Produced by David Widger





THE COMPLETE PG EDITION OF THE WORKS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

By Winston Churchill

[The Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]



CONTENTS:

     The Crossing
     The Dwelling Place of Light
     Mr. Crewe's Career
     A Far Country
     Coniston
     The Inside of the Cup
     Richard Carvel
     A Modern Chronicle
     The Celebrity
     The Crisis
     Dr. Jonathan (Play)
     A Traveller in Wartime
     An Essay on the American Contribution and the Democratic Idea





THE CROSSING

By Winston Churchill



CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE BORDERLAND

I.      THE BLUE WALL
II.     WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS
III.    CHARLESTOWN
IV.     TEMPLE BOW
V.      CRAM'S HELL
VI.     MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES
VII.    IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE
VIII.   THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE
IX.     ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL
X.      HARRODSTOWN
XI.     FRAGMENTARY
XII.    THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS
XIII.   KASKASKIA
XIV.    HOW THE KASKASKIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS
XV.     DAYS OF TRIAL
XVI.    DAVY GOES TO CAHOKIA
XVII.   THE SACRIFICE
XVIII.  "AN' YE HAD BEEN WHERE I HAD BEEN"
XIX.    THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED
XX.     THE CAMPAIGN ENDS


BOOK II. FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

I.      IN THE CABIN
II.     "THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN"
III.    WE GO TO DANVILLE
IV.     I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE
V.      I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW
VI.     THE WIDOW BROWN'S
VII.    I MEET A HERO
VIII.   TO ST. LOUIS
IX.     "CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"
X.      THE KEEL BOAT
XI.     THE STRANGE CITY
XII.    LES ISLES
XIII.   MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED
XIV.    RETRIBUTION


BOOK III. LOUISIANA

I.      THE RIGHTS OF MAN
II.     THE HOUSE ABOVE THE FALLS
III.    LOUISVILLE CELEBRATES
IV.     OF A SUDDEN RESOLUTION
V.      THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES
VI.     MADAME LA VICOMTESSE
VII.    THE DISPOSAL OF THE SIEUR DE ST. GRE
VIII.   AT LAMARQUE'S
IX.     MONSIEUR LE BARON
X.      THE SCOURGE
XI.     "IN THE MIDST OF LIFE"
XII.    VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENINGS
XIII.   A MYSTERY
XIV.    "TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES"
XV.     AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

AFTERWORD



THE CROSSING

BOOK I

THE BORDERLAND


CHAPTER I

THE BLUE WALL

I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the
evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters.
There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a
cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of
King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of
North Carolina.

The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had
two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone
chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father
was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great
buckhorns held my father's rifle when it was not in use. On other horns
hung jerked bear's meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups,
and bags of seed, and my father's best hunting shirt; also, in a
neglected corner, several articles of woman's attire from pegs. These
once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine,
faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the
Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and
huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he
would give me no answers.

My father was--how shall I say what he was? To this day I can only
surmise many things of him. He was a Scotchman born, and I know now that
he had a slight Scotch accent. At the time of which I write, my early
childhood, he was a frontiersman and hunter. I can see him now, with his
hunting shirt and leggings and moccasins; his powder horn, engraved with
wondrous scenes; his bullet pouch and tomahawk and hunting knife. He was
a tall, lean man with a strange, sad face. And he talked little save
when he drank too many "horns," as they were called in that country.
These lapses of my father's were a perpetual source of wonder to
me,--and, I must say, of delight. They occurred only when a passing
traveller who hit his fancy chanced that way, or, what was almost as
rare, a neighbor. Many a winter night I have lain awake under the skins,
listening to a flow of language that held me spellbound, though I
understood scarce a word of it.

       "Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
        Few in the extreme, but all in a degree."

The chance neighbor or traveller was no less struck with wonder. And
many the time have I heard the query, at the Cross-Roads and elsewhere,
"Whar Alec Trimble got his larnin'?"

The truth is, my father was an object of suspicion to the frontiersmen.
Even as a child I knew this, and resented it. He had brought me up in
solitude, and I was old for my age, learned in some things far beyond my
years, and ignorant of others I should have known. I loved the man
passionately. In the long winter evenings, when the howl of wolves and
"painters" rose as the wind lulled, he taught me to read from the Bible
and the "Pilgrim's Progress." I can see his long, slim fingers on the
page. They seemed but ill fitted for the life he led.

The love of rhythmic language was somehow born into me, and many's the
time I have held watch in the cabin day and night while my father was
away on his hunts, spelling out the verses that have since become part of
my life.

As I grew older I went with him into the mountains, often on his back;
and spent the nights in open camp with my little moccasins drying at the
blaze. So I learned to skin a bear, and fleece off the fat for oil with
my hunting knife; and cure a deerskin and follow a trail. At seven I
even shot the long rifle, with a rest. I learned to endure cold and
hunger and fatigue and to walk in silence over the mountains, my father
never saying a word for days at a spell. And often, when he opened his
mouth, it would be to recite a verse of Pope's in a way that moved me
strangely. For a poem is not a poem unless it be well spoken.

In the hot days of summer, over against the dark forest the bright green
of our little patch of Indian corn rippled in the wind. And towards
night I would often sit watching the deep blue of the mountain wall and
dream of the mysteries of the land that lay beyond. And by chance, one
evening as I sat thus, my father reading in the twilight, a man stood
before us. So silently had he come up the path leading from the brook
that we had not heard him. Presently my father looked up from his book,
but did not rise. As for me, I had been staring for some time in
astonishment, for he was a better-looking man than I had ever seen. He
wore a deerskin hunting shirt dyed black, but, in place of a coonskin cap
with the tail hanging down, a hat. His long rifle rested on the ground,
and he held a roan horse by the bridle.

"Howdy, neighbor?" said he.

I recall a fear that my father would not fancy him. In such cases he
would give a stranger food, and leave him to himself. My father's whims
were past understanding. But he got up.

"Good evening," said he.

The visitor looked a little surprised, as I had seen many do, at my
father's accent.

"Neighbor," said he, "kin you keep me over night?"

"Come in," said my father.

We sat down to our supper of corn and beans and venison, of all of which
our guest ate sparingly. He, too, was a silent man, and scarcely a word
was spoken during the meal. Several times he looked at me with such a
kindly expression in his blue eyes, a trace of a smile around his broad
mouth, that I wished he might stay with us always. But once, when my
father said something about Indians, the eyes grew hard as flint. It was
then I remarked, with a boy's wonder, that despite his dark hair he had
yellow eyebrows.

After supper the two men sat on the log step, while I set about the task
of skinning the deer my father had shot that day. Presently I felt a
heavy hand on my shoulder.

"What's your name, lad?" he said.

I told him Davy.

"Davy, I'll larn ye a trick worth a little time," said he, whipping out a
knife. In a trice the red carcass hung between the forked stakes, while
I stood with my mouth open. He turned to me and laughed gently.

"Some day you'll cross the mountains and skin twenty of an evening," he
said. "Ye'll make a woodsman sure. You've got the eye, and the hand."

This little piece of praise from him made me hot all over.

"Game rare?" said he to my father.

"None sae good, now," said my father.

"I reckon not. My cabin's on Beaver Creek some forty mile above, and
game's going there, too."

"Settlements," said my father. But presently, after a few whiffs of his
pipe, he added, "I hear fine things of this land across the mountains,
that the Indians call the Dark and Bluidy Ground."

"And well named," said the stranger.

"But a brave country," said my father, "and all tramped down with game.
I hear that Daniel Boone and others have gone into it and come back with
marvellous tales. They tell me Boone was there alone three months. He's
saething of a man. D'ye ken him?"

The ruddy face of the stranger grew ruddier still.

"My name's Boone," he said.

"What!" cried my father, "it wouldn't be Daniel?"

"You've guessed it, I reckon."

My father rose without a word, went into the cabin, and immediately
reappeared with a flask and a couple of gourds, one of which he handed to
our visitor.

"Tell me aboot it," said he.

That was the fairy tale of my childhood. Far into the night I lay on the
dewy grass listening to Mr. Boone's talk. It did not at first flow in a
steady stream, for he was not a garrulous man, but my father's questions
presently fired his enthusiasm. I recall but little of it, being so
small a lad, but I crept closer and closer until I could touch this
superior being who had been beyond the Wall. Marco Polo was no greater
wonder to the Venetians than Boone to me.

He spoke of leaving wife and children, and setting out for the Unknown
with other woodsmen. He told how, crossing over our blue western wall
into a valley beyond, they found a "Warrior's Path" through a gap across
another range, and so down into the fairest of promised lands. And as he
talked he lost himself in the tale of it, and the very quality of his
voice changed. He told of a land of wooded hill and pleasant vale, of
clear water running over limestone down to the great river beyond, the
Ohio--a land of glades, the fields of which were pied with flowers of
wondrous beauty, where roamed the buffalo in countless thousands, where
elk and deer abounded, and turkeys and feathered game, and bear in the
tall brakes of cane. And, simply, he told how, when the others had left
him, he stayed for three months roaming the hills alone with Nature
herself.

"But did you no' meet the Indians?" asked my father.

"I seed one fishing on a log once," said our visitor, laughing, "but he
fell into the water. I reckon he was drowned."

My father nodded comprehendingly,--even admiringly.

"And again!" said he.

"Wal," said Mr. Boone, "we fell in with a war party of Shawnees going
back to their lands north of the great river. The critters took away all
we had. It was hard," he added reflectively; "I had staked my fortune on
the venter, and we'd got enough skins to make us rich. But, neighbor,
there is land enough for you and me, as black and rich as Canaan."

"'The Lord is my shepherd,'" said my father, lapsing into verse. "'The
Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me into green
pastures, and beside still waters.'"

For a time they were silent, each wrapped in his own thought, while the
crickets chirped and the frogs sang. From the distant forest came the
mournful hoot of an owl.

"And you are going back?" asked my father, presently.

"Aye, that I am. There are many families on the Yadkin below going, too.
And you, neighbor, you might come with us. Davy is the boy that would
thrive in that country."

My father did not answer. It was late indeed when we lay down to rest,
and the night I spent between waking and dreaming of the wonderland
beyond the mountains, hoping against hope that my father would go. The
sun was just flooding the slopes when our guest arose to leave, and my
father bade him God-speed with a heartiness that was rare to him. But,
to my bitter regret, neither spoke of my father's going. Being a man of
understanding, Mr. Boone knew it were little use to press. He patted me
on the head.

"You're a wise lad, Davy," said he. "I hope we shall meet again."

He mounted his roan and rode away down the slope, waving his hand to us.
And it was with a heavy heart that I went to feed our white mare,
whinnying for food in the lean-to.



CHAPTER II

WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS

And so our life went on the same, but yet not the same. For I had the
Land of Promise to dream of, and as I went about my tasks I conjured up
in my mind pictures of its beauty. You will forgive a backwoods
boy,--self-centred, for lack of wider interest, and with a little
imagination. Bear hunting with my father, and an occasional trip on the
white mare twelve miles to the Cross-Roads for salt and other
necessaries, were the only diversions to break the routine of my days.
But at the Cross-Roads, too, they were talking of Kaintuckee. For so the
Land was called, the Dark and Bloody Ground.

The next year came a war on the Frontier, waged by Lord Dunmore, Governor
of Virginia. Of this likewise I heard at the Cross-Roads, though few
from our part seemed to have gone to it. And I heard there, for rumors
spread over mountains, that men blazing in the new land were in danger,
and that my hero, Boone, was gone out to save them. But in the autumn
came tidings of a great battle far to the north, and of the Indians suing
for peace.

The next year came more tidings of a sort I did not understand. I
remember once bringing back from the Cross-Roads a crumpled newspaper,
which my father read again and again, and then folded up and put in his
pocket. He said nothing to me of these things. But the next time I went
to the Cross-Roads, the woman asked me:--

"Is your Pa for the Congress?"

"What's that?" said I.

"I reckon he ain't," said the woman, tartly. I recall her dimly, a
slattern creature in a loose gown and bare feet, wife of the storekeeper
and wagoner, with a swarm of urchins about her. They were all very
natural to me thus. And I remember a battle with one of these urchins in
the briers, an affair which did not add to the love of their family for
ours. There was no money in that country, and the store took our pelts
in exchange for what we needed from civilization. Once a month would I
load these pelts on the white mare, and make the journey by the path down
the creek. At times I met other settlers there, some of them not long
from Ireland, with the brogue still in their mouths. And again, I saw
the wagoner with his great canvas-covered wagon standing at the door,
ready to start for the town sixty miles away. 'Twas he brought the news
of this latest war.

One day I was surprised to see the wagoner riding up the path to our
cabin, crying out for my father, for he was a violent man. And a violent
scene followed. They remained for a long time within the house, and when
they came out the wagoner's face was red with rage. My father, too, was
angry, but no more talkative than usual.

"Ye say ye'll not help the Congress?" shouted the wagoner.

"I'll not," said my father.

"Ye'll live to rue this day, Alec Trimble," cried the man. "Ye may think
ye're too fine for the likes of us, but there's them in the settlement
that knows about ye."

With that he flung himself on his horse, and rode away. But the next
time I went to the Cross-Roads the woman drove me away with curses, and
called me an aristocrat. Wearily I tramped back the dozen miles up the
creek, beside the mare, carrying my pelts with me; stumbling on the
stones, and scratched by the dry briers. For it was autumn, the woods
all red and yellow against the green of the pines. I sat down beside the
old beaver dam to gather courage to tell my father. But he only smiled
bitterly when he heard it. Nor would he tell me what the word ARISTOCRAT
meant.

That winter we spent without bacon, and our salt gave out at Christmas.
It was at this season, if I remember rightly, that we had another
visitor. He arrived about nightfall one gray day, his horse jaded and
cut, and he was dressed all in wool, with a great coat wrapped about him,
and high boots. This made me stare at him. When my father drew back the
bolt of the door he, too, stared and fell back a step.

"Come in," said he.

"D'ye ken me, Alec?" said the man.

He was a tall, spare man like my father, a Scotchman, but his hair was in
a cue.

"Come in, Duncan," said my father, quietly. "Davy, run out for wood."

Loath as I was to go, I obeyed. As I came back dragging a log behind me
I heard them in argument, and in their talk there was much about the
Congress, and a woman named Flora Macdonald, and a British fleet sailing
southward.

"We'll have two thousand Highlanders and more to meet the fleet. And
ye'll sit at hame, in this hovel ye've made yeresel" (and he glanced
about disdainfully) "and no help the King?" He brought his fist down on
the pine boards.

"Ye did no help the King greatly at Culloden, Duncan," said my father,
dryly.

Our visitor did not answer at once.

"The Yankee Rebels 'll no help the House of Stuart," said he, presently.
"And Hanover's coom to stay. Are ye, too, a Rebel, Alec Ritchie?"

I remember wondering why he said RITCHIE.

"I'll no take a hand in this fight," answered my father.

And that was the end of it. The man left with scant ceremony, I guiding
him down the creek to the main trail. He did not open his mouth until I
parted with him.

"Puir Davy," said he, and rode away in the night, for the moon shone
through the clouds.

I remember these things, I suppose, because I had nothing else to think
about. And the names stuck in my memory, intensified by later events,
until I began to write a diary.

And now I come to my travels. As the spring drew on I had had a feeling
that we could not live thus forever, with no market for our pelts. And
one day my father said to me abruptly:--

"Davy, we'll be travelling."

"Where?" I asked.

"Ye'll ken soon enough," said he. "We'll go at crack o' day."

We went away in the wild dawn, leaving the cabin desolate. We loaded the
white mare with the pelts, and my father wore a woollen suit like that of
our Scotch visitor, which I had never seen before. He had clubbed his
hair. But, strangest of all, he carried in a small parcel the silk gown
that had been my mother's. We had scant other baggage.

We crossed the Yadkin at a ford, and climbing the hills to the south of
it we went down over stony traces, down and down, through rain and sun;
stopping at rude cabins or taverns, until we came into the valley of
another river. This I know now was the Catawba. My memories of that
ride are as misty as the spring weather in the mountains. But presently
the country began to open up into broad fields, some of these abandoned
to pines. And at last, splashing through the stiff red clay that was up
to the mare's fetlocks, we came to a place called Charlotte Town. What a
day that was for me! And how I gaped at the houses there, finer than any
I had ever dreamed of! That was my first sight of a town. And how I
listened open-mouthed to the gentlemen at the tavern! One I recall had
a fighting head with a lock awry, and a negro servant to wait on him, and
was the principal spokesman. He, too, was talking of war. The Cherokees
had risen on the western border. He was telling of the massacre of a
settlement, in no mild language.

"Sirs," he cried, "the British have stirred the redskins to this. Will
you sit here while women and children are scalped, and those devils" (he
called them worse names) "Stuart and Cameron go unpunished?"

My father got up from the corner where he sat, and stood beside the man.

"I ken Alec Cameron," said he.

The man looked at him with amazement.

"Ay?" said he, "I shouldn't think you'd own it. Damn him," he cried, "if
we catch him we'll skin him alive."

"I ken Cameron," my father repeated, "and I'll gang with you to skin him
alive."

The man seized his hand and wrung it.

"But first I must be in Charlestown," said my father.

The next morning we sold our pelts. And though the mare was tired, we
pushed southward, I behind the saddle. I had much to think about,
wondering what was to become of me while my father went to skin Cameron.
I had not the least doubt that he would do it. The world is a storybook
to a lad of nine, and the thought of Charlestown filled me with a delight
unspeakable. Perchance he would leave me in Charlestown.

At nightfall we came into a settlement called the Waxhaws. And there
being no tavern there, and the mare being very jaded and the roads heavy,
we cast about for a place to sleep. The sunlight slanting over the pine
forest glistened on the pools in the wet fields. And it so chanced that
splashing across these, swinging a milk-pail over his head, shouting at
the top of his voice, was a red-headed lad of my own age. My father
hailed him, and he came running towards us, still shouting, and vaulted
the rails. He stood before us, eying me with a most mischievous look in
his blue eyes, and dabbling in the red mud with his toes. I remember I
thought him a queer-looking boy. He was lanky, and he had a very long
face under his tousled hair.

My father asked him where he could spend the night.

"Wal," said the boy, "I reckon Uncle Crawford might take you in. And
again he mightn't."

He ran ahead, still swinging the pail. And we, following, came at length
to a comfortable-looking farmhouse. As we stopped at the doorway a
stout, motherly woman filled it. She held her knitting in her hand.

"You Andy!" she cried, "have you fetched the milk?"

Andy tried to look repentant.

"I declare I'll tan you," said the lady. "Git out this instant. What
rascality have you been in?"

"I fetched home visitors, Ma," said Andy.

"Visitors!" cried the lady. "What 'll your Uncle Crawford say?" And she
looked at us smiling, but with no great hostility.

"Pardon me, Madam," said my father, "if we seem to intrude. But my mare
is tired, and we have nowhere to stay."

Uncle Crawford did take us in. He was a man of substance in that
country,--a north of Ireland man by birth, if I remember right.

I went to bed with the red-headed boy, whose name was Andy Jackson. I
remember that his mother came into our little room under the eaves and
made Andy say his prayers, and me after him. But when she was gone out,
Andy stumped his toe getting into bed in the dark and swore with a
brilliancy and vehemence that astonished me.

It was some hours before we went to sleep, he plying me with questions
about my life, which seemed to interest him greatly, and I returning in
kind.

"My Pa's dead," said Andy. "He came from a part of Ireland where they
are all weavers. We're kinder poor relations here. Aunt Crawford's
sick, and Ma keeps house. But Uncle Crawford's good, an' lets me go to
Charlotte Town with him sometimes."

I recall that he also boasted some about his big brothers, who were away
just then.

Andy was up betimes in the morning, to see us start. But we didn't
start, because Mr. Crawford insisted that the white mare should have a
half day's rest. Andy, being hustled off unwillingly to the "Old Field"
school, made me go with him. He was a very headstrong boy.

I was very anxious to see a school. This one was only a log house in a
poor, piny place, with a rabble of boys and girls romping at the door.
But when they saw us they stopped. Andy jumped into the air, let out a
war-whoop, and flung himself into the midst, scattering them right and
left, and knocking one boy over and over. "I'm Billy Buck!" he cried.
"I'm a hull regiment o' Rangers. Let th' Cherokees mind me!"

"Way for Sandy Andy!" cried the boys. "Where'd you get the new boy,
Sandy?"

"His name's Davy," said Andy, "and his Pa's goin' to fight the Cherokees.
He kin lick tarnation out'n any o' you."

Meanwhile I held back, never having been thrown with so many of my own
kind.

"He's shot painters and b'ars," said Andy. "An' skinned 'em. Kin you
lick him, Smally? I reckon not."

Now I had not come to the school for fighting. So I held back.
Fortunately for me, Smally held back also. But he tried skilful tactics.

"He kin throw you, Sandy."

Andy faced me in an instant.

"Kin you?" said he.

There was nothing to do but try, and in a few seconds we were rolling on
the ground, to the huge delight of Smally and the others, Andy shouting
all the while and swearing. We rolled and rolled and rolled in the mud,
until we both lost our breath, and even Andy stopped swearing, for want
of it. After a while the boys were silent, and the thing became grim
earnest. At length, by some accident rather than my own strength, both
his shoulders touched the ground. I released him. But he was on his
feet in an instant and at me again like a wildcat.

"Andy won't stay throwed," shouted a boy. And before I knew it he had my
shoulders down in a puddle. Then I went for him, and affairs were
growing more serious than a wrestle, when Smally, fancying himself safe,
and no doubt having a grudge, shouted out:--

"Tell him he slobbers, Davy."

Andy DID slobber. But that was the end of me, and the beginning of
Smally. Andy left me instantly, not without an intimation that he would
come back, and proceeded to cover Smally with red clay and blood.
However, in the midst of this turmoil the schoolmaster arrived, haled
both into the schoolhouse, held court, and flogged Andrew with
considerable gusto. He pronounced these words afterwards, with great
solemnity:--

"Andrew Jackson, if I catch ye fightin' once more, I'll be afther givin'
ye lave to lave the school."

I parted from Andy at noon with real regret. He was the first boy with
whom I had ever had any intimacy. And I admired him: chiefly, I fear,
for his fluent use of profanity and his fighting qualities. He was a
merry lad, with a wondrous quick temper but a good heart. And he seemed
sorry to say good-by. He filled my pockets with June apples--unripe, by
the way--and told me to remember him when I got TILL Charlestown.

I remembered him much longer than that, and usually with a shock of
surprise.



CHAPTER III

CHARLESTOWN

Down and down we went, crossing great rivers by ford and ferry, until the
hills flattened themselves and the country became a long stretch of
level, broken by the forests only; and I saw many things I had not
thought were on the earth. Once in a while I caught glimpses of great
red houses, with stately pillars, among the trees. They put me in mind of
the palaces in Bunyan, their windows all golden in the morning sun; and
as we jogged ahead, I pondered on the delights within them. I saw gangs
of negroes plodding to work along the road, an overseer riding behind
them with his gun on his back; and there were whole cotton fields in
these domains blazing in primrose flower,--a new plant here, so my father
said. He was willing to talk on such subjects. But on others, and
especially our errand to Charlestown, he would say nothing. And I knew
better than to press him.

One day, as we were crossing a dike between rice swamps spread with
delicate green, I saw the white tops of wagons flashing in the sun at the
far end of it. We caught up with them, the wagoners cracking their whips
and swearing at the straining horses. And lo! in front of the wagons was
an army,--at least my boyish mind magnified it to such. Men clad in
homespun, perspiring and spattered with mud, were straggling along the
road by fours, laughing and joking together. The officers rode, and many
of these had blue coats and buff waistcoats,--some the worse for wear.
My father was pushing the white mare into the ditch to ride by, when one
hailed him.

"Hullo, my man," said he, "are you a friend to Congress?"

"I'm off to Charlestown to leave the lad," said my father, "and then to
fight the Cherokees."

"Good," said the other. And then, "Where are you from?"

"Upper Yadkin," answered my father. "And you?"

The officer, who was a young man, looked surprised. But then he laughed
pleasantly.

"We're North Carolina troops, going to join Lee in Charlestown," said he.
"The British are sending a fleet and regiments against it."

"Oh, aye," said my father, and would have passed on. But he was made to
go before the Colonel, who plied him with many questions. Then he gave
us a paper and dismissed us.

We pursued our journey through the heat that shimmered up from the road,
pausing now and again in the shade of a wayside tree. At times I thought
I could bear the sun no longer. But towards four o'clock of that day a
great bank of yellow cloud rolled up, darkening the earth save for a
queer saffron light that stained everything, and made our very faces
yellow. And then a wind burst out of the east with a high mournful note,
as from a great flute afar, filling the air with leaves and branches of
trees. But it bore, too, a savor that was new to me,--a salt savor,
deep and fresh, that I drew down into my lungs. And I knew that we were
near the ocean. Then came the rain, in great billows, as though the
ocean itself were upon us.

The next day we crossed a ferry on the Ashley River, and rode down the
sand of Charlestown neck. And my most vivid remembrance is of the great
trunks towering half a hundred feet in the air, with a tassel of leaves
at the top, which my father said were palmettos. Something lay heavy on
his mind. For I had grown to know his moods by a sort of silent
understanding. And when the roofs and spires of the town shone over the
foliage in the afternoon sun, I felt him give a great sigh that was like
a sob.

And how shall I describe the splendor of that city? The sandy streets,
and the gardens of flower and shade, heavy with the plant odors; and the
great houses with their galleries and porticos set in the midst of the
gardens, that I remember staring at wistfully. But before long we came
to a barricade fixed across the street, and then to another. And
presently, in an open space near a large building, was a company of
soldiers at drill.

It did not strike me as strange then that my father asked his way of no
man, but went to a little ordinary in a humbler part of the town. After
a modest meal in a corner of the public room, we went out for a stroll.
Then, from the wharves, I saw the bay dotted with islands, their white
sand sparkling in the evening light, and fringed with strange trees, and
beyond, of a deepening blue, the ocean. And nearer,--greatest of all
delights to me,--riding on the swell was a fleet of ships. My father
gazed at them long and silently, his palm over his eyes.

"Men-o'-war from the old country, lad," he said after a while. "They're
a brave sight."

"And why are they here?" I asked.

"They've come to fight," said he, "and take the town again for the King."

It was twilight when we turned to go, and then I saw that many of the
warehouses along the wharves were heaps of ruins. My father said this
was that the town might be the better defended.

We bent our way towards one of the sandy streets where the great houses
were. And to my surprise we turned in at a gate, and up a path leading
to the high steps of one of these. Under the high portico the door was
open, but the house within was dark. My father paused, and the hand he
held to mine trembled. Then he stepped across the threshold, and raising
the big polished knocker that hung on the panel, let it drop. The sound
reverberated through the house, and then stillness. And then, from
within, a shuffling sound, and an old negro came to the door. For an
instant he stood staring through the dusk, and broke into a cry.

"Marse Alec!" he said.

"Is your master at home?" said my father.

Without another word he led us through a deep hall, and out into a
gallery above the trees of a back garden, where a gentleman sat smoking a
long pipe. The old negro stopped in front of him.

"Marse John," said he, his voice shaking, "heah's Marse Alec done come
back."

The gentleman got to his feet with a start. His pipe fell to the floor,
and the ashes scattered on the boards and lay glowing there.

"Alec!" he cried, peering into my father's face, "Alec! You're not
dead."

"John," said my father, "can we talk here?"

"Good God!" said the gentleman, "you're just the same. To think of
it--to think of it! Breed, a light in the drawing-room."

There was no word spoken while the negro was gone, and the time seemed
very long. But at length he returned, a silver candlestick in each hand.

"Careful," cried the gentleman, petulantly, "you'll drop them."

He led the way into the house, and through the hall to a massive door of
mahogany with a silver door-knob. The grandeur of the place awed me, and
well it might. Boy-like, I was absorbed in this. Our little mountain
cabin would almost have gone into this one room. The candles threw their
flickering rays upward until they danced on the high ceiling. Marvel of
marvels, in the oval left clear by the heavy, rounded cornice was a
picture.

The negro set down the candles on the marble top of a table. But the air
of the room was heavy and close, and the gentleman went to a window and
flung it open. It came down instantly with a crash, so that the panes
rattled again.

"Curse these Rebels," he shouted, "they've taken our window weights to
make bullets."

Calling to the negro to pry open the window with a walking-stick, he
threw himself into a big, upholstered chair. 'Twas then I remarked the
splendor of his clothes, which were silk. And he wore a waistcoat all
sewed with flowers. With a boy's intuition, I began to dislike him
intensely.

"Damn the Rebels!" he began. "They've driven his Lordship away. I hope
his Majesty will hang every mother's son of 'em. All pleasure of life is
gone, and they've folly enough to think they can resist the fleet. And
the worst of it is," cried he, "the worst of it is, I'm forced to smirk
to them, and give good gold to their government." Seeing that my father
did not answer, he asked: "Have you joined the Highlanders? You were
always for fighting."

"I'm to be at Cherokee Ford on the twentieth," said my father. "We're to
scalp the redskins and Cameron, though 'tis not known."

"Cameron!" shrieked the gentleman. "But that's the other side, man!
Against his Majesty?"

"One side or t'other," said my father, "'tis all one against Alec
Cameron."

The gentleman looked at my father with something like terror in his eyes.

"You'll never forgive Cameron," he said.

"I'll no forgive anybody who does me a wrong," said my father.

"And where have you been all these years, Alec?" he asked presently.
"Since you went off with--"

"I've been in the mountains, leading a pure life," said my father. "And
we'll speak of nothing, if you please, that's gone by."

"And what will you have me do?" said the gentleman, helplessly.

"Little enough," said my father. "Keep the lad till I come again. He's
quiet. He'll no trouble you greatly. Davy, this is Mr. Temple. You're
to stay with him till I come again."

"Come here, lad," said the gentleman, and he peered into my face.
"You'll not resemble your mother."

"He'll resemble no one," said my father, shortly.

"Good-by, Davy. Keep this till I come again." And he gave me the parcel
made of my mother's gown. Then he lifted me in his strong arms and
kissed me, and strode out of the house. We listened in silence as he
went down the steps, and until his footsteps died away on the path. Then
the gentleman rose and pulled a cord hastily. The negro came in.

"Put the lad to bed, Breed," said he.

"Whah, suh?"

"Oh, anywhere," said the master. He turned to me.

"I'll be better able to talk to you in the morning, David," said he.

I followed the old servant up the great stairs, gulping down a sob that
would rise, and clutching my mother's gown tight under my arm. Had my
father left me alone in our cabin for a fortnight, I should not have
minded. But here, in this strange house, amid such strange surroundings,
I was heartbroken. The old negro was very kind. He led me into a little
bedroom, and placing the candle on a polished dresser, he regarded me
with sympathy.

"So you're Miss Lizbeth's boy," said he. "An' she dade. An' Marse Alec
rough an' hard es though he been bo'n in de woods. Honey, ol' Breed'll
tek care ob you. I'll git you one o' dem night rails Marse Nick has, and
some ob his'n close in de mawnin'."

These things I remember, and likewise sobbing myself to sleep in the
four-poster. Often since I have wished that I had questioned Breed of
many things on which I had no curiosity then, for he was my chief
companion in the weeks that followed. He awoke me bright and early the
next day.

"Heah's some close o' Marse Nick's you kin wear, honey," he said.

"Who is Master Nick?" I asked.

Breed slapped his thigh.

"Marse Nick Temple, Marsa's son. He's 'bout you size, but he ain' no mo'
laik you den a Jack rabbit's laik an' owl. Dey ain' none laik Marse Nick
fo' gittin' into trouble-and gittin' out agin."

"Where is he now?" I asked.

"He at Temple Bow, on de Ashley Ribber. Dat's de Marsa's barony."

"His what?"

"De place whah he lib at, in de country."

"And why isn't the master there?"

I remember that Breed gave a wink, and led me out of the window onto a
gallery above the one where we had found the master the night before. He
pointed across the dense foliage of the garden to a strip of water
gleaming in the morning sun beyond.

"See dat boat?" said the negro. "Sometime de Marse he tek ar ride in dat
boat at night. Sometime gentlemen comes heah in a pow'ful hurry to git
away, out'n de harbor whah de English is at."

By that time I was dressed, and marvellously uncomfortable in Master
Nick's clothes. But as I was going out of the door, Breed hailed me.

"Marse Dave,"--it was the first time I had been called that,--"Marse
Dave, you ain't gwineter tell?"

"Tell what?" I asked.

"Bout'n de boat, and Marsa agwine away nights."

"No," said I, indignantly.

"I knowed you wahn't," said Breed. "You don' look as if you'd tell
anything."

We found the master pacing the lower gallery. At first he barely glanced
at me, and nodded. After a while he stopped, and began to put to me many
questions about my life: when and how I had lived. And to some of my
answers he exclaimed, "Good God!" That was all. He was a handsome man,
with hands like a woman's, well set off by the lace at his sleeves. He
had fine-cut features, and the white linen he wore was most becoming.

"David," said he, at length, and I noted that he lowered his voice,
"David, you seem a discreet lad. Pay attention to what I tell you. And
mark! if you disobey me, you will be well whipped. You have this house
and garden to play in, but you are by no means to go out at the front of
the house. And whatever you may see or hear, you are to tell no one. Do
you understand?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"For the rest," said he, "Breed will give you food, and look out for your
welfare."

And so he dismissed me. They were lonely days after that for a boy used
to activity, and only the damp garden paths and lawns to run on. The
creek at the back of the garden was stagnant and marshy when the water
fell, and overhung by leafy boughs. On each side of the garden was a
high brick wall. And though I was often tempted to climb it, I felt that
disobedience was disloyalty to my father. Then there was the great
house, dark and lonely in its magnificence, over which I roamed until I
knew every corner of it.

I was most interested of all in the pictures of men and women in quaint,
old-time costumes, and I used during the great heat of the day to sit in
the drawing-room and study these, and wonder who they were and when they
lived. Another amusement I had was to climb into the deep windows and
peer through the blinds across the front garden into the street.
Sometimes men stopped and talked loudly there, and again a rattle of
drums would send me running to see the soldiers. I recall that I had a
poor enough notion of what the fighting was all about. And no wonder.
But I remember chiefly my insatiable longing to escape from this prison,
as the great house soon became for me. And I yearned with a yearning I
cannot express for our cabin in the hills and the old life there.

I caught glimpses of the master on occasions only, and then I avoided
him; for I knew he had no wish to see me. Sometimes he would be seated
in the gallery, tapping his foot on the floor, and sometimes pacing the
garden walks with his hands opening and shutting. And one night I awoke
with a start, and lay for a while listening until I heard something like
a splash, and the scraping of the bottom-boards of a boat. Irresistibly
I jumped out of bed, and running to the gallery rail I saw two dark
figures moving among the leaves below. The next morning I came suddenly
on a strange gentleman in the gallery. He wore a flowered dressing-gown
like the one I had seen on the master, and he had a jolly, round face. I
stopped and stared.

"Who the devil are you?" said he, but not unkindly.

"My name is David Trimble," said I, "and I come from the mountains."

He laughed.

"Mr. David Trimble-from-the-mountains, who the devil am I?"

"I don't know, sir," and I started to go away, not wishing to disturb
him.

"Avast!" he cried. "Stand fast. See that you remember that."

"I'm not here of my free will, sir, but because my father wishes it. And
I'll betray nothing."

Then he stared at me.

"How old did you say you were?" he demanded.

"I didn't say," said I.

"And you are of Scotch descent?" said he.

"I didn't say so, sir."

"You're a rum one," said he, laughing again, and he disappeared into the
house.

That day, when Breed brought me my dinner on my gallery, he did not speak
of a visitor. You may be sure I did not mention the circumstance. But
Breed always told me the outside news.

"Dey's gittin' ready fo' a big fight, Marse Dave," said he. "Mister
Moultrie in the fo't in de bay, an' Marse Gen'l Lee tryin' for to boss
him. Dey's Rebels. An' Marse Admiral Parker an' de King's reg'ments
fixin' fo' to tek de fo't, an' den Charlesto'n. Dey say Mister Moultrie
ain't got no mo' chance dan a treed 'possum."

"Why, Breed?" I asked. I had heard my father talk of England's power and
might, and Mister Moultrie seemed to me a very brave man in his little
fort.

"Why!" exclaimed the old negro. "You ain't neber read no hist'ry books.
I knows some of de gentlemen wid Mister Moultrie. Dey ain't no soldiers.
Some is fine gentlemen, to be suah, but it's jist foolishness to fight
dat fleet an' army. Marse Gen'l Lee hisself, he done sesso. I heerd
him."

"And he's on Mister Moultrie's side?" I asked.

"Sholy," said Breed. "He's de Rebel gen'l."

"Then he's a knave and a coward!" I cried with a boy's indignation.
"Where did you hear him say that?" I demanded, incredulous of some of
Breed's talk.

"Right heah in dis house," he answered, and quickly clapped his hand to
his mouth, and showed the whites of his eyes. "You ain't agwineter tell
dat, Marse Dave?"

"Of course not," said I. And then: "I wish I could see Mister Moultrie
in his fort, and the fleet."

"Why, honey, so you kin," said Breed.

The good-natured negro dropped his work and led the way upstairs, I
following expectant, to the attic. A rickety ladder rose to a kind of
tower (cupola, I suppose it would be called), whence the bay spread out
before me like a picture, the white islands edged with the whiter lacing
of the waves. There, indeed, was the fleet, but far away, like toy ships
on the water, and the bit of a fort perched on the sandy edge of an
island. I spent most of that day there, watching anxiously for some
movement. But none came.

That night I was again awakened. And running into the gallery, I heard
quick footsteps in the garden. Then there was a lantern's flash, a
smothered oath, and all was dark again. But in the flash I had seen
distinctly three figures. One was Breed, and he held the lantern;
another was the master; and the third, a stout one muffled in a cloak, I
made no doubt was my jolly friend. I lay long awake, with a boy's
curiosity, until presently the dawn broke, and I arose and dressed, and
began to wander about the house. No Breed was sweeping the gallery, nor
was there any sign of the master. The house was as still as a tomb, and
the echoes of my footsteps rolled through the halls and chambers. At
last, prompted by curiosity and fear, I sought the kitchen, where I had
often sat with Breed as he cooked the master's dinner. This was at the
bottom and end of the house. The great fire there was cold, and the pots
and pans hung neatly on their hooks, untouched that day. I was running
through the wet garden, glad to be out in the light, when a sound stopped
me.

It was a dull roar from the direction of the bay. Almost instantly came
another, and another, and then several broke together. And I knew that
the battle had begun. Forgetting for the moment my loneliness, I ran
into the house and up the stairs two at a time, and up the ladder into
the cupola, where I flung open the casement and leaned out.

There was the battle indeed,--a sight so vivid to me after all these
years that I can call it again before me when I will. The toy
men-o'-war, with sails set, ranging in front of the fort. They looked at
my distance to be pressed against it. White puffs, like cotton balls,
would dart one after another from a ship's side, melt into a cloud, float
over her spars, and hide her from my view. And then presently the roar
would reach me, and answering puffs along the line of the fort. And I
could see the mortar shells go up and up, leaving a scorched trail
behind, curve in a great circle, and fall upon the little garrison.
Mister Moultrie became a real person to me then, a vivid picture in my
boyish mind--a hero beyond all other heroes.

As the sun got up in the heavens and the wind fell, the cupola became a
bake-oven. But I scarcely felt the heat. My whole soul was out in the
bay, pent up with the men in the fort. How long could they hold out?
Why were they not all killed by the shot that fell like hail among them?
Yet puff after puff sprang from their guns, and the sound of it was like
a storm coming nearer in the heat. But at noon it seemed to me as though
some of the ships were sailing. It was true. Slowly they drew away from
the others, and presently I thought they had stopped again. Surely two of
them were stuck together, then three were fast on a shoal. Boats, like
black bugs in the water, came and went between them and the others.
After a long time the two that were together got apart and away. But the
third stayed there, immovable, helpless.

Throughout the afternoon the fight, kept on, the little black boats
coming and going. I saw a mast totter and fall on one of the ships. I
saw the flag shot away from the fort, and reappear again. But now the
puffs came from her walls slowly and more slowly, so that my heart sank
with the setting sun. And presently it grew too dark to see aught save
the red flashes. Slowly, reluctantly, the noise died down until at last
a great silence reigned, broken only now and again by voices in the
streets below me. It was not until then that I realized that I had been
all day without food--that I was alone in the dark of a great house.

I had never known fear in the woods at night. But now I trembled as I
felt my way down the ladder, and groped and stumbled through the black
attic for the stairs. Every noise I made seemed louder an hundred fold
than the battle had been, and when I barked my shins, the pain was
sharper than a knife. Below, on the big stairway, the echo of my
footsteps sounded again from the empty rooms, so that I was taken with a
panic and fled downward, sliding and falling, until I reached the hall.
Frantically as I tried, I could not unfasten the bolts on the front door.
And so, running into the drawing-room, I pried open the window, and sat
me down in the embrasure to think, and to try to quiet the thumpings of
my heart.

By degrees I succeeded. The still air of the night and the heavy, damp
odors of the foliage helped me. And I tried to think what was right for
me to do. I had promised the master not to leave the place, and that
promise seemed in pledge to my father. Surely the master would come
back--or Breed. They would not leave me here alone without food much
longer. Although I was young, I was brought up to responsibility. And I
inherited a conscience that has since given me much trouble.

From these thoughts, trying enough for a starved lad, I fell to thinking
of my father on the frontier fighting the Cherokees. And so I dozed away
to dream of him. I remember that he was skinning Cameron,--I had often
pictured it,--and Cameron yelling, when I was awakened with a shock by a
great noise.

I listened with my heart in my throat. The noise seemed to come from the
hall,--a prodigious pounding. Presently it stopped, and a man's voice
cried out:--

"Ho there, within!"

My first impulse was to answer. But fear kept me still.

"Batter down the door," some one shouted.

There was a sound of shuffling in the portico, and the same voice:--

"Now then, all together, lads!"

Then came a straining and splitting of wood, and with a crash the door
gave way. A lantern's rays shot through the hall.

"The house is as dark as a tomb," said a voice.

"And as empty, I reckon," said another. "John Temple and his spy have
got away."

"We'll have a search," answered the first voice.

They stood for a moment in the drawing-room door, peering, and then they
entered. There were five of them. Two looked to be gentlemen, and three
were of rougher appearance. They carried lanterns.

"That window's open," said one of the gentlemen. "They must have been
here to-day. Hello, what's this?" He started back in surprise.

I slid down from the window-seat, and stood facing them, not knowing what
else to do. They, too, seemed equally confounded.

"It must be Temple's son," said one, at last. "I had thought the family
at Temple Bow. What's your name, my lad?"

"David Trimble, sir," said I.

"And what are you doing here?" he asked more sternly.

"I was left in Mr. Temple's care by my father."

"Oho!" he cried. "And where is your father?"

"He's gone to fight the Cherokees," I answered soberly. "To skin a man
named Cameron."

At that they were silent for an instant, and then the two broke into a
laugh.

"Egad, Lowndes," said the gentleman, "here is a fine mystery. Do you
think the boy is lying?"

The other gentleman scratched his forehead.

"I'll have you know I don't lie, sir," I said, ready to cry.

"No," said the other gentleman. "A backwoodsman named Trimble went to
Rutledge with credentials from North Carolina, and has gone off to
Cherokee Ford to join McCall."

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the first gentleman. He came up and laid his
hand on my shoulder, and said:--

"Where is Mr. Temple?"

"That I don't know, sir."

"When did he go away?"

I did not answer at once.

"That I can't tell you, sir."

"Was there any one with him?"

"That I can't tell you, sir."

"The devil you can't!" he cried, taking his hand away. "And why not?"

I shook my head, sorely beset.

"Come, Mathews," cried the gentleman called Lowndes.

"We'll search first, and attend to the lad after."

And so they began going through the house, prying into every cupboard and
sweeping under every bed. They even climbed to the attic; and noting the
open casement in the cupola, Mr. Lowndes said:--

"Some one has been here to-day."

"It was I, sir," I said. "I have been here all day."

"And what doing, pray?" he demanded.

"Watching the battle. And oh, sir," I cried, "can you tell me whether
Mister Moultrie beat the British?"

"He did so," cried Mr. Lowndes. "He did, and soundly."

He stared at me. I must have looked my pleasure.

"Why, David," says he, "you are a patriot, too."

"I am a Rebel, sir," I cried hotly.

Both gentlemen laughed again, and the men with them.

"The lad is a character," said Mr. Lowndes.

We made our way down into the garden, which they searched last. At the
creek's side the boat was gone, and there were footsteps in the mud.

"The bird has flown, Lowndes," said Mr. Mathews.

"And good riddance for the Committee," answered that gentleman, heartily.
"He got to the fleet in fine season to get a round shot in the middle.
David," said he, solemnly, "remember it never pays to try to be two
things at once."

"I'll warrant he stayed below water," said Mr. Mathews.

"But what shall we do with the lad?"

"I'll take him to my house for the night," said Mr. Lowndes, "and in the
morning we'll talk to him. I reckon he should be sent to Temple Bow. He
is connected in some way with the Temples."

"God help him if he goes there," said Mr. Mathews, under his breath. But
I heard him.

They locked up the house, and left one of the men to guard it, while I
went with Mr. Lowndes to his residence. I remember that people were
gathered in the streets as we passed, making merry, and that they greeted
Mr. Lowndes with respect and good cheer. His house, too, was set in a
garden and quite as fine as Mr. Temple's. It was ablaze with candles,
and I caught glimpses of fine gentlemen and ladies in the rooms. But he
hurried me through the hall, and into a little chamber at the rear where
a writing-desk was set. He turned and faced me.

"You must be tired, David," he said.

I nodded.

"And hungry? Boys are always hungry."

"Yes, sir."

"You had no dinner?"

"No, sir," I answered, off my guard.

"Mercy!" he said. "It is a long time since breakfast."

"I had no breakfast, sir."

"Good God!" he said, and pulled the velvet handle of a cord. A negro
came.

"Is the supper for the guests ready?"

"Yes, Marsa."

"Then bring as much as you can carry here," said the gentleman. "And ask
Mrs. Lowndes if I may speak with her."

Mrs. Lowndes came first. And such a fine lady she was that she
frightened me, this being my first experience with ladies. But when Mr.
Lowndes told her my story, she ran to me impulsively and put her arms
about me.

"Poor lad!" she said. "What a shame!"

I think that the tears came then, but it was small wonder. There were
tears in her eyes, too.

Such a supper as I had I shall never forget. And she sat beside me for
long, neglecting her guests, and talking of my life. Suddenly she turned
to her husband, calling him by name.

"He is Alec Ritchie's son," she said, "and Alec has gone against
Cameron."

Mr. Lowndes did not answer, but nodded.

"And must he go to Temple Bow?"

"My dear," said Mr. Lowndes, "I fear it is our duty to send him there."



CHAPTER IV

TEMPLE BOW

In the morning I started for Temple Bow on horseback behind one of Mr.
Lowndes' negroes. Good Mrs. Lowndes had kissed me at parting, and tucked
into my pocket a parcel of sweetmeats. There had been a few grave
gentlemen to see me, and to their questions I had replied what I could.
But tell them of Mr. Temple I would not, save that he himself had told me
nothing. And Mr. Lowndes had presently put an end to their talk.

"The lad knows nothing, gentlemen," he had said, which was true.

"David," said he, when he bade me farewell, "I see that your father has
brought you up to fear God. Remember that all you see in this life is
not to be imitated."

And so I went off behind his negro. He was a merry lad, and despite the
great heat of the journey and my misgivings about Temple Bow, he made me
laugh. I was sad at crossing the ferry over the Ashley, through thinking
of my father, but I reflected that it could not be long now ere I saw him
again. In the middle of the day we stopped at a tavern. And at length,
in the abundant shade of evening, we came to a pair of great ornamental
gates set between brick pillars capped with white balls, and turned into
a drive. And presently, winding through the trees, we were in sight of a
long, brick mansion trimmed with white, and a velvet lawn before it all
flecked with shadows. In front of the portico was a saddled horse,
craning his long neck at two panting hounds stretched on the ground. A
negro boy in blue clutched the bridle. On the horse-block a gentleman in
white reclined. He wore shiny boots, and he held his hat in his hand,
and he was gazing up at a lady who stood on the steps above him.

The lady I remember as well--Lord forbid that I should forget her. And
her laugh as I heard it that evening is ringing now in my ears. And yet
it was not a laugh. Musical it was, yet there seemed no pleasure in it:
rather irony, and a great weariness of the amusements of this world: and
a note, too, from a vanity never ruffled. It stopped abruptly as the
negro pulled up his horse before her, and she stared at us haughtily.

"What's this?" she said.

"Pardon, Mistis," said the negro, "I'se got a letter from Marse Lowndes."

"Mr. Lowndes should instruct his niggers," she said.
"There is a servants' drive." The man was turning his horse when she
cried: "Hold! Let's have it."

He dismounted and gave her the letter, and I jumped to the ground,
watching her as she broke the seal, taking her in, as a boy will, from
the flowing skirt and tight-laced stays of her salmon silk to her high
and powdered hair. She must have been about thirty. Her face was
beautiful, but had no particle of expression in it, and was dotted here
and there with little black patches of plaster. While she was reading, a
sober gentleman in black silk-breeches and severe coat came out of the
house and stood beside her.

"Heigho, parson," said the gentleman on the horse-block, without moving,
"are you to preach against loo or lansquenet to-morrow?"

"Would it make any difference to you, Mr. Riddle?"

Before he could answer there came a great clatter behind them, and a boy
of my own age appeared. With a leap he landed sprawling on the indolent
gentleman's shoulders, nearly upsetting him.

"You young rascal!" exclaimed the gentleman, pitching him on the drive
almost at my feet; then he fell back again to a position where he could
look up at the lady.

"Harry Riddle," cried the boy, "I'll ride steeplechases and beat you some
day."

"Hush, Nick," cried the lady, petulantly, "I'll have no nerves left me."
She turned to the letter again, holding it very near to her eyes, and
made a wry face of impatience. Then she held the sheet out to Mr.
Riddle.

"A pretty piece of news," she said languidly. "Read it, Harry."

The gentleman seized her hand instead. The lady glanced at the
clergyman, whose back was turned, and shook her head.

"How tiresome you are!" she said.

"What's happened?" asked Mr. Riddle, letting go as the parson looked
around.

"Oh, they've had a battle," said the lady, "and Moultrie and his Rebels
have beat off the King's fleet."

"The devil they have!" exclaimed Mr. Riddle, while the parson started
forwards. "Anything more?"

"Yes, a little." She hesitated. "That husband of mine has fled
Charlestown. They think he went to the fleet." And she shot a meaning
look at Mr. Riddle, who in turn flushed red. I was watching them.

"What!" cried the clergyman, "John Temple has run away?"

"Why not," said Mr. Riddle. "One can't live between wind and water long.
And Charlestown's--uncomfortable in summer."

At that the clergyman cast one look at them--such a look as I shall never
forget--and went into the house.

"Mamma," said the boy, "where has father gone? Has he run away?"

"Yes. Don't bother me, Nick."

"I don't believe it," cried Nick, his high voice shaking. "I'd--I'd
disown him."

At that Mr. Riddle burst into a hearty laugh.

"Come, Nick," said he, "it isn't so bad as that. Your father's for his
Majesty, like the rest of us. He's merely gone over to fight for him."
And he looked at the lady and laughed again. But I liked the boy.

As for the lady, she curled her lip. "Mr. Riddle, don't be foolish," she
said. "If we are to play, send your horse to the stables." Suddenly her
eye lighted on me. "One more brat," she sighed. "Nick, take him to the
nursery, or the stable. And both of you keep out of my sight."

Nick strode up to me.

"Don't mind her. She's always saying, 'Keep out of my sight.'" His
voice trembled. He took me by the sleeve and began pulling me around the
house and into a little summer bower that stood there; for he had a
masterful manner.

"What's your name?" he demanded.

"David Trimble," I said.

"Have you seen my father in town?"

The intense earnestness of the question surprised an answer out of me.

"Yes."

"Where?" he demanded.

"In his house. My father left me with your father."

"Tell me about it."

I related as much as I dared, leaving out Mr. Temple's double dealing;
which, in truth, I did not understand. But the boy was relentless.

"Why," said he, "my father was a friend of Mr. Lowndes and Mr. Mathews.
I have seen them here drinking with him. And in town. And he ran away?"

"I do not know where he went," said I, which was the truth.

He said nothing, but hid his face in his arms over the rail of the bower.
At length he looked up at me fiercely.

"If you ever tell this, I will kill you," he cried. "Do you hear?"

That made me angry.

"Yes, I hear," I said. "But I am not afraid of you."

He was at me in an instant, knocking me to the floor, so that the breath
went out of me, and was pounding me vigorously ere I recovered from the
shock and astonishment of it and began to defend myself. He was taller
than I, and wiry, but not so rugged. Yet there was a look about him that
was far beyond his strength. A look that meant, NEVER SAY DIE.
Curiously, even as I fought desperately I compared him with that other
lad I had known, Andy Jackson. And this one, though not so powerful,
frightened me the more in his relentlessness.

Perhaps we should have been fighting still had not some one pulled us
apart, and when my vision cleared I saw Nick, struggling and kicking,
held tightly in the hands of the clergyman. And it was all that
gentleman could do to hold him. I am sure it was quite five minutes
before he forced the lad, exhausted, on to the seat. And then there was
a defiance about his nostrils that showed he was undefeated. The
clergyman, still holding him with one hand, took out his handkerchief
with the other and wiped his brow.

I expected a scolding and a sermon. To my amazement the clergyman said
quietly:--

"Now what was the trouble, David?"

"I'll not be the one to tell it, sir," I said, and trembled at my
temerity.

The parson looked at me queerly.

"Then you are in the right of it," he said. "It is as I thought; I'll
not expect Nicholas to tell me."

"I will tell you, sir," said Nicholas. "He was in the house with my
father when--when he ran away. And I said that if he ever spoke of it to
any one, I would kill him."

For a while the clergyman was silent, gazing with a strange tenderness at
the lad, whose face was averted.

"And you, David?" he said presently.

"I--I never mean to tell, sir. But I was not to be frightened."

"Quite right, my lad," said the clergyman, so kindly that it sent a
strange thrill through me. Nicholas looked up quickly.

"You won't tell?" he said.

"No," I said.

"You can let me go now, Mr. Mason," said he. Mr. Mason did. And he came
over and sat beside me, but said nothing more.

After a while Mr. Mason cleared his throat.

"Nicholas," said he, "when you grow older you will understand these
matters better. Your father went away to join the side he believes in,
the side we all believe in--the King's side."

"Did he ever pretend to like the other side?" asked Nick, quickly.

"When you grow older you will know his motives," answered the clergyman,
gently. "Until then; you must trust him."

"You never pretended," cried Nick.

"Thank God I never was forced to do so," said the clergyman, fervently.

It is wonderful that the conditions of our existence may wholly change
without a seeming strangeness. After many years only vivid snatches of
what I saw and heard and did at Temple Bow come back to me. I understood
but little the meaning of the seigniorial life there. My chief wonder
now is that its golden surface was not more troubled by the winds then
brewing. It was a new life to me, one that I had not dreamed of.

After that first falling out, Nick and I became inseparable. Far slower
than he in my likes and dislikes, he soon became a passion with me. Even
as a boy, he did everything with a grace unsurpassed; the dash and daring
of his pranks took one's breath; his generosity to those he loved was
prodigal. Nor did he ever miss a chance to score those under his
displeasure. At times he was reckless beyond words to describe, and
again he would fall sober for a day. He could be cruel and tender in the
same hour; abandoned and freezing in his dignity. He had an old negro
mammy whose worship for him and his possessions was idolatry. I can hear
her now calling and calling, "Marse Nick, honey, yo' supper's done got
cole," as she searched patiently among the magnolias. And suddenly there
would be a shout, and Mammy's turban go flying from her woolly head, or
Mammy herself would be dragged down from behind and sat upon.

We had our supper, Nick and I, at twilight, in the children's dining
room. A little white room, unevenly panelled, the silver candlesticks
and yellow flames fantastically reflected in the mirrors between the deep
windows, and the moths and June-bugs tilting at the lights. We sat at a
little mahogany table eating porridge and cream from round blue bowls,
with Mammy to wait on us. Sometimes there floated in upon us the hum of
revelry from the great drawing-room where Madame had her company. Often
the good Mr. Mason would come in to us (he cared little for the parties),
and talk to us of our day's doings. Nick had his lessons from the
clergyman in the winter time.

Mr. Mason took occasion once to question me on what I knew. Some of my
answers, in especial those relating to my knowledge of the Bible,
surprised him. Others made him sad.

"David," said he, "you are an earnest lad, with a head to learn, and you
will. When your father comes, I shall talk with him." He paused--"I
knew him," said he, "I knew him ere you were born. A just man, and
upright, but with a great sorrow. We must never be hasty in our
judgments. But you will never be hasty, David," he added, smiling at me.
"You are a good companion for Nicholas."

Nicholas and I slept in the same bedroom, at a corner of the long house,
and far removed from his mother. She would not be disturbed by the noise
he made in the mornings. I remember that he had cut in the solid
shutters of that room, folded into the embrasures, "Nicholas Temple, His
Mark," and a long, flat sword. The first night in that room we slept but
little, near the whole of it being occupied with tales of my adventures
and of my life in the mountains. Over and over again I must tell him of
the "painters" and wildcats, of deer and bear and wolf. Nor was he ever
satisfied. And at length I came to speak of that land where I had often
lived in fancy--the land beyond the mountains of which Daniel Boone had
told. Of its forest and glade, its countless herds of elk and buffalo,
its salt-licks and Indians, until we fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

"I will go there," he cried in the morning, as he hurried into his
clothes; "I will go to that land as sure as my name is Nick Temple. And
you shall go with me, David."

"Perchance I shall go before you," I answered, though I had small hopes
of persuading my father.

He would often make his exit by the window, climbing down into the garden
by the protruding bricks at the corner of the house; or sometimes go
shouting down the long halls and through the gallery to the great
stairway, a smothered oath from behind the closed bedroom doors
proclaiming that he had waked a guest. And many days we spent in the
wood, playing at hunting game--a poor enough amusement for me, and one
that Nick soon tired of. They were thick, wet woods, unlike our woods of
the mountains; and more than once we had excitement enough with the
snakes that lay there.

I believe that in a week's time Nick was as conversant with my life as I
myself. For he made me tell of it again and again, and of Kentucky. And
always as he listened his eyes would glow and his breast heave with
excitement.

"Do you think your father will take you there, David, when he comes for
you?"

I hoped so, but was doubtful.

"I'll run away with you," he declared. "There is no one here who cares
for me save Mr. Mason and Mammy."

And I believe he meant it. He saw but little of his mother, and nearly
always something unpleasant was coupled with his views. Sometimes we ran
across her in the garden paths walking with a gallant,--oftenest Mr.
Riddle. It was a beautiful garden, with hedge-bordered walks and flowers
wondrously massed in color, a high brick wall surrounding it. Frequently
Mrs. Temple and Mr. Riddle would play at cards there of an afternoon, and
when that musical, unbelieving laugh of hers came floating over the wall,
Nick would say:--

"Mamma is winning."

Once we heard high words between the two, and running into the garden
found the cards scattered on the grass, and the couple gone.

Of all Nick's escapades,--and he was continually in and out of them,--I
recall only a few of the more serious. As I have said, he was a wild
lad, sobered by none of the things which had gone to make my life, and
what he took into his head to do he generally did,--or, if balked, flew
into such a rage as to make one believe he could not live. Life was
always war with him, or some semblance of a struggle. Of his many wild
doings I recall well the time when--fired by my tales of hunting--he went
out to attack the young bull in the paddock with a bow and arrow. It
made small difference to the bull that the arrow was too blunt to enter
his hide. With a bellow that frightened the idle negroes at the slave
quarters, he started for Master Nick. I, who had been taught by my
father never to run any unnecessary risk, had taken the precaution to
provide as large a stone as I could comfortably throw, and took station
on the fence. As the furious animal came charging, with his head
lowered, I struck him by a good fortune between the eyes, and Nicholas
got over. We were standing on the far side, watching him pawing the
broken bow, when, in the crowd of frightened negroes, we discovered the
parson beside us.

"David," said he, patting me with a shaking hand, "I perceive that you
have a cool head. Our young friend here has a hot one. Dr. Johnson may
not care for Scotch blood, and yet I think a wee bit of it is not to be
despised."

I wondered whether Dr. Johnson was staying in the house, too.

How many slaves there were at Temple Bow I know not, but we used to see
them coming home at night in droves, the overseers riding beside them
with whips and guns. One day a huge Congo chief, not long from Africa,
nearly killed an overseer, and escaped to the swamp. As the day fell, we
heard the baying of the bloodhounds hot upon his trail. More ominous
still, a sound like a rising wind came from the direction of the
quarters. Into our little dining-room burst Mrs. Temple herself, slamming
the door behind her. Mr. Mason, who was sitting with us, rose to calm
her.

"The Rebels!" she cried. "The Rebels have taught them this, with their
accursed notions of liberty and equality. We shall all be murdered by
the blacks because of the Rebels. Oh, hell-fire is too good for them.
Have the house barred and a watch set to-night. What shall we do?"

"I pray you compose yourself, Madame," said the clergyman. "We can send
for the militia."

"The militia!" she shrieked; "the Rebel militia! They would murder us as
soon as the niggers."

"They are respectable men," answered Mr. Mason, "and were at Fanning Hall
to-day patrolling."

"I would rather be killed by whites than blacks," said the lady. "But
who is to go for the militia?"

"I will ride for them," said Mr. Mason. It was a dark, lowering night,
and spitting rain.

"And leave me defenceless!" she cried. "You do not stir, sir."

"It is a pity," said Mr. Mason--he was goaded to it, I suppose--"'tis a
pity Mr. Riddle did not come to-night."

She shot at him a withering look, for even in her fear she would brook no
liberties. Nick spoke up:--

"I will go," said he; "I can get through the woods to Fanning Hall--"

"And I will go with him," I said.

"Let the brats go," she said, and cut short Mr. Mason's expostulations.
She drew Nick to her and kissed him. He wriggled away, and without more
ado we climbed out of the dining-room windows into the night. Running
across the lawn, we left the lights of the great house twinkling behind
us in the rain. We had to pass the long line of cabins at the quarters.
Three overseers with lanterns stood guard there; the cabins were dark,
the wretches within silent and cowed. Thence we felt with our feet for
the path across the fields, stumbled over a sty, and took our way through
the black woods. I was at home here, and Nick was not to be frightened.
At intervals the mournful bay of a bloodhound came to us from a distance.

"Suppose we should meet the Congo chief," said Nick, suddenly.

The idea had occurred to me.

"She needn't have been so frightened," said he, in scornful remembrance
of his mother's actions.

We pressed on. Nick knew the path as only a boy can. Half an hour
passed. It grew brighter. The rain ceased, and a new moon shot out
between the leaves. I seized his arm.

"What's that?" I whispered.

"A deer."

But I, cradled in woodcraft, had heard plainly a man creeping through the
underbrush beside us. Fear of the Congo chief and pity for the wretch
tore at my heart. Suddenly there loomed in front of us, on the path, a
great, naked man. We stood with useless limbs, staring at him.

Then, from the trees over our heads, came a chittering and a chattering
such as I had never heard. The big man before us dropped to the earth,
his head bowed, muttering. As for me, my fright increased. The
chattering stopped, and Nick stepped forward and laid his hand on the
negro's bare shoulder.

"We needn't be afraid of him now, Davy," he said. "I learned that trick
from a Portuguese overseer we had last year."

"You did it!" I exclaimed, my astonishment overcoming my fear.

"It's the way the monkeys chatter in the Canaries," he said. "Manuel had
a tame one, and I heard it talk. Once before I tried it on the chief,
and he fell down. He thinks I'm a god."

It must have been a weird scene to see the great negro following two boys
in the moonlight. Indeed, he came after us like a dog. At length we
were in sight of the lights of Fanning Hall. The militia was there. We
were challenged by the guard, and caused sufficient amazement when we
appeared in the hall before the master, who was a bachelor of fifty.

"'Sblood, Nick Temple!" he cried, "what are you doing here with that big
Congo for a dog? The sight of him frightens me."

The negro, indeed, was a sight to frighten one. The black mud of the
swamps was caked on him, and his flesh was torn by brambles.

"He ran away," said Nick; "and I am taking him home."

"You--you are taking him home!" sputtered Mr. Fanning.

"Do you want to see him act?" said Nick. And without waiting for a reply
he filled the hall with a dozen monkeys. Mr. Fanning leaped back into a
doorway, but the chief prostrated himself on the floor. "Now do you
believe I can take him home?" said Nick.

"'Swounds!" said Mr. Fanning, when he had his breath. "You beat the
devil, Nicholas Temple. The next time you come to call I pray you leave
your travelling show at home."

"Mamma sent me for the militia," said Nick.

"She did!" said Mr. Fanning, looking grim. "An insurrection is a bad
thing, but there was no danger for two lads in the woods, I suppose."

"There's no danger anyway," said Nick. "The niggers are all scared to
death."

Mr. Fanning burst out into a loud laugh, stopped suddenly, sat down, and
took Nick on his knee. It was an incongruous scene. Mr. Fanning almost
cried.

"Bless your soul," he said, "but you are a lad. Would to God I had you
instead of--"

He paused abruptly.

"I must go home," said Nick; "she will be worried."

"SHE will be worried!" cried Mr. Fanning, in a burst of anger. Then he
said: "You shall have the militia. You shall have the militia." He
rang a bell and sent his steward for the captain, a gawky country farmer,
who gave a gasp when he came upon the scene in the hall.

"And mind," said Nick to the captain, "you are to keep your men away from
him, or he will kill one of them."

The captain grinned at him curiously.

"I reckon I won't have to tell them to keep away," said he.

Mr. Fanning started us off for the walk with pockets filled with
sweetmeats, which we nibbled on the way back. We made a queer
procession, Nick and I striding ahead to show the path, followed by the
now servile chief, and after him the captain and his twenty men in single
file. It was midnight when we saw the lights of Temple Bow through the
trees. One of the tired overseers met us near the kitchen. When he
perceived the Congo his face lighted up with rage, and he instinctively
reached for his whip. But the chief stood before him, immovable, with
arms folded, and a look on his face that meant danger.

"He will kill you, Emory," said Nick; "he will kill you if you touch him."

Emory dropped his hand, limply.

"He will go to work in the morning," said Nick; "but mind you, not a
lash."

"Very good, Master Nick," said the man; "but who's to get him in his
cabin?"

"I will," said Nick. He beckoned to the Congo, who followed him over to
quarters and went in at his door without a protest.

The next morning Mrs. Temple looked out of her window and saw the
militiamen on the lawn.

"Pooh!" she said, "are those butternuts the soldiers that Nick went to
fetch?"



CHAPTER V

CRAM'S HELL

After that my admiration for Nick Temple increased greatly, whether
excited by his courage and presence of mind, or his ability to imitate
men and women and creatures, I know not. One of our amusements, I
recall, was to go to the Congo's cabin to see him fall on his face, until
Mr. Mason put a stop to it. The clergyman let us know that we were
encouraging idolatry, and he himself took the chief in hand.

Another incident comes to me from those bygone days. The fear of negro
insurrections at the neighboring plantations being temporarily lulled,
the gentry began to pluck up courage for their usual amusements. There
were to be races at some place a distance away, and Nick was determined
to go. Had he not determined that I should go, all would have been well.
The evening before he came upon his mother in the garden. Strange to
say, she was in a gracious mood and alone.

"Come and kiss me, Nick," she said. "Now, what do you want?"

"I want to go to the races," he said.

"You have your pony. You can follow the coach."

"David is to ride the pony," said Nick, generously. "May I go in the
coach?"

"No," she said, "there is no room for you."

Nicholas flared up. "Harry Riddle is going in the coach. I don't see
why you can't take me sometimes. You like him better than me."

The lady flushed very red.

"How dare you, Nick!" she cried angrily. "What has Mr. Mason been
putting into your head?"

"Nothing," said Nick, quite as angrily. "Any one can see that you like
Harry. And I WILL ride in the coach."

"You'll not," said his mother.

I had heard nothing of this. The next morning he led out his pony from
the stables for me to ride, and insisted. And, supposing he was to go in
the coach, I put foot in the stirrup. The little beast would scarce
stand still for me to mount.

"You'll not need the whip with her," said Nick, and led her around by the
side of the house, in view of the portico, and stood there at her bridle.
Presently, with a great noise and clatter of hoofs, the coach rounded the
drive, the powdered negro coachman pulling up the four horses with much
ceremony at the door. It was a wondrous great vehicle, the bright colors
of its body flashing in the morning light. I had examined it more than
once, and with awe, in the coach-house. It had glass windows and a lion
on a blue shield on the door, and within it was all salmon silk, save the
painted design on the ceiling. Great leather straps held up this house
on wheels, to take the jolts of the road. And behind it was a platform.
That morning two young negroes with flowing blue coats stood on it. They
leaped to the ground when the coach stopped, and stood each side of the
door, waiting for my lady to enter.

She came down the steps, laughing, with Mr. Riddle, who was in his riding
clothes, for he was to race that day. He handed her in, and got in after
her. The coachman cracked his whip, the coach creaked off down the
drive, I in the trees one side waiting for them to pass, and wondering
what Nick was to do. He had let go my bridle, folded his whip in his
hand, and with a shout of "Come on, Davy," he ran for the coach, which
was going slowly, caught hold of the footman's platform, and pulled
himself up.

What possessed the footman I know not. Perchance fear of his mistress
was greater than fear of his young master; but he took the lad by the
shoulders--gently, to be sure--and pushed him into the road, where he
fell and rolled over. I guessed what would happen. Picking himself up,
Nick was at the man like a hurricane, seizing him swiftly by the leg.
The negro fell upon the platform, clutching wildly, where he lay in a
sheer fright, shrieking for mercy, his cries rivalled by those of the
lady within. The coachman frantically pulled his horses to a stand, the
other footman jumped off, and Mr. Harry Riddle came flying out of the
coach door, to behold Nicholas beating the negro with his riding-whip.

"You young devil," cried Mr. Riddle, angrily, striding forward, "what are
you doing?"

"Keep off, Harry," said Nicholas. "I am teaching this nigger that he is
not to lay hands on his betters." With that he gave the boy one more
cut, and turned from him contemptuously.

"What is it, Harry?" came in a shrill voice from within the coach.

"It's Nick's pranks," said Mr. Riddle, grinning in spite of his anger;
"he's ruined one of your footmen. You little scoundrel," cried Mr.
Riddle, advancing again, "you've frightened your mother nearly to a
swoon."

"Serves her right," said Nick.

"What!" cried Mr. Riddle. "Come down from there instantly."

Nick raised his whip. It was not that that stopped Mr. Riddle, but a
sign about the lad's nostrils.

"Harry Riddle," said the boy, "if it weren't for you, I'd be riding in
this coach to-day with my mother. I don't want to ride with her, but I
will go to the races. If you try to take me down, I'll do my best to kill
you," and he lifted the loaded end of the whip.

Mrs. Temple's beautiful face had by this time been thrust out of the
door.

"For the love of heaven, Harry, let him come in with us. We're late
enough as it is."

Mr. Riddle turned on his heel. He tried to glare at Nick, but he broke
into a laugh instead.

"Come down, Satan," says he. "God help the woman you love and the man
you fight."

And so Nicholas jumped down, and into the coach. The footman picked
himself up, more scared than injured, and the vehicle took its lumbering
way for the race-course, I following.

I have seen many courses since, but none to equal that in the gorgeous
dress of those who watched. There had been many, many more in former
years, so I heard people say. This was the only sign that a war was in
progress,--the scanty number of gentry present,--for all save the
indifferent were gone to Charlestown or elsewhere. I recall it dimly, as
a blaze of color passing: merrymaking, jesting, feasting,--a rare
contrast, I thought, to the sight I had beheld in Charlestown Bay but a
while before. Yet so runs the world,--strife at one man's home, and
peace and contentment at his neighbor's; sorrow here, and rejoicing not a
league away.

Master Nicholas played one prank that evening that was near to costing
dear. My lady Temple made up a party for Temple Bow at the course, two
other coaches to come and some gentlemen riding. As Nick and I were
running through the paddock we came suddenly upon Mr. Harry Riddle and a
stout, swarthy gentleman standing together. The stout gentleman was
counting out big gold pieces in his hand and giving them to Mr. Riddle.

"Lucky dog!" said the stout gentleman; "you'll ride back with her, and
you've won all I've got." And he dug Mr. Riddle in the ribs.

"You'll have it again when we play to-night, Darnley," answered Mr.
Riddle, crossly. "And as for the seat in the coach, you are welcome to
it. That firebrand of a lad is on the front seat."

"D--n the lad," said the stout gentleman. "I'll take it, and you can
ride my horse. He'll--he'll carry you, I reckon." His voice had a way
of cracking into a mellow laugh.

At that Mr. Riddle went off in a towering bad humor, and afterwards I
heard him cursing the stout gentleman's black groom as he mounted his
great horse. And then he cursed the horse as it reared and plunged,
while the stout gentleman stood at the coach door, cackling at his
discomfiture. The gentleman did ride home with Mrs. Temple, Nick going
into another coach. I afterwards discovered that the gentleman had
bribed him with a guinea. And Mr. Riddle more than once came near
running down my pony on his big charger, and he swore at me roundly, too.

That night there was a gay supper party in the big dining room at Temple
Bow. Nick and I looked on from the gallery window. It was a pretty
sight. The long mahogany board reflecting the yellow flames of the
candles, and spread with bright silver and shining dishes loaded with
dainties, the gentlemen and ladies in brilliant dress, the hurrying
servants,--all were of a new and strange world to me. And presently,
after the ladies were gone, the gentlemen tossed off their wine and
roared over their jokes, and followed into the drawing-room. This I
noticed, that only Mr. Harry Riddle sat silent and morose, and that he
had drunk more than the others.

"Come, Davy," said Nick to me, "let's go and watch them again."

"But how?" I asked, for the drawing-room windows were up some distance
from the ground, and there was no gallery on that side.

"I'll show you," said he, running into the garden. After searching awhile
in the dark, he found a ladder the gardener had left against a tree;
after much straining, we carried the ladder to the house and set it up
under one of the windows of the drawing-room. Then we both clambered
cautiously to the top and looked in.

The company were at cards, silent, save for a low remark now and again.
The little tables were ranged along by the windows, and it chanced that
Mr. Harry Riddle sat so close to us that we could touch him. On his
right sat Mr. Darnley, the stout gentleman, and in the other seats two
ladies. Between Mr. Riddle and Mr. Darnley was a pile of silver and gold
pieces. There was not room for two of us in comfort at the top of the
ladder, so I gave place to Nick, and sat on a lower rung. Presently I
saw him raise himself, reach in, and duck quickly.

"Feel that," he whispered to me, chuckling and holding out his hand.

It was full of money.

"But that's stealing, Nick," I said, frightened.

"Of course I'll give it back," he whispered indignantly.

Instantly there came loud words and the scraping of chairs within the
room, and a woman's scream. I heard Mr. Riddle's voice say thickly, amid
the silence that followed:--

"Mr. Darnley, you're a d--d thief, sir."

"You shall answer for this, when you are sober, sir," said Mr. Darnley.

Then there came more scraping of chairs, all the company talking
excitedly at once. Nick and I scrambled to the ground, and we did the
very worst thing we could possibly have done,--we took the ladder away.

There was little sleep for me that night. I had first of all besought
Nick to go up into the drawing-room and give the money back. But some
strange obstinacy in him resisted.

"'Twill serve Harry well for what he did to-day," said he.

My next thought was to find Mr. Mason, but he was gone up the river to
visit a sick parishioner. I had seen enough of the world to know that
gentlemen fought for less than what had occurred in the drawing-room that
evening. And though I had neither love nor admiration for Mr. Riddle,
and though the stout gentleman was no friend of mine, I cared not to see
either of them killed for a prank. But Nick would not listen to me, and
went to sleep in the midst of my urgings.

"Davy," said he, pinching me, "do you know what you are?"

"No," said I.

"You're a granny," he said. And that was the last word I could get out
of him. But I lay awake a long time, thinking. Breed had whiled away
for me one hot morning in Charlestown with an account of the gentry and
their doings, many of which he related in an awed whisper that I could
not understand. They were wild doings indeed to me. But strangest of
all seemed the duels, conducted with a decorum and ceremony as rigorous
as the law.

"Did you ever see a duel, Breed?" I had asked.

"Yessah," said Breed, dramatically, rolling the whites of his eyes.

"Where?"

"Whah? Down on de riveh bank at Temple Bow in de ea'ly mo'nin'! Dey
mos' commonly fights at de dawn."

Breed had also told me where he was in hiding at the time, and that was
what troubled me. Try as I would, I could not remember. It had sounded
like Clam Shell. That I recalled, and how Breed had looked out at the
sword-play through the cracks of the closed shutters, agonized between
fear of ghosts within and the drama without. At the first faint light
that came into our window I awakened Nick.

"Listen," I said; "do you know a place called Clam Shell?"

He turned over, but I punched him persistently until he sat up.

"What the deuce ails you, Davy?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. "Have you
nightmare?"

"Do you know a place called Clam Shell, down on the river bank, Nick?"

"Why," he replied, "you must be thinking of Cram's Hell."

"What's that?" I asked.

"It's a house that used to belong to Cram, who was an overseer. The
niggers hated him, and he was killed in bed by a big black nigger chief
from Africa. The niggers won't go near the place. They say it's
haunted."

"Get up," said I; "we're going there now."

Nick sprang out of bed and began to get into his clothes.

"Is it a game?" he asked.

"Yes." He was always ready for a game.

We climbed out of the window, and made our way in the mist through the
long, wet grass, Nick leading. He took a path through a dark forest
swamp, over logs that spanned the stagnant waters, and at length, just as
the mist was growing pearly in the light, we came out at a tumble-down
house that stood in an open glade by the river's bank.

"What's to do now?" said Nick.

"We must get into the house," I answered. But I confess I didn't care
for the looks of it.

Nick stared at me.

"Very good, Davy," he said; "I'll follow where you go."

It was a Saturday morning. Why I recall this I do not know. It has no
special significance.

I tried the door. With a groan and a shriek it gave way, disclosing the
blackness inside. We started back involuntarily. I looked at Nick, and
Nick at me. He was very pale, and so must I have been. But such was the
respect we each held for the other's courage that neither dared flinch.
And so I walked in, although it seemed as if my shirt was made of needle
points and my hair stood on end. The crackings of the old floor were to
me like the shots in Charlestown Bay. Our hearts beating wildly, we made
our way into a farther room. It was like walking into the beyond.

"Is there a window here?" I asked Nick, my voice sounding like a shout.

"Yes, ahead of us."

Groping for it, I suddenly received a shock that set me reeling. Human
nature could stand no more. We both turned tail and ran out of the house
as fast as we could, and stood in the wet grass, panting. Then shame
came.

"Let's open the window first," I suggested. So we walked around the
house and pried the solid shutter from its fastenings. Then, gathering
our courage, we went in again at the door. In the dim light let into the
farther room we saw a four-poster bed, old and cheap, with ragged
curtains. It was this that I had struck in my groping.

"The chief killed Cram there," said Nick, in an awed voice, "in that bed.
What do you want to do here, Davy?"

"Wait," I said, though I had as little mind to wait as ever in my life.
"Stand here by the window."

We waited there. The mist rose. The sun peeped over the bank of dense
green forest and spread rainbow colors on the still waters of the river.
Now and again a fish broke, or a great bird swooped down and slit the
surface. A far-off snatch of melody came to our ears,--the slaves were
going to work. Nothing more. And little by little grave misgivings
gnawed at my soul of the wisdom of coming to this place. Doubtless there
were many other spots.

"Davy," said Nick, at last, "I'm sorry I took that money. What are we
here for?"

"Hush!" I whispered; "do you hear anything?"

I did, and distinctly. For I had been brought up in the forest.

"I hear voices," he said presently, "coming this way."

They were very clear to me by then. Emerging from the forest path were
five gentlemen. The leader, more plainly dressed than the others,
carried a leather case. Behind him was the stout figure of Mr. Darnley,
his face solemn; and last of all came Mr. Harry Riddle, very pale, but
cutting the tops of the long grass with a switch. Nick seized my arm.

"They are going to fight," said he.

"Yes," I replied, "and we are here to stop them, now."

"No, not now," he said, holding me still. "We'll have some more fun out
of this yet."

"Fun?" I echoed.

"Yes," he said excitedly. "Leave it to me. I shan't let them fight."

And that instant we changed generals, David giving place to Nicholas.

Mr. Riddle retired with one gentleman to a side of the little patch of
grass, and Mr. Darnley and a friend to another. The fifth gentleman took
a position halfway between the two, and, opening the leather case, laid
it down on the grass, where its contents glistened.

"That's Dr. Ball," whispered Nick. And his voice shook with excitement.

Mr. Riddle stripped off his coat and waistcoat and ruffles, and his
sword-belt, and Mr. Darnley did the same. Both gentlemen drew their
swords and advanced to the middle of the lawn, and stood opposite one
another, with flowing linen shirts open at the throat, and bared heads.
They were indeed a contrast. Mr. Riddle, tall and white, with closed
lips, glared at his opponent. Mr. Darnley cut a merrier figure,--rotund
and flushed, with fat calves and short arms, though his countenance was
sober enough. All at once the two were circling their swords in the air,
and then Nick had flung open the shutter and leaped through the window,
and was running and shouting towards the astonished gentlemen, all of
whom wheeled to face him. He jingled as he ran.

"What in the devil's name now?" cried Mr. Riddle, angrily. "Here's this
imp again."

Nicholas stopped in front of him, and, thrusting his hand in his breeches
pocket, fished out a handful of gold and silver, which he held out to the
confounded Mr. Riddle.

"Harry," said he, "here's something of yours I found last night."

"You found?" echoed Mr. Riddle, in a strange voice, amidst a dead
silence. "You found where?"

"On the table beside you."

"And where the deuce were you?" Mr. Riddle demanded.

"In the window behind you," said Nick, calmly.

This piece of information, to Mr. Riddle's plain discomfiture, was
greeted with a roar of laughter, Mr. Darnley himself laughing loudest.
Nor were these gentlemen satisfied with that. They crowded around Mr.
Riddle and slapped him on the back, Mr. Darnley joining in with the rest.
And presently Mr. Riddle flung away his sword, and laughed, too, giving
his hand to Mr. Darnley.

At length Mr. Darnley turned to Nick, who had stood all this while behind
them, unmoved.

"My friend," said he, seriously, "such is your regard for human life, you
will probably one day--be a pirate or an outlaw. This time we've had a
laugh. The next time somebody will be weeping. I wish I were your
father."

"I wish you were," said Nick.

This took Mr. Darnley's breath. He glanced at the other gentlemen, who
returned his look significantly. He laid his hand kindly on the lad's
head.

"Nick," said he, "I wish to God I were your father."

After that they all went home, very merry, to breakfast, Nick and I
coming after them. Nick was silent until we reached the house.

"Davy," said he, then, "how old are you?"

"Ten," I answered. "How old did you believe me?"

"Eighty," said he.

The next day, being Sunday, we all gathered in the little church to hear
Mr. Mason preach. Nick and I sat in the high box pew of the family with
Mrs. Temple, who paid not the least attention to the sermon. As for me,
the rhythm of it held me in fascination. Mr. Mason had written it out
and that afternoon read over this part of it to Nick. The quotation I
recall, having since read it many times, and the gist of it was in this
wise:--

"And he said unto him, 'What thou wilt have thou wilt have, despite the
sin of it. Blessed are the stolid, and thrice cursed he who hath
imagination,--for that imagination shall devour him. And in thy life a
sin shall be presented unto thee with a great longing. God, who is in
heaven, gird thee for that struggle, my son, for it will surely come.
That it may be said of you, "Behold, I have refined thee, but not with
silver, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." Seven days
shalt thou wrestle with thy soul; seven nights shall evil haunt thee, and
how thou shalt come forth from that struggle no man may know.'"



CHAPTER VI

MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES

A week passed, and another Sunday came,--a Sunday so still and hot and
moist that steam seemed to rise from the heavy trees,--an idle day for
master and servant alike. A hush was in the air, and a presage of we knew
not what. It weighed upon my spirits, and even Nick's, and we wandered
restlessly under the trees, seeking for distraction.

About two o'clock a black line came on the horizon, and slowly crept
higher until it broke into giant, fantastic shapes. Mutterings arose,
but the sun shone hot as ever.

"We're to have a hurricane," said Nick. "I wish we might have it and be
done with it."

At five the sun went under. I remember that Madame was lolling listless
in the garden, daintily arrayed in fine linen, trying to talk to Mr.
Mason, when a sound startled us. It was the sound of swift hoof beats on
the soft drive.

Mrs. Temple got up, an unusual thing. Perchance she was expecting a
message from some of the gentlemen; or else she may well have been tired
of Mr. Mason. Nick and I were before her, and, running through the
house, arrived at the portico in time to see a negro ride up on a horse
covered with lather.

It was the same negro who had fetched me hither from Mr. Lowndes. And
when I saw him my heart stood still lest he had brought news of my
father.

"What's to do, boy?" cried Nicholas to him.

The boy held in his hand a letter with a great red seal.

"Fo' Mistis Temple," he said, and, looking at me queerly, he took off his
cap as he jumped from the horse. Mistress Temple herself having arrived,
he handed her the letter. She took it, and broke the seal carelessly.

"Oh," she said, "it's only from Mr. Lowndes. I wonder what he wishes
now."

Every moment of her reading was for me an agony, and she read slowly.
The last words she spoke aloud:--

"'If you do not wish the lad, send him to me, as Kate is very fond of
him.' So Kate is very fond of him," she repeated. And handing the
letter to Mr. Mason, she added, "Tell him, Parson."

The words burned into my soul and seared it. And to this day I tremble
with anger as I think of them. The scene comes before me: the sky, the
darkened portico, and Nicholas running after his mother crying: "Oh,
mamma, how could you! How could you!"

Mr. Mason bent over me in compassion, and smoothed my hair.

"David," said he, in a thick voice, "you are a brave boy, David. You
will need all your courage now, my son. May God keep your nature sweet!"

He led me gently into the arbor and told me how, under Captain Baskin,
the detachment had been ambushed by the Cherokees; and how my father,
with Ensign Calhoun and another, had been killed, fighting bravely. The
rest of the company had cut their way through and reached the settlements
after terrible hardships.

I was left an orphan.

I shall not dwell here on the bitterness of those moments. We have all
known sorrows in our lives,--great sorrows. The clergyman was a wise
man, and did not strive to comfort me with words. But he sat there under
the leaves with his arm about me until a blinding bolt split the
blackness of the sky and the thunder rent our ears, and a Caribbean storm
broke over Temple Bow with all the fury of the tropics. Then he led me
through the drenching rain into the house, nor heeded the wet himself on
his Sunday coat.

A great anger stayed me in my sorrow. I would no longer tarry under Mrs.
Temple's roof, though the world without were a sea or a desert. The one
resolution to escape rose stronger and stronger within me, and I
determined neither to eat nor sleep until I had got away. The thought of
leaving Nick was heavy indeed; and when he ran to me in the dark hall and
threw his arms around me, it needed all my strength to keep from crying
aloud.

"Davy," he said passionately, "Davy, you mustn't mind what she says. She
never means anything she says--she never cares for anything save her
pleasure. You and I will stay here until we are old enough to run away
to Kentucky. Davy! Answer me, Davy!"

I could not, try as I would. There were no words that would come with
honesty. But I pulled him down on the mahogany settle near the door
which led into the back gallery, and there we sat huddled together in
silence, while the storm raged furiously outside and the draughts banged
the great doors of the house. In the lightning flashes I saw Nick's
face, and it haunted me afterwards through many years of wandering. On
it was written a sorrow for me greater than my own sorrow. For God had
given to this lad every human passion and compassion.

The storm rolled away with the night, and Mammy came through the hall
with a candle.

"Whah is you, Marse Nick? Whah is you, honey? You' suppah's ready."

And so we went into our little dining room, but I would not eat. The
good old negress brushed her eyes with her apron as she pressed a cake
upon me she had made herself, for she had grown fond of me. And
presently we went away silently to bed.

It was a long, long time before Nick's breathing told me that he was
asleep. He held me tightly clutched to him, and I know that he feared I
would leave him. The thought of going broke my heart, but I never once
wavered in my resolve, and I lay staring into the darkness, pondering
what to do. I thought of good Mr. Lowndes and his wife, and I decided to
go to Charlestown. Some of my boyish motives come back to me now: I
should be near Nick; and even at that age,--having lived a life of
self-reliance,--I thought of gaining an education and of rising to a
place of trust. Yes, I would go to Mr. Lowndes, and ask him to let me
work for him and so earn my education.

With a heavy spirit I crept out of bed, slowly disengaging Nick's arm
lest he should wake. He turned over and sighed in his sleep. Carefully
I dressed myself, and after I was dressed I could not refrain from
slipping to the bedside to bend over him once again,--for he was the only
one in my life with whom I had found true companionship. Then I climbed
carefully out of the window, and so down the corner of the house to the
ground.

It was starlight, and a waning moon hung in the sky. I made my way
through the drive between the black shadows of the forest, and came at
length to the big gates at the entrance, locked for the night. A strange
thought of their futility struck me as I climbed the rail fence beside
them, and pushed on into the main road, the mud sucking under my shoes as
I went. As I try now to cast my memory back I can recall no fear, only a
vast sense of loneliness, and the very song of it seemed to be sung in
never ending refrain by the insects of the night. I had been alone in the
mountains before. I have crossed great strips of wilderness since, but
always there was love to go back to. Then I was leaving the only being
in the world that remained to me.

I must have walked two hours or more before I came to the mire of a
cross-road, and there I stood in a quandary of doubt as to which side led
to Charlestown.

As I lingered a light began to tremble in the heavens. A cock crew in the
distance. I sat down on a fallen log to rest. But presently, as the
light grew, I heard shouts which drew nearer and deeper and brought me to
my feet in an uncertainty of expectation. Next came the rattling of
chains, the scramble of hoofs in the mire, and here was a wagon with a
big canvas cover. Beside the straining horses was a great, burly man
with a red beard, cracking his long whip, and calling to the horses in a
strange tongue. He stopped still beside his panting animals when he saw
me, his high boots sunk in the mud.

"Gut morning, poy," he said, wiping his red face with his sleeve; "what
you do here?"

"I am going to Charlestown," I answered.

"Ach!" he cried, "dot is pad. Mein poy, he run avay. You are ein gut
poy, I know. I vill pay ein gut price to help me vit mein wagon--ja."

"Where are you going?" I demanded, with a sudden wavering.

"Up country--pack country. You know der Proad River--yes?"

No, I did not. But a longing came upon me for the old backwoods life,
with its freedom and self-reliance, and a hatred for this steaming
country of heat and violent storms, and artificiality and pomp. And I
had a desire, even at that age, to make my own way in the world.

"What will you give me?" I asked.

At that he put his finger to his nose.

"Thruppence py the day."

I shook my head. He looked at me queerly.

"How old you pe,--twelve, yes?"

Now I had no notion of telling him. So I said: "Is this the Charlestown
road?"

"Fourpence!" he cried, "dot is riches."

"I will go for sixpence," I answered.

"Mein Gott!" he cried, "sixpence. Dot is robbery." But seeing me
obdurate, he added: "I vill give it, because ein poy I must have. Vat
is your name,--Tavid? You are ein sharp poy, Tavid."

And so I went with him.

In writing a biography, the relative value of days and years should hold.
There are days which count in space for years, and years for days. I
spent the time on the whole happily with this Dutchman, whose name was
Hans Koppel. He talked merrily save when he spoke of the war against
England, and then contemptuously, for he was a bitter English partisan.
And in contrast to this he would dwell for hours on a king he called
Friedrich der Grosse, and a war he waged that was a war; and how this
mighty king had fought a mighty queen at Rossbach and Leuthen in his own
country,--battles that were battles.

"And you were there, Hans?" I asked him once.

"Ja," he said, "but I did not stay."

"You ran away?"

"Ja," Hans would answer, laughing, "run avay. I love peace, Tavid. Dot
is vy I come here, and now," bitterly, "and now ve haf var again once."

I would say nothing; but I must have looked my disapproval, for he went
on to explain that in Saxe-Gotha, where he was born, men were made to
fight whether they would or no; and they were stolen from their wives at
night by soldiers of the great king, or lured away by fair promises.

Travelling with incredible slowness, in due time we came to a county
called Orangeburg, where all were Dutchmen like Hans, and very few spoke
English. And they all thought like Hans, and loved peace, and hated the
Congress. On Sundays, as we lay over at the taverns, these would be
filled with a rollicking crowd of fiddlers and dancers, quaintly dressed,
the women bringing their children and babies. At such times Hans would
be drunk, and I would have to feed the tired horses and mount watch over
the cargo. I had many adventures, but none worth the telling here. And
at length we came to Hans's farm, in a prettily rolling country on the
Broad River. Hans's wife spoke no English at all, nor did the brood of
children running about the house. I had small fancy for staying in such
a place, and so Hans paid me two crowns for my three weeks' service; I
think, with real regret, for labor was scarce in those parts, and though
I was young, I knew how to work. And I could at least have guided his
plough in the furrow and cared for his cattle.

It was the first money I had earned in my life, and a prouder day than
many I have had since.

For the convenience of travellers passing that way, Hans kept a
tavern,--if it could have been dignified by such a name. It was in truth
merely a log house with shakedowns, and stood across the rude road from
his log farmhouse. And he gave me leave to sleep there and to work for
my board until I cared to leave. It so chanced that on the second day
after my arrival a pack-train came along, guided by a nettlesome old man
and a strong, black-haired lass of sixteen or thereabouts. The old man,
whose name was Ripley, wore a nut-brown hunting shirt trimmed with red
cotton; and he had no sooner slipped the packs from his horses than he
began to rail at Hans, who stood looking on.

"You damned Dutchmen be all Tories, and worse," he cried; "you stay here
and till your farms while our boys are off in the hill towns fighting
Cherokees. I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly
Ann, water the nags."

Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly
Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with
merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite
her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet. She
had blue eyes, the whitest, strongest of teeth, and the rosiest of faces.

"Gran'pa hates a Dutchman wuss'n pizen," she said to me. "So do I.
We've all been burned out and sculped up river--and they never give us so
much as a man or a measure of corn."

I helped her feed the animals, and tether them, and loose their bells for
the night, and carry the packs under cover.

"All the boys is gone to join Rutherford and lam the Indians," she
continued, "so Gran'pa and I had to go to the settlements. There wahn't
any one else. What's your name?" she demanded suddenly.

I told her.

She sat down on a log at the corner of the house, and pulled me down
beside her.

"And whar be you from?"

I told her. It was impossible to look into her face and not tell her.
She listened eagerly, now with compassion, and now showing her white
teeth in amusement. And when I had done, much to my discomfiture, she
seized me in her strong arms and kissed me.

"Poor Davy," she cried, "you ain't got a home. You shall come home with
us."

Catching me by the hand, she ran like a deer across the road to where her
grandfather was still quarrelling violently with Hans, and pulled him
backward by the skirts of his hunting shirt. I looked for another and
mightier explosion from the old backwoodsman, but to my astonishment he
seemed to forget Hans's existence, and turned and smiled on her
benevolently.

"Polly Ann," said he, "what be you about now?"

"Gran'pa," said she, "here's Davy Trimble, who's a good boy, and his pa
is just killed by the Cherokees along with Baskin, and he wants work and
a home, and he's comin' along with us."

"All right, David," answered Mr. Ripley, mildly, "ef Polly Ann says so,
you kin come. Whar was you raised?"

I told him on the upper Yadkin.

"You don't tell me," said he. "Did ye ever know Dan'l Boone?"

"I did, indeed, sir," I answered, my face lighting up. "Can you tell me
where he is now?"

"He's gone to Kaintuckee, them new settlements, fer good. And ef I
wasn't eighty years old, I'd go thar, too."

"I reckon I'll go thar when I'm married," said Polly Ann, and blushed
redder than ever. Drawing me to her, she said, "I'll take you, too,
Davy."

"When you marry that wuthless Tom McChesney," said her grandfather,
testily.

"He's not wuthless," said Polly hotly, "he's the best man in
Rutherford's army. He'll git more sculps then any of 'em,--you see."

"Tavy is ein gut poy," Hans put in, for he had recovered his composure.
"I wish much he stay mit me."

As for me, Polly Ann never consulted me on the subject--nor had she need
to. I would have followed her to kingdom come, and at the thought of
reaching the mountains my heart leaped with joy. We all slept in the one
flea-infested, windowless room of the "tavern" that night; and before
dawn I was up and untethered the horses, and Polly Ann and I together
lifted the two bushels of alum salt on one of the beasts and the
ploughshare on the other. By daylight we had left Hans and his farm
forever.

I can see the lass now, as she strode along the trace by the flowing
river, through sunlight and shadow, straight and supple and strong.
Sometimes she sang like a bird, and the forest rang. Sometimes she would
make fun of her grandfather or of me; and again she would be silent for
an hour at a time, staring ahead, and then I knew she was thinking of
that Tom McChesney. She would wake from those reveries with a laugh, and
give me a push to send me rolling down a bank.

"What's the matter, Davy? You look as solemn as a wood-owl. What a
little wiseacre you be!"

Once I retorted, "You were thinking of that Tom McChesney."

"Ay, that she was, I'll warrant," snapped her grandfather.

Polly Ann replied, with a merry peal of laughter, "You are both jealous
of Tom--both of you. But, Davy, when you see him you'll love him as much
as I do."

"I'll not," I said sturdily.

"He's a man to look upon--"

"He's a rip-roarer," old man Ripley put in. "Ye're daft about him."

"That I am," said Polly, flushing and subsiding; "but he'll not know it."

As we rose into the more rugged country we passed more than one charred
cabin that told its silent story of Indian massacre. Only on the
scattered hill farms women and boys and old men were working in the
fields, all save the scalawags having gone to join Rutherford. There
were plenty of these around the taverns to make eyes at Polly Ann and
open love to her, had she allowed them; but she treated them in return to
such scathing tirades that they were glad to desist--all but one. He
must have been an escaped redemptioner, for he wore jauntily a swanskin
three-cornered hat and stained breeches of a fine cloth. He was a bold,
vain fellow.

"My beauty," says he, as we sat at supper, "silver and Wedgwood better
become you than pewter and a trencher."

"And I reckon a rope would sit better on your neck than a ruff," retorted
Polly Ann, while the company shouted with laughter. But he was not the
kind to become discomfited.

"I'd give a guinea to see you in silk. But I vow your hair looks better
as it is."

"Not so yours," said she, like lightning; "'twould look better to me
hanging on the belt of one of them red devils."

In the morning, when he would have lifted the pack of alum salt, Polly
Ann gave him a push that sent him sprawling. But she did it in such good
nature withal that the fellow mistook her. He scrambled to his feet,
flung his arm about her waist, and kissed her. Whereupon I hit him with
a sapling, and he staggered and let her go.

"You imp of hell!" he cried, rubbing the bump. He made a vicious dash at
me that boded no good, but I slipped behind the hominy block; and Polly
Ann, who was like a panther on her feet, dashed at him and gave him a
buffet in the cheek that sent him reeling again.

After that we were more devoted friends than ever.

We travelled slowly, day by day, until I saw the mountains lift blue
against the western sky, and the sight of them was like home once more.
I loved them; and though I thought with sadness of my father, I was on
the whole happier with Polly Ann than I had been in the lonely cabin on
the Yadkin. Her spirits flagged a little as she drew near home, but old
Mr. Ripley's rose.

"There's Burr's," he would say, "and O'Hara's and Williamson's," marking
the cabins set amongst the stump-dotted corn-fields. "And thar,"
sweeping his hand at a blackened heap of logs lying on the stones,
"thar's whar Nell Tyler and her baby was sculped."

"Poor Nell," said Polly Ann, the tears coming into her eyes as she turned
away.

"And Jim Tyler was killed gittin' to the fort. He can't say I didn't
warn him."

"I reckon he'll never say nuthin', now," said Polly Ann.

It was in truth a dismal sight,--the shapeless timbers, the corn, planted
with such care, choked with weeds, and the poor utensils of the little
family scattered and broken before the door-sill. These same Indians had
killed my father; and there surged up in my breast that hatred of the
painted race felt by every backwoods boy in my time.

Towards the end of the day the trace led into a beautiful green valley,
and in the middle of it was a stream shining in the afternoon sun. Then
Polly Ann fell entirely silent. And presently, as the shadows grew
purple, we came to a cabin set under some spreading trees on a knoll
where a woman sat spinning at the door, three children playing at her
feet. She stared at us so earnestly that I looked at Polly Ann, and saw
her redden and pale. The children were the first to come shouting at us,
and then the woman dropped her wool and ran down the slope straight into
Polly Ann's arms. Mr. Ripley halted the horses with a grunt.

The two women drew off and looked into each other's faces. Then Polly
Ann dropped her eyes.

"Have ye--?" she said, and stopped.

"No, Polly Ann, not one word sence Tom and his Pa went. What do folks
say in the settlements?"

Polly Ann turned up her nose.

"They don't know nuthin' in the settlements," she replied.

"I wrote to Tom and told him you was gone," said the older woman. "I
knowed he'd wanter hear."

And she looked meaningly at Polly Ann, who said nothing. The children
had been pulling at the girl's skirts, and suddenly she made a dash at
them. They scattered, screaming with delight, and she after them.

"Howdy, Mr. Ripley?" said the woman, smiling a little.

"Howdy, Mis' McChesney?" said the old man, shortly.

So this was the mother of Tom, of whom I had heard so much. She was, in
truth, a motherly-looking person, her fleshy face creased with strong
character.

"Who hev ye brought with ye?" she asked, glancing at me.

"A lad Polly Ann took a shine to in the settlements," said the old man.
"Polly Ann! Polly Ann!" he cried sharply, "we'll hev to be gittin'
home." And then, as though an afterthought (which it really was not), he
added, "How be ye for salt, Mis' McChesney?"

"So-so," said she.

"Wal, I reckon a little might come handy," said he. And to the girl who
stood panting beside him, "Polly, give Mis' McChesney some salt."

Polly Ann did, and generously,--the salt they had carried with so much
labor threescore and ten miles from the settlements. Then we took our
departure, the girl turning for one last look at Tom's mother, and at the
cabin where he had dwelt. We were all silent the rest of the way,
climbing the slender trail through the forest over the gap into the next
valley. For I was jealous of Tom. I am not ashamed to own it now.

In the smoky haze that rises just before night lets her curtain fall, we
descended the farther slope, and came to Mr. Ripley's cabin.



CHAPTER VII

IN SIGHT OF THE BLUE WALL ONCE MORE

Polly Ann lived alone with her grandfather, her father and mother having
been killed by Indians some years before. There was that bond between
us, had we needed one. Her father had built the cabin, a large one with
a loft and a ladder climbing to it, and a sleeping room and a kitchen.
The cabin stood on a terrace that nature had levelled, looking across a
swift and shallow stream towards the mountains. There was the truck
patch, with its yellow squashes and melons, and cabbages and beans, where
Polly Ann and I worked through the hot mornings; and the corn patch, with
the great stumps of the primeval trees standing in it. All around us the
silent forest threw its encircling arms, spreading up the slopes, higher
and higher, to crown the crests with the little pines and hemlocks and
balsam fir.

There had been no meat save bacon since the McChesneys had left, for of
late game had become scarce, and old Mr. Ripley was too feeble to go on
the long hunts. So one day, when Polly Ann was gone across the ridge, I
took down the long rifle from the buckhorns over the hearth, and the
hunting knife and powder-horn and pouch beside it, and trudged up the
slope to a game trail I discovered. All day I waited, until the forest
light grew gray, when a buck came and stood over the water, raising his
head and stamping from time to time. I took aim in the notch of a
sapling, brought him down, cleaned and skinned and dragged him into the
water, and triumphantly hauled one of his hams down the trail. Polly Ann
gave a cry of joy when she saw me.

"Davy," she exclaimed, "little Davy, I reckoned you was gone away from
us. Gran'pa, here is Davy back, and he has shot a deer."

"You don't say?" replied Mr. Ripley, surveying me and my booty with a
grim smile.

"How could you, Gran'pa?" said Polly Ann, reproachfully.

"Wal," said Mr. Ripley, "the gun was gone, an' Davy. I reckon he ain't
sich a little rascal after all."

Polly Ann and I went up the next day, and brought the rest of the buck
merrily homeward. After that I became the hunter of the family; but
oftener than not I returned tired and empty-handed, and ravenously
hungry. Indeed, our chief game was rattlesnakes, which we killed by the
dozens in the corn and truck patches.

As Polly Ann and I went about our daily chores, we would talk of Tom
McChesney. Often she would sit idle at the hand-mill, a light in her
eyes that I would have given kingdoms for. One ever memorable morning,
early in the crisp autumn, a grizzled man strode up the trail, and Polly
Ann dropped the ear of corn she was husking and stood still, her bosom
heaving. It was Mr. McChesney, Tom's father--alone.

"No, Polly Ann," he cried, "there ain't nuthin' happened. We've laid out
the hill towns. But the Virginna men wanted a guide, and Tom
volunteered, and so he ain't come back with Rutherford's boys."

Polly Ann seized him by the shoulders, and looked him in the face.

"Be you tellin' the truth, Warner McChesney?" she said in a hard voice.

"As God hears me," said Warner McChesney, solemnly. "He sent ye this."

He drew from the bosom of his hunting shirt a soiled piece of birch bark,
scrawled over with rude writing. Polly seized it, and flew into the
house.

The hickories turned a flaunting yellow, the oaks a copper-red, the
leaves crackled on the Catawba vines, and still Tom McChesney did not
come. The Cherokees were homeless and houseless and subdued,--their hill
towns burned, their corn destroyed, their squaws and children wanderers.
One by one the men of the Grape Vine settlement returned to save what
they might of their crops, and plough for the next year--Burrs, O'Haras,
Williamsons, and Winns. Yes, Tom had gone to guide the Virginia boys.
All had tales to tell of his prowess, and how he had saved Rutherford's
men from ambush at the risk of his life. To all of which Polly Ann
listened with conscious pride, and replied with sallies.

"I reckon I don't care if he never comes back," she would cry. "If he
likes the Virginny boys more than me, there be others here I fancy more
than him."

Whereupon the informant, if he were not bound in matrimony, would begin
to make eyes at Polly Ann. Or, if he were bolder, and went at the wooing
in the more demonstrative fashion of the backwoods--Polly Ann had a way
of hitting him behind the ear with most surprising effect.

One windy morning when the leaves were kiting over the valley we were
getting ready for pounding hominy, when a figure appeared on the trail.
Steadying the hood of her sunbonnet with her hand, the girl gazed long
and earnestly, and a lump came into my throat at the thought that the
comer might be Tom McChesney. Polly Ann sat down at the block again in
disgust.

"It's only Chauncey Dike," she said.

"Who's Chauncey Dike?" I asked.

"He reckons he's a buck," was all that Polly Ann vouchsafed.

Chauncey drew near with a strut. He had very long black hair, a new
coonskin cap with a long tassel, and a new blue-fringed hunting shirt.
What first caught my eye was a couple of withered Indian scalps that hung
by their long locks from his girdle. Chauncey Dike was certainly
handsome.

"Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?" he cried, when a
dozen paces away.

"I wouldn't be if you was the only one left ter choose," Polly Ann
retorted.

Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter. But I
could see that he was not very much pleased.

"Wal," said he, "I 'low ye won't see Tom very soon. He's gone to
Kaintuckee."

"Has he?" said Polly Ann, with brave indifference.

"He met a gal on the trail--a blazin' fine gal," said Chauncey Dike.
"She was goin' to Kaintuckee. And Tom--he 'lowed he'd go 'long."

Polly Ann laughed, and fingered the withered pieces of skin at Chauncey's
girdle.

"Did Tom give you them sculps?" she asked innocently.

Chauncey drew up stiffly.

"Who? Tom McChesney? I reckon he ain't got none to give. This here's
from a big brave at Noewee, whar the Virginny boys was surprised." And
he held up the one with the longest tuft. "He'd liked to tomahawked me
out'n the briers, but I throwed him fust."

"Shucks," said Polly Ann, pounding the corn, "I reckon you found him
dead."

But that night, as we sat before the fading red of the backlog, the old
man dozing in his chair, Polly Ann put her hand on mine.

"Davy," she said softly, "do you reckon he's gone to Kaintuckee?"

How could I tell?

The days passed. The wind grew colder, and one subdued dawn we awoke to
find that the pines had fantastic white arms, and the stream ran black
between white banks. All that day, and for many days after, the snow
added silently to the thickness of its blanket, and winter was upon us.
It was a long winter and a rare one. Polly Ann sat by the little window
of the cabin, spinning the flax into linsey-woolsey. And she made a
hunting shirt for her grandfather, and another little one for me which
she fitted with careful fingers. But as she spun, her wheel made the
only music--for Polly Ann sang no more. Once I came on her as she was
thrusting the tattered piece of birch bark into her gown, but she never
spoke to me more of Tom McChesney. When, from time to time, the snow
melted on the hillsides, I sometimes surprised a deer there and shot him
with the heavy rifle. And so the months wore on till spring.

The buds reddened and popped, and the briers grew pink and white.
Through the lengthening days we toiled in the truck patch, but always as
I bent to my work Polly Ann's face saddened me--it had once been so
bright, and it should have been so at this season. Old Mr. Ripley grew
querulous and savage and hard to please. In the evening, when my work
was done, I often lay on the banks of the stream staring at the high
ridge (its ragged edges the setting sun burned a molten gold), and the
thought grew on me that I might make my way over the mountains into that
land beyond, and find Tom for Polly Ann. I even climbed the watershed to
the east as far as the O'Hara farm, to sound that big Irishman about the
trail. For he had once gone to Kentucky, to come back with his scalp and
little besides. O'Hara, with his brogue, gave me such a terrifying
notion of the horrors of the Wilderness Trail that I threw up all thought
of following it alone, and so I resolved to wait until I heard of some
settlers going over it. But none went from the Grape Vine settlement
that spring.

War was a-waging in Kentucky. The great Indian nations were making a
frantic effort to drive from their hunting grounds the little bands of
settlers there, and these were in sore straits.

So I waited, and gave Polly Ann no hint of my intention.

Sometimes she herself would slip away across the notch to see Mrs.
McChesney and the children. She never took me with her on these
journeys, but nearly always when she came back at nightfall her eyes
would be red, and I knew the two women had been weeping together. There
came a certain hot Sunday in July when she went on this errand, and
Grandpa Ripley having gone to spend the day at old man Winn's, I was left
alone. I remember I sat on the squared log of the door-step, wondering
whether, if I were to make my way to Salisbury, I could fall in with a
party going across the mountains into Kentucky. And wondering, likewise,
what Polly Ann would do without me. I was cleaning the long rifle,--a
labor I loved,--when suddenly I looked up, startled to see a man
standing in front of me. How he got there I know not. I stared at him.
He was a young man, very spare and very burned, with bright red hair and
blue eyes that had a kind of laughter in them, and yet were sober. His
buckskin hunting shirt was old and stained and frayed by the briers, and
his leggins and moccasins were wet from fording the stream. He leaned his
chin on the muzzle of his gun.

"Folks live here, sonny?" said he.

I nodded.

"Whar be they?"

"Out," said I.

"Comin' back?" he asked.

"To-night," said I, and began to rub the lock.

"Be they good folks?" said he.

"Yes," I answered.

"Wal," said he, making a move to pass me, "I reckon I'll slip in and take
what I've a mind to, and move on."

Now I liked the man's looks very much, but I did not know what he would
do. So I got in his way and clutched the gun. It was loaded, but not
primed, and I emptied a little powder from the flask in the pan. At that
he grinned.

"You're a good boy, sonny," he said. "Do you reckon you could hit me if
you shot?"

"Yes," I said. But I knew I could scarcely hold the gun out straight
without a rest.

"And do you reckon I could hit you fust?" he asked. At that I laughed,
and he laughed.

"What's your name?"

I told him.

"Who do you love best in all the world?" said he.

It was a queer question. But I told him Polly Ann Ripley.

"Oh!" said he, after a pause. "And what's SHE like?"

"She's beautiful," I said; "she's been very kind to me. She took me home
with her from the settlements when I had no place to go. She's good."

"And a sharp tongue, I reckon," said he.

"When people need it," I answered.

"Oh!" said he. And presently, "She's very merry, I'll warrant."

"She used to be, but that's gone by," I said.

"Gone by!" said he, his voice falling, "is she sick?"

"No," said I, "she's not sick, she's sad."

"Sad?" said he. It was then I noticed that he had a cut across his
temple, red and barely healed. "Do you reckon your Polly Ann would give
me a little mite to eat?"

This time I jumped up, ran into the house, and got down some corn-pone
and a leg of turkey. For that was the rule of the border. He took them
in great bites, but slowly, and he picked the bones clean.

"I had breakfast yesterday morning," said he, "about forty mile from
here."

"And nothing since?" said I, in astonishment.

"Fresh air and water and exercise," said he, and sat down on the grass.
He was silent for a long while, and so was I. For a notion had struck
me, though I hardly dared to give it voice.

"Are you going away?" I asked at last.

He laughed.

"Why?" said he.

"If you were going to Kaintuckee--" I began, and faltered. For he stared
at me very hard.

"Kaintuckee!" he said. "There's a country! But it's full of blood and
Injun varmints now. Would you leave Polly Ann and go to Kaintuckee?"

"Are you going?" I said.

"I reckon I am," he said, "as soon as I kin."

"Will you take me?" I asked, breathless. "I--I won't be in your way, and
I can walk--and--shoot game."

At that he bent back his head and laughed, which made me redden with
anger. Then he turned and looked at me more soberly.

"You're a queer little piece," said he. "Why do you want to go thar?"

"I want to find Tom McChesney for Polly Ann," I said.

He turned away his face.

"A good-for-nothing scamp," said he.

"I have long thought so," I said.

He laughed again. It was a laugh that made me want to join him, had I
not been irritated.

"And he's a scamp, you say. And why?"

"Else he would be coming back to Polly Ann."

"Mayhap he couldn't," said the stranger.

"Chauncey Dike said he went off with another girl into Kaintuckee."

"And what did Polly Ann say to that?" the stranger demanded.

"She asked Chauncey if Tom McChesney gave him the scalps he had on his
belt."

At that he laughed in good earnest, and slapped his breech-clouts
repeatedly. All at once he stopped, and stared up the ridge.

"Is that Polly Ann?" said he.

I looked, and far up the trail was a speck.

"I reckon it is," I answered, and wondered at his eyesight. "She travels
over to see Tom McChesney's Ma once in a while."

He looked at me queerly.

"I reckon I'll go here and sit down, Davy," said he, "so's not to be in
the way." And he walked around the corner of the house.

Polly Ann sauntered down the trail slowly, as was her wont after such an
occasion. And the man behind the house twice whispered with extreme
caution, "How near is she?" before she came up the path.

"Have you been lonesome, Davy?" she said.

"No," said I, "I've had a visitor."

"It's not Chauncey Dike again?" she said. "He doesn't dare show his face
here."

"No, it wasn't Chauncey. This man would like to have seen you, Polly
Ann. He--" here I braced myself,--"he knew Tom McChesney. He called him
a good-for-nothing scamp."

"He did--did he!" said Polly Ann, very low. "I reckon it was good for
him I wasn't here."

I grinned.

"What are you laughing at, you little monkey," said Polly Ann, crossly.
"'Pon my soul, sometimes I reckon you are a witch."

"Polly Ann," I said, "did I ever do anything but good to you?"

She made a dive at me, and before I could escape caught me in her strong
young arms and hugged me.

"You're the best friend I have, little Davy," she cried.

"I reckon that's so," said the stranger, who had risen and was standing
at the corner.

Polly Ann looked at him like a frightened doe. And as she stared,
uncertain whether to stay or fly, the color surged into her cheeks and
mounted to her fair forehead.

"Tom!" she faltered.

"I've come back, Polly Ann," said he. But his voice was not so clear as
a while ago.

Then Polly Ann surprised me.

"What made you come back?" said she, as though she didn't care a
minkskin. Whereat Mr. McChesney shifted his feet.

"I reckon it was to fetch you, Polly Ann."

"I like that!" cried she. "He's come to fetch me, Davy." That was the
first time in months her laugh had sounded natural. "I heerd you fetched
one gal acrost the mountains, and now you want to fetch another."

"Polly Ann," says he, "there was a time when you knew a truthful man from
a liar."

"That time's past," retorted she; "I reckon all men are liars. What are
ye tom-foolin' about here for, Tom McChesney, when yere Ma's breakin' her
heart? I wonder ye come back at all."

"Polly Ann," says he, very serious, "I ain't a boaster. But when I think
what I come through to git here, I wonder that I come back at all. The
folks shut up at Harrod's said it was sure death ter cross the mountains
now. I've walked two hundred miles, and fed seven times, and my sculp's
as near hangin' on a Red Stick's belt as I ever want it to be."

"Tom McChesney," said Polly Ann, with her hands on her hips and her
sunbonnet tilted, "that's the longest speech you ever made in your life."

I declare I lost my temper with Polly Ann then, nor did I blame Tom
McChesney for turning on his heel and walking away. But he had gone no
distance at all before Polly Ann, with three springs, was at his
shoulder.

"Tom!" she said very gently.

He hesitated, stopped, thumped the stock of his gun on the ground, and
wheeled. He looked at her doubtingly, and her eyes fell to the ground.

"Tom McChesney," said she, "you're a born fool with wimmen."

"Thank God for that," said he, his eyes devouring her.

"Ay," said she. And then, "You want me to go to Kaintuckee with you?"

"That's what I come for," he stammered, his assurance all run away again.

"I'll go," she answered, so gently that her words were all but blown away
by the summer wind. He laid his rifle against a stump at the edge of the
corn-field, but she bounded clear of him. Then she stood, panting, her
eyes sparkling.

"I'll go," she said, raising her finger, "I'll go for one thing."

"What's that?" he demanded.

"That you'll take Davy along with us."

This time Tom had her, struggling like a wild thing in his arms, and
kissing her black hair madly. As for me, I might have been in the next
settlement for all they cared. And then Polly Ann, as red as a holly
berry, broke away from him and ran to me, caught me up, and hid her face
in my shoulder. Tom McChesney stood looking at us, grinning, and that
day I ceased to hate him.

"There's no devil ef I don't take him, Polly Ann," said he. "Why, he was
a-goin' to Kaintuckee ter find me for you."

"What?" said she, raising her head.

"That's what he told me afore he knew who I was. He wanted to know ef
I'd fetch him thar."

"Little Davy!" cried Polly Ann.

The last I saw of them that day they were going off up the trace towards
his mother's, Polly Ann keeping ahead of him and just out of his reach.
And I was very, very happy. For Tom McChesney had come back at last, and
Polly Ann was herself once more.

As long as I live I shall never forget Polly Ann's wedding.

She was all for delay, and such a bunch of coquetry as I have never seen.
She raised one objection after another; but Tom was a firm man, and his
late experiences in the wilderness had made him impatient of trifling.
He had promised the Kentucky settlers, fighting for their lives in their
blockhouses, that he would come back again. And a resolute man who was a
good shot was sorely missed in the country in those days.

It was not the thousand dangers and hardships of the journey across the
Wilderness Trail that frightened Polly Ann. Not she. Nor would she
listen to Tom when he implored her to let him return alone, to come back
for her when the redskins had got over the first furies of their hatred.
As for me, the thought of going with them into that promised land was
like wine. Wondering what the place was like, I could not sleep of
nights.

"Ain't you afeerd to go, Davy?" said Tom to me.

"You promised Polly Ann to take me," said I, indignantly.

"Davy," said he, "you ain't over handsome. 'Twouldn't improve yere looks
to be bald. They hev a way of takin' yere ha'r. Better stay behind with
Gran'pa Ripley till I kin fetch ye both."

"Tom," said Polly Ann, "you kin just go back alone if you don't take
Davy."

So one of the Winn boys agreed to come over to stay with old Mr. Ripley
until quieter times.

The preparations for the wedding went on apace that week. I had not
thought that the Grape Vine settlement held so many people. And they
came from other settlements, too, for news spread quickly in that
country, despite the distances. Tom McChesney was plainly a favorite
with the men who had marched with Rutherford. All the week they came,
loaded with offerings, turkeys and venison and pork and bear
meat--greatest delicacy of all--until the cool spring was filled for the
feast. From thirty miles down the Broad, a gaunt Baptist preacher on a
fat white pony arrived the night before. He had been sent for to tie the
knot.

Polly Ann's wedding-day dawned bright and fair, and long before the sun
glistened on the corn tassels we were up and clearing out the big room.
The fiddlers came first--a merry lot. And then the guests from afar
began to arrive. Some of them had travelled half the night. The
bridegroom's friends were assembling at the McChesney place. At last,
when the sun was over the stream, rose such Indian war-whoops and shots
from the ridge trail as made me think the redskins were upon us. The
shouts and hurrahs grew louder and louder, the quickening thud of horses'
hoofs was heard in the woods, and there burst into sight of the assembly
by the truck patch two wild figures on crazed horses charging down the
path towards the house. We scattered to right and left. On they came,
leaping logs and brush and ditches, until one of them pulled up, yelling
madly, at the very door, the foam-flecked sides of his horse moving with
quick heaves.

It was Chauncey Dike, and he had won the race for the bottle of "Black
Betty,"--Chauncey Dike, his long, black hair shining with bear's oil.
Amid the cheers of the bride's friends he leaped from his saddle, mounted
a stump and, flapping his arms, crowed in victory. Before he had done
the vanguard of the groom's friends were upon us, pell-mell, all in the
finest of backwoods regalia,--new hunting shirts, trimmed with bits of
color, and all armed to the teeth--scalping knife, tomahawk, and all.
Nor had Chauncey Dike forgotten the scalp of the brave who leaped at him
out of the briers at Neowee.

Polly Ann was radiant in a white linen gown, woven and sewed by her own
hands. It was not such a gown as Mrs. Temple, Nick's mother, would have
worn, and yet she was to me an hundred times more beautiful than that
lady in all her silks. Peeping out from under it were the little
blue-beaded moccasins which Tom himself had brought across the mountains
in the bosom of his hunting shirt. Polly Ann was radiant, and yet at
times so rapturously shy that when the preacher announced himself ready
to tie the knot she ran into the house and hid in the cupboard--for Polly
Ann was a child of nature. Thence, coloring like a wild rose, she was
dragged by a boisterous bevy of girls in linsey-woolsey to the spreading
maple of the forest that stood on the high bank over the stream. The
assembly fell solemn, and not a sound was heard save the breathing of
Nature in the heyday of her time. And though I was happy, the sobs rose
in my throat. There stood Polly Ann, as white now as the bleached linen
she wore, and Tom McChesney, tall and spare and broad, as strong a figure
of a man as ever I laid eyes on. God had truly made that couple for
wedlock in His leafy temple.

The deep-toned words of the preacher in prayer broke the stillness. They
were made man and wife. And then began a day of merriment, of
unrestraint, such as the backwoods alone knows. The feast was spread out
in the long grass under the trees--sides of venison, bear meat, corn-pone
fresh baked by Mrs. McChesney and Polly Ann herself, and all the
vegetables in the patch. There was no stint, either, of maple beer and
rum and "Black Betty," and toasts to the bride and groom amidst gusts of
laughter "that they might populate Kaintuckee." And Polly Ann would have
it that I should sit by her side under the maple.

The fiddlers played, and there were foot races and shooting matches. Ay,
and wrestling matches in the severe manner of the backwoods between the
young bucks, more than one of which might have ended seriously were it
not for the high humor of the crowd. Tom McChesney himself was in most
of them, a hot favorite. By a trick he had learned in the Indian country
he threw Chauncey Dike (no mean adversary) so hard that the backwoods
dandy lay for a moment in sleep. Contrary to the custom of many, Tom was
not in the habit of crowing on such occasions, nor did he even smile as
he helped Chauncey to his feet. But Polly Ann knew, and I knew, that he
was thinking of what Chauncey had said to her.

So the long summer afternoon wore away into twilight, and the sun fell
behind the blue ridges we were to cross. Pine knots were lighted in the
big room, the fiddlers set to again, and then came jigs and three and
four handed reels that made the puncheons rattle,--chicken-flutter and
cut-the-buckle,--and Polly Ann was the leader now, the young men flinging
the girls from fireplace to window in the reels, and back again; and
when, panting and perspiring, the lass was too tired to stand longer, she
dropped into the hospitable lap of the nearest buck who was perched on
the bench along the wall awaiting his chance. For so it went in the
backwoods in those days, and long after, and no harm in it that ever I
could see.

Well, suddenly, as if by concert, the music stopped, and a shout of
laughter rang under the beams as Polly Ann flew out of the door with the
girls after her, as swift of foot as she. They dragged her, a struggling
captive, to the bride-chamber which made the other end of the house, and
when they emerged, blushing and giggling and subdued, the fun began with
Tom McChesney. He gave the young men a pretty fight indeed, and long
before they had him conquered the elder guests had made their escape
through door and window.

All night the reels and jigs went on, and the feasting and drinking too.
In the fine rain that came at dawn to hide the crests, the company rode
wearily homeward through the notches.



CHAPTER VIII

THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE

         Some to endure, and many to quail,
         Some to conquer, and many to fail,
         Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

As long as I live I shall never forget the morning we started on our
journey across the Blue Wall. Before the sun chased away the filmy veil
of mist from the brooks in the valley, the McChesneys, father, mother,
and children, were gathered to see us depart. And as they helped us to
tighten the packsaddles Tom himself had made from chosen tree-forks, they
did not cease lamenting that we were going to certain death. Our scrawny
horses splashed across the stream, and we turned to see a gaunt and
lonely figure standing apart against the sun, stern and sorrowful. We
waved our hands, and set our faces towards Kaintuckee.

Tom walked ahead, rifle on shoulder, then Polly Ann; and lastly I drove
the two shaggy ponies, the instruments of husbandry we had been able to
gather awry on their packs,--a scythe, a spade, and a hoe. I
triumphantly carried the axe.

It was not long before we were in the wilderness, shut in by mountain
crags, and presently Polly Ann forgot her sorrows in the perils of the
trace. Choked by briers and grapevines, blocked by sliding stones and
earth, it rose and rose through the heat and burden of the day until it
lost itself in the open heights. As the sun was wearing down to the
western ridges the mischievous sorrel mare turned her pack on a sapling,
and one of the precious bags burst. In an instant we were on our knees
gathering the golden meal in our hands. Polly Ann baked journeycakes on
a hot stone from what we saved under the shiny ivy leaves, and scarce had
I spancelled the horses ere Tom returned with a fat turkey he had shot.

"Was there ever sech a wedding journey!" said Polly Ann, as we sat about
the fire, for the mountain air was chill. "And Tom and Davy as grave as
parsons. Ye'd guess one of you was Rutherford himself, and the other Mr.
Boone."

No wonder he was grave. I little realized then the task he had set
himself, to pilot a woman and a lad into a country haunted by frenzied
savages, when single men feared to go this season. But now he smiled,
and patted Polly Ann's brown hand.

"It's one of yer own choosing, lass," said he.

"Of my own choosing!" cried she. "Come, Davy, we'll go back to Grandpa."

Tom grinned.

"I reckon the redskins won't bother us till we git by the Nollichucky and
Watauga settlements," he said.

"The redskins!" said Polly Ann, indignant; "I reckon if one of 'em did
git me he'd kiss me once in a while."

Whereupon Tom, looking more sheepish still, tried to kiss her, and failed
ignominiously, for she vanished into the dark woods.

"If a redskin got you here," said Tom, when she had slipped back, "he'd
fetch you to Nick-a-jack Cave."

"What's that?" she demanded.

"Where all the red and white and yellow scalawags over the mountains is
gathered," he answered. And he told of a deep gorge between towering
mountains where a great river cried angrily, of a black cave out of which
a black stream ran, where a man could paddle a dugout for miles into the
rock. The river was the Tennessee, and the place the resort of the
Chickamauga bandits, pirates of the mountains, outcasts of all nations.
And Dragging Canoe was their chief.

It was on the whole a merry journey, the first part of it, if a rough
one. Often Polly Ann would draw me to her and whisper: "We'll hold out,
Davy. He'll never now." When the truth was that the big fellow was
going at half his pace on our account. He told us there was no fear of
redskins here, yet, when the scream of a painter or the hoot of an owl
stirred me from my exhausted slumber, I caught sight of him with his back
to a tree, staring into the forest, his rifle at his side. The day was
dawning.

"Turn about's fair," I expostulated.

"Ye'll need yere sleep, Davy," said he, "or ye'll never grow any bigger."

"I thought Kaintuckee was to the west," I said, "and you're making
north." For I had observed him day after day. We had left the trails.
Sometimes he climbed tree, and again he sent me to the upper branches,
whence I surveyed a sea of tree-tops waving in the wind, and looked
onward to where a green velvet hollow lay nestling on the western side of
a saddle-backed ridge.

"North!" said Tom to Polly Ann, laughing. "The little devil will beat me
at woodcraft soon. Ay, north, Davy. I'm hunting for the Nollichucky
Trace that leads to the Watauga settlement."

It was wonderful to me how he chose his way through the mountains. Once
in a while we caught sight of a yellow blaze in a tree, made by himself
scarce a month gone, when he came southward alone to fetch Polly Ann.
Again, the tired roan shied back from the bleached bones of a traveller,
picked clean by wolves. At sundown, when we loosed our exhausted horses
to graze on the wet grass by the streams, Tom would go off to look for a
deer or turkey, and often not come back to us until long after darkness
had fallen.

"Davy'll take care of you, Polly Ann," he would say as he left us.

And she would smile at him bravely and say, "I reckon I kin look out for
Davy awhile yet."

But when he was gone, and the crooning stillness set in broken only by
the many sounds of the night, we would sit huddled together by the fire.
It was dread for him she felt, not for herself. And in both our minds
rose red images of hideous foes skulking behind his brave form as he trod
the forest floor. Polly Ann was not the woman to whimper.

And yet I have but dim recollections of this journey. It was no hardship
to a lad brought up in woodcraft. Fear of the Indians, like a dog
shivering with the cold, was a deadened pain on the border.

Strangely enough it was I who chanced upon the Nollichucky Trace, which
follows the meanderings of that river northward through the great Smoky
Mountains. It was made long ago by the Southern Indians as they threaded
their way to the Hunting Lands of Kaintuckee, and shared now by Indian
traders. The path was redolent with odors, and bright with mountain
shrubs and flowers,--the pink laurel bush, the shining rhododendron, and
the grape and plum and wild crab. The clear notes of the mountain birds
were in our ears by day, and the music of the water falling over the
ledges, mingled with that of the leaves rustling in the wind, lulled us
to sleep at night. High above us, as we descended, the gap, from naked
crag to timber-covered ridge, was spanned by the eagle's flight. And
virgin valleys, where future generations were to be born, spread out and
narrowed again,--valleys with a deep carpet of cane and grass, where the
deer and elk and bear fed unmolested.

It was perchance the next evening that my eyes fell upon a sight which is
one of the wonders of my boyish memories. The trail slipped to the edge
of a precipice, and at our feet the valley widened. Planted amidst giant
trees, on a shining green lawn that ran down to the racing Nollichucky
was the strangest house it has ever been my lot to see--of no shape, of
huge size, and built of logs, one wing hitched to another by "dog alleys"
(as we called them); and from its wide stone chimneys the pearly smoke
rose upward in the still air through the poplar branches. Beyond it a
setting sun gilded the corn-fields, and horses and cattle dotted the
pastures. We stood for a while staring at this oasis in the wilderness,
and to my boyish fancy it was a fitting introduction to a delectable
land.

"Glory be to heaven!" exclaimed Polly Ann.

"It's Nollichucky Jack's house," said Tom.

"And who may he be?" said she.

"Who may he be!" cried Tom; "Captain John Sevier, king of the border, and
I reckon the best man to sweep out redskins in the Watauga settlements."

"Do you know him?" said she.

"I was chose as one of his scouts when we fired the Cherokee hill towns
last summer," said Tom, with pride. "Thar was blood and thunder for ye!
We went down the Great War-path which lies below us, and when we was
through there wasn't a corn-shuck or a wigwam or a war post left. We
didn't harm the squaws nor the children, but there warn't no prisoners
took. When Nollichucky Jack strikes I reckon it's more like a
thunderbolt nor anything else."

"Do you think he's at home, Tom?" I asked, fearful that I should not see
this celebrated person.

"We'll soon l'arn," said he, as we descended. "I heerd he was agoin' to
punish them Chickamauga robbers by Nick-a-jack."

Just then we heard a prodigious barking, and a dozen hounds came charging
down the path at our horses' legs, the roan shying into the truck patch.
A man's voice, deep, clear, compelling, was heard calling:--

"Vi! Flora! Ripper!"


I saw him coming from the porch of the house, a tall slim figure in a
hunting shirt--that fitted to perfection--and cavalry boots. His face,
his carriage, his quick movement and stride filled my notion of a hero,
and my instinct told me he was a gentleman born.

"Why, bless my soul, it's Tom McChesney!" he cried, ten paces away, while
Tom grinned with pleasure at the recognition "But what have you here?"

"A wife," said Tom, standing on one foot.

Captain Sevier fixed his dark blue eyes on Polly Ann with approbation,
and he bowed to her very gracefully.

"Where are you going, Ma'am, may I ask?" he said.

"To Kaintuckee," said Polly Ann.

"To Kaintuckee!" cried Captain Sevier, turning to Tom. "Egad, then,
you've no right to a wife,--and to such a wife," and he glanced again at
Polly Ann. "Why, McChesney, you never struck me as a rash man. Have you
lost your senses, to take a woman into Kentucky this year?"

"So the forts be still in trouble?" said Tom.

"Trouble?" cried Mr. Sevier, with a quick fling of his whip at an unruly
hound, "Harrodstown, Boonesboro, Logan's Fort at St. Asaph's,--they don't
dare stick their noses outside the stockades. The Indians have swarmed
into Kentucky like red ants, I tell you. Ten days ago, when I was in the
Holston settlements, Major Ben Logan came in. His fort had been shut up
since May, they were out of powder and lead, and somebody had to come.
How did he come? As the wolf lopes, nay, as the crow flies over crag and
ford, Cumberland, Clinch, and all, forty miles a day for five days, and
never saw a trace--for the war parties were watching the Wilderness
Road." And he swung again towards Polly Ann. "You'll not go to
Kaintuckee, ma'am; you'll stay here with us until the redskins are beaten
off there. He may go if he likes."

"I reckon we didn't come this far to give out, Captain Sevier," said she.

"You don't look to be the kind to give out, Mrs. McChesney," said he.
"And yet it may not be a matter of giving out," he added more soberly.
This mixture of heartiness and gravity seemed to sit well on him.
"Surely you have been enterprising, Tom. Where in the name of the
Continental Congress did you get the lad?"

"I married him along with Polly Ann," said Tom.

"That was the bargain, and I reckon he was worth it."

"I'd take a dozen to get her," declared Mr. Sevier, while Polly Ann
blushed. "Well, well, supper's waiting us, and cider and applejack, for
we don't get a wedding party every day. Some gentlemen are here whose
word may have more weight and whose attractions may be greater than
mine."

He whistled to a negro lad, who took our horses, and led us through the
court-yard and the house to the lawn at the far side of it. A rude table
was set there under a great tree, and around it three gentlemen were
talking. My memory of all of them is more vivid than it might be were
their names not household words in the Western country. Captain Sevier
startled them.

"My friends," said he, "if you have despatches for Kaintuckee, I pray you
get them ready over night."

They looked up at him, one sternly, the other two gravely.

"What the devil do you mean, Sevier?" said the stern one.

"That my friend, Tom McChesney, is going there with his wife, unless we
can stop him," said Sevier.

"Stop him!" thundered the stern gentleman, kicking back his chair and
straightening up to what seemed to me a colossal height. I stared at
him, boylike. He had long, iron-gray hair and a creased, fleshy face and
sunken eyes. He looked as if he might stop anybody as he turned upon
Tom. "Who the devil is this Tom McChesney?" he demanded.

Sevier laughed.

"The best scout I ever laid eyes on," said he. "A deadly man with a
Deckard, an unerring man at choosing a wife" (and he bowed to the
reddening Polly Ann), "and a fool to run the risk of losing her."

"Tut, tut," said the iron gentleman, who was the famous Captain Evan
Shelby of King's Meadows, "he'll leave her here in our settlements while
he helps us fight Dragging Canoe and his Chickamauga pirates."

"If he leaves me," said Polly Ann, her eyes flashing, "that's an end to
the bargain. He'll never find me more."

Captain Sevier laughed again.

"There's spirit for you," he cried, slapping his whip against his boot.

At this another gentleman stood up, a younger counterpart of the first,
only he towered higher and his shoulders were broader. He had a
big-featured face, and pleasant eyes--that twinkled now--sunken in, with
fleshy creases at the corners.

"Tom McChesney," said he, "don't mind my father. If any man besides
Logan can get inside the forts, you can. Do you remember me?"

"I reckon I do, Mr. Isaac Shelby," said Tom, putting a big hand into Mr.
Shelby's bigger one. "I reckon I won't soon forget how you stepped out
of ranks and tuk command when the boys was runnin', and turned the tide."

He looked like the man to step out of ranks and take command.

"Pish!" said Mr. Isaac Shelby, blushing like a girl; "where would I have
been if you and Moore and Findley and the rest hadn't stood 'em off till
we turned round?"

By this time the third gentleman had drawn my attention. Not by anything
he said, for he remained silent, sitting with his dark brown head bent
forward, quietly gazing at the scene from under his brows. The instant
he spoke they turned towards him. He was perhaps forty, and
broad-shouldered, not so tall as Mr. Sevier.

"Why do you go to Kaintuckee, McChesney?" he asked.

"I give my word to Mr. Harrod and Mr. Clark to come back, Mr. Robertson,"
said Tom.

"And the wife? If you take her, you run a great risk of losing her."

"And if he leaves me," said Polly Ann, flinging her head, "he will lose
me sure."

The others laughed, but Mr. Robertson merely smiled.

"Faith," cried Captain Sevier, "if those I met coming back helter-skelter
over the Wilderness Trace had been of that stripe, they'd have more men
in the forts now."

With that the Captain called for supper to be served where we sat. He
was a widower, with lads somewhere near my own age, and I recall being
shown about the place by them. And later, when the fireflies glowed and
the Nollichucky sang in the darkness, we listened to the talk of the war
of the year gone by. I needed not to be told that before me were the
renowned leaders of the Watauga settlements. My hero worship cried it
aloud within me. These captains dwelt on the border-land of mystery,
conquered the wilderness, and drove before them its savage tribes by
their might. When they spoke of the Cherokees and told how that same
Stuart--the companion of Cameron--was urging them to war against our
people, a fierce anger blazed within me. For the Cherokees had killed my
father.

I remember the men,--scarcely what they said: Evan Shelby's words, like
heavy blows on an anvil; Isaac Shelby's, none the less forceful; James
Robertson compelling his listeners by some strange power. He was
perchance the strongest man there, though none of us guessed, after
ruling that region, that he was to repeat untold hardships to found and
rear another settlement farther west. But best I loved to hear Captain
Sevier, whose talk lacked not force, but had a daring, a humor, a
lightness of touch, that seemed more in keeping with that world I had
left behind me in Charlestown. Him I loved, and at length I solved the
puzzle. To me he was Nick Temple grown to manhood.

I slept in the room with Captain Sevier's boys, and one window of it was
of paper smeared with bear's grease, through which the sunlight came all
bleared and yellow in the morning. I had a boy's interest in affairs,
and I remember being told that the gentlemen were met here to discuss the
treaty between themselves and the great Oconostota, chief of the
Cherokees, and also to consider the policy of punishing once for all
Dragging Canoe and his bandits at Chickamauga.

As we sat at breakfast under the trees, these gentlemen generously
dropped their own business to counsel Tom, and I observed with pride that
he had gained their regard during the last year's war. Shelby's threats
and Robertson's warnings and Sevier's exhortations having no effect upon
his determination to proceed to Kentucky, they began to advise him how to
go, and he sat silent while they talked. And finally, when they asked
him, he spoke of making through Carter's Valley for Cumberland Gap and
the Wilderness Trail.

"Egad," cried Captain Sevier, "I have so many times found the boldest
plan the safest that I have become a coward that way. What do you say to
it, Mr. Robertson?"

Mr. Robertson leaned his square shoulders over the table.

"He may fall in with a party going over," he answered, without looking
up.

Polly Ann looked at Tom as if to say that the whole Continental Army
could not give her as much protection.

We left that hospitable place about nine o'clock, Mr. Robertson having
written a letter to Colonel Daniel Boone,--shut up in the fort at
Boonesboro,--should we be so fortunate as to reach Kaintuckee: and
another to a young gentleman by the name of George Rogers Clark,
apparently a leader there. Captain Sevier bowed over Polly Ann's hand as
if she were a great lady, and wished her a happy honeymoon, and me he
patted on the head and called a brave lad. And soon we had passed beyond
the corn-field into the Wilderness again.

Our way was down the Nollichucky, past the great bend of it below Lick
Creek, and so to the Great War-path, the trail by which countless parties
of red marauders had travelled north and south. It led, indeed,
northeast between the mountain ranges. Although we kept a watch by day
and night, we saw no sign of Dragging Canoe or his men, and at length we
forded the Holston and came to the scattered settlement in Carter's
Valley.

I have since racked my brain to remember at whose cabin we stopped there.
He was a rough backwoodsman with a wife and a horde of children. But I
recall that a great rain came out of the mountains and down the valley.
We were counting over the powder gourds in our packs, when there burst in
at the door as wild a man as has ever been my lot to see. His brown
beard was grown like a bramble patch, his eye had a violet light, and his
hunting shirt was in tatters. He was thin to gauntness, ate ravenously
of the food that was set before him, and throwing off his soaked
moccasins, he spread his scalded feet to the blaze, and the steaming odor
of drying leather filled the room.

"Whar be ye from?" asked Tom.

For answer the man bared his arm, then his shoulder, and two angry scars,
long and red, revealed themselves, and around his wrists were deep gouges
where he had been bound.

"They killed Sue," he cried, "sculped her afore my very eyes. And they
chopped my boy outen the hickory withes and carried him to the Creek
Nation. At a place where there was a standin' stone I broke loose from
three of 'em and come here over the mountains, and I ain't had nothin',
stranger, but berries and chainey brier-root for ten days. God damn
'em!" he cried, standing up and tottering with the pain in his feet, "if
I can get a Deckard--"

"Will you go back?" said Tom.

"Go back!" he shouted, "I'll go back and fight 'em while I have blood in
my body."

He fell into a bunk, but his sorrow haunted him even in his troubled
sleep, and his moans awed us as we listened. The next day he told us his
story with more calmness. It was horrible indeed, and might well have
frightened a less courageous woman than Polly Ann. Imploring her not to
go, he became wild again, and brought tears to her eyes when he spoke of
his own wife. "They tomahawked her, ma'am, because she could not walk,
and the baby beside her, and I standing by with my arms tied."

As long as I live I shall never forget that scene, and how Tom pleaded
with Polly Ann to stay behind, but she would not listen to him.

"You're going, Tom?" she said.

"Yes," he answered, turning away, "I gave 'em my word."

"And your word to me?" said Polly Ann.

He did not answer.

We fixed on a Saturday to start, to give the horses time to rest, and in
the hope that we might hear of some relief party going over the Gap. On
Thursday Tom made a trip to the store in the valley, and came back with a
Deckard rifle he had bought for the stranger, whose name was Weldon.
There was no news from Kaintuckee, but the Carter's Valley settlers
seemed to think that matters were better there. It was that same night,
I believe, that two men arrived from Fort Chiswell. One, whose name was
Cutcheon, was a little man with a short forehead and a bad eye, and he
wore a weather-beaten blue coat of military cut. The second was a big,
light-colored, fleshy man, and a loud talker. He wore a hunting shirt
and leggings. They were both the worse for rum they had had on the road,
the big man talking very loud and boastfully.

"Afeard to go to Kaintuckee!" said he. "I've met a parcel o' cowards on
the road, turned back. There ain't nothin' to be afeard of, eh,
stranger?" he added, to Tom, who paid no manner of attention to him. The
small man scarce opened his mouth, but sat with his head bowed forward on
his breast when he was not drinking. We passed a dismal, crowded night
in the room with such companions. When they heard that we were to go
over the mountains, nothing would satisfy the big man but to go with us.

"Come, stranger," said he to Tom, "two good rifles such as we is ain't to
be throwed away."

"Why do you want to go over?" asked Tom. "Be ye a Tory?" he demanded
suspiciously.

"Why do you go over?" retorted Riley, for that was his name. "I reckon
I'm no more of a Tory than you."

"Whar did ye come from?" said Tom.

"Chiswell's mines, taking out lead for the army o' Congress. But there
ain't excitement enough in it."

"And you?" said Tom, turning to Cutcheon and eying his military coat.

"I got tired of their damned discipline," the man answered surlily. He
was a deserter.

"Look you," said Tom, sternly, "if you come, what I say is law."

Such was the sacrifice we were put to by our need of company. But in
those days a man was a man, and scarce enough on the Wilderness Trail in
that year of '77. So we started away from Carter's Valley on a bright
Saturday morning, the grass glistening after a week's rain, the road
sodden, and the smell of the summer earth heavy. Tom and Weldon walked
ahead, driving the two horses, followed by Cutcheon, his head dropped
between his shoulders. The big man, Riley, regaled Polly Ann.

"My pluck is," said he, "my pluck is to give a redskin no chance. Shoot
'em down like hogs. It takes a good un to stalk me, Ma'am. Up on the
Kanawha I've had hand-to-hand fights with 'em, and made 'em cry quits."

"Law!" exclaimed Polly Ann, nudging me, "it was a lucky thing we run into
you in the valley."

But presently we left the road and took a mountain trail,--as stiff a
climb as we had yet had. Polly Ann went up it like a bird, talking all
the while to Riley, who blew like a bellows. For once he was silent.

We spent two, perchance three, days climbing and descending and fording.
At night Tom would suffer none to watch save Weldon and himself, not
trusting Riley or Cutcheon. And the rascals were well content to sleep.
At length we came, to a cabin on a creek, the corn between the stumps
around it choked with weeds, and no sign of smoke in the chimney. Behind
it slanted up, in giant steps, a forest-clad hill of a thousand feet, and
in front of it the stream was dammed and lined with cane.

"Who keeps house?" cried Tom, at the threshold.

He pushed back the door, fashioned in one great slab from a forest tree.
His welcome was an angry whir, and a huge yellow rattler lay coiled
within, his head reared to strike. Polly Ann leaned back.

"Mercy," she cried, "that's a bad sign."

But Tom killed the snake, and we made ready to use the cabin that night
and the next day. For the horses were to be rested and meat was to be
got, as we could not use our guns so freely on the far side of Cumberland
Gap. In the morning, before he and Weldon left, Tom took me around the
end of the cabin.

"Davy," said he, "I don't trust these rascals. Kin you shoot a pistol?"

I reckoned I could.

He had taken one out of the pack he had got from Captain Sevier and
pushed it between the logs where the clay had fallen out. "If they try
anything," said he, "shoot 'em. And don't be afeard of killing 'em." He
patted me on the back, and went off up the slope with Weldon. Polly Ann
and I stood watching them until they were out of sight.

About eleven o'clock Riley and Cutcheon moved off to the edge of a
cane-brake near the water, and sat there for a while, talking in low
tones. The horses were belled and spancelled near by, feeding on the
cane and wild grass, and Polly Ann was cooking journey-cakes on a stone.

"What makes you so sober, Davy?" she said.

I didn't answer.

"Davy," she cried, "be happy while you're young. 'Tis a fine day, and
Kaintuckee's over yonder." She picked up her skirts and sang:--

            "First upon the heeltap,
             Then upon the toe."

 The men by the cane-brake turned and came towards us.

"Ye're happy to-day, Mis' McChesney," said Riley.

"Why shouldn't I be?" said Polly Ann; "we're all a-goin' to Kaintuckee."

"We're a-goin' back to Cyarter's Valley," said Riley, in his blustering
way. "This here ain't as excitin' as I thought. I reckon there ain't no
redskins nohow."

"What!" cried Polly Ann, in loud scorn, "ye're a-goin' to desert?
There'll be redskins enough by and by, I'll warrant ye."

"How'd you like to come along of us," says Riley; "that ain't any place
for wimmen, over yonder."

"Along of you!" cried Polly Ann, with flashing eyes.
"Do you hear that, Davy?"

I did. Meanwhile the man Cutcheon was slowly walking towards her. It
took scarce a second for me to make up my mind. I slipped around the
corner of the house, seized the pistol, primed it with a trembling hand,
and came back to behold Polly Ann, with flaming cheeks, facing them.
They did not so much as glance at me. Riley held a little back of the
two, being the coward. But Cutcheon stood ready, like a wolf.

I did not wait for him to spring, but, taking the best aim I could with
my two hands, fired. With a curse that echoed in the crags, he threw up
his arms and fell forward, writhing, on the turf.

"Run for the cabin, Polly Ann," I shouted, "and bar the door."

There was no need. For an instant Riley wavered, and then fled to the
cane.

Polly Ann and I went to the man on the ground, and turned him over. His
eyes slid upwards. There was a bloody froth on his lips.

"Davy!" cried she, awestricken, "Davy, ye've killed him!"

I grew dizzy and sick at the thought, but she caught me and held me to
her. Presently we sat down on the door log, gazing at the corpse. Then
I began to reflect, and took out my powder gourd and loaded the pistol.

"What are ye a-doing?" she said.

"In case the other one comes back," said I.

"Pooh," said Polly Ann, "he'll not come back." Which was true. I have
never laid eyes on Riley to this day.

"I reckon we'd better fetch it out of the sun," said she, after a while.
And so we dragged it under an oak, covered the face, and left it.

He was the first man I ever killed, and the business by no means came
natural to me. And that day the journey-cakes which Polly Ann had made
were untasted by us both. The afternoon dragged interminably. Try as we
would, we could not get out of our minds the Thing that lay under the
oak.

It was near sundown when Tom and Weldon appeared on the mountain side
carrying a buck between them. Tom glanced from one to the other of us
keenly. He was very quick to divine.

"Whar be they?" said he.

"Show him, Davy," said Polly Ann.

I took him over to the oak, and Polly Ann told him the story. He gave me
one look, I remember, and there was more of gratitude in it than in a
thousand words. Then he seized a piece of cold cake from the stone.

"Which trace did he take?" he demanded of me.


But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder.

"Tom, Tom!" she cried, "you beant goin' to leave us again. Tom, he'll
die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee."

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature
had reared between us and the delectable country. It stood like a lion
at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from
Powell's Valley below. How many thousands have looked at it with sinking
hearts! How many weaklings has its frown turned back! There seemed to
be engraved upon it the dark history of the dark and bloody land beyond.
Nothing in this life worth having is won for the asking; and the best is
fought for, and bled for, and died for. Written, too, upon that towering
wall of white rock, in the handwriting of God Himself, is the history of
the indomitable Race to which we belong.

For fifty miles we travelled under it, towards the Gap, our eyes drawn to
it by a resistless fascination. The sun went over it early in the day,
as though glad to leave the place, and after that a dark scowl would
settle there. At night we felt its presence, like a curse. Even Polly
Ann was silent. And she had need to be now. When it was necessary, we
talked in low tones, and the bell-clappers on the horses were not loosed
at night. It was here, but four years gone, that Daniel Boone's family
was attacked, and his son killed by the Indians.

We passed, from time to time, deserted cabins and camps, and some places
that might once have been called settlements: Elk Garden, where the
pioneers of the last four years had been wont to lay in a simple supply
of seed corn and Irish potatoes; and the spot where Henderson and his
company had camped on the way to establish Boonesboro two years before.
And at last we struck the trace that mounted upward to the Gateway
itself.



CHAPTER IX

ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL

And now we had our hands upon the latch, and God alone knew what was
behind the gate. Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it.
Death, perchance. But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence
did not frighten. As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange
aptness a quaint saying of my father's that Kaintuckee was the Garden of
Eden, and that men were being justly punished with blood for their
presumption.

As if to crown that judgment, the day was dark and lowering, with showers
of rain from time to time. And when we spoke,--Polly Ann and I,--it was
in whispers. The trace was very narrow, with Daniel Boone's blazes, two
years old, upon the trees; but the way was not over steep. Cumberland
Mountain was as silent and deserted as when the first man had known it.

Alas, for the vanity of human presage! We gained the top, and entered
unmolested. No Eden suddenly dazzled our eye, no splendor burst upon it.
Nothing told us, as we halted in our weariness, that we had reached the
Promised Land. The mists weighed heavily on the evergreens of the slopes
and hid the ridges, and we passed that night in cold discomfort. It was
the first of many without a fire.

The next day brought us to the Cumberland, tawny and swollen from the
rains, and here we had to stop to fell trees to make a raft on which to
ferry over our packs. We bound the logs together with grapevines, and as
we worked my imagination painted for me many a red face peering from the
bushes on the farther shore. And when we got into the river and were
caught and spun by the hurrying stream, I hearkened for a shot from the
farther bank. While Polly Ann and I were scrambling to get the raft
landed, Tom and Weldon swam over with the horses. And so we lay the
second night dolefully in the rain. But not so much as a whimper escaped
from Polly Ann. I have often told her since that the sorest trial she
had was the guard she kept on her tongue,--a hardship indeed for one of
Irish inheritance. Many a pull had she lightened for us by a flash of
humor.

The next morning the sun relented, and the wine of his dawn was wine
indeed to our flagging hopes. Going down to wash at the river's brink, I
heard a movement in the cane, and stood frozen and staring until a great,
bearded head, black as tar, was thrust out between the stalks and looked
at me with blinking red eyes. The next step revealed the hump of the
beast, and the next his tasselled tail lashing his dirty brown quarters.
I did not tarry longer, but ran to tell Tom. He made bold to risk a shot
and light a fire, and thus we had buffalo meat for some days after.

We were still in the mountains. The trail led down the river for a bit
through the worst of canebrakes, and every now and again we stopped while
Tom and Weldon scouted. Once the roan mare made a dash through the
brake, and, though Polly Ann burst through one way to head her off and I
another, we reached the bank of Richland Creek in time to see her nose
and the top of her pack above the brown water. There was nothing for it
but to swim after her, which I did, and caught her quietly feeding in the
cane on the other side. By great good fortune the other horse bore the
powder.

"Drat you, Nancy," said Polly Ann to the mare, as she handed me my
clothes, "I'd sooner carry the pack myself than be bothered with you."

"Hush," said I, "the redskins will get us."

Polly Ann regarded me scornfully as I stood bedraggled before her.

"Redskins!" she cried. "Nonsense! I reckon it's all talk about
redskins."

But we had scarce caught up ere we saw Tom standing rigid with his hand
raised. Before him, on a mound bared of cane, were the charred remains
of a fire. The sight of them transformed Weldon. His eyes glared again,
even as when we had first seen him, curses escaped under his breath, and
he would have darted into the cane had not Tom seized him sternly by the
shoulder. As for me, my heart hammered against my ribs, and I grew sick
with listening. It was at that instant that my admiration for Tom
McChesney burst bounds, and that I got some real inkling of what
woodcraft might be. Stepping silently between the tree trunks, his eyes
bent on the leafy loam, he found a footprint here and another there, and
suddenly he went into the cane with a sign to us to remain. It seemed an
age before he returned. Then he began to rake the ashes, and, suddenly
bending down, seized something in them,--the broken bowl of an Indian
pipe.

"Shawnees!" he said; "I reckoned so." It was at length the beseeching in
Polly Ann's eyes that he answered.

"A war party--tracks three days old. They took poplar."

To take poplar was our backwoods expression for embarking in a canoe, the
dugouts being fashioned from the great poplar trees.

I did not reflect then, as I have since and often, how great was the
knowledge and resource Tom practised that day. Our feeling for him
(Polly Ann's and mine) fell little short of worship. In company ill at
ease, in the forest he became silent and masterful--an unerring woodsman,
capable of meeting the Indian on his own footing. And, strangest thought
of all, he and many I could name who went into Kentucky, had escaped, by
a kind of strange fate, being born in the north of Ireland. This was so
of Andrew Jackson himself.

The rest of the day he led us in silence down the trace, his eye alert to
penetrate every corner of the forest, his hand near the trigger of his
long Deckard. I followed in boylike imitation, searching every thicket
for alien form and color, and yearning for stature and responsibility.
As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time with eyes fixed
ahead, a wild figure,--ragged and fringed. And we knew that the soul
within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and of his child in
captivity. Again, when the trance left him, he was an addition to our
little party not to be despised.

At dark Polly Ann and I carried the packs across a creek on a fallen
tree, she taking one end and I the other. We camped there, where the
loam was trampled and torn by countless herds of bison, and had only
parched corn and the remains of a buffalo steak for supper, as the meal
was mouldy from its wetting, and running low. When Weldon had gone a
little distance up the creek to scout, Tom relented from the sternness
which his vigilance imposed and came and sat down on a log beside Polly
Ann and me.

"'Tis a hard journey, little girl," he said, patting her; "I reckon I
done wrong to fetch you."

I can see him now, as the twilight settled down over the wilderness, his
honest face red and freckled, but aglow with the tenderness it had hidden
during the day, one big hand enfolding hers, and the other on my
shoulder.

"Hark, Davy!" said Polly Ann, "he's fair tired of us already. Davy, take
me back."

"Hush, Polly Ann," he answered; delighted at her raillery. "But I've a
word to say to you. If we come on to the redskins, you and Davy make for
the cane as hard as you kin kilter. Keep out of sight."

"As hard as we kin kilter!" exclaimed Polly Ann, indignantly. "I reckon
not, Tom McChesney. Davy taught me to shoot long ago, afore you made up
your mind to come back from Kaintuckee."

Tom chuckled. "So Davy taught you to shoot," he said, and checked
himself. "He ain't such a bad one with a pistol,"--and he patted
me,--"but I allow ye'd better hunt kiver just the same. And if they
ketch ye, Polly Ann, just you go along and pretend to be happy, and tear
off a snatch of your dress now and then, if you get a chance. It
wouldn't take me but a little time to run into Harrodstown or Boone's
Station from here, and fetch a party to follow ye."

Two days went by,--two days of strain in sunlight, and of watching and
fitful sleep in darkness. But the Wilderness Trail was deserted. Here
and there a lean-to--silent remnant of the year gone by--spoke of the
little bands of emigrants which had once made their way so cheerfully to
the new country. Again it was a child's doll, the rags of it beaten by
the weather to a rusty hue. Every hour that we progressed seemed to
justify the sagacity and boldness of Tom's plan, nor did it appear to
have entered a painted skull that a white man would have the hardihood to
try the trail this year. There were neither signs nor sounds save
Nature's own, the hoot of the wood-owl, the distant bark of a mountain
wolf, the whir of a partridge as she left her brood. At length we could
stand no more the repression that silence and watching put upon us, and
when a rotten bank gave way and flung Polly Ann and the sorrel mare into
a creek, even Weldon smiled as we pulled her, bedraggled and laughing,
from the muddy water. This was after we had ferried the Rockcastle
River.

Our trace rose and fell over height and valley, until we knew that we
were come to a wonderland at last. We stood one evening on a spur as the
setting sun flooded the natural park below us with a crystal light and,
striking a tall sycamore, turned its green to gold. We were now on the
hills whence the water ran down to nourish the fat land, and I could
scarce believe that the garden spot on which our eyes feasted could be
the scene of the blood and suffering of which we had heard. Here at last
was the fairyland of my childhood, the country beyond the Blue Wall.

We went down the river that led into it, with awes as though we were
trespassers against God Himself,--as though He had made it too beautiful
and too fruitful for the toilers of this earth. And you who read this an
hundred years hence may not believe the marvels of it to the pioneer, and
in particular to one born and bred in the scanty, hard soil of the
mountains. Nature had made it for her park,--ay, and scented it with her
own perfumes. Giant trees, which had watched generations come and go,
some of which mayhap had been saplings when the Norman came to England,
grew in groves,--the gnarled and twisted oak, and that godsend to the
settlers, the sugar-maple; the coffee tree with its drooping buds; the
mulberry, the cherry, and the plum; the sassafras and the pawpaw; the
poplar and the sycamore, slender maidens of the forest, garbed in
daintier colors,--ay, and that resplendent brunette with the white
flowers, the magnolia; and all underneath, in the green shade, enamelled
banks which the birds themselves sought to rival.

At length, one afternoon, we came to the grove of wild apple trees so
lovingly spoken of by emigrants as the Crab Orchard, and where formerly
they had delighted to linger. The plain near by was flecked with the
brown backs of feeding buffalo, but we dared not stop, and pressed on to
find a camp in the forest. As we walked in the filtered sunlight we had
a great fright, Polly Ann and I. Shrill, discordant cries suddenly burst
from the branches above us, and a flock of strange, green birds flecked
with red flew over our heads. Even Tom, intent upon the trail, turned
and laughed at Polly Ann as she stood clutching me.

"Shucks," said he, "they're only paroquets."

We made our camp in a little dell where there was short green grass by
the brookside and steep banks overgrown with brambles on either hand.
Tom knew the place, and declared that we were within thirty miles of the
station. A giant oak had blown down across the water, and, cutting out a
few branches of this, we spread our blankets under it on the turf.
Tethering our faithful beasts, and cutting a quantity of pea-vine for
their night's food, we lay down to sleep, Tom taking the first watch.

I had the second, for Tom trusted me now, and glorying in that trust I
was alert and vigilant. A shy moon peeped at me between the trees, and
was fantastically reflected in the water. The creek rippled over the
limestone, and an elk screamed in the forest far beyond. When at length
I had called Weldon to take the third watch, I lay down with a sense of
peace, soothed by the sweet odors of the night.

I awoke suddenly. I had been dreaming of Nick Temple and Temple Bow, and
my father coming back to me there with a great gash in his shoulder like
Weldon's. I lay for a moment dazed by the transition, staring through
the gray light. Then I sat up, the soft stamping and snorting of the
horses in my ears. The sorrel mare had her nose high, her tail
twitching, but there was no other sound in the leafy wilderness. With a
bound of returning sense I looked for Weldon. He had fallen asleep on
the bank above, his body dropped across the trunk of the oak. I leaped
on the trunk and made my way along it, stepping over him, until I reached
and hid myself in the great roots of the tree on the bank above. The
cold shiver of the dawn was in my body as I waited and listened. Should
I wake Tom? The vast forest was silent, and yet in its shadowy depths my
imagination drew moving forms. I hesitated.

The light grew: the boles of the trees came out, one by one, through the
purple. The tangled mass down the creek took on a shade of green, and a
faint breath came from the southward. The sorrel mare sniffed it, and
stamped. Then silence again,--a long silence. Could it be that the cane
moved in the thicket? Or had my eyes deceived me? I stared so hard that
it seemed to rustle all over. Perhaps some deer were feeding there, for
it was no unusual thing, when we rose in the morning, to hear the whistle
of a startled doe near our camping ground. I was thoroughly frightened
now,--and yet I had the speculative Scotch mind. The thicket was some
one hundred and fifty yards above, and on the flooded lands at a bend.
If there were Indians in it, they could not see the sleeping forms of our
party under me because of a bend in the stream. They might have seen me,
though I had kept very still in the twisted roots of the oak, and now I
was cramped. If Indians were there, they could determine our position
well enough by the occasional stamping and snorting of the horses. And
this made my fear more probable, for I had heard that horses and cattle
often warned pioneers of the presence of redskins.

Another thing: if they were a small party, they would probably seek to
surprise us by coming out of the cane into the creek bed above the bend,
and stalk down the creek. If a large band, they would surround and
overpower us. I drew the conclusion that it must be a small party--if a
party at all. And I would have given a shot in the arm to be able to see
over the banks of the creek. Finally I decided to awake Tom.

It was no easy matter to get down to where he was without being seen by
eyes in the cane. I clung to the under branches of the oak, finally
reached the shelving bank, and slid down slowly. I touched him on the
shoulder. He awoke with a start, and by instinct seized the rifle lying
beside him.

"What is it, Davy?" he whispered.

I told what had happened and my surmise. He glanced then at the restless
horses and nodded, pointing up at the sleeping figure of Weldon, in full
sight on the log. The Indians must have seen him.

Tom picked up the spare rifle.

"Davy," said he, "you stay here beside Polly Ann, behind the oak. You
kin shoot with a rest; but don't shoot," said he, earnestly, "for God's
sake don't shoot unless you're sure to kill."

I nodded. For a moment he looked at the face of Polly Ann, sleeping
peacefully, and the fierce light faded from his eyes. He brushed her on
the cheek and she awoke and smiled at him, trustfully, lovingly. He put
his finger to his lips.

"Stay with Davy," he said. Turning to me, he added: "When you wake
Weldon, wake him easy. So." He put his hand in mine, and gradually
tightened it. "Wake him that way, and he won't jump."

Polly Ann asked no questions. She looked at Tom, and her soul was in her
face. She seized the pistol from the blanket. Then we watched him
creeping down the creek on his belly, close to the bank. Next we moved
behind the fallen tree, and I put my hand in Weldon's. He woke with a
sigh, started, but we drew him down behind the log. Presently he climbed
cautiously up the bank and took station in the muddy roots of the tree.
Then we waited, watching Tom with a prayer in our hearts. Those who have
not felt it know not the fearfulness of waiting for an Indian attack.

At last Tom reached the bend in the bank, beside some red-bud bushes, and
there he stayed. A level shaft of light shot through the forest. The
birds, twittering, awoke. A great hawk soared high in the blue over our
heads. An hour passed. I had sighted the rifle among the yellow leaves
of the fallen oak an hundred times. But Polly Ann looked not once to the
right or left. Her eyes and her prayers followed the form of her
husband.

Then, like the cracking of a great drover's whip, a shot rang out in the
stillness, and my hands tightened over the rifle-stock. A piece of bark
struck me in the face, and a dead leaf fluttered to the ground. Almost
instantly there was another shot, and a blue wisp of smoke rose from the
red-bud bushes, where Tom was. The horses whinnied, there was a rustle
in the cane, and silence. Weldon bent over.

"My God!" he whispered hoarsely, "he hit one. Tom hit one."

I felt Polly Ann's hand on my face.

"Davy dear," she said, "are ye hurt?"

"No," said I, dazed, and wondering why Weldon had not been shot long ago
as he slumbered. I was burning to climb the bank and ask him whether he
had seen the Indian fall.

Again there was silence,--a silence even more awful than before. The sun
crept higher, the magic of his rays turning the creek from black to
crystal, and the birds began to sing again. And still there was no sign
of the treacherous enemy that lurked about us. Could Tom get back? I
glanced at Polly Ann. The same question was written in her yearning
eyes, staring at the spot where the gray of his hunting shirt showed
through the bushes at the bend. Suddenly her hand tightened on mine.
The hunting shirt was gone!

After that, in the intervals when my terror left me, I tried to speculate
upon the plan of the savages. Their own numbers could not be great, and
yet they must have known from our trace how few we were. Scanning the
ground, I noted that the forest was fairly clean of undergrowth on both
sides of us. Below, the stream ran straight, but there were growths of
cane and briers. Looking up, I saw Weldon faced about. It was the
obvious move.

But where had Tom gone?

Next my eye was caught by a little run fringed with bushes that curved
around the cane near the bend. I traced its course, unconsciously, bit
by bit, until it reached the edge of a bank not fifty feet away.

All at once my breath left me. Through the tangle of bramble stems at
the mouth of the run, above naked brown shoulders there glared at me,
hideously streaked with red, a face. Had my fancy lied? I stared again
until my eyes were blurred, now tortured by doubt, now so completely
convinced that my fingers almost released the trigger,--for I had thrown
the sights into line over the tree. I know not to this day whether I
shot from determination or nervousness. My shoulder bruised by the kick,
the smoke like a veil before my face, it was some moments ere I knew that
the air was full of whistling bullets; and then the gun was torn from my
hands, and I saw Polly Ann ramming in a new charge.

"The pistol, Davy," she cried.

One torture was over, another on. Crack after crack sounded from the
forest--from here and there and everywhere, it seemed--and with a song
that like a hurtling insect ran the scale of notes, the bullets buried
themselves in the trunk of our oak with a chug. Once in a while I heard
Weldon's answering shot, but I remembered my promise to Tom not to waste
powder unless I were sure. The agony was the breathing space we had
while they crept nearer. Then we thought of Tom, and I dared not glance
at Polly Ann for fear that the sight of her face would unnerve me.

Then a longing to kill seized me, a longing so strange and fierce that I
could scarce be still. I know now that it comes in battle to all men,
and with intensity to the hunted, and it explained to me more clearly
what followed. I fairly prayed for the sight of a painted form, and time
after time my fancy tricked me into the notion that I had one. And even
as I searched the brambles at the top of the run a puff of smoke rose out
of them, a bullet burying itself in the roots near Weldon, who fired in
return. I say that I have some notion of what possessed the man, for he
was crazed with passion at fighting the race which had so cruelly wronged
him. Horror-struck, I saw him swing down from the bank, splash through
the water with raised tomahawk, and gain the top of the run. In less
time than it takes me to write these words he had dragged a hideous,
naked warrior out of the brambles, and with an avalanche of crumbling
earth they slid into the waters of the creek. Polly Ann and I stared
transfixed at the fearful fight that followed, nor can I give any
adequate description of it. Weldon had struck through the brambles, but
the savage had taken the blow on his gun-barrel and broken the handle of
the tomahawk, and it was man to man as they rolled in the shallow water,
locked in a death embrace. Neither might reach for his knife, neither
was able to hold the other down, Weldon's curses surcharged with hatred.
the Indian straining silently save for a gasp or a guttural note, the
white a bearded madman, the savage a devil with a glistening,
paint-streaked body, his features now agonized as his muscles strained
and cracked, now lighted with a diabolical joy. But the pent-up rage of
months gave the white man strength.

Polly Ann and I were powerless for fear of shooting Weldon, and gazed
absorbed at the fiendish scene with eyes not to be withdrawn. The
tree-trunk shook. A long, bronze arm reached out from above, and a
painted face glowered at us from the very roots where Weldon had lain.
That moment I took to be my last, and in it I seemed to taste all
eternity, I heard but faintly a noise beyond. It was the shock of the
heavy Indian falling on Polly Ann and me as we cowered under the trunk,
and even then there was an instant that we stood gazing at him as at a
worm writhing in the clay. It was she who fired the pistol and made the
great hole in his head, and so he twitched and died. After that a
confusion of shots, war-whoops, a vision of two naked forms flying from
tree to tree towards the cane, and then--God be praised--Tom's voice
shouting:--

"Polly Ann! Polly Ann!"

Before she had reached the top of the bank Tom had her in his arms, and a
dozen tall gray figures leaped the six feet into the stream and stopped.
My own eyes turned with theirs to see the body of poor Weldon lying face
downward in the water. But beyond it a tragedy awaited me. Defiant,
immovable, save for the heaving of his naked chest, the savage who had
killed him stood erect with folded arms facing us. The smoke cleared
away from a gleaming rifle-barrel, and the brave staggered and fell and
died as silent as he stood, his feathers making ripples in the stream.
It was cold-blooded, if you like, but war in those days was to the death,
and knew no mercy. The tall backwoodsman who had shot him waded across
the stream, and in the twinkling of an eye seized the scalp-lock and ran
it round with his knife, holding up the bleeding trophy with a shout.
Staggering to my feet, I stretched myself, but I had been cramped so long
that I tottered and would have fallen had not Tom's hand steadied me.

"Davy!" he cried. "Thank God, little Davy! the varmints didn't get ye."

"And you, Tom?" I answered, looking up at him, bewildered with happiness.

"They was nearer than I suspicioned when I went off," he said, and looked
at me curiously. "Drat the little deevil," he said affectionately, and
his voice trembled, "he took care of Polly Ann, I'll warrant."

He carried me to the top of the bank, where we were surrounded by the
whole band of backwoodsmen.

"That he did!" cried Polly Ann, "and fetched a redskin yonder as clean as
you could have done it, Tom."

"The little deevil!" exclaimed Tom again.

I looked up, burning with this praise from Tom (for I had never thought
of praise nor of anything save his happiness and Polly Ann's). I looked
up, and my eyes were caught and held with a strange fascination by
fearless blue ones that gazed down into them. I give you but a poor
description of the owner of these blue eyes, for personal magnetism
springs not from one feature or another. He was a young man,--perhaps
five and twenty as I now know age,--woodsman-clad, square-built,
sun-reddened. His hair might have been orange in one light and
sand-colored in another. With a boy's sense of such things I knew that
the other woodsmen were waiting for him to speak, for they glanced at
him expectantly.

"You had a near call, McChesney," said he, at length; "fortunate for you
we were after this band,--shot some of it to pieces yesterday morning."
He paused, looking at Tom with that quality of tribute which comes
naturally to a leader of men. "By God," he said, "I didn't think you'd
try it."

"My word is good, Colonel Clark," answered Tom, simply.

Young Colonel Clark glanced at the lithe figure of Polly Ann. He seemed
a man of few words, for he did not add to his praise of Tom's achievement
by complimenting her as Captain Sevier had done. In fact, he said
nothing more, but leaped down the bank and strode into the water where
the body of Weldon lay, and dragged it out himself. We gathered around
it silently, and two great tears rolled down Polly Ann's cheeks as she
parted the hair with tenderness and loosened the clenched hands. Nor did
any of the tall woodsmen speak. Poor Weldon! The tragedy of his life
and death was the tragedy of Kentucky herself. They buried him by the
waterside, where he had fallen.

But there was little time for mourning on the border. The burial
finished, the Kentuckians splashed across the creek, and one of them,
stooping with a shout at the mouth of the run, lifted out of the brambles
a painted body with drooping head and feathers trailing.

"Ay, Mac," he cried, "here's a sculp for ye."

"It's Davy's," exclaimed Polly Ann from the top of the bank; "Davy shot
that one."

"Hooray for Davy," cried a huge, strapping backwoodsman who stood beside
her, and the others laughingly took up the shout. "Hooray for Davy.
Bring him over, Cowan." The giant threw me on his shoulder as though I
had been a fox, leaped down, and took the stream in two strides. I
little thought how often he was to carry me in days to come, but I felt a
great awe at the strength of him, as I stared into his rough features and
his veined and weathered skin. He stood me down beside the Indian's
body, smiled as he whipped my hunting knife from my belt, and said, "Now,
Davy, take the sculp."

Nothing loath, I seized the Indian by the long scalp-lock, while my big
friend guided my hand, and amid laughter and cheers I cut off my first
trophy of war. Nor did I have any other feeling than fierce hatred of
the race which had killed my father.

Those who have known armies in their discipline will find it difficult to
understand the leadership of the border. Such leadership was granted
only to those whose force and individuality compelled men to obey them.
I had my first glimpse of it that day. This Colonel Clark to whom Tom
delivered Mr. Robertson's letter was perchance the youngest man in the
company that had rescued us, saving only a slim lad of seventeen whom I
noticed and envied, and whose name was James Ray. Colonel Clark, so I
was told by my friend Cowan, held that title in Kentucky by reason of his
prowess.

Clark had been standing quietly on the bank while I had scalped my first
redskin. Then he called Tom McChesney to him and questioned him closely
about our journey, the signs we had seen, and, finally, the news in the
Watauga settlements. While this was going on the others gathered round
them.

"What now?" asked Cowan, when he had finished.

"Back to Harrodstown," answered the Colonel, shortly.

There was a brief silence, followed by a hoarse murmur from a thick-set
man at the edge of the crowd, who shouldered his way to the centre of it.

"We set out to hunt a fight, and my pluck is to clean up. We ain't
finished 'em yet."

The man had a deep, coarse voice that was a piece with his roughness.

"I reckon this band ain't a-goin' to harry the station any more, McGary,"
cried Cowan.

"By Job, what did we come out for? Who'll take the trail with me?"

There were some who answered him, and straightway they began to quarrel
among themselves, filling the woods with a babel of voices. While I
stood listening to these disputes with a boy's awe of a man's quarrel,
what was my astonishment to feel a hand on my shoulder. It was Colonel
Clark's, and he was not paying the least attention to the dispute.

"Davy," said he, "you look as if you could make a fire."

"Yes, sir," I answered, gasping.

"Well," said he, "make one."

I lighted a piece of punk with the flint, and, wrapping it up in some dry
brush, soon had a blaze started. Looking up, I caught his eye on me
again.

"Mrs. McChesney," said Colonel Clark to Polly Ann, "you look as if you
could make johnny-cake. Have you any meal?"

"That I have," cried Polly Ann, "though it's fair mouldy. Davy, run and
fetch it."

I ran to the pack on the sorrel mare. When I returned Mr. Clark said:--

"That seems a handy boy, Mrs. McChesney."

"Handy!" cried Polly Ann, "I reckon he's more than handy. Didn't he save
my life twice on our way out here?"

"And how was that?" said the Colonel.

"Run and fetch some water, Davy," said Polly Ann, and straightway
launched forth into a vivid description of my exploits, as she mixed the
meal. Nay, she went so far as to tell how she came by me. The young
Colonel listened gravely, though with a gleam now and then in his blue
eyes. Leaning on his long rifle, he paid no manner of attention to the
angry voices near by,--which conduct to me was little short of the
marvellous.

"Now, Davy," said he, at length, "the rest of your history."

"There is little of it, sir," I answered. "I was born in the Yadkin
country, lived alone with my father, who was a Scotchman. He hated a man
named Cameron, took me to Charlestown, and left me with some kin of his
who had a place called Temple Bow, and went off to fight Cameron and the
Cherokees." There I gulped. "He was killed at Cherokee Ford, and--and I
ran away from Temple Bow, and found Polly Ann."

This time I caught something of surprise on the Colonel's face.

"By thunder, Davy," said he, "but you have a clean gift for brief
narrative. Where did you learn it?"

"My father was a gentleman once, and taught me to speak and read," I
answered, as I brought a flat piece of limestone for Polly Ann's baking.

"And what would you like best to be when you grow up, Davy?" he asked.

"Six feet," said I, so promptly that he laughed.

"Faith," said Polly Ann, looking at me comically, "he may be many things,
but I'll warrant he'll never be that."

I have often thought since that young Mr. Clark showed much of the wisdom
of the famous king of Israel on that day. Polly Ann cooked a piece of a
deer which one of the woodsmen had with him, and the quarrel died of
itself when we sat down to this and the johnny-cake. By noon we had taken
up the trace for Harrodstown, marching with scouts ahead and behind. Mr.
Clark walked mostly alone, seemingly wrapped in thought. At times he had
short talks with different men, oftenest--I noted with pride--with Tom
McChesney. And more than once when he halted he called me to him, my
answers to his questions seeming to amuse him. Indeed, I became a kind
of pet with the backwoodsmen, Cowan often flinging me to his shoulder as
he swung along. The pack was taken from the sorrel mare and divided
among the party, and Polly Ann made to ride that we might move the
faster.

It must have been the next afternoon, about four, that the rough stockade
of Harrodstown greeted our eyes as we stole cautiously to the edge of the
forest. And the sight of no roofs and spires could have been more
welcome than that of these logs and cabins, broiling in the midsummer
sun. At a little distance from the fort, a silent testimony of siege,
the stumpy, cleared fields were overgrown with weeds, tall and rank, the
corn choked. Nearer the stockade, where the keepers of the fort might
venture out at times, a more orderly growth met the eye. It was young
James Ray whom Colonel Clark singled to creep with our message to the
gates. At six, when the smoke was rising from the stone chimneys behind
the palisades, Ray came back to say that all was well. Then we went
forward quickly, hands waved a welcome above the logs, the great wooden
gates swung open, and at last we had reached the haven for which we had
suffered so much. Mangy dogs barked at our feet, men and women ran
forward joyfully to seize our hands and greet us.

And so we came to Kaintuckee.



CHAPTER X

HARRODSTOWN

The old forts like Harrodstown and Boonesboro and Logan's at St. Asaph's
have long since passed away. It is many, many years since I lived
through that summer of siege in Harrodstown, the horrors of it are faded
and dim, the discomforts lost to a boy thrilled with a new experience. I
have read in my old age the books of travellers in Kentucky, English and
French, who wrote much of squalor and strife and sin and little of those
qualities that go to the conquest of an empire and the making of a
people. Perchance my own pages may be colored by gratitude and love for
the pioneers amongst whom I found myself, and thankfulness to God that we
had reached them alive.

I know not how many had been cooped up in the little fort since the early
spring, awaiting the chance to go back to their weed-choked clearings.
The fort at Harrodstown was like an hundred others I have since seen, but
sufficiently surprising to me then. Imagine a great parallelogram made
of log cabins set end to end, their common outside wall being the wall of
the fort, and loopholed. At the four corners of the parallelogram the
cabins jutted out, with ports in the angle in order to give a flanking
fire in case the savages reached the palisade. And then there were huge
log gates with watch-towers on either sides where sentries sat day and
night scanning the forest line. Within the fort was a big common dotted
with forest trees, where such cattle as had been saved browsed on the
scanty grass. There had been but the one scrawny horse before our
arrival.

And the settlers! How shall I describe them as they crowded around us
inside the gate? Some stared at us with sallow faces and eyes brightened
by the fever, yet others had the red glow of health. Many of the men
wore rough beards, unkempt, and yellow, weather-worn hunting shirts,
often stained with blood. The barefooted women wore sunbonnets and loose
homespun gowns, some of linen made from nettles, while the children
swarmed here and there and everywhere in any costume that chance had
given them. All seemingly talking at once, they plied us with question
after question of the trace, the Watauga settlements, the news in the
Carolinys, and how the war went.

"A lad is it, this one," said an Irish voice near me, "and a woman! The
dear help us, and who'd 'ave thought to see a woman come over the
mountain this year! Where did ye find them, Bill Cowan?"

"Near the Crab Orchard, and the lad killed and sculped a six-foot brave."

"The Saints save us! And what'll be his name?"

"Davy," said my friend.

"Is it Davy? Sure his namesake killed a giant, too."

"And is he come along, also?" said another. His shy blue eyes and stiff
blond hair gave him a strange appearance in a hunting shirt.

"Hist to him! Who will ye be talkin' about, Poulsson? Is it King David
ye mane?"

There was a roar of laughter, and this was my introduction to Terence
McCann and Swein Poulsson. The fort being crowded, we were put into a
cabin with Terence and Cowan and Cowan's wife--a tall, gaunt woman with a
sharp tongue and a kind heart--and her four brats, "All hugemsmug
together," as Cowan said. And that night we supped upon dried buffalo
meat and boiled nettle-tops, for of such was the fare in Harrodstown that
summer.

"Tom McChesney kept his faith." One other man was to keep his faith with
the little community--George Rogers Clark. And I soon learned that
trustworthiness is held in greater esteem in a border community than
anywhere else. Of course, the love of the frontier was in the grain of
these men. But what did they come back to? Day after day would the sun
rise over the forest and beat down upon the little enclosure in which we
were penned. The row of cabins leaning against the stockade marked the
boundaries of our diminutive world. Beyond them, invisible, lurked a
relentless foe. Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man's
worth was set down to a hair's breadth. Some were always to be found
squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart
for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight
with a fair field and no favor was a favorite amusement of the
backwoodsmen. My big friend, Cowan, was the champion of these, and often
of an evening the whole of the inhabitants would gather near the spring
to see him fight those who had the courage to stand up to him. His
muscles were like hickory wood, and I have known a man insensible for a
quarter of an hour after one of his blows. Strangely enough, he never
fought in anger, and was the first to the spring for a gourd of water
after the fight was over. But Tom McChesney was the best wrestler of the
lot, and could make a wider leap than any other man in Harrodstown.

Tom's reputation did not end there, for he became one of the two
bread-winners of the station. I would better have said meat-winners. Woe
be to the incautious who, lulled by a week of fancied security, ventured
out into the dishevelled field for a little food! In the early days of
the siege man after man had gone forth for game, never to return. Until
Tom came, one only had been successful,--that lad of seventeen, whose
achievements were the envy of my boyish soul, James Ray. He slept in the
cabin next to Cowan's, and long before the dawn had revealed the forest
line had been wont to steal out of the gates on the one scrawny horse the
Indians had left them, gain the Salt River, and make his way thence
through the water to some distant place where the listening savages could
not hear his shot. And now Tom took his turn. Often did I sit with
Polly Ann till midnight in the sentry's tower, straining my ears for the
owl's hoot that warned us of his coming. Sometimes he was empty-handed,
but sometimes a deer hung limp and black across his saddle, or a pair of
turkeys swung from his shoulder.

"Arrah, darlin'," said Terence to Polly Ann, "'tis yer husband and James
is the jools av the fort. Sure I niver loved me father as I do thim."

I would have given kingdoms in those days to have been seventeen and
James Ray. When he was in the fort I dogged his footsteps, and listened
with a painful yearning to the stories of his escapes from the roving
bands. And as many a character is watered in its growth by hero-worship,
so my own grew firmer in the contemplation of Ray's resourcefulness. My
strange life had far removed me from lads of my own age, and he took a
fancy to me, perhaps because of the very persistence of my devotion to
him. I cleaned his gun, filled his powder flask, and ran to do his every
bidding.

I used in the hot summer days to lie under the elm tree and listen to the
settlers' talk about a man named Henderson, who had bought a great part
of Kentucky from the Indians, and had gone out with Boone to found
Boonesboro some two years before. They spoke of much that I did not
understand concerning the discountenance by Virginia of these claims,
speculating as to whether Henderson's grants were good. For some of them
held these grants, and others Virginia grants--a fruitful source of
quarrel between them. Some spoke, too, of Washington and his ragged
soldiers going up and down the old colonies and fighting for a freedom
which there seemed little chance of getting. But their anger seemed to
blaze most fiercely when they spoke of a mysterious British general named
Hamilton, whom they called "the ha'r buyer," and who from his stronghold
in the north country across the great Ohio sent down these hordes of
savages to harry us. I learned to hate Hamilton with the rest, and
pictured him with the visage of a fiend. We laid at his door every
outrage that had happened at the three stations, and put upon him the
blood of those who had been carried off to torture in the Indian villages
of the northern forests. And when--amidst great excitement--a spent
runner would arrive from Boonesboro or St. Asaph's and beg Mr. Clark for
a squad, it was commonly with the first breath that came into his body
that he cursed Hamilton.

So the summer wore away, while we lived from hand to mouth on such scanty
fare as the two of them shot and what we could venture to gather in the
unkempt fields near the gates. A winter of famine lurked ahead, and men
were goaded near to madness at the thought of clearings made and corn
planted in the spring within reach of their hands, as it were, and they
might not harvest it. At length, when a fortnight had passed, and Tom
and Ray had gone forth day after day without sight or fresh sign of
Indians, the weight lifted from our hearts. There were many things that
might yet be planted and come to maturity before the late Kentucky
frosts.

The pressure within the fort, like a flood, opened the gates of it,
despite the sturdily disapproving figure of a young man who stood silent
under the sentry box, leaning on his Deckard. He was Colonel George
Rogers Clark,[1] Commander-in-chief of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky,
whose power was reenforced by that strange thing called an education. It
was this, no doubt, gave him command of words when he chose to use them.

 [1] It appears that Mr. Clark had not yet received the title of
Colonel, though he held command.--EDITOR.



"Faith," said Terence, as we passed him, "'tis a foine man he is, and a
gintleman born. Wasn't it him gathered the Convintion here in
Harrodstown last year that chose him and another to go to the Virginia
legislatoor? And him but a lad, ye might say. The divil fly away wid
his caution! Sure the redskins is as toired as us, and gone home to the
wives and childher, bad cess to thim."

And so the first day the gates were opened we went into the fields a
little way; and the next day a little farther. They had once seemed to
me an unexplored and forbidden country as I searched them with my eyes
from the sentry boxes. And yet I felt a shame to go with Polly Ann and
Mrs. Cowan and the women while James Ray and Tom sat with the guard of
men between us and the forest line. Like a child on a holiday, Polly Ann
ran hither and thither among the stalks, her black hair flying and a song
on her lips.

"Soon we'll be having a little home of our own, Davy," she cried; "Tom
has the place chose on a knoll by the river, and the land is rich with
hickory and pawpaw. I reckon we may be going there next week."

Caution being born into me with all the strength of a vice, I said
nothing. Whereupon she seized me in her strong hands and shook me.

"Ye little imp!" said she, while the women paused in their work to laugh
at us.

"The boy is right, Polly Ann," said Mrs. Harrod, "and he's got more sense
than most of the men in the fort."

"Ay, that he has," the gaunt Mrs. Cowan put in, eying me fiercely, while
she gave one of her own offsprings a slap that sent him spinning.

Whatever Polly Ann might have said would have been to the point, but it
was lost, for just then the sound of a shot came down the wind, and a
half a score of women stampeded through the stalks, carrying me down like
a reed before them. When I staggered to my feet Polly Ann and Mrs. Cowan
and Mrs. Harrod were standing alone. For there was little of fear in
those three.

"Shucks!" said Mrs. Cowan, "I reckon it's that Jim Ray shooting at a
mark," and she began to pick nettles again.

"Vimmen is a shy critter," remarked Swein Poulsson, coming up. I had a
shrewd notion that he had run with the others.

"Wimmen!" Mrs. Cowan fairly roared. "Wimmen! Tell us how ye went in
March with the boys to fight the varmints at the Sugar Orchard, Swein!"

We all laughed, for we loved him none the less. His little blue eyes
were perfectly solemn as he answered:--

"Ve send you fight Injuns mit your tongue, Mrs. Cowan. Then we haf no
more troubles."

"Land of Canaan!" cried she, "I reckon I could do more harm with it than
you with a gun."

There were many such false alarms in the bright days following, and never
a bullet sped from the shadow of the forest. Each day we went farther
afield, and each night trooped merrily in through the gates with hopes of
homes and clearings rising in our hearts--until the motionless figure of
the young Virginian met our eye. It was then that men began to scoff at
him behind his back, though some spoke with sufficient backwoods
bluntness to his face. And yet he gave no sign of anger or impatience.
Not so the other leaders. No sooner did the danger seem past than bitter
strife sprang up within the walls. Even the two captains were mortal
enemies. One was Harrod, a tall, spare, dark-haired man of great
endurance,--a type of the best that conquered the land for the nation;
the other, that Hugh McGary of whom I have spoken, coarse and brutal, if
you like, but fearless and a leader of men withal.

A certain Sunday morning, I remember, broke with a cloud-flecked sky, and
as we were preparing to go afield with such ploughs as could be got
together (we were to sow turnips) the loud sounds of a quarrel came from
the elm at the spring. With one accord men and women and children
flocked thither, and as we ran we heard McGary's voice above the rest.
Worming my way, boylike, through the crowd, I came upon McGary and Harrod
glaring at each other in the centre of it.

"By Job! there's no devil if I'll stand back from my clearing and waste
the rest of the summer for the fears of a pack of cowards. I'll take a
posse and march to Shawanee Springs this day, and see any man a fair
fight that tries to stop me."

"And who's in command here?" demanded Harrod.

"I am, for one," said McGary, with an oath, "and my corn's on the ear.
I've held back long enough, I tell you, and I'll starve this winter for
you nor any one else."

Harrod turned.

"Where's Clark?" he said to Bowman.

"Clark!" roared McGary, "Clark be d--d. Ye'd think he was a woman." He
strode up to Harrod until their faces almost touched, and his voice shook
with the intensity of his anger. "By G--d, you nor Clark nor any one
else will stop me, I say!" He swung around and faced the people. "Come
on, boys! We'll fetch that corn, or know the reason why."

A responding murmur showed that the bulk of them were with him. Weary of
the pent-up life, longing for action, and starved for a good meal, the
anger of his many followers against Clark and Harrod was nigh as great as
his. He started roughly to shoulder his way out, and whether from
accident or design Captain Harrod slipped in front of him, I never knew.
The thing that followed happened quickly as the catching of my breath. I
saw McGary powdering his pan, and Harrod his, and felt the crowd giving
back like buffalo. All at once the circle had vanished, and the two men
were standing not five paces apart with their rifles clutched across
their bodies, each watching, catlike, for the other to level. It was a
cry that startled us--and them. There was a vision of a woman flying
across the common, and we saw the dauntless Mrs. Harrod snatching her
husband's gun from his resisting hands. So she saved his life and
McGary's.

At this point Colonel Clark was seen coming from the gate. When he got
to Harrod and McGary the quarrel blazed up again, but now it was between
the three of them, and Clark took Harrod's rifle from Mrs. Harrod and
held it. However, it was presently decided that McGary should wait one
more day before going to his clearing, whereupon the gates were opened,
the picked men going ahead to take station as a guard, and soon we were
hard at work, ploughing here and mowing there, and in another place
putting seed in the ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were
forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence
McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to
afternoon a blue haze--harbinger of autumn--settled over fort and forest.
Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the
flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently
a rifle cracked, and we raised our heads.

"Hist!" said Terence, "the bhoys on watch is that warlike! Whin there's
no redskins to kill they must be wastin' good powdher on a three."

I leaped upon a stump and scanned the line of sentries between us and the
woods; only their heads and shoulders appeared above the rank growth. I
saw them looking from one to another questioningly, some shouting words I
could not hear. Then I saw some running; and next, as I stood there
wondering, came another crack, and then a volley like the noise of a
great fire licking into dry wood, and things that were not bees humming
round about. A distant man in a yellow hunting shirt stumbled, and was
drowned in the tangle as in water. Around me men dropped plough-handles
and women baskets, and as we ran our legs grew numb and our bodies cold
at a sound which had haunted us in dreams by night--the war-whoop. The
deep and guttural song of it rose and fell with a horrid fierceness. An
agonized voice was in my ears, and I halted, ashamed. It was Polly
Ann's.

"Davy!" she cried, "Davy, have ye seen Tom?"

Two men dashed by. I seized one by the fringe of his shirt, and he flung
me from my feet. The other leaped me as I knelt.

"Run, ye fools!" he shouted. But we stood still, with yearning eyes
staring back through the frantic forms for a sight of Tom's.

"I'll go back!" I cried, "I'll go back for him. Do you run to the fort."
For suddenly I seemed to forget my fear, nor did even the hideous notes
of the scalp halloo disturb me. Before Polly Ann could catch me I had
turned and started, stumbled,--I thought on a stump,--and fallen headlong
among the nettles with a stinging pain in my leg. Staggering to my feet,
I tried to run on, fell again, and putting down my hand found it smeared
with blood. A man came by, paused an instant while his eye caught me,
and ran on again. I shall remember his face and name to my dying day;
but there is no reason to put it down here. In a few seconds' space as I
lay I suffered all the pains of captivity and of death by torture, that
cry of savage man an hundred times more frightful than savage beast
sounding in my ears, and plainly nearer now by half the first distance.
Nearer, and nearer yet--and then I heard my name called. I was lifted
from the ground, and found myself in the lithe arms of Polly Ann.

"Set me down!" I screamed, "set me down!" and must have added some of the
curses I had heard in the fort. But she clutched me tightly (God bless
the memory of those frontier women!), and flew like a deer toward the
gates. Over her shoulder I glanced back. A spare three hundred yards
away in a ragged line a hundred red devils were bounding after us with
feathers flying and mouths open as they yelled. Again I cried to her to
set me down; but though her heart beat faster and her breath came
shorter, she held me the tighter. Second by second they gained on us,
relentlessly. Were we near the fort? Hoarse shouts answered the
question, but they seemed distant--too distant. The savages were
gaining, and Polly Ann's breath quicker still. She staggered, but the
brave soul had no thought of faltering. I had a sight of a man on a
plough horse with dangling harness coming up from somewhere, of the man
leaping off, of ourselves being pitched on the animal's bony back and
clinging there at the gallop, the man running at the side. Shots
whistled over our heads, and here was the brown fort. Its big gates
swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening. Then, as he
lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself. The
gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets beat against them like
rain.

Through the shouting and confusion came a cry in a voice I knew, now
pleading, now commanding.

"Open, open! For God's sake open!"

"It's Ray! Open for Ray! Ray's out!"

Some were seizing the bar to thrust it back when the heavy figure of
McGary crushed into the crowd beside it.

"By Job, I'll shoot the man that touches it!" he shouted, as he tore them
away. But the sturdiest of them went again to it, and cursed him. And
while they fought backward and forward, the lad's mother, Mrs. Ray, cried
out to them to open in tones to rend their hearts. But McGary had gained
the bar and swore (perhaps wisely) that he would not sacrifice the
station for one man. Where was Ray?

Where was Ray, indeed? It seemed as if no man might live in the hellish
storm that raged without the walls: as if the very impetus of hate and
fury would carry the ravages over the stockade to murder us. Into the
turmoil at the gate came Colonel Clark, sending the disputants this way
and that to defend the fort, McGary to command one quarter, Harrod and
Bowman another, and every man that could be found to a loophole, while
Mrs. Ray continued to run up and down, wringing her hands, now facing one
man, now another. Some of her words came to me, shrilly, above the
noise.

"He fed you--he fed you. Oh, my God, and you are grateful--grateful!
When you were starving he risked his life--"

Torn by anxiety for my friend, I dragged myself into the nearest cabin,
and a man was fighting there in the half-light at the port. The huge
figure I knew to be my friend Cowan's, and when he drew back to load I
seized his arm, shouting Ray's name. Although the lead was pattering on
the other side of the logs, Cowan lifted me to the port. And there,
stretched on the ground behind a stump, within twenty feet of the walls,
was James. Even as I looked the puffs of dust at his side showed that
the savages knew his refuge. I saw him level and fire, and then Bill
Cowan set me down and began to ram in a charge with tremendous energy.

Was there no way to save Ray? I stood turning this problem in my mind,
subconsciously aware of Cowan's movements: of his yells when he thought
he had made a shot, when Polly Ann appeared at the doorway. Darting in,
she fairly hauled me to the shake-down in the far corner.

"Will ye bleed to death, Davy?" she cried, as she slipped off my legging
and bent over the wound. Her eye lighting on a gourdful of water on the
puncheon table, she tore a strip from her dress and washed and bound me
deftly. The bullet was in the flesh, and gave me no great pain.

"Lie there, ye imp!" she commanded, when she had finished.

"Some one's under the bed," said I, for I had heard a movement.

In an instant we were down on our knees on the hard dirt floor, and there
was a man's foot in a moccasin! We both grabbed it and pulled, bringing
to life a person with little blue eyes and stiff blond hair.

"Swein Poulsson!" exclaimed Polly Ann, giving him an involuntary kick,
"may the devil give ye shame!"

Swein Poulsson rose to a sitting position and clasped his knees in his
hands.

"I haf one great fright," said he.

"Send him into the common with the women in yere place, Mis' McChesney,"
growled Cowan, who was loading.

"By tam!" said Swein Poulsson, leaping to his feet, "I vill stay here und
fight. I am prave once again." Stooping down, he searched under the
bed, pulled out his rifle, powdered the pan, and flying to the other
port, fired. At that Cowan left his post and snatched the rifle from
Poulsson's hands.

"Ye're but wasting powder," he cried angrily.

"Then, by tam, I am as vell under the bed," said Poulsson. "Vat can I
do?"

I had it.

"Dig!" I shouted; and seizing the astonished Cowan's tomahawk from his
belt I set to work furiously chopping at the dirt beneath the log wall.
"Dig, so that James can get under."

Cowan gave me the one look, swore a mighty oath, and leaping to the port
shouted to Ray in a thundering voice what we were doing.

"Dig!" roared Cowan. "Dig, for the love of God, for he can't hear me."

The three of us set to work with all our might, Poulsson making great
holes in the ground at every stroke, Polly Ann scraping at the dirt with
the gourd. Two feet below the surface we struck the edge of the lowest
log, and then it was Poulsson who got into the hole with his hunting
knife--perspiring, muttering to himself, working as one possessed with a
fury, while we scraped out the dirt from under him. At length, after
what seemed an age of staring at his legs, the ground caved on him, and
he would have smothered if we had not dragged him out by the heels,
sputtering and all powdered brown. But there was the daylight under the
log.

Again Cowan shouted at Ray, and again, but he did not understand. It was
then the miracle happened. I have seen brave men and cowards since, and
I am as far as ever from distinguishing them. Before we knew it Poulsson
was in the hole once more--had wriggled out of it on the other side, and
was squirming in a hail of bullets towards Ray. There was a full minute
of suspense--perhaps two--during which the very rifles of the fort were
silent (though the popping in the weeds was redoubled), and then the
barrel of a Deckard was poked through the hole. After it came James Ray
himself, and lastly Poulsson, and a great shout went out from the
loopholes and was taken up by the women in the common.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

Swein Poulsson had become a hero, nor was he willing to lose any of the
glamour which was a hero's right. As the Indians' fire slackened, he
went from cabin to cabin, and if its occupants failed to mention the
exploit (some did fail so to do, out of mischief), Swein would say:--

"You did not see me safe James, no? I vill tell you Joost how."

It never leaked out that Swein was first of all under the bed, for Polly
Ann and Bill Cowan and myself swore to keep the secret. But they told
how I had thought of digging the hole under the logs--a happy
circumstance which got me a reputation for wisdom beyond my years. There
was a certain Scotchman at Harrodstown called McAndrew, and it was he
gave me the nickname "Canny Davy," and I grew to have a sort of
precocious fame in the station. Often Captain Harrod or Bowman or some
of the others would pause in their arguments and say gravely, "What does
Davy think of it?" This was not good for a boy, and the wonder of it is
that it did not make me altogether insupportable. One effect it had on
me--to make me long even more earnestly to be a man.

The impulse of my reputation led me farther. A fortnight of more
inactivity followed, and then we ventured out into the fields once more.
But I went with the guard this time, not with the women,--thanks to a
whim the men had for humoring me.

"Arrah, and beant he a man all but two feet," said Terence, "wid more
brain than me an' Bill Cowan and Poulsson togither? 'Tis a fox's nose
Davy has for the divils, Bill. Sure he can smell thim the same as you
an' me kin see the red paint on their faces."

"I reckon that's true," said Bill Cowan, with solemnity, and so he
carried me off.

At length the cattle were turned out to browse greedily through the
clearing, while we lay in the woods by the forest and listened to the
sound of their bells, but when they strayed too far, I was often sent to
drive them back. Once when this happened I followed them to the shade at
the edge of the woods, for it was noon, and the sun beat down fiercely.
And there I sat for some time watching them as they lashed their sides
with their tails and pawed the ground, for experience is a good master.
Whether or not the flies were all that troubled them I could not tell,
and no sound save the tinkle of their bells broke the noonday stillness.
Making a circle I drove them back toward the fort, much troubled in mind.
I told Cowan, but he laughed and said it was the flies. Yet I was not
satisfied, and finally stole back again to the place where I had found
them. I sat a long time hidden at the edge of the forest, listening
until my imagination tricked me into hearing those noises which I feared
and yet longed for. Trembling, I stole a little farther in the shade of
the woods, and then a little farther still. The leaves rustled in the
summer's breeze, patches of sunlight flickered on the mould, the birds
twittered, and the squirrels scolded. A chipmunk frightened me as he
flew chattering along a log. And yet I went on. I came to the creek as
it flowed silently in the shade, stepped in, and made my way slowly down
it, I know not how far, walking in the water, my eye alert to every
movement about me. At length I stopped and caught my breath. Before me,
in a glade opening out under great trees, what seemed a myriad of forked
sticks were piled against one another, three by three, and it struck me
all in a heap that I had come upon a great encampment. But the skeletons
of the pyramid tents alone remained. Where were the skins? Was the camp
deserted?

For a while I stared through the brier leaves, then I took a venture,
pushed on, and found myself in the midst of the place. It must have held
near a thousand warriors. All about me were gray heaps of ashes, and
bones of deer and elk and buffalo scattered, some picked clean, some with
the meat and hide sticking to them. Impelled by a strong fascination, I
went hither and thither until a sound brought me to a stand--the echoing
crack of a distant rifle. On the heels of it came another, then several
together, and a faint shouting borne on the light wind. Terrorized, I
sought for shelter. A pile of brush underlain by ashes was by, and I
crept into that. The sounds continued, but seemed to come no nearer, and
my courage returning, I got out again and ran wildly through the camp
toward the briers on the creek, expecting every moment to be tumbled
headlong by a bullet. And when I reached the briers, what between
panting and the thumping of my heart I could for a few moments hear
nothing. Then I ran on again up the creek, heedless of cover, stumbling
over logs and trailing vines, when all at once a dozen bronze forms
glided with the speed of deer across my path ahead. They splashed over
the creek and were gone. Bewildered with fear, I dropped under a fallen
tree. Shouts were in my ears, and the noise of men running. I stood up,
and there, not twenty paces away, was Colonel Clark himself rushing
toward me. He halted with a cry, raised his rifle, and dropped it at the
sight of my queer little figure covered with ashes.

"My God!" he cried, "it's Davy."

"They crossed the creek," I shouted, pointing the way, "they crossed the
creek, some twelve of them."

"Ay," he said, staring at me, and by this time the rest of the guard were
come up. They too stared, with different exclamations on their
lips,--Cowan and Bowman and Tom McChesney and Terence McCann in front.

"And there's a great camp below," I went on, "deserted, where a thousand
men have been."

"A camp--deserted?" said Clark, quickly.

"Yes," I said, "yes." But he had already started forward and seized me
by the arm.

"Lead on," he cried, "show it to us." He went ahead with me, travelling
so fast that I must needs run to keep up, and fairly lifting me over the
logs. But when we came in sight of the place he darted forward alone and
went through it like a hound on the trail. The others followed him,
crying out at the size of the place and poking among the ashes. At
length they all took up the trail for a way down the creek. Presently
Clark called a halt.

"I reckon that they've made for the Ohio," he said. And at this judgment
from him the guard gave a cheer that might almost have been heard in the
fields around the fort. The terror that had hovered over us all that
long summer was lifted at last.

You may be sure that Cowan carried me back to the station. "To think it
was Davy that found it!" he cried again and again, "to think it was Davy
found it!"

"And wasn't it me that said he could smell the divils," said Terence, as
he circled around us in a mimic war dance. And when from the fort they
saw us coming across the fields they opened the gates in astonishment,
and on hearing the news gave themselves over to the wildest rejoicing.
For the backwoodsmen were children of nature. Bill Cowan ran for the
fiddle which he had carried so carefully over the mountain, and that
night we had jigs and reels on the common while the big fellow played
"Billy of the Wild Woods" and "Jump Juba," with all his might, and the
pine knots threw their fitful, red light on the wild scenes of merriment.
I must have cut a queer little figure as I sat between Cowan and Tom
watching the dance, for presently Colonel Clark came up to us, laughing
in his quiet way.

"Davy," said he, "there is another great man here who would like to see
you," and led me away wondering. I went with him toward the gate,
burning all over with pride at this attention, and beside a torch there a
broad-shouldered figure was standing, at sight of whom I had a start of
remembrance.

"Do you know who that is, Davy?" said Colonel Clark.

"It's Mr. Daniel Boone," said I.

"By thunder," said Clark, "I believe the boy IS a wizard," while Mr.
Boone's broad mouth was creased into a smile, and there was a trace of
astonishment, too, in his kindly eye.

"Mr. Boone came to my father's cabin on the Yadkin once," I said; "he
taught me to skin a deer."

"Ay, that I did," exclaimed Mr. Boone, "and I said ye'd make a woodsman
sometime."

Mr. Boone, it seemed, had come over from Boonesboro to consult with
Colonel Clark on certain matters, and had but just arrived. But so
modest was he that he would not let it be known that he was in the
station, for fear of interrupting the pleasure. He was much the same as
I had known him, only grown older and his reputation now increased to
vastness. He and Clark sat on a door log talking for a long time on
Kentucky matters, the strength of the forts, the prospect of new settlers
that autumn, of the British policy, and finally of a journey which
Colonel Clark was soon to make back to Virginia across the mountains.
They seemed not to mind my presence. At length Colonel Clark turned to
me with that quiet, jocose way he had when relaxed.

"Davy," said he, "we'll see how much of a general you are. What would
you do if a scoundrel named Hamilton far away at Detroit was bribing all
the redskins he could find north of the Ohio to come down and scalp your
men?"

"I'd go for Hamilton," I answered.

"By God!" exclaimed Clark, striking Mr. Boone on the knee, "that's what
I'd do."



CHAPTER XI

FRAGMENTARY

Mr. Boone's visit lasted but a day. I was a great deal with Colonel
Clark in the few weeks that followed before his departure for Virginia.
He held himself a little aloof (as a leader should) from the captains in
the station, without seeming to offend them. But he had a fancy for
James Ray and for me, and he often took me into the woods with him by
day, and talked with me of an evening.

"I'm going away to Virginia, Davy," he said; "will you not go with me?
We'll see Williamsburg, and come back in the spring, and I'll have you a
little rifle made."

My look must have been wistful.

"I can't leave Polly Ann and Tom," I answered.

"Well," he said, "I like that. Faith to your friends is a big equipment
for life."

"But why are you going?" I asked.

"Because I love Kentucky best of all things in the world," he answered,
smiling.

"And what are you going to do?" I insisted.

"Ah," he said, "that I can't tell even to you."

"To catch Hamilton?" I ventured at random.

He looked at me queerly.

"Would you go along, Davy?" said he, laughing now.

"Would you take Tom?"

"Among the first," answered Colonel Clark, heartily.

We were seated under the elm near the spring, and at that instant I saw
Tom coming toward us. I jumped up, thinking to please him by this
intelligence, when Colonel Clark pulled me down again.

"Davy," said he, almost roughly, I thought, "remember that we have been
joking. Do you understand?--joking. You have a tongue in your mouth, but
sense enough in your head, I believe, to hold it." He turned to Tom.
"McChesney, this is a queer lad you brought us," said he.

"He's a little deevil," agreed Tom, for that had become a formula with
him.

It was all very mysterious to me, and I lay awake many a night with
curiosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was none of my business. And
one day, to cap the matter, two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown with
clothes frayed and bodies lean from a long journey. Not one of the
hundred questions with which they were beset would they answer, nor say
where they had been or why, save that they had carried out certain orders
of Clark, who was locked up with them in a cabin for several hours.

The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark's departure, dawned crisp
and clear. He was to take with him the disheartened and the cowed, the
weaklings who loved neither work nor exposure nor danger. And before he
set out of the gate he made a little speech to the assembled people.

"My friends," he said, "you know me. I put the interests of Kentucky
before my own. Last year when I left to represent her at Williamsburg
there were some who said I would desert her. It was for her sake I made
that journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded feet, was near
to dying in the mountains. It was for her sake that I importuned the
governor and council for powder and lead, and when they refused it I said
to them, 'Gentlemen, a country that is not worth defending is not worth
claiming.'"

At these words the settlers gave a great shout, waving their coonskin
hats in the air.

"Ay, that ye did," cried Bill Cowan, "and got the amminition."

"I made that journey for her sake, I say," Colonel Clark continued, "and
even so I am making this one. I pray you trust me, and God bless and
keep you while I am gone."

He did not forget to speak to me as he walked between our lines, and told
me to be a good boy and that he would see me in the spring. Some of the
women shed tears as he passed through the gate, and many of us climbed to
sentry box and cabin roof that we might see the last of the little
company wending its way across the fields. A motley company it was, the
refuse of the station, headed by its cherished captain. So they started
back over the weary road that led to that now far-away land of
civilization and safety.

During the balmy Indian summer, when the sharper lines of nature are
softened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to make
up for the deserters. From time to time a little group would straggle to
the gates of the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sight
of white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with watchful eyes, the
women and older children driving the horses, and the babies slung to the
pack in hickory withes. Nay, some of our best citizens came to Kentucky
swinging to the tail of a patient animal. The Indians were still abroad,
and in small war parties darted hither and thither with incredible
swiftness. And at night we would gather at the fire around our new
emigrants to listen to the stories they had to tell,--familiar stories to
all of us. Sometimes it had been the gobble of a wild turkey that had
lured to danger, again a wood-owl had cried strangely in the night.

Winter came, and passed--somehow. I cannot dwell here on the tediousness
of it, and the one bright spot it has left in my memory concerns Polly
Ann. Did man, woman, or child fall sick, it was Polly Ann who nursed
them. She had by nature the God-given gift of healing, knew by heart all
the simple remedies that backwoods lore had inherited from the north of
Ireland or borrowed from the Indians. Her sympathy and loving-kindness
did more than these, her never tiring and ever cheerful watchfulness.
She was deft, too, was Polly Ann, and spun from nettle bark many a cut of
linen that could scarce be told from flax. Before the sap began to run
again in the maples there was not a soul in Harrodstown who did not love
her, and I truly believe that most of them would have risked their lives
to do her bidding.

Then came the sugaring, the warm days and the freezing nights when the
earth stirs in her sleep and the taps drip from red sunrise to red
sunset. Old and young went to the camps, the women and children boiling
and graining, the squads of men posted in guards round about. And after
that the days flew so quickly that it seemed as if the woods had burst
suddenly into white flower, and it was spring again. And then--a joy to
be long remembered--I went on a hunting trip with Tom and Cowan and
three others where the Kentucky tumbles between its darkly wooded cliffs.
And other wonders of that strange land I saw then for the first time:
great licks, trampled down for acres by the wild herds, where the salt
water oozes out of the hoofprints. On the edge of one of these licks we
paused and stared breathless at giant bones sticking here and there in
the black mud, and great skulls of fearful beasts half-embedded. This
was called the Big Bone Lick, and some travellers that went before us had
made their tents with the thighs of these monsters of a past age.

A danger past is oft a danger forgotten. Men went out to build the homes
of which they had dreamed through the long winter. Axes rang amidst the
white dogwoods and the crabs and redbuds, and there were riotous
log-raisings in the clearings. But I think the building of Tom's house
was the most joyous occasion of all, and for none in the settlement would
men work more willingly than for him and Polly Ann. The cabin went up as
if by magic. It stood on a rise upon the bank of the river in a grove of
oaks and hickories, with a big persimmon tree in front of the door. It
was in the shade of this tree that Polly Ann sat watching Tom and me
through the mild spring days as we barked the roof, and none ever felt
greater joy and pride in a home than she. We had our first supper on a
wide puncheon under the persimmon tree on the few pewter plates we had
fetched across the mountain, the blue smoke from our own hearth rising in
the valley until the cold night air spread it out in a line above us,
while the horses grazed at the river's edge.

After that we went to ploughing, an occupation which Tom fancied but
little, for he loved the life of a hunter best of all. But there was
corn to be raised and fodder for the horses, and a truck-patch to be
cleared near the house.

One day a great event happened,--and after the manner of many great
events, it began in mystery. Leaping on the roan mare, I was riding like
mad for Harrodstown to fetch Mrs. Cowan. And she, when she heard the
summons, abandoned a turkey on the spit, pitched her brats out of the
door, seized the mare, and dashing through the gates at a gallop left me
to make my way back afoot. Scenting a sensation, I hurried along the
wooded trace at a dog trot, and when I came in sight of the cabin there
was Mrs. Cowan sitting on the step, holding in her long but motherly arms
something bundled up in nettle linen, while Tom stood sheepishly by,
staring at it.

"Shucks," Mrs. Cowan was saying loudly, "I reckon ye're as little use
to-day as Swein Poulsson,--standin' there on one foot. Ye anger me--just
grinning at it like a fool--and yer own doin'. Have ye forgot how to
talk?"

Tom grinned the more, but was saved the effort of a reply by a loud noise
from the bundle.

"Here's another," cried Mrs. Cowan to me. "Ye needn't act as if it was
an animal. Faith, yereself was like that once, all red an' crinkled.
But I warrant ye didn't have the heft," and she lifted it, judicially.
"A grand baby," attacking Tom again, "and ye're no more worthy to be his
father than Davy here."

Then I heard a voice calling me, and pushing past Mrs. Cowan, I ran into
the cabin. Polly Ann lay on the log bedstead, and she turned to mine a
face radiant with a happiness I had not imagined.

"Oh, Davy, have ye seen him? Have ye seen little Tom? Davy, I reckon
I'll never be so happy again. Fetch him here, Mrs. Cowan."

Mrs. Cowan, with a glance of contempt at Tom and me, put the bundle
tenderly down on the coarse brown sheet beside her.

Poor little Tom! Only the first fortnight of his existence was spent in
peace. I have a pathetic memory of it all--of our little home, of our
hopes for it, of our days of labor and nights of planning to make it
complete. And then, one morning when the three of us were turning over
the black loam in the patch, while the baby slept peacefully in the
shade, a sound came to our ears that made us pause and listen with bated
breath. It was the sound of many guns, muffled in the distant forest.
With a cry Polly Ann flew to the hickory cradle under the tree, Tom
sprang for the rifle that was never far from his side, while with a kind
of instinct I ran to catch the spancelled horses by the river. In
silence and sorrow we fled through the tall cane, nor dared to take one
last look at the cabin, or the fields lying black in the spring sunlight.
The shots had ceased, but ere we had reached the little clearing McCann
had made they began again, though as distant as before. Tom went ahead,
while I led the mare and Polly Ann clutched the child to her breast. But
when we came in sight of the fort across the clearings the gates were
closed. There was nothing to do but cower in the thicket, listening
while the battle went on afar, Polly Ann trying to still the cries of the
child, lest they should bring death upon us. At length the shooting
ceased; stillness reigned; then came a faint halloo, and out of the
forest beyond us a man rode, waving his hat at the fort. After him came
others. The gates opened, and we rushed pell-mell across the fields to
safety.

The Indians had shot at a party shelling corn at Captain Bowman's
plantation, and killed two, while the others had taken refuge in the
crib. Fired at from every brake, James Ray had ridden to Harrodstown for
succor, and the savages had been beaten off. But only the foolhardy
returned to their clearings now. We were on the edge of another dreaded
summer of siege, the prospect of banishment from the homes we could
almost see, staring us in the face, and the labors of the spring lost
again. There was bitter talk within the gates that night, and many
declared angrily that Colonel Clark had abandoned us. But I remembered
what he had said, and had faith in him.

It was that very night, too, I sat with Cowan, who had duty in one of the
sentry boxes, and we heard a voice calling softly under us. Fearing
treachery, Cowan cried out for a sign. Then the answer came back loudly
to open to a runner with a message from Colonel Clark to Captain Harrod.
Cowan let the man in, while I ran for the captain, and in five minutes it
seemed as if every man and woman and child in the fort were awake and
crowding around the man by the gates, their eager faces reddened by the
smoking pine knots. Where was Clark? What had he been doing? Had he
deserted them?

"Deserted ye!" cried the runner, and swore a great oath. Wasn't Clark
even then on the Ohio raising a great army with authority from the
Commonwealth of Virginia to rid them of the red scourge? And would they
desert him? Or would they be men and bring from Harrodstown the company
he asked for? Then Captain Harrod read the letter asking him to raise
the company, and before day had dawned they were ready for the word to
march--ready to leave cabin and clearing, and wife and child, trusting in
Clark's judgment for time and place. Never were volunteers mustered more
quickly than in that cool April night by the gates of Harrodstown
Station.

"And we'll fetch Davy along, for luck," cried Cowan, catching sight of me
beside him.

"Sure we'll be wanting a dhrummer b'y," said McCann.

And so they enrolled me.



CHAPTER XII

THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

"Davy, take care of my Tom," cried Polly Ann.

I can see her now, standing among the women by the great hewn gateposts,
with little Tom in her arms, holding him out to us as we filed by. And
the vision of his little, round face haunted Tom and me for many weary
miles of our tramp through the wilderness. I have often thought since
that that march of the volunteer company to join Clark at the Falls of
the Ohio was a superb example of confidence in one man, and scarce to be
equalled in history.

In less than a week we of Captain Harrod's little company stood on a
forest-clad bank, gazing spellbound at the troubled waters of a mighty
river. That river was the Ohio, and it divided us from the strange north
country whence the savages came. From below, the angry voice of the
Great Falls cried out to us unceasingly. Smoke rose through the
tree-tops of the island opposite, and through the new gaps of its forest
cabins could be seen. And presently, at a signal from us, a big flatboat
left its shore, swung out and circled on the polished current, and
grounded at length in the mud below us. A dozen tall boatmen,
buckskin-clad, dropped the big oars and leaped out on the bank with a
yell of greeting. At the head of them was a man of huge frame, and long,
light hair falling down over the collar of his hunting shirt. He wrung
Captain Harrod's hand.

"That there's Simon Kenton, Davy," said Cowan, as we stood watching them.

I ran forward for a better look at the backwoods Hercules, the tales of
whose prowess had helped to while away many a winter's night in
Harrodstown Station. Big-featured and stern, yet he had the kindly eye
of the most indomitable of frontier fighters, and I doubted not the truth
of what was said of him--that he could kill any redskin hand-to-hand.

"Clark's thar," he was saying to Captain Harrod. "God knows what his
pluck is. He ain't said a word."

"He doesn't say whar he's going?" said Harrod.

"Not a notion," answered Kenton. "He's the greatest man to keep his
mouth shut I ever saw. He kept at the governor of Virginny till he gave
him twelve hundred pounds in Continentals and power to raise troops.
Then Clark fetched a circle for Fort Pitt, raised some troops thar and in
Virginny and some about Red Stone, and come down the Ohio here with 'em
in a lot of flatboats. Now that ye've got here the Kentucky boys is all
in. I come over with Montgomery, and Dillard's here from the Holston
country with a company."

"Well," said Captain Harrod, "I reckon we'll report."

I went among the first boat-load, and as the men strained against the
current, Kenton explained that Colonel Clark had brought a number of
emigrants down the river with him; that he purposed to leave them on this
island with a little force, that they might raise corn and provisions
during the summer; and that he had called the place Corn Island.

"Sure, there's the Colonel himself," cried Terence McCann, who was in the
bow, and indeed I could pick out the familiar figure among the hundred
frontiersmen that gathered among the stumps at the landing-place. As our
keel scraped they gave a shout that rattled in the forest behind them,
and Clark came down to the waterside.

"I knew that Harrodstown wouldn't fail me," he said, and called every man
by name as we waded ashore. When I came splashing along after Tom he
pulled me from the water with his two hands.

"Colonel," said Terence McCann, "we've brought ye a dhrummer b'y."

"We'd have no luck at all without him," said Cowan, and the men laughed.

"Can you walk an hundred miles without food, Davy?" asked Colonel Clark,
eying me gravely.

"Faith he's lean as a wolf, and no stomach to hinder him," said Terence,
seeing me look troubled. "I'll not be missing the bit of food the likes
of him would eat."

"And as for the heft of him," added Cowan, "Mac and I'll not feel it."

Colonel Clark laughed. "Well, boys," he said, "if you must have him, you
must. His Excellency gave me no instructions about a drummer, but we'll
take you, Davy."

In those days he was a man that wasted no time, was Colonel Clark, and
within the hour our little detachment had joined the others, felling
trees and shaping the log-ends for the cabins. That night, as Tom and
Cowan and McCann and James Ray lay around their fire, taking a
well-earned rest, a man broke excitedly into the light with a
kettle-shaped object balanced on his head, which he set down in front of
us. The man proved to be Swein Poulsson, and the object a big drum, and
he straightway began to beat upon it a tattoo with improvised drumsticks.

"A Red Stone man," he cried, "a Red Stone man, he have it in the
flatboat. It is for Tavy."

"The saints be good to us," said Terence, "if it isn't the King's own
drum he has." And sure enough, on the head of it gleamed the royal arms
of England, and on the other side, as we turned it over, the device of a
regiment. They flung the sling about my neck, and the next day, when the
little army drew up for parade among the stumps, there I was at the end
of the line, and prouder than any man in the ranks. And Colonel Clark
coming to my end of the line paused and smiled and patted me kindly on
the cheek.

"Have you put this man on the roll, Harrod?" says he.

"No, Colonel," answers Captain Harrod, amid the laughter of the men at my
end.

"What!" says the Colonel, "what an oversight! From this day he is
drummer boy and orderly to the Commander-in-chief. Beat the retreat, my
man."

I did my best, and as the men broke ranks they crowded around me,
laughing and joking, and Cowan picked me up, drum and all, and carried me
off, I rapping furiously the while.

And so I became a kind of handy boy for the whole regiment from the
Colonel down, for I was willing and glad to work. I cooked the Colonel's
meals, roasting the turkey breasts and saddles of venison that the
hunters brought in from the mainland, and even made him journey-cake, a
trick which Polly Ann had taught me. And when I went about the island,
if a man were loafing, he would seize his axe and cry, "Here's Davy,
he'll tell the Colonel on me." Thanks to the jokes of Terence McCann, I
gained an owl-like reputation for wisdom amongst these superstitious
backwoodsmen, and they came verily to believe that upon my existence
depended the success of the campaign. But day after day passed, and no
sign from Colonel Clark of his intentions.

"There's a good lad," said Terence. "He'll be telling us where we're
going."

I was asked the same question by a score or more, but Colonel Clark kept
his own counsel. He himself was everywhere during the days that
followed, superintending the work on the blockhouse we were building, and
eying the men. Rumor had it that he was sorting out the sheep from the
goats, silently choosing those who were to remain on the island and those
who were to take part in the campaign.

At length the blockhouse stood finished amid the yellow stumps of the
great trees, the trunks of which were in its walls. And suddenly the
order went forth for the men to draw up in front of it by companies, with
the families of the emigrants behind them. It was a picture to fix
itself in a boy's mind, and one that I have never forgotten. The line of
backwoodsmen, as fine a lot of men as I ever wish to see, bronzed by the
June sun, strong and tireless as the wild animals of the forest, stood
expectant with rifles grounded. And beside the tallest, at the end of
the line, was a diminutive figure with a drum hung in front of it. The
early summer wind rustled in the forest, and the never ending song of the
Great Falls sounded from afar. Apart, square-shouldered and indomitable,
stood a young man of twenty-six.

"My friends and neighbors," he said in a firm voice, "there is scarce a
man standing among you to-day who has not suffered at the hands of
savages. Some of you have seen wives and children killed before your
eyes--or dragged into captivity. None of you can to-day call the home
for which he has risked so much his own. And who, I ask you, is to blame
for this hideous war? Whose gold is it that buys guns and powder and
lead to send the Shawnee and the Iroquois and Algonquin on the warpath?"

He paused, and a hoarse murmur of anger ran along the ranks.

"Whose gold but George's, by the grace of God King of Great Britain and
Ireland? And what minions distribute it? Abbott at Kaskaskia, for one,
and Hamilton at Detroit, the Hair Buyer, for another!"

When he spoke Hamilton's name his voice was nearly drowned by
imprecations.

"Silence!" cried Clark, sternly, and they were silent. "My friends, the
best way for a man to defend himself is to maim his enemy. One year
since, when you did me the honor to choose me Commander-in-chief of your
militia in Kentucky, I sent two scouts to Kaskaskia. A dozen years ago
the French owned that place, and St. Vincent, and Detroit, and the people
there are still French. My men brought back word that the French feared
the Long Knives, as the Indians call us. On the first of October I went
to Virginia, and some of you thought again that I had deserted you. I
went to Williamsburg and wrestled with Governor Patrick Henry and his
council, with Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Mason and Mr. Wythe. Virginia had no
troops to send us, and her men were fighting barefoot with Washington
against the armies of the British king. But the governor gave me twelve
hundred pounds in paper, and with it I have raised the little force that
we have here. And with it we will carry the war into Hamilton's country.
On the swift waters of this great river which flows past us have come
tidings to-day, and God Himself has sent them. To-morrow would have been
too late. The ships and armies of the French king are on their way
across the ocean to help us fight the tyrant, and this is the news that
we bear to the Kaskaskias. When they hear this, the French of those
towns will not fight against us. My friends, we are going to conquer an
empire for liberty, and I can look onward," he cried in a burst of
inspired eloquence, sweeping his arm to the northward toward the forests
on the far side of the Ohio, "I can look onward to the day when these
lands will be filled with the cities of a Great Republic. And who among
you will falter at such a call?"

There was a brief silence, and then a shout went up from the ranks that
drowned the noise of the Falls, and many fell into antics, some throwing
their coonskin hats in the air, and others cursing and scalping Hamilton
in mockery, while I pounded on the drum with all my might. But when we
had broken ranks the rumor was whispered about that the Holston company
had not cheered, and indeed the rest of the day these men went about
plainly morose and discontented,--some saying openly (and with much
justice, though we failed to see it then) that they had their own
families and settlements to defend from the Southern Indians and
Chickamauga bandits, and could not undertake Kentucky's fight at that
time. And when the enthusiasm had burned away a little the disaffection
spread, and some even of the Kentuckians began to murmur against Clark,
for faith or genius was needful to inspire men to his plan. One of the
malcontents from Boonesboro came to our fire to argue.

"He's mad as a medicine man, is Clark, to go into that country with less
than two hundred rifles. And he'll force us, will he? I'd as lief have
the King for a master."

He brought every man in our circle to his feet,--Ray, McCann, Cowan, and
Tom. But Tom was nearest, and words not coming easily to him he fell on
the Boonesboro man instead, and they fought it out for ten minutes in the
firelight with half the regiment around them. At the end of it, when the
malcontents were carrying their champion away, they were stopped suddenly
at the sight of one bursting through the circle into the light, and a
hush fell upon the quarrel. It was Colonel Clark.

"Are you hurt, McChesney?" he demanded.

"I reckon not much, Colonel," said Tom, grinning, as he wiped his face.

"If any man deserts this camp to-night," cried Colonel Clark, swinging
around, "I swear by God to have him chased and brought back and punished
as he deserves. Captain Harrod, set a guard."

I pass quickly over the rest of the incident. How the Holston men and
some others escaped in the night in spite of our guard, and swam the
river on logs. How at dawn we found them gone, and Kenton and Harrod and
brave Captain Montgomery set out in pursuit, with Cowan and Tom and Ray.
All day they rode, relentless, and the next evening returned with but
eight weary and sullen fugitives of all those who had deserted.

The next day the sun rose on a smiling world, the polished reaches of the
river golden mirrors reflecting the forest's green. And we were astir
with the light, preparing for our journey into the unknown country. At
seven we embarked by companies in the flatboats, waving a farewell to
those who were to be left behind. Some stayed through inclination and
disaffection: others because Colonel Clark did not deem them equal to the
task. But Swein Poulsson came. With tears in his little blue eyes he
had begged the Colonel to take him, and I remember him well on that June
morning, his red face perspiring under the white bristles of his hair as
he strained at the big oar. For we must needs pull a mile up the stream
ere we could reach the passage in which to shoot downward to the Falls.
Suddenly Poulsson dropped his handle, causing the boat to swing round in
the stream, while the men damned him. Paying them no attention, he stood
pointing into the blinding disk of the sun. Across the edge of it a
piece was bitten out in blackness.

"Mein Gott!" he cried, "the world is being ended just now."

"The holy saints remember us this day!" said McCann, missing a stroke to
cross himself. "Will ye pull, ye damned Dutchman? Or we'll be the first
to slide into hell. This is no kind of a place at all at all."

By this time the men all along the line of boats had seen it, and many
faltered. Clark's voice could be heard across the waters urging them to
pull, while the bows swept across the current. They obeyed him, but
steadily the blackness ate out the light, and a weird gloaming overspread
the scene. River and forest became stern, the men silent. The more
ignorant were in fear of a cataclysm, the others taking it for an omen.

"Shucks!" said Tom, when appealed to, "I've seed it afore, and it come
all right again."

Clark's boat rounded the shoal: next our turn came, and then the whole
line was gliding down the river, the rising roar of the angry waters with
which we were soon to grapple coming to us with an added grimness. And
now but a faint rim of light saved us from utter darkness. Big Bill
Cowan, undaunted in war, stared at me with fright written on his face.

"And what 'll ye think of it, Davy?" he said.

I glanced at the figure of our commander in the boat ahead, and took
courage.

"It's Hamilton's scalp hanging by a lock," I answered, pointing to what
was left of the sun. "Soon it will be off, and then we'll have light
again."

To my surprise he snatched me from the thwart and held me up with a
shout, and I saw Colonel Clark turn and look back.

"Davy says the Ha'r Buyer's sculp hangs by the lock, boys," he shouted,
pointing at the sun.

The word was cried from boat to boat, and we could see the men pointing
upwards and laughing. And then, as the light began to grow, we were in
the midst of the tumbling waters, the steersmen straining now right, now
left, to keep the prows in the smooth reaches between rock and bar. We
gained the still pools below, the sun came out once more and smiled on
the landscape, and the spirits of the men, reviving, burst all bounds.

Thus I earned my reputation as a prophet.

Four days and nights we rowed down the great river, our oars
double-manned, for fear that our coming might be heralded to the French
towns. We made our first camp on a green little island at the mouth of
the Cherokee, as we then called the Tennessee, and there I set about
cooking a turkey for Colonel Clark, which Ray had shot. Chancing to look
up, I saw the Colonel himself watching me.

"How is this, Davy?" said he. "I hear that you have saved my army for me
before we have met the enemy."

"I did not know it, sir," I answered.

"Well," said he, "if you have learned to turn an evil omen into a good
sign, you know more than some generals. What ails you now?"

"There's a pirogue, sir," I cried, staring and pointing.

"Where?" said he, alert all at once. "Here, McChesney, take a crew and
put out after them."

He had scarcely spoken ere Tom and his men were rowing into the sunset,
the whole of our little army watching from the bank. Presently the other
boat was seen coming back with ours, and five strange woodsmen stepped
ashore, our men pressing around them. But Clark flew to the spot, the
men giving back.

"Who's the leader here?" he demanded.

A tall man stepped forward.

"I am," said he, bewildered but defiant.

"Your name?"

"John Duff," he answered, as though against his will.

"Your business?"

"Hunters," said Duff; "and I reckon we're in our rights."

"I'll judge of that," said our Colonel. "Where are you from?"

"That's no secret, neither. Kaskasky, ten days gone."

At that there was a murmur of surprise from our companies. Clark turned.

"Get your men back," he said to the captains, who stood about them. And
all of them not moving: "Get your men back, I say. I'll have it known
who's in command here."

At that the men retired. "Who commands at Kaskaskia?" he demanded of
Duff.

"Monseer Rocheblave, a Frenchy holding a British commission," said Duff.
"And the British Governor Abbott has left Post St. Vincent and gone to
Detroit. Who be you?" he added suspiciously. "Be you Rebels?"

"Colonel Clark is my name, and I am in the service of the Commonwealth of
Virginia."

Duff uttered an exclamatory oath and his manner changed. "Be you Clark?"
he said with respect. "And you're going after Kaskasky? Wal, the mility
is prime, and the Injun scouts is keeping a good lookout. But, Colonel,
I'll tell ye something: the Frenchies is etarnal afeard of the Long
Knives. My God! they've got the notion that if you ketch 'em you'll burn
and scalp 'em same as the Red Sticks."

"Good," was all that Clark answered.

"I reckon I don't know much about what the Rebels is fighting for," said
John Duff; "but I like your looks, Colonel, and wharever you're going
there'll be a fight. Me and my boys would kinder like to go along."

Clark did not answer at once, but looked John Duff and his men over
carefully.

"Will you take the oath of allegiance to Virginia and the Continental
Congress?" he asked at length.

"I reckon it won't pizen us," said John Duff.

"Hold up your hands," said Clark, and they took the oath. "Now, my men,"
said he, "you will be assigned to companies. Does any one among you know
the old French trail from Massacre to Kaskaskia?"

"Why," exclaimed John Duff, "why, Johnny Saunders here can tread it in
the dark like the road to the grogshop."

John Saunders, loose limbed, grinning sheepishly, shuffled forward, and
Clark shot a dozen questions at him one after another. Yes, the trail
had been blazed the Lord knew how long ago by the French, and given up
when they left Massacre.

"Look you," said Clark to him, "I am not a man to stand trifling. If
there is any deception in this, you will be shot without mercy."

"And good riddance," said John Duff. "Boys, we're Rebels now. Steer
clear of the Ha'r Buyer."



CHAPTER XIII

KASKASKIA

For one more day we floated downward on the face of the waters between
the forest walls of the wilderness, and at length we landed in a little
gully on the north shore of the river, and there we hid our boats.

"Davy," said Colonel Clark, "let's walk about a bit. Tell me where you
learned to be so silent?"

"My father did not like to be talked to," I answered, "except when he was
drinking."

He gave me a strange look. Many the stroll I took with him afterwards,
when he sought to relax himself from the cares which the campaign had put
upon him. This night was still and clear, the west all yellow with the
departing light, and the mists coming on the river. And presently, as we
strayed down the shore we came upon a strange sight, the same being a
huge fort rising from the waterside, all overgrown with brush and
saplings and tall weeds. The palisades that held its earthenwork were
rotten and crumbling, and the mighty bastions of its corners sliding
away. Behind the fort, at the end farthest from the river, we came upon
gravelled walks hidden by the rank growth, where the soldiers of his Most
Christian Majesty once paraded. Lost in thought, Clark stood on the
parapet, watching the water gliding by until the darkness hid it,--nay,
until the stars came and made golden dimples upon its surface. But as we
went back to the camp again he told me how the French had tried once to
conquer this vast country and failed, leaving to the Spaniards the
endless stretch beyond the Mississippi called Louisiana, and this part to
the English. And he told me likewise that this fort in the days of its
glory had been called Massacre, from a bloody event which had happened
there more than three-score years before.

"Threescore years!" I exclaimed, longing to see the men of this race
which had set up these monuments only to abandon them.

"Ay, lad," he answered, "before you or I were born, and before our
fathers were born, the French missionaries and soldiers threaded this
wilderness. And they called this river 'La Belle Riviere,'--the
Beautiful River."

"And shall I see that race at Kaskaskia?" I asked, wondering.

"That you shall," he cried, with a force that left no doubt in my mind.

In the morning we broke camp and started off for the strange place which
we hoped to capture. A hundred miles it was across the trackless wilds,
and each man was ordered to carry on his back provisions for four days
only.

"Herr Gott!" cried Swein Poulsson, from the bottom of a flatboat, whence
he was tossing out venison flitches, "four day, und vat is it ve eat
then?"

"Frenchies, sure," said Terence; "there'll be plenty av thim for a
season. Faith, I do hear they're tinder as lambs."

"You'll no set tooth in the Frenchies," the pessimistic McAndrew put in,
"wi' five thousand redskins aboot, and they lying in wait. The Colonel's
no vera mindful of that, I'm thinking."

"Will ye hush, ye ill-omened hound!" cried Cowan, angrily. "Pitch him in
the crick, Mac!"

Tom was diverted from this duty by a loud quarrel between Captain Harrod
and five men of the company who wanted scout duty, and on the heels of
that came another turmoil occasioned by Cowan's dropping my drum into the
water. While he and McCann and Tom were fishing it out, Colonel Clark
himself appeared, quelled the mutiny that Harrod had on his hands, and
bade the men sternly to get into ranks.

"What foolishness is this?" he said, eying the dripping drum.

"Sure, Colonel," said McCann, swinging it on his back, "we'd have no
heart in us at Kaskasky widout the rattle of it in our ears. Bill Cowan
and me will not be feeling the heft of it bechune us."

"Get into ranks," said the Colonel, amusement struggling with the anger
in his face as he turned on his heel. His wisdom well knew when to humor
a man, and when to chastise.

"Arrah," said Terence, as he took his place, "I'd as soon l'ave me gun
behind as Davy and the dhrum."

Methinks I can see now, as I write, the long file of woodsmen with their
swinging stride, planting one foot before the other, even as the Indian
himself threaded the wilderness. Though my legs were short, I had both
sinew and training, and now I was at one end of the line and now at the
other. And often with a laugh some giant would hand his gun to a
neighbor, swing me to his shoulder, and so give me a lift for a weary
mile or two; and perchance whisper to me to put down my hand into the
wallet of his shirt, where I would find a choice morsel which he had
saved for his supper. Sometimes I trotted beside the Colonel himself,
listening as he talked to this man or that, and thus I got the gravest
notion of the daring of this undertaking, and of the dangers ahead of us.
This north country was infested with Indians, allies of the English and
friends of the French their subjects; and the fact was never for an
instant absent from our minds that our little band might at any moment
run into a thousand warriors, be overpowered and massacred; or, worst of
all, that our coming might have been heralded to Kaskaskia.

For three days we marched in the green shade of the primeval wood, nor
saw the sky save in blue patches here and there. Again we toiled for
hours through the coffee-colored waters of the swamps. But the third
day brought us to the first of those strange clearings which the French
call prairies, where the long grass ripples like a lake in the summer
wind. Here we first knew raging thirst, and longed for the loam-specked
water we had scorned, as our tired feet tore through the grass. For
Saunders, our guide, took a line across the open in plain sight of any
eye that might be watching from the forest cover. But at length our
column wavered and halted by reason of some disturbance at the head of
it. Conjectures in our company, the rear guard, became rife at once.

"Run, Davy darlin,' an' see what the throuble is," said Terence.

Nothing loath, I made my way to the head of the column, where Bowman's
company had broken ranks and stood in a ring up to their thighs in the
grass. In the centre of the ring, standing on one foot before our angry
Colonel, was Saunders.

"Now, what does this mean?" demanded Clark; "my eye is on you, and you've
boxed the compass in this last hour."

Saunders' jaw dropped.

"I'm guiding you right," he answered, with that sullenness which comes to
his kind from fear, "but a man will slip his bearings sometimes in this
country."

Clark's eyes shot fire, and he brought down the stock of his rifle with a
thud.

"By the eternal God!" he cried, "I believe you are a traitor. I've been
watching you every step, and you've acted strangely this morning."

"Ay, ay," came from the men round him.

"Silence!" cried Clark, and turned again to the cowering Saunders. "You
pretend to know the way to Kaskaskia, you bring us to the middle of the
Indian country where we may be wiped out at any time, and now you have
the damned effrontery to tell me that you have lost your way. I am a man
of my word," he added with a vibrant intensity, and pointed to the limbs
of a giant tree which stood at the edge of the distant forest. "I will
give you half an hour, but as I live, I will leave you hanging there."

The man's brown hand trembled as he clutched his rifle barrel.

"'Tis a hard country, sir," he said. "I'm lost. I swear it on the
evangels."

"A hard country!" cried Clark. "A man would have to walk over it but
once to know it. I believe you are a damned traitor and perjurer,--in
spite of your oath, a British spy."

Saunders wiped the sweat from his brow on his buckskin sleeve.

"I reckon I could get the trace, Colonel, if you'd let me go a little way
into the prairie."

"Half an hour," said Clark, "and you'll not go alone." Sweeping his eye
over Bowman's company, he picked out a man here and a man there to go
with Saunders. Then his eye lighted on me. "Where's McChesney?" he
said. "Fetch McChesney."

I ran to get Tom, and seven of them went away, with Saunders in the
middle, Clark watching them like a hawk, while the men sat down in the
grass to wait. Fifteen minutes went by, and twenty, and twenty-five, and
Clark was calling for a rope, when some one caught sight of the squad in
the distance returning at a run. And when they came within hail it was
Saunders' voice we heard, shouting brokenly:--

"I've struck it, Colonel, I've struck the trace. There's a pecan at the
edge of the bottom with my own blaze on it."

"May you never be as near death again," said the Colonel, grimly, as he
gave the order to march.

The fourth day passed, and we left behind us the patches of forest and
came into the open prairie,--as far as the eye could reach a long, level
sea of waving green. The scanty provisions ran out, hunger was added to
the pangs of thirst and weariness, and here and there in the straggling
file discontent smouldered and angry undertone was heard. Kaskaskia was
somewhere to the west and north; but how far? Clark had misled them.
And in addition it were foolish to believe that the garrison had not been
warned. English soldiers and French militia and Indian allies stood
ready for our reception. Of such was the talk as we lay down in the
grass under the stars on the fifth night. For in the rank and file an
empty stomach is not hopeful.

The next morning we took up our march silently with the dawn, the prairie
grouse whirring ahead of us. At last, as afternoon drew on, a dark line
of green edged the prairie to the westward, and our spirits rose. From
mouth to mouth ran the word that these were the woods which fringed the
bluff above Kaskaskia itself. We pressed ahead, and the destiny of the
new Republic for which we had fought made us walk unseen. Excitement
keyed us high; we reached the shade, plunged into it, and presently came
out staring at the bastioned corners of a fort which rose from the centre
of a clearing. It had once defended the place, but now stood abandoned
and dismantled. Beyond it, at the edge of the bluff, we halted,
astonished. The sun was falling in the west, and below us was the goal
for the sight of which we had suffered so much. At our feet, across the
wooded bottom, was the Kaskaskia River, and beyond, the peaceful little
French village with its low houses and orchards and gardens colored by
the touch of the evening light. In the centre of it stood a stone church
with its belfry; but our searching eyes alighted on the spot to the
southward of it, near the river. There stood a rambling stone building
with the shingles of its roof weathered black, and all around it a
palisade of pointed sticks thrust in the ground, and with a pair of gates
and watch-towers. Drooping on its staff was the standard of England.
North and south of the village the emerald common gleamed in the slanting
light, speckled red and white and black by grazing cattle. Here and
there, in untidy brown patches, were Indian settlements, and far away to
the westward the tawny Father of Waters gleamed through the cottonwoods.

Through the waning day the men lay resting under the trees, talking in
undertones. Some cleaned their rifles, and others lost themselves in
conjectures of the attack. But Clark himself, tireless, stood with
folded arms gazing at the scene below, and the sunlight on his face
illumined him (to the lad standing at his side) as the servant of
destiny. At length, at eventide, the sweet-toned bell of the little
cathedral rang to vespers,--a gentle message of peace to war. Colonel
Clark looked into my upturned face.

"Davy, do you know what day this is?" he asked.

"No, sir," I answered.

"Two years have gone since the bells pealed for the birth of a new
nation--your nation, Davy, and mine--the nation that is to be the refuge
of the oppressed of this earth--the nation which is to be made of all
peoples, out of all time. And this land for which you and I shall fight
to-night will belong to it, and the lands beyond," he pointed to the
west, "until the sun sets on the sea again." He put his hand on my head.
"You will remember this when I am dead and gone," he said.

I was silent, awed by the power of his words.

Darkness fell, and still we waited, impatient for the order. And when at
last it came the men bustled hither and thither to find their commands,
and we picked our way on the unseen road that led down the bluff, our
hearts thumping. The lights of the village twinkled at our feet, and now
and then a voice from below was caught and borne upward to us. Once
another noise startled us, followed by an exclamation, "Donnerblitzen"
and a volley of low curses from the company. Poor Swein Poulsson had
loosed a stone, which had taken a reverberating flight riverward.

We reached the bottom, and the long file turned and hurried silently
northward, searching for a crossing. I try to recall my feelings as I
trotted beside the tall forms that loomed above me in the night. The
sense of protection they gave me stripped me of fear, and I was not
troubled with that. My thoughts were chiefly on Polly Ann and the child
we had left in the fort now so far to the south of us, and in my fancy I
saw her cheerful, ever helpful to those around her, despite the load that
must rest on her heart. I saw her simple joy at our return. But should
we return? My chest tightened, and I sped along the ranks to Harrod's
company and caught Tom by the wrist.

"Davy," he murmured, and, seizing my hand in his strong grip, pulled me
along with him. For it was not given to him to say what he felt; but as
I hurried to keep pace with his stride, Polly Ann's words rang in my
ears, "Davy, take care of my Tom," and I knew that he, too, was thinking
of her.  A hail aroused me, the sound of a loud rapping, and I saw in
black relief a cabin ahead. The door opened, a man came out with a horde
of children cowering at his heels, a volley of frightened words pouring
from his mouth in a strange tongue. John Duff was plying him with
questions in French, and presently the man became calmer and lapsed into
broken English.

"Kaskaskia--yes, she is prepare. Many spy is gone out--cross la riviere.
But now they all sleep."

Even as he spoke a shout came faintly from the distant town.

"What is that?" demanded Clark, sharply.

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Une fete des negres, peut-etre,--the
negro, he dance maybe."

"Are you the ferryman?" said Clark.

"Oui--I have some boat."

We crossed the hundred and fifty yards of sluggish water, squad by squad,
and in the silence of the night stood gathered, expectant, on the farther
bank. Midnight was at hand. Commands were passed about, and men ran
this way and that, jostling one another to find their places in a new
order. But at length our little force stood in three detachments on the
river's bank, their captains repeating again and again the part which
each was to play, that none might mistake his duty. The two larger ones
were to surround the town, while the picked force under Simon Kenton
himself was to storm the fort. Should he gain it by surprise and without
battle, three shots were to be fired in quick succession, the other
detachments were to start the war-whoop, while Duff and some with a
smattering of French were to run up and down the streets proclaiming that
every habitan who left his house would be shot. No provision being made
for the drummer boy (I had left my drum on the heights above), I chose
the favored column, at the head of which Tom and Cowan and Ray and McCann
were striding behind Kenton and Colonel Clark. Not a word was spoken.
There was a kind of cow-path that rose and fell and twisted along the
river-bank. This we followed, and in ten minutes we must have covered
the mile to the now darkened village. The starlight alone outlined
against the sky the houses of it as we climbed the bank. Then we halted,
breathless, in a street, but there was no sound save that of the crickets
and the frogs. Forward again, and twisting a corner, we beheld the
indented edge of the stockade. Still no hail, nor had our moccasined
feet betrayed us as we sought the river side of the fort and drew up
before the big river gates of it. Simon Kenton bore against them, and
tried the little postern that was set there, but both were fast. The
spikes towered a dozen feet overhead.

"Quick!" muttered Clark, "a light man to go over and open the postern."

Before I guessed what was in his mind, Cowan seized me.

"Send the lad, Colonel," said he.

"Ay, ay," said Simon Kenton, hoarsely.

In a second Tom was on Kenton's shoulders, and they passed me up with as
little trouble as though I had been my own drum. Feverishly searching
with my foot for Tom's shoulder, I seized the spikes at the top,
clambered over them, paused, surveyed the empty area below me, destitute
even of a sentry, and then let myself down with the aid of the cross-bars
inside. As I was feeling vainly for the bolt of the postern, rays of
light suddenly shot my shadow against the door. And next, as I got my
hand on the bolt-head, I felt the weight of another on my shoulder, and a
voice behind me said in English:--

"In the devil's name!"

I gave the one frantic pull, the bolt slipped, and caught again. Then
Colonel Clark's voice rang out in the night:--

"Open the gate! Open the gate in the name of Virginia and the
Continental Congress!"

Before I could cry out the man gave a grunt, leaned his gun against the
gate, and tore my fingers from the bolt-handle. Astonishment robbed me
of breath as he threw open the postern.

"In the name of the Continental Congress," he cried, and seized his gun.
Clark and Kenton stepped in instantly, no doubt as astounded as I, and
had the man in their grasp.

"Who are you?" said Clark.

"Name o' Skene, from Pennsylvanya," said the man, "and by the Lord God ye
shall have the fort."

"You looked for us?" said Clark.

"Faith, never less," said the Pennsylvanian. "The one sentry is at the
main gate."

"And the governor?"

"Rocheblave?" said the Pennsylvanian. "He sleeps yonder in the old
Jesuit house in the middle."

Clark turned to Tom McChesney, who was at his elbow.

"Corporal!" said he, swiftly, "secure the sentry at the main gate! You,"
he added, turning to the Pennsylvanian, "lead us to the governor. But
mind, if you betray me, I'll be the first to blow out your brains."

The man seized a lantern and made swiftly over the level ground until the
rubble-work of the old Jesuit house showed in the light, nor Clark nor
any of them stopped to think of the danger our little handful ran at the
mercy of a stranger. The house was silent. We halted, and Clark threw
himself against the rude panels of the door, which gave to inward
blackness. Our men filled the little passage, and suddenly we found
ourselves in a low-ceiled room in front of a great four-poster bed. And
in it, upright, blinking at the light, were two odd Frenchified figures
in tasselled nightcaps. Astonishment and anger and fear struggled in the
faces of Monsieur de Rocheblave and his lady. A regard for truth compels
me to admit that it was madame who first found her voice, and no
uncertain one it was.

First came a shriek that might have roused the garrison.

"Villains! Murderers! Outragers of decency!" she cried with spirit,
pouring a heap of invectives, now in French, now in English, much to the
discomfiture of our backwoodsmen, who peered at her helplessly.

"Nom du diable!" cried the commandant, when his lady's breath was gone,
"what does this mean?"

"It means, sir," answered Clark, promptly, "that you are my prisoner."

"And who are you?" gasped the commandant.

"George Rogers Clark, Colonel in the service of the Commonwealth of
Virginia." He held out his hand restrainingly, for the furious Monsieur
Rocheblave made an attempt to rise. "You will oblige me by remaining in
bed, sir, for a moment."

"Coquins! Canailles! Cochons!" shrieked the lady.

"Madame," said Colonel Clark, politely, "the necessities of war are often
cruel."

He made a bow, and paying no further attention to the torrent of her
reproaches or the threats of the helpless commandant, he calmly searched
the room with the lantern, and finally pulled out from under the bed a
metal despatch box. Then he lighted a candle in a brass candlestick that
stood on the simple walnut dresser, and bowed again to the outraged
couple in the four-poster.

"Now, sir," he said, "you may dress. We will retire."

"Pardieu!" said the commandant in French, "a hundred thousand thanks."

We had scarcely closed the bedroom door when three shots were heard.

"The signal!" exclaimed Clark.

Immediately a pandemonium broke on the silence of the night that must
have struck cold terror in the hearts of the poor Creoles sleeping in
their beds. The war-whoop, the scalp halloo in the dead of the morning,
with the hideous winding notes of them that reached the bluff beyond and
echoed back, were enough to frighten a man from his senses. In the
intervals, in backwoods French, John Duff and his companions were heard
in terrifying tones crying out to the habitants to venture out at the
peril of their lives.

Within the fort a score of lights flew up and down like
will-o'-the-wisps, and Colonel Clark, standing on the steps of the
governor's house, gave out his orders and despatched his messengers. Me
he sent speeding through the village to tell Captain Bowman to patrol the
outskirts of the town, that no runner might get through to warn Fort
Chartres and Cohos, as some called Cahokia. None stirred save the few
Indians left in the place, and these were brought before Clark in the
fort, sullen and defiant, and put in the guard-house there. And
Rocheblave, when he appeared, was no better, and was put back in his
house under guard.

As for the papers in the despatch box, they revealed I know not what
briberies of the savage nations and plans of the English. But of other
papers we found none, though there must have been more. Madame
Rocheblave was suspected of having hidden some in the inviolable portions
of her dress.

At length the cocks crowing for day proclaimed the morning, and while yet
the blue shadow of the bluff was on the town, Colonel Clark sallied out
of the gate and walked abroad. Strange it seemed that war had come to
this village, so peaceful and remote. And even stranger it seemed to me
to see these Arcadian homes in the midst of the fierce wilderness. The
little houses with their sloping roofs and wide porches, the gardens
ablaze with color, the neat palings,--all were a restful sight for our
weary eyes. And now I scarcely knew our commander. For we had not gone
far ere, timidly, a door opened and a mild-visaged man, in the simple
workaday smock that the French wore, stood, hesitating, on the steps.
The odd thing was that he should have bowed to Clark, who was dressed no
differently from Bowman and Harrod and Duff; and the man's voice trembled
piteously as he spoke. It needed not John Duff to tell us that he was
pleading for the lives of his family.

"He will sell himself as a slave if your Excellency will spare them,"
said Duff, translating.

But Clark stared at the man sternly.

"I will tell them my plans at the proper time," he said and when Duff had
translated this the man turned and went silently into his house again,
closing the door behind him. And before we had traversed the village the
same thing had happened many times. We gained the fort again, I
wondering greatly why he had not reassured these simple people. It was
Bowman who asked this question, he being closer to Clark than any of the
other captains. Clark said nothing then, and began to give out directions
for the day. But presently he called the Captain aside.

"Bowman," I heard him say, "we have one hundred and fifty men to hold a
province bigger than the whole of France, and filled with treacherous
tribes in the King's pay. I must work out the problem for myself."

Bowman was silent. Clark, with that touch which made men love him and
die for him, laid his hand on the Captain's shoulder.

"Have the men called in by detachments," he said, "and fed. God knows
they must be hungry,--and you."

Suddenly I remembered that he himself had had nothing. Running around
the commandant's house to the kitchen door, I came unexpectedly upon
Swein Poulsson, who was face to face with the linsey-woolsey-clad figure
of Monsieur Rocheblave's negro cook. The early sun cast long shadows of
them on the ground.

"By tam," my friend was saying, "so I vill eat. I am choost like an ox
for three days, und chew grass. Prairie grass, is it?"

"Mo pas capab', Michie," said the cook, with a terrified roll of his
white eyes.

"Herr Gott!" cried Swein Poulsson, "I am red face. Aber Herr Gott, I
thank thee I am not a nigger. Und my hair is bristles, yes. Davy"
(spying me), "I thank Herr Gott it is not vool. Let us in the kitchen
go."

"I am come to get something for the Colonel's breakfast," said I, pushing
past the slave, through the open doorway. Swein Poulsson followed, and
here I struck another contradiction in his strange nature. He helped me
light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we soon had a pot of
hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece of buffalo steak
which we found in the larder. Nor did a mouthful pass his lips until I
had sped away with a steaming portion to find the Colonel. By this time
the men had broken into the storehouse, and the open place was dotted
with their breakfast fires. Clark was standing alone by the flagstaff,
his face careworn. But he smiled as he saw me coming.

"What's this?" says he.

"Your breakfast, sir," I answered. I set down the plate and the pot
before him and pressed the pewter spoon into his hand.

"Davy," said he.

"Sir?" said I.

"What did you have for your breakfast?"

My lip trembled, for I was very hungry, and the rich steam from the
hominy was as much as I could stand. Then the Colonel took me by the
arms, as gently as a woman might, set me down on the ground beside him,
and taking a spoonful of the hominy forced it between my lips. I was
near to fainting at the taste of it. Then he took a bit himself, and
divided the buffalo steak with his own hands. And when from the
camp-fires they perceived the Colonel and the drummer boy eating together
in plain sight of all, they gave a rousing cheer.

"Swein Poulsson helped get your breakfast, sir, and would eat nothing
either," I ventured.

"Davy," said Colonel Clark, gravely, "I hope you will be younger when you
are twenty."

"I hope I shall be bigger, sir," I answered gravely.



CHAPTER XIV

HOW THE KASKASKEIANS WERE MADE CITIZENS

Never before had such a day dawned upon Kaskaskia. With July fierceness
the sun beat down upon the village, but man nor woman nor child stirred
from the darkened houses. What they awaited at the hands of the Long
Knives they knew not,--captivity, torture, death perhaps. Through the
deserted streets stalked a squad of backwoodsmen headed by John Duff and
two American traders found in the town, who were bestirring themselves in
our behalf, knocking now at this door and anon at that.

"The Colonel bids you come to the fort," he said, and was gone.

The church bell rang with slow, ominous strokes, far different from its
gentle vesper peal of yesterday. Two companies were drawn up in the sun
before the old Jesuit house, and presently through the gate a procession
came, grave and mournful. The tone of it was sombre in the white glare,
for men had donned their best (as they thought) for the last time,--cloth
of camlet and Cadiz and Limbourg, white cotton stockings, and
brass-buckled shoes. They came like captives led to execution. But at
their head a figure held our eye,--a figure that spoke of dignity and
courage, of trials borne for others. It was the village priest in his
robes. He had a receding forehead and a strong, pointed chin; but
benevolence was in the curve of his great nose. I have many times since
seen his type of face in the French prints. He and his flock halted
before our young Colonel, even as the citizens of Calais in a bygone
century must have stood before the English king.

The scene comes back to me. On the one side, not the warriors of a
nation that has made its mark in war, but peaceful peasants who had
sought this place for its remoteness from persecution, to live and die in
harmony with all mankind. On the other, the sinewy advance guard of a
race that knows not peace, whose goddess of liberty carries in her hand a
sword. The plough might have been graven on our arms, but always the
rifle.

The silence of the trackless wilds reigned while Clark gazed at them
sternly. And when he spoke it was with the voice of a conqueror, and
they listened as the conquered listen, with heads bowed--all save the
priest.

Clark told them first that they had been given a false and a wicked
notion of the American cause, and he spoke of the tyranny of the English
king, which had become past endurance to a free people. As for
ourselves, the Long Knives, we came in truth to conquer, and because of
their hasty judgment the Kaskaskians were at our mercy. The British had
told them that the Kentuckians were a barbarous people, and they had
believed.

He paused that John Duff might translate and the gist of what he had said
sink in. But suddenly the priest had stepped out from the ranks, faced
his people, and was himself translating in a strong voice. When he had
finished a tremor shook the group. But he turned calmly and faced Clark
once more.

"Citizens of Kaskaskia," Colonel Clark went on, "the king whom you
renounced when the English conquered you, the great King of France, has
judged for you and the French people. Knowing that the American cause is
just, he is sending his fleets and regiments to fight for it against the
British King, who until now has been your sovereign."

Again he paused, and when the priest had told them this, a murmur of
astonishment came from the boldest.

"Citizens of Kaskaskia, know you that the Long Knives come not to
massacre, as you foolishly believed, but to release from bondage. We are
come not against you, who have been deceived, but against those soldiers
of the British King who have bribed the savages to slaughter our wives
and children. You have but to take the oath of allegiance to the
Continental Congress to become free, even as we are, to enjoy the
blessings of that American government under which we live and for which
we fight."

The face of the good priest kindled as he glanced at Clark. He turned
once more, and though we could not understand his words, the thrill of
his eloquence moved us. And when he had finished there was a moment's
hush of inarticulate joy among his flock, and then such transports as
moved strangely the sternest men in our ranks. The simple people fell to
embracing each other and praising God, the tears running on their cheeks.
Out of the group came an old man. A skullcap rested on his silvered
hair, and he felt the ground uncertainly with his gold-headed stick.

"Monsieur," he said tremulously "you will pardon an old man if he show
feeling. I am born seventy year ago in Gascon. I inhabit this country
thirty year, and last night I think I not live any longer. Last night we
make our peace with the good God, and come here to-day to die. But we
know you not," he cried, with a sudden and surprising vigor; "ha, we know
you not! They told us lies, and we were humble and believed. But now we
are Americains," he cried, his voice pitched high, as he pointed with a
trembling arm to the stars and stripes above him. "Mes enfants, vive les
Bostonnais! Vive les Americains! Vive Monsieur le Colonel Clark,
sauveur de Kaskaskia!"

The listening village heard the shout and wondered. And when it had died
down Colonel Clark took the old Gascon by the hand, and not a man of his
but saw that this was a master-stroke of his genius.

"My friends," he said simply, "I thank you. I would not force you, and
you will have some days to think over the oath of allegiance to the
Republic. Go now to your homes, and tell those who are awaiting you what
I have said. And if any man of French birth wish to leave this place, he
may go of his own free will, save only three whom I suspect are not our
friends."

They turned, and in an ecstasy of joy quite pitiful to see went trooping
out of the gate. But scarce could they have reached the street and we
have broken ranks, when we saw them coming back again, the priest leading
them as before. They drew near to the spot where Clark stood, talking to
the captains, and halted expectantly.

"What is it, my friends?" asked the Colonel.

The priest came forward and bowed gravely.

"I am Pere Gibault, sir," he said, "cure of Kaskaskia." He paused,
surveying our commander with a clear eye. "There is something that still
troubles the good citizens."

"And what is that, sir?" said Clark.

The priest hesitated.

"If your Excellency will only allow the church to be opened--" he
ventured.

The group stood wistful, fearful that their boldness had displeased,
expectant of reprimand.

"My good Father," said Colonel Clark, "an American commander has but one
relation to any church. And that is" (he added with force) "to protect
it. For all religions are equal before the Republic."

The priest gazed at him intently.

"By that answer," said he, "your Excellency has made for your government
loyal citizens in Kaskaskia."

Then the Colonel stepped up to the priest and took him likewise by the
hand.

"I have arranged for a house in town," said he. "Monsieur Rocheblave has
refused to dine with me there. Will you do me that honor, Father?"

"With all my heart, your Excellency," said Father Gibault. And turning
to the people, he translated what the Colonel had said. Then their cup
of happiness was indeed full, and some ran to Clark and would have thrown
their arms about him had he been a man to embrace. Hurrying out of the
gate, they spread the news like wildfire, and presently the church bell
clanged in tones of unmistakable joy.

"Sure, Davy dear, it puts me in mind of the Saints' day at home," said
Terence, as he stood leaning against a picket fence that bordered the
street, "savin' the presence of the naygurs and thim red divils wid
blankets an' scowls as wud turrn the milk sour in the pail."

He had stopped beside two Kaskaskia warriors in scarlet blankets who
stood at the corner, watching with silent contempt the antics of the
French inhabitants. Now and again one or the other gave a grunt and
wrapped his blanket more tightly about him.

"Umrrhh!" said Terence. "Faith, I talk that langwidge mesilf when I have
throuble." The warriors stared at him with what might be called a
stoical surprise. "Umrrh! Does the holy father praych to ye wid thim
wurrds, ye haythens? Begorra, 'tis a wondher ye wuddent wash
yereselves," he added, making a face, "wid muddy wather to be had for the
askin'."

We moved on, through such a scene as I have seldom beheld. The village
had donned its best: women in cap and gown were hurrying hither and
thither, some laughing and some weeping; grown men embraced each other;
children of all colors flung themselves against Terence's
legs,--dark-haired Creoles, little negroes with woolly pates, and naked
Indian lads with bow and arrow. Terence dashed at them now and then, and
they fled screaming into dooryards to come out again and mimic him when
he had passed, while mothers and fathers and grandfathers smiled at the
good nature in his Irish face. Presently he looked down at me comically.

"Why wuddent ye be doin' the like, Davy?" he asked. "Amusha! 'tis mesilf
that wants to run and hop and skip wid the childher. Ye put me in mind
of a wizened old man that sat all day makin' shoes in Killarney,--all
savin' the fringe he had on his chin."

"A soldier must be dignified," I answered.

"The saints bar that wurrd from hiven," said Terence, trying to pronounce
it. "Come, we'll go to mass, or me mother will be visitin' me this
night."

We crossed the square and went into the darkened church, where the
candles were burning. It was the first church I had ever entered, and I
heard with awe the voice of the priest and the fervent responses, but I
understood not a word of what was said. Afterwards Father Gibault
mounted to the pulpit and stood for a moment with his hand raised above
his flock, and then began to speak. What he told them I have learned
since. And this I know, that when they came out again into the sunlit
square they were Americans. It matters not when they took the oath.

As we walked back towards the fort we came to a little house with a
flower garden in front of it, and there stood Colonel Clark himself by
the gate. He stopped us with a motion of his hand.

"Davy," said he, "we are to live here for a while, you and I. What do
you think of our headquarters?" He did not wait for me to reply, but
continued, "Can you suggest any improvement?"

"You will be needing a soldier to be on guard in front, sir," said I.

"Ah," said the Colonel, "McChesney is too valuable a man. I am sending
him with Captain Bowman to take Cahokia."

"Would you have Terence, sir?" I ventured, while Terence grinned.
Whereupon Colonel Clark sent him to report to his captain that he was
detailed for orderly duty to the commanding officer. And within half an
hour he was standing guard in the flower garden, making grimaces at the
children in the street. Colonel Clark sat at a table in the little front
room, and while two of Monsieur Rocheblave's negroes cooked his dinner,
he was busy with a score of visitors, organizing, advising, planning, and
commanding. There were disputes to settle now that alarm had subsided,
and at noon three excitable gentlemen came in to inform against a certain
Monsieur Cerre, merchant and trader, then absent at St. Louis. When at
length the Colonel had succeeded in bringing their denunciations to an
end and they had departed, he looked at me comically as I stood in the
doorway.

"Davy," said he, "all I ask of the good Lord is that He will frighten me
incontinently for a month before I die."

"I think He would find that difficult, sir," I answered.

"Then there's no hope for me," he answered, laughing, "for I have
observed that fright alone brings a man into a fit spiritual state to
enter heaven. What would you say of those slanderers of Monsieur Cerre?"

Not expecting an answer, he dipped his quill into the ink-pot and turned
to his papers.

"I should say that they owed Monsieur Cerre money," I replied.

The Colonel dropped his quill and stared. As for me, I was puzzled to
know why.

"Egad," said Colonel Clark, "most of us get by hard knocks what you seem
to have been born with." He fell to musing, a worried look coming on his
face that was no stranger to me later, and his hand fell heavily on the
loose pile of paper before him. "Davy," says he, "I need a
commissary-general."

"What would that be, sir," I asked.

"A John Law, who will make something out of nothing, who will make money
out of this blank paper, who will wheedle the Creole traders into
believing they are doing us a favor and making their everlasting fortune
by advancing us flour and bacon."

"And doesn't Congress make money, sir?" I asked.

"That they do, Davy, by the ton," he replied, "and so must we, as the
rulers of a great province. For mark me, though the men are happy
to-day, in four days they will be grumbling and trying to desert in
dozens."

We were interrupted by a knock at the door, and there stood Terence
McCann.

"His riverence!" he announced, and bowed low as the priest came into the
room.

I was bid by Colonel Clark to sit down and dine with them on the good
things which Monsieur Rocheblave's cook had prepared. After dinner they
went into the little orchard behind the house and sat drinking (in the
French fashion) the commandant's precious coffee which had been sent to
him from far-away New Orleans. Colonel Clark plied the priest with
questions of the French towns under English rule: and Father Gibault,
speaking for his simple people, said that the English had led them easily
to believe that the Kentuckians were cutthroats.

"Ah, monsieur," he said, "if they but knew you! If they but knew the
principles of that government for which you fight, they would renounce
the English allegiance, and the whole of this territory would be yours.
I know them, from Quebec to Detroit and Michilimackinac and Saint
Vincennes. Listen, monsieur," he cried, his homely face alight; "I
myself will go to Saint Vincennes for you. I will tell them the truth,
and you shall have the post for the asking."

"You will go to Vincennes!" exclaimed Clark; "a hard and dangerous
journey of a hundred leagues!"

"Monsieur," answered the priest, simply, "the journey is nothing. For a
century the missionaries of the Church have walked this wilderness alone
with God. Often they have suffered, and often died in tortures--but
gladly."

Colonel Clark regarded the man intently.

"The cause of liberty, both religious and civil, is our cause," Father
Gibault continued. "Men have died for it, and will die for it, and it
will prosper. Furthermore, Monsieur, my life has not known many wants.
I have saved something to keep my old age, with which to buy a little
house and an orchard in this peaceful place. The sum I have is at your
service. The good Congress will repay me. And you need the money."

Colonel Clark was not an impulsive man, but he felt none the less deeply,
as I know well. His reply to this generous offer was almost brusque, but
it did not deceive the priest.

"Nay, monsieur," he said, "it is for mankind I give it, in remembrance of
Him who gave everything. And though I receive nothing in return, I shall
have my reward an hundred fold."

In due time, I know not how, the talk swung round again to lightness, for
the Colonel loved a good story, and the priest had many which he told
with wit in his quaint French accent. As he was rising to take his
leave, Pere Gibault put his hand on my head.

"I saw your Excellency's son in the church this morning," he said.

Colonel Clark laughed and gave me a pinch.

"My dear sir," he said, "the boy is old enough to be my father."

The priest looked down at me with a puzzled expression in his brown eyes.

"I would I had him for my son," said Colonel Clark, kindly; "but the lad
is eleven, and I shall not be twenty-six until next November."

"Your Excellency not twenty-six!" cried Father Gibault, in astonishment.
"What will you be when you are thirty?"

The young Colonel's face clouded.

"God knows!" he said.

Father Gibault dropped his eyes and turned to me with native tact.

"What would you like best to do, my son?" he asked.

"I should like to learn to speak French," said I, for I had been much
irritated at not understanding what was said in the streets.

"And so you shall," said Father Gibault; "I myself will teach you. You
must come to my house to-day."

"And Davy will teach me," said the Colonel.



CHAPTER XV

DAYS OF TRIAL

But I was not immediately to take up the study of French. Things began
to happen in Kaskaskia. In the first place, Captain Bowman's company,
with a few scouts, of which Tom was one, set out that very afternoon for
the capture of Cohos, or Cahokia, and this despite the fact that they had
had no sleep for two nights. If you will look at the map,[1] you will
see, dotted along the bottoms and the bluffs beside the great
Mississippi, the string of villages, Kaskaskia, La Prairie du Rocher,
Fort Chartres, St. Philip, and Cahokia. Some few miles from Cahokia, on
the western bank of the Father of Waters, was the little French village
of St. Louis, in the Spanish territory of Louisiana. From thence
eastward stretched the great waste of prairie and forest inhabited by
roving bands of the forty Indian nations. Then you come to Vincennes on
the Wabash, Fort St. Vincent, the English and Canadians called it, for
there were a few of the latter who had settled in Kaskaskia since the
English occupation.

 [1] The best map which the editor has found of this district is in vol.
VI, Part 11, of Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America," p.
721.



We gathered on the western skirts of the village to give Bowman's company
a cheer, and every man, woman, and child in the place watched the little
column as it wound snakelike over the prairie on the road to Fort
Chartres, until it was lost in the cottonwoods to the westward.

Things began to happen in Kaskaskia. It would have been strange indeed
if things had not happened. One hundred and seventy-five men had marched
into that territory out of which now are carved the great states of Ohio,
Indiana, and Illinois, and to most of them the thing was a picnic, a
jaunt which would soon be finished. Many had left families in the
frontier forts without protection. The time of their enlistment had
almost expired.

There was a store in the village kept by a great citizen,--not a citizen
of Kaskaskia alone, but a citizen of the world. This, I am aware, sounds
like fiction, like an attempt to get an effect which was not there. But
it is true as gospel. The owner of this store had many others scattered
about in this foreign country: at Vincennes, at St. Louis, where he
resided, at Cahokia. He knew Michilimackinac and Quebec and New Orleans.
He had been born some thirty-one years before in Sardinia, had served in
the Spanish army, and was still a Spanish subject. The name of this
famous gentleman was Monsieur Francois Vigo, and he was the Rothschild of
the country north of the Ohio. Monsieur Vigo, though he merited it, I
had not room to mention in the last chapter. Clark had routed him from
his bed on the morning of our arrival, and whether or not he had been in
the secret of frightening the inhabitants into making their wills, and
then throwing them into transports of joy, I know not.

Monsieur Vigo's store was the village club. It had neither glass in the
window nor an attractive display of goods; it was merely a log cabin set
down on a weedy, sun-baked plot. The stuffy smell of skins and furs came
out of the doorway. Within, when he was in Kaskaskia, Monsieur Vigo was
wont to sit behind his rough walnut table, writing with a fine quill, or
dispensing the news of the villages to the priest and other prominent
citizens, or haggling with persistent blanketed braves over canoe-loads
of ill-smelling pelts which they brought down from the green forests of
the north. Monsieur Vigo's clothes were the color of the tobacco he gave
in exchange; his eyes were not unlike the black beads he traded, but
shrewd and kindly withal, set in a square saffron face that had the
contradiction of a small chin. As the days wore into months, Monsieur
Vigo's place very naturally became the headquarters for our army, if army
it might be called. Of a morning a dozen would be sitting against the
logs in the black shadow, and in the midst of them always squatted an
unsavory Indian squaw. A few braves usually stood like statues at the
corner, and in front of the door another group of hunting shirts.
Without was the paper money of the Continental Congress, within the good
tafia and tobacco of Monsieur Vigo. One day Monsieur Vigo's young Creole
clerk stood shrugging his shoulders in the doorway. I stopped.

"By tam!" Swein Poulsson was crying to the clerk, as he waved a worthless
scrip above his head. "Vat is money?"

This definition the clerk, not being a Doctor Johnson, was unable to give
offhand.

"Vat are you, choost? Is it America?" demanded Poulsson, while the
others looked on, some laughing, some serious. "And vich citizen are you
since you are ours? You vill please to give me one carrot of tobacco."
And he thrust the scrip under the clerk's nose.

The clerk stared at the uneven lettering on the scrip with disdain.

"Money," he exclaimed scornfully, "she is not money. Piastre--Spanish
dollare--then I give you carrot."

"By God!" shouted Bill Cowan, "ye will take Virginny paper, and Congress
paper, or else I reckon we'll have a drink and tobacey, boys, take or no
take."

"Hooray, Bill, ye're right," cried several of our men.

"Lemme in here," said Cowan. But the frightened Creole blocked the
doorway.

"Sacre'!" he screamed, and then, "Voleurs!"

The excitement drew a number of people from the neighborhood. Nay, it
seemed as if the whole town was ringed about us.

"Bravo, Jules!" they cried, "garde-tu la porte. A bas les Bostonnais! A
bas les voleurs!"

"Damn such monkey talk," said Cowan, facing them suddenly. I knew him
well, and when the giant lost his temper it was gone irrevocably until a
fight was over. "Call a man a squar' name."

"Hey, Frenchy," another of our men put in, stalking up to the clerk, "I
reckon this here store's ourn, ef we've a mind to tek it. I 'low you'll
give us the rum and the 'bacey. Come on, boys!"

In between him and the clerk leaped a little, robin-like man with a red
waistcoat, beside himself with rage. Bill Cowan and his friends stared
at this diminutive Frenchman, open-mouthed, as he poured forth a
veritable torrent of unintelligible words, plentifully mixed with sacres,
which he ripped out like snarls. I would as soon have touched him as a
ball of angry bees or a pair of fighting wildcats. Not so Bill Cowan.
When that worthy recovered from his first surprise he seized hold of some
of the man's twisting arms and legs and lifted him bodily from the
ground, as he would have taken a perverse and struggling child. There
was no question of a fight. Cowan picked him up, I say, and before any
one knew what happened, he flung him on to the hot roof of the store (the
eaves were but two feet above his head), and there the man stuck,
clinging to a loose shingle, purpling and coughing and spitting with
rage. There was a loud gust of guffaws from the woodsmen, and oaths like
whip-cracks from the circle around us, menacing growls as it surged
inward and our men turned to face it. A few citizens pushed through the
outskirts of it and ran away, and in the hush that followed we heard them
calling wildly the names of Father Gibault and Clark and of Vigo himself.
Cowan thrust me past the clerk into the store, where I stood listening to
the little man on the roof, scratching and clutching at the shingles, and
coughing still.

But there was no fight. Shouts of "Monsieur Vigo! Voici Monsieur Vigo!"
were heard, the crowd parted respectfully, and Monsieur Vigo in his
snuff-colored suit stood glancing from Cowan to his pallid clerk. He was
not in the least excited.

"Come in, my frens," he said; "it is too hot in the sun." And he set the
example by stepping over the sill on to the hard-baked earth of the floor
within. Then he spied me. "Ah," he said, "the boy of Monsieur le
Colonel! And how are you called, my son?" he added, patting me kindly.

"Davy, sir," I answered.

"Ha," he said, "and a brave soldier, no doubt."

I was flattered as well as astonished by this attention. But Monsieur
Vigo knew men, and he had given them time to turn around. By this time
Bill Cowan and some of my friends had stooped through the doorway,
followed by a prying Kaskaskian brave and as many Creoles as could crowd
behind them. Monsieur Vigo was surprisingly calm.

"It make hot weather, my frens," said he. "How can I serve you,
messieurs?"

"Hain't the Congress got authority here?" said one.

"I am happy to say," answered Monsieur Vigo, rubbing his hands, "for I
think much of your principle."

"Then," said the man, "we come here to trade with Congress money. Hain't
that money good in Kaskasky?"

There was an anxious pause. Then Monsieur Vigo's eyes twinkled, and he
looked at me.

"And what you say, Davy?" he asked.

"The money would be good if you took it, sir," I said, not knowing what
else to answer.

"Sapristi!" exclaimed Monsieur Vigo, looking hard at me. "Who teach you
that?"

"No one, sir," said I, staring in my turn.

"And if Congress lose, and not pay, where am I, mon petit maitre de la
haute finance?" demanded Monsieur Vigo, with the palms of his hands
outward.

"You will be in good company, sir," said I.

At that he threw back his head and laughed, and Bill Cowan and my friends
laughed with him.

"Good company--c'est la plupart de la vie," said Monsieur Vigo. "Et quel
garcon--what a boy it is!"

"I never seed his beat fer wisdom, Mister Vigo," said Bill Cowan, now in
good humor once more at the prospect of rum and tobacco. And I found out
later that he and the others had actually given to me the credit of this
coup. "He never failed us yet. Hain't that truth, boys? Hain't we
a-goin' on to St. Vincent because he seen the Ha'r Buyer sculped on the
Ohio?"

The rest assented so heartily but withal so gravely, that I am between
laughter and tears over the remembrance of it.

"At noon you come back," said Monsieur Vigo. "I think till then about
rate of exchange, and talk with your Colonel. Davy, you stay here."

I remained, while the others filed out, and at length I was alone with
him and Jules, his clerk.

"Davy, how you like to be trader?" asked Monsieur Vigo.

It was a new thought to me, and I turned it over in my mind. To see the
strange places of the world, and the stranger people; to become a man of
wealth and influence such as Monsieur Vigo; and (I fear I loved it best)
to match my brains with others at a bargain,--I turned it all over
slowly, gravely, in my boyish mind, rubbing the hard dirt on the floor
with the toe of my moccasin. And suddenly the thought came to me that I
was a traitor to my friends, a deserter from the little army that loved
me so well.

"Eh bien?" said Monsieur Vigo.

I shook my head, but in spite of me I felt the tears welling into my eyes
and brushed them away shamefully. At such times of stress some of my
paternal Scotch crept into my speech.

"I will no be leaving Colonel Clark and the boys," I cried, "not for all
the money in the world."

"Congress money?" said Monsieur Vigo, with a queer expression.

It was then I laughed through my tears, and that cemented the friendship
between us. It was a lifelong friendship, though I little suspected it
then.

In the days that followed he never met me on the street that he did not
stop to pass the time of day, and ask me if I had changed my mind. He
came every morning to headquarters, where he and Colonel Clark sat by the
hour with brows knit. Monsieur Vigo was as good as his word, and took
the Congress money, though not at such a value as many would have had
him. I have often thought that we were all children then, and knew
nothing of the ingratitude of republics. Monsieur Vigo took the money,
and was all his life many, many thousand dollars the poorer. Father
Gibault advanced his little store, and lived to feel the pangs of want.
And Colonel Clark? But I must not go beyond the troubles of that summer,
and the problems that vexed our commander. One night I missed him from
the room where we slept, and walking into the orchard found him pacing
there, where the moon cast filmy shadows on the grass. By day as he went
around among the men his brow was unclouded, though his face was stern.
But now I surprised the man so strangely moved that I yearned to comfort
him. He had taken three turns before he perceived me.

"Davy," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"I missed you, sir," I answered, staring at the furrows in his face.

"Come!" he said almost roughly, and seizing my hand, led me back and
forth swiftly through the wet grass for I know not how long. The moon
dipped to the uneven line of the ridge-pole and slipped behind the stone
chimney. All at once he stopped, dropped my hand, and smote both of his
together.

"I WILL hold on, by the eternal!" he cried. "I will let no American read
his history and say that I abandoned this land. Let them desert! If ten
men be found who will stay, I will hold the place for the Republic."

"Will not Virginia and the Congress send you men, sir?" I asked
wonderingly.

He laughed a laugh that was all bitterness.

"Virginia and the Continental Congress know little and care less about
me," he answered. "Some day you will learn that foresight sometimes
comes to men, but never to assemblies. But it is often given to one man
to work out the salvation of a people, and be destroyed for it. Davy, we
have been up too long."

At the morning parade, from my wonted place at the end of the line, I
watched him with astonishment, reviewing the troops as usual. For the
very first day I had crossed the river with Terence, climbed the heights
to the old fort, and returned with my drum. But no sooner had I beaten
the retreat than the men gathered here and there in groups that
smouldered with mutiny, and I noted that some of the officers were
amongst these. Once in a while a sentence like a flaming brand was flung
out. Their time was up, their wives and children for all they knew
sculped by the red varmints, and, by the etarnal, Clark or no man living
could keep them.

"Hi," said one, as I passed, "here's Davy with his drum. He'll be
leadin' us back to Kaintuck in the morning."

"Ay, ay," cried another man in the group, "I reckon he's had his full of
tyranny, too."

I stopped, my face blazing red.

"Shame on you for those words!" I shouted shrilly. "Shame on you, you
fools, to desert the man who would save your wives and children. How are
the redskins to be beaten if they are not cowed in their own country?"
For I had learned much at headquarters.

They stood silent, astonished, no doubt, at the sight of my small figure
a-tremble with anger. I heard Bill Cowan's voice behind me.

"There's truth for ye," he said, "that will slink home when a thing's
half done."

"Ye needn't talk, Bill Cowan; it's well enough for ye. I reckon your
wife'd scare any redskin off her clearin'."

"Many the time she scart me," said Bill Cowan.

And so the matter went by with a laugh. But the grumbling continued, and
the danger was that the French would learn of it. The day passed, yet
the embers blazed not into the flame of open mutiny. But he who has seen
service knows how ominous is the gathering of men here and there, the low
humming talk, the silence when a dissenter passes. There were fights,
too, that had to be quelled by company captains, and no man knew when the
loud quarrel between the two races at Vigo's store would grow into an
ugly battle.

What did Clark intend to do? This was the question that hung in the
minds of mutineer and faithful alike. They knew the desperation of his
case. Without money, save that which the generous Creoles had advanced
upon his personal credit; without apparent resources; without authority,
save that which the weight of his character exerted,--how could he
prevent desertion? They eyed him as he went from place to place about
his business,--erect, thoughtful, undisturbed. Few men dare to set their
will against a multitude when there are no fruits to be won. Columbus
persisted, and found a new world; Clark persisted, and won an empire for
thoughtless generations to enjoy.

That night he slept not at all, but sat, while the candles flickered in
their sockets, poring over maps and papers. I dared not disturb him, but
lay the darkness through with staring eyes. And when the windows on the
orchard side showed a gray square of light, he flung down the parchment
he was reading on the table. It rolled up of itself, and he pushed back
his chair. I heard him call my name, and leaping out of bed, I stood
before him.

"You sleep lightly, Davy," he said, I think to try me.

I did not answer, fearing to tell him that I had been awake watching him.

"I have one friend, at least," said the Colonel.

"You have many, sir," I answered, "as you will find when the time comes."

"The time has come," said he; "to-day I shall be able to count them.
Davy, I want you to do something for me."

"Now, sir?" I answered, overjoyed.

"As soon as the sun strikes that orchard," he said, pointing out of the
window. "You have learned how to keep things to yourself. Now I want
you to impart them to others. Go out, and tell the village that I am
going away."

"That you are going away, sir?" I repeated.

"That I am going away," he said, "with my army, (save the mark!), with my
army and my drummer boy and my paper money. Such is my faith in the
loyalty of the good people of these villages to the American cause, that
I can safely leave the flag flying over their heads with the assurance
that they will protect it."

I stared at him doubtfully, for at times a pleasantry came out of his
bitterness.

"Ay," he said, "go! Have you any love for me?"

"I have, sir," I answered.

"By the Lord, I believe you," he said, and picking up my small hunting
shirt, he flung it at me. "Put it on, and go when the sun rises."

As the first shaft of light over the bluff revealed the diamonds in the
orchard grass I went out, wondering. SUSPECTING would be a better word
for the nature I had inherited. But I had my orders. Terence was pacing
the garden, his leggings turned black with the dew. I looked at him.
Here was a vessel to disseminate.

"Terence, the Colonel is going back to Virginia with the army."

"Him!" cried Terence, dropping the stock of his Deckard to the ground.
"And back to Kaintuckee! Arrah, 'tis a sin to be jokin' before a man has
a bit in his sthummick. Bad cess to yere plisantry before breakfast."

"I'm telling you what the Colonel himself told me," I answered, and ran
on. "Davy, darlin'!" I heard him calling after me as I turned the
corner, but I looked not back.

There was a single sound in the street. A thin, bronzed Indian lad
squatted against the pickets with his fingers on a reed, his cheeks
distended. He broke off with a wild, mournful note to stare at me. A
wisp of smoke stole from a stone chimney, and the smell that corn-pone
and bacon leave was in the air. A bolt was slammed back, a door creaked
and stuck, was flung open, and with a "Va t'en, mechant!" a cotton-clad
urchin was cast out of the house, and fled into the dusty street.
Breathing the morning air in the doorway, stood a young woman in a cotton
gown, a saucepan in hand. She had inquisitive eyes, a pointed, prying
nose, and I knew her to be the village gossip, the wife of Jules,
Monsieur Vigo's clerk. She had the same smattering of English as her
husband. Now she stood regarding me narrowly between half-closed lids.

"A la bonne heure! Que fais-tu donc? What do you do so early?"

"The garrison is getting ready to leave for Kentucky to-day," I answered.

"Ha! Jules! Ecoute-toi! Nom de dieu! Is it true what you say?"

The visage of Jules, surmounted by a nightcap and heavy with sleep,
appeared behind her.

"Ha, e'est Daveed!" he said. "What news have you?"

I repeated, whereupon they both began to lament.

"And why is it?" persisted Jules.

"He has such faith in the loyalty of the Kaskaskians," I answered,
parrot-like.

"Diable!" cried Jules, "we shall perish. We shall be as the Acadians.
And loyalty--she will not save us, no."

Other doors creaked. Other inhabitants came in varied costumes into the
street to hear the news, lamenting. If Clark left, the day of judgment
was at hand for them, that was certain. Between the savage and the
Briton not one stone would be left standing on another. Madame Jules
forgot her breakfast, and fled up the street with the tidings. And then
I made my way to the fort, where the men were gathering about the
camp-fires, talking excitedly. Terence, relieved from duty, had done the
work here.

"And he as little as a fox, wid all that in him," he cried, when he
perceived me walking demurely past the sentry. "Davy, dear, come here
an' tell the b'ys am I a liar."

"Davy's monstrous cute," said Bill Cowan; "I reckon he knows as well as
me the Colonel hain't a-goin' to do no such tomfool thing as leave."

"He is," I cried, for the benefit of some others, "he's fair sick of
grumblers that haven't got the grit to stand by him in trouble."

"By the Lord!" said Bill Cowan, "and I'll not blame him." He turned
fiercely, his face reddening. "Shame on ye all yere lives," he shouted.
"Ye're making the best man that ever led a regiment take the back trail.
Ye'll fetch back to Kaintuck, and draw every redskin in the north woods
suckin' after ye like leaves in a harricane wind. There hain't a man of
ye has the pluck of this little shaver that beats the drum. I wish to
God McChesney was here."

He turned away to cross the parade ground, followed by the faithful
Terence and myself. Others gathered about him: McAndrew, who, for all
his sourness, was true; Swein Poulsson, who would have died for the
Colonel; John Duff, and some twenty more, including Saunders, whose
affection had not been killed, though Clark had nearly hanged him among
the prairies.

"Begob!" said Terence, "Davy has inflooence wid his Excellency. It's
Davy we'll sind, prayin' him not to lave the Frinch alone wid their
loyalty."

It was agreed, and I was to repeat the name of every man that sent me.

Departing on this embassy, I sped out of the gates of the fort. But, as
I approached the little house where Clark lived, the humming of a crowd
came to my ears, and I saw with astonishment that the street was blocked.
It appeared that the whole of the inhabitants of Kaskaskia were packed in
front of the place. Wriggling my way through the people, I had barely
reached the gate when I saw Monsieur Vigo and the priest, three Creole
gentlemen in uniform, and several others coming out of the door. They
stopped, and Monsieur Vigo, raising his hand for silence, made a speech
in French to the people. What he said I could not understand, and when
he had finished they broke up into groups, and many of them departed.
Before I could gain the house, Colonel Clark himself came out with
Captain Helm and Captain Harrod. The Colonel glanced at me and smiled.

"Parade, Davy," he said, and walked on.

I ran back to the fort, and when I had gotten my drum the three companies
were falling into line, the men murmuring in undertones among themselves.
They were brought to attention. Colonel Clark was seen to come out of
the commandant's house, and we watched him furtively as he walked slowly
to his place in front of the line. A tremor of excitement went from
sergeant to drummer boy. The sentries closed the big gates of the fort.

The Colonel stood for a full minute surveying us calmly,--a disquieting
way he had when matters were at a crisis. Then he began to talk.

"I have heard from many sources that you are dissatisfied, that you wish
to go back to Kentucky. If that be so, I say to you, 'Go, and God be
with you.' I will hinder no man. We have taken a brave and generous
people into the fold of the Republic, and they have shown their
patriotism by giving us freely of their money and stores." He raised his
voice. "They have given the last proof of that patriotism this day.
Yes, they have come to me and offered to take your places, to finish the
campaign which you have so well begun and wish to abandon. To-day I
shall enroll their militia under the flag for which you have fought."

When he had ceased speaking a murmur ran through the ranks.

"But if there be any," he said, "who have faith in me and in the cause
for which we have come here, who have the perseverance and the courage to
remain, I will reenlist them. The rest of you shall march for Kentucky,"
he cried, "as soon as Captain Bowman's company can be relieved at
Cahokia. The regiment is dismissed."

For a moment they remained in ranks, as though stupefied. It was Cowan
who stepped out first, snatched his coonskin hat from his head, and waved
it in the air.

"Huzzay for Colonel Clark!" he roared. "I'll foller him into Canady, and
stand up to my lick log."

They surrounded Bill Cowan, not the twenty which had flocked to him in
the morning, but four times twenty, and they marched in a body to the
commandant's house to be reenlisted. The Colonel stood by the door, and
there came a light in his eyes as he regarded us. They cheered him
again.

"Thank you, lads," he said; "remember, we may have to whistle for our
pay."

"Damn the pay!" cried Bill Cowan, and we echoed the sentiment.

"We'll see what can be done about land grants," said the Colonel, and he
turned away.

At dusk that evening I sat on the back door-step, by the orchard,
cleaning his rifle. The sound of steps came from the little passage
behind me, and a hand was on my head.

"Davee," said a voice (it was Monsieur Vigo's), "do you know what is un
coup d'e'tat?"

"No, sir."

"Ha! You execute one to-day. Is it not so, Monsieur le Colonel?"

"I reckon he was in the secret," said Colonel Clark. "Did you think I
meant to leave Kaskaskia, Davy?"

"No, sir."

"He is not so easy fool," Monsieur Vigo put in. "He tell me paper money
good if I take it. C'est la haute finance!"

Colonel Clark laughed.

"And why didn't you think I meant to leave?" said he.

"Because you bade me go out and tell everybody," I answered. "What you
really mean to do you tell no one."

"Nom du bon Dieu!" exclaimed Monsieur Vigo.

Yesterday Colonel Clark had stood alone, the enterprise for which he had
risked all on the verge of failure. By a master-stroke his ranks were
repleted, his position recovered, his authority secured once more.

Few men recognize genius when they see it. Monsieur Vigo was not one of
these.



CHAPTER XVI

DAVY GOES TO CAHOKIA

I should make but a poor historian, for I have not stuck to my
chronology. But as I write, the vivid recollections are those that I set
down. I have forgotten two things of great importance. First, the
departure of Father Gibault with several Creole gentlemen and a spy of
Colonel Clark's for Vincennes, and their triumphant return in August.
The sacrifice of the good priest had not been in vain, and he came back
with the joyous news of a peaceful conquest. The stars and stripes now
waved over the fort, and the French themselves had put it there. And the
vast stretch of country from that place westward to the Father of Waters
was now American.

And that brings me to the second oversight. The surprise and conquest of
Cahokia by Bowman and his men was like that of Kaskaskia. And the French
there were loyal, too, offering their militia for service in the place of
those men of Bowman's company who would not reenlist. These came to
Kaskaskia to join our home-goers, and no sooner had the hundred marched
out of the gate and taken up their way for Kentucky than Colonel Clark
began the drilling of the new troops.

Captain Leonard Helm was sent to take charge of Vincennes, and Captain
Montgomery set out across the mountains for Williamsburg with letters
praying the governor of Virginia to come to our assistance.

For another cloud had risen in the horizon: another problem for Clark to
face of greater portent than all the others. A messenger from Captain
Bowman at Cohos came riding down the street on a scraggly French pony,
and pulled up before headquarters. The messenger was Sergeant Thomas
McChesney, and his long legs almost reached the ground on either side of
the little beast. Leaping from the saddle, he seized me in his arms, set
me down, and bade me tell Colonel Clark of his arrival.

It was a sultry August morning. Within the hour Colonel Clark and Tom
and myself were riding over the dusty trace that wound westward across
the common lands of the village, which was known as the Fort Chartres
road. The heat-haze shimmered in the distance, and there was no sound in
plain or village save the tinkle of a cowbell from the clumps of shade.
Colonel Clark rode twenty paces in front, alone, his head bowed with
thinking.

"They're coming into Cahokia as thick as bees out'n a gum, Davy," said
Tom; "seems like there's thousands of 'em. Nothin' will do 'em but they
must see the Colonel,--the varmints. And they've got patience, they'll
wait thar till the b'ars git fat. I reckon they 'low Clark's got the
armies of Congress behind him. If they knowed," said Tom, with a
chuckle, "if they knowed that we'd only got seventy of the boys and some
hundred Frenchies in the army! I reckon the Colonel's too cute for 'em."

The savages in Cahokia were as the leaves of the forest. Curiosity, that
mainspring of the Indian character, had brought the chiefs, big and
little, to see with their own eyes the great Captain of the Long Knives.
In vain had the faithful Bowman put them off. They would wait. Clark
must come. And Clark was coming, for he was not the man to quail at such
a crisis. For the crux of the whole matter was here. And if he failed
to impress them with his power, with the might of the Congress for which
he fought, no man of his would ever see Kentucky again.

As we rode through the bottom under the pecan trees we talked of Polly
Ann, Tom and I, and of our little home by the Salt River far to the
southward, where we would live in peace when the campaign was over. Tom
had written her, painfully enough, an affectionate scrawl, which he sent
by one of Captain Linn's men. And I, too, had written. My letter had
been about Tom, and how he had become a sergeant, and what a favorite he
was with Bowman and the Colonel. Poor Polly Ann! She could not write,
but a runner from Harrodstown who was a friend of Tom's had carried all
the way to Cahokia, in the pocket with his despatches, a fold of
nettle-bark linen. Tom pulled it from the bosom of his hunting shirt to
show me, and in it was a little ring of hair like unto the finest spun
red-gold. This was the message Polly Ann had sent,--a message from
little Tom as well.

At Prairie du Rocher, at St. Philippe, the inhabitants lined the streets
to do homage to this man of strange power who rode, unattended and
unafraid, to the council of the savage tribes which had terrorized his
people of Kentucky. From the ramparts of Fort Chartres (once one of the
mighty chain of strongholds to protect a new France, and now deserted
like Massacre), I gazed for the first time in awe at the turgid flood of
the Mississippi, and at the lands of the Spanish king beyond. With never
ceasing fury the river tore at his clay banks and worried the green
islands that braved his charge. And my boyish fancy pictured to itself
the monsters which might lie hidden in his muddy depths.

We lay that night in the open at a spring on the bluffs, and the next
morning beheld the church tower of Cahokia. A little way from the town
we perceived an odd gathering on the road, the yellowed and weathered
hunting shirts of Bowman's company mixed with the motley dress of the
Creole volunteers. Some of these gentlemen wore the costume of coureurs
du bois, others had odd regimental coats and hats which had seen much
service. Besides the military was a sober deputation of citizens, and
hovering behind the whole a horde of curious, blanketed braves, come to
get a first glimpse of the great white captain. So escorted, we crossed
at the mill, came to a shady street that faced the little river, and
stopped at the stone house where Colonel Clark was to abide.

On that day, and for many days more, that street was thronged with
warriors. Chiefs in gala dress strutted up and down, feathered and
plumed and blanketed, smeared with paint, bedecked with rude
jewellery,--earrings and bracelets. From the remote forests of the north
they had come, where the cold winds blow off the blue lakes; from the
prairies to the east; from the upper running waters, where the
Mississippi flows clear and undefiled by the muddy flood; from the
villages and wigwams of the sluggish Wabash; and from the sandy, piny
country between the great northern seas where Michilimackinac stands
guard alone,--Sacs and Foxes, Chippeways and Maumies and Missesogies,
Puans and Pottawattomies, chiefs and medicine men.

Well might the sleep of the good citizens be disturbed, and the women
fear to venture to the creek with their linen and their paddles!

The lives of these people hung in truth upon a slender thing--the bearing
of one man. All day long the great chiefs sought an audience with him,
but he sent them word that matters would be settled in the council that
was to come. All day long the warriors lined the picket fence in front
of the house, and more than once Tom McChesney roughly shouldered a lane
through them that timid visitors might pass. Like a pack of wolves, they
watched narrowly for any sign of weakness. As for Tom, they were to him
as so many dogs.

"Ye varmints!" he cried, "I'll take a blizz'rd at ye if ye don't keep the
way clear."

At that they would give back grudgingly with a chorus of grunts, only to
close in again as tightly as before. But they came to have a wholesome
regard for the sun-browned man with the red hair who guarded the
Colonel's privacy. The boy who sat on the door-step, the son of the
great Pale Face Chief (as they called me), was a never ending source of
comment among them. Once Colonel Clark sent for me. The little front
room of this house was not unlike the one we had occupied at Kaskaskia.
It had bare walls, a plain table and chairs, and a crucifix in the
corner. It served as dining room, parlor, bedroom, for there was a
pallet too. Now the table was covered with parchments and papers, and
beside Colonel Clark sat a grave gentleman of about his own age. As I
came into the room Colonel Clark relaxed, turned toward this gentleman,
and said:--

"Monsieur Gratiot, behold my commissary-general, my strategist, my
financier." And Monsieur Gratiot smiled. He struck me as a man who
never let himself go sufficiently to laugh.

"Ah," he said, "Vigo has told me how he settled the question of paper
money. He might do something for the Congress in the East."

"Davy is a Scotchman, like John Law," said the Colonel, "and he is a
master at perceiving a man's character and business.

"What would you call me, at a venture, Davy?" asked Monsieur Gratiot.

He spoke excellent English, with only a slight accent.

"A citizen of the world, like Monsieur Vigo," I answered at a hazard.

"Pardieu!" said Monsieur Gratiot, "you are not far away. Like Monsieur
Vigo I keep a store here at Cahokia. Like Monsieur Vigo, I have
travelled much in my day. Do you know where Switzerland is, Davy?"

I did not.

"It is a country set like a cluster of jewels in the heart of Europe,"
said Monsieur Gratiot, "and there are mountains there that rise among the
clouds and are covered with perpetual snows. And when the sun sets on
those snows they are rubies, and the skies above them sapphire."

"I was born amongst the mountains, sir," I answered, my pulse quickening
at his description, "but they were not so high as those you speak of."

"Then," said Monsieur Gratiot, "you can understand a little my sorrow as
a lad when I left it. From Switzerland I went to a foggy place called
London, and thence I crossed the ocean to the solemn forests of the north
of Canada, where I was many years, learning the characters of these
gentlemen who are looking in upon us." And he waved his arm at the line
of peering red faces by the pickets. Monsieur Gratiot smiled at Clark.
"And there's another point of resemblance between myself and Monsieur
Vigo."

"Have you taken the paper money?" I demanded.

Monsieur Gratiot slapped his linen breeches. "That I have," and this
time I thought he was going to laugh. But he did not, though his eyes
sparkled. "And do you think that the good Congress will ever repay me,
Davy?"

"No, sir," said I.

"Peste!" exclaimed Monsieur Gratiot, but he did not seem to be offended
or shaken.

"Davy," said Colonel Clark, "we have had enough of predictions for the
present. Fetch this letter to Captain Bowman at the garrison up the
street." He handed me the letter. "Are you afraid of the Indians?"

"If I were, sir, I would not show it," I said, for he had encouraged me
to talk freely to him.

"Avast!" cried the Colonel, as I was going out. "And why not?"

"If I show that I am not afraid of them, sir, they will think that you
are the less so."

"There you are for strategy, Gratiot," said Colonel Clark, laughing.
"Get out, you rascal."

Tom was more concerned when I appeared.

"Don't pester 'em, Davy," said he; "fer God's sake don't pester 'em.
They're spoilin' fer a fight. Stand back thar, ye critters," he shouted,
brandishing his rifle in their faces. "Ugh, I reckon it wouldn't take a
horse or a dog to scent ye to-day. Rank b'ar's oil! Kite along, Davy."

Clutching the letter tightly, I slipped between the narrowed ranks, and
gained the middle of the street, not without a quickened beat of my
heart. Thence I sped, dodging this group and that, until I came to the
long log house that was called the garrison. Here our men were
stationed, where formerly a squad from an English regiment was quartered.
I found Captain Bowman, delivered the letter, and started back again
through the brown, dusty street, which lay in the shade of the great
forest trees that still lined it, doubling now and again to avoid an
idling brave that looked bent upon mischief. For a single mischance
might set the tide running to massacre. I was nearing the gate again,
the dust flying from my moccasined feet, the sight of the stalwart Tom
giving me courage again. Suddenly, with the deftness of a panther, an
Indian shot forward and lifted me high in his arms. To this day I recall
my terror as I dangled in mid-air, staring into a hideous face. By
intuition I kicked him in the stomach with all my might, and with a howl
of surprise and rage his fingers gripped into my flesh. The next thing I
remember was being in the dust, suffocated by that odor which he who has
known it can never forget. A medley of discordant cries was in my ears.
Then I was snatched up, bumped against heads and shoulders, and deposited
somewhere. Now it was Tom's face that was close to mine, and the light
of a fierce anger was in his blue eyes.

"Did they hurt ye, Davy?" he asked.

I shook my head. Before I could speak he was at the gate again,
confronting the mob of savages that swayed against the fence, and the
street was filled with running figures. A voice of command that I knew
well came from behind me. It was Colonel Clark's.

"Stay where you are, McChesney!" he shouted, and Tom halted with his hand
on the latch.

"With your permission, I will speak to them," said Monsieur Gratiot, who
had come out also.

I looked up at him, and he was as calm as when he had joked with me a
quarter of an hour since.

"Very well," said Clark, briefly.

Monsieur Gratiot surveyed them scornfully.

"Where is the Hungry Wolf, who speaks English?" he said.

There was a stir in the rear ranks, and a lean savage with abnormal cheek
bones pushed forward.

"Hungry Wolf here," he said with a grunt.

"The Hungry Wolf knew the French trader at Michilimackinac," said
Monsieur Gratiot. "He knows that the French trader's word is a true
word. Let the Hungry Wolf tell his companions that the Chief of the Long
Knives is very angry."

The Hungry Wolf turned, and began to speak. His words, hoarse and
resonant, seemed to come from the depths of his body. Presently he
paused, and there came an answer from the fiend who had seized me. After
that there were many grunts, and the Hungry Wolf turned again.

"The North Wind mean no harm," he answered. "He play with the son of the
Great White Chief, and his belly is very sore where the Chief's son
kicked him."

"The Chief of the Long Knives will consider the offence," said Monsieur
Gratiot, and retired into the house with Colonel Clark. For a full five
minutes the Indians waited, impassive. And then Monsieur Gratiot
reappeared, alone.

"The Chief of the Long Knives is mercifully inclined to forgive," he
said. "It was in play. But there must be no more play with the Chief's
son. And the path to the Great Chief's presence must be kept clear."

Again the Hungry Wolf translated. The North Wind grunted and departed in
silence, followed by many of his friends. And indeed for a while after
that the others kept a passage clear to the gate.

As for the son of the Great White Chief, he sat for a long time that
afternoon beside the truck patch of the house. And presently he slipped
out by a byway into the street again, among the savages. His heart was
bumping in his throat, but a boyish reasoning told him that he must show
no fear. And that day he found what his Colonel had long since learned
to be true that in courage is the greater safety. The power of the Great
White Chief was such that he allowed his son to go forth alone, and
feared not for his life. Even so Clark himself walked among them, nor
looked to right or left.

Two nights Colonel Clark sat through, calling now on this man and now on
that, and conning the treaties which the English had made with the
various tribes--ay, and French and Spanish treaties too--until he knew
them all by heart. There was no haste in what he did, no uneasiness in
his manner. He listened to the advice of Monsieur Gratiot and other
Creole gentlemen of weight, to the Spanish officers who came in their
regimentals from St. Louis out of curiosity to see how this man would
treat with the tribes. For he spoke of his intentions to none of them,
and gained the more respect by it. Within the week the council began;
and the scene of the great drama was a field near the village, the
background of forest trees. Few plays on the world's stage have held
such suspense, few battles such excitement for those who watched. Here
was the spectacle of one strong man's brain pitted against the combined
craft of the wilderness. In the midst of a stretch of waving grass was a
table, and a young man of six-and-twenty sat there alone. Around him
were ringed the gathered tribes, each chief in the order of his
importance squatted in the inner circle, their blankets making patches of
bright color against the green. Behind the tribes was the little group
of hunting shirts, the men leaning on the barrels of their long rifles,
indolent but watchful. Here and there a gay uniform of a Spanish or
Creole officer, and behind these all the population of the village that
dared to show itself.

The ceremonies began with the kindling of the council fire,--a rite
handed down through unknown centuries of Indian usage. By it nations had
been made and unmade, broad lands passed, even as they now might pass.
The yellow of its crackling flames was shamed by the summer sun, and the
black smoke of it was wafted by the south wind over the forest. Then for
three days the chiefs spoke, and a man listened, unmoved. The sound of
these orations, wild and fearful to my boyish ear, comes back to me now.
Yet there was a cadence in it, a music of notes now falling, now rising
to a passion and intensity that thrilled us.

Bad birds flying through the land (the British agents) had besought them
to take up the bloody hatchet. They had sinned. They had listened to
the lies which the bad birds had told of the Big Knives, they had taken
their presents. But now the Great Spirit in His wisdom had brought
themselves and the Chief of the Big Knives together. Therefore (suiting
the action to the word) they stamped on the bloody belt, and rent in
pieces the emblems of the White King across the water. So said the
interpreters, as the chiefs one after another tore the miniature British
flags which had been given them into bits. On the evening of the third
day the White Chief rose in his chair, gazing haughtily about him. There
was a deep silence.

"Tell your chiefs," he said, "tell your chiefs that to-morrow I will give
them an answer. And upon the manner in which they receive that answer
depends the fate of your nations. Good night."

They rose and, thronging around him, sought to take his hand. But Clark
turned from them.

"Peace is not yet come," he said sternly. "It is time to take the hand
when the heart is given with it."

A feathered headsman of one of the tribes gave back with dignity and
spoke.

"It is well said by the Great Chief of the Pale Faces," he answered;
"these in truth are not the words of a man with a double tongue."

So they sought their quarters for the night, and suspense hung breathless
over the village.

There were many callers at the stone house that evening,--Spanish
officers, Creole gentlemen, an English Canadian trader or two. With my
elbow on the sill of the open window I watched them awhile, listening
with a boy's eagerness to what they had to say of the day's doings. They
disputed amongst themselves in various degrees of English as to the
manner of treating the red man,--now gesticulating, now threatening, now
seizing a rolled parchment treaty from the table. Clark sat alone, a
little apart, silent save a word now and then in a low tone to Monsieur
Gratiot or Captain Bowman. Here was an odd assortment of the races which
had overrun the new world. At intervals some disputant would pause in
his talk to kill a mosquito or fight away a moth or a June-bug, but
presently the argument reached such a pitch that the mosquitoes fed
undisturbed.

"You have done much, sir," said the Spanish commandant of St. Louis, "but
the savage, he will never be content without present. He will never be
won without present."

Clark was one of those men who are perforce listened to when they begin
to speak.

"Captain de Leyba," said he, "I know not what may be the present policy
of his Spanish Majesty with McGillivray and his Creeks in the south, but
this I do believe," and he brought down his fist among the papers, "that
the old French and Spanish treaties were right in principle. Here are
copies of the English treaties that I have secured, and in them thousands
of sovereigns have been thrown away. They are so much waste paper.
Gentlemen, the Indians are children. If you give them presents, they
believe you to be afraid of them. I will deal with them without
presents; and if I had the gold of the Bank of England stored in the
garrison there, they should not touch a piece of it."

But Captain de Leyba, incredulous, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Por Dios," he cried, "whoever hear of one man and fifty militia subduing
the northern tribes without a piastre?"

After a while the Colonel called me in, and sent me speeding across the
little river with a note to a certain Mr. Brady, whose house was not far
away. Like many another citizen of Cahokia, Mr. Brady was terror-ridden.
A party of young Puan bucks had decreed it to be their pleasure to encamp
in Mr. Brady's yard, to peer through the shutters into Mr. Brady's house,
to enjoy themselves by annoying Mr. Brady's family and others as much as
possible. During the Indian occupation of Cahokia this band had gained a
well-deserved reputation for mischief; and chief among them was the North
Wind himself, whom I had done the honor to kick in the stomach. To-night
they had made a fire in this Mr. Brady's flower-garden, over which they
were cooking venison steaks. And, as I reached the door, the North Wind
spied me, grinned, rubbed his stomach, made a false dash at me that
frightened me out of my wits, and finally went through the pantomime of
scalping me. I stood looking at him with my legs apart, for the son of
the Great Chief must not run away. And I marked that the North Wind had
two great ornamental daubs like shutter-fastenings painted on his cheeks.
I sniffed preparation, too, on his followers, and I was sure they were
getting ready for some new deviltry. I handed the note to Mr. Brady
through the crack of the door that he vouchsafed to me, and when he had
slammed and bolted me out, I ran into the street and stood for some time
behind the trunk of a big hickory, watching the followers of the North
Wind. Some were painting themselves, others cleaning their rifles and
sharpening their scalping knives. All jabbered unceasingly. Now and
again a silent brave passed, paused a moment to survey them gravely,
grunted an answer to something they would fling at him, and went on. At
length arrived three chiefs whom I knew to be high in the councils. The
North Wind came out to them, and the four blanketed forms stood
silhouetted between me and the fire for a quarter of an hour. By this
time I was sure of a plot, and fled away to another tree for fear of
detection. At length stalked through the street the Hungry Wolf, the
interpreter. I knew this man to be friendly to Clark, and I acted on
impulse. He gave a grunt of surprise when I halted before him. I made
up my mind.

"The son of the Great Chief knows that the Puans have wickedness in their
hearts to-night," I said; "the tongue of the Hungry Wolf does not lie."

The big Indian drew back with another grunt, and the distant firelight
flashed on his eyes as on polished black flints.

"Umrrhh! Is the Pale Face Chief's son a prophet?"

"The anger of the Pale Face Chief and of his countrymen is as the
hurricane," I said, scarce believing my own ears. For a lad is imitative
by nature, and I had not listened to the interpreters for three days
without profit.

The Hungry Wolf grunted again, after which he was silent for a long time.
Then he said:--

"Let the Chief of the Long Knives have guard tonight." And suddenly he
was gone into the darkness.

I waded the creek and sped to Clark. He was alone now, the shutters of
the room closed. And as I came in I could scarce believe that he was the
same masterful man I had seen at the council that day, and at the
conference an hour gone. He was once more the friend at whose feet I sat
in private, who talked to me as a companion and a father.

"Where have you been, Davy?" he asked. And then, "What is it, my lad?"

I crept close to him and told him in a breathless undertone, and I knew
that I was shaking the while. He listened gravely, and when I had
finished laid a firm hand on my head.

"There," he said, "you are a brave lad, and a canny."

He thought a minute, his hand still resting on my head, and then rose and
led me to the back door of the house. It was near midnight, and the
sounds of the place were stilling, the crickets chirping in the grass.

"Run to Captain Bowman and tell him to send ten men to this door. But
they must come man by man, to escape detection. Do you understand?" I
nodded and was starting, but he still held me. "God bless you, Davy, you
are a brave boy."

He closed the door softly and I sped away, my moccasins making no sound
on the soft dirt. I reached the garrison, was challenged by Jack
Terrill, the guard, and brought by him to Bowman's room. The Captain
sat, undressed, at the edge of his bed. But he was a man of action, and
strode into the long room where his company was sleeping and gave his
orders without delay.

Half an hour later there was no light in the village. The Colonel's
headquarters were dark, but in the kitchen a dozen tall men were waiting.



CHAPTER XVII

THE SACRIFICE

So far as the world knew, the Chief of the Long Knives slept peacefully
in his house. And such was his sense of power that not even a sentry
paced the street without. For by these things is the Indian mind
impressed. In the tiny kitchen a dozen men and a boy tried to hush their
breathing, and sweltered. For it was very hot, and the pent-up odor of
past cookings was stifling to men used to the open. In a corner, hooded
under a box, was a lighted lantern, and Tom McChesney stood ready to
seize it at the first alarm. On such occasions the current of time runs
sluggish. Thrice our muscles were startled into tenseness by the baying
of a hound, and once a cock crew out of all season. For the night was
cloudy and pitchy black, and the dawn as far away as eternity.

Suddenly I knew that every man in the room was on the alert, for the
skilled frontiersman, when watchful, has a sixth sense. None of them
might have told you what he had heard. The next sound was the faint
creaking of Colonel Clark's door as it opened. Wrapping a blanket around
the lantern, Tom led the way, and we massed ourselves behind the front
door. Another breathing space, and then the war-cry of the Puans broke
hideously on the night, and children woke, crying, from their sleep. In
two bounds our little detachment was in the street, the fire spouting red
from the Deckards, faint, shadowy forms fading along the line of trees.
After that an uproar of awakening, cries here and there, a drum beating
madly for the militia. The dozen flung themselves across the stream, I
hot in their wake, through Mr. Brady's gate, which was open; and there
was a scene of sweet tranquillity under the lantern's rays,--the North
Wind and his friends wrapped in their blankets and sleeping the sleep of
the just.

"Damn the sly varmints," cried Tom, and he turned over the North Wind
with his foot, as a log.

With a grunt of fury the Indian shed his blanket and scrambled to his
feet, and stood glaring at us through his paint. But suddenly he met the
fixed sternness of Clark's gaze, and his own shifted. By this time his
followers were up. The North Wind raised his hands to heaven in token of
his innocence, and then spread his palms outward. Where was the proof?

"Look!" I cried, quivering with excitement; "look, their leggings and
moccasins are wet!"

"There's no devil if they beant!" said Tom, and there was a murmur of
approval from the other men.

"The boy is right," said the Colonel, and turned to Tom. "Sergeant, have
the chiefs put in irons." He swung on his heel, and without more ado
went back to his house to bed. The North Wind and two others were easily
singled out as the leaders, and were straightway escorted to the garrison
house, their air of injured innocence availing them not a whit. The
militia was dismissed, and the village was hushed once more.

But all night long the chiefs went to and fro, taking counsel among
themselves. What would the Chief of the Pale Faces do?

The morning came with a cloudy, damp dawning. Within a decent time (for
the Indian is decorous) blanketed deputations filled the archways under
the trees and waited there as the minutes ran into hours. The Chief of
the Long Knives surveyed the morning from his door-step, and his eyes
rested on a solemn figure at the gate. It was the Hungry Wolf. Sorrow
was in his voice, and he bore messages from the twenty great chiefs who
stood beyond. They were come to express their abhorrence of the night's
doings, of which they were as innocent as the deer of the forest.

"Let the Hungry Wolf tell the chiefs," said Colonel Clark, briefly, "that
the council is the place for talk."

And he went back into the house again.

Then he bade me run to Captain Bowman with an order to bring the North
Wind and his confederates to the council field in irons.

The day followed the promise of the dawn. The clouds hung low, and now
and again great drops struck the faces of the people in the field. And
like the heavens, the assembly itself was charged with we knew not what.
Was it peace or war? As before, a white man sat with supreme
indifference at a table, and in front of him three most unhappy chiefs
squatted in the grass, the shame of their irons hidden under the blanket
folds. Audacity is truly a part of the equipment of genius. To have
rescued the North Wind and his friends would have been child's play; to
have retired from the council with threats of war, as easy.

And yet they craved pardon.

One chief after another rose with dignity in the ring and came to the
table to plead. An argument deserving mention was that the North Wind
had desired to test the friendship of the French for the Big Knives,--set
forth without a smile. To all pleaders Colonel Clark shook his head.
He, being a warrior, cared little whether such people were friends or
foes. He held them in the hollow of his hand. And at length they came
no more.

The very clouds seemed to hang motionless when he rose to speak, and you
who will may read in his memoir what he said. The Hungry Wolf caught the
spirit of it, and was eloquent in his own tongue, and no word of it was
lost. First he told them of the causes of war, of the thirteen council
fires with the English, and in terms that the Indian mind might grasp,
and how their old father, the French King, had joined the Big Knives in
this righteous fight.

"Warriors," said he, "here is a bloody belt and a white one; take which
you choose. But behave like men. Should it be the bloody path, you may
leave this town in safety to join the English, and we shall then see
which of us can stain our shirts with the most blood. But, should it be
the path of peace as brothers of the Big Knives and of their friends the
French, and then you go to your homes and listen to the bad birds, you
will then no longer deserve to be called men and warriors,--but creatures
of two tongues, which ought to be destroyed. Let us then part this
evening in the hope that the Great Spirit will bring us together again
with the sun as brothers."

So the council broke up. White man and red went trooping into town,
staring curiously at the guard which was leading the North Wind and his
friends to another night of meditation. What their fate would be no man
knew. Many thought the tomahawk.

That night the citizens of the little village of Pain Court, as St. Louis
was called, might have seen the sky reddened in the eastward. It was the
loom of many fires at Cahokia, and around them the chiefs of the forty
tribes--all save the three in durance vile--were gathered in solemn talk.
Would they take the bloody belt or the white one? No man cared so little
as the Pale Face Chief. When their eyes were turned from the fitful
blaze of the logs, the gala light of many candles greeted them. And
above the sound of their own speeches rose the merrier note of the
fiddle. The garrison windows shone like lanterns, and behind these
Creole and backwoodsman swung the village ladies in the gay French
dances. The man at whose bidding this merrymaking was held stood in a
corner watching with folded arms, and none to look at him might know that
he was playing for a stake.

The troubled fires of the Indians had died to embers long before the
candles were snuffed in the garrison house and the music ceased.

The sun himself was pleased to hail that last morning of the great
council, and beamed with torrid tolerance upon the ceremony of kindling
the greatest of the fires. On this morning Colonel Clark did not sit
alone, but was surrounded by men of weight,--by Monsieur Gratiot and
other citizens, Captain Bowman and the Spanish officers. And when at
length the brush crackled and the flames caught the logs, three of the
mightiest chiefs arose. The greatest, victor in fifty tribal wars, held
in his hand the white belt of peace. The second bore a long-stemmed pipe
with a huge bowl. And after him, with measured steps, a third came with
a smoking censer,--the sacred fire with which to kindle the pipe.
Halting before Clark, he first swung the censer to the heavens, then to
the earth, then to all the spirits of the air,--calling these to witness
that peace was come at last,--and finally to the Chief of the Long Knives
and to the gentlemen of dignity about his person. Next the Indian
turned, and spoke to his brethren in measured, sonorous tones. He bade
them thank that Great Spirit who had cleared the sky and opened their
ears and hearts that they might receive the truth,--who had laid bare to
their understanding the lies of the English. Even as these English had
served the Big Knives, so might they one day serve the Indians.
Therefore he commanded them to cast the tomahawk into the river, and when
they should return to their land to drive the evil birds from it. And
they must send their wise men to Kaskaskia to hear the words of wisdom of
the Great White Chief, Clark. He thanked the Great Spirit for this
council fire which He had kindled at Cahokia.

Lifting the bowl of the censer, in the eyes of all the people he drew in
a long whiff to bear witness of peace. After him the pipe went the
interminable rounds of the chiefs. Colonel Clark took it, and puffed;
Captain Bowman puffed,--everybody puffed.

"Davy must have a pull," cried Tom; and even the chiefs smiled as I
coughed and sputtered, while my friends roared with laughter. It gave me
no great notion of the fragrance of tobacco. And then came such a
hand-shaking and grunting as a man rarely sees in a lifetime.

There was but one disquieting question left: What was to become of the
North Wind and his friends? None dared mention the matter at such a
time. But at length, as the day wore on to afternoon, the Colonel was
seen to speak quietly to Captain Bowman, and several backwoodsmen went
off toward the town. And presently a silence fell on the company as they
beheld the dejected three crossing the field with a guard. They were led
before Clark, and when he saw them his face hardened to sternness.

"It is only women who watch to catch a bear sleeping," he said. "The Big
Knives do not kill women. I shall give you meat for your journey home,
for women cannot hunt. If you remain here, you shall be treated as
squaws. Set the women free."

Tom McChesney cast off their irons. As for Clark, he began to talk
immediately with Monsieur Gratiot, as though he had dismissed them from
his mind. And their agitation was a pitiful thing to see. In vain they
pressed about him, in vain they even pulled the fringe of his shirt to
gain his attention. And then they went about among the other chiefs, but
these dared not intercede. Uneasiness was written on every man's face,
and the talk went haltingly. But Clark was serenity itself. At length
with a supreme effort they plucked up courage to come again to the table,
one holding out the belt of peace, and the other the still smouldering
pipe.

Clark paused in his talk. He took the belt, and flung it away over the
heads of those around him. He seized the pipe, and taking up his sword
from the table drew it, and with one blow clave the stem in half. There
was no anger in either act, but much deliberation.

"The Big Knives," he said scornfully, "do not treat with women."

The pleading began again, the Hungry Wolf interpreting with tremors of
earnestness. Their lives were spared, but to what purpose, since the
White Chief looked with disfavor upon them? Let him know that bad men
from Michilimackinac put the deed into their hearts.

"When the Big Knives come upon such people in the wilderness," Clark
answered, "they shoot them down that they may not eat the deer. But they
have never talked of it."

He turned from them once more; they went away in a dejection to wring our
compassion, and we thought the matter ended at last. The sun was falling
low, the people beginning to move away, when, to the astonishment of all,
the culprits were seen coming back again. With them were two young men
of their own nation. The Indians opened up a path for them to pass
through, and they came as men go to the grave. So mournful, so
impressive withal, that the crowd fell into silence again, and the
Colonel turned his eyes. The two young men sank down on the ground
before him and shrouded their heads in their blankets.

"What is this?" Clark demanded.

The North Wind spoke in a voice of sorrow:--

"An atonement to the Great White Chief for the sins of our nation.
Perchance the Great Chief will deign to strike a tomahawk into their
heads, that our nation may be saved in war by the Big Knives." And the
North Wind held forth the pipe once more.

"I have nothing to say to you," said Clark.

Still they stood irresolute, their minds now bereft of expedients. And
the young men sat motionless on the ground. As Clark talked they peered
out from under their blankets, once, twice, thrice. He was still talking
to the wondering Monsieur Gratiot. But no other voice was heard, and the
eyes of all were turned on him in amazement. But at last, when the drama
had risen to the pitch of unbearable suspense, he looked down upon the
two miserable pyramids at his feet, and touched them. The blankets
quivered.

"Stand up," said the Colonel, "and uncover."

They rose, cast the blankets from them, and stood with a stoic dignity
awaiting his pleasure. Wonderful, fine-limbed men they were, and for
the first time Clark's eyes were seen to kindle.

"I thank the Great Spirit," said he, in a loud voice, "that I have found
men among your nation. That I have at last discovered the real chiefs of
your people. Had they sent such as you to treat with me in the beginning
all might have been well. Go back to your people as their chiefs, and
tell them that through you the Big Knives have granted peace to your
nation."

Stepping forward, he grasped them each by the hand, and, despite
training, joy shone in their faces, while a long-drawn murmur arose from
the assemblage. But Clark did not stop there. He presented them to
Captain Bowman and to the French and Spanish gentlemen present, and they
were hailed by their own kind as chiefs of their nation. To cap it all
our troops, backwoodsmen and Creole militia, paraded in line on the
common, and fired a salute in their honor.

Thus did Clark gain the friendship of the forty tribes in the Northwest
country.



CHAPTER XVIII

"AN' YE HAD BEEN WHERE I HAD BEEN"

We went back to Kaskaskia, Colonel Clark, Tom, and myself, and a great
weight was lifted from our hearts.

A peaceful autumn passed, and we were happy save when we thought of those
we had left at home. There is no space here to tell of many incidents.
Great chiefs who had not been to the council came hundreds of leagues
across wide rivers that they might see with their own eyes this man who
had made peace without gold, and these had to be amused and entertained.

The apples ripened, and were shaken to the ground by the winds. The good
Father Gibault, true to his promise, strove to teach me French. Indeed,
I picked up much of that language in my intercourse with the inhabitants
of Kaskaskia. How well I recall that simple life,--its dances, its
songs, and the games with the laughing boys and girls on the common! And
the good people were very kind to the orphan that dwelt with Colonel
Clark, the drummer boy of his regiment.

But winter brought forebodings. When the garden patches grew bare and
brown, and the bleak winds from across the Mississippi swept over the
common, untoward tidings came like water dripping from a roof, bit by
bit. And day by day Colonel Clark looked graver. The messengers he had
sent to Vincennes came not back, and the coureurs and traders from time
to time brought rumors of a British force gathering like a thundercloud
in the northeast. Monsieur Vigo himself, who had gone to Vincennes on
his own business, did not return. As for the inhabitants, some of them
who had once bowed to us with a smile now passed with faces averted.

The cold set the miry roads like cement, in ruts and ridges. A flurry of
snow came and powdered the roofs even as the French loaves are powdered.

It was January. There was Colonel Clark on a runt of an Indian pony; Tom
McChesney on another, riding ahead, several French gentlemen seated on
stools in a two-wheeled cart, and myself. We were going to Cahokia, and
it was very cold, and when the tireless wheels bumped from ridge to
gully, the gentlemen grabbed each other as they slid about, and laughed.

All at once the merriment ceased, and looking forward we saw that Tom had
leaped from his saddle and was bending over something in the snow. These
chanced to be the footprints of some twenty men.

The immediate result of this alarming discovery was that Tom went on
express to warn Captain Bowman, and the rest of us returned to a painful
scene at Kaskaskia. We reached the village, the French gentlemen leaped
down from their stools in the cart, and in ten minutes the streets were
filled with frenzied, hooded figures. Hamilton, called the Hair Buyer,
was upon them with no less than six hundred, and he would hang them to
their own gateposts for listening to the Long Knives. These were but a
handful after all was said. There was Father Gibault, for example.
Father Gibault would doubtless be exposed to the crows in the belfry of
his own church because he had busied himself at Vincennes and with other
matters. Father Gibault was human, and therefore lovable. He bade his
parishioners a hasty and tearful farewell, and he made a cold and painful
journey to the territories of his Spanish Majesty across the Mississippi.

Father Gibault looked back, and against the gray of the winter's twilight
there were flames like red maple leaves. In the fort the men stood to
their guns, their faces flushed with staring at the burning houses. Only
a few were burned,--enough to give no cover for Hamilton and his six
hundred if they came.

But they did not come. The faithful Bowman and his men arrived instead,
with the news that there had been only a roving party of forty, and these
were now in full retreat.

Father Gibault came back. But where was Hamilton? This was the
disquieting thing.

One bitter day, when the sun smiled mockingly on the powdered common, a
horseman was perceived on the Fort Chartres road. It was Monsieur Vigo
returning from Vincennes, but he had been first to St. Louis by reason of
the value he set upon his head. Yes, Monsieur Vigo had been to
Vincennes, remaining a little longer than he expected, the guest of
Governor Hamilton. So Governor Hamilton had recaptured that place!
Monsieur Vigo was no spy, hence he had gone first to St. Louis. Governor
Hamilton was at Vincennes with much of King George's gold, and many
supplies, and certain Indians who had not been at the council. Eight
hundred in all, said Monsieur Vigo, using his fingers. And it was
Governor Hamilton's design to march upon Kaskaskia and Cahokia and sweep
over Kentucky; nay, he had already sent certain emissaries to McGillivray
and his Creeks and the Southern Indians with presents, and these were to
press forward on their side. The Governor could do nothing now, but
would move as soon as the rigors of winter had somewhat relented.
Monsieur Vigo shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. He loved les
Americains. What would Monsieur le Colonel do now?

Monsieur le Colonel was grave, but this was his usual manner. He did not
tear his hair, but the ways of the Long Knives were past understanding.
He asked many questions. How was it with the garrison at Vincennes?
Monsieur Vigo was exact, as a business man should be. They were now
reduced to eighty men, and five hundred savages had gone out to ravage.
There was no chance, then, of Hamilton moving at present? Monsieur Vigo
threw up his hands. Never had he made such a trip, and he had been
forced to come back by a northern route. The Wabash was as the Great
Lakes, and the forests grew out of the water. A fox could not go to
Vincennes in this weather. A fish? Monsieur Vigo laughed heartily.
Yes, a fish might.

"Then," said Colonel Clark, "we will be fish."

Monsieur Vigo stared, and passed his hand from his forehead backwards
over his long hair. I leaned forward in my corner by the hickory fire.

"Then we will be fish," said Colonel Clark. "Better that than food for
the crows. For, if we stay here, we shall be caught like bears in a
trap, and Kentucky will be at Hamilton's mercy."

"Sacre'!" exclaimed Monsieur Vigo, "you are mad, mon ami. I know what
this country is, and you cannot get to Vincennes."

"I WILL get to Vincennes," said Colonel Clark, so gently that Monsieur
Vigo knew he meant it. "I will SWIM to Vincennes."

Monsieur Vigo raised his hands to heaven. The three of us went out of
the door and walked. There was a snowy place in front of the church all
party-colored like a clown's coat,--scarlet capotes, yellow capotes, and
blue capotes, and bright silk handkerchiefs. They surrounded the
Colonel. Pardieu, what was he to do now? For the British governor and
his savages were coming to take revenge on them because, in their
necessity, they had declared for Congress. Colonel Clark went silently
on his way to the gate; but Monsieur Vigo stopped, and Kaskaskia heard,
with a shock, that this man of iron was to march against Vincennes.

The gates of the fort were shut, and the captains summoned. Undaunted
woodsmen as they were, they were lukewarm, at first, at the idea of this
march through the floods. Who can blame them? They had, indeed,
sacrificed much. But in ten minutes they had caught his enthusiasm
(which is one of the mysteries of genius). And the men paraded in the
snow likewise caught it, and swung their hats at the notion of taking the
Hair Buyer.

"'Tis no news to me," said Terence, stamping his feet on the flinty
ground; "wasn't it Davy that pointed him out to us and the hair liftin'
from his head six months since?"

"Und you like schwimmin', yes?" said Swein Poulsson, his face like the
rising sun with the cold.

"Swimmin', is it?" said Terence, "sure, the divil made worse things than
wather. And Hamilton's beyant."

"I reckon that'll fetch us through," Bill Cowan put in grimly.

It was a blessed thing that none of us had a bird's-eye view of that same
water. No man of force will listen when his mind is made up, and perhaps
it is just as well. For in that way things are accomplished. Clark
would not listen to Monsieur Vigo, and hence the financier had, perforce,
to listen to Clark. There were several miracles before we left.
Monsieur Vigo, for instance, agreed to pay the expenses of the
expedition, though in his heart he thought we should never get to
Vincennes. Incidentally, he was never repaid. Then there were the
French--yesterday, running hither and thither in paroxysms of fear;
to-day, enlisting in whole companies, though it were easier to get to the
wild geese of the swamps than to Hamilton. Their ladies stitched colors
day and night, and presented them with simple confidence to the Colonel
in the church. Twenty stands of colors for 170 men, counting those who
had come from Cahokia. Think of the industry of it, of the enthusiasm
behind it! Twenty stands of colors! Clark took them all, and in due
time it will be told how the colors took Vincennes. This was because
Colonel Clark was a man of destiny.

Furthermore, Colonel Clark was off the next morning at dawn to buy a
Mississippi keel-boat. He had her rigged up with two four-pounders and
four swivels, filled her with provisions, and called her the Willing.
She was the first gunboat on the Western waters. A great fear came into
my heart, and at dusk I stole back to the Colonel's house alone. The
snow had turned to rain, and Terence stood guard within the doorway.

"Arrah," he said, "what ails ye, darlin'?"

I gulped and the tears sprang into my eyes; whereupon Terence, in
defiance of all military laws, laid his gun against the doorpost and put
his arms around me, and I confided my fears. It was at this critical
juncture that the door opened and Colonel Clark came out.

"What's to do here?" he demanded, gazing at us sternly.

"Savin' your Honor's prisence," said Terence, "he's afeard your Honor
will be sending him on the boat. Sure, he wants to go swimmin' with the
rest of us."

Colonel Clark frowned, bit his lip, and Terence seized his gun and stood
to attention.

"It were right to leave you in Kaskaskia," said the Colonel; "the water
will be over your head."

"The King's drum would be floatin' the likes of him," said the
irrepressible Terence, "and the b'ys would be that lonesome."

The Colonel walked away without a word. In an hour's time he came back
to find me cleaning his accoutrements by the fire. For a while he did
not speak, but busied himself with his papers, I having lighted the
candles for him. Presently he spoke my name, and I stood before him.

"I will give you a piece of advice, Davy," said he. "If you want a
thing, go straight to the man that has it. McChesney has spoken to me
about this wild notion of yours of going to Vincennes, and Cowan and
McCann and Ray and a dozen others have dogged my footsteps."

"I only spoke to Terence because he asked me, sir," I answered. "I said
nothing to any one else."

He laid down his pen and looked at me with an odd expression.

"What a weird little piece you are," he exclaimed; "you seem to have
wormed your way into the hearts of these men. Do you know that you will
probably never get to Vincennes alive?"

"I don't care, sir," I said. A happy thought struck me. "If they see a
boy going through the water, sir--" I hesitated, abashed.

"What then?" said Clark, shortly.

"It may keep some from going back," I finished.

At that he gave a sort of gasp, and stared at me the more.

"Egad," he said, "I believe the good Lord launched you wrong end to.
Perchance you will be a child when you are fifty."

He was silent a long time, and fell to musing. And I thought he had
forgotten.

"May I go, sir?" I asked at length.

He started.

"Come here," said he. But when I was close to him he merely laid his
hand on my shoulder. "Yes, you may go, Davy."

He sighed, and presently turned to his writing again, and I went back
joyfully to my cleaning.

On a certain dark 4th of February, picture the village of Kaskaskia
assembled on the river-bank in capote and hood. Ropes are cast off, the
keel-boat pushes her blunt nose through the cold, muddy water, the oars
churn up dirty, yellow foam, and cheers shake the sodden air. So the
Willing left on her long journey: down the Kaskaskia, into the flood of
the Mississippi, against many weary leagues of the Ohio's current, and up
the swollen Wabash until they were to come to the mouth of the White
River near Vincennes. There they were to await us.

Should we ever see them again? I think that this was the unspoken
question in the hearts of the many who were to go by land.

The 5th was a mild, gray day, with the melting snow lying in patches on
the brown bluff, and the sun making shift to pierce here and there. We
formed the regiment in the fort,--backwoodsman and Creole now to fight
for their common country, Jacques and Pierre and Alphonse; and mother and
father, sweetheart and wife, waiting to wave a last good-by. Bravely we
marched out of the gate and into the church for Father Gibault's
blessing. And then, forming once more, we filed away on the road leading
northward to the ferry, our colors flying, leaving the weeping, cheering
crowd behind. In front of the tall men of the column was a wizened
figure, beating madly on a drum, stepping proudly with head thrown back.
It was Cowan's voice that snapped the strain.

"Go it, Davy, my little gamecock!" he cried, and the men laughed and
cheered. And so we came to the bleak ferry landing where we had crossed
on that hot July night six months before.

We were soon on the prairies, and in the misty rain that fell and fell
they seemed to melt afar into a gray and cheerless ocean. The sodden
grass was matted now and unkempt. Lifeless lakes filled the depressions,
and through them we waded mile after mile ankle-deep. There was a little
cavalcade mounted on the tiny French ponies, and sometimes I rode with
these; but oftenest Cowan or Tom would fling me; drum and all, on his
shoulder. For we had reached the forest swamps where the water is the
color of the Creole coffee. And day after day as we marched, the soft
rain came out of the east and wet us to the skin.

It was a journey of torments, and even that first part of it was enough
to discourage the most resolute spirit. Men might be led through it, but
never driven. It is ever the mind which suffers through the monotonies
of bodily discomfort, and none knew this better than Clark himself.
Every morning as we set out with the wet hide chafing our skin, the
Colonel would run the length of the regiment, crying:--

"Who gives the feast to-night, boys?"

Now it was Bowman's company, now McCarty's, now Bayley's. How the
hunters vied with each other to supply the best, and spent the days
stalking the deer cowering in the wet thickets. We crossed the Saline,
and on the plains beyond was a great black patch, a herd of buffalo. A
party of chosen men headed by Tom McChesney was sent after them, and
never shall I forget the sight of the mad beasts charging through the
water.

That night, when our chilled feet could bear no more, we sought out a
patch of raised ground a little firmer than a quagmire, and heaped up the
beginnings of a fire with such brush as could be made to burn, robbing
the naked thickets. Saddle and steak sizzled, leather steamed and
stiffened, hearts and bodies thawed; grievances that men had nursed over
miles of water melted. Courage sits best on a full stomach, and as they
ate they cared not whether the Atlantic had opened between them and
Vincennes. An hour agone, and there were twenty cursing laggards,
counting the leagues back to Kaskaskia. Now:--

          "C'etait un vieux sauvage
          Tout noir, tour barbouilla,
             Ouich' ka!
          Avec sa vieill' couverte
          Et son sac a tabac.
             Ouich' ka!
          Ah! ah! tenaouich' tenaga,
          Tenaouich' tenaga,
             Ouich' ka!"

So sang Antoine, dit le Gris, in the pulsing red light. And when,
between the verses, he went through the agonies of a Huron war-dance, the
assembled regiment howled with delight. Some men know cities and those
who dwell in the quarters of cities. But grizzled Antoine knew the half
of a continent, and the manners of trading and killing of the tribes
thereof.

And after Antoine came Gabriel, a marked contrast--Gabriel, five feet
six, and the glare showing but a faint dark line on his quivering lip.
Gabriel was a patriot,--a tribute we must pay to all of those brave
Frenchmen who went with us. Nay, Gabriel had left at home on his little
farm near the village a young wife of a fortnight. And so his lip
quivered as he sang:--

       "Petit Rocher de la Haute Montagne,
        Je vien finir ici cette campagne!
        Ah! doux echos, entendez mes soupirs;
        En languissant je vais bientot mouir!"

We had need of gayety after that, and so Bill Cowan sang "Billy of the
Wild Wood," and Terence McCann wailed an Irish jig, stamping the water
out of the spongy ground amidst storms of mirth. As he desisted,
breathless and panting, he flung me up in the firelight before the eyes
of them all, crying:--

"It's Davy can bate me!"

"Ay, Davy, Davy!" they shouted, for they were in the mood for anything.
There stood Colonel Clark in the dimmer light of the background. "We
must keep 'em screwed up, Davy," he had said that very day.

There came to me on the instant a wild song that my father had taught me
when the liquor held him in dominance. Exhilarated, I sprang from
Terence's arms to the sodden, bared space, and methinks I yet hear my
shrill, piping note, and see my legs kicking in the fling of it. There
was an uproar, a deeper voice chimed in, and here was McAndrew flinging
his legs with mine:--

       "I've faught on land, I've faught at sea,
          At hame I faught my aunty, O;
        But I met the deevil and Dundee
          On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O.
        An' ye had been where I had been,
          Ye wad na be sae cantie, O;
        An' ye had seen what I ha'e seen
          On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O."

In the morning Clark himself would be the first off through the gray
rain, laughing and shouting and waving his sword in the air, and I after
him as hard as I could pelt through the mud, beating the charge on my
drum until the war-cries of the regiment drowned the sound of it. For we
were upon a pleasure trip--lest any man forget,--a pleasure trip amidst
stark woods and brown plains flecked with ponds. So we followed him
until we came to a place where, in summer, two quiet rivers flowed
through green forests--the little Wabashes. And now! Now hickory and
maple, oak and cottonwood, stood shivering in three feet of water on what
had been a league of dry land. We stood dismayed at the crumbling edge
of the hill, and one hundred and seventy pairs of eyes were turned on
Clark. With a mere glance at the running stream high on the bank and the
drowned forest beyond, he turned and faced them.

"I reckon you've earned a rest, boys," he said. "We'll have games
to-day."

There were some dozen of the unflinching who needed not to be amused.
Choosing a great poplar, these he set to hollowing out a pirogue, and
himself came among the others and played leap-frog and the Indian game of
ball until night fell. And these, instead of moping and quarrelling,
forgot. That night, as I cooked him a buffalo steak, he drew near the
fire with Bowman.

"For the love of God keep up their spirits, Bowman," said the Colonel;
"keep up their spirits until we get them across. Once on the farther
hills, they cannot go back."

Here was a different being from the shouting boy who had led the games
and the war-dance that night in the circle of the blaze. Tired out, we
went to sleep with the ring of the axes in our ears, and in the morning
there were more games while the squad crossed the river to the drowned
neck, built a rough scaffold there, and notched a trail across it; to the
scaffold the baggage was ferried, and the next morning, bit by bit, the
regiment. Even now the pains shoot through my body when I think of how
man after man plunged waist-deep into the icy water toward the farther
branch. The pirogue was filled with the weak, and in the end of it I was
curled up with my drum.

Heroism is a many-sided thing. It is one matter to fight and finish,
another to endure hell's tortures hour after hour. All day they waded
with numbed feet vainly searching for a footing in the slime. Truly, the
agony of a brave man is among the greatest of the world's tragedies to
see. As they splashed onward through the tree-trunks, many a joke went
forth, though lips were drawn and teeth pounded together. I have not the
heart to recall these jokes,--it would seem a sacrilege. There were
quarrels, too, the men striving to push one another from the easier
paths; and deeds sublime when some straggler clutched at the bole of a
tree for support, and was helped onward through excruciating ways. A
dozen held tremblingly to the pirogue's gunwale, lest they fall and
drown. One walked ahead with a smile, or else fell back to lend a
helping shoulder to a fainting man.

And there was Tom McChesney. All day long I watched him, and thanked God
that Polly Ann could not see him thus. And yet, how the pride would have
leaped within her! Humor came not easily to him, but charity and courage
and unselfishness he had in abundance. What he suffered none knew; but
through those awful hours he was always among the stragglers, helping the
weak and despairing when his strength might have taken him far ahead
toward comfort and safety. "I'm all right, Davy," he would say, in
answer to my look as he passed me. But on his face was written something
that I did not understand.

How the Creole farmers and traders, unused even to the common ways of
woodcraft, endured that fearful day and others that followed, I know not.
And when a tardy justice shall arise and compel the people of this land
to raise a shaft in memory of Clark and those who followed him, let not
the loyalty of the French be forgotten, though it be not understood.

At eventide came to lurid and disordered brains the knowledge that the
other branch was here. And, mercifully, it was shallower than the first.
Holding his rifle high, with a war-whoop Bill Cowan plunged into the
stream. Unable to contain myself more, I flung my drum overboard and
went after it, and amid shouts and laughter I was towed across by James
Ray.

Colonel Clark stood watching from the bank above, and it was he who
pulled me, bedraggled, to dry land. I ran away to help gather brush for
a fire. As I was heaping this in a pile I heard something that I should
not have heard. Nor ought I to repeat it now, though I did not need the
flames to send the blood tingling through my body.

"McChesney," said the Colonel, "we must thank our stars that we brought
the boy along. He has grit, and as good a head as any of us. I reckon
if it hadn't been for him some of them would have turned back long ago."

I saw Tom grinning at the Colonel as gratefully as though he himself had
been praised.

The blaze started, and soon we had a bonfire. Some had not the strength
to hold out the buffalo meat to the fire. Even the grumblers and
mutineers were silent, owing to the ordeal they had gone through. But
presently, when they began to be warmed and fed, they talked of other
trials to be borne. The Embarrass and the big Wabash, for example.
These must be like the sea itself.

"Take the back trail, if ye like," said Bill Cowan, with a loud laugh.
"I reckon the rest of us kin float to Vincennes on Davy's drum."

But there was no taking the back trail now; and well they knew it. The
games began, the unwilling being forced to play, and before they fell
asleep that night they had taken Vincennes, scalped the Hair Buyer, and
were far on the march to Detroit.

Mercifully, now that their stomachs were full, they had no worries. Few
knew the danger we were in of being cut off by Hamilton's roving bands of
Indians. There would be no retreat, no escape, but a fight to the death.
And I heard this, and much more that was spoken of in low tones at the
Colonel's fire far into the night, of which I never told the rank and
file,--not even Tom McChesney.

On and on, through rain and water, we marched until we drew near to the
river Embarrass. Drew near, did I say? "Sure, darlin'," said Terence,
staring comically over the gray waste, "we've been in it since Choosd'y."
There was small exaggeration in it. In vain did our feet seek the deeper
water. It would go no higher than our knees, and the sound which the
regiment made in marching was like that of a great flatboat going against
the current. It had been a sad, lavender-colored day, and now that the
gloom of the night was setting in, and not so much as a hummock showed
itself above the surface, the Creoles began to murmur. And small wonder!
Where was this man leading them, this Clark who had come amongst them
from the skies, as it were? Did he know, himself? Night fell as though
a blanket had been spread over the tree-tops, and above the dreary
splashing men could be heard calling to one another in the darkness. Nor
was there any supper ahead. For our food was gone, and no game was to be
shot over this watery waste. A cold like that of eternal space settled
in our bones. Even Terence McCann grumbled.

"Begob," said he, "'tis fine weather for fishes, and the birrds are that
comfortable in the threes. 'Tis no place for a baste at all, at all."

Sometime in the night there was a cry. Ray had found the water falling
from an oozy bank, and there we dozed fitfully until we were startled by
a distant boom.

It was Governor Hamilton's morning gun at Fort Sackville, Vincennes.

There was no breakfast. How we made our way, benumbed with hunger and
cold, to the banks of the Wabash, I know not. Captain McCarty's company
was set to making canoes, and the rest of us looked on apathetically as
the huge trees staggered and fell amidst a fountain of spray in the
shallow water. We were but three leagues from Vincennes. A raft was
bound together, and Tom McChesney and three other scouts sent on a
desperate journey across the river in search of boats and provisions,
lest we starve and fall and die on the wet flats. Before he left Tom
came to me, and the remembrance of his gaunt face haunted me for many
years after. He drew something from his bosom and held it out to me, and
I saw that it was a bit of buffalo steak which he had saved. I shook my
head, and the tears came into my eyes.

"Come, Davy," he said, "ye're so little, and I beant hungry."

Again I shook my head, and for the life of me I could say nothing.

"I reckon Polly Ann'd never forgive me if anything was to happen to you,"
said he.

At that I grew strangely angry.

"It's you who need it," I cried, "it's you that has to do the work. And
she told me to take care of you."

The big fellow grinned sheepishly, as was his wont.

"'Tis only a bite," he pleaded, "'twouldn't only make me hungry,
and"--he looked hard at me--"and it might be the savin' of you. Ye'll
not eat it for Polly Ann's sake?" he asked coaxingly.

"'Twould not be serving her," I answered indignantly.

"Ye're an obstinate little deevil!" he cried, and, dropping the morsel on
the freshly cut stump, he stalked away. I ran after him, crying out, but
he leaped on the raft that was already in the stream and began to pole
across. I slipped the piece into my own hunting shirt.

All day the men who were too weak to swing axes sat listless on the bank,
watching in vain for some sight of the Willing. They saw a canoe
rounding the bend instead, with a single occupant paddling madly. And
who should this be but Captain Willing's own brother, escaped from the
fort, where he had been a prisoner. He told us that a man named
Maisonville, with a party of Indians, was in pursuit of him, and the next
piece of news he had was in the way of raising our despair a little.
Governor Hamilton's astonishment at seeing this force here and now would
be as great as his own. Governor Hamilton had said, indeed, that only a
navy could take Vincennes this year. Unfortunately, Mr. Willing brought
no food. Next in order came five Frenchmen, trapped by our scouts, nor
had they any provisions. But as long as I live I shall never forget how
Tom McChesney returned at nightfall, the hero of the hour. He had shot a
deer; and never did wolves pick an animal cleaner. They pressed on me a
choice piece of it, these great-hearted men who were willing to go hungry
for the sake of a child, and when I refused it they would have forced it
down my throat. Swein Poulsson, he that once hid under the bed, deserves
a special tablet to his memory. He was for giving me all he had, though
his little eyes were unnaturally bright and the red had left his cheeks
now.

"He haf no belly, only a leedle on his backbone!" he cried.

"Begob, thin, he has the backbone," said Terence.

"I have a piece," said I, and drew forth that which Tom had given me.

They brought a quarter of a saddle to Colonel Clark, but he smiled at
them kindly and told them to divide it amongst the weak. He looked at me
as I sat with my feet crossed on the stump.

"I will follow Davy's example," said he.

At length the canoes were finished and we crossed the river, swimming
over the few miserable skeletons of the French ponies we had brought
along. We came to a sugar camp, and beyond it, stretching between us and
Vincennes, was a sea of water. Here we made our camp, if camp it could
be called. There was no fire, no food, and the water seeped out of the
ground on which we lay. Some of those even who had not yet spoken now
openly said that we could go no farther. For the wind had shifted into
the northwest, and, for the first time since we had left Kaskaskia we saw
the stars gleaming like scattered diamonds in the sky. Bit by bit the
ground hardened, and if by chance we dozed we stuck to it. Morning found
the men huddled like sheep, their hunting shirts hard as boards, and long
before Hamilton's gun we were up and stamping. Antoine poked the butt of
his rifle through the ice of the lake in front of us.

"I think we not get to Vincennes this day," he said.

Colonel Clark, who heard him, turned to me.

"Fetch McChesney here, Davy," he said. Tom came.

"McChesney," said he, "when I give the word, take Davy and his drum on
your shoulders and follow me. And Davy, do you think you can sing that
song you gave us the other night?"

"Oh, yes, sir," I answered.

Without more ado the Colonel broke the skim of ice, and, taking some of
the water in his hand, poured powder from his flask into it and rubbed it
on his face until he was the color of an Indian. Stepping back, he
raised his sword high in the air, and, shouting the Shawanee war-whoop,
took a flying leap up to his thighs in the water. Tom swung me instantly
to his shoulder and followed, I beating the charge with all my might,
though my hands were so numb that I could scarce hold the sticks.
Strangest of all, to a man they came shouting after us.

"Now, Davy!" said the Colonel.

       "I've faught on land, I've faught at sea,
          At hame I faught my aunty, O;
        But I met the deevil and Dundee
          On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O."

I piped it at the top of my voice, and sure enough the regiment took up
the chorus, for it had a famous swing.

       "An' ye had been where I had been,
          Ye wad na be sae cantie, O;
        An' ye had seen what I ha'e seen'
          On the braes o' Killiecrankie, O."

When their breath was gone we heard Cowan shout that he had found a path
under his feet,--a path that was on dry land in the summer-time. We
followed it, feeling carefully, and at length, when we had suffered all
that we could bear, we stumbled on to a dry ridge. Here we spent another
night of torture, with a second backwater facing us coated with a full
inch of ice.

And still there was nothing to eat.



CHAPTER XIX

THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED

To lie the night on adamant, pierced by the needles of the frost; to
awake shivering and famished, until the meaning of an inch of ice on the
backwater comes to your mind,--these are not calculated to put a man into
an equable mood to listen to oratory. Nevertheless there was a kind of
oratory to fit the case. To picture the misery of these men is well-nigh
impossible. They stood sluggishly in groups, dazed by suffering, and
their faces were drawn and their eyes ringed, their beards and hair
matted. And many found it in their hearts to curse Clark and that
government for which he fought.

When the red fire of the sun glowed through the bare branches that
morning, it seemed as if the campaign had spent itself like an arrow
which drops at the foot of the mark. Could life and interest and
enthusiasm be infused again in such as these? I have ceased to marvel
how it was done. A man no less haggard than the rest, but with a
compelling force in his eyes, pointed with a blade to the hills across
the river. They must get to them, he said, and their troubles would be
ended. He said more, and they cheered him. These are the bare facts.
He picked a man here, and another there, and these went silently to a
grim duty behind the regiment.

"If any try to go back, shoot them down!" he cried.

Then with a gun-butt he shattered the ice and was the first to leap into
the water under it. They followed, some with a cheer that was most
pitiful of all. They followed him blindly, as men go to torture, but
they followed him, and the splashing and crushing of the ice were sounds
to freeze my body. I was put in a canoe. In my day I have beheld great
suffering and hardship, and none of it compared to this. Torn with pity,
I saw them reeling through the water, now grasping trees and bushes to
try to keep their feet, the strongest breaking the way ahead and
supporting the weak between them. More than once Clark himself tottered
where he beat the ice at the apex of the line. Some swooned and would
have drowned had they not been dragged across the canoe and chafed back
to consciousness. By inches the water shallowed. Clark reached the high
ground, and then Bill Cowan, with a man on each shoulder. Then others
endured to the shallows to fall heavily in the crumbled ice and be
dragged out before they died. But at length, by God's grace, the whole
regiment was on the land. Fires would not revive some, but Clark himself
seized a fainting man by the arms and walked him up and down in the
sunlight until his blood ran again.

It was a glorious day, a day when the sap ran in the maples, and the sun
soared upwards in a sky of the palest blue. All this we saw through the
tracery of the leafless branches,--a mirthless, shivering crowd, crept
through a hell of weather into the Hair Buyer's very lair. Had he
neither heard nor seen?

Down the steel-blue lane of water between the ice came a canoe. Our
stunted senses perceived it, unresponsive. A man cried out (it was Tom
McChesney); now some of them had leaped into the pirogue, now they were
returning. In the towed canoe two fat and stolid squaws and a pappoose
were huddled, and beside them--God be praised!--food. A piece of
buffalo on its way to town, and in the end compartment of the boat tallow
and bear's grease lay revealed by two blows of the tomahawk. The
kettles--long disused--were fetched, and broth made and fed in sips to
the weakest, while the strongest looked on and smiled in an agony of
self-restraint. It was a fearful thing to see men whose legs had refused
service struggle to their feet when they had drunk the steaming, greasy
mixture. And the Colonel, standing by the river's edge, turned his face
away--down-stream. And then, as often, I saw the other side of the man.
Suddenly he looked at me, standing wistful at his side.

"They have cursed me," said he, by way of a question, "they have cursed
me every day." And seeing me silent, he insisted, "Tell me, is it not
so, Davy?"

"It is so," I said, wondering that he should pry, "but it was while they
suffered. And--and some refrained."

"And you?" he asked queerly.

"I--I could not, sir. For I asked leave to come."

"If they have condemned me to a thousand hells," said he,
dispassionately, "I should not blame them." Again he looked at me. "Do
you understand what you have done?" he asked.

"No, sir," I said uneasily.

"And yet there are some human qualities in you, Davy. You have been
worth more to me than another regiment."

I stared.

"When you grow older, if you ever do, tell your children that once upon a
time you put a hundred men to shame. It is no small thing."

Seeing him relapse into silence, I did not speak. For the space of half
an hour he stared down the river, and I knew that he was looking vainly
for the Willing.

At noon we crossed, piecemeal, a deep lake in the canoes, and marching
awhile came to a timber-covered rise which our French prisoners named as
the Warriors' Island. And from the shelter of its trees we saw the
steely lines of a score of low ponds, and over the tops of as many ridges
a huddle of brown houses on the higher ground.

And this was the place we had all but sold our lives to behold! This was
Vincennes at last! We were on the heights behind the town,--we were at
the back door, as it were. At the far side, on the Wabash River, was the
front door, or Fort Sackville, where the banner of England snapped in the
February breeze.

We stood there, looking, as the afternoon light flooded the plain.
Suddenly the silence was broken.

"Hooray for Clark!" cried a man at the edge of the copse.

"Hooray for Clark!"--it was the whole regiment this time. From
execration to exaltation was but a step, after all. And the Creoles fell
to scoffing at their sufferings and even forgot their hunger in staring
at the goal. The backwoodsmen took matters more stolidly, having
acquired long since the art of waiting. They lounged about, cleaning
their guns, watching the myriad flocks of wild ducks and geese casting
blue-black shadows on the ponds.

"Arrah, McChesney," said Terence, as he watched the circling birds,
"Clark's a great man, but 'tis more riverince I'd have for him if wan av
thim was sizzling on the end of me ramrod."

"I'd sooner hev the Ha'r Buyer's sculp," said Tom.

Presently there was a drama performed for our delectation. A shot came
down the wind, and we perceived that several innocent Creole gentlemen,
unconscious of what the timber held, were shooting the ducks and geese.
Whereupon Clark chose Antoine and three of our own Creoles to sally out
and shoot likewise--as decoys. We watched them working their way over
the ridges, and finally saw them coming back with one of the Vincennes
sportsmen. I cannot begin to depict the astonishment of this man when he
reached the copse, and was led before our lean, square-shouldered
commander. Yes, monsieur, he was a friend of les Americains. Did
Governor Hamilton know that a visit was imminent? Pardieu (with many
shrugs and outward gestures of the palms), Governor Hamilton had said if
the Long Knives had wings or fins they might reach him now--he was all
unprepared.

"Gentlemen," said Colonel Clark to Captains Bowman and McCarty and
Williams, "we have come so far by audacity, and we must continue by
audacity. It is of no use to wait for the gunboat, and every moment we
run the risk of discovery. I shall write an open letter to the
inhabitants of Vincennes, which the prisoner shall take into town. I
shall tell them that those who are true to the oath they swore to Father
Gibault shall not be molested if they remain quietly in their houses.
Let those who are on the side of the Hair Buyer General and his King go
to the fort and fight there."

He bade me fetch the portfolio he carried, and with numbed fingers wrote
the letter while his captains stared in admiration and amazement. What a
stroke was this! There were six hundred men in the town and
fort,--soldiers, inhabitants, and Indians,--while we had but 170, starved
and weakened by their incredible march. But Clark was not to be daunted.
Whipping out his field-glasses, he took a stand on a little mound under
the trees and followed the fast-galloping messenger across the plain; saw
him enter the town; saw the stir in the streets, knots of men riding out
and gazing, hands on foreheads, towards the place where we were. But, as
the minutes rolled into hours, there was no further alarm. No gun, no
beat to quarters or bugle-call from Fort Sackville. What could it mean?

Clark's next move was an enigma, for he set the men to cutting and
trimming tall sapling poles. To these were tied (how reverently!) the
twenty stands of colors which loving Creole hands had stitched. The
boisterous day was reddening to its close as the Colonel lined his little
army in front of the wood, and we covered the space of four thousand.
For the men were twenty feet apart and every tenth carried a standard.
Suddenly we were aghast as the full meaning of the inspiration dawned
upon us. The command was given, and we started on our march toward
Vincennes. But not straight,--zigzagging, always keeping the ridges
between us and the town, and to the watching inhabitants it seemed as if
thousands were coming to crush them. Night fell, the colors were furled
and the saplings dropped, and we pressed into serried ranks and marched
straight over hill and dale for the lights that were beginning to twinkle
ahead of us.

We halted once more, a quarter of a mile away. Clark himself had picked
fourteen men to go under Lieutenant Bayley through the town and take the
fort from the other side. Here was audacity with a vengeance. You may
be sure that Tom and Cowan and Ray were among these, and I trotted after
them with the drum banging against my thighs.

Was ever stronghold taken thus?

They went right into the town, the fourteen of them, into the main street
that led directly to the fort. The simple citizens gave back, stupefied,
at sight of the tall, striding forms. Muffled Indians stood like statues
as we passed, but these raised not a hand against us. Where were
Hamilton, Hamilton's soldiers and savages? It was as if we had come
a-trading.

The street rose and fell in waves, like the prairie over which it ran.
As we climbed a ridge, here was a little log church, the rude cross on
the belfry showing dark against the sky. And there, in front of us,
flanked by blockhouses with conical caps, was the frowning mass of Fort
Sackville.

"Take cover," said Williams, hoarsely. It seemed incredible.

The men spread hither and thither, some at the corners of the church,
some behind the fences of the little gardens. Tom chose a great forest
tree that had been left standing, and I went with him. He powdered his
pan, and I laid down my drum beside the tree, and then, with an impulse
that was rare, Tom seized me by the collar and drew me to him.

"Davy," he whispered, and I pinched him. "Davy, I reckon Polly Ann'd be
kinder surprised if she knew where we was. Eh?"

I nodded. It seemed strange, indeed, to be talking thus at such a place.
Life has taught me since that it was not so strange, for however a man
may strive and suffer for an object, he usually sits quiet at the
consummation. Here we were in the door-yard of a peaceful cabin, the
ground frozen in lumps under our feet, and it seemed to me that the wind
had something to do with the lightness of the night.

"Davy," whispered Tom again, "how'd ye like to see the little feller to
home?"

I pinched him again, and harder this time, for I was at a loss for
adequate words. The muscles of his legs were as hard as the strands of a
rope, and his buckskin breeches frozen so that they cracked under my
fingers.

Suddenly a flickering light arose ahead of us, and another, and we saw
that they were candles beginning to twinkle through the palings of the
fort. These were badly set, the width of a man's hand apart. Presently
here comes a soldier with a torch, and as he walked we could see from
crack to crack his bluff face all reddened by the light, and so near were
we that we heard the words of his song:--

       "O, there came a lass to Sudbury Fair,
         With a hey, and a ho, nonny-nonny!
        And she had a rose in her raven hair,
         With a hey, and a ho, nonny-nonny!"

"By the etarnal!" said Tom, following the man along the palings with the
muzzle of his Deckard, "by the etarnal! 'tis like shootin' beef."

A gust of laughter came from somewhere beyond. The burly soldier paused
at the foot of the blockhouse.

"Hi, Jem, have ye seen the General's man? His Honor's in a 'igh temper,
I warrant ye."

It was fortunate for Jem that he put his foot inside the blockhouse door.

"Now, boys!"

It was Williams's voice, and fourteen rifles sputtered out a ragged
volley.

There was an instant's silence, and then a score of voices raised in
consternation,--shouting, cursing, commanding. Heavy feet pounded on the
platform of the blockhouse. While Tom was savagely jamming in powder and
ball, the wicket gate of the fort opened, a man came out and ran to a
house a biscuit's throw away, and ran back again before he was shot at,
slamming the gate after him. Tom swore.

"We've got but the ten rounds," he said, dropping his rifle to his knee.
"I reckon 'tis no use to waste it."

"The Willing may come to-night," I answered.

There was a bugle winding a strange call, and the roll of a drum, and the
running continued.

"Don't fire till you're sure, boys," said Captain Williams.

Our eyes caught sight of a form in the blockhouse port, there was an
instant when a candle flung its rays upon a cannon's flank, and Tom's
rifle spat a rod of flame. A red blot hid the cannon's mouth, and behind
it a man staggered and fell on the candle, while the shot crunched its
way through the logs of the cottage in the yard where we stood. And now
the battle was on in earnest, fire darting here and there from the black
wall, bullets whistling and flying wide, and at intervals cannon
belching, their shot grinding through trees and houses. But our men
waited until the gunners lit their matches in the cannon-ports,--it was
no trick for a backwoodsman.

At length there came a popping right and left, and we knew that Bowman
and McCarty's men had swung into position there.

An hour passed, and a shadow came along our line, darting from cover to
cover. It was Lieutenant Bayley, and he sent me back to find the Colonel
and to tell him that the men had but a few rounds left. I sped through
the streets on the errand, spied a Creole company waiting in reserve, and
near them, behind a warehouse, a knot of backwoodsmen, French, and
Indians, lighted up by a smoking torch. And here was Colonel Clark
talking to a big, blanketed chief. I was hovering around the skirts of
the crowd and seeking for an opening, when a hand pulled me off my feet.

"What'll ye be afther now?" said a voice, which was Terence's.

"Let me go," I cried, "I have a message from Lieutenant Bayley."

"Sure," said Terence, "a man'd think ye had the Hair Buyer's sculp in
yere pocket. The Colonel is treaty-makin' with Tobacey's Son, the
grreatest Injun in these parrts."

"I don't care."

"Hist!" said Terence.

"Let me go," I yelled, so loudly that the Colonel turned, and Terence
dropped me like a live coal. I wormed my way to where Clark stood.
Tobacco's Son was at that moment protesting that the Big Knives were his
brothers, and declaring that before morning broke he would have one
hundred warriors for the Great White Chief. Had he not made a treaty of
peace with Captain Helm, who was even then a prisoner of the British
general in the fort?

Colonel Clark replied that he knew well of the fidelity of Tobacco's Son
to the Big Knives, that Tobacco's Son had remained stanch in the face of
bribes and presents (this was true). Now all that Colonel Clark desired
of Tobacco's Son besides his friendship was that he would keep his
warriors from battle. The Big Knives would fight their own fight. To
this sentiment Tobacco's Son grunted extreme approval. Colonel Clark
turned to me.

"What is it, Davy?" he asked.

I told him.

"Tobacco's Son has dug up for us King George's ammunition," he said. "Go
tell Lieutenant Bayley that I will send him enough to last him a month."

I sped away with the message. Presently I came back again, upon another
message, and they were eating,--those reserves,--they were eating as I
had never seen men eat but once, at Kaskaskia. The baker stood by with
lifted palms, imploring the saints that he might have some compensation,
until Clark sent him back to his shop to knead and bake again. The good
Creoles approached the fires with the contents of their larders in their
hands. Terence tossed me a loaf the size of a cannon ball, and another.

"Fetch that wan to wan av the b'ys," said he.

I seized as much as my arms could hold and scurried away to the firing
line once more, and, heedless of whistling bullets, darted from man to
man until the bread was exhausted. Not a one but gave me a "God bless
you, Davy," ere he seized it with a great hand and began to eat in
wolfish bites, his Deckard always on the watch the while.

There was no sleep in the village. All night long, while the rifles
sputtered, the villagers in their capotes--men, women, and
children--huddled around the fires. The young men of the militia begged
Clark to allow them to fight, and to keep them well affected he sent some
here and there amongst our lines. For our Colonel's strength was not
counted by rifles or men alone: he fought with his brain. As Hamilton,
the Hair Buyer, made his rounds, he believed the town to be in possession
of a horde of Kentuckians. Shouts, war-whoops, and bursts of laughter
went up from behind the town. Surely a great force was there, a small
part of which had been sent to play with him and his men. On the
fighting line, when there was a lull, our backwoodsmen stood up behind
their trees and cursed the enemy roundly, and often by these taunts
persuaded the furious gunners to open their ports and fire their cannon.
Woe be to him that showed an arm or a shoulder! Though a casement be
lifted ever so warily, a dozen balls would fly into it. And at length,
when some of the besieged had died in their anger, the ports were opened
no more. It was then our sharpshooters crept up boldly to within thirty
yards of them--nay, it seemed as if they lay under the very walls of the
fort. And through the night the figure of the Colonel himself was often
seen amongst them, praising their markmanship, pleading with every man
not to expose himself without cause. He spied me where I had wormed
myself behind the foot-board of a picket fence beneath the cannon-port of
a blockhouse. It was during one of the breathing spaces.

"What's this?" said he to Cowan, sharply, feeling me with his foot.

"I reckon it's Davy, sir," said my friend, somewhat sheepishly. "We
can't do nothin' with him. He's been up and down the line twenty times
this night."

"What doing?" says the Colonel.

"Bread and powder and bullets," answered Bill.

"But that's all over," says Clark.

"He's the very devil to pry," answered Bill. "The first we know he'll be
into the fort under the logs."

"Or between them," says Clark, with a glance at the open palings. "Come
here, Davy."

I followed him, dodging between the houses, and when we had got off the
line he took me by the two shoulders from behind.

"You little rascal," said he, shaking me, "how am I to look out for an
army and you besides? Have you had anything to eat?"

"Yes, sir," I answered.

We came to the fires, and Captain Bowman hurried up to meet him.

"We're piling up earthworks and barricades," said the Captain, "for the
fight to-morrow. My God! if the Willing would only come, we could put
our cannon into them."

Clark laughed.

"Bowman," said he, kindly, "has Davy fed you yet?"

"No," says the Captain, surprised, "I've had no time to eat."

"He seems to have fed the whole army," said the Colonel. He paused.
"Have they scented Lamothe or Maisonville?"

"Devil a scent!" cried the Captain, "and we've scoured wood and quagmire.
They tell me that Lamothe has a very pretty force of redskins at his
heels."

"Let McChesney go," said Clark sharply, "McChesney and Ray. I'll warrant
they can find 'em."

Now I knew that Maisonville had gone out a-chasing Captain Willing's
brother,--he who had run into our arms. Lamothe was a noted Indian
partisan and a dangerous man to be dogging our rear that night. Suddenly
there came a thought that took my breath and set my heart a-hammering.
When the Colonel's back was turned I slipped away beyond the range of the
firelight, and I was soon on the prairie, stumbling over hummocks and
floundering into ponds, yet going as quietly as I could, turning now and
again to look back at the distant glow or to listen to the rifles popping
around the fort. The night was cloudy and pitchy dark. Twice the
whirring of startled waterfowl frightened me out of my senses, but
ambition pricked me on in spite of fear. I may have gone a mile thus,
perchance two or three, straining every sense, when a sound brought me to
a stand. At first I could not distinguish it because of my heavy
breathing, but presently I made sure that it was the low drone of human
voices. Getting down on my hands and knees, I crept forward, and felt
the ground rising. The voices had ceased. I gained the crest of a low
ridge, and threw myself flat. A rattle of musketry set me shivering, and
in an agony of fright I looked behind me to discover that I could not be
more than four hundred yards from the fort. I had made a circle. I lay
very still, my eyes watered with staring, and then--the droning began
again. I went forward an inch, then another and another down the slope,
and at last I could have sworn that I saw dark blurs against the ground.
I put out my hand, my weight went after, and I had crashed through a
coating of ice up to my elbow in a pool. There came a second of sheer
terror, a hoarse challenge in French, and then I took to my heels and
flew towards the fort at the top of my speed.

I heard them coming after me, leap and bound, and crying out to one
another. Ahead of me there might have been a floor or a precipice, as
the ground looks level at night. I hurt my foot cruelly on a frozen clod
of earth, slid down the washed bank of a run into the Wabash, picked
myself up, scrambled to the top of the far side, and had gotten away
again when my pursuer shattered the ice behind me. A hundred yards more,
two figures loomed up in front, and I was pulled up choking.

"Hang to him, Fletcher!" said a voice.

"Great God!" cried Fletcher, "it's Davy. What are ye up to now?"

"Let me go!" I cried, as soon as I had got my wind. As luck would have
it, I had run into a pair of daredevil young Kentuckians who had more
than once tasted the severity of Clark's discipline,--Fletcher Blount and
Jim Willis. They fairly shook out of me what had happened, and then
dropped me with a war-whoop and started for the prairie, I after them,
crying out to them to beware of the run. A man must indeed be fleet of
foot to have escaped these young ruffians, and so it proved. When I
reached the hollow there were the two of them fighting with a man in the
water, the ice jangling as they shifted their feet.

"What's yere name?" said Fletcher, cuffing and kicking his prisoner until
he cried out for mercy.

"Maisonville," said the man, whereupon Fletcher gave a war-whoop and
kicked him again.

"That's no way to use a prisoner," said I, hotly.

"Hold your mouth, Davy," said Fletcher, "you didn't ketch him."

"You wouldn't have had him but for me," I retorted.

Fletcher's answer was an oath. They put Maisonville between them, ran
him through the town up to the firing line, and there, to my horror, they
tied him to a post and used him for a shield, despite his heart-rending
yells. In mortal fear that the poor man would be shot down, I was
running away to find some one who might have influence over them when I
met a lieutenant. He came up and ordered them angrily to unbind
Maisonville and bring him before the Colonel. Fletcher laughed, whipped
out his hunting knife, and cut the thongs; but he and Willis had scarce
got twenty paces from the officer before they seized poor Maisonville by
the hair and made shift to scalp him. This was merely backwoods play,
had Maisonville but known it. Persuaded, however, that his last hour was
come, he made a desperate effort to clear himself, whereupon Fletcher cut
off a piece of his skin by mistake. Maisonville, making sure that he had
been scalped, stood groaning and clapping his hand to his head, while the
two young rascals drew back and stared at each other.

"What's to do now?" said Willis.

"Take our medicine, I reckon," answered Fletcher, grimly. And they
seized the tottering man between them, and marched him straightway to the
fire where Clark stood.

They had seen the Colonel angry before, but now they were fairly withered
under his wrath. And he could have given them no greater punishment, for
he took them from the firing line, and sent them back to wait among the
reserves until the morning.

"Nom de Dieu!" said Maisonville, wrathfully, as he watched them go, "they
should hang."

"The stuff that brought them here through ice and flood is apt to boil
over, Captain," remarked the Colonel, dryly.

"If you please, sir," said I, "they did not mean to cut him, but he
wriggled."

Clark turned sharply.

"Eh?" said he, "did you have a hand in this, too?"

"Peste!" cried the Captain, "the little ferret--you call him--he find me
on the prairie. I run to catch him with some men and fall into the
crick--" he pointed to his soaked leggings, "and your demons, they fall
on top of me."

"I wish to heaven you had caught Lamothe instead, Davy," said the
Colonel, and joined despite himself in the laugh that went up. Falling
sober again, he began to question the prisoner. Where was Lamothe?
Pardieu, Maisonville could not say. How many men did he have, etc.,
etc.? The circle about us deepened with eager listeners, who uttered
exclamations when Maisonville, between his answers, put up his hand to
his bleeding head. Suddenly the circle parted, and Captain Bowman came
through.

"Ray has discovered Lamothe, sir," said he. "What shall we do?"

"Let him into the fort," said Clark, instantly.

There was a murmur of astonished protest.

"Let him into the fort!" exclaimed Bowman.

"Certainly," said the Colonel; "if he finds he cannot get in, he will be
off before the dawn to assemble the tribes."

"But the fort is provisioned for a month," Bowman expostulated; "and they
must find out to-morrow how weak we are."

"To-morrow will be too late," said Clark.

"And suppose he shouldn't go in?"

"He will go in," said the Colonel, quietly. "Withdraw your men, Captain,
from the north side."

Captain Bowman departed. Whatever he may have thought of these orders,
he was too faithful a friend of the Colonel's to delay their execution.
Murmuring, swearing oaths of astonishment, man after man on the firing
line dropped his rifle at the word, and sullenly retreated. The crack,
crack of the Deckards on the south and east were stilled; not a barrel
was thrust by the weary garrison through the logs, and the place became
silent as the wilderness. It was the long hour before the dawn. And as
we lay waiting on the hard ground, stiff and cold and hungry, talking in
whispers, somewhere near six of the clock on that February morning the
great square of Fort Sackville began to take shape. There was the long
line of the stockade, the projecting blockhouses at each corner with
peaked caps, and a higher capped square tower from the centre of the
enclosure, the banner of England drooping there and clinging forlorn to
its staff, as though with a presentiment. Then, as the light grew, the
close-lipped casements were seen, scarred with our bullets. The little
log houses of the town came out, the sapling palings and the bare
trees,--all grim and gaunt at that cruel season. Cattle lowed here and
there, and horses whinnied to be fed.

It was a dirty, gray dawn, and we waited until it had done its best.
From where we lay hid behind log house and palings we strained our eyes
towards the prairie to see if Lamothe would take the bait, until our view
was ended at the fuzzy top of a hillock. Bill Cowan, doubled up behind a
woodpile and breathing heavily, nudged me.

"Davy, Davy, what d'ye see!"

Was it a head that broke the line of the crest? Even as I stared,
breathless, half a score of forms shot up and were running madly for the
stockade. Twenty more broke after them, Indians and Frenchmen, dodging,
swaying, crowding, looking fearfully to right and left. And from within
the fort came forth a hubbub,--cries and scuffling, orders, oaths, and
shouts. In plain view of our impatient Deckards soldiers manned the
platform, and we saw that they were flinging down ladders. An officer in
a faded scarlet coat stood out among the rest, shouting himself hoarse.
Involuntarily Cowan lined his sights across the woodpile on this mark of
color.

Lamothe's men, a seething mass, were fighting like wolves for the
ladders, fearful yet that a volley might kill half of them where they
stood. And so fast did they scramble upwards that the men before them
stepped on their fingers. All at once and by acclamation the fierce
war-whoops of our men rent the air, and some toppled in sheer terror and
fell the twelve feet of the stockade at the sound of it. Then every man
in the regiment, Creole and backwoodsman, lay back to laugh. The answer
of the garrison was a defiant cheer, and those who had dropped, finding
they were not shot at, picked themselves up again and gained the top,
helping to pull the ladders after them. Bowman's men swung back into
place, the rattle and drag were heard in the blockhouse as the cannon
were run out through the ports, and the battle which had held through the
night watches began again with redoubled vigor. But there was more
caution on the side of the British, for they had learned dearly how the
Kentuckians could measure crack and crevice.

There followed two hours and a futile waste of ammunition, the lead from
the garrison flying harmless here and there, and not a patch of skin or
cloth showing.



CHAPTER XX

THE CAMPAIGN ENDS

"If I am obliged to storm, you may depend upon such treatment as is
justly due to a murderer. And beware of destroying stores of any kind,
or any papers or letters that are in your possession; or of hurting one
house in the town. For, by Heaven! if you do, there shall be no mercy
shown you.

"To Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton."

So read Colonel Clark, as he stood before the log fire in Monsieur
Bouton's house at the back of the town, the captains grouped in front of
him.

"Is that strong enough, gentlemen?" he asked.

"To raise his hair," said Captain Charleville.

Captain Bowman laughed loudly.

"I reckon the boys will see to that," said he.

Colonel Clark folded the letter, addressed it, and turned gravely to
Monsieur Bouton.

"You will oblige me, sir," said he, "by taking this to Governor Hamilton.
You will be provided with a flag of truce."

Monsieur Bouton was a round little man, as his name suggested, and the
men cheered him as he strode soberly up the street, a piece of sheeting
tied to a sapling and flung over his shoulder. Through such humble
agencies are the ends of Providence accomplished. Monsieur Bouton walked
up to the gate, disappeared sidewise through the postern, and we sat down
to breakfast. In a very short time Monsieur Bouton was seen coming back,
and his face was not so impassive that the governors message could not be
read thereon.

"'Tis not a love-letter he has, I'll warrant," said Terence, as the
little man disappeared into the house. So accurately had Monsieur
Bouton's face betrayed the news that the men went back to their posts
without orders, some with half a breakfast in hand. And soon the rank
and file had the message.

"Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton begs leave to acquaint Colonel Clark that
he and his garrison are not disposed to be awed into any action unworthy
of British subjects."

Our men had eaten, their enemy was within their grasp and Clark and all
his officers could scarce keep them from storming. Such was the
deadliness of their aim that scarce a shot came back, and time and again
I saw men fling themselves in front of the breastworks with a war-whoop,
wave their rifles in the air, and cry out that they would have the Ha'r
Buyer's sculp before night should fall. It could not last. Not tuned to
the nicer courtesies of warfare, the memory of Hamilton's war parties, of
blackened homes, of families dead and missing, raged unappeased. These
were not content to leave vengeance in the Lord's hands, and when a white
flag peeped timorously above the gate a great yell of derision went up
from river-bank to river-bank. Out of the postern stepped the officer
with the faded scarlet coat, and in due time went back again, haughtily,
his head high, casting contempt right and left of him. Again the postern
opened, and this time there was a cheer at sight of a man in hunting
shirt and leggings and coonskin cap. After him came a certain Major Hay,
Indian-enticer of detested memory, the lieutenant of him who
followed--the Hair Buyer himself. A murmur of hatred arose from the men
stationed there; and many would have shot him where he stood but for
Clark.

"The devil has the grit," said Cowan, though his eyes blazed.

It was the involuntary tribute. Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton stared
indifferently at the glowering backwoodsmen as he walked the few steps to
the church. Not so Major Hay. His eyes fell. There was Colonel Clark
waiting at the door through which the good Creoles had been wont to go to
worship, bowing somewhat ironically to the British General. It was a
strange meeting they had in St. Xavier's, by the light of the candles on
the altar. Hot words passed in that house of peace, the General
demanding protection for all his men, and our Colonel replying that he
would do with the Indian partisans as he chose.

"And whom mean you by Indian partisans?" the undaunted governor had
demanded.

"I take Major Hay to be one of them," our Colonel had answered.

It was soon a matter of common report how Clark had gazed fixedly at the
Major when he said this, and how the Major turned pale and trembled.
With our own eyes we saw them coming out, Major Hay as near to staggering
as a man could be, the governor blushing red for shame of him. So they
went sorrowfully back to the gate.

Colonel Clark stood at the steps of the church, looking after them.

"What was that firing?" he demanded sharply. "I gave orders for a
truce."

We who stood by the church had indeed heard firing in the direction of
the hills east of the town, and had wondered thereat. Perceiving a crowd
gathered at the far end of the street, we all ran thither save the
Colonel, who directed to have the offenders brought to him at Monsieur
Bouton's. We met the news halfway. A party of Canadians and Indians had
just returned from the Falls of the Ohio with scalps they had taken.
Captain Williams had gone out with his company to meet them, had lured
them on, and finally had killed a number and was returning with the
prisoners. Yes, here they were! Williams himself walked ahead with two
dishevelled and frightened coureurs du bois, twoscore at least of the
townspeople of Vincennes, friends and relatives of the prisoners,
pressing about and crying out to Williams to have mercy on them. As for
Williams, he took them in to the Colonel, the townspeople pressing into
the door-yard and banking in front of it on the street. Behind all a
tragedy impended, nor can I think of it now without sickening.

The frightened Creoles in the street gave back against the fence, and
from behind them, issuing as a storm-cloud came the half of Williams'
company, yelling like madmen. Pushed and jostled ahead of them were four
Indians decked and feathered, the half-dried scalps dangling from their
belts, impassive, true to their creed despite the indignity of jolts and
jars and blows. On and on pressed the mob, gathering recruits at every
corner, and when they reached St. Xavier's before the fort half the
regiment was there. Others watched, too, from the stockade, and what
they saw made their knees smite together with fear. Here were four
bronzed statues in a row across the street, the space in front of them
clear that their partisans in the fort might look and consider. What was
passing in the savage mind no man might know. Not a lip trembled nor an
eye faltered when a backwoodsman, his memory aflame at sight of the
pitiful white scalps on their belts, thrust through the crowd to curse
them. Fletcher Blount, frenzied, snatched his tomahawk from his side.

"Sink, varmint!" he cried with a great oath. "By the etarnal! we'll pay
the H'ar Buyer in his own coin. Sound your drums!" he shouted at the
fort. "Call the garrison fer the show."

He had raised his arm and turned to strike when the savage put up his
hand, not in entreaty, but as one man demanding a right from another.
The cries, the curses, the murmurs even, were hushed. Throwing back his
head, arching his chest, the notes of a song rose in the heavy air.
Wild, strange notes they were, that struck vibrant chords in my own
quivering being, and the song was the death-song. Ay, and the life-song
of a soul which had come into the world even as mine own. And somewhere
there lay in the song, half revealed, the awful mystery of that Creator
Whom the soul leaped forth to meet: the myriad green of the sun playing
with the leaves, the fish swimming lazily in the brown pool, the doe
grazing in the thicket, and a naked boy as free from care as these; and
still the life grows brighter as strength comes, and stature, and power
over man and beast; and then, God knows what memories of fierce love and
fiercer wars and triumphs, of desires gained and enemies conquered,--God,
who has made all lives akin to something which He holds in the hollow of
His hand; and then--the rain beating on the forest crown, beating,
beating, beating.

The song ceased. The Indian knelt in the black mud, not at the feet of
Fletcher Blount, but on the threshold of the Great Spirit who ruleth all
things. The axe fell, yet he uttered no cry as he went before his
Master.

So the four sang, each in turn, and died in the sight of some who pitied,
and some who feared, and some who hated, for the sake of land and women.
So the four went beyond the power of gold and gewgaw, and were dragged in
the mire around the walls and flung into the yellow waters of the river.

Through the dreary afternoon the men lounged about and cursed the parley,
and hearkened for the tattoo,--the signal agreed upon by the leaders to
begin the fighting. There had been no command against taunts and jeers,
and they gathered in groups under the walls to indulge themselves, and
even tried to bribe me as I sat braced against a house with my drum
between my knees and the sticks clutched tightly in my hands.

"Here's a Spanish dollar for a couple o' taps, Davy," shouted Jack
Terrell.

"Come on, ye pack of Rebel cutthroats!" yelled a man on the wall.

He was answered by a torrent of imprecations. And so they flung it back
and forth until nightfall, when out comes the same faded-scarlet officer,
holding a letter in his hand, and marches down the street to Monsieur
Bouton's. There would be no storming now, nor any man suffered to lay
fingers on the Hair Buyer.  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

I remember, in particular, Hamilton the Hair Buyer. Not the fiend my
imagination had depicted (I have since learned that most villains do not
look the part), but a man with a great sorrow stamped upon his face. The
sun rose on that 25th of February, and the mud melted, and one of our
companies drew up on each side of the gate. Downward slid the lion of
England, the garrison drums beat a dirge, and the Hair Buyer marched out
at the head of his motley troops.

Then came my own greatest hour. All morning I had been polishing and
tightening the drum, and my pride was so great as we fell into line that
so much as a smile could not be got out of me. Picture it all:
Vincennes in black and white by reason of the bright day; eaves and
gables, stockade line and capped towers, sharply drawn, and straight
above these a stark flagstaff waiting for our colors; pigs and fowls
straying hither and thither, unmindful that this day is red on the
calendar. Ah! here is a bit of color, too,--the villagers on the side
streets to see the spectacle. Gay wools and gayer handkerchiefs there,
amid the joyous, cheering crowd of thrice-changed nationality.

"Vive les Bostonnais! Vive les Americains! Vive Monsieur le Colonel
Clark! Vive le petit tambour!"

"Vive le petit tambour!" That was the drummer boy, stepping proudly
behind the Colonel himself, with a soul lifted high above mire and puddle
into the blue above. There was laughter amongst the giants behind me,
and Cowan saying softly, as when we left Kaskaskia, "Go it, Davy, my
little gamecock!" And the whisper of it was repeated among the ranks
drawn up by the gate.

Yes, here was the gate, and now we were in the fort, and an empire was
gained, never to be lost again. The Stars and Stripes climbed the staff,
and the folds were caught by an eager breeze. Thirteen cannon thundered
from the blockhouses--one for each colony that had braved a king.

There, in the miry square within the Vincennes fort, thin and bronzed and
travel-stained, were the men who had dared the wilderness in ugliest
mood. And yet none by himself would have done it--each had come here
compelled by a spirit stronger than his own, by a master mind that
laughed at the body and its ailments.

Colonel George Rogers Clark stood in the centre of the square, under the
flag to whose renown he had added three stars. Straight he was, and
square, and self-contained. No weakening tremor of exultation softened
his face as he looked upon the men by whose endurance he had been able to
do this thing. He waited until the white smoke of the last gun had
drifted away on the breeze, until the snapping of the flag and the
distant village sounds alone broke the stillness.

"We have not suffered all things for a reward," he said, "but because a
righteous cause may grow. And though our names may be forgotten, our
deeds will be remembered. We have conquered a vast land that our
children and our children's children may be freed from tyranny, and we
have brought a just vengeance upon our enemies. I thank you, one and
all, in the name of the Continental Congress and of that Commonwealth of
Virginia for which you have fought. You are no longer Virginians,
Kentuckians, Kaskaskians, and Cahokians--you are Americans."

He paused, and we were silent. Though his words moved us strongly, they
were beyond us.

"I mention no deeds of heroism, of unselfishness, of lives saved at the
peril of others. But I am the debtor of every man here for the years to
come to see that he and his family have justice from the Commonwealth and
the nation."

Again he stopped, and it seemed to us watching that he smiled a little.

"I shall name one," he said, "one who never lagged, who never complained,
who starved that the weak might be fed and walk. David Ritchie, come
here."

I trembled, my teeth chattered as the water had never made them chatter.
I believe I should have fallen but for Tom, who reached out from the
ranks. I stumbled forward in a daze to where the Colonel stood, and the
cheering from the ranks was a thing beyond me. The Colonel's hand on my
head brought me to my senses.

"David Ritchie," he said, "I give you publicly the thanks of the
regiment. The parade is dismissed."

The next thing I knew I was on Cowan's shoulders, and he was tearing
round and round the fort with two companies at his heels.

"The divil," said Terence McCann, "he dhrummed us over the wather, an'
through the wather; and faix, he would have dhrummed the sculp from
Hamilton's head and the Colonel had said the worrd."

"By gar!" cried Antoine le Gris, "now he drum us on to Detroit."

Out of the gate rushed Cowan, the frightened villagers scattering right
and left. Antoine had a friend who lived in this street, and in ten
minutes there was rum in the powder-horns, and the toast was "On to
Detroit!"

Colonel Clark was sitting alone in the commanding officer's room of the
garrison. And the afternoon sun, slanting through the square of the
window, fell upon the maps and papers before him. He had sent for me. I
halted in sheer embarrassment on the threshold, looked up at his face,
and came on, troubled.

"Davy," he said, "do you want to go back to Kentucky?"

"I should like to stay to the end, Colonel," I answered.

"The end?" he said. "This is the end."

"And Detroit, sir?" I returned.

"Detroit!" he cried bitterly, "a man of sense measures his force, and
does not try the impossible. I could as soon march against Philadelphia.
This is the end, I say; and the general must give way to the politician.
And may God have mercy on the politician who will try to keep a people's
affection without money or help from Congress."

He fell back wearily in his chair, while I stood astonished, wondering.
I had thought to find him elated with victory.

"Congress or Virginia," said he, "will have to pay Monsieur Vigo, and
Father Gibault, and Monsieur Gratiot, and the other good people who have
trusted me. Do you think they will do so?"

"The Congress are far from here," I said.

"Ay," he answered, "too far to care about you and me, and what we have
suffered."

He ended abruptly, and sat for a while staring out of the window at the
figures crossing and recrossing the muddy parade-ground.

"Tom McChesney goes to-night to Kentucky with letters to the county
lieutenant. You are to go with him, and then I shall have no one to
remind me when I am hungry, and bring me hominy. I shall have no
financier, no strategist for a tight place." He smiled a little, sadly,
at my sorrowful look, and then drew me to him and patted my shoulder.
"It is no place for a young lad,--an idle garrison. I think," he
continued presently, "I think you have a future, David, if you do not
lose your head. Kentucky will grow and conquer, and in twenty years be a
thriving community. And presently you will go to Virginia, and study
law, and come back again. Do you hear?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"And I would tell you one thing," said he, with force; "serve the people,
as all true men should in a republic. But do not rely upon their
gratitude. You will remember that?"

"Yes, Colonel."

A long time he paused, looking on me with a significance I did not then
understand. And when he spoke again his voice showed no trace of
emotion, save in the note of it.

"You have been a faithful friend, Davy, when I needed loyalty. Perhaps
the time may come again. Promise me that you will not forget me if I
am--unfortunate."

"Unfortunate, sir!" I exclaimed.

"Good-by, Davy," he said, "and God bless you. I have work to do."

Still I hesitated. He stared at me, but with kindness.

"What is it, Davy?" he asked.

"Please, sir," I said, "if I might take my drum?"

At that he laughed.

"You may," said he, "you may. Perchance we may need it again."

I went out from his presence, vaguely troubled, to find Tom. And before
the early sun had set we were gliding down the Wabash in a canoe, past
places forever dedicated to our agonies, towards Kentucky and Polly Ann.

"Davy," said Tom, "I reckon she'll be standin' under the 'simmon tree,
waitin' fer us with the little shaver in her arms."

And so she was.






BOOK II

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM


CHAPTER I

IN THE CABIN

The Eden of one man may be the Inferno of his neighbor, and now I am to
throw to the winds, like leaves of a worthless manuscript, some years of
time, and introduce you to a new Kentucky,--a Kentucky that was not for
the pioneer. One page of this manuscript might have told of a fearful
winter, when the snow lay in great drifts in the bare woods, when Tom and
I fashioned canoes or noggins out of the great roots, when a new and
feminine bit of humanity cried in the bark cradle, and Polly Ann sewed
deer leather. Another page--nay, a dozen--could be filled with Indian
horrors, ambuscades and massacres. And also I might have told how there
drifted into this land, hitherto unsoiled, the refuse cast off by the
older colonies. I must add quickly that we got more than our share of
their best stock along with this.

No sooner had the sun begun to pit the snow hillocks than wild creatures
came in from the mountains, haggard with hunger and hardship. They had
left their homes in Virginia and the Carolinas in the autumn; an
unheralded winter of Arctic fierceness had caught them in its grip.
Bitter tales they told of wives and children buried among the rocks.
Fast on the heels of these wretched ones trooped the spring settlers in
droves; and I have seen whole churches march singing into the forts, the
preacher leading, and thanking God loudly that He had delivered them from
the wilderness and the savage. The little forts would not hold them; and
they went out to hew clearings from the forest, and to build cabins and
stockades. And our own people, starved and snowbound, went out
likewise,--Tom and Polly Ann and their little family and myself to the
farm at the river-side. And while the water flowed between the stumps
over the black land, we planted and ploughed and prayed, always alert,
watching north and south, against the coming of the Indians.

But Tom was no husbandman. He and his kind were the scouts, the advance
guard of civilization, not tillers of the soil or lovers of close
communities. Farther and farther they went afield for game, and always
they grumbled sorely against this horde which had driven the deer from
his cover and the buffalo from his wallow.

Looking back, I can recall one evening when the long summer twilight
lingered to a close. Tom was lounging lazily against the big persimmon
tree, smoking his pipe, the two children digging at the roots, and Polly
Ann, seated on the door-log, sewing. As I drew near, she looked up at me
from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry
made no mar.

"Davy," she exclaimed, "how ye've growed! I thought ye'd be a wizened
little body, but this year ye've shot up like a cornstalk."

"My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins," I said.

"He'll be wallopin' me soon," said Tom, with a grin. He took a long
whiff at his pipe, and added thoughtfully, "I reckon this ain't no place
fer me now, with all the settler folks and land-grabbers comin' through
the Gap."

"Tom," said I, "there's a bit of a fall on the river here."

"Ay," he said, "and nary a fish left."

"Something better," I answered; "we'll put a dam there and a mill and a
hominy pounder."

"And make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers," cried Polly Ann,
showing a line of very white teeth. "I always said ye'd be a rich man,
Davy."

Tom was mildly interested, and went with us at daylight to measure the
fall. And he allowed that he would have the more time to hunt if the
mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind, where
the dam was to be put, the race, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow
horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank
that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could
arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrodstown, to have
two grinding-stones fetched across the mountains.

While the corn ripened and the melons swelled and the flax flowered, our
axes rang by the river's side; and sometimes, as we worked, Cowan and
Terrell and McCann and other Long Hunters would come and jeer
good-naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave
us a lift.

It was September when the millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous
morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett
was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at much
risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and
broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in
flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even the
worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth
eighteen shillings, a bearskin ten, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat
less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly
about the land court.

The land court--curse of Kentucky! It was just a windowless log house
built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this:
Henderson (for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road)
believed that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom
held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia
repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and
tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort.
Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the
sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged day
after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarrelling,
beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife a man stood beside me.

"Drat 'em," said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in
drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts, "drat 'em, ef I had
my way I'd wring the neck of every mother's son of 'em."

I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone.

"Howdy, Davy," he said; "ye've growed some sence ye've ben with Clark."
He paused, and then continued in the same strain: "'Tis the same at
Boonesboro and up thar at the Falls settlement. The critters is
everywhar, robbin' men of their claims. Davy," said Mr. Boone,
earnestly, "you know that I come into Kaintuckee when it waren't nothin'
but wilderness, and resked my life time and again. Them varmints is
wuss'n redskins,--they've robbed me already of half my claims."

"Robbed you!" I exclaimed, indignant that he, of all men, should suffer.

"Ay," he said, "robbed me. They've took one claim after another, tracts
that I staked out long afore they heerd of Kaintuckee." He rubbed his
rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve. "I get a little for my skins, and
a little by surveyin'. But when the game goes I reckon I'll go after
it."

"Where, Mr. Boone?" I asked.

"Whar? whar the varmints cyant foller. Acrost the Mississippi into the
Spanish wilderness."

"And leave Kentucky?" I cried.

"Davy," he answered sadly, "you kin cope with 'em. They tell me you're
buildin' a mill up at McChesney's, and I reckon you're as cute as any of
'em. They beat me. I'm good for nothin' but shootin' and explorin'."

We stood silent for a while, our attention caught by a quarrel which had
suddenly come out of the doorway. One of the men was Jim Willis,--my
friend of Clark's campaign,--who had a Henderson claim near Shawanee
Springs. The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Mr. Boone had spoken,
and fragments of their curses reached us where we stood. The hunting
shirts surged around them, alert now at the prospect of a fight; men came
running in from all directions, and shouts of "Hang him! Tomahawk him!"
were heard on every side. Mr. Boone did not move. It was a common
enough spectacle for him, and he was not excitable. Moreover, he knew
that the death of one extortioner more or less would have no effect on
the system. They had become as the fowls of the air.

"I was acrost the mountain last month," said Mr. Boone, presently, "and
one of them skunks had stole Campbell's silver spoons at Abingdon.
Campbell was out arter him for a week with a coil of rope on his saddle.
But the varmint got to cover."

Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set
out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner.
The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis's clutches by the
sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between
pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they
might see the grinding. Half of McAfee's new station had heard the news,
and came over likewise. And from that day we ground as much corn as
could be brought to us from miles around.

Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts. Often of a crisp
autumn morning we heard a gobble-gobble above the tumbling of the water
and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill.
Some of our meat we got that way. As for Tom, he was off and on. When
the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan
and Ray. Generally they returned with packs of skins. But sometimes
soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads.
This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia duties, made
up Tom's life. No sooner was the mill fairly started than off he went to
the Cumberland. I mention this, not alone because I remember well the
day of his return, but because of a certain happening then that had a
heavy influence on my after life.

The episode deals with an easy-mannered gentleman named Potts, who was
the agent for a certain Major Colfax of Virginia. Tom owned under a
Henderson grant; the Major had been given this and other lands for his
services in the war. Mr. Potts arrived one rainy afternoon and found me
standing alone under the little lean-to that covered the hopper. How we
served him, with the aid of McCann and Cowan and other neighbors, and how
we were near getting into trouble because of the prank, will be seen
later. The next morning I rode into Harrodstown not wholly easy in my
mind concerning the wisdom of the thing I had done. There was no one to
advise me, for Colonel Clark was far away, building a fort on the banks
of the Mississippi. Tom had laughed at the consequences; he cared little
about his land, and was for moving into the Wilderness again. But for
Polly Ann's sake I wished that we had treated the land agent less
cavalierly. I was soon distracted from these thoughts by the sight of
Harrodstown itself.

I had no sooner ridden out of the forest shade when I saw that the place
was in an uproar, men and women gathering in groups and running here and
there between the cabins. Urging on the mare, I cantered across the
fields, and the first person I met was James Ray.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Matter enough! An army of redskins has crossed the Ohio, and not a man
to take command. My God," cried Ray, pointing angrily at the swarms
about the land office, "what trash we have got this last year! Kentucky
can go to the devil, half the stations be wiped out, and not a thrip do
they care."

"Have you sent word to the Colonel?" I asked.

"If he was here," said Ray, bitterly, "he'd have half of 'em swinging
inside of an hour. I'll warrant he'd send 'em to the right-about."

I rode on into the town, Potts gone out of my mind. Apart from the
land-office crowds, and looking on in silent rage, stood a group of the
old settlers,--tall, lean, powerful, yet impotent for lack of a leader.
A contrast they were, these buckskin-clad pioneers, to the ill-assorted
humanity they watched, absorbed in struggles for the very lands they had
won.

"By the eternal!" said Jack Terrell, "if the yea'th was ter swaller 'em
up, they'd keep on a-dickerin in hell."

"Something's got to be done," Captain Harrod put in gloomily; "the red
varmints'll be on us in another day. In God's name, whar is Clark?"

"Hold!" cried Fletcher Blount, "what's that?"

The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped
in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the
woods into the clearing.

"Redskins, or there's no devil!" said Terrell.

Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day
through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white
edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his
right hand a white belt,--token of peace on the frontier.

"Lord A'mighty!" said Fletcher Blount, "be they Cricks?"

"Chickasaws, by the headgear," said Terrell. "Davy, you've got a hoss.
Ride out and look em over."

Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very
place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The
Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of
me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head.

"Davy!" says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that
voice!

"Colonel Clark!" I cried, and rode up to him. "Thank God you are come,
sir," said I, "for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern Indians
are crossing the Ohio."

He took my bridle, and, leading the horse, began to walk rapidly towards
the station.

"Ay," he answered, "I know it. A runner came to me with the tidings,
where I was building a fort on the Mississippi, and I took Willis here
and Saunders, and came."

I glanced at my old friends, who grinned at me through the berry-stain on
their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night
before was draining from the fields Clark dropped the bridle, stooped
down, and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers
from his head, and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the sternness
of his look.

"Davy, my lad," said he, "you and I have seen some strange things
together. Perchance we shall see stranger to-day."

A shout went up, for he had been recognized. And Captain Harrod and Ray
and Terrell and Cowan (who had just ridden in) ran up to greet him and
press his hand. He called them each by name, these men whose loyalty had
been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had
reached the edge of the mob about the land court. There he stood for a
full minute, and we who knew him looked on silently and waited.

The turmoil had begun again, the speculators calling out in strident
tones, the settlers bargaining and pushing, and all clamoring to be
heard. While there was money to be made or land to be got they had no
ear for the public weal. A man shouldered his way through, roughly, and
they gave back, cursing, surprised. He reached the door, and, flinging
those who blocked it right and left, entered. There he was recognized,
and his name flew from mouth to mouth.

"Clark!"

He walked up to the table, strewn with books and deeds.

"Silence!" he thundered. But there was no need,--they were still for
once. "This court is closed," he cried "while Kentucky is in danger.
Not a deed shall be signed nor an acre granted until I come back from the
Ohio. Out you go!"

Out they went indeed, judge, brokers, speculators--the evicted and the
triumphant together. And when the place was empty Clark turned the key
and thrust it into his hunting shirt. He stood for a moment on the step,
and his eyes swept the crowd.

"Now," he said, "there have been many to claim this land--who will follow
me to defend it?"

As I live, they cheered him. Hands were flung up that were past
counting, and men who were barely rested from the hardships of the
Wilderness Trail shouted their readiness to go. But others slunk away,
and were found that morning grumbling and cursing the chance that had
brought them to Kentucky. Within the hour the news had spread to the
farms, and men rode in to Harrodstown to tell the Colonel of many who
were leaving the plough in the furrow and the axe in the wood, and
starting off across the mountains in anger and fear. The Colonel turned
to me as he sat writing down the names of the volunteers.

"Davy," said he, "when you are grown you shall not stay at home, I
promise you. Take your mare and ride as for your life to McChesney, and
tell him to choose ten men and go to the Crab Orchard on the Wilderness
Road. Tell him for me to turn back every man, woman, and child who tries
to leave Kentucky."

I met Tom coming in from the field with his rawhide harness over his
shoulders. Polly Ann stood calling him in the door, and the squirrel
broth was steaming on the table. He did not wait for it. Kissing her,
he flung himself into the saddle I had left, and we watched him mutely as
he waved back to us from the edge of the woods.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

In the night I found myself sitting up in bed, listening to a running and
stamping near the cabin.

Polly Ann was stirring. "Davy," she whispered, "the stock is oneasy."

We peered out of the loophole together and through the little orchard we
had planted. The moon flooded the fields, and beyond it the forest was a
dark blur. I can recall the scene now, the rude mill standing by the
water-side, the twisted rail fences, and the black silhouettes of the
horses and cattle as they stood bunched together. Behind us little Tom
stirred in his sleep and startled us. That very evening Polly Ann had
frightened him into obedience by telling him that the Shawanees would get
him.

What was there to do? McAfee's Station was four miles away, and Ray's
clearing two. Ray was gone with Tom. I could not leave Polly Ann alone.
There was nothing for it but to wait.

Silently, that the children might not be waked and lurking savage might
not hear, we put the powder and bullets in the middle of the room and
loaded the guns and pistols. For Polly Ann had learned to shoot. She
took the loopholes of two sides of the cabin, I of the other two, and
then began the fearful watching and waiting which the frontier knows so
well. Suddenly the cattle stirred again, and stampeded to the other
corner of the field. There came a whisper from Polly Ann.

"What is it?" I answered, running over to her.

"Look out," she said; "what d'ye see near the mill?"

Her sharp eyes had not deceived her, for mine perceived plainly a dark
form skulking in the hickory grove. Next, a movement behind the rail
fence, and darting back to my side of the house I made out a long black
body wriggling at the edge of the withered corn-patch. They were
surrounding us. How I wished that Tom were home!

A stealthy sound began to intrude itself upon our ears. Listening
intently, I thought it came from the side of the cabin where the lean-to
was, where we stored our wood in winter. The black shadow fell on that
side, and into a patch of bushes; peering out of the loophole, I could
perceive nothing there. The noise went on at intervals. All at once
there grew on me, with horror, the discovery that there was digging under
the cabin.

How long the sound continued I know not,--it might have been an hour, it
might have been less. Now I thought I heard it under the wall, now
beneath the puncheons of the floor. The pitchy blackness within was such
that we could not see the boards moving, and therefore we must needs
kneel down and feel them from time to time. Yes, this one was lifting
from its bed on the hard earth beneath. I was sure of it. It rose an
inch--then an inch more. Gripping the handle of my tomahawk, I prayed
for guidance in my stroke, for the blade might go wild in the darkness.
Upward crept the board, and suddenly it was gone from the floor. I swung
a full circle--and to my horror I felt the axe plunging into soft flesh
and crunching on a bone. I had missed the head! A yell shattered the
night as the puncheon fell with a rattle on the boards, and my tomahawk was
gone from my hand. Without, the fierce war-cry of the Shawanees that I
knew so well echoed around the log walls, and the door trembled with a
blow. The children awoke, crying.

There was no time to think; my great fear was that the devil in the cabin
would kill Polly Ann. Just then I heard her calling out to me.

"Hide!" I cried, "hide under the shake-down! Has he got you?"

I heard her answer, and then the sound of a scuffle that maddened me.
Knife in hand, I crept slowly about, and put my fingers on a man's neck
and side. Next Polly Ann careened against me, and I lost him again.
"Davy, Davy," I heard her gasp, "look out fer the floor!"

It was too late. The puncheon rose under me, I stumbled, and it fell
again. Once more the awful changing notes of the war-whoop sounded
without. A body bumped on the boards, a white light rose before my eyes,
and a sharp pain leaped in my side. Then all was black again, but I had
my senses still, and my fingers closed around the knotted muscles of an
arm. I thrust the pistol in my hand against flesh, and fired. Two of us
fell together, but the thought of Polly Ann got me staggering to my feet
again, calling her name. By the grace of God I heard her answer.

"Are ye hurt, Davy?"

"No," said I, "no. And you?"

We drifted together. 'Twas she who had the presence of mind.

"The chest--quick, the chest!"

We stumbled over a body in reaching it. We seized the handles, and with
all our strength hauled it athwart the loose puncheon that seemed to be
lifting even then. A mighty splintering shook the door.

"To the ports!" cried Polly Ann, as our heads knocked together.

To find the rifles and prime them seemed to take an age. Next I was
staring through the loophole along a barrel, and beyond it were three
black forms in line on a long beam. I think we fired--Polly Ann and
I--at the same time. One fell. We saw a comedy of the beam dropping
heavily on the foot of another, and he limping off with a guttural howl
of rage and pain. I fired a pistol at him, but missed him, and then I
was ramming a powder charge down the long barrel of the rifle. Suddenly
there was silence,--even the children had ceased crying. Outside, in the
dooryard, a feathered figure writhed like a snake towards the fence. The
moon still etched the picture in black and white.

Shots awoke me, I think, distant shots. And they sounded like the
ripping and tearing of cloth for a wound. 'Twas no new sound to me.

"Davy, dear," said a voice, tenderly.

Out of the mist the tear-stained face of Polly Ann bent over me. I put
up my hand, and dropped it again with a cry. Then, my senses coming with
a rush, the familiar objects of the cabin outlined themselves: Tom's
winter hunting shirt, Polly Ann's woollen shift and sunbonnet on their
pegs; the big stone chimney, the ladder to the loft, the closed door,
with a long, jagged line across it where the wood was splintered; and,
dearest of all, the chubby forms of Peggy and little Tom playing on the
trundle-bed. Then my glance wandered to the floor, and on the puncheons
were three stains. I closed my eyes.

Again came a far-off rattle, like stones falling from a great height down
a rocky bluff.

"What's that?" I whispered.

"They're fighting at McAfee's Station," said Polly Ann. She put her cool
hand on my head, and little Tom climbed up on the bed and looked up into
my face, wistfully calling my name.

"Oh, Davy," said his mother, "I thought ye were never coming back."

"And the redskins?" I asked.

She drew the child away, lest he hurt me, and shuddered.

"I reckon 'twas only a war-party," she answered. "The rest is at
McAfee's. And if they beat 'em off--" she stopped abruptly.

"We shall be saved," I said.

I shall never forget that day. Polly Ann left my side only to feed the
children and to keep watch out of the loopholes, and I lay on my back,
listening and listening to the shots. At last these became scattered.
Then, though we strained our ears, we heard them no more. Was the fort
taken? The sun slid across the heavens and shot narrow blades of light,
now through one loophole and now through another, until a ray slanted
from the western wall and rested upon the red-and-black paint of two dead
bodies in the corner. I stared with horror.

"I was afeard to open the door and throw 'em out," said Polly Ann,
apologetically.

Still I stared. One of them had a great cleft across his face.

"But I thought I hit him in the shoulder," I exclaimed.

Polly Ann thrust her hand, gently, across my eyes. "Davy, ye mustn't
talk," she said; "that's a dear."

Drowsiness seized me. But I resisted.

"You killed him, Polly Ann," I murmured, "you?"

"Hush," said Polly Ann.

And I slept again.



CHAPTER II

"THE BEGGARS ARE COME TO TOWN"

"They was that destitute," said Tom, "'twas a pity to see 'em."

"And they be grand folks, ye say?" said Polly Ann.

"Grand folks, I reckon. And helpless as babes on the Wilderness Trail.
They had two niggers--his nigger an' hers--and they was tuckered, too,
fer a fact.

"Lawsy!" exclaimed Polly Ann. "Be still, honey!" Taking a piece of
corn-pone from the cupboard, she bent over and thrust it between little
Peggy's chubby fingers "Be still, honey, and listen to what your Pa says.
Whar did ye find 'em, Tom?"

"'Twas Jim Ray found 'em," said Tom. "We went up to Crab Orchard,
accordin' to the Colonel's orders and we was thar three days. Ye ought
to hev seen the trash we turned back, Polly Ann! Most of 'em was scared
plum' crazy, and they was fer gittin 'out 'n Kaintuckee at any cost.
Some was fer fightin' their way through us."

"The skulks!" exclaimed Polly Ann. "They tried to kill ye? What did ye
do?"

Tom grinned, his mouth full of bacon.

"Do?" says he; "we shot a couple of 'em in the legs and arms, and bound
'em up again. They was in a t'arin' rage. I'm more afeard of a scar't
man,--a real scar't man--nor a rattler. They cussed us till they was
hoarse. Said they'd hev us hung, an' Clark, too. Said they hed a right
to go back to Virginny if they hed a mind."

"An' what did ye say?" demanded Polly Ann, pausing in her work, her eyes
flashing with resentment. "Did ye tell 'em they was cowards to want to
settle lands, and not fight for 'em? Other folks' lands, too."

"We didn't tell 'em nothin'," said Tom; "jest sent 'em kitin' back to the
stations whar they come from."

"I reckon they won't go foolin' with Clark's boys again," said Polly Ann,
resuming a vigorous rubbing of the skillet. "Ye was tellin' me about
these fine folks ye fetched home." She tossed her head in the direction
of the open door, and I wondered if the fine folks were outside.

"Oh, ay," said Tom, "they was comin' this way, from the Carolinys. Jim
Ray went out to look for a deer, and found 'em off 'n the trail. By the
etarnal, they WAS tuckered. HE was the wust, Jim said, lyin' down on a
bed of laurels she and the niggers made. She has sperrit, that woman.
Jim fed him, and he got up. She wouldn't eat nothin', and made Jim put
him on his hoss. She walked. I can't mek out why them aristocrats wants
to come to Kaintuckee. They're a sight too tender."

"Pore things!" said Polly Ann, compassionately. "So ye fetched 'em
home."

"They hadn't a place ter go," said he, "and I reckoned 'twould give 'em
time ter ketch breath, an' turn around. I told 'em livin' in Kaintuck
was kinder rough."

"Mercy!" said Polly Ann, "ter think that they was use' ter silver spoons,
and linen, and niggers ter wait on 'em. Tom, ye must shoot a turkey, and
I'll do my best to give 'em a good supper." Tom rose obediently, and
seized his coonskin hat. She stopped him with a word.

"Tom."

"Ay?"

"Mayhap--mayhap Davy would know 'em. He's been to Charlestown with the
gentry there."

"Mayhap," agreed Tom. "Pore little deevil," said he, "he's hed a hard
time."

"He'll be right again soon," said Polly Ann. "He's been sleepin' that
way, off and on, fer a week." Her voice faltered into a note of
tenderness as her eyes rested on me.

"I reckon we owe Davy a heap, Polly Ann," said he.

I was about to interrupt, but Polly Ann's next remark arrested me.

"Tom," said she, "he oughter be eddicated."

"Eddicated!" exclaimed Tom, with a kind of dismay.

"Yes, eddicated," she repeated. "He ain't like you and me. He's
different. He oughter be a lawyer, or somethin'."

Tom reflected.

"Ay," he answered, "the Colonel says that same thing. He oughter be sent
over the mountain to git l'arnin'."

"And we'll be missing him sore," said Polly Ann, with a sigh.

I wanted to speak then, but the words would not come.

"Whar hev they gone?" said Tom.

"To take a walk," said Polly Ann, and laughed. "The gentry has sech
fancies as that. Tom, I reckon I'll fly over to Mrs. McCann's an' beg
some of that prime bacon she has."

Tom picked up his ride, and they went out together. I lay for a long
time reflecting. To the strange guests whom Tom in the kindness of his
heart had brought back and befriended I gave little attention. I was
overwhelmed by the love which had just been revealed to me. And so I was
to be educated. It had been in my mind these many years, but I had never
spoken of it to Polly Ann. Dear Polly Ann! My eyes filled at the
thought that she herself had determined upon this sacrifice.

There were footsteps at the door, and these I heard, and heeded not.
Then there came a voice,--a woman's voice, modulated and trained in the
perfections of speech and in the art of treating things lightly. At the
sound of that voice I caught my breath.

"What a pastoral! Harry, if we have sought for virtue in the wilderness,
we have found it."

"When have we ever sought for virtue, Sarah?"

It was the man who answered and stirred another chord of my memory.

"When, indeed!" said the woman; "'tis a luxury that is denied us, I fear
me."

"Egad, we have run the gamut, all but that."

I thought the woman sighed.

"Our hosts are gone out," she said, "bless their simple souls! 'Tis
Arcady, Harry, 'where thieves do not break in and steal.' That's
Biblical, isn't it?" She paused, and joined in the man's laugh. "I
remember--" She stopped abruptly.

"Thieves!" said he, "not in our sense. And yet a fortnight ago this
sylvan retreat was the scene of murder and sudden death."

"Yes, Indians," said the woman; "but they are beaten off and forgotten.
Troubles do not last here. Did you see the boy? He's in there, in the
corner, getting well of a fearful hacking. Mrs. McChesney says he saved
her and her brats."

"Ay, McChesney told me," said the man. "Let's have a peep at him."

In they came, and I looked on the woman, and would have leaped from my
bed had the strength been in me. Superb she was, though her
close-fitting travelling gown of green cloth was frayed and torn by the
briers, and the beauty of her face enhanced by the marks of I know not
what trials and emotions. Little, dark-pencilled lines under the eyes
were nigh robbing these of the haughtiness I had once seen and hated.
Set high on her hair was a curving, green hat with a feather, ill-suited
to the wilderness.

I looked on the man. He was as ill-equipped as she. A London tailor
must have cut his suit of gray. A single band of linen, soiled by the
journey, was wound about his throat, and I remember oddly the buttons
stuck on his knees and cuffs, and these silk-embroidered in a criss-cross
pattern of lighter gray. Some had been torn off. As for his face, 'twas
as handsome as ever, for dissipation sat well upon it.

My thoughts flew back to that day long gone when a friendless boy rode up
a long drive to a pillared mansion. I saw again the picture. The horse
with the craning neck, the liveried servant at the bridle, the listless
young gentleman with the shiny boots reclining on the horse-block, and
above him, under the portico, the grand lady whose laugh had made me sad.
And I remembered, too, the wild, neglected lad who had been to me as a
brother, warm-hearted and generous, who had shared what he had with a
foundling, who had wept with me in my first great sorrow. Where was he?

For I was face to face once more with Mrs. Temple and Mr. Harry Riddle!

The lady started as she gazed at me, and her tired eyes widened. She
clutched Mr. Riddle's arm.

"Harry!" she cried, "Harry, he puts me in mind of--of some one--I cannot
think."

Mr. Riddle laughed nervously.

"There, there, Sally," says he, "all brats resemble somebody. I have
heard you say so a dozen times."

She turned upon him an appealing glance.

"Oh!" she said, with a little catch of her breath, "is there no such
thing as oblivion? Is there a place in the world that is not haunted? I
am cursed with memory."

"Or the lack of it," answered Mr. Riddle, pulling out a silver snuff-box
from his pocket and staring at it ruefully. "Damme, the snuff I fetched
from Paris is gone, all but a pinch. Here is a real tragedy."

"It was the same in Rome," the lady continued, unheeding, "when we met
the Izards, and at Venice that nasty Colonel Tarleton saw us at the
opera. In London we must needs run into the Manners from Maryland. In
Paris--"

"In Paris we were safe enough," Mr. Riddle threw in hastily.

"And why?" she flashed back at him.

He did not answer that.

"A truce with your fancies, madam," said he. "Behold a soul of good
nature! I have followed you through half the civilized countries of the
globe--none of them are good enough. You must needs cross the ocean
again, and come to the wilds. We nearly die on the trail, are picked up
by a Samaritan in buckskin and taken into the bosom of his worthy family.
And forsooth, you look at a backwoods urchin, and are nigh to swooning."

"Hush, Harry," she cried, starting forward and peering into my face; "he
will hear you."

"Tut!" said Harry, "what if he does? London and Paris are words to him.
We might as well be speaking French. And I'll take my oath he's
sleeping."

The corner where I lay was dark, for the cabin had no windows. And if my
life had depended upon speaking, I could have found no fit words then.

She turned from me, and her mood changed swiftly. For she laughed
lightly, musically, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Perchance I am ghost-ridden," she said.

"They are not ghosts of a past happiness, at all events," he answered.

She sat down on a stool before the hearth, and clasping her fingers upon
her knee looked thoughtfully into the embers of the fire. Presently she
began to speak in a low, even voice, he looking down at her, his feet
apart, his hand thrust backward towards the heat.

"Harry," she said, "do you remember all our contrivances? How you used
to hold my hand in the garden under the table, while I talked brazenly to
Mr. Mason? And how jealous Jack Temple used to get?" She laughed again,
softly, always looking at the fire.

"Damnably jealous!" agreed Mr. Riddle, and yawned. "Served him devilish
right for marrying you. And he was a blind fool for five long years."

"Yes, blind," the lady agreed. "How could he have been so blind? How
well I recall the day he rode after us in the woods."

"'Twas the parson told, curse him!" said Mr. Riddle. "We should have
gone that night, if your courage had held."

"My courage!" she cried, flashing a look upwards, "my foresight. A
pretty mess we had made of it without my inheritance. 'Tis small enough,
the Lord knows. In Europe we should have been dregs. We should have
starved in the wilderness with you a-farming."

He looked down at her curiously.

"Devilish queer talk," said he, "but while we are in it, I wonder where
Temple is now. He got aboard the King's frigate with a price on his
head. Williams told me he saw him in London, at White's. Have--have you
ever heard, Sarah?"

She shook her head, her glance returning to the ashes.

"No," she answered.

"Faith," says Mr. Riddle, "he'll scarce turn up here."

She did not answer that, but sat motionless.

"He'll scarce turn up here, in these wilds," Mr. Riddle repeated, "and
what I am wondering, Sarah, is how the devil we are to live here."

"How do these good people live, who helped us when we were starving?"

Mr. Riddle flung his hand eloquently around the cabin. There was
something of disgust in the gesture.

"You see!" he said, "love in a cottage."

"But it is love," said the lady, in a low tone.

He broke into laughter.

"Sally," he cried, "I have visions of you gracing the board at which we
sat to-day, patting journey-cakes on the hearth, stewing squirrel broth
with the same pride that you once planned a rout. Cleaning the pots and
pans, and standing anxious at the doorway staring through a sunbonnet for
your lord and master."

"My lord and master!" said the lady, and there was so much of scorn in
the words that Mr. Riddle winced.

"Come," he said, "I grant now that you could make pans shine like
pier-glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn--although I would have
laid an hundred guineas against it some years ago. What then? Are you
to be contented with four log walls? With the intellectual companionship
of the McChesneys and their friends? Are you to depend for excitement
upon the chances of having the hair neatly cut from your head by red
fiends? Come, we'll go back to the Rue St. Dominique, to the suppers and
the card parties of the countess. We'll be rid of regrets for a life
upon which we have turned our backs forever."

She shook her head, sadly.

"It's no use, Harry," said she, "we'll never be rid of regrets."

"We'll never have a barony like Temple Bow, and races every week, and
gentry round about. But, damn it, the Rebels have spoiled all that since
the war."

"Those are not the regrets I mean," answered Mrs. Temple.

"What then, in Heaven's name?" he cried. "You were not wont to be thus.
But now I vow you go beyond me. What then?"

She did not answer, but sat leaning forward over the hearth, he staring
at her in angry perplexity. A sound broke the afternoon stillness,--the
pattering of small, bare feet on the puncheons. A tremor shook the
woman's shoulders, and little Tom stood before her, a quaint figure in a
butternut smock, his blue eyes questioning. He laid a hand on her arm.

Then a strange thing happened. With a sudden impulse she turned and
flung her arms about the boy and strained him to her, and kissed his
brown hair. He struggled, but when she released him he sat very still on
her knee, looking into her face. For he was a solemn child. The lady
smiled at him, and there were two splashes like raindrops on her fair
cheeks.

As for Mr. Riddle, he went to the door, looked out, and took a last pinch
of snuff.

"Here is the mistress of the house coming back," he cried, "and singing
like the shepherdess in the opera."

It was Polly Ann indeed. At the sound of his mother's voice, little Tom
jumped down from the lady's lap and ran past Mr. Riddle at the door.
Mrs. Temple's thoughts were gone across the mountains.

"And what is that you have under your arm?" said Mr. Riddle, as he gave
back.

"I've fetched some prime bacon fer your supper, sir," said Polly Ann, all
rosy from her walk; "what I have ain't fit to give ye."

Mrs. Temple rose.

"My dear," she said, "what you have is too good for us. And if you do
such a thing again, I shall be very angry.

"Lord, ma'am," exclaimed Polly Ann, "and you use' ter dainties an' silver
an' linen! Tom is gone to try to git a turkey for ye." She paused, and
looked compassionately at the lady. "Bless ye, ma'am, ye're that
tuckered from the mountains! 'Tis a fearsome journey."

"Yes," said the lady, simply, "I am tired."

"Small wonder!" exclaimed Polly Ann. "To think what ye've been
through--yere husband near to dyin' afore yere eyes, and ye a-reskin'
yere own life to save him--so Tom tells me. When Tom goes out
a-fightin' red-skins I'm that fidgety I can't set still. I wouldn't let
him know what I feel fer the world. But well ye know the pain of it, who
love yere husband like that."

The lady would have smiled bravely, had the strength been given her. She
tried. And then, with a shudder, she hid her face in her hands.

"Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, "don't!"

Mr. Riddle went out.

"There, there, ma'am," she said, "I hedn't no right ter speak, and ye
fair worn out." She drew her gently into a chair. "Set down, ma'am, and
don't ye stir tell supper's ready." She brushed her eyes with her
sleeve, and, stepping briskly to my bed, bent over me. "Davy," she said,
"Davy, how be ye?"

"Davy!"

It was the lady's voice. She stood facing us, and never while I live
shall I forget that which I saw in her eyes. Some resemblance it bore to
the look of the hunted deer, but in the animal it is dumb, appealing.
Understanding made the look of the woman terrible to behold,--
understanding, ay, and courage. For she did not lack this last
quality. Polly Ann gave back in a kind of dismay, and I shivered.

"Yes," I answered, "I am David Ritchie."

"You--you dare to judge me!" she cried.

I knew not why she said this.

"To judge you?" I repeated.

"Yes, to judge me," she answered. "I know you, David Ritchie, and the
blood that runs in you. Your mother was a foolish--saint" (she laughed),
"who lifted her eyebrows when I married her brother, John Temple. That
was her condemnation of me, and it stung me more than had a thousand
sermons. A doting saint, because she followed your father into the
mountain wilds to her death for a whim of his. And your father. A
Calvinist fanatic who had no mercy on sin, save for that particular
weakness of his own--"

"Stop, Mrs. Temple!" I cried, lifting up in bed. And to my astonishment
she was silenced, looking at me in amazement. "You had your vengeance
when I came to you, when you turned from me with a lift of your shoulders
at the news of my father's death. And now--"

"And now?" she repeated questioningly.

"Now I thought you were changed," I said slowly, for the excitement was
telling on me.

"You listened!" she said.

"I pitied you."

"Oh, pity!" she cried. "My God, that you should pity me!" She
straightened, and summoned all the spirit that was in her. "I would
rather be called a name than have the pity of you and yours."

"You cannot change it, Mrs. Temple," I answered, and fell back on the
nettle-bark sheets. "You cannot change it," I heard myself repeating, as
though it were another's voice. And I knew that Polly Ann was bending
over me and calling me.

*  *  *  *   *  *  *

"Where did they go, Polly Ann?" I asked.

"Acrost the Mississippi, to the lands of the Spanish King," said Polly
Ann.

"And where in those dominions?" I demanded.

"John Saunders took 'em as far as the Falls," Polly Ann answered. "He
'lowed they was goin' to St. Louis. But they never said a word. I
reckon they'll be hunted as long as they live."

I had thought of them much as I lay on my back recovering from the
fever,--the fever for which Mrs. Temple was to blame. Yet I bore her no
malice. And many other thoughts I had, probing back into childhood
memories for the solving of problems there.

"I knowed ye come of gentlefolks, Davy," Polly Ann had said when we
talked together.

So I was first cousin to Nick, and nephew to that selfish gentleman, Mr.
Temple, in whose affectionate care I had been left in Charlestown by my
father. And my father? Who had he been? I remembered the speech that
he had used and taught me, and how his neighbors had dubbed him
"aristocrat." But Mrs. Temple was gone, and it was not in likelihood
that I should ever see her more.



CHAPTER III

WE GO TO DANVILLE

Two years went by, two uneventful years for me, two mighty years for
Kentucky. Westward rolled the tide of emigrants to change her character,
but to swell her power. Towns and settlements sprang up in a season and
flourished, and a man could scarce keep pace with the growth of them.
Doctors came, and ministers, and lawyers; generals and majors, and
captains and subalterns of the Revolution, to till their grants and to
found families. There were gentry, too, from the tide-waters, come to
retrieve the fortunes which they had lost by their patriotism. There
were storekeepers like Mr. Scarlett, adventurers and ne'er-do-weels who
hoped to start with a clean slate, and a host of lazy vagrants who
thought to scratch the soil and find abundance.

I must not forget how, at the age of seventeen, I became a landowner,
thanks to my name being on the roll of Colonel Clark's regiment. For, in
a spirit of munificence, the Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia had
awarded to every private in that regiment one hundred and eight acres of
land on the Ohio River, north of the Falls. Sergeant Thomas McChesney,
as a reward for his services in one of the severest campaigns in history,
received a grant of two hundred and sixteen acres! You who will may look
at the plat made by William Clark, Surveyor for the Board of
Commissioners, and find sixteen acres marked for Thomas McChesney in
Section 169, and two hundred more in Section 3. Section 3 fronted the
Ohio some distance above Bear Grass Creek, and was, of course, on the
Illinois shore. As for my own plots, some miles in the interior, I never
saw them. But I own them to this day.

I mention these things as bearing on the story of my life, with which I
must get on. And, therefore, I may not dwell upon this injustice to the
men who won an empire and were flung a bone long afterwards.

It was early autumn once more, and such a busy week we had had at the
mill, that Tom was perforce obliged to remain at home and help, though he
longed to be gone with Cowan and Ray a-hunting to the southwest. Up
rides a man named Jarrott, flings himself from his horse, passes the time
of day as he watches the grinding, helps Tom to tie up a sack or two, and
hands him a paper.

"What's this?" says Tom, staring at it blankly.

"Ye won't blame me, Mac," answers Mr. Jarrott, somewhat ashamed of his
role of process-server. "'Tain't none of my doin's."

"Read it, Davy," said Tom, giving it to me.

I stopped the mill, and, unfolding the paper, read. I remember not the
quaint wording of it, save that it was ill-spelled and ill-writ
generally. In short, it was a summons for Tom to appear before the court
at Danville on a certain day in the following week, and I made out that a
Mr. Neville Colfax was the plaintiff in the matter, and that the suit had
to do with land.

"Neville Colfax!" I exclaimed, "that's the man for whom Mr. Potts was
agent."

"Ay, ay," said Tom, and sat him down on the meal-bags. "Drat the
varmint, he kin hev the land."

"Hev the land?" cried Polly Ann, who had come in upon us. "Hev ye no
sperrit, Tom McChesney?"

"There's no chance ag'in the law," said Tom, hopelessly. "Thar's Perkins
had his land tuck away last year, and Terrell's moved out, and twenty
more I could name. And thar's Dan'l Boone, himself. Most the rich
bottom he tuck up the critters hev got away from him."

"Ye'll go to Danville and take Davy with ye and fight it," answered Polly
Ann, decidedly. "Davy has a word to say, I reckon. 'Twas he made the
mill and scar't that Mr. Potts away. I reckon he'll git us out of this
fix."

Mr. Jarrott applauded her courage.

"Ye have the grit, ma'am," he said, as he mounted his horse again.
"Here's luck to ye!"

The remembrance of Mr. Potts weighed heavily upon my mind during the next
week. Perchance Tom would have to pay for this prank likewise. 'Twas
indeed a foolish, childish thing to have done, and I might have known
that it would only have put off the evil day of reckoning. Since then,
by reason of the mill site and the business we got by it, the land had
become the most valuable in that part of the country. Had I known
Colonel Clark's whereabouts, I should have gone to him for advice and
comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel.
Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and
silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no
man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless in such matters as
this.

"'Tis Davy will save us, Tom," said Polly Ann, "with the l'arnin' he's
got while the corn was grindin'."

I had, indeed, been reading at the mill while the hopper emptied itself,
such odd books as drifted into Harrodstown. One of these was called
"Bacon's Abridgment"; it dealt with law and it puzzled me sorely.

"And the children," Polly Ann continued,--"ye'll not make me pick up the
four of 'em, and pack it to Louisiana, because Mr. Colfax wants the land
we've made for ourselves."

There were four of them now, indeed,--the youngest still in the bark
cradle in the corner. He bore a no less illustrious name than that of
the writer of these chronicles.

It would be hard to say which was the more troubled, Tom or I, that windy
morning we set out on the Danville trace. Polly Ann alone had been
serene,--ay, and smiling and hopeful. She had kissed us each good-by
impartially. And we left her, with a future governor of Kentucky on her
shoulder, tripping lightly down to the mill to grind the McGarrys' corn.

When the forest was cleared at Danville, Justice was housed first. She
was not the serene, inexorable dame whom we have seen in pictures holding
her scales above the jars of earth. Justice at Danville was a somewhat
high-spirited, quarrelsome lady who decided matters oftenest with the
stroke of a sword. There was a certain dignity about her temple
withal,--for instance, if a judge wore linen, that linen must not be
soiled. Nor was it etiquette for a judge to lay his own hands in
chastisement on contemptuous persons, though Justice at Danville had more
compassion than her sisters in older communities upon human failings.

There was a temple built to her "of hewed or sawed logs nine inches
thick"--so said the specifications. Within the temple was a rude
platform which served as a bar, and since Justice is supposed to carry a
torch in her hand, there were no windows,--nor any windows in the jail
next door, where some dozen offenders languished on the afternoon that
Tom and I rode into town.

There was nothing auspicious in the appearance of Danville, and no man
might have said then that the place was to be the scene of portentous
conventions which were to decide the destiny of a State. Here was a
sprinkling of log cabins, some in the building, and an inn, by courtesy
so called. Tom and I would have preferred to sleep in the woods near by,
with our feet to the blaze; this was partly from motives of economy, and
partly because Tom, in common with other pioneers, held an inn in
contempt. But to come back to our arrival.

It was a sunny and windy afternoon, and the leaves were flying in the
air. Around the court-house was a familiar, buzzing scene,--the
backwoodsmen, lounging against the wall or brawling over their claims,
the sleek agents and attorneys, and half a dozen of a newer type. These
were adventurous young gentlemen of family, some of them lawyers and some
of them late officers in the Continental army who had been rewarded with
grants of land. These were the patrons of the log tavern which stood
near by with the blackened stumps around it, where there was much
card-playing and roistering, ay, and even duelling, of nights.

"Thar's Mac," cried a backwoodsman who was sitting on the court-house
steps as we rode up. "Howdy, Mac; be they tryin' to git your land, too?"

"Howdy, Mac," said a dozen more, paying a tribute to Tom's popularity.
And some of them greeted me.

"Is this whar they take a man's land away?" says Tom, jerking his thumb
at the open door.

Tom had no intention of uttering a witticism, but his words were followed
by loud guffaws from all sides, even the lawyers joining in.

"I reckon this is the place, Tom," came the answer.

"I reckon I'll take a peep in thar," said Tom, leaping off his horse and
shouldering his way to the door. I followed him, curious. The building
was half full. Two elderly gentlemen of grave demeanor sat on stools
behind a puncheon table, and near them a young man was writing. Behind
the young man was a young gentleman who was closing a speech as we
entered, and he had spoken with such vehemence that the perspiration
stood out on his brow. There was a murmur from those listening, and I
saw Tom pressing his way to the front.

"Hev any of ye seen a feller named Colfax?" cries Tom, in a loud voice.
"He says he owns the land I settled, and he ain't ever seed it."

There was a roar of laughter, and even the judges smiled.

"Whar is he?" cries Tom; "said he'd be here to-day."

Another gust of laughter drowned his words, and then one of the judges
got up and rapped on the table. The gentleman who had just made the
speech glared mightily, and I supposed he had lost the effect of it.

"What do you mean by interrupting the court?" cried the judge. "Get out,
sir, or I'll have you fined for contempt."

Tom looked dazed. But at that moment a hand was laid on his shoulder,
and Tom turned.

"Why," says he, "thar's no devil if it ain't the Colonel. Polly Ann told
me not to let 'em scar' me, Colonel."

"And quite right, Tom," Colonel Clark answered, smiling. He turned to
the judges. "If your Honors please," said he, "this gentleman is an old
soldier of mine, and unused to the ways of court. I beg your Honors to
excuse him."

The judges smiled back, and the Colonel led us out of the building.

"Now, Tom," said he, after he had given me a nod and a kind word, "I know
this Mr. Colfax, and if you will come into the tavern this evening after
court, we'll see what can be done. I have a case of my own at present."

Tom was very grateful. He spent the remainder of the daylight hours with
other friends of his, shooting at a mark near by, serenely confident of
the result of his case now that Colonel Clark had a hand in it. Tom
being one of the best shots in Kentucky, he had won two beaver skins
before the early autumn twilight fell. As for me, I had an afternoon of
excitement in the court, fascinated by the marvels of its procedures, by
the impassioned speeches of its advocates, by the gravity of its judges.
Ambition stirred within me.

The big room of the tavern was filled with men in heated talk over the
day's doings, some calling out for black betty, some for rum, and some
demanding apple toddies. The landlord's slovenly negro came in with
candles, their feeble rays reenforcing the firelight and revealing the
mud-chinked walls. Tom and I had barely sat ourselves down at a table in
a corner, when in came Colonel Clark. Beside him was a certain swarthy
gentleman whom I had noticed in the court, a man of some thirty-five
years, with a fine, fleshy face and coal-black hair. His expression was
not one to give us the hope of an amicable settlement,--in fact, he had
the scowl of a thundercloud. He was talking quite angrily, and seemed
not to heed those around him.

"Why the devil should I see the man, Clark?" he was saying.

The Colonel did not answer until they had stopped in front of us.

"Major Colfax," said he, "this is Sergeant Tom McChesney, one of the best
friends I have in Kentucky. I think a vast deal of Tom, Major. He was
one of the few that never failed me in the Illinois campaign. He is as
honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at all,
and I have great hopes that you will agree. Tom, the Major and I are
boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has consented to
this meeting."

"I fear that your kind efforts will be useless, Colonel," Major Colfax
put in, rather tartly. "Mr. McChesney not only ignores my rights, but
was near to hanging my agent."

"What?" says Colonel Clark.

I glanced at Tom. However helpless he might be in a court, he could be
counted on to stand up stanchly in a personal argument. His retorts
would certainly not be brilliant, but they surely would be dogged. Major
Colfax had begun wrong.

"I reckon ye've got no rights that I know on," said Tom. "I cleart the
land and settled it, and I have a better right to it nor any man. And
I've got a grant fer it."

"A Henderson grant!" cried the Major; "'tis so much worthless paper."

"I reckon it's good enough fer me," answered Tom. "It come from those
who blazed their way out here and druv the redskins off. I don't know
nothin' about this newfangled law, but 'tis a queer thing to my thinkin'
if them that fit fer a place ain't got the fust right to it."

Major Colfax turned to Colonel Clark with marked impatience.

"I told you it would be useless, Clark," said he. "I care not a fig for
a few paltry acres, and as God hears me I'm a reasonable man." (He did
not look it then.) "But I swear by the evangels I'll let no squatter
have the better of me. I did not serve Virginia for gold or land, but I
lost my fortune in that service, and before I know it these backwoodsmen
will have every acre of my grant. It's an old story," said Mr. Colfax,
hotly, "and why the devil did we fight England if it wasn't that every
man should have his rights? By God, I'll not be frightened or wheedled
out of mine. I sent an agent to Kentucky to deal politely and reasonably
with these gentry. What did they do to him? Some of them threw him out
neck and crop. And if I am not mistaken," said Major Colfax, fixing a
piercing eye upon Tom, "if I am not mistaken, it was this worthy sergeant
of yours who came near to hanging him, and made the poor devil flee
Kentucky for his life."

This remark brought me near to an untimely laugh at the remembrance of
Mr. Potts, and this though I was far too sober over the outcome of the
conference. Colonel Clark seized hold of a chair and pushed it under
Major Colfax.

"Sit down, gentlemen, we are not so far apart," said the Colonel, coolly.
The slovenly negro lad passing at that time, he caught him by the sleeve.
"Here, boy, a bowl of toddy, quick. And mind you brew it strong. Now,
Tom," said he, "what is this fine tale about a hanging?"

"'Twan't nothin'," said Tom.

"You tell me you didn't try to hang Mr. Potts!" cried Major Colfax.

"I tell you nothin'," said Tom, and his jaw was set more stubbornly than
ever.

Major Colfax glanced at Colonel Clark.

"You see!" he said a little triumphantly.

I could hold my tongue no longer.

"Major Colfax is unjust, sir," I cried. "'Twas Tom saved the man from
hanging."

"Eh?" says Colonel Clark, turning to me sharply. "So you had a hand in
this, Davy. I might have guessed as much."

"Who the devil is this?" says Mr. Colfax.

"A sort of ward of mine," answers the Colonel. "Drummer boy, financier,
strategist, in my Illinois campaign. Allow me to present to you, Major,
Mr. David Ritchie. When my men objected to marching through ice-skimmed
water up to their necks, Mr. Ritchie showed them how."

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the Major, staring at me from under his
black eyebrows, "he was but a child."

"With an old head on his shoulders," said the Colonel, and his banter
made me flush.

The negro boy arriving with the toddy, Colonel Clark served out three
generous gourdfuls, a smaller one for me. "Your health, my friends, and
I drink to a peaceful settlement."

"You may drink to the devil if you like," says Major Colfax, glaring at
Tom.

"Come, Davy," said Colonel Clark, when he had taken half the gourd,
"let's have the tale. I'll warrant you're behind this."

I flushed again, and began by stammering. For I had a great fear that
Major Colfax's temper would fly into bits when he heard it.

"Well, sir," said I, "I was grinding corn at the mill when the man came.
I thought him a smooth-mannered person, and he did not give his business.
He was just for wheedling me. 'And was this McChesney's mill?' said he.
'Ay,' said I. 'Thomas McChesney?' 'Ay,' said I. Then he was all for
praise of Thomas McChesney. 'Where is he?' said he. 'He is at the far
pasture,' said I,' and may be looked for any moment.' Whereupon he sits
down and tries to worm out of me the business of the mill, the yield of
the land. After that he begins to talk about the great people he knows,
Sevier and Shelby and Robertson and Boone and the like. Ay, and his
intimates, the Randolphs and the Popes and the Colfaxes in Virginia.
'Twas then I asked him if he knew Colonel Campbell of Abingdon."

"And what deviltry was that?" demanded the Colonel, as he dipped himself
more of the toddy.

"I'll come to it, sir. Yes, Colonel Campbell was his intimate, and
ranted if he did not tarry a week with him at Abingdon on his journeys.
After that he follows me to the cabin, and sees Polly Ann and Tom and the
children on the floor poking a 'possum. 'Ah,' says he, in his softest
voice, 'a pleasant family scene. And this is Mr. McChesney?' 'I'm your
man,' says Tom. Then he praised the mill site and the land all over
again. 'Tis good enough for a farmer,' says Tom. 'Who holds under
Henderson's grant,' I cried. 'Twas that you wished to say an hour
ago,' and I saw I had caught him fair."

"By the eternal!" cried Colonel Clark, bringing down his fist upon the
table. "And what then?"

I glanced at Major Colfax, but for the life of me I could make nothing of
his look.

"And what did your man say?" said Colonel Clark.

"He called on the devil to bite me, sir," I answered. The Colonel put
down his gourd and began to laugh. The Major was looking at me fixedly.

"And what then?" said the Colonel.

"It was then Polly Ann called him a thief to take away the land Tom had
fought for and paid for and tilled. The man was all politeness once
more, said that the matter was unfortunate, and that a new and good title
might be had for a few skins."

"He said that?" interrupted Major Colfax, half rising in his chair. "He
was a damned scoundrel."

"So I thought, sir," I answered.

"The devil you did!" said the Major.

"Tut, Colfax," said the Colonel, pulling him by the sleeve of his
greatcoat, "sit down and let the lad finish. And then?"

"Mr. Boone had told me of a land agent who had made off with Colonel
Campbell's silver spoons from Abingdon, and how the Colonel had ridden
east and west after him for a week with a rope hanging on his saddle. I
began to tell this story, and instead of the description of Mr. Boone's
man, I put in that of Mr. Potts,--in height some five feet nine, spare,
of sallow complexion and a green greatcoat."

Major Colfax leaped up in his chair.

"Great Jehovah!" he shouted, "you described the wrong man."

Colonel Clark roared with laughter, thereby spilling some of his toddy.

"I'll warrant he did so," he cried; "and I'll warrant your agent went
white as birch bark. Go on, Davy."

"There's not a great deal more, sir," I answered, looking apprehensively
at Major Colfax, who still stood. "The man vowed I lied, but Tom laid
hold of him and was for hurrying him off to Harrodstown at once."

"Which would ill have suited your purpose," put in the Colonel. "And
what did you do with him?"

"We put him in a loft, sir, and then I told Tom that he was not
Campbell's thief at all. But I had a craving to scare the man out of
Kentucky. So I rode off to the neighbors and gave them the tale, and
bade them come after nightfall as though to hang Campbell's thief, which
they did, and they were near to smashing the door trying to get in the
cabin. Tom told them the rascal had escaped, but they must needs come in
and have jigs and toddies until midnight. When they were gone, and we
called down the man from the loft, he was in such a state that he could
scarce find the rungs of the ladder with his feet. He rode away into the
night, and that was the last we heard of him. Tom was not to blame,
sir."

Colonel Clark was speechless. And when for the moment he would conquer
his mirth, a glance at Major Colfax would set him off again in laughter.
I was puzzled. I thought my Colonel more human than of old.

"How now, Colfax?" he cried, giving a poke to the Major's ribs; "you hold
the sequel to this farce."

The Major's face was purple,--with what emotion I could not say.
Suddenly he swung full at me.

"Do you mean to tell me that you were the general of this hoax--you?" he
demanded in a strange voice.

"The thing seemed an injustice to me, sir," I replied in self-defence,
"and the man a rascal."

"A rascal!" cried the Major, "a knave, a poltroon, a simpleton! And he
came to me with no tale of having been outwitted by a stripling."
Whereupon Major Colfax began to shake, gently at first, and presently he
was in such a gale of laughter that I looked on him in amazement, Colonel
Clark joining in again. The Major's eye rested at length upon Tom, and
gradually he grew calm.

"McChesney," said he, "we'll have no bickerings in court among soldiers.
The land is yours, and to-morrow my attorney shall give you a deed of it.
Your hand, McChesney."

The stubbornness vanished from Tom's face, and there came instead a dazed
expression as he thrust a great, hard hand into the Major's.

"'Twan't the land, sir," he stammered; "these varmints of settlers is
gittin' thick as flies in July. 'Twas Polly Ann. I reckon I'm obleeged
to ye, Major."

"There, there," said the Major, "I thank the Lord I came to Kentucky to
see for myself. Damn the land. I have plenty more,--and little else."
He turned quizzically to Colonel Clark, revealing a line of strong, white
teeth. "Suppose we drink a health to your drummer boy," said he, lifting
up his gourd.



CHAPTER IV

I CROSS THE MOUNTAINS ONCE MORE

"'Tis what ye've a right to, Davy," said Polly Ann, and she handed me a
little buckskin bag on which she had been sewing. I opened it with
trembling fingers, and poured out, chinking on the table, such a motley
collection of coins as was never seen,--Spanish milled dollars, English
sovereigns and crowns and shillings, paper issues of the Confederacy, and
I know not what else. Tom looked on with a grin, while little Tom and
Peggy reached out their hands in delight, their mother vigorously
blocking their intentions.

"Ye've earned it yerself," said Polly Ann, forestalling my protest;
"'tis what ye got by the mill, and I've laid it by bit by bit for yer
eddication."

"And what do you get?" I cried, striving by feigned anger to keep the
tears back from my eyes. "Have you no family to support?"

"Faith," she answered, "we have the mill that ye gave us, and the farm,
and Tom's rifle. I reckon we'll fare better than ye think, tho' we'll
miss ye sore about the place."

I picked out two sovereigns from the heap, dropped them in the bag, and
thrust it into my hunting shirt.

"There," said I, my voice having no great steadiness, "not a penny more.
I'll keep the bag for your sake, Polly Ann, and I'll take the mare for
Tom's."

She had had a song on her lips ever since our coming back from Danville,
seven days agone, a song on her lips and banter on her tongue, as she
made me a new hunting shirt and breeches for the journey across the
mountains. And now with a sudden movement she burst into tears and flung
her arms about my neck.

"Oh, Davy, 'tis no time to be stubborn," she sobbed, "and eddication is a
costly thing. Ever sence I found ye on the trace, years ago, I've
thought of ye one day as a great man. And when ye come back to us so big
and l'arned, I'd wish to be saying with pride that I helped ye."

"And who else, Polly Ann?" I faltered, my heart racked with the parting.
"You found me a homeless waif, and you gave me a home and a father and
mother."

"Davy, ye'll not forget us when ye're great, I know ye'll not. Tis not
in ye."

She stood back and smiled at me through her tears. The light of heaven
was in that smile, and I have dreamed of it even since age has crept upon
me. Truly, God sets his own mark on the pure in heart, on the unselfish.

I glanced for the last time around the rude cabin, every timber of which
was dedicated to our sacrifices and our love: the fireplace with its
rough stones, on the pegs the quaint butternut garments which Polly Ann
had stitched, the baby in his bark cradle, the rough bedstead and the
little trundle pushed under it,--and the very homely odor of the place is
dear to me yet. Despite the rigors and the dangers of my life here,
should I ever again find such happiness and peace in the world? The
children clung to my knees; and with a "God bless ye, Davy, and come back
to us," Tom squeezed my hand until I winced with pain. I leaped on the
mare, and with blinded eyes rode down the familiar trail, past the mill,
to Harrodsburg.

There Mr. Neville Colfax was waiting to take me across the mountains.

There is a story in every man's life, like the kernel in the shell of a
hickory nut. I am ill acquainted with the arts of a biographer, but I
seek to give in these pages little of the shell and the whole of the
kernel of mine. 'Twould be unwise and tiresome to recount the journey
over the bare mountains with my new friend and benefactor. He was a
strange gentleman, now jolly enough to make me shake with laughter and
forget the sorrow of my parting, now moody for a night and a day; now he
was all sweetness, now all fire; now he was abstemious, now
self-indulgent and prodigal. He had a will like flint, and under it a
soft heart. Cross his moods, and he hated you. I never thought to cross
them, therefore he called me Davy, and his friendliness grew with our
journey. His anger turned against rocks and rivers, landlords and
emigrants, but never against me. And for this I was silently thankful.

And how had he come to take me over the mountains, and to put me in the
way of studying law? Mindful of the kernel of my story, I have shortened
the chapter to tell you out of the proper place. Major Colfax had made
Tom and me sup with himself and Colonel Clark at the inn in Danville.
And so pleased had the Major professed himself with my story of having
outwitted his agent, that he must needs have more of my adventures.
Colonel Clark gave him some, and Tom,--his tongue loosed by the
toddy,--others. And the Colonel added to the debt I owed him by
suggesting that Major Colfax take me to Virginia and recommend me to a
lawyer there.

"Nay," cried the Major, "I will do more. I like the lad, for he is
modest despite the way you have paraded him. I have an uncle in
Richmond, Judge Wentworth, to whom I will take him in person. And when
the Judge has done with him, if he is not flayed and tattooed with
Blackstone, you may flay and tattoo me."

Thus did I break through my environment. And it was settled that I
should meet the Major in seven days at Harrodstown.

Once in the journey did the Major make mention of a subject which had
troubled me.

"Davy," said he, "Clark has changed. He is not the same man he was when
I saw him in Williamsburg demanding supplies for his campaign."

"Virginia has used him shamefully, sir," I answered, and suddenly there
came flooding to my mind things I had heard the Colonel say in the
campaign.

"Commonwealths have short memories," said the Major, "they will accept
any sacrifice with a smile. Shakespeare, I believe, speaks of royal
ingratitude--he knew not commonwealths. Clark was close-lipped once, not
given to levity and--to toddy. There, there, he is my friend as well as
yours, and I will prove it by pushing his cause in Virginia. Is yours
Scotch anger? Then the devil fend me from it. A monarch would have
given him fifty thousand acres on the Wabash, a palace, and a sufficient
annuity. Virginia has given him a sword, eight thousand wild acres to be
sure, repudiated the debts of his army, and left him to starve. Is there
no room for a genius in our infant military establishment?"

At length, as Christmas drew near, we came to Major Colfax's seat, some
forty miles out of the town of Richmond. It was called Neville's Grange,
the Major's grandfather having so named it when he came out from England
some sixty years before. It was a huge, rambling, draughty house of
wood,--mortgaged, so the Major cheerfully informed me, thanks to the
patriotism of the family. At Neville's Grange the Major kept a somewhat
roisterous bachelor's hall. The place was overrun with negroes and dogs,
and scarce a night went by that there was not merrymaking in the house
with the neighbors. The time passed pleasantly enough until one frosty
January morning Major Colfax had a twinge of remembrance, cried out for
horses, took me into Richmond, and presented me to that very learned and
decorous gentleman, Judge Wentworth.

My studies began within the hour of my arrival.



CHAPTER V

I MEET AN OLD BEDFELLOW

I shall burden no one with the dry chronicles of a law office. The
acquirement of learning is a slow process in life, and perchance a slower
one in the telling. I lacked not application during the three years of
my stay in Richmond, and to earn my living I worked at such odd tasks as
came my way.

The Judge resembled Major Colfax in but one trait: he was choleric. But
he was painstaking and cautious, and I soon found out that he looked
askance upon any one whom his nephew might recommend. He liked the
Major, but he vowed him to be a roisterer and spendthrift, and one day,
some months after my advent, the Judge asked me flatly how I came to fall
in with Major Colfax. I told him. At the end of this conversation he
took my breath away by bidding me come to live with him. Like many
lawyers of that time, he had a little house in one corner of his grounds
for his office. It stood under great spreading trees, and there I was
wont to sit through many a summer day wrestling with the authorities.
In the evenings we would have political arguments, for the Confederacy
was in a seething state between the Federalists and the Republicans over
the new Constitution, now ratified. Between the Federalists and the
Jacobins, I would better say, for the virulence of the French Revolution
was soon to be reflected among the parties on our side. Kentucky,
swelled into an unmanageable territory, was come near to rebellion
because the government was not strong enough to wrest from Spain the free
navigation of the Mississippi.

And yet I yearned to go back, and looked forward eagerly to the time when
I should have stored enough in my head to gain admission to the bar. I
was therefore greatly embarrassed, when my examinations came, by an offer
from Judge Wentworth to stay in Richmond and help him with his practice.
It was an offer not to be lightly set aside, and yet I had made up my
mind. He flew into a passion because of my desire to return to a wild
country of outlaws and vagabonds.

"Why, damme," he cried, "Kentucky and this pretty State of Franklin which
desired to chip off from North Carolina are traitorous places. Disloyal
to Congress! Intriguing with a Spanish minister and the Spanish governor
of Louisiana to secede from their own people and join the King of Spain.
Bah!" he exclaimed, "if our new Federal Constitution is adopted I would
hang Jack Sevier of Franklin and your Kentuckian Wilkinson to the highest
trees west of the mountains."

I can see the little gentleman as he spoke, his black broadcloth coat and
lace ruffles, his hand clutching the gold head of his cane, his face
screwed up with indignation under his white wig. It was on a Sunday, and
he was standing by the lilac bushes on the lawn in front of his square
brick house.

"David," said he, more calmly, "I trust I have taught you something
besides the law. I trust I have taught you that a strong Federal
government alone will be the salvation of our country."

"You cannot blame Kentucky greatly, sir," said I, feeling that I must
stand up for my friends. "The Federal government has done little enough
for its people, and treated them to a deal of neglect. They won that
western country for themselves with no Federal nor Virginia or North
Carolina troops to help them. No man east of the mountains knows what
that fight has been. No man east of the mountains knows the horror of
that Indian warfare. This government gives them no protection now. Nay,
Congress cannot even procure for them an outlet for their commerce. They
must trade or perish. Spain closes the Mississippi, arrests our
merchants, seizes their goods, and often throws them into prison. No
wonder they scorn the Congress as weak and impotent."

The Judge stared at me aghast. It was the first time I had dared oppose
him on this subject.

"What," he sputtered, "what? You are a Separatist,--you whom I have
received into the bosom of my family!" Seizing the cane at the middle,
he brandished it in my face.

"Don't misunderstand me, sir," said I. "You have given me books to read,
and have taught me what may be the destiny of our nation on this
continent. But you must forgive a people whose lives have been spent in
a fierce struggle for their homes, whose families have nearly all lost
some member by massacre, who are separated by hundreds of miles of
wilderness from you."

He looked at me speechless, and turned and walked into the house. I
thought I had sinned past forgiveness, and I was beyond description
uncomfortable, for he had been like a parent to me. But the next
morning, at half after seven, he walked into the little office and laid
down some gold pieces on my table. Gold was very scarce in those days.

"They are for your journey, David," said he. "My only comfort in your
going back is that you may grow up to put some temperance into their wild
heads. I have a commission for you at Jonesboro, in what was once the
unspeakable State of Franklin. You can stop there on your way to
Kentucky." He drew from his pocket a great bulky letter, addressed to
"Thomas Wright, Esquire, Barrister-at-law in Jonesboro, North Carolina."
For the good gentleman could not bring himself to write Franklin.

It was late in September of the year 1788 when I set out on my homeward
way--for Kentucky was home to me. I was going back to Polly Ann and Tom,
and visions of that home-coming rose before my eyes as I rode. In a
packet in my saddle-bags were some dozen letters which Mr. Wrenn, the
schoolmaster at Harrodstown, had writ at Polly Ann's bidding. I have the
letters yet. For Mr. Wrenn was plainly an artist, and had set down on
the paper the words just as they had flowed from her heart. Ay, and
there was news in the letters, though not surprising news among those
pioneer families whom God blessed so abundantly. Since David Ritchie
McChesney (I mention the name with pride) had risen above the necessities
of a bark cradle, two more had succeeded him, a brother and a sister. I
spurred my horse onward, and thought impatiently of the weary leagues
between my family and me.

I have often pictured myself on that journey. I was twenty-one years of
age, though one would have called me older. My looks were nothing to
boast of, and I was grown up tall and weedy, so that I must have made
quite a comical sight, with my long legs dangling on either side of the
pony. I wore a suit of gray homespun, and in my saddle-bags I carried
four precious law books, the stock in trade which my generous patron had
given me. But as I mounted the slopes of the mountains my spirits rose
too at the prospect of the life before me. The woods were all aflame
with color, with wine and amber and gold, and the hills wore the misty
mantle of shadowy blue so dear to my youthful memory. As I left the rude
taverns of a morning and jogged along the heights, I watched the vapors
rise and troll away from the valleys far beneath, and saw great flocks of
ducks and swans and cackling geese darkening the air in their southward
flight. Strange that I fell in with no company, for the trail leading
into the Tennessee country was widened and broadened beyond belief, and
everywhere I came upon blackened fires and abandoned lean-tos, and refuse
bones gnawed by the wolves and bleached by the weather. I slept in some
of these lean-tos, with my fire going brightly, indifferent to the howl
of wolves in chase or the scream of a panther pouncing on its prey. For
I was born of the wilderness. It had no terrors for me, nor did I ever
feel alone. The great cliffs with their clinging, gnarled trees, the
vast mountains clothed in the motley colors of the autumn, the sweet and
smoky smell of the Indian summer,--all were dear to me.

As I drew near to Jonesboro my thoughts began to dwell upon that strange
and fascinating man who had entertained Polly Ann and Tom and me so
lavishly on our way to Kentucky,--Captain John Sevier. For he had made a
great noise in the world since then, and the wrath of such men as my late
patron was heavy upon him. Yes, John Sevier, Nollichucky Jack, had been
a king in all but name since I had seen him, the head of such a
principality as stirred the blood to read about. It comprised the
Watauga settlement among the mountains of what is now Tennessee, and was
called prosaically (as is the wont of the Anglo-Saxon) the free State of
Franklin. There were certain conservative and unimaginative souls in
this mountain principality who for various reasons held their old
allegiance to the State of North Carolina. One Colonel Tipton led these
loyalist forces, and armed partisans of either side had for some years
ridden up and down the length of the land, burning and pillaging and
slaying. We in Virginia had heard of two sets of courts in Franklin, of
two sets of legislators. But of late the rumor had grown persistently
that Nollichucky Jack was now a kind of fugitive, and that he had passed
the summer pleasantly enough fighting Indians in the vicinity of
Nick-a-jack Cave.

It was court day as I rode into the little town of Jonesboro, the air
sparkling like a blue diamond over the mountain crests, and I drew deep
into my lungs once more the scent of the frontier life I had loved so
well. In the streets currents of excited men flowed and backed and
eddied, backwoodsmen and farmers in the familiar hunting shirts of hide
or homespun, and lawyers in dress less rude. A line of horses stood
kicking and switching their tails in front of the log tavern, rough carts
and wagons had been left here and there with their poles on the ground,
and between these, piles of skins were heaped up and bags of corn and
grain. The log meeting-house was deserted, but the court-house was the
centre of such a swirling crowd as I had often seen at Harrodstown. Now
there are brawls and brawls, and I should have thought with shame of my
Kentucky bringing-up had I not perceived that this was no ordinary court
day, and that an unusual excitement was in the wind.

Tying my horse, and making my way through the press in front of the
tavern door, I entered the common room, and found it stifling, brawling
and drinking going on apace. Scarce had I found a seat before the whole
room was emptied by one consent, all crowding out of the door after two
men who began a rough-and-tumble fight in the street. I had seen
rough-and-tumble fights in Kentucky, and if I have forborne to speak of
them it is because there always has been within me a loathing for them.
And so I sat quietly in the common room until the landlord came. I asked
him if he could direct me to Mr. Wright's house, as I had a letter for
that gentleman. His answer was to grin at me incredulously.

"I reckoned you wah'nt from these parts," said he. "Wright's-out o'
town."

"What is the excitement?" I demanded.

He stared at me.

"Nollichucky Jack's been heah, in Jonesboro, young man," said he.

"What," I exclaimed, "Colonel Sevier?"

"Ay, Sevier," he repeated. "With Martin and Tipton and all the Caroliny
men right heah, having a council of mility officers in the court-house,
in rides Jack with his frontier boys like a whirlwind. He bean't afeard
of 'em, and a bench warrant out ag'in him for high treason. Never seed
sech a recklessness. Never had sech a jamboree sence I kept the tavern.
They was in this here room most of the day, and they was five fights
before they set down to dinner."

"And Colonel Tipton?" I said.

"Oh, Tipton," said he, "he hain't afeard neither, but he hain't got men
enough."

"And where is Sevier now?" I demanded.

"How long hev you ben in town?" was his answer.

I told him.

"Wal," said he, shifting his tobacco from one sallow cheek to the other,
"I reckon he and his boys rud out just afore you come in. Mark me," he
added, "when I tell ye there'll be trouble yet. Tipton and Martin and
the Caroliny folks is burnin' mad with Chucky Jack for the murder of Corn
Tassel and other peaceful chiefs. But Jack hez a wild lot with
him,--some of the Nollichucky Cave traders, and there's one young lad
that looks like he was a gentleman once. I reckon Jack himself wouldn't
like to get into a fight with him. He's a wild one. Great Goliah," he
exclaimed, running to the door, "ef thar ain't a-goin' to be another
fight! Never seed sech a day in Jonesboro."

I likewise ran to the door, and this fight interested me. There was a
great, black-bearded mountaineer- farmer- desperado in the midst of a
circle, pouring out a torrent of abuse at a tall young man.

"That thar's Hump Gibson," said the landlord, genially pointing out the
black-bearded ruffian, "and the young lawyer feller hez git a jedgment
ag'in him. He's got spunk, but I reckon Hump'll t'ar the innards out'n
him ef he stands thar a great while."

"Ye'll git jedgment ag'in me, ye Caroliny splinter, will ye?" yelled Mr.
Gibson, with an oath. "I'll pay Bill Wilder the skins when I git ready,
and all the pinhook lawyers in Washington County won't budge me a mite."

"You'll pay Bill Wilder or go to jail, by the eternal," cried the young
man, quite as angrily, whereupon I looked upon him with a mixture of
admiration and commiseration, with a gulping certainty in my throat that
I was about to see murder done. He was a strange young man, with the
rare marked look that would compel even a poor memory to pick him out
again. For example, he was very tall and very slim, with red hair blown
every which way over a high and towering forehead that seemed as long as
the face under it. The face, too, was long, and all freckled by the
weather. The blue eyes held me in wonder, and these blazed with such
prodigious wrath that, if a look could have killed, Hump Gibson would
have been stricken on the spot. Mr. Gibson was, however, very much
alive.

"Skin out o' here afore I kill ye," he shouted, and he charged at the
slim young man like a buffalo, while the crowd held its breath. I, who
had looked upon cruel sights in my day, was turning away with a kind of
sickening when I saw the slim young man dodge the rush. He did more.
With two strides of his long legs he reached the fence, ripped off the
topmost rail, and his huge antagonist, having changed his direction and
coming at him with a bellow, was met with the point of a scantling in the
pit of his stomach, and Mr. Gibson fell heavily to the ground. It had
all happened in a twinkling, and there was a moment's lull while the
minds of the onlookers needed readjustment, and then they gave vent to
ecstasies of delight.

"Great Goliah!" cried the landlord, breathlessly, "he shet him up jest
like a jack-knife."

Awe-struck, I looked at the tall young man, and he was the very essence
of wrath. Unmindful of the plaudits, he stood brandishing the fence-rail
over the great, writhing figure on the ground. And he was slobbering. I
recall that this fact gave a twinge to something in my memory.

"Come on, Hump Gibson," he cried, "come on!"--at which the crowd went
wild with pure joy. Witticisms flew.

"Thought ye was goin' to eat 'im up, Hump?" said a friend.

"Ye ain't hed yer meal yet, Hump," reminded another.

Mr. Hump Gibson arose slowly out of the dust, yet he did not stand
straight.

"Come on, come on!" cried the young lawyer-fellow, and he thrust the
point of the rail within a foot of Mr. Gibson's stomach.

"Come on, Hump!" howled the crowd, but Mr. Gibson stood irresolute. He
lacked the supreme test of courage which was demanded on this occasion.
Then he turned and walked away very slowly, as though his pace might
mitigate in some degree the shame of his retreat. The young man flung
away the fence-rail, and, thrusting aside the overzealous among his
admirers, he strode past me into the tavern, his anger still hot.

"Hooray fer Jackson!" they shouted. "Hooray fer Andy Jackson!"

Andy Jackson! Then I knew. Then I remembered a slim, wild, sandy-haired
boy digging his toes in the red mud long ago at the Waxhaws Settlement.
And I recalled with a smile my own fierce struggle at the schoolhouse
with the same boy, and how his slobbering had been my salvation. I
turned and went in after him with the landlord, who was rubbing his hands
with glee.

"I reckon Hump won't come crowin' round heah any more co't days, Mr.
Jackson," said our host.

But Mr. Jackson swept the room with his eyes and then glared at the
landlord so that he gave back.

"Where's my man?" he demanded.

"Your man, Mr. Jackson?" stammered the host.

"Great Jehovah!" cried Mr. Jackson, "I believe he's afraid to race. He
had a horse that could show heels to my Nancy, did he? And he's gone,
you say?"

A light seemed to dawn on the landlord's countenance.

"God bless ye, Mr. Jackson!" he cried, "ye don't mean that young
daredevil that was with Sevier?"

"With Sevier?" says Jackson.

"Ay," says the landlord; "he's been a-fightin with Sevier all summer, and
I reckon he ain't afeard of nothin' any more than you. Wait--his name
was Temple--Nick Temple, they called him."

"Nick Temple!" I cried, starting forward.

"Where's he gone?" said Mr. Jackson. "He was going to bet me a six-forty
he has at Nashboro that his horse could beat mine on the Greasy Cove
track. Where's he gone?"

"Gone!" said the landlord, apologetically, "Nollichucky Jack and his boys
left town an hour ago."

"Is he a man of honor or isn't he?" said Mr. Jackson, fiercely.

"Lord, sir, I only seen him once, but I'd stake my oath on it.

"Do you mean to say Mr. Temple has been here--Nicholas Temple?" I said.

The bewildered landlord turned towards me helplessly.

"Who the devil are you, sir?" cried Mr. Jackson.

"Tell me what this Mr. Temple was like," said I.

The landlord's face lighted up.

"Faith, a thoroughbred hoss," says he; "sech nostrils, and sech a gray
eye with the devil in it fer go--yellow ha'r, and ez tall ez Mr. Jackson
heah."

"And you say he's gone off again with Sevier?"

"They rud into town" (he lowered his voice, for the room was filling),
"snapped their fingers at Tipton and his warrant, and rud out ag'in. My
God, but that was like Nollichucky Jack. Say, stranger, when your Mr.
Temple smiled--"

"He is the man!" I cried; "tell me where to find him."

Mr. Jackson, who had been divided between astonishment and impatience and
anger, burst out again.

"What the devil do you mean by interfering with my business, sir?"

"Because it is my business too," I answered, quite as testily; "my claim
on Mr. Temple is greater than yours."

"By Jehovah!" cried Jackson, "come outside, sir, come outside!"

The landlord backed away, and the men in the tavern began to press around
us expectantly.

"Gallop into him, Andy!" cried one.

"Don't let him git near no fences, stranger," said another.

Mr. Jackson turned on this man with such truculence that he edged away to
the rear of the room.

"Step out, sir," said Mr. Jackson, starting for the door before I could
reply. I followed perforce, not without misgivings, the crowd pushing
eagerly after. Before we reached the dusty street Jackson began pulling
off his coat. In a trice the shouting onlookers had made a ring, and we
stood facing each other, he in his shirt-sleeves.

"We'll fight fair," said he, his lips wetting.

"Very good," said I, "if you are still accustomed to this hasty manner.
You have not asked my name, my standing, nor my reasons for wanting Mr.
Temple."

I know not whether it was what I said that made him stare, or how I said
it.

"Pistols, if you like," said he.

"No," said I; "I am in a hurry to find Mr. Temple. I fought you this way
once, and it's quicker."

"You fought me this way once?" he repeated. The noise of the crowd was
hushed, and they drew nearer to hear.

"Come, Mr. Jackson," said I, "you are a lawyer and a gentleman, and so am
I. I do not care to be beaten to a pulp, but I am not afraid of you.
And I am in a hurry. If you will step back into the tavern, I will
explain to you my reasons for wishing to get to Mr. Temple."

Mr. Jackson stared at me the more.

"By the eternal," said he, "you are a cool man. Give me my coat," he
shouted to the bystanders, and they helped him on with it. "Now," said
he, as they made to follow him, "keep back. I would talk to this
gentleman. By the heavens," he cried, when he had gained the room, "I
believe you are not afraid of me. I saw it in your eyes."

Then I laughed.

"Mr. Jackson," said I, "doubtless you do not remember a homeless boy
named David whom you took to your uncle's house in the Waxhaws--"

"I do," he exclaimed, "as I live I do. Why, we slept together."

"And you stumped your toe getting into bed and swore," said I.

At that he laughed so heartily that the landlord came running across the
room.

"And we fought together at the Old Fields School. Are you that boy?" and
he scanned me again. "By God, I believe you are." Suddenly his face
clouded once more.

"But what about Temple?" said he.

"Ah," I answered, "I come to that quickly. Mr. Temple is my cousin.
After I left your uncle's house my father took me to Charlestown."

"Is he a Charlestown Temple?" demanded Mr. Jackson. "For I spent some
time gambling and horse-racing with the gentry there, and I know many of
them. I was a wild lad" (I repeat his exact words), "and I ran up a bill
in Charlestown that would have filled a folio volume. Faith, all I had
left me was the clothes on my back and a good horse. I made up my mind
one night that if I could pay my debts and get out of Charlestown I would
go into the back country and study law and sober down. There was a Mr.
Braiden in the ordinary who staked me two hundred dollars at
rattle-and-snap against my horse. Gad, sir, that was providence. I won.
I left Charlestown with honor, I studied law at Salisbury in North
Carolina, and I have come here to practise it."

"You seem to have the talent," said I, smiling at the remembrance of the
Hump Gibson incident.

"That is my history in a nutshell," said Mr. Jackson.

"And now," he added, "since you are Mr. Temple's cousin and friend and an
old acquaintance of mine to boot, I will tell you where I think he is."

"Where is that?" I asked eagerly.

"I'll stake a cowbell that Sevier will stop at the Widow Brown's," he
replied. "I'll put you on the road. But mind you, you are to tell Mr.
Temple that he is to come back here and race me at Greasy Cove."

"I'll warrant him to come," said I.

Whereupon we left the inn together, more amicably than before. Mr.
Jackson had a thoroughbred horse near by that was a pleasure to see, and
my admiration of his mount seemed to set me as firmly in Mr. Jackson's
esteem again as that gentleman himself sat in the saddle. He was as good
as his word, rode out with me some distance on the road, and reminded me
at the last that Nick was to race him.



CHAPTER VI

THE WIDOW BROWN'S

It was not to my credit that I should have lost the trail, after Mr.
Jackson put me straight. But the night was dark, the country unknown to
me, and heavily wooded and mountainous. In addition to these things my
mind ran like fire. My thoughts sometimes flew back to the wondrous
summer evening when I trod the Nollichucky trace with Tom and Polly Ann,
when I first looked down upon the log palace of that prince of the
border, John Sevier. Well I remembered him, broad-shouldered, handsome,
gay, a courtier in buckskin. Small wonder he was idolized by the Watauga
settlers, that he had been their leader in the struggle of Franklin for
liberty. And small wonder that Nick Temple should be in his following.

Nick! My mind was in a torment concerning him. What of his mother?
Should I speak of having seen her? I went blindly through the woods for
hours after the night fell, my horse stumbling and weary, until at length
I came to a lonely clearing on the mountain side, and a fierce pack of
dogs dashed barking at my horse's heels. There was a dark cabin ahead,
indistinct in the starlight, and there I knocked until a gruff voice
answered me and a tousled man came to the door. Yes, I had missed the
trail. He shook his head when I asked for the Widow Brown's, and bade me
share his bed for the night. No, I would go on, I was used to the
backwoods. Thereupon he thawed a little, kicked the dogs, and pointed to
where the mountain dipped against the star-studded sky. There was a
trail there which led direct to the Widow Brown's, if I could follow it.
So I left him.

Once the fear had settled deeply of missing Nick at the Widow Brown's, I
put my mind on my journey, and thanks to my early training I was able to
keep the trail. It doubled around the spurs, forded stony brooks in
diagonals, and often in the darkness of the mountain forest I had to feel
for the blazes on the trees. There was no making time. I gained the
notch with the small hours of the morning, started on with the descent,
crisscrossing, following a stream here and a stream there, until at
length the song of the higher waters ceased and I knew that I was in the
valley. Suddenly there was no crown-cover over my head. I had gained
the road once more, and I followed it hopefully, avoiding the stumps and
the deep wagon ruts where the ground was spongy.

The morning light revealed a milky mist through which the trees showed
like phantoms. Then there came stains upon the mist of royal purple, of
scarlet, of yellow like a mandarin's robe, peeps of deep blue fading into
azure as the mist lifted. The fiery eye of the sun was cocked over the
crest, and beyond me I saw a house with its logs all golden brown in the
level rays, the withered cornstalks orange among the blackened stumps.
My horse stopped of his own will at the edge of the clearing. A cock
crew, a lean hound prostrate on the porch of the house rose to his
haunches, sniffed, growled, leaped down, and ran to the road and sniffed
again. I listened, startled, and made sure of the distant ring of many
hoofs. And yet I stayed there, irresolute. Could it be Tipton and his
men riding from Jonesboro to capture Sevier? The hoof-beats grew
louder, and then the hound in the road gave tongue to the short, sharp
bark that is the call to arms. Other dogs, hitherto unseen, took up the
cry, and turning in my saddle I saw a body of men riding hard at me
through the alley in the forest. At their head, on a heavy,
strong-legged horse, was one who might have stood for the figure of
turbulence, and I made no doubt that this was Colonel Tipton
himself,--Colonel Tipton, once secessionist, now champion of the Old
North State and arch-enemy of John Sevier. At sight of me he reined up
so violently that his horse went back on his haunches, and the men behind
were near overriding him.

"Look out, boys," he shouted, with a fierce oath, "they've got guards
out!" He flung back one hand to his holster for a pistol, while the
other reached for the powder flask at his belt. He primed the pan, and,
seeing me immovable, set his horse forward at an amble, his pistol at the
cock.

"Who in hell are you?" he cried.

"A traveller from Virginia," I answered.

"And what are you doing here?" he demanded, with another oath.

"I have just this moment come here," said I, as calmly as I might. "I
lost the trail in the darkness."

He glared at me, purpling, perplexed.

"Is Sevier there?" said he, pointing at the house.

"I don't know," said I.

Tipton turned to his men, who were listening.

"Surround the house," he cried, "and watch this fellow."

I rode on perforce towards the house with Tipton and three others, while
his men scattered over the corn-field and cursed the dogs. And then we
saw in the open door the figure of a woman shading her eyes with her
hand. We pulled up, five of us, before the porch in front of her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Brown," said Tipton, gruffly.

"Good morning, Colonel," answered the widow.

Tipton leaped from his horse, flung the bridle to a companion, and put
his foot on the edge of the porch to mount. Then a strange thing
happened. The lady turned deftly, seized a chair from within, and pulled
it across the threshold. She sat herself down firmly, an expression on
her face which hinted that the late lamented Mr. Brown had been a
dominated man. Colonel Tipton stopped, staggering from the very impetus
of his charge, and gazed at her blankly.

"I have come for Colonel Sevier," he blurted. And then, his anger
rising, "I will have no trifling, ma'am. He is in this house."

"La! you don't tell me," answered the widow, in a tone that was wholly
conversational.

"He is in this house," shouted the Colonel.

"I reckon you've guessed wrong, Colonel," said the widow.

There was an awkward pause until Tipton heard a titter behind him. Then
his wrath exploded.

"I have a warrant against the scoundrel for high treason," he cried,
"and, by God, I will search the house and serve it."

Still the widow sat tight. The Rock of Ages was neither more movable nor
calmer than she.

"Surely, Colonel, you would not invade the house of an unprotected
female."

The Colonel, evidently with a great effort, throttled his wrath for the
moment. His new tone was apologetic but firm.

"I regret to have to do so, ma'am," said he, "but both sexes are equal
before the law."

"The law!" repeated the widow, seemingly tickled at the word. She smiled
indulgently at the Colonel. "What a pity, Mr. Tipton, that the law
compels you to arrest such a good friend of yours as Colonel Sevier.
What self-sacrifice, Colonel Tipton! What nobility!"

There was a second titter behind him, whereat he swung round quickly, and
the crimson veins in his face looked as if they must burst. He saw me
with my hand over my mouth.

"You warned him, damn you!" he shouted, and turning again leaped to the
porch and tried to squeeze past the widow into the house.

"How dare you, sir?" she shrieked, giving him a vigorous push backwards.
The four of us, his three men and myself, laughed outright. Tipton's
rage leaped its bounds. He returned to the attack again and again, and
yet at the crucial moment his courage would fail him and he would let the
widow thrust him back. Suddenly I became aware that there were two new
spectators of this comedy. I started and looked again, and was near to
crying out at sight of one of them. The others did cry out, but Tipton
paid no heed.

Ten years had made his figure more portly, but I knew at once the man in
the well-fitting hunting shirt, with the long hair flowing to his
shoulders, with the keen, dark face and courtly bearing and humorous
eyes. Yes, humorous even now, for he stood, smiling at this comedy
played by his enemy, unmindful of his peril. The widow saw him before
Tipton did, so intent was he on the struggle.

"Enough!" she cried, "enough, John Tipton!" Tipton drew back
involuntarily, and a smile broadened on the widow's face. "Shame on you
for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you--Colonel Sevier."

Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into
such profanity as I have seldom heard.

"By the eternal God, John Sevier," he shouted, "I'll hang you to the
nearest tree!"

Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the
gentleman beside him.

"I have surrendered to Colonel Love," he said.

Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me,
and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might yet
be held in its pan. We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and
myself,--all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while
we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow,
the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with
something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple.

Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time Riddle's words of long
ago came to me, "God help the woman you love or the man you fight." How
shall I describe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,--yet it
was the frailness of the race-horse. The golden hair, sun-tanned, awry
across his forehead, the face the same thin and finely cut face of the
boy. The gray eyes held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more
dangerous than that. Colonel John Tipton looked, and as I live he
recoiled.

"If you touch him, I'll kill you," said Mr. Temple. Nor did he say it
angrily. I marked for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim
fingers. What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings
is mere conjecture, for Colonel Sevier himself stepped up on the porch,
laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone. What he
said we didn't hear. The astonishing thing was that neither of them for
the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them. I saw
Nick's expression change. He smiled,--the smile the landlord had
described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him.
After that Colonel Sevier stooped down and picked up the pistol from the
floor of the porch and handed it with a bow to Tipton, butt first.
Tipton took it, seemingly without knowing why, and at that instant a
negro boy came around the house, leading a horse. Sevier mounted it
without a protest from any one.

"I am ready to go with you, gentlemen," he said.

Colonel Tipton slipped his pistol back into his belt, stepped down from
the porch, and leaped into his saddle, and he and his men rode off into
the stump-lined alley in the forest that was called a road. Nick stood
beside the widow, staring after them until they had disappeared.

"My horse, boy!" he shouted to the gaping negro, who vanished on the
errand.

"What will you do, Mr. Temple?" asked the widow.

"Rescue him, ma'am," cried Nick, beginning to pace up and down. "I'll
ride to Turner's. Cozby and Evans are there, and before night we shall
have made Jonesboro too hot to hold Tipton and his cutthroats."

"La, Mr. Temple," said the widow, with unfeigned admiration, "I never saw
the like of you. But I know John Tipton, and he'll have Colonel Sevier
started for North Carolina before our boys can get to Jonesboro."

"Then we'll follow," says Nick, beginning to pace again. Suddenly, at a
cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like
a point of steel. His hand slipped to his waist.

"A spy," he said, and turned and smiled at the lady, who was watching him
with a kind of fascination; "but damnably cool," he continued, looking at
me. "I wonder if he thinks to outride me on that beast? Look you, sir,"
he cried, as Mrs. Brown's negro came back struggling with a deep-ribbed,
high-crested chestnut that was making half circles on his hind legs,
"I'll give you to the edge of the woods, and lay you a six-forty against
a pair of moccasins that you never get back to Tipton."

"God forbid that I ever do," I answered fervently.

"What," he exclaimed, "and you here with him on this sneak's errand!"

"I am here with him on no errand," said I. "He and his crew came on me a
quarter of an hour since at the edge of the clearing. Mr. Temple, I am
here to find you, and to save time I will ride with you."

"Egad, you'll have to ride like the devil then," said he, and he stooped
and snatched the widow's hand and kissed it with a daring gallantry that
I had thought to find in him. He raised his eyes to hers.

"Good-by, Mr. Temple," she said,--there was a tremor in her voice,--"and
may you save our Jack!"

He snatched the bridle from the boy, and with one leap he was on the
rearing, wheeling horse. "Come on," he cried to me, and, waving his hat
at the lady on the porch, he started off with a gallop up the trail in
the opposite direction from that which Tipton's men had taken.

All that I saw of Mr. Nicholas Temple on that ride to Turner's was his
back, and presently I lost sight of that. In truth, I never got to
Turner's at all, for I met him coming back at the wind's pace, a huge,
swarthy, determined man at his side and four others spurring after, the
spume dripping from the horses' mouths. They did not so much as look at
me as they passed, and there was nothing left for me to do but to turn my
tired beast and follow at any pace I could make towards Jonesboro.

It was late in the afternoon before I reached the town, the town set down
among the hills like a caldron boiling over with the wrath of Franklin.
The news of the capture of their beloved Sevier had flown through the
mountains like seeds on the autumn wind, and from north, south, east, and
west the faithful were coming in, cursing Tipton and Carolina as they
rode.

I tethered my tired beast at the first picket, and was no sooner on my
feet than I was caught in the hurrying stream of the crowd and fairly
pushed and beaten towards the court-house. Around it a thousand furious
men were packed. I heard cheering, hoarse and fierce cries, threats and
imprecations, and I knew that they were listening to oratory. I was
suddenly shot around the corner of a house, saw the orator himself, and
gasped.

It was Nicholas Temple. There was something awe-impelling in the tall,
slim, boyish figure that towered above the crowd, in the finely wrought,
passionate face, in the voice charged with such an anger as is given to
few men.

"What has North Carolina done for Franklin?" he cried. "Protected her?
No. Repudiated her? Yes. You gave her to the Confederacy for a war
debt, and the Confederacy flung her back. You shook yourselves free from
Carolina's tyranny, and traitors betrayed you again. And now they have
betrayed your leader. Will you avenge him, or will you sit down like
cowards while they hang him for treason?"

His voice was drowned, but he stood immovable with arms folded until
there was silence again.

"Will you rescue him?" he cried, and the roar rose again. "Will you
avenge him? By to-morrow we shall have two thousand here. Invade North
Carolina, humble her, bring her to her knees, and avenge John Sevier!"

Pandemonium reigned. Hats were flung in the air, rifles fired, shouts
and curses rose and blended into one terrifying note. Gradually, in the
midst of this mad uproar, the crowd became aware that another man was
standing upon the stump from which Nicholas Temple had leaped. "Cozby!"
some one yelled, "Cozby!" The cry was taken up. "Huzzay for Cozby!
He'll lead us into Caroliny." He was the huge, swarthy man I had seen
riding hard with Nick that morning. A sculptor might have chosen his
face and frame for a type of the iron-handed leader of pioneers. Will
was supreme in the great features,--inflexible, indomitable will. His
hunting shirt was open across his great chest, his black hair fell to his
shoulders, and he stood with a compelling hand raised for silence. And
when he spoke, slowly, resonantly, men fell back before his words.

"I admire Mr. Temple's courage, and above all his loyalty to our beloved
General," said Major Cozby. "But Mr. Temple is young, and the heated
counsels of youth must not prevail. My friends, in order to save Jack
Sevier we must be moderate."

His voice, strong as it was, was lost. "To hell with moderation!" they
shouted. "Down with North Carolina! We'll fight her!"

He got silence again by the magnetic strength he had in him.

"Very good," he said, "but get your General first. If we lead you across
the mountains now, his blood will be upon your heads. No man is a better
friend to Jack Sevier than I. Leave his rescue to me, and I will get him
for you." He paused, and they were stilled perforce. "I will get him
for you," he repeated slowly, "or North Carolina will pay for the burial
of James Cozby."

There was an instant when they might have swung either way.

"How will ye do it?" came in a thin, piping voice from somewhere near the
stump. It may have been this that turned their minds. Others took up
the question, "How will ye do it, Major Cozby?"

"I don't know," cried the Major, "I don't know. And if I did know, I
wouldn't tell you. But I will get Nollichucky Jack if I have to burn
Morganton and rake the General out of the cinders!"

Five hundred hands flew up, five hundred voices cried, "I'm with ye,
Major Cozby!" But the Major only shook his head and smiled. What he
said was lost in the roar. Fighting my way forward, I saw him get down
from the stump, put his hand kindly on Nick's shoulder, and lead him into
the court-house. They were followed by a score of others, and the door
was shut behind them.

It was then I bethought myself of the letter to Mr. Wright, and I sought
for some one who would listen to my questions as to his whereabouts. At
length the man himself was pointed out to me, haranguing an excited crowd
of partisans in front of his own gate. Some twenty minutes must have
passed before I could get any word with him. He was a vigorous little
man, with black eyes like buttons, he wore brown homespun and white
stockings, and his hair was clubbed. When he had yielded the ground to
another orator, I handed him the letter. He drew me aside, read it on
the spot, and became all hospitality at once. The town was full, and
though he had several friends staying in his house I should join them.
Was my horse fed? Dinner had been forgotten that day, but would I enter
and partake? In short, I found myself suddenly provided for, and I lost
no time in getting my weary mount into Mr. Wright's little stable. And
then I sat down, with several other gentlemen, at Mr. Wright's board,
where there was much guessing as to Major Cozby's plan.

"No other man west of the mountains could have calmed that crowd after
that young daredevil Temple had stirred them up," declared Mr. Wright.

I ventured to say that I had business with Mr. Temple.

"Faith, then, I will invite him here," said my host. "But I warn you,
Mr. Ritchie, that he is a trigger set on the hair. If he does not fancy
you, he may quarrel with you and shoot you. And he is in no temper to be
trifled with to-day."

"I am not an easy person to quarrel with," I answered.

"To look at you, I shouldn't say that you were," said he. "We are going
to the court-house, and I will see if I can get a word with the young
Hotspur and send him to you. Do you wait here."

I waited on the porch as the day waned. The tumult of the place had died
down, for men were gathering in the houses to discuss and conjecture.
And presently, sauntering along the street in a careless fashion, his
spurs trailing in the dust, came Nicholas Temple. He stopped before the
house and stared at me with a fine insolence, and I wondered whether I
myself had not been too hasty in reclaiming him. A greeting died on my
lips.

"Well, sir," he said, "so you are the gentleman who has been dogging me
all day."

"I dog no one, Mr. Temple," I replied bitterly.

"We'll not quibble about words," said he. "Would it be impertinent to
ask your business--and perhaps your name?"

"Did not Mr. Wright give you my name?" I exclaimed.

"He might have mentioned it, I did not hear. Is it of such importance?"

At that I lost my temper entirely.

"It may be, and it may not," I retorted. "I am David Ritchie."

He changed before my eyes as he stared at me, and then, ere I knew it, he
had me by both arms, crying out:--

"David Ritchie! My Davy--who ran away from me--and we were going to
Kentucky together. Oh, I have never forgiven you,"--the smile that there
was no resisting belied his words as he put his face close to mine--"I
never will forgive you. I might have known you--you've grown, but I vow
you're still an old man,--Davy, you renegade. And where the devil did
you run to?"

"Kentucky," I said, laughing.

"Oh, you traitor--and I trusted you. I loved you, Davy. Do you remember
how I clung to you in my sleep? And when I woke up, the world was black.
I followed your trail down the drive and to the cross-roads--"

"It was not ingratitude, Nick," I said; "you were all I had in the
world." And then I faltered, the sadness of that far-off time coming
over me in a flood, and the remembrance of his generous sorrow for me.

"And how the devil did you track me to the Widow Brown's?" he demanded,
releasing me.

"A Mr. Jackson had a shrewd notion you were there. And by the way, he
was in a fine temper because you had skipped a race with him."

"That sorrel-topped, lantern-headed Mr. Jackson?" said Nick. "He'll be
killed in one of his fine tempers. Damn a man who can't keep his temper.
I'll race him, of course. And where are you bound now, Davy?"

"For Louisville, in Kentucky, at the Falls of the Ohio. It is a growing
place, and a promising one for a young man in the legal profession to
begin life."

"When do you leave?" said he.

"To-morrow morning, Nick," said I. "You wanted once to go to Kentucky;
why not come with me?"

His face clouded.

"I do not budge from this town," said he, "I do not budge until I hear
that Jack Sevier is safe. Damn Cozby! If he had given me my way, we
should have been forty miles from here by this. I'll tell you. Cozby is
even now picking five men to go to Morganton and steal Sevier, and he
puts me off with a kind word. He'll not have me, he says."

"He thinks you too hot. It needs discretion and an old head," said I.

"Egad, then, I'll commend you to him," said Nick.

"Now," I said, "it's time for you to tell me something of yourself, and
how you chanced to come into this country."

"'Twas Darnley's fault," said Nick.

"Darnley!" I exclaimed; "he whom you got into the duel with--" I stopped
abruptly, with a sharp twinge of remembrance that was like a pain in my
side. 'Twas Nick took up the name.

"With Harry Riddle." He spoke quietly, that was the terrifying part of
it. "David, I've looked for that man in Italy and France, I've scoured
London for him, and, by God, I'll find him before he dies. And when I do
find him I swear to you that there will be no such thing as time wasted,
or mercy."

I shuddered. In all my life I had never known such a moment of
indecision. Should I tell him? My conscience would give me no definite
reply. The question had haunted me all the night, and I had lost my way
in consequence, nor had the morning's ride from the Widow Brown's
sufficed to bring me to a decision. Of what use to tell him? Would
Riddle's death mend matters? The woman loved him, that had been clear to
me; yet, by telling Nick what I knew I might induce him to desist from
his search, and if I did not tell, Nick might some day run across the
trail, follow it up, take Riddle's life, and lose his own. The moment,
made for confession as it was, passed.

"They have ruined my life," said Nick. "I curse him, and I curse her."

"Hold!" I cried; "she is your mother."

"And therefore I curse her the more," he said. "You know what she is,
you've tasted of her charity, and you are my father's nephew. If you
have been without experience, I will tell you what she is. A common--"
I reached out and put my hand across his mouth.

"Silence!" I cried; "you shall say no such thing. And have you not
manhood enough to make your own life for yourself?"

"Manhood!" he repeated, and laughed. It was a laugh that I did not like.
"They made a man of me, my parents. My father played false with the
Rebels and fled to England for his reward. A year after he went I was
left alone at Temple Bow to the tender mercies of the niggers. Mr. Mason
came back and snatched what was left of me. He was a good man; he saved
me an annuity out of the estate, he took me abroad after the war on a
grand tour, and died of a fever in Rome. I made my way back to
Charlestown, and there I learned to gamble, to hold liquor like a
gentleman, to run horses and fight like a gentleman. We were speaking of
Darnley," he said.

"Yes, of Darnley," I repeated.

"The devil of a man," said Nick; "do you remember him, with the cracked
voice and fat calves?"

At any other time I should have laughed at the recollection.

"Darnley turned Whig, became a Continental colonel, and got a grant out
here in the Cumberland country of three thousand acres. And now I own
it."

"You own it!" I exclaimed.

"Rattle-and-snap," said Nick; "I played him for the land at the ordinary
one night, and won it. It is out here near a place called Nashboro,
where this wild, long-faced Mr. Jackson says he is going soon. I crossed
the mountains to have a look at it, fell in with Nollichucky Jack, and
went off with him for a summer campaign. There's a man for you, Davy,"
he cried, "a man to follow through hell-fire. If they touch a hair of
his head we'll sack the State of North Carolina from Morganton to the
sea."

"But the land?" I asked.

"Oh, a fig for the land," answered Nick; "as soon as Nollichucky Jack is
safe I'll follow you into Kentucky." He slapped me on the knee. "Egad,
Davy, it seems like a fairy tale. We always said we were going to
Kentucky, didn't we? What is the name of the place you are to startle
with your learning and calm by your example?"

"Louisville," I answered, laughing, "by the Falls of the Ohio."

"I shall turn up there when Jack Sevier is safe and I have won some more
land from Mr. Jackson. We'll have a rare old time together, though I
have no doubt you can drink me under the table. Beware of these sober
men. Egad, Davy, you need only a woolsack to become a full-fledged
judge. And now tell me how fortune has buffeted you."

It was my second night without sleep, for we sat burning candles in Mr.
Wright's house until the dawn, making up the time which we had lost away
from each other.



CHAPTER VII

I MEET A HERO

When left to myself, I was wont to slide into the commonplace; and where
my own dull life intrudes to clog the action I cut it down here and pare
it away there until I am merely explanatory, and not too much in
evidence. I rode out the Wilderness Trail, fell in with other
travellers, was welcomed by certain old familiar faces at Harrodstown,
and pressed on. I have a vivid recollection of a beloved, vigorous
figure swooping out of a cabin door and scattering a brood of children
right and left. "Polly Ann!" I said, and she halted, trembling.

"Tom," she cried, "Tom, it's Davy come back," and Tom himself flew out of
the door, ramrod in one hand and rifle in the other. Never shall I
forget them as they stood there, he grinning with sheer joy as of yore,
and she, with her hair flying and her blue gown snapping in the wind, in
a tremor between tears and laughter. I leaped to the ground, and she
hugged me in her arms as though I had been a child, calling my name again
and again, and little Tom pulling at the skirts of my coat. I caught the
youngster by the collar.

"Polly Ann," said I, "he's grown to what I was when you picked me up, a
foundling."

"And now it's little Davy no more," she answered, swept me a courtesy,
and added, with a little quiver in her voice, "ye are a gentleman now."

"My heart is still where it was," said I.

"Ay, ay," said Tom, "I'm sure o' that, Davy."

I was with them a fortnight in the familiar cabin, and then I took up my
journey northward, heavy at leaving again, but promising to see them from
time to time. For Tom was often at the Falls when he went a-scouting
into the Illinois country. It was, as of old, Polly Ann who ran the mill
and was the real bread-winner of the family.

Louisville was even then bursting with importance, and as I rode into it,
one bright November day, I remembered the wilderness I had seen here not
ten years gone when I had marched hither with Captain Harrod's company to
join Clark on the island. It was even then a thriving little town of log
and clapboard houses and schools and churches, and wise men were saying
of it--what Colonel Clark had long ago predicted--that it would become
the first city of commercial importance in the district of Kentucky.

I do not mean to give you an account of my struggles that winter to
obtain a foothold in the law. The time was a heyday for young
barristers, and troubles in those early days grew as plentifully in
Kentucky as corn. In short, I got a practice, for Colonel Clark was here
to help me, and, thanks to the men who had gone to Kaskaskia and
Vincennes, I had a fairly large acquaintance in Kentucky. I hired rooms
behind Mr. Crede's store, which was famed for the glass windows which had
been fetched all the way from Philadelphia. Mr. Crede was the embodiment
of the enterprising spirit of the place, and often of an evening he
called me in to see the new fashionable things his barges had brought
down the Ohio. The next day certain young sparks would drop into my room
to waylay the belles as they came to pick a costume to be worn at Mr.
Nickle's dancing school, or at the ball at Fort Finney.

The winter slipped away, and one cool evening in May there came a negro
to my room with a note from Colonel Clark, bidding me sup with him at the
tavern and meet a celebrity.

I put on my best blue clothes that I had brought with me from Richmond,
and repaired expectantly to the tavern about eight of the clock, pushed
through the curious crowd outside, and entered the big room where the
company was fast assembling. Against the red blaze in the great
chimney-place I spied the figure of Colonel Clark, more portly than of
yore, and beside him stood a gentleman who could be no other than General
Wilkinson.

He was a man to fill the eye, handsome of face, symmetrical of figure,
easy of manner, and he wore a suit of bottle-green that became him
admirably. In short, so fascinated and absorbed was I in watching him as
he greeted this man and the other that I started as though something had
pricked me when I heard my name called by Colonel Clark.

"Come here, Davy," he cried across the room, and I came and stood abashed
before the hero. "General, allow me to present to you the drummer boy of
Kaskaskia and Vincennes, Mr. David Ritchie."

"I hear that you drummed them to victory through a very hell of torture,
Mr. Ritchie," said the General. "It is an honor to grasp the hand of one
who did such service at such a tender age."

General Wilkinson availed himself of that honor, and encompassed me with
a smile so benignant, so winning in its candor, that I could only mutter
my acknowledgment, and Colonel Clark must needs apologize, laughing, for
my youth and timidity.

"Mr. Ritchie is not good at speeches, General," said he, "but I make no
doubt he will drink a bumper to your health before we sit down.
Gentlemen," he cried, filling his glass from a bottle on the table, "a
toast to General Wilkinson, emancipator and saviour of Kentucky!"

The company responded with a shout, tossed off the toast, and sat down at
the long table. Chance placed me between a young dandy from
Lexington--one of several the General had brought in his train--and Mr.
Wharton, a prominent planter of the neighborhood with whom I had a
speaking acquaintance. This was a backwoods feast, though served in
something better than the old backwoods style, and we had venison and
bear's meat and prairie fowl as well as pork and beef, and breads that
came stinging hot from the Dutch ovens. Toasts to this and that were
flung back and forth, and jests and gibes, and the butt of many of these
was that poor Federal government which (as one gentleman avowed) was like
a bantam hen trying to cover a nestful of turkey's eggs, and clucking
with importance all the time. This picture brought on gusts of laughter.

"And what say you of the Jay?" cried one; "what will he hatch?"

Hisses greeted the name, for Mr. Jay wished to enter into a treaty with
Spain, agreeing to close the river for five and twenty years. Colonel
Clark stood up, and rapped on the table.

"Gentlemen," said he, "Louisville has as her guest of honor to-night a
man of whom Kentucky may well be proud [loud cheering]. Five years ago
he favored Lexington by making it his home, and he came to us with the
laurel of former achievements still clinging to his brow. He fought and
suffered for his country, and attained the honorable rank of Major in the
Continental line. He was chosen by the people of Pennsylvania to
represent them in the august body of their legislature, and now he has
got new honor in a new field [renewed cheering]. He has come to Kentucky
to show her the way to prosperity and glory. Kentucky had a grievance
[loud cries of "Yes, yes!"]. Her hogs and cattle had no market, her
tobacco and agricultural products of all kinds were rotting because the
Spaniards had closed the Mississippi to our traffic. Could the Federal
government open the river? [shouts of "No, no!" and hisses]. Who opened
it? [cries of "Wilkinson, Wilkinson!"]. He said to the Kentucky
planters, 'Give your tobacco to me, and I will sell it.' He put it in
barges, he floated down the river, and, as became a man of such
distinction, he was met by Governor-general Miro on the levee at New
Orleans. Where is that tobacco now, gentlemen?" Colonel Clark was here
interrupted by such roars and stamping that he paused a moment, and
during this interval Mr. Wharton leaned over and whispered quietly in my
ear:--

"Ay, where is it?"

I stared at Mr. Wharton blankly. He was a man nearing the middle age,
with a lacing of red in his cheeks, a pleasant gray eye, and a singularly
quiet manner.

"Thanks to the genius of General Wilkinson," Colonel Clark continued,
waving his hand towards the smilingly placid hero, "that tobacco has been
deposited in the King's store at ten dollars per hundred,--a privilege
heretofore confined to Spanish subjects. Well might Wilkinson return
from New Orleans in a chariot and four to a grateful Kentucky! This year
we have tripled, nay, quadrupled, our crop of tobacco, and we are here
to-night to give thanks to the author of this prosperity." Alas, Colonel
Clark's hand was not as steady as of yore, and he spilled the liquor on
the table as he raised his glass. "Gentlemen, a health to our
benefactor."

They drank it willingly, and withal so lengthily and noisily that Mr.
Wilkinson stood smiling and bowing for full three minutes before he could
be heard. He was a very paragon of modesty, was the General, and a man
whose attitudes and expressions spoke as eloquently as his words. None
looked at him now but knew before he opened his mouth that he was
deprecating such an ovation.

"Gentlemen,--my friends and fellow-Kentuckians," he said, "I thank you
from the bottom of my heart for your kindness, but I assure you that I
have done nothing worthy of it [loud protests]. I am a simple, practical
man, who loves Kentucky better than he loves himself. This is no virtue,
for we all have it. We have the misfortune to be governed by a set of
worthy gentlemen who know little about Kentucky and her wants, and think
less [cries of "Ay, ay!"]. I am not decrying General Washington and his
cabinet; it is but natural that the wants of the seaboard and the welfare
and opulence of the Eastern cities should be uppermost in their minds
[another interruption]. Kentucky, if she would prosper, must look to her
own welfare. And if any credit is due to me, gentlemen, it is because I
reserved my decision of his Excellency, Governor-general Miro, and his
people until I saw them for myself. A little calm reason, a plain
statement of the case, will often remove what seems an insuperable
difficulty, and I assure you that Governor-general Miro is a most
reasonable and courteous gentleman, who looks with all kindliness and
neighborliness on the people of Kentucky. Let us drink a toast to him. To
him your gratitude is due, for he sends you word that your tobacco will
be received."

"In General Wilkinson's barges," said Mr. Wharton leaning over and
subsiding again at once.

The General was the first to drink the toast, and he sat down very
modestly amidst a thunder of applause.

The young man on the other side of me, somewhat flushed, leaped to his
feet.

"Down with the Federal government!" he cried; "what have they done for
us, indeed? Before General Wilkinson went to New Orleans the Spaniards
seized our flat boats and cargoes and flung our traders into prison, ay,
and sent them to the mines of Brazil. The Federal government takes sides
with the Indians against us. And what has that government done for you,
Colonel?" he demanded, turning to Clark, "you who have won for them half
of their territory? They have cast you off like an old moccasin. The
Continental officers who fought in the East have half-pay for life or
five years' full pay. And what have you?"

There was a breathless hush. A swift vision came to me of a man, young,
alert, commanding, stern under necessity, self-repressed at all times--a
man who by the very dominance of his character had awed into submission
the fierce Northern tribes of a continent, who had compelled men to
follow him until the life had all but ebbed from their bodies, who had
led them to victory in the end. And I remembered a boy who had stood
awe-struck before this man in the commandant's house at Fort Sackville.
Ay, and I heard again his words as though he had just spoken them,
"Promise me that you will not forget me if I am--unfortunate." I did
not understand then. And now because of a certain blinding of my eyes, I
did not see him clearly as he got slowly to his feet. He clutched the
table. He looked around him--I dare not say--vacantly. And then,
suddenly, he spoke with a supreme anger and a supreme bitterness.

"Not a shilling has this government given me," he cried. "Virginia was
more grateful; from her I have some acres of wild land and--a sword." He
laughed. "A sword, gentlemen, and not new at that. Oh, a grateful
government we serve, one careful of the honor of her captains.
Gentlemen, I stand to-day a discredited man because the honest debts I
incurred in the service of that government are repudiated, because my
friends who helped it, Father Gibault, Vigo, and Gratiot, and others have
never been repaid. One of them is ruined."

A dozen men had sprung clamoring to their feet before he sat down. One,
more excited than the rest, got the ear of the company.

"Do we lack leaders?" he cried. "We have them here with us to-night, in
this room. Who will stop us? Not the contemptible enemies in Kentucky
who call themselves Federalists. Shall we be supine forever? We have
fought once for our liberties, let us fight again. Let us make a common
cause with our real friends on the far side of the Mississippi."

I rose, sick at heart, but every man was standing. And then a strange
thing happened. I saw General Wilkinson at the far end of the room; his
hand was raised, and there was that on his handsome face which might have
been taken for a smile, and yet was not a smile. Others saw him too, I
know not by what exertion of magnetism. They looked at him and they held
their tongues.

"I fear that we are losing our heads, gentlemen," he said; "and I propose
to you the health of the first citizen of Kentucky, Colonel George Rogers
Clark."

I found myself out of the tavern and alone in the cool May night. And as
I walked slowly down the deserted street, my head in a whirl, a hand was
laid on my shoulder. I turned, startled, to face Mr. Wharton, the
planter.

"I would speak a word with you, Mr. Ritchie," he said. "May I come to
your room for a moment?"

"Certainly, sir," I answered.

After that we walked along together in silence, my own mind heavily
occupied with what I had seen and heard. We came to Mr. Crede's store,
went in at the picket gate beside it and down the path to my own door,
which I unlocked. I felt for the candle on the table, lighted it, and
turned in surprise to discover that Mr. Wharton was poking up the fire
and pitching on a log of wood. He flung off his greatcoat and sat down
with his feet to the blaze. I sat down beside him and waited, thinking
him a sufficiently peculiar man.

"You are not famous, Mr. Ritchie," said he, presently.

"No, sir," I answered.

"Nor particularly handsome," he continued, "nor conspicuous in any way."

I agreed to this, perforce.

"You may thank God for it," said Mr. Wharton.

"That would be a strange outpouring, sir," said I.

He looked at me and smiled.

"What think you of this paragon, General Wilkinson?" he demanded
suddenly.

"I have Federal leanings, sir," I answered

"Egad," said he, "we'll add caution to your lack of negative
accomplishments. I have had an eye on you this winter, though you did
not know it. I have made inquiries about you, and hence I am not here
to-night entirely through impulse. You have not made a fortune at the
law, but you have worked hard, steered wide of sensation, kept your mouth
shut. Is it not so?"

Astonished, I merely nodded in reply.

"I am not here to waste your time or steal your sleep," he went on,
giving the log a push with his foot, "and I will come to the point. When
I first laid eyes on this fine gentleman, General Wilkinson, I too fell a
victim to his charms. It was on the eve of this epoch-making trip of
which we heard so glowing an account to-night, and I made up my mind
that no Spaniard, however wily, could resist his persuasion. He said to
me, 'Wharton, give me your crop of tobacco and I promise you to sell it
in spite of all the royal mandates that go out of Madrid.' He went, he
saw, he conquered the obdurate Miro as he has apparently conquered the
rest of the world, and he actually came back in a chariot and four as
befitted him. A heavy crop of tobacco was raised in Kentucky that year.
I helped to raise it," added Mr. Wharton, dryly. "I gave the General my
second crop, and he sent it down. Mr. Ritchie, I have to this day never
received a piastre for my merchandise, nor am I the only planter in this
situation. Yet General Wilkinson is prosperous."

My astonishment somewhat prevented me from replying to this, too. Was it
possible that Mr. Wharton meant to sue the General? I reflected while he
paused. I remembered how inconspicuous he had named me, and hope died.
Mr. Wharton did not look at me, but stared into the fire, for he was
plainly not a man to rail and rant.

"Mr. Ritchie, you are young, but mark my words, that man Wilkinson will
bring Kentucky to ruin if he is not found out. The whole district from
Crab Orchard to Bear Grass is mad about him. Even Clark makes a fool of
himself--"

"Colonel Clark, sir!" I cried.

He put up a hand.

"So you have some hot blood," he said. "I know you love him. So do I,
or I should not have been there tonight. Do I blame his bitterness? Do
I blame--anything he does? The treatment he has had would bring a blush
of shame to the cheek of any nation save a republic. Republics are
wasteful, sir. In George Rogers Clark they have thrown away a general
who might some day have decided the fate of this country, they have left
to stagnate a man fit to lead a nation to war. And now he is ready to
intrigue against the government with any adventurer who may have
convincing ways and a smooth tongue."

"Mr. Wharton," I said, rising, "did you come here to tell me this?"

But Mr. Wharton continued to stare into the fire.

"I like you the better for it, my dear sir," said he, "and I assure you
that I mean no offence. Colonel Clark is enshrined in our hearts,
Democrats and Federalists alike. Whatever he may do, we shall love him
always. But this other man,--pooh!" he exclaimed, which was as near a
vigorous expression as he got. "Now, sir, to the point. I, too, am a
Federalist, a friend of Mr. Humphrey Marshall, and, as you know, we are
sadly in the minority in Kentucky now. I came here to-night to ask you
to undertake a mission in behalf of myself and certain other gentlemen,
and I assure you that my motives are not wholly mercenary." He paused,
smiled, and put the tips of his fingers together. "I would willingly
lose every crop for the next ten years to convict this Wilkinson of
treason against the Federal government."

"Treason!" I repeated involuntarily.

"Mr. Ritchie," answered the planter, "I gave you credit for some
shrewdness. Do you suppose the Federal government does not realize the
danger of this situation in Kentucky. They have tried in vain to open
the Mississippi, and are too weak to do it. This man Wilkinson goes down
to see Miro, and Miro straightway opens the river to us through him. How
do you suppose Wilkinson did it? By his charming personality?"

I said something, I know not what, as the light began to dawn on me. And
then I added, "I had not thought about the General."

"Ah," replied Mr. Wharton, "just so. And now you may easily imagine that
General Wilkinson has come to a very pretty arrangement with Miro. For a
certain stipulated sum best known to Wilkinson and Miro, General
Wilkinson agrees gradually to detach Kentucky from the Union and join it
to his Catholic Majesty's dominion of Louisiana. The bribe--the opening
of the river. What the government could not do Wilkinson did by the
lifting of his finger."

Still Mr. Wharton spoke without heat.

"Mind you," he said, "we have no proof of this, and that is my reason for
coming here to-night, Mr. Ritchie. I want you to get proof of it if you
can."

"You want me--" I said, bewildered.

"I repeat that you are not handsome,"--I think he emphasized this
unduly,--"that you are self-effacing, inconspicuous; in short, you are
not a man to draw suspicion. You might travel anywhere and scarcely be
noticed,--I have observed that about you. In addition to this you are
wary, you are discreet, you are painstaking. I ask you to go first to
St. Louis, in Louisiana territory, and this for two reasons. First,
because it will draw any chance suspicion from your real objective, New
Orleans; and second, because it is necessary to get letters to New
Orleans from such leading citizens of St. Louis as Colonel Chouteau and
Monsieur Gratiot, and I will give you introductions to them. You are
then to take passage to New Orleans in a barge of furs which Monsieur
Gratiot is sending down. Mind, we do not expect that you will obtain
proof that Miro is paying Wilkinson money. If you do, so much the
better; but we believe that both are too sharp to leave any tracks. You
will make a report, however, upon the conditions under which our tobacco
is being received, and of all other matters which you may think germane
to the business in hand. Will you go?"

I had made up my mind.

"Yes, I will go," I answered.

"Good," said Mr. Wharton, but with no more enthusiasm than he had
previously shown; "I thought I had not misjudged you. Is your law
business so onerous that you could not go to-morrow?"

I laughed.

"I think I could settle what affairs I have by noon, Mr. Wharton," I
replied.

"Egad, Mr. Ritchie, I like your manner," said he; "and now for a few
details, and you may go to bed."

He sat with me half an hour longer, carefully reviewing his instructions,
and then he left me to a night of contemplation.



CHAPTER VIII

TO ST. LOUIS

By eleven o'clock the next morning I had wound up my affairs, having
arranged with a young lawyer of my acquaintance to take over such cases
as I had, and I was busy in my room packing my saddle-bags for the
journey. The warm scents of spring were wafted through the open door and
window, smells of the damp earth giving forth the green things, and
tender shades greeted my eyes when I paused and raised my head to think.
Purple buds littered the black ground before my door-step, and against
the living green of the grass I saw the red stain of a robin's breast as
he hopped spasmodically hither and thither, now pausing immovable with
his head raised, now tossing triumphantly a wriggling worm from the sod.
Suddenly he flew away, and I heard a voice from the street side that
brought me stark upright.

"Hold there, neighbor; can you direct me to the mansion of that
celebrated barrister, Mr. Ritchie?"

There was no mistaking that voice--it was Nicholas Temple's. I heard a
laugh and an answer, the gate slammed, and Mr. Temple himself in a long
gray riding-coat, booted and spurred, stood before me.

"Davy," he cried, "come out here and hug me. Why, you look as if I were
your grandmother's ghost."

"And if you were," I answered, "you could not have surprised me more.
Where have you been?"

"At Jonesboro, acting the gallant with the widow, winning and losing
skins and cow-bells and land at rattle-and-snap, horse-racing with that
wild Mr. Jackson. Faith, he near shot the top of my head off because I
beat him at Greasy Cove."

I laughed, despite my anxiety.

"And Sevier?" I demanded.

"You have not heard how Sevier got off?" exclaimed Nick. "Egad, that was
a crowning stroke of genius! Cozby and Evans, Captains Greene and
Gibson, and Sevier's two boys whom you met on the Nollichucky rode over
the mountains to Morganton. Greene and Gibson and Sevier's boys hid
themselves with the horses in a clump outside the town, while Cozby and
Evans, disguised as bumpkins in hunting shirts, jogged into the town with
Sevier's racing mare between them. They jogged into the town, I say,
through the crowds of white trash, and rode up to the court-house where
Sevier was being tried for his life. Evans stood at the open door and
held the mare and gaped, while Cozby stalked in and shouldered his way
to the front within four feet of the bar, like a big, awkward countryman.
Jack Sevier saw him, and he saw Evans with the mare outside. Then, by
thunder, Cozby takes a step right up to the bar and cries out, 'Judge,
aren't you about done with that man?' Faith, it was like judgment day,
such a mix-up as there was after that, and Nollichucky Jack made three
leaps and got on the mare, and in the confusion Cozby and Evans were off
too, and the whole State of North Carolina couldn't catch 'em then."
Nick sighed. "I'd have given my soul to have been there," he said.

"Come in," said I, for lack of something better.

"Cursed if you haven't given me a sweet reception, Davy," said he. "Have
you lost your practice, or is there a lady here, you rogue," and he poked
into the cupboard with his stick. "Hullo, where are you going now?" he
added, his eye falling on the saddle-bags.

I had it on my lips to say, and then I remembered Mr. Wharton's
injunction.

"I'm going on a journey," said I.

"When?" said Nick.

"I leave in about an hour," said I.

He sat down. "Then I leave too," he said.

"What do you mean, Nick?" I demanded.

"I mean that I will go with you," said he.

"But I shall be gone three months or more," I protested.

"I have nothing to do," said Nick, placidly.

A vague trouble had been working in my mind, but now the full horror of
it dawned upon me. I was going to St. Louis. Mrs. Temple and Harry
Riddle were gone there, so Polly Ann had avowed, and Nick could not help
meeting Riddle. Sorely beset, I bent over to roll up a shirt, and
refrained from answering.

He came and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"What the devil ails you, Davy?" he cried. "If it is an elopement, of
course I won't press you. I'm hanged if I'll make a third."

"It is no elopement," I retorted, my face growing hot in spite of myself.

"Then I go with you," said he, "for I vow you need taking care of. You
can't put me off, I say. But never in my life have I had such a
reception, and from my own first cousin, too."

I was in a quandary, so totally unforeseen was this situation. And then
a glimmer of hope came to me that perhaps his mother and Riddle might not
be in St. Louis after all. I recalled the conversation in the cabin, and
reflected that this wayward pair had stranded on so many beaches, had
drifted off again on so many tides, that one place could scarce hold them
long. Perchance they had sunk,--who could tell? I turned to Nick, who
stood watching me.

"It was not that I did not want you," I said, "you must believe that. I
have wanted you ever since that night long ago when I slipped out of your
bed and ran away. I am going first to St. Louis and then to New Orleans
on a mission of much delicacy, a mission that requires discretion and
secrecy. You may come, with all my heart, with one condition only--that
you do not ask my business."

"Done!" cried Nick. "Davy, I was always sure of you; you are the one
fixed quantity in my life. To St. Louis, eh, and to New Orleans? Egad,
what havoc we'll make among the Creole girls. May I bring my nigger?
He'll do things for you too."

"By all means," said I, laughing, "only hurry."

"I'll run to the inn," said Nick, "and be back in ten minutes." He got
as far as the door, slapped his thigh, and looked back. "Davy, we may
run across--"

"Who?" I asked, with a catch of my breath.

"Harry Riddle," he answered; "and if so, may God have mercy on his soul!"

He ran down the path, the gate clicked, and I heard him whistling in the
street on his way to the inn.

After dinner we rode down to the ferry, Nick on the thoroughbred which
had beat Mr. Jackson's horse, and his man, Benjy, on a scraggly pony
behind. Benjy was a small, black negro with a very squat nose, alert and
talkative save when Nick turned on him. Benjy had been born at Temple
Bow; he worshipped his master and all that pertained to him, and he
showered upon me all the respect and attention that was due to a member
of the Temple family. For this I was very grateful. It would have been
an easier journey had we taken a boat down to Fort Massac, but such a
proceeding might have drawn too much attention to our expedition. I have
no space to describe that trip overland, which reminded me at every stage
of the march against Kaskaskia, the woods, the chocolate streams, the
coffee-colored swamps flecked with dead leaves,--and at length the
prairies, the grass not waist-high now, but young and tender, giving
forth the acrid smell of spring. Nick was delighted. He made me recount
every detail of my trials as a drummer boy, or kept me in continuous
spells of laughter over his own escapades. In short, I began to realize
that we were as near to each other as though we had never been parted.

We looked down upon Kaskaskia from the self-same spot where I had stood
on the bluff with Colonel Clark, and the sounds were even then the
same,--the sweet tones of the church bell and the lowing of the cattle.
We found a few Virginians and Pennsylvanians scattered in amongst the
French, the forerunners of that change which was to come over this
country. And we spent the night with my old friend, Father Gibault,
still the faithful pastor of his flock; cheerful, though the savings of
his lifetime had never been repaid by that country to which he had given
his allegiance so freely. Travelling by easy stages, on the afternoon of
the second day after leaving Kaskaskia we picked our way down the high
bluff that rises above the American bottom, and saw below us that yellow
monster among the rivers, the Mississippi. A blind monster he seemed,
searching with troubled arms among the islands for his bed, swept onward
by an inexorable force, and on his heaving shoulders he carried great
trees pilfered from the unknown forests of the North.

Down in the moist and shady bottom we came upon the log hut of a
half-breed trapper, and he agreed to ferry us across. As for our horses,
a keel boat must be sent after these, and Monsieur Gratiot would no doubt
easily arrange for this. And so we found ourselves, about five o'clock
on that Saturday evening, embarked in a wide pirogue on the current,
dodging the driftwood, avoiding the eddies, and drawing near to a village
set on a low bluff on the Spanish side and gleaming white among the
trees. And as I looked, the thought came again like a twinge of pain
that Mrs. Temple and Riddle might be there, thinking themselves secure in
this spot, so removed from the world and its doings.

"How now, my man of mysterious affairs?" cried Nick, from the bottom of
the boat; "you are as puckered as a sour persimmon. Have you a treaty
with Spain in your pocket or a declaration of war? What can trouble
you?"

"Nothing, if you do not," I answered, smiling.

"Lord send we don't admire the same lady, then," said Nick. "Pierrot,"
he cried, turning to one of the boatmen, "il y a des belles demoiselles
la, n'est-ce pas?"

The man missed a stroke in his astonishment, and the boat swung
lengthwise in the swift current.

"Dame, Monsieur, il y en a," he answered.

"Where did you learn French, Nick?" I demanded.

"Mr. Mason had it hammered into me," he answered carelessly, his eyes on
the line of keel boats moored along the shore. Our guides shot the canoe
deftly between two of these, the prow grounded in the yellow mud, and we
landed on Spanish territory.

We looked about us while our packs were being unloaded, and the place had
a strange flavor in that year of our Lord, 1789. A swarthy boatman in a
tow shirt with a bright handkerchief on his head stared at us over the
gunwale of one of the keel boats, and spat into the still, yellow water;
three high-cheeked Indians, with smudgy faces and dirty red blankets,
regarded us in silent contempt; and by the water-side above us was a sled
loaded with a huge water cask, a bony mustang pony between the shafts,
and a chanting negro dipping gourdfuls from the river. A road slanted up
the little limestone bluff, and above and below us stone houses could be
seen nestling into the hill, houses higher on the river side, and with
galleries there. We climbed the bluff, Benjy at our heels with the
saddle-bags, and found ourselves on a yellow-clay street lined with grass
and wild flowers. A great peace hung over the village, an air of a
different race, a restfulness strange to a Kentuckian. Clematis and
honeysuckle climbed the high palings, and behind the privacy of these,
low, big-chimneyed houses of limestone, weathered gray, could be seen,
their roofs sloping in gentle curves to the shaded porches in front; or
again, houses of posts set upright in the ground and these filled between
with plaster, and so immaculately whitewashed that they gleamed against
the green of the trees which shaded them. Behind the houses was often a
kind of pink-and-cream paradise of flowering fruit trees, so dear to the
French settlers. There were vineyards, too, and thrifty patches of
vegetables, and lines of flowers set in the carefully raked mould.

We walked on, enraptured by the sights around us, by the heavy scent of
the roses and the blossoms. Here was a quaint stone horse-mill, a
stable, or a barn set uncouthly on the street; a baker's shop, with a
glimpse of the white-capped baker through the shaded doorway, and an
appetizing smell of hot bread in the air. A little farther on we heard
the tinkle of the blacksmith's hammer, and the man himself looked up from
where the hoof rested on his leather apron to give us a kindly "Bon soir,
Messieurs," as we passed. And here was a cabaret, with the inevitable
porch, from whence came the sharp click of billiard balls.

We walked on, stopping now and again to peer between the palings, when we
heard, amidst the rattling of a cart and the jingling of bells, a chorus
of voices:--

       "A cheval, a cheval, pour aller voir ma mie,
             Lon, lon, la!"

A shaggy Indian pony came ambling around the corner between the long
shafts of a charette. A bareheaded young man in tow shirt and trousers
was driving, and three laughing girls were seated on the stools in the
cart behind him. Suddenly, before I quite realized what had happened,
the young man pulled up the pony, the girls fell silent, and Nick was
standing in the middle of the road, with his hat in his hand, bowing
elaborately.

"Je vous salue, Mesdemoiselles," he cried, "mes anges a char-a-banc.
Pouvez-vous me diriger chez Monsieur Gratiot?"

"Sapristi!" exclaimed the young man, but he laughed. The young women
stood up, giggling, and peered at Nick over the young man's shoulder.
One of them wore a fresh red-and-white calamanco gown. She had a
complexion of ivory tinged with red, raven hair, and dusky, long-lashed,
mischievous eyes brimming with merriment.

"Volontiers, Monsieur," she answered, before the others could catch their
breath, "premiere droite et premiere gauche. Allons, Gaspard!" she
cried, tapping the young man sharply on the shoulder, "es tu fou?"

Gaspard came to himself, flicked the pony, and they went off down the
road with shouts of laughter, while Nick stood waving his hat until they
turned the corner.

"Egad," said he, "I'd take to the highway if I could be sure of holding
up such a cargo every time. Off with you, Benjy, and find out where she
lives," he cried, and the obedient Benjy dropped the saddle-bags as
though such commands were not uncommon.

"Pick up those bags, Benjy," said I, laughing.

Benjy glanced uncertainly at his master.

"Do as I tell you, you black scalawag," said Nick, "or I'll tan you.
What are you waiting for?"

"Marse Dave--" began Benjy, rolling his eyes in discomfiture.

"Look you, Nick Temple," said I, "when you shipped with me you promised
that I should command. I can't afford to have the town about our ears."

"Oh, very well, if you put it that way," said Nick. "A little honest
diversion--Pick up the bags, Benjy, and follow the parson."

Obeying Mademoiselle's directions, we trudged on until we came to a
comfortable stone house surrounded by trees and set in a half-block
bordered by a seven-foot paling. Hardly had we opened the gate when a
tall gentleman of grave demeanor and sober dress rose from his seat on
the porch, and I recognized my friend of Cahokia days, Monsieur Gratiot.
He was a little more portly, his hair was dressed now in an eelskin, and
he looked every inch the man of affairs that he was. He greeted us
kindly and bade us come up on the porch, where he read my letter of
introduction.

"Why," he exclaimed immediately, giving me a cordial grasp of the hand,
"of course. The strategist, the John Law, the reader of character of
Colonel Clark's army. Yes, and worse, the prophet, Mr. Ritchie."

"And why worse, sir?" I asked.

"You predicted that Congress would never repay me for the little loan I
advanced to your Colonel."

"It was not such a little loan, Monsieur," I said.

"N'importe," said he; "I went to Richmond with my box of scrip and
promissory notes, but I was not ill repaid. If I did not get my money,
I acquired, at least, a host of distinguished acquaintances. But, Mr.
Ritchie, you must introduce me to your friend."

"My cousin. Mr. Nicholas Temple," I said.

Monsieur Gratiot looked at him fixedly.

"Of the Charlestown Temples?" he asked, and a sudden vague fear seized
me.

"Yes," said Nick, "there was once a family of that name."

"And now?" said Monsieur Gratiot, puzzled.

"Now," said Nick, "now they are become a worthless lot of refugees and
outlaws, who by good fortune have escaped the gallows."

Before Monsieur Gratiot could answer, a child came running around the
corner of the house and stood, surprised, staring at us. Nick made a
face, stooped down, and twirled his finger. Shouting with a terrified
glee, the boy fled to the garden path, Nick after him.

"I like Mr. Temple," said Monsieur Gratiot, smiling. "He is young, but
he seems to have had a history."

"The Revolution ruined many families--his was one," I answered, with what
firmness of tone I could muster. And then Nick came back, carrying the
shouting youngster on his shoulders. At that instant a lady appeared in
the doorway, leading another child, and we were introduced to Madame
Gratiot.

"Gentlemen," said Monsieur Gratiot, "you must make my house your home. I
fear your visit will not be as long as I could wish, Mr. Ritchie," he
added, turning to me, "if Mr. Wharton correctly states your business. I
have an engagement to have my furs in New Orleans by a certain time. I
am late in loading, and as there is a moon I am sending off my boats
to-morrow night. The men will have to work on Sunday."

"We were fortunate to come in such good season," I answered.

After a delicious supper of gumbo, a Creole dish, of fricassee, of creme
brule, of red wine and fresh wild strawberries, we sat on the porch. The
crickets chirped in the garden, the moon cast fantastic shadows from the
pecan tree on the grass, while Nick, struggling with his French, talked
to Madame Gratiot; and now and then their gay laughter made Monsieur
Gratiot pause and smile as he talked to me of my errand. It seemed
strange to me that a man who had lost so much by his espousal of our
cause should still be faithful to the American republic. Although he
lived in Louisiana, he had never renounced the American allegiance which
he had taken at Cahokia. He regarded with no favor the pretensions of
Spain toward Kentucky. And (remarkably enough) he looked forward even
then to the day when Louisiana would belong to the republic. I exclaimed
at this.

"Mr. Ritchie," said he, "the most casual student of your race must come
to the same conclusion. You have seen for yourself how they have overrun
and conquered Kentucky and the Cumberland districts, despite a hideous
warfare waged by all the tribes. Your people will not be denied, and
when they get to Louisiana, they will take it, as they take everything
else."

He was a man strong in argument, was Monsieur Gratiot, for he loved it.
And he beat me fairly.

"Nay," he said finally, "Spain might as well try to dam the Mississippi
as to dam your commerce on it. As for France, I love her, though my
people were exiled to Switzerland by the Edict of Nantes. But France is
rotten through the prodigality of her kings and nobles, and she cannot
hold Louisiana. The kingdom is sunk in debt." He cleared his throat.
"As for this Wilkinson of whom you speak, I know something of him. I
have no doubt that Miro pensions him, but I know Miro likewise, and you
will obtain no proof of that. You will, however, discover in New Orleans
many things of interest to your government and to the Federal party in
Kentucky. Colonel Chouteau and I will give you letters to certain French
gentlemen in New Orleans who can be trusted. There is Saint-Gre, for
instance, who puts a French Louisiana into his prayers. He has never
forgiven O'Reilly and his Spaniards for the murder of his father in
sixty-nine. Saint-Gre is a good fellow,--a cousin of the present Marquis
in France,--and his ancestors held many positions of trust in the colony
under the French regime. He entertains lavishly at Les Iles, his
plantation on the Mississippi. He has the gossip of New Orleans at his
tongue's tip, and you will be suspected of nothing save a desire to amuse
yourselves if you go there." He paused interrupted by the laughter of
the others. "When strangers of note or of position drift here and pass
on to New Orleans, I always give them letters to Saint-Gre. He has a
charming daughter and a worthless son."

Monsieur Gratiot produced his tabatiere and took a pinch of snuff. I
summoned my courage for the topic which had trembled all the evening on
my lips.

"Some years ago, Monsieur Gratiot, a lady and a gentleman were rescued on
the Wilderness Trail in Kentucky. They left us for St. Louis. Did they
come here?"

Monsieur Gratiot leaned forward quickly.

"They were people of quality?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"And their name?"

"They--they did not say."

"It must have been the Clives," he cried "it can have been no other.
Tell me--a woman still beautiful, commanding, of perhaps eight and
thirty? A woman who had a sorrow?--a great sorrow, though we have never
learned it. And Mr. Clive, a man of fashion, ill content too, and pining
for the life of a capital?"

"Yes," I said eagerly, my voice sinking near to a whisper, "yes--it is
they. And are they here?"

Monsieur Gratiot took another pinch of snuff. It seemed an age before he
answered:--

"It is curious that you should mention them, for I gave them letters to
New Orleans,--amongst others, to Saint-Gre. Mrs. Clive was--what shall
I say?--haunted. Monsieur Clive talked of nothing but Paris, where they
had lived once. And at last she gave in. They have gone there."

"To Paris?" I said, taking breath.

"Yes. It is more than a year ago," he continued, seeming not to notice
my emotion; "they went by way of New Orleans, in one of Chouteau's boats.
Mrs. Clive seemed a woman with a great sorrow."



CHAPTER IX

"CHERCHEZ LA FEMME"

Sunday came with the soft haziness of a June morning, and the dew sucked
a fresh fragrance from the blossoms and the grass. I looked out of our
window at the orchard, all pink and white in the early sun, and across a
patch of clover to the stone kitchen. A pearly, feathery smoke was
wafted from the chimney, a delicious aroma of Creole coffee pervaded the
odor of the blossoms, and a cotton-clad negro a pieds nus came down the
path with two steaming cups and knocked at our door. He who has tasted
Creole coffee will never forget it. The effect of it was lost upon Nick,
for he laid down the cup, sighed, and promptly went to sleep again, while
I dressed and went forth to make his excuses to the family. I found
Monsieur and Madame with their children walking among the flowers.
Madame laughed.

"He is charming, your cousin," said she. "Let him sleep, by all means,
until after Mass. Then you must come with us to Madame Chouteau's, my
mother's. Her children and grandchildren dine with her every Sunday."

"Madame Chouteau, my mother-in-law, is the queen regent of St. Louis, Mr.
Ritchie," said Monsieur Gratiot, gayly. "We are all afraid of her, and I
warn you that she is a very determined and formidable personage. She is
the widow of the founder of St. Louis, the Sieur Laclede, although she
prefers her own name. She rules us with a strong hand, dispenses
justice, settles disputes, and--sometimes indulges in them herself. It
is her right."

"You will see a very pretty French custom of submission to parents," said
Madame Gratiot. "And afterwards there is a ball."

"A ball!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"It may seem very strange to you, Mr. Ritchie, but we believe that Sunday
was made to enjoy. They will have time to attend the ball before you
send them down the river?" she added mischievously, turning to her
husband.

"Certainly," said he, "the loading will not be finished before eight
o'clock."

Presently Madame Gratiot went off to Mass, while I walked with Monsieur
Gratiot to a storehouse near the river's bank, whence the skins, neatly
packed and numbered, were being carried to the boats on the sweating
shoulders of the negroes, the half-breeds, and the Canadian
boatmen,--bulky bales of yellow elk, from the upper plains of the
Missouri, of buffalo and deer and bear, and priceless little packages of
the otter and the beaver trapped in the green shade of the endless
Northern forests, and brought hither in pirogues down the swift river by
the red tribesmen and Canadian adventurers.

Afterwards I strolled about the silent village. Even the cabarets were
deserted. A private of the Spanish Louisiana Regiment in a dirty uniform
slouched behind the palings in front of the commandant's quarters,--a
quaint stone house set against the hill, with dormer windows in its
curving roof, with a wide porch held by eight sturdy hewn pillars; here
and there the muffled figure of a prowling Indian loitered, or a
barefooted negress shuffled along by the fence crooning a folk-song. All
the world had obeyed the call of the church bell save these--and Nick. I
bethought myself of Nick, and made my way back to Monsieur Gratiot's.

I found my cousin railing at Benjy, who had extracted from the
saddle-bags a wondrous gray suit of London cut in which to array his
master. Clothes became Nick's slim figure remarkably. This coat was cut
away smartly, like a uniform, towards the tails, and was brought in at
the waist with an infinite art.

"Whither now, my conquistador?" I said.

"To Mass," said he.

"To Mass!" I exclaimed; "but you have slept through the greater part of
it."

"The best part is to come," said Nick, giving a final touch to his
neck-band. Followed by Benjy's adoring eyes, he started out of the door,
and I followed him perforce. We came to the little church, of upright
logs and plaster, with its crudely shingled, peaked roof, with its tiny
belfry crowned by a cross, with its porches on each side shading the line
of windows there. Beside the church, a little at the back, was the
cure's modest house of stone, and at the other hand, under spreading
trees, the graveyard with its rough wooden crosses. And behind these
graves rose the wooded hill that stretched away towards the wilderness.

What a span of life had been theirs who rested here! Their youth,
perchance, had been spent amongst the crooked streets of some French
village, streets lined by red-tiled houses and crossing limpid streams by
quaint bridges. Death had overtaken them beside a monster tawny river of
which their imaginations had not conceived, a river which draws tribute
from the remote places of an unknown land,--a river, indeed, which,
mixing all the waters, seemed to symbolize a coming race which was to
conquer the land by its resistless flow, even as the Mississippi bore
relentlessly towards the sea.

These were my own thoughts as I listened to the tones of the priest as
they came, droningly, out of the door, while Nick was exchanging jokes in
doubtful French with some half-breeds leaning against the palings. Then
we heard benches scraping on the floor, and the congregation began to
file out.

Those who reached the steps gave back, respectfully, and there came an
elderly lady in a sober turban, a black mantilla wrapped tightly about
her shoulders, and I made no doubt that she was Monsieur Gratiot's
mother-in-law, Madame Chouteau, she whom he had jestingly called the
queen regent. I was sure of this when I saw Madame Gratiot behind her.
Madame Chouteau indeed had the face of authority, a high-bridged nose, a
determined chin, a mouth that shut tightly. Madame Gratiot presented us
to her mother, and as she passed on to the gate Madame Chouteau reminded
us that we were to dine with her at two.

After her the congregation, the well-to-do and the poor alike, poured out
of the church and spread in merry groups over the grass: keel boatmen in
tow shirts and party-colored worsted belts, the blacksmith, the
shoemaker, the farmer of a small plot in the common fields in large
cotton pantaloons and light-wove camlet coat, the more favored in
skull-caps, linen small-clothes, cotton stockings, and silver-buckled
shoes,--every man pausing, dipping into his tabatiere, for a word with
his neighbor. The women, too, made a picture strange to our eyes, the
matrons in jacket and petticoat, a Madras handkerchief flung about their
shoulders, the girls in fresh cottonade or calamanco.

All at once cries of "'Polyte! 'Polyte!" were heard, and a nimble young
man with a jester-like face hopped around the corner of the church,
trundling a barrel. Behind 'Polyte came two rotund little men perspiring
freely, and laden down with various articles,--a bird-cage with two
yellow birds, a hat-trunk, an inlaid card box, a roll of scarlet cloth,
and I know not what else. They deposited these on the grass beside the
barrel, which 'Polyte had set on end and proceeded to mount, encouraged
by the shouts of his friends, who pressed around the barrel.

"It's an auction," I said.

But Nick did not hear me. I followed his glance to the far side of the
circle, and my eye was caught by a red ribbon, a blush that matched it.
A glance shot from underneath long lashes,--but not for me. Beside the
girl, and palpably uneasy, stood the young man who had been called
Gaspard.

"Ah," said I, "your angel of the tumbrel."

But Nick had pulled off his hat and was sweeping her a bow. The girl
looked down, smoothing her ribbon, Gaspard took a step forward, and other
young women near us tittered with delight. The voice of Hippolyte
rolling his r's called out in a French dialect:--

"M'ssieurs et Mesdames, ce sont des effets d'un pauvre officier qui est
mort. Who will buy?" He opened the hat-trunk, produced an antiquated
beaver with a gold cord, and surveyed it with a covetousness that was
admirably feigned. For 'Polyte was an actor. "M'ssieurs, to own such a
hat were a patent of nobility. Am I bid twenty livres?"

There was a loud laughter, and he was bid four.

"Gaspard," cried the auctioneer, addressing the young man of the tumbrel,
"Suzanne would no longer hesitate if she saw you in such a hat. And with
the trunk, too. Ah, mon Dieu, can you afford to miss it?"

The crowd howled, Suzanne simpered, and Gaspard turned as pink as clover.
But he was not to be bullied. The hat was sold to an elderly person, the
red cloth likewise; a pot of grease went to a housewife, and there was a
veritable scramble for the box of playing cards; and at last Hippolyte
held up the wooden cage with the fluttering yellow birds.

"Ha!" he cried, his eyes on Gaspard once more, "a gentle present--a
present to make a heart relent. And Monsieur Leon, perchance you will
make a bid, although they are not gamecocks."

Instantly, from somewhere under the barrel, a cock crew. Even the yellow
birds looked surprised, and as for 'Polyte, he nearly dropped the cage.
One elderly person crossed himself. I looked at Nick. His face was
impassive, but suddenly I remembered his boyhood gift, how he had
imitated the monkeys, and I began to shake with inward laughter. There
was an uncomfortable silence.

"Peste, c'est la magie!" said an old man at last, searching with an
uncertain hand for his snuff.

"Monsieur," cried Nick to the auctioneer, "I will make a bid. But first
you must tell me whether they are cocks or yellow birds."

"Parbleu," answered the puzzled Hippolyte, "that I do not know,
Monsieur."

Everybody looked at Nick, including Suzanne.

"Very well," said he, "I will make a bid. And if they turn out to be
gamecocks, I will fight them with Monsieur Leon behind the cabaret. Two
livres!"

There was a laugh, as of relief.

"Three!" cried Gaspard, and his voice broke.

Hippolyte looked insulted.

"M'ssieurs," he shouted, "they are from the Canaries. Diable, un berger
doit etre genereux."

Another laugh, and Gaspard wiped the perspiration from his face.

"Five!" said he.

"Six!" said Nick, and the villagers turned to him in wonderment. What
could such a fine Monsieur want with two yellow birds?

"En avant, Gaspard," said Hippolyte, and Suzanne shot another barbed
glance in our direction.

"Seven," muttered Gaspard.

"Eight!" said Nick, immediately.

"Nine," said Gaspard.

"Ten," said Nick.

"Ten," cried Hippolyte, "I am offered ten livres for the yellow birds.
Une bagatelle! Onze, Gaspard! Onze! onze livres, pour l'amour de
Suzanne!"

But Gaspard was silent. No appeals, entreaties, or taunts could persuade
him to bid more. And at length Hippolyte, with a gesture of disdain,
handed Nick the cage, as though he were giving it away.

"Monsieur," he said, "the birds are yours, since there are no more lovers
who are worthy of the name. They do not exist."

"Monsieur," answered Nick, "it is to disprove that statement that I have
bought the birds. Mademoiselle," he added, turning to the flushing
Suzanne, "I pray that you will accept this present with every assurance
of my humble regard."

Mademoiselle took the cage, and amidst the laughter of the village at the
discomfiture of poor Gaspard, swept Nick a frightened courtesy,--one that
nevertheless was full of coquetry. And at that instant, to cap the
situation, a rotund little man with a round face under a linen biretta
grasped Nick by the hand, and cried in painful but sincere English:--

"Monsieur, you mek my daughter ver' happy. She want those bird ever
sence Captain Lopez he die. Monsieur, I am Jean Baptiste Lenoir, Colonel
Chouteau's miller, and we ver' happy to see you at the pon'."

"If Monsieur will lead the way," said Nick, instantly, taking the little
man by the arm.

"But you are to dine at Madame Chouteau's," I expostulated.

"To be sure," said he. "Au revoir, Monsieur. Au revoir, Mademoiselle.
Plus tard, Mademoiselle; nous danserons plus tard."

"What devil inhabits you?" I said, when I had got him started on the way
to Madame Chouteau's.

"Your own, at present, Davy," he answered, laying a hand on my shoulder,
"else I should be on the way to the pon' with Lenoir. But the ball is to
come," and he executed several steps in anticipation. "Davy, I am sorry
for you."

"Why?" I demanded, though feeling a little self-commiseration also.

"You will never know how to enjoy yourself," said he, with conviction.

Madame Chouteau lived in a stone house, wide and low, surrounded by trees
and gardens. It was a pretty tribute of respect her children and
grandchildren paid her that day, in accordance with the old French usage
of honoring the parent. I should like to linger on the scene, and tell
how Nick made them all laugh over the story of Suzanne Lenoir and the
yellow birds, and how the children pressed around him and made him
imitate all the denizens of wood and field, amid deafening shrieks of
delight.

"You have probably delayed Gaspard's wooing another year, Mr. Temple.
Suzanne is a sad coquette," said Colonel Auguste Chouteau, laughing, as
we set out for the ball.

The sun was hanging low over the western hills as we approached the
barracks, and out of the open windows came the merry, mad sounds of
violin, guitar, and flageolet, the tinkle of a triangle now and then, the
shouts of laughter, the shuffle of many feet over the puncheons. Within
the door, smiling and benignant, unmindful of the stifling atmosphere,
sat the black-robed village priest talking volubly to an elderly man in a
scarlet cap, and several stout ladies ranged along the wall: beyond them,
on a platform, Zeron, the baker, fiddled as though his life depended on
it, the perspiration dripping from his brow, frowning, gesticulating at
them with the flageolet and the triangle. And in a dim, noisy, heated
whirl the whole village went round and round and round under the low
ceiling in the valse, young and old, rich and poor, high and low, the
sound of their laughter and the scraping of their feet cut now and again
by an agonized squeak from Zeron's fiddle. From time to time a
staggering, panting couple would fling themselves out, help themselves
liberally to pink sirop from the bowl on the side table, and then fling
themselves in once more, until Zeron stopped from sheer exhaustion, to
tune up for a pas de deux.

Across the room, by the sirop bowl, a pair of red ribbons flaunted, a
pair of eyes sent a swift challenge, Zeron and his assistants struck up
again, and there in a corner was Nick Temple, with characteristic
effrontery attempting a pas de deux with Suzanne. Though Nick was
ignorant, he was not ungraceful, and the village laughed and admired.
And when Zeron drifted back into a valse he seized Suzanne's plump figure
in his arms and bore her, unresisting, like a prize among the dancers,
avoiding alike the fat and unwieldy, the clumsy and the spiteful. For a
while the tune held its mad pace, and ended with a shriek and a snap on a
high note, for Zeron had broken a string. Amid a burst of laughter from
the far end of the room I saw Nick stop before an open window in which a
prying Indian was framed, swing Suzanne at arm's length, and bow abruptly
at the brave with a grunt that startled him into life.

"Va-t'en, mechant!" shrieked Suzanne, excitedly.

Poor Gaspard! Poor Hippolyte! They would gain Suzanne for a dance only
to have her snatched away at the next by the slim and reckless young
gentleman in the gray court clothes. Little Nick cared that the affair
soon became the amusement of the company. From time to time, as he
glided past with Suzanne on his shoulder, he nodded gayly to Colonel
Chouteau or made a long face at me, and to save our souls we could not
help laughing.

"The girl has met her match, for she has played shuttle-cock with all
the hearts in the village," said Monsieur Chouteau. "But perhaps it is
just as well that Mr. Temple is leaving to-night. I have signed a bond,
Mr. Ritchie, by which you can obtain money at New Orleans. And do not
forget to present our letter to Monsieur de Saint Gre. He has a
daughter, by the way, who will be more of a match for your friend's
fascinations than Suzanne."

The evening faded into twilight, with no signs of weariness from the
dancers. And presently there stood beside us Jean Baptiste Lenoir, the
Colonel's miller.

"B'soir, Monsieur le Colonel," he said, touching his skull-cap, "the
water is very low. You fren'," he added, turning to me, "he stay long
time in St. Louis?"

"He is going away to-night,--in an hour or so," I answered, with
thanksgiving in my heart.

"I am sorry," said Monsieur Lenoir, politely, but his looks belied his
words. "He is ver' fond Suzanne. Peut etre he marry her, but I think
not. I come away from France to escape the fine gentlemen; long time ago
they want to run off with my wife. She was like Suzanne."

"How long ago did you come from France, Monsieur?" I asked, to get away
from an uncomfortable subject.

"It is twenty years," said he, dreamily, in French. "I was born in the
Quartier Saint Jean, on the harbor of the city of Marseilles near Notre
Dame de la Nativite." And he told of a tall, uneven house of four
stories, with a high pitched roof, and a little barred door and window at
the bottom giving out upon the rough cobbles. He spoke of the smell of
the sea, of the rollicking sailors who surged through the narrow street
to embark on his Majesty's men-of-war, and of the King's white soldiers
in ranks of four going to foreign lands. And how he had become a farmer,
the tenant of a country family. Excitement grew on him, and he mopped
his brow with his blue rumal handkerchief.

"They desire all, the nobles," he cried, "I make the land good, and they
seize it. I marry a pretty wife, and Monsieur le Comte he want her.
L'bon Dieu," he added bitterly, relapsing into French. "France is for
the King and the nobility, Monsieur. The poor have but little chance
there. In the country I have seen the peasants eat roots, and in the
city the poor devour the refuse from the houses of the rich. It was we
who paid for their luxuries, and with mine own eyes I have seen their
gilded coaches ride down weak men and women in the streets. But it
cannot last. They will murder Louis and burn the great chateaux. I, who
speak to you, am of the people, Monsieur, I know it."

The sun had long set, and with flint and tow they were touching the flame
to the candles, which flickered transparent yellow in the deepening
twilight. So absorbed had I become in listening to Lenoir's description
that I had forgotten Nick. Now I searched for him among the promenading
figures, and missed him. In vain did I seek for a glimpse of Suzanne's
red ribbons, and I grew less and less attentive to the miller's
reminiscences and arraignments of the nobility. Had Nick indeed run away
with his daughter?

The dancing went on with unabated zeal, and through the open door in the
fainting azure of the sky the summer moon hung above the hills like a
great yellow orange. Striving to hide my uneasiness, I made my farewells
to Madame Chouteau's sons and daughters and their friends, and with
Colonel Chouteau I left the hall and began to walk towards Monsieur
Gratiot's, hoping against hope that Nick had gone there to change. But
we had scarce reached the road before we could see two figures in the
distance, hazily outlined in the mid-light of the departed sun and the
coming moon. The first was Monsieur Gratiot himself, the second Benjy.
Monsieur Gratiot took me by the hand.

"I regret to inform you, Mr. Ritchie," said he, politely, "that my keel
boats are loaded and ready to leave. Were you on any other errand I
should implore you to stay with us."

"Is Temple at your house?" I asked faintly.

"Why, no," said Monsieur Gratiot; "I thought he was with you at the
ball."

"Where is your master?" I demanded sternly of Benjy.

"I ain't seed him, Marse Dave, sence I put him inter dem fine clothes 'at
he w'ars a-cou'tin'."

"He has gone off with the girl," put in Colonel Chouteau, laughing.

"But where?" I said, with growing anger at this lack of consideration on
Nick's part.

"I'll warrant that Gaspard or Hippolyte Beaujais will know, if they can
be found," said the Colonel. "Neither of them willingly lets the girl
out of his sight."

As we hurried back towards the throbbing sounds of Zeron's fiddle I
apologized as best I might to Monsieur Gratiot, declaring that if Nick
were not found within the half-hour I would leave without him. My host
protested that an hour or so would make no difference. We were about to
pass through the group of loungers that loitered by the gate when the
sound of rapid footsteps arrested us, and we turned to confront two
panting and perspiring young men who halted beside us. One was Hippolyte
Beaujais, more fantastic than ever as he faced the moon, and the other
was Gaspard. They had plainly made a common cause, but it was Hippolyte
who spoke.

"Monsieur," he cried, "you seek your friend? Ha, we have found him,--we
will lead you to him."

"Where is he?" said Colonel Chouteau, repressing another laugh.

"On the pond, Monsieur,--in a boat, Monsieur, with Suzanne, Monsieur le
Colonel! And, moreover, he will come ashore for no one."

"Parbleu," said the Colonel, "I should think not for any arguments that
you two could muster. But we will go there."

"How far is it?" I asked, thinking of Monsieur Gratiot.

"About a mile," said Colonel Chouteau, "a pleasant walk."

We stepped out, Hippolyte and Gaspard running in front, the Colonel and
Monsieur Gratiot and myself following; and a snicker which burst out now
and then told us that Benjy was in the rear. On any other errand I
should have thought the way beautiful, for the country road, rutted by
wooden wheels, wound in and out through pleasant vales and over gentle
rises, whence we caught glimpses from time to time of the Mississippi
gleaming like molten gold to the eastward. Here and there, nestling
against the gentle slopes of the hillside clearing, was a low-thatched
farmhouse among its orchards. As we walked, Nick's escapade, instead of
angering Monsieur Gratiot, seemed to present itself to him in a more and
more ridiculous aspect, and twice he nudged me to call my attention to
the two vengefully triumphant figures silhouetted against the moon ahead
of us. From time to time also I saw Colonel Chouteau shaking with
laughter. As for me, it was impossible to be angry at Nick for any
space. Nobody else would have carried off a girl in the face of her
rivals for a moonlight row on a pond a mile away.

At length we began to go down into the valley where Chouteau's pond was,
and we caught glimpses of the shimmering of its waters through the trees,
ay, and presently heard them tumbling lightly over the mill-dam. The
spot was made for romance,--a sequestered vale, clad with forest trees,
cleared a little by the water-side, where Monsieur Lenoir raised his
maize and his vegetables. Below the mill, so Monsieur Gratiot told me,
where the creek lay in pools on its limestone bed, the village washing
was done; and every Monday morning bare-legged negresses strode up this
road, the bundles of clothes balanced on their heads, the paddles in
their hands, followed by a stream of black urchins who tempted Providence
to drown them.

Down in the valley we came to a path that branched from the road and led
under the oaks and hickories towards the pond, and we had not taken
twenty paces in it before the notes of a guitar and the sound of a voice
reached our ears. And then, when the six of us stood huddled in the rank
growth at the water's edge, we saw a boat floating idly in the forest
shadow on the far side.

I put my hand to my mouth.

"Nick!" I shouted.

There came for an answer, with the careless and unskilful thrumming of
the guitar, the end of the verse:--

       "Thine eyes are bright as the stars at night,
        Thy cheeks like the rose of the dawning, oh!"

"Helas!" exclaimed Hippolyte, sadly, "there is no other boat."

"Nick!" I shouted again, reenforced vociferously by the others.

The music ceased, there came feminine laughter across the water, then
Nick's voice, in French that dared everything:--

"Go away and amuse yourselves at the dance. Peste, it is scarce an hour
ago I threatened to row ashore and break your heads. Allez vous en,
jaloux!"

A scream of delight from Suzanne followed this sally, which was received
by Gaspard and Hippolyte with a rattle of sacres, and--despite our
irritation--the Colonel, Monsieur Gratiot, and myself with a burst of
involuntary laughter.

"Parbleu," said the Colonel, choking, "it is a pity to disturb such a
one. Gratiot, if it was my boat, I'd delay the departure till morning."

"Indeed, I shall have had no small entertainment as a solace," said
Monsieur Gratiot. "Listen!"

The tinkle of the guitar was heard again, and Nick's voice, strong and
full and undisturbed:--

     "S'posin' I was to go to N' O'leans an' take sick an' die,
     Like a bird into the country my spirit would fly.
        Go 'way, old man, and leave me alone,
        For I am a stranger and a long way from home."

There was a murmur of voices in the boat, the sound of a paddle gurgling
as it dipped, and the dugout shot out towards the middle of the pond and
drifted again.

I shouted once more at the top of my lungs:--

"Come in here, Nick, instantly!"

There was a moment's silence.

"By gad, it's Parson Davy!" I heard Nick exclaim. "Halloo, Davy, how the
deuce did you get there?"

"No thanks to you," I retorted hotly. "Come in."

"Lord," said he, "is it time to go to New Orleans?"

"One might think New Orleans was across the street," said Monsieur
Gratiot. "What an attitude of mind!"

The dugout was coming towards us now, propelled by easy strokes, and Nick
could be heard the while talking in low tones to Suzanne. We could only
guess at the tenor of his conversation, which ceased entirely as they
drew near. At length the prow slid in among the rushes, was seized
vigorously by Gaspard and Hippolyte, and the boat hauled ashore.

"Thank you very much, Messieurs; you are most obliging," said Nick. And
taking Suzanne by the hand, he helped her gallantly over the gunwale.
"Monsieur," he added, turning in his most irresistible manner to Monsieur
Gratiot, "if I have delayed the departure of your boat, I am exceedingly
sorry. But I appeal to you if I have not the best of excuses."

And he bowed to Suzanne, who stood beside him coyly, looking down. As
for 'Polyte and Gaspard, they were quite breathless between rage and
astonishment. But Colonel Chouteau began to laugh.

"Diable, Monsieur, you are right," he cried, "and rather than have missed
this entertainment I would pay Gratiot for his cargo."

"Au revoir, Mademoiselle," said Nick, "I will return when I am released
from bondage. When this terrible mentor relaxes vigilance, I will escape
and make my way back to you through the forests."

"Oh!" cried Mademoiselle to me, "you will let him come back, Monsieur."

"Assuredly, Mademoiselle," I said, "but I have known him longer than you,
and I tell you that in a month he will not wish to come back."

Hippolyte gave a grunt of approval to this plain speech. Suzanne
exclaimed, but before Nick could answer footsteps were heard in the path
and Lenoir himself, perspiring, panting, exhausted, appeared in the midst
of us.

"Suzanne!" he cried, "Suzanne!" And turning to Nick, he added quite
simply, "So, Monsieur, you did not run off with her, after all?"

"There was no place to run, Monsieur," answered Nick.

"Praise be to God for that!" said the miller, heartily, "there is some
advantage in living in the wilderness, when everything is said."

"I shall come back and try, Monsieur," said Nick.

The miller raised his hands.

"I assure you that he will not, Monsieur," I put in.

He thanked me profusely, and suddenly an idea seemed to strike him.

"There is the priest," he cried; "Monsieur le cure retires late. There
is the priest, Monsieur."

There was an awkward silence, broken at length by an exclamation from
Gaspard. Colonel Chouteau turned his back, and I saw his shoulders
heave. All eyes were on Nick, but the rascal did not seem at all
perturbed.

"Monsieur," he said, bowing, "marriage is a serious thing, and not to be
entered into lightly. I thank you from my heart, but I am bound now with
Mr. Ritchie on an errand of such importance that I must make a sacrifice
of my own interests and affairs to his."

"If Mr. Temple wishes--" I began, with malicious delight. But Nick took
me by the shoulder.

"My dear Davy," he said, giving me a vicious kick, "I could not think of
it. I will go with you at once. Adieu, Mademoiselle," said he, bending
over Suzanne's unresisting hand. "Adieu, Messieurs, and I thank you for
your great interest in me." (This to Gaspard and Hippolyte.)

"And now, Monsieur Gratiot, I have already presumed too much on your
patience. I will follow you, Monsieur."

We left them, Lenoir, Suzanne, and her two suitors, standing at the pond,
and made our way through the path in the forest. It was not until we
reached the road and had begun to climb out of the valley that the
silence was broken between us.

"Monsieur," said Colonel Chouteau, slyly, "do you have many such
escapes?"

"It might have been closer," said Nick.

"Closer?" ejaculated the Colonel.

"Assuredly," said Nick, "to the extent of abducting Monsieur le cure. As
for you, Davy," he added, between his teeth, "I mean to get even with
you."

It was well for us that the Colonel and Monsieur Gratiot took the
escapade with such good nature. And so we walked along through the
summer night, talking gayly, until at length the lights of the village
twinkled ahead of us, and in the streets we met many parties making merry
on their homeward way. We came to Monsieur Gratiot's, bade our farewells
to Madame, picked up our saddle-bags, the two gentlemen escorting us down
to the river bank where the keel boat was tugging at the ropes that held
her, impatient to be off. Her captain, a picturesque Canadian by the
name of Xavier Paret, was presented to us; we bade our friends farewell,
and stepped across the plank to the deck. As we were casting off,
Monsieur Gratiot called to us that he would take the first occasion to
send our horses back to Kentucky. The oars were manned, the heavy hulk
moved, and we were shot out into the mighty current of the river on our
way to New Orleans.

Nick and I stood for a long time on the deck, and the windows of the
little village gleamed like stars among the trees. We passed the last of
its houses that nestled against the hill, and below that the forest lay
like velvet under the moon. The song of our boatmen broke the silence of
the night:--

       "Voici le temps et la saison,
        Voici le temps et la saison,
        Ah! vrai, que les journees sont longues,
        Ah! vrai, que les journees sont longues!"



CHAPTER X

THE KEEL BOAT

We were embarked on a strange river, in a strange boat, and bound for a
strange city. To us Westerners a halo of romance, of unreality, hung
over New Orleans. To us it had an Old World, almost Oriental flavor of
mystery and luxury and pleasure, and we imagined it swathed in the
moisture of the Delta, built of quaint houses, with courts of shining
orange trees and magnolias, and surrounded by flowering plantations of
unimagined beauty. It was most fitting that such a place should be the
seat of dark intrigues against material progress, and this notion lent
added zest to my errand thither. As for Nick, it took no great sagacity
on my part to predict that he would forget Suzanne and begin to look
forward to the Creole beauties of the Mysterious City.

First, there was the fur-laden keel boat in which we travelled, gone
forever now from Western navigation. It had its rude square sail to take
advantage of the river winds, its mast strongly braced to hold the long
tow-ropes. But tow-ropes were for the endless up-river journey, when a
numerous crew strained day after day along the bank, chanting the
voyageurs' songs. Now we were light-manned, two half-breeds and two
Canadians to handle the oars in time of peril, and Captain Xavier, who
stood aft on the cabin roof, leaning against the heavy beam of the long,
curved tiller, watching hawklike for snag and eddy and bar. Within the
cabin was a great fireplace of stones, where our cooking was done, and
bunks set round for the men in cold weather and rainy. But in these fair
nights we chose to sleep on deck.

Far into the night we sat, Nick and I, our feet dangling over the forward
edge of the cabin, looking at the glory of the moon on the vast river, at
the endless forest crown, at the haze which hung like silver dust under
the high bluffs on the American side. We slept. We awoke again as the
moon was shrinking abashed before the light that glowed above these
cliffs, and the river was turned from brown to gold and then to burnished
copper, the forest to a thousand shades of green from crest to the banks
where the river was licking the twisted roots to nakedness. The south
wind wafted the sharp wood-smoke from the chimney across our faces. In
the stern Xavier stood immovable against the tiller, his short pipe
clutched between his teeth, the colors of his new worsted belt made
gorgeous by the rising sun.

"B'jour, Michie," he said, and added in the English he had picked up from
the British traders, "the breakfas' he is ready, and Jean make him good.
Will you have the grace to descen'?"

We went down the ladder into the cabin, where the odor of the furs
mingled with the smell of the cooking. There was a fricassee steaming on
the crane, some of Zeron's bread, brought from St. Louis, and coffee that
Monsieur Gratiot had provided for our use. We took our bowls and cups on
deck and sat on the edge of the cabin.

"By gad," cried Nick, "it lacks but the one element to make it a
paradise."

"And what is that?" I demanded.

"A woman," said he.

Xavier, who overheard, gave a delighted laugh.

"Parbleu, Michie, you have right," he said, "but Michie Gratiot, he say
no. In Nouvelle Orleans we find some."

Nick got to his feet, and if anything he did could have surprised me, I
should have been surprised when he put his arm coaxingly about Xavier's
neck. Xavier himself was surprised and correspondingly delighted.

"Tell me, Xavier," he said, with a look not to be resisted, "do you think
I shall find some beauties there?"

"Beauties!" exclaimed Xavier, "La Nouvelle Orleans--it is the home of
beauty, Michie. They promenade themselves on the levee, they look down
from ze gallerie, mais--"

"But what, Xavier?"

"But, mon Dieu, Michie, they are vair' difficile. They are not like
Englis' beauties, there is the father and the mother, and--the convent."
And Xavier, who had a wen under his eye, laid his finger on it.

"For shame, Xavier," cried Nick; "and you are balked by such things?"

Xavier thought this an exceedingly good joke, and he took his pipe out of
his mouth to laugh the better.

"Me? Mais non, Michie. And yet ze Alcalde, he mek me afraid. Once he
put me in ze calaboose when I tried to climb ze balcon'."

Nick roared.

"I will show you how, Xavier," he said; "as to climbing the balconies,
there is a convenance in it, as in all else. For instance, one must be
daring, and discreet, and nimble, and ready to give the law a presentable
answer, and lacking that, a piastre. And then the fair one must be a
fair one indeed."

"Diable, Michie," cried Xavier, "you are ze mischief."

"Nay," said Nick, "I learned it all and much more from my cousin, Mr.
Ritchie."

Xavier stared at me for an instant, and considering that he knew nothing
of my character, I thought it extremely impolite of him to laugh.
Indeed, he tried to control himself, for some reason standing in awe of
my appearance, and then he burst out into such loud haw-haws that the
crew poked their heads above the cabin hatch.

"Michie Reetchie," said Xavier, and again he burst into laughter that
choked further speech. He controlled himself and laid his finger on his
wen.

"You don't believe it," said Nick, offended.

"Michie Reetchie a gallant!" said Xavier.

"An incurable," said Nick, "an amazingly clever rogue at device when
there is a petticoat in it. Davy, do I do you justice?"

Xavier roared again.

"Quel maitre!" he said.

"Xavier," said Nick, gently taking the tiller out of his hand, "I will
teach you how to steer a keel boat."

"Mon Dieu," said Xavier, "and who is to pay Michie Gratiot for his fur?
The river, she is full of things."

"Yes, I know, Xavier, but you will teach me to steer."

"Volontiers, Michie, as we go now. But there come a time when I, even I,
who am twenty year on her, do not know whether it is right or left. Ze
rock--he vair' hard. Ze snag, he grip you like dat," and Xavier twined
his strong arms around Nick until he was helpless. "Ze bar--he hol' you
by ze leg. An' who is to tell you how far he run under ze yellow water,
Michie? I, who speak to you, know. But I know not how I know. Ze
water, sometime she tell, sometime she say not'ing."

"A bas, Xavier!" said Nick, pushing him away, "I will teach you the
river."

Xavier laughed, and sat down on the edge of the cabin. Nick took easily
to accomplishments, and he handled the clumsy tiller with a certainty and
distinction that made the boatmen swear in two languages and a patois. A
great water-logged giant of the Northern forests loomed ahead of us.
Xavier sprang to his feet, but Nick had swung his boat swiftly, smoothly,
into the deeper water on the outer side.

"Saint Jacques, Michie," cried Xavier, "you mek him better zan I
thought."

Fascinated by a new accomplishment, Nick held to the tiller, while Xavier
with a trained eye scanned the troubled, yellow-glistening surface of the
river ahead. The wind died, the sun beat down with a moist and venomous
sting, and northeastward above the edge of the bluff a bank of cloud like
sulphur smoke was lifted. Gradually Xavier ceased his jesting and became
quiet.

"Looks like a hurricane," said Nick.

"Mon Dieu," said Xavier, "you have right, Michie," and he called in his
rapid patois to the crew, who lounged forward in the cabin's shade.
There came to my mind the memory of that hurricane at Temple Bow long
ago, a storm that seemed to have brought so much sorrow into my life. I
glanced at Nick, but his face was serene.

The cloud-bank came on in black and yellow masses, and the saffron light
I recalled so well turned the living green of the forest to a sickly
pallor and the yellow river to a tinge scarce to be matched on earth.
Xavier had the tiller now, and the men were straining at the oars to send
the boat across the current towards the nearer western shore. And as my
glance took in the scale of things, the miles of bluff frowning above the
bottom, the river that seemed now like a lake of lava gently boiling, and
the wilderness of the western shore that reached beyond the ken of man, I
could not but shudder to think of the conflict of nature's forces in such
a place. A grim stillness reigned over all, broken only now and again by
a sharp command from Xavier. The men were rowing for their lives, the
sweat glistening on their red faces.

"She come," said Xavier.

I looked, not to the northeast whence the banks of cloud had risen, but
to the southwest, and it seemed as though a little speck was there
against the hurrying film of cloud. We were drawing near the forest
line, where a little creek made an indentation. I listened, and from
afar came a sound like the strumming of low notes on a guitar, and sad.
The terrified scream of a panther broke the silence of the forest, and
then the other distant note grew stronger, and stronger yet, and rose to
a high hum like unto no sound on this earth, and mingled with it now was
a lashing like water falling from a great height. We grounded, and
Xavier, seizing a great tow-rope, leaped into the shallow water and
passed the bight around a trunk. I cried out to Nick, but my voice was
drowned. He seized me and flung me under the cabin's lee, and then above
the fearful note of the storm came cracklings like gunshots of great
trees snapping at their trunk. We saw the forest wall burst out--how far
away I know not--and the air was filled as with a flock of giant birds,
and boughs crashed on the roof of the cabin and tore the water in the
darkness. How long we lay clutching each other in terror on the rocking
boat I may not say, but when the veil first lifted there was the river
like an angry sea, and limitless, the wind in its fury whipping the foam
from the crests and bearing it off into space. And presently, as we
stared, the note lowered and the wind was gone again, and there was the
water tossing foolishly, and we lay safe amidst the green wreckage of the
forest as by a miracle.

It was Nick who moved first. With white face he climbed to the roof of
the cabin and idly seizing the great limb that lay there tried to move
it. Xavier, who lay on his face on the bank, rose to a sitting posture
and crossed himself. Beyond me crowded the four members of the crew,
unhurt. Then we heard Xavier's voice, in French, thanking the Blessed
Virgin for our escape.

Further speech was gone from us, for men do not talk after such a matter.
We laid hold of the tree across the cabin and, straining, flung it over
into the water. A great drop of rain hit me on the forehead, and there
came a silver-gray downpour that blotted out the scene and drove us down
below. And then, from somewhere in the depths of the dark cabin, came a
sound to make a man's blood run cold.

"What's that?" I said, clutching Nick.

"Benjy," said he; "thank God he did not die of fright." We lighted a
candle, and poking around, found the negro where he had crept into the
farthest corner of a bunk with his face to the wall. And when we touched
him he gave vent to a yell that was blood-curdling.

"I'se a bad nigger, Lo'd, yes, I is," he moaned. "I ain't fit fo'
jedgment, Lo'd."

Nick shook him and laughed.

"Come out of that, Benjy," he said; "you've got another chance."

Benjy turned, perforce, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the
candle-light, and stared at us.

"You ain't gone yit, Marse," he said.

"Gone where?" said Nick.

"I'se done been tole de quality 'll be jedged fust, Marse."

Nick hauled him out on the floor. Climbing to the deck, we found that
the boat was already under way, running southward in the current through
the misty rain. And gazing shoreward, a sight met my eyes which I shall
never forget. A wide vista, carpeted with wreckage, was cut through the
forest to the river's edge, and the yellow water was strewn for miles
with green boughs. We stared down it, overwhelmed, until we had passed
beyond its line.

"It is as straight," said Nick, "as straight as one of her Majesty's
alleys I saw cut through the forest at Saint-Cloud."

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

Had I space and time to give a faithful account of this journey it would
be chiefly a tribute to Xavier's skill, for they who have not put
themselves at the mercy of the Mississippi in a small craft can have no
idea of the dangers of such a voyage. Infinite experience, a keen eye, a
steady hand, and a nerve of iron are required. Now, when the current
swirled almost to a rapid, we grazed a rock by the width of a ripple; and
again, despite the effort of Xavier and the crew, we would tear the limbs
from a huge tree, which, had we hit it fair, would have ripped us from
bow to stern. Once, indeed, we were fast on a sand-bar, whence (as Nick
said) Xavier fairly cursed us off. We took care to moor at night, where
we could be seen as little as possible from the river, and divided the
watches lest we should be surprised by Indians. And, as we went
southward, our hands and faces became blotched all over by the bites of
mosquitoes and flies, and we smothered ourselves under blankets to get
rid of them. At times we fished, and one evening, after we had passed
the expanse of water at the mouth of the Ohio, Nick pulled a hideous
thing from the inscrutable yellow depths,--a slimy, scaleless catfish.
He came up like a log, and must have weighed seventy pounds. Xavier and
his men and myself made two good meals of him, but Nick would not touch
the meat.

The great river teemed with life. There were flocks of herons and cranes
and water pelicans, and I know not what other birds, and as we slipped
under the banks we often heard the paroquets chattering in the forests.
And once, as we drifted into an inlet at sunset, we caught sight of the
shaggy head of a bear above the brown water, and leaping down into the
cabin I primed the rifle that stood there and shot him. It took the
seven of us to drag him on board, and then I cleaned and skinned him as
Tom had taught me, and showed Jean how to put the caul fat and liver in
rows on a skewer and wrap it in the bear's handkerchief and roast it
before the fire. Nick found no difficulty in eating this--it was a dish
fit for any gourmand.

We passed the great, red Chickasaw Bluff, which sits facing westward
looking over the limitless Louisiana forests, where new and wondrous
vines and flowers grew, and came to the beautiful Walnut Hills crowned by
a Spanish fort. We did not stop there to exchange courtesies, but
pressed on to the Grand Gulf, the grave of many a keel boat before and
since. This was by far the most dangerous place on the Mississippi, and
Xavier was never weary of recounting many perilous escapes there, or
telling how such and such a priceless cargo had sunk in the mud by reason
of the lack of skill of particular boatmen he knew of. And indeed, the
Canadian's face assumed a graver mien after the Walnut Hills were behind
us.

"You laugh, Michie," he said to Nick, a little resentfully. "I who speak
to you say that there is four foot on each side of ze bateau. Too much
tafia, a little too much excite--" and he made a gesture with his hand
expressive of total destruction; "ze tornado, I would sooner have him--"

"Bah!" said Nick, stroking Xavier's black beard, "give me the tiller. I
will see you through safely, and we will not spare the tafia either."
And he began to sing a song of Xavier's own:--

         "'Marianson, dame jolie,
          Ou est alle votre mari?'"

"Ah, toujours les dames!" said Xavier. "But I tell you, Michie, le
diable,--he is at ze bottom of ze Grand Gulf and his mouth open--so."
And he suited the action to the word.

At night we tied up under the shore within earshot of the mutter of the
place, and twice that night I awoke with clinched hands from a dream of
being spun fiercely against the rock of which Xavier had told, and sucked
into the devil's mouth under the water. Dawn came as I was fighting the
mosquitoes,--a still, sultry dawn with thunder muttering in the distance.

We breakfasted in silence, and with the crew standing ready at the oars
and Xavier scanning the wide expanse of waters ahead, seeking for that
unmarked point whence to embark on this perilous journey, we floated down
the stream. The prospect was sufficiently disquieting on that murky day.
Below us, on the one hand, a rocky bluff reached out into the river, and
on the far side was a timber-clad point round which the Mississippi
doubled and flowed back on itself. It needed no trained eye to guess at
the perils of the place. On the one side the mighty current charged
against the bluff and, furious at the obstacle, lashed itself into a
hundred sucks and whirls, their course marked by the flotsam plundered
from the forests above. Woe betide the boat that got into this devil's
caldron! And on the other side, near the timbered point, ran a counter
current marked by forest wreckage flowing up-stream. To venture too far
on this side was to be grounded or at least to be sent back to embark
once more on the trial.

But where was the channel? We watched Xavier with bated breath. Not
once did he take his eyes from the swirling water ahead, but gave the
tiller a touch from time to time, now right, now left, and called in a
monotone for the port or starboard oars. Nearer and nearer we sped,
dodging the snags, until the water boiled around us, and suddenly the
boat shot forward as in a mill-race, and we clutched the cabin's roof. A
triumphant gleam was in Xavier's eyes, for he had hit the channel
squarely. And then, like a monster out of the deep, the scaly, black
back of a great northern pine was flung up beside us and sheered us
across the channel until we were at the very edge of the foam-specked,
spinning water. But Xavier saw it, and quick as lightning brought his
helm over and laughed as he heard it crunching along our keel. And so we
came swiftly around the bend and into safety once more. The next day
there was the Petite Gulf, which bothered Xavier very little, and the day
after that we came in sight of Natchez on her heights and guided our boat
in amongst the others that lined the shore, scowled at by lounging
Indians there, and eyed suspiciously by a hatchet-faced Spaniard in a
tawdry uniform who represented his Majesty's customs. Here we stopped
for a day and a night that Xavier and his crew might get properly drunk
on tafia, while Nick and I walked about the town and waited until his
Excellency, the commandant, had finished dinner that we might present our
letters and obtain his passport. Natchez at that date was a sufficiently
unkempt and evil place of dirty, ramshackle houses and gambling dens,
where men of the four nations gamed and quarrelled and fought. We were
glad enough to get away the following morning, Xavier somewhat saddened
by the loss of thirty livres of which he had no memory, and Nick and
myself relieved at having the passports in our pockets. I have mine yet
among my papers.

         "Natchez, 29 de Junio, de 1789.

"Concedo libre y seguro paeaporte a Don David Ritchie para que pase a la
Nueva Orleans por Agna. Pido y encargo no se le ponga embarazo."

A few days more and we were running between low shores which seemed to
hold a dark enchantment. The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the
Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill
and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the
dark forest of an evening. And the forest,--it seemed an impenetrable
mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chene
vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and
twined in the mistletoe's death embrace; the dark cypress swamp with the
conelike knees above the yellow back-waters; and here and there grew the
bridelike magnolia which we had known in Kentucky, wafting its perfume
over the waters, and wondrous flowers and vines and trees with French
names that bring back the scene to me even now with a whiff of romance,
bois d'arc, lilac, grande volaille (water-lily). Birds flew hither and
thither (the names of every one of which Xavier knew),--the whistling
papabot, the mournful bittern (garde-soleil), and the night-heron
(grosbeck), who stood like a sentinel on the points.

One night I awoke with the sweat starting from my brow, trying to collect
my senses, and I lay on my blanket listening to such plaintive and
heart-rending cries as I had never known. Human cries they were, cries
as of children in distress, and I rose to a sitting posture on the deck
with my hair standing up straight, to discover Nick beside me in the same
position.

"God have mercy on us," I heard him mutter, "what's that? It sounds like
the wail of all the babies since the world began."

We listened together, and I can give no notion of the hideous
mournfulness of the sound. We lay in a swampy little inlet, and the
forest wall made a dark blur against the star-studded sky. There was a
splash near the boat that made me clutch my legs, the wails ceased and
began again with redoubled intensity. Nick and I leaped to our feet and
stood staring, horrified, over the gunwale into the black water.
Presently there was a laugh behind us, and we saw Xavier resting on his
elbow.

"What devil-haunted place is this?" demanded Nick.

"Ha, ha," said Xavier, shaking with unseemly mirth, "you have never heard
ze alligator sing, Michie?"

"Alligator!" cried Nick; "there are babies in the water, I tell you."

"Ha, ha," laughed Xavier, flinging off his blanket and searching for his
flint and tinder. He lighted a pine knot, and in the red pulsing flare
we saw what seemed to be a dozen black logs floating on the surface. And
then Xavier flung the cresset at them, fire and all. There was a
lashing, a frightful howl from one of the logs, and the night's silence
once more.

Often after that our slumbers were disturbed, and we would rise with
maledictions in our mouths to fling the handiest thing at the serenaders.
When we arose in the morning we would often see them by the dozens,
basking in the shallows, with their wide mouths flapped open waiting for
their prey. Sometimes we ran upon them in the water, where they looked
like the rough-bark pine logs from the North, and Nick would have a shot
at them. When he hit one fairly there would be a leviathan-like roar and
a churning of the river into suds.

At length there were signs that we were drifting out of the wilderness,
and one morning we came in sight of a rich plantation with its dark
orange trees and fields of indigo, with its wide-galleried manor-house in
a grove. And as we drifted we heard the negroes chanting at their work,
the plaintive cadence of the strange song adding to the mystery of the
scene. Here in truth was a new world, a land of peaceful customs, green
and moist. The soft-toned bells of it seemed an expression of its
life,--so far removed from our own striving and fighting existence in
Kentucky. Here and there, between plantations, a belfry could be seen
above the cluster of the little white village planted in the green; and
when we went ashore amongst these simple French people they treated us
with such gentle civility and kindness that we would fain have lingered
there. The river had become a vast yellow lake, and often as we drifted
of an evening the wail of a slave dance and monotonous beating of a
tom-tom would float to us over the water.

At last, late one afternoon, we came in sight of that strange city which
had filled our thoughts for many days.



CHAPTER XI

THE STRANGE CITY

Nick and I stood by the mast on the forward part of the cabin, staring at
the distant, low-lying city, while Xavier sought for the entrance to the
eddy which here runs along the shore. If you did not gain this entrance,
--so he explained,--you were carried by a swift current below New Orleans
and might by no means get back save by the hiring of a crew. Xavier,
however, was not to be caught thus, and presently we were gliding quietly
along the eastern bank, or levee, which held back the river from the
lowlands. Then, as we looked, the levee became an esplanade shaded by
rows of willows, and through them we caught sight of the upper galleries
and low, curving roofs of the city itself. There, cried Xavier, was the
Governor's house on the corner, where the great Miro lived, and beyond it
the house of the Intendant; and then, gliding into an open space between
the keel boats along the bank, stared at by a score of boatmen and idlers
from above, we came to the end of our long journey. No sooner had we
made fast than we were boarded by a shabby customs officer who, when he
had seen our passports, bowed politely and invited us to land. We leaped
ashore, gained the gravelled walk on the levee, and looked about us.

Squalidity first met our eyes. Below us, crowded between the levee and
the row of houses, were dozens of squalid market-stalls tended by
cotton-clad negroes. Beyond, across the bare Place d'Armes, a blackened
gap in the line of houses bore witness to the devastation of the year
gone by, while here and there a roof, struck by the setting sun, gleamed
fiery red with its new tiles. The levee was deserted save for the
negroes and the river men.

"Time for siesta, Michie," said Xavier, joining us; "I will show you ze
inn of which I spik. She is kep' by my fren', Madame Bouvet."

"Xavier," said Nick, looking at the rolling flood of the river, "suppose
this levee should break?"

"Ah," said Xavier, "then some Spaniard who never have a bath--he feel
what water is lak."

Followed by Benjy with the saddle-bags, we went down the steps set in the
levee into this strange, foreign city. It was like unto nothing we had
ever seen, nor can I give an adequate notion of how it affected us,--such
a mixture it seemed of dirt and poverty and wealth and romance. The
narrow, muddy streets ran with filth, and on each side along the houses
was a sun-baked walk held up by the curved sides of broken flatboats,
where two men might scarcely pass. The houses, too, had an odd and
foreign look, some of wood, some of upright logs and plaster, and newer
ones, Spanish in style, of adobe, with curving roofs of red tiles and
strong eaves spreading over the banquette (as the sidewalk was called),
casting shadows on lemon-colored walls. Since New Orleans was in a
swamp, the older houses for the most part were lifted some seven feet
above the ground, and many of these houses had wide galleries on the
street side. Here and there a shop was set in the wall; a watchmaker was
to be seen poring over his work at a tiny window, a shoemaker
cross-legged on the floor. Again, at an open wicket, we caught a glimpse
through a cool archway into a flowering court-yard. Stalwart negresses
with bright kerchiefs made way for us on the banquette. Hands on hips,
they swung along erect, with baskets of cakes and sweetmeats on their
heads, musically crying their wares.

At length, turning a corner, we came to a white wooden house on the Rue
Royale, with a flight of steps leading up to the entrance. In place of a
door a flimsy curtain hung in the doorway, and, pushing this aside, we
followed Xavier through a darkened hall to a wide gallery that overlooked
a court-yard. This court-yard was shaded by several great trees which
grew there, the house and gallery ran down one other side of it; and the
two remaining sides were made up of a series of low cabins, these forming
the various outhouses and the kitchen. At the far end of this gallery a
sallow, buxom lady sat sewing at a table, and Xavier saluted her very
respectfully.

"Madame," he said, "I have brought you from St. Louis with Michie
Gratiot's compliments two young American gentlemen, who are travelling to
amuse themselves."

The lady rose and beamed upon us.

"From Monsieur Gratiot," she said; "you are very welcome, gentlemen, to
such poor accommodations as I have. It is not unusual to have American
gentlemen in New Orleans, for many come here first and last. And I am
happy to say that two of my best rooms are vacant. Zoey!"

There was a shrill answer from the court below, and a negro girl in a
yellow turban came running up, while Madame Bouvet bustled along the
gallery and opened the doors of two darkened rooms. Within I could dimly
see a walnut dresser, a chair, and a walnut bed on which was spread a
mosquito bar.

"Voila! Messieurs," cried Madame Bouvet, "there is still a little time
for a siesta. No siesta!" cried Madame, eying us aghast; "ah, the
Americans they never rest--never."

We bade farewell to the good Xavier, promising to see him soon; and Nick,
shouting to Benjy to open the saddle-bags, proceeded to array himself in
the clothes which had made so much havoc at St. Louis. I boded no good
from this proceeding, but I reflected, as I watched him dress, that I
might as well try to turn the Mississippi from its course as to attempt
to keep my cousin from the search for gallant adventure. And I reflected
that his indulgence in pleasure-seeking would serve the more to divert
any suspicions which might fall upon my own head. At last, when the
setting sun was flooding the court-yard, he stood arrayed upon the
gallery, ready to venture forth to conquest.

Madame Bouvet's tavern, or hotel, or whatever she was pleased to call it,
was not immaculately clean. Before passing into the street we stood for
a moment looking into the public room on the left of the hallway, a long
saloon, evidently used in the early afternoon for a dining room, and at
the back of it a wide, many-paned window, capped by a Spanish arch,
looked out on the gallery. Near this window was a gay party of young men
engaged at cards, waited on by the yellow-turbaned Zoey, and drinking
what evidently was claret punch. The sounds of their jests and laughter
pursued us out of the house.

The town was waking from its siesta, the streets filling, and people
stopped to stare at Nick as we passed. But Nick, who was plainly in
search of something he did not find, hurried on. We soon came to the
quarter which had suffered most from the fire, where new houses had gone
up or were in the building beside the blackened logs of many of
Bienville's time. Then we came to a high white wall that surrounded a
large garden, and within it was a long, massive building of some beauty
and pretension, with a high, latticed belfry and heavy walls and with
arched dormers in the sloping roof. As we stood staring at it through
the iron grille set in the archway of the lodge, Nick declared that it
put him in mind of some of the chateaux he had seen in France, and he
crossed the street to get a better view of the premises. An old man in
coarse blue linen came out of the lodge and spoke to me.

"It is the convent of the good nuns, the Ursulines, Monsieur," he said in
French, "and it was built long ago in the Sieur de Bienville's time, when
the colony was young. For forty-five years, Monsieur, the young ladies
of the city have come here to be educated."

"What does he say?" demanded Nick, pricking up his ears as he came across
the street.

"That young men have been sent to the mines of Brazil for climbing the
walls," I answered.

"Who wants to climb the walls?" said Nick, disgusted.

"The young ladies of the town go to school here," I answered; "it is a
convent."

"It might serve to pass the time," said Nick, gazing with a new interest
at the latticed windows. "How much would you take, my friend, to let us
in at the back way this evening?" he demanded of the porter in French.

The good man gasped, lifted his hands in horror, and straightway let
loose upon Nick a torrent of French invectives that had not the least
effect except to cause a blacksmith's apprentice and two negroes to stop
and stare at us.

"Pooh!" exclaimed Nick, when the man had paused for want of breath, "it
is no trick to get over that wall."

"Bon Dieu!" cried the porter, "you are Kentuckians, yes? I might have
known that you were Kentuckians, and I shall advise the good sisters to
put glass on the wall and keep a watch."

"The young ladies are beautiful, you say?" said Nick.

At this juncture, with the negroes grinning and the porter near bursting
with rage, there came out of the lodge the fattest woman I have ever seen
for her size. She seized her husband by the back of his loose frock and
pulled him away, crying out that he was losing time by talking to
vagabonds, besides disturbing the good sisters. Then we went away, Nick
following the convent wall down to the river. Turning southward under
the bank past the huddle of market-stalls, we came suddenly upon a sight
that made us pause and wonder.

New Orleans was awake. A gay and laughing throng paced the esplanade on
the levee under the willows, with here and there a cavalier on horseback
on the Royal Road below. Across the Place d'Armes the spire of the
parish church stood against the fading sky, and to the westward the
mighty river stretched away like a gilded floor. It was a strange
throng. There were grave Spaniards in long cloaks and feathered beavers;
jolly merchants and artisans in short linen jackets, each with his
tabatiere, the wives with bits of finery, the children laughing and
shouting and dodging in and out between fathers and mothers beaming with
quiet pride and contentment; swarthy boat-men with their worsted belts,
gaudy negresses chanting in the soft patois, and here and there a
blanketed Indian. Nor was this all. Some occasion (so Madame Bouvet had
told us) had brought a sprinkling of fashion to town that day, and it was
a fashion to astonish me. There were fine gentlemen with swords and silk
waistcoats and silver shoe-buckles, and ladies in filmy summer gowns.
Greuze ruled the mode in France then, but New Orleans had not got beyond
Watteau. As for Nick and me, we knew nothing of Greuze and Watteau then,
and we could only stare in astonishment. And for once we saw an officer
of the Louisiana Regiment resplendent in a uniform that might have served
at court.

Ay, and there was yet another sort. Every flatboatman who returned to
Kentucky was full of tales of the marvellous beauty of the quadroons and
octoroons, stories which I had taken with a grain of salt; but they had
not indeed been greatly overdrawn. For here were these ladies in the
flesh, their great, opaque, almond eyes consuming us with a swift glance,
and each walking with a languid grace beside her duenna. Their faces
were like old ivory, their dress the stern Miro himself could scarce
repress. In former times they had been lavish in their finery, and even
now earrings still gleamed and color broke out irrepressibly.

Nick was delighted, but he had not dragged me twice the length of the
esplanade ere his eye was caught by a young lady in pink who sauntered
between an elderly gentleman in black silk and a young man more gayly
dressed.

"Egad," said Nick, "there is my divinity, and I need not look a step
farther."

I laughed.

"You have but to choose, I suppose, and all falls your way," I answered.

"But look!" he cried, halting me to stare after the girl, "what a face,
and what a form! And what a carriage, by Jove! There is breeding for
you! And Davy, did you mark the gentle, rounded arm? Thank heaven these
short sleeves are the fashion."

"You are mad, Nick," I answered, pulling him on, "these people are not to
be stared at so. And once I present our letters to Monsieur de
Saint-Gre, it will not be difficult to know any of them."

"Look!" said he, "that young man, lover or husband, is a brute. On my
soul, they are quarrelling."

The three had stopped by a bench under a tree. The young man, who wore
claret silk and a sword, had one of those thin faces of dirty complexion
which show the ravages of dissipation, and he was talking with a rapidity
and vehemence of which only a Latin tongue will admit. We could see,
likewise, that the girl was answering with spirit,--indeed, I should
write a stronger word than spirit,--while the elderly gentleman, who had
a good-humored, fleshy face and figure, was plainly doing his best to
calm them both. People who were passing stared curiously at the three.

"Your divinity evidently has a temper," I remarked.

"For that scoundel--certainly," said Nick; "but come, they are moving
on."

"You mean to follow them?" I exclaimed.

"Why not?" said he. "We will find out where they live and who they are,
at least."

"And you have taken a fancy to this girl?"

"I have looked them all over, and she's by far the best I've seen. I can
say so much honestly."

"But she may be married," I said weakly.

"Tut, Davy," he answered, "it's more than likely, from the violence of
their quarrel. But if so, we will try again."

"We!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, come on!" he cried, dragging me by the sleeve, "or we shall lose
them."

I resisted no longer, but followed him down the levee, in my heart
thanking heaven that he had not taken a fancy to an octoroon. Twilight
had set in strongly, the gay crowd was beginning to disperse, and in the
distance the three figures could be seen making their way across the
Place d'Armes, the girl hanging on the elderly gentleman's arm, and the
young man following with seeming sullenness behind. They turned into one
of the narrower streets, and we quickened our steps. Lights gleamed in
the houses; voices and laughter, and once the tinkle of a guitar came to
us from court-yard and gallery. But Nick, hurrying on, came near to
bowling more than one respectable citizen we met on the banquette, into
the ditch. We reached a corner, and the three were nowhere to be seen.

"Curse the luck!" cried Nick, "we have lost them. The next time I'll
stop for no explanations."

There was no particular reason why I should have been penitent, but I
ventured to say that the house they had entered could not be far off.

"And how the devil are we to know it?" demanded Nick.

This puzzled me for a moment, but presently I began to think that the two
might begin quarrelling again, and said so. Nick laughed and put his arm
around my neck.

"You have no mean ability for intrigue when you put your mind to it,
Davy," he said; "I vow I believe you are in love with the girl yourself."

I disclaimed this with some vehemence. Indeed, I had scarcely seen her.

"They can't be far off," said Nick; "we'll pitch on a likely house and
camp in front of it until bedtime."

"And be flung into a filthy calaboose by a constable," said I. "No,
thank you."

We walked on, and halfway down the block we came upon a new house with
more pretensions than its neighbors. It was set back a little from the
street, and there was a high adobe wall into which a pair of gates were
set, and a wicket opening in one of them. Over the wall hung a dark
fringe of magnolia and orange boughs. On each of the gate-posts a
crouching lion was outlined dimly against the fainting light, and, by
crossing the street, we could see the upper line of a latticed gallery
under the low roof. We took our stand within the empty doorway of a
blackened house, nearly opposite, and there we waited, Nick murmuring all
sorts of ridiculous things in my ear. But presently I began to reflect
upon the consequences of being taken in such a situation by a constable
and dragged into the light of a public examination. I put this to Nick
as plainly as I could, and was declaring my intention of going back to
Madame Bouvet's, when the sound of voices arrested me. The voices came
from the latticed gallery, and they were low at first, but soon rose to
such an angry pitch that I made no doubt we had hit on the right house
after all. What they said was lost to us, but I could distinguish the
woman's voice, low-pitched and vibrant as though insisting upon a
refusal, and the man's scarce adult tones, now high as though with balked
passion, now shaken and imploring. I was for leaving the place at once,
but Nick clutched my arm tightly; and suddenly, as I stood undecided, the
voices ceased entirely, there were the sounds of a scuffle, and the
lattice of the gallery was flung open. In the all but darkness we saw a
figure climb over the railing, hang suspended for an instant, and drop
lightly to the ground. Then came the light relief of a woman's gown in
the opening of the lattice, the cry "Auguste, Auguste!" the wicket in the
gate opened and slammed, and a man ran at top speed along the banquette
towards the levee.

Instinctively I seized Nick by the arm as he started out of the doorway.

"Let me go," he cried angrily, "let me go, Davy."

But I held on.

"Are you mad?" I said.

He did not answer, but twisted and struggled, and before I knew what he
was doing he had pushed me off the stone step into a tangle of blackened
beams behind. I dropped his arm to save myself, and it was mere good
fortune that I did not break an ankle in the fall. When I had gained the
step again he was gone after the man, and a portly citizen stood in front
of me, looking into the doorway.

"Qu'est-ce-qu'il-y-a la dedans?" he demanded sharply.

It was a sufficiently embarrassing situation. I put on a bold front,
however, and not deigning to answer, pushed past him and walked with as
much leisure as possible along the banquette in the direction which Nick
had taken. As I turned the corner I glanced over my shoulder, and in the
darkness I could just make out the man standing where I had left him. In
great uneasiness I pursued my way, my imagination summing up for Nick all
kinds of adventures with disagreeable consequences. I walked for some
time--it may have been half an hour--aimlessly, and finally decided it
would be best to go back to Madame Bouvet's and await the issue with as
much calmness as possible. He might not, after all, have caught the
fellow.

There were few people in the dark streets, but at length I met a man who
gave me directions, and presently found my way back to my lodging place.
Talk and laughter floated through the latticed windows into the street,
and when I had pushed back the curtain and looked into the saloon I found
the same gaming party at the end of it, sitting in their shirt-sleeves
amidst the moths and insects that hovered around the candles.

"Ah, Monsieur," said Madame Bouvet's voice behind me, "you must excuse
them. They will come here and play, the young gentlemen, and I cannot
find it in my heart to drive them away, though sometimes I lose a
respectable lodger by their noise. But, after all, what would you?" she
added with a shrug; "I love them, the young men. But, Monsieur," she
cried, "you have had no supper! And where is Monsieur your companion?
Comme il est beau garcon!"

"He will be in presently," I answered with unwarranted assumption.

Madame shot at me the swiftest of glances and laughed, and I suspected
that she divined Nick's propensity for adventure. However, she said
nothing more than to bid me sit down at the table, and presently Zoey
came in with lights and strange, highly seasoned dishes, which I ate with
avidity, notwithstanding my uneasiness of mind, watching the while the
party at the far end of the room. There were five young gentlemen
playing a game I knew not, with intervals of intense silence, and
boisterous laughter and execrations while the cards were being shuffled
and the money rang on the board and glasses were being filled from a
stand at one side. Presently Madame Bouvet returned, and placing before
me a cup of wondrous coffee, advanced down the room towards them.

"Ah, Messieurs," she cried, "you will ruin my poor house."

The five rose and bowed with marked profundity. One of them, with a
puffy, weak, good-natured face, answered her briskly, and after a little
raillery she came back to me. I had a question not over discreet on my
tongue's tip.

"There are some fine residences going up here, Madame," I said.

"Since the fire, Monsieur, the dreadful fire of Good Friday a year ago.
You admire them?"

"I saw one," I answered with indifference, "with a wall and lions on the
gate-posts--"

"Mon Dieu, that is a house," exclaimed Madame; "it belongs to Monsieur de
Saint-Gre."

"To Monsieur de Saint-Gre!" I repeated.

She shot a look at me. She had bright little eyes like a bird's, that
shone in the candlelight.

"You know him, Monsieur?"

"I heard of him in St. Louis," I answered.

"You will meet him, no doubt," she continued. "He is a very fine
gentleman. His grandfather was Commissary-general of the colony, and he
himself is a cousin of the Marquis de Saint-Gre, who has two chateaux, a
house in Paris, and is a favorite of the King." She paused, as if to let
this impress itself upon me, and added archly, "Tenez, Monsieur, there is
a daughter--"

She stopped abruptly.

I followed her glance, and my first impression--of claret-color--gave me
a shock. My second confirmed it, for in the semi-darkness beyond the
rays of the candle was a thin, eager face, prematurely lined, with
coal-black, lustrous eyes that spoke eloquently of indulgence. In an
instant I knew it to be that of the young man whom I had seen on the
levee.

"Monsieur Auguste?" stammered Madame.

"Bon soir, Madame," he cried gayly, with a bow; "diable, they are already
at it, I see, and the punch in the bowl. I will win back to-night what I
have lost by a week of accursed luck."

"Monsieur your father has relented, perhaps," said Madame, deferentially.

"Relented!" cried the young man, "not a sou. C'est egal! I have the
means here," and he tapped his pocket, "I have the means here to set me
on my feet again, Madame."

He spoke with a note of triumph, and Madame took a curious step towards
him.

"Qu'est-ce-que c'est, Monsieur Auguste?" she inquired.

He drew something that glittered from his pocket and beckoned to her to
follow him down the room, which she did with alacrity.

"Ha, Adolphe," he cried to the young man of the puffy face, "I will have
my revenge to-night. Voila!!" and he held up the shining thing, "this
goes to the highest bidder, and you will agree that it is worth a pretty
sum."

They rose from their chairs and clustered around him at the table, Madame
in their midst, staring with bent heads at the trinket which he held to
the light. It was Madame's voice I heard first, in a kind of frightened
cry.

"Mon Dieu, Monsieur Auguste, you will not part with that!" she exclaimed.

"Why not?" demanded the young man, indifferently. "It was painted by
Boze, the back is solid gold, and the Jew in the Rue Toulouse will give
me four hundred livres for it to-morrow morning."

There followed immediately such a chorus of questions, exclamations, and
shrill protests from Madame Bouvet, that I (being such a laborious French
scholar) could distinguish but little of what they said. I looked in
wonderment at the gesticulating figures grouped against the light, Madame
imploring, the youthful profile of the newcomer marked with a cynical and
scornful refusal. More than once I was for rising out of my chair to go
over and see for myself what the object was, and then, suddenly, I
perceived Madame Bouvet coming towards me in evident agitation. She sank
into the chair beside me.

"If I had four hundred livres," she said, "if I had four hundred livres!"

"And what then?" I asked.

"Monsieur," she said, "a terrible thing has happened. Auguste de
Saint-Gre--"

"Auguste de Saint-Gre!" I exclaimed.

"He is the son of that Monsieur de Saint-Gre of whom we spoke," she
answered, "a wild lad, a spendthrift, a gambler, if you like. And yet he
is a Saint-Gre, Monsieur, and I cannot refuse him. It is the miniature
of Mademoiselle Helene de Saint-Gre, the daughter of the Marquis, sent to
Mamselle 'Toinette, his sister, from France. How he has obtained it I
know not."

"Ah!" I exclaimed sharply, the explanation of the scene of which I had
been a witness coming to me swiftly. The rascal had wrenched it from her
in the gallery and fled.

"Monsieur," continued Madame, too excited to notice my interruption, "if
I had four hundred livres I would buy it of him, and Monsieur de
Saint-Gre pere would willingly pay it back in the morning."

I reflected. I had a letter in my pocket to Monsieur de Saint-Gre, the
sum was not large, and the act of Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gre in every
light was detestable. A rising anger decided me, and I took a wallet
from my pocket.

"I will buy the miniature, Madame," I said.

She looked at me in astonishment.

"God bless you, Monsieur," she cried; "if you could see Mamselle
'Toinette you would pay twice the sum. The whole town loves her.
Monsieur Auguste, Monsieur Auguste!" she shouted, "here is a gentleman
who will buy your miniature."

The six young men stopped talking and stared at me With one accord.
Madame arose, and I followed her down the room towards them, and, had it
not been for my indignation, I should have felt sufficiently ridiculous.
Young Monsieur de Saint-Gre came forward with the good-natured, easy
insolence to which he had been born, and looked me over.

"Monsieur is an American," he said.

"I understand that you have offered this miniature for four hundred
livres," I said.

"It is the Jew's price," he answered; "mais pardieu, what will you?" he
added with a shrug, "I must have the money. Regardez, Monsieur, you have
a bargain. Here is Mademoiselle Helene de Saint-Gre, daughter of my lord
the Marquis of whom I have the honor to be a cousin," and he made a bow.
"It is by the famous court painter, Joseph Boze, and Mademoiselle de
Saint-Gre herself is a favorite of her Majesty." He held the portrait
close to the candle and regarded it critically. "Mademoiselle Helene
Victoire Marie de Saint-Gre, painted in a costume of Henry the Second's
time, with a ruff, you notice, which she wore at a ball given by his
Highness the Prince of Conde at Chantilly. A trifle haughty, if you
like, Monsieur, but I venture to say you will be hopelessly in love with
her within the hour."

At this there was a general titter from the young gentlemen at the table.

"All of which is neither here nor there, Monsieur," I answered sharply.
"The question is purely a commercial one, and has nothing to do with the
lady's character or position."

"It is well said, Monsieur," Madame Bouvet put in.

Monsieur Auguste de Saint-Gre shrugged his slim shoulders and laid down
the portrait on the walnut table.

"Four hundred livres, Monsieur," he said.

I counted out the money, scrutinized by the curious eyes of his
companions, and pushed it over to him. He bowed carelessly, sat him
down, and began to shuffle the cards, while I picked up the miniature and
walked out of the room. Before I had gone twenty paces I heard them
laughing at their game and shouting out the stakes. Suddenly I bethought
myself of Nick. What if he should come in and discover the party at the
table? I stopped short in the hallway, and there Madame Bouvet overtook
me.

"How can I thank you, Monsieur?" she said. And then, "You will return
the portrait to Monsieur de Saint-Gre?"

"I have a letter from Monsieur Gratiot to that gentleman, which I shall
deliver in the morning," I answered. "And now, Madame, I have a favor to
ask of you."

"I am at Monsieur's service," she answered simply.

"When Mr. Temple comes in, he is not to go into that room," I said,
pointing to the door of the saloon; "I have my reasons for requesting
it."

For answer Madame went to the door, closed it, and turned the key. Then
she sat down beside a little table with a candlestick and took up her
knitting.

"It will be as Monsieur says," she answered.

I smiled.

"And when Mr. Temple comes in will you kindly say that I am waiting for
him in his room?" I asked.

"As Monsieur says," she answered. "I wish Monsieur a good-night and
pleasant dreams."

She took a candlestick from the table, lighted the candle, and handed it
me with a courtesy. I bowed, and made my way along the gallery above the
deserted court-yard. Entering my room and closing the door after me, I
drew the miniature from my pocket and stood gazing at it for I know not
how long.



CHAPTER XII

LES ILES

I stood staring at the portrait, I say, with a kind of fascination that
astonished me, seeing that it had come to me in such a way. It was no
French face of my imagination, and as I looked it seemed to me that I
knew Mademoiselle Helene de Saint-Gre. And yet I smile as I write this,
realizing full well that my strange and foreign surroundings and my
unforeseen adventure had much to do with my state of mind. The lady in
the miniature might have been eighteen, or thirty-five. Her features
were of the clearest cut, the nose the least trifle aquiline, and by a
blurred outline the painter had given to the black hair piled high upon
the head a suggestion of waviness. The eyebrows were straight, the brown
eyes looked at the world with an almost scornful sense of humor, and I
marked that there was determination in the chin. Here was a face that
could be infinitely haughty or infinitely tender, a mouth of witty--nay,
perhaps cutting--repartee of brevity and force. A lady who spoke
quickly, moved quickly, or reposed absolutely. A person who commanded by
nature and yet (dare I venture the thought?) was capable of a supreme
surrender. I was aroused from this odd revery by footsteps on the
gallery, and Nick burst into the room. Without pausing to look about
him, he flung himself lengthwise on the bed on top of the mosquito bar.

"A thousand curses on such a place," he cried; "it is full of rat holes
and rabbit warrens."

"Did you catch your man?" I asked innocently.

"Catch him!" said Nick, with a little excusable profanity; "he went in at
one end of such a warren and came out at another. I waited for him in
two streets until an officious person chanced along and threatened to
take me before the Alcalde. What the devil is that you have got in your
hand, Davy?" he demanded, raising his head.

"A miniature that took my fancy, and which I bought."

He rose from the bed, yawned, and taking it in his hand, held it to the
light. I watched him curiously.

"Lord," he said, "it is such a passion as I might have suspected of you,
Davy."

"There was nothing said about passion," I answered

"Then why the deuce did you buy it?" he said with some pertinence.

This staggered me.

"A man may fancy a thing, without indulging in a passion, I suppose," I
replied.

Nick held the picture at arm's length in the palm of his hand and
regarded it critically.

"Faith," said he, "you may thank heaven it is only a picture. If such a
one ever got hold of you, Davy, she would general you even as you general
me. Egad," he added with a laugh, "there would be no more walking the
streets at night in search of adventure for you. Consider carefully the
masterful features of that lady and thank God you haven't got her."

I was inclined to be angry, but ended by laughing.

"There will be no rivalry between us, at least," I said.

"Rivalry!" exclaimed Nick. "Heaven forbid that I should aspire to such
abject slavery. When I marry, it will be to command."

"All the more honor in such a conquest," I suggested.

"Davy," said he, "I have long been looking for some such flaw in your
insuperable wisdom. But I vow I can keep my eyes open no longer. Benjy!"

A smothered response came from the other side of the wall, and Benjy duly
appeared in the doorway, blinking at the candlelight, to put his master
to bed.

We slept that night with no bed covering save the mosquito bar, as was
the custom in New Orleans. Indeed, the heat was most oppressive, but we
had become to some extent inured to it on the boat, and we were both in
such sound health that our slumbers were not disturbed. Early in the
morning, however, I was awakened by a negro song from the court-yard, and
I lay pleasantly for some minutes listening to the early sounds,
breathing in the aroma of coffee which mingled with the odor of the
flowers of the court, until Zoey herself appeared in the doorway, holding
a cup in her hand. I arose, and taking the miniature from the table,
gazed at it in the yellow morning light; and then, having dressed myself,
I put it carefully in my pocket and sat down at my portfolio to compose a
letter to Polly Ann, knowing that a description of what I had seen in New
Orleans would amuse her. This done, I went out into the gallery, where
Madame was already seated at her knitting, in the shade of the great tree
that stood in the corner of the court and spread its branches over the
eaves. She arose and courtesied, with a questioning smile.

"Madame," I asked, "is it too early to present myself to Monsieur de
Saint-Gre?"

"Pardieu, no, Monsieur, we are early risers in the South for we have our
siesta. You are going to return the portrait, Monsieur?"

I nodded.

"God bless you for the deed," said she. "Tenez, Monsieur," she added,
stepping closer to me, "you will tell his father that you bought it from
Monsieur Auguste?"

I saw that she had a soft spot in her heart for the rogue.

"I will make no promises, Madame," I answered.

She looked at me timidly, appealingly, but I bowed and departed. The sun
was riding up into the sky, the walls already glowing with his heat, and
a midsummer languor seemed to pervade the streets as I walked along. The
shadows now were sharply defined, the checkered foliage of the trees was
flung in black against the yellow-white wall of the house with the
lions, and the green-latticed gallery which we had watched the night
before seemed silent and deserted. I knocked at the gate, and presently
a bright-turbaned gardienne opened it.

Was Monsieur de Saint-Gre at home. The gardienne looked me over, and
evidently finding me respectable, replied with many protestations of
sorrow that he was not, that he had gone with Mamselle very early that
morning to his country place at Les Iles. This information I extracted
with difficulty, for I was not by any means versed in the negro patois.

As I walked back to Madame Bouvet's I made up my mind that there was but
the one thing to do, to go at once to Monsieur de Saint-Gre's plantation.
Finding Madame still waiting in the gallery, I asked her to direct me
thither.

"You have but to follow the road that runs southward along the levee, and
some three leagues will bring you to it, Monsieur. You will inquire for
Monsieur de Saint-Gre."

"Can you direct me to Mr. Daniel Clark's?" I asked.

"The American merchant and banker, the friend and associate of the great
General Wilkinson whom you sent down to us last year? Certainly,
Monsieur. He will no doubt give you better advice than I on this
matter."

I found Mr. Clark in his counting-room, and I had not talked with him
five minutes before I began to suspect that, if a treasonable
understanding existed between Wilkinson and the Spanish government, Mr.
Clark was innocent of it. He being the only prominent American in the
place, it was natural that Wilkinson should have formed with him a
business arrangement to care for the cargoes he sent down. Indeed, after
we had sat for some time chatting together, Mr. Clark began himself to
make guarded inquiries on this very subject. Did I know Wilkinson? How
was his enterprise of selling Kentucky products regarded at home? But I
do not intend to burden this story with accounts of a matter which,
though it has never been wholly clear, has been long since fairly settled
in the public mind. Mr. Clark was most amiable, accepted my statement
that I was travelling for pleasure, and honored Monsieur Chouteau's bon
(for my purchase of the miniature had deprived me of nearly all my ready
money), and said that Mr. Temple and I would need horses to get to Les
Iles.

"And unless you purpose going back to Kentucky by keel boat, or round by
sea to Philadelphia or New York, and cross the mountains," he said, "you
will need good horses for your journey through Natchez and the Cumberland
country. There is a consignment of Spanish horses from the westward just
arrived in town," he added, "and I shall be pleased to go with you to the
place where they are sold. I shall not presume to advise a Kentuckian on
such a purchase."

The horses were crowded together under a dirty shed near the levee, and
the vessel from which they had been landed rode at anchor in the river.
They were the scrawny, tough ponies of the plains, reasonably cheap, and
it took no great discernment on my part to choose three of the strongest
and most intelligent looking. We went next to a saddler's, where I
selected three saddles and bridles of Spanish workmanship, and Mr. Clark
agreed to have two of his servants meet us with the horses before Madame
Bouvet's within the hour. He begged that we would dine with him when we
returned from Les Iles.

"You will not find an island, Mr. Ritchie," he said; "Saint-Gre's
plantation is a huge block of land between the river and a cypress swamp
behind. Saint-Gre is a man with a wonderful quality of mind, who might,
like his ancestors, have made his mark if necessity had probed him or
opportunity offered. He never forgave the Spanish government for the
murder of his father, nor do I blame him. He has his troubles. His son
is an incurable rake and degenerate, as you may have heard."

I went back to Madame Bouvet's, to find Nick emerging from his toilet.

"What deviltry have you been up to, Davy?" he demanded.

"I have been to the House of the Lions to see your divinity," I answered,
"and in a very little while horses will be here to carry us to her."

"What do you mean?" he asked, grasping me by both shoulders.

"I mean that we are going to her father's plantation, some way down the
river."

"On my honor, Davy, I did not suspect you of so much enterprise," he
cried. "And her husband--?"

"Does not exist," I replied. "Perhaps, after all, I might be able to
give you instruction in the conduct of an adventure. The man you chased
with such futility was her brother, and he stole from her the miniature
of which I am now the fortunate possessor."

He stared at me for a moment in rueful amazement.

"And her name?" he demanded.

"Antoinette de Saint-Gre," I answered; "our letter is to her father."

He made me a rueful bow.

"I fear that I have undervalued you, Mr. Ritchie," he said. "You have no
peer. I am unworthy to accompany you, and furthermore, it would be
useless."

"And why useless!" I inquired, laughing.

"You have doubtless seen the lady, and she is yours, said he.

"You forget that I am in love with a miniature," I said.

In half an hour we were packed and ready, the horses had arrived, we bade
good-by to Madame Bouvet and rode down the miry street until we reached
the road behind the levee. Turning southward, we soon left behind the
shaded esplanade and the city's roofs below us, and came to the first of
the plantation houses set back amidst the dark foliage. No tremor shook
the fringe of moss that hung from the heavy boughs, so still was the day,
and an indefinable, milky haze stretched between us and the cloudless sky
above. The sun's rays pierced it and gathered fire; the mighty river
beside us rolled listless and sullen, flinging back the heat defiantly.
And on our left was a tropical forest in all its bewildering luxuriance,
the live-oak, the hackberry, the myrtle, the Spanish bayonet in bristling
groups, and the shaded places gave out a scented moisture like an
orangery; anon we passed fields of corn and cotton, swamps of rice,
stretches of poverty-stricken indigo plants, gnawed to the stem by the
pest. Our ponies ambled on, unmindful; but Nick vowed that no woman
under heaven would induce him to undertake such a journey again.

Some three miles out of the city we descried two figures on horseback
coming towards us, and quickly perceived that one was a gentleman, the
other his black servant. They were riding at a more rapid pace than the
day warranted, but the gentleman reined in his sweating horse as he drew
near to us, eyed us with a curiosity tempered by courtesy, bowed gravely,
and put his horse to a canter again.

"Phew!" said Nick, twisting in his saddle, "I thought that all Creoles
were lazy."

"We have met the exception, perhaps," I answered. "Did you take in that
man?"

"His looks were a little remarkable, come to think of it," answered Nick,
settling down into his saddle again.

Indeed, the man's face had struck me so forcibly that I was surprised out
of an inquiry which I had meant to make of him, namely, how far we were
from the Saint-Gre plantation. We pursued our way slowly, from time to
time catching a glimpse of a dwelling almost hid in the distant foliage,
until at length we came to a place a little more pretentious than those
which we had seen. From the road a graceful flight of wooden steps
climbed the levee and descended on the far side to a boat landing, and a
straight vista cut through the grove, lined by wild orange trees,
disclosed the white pillars and galleries of a far-away plantation house.
The grassy path leading through the vista was trimly kept, and on either
side of it in the moist, green shade of the great trees flowers bloomed
in a profusion of startling colors,--in splotches of scarlet and white
and royal purple.

Nick slipped from his horse.

"Behold the mansion of Mademoiselle de Saint-Gre," said he, waving his
hand up the vista.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I am told by a part of me that never lies, Davy," he answered, laying
his hand upon his heart; "and besides," he added, "I should dislike
devilishly to go too far on such a day and have to come back again."

"We will rest here," I said, laughing, "and send in Benjy to find out."

"Davy," he answered, with withering contempt, "you have no more romance
in you than a turnip. We will go ourselves and see what befalls."

"Very well, then," I answered, falling in with his humor, "we will go
ourselves."

He brushed his face with his handkerchief, gave himself a pull here and a
pat there, and led the way down the alley. But we had not gone far
before he turned into a path that entered the grove on the right, and to
this likewise I made no protest. We soon found ourselves in a heavenly
spot,--sheltered from the sun's rays by a dense verdure,--and no one who
has not visited these Southern country places can know the teeming
fragrance there. One shrub (how well I recall it!) was like unto the
perfume of all the flowers and all the fruits, the very essence of the
delicious languor of the place that made our steps to falter. A bird
shot a bright flame of color through the checkered light ahead of us.
Suddenly a sound brought us to a halt, and we stood in a tense and
wondering silence. The words of a song, sung carelessly in a clear,
girlish voice, came to us from beyond.

          "Je voudrais bien me marier,
          Je voudrais bien me marier,
          Mais j'ai qrand' peur de me tromper:
          Mais j'ai grand' peur de me tromper:
             Ils sont si malhonnetes!
             Ma luron, ma lurette,
             Ils sont si malhonnetes!
             Ma luron, ma lure."

"We have come at the very zenith of opportunity," I whispered.

"Hush!" he said.

          "Je ne veux pas d'un avocat,
          Je ne veux pas d'un avocat,
          Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
          Car ils aiment trop les ducats,
             Ils trompent les fillettes,
             Ma luron, ma lurette,
             Ils trompent les fillettes,
             Ma luron, ma lure."

"Eliminating Mr. Ritchie, I believe," said Nick, turning on me with a
grimace. "But hark again!"

          "Je voudrais bien d'un officier:
          Je voudrais bien d'un officier:
          Je marcherais a pas carres,
          Je marcherais a pas carres,
             Dans ma joli' chambrette,
             Ma luron, ma lurette
             Dans ma joli' chambrette,
             Ma luron, ma lure."

The song ceased with a sound that was half laughter, half sigh. Before I
realized what he was doing, Nick, instead of retracing his steps towards
the house, started forward. The path led through a dense thicket which
became a casino hedge, and suddenly I found myself peering over his
shoulder into a little garden bewildering in color. In the centre of the
garden a great live-oak spread its sheltering branches. Around the
gnarled trunk was a seat. And on the seat,--her sewing fallen into her
lap, her lips parted, her eyes staring wide, sat the young lady whom we
had seen on the levee the evening before. And Nick was making a bow in
his grandest manner.

"Helas, Mademoiselle," he said, "je ne suis pas officier, mais on peut
arranger tout cela, sans doute."

My breath was taken away by this unheard-of audacity, and I braced myself
against screams, flight, and other feminine demonstrations of terror.
The young lady did nothing of the kind. She turned her back to us,
leaned against the tree, and to my astonishment I saw her slim shoulders
shaken with laughter. At length, very slowly, she looked around, and in
her face struggled curiosity and fear and merriment. Nick made another
bow, worthy of Versailles, and she gave a frightened little laugh.

"You are English, Messieurs--yes?" she ventured.

"We were once!" cried Nick, "but we have changed, Mademoiselle."

"Et quoi donc?" relapsing into her own language.

"Americans," said he. "Allow me to introduce to you the Honorable David
Ritchie, whom you rejected a few moments ago."

"Whom I rejected?" she exclaimed.

"Alas," said Nick, with a commiserating glance at me, "he has the
misfortune to be a lawyer."

Mademoiselle shot at me the swiftest and shyest of glances, and turned to
us once more her quivering shoulders. There was a brief silence.

"Mademoiselle?" said Nick, taking a step on the garden path.

"Monsieur?" she answered, without so much as looking around.

"What, now, would you take this gentleman to be?" he asked with an
insistence not to be denied.

Again she was shaken with laughter, and suddenly to my surprise she
turned and looked full at me.

"In English, Monsieur, you call it--a gallant?"

My face fairly tingled, and I heard Nick laughing with unseemly
merriment.

"Ah, Mademoiselle," he cried, "you are a judge of character, and you have
read him perfectly."

"Then I must leave you, Messieurs," she answered, with her eyes in her
lap. But she made no move to go.

"You need have no fear of Mr. Ritchie, Mademoiselle," answered Nick,
instantly. "I am here to protect you against his gallantry."

This time Nick received the glance, and quailed before it.

"And who--par exemple--is to protect me against--you, Monsieur?" she
asked in the lowest of voices.

"You forget that I, too, am unprotected--and vulnerable, Mademoiselle,"
he answered.

Her face was hidden again, but not for long.

"How did you come?" she demanded presently.

"On air," he answered, "for we saw you in New Orleans yesterday."

"And--why?"

"Need you ask, Mademoiselle?" said the rogue, and then, with more
effrontery than ever, he began to sing:--

         "'Je voudrais bien me marier,
          Je voudrais bien me marier,
          Mais j'ai grand' peur de me tromper.'"

She rose, her sewing falling to the ground, and took a few startled steps
towards us.

"Monsieur! you will be heard," she cried.

"And put out of the Garden of Eden," said Nick.

"I must leave you," she said, with the quaintest of English
pronunciation.

Yet she stood irresolute in the garden path, a picture against the dark
green leaves and the flowers. Her age might have been seventeen. Her
gown was of some soft and light material printed in buds of delicate
color, her slim arms bare above the elbow. She had the ivory complexion
of the province, more delicate than I had yet seen, and beyond that I
shall not attempt to describe her, save to add that she was such a
strange mixture of innocence and ingenuousness and coquetry as I had not
imagined. Presently her gaze was fixed seriously on me.

"Do you think it very wrong, Monsieur?" she asked.

I was more than taken aback by this tribute.

"Oh," cried Nick, "the arbiter of etiquette!"

"Since I am here, Mademoiselle," I answered, with anything but readiness,
"I am not a proper judge."

Her next question staggered me.

"You are well-born?" she asked.

"Mr. Ritchie's grandfather was a Scottish earl," said Nick, immediately,
a piece of news that startled me into protest. "It is true, Davy, though
you may not know it," he added.

"And you, Monsieur?" she said to Nick.

"I am his cousin,--is it not honor enough?" said he.

"Yet you do not resemble one another."

"Mr. Ritchie has all the good looks in the family," said Nick.

"Oh!" cried the young lady, and this time she gave us her profile.

"Come, Mademoiselle," said Nick, "since the fates have cast the die, let
us all sit down in the shade. The place was made for us."

"Monsieur!" she cried, giving back, "I have never in my life been alone
with gentlemen."

"But Mr. Ritchie is a duenna to satisfy the most exacting," said Nick;
"when you know him better you will believe me."

She laughed softly and glanced at me. By this time we were all three
under the branches.

"Monsieur, you do not understand the French customs. Mon Dieu, if the
good Sister Lorette could see me now--"

"But she is safe in the convent," said Nick. "Are they going to put
glass on the walls?"

"And why?" asked Mademoiselle, innocently.

"Because," said Nick, "because a very bad man has come to New
Orleans,--one who is given to climbing walls."

"You?"

"Yes. But when I found that a certain demoiselle had left the convent, I
was no longer anxious to climb them."

"And how did you know that I had left it?"

I was at a loss to know whether this were coquetry or innocence.

"Because I saw you on the levee," said Nick.

"You saw me on the levee?" she repeated, giving back.

"And I had a great fear," the rogue persisted.

"A fear of what?"

"A fear that you were married," he said, with a boldness that made me
blush. As for Mademoiselle, a color that vied with the June roses
charged through her cheeks. She stooped to pick up her sewing, but Nick
was before her.

"And why did you think me married?" she asked in a voice so low that we
scarcely heard.

"Faith," said Nick, "because you seemed to be quarrelling with a man."

She turned to him with an irresistible seriousness.

"And is that your idea of marriage, Monsieur?"

This time it was I who laughed, for he had been hit very fairly.

"Mademoiselle," said he, "I did not for a moment think it could have been
a love match."

Mademoiselle turned away and laughed.

"You are the very strangest man I have ever seen," she said.

"Shall I give you my notion of a love match, Mademoiselle?" said Nick.

"I should think you might be well versed in the subject, Monsieur," she
answered, speaking to the tree, "but here is scarcely the time and
place." She wound up her sewing, and faced him. "I must really leave
you," she said.

He took a step towards her and stood looking down into her face. Her
eyes dropped.

"And am I never to see you again?" he asked.

"Monsieur!" she cried softly, "I do not know who you are." She made him a
courtesy, took a few steps in the opposite path, and turned. "That
depends upon your ingenuity," she added; "you seem to have no lack of it,
Monsieur."

Nick was transported.

"You must not go," he cried.

"Must not? How dare you speak to me thus, Monsieur?" Then she tempered
it. "There is a lady here whom I love, and who is ill. I must not be
long from her bedside."

"She is very ill?" said Nick, probably for want of something better.

"She is not really ill, Monsieur, but depressed--is not that the word?
She is a very dear friend, and she has had trouble--so much,
Monsieur,--and my mother brought her here. We love her as one of the
family."

This was certainly ingenuous, and it was plain that the girl gave us this
story through a certain nervousness, for she twisted her sewing in her
fingers as she spoke.

"Mademoiselle," said Nick, "I would not keep you from such an errand of
mercy."

She gave him a grateful look, more dangerous than any which had gone
before.

"And besides," he went on, "we have come to stay awhile with you, Mr.
Ritchie and myself."

"You have come to stay awhile?" she said.

I thought it time that the farce were ended.

"We have come with letters to your father, Monsieur de Saint-Gre,
Mademoiselle," I said, "and I should like very much to see him, if he is
at leisure."

Mademoiselle stared at me in unfeigned astonishment.

"But did you not meet him, Monsieur?" she demanded.
"He left an hour ago for New Orleans. You must have met a gentleman
riding very fast."

It was my turn to be astonished.

"But that was not your father!" I exclaimed.

"Et pourquoi non?" she said.

"Is not your father the stout gentleman whom I saw with you on the levee
last evening?" I asked.

She laughed.

"You have been observing, Monsieur," she said.
"That was my uncle, Monsieur de Beausejour. You saw me quarrelling with
my brother, Auguste," she went on a little excitedly. "Oh, I am very
much ashamed of it. I was so angry. My cousin, Mademoiselle Helene de
Saint-Gre, has just sent me from France such a beautiful miniature, and
Auguste fell in love with it."

"Fell in love with it!" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"You should see it, Monsieur, and I think you also would fall in love
with it."

"I have not a doubt of it," said Nick.

Mademoiselle made the faintest of moues.

"Auguste is very wild, as you say," she continued, addressing me, "he is
a great care to my father. He intrigues, you know, he wishes Louisiane
to become French once more,--as we all do. But I should not say this,
Monsieur," she added in a startled tone. "You will not tell? No, I know
you will not. We do not like the Spaniards. They killed my grandfather
when they came to take the province. And once, the Governor-general
Miro sent for my father and declared he would put Auguste in prison if he
did not behave himself. But I have forgotten the miniature. When
Auguste saw that he fell in love with it, and now he wishes to go to
France and obtain a commission through our cousin, the Marquis of
Saint-Gre, and marry Mademoiselle Helene."

"A comprehensive programme, indeed," said Nick.

"My father has gone back to New Orleans," she said, "to get the miniature
from Auguste. He took it from me, Monsieur." She raised her head a
little proudly. "If my brother had asked it, I might have given it to
him, though I treasured it. But Auguste is so--impulsive. My uncle
told my father, who is very angry. He will punish Auguste severely,
and--I do not like to have him punished. Oh, I wish I had the
miniature."

"Your wish is granted, Mademoiselle," I answered, drawing the case from
my pocket and handing it to her.

She took it, staring at me with eyes wide with wonder, and then she
opened it mechanically.

"Monsieur," she said with great dignity, "do you mind telling me where
you obtained this?"

"I found it, Mademoiselle," I answered; and as I spoke I felt Nick's
fingers on my arm.

"You found it? Where? How, Monsieur?"

"At Madame Bouvet's, the house where we stayed."

"Oh," she said with a sigh of relief, "he must have dropped it. It is
there where he meets his associates, where they talk of the French
Louisiane."

Again I felt Nick pinching me, and I gave a sigh of relief. Mademoiselle
was about to continue, but I interrupted her.

"How long will your father be in New Orleans, Mademoiselle?" I asked.

"Until he finds Auguste," she answered. "It may be days, but he will
stay, for he is very angry. But will you not come into the house,
Messieurs, and be presented to my mother?" she asked. "I have been
very--inhospitable," she added with a glance at Nick.

We followed her through winding paths bordered by shrubs and flowers, and
presently came to a low house surrounded by a wide, cool gallery, and
shaded by spreading trees. Behind it were clustered the kitchens and
quarters of the house servants. Mademoiselle, picking up her dress, ran
up the steps ahead of us and turned to the left in the hall into a
darkened parlor. The floor was bare, save for a few mats, and in the
corner was a massive escritoire of mahogany with carved feet, and there
were tables and chairs of a like pattern. It was a room of more
distinction than I had seen since I had been in Charlestown, and
reflected the solidity of its owners.

"If you will be so kind as to wait here, Messieurs," said Mademoiselle,
"I will call my mother."

And she left us.

I sat down, rather uncomfortably, but Nick took a stand and stood staring
down at me with folded arms.

"How I have undervalued you, Davy," he said.

"I am not proud of it," I answered shortly.

"What the deuce is to do now!" he asked.

"I cannot linger here," I answered; "I have business with Monsieur de
Saint-Gre, and I must go back to New Orleans at once."

"Then I will wait for you," said Nick. "Davy, I have met my fate."

I laughed in spite of myself.

"It seems to me that I have heard that remark before," I answered.

He had not time to protest, for we heard footsteps in the hall, and
Mademoiselle entered, leading an older lady by the hand. In the light of
the doorway I saw that she was thin and small and yellow, but her
features had a regularity and her mien a dignity which made her
impressing, which would have convinced a stranger that she was a person
of birth and breeding. Her hair, tinged with gray, was crowned by a lace
cap.

"Madame," I said, bowing and coming forward, "I am David Ritchie, from
Kentucky, and this is my cousin, Mr. Temple, of Charlestown. Monsieur
Gratiot and Colonel Chouteau, of St. Louis, have been kind enough to give
us letters to Monsieur de Saint-Gre." And I handed her one of the
letters which I had ready.

"You are very welcome, Messieurs," she answered, with the same delightful
accent which her daughter had used, "and you are especially welcome from
such a source. The friends of Colonel Chouteau and of Monsieur Gratiot
are our friends. You will remain with us, I hope, Messieurs," she
continued. "Monsieur de Saint-Gre will return in a few days at best."

"By your leave, Madame, I will go to New Orleans at once and try to find
Monsieur," I said, "for I have business with him."

"You will return with him, I hope," said Madame.

I bowed.

"And Mr. Temple will remain?" she asked, with a questioning look at Nick.

"With the greatest pleasure in the world, Madame," he answered, and there
was no mistaking his sincerity. As he spoke, Mademoiselle turned her
back on him.

I would not wait for dinner, but pausing only for a sip of cool Madeira
and some other refreshment, I made my farewells to the ladies. As I
started out of the door to find Benjy, who had been waiting for more than
an hour, Mademoiselle gave me a neatly folded note.

"You will be so kind as to present that to my father, Monsieur," she
said.



CHAPTER XIII

MONSIEUR AUGUSTE ENTRAPPED

It may be well to declare here and now that I do not intend to burden
this story with the business which had brought me to New Orleans. While
in the city during the next few days I met a young gentleman named Daniel
Clark, a nephew of that Mr. Clark of whom I have spoken. Many years
after the time of which I write this Mr. Daniel Clark the younger, who
became a rich merchant and an able man of affairs, published a book which
sets forth with great clearness proofs of General Wilkinson's duplicity
and treason, and these may be read by any who would satisfy himself
further on the subject. Mr. Wharton had not believed, nor had I
flattered myself that I should be able to bring such a fox as General
Wilkinson to earth. Abundant circumstantial evidence I obtained:
Wilkinson's intimacy with Miro was well known, and I likewise learned
that a cipher existed between them. The permit to trade given by Miro to
Wilkinson was made no secret of. In brief, I may say that I discovered
as much as could be discovered by any one without arousing suspicion, and
that the information with which I returned to Kentucky was of some
material value to my employers.

I have to thank Monsieur Philippe de St. Gre for a great deal. And I
take this opportunity to set down the fact that I have rarely met a more
remarkable man.

As I rode back to town alone a whitish film was spread before the sun,
and ere I had come in sight of the fortifications the low forest on the
western bank was a dark green blur against the sky. The esplanade on the
levee was deserted, the willow trees had a mournful look, while the
bright tiles of yesterday seemed to have faded to a sombre tone. I spied
Xavier on a bench smoking with some friends of his.

"He make much rain soon, Michie," he cried. "You hev good time, I hope,
Michie."

I waved my hand and rode on, past the Place d'Armes with its white
diagonal bands strapping its green like a soldiers front, and as I drew
up before the gate of the House of the Lions the warning taps of the
storm were drumming on the magnolia leaves. The same gardienne came to
my knock, and in answer to her shrill cry a negro lad appeared to hold my
horse. I was ushered into a brick-paved archway that ran under the
latticed gallery toward a flower-filled court-yard, but ere we reached
this the gardienne turned to the left up a flight of steps with a
delicate balustrade which led to an open gallery above. And there stood
the gentleman whom we had met hurrying to town in the morning. A
gentleman he was, every inch of him. He was dressed in black silk, his
hair in a cue, and drawn away from a face of remarkable features. He had
a high-bridged nose, a black eye that held an inquiring sternness, a chin
indented, and a receding forehead. His stature was indeterminable. In
brief, he might have stood for one of those persons of birth and ability
who become prime ministers of France.

"Monsieur de St. Gre?" I said.

He bowed gracefully, but with a tinge of condescension. I was awed, and
considering the relations which I had already had with his family, I must
admit that I was somewhat frightened.

"Monsieur," I said, "I bring letters to you from Monsieur Gratiot and
Colonel Chouteau of St. Louis. One of these I had the honor to deliver
to Madame de St. Gre, and here is the other."

"Ah," he said, with another keen glance, "I met you this morning, did I
not?"

"You did, Monsieur."

He broke the seal, and, going to the edge of the gallery, held the letter
to the light. As he read a peal of thunder broke distantly, the rain
came down in a flood. Then he folded the paper carefully and turned to
me again.

"You will make my house your home, Mr. Ritchie," he said; "recommended
from such a source, I will do all I can to serve you. But where is this
Mr. Temple of whom the letter speaks? His family in Charlestown is known
to me by repute."

"By Madame de St. Gre's invitation he remained at Les Iles," I answered,
speaking above the roar of the rain.

"I was just going to the table," said Monsieur de St. Gre; "we will talk
as we eat."

He led the way into the dining room, and as I stood on the threshold a
bolt of great brilliancy lighted its yellow-washed floor and walnut
furniture of a staid pattern. A deafening crash followed as we took our
seats, while Monsieur de St. Gre's man lighted four candles of green
myrtle-berry wax.

"Monsieur Gratiot's letter speaks vaguely of politics, Mr. Ritchie,"
began Monsieur de St. Gre. He spoke English perfectly, save for an
occasional harsh aspiration which I cannot imitate.

Directing his man to fetch a certain kind of Madeira, he turned to me
with a look of polite inquiry which was scarcely reassuring. And I
reflected, the caution with which I had been endowed coming uppermost,
that the man might have changed since Monsieur Gratiot had seen him. He
had, moreover, the air of a man who gives a forced attention, which
seemed to me the natural consequences of the recent actions of his son.

"I fear that I am intruding upon your affairs, Monsieur," I answered.

"Not at all, sir," he said politely. "I have met that charming
gentleman, Mr. Wilkinson, who came here to brush away the causes of
dissension, and cement a friendship between Kentucky and Louisiana."

It was most fortunate that the note of irony did not escape me.

"Where governments failed, General Wilkinson succeeded," I answered
dryly.

Monsieur de St. Gre glanced at me, and an enigmatical smile spread over
his face. I knew then that the ice was cracked between us. Yet he was
too much a man of the world not to make one more tentative remark.

"A union between Kentucky and Louisiana would be a resistless force in
the world, Mr. Ritchie," he said.

"It was Nebuchadnezzar who dreamed of a composite image, Monsieur," I
answered; "and Mr. Wilkinson forgets one thing,--that Kentucky is a part
of the United States."

At that Monsieur St. Gre laughed outright. He became a different man,
though he lost none of his dignity.

"I should have had more faith in my old friend Gratiot," he said; "but you
will pardon me if I did not recognize at once the statesman he had sent
me, Mr. Ritchie."

It was my turn to laugh.

"Monsieur," he went on, returning to that dignity of mien which marked
him, "my political opinions are too well known that I should make a
mystery of them to you. I was born a Frenchman, I shall die a Frenchman,
and I shall never be happy until Louisiana is French once more. My
great-grandfather, a brother of the Marquis de St. Gre of that time, and
a wild blade enough, came out with D'Iberville. His son, my grandfather,
was the Commissary-general of the colony under the Marquis de Vaudreuil.
He sent me to France for my education, where I was introduced at court by
my kinsman, the old Marquis, who took a fancy to me and begged me to
remain. It was my father's wish that I should return, and I did not
disobey him. I had scarcely come back, Monsieur, when that abominable
secret bargain of Louis the Fifteenth became known, ceding Louisiana to
Spain. You may have heard of the revolution which followed here. It was
a mild affair, and the remembrance of it makes me smile to this day,
though with bitterness. I was five and twenty, hot-headed, and French.
Que voulez-vous?" and Monsieur de St. Gre shrugged his shoulders.
"O'Reilly, the famous Spanish general, came with his men-of-war. Well I
remember the days we waited with leaden hearts for the men-of-war to come
up from the English turn; and I can see now the cannon frowning from the
ports, the grim spars, the high poops crowded with officers, the great
anchors splashing the yellow water. I can hear the chains running. The
ships were in line of battle before the town, their flying bridges swung
to the levee, and they loomed above us like towering fortresses. It was
dark, Monsieur, such as this afternoon, and we poor French colonists
stood huddled in the open space below, waiting for we knew not what."

He paused, and I started, for the picture he drew had carried me out of
myself.

"On the 18th of August, 1769,--well I remember the day," Monsieur de St.
Gre continued, "the Spanish troops landed late in the afternoon,
twenty-six hundred strong, the artillery rumbling over the bridges, the
horses wheeling and rearing. And they drew up as in line of battle in
the Place d'Armes,--dragoons, fusileros de montanas, light and heavy
infantry. Where were our white cockades then? Fifty guns shook the
town, the great O'Reilly limped ashore through the smoke, and Louisiana
was lost to France. We had a cowardly governor, Monsieur, whose name is
written in the annals of the province in letters of shame. He betrayed
Monsieur de St. Gre and others into O'Reilly's hands, and when my father
was cast into prison he was seized with such a fit of anger that he
died."

Monsieur de St. Gre was silent. Without, under the eaves of the gallery,
a white rain fell, and a steaming moisture arose from the court-yard.

"What I have told you, Monsieur, is common knowledge. Louisiana has been
Spanish for twenty years. I no longer wear the white cockade, for I am
older now." He smiled. "Strange things are happening in France, and the
old order to which I belong" (he straightened perceptibly) "seems to be
tottering. I have ceased to intrigue, but thank God I have not ceased to
pray. Perhaps--who knows?--perhaps I may live to see again the lily of
France stirred by the river breeze."

He fell into a revery, his fine head bent a little, but presently aroused
himself and eyed me curiously. I need not say that I felt a strange
liking for Monsieur de St. Gre.

"And now, Mr. Ritchie," he said, "will you tell me who you are, and how I
can serve you?"

The servant had put the coffee on the table and left the room. Monsieur
de St. Gre himself poured me a cup from the dainty, quaintly wrought
Louis Quinze coffeepot, graven with the coat of arms of his family. As
we sat talking, my admiration for my host increased, for I found that he
was familiar not only with the situation in Kentucky, but that he also
knew far more than I of the principles and personnel of the new
government of which General Washington was President. That he had little
sympathy with government by the people was natural, for he was a Creole,
and behind that a member of an order which detested republics. When we
were got beyond these topics the rain had ceased, the night had fallen,
the green candles had burned low. And suddenly, as he spoke of Les
Isles, I remembered the note Mademoiselle had given me for him, and I
apologized for my forgetfulness. He read it, and dropped it with an
exclamation.

"My daughter tells me that you have returned to her a miniature which she
lost, Monsieur," he said.

"I had that pleasure," I answered.

"And that--you found this miniature at Madame Bouvet's. Was this the
case?" And he stared hard at me.

I nodded, but for the life of me I could not speak. It seemed an outrage
to lie to such a man. He did not answer, but sat lost in thought,
drumming with his fingers on the tables until the noise of the slamming
of a door aroused him to a listening posture. The sound of subdued
voices came from the archway below us, and one of these, from an
occasional excited and feminine note, I thought to be the gardienne's.
Monsieur de St. Gre thrust back his chair, and in three strides was at
the edge of the gallery.

"Auguste!" he cried.

Silence.

"Auguste, come up to me at once," he said in French.

Another silence, then something that sounded like "Sapristi!" a groan
from the gardienne, and a step was heard on the stairway. My own
discomfort increased, and I would have given much to be in any other
place in the world. Auguste had arrived at the head of the steps but was
apparently unable to get any farther.

"Bon soir, mon pere," he said.

"Like a dutiful son," said Monsieur de St. Gre, "you heard I was in town,
and called to pay your respects, I am sure. I am delighted to find you.
In fact, I came to town for that purpose."

"Lisette--" began Auguste.

"Thought that I did not wish to be disturbed, no doubt," said his father.
"Walk in, Auguste."

Monsieur Auguste's slim figure appeared in the doorway. He caught sight
of me, halted, backed, and stood staring with widened eyes. The candles
threw their light across his shoulder on the face of the elder Monsieur
de St. Gre. Auguste was a replica of his father, with the features
minimized to regularity and the brow narrowed. The complexion of the one
was a clear saffron, while the boy's skin was mottled, and he was not
twenty.

"What is the matter?" said Monsieur de St. Gre.

"You--you have a visitor!" stammered Auguste, with a tact that savored of
practice. Yet there was a sorry difference between this and the haughty
young patrician who had sold me the miniature.

"Who brings me good news," said Monsieur de St. Gre, in English. "Mr.
Ritchie, allow me to introduce my son, Auguste."

I felt Monsieur de St. Gre's eyes on me as I bowed, and I began to think
I was in near as great a predicament as Auguste. Monsieur de St. Gre was
managing the matter with infinite wisdom.

"Sit down, my son," he said; "you have no doubt been staying with your
uncle." Auguste sat down, still staring.

"Does your aunt's health mend?"

"She is better to-night, father," said the son, in English which might
have been improved.

"I am glad of it," said Monsieur de St. Gre, taking a chair. "Andre,
fill the glasses."

The silent, linen-clad mulatto poured out the Madeira, shot a look at
Auguste, and retired softly.

"There has been a heavy rain, Monsieur," said Monsieur de St. Gre to me,
"but I think the air is not yet cleared. I was about to say, Mr.
Ritchie, when my son called to pay his respects, that the miniature of
which we were speaking is one of the most remarkable paintings I have
ever seen." Auguste's thin fingers were clutching the chair. "I have
never beheld Mademoiselle Helene de St. Gre, for my cousin, the Marquis,
was not married when I left France. He was a captain in a regiment of
his Majesty's Mousquetaires, since abolished. But I am sure that the
likeness of Mademoiselle must be a true one, for it has the stamp of a
remarkable personality, though Helene can be only eighteen. Women, with
us, mature quickly, Monsieur. And this portrait tallies with what I have
heard of her character. You no doubt observed the face, Monsieur,--that
of a true aristocrat. But I was speaking of her character. When she was
twelve, she said something to a cardinal for which her mother made her
keep her room a whole day. For Mademoiselle would not retract, and,
pardieu, I believe his Eminence was wrong. The Marquise is afraid of
her. And when first Helene was presented formally she made such a witty
retort to the Queen's sally that her Majesty insisted upon her coming to
court. On every New Year's day I have always sent a present of coffee
and perique to my cousin the Marquis, and it is Mademoiselle who writes
to thank us. Parole d'honneur, her letters make me see again the people
amongst whom she moves,--the dukes and duchesses, the cardinals, bishops,
and generals. She draws them to the life, Monsieur, with a touch that
makes them all ridiculous. His Majesty does not escape. God forgive
him, he is indeed an amiable, weak person for calling a States General.
And the Queen, a frivolous lady, but true to those whom she loves, and
beginning now to realize the perils of the situation." He paused. "Is
it any wonder that Auguste has fallen in love with his cousin, Monsieur?
That he loses his head, forgets that he is a gentleman, and steals her
portrait from his sister!"

Had I not been so occupied with my own fate in the outcome of this
inquisition, I should have been sorry for Auguste. And yet this feeling
could not have lasted, for the young gentleman sprang to his feet, cast a
glance at me which was not without malignance, and faced his father, his
lips twitching with anger and fear. Monsieur de St. Gre sat undisturbed.

"He is so much in love with the portrait, Monsieur, that he loses it."

"Loses it!" cried Auguste.

"Precisely," said his father, dryly, "for Mr. Ritchie tells me he found
it--at Madame Bouvet's, was it not, Monsieur?"

Auguste looked at me.

"Mille diables!" he said, and sat down again heavily.

"Mr. Ritchie has returned it to your sister, a service which puts him
heavily in our debt," said Monsieur de St. Gre. "Now, sir," he added to
me, rising, "you have had a tiresome day. I will show you to your room,
and in the morning we will begin our--investigations."

He clapped his hands, the silent mulatto appeared with a new candle, and
I followed my host down the gallery to a room which he flung open at the
far end. A great four-poster bedstead was in one corner, and a polished
mahogany dresser in the other.

"We have saved some of our family furniture from the fire, Mr. Ritchie,"
said Monsieur de St. Gre; "that bed was brought from Paris by my father
forty years ago. I hope you will rest well."

He set the candle on the table, and as he bowed there was a trace of an
enigmatical smile about his mouth. How much he knew of Auguste's
transaction I could not fathom, but the matter and the scarcely
creditable part I had played in it kept me awake far into the night. I
was just falling into a troubled sleep when a footstep on the gallery
startled me back to consciousness. It was followed by a light tap on the
door.

"Monsieur Reetchie," said a voice.

It was Monsieur Auguste. He was not an imposing figure in his nightrail,
and by the light of the carefully shaded candle he held in his hand I saw
that he had hitherto deceived me in the matter of his calves. He stood
peering at me as I lay under the mosquito bar.

"How is it I can thank you, Monsieur!" he exclaimed in a whisper.

"By saying nothing, Monsieur," I answered.

"You are noble, you are generous, and--and one day I will give you the
money back," he added with a burst of magniloquence. "You have behave
very well, Monsieur, and I mek you my friend. Behol' Auguste de St. Gre,
entirely at your service, Monsieur." He made a sweeping bow that might
have been impressive save for the nightrail, and sought my hand, which he
grasped in a fold of the mosquito bar.

"I am overcome, Monsieur," I said.

"Monsieur Reetchie, you are my friend, my intimate" (he put an aspirate
on the word). "I go to tell you one leetle secret. I find that I can
repose confidence in you. My father does not understan' me, you saw,
Monsieur, he does not appreciate--that is the Engleesh. Mon Dieu, you
saw it this night. I, who spik to you, am made for a courtier, a noble.
I have the gift. La Louisiane--she is not so big enough for me." He
lowered his voice still further, and bent nearer to me. "Monsieur, I run
away to France. My cousin the Marquis will help me. You will hear of
Auguste de St. Gre at Versailles, at Trianon, at Chantilly, and
peut-etre--"

"It is a worthy campaign, Monsieur," I interrupted.

A distant sound broke the stillness, and Auguste was near to dropping the
candle on me.

"Adieu, Monsieur," he whispered; "milles tonneres, I have done one
extraordinaire foolish thing when I am come to this house to-night."

And he disappeared, shading his candle, as he had come.



CHAPTER XIV

RETRIBUTION

During the next two days I had more evidence of Monsieur de St. Gre's
ability, and, thanks to his conduct of my campaign, not the least
suspicion of my mission to New Orleans got abroad. Certain gentlemen
were asked to dine, we called on others, and met still others casually in
their haunts of business or pleasure. I was troubled because of the
inconvenience and discomfort to which my host put himself, for New
Orleans in the dog-days may be likened in climate to the under side of
the lid of a steam kettle. But at length, on the second evening, after
we had supped on jambalaya and rice cakes and other dainties, and the
last guest had gone, my host turned to me.

"The rest of the burrow is the same, Mr. Ritchie, until it comes to the
light again."

"And the fox has crawled out of the other end," I said.

"Precisely," he answered, laughing; "in short, if you were to remain in
New Orleans until New Year's, you would not learn a whit more. To-morrow
morning I have a little business of my own to transact, and we shall get
to Les Iles in time for dinner. No, don't thank me," he protested;
"there's a certain rough honesty and earnestness ingrained in you which I
like. And besides," he added, smiling, "you are poor indeed at thanking,
Mr. Ritchie. You could never do it gracefully. But if ever I were in
trouble, I believe that I might safely call on you."

The next day was a rare one, for a wind from somewhere had blown the
moisture away a little, the shadows were clearer cut, and by noon
Monsieur de St. Gre and I were walking our horses in the shady road
behind the levee. We were followed at a respectful distance by Andre,
Monsieur's mulatto body-servant, and as we rode my companion gave me
stories of the owners of the different plantations we passed, and spoke
of many events of interest in the history of the colony. Presently he
ceased to talk, and rode in silence for many minutes. And then he turned
upon me suddenly.

"Mr. Ritchie," he said, "you have seen my son. It may be that in him I
am paying the price of my sins. I have done everything to set him
straight, but in vain. Monsieur, every son of the St. Gre's has awakened
sooner or later to a sense of what becomes him. But Auguste is a fool,"
he cried bitterly,--a statement which I could not deny; "were it not for
my daughter, Antoinette, I should be a miserable man indeed."

Inasmuch as he was not a person of confidences, I felt the more flattered
that he should speak so plainly to me, and I had a great sympathy for
this strong man who could not help himself.

"You have observed Antoinette, Mr. Ritchie," he continued; "she is a
strange mixture of wilfulness and caprice and self-sacrifice, and she has
at times a bit of that wit which has made our house for generations the
intimates--I may say--of sovereigns."

This peculiar pride of race would have amused me in another man. I found
myself listening to Monsieur de St. Gre with gravity, and I did not dare
to reply that I had had evidence of Mademoiselle's aptness of retort.

"She has been my companion since she was a child, Monsieur. She has
disobeyed me, flaunted me, nursed me in illness, championed me behind my
back. I have a little book which I have kept of her sayings and doings,
which may interest you, Monsieur. I will show it you."

This indeed was a new side of Monsieur de St. Gre, and I reflected rather
ruefully upon the unvarnished truth of what Mr. Wharton had told me,--ay,
and what Colonel Clark had emphasized long before. It was my fate never
to be treated as a young man. It struck me that Monsieur de St. Gre had
never even considered me in the light of a possible suitor for his
daughter's hand.

"I should be delighted to see them, Monsieur," I answered.

"Would you?" he exclaimed, his face lighting up as he glanced at me.
"Alas, Madame de St. Gre and I have promised to go to our neighbors',
Monsieur and Madame Bertrand's, for to-night. But, to-morrow, if you
have leisure, we shall look at it together. And not a word of this to my
daughter, Monsieur," he added apprehensively; "she would never forgive
me. She dislikes my talking of her, but at times I cannot help it. It
was only last year that she was very angry with me, and would not speak
to me for days, because I boasted of her having watched at the bedside of
a poor gentleman who came here and got the fever. You will not tell
her?"

"Indeed I shall not, Monsieur," I answered.

"It is strange," he said abruptly, "it is strange that this gentleman and
his wife should likewise have had letters to us from Monsieur Gratiot.
They came from St. Louis, and they were on their way to Paris."

"To Paris?" I cried; "what was their name?"

He looked at me in surprise.

"Clive," he said.

"Clive!" I cried, leaning towards him in my saddle. "Clive! And what
became of them?"

This time he gave me one of his searching looks, and it was not unmixed
with astonishment.

"Why do you ask. Monsieur?" he demanded. "Did you know them?"

I must have shown that I was strangely agitated. For the moment I could
not answer.

"Monsieur Gratiot himself spoke of them to me," I said, after a little;
"he said they were an interesting couple."

"Pardieu!" exclaimed Monsieur de St. Gre, "he put it mildly." He gave me
another look. "There was something about them, Monsieur, which I could
not fathom. Why were they drifting? They were people of quality who had
seen the world, who were by no means paupers, who had no cause to travel
save a certain restlessness. And while they were awaiting the sailing of
the packet for France they came to our house--the old one in the Rue
Bourbon that was burned. I would not speak ill of the dead, but Mr.
Clive I did not like. He fell sick of the fever in my house, and it was
there that Antoinette and Madame de St. Gre took turns with his wife in
watching at his bedside. I could do nothing with Antoinette, Monsieur,
and she would not listen to my entreaties, my prayers, my commands. We
buried the poor fellow in the alien ground, for he did not die in the
Church, and after that my daughter clung to Mrs. Clive. She would not
let her go, and the packet sailed without her. I have never seen such
affection. I may say," he added quickly, "that Madame de St. Gre and I
share in it, for Mrs. Clive is a lovable woman and a strong character.
And into the great sorrow that lies behind her life, we have never
probed."

"And she is with you now, Monsieur?" I asked.

"She lives with us, Monsieur," he answered simply, "and I hope for
always. No," he said quickly, "it is not charity,--she has something of
her own. We love her, and she is the best of companions for my daughter.
For the rest, Monsieur, she seems benumbed, with no desire to go back or
to go farther."

An entrance drive to the plantation of Les Iles, unknown to Nick and me,
led off from the main road like a green tunnel arched out of the forest.
My feelings as we entered this may be imagined, for I was suddenly
confronted with the situation which I had dreaded since my meeting with
Nick at Jonesboro. I could scarcely allow myself even the faint hope
that Mrs. Clive might not prove to be Mrs. Temple after all. Whilst I
was in this agony of doubt and indecision, the drive suddenly came out on
a shaded lawn dotted with flowering bushes. There was the house with its
gallery, its curved dormer roof and its belvedere; and a white, girlish
figure flitted down the steps. It was Mademoiselle Antoinette, and no
sooner had her father dismounted than she threw herself into his arms.
Forgetful of my presence, he stood murmuring in her ear like a lover; and
as I watched them my trouble slipped from my mind, and gave place to a
vaguer regret that I had been a wanderer throughout my life. Presently
she turned up to him a face on which was written something which he could
not understand. His own stronger features reflected a vague disquiet.

"What is it, ma cherie?"

What was it indeed? Something was in her eyes which bore a message and
presentiment to me. She dropped them, fastening in the lapel of his coat
a flaunting red flower set against a shining leaf, and there was a
gentle, joyous subterfuge in her answer.

"Thou pardoned Auguste, as I commanded?" she said. They were speaking in
the familiar French.

"Ha, diable! is it that which disquiets thee?" said her father. "We will
not speak of Auguste. Dost thou know Monsieur Ritchie, 'Toinette?"

She disengaged herself and dropped me a courtesy, her eyes seeking the
ground. But she said not a word. At that instant Madame de St. Gre
herself appeared on the gallery, followed by Nick, who came down the
steps with a careless self-confidence to greet the master. Indeed, a
stranger might have thought that Mr. Temple was the host, and I saw
Antoinette watching him furtively with a gleam of amusement in her eyes.

"I am delighted to see you at last, Monsieur," said my cousin. "I am
Nicholas Temple, and I have been your guest for three days."

Had Monsieur de St. Gre been other than the soul of hospitality, it would
have been impossible not to welcome such a guest. Our host had, in
common with his daughter, a sense of humor. There was a quizzical
expression on his fine face as he replied, with the barest glance at
Mademoiselle Antoinette:--

"I trust you have been--well entertained, Mr. Temple. My daughter has
been accustomed only to the society of her brother and cousins."

"Faith, I should not have supposed it," said Nick, instantly, a remark
which caused the color to flush deeply into Mademoiselle's face. I
looked to see Monsieur de St. Gre angry. He tried, indeed, to be grave,
but smiled irresistibly as he mounted the steps to greet his wife, who
stood demurely awaiting his caress. And in this interval Mademoiselle
shot at Nick a swift and withering look as she passed him. He returned a
grimace.

"Messieurs," said Monsieur de St. Gre, turning to us, "dinner will soon
be ready--if you will be so good as to pardon me until then."

Nick followed Mademoiselle with his eyes until she had disappeared beyond
the hall. She did not so much as turn. Then he took me by the arm and
led me to a bench under a magnolia a little distance away, where he
seated himself, and looked up at me despairingly.

"Behold," said he, "what was once your friend and cousin, your
counsellor, sage, and guardian. Behold the clay which conducted you
hither, with the heart neatly but painfully extracted. Look upon a
woman's work, Davy, and shun the sex. I tell you it is better to go
blindfold through life, to have--pardon me--your own blunt features, than
to be reduced to such a pitiable state. Was ever such a refinement of
cruelty practised before? Never! Was there ever such beauty, such
archness, such coquetry,--such damned elusiveness? Never! If there is a
cargo going up the river, let me be salted and lie at the bottom of it.
I'll warrant you I'll not come to life."

"You appear to have suffered somewhat," I said, forgetting for the moment
in my laughter the thing that weighed upon my mind.

"Suffered!" he cried; "I have been tossed high in the azure that I might
sink the farther into the depths. I have been put in a grave, the earth
stamped down, resurrected, and flung into the dust-heap. I have been
taken up to the gate of heaven and dropped a hundred and fifty years
through darkness. Since I have seen you I have been the round of all the
bright places and all the bottomless pits in the firmament."

"It seems to have made you literary," I remarked judicially.

"I burn up twenty times a day," he continued, with a wave of the hand to
express the completeness of the process; "there is nothing left. I see
her, I speak to her, and I burn up."

"Have you had many tete-a-tetes?" I asked.

"Not one," he retorted fiercely; "do you think there is any sense in the
damnable French custom? I am an honorable man, and, besides, I am not
equipped for an elopement. No priest in Louisiana would marry us. I see
her at dinner, at supper. Sometimes we sew on the gallery," he went on,
"but I give you my oath that I have not had one word with her alone."

"An oath is not necessary," I said. "But you seem to have made some
progress nevertheless."

"Do you call that progress?" he demanded.

"It is surely not retrogression."

"God knows what it is," said Nick, helplessly, "but it's got to stop. I
have sent her an ultimatum."

"A what?"

"A summons. Her father and mother are going to the Bertrands' to-night,
and I have written her a note to meet me in the garden. And you," he
cried, rising and slapping me between the shoulders, "you are to keep
watch, like the dear, careful, canny, sly rascal you are."

"And--and has she accepted?" I inquired.

"That's the deuce of it," said he; "she has not. But I think she'll
come."

I stood for a moment regarding him.

"And you really love Mademoiselle Antoinette?" I asked.

"Have I not exhausted the language?" he answered. "If what I have been
through is not love, then may the Lord shield me from the real disease."

"It may have been merely a light case of--tropical enthusiasm, let us
say. I have seen others, a little milder because the air was more
temperate."

"Tropical--balderdash," he exploded. "If you are not the most
exasperating, unfeeling man alive--"

"I merely wanted to know if you wished to marry Mademoiselle de St. Gre,"
I interrupted.

He gave me a look of infinite tolerance.

"Have I not made it plain that I cannot live without her?" he said; "if
not, I will go over it all again."

"That will not be necessary," I said hastily.

"The trouble may be," he continued, "that they have already made one of
their matrimonial contracts with a Granpre, a Beausejour, a Bernard."

"Monsieur de St. Gre is a very sensible man," I answered. "He loves his
daughter, and I doubt if he would force her to marry against her will.
Tell me, Nick," I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder, "do you love
this girl so much that you would let nothing come between you and her?"

"I tell you, I do; and again I tell you, I do," he replied. He paused,
suddenly glancing at my face, and added, "Why do you ask, Davy?"

I stood irresolute, now that the time had come not daring to give voice
to my suspicions. He had not spoken to me of his mother save that once,
and I had no means of knowing whether his feeling for the girl might not
soften his anger against her. I have never lacked the courage to come to
the point, but there was still the chance that I might be mistaken in
this after all. Would it not be best to wait until I had ascertained in
some way the identity of Mrs. Clive? And while I stood debating, Nick
regarding me with a puzzled expression, Monsieur de St. Gre appeared on
the gallery.

"Come, gentlemen," he cried; "dinner awaits us."

The dining room at Les Iles was at the corner of the house, and its
windows looked out on the gallery, which was shaded at that place by
dense foliage. The room, like others in the house, seemed to reflect the
decorous character of its owner. Two St. Gre's, indifferently painted,
but rigorous and respectable, relieved the whiteness of the wall. They
were the Commissary-general and his wife. The lattices were closed on
one side, and in the deep amber light the family silver shone but dimly.
The dignity of our host, the evident ceremony of the meal,--which was
attended by three servants,--would have awed into a modified silence at
least a less irrepressible person than Nicholas Temple. But Nick was one
to carry by storm a position which another might wait to reconnoitre.
The first sensation of our host was no doubt astonishment, but he was
soon laughing over a vivid account of our adventures on the keel boat.
Nick's imitation of Xavier, and his description of Benjy's terrors after
the storm, were so perfect that I laughed quite as heartily; and Madame
de St. Gre wiped her eyes and repeated continually, "Quel drole monsieur!
it is thus he has entertained us since thou departed, Philippe."

As for Mademoiselle, I began to think that Nick was not far wrong in his
diagnosis. Training may have had something to do with it. She would not
laugh, not she, but once or twice she raised her napkin to her face and
coughed slightly. For the rest, she sat demurely, with her eyes on her
plate, a model of propriety. Nick's sufferings became more
comprehensible.

To give the devil his due, Nick had an innate tact which told him when to
stop, and perhaps at this time Mademoiselle's superciliousness made him
subside the more quickly. After Monsieur de St. Gre had explained to me
the horrors of the indigo pest and the futility of sugar raising, he
turned to his daughter.

"'Toinette, where is Madame Clive?" he asked. The girl looked up,
startled into life and interest at once.

"Oh, papa," she cried in French, "we are so worried about her, mamma and
I. It was the day you went away, the day these gentlemen came, that we
thought she would take an airing. And suddenly she became worse."

Monsieur de St. Gre turned with concern to his wife.

"I do not know what it is, Philippe," said that lady; "it seems to be
mental. The loss of her husband weighs upon her, poor lady. But this is
worse than ever, and she will lie for hours with her face turned to the
wall, and not even Antoinette can arouse her."

"I have always been able to comfort her before," said Antoinette, with a
catch in her voice.

I took little account of what was said after that, my only notion being
to think the problem out for myself, and alone. As I was going to my
room Nick stopped me.

"Come into the garden, Davy," he said.

"When I have had my siesta," I answered.

"When you have had your siesta!" he cried; "since when did you begin to
indulge in siestas?"

"To-day," I replied, and left him staring after me.

I reached my room, bolted the door, and lay down on my back to think.
Little was needed to convince me now that Mrs. Clive was Mrs. Temple, and
thus the lady's relapse when she heard that her son was in the house was
accounted for. Instead of forming a plan, my thoughts drifted from that
into pity for her, and my memory ran back many years to the text of good
Mr. Mason's sermon, "I have refined thee, but not with silver, I have
chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." What must Sarah Temple have
suffered since those days! I remembered her in her prime, in her beauty,
in her selfishness, in her cruelty to those whom she might have helped,
and I wondered the more at the change which must have come over the woman
that she had won the affections of this family, that she had gained the
untiring devotion of Mademoiselle Antoinette. Her wit might not account
for it, for that had been cruel. And something of the agony of the
woman's soul as she lay in torment, facing the wall, thinking of her son
under the same roof, of a life misspent and irrevocable, I pictured.

A stillness crept into the afternoon like the stillness of night. The
wide house was darkened and silent, and without a sunlight washed with
gold filtered through the leaves. There was a drowsy hum of bees, and in
the distance the occasional languishing note of a bird singing what must
have been a cradle-song. My mind wandered, and shirked the task that was
set to it.

Could anything be gained by meddling? I had begun to convince myself
that nothing could, when suddenly I came face to face with the
consequences of a possible marriage between Nick and Mademoiselle
Antoinette. In that event the disclosure of his mother's identity would
be inevitable. Not only his happiness was involved, but Mademoiselle's,
her father's and her mother's, and lastly that of this poor hunted woman
herself, who thought at last to have found a refuge.

An hour passed, and it became more and more evident to me that I must see
and talk with Mrs. Temple. But how was I to communicate with her? At
last I took out my portfolio and wrote these words on a sheet:--

"If Mrs. Clive will consent to a meeting with Mr. David Ritchie, he will
deem it a favor. Mr. Ritchie assures Mrs. Clive that he makes this
request in all friendliness."

I lighted a candle, folded the note and sealed it, addressed it to Mrs.
Clive, and opening the latticed door I stepped out. Walking along the
gallery until I came to the rear part of the house which faced towards
the out-buildings, I spied three figures prone on the grass under a
pecan tree that shaded the kitchen roof. One of these figures was Benjy,
and he was taking his siesta. I descended quietly from the gallery, and
making my way to him, touched him on the shoulder. He awoke and stared
at me with white eyes.

"Marse Dave!" he cried.

"Hush," I answered, "and follow me."

He came after me, wondering, a little way into the grove, where I
stopped.

"Benjy," I said, "do you know any of the servants here?"

"Lawsy, Marse Dave, I reckon I knows 'em,--some of 'em," he answered with
a grin.

"You talk to them?"

"Shucks, no, Marse Dave," he replied with a fine scorn, "I ain't no hand
at dat ar nigger French. But I knows some on 'em, and right well too."

"How?" I demanded curiously.

Benjy looked down sheepishly at his feet. He was standing pigeon-toed.

"I done c'ressed some on 'em, Marse Dave," he said at length, and there
was a note of triumph in his voice.

"You did what?" I asked.

"I done kissed one of dem yaller gals, Marse Dave. Yass'r, I done kissed
M'lisse."

"Do you think Melisse would do something for you if you asked her?" I
inquired.

Benjy seemed hurt.

"Marse Dave--" he began reproachfully.

"Very well, then," I interrupted, taking the letter from my pocket,
"there is a lady who is ill here, Mrs. Clive--"

I paused, for a new look had come into Benjy's eyes. He began that
peculiar, sympathetic laugh of the negro, which catches and doubles on
itself, and I imagined that a new admiration for me dawned on his face.

"Yass'r, yass, Marse Dave, I reckon M'lisse 'll git it to her 'thout any
one tekin' notice."

I bit my lips.

"If Mrs. Clive receives this within an hour, Melisse shall have one
piastre, and you another. There is an answer."

Benjy took the note, and departed nimbly to find Melisse, while I paced
up and down in my uneasiness as to the outcome of the experiment. A
quarter of an hour passed, half an hour, and then I saw Benjy coming
through the trees. He stood before me, chuckling, and drew from his
pocket a folded piece of paper. I gave him the two piastres, warned him
if his master or any one inquired for me that I was taking a walk, and
bade him begone. Then I opened the note.

"I will meet you at the bayou, at seven this evening. Take the path that
leads through the garden."

I read it with a catch of the breath, with a certainty that the happiness
of many people depended upon what I should say at that meeting. And to
think of this and to compose myself a little, I made my way to the garden
in search of the path, that I might know it when the time came. Entering
a gap in the hedge, I caught sight of the shaded seat under the tree
which had been the scene of our first meeting with Antoinette, and I
hurried past it as I crossed the garden. There were two openings in the
opposite hedge, the one through which Nick and I had come, and another.
I took the second, and with little difficulty found the path of which the
note had spoken. It led through a dense, semi-tropical forest in the
direction of the swamp beyond, the way being well beaten, but here and
there jealously crowded by an undergrowth of brambles and the prickly
Spanish bayonet. I know not how far I had walked, my head bent in
thought, before I felt the ground teetering under my feet, and there was
the bayou. It was a narrow lane of murky, impenetrable water, shaded now
by the forest wall. Imaged on its amber surface were the twisted boughs
of the cypresses of the swamp beyond,--boughs funereally draped, as
though to proclaim a warning of unknown perils in the dark places. On
that side where I stood ancient oaks thrust their gnarled roots into the
water, and these knees were bridged by treacherous platforms of moss. As
I sought for a safe resting-place a dull splash startled me, the
pink-and-white water lilies danced on the ripples, and a long, black
snout pushed its way to the centre of the bayou and floated there
motionless.

I sat down on a wide knee that seemed to be fashioned for the purpose,
and reflected. It may have been about half-past five, and I made up my
mind that, rather than return and risk explanations, I would wait where I
was until Mrs. Temple appeared. I had much to think of, and for the rest
the weird beauty of the place, with its changing colors as the sun fell,
held me in fascination. When the blue vapor stole through the cypress
swamp, my trained ear caught the faintest of warning sounds. Mrs. Temple
was coming.

I could not repress the exclamation that rose to my lips when she stood
before me.

"I have changed somewhat," she began quite calmly; "I have changed since
you were at Temple Bow."

I stood staring at her, at a loss to know whether by these words she
sought to gain an advantage. I knew not whether to pity or to be angry,
such a strange blending she seemed of former pride and arrogance and
later suffering. There were the features of the beauty still, the eyes
defiant, the lips scornful. Sorrow had set its brand upon this
protesting face in deep, violet marks under the eyes, in lines which no
human power could erase: sorrow had flecked with white the gold of the
hair, had proclaimed her a woman with a history. For she had a new and
remarkable beauty which puzzled and astonished me,--a beauty in which
maternity had no place. The figure, gowned with an innate taste in
black, still kept the rounded lines of the young woman, while about the
shoulders and across the open throat a lace mantilla was thrown. She
stood facing me, undaunted, and I knew that she had come to fight for
what was left her. I knew further that she was no mean antagonist.

"Will you kindly tell me to what circumstance I owe the honor of
this--summons, Mr. Ritchie?" she asked. "You are a travelled person for
one so young. I might almost say," she added with an indifferent laugh,
"that there is some method and purpose in your travels."

"Indeed, you do me wrong, Madame," I replied; "I am here by the merest
chance."

Again she laughed lightly, and stepping past me took her seat on the oak
from which I had risen. I marvelled that this woman, with all her
self-possession, could be the same as she who had held her room,
cowering, these four days past. Admiration for her courage mingled with
my other feelings, and for the life of me I knew not where to begin. My
experience with women of the world was, after all, distinctly limited.
Mrs. Temple knew, apparently by intuition, the advantage she had gained,
and she smiled.

"The Ritchies were always skilled in dealing with sinners," she began;
"the first earl had the habit of hunting them like foxes, so it is said.
I take it for granted that, before my sentence is pronounced, I shall
have the pleasure of hearing my wrong-doings in detail. I could not ask
you to forego that satisfaction."

"You seem to know the characteristics of my family, Mrs. Temple," I
answered. "There is one trait of the Ritchies concerning which I ask
your honest opinion."

"And what is that?" she said carelessly.

"I have always understood that they have spoken the truth. Is it not
so?"

She glanced at me curiously.

"I never knew your father to lie," she answered; "but after all he had
few chances. He so seldom spoke."

"Your intercourse with me at Temple Bow was quite as limited," I said.

"Ah," she interrupted quickly, "you bear me that grudge. It is another
trait of the Ritchies."

"I bear you no grudge, Madame," I replied. "I asked you a question
concerning the veracity of my family, and I beg that you will believe
what I say."

"And what is this momentous statement?" she asked.

I had hard work to keep my temper, but I knew that I must not lose it.

"I declare to you on my honor that my business in New Orleans in no way
concerns you, and that I had not the slightest notion of finding you
here. Will you believe that?"

"And what then?" she asked.

"I also declare to you that, since meeting your son, my chief anxiety has
been lest he should run across you."

"You are very considerate of others," she said. "Let us admit for the
sake of argument that you come here by accident."

It was the opening I had sought for, but despaired of getting.

"Then put yourself for a moment in my place, Madame, and give me credit
for a little kindliness of feeling, and a sincere affection for your
son."

There was a new expression on her face, and the light of a supreme effort
in her eyes.

"I give you credit at least for a logical mind," she answered. "In spite
of myself you have put me at the bar and seem to be conducting my trial."

"I do not see why there should be any rancor between us," I answered.
"It is true that I hated you at Temple Bow. When my father was killed
and I was left a homeless orphan you had no pity for me, though your
husband was my mother's brother. But you did me a good turn after all,
for you drove me out into a world where I learned to rely upon myself.
Furthermore, it was not in your nature to treat me well."

"Not in my nature?" she repeated.

"You were seeking happiness, as every one must in their own way. That
happiness lay, apparently, with Mr. Riddle."

"Ah," she cried, with a catch of her breath, "I thought you would be
judging me."

"I am stating facts. Your son was a sufficient embarrassment in this
matter, and I should have been an additional one. I blame you not, Mrs.
Temple, for anything you have done to me, but I blame you for embittering
Nick's life."

"And he?" she said. It seemed to me that I detected a faltering in her
voice.

"I will hide nothing from you. He blames you, with what justice I leave
you to decide."

She did not answer this, but turned her head away towards the bayou. Nor
could I determine what was in her mind.

"And now I ask you whether I have acted as your friend in begging you to
meet me."

She turned to me swiftly at that.

"I am at a loss to see how there can be friendship between us, Mr.
Ritchie," she said.

"Very good then, Madame; I am sorry," I answered. "I have done all that
is in my power, and now events will have to take their course."

I had not gone two steps into the wood before I heard her voice calling
my name. She had risen, and leaned with her hand against the oak.

"Does Nick--know that you are here?" she cried.

"No," I answered shortly. Then I realized suddenly what I had failed to
grasp before,--she feared that I would pity her.

"David!"

I started violently at the sound of my name, at the new note in her
voice, at the change in the woman as I turned. And then before I
realized what she had done she had come to me swiftly and laid her hand
upon my arm.

"David, does he hate me?"

All the hope remaining in her life was in that question, was in her face
as she searched mine with a terrible scrutiny. And never had I known
such an ordeal. It seemed as if I could not answer, and as I stood
staring back at her a smile was forced to her lips.

"I will pay you one tribute, my friend," she said; "you are honest."

But even as she spoke I saw her sway, and though I could not be sure it
were not a dizziness in me, I caught her. I shall always marvel at the
courage there was in her, for she straightened and drew away from me a
little proudly, albeit gently, and sat down on the knee of the oak,
looking across the bayou towards the mist of the swamp. There was the
infinite calmness of resignation in her next speech.

"Tell me about him," she said.

She was changed indeed. Were it not so I should have heard of her own
sufferings, of her poor, hunted life from place to place, of countless
nights made sleepless by the past. Pride indeed was left, but the fire
had burned away the last vestige of selfishness.

I sat down beside her, knowing full well that I should be judged by what
I said. She listened, motionless, though something of what that
narrative cost her I knew by the current of sympathy that ran now between
us. Unmarked, the day faded, a new light was spread over the waters, the
mist was spangled with silver points, the Spanish moss took on the
whiteness of lace against the black forest swamp, and on the yellow face
of the moon the star-shaped leaves of a gum were printed.

At length I paused. She neither spoke, nor moved--save for the rising
and falling of her shoulders. The hardest thing I had to say I saved for
the last, and I was near lacking the courage to continue.

"There is Mademoiselle Antoinette--" I began, and stopped,--she turned on
me so quickly and laid a hand on mine.

"Nick loves her!" she cried.

"You know it!" I exclaimed, wondering.

"Ah, David," she answered brokenly, "I foresaw it from the first. I,
too, love the girl. No human being has ever given me such care and such
affection. She--she is all that I have left. Must I give her up? Have
I not paid the price of my sins?"

I did not answer, knowing that she saw the full cruelty of the
predicament. What happiness remained to her now of a battered life stood
squarely in the way of her son's happiness. That was the issue, and no
advice or aid of mine could change it. There was another silence that
seemed to me an eternity as I watched, a helpless witness, the struggle
going on within her. At last she got to her feet, her face turned to the
shadow.

"I will go, David," she said. Her voice was low and she spoke with a
steadiness that alarmed me. "I will go."

Torn with pity, I thought again, but I could see no alternative. And
then, suddenly, she was clinging to me, her courage gone, her breast
shaken with sobs. "Where shall I go?" she cried. "God help me! Are
there no remote places where He will not seek me out? I have tried them
all, David." And quite as suddenly she disengaged herself, and looked at
me strangely. "You are well revenged for Temple Bow," she said.

"Hush," I answered, and held her, fearing I knew not what, "you have not
lacked courage. It is not so bad as you believe. I will devise a plan
and help you. Have you money?"

"Yes," she answered, with a remnant of her former pride; "and I have an
annuity paid now to Mr. Clark."

"Then listen to what I say," I answered. "To-night I will take you to
New Orleans and hide you safely. And I swear to you, whether it be right
or wrong, that I will use every endeavor to change Nick's feelings
towards you. Come," I continued, leading her gently into the path, "let
us go while there is yet time."

"Stop," she said, and I halted fearfully. "David Ritchie, you are a good
man. I can make no amends to you,"--she did not finish.

Feeling for the path in the blackness of the wood, I led her by the hand,
and she followed me as trustfully as a child. At last, after an age of
groping, the heavy scents of shrubs and flowers stole to us on the night
air, and we came out at the hedge into what seemed a blaze of light that
flooded the rows of color. Here we paused, breathless, and looked. The
bench under the great tree was vacant, and the garden was empty.

It was she who led the way through the hedge, who halted in the garden
path at the sound of voices. She turned, but there was no time to flee,
for the tall figure of a man came through the opposite hedge, followed by
a lady. One was Nicholas Temple, the other, Mademoiselle de St. Gre.
Mrs. Temple's face alone was in the shadow, and as I felt her hand
trembling on my arm I summoned all my resources. It was Nick who spoke
first.

"It is Davy!" he cried. "Oh, the sly rascal! And this is the promenade
of which he left us word, the solitary meditation! Speak up, man; you
are forgiven for deserting us."

He turned, laughing, to Mademoiselle. But she stood with her lips parted
and her hands dropped, staring at my companion. Then she took two steps
forward and stopped with a cry.

"Mrs. Clive!"

The woman beside me turned, and with a supreme courage raised her head
and faced the girl.

"Yes, Antoinette, it is I," she answered.

And then my eyes sought Nick, for Mrs. Temple had faced her son with a
movement that was a challenge, yet with a look that questioned, yearned,
appealed. He, too, stared, the laughter fading from his eyes, first
astonishment, and then anger, growing in them, slowly, surely. I shall
never forget him as he stood there (for what seemed an age) recalling one
by one the wrongs this woman had done him. She herself had taught him to
brook no restraint, to follow impetuously his loves and hates, and
endurance in these things was moulded in every line of his finely cut
features. And when he spoke it was not to her, but to the girl at his
side.

"Do you know who this is?" he said. "Tell me, do you know this woman?"

Mademoiselle de St. Gre did not answer him. She drew near, gently, to
Mrs. Temple, whose head was bowed, whose agony I could only guess.

"Mrs. Clive," she said softly, though her voice was shaken by a
prescience, "won't you tell me what has happened? Won't you speak to
me--Antoinette?"

The poor lady lifted up her arms, as though to embrace the girl, dropped
them despairingly, and turned away.

"Antoinette," she murmured, "Antoinette!"

For Nick had seized Antoinette by the hand, restraining her.

"You do not know what you are doing?" he cried angrily. "Listen!"

I had stood bereft of speech, watching the scene breathlessly. And now I
would have spoken had not Mademoiselle astonished me by taking the lead.
I have thought since that I might have pieced together this much of her
character. Her glance at Nick surprised him momentarily into silence.

"I know that she is my dearest friend," she said, "that she came to us in
misfortune, and that we love her and trust her. I do not know why she is
here with Mr. Ritchie, but I am sure it is for some good reason." She
laid a hand on Mrs. Temple's shoulder. "Mrs. Clive, won't you speak to
me?"

"My God, Antoinette, listen!" cried Nick; "Mrs. Clive is not her name. I
know her, David knows her. She is an--adventuress!"

Mrs. Temple gave a cry, and the girl shot at him a frightened, bewildered
glance, in which a new-born love struggled with an older affection.

"An adventuress!" she repeated, her hand dropping, "oh, I do not believe
it. I cannot believe it."

"You shall believe it," said Nick, fiercely. "Her name is not Clive.
Ask David what her name is."

Antoinette's lips moved, but she shirked the question. And Nick seized
me roughly.

"Tell her," he said, "tell her! My God, how can I do it? Tell her,
David."

For the life of me I could not frame the speech at once, my pity and a
new-found and surprising respect for her making it doubly hard to
pronounce her sentence. Suddenly she raised her head, not proudly, but
with a dignity seemingly conferred by years of sorrow and of suffering.
Her tones were even, bereft of every vestige of hope.

"Antoinette, I have deceived you, though as God is my witness, I thought
no harm could come of it. I deluded myself into believing that I had
found friends and a refuge at last. I am Mrs. Temple."

"Mrs. Temple!" The girl repeated the name sorrowfully, but perplexedly,
not grasping its full significance.

"She is my mother," said Nick, with a bitterness I had not thought in
him, "she is my mother, or I would curse her. For she has ruined my life
and brought shame on a good name."

He paused, his breath catching for very anger. Mrs. Temple hid her face
in her hands, while the girl shrank back in terror. I grasped him by the
arm.

"Have you no compassion?" I cried. But Mrs. Temple interrupted me.

"He has the right," she faltered; "it is my just punishment."

He tore himself away, and took a step to her.

"Where is Riddle?" he cried. "As God lives, I will kill him without
mercy!"

His mother lifted her head again.

"God has judged him," she said quietly; "he is beyond your vengeance--he
is dead." A sob shook her, but she conquered it with a marvellous
courage. "Harry Riddle loved me, he was kind to me, and he was a better
man than John Temple."

Nick recoiled. The fierceness of his anger seemed to go, leaving a more
dangerous humor.

"Then I have been blessed with parents," he said.

At that she swayed, but when I would have caught her she motioned me away
and turned to Antoinette. Twice Mrs. Temple tried to speak.

"I was going away to-night," she said at length, "and you would never
have seen or heard of me more. My nephew David--Mr. Ritchie--whom I
treated cruelly as a boy, had pity on me. He is a good man, and he was
to have taken me away--I do not attempt to defend myself, my dear, but
I pray that you, who have so much charity, will some day think a little
kindly of one who has sinned deeply, of one who will love and bless you
and yours to her dying day."

She faltered, and Nick would have spoken had not Antoinette herself
stayed him with a gesture.

"I wish--my son to know the little there is on my side. It is not much.
Yet God may not spare him the sorrow that brings pity. I--I loved Harry
Riddle as a girl. My father was ruined, and I was forced into marriage
with John Temple for his possessions. He was selfish, overbearing,
cruel--unfaithful. During the years I lived with him he never once spoke
kindly to me. I, too, grew wicked and selfish and heedless. My head was
turned by admiration. Mr. Temple escaped to England in a man-of-war; he
left me without a line of warning, of farewell. I--I have wandered over
the earth, haunted by remorse, and I knew no moment of peace, of
happiness, until you brought me here and sheltered and loved me. And
even here I have had many sleepless hours. A hundred times I have
summoned my courage to tell you,--I could not. I am justly punished,
Antoinette." She moved a little, timidly, towards the girl, who stood
motionless, dazed by what she heard. She held out a hand, appealingly,
and dropped it. "Good-by, my dear; God will bless you for your kindness
to an unfortunate outcast."

She glanced with a kind of terror in her eyes from the girl to Nick, and
what she meant to say concerning their love I know not, for the flood,
held back so long, burst upon her. She wept as I have never seen a woman
weep. And then, before Nick or I knew what had happened, Antoinette had
taken her swiftly in her arms and was murmuring in her ear:--

"You shall not go. You shall not. You will live with me always."

Presently the sobs ceased, and Mrs. Temple raised her face, slowly,
wonderingly, as if she had not heard aright. And she tried gently to
push the girl away.

"No, Antoinette," she said, "I have done you harm enough."

But the girl clung to her strongly, passionately. "I do not care what
you have done," she cried, "you are good now. I know that you are good
now. I will not cast you out. I will not."

I stood looking at them, bewildered and astonished by Mademoiselle's
loyalty. She seemed to have forgotten Nick, as had I, and then as I
turned to him he came towards them. Almost roughly he took Antoinette by
the arm.

"You do not know what you are saying," he cried. "Come away, Antoinette,
you do not know what she has done--you cannot realize what she is."

Antoinette shrank away from him, still clinging to Mrs. Temple. There
was a fearless directness in her look which might have warned him.

"She is your mother," she said quietly.

"My mother!" he repeated; "yes, I will tell you what a mother she has
been to me--"

"Nick!"

It passes my power to write down the pity of that appeal, the
hopelessness of it, the yearning in it. Freeing herself from the girl,
Mrs. Temple took one step towards him, her arms held up. I had not
thought that his hatred of her was deep enough to resist it. It was
Antoinette whose intuition divined this ere he had turned away.

"You have chosen between me and her," he said; and before we could get
the poor lady to the seat under the oak, he had left the garden. In my
perturbation I glanced at Antoinette, but there was no other sign in her
face save of tenderness for Mrs. Temple.

Mrs. Temple had mercifully fainted. As I crossed the lawn I saw two
figures in the deep shadow beside the gallery, and I heard Nick's voice
giving orders to Benjy to pack and saddle. When I reached the garden
again the girl had loosed Mrs. Temple's gown, and was bending over her,
murmuring in her ear.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

Many hours later, when the moon was waning towards the horizon, fearful
of surprise by the coming day, I was riding slowly under the trees on the
road to New Orleans. Beside me, veiled in black, her head bowed, was
Mrs. Temple, and no word had escaped her since she had withdrawn herself
gently from the arms of Antoinette on the gallery at Les Iles. Nick had
gone long before. The hardest task had been to convince the girl that
Mrs. Temple might not stay. After that Antoinette had busied herself,
with a silent fortitude I had not thought was in her, making ready for
the lady's departure. I shall never forget her as she stood, a slender
figure of sorrow, looking down at us, the tears glistening on her cheeks.
And I could not resist the impulse to mount the steps once more.

"You were right, Antoinette," I whispered; "whatever happens, you will
remember that I am your friend. And I will bring him back to you if I
can."

She pressed my hand, and turned and went slowly into the house.






BOOK III

LOUISIANA


CHAPTER I

THE RIGHTS OF MAN

Were these things which follow to my thinking not extraordinary, I should
not write them down here, nor should I have presumed to skip nearly five
years of time. For indeed almost five years had gone by since the warm
summer night when I rode into New Orleans with Mrs. Temple. And in all
that time I had not so much as laid eyes on my cousin and dearest friend,
her son. I searched New Orleans for him in vain, and learned too late
that he had taken passage on a packet which had dropped down the river
the next morning, bound for Charleston and New York.

I have an instinct that this is not the place to relate in detail what
occurred to me before leaving New Orleans. Suffice it to say that I made
my way back through the swamps, the forests, the cane-brakes of the
Indian country, along the Natchez trail to Nashville, across the barrens
to Harrodstown in Kentucky, where I spent a week in that cabin which had
so long been for me a haven of refuge. Dear Polly Ann! She hugged me as
though I were still the waif whom she had mothered, and wept over the
little presents which I had brought the children. Harrodstown was
changed, new cabins and new faces met me at every turn, and Tom, more
disgruntled than ever, had gone a-hunting with Mr. Boone far into the
wilderness.

I went back to Louisville to take up once more the struggle for practice,
and I do not intend to charge so much as a page with what may be called
the even tenor of my life. I was not a man to get into trouble on my own
account. Louisville grew amazingly; white frame houses were built, and
even brick ones. And ere Kentucky became a State, in 1792, I had gone as
delegate to more than one of the Danville Conventions.

Among the nations, as you know, a storm raged, and the great swells from
that conflict threatened to set adrift and wreck the little republic but
newly launched. The noise of the tramping of great armies across the Old
World shook the New, and men in whom the love of fierce fighting was born
were stirred to quarrel among themselves. The Rights of Man! How many
wrongs have been done under that clause! The Bastille stormed; the Swiss
Guard slaughtered; the Reign of Terror, with its daily procession of
tumbrels through the streets of Paris; the murder of that amiable and
well-meaning gentleman who did his best to atone for the sins of his
ancestors; the fearful months of waiting suffered by his Queen before
she, too, went to her death. Often as I lighted my candle of an evening
in my little room to read of these things so far away, I would drop my
Kentucky Gazette to think of a woman whose face I remembered, to wonder
sadly whether Helene de St. Gre were among the lists. In her, I was
sure, was personified that courage for which her order will go down
eternally through the pages of history, and in my darker moments I
pictured her standing beside the guillotine with a smile that haunted me.

The hideous image of that strife was reflected amongst our own people.
Budget after budget was hurried by the winds across the sea. And swift
couriers carried the news over the Blue Wall by the Wilderness Trail
(widened now), and thundered through the little villages of the Blue
Grass country to the Falls. What interest, you will say, could the
pioneer lawyers and storekeepers and planters have in the French
Revolution? The Rights of Man! Down with kings! General Washington and
Mr. Adams and Mr. Hamilton might sigh for them, but they were not for the
free-born pioneers of the West. Citizen was the proper term
now,--Citizen General Wilkinson when that magnate came to town,
resplendent in his brigadier's uniform. It was thought that Mr.
Wilkinson would plot less were he in the army under the watchful eye of
his superiors. Little they knew him! Thus the Republic had a reward for
adroitness, for treachery, and treason. But what reward had it for the
lonely, embittered, stricken man whose genius and courage had gained for
it the great Northwest territory? What reward had the Republic for him
who sat brooding in his house above the Falls--for Citizen General Clark?

In those days you were not a Federalist or a Democrat, you were an
Aristocrat or a Jacobin. The French parties were our parties; the French
issue, our issue. Under the patronage of that saint of American
Jacobinism, Thomas Jefferson, a Jacobin society was organized in
Philadelphia,--special guardians of Liberty. And flying on the March
winds over the mountains the seed fell on the black soil of Kentucky:
Lexington had its Jacobin society, Danville and Louisville likewise their
patrons and protectors of the Rights of Mankind. Federalists were not
guillotined in Kentucky in the summer of 1793, but I might mention more
than one who was shot.

In spite of the Federalists, Louisville prospered, and incidentally I
prospered in a mild way. Mr. Crede, behind whose store I still lived,
was getting rich, and happened to have an affair of some importance in
Philadelphia. Mr. Wharton was kind enough to recommend a young lawyer
who had the following virtues: he was neither handsome nor brilliant, and
he wore snuff-colored clothes. Mr. Wharton also did me the honor to say
that I was cautious and painstaking, and had a habit of tiring out my
adversary. Therefore, in the early summer of 1793, I went to
Philadelphia. At that time, travellers embarking on such a journey were
prayed over as though they were going to Tartary. I was absent from
Louisville near a year, and there is a diary of what I saw and felt and
heard on this trip for the omission of which I will be thanked. The
great news of that day which concerns the world--and incidentally this
story--was that Citizen Genet had landed at Charleston.

Citizen Genet, Ambassador of the great Republic of France to the little
Republic of America, landed at Charleston, acclaimed by thousands, and
lost no time. Scarcely had he left that city ere American privateers had
slipped out of Charleston harbor to prey upon the commerce of the hated
Mistress of the Sea. Was there ever such a march of triumph as that of
the Citizen Ambassador northward to the capital? Everywhere toasted and
feasted, Monsieur Genet did not neglect the Rights of Man, for without
doubt the United States was to declare war on Britain within a fortnight.
Nay, the Citizen Ambassador would go into the halls of Congress and
declare war himself if that faltering Mr. Washington refused his duty.
Citizen Genet organized his legions as he went along, and threw
tricolored cockades from the windows of his carriage. And at his
glorious entry into Philadelphia (where I afterwards saw the great man
with my own eyes), Mr. Washington and his Federal-Aristocrats trembled in
their boots.

It was late in April, 1794, when I reached Pittsburg on my homeward
journey and took passage down the Ohio with a certain Captain Wendell of
the army, in a Kentucky boat. I had known the Captain in Louisville, for
he had been stationed at Fort Finney, the army post across the Ohio from
that town, and he had come to Pittsburg with a sergeant to fetch down the
river some dozen recruits. This was a most fortunate circumstance for
me, and in more ways than one. Although the Captain was a gruff and
blunt man, grizzled and weather-beaten, a woman-hater, he could be a
delightful companion when once his confidence was gained; and as we
drifted in the mild spring weather through the long reaches between the
passes he talked of Trenton and Brandywine and Yorktown. There was more
than one bond of sympathy between us, for he worshipped Washington,
detested the French party, and had a hatred for "filthy Democrats" second
to none I have ever encountered.

We stopped for a few days at Fort Harmar, where the Muskingum pays its
tribute to the Ohio, built by the Federal government to hold the
territory which Clark had won. And leaving that hospitable place we took
up our journey once more in the very miracle-time of the spring. The
sunlight was like amber-crystal, the tall cottonwoods growing by the
water-side flaunted a proud glory of green, the hills behind them that
formed the first great swells of the sea of the wilderness were clothed
in a thousand sheens and shaded by the purple budding of the oaks and
walnuts on the northern slopes. On the yellow sandbars flocks of geese
sat pluming in the sun, or rose at our approach to cast fleeting shadows
on the water, their HONK-HONKS echoing from the hills. Here and there a
hawk swooped down from the azure to break the surface and bear off a
wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see at
the brink an elk or doe, with head poised, watching us as we drifted. We
passed here and there a lonely cabin, to set my thoughts wandering
backwards to my youth, and here and there in the dimples of the hills
little clusters of white and brown houses, one day to become marts of the
Republic.

My joy at coming back at this golden season to a country I loved was
tempered by news I had heard from Captain Wendell, and which I had
discussed with the officers at Fort Harmar. The Captain himself had
broached the subject one cool evening, early in the journey, as we sat
over the fire in our little cabin. He had been telling me about
Brandywine, but suddenly he turned to me with a kind of fierce gesture
that was natural to the man.

"Ritchie," he said, "you were in the Revolution yourself. You helped
Clark to capture that country," and he waved his hand towards the
northern shore; "why the devil don't you tell me about it?"

"You never asked me," I answered.

He looked at me curiously.

"Well," he said, "I ask you now."

I began lamely enough, but presently my remembrance of the young man who
conquered all obstacles, who compelled all men he met to follow and obey
him, carried me strongly into the narrative. I remembered him, quiet,
self-contained, resourceful, a natural leader, at twenty-five a bulwark
for the sorely harried settlers of Kentucky; the man whose clear vision
alone had perceived the value of the country north of the Ohio to the
Republic, who had compelled the governor and council of Virginia to see
it likewise. Who had guarded his secret from all men, who in the face of
fierce opposition and intrigue had raised a little army to follow
him--they knew not where. Who had surprised Kaskaskia, cowed the tribes
of the North in his own person, and by sheer force of will drew after him
and kept alive a motley crowd of men across the floods and through the
ice to Vincennes.

We sat far into the night, the Captain listening as I had never seen a
man listen. And when at length I had finished he was for a long time
silent, and then he sprang to his feet with an oath that woke the
sleeping soldiers forward and glared at me.

"My God!" he cried, "it is enough to make a man curse his uniform to
think that such a man as Wilkinson wears it, while Clark is left to rot,
to drink himself under the table from disappointment, to plot with the
damned Jacobins--"

"To plot!" I cried, starting violently in my turn.

The Captain looked at me in astonishment.

"How long have you been away from Louisville?" he asked.

"It will be a year," I answered.

"Ah," said the Captain, "I will tell you. It is more than a year since
Clark wrote Genet, since the Ambassador bestowed on him a general's
commission in the army of the French Republic."

"A general's commission!" I exclaimed. "And he is going to France?" The
nation which had driven John Paul Jones from its service was now to lose
George Rogers Clark!

"To France!" laughed the Captain. "No, this is become France enough. He
is raising in Kentucky and in the Cumberland country an army with a
cursed, high-sounding name. Some of his old Illinois scouts--McChesney,
whom you mentioned, for one--have been collecting bear's meat and venison
hams all winter. They are going to march on Louisiana and conquer it for
the French Republic, for Liberty, Equality--the Rights of Man, anything
you like."

"On Louisiana!" I repeated; "what has the Federal government been doing?"

The Captain winked at me and sat down.

"The Federal government is supine, a laughing-stock--so our friends the
Jacobins say, who have been shouting at Mr. Easton's tavern all winter.
Nay, they declare that all this country west of the mountains, too, will
be broken off and set up into a republic, and allied with that most
glorious of all republics, France. Believe me, the Jacobins have not
been idle, and there have been strange-looking birds of French plumage
dodging between the General's house at Clarksville and the Bear Grass."

I was silent, the tears almost forcing themselves to my eyes at the
pathetic sordidness of what I had heard.

"It can come to nothing," continued the Captain, in a changed voice.
"General Clark's mind is unhinged by--disappointment. Mad Anthony[1] is
not a man to be caught sleeping, and he has already attended to a little
expedition from the Cumberland. Mad Anthony loves the General, as we all
do, and the Federal government is wiser than the Jacobins think. It may
not be necessary to do anything." Captain Wendell paused, and looked at
me fixedly. "Ritchie, General Clark likes you, and you have never
offended him. Why not go to his little house in Clarksville when you get
to Louisville and talk to him plainly, as I know you can? Perhaps you
might have some influence."

 [1] General Wayne of Revolutionary fame was then in command of that
district.



I shook my head sadly.

"I intend to go," I answered, "but I will have no influence."



CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE ABOVE THE FALLS

It was May-day, and shortly after dawn we slipped into the quiet water
which is banked up for many miles above the Falls. The Captain and I sat
forward on the deck, breathing deeply the sharp odor which comes from the
wet forest in the early morning, listening to the soft splash of the
oars, and watching the green form of Eighteen Mile Island as it gently
drew nearer and nearer. And ere the sun had risen greatly we had passed
Twelve Mile Island, and emerging from the narrow channel which divides
Six Mile Island from the northern shore, we beheld, on its terrace above
the Bear Grass, Louisville shining white in the morning sun. Majestic in
its mile of width, calm, as though gathering courage, the river seemed to
straighten for the ordeal to come, and the sound of its waters crying
over the rocks far below came faintly to my ear and awoke memories of a
day gone by. Fearful of the suck, we crept along the Indian shore until
we counted the boats moored in the Bear Grass, and presently above the
trees on our right we saw the Stars and Stripes floating from the log
bastion of Fort Finney. And below the fort, on the gentle sunny slope to
the river's brink, was spread the green garden of the garrison, with its
sprouting vegetables and fruit trees blooming pink and white.

We were greeted by a company of buff and blue officers at the landing,
and I was bidden to breakfast at their mess, Captain Wendell promising to
take me over to Louisville afterwards. He had business in the town, and
about eight of the clock we crossed the wide river in one of the barges
of the fort and made fast at the landing in the Bear Grass. But no
sooner had we entered the town than we met a number of country people on
horseback, with their wives and daughters--ay, and sweethearts--perched
up behind them: the men mostly in butternut linsey hunting shirts and
trousers, slouch hats, and red handkerchiefs stuck into their bosoms; the
women marvellously pretty and fresh in stiff cotton gowns and Quaker
hats, and some in crimped caps with ribbons neatly tied under the chin.
Before Mr. Easton's tavern Joe Handy, the fiddler, was reeling off a few
bars of "Hey, Betty Martin" to the familiar crowd of loungers under the
big poplar.

"It's Davy Ritchie!" shouted Joe, breaking off in the middle of the tune;
"welcome home, Davy. Ye're jest in time for the barbecue on the island."

"And Cap Wendell! Howdy, Cap!" drawled another, a huge, long-haired,
sallow, dirty fellow. But the Captain only glared.

"Damn him!" he said, after I had spoken to Joe and we had passed on, "HE
ought to be barbecued; he nearly bit off Ensign Barry's nose a couple of
months ago. Barry tried to stop the beast in a gouging fight."

The bright morning, the shady streets, the homelike frame and log houses,
the old-time fragrant odor of cornpone wafted out of the open doorways,
the warm greetings,--all made me happy to be back again. Mr. Crede
rushed out and escorted us into his cool store, and while he waited on
his country customers bade his negro brew a bowl of toddy, at the mention
of which Mr. Bill Whalen, chief habitue, roused himself from a stupor on
a tobacco barrel. Presently the customers, having indulged in the toddy,
departed for the barbecue, the Captain went to the fort, and Mr. Crede
and myself were left alone to talk over the business which had sent me to
Philadelphia.

At four o'clock, having finished my report and dined with my client, I
set out for Clarksville, for Mr. Crede had told me, among other things,
that the General was there. Louisville was deserted, the tavern porch
vacant; but tacked on the logs beside the door was a printed bill which
drew my curiosity. I stopped, caught by a familiar name in large type at
the head of it.

   "GEORGE R. CLARK, ESQUIRE, MAJOR-GENERAL IN THE ARMIES OF FRANCE
   AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY LEGION ON THE
   MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

             "PROPOSALS

"For raising volunteers for the reduction of the Spanish posts on the
Mississippi, for opening the trade of the said river and giving freedom
to all its inhabitants--"

I had got so far when I heard a noise of footsteps within, and Mr.
Easton himself came out, in his shirt-sleeves.

"By cricky, Davy," said he, "I'm right glad ter see ye ag'in. Readin'
the General's bill, are ye? Tarnation, I reckon Washington and all his
European fellers east of the mountains won't be able ter hold us back
this time. I reckon we'll gallop over Louisiany in the face of all the
Spaniards ever created. I've got some new whiskey I 'low will sink
tallow. Come in, Davy."

As he took me by the arm, a laughter and shouting came from the back
room.

"It's some of them Frenchy fellers come over from Knob Licks. They're in
it," and he pointed his thumb over his shoulder to the proclamation, "and
thar's one young American among 'em who's a t'arer. Come in."

I drank a glass of Mr. Easton's whiskey, and asked about the General.

"He stays over thar to Clarksville pretty much," said Mr. Easton. "Thar
ain't quite so much walkin' araound ter do," he added significantly.

I made my way down to the water-side, where Jake Landrasse sat alone on
the gunwale of a Kentucky boat, smoking a clay pipe as he fished. I had
to exercise persuasion to induce Jake to paddle me across, which he
finally agreed to do on the score of old friendship, and he declared that
the only reason he was not at the barbecue was because he was waiting to
take a few gentlemen to see General Clark. I agreed to pay the damages
if he were late in returning for these gentlemen, and soon he was
shooting me with pulsing strokes across the lake-like expanse towards the
landing at Fort Finney. Louisville and the fort were just above the head
of the Falls, and the little town of Clarksville, which Clark had
founded, at the foot of them. I landed, took the road that led parallel
with the river through the tender green of the woods, and as I walked the
mighty song which the Falls had sung for ages to the Wilderness rose
higher and higher, and the faint spray seemed to be wafted through the
forest and to hang in the air like the odor of a summer rain.

It was May-day. The sweet, caressing note of the thrush mingled with the
music of the water, the dogwood and the wild plum were in festal array;
but my heart was heavy with thinking of a great man who had cheapened
himself. At length I came out upon a clearing where fifteen log houses
marked the grant of the Federal government to Clark's regiment. Perched
on a tree-dotted knoll above the last spasm of the waters in their
two-mile race for peace, was a two-storied log house with a little,
square porch in front of the door. As I rounded the corner of the house
and came in sight of the porch I halted--by no will of my own--at the
sight of a figure sunken in a wooden chair. It was that of my old
Colonel. His hands were folded in front of him, his eyes were fixed but
dimly on the forests of the Kentucky shore across the water; his hair,
uncared for, fell on the shoulders of his faded blue coat, and the
stained buff waistcoat was unbuttoned. For he still wore unconsciously
the colors of the army of the American Republic.

"General!" I said.

He started, got to his feet, and stared at me.

"Oh, it's--it's Davy," he said. "I--I was expecting--some
friends--Davy. What--what's the matter, Davy?"

"I have been away. I am glad to see you again, General.

"Citizen General, sir, Major-general in the army of the French Republic
and Commander-in-chief of the French Revolutionary Legion on the
Mississippi."

"You will always be Colonel Clark to me, sir," I answered.

"You--you were the drummer boy, I remember, and strutted in front of the
regiment as if you were the colonel. Egad, I remember how you fooled the
Kaskaskians when you told them we were going away." He looked at me, but
his eyes were still fixed on the point beyond. "You were always older
than I, Davy. Are you married?"

In spite of myself, I laughed as I answered this question.

"You are as canny as ever," he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,--they are only possible for the
bachelor." Hearing a noise, he glanced nervously in the direction of the
woods, only to perceive his negro carrying a pail of water. "I--I was
expecting some friends," he said. "Sit down, Davy."

"I hope I am not intruding, General," I said, not daring to look at him.

"No, no, my son," he answered, "you are always welcome. Did we not
campaign together? Did we not--shoot these very falls together on our
way to Kaskaskia?" He had to raise his voice above the roar of the
water. "Faith, well I remember the day. And you saved it, Davy,--you, a
little gamecock, a little worldly-wise hop-o'-my-thumb, eh? Hamilton's
scalp hanging by a lock, egad--and they frightened out of their five wits
because it was growing dark." He laughed, and suddenly became solemn
again. "There comes a time in every man's life when it grows dark, Davy,
and then the cowards are afraid. They have no friends whose hands they
can reach out and feel. But you are my friend. You remember that you
said you would always be my friend? It--it was in the fort at Vincennes."

"I remember, General."

He rose from the steps, buttoned his waistcoat, and straightened himself
with an effort. He looked at me impressively.

"You have been a good friend indeed, Davy, a faithful friend," he said.
"You came to me when I was sick, you lent me money,"--he waved aside my
protest. "I am happy to say that I shall soon be in a position to repay
you, to reward you. My evil days are over, and I spurn that government
which spurned me, for the honor and glory of which I founded that
city,"--he pointed in the direction of Louisville,--"for the power and
wealth of which I conquered this Northwest territory. Listen! I am now
in the service of a republic where the people have rights, I am
Commander-in-chief of the French Revolutionary Legion on the Mississippi.
Despite the supineness of Washington, the American nation will soon be at
war with Spain. But my friends--and thank God they are many--will follow
me--they will follow me to Natchez and New Orleans,--ay, even to Santa Fe
and Mexico if I give the word. The West is with me, and for the West I
shall win the freedom of the Mississippi. For France and Liberty I shall
win back again Louisiana, and then I shall be a Marechal de Camp."

I could not help thinking of a man who had not been wont to speak of his
intentions, who had kept his counsel for a year before Kaskaskia.

"I need my drummer boy, Davy," he said, his face lighting up, "but he
will not be a drummer boy now. He will be a trusted officer of high
rank, mind you. Come," he cried, seizing me by the arm, "I will write
the commission this instant. But hold! you read French,--I remember the
day Father Gibault gave you your first lesson." He fumbled in his
pocket, drew out a letter, and handed it to me. "This is from Citizen
Michaux, the famous naturalist, the political agent of the French
Republic. Read what he has written me."

I read, I fear in a faltering voice:--

"Citoyen General:

"Un homme qui a donne des preuves de son amour pour la Liberte et de sa
haine pour le despotisme ne devait pas s'adresser en vain au ministre de
la Republique francaise. General, il est temps que les Americains libres
de l'Ouest soient debarasses d'un ennemie aussi injuste que meprisable."

When I had finished I glanced at the General, but he seemed not to be
heeding me. The sun was setting above the ragged line of forest, and a
blue veil was spreading over the tumbling waters. He took me by the arm
and led me into the house, into a bare room that was all awry. Maps hung
on the wall, beside them the General's new commission, rudely framed.
Among the littered papers on the table were two whiskey bottles and
several glasses, and strewn about were a number of chairs, the arms of
which had been whittled by the General's guests. Across the rough
mantel-shelf was draped the French tricolor, and before the fireplace on
the puncheons lay a huge bearskin which undoubtedly had not been shaken
for a year. Picking up a bottle, the General poured out generous
helpings in two of the glasses, and handed one to me.

"The mists are bad, Davy," said he "I--I cannot afford to get the fever
now. Let us drink success to the army of the glorious Republic, France."

"Let us drink first, General," I said, "to the old friendship between
us."

"Good!" he cried. Tossing off his liquor, he set down the glass and
began what seemed a fruitless search among the thousand papers on the
table. But at length, with a grunt of satisfaction, he produced a form
and held it under my eyes. At the top of the sheet was that much-abused
and calumniated lady, the Goddess of Liberty.

"Now," he said, drawing up a chair and dipping his quill into an almost
depleted ink-pot, "I have decided to make you, David Ritchie, with full
confidence in your ability and loyalty to the rights of liberty and
mankind, a captain in the Legion on the Mississippi."

I crossed the room swiftly, and as he put his pen to paper I laid my hand
on his arm.

"General, I cannot," I said. I had seen from the first the futility of
trying to dissuade him from the expedition, and I knew now that it would
never come off. I was willing to make almost any sacrifice rather than
offend him, but this I could not allow. The General drew himself up in
his chair and stared at me with a flash of his old look.

"You cannot?" he repeated; "you have affairs to attend to, I take it."

I tried to speak, but he rode me down.

"There is money to be made in that prosperous town of Louisville." He
did not understand the pain which his words caused me. He rose and laid
his hands affectionately on my shoulders. "Ah, Davy, commerce makes a
man timid. Do you forget the old days when I was the father and you the
son? Come! I will make you a fortune undreamed of, and you shall be my
fianancier once more."

"I had not thought of the money, General," I answered, "and I have always
been ready to leave my business to serve a friend."

"There, there," said the General, soothingly, "I know it. I would not
offend you. You shall have the commission, and you may come when it
pleases you."

He sat down again to write, but I restrained him.

"I cannot go, General," I said.

"Thunder and fury," cried the General, "a man might think you were a
weak-kneed Federalist." He stared at me, and stared again, and rose and
recoiled a step. "My God," he said, "you cannot be a Federalist, you
can't have marched to Kaskaskia and Vincennes, you can't have been a
friend of mine and have seen how the government of the United States has
treated me, and be a Federalist!"

It was an argument and an appeal which I had foreseen, yet which I knew
not how to answer. Suddenly there came, unbidden, his own counsel which
he had given me long ago, "Serve the people, as all true men should in a
Republic, but do not rely upon their gratitude." This man had bidden me
remember that.

"General," I said, trying to speak steadily, "it was you who gave me my
first love for the Republic. I remember you as you stood on the heights
above Kaskaskia waiting for the sun to go down, and you reminded me that
it was the nation's birthday. And you said that our nation was to be a
refuge of the oppressed of this earth, a nation made of all peoples, out
of all time. And you said that the lands beyond," and I pointed to the
West as he had done, "should belong to it until the sun sets on the sea
again."

I glanced at him, for he was silent, and in my life I can recall no
sadder moment than this. The General heard, but the man who had spoken
these words was gone forever. The eyes of this man before me were fixed,
as it were, upon space. He heard, but he did not respond; for the spirit
was gone. What I looked upon was the tortured body from which the
genius--the spirit I had worshipped--had fled. I turned away, only to
turn back in anger.

"What do you know of this France for which you are to fight?" I cried.
"Have you heard of the thousands of innocents who are slaughtered, of the
women and children who are butchered in the streets in the name of
Liberty? What have those blood-stained adventurers to do with Liberty,
what have the fish-wives who love the sight of blood to do with you that
would fight for them? You warned me that this people and this government
to which you have given so much would be ungrateful,--will the butchers
and fish-wives be more grateful?"

He caught only the word GRATEFUL, and he rose to his feet with something
of the old straightness and of the old power. And by evil chance his
eye, and mine, fell upon a sword hanging on the farther wall. Well I
remembered when he had received it, well I knew the inscription on its
blade, "Presented by the State of Virginia to her beloved son, George
Rogers Clark, who by the conquest of Illinois and St. Vincennes extended
her empire and aided in the defence of her liberties." By evil chance, I
say, his eye lighted on that sword. In three steps he crossed the room
to where it hung, snatched it from its scabbard, and ere I could prevent
him he had snapped it across his knee and flung the pieces in a corner.

"So much for the gratitude of my country," he said.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

I had gone out on the little porch and stood gazing over the expanse of
forest and waters lighted by the afterglow. Then I felt a hand upon my
shoulder, I heard a familiar voice calling me by an old name.

"Yes, General!" I turned wonderingly.

"You are a good lad, Davy. I trust you," he said. "I--I was expecting
some friends."

He lifted a hand that was not too steady to his brow and scanned the road
leading to the fort. Even as he spoke four figures emerged from the
woods,--undoubtedly the gentlemen who had held the council at the inn
that afternoon. We watched them in silence as they drew nearer, and then
something in the walk and appearance of the foremost began to bother me.
He wore a long, double-breasted, claret-colored redingote that fitted
his slim figure to perfection, and his gait was the easy gait of a man
who goes through the world careless of its pitfalls. So intently did I
stare that I gave no thought to those who followed him. Suddenly, when
he was within fifty paces, a cry escaped me,--I should have known that
smiling, sallow, weakly handsome face anywhere in the world.

The gentleman was none other than Monsieur Auguste de St. Gre. At the
foot of the steps he halted and swept his hand to his hat with a military
salute.

"Citizen General," he said gracefully, "we come and pay our respec's to
you and mek our report, and ver' happy to see you look well. Citoyens,
Vive la Republique!--Hail to the Citizen General!"

"Vive la Republique! Vive le General!" cried the three citizens behind
him.

"Citizens, you are very welcome," answered the General, gravely, as he
descended the steps and took each of them by the hand. "Citizens, allow
me to introduce to you my old friend, Citizen David Ritchie--"

"Milles diables!" cried the Citizen St. Gre, seizing me by the hand,
"c'est mon cher ami, Monsieur Reetchie. Ver' happy you have this honor,
Monsieur;" and snatching his wide-brimmed military cocked hat from his
head he made me a smiling, sweeping bow.

"What!" cried the General to me, "you know the Sieur de St. Gre, Davy?"

"He is my guest once in Louisiane, mon general," Monsieur Auguste
explained; "my family knows him."

"You know the Sieur de St. Gre, Davy?" said the General again.

"Yes, I know him," I answered, I fear with some brevity.

"Podden me," said Auguste, "I am now Citizen Captain de St. Gre. And you
are also embark in the glorious cause--Ah, I am happy," he added,
embracing me with a winning glance.

I was relieved from the embarrassment of denying the impeachment by
reason of being introduced to the other notables, to Citizen Captain
Sullivan, who wore an undress uniform consisting of a cotton butternut
hunting shirt. He had charge on the Bear Grass of building the boats for
the expedition, and was likewise a prominent member of that august body,
the Jacobin Society of Lexington. Next came Citizen Quartermaster
Depeau, now of Knob Licks, Kentucky, sometime of New Orleans. The
Citizen Quartermaster wore his hair long in the backwoods fashion; he had
a keen, pale face and sunken eyes.

"Ver' glad mek you known to me, Citizen Reetchie."

The fourth gentleman was likewise French, and called Gignoux. The
Citizen Gignoux made some sort of an impression on me which I did not
stop to analyze. He was a small man, with a little round hand that
wriggled out of my grasp; he had a big French nose, bright eyes that
popped a little and gave him the habit of looking sidewise, and grizzled,
chestnut eyebrows over them. He had a thin-lipped mouth and a round
chin.

"Citizen Reetchie, is it? I laik to know citizen's name glorified by
gran' cause. Reetchie?"

"Will you enter, citizens?" said the General.

I do not know why I followed them unless it were to satisfy a
devil-prompted curiosity as to how Auguste de St. Gre had got there. We
went into the room, where the General's slovenly negro was already
lighting the candles and the General proceeded to collect and fill six of
the glasses on the table. It was Citizen Captain Sullivan who gave the
toast.

"Citizens," he cried, "I give you the health of the foremost apostle of
Liberty in the Western world, the General who tamed the savage tribes,
who braved the elements, who brought to their knees the minions of a
despot king." A slight suspicion of a hiccough filled this gap. "Cast
aside by an ungrateful government, he is still unfaltering in his
allegiance to the people. May he lead our Legion victorious through the
Spanish dominions.

"Vive la Republique!" they shouted, draining their glasses. "Vive le
citoyen general Clark!"

"Louisiana!" shouted Citizen Sullivan, warming, "Louisiana, groaning
under oppression and tyranny, is imploring us with uplifted hands. To
those remaining veteran patriots whose footsteps we followed to this
distant desert, and who by their blood and toil have converted it into a
smiling country, we now look. Under your guidance, Citizen General, we
fought, we bled--"

How far the Citizen Captain would have gone is problematical. I had
noticed a look of disgust slowly creeping into the Citizen
Quartermaster's eyes, and at this juncture he seized the Citizen Captain
and thrust him into a chair.

"Sacre vent!" he exclaimed, "it is the proclamation--he recites the
proclamation! I see he have participate in those handbill. Poof, the
world is to conquer,--let us not spik so much."

"I give you one toast," said the little Citizen Gignoux, slyly, "we all
bring back one wife from Nouvelle Orleans!

"Ha," exclaimed the Sieur de St. Gre, laughing, "the Citizen Captain
Depeau--he has already one wife in Nouvelle Orleans."[1]

 [1] It is unnecessary for the editor to remind the reader that these
are not Mr. Ritchie's words, but those of an adventurer. Mr. Depeau was
an honest and worthy gentleman, earnest enough in a cause which was more
to his credit than to an American's. According to contemporary evidence,
Madame Depeau was in New Orleans.



The Citizen Quartermaster was angry at this, and it did not require any
great perspicacity on my part to discover that he did not love the
Citizen de St. Gre.

"He is call in his country, Gumbo de St. Gre," said Citizen Depeau. "It
is a deesh in that country. But to beesness, citizens,--we embark on
glorious enterprise. The King and Queen of France, she pay for her
treason with their haids, and we must be prepare' for do the sem."

"Ha," exclaimed the Sieur de St. Gre, "the Citizen Quartermaster will
lose his provision before his haid."

The inference was plain, and the Citizen Quartermaster was quick to take
it up.

"We are all among frien's," said he. "Why I call you Gumbo de St. Gre?
When I come first settle in Louisiane you was wild man--yes. Drink
tafia, fight duel, spend family money. Aristocrat then. No, I not hold
my tongue. You go France and Monsieur le Marquis de St. Gre he get you
in gardes du corps of the King. Yes, I tell him. You tell the Citizen
General how come you Jacobin now, and we see if he mek you Captain."

A murmur of surprise escaped from several of the company, and they all
stared at the Sieur de St. Gre. But General Clark brought down his fist
on the table with something of his old-time vigor, and the glasses
rattled.

"Gentlemen, I will have no quarrelling in my presence," he cried; "and I
beg to inform Citizen Depeau that I bestow my commissions where it
pleases me."

Auguste de St. Gre rose, flushing, to his feet. "Citizens," he said,
with a fluency that was easy for him, "I never mek secret of my
history--no. It is true my relation, Monsieur le Marquis de St. Gre,
bought me a pair of colors in the King's gardes du corps."

"And is it not truth you tremple the coackade, what I hear from
Philadelphe?" cried Depeau.

Monsieur Auguste smiled with a patient tolerance.

"If you hev pains to mek inquiry," said he, "you must learn that I join
le Marquis de La Fayette and the National Guard. That I have since fight
for the Revolution. That I am come now home to fight for Louisiane, as
Monsieur Genet will tell you whom I saw in Philadelphe."

"The Citizen Capitaine--he spiks true."

All eyes were turned towards Gignoux, who had been sitting back in his
chair, very quiet.

"It is true what he say," he repeated, "I have it by Monsieur Genet
himself."

"Gentlemen," said General Clark, "this is beside the question, and I will
not have these petty quarrels. I may as well say to you now that I have
chosen the Citizen Captain to go at once to New Orleans and organize a
regiment among the citizens there faithful to France. On account of his
family and supposed Royalist tendencies he will not be suspected. I fear
that a month at least has yet to elapse before our expedition can move."

"It is one wise choice," put in Monsieur Gignoux.

"Monsieur le general and gentlemen," said the Sieur de St. Gre,
gracefully, "I thank you ver' much for the confidence. I leave by first
flatboat and will have all things stir up when you come. The citizens of
Louisiane await you. If necessair, we have hole in levee ready to cut."

"Citizens," interrupted General Clark, sitting down before the ink-pot,
"let us hear the Quartermaster's report of the supplies at Knob Licks,
and Citizen Sullivan's account of the boats. But hold," he cried,
glancing around him, "where is Captain Temple? I heard that he had come
to Louisville from the Cumberland to-day. Is he not going with you to
New Orleans, St. Gre?"

I took up the name involuntarily.

"Captain Temple," I repeated, while they stared at me. "Nicholas
Temple?"

It was Auguste de St. Gre who replied.

"The sem," he said. "I recall he was along with you in Nouvelle Orleans.
He is at ze tavern, and he has had one gran' fight, and he is ver'--I am
sorry--intoxicate--"

I know not how I made my way through the black woods to Fort Finney,
where I discovered Jake Landrasse and his canoe. The road was long, and
yet short, for my brain whirled with the expectation of seeing Nick
again, and the thought of this poor, pathetic, ludicrous expedition
compared to the sublime one I had known.

George Rogers Clark had come to this!



CHAPTER III

LOUISVILLE CELEBRATES

"They have gran' time in Louisville to-night, Davy," said Jake Landrasse,
as he paddled me towards the Kentucky shore; "you hear?"

"I should be stone deaf if I didn't," I answered, for the shouting which
came from the town filled me with forebodings.

"They come back from the barbecue full of whiskey," said Jake, "and a
young man at the tavern come out on the porch and he say, 'Get ready you
all to go to Louisiana! You been hole back long enough by tyranny.' Sam
Barker come along and say he a Federalist. They done have a gran' fight,
he and the young feller, and Sam got licked. He went at Sam just like a
harricane."

"And then?" I demanded.

"Them four wanted to leave," said Jake, taking no trouble to disguise his
disgust, "and I had to fetch 'em over. I've got to go back and wait for
'em now," and he swore with sincere disappointment. "I reckon there
ain't been such a jamboree in town for years."

Jake had not exaggerated. Gentlemen from Moore's Settlement, from
Sullivan's Station on the Bear Grass,--to be brief, the entire male
population of the county seemed to have moved upon Louisville after the
barbecue, and I paused involuntarily at the sight which met my eyes as I
came into the street. A score of sputtering, smoking pine-knots threw a
lurid light on as many hilarious groups, and revealed, fantastically
enough, the boles and lower branches of the big shade trees above them.
Navigation for the individual, difficult enough lower down, in front of
the tavern became positively dangerous. There was a human eddy,--nay, a
maelstrom would better describe it. Fights began, but ended abortively
by reason of the inability of the combatants to keep their feet; one man
whose face I knew passed me with his hat afire, followed by several
companions in gusts of laughter, for the torch-bearers were careless and
burned the ears of their friends in their enthusiasm. Another person
whom I recognized lacked a large portion of the front of his attire, and
seemed sublimely unconscious of the fact. His face was badly scratched.
Several other friends of mine were indulging in brief intervals of rest
on the ground, and I barely avoided stepping on them. Still other
gentlemen were delivering themselves of the first impressive periods of
orations, only to be drowned by the cheers of their auditors. These were
the snatches which I heard as I picked my way onward with exaggerated
fear:--

"Gentlemen, the Mississippi is ours, let the tyrants who forbid its use
beware!" "To hell with the Federal government!" "I tell you, sirs, this
land is ours. We have conquered it with our blood, and I reckon no
Spaniard is goin' to stop us. We ain't come this far to stand still. We
settled Kaintuck, fit off the redskins, and we'll march across the
Mississippi and on and on--" "To Louisiany!" they shouted, and the
whole crowd would take it up, "To Louisiany! Open the river!"

So absorbed was I in my own safety and progress that I did not pause to
think (as I have often thought since) of the full meaning of this, though
I had marked it for many years. The support given to Wilkinson's plots,
to Clark's expedition, was merely the outward and visible sign of the
onward sweep of a resistless race. In spite of untold privations and
hardships, of cruel warfare and massacre, these people had toiled over
the mountains into this land, and impatient of check or hindrance would,
even as Clark had predicted, when their numbers were sufficient leap the
Mississippi. Night or day, drunk or sober, they spoke of this thing with
an ever increasing vehemence, and no man of reflection who had read their
history could say that they would be thwarted. One day Louisiana would
be theirs and their children's for the generations to come. One day
Louisiana would be American.

That I was alive and unscratched when I got as far as the tavern is a
marvel. Amongst all the passion-lit faces which surrounded me I could
get no sight of Nick's, and I managed to make my way to a momentarily
quiet corner of the porch. As I leaned against the wall there, trying to
think what I should do, there came a great cheering from a little way up
the street, and then I straightened in astonishment. Above the cheering
came the sound of a drum beaten in marching time, and above that there
burst upon the night what purported to be the "Marseillaise," taken up
and bawled by a hundred drunken throats and without words. Those around
me who were sufficiently nimble began to run towards the noise, and I ran
after them. And there, marching down the middle of the street at the
head of a ragged and most indecorous column of twos, in the centre of a
circle of light cast by a pine-knot which Joe Handy held, was Mr.
Nicholas Temple. His bearing, if a trifle unsteady, was proud, and--if I
could believe my eyes--around his neck was slung the thing which I prized
above all my possessions,--the drum which I had carried to Kaskaskia and
Vincennes! He had taken it from the peg in my room.

I shrink from putting on paper the sentimental side of my nature, and
indeed I could give no adequate idea of my affection for that drum. And
then there was Nick, who had been lost to me for five years! My impulse
was to charge the procession, seize Nick and the drum together, and drag
them back to my room; but the futility and danger of such a course were
apparent, and the caution for which I am noted prevented my undertaking
it. The procession, augmented by all those to whom sufficient power of
motion remained, cheered by the helpless but willing ones on the ground,
swept on down the street and through the town. Even at this late day I
shame to write it! Behold me, David Ritchie, Federalist, execrably
sober, at the head of the column behind the leader. Was it twenty
minutes, or an hour, that we paraded? This I know, that we slighted no
street in the little town of Louisville. What was my bearing,--whether
proud or angry or carelessly indifferent,--I know not. The glare of Joe
Handy's torch fell on my face, Joe Handy's arm and that of another
gentleman, the worse for liquor, were linked in mine, and they saw fit to
applaud at every step my conversion to the cause of Liberty. We passed
time and time again the respectable door-yards of my Federalist friends,
and I felt their eyes upon me with that look which the angels have for
the fallen. Once, in front of Mr. Wharton's house, Mr. Handy burned my
hair, apologized, staggered, and I took the torch! And I used it to good
advantage in saving the drum from capture. For Mr. Temple, with all the
will in the world, had begun to stagger. At length, after marching
seemingly half the night, they halted by common consent before the house
of a prominent Democrat who shall be nameless, and, after some minutes of
vain importuning, Nick, with a tattoo on the drum, marched boldly up to
the gate and into the yard. A desperate cunning came to my aid. I flung
away the torch, leaving the head of the column in darkness, broke from
Mr. Handy's embrace, and, seizing Nick by the arm, led him onward through
the premises, he drumming with great docility. Followed by a few
stragglers only (some of whom went down in contact with the trees of the
orchard), we came to a gate at the back which I knew well, which led
directly into the little yard that fronted my own rooms behind Mr.
Crede's store. Pulling Nick through the gate, I slammed it, and he was
only beginning to protest when I had him safe within my door, and the
bolt slipped behind him. As I struck a light something fell to the floor
with a crash, an odor of alcohol filled the air, and as the candle caught
the flame I saw a shattered whiskey bottle at my feet and a room which
had been given over to carousing. In spite of my feelings I could not
but laugh at the perfectly irresistible figure my cousin made, as he
stood before me with the drum slung in front of him. His hat was gone,
his dust-covered clothes awry, but he smiled at me benignly and without a
trace of surprise.

"Sho you've come back at lasht, Davy," he said. "You're--you're
very--irregular. You'll lose--law bishness. Y-you're worse'n Andy
Jackson--he's always fightin'."

I relieved him, unprotesting, of the drum, thanking my stars there was so
much as a stick left of it. He watched me with a silent and exaggerated
interest as I laid it on the table. From a distance without came the
shouts of the survivors making for the tavern.

"'Sfortunate you had the drum, Davy," he said gravely, "'rwe'd had no
procession."

"It is fortunate I have it now," I answered, looking ruefully at the
battered rim where Nick had missed the skin in his ardor.

"Davy," said he, "funny thing--I didn't know you wash a Jacobite. Sh'ou
hear," he added relevantly, "th' Andy Jackson was married?"

"No," I answered, having no great interest in Mr. Jackson. "Where have
you been seeing him again?"

"Nashville on Cumberland. Jackson'sh county sholicitor,--devil of a man.
I'll tell you, Davy," he continued, laying an uncertain hand on my
shoulder and speaking with great earnestness, "I had Chicashaw
horse--Jackson'd Virginia thoroughbred--had a race--'n' Jackson wanted to
shoot me 'n' I wanted to shoot Jackson. 'N' then we all went to the Red
Heifer--"

"What the deuce is the Red Heifer?" I asked.

"'N'dishtillery over a shpring, 'n' they blow a horn when the liquor
runsh. 'N' then we had supper in Major Lewish's tavern. Major Lewis
came in with roast pig on platter. You know roast pig, Davy? . . . 'N'
Jackson pulls out's hunting knife n'waves it very mashestic. . . . You
know how mashestic Jackson is when he--wantshtobe?" He let go my
shoulder, brushed back his hair in a fiery manner, and, seizing a knife
which unhappily lay on the table, gave me a graphic illustration of Mr.
Jackson about to carve the pig, I retreating, and he coming on. "N' when
he stuck the pig, Davy,--"

He poised the knife for an instant in the air, and then, before I could
interpose, he brought it down deftly through the head of my precious
drum, and such a frightful, agonized squeal filled the room that even I
shivered involuntarily, and for an instant I had a vivid vision of a pig
struggling in the hands of a butcher. I laughed in spite of myself. But
Nick regarded me soberly.

"Funny thing, Davy," he said, "they all left the room." For a moment he
appeared to be ruminating on this singular phenomenon. Then he
continued: "'N' Jackson was back firsht, 'n' he was damned impolite....
'n' he shook his fist in my face" (here Nick illustrated Mr. Jackson's
gesture), "'n' he said, 'Great God, sir, y' have a fine talent but if y'
ever do that again, I'll--I'll kill you.' . . . That'sh what he said,
Davy."

"How long have you been in Nashville, Nick?" I asked.

"A year," he said, "lookin' after property I won rattle-an'-shnap--you
remember?"

"And why didn't you let me know you were in Nashville?" I asked, though I
realized the futility of the question.

"Thought you was--mad at me," he answered, "but you ain't, Davy. You've
been very good-natured t' let me have your drum." He straightened. "I
am ver' much obliged."

"And where were you before you went to Nashville?" I said.

"Charleston, 'Napolis . . . Philadelphia . . . everywhere," he answered.

"Now," said he, "'mgoin' t' bed."

I applauded this determination, but doubted whether he meant to carry it
out. However, I conducted him to the back room, where he sat himself
down on the edge of my four-poster, and after conversing a little longer
on the subject of Mr. Jackson (who seemed to have gotten upon his brain),
he toppled over and instantly fell asleep with his clothes on. For a
while I stood over him, the old affection welling up so strongly within
me that my eyes were dimmed as I looked upon his face. Spare and
handsome it was, and boyish still, the weaker lines emphasized in its
relaxation. Would that relentless spirit with which he had been born
make him, too, a wanderer forever? And was it not the strangest of fates
which had impelled him to join this madcap expedition of this other man I
loved, George Rogers Clark?

I went out, closed the door, and lighting another candle took from my
portfolio a packet of letters. Two of them I had not read, having found
them only on my return from Philadelphia that morning. They were all
signed simply "Sarah Temple," they were dated at a certain number in the
Rue Bourbon, New Orleans, and each was a tragedy in that which it had
left unsaid. There was no suspicion of heroics, there was no railing at
fate; the letters breathed but the one hope,--that her son might come
again to that happiness of which she had robbed him. There were in all
but twelve, and they were brief, for some affliction had nearly deprived
the lady of the use of her right hand. I read them twice over, and then,
despite the lateness of the hour, I sat staring at the candles,
reflecting upon my own helplessness. I was startled from this revery by
a knock. Rising hastily, I closed the door of my bedroom, thinking I had
to do with some drunken reveller who might be noisy. The knock was
repeated. I slipped back the bolt and peered out into the night.

"I saw dat light," said a voice which I recognized; "I think I come in to
say good night."

I opened the door, and he walked in.

"You are one night owl, Monsieur Reetchie," he said.

"And you seem to prefer the small hours for your visits, Monsieur de St.
Gre," I could not refrain from replying.

He swept the room with a glance, and I thought a shade of disappointment
passed over his face. I wondered whether he were looking for Nick. He
sat himself down in my chair, stretched out his legs, and regarded me
with something less than his usual complacency.

"I have much laik for you, Monsieur Reetchie," he began, and waved aside
my bow of acknowledgment "Before I go away from Louisville I want to spik
with you,--this is a risson why I am here. You listen to what dat Depeau
he say,--dat is not truth. My family knows you, I laik to have you hear
de truth."

He paused, and while I wondered what revelations he was about to make, I
could not repress my impatience at the preamble.

"You are my frien', you have prove it," he continued. "You remember las'
time we meet?" (I smiled involuntarily.) "You was in bed, but you not
need be ashame' for me. Two days after I went to France, and I not in
New Orleans since."

"Two days after you saw me?" I repeated.

"Yaas, I run away. That was the mont' of August, 1789, and we have not
then heard in New Orleans that the Bastille is attack. I lan' at La
Havre,--it is the en' of Septembre. I go to the Chateau de St.
Gre--great iron gates, long avenue of poplar,--big house all 'round a
court, and Monsieur le Marquis is at Versailles. I borrow three louis
from the concierge, and I go to Versailles to the hotel of Monsieur le
Marquis. There is all dat trouble what you read about going on, and
Monsieur le Marquis he not so glad to see me for dat risson. 'Mon cher
Auguste,' he cry, 'you want to be of officier in gardes de corps? You
are not afred?'" (Auguste stiffened.) "'I am a St. Gre, Monsieur le
Marquis. I am afred of nothings,' I answered. He tek me to the King, I
am made lieutenant, the mob come and the King and Queen are carry off to
Paris. The King is prisoner, Monsieur le Marquis goes back to the
Chateau de St. Gre. France is a republic. Monsieur--que voulez-vous?"
(The Sieur de St. Gre shrugged his shoulders.) "I, too, become
Republican. I become officier in the National Guard,--one must move with
the time. Is it not so, Monsieur? I deman' of you if you ever expec' to
see a St. Gre a Republican."

I expressed my astonishment.

"I give up my right, my principle, my family. I come to America--I go to
New Orleans where I have influence and I stir up revolution for France,
for Liberty. Is it not noble cause?"

I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask Monsieur Auguste why he left
France, but the uselessness of it was apparent.

"You see, Monsieur, I am justify before you, before my frien's,--that is
all I care," and he gave another shrug in defiance of the world at large.
"What I have done, I have done for principle. If I remain Royalist, I
might have marry my cousin, Mademoiselle de St. Gre. Ha, Monsieur, you
remember--the miniature you were so kin' as to borrow me four hundred
livres?"

"I remember," I said.

"It is because I have much confidence in you, Monsieur," he said, "it is
because I go--peut-etre--to dangere, to death, that I come here and ask
you to do me a favor."

"You honor me too much, Monsieur," I answered, though I could scarce
refrain from smiling.

"It is because of your charactair," Monsieur Auguste was good enough to
say. "You are to be repose' in, you are to be rely on. Sometime I think
you ver' ole man. And this is why, and sence you laik objects of art,
that I bring this and ask you keep it while I am in dangere."

I was mystified. He thrust his hand into his coat and drew forth an oval
object wrapped in dirty paper, and then disclosed to my astonished eyes
the miniature of Mademoiselle de St. Gre,--the miniature, I say, for the
gold back and setting were lacking. Auguste had retained only the
ivory,--whether from sentiment or necessity I will not venture. The
sight of it gave me a strange sensation, and I can scarcely write of the
anger and disgust which surged over me, of the longing to snatch it from
his trembling fingers. Suddenly I forgot Auguste in the lady herself.
There was something emblematical in the misfortune which had bereft the
picture of its setting. Even so the Revolution had taken from her a
brilliant life, a king and queen, home and friends. Yet the spirit
remained unquenchable, set above its mean surroundings,--ay, and
untouched by them. I was filled with a painful curiosity to know what
had become of her, which I repressed. Auguste's voice aroused me.

"Ah, Monsieur, is it not a face to love, to adore?"

"It is a face to obey," I answered, with some heat, and with more truth
than I knew.

"Mon Dieu, Monsieur, it is so. It is that mek me love--you know not
how. You know not what love is, Monsieur Reetchie, you never love laik
me. You have not sem risson. Monsieur," he continued, leaning forward
and putting his hand on my knee, "I think she love me--I am not sure. I
should not be surprise'. But Monsieur le Marquis, her father, he trit me
ver' bad. Monsieur le Marquis is guillotine' now, I mus' not spik evil
of him, but he marry her to one ol' garcon, Le Vicomte d'Ivry-le-Tour."

"So Mademoiselle is married," I said after a pause.

"Oui, she is Madame la Vicomtesse now; I fall at her feet jus' the sem.
I hear of her once at Bel Oeil, the chateau of Monsieur le Prince de
Ligne in Flander'. After that they go I know not where. They are
exile',--los' to me." He sighed, and held out the miniature to me.
"Monsieur, I esk you favor. Will you be as kin' and keep it for me
again?"

I have wondered many times since why I did not refuse. Suffice it to say
that I took it. And Auguste's face lighted up.

"I am a thousan' times gret'ful," he cried; and added, as though with an
afterthought, "Monsieur, would you be so kin' as to borrow me fif'
dollars?"



CHAPTER IV

OF A SUDDEN RESOLUTION

It was nearly morning when I fell asleep in my chair, from sheer
exhaustion, for the day before had been a hard one, even for me. I awoke
with a start, and sat for some minutes trying to collect my scattered
senses. The sun streamed in at my open door, the birds hopped on the
lawn, and the various sounds of the bustling life of the little town came
to me from beyond. Suddenly, with a glimmering of the mad events of the
night, I stood up, walked uncertainly into the back room, and stared at
the bed.

It was empty. I went back into the outer room; my eye wandered from the
shattered whiskey bottle, which was still on the floor, to the table
littered with Mrs. Temple's letters. And there, in the midst of them,
lay a note addressed with my name in a big, unformed hand. I opened it
mechanically.

   "Dear Davy,"--so it ran,--"I have gone away, I cannot tell you where.
   Some day I will come back and you will forgive me. God bless you!
                    NICK."

He had gone away! To New Orleans? I had long ceased trying to account
for Nick's actions, but the more I reflected, the more incredible it
seemed to me that he should have gone there, of all places. And yet I
had had it from Clark's own lips (indiscreet enough now!) that Nick and
St. Gre were to prepare the way for an insurrection there. My thoughts
ran on to other possibilities; would he see his mother? But he had no
reason to know that Mrs. Temple was still in New Orleans. Then my glance
fell on her letters, lying open on the table. Had he read them? I put
this down as improbable, for he was a man who held strictly to a point of
honor.

And then there was Antoinette de St. Gre! I ceased to conjecture here,
dashed some water in my eyes, pulled myself together, and, seizing my
hat, hurried out into the street. I made a sufficiently indecorous
figure as I ran towards the water-side, barely nodding to my
acquaintances on the way. It was a fresh morning, a river breeze stirred
the waters of the Bear Grass, and as I stood, scanning the line of boats
there, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to confront a little man
with grizzled, chestnut eyebrows. He was none other than the Citizen
Gignoux.

"You tek ze air, Monsieur Reetchie?" said he. "You look for some one,
yes? You git up too late see him off."

I made a swift resolve never to quibble with this man.

"So Mr. Temple has gone to New Orleans with the Sieur de St. Gre," I
said.

Citizen Gignoux laid a fat finger on one side of his great nose. The
nose was red and shiny, I remember, and glistened in the sunlight.

"Ah," said he, "'tis no use tryin' hide from you. However, Monsieur
Reetchie, you are the ver' soul of honor. And then your frien'! I know
you not betray the Sieur de St. Gre. He is ver' fon' of you."

"Betray!" I exclaimed; "there is no question of betrayal. As far as I
can see, your plans are carried on openly, with a fine contempt for the
Federal government."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"'Tis not my doin'," he said, "but I am--what you call it?--a cipher.
Sicrecy is what I believe. But drink too much, talk too much--is it not
so, Monsieur? And if Monsieur le Baron de Carondelet, ze governor, hear
they are in New Orleans, I think they go to Havana or Brazil." He
smiled, but perhaps the expression of my face caused him to sober
abruptly. "It is necessair for the cause. We must have good Revolution
in Louisiane."

A suspicion of this man came over me, for a childlike simplicity
characterized the other ringleaders in this expedition. Clark had had
acumen once, and lost it; St. Gre was a fool; Nick Temple was leading
purposely a reckless life; the Citizens Sullivan and Depeau had, to say
the least, a limited knowledge of affairs. All of these were responding
more or less sincerely to the cry of the people of Kentucky (every day
more passionate) that something be done about Louisiana. But Gignoux
seemed of a different feather. Moreover, he had been too shrewd to deny
what Colonel Clark would have denied in a soberer moment,--that St. Gre
and Nick had gone to New Orleans.

"You not spik, Monsieur. You not think they have success. You are not
Federalist, no, for I hear you march las night with your frien',--I hear
you wave torch."

"You make it your business to hear a great deal, Monsieur Gignoux," I
retorted, my temper slipping a little.

He hastened to apologize.

"Mille pardons, Monsieur," he said; "I see you are Federalist--but drunk.
Is it not so? Monsieur, you tink this ver' silly thing--this
expedition."

"Whatever I think, Monsieur," I answered, "I am a friend of General
Clark's."

"An enemy of ze cause?" he put in.

"Monsieur," I said, "if President Washington and General Wayne do not
think it worth while to interfere with your plans, neither do I."

I left him abruptly, and went back to my long-delayed affairs with a
heavy heart. The more I thought, the more criminally foolish Nick's
journey seemed to me. However puerile the undertaking, De Lemos at
Natchez and Carondelet at New Orleans had not the reputation of sleeping
at their posts, and their hatred for Americans was well known. I sought
General Clark, but he had gone to Knob Licks, and in my anxiety I lay
awake at nights tossing in my bed.

One evening, perhaps four days after Nick's departure, I went into the
common room of the tavern, and there I was surprised to see an old
friend. His square, saffron face was just the same, his little jet eyes
snapped as brightly as ever, his hair--which was swept high above his
forehead and tied in an eelskin behind--was as black as when I had seen
it at Kaskaskia. I had met Monsieur Vigo many times since, for he was a
familiar figure amongst the towns of the Ohio and the Mississippi, and
from Vincennes to Anse a la Graisse, and even to New Orleans. His
reputation as a financier was greater than ever. He was talking to my
friend, Mr. Marshall, but he rose when he saw me, with a beaming smile.

"Ha, it is Davy," he cried, "but not the sem lil drummer boy who would
not come into my store. Reech lawyer now,--I hear you make much money
now, Davy."

"Congress money?" I said.

Monsieur Vigo threw out his hands, and laughed exactly as he had done in
his log store at Kaskaskia.

"Congress have never repay me one sou," said Monsieur Vigo, making a
face. "I have try--I have talk--I have represent--it is no good. Davy,
it is your fault. You tell me tek dat money. You call dat finance?"

"David," said Mr. Marshall, sharply, "what the devil is this I hear of
your carrying a torch in a Jacobin procession?"

"You may put it down to liquor, Mr. Marshall," I answered.

"Then you must have had a cask, egad," said Mr. Marshall, "for I never
saw you drunk."

I laughed.

"I shall not attempt to explain it, sir," I answered.

"You must not allow your drum to drag you into bad company again," said
he, and resumed his conversation. As I suspected, it was a vigorous
condemnation of General Clark and his new expedition. I expressed my
belief that the government did not regard it seriously, and would forbid
the enterprise at the proper time.

"You are right, sir," said Mr. Marshall, bringing down his fist on the
table. "I have private advices from Philadelphia that the President's
consideration for Governor Shelby is worn out, and that he will issue a
proclamation within the next few days warning all citizens at their peril
from any connection with the pirates."

I laughed.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. Marshall," said I, "Citizen Genet has been
liberal with nothing except commissions, and they have neither money nor
men."

"The rascals have all left town," said Mr. Marshall. "Citizen
Quartermaster Depeau, their local financier, has gone back to his store
at Knob Licks. The Sieur de St. Gre and a Mr. Temple, as doubtless you
know, have gone to New Orleans. And the most mysterious and therefore
the most dangerous of the lot, Citizen Gignoux, has vanished like an evil
spirit. It is commonly supposed that he, too, has gone down the river.
You may see him, Vigo," said Mr. Marshall, turning to the trader; "he is
a little man with a big nose and grizzled chestnut eyebrows."

"Ah, I know a lil 'bout him," said Monsieur Vigo; "he was on my boat two
days ago, asking me questions."

"The devil he was!" said Mr. Marshall.

I had another disquieting night, and by the morning I had made up my
mind. The sun was glinting on the placid waters of the river when I made
my way down to the bank, to a great ten-oared keel boat that lay on the
Bear Grass, with its square sail furled. An awning was stretched over
the deck, and at a walnut table covered with papers sat Monsieur Vigo,
smoking his morning pipe.

"Davy," said he, "you have come a la bonne heure. At ten I depart for
New Orleans." He sighed. "It is so long voyage," he added, "and so
lonely one. Sometime I have the good fortune to pick up a companion, but
not to-day."

"Do you want me to go with you?" I said.

He looked at me incredulously.

"I should be delighted," he said, "but you mek a jest."

"I was never more serious in my life," I answered, "for I have business
in New Orleans. I shall be ready."

"Ha," cried Monsieur Vigo, hospitably, "I shall be enchant. We will talk
philosophe, Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Rousseau."

For Monsieur Vigo was a great reader, and we had often indulged in
conversation which (we flattered ourselves) had a literary turn.

I spent the remaining hours arranging with a young lawyer of my
acquaintance to look after my business, and at ten o'clock I was aboard
the keel boat with my small baggage. At eleven, Monsieur Vigo and I were
talking "philosophe" over a wonderful breakfast under the awning, as we
dropped down between the forest-lined shores of the Ohio. My host
travelled in luxury, and we ate the Creole dishes, which his cook
prepared, with silver forks which he kept in a great chest in the cabin.

You who read this may feel something of my impatience to get to New
Orleans, and hence I shall not give a long account of the journey. What
a contrast it was to that which Nick and I had taken five years before in
Monsieur Gratiot's fur boat! Like all successful Creole traders,
Monsieur Vigo had a wonderful knack of getting on with the Indians, and
often when we tied up of a night the chief men of a tribe would come down
to greet him. We slipped southward on the great, yellow river which
parted the wilderness, with its sucks and eddies and green islands, every
one of which Monsieur knew, and I saw again the flocks of water-fowl and
herons in procession, and hawks and vultures wheeling in their search.
Sometimes a favorable wind sprang up, and we hoisted the sail. We passed
the Walnut Hills, the Nogales, the moans of the alligators broke our
sleep by night, and at length we came to Natchez, ruled over now by that
watch-dog of the Spanish King, Gayoso de Lemos. Thanks to Monsieur Vigo,
his manners were charming and his hospitality gracious, and there was no
trouble whatever about my passport.

Our progress was slow when we came at last to the belvedered plantation
houses amongst the orange groves; and as we sat on the wide galleries in
the summer nights, we heard all the latest gossip of the capital of
Louisiana. The river was low; there was an ominous quality in the heat
which had its effect, indeed, upon me, and made the old Creoles shake
their heads and mutter a word with a terrible meaning. New Orleans was a
cesspool, said the enlightened. The Baron de Carondelet, indefatigable
man, aimed at digging a canal to relieve the city of its filth, but this
would be the year when it was most needed, and it was not dug. Yes,
Monsieur le Baron was energy itself. That other fever--the political
one--he had scotched. "Ca Ira" and "La Marseillaise" had been sung in
the theatres, but not often, for the Baron had sent the alcaldes to shut
them up. Certain gentlemen of French ancestry had gone to languish in
the Morro at Havana. Yes, Monsieur de Carondelet, though fat, was on
horseback before dawn, New Orleans was fortified as it never had been
before, the militia organized, real cannon were on the ramparts which
could shoot at a pinch.

Sub rosa, I found much sympathy among the planters with the Rights of
Man. What had become, they asked, of the expedition of Citizen General
Clark preparing in the North? They may have sighed secretly when I
painted it in its true colors, but they loved peace, these planters.
Strangely enough, the name of Auguste de St. Gre never crossed their lips,
and I got no trace of him or Nick at any of these places. Was it
possible that they might not have come to New Orleans after all?

Through the days, when the sun beat upon the awning with a tropical
fierceness, when Monsieur Vigo abandoned himself to his siestas, I
thought. It was perhaps characteristic of me that I waited nearly three
weeks to confide in my old friend the purpose of my journey to New
Orleans. It was not because I could not trust him that I held my tongue,
but because I sought some way of separating the more intimate story of
Nick's mother and his affair with Antoinette de St. Gre from the rest of
the story. But Monsieur Vigo was a man of importance in Louisiana, and I
reflected that a time might come when I should need his help. One
evening, when we were tied up under the oaks of a bayou, I told him.
There emanated from Monsieur Vigo a sympathy which few men possess, and
this I felt strongly as he listened, breaking his silence only at long
intervals to ask a question. It was a still night, I remember, of great
beauty, with a wisp of a moon hanging over the forest line, the air heavy
with odors and vibrant with a thousand insect tones.

"And what you do, Davy?" he said at length.

"I must find my cousin and St. Gre before they have a chance to get into
much mischief," I answered. "If they have already made a noise, I
thought of going to the Baron de Carondelet and telling him what I know
of the expedition. He will understand what St. Gre is, and I will
explain that Mr. Temple's reckless love of adventure is at the bottom of
his share in the matter."

"Bon, Davy," said my host, "if you go, I go with you. But I believe ze
Baron think Morro good place for them jus' the sem. Ze Baron has been
make miserable with Jacobins. But I go with you if you go."

He discoursed for some time upon the quality of the St. Gre's, their
public services, and before he went to sleep he made the very just remark
that there was a flaw in every string of beads. As for me, I went down
into the cabin, surreptitiously lighted a candle, and drew from my pocket
that piece of ivory which had so strangely come into my possession once
more. The face upon it had haunted me since I had first beheld it. The
miniature was wrapped now in a silk handkerchief which Polly Ann had
bought for me in Lexington. Shall I confess it?--I had carefully rubbed
off the discolorations on the ivory at the back, and the picture lacked
now only the gold setting. As for the face, I had a kind of consolation
from it. I seemed to draw of its strength when I was tired, of its
courage when I faltered. And, during those four days of indecision in
Louisville, it seemed to say to me in words that I could not evade or
forget, "Go to New Orleans." It was a sentiment--foolish, if you
please--which could not resist. Nay, which I did not try to resist, for
I had little enough of it in my life. What did it matter? I should
never see Madame la Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour.

She was Helene to me; and the artist had caught the strength of her soul
in her clear-cut face, in the eyes that flashed with wit and
courage,--eyes that seemed to look with scorn upon what was mean in the
world and untrue, with pity on the weak. Here was one who might have
governed a province and still have been a woman, one who had taken into
exile the best of safeguards against misfortune,--humor and an
indomitable spirit.



CHAPTER V

THE HOUSE OF THE HONEYCOMBED TILES

As long as I live I shall never forget that Sunday morning of my second
arrival at New Orleans. A saffron heat-haze hung over the river and the
city, robbed alike from the yellow waters of the one and the pestilent
moisture of the other. It would have been strange indeed if this capital
of Louisiana, brought hither to a swamp from the sands of Biloxi many
years ago by the energetic Bienville, were not visited from time to time
by the scourge!

Again I saw the green villas on the outskirts, the verdure-dotted expanse
of roofs of the city behind the levee bank, the line of Kentucky boats,
keel boats and barges which brought our own resistless commerce hither in
the teeth of royal mandates. Farther out, and tugging fretfully in the
yellow current, were the aliens of the blue seas, high-hulled, their
tracery of masts and spars shimmering in the heat: a full-rigged ocean
packet from Spain, a barque and brigantine from the West Indies, a rakish
slaver from Africa with her water-line dry, discharged but yesterday of a
teeming horror of freight. I looked again upon the familiar rows of trees
which shaded the gravelled promenades where Nick had first seen
Antoinette. Then we were under it, for the river was low, and the
dingy-uniformed officer was bowing over our passports beneath the awning.
We walked ashore, Monsieur Vigo and I, and we joined a staring group of
keel boatmen and river-men under the willows.

Below us, the white shell walks of the Place d'Armes were thronged with
gayly dressed people. Over their heads rose the fine new Cathedral,
built by the munificence of Don Andreas Almonaster, and beside that the
many-windowed, heavy-arched Cabildo, nearly finished, which will stand
for all time a monument to Spanish builders.

"It is Corpus Christi day," said Monsieur Vigo; "let us go and see the
procession."

Here once more were the bright-turbaned negresses, the gay Creole gowns
and scarfs, the linen-jacketed, broad-hatted merchants, with those of
soberer and more conventional dress, laughing and chatting, the children
playing despite the heat. Many of these people greeted Monsieur Vigo.
There were the saturnine, long-cloaked Spaniards, too, and a greater
number than I had believed of my own keen-faced countrymen lounging
about, mildly amused by the scene. We crossed the square, and with the
courtesy of their race the people made way for us in the press; and we
were no sooner placed ere the procession came out of the church. Flaming
soldiers of the Governor's guard, two by two; sober, sandalled friars in
brown, priests in their robes,--another batch of color; crosses
shimmering, tapers emerging from the cool darkness within to pale by the
light of day. Then down on their knees to Him who sits high above the
yellow haze fell the thousands in the Place d'Armes. For here was the
Host itself, flower-decked in white and crimson, its gold-tasselled
canopy upheld by four tonsured priests, a sheen of purple under it,--the
Bishop of Louisiana in his robes.

"The Governor!" whispered Monsieur Vigo, and the word was passed from
mouth to mouth as the people rose from their knees. Francois Louis
Hector, Baron de Carondelet, resplendent in his uniform of colonel in the
royal army of Spain, his orders glittering on his breast,--pillar of
royalty and enemy to the Rights of Man! His eye was stern, his carriage
erect, but I seemed to read in his careworn face the trials of three
years in this moist capital. After the Governor, one by one, the waiting
Associations fell in line, each with its own distinguishing sash. So the
procession moved off into the narrow streets of the city, the people in
the Place dispersed to new vantage points, and Monsieur Vigo signed me to
follow him.

"I have a frien', la veuve Gravois, who lives ver' quiet. She have one
room, and I ask her tek you in, Davy." He led the way through the empty
Rue Chartres, turned to the right at the Rue Bienville, and stopped
before an unpretentious house some three doors from the corner. Madame
Gravois, elderly, wizened, primp in a starched cotton gown, opened the
door herself, fell upon Monsieur Vigo in the Creole fashion; and within a
quarter of an hour I was installed in her best room, which gave out on a
little court behind. Monsieur Vigo promised to send his servant with my
baggage, told me his address, bade me call on him for what I wanted, and
took his leave.

First, there was Madame Gravois' story to listen to as she bustled about
giving orders to a kinky-haired negro girl concerning my dinner. Then
came the dinner, excellent--if I could have eaten it. The virtues of
the former Monsieur Gravois were legion. He had come to Louisiana from
Toulon, planted indigo, fought a duel, and Madame was a widow. So I
condense two hours into two lines. Happily, Madame was not proof against
the habits of the climate, and she retired for her siesta. I sought my
room, almost suffocated by a heat which defies my pen to describe, a heat
reeking with moisture sucked from the foul kennels of the city. I had
felt nothing like it in my former visit to New Orleans. It seemed to
bear down upon my brain, to clog the power of thought, to make me
vacillating. Hitherto my reasoning had led me to seek Monsieur de St.
Gre, to count upon that gentleman's common sense and his former
friendship. But now that the time had come for it, I shrank from such a
meeting. I remembered his passionate affection for Antoinette, I
imagined that he would not listen calmly to one who was in some sort
connected with her unhappiness. So a kind of cowardice drove me first to
Mrs. Temple. She might know much that would save me useless trouble and
blundering.

The shadows of tree-top, thatch, and wall were lengthening as I walked
along the Rue Bourbon. Heedless of what the morrow might bring forth,
the street was given over to festivity. Merry groups were gathered on
the corners, songs and laughter mingled in the court-yards, billiard
balls clicked in the cabarets. A fat, jolly little Frenchman, surrounded
by tripping children, sat in his doorway on the edge of the banquette,
fiddling with all his might, pausing only to wipe the beads of
perspiration from his face.

"Madame Clive, mais oui, Monsieur, l' petite maison en face." Smiling
benignly at the children, he began to fiddle once more.

The little house opposite! Mrs. Temple, mistress of Temple Bow, had come
to this! It was a strange little home indeed, Spanish, one-story, its
dormers hidden by a honeycombed screen of terra-cotta tiles. This screen
was set on the extreme edge of the roof which overhung the banquette and
shaded the yellow adobe wall of the house. Low, unpretentious, the
latticed shutters of its two windows giving it but a scant air of
privacy,--indeed, they were scarred by the raps of careless passers-by on
the sidewalk. The two little battened doors, one step up, were closed.
I rapped, waited, and rapped again. The musician across the street
stopped his fiddling, glanced at me, smiled knowingly at the children;
and they paused in their dance to stare. Then one of the doors was
pushed open a scant four inches, a scarlet madras handkerchief appeared
in the crack above a yellow face. There was a long moment of silence,
during which I felt the scrutiny of a pair of sharp, black eyes.

"What yo' want, Marse?"

The woman's voice astonished me, for she spoke the dialect of the
American tide-water.

"I should like to see Mrs. Clive," I answered.

The door closed a shade.

"Mistis sick, she ain't see nobody," said the woman. She closed the door
a little more, and I felt tempted to put my foot in the crack.

"Tell her that Mr. David Ritchie is here," I said.

There was an instant's silence, then an exclamation.

"Lan' sakes, is you Marse Dave?" She opened the door--furtively, I
thought--just wide enough for me to pass through. I found myself in a
low-ceiled, darkened room, opposite a trim negress who stood with her
arms akimbo and stared at me.

"Marse Dave, you doan rec'lect me. I'se Lindy, I'se Breed's daughter. I
rec'lect you when you was at Temple Bow. Marse Dave, how you'se done
growed! Yassir, when I heerd from Miss Sally I done comed here to tek
cyar ob her."

"How is your mistress?" I asked.

"She po'ly, Marse Dave," said Lindy, and paused for adequate words. I
took note of this darky who, faithful to a family, had come hither to
share her mistress's exile and obscurity. Lindy was spare, energetic,
forceful--and, I imagined, a discreet guardian indeed for the
unfortunate. "She po'ly, Marse Dave, an' she ain' nebber leabe dis year
house. Marse Dave," said Lindy earnestly, lowering her voice and taking
a step closer to me, "I done reckon de Mistis gwine ter die ob
lonesomeness. She des sit dar an' brood, an' brood--an' she use' ter de
bes' company, to de quality. No, sirree, Marse Dave, she ain' nebber
sesso, but she tink 'bout de young Marsa night an' day. Marse Dave?"

"Yes?" I said.

"Marse Dave, she have a lil pink frock dat Marsa Nick had when he was a
bebby. I done cotch Mistis lookin' at it, an' she hid it when she see me
an' blush like 'twas a sin. Marse Dave?"

"Yes?" I said again.

"Where am de young Marsa?"

"I don't know, Lindy," I answered.

Lindy sighed.

"She done talk 'bout you, Marse Dave, an' how good you is--"

"And Mrs. Temple sees no one," I asked.

"Dar's one lady come hyar ebery week, er French lady, but she speak
English jes' like the Mistis. Dat's my fault," said Lindy, showing a
line of white teeth.

"Your fault," I exclaimed.

"Yassir. When I comed here from Caroliny de Mistis done tole me not ter
let er soul in hyah. One day erbout three mont's ergo, dis yer lady come
en she des wheedled me ter let her in. She was de quality, Marse Dave,
and I was des' afeard not ter. I declar' I hatter. Hush," said Lindy,
putting her fingers to her lips, "dar's de Mistis!"

The door into the back room opened, and Mrs. Temple stood on the
threshold, staring with uncertain eyes into the semi-darkness.

"Lindy," she said, "what have you done?"

"Miss Sally--" Lindy began, and looked at me. But I could not speak for
looking at the lady in the doorway.

"Who is it?" she said again, and her hand sought the door-post
tremblingly. "Who is it?"

Then I went to her. At my first step she gave a little cry and swayed,
and had I not taken her in my arms I believe she would have fallen.

"David!" she said, "David, is it you? I--I cannot see very well. Why did
you not speak?" She looked at Lindy and smiled. "It is because I am an
old woman, Lindy," and she lifted her hand to her forehead. "See, my
hair is white--I shock you, David."

Leaning on my shoulder, she led me through a little bedroom in the rear
into a tiny garden court beyond, a court teeming with lavish colors and
redolent with the scent of flowers. A white shell walk divided the
garden and ended at the door of a low outbuilding, from the chimney of
which blue smoke curled upward in the evening air. Mrs. Temple drew me
almost fiercely towards a bench against the adobe wall.

"Where is he?" she said. "Where is he, David?"

The suddenness of the question staggered me; I hesitated.

"I do not know," I answered.

I could not look into her face and say it. The years of torment and
suffering were written there in characters not to be mistaken. Sarah
Temple, the beauty, was dead indeed. The hope which threatened to light
again the dead fires in the woman's eyes frightened me.

"Ah," she said sharply, "you are deceiving me. It is not like you,
David. You are deceiving me. Tell me, tell me, for the love of God, who
has brought me to bear chastisement." And she gripped my arm with a
strength I had not thought in her.

"Listen," I said, trying to calm myself as well as her. "Listen, Mrs.
Temple." I could not bring myself to call her otherwise.

"You are keeping him away from me," she cried. "Why are you keeping him
away? Have I not suffered enough? David, I cannot live long. I do not
dare to die--until he has forgiven me."

I forced her, gently as I might, to sit on the bench, and I seated myself
beside her.

"Listen," I said, with a sternness that hid my feelings, and perforce her
expression changed again to a sad yearning, "you must hear me. And you
must trust me, for I have never pretended. You shall see him if it is in
my power."

She looked at me so piteously that I was near to being unmanned.

"I will trust you," she whispered.

"I have seen him," I said. She started violently, but I laid my hand on
hers, and by some self-mastery that was still in her she was silent. "I
saw him in Louisville a month ago, when I returned from a year's visit to
Philadelphia."

I could not equivocate with this woman, I could no more lie to her sorrow
than to the Judgment. Why had I not foreseen her question?

"And he hates me?" She spoke with a calmness now that frightened me more
than her agitation had done.

"I do not know," I answered; "when I would have spoken to him he was
gone."

"He was drunk," she said. I stared at her in frightened wonderment. "He
was drunk--it is better than if he had cursed me. He did not mention me?
Or any one?"

"He did not," I answered.

She turned her face away.

"Go on, I will listen to you," she said, and sat immovable through the
whole of my story, though her hand trembled in mine. And while I live I
hope never to have such a thing to go through with again. Truth held me
to the full, ludicrous tragedy of the tale, to the cheap character of my
old Colonel's undertaking, to the incident of the drum, to the
conversation in my room. Likewise, truth forbade me to rekindle her
hope. I did not tell her that Nick had come with St. Gre to New Orleans,
for of this my own knowledge was as yet not positive. For a long time
after I had finished she was silent.

"And you think the expedition will not get here?" she asked finally, in a
dead voice.

"I am positive of it," I answered, "and for the sake of those who are
engaged in it, it is mercifully best that it should not. The day may
come," I added, for the sake of leading her away, "when Kentucky will be
strong enough to overrun Louisiana. But not now."

She turned to me with a trace of her former fierceness.

"Why are you in New Orleans?" she demanded.

A sudden resolution came to me then.

"To bring you back with me to Kentucky," I answered. She shook her head
sadly, but I continued: "I have more to say. I am convinced that
neither Nick nor you will be happy until you are mother and son again.
You have both been wanderers long enough."

Once more she turned away and fell into a revery. Over the housetop,
from across the street, came the gay music of the fiddler. Mrs. Temple
laid her hand gently on my shoulder.

"My dear," she said, smiling, "I could not live for the journey."

"You must live for it," I answered. "You have the will. You must live
for it, for his sake."

She shook her head, and smiled at me with a courage which was the crown
of her sufferings.

"You are talking nonsense, David," she said; "it is not like you. Come,"
she said, rising with something of her old manner, "I must show you what
I have been doing all these years. You must admire my garden."

I followed her, marvelling, along the shell path, and there came unbidden
to my mind the garden at Temple Bow, where she had once been wont to sit,
tormenting Mr. Mason or bending to the tale of Harry Riddle's love.
Little she cared for flowers in those days, and now they had become her
life. With such thoughts in my mind, I listened unheeding to her talk.
The place was formerly occupied by a shiftless fellow, a tailor; and the
court, now a paradise, had been a rubbish heap. That orange tree which
shaded the uneven doorway of the kitchen she had found here. Figs,
pomegranates, magnolias; the camellias dazzling in their purity; the
blood-red oleanders; the pink roses that hid the crumbling adobe and
climbed even to the sloping tiles,--all these had been set out and cared
for with her own hands. Ay, and the fragrant bed of yellow jasmine over
which she lingered,--Antoinette's favorite flower.

Antoinette's flowers that she wore in her hair! In her letters Mrs.
Temple had never mentioned Antoinette, and now she read the question
(perchance purposely put there) in my eyes. Her voice faltered sadly.
Scarce a week had she been in the house before Antoinette had found her.

"I--I sent the girl away, David. She came without Monsieur de St. Gre's
knowledge, without his consent. It is natural that he thinks me--I will
not say what. I sent Antoinette away. She clung to me, she would not
go, and I had to be--cruel. It is one of the things which make the
nights long--so long. My sins have made her life unhappy."

"And you hear of her? She is not married?" I asked.

"No, she is not married," said Mrs. Temple, stooping over the jasmines.
Then she straightened and faced me, her voice shaken with earnestness.
"David, do you think that Nick still loves her?"

Alas, I could not answer that. She bent over the jasmines again.

"There were five years that I knew nothing," she continued. "I did not
dare ask Mr. Clark, who comes to me on business, as you know. It was Mr.
Clark who brought back Lindy on one of his trips to Charleston. And
then, one day in March of this year, Madame de Montmery came."

"Madame de Montmery?" I repeated.

"It is a strange story," said Mrs. Temple. "Lindy had never admitted any
one, save Mr. Clark. One day early in the spring, when I was trimming my
roses by the wall there, the girl ran to me and said that a lady wished
to see me. Why had she let her in? Lindy did not know, she could not
refuse her. Had the lady demanded admittance? Lindy thought that I
would like to see her. David, it was a providential weakness, or
curiosity, that prompted me to go into the front room, and then I saw why
Lindy had opened the door to her. Who she is or what she is I do not
know to this day. Who am I now that I should inquire? I know that she
is a lady, that she has exquisite manners, that I feel now that I cannot
live without her. She comes every week, sometimes twice, she brings me
little delicacies, new seeds for my garden. But, best of all, she brings
me herself, and I am always counting the days until she comes again.
Yes, and I always fear that she, too, will be taken away from me."

I had not heard the sound of voices, but Mrs. Temple turned, startled,
and looked towards the house. I followed her glance, and suddenly I knew
that my heart was beating.



CHAPTER VI

MADAME LA VICOMTESSE

Hesitating on the step, a lady stood in the vine-covered doorway, a study
in black and white in a frame of pink roses. The sash at her waist, the
lace mantilla that clung about her throat, the deftly coiled hair with
its sheen of the night waters--these in black. The simple gown--a
tribute to the art of her countrywomen--in white.

Mrs. Temple had gone forward to meet her, but I stood staring,
marvelling, forgetful, in the path. They were talking, they were coming
towards me, and I heard Mrs. Temple pronounce my name and hers--Madame de
Montmery. I bowed, she courtesied. There was a baffling light in the
lady's brown eyes when I dared to glance at them, and a smile playing
around her mouth. Was there no word in the two languages to find its way
to my lips? Mrs. Temple laid her hand on my arm.

"David is not what one might call a ladies' man, Madame," she said.

The lady laughed.

"Isn't he?" she said.

"I am sure you will frighten him with your wit," answered Mrs. Temple,
smiling. "He is worth sparing."

"He is worth frightening, then," said the lady, in exquisite English, and
she looked at me again.

"You and David should like each other," said Mrs. Temple; "you are both
capable persons, friends of the friendless and towers of strength to the
weak."

The lady's face became serious, but still there was the expression I
could not make out. In an instant she seemed to have scrutinized me with
a precision from which there could be no appeal.

"I seem to know Mr. Ritchie," she said, and added quickly: "Mrs. Clive
has talked a great deal about you. She has made you out a very wonderful
person."

"My dear," said Mrs. Temple, "the wonderful people of this world are
those who find time to comfort and help the unfortunate. That is why you
and David are wonderful. No one knows better than I how easy it is to be
selfish."

"I have brought you an English novel," said Madame de Montomery, turning
abruptly to Mrs. Temple. "But you must not read it at night. Lindy is
not to let you have it until to-morrow."

"There," said Mrs. Temple, gayly, to me, "Madame is not happy unless she
is controlling some one, and I am a rebellious subject."

"You have not been taking care of yourself," said Madame. She glanced at
me, and bit her lips, as though guessing the emotion which my visit had
caused. "Listen," she said, "the vesper bells! You must go into the
house, and Mr. Ritchie and I must leave you."

She took Mrs. Temple by the arm and led her, unresisting, along the path.
I followed, a thousand thoughts and conjectures spinning in my brain.
They reached the bench under the little tree beside the door, and stood
talking for a moment of the routine of Mrs. Temple's life. Madame, it
seemed, had prescribed a regimen, and meant to have it followed.
Suddenly I saw Mrs. Temple take the lady's arm, and sink down upon the
bench. Then we were both beside her, bending over her, she sitting
upright and smiling at us.

"It is nothing," she said; "I am so easily tired."

Her lips were ashen, and her breath came quickly. Madame acted with that
instant promptness which I expected of her.

"You must carry her in, Mr. Ritchie," she said quietly.

"No, it is only momentary, David," said Mrs. Temple. I remember how
pitifully frail and light she was as I picked her up and followed Madame
through the doorway into the little bedroom. I laid Mrs. Temple on the
bed.

"Send Lindy here," said Madame.

Lindy was in the front room with the negress whom Madame had brought with
her. They were not talking. I supposed then this was because Lindy did
not speak French. I did not know that Madame de Montmery's maid was a
mute. Both of them went into the bedroom, and I was left alone. The
door and windows were closed, and a green myrtle-berry candle was burning
on the table. I looked about me with astonishment. But for the low
ceiling and the wide cypress puncheons of the floor the room might have
been a boudoir in a manor-house. On the slender-legged, polished
mahogany table lay books in tasteful bindings; a diamond-paned bookcase
stood in the corner; a fauteuil and various other chairs which might have
come from the hands of an Adam were ranged about. Tall silver
candlesticks graced each end of the little mantel-shelf, and between them
were two Lowestoft vases having the Temple coat of arms.

It might have been half an hour that I waited, now pacing the floor, now
throwing myself into the arm-chair by the fireplace. Anxiety for Mrs.
Temple, problems that lost themselves in a dozen conjectures, all idle--
these agitated me almost beyond my power of self-control. Once I felt
for the miniature, took it out, and put it back without looking at it.
At last I was startled to my feet by the opening of the door, and Madame
de Montmery came in. She closed the door softly behind her, with the
deft quickness and decision of movement which a sixth sense had told me
she possessed, crossed the room swiftly, and stood confronting me.

"She is easy again, now," she said simply. "It is one of her attacks. I
wish you might have seen me before you told her what you had to say to
her."

"I wish indeed that I had known you were here."

She ignored this, whether intentionally, I know not.

"It is her heart, poor lady! I am afraid she cannot live long." She
seated herself in one of the straight chairs. "Sit down, Mr. Ritchie,"
she said; "I am glad you waited. I wanted to talk with you."

"I thought that you might, Madame la Vicomtesse," I answered.

She made no gesture, either of surprise or displeasure.

"So you knew," she said quietly.

"I knew you the moment you appeared in the doorway," I replied. It was
not just what I meant to say.

There flashed over her face that expression of the miniature, the mouth
repressing the laughter in the brown eyes.

"Montmery is one of my husband's places," she said. "When Antoinette
asked me to come here and watch over Mrs. Temple, I chose the name."

"And Mrs. Temple has never suspected you?"

"I think not. She thinks I came at Mr. Clark's request. And being a
lady, she does not ask questions. She accepts me for what I appear to
be."

It seemed so strange to me to be talking here in New Orleans, in this
little Spanish house, with a French vicomtesse brought up near the court
of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette; nay, with Helene de St. Gre, whose
portrait had twice come into my life by a kind of strange fatality (and
was at that moment in my pocket), that I could scarce maintain my
self-possession in her presence. I had given the portrait, too,
attributes and a character, and I found myself watching the lady with a
breathless interest lest she should fail in any of these. In the
intimacy of the little room I felt as if I had known her always, and
again, that she was as distant from me and my life as the court from
which she had come. I found myself glancing continually at her face, on
which the candle-light shone. The Vicomtesse might have been four and
twenty. Save for the soberer gown she wore, she seemed scarce older than
the young girl in the miniature who had the presence of a woman of the
world. Suddenly I discovered with a flush that she was looking at me
intently, without embarrassment, but with an expression that seemed to
hint of humor in the situation. To my astonishment, she laughed a
little.

"You are a very odd person, Mr. Ritchie," she said. "I have heard so
much of you from Mrs. Temple, from Antoinette, that I know something of
your strange life. After all," she added with a trace of sadness, "it
has been no stranger than my own. First I will answer your questions,
and then I shall ask some."

"But I have asked no questions, Madame la Vicomtesse," I said.

"And you are a very simple person, Mr. Ritchie," continued Madame la
Vicomtesse, smiling; "it is what I had been led to suppose. A serious
person. As the friend of Mr. Nicholas Temple, as the relation and (may I
say?) benefactor of this poor lady here, it is fitting that you should
know certain things. I will not weary you with the reasons and events
which led to my coming from Europe to New Orleans, except to say that I,
like all of my class who have escaped the horrors of the Revolution, am a
wanderer, and grateful to Monsieur de St. Gre for the shelter he gives
me. His letter reached me in England, and I arrived three months ago."

She hesitated--nay, I should rather say paused, for there was little
hesitation in what she did. She paused, as though weighing what she was
to say next.

"When I came to Les Iles I saw that there was a sorrow weighing upon the
family; and it took no great astuteness on my part, Mr. Ritchie, to
discover that Antoinette was the cause of it. One has only to see
Antoinette to love her. I wondered why she had not married. And yet I
saw that there had been an affair. It seemed very strange to me, Mr.
Ritchie, for with us, you understand, marriages are arranged. Antoinette
really has beauty, she is the daughter of a man of importance in the
colony, her strength of character saves her from being listless. I found
a girl with originality of expression, with a sense of the fitness of
things, devoted to charitable works, who had not taken the veil. That
was on her father's account. As you know, they are inseparable.
Monsieur Philippe de St. Gre is a remarkable man, with certain vigorous
ideas not in accordance with the customs of his neighbors. It was he who
first confided in me that he would not force Antoinette to marry; it was
she, at length, who told me the story of Nicholas Temple and his mother."
She paused again, and, reading between the lines, I perceived that Madame
la Vicomtesse had become essential to the household at Les Iles.
Philippe de St. Gre was not a man to misplace a confidence.

"It was then that I first heard of you, Mr. Ritchie, and of the part
which you played in that affair. It was then I had my first real insight
into Antoinette's character. Her affection for Mrs. Temple astonished
me, bewildered me. The woman had deceived her and her family, and yet
Antoinette gave up her lover because he would not take his mother back.
Had Mrs. Temple been willing to return to Les Iles after you had
providentially taken her away, they would have received her. Philippe de
St. Gre is not a man to listen to criticism. As it was, Antoinette did
not rest until she found where Mrs. Temple had hidden herself, and then
she came here to her. It is not for us to judge any of them. In sending
Antoinette away the poor lady denied herself the only consolation that
was left to her. Antoinette understood. Every week she has had news of
Mrs. Temple from Mr. Clark. And when I came and learned her trouble,
Antoinette begged me to come here and be Mrs. Temple's friend. Mr.
Ritchie, she is a very ill woman and a very sad woman,--the saddest woman
I have ever known, and I have seen many."

"And Mademoiselle de St. Gre?" I asked.

"Tell me about this man for whom Antoinette has ruined her life," said
Madame la Vicomtesse, brusquely. "Is he worth it? No, no man is worth
what she has suffered. What has become of him? Where is he? Did you
not tell her that you would bring him back?"

"I said that I would bring him back if I could," I answered, "and I meant
it, Madame."

Madame la Vicomtesse bit her lip. Had she known me better, she might
have smiled. As for me, I was wholly puzzled to account for these
fleeting changes in her humor.

"You have taken a great deal upon your shoulders, Mr. Ritchie," she said.
"They are from all accounts broad ones. There, I was wrong to be
indignant in your presence,--you who seem to have spent your life in
trying to get others out of difficulties. Mercy," she said, with a quick
gesture at my protest, "there are few men with whom one might talk thus
in so short an acquaintance. I love the girl, and I cannot help being
angry with Mr. Temple. I suppose there is something to be said on his
side. Let us hear it--I dare say he could not have a better advocate,"
she finished, with an indefinable smile.

I began at the wrong end of my narrative, and it was some time before I
had my facts arranged in proper sequence. I could not forget that Madame
la Vicomtesse was looking at me fixedly. I reviewed Nick's neglected
childhood; painted as well as I might his temperament and character--his
generosity and fearlessness, his recklessness and improvidence. His
loyalty to those he loved, his detestation of those he hated. I told
how, under these conditions, the sins and vagaries of his parents had
gone far to wreck his life at the beginning of it. I told how I had
found him again with Sevier, how he had come to New Orleans with me the
first time, how he had loved Antoinette, and how he had disappeared after
the dreadful scene in the garden at Les Iles, how I had not seen him
again for five years. Here I hesitated, little knowing how to tell the
Vicomtesse of that affair in Louisville. Though I had a sense that I
could not keep the truth from so discerning a person, I was startled to
find this to be so.

"Yes, yes, I understand," she said quickly. "And in the morning he had
flown with that most worthy of my relatives, Auguste de St. Gre."

I looked at her, finding no words to express my astonishment at this
perspicacity.

"And now what do you intend to do?" she asked. "Find him in New Orleans,
if you can, of course. But how?" She rose quickly, went to the
fireplace, and stood for a moment with her back to me. Suddenly she
turned. "It ought not to be difficult, after all. Auguste de St. Gre is
a fool, and he confirms what you say of the expedition. He is, indeed, a
pretty person to choose for an intrigue of this kind. And your
cousin,--what shall we call him?"

"To say the least, secrecy is not Nick's forte," I answered, catching her
mood.

She was silent awhile.

"It would be a blessing if Monsieur le Baron could hang Auguste
privately. As for your cousin, he may be worth saving, after all. I
know Monsieur de Carondelet, and he has no patience with conspirators of
this sort. I think he would not hesitate to make examples of them.
However, we will try to save them."

"We!" I repeated unwittingly.

Madame la Vicomtesse looked at me and laughed out right.

"Yes," she said, "you will do some things, I others. There are the
gaming clubs with their ridiculous names, L'Amour, La Mignonne, La
Desiree" (she counted them reflectively on her fingers). "Both of our
gentlemen might be tempted into one of these. You will drop into them,
Mr. Ritchie. Then there is Madame Bouvet's."

"Auguste would scarcely go there," I objected.

"Ah," said Madame la Vicomtesse, "but Madame Bouvet will know the names
of some of Auguste's intimates. This Bouvet is evidently a good person,
perhaps she will do more for you. I understand that she has a weak spot
in her heart for Auguste."

Madame la Vicomtesse turned her back again. Had she heard how Madame
Bouvet had begged me to buy the miniature?

"Have you any other suggestions to make?" she said, putting a foot on the
fender.

"They have all been yours, so far," I answered.

"And yet you are a man of action, of expedients," she murmured, without
turning. "Where are your wits, Mr. Ritchie? Have you any plan?"

"I have been so used to rely on myself, Madame," I replied.

"That you do not like to have your affairs meddled with by a woman," she
said, into the fireplace.

"I give you the credit to believe that you are too clever to
misunderstand me, Madame," I said. "You must know that your help is most
welcome."

At that she swung around and regarded me strangely, mirth lurking in her
eyes. She seemed about to retort, and then to conquer the impulse. The
effect of this was to make me anything but self-complacent. She sat down
in the chair and for a little while she was silent.

"Suppose we do find them," she said suddenly. "What shall we do with
them?" She looked up at me questioningly, seriously. "Is it likely that
your Mr. Temple will be reconciled with his mother? Is it likely that he
is still in love with Antoinette?"

"I think it is likely that he is still in love with Mademoiselle de St.
Gre," I answered, "though I have no reason for saying so."

"You are very honest, Mr. Ritchie. We must look at this problem from all
sides. If he is not reconciled with his mother, Antoinette will not
receive him. And if he is, we have the question to consider whether he
is still worthy of her. The agents of Providence must not be heedless,"
she added with a smile.

"I am sure that Nick would alter his life if it became worth living," I
said. "I will answer for that much."

"Then he must be reconciled with his mother," she replied with decision.
"Mrs. Temple has suffered enough. And he must be found before he gets
sufficiently into the bad graces of the Baron de Carondelet,--these two
things are clear." She rose. "Come here to-morrow evening at the same
time."

She started quickly for the bedroom door, but something troubled me
still.

"Madame--" I said.

"Yes," she answered, turning quickly.

I did not know how to begin. There were many things I wished to say, to
know, but she was a woman whose mind seemed to leap the chasms, whose
words touched only upon those points which might not be understood. She
regarded me with seeming patience.

"I should think that Mrs. Temple might have recognized you," I said, for
want of a better opening.

"From the miniature?" she said.

I flushed furiously, and it seemed to burn me through the lining of my
pocket.

"That was my salvation," she said. "Mrs. Temple has never seen the
miniature. I have heard how you rescued it, Mr. Ritchie," she added,
with a curious smile. "Monsieur Philippe de St. Gre told me."

"Then he knew?" I stammered.

She laughed.

"I have told you that you are a very simple person," she said. "Even you
are not given to intrigues. I thank you for rescuing me."

I flushed more hotly than before.

"I never expected to see you," I said.

"It must have been a shock," she said.

I was dumb. I had my hand in my coat; I fully intended to give her the
miniature. It was my plain duty. And suddenly, overwhelmed, I
remembered that it was wrapped in Polly Ann's silk handkerchief.

Madame la Vicomtesse remained for a moment where she was.

"Do not do anything until the morning," she said. "You must go back to
your lodgings at once."

"That would be to lose time," I answered.

"You must think of yourself a little," she said. "Do as I say. I have
heard that two cases of the yellow fever have broken out this afternoon.
And you, who are not used to the climate, must not be out after dark."

"And you?" I said.

"I am used to it," she replied; "I have been here three months. Lest
anything should happen, it might be well for you to give me your
address."

"I am with Madame Gravois, in the Rue Bienville."

"Madame Gravois, in the Rue Bienville," she repeated.
"I shall remember. A demain, Monsieur." She courtesied and went swiftly
into Mrs. Temple's room. Seizing my hat, I opened the door and found
myself in the dark street.



CHAPTER VII

THE DISPOSAL OF THE SIEUR DE ST. GRE

I had met Helene de St. Gre at last. And what a fool she must think me!
As I hurried along the dark banquettes this thought filled my brain for a
time to the exclusion of all others, so strongly is vanity ingrained in
us. After all, what did it matter what she thought,--Madame la
Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour? I had never shone, and it was rather late to
begin. But I possessed, at least, average common sense, and I had given
no proof even of this.

I wandered on, not heeding the command which she had given me,--to go
home. The scent of camellias and magnolias floated on the heavy air of
the night from the court-yards, reminding me of her. Laughter and soft
voices came from the galleries. Despite the Terror, despite the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine, despite the Rights of Man and the wars and suffering
arising therefrom, despite the scourge which might come to-morrow, life
went gayly on. The cabarets echoed, and behind the tight blinds lines of
light showed where the Creole gentry gamed at their tables, perchance in
the very clubs Madame la Vicomtesse had mentioned.

The moon, in her first quarter, floated in a haze. Washed by her light,
the quaintly wrought balconies and heavy-tiled roofs of the Spanish
buildings, risen from the charred embers, took on a touch of romance. I
paused once with a twinge of remembrance before the long line of the
Ursuline convent, with its latticed belfry against the sky. There was
the lodge, with its iron gates shut, and the wall which Nick had
threatened to climb. As I passed the great square of the new barracks, a
sereno (so the night watchmen were called) was crying the hour. I came
to the rambling market-stalls, casting black shadows on the river
road,--empty now, to be filled in the morning with shouting marchands.
The promenade under the willows was deserted, the great river stretched
away under the moon towards the forest line of the farther shore, filmy
and indistinct. A black wisp of smoke rose from the gunwale of a
flatboat, and I stopped to listen to the weird song of a negro, which I
have heard many times since.

CAROLINE.

In, de, tois, Ca-ro-line, Qui ci ca ye, comme ca ma chere? In, de
tois, Ca-ro-line, Quo fair t'-apes cri--e ma chere? Mo l'-aime
toe con-ne ca, C'est to m'ou--le, c'est to mo prend, Mo l'-aime toe,
to con-ne ca--a c'est to m'oule c'est to mo prend.



Gaining the promenade, I came presently to the new hotel which had been
built for the Governor, with its balconied windows looking across the
river--the mansion of Monsieur le Baron de Carondelet. Even as I sat on
the bench in the shadow of the willows, watching the sentry who paced
before the arched entrance, I caught sight of a man stealing along the
banquette on the other side of the road. Twice he paused to look behind
him, and when he reached the corner of the street he stopped for some
time to survey the Governor's house opposite.

Suddenly I was on my feet, every sense alert, staring. In the moonlight,
made milky by the haze, he was indistinct. And yet I could have taken
oath that the square, diminutive figure, with the head set forward on the
shoulders, was Gignoux's. If this man were not Gignoux, then the Lord
had cast two in a strange mould.

And what was Gignoux doing in New Orleans? As if in answer to the
question two men emerged from the dark archway of the Governor's house,
passed the sentry, and stood for an instant on the edge of the shadow.
One wore a long Spanish cloak, and the other a uniform that I could not
make out. A word was spoken, and then my man was ambling across to meet
them, and the three walked away up Toulouse Street.

I was in a fire of conjecture. I did not dare to pass the sentry and
follow them, so I made round as fast as I could by the Rue St. Pierre,
which borders the Place d'Armes, and then crossed to Toulouse again by
Chartres. The three were nowhere to be seen. I paused on the corner for
thought, and at length came to a reluctant but prudent conclusion that I
had best go back to my lodging and seek Monsieur early in the morning.

Madame Gravois was awaiting me. Was Monsieur mad to remain out at night?
Had Monsieur not heard of the yellow fever? Madame Gravois even had
prepared some concoction which she poured out of a bottle, and which I
took with the docility of a child. Monsieur Vigo had called, and there
was a note. A note? It was a small note. I glanced stupidly at the
seal, recognized the swan of the St. Gre crest, broke it, and read:--

"Mr. Ritchie will confer a favor upon la Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour if he
will come to Monsieur de St. Gre's house at eight to-morrow morning."

I bade the reluctant Madame Gravois good night, gained my room, threw
off my clothes, and covered myself with the mosquito bar. There was no
question of sleep, for the events of the day and surmises for the morrow
tortured me as I tossed in the heat. Had the man been Gignoux? If so,
he was in league with Carondelet's police. I believed him fully capable
of this. And if he knew Nick's whereabouts and St. Gre's, they would
both be behind the iron gateway of the calabozo in the morning. Monsieur
Vigo had pointed out to me that day the gloomy, heavy-walled prison in
the rear of the Cabildo,--ay, and he had spoken of its instruments of
torture.

What could the Vicomtesse want? Truly (I thought with remorse) she had
been more industrious than I.

I fell at length into a fevered sleep, and awoke, athirst, with the light
trickling through my lattices. Contrary to Madame Gravois's orders, I
had opened the glass of my window. Glancing at my watch,--which I had
bought in Philadelphia,--I saw that the hands pointed to half after
seven. I had scarcely finished my toilet before there was a knock at the
door, and Madame Gravois entered with a steaming cup of coffee in one
hand and her bottle of medicine in the other.

"I did not wake Monsieur," she said, "for he was tired."

She gave me another dose of the medicine, made me drink two cups of
coffee, and then I started out with all despatch for the House of the
Lions. As I turned into the Rue Chartres I saw ahead of me four horses,
with their bridles bunched and held by a negro lad, waiting in the
street. Yes, they were in front of the house. There it was, with its
solid green gates between the lions, its yellow walls with the fringe of
peeping magnolias and oranges, with its green-latticed gallery from which
Monsieur Auguste had let himself down after stealing the miniature. I
knocked at the wicket, the same gardienne answered the call, smiled, led
me through the cool, paved archway which held in its frame the green of
the court beyond, and up the stairs with the quaint balustrade which I
had mounted five years before to meet Philippe de St. Gre. As I reached
the gallery Madame la Vicomtesse, gowned in brown linen for riding, rose
quickly from her chair and came forward to meet me.

"You have news?" I asked, as I took her hand.

"I have the kind of news I expected," she answered, a smile tempering the
gravity of her face; "Auguste is, as usual, in need of money."

"Then you have found them," I answered, my voice betraying my admiration
for the feat.

Madame la Vicomtesse shrugged her shoulders slightly.

"I did nothing," she said. "From what you told me, I suspected that as
soon as Auguste reached Louisiana he would have a strong desire to go
away again. This is undoubtedly what has happened. In any event, I knew
that he would want money, and that he would apply to a source which has
hitherto never failed him."

"Mademoiselle Antoinette!" I said.

"Precisely," answered Madame la Vicomtesse. "When I reached home last
night I questioned Antoinette, and I discovered that by a singular chance
a message from Auguste had already reached her."

"Where is he?" I demanded.

"I do not know," she replied. "But he will be behind the hedge of the
garden at Les Iles at eleven o'clock--unless he has lost before then his
love of money."

"Which is to say--"

"He will be there unless he is dead. That is why I sent for you,
Monsieur." She glanced at me. "Sometimes it is convenient to have a
man."

I was astounded. Then I smiled, the affair was so ridiculously simple.

"And Monsieur de St. Gre?" I asked.

"Has been gone for a week with Madame to visit the estimable Monsieur
Poydras at Pointe Coupee." Madame la Vicomtesse, who had better use for
her words than to waste them at such a time, left me, went to the
balcony, and began to give the gardienne in the court below swift
directions in French. Then she turned to me again.

"Are you prepared to ride with Antoinette and me to Les Iles, Monsieur?"
she asked.

"I am," I answered.

It must have been my readiness that made her smile. Then her eyes rested
on mine.

"You look tired, Mr. Ritchie," she said. "You did not obey me and go
home last night."

"How did you know that?" I asked, with a thrill at her interest.

"Because Madame Gravois told my messenger that you were out."

I was silent.

"You must take care of yourself," she said briefly. "Come, there are
some things which I wish to say to you before Antoinette is ready."

She led me toward the end of the gallery, where a bright screen of
morning-glories shaded us from the sun. But we had scarce reached the
place ere the sound of steps made us turn, and there was Mademoiselle
Antoinette herself facing us. I went forward a few steps, hesitated, and
bowed. She courtesied, my name faltering on her lips. Yes, it was
Antoinette, not the light-hearted girl whom we had heard singing "Ma
luron" in the garden, but a woman now with a strange beauty that
astonished me. Hers was the dignity that comes from unselfish service,
the calm that is far from resignation, though the black veil caught up on
her chapeau de paille gave her the air of a Sister of Mercy. Antoinette
had inherited the energies as well as the features of the St. Gre's, yet
there was a painful moment as she stood there, striving to put down the
agitation the sight of me gave her. As for me, I was bereft of speech,
not knowing what to say or how far to go. My last thought was of the
remarkable quality in this woman before me which had held her true to
Mrs. Temple, and which sent her so courageously to her duty now.

Madame la Vicomtesse, as I had hoped, relieved the situation. She knew
how to broach a dreaded subject.

"Mr. Ritchie is going with us, Antoinette," she said.

"It is perhaps best to explain everything to him before we start. I was
about to tell you, Mr. Ritchie," she continued, turning to me, "that
Auguste has given no hint in his note of Mr. Temple's presence in
Louisiana. And yet you told me that they were to have come here
together."

"Yes," I answered, "and I have no reason to think they have separated."

"I was merely going to suggest," said the Vicomtesse, firmly, "I was
merely going to suggest the possibility of our meeting Mr. Temple with
Auguste."

It was Antoinette who answered, with a force that revealed a new side of
her character.

"Mr. Temple will not be there," she said, flashing a glance upon us. "Do
you think he would come to me--?"

Helene laid her hand upon the girl's arm.

"My dear, I think nothing," she said quietly; "but it is best for us to
be prepared against any surprise. Remember that I do not know Mr.
Temple, and that you have not seen him for five years."

"It is not like him, you know it is not like him," exclaimed Antoinette,
looking at me.

"I know it is not like him, Mademoiselle," I replied.

Madame la Vicomtesse, from behind the girl, gave me a significant look.

"This occurred to me," she went on in an undisturbed tone, "that Mr.
Temple might come with Auguste to protest against the proceeding,--or
even to defend himself against the imputation that he was to make use of
this money in any way. I wish you to realize, Antoinette, before you
decide to go, that you may meet Mr. Temple. Would it not be better to
let Mr. Ritchie go alone? I am sure that we could find no better
emissary."

"Auguste is here," said Antoinette. "I must see him." Her voice caught.
"I may never see him again. He may be ill, he may be starving--and I
know that he is in trouble. Whether" (her voice caught) "whether Mr.
Temple is with him or not, I mean to go."

"Then it would be well to start," said the Vicomtesse.

Deftly dropping her veil, she picked up a riding whip that lay on the
railing and descended the stairs to the courtyard. Antoinette and I
followed. As we came through the archway I saw Andre, Monsieur de St.
Gre's mulatto, holding open the wicket for us to pass. He helped the
ladies to mount the ponies, lengthened my own stirrups for me, swung into
the saddle himself, and then the four of us were picking our way down the
Rue Chartres at an easy amble. Turning to the right beyond the cool
garden of the Ursulines, past the yellow barracks, we came to the river
front beside the fortifications. A score of negroes were sweating there
in the sun, swinging into position the long logs for the palisades,
nearly completed. They were like those of Kaskaskia and our own frontier
forts in Kentucky, with a forty-foot ditch in front of them. Seated on a
horse talking to the overseer was a fat little man in white linen who
pulled off his hat and bowed profoundly to the ladies. His face gave me
a start, and then I remembered that I had seen him only the day before,
resplendent, coming out of church. He was the Baron de Carondelet.

There was a sentry standing under a crape-myrtle where the Royal Road ran
through the gateway. Behind him was a diminutive five-sided brick fort
with a dozen little cannon on top of it. The sentry came forward,
brought his musket to a salute, and halted before my horse.

"You will have to show your passport," murmured Madame la Vicomtesse.

I drew the document from my pocket. It was signed by De Lemos, and duly
countersigned by the officer of the port. The man bowed, and I passed
on.

It was a strange, silent ride through the stinging heat to Les Iles, the
brown dust hanging behind us like a cloud, to settle slowly on the
wayside shrubbery. Across the levee bank the river was low, listless,
giving off hot breath like a monster in distress. The forest pools were
cracked and dry, the Spanish moss was a haggard gray, and under the sun
was the haze which covered the land like a saffron mantle. At times a
listlessness came over me such as I had never known, to make me forget
the presence of the women at my side, the very errand on which we rode.
From time to time I was roused into admiration of the horsemanship of
Madame la Vicomtesse, for the restive Texas pony which she rode was stung
to madness by the flies. As for Antoinette, she glanced neither right
nor left through her veil, but rode unmindful of the way, heedless of
heat and discomfort, erect, motionless save for the easy gait of her
horse. At length we turned into the avenue through the forest, lined by
wild orange trees, came in sight of the low, belvedered plantation house,
and drew rein at the foot of the steps. Antoinette was the first to
dismount, and passed in silence through the group of surprised house
servants gathering at the door. I assisted the Vicomtesse, who paused to
bid the negroes disperse, and we lingered for a moment on the gallery
together.

"Poor Antoinette!" she said, "I wish we might have saved her this." She
looked up at me. "How she defended him!" she exclaimed.

"She loves him," I answered.

Madame la Vicomtesse sighed.

"I suppose there is no help for it," she said. "But it is very difficult
not to be angry with Mr. Temple. The girl cared for his mother, gave her
a home, clung to her when he and the world would have cast her off,
sacrificed her happiness for them both. If I see him, I believe I shall
shake him. And if he doesn't fall down on his knees to her, I shall ask
the Baron to hang him. We must bring him to his senses, Mr. Ritchie. He
must not leave Louisiana until he sees her. Then he will marry her."
She paused, scrutinized me in her quick way, and added: "You see that I
take your estimation of his character. You ought to be flattered."

"I am flattered by any confidence you repose in me, Madame la
Vicomtesse."

She laughed. I was not flattered then, but cursed myself for the quaint
awkwardness in my speech that amused her. And she was astonishingly
quick to perceive my moods.

"There, don't be angry. You will never be a courtier, my honest friend,
and you may thank God for it. How sweet the shrubs are! Your chief
business in life seems to be getting people out of trouble, and I am
going to help you with this case."

It was my turn to laugh.

"You are going to help!" I exclaimed. "My services have been heavy, so
far."

"You should not walk around at night," she replied irrelevantly.

Suddenly I remembered Gignoux, but even as I was about to tell her of the
incident Antoinette appeared in the doorway. She was very pale, but her
lips were set with excitement and her eyes shone strangely. She was
still in her riding gown, in her hand she carried a leather bag, and
behind her stood Andre with a bundle.

"Quick!" she said; "we are wasting time, and he may be gone."

Checking an exclamation which could hardly have been complimentary to
Auguste, the Vicomtesse crossed quickly to her and put her arm about her.

"We will follow you, mignonne," she said in French.

"Must you come?" said Antoinette, appealingly. "He may not appear if he
sees any one."

"We shall have to risk that," said the Vicomtesse, dryly, with a glance
at me. "You shall not go alone, but we will wait a few moments at the
hedge."

We took the well-remembered way through the golden green light under the
trees, Antoinette leading, and the sight of the garden brought back to me
poignantly the scene in the moonlight with Mrs. Temple. There was no
sound save the languid morning notes of the birds and the humming of the
bees among the flowers as Antoinette went tremblingly down the path and
paused, listening, under the branches of that oak where I had first
beheld her. Then, with a little cry, we saw her run forward--into the
arms of Auguste de St. Gre. It was a pitiful thing to look upon.

Antoinette had led her brother to the seat under the oak. How long we
waited I know not, but at length we heard their voices raised, and
without more ado Madame la Vicomtesse, beckoning me, passed quickly
through the gap in the hedge and went towards them. I followed with
Andre. Auguste rose with an oath, and then stood facing his cousin like
a man struck dumb, his hands dropped. He was a sorry sight indeed,
unshaven, unkempt, dark circles under his eyes, clothes torn.

"Helene! You here--in America!" he cried in French, staring at her.

"Yes, Auguste," she replied quite simply, "I am here." He would have
come towards her, but there was a note in her voice which arrested him.

"And Monsieur le Vicomte--Henri?" he said. I found myself listening
tensely for the answer.

"Henri is in Austria, fighting for his King, I hope," said Madame la
Vicomtesse.

"So Madame la Vicomtesse is a refugee," he said with a bow and a smile
that made me very angry.

"And Monsieur de St. Gre!" I asked.

At the sound of my voice he started and gave back, for he had not
perceived me. He recovered his balance, such as it was, instantly.

"Monsieur seems to take an extraordinary interest in my affairs," he said
jauntily.

"Only when they are to the detriment of other persons who are my
friends," I said.

"Monsieur has intruded in a family matter," said Auguste, grandly, still
in French.

"By invitation of those most concerned, Monsieur," I answered, for I
could have throttled him.

Auguste had developed. He had learned well that effrontery is often the
best weapon of an adventurer. He turned from me disdainfully,
petulantly, and addressed the Vicomtesse once more.

"I wish to be alone with Antoinette," he said.

"No doubt," said the Vicomtesse.

"I demand it," said Auguste.

"The demand is not granted," said the Vicomtesse; "that is why we have
come. Your sister has already made enough sacrifices for you. I know
you, Monsieur Auguste de St. Gre," she continued with quiet contempt.
"It is not for love of Antoinette that you have sought this meeting. It
is because," she said, riding down a torrent of words which began to
escape from him, "it is because you are in a predicament, as usual, and
you need money."

It was Antoinette who spoke. She had risen, and was standing behind
Auguste. She still held the leather bag in her hand.

"Perhaps the sum is not enough," she said; "he has to get to France.
Perhaps we could borrow more until my father comes home." She looked
questioningly at us.

Madame la Vicomtesse was truly a woman of decision. Without more ado she
took the bag from Antoinette's unresisting hands and put it into mine. I
was no less astonished than the rest of them.

"Mr. Ritchie will keep this until the negotiations are finished," said
the Vicomtesse.

"Negotiations!" cried Auguste, beside himself. "This is insolence,
Madame."

"Be careful, sir," I said.

"Auguste!" cried Antoinette, putting her hand on his arm.

"Why did you tell them?" he demanded, turning on her.

"Because I trust them, Auguste," Antoinette answered. She spoke without
anger, as one whose sorrow has put her beyond it. Her speech had a
dignity and force which might have awed a worthier man. His
disappointment and chagrin brought him beyond bounds.

"You trust them!" he cried, "you trust them when they tell you to give
your brother, who is starving and in peril of his life, eight hundred
livres? Eight hundred livres, pardieu, and your brother!"

"It is all I have, Auguste," said his sister, sadly.

"Ha!" he said dramatically, "I see, they seek my destruction. This
man"--pointing at me--"is a Federalist, and Madame la Vicomtesse"--he
bowed ironically--"is a Royalist."

"Pish!" said the Vicomtesse, impatiently, "it would be an easy matter to
have you sent to the Morro--a word to Monsieur de Carondelet, Auguste.
Do you believe for a moment that, in your father's absence, I would have
allowed Antoinette to come here alone? And it was a happy circumstance
that I could call on such a man as Mr. Ritchie to come with us."

"It seems to me that Mr. Ritchie and his friends have already brought
sufficient misfortune on the family."

It was a villanous speech. Antoinette turned away, her shoulders
quivering, and I took a step towards him; but Madame la Vicomtesse made a
swift gesture, and I stopped, I know not why. She gave an exclamation so
sharp that he flinched physically, as though he had been struck. But it
was characteristic of her that when she began to speak, her words cut
rather than lashed.

"Auguste de St. Gre," she said, "I know you. The Tribunal is merciful
compared to you. There is no one on earth whom you would not torture for
your selfish ends, no one whom you would not sell without compunction for
your pleasure. There are things that a woman should not mention, and yet
I would tell them without shame to your face were it not for your sister.
If it were not for her, I would not have you in my presence. Shall I
speak of your career in France? There is Valenciennes, for example--"

She stopped abruptly. The man was gray, but not on his account did the
Vicomtesse stay her speech. She forgot him as though he did not exist,
and by one of those swift transitions which thrilled me had gone to the
sobbing Antoinette and taken her in her arms, murmuring endearments of
which our language is not capable. I, too, forgot Auguste. But no
rebuke, however stinging, could make him forget himself, and before we
realized it he was talking again. He had changed his tactics.

"This is my home," he said, "where I might expect shelter and comfort.
You make me an outcast."

Antoinette disengaged herself from Helene with a cry, but he turned away
from her and shrugged.

"A stranger would have fared better. Perhaps you will have more
consideration for a stranger. There is a French ship at the Terre aux
Boeufs in the English Turn, which sails to-night. I appeal to you, Mr.
Ritchie,"--he was still talking in French--"I appeal to you, who are a
man of affairs,"--and he swept me a bow,--"if a captain would risk taking
a fugitive to France for eight hundred livres? Pardieu, I could get no
farther than the Balize for that. Monsieur," he added meaningly, "you
have an interest in this. There are two of us to go."

The amazing effrontery of this move made me gasp. Yet it was neither the
Vicomtesse nor myself who answered him. We turned by common impulse to
Antoinette, and she was changed. Her breath came quickly, her eyes
flashed, her anger made her magnificent.

"It is not true," she cried, "you know it is not true."

He lifted his shoulders and smiled.

"You are my brother, and I am ashamed to acknowledge you. I was willing
to give my last sou, to sell my belongings, to take from the poor to help
you--until you defamed a good man. You cannot make me believe," she
cried, unheeding the color that surged into her cheeks, "you cannot make
me believe that he would use this money. You cannot make me believe it."

"Let us do him the credit of thinking that he means to repay it," said
Auguste.

Antoinette's eyes filled with tears,--tears of pride, of humiliation, ay,
and of an anger of which I had not thought her capable. She was indeed a
superb creature then, a personage I had not imagined. Gathering up her
gown, she passed Auguste and turned on him swiftly.

"If you were to bring that to him," she said, pointing to the bag in my
hand, "he would not so much as touch it. To-morrow I shall go to the
Ursulines, and I thank God I shall never see you again. I thank God I
shall no longer be your sister. Give Monsieur the bundle," she said to
the frightened Andre, who still stood by the hedge; "he may need food and
clothes for his journey."

She left us. We stood watching her until her gown had disappeared
amongst the foliage. Andre came forward and held out the bundle to
Auguste, who took it mechanically. Then Madame La Vicomtesse motioned to
Andre to leave, and gave me a glance, and it was part of the deep
understanding of her I had that I took its meaning. I had my forebodings
at what this last conversation with Auguste might bring forth, and I
wished heartily that we were rid of him.

"Monsieur de St. Gre," I said, "I understood you to say that a ship is
lying at the English Turn some five leagues below us, on which you are to
take passage at once."

He turned and glared at me, some devilish retort on his lips which he
held back. Suddenly he became suave.

"I shall want two thousand livres Monsieur; it was the sum I asked for."

"It is not a question of what you asked for," I answered.

"Since when did Monsieur assume this intimate position in my family?" he
said, glancing at the Vicomtesse.

"Monsieur de St. Gre," I replied with difficulty, "you will confine
yourself to the matter in hand. You are in no situation to demand terms;
you must take or leave what is offered you. Last night the man called
Gignoux, who was of your party, was at the Governor's house."

At this he started perceptibly.

"Ha, I thought he was a traitor," he cried. Strangely enough, he did not
doubt my word in this.

"I am surprised that your Father's house has not been searched this
morning," I continued, astonished at my own moderation. "The sentiments
of the Baron de Carondelet are no doubt known to you, and you are aware
that your family or your friends cannot save you if you are arrested.
You may have this money on two conditions. The first is that you leave
the province immediately. The second, that you reveal the whereabouts of
Mr. Nicholas Temple."

"Monsieur is very kind," he replied, and added the taunt, "and well
versed in the conduct of affairs of money."

"Does Monsieur de St. Gre accept?" I asked.

He threw out his hands with a gesture of resignation.

"Who am I to accept?" he said, "a fugitive, an outcast. And I should
like to remind Monsieur that time passes."

"It is a sensible observation," said I, meaning that it was the first.
His sudden docility made me suspicious. "What preparations have you made
to go?"

"They are not elaborate, Monsieur, but they are complete. When I leave
you I step into a pirogue which is tied to the river bank."

"Ah," I replied. "And Mr. Temple?"

Madame la Vicomtesse smiled, for Auguste was fairly caught. He had not
the astuteness to be a rogue; oddly he had the sense to know that he
could fool us no longer.

"Temple is at Lamarque's," he answered sullenly.

I glanced questioningly at the Vicomtesse.

"Lamarque is an old pensioner of Monsieur de St. Gre's," said she; "he
has a house and an arpent of land not far below here."

"Exactly," said Auguste, "and if Mr. Ritchie believes that he will save
money by keeping Mr. Temple in Louisiana instead of giving him this
opportunity to escape, it is no concern of mine."

I reflected a moment on this, for it was another sensible remark.

"It is indeed no concern of yours," said Madame la Vicomtesse.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"And now," he said, "I take it that there are no further conscientious
scruples against my receiving this paltry sum."

"I will go with you to your pirogue," I answered, "when you embark you
shall have it."

"I, too, will go," said Madame la Vicomtesse.

"You overwhelm me with civility, Madame," said the Sieur de St. Gre,
bowing low.

"Lead the way, Monsieur," I said.

He took his bundle, and started off down the garden path with a grand
air. I looked at the Vicomtesse inquiringly, and there was laughter in
her eyes.

"I must show you the way to Lamarque's." And then she whispered, "You
have done well, Mr. Ritchie."

I did not return her look, but waited until she took the path ahead of
me. In silence we followed Auguste through the depths of the woods,
turning here and there to avoid a fallen tree or a sink-hole where the
water still remained. At length we came out in the glare of the sun and
crossed the dusty road to the levee bank. Some forty yards below us was
the canoe, and we walked to it, still in silence. Auguste flung in his
bundle, and turned to us.

"Perhaps Monsieur is satisfied," he said.

I handed him the bag, and he took it with an elaborate air of
thankfulness. Nay, the rascal opened it as if to assure himself that he
was not tricked at the last. At the sight of the gold and silver which
Antoinette had hastily collected, he turned to Madame la Vicomtesse.

"Should I have the good fortune to meet Monsieur le Vicomte in France, I
shall assure him that Madame is in good hands" (he swept an exultant look
at me) "and enjoying herself."

I could have flung him into the river, money-bag and all. But Madame la
Vicomtesse made him a courtesy there on the levee bank, and said
sweetly:--

"That is very good of you, Auguste."

"As for you, Monsieur," he said, and now his voice shook with
uncontrolled rage, "I am in no condition to repay your kindnesses. But I
have no doubt that you will not object to keeping the miniature a while
longer."

I was speechless with anger and shame, and though I felt the eyes of the
Vicomtesse upon me, I dared not look at her. I heard Auguste but
indistinctly as he continued:--

"Should you need the frame, Monsieur, you will doubtless find it still
with Monsieur Isadore, the Jew, in the Rue Toulouse." With that he
leaped into his boat, seized the paddle, and laughed as he headed into
the current. How long I stood watching him as he drifted lazily in the
sun I know not, but at length the voice of Madame la Vicomtesse aroused
me.

"He is a pleasant person," she said.



CHAPTER VIII

AT LAMARQUE'S

Until then it seemed as if the sun had gotten into my brain and set it
on fire. Her words had the strange effect of clearing my head, though I
was still in as sad a predicament as ever I found myself. There was the
thing in my pocket, still wrapped in Polly Ann's handkerchief. I glanced
at the Vicomtesse shyly, and turned away again. Her face was all
repressed laughter, the expression I knew so well.

"I think we should feel better in the shade, Mr. Ritchie," she said in
English, and, leaping lightly down from the bank, crossed the road again.
I followed her, perforce.

"I will show you the way to Lamarque's," she said.

"Madame la Vicomtesse!" I cried.

Had she no curiosity? Was she going to let pass what Auguste had hinted?
Lifting up her skirts, she swung round and faced me. In her eyes was a
calmness more baffling than the light I had seen there but a moment
since. How to begin I knew not, and yet I was launched.

"Madame la Vicomtesse, there was once a certain miniature painted of
you."

"By Boze, Monsieur," she answered, readily enough. The embarrassment was
all on my side. "We spoke of it last evening. I remember well when it
was taken. It was the costume I wore at Chantilly, and Monsieur le
Prince complimented me, and the next day the painter himself came to our
hotel in the Rue de Bretagne and asked the honor of painting me." She
sighed. "Ah, those were happy days! Her Majesty was very angry with
me."

"And why?" I asked, forgetful of my predicament.

"For sending it to Louisiana, to Antoinette."

"And why did you send it?"

"A whim," said the Vicomtesse. "I had always written twice a year either
to Monsieur de St. Gre or Antoinette, and although I had never seen them,
I loved them. Perhaps it was because they had the patience to read my
letters and the manners to say they liked them."

"Surely not, Madame," I said. "Monsieur de St. Gre spoke often to me of
the wonderful pictures you drew of the personages at court."

Madame la Vicomtesse had an answer on the tip of her tongue. I know now
that she spared me.

"And what of this miniature, Monsieur?" she asked. "What became of it
after you restored it to its rightful owner?"

I flushed furiously and fumbled in my pocket.

"I obtained it again, Madame," I said.

"You obtained it!" she cried, I am not sure to this day whether in
consternation or jest. In passing, it was not just what I wanted to say.

"I meant to give it you last night," I said.

"And why did you not?" she demanded severely.

I felt her eyes on me, and it seemed to me as if she were looking into my
very soul. Even had it been otherwise, I could not have told her how I
had lived with this picture night and day, how I had dreamed of it, how
it had been my inspiration and counsel. I drew it from my pocket,
wrapped as it was in the handkerchief, and uncovered it with a reverence
which she must have marked, for she turned away to pick a yellow flower
by the roadside. I thank Heaven that she did not laugh. Indeed, she
seemed to be far from laughter.

"You have taken good care of it, Monsieur," she said. "I thank you."

"It was not mine, Madame," I answered.

"And if it had been?" she asked.

It was a strange prompting.

"If it had been, I could have taken no better care of it," I answered,
and I held it towards her.

She took it simply.

"And the handkerchief?" she said.

"The handkerchief was Polly Ann's," I answered.

She stopped to pick a second flower that had grown by the first.

"Who is Polly Ann?" she said.

"When I was eleven years of age and ran away from Temple Bow after my
father died, Polly Ann found me in the hills. When she married Tom
McChesney they took me across the mountains into Kentucky with them.
Polly Ann has been more than a mother to me."

"Oh!" said Madame la Vicomtesse. Then she looked at me with a stranger
expression than I had yet seen in her face. She thrust the miniature in
her gown, turned, and walked in silence awhile. Then she said:--

"So Auguste sold it again?"

"Yes," I said.

"He seems to have found a ready market only in you," said the Vicomtesse,
without turning her head. "Here we are at Lamarque's."

What I saw was a low, weather-beaten cabin on the edge of a clearing, and
behind it stretched away in prim rows the vegetables which the old
Frenchman had planted. There was a little flower garden, too, and an
orchard. A path of beaten earth led to the door, which was open. There
we paused. Seated at a rude table was Lamarque himself, his hoary head
bent over the cards he held in his hand. Opposite him was Mr. Nicholas
Temple, in the act of playing the ace of spades. I think that it was the
laughter of Madame la Vicomtesse that first disturbed them, and even then
she had time to turn to me.

"I like your cousin," she whispered.

"Is that you, St. Gre?" said Nick. "I wish to the devil you would learn
not to sneak. You frighten me. Where the deuce did you go to?"

But Lamarque had seen the lady, stared at her wildly for a moment, and
rose, dropping his cards on the floor. He bowed humbly, not without
trepidation.

"Madame la Vicomtesse!" he said.

By this time Nick had risen, and he, too, was staring at her. How he
managed to appear so well dressed was a puzzle to me.

"Madame," he said, bowing, "I beg your pardon. I thought you were
that--I beg your pardon."

"I understand your feelings, sir," answered the Vicomtesse as she
courtesied.

"Egad," said Nick, and looked at her again. "Egad, I'll be hanged if
it's not--"

It was the first time I had seen the Vicomtesse in confusion. And indeed
if it were confusion she recovered instantly.

"You will probably be hanged, sir, if you do not mend your company," she
said. "Do you not think so, Mr. Ritchie?"

"Davy!" he cried. And catching sight of me in the doorway, over her
shoulder, "Has he followed me here too?" Running past the Vicomtesse, he
seized me in his impulsive way and searched my face. "So you have
followed me here, old faithful! Madame," he added, turning to the
Vicomtesse, "there is some excuse for my getting into trouble."

"What excuse, Monsieur?" she asked. She was smiling, yet looking at us
with shining eyes.

"The pleasure of having Mr. Ritchie get me out," he answered. "He has
never failed me."

"You are far from being out of this," I said. "If the Baron de
Carondelet does not hang you or put you in the Morro, you will not have
me to thank. It will be Madame la Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour."

"Madame la Vicomtesse!" exclaimed Nick, puzzled.

"May I present to you, Madame, Mr. Nicholas Temple?" I asked.

Nick bowed, and she courtesied again.

"So Monsieur le Baron is really after us," said Nick. He opened his
eyes, slapped his knee, and laughed. "That may account for the Citizen
Captain de St. Gre's absence," he said. "By the way, Davy, you haven't
happened by any chance to meet him?"

The Vicomtesse and I exchanged a look of understanding. Relief was plain
on her face. It was she who answered.

"We have met him--by chance, Monsieur. He has just left for Terre aux
Boeufs."

"Terre aux Boeufs! What the dev--I beg your pardon, Madame la
Vicomtesse, but you give me something of a surprise. Is there another
conspiracy at Terre aux Boeufs, or--does somebody live there who has
never before lent Auguste money?"

Madame la Vicomtesse laughed. Then she grew serious again.

"You did not know where he had gone?" she said.

"I did not even know he had gone," said Nick. "Citizen Lamarque and I
were having a little game of piquet--for vegetables. Eh, citizen?"

Madame la Vicomtesse laughed again, and once more the shade of sadness
came into her eyes.

"They are the same the world over," she said,--not to me, nor yet to any
one there. And I knew that she was thinking of her own kind in France,
who faced the guillotine without sense of danger. She turned to Nick.
"You may be interested to know, Mr. Temple," she added, "that Auguste is
on his way to the English Turn to take ship for France."

Nick regarded her for a moment, and then his face lighted up with that
smile which won every one he met, which inevitably made them smile back
at him.

"The news is certainly unexpected, Madame," he said. "But then, after
one has travelled much with Auguste it is difficult to take a great deal
of interest in him. Am I to be sent to France, too?" he asked.

"Not if it can be helped," replied the Vicomtesse, seriously. "Mr.
Ritchie will tell you, however, that you are in no small danger.
Doubtless you know it. Monsieur le Baron de Carondelet considers that
the intrigues of the French Revolutionists in Louisiana have already
robbed him of several years of his life. He is not disposed to be
lenient towards persons connected with that cause."

"What have you been doing since you arrived here on this ridiculous
mission?" I demanded impatiently.

"My cousin is a narrow man, Madame la Vicomtesse," said Nick. "We enjoy
ourselves in different ways. I thought there might be some excitement in
this matter, and I was sadly mistaken."

"It is not over yet," said the Vicomtesse.

"And Davy," continued Nick, bowing to me, "gets his pleasures and
excitement by extracting me from my various entanglements. Well, there
is not much to tell. St. Gre and I were joined above Natchez by that
little pig, Citizen Gignoux, and we shot past De Lemos in the night.
Since then we have been permitted to sleep--no more--at various
plantations. We have been waked up at barbarous hours in the morning and
handed on, as it were. They were all fond of us, but likewise they were
all afraid of the Baron. What day is to-day? Monday? Then it was on
Saturday that we lost Gignoux."

"I have reason to think that he has already sold out to the Baron," I put
in.

"Eh?"

"I saw him in communication with the police at the Governor's hotel last
night," I answered.

Nick was silent for a moment.

"Well," he said, "that may make some excitement." Then he laughed. "I
wonder why Auguste didn't think of doing that," he said. "And now,
what?"

"How did you get to this house?" I said.

"We came down on Saturday night, after we had lost Gignoux above the
city."

"Do you know where you are?" I asked.

"Not I," said Nick. "I have been playing piquet with Lamarque most of
the time since I arrived. He is one of the pleasantest men I have met in
Louisiana, although a little taciturn, as you perceive, and more than a
little deaf. I think he does not like Auguste. He seems to have known
him in his youth."

Madame la Vicomtesse looked at him with interest.

"You are at Les Iles, Nick," I said; "you are on Monsieur de St. Gre's
plantation, and within a quarter of a mile of his house."

His face became grave all at once. He seized me by both shoulders, and
looked into my face.

"You say that we are at Les Iles?" he repeated slowly.

I nodded, seeing the deception which Auguste had evidently practised in
order to get him here. Then Nick dropped his arms, went to the door, and
stood for a long time with his back turned to us, looking out over the
fields. When finally he spoke it was in the tone he used in anger.

"If I had him now, I think I would kill him," he said.

Auguste had deluded him in other things, had run away and deserted him in
a strange land. But this matter of bringing him to Les Iles was past
pardon. It was another face he turned to the Vicomtesse, a stronger
face, a face ennobled by a just anger.

"Madame la Vicomtesse," he said, "I have a vague notion that you are
related to Monsieur de St. Gre. I give you my word of honor as a
gentleman that I had no thought of trespassing upon him in any way."

"Mr. Temple, we were so sure of that--Mr. Ritchie and I--that we should
not have sought for you here otherwise," she replied quickly. Then she
glanced at me as though seeking my approval for her next move. It was
characteristic of her that she did not now shirk a task imposed by her
sense of duty. "We have little time, Mr. Temple, and much to say.
Perhaps you will excuse us, Lamarque," she added graciously, in French.

"Madame la Vicomtesse!" said the old man. And, with the tact of his
race, he bowed and retired. The Vicomtesse seated herself on one of the
rude chairs, and looked at Nick curiously. There was no such thing as
embarrassment in her manner, no trace of misgiving that she would not
move properly in the affair. Knowing Nick as I did, the difficulty of
the task appalled me, for no man was likelier than he to fly off at a
misplaced word.

Her beginning was so bold that I held my breath, knowing full well as I
did that she had chosen the very note.

"Sit down, Mr. Temple," she said. "I wish to speak to you about your
mother."

He stopped like a man who had been struck, straightened, and stared at
her as though he had not taken her meaning. Then he swung on me.

"Your mother is in New Orleans," I said. "I would have told you in
Louisville had you given me the chance."

"It is an interesting piece of news, David," he answered, "which you
might have spared me. Mrs. Temple did not think herself necessary to my
welfare when I was young, and now I have learned to live without her."

"Is there no such thing as expiation, Monsieur?" said the Vicomtesse.

"Madame," he said, "she made me what I am, and when I might have redeemed
myself she came between me and happiness."

"Monsieur," said the Vicomtesse, "have you ever considered her
sufferings?"

He looked at the Vicomtesse with a new interest. She was not so far
beyond his experience as mine.

"Her sufferings?" he repeated, and smiled.

"Madame la Vicomtesse should know them," I interrupted; and without
heeding her glance of protest I continued, "It is she who has cared for
Mrs. Temple."

"You, Madame!" he exclaimed.

"Do not deny your own share in it, Mr. Ritchie," she answered. "As for
me, Monsieur," she went on, turning to Nick, "I have done nothing that
was not selfish. I have been in the world, I have lived my life,
misfortunes have come upon me too. My visits to your mother have been to
me a comfort, a pleasure,--for she is a rare person."

"I have never found her so, Madame," he said briefly.

"I am sure it is your misfortune rather than your fault, Mr. Temple. It
is because you do not know her now."

Again he looked at me, puzzled, uneasy, like a man who would run if he
could. But by a kind of fascination his eyes went back to this woman who
dared a subject sore to the touch--who pressed it gently, but with
determination, never doubting her powers, yet with a kindness and
sympathy of tone which few women of the world possess. The Vicomtesse
began to speak again, evenly, gently.

"Mr. Temple," said she, "I am merely going to tell you some things which
I am sure you do not know, and when I have finished I shall not appeal to
you. It would be useless for me to try to influence you, and from what
Mr. Ritchie and others have told me of your character I am sure that no
influence will be necessary. And," she added, with a smile, "it would be
much more comfortable for us both if you sat down."

He obeyed her without a word. No wonder Madame la Vicomtesse had had an
influence at court.

"There!" she said. "If any reference I am about to make gives you pain,
I am sorry." She paused briefly. "After Mr. Ritchie took your mother
from here to New Orleans, some five years ago, she rented a little house
in the Rue Bourbon with a screen of yellow and red tiles at the edge of
the roof. It is on the south side, next to the corner of the Rue St.
Philippe. There she lives absolutely alone, except for a servant. Mr.
Clark, who has charge of her affairs, was the only person she allowed to
visit her. For her pride, however misplaced, and for her spirit we must
all admire her. The friend who discovered where she was, who went to her
and implored Mrs. Temple to let her stay, she refused."

"The friend?" he repeated in a low tone. I scarcely dared to glance at
the Vicomtesse.

"Yes, it was Antoinette," she answered. He did not reply, but his eyes
fell. "Antoinette went to her, would have comforted her, would have
cared for her, but your mother sent her away. For five years she has
lived there, Mr. Temple, alone with her past, alone with her sorrow and
remorse. You must draw the picture for yourself. If the world has a
more terrible punishment, I have not heard of it. And when, some months
ago, I came, and Antoinette sent me to her--"

"Sent you to her!" he said, raising his head quickly.

"Under another name than my own," Helene continued, apparently taking no
notice of his interruption. She leaned toward him and her voice
faltered. "I found your mother dying."

He said nothing, but got to his feet and walked slowly to the door, where
he stood looking out again. I felt for him, I would have gone to him
then had it not been for the sense in me that Helene did not wish it. As
for Helene, she sat waiting for him to turn back to her, and at length he
did.

"Yes?" he said.

"It is her heart, Mr. Temple, that we fear the most. Last night I
thought the end had come. It cannot be very far away now. Sorrow and
remorse have killed her, Monsieur. The one thing that she has prayed for
through the long nights is that she might see you once again and obtain
your forgiveness. God Himself does not withhold forgiveness, Mr.
Temple," said the Vicomtesse, gently. "Shall any of us presume to?"

A spasm of pain crossed his face, and then his expression hardened.

"I might have been a useful man," he said; "she ruined my life--"

"And you will allow her to ruin the rest of it?" asked the Vicomtesse.

He stared at her.

"If you do not go to her and forgive her, you will remember it until you
die," she said.

He sank down on the chair opposite to her, his head bowed into his hands,
his elbows on the table among the cards. At length I went and laid my
hands upon his shoulder, and at my touch he started. Then he did a
singular thing, an impulsive thing, characteristic of the old Nick I had
known. He reached across the table and seized the hand of Madame la
Vicomtesse. She did not resist, and her smile I shall always remember.
It was the smile of a woman who has suffered, and understands.

"I will go to her, Madame!" he said, springing to his feet. "I will go
to her. I--I was wrong."

She rose, too, he still clinging to her hand, she still unresisting. His
eye fell upon me.

"Where is my hat, Davy?" he asked.

The Vicomtesse withdrew her hand and looked at me.

"Alas, it is not quite so simple as that, Mr. Temple," she said;
"Monsieur de Carondelet has first to be reckoned with."

"She is dying, you say? then I will go to her. After that Monsieur de
Carondelet may throw me into prison, may hang me, may do anything he
chooses. But I will go to her."

I glanced anxiously at the Vicomtesse, well knowing how wilful he was
when aroused. Admiration was in her eyes, seeing that he was heedless of
his own danger.

"You would not get through the gates of the city. Monsieur le Baron
requires passports now," she said.

At that he began to pace the little room, his hands clenched.

"I could use your passport, Davy," he cried. "Let me have it."

"Pardon me, Mr. Temple, I do not think you could," said the Vicomtesse.
I flushed. I suppose the remark was not to be resisted.

"Then I will go to-night," he said, with determination. "It will be no
trouble to steal into the city. You say the house has yellow and red
tiles, and is near the Rue St. Philippe?"

Helene laid her fingers on his arm.

"Listen, Monsieur, there is a better way," she said. "Monsieur le Baron
is doubtless very angry with you, and I am sure that this is chiefly
because he does not know you. For instance, if some one were to tell him
that you are a straightforward, courageous young man, a gentleman with an
unquenchable taste for danger, that you are not a low-born adventurer and
intriguer, that you have nothing in particular against his government, he
might not be quite so angry. Pardon me if I say that he is not disposed
to take your expedition any more seriously than is your own Federal
government. The little Baron is irascible, choleric, stern, or else
good-natured, good-hearted, and charitable, just as one happens to take
him. As we say in France, it is not well to strike flint and steel in
his presence. He might blow up and destroy one. Suppose some one were
to go to Monsieur de Carondelet and tell him what a really estimable
person you are, and assure him that you will go quietly out of his
province at the first opportunity, and be good, so far as he is
concerned, forever after? Mark me, I merely say SUPPOSE. I do not know
how far things have gone, or what he may have heard. But suppose a
person whom I have reason to believe he likes and trusts and respects, a
person who understands his vagaries, should go to him on such an errand."

"And where is such a person to be found," said Nick, amused in spite of
himself.

Madame la Vicomtesse courtesied.

"Monsieur, she is before you," she said.

"Egad," he cried, "do you mean to say, Madame, that you will go to the
Baron on my behalf?"

"As soon as I ever get to town," she said. "He will have to be waked
from his siesta, and he does not like that."

"But he will forgive you," said Nick, quick as a flash.

"I have reason to believe he will," said Madame la Vicomtesse.

"Faith," cried Nick, "he would not be flesh and blood if he didn't."

At that the Vicomtesse laughed, and her eye rested judicially on me. I
was standing rather glumly, I fear, in the corner.

"Are you going to take him with you?" said Nick.

"I was thinking of it," said the Vicomtesse. "Mr. Ritchie knows you, and
he is such a reliable and reputable person."

Nick bowed.

"You should have seen him marching in a Jacobin procession, Madame," he
said.

"He follows his friends into strange places," she retorted.

"And now, Mr. Temple," she added, "may we trust you to stay here with
Lamarque until you have word from us?"

"You know I cannot stay here," he cried.

"And why not, Monsieur?"

"If I were captured here, I should get Monsieur de St. Gre into trouble;
and besides," he said, with a touch of coldness, "I cannot be beholden to
Monsieur de St. Gre. I cannot remain on his land."

"As for getting Monsieur de St. Gre into trouble, his own son could not
involve him with the Baron," answered Madame la Vicomtesse. "And it
seems to me, Monsieur, that you are already so far beholden to Monsieur
de St. Gre that you cannot quibble about going a little more into his
debt. Come, Mr. Temple, how has Monsieur de St. Gre ever offended you?"

"Madame--" he began.

"Monsieur," she said, with an air not to be denied, "I believe I can
discern a point of honor as well as you. I fail to see that you have a
case."

He was indeed no match for her. He turned to me appealingly, his brows
bent, but I had no mind to meddle. He swung back to her.

"But Madame--!" he cried.

She was arranging the cards neatly on the table.

"Monsieur, you are tiresome," she said. "What is it now?"

He took a step toward her, speaking in a low tone, his voice shaking.
But, true to himself, he spoke plainly. As for me, I looked on
frightened,--as though watching a contest,--almost agape to see what a
clever woman could do.

"There is--Mademoiselle de St. Gre--"

"Yes, there is Mademoiselle de St. Gre," repeated the Vicomtesse, toying
with the cards.

His face lighted, though his lips twitched with pain.

"She is still--"

"She is still Mademoiselle de St. Gre, Monsieur, if that is what you
mean."

"And what will she think if I stay here?"

"Ah, do you care what she thinks, Mr. Temple?" said the Vicomtesse,
raising her head quickly. "From what I have heard, I should not have
thought you could."

"God help me," he answered simply, "I do care."

Helene's eyes softened as she looked at him, and my pride in him was
never greater than at that moment.

"Mr. Temple," she said gently, "remain where you are and have faith in
us. I begin to see now why you are so fortunate in your friends." Her
glance rested for a brief instant on me. "Mr. Ritchie and I will go to
New Orleans, talk to the Baron, and send Andre at once with a message.
If it is in our power, you shall see your mother very soon."

She held out her hand to him, and he bent and kissed it reverently, with
an ease I envied. He followed us to the door. And when the Vicomtesse
had gone a little way down the path she looked at him over her shoulder.

"Do not despair, Mr. Temple," she said.

It was an answer to a yearning in his face. He gripped me by the
shoulders.

"God bless you, Davy," he whispered, and added, "God bless you both."

I overtook her where the path ran into the forest's shade, and for a long
while I walked after her, not breaking her silence, my eyes upon her, a
strange throbbing in my forehead which I did not heed. At last, when the
perfumes of the flowers told us we were nearing the garden, she turned to
me.

"I like Mr. Temple," she said, again.

"He is an honest gentleman," I answered.

"One meets very few of them," she said, speaking in a low voice. "You
and I will go to the Governor. And after that, have you any idea where
you will go?"

"No," I replied, troubled by her regard.

"Then I will tell you. I intend to send you to Madame Gravois's, and she
will compel you to go to bed and rest. I do not mean to allow you to
kill yourself."



CHAPTER IX

MONSIEUR LE BARON

The sun beat down mercilessly on thatch and terrace, the yellow walls
flung back the quivering heat, as Madame la Vicomtesse and I walked
through the empty streets towards the Governor's house. We were followed
by Andre and Madame's maid. The sleepy orderly started up from under the
archway at our approach, bowed profoundly to Madame, looked askance at
me, and declared, with a thousand regrets, that Monsieur le Baron was
having his siesta.

"Then you will wake him," said Madame la Vicomtesse.

Wake Monsieur le Baron! Bueno Dios, did Madame understand what it meant
to wake his Excellency? His Excellency would at first be angry, no
doubt. Angry? As an Andalusian bull, Madame. Once, when his Excellency
had first come to the province, he, the orderly, had presumed to awake
him.

"Assez!" said Madame, so suddenly that the man straightened and looked at
her again. "You will wake Monsieur le Baron, and tell him that Madame la
Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour has something of importance to say to him."

Madame had the air, and a title carried with a Spanish soldier in New
Orleans in those days. The orderly fairly swept the ground and led us
through a court where the sun drew bewildering hot odors from the fruits
and flowers, into a darkened room which was the Baron's cabinet. I
remember it vaguely, for my head was hot and throbbing from my exertions
in such a climate. It was a new room,--the hotel being newly
built,--with white walls, a picture of his Catholic Majesty and the
royal arms of Spain, a map of Louisiana, another of New Orleans
fortified, some walnut chairs, a desk with ink and sand and a seal, and a
window, the closed lattice shutters of which showed streaks of light
green light. These doubtless opened on the Royal Road and looked across
the levee esplanade on the waters of the Mississippi. Madame la
Vicomtesse seated herself, and with a gesture which was an order bade me
do likewise.

"He will be angry, the dear Baron," she said. "He is harassed to death
with republics. No offence, Mr. Ritchie. He is up at dawn looking to
the forts and palisades to guard against such foolish enterprises as this
of Mr. Temple's. And to be waked out of a well-earned siesta--to save a
gentleman who has come here to make things unpleasant for him--is
carrying a joke a little far. Mais--que voulez-vous?"

She gave a little shrug to her slim shoulders as she smiled at me, and
she seemed not a whit disturbed concerning the conversation with his
Excellency. I wondered whether this were birth, or training, or both, or
a natural ability to cope with affairs. The women of her order had long
been used to intercede with sovereigns, to play a part in matters of
state. Suddenly I became aware that she was looking at me.

"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, and continued without waiting
for a reply, "you strange man."

"I was thinking how odd it was," I replied, "that I should have known you
all these years by a portrait, that we should finally be thrown together,
and that you should be so exactly like the person I had supposed you to
be."

She lowered her eyes, but she did not seem to take offence. I meant
none.

"And you," she answered, "are continually reminding me of an Englishman I
knew when I was a girl. He was a very queer person to be attached to the
Embassy,--not a courtier, but a serious, literal person like you, Mr.
Ritchie, and he resembled you very much. I was very fond of him."

"And--what became of him?" I asked. Other questions rose to my lips, but
I put them down.

"I will tell you," she answered, bending forward a little. "He did
something which I believe you might have done. A certain Marquis spoke
lightly of a lady, an Englishwoman at our court, and my Englishman ran
him through one morning at Versailles."

She paused, and I saw that her breath was coming more quickly at the
remembrance.

"And then?"

"He fled to England. He was a younger son, and poor. But his King heard
of the affair, had it investigated, and restored him to the service. I
have never seen him since," she said, "but I have often thought of him.
There," she added, after a silence, with a lightness which seemed
assumed, "I have given you a romance. How long the Baron takes to
dress!"

At that moment there were footsteps in the court-yard, and the orderly
appeared at the door, saluting, and speaking in Spanish.

"His Excellency the Governor!"

We rose, and Madame was courtesying and I was bowing to the little man.
He was in uniform, his face perspiring in the creases, his plump calves
stretching his white stockings to the full. Madame extended her hand and
he kissed it, albeit he did not bend easily. He spoke in French, and his
voice betrayed the fact that his temper was near slipping its leash. The
Baron was a native of Flanders.

"To what happy circumstance do I owe the honor of this visit, Madame la
Vicomtesse?" he asked.

"To a woman's whim, Monsieur le Baron," she answered, "for a man would
not have dared to disturb you. May I present to your Excellency, Mr.
David Ritchie of Kentucky?"

His Excellency bowed stiffly, looked at me with no pretence of pleasure,
and I had had sufficient dealings with men to divine that, in the coming
conversation, the overflow of his temper would be poured upon me. His
first sensation was surprise.

"An American!" he said, in a tone that implied reproach to Madame la
Vicomtesse for having fallen into such company. "Ah," he cried,
breathing hard in the manner of stout people, "I remember you came down
with Monsieur Vigo, Monsieur, did you not?"

It was my turn to be surprised. If the Baron took a like cognizance of
all my countrymen who came to New Orleans, he was a busy man indeed.

"Yes, your Excellency," I answered.

"And you are a Federalist?" he said, though petulantly.

"I am, your Excellency."

"Is your nation to overrun the earth?" said the Baron. "Every morning
when I ride through the streets it seems to me that more Americans have
come. Pardieu, I declare every day that, if it were not for the
Americans, I should have ten years more of life ahead of me." I could
not resist the temptation to glance at Madame la Vicomtesse. Her eyes,
half closed, betrayed an amusement that was scarce repressed.

"Come, Monsieur le Baron," she said, "you and I have like beliefs upon
most matters. We have both suffered at the hands of people who have
mistaken a fiend for a Lady."

"You would have me believe, Madame," the Baron put in, with a wit I had
not thought in him, "that Mr. Ritchie knows a lady when he sees one. I
can readily believe it."

Madame laughed.

"He at least has a negative knowledge," she replied. "And he has brought
into New Orleans no coins, boxes, or clocks against your Excellency's
orders with the image and superscription of the Goddess in whose name all
things are done. He has not sung 'Ca Ira' at the theatres, and he
detests the tricolored cockades as much as you do."

The Baron laughed in spite of himself, and began to thaw. There was a
little more friendliness in his next glance at me.

"What images have you brought in, Mr. Ritchie?" he asked. "We all
worship the sex in some form, however misplaced our notions of it."

There is not the least doubt that, for the sake of the Vicomtesse, he was
trying to be genial, and that his remark was a purely random one. But
the roots of my hair seemed to have taken fire. I saw the Baron as in a
glass, darkly. But I kept my head, principally because the situation had
elements of danger.

"The image of Madame la Vicomtesse, Monsieur," I said.

"Dame!" exclaimed his Excellency, eying me with a new interest, "I did
not suspect you of being a courtier."

"No more he is, Monsieur le Baron," said the Vicomtesse, "for he speaks
the truth."

His Excellency looked blank. As for me, I held my breath, wondering what
coup Madame was meditating.

"Mr. Ritchie brought down from Kentucky a miniature of me by Boze, that
was painted in a costume I once wore at Chantilly."

"Comment! diable," exclaimed the Baron. "And how did such a thing get
into Kentucky, Madame?"

"You have brought me to the point," she replied, "which is no small
triumph for your Excellency. Mr. Ritchie bought the miniature from that
most estimable of my relations, Monsieur Auguste de St. Gre."

The Baron sat down and began to fan himself. He even grew a little
purple. He looked at Madame, sputtered, and I began to think that, if he
didn't relieve himself, his head might blow off. As for the Vicomtesse,
she wore an ingenuous air of detachment, and seemed supremely unconscious
of the volcano by her side.

"So, Madame," cried the Governor at length, after I know not what
repressions, "you have come here in behalf of that--of Auguste de St.
Gre!"

"So far as I am concerned, Monsieur," answered the Vicomtesse, calmly,
"you may hang Auguste, put him in prison, drown him, or do anything you
like with him."

"God help me," said the poor man, searching for his handkerchief, and
utterly confounded, "why is it you have come to me, then? Why did you
wake me up?" he added, so far forgetting himself.

"I came in behalf of the gentleman who had the indiscretion to accompany
Auguste to Louisiana," she continued, "in behalf of Mr. Nicholas Temple,
who is a cousin of Mr. Ritchie."

The Baron started abruptly from his chair.

"I have heard of him," he cried; "Madame knows where he is?"

"I know where he is. It is that which I came to tell your Excellency."

"Hein!" said his Excellency, again nonplussed. "You came to tell me
where he is? And where the--the other one is?"

"Parfaitement," said Madame. "But before I tell you where they are, I
wish to tell you something about Mr. Temple."

"Madame, I know something of him already," said the Baron, impatiently.

"Ah," said she, "from Gignoux. And what do you hear from Gignoux?"

This was another shock, under which the Baron fairly staggered.

"Diable! is Madame la Vicomtesse in the plot?" he cried. "What does
Madame know of Gignoux?"

Madame's manner suddenly froze.

"I am likely to be in the plot, Monsieur," she said. "I am likely to be
in a plot which has for its furtherance that abominable anarchy which
deprived me of my home and estates, of my relatives and friends and my
sovereign."

"A thousand pardons, Madame la Vicomtesse," said the Baron, more at sea
than ever. "I have had much to do these last years, and the heat and the
Republicans have got on my temper. Will Madame la Vicomtesse pray
explain?"

"I was about to do so when your Excellency interrupted," said Madame.
"You see before you Mr. Ritchie, barrister, of Louisville, Kentucky,
whose character of sobriety, dependence, and ability" (there was a little
gleam in her eye as she gave me this array of virtues) "can be perfectly
established. When he came to New Orleans some years ago he brought
letters to Monsieur de St. Gre from Monsieur Gratiot and Colonel Chouteau
of St. Louis, and he is known to Mr. Clark and to Monsieur Vigo. He is a
Federalist, as you know, and has no sympathy with the Jacobins."

"Eh bien, Mr. Ritchie," said the Baron, getting his breath, "you are
fortunate in your advocate. Madame la Vicomtesse neglected to say that
she was your friend, the greatest of all recommendations in my eyes."

"You are delightful, Monsieur le Baron," said the Vicomtesse.

"Perhaps Mr. Ritchie can tell me something of this expedition," said the
Baron, his eyes growing smaller as he looked at me.

"Willingly," I answered. "Although I know that your Excellency is well
informed, and that Monsieur Vigo has doubtless given you many of the
details that I know."

He interrupted me with a grunt.

"You Americans are clever people, Monsieur," he said; "you contrive to
combine shrewdness with frankness."

"If I had anything to hide from your Excellency, I should not be here," I
answered. "The expedition, as you know, has been as much of a farce as
Citizen Genet's commissions. But it has been a sad farce to me, inasmuch
as it involves the honor of my old friend and Colonel, General Clark, and
the safety of my cousin, Mr. Temple."

"So you were with Clark in Illinois?" said the Baron, craftily. "Pardon
me, Mr. Ritchie, but I should have said that you are too young."

"Monsieur Vigo will tell you that I was the drummer boy of the regiment,
and a sort of ward of the Colonel's. I used to clean his guns and cook
his food."

"And you did not see fit to follow your Colonel to Louisiana?" said his
Excellency, for he had been trained in a service of suspicion.

"General Clark is not what he was," I replied, chafing a little at his
manner; "your Excellency knows that, and I put loyalty to my government
before friendship. And I might remind your Excellency that I am neither
an adventurer nor a fool."

The little Baron surprised me by laughing. His irritability and his good
nature ran in streaks.

"There is no occasion to, Mr. Ritchie," he answered. "I have seen
something of men in my time. In which category do you place your cousin,
Mr. Temple?"

"If a love of travel and excitement and danger constitutes an adventurer,
Mr. Temple is such," I said. "Fortunately the main spur of the
adventurer's character is lacking in his case. I refer to the desire for
money. Mr. Temple has an annuity from his father's estate in Charleston
which puts him beyond the pale of the fortune-seeker, and I firmly
believe that if your Excellency sees fit to allow him to leave the
province, and if certain disquieting elements can be removed from his
life" (I glanced at the Vicomtesse), "he will settle down and become a
useful citizen of the United States. As much as I dislike to submit to a
stranger private details in the life of a member of my family, I feel
that I must tell your Excellency something of Mr. Temple's career, in
order that you may know that restlessness and the thirst for adventure
were the only motives that led him into this foolish undertaking."

"Pray proceed, Mr. Ritchie," said the Baron.

I was surprised not to find him more restless, and in addition the glance
of approbation which the Vicomtesse gave me spurred me on. However
distasteful, I had the sense to see that I must hold nothing back of
which his Excellency might at any time become cognizant, and therefore I
told him as briefly as possible Nick's story, leaving out only the
episode with Antoinette. When I came to the relation of the affairs
which occurred at Les Iles five years before and told his Excellency that
Mrs. Temple had since been living in the Rue Bourbon as Mrs. Clive,
unknown to her son, the Baron broke in upon me.

"So the mystery of that woman is cleared at last," he said, and turned to
the Vicomtesse. "I have learned that you have been a frequent visitor,
Madame."

"Not a sparrow falls to the ground in Louisiana that your Excellency does
not hear of it," she answered.

"And Gignoux?" he said, speaking to me again.

"As I told you, Monsieur le Baron," I answered, "I have come to New
Orleans at a personal sacrifice to induce my cousin to abandon this
matter, and I went out last evening to try to get word of him." This was
not strictly true. "I saw Monsieur Gignoux in conference with some of
your officers who came out of this hotel."

"You have sharp eyes, Monsieur," he remarked.

"I suspected the man when I met him in Kentucky," I continued, not
heeding this. "Monsieur Vigo himself distrusted him. To say that
Gignoux were deep in the councils of the expedition, that he held a
commission from Citizen Genet, I realize will have no weight with your
Excellency,--provided the man is in the secret service of his Majesty the
King of Spain."

"Mr. Ritchie," said the Baron, "you are a young man and I an old one. If
I tell you that I have a great respect for your astuteness and ability,
do not put it down to flattery. I wish that your countrymen, who are
coming down the river like driftwood, more resembled you. As for Citizen
Gignoux," he went on, smiling, and wiping his face, "let not your heart
be troubled. His Majesty's minister at Philadelphia has written me
letters on the subject. I am contemplating for Monsieur Gignoux a sea
voyage to Havana, and he is at present partaking of my hospitality in the
calabozo."

"In the calabozo!" I cried, overwhelmed at this example of Spanish
justice and omniscience.

"Precisely," said the Baron, drumming with his fingers on his fat knee.
"And now," he added, "perhaps Madame la Vicomtesse is ready to tell me of
the whereabouts of Mr. Temple and her estimable cousin, Auguste. It may
interest her to know why I have allowed them their liberty so long."

"A point on which I have been consumed with curiosity--since I have
begun to tremble at the amazing thoroughness of your Excellency's
system," said the Vicomtesse.

His Excellency scarcely looked the tyrant as he sat before us, with his
calves crossed and his hands folded on his waistcoat and his little black
eyes twinkling.

"It is because," he said, "there are many French planters in the province
bitten with the three horrors" (he meant Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity), "I sent six to Havana; and if Monsieur Etienne de Bore had
not, in the nick of time for him, discovered how to make sugar he would
have gone, too. I had an idea that the Sieur de St. Gre and Mr. Temple
might act as a bait to reveal the disease in some others. Ha, I am
cleverer than you thought, Mr. Ritchie. You are surprised?"

I was surprised, and showed it.

"Come," he said, "you are astute. Why did you think I left them at
liberty?"

"I thought your Excellency believed them to be harmless, as they are," I
replied.

He turned again to the Vicomtesse. "You have picked up a diplomat,
Madame. I must confess that I misjudged him when you introduced him to
me. And again, where are Mr. Temple and your estimable cousin? Shall I
tell you? They are at old Lamarque's, on the plantation of Philippe de
St. Gre."

"They were, your Excellency," said the Vicomtesse.

"Eh?" exclaimed the Baron, jumping.

"Mademoiselle de St. Gre has given her brother eight hundred livres, and
he is probably by this time on board a French ship at the English Turn.
He is very badly frightened. I will give your Excellency one more
surprise."

"Madame la Vicomtesse," said the Baron, "I have heard that, but for your
coolness and adroitness, Monsieur le Vicomte, your husband, and several
other noblemen and their ladies and some of her Majesty's letters and
jewels would never have gotten out of France. I take this opportunity of
saying that I have the greatest respect for your intelligence. Now what
is the surprise?"

"That your Excellency intended that both Mr. Temple and Auguste de St.
Gre were to escape on that ship."

"Mille tonneres," exclaimed the Baron, staring at her, and straightway he
fell into a fit of laughter that left him coughing and choking and
perspiring as only a man in his condition of flesh can perspire. To say
that I was bewildered by this last evidence of the insight of the woman
beside me would be to put it mildly. The Vicomtesse sat quietly watching
him, the wonted look of repressed laughter on her face, and by degrees
his Excellency grew calm again.

"Mon dieu," said he, "I always like to cross swords with you, Madame la
Vicomtesse, yet this encounter has been more pleasurable than any I have
had since I came to Louisiana. But, diable," he cried, "just as I was
congratulating myself that I was to have one American the less, you come
and tell me that he has refused to flee. Out of consideration for the
character and services of Monsieur Philippe de St. Gre I was willing to
let them both escape. But now?"

"Mr. Temple is not known in New Orleans except to the St. Gre family,"
said the Vicomtesse. "He is a man of honor. Suppose Mr. Ritchie were to
bring him to your Excellency, and he were to give you his word that he
would leave the province at the first opportunity? He now wishes to see
his mother before she dies, and it was as much as we could do this
morning to persuade him from going to her openly in the face of arrest."

But the Baron was old in a service which did not do things hastily.

"He is well enough where he is for to-day," said his Excellency, resuming
his official manner. "To-night after dark I will send down an officer
and have him brought before me. He will not then be seen in custody by
any one, and provided I am satisfied with him he may go to the Rue
Bourbon."

The little Baron rose and bowed to the Vicomtesse to signify that the
audience was ended, and he added, as he kissed her hand, "Madame la
Vicomtesse, it is a pleasure to be able to serve such a woman as you."



CHAPTER X

THE SCOURGE

As we went through the court I felt as though I had been tied to a
string, suspended in the air, and spun. This was undoubtedly due to the
heat. And after the astonishing conversation from which we had come, my
admiration for the lady beside me was magnified to a veritable awe. We
reached the archway. Madame la Vicomtesse held me lightly by the edge of
my coat, and I stood looking down at her.

"Wait a minute, Mr. Ritchie," she said, glancing at the few figures
hurrying across the Place d'Armes; "those are only Americans, and they
are too busy to see us standing here. What do you propose to do now?"

"We must get word to Nick as we promised, that he may know what to
expect," I replied. "Suppose we go to Monsieur de St. Gre's house and
write him a letter?"

"No," said the Vicomtesse, with decision, "I am going to Mrs. Temple's.
I shall write the letter from there and send it by Andre, and you will go
direct to Madame Gravois's."

Her glance rested anxiously upon my face, and there came an expression in
her eyes which disturbed me strangely. I had not known it since the days
when Polly Ann used to mother me. But I did not mean to give up.

"I am not tired, Madame la Vicomtesse," I answered, "and I will go with
you to Mrs. Temple's."

"Give me your hand," she said, and smiled. "Andre and my maid are used
to my vagaries, and your own countrymen will not mind. Give me your
hand, Mr. Ritchie."

I gave it willingly enough, with a thrill as she took it between her
own. The same anxious look was in her eyes, and not the least
embarrassment.

"There, it is hot and dry, as I feared," she said, "and you seem
flushed." She dropped my hand, and there was a touch of irritation in
her voice as she continued: "You seemed fairly sensible when I first met
you last night, Mr. Ritchie. Are you losing your sanity? Do you not
realize that you cannot take liberties with this climate? Do as I say,
and go to Madame Gravois's at once."

"It is my pleasure to obey you, Madame la Vicomtesse," I answered, "but I
mean to go with you as far as Mrs. Temple's, to see how she fares. She
may be--worse."

"That is no reason why you should kill yourself," said Madame, coldly.
"Will you not do as I say?"

"I think that I should go to Mrs. Temple's," I answered.

She did not reply to that, letting down her veil impatiently, with a
deftness that characterized all her movements. Without so much as asking
me to come after her, she reached the banquette, and I walked by her side
through the streets, silent and troubled by her displeasure. My pride
forbade me to do as she wished. It was the hottest part of a burning
day, and the dome of the sky was like a brazen bell above us. We passed
the calabozo with its iron gates and tiny grilled windows pierced in the
massive walls, behind which Gignoux languished, and I could not repress a
smile as I thought of him. Even the Spaniards sometimes happened upon
justice. In the Rue Bourbon the little shops were empty, the doorstep
where my merry fiddler had played vacant, and the very air seemed to
simmer above the honeycombed tiles. I knocked at the door, once, twice.
There was no answer. I looked at Madame la Vicomtesse, and knocked again
so loudly that the little tailor across the street, his shirt opened at
the neck, flung out his shutter. Suddenly there was a noise within, the
door was opened, and Lindy stood before us, in the darkened room, with
terror in her eyes.

"Oh, Marse Dave," she cried, as we entered, "oh, Madame, I'se so glad
you'se come, I'se so glad you'se come."

She burst into a flood of tears. And Madame la Vicomtesse, raising her
veil, seized the girl by the arm.

"What is it?" she said. "What is the matter, Lindy?"

Madame's touch seemed to steady her.

"Miss Sally," she moaned, "Miss Sally done got de yaller fever."

There was a moment's silence, for we were both too appalled by the news
to speak.

"Lindy, are you sure?" said the Vicomtesse.

"Yass'm, yass'm," Lindy sobbed, "I reckon I'se done seed 'nuf of it,
Mistis." And she went into a hysterical fit of weeping.

The Vicomtesse turned to her own frightened servants in the doorway, bade
Andre in French to run for Dr. Perrin, and herself closed the battened
doors. There was a moment when her face as I saw it was graven on my
memory, reflecting a knowledge of the evils of this world, a spirit above
and untouched by them, a power to accept what life may bring with no
outward sign of pleasure or dismay. Doubtless thus she had made King and
Cardinal laugh, doubtless thus, ministering to those who crossed her
path, she had met her own calamities. Strangest of all was the effect
she had upon Lindy, for the girl ceased crying as she watched her.

Madame la Vicomtesse turned to me.

"You must go at once," she said. "When you get to Madame Gravois's,
write to Mr. Temple. I will send Andre to you there."

She started for the bedroom door, Lindy making way for her. I scarcely
knew what I did as I sprang forward and took the Vicomtesse by the arm.

"Where are you going?" I cried. "You cannot go in there! You cannot go
in there!"

It did not seem strange that she turned to me without anger, that she did
not seek to release her arm. It did not seem strange that her look had
in it a gentleness as she spoke.

"I must," she said.

"I cannot let you risk your life," I cried, wholly forgetting myself;
"there are others who will do this."

"Others?" she said.

"I will go. I--I have nursed people before this. And there is Lindy."

A smile quivered on her lips,--or was it a smile?

"You will do as I say and go to Madame Gravois's--at once," she murmured,
striving for the first time to free herself.

"If you stay, I stay," I answered; "and if you die, I die."

She looked up into my eyes for a fleeting instant.

"Write to Mr. Temple," she said.

Dazed, I watched her open the bedroom doors, motion to Lindy to pass
through, and then she had closed them again and I was alone in the
darkened parlor.

The throbbing in my head was gone, and a great clearness had come with a
great fear. I stood, I know not how long, listening to the groans that
came through the wall, for Mrs. Temple was in agony. At intervals I
heard Helene's voice, and then the groans seemed to stop. Ten times I
went to the bedroom door, and as many times drew away again, my heart
leaping within me at the peril which she faced. If I had had the right,
I believe I would have carried her away by force.

But I had not the right. I sat down heavily, by the table, to think and
it might have been a cry of agony sharper than the rest that reminded me
once more of the tragedy of the poor lady in torture. My eye fell upon
the table, and there, as though prepared for what I was to do, lay pen
and paper, ink and sand. My hand shook as I took the quill and tried to
compose a letter to my cousin. I scarcely saw the words which I put on
the sheet, and I may be forgiven for the unwisdom of that which I wrote.

"The Baron de Carondelet will send an officer for you to-night so that
you may escape observation in custody. His Excellency knew of your
hiding-place, but is inclined to be lenient, will allow you to-morrow to
go to the Rue Bourbon, and will without doubt permit you to leave the
province. Your mother is ill, and Madame la Vicomtesse and myself are
with her.
"DAVID."

In the state I was it took me a long time to compose this much, and I
had barely finished it when there was a knock at the outer door. There
was Andre. He had the immobility of face which sometimes goes with the
mulatto, and always with the trained servant, as he informed me that
Monsieur le Medecin was not at home, but that he had left word. There
was an epidemic, Monsieur, so Andre feared. I gave him the note and his
directions, and ten minutes after he had gone I would have given much to
have called him back. How about Antoinette, alone at Les Iles? Why had
I not thought of her? We had told her nothing that morning, Madame la
Vicomtesse and I, after our conference with Nick. For the girl had shut
herself in her room, and Madame had thought it best not to disturb her at
such a stage. But would she not be alarmed when Helene failed to return
that night? Had circumstances been different, I myself would have ridden
to Les Iles, but no inducement now could make me desert the post I had
chosen. After many years I dislike to recall to memory that long
afternoon which I spent, helpless, in the Rue Bourbon. Now I was on my
feet, pacing restlessly the short breadth of the room, trying to shut out
from my mind the horrors of which my ears gave testimony. Again, in the
intervals of quiet, I sat with my elbows on the table and my head in my
hands, striving to allay the throbbing in my temples. Pains came and
went, and at times I felt like a fagot flung into the fire,--I, who had
never known a sick day. At times my throat pained me, an odd symptom in
a warm climate. Troubled as I was in mind and body, the thought of
Helene's quiet heroism upheld me through it all. More than once I had my
hand raised to knock at the bedroom door and ask if I could help, but I
dared not; at length, the sun having done its worst and spent its fury, I
began to hear steps along the banquette and voices almost at my elbow
beyond the little window. At every noise I peered out, hoping for the
doctor. But he did not come. And then, as I fell back into the
fauteuil, there was borne on my consciousness a sound I had heard before.
It was the music of the fiddler, it was a tune I knew, and the voices of
the children were singing the refrain:--

          "Ne sait quand reviendra,
          Ne sait quand reviendra."

I rose, opened the door, and slipped out of it, and I must have made a
strange, hatless figure as I came upon the fiddler and his children from
across the street.

"Stop that noise," I cried in French, angered beyond all reason at the
thought of music at such a time. "Idiots, there is yellow fever there."

The little man stopped with his bow raised; for a moment they all stared
at me, transfixed. It was a little elf in blue indienne who jumped first
and ran down the street, crying the news in a shrill voice, the others
following, the fiddler gazing stupidly after them. Suddenly he scrambled
up, moaning, as if the scourge itself had fastened on him, backed into
the house, and slammed the door in my face. I returned with slow steps
to shut myself in the darkened room again, and I recall feeling something
of triumph over the consternation I had caused. No sounds came from the
bedroom, and after that the street was quiet as death save for an
occasional frightened, hurrying footfall. I was tired.

All at once the bedroom door opened softly, and Helene was standing
there, looking at me. At first I saw her dimly, as in a vision, then
clearly. I leaped to my feet and went and stood beside her.

"The doctor has not come," I said. "Where does he live? I will go for
him."

She shook her head.

"He can do no good. Lindy has procured all the remedies, such as they
are. They can only serve to alleviate," she answered. "She cannot
withstand this, poor lady." There were tears on Helene's lashes. "Her
sufferings have been frightful--frightful."

"Cannot I help?" I said thickly. "Cannot I do something?"

She shook her head. She raised her hand timidly to the lapel of my coat,
and suddenly I felt her palm, cool and firm, upon my forehead. It rested
there but an instant.

"You ought not to be here," she said, her voice vibrant with earnestness
and concern. "You ought not to be here. Will you not go--if I ask it?"

"I cannot," I said; "you know I cannot if you stay."

She did not answer that. Our eyes met, and in that instant for me there
was neither joy nor sorrow, sickness nor death, nor time nor space nor
universe. It was she who turned away.

"Have you written him?" she asked in a low voice.

"Yes," I answered.

"She would not have known him," said Helene; "after all these years of
waiting she would not have known him. Her punishment has been great."

A sound came from the bedroom, and Helene was gone, silently, as she had
come.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

I must have been dozing in the fauteuil, for suddenly I found myself
sitting up, listening to an unwonted noise. I knew from the count of the
hoof-beats which came from down the street that a horse was galloping in
long strides--a spent horse, for the timing was irregular. Then he was
pulled up into a trot, then to a walk as I ran to the door and opened it
and beheld Nicholas Temple flinging himself from a pony white with
lather. And he was alone! He caught sight of me as soon as his foot
touched the banquette.

"What are you doing here?" I cried. "What are you doing here?"

He halted on the edge of the banquette as a hurrying man runs into a
wall. He had been all excitement, all fury, as he jumped from his horse;
and now, as he looked at me, he seemed to lose his bearings, to be all
bewilderment. He cried out my name and stood looking at me like a fool.

"What the devil do you mean by coming here?" I cried. "Did I not write
you to stay where you were? How did you get here?" I stepped down on
the banquette and seized him by the shoulders. "Did you receive my
letter?"

"Yes," he said, "yes." For a moment that was as far as he got, and he
glanced down the street and then at the heaving beast he had ridden,
which stood with head drooping to the kennel. Then he laid hold of me.
"Davy, is it true that she has yellow fever? Is it true?"

"Who told you?" I demanded angrily.

"Andre," he answered. "Andre said that the lady here had yellow fever.
Is it true?"

"Yes," I said almost inaudibly.

He let his hand fall from my shoulder, and he shivered.

"May God forgive me for what I have done!" he said. "Where is she?"

"For what you have done?" I cried; "you have done an insensate thing to
come here." Suddenly I remembered the sentry at the gate of Fort St.
Charles. "How did you get into the city?" I said; "were you mad to defy
the Baron and his police?"

"Damn the Baron and his police," he answered, striving to pass me. "Let
me in! Let me see her."

Even as he spoke I caught sight of men coming into the street, perhaps at
the corner of the Rue St. Pierre, and then more men, and as we went into
the house I saw that they were running. I closed the doors. There were
cries in the street now, but he did not seem to heed them. He stood
listening, heart-stricken, to the sounds that came through the bedroom
wall, and a spasm crossed his face. Then he turned like a man not to be
denied, to the bedroom door. I was before him, but Madame la Vicomtesse
opened it. And I remember feeling astonishment that she did not show
surprise or alarm.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Temple?" she said.

"My mother, Madame! My mother! I must go to her."

He pushed past her into the bedroom, and I followed perforce. I shall
never forget the scene, though I had but the one glimpse of it,--the
raving, yellowed woman in the bed, not a spectre nor yet even a semblance
of the beauty of Temple Bow. But she was his mother, upon whom God had
brought such a retribution as He alone can bestow. Lindy, faithful
servant to the end, held the wasted hands of her mistress against the
violence they would have done. Lindy held them, her own body rocking
with grief, her lips murmuring endearments, prayers, supplications.

"Miss Sally, honey, doan you know Lindy? Gawd'll let you git well, Miss
Sally, Gawd'll let you git well, honey, ter see Marse Nick--ter
see--Marse--Nick--"

The words died on Lindy's lips, the ravings of the frenzied woman ceased.
The yellowed hands fell limply to the sheet, the shrunken form stiffened.
The eyes of the mother looked upon the son, and in them at first was the
terror of one who sees the infinite. Then they softened until they
became again the only feature that was left of Sarah Temple. Now, as she
looked at him who was her pride, her honor, for one sight of whom she had
prayed,--ay, and even blasphemed,--her eyes were all tenderness. Then
she spoke.

"Harry," she said softly, "be good to me, dear. You are all I have now."

She spoke of Harry Riddle!

But the long years of penance had not been in vain. Nick had forgiven
her. We saw him kneeling at the bedside, we saw him with her hand in
his, and Helene was drawing me gently out of the room and closing the
door behind her. She did not look at me, nor I at her.

We stood for a moment close together, and suddenly the cries in the
street brought us back from the drama in the low-ceiled, reeking room we
had left.

"Ici! Ici! Voici le cheval!"

There was a loud rapping at the outer door, and a voice demanding
admittance in Spanish in the name of his Excellency the Governor.

"Open it," said Helene. There was neither excitement in her voice, nor
yet resignation. In those two words was told the philosophy of her life.

I opened the door. There, on the step, was an officer, perspiring,
uniformed and plumed, and behind him a crowd of eager faces, white and
black, that seemed to fill the street. He took a step into the room, his
hand on the hilt of his sword, and poured out at me a torrent of Spanish
of which I understood nothing. All at once his eye fell upon Helene, who
was standing behind me, and he stopped in the middle of his speech and
pulled off his hat and bowed profoundly.

"Madame la Vicomtesse!" he stammered. I was no little surprised that she
should be so well known.

"You will please to speak French, Monsieur," she said; "this gentleman
does not understand Spanish. What is it you desire?"

"A thousand pardons, Madame la Vicomtesse," he said. "I am the Alcalde
de Barrio, and a wild Americano has passed the sentry at St. Charles's
gate without heeding his Excellency's authority and command. I saw the
man with my own eyes. I should know him again in a hundred. We have
traced him here to this house, Madame la Vicomtesse. Behold the horse
which he rode!" The Alcalde turned and pointed at the beast. "Behold
the horse which he rode, Madame la Vicomtesse. The animal will die."

"Probably," answered the Vicomtesse, in an even tone.

"But the man," cried the Alcalde, "the man is here, Madame la Vicomtesse,
here, in this house!"

"Yes," she said, "he is here."

"Sancta Maria! Madame," he exclaimed, "I--I who speak to you have come to
get him. He has defied his Excellency's commands. Where is he?"

"He is in that room," said the Vicomtesse, pointing at the bedroom door.

The Alcalde took a step forward. She stopped him by a quick gesture.

"He is in that room with his mother," she said, "and his mother has the
yellow fever. Come, we will go to him." And she put her hand upon the
door.

"Yellow fever!" cried the Alcalde, and his voice was thick with terror.
There was a moment's silence as he stood rooted to the floor. I did not
wonder then, but I have since thought it remarkable that the words spoken
low by both of them should have been caught up on the banquette and
passed into the street. Impassive, I heard it echoed from a score of
throats, I saw men and women stampeding like frightened sheep, I heard
their footfalls and their cries as they ran. A tawdry constable, who
held with a trembling hand the bridle of the tired horse, alone remained.

"Yellow fever!" the Alcalde repeated

The Vicomtesse inclined her head.

He was silent again for a while, uncertain, and then, without
comprehending, I saw the man's eyes grow smaller and a smile play about
his mouth. He looked at the Vicomtesse with a new admiration to which
she paid no heed.

"I am sorry, Madame la Vicomtesse," he began, "but--"

"But you do not believe that I speak the truth," she replied quietly.

He winced.

"Will you follow me?" she said, turning again.

He had started, plainly in an agony of fear, when a sound came from
beyond the wall that brought a cry to his lips.

Her manner changed to one of stinging scorn.

"You are a coward," she said. "I will bring the gentleman to you if he
can be got to leave the bedside."

"No," said the Alcalde, "no. I--I will go to him, Madame la Vicomtesse."

But she did not open the door.

"Listen," she said in a tone of authority, "I myself have been to his
Excellency to-day concerning this gentleman--"

"You, Madame la Vicomtesse?"

"I will open the door," she continued, impatient at the interruption,
"and you will see him. Then I shall write a letter which you will take
to the Governor. The gentleman will not try to escape, for his mother is
dying. Besides, he could not get out of the city. You may leave your
constable where he is, or the man may come in and stand at this door in
sight of the gentleman while you are gone--if he pleases."

"And then?" said the Alcalde.

"It is my belief that his Excellency will allow the gentleman to remain
here, and that you will be relieved from the necessity of running any
further risk."

As she spoke she opened the door, softly. The room was still now, still
as death, and the Alcalde went forward on tiptoe. I saw him peering in,
I saw him backing away again like a man in mortal fear.

"Yes, it is he--it is the man," he stammered. He put his hand to his
brow.

The Vicomtesse closed the door, and without a glance at him went quickly
to the table and began to write. She had no thought of consulting the
man again, of asking his permission. Although she wrote rapidly, five
minutes must have gone by before the note was finished and folded and
sealed. She held it out to him.

"Take this to his Excellency," she said, "and bring me his answer." The
Alcalde bowed, murmured her title, and went lamely out of the house. He
was plainly in an agony of uncertainty as to his duty, but he glanced at
the Vicomtesse--and went, flipping the note nervously with his finger
nail. He paused for a few low-spoken words with the tawdry constable,
who sat down on the banquette after his chief had gone, still clinging to
the bridle. The Vicomtesse went to the doorway, looked at him, and
closed the battened doors. The constable did not protest. The day was
fading without, and the room was almost in darkness as she crossed over
to the little mantel and stood with her head laid upon her arm.

I did not disturb her. The minutes passed, the light waned until I could
see her no longer, and yet I knew that she had not moved. The strange
sympathy between us kept me silent until I heard her voice calling my
name.

"Yes," I answered.


"The candle!"

I drew out my tinder-box and lighted the wick. She had turned, and was
facing me even as she had faced me the night before. The night before!
The greatest part of my life seemed to have passed since then. I
remember wondering that she did not look tired. Her face was sad, her
voice was sad, and it had an ineffable, sweet quality at such times that
was all its own.

"The Alcalde should be coming back," she said.

"Yes," I answered.

These were our words, yet we scarce heeded their meaning. Between us was
drawn a subtler communion than speech, and we dared--neither of us--to
risk speech. She searched my face, but her lips were closed. She did
not take my hand again as in the afternoon. She turned away. I knew
what she would have said.

There was a knock at the door. We went together to open it, and the
Alcalde stood on the step. He held in his hand a long letter on which
the red seal caught the light, and he gave the letter to the Vicomtesse,
with a bow.

"From his Excellency, Madame la Vicomtesse."

She broke the seal, went to the table, and read. Then she looked up at
me.

"It is the Governor's permit for Mr. Temple to remain in this house.
Thank you," she said to the Alcalde; "you may go."

"With my respectful wishes for the continued good health of Madame la
Vicomtesse," said the Alcalde.



CHAPTER XI

"IN THE MIDST OF LIFE"

The Alcalde had stopped on the step with an exclamation at something in
the darkness outside, and he backed, bowing, into the room again to make
way for some one. A lady, slim, gowned and veiled in black and followed
by a negress, swept past him. The lady lifted her veil and stood before
us.

"Antoinette!" exclaimed the Vicomtesse, going to her.

The girl did not answer at once. Her suffering seemed to have brought
upon her a certain acceptance of misfortune as inevitable. Her face,
framed in the black veil, was never more beautiful than on that night.

"What is the Alcalde doing here?" she said.

The officer himself answered the question.

"I am leaving, Mademoiselle," said he. He reached out his hands toward
her, appealingly. "Do you not remember me, Mademoiselle? You brought
the good sister to see my wife."

"I remember you," said Antoinette.

"Do not stay here, Mademoiselle!" he cried. "There is--there is yellow
fever."

"So that is it," said Antoinette, unheeding him and looking at her
cousin. "She has yellow fever, then?"

"I beg you to come away, Mademoiselle!" the man entreated.

"Please go," she said to him. He looked at her, and went out silently,
closing the doors after him. "Why was he here?" she asked again.

"He came to get Mr. Temple, my dear," said the Vicomtesse. The girl's
lips framed his name, but did not speak it.

"Where is he?" she asked slowly.

The Vicomtesse pointed towards the bedroom.

"In there," she answered, "with his mother."

"He came to her?" Antoinette asked quite simply.

The Vicomtesse glanced at me, and drew the veil gently from the girl's
shoulders. She led her, unresisting, to a chair. I looked at them. The
difference in their ages was not so great. Both had suffered cruelly;
one had seen the world, the other had not, and yet the contrast lay not
here. Both had followed the gospel of helpfulness to others, but one as
a religieuse, innocent of the sin around her, though poignant of the
sorrow it caused. The other, knowing evil with an insight that went far
beyond intuition, fought with that, too.

"I will tell you, Antoinette," began the Vicomtesse; "it was as you said.
Mr. Ritchie and I found him at Lamarque's. He had not taken your money;
he did not even know that Auguste had gone to see you. He did not even
know," she said, bending over the girl, "that he was on your father's
plantation. When we told him that, he would have left it at once."

"Yes," she said.

"He did not know that his mother was still in New Orleans. And when we
told him how ill she was he would have come to her then. It was as much
as we could do to persuade him to wait until we had seen Monsieur de
Carondelet. Mr. Ritchie and I came directly to town and saw his
Excellency."

It was characteristic of the Vicomtesse that she told this almost with a
man's brevity, that she omitted the stress and trouble and pain of it
all. These things were done; the tact and skill and character of her who
had accomplished them were not spoken of. The girl listened immovable,
her lips parted and her eyes far away. Suddenly, with an awakening, she
turned to Helene.

"You did this!" she cried.

"Mr. Ritchie and I together," said the Vicomtesse.

Her next exclamation was an odd one, showing how the mind works at such a
time.

"But his Excellency was having his siesta!" said Antoinette.

Again Helene glanced at me, but I cannot be sure that she smiled.

"We thought the matter of sufficient importance to awake his Excellency,"
said Helene.

"And his Excellency?" asked Antoinette. In that moment all three of us
seemed to have forgotten the tragedy behind the wall.

"His Excellency thought so, too, when we had explained it sufficiently,"
Helene answered.

The girl seemed suddenly to throw off the weight of her grief. She
seized the hand of the Vicomtesse in both of her own.

"The Baron pardoned him?" she cried. "Tell me what his Excellency said.
Why are you keeping it from me?"

"Hush, my dear," said the Vicomtesse. "Yes, he pardoned him. Mr. Temple
was to have come to the city to-night with an officer. Mr. Ritchie and I
came to this house together, and we found--"

"Yes, yes," said Antoinette.

"Mr. Ritchie wrote to Mr. Temple that his Excellency was to send for him
to-night, but Andre told him of the fever, and he came here in the face
of danger to see her before she died. He galloped past the sentry at the
gate, and the Alcalde followed him from there."

"And came here to arrest him?" cried Antoinette. Before the Vicomtesse
could prevent her she sprang from her chair, ran to the door, and was
peering out into the darkness. "Is the Alcalde waiting?"

"No, no," said the Vicomtesse, gently bringing her back. "I wrote to his
Excellency and we have his permission for Mr. Temple to remain here."

Suddenly Antoinette stopped in the middle of the floor, facing the
candle, her hands clasped, her eyes wide with fear. We started, Helene
and I, as we looked at her.

"What is it, my dear?" said the Vicomtesse, laying a hand on her arm.

"He will take it," she said, "he will take the fever."

A strange thing happened. Many, many times have I thought of it since,
and I did not know its meaning then. I had looked to see the Vicomtesse
comfort her. But Helene took a step towards me, my eyes met hers, and in
them reflected was the terror I had seen in Antoinette's. At that
instant I, too, forgot the girl, and we turned to see that she had sunk
down, weeping, in the chair. Then we both went to her, I through some
instinct I did not fathom.

Helene's hand, resting on Antoinette's shoulder, trembled there. It may
well have been my own weakness which made me think her body swayed, which
made me reach out as if to catch her. However marvellous her strength
and fortitude, these could not last forever. And--Heaven help me--my own
were fast failing. Once the room had seemed to me all in darkness. Then
I saw the Vicomtesse leaning tenderly over her cousin and whispering in
her ear, and Antoinette rising, clinging to her.

"I will go," she faltered, "I will go. He must not know I have been
here. You--you will not tell him?"

"No, I shall not tell him," answered the Vicomtesse.

"And--you will send word to me, Helene?"

"Yes, dear."

Antoinette kissed her, and began to adjust her veil mechanically. I
looked on, bewildered by the workings of the feminine mind. Why was she
going? The Vicomtesse gave me no hint. But suddenly the girl's arms
fell to her sides, and she stood staring, not so much as a cry escaping
her. The bedroom doors had been opened, and between them was the tall
figure of Nicholas Temple. So they met again after many years, and she
who had parted them had brought them together once more. He came a step
into the room, as though her eyes had drawn him so far. Even then he did
not speak her name.

"Go," he said. "Go, you must not stay here. Go!"

She bowed her head.

"I was going," she answered. "I--I am going."

"But you must go at once," he cried excitedly. "Do you know what is in
there?" and he pointed towards the bedroom.

"Yes, yes, I know," she said, "I know."

"Then go," he cried. "As it is you have risked too much."

She lifted up her head and looked at him. There was a new-born note in
her voice, a tremulous note of joy in the midst of sorrow. It was of her
he was thinking!

"And you?" she said. "You have come and remained."

"She is my mother," he answered. "God knows it was the least I could
have done."

Twice she had changed before our eyes, and now we beheld a new and yet
more startling transformation. When she spoke there was no reproach in
her voice, but triumph. Antoinette undid her veil.

"Yes, she is your mother," she answered; "but for many years she has been
my friend. I will go to her. She cannot forbid me now. Helene has been
with her," she said, turning to where the Vicomtesse stood watching her
intently. "Helene has been with her. And shall I, who have longed to
see her these many years, leave her now?"

"But you were going!" he cried, beside himself with apprehension at this
new turning. "You told me that you were going."

Truly, man is born without perception.

"Yes, I told you that," she replied almost defiantly.

"And why were you going?" he demanded. Then I had a sudden desire to
shake him.

Antoinette was mute.

"You yourself must find the answer to that question, Mr. Temple," said
the Vicomtesse, quietly.

He turned and stared at Helene, and she seemed to smile. Then as his
eyes went back, irresistibly, to the other, a light that was wonderful to
see dawned and grew in them. I shall never forget him as he stood,
handsome and fearless, a gentleman still, despite his years of wandering
and adventure, and in this supreme moment unselfish. The wilful,
masterful boy had become a man at last.

He started forward, stopped, trembling with a shock of remembrance, and
gave back again.

"You cannot come," he said; "I cannot let you take this risk. Tell her
she cannot come, Madame," he said to Helene. "For the love of God send
her home again."

But there were forces which even Helene could not stem. He had turned to
go back, he had seized the door, but Antoinette was before him. Custom
does not weigh at such a time. Had she not read his avowal? She had his
hand in hers, heedless of us who watched. At first he sought to free
himself, but she clung to it with all the strength of her love,--yet she
did not look up at him.

"I will come with you," she said in a low voice, "I will come with you,
Nick."

How quaintly she spoke his name, and gently, and timidly--ay, and with a
supreme courage. True to him through all those numb years of waiting,
this was a little thing--that they should face death together. A little
thing, and yet the greatest joy that God can bestow upon a good woman.
He looked down at her with a great tenderness, he spoke her name, and I
knew that he had taken her at last into his arms.

"Come," he said.

They went in together, and the doors closed behind them.

  *  *  *  *   *  *  *

Antoinette's maid was on the step, and the Vicomtesse and I were alone
once more in the little parlor. I remember well the sense of unreality I
had, and how it troubled me. I remember how what I had seen and heard
was turning, turning in my mind. Nick had come back to Antoinette. They
were together in that room, and Mrs. Temple was dying--dying. No, it
could not be so. Again, I was in the garden at Les Iles on a night that
was all perfume, and I saw the flowers all ghostly white under the moon.
And then, suddenly, I was watching the green candle sputter, and out of
the stillness came a cry--the sereno calling the hour of the night. How
my head throbbed! It was keeping time to some rhythm, I knew not what.
Yes, it was the song my father used to sing:--

       "I've faught on land? I've faught at sea,
        At hume I've faught my aunty, O!"

But New Orleans was hot, burning hot, and this could not be cold I felt.
Ah, I had it, the water was cold going to Vincennes, so cold!

A voice called me. No matter where I had gone, I think I would have come
back at the sound of it. I listened intently, that I might lose no word
of what it said. I knew the voice. Had it not called to me many times
in my life before? But now there was fear in it, and fear gave it a
vibrant sweetness, fear gave it a quality that made it mine--mine.

"You are shivering."

That was all it said, and it called from across the sea. And the sea was
cold,--cold and green under the gray light. If she who called to me
would only come with the warmth of her love! The sea faded, the light
fell, and I was in the eternal cold of space between the whirling worlds.
If she could but find me! Was not that her hand in mine? Did I not feel
her near me, touching me? I wondered that I should hear myself as I
answered her.

"I am not ill," I said. "Speak to me again."

She was pressing my hand now, I saw her bending over me, I felt her hair
as it brushed my face. She spoke again. There was a tremor in her
voice, and to that alone I listened. The words were decisive, of
command, and with them some sense as of a haven near came to me. Another
voice answered in a strange tongue, saying seemingly:--

"Oui, Madame--male couri--bon dje--male couri!"

I heard the doors close, and the sound of footsteps running and dying
along the banquette, and after that my shoulders were raised and
something wrapped about them. Then stillness again, the stillness that
comes between waking and sleeping, between pain and calm. And at times
when I felt her hand fall into mine or press against my brow, the pain
seemed more endurable. After that I recall being lifted, being borne
along. I opened my eyes once and saw, above a tile-crowned wall, the
moon all yellow and distorted in the sky. Then a gate clicked, dungeon
blackness, half-light again, ascent, oblivion.



CHAPTER XII

VISIONS, AND AN AWAKENING

I have still sharp memories of the tortures of that illness, though it
befell so long ago. At times, when my mind was gone from me, I cried out
I know not what of jargon, of sentiment, of the horrors I had beheld in
my life. I lived again the pleasant scenes, warped and burlesqued almost
beyond cognizance, and the tragedies were magnified a hundred fold. Thus
it would be: on the low, white ceiling five cracks came together, and
that was a device. And the device would take on color, red-bronze like
the sumach in the autumn and streaks of vermilion, and two glowing coals
that were eyes, and above them eagles' feathers, and the cracks became
bramble bushes. I was behind the log, and at times I started and knew
that it was a hideous dream, and again Polly Ann was clutching me and
praying me to hold back, and I broke from her and splashed over the
slippery limestone bed of the creek to fight single-handed. Through all
the fearful struggle I heard her calling me piteously to come back to
her. When the brute got me under water I could not hear her, but her
voice came back suddenly (as when a door opens) and it was like the wind
singing in the poplars. Was it Polly Ann's voice?

Again, I sat with Nick under the trees on the lawn at Temple Bow, and the
world was dark with the coming storm. I knew and he knew that the storm
was brewing that I might be thrust out into it. And then in the
blackness, when the air was filled with all the fair things of the earth
torn asunder, a beautiful woman came through the noise and the fury, and
we ran to her and clung to her skirts, thinking we had found safety.
But she thrust us forth into the blackness with a smile, as though she
were flinging papers out of the window. She, too, grew out of the design
in the cracks of the ceiling, and a greater fear seized me at sight of
her features than when the red face came out of the brambles.

My constant torment was thirst. I was in the prairie, and it was
scorched and brown to the horizon. I searched and prayed pitifully for
water,--for only a sip of the brown water with the specks in it that was
in the swamp. There were no swamps. I was on the bed in the cabin
looking at the shifts and hunting shirts on the pegs, and Polly Ann would
bring a gourdful of clear water from the spring as far as the door. Nay,
once I got it to my lips, and it was gone. Sometimes a young man in a
hunting shirt, square-shouldered, clear-eyed, his face tanned and his
fair hair bleached by the sun, would bring the water. He was the hero of
my boyhood, and part of him indeed was in me. And I would have followed
him again to Vincennes despite the tortures of the damned. But when I
spoke his name he grew stouter before me, and his eyes lost their lustre
and his hair turned gray; and his hand shook as he held out the gourd and
spilled its contents ere I could reach them.

Sometimes another brought the water, and at sight of her I would tremble
and grow faint, and I had not the strength to reach for it. She would
look at me with eyes that laughed despite the resolution of the mouth.
Then the eyes would grow pitiful at my helplessness, and she would murmur
my name. There was some reason which I never fathomed why she could not
give me the water, and her own suffering seemed greater than mine because
of it. So great did it seem that I forgot my own and sought to comfort
her. Then she would go away, very slowly, and I would hear her calling
to me in the wind, from the stars to which I looked up from the prairie.
It was she, I thought, who ordered the world. Who, when women were lost
and men cried out in distress, came to them calmly, ministered to them
deftly.

Once--perhaps a score of times, I cannot tell--was limned on the ceiling,
where the cracks were, her miniature, and I knew what was coming and
shuddered and cried aloud because I could not stop it. I saw the narrow
street of a strange city deep down between high houses,--houses with
gratings on the lowest windows, with studded, evil-looking doors, with
upper stories that toppled over to shut out the light of the sky, with
slated roofs that slanted and twisted this way and that and dormers
peeping from them. Down in the street, instead of the King's white
soldiers, was a foul, unkempt rabble, creeping out of its damp places,
jesting, cursing, singing. And in the midst of the rabble a lady sat in
a cart high above it unmoved. She was the lady of the miniature. A
window in one of the jutting houses was flung open, a little man leaned
out excitedly, and I knew him too. He was Jean Baptiste Lenoir, and he
cried out in a shrill voice:--

"You must take off her ruff, citizens. You must take off her ruff!"

There came a blessed day when my thirst was gone, when I looked up at the
cracks in the ceiling and wondered why they did not change into horrors.
I watched them a long, long time, and it seemed incredible that they
should still remain cracks. Beyond that I would not go, into speculation
I dared not venture. They remained cracks, and I went to sleep thanking
God. When I awoke a breeze came in cool, fitful gusts, and on it the
scent of camellias. I thought of turning my head, and I remember
wondering for a long time over the expediency of this move. What would
happen if I did! Perhaps the visions would come back, perhaps my head
would come off. Finally I decided to risk it, and the first thing that I
beheld was a palm-leaf fan, moving slowly. That fact gave me food for
thought, and contented me for a while. Then I hit upon the idea that
there must be something behind the fan. I was distinctly pleased by this
astuteness, and I spent more time in speculation. Whatever it was, it
had a tantalizing elusiveness, keeping the fan between it and me. This
was not fair.

I had an inspiration. If I feigned to be asleep, perhaps the thing
behind the fan would come out. I shut my eyes. The breeze continued
steadily. Surely no human being could fan as long as that without being
tired! I opened my eyes twice, but the thing was inscrutable. Then I
heard a sound that I knew to be a footstep upon boards. A voice
whispered:--

"The delirium has left him."

Another voice, a man's voice, answered:--

"Thank God! Let me fan him. You are tired."

"I am not tired," answered the first voice.

"I do not see how you have stood it," said the man's voice. "You will
kill yourself, Madame la Vicomtesse. The danger is past now."

"I hope so, Mr. Temple," said the first voice. "Please go away. You may
come back in half an hour."

I heard the footsteps retreating. Then I said: "I am not asleep."

The fan stopped for a brief instant and then went on vibrating
inexorably. I was entranced at the thought of what I had done. I had
spoken, though indeed it seemed to have had no effect. Could it be that
I hadn't spoken? I began to be frightened at this, when gradually
something crept into my mind and drove the fear out. I did not grasp
what this was at first, it was like the first staining of wine on the
eastern sky to one who sees a sunrise. And then the thought grew even as
the light grows, tinged by prismatic colors, until at length a memory
struck into my soul like a shaft of light. I spoke her name,
unblushingly, aloud.

"Helene!"

The fan stopped. There was a silence that seemed an eternity as the palm
leaf trembled in her hand, there was an answer that strove tenderly to
command.

"Hush, you must not talk," she said.

Never, I believe, came such supreme happiness with obedience. I felt her
hand upon my brow, and the fan moved again. I fell asleep once more from
sheer weariness of joy. She was there, beside me. She had been there,
beside me, through it all, and it was her touch which had brought me back
to life.

I dreamed of her. When I awoke again her image was in my mind, and I let
it rest there in contemplation. But presently I thought of the fan,
turned my head, and it was not there. A great fear seized me. I looked
out of the open door where the morning sun threw the checkered shadows of
the honeysuckle on the floor of the gallery, and over the railing to the
tree-tops in the court-yard. The place struck a chord in my memory.
Then my eyes wandered back into the room. There was a polished dresser,
a crucifix and a prie-dieu in the corner, a fauteuil, and another chair
at my bed. The floor was rubbed to an immaculate cleanliness, stained
yellow, and on it lay clean woven mats. The room was empty!

I cried out, a yellow and red turban shot across the window, and I beheld
in the door the spare countenance of the faithful Lindy.

"Marse Dave," she cried, "is you feelin' well, honey?"

"Where am I, Lindy?" I asked.

Lindy, like many of her race, knew well how to assume airs of importance.
Lindy had me down, and she knew it.

"Marse Dave," she said, "doan yo' know better'n dat? Yo' know yo' ain't
ter talk. Lawsy, I reckon I wouldn't be wuth pizen if she was to hear I
let yo' talk."

Lindy implied that there was tyranny somewhere.

"She?" I asked, "who's she?"

"Now yo' hush, Marse Dave," said Lindy, in a shrill whisper, "I ain't
er-gwine ter git mixed up in no disputation. Ef she was ter hear me
er-disputin' wid yo', Marse Dave, I reckon I'd done git such er
tongue-lashin'--" Lindy looked at me suspiciously. "Yo'-er allus was
powe'rful cute, Marse Dave."

Lindy set her lips with a mighty resolve to be silent. I heard some one
coming along the gallery, and then I saw Nick's tall figure looming up
behind her.

"Davy," he cried.

Lindy braced herself up doggedly.

"Yo' ain't er-gwine to git in thar nohow, Marse Nick," she said.

"Nonsense, Lindy," he answered, "I've been in there as much as you have."
And he took hold of her thin arm and pulled her back.

"Marse Nick!" she cried, terror-stricken, "she'll done fin' out dat
you've been er-talkin'."

"Pish!" said Nick with a fine air, "who's afraid of her?"

Lindy's face took on an expression of intense amusement.

"Yo' is, for one, Marse Nick," she answered, with the familiarity of an
old servant. "I done seed yo' skedaddle when she comed."

"Tut," said Nick, grandly, "I run from no woman. Eh, Davy?" He pushed
past the protesting Lindy into the room and took my hand.

"Egad, you have been near the devil's precipice, my son. A three-bottle
man would have gone over." In his eyes was all the strange affection he
had had for me ever since ave had been boys at Temple Bow together.
"Davy, I reckon life wouldn't have been worth much if you'd gone."

I did not answer. I could only stare at him, mutely grateful for such an
affection. In all his wild life he had been true to me, and he had clung
to me stanchly in this, my greatest peril. Thankful that he was here, I
searched his handsome person with my eyes. He was dressed as usual, with
care and fashion, in linen breeches and a light gray coat and a filmy
ruffle at his neck. But I thought there had come a change into his face.
The reckless quality seemed to have gone out of it, yet the spirit and
daring remained, and with these all the sweetness that was once in his
smile. There were lines under his eyes that spoke of vigils.

"You have been sitting up with me," I said.

"Of course," he answered patting my shoulder. "Of course I have. What
did you think I would be doing?"

"What was the matter with me?" I asked.

"Nothing much," he said lightly, "a touch of the sun, and a great deal of
overwork in behalf of your friends. Now keep still, or I will be getting
peppered."

I was silent for a while, turning over this answer in my mind. Then I
said:--

"I had yellow fever."

He started.

"It is no use to lie to you," he replied; "you're too shrewd."

I was silent again for a while.

"Nick," I said, "you had no right to stay here. You have--other
responsibilities now."

He laughed. It was the old buoyant, boyish laugh of sheer happiness, and
I felt the better for hearing it.

"If you begin to preach, parson, I'll go; I vow I'll have no more
sermonizing. Davy," he cried, "isn't she just the dearest, sweetest,
most beautiful person in the world?"

"Where is she?" I asked, temporizing. Nick was not a subtle person, and
I was ready to follow him at great length in the praise of Antoinette.
"I hope she is not here."

"We made her go to Les Iles," said he.

"And you risked your life and stayed here without her?" I said.

"As for risking life, that kind of criticism doesn't come well from you.
And as for Antoinette," he added with a smile, "I expect to see something
of her later on."

"Well," I answered with a sigh of supreme content, "you have been a fool
all your life, and I hope that she will make you sensible."

"You never could make me so," said Nick, "and besides, I don't think
you've been so damned sensible yourself."

We were silent again for a space.

"Davy," he asked, "do you remember what I said when you had that
miniature here?"

"You said a great many things, I believe."

"I told you to consider carefully the masterful features of that lady,
and to thank God you hadn't married her. I vow I never thought she'd
turn up. Upon my oath I never thought I should be such a blind slave as
I have been for the last fortnight. Faith, Monsieur de St. Gre is a
strong man, but he was no more than a puppet in his own house when he
came back here for a day. That lady could govern a province,--no, a
kingdom. But I warrant you there would be no climbing of balconies in
her dominions. I have never been so generalled in my life."

I had no answer for these comments.

"The deuce of it is the way she does it," he continued, plainly bent on
relieving himself. "There's no noise, no fuss; but you must obey, you
don't know why. And yet you may flay me if I don't love her."

"Love her!" I repeated.

"She saved your life," said Nick; "I don't believe any other woman could
have done it. She hadn't any thought of her own. She has been here, in
this room, almost constantly night and day, and she never let you go.
The little French doctor gave you up--not she. She held on. Cursed if I
see why she did it."

"Nor I," I answered.

"Well," he said apologetically, "of course I would have done it, but you
weren't anything to her. Yes, egad, you were something to be
saved,--that was all that was necessary. She had you brought back
here--we are in Monsieur de St. Gre's house, by the way--in a litter, and
she took command as though she had nursed yellow fever cases all her
life. No flurry. I said that you were in love with her once, Davy, when
I saw you looking at the portrait. I take it back. Of course a man
could be very fond of her," he said, "but a king ought to have married
her. As for that poor Vicomte she's tied up to, I reckon I know the
reason why he didn't come to America. An ordinary man would have no
chance at all. God bless her!" he cried, with a sudden burst of feeling,
"I would die for her myself. She got me out of a barrel of trouble with
his Excellency. She cared for my mother, a lonely outcast, and braved
death herself to go to her when she was dying of the fever. God bless
her!"

Lindy was standing in the doorway.

"Lan' sakes, Marse Nick, yo' gotter go," she said.

He rose and pressed my fingers. "I'll go," he said, and left me. Lindy
seated herself in the chair. She held in her hand a bowl of beef broth.
From this she fed me in silence, and when she left she commanded me to
sleep informing me that she would be on the gallery within call.

But I did not sleep at once. Nick's words had brought back a fact which
my returning consciousness had hitherto ignored. The birds sang in the
court-yard, and when the breeze stirred it was ever laden with a new
scent. I had been snatched from the jaws of death, my life was before
me, but the happiness which had thrilled me was gone, and in my weakness
the weight of the sadness which had come upon me was almost unbearable.
If I had had the strength, I would have risen then and there from my bed,
I would have fled from the city at the first opportunity. As it was, I
lay in a torture of thought, living over again every part of my life
which she had touched. I remembered the first long, yearning look I had
given the miniature at Madame Bouvet's. I had not loved her then. My
feeling rather had been a mysterious sympathy with and admiration for
this brilliant lady whose sphere was so far removed from mine. This was
sufficiently strange. Again, in the years of my struggle for livelihood
which followed, I dreamed of her; I pictured her often in the midst of
the darkness of the Revolution. Then I had the miniature again, which
had travelled to her, as it were, and come back to me. Even then it was
not love I felt but an unnamed sentiment for one whom I clothed with
gifts and attributes I admired: constancy, an ability to suffer and to
hide, decision, wit, refuge for the weak, scorn for the false. So I
named them at random and cherished them, knowing that these things were
not what other men longed for in women. Nay, there was another quality
which I believed was there--which I knew was there--a supreme tenderness
that was hidden like a treasure too sacred to be seen.

I did not seek to explain the mystery which had brought her across the
sea into that little garden of Mrs. Temple's and into my heart. There
she was now enthroned, deified; that she would always be there I
accepted. That I would never say or do anything not in consonance with
her standards I knew. That I would suffer much I was sure, but the lees
of that suffering I should hoard because they came from her.

What might have been I tried to put away. There was the moment, I
thought, when our souls had met in the little parlor in the Rue Bourbon.
I should never know. This I knew--that we had labored together to bring
happiness into other lives.

Then came another thought to appall me. Unmindful of her own safety, she
had nursed me back to life through all the horrors of the fever. The
doctor had despaired, and I knew that by the very force that was in her
she had saved me. She was here now, in this house, and presently she
would be coming back to my bedside. Painfully I turned my face to the
wall in a torment of humiliation--I had called her by her name. I would
see her again, but I knew not whence the strength for that ordeal was to
come.



CHAPTER XIII

A MYSTERY

I knew by the light that it was evening when I awoke. So prisoners mark
the passing of the days by a bar of sun light. And as I looked at the
green trees in the courtyard, vaguely troubled by I knew not what, some
one came and stood in the doorway. It was Nick.

"You don't seem very cheerful," said he; "a man ought to be who has been
snatched out of the fire."

"You seem to be rather too sure of my future," I said, trying to smile.

"That's more like you," said Nick. "Egad, you ought to be happy--we all
ought to be happy--she's gone."

"She!" I cried. "Who's gone?"

"Madame la Vicomtesse," he replied, rubbing his hands as he stood over
me. "But she's left instructions with me for Lindy as long as Monsieur
de Carondelet's Bando de Buen Gobierno. You are not to do this, and you
are not to do that, you are to eat such and such things, you are to be
made to sleep at such and such times. She came in here about an hour ago
and took a long look at you before she left."

"She was not ill?" I said faintly.

"Faith, I don't know why she was not," he said. "She has done enough to
tire out an army. But she seems well and fairly happy. She had her joke
at my expense as she went through the court-yard, and she reminded me
that we were to send a report by Andre every day."

Chagrin, depression, relief, bewilderment, all were struggling within me.

"Where did she go?" I asked at last.

"To Les Iles," he said. "You are to be brought there as soon as you are
strong enough."

"Do you happen to know why she went?" I said.

"Now how the deuce should I know?" he answered. "I've done everything
with blind servility since I came into this house. I never asked for any
reason--it never would have done any good. I suppose she thought that
you were well on the road to recovery, and she knew that Lindy was an old
hand. And then the doctor is to come in."

"Why didn't you go?" I demanded, with a sudden remembrance that he was
staying away from happiness.

"It was because I longed for another taste of liberty, Davy," he laughed.
"You and I will have an old-fashioned time here together,--a deal of
talk, and perhaps a little piquet,--who knows?"

My strength came back, bit by bit, and listening to his happiness did
much to ease the soreness of my heart--while the light lasted. It was
in the night watches that my struggles came--though often some unwitting
speech of his would bring back the pain. He took delight in telling me,
for example, how for hours at a time I had been in a fearful delirium.

"The Lord knows what foolishness you talked, Davy," said he. "It would
have done me good to hear you had you been in your right mind."

"But you did hear me," I said, full of apprehensions.

"Some of it," said he. "You were after Wilkinson once, in a burrow, I
believe, and you swore dreadfully because he got out of the other end. I
can't remember all the things you said. Oh, yes, once you were talking
to Auguste de St. Gre about money."

"Money?" I repeated in a sinking voice.

"Oh, a lot of jargon." The Vicomtesse pushed me out of the room, and
after that I was never allowed to be there when you had those flights.
Curse the mosquitoes! He seized a fan and began to ply it vigorously.
"I remember. You were giving Auguste a lecture. Then I had to go."

These and other reminiscences gave me sufficient food for reflection, and
many a shudder over the possibilities of my ravings. She had put him
out! No wonder.

After a while I was carried to the gallery, and there I would talk to the
little doctor about the yellow fever which had swept the city. Monsieur
Perrin was not much of a doctor, to be sure, and he had a heartier dread
of the American invasion than of the scourge. He worshipped the
Vicomtesse, and was so devoid of professional pride as to give her freely
all credit for my recovery. He too, clothed her with the qualities of
statesmanship.

"Ha, Monsieur," he said, "if that lady had been King of France, do you
think there would have been any States General, any red bonnets, any
Jacobins or Cordeliers? Parbleu, she would have swept the vicemongers
and traitors out of the Palais Royal itself. There would have been a
house-cleaning there. I, who speak to you, know it."

Every day Nick wrote a bulletin to be sent to the Vicomtesse, and he took
a fiendish delight in the composition of these. He would come out on the
gallery with ink and a blank sheet of paper and try to enlist my help.
He would insert the most ridiculous statements, as for instance, "Davy is
worse to-day, having bribed Lindy to give him a pint of Madeira against
my orders." Or, "Davy feigns to be sinking rapidly because he wishes to
have you back." Indeed, I was always in a torture of doubt to know what
the rascal had sent.

His company was most agreeable when he was recounting the many adventures
he had had during the five years after he had left New Orleans and been
lost to me. These would fill a book, and a most readable book it would
be if written in his own speech. His love for the excitement of the
frontier had finally drawn him back to the Cumberland country near
Nashville, and he had actually gone so far as to raise a house and till
some of the land which he had won from Darnley. It was perhaps
characteristic of him that he had named the place "Rattle-and-Snap" in
honor of the game which had put him in possession of it, and
"Rattle-and-Snap" it remains to this day. He was going back there with
Antoinette, so he said, to build a brick mansion and to live a
respectable life the rest of his days.

There was one question which had been in my mind to ask him, concerning
the attitude of Monsieur de St. Gre. That gentleman, with Madame, had
hurried back from Pointe Coupee at a message from the Vicomtesse, and had
gone first to Les Iles to see Antoinette. Then he had come, in spite of
the fever, to his own house in New Orleans to see Nick himself. What
their talk had been I never knew, for the subject was too painful to be
dwelt upon, and the conversation had been marked by frankness on both
sides. Monsieur de St. Gre was a just man, his love for his daughter was
his chief passion, and despite all that had happened he liked Nick. I
believe he could not wholly blame the younger man, and he forgave him.

Mrs. Temple, poor lady, had died on that first night of my illness, and
it was her punishment that she had not known her son or her son's
happiness. Whatever sins she had committed in her wayward life were
atoned for, and by her death I firmly believe that she redeemed him. She
lies now among the Temples in Charleston, and on the stone which marks
her grave is cut no line that hints of the story of these pages.

One bright morning, when Nick and I were playing cards, we heard some
one mounting the stairs, and to my surprise and embarrassment I beheld
Monsieur de St. Gre emerging on the gallery. He was in white linen and
wore a broad hat, which he took from his head as he advanced. He had
aged somewhat, his hair was a little gray, but otherwise he was the firm,
dignified personage I had admired on this same gallery five years before.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said in English; "ha, do not rise, sir" (to
me). He patted Nick's shoulder kindly, but not familiarly, as he passed
him, and extended his hand.

"Mr. Ritchie, it gives me more pleasure than I can express to see you so
much recovered."

"I am again thrown on your hospitality, sir," I said, flushing with
pleasure at this friendliness. For I admired and respected the man
greatly. "And I fear I have been a burden and trouble to you and your
family."

He took my hand and pressed it. Characteristically, he did not answer
this, and I remembered he was always careful not to say anything which
might smack of insincerity.

"I had a glimpse of you some weeks ago," he said, thus making light of
the risk he had run. "You are a different man now. You may thank your
Scotch blood and your strong constitution."

"His good habits have done him some good, after all," put in my
irrepressible cousin.

Monsieur de St. Gre smiled.

"Nick," he said (he pronounced the name quaintly, like Antoinette), "his
good habits have turned out to be some advantage to you. Mr. Ritchie,
you have a faithful friend at least." He patted Nick's shoulder again.
"And he has promised me to settle down."

"I have every inducement, sir," said Nick.

Monsieur de St. Gre became grave.

"You have indeed, Monsieur," he answered.

"I have just come from Dr. Perrin's, David,"--he added, "May I call you
so? Well, then, I have just come from Dr. Perrin's, and he says you may
be moved to Les Iles this very afternoon. Why, upon my word," he
exclaimed, staring at me, "you don't look pleased. One would think you
were going to the calabozo."

"Ah," said Nick, slyly, "I know. He has tasted freedom, Monsieur, and
Madame la Vicomtesse will be in command again."

I flushed. Nick could be very exasperating.

"You must not mind him, Monsieur," I said.

"I do not mind him," answered Monsieur de St. Gre, laughing in spite of
himself. "He is a sad rogue. As for Helene--"

"I shall not know how to thank the Vicomtesse," I said. "She has done me
the greatest service one person can do another."

"Helene is a good woman," answered Monsieur de St. Gre, simply. "She is
more than that, she is a wonderful woman. I remember telling you of her
once. I little thought then that she would ever come to us."

He turned to me. "Dr. Perrin will be here this afternoon, David, and he
will have you dressed. Between five and six if all goes well, we shall
start for Les Iles. And in the meantime, gentlemen," he added with a
stateliness that was natural to him, "I have business which takes me
to-day to my brother-in-law's, Monsieur de Beausejour's."

Nick leaned over the gallery and watched meditatively his prospective
father-in-law leaving the court-yard.

"He got me out of a devilish bad scrape," he said.

"How was that?" I asked listlessly.

"That fat little Baron, the Governor, was for deporting me for running
past the sentry and giving him all the trouble I did. It seems that the
Vicomtesse promised to explain matters in a note which she wrote, and
never did explain. She was here with you, and a lot she cared about
anything else. Lucky that Monsieur de St. Gre came back. Now his
Excellency graciously allows me to stay here, if I behave myself, until I
get married."

I do not know how I spent the rest of the day. It passed, somehow. If I
had had the strength then, I believe I should have fled. I was to see
her again, to feel her near me, to hear her voice. During the weeks that
had gone by I had schooled myself, in a sense, to the inevitable. I had
not let my mind dwell upon my visit to Les Iles, and now I was face to
face with the struggle for which I felt I had not the strength. I had
fought one battle,--I knew that a fiercer battle was to come.

In due time the doctor arrived, and while he prepared me for my
departure, the little man sought, with misplaced kindness, to raise my
spirits. Was not Monsieur going to the country, to a paradise?
Monsieur--so Dr. Perrin had noticed--had a turn for philosophy. Could
two more able and brilliant conversationalists be found than Philippe de
St. Gre and Madame la Vicomtesse? And there was the happiness of that
strange but lovable young man, Monsieur Temple, to contemplate. He was
in luck, ce beau garcon, for he was getting an angel for his wife. Did
Monsieur know that Mademoiselle Antoinette was an angel?

At last I was ready, arrayed in my best, on the gallery, when Monsieur de
St. Gre came. Andre and another servant carried me down into the court,
and there stood a painted sedan-chair with the St. Gre arms on the
panels.

"My father imported it, David," said Monsieur de St. Gre. "It has not
been used for many years. You are to be carried in it to the levee, and
there I have a boat for you."

Overwhelmed by this kindness, I could not find words to thank him as I
got into the chair. My legs were too long for it, I remember. I had a
quaint feeling of unreality as I sank back on the red satin cushions and
was borne out of the gate between the lions. Monsieur de St. Gre and
Nick walked in front, the faithful Lindy followed, and people paused to
stare at us as we passed. We crossed the Place d'Armes, the Royal Road,
gained the willow-bordered promenade on the levee's crown, and a wide
barge was waiting, manned by six negro oarsmen. They lifted me into its
stern under the awning, the barge was cast off, the oars dipped, and we
were gliding silently past the line of keel boats on the swift current of
the Mississippi. The spars of the shipping were inky black, and the
setting sun had struck a red band across the waters. For a while the
three of us sat gazing at the green shore, each wrapped in his own
reflections,--Philippe de St. Gre thinking, perchance, of the wayward son
he had lost; Nick of the woman who awaited him; and I of one whom fate
had set beyond me. It was Monsieur de St. Gre who broke the silence at
last.

"You feel no ill effects from your moving, David?" he asked, with an
anxious glance at me.

"None, sir," I said.

"The country air will do you good," he said kindly.

"And Madame la Vicomtesse will put him on a diet," added Nick, rousing
himself.

"Helene will take care of him," answered Monsieur de St. Gre.

He fell to musing again. "Madame la Vicomtesse has seen more in seven
years than most of us see in a lifetime," he said. "She has beheld the
glory of France, and the dishonor and pollution of her country. Had the
old order lasted her salon would have been famous, and she would have
been a power in politics."

"I have thought that the Vicomtesse must have had a queer marriage," Nick
remarked.

Monsieur de St. Gre smiled.

"Such marriages were the rule amongst our nobility," he said. "It was
arranged while Helene was still in the convent, though it was not
celebrated until three years after she had been in the world. There was
a romantic affair, I believe, with a young gentleman of the English
embassy, though I do not know the details. He is said to be the only man
she ever cared for. He was a younger son of an impoverished earl."

I started, remembering what the Vicomtesse had said. But Monsieur de St.
Gre did not appear to see my perturbation.

"Be that as it may, if Helene suffered, she never gave a sign of it. The
marriage was celebrated with great pomp, and the world could only
conjecture what she thought of the Vicomte. It was deemed on both sides
a brilliant match. He had inherited vast estates, Ivry-le-Tour,
Montmery, Les Saillantes, I know not what else. She was heiress to the
Chateau de St. Gre with its wide lands, to the chateau and lands of the
Cote Rouge in Normandy, to the hotel St. Gre in Paris. Monsieur le
Vicomte was between forty and fifty at his marriage, and from what I have
heard of him he had many of the virtues and many of the faults of his
order. He was a bachelor, which does not mean that he had lacked
consolations. He was reserved with his equals, and distant with others.
He had served in the Guards, and did not lack courage. He dressed
exquisitely, was inclined to the Polignac party, took his ease
everywhere, had a knowledge of cards and courts, and little else. He was
cheated by his stewards, refused to believe that the Revolution was
serious, and would undoubtedly have been guillotined had the Vicomtesse
not contrived to get him out of France in spite of himself. They went
first to the Duke de Ligne, at Bel Oeil, and thence to Coblentz. He
accepted a commission in the Austrian service, which is much to his
credit, and Helene went with some friends to England. There my letter
reached her, and rather than be beholden to strangers or accept my money
there, she came to us. That is her story in brief, Messieurs. As for
Monsieur le Vicomte, he admired his wife, as well he might, respected her
for the way she served the gallants, but he made no pretence of loving
her. One affair--a girl in the village of Montmery--had lasted. Helene
was destined for higher things than may be found in Louisiana," said
Monsieur de St. Gre, turning to Nick, "but now that you are to carry away
my treasure, Monsieur, I do not know what I should have done without
her."

"And has there been any news of the Vicomte of late?"

It was Nick who asked the question, after a little. Monsieur de St. Gre
looked at him in surprise.

"Eh, mon Dieu, have you not heard?" he said. "C'est vrai, you have been
with David. Did not the Vicomtesse mention it? But why should she?
Monsieur le Vicomte died in Vienna. He had lived too well."

"The Vicomte is dead?" I said.

They both looked at me. Indeed, I should not have recognized my own
voice. What my face betrayed, what my feelings were, I cannot say. My
heart beat no faster, there was no tumult in my brain, and yet--my breath
caught strangely. Something grew within me which is beyond the measure
of speech, and so it was meant to be.

"I did not know this myself until Helene returned to Les Iles," Monsieur
de St. Gre was saying to me. "The letter came to her the day after you
were taken ill. It was from the Baron von Seckenbruck, at whose house
the Vicomte died. She took it very calmly, for Helene is not a woman to
pretend. How much better, after all, if she had married her Englishman
for love! And she is much troubled now because, as she declares, she is
dependent upon my bounty. That is my happiness, my consolation," the
good man added simply, "and her father, the Marquis, was kind to me when
I was a young provincial and a stranger. God rest his soul!"

We were drawing near to Les Iles. The rains had come during my illness,
and in the level evening light the forest of the shore was the tender
green of spring. At length we saw the white wooden steps in the levee at
the landing, and near them were three figures waiting. We glided nearer.
One was Madame de St. Gre, another was Antoinette,--these I saw indeed.
The other was Helene, and it seemed to me that her eyes met mine across
the waters and drew them. Then we were at the landing. I heard Madame
de St. Gre's voice, and Antoinette's in welcome--I listened for another.
I saw Nick running up the steps; in the impetuosity of his love he had
seized Antoinette's hand in his, and she was the color of a red rose.
Creole decorum forbade further advances. Andre and another lifted me
out, and they gathered around me,--these kind people and devoted
friends,--Antoinette calling me, with exquisite shyness, by name; Madame
de St. Gre giving me a grave but gentle welcome, and asking anxiously how
I stood the journey. Another took my hand, held it for the briefest
space that has been marked out of time, and for that instant I looked
into her eyes. Life flowed back into me, and strength, and a joy not to
be fathomed. I could have walked; but they bore me through the
well-remembered vista, and the white gallery at the end of it was like
the sight of home. The evening air was laden with the scent of the
sweetest of all shrubs and flowers.



CHAPTER XIV

"TO UNPATHED WATERS, UNDREAMED SHORES"

Monsieur and Madame de St. Gre themselves came with me to my chamber off
the gallery, where everything was prepared for my arrival with the most
loving care,--Monsieur de St. Gre supplying many things from his wardrobe
which I lacked. And when I tried to thank them for their kindness he
laid his hand upon my shoulder.

"Tenez, mon ami," he said, "you got your illness by doing things for
other people. It is time other people did something for you."

Lindy brought me the daintiest of suppers, and I was left to my
meditations. Nick looked in at the door, and hinted darkly that I had to
thank a certain tyrant for my abandonment. I called to him, but he paid
no heed, and I heard him chuckling as he retreated along the gallery.
The journey, the excitement into which I had been plunged by the news I
had heard, brought on a languor, and I was between sleeping and waking
half the night. I slept to dream of her, of the Vicomte, her husband,
walking in his park or playing cards amidst a brilliant company in a
great candle-lit room like the drawing-room at Temple Bow. Doubt grew,
and sleep left me. She was free now, indeed, but was she any nearer to
me? Hope grew again,--why had she left me in New Orleans? She had
received a letter, and if she had cared she would not have remained. But
there was a detestable argument to fit that likewise, and in the light of
this argument it was most natural that she should return to Les Iles.
And who was I, David Ritchie, a lawyer of the little town of Louisville,
to aspire to the love of such a creature? Was it likely that Helene,
Vicomtesse d'Ivry-le-Tour, would think twice of me? The powers of the
world were making ready to crush the presumptuous France of the Jacobins,
and the France of King and Aristocracy would be restored. Chateaux and
lands would be hers again, and she would go back again to that brilliant
life among the great to which she was born, for which nature had fitted
her. Last of all was the thought of the Englishman whom I resembled.
She would go back to him.

Nick was the first in my room the next morning. He had risen early (so
he ingenuously informed me) because Antoinette had a habit of getting up
with the birds, and as I drank my coffee he was emphatic in his
denunciations of the customs of the country.

"It is a wonderful day, Davy," he cried; "you must hurry and get out.
Monsieur de St. Gre sends his compliments, and wishes to know if you will
pardon his absence this morning. He is going to escort Antoinette and me
over to see some of my prospective cousins, the Bertrands." He made a
face, and bent nearer to my ear. "I swear to you I have not had one
moment alone with her. We have been for a walk, but Madame la Vicomtesse
must needs intrude herself upon us. Egad, I told her plainly what I
thought of her tyranny."

"And what did she say?" I asked, trying to smile.

"She laughed, and said that I belonged to a young nation which had done
much harm in the world to everybody but themselves. Faith, if I wasn't
in love with Antoinette, I believe I'd be in love with her."

"I have no doubt of it," I answered.

"The Vicomtesse is as handsome as a queen this morning," he continued,
paying no heed to this remark. "She has on a linen dress that puzzles
me. It was made to walk among the trees and flowers, it is as simple as
you please; and yet it has a distinction that makes you stare."

"You seem to have stared," I answered. "Since when did you take such
interest in gowns?"

"Bless you, it was Antoinette. I never should have known," said he.
"Antoinette had never before seen the gown, and she asked the Vicomtesse
where she got the pattern. The Vicomtesse said that the gown had been
made by Leonard, a court dressmaker, and it was of the fashion the Queen
had set to wear in the gardens of the Trianon when simplicity became the
craze. Antoinette is to have it copied, so she says."

Which proved that Antoinette was human, after all, and happy once more.

"Hang it," said Nick, "she paid more attention to that gown than to me.
Good-by, Davy. Obey the--the Colonel."

"Is--is not the Vicomtesse going with you?" I asked

"No, I'm sorry for you," he called back from the gallery.

He had need to be, for I fell into as great a fright as ever I had had in
my life. Monsieur de St. Gre knocked at the door and startled me out of
my wits. Hearing that I was awake, he had come in person to make his
excuses for leaving me that morning.

"Bon Dieu!" he said, looking at me, "the country has done you good
already. Behold a marvel! Au revoir, David."

I heard the horses being brought around, and laughter and voices. How
easily I distinguished hers! Then I heard the hoof-beats on the soft
dirt of the drive. Then silence,--the silence of a summer morning which
is all myriad sweet sounds. Then Lindy appeared, starched and turbaned.

"Marse Dave, how you feel dis mawnin'? Yo' 'pears mighty peart, sholy.
Marse Dave, yo' chair is sot on de gallery. Is you ready? I'll fotch
dat yaller nigger, Andre."

"You needn't fetch Andre," I said; "I can walk."

"Lan sakes, Marse Dave, but you is bumptious."

I rose and walked out on the gallery with surprising steadiness. A great
cushioned chair had been placed there and beside it a table with books,
and another chair. I sat down. Lindy looked at me sharply, but I did
not heed her, and presently she retired. The day, still in its early
golden glory, seemed big with prescience. Above, the saffron haze was
lifted, and there was the blue sky. The breeze held its breath; the
fragrance of grass and fruit and flowers, of the shrub that vied with
all, languished on the air. Out of these things she came.

I knew that she was coming, but I saw her first at the gallery's end, the
roses she held red against the white linen of her gown. Then I felt a
great yearning and a great dread. I have seen many of her kind since,
and none reflected so truly as she the life of the old regime. Her
dress, her carriage, her air, all suggested it; and she might, as Nick
said, have been walking in the gardens of the Trianon. Titles I cared
nothing for. Hers alone seemed real, to put her far above me. Had all
who bore them been as worthy, titles would have meant much to mankind.

She was coming swiftly. I rose to my feet before her. I believe I
should have risen in death. And then she was standing beside me, looking
up into my face.

"You must not do that," she said, "or I will go away."

I sat down again. She went to the door and called, I following her with
my eyes. Lindy came with a bowl of water.

"Put it on the table," said the Vicomtesse.

Lindy put the bowl on the table, gave us a glance, and departed silently.
The Vicomtesse began to arrange the flowers in the bowl, and I watched
her, fascinated by her movements. She did everything quickly, deftly,
but this matter took an unconscionable time. She did not so much as
glance at me. She seemed to have forgotten my presence.

"There," she said at last, giving them a final touch. "You are less
talkative, if anything, than usual this morning, Mr. Ritchie. You have
not said good morning, you have not told me how you were--you have not
even thanked me for the roses. One might almost believe that you are
sorry to come to Les Iles."

"One might believe anything who didn't know, Madame la Vicomtesse."

She put her hand to the flowers again.

"It seems a pity to pick them, even in a good cause," she said.

She was so near me that I could have touched her. A weakness seized me,
and speech was farther away than ever. She moved, she sat down and
looked at me, and the kind of mocking smile came into her eyes that I
knew was the forerunner of raillery.

"There is a statue in the gardens of Versailles which seems always about
to speak, and then to think better of it. You remind me of that statue,
Mr. Ritchie. It is the statue of Wisdom."

What did she mean?

"Wisdom knows the limitations of its own worth, Madame," I replied.

"It is the one particular in which I should have thought wisdom was
lacking," she said. "You have a tongue, if you will deign to use it. Or
shall I read to you?" she added quickly, picking up a book. "I have read
to the Queen, when Madame Campan was tired. Her Majesty poor dear lady,
did me the honor to say she liked my English."

"You have done everything, Madame," I said.

"I have read to a Queen, to a King's sister, but never yet--to a King,"
she said, opening the book and giving me the briefest of glances. "You
are all kings in America are you not? What shall I read?"

"I would rather have you talk to me."

"Very well, I will tell you how the Queen spoke English. No, I will not
do that," she said, a swift expression of sadness passing over her face.
"I will never mock her again. She was a good sovereign and a brave woman
and I loved her." She was silent a moment, and I thought there was a
great weariness in her voice when she spoke again. "I have every reason
to thank God when I think of the terrors I escaped, of the friends I have
found. And yet I am an unhappy woman, Mr. Ritchie."

"You are unhappy when you are not doing things for others, Madame," I
suggested.

"I am a discontented woman," she said; "I always have been. And I am
unhappy when I think of all those who were dear to me and whom I loved.
Many are dead, and many are scattered and homeless."

"I have often thought of your sorrows, Madame," I said.

"Which reminds me that I should not burden you with them, my good friend,
when you are recovering. Do you know that you have been very near to
death?"

"I know, Madame," I faltered. "I know that had it not been for you I
should not be alive to-day. I know that you risked your life to save my
own."

She did not answer at once, and when I looked at her she was gazing out
over the flowers on the lawn.

"My life did not matter," she said. "Let us not talk of that."

I might have answered, but I dared not speak for fear of saying what was
in my heart. And while I trembled with the repression of it, she was
changed. She turned her face towards me and smiled a little.

"If you had obeyed me you would not have been so ill," she said.

"Then I am glad that I did not obey you."

"Your cousin, the irrepressible Mr. Temple, says I am a tyrant. Come
now, do you think me a tyrant?"

"He has also said other things of you."

"What other things?"

I blushed at my own boldness.

"He said that if he were not in love with Antoinette, he would be in love
with you."

"A very safe compliment," said the Vicomtesse. "Indeed, it sounds too
cautious for Mr. Temple. You must have tampered with it, Mr. Ritchie,"
she flashed. "Mr. Temple is a boy. He needs discipline. He will have
too easy a time with Antoinette."

"He is not the sort of man you should marry," I said, and sat amazed at
it.

She looked at me strangely.

"No, he is not," she answered. "He is more or less the sort of man I
have been thrown with all my life. They toil not, neither do they spin.
I know you will not misunderstand me, for I am very fond of him. Mr.
Temple is honest, fearless, lovable, and of good instincts. One cannot
say as much for the rest of his type. They go through life fighting,
gaming, horse-racing, riding to hounds,--I have often thought that it was
no wonder our privileges came to an end. So many of us were steeped in
selfishness and vice, were a burden on the world. The early nobles, with
all their crimes, were men who carved their way. Of such were the lords
of the Marches. We toyed with politics, with simplicity, we wasted the
land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken
villages. The reckoning came. Our punishment was not given into the
hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to the scum, the
canaille, the demons of the earth. Had our King, had our nobility, been
men with the old fire, they would not have stood it. They were worn out
with centuries of catering to themselves. Give me a man who will shape
his life and live it with all his strength. I am tired of sham and
pretence, of cynical wit, of mocking at the real things of life, of
pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy. Give me a man whose existence means
something."

Was she thinking of the Englishman of whom she had spoken? Delicacy
forbade my asking the question. He had been a man, according to her own
testimony. Where was he now? Her voice had a ring of earnestness in it
I had never heard before, and this arraignment of her own life and of her
old friends surprised me. Now she seemed lost in a revery, from which I
forebore to arouse her.

"I have often tried to picture your life," I said at last.

"You?" she answered, turning her head quickly.

"Ever since I first saw the miniature," I said. "Monsieur de St. Gre
told me some things, and afterwards I read 'Le Mariage de Figaro,' and
some novels, and some memoirs of the old courts which I got in
Philadelphia last winter. I used to think of you as I rode over the
mountains, as I sat reading in my room of an evening. I used to picture
you in the palaces amusing the Queen and making the Cardinals laugh. And
then I used to wonder--what became of you--and whether--" I hesitated,
overwhelmed by a sudden confusion, for she was gazing at me fixedly with
a look I did not understand.

"You used to think of that?" she said.

"I never thought to see you," I answered.

Laughter came into her eyes, and I knew that I had not vexed her. But I
had spoken stupidly, and I reddened.

"I had a quick tongue," she said, as though to cover my confusion. "I
have it yet. In those days misfortune had not curbed it. I had not
learned to be charitable. When I was a child I used to ride with my
father to the hunts at St. Gre, and I was too ready to pick out the
weaknesses of his guests. If one of the company had a trick or a
mannerism, I never failed to catch it. People used to ask me what I
thought of such and such a person, and that was bad for me. I saw their
failings and pretensions, but I ignored my own. It was the same at
Abbaye aux Bois, the convent where I was taught. When I was presented to
her Majesty I saw why people hated her. They did not understand her.
She was a woman with a large heart, with charity. Some did not suspect
this, others forgot it because they beheld a brilliant personage with
keen perceptions who would not submit to being bored. Her Majesty made
many enemies at court of persons who believed she was making fun of them.
There was a dress-maker at the French court called Mademoiselle Bertin,
who became ridiculously pretentious because the Queen allowed the woman
to dress her hair in private. Bertin used to put on airs with the
nobility when they came to order gowns, and she was very rude to me when
I went for my court dress. There was a ball at Versailles the day I was
presented, and my father told me that her Majesty wished to speak with
me. I was very much frightened. The Queen was standing with her back to
the mirror, the Duchesse de Polignac and some other ladies beside her,
when my father brought me up, and her Majesty was smiling.

"'What did you say to Bertin, Mademoiselle?' she asked.

"I was more frightened than ever, but the remembrance of the woman's
impudence got the better of me.

"'I told her that in dressing your Majesty's hair she had acquired all
the court accomplishments but one.'

"'I'll warrant that Bertin was curious,' said the Queen.

"'She was, your Majesty.'

"'What is the accomplishment she lacks?' the Queen demanded; 'I should
like to know it myself.'

"It is discrimination, your Majesty. I told the woman there were some
people she could be rude to with impunity. I was not one of them.'

"'She'll never be rude to you again, Mademoiselle,' said the Queen.

"'I am sure of it, your Majesty,' I said.

"The Queen laughed, and bade the Duchesse de Polignac invite me to supper
that evening. My father was delighted,--I was more frightened than ever.
But the party was small, her Majesty was very gracious and spoke to me
often, and I saw that above all things she liked to be amused. Poor
lady! It was a year after that terrible affair of the necklace, and she
wished to be distracted from thinking of the calumnies which were being
heaped upon her. She used to send for me often during the years that
followed, and I might have had a place at court near her person. But my
father was sensible enough to advise me not to accept,--if I could refuse
without offending her Majesty. The Queen was not offended; she was good
enough to say that I was wise in my request. She had, indeed, abolished
most of the ridiculous etiquette of the court. She would not eat in
public, she would not be followed around the palace by ladies in court
gowns, she would not have her ladies in the room when she was dressing.
If she wished a mirror, she would not wait for it to be passed through
half a dozen hands and handed her by a Princess of the Blood. Sometimes
she used to summon me to amuse her and walk with me by the water in the
beautiful gardens of the Petit Triano. I used to imitate the people she
disliked. I disliked them, too. I have seen her laugh until the tears
came into her eyes when I talked of Monsieur Necker. As the dark days
drew nearer I loved more and more to be in the seclusion of the country
at Montmery, at the St. Gre of my girlhood. I can see St. Gre now," said
the Vicomtesse, "the thatched houses of the little village on either side
of the high-road, the honest, red-faced peasants courtesying in their
doorways at our berline, the brick wall of the park, the iron gates
beside the lodge, the long avenue of poplars, the deer feeding in the
beechwood, the bridge over the shining stream and the long,
weather-beaten chateau beyond it. Paris and the muttering of the storm
were far away. The mornings on the sunny terrace looking across the
valley to the blue hills, the walks in the village, grew very dear to me.
We do not know the value of things, Mr. Ritchie, until we are about to
lose them."

"You did not go back to court?" I asked.

She sighed.

"Yes, I went back. I thought it my duty. I was at Versailles that
terrible summer when the States General met, when the National Assembly
grew out of it, when the Bastille was stormed, when the King was throwing
away his prerogatives like confetti. Never did the gardens of the
Trianon seem more beautiful, or more sad. Sometimes the Queen would
laugh even then when I mimicked Bailly, Des Moulins, Mirabeau. I was
with her Majesty in the gardens on that dark, rainy day when the
fishwomen came to Versailles. The memory of that night will haunt me as
long as I live. The wind howled, the rain lashed with fury against the
windows, the mob tore through the streets of the town, sacked the
wine-shops, built great fires at the corners. Before the day dawned
again the furies had broken into the palace and murdered what was left of
the Guard. You have heard how they carried off the King and Queen to
Paris--how they bore the heads of the soldiers on their pikes. I saw it
from a window, and I shall never forget it."

Her voice faltered, and there were tears on her lashes. Some quality in
her narration brought before me so vividly the scenes of which she spoke
that I started when she had finished. There was much more I would have
known, but I could not press her to speak longer on a subject that gave
her pain. At that moment she seemed more distant to me than ever before.
She rose, went into the house, and left me thinking of the presumptions
of the hopes I had dared to entertain, left me picturing sadly the
existence of which she had spoken. Why had she told me of it? Perchance
she had thought to do me a kindness!

She came back to me--I had not thought she would. She sat down with her
embroidery in her lap, and for some moments busied herself with it in
silence. Then she said, without looking up:--

"I do not know why I have tired you with this, why I have saddened
myself. It is past and gone."

"I was not tired, Madame. It is very difficult to live in the present
when the past has been so brilliant," I answered.

"So brilliant!" She sighed. "So thoughtless,--I think that is the
sharpest regret." I watched her fingers as they stitched, wondering how
they could work so rapidly. At last she said in a low voice, "Antoinette
and Mr. Temple have told me something of your life, Mr. Ritchie."

I laughed.

"It has been very humble," I replied.

"What I heard was--interesting to me," she said, turning over her frame.
"Will you not tell me something of it?"

"Gladly, Madame, if that is the case," I answered.

"Well, then," she said, "why don't you?"

"I do not know which part you would like, Madame. Shall I tell you about
Colonel Clark? I do not know when to begin--"

She dropped her sewing in her lap and looked up at me quickly.

"I told you that you were a strange man," she said. "I almost lose
patience with you. No, don't tell me about Colonel Clark--at least not
until you come to him. Begin at the beginning, at the cabin in the
mountains."

"You want the whole of it!" I exclaimed.

She picked up her embroidery again and bent over it with a smile.

"Yes, I want the whole of it."

So I began at the cabin in the mountains. I cannot say that I ever
forgot she was listening, but I lost myself in the narrative. It
presented to me, for the first time, many aspects that I had not thought
of. For instance, that I should be here now in Louisiana telling it to
one who had been the companion and friend of the Queen of France. Once
in a while the Vicomtesse would look up at me swiftly, when I paused, and
then go on with her work again. I told her of Temple Bow, and how I had
run away; of Polly Ann and Tom, of the Wilderness Trail and how I shot
Cutcheon, of the fight at Crab Orchard, of the life in Kentucky, of Clark
and his campaign. Of my doings since; how I had found Nick and how he
had come to New Orleans with me; of my life as a lawyer in Louisville, of
the conventions I had been to. The morning wore on to midday, and I told
her more than I believed it possible to tell any one. When at last I had
finished a fear grew upon me that I had told her too much. Her fingers
still stitched, her head was bent and I could not see her face,--only the
knot of her hair coiled with an art that struck me suddenly. Then she
spoke, and her voice was very low.

"I love Polly Ann," she said; "I should like to know her."

"I wish that you could know her," I answered, quickening.

She raised her head, and looked at me with an expression that was not a
smile. I could not say what it was, or what it meant.

"I do not think you are stupid," she said, in the same tone, "but I do
not believe you know how remarkable your life has been. I can scarcely
realize that you have seen all this, have done all this, have felt all
this. You are a lawyer, a man of affairs, and yet you could guide me
over the hidden paths of half a continent. You know the mountain ranges,
the passes, the rivers, the fords, the forest trails, the towns and the
men who made them!" She picked up her sewing and bent over it once more.
"And yet you did not think that this would interest me."

Perchance it was a subtle summons in her voice I heard that bade me open
the flood-gates of my heart,--I know not. I know only that no power on
earth could have held me silent then.

"Helene!" I said, and stopped. My heart beat so wildly that I could hear
it. "I do not know why I should dare to think of you, to look up to
you--Helene, I love you, I shall love you till I die. I love you with
all the strength that is in me, with all my soul. You know it, and if
you did not I could hide it no more. As long as I live there will never
be another woman in the world for me. I love you. You will forgive me
because of the torture I have suffered, because of the pain I shall
suffer when I think of you in the years to come."

Her sewing dropped to her lap--to the floor. She looked at me, and the
light which I saw in her eyes flooded my soul with a joy beyond my
belief. I trembled with a wonder that benumbed me. I would have got to
my feet had she not come to me swiftly, that I might not rise. She stood
above me, I lifted up my arms; she bent to me with a movement that
conferred a priceless thing.

"David," she said, "could you not tell that I loved you, that you were he
who has been in my mind for so many years, and in my heart since I saw
you?"

"I could not tell," I said. "I dared not think it. I--I thought there
was another."

She was seated on the arm of my chair. She drew back her head with a
smile trembling on her lips, with a lustre burning in her eyes like a
vigil--a vigil for me.

"He reminded me of you," she answered.

I was lost in sheer, bewildering happiness. And she who created it, who
herself was that happiness, roused me from it.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"I was thinking that a star has fallen,--that I may have a jewel beyond
other men," I said.

"And a star has risen for me," she said, "that I may have a guide beyond
other women."

"Then it is you who have raised it, Helene." I was silent a moment,
trying again to bring the matter within my grasp. "Do you mean that you
love me, that you will marry me, that you will come back to Kentucky with
me and will be content,--you, who have been the companion of a Queen?"

There came an archness into her look that inflamed me the more.

"I, who have been the companion of a Queen, love you, will marry you,
will go back to Kentucky with you and be content," she repeated. "And
yet not I, David, but another woman--a happy woman. You shall be my
refuge, my strength, my guide. You will lead me over the mountains and
through the wilderness by the paths you know. You will bring me to Polly
Ann that I may thank her for the gift of you,--above all other gifts in
the world."

I was silent again.

"Helene," I said at last, "will you give me the miniature?"

"On one condition," she replied.

"Yes," I said, "yes. And again yes. What is it?"

"That you will obey me--sometimes."

"It is a privilege I long for," I answered.

"You did not begin with promise," she said.

I released her hand, and she drew the ivory from her gown and gave it me.
I kissed it.

"I will go to Monsieur Isadore's and get the frame," I said.

"When I give you permission," said Helene, gently.

I have written this story for her eyes.



CHAPTER XV

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A MAN

Out of the blood and ashes of France a Man had arisen who moved real
kings and queens on his chess-board--which was a large part of the
world. The Man was Napoleon Buonaparte, at present, for lack of a better
name, First Consul of the French Republic. The Man's eye, sweeping the
world for a new plaything, had rested upon one which had excited the
fancy of lesser adventurers, of one John Law, for instance. It was a
large, unwieldy plaything indeed, and remote. It was nothing less than
that vast and mysterious country which lay beyond the monster yellow
River of the Wilderness, the country bordered on the south by the Gulf
swamps, on the north by no man knew what forests,--as dark as those the
Romans found in Gaul,--on the west by a line which other generations
might be left to settle.

This land was Louisiana.

A future king of France, while an emigre, had been to Louisiana. This is
merely an interesting fact worth noting. It was not interesting to
Napoleon.

Napoleon, by dint of certain screws which he tightened on his Catholic
Majesty, King Charles of Spain, in the Treaty of San Ildefonso on the 1st
of October, 1800, got his plaything. Louisiana was French
again,--whatever French was in those days. The treaty was a profound
secret. But secrets leak out, even the profoundest; and this was wafted
across the English Channel to the ears of Mr. Rufus King, American
Minister at London, who wrote of it to one Thomas Jefferson, President of
the United States. Mr. Jefferson was interested, not to say alarmed.

Mr. Robert Livingston was about to depart on his mission from the little
Republic of America to the great Republic of France. Mr. Livingston was
told not to make himself disagreeable, but to protest. If Spain was to
give up the plaything, the Youngest Child among the Nations ought to have
it. It lay at her doors, it was necessary for her growth.

Mr. Livingston arrived in France to find that Louisiana was a mere pawn
on the chess-board, the Republic he represented little more. He
protested, and the great Talleyrand shrugged his shoulders. What was
Monsieur talking about? A treaty. What treaty? A treaty with Spain
ceding back Louisiana to France after forty years. Who said there was
such a treaty? Did Monsieur take snuff? Would Monsieur call again when
the Minister was less busy?

Monsieur did call again, taking care not to make himself disagreeable.
He was offered snuff. He called again, pleasantly. He was offered
snuff. He called again. The great Talleyrand laughed. He was always so
happy to see Monsieur when he (Talleyrand) was not busy. He would give
Monsieur a certificate of importunity. He had quite forgotten what
Monsieur was talking about on former occasions. Oh, yes, a treaty.
Well, suppose there was such a treaty, what then?

What then? Mr. Livingston, the agreeable but importunate, went home and
wrote a memorial, and was presently assured that the inaccessible Man who
was called First Consul had read it with interest--great interest. Mr.
Livingston did not cease to indulge in his enjoyable visits to
Talleyrand--not he. But in the intervals he sat down to think.

What did the inaccessible Man himself have in his mind?

The Man had been considering the Anglo-Saxon race, and in particular that
portion of it which inhabited the Western Hemisphere. He perceived that
they were a quarrelsome people, which possessed the lust for land and
conquest like the rest of their blood. He saw with astonishment
something that had happened, something that they had done. Unperceived
by the world, in five and twenty years they had swept across a thousand
miles of mountain and forest wilderness in ever increasing thousands, had
beaten the fiercest of savage tribes before them, stolidly unmindful of
their dead. They had come at length to the great yellow River, and
finding it closed had cried aloud in their anger. What was beyond it to
stop them? Spain, with a handful of subjects inherited from the France
of Louis the Fifteenth.

Could Spain stop them? No. But he, the Man, would stop them. He would
raise up in Louisiana as a monument to himself a daughter of France to
curb their ambition. America should not be all Anglo-Saxon.

Already the Americans had compelled Spain to open the River. How long
before they would overrun Louisiana itself, until a Frenchman or a
Spaniard could scarce be found in the land?

Sadly, in accordance with the treaty which Monsieur Talleyrand had known
nothing about, his Catholic Majesty instructed his Intendant at New
Orleans to make ready to deliver Louisiana to the French Commission.
That was in July, 1802. This was not exactly an order to close the River
again--in fact, his Majesty said nothing about closing the River. Mark
the reasoning of the Spanish mind. The Intendant closed the River as his
plain duty. And Kentucky and Tennessee, wayward, belligerent infants who
had outgrown their swaddling clothes, were heard from again. The Nation
had learned to listen to them. The Nation was very angry. Mr. Hamilton
and the Federalists and many others would have gone to war and seized the
Floridas.

Mr. Jefferson said, "Wait and see what his Catholic Majesty has to say."
Mr. Jefferson was a man of great wisdom, albeit he had mistaken
Jacobinism for something else when he was younger. And he knew that
Napoleon could not play chess in the wind. The wind was rising.

Mr. Livingston was a patriot, able, importunate, but getting on in years
and a little hard of hearing. Importunity without an Army and a Navy
behind it is not effective--especially when there is no wind. But Mr.
Jefferson heard the wind rising, and he sent Mr. Monroe to Mr.
Livingston's aid. Mr. Monroe was young, witty, lively, popular with
people he met. He, too, heard the wind rising, and so now did Mr.
Livingston.

The ships containing the advance guard of the colonists destined for the
new Louisiana lay in the roads at Dunkirk, their anchors ready to
weigh,--three thousand men, three thousand horses, for the Man did things
on a large scale. The anchors were not weighed.

His Catholic Majesty sent word from Spain to Mr. Jefferson that he was
sorry his Intendant had been so foolish. The River was opened again.

The Treaty of Amiens was a poor wind-shield. It blew down, and the
chessmen began to totter. One George of England, noted for his frugal
table and his quarrelsome disposition, who had previously fought with
France, began to call the Man names. The Man called George names, and
sat down to think quickly. George could not be said to be on the best of
terms with his American relations, but the Anglo-Saxon is unsentimental,
phlegmatic, setting money and trade and lands above ideals. George meant
to go to war again. Napoleon also meant to go to war again. But George
meant to go to war again right away, which was inconvenient and
inconsiderate, for Napoleon had not finished his game of chess. The
obvious outcome of the situation was that George with his Navy would get
Louisiana, or else help his relations to get it. In either case
Louisiana would become Anglo-Saxon.

This was the wind which Mr. Jefferson had heard.

The Man, being a genius who let go gracefully when he had to, decided
between two bad bargains. He would sell Louisiana to the Americans as a
favor; they would be very, very grateful, and they would go on hating
George. Moreover, he would have all the more money with which to fight
George.

The inaccessible Man suddenly became accessible. Nay, he became
gracious, smiling, full of loving-kindness, charitable. Certain
dickerings followed by a bargain passed between the American Minister and
Monsieur Barbe-Marbois. Then Mr. Livingston and Mr. Monroe dined with
the hitherto inaccessible. And the Man, after the manner of Continental
Personages, asked questions. Frederick the Great has started this
fashion, and many have imitated it.

Louisiana became American at last. Whether by destiny or chance, whether
by the wisdom of Jefferson or the necessity of Napoleon, who can say? It
seems to me, David Ritchie, writing many years after the closing words of
the last chapter were penned, that it was ours inevitably. For I have
seen and known and loved the people with all their crudities and faults,
whose inheritance it was by right of toil and suffering and blood.

And I, David Ritchie, saw the flags of three nations waving over it in
the space of two days. And it came to pass in this wise.

Rumors of these things which I have told above had filled Kentucky from
time to time, and in November of 1803 there came across the mountains the
news that the Senate of the United States had ratified the treaty between
our ministers and Napoleon.

I will not mention here what my life had become, what my fortune, save to
say that both had been far beyond my expectations. In worldly goods and
honors, in the respect and esteem of my fellow-men, I had been happy
indeed. But I had been blessed above other men by one whose power it was
to lift me above the mean and sordid things of this world.

Many times in the pursuit of my affairs I journeyed over that country
which I had known when it belonged to the Indian and the deer and the elk
and the wolf and the buffalo. Often did she ride by my side, making
light of the hardships which, indeed, were no hardships to her, wondering
at the settlements which had sprung up like magic in the wilderness,
which were the heralds of the greatness of the Republic,--her country
now.

So, in the bright and boisterous March weather of the year 1804, we found
ourselves riding together along the way made memorable by the footsteps
of Clark and his backwoodsmen. For I had an errand in St. Louis with
Colonel Chouteau. A subtle change had come upon Kaskaskia with the new
blood which was flowing into it: we passed Cahokia, full of memories to
the drummer boy whom she loved. There was the church, the garrison, the
stream, and the little house where my Colonel and I had lived together.
She must see them all, she must hear the story from my lips again; and
the telling of it to her gave it a new fire and a new life.

At evening, when the March wind had torn the cotton clouds to shreds, we
stood on the Mississippi's bank, gazing at the western shore, at
Louisiana. The low, forest-clad hills made a black band against the sky,
and above the band hung the sun, a red ball. He was setting, and man
might look upon his face without fear. The sight of the waters of that
river stirred me to think of many things. What had God in store for the
vast land out of which the waters flowed? Had He, indeed, saved it for a
People, a People to be drawn from all nations, from all classes? Was the
principle of the Republic to prevail and spread and change the complexion
of the world? Or were the lusts of greed and power to increase until in
the end they had swallowed the leaven? Who could say? What man of those
who, soberly, had put his hand to the Paper which declared the
opportunities of generations to come, could measure the Force which he
had helped to set in motion.

We crossed the river to the village where I had been so kindly received
many years ago--to St. Louis. The place was little changed. The wind
was stilled, the blue wood smoke curled lazily from the wide stone
chimneys of the houses nestling against the hill. The afterglow was
fading into night; lights twinkled in the windows. Followed by our
servants we climbed the bank, Helene and I, and walked the quiet streets
bordered by palings. The evening was chill. We passed a bright cabaret
from which came the sound of many voices; in the blacksmith's shop
another group was gathered, and we saw faces eager in the red light.
They were talking of the Cession.

We passed that place where Nick had stopped Suzanne in the cart, and
laughed at the remembrance. We came to Monsieur Gratiot's, for he had
bidden us to stay with him. And with Madame he gave us a welcome to warm
our hearts after our journey.

"David," he said, "I have seen many strange things happen in my life, but
the strangest of all is that Clark's drummer boy should have married a
Vicomtesse of the old regime."

And she was ever Madame la Vicomtesse to our good friends in St. Louis,
for she was a woman to whom a title came as by nature's right.

"And you are about to behold another strange thing David," Monsieur
Gratiot continued. "To-day you are on French territory."

"French territory!" I exclaimed.

"To-day Upper Louisiana is French," he answered. "To-morrow it will be
American forever. This morning Captain Stoddard of the United States
Army, empowered to act as a Commissioner of the French Republic, arrived
with Captain Lewis and a guard of American troops. Today, at noon, the
flag of Spain was lowered from the staff at the headquarters. To-night a
guard of honor watches with the French Tricolor, and we are French for
the last time. To-morrow we shall be Americans."

I saw that simple ceremony. The little company of soldiers was drawn up
before the low stone headquarters, the villagers with heads uncovered
gathered round about. I saw the Stars and Stripes rising, the Tricolor
setting. They met midway on the staff, hung together for a space, and a
salute to the two nations echoed among the hills across the waters of the
great River that rolled impassive by.



AFTERWORD

This book has been named "The Crossing" because I have tried to express
in it the beginnings of that great movement across the mountains which
swept resistless over the Continent until at last it saw the Pacific
itself. The Crossing was the first instinctive reaching out of an infant
nation which was one day to become a giant. No annals in the world's
history are more wonderful than the story of the conquest of Kentucky and
Tennessee by the pioneers.

This name, "The Crossing," is likewise typical in another sense. The
political faith of our forefathers, of which the Constitution is the
creed, was made to fit a more or less homogeneous body of people who
proved that they knew the meaning of the word "Liberty." By Liberty, our
forefathers meant the Duty as well as the Right of man to govern himself.
The Constitution amply attests the greatness of its authors, but it
was a compromise. It was an attempt to satisfy thirteen colonies,
each of which clung tenaciously to its identity. It suited the
eighteenth-century conditions of a little English-speaking confederacy
along the seaboard, far removed from the world's strife and jealousy. It
scarcely contemplated that the harassed millions of Europe would flock to
its fold, and it did not foresee that, in less than a hundred years, its
own citizens would sweep across the three thousand miles of forest and
plain and mountain to the Western Ocean, absorb French and Spanish
Louisiana, Spanish Texas, Mexico, and California, fill this land with
broad farmsteads and populous cities, cover it with a network of
railroads.

Would the Constitution, made to meet the needs of the little confederacy
of the seaboard, stretch over a Continent and an Empire?

We are fighting out that question to-day. But The Crossing was in Daniel
Boone's time, in George Rogers Clark's. Would the Constitution stand the
strain? And will it stand the strain now that the once remote haven of
the oppressed has become a world-power?

It was a difficult task in a novel to gather the elements necessary to
picture this movement: the territory was vast, the types bewildering.
The lonely mountain cabin; the seigniorial life of the tide-water; the
foothills and mountains which the Scotch-Irish have marked for their own
to this day; the Wilderness Trail; the wonderland of Kentucky, and the
cruel fighting in the border forts there against the most relentless of
foes; George Rogers Clark and his momentous campaign which gave to the
Republic Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; the transition period--the coming
of the settler after the pioneer; Louisiana, St. Louis, and New
Orleans,--to cover this ground, to picture the passions and politics of
the time, to bring the counter influence of the French Revolution as near
as possible to reality, has been a three years' task. The autobiography
of David Ritchie is as near as I can get to its solution, and I have a
great sense of its incompleteness.

I had hoped when I planned the series to bring down this novel through
the stirring period which ended, by a chance, when a steamboat brought
supplies to Jackson's army in New Orleans--the beginning of the era of
steam commerce on our Western waters. This work will have to be reserved
for a future time.

I have tried to give a true history of Clark's campaign as seen by an
eyewitness, trammelled as little as possible by romance. Elsewhere, as I
look back through these pages, I feel as though the soil had only been
scraped. What principality in the world has the story to rival that of
John Sevier and the State of Franklin? I have tried to tell the truth as
I went along. General Jackson was a boy at the Waxhaws and dug his toes
in the red mud. He was a man at Jonesboro, and tradition says that he
fought with a fence-rail. Sevier was captured as narrated. Monsieur
Gratiot, Monsieur Vigo, and Father Gibault lost the money which they gave
to Clark and their country. Monsieur Vigo actually travelled in the
state which Davy describes when he went down the river with him.
Monsieur Gratiot and Colonel Auguste Chouteau and Madame Chouteau are
names so well known in St. Louis that it is superfluous to say that such
persons existed and were the foremost citizens of the community.

Among the many to whom my apologies and thanks are due is Mr. Pierre
Chouteau of St. Louis, whose unremitting labors have preserved and
perpetuated the history and traditions of the country of his ancestors.
I would that I had been better able to picture the character, the
courage, the ability, and patriotism of the French who settled Louisiana.
The Republic owes them much, and their descendants are to-day among the
stanchest preservers of her ideals.

WINSTON CHURCHILL.






THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT

By WINSTON CHURCHILL


1917




CHAPTER I

In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to
boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered,
the helpless--and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, crushed,
rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward
Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite
of seemingly stable and lasting things, into shifting shale; surrounded
by fragments of cliffs from distant lands he had never seen. Thus, at
five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper of the leviathan Chippering
Mill in the city of Hampton.

That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an
historic river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times
to be a hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him,
and to the world of order and standards and religious sanctions into
which he had been born. His had been a life of relinquishments. For a
long time he had clung to the institution he had been taught to believe
was the rock of ages, the Congregational Church, finally to abandon it;
even that assuming a form fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the
edifice three blocks distant from Fillmore Street which he had attended
for a brief time, some ten years before, after his arrival in Hampton.
The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent and bewildered
Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, to
compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of
rounded, knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And the
minister was sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he
aroused in Edward Bumpus an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage.
Half a block from this tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church,
prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting an eternal permanence amidst the
chaos which had succeeded permanence!

There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and
his wife might have gone. One in particular, which he passed on his way
to the mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all
the outward semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring
and secure. He hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling
congregation,--the remains of a social stratum from which he had been
pried loose; and--more irony--this street, called Warren, of arching elms
and white-gabled houses, was now the abiding place of those prosperous
Irish who had moved thither from the tenements and ruled the city.

On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton
had Edward been born. In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted
there since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he
would have told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of
a family that by right of priority and service should have been destined
to inherit the land, but whose descendants were preserved to see it
delivered to the alien. The God of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had
been tried in the balance and found wanting. Edward could never
understand this; or why the Universe, so long static and immutable, had
suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, but in spite of
youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian
college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may
prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one.
Experience even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more
than twenty years after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a
Dolton mercantile establishment before he felt justified in marrying
Hannah, the daughter of Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment
amalgamated with a rival--and Edward's services were no longer required.
During the succession of precarious places with decreasing salaries he
had subsequently held a terrified sense of economic pressure had
gradually crept over him, presently growing strong enough, after two
girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family ....It would be
painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the slipping into
shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had now for
some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick
wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate
but not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the
agent of the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar. Thus had virtue failed
to hold its own.

One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates
staring at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite
bank of the canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of
enlightenment. It was not so. The fog of Edward's bewilderment never
cleared, and the unformed question was ever clamouring for an answer--how
had it happened? Job's cry. How had it happened to an honest and virtuous
man, the days of whose forebears had been long in the land which the Lord
their God had given them? Inherently American, though lacking the saving
quality of push that had been the making of men like Ditmar, he never
ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the hordes of foreigners
trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from expressing these
sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent man of that
unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, almost wholly
deserted the old England for the new. The ancestral features were there,
the lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded for the precise
formation that emphasizes such syllables as el, the hooked nose and
sallow cheeks, the grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn down at the
corners. But for all its ancestral strength of feature, it was a face
from which will had been extracted, and lacked the fire and fanaticism,
the indomitable hardness it should have proclaimed, and which have been
so characteristically embodied in Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of the
Puritan. His clothes were slightly shabby, but always neat.

Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a
certain transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost
amounting to an obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have
slipped downward in the social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in
America. He collected documents about his ancestors and relations, he
wrote letters with a fine, painful penmanship on a ruled block he bought
at Hartshorne's drug store to distant Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and
Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, the original immigrant, of
Dolton. Many of these western kinsmen answered: not so the magisterial
Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom likewise he
had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his elder
daughter, Janet.

"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully.

"Why? Aren't we descended from him?"

"How many generations?"

"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable.

Janet was quick at figures. She made a mental calculation.

"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of
Ebenezer's time, haven't you?"

Edward was a little surprised. He had never thought of this, but his
ardour for Ebenezer remained undampened. Genealogy--his own--had become
his religion, and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings
poring over papers of various degrees of discolouration, making careful
notes on the ruled block.

This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had
somehow been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also
a comfort. It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy
of his daughters and his wife. Hannah Bumpus took the situation more
grimly: she was a logical projection in a new environment of the
religious fatalism of ancestors whose God was a God of vengeance. She did
not concern herself as to what all this vengeance was about; life was a
trap into which all mortals walked sooner or later, and her particular
trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties she kept whirling with
an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had been the head of
the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an incontrovertible
belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not. But she kept the little
flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many journeys--as clean
as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was scoured and dusted to
her satisfaction she would sally forth to Bonnaccossi's grocery and
provision store on the corner to do her bargaining in competition with
the Italian housewives of the neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to
pause outside for a moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured
prints of red and yellow jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with
slices of orange, the gaudy boxes of cereals and buckwheat flour, the
"Brookfield" eggs in packages. Significant, this modern package system,
of an era of flats with little storage space. She took in at a glance the
blue lettered placard announcing the current price of butterine, and
walked around to the other side of the store, on Holmes Street, where the
beef and bacon hung, where the sidewalk stands were filled, in the
autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach.

With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly
lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that
in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her
unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called
"respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which
had been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench. Until
they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her adaptation
to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. Hannah Bumpus regarded
a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a wedding ring to a
virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up, there would be young
men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks. The fear that haunted
her came true, and she never was reconciled. The two girls went to the
public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work, and it seemed to be
a part of her punishment for the sins of her forefathers that she had no
more control over them than if they had been boarders; while she looked
on helplessly, they did what they pleased; Janet, whom she never
understood, was almost as much a source of apprehension as Lise, who
became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed reprehensible in this new
America which she refused to recognize and acknowledge as her own
country.

To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah used
to lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick. It
worried her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut the
expenses down, there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, hitherto
justly celebrated, was put to shame by that which the foreigners
displayed, and which would have delighted the souls of gentlemen of the
Manchester school. Every once in a while there rose up before her
fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians and Jews who, ignorant
emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before they, the
Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property owners.
Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned from
school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family. One of the
younger children was a classmate.

"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I
don't see why I can't."

This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her
indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying than
Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold of.

"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the
stove, "I guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills
and crowded into one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and
macaroni, and put four boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could
have had a house, too. We can start in right now, if you're willing."

But Lise had only looked darker.

"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do."

"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a
chance?"

"I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at school--she
don't have to work. She liked me before she found out where I lived..."

There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy,
for doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not bear to
have her daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself
time to think. Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to
him, was the logical result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that
marriage was an indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a
religious sanction, no less powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had
deteriorated into a superstition. Hannah, being a fatalist, was not
religious. The beliefs of other days, when she had donned her best dress
and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed and left--habits. No new
beliefs had taken their place....

Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to
gain that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned. Always, when they
were on the verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident
seemed to arise on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had
been forced to buy a new overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor
must be renewed, and Lise had had a spell of sickness, losing her
position in a flower shop. Afterwards, when she became a saleslady in the
Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store in Faber Street, she earned
four dollars and a half a week. Two of these were supposed to go into the
common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved finery, and Hannah
had not every week the heart to insist. Even when, on an occasional
Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly flung down the
money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice it. But Janet,
who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the office of the
Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers.

The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough
in the Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct.

Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by
agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers. Janet would
stir, her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the
inexpressible, in which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's
desire. Each morning, as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval
of bewilderment, of revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells
swinging in high cupolas above the river,--one rousing another. She could
even distinguish the bells: the deep-toned, penetrating one belonged to
the Patuxent Mill, over on the west side, while the Arundel had a high,
ominous reverberation like a fire bell. When at last the clangings had
ceased she would lie listening to the overtones throbbing in the air,
high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the second summons
that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,--to her
the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the
symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity.

Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister
cuddling up to her in fright. In such rare moments as this her heart
melted towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her. A
sense of Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like
a pang, that Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of
the feeling as in this dark hour, though it came to her at other times,
when they were not quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal
reaction between them.

It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window,
and light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared
together. Against the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a
travel-dented walnut bureau with a marble top, with an oval mirror into
which were stuck numerous magazine portraits of the masculine and
feminine talent adorning the American stage, a preponderance of the music
hall variety. There were pictures of other artists whom the recondite
would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic stories of
whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines--an
infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness. Between
one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found
vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose
connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a
triumphant acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose
trial for murder, in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of
newspapers and followed by Lise with breathless interest and sympathy.
She was wont to stare at this lady while dressing and exclaim:--"Say, I
hope they put it all over that district attorney!"

To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained
cold, though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms. Lise was a
truer daughter of her time and country in that she had the national
contempt for law, was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals
that caused the bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and
flowers and impassioned letters. Janet recalled there had been others
before Mrs. Wellman, caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited
in her sister a similar partisanship.

It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom.
Against the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked
photo-engravings that had taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man
and woman, clad in scanty bathing suits, seated side by side in a
careening sail boat,--the work of a popular illustrator whose manly and
womanly "types" had become national ideals.

There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the
same school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a
stately neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver,
the bare-throated women with jewels. A more critical eye than Lise's,
gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have
detected in the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort
to feel at home, to converse naturally, which their square jaws and
square shoulders belied. This was no doubt the fault of the artist's
models, who had failed to live up to the part. At any rate, the sight of
these young gods of leisure, the contemplation of the stolid butler and
plush footmen in the background never failed to make Lise's heart beat
faster.

On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and
bought by Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an
oval photograph frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off,
and the band of purple velvet inside the metal had whitened. The frame
always contained the current object of Lise's affections, though the
exhibits--as Janet said--were subject to change without notice. The
Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the prevailing Hampton
fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes like a
Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved in
a careful curve at the neck and around the ears. It had almost the
appearance of a Japanese wig. The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of
the lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished
and pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible
officer of the law from behind. This effect, one presently perceived, was
due to the high, stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, when
she and her sister were engaged in one of their frequent controversies
about life in general: the obvious retort to this remark, which Lise
never failed to make, was that Janet could boast of no beaux at all.

It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie
justice. In real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy in
his manners, sure of his powers of conquest. As Lise observed, he had
made a home-run with her at Slattery's Riverside Park. "Sadie Hartmann
was sure sore when I tangoed off with him," she would observe
reminiscently....

It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the
last minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the
bureau frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her
shoulders before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode.
Thus occupied, she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority
of shop-girls, she was small, but her figure was good, her skin white;
her discontented mouth gave her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc
with the work of the world. In winter breakfast was eaten by the light of
a rococo metal lamp set in the centre of the table. This was to save gas.
There was usually a rump steak and potatoes, bread and "creamery"
butterine, and the inevitable New England doughnuts. At six thirty the
whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the signal for Edward's
departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy bells once
more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of seven,
when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates.

The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose
owner had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as
though insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of
domesticity. A bay ran up the two stories, and at the left were two
narrow doorways, one for each flat. On the right the house was separated
from its neighbour by a narrow interval, giving but a precarious light to
the two middle rooms, the diningroom and kitchen. The very
unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain compensations for
Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, felt a real
relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, every
feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind
brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house
that held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green
ten-cent trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical
announcement--when boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda
was to be had within, as well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy.
Then came a tenement, under which two enterprising Greeks by the name of
Pappas--spelled Papas lower down--conducted a business called "The
Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing establishment. Janet could
see the brilliantined black heads of the two proprietors bending over
their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she
passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab
environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas,
and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her
education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful.

She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to
dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was incandescent
within her breast. Desire for what? It would have been some relief to
know. She could not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance
halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy
rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton. And beside, the Max Wylies were
afraid of her. If at times she wished for wealth, it was because wealth
held the magic of emancipation from surroundings against which her soul
revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided was the memory of a seaside
village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of her childhood, where
the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, where she recalled,
through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of
a little street....

Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners'
Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the
store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes,
sheet iron and cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy,
too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve.
He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his savings,
but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs
of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge
policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness. He
hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and "French"; he
hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat. He
possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible. A native of
Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue
eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had
a twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun.

He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did not
understand herself!

By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from
exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists. She
disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day
she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery
against the sky made by the slender branches of the great elms and
maples. She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised, heedless of
passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that could be so
oddly and unexpectedly aroused.

Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip
of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous
edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity.
There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account
of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the
superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of another,
announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the
Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes,
tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We don't give Trading Stamps, Our
Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten foot" stores were the
repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery, and
interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The
Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an
occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here,
during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding
spanning the window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in
his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd
below. Then came the funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley
Block (1872), and on the corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting
forth plate glass bays--two on Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled
with cameras and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney
cures, calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and handy alcohol lamps.
Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing the heterogeneous and
bewildering effect of the street were long rows of heavy hemlock trunks,
unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees bearing webs of wires.
Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks rumbled across
the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind startled
pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber
Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up
one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and
flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the
safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle
public.

Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved
roadway between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses.
Even in bright weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark,
misty mornings the stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the
farther bank were menacing indeed, bristling with projections, towers,
and chimneys, flanked by heavy walls. Had her experience included Europe,
her imagination might have seized the medieval parallel,--the arched
bridges flung at intervals across the water, lacking only chains to raise
them in case of siege. The place was always ominously suggestive of
impending strife. Janet's soul was a sensitive instrument, but she
suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to translate her
impressions intellectually. Her feeling about the mills was that they
were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven thither day
after day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as those who
trooped in through the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, four
times a day, the oak treads of the circular tower stairs.

The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the
canal.

The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in
Hampton are labyrinthine. Janet did not enter by the great gates her
father kept, but walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where,
day and night, a watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the
doorway leading to the paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the
grill, of numerous young men settling down at those mysterious and
complicated machines that kept so unerring a record, in dollars and
cents, of the human labour of the operatives. There were other suites for
the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and at the end of the
corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the outer of the two
rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general-in-chief
himself of this vast establishment. In this outer office, behind the rail
that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her
typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river,
which ran here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by
miles and miles of mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the
banks. The prison-like buildings on the farther shore were also of
colossal size, casting their shadows far out into the waters; while in
the distance, up and down the stream, could be seen the delicate web of
the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with trolley cars like toys
gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping along the footpaths.

Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor
of tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young
Mr. Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had
been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss
Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable
woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep,
masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a
masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand. Nerves were
things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel. Janet was
the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that might
be assigned.

There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster
and purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship
Janet, had she been differently organized, might have found congenial,
but something in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship.
She had but one friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she
had met at a lunch counter by accident, may be called so. As has been
admirably said in another language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek:
Janet offered the cheek. All unconsciously she sought a relationship
rarely to be found in banks and business offices; would yield herself to
none other. The young women stenographers in the Chippering Mill,
respectable, industrious girls, were attracted by a certain indefinable
quality, but finding they made no progress in their advances, presently
desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one of them remarked, "You
always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who worked in the office
of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, experienced a brief
infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum incessantly, Janet found
her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her part, declared that
Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better than the rest of
them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five which
gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly
into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange
persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to
relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical
laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question,
subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over
which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be
degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession,
deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was
frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a passion by no means
always consciously identified with men, embodying all the fierce
unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life.

These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun
glinting on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of
possessing her, and the longing they induced was pain. Longing for what?
For some unimagined existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the
ecstasy induced by these was neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as
now, might not assail her. Why should she feel her body hot with shame,
her cheeks afire? At such moments she would turn to the typewriter, her
fingers striking the keys with amazing rapidity, with extraordinary
accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to Mr. Claude Ditmar as he
entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused to watch her. She
was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson signal that
flashed to him and was gone. Why had he never noticed her before? All
these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his office,
and he had not so much as looked at her twice. The unguessed answer was
that he had never surprised her in a vivid moment. He had a flair for
women, though he had never encountered any possessing the higher values,
and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this
one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung,
capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch him would be
delectable.

When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and
the shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the
keys, seemed to belie that apparent slimness. And had he not been
unacquainted with the subtleties of the French mind and language, he
might have classed her as a fausse maigre. Her head was small, her hair
like a dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her
hair, to see whether it would not betray, at closer range, an
imperceptible wave,--but not daring to linger he went into his office,
closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat
appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity.
He had thought of Janet--when she had entered his mind at all--as
unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression. Her
qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen them
struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man had been as
fortunate.

Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway,
who liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn.

"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and
conscientious in her work. She's very quick, too.

"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have
it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for
business.

"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs. You can see she comes of
good stock." Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood. "Her
father, you know, is the gatekeeper down there. He's been unfortunate."

"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him. Fine looking old man. A
friend of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...."




CHAPTER II

In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of
such a disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr.
Claude Ditmar intended to infringe upon a fixed principle. He had
principles. For him, as for the patriarchs and householders of Israel,
the seventh commandment was only relative, yet hitherto he had held
rigidly to that relativity, laying down the sound doctrine that women and
business would not mix: or, as he put it to his intimates, no sensible
man would fool with a girl in his office. Hence it may be implied that
Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a property
basis. He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never
appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea
of a good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise
busy and successful persons who, by reason of having married early and
unwisely, are strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse
chronicled in novels and the public prints. If one may conveniently
overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible
to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred
blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him
into matrimony with a lady of this description: a somewhat sticky,
candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would
have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not inconsolable, but he had
had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a somewhat exorbitant
price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained.

He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of
twelve, both somewhat large for their ages. Amy attended the only private
institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast;
George continued at a public school. The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years
before her demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless
aspirations to which American ladies of her type and situation seem
peculiarly liable, and with a view to their ultimate realization she had
inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. Death had released Ditmar from its
increasing pressure. For his wife had possessed that admirable substitute
for character, persistence, had been expert in the use of importunity,
often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female economically
dependent. The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton National
Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the superintendents of the
Chippering and already a marked man, she had deemed herself fortunate
among women, looking forward to a life of ease and idleness and candy in
great abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered by the unforeseen
discomfort of bringing two children into the world, with an interval of
scarcely a year between them. Her parents from an excess of native
modesty having failed to enlighten her on this subject, her feelings were
those of outraged astonishment, and she was quite determined not to
repeat the experience a third time. Knowledge thus belatedly acquired,
for a while she abandoned herself to the satisfaction afforded by the
ability to take a commanding position in Hampton society, gradually to
become aware of the need of a more commodious residence. In a certain
kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had meanwhile become Agent of
the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that his prudent
reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of an
increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many
opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social
pre-eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations,
when frequently applied, succeeded better; like many married men, what he
most desired was to be let alone; but in some unaccountable way she had
come to suspect that his preference for blondes was of a more liberal
nature than at first, in her innocence, she had realized. She was
jealous, too, of his cronies, in spite of the fact that these gentlemen,
when they met her, treated her with an elaborate politeness; and she
accused him with entire justice of being more intimate with them than
with her, with whom he was united in holy bonds. The inevitable result of
these tactics was the modern mansion in the upper part of Warren Street,
known as the "residential" district. Built on a wide lot, with a garage
on one side to the rear, with a cement driveway divided into squares, and
a wall of democratic height separating its lawn from the sidewalk, the
house may for the present be better imagined than described.

A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it
a judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories
of the Warren Street house. For a while her husband indulged in a foolish
optimism, only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, once
acquired, is not easily shed. Scarcely had he settled down to the belief
that by the gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved
comparative peace, than he began to suspect her native self-confidence of
cherishing visions of a career contemplating nothing less than the
eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a field too limited for her
social talents and his business ability and bank account--at which she
was pleased to hint. Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion was the
Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist,
whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully
released by death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire
a culture and finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston
Academy, Amy to a fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet
he did not take the idea with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. The
children remained at home, more or less--increasingly less--in the charge
of an elderly woman who acted as housekeeper.

Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom. And now, when he made trips
to New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there were no
questions asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed. More frequently
he was in Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable club, not
too exacting in regard to membership, and here he met his cronies and
sometimes planned excursions with them, automobile trips in summer to the
White Mountains or choice little resorts to spend Sundays and holidays,
generally taking with them a case of champagne and several bags of golf
sticks. He was fond of shooting, and belonged to a duck club on the Cape,
where poker and bridge were not tabooed. To his intimates he was known as
"Dit." Nor is it surprising that his attitude toward women had become in
general one of resentment; matrimony he now regarded as unmitigated
folly. At five and forty he was a vital, dominating, dust-coloured man
six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a hundred and ninety
pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When relaxed, and in congenial company,
he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic of many American
business men of to-day.

His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed
him as belonging to a modern American type in that they were not
clear-cut, but rather indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache
gave him a certain efficient, military look which, when introduced to
strangers as "Colonel," was apt to deceive them into thinking him an army
officer. The title he had once received as a member of the staff of the
governor of the state, and was a tribute to a gregariousness and
political influence rather than to a genius for the art of war. Ex
officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to
boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual
to be taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of
congress down. He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and
shrewd, efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his
manner of dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay,
nay,--save with his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had
something to gain. His clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns
and light colours set aside for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston.

If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the
Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr.
Claude Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still
owning a controlling interest in the company. His loyalty to them and to
the mill he so ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life. For
Ditmar, a Chippering could do no wrong. It had been the keen eye of Mr.
Stephen Chippering that first had marked him, questioned him, recognized
his ability, and from the moment of that encounter his advance had been
rapid. When old Stephen had been called to his fathers, Ditmar's
allegiance was automatically, as it were, transferred to the two sons,
George and Worthington, already members of the board of directors.
Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which stood overlooking
the waters of the Charles River Basin. The attitude toward him of the
Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of
feudalism to democracy. They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating
him with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of
condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that
there were limits to the intimacy. They did not, for instance--no doubt
out of consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to
their club, which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged.
He felt no animus. Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have
changed places with the Chipperings. At an early age, and quite
unconsciously, he had accepted property as the ruling power of the
universe, and when family was added thereto the combination was nothing
less than divine.

There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became
almost unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away
from Fillmore Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself. Only she did
not know where to go, or how to get away. She was convinced of the
existence in the world of delightful spots where might be found congenial
people with whom it would be a joy to talk. Fillmore Street, certainly,
did not contain any such. The office was not so bad. It is true that in
the mornings, as she entered West Street, the sight of the dark facade of
the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the captivity in which she
passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her sensations of oppression
and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an outlet for her
energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments she could
find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so
purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter
and confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and
between the mills toward the sea. Toward the sea!

It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought
of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in
at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew
leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and
prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of
cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular
woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a
knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending over the kitchen
stove. And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate should have dealt
thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity welling within her.
After supper, when Lise had departed with her best young man, Hannah
would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to help her with the
dishes.

"You work all day, you have a right to rest."

"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the
harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized.
Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet
had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her
mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often wondered
why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection of
tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled
with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting
herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's:
divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been
better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of
rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and
driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether
it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung
by inexpressible desires,--desires in which the undiscovered spiritual
was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical. She would
have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences,
and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her. Even
if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be
able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis
was too troubling to be dwelt upon.

She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no
Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that
realm. Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste
for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public
Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of
books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents. Her few
choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill...

Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement
in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose
heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out
into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a
tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism
was not wholly proof. Scarce an evening went by without an expression of
uneasiness from Hannah.

"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?"
Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her
spectacles to read the Banner.

"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that
her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add
to Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she
had less with the helpless attitude of her parents.

"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights
the way she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything
about. I wasn't brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work for
a living I guess there's no help for it."

And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability
adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced
to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If he
heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was
oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers
spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp.
Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands
listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a
distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to
California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither. In
spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western
members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward.

"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to
be much concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls."

"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she
had given little thought to the question.

Edward would mildly ignore this challenge.

"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the
vessels as they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise
voice, emphasizing admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian,"
"vessels," and "Japan." "Wouldn't you like to see the letter?"

To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his
passion, she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently
handing it on to Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling
calligraphy, pondered over his manifold woes. Alpheus's son, who had had
a good position in a sporting goods establishment on Market Street, was
sick and in danger of losing it, the son's wife expecting an addition to
the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. Alpheus, a veteran of
the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but
the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid
worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read,
reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures,
of disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in
failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening,
as he wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was
pouring out his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means
unpleasurable, to this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his
own failure!

If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which
haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a
back eddy of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam
and jetsam had collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking
illustration of the process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore
Street in particular, one had only to take the trolley to Glendale, the
Italian settlement on the road leading to the old New England village of
Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked there, alone or with her friend Eda
Rawle. Disintegration itself--in a paradoxically pathetic attempt at
reconstruction--had built Glendale. Human hands, Italian hands. Nor,
surprising though it may seem, were these descendants of the people of
the Renaissance in the least offended by their handiwork. When the
southern European migration had begun and real estate became valuable,
one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American order had been
torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare hills of
Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye
craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a
colour scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution. Standing alone and
bare amidst its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the
entire settlement, composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate
settings, is a house with a tiny body painted strawberry-red, with
scroll-work shutters a tender green; surmounting the structure and almost
equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, once the white crown of the
Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton. The walls of this dwelling were
wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while the shutters for many
years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. Similarly, in
Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness human
fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where
existence had been regarded as solved. Here there was but one order,--if
such it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one
necessity claiming them all--the mills.

Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human
planks torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which
is to say they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus
family; and Chris Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced
that the history of mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by
women. Perhaps he was right, but the conviction was none the less an
obsession. He came from a little village near Wittenburg that has
scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like most residents of Hampton who
did not work in the mills, he ministered to those who did, or to those
who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in his barber
shop on Faber Street.

The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride,
preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood
by which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled
a certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew
unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in
common with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's
wife was a mild hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers,
two young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings
at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay
rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and
thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless
Edward.

"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the
vimmen leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror
of Egypt and the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and
Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you
there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill
you say of Goethe?"

Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe.

"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the
vimmen leave him alone? Divine yoost that." And he would proceed to cite
endless examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses had
been their bane. Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation to
the subject of his own obsession; the German was by far the more
aggressive, he would have none of it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing
to concede that the Bumpuses had been brought to their present lowly
estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex Chris might conditionally
have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously waving a tattered palm
leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took away the barber's
breath by suddenly observing:--"You never seem to think of the women
whose lives are ruined by men, Mr. Auermann."

It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a
young woman at that. He glared at her through his spectacles, took them
off, wiped them, replaced them, and glared at her again. He did not like
Janet; she was capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he
had never been wholly unaware of her disapproval and ridicule. Perhaps he
recognized in her, instinctively, the potential qualities of that
emerging modern woman who to him was anathema.

"It is somethings I don't think about," he said.

He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually
hunched up with his hands folded across his shins.

"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes. Toward all the masculine
residents of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of
unconcealed scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy. With
Johnny Tiernan alone he refused to enter the lists. When the popular
proprietor of the tin shop came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose
uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps,
Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous
playfulness.

"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny would
innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through
the wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released
it. And Chris would as invariably reply:--"You have the dandruffs--yes?
You come to my shop, I give you somethings...."

Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than
Edward, would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with
profound convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the
defenceless Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the
tenements above the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas
Bros., and known as "The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a
model of acquiescence in a system he would have designated as one of
industrial feudalism, his duty being to examine the rolls of cloth as
they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, in case of imperfections
handing them over to the women menders: at night, to borrow a vivid
expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the subject of
socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the
cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and
woman; his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the
origin of which he did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of
capricious forces over which human intelligence was one day to triumph.
Squatting on the lowest step, his face upturned, by the light of the arc
sputtering above the street he looked like a yellow frog, his eager eyes
directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of intelligence.

"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what
happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair
caught in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it
came to horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although
she never went to church, she did not like to think that no God existed.
Of this Mr. Shivers was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily,
hemmed and hawed, making ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's
socialism with a deeply-rooted native individualism that Shivers declared
as defunct as Christianity.

"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic
system, why do you not rise, then? Why do I not rise? I'm as good as
Ditmar, I'm better educated, but we're all slaves. What right has a man
to make you and me work for him just because he has capital?"

"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply.

Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism
and sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the
fact that Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a
paradoxical fascination, suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual
realms. She despised her father for not being able to crush the little
man. Edward would make pathetic attempts to capture the role Shivers had
appropriated, to be the practical party himself, to convict Shivers of
idealism. Socialism scandalized him, outraged, even more than atheism,
something within him he held sacred, and he was greatly annoyed because
he was unable adequately to express this feeling.

"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his
precise but ineffectual manner. "We all want property, you would accept a
fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I. Americans will never
become socialists."

"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut? Ain't that Yankee
enough for you?" Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him.

A Yankee Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of
Bumpuses! A Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose
like that, a Yankee with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and
bunches of black, moth-eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too polite
to descend to personalities, was silent....

In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would
have scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the
favourite prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity
had been disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged
the germs of those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air
of our modern industrial communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a
passing mention. A Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm,
and to the ordinary traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just
a good-natured, round-faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a
seat beside ladies of his acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until
it was time to rise and bawl out, in the approved manner of his
profession, the name of the next station. Fillmore Street knew that the
flat visored cap which his corporation compelled him to wear covered a
brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single Tax. When he
encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating..

Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned,
though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life. Their first
meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they
both frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham
sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a
Napoleon had led to conversation.

Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would
not be repulsed. A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded
with a Welsh family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding,
commonplace, resembling--as Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed
many of the noble qualities of that animal, she might have been thought
the last person in the world to discern and appreciate in Janet the
hidden elements of a mysterious fire. In appearance Miss Rawle was of a
type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly blonde, with high
malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, cheeks of an
amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or smiled,
drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid gums.
It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love
content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation.
Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though
in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was
able to give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering.

In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr.
Shivers described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those
inexpressible longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her,
almost irresistibly, she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light
in the darkness, like the beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had faith
in her, even when Janet had lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the
same spirit that Marguerite went to church; though she, Janet, more
resembled Faust, being--save in these hours of lowered vitality--of the
forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need that drove her, she
arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms. Janet was
immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine
trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of
those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues
come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony,
was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it,
having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never
having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified,
Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the
subject she recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:--"When you do fall in love,
Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!"

Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a
kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a
volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between
them.

Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or
sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on
Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an
expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical
line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white
teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it
appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen; she
averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with shame
that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed to public
gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were, however,
marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and ships,--once a
fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of orange
flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to Hampton,
the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to her!
Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the
Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets
turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of
London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands indeed, and
stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages
tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes
and emperors brought into such startling proximity one could easily
imagine one's self exchanging the time of day! Incredible to Janet how
the audiences, how even Eda accepted with American complacency what were
to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to see more, to know more,
became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to devour these scenes,
to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they were whisked
away. They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at night she
often charmed herself to sleep with remembered visions of wide, empty,
treeshaded terraces reserved for kings.

But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was
thrilled to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium.
Emerging from the vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the
slushy street, her eyes shone with a silver light like that of a mountain
lake in a stormy sunset. And they walked in silence until Janet would
exclaim:

"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!"

Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was
powerless to detect, and which did not become values until they had
passed through Janet. One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with
scenes in a lumber camp high in the mountains of Galicia, where grow
forests of the priceless pine that becomes, after years of drying and
seasoning, the sounding board of the Stradivarius and the harp. Even then
it must respond to a Player. Eda, though failing to apply this poetic
parallel, when alone in her little room in the Welsh boarding-house often
indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that man, hidden in the mists
of the future, whose destiny it would be to awaken her friend. Hampton
did not contain him,--of this she was sure; and in her efforts to
visualize him she had recourse to the movies, seeking him amongst that
brilliant company of personages who stood so haughtily or walked so
indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of the screen.

By virtue of these marvels of the movies: Hampton ugly and sordid
Hampton!--actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge. Were not
the strange peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton? She saw them
arriving at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed
like dumb animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of
them were presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber
Street. She sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of
the wonderful lands from which they had come, to imagine their lives in
that earlier environment. Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda,
through the various quarters of the city. Each quarter had a flavour of
its own, a synthetic flavour belonging neither to the old nor to the new,
yet partaking of both: a difference in atmosphere to which Janet was
keenly sensitive. In the German quarter, to the north, one felt a sort of
ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be permitted: the tenements
here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work on their
superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem
Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians
were to the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey
houses scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face
of Torrey's hill. Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll
down on it, and facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little
building giving the note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness,
of joie de vivre to the settlement, the Franco-Belgian co-operative
store, with its salle de reunion above and a stage for amateur
theatricals. Standing in the mud outside, Janet would gaze through the
tiny windows in the stucco wall at the baskets prepared for each
household laid in neat rows beside the counter; at the old man with the
watery blue eyes and lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no
English, whose duty it was to distribute the baskets to the women and
children as they called.

Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton,
where Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed
Hibernian glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the
city had once lived and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill
bells had roused the boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter
morning. Beside the hall was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of
ashes and rubbish like the vomitings of some filthy volcano; the
unsightliness of which was half concealed by huge signs announcing the
merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. But why had the departure
of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey Street dark, narrow,
mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its architecture? Was it
the coffee-houses? One of these, in front of which Janet liked to linger,
was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had, apparently,
fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open to the
street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal
squares were set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians
absorbed in a Turkish game played on a backgammon board, their gentleness
and that of the loiterers looking on in strange contrast with their
hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. Behind this group, in the half light
of the middle interior, could be discerned an American soda-water
fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter oddly shaped bottles
containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle-shaped stove, and
on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from the period
in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; and
there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the
shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the
Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the
fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes.

When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed
with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this
teeming, prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a
fat, almond eyed child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all
sorts of queer contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black
moustaches and eagle noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents,
had decided in the morning that three days' wages would since to support
their families for the week .... In the midst of the throng might be seen
occasionally the stout and comfortable and not too immaculate figure of a
shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock coat and square-topped "Derby"
hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the children who scattered out
of his path.

Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called
foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns
in the northern wilderness of water and forest. On one corner stood
almost invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and
the elders spoke the patois. These, despite the mill pallor, retained in
their faces, in their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their
ancestors, the coureurs des bois, but the children spoke English, and the
young men, as they played baseball in the street or in the corner lots
might be heard shouting out derisively the cry of the section hands so
familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you beggars you, doff!"

Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far
from the canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the
Italians had appropriated to themselves. This street, too, in spite of
the telegraph poles flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in
spite of the trolley running down its middle, had acquired a character, a
unity all its own, a warmth and picturesqueness that in the lingering
light of summer evenings assumed an indefinable significance. It was not
Italy, but it was something--something proclaimed in the ornate, leaning
lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow tenement on the second
block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house next door, in
fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which leaned
swarthy, earringed women. Blocking the end of the street, in stern
contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars
running up the six stories between the glass. Here likewise the sidewalks
overflowed with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous eyes, mute,
appealing, the eyes of cattle. Unlike American children, they never
seemed to be playing. Among the groups of elders gathered for gossip were
piratical Calabrians in sombre clothes, descended from Greek ancestors,
once the terrors of the Adriatic Sea. The women, lingering in the
doorways, hemmed in by more children, were for the most part squat and
plump, but once in a while Janet's glance was caught and held by a
strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo.

Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision
store with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement.
Janet's eye was attracted by a box of olives.

"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the
movies? All those old trees on the side of a hill?"

"Why, that's so," said Eda. "You never would have thought anything'd grow
on those trees."

The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin.

"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit
into their hands. Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and
giggled.

"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed.

"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as
though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion. She
nodded affirmatively. The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her sense
of adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in the
grove; she glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and well
formed, with remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the olives
themselves. It surprised her that she liked him, though he was an Italian
and a foreigner: a certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to her--a
quality lacking in many of her own countrymen.

And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to
begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him
in soft, liquid tones that moved her ....

Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and
sombre--Janet's sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more
poignant, charged with presage. These feelings, vague and unaccountable,
she was utterly unable to confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired
was fascinating; a fear and a hope that some day, in all this Babel of
peoples, something would happen! It was as though the conflicting soul of
the city and her own soul were one....




CHAPTER III

Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find
uncongenial such distractions and companionships as were offered by the
civilization that surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was
slavery--but slavery out of which she might any day be snatched, like
Leila Hawtrey, by a prince charming who had made a success in life.
Success to Lise meant money. Although what some sentimental sociologists
might call a victim of our civilization, Lise would not have changed it,
since it produced not only Lise herself, but also those fabulous
financiers with yachts and motors and town and country houses she read
about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers. It contained her
purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a mere
temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she
strained, the dwelling-place of light. In short, her philosophy was that
of the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized
Sunday school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the
censors of the movies. The peculiar kind of abstinence once
euphemistically known as "virtue," particularly if it were combined with
beauty, never failed of its reward. Lise, in this sense, was indeed
virtuous, and her mirror told her she was beautiful. Almost anything
could happen to such a lady: any day she might be carried up into heaven
by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven by a celestial
chauffeur.

One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an
element by which her sister Janet was repelled. A popular production
known as "Leila of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a
glittering metropolitan restaurant where men of the world are wont to
gather and discuss the stock market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and
orphaned waitress upon whom several of the fashionable frequenters had
exercised seductive powers in vain. They lay in wait for her at the side
entrance, followed her, while one dissipated and desperate person,
married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, sent her an
offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced on
the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom.
There are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's
has threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the
temptation may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila
herself, wrapped in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an
elevator lifting her to an apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet
bed, a French maid, and a Pomeranian. Virtue totters, but triumphs, being
reinforced by two more visions the first of these portrays Leila,
prematurely old, dragging herself along pavements under the metallic
Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening dress; and the second
reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying mother's bed, giving
her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of her childhood.

And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and
cents, in stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes
kindly to rough but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel
shirts, who have struck gold and come to New York with a fortune but
despising effeteness; such a one, tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed
in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue tailor, takes a table one evening
at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately in love. He means marriage
from the first, and his faith in Leila is great enough to survive what
appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. Through the
machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false pretence
that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious
house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised.
The westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the
villain, and vanquishes him. Leila becomes a Bride. We behold her, at the
end, mistress of one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled
vestibules and negro butlers into whose sacred precincts we are
occasionally, in the movies, somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way
from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall-bedroom. A long way, too, from the
Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise a way not impossible, nor even
improbable.

This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset,
made a great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth
in the Book of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a
higher price and getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. Wiley,
in whose company she had seen this play, and whose likeness filled the
plush and silver-plated frame on her bureau, remained ironically ignorant
of the fact that he had paid out his money to make definite an ambition,
an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind of the lady whom he adored. Nor
did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a certain inscrutableness. As a
matter of fact it had never been her intention to accept him, but now
that she was able concretely to visualize her Lochinvar of the future,
Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the more apparent. In the first
place, he had been born in Lowell and had never been west of Worcester;
in the second, his salary was sixteen dollars a week: it is true she had
once fancied the Scottish terrier style of hair-cut abruptly ending in
the rounded line of the shaven neck, but Lochinvar had been
close-cropped. Mr. Wiley, close-cropped, would have resembled a convict.

Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had
not always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where
no folly seems preposterous. The manner of their meeting had had just the
adventurous and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite
amusements in the intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down
Faber Street of an evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three
other young ladies, all chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and
wheeling out again, pretending the utmost indifference to melting glances
cast in their direction. An exciting sport, though incomprehensible to
masculine intelligence. It was a principle with Lise to pay no attention
to any young man who was not "presented," those venturing to approach her
with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being instantly
congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But Mr. Wiley, it seemed,
could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose
arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a
large and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised
above the hood and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold,
written in nickel across the radiator. He greeted Miss Schuler
effusively, but his eye was on Lise from the first, and it was she he
took with, him in the front seat, indifferent to the giggling behind.
Ever since then Lise had had a motor at her disposal, and on Sundays they
took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of the state. But it must not be
imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the vehicle; nor was he a
chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted her to keep
company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard,
something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed
over the tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an
hour with the miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did
not feel he was going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a
mitrailleuse in action. Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on to
her hat with one hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code
permitting this; permitting him also, occasionally, when they found
themselves in tenebrous portions of Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his
arm around her waist and kiss her. So much did Lise's virtue allow, and
no more, the result being that he existed in a tantalizing state of hope
and excitement most detrimental to the nerves.

He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's
family,--the fine careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the
free-lance for whom seventy miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile,
apparently, like the ship, sets a stamp upon its votaries. No Elizabethan
buccaneer swooping down on defenceless coasts ever exceeded in audacity
Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. He would draw up with an
ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the clay-yellow house, and
sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its approval of the
performance, would let out a belated pop that never failed to jar the
innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or rather shot past,
by an Italian, and knew what it was. He hated automobiles, he hated Mr.
Wiley.

"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring.

And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently.

"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!"

He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room,
often before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made
him welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities,
was proof against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility. With unerring
instinct he singled out Edward as his victim.

"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire.

Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a
drink of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his
cup had in it some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder
daughter.

"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run
nights, starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue.

And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't
say so!" He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball
Team, owing to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next
year. Mr. Wiley possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news,
he had confidence in his topics and in his manner of dealing with them;
and Edward, pretending to be entertained, went so far in his politeness
as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had supper.

"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley
would reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in
spite of Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans. "I
guess there's nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss
Bumpus."

If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes
thought she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it. Her icy
silence did not detract from the delights of his gestation.

Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you
taking Lise this evening?"

Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague.

"Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard. Maybe we'll pick up Ella
Schuler and one or two other young ladies."

Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and
Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact,
Lise sometimes did insist on a "party."

"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for
a girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl."

"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily.

Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley
and Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if she
skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when
she came home from the store, and was often late for supper. In the
meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward
would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening
Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to
another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed--elaborate precautions to
spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last
creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street,
belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every
important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men,
only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically
folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and
"torture" collar--lures for the discriminating. Owing to certain expenses
connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and the tie,
but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would find him
irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, to be taken for a "college"
man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and
diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in
vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for the
younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for
an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no
scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated.....

When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure,
triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of
silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah
snatched up.

"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her
shoulder once to Edward.

"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously.

"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you
can."

Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being
that he was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of
father another sort of suitor would be courting Lise.

"I have to be civil," he protested. He pronounced that, word "civil"
exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables.

"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had
followed her into the kitchen, she added: "That's the trouble with your
father, he's always be'n a little too civil. Edward Bumpus is just as
simple as a child, he's afraid of offending folks' feelings .... Think of
being polite to that Whey!" In those two words Hannah announced
eloquently her utter condemnation of the demonstrator of the Wizard. It
was characteristic of her, however, when she went back for another load
of dishes and perceived that Edward was only pretending to read his
Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings. She thought it queer
because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had "brought on
her."

"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em.
Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter. I don't
know who she takes after. She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the
Bumpuses."

"What can you do?" asked Edward. "You can't order him out of the house.
It's better for him to come here. And you can't stop Lise from going with
him--she's earning her own money...."

They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same
impasse. In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her
energetic rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question.

"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?"

"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley
credit for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him
take advantage of her."

Hannah ruminated. Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine virtue
did not appeal to her, but she let it pass. She was in no mood to quarrel
with any quality that would ward off disgrace.

"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any
principles...."

If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was
because former suitors had not commanded automobiles. When Mr. Wiley lost
his automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such. One April
evening, after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine o'clock
to find Lise already in their room, to remark upon the absence of Mr.
Wiley's picture from the frame.

"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair.

"Through with him?" Janet repeated.

Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily. "I handed
him the mit--do you get me?"

"But why?"

"Why? I was sick of him--ain't that enough? And then he got mixed up with
a Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people sacked
him. I always told him he was too fly. It's lucky for him I wasn't in the
car."

"It's lucky for you," said Janet. Presently she inquired curiously:
"Aren't you sorry?"

"Nix." Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by hair.
"Didn't I tell you I was sick of him? But he sure was some spender," she
added, as though in justice bound to give him his due.

Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved,
almost gay. She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint creams--all
that remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift.

One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge,
the upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office
window, spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam. The day,
dedicated to the memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth
of May, was a legal holiday. Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of
holidays as opportunities never realized, as intervals that should have
been filled with unmitigated joys, and yet were invariably wasted,
usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, feeling an irresistible longing
for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for quest and discovery of she
knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing awhile at the sunlight
dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked on, southward,
until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the city and
found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. So
read the sign.

Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the
sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls,
the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted
pine a pungent, reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the
pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because
it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards,
masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had
just a tang of New England sharpness, was filled with tender sounds, the
clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple
leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood staring
at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his quivering
tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as though he held
the secret of life she craved. But he darted away.

She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the
flowers and ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and
tanagers gashing in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a
strange yearning to expand and expand until she should become a part of
all nature, be absorbed into it, cease to be herself. Never before had
she known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine
discontent .... Occasionally, intruding faintly upon the countryside
peace, she was aware of a distant humming sound that grew louder and
louder until there shot roaring past her an automobile filled with noisy
folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of dust. Even these
intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were powerless to destroy
her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, pausing once in a
while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; and it pleased
her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never go back:
she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back,"
keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost
intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly,
on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them. She had really stopped
because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked
at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:--"Those twenty-five cent
stockings aren't worth buying!"

Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the
sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running
through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour
reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been
employed. But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of
sauntering the farming landscape was left behind, the crumbling stone
fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall capped by a privet
hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway entered and
mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. But
afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage
Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly
but eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born
curiosity. Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing
and partial glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its
setting, fired her imagination, started her to wondering why it was that
some were permitted to live in the midst of such beauty while she was
condemned to spend her days in Fillmore Street and the prison of the
mill. She was not even allowed to look at it! The thought was like a
cloud across the sun.

However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way
the shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised. The sight of a long
common with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples,
sturdy oaks, strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows
across the road filled her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace
deepened by the awareness, in the background, ranged along the common on
either side, of stately, dignified buildings, each in an appropriate
frame of foliage. With the essence rather than the detail of all this her
consciousness became steeped; she was naturally ignorant of the great
good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared with one or two
exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of the
nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the
Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid. She knew this must be Silliston, the
seat of that famous academy of which she had heard.

The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or
creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and
classic pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial
inheritance of the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and
pride. And the modern architect, of whose work there was an abundance,
had graciously and intuitively held this earlier note and developed it.
He was an American, but an American who had been trained. The result was
harmony, life as it should proceed, the new growing out of the old. And
no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus than that it pleased her,
struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her responsive chords. For
the first time in her adult life she stood in the presence of tradition,
of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost reality of her
being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after all the
years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots....

What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having
come, visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her
humour was that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling
place in a region of beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced,
tinged, therefore, with unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by
the chance stillness and emptiness of the place. She wandered up and down
the Common, whose vivid green was starred with golden dandelions; and
then, spying the arched and shady vista of a lane, entered it, bent on
new discoveries. It led past one of the newer buildings, the library--as
she read in a carved inscription over the door--plunged into shade again
presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, ancient and weathered, with a
great square chimney thrust out of the very middle of the ridge-pole,--a
landmark left by one of the earliest of Silliston's settlers. Presiding
over it, embracing and protecting it, was a splendid tree. The place was
evidently in process of reconstruction and repair, the roof had been
newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny panes had been put
in the windows; a little garden was being laid out under the sheltering
branches of the tree, and between the lane and the garden, half finished,
was a fence of an original and pleasing design, consisting of pillars
placed at intervals with upright pickets between, the pickets sawed in
curves, making a line that drooped in the middle. Janet did not perceive
the workman engaged in building this fence until the sound of his hammer
attracted her attention. His back was bent, he was absorbed in his task.

"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired.

He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have
seen stores, I'm sure I have."

Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully
whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to
accept her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could
have wished. And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by
the contradictions he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness,
experience and candour, of gentility and manual toil. He must have been
about thirty-five; he was hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not
unkempt, was greying at the temples; his eyes--which she noticed
particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises delicately stencilled in a
remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet cultivated, his workman's
clothes belied his bearing.

"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a
holiday, or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?"

"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise.

"So it is! And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their
automobiles, or else they're playing golf. Nobody's working today."

"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired.

"Working?" he repeated. "I suppose some people would call it work. I--I
hadn't thought of it in that way."

"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say.

"Well, yes," he confessed. "I suppose I do."

Her cheeks dimpled. If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had
flown, and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance. She had, however,
profound doubts now of his being a carpenter.

"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very
ludicrousness of the notion she laughed again. She discovered a keen
relish for this kind of humour, but it was new to her experience, and she
could not cope with it.

"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed.

"Oh," he said. "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop,
is a restaurant. It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I
believe, but they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee. At least they call
it coffee."

"Oh, thank you," she said.

"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her.

"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much." And she was impelled to add: "It's
such a beautiful day."

"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed.

"Yes, it is," she laughed. "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to
get back to Hampton for dinner." Suddenly she grew hot at the thought
that he might suspect her of hinting. "You see, I live in Hampton," she
went on hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and
I was just out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended." She had
made it worse.

But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise,
of incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not
deceive her. Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to
suspect him had been put to any real test by the discovery of her home,
and she was quite sure her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee
blouse proclaimed her as a working girl of the mill city. "I've been to
Hampton," he declared, just as though it were four thousand miles away
instead of four.

"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the
same spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a
beautiful place as this!"

"Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's
nice."

She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a
little flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these
contradicted the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck,
the khaki trousers still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning
to get the better of her, she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the
fence. If one had to work, it must be a pleasure to work on things
pleasing to the eye--such was her inference.

"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some
one would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you paint
it?"

"Are you a painter, too?"

"After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it
white, with the pillars green."

"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a
moment's thought. "What else can you do?"

He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments.

"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the
magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse.
"I put in those patches."

"They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in
trees."

"They don't seem to mind."

"Are the holes very deep?"

"Pretty deep."

"But I should think the tree would be dead."

"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can
keep the outer covering intact, the tree will live."

"Why did you let the holes get so deep?"

"I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all
rotten, but the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the forest
two hundred and fifty years ago."

"Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?"

"I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it."

"How do you know?" she inquired.

"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets."

"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery.

"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an
indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his
expression implied that her mistake was a most natural one.

"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh
again.

"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't
got used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a
house. When the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I
suppose, in order to live up to it."

Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff
collar.... But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on
one foot, poised for departure.

"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a
formal visit.

"Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?"

"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to
contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality
which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!"
she declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again."

"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying
so. But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had
delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more
serious.

"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why,
in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton
interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she
divined in him restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw
in Hampton. His opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours
in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty";
he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word
did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his
beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea. "Why do you
think it's interesting?" she demanded.

"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of
nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling.

She repeated the word.

"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once
made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never
went back."

"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All
those foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it
frightened me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I
never would have thought of--nitro-glycerine."

She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered
lightly enough:--"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you
can't play with human chemicals any more than you can play with real
ones--you've got to know something about chemistry."

This remark was beyond her depth.

"Who is playing with them?" she asked.

"Everybody--no one in particular. Nobody seems to know much about them,
yet," he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin
with a worm in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly,
the bird stopped, cocking its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in
conflict with her desire to remain indefinitely talking with this strange
man, Janet felt an intense impulse to leave. She could bear the
conversation no longer, she might burst into tears--such was the
extraordinary effect he had produced on her.

"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said.

"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she had
walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning
idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in
friendly fashion.

For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously,
keeping time with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common,
seeing nothing, paying no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her
curiously. But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and
vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was
tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village
below. She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to
her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to
conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had
discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied.
Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears:
she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might
know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was not
conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed
rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it
not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of
the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of
understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world
open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of
the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range
including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And
the fact that something of his meaning had eluded her grasp made her
rebel all the more bitterly against the lack of a greater knowledge ....

Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at
her desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer
she started to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps she
feared to break the charm of that memory....




CHAPTER IV

Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged
homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like
adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming
moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the
western sky. The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly
over the tarvia. Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream,
remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her;
excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, her feet were
sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged outline of
the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most
depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey
pavements, was at hand, listless householders and their families were
already, seeking refuge on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore
Street.

It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed,
was seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered
yards and the backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite
the heaviness of the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the
fabric of Janet's dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with
other dreams of a different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed
to dissolve them. She resented, for instance, the presence in the plush
oval of Mr. Eustace Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced
Mr. Wiley's, and who had played the part of the western hero in "Leila of
Hawtrey's." With his burning eyes and sensual face betraying the
puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, he was not Janet's ideal of a
hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was holding a newspaper: not
the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston sheet
to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled "Three
O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the top of the
page:--

        "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR."

As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:--"Say, that Nealy girl's
won out!"

"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly.

"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I
would have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the
Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over
and want to know who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the band!"

"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?"

"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by
her sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the
biggest copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it,
and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly
Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for
seventy five. I wish I'd been in court when that jury came back! There's
her picture."

To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself
that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and
approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she
took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure
stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the
envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, in
spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably
under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a
day and give some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture
hat was coquettish, if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady
reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose talents
were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had wept tears
of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome to speak, and
then had recovered sufficiently to express her gratitude to the twelve
gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American womanhood. Mr.
Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived would she
be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, when at
length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been
"prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally,
yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage,
that had been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women
sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile....

Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and
flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper.
But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no
longer.

"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed.
"It's--it's horrible."

"Horrible?" Lise repeated.

Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping.

"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred
and feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer."

Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a
millionaire?"

"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me
she didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face."

"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly.

"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner
starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first
place, I'd have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a
man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help
me any. Where do you get such ideas? Decent people don't have them."

Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face
vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the identity of a
sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing.
Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the
windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as completely
to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed with
bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such reproaches,
holding her own in the passionate quarrels that occasionally took place
between them yet there were times, such as this, when her resistance
broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She rocked to and
fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her hands.
Janet reached out and touched her.

"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was
a disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is."

"I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle"
--sob--"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was
dead! Standing on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars
a week--what's there in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the
floor never lettin' up on you. He come up to me yesterday and says, `I
didn't know you was near sighted, Miss Bumpus' just because there was a
customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait on"--sob--"That's his line of
dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on Annie. Tomorrow I'm going
to tell him to go to hell. I'm through I'm sick of it, I tell
you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six dollars."

"Where are you going?" asked Janet.

"I don't know--I don't care. What's the difference? any place'd be better
than this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high,
though subdued, whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A feeling
of helplessness, of utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to
comfort herself, how could she comfort her sister? She glanced around the
familiar, sordid room, at the magazine pages against the faded
wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the littered bed, over which
Lise's clothes were flung. It was hot and close even now, in summer it
would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to her a glimpse
of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty and
freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments
as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her,
terrified by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she,
Janet, was powerless to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness.
What would become of Lise? And what would become of her, Janet?... So she
clung, desperately, to her sister's hand until at last Lise roused
herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and
perspiration.

"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said,
and the cry found an echo in Janet's heart....

But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the
mill....

The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had
something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that
evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was
understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the
gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most
probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, title, and
privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in
the social scale--being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an
office in Faber Street.

"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put
across," was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained
the impression that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved. "If I
thought he'd make good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But say,
he's one of those ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank. He's never
done a day's work in his life. Last year he was passing around Foley's
magazine, and before that he was with the race track that went out of
business because the ministers got nutty over it. Well, he may win out,"
she added reflectively, "those guys sometimes do put the game on the
blink. He sure is a good spender when the orders come in, with a line of
talk to make you holler for mercy."

Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of
his mouth--the left side. As a muscular feat it was a triumph. A deaf
person on his right side would not have known he was speaking. The effect
was secretive, extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell
sprinklers, it ought to have helped him to make love, so distinctly
personal was it, implying as it did that the individual addressed was
alone of all the world worthy of consideration. Among his friends it was
regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, especially since he
did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as though he
weren't talking at all.

She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed.

She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies,
and one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park,
where one evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley.

"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the
incident with relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over
the ropes. I guess he could do it, too, all right."

Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness
toward Mr. Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning. She was moved
to inquire after his welfare.

"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise. "He was gay with it
too--when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and
went right between Charlie and me. I had to laugh. He's got a job over in
Haverhill you can't hold that guy under water long."

Apparently Lise had no regrets. But her premonitions concerning Mr. Frear
proved to be justified. He did not "make good." One morning the little
office on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was closed,
Hampton knew him no more, and the police alone were sincerely regretful.
It seemed that of late he had been keeping all the money for the
sprinklers, and spending a good deal of it on Lise. At the time she
accepted the affair with stoical pessimism, as one who has learned what
to expect of the world, though her moral sense was not profoundly
disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in the delights of
Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the expense of the
Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston. Mr. Frear inconsiderately neglected
to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to her
in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the
tin shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's
sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's
city government. About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore
Street after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the
company of Miss Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan
seated on his steps, grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan.

"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed. "You'd think it was
July."

And Lise agreed.

"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on.
"It's the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean."

There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth
noting that Lise instantly became suspicious.

"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him
a dark, coquettish glance.

Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his
soul; not because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being
somewhat amazingly proof against such things,--but because it was
conveyed to him in some unaccountable way that her suspicions were
aroused. The brain beneath that corkscrew hair was worthy of a Richelieu.
Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise Bumpus, if he could have been induced
to reveal it, would have been worth listening to.

"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily. "Don't I see all the pretty
young ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the
Cascade man. Why is it you'll never give me a dance?"

"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise.

"What chance have I got, against him?"

"He don't own me," said Lise.

Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed.

"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and
says, `Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would
happen."

"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant
arrived at this conclusion.

"And where then? I'll come along, if there's a chance for me."

"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him.

Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn:

"Kidding, is it? Me kiddin' you? Give me a chance, that's all I'm asking.
Where will you be, now?"

"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded.

Mr. Tiernan's expression changed. His nose seemed to become more pointed,
his eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever. He didn't take the trouble,
now, to conceal his admiration.

"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the
force to-morrow."

"What's he wanted for?"

"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'. He's been sprinklin'
his company's water without a license."

She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:--"I ought to have been
wise that he was a crook!"

"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been
wise, too. The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that
couldn't use but half of his mouth."

This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment. She proceeded to clear
herself.

"He was nothing to me. He never gave me no rest. He used to come 'round
and pester me to go out with him--"

"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan. "Don't I know how it is with the likes
of him! A good time's a good time, and no harm in it. But the point is"
and here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he? Where will he be
tonight?"

All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful.

"I don't know--honest to God, I don't. If I did I'd tell you. Last night
he said he might be out of town. He didn't say where he was going." She
fumbled in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and
pressing it to her eyes.

"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly. "How would you know? And
he deceivin' you like he did the company--"

"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise.

"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm.
"It's not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that
any one would be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as
your father. Run along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and
you'll accept my apology. I guess we'll never see him in Hampton
again...."

Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting
acquaintances, and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy
brick building where a huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was
seated behind a desk. Mr. Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively
lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five-Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies
of which were set forth on large signs above the "ten foot" buildings on
Faber Street.

"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked. "I guess he got wise this
morning."

The sergeant nodded....




CHAPTER V

To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have
no means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least
comfortable and agreeable of human experiences. Such, as summer came on,
was Janet's case. The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her
mind, sometimes to flare up so vividly as to make her existence seem
unbearable. How wonderful, she thought, to be able to dwell in such a
beautiful place, to have as friends and companions such amusing and
intelligent people as the stranger with whom she had talked! Were all the
inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, since it was a seat of
learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, anywhere," found an echo
in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away? She was capable of taking
care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had been raised
twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her family to
stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization?
Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and
self sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit
nor satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to
growth. Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not
expect of it miracles, economic or matrimonial. Nothing would happen
unless she made it happen. She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a
week, of which she now contributed five to the household,--her father,
with characteristic incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance
policy than he could reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she
spent more than one on lunches, there were dresses and underclothing,
shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little
treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist--for Janet
would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers. She managed to save
something, but it was very little. And she was desperately unhappy when
she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw
herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of
accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying
up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with
which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her.
Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant
dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her existence,
drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom that
marriage would compel her to surrender....

One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home
when she remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her
steps. As she turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal
and directly in front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile,
painted crimson and black, of the type known as a runabout, which she
recognized as belonging to Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar
himself was stepping off the end of the bridge and about to start the
engine when, dropping the crank, he walked to the dashboard and
apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was it the glance
cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? Janet
was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal
Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came
slowly forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself
the idea that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her
embarrassment persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain
incidents, each in itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting
to a suspicion that for some months he had been aware of her: many times
when he had passed through the outer office she had felt his eyes upon
her, had been impelled to look up from her work to surprise in them a
certain glow to make her bow her head again in warm confusion. Now, as
she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of
the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an adventure, yet
sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the light
flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his
forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened
up, lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her.

"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone."

"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness
that rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and
was leading him on to rashness.

"Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman
who stood in the vestibule of the office entrance.

"Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had
he not addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What do
you think of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and
surveyed it, laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note
apologetic, at variance with the conception she had formed of his
character, though not alien, indeed, to the dust-coloured vigour of the
man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he stood there, yet he excited
her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something that caused her
inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." He
indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her.

"It is pretty," she agreed.

In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his
acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish
nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to
powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt
throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for
which men have given their souls. This conviction of her possession of a
temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than
intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense. He
had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other
sex, and he found the experience delicious.

"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not
ask him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing
the engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted in
that little space to do the particular work for which it is designed."

Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a
little way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on
the cylinders, at the bright rods and gears.

"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple. The
gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the
carburetor, it has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is
sucked into each of these cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like
this." He sought to explain the action of the piston. "That compresses
it, and then a tiny electric spark comes just at the right moment to
explode it, and the explosion sends the piston down again, and turns the
shaft. Well, all four cylinders have an explosion one right after
another, and that keeps the shaft going." Whereupon the most important
personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill proceeded,
for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the floor
boards behind the dash. "There's the shaft, come here and look at it."
She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed,
brushing her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor. "The shaft turns
the rear wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the
rear wheels drive the car. Do you see?"

"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little."

He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she
could feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples. She was even
compelled for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into
hers leaped a flame that ran scorching through her body. Then she knew
with conviction that the explanation of the automobile had been an
excuse; she had comprehended almost nothing of it, but she had been
impressed by the facility with which he described it, by his evident
mastery over it. She had noticed his hands, how thick his fingers were
and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, without smearing the
cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with the oil that
glistened everywhere.

"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards. "I like to
take care of it myself."

"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the
remark, and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by
inhibition connected with his nearness. Fascination and antagonism were
struggling within her. Her desire to get away grew desperate.

"Thank you for showing it to me." With an effort of will she moved toward
the bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her
departure to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again the
thrill of the current he sped after her. By lifting his hat, a little
higher, a little more confidently than in the first instance, he made her
leaving seem more gracious, the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment
on his part that their relationship had changed.

Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and
into the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she
had left it, and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart
pounding in her breast as though she had barely escaped an accident
threatening her with physical annihilation. Something had happened to her
at last! But what did it mean? Where would it lead? Her fear, her
antagonism, of which she was still conscious, her resentment that Ditmar
had thus surreptitiously chosen to approach her in a moment when they
were unobserved were mingled with a throbbing exultation in that he had
noticed her, that there was something in her to attract him in that way,
to make his voice thicker and his smile apologetic when he spoke to her.
Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware before, but never had it
been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from without. She was at
once terrified, excited--and flattered.

At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building. When she
reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of
paradoxical hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her. But he
had gone....

In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade
herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was
seated at her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of
the palpitation of the evening before, and at the sound of every step in
the corridor she started. Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed.
And when at last Ditmar arrived, though the blood rose to her temples,
she kept her eyes fixed on the keys. He went quickly into his room: she
was convinced he had not so much as glanced at her.... As the days went
by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that his continued ignoring
of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she detected in it a
deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated secrecy,
though secrecy contained a thrill. Then, one morning when she was alone
in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports,
Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising
her into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself
and hating him. Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in
regard to Mr. Ditmar.

The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs.

"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said.

"Leaving!" repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture.

"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice.
"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm
very fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that. He's got me a place with the
Treasurer, Mr. Semple."

"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet
said sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was
conscious in the older woman of a certain kindly interest.

"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place."

"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly.

"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and
clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I
could honestly do so." Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and
patted it affectionately. "Of course you'll have to expect some jealousy,
there are older women in the other offices who will think they ought to
have the place, but if you attend to your own affairs, as you always have
done, there won't be any trouble."

"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!" Janet cried, so passionately that
Miss Ottway looked at her in surprise. "I'm awfully grateful to you," she
added, flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it."

"Nonsense," said the other with decision. "You'd be very foolish not to
try it. You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a
little more money won't be unwelcome, I guess. Mr. Ditmar will speak to
you this afternoon. I leave on Saturday. I'm real glad to do you a good
turn, Janet, and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively
as they parted at the corner of Faber Street. "I've always thought a good
deal of you."

For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her
friend, heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her. Then she went to
Grady's Quick Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk,
which she consumed slowly, profoundly sunk in thought. Presently Eda
Rawle arrived, and noticing her preoccupation, inquired what was the
matter.

"Nothing," said Janet....

At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss
Ottway, who presently came out to summon Janet to his presence. Fresh,
immaculate, yet virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes,
he was seated at his desk engaged in turning over some papers in a
drawer. He kept her waiting a moment, and then said, with apparent
casualness:--"Is that you, Miss Bumpus? Would you mind closing the
door?"

Janet obeyed, and again stood before him. He looked up. A suggestion of
tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of
defiance, conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the
panther-like impression he had received when first, as a woman, she had
come to his notice. The renewed and heightened perception of this feral
quality in her aroused a sense of danger by no means unpleasurable,
though warning him that he was about to take an unprecedented step, being
drawn beyond the limits of caution he had previously set for himself in
divorcing business and sex. Though he was by no means self-convinced of
an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave its possibilities
open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and instinct,
perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm.

"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer.

She seated herself on an office chair.

"Do you like your work here?" he inquired.

"No," said Janet.

"Why not?" he demanded, staring at her.

"Why should I?" she retorted.

"Well--what's the trouble with it? It isn't as hard as it would be in
some other places, is it?"

"I'm not saying anything against the place."

"What, then?"

"You asked me if I liked my work. I don't."

"Then why do you do it?" he demanded.

"To live," she replied.

He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight
annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark,
self-contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor.

"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded.

"I don't know. I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said.

He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer. She
refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her. She acted
as though she were conferring the favour. And yet, clearing his throat,
he was impelled to say:--"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the
Boston office with Mr. Semple, the treasurer of the corporation. I shall
miss her, she's an able and reliable woman, and she knows my ways." He
paused, fingering his paper knife. "The fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's
spoken highly of you, she tells me you're quick and accurate and
painstaking--I've noticed that for myself. She seems to think you could
do her work, and recommends that I give you a trial. You understand, of
course, that the position is in a way confidential, and that you could
not expect at first, at any rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm
willing to offer you fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and
afterwards, if we get along together, to give you more. What do you say?"

"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word
of gratitude or of appreciation to that consent.

"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled. Miss Ottway will explain
things to you, and tell you about my peculiarities. And when she goes you
can take her desk, by the window nearest my door."

Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the
open doorway into the outer office....

To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in
her breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper
was nearly over to inform her family, making the announcement in a
matter-of-fact tone, just as though it were not the unique piece of good
fortune that had come to the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated
from the mercantile establishment at Dolton. The news was received with
something like consternation. For the moment Hannah was incapable of
speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the cutting of the pie: but
hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it down, her
determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had
paradoxically derived so much comfort. The effect on Edward, while
somewhat less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite. Hope,
to flower in him, needed but little watering. Great was his faith in the
Bumpus blood, and secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as
the chosen vessel for their redemption.

"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting
his pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet. I guess
I've told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one that
held out against the Indians till her husband came back with the
neighbours. I was just reading about her again the other night."

"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah.

"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed. "And from what I can gather
of her looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very
tall--not so tall as you, I guess. So you're goin'" (he pronounced it
very slowly) "you're goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer! He's
a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, he's a good man, too. All you've got to do is to
behave right by him. He always speaks to me when he passes by the gate. I
was sorry for him when his wife died--a young woman, too. And he's never
married again! Well, I swan!"

"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah. "And what's Mr. Ditmar's
goodness got to do with it? He's found-out Janet has sense, she's willing
and hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the loser by
it, and he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway. It's just like you,
thinking he's doing her a good turn."

"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard
to get work with so many folks after every job."

"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah
retorted rather cruelly. It was thus characteristically and with
unintentional sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection
not only upon Edward, but Lise also. Janet had grown warm at the mention
of Ditmar's name.

"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her
sister, who during this conversation had sat in silence. Lise's
expression, normally suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her
type, had grown almost sullen. Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes
was suddenly arrested.

"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister? Ain't you glad she's
got the place?"

"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt
shaker. "I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too. I work just as hard
as she does."

Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with
compunction and sympathy.

"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly. "You ain't so old as Janet."

"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control. "I've got
a picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises
from him."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared. "There--you've
spilled the salt!"

But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room. Edward
picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the
salt and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of
the dishes, disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as
though she had forgotten something.

"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet.

"I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she
thinks they're down on her."

"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her
sentence remained unfinished.

Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the
news that Lise had gone out.

One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of
confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion,
something intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her
feelings toward Ditmar were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several
days went by before she could bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the
new business relationship in which she stood to the agent of the
Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they walked out Warren
Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just ended: Mr.
Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, had
found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him.
But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the
"residential district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns,
the flowerbeds and shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of
Hampton unfamiliar with boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of these
she paused, retaining Janet by the arm, exclaiming wistfully:

"Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss."

Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the facade of rough stucco
that once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar,
recognized it as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily,
almost roughly along the sidewalk until they had reached the end of the
block. Janet was red.

"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her
surprise.

"Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office."

"But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?"

"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were
not those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should
scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms
Ditmar had betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of
staring point-blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he
might be concealed behind a curtain.

"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's
going away."

"Janet!" cried Eda. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial. I don't know whether
he'll keep me or not."

"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly. "If that isn't just like
you, not saying a word about it. Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I just
couldn't wait to tell you. But then, I'm not smart like you."

"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed
because she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity.

"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which
Janet lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and
somewhat medieval proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to
pass without an appropriate festal symbol. "We'll have a spree on
Saturday--the circus is coming then."

"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming. "I've got the
raise...."

On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in
her best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant,
despite the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as
they made their way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete
the feast. That glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its
manifold functions a department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans
and marble-topped tables and white-clad waiters who took one's order and
filled it at the soda fountain. It mattered little to Eda that the young
man awaiting their commands had pimples and long hair and grinned
affectionately as he greeted them.

"Hello, girls!" he said. "What strikes you to-day?"

"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable
to imagine any more delectable confection, assented. The penetrating
odour peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but
ancient remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their
enjoyment.

The circus began at two. Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded car
they chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past the
car barns and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared face
of Torrey's Hill, where circuses were wont to settle. A sirocco-like
breeze from the southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of germ-laden
dust stirred up by the automobiles, blowing their skirts against their
legs, and sometimes they were forced to turn, clinging to their hats,
confused and giggling, conscious of male glances. The crowd, increasing
as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; young men with a newly-washed
aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed boisterously groups of girls, who
retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of laughter; amorous couples
strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place were as empty as
Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing bright
neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search
of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs,
in startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris
models,--imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the smallness
of our modern world. Eda regarded them superciliously.

"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!" she
exclaimed.

In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober
operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring
hither their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and
foremen, slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish,
Scotch, Welsh and English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian,
Lithuanian, or Jew. Peanut and popcorn men, venders of tamales and
Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their wares, while from afar could be
heard the muffled booming of a band. Janet's heart beat faster. She
regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent that rose before
her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from
circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the
circular enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of
the sun, in trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an
unnatural, jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow
enhanced by the hoarse, amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly
a lion near them raised a shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating,
soul-shaking roars.

"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to
be awestricken by this demonstration.

"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away.

"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her.

"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself,
showing her gums.

The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its
fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by
the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying
or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes
never left these morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about,
their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the
beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled
with the effluvia of animals, had aroused an excitement that was slow in
subsiding. Some time elapsed before they were capable of taking a normal
interest in the various exhibits.

"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the
compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat
dissolute occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who
stay at the Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know."

"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet
crossed!"

"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know
looks just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who
sits in the cashier's cage at Grady's."

"If it sure isn't!" said Eda.

"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and
she looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one
side when you hand in your check."

"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks
she's got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day."

These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply
sustained by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they
turned. A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly
searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering
and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on
by their companions.

"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your
relations--have ye?"

Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He was
shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and by
his friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless
obsessed in which Hampton abounded.

"Relations!" Eda exclaimed.

"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at
first he had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion,
"we're all descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the
denizens of the cage.

"What are you giving us?" said Eda.

"Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know
they're our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and
Eve. That there's a fable."

"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her
disgust.

But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better
than monkeys, anyway."

"That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to continue
the conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And when, from the
entrance to the performance tent, they glanced back over their shoulders,
he was still gazing at his cousins behind the bars, seemingly deriving an
acute pleasure from his consciousness of the connection....




CHAPTER VI

Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for
the playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of
interesting and dramatic situations, and in it may be studied,
undoubtedly, one phase of the evolution tending to transform if not
disintegrate certain institutions hitherto the corner-stones of society.
Our stage is set. A young woman, conscious of ability, owes her promotion
primarily to certain dynamic feminine qualities with which she is
endowed. And though she may make an elaborate pretense of ignoring the
fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at the same time,
paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and inspiring
thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement;
secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the
colours of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate
relationship with Mr. Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his
private stenographer her attitude, slightly defiant, was the
irreproachable one of a strict attention to duty. All unconsciously she
was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and probably a feminist at
heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined by no preconceived
or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. For feminism, in
a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex attraction
are functions of the same thing. There were moments when she believed
herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an
impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to
stare at her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he
understood women!

She would show him!--such was her dominating determination. Her promotion
assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at the feet of
her sex. In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly stimulating. If
he flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if he entertained the
notion that he could presently take advantage of the contact with her now
achieved to make unbusinesslike advances--well, he would find out. He had
proclaimed his desire for an able assistant in Miss Ottway's place--he
would get one, and nothing more. She watched narrowly, a l'affut, as the
French say, for any signs of sentiment, and indeed this awareness of her
being on guard may have had some influence on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude,
likewise irreproachable.... A rather anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie
James, was hired for Janet's old place.

In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life
Janet felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import.
Hitherto the mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom
and draining her energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of
meaningless documents and rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus
and a motive, the Corporation began to take on significance, and she
flung herself into the work with an ardour hitherto unknown, determined
to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that the time would come when he
could not do without her. She strove to memorize certain names and
addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to familiarize herself
with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what letters were
to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in order that
he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired the
faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the
office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar
with his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting
the important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from
numerous visitors who called only to waste his time. Her instinct for the
detection of book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they might
appear, was unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging to
them: an individual once observed to be persona non grata never succeeded
in passing her twice. On one occasion Ditmar came out of his office to
see the back of one of these visitors disappearing into the corridor.

"Who was that?" he asked.

"His name is McCalla," she said. "I thought you didn't want to be
bothered."

"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded.

"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely.

And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she studied him, without
permitting him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude
toward all those with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself
approving. She was forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled
to admire his adroitness in dealing with them. He could be democratic or
autocratic as occasion demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to
remain inflexible. One morning, for instance, there arrived from New York
a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied bow, whose thin hair--carefully
parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose wary and slightly weary
eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan atmosphere of high
pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He had a machine
to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and more
than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped. It was
designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the
skilled and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all
day long under a north light patiently threading the ends of the warp
through the heddles of the loom harness. Janet's imagination was
gradually fired as she listened to the visitor's eloquence; and the
textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to her uninteresting and
sordid, took on the colours of romance.

"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the
salesman concluded. "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one
in the Chippering than in any mill in New England."

Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she
felt a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by
blandishments. At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request,
he seemed physically to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of
chewing his cigar.

"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it." And she
was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the
machine as the salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals,
he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come
back, Mr. Hicks--but don't come back until then."

And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited....

Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master,
familiar with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many
spindles, how many looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened,
becoming aware of it by what seemed to Janet a subconscious process,
sending for the superintendent of the department: for Mr. Orcutt,
perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a tall, lean, spectacled man
of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster.

"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?"

"Why, the blower's out of order."

"Well, whose fault is it?"....

He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second
hands. The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering
employ through good and bad times for years, had a place in his
affections, but toward the labour force in general his attitude was
impersonal. The mill had to be run, and people to be got to run it. With
him, first and last and always it was the mill, and little by little what
had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of machinery and human beings
became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It was odd how the
essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; how the
very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the mornings,
had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden like a
great battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she had been
snatched as by a miracle from the commonplace. And all this was a
function of Ditmar.

Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic,
but gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself why
she had deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded
debatable ground in part inevitably personal, flung herself with such
abandon into the enterprise of his life's passion, at the same time
maintaining a deceptive attitude of detachment, half deceiving herself
that it was zeal for the work by which she was actuated. In her soul she
knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the flames. She read him, up
to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and beneath his attempts at
self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that betrayed itself
in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and occasionally
when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness of
temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious
thrill of power. And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar! Was she
in love with him? That question did not trouble her either. She continued
to experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction,
revealing to her depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened
while they fascinated. It never occurred to her to desist. That craving
in her for high adventure was not to be denied.

On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll
about his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler,
smoking a cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence. His house,
as he gazed at it against the whitening sky, was an eminently
satisfactory abode, his wife was dead, his children gave him no trouble;
he felt a glow of paternal pride in his son as the boy raced up and down
the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, large and strong for his
age, and had a domineering way with other boys that gave Ditmar secret
pleasure. Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, and who had
inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar thought
scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a
chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems. He
had, in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely
compounded of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business naturally
being the greatest of these. He was--though he did not know it--ethically
and philosophically right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and
his had been the good fortune to live in a world whose codes and
conventions had been carefully adjusted to the pursuit of that particular
brand of happiness he had made his own. Why, then, in the name of that
happiness, of the peace and sanity and pleasurable effort it had brought
him, had he allowed and even encouraged the advent of a new element that
threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an element refusing to be
classified under the head of property, since it involved something he
desired and could not buy? A woman who was not property, who resisted the
attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar's universe.
He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without having
heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the
species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made
fools of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his
experience it had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite or the
Chippering Mill: it had never made his cigars taste bitter; it had never
caused a deterioration in the appreciation of what he had achieved and
held. But now he was experiencing strange symptoms of an intensity out of
all proportion to that of former relations with the other sex. What was
most unusual for him, he was alarmed and depressed, at moments irritable.
He regretted the capricious and apparently accidental impulse that had
made him pretend to tinker with his automobile that day by the canal,
that had led him to the incomparable idiocy of getting rid of Miss Ottway
and installing the disturber of his peace as his private stenographer.

What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable? When in his
office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he
would watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and
noiseless movements that excited him the more because he suspected
beneath her outward and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet
feared. He thought of her continually as a panther, a panther he had
caught and could not tame; he hadn't even caught her, since she might
escape at any time. He took precautions not to alarm her. When she
brushed against him he trembled. Continually she baffled and puzzled him,
and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She represented a whole
set of new and undetermined values for which he had no precedents, and
unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an integrity
of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences economic and
social. All the more exasperating, therefore, was a propinquity creating
an intimacy without substance, or without the substance he craved for she
had magically become for him a sort of enveloping, protecting atmosphere.
In an astonishingly brief time he had fallen into the habit of talking
things over with her; naturally not affairs of the first importance, but
matters such as the economy of his time: when, for instance, it was most
convenient for him to go to Boston; and he would find that she had
telephoned, without being told, to the office there when to expect him,
to his chauffeur to be on hand. He never had to tell her a thing twice,
nor did she interrupt--as Miss Ottway sometimes had done--the processes
of his thought. Without realizing it he fell into the habit of listening
for the inflections of her voice, and though he had never lacked the
power of making decisions, she somehow made these easier for him
especially if, a human equation were involved.

He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his
reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are
necessary to make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss
Bumpus, apparently, had no intention of being the second party. Yet she
was not virtuous, as he had hitherto defined the word. Of this he was
sure. No woman who moved about as she did, who had such an effect on him,
who had on occasions, though inadvertently, returned the lightning of his
glances, whose rare laughter resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was
that almost imperceptible kink, could be virtuous. This instinctive
conviction inflamed him. For the first time in his life he began to doubt
the universal conquering quality of his own charms,--and when such a
thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of hell-fire. He
indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions that
hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies
inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer
with his usual geniality.

"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one
day by Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met
on the marble tiles of the hall in their Boston club.

"All right. Why?"

"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied,
that's all. I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the
legislature's just put through might be worrying you."

"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar. He
accepted a gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a
little spree over Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would
have found enticing. On another occasion he encountered in the lobby of
the Parker House a more intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow,
self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of those lawyers hail fellows well met
in business circles and looked upon askance by the Brahmins of their
profession; more than half politician, he had been in Congress, and from
time to time was retained by large business interests because of his
persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though these had
been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and children's
fifty-four hour bill. Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and the
crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal
worries.

"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially.

"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar.

"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see. Where have you been keeping
yourself lately? Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be
there." Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm,
though he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence.

"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar. "I've got to go back to Hampton."

This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction. He took hold of
Ditmar's arm.

"A lady--eh--what?"

"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of
truculence that took his friend aback. Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole
have offended the agent of the Chippering Mill.

"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain. Ditmar, somewhat
mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had
gone.

"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter,
obsequiously.

Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal.

Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the
cause of it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in
Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and
unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill,
of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a
man--a man for whom she had achieved a delicious contempt. And the
knowledge that she, if she chose, could sway and dominate him by the mere
exercise of that strange feminine force within her was intoxicating and
terrifying. She read this in a thousand signs; in his glances; in his
movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little things he said,
apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a constant
recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly
conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from
this attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current
profoundly disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a
commingled ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms. Yet the
tension was not constant, rising and falling with his moods and
struggles, all of which she read--unguessed by him--as easily as a
printed page by the gift that dispenses with laborious processes of the
intellect. On the other hand, a resentment boiled within her his
masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John Knox that many
women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended to become
a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar. She was,
perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he
wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted, divining his fear of scandal
and hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her justice, marriage
never occurred to her. She was not so commonplace.

There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax,
when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise
that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in
September, for instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the
office late in the afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to
recognize in him the restored presence of the quality of elan, of
command, of singleness of purpose that had characterized him before she
had become his stenographer. At first, as he read his mail, he seemed
scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood by the window, awaiting his
pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over the floor of the
river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights of the
Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand. Suddenly she heard
Ditmar speaking.

"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?"

"Not at all," she replied, turning.

On his face was a smile, almost boyish.

"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever
came into any mill in New England," he declared.

"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly.

"The cotton cards--?" he demanded.

She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of
cotton, made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the
selling house, in Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went
over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now become
familiar, pongees, poplins, percales and voiles, garbardines and
galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote
down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete was his absorption in this
task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of
his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy.
Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office
and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned from the talk
over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that Ditmar had
lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York.
Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her
machine, he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day
was ended, showed a desire to detain her. His mood became communicative.

"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared. "Of
course it isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and
that's enough for one man, God knows. But I heard the Bradlaughs were in
the market for these goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that
I'd go after it. I knew I could get away with it, if anybody could. I
went to the Bradlaughs and sat down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with
'em, brought 'em home at night. I didn't let 'em alone a minute until
they handed it over. I wasn't going to give any other mill in New England
or any of those southern concerns a chance to walk off with it--not on
your life! Why, we have the facilities. There isn't another mill in the
country can turn it out in the time they ask, and even we will have to go
some to do it. But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm struck by
lightning."

He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing
beside him, smiled. She had the tempting gift of silence. Forgetting her
twinge of jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of
boyish exuberance, of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success
she liked him better than ever before. She had, for the first time, the
curious feeling of being years older than he, yet this did not detract
from a new-born admiration.

"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on. "When old Stephen
Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in
four years. The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say
it myself. All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me
sick--why, there was a time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and
I'm man enough to do it yet, if I have to. When the last agent--that was
Cort--was sacked I went to Boston on my own hook and tackled the old
gentleman--that's the only way to get anywhere. I couldn't bear to see
the mill going to scrap, and I told him a thing or two,--I had the facts
and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big man, but he had a streak of
obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I had to get it across to
him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had to wake him up to
the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be shown--he was
from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all wool and a yard
wide, and he liked me and trusted me.

"That was in nineteen hundred. I can remember the interview as well as if
it had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning in
that library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books and
the double windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was
blowing a gale. And at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead. I'll
put you in as agent, and stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand
behind me. He was quiet, the finest looking old man I ever saw in my
life, straight as a ramrod, with a little white goatee and a red,
weathered face full of creases, and a skin that looked as if it had been
pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. They don't seem to
turn 'em out any more. Why, I have a picture of him here."

He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph. Janet gazed at
it sympathetically.

"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said,
reminiscently. "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how
thick it was. If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling
him about it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me. Some of the
people up here didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared
of him, and if he thought they had something up their sleeves he looked
as if he were going to eat 'em alive. Regular fighting eyes, the kind
that get inside of a man and turn the light on. And he sat so still--made
you ashamed of yourself. Well, he was a born fighter, went from Harvard
into the Rebellion and was left for dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the
company found him and saved him. He set that may up for life, and never
talked about it, either. See what he wrote on the bottom--'To my friend,
Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe me, when he once called a
man a friend he never took it back. I know one thing, I'll never get
another friend like him."

With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he
took the picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer. She was
stirred, almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to
lessen by distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she
lingered, half leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her
head bent toward him, her eyes filled with light. She was wondering
whether he could ever love a woman as he loved this man of whom he had
spoken, whether he could be as true to a woman. His own attitude seemed
never to have been more impersonal, but she had ceased to resent it;
something within her whispered that she was the conductor, the inspirer..

"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he
exclaimed, "to see the Chippering Mill to-day! I guess he'd be proud of
it, I guess he wouldn't regret having put me in as agent."

Janet did not reply. She could not. She sat regarding him intently, and
when he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression
changed, she knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind.

"I hope you like it here," he said. His voice had become vibrant,
ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet
she was not displeased. Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with
it an exhilarating self-command.

"I do like it," she answered.

"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't
care for your work."

"Oh, this is different."

"How?"

"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just
copying things I don't know anything about."

"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone.
"I've never had any one in the office who did my work as well. Now Miss
Ottway was a good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but
she never got the idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it,
and she wasn't able to save me trouble, as you do. It's remarkable how
you've come to understand, and in such a short time."

Janet coloured. She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to
straighten out the papers beside her.

"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said.

"What?" he demanded.

"Well--about the mill. I never thought much about it before, I always
hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It
was just drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd
like to see the machinery."

"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared.

His evident agitation made her pause. They were alone, the outer office
deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with
ridiculous ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no
longer the agent of the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by
a business achievement, but a man, the incarnation and expression of
masculine desire desire for her. She knew she could compel him, if she
chose, to throw caution to the winds.

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a
conspicuous sign of his favour.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had
spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between
them never before hinted at by her. "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me
through." She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire
within, her manner had become demure, repressed. "Did you wish anything
more this evening?" she inquired.

"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his
chair....




CHAPTER VII

Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and
Janet went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping
stealthily over the city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks.
These had become beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric
arcs, splotches in the veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in
the distance, against the blurred lights from the Warren Street stores
skirting the park could be seen phantom vehicles, phantom people moving
to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, invaded by a pearly mist was her
own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a mist shot through and through
with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing yet transforming and
etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, she had not
cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him gripping
his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost savagely.
She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that exquisite
touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the
semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within
herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she
would hurt him again. Still palpitating, she reached the house in
Fillmore Street, halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her
face was flushed, anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something
unusual in her manner. But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and
lighted the gas in the bedroom the sight of her sister's clothes cast
over the chairs was proof that Lise had already donned her evening finery
and departed. The room was filled with the stale smell of clothes, which
Janet detested. She flung open the windows. She took off her hat and
swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's absence was
modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness. Why should she
not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings? She had begun to
earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista whose end
she could not see, alluring, enticing.... In the dining-room, by the
cleared table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother appeared in
the kitchen door.

"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed.

"Nothing," said Janet. "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. He'd
been away."

"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill. I've
saved you some supper."

"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry."

"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as
she brought in the filled plate from the oven.

"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could
always be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions.
"I never saw her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real
pretty!"

Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened
as she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had browned and
hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the
potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her
mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather
resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man,
with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,--more alive. She was too
honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one,
fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights. Her
promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and father, did
they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was
perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would have
believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that matters
could not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave Mr.
Ditmar or--and here she baulked at being logical. She had no intention of
leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be
wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made
her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties? turned life from a
dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar would be to slump
back into the humdrum, into something from which she had magically been
emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; by the red-checked
tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with the frayed seats,
the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the tawdry pillow
with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at the
Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape
below--the family's most cherished heirloom--though long familiar, was
not so bad; but the two yellowed engravings on the wall offended her.
They had been wedding presents to Edward's father. One represented a
stupid German peasant woman holding a baby, and standing in front of a
thatched cottage; its companion was a sylvan scene in which certain
wooden rustics were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Between the two,
and dotted with flyspecks, hung an insurance calendar on which was a huge
head of a lady, florid, fluffy-haired, flirtatious. Lise thought her
beautiful.

The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization
came to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it
proclaimed--the note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle,
in what life might send. It reflected accurately the attitude of her
parents, particularly of her father. With an odd sense of detachment, of
critical remoteness and contempt she glanced at him as he sat stupidly
absorbed in his newspaper, his face puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar
rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment of an indomitableness that
refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of the story he had told
her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become agent of the
Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of his
ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings
and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an
expression of himself, since it was his ideal. And now it seemed that he
had made it hers also. She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her
plate away from her, and rose.

"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room.
"Where are you going?"

"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered....

"It's late," Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to
Eda's she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts
might flow undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was
out in the diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly
to undress, pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once
she surprised herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that
was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? No
other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good
looking, and now--it was astonishing!--she seemed to have changed, and
she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark
hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She
caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to
envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking
shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy....

Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what
she had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her
toilet, put out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however,
she remained wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other,
trying to banish from her mind the episode that had excited her. But
always it came back again. She saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital,
electric with desire. At last she fell asleep.

Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness,
something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she
could not define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving
peculiarly about the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the
bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last
she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some
irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed,
like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant
dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate.

"Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any
noise--honest to God."

"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet.

"It couldn't have been."

"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly.

Lise giggled.

"What's it to you, angel face!" she inquired. "Quiet down, now, and go
bye-bye."

Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her.
She was limp. She began to whimper.

"Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had a
highball."

Janet released her and drew back.

"I just had a highball--honest to God!"

"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely.

"Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take
care of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I
ain't like you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive."

"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A little
fun to keep alive!

With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise
approached a chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction
of the room where Hannah and Edward slept.

"D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?" she asked, and began to
fumble at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to
nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing
her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a
profound slumber. Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the
odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the
stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating her
with horror: it seemed the very essence of degradation. But as she lay on
the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes of
excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel and
almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, felt around in the
clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept
through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the
lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the
linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale
food, but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down
on the sofa.

Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not
the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of
something else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become
drunk? Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been
singularly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her
evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be
curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's cynical knowledge of life and its
pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her charms, had seemed
secure from danger; but Janet recalled her discouragement, her threat to
leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been something furtive about
her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled had destroyed in
Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun
to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for her
sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality
is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions. A few
hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar:
now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own
gratification. As a man, he had become an enemy. Ditmar was like all
other men who exploited her sex without compunction, but the thought that
she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken stupor, that their cases differed
only in degree, was insupportable.

At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with
Ditmar at some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston,
perhaps--Silliston Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure,
always, that the man was Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling
the man she had met in Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter.
He was pleading with her, in his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that
thrilled her, that summoned some answering thing out of the depths of
her, and she felt herself yielding with a strange ecstasy in which were
mingled joy and terror. The terror was conquering the joy, and suddenly
he stood transformed before her eyes, caricatured, become a shrieking
monster from whom she sought in agony to escape.... In this paralysis of
fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the flickering flame of the
lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the siren of the
Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the dream-spell upon
her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's voice,
his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the sound never
end?...

Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in
and find her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp,
and ran into the bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the
passage-way outside, the shadows of the night still lurked in the
corners; by the grey light she gazed at Lise, who breathed loudly and
stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips parched. Janet touched her.

"Lise--get up!" she said. "It's time to get up." She shook her.

"Leave me alone--can't you?"

"It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded."

Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot.

"I don't want to get up. I won't get up."

"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold. "You've got
to--you've got to eat breakfast and go to work."

"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more."

A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical
effect of it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up
and closed the window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise
again.

"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened
last night."

"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily.

"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as
to the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the edge
of the bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead.

"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked.

Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation,
could be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up her
hair. She seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping
frequently. Once she remarked:--"I don't see the good of getting nutty
over a highball."

Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose.

Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than
usual that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the
roofs on the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise passed
unobserved by both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the
two girls, with rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it
was Janet's custom to depart earlier, since she had farther to go. Lise,
suspicious, maintained an obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb.
They reached the corner by the provision shop with the pink and orange
chromos of jellies in the window.

"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly. "I want
you to tell me."

"Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?"

"You know very well what I mean."

"Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant.
"What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't
it?"

Janet approached her.

"What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?"

"I guess you're there already," said Janet.

Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and thrust
her back.

"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work
all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a
week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to
shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar."

Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger.

"How dare you say that?" she demanded.

Lise was cowed.

"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just
because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of
gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as
Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad." She began to sob.
"I'm as straight as you are. How was I to know the highball was stiff?
Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything in the
joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me."

Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and
resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the
truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because
Ditmar had been mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come
to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back
entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she
wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was
an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her
sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a
chance?

The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was
plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain
in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were
burning in the loom rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the
watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left
for Boston.

Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on
learning that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such
intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters
demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an
act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation,
since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she
had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent suffering
had to do with Man--a conviction peculiarly maddening to such
temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in terms
of Ditmar, she had looked forward to tormenting him again, and by
departing he had deliberately balked and cheated her. The rain fell
ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to descend on the
river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to the clouds
alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. As the
day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme
weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing
things for herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that
he might have less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which
she thought he would deem the most important. Perhaps he would come in,
late! In a world of impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a
tiny refuge to which she clung. At last she put on her coat and rubbers,
faring forth reluctantly into the wet.

At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the
gas was burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed.
For a moment she stood still, then closed the door softly.

"Lise," she said.

"What?"

Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began
to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own.

"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to
pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it. I
oughtn't to have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up
and see you."

For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her hair
with an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look,
her face puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows.

"How do you mean--you understand?" she asked slowly. "You never hit the
booze."

Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her
sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself for
this sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day
she had hated her, wished never to see her again.

"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said. "Lise,
I guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never find."

Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person
awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward
comprehension.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "You and me? You're all right--you've
got no kick coming."

"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have."
Janet was at a loss to express herself.

 "Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed. Her glance turned
involuntarily toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on
the wall. "Swells have a good time," she added.

"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet.

"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods,"
declared Lise.

"You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell," Janet
cried.

Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present
physical discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the
vehemence with which it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought
home to her some hint of the terror in Janet's soul.

"Me for the water wagon," she said.

Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the
man who had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue
the conversation. She rose and took off her hat.

"Why don't you go to bed?" she asked. "I'll tell mother you have a
headache and bring in your supper."

"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully.

Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the
human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so
called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected
by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether
a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood
are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this
phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the
most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures. She had resolved, far
instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish
Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send
some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her way to the
office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity. But the
northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the mist and the clouds,
the smoke from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of
the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when
she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue
river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the
current. Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton. About ten o'clock, as
she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell
approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his hand.

"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked.

"About Mr. Ditmar? No."

"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at
times to use the title facetiously. "Listen; `One of the most notable
figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar,
Agent of the Chippering Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed
to a picture. "There he is, as large as life."

A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those men
who, as the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public
careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building
where they had "snap-shotted" him he appeared even more massive,
forceful, and preponderant than she had known him. Beholding him thus set
forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to have been
distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound the dizzy
importance he had possessed for her before she became his stenographer.
She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who had
pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and
again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as
the sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation
in her sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded
herself she despised. He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as
she read rapidly down the column the fascination that crept over her was
mingled with disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to
believe she had dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient,
successful person, the list of whose achievements and qualities was so
alluringly set forth by an interviewer who himself had fallen a victim.

The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American
business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and
Ditmar, referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was
emphatically one who had earned the gratitude of the grand old
Commonwealth. By the efforts of such sons she continued to maintain her
commanding position among her sister states. Prominent among the
qualities contributing to his success was open-mindedness, "a willingness
to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still clung to
older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,
--indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on
labour followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and
settle it between them. No unions. He had consistently refused to
recognize them. There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the
largest commission ever given to a single mill, a reference to the
excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade circles. Claude
Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to look
at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all over
him.... In addition, the article contained much material of an
autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been supplied by
Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder
self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic
phrases.

Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a
trip abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of
an actress, a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it
had revealed to him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet
became vivid for him. There must be something unusual in a person whose
feelings could be so intense, whose emotions rang so true. He was not
unsophisticated. He had sometimes wondered why Ditmar had promoted her,
though acknowledging her ability. He admired Ditmar, but had no illusions
about him. Harvard, and birth in a social stratum where emphasis is
superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's exuberance; and he
was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's flushed face the hint of
a smile as she looked up at him when she had finished.

"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper;
and her laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected,
humorous sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him,"
Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity
in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the
first of April, you know, and Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't
be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I stand to lose twenty-five
dollars on him."

This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty
in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a
self-contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial
and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by
them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He
was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He
went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent Sundays and holidays
in delightful places, to return reddened and tanned; and though he never
spoke about these excursions, and put on no airs of superiority, there
was that in his manner and even in the cut of his well-worn suits
proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a category of
fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained from
above. Even Ditmar was not of these.

"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told
Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics."

And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Will you take me through
sometime, Mr. Caldwell?"

"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you can
spare the time."

Her face had become scarlet.

"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me
himself."

"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went
downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department.
The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but
now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen
stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed
him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto
scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been turned. It glowed
with a strange and disturbing radiance....

As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a
miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before
suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature.
In the brief space of an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the
freight cars on the sidings transformed into delicate fabrics wound from
the looms; cotton that only last summer, perhaps, while she sat
typewriting at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South.
She had seen it torn by the bale-breakers, blown into the openers,
loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into
batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of
white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it was
flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres,
removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short,
thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing
frames. Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then
came the Blubbers and the roving frames, twisting and winding, the while
maintaining the most delicate of tensions lest the rope break, running
the strands together into a thread constantly growing stronger and finer,
until it was ready for spinning.

Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while
she strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the
marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex
machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands
were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the
ring-spinning frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the
space of an instant, mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here,
doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on
the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for the
first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long frame
of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn were
carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider's web, where
hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly, side
by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to be woven
on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or "slashed" in
starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound around one
great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by one,
and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all
day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of
whom Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the
threads attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound. The
looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all else. It seemed as if she
would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the
harnesses,--each rapid movement making a V in the warp, within the angle
of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and fro, carrying the
thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great the eye could
scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when the angle closed,
and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate patterns not one,
but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for the impulse
bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the machines
halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread,
tied it, and started the loom again.

"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could only
nod in reply.

The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She
began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain
all day long. She had never thought much about them before save to
compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been
emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new
curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place
with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow
aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery
whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of
the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live for hours
at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting
hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never before
realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. But
these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the
danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor,
save occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a
glance, perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces
glowed, and instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking
terrors, despite her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another
world, a world somehow associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who had
lifted her farther above all this? Was it not by grace of her association
with him she was there, a spectator of the toil beneath? Yet the terror
persisted. She, presently, would step out of the noise, the oppressive
moist heat of the drawing and spinning rooms, the constant, remorseless
menace of whirling wheels and cogs and belts. But they?... She drew
closer to Caldwell's side.

"I never knew--" she said. "It must be hard to work here."

He smiled at her, reassuringly.

"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied. "It's like a health resort compared
to the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's plenty of
ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of heat and
moisture, because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn or spin,
and when it's hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If you think
this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot
system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" He led
Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet
cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity
were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was
controlled by a thermostat.

"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the
welfare of his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it, he's
spent thousands of dollars, and as soon as these machines became
practical he put 'em in. The other day when I was going through the room
one of these shuttles flew off, as they sometimes do when the looms are
running at high speed. A woman was pretty badly hurt. Ditmar came right
down."

"He really cares about them," said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of
Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully.

"Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable and
happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and he'd
be stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that. Do
you?"

Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were
crossed.... They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them
and were descending the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a
neighbouring tower. Janet shivered a little, and her face seemed almost
feverish as she turned to Caldwell and thanked him.

"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared. "And sometime, when
you want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me
know--I'm your man. And--I won't mention it."

She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced
at her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had
produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was
stirred, and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested,
in these processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed
interested, something deeper, more significant and human than he had
guessed, and which he was unable to define....

Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the
people who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought
of them. And the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her
typewriter was silent meant something to her now--she could not say what.
When she found herself listening for it, her heart beat faster. She had
lived and worked beside it, and it had not existed for her, it had had no
meaning, the mills might have been empty. She had, indeed, many, many
times seen these men and women, boys and girls trooping away from work,
she had strolled through the quarters in which they lived, speculated on
the lands from which they had come; but she had never really thought of
them as human beings, individuals, with problems and joys and sorrows and
hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery was borne in upon her.
And always an essential function of this revelation, looming larger than
ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar they toiled, in
Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the stupendous
responsibility and power.

As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took
possession of her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of
the Clarendon Mill across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell,
and suddenly the air was pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the
walls lining the river. Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs
and through the vestibule and along the track by the canal to the great
gates, which her father was in the act of unbarring. She took a stand
beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward showed a mild surprise.

"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said.

Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable.

"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this
time. You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no
respect or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never
could see why the government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the
word "foreigners" an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic
because of its peculiar note of futility. Janet paid no attention to him.
Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending the tower
stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the doorway--the
first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard and swept
onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge of the gates.
Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed over the
great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for it
was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers,
menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed to Janet indeed a
torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to
the steep bank of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst. And suddenly she
had plunged into it. The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be
denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel it, be submerged and swept away
by it, losing all sense of identity. She heard her father call after her,
faintly--the thought crossed her mind that his appeals were always
faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal, eastward, the
pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets began.

She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams
met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington
and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations,
hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until
she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great
structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway
overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting
nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders. Doffer boys romped
and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and flowered
hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and joked, but for
the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of their faces making
a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their feet and set intentness
of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements. And the clothes
of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded peasant's
shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an old master, lit up a group of
women. Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred
through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt,
bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows,
broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and
pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians.
And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it
came!

Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball
of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of
the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant
the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in
the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix
these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to
magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either
side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the
deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the
washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an artist of
living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things....




CHAPTER VIII

The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily
are called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning
of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire
organism. It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness,
brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice
out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified
with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she not
lose all life had to give? When she came in to supper her father was
concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had
left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her
evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his
comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She
was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the
something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more
rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature
timorous and less vitalized.

After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the
spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already
thronging with people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered,
and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring at
a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that read,
"Marked down to $20." And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind,
why shouldn't she buy it? She had the money, she needed a new suit for
the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind the
excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming
itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would
be buying a new character to which she would have to live up. The old
Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would announce
to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all those
longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable!
This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as
that between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this
fact, of the audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she
gazed at the suit. It was modest enough, yet it had a certain distinction
of cut, it looked expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to be sure,
but as the placard announced, it had the air of being much more
costly--even more costly than thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous.
Though she strove to remain outwardly calm, her heart beat rapidly as she
entered the store and asked for the costume, and was somewhat reassured
by the comportment of the saleswoman, who did not appear to think the
request preposterous, to regard her as a spendthrift and a profligate.
She took down the suit from the form and led Janet to a cabinet in the
back of the shop, where it was tried on.

"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but
we've had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You can't
sell anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too good,
it ain't showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for you, and it's
just your style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it. Your old
suit is too tight--I guess you've filled out some since you bought it."

She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and
then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost
rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and
buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this
image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different,
distinguished? and if not beautiful--alluring? She had had a momentary
apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but
the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical word
"lady."

"I'll take it," she announced.

"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared
the woman. "It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?"

"Yes," said Janet faintly.... "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll
call for it in an hour."

The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She had
an instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and
repair her folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with
her that evening, if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose?
But she was ashamed to face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not
to be repressed--an elation optically presented by a huge electric sign
on the farther side of the street that flashed through all the colours of
the spectrum, surrounded by running fire like the running fire in her
soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze fixed ahead, she pressed
through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and women in their
best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children and
bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement
staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five
Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of
Graft," "Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed
meaningless, and she hurried on again.... She was being noticed! A man
looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting,
appealing, subtly flattering, agitating--she was sure he had turned and
was following her. She hastened her steps. It was wicked, what she was
doing, but she gloried in it; and even the sight, in burning red letters,
of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion by its association with
her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk there meant nothing to
her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated, orange-coloured panes
separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in green, at the sign
"Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices and laughter
that came from within. She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a shadow
appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating....

Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following
her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to
Eda's--not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda,
Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny
and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the new suit,
though she would relish her friend's praise, would be the equivalent of
announcing an affair of the heart which she, Janet, would have
indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew now where she
was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate had bade
her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy
the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was
even now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the Chippering
Mill, in her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working of nights
on the Bradlaugh order. She reached the canal. The white arc above the
end of the bridge cast sharp, black shadows of the branches of the trees
on the granite, the thousand windows of the mill shone yellow, reflected
in the black water. Twice she started to go, twice she paused, held by
the presage of a coming event, a presage that robbed her of complete
surprise when she heard footsteps on the bridge, saw the figure of a man
halting at the crown of the arch to look back at the building he had
left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping the rail. Her heart
was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood motionless, until he
turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and stopped in front
of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day.

"Miss Bumpus!" he exclaimed.

"Mr. Ditmar" she said.

"Were you--were you coming to the office?"

"I was just out walking," she told him. "I thought you were in Boston."

"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never
leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back
again to her face. "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to
see about those new Blubbers."

"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said.

"How did you know?"

"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone."

"You're a wonder," was his comment. "Well, we've got a running start on
that order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill.
"Everything going full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll
have to give you some of the credit."

"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested.

"More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't
get along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices
of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It sounded
absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded to it.
"Which way were you going?" he inquired.

"Home," she said.

"Where do you live?"

"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a
little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street."

"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come
with you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say
to you."

"Can't you say it to-morrow?"

"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many
interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance."

She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the
route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them,
and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet
allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to
seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared on the bridge
almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her.
Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that
day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip through
the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness.

"What do you want to say?" she asked.

"Oh, lots of things."

She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but
firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power
stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed
to burn where he touched her.

"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it
because you don't like me?"

"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like
seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me
outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer."

"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met.
You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself."

"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer,"
she informed him.

"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't
go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked
about."

"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me
talked about?" she cried.

He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--"

"What did you mean?"

"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we
shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our
friendship the subject of gossip."

Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and
penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over
him.

"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any
advantages--and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper
about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--"

"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.

"Well, in some places it was rather funny."

"Funny? How?"

"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic
lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it
praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough."

He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.
From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got
anything but flattery.

"I want you to criticize me," he said.

But she went on relentlessly:--"When I read in that article how
successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out to
get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the
Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate expression to her
meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends."

"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.

"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I
didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat
that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement.
It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You
couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't
care to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently.

This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words.

"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and
honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on
you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I
thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to
put it over.'"

She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to
herself, to take her arm again.

"How could I help you?"

"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of
thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain
it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on
you."

He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not
intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing
with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently
abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her.

"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent.
"You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His
voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder
pressed against her shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've
never wanted one until now."

She wondered about his wife.

"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains."

"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed.

"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at
first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you."

They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were
standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end
of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.

"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed.

"I must go home--it's late."

"It's only nine o'clock."

"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night."

"Just one more turn!" he pleaded.

But she shook her head, backing away from him.

"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said
that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her
shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of
music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at
last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was
beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that he
needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of his
experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She could
help him!...

She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.

"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was
seated quietly sewing under the lamp.

"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried
this?" Janet asked.

The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she
rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her secret
had been guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to
encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose
attention was immediately attracted by the bundle.

"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded.

"A new suit," said Janet.

"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?"

"No, at Dowling's."

"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!"

"Well, what if it was?"

Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of
whistling through her teeth.

"Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well,
as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they
first knocked it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would
buy if she had the ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?"

"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a
right to do as I please with my own money."

"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you
look well."

After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when
they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that
Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when
they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against
this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she
was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry
darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise.

In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness
during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness
and alertness. It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note
had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life;
and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did not
put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation. Janet
compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for "best."
The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill, glorying in the
sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her thoughts were not
so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which he was the medium.
She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. When she reached the
office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off her hat and
jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself with
the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change.
She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was
all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it.
But when he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed
the door, he took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she
continued arranging letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him.
His bearing, his look, his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at
least, believed things to be changed. He glowed with health and vigour,
with an aggressiveness from which she shrank, yet found delicious.

"How are you this morning?" he said at last--this morning as
distinguished from all other mornings.

"I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised
by her ability to remain outwardly calm.

"Why did you run away from me last night?"

"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the
letters.

"We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at
all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me."

"I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she
took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room.

"I thought we were going to be friends," he said.

"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr.
Orcutt's waiting to see you."

"Let him wait."

He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the
typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as
grasping the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as
she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he had
ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his
way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight of
her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he might
venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an
inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely
repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle
transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost
coquettish. His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open at
the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline
of her shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up
and went toward her, but she avoided him.

"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she
reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight
of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold.

Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other.

"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that
lot didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent."

Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information.

"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them."

"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt.

"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for
geniality. "You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself
out."

Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation
that lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet had
escaped.

"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you
up," Ditmar informed him.

"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things,"
Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her
going through the mill with young Caldwell."

Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held.

"Oh, she went through, did she?"

After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular
musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk.

That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning
to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat
by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was
swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were
strangely commingled. A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this
can't go on! It's too terrible! Everyone in the office will notice
it--there will be a scandal. I ought to go away while there is yet
time--to-day." Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she
was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was
flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters
was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had made
at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was
inconceivable without him.

Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand
and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward
the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to
take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her,
seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent over her book.
Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn:
Ditmar's glance was focussed there. Her hands were cold as she wrote....
Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming in from the outer
office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to Ditmar, who sat
staring at it.

"Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?"

Janet, who had risen, spoke up.

"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see
him--don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?"

"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded
reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness."

Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating
reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or
less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his
manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his
dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about
the `survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear
Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and sallow
young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like a
chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk. As he whisked himself
in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of polite
self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had the air
of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring it, is
prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse to drop
the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would
jump.

"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this
pleasure."

"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.

Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his
chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened
a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.

"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons.

Ditmar lit one for himself.

"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an
examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the
operatives in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in
hearing something of the situation we found."

"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar.

"No, the fact is--"

"You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a
slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making
things comfortable and healthy for our people."

"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of
your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured
to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home,"
replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though living
in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I know a man
who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker
Hill monument."

"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody
can go there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how
you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up
their garbage and wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to
interfere with my private affairs."

"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public
menace?" Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of
tenements ready to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations,
thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had
been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered
the purpose better. If it were not for the danger to life and the pity of
making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a
blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city
would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could do would be
to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds
for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of
rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases
with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light,
without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking
and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs
in. You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the
acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred."

"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked
Ditmar.

"That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad,
they're dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements
as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make
you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't
treat cattle that way. In some households of five rooms, including the
kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people
living. You've got an alarming infant death-rate."

"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired.
"They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a
pig-sty--they had 'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy
land and build flats for them? Inside of a month they'd have all the
woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs
filled with ashes. I know, because it's been tried."

Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling,
and his eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the
assumption of approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new
ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began
patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had
discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought
of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it.
Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a
certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him;
he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of
his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's
objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before
we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. His
outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the
futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and
more agile one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of
deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return
to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when contrasted to
Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of
his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the misery he had
seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his feeling, Janet
began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for existence of
her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the range of
her sympathy.

"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess
you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people
have got millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other
side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they
manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a
dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists
to-day."

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what
does it prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless
competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay
the price. And the community also pays the price, the state and nation
pay it. And we have this misery on our consciences. I've no doubt you
could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me I could
take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark to read
in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get more than
seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time, where the
woman has to look out for the children and work for the lodgers, and even
with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into the mills
to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of this
kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a
family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put
out to board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do
you suppose they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing
themselves ultimately from these very conditions? And aren't these
conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?"

"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded.

"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings
in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's
more than a good many mills I could mention attempt."

"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than
any man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to
enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign
of public opinion against certain property owners."

"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you
won't get anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements
like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're
accustomed to. What you reformers are actually driving at is that we
should raise wages--isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats
anyway. I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want
you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people as
you and the men behind you. The trouble is, you only see one side of this
question. When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts. We
can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth, whether
he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't. We're in
competition with other mills, we're in competition with the South. We
can't regulate the cost of living. We do our best to make things right in
the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't afford to be sentimental
about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the world's made that way.
Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man who's had anything
to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that drummed into him
hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough laws and
ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have any more
the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve--all of
'em." Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar
away. "Send me a copy of your survey when it's published. I'll look it
over."

"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar
exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to
advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of
Hampton. I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour
trying to run a mill with them. They're here one day and there the next,
they don't know what loyalty is. You've got to drive 'em--if you give 'em
an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property. Why, there's
nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd build 'em
houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it is, I do my best,
though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half time when I
oughtn't to be running at all."

His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had
been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the
sympathy on which he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at
his face.

"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with
that kind of talk?"

"I was wondering--" she began.

"What?"

"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work
in order to keep alive?"

"Understand them! Why not?" he asked.

"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're
pretty much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not blaming
you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made
me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way."

"Not like these foreigners!" he protested.

"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped
suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the
startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the
many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know
what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that
smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, beautiful
things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've wanted them, you
couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel like to strike, to
wish to dynamite men like you!"

"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!"

"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for
them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your
mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and
you just want me--for your pleasure."

He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in
his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not
the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his
irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a
fever heat as he approached and stood over her.

"You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you?
Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you."

"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do
you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you
know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get."

Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings.
Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would
indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the
red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her
with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others--I want you!" such
was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be conquered,
intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her
self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now
from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt
his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm;
for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the
emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang away,
dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood
swaying.

"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why can't
you trust me?"

She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to
twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar
was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on
the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again.

"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked.

He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized
the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a
certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took
down his words.




THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT

By WINSTON CHURCHILL
VOLUME 2




CHAPTER IX

At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being
able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young
woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that
the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew
instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to think
about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of anomalies
and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her knowledge
and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is rapidly
discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to achieve the
morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. Tradition,
convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the movies, even her
mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom with which the
sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The thought,
however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, despite a
fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about a
revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she failed
so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the path to
self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace?

Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided
it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to
cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in
her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her
resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that
he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not
intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a
profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present
mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who,
under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly
goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while
the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so
phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin.

This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and
Ditmar had nothing to do with that....

Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind,
invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited
beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr.
Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite
ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.

In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her
and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having
hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt him
before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events invariably
intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One evening at
supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved the
comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she
gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove,
the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare
of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence of
beans.

"Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just
wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can
put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made
out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He
says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost
thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it.
And the fire-box is most worn through."

"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward.

"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do
anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply.
Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to
time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many
sheets.

"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with
asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of
Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816,
and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was
born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in
Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction
company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's
descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had
issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury,
Vermont, and married '"

Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.

"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben
Wheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.
Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads
that's all he'd think of."

As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's
lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as Janet
was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it was
gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own
fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect
a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger and
revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in its
continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her
sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was
she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her evening
finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour set for
a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet whose
glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the newspaper fell
to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She was thinking of
some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled
anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as
he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an
overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,--the
destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the
confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a
destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect
of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion she was
no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she chose.
Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up some of
the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands.

"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guess
I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet."

And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were
vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had
been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of
a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room swiftly,
entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. Across the
street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and through the
window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his chair, his
feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ceiling.
When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his chair on
the floor with a bang.

"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I
was just hoping some one would pay me a call."

Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of
pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--"You know you were having a
beautiful time, all by yourself."

"A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some young
lady a-coming to pay me a visit."

"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?"

"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.

Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the
secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to
estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for
instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise.
In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing
her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to
attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust
him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her
with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above
all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It
was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning
greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some
unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her,
and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a
certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and
self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes as
he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless
family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing,
she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she
said:--"I've come to see about the stove."

"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.
"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I
know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better be
having a look at it yourself."

He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the
store.

"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light,
"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened
the oven and took off the lids.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll
trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly.

He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.

"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's
too much--mebbe we can find another."

"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked.

"I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying for
it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't be
running away."

"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she
turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the
bills, how little was left in her purse.

"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted
her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until
she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had
in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went
straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had
brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been
equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part
which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become
convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a
bewildering thing....

The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued,
Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home
in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of
protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if
possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of
Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the
dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!"

And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--"Somebody had to do
it--didn't they? Who else was there?"

"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to
save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically.

"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet.

Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other,
were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her
mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by
Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed
sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.

"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to
think it was a good one."

"It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this
evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the
other. Come and see how nice it looks."

Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing
at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a
little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again.
She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.

"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed.

And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their
intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the
room....

Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a heroine,
she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her father,
which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie her
affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took on
the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as compared
with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in some sort
to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder daughter's
act.

"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and
when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah
observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a
daughter like her!"

Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness
was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned
him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him
powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat
listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured,
pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found
refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That
evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner,
untouched.

What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who
also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become
an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to
make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had
often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in
failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite
relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the
nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might
do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such
acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah
invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another
--the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the
lack of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when
the two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly
occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by
inquiring:--"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too.
How much does Ditmar give you, sweetheart?"

Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape.

"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was
released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which
had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only
kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?"

"I'm not like-you," said Janet.

"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
mouth. "Forget it."

When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually
before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that her
sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from discussing;
an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her conquests
before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with an
engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this gentleman
was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined to
believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the
fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular
inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What
was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways
possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid
speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself
in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had
recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable
tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next
Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the
blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber
Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler
and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three
successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the
whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were
massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was
caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly after
this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly and
craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak
ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it
would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the
trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure
the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste
and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the
saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did
succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it
withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly brought
the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,--velvet
bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and artistically
spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged with a material
which--if not too impudently examined and no questions asked--might be
mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white fox. Both
investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of Janet's
increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before the
bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with a
defiant apology.

"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared,
seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well get
your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig up
twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's
most blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit to
carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it--says it
puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's
supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled
around for her sister's inspection.

"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the
rain."

"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in
imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its
purpose of summoning up a somewhat abject image of herself in wet velvet
and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of
woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more
resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this
suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a
canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She
swung on Janet furiously.

"I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you!
You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what
I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them
Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice."

And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--"If I
were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an
introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the money!"
she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty enough
without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at you."

"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man
living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's
voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger.
"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher."

"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman,"
Janet declared.

"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be
scared anybody will pick you up."

"I'm not," said Janet....

This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the
stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been
moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to convince
her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to make her
more secretive and sullen than ever before.

"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said
dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after
Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and
blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the
minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, but
sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might have
been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like any of
the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find out. She
just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. Well, the world
has got all jumbled up--it beats me."

Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.

"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit
hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I
could honestly wish him to have her."

"Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was
somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.

"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she
looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I
don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my
daughter to look like one."

"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain
recent misgivings.

"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who,
from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. And
after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' her
attention now?"

"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody."

"I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was low
enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know the
worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood."

This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent
in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and
"wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking
Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself.
Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if
she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be
punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed
in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her
friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and
was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism
which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of
a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of
course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now
saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any
ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between
them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new
convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that
Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed
for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was
deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her
heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might
possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has
developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.

Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she
sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that
it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in
any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively
from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony,
and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be
hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions,
would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony.
In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified
that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would
punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and
repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God. She
felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it,
--the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did not
resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense,
that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a
surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she
shrank. She was a true daughter of her time.

On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his
correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and
interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file
away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her
work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two men
were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that
struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which had
survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle for
supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been
projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize.
She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an
almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and
kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was
complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by
gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his
history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face she
was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the
eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the
peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a
responsive sense of championship.

"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim. "I tell you again
you'll never be able to pull it off."

Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January."

"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded.

"You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference
after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor
insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a
fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in
Hampton,--didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and make
all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't I say
that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool
people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and they
listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing about it.
Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law goes into
effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to fill that
Bradlaugh order in God's world."

"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. "You're always for lying
down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to
work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run
the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony? When
they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to
fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice,
what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? Not
on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the
party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's
fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll
have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and
donate our mills to the state for insane asylums."

"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.
They're getting sick of the unions now."

Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.

"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll
do us."

Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost
touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the
Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood ran
faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.

"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with
that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and left
the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and then,
taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and seated
himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a gleam of
triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and energize him.

"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with
the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. I've
got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, where
were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the door."

Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil
on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of
Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the
Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that
hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange
surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had
experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against
him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had
wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow,
enlisted once again on his side.

"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know."

"Won't mention what?" she asked.

"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue
giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law
goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason,
and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd have
time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time comes
they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach 'em a
lesson."

"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him.

"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have
said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it
spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator
might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me,
with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it."

"But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that
they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet
inquired.

"Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move.
I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push
this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers
who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If we
can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em
they can't come in here and exploit my operatives."

In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his
aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel
her to accept his point of view.

"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've
told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a
different thing for me--just by your being here. I don't know what I'd do
without you. You've got so much sense about things--about people,--and I
sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these mills that
I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills with Caldwell the
other day," he added, accusingly.

"I--I forgot," said Janet. "Why should I tell--you?" She knew that all
thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look
up. "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little
faintly, "I've got some copying to do."

"You're a deep one," he said. And as he turned to the pile of
correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down his
sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he was
making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the absolute
expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of commercial
intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one of the
drawers of his desk.

"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?"

"Isn't it there?" she asked.

But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging
them until she could stand it no longer.

"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting
around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly
separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly.

"There!" she exclaimed. "It was right before your eyes."

As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing
her, irresistibly.

"Janet!" he said. "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it?
I can't stand it any longer!"

"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. "Mr.
Ditmar--let me go!"

A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength
and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had
never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening,
welcoming the annihilation of his embrace.

"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried. "Somebody will come in."

Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final
effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room.

"You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his
handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on
it. "I'll have you yet!"

But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for
the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral
inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was thinking.
She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the agitation
of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her hands to
her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room, not so
much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her.

She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the
window. The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was
changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality. She, too, must be changed.
She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that room of
Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon! Mr. Caldwell made a commonplace
remark, she heard herself answer him. Her mind was numb, only her body
seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of anger, of desire
so intense as to make her helpless. And when at length she reached out
for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she could scarcely hold
it. Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient control of herself to
begin her copying, when she found a certain relief in action--her hands
flying over the keys, tearing off the finished sheets, and replacing them
with others. She did not want to think, to decide, and yet she
knew--something was trying to tell her that the moment for decision had
come. She must leave, now. If she stayed on, this tremendous adventure
she longed for and dreaded was inevitable. Fear and fascination battled
within her. To run away was to deny life; to remain, to taste and savour
it. She had tasted it--was it sweet?--that sense of being swept away,
engulfed by an elemental power beyond them both, yet in them both? She
felt him drawing her to him, and she struggling yet inwardly longing to
yield. And the scarlet stain on his handkerchief--when she thought of
that her blood throbbed, her face burned.

At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and
stood by the rail. His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable.

"Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you
leave?" he said.

She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but
standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob.

"I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said. Reassured
by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his
face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar
she had difficulty in recognizing. "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend
you," he went on. "Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I couldn't help
it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay. I give you my word."

She did not reply. After a pause he began again, repeating himself.

"I didn't mean to do it. I was carried away--it all happened before I
knew. I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world."

Still she was silent.

"For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried. "Say you forgive me--give me
another chance!"

But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of
reproach or contempt or anger he could not say. The situation transcended
his experience. He took an uncertain step toward her, as though half
expecting her to flee, and stopped.

"Listen!" he pleaded. "I can't talk to you here. Won't you give me a
chance to explain--to put myself right? You know what I think of you, how
I respect and--admire you. If you'll only let me see you somewhere
--anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you
how much I'd appreciate it. I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I
couldn't bear to lose you. I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge
--at eight o'clock to-night. I'll wait for you. You'll come? Say you'll
come, and give me another chance!"

"Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked.

He stared at her in sheer perplexity. "Letters!" he exclaimed. "Damn the
letters! Do you think I could write any letters now?"

As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of
her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having
seen it. Had she smiled?

"I'll be there," he cried. "I'll wait for you."

She turned from him, opened the door, and went out.

That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother,
she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the
matter were in doubt. But in her heart she was convinced of its
predetermination by some power other than her own volition. With this
feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and
impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task. The hands of
the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had
already made her toilet and departed. Janet opened the wardrobe, looked
at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and
closed the door again. Here, at any rate, seemed a choice. She would not
wear that, to-night. She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat, and
went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew the
calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of
fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than
herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity. Somewhere,
removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was
aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant
throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West
Street She had not been able to eat any supper. That throbbing of the
looms in the night! As it grew louder and louder the tension within her
increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing
wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more
slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the
end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of
the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar. She stood
motionless as he hurried toward her.

"You've come! You've forgiven me?" he asked.

"Why were you--down there?" she asked.

"Why? Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--"

It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had
no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known. She
resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his
perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were
restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power.

"We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment. "Let's take a little
walk--I've got a lot to say to you. I want to put myself right." He tried
to take her arm, but she avoided him. They started along the canal in the
direction of the Stanley Street bridge. "Don't you care for me a little?"
he demanded.

"Why should I?" she parried.

"Then--why did you come?"

"To hear what you had to say."

"You mean--about this afternoon?"

"Partly," said Janet.

"Well--we'll talk it all over. I wanted to explain about this afternoon,
especially. I'm sorry--"

"Sorry!" she exclaimed.

The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him
completely aback. Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to
betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with
desire. How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took refuge
in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them?

"I didn't mean that," he explained desperately. "My God--to feel you, to
have you in my arms--! I was sorry because I frightened you. But when you
came near me that way I just couldn't help it. You drove me to it."

"Drove you to it!"

"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You
make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman
before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I can't
live without you." He flung his arm toward the lights of the mills.
"That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't say I've
been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman until I
knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you what you
were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I did to-day
because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the time you
seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate me, and
then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night, as you
seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and then,
when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know what
I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me can't stand it."

"Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago."

"Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my
life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I never
knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's that
mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the country,
I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you went away I
wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I wouldn't have
any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you see? You--you
sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary, I can't express
what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that mill as a
woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of adequate
eloquence.

She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of
the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her
most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive
thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not. She
was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the
identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her
consciousness....

They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by
common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The
hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only
the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against the
flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the
power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but
she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters
falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent
into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing
why. Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led the
way toward the unfrequented district of the south side. It was the road
to Silliston, but she had forgotten that. Ditmar, regaining her side,
continued his pleading. He spoke of his loneliness, which he had never
realized. He needed her. And she experienced an answering pang. It still
seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel that gnawing
need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often made her
unhappy. And because of the response his need aroused in her she did not
reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he could ever
understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly pour herself
out to him.

"I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last. "I've never
had any advantages, I don't know anything. I've never had a chance to
learn. I've told you that before."

"What difference does that make? You've got more sense than any woman I
ever saw," he declared.

"It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound
of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a
dream. The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in
contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt,
was swept back into her mind. Self-pity, dignity, and inherent
self-respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited
racial pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she
had lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have
laid at the feet of another woman.

"I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you. Why won't
you come to me? I'll take care of you."

"Do you think I want to be taken care of?" She wheeled on him so swiftly
that he started back. "Is that what you think I want?"

"No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech.

"Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him. "What
you can buy for me?"

To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the
trouble. And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to his
confusion and bewilderment.

"I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically. "There
isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what I'm
trying to say. I'd go the limit."

"Your limit!" she exclaimed.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. But she had become inarticulate
--cryptic, to him. He could get nothing more out of her.

"You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into
tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control. The world was black
with his ignorance. She hated herself, she hated him. Her sobs shook her
convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her along
the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her. Once or
twice she felt his hand on her shoulders.... And then, unlooked for and
unbidden, pity began to invade her. Absurd to pity him! She fought
against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained
ground. After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he
loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart. After all, he did
not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination
conjured up the situation in a new perspective. Her sobs gradually
ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded
him. He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to
comfort. But what she said was:--"I ought to be going home."

"Not yet!" he begged. "It's early. You say I don't understand you,
Janet--my God, I wish I did! It breaks me all up to see you cry like
that."

"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment. "I--I can't make you understand. I
guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it. You must let
me go, I only make you unhappy."

"Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded
her lips to his. A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his
arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight
of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it.
Ditmar seized her arm.

"You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely.

"I must," she whispered. "I want to be alone--I want to think. You must
let me."

"I'll see you to-morrow?"

"I don't know--I want to think. I'm--I'm tired."

The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop. She flew up the
steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw
him still standing in the road. The car was empty of passengers, but the
conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot. She
glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen
hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties. He was
unmoved as he took her fare. Nevertheless, at the thought that these
other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all
over. What should she do now? She could not think. Confused with her
shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give
herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by
qualms of resentment, defiling its purity. Was Ditmar ashamed of her?...
When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her
tears were neither of joy nor sorrow. Her capacity for both was
exhausted. In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when,
at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her.




CHAPTER X

Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it
became a tiny speck of light in the distance. Then he started to walk
toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up
energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a
physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow
of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction. After all, he could not expect
to travel too fast with her. Had he not at least gained a signal victory?
When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given him!--he
increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief time he had
recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of Warren
Street, and gained his own door.

The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his
way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch,
sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar. He liked this room of
his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and
sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of
matrimonial conflict. One of the few elements of agreement he had held in
common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in household
decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in Boston to
choose the furniture and fittings. The lamp in the centre of the table
was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and emerald
glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design, after the
manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed them.
Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had
remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the
standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired. The table and
chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by
machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows were high
in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which
they looked. The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless
volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge
of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had
bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future
culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature. These
volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if
one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate. The steam radiator
was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles
that made the hearth. Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large
coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose,
Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible
artistic representation of his ideal of the female form. Cora Ditmar's
objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing
had been vain. She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the
art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this
particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it. And the
picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived. Formerly he had
enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of
mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities
of the future. For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed
despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy. He
had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be
cured by gifts and baubles. But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt
a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood. That
quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had
now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something
--something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny. It
was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with the
picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung. For he
had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse. What should he do
with it? Light the fire and burn it--frame and all? The frame was an
integral part of it. What would his housekeeper say? But now that he had
actually removed it from the wall he could not replace it, so he opened
the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics which had found
refuge there. He had put his past in the closet; yet the relief he felt
was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the discovery of
symptoms never before remarked. Why should this woman have this
extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself? He sat down
again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he had
surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her. She had completely upset
his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could imagine no
peace unless he possessed her. Hitherto he had recognized in his feeling
for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other women,
intensified to a degree never before experienced. But this sudden access
of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was disquieting. And
in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now making of his emotional
tract he was discovering the presence of other disturbing symptoms such
as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration almost amounting to pity which
at times he had vaguely sensed yet never sought imaginatively to grasp.
It bewildered him by hampering a ruthlessness hitherto absolute. The
fierceness of her inflamed his passion, yet he recognized dimly behind
this fierceness an instinct of self-protection--and he thought of her in
this moment as a struggling bird that fluttered out of his hands when
they were ready to close over her. So it had been to-night. He might have
kept her, prevented her from taking the car. Yet he had let her go! There
came again, utterly to blot this out, the memory of her lips.

Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he
resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was
spent. What was she struggling against? What was behind her resistance?
She loved him! It had never before occurred to him to enter into the
nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by
his own. This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to
make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been
a reason for sheer exultation. He began to see that with her it involved
complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things
he had formerly avoided and resented in woman. He thought of certain
friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank
account had been powerless to extricate him.... And he was ashamed of
himself.

In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his
imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the
heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to
surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance
is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third
cigar. The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her
vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what
he could buy for her! She was not purchasable--that way. He ought to have
known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying. But marriage! Literally
it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he himself
associated with shackles. One of the unconscious causes of his
fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that
herd-convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding
rings--are slaves. The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type
must not be underestimated. And the idea that she, too, might prefer the
sanction of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had
taken his fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous
with the freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock. Was he
prepared to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way? The
question demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the
moment incapable. There were his children! He had never sought to arrive
at even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his
life, to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed
himself a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned
this tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions
for them. He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to
think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made,
that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even
imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate
country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities,
which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the
socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems
of success. He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a place,
as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an influential
man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such another. In
short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy, her
aspirations for their children's social prestige....

The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he
went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in
addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly
compounded of desire.

He slept soundly, however. He was one of those fortunate beings who come
into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition
which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament. And
his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a
problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait. As
sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms
he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation,
the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant
reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!" It was
Saturday. He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and
refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount
of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble,
yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the
mill. In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all
the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a
trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead. What if
she had gone! He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would
be just like her. You never could tell what she would do.

Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs,
gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the
window was empty! Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together
bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations.

"Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded. He tried to speak
naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike
the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him.
Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise.

"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said. "Why, yes, she's in your
room."

"Oh!" said Ditmar.

"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you
can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on. "It's about that
lawsuit. It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there, and
they say they have to see you. Miss Bumpus has the memorandum."

Ditmar looked at his watch.

"Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed. "I won't
see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now. You understand. I've
got to have a little time to do some letters. I won't be disturbed--by
any one--for half an hour."

Caldwell nodded.

"All right, Mr. Ditmar."

Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him. She was
occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile
with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did.

"Janet!" he exclaimed.

"There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she
replied.

"I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had
to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking
of you. Aren't you glad to see me?"

She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his
approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to
strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of
inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as
they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by
those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away
her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek,
spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft
contour of her arm, his passion conquered.... Still he was acutely
conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed
against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his arms,
though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential self
of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her the
more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might capture
it.

"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by
helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment
instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the
reservation he was loth to acknowledge.

"Don't you love me?" he said.

"I don't know."

"You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it."

She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay
idle in her hand.

"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't stand
this. Janet, aren't you happy?"

She shook her head.

"Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was
this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?"

"Because I'm not."

"Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know that.
Tell me!"

"You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand."

"Is it something I've done?"

"You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that way,
I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do."

"Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you."

She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize
how impossible it is. I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't."

She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless,
yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous.

"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that
drowned all caution, all reason. "But you can help me--when we are
married."

"Married!" she repeated. "You want to marry me?"

"Yes, yes--I need you." He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his,
her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to
penetrate to the depths of him. And despite his man's amazement at her
hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed,
ashamed as he had never been in his life. At length, when he could stand
no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you
to be my wife."

"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked.

"I didn't think, Janet. I was mad about you. I didn't know you."

"Do you know me now?"

"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will
know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen.
You'll marry me?"

"I'm afraid," she said. "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't. A
woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much. And now you're willing to
marry me, if you can't get me any other way." Her hand touched his coat,
checking his protest. "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give
me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before. But I couldn't live as
your--mistress."

The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour
thrilled him.

"If I stayed here, it would be found out. I wouldn't let you keep me. I'd
have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all I've
got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were reviewing
the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you might come to
believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize what you were
doing, or what might happen if we were married. I've tried to tell you
that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was saying. My
father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of the
operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton wouldn't
understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she spoke with
more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of them, it all
seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, I wouldn't
stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago."

Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of
the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made
matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly
his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a
momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that
might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance
to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had
been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance
appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a
lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme
desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he
listened to her.

"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady
--I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your
father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you suppose
I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll be married
in the spring, when the rush is over."

He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that
embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her
will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her lithe
body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and
hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this
thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he
had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman
he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and
suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself.

"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again.

She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.

"I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe
in it, somehow."

"You must believe in it," he said.

"I can't,--perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged.
"You'll miss your train."

He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll be
back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--"

"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night."

"Why not?"

"Not to-night," she repeated.

"Well then, to-morrow. To-morrow's Sunday. Do you know where the Boat
Club is on the River Boulevard? I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten.
I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want
any one to know, yet--do we?"

She shook her head.

"We must keep it secret for a while," he said. "Wear your new dress--the
blue one. Good-bye--sweetheart."

He kissed her again and hurried out of the office.... Boarding the train
just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the
smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely
noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle. Well, he had
done it! He was amazed. He had not intended to propose marriage, and when
he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became
confused. But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to pay
such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in
particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his
incipient anxieties. Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to throw
off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the train
had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all traces
of worry had disappeared. The future would take care of itself.

For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious
meal. Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided,
and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of
the pie crust. And in contrast to her usual moroseness and
self-absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the
dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the
Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from
the cashier's cage. She became almost hysterical with glee as she
pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie,
draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him.
"Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked. "She gave
the pile a shove when he landed. He's got her number all right. But say,
it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he got up,
he looked like Santa Claus. All the girls in the floor were there we
nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha. And Ruby says,
sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr.
Waiters.' He was sore! He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his
coco as big as a potato." So vivid was Lise's account of this affair
which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of
drudgery-that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language
symbolic of a world she feared and detested.

"If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me."

Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which
she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston. Now she
began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm
going to marry Mr. Ditmar." After the first shock of amazement, she could
imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news as a
vindication of an inherent quality in the Bumpus blood. He would begin to
talk about the family. For, despite what might have been deemed a
somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he still
believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous voyage of
the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose omniscient mind was
peculiarly concerned with the family trees of Puritans. And what could be
a more striking proof of the existence of this Providence, or a more
fitting acknowledgment on his part of the Bumpus virtues, than that Janet
should become the wife of the agent of the Chippering Mills? Janet
smiled. She was amused, too, by the thought that Lise's envy would be
modified by the prospect of a heightened social status; since Lise, it
will be remembered, had her Providence likewise. Hannah's god was not a
Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution, in ingenious methods
of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle baubles before the eyes
of his children--only to snatch them away again. Hannah's pessimism would
persist as far as the altar, and beyond!

On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within
her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by
dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained
despite a malicious opposition. And she loved Ditmar. This must be love
she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him,
this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt
in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not
resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal. She saw
him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults
appealed. His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to
propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a
fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet,
that he wanted her enough to marry her. It was wonderful to be wanted
like that! But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as
Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up
Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement.
She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its
mistress. Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a
Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts;
things just didn't happen that way.

She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together
along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to
live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had
dragged her friend onward, to the corner. In spite of its size, of the
spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her
then. Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if undeveloped
sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made her breathless
on first beholding Silliston Common. And then the vision of Silliston had
still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon was as a gossamer
silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a stage setting,
softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of dignity and
glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable. And she felt a
sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would burst....

Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow.
A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as
though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in
the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the
living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one another
around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? Impelled
irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she went
forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, stepped
over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the lawn,
feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid fascination.
The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and swift, the girl
stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her body; he caught
her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her cries through the
window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him, struggling with him.
He put out his tongue at her, but presently released his sister, who
stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in evident recrimination and
complaint. The faces of the two were plain now; the boy resembled Ditmar,
but the features of the girl, heavy and stamped with self-indulgence,
were evidently reminiscent of the woman who had been his wife. Then the
shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, overcome by a sense of horror
at her position, took to flight....

When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to
imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those
children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention
had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had
included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the
farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play.
She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was
aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the
woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had
lacked the advantages of development. Could it--could it ever be
developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any nearer
to the unknown realm of light she craved?...




CHAPTER XI

Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose
sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and
dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat,
felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of
life. The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power
over her. The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things
possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of
bells, calling her to happiness. She was going to meet happiness, to meet
love--to meet Ditmar! The trolley which she took in Faber Street, though
lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it left the
city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia roadway
above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the openings
in the woods. And when she looked out of the window on her right she
beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" built by
residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more elaborate
summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with queer names
that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug Harbour," "Buena
Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though she did not know
its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, "Klein aber
Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded up, though the
mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the porches, they were
mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy.

Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had
mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather
the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw
an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar
had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately
Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before
her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still. With
his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but
slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker
in his huge coat of golden fur. Never had he appeared to better
advantage.

"I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car." Turning to the
automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses
with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked
in the flower store. And he held the flowers against her suit her new
suit she had worn for this meeting.

"Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance.
"You brought these--for me?"

"From Boston--my beauty!"

"But I can't wear all of them!"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Haven't you a pin?"

She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual,
though the thought of their value-revealing in some degree her own worth
in his eyes-unnerved her. She was warmly conscious of his gaze. Then he
turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a
bright tweed motor coat warmly lined.

"Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back. "I'll--I'll be warm enough." But
laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the
sleeves, his fingers pressing against her. Overcome by shyness, she drew
away from him.

"I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried,
delightedly surveying her. "I couldn't forget it!" His glance grew more
concentrated, warmer, penetrating.

"You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes.

"Why not--you're mine--aren't you? You're mine, now."

"I don't know. There are lots of things I want to talk about," she
replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself.
He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered
by the semi-publicity of the place. He was giving her no time to think
--but she did not want to, think. Starting the engine, he got in and
leaned toward her.

"Not here!" she exclaimed.

"All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly,
solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to
the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering
warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from
discontent and sordidness and struggle. For a moment she closed her eyes,
but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself
reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were
one! The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the
woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately
placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command! And she could
no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had
stood in front of the house in Warren Street. The car was speeding over
the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to
her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day,
the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her. She
marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a
live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight stretches it went at a mad
pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing
another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience. Once she gasped:
"Not so fast! I can't stand it."

He laughed and obeyed her. They glided between river and sky across the
delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the
distance. Running through the little village on the farther bank, they
left the river.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side
road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping. "Janet, we've
got this day--this whole day to ourselves." He seized and drew her to
him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful
of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing
phrases.

"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it
seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of
his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and
buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint:
her eyes were clouded.

"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called
him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come along."

"I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And
added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside."

She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public
advertisement of their love.

"I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car
again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking."

"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I could
only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! If you
keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. And now
do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just ready to
bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em."

"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain
something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the
proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before
she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which
she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have to think
--you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile.

"Well, what is it?" he assented. "You might as well get it off now."

And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you.
I've told you the reasons. You're rich, and you have friends who wouldn't
understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand. I--I'm nothing,
I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy. I've never lived--in
the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you know, I
shouldn't know what to do."

He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously. His
smile was self-confident, exultant.

"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said.

And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her
eyebrows.

"I mean it," she said. "I came out to tell you so. I know--it just isn't
possible."

"I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared. "Why,
you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much
money she has."

In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased.

"Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand? I've got
you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you."

She sighed. He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his
hand on hers she simply could not think. The spell of his nearness, of
his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too
powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day,
take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting. She
was living--what did it all matter? She yielded herself to the witchery
of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown.

They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country
now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and
ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which
had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path. Cows and
horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black mud
glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the
barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of
destruction. Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully, boyishly.

"We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim. And then he had to assure her
that he wouldn't run over them.

"I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand.

"No, but you will, it's only luck."

"Luck!" he cried derisively. "Skill! I wish I had a dollar for every one
I got when I was learning to drive. There was a farmer over here in
Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two
turkeys. "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and
the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars. I can
remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben
in the county. They got rich on us."

She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and
they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an
aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man standing
in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury.

"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch,
after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band. "Mebbe it's more."
His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile.

"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when
they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him. Ditmar's reply was to
wink at her. Presently they saw another figure on the road.

"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed. This man was young, the
colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes
that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute
surprise.

"I no know--stranger," he said.

"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely.

"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had
started the car. "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old
rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak
American on the whole cape. All the Portuguese islands are dumped there
--cranberry pickers, you know."

"I didn't know that," said Janet.

"Sure thing!" he exclaimed. "And when I got there, what do you think?
there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a
fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition. It had all been chipped
away by souvenir hunters."

She gazed at him incredulously.

"You don't believe me! I'll take you down there sometime. And another
thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land. I said to Charlie Crane,
who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles
Standish and Priscilla what's her name."

"How I'd love to see the ocean again!" Janet exclaimed.

"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised. "We'll go out on
it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape."

Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible.

"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather
keeps up. If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy.
We'll see the rock. I guess some of your ancestors must have come over
with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh? You look like it."

Janet laughed. "It's a joke on them, if they did. I wonder what they'd
think of Hampton, if they could see it now. I counted up once, just to
tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came
to Dolton. Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty-six
other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife."

"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment. "Great old man,
your father. I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all by
himself. Well, there must be something in it, this family business. Now,
you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it."

Janet flushed. "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed.

"I don't know," said Ditmar. "It's something to fall back on--a good
deal. And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour
unions--he's a straight American. And you look the part," he added. "You
remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a picture of
Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you know. I'm not
much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember thinking she
could have me. Funny isn't it, that you should have come along? But
you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture. I'm the only man
that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously.

"You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly.

"You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted. "You're
chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up. You're so prim-so
Priscilla." He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined,
repeating it. "It's a great combination. When I think of it, I want to
shake you, to squeeze you until you scream."

"Then please don't think of it," she said.

"That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly.

At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New
England of other days. The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was
bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century
and a half; others were of the Mansard period. The high school, of
strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury
of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous. At
the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone posts
and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the common
on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables, in front
of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign, "Kingsbury
Tavern." In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad been a famous
inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had foreseen the
possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even more famous. A
score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it under the bare,
ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long porch, where
guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking-chairs which
the mild weather had brought forth again. Ditmar drew up in line with the
other motors, and stopped.

"Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets. "I
guess I could get along with something to eat. How about you? They treat
you as well here as any place I know of in New England."

He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of
course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out
of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to
alight. She laid the roses on the seat.

"Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded.

"I'd rather not," she said. "Don't you think they'll be safe here?"

"Oh, I guess so," he replied. She was always surprising him; but her
solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such
instinctive acts refreshing.

"Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly.

"I'd rather leave them here," she replied. As she walked beside Ditmar to
the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware of
inspection by the groups on the porch. She had seen such people as these
hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in Hampton
toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury--people
of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was excluded;
Ditmar's world. He was at home here. But she? The delusion that she
somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by their
glances. What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she passed
them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But Ditmar's
complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning the
place, as it were, somewhat reassured her. He went up to the desk, behind
which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him effusively,
yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful.

"Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar. "You've got a good crowd here to-day. Any
room for me?"

"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you. Well, I haven't laid
eyes on you for a dog's age. Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I
was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself."

"Why, I've been busy, Eddie. I've landed the biggest order ever heard of
in Hampton. Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is to
loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money."

The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this
persiflage.

"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. "This is my friend,
Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit. "And when you've eaten his
dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men
beaten a mile."

Janet smiled and flushed. She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet
glance.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate
bow.

"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?"

"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared
Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter.

"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie."

"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he
escorted them into the dining-room. And Ditmar, gazing around over the
heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with
tilted chairs.

"That one'll do," he said.

"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale.

"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way
toward it.

The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair.

"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business."

"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" said Ditmar to Janet when they were
alone. He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked.

"I wanted to surprise you. Don't you like it?"

"Yes," she replied. "Only--"

"Only, what?"

"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here."

"All right. I'll try to be good until we get into the car again. You
watch me! I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years."

He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their
orders.

"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled
sympathetically, somewhat ruefully. When she had gone he began to talk to
Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fuse oil
distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen
rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared.

Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he
wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to
scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the
other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects
of the universal curiosity she had feared. Once in a while, indeed, she
encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration
in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as
she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her
new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which
Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure
began to go to her head like wine....

When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while
Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his
love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious
yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on
occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be
detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely
disquieting. At last she said:

"Oughtn't we to be going home?"

"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest
road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was
summer."

"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't
know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this."

"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation:

"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things
get settled a little--isn't there?"

She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they
walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the
tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to
drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in
the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun
fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky,
distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at a
world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such
strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At
times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air:
it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of
the beauty so poignantly revealed to her.

Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence
of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired.
Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand,
to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though
she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed
and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was
actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities
hidden from him. Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists
to creep over the waters. He asked if she were cold, and she shook her
head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him.

"It's been a wonderful day!" she said.

"The greatest ever!" he agreed. And his ardour, mounting again, swept
away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him,
made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an
ecstatic contemplation.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to
Boston and have dinner together. We'll be there in an hour, and back by
ten o'clock."

"To Boston!" she repeated. "Now?"

"Why not?" he said, stopping the car. "Here's the road--it's a boulevard
all the way."

It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his
touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her
with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger.

"I told you I had to be home," she said.

"I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise. We're going to be married,
Janet," he whispered.

"Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried.
"I want to go back to Hampton. If you won't take me, I'll walk."

She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door. He seized her
arm.

"For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm.
"All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner. I couldn't bear to
leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day. Do you
suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?"

With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and
looked at him.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "Sometimes I think you would. Why
shouldn't you? Why should you marry me? Why shouldn't you try to do with
me what you've done with other women? I don't know anything about the
world, about life. I'm nobody. Why shouldn't you?"

"Because you're not like the other women--that's why. I love you--won't
you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety. "Listen--I'll take
you home if you want to go. You don't know how it hurts me to have you
think such things!"

"Well, then, take me home," she said. It was but gradually that she
became pacified. A struggle was going on within her between these doubts
of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his
pleadings. Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the
lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness.

"You'd better let me out here," she said. "You can't drive me home."

He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters
built for the convenience of passengers.

"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked.

"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to
him. "I--I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like
that. I'm horrid and I can't help it." She began to unbutton the coat he
had bought for her.

"Aren't you going to take it?" he said. "It's yours."

"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar
had given it to me?"

"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that
we're going to be married," he announced recklessly.

"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation. "You couldn't. You said so
yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the
trolley."

"And the roses?" he asked.

She pressed them to her face, and chose one. "I'll take this," she said,
laying the rest on the seat....

He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove
slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of
announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective
husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he
found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And
the ever-recurring question presented itself--was he prepared to go that
length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she
was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him
intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his
children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in
spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty.

When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the
wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she
had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the
back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed
emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love....

The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones. All the elements
of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her
work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic. There
was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was
not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old.
Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been
transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's
company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the
weight of an unnatural secrecy. She was aware, for instance, that her
mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to
her absences on certain nights and on Sundays. She offered no
explanation. It was impossible. She understood that the reason why they
refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as
well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to
independence. And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her,
on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her
even more. From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment,
ridicule. What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a
lover--and that lover Ditmar! But Lise said nothing. She was remote,
self-absorbed. Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at
home.

She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening. Yet, as the days
succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their
love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others
in the office. They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in
which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to
caution him, to keep him in check. Again, on the evening excursions to
which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented
spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to
ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her
by sight. These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she
seemed conscious of curious glances. But what caused her the most concern
was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself subjected
her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly difficult to
resist. He tried to take her by storm, and when this method failed,
resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny because of
the innate feminine pity she felt for him. To recount these affairs would
be a mere repetition of identical occurrences. On their second Sunday
excursion he had actually driven her, despite her opposition, several
miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only served to inflame him
the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat unnerved, a miracle that she
had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she would not trust him; they
could not be married at once; she must understand that!--an argument so
repugnant as to cause her to shake with sobs of inarticulate anger. After
this he would grow bewildered, then repentant, then contrite. In
contrition--had he known it--he was nearest to victory.

As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core
of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its
roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element
wanting in her sister Lise. It must have been largely the thought of
Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that
dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was
another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern
atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many
undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the
American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her
liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to
lose Ditmar's love....

No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy
by any means wholly on this plane of conflict. There were hours when,
Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the
office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself,
relating the little incidents she found most illuminating. And thus by
degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him. For
example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in
the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once
imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or
direction. Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms
were wanting for its expression. The idea of him that first had
captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character
controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a
power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments,
dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still
acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of
direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The rest
of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance to the
sea.

As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what
he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely
served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to
heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in
her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a
helpmate. She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of
exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful
possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy
her. Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion. She
could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself. Hope and
ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the
women who had been her predecessors. He had not spoken of these, save
once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising
leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content.
If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring
him happiness! The thought of his children troubled her most, but she was
quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it were
partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on the
woman who had been their mother. The triviality, the emptiness of his
existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with pure
pity. For she could understand it.

One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about
this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday
excursion. This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another
automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits
involving a wide choice of resorts. While he was paying for luncheon and
chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had
flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin.

"Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket? I always keep
it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb him
after they were in the automobile. "It's my lucky piece. I guess I was so
excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning I put
it into my change. Just see what you do to me!"

"Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly.

"How about you! I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had."

"You'd better not be too sure," she warned him.

"Oh, I'm not worrying. I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down
to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it
ever since. And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man
believe in luck. Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering
with the car by the canal and you came along?"

"The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him.

He laughed. "So you were on to me?" he said. "You're a foxy one!"

"Anyone could see you were only pretending. It made me angry, when I
thought of it afterwards."

"I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you. But listen to what I'm
going to tell you! It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that
time--that very morning. I was coming back to Boston from New York on the
midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on my
trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes. I didn't know I'd
lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and I
suddenly felt in my pocket. It made me sick to think it was gone. Well, I
started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my mind I'd
take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as I got
out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his glad
rags, coming out of the station! I knew him, I'd been on his car lots of
times. `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning, did I?'

"`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.'

"`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar
bill. You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes."

"`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he.

"`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him. `We'll
trade.'

"'Was you in lower seven?--so you was!' says George. Well, he had it all
right--you bet he had it. Now wasn't that queer? The very day you and I
began to know each other!"

"Wonderful!" Janet agreed. "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?"

"Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having
considered all sides of the matter. "But I've got that charm of the
secret order I belong to--that's on my chain. I guess I'll keep it in my
vest pocket."

"I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked.

"Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared. And she thought
of Lise.

"I'm not. I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to
happen. Nothing can prevent it."

"By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark. "You are like that
You're different from any person I ever knew...."

From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar. He spoke of a
large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago,
where he intended to take her. In the future he would never travel alone.
And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last National
Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was. He gloried in her
innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with impressions of his
cosmopolitanism. In this, perhaps, he was not quite so successful as he
imagined, but her eyes shone. She had never even been in a sleeping car!
For her delectation he launched into an enthusiastic description of these
vehicles, of palatial compartment cars, of limited, transcontinental
trains, where one had a stenographer and a barber at one's disposal.

"Neither of them would do me any good," she complained.

"You could go to the manicure," he said.

There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal
moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high,
festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as
Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention. He had travelled on a
special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the
company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers,
collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as
the French say, in terms of their "little" names. He dwelt on the
magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an
inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to
"the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition. No women belonged to
this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons.
Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the
cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities. And
the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified
picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United
States had been chosen. In her innocence she had believed the voters to
perform this function. Ditmar laughed.

"Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he
inquired. "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we
have to take the best we can."

Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove
and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power.
Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration.
It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded
New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede
--she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to
this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the
more fool you! A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by
day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while
others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as
little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot. If Janet had
ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature
rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her,
perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than
herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being
who might be called God. Her perplexities--for she did have them--took
the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring
though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included
in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things,
too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp. Stored within her,
sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at
Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse!
of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom. On the
other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and
hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which
his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her
fascination. At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the
rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon
and possessed.

Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office. Here
she beheld Ditmar at his best. It cannot be said that his infatuation for
her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there beside
him, he betrayed it continually. But here she was in the presence of what
had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here he
acquired unity. All his energies were bent toward the successful
execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first
of February. And as day after day went by her realization of the
magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener. Excitement was in
the air. Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only Orcutt,
the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the workers
with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of determination
to carry off this matter triumphantly. The mill seemed fairly to hum with
effort. Janet's increasing knowledge of its organization and processes
only served to heighten her admiration for the confidence Ditmar had
shown from the beginning. It was superb. And now, as the probability of
the successful execution of the task tended more and more toward
certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish, exuberant spirits.

"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I
will do it, with three days' margin, too! I'll get the last shipment off
on the twenty-eighth of January. Why, even George Chippering was afraid I
couldn't handle it. If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold
feet." Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down on
her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his
dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too. You've been a
wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders. If
Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes."

"I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied. "Only I hope he
won't die."

"I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar. "And as for you--"

"Never mind me, now," she said.

He bent over her.

"Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world."

Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her
confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they
might explore together. She was useful. Sometimes, however, he seemed to
her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too
easily, had been too uniform. His temper was quick, the prospect of
opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with
surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from
his opinions. At other times Janet had seen him overrule them ruthlessly;
humiliate them. There were days when things went wrong, when there were
delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual. On one such
day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office. His long, lean
face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an expression that
always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent having the
unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very bearing.
Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult letter,
and looked up sharply.

"Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?"

Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals. When anything happened,
he had the air of declaring, "I told you so."

"You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk
over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January."

"Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in. "The notices have been posted, as the
law requires."

"The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them. A
delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to
cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours."

"Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar. "What do they suppose?
That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do? The hands not paid by
the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day. And there's
got to be some limit to this thing. If these damned demagogues in the
legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children every
three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and
children--we might as well shut down right now. Three years ago, when
they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay. I said so
then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me. They listened
this time. Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut 'em up. No,
they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent."

Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously.

"I told them that."

"What did they say?"

"They said they thought there'd be a strike."

"Pooh! Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence. "Do you
believe that? You're always borrowing trouble, you are. They may have a
strike at one mill, the Clarendon. I hope they do, I hope Holster gets it
in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway. We won't have any
strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all the
work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or
piling them up in the banks. It's all bluff."

"There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W. last night. A
committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy
satisfaction in the prospect of disaster.

"The I. W. W.! My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here
wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.? Those anarchists haven't got
any organization. Can't you get that through your head?"

"All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off. Janet felt rather sorry for
him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating. But
Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed
against the unfortunate superintendent.

"Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years
could be such a fool?" he demanded. "The I. W. W.! Why not the Ku Klux?
He must think I haven't anything to do but chin. I don't know why I keep
him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy."

His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when
his temper got the better of him. Janet did not reply, but sat with her
pencil poised over her book.

"Let's see, where was I?" he asked. "I can't finish that letter now. Go
out and do the others."

Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in
streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's
heart was heavy. Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and
preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a
clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were
often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance
small consolation. She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions
expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old
woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern
for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but
temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her. That other passion was
paramount. What was she beside it? Would he hesitate for a moment to
sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them? The tempestuousness of
these thoughts, when they took possession of her, hinting as they did of
possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and unrevealed, astonished
and frightened her; she sought to thrust them away, to reassure herself
that his concern for the successful delivery of the Bradlaugh order was
natural. During the morning, in the intervals between interviews with the
superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and she found herself
inconsistently resenting the absence of those expressions of
endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for indulgence in which she
had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came to her rescue, fuel was
added to her feeling by the fact that he did not seem to notice her
coolness. Since he failed to appear after lunch, she knew he must be
investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at six o'clock, when
he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left the office. An odour
of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her aware of the presence of
Miss Lottie Myers.

"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the
stairs. "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after six,
do you?"

"Oh, sometimes," said Janet.

"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared. "But I'm
not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it."

"I don't suppose you are," said Janet.

For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more
impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered. They crossed the bridge
in silence. "Well, ta-ta," she said. "If you like it, it's up to you.
Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips
defiantly. And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and
apprehension. Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made
the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie
Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour. She felt a mad, primitive
desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel
her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor
impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and
degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward. Was it a
misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to
say?...

In Fillmore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her
body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her
glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in
one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless
heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled
with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows,
and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins. Janet's eyes
fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so
painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face
and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than
an ankle. The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight
of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names
which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish
image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of
the reflecting American provincial. Some such responsive quiver, akin to
disgust, Janet herself experienced.

"It's the very last scream," Lise was saying. "And say, if I owned a ball
dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right! Can I have the pleasure
of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?" With deft and rapid fingers she lead
parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over the left
eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head, inserting
here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the cracked back,
and holding it up behind her. Finally, when the operation was finished to
her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon in the picture,
"I get you!" Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced a hat. "You sure
had my number when you guessed the feathers on that other would get
draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously ignoring their
former unpleasantness on the subject. When she had pinned it on she bent
mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed. "How d'you like my new
toque? Peekaboo! That's the way the guys rubberneck to see if you're good
lookin'."

Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her
eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime
and executed mincing steps of the maxixe. Fumbling in the upper drawer
for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the
bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it
rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin. Casting a suspicious,
lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered
the coin with her foot.

"Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle. Then removing her
foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously. To her amazement her sister
made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the
episode. Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions, a
"third degree," as she would have put it. She snapped the bag together,
drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with characteristic
audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face between her hands and
kissing her.

"Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear
them.

Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask
Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and
remained miraculously unspent. It was possible, but highly incredible.
And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for! The
sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer
feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting
with Lottie Myers. And by some untoward association she was reminded of a
conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon following
their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay envelope, she had
found twenty dollars.

"Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite
sure. He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could
not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with
the value of her services.... But now she asked herself again, was she
worth it? or was it merely--part of her price? Going to the wardrobe and
opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she
discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose
rescued from the cluster he had given her. The petals were dry, yet they
gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to
her face. Janet wept....

The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the
letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized
his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young
Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted
on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were
restored. He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager look
with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to
anticipate as they swept the room in search of her. And when they fell on
her he closed the door and came forward impetuously. But her exclamation
caused him to halt in bewilderment.

"Don't touch me!" she said.

And he stammered out, as he stood over her:--"What's the matter?"

"Everything. You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did."

"Don't love you!" he repeated. "My God, what's the trouble now? What have
I done?"

"Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you
can't do. You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill
--when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive."

He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense
desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the
open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal. She fought
him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to
him.

"You little tigress!" he said, as he held her. "You were jealous--were
you--jealous of the mill?" And he laughed again. "I'd like to see you
with something really to be jealous about. So you love me like that, do
you?"

She could feel his heart beating against her.

"I won't be neglected," she told him tensely. "I want all of you--if I
can't have all of you, I don't want any. Do you understand?"

"Do I understand? Well, I guess I do."

"You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the
swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering
resentment. She had not intended to surrender. "You forgot all about me,
you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt. Oh, I was hurt!
And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know
without your saying it."

He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by
this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood.
And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely
believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded
all his force to overcome. Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms
she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly
compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty
seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman,
not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds
of experience....

Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window. The day
was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a
soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge.

"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly,
exultantly....




CHAPTER XII

It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants,
welcome to the poor. But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of
sunshine. The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore
Street. Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her,
and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself. And all
the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were
banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! The
words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt of a
song. What did the weather matter?

When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to
fall. But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance
down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the
coat she had now come to regard as her own. He buttoned down the curtains
and took her in his arms.

"What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?"

"Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said. "I have the chains on, I
can get through anything in this car."

He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove
it out of the rutty lane into the state road. The snow grew thicker and
thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery
flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet
caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway.

The ground was spread with fleece. Occasionally, and with startling
suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the
whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared. Presently, through the veil,
she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had
visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common
had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare
branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white
--heavy with leaf. Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world
houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her. And she found
herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for
a carpenter. All that seemed to have taken place in a past life. She
asked Ditmar where he was going.

"Boston," he told her. "There's no other place to go."

"But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this."

"Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical
smile. "How about it, little girl?" It was a term of endearment derived,
undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes indulged.

She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she could
think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the world
shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? They were
on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about Boston, to
try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it had held
before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of childhood
when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it. Traces
remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had walked
about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately houses
with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered space
where children were playing. And her childish verdict, persisting to-day,
was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded wealth
and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced they must
contain, were not for her! Some of the panes of glass in their windows
were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking her
father the reason! He hadn't known. This purple quality had somehow
steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood
for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, they
were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad it
would have been quite as credible--and incredible. Wherever they were
going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble
before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the
white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty....

And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were
the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of
the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the
snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes melted
silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came
led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told her,
as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and
fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far
side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And
here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one
chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see, with
just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to notice,
pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin Chippering
mansions standing side by side. Save for these shrines--for such in some
sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing more than a
collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and social position
made unassailable. But to-day he, too, was excited. Never had he been
more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience; and he to whom it
had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her, who seemed able to
summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place from out of the
snow. Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the reflection of some
mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed. And in her delight, vicariously
his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more delight to come,
which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast deepening snow he
drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down the other,
encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the top of Park
Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose golden dome, seen
through the veil, was tinged with blue. Boston! Why not Russia? Janet was
speechless for sheer lack of words to describe what she felt....

At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in
front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet
demanded where they were.

"Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied. She noticed that he
was shivering.

"Are you cold?" she inquired with concern.

"I guess I am, a little," he replied. "I don't know why I should be, in a
fur coat. But I'll be warm soon enough, now."

A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping
them to alight. And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the
entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved
with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches
were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set
in the intervals between them.

"Sit down a moment," he said to her. "I must telephone to have somebody
take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter."

She sat down on one of the benches. The soft light, the warmth, the
exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the
strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all
contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing. She could not think.
She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the utmost
flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face wore the
expression of one in a dream. Presently she saw Ditmar returning followed
by a boy in a blue uniform.

"All right," he said. At the end of the corridor was an elevator in which
they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a key
in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room. Between its windows
was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the floor, on
which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase filled with
dusky roses. Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their fragrance, glanced
around the room. The hangings, the wall-paper, the carpet, the velvet
upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge in the corner were
of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece, with its English
coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion of the Georgian
period. The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed to one. And in the
large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she supposed, dreamily,
to be herself. The bell boy was taking off her coat, which he hung, with
Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner.

"Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked.

"Sure," said Ditmar. "And tell them to hurry up with lunch."

The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him.

"We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed.

"Why not? I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and when
I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned." He
placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze. "Isn't it
cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him. His own
hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold.

"You are cold!" she said.

"Not now--not now," he replied. The queer vibrations were in his voice
that she had heard before. "Sweetheart! This is the best yet, isn't it?
And after that trip in the storm!"

"It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking
around her once more. "I never was in a room like this."

"Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted. "Sit down beside
the fire, and get warm yourself."

She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As
usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of
appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the
inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of
woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as
though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she
might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter of
course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say
anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the
excellences of the hotel. She did not appear to hear him, her eyes
lingering on the room, until presently she asked:--"What's the name of
this hotel?"

He told her.

"I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a
private room."

"Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this
statement impartially added to his perplexity. "Well," he was able to
answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?" He leaned toward
her, he put his hand on hers. "The manager here is an old friend of mine.
He knows we're as good as married."

"Another old friend!" she queried. And the touch of humour, in spite of
his taut nerves, delighted him.

"Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously. "I've got 'em everywhere, as
thick as landmarks."

"You seem to," she said.

"I hope you're hungry," he said.

"Not very," she replied. "It's all so strange--this day, Claude. It's
like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place,
and--and being with you."

"You still love me?" he cried, getting up.

"You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his.
And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never
seen before.... "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her. "You're
so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it."

"And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!"
And she smiled up at him.

Ditmar had known a moment of awe.... Suddenly he took her face between
his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly. His hands
trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm.

"Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously.

And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!"

Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which,
nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at
the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it. Two waiters
entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding
above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses.

"I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as
he served them. "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a
yellow liquid.

She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily.

"What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and
took a drink of water.

"It's horrid!" she cried.

"Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her. "You'll be crazy about
'em."

"I never want to taste another," she declared.

He laughed again. He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying
its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the
extent of her inexperience. She was, in truth, untouched by the world
--the world in which he had lived. He pulled out her chair for her and
she sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on
either side of a plate of oysters. Oysters served in this fashion,
needless to say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or
in any Hampton restaurant where she had lunched. But she saw that Ditmar
had chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example.

"You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed.

She touched one, delicately, with her fork.

"They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus
was by no means unknown to her. Lise had often boasted of a taste for
oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red
catsup in a "cocktail."

"They're alive, but they don't know it. They won't eat you," Ditmar
replied gleefully. "Squeeze a little lemon on one." Another sort of
woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish.

She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed
it quickly.

"Well?" he said. "It isn't bad, is it?"

"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she
ate the rest of them.

"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape,
right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had
once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a
bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had lent a
zest to his life. "We'll roll down there together some day next summer,
little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a day
and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow 'em
as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's some
trick to open 'em."

He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving to
adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; to
the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot plates
before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy soup, a
fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully disguised, a
breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of coffee.
Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were aroused in
her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to eat one's
meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical hunger was
satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank in the
caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the heavy
scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to the
storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows,
powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold,
black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and
limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a
nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep
within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this
illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to
believe in the illusion!

Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from
that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow. She
loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were
moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an
objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from
the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it
crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this?
What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense
of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling
her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little
by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known,
that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an
expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more, as
he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, as
he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the
waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she
rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains,
the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light;
and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.

"I'd like to be able to play!" she said.

"You can learn," he told her.

"I'm too old!"

He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.

Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
them. The picture fascinated Janet.

"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked.

"What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he
said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to
the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book
again--we'll read it together."

Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the
other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a
small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
pearls.

"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed.

"Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look!" he said. "I'll buy you
pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't
compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls."

"No, no," she cried. "I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them.
Please!" She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away from
him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring,
supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her,
she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning
kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him
--but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he,
stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she
craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them dizzily
--whither? The sheer sweetness and terror of it!

"Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately. "You mustn't!"

"Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can.
Won't you trust me? For God's sake, don't be cruel. You're my wife,
now--"

His voice seemed to come from a great distance. And from a great
distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters.

"Do you love me?--will you love me always--always?"

And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet." He had found
her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the
room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased....

The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening
Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the
train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She knew that
something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had
irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that
same morning--an age ago. But she was unable to realize the
metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime,
exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to
feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of people
returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller cities north
of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she began, in a
detached way, to observe them. Their aspects, their speech and manners
had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without arousing
the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which normally should
have followed. Ordinarily she might have felt a certain sympathy for the
fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily staring through
his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle would surely
have moved her to disgust. Two couples were seated vis-a-vis, the men
apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was wearing. In
spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they pulled it from
her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself with tolerant
amusement. Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton with an inane
guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her while he
presented the tickets. Janet beheld all this as one sees dancers through
a glass, without hearing the music.

Behind her two men fell into conversation.

"I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open
winter, too."

"Look out for them when they start in mild!"

"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until
morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got to
watch every minute...."

Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at
the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were discussing
with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the fifty-four
hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They denounced the mill
owners.

"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we
goin' to have a strike sure."

"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It
will be cold winter, now."

Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the
countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed
out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms.
Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again
the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that
journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she
heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves
of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of
music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming to
behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little and
great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in the
corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's hand
working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness--for
her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself saying:--"It was my fault
as much as yours."

And his vehement reply:--"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it
was wonderful, Janet. I can't bear to see you sad."

To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken
those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten?
And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad." What she had felt indeed
was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself
was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so
different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to be
compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he
himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had
actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached
the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as
he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the
quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were
these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of
life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though
she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a
fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her....

At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common,
following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to
Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room
door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the
lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday
newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap.

"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed.
"Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?"

"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?"

"Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so
uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you didn't
come home for supper I was considerably worried."

Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her
gloves.

"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced.

For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the
old-fashioned clock.

"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length. "You're going to marry Mr. Ditmar!"

Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he
stared at her.

"Not right away," said Janet.

"Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost
resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar
just like you were talking about the weather."

Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious
lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen
like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a
suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift perception
of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and kissed her. It
was as though the relation between them were reversed, and the daughter
had now become the mother and the comforter.

"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward. His words
incited Hannah to protest.

"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed.

"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!" he
went on, unheeding, jubilant. "You'll drop in and see the old people once
in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?"

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet.

"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he
stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--"

"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he
wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him."

"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet.

"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly. "We can't any of us tell
till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see
him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street."
The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their
own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't get
a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then."

"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet.

"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted. "We
may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says."

"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward
assured her.

"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't
mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very busy
now,--he hasn't made any plans."

"I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. "She's
been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all."

"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed. He could
not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with
benevolence. "Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can expect
another Mr. Ditmar...."

"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night."
She rose and kissed Janet again. "I just can't believe it," she declared,
"but I guess it's so if you say it is."

"Of course it's so," said Edward.

"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah....

Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of
Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they
say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached
her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not
been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because the
news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that she
was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now that
reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the scope of
her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered circumstance
long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that she was
tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion there
remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her,
unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her
to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the
pillow she fell asleep....

When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay
awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The discovery
of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right hand was
broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching out to save
something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on a table with
a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden flaring up of this
trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, to light a fuse
along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating redly all the
events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to possess, as her
very own, these precious, passionate memories of life lived at last to
fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself and taken--all. A
longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take an early train, he
would be at the office by nine. How could she wait until then?

With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out
her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right
side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear.

"Lise!" she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And Janet,
trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched for
the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise; her clothes,
which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were nowhere to be
seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence of several
knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden sickness of
apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the doors. In the
bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the purple
feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket Lise
wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather. That was all.... Janet sank
down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together, overwhelmed by the
sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked, all unsuspected, in
the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in which she herself was
somehow involved. Just why this was so, she could not for the moment
declare. The room was cold, she was clad only in a nightdress, but surges
of heat ran through her body. What should she do? She must think. But
thought was impossible. She got up and closed the window and began to
dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again to stand motionless.
In one such moment there entered her mind an incident that oddly had made
little impression at the time of its occurrence because she, Janet, had
been blinded by the prospect of her own happiness--that happiness which,
a few minutes ago, had seemed so real and vital a thing! And it was the
memory of this incident that suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all
of Lise's conduct during the past months--her accidental dropping of the
vanity case and the gold coin! Now she knew for a certainty what had
happened to her sister.

Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled
with the smell of frying meat. Streaks of grease smoke floated
fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the frying-pan in
one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove. Wisps of
her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot
at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she
looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb
--pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a
staggering insight into life itself. Hannah had once been young,
desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her. Janet
wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed
it now. But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's
face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the
foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks.

"Where's Lise?"

And Janet could not answer. She shook her head. Hannah dropped the fork,
the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing Janet
by the shoulders.

"Is she gone? I knew it, I felt it all along. I thought she'd done
something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I
couldn't--I couldn't! And now she's gone. Oh, my God, I'll never forgive
myself!"

The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible. For an instant
only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the kitchen
chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall. Her face twitched.
Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her mother's
eyes. She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to have
lived through ages of misery and tragedy.... She was aware of a pungent
odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the steak. Now
and then she glanced at Hannah. Grief seemed to have frozen her. Then,
from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in the
doorway.

"Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked. From where he stood
he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her
figure. His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the
rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him.

"Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly.

Janet went to him. But it was Hannah who spoke.

"Lise has gone," she said.

"Lise--gone," Edward repeated. "Gone where?"

"She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous,
dulled voice.

Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to
break the silence.

"She didn't come home last night, father."

"Didn't come home? Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said.

It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful.

"No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her
again. My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have
guessed it. Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!"

Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat. So
appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise,
wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock, his
lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and put his
hand on her shoulder.

"There, there, mother," he pleaded. "If she's gone, we'll find her, we'll
bring her back to you."

Hannah shook her head. She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over
to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the
dish.

"Go in there and set down, Edward," she said. "I guess we've got to have
breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not."

It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about
her tasks automatically. And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become
aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through
many vicissitudes, shattered at last. He spilled his coffee when he tried
to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room, searching
for his overcoat. It was Janet who found it and helped him on with it. He
tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for the mill. Janet
began to remove the dishes from the table.

"You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah.

"I've had all I want," Janet replied.

Hannah followed her into the kitchen. The scarcely touched food was laid
aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the
sink and let the water run. She turned to Janet and seized her hands
convulsively.

"Let me do this, mother," said Janet. She knew her mother was thinking of
the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released her
hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung.

"You sit down, mother," she said.

Hannah would not. They finished the dishes together in silence while the
light of the new day stole in through the windows. Janet went into her
room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and
rubbers. Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her.

"It ain't going to spoil your happiness?"

But Janet could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down the
stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and out
of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow, which
the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke, leaving on
the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by waves on the
sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning hatefully beautiful.
In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and labouring
energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny Tiernan,
the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind.

"Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said. "Now, if you'd only waited awhile,
I'd have had it as clean as a parlour. It's fine weather for coal bills."

She halted.

"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?"

Johnny looked at her.

"Why sure," he said. Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly
opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to
the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably. He placed a
chair for her. "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked.

"It's about my sister," said Janet.

"Miss Lise?"

"I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said
Janet.

Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister. In
spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of
her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the
tragedy behind her apparent calmness. He met her magnificently.

"Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard
Duval--when he's been in town. He travels for a Boston shoe house,
Humphrey and Gillmount."

"I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet. "I thought you
might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had
seen them. She left home yesterday morning."

For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his
fingers running through his bristly hair.

"Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet. It's me that can
find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you. Just you stay
here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys.
I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it."

He seized his overcoat and departed. Presently the sun, glinting on the
sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting
its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench
with the shears lying across the vise. Once she thought of Ditmar
arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her.... The
sound of a bell made her jump. Mr. Tiernan had returned.

"She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating
a fact.

Mr. Tiernan nodded.

"They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning. Eddy Colahan
was at the depot."

Janet rose. "Thank you," she said simply.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I'm going to Boston," she answered. "I'm going to find out where she
is."

"Then it's me that's going with you," he announced.

"Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested. "I couldn't let you do that."

"And why not?" he demanded. "I've got a little business there myself. I'm
proud to go with you. It's your sister you want, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady? How will you
find your sister?"

"Do you think you can find her?"

"Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently. He had evidently made
up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded. "Haven't
I good friends in Boston?" By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he
completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential
members of his race of the Boston police department. Pulling out a large
nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he
locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station. Mr.
Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow. The dry snow squeaked under
his feet.

After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the
smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning
the Charles River by the North Station. All the way to Boston she had sat
gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields,
incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of
feeling commensurate with the situation. She did not know what she would
say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's
expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote. When the
train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over
its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of
dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth
with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide. In front of
the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth. They
passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped, where
Ditmar had bidden her good-bye. Something stirred within her, became a
shooting pain.... She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do.

"I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her.
And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the
darkness of the subway. Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few
blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle
were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally." Mr.
Tiernan entered.

"Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head
towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman
was seated at a desk under a drop light.

"Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up.

"It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan. "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady
friend of mine from Hampton."

Mr. Mulally rose and bowed.

"How do ye do, ma'am," he said.

"I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued. "I
thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I
was gone."

"With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with
alacrity. "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye."

When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a
grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until
Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached
the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest.

"Well, I caught him. It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going
out on the road again, up to Maine. I know where Miss Lise is."

"He told you!" exclaimed Janet.

"He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him. He was all for bluffing
at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white as his
collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right he's
heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch of
pride.

"What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously.

"Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan. "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet. I
was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss. I'm guessing he won't
take much pleasure on this trip."

She asked for no more details.




CHAPTER XIII

Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car
going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a
broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows
of boarding--and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner,
walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan
scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a
basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he
pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed
vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was
cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in
a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face
like a fungus grown in darkness.

"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded.

"You've got the wrong place. There ain't no one of that name here," said
the woman.

"There ain't! All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the door
in spite of her. "If you don't let this young lady see her quick, there's
trouble coming to you."

"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear.

"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared. "I know all about you, and I
know all about Duval. If you don't want any trouble you won't make any,
and you'll take this young lady to her sister. I'll wait here for you,
Miss Janet," he added.

"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know,"
the woman replied sullenly. "If you mean that couple that came here
yesterday--"

She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed,
nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke
which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below,
seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil. A terror
seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming
impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day. In the dark
hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front
room.

"She's in there, unless she's gone out." And indeed a voice was heard
petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice! Janet hesitated, her
hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels. Then, as she pushed
open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she found
herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly
photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the
mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread
fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains. The bed was
unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and
the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug
store--she recognized Lise's vanity case. The effect of all this,
integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror. Janet could not speak.
She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but
stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble
top and raised sides. She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat.
It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly.

"You!" she exclaimed. "What the--what brought you here?"

"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated.

"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you
where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like
this?"

For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could
preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the
evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed
actually to feel them brushing against her.

"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!"

"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for? Why
would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two years?
I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little girl and
march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show standing
behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm all for
easy street when it comes to a home like that."

Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting,
almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the
monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself! She dared not
complete the thought, now.

"But this!" she exclaimed.

"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth
Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no whistles
hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There ain't no
geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's the matter
with it?"

Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle.

"What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter
with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it
means, or you'd come home with me."

"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly.
"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be
smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway."

"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk
like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He
won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets."

A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes.

"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said.
"They're all the same, to girls like us."

Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating. Was this a hazard on
Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge? And yet what did it matter
whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were
all alike? Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only
difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without
illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while
she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real
choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this
detestable house? Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the box
of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, and by
some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's Sunday
excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders she
herself had taken. Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's, hell?... And
was. Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and luxury to be
condemned because she had believed her own to be higher? Did not both
lead to destruction? The weight that had lain on her breast since the
siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and touched
the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable.

"It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same."

Lise was staring at her.

"My God!" she exclaimed. "You?"

"Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it? Stay here
with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws you
out on the street? Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill him."

Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow. But a
new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong
as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment. And the words Lise had
spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning.

"I'm going to have a baby...."

Lise was going to have a child! Why hadn't she guessed it? A child!
Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child! This enlightenment as to Lise's
condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought
with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented
then yielded to. The bond between them, instead of snapping, had
inexplicably strengthened. And Lise, despite her degradation, was more
than ever her sister! Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat
down beside Lise and put an arm around her.

"He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all
right. And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me
he was married already."

"What?" Janet exclaimed.

"Sure! He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston. That was a twenty-one
round knockout! Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he blew
into Hampton last Friday! But he said he couldn't help it--he loved me."
Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her wrongs,
dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief. "Well, while he'd been
away--this thing came. I didn't know what was the matter at first, and
when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill myself. When
I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it. Say, I was a
goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically.

"And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?"

"I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he
didn't. Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's!
But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was
right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help
himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk."

Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet.

"Do you love him?" she asked.

"Say, what is love?" Lise demanded. "Do you ever run into it outside of
the movies? Do I love him? Well, he's a good looker and a fancy dresser,
he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute. If he hadn't
put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore. I don't know he ain't so
bad. He's weak, that's the trouble with him."

This was the climax! Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from
wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's
temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a
moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were
incomprehensible to Janet.

"Get on to this," Lise adjured her. "When I first was acquainted with him
he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year from
Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm. He had me
razzle-dazzled. He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say.
Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue
shopping in a limousine. Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him."

"Liking him!" cried Janet passionately. "I'd kill him that's what I'd
do."

Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration.

"That's where you and me is different," she declared. "I wish I was like
that, but I ain't. And where would I come in? Now you're wise why I can't
go back to Hampton. Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my eyes
out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back."

"What are you going to do?" Janet demanded.

"Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him. Maybe it's
because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too. When you dropped in I was
just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all wore
out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston. And I
thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading about in
the paper. Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to stay in
bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to gaze at the
girls behind the counter and ask the price of things. I'm going to
Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm going to
do."

"But--?" Janet found words inadequate.

Lise understood her.

"Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon."

"Where?"

"The doctor's. Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital." Lise gave a
slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid.
"Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take
it early."

For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply.

"Lise! That's a crime!" she cried.

"Crime, nothing!" retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant. "Say,
I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without
catching on to a few things! What do you take me for! What'd I do with a
baby?"

What indeed! The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the
veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock
and crushed soil beneath. This was reality! What right had society to
compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget,
perhaps, other children of suffering? Were not she and Lise of the
exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more
fortunate enjoyed unscathed? And now, for their natural cravings, their
family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts! Neither
Lise nor she had had a chance. She saw that, now. The scorching
revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy
and revenge. Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might
be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not. A wild desire seized her
to get back to Hampton.

"Give me the address of the hospital," she said.

"Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado. "Do you think I'm going to let
you butt into this? I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your
own business."

Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a
piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box.

"Give me the address," she insisted.

"Say, what are you going to do?"

"I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you."

"Anything happens! What do you mean?" Janet's words had frightened Lise,
the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her. But above all, she
was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude of
steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are
incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible.
"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined. "The place is all right
--he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't. It costs something, too.
Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access
of alarm.

"If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd,
impersonal tone her voice had acquired. "You must write me as soon--as
soon as it is over. Do you understand?"

"Honest to God I will," Lise assured her.

"And you mustn't come back to a house like this."

"Where'll I go?" Lise asked.

"I don't know. We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet,
significantly.

"You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed.

"No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to. Mr.
Tiernan has seen him. Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me."

"Johnny Tiernan! Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?"

Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag.

"Good-bye, Lise," she said. "I'll come down again I'll come down whenever
you want me." Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her, sobbing. For a
while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently detached herself.
She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within her seemed to have
hardened--something that pity could not melt, possessing her and
thrusting heron to action. She knew not what action. So strong was this
thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits of that darkened
house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan, who opened the
door for her to pass out. Once in the street, she breathed deeply of the
sunlit air. Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's glance of comprehension....
When they arrived at the North Station he said:--"You'll be wanting a
bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her head he did not press
her to eat. He told her that a train for Hampton left in ten minutes. "I
think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day, as long as I'm here," he
added.

She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he
cut her short.

"It's glad I was to help you," he assured her. "And if there's anything
more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on
Johnny Tiernan, won't you?"

He left her at the gate. He had intruded with no advice, he had offered
no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise. His
confidence in her seemed never to have wavered. He had respected, perhaps
partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense of
gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their
bitterness. Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world. He was a
man.

No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan
utterly. Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own
experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was
able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between
her case and Lise's. Despite the fact that the memories she had cherished
were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth and compare
them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of Lise. Were
her own any less tawdry? Only she, Janet, had been the greater fool of
the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself to dream, to
believe that what she had done had been for love, for light! because she
had not listened to the warning voice within her! It had always been on
the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had loved to linger,
and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's experience, she saw
them all as false. It seemed incredible, now, that she had ever deceived
herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry her, that he loved her
enough to make her his wife. Nor was it necessary to summon and marshal
incidents to support this view, they came of themselves, crowding one
another, a cumulative and appalling array of evidence, before which she
stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity. And in the events of
yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld a deliberate and
prearranged plan for her betrayal. Had he not telephoned to Boston for
the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every detail of what had
subsequently happened? Was there any essential difference between the
methods of Ditmar and Duval? Both were skilled in the same art, and
Ditmar was the cleverer of the two. It had only needed her meeting with
Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her faith and her
love, sullied and besmirched them. And then came the odd reflection,--how
strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for herself and Lise!

The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorching hatred that
had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge. Occasionally,
however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the recollection of
what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do; and though the
idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her, though she
achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation in herself
enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having endorsed
it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a world that
had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was black and
detestable. Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a function of the
hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness, had made Ditmar
merely the personification of that world. From time to time her hands
clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran through her, the
craving for action became so intense she could scarcely refrain from
rising in her seat.

By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east,
gathering the clouds once more. The brilliancy of the morning had given
place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as
the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom.
As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an
unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way
through them, why they were there, what they were talking about? One
determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar.
Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from
inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of
her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being
prepared for the meeting. Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street,
she crossed it. But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance
drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where
it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill. In the
middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd. A girl,
evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort, hurried
toward her from the direction of the mill itself. Janet accosted her.

"It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the
question. "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit
when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through
the mill, and when they came into our room I left. I didn't want no
trouble with 'em. It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two
hours. You've heard about it, I guess."

Janet nodded.

"They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl
continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers. And they voted to
strike. They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too."

"And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly.

"I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these
foreigners are going on--they're crazy. But say," the girl added, "it
ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it? They never done it two years
ago when the law came down to fifty-six."

Janet did not wait to reply. While listening to this explanation,
excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering
force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her
until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in
their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit
shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives. Now she was on the outskirts
of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the Clarendon. It
spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every minute, until
presently she was hemmed in. Here and there hoarse shouts of approval and
cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging their audiences
in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were waved; and suddenly,
in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible movements to which mobs
are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of the Hawthorne Street
track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its bell keeping pace
with the beating of Janet's heart. A dark Sicilian, holding aloft the
green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear platform and
began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, pulling the
bellcord the while. Three or four policemen fought their way to the spot,
striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the face of the
alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of power.

Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd. She wanted to
savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be
played upon by these sallow, stubby-bearded exhorters, whose menacing
tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical
words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim
suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now
somehow summoned to share. That these were the intruders whom she, as a
native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her. The
racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship. Their
anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have done, the
revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the babel to
which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice lifted
up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited and
oppressed. She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their
betrayers her betrayers.

Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but
unconsciously awaiting. Another cry like that had rung out in another mob
across the seas more than a century before. "Ala Bastille!" became "To
the Chippering!" Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds
repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could
be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore. "To the
Chippering!" It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle. Was she
shouting it, too? A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse
that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward
the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along. Nay, it seemed as if
the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she
herself had released and was guiding it! Her feet were wet as she
ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that. The
odour of humanity was in her nostrils. On the left a gaunt Jew pressed
against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her
shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty.
Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips
were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above
the shouting. All about Janet were dark, awakening faces....

It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a
point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology,
psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"
--which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck
wax-like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to
conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and
Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes
of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the Republic's
wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other barbarians
before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering palaces on
the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of America! They
appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke into the
lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the piles and
rush out again, armed with billets....

Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the
street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside
the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in
front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across
the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the
whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The
halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of their
charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow-filled
tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, hurled
their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to measure the
distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a more
terrible and deliberate significance. A shout of triumph announced that
the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured in
between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered stairways
and spreading through the compartments of the mill. More ominous than the
tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this absorption of
the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the power was shut
off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. Pinioned against
the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot where, the first
evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to cross. Every
crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave her a fierce
throb of joy. She had not expected the gates to yield--her father must
have insecurely fastened them. Gaining the farther side of the canal, she
perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse shaking his
fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him unheeding. His
look arrested her. His face was livid, his eyes were red with anger, he
stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to possess. She
had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation against
foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in which he had
been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect for the
convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was ready to
fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these people sounded
blasphemous in Janet's ears.

"Father!" she cried. "Father!"

He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to
draw her to the wall beside him. But she resisted. There sprang from her
lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?" She was, indeed,
amazed at having spoken it.

"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly. "We've been looking for him
everywhere. My God, to think that this should happen with me at the
gates!" he lamented. "Go home, Janet. You can't tell what'll happen, what
these fiends will do, you may get hurt. You've got no business here."
Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned from her
in desperation. "Get 'em out! Far God's sake, can't you get 'em out
before they ruin the machines?"

But Janet waited no longer. Pushing her way frantically through the
people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way
into one of the spinning rooms. The frames were stilled, the overseer and
second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders
harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed
and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in
the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the
strike. Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out,
the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices.
Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing
through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr.
Caldwell. He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling
her by name. She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:--

"Where's Mr. Ditmar?"

Caldwell shook his head. His answer was the same as Edward's. "I don't
know," he shouted excitedly above the noise. "We've got to get this mob
out before they do any damage."

He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and
then she went on. These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard
communicating by a little gate with the office entrance. The door of the
vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her,
permitted her to enter. The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells
and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had
gone. The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in the
corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about her
at the objects there so poignantly familiar. She took off her coat. His
desk was littered with books and papers, and she started, mechanically,
to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the shelves, sorting
out the letters and putting them in the basket. She could not herself
have told why she should take up again these trivial tasks as though no
cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever the world of
yesterday from that of to-morrow. With a movement suggestive of
tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the glass rack
when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood transfixed,
listening intently. There were footsteps in the corridor, the voices came
nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the others. It was
Ditmar's! Nothing had happened to him! Dropping the pen, she went over to
the window, staring out over the grey waters, trembling so violently that
she could scarcely stand.

She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell,
Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers. Some one turned on
the electric switch, darkening the scene without. Ditmar continued to
speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage.

"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded. "That's what
I want to know! There was plenty of time after they turned the corner of
East Street. You might have guessed what they would do. But instead of
that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and intimidate our
own people." He called the strikers an unprintable name, and though Janet
stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he gave no sign of
being aware of her presence.

"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone
quivering with excitement and apprehension. "They really didn't give us a
chance--that's the truth. They were down Canal Street and over the bridge
before we knew it."

"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted. "I can't
afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody--" and he broke
out in another tirade against the intruders. "By God, I'll fix 'em for
this--I'll crush 'em. And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll see
that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em, kept
the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work. If they desert me
now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became an
inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on
Janet. She had turned, but her look made no impression on him. "Call up
the Chief of Police," he said.

Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the
receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the
department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded
deputies. The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the
explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall. In making an
appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city
government. And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he
gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences,
explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the
Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the
Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a
force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the
operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike.
Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping
out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been
the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard it,
could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was
determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and
oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances
of their own. Until to-day her eyes had been sealed. In agony they had
been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil;
and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty. She had
needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also
was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure
and profit. He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing a
woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some
impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done
her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for
her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be
able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken
within her soul.... The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited
with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and
two of the most influential directors. These conversations had covered
the space of an hour or more. And perhaps as a result of self-suggestion,
of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering, and the
directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's habitual
self-confidence was gradually restored. And when at last he hung up the
instrument and turned to her, though still furious against the strikers,
his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of victory.

"They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again. It's that damned
Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let
him. It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them. I'll
show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow
morning."

He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy! She did, not reply, but
picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it.

"Where are you going?" he demanded. And she replied laconically, "Home."

"Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her.

"You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him.

"I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door. "Where have you
been?--where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I--I was
afraid you might be sick."

"Were you?" she said. "I'm all right. I had business in Boston."

"Why didn't you telephone me? In Boston?" he repeated.

She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him.

"What's the matter?" he cried. "I've been worried about you all day
--until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had
happened."

"You might have asked my father," she said.

"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!"

His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that
something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had
congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last
been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this
whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at
the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere
with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of
humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had
not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude.
As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that
there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn
on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him.

"I hate you!" she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate,
concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic
quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it--before which he
physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning.

"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly.

"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on. Her hands
were busy with the buttons of her coat.

"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get
tired of me--the way you've done with other women. It's just the same
with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're
cattle. If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they can
starve for all you care."

"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "What have I done to
you, Janet? I love you, I need you!"

"Love me!" she repeated. "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen
it--I know. As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you, you
love me. And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden,
passionate vehemence. "I never knew before, but I know now. I've been
with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they
battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash
your windows, too, to blow up your mill."

"What are you saying? You came here with the strikers? you were with that
mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly.

"Yes, I was in that mob. I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't
belong here, with you. But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd
hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as
if you'd never seen me before. I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm
glad I had a chance to tell you this."

"My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to
collect himself. "You trusted me yesterday. What's happened to change
you? Won't you tell me? It's nothing I've done--I swear. And what do you
mean when you say you were in that mob? I was almost crazy when I came
back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand? It
wasn't that I didn't think of you. I'd been worrying about you all day.
Look at this thing sensibly. I love you, I can't get along without
you--I'll marry you. I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as
soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike. It won't take long."

"Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again. "I'll tell you
where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in
a house, in Boston. I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've
been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that
brought her there. Would you marry me now--with my sister there? And am I
any different from her? You you've made me just like her." Her voice had
broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no
heed.

Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her.

"If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself."

And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had
left the office and was running down the stairs....




CHAPTER XIV

What was happening to Hampton? Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners,
dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of
the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered
structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a
pack of cards! Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra" that
the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens became
panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces hitherto
unrecognized and unknown. Who was to tell these solid, educated business
men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and in which
they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they thought
it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the past? that
human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the strata of
civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions and
institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human
passions? that their city was not of special, but of universal
significance? And how were these, who still believed themselves to be
dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments
change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies? When night
fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in
a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City
Hall.

Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a
philosophy. Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama
peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were
alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour
unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in
Hampton that day. He at least knew what ought to be done, and even before
his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and emphatic
terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious duty. These
strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions--by
comparison respectable--held aloof from them. Here, in effect, was his
argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and
deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local
militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the
plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear. He demanded
from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right
to continue at work was inalienable. He was listened to with sympathy and
respect--but nothing was done! The world had turned upside down indeed if
the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of the agent of
the Chippering Mill! American institutions were a failure! But such was
the fact. Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the retributions
of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict in the face
of their obvious duty.

By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his
way to the mill. In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across the
ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners;
seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close
to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened,
perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of the
eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a distance,
was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, to
emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness
lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint
designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he was
galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for action;
physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he quickened his
steps he itched to seize with his own hands these foreigners who had
dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had had the audacity to
challenge the principles of his government which welcomed them to its
shores. He would have liked to wring their necks. His philosophy, too,
was environmental. And beneath this wrath, stimulating and energizing it
the more, was the ache in his soul from the loss for which he held these
enemies responsible. Two days ago happiness and achievement had both been
within his grasp. The only woman--so now it seemed--he had ever really
wanted! What had become of her? What obscure and passionate impulse had
led her suddenly to defy and desert him, to cast in her lot with these
insensate aliens? A hundred times during the restless, inactive hours of
a sleepless night this question had intruded itself in the midst of his
scheming to break the strike, as he reviewed, word by word, act by act,
that almost incomprehensible revolt of hers which had followed so
swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of fate--on that other revolt of the
workers. At moments he became confused, unable to separate the two. He
saw her fire in that other.... Her sister, she had said, had been
disgraced; she had defied him to marry her in the face of that
degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him. He had let her go. What
a fool he had been to let her go! Had she herself been--! He did not
finish this thought. Throughout the long night he had known, for a
certainty, that this woman was a vital part of him, flame of his flame.
Had he never seen her he would have fought these strikers to their knees,
but now the force of this incentive was doubled. He would never yield
until he had crushed them, until he had reconquered her.

He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he
slowed his steps. The whites of his eyes reddened. The great coat of
golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness.
There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous
spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter
his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous. Throughout the
countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had
played its dominant, phylogenetic role. He was the Master. The journey
across the seas had not changed that. A few shivered--not alone because
they were thinly clad. He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned
the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the
number of those running the gantlet had increased. And he heard, twice or
thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly. His eyes grew redder still
as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway.

"Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded. "What do you mean by
letting them interfere with these workers?"

The man flinched. He was apologetic. "So long as they're peaceable, Mr.
Ditmar--those are my orders. I do try to keep 'em movin'."

"Your orders? You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went
on. There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were
bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the
flow toward the mills were having their effect. By the frozen canal, the
scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively
thick, and at the corner of the lodging-house row Ditmar halted a moment,
unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured. He gave them
no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the
picketing on his own operatives. Some came with timid steps; others,
mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost
defiant--and such he marked. There were those who, when the picketers
held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and
those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn
between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy
with the revolt. A small number joined the ranks of the picketers. Ditmar
towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a student of
human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes, would from
that point of vantage have had much to gather from the expressions coming
within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to an end. Suddenly,
from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the bells shattered
the early morning air, the remnant of the workers hastened across the
canal and through the guarded gates, which were instantly closed. Ditmar
was left alone among the strikers. As he moved toward the bridge they
made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust out of his way. But
there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he heard a man curse him.

Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is
subject to the operation of cause and effect. It was not what an
ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from
which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton,
although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her
pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit
social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to
certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have.
The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea
to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever
industrial strife has made congenial soil. In four and twenty hours
Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true nature
of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged and
appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes. Property, that
sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law had
been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American tradition,
was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of mass
meetings. All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar with
American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations that
dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national
propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech,
sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly
cadenced and intoned. From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd,
matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers
of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son
of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt
hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their
conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the
inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands long
steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern seas,
from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and Ghibelline
hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily and Greece;
from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the mountains of
Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from villages
beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes. Each peasant
listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the
folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the
common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still
unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a
mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause. But who was
to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the
creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these
ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof? Even as
dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making
from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a
Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the
philosophy were landing in Hampton.

The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio
Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World! An ominous name, an
ominous title,--compared by a well-known publicist to the sound of a
fire-bell in the night. The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of
the World! No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton! The
writer of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words
"syndicalism" and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too
young to know the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a
philosophy of labour, or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard
of,--the home of lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder. For obvious
reasons he did not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born
in the West, where it had ravaged and wrecked communities. His article
was guardedly respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr.
Antonelli had been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between
crude labour and capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the
citizens of Hampton as remote as Kansas cyclones....

Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what
doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening
into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to
suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than he
looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe
work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In
the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one
of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are
thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice
the longings and passions of those below. He did not blink in the light;
he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed
around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over
the hall as he arose. His speech was taken down verbatim, to be submitted
to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the possession of a
power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents apparently
unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and never
transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and to
remember them. If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified it
the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months later,
when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against him,
he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts. Skilfully,
always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his
hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's
oppressed. Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he
universalized, it. The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had
the courage to take possession of his own....

Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly
proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which
were to be chosen by each nationality. And the resolution, translated
into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm. Until that
moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular
grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for
existence. Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the
deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not
for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation
of all the downtrodden of the earth. Antonelli became a saviour; they
reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy
street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their
arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before.

Such was Antonelli to the strikers. But to those staid residents of
Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New
England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream. Hard on his heels
came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the
imaginative the old nursery rhyme:--"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, The
beggars are come to town."

It has, indeed, a knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast
those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed,
indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long,
affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that
fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The
projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of
everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob
rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin
revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the
clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that
flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public. For there were women in
the band. All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism,
unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry
and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with
something indefinable yet abhorrent. Such things are felt. Few of the
older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in
their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and
repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers
arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of
--in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. And no
sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in
overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these
turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to
interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed. Hampton would
take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it
was would take care of it. And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclaimed
his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the
suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for
soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three
companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra
police.

The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad. What she
burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the
West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again. But--there was her
mother. She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and
Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the
danger of the strike had passed. A messenger had come to fetch his
clothes. After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up
the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway. Through the open
doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa
--for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day. Nothing
else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their
plight. Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by
physical action. She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment it
seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something
beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever.

Janet entered the room. She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's
hand in hers. And Hannah submitted passively. Janet could not speak. A
minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken,
acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable. Never had the room
been so still! Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the
picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten. Every Monday morning, as
far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to
work--and to-day he had forgotten. Getting up, she opened the glass door,
and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought, about
six. She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the shelf, wound
up the weight, and started the pendulum. And the sound of familiar
ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of speech.

"Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you."

On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect. Habit
reasserted itself. She started, and rose almost briskly.

"No you won't," she said, "I'll get it. I'd ought to have thought of it
before. You must be tired and hungry."

Her voice was odd and thin. Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded.

"Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway."

Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the meal
was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive.

"You must take something, mother," she said.

"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied.

"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold
meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up a
fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:--"You saw Lise?"

"Yes," said Janet.

"Where is she?"

"In a house--in Boston."

"One of--those houses?"

"I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so."

"You went there?"

"Mr. Tiernan went with me."

"She wouldn't come home?"

"Not--not just now, mother."

"You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?"

The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in
Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from
which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left
Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I
couldn't."

Hannah pushed back her chair.

"I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make
her. Where is she? Where is the house?"

Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:--"Lise isn't
there any more--she's gone away."

"Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a
woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her."

Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The
situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where Lise
was!

"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best.
She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she promised
to write, to send me her address."

"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken
child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to
Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love,
and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she
must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could
efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman,
her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This,
then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope
had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was
still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be
borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must
have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's
whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into
making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child
must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained,
fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not
have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping
convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet,
helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even
than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able
to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when these
were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying listless
in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have exhausted the
gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, had been the
fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no touch of
fire....

The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren. Never, even in the days
when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to
arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating
shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness,
came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and
blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first
time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who
would dare to defy it. She, for one, would defy it. In that reflection
she found a certain fierce joy. And she might lie in bed if she wished
--how often had she longed to! But she could not. The room was cold,
appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes. The
dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over
the stove when she reached the kitchen. After the pretence of breakfast
was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed,
tidying her room. It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little,
familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind
memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the
kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when
Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant
remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by
the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room
swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the
wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and
hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the
bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel
and held the withered flower to her face. Even now a fragrance, faint yet
poignant, clung to it.... She wrapped it up again, walked to the window,
hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this sole
relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the stove.
Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem to
notice the act. Janet turned to her.

"I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said.

"You'd ought to," Hannah replied. "There's no use settin' around here."

The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured. And Janet, putting
on her coat and hat, descended the stairs. Not once that morning had her
mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about
Ditmar. This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared
most. In the street she met the postman.

"I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said. And on the pink envelope
he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish
handwriting of Lise. "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the
postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there." Janet
scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope. "Dear Janet," the
letter ran. "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was nothing to
it. Wouldn't that jar you? Boston's a slow burg, and there's no use of my
staying here now. I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll come back when
I've had a look at the great white way. I've got the coin, and I gave him
the mit to-night. If you haven't anything better to do, drop in at the
Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not to worry at home.
There's no use trying to trail me. Your affectionate sister Lise."

Janet thrust the letter in her pocket. Then she walked rapidly westward
until she came to the liver-coloured facade of the City Hall, opposite
the Common. Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the
pavement in front of it, she entered the building....




THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT

By WINSTON CHURCHILL
VOLUME 3.




CHAPTER XV

Occasionally the art of narrative may be improved by borrowing the method
of the movies. Another night has passed, and we are called upon to
imagine the watery sunlight of a mild winter afternoon filtering through
bare trees on the heads of a multitude. A large portion of Hampton Common
is black with the people of sixteen nationalities who have gathered
there, trampling down the snow, to listen wistfully and eagerly to a new
doctrine of salvation. In the centre of this throng on the
bandstand--reminiscent of concerts on sultry, summer nights--are the
itinerant apostles of the cult called Syndicalism, exhorting by turns in
divers tongues. Antonelli had spoken, and many others, when Janet,
impelled by a craving not to be denied, had managed to push her way
little by little from the outskirts of the crowd until now she stood
almost beneath the orator who poured forth passionate words in a language
she recognized as Italian. Her curiosity was aroused, she was unable to
classify this tall man whose long and narrow face was accentuated by a
pointed brown beard, whose lips gleamed red as he spoke, whose slim hands
were eloquent. The artist as propagandist--the unsuccessful artist with
more facility than will. The nose was classic, and wanted strength; the
restless eyes that at times seemed fixed on her were smouldering windows
of a burning house: the fire that stirred her was also consuming him.
Though he could have been little more than five and thirty, his hair was
thinned and greying at the temples. And somehow emblematic of this
physiognomy and physique, summing it up and expressing it in terms of
apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow.
Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played
on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the
climax of his speech, she felt like weeping.

"Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed.

"Who is he?" Janet asked.

"Rolfe," said the woman.

"But he's an Italian?"

The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know." He
had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a
distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in
America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to
Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words.
"Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth
belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the
creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you
shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and
produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what
is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family
alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your
labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and
women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves,"
he cried, "because you submit like slaves."

He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I
have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others
of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to gain
your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why? Because
the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you will be
content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your wages, the
state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents, they say--only
fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What is fifty cents to
them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know that fifty cents
will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the neck of pork, or six
quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will help pay the rent of the
rat-holes where you live." Once more he was interrupted by angry shouts
of approval. "And the labour unions, have they aided you? Why not? I will
tell you why--because they are the servile instruments of the masters.
The unions say that capital has rights, bargain with it, but for us there
can be only one bargain, complete surrender of the tools to the workers.
For the capitalists are parasites who suck your blood and your children's
blood. From now on there can be no compromise, no truce, no peace until
they are exterminated. It is war." War! In Janet's soul the word
resounded like a tocsin. And again, as when swept along East Street with
the mob, that sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of
submergence with them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry,
her lot was cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to
poverty, had known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah
had been duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in
the vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must
be exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that
Ditmar would not have dared to use and deceive her? Why had she never
thought of these things before?... The light was beginning to fade, the
great meeting was breaking up, and yet she lingered. At the foot of the
bandstand steps, conversing with a small group of operatives that
surrounded him, she perceived the man who had just spoken. And as she
stood hesitating, gazing at him, a desire to hear more, to hear all of
this creed he preached, that fed the fires in her soul, urged her
forward. Her need, had she known it, was even greater than that of these
toilers whom she now called comrades. Despite some qualifying reserve she
felt, and which had had to do with the redness of his lips, he attracted
her. He had a mind, an intellect, he must possess stores of the knowledge
for which she thirsted; he appeared to her as one who had studied and
travelled, who had ascended heights and gained the wider view denied her.
A cynical cosmopolitanism would have left her cold, but here, apparently,
was a cultivated man burning with a sense of the world's wrongs. Ditmar,
who was to have led her out of captivity, had only thrust her the deeper
into bondage.... She joined the group, halting on the edge of it,
listening. Rolfe was arguing with a man about the labour unions, but
almost at once she knew she had fixed his attention. From time to time,
as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly, and in their dark pupils were
tiny points of light that stirred and confused her, made her wonder what
was behind them, in his soul. When he had finished his argument, he
singled her out.

"You do not work in the mills?" he asked.

"No, I'm a stenographer--or I was one."

"And now?"

"I've given up my place."

"You want to join us?"

"I was interested in what you said. I never heard anything like it
before."

He looked at her intently.

"Come, let us walk a little way," he said. And she went along by his
side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte's excitement in the
freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved
doctrine of brotherhood. "I will give you things to read, you shall be
one of us."

"I'm afraid I shouldn't understand them," Janet replied. "I've read so
little."

"Oh, you will understand," he assured her, easily. "There is too much
learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little
impulse and feeling, intuition. Where do reason and intelligence lead us?
To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class. They
separate us from the mass of humanity. No, our fight is against those who
claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the public
schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads to
submission, makes us content with our station in life. The true
syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!" he cried.

Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her a
gleam of light. Her excitement grew. Never before had she been in the
presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease. And
the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour.

"But you have studied!" she exclaimed.

"Oh yes, I have studied," he replied, with a touch of weariness, "only to
learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the
social order is simple. We have only to take what belongs to us, we who
work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations."

"You would take possession of the mills?" she asked.

"Yes," he said quickly, "of all wealth, and of the government. There
would be no government--we should not need it. A little courage is all
that is necessary, and we come into our own. You are a stenographer, you
say. But you--you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your
eyes. You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not
have been herein this place, to-day. Is it not so?"

She shivered, but was silent.

"Is it not so?" he repeated. "They have wronged you, too, perhaps,--they
have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and
crush them. Christians and slaves submit. The old religion teaches that
the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble we
shall be rewarded in heaven." Rolfe laughed. "The masters approve of that
teaching. They would not have it changed. But for us it is war. We'll
strike and keep on striking, we'll break their machinery, spoil their
mills and factories, and drive them out. And even if we do not win at
once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life
ground out of us--is it not?"

"Yes, it is better!" she agreed. The passion in her voice did not escape
him.

"Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true
Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall have
aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his
inheritance." He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more
luminous.

"`Like unseen music in the night,'--so Sorel writes about it. They may
scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. `Like music in the night!'
You respond to that!"

Again she was silent. They had walked on, through familiar streets that
now seemed strange.

"You respond--I can tell," he said. "And yet, you are not like these
others, like me, even. You are an American. And yet you are not like most
of your countrywomen."

"Why do you say that?"

"I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they
do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look calm
and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you came
up to me."

She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his
assumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was
tingling.

"And you?" she asked. "Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?"

He assented. "And yours?"

She told him.

"You have been in America long--your family?"

"Very long," she said. "But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an Italian
name."

"My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother a
peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills.
When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old master."

"An old master?"

"The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred
years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called
Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci."

The name, as Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It was
a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked
yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's
book-store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to
and from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist. The
steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive
trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar,
flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling
for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had
ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a morning
when she had looked for it, and it was gone.

"And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?"

"Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a
child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I
was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and
there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds,
putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England,
among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I
first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up
type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the
East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on Syndicalism
by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to realize that
the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism."

"The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear.

"The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here
to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism
--betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the
thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that
will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that
is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado and
California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was an
uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and Antonelli and Jastro
and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as they
do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," he said,
slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, I will
enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give you the cause, the
religion you need."

She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and
fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning
him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of her
intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense of
wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his
eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, sexual note
that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity.

"I can't, to-night," she said. "I must go home--my mother is all alone.
But I want to help, I want to do something."

They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her
eyes from his glance.

"Then come to-morrow," he said eagerly. "You know where Headquarters is,
in the Franco-Belgian Hall?"

"What could I do?" she asked.

"You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what
picketing is?"

"You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?"

"Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering
Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the
lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple."

"Cripple!" exclaimed Janet.

"Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally." Rolfe did not seem to notice
her tone. "But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's
importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't
for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's
always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to
make him shut down, especially."

"I see," said Janet.

"You'll come to Headquarters?" Rolfe repeated.

"Yes, I'll come, to-morrow," she promised.

After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not
heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he had
given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head, and
like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember all
that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed recondite,
cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he, the man
himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially had
paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his
presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then
she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been
foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her
were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in
that very emancipation from cant and convention, characteristic of the
Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had attracted
him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied and
travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her, Janet
Bumpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as a
comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that quality
--whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had not known
how to value it. With this thought came a flaming suggestion--Ditmar
should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make him scorch with the
fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had joined his enemies,
the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world! Her shackles had been
cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she felt tired. The prospect of
returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent flat--made the more silent by
her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed her. The ache in her heart
began to throb again. How could she wait until the dawn of another
day?...

In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a
hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There
is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she
stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by a
sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on,
whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and
relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share
toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light of the
electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant
advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the
mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures scattered
here and there farther down the street served only to exaggerate its wide
emptiness. What could these do, what could she accomplish against the
mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she stood gazing, she became
aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over her shoulder she caught
the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers muffled in heavy capes and woolen
caps was marching along the car-tracks. She followed them. At the corner
of West Street, in obedience to a sharp command she saw them halt, turn,
and advance toward a small crowd gathered there. It scattered, only to
collect again when the soldiers had passed on. Janet joined them. She
heard men cursing the soldiers. The women stood a little aside; some were
stamping to keep warm, and one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet
presently perceived to be a child, sank down on a stone step and remained
there, crouching, resigned.

"We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live, I
guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such
vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the
Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked.

Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about
her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and her
white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm through
Janet's.

"You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked.

"I've never done any picketing."

"I showa you."

The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of
cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the
street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while
ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy in
her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two
policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused
her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman
with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the
policemen thrust out his club threateningly.

"Move on, you can't sit here," he said.

With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl flung
herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous
inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as
though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The
act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored in
an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something swiftly,
in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more attention to the
policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered half the block before
she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come and gone in a flash,
her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found expression in an
abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's name, volunteering
the information that her own was Gemma, that she was a "fine speeder" in
the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly seven dollars a week.
She had been among the first to walk out.

"Why did you walk out?" asked Janet curiously.

"Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I get
married."

"Is that why you are striking?" asked Janet curiously.

"That is why--of course."

"Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a cause
--the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the mills.
I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--"

The girl gave her a radiant smile.

"Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I am
for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more money,
until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do you
strike?"

"I was mad, too," Janet replied simply.

"Revenge!" exclaimed the girl, glittering again. "I understan'. Here come
the scabs! Now I show you."

The light had grown, but the stores were still closed and barred. Along
Faber Street, singly or in little groups, anxiously glancing around them,
behind them, came the workers who still clung desperately to their jobs.
Gemma fairly darted at two girls who sought the edge of the sidewalk,
seizing them by the sleeves, and with piteous expressions they listened
while she poured forth on them a stream of Italian. After a moment one
tore herself away, but the other remained and began to ask questions.
Presently she turned and walked slowly away in the direction from which
she had come.

"I get her," exclaimed Gemma, triumphantly.

"What did you say?" asked Janet.

"Listen--that she take the bread from our mouths, she is traditore--scab.
We strike for them, too, is it not so?"

"It is no use for them to work for wages that starve. We win the strike,
we get good wages for all. Here comes another--she is a Jewess--you try,
you spik."

Janet failed with the Jewess, who obstinately refused to listen or reply
as the two walked along with her, one on either side. Near West Street
they spied a policeman, and desisted. Up and down Faber Street,
everywhere, the game went on: but the police were watchful, and once a
detachment of militia passed. The picketing had to be done quickly, in
the few minutes that were to elapse before the gates should close.
Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she
perceived the apologetic attitude of the "scabs" and she began to despise
them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense of surprise
at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several women in turn,
fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution. Some--because she
was an American--examined her with furtive curiosity; others pretended
not to understand, accelerating their pace. She gained no converts that
morning, but one girl, pale, anemic with high cheek bones evidently a
Slav--listened to her intently.

"I gotta right to work," she said.

"Not if others will starve because you work," objected Janet.

"If I don't work I starve," said the girl.

"No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all. How
much do you get now?"

"Four dollar and a half."

"You starve now," Janet declared contemptuously. "The quicker you join
us, the sooner you'll get a living wage."

The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and
then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought for
others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling
picketers remained.

Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had
caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously,
resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun.

Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her
unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street.
She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they
ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to
blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with
the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were
not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and
the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother, she reflected
bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her shattered
happiness. But gradually, as from time to time she glanced covertly at
Hannah's face, her resentment gave way to apprehension. Hannah did not
seem now even to be aware of her presence; this persistent apathy filled
her with a dread she did not dare to acknowledge.

"Mother!" she cried at last.

Hannah started. "Have you finished?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You've b'en out in the cold, and you haven't eaten much." Janet fought
back her tears. "Oh yes, I have," she managed to reply, convinced of the
futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a realization
of the situation. Perhaps--though her heart contracted at the thought
perhaps it was a merciful thing! But to live, day after day, in the
presence of that comfortless apathy!... Later in the morning she went
out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she
turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall.
Her courage failed her. How would these foreigners and the strange
leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar's stenographer?
She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer; they would
find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe. Had he
really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in front
of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one
another to talk about the strike. In Faber Street, indeed, an air of
suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but
business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it. There was,
however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives
mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at the corners;
a company of soldiers marched by, drawing the people in silence to the
curb. Janet scanned the faces of these idle operatives; they seemed for
the most part either calm or sullen, wanting the fire and passion of the
enthusiasts who had come out to picket in the early hours of the day; she
sought vainly for the Italian girl with whom she had made friends.
Despondency grew in her, a sense of isolation, of lacking any one, now,
to whom she might turn, and these feelings were intensified by the air of
confidence prevailing here. The strike was crushed, injustice and wrong
had triumphed--would always triumph. In front of the Banner office she
heard a man say to an acquaintance who had evidently just arrived in
town:--"The Chippering? Sure, that's running. By to-morrow Ditmar'll
have a full force there. Now that the militia has come, I guess we've got
this thing scotched..."

Just how and when that order and confidence of Faber Street began to be
permeated by disquietude and alarm, Janet could not have said. Something
was happening, somewhere--or about to happen. An obscure, apparently
telepathic process was at work. People began to hurry westward, a few had
abandoned the sidewalk and were running; while other pedestrians, more
timid, were equally concerned to turn and hasten in the opposite
direction. At the corner of West Street was gathering a crowd that each
moment grew larger and larger, despite the efforts of the police to
disperse it. These were strikers, angry strikers. They blocked the
traffic, halted the clanging trolleys, surged into the mouth of West
Street, booing and cursing at the soldiers whose threatening line of
bayonets stretched across that thoroughfare half-way down toward the
canal, guarding the detested Chippering Mill. Bordering West Street,
behind the company's lodging-houses on the canal, were certain low
buildings, warehouses, and on their roofs tense figures could be seen
standing out against the sky. The vanguard of the mob, thrust on by
increasing pressure from behind, tumbled backward the thin cordon of
police, drew nearer and nearer the bayonets, while the soldiers grimly
held their ground. A voice was heard on the roof, a woman in the front
rank of the mob gave a warning shriek, and two swift streams of icy water
burst forth from the warehouse parapet, tearing the snow from the
cobbles, flying in heavy, stinging spray as it advanced and mowed the
strikers down and drove them like flies toward Faber Street. Screams of
fright, curses of defiance and hate mingled with the hissing of the water
and the noise of its impact with the ground--like the tearing of heavy
sail-cloth. Then, from somewhere near the edge of the mob, came a single,
sharp detonation, quickly followed by another--below the watchmen on the
roof a window crashed. The nozzles on the roof were raised, their
streams, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, bowled down the rioters
below the tell-tale wisps of smoke, and no sooner had the avalanche of
water passed than the policemen who, forewarned, had sought refuge along
the walls, rushed forward and seized a man who lay gasping on the snow.
Dazed, half drowned, he had dropped his pistol. They handcuffed him and
dragged him away through the ranks of the soldiers, which opened for him
to pass. The mob, including those who had been flung down, bruised and
drenched, and who had painfully got to their feet again, had backed
beyond the reach of the water, and for a while held that ground, until
above its hoarse, defiant curses was heard, from behind, the throbbing of
drums.

"Cossacks! More Cossacks!"

The cry was taken up by Canadians, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Slovaks,
Jews, and Syrians. The drums grew louder, the pressure from the rear was
relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction of
the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three
companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped,
gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line,
and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the mob,
who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared, and on
the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned trolleys
began to move again....

Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down
West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear
the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the
contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it
seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently
miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the
car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His
face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped,
turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers.

"The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!" he
cried. "We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill
Ditmar!"

A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them.

"Move on!" he said brutally. "Move on, or I'll roil you in." And Janet,
once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had
spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud, "Kill
Ditmar!" as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power house
with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over the
stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue she had trod
with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was the ragpicker's shop,
the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand of
the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and beyond,
the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model. Now she descried
looming above her the outline of Torrey's Hill blurred and melting into a
darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood the
Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers of
the World. She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers
loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them
excitedly beside the little building. Its lines were simple and
unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing
strongly from the surrounding houses: it might have been transported from
a foreign country and set down here. As the home of that odd, cooperative
society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated her
imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the yellowed,
lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and children
waiting to fill their baskets with the day's provisions. In the middle of
the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor. Presently
she gathered the courage to enter. Her heart was pounding as she climbed
the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a moment on the
threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered by the scene
within, confused by the noise. Through a haze of smoke she beheld groups
of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves--apparently on
the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent spectators of
both sexes stood at the back of the hall. At the far end was a stage,
still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, alone, above
the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment almost
disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black tie. He
was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently flung
down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him. Suddenly one
of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him and made an
appeal through their interpreter. He did not appear to be listening;
without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words in reply,
and the group retired, satisfied. By some incomprehensible power he
dominated. Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, Janet watched
him, breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of strife, and
turmoil. She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle was in her own
soul as well. Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who had been in her
mind as she had come hither, and then she caught sight of him in a group
in the centre of the hall. He saw her, he was making his way toward her,
he was holding her hands, looking down into her face with that air of
appropriation, of possession she remembered. But she felt no resentment
now, only a fierce exultation at having dared.

"You've come to join us!" he exclaimed. "I thought I'd lost you."

He bent closer to her that she might hear.

"We are having a meeting of the Committee," he said, and she smiled.
Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous. And Rolfe smiled back
at her. "You wouldn't think so, but Antonelli knows how to manage them.
He is a general. Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit."

"But what can I do?" she asked.

"I have been thinking. You said you were a stenographer--we need
stenographers, clerks. You will not be wasted. Come in here."

Behind her two box-like rooms occupying the width of the building had
been turned into offices, and into one of these Rolfe led her. Men and
women were passing in and out, while in a corner a man behind a desk sat
opening envelopes, deftly extracting bills and post-office orders and
laying them in a drawer. On the wall of this same room was a bookcase
half filled with nondescript volumes.

"The Bibliotheque--that's French for the library of the Franco-Belgian
Cooperative Association," explained Rolfe. "And this is Comrade Sanders.
Sanders is easier to say than Czernowitz. Here is the young lady I told
you about, who wishes to help us--Miss Bumpus."

Mr. Sanders stopped counting his money long enough to grin at her.

"You will be welcome," he said, in good English. "Stenographers are
scarce here. When can you come?"

"To-morrow morning," answered Janet.

"Good," he said. "I'll have a machine for you. What kind do you use?"

She told him. Instinctively she took a fancy to this little man, whose
flannel shirt and faded purple necktie, whose blue, unshaven face and
tousled black hair seemed incongruous with an alert, business-like, and
efficient manner. His nose, though not markedly Jewish, betrayed in him
the blood of that vital race which has triumphantly survived so many
centuries of bondage and oppression.

"He was a find, Czernowitz--he calls himself Sanders," Rolfe explained,
as they entered the hall once more. "An Operative in the Patuxent,
educated himself, went to night school--might have been a capitalist like
so many of his tribe if he hadn't loved humanity. You'll get along with
him."

"I'm sure I shall," she replied.

Rolfe took from his pocket a little red button with the letters I.W.W.
printed across it. He pinned it, caressingly, on her coat.

"Now you are one of us!" he exclaimed. "You'll come to-morrow?"

"I'll come to-morrow," she repeated, drawing away from him a little.

"And--we shall be friends?"

She nodded. "I must go now, I think."

"Addio!" he said. "I shall look for you. For the present I must remain
here, with the Committee."

When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to
stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed to
the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the
emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace,
everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing
beside her.

"Haven't we met before?" he asked. "Or--can I be mistaken?"

Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned to
him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating look
he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a
carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and wore
a white, low collar.

"In Silliston!" she exclaimed. "Why--what are you doing here?"

"Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering
which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it's very
puzzling--isn't it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron
with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don't you think so?"

She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious.

"You don't really like it, yourself," she informed him.

"Now you're reflecting on my taste," he declared.

"Oh no--it's because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished
yet?"

"I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you
remember the pineapples?"

She nodded. "And the house? and the garden?"

"Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn't have anything more to do."

"Is that--all you do?" she asked.

"It's more important than anything else. But you have you been back to
Silliston since I saw you? I've been waiting for another call."

"You haven't even thought of me since," she was moved to reply in the
same spirit.

"Haven't I?" he exclaimed. "I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton,
whether I mightn't meet you--and here you are! Doesn't that prove it?"

She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted
her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had
discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any
flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just
friendly.

"Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton," she ventured.

"Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came."

"The explosion! The strike!" she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. "Now I
remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine--human
nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike."

"Did I? perhaps I did," he assented. "Maybe you suggested the idea."

"I suggested it! Oh no, I didn't--it was new to me, it frightened me at
the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had never
occurred to me."

"You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There
are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one."

His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since
his glance was fixed on the red button she wore.

"You meant that I would explode, too!"

"Oh no--nothing so terrible as that," he disclaimed. "And yet most of us
have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all
that sort of thing that won't stand too much bottling-up."

"Yes, I've joined the strike." She spoke somewhat challengingly, though
she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with
him. "I suppose you think it strange, since I'm not a foreigner and
haven't worked in the mills. But I don't see why that should make any
difference if you believe that the workers haven't had a chance."

"No difference," he agreed, pleasantly, "no difference at all."

"Don't you sympathize with the strikers?" she insisted. "Or--are you on
the other side, the side of the capitalists?"

"I? I'm a spectator--an innocent bystander."

"You don't sympathize with the workers?" she cried.

"Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody."

"With the capitalists?"

"Why not?"

"Why not? Because they've had everything their own way, they've exploited
the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the profits." She was
using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology.

"Isn't that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?" he
inquired.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done all
that. At any rate, it isn't my notion of happiness. Is it yours?"

For a moment she considered this.

"No--not exactly," she admitted. "But they seem happy," she insisted
vehemently, "they have everything they want and they do exactly as they
please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care
how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don't know, you can't
know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!"

Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance.

"The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists
take it from them, from their wives and children."

"Now I know what you've been doing," he said accusingly. "You've been
studying economics."

Her brow puckered.

"Studying what?"

"Economics--the distribution of wealth. It's enough to upset anybody."

"But I'm not upset," she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his
comical concern.

"It's very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics and such
things, and I couldn't sleep for a week. It was called `The Organization
of Happiness,' I believe, and it described just how the world ought to be
arranged--and isn't. I thought seriously of going to Washington and
telling the President and Congress about it."

"It wouldn't have done any good," said Janet.

"No, I realized that."

"The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on striking
until the workers own the mills--take everything away from the
capitalists."

"It's very simple," he agreed, "much simpler than the book I read. That's
what they call syndicalism, isn't it?"

"Yes." She was conscious of his friendliness, of the fact that his
skepticism was not cynical, yet she felt a strong desire to convince him,
to vindicate her new creed. "There's a man named Rolfe, an educated man
who's lived in Italy and England, who explains it wonderfully. He's one
of the I.W.W. leaders--you ought to hear him."

"Rolfe converted you? I'll go to hear him."

"Yes--but you have to feel it, you have to know what it is to be kept
down and crushed. If you'd only stay here awhile."

"Oh, I intend to," he replied.

She could not have said why, but she felt a certain relief on hearing
this.

"Then you'll see for yourself!" she cried. "I guess that's what you've
come for, isn't it?"

"Well, partly. To tell the truth, I've come to open a restaurant."

"To open a restaurant!" Somehow she was unable to imagine him as the
proprietor of a restaurant. "But isn't it rather a bad time?" she gasped.

"I don't look as if I had an eye for business--do I? But I have. No, it's
a good time--so many people will be hungry, especially children. I'm
going to open a restaurant for children. Oh, it will be very modest, of
course--I suppose I ought to call it a soup kitchen."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Then you really--" the sentence
remained unfinished. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "You made me think--"

"Oh, you mustn't pay any attention to what I say. Come 'round and see my
establishment, Number 77 Dey Street, one flight up, no elevator. Will
you?"

She laughed tremulously as he took her hand.

"Yes indeed, I will," she promised. And she stood awhile staring after
him. She was glad he had come to Hampton, and yet she did not even know
his name.




CHAPTER XVI

She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities
Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question dreaded
about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, performing
her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking simply of
trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going on
continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward,
wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and
darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not
catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the
tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her
mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief
and a new and terrible source of anxiety.

Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy,
else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was
over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often
did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she
sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new labours
with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to pause
to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold for
her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to
typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of
duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his
accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing
number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out to
them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became
more and more effective their number increased until many mills had
closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a
desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives
were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in a
steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she entered
into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early days of
the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the most part
investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution to suffer
for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were resigned;
some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the task of
picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. In this
work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help of Anna
Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in the
Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of
organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory,
had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective
with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly
out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize.
Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became
friends.

The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was
cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times
it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been
plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de
reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world,
emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature,
Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students,
investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine
writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and
upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged.
Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to
one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science.
Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning,
she was stirred by the sight of this distinguished-looking person who sat
on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. The
two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts of
which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received
cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the
conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a
conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in
Rolfe, in the Committee itself.

That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine
or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the
obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community
of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the
west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the
so-called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to
these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The
faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard.
Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups,
gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching
them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking
personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the
stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid
blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand:
Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in
the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any
arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of
practical wisdom.

Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some
half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and
conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring
favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing
on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting
recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that
had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. Some
of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the leader, who
sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, never so much
as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned cigar rolled
between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and yet he had
an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said--although it is
safe to assert that these moulders of American institutions knew little
about that terrible philosopher who had raised his voice against the
"slave morals of Christianity." It was their first experience with the
superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, when a lull arrived in
the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be given chairs.

"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from
speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had
followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from
speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of
the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one
another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce
approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The
Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth,
proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the
deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he
declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital.

"We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli
curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall.

That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He
knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been
much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if
Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was
interrupted.

Had the mill owners accepted their services?

The Chairman cleared his throat.

The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in
a body. A meeting would be arranged--"When you arrange a meeting, let me
know," said Antonelli.

A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep
one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it.

"A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a long-suffering
expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--"

"What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders,
passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your
state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you
have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a
question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills
anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad?
or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come
before the strike?"

This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was
adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly
Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a
handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to
investigate such matters until called to its attention....

Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit
to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of
the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be
stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side
of the strikers.

"Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a
slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and
ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread,
but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?"

This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a
look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many
weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four
thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton....

In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of
language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations,
bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the
Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of
hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was
at hand. Walking up and down the bibliotheque, his hands behind his
back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to
Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his
head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes
burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other
work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided
between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy
assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this
seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their
eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It was
indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe typified
it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, discarded as
inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried individual
discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered these
things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that frankly and
cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He regarded her as his
proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed more concerned that she
should shed these relics of an ancestral code than acquire the doctrines
of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with him presented the
allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he fascinated her;
and still another motive--which she partially disguised from
herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do with
Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in desperation,
not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this fierce creed
as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay ambushed against
her moments of idleness. The second evening of her installation at
Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, helping Sanders with
his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when at last she put on her
hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had been talking to Jastro,
immediately approached her. His liquid eyes regarded her solicitously.

"You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper."

But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a
little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then
consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when they
came to Warren Street she turned into it.

"Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded.

"For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?"

"Will you have supper afterwards?"

"Perhaps."

He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with
rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what her
friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits--from
the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. She
scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she had
led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible that
he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She
scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in
which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to her,
faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It was
the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that seemed to
arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of sustained
attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so poignantly
as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep herself in the
agony.

"Who lives here" Rolfe asked.

"Mr. Ditmar," she answered.

"The agent of the Chippering Mill?"

She nodded.

"He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him,
we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit
himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line.
He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him
--he lives in luxury while his people are starving."

"Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice.

"Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot,
for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate."

"They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he isn't
a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man."

Rolfe looked at her curiously.

"What do you know about him?" he asked.

"I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer."

"You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?"

"Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that
it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves
and their kind, and not of us. They use us."

"He tried to use you! You loved him!"

"How dare you say that!"

He fell back before her anger.

"I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous
of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like you."

They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a
while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting
across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew
nearer to her.

"Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll
have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to
know."

"Where?" she asked.

"At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've been
there."

"No," said Janet.

"It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we
shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all
the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?"

"Yes, I'll come," she said....

The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently
pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission"
style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air
fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out
several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair,
giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted
with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable Nellie
Bond herself down to those who may be designated as camp-followers. Rolfe,
as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his
associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an
illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the
boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies
across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly
frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically
transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan,
exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, while
Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French fried
potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he addressed as
"comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails.

"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared.

But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, and
while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain
misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had
sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was
struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the
strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in
the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, noting
the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though seeking to
wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it down and
lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a religion that
had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no disciplines. He threw
it out in snatches, this religion, while relating the histories of
certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, letting fall a hint
to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond were dwelling together
in more than amity.

"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly.

Rolfe laughed.

"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property?
It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in
bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of
God."

"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God
they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had
their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find out
whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have you and
me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because they will
prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be satisfied
with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, and we shall
have our reward in the next."

She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated,
but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for
granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But
presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very
hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her
doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore
to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed
physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship
with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and
theirs.

"For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe
was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the
bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that has
kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our
strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world
belongs to him who is bold."

"Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed.

"I will teach you Italian," he said.

"I want to learn--so much!" she sighed.

"Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water
it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive
echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under
the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just
beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the code
which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, opposed
to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, sex. In
deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, and
because he was concerned for his position and the security of the ruling
class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette between his
red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous enjoyment the
evident effect of his arguments.

"But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again.
She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to
relationships that were made and broken at pleasure.

"Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working
in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The
hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and
obey forever."

"But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they
do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer."

He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice.

"Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble
women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change
our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward
eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in
history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not
made to be a drudge...."

But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so
easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so
eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and
retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She
repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red
lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he
would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving
stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like
Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary.
Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he
professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her
craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her.
Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or
connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind.
Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table,
solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked.

Her reply was listless.

"Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home."

"Not now," he begged. "It's early yet."

But she insisted....




CHAPTER XVII

The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl
there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung
the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions,
their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst
of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer
windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to
a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled
with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them
--the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that
drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands
in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter.
He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they
wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate.

"It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't
all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred now,
and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't it?"

Dozens of hands were raised.

"I'm twenty-nine!"

"I'm three, mister!"

"I'm forty-one!"

He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he
seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps
above him. He smiled at Janet.

"This is my restaurant," he said.

But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over
the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he
whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some
ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen
hundred had been admitted he turned to her again.

"You allow visitors?"

"Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very swell
lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk to her
for me."

"But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled,
but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?"

"Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the
unfortunate unemployed."

"Unemployed?"

"The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist
her in the I.W.W."

"We don't want that kind," Janet declared.

"Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so
pathetic."

She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness
of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of
the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already
seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying
them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it
ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily
accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing
else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones
had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into
Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what if
the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out, to
win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and
gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him, to
perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So
complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u set
sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a
slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was
gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This
impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large,
pear-shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her
black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat
of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange contrast to
Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine but rugged
features.

"I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present," he was saying.
"But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"--and he imitated the
obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear soup,
and then a fish--?"

The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face.

"You're always joking, Brooks," she chided him, "even when you're doing
things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all
the way from New York to find out what's going on here."

"How hungry children eat, for instance?" he queried.

"Dear little things, it's heartrending!" she exclaimed. "Especially when
I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the
nationality of that adorable tot at the end."

"Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you," he ventured. And Janet, though
distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and
pleased that he should have remembered her name. "Brooks," she had called
him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person seemed
intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her class?
"Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus."

Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette,
but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly, persuasively.

"How d'ye do?" she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the
girl's somewhat reluctant hand. "Do come and sit down beside me and tell
me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent."

Her friend from Silliston shot at Janet an amused but fortifying glance
and left them, going down to the tables. Somehow that look of his helped
to restore in her a sense of humour and proportion, and her feeling
became one of curiosity concerning this exquisitely soigneed being of an
order she had read about, but never encountered--an order which her newly
acquired views declared to be usurpers and parasites. But despite her
palpable effort to be gracious perhaps because of it--Mrs. Brocklehurst
had an air about her that was disconcerting! Janet, however, seemed
composed as she sat down.

"I'm afraid I don't know very much. Maybe you will tell me something,
first."

"Why, certainly," said Mrs. Brocklehurst, sweetly when she had got her
breath.

"Who is that man?" Janet asked.

"Whom do you mean--Mr. Insall?"

"Is that his name? I didn't know. I've seen him twice, but he never told
me."

"Why, my dear, do you mean to say you haven't heard of Brooks Insall?"

"Brooks Insall." Janet repeated the name, as her eyes sought his figure
between the tables. "No."

"I'm sure I don't know why I should have expected you to hear of him,"
declared the lady, repentantly. "He's a writer--an author." And at this
Janet gave a slight exclamation of pleasure and surprise. "You admire
writers? He's done some delightful things."

"What does he write about?" Janet asked.

"Oh, wild flowers and trees and mountains and streams, and birds and
humans--he has a wonderful insight into people."

Janet was silent. She was experiencing a swift twinge of jealousy, of
that familiar rebellion against her limitations.

"You must read them, my dear," Mrs. Brocklehurst continued softly, in
musical tones. "They are wonderful, they have such distinction. He's
walked, I'm told, over every foot of New England, talking to the farmers
and their wives and--all sorts of people." She, too, paused to let her
gaze linger upon Insall laughing and chatting with the children as they
ate. "He has such a splendid, `out-door' look don't you think? And he's
clever with his hands he bought an old abandoned farmhouse in Silliston
and made it all over himself until it looks as if one of our
great-great-grandfathers had just stepped out of it to shoot an Indian
only much prettier. And his garden is a dream. It's the most unique place
I've ever known."

Janet blushed deeply as she recalled how she had mistaken him for a
carpenter: she was confused, overwhelmed, she had a sudden longing to
leave the place, to be alone, to think about this discovery. Yet she
wished to know more.

"But how did he happen to come here to Hampton--to be doing this?" she
asked.

"Well, that's just what makes him interesting, one never can tell what
he'll do. He took it into his head to collect the money to feed these
children; I suppose he gave much of it himself. He has an income of his
own, though he likes to live so simply."

"This place--it's not connected with any organization?" Janet ejaculated.

"That's the trouble, he doesn't like organizations, and he doesn't seem
to take any interest in the questions or movements of the day," Mrs.
Brocklehurst complained. "Or at least he refuses to talk about them,
though I've known him for many years, and his people and mine were
friends. Now there are lots of things I want to learn, that I came up
from New York to find out. I thought of course he'd introduce me to the
strike leaders, and he tells me he doesn't know one of them. Perhaps you
know them," she added, with sudden inspiration.

"I'm only an employee at Strike Headquarters," Janet replied, stiffening
a little despite the lady's importuning look--which evidently was usually
effective.

"You mean the I.W.W.?"

"Yes."

Meanwhile Insall had come up and seated himself below them on the edge of
the platform.

"Oh, Brooks, your friend Miss Bumpus is employed in the Strike
Headquarters!" Mrs. Brocklehurst cried, and turning to Janet she went on.
"I didn't realize you were a factory girl, I must say you don't look it."

Once more a gleam of amusement from Insall saved Janet, had the effect of
compelling her to meet the affair somewhat after his own manner. He
seemed to be putting the words into her mouth, and she even smiled a
little, as she spoke.

"You never can tell what factory girls do look like in these days," she
observed mischievously.

"That's so," Mrs. Brocklehurst agreed, "we are living in such
extraordinary times, everything topsy turvy. I ought to have realized
--it was stupid of me--I know several factory girls in New York, I've
been to their meetings, I've had them at my house--shirtwaist strikers."

She assumed again the willowy, a position, her fingers clasped across her
knee, her eyes supplicatingly raised to Janet. Then she reached out her
hand and touched the I.W.W. button. "Do tell me all about the Industrial
Workers, and what they believe," she pleaded.

"Well," said Janet, after a slight pause, "I'm afraid you won't like it
much. Why do you want to know?"

"Because I'm so interested--especially in the women of the movement. I
feel for them so, I want to help--to do something, too. Of course you're
a suffragist."

"You mean, do I believe in votes for women? Yes, I suppose I do."

"But you must," declared Mrs. Brocklehurst, still sweetly, but with
emphasis. "You wouldn't be working, you wouldn't be striking unless you
did."

"I've never thought about it," said Janet.

"But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you get
the vote? It's the only way men ever get anywhere--the politicians listen
to them." She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet. "Mrs. Ned
Carfax is here from Boston--I saw her for a moment at the hotel she's
been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me. I'll have
her send you suffrage literature at once, if you'll give me your
address."

"You want a vote?" asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings.

"Certainly I want one."

"Why?"

"Why?" repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst.

"Yes. You must have everything you want."

Even then the lady's sweet reasonableness did not desert her. She smiled
winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth.

"On principle, my dear. For one reason, because I have such sympathy with
women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when women
must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become
individuals, independent."

"But you?" exclaimed Janet.

Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured "Yes?"

"You are not a slave."

A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs.
Brocklehurst's cheeks.

"We're all slaves," she declared with a touch of passion. "It's hard for
you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than
our sisters. But it's true. The men give us jewels and automobiles and
clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman craves
--liberty."

Janet had become genuinely interested.

"But what kind of liberty?"

"Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country,
to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and
children, what they ought to be."

Here was altruism, truly! Here were words that should have inspired
Janet, yet she was silent. Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously.

"What are you thinking?" she urged--and it was Janet's turn to flush.

"I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to give,
and yet--and yet you're not happy."

"Oh, I'm not unhappy," protested the lady. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't know. You, too, seem to be wanting something."

"I want to be of use, to count," said Mrs. Brocklehurst,--and Janet was
startled to hear from this woman's lips the very echo of her own desires.

Mrs. Brocklehurst's feelings had become slightly complicated. It is
perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was, withal,
a person of resolution--of resolution taking the form of unswerving faith
in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being carried beyond her
depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever admits being out of
depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to feel the bottom under
one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When life became
uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, as she gazed
at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by a
characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come in
contact with something baking. Therefore she broke the silence.

"Isn't that what you want--you who are striking?" she asked.

"I think we want the things that you've got," said Janet. A phrase one of
the orators had used came into her mind, "Enough money to live up to
American standards"--but she did not repeat it. "Enough money to be free,
to enjoy life, to have some leisure and amusement and luxury." The last
three she took from the orator's mouth.

"But surely," exclaimed Mrs. Brocklehurst, "surely you want more than
that!"

Janet shook her head.

"You asked me what we believed, the I.W.W., the syndicalists, and I told
you you wouldn't like it. Well, we believe in doing away with you, the
rich, and taking all you have for ourselves, the workers, the producers.
We believe you haven't any right to what you've got, that you've fooled
and cheated us out of it. That's why we women don't care much about the
vote, I suppose, though I never thought of it. We mean to go on striking
until we've got all that you've got."

"But what will become of us?" said Mrs. Brocklehurst. "You wouldn't do
away with all of us! I admit there are many who don't--but some do
sympathize with you, will help you get what you want, help you, perhaps,
to see things more clearly, to go about it less--ruthlessly."

"I've told you what we believe," repeated Janet.

"I'm so glad I came," cried Mrs. Brocklehurst. "It's most interesting! I
never knew what the syndicalists believed. Why, it's like the French
Revolution--only worse. How are you going to get rid of us? cut our heads
off?"

Janet could not refrain from smiling.

"Let you starve, I suppose."

"Really!" said Mrs. Brocklehurst, and appeared to be trying to visualize
the process. She was a true Athenian, she had discovered some new thing,
she valued discoveries more than all else in life, she collected them,
though she never used them save to discuss them with intellectuals at her
dinner parties. "Now you must let me come to Headquarters and get a
glimpse of some of the leaders--of Antonelli, and I'm told there's a
fascinating man named Rowe."

"Rolfe," Janet corrected.

"Rolfe--that's it." She glanced down at the diminutive watch, set with
diamonds, on her wrist, rose and addressed Insall. "Oh dear, I must be
going, I'm to lunch with Nina Carfax at one, and she's promised to tell
me a lot of things. She's writing an article for Craven's Weekly all
about the strike and the suffering and injustice--she says it's been
horribly misrepresented to the public, the mill owners have had it all
their own way. I think what you're doing is splendid, Brooks, only--"
here she gave him an appealing, rather commiserating look--"only I do
wish you would take more interest in--in underlying principles."

Insall smiled.

"It's a question of brains. You have to have brains to be a sociologist,"
he answered, as he held up for her the fur coat. With a gesture of gentle
reproof she slipped into it, and turned to Janet.

"You must let me see more of you, my dear," she said. "I'm at the best
hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible--but I'll be
here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and
call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long
time--I don't think you realize how interesting you are. Au revoir!" She
did not seem to expect any reply, taking acquiescence for granted.
Glancing once more at the rows of children, who had devoured their meal
in an almost uncanny silence, she exclaimed, "The dears! I'm going to
send you a cheque, Brooks, even if you have been horrid to me--you always
are."

"Horrid!" repeated Insall, "put it down to ignorance."

He accompanied her down the stairs. From her willowy walk a sophisticated
observer would have hazarded the guess that her search for an occupation
had included a course of lessons in fancy dancing.

Somewhat dazed by this interview which had been so suddenly forced upon
her, Janet remained seated on the platform. She had the perception to
recognize that in Mrs. Brocklehurst and Insall she had come in contact
with a social stratum hitherto beyond the bounds of her experience; those
who belonged to that stratum were not characterized by the possession of
independent incomes alone, but by an attitude toward life, a manner of
not appearing to take its issues desperately. Ditmar was not like that.
She felt convicted of enthusiasms, she was puzzled, rather annoyed and
ashamed. Insall and Mrs. Brocklehurst, different though they were, had
this attitude in common.... Insall, when he returned, regarded her
amusedly.

"So you'd like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?" he asked.

And Janet flushed. "Well, she forced me to say it."

"Oh, it didn't hurt her," he said.

"And it didn't help her," Janet responded quickly.

"No, it didn't help her," Insall agreed, and laughed.

"But I'm not sure it isn't true," she went on, "that we want what she's
got." The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little. She had not
really meant to make it. Insall seemed to have the quality of forcing one
to think out loud.

"And what she wants, you've got," he told her.

"What have I got?"

"Perhaps you'll find out, some day."

"It may be too late," she exclaimed. "If you'd only tell me, it might
help."

"I think it's something you'll have to discover for yourself," he
replied, more gravely than was his wont.

She was silent a moment, and then she demanded: "Why didn't you tell me
who you were? You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day,
that you were a carpenter. I didn't know you'd written books."

"You can't expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen--though
perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public," he said.
"Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer.."

"I'd give anything to be an author!" she cried.

"It's a hard life," he assured her. "We have to go about seeking
inspiration from others."

"Is that why you came to Hampton?"

"Well, not exactly. It's a queer thing about inspiration, you only find
it when you're not looking for it."

She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her. They
were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the
anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly,
alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust.

"And you didn't tell me," he reproached her, "that you were at I.W.W.
Headquarters."

A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim: "You don't
believe in Syndicalism--and yet you've come here to feed these children!"

"Oh, I think I understand the strike," he said.

"How? Have you seen it? Have you heard the arguments?"

"No. I've seen you. You've explained it."

"To Mrs. Brocklehurst?"

"It wasn't necessary," he replied--and immediately added, in semi-serious
apology: "I thought it was admirable, what you said. If she'd talked to a
dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it put more clearly.
Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she hears it."

"Now you're making fun of me!"

"Indeed I'm not," he protested.

"But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy," she
pronounced the word hesitatingly. "I don't understand it yet as well as I
should."

"You are it," he said. "It's not always easy to understand what we are
--it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend
what we have been."

And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been
waiting on the table came toward Insall.

"The children have finished, Brooks," she informed him. "It's time to let
in the others."

Insall turned to Janet. "This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin,"
he said. "Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston."

The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She,
too, took Janet's hand.

"Have you come to help us?" she asked.

And Janet said: "Oh, I'd like to, but I have other work."

"Come in and see us again," said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her
leave....

"Who is she, Brooks?" Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone.

"Well," he answered, "I don't know. What does it matter?"

Mrs. Maturin smiled.

"I should say that it did matter," she replied. "But there's something
unusual about her--where did you find her?"

"She found me." And Insall explained. "She was a stenographer, it seems,
but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists," he added.

"A history?" Mrs. Maturin queried. "Well, I needn't ask--it's written on
her face."

"That's all I know," said Insall.

"I'd like to know," said Mrs. Maturin. "You say she's in the strike?"

"I should rather put it that the strike is in her."

"What do you mean, Brooks?"

But Insall did not reply.

Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional
confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she
had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes;
she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first met
him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of a compelling
faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding justification of
herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to Syndicalism, because
she had made the startling discovery that he was a writer of some renown,
she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate her cause. She found
herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there were a higher truth of
which he was in possession. And the fact that his attitude toward her had
been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, that
his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all but
the details, was even more disturbing--yet vaguely consoling. The
consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady,
his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image
now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of
Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could Janet have so expressed her
thought! had appeared as an extension of Insall's own personality. She
was a strong, tall, vital woman with a sweet irregularity of feature,
with a heavy crown of chestnut hair turning slightly grey, quaintly
braided, becomingly framing her face. Her colour was high. The impression
she conveyed of having suffered was emphasized by the simple mourning
gown she wore, but the dominant note she had struck was one of
dependability. It was, after all, Insall's dominant, too. Insall had
asked her to call again; and the reflection that she might do so was
curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the loft, with these two
presiding over it, took on something of the aspect of a sanctuary....

Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous
lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in
Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such
abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent,
just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with
Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs.
Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and
thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what
she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had said,
until we become something else! He had forced her to use an argument that
failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical apologetics. Stripped
of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine just one of taking,
taking? And when the workers were in possession of all, would not they be
as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar? Rolfe, despite the inspiring
intellectual creed he professed, lacked the poise and unity that go with
happiness. He wanted things, for himself: whereas she beheld in Insall
one who seemed emancipated from possessions, whose life was so organized
as to make them secondary affairs. And she began to wonder what Insall
would think of Ditmar.

These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her.
She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for
their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the
bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar
might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the same
city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the
strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of
an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of
catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild
joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to
perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had
destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood,
more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she
paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she
was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, and
her heart stop beating when she thought of the possibility of his being
shot? For these unwelcome phenomena within herself Janet could not
account. When they disturbed and frightened her, she plunged into her
work with the greater zeal....

As the weeks went by, the strain of the strike began to tell on the weak,
the unprepared, on those who had many mouths to feed. Shivering with the
cold of that hardest of winters, these unfortunates flocked to the
Franco-Belgian Hall, where a little food or money in proportion to the
size of their families was doled out to them. In spite of the
contributions received by mail, of the soup kitchens and relief stations
set up by various organizations in various parts of the city, the supply
little more than sufficed to keep alive the more needy portion of the
five and twenty thousand who now lacked all other means of support.
Janet's heart was wrung as she gazed at the gaunt, bewildered faces
growing daily more tragic, more bewildered and gaunt; she marvelled at
the animal-like patience of these Europeans, at the dumb submission of
most of them to privations that struck her as appalling. Some indeed
complained, but the majority recited in monotonous, unimpassioned tones
their stories of suffering, or of ill treatment by the "Cossacks" or the
police. The stipends were doled out by Czernowitz, but all through the
week there were special appeals. Once it was a Polish woman, wan and
white, who carried her baby wrapped in a frayed shawl.

"Wahna littel money for milk," she said, when at length their attention
was drawn to her.

"But you get your money, every Saturday," the secretary informed her
kindly.

She shook her head.

"Baby die, 'less I have littel milk--I show you."

Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and
ghastly blue lips .... And she herself went out with the woman to buy the
milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she called
home--in one of those "rear" tenements separated from the front buildings
by a narrow court reeking with refuse. The place was dank and cold,
malodorous. The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the other
room of the kennel, were out on the streets. But when her eyes grew used
to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in the bed in
the corner....

On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and
thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee--one of those normally
happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the
despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes
grief-stricken like a wounded animal's.

"She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!"

It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. "The girl wasn't doing
nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on
her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit her
--and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the
gutter. If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that
gentle looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a `Don't be a scab'
ribbon on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I
wouldn't blame 'em." Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red
with anger as she told the story.

"And how is the woman now?" asked Janet.

"In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her
head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they
live."...

Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter
flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and
imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the
remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in
particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the
extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. "Minions, slaves of
the capitalists, of the masters," the courts were called, and Janet
subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a
tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters
frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of
landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not
paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. "Let the landlords try it!" he said
phlegmatically....

After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege of
privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent.
Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions
of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire
real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording
payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly,
through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm of
the leaders, by the expectation that the mill owners would yield at once.
Some went back to work, only to be "seen" by the militant, watchful
pickets--generally in their rooms, at night. One evening, as Janet was
walking home, she chanced to overhear a conversation taking place in the
dark vestibule of a tenement.

"Working to-day?"

"Yah."

"Work to-morrow?"

Hesitation. "I d'no."

"You work, I cut your throat." A significant noise. "Naw, I no work."

"Shake!"

She hurried on trembling, not with fear, but exultingly. Nor did she
reflect that only a month ago such an occurrence would have shocked and
terrified her. This was war.... On her way to Fillmore Street she passed,
at every street corner in this district, a pacing sentry, muffled in
greatcoat and woollen cap, alert and watchful, the ugly knife on the end
of his gun gleaming in the blue light of the arc. It did not occur to
her, despite the uniform, that the souls of many of these men were
divided also, that their voices and actions, when she saw them
threatening with their bayonets, were often inspired by that inner
desperation characteristic of men who find themselves unexpectedly in
false situations. Once she heard a woman shriek as the sharp knife grazed
her skirt: at another time a man whose steps had been considerably
hurried turned, at a safe distance, and shouted defiantly:

"Say, who are you working for? Me or the Wool Trust?"

"Aw, get along," retorted the soldier, "or I'll give you yours."

The man caught sight of Janet's button as she overtook him. He was
walking backward.

"That feller has a job in a machine shop over in Barrington, I seen him
there when I was in the mills. And here he is tryin' to put us out
--ain't that the limit?"

The thud of horses' feet in the snow prevented her reply. The silhouettes
of the approaching squad of cavalry were seen down the street, and the
man fled precipitately into an alleyway....

There were ludicrous incidents, too, though never lacking in a certain
pathos. The wife of a Russian striker had her husband arrested because he
had burned her clothes in order to prevent her returning to the mill.
From the police station he sent a compatriot with a message to
Headquarters. "Oye, he fix her! She no get her jawb now--she gotta stay
in bed!" this one cried triumphantly.

"She was like to tear me in pieces when I brought her the clothes," said
Anna Mower, who related her experience with mingled feelings. "I couldn't
blame her. You see, it was the kids crying with cold and starvation, and
she got so she just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand it, neither."

Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew
stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people
were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists....




CHAPTER XVIII

A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized
that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la
Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding bread
and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As has
been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift,
composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating
them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling
innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous
one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are
winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken
solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end
the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and
oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great
army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and years
of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle
parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have to
leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a
miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life
is to be a soldier! The `good' soldier never tries to distinguish right
from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--"

"But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none of
us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to
detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the
inspirational flow.

"The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe
was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine has
been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall lower
than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go."

"All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a
little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement in
certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down the
spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, she had
avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood she
responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a
medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption
in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the
soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors
of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of
speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the
lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such
times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could
scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he
cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will
profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!"

Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another
cigarette.

"They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've
done yet."

Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a
buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the
door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane
into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of
Franco-Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his
self-made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the
girl as she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at
the reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window.

"Is that the end?" she asked, at length.

"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you
think it's a good one?"

She looked at him, puzzled.

"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it down
so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to."

"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to
feel."

"It is necessary to know," she told him.

"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you
are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way.
Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a
del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New
England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan."

She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar
had called her so, too.

"I can't help what I am," she said.

"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must
be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be
completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I will
teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he is
beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and
Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live."

"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him
he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her
typewriter.

"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her.

But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to think
it out for myself--to talk to others, too."

"What others?"

"Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook
on the rack.

"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising.

"There is every one else," she said.

As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at
her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him to
believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion
inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had passed, he
had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered
his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious inference
was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to his own;
characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, since he was
of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden fear of losing
her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, creative
mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he stood over
her.

"When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told
her.

But she shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she
added, "I can't, to-night."

"But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?"

"I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out." She sought to
temporize.

"You've changed!" he accused her. "You're not the same as you were at
first--you avoid me."

The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine
might have warned him.

"I don't like that Hampton Hotel," she flashed back. "I'm--I'm not a
vagabond--yet."

"A vagabond!" he repeated.

She went on savagely with her work..

"You have two natures," he exclaimed. "You are still a bourgeoise, a
Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get
over that."

"I'm not sure I want to get over it."

He leaned nearer to her.

"But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go."

"You've no rights over me," she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. "I'm
not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you."

"Then--why are you doing it?" His suspicions rose again, and made him
reckless.

"To help the strikers," she said.... He could get no more out of her, and
presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it....

More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street
Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium.
The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible
things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never
seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife and
suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to lose
herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the spectacle
--when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy grew more and
more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was able to renew
something of that sense of proportion the lack of which, in the chaos in
which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge of madness. At
first she had had a certain hesitation about going back, and on the
occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the block before
venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was merely a chance
acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to her, to understand
her better than any one else she knew in the world. This was queer,
because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked her for any
confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some things: he gave
her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as his specialty,
humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a minister, and
smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be like him, and
then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her forefathers that
Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of religion as she
had grown up to apprehend the term.

Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits,
they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that
second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed
to the loft, the second batch of children were finishing their midday
meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall
himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the
table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child
had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore,
several sizes too large for him.

"You come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out," Insall was
saying, when he looked up and saw Janet.

"Why, if it isn't Miss Bumpus! I thought you'd forgotten us."

"Oh no," she protested. "I wanted to come."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Well, I have come," she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press
her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse,
such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see
him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was
once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact.

"You've never seen my clothing store, have you?" he asked. And with the
child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft. A
kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined with
box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in neat
lettering indicating the articles contained therein. "Shoes?" he
repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a drawer.
"Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off the shoes
you have on."

The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type,
intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes he
wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the cotton
stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands fumbled with
the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, producing a
pocket knife, deftly cut the strings.

"Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated."

"They're by me since August," said the boy.

"And now the stockings," prompted Insall. The old ones, wet, discoloured,
and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones substituted. Insall,
casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair of shoes that had been
worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and taking one in his hand
knelt down before the child. "Let's see how good a guesser I am," he
said, loosening the strings and turning back the tongue, imitating
good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman of footwear as he
slipped on the shoe. "Why, it fits as if it were made for you! Now for
the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man who wears a whole
size larger on his left foot." The dazed expression remained on the boy's
face. The experience was beyond him. "That's better," said Insall, as he
finished the lacing. "Keep out of the snow, Marcus, all you can. Wet feet
aren't good for a cough, you know. And when you come in to supper a nice
doctor will be here, and we'll see if we can't get rid of the cough."

The boy nodded. He got to his feet, stared down at the shoes, and walked
slowly toward the door, where he turned.

"Thank you, Mister Insall," he said.

And Insall, still sitting on his heels, waved his hand.

"It is not to mention it," he replied. "Perhaps you may have a clothing
store of your own some day--who knows!" He looked up at Janet amusedly
and then, with a spring, stood upright, his easy, unconscious pose
betokening command of soul and body. "I ought to have kept a store," he
observed. "I missed my vocation."

"It seems to me that you missed a great many vocations," she replied.
Commonplaces alone seemed possible, adequate. "I suppose you made all
those drawers yourself."

He bowed in acknowledgment of her implied tribute. With his fine nose and
keen eyes--set at a slightly downward angle, creased at the corners
--with his thick, greying hair, despite his comparative youth he had the
look one associates with portraits of earlier, patriarchal Americans....
These calls of Janet's were never of long duration. She had fallen into
the habit of taking her lunch between one and two, and usually arrived
when the last installment of youngsters were finishing their meal;
sometimes they were filing out, stopping to form a group around Insall,
who always managed to say something amusing--something pertinent and
good-naturedly personal. For he knew most of them by name, and had
acquired a knowledge of certain individual propensities and
idiosyncrasies that delighted their companions.

"What's the trouble, Stepan--swallowed your spoon?" Stepan was known to
be greedy. Or he would suddenly seize an unusually solemn boy from behind
and tickle him until the child screamed with laughter. It was, indeed,
something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with these
alien children of the tenements and the streets who from their earliest
years had been forced to shift for themselves, and many of whom had
acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. Insall himself
had used the phrase, and explained it to Janet. That sense of caveat
donor was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic. But he broke it
down; broke down, too, the shyness accompanying it, the shyness and
solemnity emphasized in them by contact with hardship and poverty, with
the stark side of life they faced at home. He had made them--Mrs. Maturin
once illuminatingly remarked--more like children. Sometimes he went to
see their parents,--as in the case of Marcus--to suggest certain hygienic
precautions in his humorous way; and his accounts of these visits, too,
were always humorous. Yet through that humour ran a strain of pathos that
clutched--despite her smile--at Janet's heartstrings. This gift of
emphasizing and heightening tragedy while apparently dealing in comedy
she never ceased to wonder at. She, too, knew that tragedy of the
tenements, of the poor, its sordidness and cruelty. All her days she had
lived precariously near it, and lately she had visited these people, had
been torn by the sight of what they endured. But Insall's jokes, while
they stripped it of sentimentality of which she had an instinctive
dislike--made it for her even more poignant. One would have thought, to
have such an insight into it, that he too must have lived it, must have
been brought up in some dirty alley of a street. That gift, of course,
must be a writer's gift.

When she saw the waifs trooping after him down the stairs, Mrs. Maturin
called him the Pied Piper of Hampton.

As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which
these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though they
were matters of course, and gave her their friendship. There was, really,
no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for
food--and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would have
been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as from
what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them. Sometimes she
looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would say if she
knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar--which had been her real
reason for entering the ranks of the strikers. And was it fair for her,
Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship without revealing
this? She could not make up her mind as to what this lady would say.
Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much trouble, after
her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and the itinerant band
of syndicalists who had descended upon her restricted world. But Insall
and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed. What chiefly surprised her, in
addition to their kindliness, to their taking her on faith without the
formality of any recommendation or introduction, was their lack of
intellectual narrowness. She did not, of course, so express it. But she
sensed, in their presence, from references casually let fall in their
conversation, a wider culture of which they were in possession, a culture
at once puzzling and exciting, one that she despaired of acquiring for
herself. Though it came from reading, it did not seem "literary,"
according to the notion she had conceived of the term. Her speculations
concerning it must be focussed and interpreted. It was a culture, in the
first place, not harnessed to an obvious Cause: something like that
struck her. It was a culture that contained tolerance and charity, that
did not label a portion of mankind as its enemy, but seemed, by
understanding all, to forgive all. It had no prejudices; nor did it
boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its absence of convention. And
little by little Janet connected it with Silliston.

"It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that," she exclaimed,
when the Academy was mentioned. On this occasion Insall had left for a
moment, and she was in the little room he called his "store," alone with
Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received.

"It was there you first met Brooks, wasn't it?" She always spoke of him
as Brooks. "He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him
about a place to lunch." Mrs. Maturin laughed. "You didn't know what to
make of him, did you?"

"I thought he was a carpenter!" said Janet. "I--I never should have taken
him for an author. But of course I don't know any other authors."

"Well, he's not like any of them, he's just like himself. You can't put a
tag on people who are really big."

Janet considered this. "I never thought of that. I suppose not," she
agreed.

Mrs. Maturin glanced at her. "So you liked Sflliston," she said.

"I liked it better than any place I ever saw. I haven't seen many places,
but I'm sure that few can be nicer."

"What did you like about it, Janet?" Mrs. Maturin was interested.

"It's hard to say," Janet replied, after a moment. "It gave me such a
feeling of peace--of having come home, although I lived in Hampton. I
can't express it."

"I think you're expressing it rather well," said Mrs. Maturin.

"It was so beautiful in the spring," Janet continued, dropping the coat
she held into the drawer. "And it wasn't just the trees and the grass
with the yellow dandelions, it was the houses, too--I've often wondered
why those houses pleased me so much. I wanted to live in every one of
them. Do you know that feeling?" Mrs. Maturin nodded. "They didn't hurt
your eyes when you looked at them, and they seemed to be so much at home
there, even the new ones. The new ones were like the children of the
old."

"I'll tell the architect. He'll be pleased," said Mrs. Maturin.

Janet flushed.

"Am I being silly?" she asked.

"No; my dear," Mrs. Maturin replied. "You've expressed what I feel about
Silliston. What do you intend to do when the strike is over?"

"I hadn't thought." Janet started at the question, but Mrs. Maturin did
not seem to notice the dismay in her tone. "You don't intend to--to
travel around with the I. W. W. people, do you?"

"I--I hadn't thought," Janet faltered. It was the first time Mrs. Maturin
had spoken of her connection with Syndicalism. And she surprised herself
by adding: "I don't see how I could. They can get stenographers anywhere,
and that's all I'm good for." And the question occurred to her--did she
really wish to?

"What I was going to suggest," continued Mrs. Maturin, quietly, "was that
you might try Silliston. There's a chance for a good stenographer there,
and I'm sure you are a good one. So many of the professors send to
Boston."

Janet stood stock still. Then she said: "But you don't know anything
about me, Mrs. Maturin."

Kindliness burned in the lady's eyes as she replied: "I know more now
--since you've told me I know nothing. Of course there's much I don't
know, how you, a stenographer, became involved in this strike and joined
the I. W. W. But you shall tell me or not, as you wish, when we become
better friends."

Janet felt the blood beating in her throat, and an impulse to confess
everything almost mastered her. From the first she had felt drawn toward
Mrs. Maturin, who seemed to hold out to her the promise of a woman's
friendship--for which she had felt a life-long need: a woman friend who
would understand the insatiate yearning in her that gave her no rest in
her search for a glittering essence never found, that had led her only to
new depths of bitterness and despair. It would destroy her, if indeed it
had not already done so. Mrs. Maturin, Insall, seemed to possess the
secret that would bring her peace--and yet, in spite of something urging
her to speak, she feared the risk of losing them. Perhaps, after all,
they would not understand! perhaps it was too late!

"You do not believe in the Industrial Workers of the World," was what she
said.

Mrs. Maturin herself, who had been moved and excited as she gazed at
Janet, was taken by surprise. A few moments elapsed before she could
gather herself to reply, and then she managed to smile.

"I do not believe that wisdom will die with them, my dear. Their--their
doctrine is too simple, it does not seem as if life, the social order is
to be so easily solved."

"But you must sympathize with them, with the strikers." Janet's gesture
implied that the soup kitchen was proof of this.

"Ah," replied Mrs. Maturin, gently, "that is different to understand
them. There is one philosophy for the lamb, and another for the wolf."

"You mean," said Janet, trembling, "that what happens to us makes us
inclined to believe certain things?"

"Precisely," agreed Mrs. Maturin, in admiration. "But I must be honest
with you, it was Brooks who made me see it."

"But--he never said that to me. And I asked him once, almost the same
question."

"He never said it to me, either," Mrs. Maturin confessed. "He doesn't
tell you what he believes; I simply gathered that this is his idea. And
apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by
suffering--it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the
employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault."

"Not their fault!" Janet repeated.

"Not in a large sense," said Mrs. Maturin. "When people grow up to look
at life in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint, it is difficult,
almost impossible to change them. It's--it's their religion. They are
convinced that if the world doesn't go on in their way, according to
their principles, everything will be destroyed. They aren't inhuman.
Within limits everybody is more than willing to help the world along, if
only they can be convinced that what they are asked to do will help."

Janet breathed deeply. She was thinking of Ditmar.

And Mrs. Maturin, regarding her, tactfully changed the subject.

"I didn't intend to give you a lecture on sociology or psychology, my
dear," she said. "I know nothing about them, although we have a professor
who does. Think over what I've said about coming to Silliston. It will do
you good--you are working too hard here. I know you would enjoy
Silliston. And Brooks takes such an interest in you," she added
impulsively. "It is quite a compliment."

"But why?" Janet demanded, bewildered.

"Perhaps it's because you have--possibilities. You may be typewriting his
manuscripts. And then, I am a widow, and often rather lonely--you could
come in and read to me occasionally."

"But--I've never read anything."

"How fortunate!" said Insall, who had entered the doorway in time to hear
Janet's exclamation. "More than half of modern culture depends on what
one shouldn't read."

Mrs. Maturin laughed. But Insall waved his hand deprecatingly.

"That isn't my own," he confessed. "I cribbed it from a clever
Englishman. But I believe it's true."

"I think I'll adopt her," said Mrs. Maturin to Insall, when she had
repeated to him the conversation. "I know you are always convicting me of
enthusiasms, Brooks, and I suppose I do get enthusiastic."

"Well, you adopt her--and I'll marry her," replied Insall, with a smile,
as he cut the string from the last bundle of clothing.

"You might do worse. It would be a joke if you did--!"

His friend paused to consider this preposterous possibility. "One never
can tell whom a man like you, an artist, will marry."

"We've no business to marry at all," said Insall, laughing. "I often
wonder where that romantic streak will land you, Augusta. But you do have
a delightful time!"

"Don't begrudge it me, it makes life so much more interesting," Mrs.
Maturin begged, returning his smile. "I haven't the faintest idea that
you will marry her or any one else. But I insist on saying she's your
type--she's the kind of a person artists do dig up and marry--only better
than most of them, far better."

"Dig up?" said Insall.

"Well, you know I'm not a snob--I only mean that she seems to be one of
the surprising anomalies that sometimes occur in--what shall I say?--in
the working-classes. I do feel like a snob when I say that. But what is
it? Where does that spark come from? Is it in our modern air, that
discontent, that desire, that thrusting forth toward a new light
--something as yet unformulated, but which we all feel, even at small
institutions of learning like Silliston?"

"Now you're getting beyond me."

"Oh no, I'm not," Mrs. Maturin retorted confidently. "If you won't talk
about it, I will, I have no shame. And this girl has it--this thing I'm
trying to express. She's modern to her finger tips, and yet she's
extraordinarily American--in spite of her modernity, she embodies in some
queer way our tradition. She loves our old houses at Silliston--they make
her feel at home--that's her own expression."

"Did she say that?"

"Exactly. And I know she's of New England ancestry, she told me so. What
I can't make out is, why she joined the I.W.W. That seems so
contradictory."

"Perhaps she was searching for light there," Insall hazarded. "Why don't
you ask her?"

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Maturin, thoughtfully. "I want to, my
curiosity almost burns me alive, and yet I don't. She isn't the kind you
can ask personal questions of--that's part of her charm, part of her
individuality. One is a little afraid to intrude. And yet she keeps
coming here--of course you are a sufficient attraction, Brooks. But I
must give her the credit of not flirting with you."

"I've noticed that, too," said Insall, comically.

"She's searching for light," Mrs. Maturin went on, struck by the phrase.
"She has an instinct we can give it to her, because we come from an
institution of learning. I felt something of the kind when I suggested
her establishing herself in Silliston. Well, she's more than worth while
experimenting on, she must have lived and breathed what you call the
`movie atmosphere' all her life, and yet she never seems to have read and
absorbed any sentimental literature or cheap religion. She doesn't
suggest the tawdry. That part of her, the intellectual part, is a clear
page to be written upon."

"There's my chance," said Insall.

"No, it's my chance--since you're so cynical."

"I'm not cynical," he protested.

"I don't believe you really are. And if you are, there may be a judgment
upon you," she added playfully. "I tell you she's the kind of woman
artists go mad about. She has what sentimentalists call temperament, and
after all we haven't any better word to express dynamic desires. She'd
keep you stirred up, stimulated, and you could educate her."

"No, thanks, I'll leave that to you. He who educates a woman is lost. But
how about Syndicalism and all the mysticism that goes with it? There's an
intellectual over at Headquarters who's been talking to her about
Bergson, the life-force, and the World-We-Ourselves-Create."

Mrs. Maturin laughed.

"Well, we go wrong when we don't go right. That's just it, we must go
some way. And I'm sure, from what I gather, that she isn't wholly
satisfied with Syndicalism."

"What is right?" demanded Insall.

"Oh, I don't intend to turn her over to Mr. Worrall and make a
sociologist and a militant suffragette out of her. She isn't that kind,
anyhow. But I could give her good literature to read--yours, for
instance," she added maliciously.

"You're preposterous, Augusta," Insall exclaimed.

"I may be, but you've got to indulge me. I've taken this fancy to her
--of course I mean to see more of her. But--you know how hard it is for
me, sometimes, since I've been left alone."

Insall laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder.

"I remember what you said the first day I saw her, that the strike was in
her," Mrs. Maturin continued. "Well, I see now that she does express and
typify it--and I don't mean the `labour movement' alone, or this strike
in Rampton, which is symptomatic, but crude. I mean something bigger
--and I suppose you do--the protest, the revolt, the struggle for
self-realization that is beginning to be felt all over the nation, all
over the world today, that is not yet focussed and self-conscious, but
groping its way, clothing itself in any philosophy that seems to fit it.
I can imagine myself how such a strike as this might appeal to a girl
with a sense of rebellion against sordidness and lack of
opportunity--especially if she has had a tragic experience. And sometimes
I suspect she has had one."

"Well, it's an interesting theory," Insall admitted indulgently.

"I'm merely amplifying your suggestions, only you won't admit that they
are yours. And she was your protegee." "And you are going to take her off
my hands." "I'm not so sure," said Mrs. Maturin.




CHAPTER XIX

The Hampton strike had reached the state of grim deadlock characteristic
of all stubborn wars. There were aggressions, retaliations on both sides,
the antagonism grew more intense. The older labour unions were accused by
the strikers of playing the employers' game, and thus grew to be hated
even more than the "capitalists." These organizations of the skilled had
entered but half-heartedly into a struggle that now began to threaten,
indeed, their very existence, and when it was charged that the Textile
Workers had been attempting to secure recruits from the ranks of the
strikers, and had secretly offered the millowners a scale of demands in
the hope that a sufficient number of operatives would return to work, and
so break the strike; a serious riot was barely averted. "Scab-hunting
agencies," the unions were called. One morning when it was learned that
the loom-fixers, almost to a man, had gone back to the mills, a streetcar
was stopped near the power house at the end of Faber Street, and in a
twinkling, before the militia or police could interfere, motorman,
conductor, and passengers were dragged from it and the trolley pole
removed. This and a number of similar aggressive acts aroused the
mill-owners and their agents to appeal with renewed vigour to the public
through the newspapers, which it was claimed they owned or subsidized.
Then followed a series of arraignments of the strike leaders calculated
to stir the wildest prejudices and fears of the citizens of Hampton.
Antonelli and Jastro--so rumour had it--in various nightly speeches had
advised their followers to "sleep in the daytime and prowl like wild
animals at night"; urged the power house employees to desert and leave
the city in darkness; made the declaration, "We will win if we raise
scaffolds on every street!" insisted that the strikers, too, should have
"gun permits," since the police hirelings carried arms. And the fact that
the mill-owners replied with pamphlets whose object was proclaimed to be
one of discrediting their leaders in the eyes of the public still further
infuriated the strikers. Such charges, of course, had to be vehemently
refuted, the motives behind them made clear, and counter-accusations laid
at the door of the mill-owners.

The atmosphere at Headquarters daily grew more tense. At any moment the
spark might be supplied to precipitate an explosion that would shake the
earth. The hungry, made more desperate by their own sufferings or the
spectacle of starving families, were increasingly difficult to control:
many wished to return to work, others clamoured for violence, nor were
these wholly discouraged by a portion of the leaders. A riot seemed
imminent--a riot Antonelli feared and firmly opposed, since it would
alienate the sympathy of that wider public in the country on which the
success of the strike depended. Watchful, yet apparently unconcerned,
unmoved by the quarrels, the fierce demands for "action," he sat on the
little stage, smoking his cigars and reading his newspapers.

Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks when
she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. Inexperience
had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the
excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new ideas, into which
she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment that galvanized
her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night, hers had been the
oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a desperate wayfarer,
pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances up to perceive the
clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the black morning
hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her brain became hideously
active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, striving to
convince herself that it could not be. But the thing had its advocate,
also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens she had
ignored: to cause her to piece together, in this moment of torture,
portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes from
education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young women as
Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times, in the month just past,
she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and on one
occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the bibliotheque
and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with a pang of fear she recalled
what Anna had said:--"You're working too hard--you hadn't ought to stay
here nights. If it was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think."

Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate
her consciousness until now! "If it was some girls I've met, I'd know
what to think!" It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she
sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to
confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm,
perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The
rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What
would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never see
them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off,
utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little while
ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not somebody
--God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried to say, "Oh
God, deliver me from this thing!" but the words seemed a mockery. After
all, it was mechanical, it had either happened or it hadn't happened. A
life-long experience in an environment where only unpleasant things
occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a fleeting, childhood
belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule. And if there were a
God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered before this thing
happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why hadn't he informed
her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill in which he had
placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting destruction? Why
had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would he comfort her now,
convey to her some message of his sympathy and love? No such message,
alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness.

After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the
bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she face
it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and litter
of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought a slight
relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over her--suggested and
conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother. Something had killed
suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would mercifully lose the power
to suffer! But the thought made her shudder. She could not, like her
mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in cleaning pots and pans,
or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a spotless kitchen. What
would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that had tortured her became a
dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at another time--how long
ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's deception had dulled, when she
had sat in the train on her way back to Hampton from Boston, after seeing
Lise. The pain would throb again, unsupportably, and she would wake, and
this time it would drive her--she knew not where.

She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true....

She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran
up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police
in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had been
arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and terrified,
they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had also been
found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of Hampton's
prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was the inevitable
result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of society as Jastro
and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited the Syrians to the deed.
But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna insisted--they themselves had
planted the explosive, adroitly started the rumours, told the police
where the dynamite was to be found. Such was the view that prevailed at
Headquarters, pervaded the angrily buzzing crowd that stood
outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the stormy conferences in the
Salle de Reunion.

The day wore on. In the middle of the afternoon, as she was staring out
of the window, Anna Mower returned with more news. Dynamite had been
discovered in Hawthorne Street, and it was rumoured that Antonelli and
Jastro were to be arrested.

"You ought to go home and rest, Janet," she said kindly.

Janet shook her head.

"Rolfe's back," Anna informed her, after a moment. "He's talking to
Antonelli about another proclamation to let people know who's to blame
for this dynamite business. I guess he'll be in here in a minute to
dictate the draft. Say, hadn't you better let Minnie take it, and go
home?"

"I'm not sick," Janet repeated, and Anna reluctantly left her.

Rolfe had been absent for a week, in New York, consulting with some of
the I.W.W. leaders; with Lockhart, the chief protagonist of Syndicalism
in America, just returned from Colorado, to whom he had given a detailed
account of the Hampton strike. And Lockhart, next week, was coming to
Hampton to make a great speech and look over the ground for himself. All
this Rolfe told Janet eagerly when he entered the bibliotheque. He was
glad to get back; he had missed her.

"But you are pale!" he exclaimed, as he seized her hand, "and how your
eyes burn! You do not take care of yourself when I am not here to watch
you." His air of solicitude, his assumption of a peculiar right to ask,
might formerly have troubled and offended her. Now she was scarcely aware
of his presence. "You feel too much--that is it you are like a torch that
consumes itself in burning. But this will soon be over, we shall have
them on their knees, the capitalists, before very long, when it is known
what they have done to-day. It is too much--they have overreached
themselves with this plot of the dynamite."

"You have missed me, a little?"

"I have been busy," she said, releasing her hand and sitting down at her
desk and taking up her notebook.

"You are not well," he insisted.

"I'm all right," she replied.

He lit a cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner of
preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to
dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with
fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed,
that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the
magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent
tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again,
glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet.
Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by his
own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a loss to
account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly been able to
arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped. For Rolfe there
had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What had happened,
during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all neophytes he
had ever encountered?

"The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be
true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the
mill-owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always
unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in
order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit
another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he
stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help
me, you're not in sympathy."

He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible
hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial was
unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was
cold.

"Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot believe
that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the workers--it
is all nothing without you."

For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as
sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away.

"I can't love--I can only hate," she said.

"But you do not hate me!" Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice
caught as in a sob. "I, who love you, who have taught you!"

She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though
slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her.

"Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried.
"It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable
keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool.
Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a
friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and
Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner with
him."

Janet, too, had risen.

"I don't believe it," she said.

"Ah, I thought you wouldn't! But we have the proof that dynamite was in
the satchel, we've found the contractor from whom it was bought. I was a
fool--I might have known that you loved Ditmar."

"I hate him!" said Janet.

"It is the same thing," said Rolfe.

She did not answer.... He watched her in silence as she put on her hat
and coat and left the room.

The early dusk was gathering when she left the hall and made her way
toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant
injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once
brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the
telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely
discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely
garbed, and went about in "rubbers"--the most depressing of all articles
worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but the
pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the shop
windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in front of that very
emporium where Lisehad been incarcerated, the Bagatelle, stared at the
finery displayed there, at the blue tulle dress that might be purchased,
she read, for $22.99. She found herself repeating, in meaningless,
subdued tones, the words, "twenty-two ninety-nine." She even tried--just
to see if it were possible--to concentrate her mind on that dress, on the
fur muffs and tippets in the next window; to act as if this were just an
ordinary, sad February afternoon, and she herself once more just an
ordinary stenographer leading a monotonous, uneventful existence. But she
knew that this was not true, because, later on, she was going to do
something--to commit some act. She didn't know what this act would be.
Her head was hot, her temples throbbed....

Night had fallen, the electric arcs burned blue overhead, she was in
another street--was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble
of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming
toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the
shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in
these parades--which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of
Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained
the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been
distributed by thousands among the strikers. She recalled the words of
this song, though the procession was as yet too far away for her to
distinguish them:--

       "The People's flag is deepest red,
        It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
        And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
        Their life-blood dyed its every fold."

The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to reach
her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together. Suddenly,
as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the
Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:--

       "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
        Arise, ye wretched of the earth!"

And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:--

       "'Tis the final conflict,
        Let each stand in his place!"

The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against
the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was
carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human
beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of
old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by the
cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the
sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play.
The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by the
standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the
strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The
light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front
rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent, as
though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a group
of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado. From the
rear came that indescribable "booing" which those who have heard never
forget, mingled with curses and cries:--"Vive la greve!"

"To hell with the Cossacks!"

"Kahm on--shoot!"

The backs of the soldiers, determined, unyielding, were covered with
heavy brown capes that fell below the waist. As Janet's glance wandered
down the line it was arrested by the face of a man in a visored woollen
cap--a face that was almost sepia, in which large white eyeballs struck a
note of hatred. And what she seemed to see in it, confronting her, were
the hatred and despair of her own soul! The man might have been a
Hungarian or a Pole; the breadth of his chin was accentuated by a wide,
black moustache, his attitude was tense,--that of a maddened beast ready
to spring at the soldier in front of him. He was plainly one of those who
had reached the mental limit of endurance.

In contrast with this foreigner, confronting him, a young lieutenant
stood motionless, his head cocked on one side, his hand grasping the club
held a little behind him, his glance meeting the other's squarely, but
with a different quality of defiance. All his faculties were on the
alert. He wore no overcoat, and the uniform fitting close to his figure,
the broad-brimmed campaign hat of felt served to bring into relief the
physical characteristics of the American Anglo-Saxon, of the
individualist who became the fighting pioneer. But Janet, save to
register the presence of the intense antagonism between the two, scarcely
noticed her fellow countryman.... Every moment she expected to see the
black man spring,--and yet movement would have marred the drama of that
consuming hatred....

Then, by one of those bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds
are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little the
people were dispersed to drift together again by chance--in smaller
numbers--several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered
over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or
four special policemen with night sticks urged them on. Not a riot, or
anything approaching it. The police were jeered, but the groups,
apparently, had already begun to scatter, when from the triangular
vestibule of a saloon on the corner darted a flame followed by an echoing
report, a woman bundled up in a shawl screamed and sank on the snow. For
an instant the little French-Canadian policeman whom the shot had missed
gazed stupidly down at her....

As Janet ran along the dark pavements the sound of the shot and of the
woman's shriek continued to ring in her ears. At last she stopped in
front of the warehouse beyond Mr. Tiernan's shop, staring at the darkened
windows of the flat--of the front room in which her mother now slept
alone. For a minute she stood looking at these windows, as though
hypnotized by some message they conveyed--the answer to a question
suggested by the incident that had aroused and terrified her. They drew
her, as in a trance, across the street, she opened the glass-panelled
door, remembering mechanically the trick it had of not quite closing,
turned and pushed it to and climbed the stairs. In the diningroom the
metal lamp, brightly polished, was burning as usual, its light falling on
the chequered red table-cloth, on her father's empty chair, on that
somewhat battered heirloom, the horsehair sofa. All was so familiar, and
yet so amazingly unfamiliar, so silent! At this time Edward should be
reading the Banner, her mother bustling in and out, setting the table for
supper. But not a dish was set. The ticking of the ancient clock only
served to intensify the silence. Janet entered, almost on tiptoe, made
her way to the kitchen door, and looked in. The stove was polished, the
pans bright upon the wall, and Hannah was seated in a corner, her hands
folded across a spotless apron. Her scant hair was now pure white, her
dress seemed to have fallen away from her wasted neck, which was like a
trefoil column.

"Is that you, Janet? You hain't seen anything of your father?"

The night before Janet had heard this question, and she had been puzzled
as to its meaning--whether in the course of the day she had seen her
father, or whether Hannah thought he was coming home.

"He's at the mill, mother. You know he has to stay there."

"I know," replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old
aspersion. "But I've got everything ready for him in case he should
come--any time--if the strikers hain't killed him."

"But he's safe where he is."

"I presume they will try to kill him, before they get through," Hannah
continued evenly. "But in case he should come at any time, and I'm not
here, you tell him all those Bumpus papers are put away in the drawer of
that old chest, in the corner. I can't think what he'd do without those
papers. That is," she added, "if you're here yourself."

"Why shouldn't you be here?" asked Janet, rather sharply.

"I dunno, I seem to have got through." She glanced helplessly around the
kitchen. "There don't seem to be much left to keep me alive.... I guess
you'll be wanting your supper, won't you? You hain't often home these
days--whatever it is you're doing. I didn't expect you."

Janet did not answer at once.

"I--I have to go out again, mother," she said.

Hannah accepted the answer as she had accepted every other negative in
life, great and small.

"Well, I guessed you would."

Janet made a step toward her.

"Mother!" she said, but Hannah gazed at her uncomprehendingly. Janet
stooped convulsively, and kissed her. Straightening up, she stood looking
down at her mother for a few moments, and went out of the room, pausing
in the dining-room, to listen, but Hannah apparently had not stirred. She
took the box of matches from its accustomed place on the shelf beside the
clock, entered the dark bedroom in the front of the flat, closing the
door softly behind her. The ghostly blue light from a distant arc came
slanting in at the window, glinting on the brass knobs of the chest of
drawers-another Bumpus heirloom. She remembered that chest from early
childhood; it was one of the few pieces that, following them in all their
changes of residence, had been faithful to the end: she knew everything
in it, and the place for everything. Drawing a match from the box, she
was about to turn on the gas--but the light from the arc would suffice.
As she made her way around the walnut bed she had a premonition of
poignant anguish as yet unrealized, of anguish being held at bay by a
stronger, fiercer, more imperative emotion now demanding expression,
refusing at last to be denied. She opened the top drawer of the chest,
the drawer in which Hannah, breaking tradition, had put the Bumpus
genealogy. Edward had never kept it there. Would the other things be in
place? Groping with her hands in the left-hand corner, her fingers
clasped exultantly something heavy, something wrapped carefully in layers
of flannel. She had feared her father might have taken it to the mill!
She drew it out, unwound the flannel, and held to the light an
old-fashioned revolver, the grease glistening along its barrel. She
remembered, too, that the cartridges had lain beside it, and thrusting
her hand once more into the drawer found the box, extracting several, and
replacing the rest, closed the drawer, and crept through the dining-room
to her bedroom, where she lit the gas in order to examine the weapon
--finally contriving, more by accident than skill, to break it. The
cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But before
inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it
out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do
it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act
determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it,
and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from
her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the light
when she saw reflected in the glass the red button of the I.W.W. still
pinned on her coat. This she tore off, and flung on the bureau.

When she had kissed her mother, when she had stood hesitatingly in the
darkness of the familiar front bedroom in the presence of unsummoned
memories of a home she had believed herself to resent and despise, she
had nearly faltered. But once in the street, this weakness suddenly
vanished, was replaced by a sense of wrong that now took complete and
furious possession of her, driving her like a gale at her back. She
scarcely felt on her face the fine rain that had begun to fall once more.
Her feet were accustomed to the way. When she had turned down West Street
and almost gained the canal, it was with a shock of surprise that she
found herself confronted by a man in a long cape who held a rifle and
barred her path. She stared at him as at an apparition.

"You can't get by here," he said. "Don't you know that?"

She did not reply. He continued to look at her, and presently asked, in a
gentler tone:--"Where did you wish to go, lady?"

"Into the mill," she replied, "to the offices."

"But there can't anybody go through here unless they have a pass. I'm
sorry, but that's the order."

Her answer came so readily as to surprise her.

"I was Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer. I have to see him."

The sentry hesitated, and then addressed another soldier, who was near
the bridge.

"Hi, sergeant!" he called. The sergeant came up--a conscientious Boston
clerk who had joined the militia from a sense of duty and a need for
exercise. While the sentry explained the matter he gazed at Janet. Then
he said politely:--"I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't disobey orders."

"But can't you send word to Mr. Ditmar, and tell him I want to see him?"
she asked.

"Why, I guess so," he answered, after a moment. "What name shall I say?"

"Miss Bumpus."

"Bumpus," he repeated. "That's the gatekeeper's name."

"I'm his daughter--but I want to see Mr. Ditmar."

"Well," said the sergeant, "I'm sure it's all right, but I'll have to
send in anyway. Orders are orders. You understand?"

She nodded as he departed. She saw him cross the bridge like a ghost
through the white mist rising from the canal. And through the mist she
could make out the fortress-like mass of the mill itself, and the blurred,
distorted lights in the paymaster's offices smeared on the white curtain
of the vapour.

"Nasty weather," the sentry remarked, in friendly fashion. He appeared
now, despite his uniform, as a good-natured, ungainly youth.

Janet nodded.

"You'd ought to have brought an umbrella," he said. "I guess it'll rain
harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero,
anyhow."

She nodded again, but he did not seem to resent her silence. He talked
about the hardship of patrolling in winter, until the sergeant came back.

"It's all right, Miss Bumpus," he said, and touched his hat as he
escorted her to the bridge. She crossed the canal and went through the
vestibule without replying to the greeting of the night-watchman, or
noticing his curious glance; she climbed the steel-clad stairway, passed
the paymaster's offices and Mr. Orcutt's, and gained the outer office
where she had worked as a stenographer. It was dark, but sufficient light
came through Ditmar's open door to guide her beside the rail. He had
heard her step, and as she entered his room he had put his hands heavily
on his desk, in the act of rising from his chair.

"Janet!" he said, and started toward her, but got no farther than the
corner of the desk. The sight of her heaving breast, of the peculiar
light that flashed from beneath her lashes stopped him suddenly. Her
hands were in her pockets. "What is it?" he demanded stupidly.

But she continued to stand there, breathing so heavily that she could not
speak. It was then that he became aware of an acute danger. He did not
flinch.

"What is it?" he repeated.

Still she was silent. One hand was thrust deeper into its pocket, he saw
a shudder run through her, and suddenly she burst into hysterical
weeping, sinking into a chair. He stood for some moments helplessly
regarding her before he gained the presence of mind to go to the door and
lock it, returning to bend over her.

"Don't touch me!" she said, shrinking from him.

"For God's sake tell me what's the matter," he begged.

She looked up at him and tried to speak, struggling against the sobs that
shook her.

"I--I came here to--to kill you--only I can't do it."

"To kill me!" he said, after a pause. In spite of the fact that he had
half divined her intention, the words shocked him. Whatever else may be
said of him, he did not lack courage, his alarm was not of a physical
nature. Mingled with it were emotions he himself did not understand,
caused by the unwonted sight of her loss of self-control, of her anger,
and despair. "Why did you want to kill me?"

And again he had to wait for an answer.

"Because you've spoiled my life--because I'm going to have a child!"

"What do you mean? Are you?... it can't be possible."

"It is possible, it's true--it's true. I've waited and waited, I've
suffered, I've almost gone crazy--and now I know. And I said I'd kill you
if it were so, I'd kill myself--only I can't. I'm a coward." Her voice
was drowned again by weeping.

A child! He had never imagined such a contingency! And as he leaned back
against the desk, his emotions became chaotic. The sight of her, even as
she appeared crazed by anger, had set his passion aflame--for the
intensity and fierceness of her nature had always made a strong appeal to
dominant qualities in Ditmar's nature. And then--this announcement!
Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by
an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a
similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime
gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this
particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind
leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain
desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his
affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal.

"I didn't know," he said desperately, "I couldn't guess. Do you think I
would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were both
carried away--"

"You planned it!" she replied vehemently, without looking up. "You didn't
care for me, you only--wanted me."

"That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you."

"Oh, do you think I believe that?" she exclaimed.

"I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of
an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to
present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you
left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me."

"You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted.

"Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you ought
to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd joined
those anarchists--"

"They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she
said.

He waved this aside. "I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until
somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did
you do it?"

"Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want
them to win--against you!" She lifted her head and looked at him, and in
spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her
defiance.

"Because you love me!" he said.

"Because I hate you," she answered.

And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love
had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it was
a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it
vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic.

"Listen!" he pleaded. "I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself
going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help
thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left
me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that
something had happened. It wasn't my fault--" he pulled himself up
abruptly.

"I found out what men were like," she said. "A man made my sister a woman
of the streets--that's what you've done to me."

He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so characteristic
of her, struck him with a new fear.

"I'm not that kind of a man," he said.

But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying.

"I'll take care of you," he assured her, after a moment. "If you'll only
trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you."

She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of
dignity and scorn to her words when they came.

"I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and
kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me." She rose. "But
I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me again."

She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of her
again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a pang. He
could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had never
understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he had
brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted to
kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed that
she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood before him
the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her.

"I love you, Janet," he said. "I want you to marry me."

"You don't understand," she answered. "You never did. If I had married
you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had been
married."

"Not as bad!" he exclaimed.

"If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me," she explained,
slowly. "Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. I
know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get away
from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a chance,
to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I knew were
there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love you, I would
have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that you didn't really
love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get away from you,
when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get tired of me.
That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have been the same if
we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it any more than I can
now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now, but that's because
you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going to trouble you any
more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now, but that isn't
love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you."

"You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--"

"If the world was right," she said, "I could have this child and nobody
would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when
I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do what
I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a child
--especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything."

Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As the
fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come as a
supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless, there
revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had wrung from
her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a realization of her
personality never before achieved. And because he had hitherto failed to
achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated, surpassing glimpse of what
she essentially was, and the thought of the child their child--permeating
his passion, transformed it into a feeling hitherto unexperienced and
unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully, his hands feeling for her,
yet not daring to touch her.

"Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry you
now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't after
--after all we have been to each other."

But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the
intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing,
and she scarcely heard him.

"I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear
it."

"Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For
God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her
arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his
hold.

"Let me go, please." All the passionate anger had gone out of her, and
she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a resolution
which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake.

"But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when
you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you and
want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged me
--thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that, I
guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For
the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to
me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder,
after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God knows
what I've suffered, too!"

"Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he obeyed
her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him. He turned
and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it. "I'll see
you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as she went
through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted hallway
beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence. He was
trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him, tortured
by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the great crisis
of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that strange last
look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed her to go out
into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he fairly ran out of
the office and down the stairs and across the bridge.

"Which way did that young lady go?" he demanders of the sergeant.

"Why--uh, West Street, Mr. Ditmar."

He remembered where Fillmore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out
one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his
glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he
reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood
gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived,
and whether she had as yet come home....

After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed gone
through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was
better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing
from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed. She
tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her cheeks,
her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this physical
sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet
incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she
floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught
herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments she
was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had passed since, in a terrible
exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office in
the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to find
the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or to cast
about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her failure had
sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar speaking,
the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not Ditmar's! They
were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which she listened,
he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she should marry
Ditmar, because of her Bumpus blood. And this made her laugh.... Again,
Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it. She had taken it
down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud, he said--so fine;
its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed, became that of the
detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made Janet smile! But
Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why not go back to him
and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation would be joy....

It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found
herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The
light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and
into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures
of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat,
their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of
this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a
twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in
Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were
contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from God, and yet
they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find
her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and
would He help her?

The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless strokes
--like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring her
reluctant, drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness
through which she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds
were left undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an
outcast! Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and
unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth
from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the
Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill
lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift
waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves,
seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though
it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then
to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill and
steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in the water
when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold! She wished she
could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she couldn't.... Where
was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop over that parapet and
be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't she? Well, it was
because--because--she was going to have a child. Well, if she had a child
to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she would have something to
love. She loved it now, as though she felt it quickening within her, she
wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved affection. She seemed
actually to feel in her arms its soft little body pressed against her.
Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled, as an incident of the
remote past, that she had told him she wanted it!

This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an
expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason why
she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and
herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her, long
ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her still, he
had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him? Why had she
taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a father,--when
she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted the child? why,
even in her moments of passionate hatred she recalled having been
surprised by some such yearning as now came over her? And for an
interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling clarity. Not
because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because he was what
he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and possessed her,
left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to her, willing to
sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires, but he loved her,
for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look that a woman never
mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in his window glowed
again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was drawing her,
irresistibly....

The sentry recognized her as she came along the canal.

"Mr. Ditmar's gone," he told her.

"Gone!" she repeated. "Gone!"

"Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he
asked the sergeant about you."

"And--he won't be back?"

"I guess not," answered the man, sympathetically. "He said good-night."

She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been so
unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had
suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered,
though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted
past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber Street
were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs. Seeking to
escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading north, only
to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from the sidewalk.

"Excuse me, but you didn't see that automobile," he said, as he released
her.

Shaken, she went on through several streets to find herself at length
confronted by a pair of shabby doors that looked familiar, and pushing
one of them open, baited at the bottom of a stairway to listen. The sound
of cheerful voices camp to her from above; she started to climb--even
with the help of the rail it seemed as if she would never reach the top
of that stairway. But at last she stood in a loft where long tables were
set, and at the end of one of these, sorting out spoons and dishes, three
women and a man were chatting and laughing together. Janet was troubled
because she could not remember who the man was, although she recognized
his bold profile, his voice and gestures.... At length one of the women
said something in a low tone, and he looked around quickly and crossed
the room.

"Why, it's you!" he said, and suddenly she recalled his name.

"Mr. Insall!"

But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged
condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion. He
took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the
light and placing her in a chair. Darkness descended on her....

Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the
doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet.

"Oh, Brooks, what is it--what's happened to her?"

"I don't know," he replied, "I didn't have a chance to ask her. I'm going
for a doctor."

"Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay." Mrs. Maturin was instantly competent
.... And when Insall came back from the drug store where he had
telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. "We've done everything
we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry clothes, and
we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers and laid her on
the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,--what can have happened to
her? Is the doctor coming?"

"Right away," said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the storeroom.
Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician arrived.

"It's probably pneumonia," he explained to Insall a little later. "She
must go to the hospital--but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty
full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike." He hesitated. "Of
course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private
institution just now."

"Oh, she has friends," said Mrs. Maturin. "Couldn't we take her to our
little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles--that isn't
much in an automobile, and the roads are good now."

"Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she
would, of course, be better looked after," the physician consented.

"I'll see to it at once," said Insall....




CHAPTER XX

The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus of
Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window of the
white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare branches of
the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch, day by day,
the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the white
sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that sunlight
swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always spending,
always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been poured out on
her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep. And instead of
the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant clamour of the
mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by silvertoned chimes
proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered to the spell, and
had no thought of the future. For a little while every day, Mrs. Maturin
read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing many of the verses
by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in the soft dark hair that
fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For Janet little guessed the
thought that went into the choosing of these books, nor could she know of
the hours spent by this lady pondering over library shelves or consulting
eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as
a wildflower--one of the rare, shy ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung
up in Hampton, of all places, crushed by a heedless foot, yet
miraculously not destroyed, and already pushing forth new and eager
tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To find the proper nourishment, to
give it a chance to grow in a native, congenial soil, such was her
breathless task. And so she had selected "The Child's Garden of Verses."

       "I should like to rise and go
        Where the golden apples grow"...

When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston.
Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded
in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta
Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite
disagreements and conflicts--nay, through them--developed imperceptibly
toward a sublimer union, founded not on dominion, but on justice and
right. She spoke of the England she had visited on her wedding journey,
of the landmarks and literature that also through generations have been
American birthrights; and of that righteous self-assertion and
independence which, by protest and even by war, America had contributed
to the democracy of the future. Silliston, indifferent to cults and
cataclysms, undisturbed by the dark tides flung westward to gather in
deposits in other parts of the land, had held fast to the old tradition,
stood ready to do her share to transform it into something even nobler
when the time should come. Simplicity and worth and beauty--these
elements at least of the older Republic should not perish, but in the end
prevail.

She spoke simply of these things, connecting them with a Silliston whose
spirit appealed to all that was inherent and abiding in the girl. All was
not chaos: here at least, a beacon burned with a bright and steady flame.
And she spoke of Andrew Silliston, the sturdy colonial prototype of the
American culture, who had fought against his King, who had spent his
modest fortune to found this seat of learning, believing as he did that
education is the cornerstone of republics; divining that lasting unity is
possible alone by the transformation of the individual into the citizen
through voluntary bestowal of service and the fruits of labour. Samuel
Wootton, the Boston merchant who had given the hospital, was Andrew's
true descendant, imbued with the same half-conscious intuition that
builds even better that it reeks. And Andrew, could he have returns to
earth in his laced coat and long silk waistcoat, would still recognize
his own soul in Silliston Academy, the soul of his creed and race.

       "Away down the river,
        A hundred miles or more,
        Other little children
        Shall bring my boats ashore."...

Janet drew in a great breath, involuntarily. These were moments when it
seemed that she could scarcely contain what she felt of beauty and
significance, when the ecstasy and pain were not to be borne. And
sometimes, as she listened to Mrs. Maturin's voice, she wept in silence.
Again a strange peace descended on her, the peace of an exile come home;
if not to remain, at least to know her own land and people before faring
forth. She would not think of that faring yet awhile, but strive to live
and taste the present--and yet as life flowed back into her veins that
past arose to haunt her, she yearned to pour it out to her new friend, to
confess all that had happened to her. Why couldn't she? But she was
grateful because Mrs. Maturin betrayed no curiosity. Janet often lay
watching her, puzzled, under the spell of a frankness, an ingenuousness,
a simplicity she had least expected to find in one who belonged to such a
learned place as that of Silliston. But even learning, she was
discovering, could be amazingly simple. Freely and naturally Mrs. Maturin
dwelt on her own past, on the little girl of six taken from her the year
after her husband died, on her husband himself, once a professor here,
and who, just before his last illness, had published a brilliant book on
Russian literature which resulted in his being called to Harvard. They
had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin had come back to
Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake, hemmed in by the
Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had spent her girlhood
summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the University of Toronto.
There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had come at her father's
suggestion to camp.

Janet, of course, could not know all of that romance, though she tried to
picture it from what her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and
twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most at
home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the
wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion,
endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which,
because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy knot
behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a canoe,
she might at a little distance have been mistaken for one of the race to
which the forests and waters had once belonged. The instinct of mothering
was strong in her, and from the beginning she had taken the shy and
delicate student under her wing, recognizing in him one of the physically
helpless dedicated to a supreme function. He was forever catching colds,
his food disagreed with him, and on her own initiative she discharged his
habitant cook and supplied him with one of her own choosing. When
overtaken by one of his indispositions she paddled him about the lake
with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his knees, and he
submitted: he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly indifferent to
the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness of disposition, his
brilliant conversations with those whom, like her father, he knew and
trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her life she was awakening
to the glories of literature and taking a special course in that branch.
He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and Dostoievsky, and seated on the
log piazza read in excellent French "Dead Souls," "Peres et Enfants," and
"The Brothers Karamazoff." At the end of August he went homeward almost
gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his heart, until he began to miss
Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had
followed that too brief period of intensive happiness....

The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty,
though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the
sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity of
loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and
insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently
to rally her on her enthusiasms, while understanding and sympathizing with
this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her from
the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal
instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch....

Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long
been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when tramping
over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. Ledyard's, the
principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear again. Even then he,
had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in botany, bird
lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through the
neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by fancying
the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which he had restored with
his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings. Behind it he had
made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that ran his workshop.
In play hours the place was usually overrun by boys.... But sometimes the
old craving for tramping would overtake him, one day his friends would
find the house shut up, and he would be absent for a fortnight, perhaps
for a month--one never knew when he was going, or when he would return.
He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through the byways of New
England, stopping at night at the farm-houses, or often sleeping out
under the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write another book. He wrote
only when he felt like writing.

It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins", rather
than his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs.
Maturin chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he
was more gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins
chose a cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to
the mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the
Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two chunky grey
horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate
of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the
lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted. Silas
cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the stone
walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment of
goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied
psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but
if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that
peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos was in a way a
sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with theories, he never
even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods,
or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas
on the subject: it is certain that presently one began to have one's own:
nor did he exclaim with George Sand, "Il n'y a rien de plus betement
mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!" Somehow the meannesses and
jealousies were accounted for, if not excused. To understand is to
pardon.

It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of
space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as
one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the early
summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was the
sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt
breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of
roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the
landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught
by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail.

Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned
patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and
colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned....
Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and
the horses' feet are on the "Boston Road"--or rud, according to the
authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places, a
"rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which
the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with
upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the
easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters: few valleys
are deep enough to turn it aside; few mountains can appal it: railroads
have given it a wide berth. Here and there the forest opens out to
reveal, on a knoll or "flat," a forgotten village or tavern-stand. Over
the high shelf of Washington Town it runs where the air is keen and the
lakes are blue, where long-stemmed wild flowers nod on its sunny banks,
to reach at length the rounded, classic hills and sentinel mountain that
mark the sheep country of the Connecticut....

It was before Janet's convalescence began that Mrs. Maturin had consulted
Insall concerning her proposed experiment in literature. Afterwards he
had left Silliston for a lumber camp on a remote river in northern Maine,
abruptly to reappear, on a mild afternoon late in April, in Augusta
Maturin's garden. The crocuses and tulips were in bloom, and his friend,
in a gardening apron, was on her knees, trowel in hand, assisting a hired
man to set out marigolds and snapdragons.

"Well, it's time you were home again," she exclaimed, as she rose to
greet him and led him to a chair on the little flagged terrace beside the
windows of her library. "I've got so much to tell you about our invalid."

"Our invalid!" Insall retorted.

"Of course. I look to you to divide the responsibility with me, and
you've shirked by running off to Maine. You found her, you know--and
she's really remarkable."

"Now see here, Augusta, you can't expect me to share the guardianship of
an attractive and--well, a dynamic young woman. If she affects you this
way, what will she do to me? I'm much too susceptible."

"Susceptible" she scoffed. "But you can't get out of it. I need you. I've
never been so interested and so perplexed in my life."

"How is she?" Insall asked.

"Frankly, I'm worried," said Mrs. Maturin. "At first she seemed to be
getting along beautifully. I read to her, a little every day, and it was
wonderful how she responded to it. I'll tell you about that I've got so
much to tell you! Young Dr. Trent is puzzled, too, it seems there are
symptoms in the case for which he cannot account. Some three weeks ago he
asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything--that's the
trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that I've grown
absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she should, and
Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional
complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual.
Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has
something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell
it to somebody--in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of me, but
she's so maddeningly self-contained, and at moments when I look at her
she baffles me, she makes me feel like an atom. Twenty times at least
I've almost screwed up my courage to ask her, but when it comes to the
point, I simply can't do it."

"You ought to be able to get at it, if any one can," said Insall.

"I've a notion it may be connected with the strike," Augusta Maturin
continued. "I never could account for her being mixed up in that,
plunging into Syndicalism. It seemed so foreign to her nature. I wish I'd
waited a little longer before telling her about the strike, but one day
she asked me how it had come out--and she seemed to be getting along so
nicely I didn't see any reason for not telling her. I said that the
strike was over, that the millowners had accepted the I.W.W. terms, but
that Antonelli and Jastro had been sent to jail and were awaiting trial
because they had been accused of instigating the murder of a woman who
was shot by a striker aiming at a policeman. It seems that she had seen
that! She told me so quite casually. But she was interested, and I went
on to mention how greatly the strikers were stirred by the arrests, how
they paraded in front of the jail, singing, and how the feeling was
mostly directed against Mr. Ditmar, because he was accused of instigating
the placing of dynamite in the tenements."

"And you spoke of Mr. Ditmar's death?" Insall inquired.

"Why yes, I told her how he had been shot in Dover Street by a demented
Italian, and if it hadn't been proved that the Italian was insane and not
a mill worker, the result of the strike might have been different."

"How did she take it?"

"Well, she was shocked, of course. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and
then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but
I was sorry I'd said anything about it."

"She didn't say anything?"

"Not a word."

"Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private
stenographer?"

"No!" Augusta Maturin exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied.

"That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin.

Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird
on the edge of the lawn.

"Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out
anything about her family?"

"Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on
Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother
doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I
wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use
the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chippering Mills!"

"A gatekeeper?"

"Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became
one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and I
had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his
remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was born
in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the Plymouth
Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed with gritty,
yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical Society. He
speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New Englander, never
slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, the kind of face
one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, wondering what was
the matter with it, and at last I realized what it lacked--will, desire,
ambition,--it was what a second-rate sculptor might have made of
Bradford, for instance. But there is a remnant of fire in him. Once, when
he spoke of the strike, of the foreigners, he grew quite indignant."

"He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall
asked.

"He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I
didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of her
amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy between
them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the unconscious
transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to smother.
Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost incredible
that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen the mother."

"It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer,"
Insall put in. "Was that reticence?"

"I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the
impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his
emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who
are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to
exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he
sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he
apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in
which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to
thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's right.
If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's pure
selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her."

Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to say
that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me the
justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a
connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her."

"Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble."

Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence.

"I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of
Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them."

"Did I think of them?"

"You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt
like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw.
And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She lay
there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to be
interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't
imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little
community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard
flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those
lines,

       "Other little children
        Shall bring my boats ashore."

That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she
inspired it."

"You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed.

"I'm much too radical for a schoolmam," she declared. "No board of
trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept the
faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and
sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts,
fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:--

       'Here, where the moors stretch free
        In the high blue afternoon,
        Are the marching sun and the talking sea.'

and those last lines:--

       'But thou, vast outbound ship of souls,
        What harbour town for thee?
        What shapes, when thy arriving tolls,
        Shall crowd the banks to see?
        Shall all the happy shipmates then
        Stand singing brotherly?
        Or shall a haggard, ruthless few
        Warp her over and bring her to,
        While the many broken souls of me
        Fester down in the slaver's pen,
        And nothing to say or do?'"

"I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited.
And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold
and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out
of it into the light--whether we can rescue her." Mrs. Maturin paused.

"What do you mean?" Insall asked.

"Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing
mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an aliveness
that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I was
conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality. It
isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly
modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of the
hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very
different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't
exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And
she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the
clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital
on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then," she
added insinuatingly, "we can collaborate."

"I think I'll go back to Maine," Insall exclaimed.

"If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again," said Mrs. Maturin.

"Janet," said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from
which she was reading, "do you remember that I spoke to you once in
Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we
don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of the
professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to give
their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And there's
Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write another
book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript, it's like
script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs. Case
--I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my
house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk."

Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

"You'll stay?"

"I can't," answered Janet. "I couldn't."

"But why not? Have you any other plans?"

"No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here."
Presently she raised her face to her friend. "Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so
sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and
beautiful! And now I've made you sad!"

It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her.

"What are friends for, Janet," she asked, "if not to share sorrow with?
And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has
not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat
here all these days with you without guessing that something worries you.
I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that I
might help you."

"I wanted to," said Janet, "every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I
couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you. And
then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think."

"I think I know you, Janet," answered Mrs. Maturin. "Nothing human,
nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of
those who believe so."

Presently Janet said, "I'm going to have a child."

Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing
her immediate reply.

"I, too, had a child, my dear," she answered. "I lost her." She felt the
girl's clasp tighten on her fingers.

"But you--you had a right to it--you were married. Children are sacred
things," said Augusta Maturin.

"Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this
child which was coming to her was sacred, too?

"However they come?" asked Janet. "Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At
first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was
driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in the
rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You understand?"

Augusta Maturity inclined her head.

"But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to
pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?"

"It was Mr. Ditmar."

"Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet."

"I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was dead
--and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and I know
now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something
happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another girl who'd
got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing with me, and
I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to do something."

Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited.

"I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and
lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed too
good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen. Please
don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it was my
fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from Hampton, but I
didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet stopped.

"But--you loved him?"

"Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I
thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that
night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to
shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too."

"Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement at
Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively,
apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement.

"But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I couldn't,
but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the child,
because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his head, he
seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd marry me right
away."

"And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity.

"Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him
--but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of faults,
and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel,
though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come to
understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but
because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested
in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that
mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he
was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me
and just took me."

"One never knows!" Augusta Maturity murmured.

"I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then I
came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've never
quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what happens to
me, now that I've told you," Janet added. "It was mean, not to tell you,
but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving me--and I
wanted all I could get."

"I'm thankful you did come to us!" Augusta Maturin managed to reply.

"You mean--?" Janet exclaimed.

"I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these things
quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is growing to
understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't know what kind
of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet."

"Oh, Mrs. Maturin!"

"I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been
sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to me.
And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little theories
of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I
understand you and love you even more than I did before."

Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of
the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for
fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:--"Mrs. Maturin,
do you believe in God?"

Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. "I like to think of Him as
light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no
matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and
sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world
learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long
for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization is
knowledge and light."

"That is beautiful," said Janet at length.

"It is all we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough."
She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to
consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be
easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been,
since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you
will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have something to
go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which you have a natural
craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts and the best
interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have your child, and
work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of course I'll keep your
secret, my dear."

"But--how?" Janet exclaimed.

"I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my
house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs.
Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting
until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away up
in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer. We'll
stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after that, I
know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west, where you
can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend in
California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should
eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned
respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will
always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of
course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe
that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives.
Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time
to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?"

"Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?"

"I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need me
more," Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to
bring conviction....




CHAPTER XXI

As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again, and
through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently
installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building belonging
to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not far from the
Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied manuscripts' or,
from her notebook, letters dictated by various members of the faculty.
And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at the flawless
copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to the
dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the
meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it was
almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the
Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these
learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly
worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward
her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning before
their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are quick to
respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and she was of a
type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these discerning
ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought their
manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short, Silliston
gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta Maturin. As
for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled pride not
unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the hidden element
of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged. Not that she had any
compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from Insall; but sometimes as
she contemplated it the strings of her heart grew tight. Silliston was so
obviously where Janet belonged, she could not bear the thought of the
girl going out again from this sheltered spot into a chaotic world of
smoke and struggle.

Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment
she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when
these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good
fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear
assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her
friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had
found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her
prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and
gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this
wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost.

Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and
treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her work,
the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with delicious
smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, new leaves
of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, and emerald
green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white clouds of the
little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She loved best the
moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows of elms the
lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments seemingly long
familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever stirring new
harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she belonged, and here,
had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have lived on in one
continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, foursquare,
ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its high chimneys
and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace porch open to the
sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. Ledyard. What was
the secret of its flavour? And how account for the sense of harmony
inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of the second Adams,
set in a frame of maples and shining white in the morning sun? Its curved
portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, its long windows were
touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a deckhouse on the wide
roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a Motley or a Longfellow
might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his "Thanatopsis." Farther on,
chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick row of professors' houses,
with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of granite--a subject for an
old English print.... Along the border of the Common were interspersed
among the ancient dormitories and halls the new and dignified buildings
of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the soul of Silliston. And to
it the soul of Janet responded.

In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross
the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of
the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity
of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows
were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the
classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high
clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you
reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival
colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is one
glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, and
another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster.

Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin
and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the
world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the
sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like a tapestry
woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow and
fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, but
they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of the
ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild
violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all
a-shimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the
pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks
flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing
things, they gathered drooping adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots
and foam-flowers. From Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He
would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur,
above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high
above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit
foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that
first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped
them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate....

Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her
planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of
his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs.
Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow
it.

"Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to
put in that border to replace the hyacinths."

"I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in a
railroad folder."

"Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask.

"Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to me
I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know, too,
only you're so afraid of committing yourself."

Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical
intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while it
was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs.
Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if
he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His
head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he
never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable
to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's
impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the
solution herself.

"Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!"

"How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding,
made sure they had been in his mind all the while.

Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to
await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own
it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she
scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston
bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library table
were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought to be
read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, after
an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while literature
in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of modern thought.
The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended largely upon what
one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the new environment
fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of wading through
the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, as landmarks
for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an absolute universe
now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or treatise by one of that
small but growing nucleus of twentieth century seers was an event, and
often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken up again after supper.
While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side of the lamp, Janet had
her turn at reading. From the first she had been quick to note Mrs.
Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school manner were
rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and pragmatism, its
courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she had always been
dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the face, refreshed
her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she was constantly
under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, that hovers on
the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, whenever Insall
chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a silent but often
quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments on these new
ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate and delight
her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, she would
recall one of his quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright light on
some matter hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play was the
subject of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing her out,
in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by pedagogically
implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from shyness.

"Say what you think, my dear," Mrs. Maturin would urge her. "And remember
that your own opinion is worth more than Shakespeare's or Napoleon's!"

Insall would escort her home to Mrs. Case's boarding house....

One afternoon early in June Janet sat in her little room working at her
letters when Brooks Insall came in. "I don't mean to intrude in business
hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me," he
said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic
neatness.

"Something you've written?" she exclaimed, blushing with pleasure and
surprise. He was actually confiding to her one of his manuscripts!

"Well--yes," he replied comically, eyeing her.

"I'll be very careful with it. I'll do it right away."

"There's no particular hurry," he assured her. "The editor's waited six
months for it--another month or so won't matter."

"Another month or so!" she ejaculated,--but he was gone. Of course she
couldn't have expected him to remain and talk about it; but this
unexpected exhibition of shyness concerning his work--so admired by the
world's choicer spirits--thrilled yet amused her, and made her glow with
a new understanding. With eager fingers she undid the string and sat
staring at the regular script without taking in, at first, the meaning of
a single sentence. It was a comparatively short sketch entitled "The
Exile," in which shining, winged truths and elusive beauties flitted
continually against a dark-background of Puritan oppression; the story of
one Basil Grelott, a dreamer of Milton's day, Oxford nurtured, who,
casting off the shackles of dogma and man-made decrees, sailed with his
books to the New England wilderness across the sea. There he lived, among
the savages, in peace and freedom until the arrival of Winthrop and his
devotees, to encounter persecution from those who themselves had fled
from it. The Lord's Brethren, he averred, were worse than the Lord's
Bishops--Blackstone's phrase. Janet, of course, had never heard of
Blackstone, some of whose experiences Insall had evidently used. And the
Puritans dealt with Grelott even as they would have served the author of
"Paradise Lost" himself, especially if he had voiced among them the
opinions set forth in his pamphlet on divorce. A portrait of a stern
divine with his infallible Book gave Janet a vivid conception of the
character of her ancestors; and early Boston, with yellow candlelight
gleaming from the lantern-like windows of the wooden, Elizabethan houses,
was unforgettably etched. There was an inquisition in a freezing barn of
a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish amid the forest in his
renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the manuscript, Janet sat
typewriting into the night, taking it home with her and placing it
besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By five the next evening
she had finished the copy.

A gentle rain had fallen during the day, but had ceased as she made her
way toward Insall's house. The place was familiar now: she had been there
to supper with Mrs. Maturin, a supper cooked and served by Martha Vesey,
an elderly, efficient and appallingly neat widow, whom Insall had
discovered somewhere in his travels and installed as his housekeeper.
Janet paused with her hand on the gate latch to gaze around her, at the
picket fence on which he had been working when she had walked hither the
year before. It was primly painted now, its posts crowned with the carved
pineapples; behind the fence old-fashioned flowers were in bloom, lupins
and false indigo; and the retaining wall of blue-grey slaty stone, which
he had laid that spring, was finished. A wind stirred the maple,
releasing a shower of heavy drops, and she opened the gate and went up
the path and knocked at the door. There was no response--even Martha must
be absent, in the village! Janet was disappointed, she had looked forward
to seeing him, to telling him how great had been her pleasure in the
story he had written, at the same time doubting her courage to do so. She
had never been able to speak to him about his work and what did her
opinion matter to him? As she turned away the stillness was broken by a
humming sound gradually rising to a crescendo, so she ventured slowly
around the house and into the orchard of gnarled apple trees on the slope
until she came insight of a little white building beside the brook. The
weathervane perched on the gable, and veering in the wet breeze, seemed
like a live fish swimming in its own element; and through the open window
she saw Insall bending over a lathe, from which the chips were flying.
She hesitated. Then he looked up, and seeing her, reached above his head
to pull the lever that shut off the power.

"Come in," he called out, and met her at the doorway. He was dressed in a
white duck shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of faded corduroy
trousers. "I wasn't looking for this honour," he told her, with a gesture
of self-deprecation, "or I'd have put on a dinner coat."

And, despite her eagerness and excitement, she laughed.

"I didn't dare to leave this in the house," she explained.  Mrs. Vesey
wasn't home. And I thought you might be here."

"You haven't made the copy already!"

"Oh, I loved doing it!" she replied, and paused, flushing. She might have
known that it would be simply impossible to talk to him about it! So she
laid it down on the workbench, and, overcome by a sudden shyness,
retreated toward the door.

"You're not going!" he exclaimed.

"I must--and you're busy."

"Not at all," he declared, "not at all, I was just killing time until
supper. Sit down!" And he waved her to a magisterial-looking chair of
Jacobean design, with turned legs, sandpapered and immaculate, that stood
in the middle of the shop.

"Oh, not in that!" Janet protested. "And besides, I'd spoil it--I'm sure
my skirt is wet."

But he insisted, thrusting it under her. "You've come along just in time,
I wanted a woman to test it--men are no judges of chairs. There's a
vacuum behind the small of your back, isn't there? Augusta will have to
put a cushion in it."

"Did you make it for Mrs. Maturin? She will be Pleased!" exclaimed Janet,
as she sat down. "I don't think it's uncomfortable."

"I copied it from an old one in the Boston Art Museum. Augusta saw it
there, and said she wouldn't be happy until she had one like it. But
don't tell her."

"Not for anything!" Janet got to her feet again. "I really must be
going."

"Going where?"

"I told Mrs. Maturin I'd read that new book to her. I couldn't go
yesterday--I didn't want to go," she added, fearing he might think his
work had kept her.

"Well, I'll walk over with you. She asked me to make a little design for
a fountain, you know, and I'll have to get some measurements."

As they emerged from the shop and climbed the slope Janet tried to fight
off the sadness that began to invade her. Soon she would have to be
leaving all this! Her glance lingered wistfully on the old farmhouse with
its great centre chimney from which the smoke was curling, with its
diamond-paned casements Insall had put into the tiny frames.

"What queer windows!" she said. "But they seem to go with the house,
beautifully."

"You think so?" His tone surprised her; it had a touch more of
earnestness than she had ever before detected. "They belong to that type
of house the old settlers brought the leaded glass with them. Some people
think they're cold, but I've arranged to make them fairly tight. You see,
I've tried to restore it as it must have been when it was built."

"And these?" she asked, pointing to the millstones of different diameters
that made the steps leading down to the garden.

"Oh, that's an old custom, but they are nice," he agreed. "I'll just put
this precious manuscript inside and get my foot rule," he added, opening
the door, and she stood awaiting him on the threshold, confronted by the
steep little staircase that disappeared into the wall half way up. At her
left was the room where he worked, and which once had been the farmhouse
kitchen. She took a few steps into it, and while he was searching in the
table drawer she halted before the great chimney over which, against the
panel, an old bell-mouthed musket hung. Insall came over beside her.

"Those were trees!" he said. "That panel's over four feet across, I
measured it once. I dare say the pine it was cut from grew right where we
are standing, before the land was cleared to build the house."

"But the gun?" she questioned. "You didn't have it the night we came to
supper."

"No, I ran across it at a sale in Boston. The old settler must have owned
one like that. I like to think of him, away off here in the wilderness in
those early days."

She thought of how Insall had made those early days live for her, in his
story of Basil Grelott. But to save her soul, when with such an opening,
she could not speak of it.

"He had to work pretty hard, of course," Insall continued, "but I dare
say he had a fairly happy life, no movies, no Sunday supplements, no
automobiles or gypsy moths. His only excitement was to trudge ten miles
to Dorset and listen to a three hour sermon on everlasting fire and
brimstone by a man who was supposed to know. No wonder he slept soundly
and lived to be over ninety!"

Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly
fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark--a pose eloquent, she
thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered what
belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed. Some firm
conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected him the
more for concealing it.

"It's hard to understand such a terrible religion!" she cried. "I don't
see how those old settlers could believe in it, when there are such
beautiful things in the world, if we only open our eyes and look for
them. Oh Mr. Insall, I wish I could tell you how I felt when I read your
story, and when Mrs. Maturin read me those other books of yours."

She stopped breathlessly, aghast at her boldness--and then, suddenly, a
barrier between them seemed to break down, and for the first time since
she had known him she felt near to him. He could not doubt the sincerity
of her tribute.

"You like them as much as that, Janet?" he said, looking at her.

"I can't tell you how much, I can't express myself. And I want to tell
you something else, Mr. Insall, while I have the chance--how just being
with you and Mrs. Maturin has changed me. I can face life now, you have
shown me so much in it I never saw before."

"While you have the chance?" he repeated.

"Yes." She strove to go on cheerfully, "Now I've said it, I feel better,
I promise not to mention it again. I knew--you didn't think me
ungrateful. It's funny," she added, "the more people have done for
you-when they've given you everything, life and hope,--the harder it is
to thank them." She turned her face away, lest he might see that her eyes
were wet. "Mrs. Maturin will be expecting us."

"Not yet," she heard him say, and felt his hand on her arm. "You haven't
thought of what you're doing for me."

"What I'm doing for you!" she echoed. "What hurts me most, when I think
about it, is that I'll never be able to do anything."

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"If I only could believe that some day I might be able to help you--just
a little--I should be happier. All I have, all I am I owe to you and Mrs.
Maturin."

"No, Janet," he answered. "What you are is you, and it's more real than
anything we could have put into you. What you have to give is
--yourself." His fingers trembled on her arm, but she saw him smile a
little before he spoke again. "Augusta Maturin was right when she said
that you were the woman I needed. I didn't realize it then perhaps she
didn't--but now I'm sure of it. Will you come to me?"

She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay
that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace,
clutching the mantel-shelf.

"Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't--I can't."

"You can't!... Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel differently
--I didn't mean to startle you," she heard him reply gently. This
humility, in him, was unbearable.

"Oh, it isn't that--it isn't that! If I could, I'd be willing to serve
you all my life--I wouldn't ask for anything more. I never thought that
this would happen. I oughtn't to have stayed in Silliston."

"You didn't suspect that I loved you?"

"How could I? Oh, I might have loved you, if I'd been fortunate--if I'd
deserved it. But I never thought, I always looked up to you--you are so
far above me!" She lifted her face to him in agony. "I'm sorry--I'm sorry
for you--I'll never forgive myself!"

"It's--some one else?" he asked.

"I was--going to be married to--to Mr. Ditmar," she said slowly,
despairingly.

"But even then--" Insall began.

"You don't understand!" she cried. "What will you think of me?--Mrs.
Maturin was to have told you, after I'd gone. It's--it's the same as if I
were married to him--only worse."

"Worse!" Insall repeated uncomprehendingly.... And then she was aware
that he had left her side. He was standing by the window.

A thrush began to sing in the maple. She stole silently toward the door,
and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance. He had turned.

"I can't--I can't let you go like this!" she heard him say, but she fled
from him, out of the gate and toward the Common....

When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden. With an instant
perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to
the sofa in the library. There the confession was made.

"I never guessed it," Janet sobbed. "Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you'll believe
me--won't you?"

"Of course I believe you, Janet," Augusta Maturity replied, trying to
hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity. "I didn't suspect
it either. If I had--"

"You wouldn't have brought me here, you wouldn't have asked me to stay
with you. But I was to blame, I oughtn't to have stayed, I knew all along
that something would happen--something terrible that I hadn't any right
to stay."

"Who could have foreseen it!" her friend exclaimed helplessly. "Brooks
isn't like any other man I've ever known--one can never tell what he has
in mind. Not that I'm surprised as I look back upon it all!"

"I've hurt him!"

Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. "Remember, my dear," she begged, "you
haven't only yourself to think about, from now on."

But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl
impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed....

Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many
emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not
telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy for
him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had
brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this
cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come into
her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her own
responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with a pang
her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an artist,
should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had seen it.
Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and again,
during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but remained
unspoken....

The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his
friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden,
capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not
mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they
had gone to Canada....

In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad
station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was
necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of
paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen
all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped
in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while she
herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a
reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin
and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years. It
was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous
journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first roaring
reach of rapids Janet held her breath--so incredible did it appear that
any human power could impel and guide a boat up the white stairway between
the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she felt a strange,
wild delight in the sense of danger, of amazement at the woodsman's eye
that found and followed the crystal paths through the waste of foam....
There were long, quiet stretches, hemmed in by alders, where the canoes,
dodging the fallen trees, glided through the still water... No such
silent, exhilarating motion Janet had ever known. Even the dipping
paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle, as though a
fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the shining pools
ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop Delphin would
exclaim: "Un gros!" From an upper branch of a spruce a kingfisher darted
like an arrow into the water, making a splash like a falling stone. Once,
after they had passed through the breach of a beaver dam, Herve nodded
his head toward a mound of twigs by the bank and muttered something.
Augusta Maturin laughed.

"Cabane de castor, he says--a beaver cabin. And the beavers made the dam
we just passed. Did you notice, Janet, how beautifully clean those logs
had been cut by their sharp teeth?"

At moments she conversed rapidly with Delphin in the same patois Janet
had heard on the streets of Hampton. How long ago that seemed!

On two occasions, when the falls were sheer, they had to disembark and
walk along little portages through the green raspberry bushes. The prints
of great hooves in the black silt betrayed where wild animals had paused
to drink. They stopped for lunch on a warm rock beside a singing
waterfall, and at last they turned an elbow in the stream and with
suddenly widened vision beheld the lake's sapphire expanse and the
distant circle of hills. "Les montagnes," Herve called them as he flung
out his pipe, and this Janet could translate for herself. Eastward they
lay lucent in the afternoon light; westward, behind the generous log camp
standing on a natural terrace above the landing, they were in shadow.
Here indeed seemed peace, if remoteness, if nature herself might bestow
it.

Janet little suspected that special preparations had been made for her
comfort. Early in April, while the wilderness was still in the grip of
winter, Delphin had been summoned from a far-away lumber camp to Saint
Hubert, where several packing-cases and two rolls of lead pipe from
Montreal lay in a shed beside the railroad siding. He had superintended
the transportation of these, on dog sledges, up the frozen decharge,
accompanied on his last trip by a plumber of sorts from Beaupre, thirty
miles down the line; and between them they had improvised a bathroom, and
attached a boiler to the range! Only a week before the arrival of Madame
the spring on the hillside above the camp had been tapped, and the pipe
laid securely underground. Besides this unheard-of luxury for the Lac du
Sablier there were iron beds and mattresses and little wood stoves to go
in the four bedrooms, which were more securely chinked with moss. The
traditions of that camp had been hospitable. In Professor Wishart's day
many guests had come and gone, or pitched their tents nearby; and Augusta
Maturin, until this summer, had rarely been here alone, although she had
no fears of the wilderness, and Delphin brought his daughter Delphine to
do the housework and cooking. The land for miles round about was owned by
a Toronto capitalist who had been a friend of her father, and who could
afford as a hobby the sparing of the forest. By his permission a few
sportsmen came to fish or shoot, and occasionally their campfires could
be seen across the water, starlike glows in the darkness of the night, at
morning and evening little blue threads of smoke that rose against the
forest; "bocane," Delphin called it, and Janet found a sweet, strange
magic in these words of the pioneer.

The lake was a large one, shaped like an hourglass, as its name implied,
and Augusta Maturin sometimes paddled Janet through the wide, shallow
channel to the northern end, even as she had once paddled Gifford. Her
genius was for the helpless. One day, when the waters were high, and the
portages could be dispensed with, they made an excursion through the
Riviere des Peres to the lake of that name, the next in the chain above.
For luncheon they ate the trout Augusta caught; and in the afternoon,
when they returned to the mouth of the outlet, Herve, softly checking the
canoe with his paddle, whispered the word "Arignal!" Thigh deep in the
lush grasses of the swamp was an animal with a huge grey head, like a
donkey's, staring foolishly in their direction--a cow moose. With a
tremendous commotion that awoke echoes in the forest she tore herself
from the mud and disappeared, followed by her panic-stricken offspring, a
caricature of herself....

By September the purple fireweed that springs up beside old camps, and in
the bois brute, had bloomed and scattered its myriad, impalpable
thistledowns over crystal floors. Autumn came to the Laurentians. In the
morning the lake lay like a quicksilver pool under the rising mists,
through which the sun struck blinding flashes of light. A little later,
when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags, the
blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with balsam.
Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,--the arsenic-green
of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow of the alders
bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white limbs could be seen
gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too early, the sun fell
down behind the serrated forest-edge of the western hill, a ball of
orange fire.... One evening Delphin and Herve, followed by two other
canoes, paddled up to the landing. New visitors had arrived, Dr. McLeod,
who had long been an intimate of the Wishart family, and with him a
buxom, fresh-complexioned Canadian woman, a trained nurse whom he had
brought from Toronto.

There, in nature's wilderness, Janet knew the supreme experience of
women, the agony, the renewal and joy symbolic of nature herself. When
the child was bathed and dressed in the clothes Augusta Maturin herself
had made for it, she brought it into the room to the mother.

"It's a daughter," she announced.

Janet regarded the child wistfully. "I hoped it would be a boy," she
said. "He would have had--a better chance." But she raised her arms, and
the child was laid in the bed beside her.

"We'll see that she has a chance, my dear," Augusta Maturin replied, as
she kissed her.

Ten days went by, Dr. McLeod lingered at Lac du Sablier, and Janet was
still in bed. Even in this life-giving air she did not seem to grow
stronger. Sometimes, when the child was sleeping in its basket on the
sunny porch, Mrs. Maturin read to her; but often when she was supposed to
rest, she lay gazing out of the open window into silver space listening
to the mocking laughter of the loons, watching the ducks flying across
the sky; or, as evening drew on, marking in the waters a steely angle
that grew and grew--the wake of a beaver swimming homeward in the
twilight. In the cold nights the timbers cracked to the frost, she heard
the owls calling to one another from the fastnesses of the forest, and
thought of life's inscrutable mystery. Then the child would be brought to
her. It was a strange, unimagined happiness she knew when she felt it
clutching at her breasts, at her heart, a happiness not unmixed with
yearning, with sadness as she pressed it to her. Why could it not remain
there always, to comfort her, to be nearer her than any living thing?
Reluctantly she gave it back to the nurse, wistfully her eyes followed
it....

Twice a week, now, Delphin and Herve made the journey to Saint Hubert,
and one evening, after Janet had watched them paddling across the little
bay that separated the camp from the outlet's mouth, Mrs. Maturin
appeared, with an envelope in her hand.

"I've got a letter from Brooks Insall, Janet," she said, with a
well-disguised effort to speak naturally. "It's not the first one he's
sent me, but I haven't mentioned the others. He's in Silliston--and I
wrote him about the daughter."

"Yes," said Janet.

"Well--he wants to come up here, to see you, before we go away. He asks
me to telegraph your permission."

"Oh no, he mustn't, Mrs. Maturin!"

"You don't care to see him?"

"It isn't that. I'd like to see him if things had been different. But now
that I've disappointed him--hurt him, I couldn't stand it. I know it's
only his kindness."

After a moment Augusta Maturin handed Janet a sealed envelope she held in
her hand.

"He asked me to give you this," she said, and left the room. Janet read
it, and let it fall on the bedspread, where it was still lying when her
friend returned and began tidying the room. From the direction of the
guide's cabin, on the point, came the sounds of talk and laughter, broken
by snatches of habitant songs. Augusta Maturin smiled. She pretended not
to notice the tears in Janet's eyes, and strove to keep back her own.

"Delphin and Herve saw a moose in the decharge," she explained. "Of
course it was a big one, it always is! They're telling the doctor about
it."

"Mrs. Maturin," said Janet, "I'd like to talk to you. I think I ought to
tell you what Mr. Insall says."

"Yes, my dear," her friend replied, a little faintly, sitting down on the
bed.

"He asks me to believe what--I've done makes no difference to him. Of
course he doesn't put it in so many words, but he says he doesn't care
anything about conventions," Janet continued slowly. "What I told him
when he asked me to marry him in Silliston was a shock to him, it was so
--so unexpected. He went away, to Maine, but as soon as he began to think
it all over he wanted to come and tell me that he loved me in spite of
it, but he felt he couldn't, under the circumstances, that he had to wait
until--now. Although I didn't give him any explanation, he wants me to
know that he trusts me, he understands--it's because, he says, I am what
I am. He still wishes to marry me, to take care of me and the child. We
could live in California, at first--he's always been anxious to go there,
he says."

"Well, my dear?" Augusta Maturin forced herself to say at last.

"It's so generous--so like him!" Janet exclaimed. "But of course I
couldn't accept such a sacrifice, even if--" She paused. "Oh, it's made
me so sad all summer to think that he's unhappy because of me!"

"I know, Janet, but you should realize, as I told you in Silliston, that
it isn't by any deliberate act of your own, it's just one of those things
that occur in this world and that can't be foreseen or avoided." Augusta
Maturin spoke with an effort. In spite of Janet's apparent calm, she had
never been more acutely aware of the girl's inner suffering.

"I know," said Janet. "But it's terrible to think that those things we
unintentionally do, perhaps because of faults we have previously
committed, should have the same effect as acts that are intentional."

"The world is very stupid. All suffering, I think, is brought about by
stupidity. If we only could learn to look at ourselves as we are! It's a
stupid, unenlightened society that metes out most of our punishments and
usually demands a senseless expiation." Augusta Maturin waited, and
presently Janet spoke again.

"I've been thinking all summer, Mrs. Maturin. There was so much I wanted
to talk about with you, but I wanted to be sure of myself first. And now,
since the baby came, and I know I'm not going to get well, I seem to see
things much more clearly."

"Why do you say you're not going to get well, Janet? In this air, and
with the child to live for!"

"I know it. Dr. McLeod knows it, or he wouldn't be staying here, and
you've both been too kind to tell me. You've been so kind, Mrs. Maturin
--I can't talk about it. But I'm sure I'm going to die, I've really known
it ever since we left Silliston. Something's gone out of me, the thing
that drove me, that made me want to live--I can't express what I mean any
other way. Perhaps it's this child, the new life--perhaps I've just been
broken, I don't know. You did your best to mend me, and that's one thing
that makes me sad. And the thought of Mr. Insall's another. In some ways
it would have been worse to live--I couldn't have ruined his life. And
even if things had been different, I hadn't come to love him, in that
way--it's queer, because he's such a wonderful person. I'd like to live
for the child, if only I had the strength, the will left in me--but
that's gone. And maybe I could save her from--what I've been through."

Augusta Maturin took Janet's hand in hers.

"Janet," she said, "I've been a lonely woman, as you know, with nothing
to look forward to. I've always wanted a child since my little Edith
went. I wanted you, my dear, I want your child, your daughter--as I want
nothing else in the world. I will take her, I will try to bring her up in
the light, and Brooks Insall will help me...."


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

   Anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid
   But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace
   Exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained
   Foreigners. I never could see why the government lets 'em all come
   Hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity
   Janet resented that pity
   Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes
   Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect
   Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory
   She resented being prayed for
   Struggled against her woman's desire to give
   Tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance
   The seventh commandment was only relative
   There had been something sorrowful in that kiss
   Too much reason in the world, too little impulse and feeling






MR. CREWE'S CAREER, Complete

By WINSTON CHURCHILL



BOOK 1.



CHAPTER I

THE HONOURABLE HILARY VANE SITS FOR HIS PORTRAIT

I may as well begin this story with Mr. Hilary Vane, more frequently
addressed as the Honourable Hilary Vane, although it was the gentleman's
proud boast that he had never held an office in his life. He belonged to
the Vanes of Camden Street,--a beautiful village in the hills near
Ripton,--and was, in common with some other great men who had made a
noise in New York and the nation, a graduate of Camden Wentworth Academy.
But Mr. Vane, when he was at home, lived on a wide, maple-shaded street
in the city of Ripton, cared for by an elderly housekeeper who had more
edges than a new-fangled mowing machine. The house was a porticoed one
which had belonged to the Austens for a hundred years or more, for Hilary
Vane had married, towards middle age, Miss Sarah Austen. In two years he
was a widower, and he never tried it again; he had the Austens' house,
and that many-edged woman, Euphrasia Cotton, the Austens' housekeeper.

The house was of wood, and was painted white as regularly as leap year.
From the street front to the vegetable garden in the extreme rear it was
exceedingly long, and perhaps for propriety's sake--Hilary Vane lived at
one end of it and Euphrasia at the other. Hilary was sixty-five,
Euphrasia seventy, which is not old for frugal people, though it is just
as well to add that there had never been a breath of scandal about either
of them, in Ripton or elsewhere. For the Honourable Hilary's modest needs
one room sufficed, and the front parlour had not been used since poor
Sarah Austen's demise, thirty years before this story opens.

In those thirty years, by a sane and steady growth, Hilary Vane had
achieved his present eminent position in the State. He was trustee for I
know not how many people and institutions, a deacon in the first church,
a lawyer of such ability that he sometimes was accorded the
courtesy-title of "Judge." His only vice--if it could be called such--was
in occasionally placing a piece, the size of a pea, of a particular kind
of plug tobacco under his tongue,--and this was not known to many people.
Euphrasia could not be called a wasteful person, and Hilary had
accumulated no small portion of this world's goods, and placed them as
propriety demanded, where they were not visible to the naked eye: and be
it added in his favour that he gave as secretly, to institutions and
hospitals the finances and methods of which were known to him.

As concrete evidence of the Honourable Hilary Vane's importance, when he
travelled he had only to withdraw from his hip-pocket a book in which
many coloured cards were neatly inserted, an open-sesame which permitted
him to sit without payment even in those wheeled palaces of luxury known
as Pullman cars. Within the limits of the State he did not even have to
open the book, but merely say, with a twinkle of his eyes to the
conductor, "Good morning, John," and John would reply with a bow and a
genial and usually witty remark, and point him out to a nobody who sat in
the back of the car. So far had Mr. Hilary Vane's talents carried him.

The beginning of this eminence dated back to the days before the Empire,
when there were many little principalities of railroads fighting among
themselves. For we are come to a changed America. There was a time, in
the days of the sixth Edward of England, when the great landowners found
it more profitable to consolidate the farms, seize the common lands, and
acquire riches hitherto undreamed of. Hence the rising of tailor Ket and
others, and the leveling of fences and barriers, and the eating of many
sheep. It may have been that Mr. Vane had come across this passage in
English history, but he drew no parallels. His first position of trust
had been as counsel for that principality known in the old days as the
Central Railroad, of which a certain Mr. Duncan had been president, and
Hilary Vane had fought the Central's battles with such telling effect
that when it was merged into the one Imperial Railroad, its stockholders
--to the admiration of financiers--were guaranteed ten per cent. It was,
indeed, rumoured that Hilary drew the Act of Consolidation itself. At any
rate, he was too valuable an opponent to neglect, and after a certain
interval of time Mr. Vane became chief counsel in the State for the
Imperial Railroad, on which dizzy height we now behold him. And he found,
by degrees, that he had no longer time for private practice.

It is perhaps gratuitous to add that the Honourable Hilary Vane was a man
of convictions. In politics he would have told you--with some vehemence,
if you seemed to doubt--that he was a Republican. Treason to party he
regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence, as an act for which a man should
be justly outlawed. If he were in a mellow mood, with the right quantity
of Honey Dew tobacco under his tongue, he would perhaps tell you why he
was a Republican, if he thought you worthy of his confidence. He believed
in the gold standard, for one thing; in the tariff (left unimpaired in
its glory) for another, and with a wave of his hand would indicate the
prosperity of the nation which surrounded him,--a prosperity too sacred
to tamper with.

One article of his belief, and in reality the chief article, Mr. Vane
would not mention to you. It was perhaps because he had never formulated
the article for himself. It might be called a faith in the divine right
of Imperial Railroads to rule, but it was left out of the verbal creed.
This is far from implying hypocrisy to Mr. Vane. It was his
foundation-rock and too sacred for light conversation. When he allowed
himself to be bitter against various "young men with missions" who had
sprung up in various States of the Union, so-called purifiers of
politics, he would call them the unsuccessful with a grievance, and
recommend to them the practice of charity, forbearance, and other
Christian virtues. Thank God, his State was not troubled with such.

In person Mr. Hilary Vane was tall, with a slight stoop to his shoulders,
and he wore the conventional double-breasted black coat, which reached to
his knees, and square-toed congress boots. He had a Puritan beard, the
hawk-like Vane nose, and a twinkling eye that spoke of a sense of humour
and a knowledge of the world. In short, he was no man's fool, and on
occasions had been more than a match for certain New York lawyers with
national reputations.

It is rare, in this world of trouble, that such an apparently ideal and
happy state of existence is without a canker. And I have left the
revelation of the canker to the last. Ripton knew it was there, Camden
Street knew it, and Mr. Vane's acquaintances throughout the State; but
nobody ever spoke of it. Euphrasia shed over it the only tears she had
known since Sarah Austen died, and some of these blotted the only letters
she wrote. Hilary Vane did not shed tears, but his friends suspected that
his heart-strings were torn, and pitied him. Hilary Vane fiercely
resented pity, and that was why they did not speak of it. This trouble of
his was the common point on which he and Euphrasia touched, and they
touched only to quarrel. Let us out with it--Hilary Vane had a wild son,
whose name was Austen.

Euphrasia knew that in his secret soul Mr. Vane attributed this wildness,
and what he was pleased to designate as profligacy, to the Austen blood.
And Euphrasia resented it bitterly. Sarah Austen had been a young, elfish
thing when he married her,--a dryad, the elderly and learned Mrs. Tredway
had called her. Mr Vane had understood her about as well as he would have
understood Mary, Queen of Scots, if he had been married to that lady.
Sarah Austen had a wild, shy beauty, startled, alert eyes like an animal,
and rebellious black hair that curled about her ears and gave her a
faun-like appearance. With a pipe and the costume of Rosalind she would
have been perfect. She had had a habit of running off for the day into
the hills with her son, and the conventions of Ripton had been to her as
so many defunct blue laws. During her brief married life there had been
periods of defiance from her lasting a week, when she would not speak to
Hilary or look at him, and these periods would be followed by violent
spells of weeping in Euphrasia's arms, when the house was no place for
Hilary. He possessed by matrimony and intricate mechanism of which his
really admirable brain could not grasp the first principles; he felt for
her a real if uncomfortable affection, but when she died he heaved a sigh
of relief, at which he was immediately horrified.

Austen he understood little better, but his affection for the child may
be likened to the force of a great river rushing through a narrow gorge,
and he vied with Euphrasia in spoiling him. Neither knew what they were
doing, and the spoiling process was interspersed with occasional and (to
Austen) unmeaning intervals of severe discipline. The boy loved the
streets and the woods and his fellow-beings; his punishments were a
series of afternoons in the house, during one of which he wrecked the
bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old slipper
that broke under the process. Euphrasia kept the slipper, and once showed
it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was grown up and gone
and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away, choking, and left
the room. Such was his cross.

To make it worse, the boy had love his father. Nay, still loved him. As a
little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
near he came to unmanning him. As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.

Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice on
Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. Then he went to Camden
Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and attend
Camden Wentworth Academy. His letters, such as they were, were inimitable
if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane knew. Camden
Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life; and the lad
could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only to begin
quarreling with him again.

I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
and convulsed the other half. Austen went to the college which his father
had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and his career
there might well have puzzled a father of far greater tolerance and
catholicity. Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more than once to
talk the matter over with the president, who had been his classmate
there.

"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when pressed
for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I believe, that
doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me more anxious
thought than any scholar I have ever had."

"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.

"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my soul,
I think it is all animal spirits."

"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
of us, I have been brought up to believe."

The president was a wise man, and took another tack.

"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it. Every once
in a while he takes your breath away--but he has to become interested. A
few weeks ago Hays came to me direct from his lecture room to tell me
about a discussion of Austen's in constitutional law. Hays, you know, is
not easily enthused, but he declares your son has as fine a legal brain
as he has come across in his experience. But since then, I am bound to
admit," added the president, sadly, "Austen seems not to have looked at a
lesson."

"'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel,'" replied Hilary.

"He'll sober down," said the president, stretching his conviction a
little, "he has two great handicaps: he learns too easily, and he is too
popular." The president looked out of his study window across the common,
surrounded by the great elms which had been planted when Indian lads
played among the stumps and the red flag of England had flown from the
tall pine staff. The green was covered now with students of a conquering
race, skylarking to and fro as they looked on at a desultory baseball
game.  "I verily believe," said the president, "at a word from your son,
most of them would put on their coats and follow him on any mad
expedition that came into his mind."

Hilary Vane groaned more than once in the train back to Ripton. It meant
nothing to him to be the father of the most popular man in college.

"The mad expedition" came at length in the shape of a fight with the
townspeople, in which Austen, of course, was the ringleader. If he had
inherited his mother's eccentricities, he had height and physique from
the Vanes, and one result was a week in bed for the son of the local
plumber and a damage suit against the Honourable Hilary. Another result
was that Austen and a Tom Gaylord came back to Ripton on a long
suspension, which, rumour said, would have been expulsion if Hilary were
not a trustee. Tom Gaylord was proud of suspension in such company. More
of him later. He was the son of old Tom Gaylord, who owned more lumber
than any man in the State, and whom Hilary Vane believed to be the
receptacle of all the vices.

Eventually Austen went back and graduated--not summa cum laude, honesty
compels me to add. Then came the inevitable discussion, and to please his
father he went to the Harvard Law School for two years. At the end of
that time, instead of returning to Ripton, a letter had come from him
with the postmark of a Western State, where he had fled with a classmate
who owned ranch. Evidently the worldly consideration to be derived from
conformity counted little with Austen Vane. Money was a medium only--not
an end. He was in the saddle all day, with nothing but the horizon to
limit him; he loved his father, and did not doubt his father's love for
him, and he loved Euphrasia. He could support himself, but he must see
life. The succeeding years brought letters and quaint, useless presents
to both the occupants of the lonely house,--Navajo blankets and Indian
jeweler and basket-work,--and Austen little knew how carefully these were
packed away and surreptitiously gazed at from time to time. But to Hilary
the Western career was a disgrace, and such meagre reports of it as came
from other sources than Austen tended only to confirm him in this
opinion.

It was commonly said of Mr. Paul Pardriff that not a newspaper fell from
the press that he did not have a knowledge of its contents. Certain it
was that Mr. Pardriff made a specialty of many kinds of knowledge,
political and otherwise, and, the information he could give--if he chose
--about State and national affairs was of a recondite and cynical nature
that made one wish to forget about the American flag. Mr. Pardriff was
under forty, and with these gifts many innocent citizens of Ripton
naturally wondered why the columns of his newspaper, the Ripton Record,
did not more closely resemble the spiciness of his talk in the office of
Gales' Hotel. The columns contained, instead, such efforts as essays on a
national flower and the abnormal size of the hats of certain great men,
notably Andrew Jackson; yes, and the gold standard; and in times of
political stress they were devoted to a somewhat fulsome praise of
regular and orthodox Republican candidates,--and praise of any one was
not in character with the editor. Ill-natured people said that the matter
in his paper might possibly be accounted for by the gratitude of the
candidates, and the fact that Mr. Pardriff and his wife and his
maid-servant and his hired man travelled on pink mileage books, which
could only be had for love--not money. On the other hand, reputable
witnesses had had it often from Mr. Pardriff that he was a reformer, and
not at all in sympathy with certain practices which undoubtedly existed.

Some years before--to be exact, the year Austen Vane left the law school
--Mr. Pardriff had proposed to exchange the Ripton Record with the editor
of the Pepper County Plainsman in afar Western State. The exchange was
effected, and Mr. Pardriff glanced over the Plainsman regularly once a
week, though I doubt whether the Western editor ever read the Record
after the first copy. One day in June Mr. Pardriff was seated in his
sanctum above Merrill's drug store when his keen green eyes fell upon the
following:--"The Plainsman considers it safe to say that the sympathy of
the people of Pepper County at large is with Mr. Austen Vane, whose
personal difficulty with Jim Blodgett resulted so disastrously for Mr.
Blodgett. The latter gentleman has long made himself obnoxious to local
ranch owners by his persistent disregard of property lines and property,
and it will be recalled that he is at present in hot water with the
energetic Secretary of the Interior for fencing government lands. Vane,
who was recently made manager of Ready Money Ranch, is one of the most
popular young men in the county. He was unwillingly assisted over the
State line by his friends. Although he has never been a citizen of the
State, the Plainsman trusts that he may soon be back and become one of
us. At last report Mr. Blodgett was resting easily."

This article obtained circulation in Ripton, although it was not copied
into the Record out of deference to the feelings of the Honourable Hilary
Vane. In addition to the personal regard Mr. Pardriff professed to have
for the Honourable Hilary, it maybe well to remember that Austen's father
was, among other, things, chairman of the State Committee. Mr. Tredway
(largest railroad stockholder in Ripton) pursed his lips that were
already pursed. Tom Gaylord roared with laughter. Two or three days later
the Honourable Hilary, still in blissful ignorance, received a letter
that agitated him sorely.

"DEAR FATHER: I hope you don't object to receiving a little visit from a
prodigal, wayward son. To tell the truth, I have found it convenient to
leave the Ready Money Ranch for a while, although Bob Tyner is good
enough to say I may have the place when I come back. You know I often
think of you and Phrasie back in Ripton, and I long to see the dear old
town again. Expect me when you see me.

"Your aff. son,
"AUSTEN."




CHAPTER II

ON THE TREATMENT OF PRODIGALS

While Euphrasia, in a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the
room which held for her so many memories of Austen's boyhood, even
beating the carpet with her own hands, Hilary Vane went about his
business with no apparent lack of diligence. But he was meditating. He
had many times listened to the Reverend Mr. Weightman read the parable
from the pulpit, but he had never reflected how it would be to be the
father of a real prodigal. What was to be done about the calf? Was there
to be a calf, or was there not? To tell the truth, Hilary wanted a calf,
and yet to have one (in spite of Holy Writ) would seem to set a premium
on disobedience and riotous living.

Again, Austen had reached thirty, an age when it was not likely he would
settle down and live an orderly and godly life among civilized beings,
and therefore a fatted calf was likely to be the first of many follies
which he (Hilary) would live to regret. No, he would deal with justice.
How he dealt will be seen presently, but when he finally reached this
conclusion, the clipping from the Pepper County Plainsman had not yet
come before his eyes.

It is worth relating how the clipping did come before his eyes, for no
one in Ripton had the temerity to speak of it. Primarily, it was because
Miss Victoria Flint had lost a terrier, and secondarily, because she was
a person of strong likes and dislikes. In pursuit of the terrier she
drove madly through Leith, which, as everybody knows, is a famous colony
of rich summer residents. Victoria probably stopped at every house in
Leith, and searched them with characteristic vigour and lack of ceremony,
sometimes entering by the side door, and sometimes by the front, and
caring very little whether the owners were at home or not. Mr. Humphrey
Crewe discovered her in a boa-stall at Wedderburn,--as his place was
called,--for it made little difference to Victoria that Mr. Crewe was a
bachelor of marriageable age and millions. Full, as ever, of practical
suggestions, Mr. Crewe proposed to telephone to Ripton and put an
advertisement in the Record, which--as he happened to know--went to press
the next day. Victoria would not trust to the telephone, whereupon Mr.
Crewe offered to drive down with her.

"You'd bore me, Humphrey," said she, as she climbed into her runabout
with the father and grandfather of the absentee. Mr. Crewe laughed as she
drove away. He had a chemical quality of turning invidious remarks into
compliments, and he took this one as Victoria's manner of saying that she
did not wish to disturb so important a man.

Arriving in the hot main street of Ripton, her sharp eyes descried the
Record sign over the drug store, and in an astonishingly short time she
was in the empty office. Mr. Pardriff was at dinner. She sat down in the
editorial chair and read a great deal of uninteresting matter, but at
last found something on the floor (where the wind had blown it) which
made her laugh. It was the account of Austen Vane's difficulty with Mr.
Blodgett. Victoria did not know Austen, but she knew that the Honourable
Hilary had a son of that name who had gone West, and this was what
tickled her. She thrust the clipping in the pocket of her linen coat just
as Mr. Pardriff came in.

Her conversation with the editor of the Record proved so entertaining
that she forgot all about the clipping until she had reached Fairview,
and had satisfied a somewhat imperious appetite by a combination of lunch
and afternoon tea. Fairview was the "summer place" of Mr. Augustus P.
Flint, her father, on a shelf of the hills in the town of Tunbridge,
equidistant from Leith and Ripton: and Mr. Flint was the president of the
Imperial Railroad, no less.

Yes, he had once been plain Gus Flint, many years ago, when he used to
fetch the pocket-handkerchiefs of Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton,
and he was still "Gus" to his friends. Mr. Flint's had been the brain
which had largely conceived and executed the consolidation of
principalities of which the Imperial Railroad was the result and, as
surely as tough metal prevails, Mr. Flint, after many other trials and
errors of weaker stuff, had been elected to the place for which he was so
supremely fitted. We are so used in America to these tremendous rises
that a paragraph will suffice to place Mr. Flint in his Aladdin's palace.
To do him justice, he cared not a fig for the palace, and he would have
been content with the farmhouse under the hill where his gardener lived.
You could not fool Mr. Flint on a horse or a farm, and he knew to a dot
what a railroad was worth by travelling over it. Like his
governor-general and dependent, Mr. Hilary Vane, he had married a wife
who had upset all his calculations. The lady discovered Mr. Flint's
balance in the bank, and had proceeded to use it for her own
glorification, and the irony of it all was that he could defend it from
everybody else. Mrs. Flint spent, and Mr. Flint paid the bills; for the
first ten years protestingly, and after that he gave it up and let her go
her own gait.

She had come from the town of Sharon, in another State, through which Mr.
Flint's railroad also ran, and she had been known as the Rose of that
place. She had begun to rise immediately, with the kite-like adaptability
of the American woman for high altitudes, and the leaden weight of the
husband at the end of the tail was as nothing to her. She had begun it
all by the study of people in hotels while Mr. Flint was closeted with
officials and directors. By dint of minute observation and reasoning
powers and unflagging determination she passed rapidly through several
strata, and had made a country place out of her husband's farm in
Tunbridge, so happily and conveniently situated near Leith. In winter
they lived on Fifth Avenue.

One daughter alone had halted, for a minute period, this progress, and
this daughter was Victoria--named by her mother. Victoria was now
twenty-one, and was not only of another generation, but might almost have
been judged of another race than her parents. The things for which her
mother had striven she took for granted, and thought of them not at all,
and she had by nature that simplicity and astonishing frankness of manner
and speech which was once believed to be an exclusive privilege of
duchesses.

To return to Fairview. Victoria, after sharing her five o'clock luncheon
with her dogs, went to seek her father, for the purpose (if it must be
told) of asking him for a cheque. Mr. Flint was at Fairview on the
average of two days out of the week during the summer, and then he was
nearly always closeted with a secretary and two stenographers and a
long-distance telephone in two plain little rooms at the back of the
house. And Mr. Hilary Vane was often in consultation with him, as he was
on the present occasion when Victoria flung open the door. At sight of
Mr. Vane she halted suddenly on the threshold, and a gleam of mischief
came into her eye as she thrust her hand into her coat pocket. The two
regarded her with the detached air of men whose thread of thought has
been broken.

"Well, Victoria," said her father, kindly if resignedly, "what is it
now?"

"Money," replied Victoria, promptly; "I went to Avalon this morning and
bought that horse you said I might have."

"What horse?" asked Mr. Flint, vaguely. "But never mind. Tell Mr. Freeman
to make out the cheque."

Mr. Vane glanced at Mr. Flint, and his eyes twinkled. Victoria, who had
long ago discovered the secret of the Honey Dew, knew that he was rolling
it under his tongue and thinking her father a fool for his indulgence.

"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "Austen's coming home, isn't he?"
She had got this by feminine arts out of Mr. Paul Pardriff, to whom she
had not confided the fact of her possession of the clipping.

The Honourable Hilary gave a grunt, as he always did when he was
surprised and displeased, as though some one had prodded him with a stick
in a sensitive spot.

"Your son? Why, Vane, you never told me that," said Mr. Flint. "I didn't
know that you knew him, Victoria."

"I don't," answered Victoria, "but I'd like to. What did he do to Mr.
Blodgett?" she demanded of Hilary.

"Mr. Blodgett!" exclaimed that gentleman. "I never heard of him. What's
happened to him?"

"He will probably recover," she assured him.

The Honourable Hilary, trying in vain to suppress his agitation, rose to
his feet.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Victoria," he said, but his
glance was fixed on the clipping in her hand.

"Haven't you seen it?" she asked, giving it to him.

He read it in silence, groaned, and handed it to Mr. Flint, who had been
drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
again and looked out of the window.

"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria. "I'd be proud of him,
if I were you."

"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly. "Proud of him!"

"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.

"Why not?" said Victoria. "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to be
punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."

Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
she left the room. The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
of an escapade of hers in Ripton.

As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward that
afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal who
had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice. In the
meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted from
the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time. They
were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although
broad-brimmed, was not a sombrero, and the respectable, loose-fitting
suit of clothes was not of buckskin with tassels on the trousers; and
likewise that he came without the cartridge belt and holster which they
had pictured in anticipatory sessions on the baggage-trucks. There could
be no doubt of the warmth of their greeting as they sidled up and seized
a hand somewhat larger than theirs, but the welcome had in it an
ingredient of awe that puzzled the newcomer, who did not hesitate to
inquire:--"What's the matter, Ed? Why so ceremonious, Perley?"

But his eagerness did not permit him to wait for explanations. Grasping
his bag, the only baggage he possessed, he started off at a swinging
stride for Hanover Street, pausing only to shake the hands of the few who
recognized him, unconscious of the wild-fire at his back. Hanover Street
was empty that drowsy summer afternoon, and he stopped under the
well-remembered maples before the house and gazed at it long and
tenderly; even at the windows of that room--open now for the first time
in years--where he had served so many sentences of imprisonment. Then he
went cautiously around by the side and looked in at the kitchen door. To
other eyes than his Euphrasia might not have seemed a safe person to
embrace, but in a moment he had her locked in his arms and weeping. She
knew nothing as yet of Mr. Blodgett's misfortunes, but if Austen Vane had
depopulated a county it would have made no difference in her affection.

"My, but you're a man," exclaimed Euphrasia, backing away at last and
staring at him with the only complete approval she had ever accorded to
any human being save one.

"What did you expect, Phrasie?"

"Come, and I'll show you your room," she said, in a gutter she could not
hide; "it's got all the same pictures in, your mother's pictures, and the
chair you broke that time when Hilary locked you in. It's mended."

"Hold on, Phrasie," said Austen, seizing her by the apron-strings, "how
about the Judge?" It was by this title he usually designated his father.

"What about him?" demanded Euphrasia, sharply.

"Well, it's his house, for one thing," answered Austen, "and he may
prefer to have that room--empty."

"Empty! Turn you out? I'd like to see him," cried Euphrasia. "It wouldn't
take me long to leave him high and dry."

She paused at the sound of wheels, and there was the Honourable Hilary,
across the garden patch, in the act of slipping out of his buggy at the
stable door. In the absence of Luke, the hired man, the chief counsel for
the railroad was wont to put up the horse himself, and he already had the
reins festooned from the bit rings when he felt a heavy, hand on his
shoulder and heard a voice say:--"How are you, Judge?"

If the truth be told, that voice and that touch threw the Honourable
Hilary's heart out of beat. Many days he had been schooling himself for
this occasion: this very afternoon he had determined his course of
action, which emphatically did not include a fatted calf. And now surged
up a dryad-like memory which had troubled him many a wakeful night, of
startled, appealing eyes that sought his in vain, and of the son she had
left him flinging himself into his arms in the face of chastisement. For
the moment Hilary Vane, under this traitorous influence, was unable to
speak. But he let the hand rest on his shoulder, and at length was able
to pronounce, in a shamefully shaky voice, the name of his son. Whereupon
Austen seized him by the other shoulder and turned him round and looked
into his face.

"The same old Judge," he said.

But Hilary was startled, even as Euphrasia had been. Was this strange,
bronzed, quietly humorous young man his son? Hilary even had to raise his
eyes a little; he had forgotten how tall Austen was. Strange emotions,
unbidden and unwelcome, ran riot in his breast; and Hilary Vane, who made
no slips before legislative committees or supreme courts, actually found
himself saying:--"Euphrasia's got your room ready."

"It's good of you to take me in, Judge," said Austen, patting his
shoulder. And then he began, quite naturally to unbuckle the breechings
and loose the traces, which he did with such deftness and celerity that
he had the horse unharnessed and in the stall in a twinkling, and had
hauled the buggy through the stable door, the Honourable Hilary watching
him the while. He was troubled, but for the life of him could find no
adequate words, who usually had the dictionary at his disposal.

"Didn't write me why you came home," said the Honourable Hilary, as his
son washed his hands at the spigot.

"Didn't I? Well, the truth was I wanted to see you again, Judge."

His father grunted, not with absolute displeasure, but suspiciously.

"How about Blodgett?" he asked.

"Blodgett? Have you heard about that? Who told you?"

"Never mind. You didn't. Nothing in your letter about it."

"It wasn't worth mentioning," replied Austen. "Tyner and the boys liked
it pretty well, but I didn't think you'd be interested. It was a local
affair."

"Not interested! Not worth mentioning!" exclaimed the Honourable Hilary,
outraged to discover that his son was modestly deprecating an achievement
instead of defending a crime. "Godfrey! murder ain't worth mentioning, I
presume."

"Not when it isn't successful," said Austen. "If Blodgett had succeeded,
I guess you'd have heard of it before you did."

"Do you mean to say this Blodgett tried to kill you?" demanded the
Honourable Hilary.

"Yes," said his son, "and I've never understood why he didn't. He's a
good deal better shot than I am."

The Honourable Hilary grunted, and sat down on a bucket and carefully
prepared a piece of Honey Dew. He was surprised and agitated.

"Then why are you a fugitive from justice if you were acting in
self-defence?" he inquired.

"Well, you see there were no witnesses, except a Mexican of Blodgett's,
and Blodgett runs the Pepper County machine for the railroad out there.
I'd been wanting to come East and have a look at you for some time, and I
thought I might as well come now."

"How did this--this affair start?" asked Mr. Vane.

"Blodgett was driving in some of Tyner's calves, and I caught him. I told
him what I thought of him, and he shot at me through his pocket. That was
all."

"All! You shot him, didn't you?"

"I was lucky enough to hit him first," said Austen.

Extraordinary as it may seem, the Honourable Hilary experienced a sense
of pride.

"Where did you hit him?" he asked.

It was Euphrasia who took matters in her own hands and killed the fatted
calf, and the meal to which they presently sat down was very different
from the frugal suppers Mr. Vane usually had. But he made no comment. It
is perhaps not too much to say that he would have been distinctly
disappointed had it been otherwise. There was Austen's favourite pie, and
Austen's favourite cake, all inherited from the Austens, who had thought
more of the fleshpots than people should. And the prodigal did full
justice to the occasion.




CHAPTER III

CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW

So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
outlaws, Pepper County. Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called. It
gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the moment
engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.

Austen cared very little for lionizing. He spent most of his time with
young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous lumber
business. And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually fell
once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days. Together
these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing and
scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.

After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
of his son one morning at his office. This office was in what had once
been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
through the elms on to the square. Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.

The anteroom next door, where the clerks sat, was also a waiting-room for
various individuals from the different parts of the State who continually
sought the counsel's presence.

"Haven't seen much of you since you've be'n home, Austen," his father
remarked as an opening.

"Your--legal business compels you to travel a great deal," answered
Austen, turning from the window and smiling.

"Somewhat," said the Honourable Hilary, on whom this pleasantry was not
lost. "You've be'n travelling on the lumber business, I take it."

"I know more about it than I did," his son admitted.

The Honourable Hilary grunted.

"Caught a good many fish, haven't you?"

Austen crossed the room and sat on the edge of the desk beside his
father's chair.

"See here, Judge," he said, "what are you driving at? Out with it."

"When are you--going back West?" asked Mr. Vane.

Austen did not answer at once, but looked down into his father's
inscrutable face.

"Do you want to get rid of me?" he said.

"Sowed enough wild oats, haven't you?" inquired the father.

"I've sowed a good many," Austen admitted.

"Why not settle down?"

"I haven't yet met the lady, Judge," replied his son.

"Couldn't support her if you had," said Mr. Vane.

"Then it's fortunate," said Austen, resolved not to be the necessary
second in a quarrel. He knew his father, and perceived that these
preliminary and caustic openings of his were really olive branches.

"Sometimes I think you might as well be in that outlandish country, for
all I see of you," said the Honourable Hilary.

"You ought to retire from business and try fishing," his son suggested.

The Honourable Hilary sometimes smiled.

"You've got a good brain, Austen, and what's the use of wasting it
chasing cattle and practising with a pistol on your fellow-beings? You
won't have much trouble in getting admitted to the bar. Come into the
office."

Austen did not answer at once. He suspected that it had cost his father
not a little to make these advances.

"Do you believe you and I could get along, Judge? How long do you think
it would last?"

"I've considered that some," answered the Honourable Hilary, "but I won't
last a great while longer myself."

"You're as sound as a bronco," declared Austen, patting him.

"I never was what you might call dissipated," agreed Mr. Vane, "but men
don't go on forever. I've worked hard all my life, and got where I am,
and I've always thought I'd like to hand it on to you. It's a position of
honour and trust, Austen, and one of which any lawyer might be proud."

"My ambition hasn't run in exactly that channel," said his son.

"Didn't know as you had any precise ambition," responded the Honourable
Hilary, "but I never heard of a man refusing to be chief counsel for a
great railroad. I don't say you can be, mind, but I say with work and
brains it's as easy for the son of Hilary Vane as for anybody else."

"I don't know much about the duties of such a position," said Austen,
laughing, "but at all events I shall have time to make up my mind how to
answer Mr. Flint when he comes to me with the proposal. To speak frankly,
Judge, I hadn't thought of spending the whole of what might otherwise
prove a brilliant life in Ripton."

The Honourable Hilary smiled again, and then he grunted.

"I tell you what I'll do," he said; "you come in with me and agree to
stay five years. If you've done well for yourself, and want to go to New
York or some large place at the end of that time, I won't hinder you. But
I feel it my duty to say, if you don't accept my offer, no son of mine
shall inherit what I've laid up by hard labour. It's against American
doctrine, and it's against my principles. You can go back to Pepper
County and get put in jail, but you can't say I haven't warned you
fairly."

"You ought to leave your fortune to the railroad, Judge," said Austen.
"Generations to come would bless your name if you put up a new station in
Ripton and built bridges over Bunker Hill grade crossing and the other
one on Heath Street where Nic Adams was killed last month. I shouldn't
begrudge a cent of the money."

"I suppose I was a fool to talk to you," said the Honourable Hilary,
getting up.

But his son pushed him down again into the Windsor chair.

"Hold on, Judge," he said, "that was just my way of saying if I accepted
your offer, it wouldn't be because I yearned after the money. Thinking of
it has never kept me awake nights. Now if you'll allow me to take a few
days once in a while to let off steam, I'll make a counter proposal, in
the nature of a compromise."

"What's that?" the Honourable Hilary demanded suspiciously.

"Provided I get admitted to the bar I will take a room in another part of
this building and pick up what crumbs of practice I can by myself. Of
course, sir, I realize that these, if they come at all, will be owing to
the lustre of your name. But I should, before I become Mr. Flint's
right-hand man, like to learn to walk with my own legs."

The speech pleased the Honourable Hilary, and he put out his hand.

"It's a bargain, Austen," he said.

"I don't mind telling you now, Judge, that when I left the West I left it
for good, provided you and I could live within a decent proximity. And I
ought to add that I always intended going into the law after I'd had a
fling. It isn't fair to leave you with the impression that this is a
sudden determination. Prodigals don't become good as quick as all that."

Ripton caught its breath a second time the day Austen hired a law office,
nor did the surprise wholly cease when, in one season, he was admitted to
the bar, for the proceeding was not in keeping with the habits and
customs of prodigals. Needless to say, the practice did not immediately
begin to pour in, but the little office rarely lacked a visitor, and
sometimes had as many as five or six. There was an irresistible
attraction about that room, and apparently very little law read there,
though sometimes its occupant arose and pushed the visitors into the hall
and locked the door, and opened the window at the top to let the smoke
out. Many of the Honourable Hilary's callers preferred the little room in
the far corridor to the great man's own office.

These visitors of the elder Mr. Vane's, as has been before hinted, were
not all clients. Without burdening the reader too early with a treatise
on the fabric of a system, suffice it to say that something was
continually going on that was not law; and gentlemen came and went--fat
and thin, sharp-eyed and red-faced--who were neither clients nor lawyers.
These were really secretive gentlemen, though most of them had a
hail-fellow-well-met manner and a hearty greeting, but when they talked
to the Honourable Hilary it was with doors shut, and even then they sat
very close to his ear. Many of them preferred now to wait in Austen's
office instead of the anteroom, and some of them were not so cautious
with the son of Hilary Vane that they did not let drop certain
observations to set him thinking. He had a fanciful if somewhat facetious
way of calling them by feudal titles which made them grin.

"How is the Duke of Putnam this morning?" he would ask of the gentleman
of whom the Ripton Record would frequently make the following
announcement: "Among the prominent residents of Putnam County in town
this week was the Honourable Brush Bascom."

The Honourable Brush and many of his associates, barons and earls, albeit
the shrewdest of men, did not know exactly how to take the son of Hilary
Vane. This was true also of the Honourable Hilary himself, who did not
wholly appreciate the humour in Austen's parallel of the feudal system.
Although Austen had set up for himself, there were many ways--not legal
--in which the son might have been helpful to the father, but the
Honourable Hilary hesitated, for some unformulated reason, to make use of
him; and the consequence was that Mr. Hamilton Tooting and other young
men of a hustling nature in the Honourable Hilary's office found that
Austen's advent did not tend greatly to lighten a certain class of their
labours. In fact, father and son were not much nearer in spirit than when
ode had been in Pepper County and the other in Ripton. Caution and an
instinct which senses obstacles are characteristics of gentlemen in Mr.
Vane's business.

So two years passed,--years liberally interspersed with expeditions into
the mountains and elsewhere, and nights spent in the company of Tom
Gaylord and others. During this period Austen was more than once assailed
by the temptation to return to the free life of Pepper County, Mr.
Blodgett having completely recovered now, and only desiring vengeance of
a corporal nature. But a bargain was a bargain, and Austen Vane stuck to
his end of it, although he had now begun to realize many aspects of a
situation which he had not before suspected. He had long foreseen,
however, that the time was coming when a serious disagreement with his
father was inevitable. In addition to the difference in temperament,
Hilary Vane belonged to one generation and Austen to another.

It happened, as do so many incidents which tend to shape a life, by a
seeming chance. It was a Tune evening, and there had been a church
sociable and basket picnic during the day in a grove in the town of
Mercer, some ten miles south of Ripton. The grove was bounded on one side
by the railroad track, and merged into a thick clump of second growth and
alders where there was a diagonal grade crossing. The picnic was over and
the people preparing to go home when they were startled by a crash,
followed by the screaming of brakes as a big engine flew past the grove
and brought a heavy train to a halt some distance down the grade. The
women shrieked and dropped the dishes they were washing, and the men left
their horses standing and ran to the crossing and then stood for the
moment helpless, in horror at the scene which met their eyes. The wagon
of one--of their own congregation was in splinters, a man (a farmer of
the neighbourhood) lying among the alders with what seemed a mortal
injury. Amid the lamentations and cries for some one to go to Mercer
Village for the doctor a young man drove up rapidly and sprang out of a
buggy, trusting to some one to catch his horse, pushed, through the ring
of people, and bent over the wounded farmer. In an instant he had whipped
out a knife, cut a stick from one of the alders, knotted his handkerchief
around the man's leg, ran the stick through the knot, and twisted the
handkerchief until the blood ceased to flow. They watched him, paralyzed,
as the helpless in this world watch the capable, and before he had
finished his task the train crew and some passengers began to arrive.

"Have you a doctor aboard, Charley?" the young man asked.

"No," answered the conductor, who had been addressed; "my God, not one,
Austen."

"Back up your train," said Austen, "and stop your baggage car here. And
go to the grove," he added to one of the picnickers, "and bring four or
five carriage cushions. And you hold this."

The man beside him took the tourniquet, as he was bid. Austen Vane drew a
note-book from his pocket.

"I want this man's name and address," he said, "and the names and
addresses of every person here, quickly."

He did not lift his voice, but the man who had taken charge of such a
situation was not to be denied. They obeyed him, some eagerly, some
reluctantly, and by that time the train had backed down and the cushions
had arrived. They laid these on the floor of the baggage car and lifted
the man on to them. His name was Zeb Meader, and he was still insensible.
Austen Vane, with a peculiar set look upon his face, sat beside him all
the way into Ripton. He spoke only once, and that was to tell the
conductor to telegraph from Avalon to have the ambulance from St. Mary's
Hospital meet the train at Ripton.

The next day Hilary Vane, returning from one of his periodical trips to
the northern part of the State, invaded his son's office.

"What's this they tell me about your saving a man's life?" he asked,
sinking into one of the vacant chairs and regarding Austen with his
twinkling eyes.

"I don't know what they tell you," Austen answered. "I didn't do anything
but get a tourniquet on his leg and have him put on the train."

The Honourable Hilary grunted, and continued to regard his son. Then he
cut a piece of Honey Dew.

"Looks bad, does it?" he said.

"Well," replied Austen, "it might have been done better. It was bungled.
In a death-trap as cleverly conceived as that crossing, with a down grade
approaching it, they ought to have got the horse too."

The Honourable Hilary grunted again, and inserted the Honey Dew. He
resolved to ignore the palpable challenge in this remark, which was in
keeping with this new and serious mien in Austen.

"Get the names of witnesses?" was his next question.

"I took particular pains to do so."

"Hand 'em over to Tooting. What kind of man is this Meagre?"

"He is rather meagre now," said Austen, smiling a little. "His name's
Meader."

"Is he likely to make a fuss?"

"I think he is," said Austen.

"Well," said the Honourable Hilary, "we must have Ham Tooting hurry
'round and fix it up with him as soon as he can talk, before one of these
cormorant lawyers gets his claw in him."

Austen said nothing, and after some desultory conversation, in which he
knew how to indulge when he wished to conceal the fact that he was
baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed. That student of human nature,
Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a free
vocabulary, made the next attempt. It is a characteristic of Mr.
Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
awkward diminutive of their friends' names.

"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
that Meagre accident, before I forget it."

"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
Statutes.

"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
cigar. "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"

"I may."

"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
like a nasty one. I don't like those Mercer people. The last farmer they
ran over there raised hell."

"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough," said
Austen. Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to his
cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk very
close to him.

"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
What? Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
do they? Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
case. It makes a man want to be independent. What?"

"This sounds like virtue, Ham."

"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
money if he didn't wear the collar."

"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.

"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."

"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."

"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting, now
a little bewildered.

"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?"

They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he
decided that any subject would do.

"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
"Do you know him?"

"I've seen him," said Austen. "He's a young man, isn't he?"

"And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought to
hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing
there the other day, and he was walking around among the flowerbeds.
'Ain't your name Tooting?' he hollered. I almost fell out of the buggy."

"What did he want?" asked Austen, curiously. Mr. Tooting winked.

"Say, those millionaires are queer, and no mistake. You'd think a fellow
that only had to cut coupons wouldn't be lookin' for another job,
wouldn't you? He made me hitch my horse, and had me into his study, as he
called it, and gave me a big glass of whiskey and soda. A fellow with
buttons and a striped vest brought it on tiptoe. Then this Crewe gave me
a long yellow cigar with a band on it and told me what the State needed,
--macadam roads, farmers' institutes, forests, and God knows what. I told
him all he had to do was to get permission from old man Flint, and he
could have 'em."

"What did he say to that?"

"He said Flint was an intimate friend of his. Then he asked me a whole
raft of questions about fellows in the neighbourhood I didn't know he'd
ever heard of. Say, he wants to go from Leith to the Legislature."

"He can go for all I care," said Austen, as he pushed open the door of
the restaurant.

For a few days Mr. Meader hung between life and death. But he came of a
stock which had for generations thrust its roots into the crevices of
granite, and was not easily killed by steam-engines. Austen Vane called
twice, and then made an arrangement with young Dr. Tredway (one of the
numerous Ripton Tredways whose money had founded the hospital) that he
was to see Mr. Meader as soon as he was able to sustain a conversation.
Dr. Tredway, by the way, was a bachelor, and had been Austen's companion
on many a boisterous expedition.

When Austen, in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over
the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of
that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him.
The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from
caverns of suffering below the bandage. They were shrewd eyes, however,
and proved that Mr. Meader had possession of the five senses--nay, of the
six. Austen sat down beside the bed.

"Dr. Tredway tells me you are getting along finely," he said.

"No thanks to the railrud," answered Mr. Meader; "they done their best."

"Did you hear any whistle or any bell?" Austen asked.

"Not a sound," said Mr. Meader; "they even shut off their steam on that
grade."

Austen Vane, like most men who are really capable of a deep sympathy, was
not an adept at expressing it verbally. Moreover, he knew enough of his
fellow-men to realize that a Puritan farmer would be suspicious of
sympathy. The man had been near to death himself, was compelled to spend
part of the summer, his bread-earning season, in a hospital, and yet no
appeal or word of complaint had crossed his lips.

"Mr. Meader," said Austen, "I came over here to tell you that in my
opinion you are entitled to heavy damages from the railroad, and to
advise you not to accept a compromise. They will send some one to you and
offer you a sum far below that which you ought in justice to receive, You
ought to fight this case."

"How am I going to pay a lawyer, with a mortgage on my farm?" demanded
Mr. Meader.

"I'm a lawyer," said Austen, "and if you'll take me, I'll defend you
without charge."

"Ain't you the son of Hilary Vane?"

"Yes."

"I've heard of him a good many times," said Mr. Meader, as if to ask what
man had not. "You're railroad, ain't ye?"

Mr. Meader gazed long and thoughtfully into the young man's face, and the
suspicion gradually faded from the farmer's blue eyes.

"I like your looks," he said at last. "I guess you saved my life. I'm
--I'm much obliged to you."

When Mr. Tooting arrived later in the day, he found Mr. Meader willing to
listen, but otherwise strangely non-committal. With native shrewdness,
the farmer asked him what office he came from, but did not confide in Mr.
Tooting the fact that Mr. Vane's son had volunteered to wring more money
from Mr. Vane's client than Mr. Tooting offered him. Considerably
bewildered, that gentleman left the hospital to report the affair to the
Honourable Hilary, who, at intervals during the afternoon, found himself
relapsing into speculation.

Inside of a somewhat unpromising shell, Mr. Zeb Meader was a human being,
and no mean judge of men and motives. As his convalescence progressed,
Austen Vane fell into the habit of dropping in from time to time to chat
with him, and gradually was rewarded by many vivid character sketches of
Mr. Meader's neighbours in Mercer and its vicinity. One afternoon, when
Austen came into the ward, he found at Mr. Meader's bedside a basket of
fruit which looked too expensive and tempting to have come from any
dealer's in Ripton.

"A lady came with that," Mr. Meader explained. "I never was popular
before I was run over by the cars. She's be'n here twice. When she
fetched it to-day, I kind of thought she was up to some, game, and I
didn't want to take it."

"Up to some game?" repeated Austen.

"Well, I don't know," continued Mr. Meader, thoughtfully, "the woman here
tells me she comes regular in the summer time to see sick folks, but from
the way she made up to me I had an idea that she wanted something. But I
don't know. Thought I'd ask you. You see, she's railrud."

"Railroad!"

"She's Flint's daughter."

Austen laughed.

"I shouldn't worry about that," he said. "If Mr. Flint sent his daughter
with fruit to everybody his railroad injures, she wouldn't have time to
do anything else. I doubt if Mr. Flint ever heard of your case."

Mr. Meader considered this, and calculated there was something in it.

"She was a nice, common young lady, and cussed if she didn't make me
laugh, she has such a funny way of talkin'. She wanted to know all about
you."

"What did she want to know?" Austen exclaimed, not unnaturally.

"Well, she wanted to know about the accident, and I told her how you druv
up and screwed that thing around my leg and backed the train down. She
was a good deal took with that."

"I think you are inclined to make too much of it," said Austen.

Three days later, as he was about to enter the ward, Mr. Meader being now
the only invalid there, he heard a sound which made him pause in the
doorway. The sound was feminine laughter of a musical quality that struck
pleasantly on Austen's ear. Miss Victoria Flint was sated beside Mr.
Meader's bed, and qualified friendship had evidently been replaced by
intimacy since Austen's last visit, for Mr. Meader was laughing, too.

"And now I'm quite sure you have missed your vocation, Mr. Meader," said
Victoria. "You would have made a fortune on the stage."

"Me a play-actor!" exclaimed the invalid. "How much wages do they git?"

"Untold sums," she declared, "if they can talk like you."

"He kind of thought that story funny--same as you," Mr. Meader ruminated,
and glanced up. "Drat me," he remarked, "if he ain't a-comin' now! I
callated he'd run acrost you sometime."

Victoria raised her eyes, sparkling with humour, and they met Austen's.

"We was just talkin' about you," cried Mr. Meader, cordially; "come right
in." He turned to Victoria. "I want to make you acquainted," he said,
"with Austen Vane."

"And won't you tell him who I am, Mr. Meader?" said Victoria.

"Well," said Mr. Meader, apologetically, "that was stupid of me--wahn't
it? But I callated he'd know. She's the daughter of the railrud
president--the 'one that was askin' about you."

There was an instant's pause, and the colour stole into Victoria's
cheeks. Then she glanced at Austen and bit her lip-and laughed. Her
laughter was contagious.

"I suppose I shall have to confess that you have inspired my curiosity,
Mr. Vane," she said.

Austen's face was sunburned, but it flushed a more vivid red under the
tan. It is needless to pretend that a man of his appearance and qualities
had reached the age of thirty-two without having listened to feminine
comments of which he was the exclusive subject. In this remark of
Victoria's, or rather in the manner in which she made it, he recognized a
difference.

"It is a tribute, then, to the histrionic talents of Mr. Meader, of which
you were speaking," he replied laughingly.

Victoria glanced at him with interest as he looked down at Mr. Meader.

"And how is it to-day, Zeb?" he said.

"It ain't so bad as it might be--with sech folks as her and you araound,"
admitted Mr. Meader. "I'd almost agree to get run over again. She was
askin' about you, and that's a fact, and I didn't slander you, neither.
But I never callated to comprehend wimmen-folks."

"Now, Mr. Meader," said Victoria, reprovingly, but there were little
creases about her eyes, "don't be a fraud."

"It's true as gospel," declared the invalid; "they always got the better
of me. I had one of 'em after me once, when I was young and prosperin'
some."

"And yet you have survived triumphant," she exclaimed.

"There wahn't none of 'em like you," said Mr. Meader, "or it might have
be'n different."

Again her eyes irresistibly sought Austen's,--as though to share with him
the humour of this remark,--and they laughed together. Her colour, so
sensitive, rose again, but less perceptibly this time. Then she got up.

"That's unfair, Mr. Meader!" she protested.

"I'll leave it to Austen," said Mr. Meader, "if it ain't probable. He'd
ought to know."

In spite of a somewhat natural embarrassment, Austen could not but
acknowledge to himself that Mr. Meader was right. With a womanly movement
which he thought infinitely graceful, Victoria leaned over the bed.

"Mr. Meader," she said, "I'm beginning to think it's dangerous for me to
come here twice a week to see you, if you talk this way. And I'm not a
bit surprised that that woman didn't get the better of you."

"You hain't a-goin'!" he exclaimed. "Why, I callated--"

"Good-by," she said quickly; "I'm glad to see that you are doing so
well." She raised her head and looked at Austen in a curious, inscrutable
way. "Good-by, Mr. Vane," she said; "I--I hope Mr. Blodgett has
recovered."

Before he could reply she had vanished, and he was staring at the empty
doorway. The reference to the unfortunate Mr. Blodgett, after taking his
breath away, aroused in him an intense curiosity betraying, as it did, a
certain knowledge of past events in his life in the hitherto unknown
daughter of Augustus interest could she have in him? Such a Flint. What
question, from similar sources, has heightened the pulse of young men
from time immemorial.




CHAPTER IV

"TIMEO DANAOS"

The proverbial little birds that carry news and prophecies through the
air were evidently responsible for an official-looking letter which
Austen received a few mornings later. On the letter-head was printed "The
United Northeastern Railroads," and Mr. Austen Vane was informed that, by
direction of the president, the enclosed was sent to him in an entirely
complimentary sense. "The enclosed" was a ticket of red cardboard, and
its face informed him that he might travel free for the rest of the year.
Thoughtfully turning it over, he read on the back the following
inscription:--"It is understood that this pass is accepted by its
recipient as a retainer."

Austen stared at it and whistled. Then he pushed back his chair, with the
pass in his hand, and hesitated. He seized a pen and wrote a few lines:
"Dear sir, I beg to return the annual pass over the Northeastern
Railroads with which you have so kindly honoured me"--when he suddenly
changed his mind again, rose, and made his way through the corridors to
his father's office. The Honourable Hilary was absorbed in his daily
perusal of the Guardian.

"Judge," he asked, "is Mr. Flint up at his place this week?"

The Honourable Hilary coughed.

"He arrived yesterday on the three. Er--why?"

"I wanted to go up and thank him for this," his son answered, holding up
the red piece of cardboard. "Mr. Flint is a very thoughtful man."

The Honourable Hilary tried to look unconcerned, and succeeded.

"Sent you an annual, has he? Er--I don't know as I'd bother him
personally, Austen. Just a pleasant note of acknowledgment."

"I don't flatter myself that my achievements in the law can be
responsible for it," said Austen. "The favour must be due to my
relationship with his eminent chief counsel."

Hilary Vane's keen eyes rested on his son for an instant. Austen was more
than ever an enigma to him.

"I guess relationship hasn't got much to do with business," he replied.
"You have be'n doing--er--better than I expected."

"Thank you, Judge," said Austen, quietly. "I don't mind saying that I
would rather have your approbation than--this more substantial
recognition of merit."

The Honourable Hilary's business was to deal with men, and by reason of
his ability in so doing he had made a success in life. He could judge
motives more than passably well, and play upon weaknesses. But he left
Austen's presence that morning vaguely uneasy, with a sense of having
received from his own son an initial defeat at a game of which he was a
master. Under the excuse of looking up some precedents, he locked his
doors to all comers for two hours, and paced his room. At one moment he
reproached himself for not having been frank; for not having told Austen
roundly that this squeamishness about a pass was unworthy of a strong man
of affairs; yes, for not having revealed to him the mysteries of railroad
practice from the beginning. But frankness was not an ingredient of the
Honourable Hilary's nature, and Austen was not the kind of man who would
accept a hint and a wink. Hilary Vane had formless forebodings, and found
himself for once in his life powerless to act.

The cost of living in Ripton was not so high that Austen Vane could not
afford to keep a horse and buggy. The horse, which he tended himself, was
appropriately called Pepper; Austen had found him in the hills, and he
was easily the finest animal in Ripton: so good, in fact, that Mr.
Humphrey Crewe (who believed he had an eye for horses) had peremptorily
hailed Austen from a motorcar and demanded the price, as was Mr. Crewe's
wont when he saw a thing he desired. He had been somewhat surprised and
not inconsiderably offended by the brevity and force of the answer which
he had received.

On the afternoon of the summer's day in which Austen had the conversation
with his father just related, Pepper was trotting at a round clip through
the soft and shady wood roads toward the town of Tunbridge; the word
"town" being used in the New England sense, as a piece of territory about
six miles by six. The fact that automobiles full of laughing people from
Leith hummed by occasionally made no apparent difference to Pepper, who
knew only the master hand on the reins; the reality that the wood roads
were climbing great hills the horse did not seem to feel. Pepper knew
every lane and by-path within twenty miles of Ripton, and exhibited such
surprise as a well-bred horse may when he was slowed down at length and
turned into a hard, blue-stone driveway under a strange granite arch with
the word "Fairview" cut in Gothic letters above it, and two great lamps
in wrought-iron brackets at the sides. It was Austen who made a note of
the gratings over the drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a
mysterious and seemingly enchanted realm. Intimacy with domains was new
to him, and he began to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint
which was new to him likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself.
The estate seemed to be the visible semblance of a power which troubled
him.

Shortly after passing an avenue neatly labelled "Trade's Drive" the road
wound upwards through a ravine the sides of which were covered with a
dense shrubbery which had the air of having always been there, and yet
somehow looked expensive. At the top of the ravine was a sharp curve; and
Austen, drawing breath, found himself swung, as it were, into space,
looking off across miles of forest-covered lowlands to an ultramarine
mountain in the hazy south,--Sawanec. As if in obedience to a telepathic
command of his master, Pepper stopped.

Drinking his fill of this scene, Austen forgot an errand which was not
only disagreeable, but required some fortitude for its accomplishment.
The son had this in common with the Honourable Hilary--he hated heroics;
and the fact that the thing smacked of heroics was Austen's only
deterrent. And then there was a woman in this paradise! These gradual
insinuations into his revery at length made him turn. A straight avenue
of pear-shaped, fifteen-year-old maples led to the house, a massive
colonial structure of wood that stretched across the shelf; and he had
tightened the reins and started courageously up the avenue when he
perceived that it ended in a circle on which there was no sign of a
hitching-post. And, worse than this, on the balconied, uncovered porch
which he would have to traverse to reach the doorway he saw the sheen and
glimmer of women's gowns grouped about wicker tables, and became aware
that his approach was the sole object of the scrutiny of an afternoon tea
party.

As he reached the circle it was a slight relief to learn that Pepper was
the attraction. No horse knew better than Pepper when he was being
admired, and he arched his neck and lifted his feet and danced in the
sheer exhilaration of it. A smooth-faced, red-cheeked gentleman in gray
flannels leaned over the balustrade and made audible comments in a
penetrating voice which betrayed the fact that he was Mr. Humphrey Crewe.

"Saw him on the street in Ripton last year. Good hock action, hasn't
he?--that's rare in trotters around here. Tried to buy him. Feller
wouldn't sell. His name's Vane--he's drivin' him now."

A lady of a somewhat commanding presence was beside him. She was perhaps
five and forty, her iron-gray hair was dressed to perfection, her figure
all that Parisian art could make it, and she was regarding Austen with
extreme deliberation through the glasses which she had raised to a
high-bridged nose.

"Politics is certainly your career, Humphrey," she remarked, "you have
such a wonderful memory for faces. I don't see how he does it, do you,
Alice?" she demanded of a tall girl beside her, who was evidently her
daughter, but lacked her personality.

"I don't know," said Alice.

"It's because I've been here longer than anybody else, Mrs. Pomfret,"
answered Mr. Crewe, not very graciously, "that's all. Hello." This last
to Austen.

"Hello," said Austen.

"Who do you want to see?" inquired Mr. Crewe, with the admirable tact for
which he was noted.

Austen looked at him for the first time.

"Anybody who will hold my horse," he answered quietly.

By this time the conversation had drawn the attention of the others at
the tables, and one or two smiled at Austen's answer. Mrs. Flint, with a
"Who is it?" arose to repel a social intrusion. She was an overdressed
lady, inclining to embonpoint, but traces of the Rose of Sharon were
still visible.

"Why don't you drive 'round to the stables?" suggested Mr. Crewe, unaware
of a smile.

Austen did not answer. He was, in fact, looking towards the doorway, and
the group on the porch were surprised to see a gleam of mirthful
understanding start in his eyes. An answering gleam was in Victoria's,
who had at that moment, by a singular coincidence, come out of the house.
She came directly down the steps and out on the gravel, and held her hand
to him in the buggy, and he flushed with pleasure as he grasped it.

"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said. "I am so glad you have called.
Humphrey, just push the stable button, will you?"

Mr. Crewe obeyed with no very good grace, while the tea-party went back
to their seats. Mrs. Flint supposed he had come to sell Victoria the
horse; while Mrs. Pomfret, who had taken him in from crown to boots,
remarked that he looked very much like a gentleman.

"I came to see your father for a few moments--on business," Austen
explained.

She lifted her face to his with a second searching look.

"I'll take you to him," she said.

By this time a nimble groom had appeared from out o a shrubbery path and
seized Pepper's head. Austen alighted and followed Victoria into a great,
cool hallway, and through two darkened rooms, bewilderingly furnished and
laden with the scent of flowers, into a narrow passage beyond. She led
the way simply, not speaking, and her silence seemed to betoken the
completeness of an understanding between them, as of a long acquaintance.

In a plain white-washed room, behind a plain oaken desk, sat Mr. Flint--a
plain man. Austen thought he would have known him had he seen him on the
street. The other things in the room were letter-files, a safe, a
long-distance telephone, and a thin private secretary with a bend in his
back. Mr. Flint looked up from his desk, and his face, previously bereft
of illumination, lighted when he saw his daughter. Austen liked that in
him.

"Well, Vic, what is it now?" he asked.

"Mr. Austen Vane to see you," said Victoria, and with a quick glance at
Austen she left him standing on the threshold. Mr. Flint rose. His eyes
were deep-set in a square, hard head, and he appeared to be taking Austen
in without directly looking at him; likewise, one felt that Mr. Flint's
handshake was not an absolute gift of his soul.

"How do you do, Mr. Vane? I don't remember ever to have had the pleasure
of seeing you, although your father and I have been intimately connected
for many years."

So the president's manner was hearty, but not the substance. It came,
Austen thought, from a rarity of meeting with men on a disinterested
footing; and he could not but wonder how Mr. Flint would treat the angels
in heaven if he ever got there, where there were no franchises to be had.
Would he suspect them of designs upon his hard won harp and halo? Austen
did not dislike Mr. Flint; the man's rise, his achievements, his
affection for his daughter, he remembered. But he was also well aware
that Mr. Flint had thrown upon him the onus of the first move in a game
which the railroad president was used to playing every day. The dragon
was on his home ground and had the choice of weapons.

"I do not wish to bother you long," said Austen.

"No bother," answered Mr. Flint, "no bother to make the acquaintance of
the son of my old friend, Hilary Vane. Sit down--sit down. And while I
don't believe any man should depend upon his father to launch him in the
world, yet it must be a great satisfaction to you, Mr. Vane, to have such
a father. Hilary Vane and I have been intimately associated for many
years, and my admiration for him has increased with every year. It is to
men of his type that the prosperity, the greatness, of this nation is
largely due,--conservative, upright, able, content to confine himself to
the difficult work for which he is so eminently fitted, without
spectacular meddling in things in which he can have no concern. Therefore
I welcome the opportunity to know you, sir, for I understand that you
have settled down to follow in his footsteps and that you will make a
name for yourself. I know the independence of young men--I was young once
myself. But after all, Mr. Vane, experience is the great teacher, and
perhaps there is some little advice which an old man can give you that
may be of service. As your father's son, it is always at your disposal.
Have a cigar."

The thin secretary continued to flit about the room, between the
letter-files and the desk. Austen had found it infinitely easier to shoot
Mr. Blodgett than to engage in a duel with the president of the United
Railroad.

"I smoke a pipe," he said.

"Too many young men smoke cigars--and those disgusting cigarettes," said
Mr. Flint, with conviction. "There are a lot of worthless young men in
these days, anyhow. They come to my house and loaf and drink and smoke,
and talk a lot of nonsense about games and automobiles and clubs, and
cumber the earth generally. There's a young man named Crewe over at
Leith, for instance--you may have seen him. Not that he's dissipated
--but he don't do anything but talk about railroads and the stock market
to make you sick, and don't know any more about 'em than my farmer."

During this diatribe Austen saw his opening growing smaller and smaller.
If he did not make a dash for it, it would soon be closed entirely.

"I received a letter this morning, Mr. Flint, enclosing me an annual
pass--"

"Did Upjohn send you one?" Mr. Flint cut in; "he ought to have done so
long ago. It was probably an oversight that he did not, Mr. Vane. We try
to extend the courtesies of the road to persons who are looked up to in
their communities. The son of Hilary Vane is at all times welcome to
one."

Mr. Flint paused to light his cigar, and Austen summoned his resolution.
Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly
more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no
inconsiderable intrinsic value. Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously
contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune
upstart. Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the
president of the Northeastern Railroads?

"I had first thought of writing you a letter, Mr. Flint," he said, "but
it seemed to me that, considering your relations with my father, the
proper thing to do was to come to you and tell you why I cannot take the
pass."

The thin secretary paused in his filing, and remained motionless with his
body bent over the drawer.

"Why you cannot take it, Mr. Vane?" said the railroad president. "I'm
afraid I don't understand."

"I appreciate the--the kindness," said Austen, "and I will try to
explain." He drew the red cardboard from his pocket and turned it over.
"On the back of this is printed, in small letters, 'It is understood that
this pass is accepted by the recipient as a retainer.'"

"Well," Mr. Flint interrupted, smiling somewhat blandly, "how much money
do you think that pass would save an active young lawyer in a year? Is
three hundred dollars too much? Three hundred dollars is not an
insignificant sum to a young man on the threshold of his practice, is
it?"

Austen looked at Mr. Flint.

"Any sum is insignificant when it restricts a lawyer from the acceptance
of just causes, Mr. Flint. As I understand the matter, it is the custom
of your railroad to send these passes to the young lawyers of the State
the moment they begin to give signs of ability. This past would prevent
me from serving clients who might have righteous claims against your
railroads, and--permit me to speak frankly--in my opinion the practice
tends to make it difficult for poor people who have been injured to get
efficient lawyers."

"Your own father is retained by the railroad," said Mr. Flint.

"As their counsel," answered Austen. "I have a pride in my profession,
Mr. Flint, as no doubt you have in yours. If I should ever acquire
sufficient eminence to be sought as counsel for a railroad, I should make
my own terms with it. I should not allow its management alone to decide
upon the value of my retainer, and my services in its behalf would be
confined strictly to professional ones."

Mr. Flint drummed on the table.

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

"I mean that I would not engage, for a fee or a pass, to fight the
political battles of a railroad, or undertake any political manipulation
in its behalf whatever."

Mr. Flint leaned forward aggressively.

"How long do you think a railroad would pay dividends if it did not adopt
some means of defending itself from the blackmail politician of the State
legislatures, Mr. Vane? The railroads of which I have the honour to be
president pay a heavy tag in this and other States. We would pay a much
heavier one if we didn't take precautions to protect ourselves. But I do
not intend to quarrel with you, Mr. Vane," he continued quickly,
perceiving that Austen was about to answer him, "nor do I wish to leave
you with the impression that the Northeastern Railroads meddle unduly in
politics."

Austen knew not how to answer. He had not gone there to discuss this last
and really great question with Mr. Flint, but he wondered whether the
president actually thought him the fledgling he proclaimed. Austen laid
his pass on Mr. Flint's desk, and rose.

"I assure you, Mr. Flint, that the spirit which prompted my visit was not
a contentious one. I cannot accept the pass, simply because I do not wish
to be retained."

Mr. Flint eyed him. There was a mark of dignity, of silent power, on this
tall scapegrace of a son of Hilary Vane that the railroad president had
missed at first--probably because he had looked only for the scapegrace.
Mr. Flint ardently desired to treat the matter in the trifling aspect in
which he believed he saw it, to carry it off genially. But an instinct
not yet formulated told the president that he was face to face with an
enemy whose potential powers were not to be despised, and he bristled in
spite of himself.

"There is no statute I know of by which a lawyer can be compelled to
accept a retainer against his will, Mr. Vane," he replied, and overcame
himself with an effort. "But I hope that you will permit me," he added in
another tone, "as an old friend of your father's and as a man of some
little experience in the world, to remark that intolerance is a
characteristic of youth. I had it in the days of Mr. Isaac D.
Worthington, whom you do not remember. I am not addicted to flattery, but
I hope and believe you have a career before you. Talk to your father.
Study the question on both sides,--from the point of view of men who are
honestly trying, in the face of tremendous difficulties, to protect
innocent stockholders as well as to conduct a corporation in the
interests of the people at large, and for their general prosperity. Be
charitable, young man, and judge not hastily."

Years before, when poor Sarah Austen had adorned the end of his table,
Hilary Vane had raised his head after the pronouncement of grace to
surprise a look in his wife's eyes which strangely threw him into a white
heat of anger. That look (and he at intervals had beheld it afterwards)
was the true presentment of the soul of the woman whose body was his. It
was not--as Hilary Vane thought it--a contempt for the practice of
thanking one's Maker for daily bread, but a contempt for cant of one who
sees the humour in cant. A masculine version of that look Mr. Flint now
beheld in the eyes of Austen Vane, and the enraging effect on the
president of the United Railroads was much the same as it had been on his
chief counsel. Who was this young man of three and thirty to agitate him
so? He trembled, though not visibly, yet took Austen's hand mechanically.

"Good day, Mr. Vane," he said; "Mr. Freeman will help you to find your
horse."

The thin secretary bowed, and before he reached the door into the passage
Mr. Flint had opened another at the back of the room and stepped out on a
close-cropped lawn flooded with afternoon sunlight. In the passage Austen
perceived a chair, and in the chair was seated patiently none other than
Mr. Brush Bascom--political Duke of Putnam. Mr. Bascom's little agate
eyes glittered in the dim light.

"Hello, Austen," he said, "since when have you took to comin' here?"

"It's a longer trip from Putnam than from Ripton, Brush," said Austen,
and passed on, leaving Mr. Bascom with a puzzled mind. Something very
like a smile passed over Mr. Freeman's face as he led the way silently
out of a side entrance and around the house. The circle of the drive was
empty, the tea-party had gone--and Victoria. Austen assured himself that
her disappearance relieved him: having virtually quarrelled with her
father, conversation would have been awkward; and yet he looked for her.

They found the buggy and Pepper in the paved courtyard of the stables. As
Austen took the reins the secretary looked up at him, his mild blue eyes
burning with an unsuspected fire. He held out his hand.

"I want to congratulate you," he said.

"What for?" asked Austen, taking the hand in some embarrassment.

"For speaking like a man," said the secretary, and he turned on his heel
and left him.

This strange action, capping, as it did, a stranger experience, gave
Austen food for thought as he let Pepper take his own pace down the
trade's road. Presently he got back into the main drive where it clung to
a steep, forest-covered side hill, when his attention was distracted by
the sight of a straight figure in white descending amidst the foliage
ahead. His instinctive action was to pull Pepper down to a walk, scarcely
analyzing his motives; then he had time, before reaching the spot where
their paths would cross, to consider and characteristically to enjoy the
unpropitious elements arrayed against a friendship with Victoria Flint.

She halted on a flagstone of the descending path some six feet above the
roadway, and stood expectant. The Rose of Sharon, five and twenty years
before, would have been coy--would have made believe to have done it by
accident. But the Rose of Sharon, with all her beauty, would have had no
attraction for Austen Vane. Victoria had much of her mother's good looks,
the figure of a Diana, and her clothes were of a severity and correctness
in keeping with her style; they merely added to the sum total of the
effect upon Austen. Of course he stopped the buggy immediately beneath
her, and her first question left him without any breath. No woman he had
ever known seized the essentials as she did.

"What have you been doing to my father?" she asked.

"Why?" exclaimed Austen.

"Because he's in such a bad temper," said Victoria. "You must have put
him in it. It can't be possible that you came all the way up here to
quarrel with him. Nobody ever dares to quarrel with him."

"I didn't come up to quarrel with him," said Austen.

"What's the trouble?" asked Victoria.

The humour of this question was too much for him, and he laughed.
Victoria's eyes laughed a little, but there was a pucker in her forehead.

"Won't you tell me?" she demanded, "or must I get it out of him?"

"I am afraid," said Austen, slowly, "that you must get it out of him--if
he hasn't forgotten it."

"Forgotten it, dear old soul!" cried Victoria. "I met him just now and
tried to make him look at the new Guernseys, and he must have been
disturbed quite a good deal when he's cross as a bear to me. He really
oughtn't to be upset like that, Mr. Vane, when he comes up here to rest.
I am afraid that you are rather a terrible person, although you look so
nice. Won't you tell me what you did to him?"

Austen was non-plussed.

"Nothing intentional," he answered earnestly, "but it wouldn't be fair to
your father if I gave you my version of a business conversation that
passed between us, would it?"

"Perhaps not," said Victoria. She sat down on the flagstone with her
elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and looked at him
thoughtfully. He knew well enough that a wise general would have
retreated--horse, foot, and baggage; but Pepper did not stir.

"Do you know," said Victoria, "I have an idea you came up here about Zeb
Meader."

"Zeb Meader!"

"Yes. I told my father about him,--how you rescued him, and how you went
to see him in the hospital, and what a good man he is, and how poor."

"Oh, did you!" exclaimed Austen.

"Yes. And I told him the accident wasn't Zeb's fault, that the train
didn't whistle or ring, and that the crossing was a blind one."

"And what did he say?" asked Austen, curiously.

"He said that on a railroad as big as his something of the kind must
happen occasionally. And he told me if Zeb didn't make a fuss and act
foolishly, he would have no cause to regret it."

"And did you tell Zeb?" asked Austen.

"Yes," Victoria admitted, "but I'm sorry I did, now."

"What did Zeb say?"

Victoria laughed in spite of herself, and gave a more or less exact
though kindly imitation of Mr. Meader's manner.

"He said that wimmen-folks had better stick to the needle and the duster,
and not go pokin' about law business that didn't concern 'em. But the
worst of it was," added Victoria, with some distress, "he won't accept
any more fruit. Isn't he silly? He won't get it into his head that I give
him the fruit, and not my father. I suspect that he actually believes my
father sent me down there to tell him that."

Austen was silent, for the true significance of this apparently obscure
damage case to the Northeastern Railroads was beginning to dawn on him.
The public was not in the best of humours towards railroads: there was
trouble about grade crossings, and Mr. Meader's mishap and the manner of
his rescue by the son of the corporation counsel had given the accident a
deplorable publicity. Moreover, if it had dawned on Augustus Flint that
the son of Hilary Vane might prosecute the suit, it was worth while
taking a little pains with Mr. Meader and Mr. Austen Vane. Certain small
fires have been known to light world-wide conflagrations.

"What are you thinking about?" asked Victoria. "It isn't at all polite to
forget the person you are talking to."

"I haven't forgotten you," said Austen, with a smile. How could he
--sitting under her in this manner?

"Besides," said Victoria, mollified, "you haven't an answered my
question."

"Which question?"

She scrutinized him thoughtfully, and with feminine art made the kind of
an attack that rarely fails.

"Why are you such an enigma, Mr. Vane?" she demanded. "Is it because
you're a lawyer, or because you've been out West and seen so much of life
and shot so many people?"

Austen laughed, yet he had tingling symptoms because she showed enough
interest in him to pronounce him a riddle. But he instantly became
serious as the purport of the last charge came home to him.

"I suppose I am looked upon as a sort of Jesse James," he said. "As it
happens, I have never shot but one man, and I didn't care very much for
that."

Victoria got up and came down a step and gave him her hand. He took it,
nor was he the first to relinquish the hold; and a colour rose delicately
in her face as she drew her fingers away.

"I didn't mean to offend you," she said.

"You didn't offend me," he replied quickly. "I merely wished you to know
that I wasn't a brigand."

Victoria smiled.

"I really didn't think so--you are much too solemn. I have to go now,
and--you haven't told me anything."

She crossed the road and began to descend the path on the other side.
Twice he glanced back, after he had started, and once surprised her
poised lightly among the leaves, looking over her shoulder.




CHAPTER V

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

The next time Austen visited the hospital Mr. Meader had a surprise in
store for him. After passing the time of day, as was his custom, the
patient freely discussed the motives which had led him to refuse any more
of Victoria's fruit.

"I hain't got nothing against her," he declared; "I tried to make that
plain. She's as nice and common a young lady as I ever see, and I don't
believe she had a thing to do with it. But I suspicioned they was up to
somethin' when she brought them baskets. And when she give me the message
from old Flint, I was sure of it."

"Miss Flint was entirely innocent, I'm sure," said Austen, emphatically.

"If I could see old Flint, I'd tell him what I thought of him usin'
wimmen-folks to save 'em money," said Mr. Meader. "I knowed she wahn't
that kind. And then that other thing come right on top of it."

"What other thing?"

"Say," demanded Mr. Meader, "don't you know?"

"I know nothing," said Austen.

"Didn't know Hilary Vane's be'n here?"

"My father!" Austen ejaculated.

"Gittin' after me pretty warm, so they be. Want to know what my price is
now. But say, I didn't suppose your fayther'd come here without lettin'
you know."

Austen was silent. The truth was that for a few moments he could not
command himself sufficiently to speak.

"He is the chief counsel for the road," he said at length; "I am not
connected with it."

"I guess you're on the right track. He's a pretty smooth talker, your
fayther. Just dropped in to see how I be, since his son was interested.
Talked a sight of law gibberish I didn't understand. Told me I didn't
have much of a case; said the policy of the railrud was to be liberal,
and wanted to know what I thought I ought to have."

"Well?" said Austen, shortly.

"Well," said Mr. Mender, "he didn't git a mite of satisfaction out of me.
I've seen enough of his kind of folks to know how to deal with 'em, and I
told him so. I asked him what they meant by sending that slick Mr.
Tooting 'raound to offer me five hundred dollars. I said I was willin' to
trust my case on that crossin' to a jury."

Austen smiled, in spite of his mingled emotions.

"What else did Mr. Vane say?" he asked.

Not a great sight more. Said a good many folks were foolish enough to
spend money and go to law when they'd done better to trust to the
liberality of the railrud. Liberality! Adams' widow done well to trust
their liberality, didn't she? He wanted to know one more thing, but I
didn't give him any satisfaction."

"What was that?"

"I couldn't tell you how he got 'raound to it. Guess he never did, quite.
He wanted to know what lawyer was to have my case. Wahn't none of his
affair, and I callated if you'd wanted him to know just yet, you'd have
toad him."

Austen laid his hand on the farmer's, as he rose to go.

"Zeb," he said, "I never expect to have a more exemplary client."

Mr. Mender shot a glance at him.

"Mebbe I spoke a mite too free about your fayther, Austen," he said; "you
and him seem kind of different."

"The Judge and I understand each other," answered Austen.

He had got as far as the door, when he stopped, swung on his heel, and
came back to the bedside.

"It's my duty to tell you, Zeb, that in order to hush this thing up they
may offer you more than you can get from a jury. In that case I should
have to advise you to accept."

He was aware that, while he made this statement, Zeb Meader's eyes were
riveted on him, and he knew that the farmer was weighing him in the
balance.

"Sell out?" exclaimed Mr. Meader. "You advise me to sell out?"

Austen did not get angry. He understood this man and the people from
which he sprang.

"The question is for you to decide--whether you can get more money by a
settlement."

"Money!" cried Zeb Meader, "I have found it pretty hard to git, but
there's some things I won't do for it. There's a reason why they want
this case hushed up, the way they've be'n actin'. I ain't lived in Mercer
and Putnam County all my life for nothin'. Hain't I seen 'em run their
dirty politics there under Brush Bascom for the last twenty-five years?
There's no man has an office or a pass in that county but what Bascom
gives it to him, and Bascom's the railrud tool." Suddenly Zeb raised
himself in bed. "Hev' they be'n tamperin' with you?" he demanded.

"Yes," answered Austen, dispassionately. He had hardly heard what Zeb had
said; his mind had been going onward. "Yes. They sent me an annual pass,
and I took it back."

Zeb Meader did not speak for a few moments.

"I guess I was a little hasty, Austen," he said at length.

"I might have known you wouldn't sell out. If you're' willin' to take the
risk, you tell 'em ten thousand dollars wouldn't tempt me."

"All right, Zeb," said Austen.

He left the hospital and struck out across the country towards the slopes
of Sawanec, climbed them, and stood bareheaded in the evening light,
gazing over the still, wide valley northward to the wooded ridges where
Leith and Fairview lay hidden. He had come to the parting of the ways of
life, and while he did not hesitate to choose his path, a Vane
inheritance, though not dominant, could not fail at such a juncture to
point out the pleasantness of conformity. Austen's affection for Hilary
Vane was real; the loneliness of the elder man appealed to the son, who
knew that his father loved him in his own way. He dreaded the wrench
there.

And nature, persuasive in that quarter, was not to be stilled in a field
more completely her own. The memory and suppliance of a minute will
scarce suffice one of Austen's temperament for a lifetime; and his eyes,
flying with the eagle high across the valley, searched the velvet folds
of the ridges, as they lay in infinite shades of green in the level
light, for the place where the enchanted realm might be. Just what the
state of his feelings were at this time towards Victoria Flint is too
vague--accurately to be painted, but he was certainly not ready to give
way to the attraction he felt for her. His sense of humour intervened if
he allowed himself to dream; there was a certain folly in pursuing the
acquaintance, all the greater now that he was choosing the path of
opposition to the dragon. A young woman, surrounded as she was, could be
expected to know little of the subtleties of business and political
morality: let him take Zeb Meader's case, and her loyalty would naturally
be with her father,--if she thought of Austen Vane at all.

And yet the very contradiction of her name, Victoria joined with Flint,
seemed to proclaim that she did not belong to her father or to the Rose
of Sharon. Austen permitted himself to dwell, as he descended the
mountain in the gathering darkness, upon the fancy of the springing of a
generation of ideals from a generation of commerce which boded well for
the Republic. And Austen Vane, in common with that younger and travelled
generation, thought largely in terms of the Republic. Pepper County and
Putnam County were all one to him--pieces of his native land. And as
such, redeemable.

It was long past the supper hour when he reached the house in Hanover
Street; but Euphrasia, who many a time in days gone by had fared forth
into the woods to find Sarah Austen, had his supper hot for him.
Afterwards he lighted his pipe and went out into the darkness, and
presently perceived a black figure seated meditatively on the granite
doorstep.

"Is that you, Judge?" said Austen.

The Honourable Hilary grunted in response.

"Be'n on another wild expedition, I suppose."

"I went up Sawanec to stretch my legs a little," Austen answered, sitting
down beside his father.

"Funny," remarked the Honourable Hilary, "I never had this mania for
stretchin' my legs after I was grown."

"Well," said Austen, "I like to go into the woods and climb the hills and
get aired out once in a while."

"I heard of your gettin' aired out yesterday, up Tunbridge way," said the
Honourable Hilary.

"I supposed you would hear of it," answered Austen.

"I was up there to-day. Gave Mr. Flint your pass did you?"

"Yes."

"Didn't see fit to mention it to me first--did you? Said you were going
up to thank him for it."

Austen considered this.

"You have put me in the wrong, Judge," he replied after a little. "I made
that remark ironically. I I am afraid we cannot agree on the motive which
prompted me."

"Your conscience a little finer than your father's--is it?"

"No," said Austen, "I don't honestly think it is. I've thought a good
deal in the last few years about the difference in our ways of looking at
things. I believe that two men who try to be honest may conscientiously
differ. But I also believe that certain customs have gradually grown up
in railroad practice which are more or less to be deplored from the point
of view of the honour of the profession. I think they are not perhaps
--realized even by the eminent men in the law."

"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary. But he did not press his son for the
enumeration of these customs. After all the years he had disapproved of
Austen's deeds it seemed strange indeed to be called to account by the
prodigal for his own. Could it be that this boy whom he had so often
chastised took a clearer view of practical morality than himself? It was
preposterous. But why the uneasiness of the past few years? Why had he
more than once during that period, for the first time in his life,
questioned a hitherto absolute satisfaction in his position of chief
counsel for the Northeastern Railroads? Why had he hesitated to initiate
his son into many of the so-called duties of a railroad lawyer? Austen
had never verbally arraigned those duties until to-night.

Contradictory as it may seem, irritating as it was to the Honourable
Hilary Vane, he experienced again the certain faint tingling of pride as
when Austen had given him the dispassionate account of the shooting of
Mr. Blodgett; and this tingling only served to stiffen Hilary Vane more
than ever. A lifelong habit of admitting nothing and a lifelong pride
made the acknowledgment of possible professional lapses for the benefit
of his employer not to be thought of. He therefore assumed the same
attitude as had Mr. Flint, and forced the burden of explanation upon
Austen, relying surely on the disinclination of his son to be specific.
And Austen, considering his relationship, could not be expected to fathom
these mental processes.

"See here, Judge," he said, greatly embarrassed by the real affection he
felt, "I don't want to seem like a prig and appear to be sitting in
judgment upon a man of your experience and position especially since I
have the honour to be your son, and have made a good deal of trouble by a
not irreproachable existence. Since we have begun on the subject,
however, I think I ought to tell you that I have taken the case of Zeb
Meader against the Northeastern Railroads."

"Wahn't much need of telling me, was there?" remarked the Honourable
Hilary, dryly. "I'd have found it out as soon as anybody else."

"There was this need of telling you," answered Austen, steadily,
"although I am not in partnership with you, I bear your name. And
in-as-much as I am to have a suit against your client, it has occurred to
me that you would like me to move--elsewhere."

The Honourable Hilary was silent for a long time.

"Want to move--do YOU? Is that it?"

"Only because my presence may embarrass you."

"That wahn't in the contract," said the Honourable Hilary; "you've got a
right to take any fool cases you've a mind to. Folks know pretty well I'm
not mixed up in 'em."

Austen did not smile; he could well understand his father's animus in
this matter. As he looked up at the gable of his old home against the
stars, he did not find the next sentence any easier.

"And then," he continued, "in taking, a course so obviously against your
wishes and judgment it occurred to me--well, that I was eating at your
table and sleeping in your house."

To his son's astonishment, Hilary Vane turned on him almost truculently.

"I thought the time'd come when you'd want to go off again,--gypsying,"
he cried.

"I'd stay right here in Ripton, Judge. I believe my work is in this
State."

The Honour could see through a millstone with a hole in it. The effect of
Austen's assertion on him was a declaration that the mission of the one
was to tear down what the other had so laboriously built up. And yet a
growing dread of Hilary Vane's had been the loneliness of declining years
in that house should Austen leave it again, never to return.

"I knew you had this Meader business in mind," he said. "I knew you had
fanciful notions about--some things. Never told you I didn't want you
here, did I?"

"No," said Austen, "but--"

Would have told you if I hadn't wanted you--wouldn't I?"

"I hope so, Judge," said Austen, who understood something of the feeling
which underlay this brusqueness. That knowledge made matters all the
harder for him.

"It was your mother's house--you're entitled to that, anyway," said the
Honourable Hilary, "but what I want to know is, why you didn't advise
that eternal fool of a Meader to accept what we offered him. You'll never
get a county jury to give as much."

"I did advise him to accept it," answered Austen.

"What's the matter with him?" the Honourable Hilary demanded.

"Well, judge, if you really want my opinion, an honest farmer like Meader
is suspicious of any corporation which has such zealous and loyal
retainers as Ham Tooting and Brush Bascom." And Austen thought with a
return of the pang which had haunted him at intervals throughout the
afternoon, that he might almost have added to these names that of Hilary
Vane. Certainly Zeb Meader had not spared his father.

"Life," observed the Honourable Hilary, unconsciously using a phrase from
the 'Book of Arguments,' "is a survival of the fittest."

"How do you define 'the fittest?'" asked Austen. "Are they the men who
have the not unusual and certainly not exalted gift of getting money from
their fellow creatures by the use of any and all weapons that may be at
hand? who believe the acquisition of wealth to be exempt from the
practice of morality? Is Mr. Flint your example of the fittest type to
exist and survive, or Gladstone or Wilberforce or Emerson or Lincoln?"

"Emerson!" cried the Honourable Hilary, the name standing out in red
letters before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's
writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the
"Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and her
son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable
flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's
authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him--The
name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for
incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. "Don't talk Emerson to me,"
he exclaimed. "And as for Brush Bascom, I've known him for thirty years,
and he's done as much for the Republican party as any man in this State."

This vindication of Mr. Bascom naturally brought to a close a
conversation which had already continued too long. The Honourable Hilary
retired to rest; but--if Austen had known it--not to sleep until the
small hours of the morning.

It was not until the ensuing spring that the case of Mr. Zebulun Meader
against the United Northeastern Railroads came up for trial in Bradford,
the county-seat of Putnam County, and we do not wish to appear to give it
too great a weight in the annals of the State. For one thing, the weekly
newspapers did not mention it; and Mr. Paul Pardriff, when urged to give
an account of the proceedings in the Ripton Record, said it was a matter
of no importance, and spent the afternoon writing an editorial about the
domestic habits of the Aztecs. Mr. Pardriff, however, had thought the
matter of sufficient interest personally to attend the trial, and for the
journey he made use of a piece of green cardboard which he habitually
carried in his pocket. The editor of the Bradford Champion did not have
to use his yellow cardboard, yet his columns may be searched in vain for
the event.

Not that it was such a great event, one of hundreds of railroad accidents
that come to court. The son of Hilary Vane was the plaintiff's counsel;
and Mr. Meader, although he had not been able to work since his release
from the hospital, had been able to talk, and the interest taken in the
case by the average neglected citizen in Putnam proved that the weekly
newspaper is not the only disseminator of news.

The railroad's side of the case was presented by that genial and able
practitioner of Putnam County, Mr. Nathaniel Billings, who travelled from
his home in Williamstown by the exhibition of a red ticket. Austen Vane
had to pay his own way from Ripton, but as he handed back the mileage
book, the conductor leaned over and whispered something in his ear that
made him smile, and Austen thought he would rather have that little drop
of encouragement than a pass. And as he left the car at Bradford, two
grizzled and hard-handed individuals arose and wished him good luck.

He needed encouragement,--what young lawyer does not on his first
important case? And he did not like to think of the future if he lost
this. But in this matter he possessed a certain self-confidence which
arose from a just and righteous anger against the forces opposing him and
a knowledge of their tactics. To his mind his client was not Zeb Meader
alone, but the host of victims who had been maimed and bought off because
it was cheaper than to give the public a proper protection.

The court room was crowded. Mr. Zeb Meader, pale but determined, was
surrounded by a knot of Mercer neighbours, many of whom were witnesses.
The agate eyes of Mr. Brush Bascom flashed from the audience, and Mr. Nat
Billings bustled forward to shake Austen's hand. Nat was one of those who
called not infrequently upon the Honourable Hilary in Ripton, and had sat
on Austen's little table.

"Glad to see you, Austen," he cried, so that the people might hear; and
added, in a confidentially lower tone, "We lawyers understand that these
little things make no difference, eh?"

"I'm willing to agree to that if you are, Nat," Austen answered. He
looked at the lawyer's fleshy face, blue-black where it was shaven, and
at Mr. Billings' shifty eyes and mouth, which its muscles could not quite
keep in place. Mr. Billings also had nicked teeth. But he did his best to
hide these obvious disadvantages by a Falstaffian bonhomie,--for Mr.
Billings was growing stout.

"I tried it once or twice, my friend, when I was younger. It's noble, but
it don't pay," said Mr. Billings, still confidential. "Brush is
sour--look at him. But I understand how you feel. I'm the kind of feller
that speaks out, and what I can't understand is, why the old man let you
get into it."

"He knew you were going to be on the other side, Nat, and wanted to teach
me a lesson. I suppose it is folly to contest a case where the Railroad
Commission has completely exonerated your client," Austen added
thoughtfully.

Mr. Billings' answer was to wink, very slowly, with one eye; and shortly
after these pleasantries were over, the case was called. A fragrant wind
blew in at the open windows, and Nature outside was beginning to array
herself in myriad hues of green. Austen studied the jury, and wondered
how many points of his argument he could remember, but when he had got to
his feet the words came to him. If we should seek an emblem for King
David's smooth, round stone which he flung at Goliath, we should call it
the truth--for the truth never fails to reach the mark. Austen's opening
was not long, his words simple and not dramatic, but he seemed to charge
them with something of the same magnetic force that compelled people to
read and believe "Uncle Ton's Cabin" and the "Song of the Shirt."
Spectators and jury listened intently.

Some twenty witnesses appeared for the plaintiff, all of whom declared
that they had heard neither bell nor whistle. Most of these witnesses had
been in the grove, two or three in the train; two, residents of the
vicinity, testified that they had complained to the Railroad Commission
about that crossing, and had received evasive answers to the effect that
it was the duty of citizens to look out for themselves. On
cross-examination they declared they had no objection to grade crossings
which were properly safeguarded; this crossing was a death-trap.
(Stricken out.) Mr. Billings made the mistake of trying to prove that one
of these farmers--a clear-eyed, full-chested man with a deep voice--had
an animus against the railroad dating from a controversy concerning the
shipping of milk.

"I have an animus, your Honour," said the witness, quietly. "When the
railrud is represented by the kind of politicians we have in Putnam, it's
natural I should hain't it?"

This answer, although stricken out, was gleefully received.

In marked contrast to the earnestness of young Mr. Vane, who then rested,
Mr. Billings treated the affair from the standpoint of a man of large
practice who usually has more weighty matters to attend to. This was so
comparatively trivial as not to be dignified by a serious mien. He quoted
freely from the "Book of Arguments," reminding the jury of the debt of
gratitude the State owed to the Northeastern Railroads for doing so much
for its people; and if they were to eliminate all grade crossings, there
would be no dividends for the stockholders. Besides, the law was that the
State should pay half when a crossing was eliminated, and the State could
not afford it. Austen had suggested, in his opening, that it was cheaper
for the railroad as well as the State to kill citizens. He asked
permission to inquire of the learned counsel for the defence by what
authority he declared that the State could not afford to enter into a
policy by which grade crossings would gradually be eliminated.

"Why," said Mr. Billings, "the fact that all bills introduced to this end
never get out of committee."

"May I ask," said Austen, innocently, "who has been chairman of that
particular committee in the lower House for the last five sessions?"

Mr. Billings was saved the embarrassment of answering this question by a
loud voice in the rear calling out:--"Brush Bascom!"

A roar of laughter shook the court room, and all eyes were turned on
Brush, who continued to sit unconcernedly with his legs crossed and his
arm over the back of the seat. The offender was put out, order was
restored, and Mr. Billings declared, with an injured air, that he failed
to see why the counsel for the plaintiff saw fit to impugn Mr. Bascom.

"I merely asked a question," said Austere; "far be it from me to impugn
any man who has held offices in the gift of the people for the last
twenty years."

Another gale of laughter followed this, during which Mr. Billings
wriggled his mouth and gave a strong impression that such tactics and
such levity were to be deplored.

For the defence, the engineer and fireman both swore that the bell had
been rung before the crossing was reached. Austen merely inquired whether
this was not when they had left the station at North Mercer, two miles
away. No, it was nearer. Pressed to name the exact spot, they could only
conjecture, but near enough to be heard on the crossing. Other
witnesses--among them several picnickers in the grove--swore that they
had heard the bell. One of these Austen asked if he was not the member
from Mercer in the last Legislature, and Mr. Billings, no longer genial,
sprang to his feet with an objection.

"I merely wish to show, your Honour," said Austen, "that this witness
accepted a pass from the Northeastern Railroads when he went to the
Legislature, and that he has had several trip passes for himself and his
family since."

The objection was not sustained, and Mr. Billings noted an exception.

Another witness, upon whose appearance the audience tittered audibly, was
Dave Skinner, boss of Mercer. He had lived, he said, in the town of
Mercer all his life, and maintained that he was within a hundred yards of
the track when the accident occurred, and heard the bell ring.

"Is it not a fact," said Austen to this witness, "that Mr. Brush Bascom
has a mortgage on your farm?"

"I can show, your Honour," Austen continued, when Mr. Billings had
finished his protest, "that this man was on his way to Riverside to pay
his quarterly instalment."

Mr. Bascom was not present at the afternoon session. Mr. Billings'
summing up was somewhat impassioned, and contained more quotations from
the "Book of Arguments." He regretted, he said, the obvious appeals to
prejudice against a railroad corporation that was honestly trying to do
its duty-yes, and more than its duty.

Misjudged, misused, even though friendless, it would continue to serve
the people. So noble, indeed, was the picture which Mr. Billings'
eloquence raised up that his voice shook with emotion as he finished.

In the opinion of many of the spectators Austen Vane had yet to learn the
art of oratory. He might with propriety have portrayed the suffering and
loss of the poor farmer who was his client; he merely quoted from the
doctor's testimony to the effect that Mr. Meader would never again be
able to do physical labour of the sort by which he had supported himself,
and ended up by calling the attention of the jury to the photographs and
plans of the crossing he had obtained two days after the accident,
requesting them to note the facts that the public highway, approaching
through a dense forest and underbrush at an angle of thirty-three
degrees, climbed the railroad embankment at that point, and a train could
not be seen until the horse was actually on the track.

The jury was out five minutes after the judge's charge, and gave Mr.
Zebulun Meader a verdict of six thousand dollars and costs,--a popular
verdict, from the evident approval with which it was received in the
court room. Quiet being restored, Mr. Billings requested, somewhat
vehemently, that the case be transferred on the exceptions to the Supreme
Court, that the stenographer write out the evidence, and that he might
have three weeks in which to prepare a draft. This was granted.

Zeb Meader, true to his nature, was self-contained throughout the
congratulations he received, but his joy was nevertheless intense.

"You shook 'em up good, Austen," he said, making his way to where his
counsel stood. "I suspicioned you'd do it. But how about this here
appeal?"

"Billings is merely trying to save the face of his railroad," Austen
answered, smiling. "He hasn't the least notion of allowing this case to
come up again--take my word for it."

"I guess your word's good," said Zeb. "And I want to tell you one thing,
as an old man. I've been talkin' to Putnam County folks some, and you
hain't lost nothin' by this."

"How am I to get along without the friendship of Brush Bascom?" asked
Austen, soberly.

Mr. Meader, who had become used to this mild sort of humour, relaxed
sufficiently to laugh.

"Brush did seem a mite disgruntled," he remarked.

Somewhat to Austen's embarrassment, Mr. Mender's friends were pushing
forward. One grizzled veteran took him by the hand and looked
thoughtfully into his face.

"I've lived a good many years," he said, "but I never heerd 'em talked up
to like that. You're my candidate for governor."




CHAPTER VI

ENTER THE LION

It is a fact, as Shakespeare has so tersely hinted, that fame sometimes
comes in the line of duty. To be sure, if Austen Vane had been Timothy
Smith, the Mender case might not have made quite so many ripples in the
pond with which this story is concerned. Austen did what he thought was
right. In the opinion of many of his father's friends whom he met from
time to time he had made a good-sized stride towards ruin, and they did
not hesitate to tell him so--Mr. Chipman, president of the Ripton
National Bank; Mr. Greene, secretary and treasurer of the Hawkeye Paper
Company, who suggested with all kindness that, however noble it may be,
it doesn't pay to tilt at windmills.

"Not unless you wreck the windmill," answered Austen. A new and very
revolutionary point of view to Mr. Greene, who repeated it to Professor
Brewer, urging that gentleman to take Austen in hand. But the professor
burst out laughing, and put the saying into circulation.

Mr. Silas Tredway, whose list of directorships is too long to print, also
undertook to remonstrate with the son of his old friend, Hilary Vane. The
young lawyer heard him respectfully. The cashiers of some of these
gentlemen, who were younger men, ventured to say--when out of hearing
--that they admired the championship of Mr. Mender, but it would never
do. To these, likewise, Austen listened good-naturedly enough, and did
not attempt to contradict them. Changing the angle of the sun-dial does
not affect the time of day.

It was not surprising that young Tom Gaylord, when he came back from New
York and heard of Austen's victory, should have rushed to his office and
congratulated him in a rough but hearty fashion. Even though Austen had
won a suit against the Gaylord Lumber Company, young Tom would have
congratulated him. Old Tom was a different matter. Old Tom, hobbling
along under the maples, squinted at Austen and held up his stick.

"Damn you, you're a lawyer, ain't you?" cried the old man.

Austen, well used to this kind of greeting from Mr. Gaylord, replied that
he didn't think himself much of one.

"Damn it, I say you are. Some day I may have use for you," said old Tom,
and walked on.

"No," said young Tom, afterwards, in explanation of this extraordinary
attitude of his father, "it isn't principle. He's had a row with the
Northeastern about lumber rates, and swears he'll live till he gets even
with 'em."

If Professor Brewer (Ripton's most clear-sighted citizen) had made the
statement that Hilary Vane--away down in the bottom of his heart--was
secretly proud of his son, the professor would probably have lost his
place on the school board, the water board, and the library committee.
The way the worldly-wise professor discovered the secret was this: he had
gone to Bradford to hear the case, for he had been a dear friend of Sarah
Austen. Two days later Hilary Vane saw the professor on his little porch,
and lingered. Mr. Brewer suspected why, led carefully up to the subject,
and not being discouraged--except by numerous grunts--gave the father an
account of the proceedings by no means unfavourable to the son. Some
people like paregoric; the Honourable Hilary took his without undue
squirming, with no visible effects to Austen.

Life in the office continued, with one or two exceptions, the even tenor
of its way. Apparently, so far as the Honourable Hilary was concerned,
his son had never been to Bradford. But the Honourable Brush Bascom, when
he came on mysterious business to call on the chief counsel, no longer
sat on Austen's table; this was true of other feudal lords and retainers:
of Mr. Nat Billings, who, by the way, did not file his draft after all.
Not that Mr. Billings wasn't polite, but he indulged no longer in slow
winks at the expense of the honourable Railroad Commission.

Perhaps the most curious result of the Meader case to be remarked in
passing, was upon Mr. Hamilton Tooting. Austen, except when he fled to
the hills, was usually the last to leave the office, Mr. Tooting often
the first. But one evening Mr. Tooting waited until the force had gone,
and entered Austen's room with his hand outstretched.

"Put her there, Aust," he said.

Austen put her there.

"I've been exercisin' my thinker some the last few months," observed Mr.
Tooting, seating himself on the desk.

"Aren't you afraid of nervous prostration, Ham?"

"Say," exclaimed Mr. Tooting, with a vexed laugh, "why are you always
jollying me? You ain't any older than I am."

"I'm not as old, Ham. I don't begin to have your knowledge of the world."

"Come off," said Mr. Tooting, who didn't know exactly how to take this
compliment. "I came in here to have a serious talk. I've been thinking it
over, and I don't know but what you did right."

"Well, Ham, if you don't know, I don't know how I am to convince you."

"Hold on. Don't go twistin' around that way--you make me dizzy." He
lowered his voice confidentially, although there was no one within five
walls of them. "I know the difference between a gold brick and a
government bond, anyhow. I believe bucking the railroad's going to pay in
a year or so. I got on to it as soon as you did, I guess, but when a
feller's worn the collar as long as I have and has to live, it ain't easy
to cut loose--you understand."

"I understand," answered Austen, gravely.

"I thought I'd let you know I didn't take any too much trouble with
Meader last summer to get the old bird to accept a compromise."

"That was good of you, Ham."

"I knew what you was up to," said Mr. Tooting, giving Austen a friendly
poke with his cigar.

"You showed your usual acumen, Mr. Tooting," said Austen, as he rose to
put on his coat. Mr. Tooting regarded him uneasily.

"You're a deep one, Aust," he declared; "some day you and, me must get
together."

Mr. Billings' desire for ultimate justice not being any stronger than
Austen suspected, in due time Mr. Meader got his money. His counsel would
have none of it,--a decision not at all practical, and on the whole
disappointing. There was, to be sure, an influx into Austen's office of
people who had been run over in the past, and it was Austen's unhappy
duty to point out to these that they had signed (at the request of
various Mr. Tootings) little slips of paper which are technically known
as releases. But the first hint of a really material advantage to be
derived from his case against the railroad came from a wholly unexpected
source, in the shape of a letter in the mail one August morning.

   "DEAR SIR: Having remarked with some interest the verdict for a
   client of yours against the United Northeastern Railroads, I wish
   you would call and see me at your earliest convenience.

   "Yours truly,

   "HUMPHREY CREWE."

Although his curiosity was aroused, Austen was of two minds whether to
answer this summons, the truth being that Mr. Crewe had not made, on the
occasions on which they had had intercourse, the most favourable of
impressions. However, it is not for the struggling lawyer to scorn any
honourable brief, especially from a gentleman of stocks and bonds and
varied interests like Mr. Crewe, with whom contentions of magnitude are
inevitably associated.  As he spun along behind Pepper on the Leith road
that climbed Willow Brook on the afternoon he had made the appointment,
Austen smiled to himself over his anticipations, and yet---being
human-let his fancy play.

The broad acres of Wedderburn stretched across many highways, but the
manor-house (as it had been called) stood on an eminence whence one could
look for miles down the Yale of the Blue. It had once been a farmhouse,
but gradually the tail had begun to wag the dog, and the farmhouse
became, like the original stone out of which the Irishman made the soup,
difficult to find. Once the edifice had been on the road, but the road
had long ago been removed to a respectful distance, and Austen entered
between two massive pillars built of granite blocks on a musical gravel
drive.

Humphrey Crewe was on the porch, his hands in his pockets, as Austen
drove up.

"Hello," he said, in a voice probably meant to be hospitable, but which
had a peremptory ring, "don't stand on ceremony. Hitch your beast and
come along in."

Having, as it were, superintended the securing of Pepper, Mr. Crewe led
the way through the house to the study, pausing once or twice to point
out to Austen a carved ivory elephant procured at great expense in China,
and a piece of tapestry equally difficult of purchase. The study itself
was no mere lounging place of a man of pleasure, but sober and formidable
books were scattered through the cases: "Turner's Evolution of the
Railroad," "Graham's Practical Forestry," "Eldridge's Finance"; while
whole shelves of modern husbandry proclaimed that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was
no amateur farmer. There was likewise a shelf devoted to road building,
several to knotty-looking pamphlets, and half a wall of neatly labelled
pigeonholes. For decoration, there was an oar garnished with a ribbon,
and several groups of college undergraduates, mostly either in puffed
ties or scanty attire, and always prominent in these groups, and always
unmistakable, was Mr. Humphrey Crewe himself.

Mr. Crewe was silent awhile, that this formidable array of things might
make the proper impression upon his visitor.

"It was lucky you came to-day, Vane," he said at length. "I am due in New
York to-morrow for a directors' meeting, and I have a conference in
Chicago with a board of trustees of which I am a member on the third.
Looking at my array of pamphlets, eh? I've been years in collecting
them,--ever since I left college. Those on railroads ought especially to
interest you--I'm somewhat of a railroad man myself."

"I didn't know that," said Austen.

"Had two or three blocks of stock in subsidiary lines that had to be
looked after. It was a nuisance at first," said Mr. Crewe, "but I didn't
shirk it. I made up my mind I'd get to the bottom of the railroad
problem, and I did. It's no use doing a thing at all unless you do it
well." Mr. Crewe, his hands still in his pockets, faced Austen smilingly.
"Now I'll bet you didn't know I was a railroad man until you came in
here. To tell the truth, it was about a railroad matter that I sent for
you."

Mr. Crewe lit a cigar, but he did not offer one to Austen, as he had to
Mr. Tooting. "I wanted to see what you were like," he continued, with
refreshing frankness. "Of course, I'd seen you on the road. But you can
get more of an idea of a man by talkin' to him, you know."

"You can if he'll talk," said Austen, who was beginning to enjoy his
visit.

Mr. Crewe glanced at him keenly. Few men are fools at all points of the
compass, and Mr. Crewe was far from this.

"You did well in that little case you had against the Northeastern. I
heard about it."

"I did my best," answered Austen, and he smiled again.

"As some great man has remarked," observed Mr. Crewe, "it isn't what we
do, it's how we do it. Take pains over the smaller cases, and the larger
cases will come of themselves, eh?"

"I live in hope," said Austen, wondering how soon this larger case was
going to unfold itself.

"Let me see," said Mr. Crewe, "isn't your father the chief attorney in
this State for the Northeastern? How do you happen to be on the other
side?"

"By the happy accident of obtaining a client," said Austen.

Mr. Crewe glanced at him again. In spite of himself, respect was growing
in him. He had expected to find a certain amount of eagerness and
subserviency--though veiled; here was a man of different calibre than he
looked for in Ripton.

"The fact is," he declared, "I have a grievance against the Northeastern
Railroads, and I have made up my mind that you are the man for me."

"You may have reason to regret your choice," Austen suggested.

"I think not," replied Mr. Crewe, promptly; "I believe I know a man when
I see one, and you inspire me with confidence. This matter will have a
double interest for you, as I understand you are fond of horses."

"Horses?"

"Yes," Mr. Crewe continued, gaining a little heat at the word, "I bought
the finest-lookin' pair you ever saw in New York this spring,--all-around
action, manners, conformation, everything; I'll show 'em to you. One of
'em's all right now; this confounded railroad injured the other gettin'
him up here. I've put in a claim. They say they didn't, my man says they
did. He tells me the horse was thrown violently against the sides of the
car several times. He's internally injured. I told 'em I'd sue 'em, and
I've decided that you are the man to take the case--on conditions."

Austen's sense of humour saved him,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe had begun to
interest him. He rose and walked to the window and looked out for a few
moments over the flower garden before he replied:--"On what conditions?"

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "frankly, I don't want to pay more than the horse
is worth, and it's business to settle on the fee in case you win. I
thought--"

"You thought," said Austen, "that I might not charge as much as the next
man."

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I knew that if you took the case, you'd fight it
through, and I want to get even with 'em. Their claim agent had the
impudence to suggest that the horse had been doctored by the dealer in
New York. To tell me that I, who have been buying horses all my life, was
fooled. The veterinary swears the animal is ruptured. I'm a citizen of
Avalon County, though many people call me a summer resident; I've done
business here and helped improve the neighbourhood for years. It will be
my policy to employ home talent Avalon County lawyers, for instance. I
may say, without indiscretion, that I intend from now on to take even a
greater interest in public affairs. The trouble is in this country that
men in my position do not feel their responsibilities."

"Public spirit is a rare virtue," Austen remarked, seeing that he was
expected to say something. "Avalon County appreciates the compliment,
--if I may be permitted to answer for it."

"I want to do the right thing," said Mr. Crewe. "In fact, I have almost
made up my mind to go to the Legislature this year. I know it would be a
sacrifice of time, in a sense, and all that, but--" He paused, and looked
at Austen.

"The Legislature needs leavening."

"Precisely," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "and when I look around me and see the
things crying to be done in this State, and no lawmaker with sense and
foresight enough to propose them, it makes me sick. Now, for instance,"
he continued, and rose with an evident attempt to assault the forestry
shelves. But Austen rose too.

"I'd like to go over that with you, Mr. Crewe," said he, "but I have to
be back in Ripton."

"How about my case?" his host demanded, with a return to his former
abruptness.

"What about it?" asked Austen.

"Are you going to take it?"

"Struggling lawyers don't refuse business."

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "that's sensible. But what are you going to
charge?"

"Now," said Austen, with entire good humour, "when you get on that
ground, you are dealing no longer with one voracious unit, but with a
whole profession,--a profession, you will allow me to add, which in
dignity is second to none. In accordance with the practice of the best
men in that profession, I will charge you what I believe is fair--not
what I think you are able and willing to pay. Should you dispute the
bill, I will not stoop to quarrel with you, but, try to live on bread and
butter a while longer."

Mr. Crewe was silent for a moment. It would not be exact to say
uncomfortable, for it is to be doubted whether he ever got so. But he
felt dimly that the relations of patron and patronized were becoming
somewhat jumbled.

"All right," said he, "I guess we can let it go at that. Hello! What the
deuce are those women doing here again?"

This irrelevant exclamation was caused by the sight through the open
French window--of three ladies in the flower garden, two of whom were
bending over the beds. The third, upon whose figure Austen's eyes were
riveted, was seated on a stone bench set in a recess of pines, and
looking off into the Yale of the Blue. With no great eagerness, but
without apology to Austen, Mr. Crewe stepped out of the window and
approached them; and as this was as good a way as any to his horse and
buggy, Austen followed. One of the ladies straightened at their
appearance, scrutinized them through the glasses she held in her hand,
and Austen immediately recognized her as the irreproachable Mrs. Pomfret.

"We didn't mean to disturb you, Humphrey," she said. "We knew you would
be engaged in business, but I told Alice as we drove by I could not
resist stopping for one more look at your Canterbury bells. I knew you
wouldn't mind, but you mustn't leave your--affairs,--not for an instant."

The word "affairs" was accompanied by a brief inspection of Austen Vane.

"That's all right," answered Mr. Crewe; "it doesn't cost anything to look
at flowers, that's what they're for. Cost something to put 'em in. I got
that little feller Ridley to lay 'em out--I believe I told you. He's just
beginning. Hello, Alice."

"I think he did it very well, Humphrey," said Miss Pomfret.

"Passably," said Mr. Crewe. "I told him what I wanted and drew a rough
sketch of the garden and the colour scheme."

"Then you did it, and not Mr. Ridley. I rather suspected it," said Mrs.
Pomfret; "you have such clear and practical ideas about things,
Humphrey."

"It's simple enough," said Mr. Crewe, deprecatingly, "after you've seen a
few hundred gardens and get the general underlying principle."

"It's very clever," Alice murmured.

"Not at all. A little application will do wonders. A certain definite
colour massed here, another definite colour there, and so forth."

Mr. Crewe spoke as though Alice's praise irritated him slightly. He waved
his hand to indicate the scheme in general, and glanced at Victoria on
the stone bench. From her (Austen thought) seemed to emanate a silent but
mirthful criticism, although she continued to gaze persistently down the
valley, apparently unaware of their voices. Mr. Crewe looked as if he
would have liked to reach her, but the two ladies filled the narrow path,
and Mrs. Pomfret put her fingers on his sleeve.

"Humphrey, you must explain it to us. I am so interested in gardens I'm
going to have one if Electrics increase their dividend."

Mr. Crewe began, with no great ardour, to descant on the theory of
planting, and Austen resolved to remain pocketed and ignored no longer.
He retraced his steps and made his way rapidly by another path towards
Victoria, who turned her head at his approach, and rose. He acknowledged
an inward agitation with the vision in his eye of the tall, white figure
against the pines, clad with the art which, in mysterious simplicity,
effaces itself.

"I was wondering," she said, as she gave him her hand, "how long it would
be before you spoke to me."

"You gave me no chance," said Austen, quickly.

"Do you deserve one?" she asked.

Before he could answer, Mr. Crewe's explanation of his theories had come
lamely to a halt. Austen was aware of the renewed scrutiny of Mrs.
Pomfret, and then Mr. Crewe, whom no social manacles could shackle, had
broken past her and made his way to them. He continued to treat the
ground on which Austen was standing as unoccupied.

"Hello, Victoria," he said, "you don't know anything about gardens, do
you?"

"I don't believe you do either," was Victoria's surprising reply.

Mr. Crewe laughed at this pleasantry.

"How are you going to prove it?" he demanded.

"By comparing what you've done with Freddie Ridley's original plan," said
Victoria.

Mr. Crewe was nettled.

"Ridley has a lot to learn," he retorted. "He had no conception of what
was appropriate here."

"Freddie was weak," said Victoria, but he needed the money. Don't you
know Mr. Vane?"

"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I've been talking to him--on business."

"Oh," said Victoria, "I had no means of knowing. Mrs. Pomfret, I want to
introduce Mr. Vane, and Miss Pomfret, Mr. Vane."

Mrs. Pomfret, who had been hovering on the outskirts of this duel,
inclined her head the fraction of an inch, but Alice put out her hand
with her sweetest manner.

"When did you arrive?" she asked.

"Well, the fact is, I haven't arrived yet," said Austen.

"Not arrived" exclaimed Alice, with a puzzled glance into Victoria's
laughing eyes.

"Perhaps Humphrey will help you along," Victoria suggested, turning to
him. "He might be induced to give you his celebrated grievance about his
horses."

"I have given it to him," said Mr. Crewe, briefly.

"Cheer up, Mr. Vane, your fortune is made," said Victoria.

"Victoria," said Mrs. Pomfret, in her most imperial voice, "we ought to
be going instantly, or we shan't have time to drop you at the Hammonds'."

"I'll take you over in the new motor car," said Mr. Crewe, with his air
of conferring a special train.

"How much is gasoline by the gallon?" inquired Victoria.

"I did a favour once for the local manager, and get a special price,"
said Mr. Crewe.

"Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, taking his hand, "don't forget you are
coming to dinner to-night. Four people gave out at the last minute, and
there will be just Alice and myself. I've asked old Mr. Fitzhugh."

"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll have the motor car brought around."

The latter part of this remark was, needless to say, addressed to
Victoria.

"It's awfully good of you, Humphrey," she answered, "but the Hammonds are
on the road to Ripton, and I am going to ask Mr. Vane to drive me down
there behind that adorable horse of his."

This announcement produced a varied effect upon those who heard it,
although all experienced surprise. Mrs. Pomfret, in addition to an anger
which she controlled only as the result of long practice, was horrified,
and once more levelled her glasses at Austen.

"I think, Victoria, you had better come with us," she said. "We shall
have plenty of time, if we hurry."

By this time Austen had recovered his breath.

"I'll be ready in an instant," he said, and made brief but polite adieus
to the three others.

"Good-by," said Alice, vaguely.

"Let me know when anything develops," said Mr. Crewe, with his back to
his attorney.

Austen found Victoria, her colour heightened a little, waiting for him by
the driveway. The Pomfrets had just driven off, and Mr. Crewe was nowhere
to be seen.

"I do not know what you will think of me for taking this for granted, Mr.
Vane," she said as he took his seat beside her, "but I couldn't resist
the chance of driving behind your horse."

"I realized," he answered smilingly, "that Pepper was the attraction, and
I have more reason than ever to be grateful to him."

She glanced covertly at the Vane profile, at the sure, restraining hands
on the reins which governed with so nice a touch the mettle of the horse.
His silence gave her time to analyze again her interest in this man,
which renewed itself at every meeting. In the garden she had been struck
by the superiority of a nature which set at naught what had been, to some
smaller spirits, a difficult situation. She recognized this quality as
inborn, but, not knowing of Sarah Austen, she wondered where he got it.
Now it was the fact that he refrained from comment that pleased her most.

"Did Humphrey actually send for you to take up the injured horse case?"
she asked.

Austen flushed.

"I'm afraid he did. You seem to know all about it," he added.

"Know all about it Every one within twenty miles of Leith knows about it.
I'm sure the horse was doctored when he bought him."

"Take care, you may be called as a witness."

"What I want to know is, why you accepted such a silly case," said
Victoria.

Austen looked quizzically into her upturned face, and she dropped her
eyes.

"That's exactly what I should have asked myself,--after a while," he
said.

She laughed with a delicious understanding of "after a while."

"I suppose you think me frightfully forward," she said, in a lowered
voice, "inviting myself to drive and asking you such a question when I
scarcely know you. But I just couldn't go on with Mrs. Pomfret,--she
irritated me so,--and my front teeth are too valuable to drive with
Humphrey Crewe."

Austen smiled, and secretly agreed with her.

"I should have offered, if I had dared," he said.

"Dared! I didn't know that was your failing. I don't believe you even
thought of it."

"Nevertheless, the idea occurred to me, and terrified me," said Austen.

"Why?" she asked, turning upon him suddenly. "Why did it terrify you?"

"I should have been presuming upon an accidental acquaintance, which I
had no means of knowing you wished to continue," he replied, staring at
his horse's head.

"And I?" Victoria asked. "Presumption multiplies tenfold in a woman,
doesn't it?"

"A woman confers," said Austen.

She smiled, but with a light in her eyes. This simple sentence seemed to
reveal yet more of an inner man different from some of those with whom
her life had been cast. It was an American point of view--this choosing
to believe that the woman conferred. After offering herself as his
passenger Victoria, too, had had a moment of terror: the action had been
the result of an impulse which she did not care to attempt to define. She
changed the subject.

"You have been winning laurels since I saw you last summer," she said. "I
hear incidentally you have made our friend Zeb Meader a rich man."

"As riches go, in the town of Mercer," Austen laughed. "As for my
laurels, they have not yet begun to chafe."

Here was a topic he would have avoided, and yet he was curious to
discover what her attitude would be. He had antagonized her father, and
the fact that he was the son of Hilary Vane had given his antagonism
prominence.

"I am glad you did it for Zeb."

"I should have done it for anybody--much as I like Zeb," he replied
briefly.

She glanced at him.

"It was--courageous of you," she said.

"I have never looked upon it in that light," he answered. "May I ask you
how you heard of it?"

She coloured, but faced the question.

"I heard it from my father, at first, and I took an interest--on Zeb
Meader's account," she added hastily.

Austen was silent.

"Of course," she continued, "I felt a little like boasting of an
'accidental acquaintance' with the man who saved Zeb Meader's life."

Austen laughed. Then he drew Pepper down to a walk, and turned to her.

"The power of making it more than an accidental acquaintance lies with
you," he said quietly.

"I have always had an idea that aggression was a man's prerogative,"
Victoria answered lightly. "And seeing that you have not appeared at
Fairview for something over a year, I can only conclude that you do not
choose to exercise it in this case."

Austen was in a cruel quandary.

"I did wish to come," he answered simply, "but--the fact that I have had
a disagreement with your father has--made it difficult." "Nonsense"
exclaimed Victoria; "just because you have won a suit against his
railroad. You don't know my father, Mr. Vane. He isn't the kind of man
with whom that would make any difference. You ought to talk it over with
him. He thinks you were foolish to take Zeb Meader's side."

"And you?" Austen demanded quickly.

"You see, I'm a woman," said Victoria, "and I'm prejudiced--for Zeb
Meader. Women are always prejudiced,--that's our trouble. It seemed to me
that Zeb was old, and unfortunate, and ought to be compensated, since he
is unable to work. But of course I suppose I can't be expected to
understand."

It was true that she could not be expected to understand. He might not
tell her that his difference with Mr. Flint was not a mere matter of
taking a small damage suit against his railroad, but a fundamental one.
And Austen recognized that the justification of his attitude meant an
arraignment of Victoria's father.

"I wish you might know my father better, Mr. Vane," she went on, "I wish
you might know him as I know him, if it were possible. You see, I have
been his constant companion all my life, and I think very few people
understand him as I do, and realize his fine qualities. He makes no
attempt to show his best side to the world. His life has been spent in
fighting, and I am afraid he is apt to meet the world on that footing. He
is a man of such devotion to his duty that he rarely has a day to
himself, and I have known him to sit up until the small hours of the
morning to settle some little matter of justice. I do not think I am
betraying his confidence when I say that he is impressed with your
ability, and that he liked your manner the only time he ever talked to
you. He believes that you have got, in some way, a wrong idea of what he
is trying to do. Why don't you come up and talk to him again?"

"I am afraid your kindness leads you to overrate my importance," Austen
replied, with mingled feelings. Victoria's confidence in her father made
the situation all the more hopeless.

"I'm sure I don't," she answered quickly; "ever since--ever since I first
laid eyes upon you I have had a kind of belief in you."

"Belief?" he echoed.

"Yes," she said, "belief that--that you had a future. I can't describe
it," she continued, the colour coming into her face again; "one feels
that way about some people without being able to put the feeling into
words. And have a feeling, too, that I should like you to be friends with
my father."

Neither of them, perhaps, realized the rapidity with which "accidental
acquaintance" had melted into intimacy. Austen's blood ran faster, but it
was characteristic of him that he tried to steady himself, for he was a
Vane. He had thought of her many times during the past year, but
gradually the intensity of the impression had faded until it had been so
unexpectedly and vividly renewed to-day. He was not a man to lose his
head, and the difficulties of the situation made him pause and choose his
words, while he dared not so much as glance at her as she sat in the
sunlight beside him.

"I should like to be friends with your father," he answered gravely,--the
statement being so literally true as to have its pathetically humorous
aspect.

"I'll tell him so, Mr. Vane," she said.

Austen turned, with a seriousness that dismayed her.

"I must ask you as a favour not to do that," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"In the first place," he answered quietly, "I cannot afford to have Mr.
Flint misunderstand my motives. And I ought not to mislead you," he went
on. "In periods of public controversy, such as we are passing through at
present, sometimes men's views differ so sharply as to make intercourse
impossible. Your father and I might not agree--politically, let us say.
For instance," he added, with evident hesitation, "my father and I
disagree."

Victoria was silent. And presently they came to a wire fence overgrown
with Virginia creeper, which divided the shaded road from a wide lawn.

"Here we are at the Hammonds', and--thank you," she said.

Any reply he might have made was forestalled. The insistent and
intolerant horn of an automobile, followed now by the scream of the
gears, broke the stillness of the country-side, and a familiar voice
cried out--"Do you want the whole road?"

Austen turned into the Hammonds' drive as the bulldog nose of a motor
forged ahead, and Mr. Crewe swung in the driver's seat.

"Hello, Victoria," he shouted, "you people ought to have ear-trumpets."

The car swerved, narrowly missed a watering fountain where the word
"Peace" was inscribed, and shot down the hill.

"That manner," said Victoria, as she jumped out of the buggy, "is a
valuable political asset."

"Does he really intend to go into politics?" Austen asked curiously.

"'Intend' is a mild word applied to Humphrey," she answered;
"'determined' would suit him better. According to him, there is no game
that cannot be won by dynamics. 'Get out of the way' is his motto. Mrs.
Pomfret will tell you how he means to cover the State with good roads
next year, and take a house in Washington the year after." She held out
her hand.  "Good-by,--and I am ever so much obliged to you for bringing
me here."

He drove away towards Ripton with many things to think about, with a last
picture of her in his mind as she paused for an instant in the flickering
shadows, stroking Pepper's forehead.




CHAPTER VII

THE LEOPARD AND HIS SPOTS

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mr. Humphrey Crewe, of
his value to the town of Leith, and to the State at large, and in these
pages only a poor attempt at an appreciation of him may be expected. Mr.
Crewe by no means underestimated this claim upon the community, and he
had of late been declaring that he was no summer resident. Wedderburn was
his home, and there he paid his taxes. Undoubtedly, they were less than
city taxes.

Although a young man, Mr. Crewe was in all respects a model citizen, and
a person of many activities. He had built a farmers' club, to which the
farmers, in gross ingratitude, had never gone. Now it was a summer
residence and distinctly rentable. He had a standing offer to erect a
library in the village of Leith provided the town would furnish the
ground, the books, and permit the name of Crewe to be carved in stone
over the doorway. The indifference of the town pained him, and he was
naturally not a little grieved at the lack of proper feeling of the
country people of America towards those who would better their
conditions. He had put a large memorial window in the chapel to his
family.

Mr. Crewe had another standing offer to be one of five men to start a
farming experiment station--which might pay dividends. He, was a church
warden; president of a society for turning over crops (which he had
organized); a member of the State Grange; president of the embryo State
Economic League (whatever that was); and chairman of the Local
Improvement Board--also a creation of his own. By these tokens, and
others too numerous to mention, it would seem that the inhabitants of
Leith would have jumped at the chance to make such a man one of the five
hundred in their State Legislature.

To Whitman is attributed the remark that genius is almost one hundred per
cent directness, but whether or not this applied to Mr. Humphrey Crewe
remains to be seen. "Dynamics" more surely expressed him. It would not
seem to be a very difficult feat, to be sure, to get elected to a State
Legislature of five hundred which met once a year: once in ten years,
indeed, might have been more appropriate for the five hundred. The town
of Leith with its thousand inhabitants had one representative, and Mr.
Crewe had made up his mind he was to be that representative.

There was, needless to say, great excitement in Leith over Mr. Crewe's
proposed venture into the unknown seas of politics. I mean, of course,
that portion of Leith which recognized in Mr. Crewe an eligible bachelor
and a person of social importance, for these qualities were not
particularly appealing to the three hundred odd farmers whose votes were
expected to send him rejoicing to the State capital.

"It is so rare with us for a gentleman to go into politics, that we ought
to do everything we can to elect him," Mrs. Pomfret went about declaring.
"Women do so much in England, I wonder they don't do more here. I was
staying at Aylestone Court last year when the Honourable Billy Aylestone
was contesting the family seat with a horrid Radical, and I assure you,
my dear, I got quite excited. We did nothing from morning till night but
electioneer for the Honourable Billy, and kissed all the babies in the
borough. The mothers were so grateful. Now, Edith, do tell Jack instead
of playing tennis and canoeing all day he ought to help. It's the duty of
all young men to help. Noblesse oblige, you know. I can't understand
Victoria. She really has influence with these country people, but she
says it's all nonsense. Sometimes I think Victoria has a common streak in
her--and no wonder. The other day she actually drove to the Hammonds' in
a buggy with an unknown lawyer from Ripton. But I told you about it. Tell
your gardener and the people that do your haying, dear, and your chicken
woman. My chicken woman is most apathetic, but do you wonder, with the
life they lead?"

Mr. Humphrey Crewe might have had, with King Charles, the watchword
"Thorough." He sent to the town clerk for a check-list, and proceeded to
honour each of the two hundred Republican voters with a personal visit.
This is a fair example of what took place in the majority of cases.

Out of a cloud of dust emerges an automobile, which halts, with
protesting brakes, in front of a neat farmhouse, guarded by great maples.
Persistent knocking by a chauffeur at last brings a woman to the door.
Mrs. Jenney has a pleasant face and an ample figure.

"Mr. Jenney live here?" cries Mr. Crewe from the driver's seat.

"Yes," says Mrs. Jenney, smiling.

"Tell him I want to see him."

"Guess you'll find him in the apple orchard."

"Where's that?"

The chauffeur takes down the bars, Mr. Jenney pricks up his ears, and
presently--to his amazement--perceives a Leviathan approaching him,
careening over the ruts of his wood road. Not being an emotional person,
he continues to pick apples until he is summarily hailed. Then he goes
leisurely towards the Leviathan.

"Are you Mr. Jenney?"

"Callate to be," says Mr. Jenney, pleasantly.

"I'm Humphrey Crewe."

"How be you?" says Mr. Jenney, his eyes wandering over the Leviathan.

"How are the apples this year?" asks Mr. Crewe, graciously.

"Fair to middlin'," says Mr. Jenney.

"Have you ever tasted my Pippins?" says Mr. Crewe. "A little science in
cultivation helps along. I'm going to send you a United States government
pamphlet on the fruit we can raise here."

Mr. Jenney makes an awkward pause by keeping silent on the subject of the
pamphlet until he shall see it.

"Do you take much interest in politics?"

"Not a great deal," answers Mr. Jenney.

"That's the trouble with Americans," Mr. Crewe declares, "they don't care
who represents 'em, or whether their government's good or bad."

"Guess that's so," replies Mr. Jenney, politely.

"That sort of thing's got to stop," declares Mr. Crewe; "I'm a candidate
for the Republican nomination for representative."

"I want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Jenney, pulling his beard. One would
never suspect that this has been one of Mr. Jenney's chief topics of
late.

"I'll see that the interests of this town are cared for."

"Let's see," says Mr. Jenney, "there's five hundred in the House, ain't
there?"

"It's a ridiculous number," says Mr. Crewe, with truth.

"Gives everybody a chance to go," says Mr. Jenney. "I was thar in '78,
and enjoyed it some."

"Who are you for?" demanded Mr. Crewe, combating the tendency of the
conversation to slip into a pocket.

"Little early yet, hain't it? Hain't made up my mind. Who's the
candidates?" asks Mr. Jenney, continuing to stroke his beard.

"I don't know," says Mr. Crewe, "but I do know I've done something for
this town, and I hope you'll take it into consideration. Come and see me
when you go to the village. I'll give you a good cigar, and that
pamphlet, and we'll talk matters over."

"Never would have thought to see one of them things in my orchard," says
Mr. Jenney. "How much do they cost? Much as a locomotive, don't they?"

It would not be exact to say that, after some weeks of this sort of
campaigning, Mr. Crewe was discouraged, for such writhe vitality with
which nature had charged him that he did not know the meaning of the
word. He was merely puzzled, as a June-bug is puzzled when it bumps up
against a wire window-screen. He had pledged to him his own gardener,
Mrs. Pomfret's, the hired men of three of his neighbours, a few modest
souls who habitually took off their hats to him, and Mr. Ball, of the
village, who sold groceries to Wedderburn and was a general handy man for
the summer people. Mr. Ball was an agitator by temperament and a promoter
by preference. If you were a summer resident of importance and needed
anything from a sewing-machine to a Holstein heifer, Mr. Ball, the
grocer, would accommodate you. When Mrs. Pomfret's cook became inebriate
and refractory, Mr. Ball was sent for, and enticed her to the station and
on board of a train; when the Chillinghams' tank overflowed, Mr. Ball
found the proper valve and saved the house from being washed away. And it
was he who, after Mrs. Pomfret, took the keenest interest in Mr. Crewe's
campaign. At length came one day when Mr. Crewe pulled up in front of the
grocery store and called, as his custom was, loudly for Mr. Ball. The
fact that Mr. Ball was waiting on customers made no difference, and
presently that gentleman appeared, rubbing his hands together.

"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" he said, "automobile going all right?"

"What's the matter with these fellers?" said Mr. Crewe. "Haven't I done
enough for the town? Didn't I get 'em rural free delivery? Didn't I
subscribe to the meeting-house and library, and don't I pay more taxes
than anybody else?"

"Certain," assented Mr. Ball, eagerly, "certain you do." It did not seem
to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the scurvy
ingratitude of his townsmen. He stepped gingerly down into the dust and
climbed up on the tool box.

"Look out," said Mr. Crewe, "don't scratch the varnish. What is it?"

Mr. Ball shifted obediently to the rubber-covered step, and bent his face
to his patron's ear.

"It's railrud," he said.

"Railroad!" shouted Mr. Crewe, in a voice that made the grocer clutch his
arm in terror. "Don't pinch me like that. Railroad! This town ain't
within ten miles of the railroad."

"For the love of David," said Mr. Ball, "don't talk so loud, Mr. Crewe."

"What's the railroad got to do with it?" Mr. Crewe demanded.

Mr. Ball glanced around him, to make sure that no one was within shouting
distance.

"What's the railrud got to do with anything in this State?" inquired Mr.
Ball, craftily.

"That's different," said Mr. Crewe, shortly, "I'm a corporation man
myself. They've got to defend 'emselves."

"Certain. I ain't got anything again' 'em," Mr. Ball agreed quickly. "I
guess they know what they're about. By the bye, Mr. Crewe," he added,
coming dangerously near the varnish again, and drawing back, "you hain't
happened to have seen Job Braden, have you?"

"Job Braden!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, "Job Braden! What's all this mystery
about Job Braden? Somebody whispers that name in my ear every day. If you
mean that smooth-faced cuss that stutters and lives on Braden's Hill, I
called on him, but he was out. If you see him, tell him to come up to
Wedderburn, and I'll talk with him."

Mr. Ball made a gesture to indicate a feeling divided between respect for
Mr. Crewe and despair at the hardihood of such a proposition.

"Lord bless you, sir, Job wouldn't go."

"Wouldn't go?"

"He never pays visits,--folks go to him."

"He'd come to see me, wouldn't he?"

"I--I'm afraid riot, Mr. Crewe. Job holds his comb rather high."

"Do you mean to say this two-for-a-cent town has a boss?"

"Silas Grantley was born here," said Mr. Ball--for even the worm will
turn. "This town's got a noble history."

"I don't care anything about Silas Grantley. What I want to know is, how
this rascal manages to make anything out of the political pickings of a
town like Leith."

"Well, Job ain't exactly a rascal, Mr. Crewe. He's got a good many of
them hill farmers in a position of--of gratitude. Enough to control the
Republican caucus."

"Do you mean he buys their votes?" demanded Mr. Crewe.

"It's like this," explained Mr. Ball, "if one of 'em falls behind in his
grocery bill, for example, he can always get money from Job. Job takes a
mortgage, but he don't often close down on 'm. And Job has been
collectin' credentials in Avalon County for upward of forty years."

"Collecting credentials?"

"Yes. Gets a man nominated to State and county conventions that can't go,
and goes himself with a bunch of credentials. He's in a position to
negotiate. He was in all them railrud fights with Jethro Bass, and now he
does business with Hilary Vane or Brush Bascom when anything especial's
goin' on. You'd ought to see him, Mr. Crewe."

"I guess I won't waste my time with any picayune boss if the United
Northeastern Railroads has any hand in this matter," declared Mr. Crewe.
"Wind her up."

This latter remark was addressed to a long-suffering chauffeur who looked
like a Sicilian brigand.

"I didn't exactly like to suggest it," said Mr. Ball, rubbing his hands
and raising his voice above the whir of the machine, "but of course I
knew Mr. Flint was an intimate friend. A word to him from you--"

But by this Mr. Crewe had got in his second speed and was sweeping around
a corner lined with farmers' teams, whose animals were behaving like
circus horses. On his own driveway, where he arrived in incredibly brief
time, he met his stenographer, farm superintendent, secretary,
housekeeper, and general utility man, Mr. Raikes. Mr. Raikes was elderly,
and showed signs of needing a vacation.

"Telephone Mr. Flint, Raikes, and tell him I would like an appointment at
his earliest convenience, on important business."

Mr. Raikes, who was going for his daily stroll beside the river, wheeled
and made for the telephone, and brought back the news that Mr. Flint
would be happy to see Mr. Crewe the next afternoon at four o'clock.

This interview, about which there has been so much controversy in the
newspapers, and denials and counter-denials from the press bureaus of
both gentlemen,--this now historic interview began at four o'clock
precisely the next day. At that hour Mr. Crewe was ushered into that
little room in which Mr. Flint worked when at Fairview. Like Frederick
the Great and other famous captains, Mr. Flint believed in an iron
bedstead regime. The magnate was, as usual, fortified behind his oak
desk; the secretary with a bend in his back was in modest evidence; and
an elderly man of comfortable proportions, with a large gold watch-charm
portraying the rising sun, and who gave, somehow, the polished impression
of a marble, sat near the window smoking a cigar. Mr. Crewe approached
the desk with that genial and brisk manner for which he was noted and
held out his hand to the railroad president.

"We are both business men, and both punctual, Mr. Flint," he said, and
sat down in the empty chair beside his host, eyeing without particular
favour him of the watch-charm, whose cigar was not a very good one. "I
wanted to have a little private conversation with you which might be of
considerable interest to us both." And Mr. Crewe laid down on the desk a
somewhat formidable roll of papers.

"I trust the presence of Senator Whitredge will not deter you," answered
Mr. Flint.  "He is an old friend of mine."

Mr. Crewe was on his feet again with surprising alacrity, and beside the
senator's chair.

"How are you, Senator?" he said, "I have never had the pleasure of
meeting you, but I know you by reputation."

The senator got to his feet. They shook hands, and exchanged cordial
greetings; and during the exchange Mr. Crewe looked out of the window,
and the senator's eyes were fixed on the telephone receiver on Mr.
Flint's desk. As neither gentleman took hold of the other's fingers very
hard, they fell apart quickly.

"I am very happy to meet you, Mr. Crewe," said the senator. Mr. Crewe sat
down again, and not being hampered by those shrinking qualities so fatal
to success he went on immediately:--"There is nothing which I have to
say that the senator cannot hear. I made the appointment with you, Mr.
Flint, to talk over a matter which may be of considerable importance to
us both. I have made up my mind to go to the Legislature."

Mr. Crewe naturally expected to find visible effects of astonishment and
joy on the faces of his hearers at such not inconsiderable news. Mr.
Flint, however, looked serious enough, though the senator smiled as he
blew his smoke out of the window.

"Have you seen Job Braden, Mr. Crewe?" he asked, with genial jocoseness.
"They tell me that Job is still alive and kicking over in your parts."

"Thank you, Senator," said Mr. Crewe, "that brings me to the very point I
wish to emphasize. Everywhere in Leith I am met with the remark, 'Have
you seen Job Braden?' And I always answer, 'No, I haven't seen Mr.
Braden, and I don't intend to see him."'

Mr. Whitredge laughed, and blew out a ring of smoke. Mr. Flint's face
remained sober.

"Now, Mr. Flint," Mr. Crewe went on, "you and I understand each other,
and we're on the same side of the fence. I have inherited some interests
in corporations myself, and I have acquired an interest in others. I am a
director in several. I believe that it is the duty of property to protect
itself, and the duty of all good men in politics,--such as the senator
here,"--(bow from Mr. Whitredge) to protect property. I am a practical
man, and I think I can convince you, if you don't see it already, that my
determination to go to the Legislature is an advantageous thing for your
railroad."

"The advent of a reputable citizen into politics is always a good thing
for the railroad, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint.

"Exactly," Mr. Crewe agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this
remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property
holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,--a man who, by study and
predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the
State, so much the better."

"So much the better," said Mr. Flint.

"I thought you would see it that way," Mr. Crewe continued. "Now a man of
your calibre must have studied to some extent the needs of the State, and
it must have struck you that certain improvements go hand in hand with
the prosperity of your railroad."

"Have a cigar, Mr. Crewe. Have another, Senator?" said Mr. Flint. "I
think that is safe as a general proposition, Mr. Crewe."

"To specify," said Mr. Crewe, laying his hand on the roll of papers he
had brought, "I have here bills which I have carefully drawn up and which
I will leave for your consideration. One is to issue bonds for ten
millions to build State roads."

"Ten millions!" said Mr. Flint, and the senator whistled mildly.

"Think about it," said Mr. Crewe, "the perfection of the highways through
the State, instead of decreasing your earnings, would increase them
tremendously. Visitors by the tens of thousands would come in
automobiles, and remain and buy summer places. The State would have its
money back in taxes and business in no time at all. I wonder somebody
hasn't seen it before--the stupidity of the country legislator is
colossal. And we want forestry laws, and laws for improving the condition
of the farmers--all practical things. They are all there," Mr. Crewe
declared, slapping the bundle; "read them, Mr. Flint. If you have any
suggestions to make, kindly note them on the margin, and I shall be glad
to go over them with you."

By this time the senator was in a rare posture for him--he was seated
upright.

"As you know, I am a very busy man, Mr. Crewe," said the railroad
president.

"No one appreciates that more fully than I do, Mr. Flint," said Mr.
Crewe; "I haven't many idle hours myself. I think you will find the bills
and my comments on them well worth your consideration from the point of
view of advantage to your railroad. They are typewritten, and in concrete
form. In fact, the Northeastern Railroads and myself must work together
to our mutual advantage--that has become quite clear to me. I shall have
need of your help in passing the measures."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Flint,
putting down the papers.

"That is," said Mr. Crewe, "if you approve of the bills, and I am
confident that I shall be able to convince you."

"What do you want me to do?" asked the railroad president.

"Well, in the first place," said Mr. Crewe, unabashed, "send word to your
man Braden that you've seen me and it's all right."

"I assure you," answered Mr. Flint, giving evidence for the first time of
a loss of patience, "that neither the Northeastern Railroads nor myself,
have any more to do with this Braden than you have."

Mr. Crewe, being a man of the world, looked incredulous.

"Senator," Mr. Flint continued, turning to Mr. Whitredge, "you know as
much about politics in this State as any man of my acquaintance, have you
ever heard of any connection between this Braden and the Northeastern
Railroads?"

The senator had a laugh that was particularly disarming.

"Bless your soul, no," he replied. "You will pardon me, Mr. Crewe, but
you must have been listening to some farmer's tale. The railroad is the
bugaboo in all these country romances. I've seen old Job Braden at
conventions ever since I was a lad. He's a back number, one of the few
remaining disciples and imitators of Jethro Bass: talks like him and acts
like him. In the old days when there were a lot of little railroads, he
and Bijah Bixby and a few others used to make something out of them, but
since the consolidation, and Mr. Flint's presidency, Job stays at home.
They tell me he runs Leith yet. You'd better go over and fix it up with
him."

A somewhat sarcastic smile of satisfaction was playing over Mr. Flint's
face as he listened to the senator's words. As a matter of fact, they
were very nearly true as regarded Job Braden, but Mr. Crewe may be
pardoned for thinking that Mr. Flint was not showing him quite the
confidence due from one business and corporation man to another. He was
by no means abashed,--Mr. Crewe had too much spirit for that. He merely
became--as a man whose watchword is "thorough" will--a little more
combative.

"Well, read the bills anyway, Mr. Flint, and I'll come and go over them
with you. You can't fail to see my arguments, and all I ask is that you
throw the weight of your organization at the State capital for them when
they come up."

Mr. Flint drummed on the table.

"The men who have held office in this State," he said, "have always been
willing to listen to any suggestion I may have thought proper to make to
them. This is undoubtedly because I am at the head of the property which
pays the largest taxes. Needless to say I am chary of making suggestions.
But I am surprised that you should have jumped at a conclusion which is
the result of a popular and unfortunately prevalent opinion that the
Northeastern Railroads meddled in any way with the government or politics
of this State. I am glad of this opportunity of assuring you that we do
not," he continued, leaning forward and holding up his hand to ward off
interruption, "and I know that Senator Whitredge will bear me out in this
statement, too."

The senator nodded gravely. Mr. Crewe, who was anything but a fool, and
just as assertive as Mr. Flint, cut in.

"Look here, Mr. Flint," he said, "I know what a lobby is. I haven't been
a director in railroads myself for nothing. I have no objection to a
lobby. You employ counsel before the Legislature, don't you--"

"We do," said Mr. Flint, interrupting, "the best and most honourable
counsel we can find in the State. When necessary, they appear before the
legislative committees. As a property holder in the State, and an admirer
of its beauties, and as its well-wisher, it will give me great pleasure
to look over your bills, and use whatever personal influence I may have
as a citizen to forward them, should they meet my approval. And I am
especially glad to do this as a neighbour, Mr. Crewe. As a neighbour," he
repeated, significantly.

The president of the Northeastern Railroads rose as he spoke these words,
and held out his hand to Mr. Crewe. It was perhaps a coincidence that the
senator rose also.

"All right," said Mr. Crewe, "I'll call around again in about two weeks.
Come and see me sometime, Senator." "Thank you," said the senator, "I
shall be happy. And if you are ever in your automobile near the town of
Ramsey, stop at my little farm, Mr. Crewe. I trust to be able soon to
congratulate you on a step which I am sure will be but the beginning of
a long and brilliant political career."

"Thanks," said Mr. Crewe; "by the bye, if you could see your way to drop
a hint to that feller Braden, I should be much obliged."

The senator shook his head and laughed.

"Job is an independent cuss," he said, "I'm afraid he'd regard that as an
unwarranted trespass on his preserves."

Mr. Crewe was ushered out by the stooping secretary, Mr. Freeman; who,
instead of seizing Mr. Crewe's hand as he had Austen Vane's, said not a
word. But Mr. Crewe would have been interested if he could have heard Mr.
Flint's first remark to the senator after the door was closed on his
back. It did not relate to Mr. Crewe, but to the subject under discussion
which he had interrupted; namely, the Republican candidates for the
twenty senatorial districts of the State.

On its way back to Leith the red motor paused in front of Mr. Ball's
store, and that gentleman was summoned in the usual manner.

"Do you see this Braden once in a while?" Mr. Crewe demanded.

Mr. Ball looked knowing.

"Tell him I want to have a talk with him," said Mr. Crewe. "I've been to
see Mr. Flint, and I think matters can be arranged. And mind you, no word
about this, Ball."

"I guess I understand a thing or two," said Mr. Ball. "Trust me to handle
it."

Two days later, as Mr. Crewe was seated in his study, his man entered and
stood respectfully waiting for the time when he should look up from his
book.

"Well, what is it now, Waters?"

"If you please, sir," said the man, "a strange message has come over the
telephone just now that you were to be in room number twelve of the
Ripton House to-morrow at ten o'clock. They wouldn't give any name, sir,"
added the dignified Waters, who, to tell the truth, was somewhat
outraged, nor tell where they telephoned from. But it was a man's voice,
sir."

"All right," said Mr. Crewe.

He spent much of the afternoon and evening debating whether or not his
dignity would permit him to go. But he ordered the motor at half-past
nine, and at ten o'clock precisely the clerk at the Ripton House was
bowing to him and handing him, deferentially, a dripping pen.

"Where's room number twelve?" said the direct Mr. Crewe.

"Oh," said the clerk, and possessing a full share of the worldly wisdom
of his calling, he smiled broadly. "I guess you'll find him up there, Mr.
Crewe. Front, show the gentleman to number twelve."

The hall boy knocked on the door of number twelve.

"C--come in," said a voice. "Come in."

Mr. Crewe entered, the hall boy closed the door, and he found himself
face to face with a comfortable, smooth-faced man seated with great
placidity on a rocking-chair in the centre of the room, between the bed
and the marble-topped table: a man to whom, evidently, a rich abundance
of thought was sufficient company, for he had neither newspaper nor book.
He rose in a leisurely fashion, and seemed the very essence of the benign
as he stretched forth his hand.

"I'm Mr. Crewe," the owner of that name proclaimed, accepting the hand
with no exaggeration of cordiality. The situation jarred on him a trifle.

"I know. Seed you on the road once or twice. How be you?"

Mr. Crewe sat down.

"I suppose you are Mr. Braden," he said.

Mr. Braden sank into the rocker and fingered a waistcoat pocket full of
cigars that looked like a section of a cartridge-belt.

"T--try one of mine," he said.

"I only smoke once after breakfast," said Mr. Crewe.

"Abstemious, be you? Never could find that it did me any hurt."

This led to an awkward pause, Mr. Crewe not being a man who found profit
in idle discussion. He glanced at Mr. Braden's philanthropic and beaming
countenance, which would have made the fortune of a bishop. It was not
usual for Mr. Crewe to find it difficult to begin a conversation, or to
have a companion as self-sufficient as himself. This man Braden had all
the fun, apparently, in sitting in a chair and looking into space that
Stonewall Jackson had, or an ordinary man in watching a performance of "A
Trip to Chinatown." Let it not be inferred, again, that Mr. Crewe was
abashed; but he was puzzled.

"I had an engagement in Ripton this morning," he said, "to see about some
business matters. And after I received your telephone I thought I'd drop
in here."

"Didn't telephone," said Mr. Braden, placidly.

"What!" said Mr. Crewe, "I certainly got a telephone message."

"N--never telephone," said Mr. Braden.

"I certainly got a message from you," Mr. Crewe protested.

"Didn't say it was from me--didn't say so--did they--"

"No," said Mr. Crewe, "but--"

"Told Ball you wanted to have me see you, didn't you?"

Mr. Crewe, when he had unravelled this sentence, did not fancy the way it
was put.

"I told Ball I was seeing everybody in Leith," he answered, "and that I
had called on you, and you weren't at home. Ball inferred that you had a
somewhat singular way of seeing people."

"You don't understand," was Mr. Braden's somewhat enigmatic reply.

"I understand pretty well," said Mr. Crewe. "I'm a candidate for the
Republican nomination for representative from Leith, and I want your vote
and influence. You probably know what I have done for the town, and that
I'm the biggest taxpayer, and an all-the-year-round resident."

"S--some in Noo York--hain't you?"

"Well, you can't expect a man in my position and with my interests to
stay at home all the time. I feel that I have a right to ask the town for
this nomination. I have some bills here which I'll request you to read
over, and you will see that I have ideas which are of real value to the
State. The State needs waking up-progressive measures. You're a farmer,
ain't you?"

"Well, I have be'n."

"I can improve the condition of the farmer one hundred per cent, and if
my road system is followed, he can get his goods to market for about a
tenth of what it costs him now. We have infinitely valuable forests in
the State which are being wasted by lumbermen, which ought to be
preserved. You read those bills, and what I have written about them."

"You don't understand," said Mr. Braden, drawing a little closer and
waving aside the manuscript with his cigar.

"Don't understand what?"

"Don't seem to understand," repeated Mr. Braden, confidingly laying his
hand on Mr. Crewe's knee. "Candidate for representative, be you?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Crewe, who was beginning to resent the manner in which
he deemed he was being played with, "I told you I was."

"M--made all them bills out before you was chose?" said Mr. Braden.

Mr. Crewe grew red in the face.

"I am interested in these questions," he said stiffly.

"Little mite hasty, wahn't it?" Mr. Braden remarked equably, "but you've
got plenty of time and money to fool with such things, if you've a mind
to. Them don't amount to a hill of beans in politics. Nobody pays any
attention to that sort of fireworks down to the capital, and if they was
to get into committee them Northeastern Railroads fellers'd bury 'em
deeper than the bottom of Salem pond. They don't want no such things as
them to pass."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Crewe, "but you haven't read 'em."

"I know what they be," said Mr. Braden, "I've be'n in politics more years
than you've be'n livin', I guess. I don't want to read 'em," he
announced, his benign manner unchanged.

"I think you have made a mistake so far as the railroad is concerned, Mr.
Braden," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm a practical man myself, and I don't indulge
in moonshine. I am a director in one or two railroads. I have talked this
matter over with Mr. Flint, and incidentally with Senator Whitredge."

"Knowed Whitredge afore you had any teeth," said Mr. Braden, who did not
seem to be greatly impressed, "know him intimate. What'd you go to Flint
for?"

"We have interests in common," said Mr. Crewe, "and I am rather a close
friend of his. My going to the Legislature will be, I think, to our
mutual advantage."

"O--ought to have come right to me," said Mr. Braden, leaning over until
his face was in close proximity to Mr. Crewe's. "Whitredge told you to
come to me, didn't he?"

Mr. Crewe was a little taken aback.

"The senator mentioned your name," he admitted.

"He knows. Said I was the man to see if you was a candidate, didn't he?
Told you to talk to Job Braden, didn't he?"

Now Mr. Crewe had no means of knowing whether Senator Whitredge had been
in conference with Mr. Braden or not.

"The senator mentioned your name casually, in some connection," said Mr.
Crewe.

"He knows," Mr. Braden repeated, with a finality that spoke volumes for
the senator's judgment; and he bent over into Mr. Crewe's ear, with the
air of conveying a mild but well-merited reproof, "You'd ought to come
right to me in the first place. I could have saved you all that
unnecessary trouble of seein' folks. There hasn't be'n a representative
left the town of Leith for thirty years that I hain't agreed to.
Whitredge knows that. If I say you kin go, you kin go. You understand,"
said Mr. Braden, with his fingers on Mr. Crewe's knee once more.

Five minutes later Mr. Crewe emerged into the dazzling sun of the Ripton
square, climbed into his automobile, and turned its head towards Leith,
strangely forgetting the main engagement which he said had brought him to
town.




CHAPTER VIII

THE TRIALS OF AN HONOURABLE

It was about this time that Mr. Humphrey Crewe was transformed, by one of
those subtle and inexplicable changes which occur in American politics,
into the Honourable Humphrey Crewe. And, as interesting bits of news
about important people are bound to leak out, it became known in Leith
that he had subscribed to what is known as a Clipping Bureau. Two weeks
after the day he left Mr. Braden's presence in the Ripton House the
principal newspapers of the country contained the startling announcement
that the well-known summer colony of Leith was to be represented in the
State Legislature by a millionaire. The Republican nomination, which Mr.
Crewe had secured, was equivalent to an election.

For a little time after that Mr. Crewe, although naturally an important
and busy man, scarcely had time to nod to his friends on the road.

"Poor dear Humphrey," said Mrs. Pomfret, "who was so used to dropping in
to dinner, hasn't had a moment to write me a line to thank me for the
statesman's diary I bought for him in London this spring. They're in that
new red leather, and Aylestone says he finds his so useful. I dropped in
at Wedderburn to-day to see if I could be of any help, and the poor man
was buttonholed by two reporters who had come all the way from New York
to see him. I hope he won't overdo it."

It was true. Mr. Crewe was to appear in the Sunday supplements.  "Are our
Millionaires entering Politics?" Mr. Crewe, with his usual gracious
hospitality, showed the reporters over the place, and gave them
suggestions as to the best vantage-points in which to plant their
cameras. He himself was at length prevailed upon to be taken in a rough
homespun suit, and with a walking-stick in his hand, appraising with a
knowing eye a flock of his own sheep. Pressed a little, he consented to
relate something of the systematic manner in which he had gone about to
secure this nomination: how he had visited in person the homes of his
fellow-townsmen. "I knew them all, anyway," he is quoted as saying; "we
have had the pleasantest of relationships during the many years I have
been a resident of Leith."

"Beloved of his townspeople," this part of the article was headed. No,
these were not Mr. Crewe's words--he was too modest for that. When urged
to give the name of one of his townsmen who might deal with this and
other embarrassing topics, Mr. Ball was mentioned. "Beloved of his
townspeople" was Mr. Ball's phrase. "Although a multi-millionaire, no man
is more considerate of the feelings and the rights of his more humble
neighbours. Send him to the Legislature! We'd send him to the United
States Senate if we could. He'll land there, anyway." Such was a random
estimate (Mr. Ball's) the reporters gathered on their way to Ripton. Mr.
Crewe did not hesitate to say that the prosperity of the farmers had
risen as a result of his labours at Wedderburn where the most improved
machinery and methods were adopted. His efforts to raise the
agricultural, as well as the moral and intellectual, tone of the
community had been unceasing.

Then followed an intelligent abstract of the bills he was to introduce
--the results of a progressive and statesmanlike brain. There was an
account of him as a methodical and painstaking business man whose
suggestions to the boards of directors of which he was a member had been
invaluable. The article ended with a list of the clubs to which he
belonged, of the societies which he had organized and of those of which
he was a member,--and it might have been remarked by a discerning reader
that most of these societies were State affairs. Finally there was a pen
portrait of an Apollo Belvidere who wore the rough garb of a farmer (on
the days when the press was present).

Mr. Crewe's incessant trials, which would have taxed a less rugged
nature, did not end here. About five o'clock one afternoon a
pleasant-appearing gentleman with a mellifluous voice turned up who
introduced himself as ex (State) Senator Grady. The senator was from
Newcastle, that city out of the mysterious depths of which so many
political stars have arisen. Mr. Crewe cancelled a long-deferred
engagement with Mrs. Pomfret, and invited the senator to stay to dinner;
the senator hesitated, explained that he was just passing through Ripton,
and, as it was a pleasant afternoon, had called to "pay his respects";
but Mr. Crewe's well-known hospitality would accept no excuses. Mr. Crewe
opened a box of cigars which he had bought especially for the taste of
State senators and a particular grade of Scotch whiskey.

They talked politics for four hours. Who would be governor? The senator
thought Asa Gray would. The railroad was behind him, Mr. Crewe observed
knowingly. The senator remarked that Mr. Crewe was no gosling. Mr. Crewe,
as political-geniuses will, asked as many questions as the emperor of
Germany--pertinent questions about State politics. Senator Grady was
tremendously impressed with his host's programme of bills, and went over
them so painstakingly that Mr. Crewe became more and more struck with
Senator Grady's intelligence. The senator told Mr. Crewe that just such a
man as he was needed to pull the State out of the rut into which she had
fallen. Mr. Crewe said that he hoped to find such enlightened men in the
Legislature as the senator. The senator let it be known that he had read
the newspaper articles, and had remarked that Mr. Crewe was close to the
president of the Northeastern Railroads.

"Such a man as you," said the senator, looking at the remainder of the
Scotch whiskey, "will have the railroad behind you, sure."

"One more drink," said Mr. Crewe.

"I must go," said Mr. Grady, pouring it out, but that reminds me. It
comes over me sudden-like, as I sit here, that you certainly ought to be
in the new encyclopeedie of the prominent men of the State. But sure you
have received an application."

"It is probable that my secretary has one," said Mr. Crewe, "but he
hasn't called it to my attention."

"You must get in that book, Mr. Crewe," said the senator, with an intense
earnestness which gave the impression of alarm; "after what you've told
me to-night I'll see to it myself that you get in. It may be that I've
got some of the sample pages here, if I haven't left them at home," said
Mr. Grady, fumbling in an ample inside pocket, and drawing forth a
bundle. "Sure, here they are. Ain't that luck for you? Listen! 'Asa P.
Gray was born on the third of August, eighteen forty-seven, the seventh
son of a farmer. See, there's a space in the end they left to fill up
when he's elicted governor! Here's another. The Honourable Hilary Vane
comes from one of the oldest Puritan families in the State, the Vanes of
Camden Street--' Here's another. 'The Honourable Brush Bascom of Putnam
County is the son of poor but honourable parents--' Look at the picture
of him. Ain't that a handsome steel-engravin' of the gentleman?"

Mr. Crewe gazed contemplatively at the proof, but was too busy with his
own thoughts to reflect that there was evidently not much poor or
honourable about Mr. Bascom now.

"Who's publishing this?" he asked.

"Fogarty and Company; sure they're the best publishers in the State, as
you know, Mr. Crewe. They have the State printing. Wasn't it fortunate I
had the proofs with me? Tim Fogarty slipped them into me pocket when I
was leavin' Newcastle. 'The book is goin' to press the day after
eliction,' says he, 'John,' says he, 'you know I always rely on your
judgment, and if you happen to think of anybody between now and then who
ought to go in, you'll notify me,' says he. When I read the bills
to-night, and saw the scope of your work, it came over me in a flash that
Humphrey Crewe was the man they left out. You'll get a good man to write
your life, and what you done for the town and State, and all them
societies and bills, won't you? 'Twould be a thousand pities not to have
it right."

"How much does it cost?" Mr. Crewe inquired.

"Sure I forgot to ask Tim Fogarty. Mebbe he has it here. I signed one
myself, but I couldn't afford the steelengravin'. Yes, he slipped one in.
Two hundred dollars for a two-page biography, and, three hundred for the
steelengravin'. Five hundred dollars. I didn't know it was so cheap as
that," exclaimed the senator, "and everybody in the State havin' to own
one in self-protection. You don't happen to have a pen about you?"

Mr. Crewe waved the senator towards his own desk, and Mr. Grady filled
out the blank.

"It's lucky we are that I didn't drop in after eliction, and the book in
press," he remarked; "and I hope you'll give him a good photograph.
This's for you, I'll take this to Tim myself," and he handed the pen for
Mr. Crewe to sign with.

Mr. Crewe read over the agreement carefully, as a business man should,
before putting his signature to it. And then the senator, with renewed
invitations for Mr. Crewe to call on him when he came to Newcastle, took
his departure. Afterwards Mr. Crewe remained so long in reflection that
his man Waters became alarmed, and sought him out and interrupted his
revery.

The next morning Mrs. Pomfret, who was merely "driving by" with her
daughter Alice and Beatrice Chillingham, spied Mr. Crewe walking about
among the young trees he was growing near the road, and occasionally
tapping them with his stout stick. She poked her coachman in the back and
cried:--"Humphrey, you're such an important man now that I despair of
ever seeing you again. What was the matter last night?"

"A politician from Newcastle," answered Mr. Crewe, continuing to tap the
trees, and without so much as a glance at Alice.

"Well, if you're as important as this before you're elected, I can't
think what it will be afterwards," Mrs. Pomfret lamented. "Poor dear
Humphrey is so conscientious. When can you come, Humphrey?"

"Don't know," said Mr. Crewe; "I'll try to come tonight, but I may be
stopped again. Here's Waters now."

The three people in Mrs. Pomfret's victoria were considerably impressed
to see the dignified Waters hurrying down the slope from the house
towards them. Mr. Crewe continued to tap the trees, but drew a little
nearer the carriage.

"If you please, sir," said Waters, "there's a telephone call for you from
Newcastle. It's urgent, sir."

"Who is it?"

"They won't give their names, sir."

"All right," said Mr. Crewe, and with a grin which spoke volumes for the
manner in which he was harassed he started towards the house--in no great
hurry, however. Reaching the instrument, and saying "Hello" in his
usually gracious manner, he was greeted by a voice with a decided
Hibernian-American accent.

"Am I talkin' to Mr. Crewe?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Humphrey Crewe?"

"Yes--yes, of course you are. Who are you?"

"I'm the president of the Paradise Benevolent and Military Association,
Mr. Crewe. Boys that work in the mills, you know," continued the voice,
caressingly. "Sure you've heard of us. We're five hundred strong, and all
of us good Republicans as the president. We're to have our annual fall
outing the first of October in Finney Grove, and we'd like to have you
come down."

"The first of October?" said Mr. Crewe. "I'll consult my engagement
book."

"We'd like to have a good picture of you in our programme, Mr. Crewe. We
hope you'll oblige us. You're such an important figure in State politics
now you'd ought to have a full page."

There was a short silence.

"What does it cost?" Mr. Crewe demanded.

"Sure," said the caressing voice of the president, "whatever you like."

"I'll send you a check for five dollars, and a picture," said Mr. Crewe.

The answer to this was a hearty laugh, which the telephone reproduced
admirably. The voice now lost a little of its caressing note and partook
of a harder quality.

"You're a splendid humorist, Mr. Crewe. Five dollars wouldn't pay for the
plate and the paper. A gentleman like you could give us twenty-five, and
never know it was gone. You won't be wanting to stop in the Legislature,
Mr. Crewe, and we remember our friends in Newcastle."

"Very well, I'll see what I can do. Good-by, I've got an engagement,"
said Mr. Crewe, and slammed down the telephone. He seated himself in his
chair, and the pensive mood so characteristic (we are told) of statesmen
came over him once more.

While these and other conferences and duties too numerous to mention were
absorbing Mr. Crewe, he was not too busy to bear in mind the pleasure of
those around him who had not received such an abundance of the world's
blessings as he. The townspeople of Leith were about to bestow on him
their greatest gift. What could he do to show his appreciation? Wrestling
with this knotty problem, a brilliant idea occurred to him,--he would
have a garden-party: invite everybody in town, and admit them to the
sanctities of Wedderburn; yes, even of Wedderburn house, that they might
behold with their own eyes the carved ivory elephants and other contents
of glass cabinets which reeked of the Sunday afternoons of youth. Being a
man of action, Mr. Pardriff was summoned at once from Leith and asked for
his lowest price on eight hundred and fifty invitations and a notice of
the party in the Ripton Record.

"Goin' to invite Democrats, too?" demanded Mr. Pardriff, glancing at the
check-list.

"Everybody," said Mr. Crewe, with unparalleled generosity. "I won't draw
any distinction between friends and enemies. They're all neighbours."

"And some of 'em might, by accident, vote the Republican ticket," Mr.
Pardriff retorted, narrowing his eyes a little.

Mr. Crewe evidently thought this a negligible suggestion, for he did not
reply to it, but presently asked for the political news in Ripton.

"Well," said Mr. Pardriff, "you know they tried to get Austen Vane to run
for State senator, don't you?"

"Vane Why, he ain't a full-fledged lawyer yet. I've hired him in an
unimportant case. Who asked him to run?"

"Young Tom Gaylord and a delegation."

"He couldn't have got it," said Mr. Crewe.

"I don't know," said Mr. Pardriff, "he might have given Billings a hustle
for the nomination."

"You supported Billings, I noticed," said Mr. Crewe.

Mr. Pardriff winked an eye.

"I'm not ready to walk the ties when I go to Newcastle," he remarked,
"and Nat ain't quite bankrupt yet. The Gaylords," continued Mr. Pardriff,
who always took the cynical view of a man of the world, "have had some
row with the Northeastern over lumber shipments. I understand they're
goin' to buck 'em for a franchise in the next Legislature, just to make
it lively. The Gaylords ain't exactly poverty-stricken, but they might as
well try to move Sawanec Mountain as the Northeastern."

It was a fact that young Tom Gaylord had approached Austen Vane with a
"delegation" to request him to be a candidate for the Republican
nomination for the State senate in his district against the railroad
candidate and Austen's late opponent, the Honourable Nat Billings. It was
a fact also that Austen had invited the delegation to sit down, although
there were only two chairs, and that a wrestling match had ensued with
young Tom, in the progress of which one chair had been broken. Young Tom
thought it was time to fight the railroad, and perceived in Austen the
elements of a rebel leader. Austen had undertaken to throw young Tom out
of a front window, which was a large, old-fashioned one,--and after
Herculean efforts had actually got him on the ledge, when something in
the street caught his eye and made him desist abruptly. The something was
the vision of a young woman in a brown linen suit seated in a runabout
and driving a horse almost as handsome as Pepper.

When the delegation, after exhausting their mental and physical powers of
persuasion, had at length taken their departure in disgust, Austen opened
mechanically a letter which had very much the appearance of an
advertisement, and bearing a one-cent stamp. It announced that a
garden-party would take place at Wedderburn, the home of the Honourable
Humphrey Crewe, at a not very distant date, and the honour of the
bearer's presence was requested. Refreshments would be served, and the
Ripton Band would dispense music. Below, in small print, were minute
directions where to enter, where to hitch your team, and where to go out.

Austen was at a loss to know what fairy godmother had prompted Mr. Crewe
to send him an invitation, the case of the injured horse not having
advanced with noticeable rapidity. Nevertheless, the prospect of the
garden-party dawned radiantly for him above what had hitherto been a
rather gloomy horizon. Since the afternoon he had driven Victoria to the
Hammonds' he had had daily debates with an imaginary man in his own
likeness who, to the detriment of his reading of law, sat across his
table and argued with him. The imaginary man was unprincipled, and had no
dignity, but he had such influence over Austen Vane that he had induced
him to drive twice within sight of Fairview gate, when Austen Vane had
turned round again. The imaginary man was for going to call on her and
letting subsequent events take care of themselves; Austen Vane, had an
uncomfortable quality of reducing a matter first of all to its simplest
terms. He knew that Mr. Flint's views were as fixed, ineradicable, and
unchangeable as an epitaph cut in a granite monument; he felt (as Mr.
Flint had) that their first conversation had been but a forerunner of, a
strife to come between them; and add to this the facts that Mr. Flint was
very rich and Austen Vane poor, that Victoria's friends were not his
friends, and that he had grave doubts that the interest she had evinced
in him sprang from any other incentive than a desire to have
communication with various types of humanity, his hesitation as to
entering Mr. Flint's house was natural enough.

It was of a piece with Mr. Crewe's good fortune of getting what he wanted
that the day of the garden-party was the best that September could do in
that country, which is to say that it was very beautiful. A pregnant
stillness enwrapped the hills, a haze shot with gold dust, like the
filmiest of veils, softened the distant purple and the blue-black shadows
under the pines. Austen awoke from his dream in this enchanted borderland
to find himself in a long line of wagons filled with people in their
Sunday clothes,--the men in black, and the young women in white, with gay
streamers, wending their way through the rear-entrance drive of
Wedderburn, where one of Mr. Crewe's sprucest employees was taking up the
invitation cards like tickets,--a precaution to prevent the rowdy element
from Ripton coming and eating up the refreshments. Austen obediently tied
Pepper in a field, as he was directed, and made his way by a path through
the woods towards the house, where the Ripton Band could be heard playing
the second air in the programme, "Don't you wish you'd Waited?"

For a really able account of that memorable entertainment see the Ripton
Record of that week, for we cannot hope to vie with Mr. Pardriff when his
heart is really in his work. How describe the noble figure of Mr. Crewe
as it burst upon Austen when he rounded the corner of the house? Clad in
a rough-and-ready manner, with a Gladstone collar to indicate the newly
acquired statesmanship, and fairly radiating geniality, Mr. Crewe stood
at the foot of the steps while the guests made the circuit of the
driveway; and they carefully avoided, in obedience to a warning sign, the
grass circle in the centre. As man and wife confronted him, Mr. Crewe
greeted them in hospitable but stentorian tones that rose above the
strains of "Don't you wish you'd Waited?" It was Mr. Ball who introduced
his townspeople to the great man who was to represent them.

"How are you?" said Mr. Crewe, with his eyes on the geraniums. "Mr. and
Mrs. Perley Wright, eh? Make yourselves at home. Everything's free
--you'll find the refreshments on the back porch--just have an eye to the
signs posted round, that's all." And Mr. and Mrs. Perley Wright,
overwhelmed by such a welcome, would pass on into a back eddy of
neighbours, where they would stick, staring at a sign requesting them
please not to pick the flowers.

"Can't somebody stir 'em up?" Mr. Crewe shouted in an interval when the
band had stopped to gather strength for a new effort. "Can't somebody
move 'em round to see the cows and what's in the house and the automobile
and the horses? Move around the driveway, please. It's so hot here you
can't breathe. Some of you wanted to see what was in the house. Now's
your chance."

This graceful appeal had some temporary effect, but the congestion soon
returned, when a man of the hour appeared, a man whose genius scattered
the groups and who did more to make the party a success than any single
individual,--Mr. Hamilton Tooting, in a glorious white silk necktie with
purple flowers.

"I'll handle 'em, Mr. Crewe," he said; "a little brains'll start 'em
goin'. Come along here, Mr. Wright, and I'll show you the best cows this
side of the Hudson Riverall pedigreed prize winners. Hello, Aust, you
take hold and get the wimmen-folks interested in the cabinets. You know
where they are."

"There's a person with some sense," remarked Mrs. Pomfret, who had been
at a little distance among a group of summer-resident ladies and watching
the affair with shining eyes. "I'll help. Come, Edith; come, Victoria
where's Victoria?--and dear Mrs. Chillingham. We American women are so
deplorably lacking in this kind of experience. Alice, take some of the
women into the garden. I'm going to interest that dear, benevolent man
who looks so helpless, and doing his best to have a good time."

The dear, benevolent man chanced to be Mr. Job Braden, who was standing
somewhat apart with his hands in his pockets. He did not move as Mrs.
Pomfret approached him, holding her glasses to her eyes.

"How are you?" exclaimed that lady, extending a white-gloved hand with a
cordiality that astonished her friends. "It is so pleasant to see you
here, Mr.--Mr.--"

"How be you?" said Mr. Braden, taking her fingers in the gingerly manner
he would have handled one of Mr. Crewe's priceless curios. The giraffe
Mr. Barnum had once brought to Ripton was not half as interesting as this
immaculate and mysterious production of foreign dressmakers and French
maids, but he refrained from betraying it. His eye rested on the
lorgnette.

"Near-sighted, be you?" he inquired,--a remark so unexpected that for the
moment Mrs. Pomfret was deprived of speech.

"I manage to see better with--with these," she gasped, "when we get old
--you know."

"You hain't old," said Mr. Braden, gallantly. "If you be," he added, his
eye travelling up and down the Parisian curves, I wouldn't have suspected
it--not a mite."

"I'm afraid you are given to flattery, Mr.--Mr.--" she replied hurriedly.
"Whom have I the pleasure of speaking to?"

"Job Braden's my name," he answered, "but you have the advantage of me."

"How?" demanded the thoroughly bewildered Mrs. Pomfret.

"I hain't heard your name," he said.

"Oh, I'm Mrs. Pomfret--a very old friend of Mr. Crewe's. Whenever he has
his friends with him, like this, I come over and help him. It is so
difficult for a bachelor to entertain, Mr. Braden."

"Well," said Mr. Braden, bending alarmingly near her ear, "there's one
way out of it."

"What's that?" said Mrs. Pomfret.

"Git married," declared Mr. Braden.

"How very clever you are, Mr. Braden! I wish poor dear Mr. Crewe would
get married--a wife could take so many burdens off his shoulders. You
don't know Mr. Crewe very well, do you?"

"Callate to--so so," said Mr. Braden.

Mrs. Pomfret was at sea again.

"I mean, do you see him often?"

"Seen him once," said Mr. Braden. "G-guess that's enough."

"You're a shrewd judge of human nature, Mr. Braden," she replied, tapping
him on the shoulder with the lorgnette, "but you can have no idea how
good he is--how unceasingly he works for others. He is not a man who
gives much expression to his feelings, as no doubt you have discovered,
but if you knew him as I do, you would realize how much affection he has
for his country neighbours and how much he has their welfare at heart."

"Loves 'em--does he--loves 'em?"

"He is like an English gentleman in his sense of responsibility," said
Mrs. Pomfret; "over there, you know, it is a part of a country
gentleman's duty to improve the condition of his--his neighbours. And
then Mr. Crewe is so fond of his townspeople that he couldn't resist
doing this for them," and she indicated with a sweep of her eyeglasses
the beatitude with which they were surrounded.

"Wahn't no occasion to," said Mr. Braden.

"What!" cried Mrs. Pomfret, who had been walking on ice for some time.

"This hain't England--is it? Hain't England?"

"No," she admitted, "but--"

"Hain't England," said Mr. Braden, and leaned forward until he was within
a very few inches of her pearl ear-ring. "He'll be chose all
right--d-don't fret--he'll be chose."

"My dear Mr. Braden, I've no doubt of it--Mr. Crewe's so popular," she
cried, removing her ear-ring abruptly from the danger zone. "Do make
yourself at home," she added, and retired from Mr. Braden's company a
trifle disconcerted,--a new experience for Mrs. Pomfret. She wondered
whether all country people were like Mr. Braden, but decided, after
another experiment or two, that he was an original. More than once during
the afternoon she caught sight of him, beaming upon the festivities
around him. But she did not renew the conversation.

To Austen Vane, wandering about the grounds, Mr. Crewe's party presented
a sociological problem of no small interest. Mr. Crewe himself interested
him, and he found himself speculating how far a man would go who charged
the fastnesses of the politicians with a determination not to be denied
and a bank account to be reckoned with. Austen talked to many of the
Leith farmers whom he had known from boyhood, thanks to his custom of
roaming the hills; they were for the most part honest men whose
occupation in life was the first thought, and they were content to leave
politics to Mr. Braden--that being his profession. To the most
intelligent of these Mr. Crewe's garden-party was merely the wanton whim
of a millionaire. It was an open secret to them that Job Braden for
reasons of his own had chosen Mr. Crewe to represent them, and they were
mildly amused at the efforts of Mrs. Pomfret and her assistants to secure
votes which were as certain as the sun's rising on the morrow.

It was some time before Austen came upon the object of his search--though
scarce admitting to himself that it had an object. In greeting him, after
inquiring about his railroad case, Mr. Crewe had indicated with a wave of
his hand the general direction of the refreshments; but it was not until
Austen had tried in all other quarters that he made his way towards the
porch where the lemonade and cake and sandwiches were. It was, after all,
the most popular place, though to his mind the refreshments had little to
do with its popularity. From the outskirts of the crowd he perceived
Victoria presiding over the punchbowl that held the lemonade. He liked to
think of her as Victoria; the name had no familiarity for him, but seemed
rather to enhance the unattainable quality of her.

Surrounding Victoria were several clean-looking, freckled, and tanned
young men of undergraduate age wearing straw hats with coloured ribbons,
who showed every eagerness to obey and even anticipate the orders she did
not hesitate to give them. Her eye seemed continually on the alert for
those of Mr. Crewe's guests who were too bashful to come forward, and
discerning them she would send one of her lieutenants forward with
supplies. Sometimes she would go herself to the older people; and once,
perceiving a tired woman holding a baby (so many brought babies, being
unable to leave them), Victoria impulsively left her post and seized the
woman by the arm.

"Do come and sit down," she cried; "there's a chair beside me. And oh,
what a nice baby! Won't you let me hold him?"

"Why, yes, ma'am," said the woman, looking up at Victoria with grateful,
patient eyes, and then with awe at what seemed to her the priceless
embroidery on Victoria's waist, "won't he spoil your dress?"

"Bless him, no," said Victoria, poking her finger into a dimple--for he
was smiling at her. "What if he does?" and forthwith she seized him in
her arms and bore him to the porch, amidst the laughter of those who
beheld her, and sat him down on her knee in front of the lemonade bowl,
the tired mother beside her. "Will a little lemonade hurt him? Just a
very, very little, you know?"

"Why, no, ma'am," said the mother.

"And just a teeny bit of cake," begged Victoria, daintily breaking off a
piece, while the baby gurgled and snatched for it. "Do tell me how old he
is, and how many more you have."

"He's eleven months on the twenty-seventh," said the mother, "and I've
got four more." She sighed, her eyes wandering back to the embroidery.
"What between them and the housework and the butter makin', it hain't
easy. Be you married?"

"No," said Victoria, laughing and blushing a little.

"You'll make a good wife for somebody," said the woman. "I hope you'll
get a good man."

"I hope so, too," said Victoria, blushing still deeper amidst the
laughter, "but there doesn't seem to be much chance of it, and good men
are very scarce."

"I guess you're right," said the mother, soberly. "Not but what my man's
good enough, but he don't seem to get along, somehow. The farm's wore
out, and the mortgage comes around so regular."

"Where do you live?" asked Victoria, suddenly growing serious.

"Fitch's place. 'Tain't very far from the Four Corners, on the Avalon
road."

"And you are Mrs. Fitch?"

"Callate to be," said the mother. "If it ain't askin' too much, I'd like
to know your name."

"I'm Victoria Flint. I live not very far from the Four Corners--that is,
about eight miles. May I come over and see you sometime?"

Although Victoria said this very simply, the mother's eyes widened until
one might almost have said they expressed a kind of terror.

"Land sakes alive, be you Mr. Flint's daughter? I might have knowed it
from the lace--that dress must have cost a fortune. But I didn't think to
find you so common."

Victoria did not smile. She had heard the word "common" so used before,
and knew that it was meant for a compliment, and she turned to the woman
with a very expressive light in her eyes.

"I will come to see you--this very week," she said. And just then her
glance, seemingly drawn in a certain direction, met that of a tall young
man which had been fixed upon her during the whole of this scene. She
coloured again, abruptly handed the baby back to his mother, and rose.

"I'm neglecting all these people," she said, "but do sit there and rest
yourself and--have some more lemonade."

She bowed to Austen, and smiled a little as she filled the glasses, but
she did not beckon him. She gave no further sign of her knowledge of his
presence until he stood beside her--and then she looked up at him.

"I have been looking for you, Miss Flint," he said.

"I suppose a man would never think of trying the obvious places first,"
she replied. "Hastings, don't you see that poor old woman over there? She
looks so thirsty--give her this."

The boy addressed, with a glance at Austen, did as he was bid, and she
sent off a second on another errand.

"Let me help," said Austen, seizing the cake; and being seized at the
same time, by an unusual and inexplicable tremor of shyness, thrust it at
the baby.

"Oh, he can't have anymore; do you want to kill him?" cried Victoria,
seizing the plate, and adding mischievously, "I don't believe you're of
very much use--after all!"

"Then it's time I learned," said Austen. "Here's Mr. Jenney. I'm sure
he'll have a piece."

"Well," said Mr. Jenney, the same Mr. Jenney of the apple orchard, but
holding out a horny hand with unmistakable warmth, "how be you, Austen?"
Looking about him, Mr. Jenney put his hand to his mouth, and added,
"Didn't expect to see you trailin' on to this here kite." He took a piece
of cake between his thumb and forefinger and glanced bashfully at
Victoria.

"Have some lemonade, Mr. Jenney? Do," she urged.

"Well, I don't care if I do," he said, "just a little mite." He did not
attempt to stop her as she filled the glass to the brim, but continued to
regard her with a mixture of curiosity and admiration. "Seen you nursin'
the baby and makin' folks at home. Guess you have the knack of it
better'n some I could mention."

This was such a palpable stroke at their host that Victoria laughed, and
made haste to turn the subject from herself.

"Mr. Vane seems to be an old friend of yours," she said.

"Why," said Mr. Jenney, laying his hand on Austen's shoulder, "I callate
he is. Austen's broke in more'n one of my colts afore he went West and
shot that feller. He's as good a judge of horse-flesh as any man in this
part of the State. Hear Tom Gaylord and the boys wanted him to be State
senator."

"Why didn't you accept, Mr. Vane?"

"Because I don't think the boys could have elected me," answered Austen,
laughing.

"He's as popular a man as there is in the county," declared Mr. Jenney.
He was a mite wild as a boy, but sence he's sobered down and won that
case against the railrud, he could get any office he'd a mind to. He's
always adoin' little things for folks, Austen is."

"Did--did that case against the railroad make him so popular?" asked
Victoria, glancing at Austen's broad back--for he had made his escape
with the cake.

"I guess it helped considerable," Mr. Jenney admitted.

"Why?" asked Victoria.

"Well, it was a fearless thing to do--plumb against his own interests
with old Hilary Vane. Austen's a bright lawyer, and I have heard it said
he was in line for his father's place as counsel."

"Do--do people dislike the railroad?"

Mr. Jenney rubbed his beard thoughtfully. He began to wonder who this
young woman was, and a racial caution seized him.

"Well," he said, "folks has an idea the railrud runs this State to suit
themselves. I guess they hain't far wrong. I've be'n to the Legislature
and seen some signs of it. Why, Hilary Vane himself has charge of the
most considerable part of the politics. Who be you?" Mr. Jenney demanded
suddenly.

"I'm Victoria Flint," said Victoria.

"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Jenney, "you don't say so! I might have known
it--seen you on the rud more than once. But I don't know all you rich
folks apart. Wouldn't have spoke so frank if I'd knowed who you was."

"I'm glad you did, Mr. Jenney," she answered.  "I wanted to know what
people think."

"Well, it's almighty complicated," said Mr. Jenney, shaking his head. "I
don't know by rights what to think. As long as I've said what I have,
I'll say this: that the politicians is all for the railrud, and I hain't
got a mite of use for the politicians. I'll vote for a feller like Austen
Vane every time, if he'll run, and I know other folks that will."

After Mr. Jenney had left her, Victoria stood motionless, gazing off into
the haze, until she was startled by the voice of Hastings Weare beside
her.

"Say, Victoria, who is that man?" he asked.

"What man?"

Hastings nodded towards Austen, who, with a cake basket in his hand,
stood chatting with a group of country people on the edge of the porch.

"Oh, that man!" said Victoria. "His name's Austen Vane, and he's a lawyer
in Ripton."

"All I can say is," replied Hastings, with a light in his face, "he's one
I'd like to tie to. I'll bet he could whip any four men you could pick
out."

Considering that Hastings had himself proposed--although in a very mild
form--more than once to Victoria, this was generous.

"I daresay he could," she agreed absently.

"It isn't only the way he's built," persisted Hastings, "he looks as if
he were going to be somebody some day. Introduce me to him, will you?"

"Certainly," said Victoria. "Mr. Vane," she called, "I want to introduce
an admirer, Mr. Hastings Weare."

"I just wanted to know you," said Hastings, reddening, "and Victoria--I
mean Miss Flint--said she'd introduce me."

"I'm much obliged to her," said Austen, smiling.

"Are you in politics?" asked Hastings.

"I'm afraid not," answered Austen, with a glance at Victoria.

"You're not helping Humphrey Crewe, are you?"

"No," said Austen, and added with an illuminating smile, "Mr. Crewe
doesn't need any help."

"I'm glad you're not," exclaimed the downright Hastings, with palpable
relief in his voice that an idol had not been shattered. "I think
Humphrey's a fakir, and all this sort of thing tommyrot. He wouldn't get
my vote by giving me lemonade and cake and letting me look at his cows.
If you ever run for office, I'd like to cast it for you. My father is
only a summer resident, but since he has gone out of business he stays
here till Christmas, and I'll be twenty-one in a year."

Austen had ceased to smile; he was looking into the boy's eyes with that
serious expression which men and women found irresistible.

"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply.

Hastings was suddenly overcome with the shyness of youth. He held out his
hand, and said, "I'm awfully glad to have met you," and fled.

Victoria, who had looked on with a curious mixture of feelings, turned to
Austen.

"That was a real tribute," she said.  "Is this the way you affect
everybody whom you meet?"

They were standing almost alone. The sun was nearing the western hills
beyond the river, and people had for some time been wending their way
towards the field where the horses were tied. He did not answer her
question, but asked one instead.

"Will you let me drive you home?"

"Do you think you deserve to, after the shameful manner in which you have
behaved?"

"I'm quite sure that I don't deserve to," he answered, still looking down
at her.

"If you did deserve to, being a woman, I probably shouldn't let you,"
said Victoria, flashing a look upwards; "as it is, you may."

His face lighted, but she halted in the grass, with her hands behind her,
and stared at him with a puzzled expression.

"I'm sure you're a dangerous man," she declared. "First you take in poor
little Hastings, and now you're trying to take me in."

"Then I wish I were still more dangerous," he laughed, "for apparently I
haven't succeeded."

"I want to talk to you seriously," said Victoria; "that is the only
reason I'm permitting you to drive me home."

"I am devoutly thankful for the reason then," he said,--"my horse is tied
in the field."

"And aren't you going to say good-by to your host and hostess?"

"Hostess?" he repeated, puzzled.

"Hostesses," she corrected herself, "Mrs. Pomfret and Alice. I thought
you had eyes in your head," she added, with a fleeting glance at them.

"Is Crewe engaged to Miss Pomfret?" he asked.

"Are all men simpletons?" said Victoria. "He doesn't know it yet, but he
is."

"I think I'd know it, if I were," said Austen, with an emphasis that made
her laugh.

"Sometimes fish don't know they're in a net until--until the morning
after," said Victoria. "That has a horribly dissipated sound--hasn't it?
I know to a moral certainty that Mr. Crewe will eventually lead Miss
Pomfret away from the altar. At present," she could not refrain from
adding, "he thinks he's in love with some one else."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter," she replied. "Humphrey's perfectly happy, because he
believes most women are in love with him, and he's making up his mind in
that magnificent, thorough way of his whether she is worthy to be endowed
with his heart and hand, his cows, and all his stocks and bonds. He
doesn't know he's going to marry Alice. It almost makes one a Calvinist,
doesn't it. He's predestined, but perfectly happy."

"Who is he in love with?" demanded Austen, ungrammatically.

"I'm going to say good-by to him. I'll meet you in the field, if you
don't care to come. It's only manners, after all, although the lemonade's
all gone and I haven't had a drop."

"I'll go along too," he said.

"Aren't you afraid of Mrs. Pomfret?"

"Not a bit!"

"I am," said Victoria, "but I think you'd better come just the same."

Around the corner of the house they found them,--Mr. Crewe urging the
departing guests to remain, and not to be bashful in the future about
calling.

"We don't always have lemonade and cake," he was saying, "but you can be
sure of a welcome, just the same. Good-by, Vane, glad you came. Did they
show you through the stables? Did you see the mate to the horse I lost?
Beauty, isn't he? Stir 'em up and get the money. I guess we won't see
much of each other politically. You're anti-railroad. I don't believe
that tack'll work--we can't get along without corporations, you know. You
ought to talk to Flint. I'll give you a letter of introduction to him. I
don't know what I'd have done without that man Tooting in your father's
office. He's a wasted genius in Ripton. What? Good-by, you'll find your
wagon, I guess. Well, Victoria, where have you been keeping yourself?
I've been so busy I haven't had time to look for you. You're going to
stay to dinner, and Hastings, and all the people who have helped."

"No, I'm not," answered Victoria, with a glance at Austen, before whom
this announcement was so delicately made, "I'm going home."

"But when am I to see you?" cried Mr. Crewe, as near genuine alarm as he
ever got.  You never let me see you. I was going to drive you home in the
motor by moonlight."

"We all know that you're the most original person, Victoria," said Mrs.
Pomfret, "full of whims and strange fancies," she added, with the only
brief look at Austen she had deigned to bestow on him. "It never pays to
count on you for twenty-four hours. I suppose you're off on another wild
expedition."

"I think I've earned the right to it," said Victoria;--I've poured
lemonade for Humphrey's constituents the whole afternoon. And besides, I
never said I'd stay for dinner. I'm going home. Father's leaving for
California in the morning."

"He'd better stay at home and look after her," Mrs. Pomfret remarked,
when Victoria was out of hearing.

Since Mrs. Harry Haynes ran off, one can never tell what a woman will do.
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Victoria eloped with a handsome nobody
like that. Of course he's after her money, but he wouldn't get it, not if
I know Augustus Flint."

"Is he handsome?" said Mr. Crewe, as though the idea were a new one.
"Great Scott, I don't believe she gives him a thought. She's only going
as far as the field with him. She insisted on leaving her horse there
instead of putting him in the stable."

"Catch Alice going as far as the field with him," said Mrs. Pomfret, "but
I've done my duty. It's none of my affair."

In the meantime Austen and Victoria had walked on some distance in
silence.

"I have an idea with whom Mr. Crewe is in love," he said at length.

"So have I," replied Victoria, promptly. "Humphrey's in love with
himself. All he desires in a wife--if he desires one--is an inanimate and
accommodating looking-glass, in whom he may see what he conceives to be
his own image daily. James, you may take the mare home. I'm going to
drive with Mr. Vane."

She stroked Pepper's nose while Austen undid the hitch-rope from around
his neck.

"You and I are getting to be friends, aren't we, Pepper?" she asked, as
the horse, with quivering nostrils, thrust his head into her hand. Then
she sprang lightly into the buggy by Austen's side. The manner of these
acts and the generous courage with which she defied opinion appealed to
him so strongly that his heart was beating faster than Pepper's
hoof-beats on the turf of the pasture.

"You are very good to come with me," he said gravely, when they had
reached the road; "perhaps I ought not to have asked you."

"Why?" she asked, with one of her direct looks.

"It was undoubtedly selfish," he said, and added, more lightly, "I don't
wish to put you into Mrs. Pomfret's bad graces."

Victoria laughed.

"She thought it her duty to tell father the time you drove me to the
Hammonds'. She said I asked you to do it."

"What did he say?" Austen inquired, looking straight ahead of him.

"He didn't say much," she answered. "Father never does. I think he knows
that I am to be trusted."

"Even with me?" he asked quizzically, but with a deeper significance.

"I don't think he realizes how dangerous you are," she replied, avoiding
the issue. "The last time I saw you, you were actually trying to throw a
fat man out of your window. What a violent life you lead, Mr. Vane. I
hope you haven't shot any more people--"

"I saw you," he said.

"Is that the way you spend your time in office hours,--throwing people
out of the windows?"

"It was only Tom Gaylord."

"He's the man Mr. Jenney said wanted you to be a senator, isn't he?" she
asked.

"You have a good memory," he answered her. "Yes. That's the reason I
tried to throw him out of the window."

"Why didn't you be a senator?" she asked abruptly. "I always think of you
in public life. Why waste your opportunities?"

"I'm not at all sure that was an opportunity. It was only some of Tom's
nonsense. I should have had all the politicians in the district against
me."

"But you aren't the kind of man who would care about the politicians,
surely. If Humphrey Crewe can get elected by the people, I should think
you might."

"I can't afford to give garden-parties and buy lemonade," said Austen,
and they both laughed. He did not think it worth while mentioning Mr.
Braden.

"Sometimes I think you haven't a particle of ambition," she said. "I like
men with ambition."

"I shall try to cultivate it," said Austen.

"You seem to be popular enough."

"Most worthless people are popular, because they don't tread on anybody's
toes."

"Worthless people don't take up poor people's suits, and win them," she
said. "I saw Zeb Meader the other day, and he said you could be President
of the United States."

"Zeb meant that I was eligible--having been born in this country," said
Austen. "But where did you see him?"

"I--I went to see him."

"All the way to Mercer?"

"It isn't so far in an automobile," she replied, as though in excuse, and
added, still more lamely, "Zeb and I became great friends, you know, in
the hospital."

He did not answer, but wondered the more at the simplicity and kindness
in one brought up as she had been which prompted her to take the trouble
to see the humblest of her friends: nay, to take the trouble to have
humble friends.

The road wound along a ridge, and at intervals was spread before them the
full glory of the September sunset,--the mountains of the west in
blue-black silhouette against the saffron sky, the myriad dappled clouds,
the crimson fading from the still reaches of the river, and the
wine-colour from the eastern hills. Both were silent under the spell, but
a yearning arose within him when he glanced at the sunset glow on her
face: would sunsets hereafter bring sadness?

His thoughts ran riot as the light faded in the west. Hers were not
revealed. And the silence between them seemed gradually to grow into a
pact, to become a subtler and more intimate element than speech. A faint
tang of autumn smoke was in the air, a white mist crept along the running
waters, a silver moon like a new-stamped coin rode triumphant in the sky,
impatient to proclaim her glory; and the shadows under the ghost-like
sentinel trees in the pastures grew blacker. At last Victoria looked at
him.

"You are the only man I know who doesn't insist on talking," she said.
There are times when--"

"When there is nothing to say," he suggested.

She laughed softly. He tried to remember the sound of it afterwards, when
he rehearsed this phase of the conversation, but couldn't.

"It's because you like the hills, isn't it?" she asked. "You seem such an
out-of-door person, and Mr. Jenney said you were always wandering about
the country-side."

"Mr. Jenney also made other reflections about my youth," said Austen.

She laughed again, acquiescing in his humour, secretly thankful not to
find him sentimental.

"Mr. Jenney said something else that--that I wanted to ask you about,"
she went on, breathing more deeply. "It was about the railroad."

"I am afraid you have not come to an authority," he replied.

"You said the politicians would be against you if you tried to become a
State senator. Do you believe that the politicians are owned by the
railroad?"

"Has Jenney been putting such things into your head?"

"Not only Mr. Jenney, but--I have heard other people say that. And
Humphrey Crewe said that you hadn't a chance politically, because you had
opposed the railroad and had gone against your own interests."

Austen was amazed at this new exhibition of courage on her part, though
he was sorely pressed.

"Humphrey Crewe isn't much of an authority, either," he said briefly.

"Then you won't tell me?" said Victoria. "Oh, Mr. Vane," she cried, with
sudden vehemence, "if such things are going on here, I'm sure my father
doesn't know about them. This is only one State, and the railroad runs
through so many. He can't know everything, and I have heard him say that
he wasn't responsible for what the politicians did in his name. If they
are bad, why don't you go to him and tell him so? I'm sure he'd listen to
you."

"I'm sure he'd think me a presumptuous idiot," said Austen. "Politicians
are not idealists anywhere--the very word has become a term of reproach.
Undoubtedly your father desires to set things right as much as any one
else--probably more than any one."

"Oh, I know he does," exclaimed Victoria.

"If politics are not all that they should be," he went on, somewhat
grimly, with an unpleasant feeling of hypocrisy, "we must remember that
they are nobody's fault in particular, and can't be set right in an
instant by any one man, no matter how powerful."

She turned her face to him gratefully, but he did not meet her look. They
were on the driveway of Fairview.

"I suppose you think me very silly for asking such questions," she said.

"No," he answered gravely, "but politics are so intricate a subject that
they are often not understood by those who are in the midst of them. I
admire--I think it is very fine in you to want to know."

"You are not one of the men who would not wish a woman to know, are you?"

"No," he said, "no, I'm not."

The note of pain in his voice surprised and troubled her. They were
almost in sight of the house.

"I asked you to come to Fairview," she said, assuming a lightness of
tone, "and you never appeared. I thought it was horrid of you to forget,
after we'd been such friends."

"I didn't forget," replied Austen.

"Then you didn't want to come."

He looked into her eyes, and she dropped them.

"You will have to be the best judge of that," he said.

"But what am I to think?" she persisted.

"Think the best of me you can," he answered, as they drew up on the
gravel before the open door of Fairview house. A man was standing in the
moonlight on the porch.

"Is that you, Victoria?"

"Yes, father."

"I was getting worried," said Mr. Flint, coming down on the driveway.

"I'm all right," she said, leaping out of the buggy, "Mr. Vane brought me
home."

"How are you, Hilary?" said Mr. Flint.

"I'm Austen Vane, Mr. Flint," said Austen.

"How are you?" said Mr. Flint, as curtly as the barest politeness
allowed. "What was the matter with your own horse, Victoria?"

"Nothing," she replied, after an instant's pause. Austen wondered many
times whether her lips had trembled. "Mr. Vane asked me to drive with
him, and I came. Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Vane?"

"No, thanks," said Austen, "I'm afraid I have to go back to Ripton."

"Good-by, and thank you," she said, and gave him her hand. As he pressed
it, he thought he felt the slightest pressure in return, and then she
fled up the steps. As he drove away, he turned once to look at the great
house, with its shades closely drawn, as it stood amidst its setting of
shrubbery silent under the moon.

An hour later he sat in Hanover Street before the supper Euphrasia had
saved for him. But though he tried nobly, his heart was not in the
relation, for her benefit, of Mr. Crewe's garden-party.




CHAPTER IX

Mr. CREWE ASSAULTS THE CAPITAL

Those portions of the biographies of great men which deal with the small
beginnings of careers are always eagerly devoured, and for this reason
the humble entry of Mr. Crewe into politics may be of interest. Great
revolutions have had their origins in back cellars; great builders of
railroads have begun life with packs on their shoulders, trudging over
the wilderness which they were to traverse in after years in private
cars. The history of Napoleon Bonaparte has not a Sunday-school moral,
but we can trace therein the results of industry after the future emperor
got started. Industry, and the motto "nil desperandum" lived up to, and
the watchword "thorough," and a torch of unsuspected genius, and
"l'audace, toujours l'audace," and a man may go far in life.

Mr. Humphrey Crewe possessed, as may have been surmised, a dash of all
these gifts. For a summary of his character one would not have used the
phrase (as a contemporary of his remarked) of "a shrinking violet." The
phrase, after all, would have fitted very few great men; genius is sure
of itself, and seeks its peers.

The State capital is an old and beautiful and somewhat conservative town.
Life there has its joys and sorrows and passions, its ambitions, and
heart-burnings, to be sure; a most absorbing novel could be written about
it, and the author need not go beyond the city limits or approach the
state-house or the Pelican Hotel. The casual visitor in that capital
leaves it with a sense of peace, the echo of church bells in his ear, and
(if in winter) the impression of dazzling snow.  Comedies do not
necessarily require a wide stage, nor tragedies an amphitheatre for their
enactment.

No casual visitor, for instance, would have suspected from the faces or
remarks of the inhabitants whom he chanced to meet that there was
excitement in the capital over the prospective arrival of Mr. Humphrey
Crewe for the legislative session that winter. Legislative sessions, be
it known, no longer took place in the summer, a great relief to Mr. Crewe
and to farmers in general, who wished to be at home in haying time.

The capital abounded in comfortable homes and boasted not a dwellings of
larger pretensions. Chief among these was the Duncan house--still so
called, although Mr. Duncan, who built it, had been dead these fifteen
years, and his daughter and heiress, Janet, had married an Italian
Marquis and lived in a Roman palace, rehabilitated by the Duncan money.
Mr. Duncan, it may be recalled by some readers of "Coniston," had been a
notable man in his day, who had married the heiress of the State, and was
president of the Central Railroad, now absorbed in the United
Northeastern. The house was a great square of brick, with a wide cornice,
surrounded by a shaded lawn; solidly built, in the fashion of the days
when rich people stayed at home, with a conservatory and a library that
had once been Mr. Duncan's pride. The Marchesa cared very little about
the library, or about the house, for that matter; a great aunt and uncle,
spinster and bachelor, were living in it that winter, and they vacated
for Mr. Crewe. He travelled to the capital on the legislative pass the
Northeastern Railroads had so kindly given him, and brought down his
horses and his secretary and servants from Leith a few days before the
first of January, when the session was to open, and laid out his bills
for the betterment of the State on that library table where Mr. Duncan
had lovingly thumbed his folios. Mr. Crewe, with characteristic
promptitude, set his secretary to work to make a list of the persons of
influence in the town, preparatory to a series of dinner-parties; he
dropped into the office of Mr. Ridout, the counsel of the Northeastern
and of the Winona Corporation in the capital, to pay his respects as a
man of affairs, and incidentally to leave copies of his bills for the
improvement of the State. Mr. Ridout was politely interested, and
promised to read the bills, and agreed that they ought to pass.

Mr. Crewe also examined the Pelican Hotel, so soon to be a hive, and
stood between the snow-banks in the capital park contemplating the statue
of the great statesman there, and repeating to himself the quotation
inscribed beneath. "The People's Government, made for the People, made by
the People, and answerable to the People." And he wondered, idly,--for
the day was not cold,--how he would look upon a pedestal with the
Gladstone collar and the rough woollen coat that would lend themselves so
readily to reproduction in marble. Stranger things had happened, and
grateful States had been known to reward benefactors.

At length comes the gala night of nights,--the last of the old year,--and
the assembling of the five hundred legislators and of the army that is
wont to attend them. The afternoon trains, steaming hot, are crowded to
the doors, the station a scene of animation, and Main Street, dazzling in
snow, is alive with a stream of men, with eddies here and there at the
curbs and in the entries. What handshaking, and looking over of new
faces, and walking round and round! What sightseeing by the country
members and their wives who have come to attend the inauguration of the
new governor, the Honourable Asa P. Gray! There he is, with the whiskers
and the tall hat and the comfortable face, which wears already a look of
gubernatorial dignity and power. He stands for a moment in the lobby of
the Pelican Hotel,--thronged now to suffocation,--to shake hands genially
with new friends, who are led up by old friends with two fingers on the
elbow. The old friends crack jokes and whisper in the ear of the
governor-to-be, who presently goes upstairs, accompanied by the
Honourable Hilary Vane, to the bridal suite, which is reserved for him,
and which has fire-proof carpet on the floor. The Honourable Hilary has a
room next door, connecting with the new governor's by folding doors, but
this fact is not generally known to country members. Only old timers,
like Bijah Bixby and Job Braden, know that the Honourable Hilary's room
corresponds to one which in the old Pelican was called the Throne Room,
Number Seven, where Jethro Bass sat in the old days and watched
unceasingly the groups in the street from the window.

But Jethro Bass has been dead these twenty years, and his lieutenants
shorn of power. An empire has arisen out of the ashes of the ancient
kingdoms. Bijah and Job are old, all-powerful still in Clovelly and
Leith--influential still in their own estimations; still kicking up their
heels behind, still stuttering and whispering into ears, still "going
along by when they are talking sly." But there are no guerrillas now, no
condottieri who can be hired: the empire has a paid and standing army, as
an empire should. The North Country chiefs, so powerful in the clan
warfare of bygone days, are generals now,--chiefs of staff. The
captain-general, with a minute piece of Honey Dew under his tongue, sits
in Number Seven. A new Number Seven,--with electric lights and a bathroom
and a brass bed. Tempora mutantur. There is an empire and a feudal
system, did one but know it. The clans are part of the empire, and each
chief is responsible for his clan--did one but know it. One doesn't know
it.

The Honourable Brush Bascom, Duke of Putnam, member of the House, has
arrived unostentatiously--as is his custom--and is seated in his own
headquarters, number ten (with a bathroom). Number nine belongs from year
to year to Mr. Manning, division superintendent of that part of the
Northeastern which was the old Central,--a thin gentleman with
side-whiskers. He loves life in the capital so much that he takes his
vacations there in the winter,--during the sessions of the Legislature,
--presumably because it is gay. There are other rooms, higher up, of
important men, to be sure, but to enter which it is not so much of an
honour. The Honourable Bill Fleming, postmaster of Brampton in Truro
(Ephraim Prescott being long since dead and Brampton a large place now),
has his vacation during the session in room thirty-six (no bathroom); and
the Honourable Elisha Jane, Earl of Haines County in the North Country,
and United States consul somewhere, is home on his annual vacation in
room fifty-nine (no bath). Senator Whitredge has a room, and Senator
Green, and Congressmen Eldridge and Fairplay (no baths, and only
temporary).

The five hundred who during the next three months are to register the
laws find quarters as best they can. Not all of them are as luxurious as
Mr. Crewe in the Duncan house, or the Honourable Brush Bascom in number
ten of the Pelican, the rent of either of which would swallow the
legislative salary in no time. The Honourable Nat Billings, senator from
the Putnam County district, is comfortably installed, to be sure. By
gradual and unexplained degrees, the constitution of the State has been
changed until there are only twenty senators. Noble five hundred!
Steadfast twenty!

A careful perusal of the biographies of great men of the dynamic type
leads one to the conclusion that much of their success is due to an
assiduous improvement of every opportunity,--and Mr. Humphrey Crewe
certainly possessed this quality, also. He is in the Pelican Hotel this
evening, meeting the men that count. Mr. Job Braden, who had come down
with the idea that he might be of use in introducing the new member from
Leith to the notables, was met by this remark:--"You can't introduce me
to any of 'em--they all know who I am. Just point any of 'em out you
think I ought to know, and I'll go up and talk to 'em. What? Come up to
my house after a while and smoke a cigar. The Duncan house, you know--the
big one with the conservatory."

Mr. Crewe was right--they all knew him. The Leith millionaire, the summer
resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the size of
his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel that
evening. Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the bridal
suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe gained an
entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the somewhat
protracted felicitations of an Irish member of the Newcastle delegation.

"How are you, Governor?" he said, with the bonhomie of a man of the
world. "I'm Humphrey Crewe, from Leith. You got a letter from me, didn't
you, congratulating you upon your election? We didn't do badly for you up
there. What?"

"How do you do, Mr. Crewe?" said Mr. Gray, with dignified hospitality,
while their fingers slid over each other's; "I'm glad to welcome you
here. I've noticed the interest you've taken in the State, and the number
of ahem--very useful societies to which you belong."

"Good," said Mr. Crewe, "I do what I can. I just dropped in to shake your
hand, and to say that I hope we'll pull together."

The governor lifted his eyebrows a little.

"Why, I hope so, I'm sere, Mr. Crewe," said he.

"I've looked over the policy of the State for the last twenty years in
regard to public improvements and the introduction of modern methods as
concerns husbandry, and I find it deplorable. You and I, Governor, live
in a progressive age, and we can't afford not to see something done.
What? It is my desire to do what I can to help make your administration a
notable advance upon those of your predecessors."

"Why--I greatly appreciate it, Mr. Crewe," said Mr. Gray.

"I'm sure you do. I've looked over your record, and I find you've had
experience in State affairs, and that you are a successful and
conservative business man. That is the type we want--eh? Business men.
You've read over the bills I sent you by registered mail?"

"Ahem," said Mr. Gray, "I've been a good deal occupied since election
day, Mr. Crewe."

"Read 'em," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'll call in on you at the state-house
day after to-morrow at five o'clock promptly. We'll discuss 'em,
Governor, and if, by the light of your legislative experience, you have
any suggestions to make, I shall be glad to hear 'em. Before putting the
bills in their final shape I've taken the trouble to go over them with my
friend, Mr. Flint--our mutual friend, let us say."

"I've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Flint," said Mr. Gray. "I--ahem
--can't say that I know him intimately."

Mr. Crewe looked at Mr. Gray in a manner which plainly indicated that he
was not an infant.

"My relations with Mr. Flint and the Northeastern have been very
pleasant," said Mr. Crewe. "I may say that I am somewhat of a practical
railroad and business man myself."

"We need such men," said Mr. Gray. "Why, how do you do, Cary? How are the
boys up in Wheeler?"

"Well, good-by, Governor. See you day after to-morrow at five precisely,"
said Mr. Crewe.

The next official call of Mr. Crewe was on the Speaker-to-be, Mr. Doby of
Hale (for such matters are cut and dried), but any amount of pounding on
Mr. Doby's door (number seventy-five) brought no response. Other rural
members besides Mr. Crewe came and pounded on that door, and went away
again; but Mr. Job Braden suddenly appeared from another part of the
corridor, smiling benignly, and apparently not resenting the refusal of
his previous offers of help.

"W--want the Speaker?" he inquired.

Mr. Crewe acknowledged that he did.

"Ed only sleeps there," said Mr. Braden. "Guess you'll find him in the
Railroad-Room."

"Railroad Room?"

"Hilary Vane's, Number Seven." Mr. Braden took hold of the lapel of his
fellow-townsman's coat. "Callated you didn't know it all," he said;
"that's the reason I come down--so's to help you some."

Mr. Crewe, although he was not wont to take a second place, followed Mr.
Braden down the stairs to the door next to the governor's, where he
pushed ahead of his guide, through the group about the doorway,--none of
whom, however, were attempting to enter. They stared in some surprise at
Mr. Crewe as he flung open the door without knocking, and slammed it
behind him in Mr. Braden's face. But the bewilderment caused by this act
of those without was as nothing to the astonishment of those within--had
Mr. Crewe but known it. An oil painting of the prominent men gathered
about the marble-topped table in the centre of the room, with an outline
key beneath it, would have been an appropriate work of art to hang in the
state-house, as emblematic of the statesmanship of the past twenty years.
The Honourable Hilary Vane sat at one end in a padded chair; Mr. Manning,
the division superintendent, startled out of a meditation, was upright on
the end of the bed; Mr. Ridout, the Northeastern's capital lawyer, was
figuring at the other end of the table; the Honourable Brush Bascom was
bending over a wide, sad-faced gentleman of some two hundred and fifty
pounds who sat at the centre in his shirt-sleeves, poring over numerous
sheets in front of him which were covered with names of the five hundred.
This gentleman was the Honourable Edward Doby of Hale, who, with the kind
assistance of the other gentlemen above-named, was in this secluded spot
making up a list of his committees, undisturbed by eager country members.
At Mr. Crewe's entrance Mr. Bascom, with great presence of mind, laid
down his hat over the principal list, while Mr. Ridout, taking the hint,
put the Revised Statutes on the other. There was a short silence; and the
Speaker-to-be, whose pencil had been knocked out of his hand; recovered
himself sufficiently to relight an extremely frayed cigar.

Not that Mr. Crewe was in the least abashed. He chose this opportunity to
make a survey of the situation, nodded to Mr. Ridout, and walked up to
the padded armchair.

"How are you, Mr. Vane?" he said. "I thought I'd drop in to shake hands
with you, especially as I have business with the Speaker, and heard he
was here. But I'm glad to have met you for many reasons. I want you to be
one of the vice-presidents of the State Economic League--it won't cost
you anything. Ridout has agreed to let his name go on."

The Honourable Hilary, not being an emotional man, merely grunted as he
started to rise to his feet. What he was about to say was interrupted by
a timid knock, and there followed another brief period of silence.

"It ain't anybody," said Mr. Bascom, and crossing the room, turned the
key in the lock. The timid knock was repeated.

"I suppose you're constantly interrupted here by unimportant people," Mr.
Crewe remarked.

"Well," said Mr. Vane, slowly, boring into Mr. Crewe with his eye, "that
statement isn't far out of the way."

"I don't believe you've ever met me, Mr. Vane. I'm Humphrey Crewe. We
have a good friend in common in Mr. Flint."

The Honourable Hilary's hand passed over Mr. Crewe's lightly.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Crewe," he said, and a faint twinkle appeared in
his eye. "Job has told everybody you were coming down. Glad to welcome a
man of your ahem--stamp into politics."

"I'm a plain business man," answered Mr. Crewe, modestly; "and although I
have considerable occupation, I believe that one in my position has
duties to perform. I've certain bills--"

"Yes, yes," agreed the Honourable Hilary; "do you know Mr. Brush Bascom
and Mr. Manning? Allow me to introduce you,--and General Doby."

"How are you, General?" said Mr. Crewe to the Speaker-to-be, "I'm always
glad to shake the hand of a veteran. Indeed, I have thought that a
society--"

"I earned my title," said General Doby, somewhat sheepishly, "fighting on
Governor Brown's staff. There were twenty of us, and we were resistless,
weren't we, Brush?"

"Twenty on a staff!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe.

"Oh, we furnished our own uniforms and paid our own way--except those of
us who had passes," declared the General, as though the memory of his
military career did not give him unalloyed pleasure. "What's the use of
State sovereignty if you can't have a glittering army to follow the
governor round?"

Mr. Crewe had never considered this question, and he was not the man to
waste time in speculation.

"Doubtless you got a letter from me, General Doby," he said. "We did what
we could up our way to put you in the Speaker's chair."

General Doby creased a little in the middle, to signify that he was
bowing.

"I trust it will be in my power to reciprocate, Mr. Crewe," he replied.

"We want to treat Mr. Crewe right," Mr. Bascom put in.

"You have probably made a note of my requests," Mr. Crewe continued. "I
should like to be on the Judiciary Committee, for one thing. Although I
am not a lawyer, I know something of the principles of law, and I
understand that this and the Appropriations Committee are the most
important. I may say with truth that I should be a useful member of that,
as I am accustomed to sitting on financial boards. As my bills are of
some considerable importance and deal with practical progressive
measures, I have no hesitation in asking for the chairmanship of Public
Improvements,--and of course a membership in the Agricultural is
essential, as I have bills for them. Gentlemen," he added to the room at
large, "I have typewritten manifolds of those bills which I shall be
happy to leave here--at headquarters." And suiting the action to the
word, he put down a packet on the table.

The Honourable Brush Bascom, accompanied by Mr. Ridout, walked to the
window and stood staring at the glitter of the electric light on the
snow. The Honourable Hilary gazed steadily at the table, while General
Doby blew his nose with painful violence.

"I'll do what I can for you, certainly, Mr. Crewe," he said. "But--what
is to become of the other four hundred and ninety-nine? The ways of a
Speaker are hard, Mr. Crewe, and I have to do justice to all."

"Well," answered Mr. Crewe, of course I don't want to be unreasonable,
and I realize the pressure that's put upon you. But when you consider the
importance of the work I came down here to do--"

"I do consider it," said the Speaker, politely. "It's a little early to
talk about the make-up of committees. I hope to be able to get at them by
Sunday. You may be sure I'll do my best for you."

"We'd better make a note of it," said Mr. Crewe; "give me some paper,"
and he was reaching around behind General Doby for one of the precious
sheets under Mr. Bascom's hat, when the general, with great presence of
mind, sat on it. We have it, from a malicious and untrustworthy source,
that the Northeastern Railroads paid for a new one.

"Here, here," cried the Speaker, "make the memorandum here."

At this critical juncture a fortunate diversion occurred. A rap--three
times--of no uncertain quality was heard at the door, and Mr. Brush
Bascom hastened to open it. A voice cried out:--"Is Manning here? The
boys are hollering for those passes," and a wiry, sallow gentleman burst
in, none other than the Honourable Elisha Jane, who was taking his
consular vacation. When his eyes fell upon Mr. Crewe he halted abruptly,
looked a little foolish, and gave a questioning glance at the Honourable
Hilary.

"Mountain passes, Lish? Sit down. Did I ever tell you that story about
the slide in Rickets Gulch?" asked the Honourable Brush Bascom.  But
first let me make you acquainted with Mr. Humphrey Crewe of Leith. Mr.
Crewe has come down here with the finest lot of bills you ever saw, and
we're all going to take hold and put 'em through. Here, Lish, I'll give
you a set."

"Read 'em, Mr. Jane," urged Mr. Crewe. "I don't claim much for 'em, but
perhaps they will help to set a few little matters right--I hope so."

Mr. Jane opened the bills with deliberation, and cast his eyes over the
headings.

"I'll read 'em this very night, Mr. Crewe," he said solemnly; "this
meeting you is a particular pleasure, and I have heard in many quarters
of these measures."

"Well," admitted Mr. Crewe, "they may help some. I have a few other
matters to attend to this evening, so I must say good-night, gentlemen.
Don't let me interfere with those I mountain passes, Mr. Manning."

With this parting remark, which proved him to be not merely an idealist
in politics, but a practical man, Mr. Crewe took his leave. And he was
too much occupied with his own thoughts to pay any attention to the click
of the key as it turned in the lock, or to hear United States Senator
Whitredge rap (three times) on the door after he had turned the corner,
or to know that presently the sliding doors into the governor's bridal
suite--were to open a trifle, large enough for the admission of the body
of the Honourable Asa P. Gray.

Number Seven still keeps up its reputation as the seat of benevolence,
and great public benefactors still meet there to discuss the welfare of
their fellow-men: the hallowed council chamber now of an empire, seat of
the Governor-general of the State, the Honourable Hilary Vane, and his
advisers. For years a benighted people, with a fond belief in their
participation of Republican institutions, had elected the noble five
hundred of the House and the stanch twenty of the Senate. Noble five
hundreds (biggest Legislature in the world) have come and gone; debated,
applauded, fought and on occasions denounced, kicked over the traces, and
even wept--to no avail. Behold that political institution of man,
representative government There it is on the stage, curtain up, a sublime
spectacle for all men to see, and thrill over speeches about the Rights
of Man, and the Forefathers in the Revolution; about Constituents who do
not constitute. The High Heavens allow it and smile, and it is well for
the atoms that they think themselves free American representatives, that
they do not feel the string of predestination around their ankles. The
senatorial twenty, from their high carved seats, see the strings and
smile, too; yes, and see their own strings, and smile. Wisdom does not
wish for flight. "The people" having changed the constitution, the
blackbirds are reduced from four and forty to a score. This is
cheaper--for the people.

Democracy on the front of the stage before an applauding audience;
performers absorbed in their parts, forgetting that the landlord has to
be paid in money yet to be earned. Behind the stage, the real play, the
absorbing interest, the high stakes--occasional discreet laughter through
the peep-hole when an actor makes an impassioned appeal to the gods.
Democracy in front, the Feudal System, the Dukes and Earls behind--but in
plain clothes; Democracy in stars and spangles and trappings and
insignia. Or, a better figure, the Fates weaving the web in that mystic
chamber, Number Seven, pausing now and again to smile as a new thread is
put in. Proclamations, constitutions, and creeds crumble before
conditions; the Law of Dividends is the high law, and the Forum an open
vent through which the white steam may rise heavenward and be resolved
again into water.

Mr. Crewe took his seat in the popular assemblage next day, although most
of the five hundred gave up theirs to the ladies who had come to hear his
Excellency deliver his inaugural. The Honourable Asa made a splendid
figure, all agreed, and read his speech in a firm and manly voice. A
large part of it was about the people; some of it about the sacred
government they had inherited from their forefathers; still another
concerned the high character and achievements of the inhabitants within
the State lines; the name of Abraham Lincoln was mentioned, and, with
even greater reverence and fervour, the Republican party which had
ennobled and enriched the people--and incidentally elected the governor.
There was a noble financial policy, a curtailment of expense. The forests
should be protected, roads should be built, and, above all, corporations
should be held to a strict accounting.

Needless to say, the speech gave great satisfaction to all, and many old
friends left the hall exclaiming that they didn't believe Asa had it in
him. As a matter of fact (known only to the initiated), Asa didn't have
it in him until last night, before he squeezed through the crack in the
folding doors from room number six to room Number Seven. The inspiration
came to him then, when he was ennobled by the Governor-general, who
represents the Empire. Perpetual Governor-general, who quickens into life
puppet governors of his own choosing Asa has agreed, for the honour of
the title of governor of his State, to act the part, open the fairs, lend
his magnificent voice to those phrases which it rounds so well. It is
fortunate, when we smoke a fine cigar from Havana, that we cannot look
into the factory. The sight would disturb us. It was well for the
applauding, deep-breathing audience in the state-house that first of
January that they did not have a glimpse in room Number Seven the night
before, under the sheets that contained the list of the Speaker's
committees; it was well that they could not go back to Ripton into the
offices on the square, earlier in December, where Mr. Hamilton Tooting
was writing the noble part of that inaugural from memoranda given him by
the Honourable Hilary Vane. Yes, the versatile Mr. Tooting, and none
other, doomed forever to hide the light of his genius under a bushel! The
financial part was written by the Governor-general himself--the
Honourable Hilary Vane. And when it was all finished and revised, it was
put into a long envelope which bore this printed address: Augustus P.
Flint, Pres't United Northeastern Railroads, New York. And came back with
certain annotations on the margin, which were duly incorporated into it.
This is the private history (which must never be told) of the document
which on January first became, as far as fame and posterity is concerned,
the Honourable Asa P. Gray's--forever and forever.

Mr. Crewe liked the inaugural, and was one of the first to tell Mr. Gray
so, and to express his pleasure and appreciation of the fact that his
request (mailed in November) had been complied with, that the substance
of his bills had been recommended in the governor's programme.

He did not pause to reflect on the maxim, that platforms are made to get
in by and inaugurals to get started by.

Although annual efforts have been made by various public-spirited
citizens to build a new state-house, economy--with assistance from room
Number Seven has triumphed. It is the same state-house from the gallery
of which poor William Wetherell witnessed the drama of the Woodchuck
Session, although there are more members now, for the population of the
State has increased to five hundred thousand. It is well for General
Doby, with his two hundred and fifty pounds, that he is in the Speaker's
chair; five hundred seats are a good many for that hall, and painful in a
long session. The Honourable Brush Bascom can stretch his legs, because
he is fortunate enough to have a front seat. Upon inquiry, it turns out
that Mr. Bascom has had a front seat for the last twenty years--he has
been uniformly lucky in drawing. The Honourable Jacob Botcher (ten years'
service) is equally fortunate; the Honourable Jake is a man of large
presence, and a voice that sounds as if it came, oracularly, from the
caverns of the earth. He is easily heard by the members on the back
seats, while Mr. Bascom is not. Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer, is in the
House this year, and singularly enough has a front seat likewise. It was
Mr. Crewe's misfortune to draw number 415, in the extreme corner of the
room, and next the steam radiator. But he was not of the metal to accept
tamely such a ticketing from the hat of destiny (via the Clerk of the
House). He complained, as any man of spirit would, and Mr. Utter, the
polite clerk, is profoundly sorry,--and says it maybe managed. Curiously
enough, the Honourable Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher join
Mr. Crewe in his complaint, and reiterate that it is an outrage that a
man of such ability and deserving prominence should be among the
submerged four hundred and seventy. It is managed in a mysterious manner
we don't pretend to fathom, and behold Mr. Crewe in the front of the
Forum, in the seats of the mighty, where he can easily be pointed out
from the gallery at the head of the five hundred, between those shining
leaders and parliamentarians, the Honourables Brush Bascom and Jake
Botcher.

For Mr. Crewe has not come to the Legislature, like the country members
in the rear, to acquire a smattering of parliamentary procedure by the
day the Speaker is presented with a gold watch, at the end of the
session. Not he! Not the practical business man, the member of boards,
the chairman and president of societies. He has studied the Rules of the
House and parliamentary law, you may be sure. Genius does not come
unprepared, and is rarely caught napping. After the Legislature
adjourned that week the following telegram was sent over the wires:--

   Augustus P. Flint, New York.

   Kindly use your influence with Doby to secure my committee
   appointments. Important as per my conversation with you.

                       Humphrey Crewe.

Nor was Mr. Crewe idle from Saturday to Monday night, when the committees
were to be announced. He sent to the State Tribune office for fifty
copies of that valuable paper, which contained a two-column-and-a-half
article on Mr. Crewe as a legislator and financier and citizen, with a
summary of his bills and an argument as to how the State would benefit by
their adoption; an accurate list of Mr. Crewe's societies was inserted,
and an account of his life's history, and of those ancestors of his who
had been born or lived within the State. Indeed, the accuracy of this
article as a whole did great credit to the editor of the State Tribune,
who must have spent a tremendous amount of painstaking research upon it;
and the article was so good that Mr. Crewe regretted (undoubtedly for the
editor's sake) that a request could not be appended to it such as is used
upon marriage and funeral notices: "New York, Boston, and Philadelphia
papers please copy."

Mr. Crewe thought it his duty to remedy as much as possible the
unfortunate limited circulation of the article, and he spent as much as a
whole day making out a list of friends and acquaintances whom he thought
worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune--marked personal. Victoria Flint
got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table. (Mr. Flint did
not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and
helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was. He sent
his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his
handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which
provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations
which, according to Charles Reade, should form the ingredients of a good
novel. But of this matter later.

Mrs. Pomfret and Alice each got one, and each wrote Mr. Crewe appropriate
congratulations. (Alice's answer supervised.) Mrs. Chillingham got one;
the Honourable Hilary Vane got one--marked in red ink, lest he should
have skipped it in his daily perusal of the paper. Mr. Brush, Bascom got
one likewise. But the list of Mr. Crewe's acquaintances is too long and
too broad to dwell upon further in these pages.

The Monday-night session came at last, that sensational hour when the
Speaker makes those decisions to which he is supposed to have given birth
over Sunday in the seclusion of his country home at Hale. Monday-night
sessions are, as a rule, confined in attendance to the Honourable Brush
Bascom and Mr. Ridout and a few other conscientious members who do not
believe in cheating the State, but to-night all is bustle and confusion,
and at least four hundred members are pushing down the aisles and
squeezing past each other into the narrow seats, and reading the State
Tribune or the ringing words of the governor's inaugural which they find
in the racks on the back of the seats before them. Speaker Doby, who has
been apparently deep in conference with the most important members (among
them Mr. Crewe, to whom he has whispered that a violent snow-storm is
raging in Hale), raps for order; and after a few preliminaries hands to
Mr. Utter, the clerk, amidst a breathless silence, the paper on which the
parliamentary career of so many ambitious statesmen depends.

It is not a pleasure to record the perfidy of man, nor the lack of
judgment which prevents him, in his circumscribed lights, from
recognizing undoubted geniuses when he sees them. Perhaps it was jealousy
on General Doby's part, and a selfish desire to occupy the centre of the
stage himself, but at any rate we will pass hastily over the disagreeable
portions of this narrative. Mr. Crewe settled himself with his feet
extended, and with a complacency which he had rightly earned by leaving
no stone unturned, to listen. He sat up a little when the Appropriations
Committee, headed by the Honourable Jake Botcher, did not contain his
name--but it might have been an oversight of Mr. Utters; when the
Judiciary (Mr. Ridout's committee) was read it began to look like malice;
committee after committee was revealed, and the name of Humphrey Crewe
might not have been contained in the five hundred except as the twelfth
member of forestry, until it appeared at the top of National Affairs.
Here was a broad enough field, certainly,--the Trusts, the Tariff, the
Gold Standard, the Foreign Possessions,--and Mr. Crewe's mind began to
soar in spite of himself. Public Improvements was reached, and he
straightened. Mr. Beck, a railroad lawyer from Belfast, led it. Mr. Crewe
arose, as any man of spirit would, and walked with dignity up the aisle
and out of the house. This deliberate attempt to crush genius would
inevitably react on itself. The Honourable Hilary Vane and Mr. Flint
should be informed of it at once.




CHAPTER X

"FOR BILLS MAY COME, AND BILLS MAY GO"

A man with a sense of humour once went to the capital as a member of the
five hundred from his town, and he never went back again. One reason for
this was that he died the following year, literally, the doctors said,
from laughing too much. I know that this statement will be received
incredulously, and disputed by those who claim that laughter is a good
thing; the honourable gentleman died from too much of a good thing. He
was overpowered by having too much to laugh at, and the undiscerning
thought him a fool, and the Empire had no need of a court jester. But
many of his sayings have lived, nevertheless. He wrote a poem, said to be
a plagiarism, which contains the quotation at the beginning of this
chapter: "For bills may come, and bills may go, but I go on forever." The
first person singular is supposed to relate to the United Northeastern
Railroads. It was a poor joke at best.

It is needless to say that the gentleman referred to had a back seat
among the submerged four hundred and seventy,--and that he kept it. No
discerning and powerful well-wishers came forward and said to him,
"Friend, go up higher." He sat, doubled up, in number, and the gods gave
him compensation in laughter; he disturbed the Solons around him, who
were interested in what was going on in front, and trying to do their
duty to their constituents by learning parliamentary procedure before the
Speaker got his gold watch and shed tears over it.

The gentleman who laughed and died is forgotten, as he deserves to be,
and it never occurred to anybody that he might have been a philosopher,
after all. There is something irresistibly funny about predestination;
about men who are striving and learning and soberly voting upon measures
with which they have as little to do as guinea-pigs. There were certain
wise and cynical atheists who did not attend the sessions at all except
when they received mysterious hints to do so. These were chiefly from
Newcastle. And there were others who played poker in the state-house
cellar waiting for the Word to come to them, when they went up and voted
(prudently counting their chips before they did so), and descended again.
The man with a sense of humour laughed at these, too, and at the twenty
blackbirds in the Senate,--but not so heartily. He laughed at their
gravity, for no gravity can equal that of gentlemen who play with stacked
cards.

The risible gentleman laughed at the proposed legislation, about which he
made the song, and he likened it to a stream that rises hopefully in the
mountains, and takes its way singing at the prospect of reaching the
ocean, but presently flows into a hole in the ground to fill the
forgotten caverns of the earth, and is lost to the knowledge and sight of
man. The caverns he labelled respectively Appropriations, Railroad,
Judiciary, and their guardians were unmistakably the Honourables Messrs.
Bascom, Botcher, and Ridout. The greatest cavern of all he called "The
Senate."

If you listen, you can hear the music of the stream of bills as it is
rising hopefully and flowing now: "Mr. Crewe of Leith gives notice that
on to-morrow or some subsequent day he will introduce a bill entitled,
'An act for the Improvement of the State Highways.' Mr. Crewe of Leith
gives notice, etc. 'An act for the Improvement of the Practice of
Agriculture.' 'An act relating to the State Indebtedness.' 'An act to
increase the State Forest Area.' 'An act to incorporate the State
Economic League.' 'An act to incorporate the State Children's Charities
Association.' 'An act in relation to Abandoned Farms.'" These were some
of the most important, and they were duly introduced on the morrow, and
gravely referred by the Speaker to various committees. As might be
expected, a man whose watchword is, "thorough" immediately got a list of
those committees, and lost no time in hunting up the chairmen and the
various available members thereof.

As a man of spirit, also, Mr. Crewe wrote to Mr. Flint, protesting as to
the manner in which he had been treated concerning committees. In the
course of a week he received a kind but necessarily brief letter from the
Northeastern's president to remind him that he persisted in a fallacy; as
a neighbour, Mr. Flint would help him to the extent of his power, but the
Northeastern Railroads could not interfere in legislative or political
matters. Mr. Crewe was naturally pained by the lack of confidence of his
friend; it seems useless to reiterate that he was far from being a fool,
and no man could be in the capital a day during the session without being
told of the existence of Number Seven, no matter how little the informant
might know of what might be going on there. Mr. Crewe had been fortunate
enough to see the inside of that mysterious room, and, being a
sufficiently clever man to realize the importance and necessity of
government by corporations, had been shocked at nothing he had seen or
heard. However, had he had a glimpse of the Speaker's lists under the
hopelessly crushed hat of Mr. Bascom, perhaps he might have been shocked,
after all.

It was about this time that a touching friendship began which ought, in
justice, to be briefly chronicled. It was impossible for the Honourable
Brush Bascom and the Honourable Jacob Botcher to have Mr. Crewe sitting
between them and not conceive a strong affection for him. The Honourable
Brush, though not given to expressing his feelings, betrayed some
surprise at the volumes Mr. Crewe had contributed to the stream of bills;
and Mr. Botcher, in a Delphic whisper, invited Mr. Crewe to visit him in
room forty-eight of the Pelican that evening. To tell the truth, Mr.
Crewe returned the feeling of his companions warmly, and he had even
entertained the idea of asking them both to dine with him that evening.

Number forty-eight (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic
resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here.
Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty
voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed transom. The Honourable
Jake, being a tee-totaller, had no bathroom, and none but his intimate
friends ever looked in the third from the top bureau drawer.

The proprietor of the Pelican, who in common with the rest of humanity
had fallen a victim to the rough and honest charms and hearty good
fellowship of the Honourable Jake, always placed a large padded arm-chair
in number forty-eight before the sessions, knowing that the Honourable
Jake's constituency would be uniformly kind to him. There Mr. Botcher was
wont to sit (when he was not depressing one of the tiles in the rotunda),
surrounded by his friends and their tobacco smoke, discussing in his
frank and manly fashion the public questions of the day.

Mr. Crewe thought it a little strange that, whenever he entered a room in
the Pelican, a silence should succeed the buzz of talk which he had heard
through the closed transom; but he very naturally attributed this to the
constraint which ordinary men would be likely to feel in his presence. In
the mouth of one presumptuous member the word "railroad" was cut in two
by an agate glance from the Honourable Brush, and Mr. Crewe noted with
some surprise that the Democratic leader of the House, Mr. Painter, was
seated on Mr. Botcher's mattress, with an expression that was in singular
contrast to the look of bold defiance which he had swept over the House
that afternoon in announcing his opposition policy. The vulgar political
suggestion might have crept into a more trivial mind than Mr. Crewe's
that Mr. Painter was being, "put to bed," the bed being very similar to
that of Procrustes. Mr. Botcher extracted himself from the nooks and
crannies of his armchair.

"How are you, Crewe?" he said hospitably; "we're all friends here--eh,
Painter? We don't carry our quarrels outside the swinging doors. You know
Mr. Crewe--by sight, of course. Do you know these other gentlemen, Crewe?
I didn't expect you so early."

The "other gentlemen" said that they were happy to make the acquaintance
of their fellow-member from Leith, and seemingly with one consent began
to edge towards the door.

"Don't go, boys," Mr. Bascom protested. "Let me finish that story."

Some of "the boys" seemed to regard this statement as humorous,--more
humorous, indeed, than the story itself. And when it was finished they
took their departure, a trifle awkwardly, led by Mr. Painter.

"They're a little mite bashful," said Mr. Botcher, apologetically.

"How many more of those bills have you got?" demanded Mr. Bascom, from
the steam radiator, with characteristic directness.

"I put 'em all in this morning," said Mr. Crewe, "but I have thought
since of two or three other conditions which might be benefited by
legislation."

"Well," said Mr. Bascom, kindly, "if you have any more I was going to
suggest that you distribute 'em round among the boys. That's the way I
do, and most folks don't guess they're your bills. See?"

"What harm is there in that?" demanded Mr. Crewe. "I'm not ashamed of
'em."

"Brush was only lookin' at it from the point of view of gettin' 'em
through," honest Mr. Botcher put in, in stentorian tones. "It doesn't do
for a new member to be thought a hog about legislation."

Now the Honourable Jacob only meant this in the kindest manner, as we
know, and to give inexperience a hint from well-intentioned experience.
On the other hand, Mr. Crewe had a dignity and a position to uphold. He
was a personality. People who went too far with him were apt to be
rebuked by a certain glassy quality in his eye, and this now caused the
Honourable Jake to draw back perceptibly.

"I see no reason why a public-spirited man should be open to such an
imputation," said Mr. Crewe.

"Certainly not, certainly not," said Mr. Botcher, in stentorian tones of
apology, "I was only trying to give you a little friendly advice, but I
may have put it too strong. Brush and I--I may as well be plain about it,
Mr. Crewe--have taken a liking to you. Couldn't help it, sir, sitting
next to you as we do. We take an interest in your career, and we don't
want you to make any mistakes. Ain't that about it, Brush?"

"That's about it," said Mr. Bascom.

Mr. Crewe was to big a man not to perceive and appreciate the sterling
philanthropy which lay beneath the exteriors of his new friends, who
scorned to flatter him.

"I understand the spirit in which your advice is given, gentlemen," he
replied magnanimously, "and I appreciate it. We are all working for the
same things, and we all believe that they must be brought about in the
same practical way. For instance, we know as practical men that the
railroad pays a large tax in this State, and that property must take a
hand--a very considerable hand--in legislation. You gentlemen, as
important factors in the Republican organization, are loyal to--er--that
property, and perhaps for wholly desirable reasons cannot bring forward
too many bills under your own names. Whereas I--"

At this point in Mr. Crewe's remarks the Honourable Jacob Botcher was
seized by an appalling coughing fit which threatened to break his
arm-chair, probably owing to the fact that he had swallowed something
which he had in his mouth the wrong way. Mr. Bascom, assisted by Mr.
Crewe, pounded him relentlessly on the back.

"I read that article in the 'Tribune' about you with great interest,"
said Mr. Bascom, when Mr. Botcher's coughing had subsided. "I had no idea
you were so--ahem--well equipped for a political career. But what we
wanted to speak to you about was this," he continued, as Mr. Crewe showed
signs of breaking in, "those committee appointments you desired."

"Yes," said Mr. Crewe, with some pardonable heat, "the Speaker doesn't
seem to know which side his bread's buttered on."

"What I was going to say," proceeded Mr. Bascom, "was that General Doby
is a pretty good fellow. Personally, I happen to know that the general
feels very badly that he couldn't give you what you wanted. He took a
shine to you that night you saw him."

"Yes," Mr. Botcher agreed, for he had quite recovered, the general felt
bad--feels bad, I should say. He perceived that you were a man of
ability, sir--"

"And that was just the reason," said the Honourable Brush, "that he
couldn't make you more useful just now."

"There's a good deal of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of
ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones.
"The competition amongst those--er--who have served the party is very
keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the
general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of
your--er--well-wishers persuaded him to take you off for your own good."

"It wouldn't do for the party leaders to make you too prominent all at
once," said Mr. Bascom. "You are bound to take an active part in what
passes here. The general said, 'At all events I will give Mr. Crewe one
chairmanship by which he can make a name for himself suited to his
talents,' and he insisted on giving you, in spite of some remonstrances
from your friends, National Affairs. The general urged, rightly, that
with your broad view and knowledge of national policy, it was his duty to
put you in that place whatever people might say."

Mr. Crewe listened to these explanations in some surprise; and being a
rational man, had to confess that they were--more or less reasonable.

"Scarcely any bills come before that committee," he objected.

"Ah," replied Mr. Bascom, "that is true. But the chairman of that
committee is generally supposed to be in line for--er--national honours.
It has not always happened in the past, because the men have not proved
worthy. But the opportunity is always given to that chairman to make a
speech upon national affairs which is listened to with the deepest
interest.

"Is that so?" said Mr. Crewe. He wanted to be of service, as we know. He
was a man of ideas, and the opening sentences of the speech were already
occurring to him.

"Let's go upstairs and see the general now," suggested Mr. Botcher,
smiling that such a happy thought should have occurred to him.

"Why, I guess we couldn't do any better," Mr. Bascom agreed.

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "I'm willing to hear what he's got to say,
anyway."

Taking advantage of this generous concession, Mr. Botcher hastily locked
the door, and led the way up the stairway to number seventy-five. After a
knock or two here, the door opened a crack, disclosing, instead of
General Doby's cherubic countenance, a sallow face with an exceedingly
pointed nose. The owner of these features, having only Mr. Botcher in his
line of vision, made what was perhaps an unguarded remark.

"Hello, Jake, the general's in number nine--Manning sent for him about
half an hour ago."

It was Mr. Botcher himself who almost closed the door on the gentleman's
sharp nose, and took Mr. Crewe's arm confidingly.

"We'll go up to the desk and see Doby in the morning,--he's busy," said
the Honourable Jake.

"What's the matter with seeing him now?" Mr. Crewe demanded. "I know
Manning. He's the division superintendent, isn't he?"

Mr. Botcher and Mr. Bascom exchanged glances.

"Why, yes--" said Mr. Bascom, "yes, he is. He's a great friend of General
Doby's, and their wives are great friends."

"Intimate friends, sir," said the Honourable Jake

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "we won't bother 'em but a moment."

It was he who led the way now, briskly, the Honourable Brush and the
Honourable Jake pressing closely after him. It was Mr. Crewe who, without
pausing to knock, pushed open the door of number nine, which was not
quite closed; and it was Mr. Crewe who made the important discovery that
the lugubrious division superintendent had a sense of humour. Mr. Manning
was seated at a marble-topped table writing on a salmon-coloured card, in
the act of pronouncing these words:--"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker
and all the little Speakers, to New York and return."

Mr. Speaker Doby, standing before the marble-topped table with his hands
in his pockets, heard the noise behind him and turned, and a mournful
expression spread over his countenance.

"Don't mind me," said Mr. Crewe, waving a hand in the direction of the
salmon-coloured tickets; "I hope you have a good time, General. When do
you go?"

"Why," exclaimed the Speaker, "how are you, Mr. Crewe, how are you? It's
only one of Manning's little jokes."

"That's all right, General," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't been a director
in railroads for nothing. I'm not as green as he thinks. Am I, Mr.
Manning?"

"It never struck me that green was your colour, Mr. Crewe," answered the
division superintendent, smiling a little as he tore the tickets into
bits and put them in the waste-basket.

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "you needn't have torn 'em up on my account. I
travel on the pass which the Northeastern gives me as a legislator, and
I'm thinking seriously of getting Mr. Flint to send me an annual, now
that I'm in politics and have to cover the State."

"We thought you were a reformer, Mr. Crewe," the Honourable Brush Bascom
remarked.

"I am a practical man," said Mr. Crewe; "a railroad man, a business mark
and as such I try to see things as they are."

"Well," said General Doby, who by this time had regained his usual genial
air of composure, I'm glad you said that, Mr. Crewe. As these gentlemen
will tell you, if I'd had my wish I'd have had you on every important
committee in the House."

"Chairman of every important committee, General," corrected the
Honourable Jacob Botcher.

"Yes, chairman of 'em," assented the general, after a glance at Mr.
Crewe's countenance to see how this statement fared. "But the fact is,
the boys are all jealous of you--on the quiet. I suppose you suspected
something of the kind."

"I should have imagined there might be some little feeling," Mr. Crewe
assented modestly.

"Exactly," cried the general, "and I had to combat that feeling when I
insisted upon putting you at the head of National Affairs. It does not do
for a new member, whatever his prominence in the financial world, to be
pushed forward too quickly. And unless I am mighty mistaken, Mr. Crewe,"
he added, with his hand on the new member's shoulder, "you will make
yourself felt without any boosting from me."

"I did not come here to remain idle, General," answered Mr. Crewe,
considerably mollified.

"Certainly not," said the general, "and I say to some of those men, 'Keep
your eye on the gentleman who is Chairman of National Affairs.'"

After a little more of this desultory and pleasant talk, during which
recourse was, had to the bathroom for several tall and thin glasses
ranged on the shelf there, Mr. Crewe took his departure in a most equable
frame of mind. And when the door was closed and locked behind him, Mr.
Manning dipped his pen in the ink, once more produced from a drawer in
the table the salmon-coloured tickets, and glanced again at the general
with a smile.

"For Mr. Speaker and Mrs. Speaker and all the little Speakers, to New
York and return."




MR. CREWE'S CAREER

By Winston Churchill
BOOK 2.




CHAPTER XI

THE HOPPER

It is certainly not the function of a romance to relate, with the
exactness of a House journal, the proceedings of a Legislature. Somebody
has likened the state-house to pioneer Kentucky, a dark and bloody ground
over which the battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed,--no place
for an innocent and unselfish bystander like Mr. Crewe, who desired only
to make of his State an Utopia; whose measures were for the public good
--not his own. But if any politician were fatuous enough to believe that
Humphrey Crewe was a man to introduce bills and calmly await their fate;
a man who, like Senator Sanderson, only came down to the capital when he
was notified by telegram, that politician was entirely mistaken.

No sooner had his bills been assigned to the careful and just
consideration of the committees in charge of the Honourable Brush Bascom,
Mr. Botcher, and others than Mr. Crewe desired of each a day for a
hearing. Every member of the five hundred was provided with a copy; nay,
nearly every member was personally appealed to, to appear and speak for
the measures. Foresters, road builders, and agriculturists (expenses
paid) were sent for from other States; Mr. Ball and others came down from
Leith, and gentlemen who for a generation had written letters to the
newspapers turned up from other localities. In two cases the largest
committee rooms proved too small for the gathering which was the result
of Mr. Crewe's energy, and the legislative hall had to be lighted. The
State Tribune gave column reports of the hearings, and little editorial
pushes besides. And yet, when all was over, when it had been proved
beyond a doubt that, if the State would consent to spend a little money,
she would take the foremost rank among her forty odd sisters for
progression, the bills were still under consideration by those hardheaded
statesmen, Mr. Bascom and Mr. Botcher and their associates.

It could not be because these gentlemen did not know the arguments and
see the necessity. Mr. Crewe had had them to dinner, and had spent so
much time in their company presenting his case--to which they absolutely
agreed--that they took to a forced seclusion. The member from Leith also
wrote letters and telegrams, and sent long typewritten arguments and
documents to Mr. Flint. Mr. Crewe, although far from discouraged, began
to think there was something mysterious about all this seemingly
unnecessary deliberation.

Mr. Crewe, though of great discernment, was only mortal, and while he was
fighting his battle single-handed, how was he to know that the gods above
him were taking sides and preparing for conflict? The gods do not give
out their declarations of war for publication to the Associated Press;
and old Tom Gaylord, who may be likened to Mars, had no intention of
sending Jupiter notice until he got his cohorts into line. The strife,
because it was to be internecine, was the more terrible. Hitherto the
Gaylord Lumber Company, like the Winona Manufacturing Company of
Newcastle (the mills of which extended for miles along the Tyne), had
been a faithful ally of the Empire; and, on occasions when it was needed,
had borrowed the Imperial army to obtain grants, extensions, and
franchises.

The fact is that old Tom Gaylord, in the autumn previous, had quarreled
with Mr. Flint about lumber rates, which had been steadily rising. Mr.
Flint had been polite, but firm; and old Tom, who, with all his
tremendous properties, could ship by no other railroad than the
Northeastern, had left the New York office in a black rage. A more
innocent citizen than old Tom would have put his case (which was without
doubt a strong one) before the Railroad Commission of the State, but old
Tom knew well enough that the Railroad Commission was in reality an
economy board of the Northeastern system, as much under Mr. Flint's
orders as the conductors and brakemen. Old Tom, in consulting the map,
conceived an unheard-of effrontery, a high treason which took away the
breath of his secretary and treasurer when it was pointed out to him. The
plan contemplated a line of railroad from the heart of the lumber regions
down the south side of the valley of the Pingsquit to Kingston, where the
lumber could take to the sea. In short, it was a pernicious revival of an
obsolete state of affairs, competition, and if persisted in, involved
nothing less than a fight to a finish with the army, the lobby of the
Northeastern. Other favoured beings stood aghast when they heard of it,
and hastened to old Tom with timely counsel; but he had reached a frame
of mind which they knew well. He would listen to no reason, and
maintained stoutly that there were other lawyers in the world as able in
political sagacity and lobby tactics as Hilary Vane; the Honourable
Galusha Hammer, for instance, an old and independent and wary war-horse
who had more than once wrung compromises out of the Honourable Hilary.
The Honourable Galusha Hammer was sent for, and was now industriously, if
quietly and unobtrusively, at work. The Honourable Hilary was likewise at
work, equally quietly and unobtrusively. When the powers fall out, they
do not open up at once with long-distance artillery. There is always a
chance of a friendly settlement. The news was worth a good deal, for
instance, to Mr. Peter Pardriff (brother of Paul, of Ripton), who
refrained, with praiseworthy self-control, from publishing it in the
State Tribune, although the temptation to do so must have been great. And
most of the senatorial twenty saw the trouble coming and braced their
backs against it, but in silence. The capital had seen no such war as
this since the days of Jethro Bass.

In the meantime Mr. Crewe, blissfully ignorant of this impending
conflict, was preparing a speech on national affairs and national issues
which was to startle an unsuspecting State. Mrs. Pomfret, who had
received many clippings and pamphlets, had written him weekly letters of
a nature spurring to his ambition, which incidentally contained many
references to Alice's interest in his career. And Mr. Crewe's mind, when
not intent upon affairs of State, sometimes reverted pleasantly to
thoughts of Victoria Flint; it occurred to him that the Duncan house was
large enough for entertaining, and that he might invite Mrs. Pomfret to
bring Victoria and the inevitable Alice to hear his oration, for which
Mr. Speaker Doby had set a day.

In his desire to give other people pleasure, Mr. Crewe took the trouble
to notify a great many of his friends and acquaintances as to the day of
his speech, in case they might wish to travel to the State capital and
hear him deliver it. Having unexpectedly received in the mail a cheque
from Austen Vane in settlement of the case of the injured horse, Austen
was likewise invited.

Austen smiled when he opened the letter, and with its businesslike
contents there seemed to be wafted from it the perfume and suppliance of
a September day in the Vale of the Blue. From the window of his back
office, looking across the railroad tracks, he could see Sawanec, pale in
her winter garb against a pale winter sky, and there arose in him the old
restless desire for the woods and fields which at times was almost
irresistible. His thoughts at length descending from the azure above
Sawanec, his eyes fell again on Mr. Crewe's typewritten words: "It may be
of interest to you that I am to deliver, on the 15th instant, and as the
Chairman of the House Committee on National Affairs, a speech upon
national policies which is the result of much thought, and which touches
upon such material needs of our State as can be supplied by the Federal
Government."

Austen had a brief fancy, whimsical as it was, of going to hear him. Mr.
Crewe, as a type absolutely new to him, interested him. He had followed
the unusual and somewhat surprising career of the gentleman from Leith
with some care, even to the extent of reading of Mr. Crewe's activities
in the State Tribunes which had been sent him. Were such qualifications
as Mr. Crewe possessed, he wondered, of a kind to sweep their possessor
into high office? Were industry, persistency, and a capacity for taking
advantage of a fair wind sufficient?

Since his return from Pepper County, Austen Vane had never been to the
State capital during a session, although it was common for young lawyers
to have cases before the Legislature. It would have been difficult to say
why he did not take these cases, aside from the fact that they were not
very remunerative. On occasions gentlemen from different parts of the
State, and some from outside of it who had certain favours to ask at the
hands of the lawmaking body, had visited his back office and closed the
door after them, and in the course of the conversation had referred to
the relationship of the young lawyer to Hilary Vane. At such times Austen
would freely acknowledge the debt of gratitude he owed his father for
being in the world--and refer them politely to Mr. Hilary Vane himself.
In most cases they had followed his advice, wondering not a little at
this isolated example of quixotism.

During the sessions, except for a day or two at week ends which were
often occupied with conferences, the Honourable Hilary's office was
deserted; or rather, as we have seen, his headquarters were removed to
room Number Seven in the Pelican Hotel at the capital. Austen got many of
the lay clients who came to see his father at such times; and--without
giving an exaggerated idea of his income--it might be said that he was
beginning to have what may be called a snug practice for a lawyer of his
experience. In other words, according to Mr. Tooting, who took an intense
interest in the matter, "not wearing the collar" had been more of a
financial success for Austen than that gentleman had imagined. There
proved to be many clients to whom the fact that young Mr. Vane did not
carry a "retainer pass" actually appealed. These clients paid their
bills, but they were neither large nor influential, as a rule, with the
notable exception of the Gaylord Lumber Company, where the matters for
trial were not large. If young Tom Gaylord had had his way, Austen would
have been the chief counsel for the corporation.

To tell the truth, Austen Vane had a secret aversion to going to the
capital during a session, a feeling that such a visit would cause him
unhappiness. In spite of his efforts, and indeed in spite of Hilary's,
Austen and his father had grown steadily apart. They met in the office
hallway, in the house in Hanover Street when Hilary came home to sleep,
and the elder Mr. Vane was not a man to thrive on small talk. His world
was the battlefield from which he directed the forces of the great
corporation which he served, and the cherished vision of a son in whom he
could confide his plans, upon whose aid and counsel he could lean, was
gone forever. Hilary Vane had troublesome half-hours, but on the whole he
had reached the conclusion that this son, like Sarah Austen, was one of
those inexplicable products in which an extravagant and inscrutable
nature sometimes indulged. On the rare evenings when the two were at home
together, the Honourable Hilary sat under one side of the lamp with a
pile of documents and newspapers, and Austen under the other with a book
from the circulating library. No public questions could be broached upon
which they were not as far apart as the poles, and the Honourable Hilary
put literature in the same category as embroidery. Euphrasia, when she
paused in her bodily activity to darn their stockings, used to glance at
them covertly from time to time, and many a silent tear of which they
knew nothing fell on her needle.

On the subject of his protracted weekly absences at the State capital,
the Honourable Hilary was as uncommunicative as he would have been had he
retired for those periods to a bar-room. He often grunted and cleared his
throat and glanced at his son when their talk bordered upon these
absences; and he was even conscious of an extreme irritation against
himself as well as Austen because of the instinct that bade him keep
silent. He told himself fiercely that he had nothing to be ashamed of,
nor would he have acknowledged that it was a kind of shame that bade him
refrain even from circumstantial accounts of what went on in room Number
Seven of the Pelican. He had an idea that Austen knew and silently
condemned; and how extremely maddening was this feeling to the Honourable
Hilary may well be imagined. All his life long he had deemed himself
morally invulnerable, and now to be judged and ethically found wanting by
the son of Sarah Austen was, at times, almost insupportable. Were the
standards of a long life to be suddenly reversed by a prodigal son?

To get back to Austen. On St. Valentine's Day of that year when, to tell
the truth, he was seated in his office scribbling certain descriptions of
nature suggested by the valentines in Mr. Hayman's stationery store, the
postman brought in a letter from young Tom Gaylord. Austen laughed as he
read it. "The Honourable Galusha Hammer is well named," young Tom wrote,
"but the conviction has been gaining ground with me that a hammer is
about as much use as a shovel would be at the present time. It is not the
proper instrument." "But the 'old man'" (it was thus young Tom was wont
to designate his parent) "is pig-headed when he gets to fighting, and
won't listen to reason. If he believes he can lick the Northeastern with
a Hammer, he is durned badly mistaken, and I told him so. I have been
giving him sage advice in little drops--after meals. I tell him there is
only one man in the State who has sense enough even to shake the
Northeastern, and that's you. He thinks this a pretty good joke. Of
course I realize where your old man is planted, and that you might have
some natural delicacy and wish to refrain from giving him a jar. But come
down for an hour and let me talk to you, anyway. The new statesman from
Leith is cutting a wide swath. Not a day passes but his voice is heard
roaring in the Forum; he has visited all the State institutions, dined
and wined the governor and his staff and all the ex-governors he can lay
his hands on, and he has that hard-headed and caustic journalist, Mr.
Peter Pardriff, of the State Tribune, hypnotized. He has some swells up
at his house to hear his speech on national affairs, among them old
Flint's daughter, who is a ripper to look at, although I never got nearer
to her than across the street. As you may guess, it is something of a
card for Crewe to have Flint's daughter here."

Austen sat for a long time after reading this letter, idly watching the
snow-clouds gathering around Sawanec. Then he tore up the paper, on which
he had been scribbling, into very small bits, consulted a time-table, and
at noon, in a tumult of feelings, he found himself in a back seat of the
express, bound for the capital.

Arriving at the station, amidst a hurry and bustle of legislators and
politicians coming and going, many of whom nodded to him, he stood for a
minute in the whirling snow reflecting. Now that he was here, where was
he to stay? The idea of spending the night at the Pelican was repellent
to him, and he was hesitating between two more modest hostelries when he
was hailed by a giant with a flowing white beard, a weather-beaten face,
and a clear eye that shone with a steady and kindly light. It was James
Redbrook, the member from Mercer.

"Why, how be you, Austen?" he cried, extending a welcome hand; and, when
Austen had told him his dilemma: "Come right along up to my lodgings. I
live at the Widow Peasley's, and there's a vacant room next to mine."

Austen accepted gratefully, and as they trudged through the storm up the
hill, he inquired how legislative matters were progressing. Whereupon Mr.
Redbrook unburdened himself.

"Say, I just warmed up all over when I see you, Austen. I'm so glad to
run across an honest man. We ain't forgot in Mercer what you did for Zeb
Meader, and how you went against your interests. And I guess it ain't
done you any harm in the State. As many as thirty or forty members have
spoke to me about it. And down here I've got so I just can't hold in any
more."

"Is it as bad as that, Mr. Redbrook?" asked Austen, with a serious glance
at the farmer's face.

"It's so bad I don't know how to begin," said the member from Mercer, and
paused suddenly. "But I don't want to hurt your feelings, Austen, seeing
your father is--where he is."

"Go on," said Austen, "I understand."

"Well," said Mr. Redbrook, "it just makes me tremble as an American
citizen. The railrud sends them slick cusses down here that sit in the
front seats who know all this here parliamentary law and the tricks of
the trade, and every time any of us gets up to speak our honest minds,
they have us ruled out of order or get the thing laid on the table until
some Friday morning when there ain't nobody here, and send it along up to
the Senate. They made that fat feller, Doby, Speaker, and he's stuffed
all the important committees so that you can't get an honest measure
considered. You can talk to the committees all you've a mind to, and
they'll just listen and never do anything. There's five hundred in the
House, and it ain't any more of a Legislature than a camp-meetin' is.
What do you suppose they done last Friday morning, when there wahn't but
twenty men at the session? We had an anti-pass law, and all these fellers
were breakin' it. It forbid anybody riding on a pass except railroad
presidents, directors, express messengers, and persons in misfortune, and
they stuck in these words, 'and others to whom passes have been granted
by the proper officers.' Ain't that a disgrace to the State? And those
twenty senators passed it before we got back on Tuesday. You can't get a
bill through that Legislature unless you go up to the Pelican and get
permission of Hilary--"

Here Mr. Redbrook stopped abruptly, and glanced contritely at his
companion.

"I didn't mean to get goin' so," he said, "but sometimes I wish this
American government'd never been started."

"I often feel that way myself, Mr. Redbrook," said Austen.

"I knowed you did. I guess I can tell an honest man when I see one. It's
treason to say anything against this Northeastern louder than a whisper.
They want an electric railrud bad up in Greenacre, and when some of us
spoke for it and tried to get the committee to report it, those cheap
fellers from Newcastle started such a catcall we had to set down."

By this time they were at the Widow Peasley's, stamping the snow from off
their boots.

"How general is this sentiment?" Austen asked, after he had set down his
bag in the room he was to occupy.

"Why," said Mr. Redbrook, with conviction, "there's enough feel as I do
to turn that House upside down--if we only had a leader. If you was only
in there, Austen."

"I'm afraid I shouldn't be of much use," Austen answered. "They'd have
given me a back seat, too."

The Widow Peasley's was a frame and gabled house of Revolutionary days
with a little terrace in front of it and a retaining wall built up from
the sidewalk. Austen, on the steps, stood gazing across at a square
mansion with a wide cornice, half hidden by elms and maples and pines. It
was set far back from the street, and a driveway entered the picket-fence
and swept a wide semicircle to the front door and back again. Before the
door was a sleigh of a pattern new to him, with a seat high above the
backs of two long-bodied, deep-chested horses, their heads held with
difficulty by a little footman with his arms above him. At that moment
two figures in furs emerged from the house. The young woman gathered up
the reins and leaped lightly to the box, the man followed; the little
groom touched his fur helmet and scrambled aboard as the horses sprang
forward to the music of the softest of bells. The sleigh swept around the
curve, avoided by a clever turn a snow-pile at the entrance, the young
woman raised her eyes from the horses, stared at Austen, and bowed. As
for Austen, he grew warm as he took off his hat, and he realized that his
hand was actually trembling. The sleigh flew on up the hill, but she
turned once more to look behind her, and he still had his hat in his
hand, the snowflakes falling on his bared head. Then he was aware that
James Redbrook was gazing at him curiously.

"That's Flint's daughter, ain't it?" inquired the member from Mercer.
"Didn't callate you'd know her."

Austen flushed. He felt exceedingly foolish, but an answer came to him.

"I met her in the hospital. She used to go there to see Zeb Meader."

"That's so," said Mr. Redbrook; "Zeb told me about it, and she used to
come to Mercer to see him after he got out. She ain't much like the old
man, I callate."

"I don't think she is," said Austen.

"I don't know what she's stayin' with that feller Crewe for," the farmer
remarked; of all the etarnal darn idiots--why, Brush Bascom and that
Botcher and the rest of 'em are trailin' him along and usin' him for the
best thing that ever came down here. He sets up to be a practical man,
and don't know as much as some of us hayseeds in the back seats. Where be
you goin'?"

"I was going to the Pelican."

"Well, I've got a committee meetin' of Agriculture," said Mr. Redbrook.
"Could you be up here at Mis' Peasley's about eight to-night?"

"Why, yes," Austen replied, "if you want to see me."

"I do want to see you," said Mr. Redbrook, significantly, and waved a
farewell.

Austen took his way slowly across the state-house park, threading among
the groups between the snow-banks towards the wide facade of the Pelican
Hotel. Presently he paused, and then with a sudden determination crossed
the park diagonally into Main Street, walking rapidly southward and
scrutinizing the buildings on either side until at length these began to
grow wide apart, and he spied a florist's sign with a greenhouse behind
it. He halted again, irresolutely, in front of it, flung open the door,
and entered a boxlike office filled with the heated scents of flowers. A
little man eyed him with an obsequious interest which he must have
accorded to other young men on similar errands. Austen may be spared a
repetition of the very painful conversation that ensued; suffice it to
say that, after mature deliberation, violets were chosen. He had a
notion--not analyzed--that she would prefer violets to roses. The
information that the flowers were for the daughter of the president of
the Northeastern Railroads caused a visible quickening of the little
florist's regard, an attitude which aroused a corresponding disgust and
depression in Austen.

"Oh, yes," said the florist, "she's up at Crewe's." He glanced at Austen
apologetically. "Excuse me," he said, "I ought to know you. Have you a
card?"

"No," said Austen, with emphasis.

"And what name, please?"

"No name," said the donor, now heartily repenting of his rashness, and
slamming the glass door in a manner that made the panes rattle behind
him.

As he stood hesitating on the curb of the crossing, he began to wish that
he had not left Ripton.

"Hello, Austen," said a voice, which he recognized as the Honourable
Brush Bascom's, "didn't know you ever came down here in session time."

"What are you doing down here, Brush?" Austen asked.

Mr. Bascom grinned in appreciation of this pleasantry.

"I came for my health," he said; "I prefer it to Florida."

"I've heard that it agrees with some people," said Austen.

Mr. Bascom grinned again.

"Just arrived?" he inquired.

"Just," said Austen.

"I thought you'd get here sooner or later," said Mr. Bascom. "Some folks
try stayin' away, but it ain't much use. You'll find the honourable
Hilary doing business at the same old stand, next to the governor, in
Number Seven up there." And Mr. Bascom pointed to the well-known window
on the second floor.

"Thanks, Brush," said Austen, indifferently. "To tell the truth, I came
down to hear that promising protege of yours speak on national affairs. I
understand you're pushing his bills along."

Mr. Bascom, with great deliberation, shut one of his little eyes.

"So long," he said, "come and see me when you get time."

Austen went slowly down the street and entered the smoke-clouded lobby of
the Pelican. He was a man to draw attention, and he was stared at by many
politicians there and spoken to by some before he reached the stairs.
Mounting, he found the door with the numeral, and knocked. The medley of
voices within ceased; there were sounds of rattling papers, and of
closing of folding doors. The key turned in the lock, and State Senator
Nathaniel Billings appeared in the doorway, with a look of polite inquiry
on his convivial face. This expression, when he saw Austen, changed to
something like consternation.

"Why, hello, hello," said the senator. "Come in, come in. The Honourable
Hilary's here. Where'd you come down?"

"Hello, Nat," said Austen, and went in.

The Honourable Hilary sat in his usual arm-chair; Mr. Botcher severely
strained the tensile strength of the bedsprings; Mr. Hamilton Tooting
stood before the still waving portieres in front of the folding doors;
and Mr. Manning, the division superintendent, sat pensively, with his pen
in his mouth, before the marble-topped table from which everything had
been removed but a Bible. Two gentlemen, whom Austen recognized as
colleagues of Mr. Billings in the State Senate, stood together in a
window, pointing out things of interest in the street. Austen walked up
to his father and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"How are you, Judge?" he said. "I only came into pay my respects. I hope
I have not disturbed any--entertainment going on here," he added,
glancing in turn at the thoughtful occupants of the room, and then at the
curtains which hid the folding doors to the apartment of his Excellency.

"Why, no," answered the Honourable Hilary, his customary grunt being the
only indication of surprise on his part; "didn't know you were coming
down."

"I didn't know it myself until this morning," said Austen.

"Legislative case, I suppose," remarked the Honourable Jacob Botcher, in
his deep voice.

"No, merely a pleasure trip, Mr. Botcher."

The Honourable Jacob rubbed his throat, the two State senators in the
window giggled, and Mr. Hamilton Tooting laughed.

"I thought you took to the mountains in such cases, sir," said Mr.
Botcher.

"I came for intellectual pleasure this time," said Austen. "I understand
that Mr. Crewe is to deliver an epoch-making speech on the national
situation to-morrow."

This was too much even for the gravity of Mr. Manning; Mr. Tooting and
Mr. Billings and his two colleagues roared, though the Honourable Jacob's
laugh was not so spontaneous.

"Aust," said Mr. Tooting, admiringly, you're all right."

"Well, Judge," said Austen, patting his father's shoulder again, "I'm
glad to see you so comfortably fixed. Good-by, and give my regards to the
governor. I'm sorry to have missed him," he added, glancing at the
portieres that hid the folding doors.

"Are you stopping here?" asked the Honourable Hilary.

"No, I met Mr. Redbrook of Mercer, and he took me up to his lodgings. If
I can do anything for you, a message will reach me there."

"Humph," said the Honourable Hilary, while the others exchanged
significant glances.

Austen had not gone half the length of the hall when he was overtaken by
Mr. Tooting.

"Say, Aust, what's up between you and Redbrook?" he asked.

"Nothing. Why?" Austen asked, stopping abruptly.

"Well, I suppose you know there's an anti-railroad feeling growing in
that House, and that Redbrook has more influence with the farmers than
any other man."

"I didn't know anything about Mr. Redbrook's influence," said Austen.

Mr. Tooting looked unconvinced.

"Say, Aust, if anything's in the wind, I wish you'd let me know. I'll
keep it quiet."

"I think I shall be safe in promising that, Ham," said Austen. "When
there's anything in the wind, you generally find it out first."

"There's trouble coming for the railroad," said Mr. Tooting. "I can see
that. And I guess you saw it before I did."

"They say a ship's about to sink when the rats begin to leave it," said
Austen.

Although Austen spoke smilingly, Mr. Tooting looked pained.

"There's no chance for young men in that system," he said.

"Young men write the noble parts of the governor's inaugurals," said
Austen.

"Yes," said Mr. Tooting, bitterly, "but you never get to be governor and
read 'em. You've got to be a 'come on' with thirty thousand dollars to be
a Northeastern governor and live next door to the Honourable Hilary in
the Pelican. Well, so long, Aust. If anything's up, give me the tip,
that's all I ask."

Reflecting on the singular character of Mr. Tooting, Austen sought the
Gaylords' headquarters, and found them at the furthermost end of the
building from the Railroad Room. The door was opened by young Tom
himself, whose face became wreathed in smiles when he saw who the visitor
was.

"It's Austen!" he cried. "I thought you'd come down when you got that
appeal of mine."

Austen did not admit the self-sacrifice as he shook Tom's hand; but
remembered, singularly enough, the closing sentences of Tom's letter
--which had nothing whatever to do with the Gaylord bill.

At this moment a commotion arose within the room, and a high, tremulous,
but singularly fierce and compelling voice was heard crying out:--"Get
out! Get out, d-n you, all of you, and don't come back until you've got
some notion of what you're a-goin' to do. Get out, I say!"

These last words were pronounced with such extraordinary vigour that four
gentlemen seemed to be physically impelled from the room. Three of them
Austen recognized as dismissed and disgruntled soldiers from the lobby
army of the Northeastern; the fourth was the Honourable Galusha Hammer,
whose mode of progress might be described as "stalking," and whose lips
were forming the word "intolerable." In the corner old Tom himself could
be seen, a wizened figure of wrath.

"Who's that?" he demanded of his son, "another d-d fool?"

"No," replied young Tom, "it's Austen Vane."

"What's he doin' here?" old Tom demanded, with a profane qualification as
to the region. But young Tom seemed to be the only being capable of
serenity amongst the flames that played around him.

"I sent for him because he's got more sense than Galusha and all the rest
of 'em put together," he said.

"I guess that's so," old Tom agreed unexpectedly, "but it ain't sayin'
much. Bring him in--bring him in, and lock the door."

In obedience to these summons, and a pull from young Tom, Austen entered
and sat down.

"You've read the Pingsquit bill?" old Tom demanded.

"Yes," said Austen.

"Just because you won a suit against the Northeastern, and nearly killed
a man out West, Tom seems to think you can do anything. He wouldn't, give
me any peace until I let him send for you," Mr. Gaylord remarked testily.
"Now you're down here, what have you got to propose?"

"I didn't come here to propose anything, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen.

"What!" cried Mr. Gaylord, with one of his customary and forceful
exclamations. "What'd you come down for?"

"I've been asking myself that question ever since I came, Mr. Gaylord,"
said Austen, "and I haven't yet arrived at any conclusion."

Young Tom looked at his friend and laughed, and Mr. Gaylord, who at first
gave every indication of being about to explode with anger, suddenly
emitted a dry cackle.

"You ain't a d-n fool, anyway," he declared.

"I'm beginning to think I am," said Austen.

"Then you've got sense enough to know it," retorted old Tom. "Most of 'em
haven't." And his glance, as it fell upon the younger man, was almost
approving. Young Tom's was distinctly so.

"I told you Austen was the only lawyer who'd talk common sense to you,"
he said.

"I haven't heard much of it yet," said old Tom.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen, smiling a
little, "that I didn't come down in any legal capacity. That's only one
of Tom's jokes."

"Then what in h--l did you bring him in here for?" demanded old Tom of
his son.

"Just for a quiet little powwow," said young Tom, "to make you laugh.
He's made you laugh before."

"I don't want to laugh," said old Tom, pettishly. Nevertheless, he seemed
to be visibly cooling. "If you ain't in here to make money," he added to
Austen, "I don't care how long you stay."

"Say, Austen," said young Tom, "do you remember the time we covered the
old man with shavings at the mills in Avalon, and how he chased us with a
two-by-four scantling?"

"I'd made pulp out'n you if I'd got you," remarked Mr. Gaylord, with a
reminiscent chuckle that was almost pleasant. "But you were always a
goldurned smart boy, Austen, and you've done well with them little
suits." He gazed at Austen a moment with his small, filmy-blue eye. "I
don't know but what you might take hold here and make it hot for those
d-d rascals in the Northeastern, after all. You couldn't botch it worsen
Hammer has, and you might do some good. I said I'd make 'em dance, and by
G-d, I'll do it, if I have to pay that Teller Levering in New York, and
it takes the rest of my life. Look the situation over, and come back
to-morrow and tell me what you think of it."

"I can tell you what I think of it now, Mr. Gaylord," said Austen.

"What's that?" old Tom demanded sharply.

"That you'll never get the bill passed, this session or next, by
lobbying."

For the moment the elder Mr. Gaylord was speechless, but young Tom
Gaylord clapped his hand heartily on his friend's shoulder.

"That's the reason I wanted to get you down here, Austen," he cried;
that's what I've been telling the old man all along--perhaps he'll
believe you."

"Then you won't take hold?" said Mr. Gaylord, his voice trembling on the
edge of another spasm. "You refuse business?"

"I refuse that kind of business, Mr. Gaylord," Austen answered quietly,
though there was a certain note in his voice that young Tom knew well,
and which actually averted the imminent explosion from Mr. Gaylord, whose
eyes glared and watered. "But aside from that, you must know that the
Republican party leaders in this State are the heads of the lobby of the
Northeastern Railroads."

"I guess I know about Number Seven as well as you do," old Tom
interjected.

Austen's eye flashed.

"Now hold on, father," said young Tom, "that's no way to talk to Austen."

"Knowing Number Seven," Austen continued, "you probably realize that the
political and business future of nearly every one of the twenty State
senators depends upon the favour of the Northeastern Railroads."

"I know that the d-d fools won't look at money," said Mr. Gaylord;
"Hammer's tried 'em."

"I told you that before you started in," young Tom remarked, "but when
you get mad, you won't listen to sense. And then there's the Honourable
Asa Gray, who wants to represent the Northeastern some day in the United
States Senate."

"The bill ought to pass," shrieked old Tom; "it's a d-d outrage. There's
no reason why I shouldn't be allowed to build a railroad if I've got the
money to do it. What in blazes are we comin' to in this country if we
can't git competition? If Flint stops that bill, I'll buy a newspaper and
go to the people with the issue and throw his d-d monopoly into
bankruptcy."

"It's all very well to talk about competition and monopolies and
lobbies," said young Tom, "but how about the Gaylord Lumber Company? How
about the time you used the lobby, with Flint's permission? This kind of
virtuous talk is beautiful to listen to when you and Flint get into a
row."

At this remark of his son's, the intermittent geyser of old Tom's wrath
spouted up again with scalding steam, and in a manner utterly impossible
to reproduce upon paper. Young Tom waited patiently for the exhibition to
cease, which it did at length in a coughing fit of sheer exhaustion that
left his father speechless, if not expressionless, pointing a lean and
trembling finger in the direction of a valise on the floor.

"You'll go off in a spell of that kind some day," said young Tom, opening
the valise and extracting a bottle. Uncorking it, he pressed it to his
father's lips, and with his own pocket-handkerchief (old Tom not
possessing such an article) wiped the perspiration from Mr. Gaylord's
brow and the drops from his shabby black coat. "There's no use gettin'
mad at Austen. He's dead right--you can't lobby this thing through, and
you knew it before you started. If you hadn't lost your temper, you
wouldn't have tried."

"We'll see, by G-d, we'll see," said the indomitable old Tom, when he got
his breath. "You young men think you know a sight, but you haven't got
the stuff in you we old Tellers have. Where would I be if it wasn't for
fightin'? You mark my words, before this session's ended I'll scare h-l
out of Flint--see if I don't."

Young Tom winked at his friend.

"Let's go down to supper," he said.

The dining room of the Pelican Hotel during a midweek of a busy session
was a scene of bustle and confusion not likely to be forgotten. Every
seat was taken, and gentlemen waited their turn in the marble-flagged
rotunda who had not the honour of being known to Mr. Giles, the head
waiter. If Mr. Hamilton Tooting were present, and recognized you, he
would take great pleasure in pointing out the celebrities, and especially
that table over which the Honourable Hilary Vane presided, with the
pretty, red-checked waitress hovering around it. At the Honourable
Hilary's right hand was the division superintendent, and at his left, Mr.
Speaker Doby--a most convenient and congenial arrangement; farther down
the board were State Senator Nat Billings, Mr. Ridout (when he did not
sup at home), the Honourables Brush Bascom and Elisha Jane, and the
Honourable Jacob Botcher made a proper ballast for the foot. This table
was known as the Railroad Table, and it was very difficult, at any
distance away from it, to hear what was said, except when the Honourable
Jacob Botcher made a joke. Next in importance and situation was the
Governor's Table--now occupied by the Honourable Asa Gray. Mr. Tooting's
description would not have stopped here.

Sensations are common in the Pelican Hotel, but when Austen Vane walked
in that evening between the Gaylords, father and son, many a hungry guest
laid down his knife and fork and stared. Was the younger Vane (known to
be anti-railroad) to take up the Gaylords' war against his own father?
All the indications were that way, and a rumour flew from table to
table-leaping space, as rumours will--that the Gaylords had sent to
Ripton for Austen. There was but one table in the room the occupants of
which appeared not to take any interest in the event, or even to grasp
that an event had occurred. The Railroad Table was oblivious.

After supper Mr. Tooting found Austen in the rotunda, and drew him
mysteriously aside.

"Say, Aust, the Honourable Hilary wants to see you to-night," he
whispered.

"Did he send you with the message?" Austen demanded.

"That's right," said Mr. Tooting. "I guess you know what's up."

Austen did not answer. At the foot of the stairway was the tall form of
Hilary Vane himself, and Austen crossed the rotunda.

"Do you want to see me, Judge?" he asked.

The Honourable Hilary faced about quickly.

"Yes, if you've got any spare time."

"I'll go to your room at half-past nine to-night, if that's convenient."

"All right," said the Honourable Hilary, starting up the stairs.

Austen turned, and found Mr. Hamilton Tooting at his elbow.




CHAPTER XII

Mr. REDBROOK'S PARTY

The storm was over, and the bare trees, when the moon shone between the
hurrying clouds, cast lacelike shadows on the white velvet surface of the
snow as Austen forged his way up the hill to the Widow Peasley's in
keeping with his promise to Mr. Redbrook. Across the street he paused
outside the picket-fence to gaze at the yellow bars of light between the
slats of the windows of the Duncan house. It was hard to realize that she
was there, within a stone's throw of where he was to sleep; but the
strange, half-startled expression in her eyes that afternoon and the
smile--which had in it a curious quality he could not analyze--were so
vivid in his consciousness as to give him pain. The incident, as he stood
there ankle-deep in the snow, seemed to him another inexplicable and
uselessly cruel caprice of fate.

As he pictured her in the dining room behind Mr. Crewe's silver and cut
glass and flowers, it was undoubtedly natural that he should wonder
whether she were thinking of him in the Widow Peasley's lamp-lit cottage,
and he smiled at the contrast. After all, it was the contrast between his
life and hers. As an American of good antecedents and education, with a
Western experience thrown in, social gulfs, although awkward, might be
crossed in spite of opposition from ladies like the Rose of Sharon,--who
had crossed them. Nevertheless, the life which Victoria led seemingly
accentuated--to a man standing behind a picket-fence in the snow--the
voids between.

A stamping of feet in the Widow Peasley's vestibule awoke in him that
sense of the ridiculous which was never far from the surface, and he made
his way thither in mingled amusement and pain. What happened there is of
interest, but may be briefly chronicled. Austen was surprised, on
entering, to find Mrs. Peasley's parlour filled with men; and a single
glance at their faces in the lamplight assured him that they were of a
type which he understood--countrymen of that rugged New England stock to
which he himself belonged, whose sons for generations had made lawyers
and statesmen and soldiers for the State and nation. Some were talking in
low voices, and others sat silent on the chairs and sofa, not awkwardly
or uncomfortably, but with a characteristic self-possession and repose.
Mr. Redbrook, towering in front of the stove, came forward.

"Here you be," he said, taking Austen's hand warmly and a little
ceremoniously; "I asked 'em here to meet ye."

"To meet me!" Austen repeated.

"Wanted they should know you," said Mr. Redbrook.

"They've all heard of you and what you did for Zeb."

Austen flushed. He was aware that he was undergoing a cool and critical
examination by those present, and that they were men who used all their
faculties in making up their minds.

"I'm very glad to meet any friends of yours, Mr. Redbrook," he said.
"What I did for Meader isn't worth mentioning. It was an absolutely
simple case."

"Twahn't so much what ye did as how ye did it," said Mr. Redbrook. "It's
kind of rare in these days," he added, with the manner of commenting to
himself on the circumstance, "to find a young lawyer with brains that
won't sell 'em to the railrud. That's what appeals to me, and to some
other folks I know--especially when we take into account the situation
you was in and the chances you had."

Austen's silence under this compliment seemed to create an indefinable
though favourable impression, and the member from Mercer permitted
himself to smile.

"These men are all friends of mine, and members of the House," he said,
"and there's more would have come if they'd had a longer notice. Allow me
to make you acquainted with Mr. Widgeon of Hull."

"We kind of wanted to look you over," said Mr. Widgeon, suiting the
action to the word. "That's natural ain't it?"

"Kind of size you up," added Mr. Jarley of Wye, raising his eyes.
"Callate you're sizable enough."

"Wish you was in the House," remarked Mr. Adams of Barren. "None of us is
much on talk, but if we had you, I guess we could lay things wide open."

"If you was thar, and give it to 'em as hot as you did when you was
talkin' for Zeb, them skunks in the front seats wouldn't know whether
they was afoot or hossback," declared Mr. Williams of Devon, a town
adjoining Mercer.

"I used to think railrud gov'ment wahn't so bad until I come to the House
this time," remarked a stocky member from Oxford; "it's sheer waste of
money for the State to pay a Legislature. They might as well run things
from the New York office--you know that."

"We might as well wear so many Northeastern uniforms with brass buttons,"
a sinewy hill farmer from Lee put in. He had a lean face that did not
move a muscle, but a humorous gray eye that twinkled.

In the meantime Mr. Redbrook looked on with an expression of approval
which was (to Austen) distinctly pleasant, but more or less mystifying.

"I guess you ain't disappointed 'em much," he declared, when the round
was ended; "most of 'em knew me well enough to understand that cattle and
live stock in general, includin' humans, is about as I represent 'em to
be."

"We have some confidence in your judgment, Brother Redbrook," answered
Mr. Terry of Lee, "and now we've looked over the goods, it ain't set back
any, I callate."

This observation, which seemed to meet with a general assent, was to
Austen more mystifying than ever. He laughed.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I feel as though some expression of thanks were
due you for this kind and most unexpected reception." Here a sudden
seriousness came into his eyes which served, somehow, only to enhance his
charm of manner, and a certain determined ring into his voice. "You have
all referred to a condition of affairs," he added, "about which I have
thought a great deal, and which I deplore as deeply as you do. There is
no doubt that the Northeastern Railroads have seized the government of
this State for three main reasons: to throttle competition; to control
our railroad commission in order that we may not get the service and
safety to which we are entitled,--so increasing dividends; and to make
and maintain laws which enable them to bribe with passes, to pay less
taxes than they should, and to manipulate political machinery."

"That's right," said Mr. Jarley of Wye, with a decided emphasis.

"That's the kind of talk I like to hear," exclaimed Mr. Terry.

"And nobody's had the gumption to fight 'em," said Mr. Widgeon.

"It looks," said Austen, "as though it must come to a fight in the end. I
do not think they will listen to reason. I mean," he added, with a flash
of humour, "that they will listen to it, but not act upon it. Gentlemen,
I regret to have to say, for obvious reasons, something which you all
know, that my father is at the head of the Northeastern machine, which is
the Republican party organization."

There was a silence.

"You went again' him, and we honour you for it, Austen," said Mr.
Redbrook, at length.

"I want to say," Austen continued, "that I have tried to look at things
as Mr. Vane sees them, and that I have a good deal of sympathy for his
point of view. Conditions as they exist are the result of an evolution
for which no one man is responsible. That does not alter the fact that
the conditions are wrong. But the railroads, before they consolidated,
found the political boss in power, and had to pay him for favours. The
citizen was the culprit to start with, just as he is the culprit now,
because he does not take sufficient interest in his government to make it
honest. We mustn't blame the railroads too severely, when they grew
strong enough, for substituting their own political army to avoid being
blackmailed. Long immunity has reenforced them in the belief that they
have but one duty to pay dividends. I am afraid," he added, "that they
will have to be enlightened somewhat as Pharaoh was enlightened."

"Well, that's sense, too," said Mr. Widgeon; "I guess you're the man to
enlighten 'em."

"Moderate talk appeals to me," declared Mr. Jarley.

"And when that fails," said Mr. Terry, 'hard, tellin' blows."

"Don't lose track of the fact that we've got our eye on you," said Mr.
Emerson of Oxford, who had a blacksmith's grip, and came back to renew it
after he had put on his overshoes. He was the last to linger, and when
the door had closed on him Austen turned to Mr. Redbrook.

"Now what does all this mean?" he demanded.

"It means," said Mr. Redbrook, "that when the time comes, we want you to
run for governor."

Austen went to the mantelpiece, and stood for a long time with his back
turned, staring at a crayon portrait of Colonel Peasley, in the uniform
in which he had fallen at the battle of Gettysburg. Then he swung about
and seized the member from Mercer by both broad shoulders.

"James Redbrook," he said, "until to-night I thought you were about as
long-headed and sensible a man as there was in the State."

"So I be," replied Mr. Redbrook, with a grin. "You ask young Tom
Gaylord."

"So Tom put you up to this nonsense."

"It ain't nonsense," retorted Mr. Redbrook, stoutly, "and Tom didn't put
me up to it. It's the' best notion that ever came into my mind."

Austen, still clinging to Mr. Redbrook's shoulders, shook his head
slowly.

"James," he said, "there are plenty of men who are better equipped than I
for the place, and in a better situation to undertake it. I--I'm much
obliged to you. But I'll help. I've got to go," he added; "the Honourable
Hilary wants to see me."

He went into the entry and put on his overshoes and his coat, while James
Redbrook regarded him with a curious mingling of pain and benevolence on
his rugged face.

"I won't press you now, Austen," he said, "but think on it. For God's
sake, think on it."

Outside, Austen paused in the snow once more, his brain awhirl with a
strange exaltation the like of which he had never felt before. Although
eminently human, it was not the fact that honest men had asked him to be
their governor which uplifted him,--but that they believed him to be as
honest as themselves. In that hour he had tasted life as he had never yet
tasted it, he had lived as he might never live again. Not one of them, he
remembered suddenly, had uttered a sentence of the political claptrap of
which he had heard so much. They had spoken from the soul; not bitterly,
not passionately, but their words had rung with the determination which
had made their forefathers and his leave home, toil, and kindred to fight
and die at Bunker Hill and Gettysburg for a principle. It had bean given
him to look that eight into the heart of a nation, and he was awed.

As he stood there under the winter moon, he gradually became conscious of
music, of an air that seemed the very expression of his mood. His eyes,
irresistibly drawn towards the Duncan house, were caught by the
fluttering of lace curtains at an open window. The notes were those of a
piano,--though the instrument mattered little,--that with which they were
charged for him set the night wind quivering. It was not simple music,
although it had in it a grand simplicity. At times it rose, vibrant with
inexpressible feeling, and fell again into gentler, yearning cadences
that wrung the soul with a longing that was world-old and world-wide,
that reached out towards the unattainable stare--and, reaching, became
immortal. Thus was the end of it, fainting as it drifted heavenward.

Then the window was closed.

Austen walked on; whither, he knew not. After a certain time of which he
had no cognizance he found himself under the glaring arc-light that hung
over Main Street before the Pelican Hotel, in front of what was known as
the ladies' entrance. He slipped in there, avoiding the crowded lobby
with its shifting groups and its haze of smoke,--plainly to be seen
behind the great plates of glass,--went upstairs, and gained room Number.
Seven unnoticed. Then, after the briefest moment of hesitation, he
knocked. A voice responded--the Honourable Hilary's. There was but one
light burning in the room, and Mr. Vane sat in his accustomed chair in
the corner, alone. He was not reading, nor was he drowsing, but his head
was dropped forward a little on his breast. He raised it slowly at his
son's entrance, and regarded Austen fixedly, though silently.

"You wanted to see me, Judge?" said Austen.

"Come at last, have you?" said Mr. Vane.

"I didn't intend to be late," said Austen.

"Seem to have a good deal of business on hand these days," the Honourable
Hilary remarked.

Austen took a step forward, and stopped. Mr. Vane was preparing a piece
of Honey Dew.

"If you would like to know what the business was, Judge, I am here to
tell you."

The Honourable Hilary grunted.

"I ain't good enough to be confided in, I guess," he said; "I wouldn't
understand motives from principle."

Austen looked at his father for a few moments in silence. To-night he
seemed at a greater distance than ever before, and more lonely than ever.
When Austen had entered the room and had seen him sitting with his head
bowed forward, the hostility of months of misunderstanding had fallen
away from the son, and he had longed to fly to him as he had as a child
after punishment. Differences in after life, alas, are not always to be
bridged thus.

"Judge," he said slowly, with an attempt to control his voice, wouldn't
it have been fairer to wait awhile, before you made a remark like that?
Whatever our dealings may have been, I have never lied to you. Anything
you may want to know, I am here to tell you."

"So you're going to take up lobbying, are you? I had a notion you were
above lobbying."

Austen was angered. But like all men of character, his face became stern
under provocation, and he spoke more deliberately.

"Before we go any farther," he said, "would you mind telling me who your
informant is on this point?"

"I guess I don't need an informant. My eyesight is as good as ever," said
the Honourable Hilary.

"Your deductions are usually more accurate. If any one has told you that
I am about to engage in lobbying, they have lied to you."

"Wouldn't engage in lobbying, would you?" the Honourable Hilary asked,
with the air of making a casual inquiry.

Austen flushed, but kept his temper.

"I prefer the practice of law," he replied.

"Saw you were associatin' with saints," his father remarked.

Austen bit his lip, and then laughed outright,--the canonization of old
Tom Gaylord being too much for him.

"Now, Judge," he said, "it isn't like you to draw hasty conclusions.
Because I sat down to supper with the Gaylords it isn't fair to infer
that they have retained me in a legislative case."

The Honourable Hilary did not respond to his son's humour, but shifted
the Honey Dew to the left cheek.

"Old Tom going in for reform?"

"He may bring it about," answered Austen, instantly becoming serious
again, "whether he's going in for it or not."

For the first time the Honourable Hilary raised his eyes to his son's
face, and shot at him a penetrating look of characteristic shrewdness.
But he followed in conversation the same rule as in examining a witness,
rarely asking a direct question, except as a tactical surprise.

"Old Tom ought to have his railroad, oughtn't he?"

"So far as I can see, it would be a benefit to the people of that part of
the State," said Austen.

"Building it for the people, is he?"

"His motive doesn't count. The bill should be judged on its merits, and
proper measures for the safeguarding of public interests should be put
into it."

"Don't think the bill will be judged on its merits, do you?"

"No, I don't," replied Austen, "and neither do you."

"Did you tell old Tom so?" asked Mr. Vane, after a pause. "Did you tell
old Tom so when he sent for you to take hold?"

"He didn't send for me," answered Austen, quietly, "and I have no
business dealings with him except small suits. What I did tell him was
that he would never get the bill through this session or next by
lobbying."

The Honourable Hilary never showed surprise. He emitted a grunt which
evinced at once impatience and amusement.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Well, Judge, I'll tell you what I told him--although you both know. It's
because the Northeastern owns the Republican party machine, which is the
lobby, and because most of the twenty State senators are dependent upon
the Northeastern for future favours."

"Did you tell Tom Gaylord that?" demanded Mr. Vane. "What did he say?"

Austen braced himself. He did not find the answer easy.

"He said he knew about Number Seven as well as I did."

The Honourable Hilary rose abruptly--perhaps in some secret agitation
--Austen could not discern. His father walked as far as the door, and
turned slowly and faced him, but he did not speak. His mouth was tightly
closed, almost as in pain, and Austen went towards him, appealingly.

"Judge," he said, "you sent for me. You have asked me questions which I
felt obliged in honesty to answer. God knows I don't wish to differ with
you, but circumstances seem always against us. I will talk plainly, if
you will let me. I try to look at things from your point of view. I know
that you believe that a political system should go hand in hand with the
great commercial system which you are engaged in building. I disagree
with your beliefs, but I do not think that your pursuit of them has not
been sincere, and justified by your conscience. I suppose that you sent
for me to know whether Mr. Gaylord has employed me to lobby for his bill.
He has not, because I refused that employment. But I will tell you that,
in my opinion, if a man of any ability whatever should get up on the
floor of the House and make an argument for the Pingsquit bill, the
sentiment against the Northeastern and its political power is so great
that the House would compel the committee to report the bill, and pass
it. You probably know this already, but I mention it for your own good if
you do not, in the hope that, through you, the Northeastern Railroads may
be induced to relax their grip upon the government of this State."

The Honourable Hilary advanced, until only the marble-topped table was
between himself and his son. A slight noise in the adjoining room caused
him to turn his head momentarily. Then he faced Austen again.

"Did you tell Gaylord this?" he asked.

Austen made a gesture of distaste, and turned away.

"No," he said, "I reserved the opinion, whatever it is worth, for your
ears alone."

"I've heard that kind of calculation before," said the Honourable Hilary.
"My experience is that they never come to much. As for this nonsense
about the Northeastern Railroads running things," he added more
vigorously, "I guess when it's once in a man's head there's no getting it
out. The railroad employs the best lawyers it can find to look after its
interests. I'm one of 'em, and I'm proud of it. If I hadn't been one of
'em, the chances are you'd never be where you are, that you'd never have
gone to college and the law school. The Republican party realizes that
the Northeastern is most vitally connected with the material interests of
this State; that the prosperity of the road means the prosperity of the
State. And the leaders of the party protect the road from vindictive
assaults on it like Gaylord's, and from scatterbrains and agitators like
your friend Redbrook."

Austen shook his head sadly as he gazed at his father. He had always
recognized the futility of arguments, if argument on this point ever
arose between them.

"It's no use, Judge," he said. "If material prosperity alone were to be
considered, your contention would have some weight. The perpetuation of
the principle of American government has to be thought of. Government by
a railroad will lead in the end to anarchy. You are courting destruction
as it is."

"If you came in here to quote your confounded Emerson--" the Honourable
Hilary began, but Austen slipped around the table and took him by the arm
and led him perforce to his chair.

"No, Judge, that isn't Emerson," he answered. "It's just common sense,
only it sounds to you like drivel. I'm going now,--unless you want to
hear some more about the plots I've been getting into. But I want to say
this. I ask you to remember that you're my father, and that--I'm fond of
you. And that, if you and I happen to be on opposite sides, it won't make
any difference as far as my feelings are concerned. I'm always ready to
tell you frankly what I'm doing, if you wish to know. Good-by. I suppose
I'll see you in Ripton at the end of the week." And he pressed his
father's shoulder.

Mr. Vane looked up at his son with a curious expression. Perhaps (as when
Austen returned from the shooting of Mr. Blodgett in the West) there was
a smattering of admiration and pride in that look, and something of an
affection which had long ceased in its strivings for utterance. It was
the unconscious tribute, too,--slight as was its exhibition,--of the man
whose life has been spent in the conquest of material things to the man
who has the audacity, insensate though it seem, to fling these to the
winds in his search after ideals.

"Good-by, Austen," said Mr. Vane.

Austen got as far as the door, cast another look back at his father,--who
was sitting motionless, with head bowed, as when he came,--and went out.
So Mr. Vane remained for a full minute after the door had closed, and
then he raised his head sharply and gave a piercing glance at the
curtains that separated Number Seven from the governor's room. In three
strides he had reached them, flung them open, and the folding doors
behind them, already parted by four inches. The gas was turned low, but
under the chandelier was the figure of a young man struggling with an
overcoat. The Honourable Hilary did not hesitate, but came forward with a
swiftness that paralyzed the young man, who turned upon him a face on
which was meant to be written surprise and a just indignation, but in
reality was a mixture of impudence and pallid fright. The Honourable
Hilary, towering above him, and with that grip on his arm, was a
formidable person.

"Listening, were you, Ham?" he demanded.

"No," cried Mr. Tooting, with a vehemence he meant for force. "No, I
wasn't. Listening to who?"

"Humph!" said the Honourable Hilary, still retaining with one hand the
grip on Mr. Tooting 's arm, and with the other turning up the gas until
it flared in Mr. Tooting's face. "What are you doing in the governor's
room?"

"I left my overcoat in here this afternoon when you sent me to bring up
the senator."

"Ham," said Mr. Vane, "it isn't any use lying to me."

"I ain't lying to you," said Mr. Tooting, "I never did. I often lied for
you," he added, "and you didn't raise any objections that I remember."

Mr. Vane let go of the arm contemptuously.

"I've done dirty work for the Northeastern for a good many years," cried
Mr. Tooting, seemingly gaining confidence now that he was free; "I've
slaved for 'em, and what have they done for me? They wouldn't even back
me for county solicitor when I wanted the job."

"Turned reformer, Ham?"

"I guess I've got as much right to turn reformer as some folks I know."

"I guess you have," agreed the Honourable Hilary; unexpectedly. He seated
himself on a chair, and proceeded to regard Mr. Tooting in a manner
extremely disconcerting to that gentleman. This quality of
impenetrability, of never being sure when he was angry, had baffled more
able opponents of Hilary Vane than Mr. Hamilton Tooting.

"Good-night, Ham."

"I want to say--" Mr. Tooting began.

"Good-night, Ham," said Mr. Vane, once more.

Mr. Tooting looked at him, slowly buttoned up his overcoat, and departed.




CHAPTER XIII

THE REALM OF PEGASUS

The eventful day of Mr. Humphrey Crewe's speech on national affairs
dawned without a cloud in the sky. The snow was of a dazzling whiteness
and sprinkled with diamond dust; and the air of such transcendent
clearness that Austen could see--by leaning a little out of the Widow
Peasley's window--the powdered top of Holdfast Mountain some thirty miles
away. For once, a glance at the mountain sufficed him; and he directed
his gaze through the trees at the Duncan house, engaging in a pleasant
game of conjecture as to which was her window. In such weather the
heights of Helicon seemed as attainable as the peak of Holdfast; and he
had but to beckon a shining Pegasus from out a sun-shaft in the sky.
Obstacles were mere specks on the snow.

He forgot to close the window, and dressed in a temperature which would
have meant, for many mortals, pneumonia. The events of yesterday; painful
and agitating as they had been, had fallen away in the prospect that lay
before him--he would see her to-day, and speak with her. These words,
like a refrain; were humming in his head as honest Mr. Redbrook talked
during breakfast, while Austen's answers may have been both intelligent
and humorous. Mr. Redbrook, at least; gave no sign that they were not. He
was aware that Mr. Redbrook was bringing arguments to bear on the matter
of the meeting of the evening before, but he fended these lightly, while
in spirit he flung a gem-studded bridle aver the neck of Pegasus.

And after breakfast--away from the haunts of men! Away from the
bickerings, the subjection of mean spirits; material loss and gain and
material passion! By eight o'clock (the Widow Peasley's household being
an early and orderly one) he was swinging across the long hills, cleaving
for himself a furrowed path in the untrodden snow, breathing deep as he
gazed across the blue spaces from the crests. Bellerophon or Perseus,
aided by immortals, felt no greater sense of achievements to come than
he. Out here, on the wind-swept hills that rolled onward and upward to
the mountains, the world was his.

With the same speed he returned, still by untrodden paths until he
reached the country road that ended in the city street. Some who saw him
paused in their steps, caught unconsciously by the rhythmic perfection of
his motion. Ahead of him he beheld the state-house, its dial aflame in
the light, emblematic to him of the presence within it of a spirit which
cleansed it of impurities. She would be there; nay, when he looked at the
dial from a different angle, was there. As he drew nearer, there rose out
of the void her presence beside him which he had daily tried to summon
since that autumn afternoon--her voice and her eyes, and many of the
infinite expressions of each and both. Sprites that they were, they had
failed him until to-day, when he was to see her again!

And then, somehow, he had threaded the groups beside the battle-flags in
the corridor, and mounted the stairway. The doorkeeper of the House
looked into his face, and, with that rare knowledge of mankind which
doorkeepers possess, let him in. There were many ladies on the floor
(such being the chivalrous custom when a debate or a speech of the
importance of Mr. Crewe's was going on), but Austen swept them with a
glance of disappointment. Was it possible, after all, that she had not
come, or--more agitating thought--had gone back to New York?

At this disturbing point in his reflections Austen became aware that the
hall was ringing with a loud and compelling voice which originated in
front of the Speaker's desk.

The Honourable Humphrey Crewe was delivering his long-heralded speech on
national affairs, and was arrayed for the occasion in a manner befitting
the American statesman, with the conventional frock coat, which he wore
unbuttoned. But the Gladstone collar and a tie gave the touch of
individuality to his dress which was needed to set him aside as a marked
man. Austen suddenly remembered, with an irresistible smile, that one of
the reasons which he had assigned for his visit to the capital was to
hear this very speech, to see how Mr. Crewe would carry off what appeared
to be a somewhat difficult situation. Whether or not this motive had
drawn others,--for the millionaire's speech had not lacked
advertisement,--it is impossible to say, but there was standing room only
on the floor of the House that day.

The fact that Mr. Crewe was gratified could not be wholly concealed. The
thing that fascinated Austen Vane and others who listened was the aplomb
with which the speech was delivered. The member from Leith showed no
trace of the nervousness naturally to be expected in a maiden effort, but
spoke with the deliberation of an old campaigner, of the man of weight
and influence that he was. He leaned, part of the time, with his elbow on
the clerk's desk, with his feet crossed; again, when he wished to
emphasize a point, he came forward and seized with both hands the back of
his chair. Sometimes he thrust his thumb in his waistcoat pocket, and
turned with an appeal to Mr. Speaker Doby, who was apparently too
thrilled and surprised to indulge in conversation with those on the bench
beside him, and who made no attempt to quell hand-clapping and even
occasional whistling; again, after the manner of experts, Mr. Crewe
addressed himself forcibly to an individual in the audience, usually a
sensitive and responsive person like the Honourable Jacob Botcher, who on
such occasions assumed a look of infinite wisdom and nodded his head
slowly. There was no doubt about it that the compelling personality of
Mr. Humphrey Crewe was creating a sensation. Genius is sure of itself,
and statesmen are born, not made.

Able and powerful as was Mr. Crewe's discourse, the man and not the words
had fastened the wandering attention of Austen Vane. He did not perceive
his friend of the evening before, Mr. Widgeon, coming towards him up the
side aisle, until he felt a touch on the arm.

"Take my seat. It ain't exactly a front one," whispered the member from
Hull, "my wife's cousin's comin' on the noon train. Not a bad speech, is
it?" he added. "Acts like a veteran. I didn't callate he had it in him."

Thus aroused, Austen made his way towards the vacant chair, and when he
was seated raised his eyes to the gallery rail, and Mr. Crewe, the
legislative chamber, and its audience ceased to exist. It is quite
impossible--unless one is a poetical genius--to reproduce on paper that
gone and sickly sensation which is, paradoxically, so exquisite. The
psychological cause of it in this instance was, primarily, the sight, by
Austen Vane, of his own violets on a black, tailor-made gown trimmed with
wide braid, and secondarily of an oval face framed in a black hat, the
subtle curves of which no living man could describe. The face was turned
in his direction, and he felt an additional thrill when he realized that
she must have been watching him as he came in, for she was leaning
forward with a gloved hand on the railing.

He performed that act of conventionality known as a bow, and she nodded
her head--black hat and all. The real salutation was a divine ray which
passed between their eyes--hers and his--over the commonplace mortals
between. And after that, although the patient legislative clock in the
corner which had marked the space of other great events (such as the
Woodchuck Session) continued to tick, undisturbed in this instance by the
pole of the sergeant-at-arms, time became a lost dimension for Austen
Vane. He made a few unimportant discoveries such as the fact that Mrs.
Pomfret and her daughter were seated beside Victoria, listening with a
rapt attention; and that Mr. Crewe had begun to read statistics; and that
some people were gaping and others leaving. He could look up at the
gallery without turning his head, and sometimes he caught her momentary
glance, and again, with her chin in her hand, she was watching Mr. Crewe
with a little smile creasing the corners of her eyes.

A horrible thought crossed Austen's mind--perhaps they were not his
violets after all! Because she had smiled at him, yesterday and to-day,
he had soared heavenwards on wings of his own making. Perhaps they were
Mr. Crewe's violets. Had she not come to visit Mr. Crewe, to listen to
his piece de resistance, without knowing that he, Austen Vane, would be
in the capital? The idea that her interest in Austen Vane was possibly
connected with the study of mankind had a sobering effect on him; and the
notion that she had another sort of interest in Mr. Crewe seemed
ridiculous enough, but disturbing, and supported by feats.

Austen had reached this phase in his reflections when he was aroused by a
metallic sound which arose above the resonant tones of the orator of the
day. A certain vessel, to the use of which, according to Mr. Dickens, the
satire male portion of the American nation was at one time addicted,--a
cuspidor, in plain language,--had been started, by some unknown agency in
the back seats, rolling down the centre aisle, and gathering impetus as
it went, bumped the louder on each successive step until it hurled itself
with a clash against the clerk's desk, at the feet of the orator himself.
During its descent a titter arose which gradually swelled into a roar of
laughter, and Austen's attention was once more focused upon the member
from Leith. But if any man had so misjudged the quality of Humphrey Crewe
as to suppose for an instant that he could be put out of countenance by
such a manoeuvre, that man was mightily mistaken. Mr. Crewe paused, with
his forefinger on the page, and fixed a glassy eye on the remote
neighbourhood in the back seats where the disturbance had started.

"I am much obliged to the gentleman," he said coldly, "but he has sent me
an article which I never use, under any conditions. I would not deprive
him of its convenience."

Whereupon, it is not too much to say, Mr. Crews was accorded an ovation,
led by his stanch friend and admirer, the Honourable Jacob Botcher,
although that worthy had been known to use the article in question.

Mr. Speaker Doby glanced at the faithful clock, and arose majestically.

"I regret to say," he announced, "that the time of the gentleman from
Leith is up."

Mr. Botcher rose slowly to his feet.

"Mr. Speaker," he began, in a voice that rumbled through the crevices of
the gallery, "I move you, sir, that a vote of thanks be accorded to the
gentleman from Leith for his exceedingly able and instructive speech on
national affairs."

"Second the motion," said the Honourable Brush Bascom, instantly.

"And leave to print in the State Tribune!" cried a voice from somewhere
among the submerged four hundred and seventy.

"Gentlemen of the House," said Mr. Crewe, when the laughter had subsided,
"I have given you a speech which is the result of much thought and
preparation on my part. I have not flaunted the star-spangled banner in
your faces, or indulged in oratorical fireworks. Mine have been the words
of a plain business man, and I have not indulged in wild accusations or
flights of imagination. Perhaps, if I had," he added, "there are some who
would have been better pleased. I thank my friends for their kind
attention and approbation."

Nevertheless, amidst somewhat of a pandemonium, the vote of thanks was
given and the House adjourned; while Mr. Crewe's friends of whom he had
spoken could be seen pressing around him and shaking him by the hand.
Austen got to his feet, his eyes again sought the gallery, whence he
believed he received a look of understanding from a face upon which
amusement seemed plainly written. She had turned to glance down at him,
despite the fact that Mrs. Pomfret was urging her to leave. Austen
started for the door, and managed to reach it long before his neighbours
had left the vicinity of their seats. Once in the corridor, his eye
singled her out amongst those descending the gallery stairs, and he had a
little thrill of pride and despair when he realized that she was the
object of the scrutiny, too, of the men around him; the women were
interested, likewise, in Mrs. Pomfret, whose appearance, although
appropriate enough for a New York matinee, proclaimed her as hailing from
that mysterious and fabulous city of wealth. This lady, with her
lorgnette, was examining the faces about her in undisguised curiosity,
and at the same time talking to Victoria in a voice which she took no
pains to lower.

"I think it outrageous," she was saying. "If some Radical member had done
that in Parliament, he would have been expelled from the House. But of
course in Parliament they wouldn't have those horrid things to roll down
the aisles. Poor dear Humphrey! The career of a gentleman in politics is
a thankless one in this country. I wonder at his fortitude."

Victoria's eyes alone betokened her amusement.

"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said. "I'm so glad to see you again."

Austen said something which he felt was entirely commonplace and
inadequate to express his own sentiments, while Alice gave him an
uncertain bow, and Mrs. Pomfret turned her glasses upon him.

"You remember Mr. Vane," said Victoria; "you met him at Humphrey's."

"Did I?" answered Mrs. Pomfret. "How do you do? Can't something be done
to punish those rowdies?"

Austen grew red.

"Mr. Vane isn't a member of the House," said Victoria.

"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret. "Something ought to be done about it. In
England such a thing wouldn't be allowed to drop for a minute. If I lived
in this State, I think I should do something. Nobody in America seems to
have the spirit even to make a protest."

Austen turned quietly to Victoria.

"When are you going away?" he asked.

"To-morrow morning--earlier than I like to think of. I have to be in New
York by to-morrow night."

She flashed at him a look of approbation for his self-control, and then,
by a swift transition which he had often remarked, her expression changed
to one of amusement, although a seriousness lurked in the depths of her
eyes. Mrs. Pomfret had gone on, with Alice, and they followed.

"And--am I not to see you again before you go?" he exclaimed.

He didn't stop to reason than upon the probable consequences of his act
in seeking her. Nature, which is stronger than reason, was compelling
him.

"That depends," said Victoria.

"Upon whom?"

"Upon you."

They were on the lower stairs by this times, and there was silence
between then for a few moments as they descended,--principally because,
after this exalting remark, Austen could not trust himself to speak.

"Will you go driving with me?" he asked, and was immediately
thunderstruck at his boldness.

"Yes," she answered, simply.

"How soon may I come?" he demanded,

She laughed softly, but with a joyous note which was not hidden from him
as they stepped out of the darkened corridor into the dazzling winter
noonday.

"I will be ready at three o'clock," she said.

He looked at his watch.

"Two hours and a half!" he cried.

"If that is too early," she said mischievously, "we can go later."

"Too early!" he repeated. But the rest of his protest was cut short by
Mr. Crewe.

"Hello, Victoria, what did you think of my speech?"

"The destinies of the nation are settled," said Victoria. "Do you know
Mr. Vane?"

"Oh, yes, how are you?" said Mr, Crewe; "glad to see you," and he
extended a furred glove. "Were you there?"

"Yes," said Austen.

"I'll send you a copy. I'd like to talk it over with you. Come on,
Victoria, I've arranged for an early lunch. Come on, Mrs. Pomfret--get
in, Alice."

Mrs. Pomfret, still protesting against the profane interruption to Mr.
Crewe's speech, bent her head to enter Mr. Crewe's booby sleigh, which
had his crest on the panel. Alice was hustled in next, but Victoria
avoided his ready assistance and got in herself, Mr. Crewe getting in
beside her.

"Au revoir," she called out to Austen, as the door slammed. The coachman
gathered his horses together, and off they went at a brisk trot. Then the
little group which had been watching the performance dispersed. Halfway
across the park Austen perceived some one signaling violently to him, and
discovered his friend, young Tom Gaylord.

"Come to dinner with me," said young Tom, "and tell me whether the speech
of your friend from Leith will send him to Congress. I saw you hobnobbing
with him just now. What's the matter, Austen? I haven't seen that guilty
expression on your face since we were at college together."

"What's the best livery-stable in town?" Austen asked.

"By George, I wondered why you came down here. Who are you going to take
out in a sleigh? There's a girl in it, is there?"

"Not yet, Tom," said Austen.

"I've often asked myself why I ever had any use for such a secretive cuss
as you," declared young Mr. Gaylord. "But if you're really goin' to get
interested in girls, you ought to see old Flint's daughter. I wrote you
about her. Why," exclaimed Tom, "wasn't she one of those that got into
Crewe's sleigh?"

"Tom," said Austen, "where did you say that livery-stable was?"

"Oh, dang the livery-stable!" answered Mr. Gaylord. "I hear there's quite
a sentiment for you for governor. How about it? You know I've always said
you could be United States senator and President. If you'll only say the
word, Austen, we'll work up a movement around the State that'll be hard
to beat."

"Tom," said Austen, laying his hand on young Mr. Gaylord's farther
shoulder, "you're a pretty good fellow. Where did you say that
livery-stable was?

"I'll go sleigh-riding with you," said Mr. Gaylord. "I guess the
Pingsquit bill can rest one afternoon."

"Tom, I don't know any man I'd rather take than you," said Austen.

The unsuspecting Tom was too good-natured to be offended, and shortly
after dinner Austen found himself in the process of being looked over by
a stout gentleman named Putter, proprietor of Putter's Livery, who
claimed to be a judge of men as well as horses. Austen had been through
his stalls and chosen a mare.

"Durned if you don't look like a man who can handle a horse," said Mr.
Putter.  And as long as you're a friend of Tom Gaylord's I'll let you
have her. Nobody drives that mare but me. What's your name?"

"Vane."

"Ain't any relation to old Hilary, be you?"

"I'm his son," said Austen, "only he doesn't boast about it."

"Godfrey!" exclaimed Mr. Putter, with a broad grin, "I guess you kin have
her. Ain't you the man that shot a feller out West? Seems to me I heerd
somethin' about it."

"Which one did you hear about?" Austen asked.

"Good Lord!" said Mr. Putter, "you didn't shoot more'n one, did you?"

It was just three o'clock when Austen drove into the semicircle opposite
the Widow Peasley's, rang Mr. Crewe's door-bell, and leaped into the
sleigh once more, the mare's nature being such as to make it undesirable
to leave her. Presently Mr. Crewe's butler appeared, and stood dubiously
in the vestibule.

"Will you tell Miss Flint that Mr. Vane has called for her, and that I
cannot leave the horse?"

The man retired with obvious disapproval. Then Austen heard Victoria's
voice in the hallway:--"Don't make a goose of yourself, Humphrey." Here
she appeared, the colour fresh in her cheeks, her slender figure clad in
a fur which even Austen knew was priceless. She sprang into the sleigh,
the butler, with annoying deliberation, and with the air of saying that
this was an affair of which he washed his hands, tucked in Mr. Putter's
best robe about her feet, the mare leaped forward, and they were off, out
of the circle and flying up the hill on the hard snow-tracks.

"Whew!" exclaimed Victoria, "what a relief! Are you staying in that dear
little house?" she asked, with a glance at the Widow Peasley's.

"Yes," said Austen.

"I wish I were."

He looked at her shyly. He was not a man to do homage to material gods,
but the pomp and circumstance with which she was surrounded had had a
sobering effect upon him, and added to his sense of the instability and
unreality of the present moment. He had an almost guilty feeling of
having broken an unwritten law, of abducting a princess, and the old
Duncan house had seemed to frown protestingly that such an act should
have taken place under its windows. If Victoria had been--to him--an
ordinary mortal in expensive furs instead of a princess, he would have
snapped his fingers at the pomp and circumstance. These typified the
comforts which, in a wild and forgetful moment, he might ask her to
leave. Not that he believed she would leave them. He had lived long
enough to know that an interest by a woman in a man--especially a man
beyond the beaten track of her observation--did not necessarily mean that
she might marry him if he asked her. And yet--oh, Tantalus! here she was
beside him, for one afternoon again his very own, their two souls ringing
with the harmony of whirling worlds in sunlit space. He sought refuge in
thin thought; he strove, in oblivion, to drain the cup of the hour of its
nectar, even as he had done before. Generations of Puritan Vanes (whose
descendant alone had harassed poor Sarah Austere) were in his blood; and
there they hung in the long gallery of Time, mutely but sternly
forbidding when he raised his hand to the stem.

In silence they reached the crest where the little city ended abruptly in
view of the paradise of the silent hills,--his paradise, where there were
no palaces or thought of palaces. The wild wind of the morning was still.
In this realm at least, a heritage from his mother, seemingly untrodden
by the foot of man, the woman at his side was his. From Holdfast over the
spruces to Sawanec in the blue distance he was lord, a domain the wealth
of which could not be reckoned in the coin of Midas. He turned to her as
they flew down the slope, and she averted her face, perchance perceiving
in that look a possession from which a woman shrinks; and her remark,
startlingly indicative of the accord between them, lent a no less
startling reality to the enchantment.

"This is your land, isn't it?" she said.

"I sometimes feel as though it were," he answered. "I was out here this
morning, when the wind was at play," and he pointed with his whip at a
fantastic snowdrift, before I saw you."

"You looked as though you had come from it," she answered.  You seemed
--I suppose you will think me silly--but you seemed to bring something of
this with you into that hail. I always think of you as out on the hills
and mountains."

"And you," he said, "belong here, too."

She drew a deep breath.

"I wish I did. But you--you really do belong here. You seem to have
absorbed all the clearness of it, and the strength and vigour. I was
watching you this morning, and you were so utterly out of place in those
surroundings." Victoria paused, her colour deepening.

His blood kept pace with the mare's footsteps, but he did not reply.

"What did you think of Humphrey's speech?" she asked, abruptly changing
the subject.

"I thought it a surprisingly good one,--what I heard of it," he answered.
"That wasn't much. I didn't think he'd do as well."

"Humphrey's clever in a great many ways," Victoria agreed. "If he didn't
have such an impenetrable conceit, he might go far, because he learns
quickly, and has an industry that is simply appalling. But he hasn't
quite the manner for politics, has he?"

"I think I should call his manner a drawback," said Austen, "though not
by any means an insurmountable one."

Victoria laughed.

"The other qualities all need to be very great," she said. "He was
furious at me for coming out this afternoon. He had it all arranged to
drive over to the Forge, and had an early lunch."

"And I," said Austen, "have all the more reason to be grateful to you."

"Oh, if you knew the favour you were doing me," she cried, "bringing me
out here where I can breathe. I hope you don't think I dislike Humphrey,"
she went on. "Of course, if I did, I shouldn't visit him. You see, I have
known him for so long."

"I hadn't a notion that you disliked him," said Austen. "I am curious
about his career; that's one reason I came down. He somehow inspires
curiosity."

"And awe," she added. "Humphrey's career has all the fascination of a
runaway locomotive. One watches it transfixed, awaiting the inevitable
crash."

Their eyes met, and they both laughed.

"It's no use trying to be a humbug," said Victoria, "I can't. And I do
like Humphrey, in spite of his career."

And they laughed again. The music of the bells ran faster and faster
still, keeping time to a wilder music of the sunlit hills and sky; nor
was it strange that her voice, when she spoke, did not break the spell,
but laid upon him a deeper sense of magic.

"This brings back the fairy books," she said, "and all those wonderful
and never-to-be-forgotten sensations of the truant, doesn't it? You've
been a truant--haven't you?"

"Yes," he laughed, "I've been a truant, but I never quite realized the
possibilities of the part--until to-day."

She was silent a moment, and turned away her head, surveying the
landscape that fell away for miles beyond.

"When I was a child," she said, "I used to think that by opening a door I
could step into an enchanted realm like this. Only I could never find the
door. Perhaps," she added, gayly pursuing the conceit, "it was because
you had the key, and I didn't know you in those days." She gave him a
swift, searching look, smiling, whimsical yet startled,--so elusive that
the memory of it afterwards was wont to come and go like a flash of
light. "Who are you?" she asked.

His blood leaped, but he smiled in delighted understanding of her mood.
Sarah Austen had brought just such a magic touch to an excursion, and
even at that moment Austen found himself marvelling a little at the
strange resemblance between the two.

"I am a plain person whose ancestors came from a village called Camden
Street," he replied. "Camden Street is there, on a shelf of the hills,
and through the arch of its elms you can look off over the forests of the
lowlands until they end in the blue reaches of the ocean,--if you could
see far enough."

"If you could see far enough," said Victoria, unconsciously repeating his
words. "But that doesn't explain you," she exclaimed: "You are like
nobody I ever met, and you have a supernatural faculty of appearing
suddenly, from nowhere, and whisking me away like the lady in the fable,
out of myself and the world I live in. If I become so inordinately
grateful as to talk nonsense, you mustn't blame me. Try not to think of
the number of times I've seen you, or when it was we first met."

"I believe," said Austen, gravely, "it was when a mammoth beast had his
cave on Holdfast, and the valleys were covered with cocoanut-palms."

"And you appeared suddenly then, too, and rescued me. You have always
been uniformly kind," she said, "but--a little intangible."

"A myth," he suggested, "with neither height, breadth, nor thickness."

"You have height and breadth," she answered, measuring him swiftly with
her eye; "I am not sure about the thickness. Perhaps. What I mean to say
is, that you seem to be a person in the world, but not of it. Your exits
and entrances are too mysterious, and then you carry me out of it,
--although I invite myself, which is not at all proper."

"I came down here to see you," he said, and took a firmer grip on the
reins. "I exist to that extent."

"That's unworthy of you," she cried. "I don't believe you--would have
known I was here unless you had caught eight of me."

"I should have known it," he said.

"How?"

"Because I heard you playing. I am sure it was you playing."

"Yes, it was I," she answered simply, "but I did not know that--you
heard. Where were you?

"I suppose," he replied, "a sane witness would have testified that I was
in the street--one of those partial and material truths which are so
misleading."

She laughed again, joyously.

"Seriously, why did you come down here?" she insisted. "I am not so
absorbed in Humphrey's career that I cannot take an interest in yours. In
fact, yours interests me more, because it is more mysterious.
Humphrey's," she added, laughing, "is charted from day to day, and
announced in bulletins. He is more generous to his friends than--you."

"I have nothing to chart," said Austen, "except such pilgrimages as
this,--and these, after all, are unchartable. Your friend, Mr. Crewe, on
the other hand, is well away on his voyage after the Golden Fleece. I
hope he is provided with a Lynceus."

She was silent for a long time, but he was feverishly conscious of her
gaze upon him, and did not dare to turn his eyes to hers. The look in
them he beheld without the aid of physical vision, and in that look was
the world-old riddle of her sex typified in the image on the African
desert, which Napoleon had tried to read, and failed. And while wisdom
was in the look, there was in it likewise the eternal questioning of a
fate quite as inscrutable, against which wisdom would avail nothing. It
was that look which, for Austen, revealed in her in their infinite
variety all women who had lived; those who could resist, and those who
could yield, and yielding all, bestow a gift which left them still
priceless; those to whom sorrow might bring sadness, and knowledge
mourning, and yet could rob them of no jot of sweetness. And knowing
this, he knew that to gain her now (could such a high prize be gained!)
would be to lose her. If he were anything to her (realize it or not as
she might), it was because he found strength to resist this greatest
temptation of his life. Yield, and his guerdon was lost, and he would be
Austen Vane no longer--yield, and his right to act, which would make him
of value in her eyes as well as in his own, was gone forever.

Well he knew what the question in her eyes meant or something of what it
meant, so inexplicably is the soul of woman linked to events. He had
pondered often on that which she had asked him when he had brought her
home over the hills in the autumn twilight. He remembered her words, and
the very inflection of her voice. "Then you won't tell me?" How could he
tell her? He became aware that she was speaking now, in an even tone.

"I had an odd experience this morning, when I was waiting for Mrs.
Pomfret outside the state-house," she said. "A man was standing looking
up at the statue of the patriot with a strange, rapt expression on his
face,--such a good face,--and he was so big and honest and uncompromising
I wanted to talk to him. I didn't realize that I was staring at him so
hard, because I was trying to remember where I had seen him before,--and
then I remembered suddenly that it was with you."

"With me?" Austen repeated.

"You were standing with him, in front of the little house, when I save
you yesterday. His name was Redbrook. It appears that he had seen me,"
Victoria replied, "when I went to Mercer to call on Zeb Meader. And he
asked me if I knew you."

"Of course you denied it," said Austen.

"I couldn't, very well," laughed Victoria, "because you had confessed to
the acquaintance first."

"He merely wished to have the fact corroborated. Mr. Redbrook is a man
who likes to be sure of his ground."

"He told me a very interesting thing about you," she continued slowly,
with her eye upon. Austen's profile. "He said that a great many men
wanted you to be their candidate for governor of the State,--more than
you had any idea of,--and that you wouldn't consent. Mr. Redbrook grew so
enthusiastic that he forgot, for the moment, my--relationship to the
railroad. He is not the only person with whom I have talked who has
--forgotten it, or hasn't known of it."

Austen was silent.

"Why won't you be a candidate," she asked, in a low voice, "if such men
as that want you?"

"I am afraid Mr. Redbrook exaggerates," he said. "The popular demand of
which he spoke is rather mythical. And I should be inclined to accuse
him, too, of a friendly attempt to install me in your good graces."

"No," answered Victoria, smiling, with serious eyes, "I won't be put off
that way. Mr. Redbrook isn't the kind of man that exaggerates--I've seen
enough of his type to know that. And he told me about your--reception
last night at the Widow Peasley's. You wouldn't have told me," she added
reproachfully.

He laughed.

"It was scarcely a subject I could have ventured," he said.

"But I asked you," she objected. "Now tell me, why did you refuse to be
their candidate? It wasn't because you were not likely to get elected,
was it?"

He permitted himself a glance which was a tribute of admiration--a glance
which she returned steadfastly.

"It isn't likely that I should have been elected," he answered, "but you
are right--that is not the reason I refused."

"I thought not," she said, "I did not believe you were the kind of man to
refuse for that reason. And you would have been elected."

"What makes you think so?" he asked curiously.

"I have been thinking since I saw you last--yes, and I have been making
inquiries. I have been trying to find out things--which you will not tell
me." She paused, with a little catch of her breath, and went on again.
"Do you believe I came all the way up here just to hear Humphrey Crewe
make a speech and to drive with him in a high sleigh and listen to him
talk about his career? When serious men of the people like Mr. Redbrook
and that nice Mr. Jenney at Leith and a lot of others who do not
ordinarily care for politics are thinking and indignant, I have come to
the conclusion there must be a cause for it. They say that the railroad
governs them through disreputable politicians,--and I--I am beginning to
believe it is true. I have had some of the politicians pointed out to me
in the Legislature, and they look like it."

Austen did not smile. She was speaking quietly, but he saw that she was
breathing deeply, and he knew that she possessed a courage which went far
beyond that of most women, and an insight into life and affairs.

"I am going to find out," she said, "whether these things are true."

"And then?" he asked involuntarily.

"If they are true, I am going to tell my father about them, and ask him
to investigate. Nobody seems to have the courage to go to him."

Austen did not answer. He felt the implication; he knew that, without
realizing his difficulties, and carried on by a feeling long pent up, she
had measured him unjustly, and yet he felt no resentment, and no shock.
Perhaps he might feel that later. Now he was filled only with a sympathy
that was yet another common bond between them. Suppose she did find out?
He knew that she would not falter until she came to the end of her
investigation, to the revelation of Mr. Flint's code of business ethics.
Should the revolt take place, she would be satisfied with nothing less
than the truth, even as he, Austen Vane, had not been satisfied. And he
thought of the life-long faith that would be broken thereby.

They had made the circle of the hills, and the sparkling lights of the
city lay under them like blue diamond points in the twilight of the
valley. The crests behind them deepened in purple as the saffron faded in
the west, and a gossamer cloud of Tyrian dye floated over Holdfast. In
silence they turned for a last lingering look, and in silence went down
the slope into the world again, and through the streets to the driveway
of the Duncan house. It was only when they had stopped before the door
that she trusted herself to speak.

"I ought not to have said what I did," she began, in a low voice; "I
didn't realize--but I cannot understand you."

"You have said nothing which you need ever have cause to regret," he
replied. He was too great for excuses, too great for any sorrow save what
she herself might feel, as great as the silent hills from which he came.

She stood for a moment on the edge of the steps, her eyes lustrous,--yet
gazing into his with a searching, troubled look that haunted him for many
days. But her self-command was unshaken, her power to control speech was
the equal of his. And this power of silence in her revealed in such
instants--was her greatest fascination for Austen, the thing which set
her apart among women; which embodied for him the whole charm and mystery
of her sex.

"Good-by," she said simply.

"Good-by," he said, and seized her hand--and drove away.

Without ringing the bell Victoria slipped into the hall,--for the latch
was not caught,--and her first impulse was to run up the staircase to her
room. But she heard Mrs. Pomfret's voice on the landing above and fled,
as to a refuge, into the dark drawing-room, where she stood for a moment
motionless, listening for the sound of his sleigh-bells as they fainted
on the winter's night. Then she seated herself to think, if she could,
though it is difficult to think when one's heart is beating a little
wildly. It was Victoria's nature to think things out. For the first time
in her life she knew sorrow, and it made it worse that that sorrow was
indefinable. She felt an accountable attraction for this man who had so
strangely come into her life, whose problems had suddenly become her
problems. But she did not connect the attraction for Austen Vane with her
misery. She recalled him as he had left her, big and strong and
sorrowful, with a yearning look that was undisguised, and while her faith
in him came surging back again, she could not understand.

Gradually she became aware of men's voices, and turned with a start to
perceive that the door of the library was open, and that Humphrey Crewe
and another were standing in the doorway against the light. With an
effort of memory she identified the other man as the Mr. Tooting who had
made himself so useful at Mr. Crewe's garden party.

"I told you I could make you governor, Mr. Crewe," Mr. Tooting was
saying. "Say, why do you think the Northeastern crowd--why do you think
Hilary Vane is pushing your bills down the sidings? I'll tell you,
because they know you're a man of ability, and they're afraid of you, and
they know you're a gentleman, and can't be trusted with their deals, so
they just shunted you off at Kodunk with a jolly about sendin' you to
Congress if you made a hit on a national speech. I've been in the
business a good many years, and I've seen and done some things for the
Northeastern that stick in my throat"--(at this point Victoria sat down
again and gripped the arms of her chair), "I don't like to see a decent
man sawbucked the way they're teeterin' you, Mr. Crewe. I know what I'm
talkin' about, and I tell you that Ridout and Jake Botcher and Brush
Bascom haven't any more notion of lettin' your bills out of committee
than they have Gaylord's. Why? Because they've got orders not to."

"You're making some serious charges, Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe.

"And what's more, I can prove 'em. You know yourself that anybody who
talks against the Northeastern is booted down and blacklisted. You've
seen that, haven't you?"

"I have observed," said Mr. Crewe, "that things do not seem to be as they
should in a free government."

"And it makes your blood boil as an American citizen, don't it? It does
mine," said Mr. Tooting, with fine indignation. "I was a poor boy, and
had to earn my living, but I've made up my mind I've worn the collar long
enough--if I have to break rocks. And I want to repeat what I said a
little while ago," he added, weaving his thumb into Mr. Crewe's
buttonhole; "I know a thing or two, and I've got some brains, as they
know, and I can make you governor of this State if you'll only say the
word. It's a cinch."

Victoria started to rise once more, and realized that to escape she would
have to cross the room directly in front of the two men. She remained
sitting where she was in a fearful fascination, awaiting Humphrey Crewe's
answer. There was a moment's pause.

"I believe you made the remark, Mr. Tooting," he said, "that in your
opinion there is enough anti-railroad sentiment in the House to pass any
bill which the railroad opposes."

"If a leader was to get up there, like you, with the arguments I could
put into his hands, they would make the committee discharge that
Pingsquit bill of the Gaylords', and pass it."

"On what do you base your opinion?" asked Mr. Crewe.

"Well," said Mr. Tooting, "I guess I'm a pretty shrewd observer and have
had practice enough. But you know Austen Vane, don't you?"

Victoria held her breath.

"I've a slight acquaintance with him," replied Mr. Crewe; "I've helped
him along in one or two minor legal matters. He seems to be a little
--well, pushing, you might say."

"I want to tell you one thing about Austen," continued Mr. Tooting.
"Although I don't stand much for old Hilary, I'd take Austen Vane's
opinion on most things as soon as that of any man in the State. If he
only had some sense about himself, he could be governor next time
--there's a whole lot that wants him. I happen to know some of 'em
offered it to him last night."

"Austen Vane governor!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, with a politely deprecating
laugh.

"It may sound funny," said Mr. Tooting, stoutly; "I never understood what
he has about him. He's never done anything but buck old Hilary in that
damage case and send back a retainer pass to old Flint, but he's got
something in his make-up that gets under your belt, and a good many of
these old hayseeds'll eat out of his hand, right now. Well, I don't want
this to go any farther, you're a gentleman,--but Austen came down here
yesterday and had the whole thing sized up by last night. Old Hilary
thought the Gaylords sent for him to lobby their bill through. They may
have sent for him, all right, but he wouldn't lobby for 'em. He could
have made a pile of money out of 'em. Austen doesn't seem to care about
money--he's queer. He says as long as he has a horse and a few books and
a couple of sandwiches a day he's all right. Hilary had him up in Number
Seven tryin' to find out what he came down for, and Austen told him
pretty straight--what he didn't tell the Gaylords, either. He kind of
likes old Hilary,--because he's his father, I guess,--and he said there
were enough men in that House to turn Hilary and his crowd upside down.
That's how I know for certain. If Austen Vane said it, I'll borrow money
to bet on it," declared Mr. Tooting.

"You don't think young Vane is going to get into the race?" queried Mr.
Crewe.

"No," said Mr. Tooting, somewhat contemptuously. "No, I tell you he
hasn't got that kind of sense. He never took any trouble to get ahead,
and I guess he's sort of sensitive about old Hilary. It'd make a good
deal of a scandal in the family, with Austen as an anti-railroad
candidate."  Mr. Tooting lowered his voice to a tone that was caressingly
confidential. "I tell you, and you sleep on it, a man of your brains and
money can't lose. It's a chance in a million, and when you win you've got
this little State tight in your pocket, and a desk in the millionaire's
club at Washington. Well, so long," said Mr. Tooting, "you think that
over."

"You have, at least, put things in a new and interesting light," said Mr.
Crewe. "I will try to decide what my duty is."

"Your duty's pretty plain to me," said Mr. Tooting. "If I had money, I'd
know that the best way to use it is for the people,--ain't that so?"

"In the meantime," Mr. Crewe continued, "you may drop in to-morrow at
three."

"You'd better make it to-morrow night, hadn't you?" said Mr. Tooting,
significantly. "There ain't any back way to this house."

"As you choose," said Mr. Crewe.

They passed within a few feet of Victoria, who resisted an almost
uncontrollable impulse to rise and confront them. The words given her to
use were surging in her brain, and yet she withheld them why, she knew
not. Perhaps it was because, after such communion as the afternoon had
brought, the repulsion she felt for Mr. Tooting aided her to sit where
she was. She heard the outside door open and close, and she saw Humphrey
Crewe walk past her again into his library, and that door closed, and she
was left in darkness. Darkness indeed for Victoria, who throughout her
life had lived in light alone; in the light she had shed, and the light
which she had kindled in others. With a throb which was an exquisite
pain, she understood now the compassion in Austen's eyes, and she saw so
simply and so clearly why he had not told her that her face burned with
the shame of her demand. The one of all others to whom she could go in
this trouble was denied her, and his lips were sealed, who would have
spoken honestly and without prejudice. She rose and went quietly out into
the biting winter night, and stood staring through the trees at the
friendly reddened windows of the little cottage across the way with a
yearning that passed her understanding. Out of those windows, to
Victoria, shone honesty and truth, and the peace which these alone may
bring.




CHAPTER XIV

THE DESCENDANTS OF HORATIUS

So the twenty honourable members of the State Senate had been dubbed by
the man who had a sense of humour and a smattering of the classics,
because they had been put there to hold the bridge against the Tarquins
who would invade the dominions of the Northeastern. Twenty picked men,
and true they were indeed, but a better name for their body would have
been the 'Life Guard of the Sovereign.' The five hundred far below them
might rage and at times revolt, but the twenty in their shining armour
stood undaunted above the vulnerable ground and smiled grimly at the mob.
The citadel was safe.

The real Horatius of the stirring time of which we write was that old and
tried veteran, the Honourable Brush Bascom; and Spurius Lartius might be
typified by the indomitable warrior, the Honourable Jacob Botcher, while
the Honourable Samuel Doby of Hale, Speaker of the House, was
unquestionably Herminius. How the three held the bridge that year will be
told in as few and as stirring words as possible. A greater than Porsena
confronted them, and well it was for them, and for the Empire, that the
Body Guard of the Twenty stood behind them.

        "Lars Porsena of Clusium,
        By the Nine Gods he swore."

The morning after the State Tribune had printed that memorable speech on
national affairs--statistics and all, with an editorial which gave every
evidence of Mr. Peter Pardriff's best sparkle--Mr. Crewe appeared on the
floor of the House with a new look in his eye which made discerning men
turn and stare at him. It was the look of the great when they are justly
indignant, when their trust--nobly given--has been betrayed. Washington,
for instance, must have had just such a look on the battlefield of
Trenton. The Honourable Jacob Botcher, pressing forward as fast as his
bulk would permit and with the newspaper in his hand, was met by a calm
and distant manner which discomposed that statesman, and froze his stout
index finger to the editorial which "perhaps Mr. Crewe had not seen."

Mr. Crewe was too big for resentment, but he knew how to meet people who
didn't measure up to his standards. Yes, he had seen the editorial, and
the weather still continued fine. The Honourable Jacob was left behind
scratching his head, and presently he sought a front seat in which to
think, the back ones not giving him room enough. The brisk, cheery
greeting of the Honourable Brush Bascom fared no better, but Mr. Bascom
was a philosopher, and did not disturb the great when their minds were
revolving on national affairs and the welfare of humanity in general. Mr.
Speaker Doby and Mr. Ridout got but abstract salutations also, and were
correspondingly dismayed.

That day, and for many days thereafter, Mr. Crewe spent some time--as was
entirely proper--among the back seats, making the acquaintance of his
humbler fellow members of the submerged four hundred and seventy. He had
too long neglected this, so he told them, but his mind had been on high
matters. During many of his mature years he had pondered as to how the
welfare of community and State could be improved, and the result of that
thought was embodied in the bills of which they had doubtless received
copies. If not, down went their names in a leather-bound memorandum, and
they got copies in the next mails.

The delight of some of the simple rustic members at this unbending of a
great man may be imagined. To tell the truth, they had looked with little
favour upon the intimacy which had sprung up between him and those
tyrannical potentates, Messrs. Botcher and Bascom, and many who had the
courage of their convictions expressed then very frankly. Messrs. Botcher
and Bascom were, when all was said, mere train despatchers of the
Northeastern, who might some day bring on a wreck the like of which the
State had never seen. Mr. Crewe was in a receptive mood; indeed his
nature, like Nebuchadnezzar's, seemed to have experienced some
indefinable and vital change. Was this the Mr. Crewe the humble rural
members had pictured to themselves? Was this the Mr. Crewe who, at the
beginning of the session, had told them roundly it was their duty to vote
for his bills?

Mr. Crewe was surprised, he said, to hear so much sentiment against the
Northeastern Railroads. Yes, he was a friend of Mr. Flint's--they were
neighbours in the country. But if these charges had any foundation
whatever, they ought to be looked into--they ought to be taken up. A
sovereign people should not be governed by a railroad. Mr. Crewe was a
business man, but first of all he was a citizen; as a business man he did
not intend to talk vaguely, but to investigate thoroughly. And then, if
charges should be made, he would make them specifically, and as a citizen
contend for the right.

It is difficult to restrain one's pen in dealing with a hero, but it is
not too much to say that Mr. Crewe impressed many of the country members
favourably. How, indeed, could he help doing so? His language was
moderate, his poise that of a man of affairs, and there was a look in his
eye and a determination in his manner that boded ill for the Northeastern
if he should, after weighing the facts, decide that they ought to be
flagellated. His friendship with Mr. Flint and the suspicion that he
might be inclined to fancy Mr. Flint's daughter would not influence him
in the least; of that many of his hearers were sure. Not a few of them
were invited to dinner at the Duncan house, and shown the library and the
conservatory.

"Walk right in," said Mr. Crewe. "You can't hurt the flowers unless you
bump against the pots, and if you walk straight you can't do that. I
brought the plants down from my own hothouse in Leith. Those are French
geraniums--very hard to get. They're double, you see, and don't look like
the scrawny things you see in this country. Yes (with a good-natured
smile), I guess they do cost something. I'll ask my secretary what I paid
for that plant. Is that dinner, Waters? Come right in, gentlemen, we
won't wait for ceremony."

Whereupon the delegation would file into the dining room in solemn
silence behind the imperturbable Waters, with dubious glances at Mr.
Waters' imperturbable understudy in green and buff and silver buttons.
Honest red hands, used to milking at five o'clock in the morning, and
hands not so red that measured dry goods over rural counters for
insistent female customers fingered in some dismay what seemed an
inexplicable array of table furniture.

"It don't make any difference which fork you take," said the good-natured
owner of this palace of luxury, "only I shouldn't advise you to use one
for the soup you wouldn't get much of it--what? Yes, this house suits me
very well. It was built by old man Duncan, you know, and his daughter
married an Italian nobleman and lives in a castle. The State ought to buy
the house for a governor's mansion. It's a disgrace that our governor
should have to live in the Pelican Hotel, and especially in a room next
to that of the chief counsel of the Northeastern, with only a curtain and
a couple of folding doors between."

"That's right," declared an up-state member, the governor hadn't ought to
live next to Vane. But as to gettin' him a house like this--kind of
royal, ain't it? Couldn't do justice to it on fifteen hundred a year,
could he? Costs you a little mite more to live in it, don't it?"

"It costs me something," Mr. Crewe admitted modestly. "But then our
governors are all rich men, or they couldn't afford to pay the
Northeastern lobby campaign expenses. Not that I believe in a rich man
for governor, gentlemen. My contention is that the State should pay its
governors a sufficient salary to make them independent of the
Northeastern, a salary on which they can live as befits a chief
executive."

These sentiments, and others of a similar tenor, were usually received in
silence by his rural guests, but Mr. Crewe, being a broad-minded man of
human understanding, did not set down their lack of response to surliness
or suspicion of a motive, but rather to the innate caution of the hill
farmer; and doubtless, also, to a natural awe of the unwonted splendour
with which they were surrounded. In a brief time his kindly hospitality
became a byword in the capital, and fabulous accounts of it were carried
home at week ends to toiling wives and sons and daughters, to incredulous
citizens who sat on cracker boxes and found the Sunday papers stale and
unprofitable for weeks thereafter. The geraniums--the price of which Mr.
Crewe had forgotten to find out--were appraised at four figures, and the
conservatory became the hanging gardens of Babylon under glass; the
functionary in buff and green and silver buttons and his duties furnished
the subject for long and heated arguments. And incidentally everybody who
had a farm for sale wrote to Mr. Crewe. Since the motives of every
philanthropist and public benefactor are inevitably challenged by cynics,
there were many who asked the question, "What did Mr. Crewe want?" It is
painful even to touch upon this when we know that Mr. Crewe was merely
doing his duty as he saw it, when we know that he spelled the word,
mentally, with a capital D.

There were many, too, who remarked that a touching friendship in the
front seats (formerly plainly visible to the naked eye from the back) had
been strained--at least. Mr. Crewe still sat with Mr. Botcher and Mr.
Bascom, but he was not a man to pretend after the fires had cooled. The
Honourable Jacob Botcher, with his eyes shut so tight, that his honest
face wore an expression of agony, seemed to pray every morning for the
renewal of that friendship when the chaplain begged the Lord to guide the
Legislature into the paths of truth; and the Honourable Brush Bascom wore
an air of resignation which was painful to see. Conversation languished,
and the cosey and familiar haunts of the Pelican knew Mr. Crewe no more.

Mr. Crewe never forgot, of course, that he was a gentleman, and a certain
polite intercourse existed. During the sessions, as a matter of fact, Mr.
Bascom had many things to whisper to Mr. Botcher, and Mr. Butcher to Mr.
Bascom, and in order to facilitate this Mr. Crewe changed seats with the
Honourable Jacob. Neither was our hero a man to neglect, on account of
strained relations, to insist upon his rights. His eyes were open now,
and he saw men and things political as they were; he knew that his bills
for the emancipation of the State were prisoners in the maw of the
dragon, and not likely to see the light of law. Not a legislative day
passed that he did not demand, with a firmness and restraint which did
him infinite credit, that Mr. Bascom's and Mr. Butcher's committees
report those bills to the House either favourably or unfavourably. And we
must do exact justice, likewise, to Messrs. Bascom and Butcher; they,
too, incited perhaps thereto by Mr. Crewe's example, answered courteously
that the very excellent bills in question were of such weight and
importance as not to be decided on lightly, and that there were necessary
State expenditures which had first to be passed upon. Mr. Speaker Doby,
with all the will in the world, could do nothing: and on such occasions
(Mr. Crewe could see) Mr. Doby bore a striking resemblance to the picture
of the mockturtle in "Alice m Wonderland"--a fact which had been pointed
out by Miss Victoria Flint. In truth, all three of these gentlemen wore,
when questioned, such a sorrowful and injured air as would have deceived
a more experienced politician than the new member from Leith. The will to
oblige was infinite.

There was no doubt about the fact that the session was rapidly drawing to
a close; and likewise that the committees guided by the Honourables Jacob
Butcher and Brush Bascom, composed of members carefully picked by that
judge of mankind, Mr. Doby, were wrestling day and night (behind closed
doors) with the intellectual problems presented by the bills of the
member from Leith. It is not to be supposed that a man of Mr. Crewe's
shrewdness would rest at the word of the chairmen. Other members were
catechized, and in justice to Messrs. Bascom and Botcher it must be
admitted that the assertions of these gentlemen were confirmed. It
appeared that the amount of thought which was being lavished upon these
measures was appalling.

By this time Mr. Crewe had made some new friends, as was inevitable when
such a man unbent. Three of these friends owned, by a singular chance,
weekly newspapers, and having conceived a liking as well as an admiration
for him, began to say pleasant things about him in their columns--which
Mr. Crewe (always thoughtful) sent to other friends of his. These new and
accidental newspaper friends declared weekly that measures of paramount
importance were slumbering in committees, and cited the measures. Other
friends of Mr. Crewe were so inspired by affection and awe that they
actually neglected their business and spent whole days in the rural
districts telling people what a fine man Mr. Crewe was and circulating
petitions for his bills; and incidentally the committees of Mr. Butcher
and Mr. Bascom were flooded with these petitions, representing the
spontaneous sentiment of an aggrieved populace.

        "Just then a scout came flying,
         All wild with haste and fear
        To arms! to arms! Sir Consul
         Lars Porsena is here.
        On the low hills to westward
         The Consul fixed his eye,
        And saw the swarthy storm of dust
         Rise fast along the sky."

It will not do to push a comparison too far, and Mr. Hamilton Tooting, of
course, ought not to be made to act the part of Tarquin the Proud. Like
Tarquin, however, he had been deposed--one of those fatuous acts which
the wisest will commit. No more could the Honourable Hilary well be
likened to Pandora, for he only opened the box wide enough to allow one
mischievous sprite to take wings--one mischievous sprite that was to
prove a host. Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr. Tooting
had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make it worth
his while the mysterious acts by which the puppets on the stage were
moved, and who moved them; who, for instance, wrote the declamation which
his Excellency Asa Gray recited as his own. Mr. Tooting, as we have seen,
had a remarkable business head, and combined with it--as Austen Vane
remarked--the rare instinct of the Norway rat which goes down to the sea
in ships--when they are safe. Burrowing continually amongst the bowels of
the vessel, Mr. Tooting knew the weak timbers better than the Honourable
Hilary Vanes who thought the ship as sound as the day Augustus Flint had
launched her. But we have got a long way from Horatius in our imagery.

Little birds flutter around the capital, picking up what crumbs they may.
One of them, occasionally fed by that humanitarian, the Honourable Jacob
Botcher, whispered a secret that made the humanitarian knit his brows. He
was the scout that came flying (if by a burst of imagination we can
conceive the Honourable Jacob in this aerial act)--came flying to the
Consul in room Number Seven with the news that Mr. Hamilton Tooting had
been detected on two evenings slipping into the Duncan house. But the
Consul--strong man that he was--merely laughed. The Honourable Elisha
Jane did some scouting on his own account. Some people are so small as to
be repelled by greatness, to be jealous of high gifts and power, and it
was perhaps inevitable that a few of the humbler members whom Mr. Crewe
had entertained should betray his hospitality, and misinterpret his pure
motives.

It was a mere coincidence, perhaps, that after Mr. Jane's investigation
the intellectual concentration which one of the committees had bestowed
on two of Mr. Crewe's bills came to an end. These bills, it is true,
carried no appropriation, and, were, respectively, the acts to
incorporate the State Economic League and the Children's Charities
Association. These suddenly appeared in the House one morning, with
favourable recommendations, and, mirabile dicta, the end of the day saw
them through the Senate and signed by the governor. At last Mr. Crewe by
his Excellency had stamped the mark of his genius on the statute books,
and the Honourable Jacob Botcher, holding out an olive branch, took the
liberty of congratulating him.

A vainer man, a lighter character than Humphrey Crewe, would have been
content to have got something; and let it rest at that. Little Mr.
Butcher or Mr. Speaker Doby, with his sorrowful smile, guessed the iron
hand within the velvet glove of the Leith statesman; little they knew the
man they were dealing with. Once aroused, he would not be pacified by
bribes of cheap olive branches and laurels. When the proper time came, he
would fling down the gauntlet--before Rome itself, and then let Horatius
and his friends beware.

The hour has struck at last--and the man is not wanting. The French
Revolution found Napoleon ready, and our own Civil War General Ulysses
Grant. Of that ever memorable session but three days remained, and those
who had been prepared to rise in the good cause had long since despaired.
The Pingsquit bill, and all other bills that spelled liberty, were still
prisoners in the hands of grim jailers, and Thomas Gaylord, the elder,
had worn several holes in the carpet of his private room in the Pelican,
and could often be descried from Main Street running up and down between
the windows like a caged lion, while young Tom had been spied standing,
with his hands in his pockets, smiling on the world.

Young Tom had his own way of doing things, though he little dreamed of
the help Heaven was to send him in this matter. There was, in the lower
House, a young man by the name of Harper, a lawyer from Brighton, who was
sufficiently eccentric not to carry a pass. The light of fame, as the
sunset gilds a weathercock on a steeple, sometimes touches such men for
an instant and makes them immortal. The name of Mr. Harper is remembered,
because it is linked with a greater one. But Mr. Harper was the first man
over the wall.

History chooses odd moments for her entrances. It was at the end of one
of those busy afternoon sessions, with a full house, when Messrs. Bascom,
Botcher, and Ridout had done enough of blocking and hacking and hewing to
satisfy those doughty defenders of the bridge, that a slight,
unprepossessing-looking young man with spectacles arose to make a motion.
The Honourable Jacob Botcher, with his books and papers under his arm,
was already picking his way up the aisle, nodding genially to such of the
faithful as he saw; Mr. Bascom was at the Speaker's desk, and Mr. Ridout
receiving a messenger from the Honourable Hilary at the door. The
Speaker, not without some difficulty, recognized Mr. Harper amidst what
seemed the beginning of an exodus--and Mr. Harper read his motion.

Men halted in the aisles, and nudged other men to make them stop talking.
Mr. Harper's voice was not loud, and it shook a trifle with excitement,
but those who heard passed on the news so swiftly to those who had not
that the House was sitting (or standing) in amazed silence by the time
the motion reached the Speaker, who had actually risen to receive it. Mr.
Doby regarded it for a few seconds and raised his eyes mournfully to Mr.
Harper himself, as much as to say that he would give the young man a
chance to take it back if he could--if the words had not been spoken
which would bring the offender to the block in the bloom and enthusiasm
of youth. Misguided Mr. Harper had committed unutterable treason to the
Empire!

"The gentleman from Brighton, Mr. Harper," said the Speaker, sadly,
"offers the following resolution, and moves its adoption: 'Resolved, that
the Committee on Incorporations be instructed to report House bill number
302, entitled "An act to incorporate the Pingsquit Railroad," by
eleven-thirty o'clock to-morrow morning'--the gentleman from Putnam, Mr.
Bascom."

The House listened and looked on entranced, as though they were the
spectators to a tragedy. And indeed it seemed as though they were. Necks
were craned to see Mr. Harper; he didn't look like a hero, but one never
can tell about these little men. He had hurled defiance at the
Northeastern Railroads, and that was enough for Mr. Redbrook and Mr.
Widgeon and their friends, who prepared to rush into the fray trusting to
Heaven for speech and parliamentary law. O for a leader now! Horatius is
on the bridge, scarce concealing his disdain for this puny opponent, and
Lartius and Herminius not taking the trouble to arm. Mr. Bascom will
crush this one with the flat of his sword.

"Mr. Speaker," said that gentleman, informally, "as Chairman of the
Committee on Incorporations, I rise to protest against such an unheard-of
motion in this House. The very essence of orderly procedure, of effective
business, depends on the confidence of the House in its committees, and
in all of my years as a member I have never known of such a thing.
Gentlemen of the House, your committee are giving to this bill and other
measures their undivided attention, and will report them at the earliest
practicable moment. I hope that this motion will be voted down."

Mr. Bascom, with a glance around to assure himself that most of the
hundred members of the Newcastle delegation--vassals of the Winona
Corporation and subject to the Empire--had not made use of their passes
and boarded, as usual, the six o'clock train, took his seat. A buzz of
excitement ran over the house, a dozen men were on their feet, including
the plainly agitated Mr. Harper himself. But who is this, in the lunar
cockpit before the Speaker's desk, demanding firmly to be heard--so
firmly that Mr. Harper, with a glance at him, sits down again; so firmly
that Mr. Speaker Doby, hypnotized by an eye, makes the blunder that will
eventually cost him his own head?

"The gentleman from Leith, Mr. Crewe."

As though sensing a drama, the mutterings were hushed once more. Mr.
Jacob Botcher leaned forward, and cracked his seat; but none, even those
who had tasted of his hospitality, recognized that the Black Knight had
entered the lists--the greatest deeds of this world, and the heroes of
them, coming unheralded out of the plain clay. Mr. Crewe was the calmest
man under the roof as he saluted the Speaker, walked up to the clerk's
desk, turned his back to it, and leaned both elbows on it; and he
regarded the sea of faces with the identical self-possession he had
exhibited when he had made his famous address on national affairs. He did
not raise his voice at the beginning, but his very presence seemed to
compel silence, and curiosity was at fever heat. What was he going to
say?

"Gentlemen of the House," said Mr. Crewe, "I have listened to the
gentleman from Putnam with some--amusement. He has made the statement
that he and his committee are giving to the Pingsquit bill and other
measures--some other measures--their undivided attention. Of this I have
no doubt whatever. He neglected to define the species of attention he is
giving them--I should define it as the kindly care which the warden of a
penitentiary bestows upon his charges."

Mr. Crewe was interrupted here. The submerged four hundred and seventy
had had time to rub their eyes and get their breath, to realize that
their champion had dealt Mr. Bascom a blow to cleave his helm, and a roar
of mingled laughter and exultation arose in the back seats, and there was
more craning to see the glittering eyes of the Honourable Brush and the
expressions of his two companions-in-arms. Mr. Speaker Doby beat the
stone with his gavel, while Mr. Crewe continued to lean back calmly until
the noise was over.

"Gentlemen," he went on, "I will enter at the proper time into a
situation--known, I believe, to most of you--that brings about a
condition of affairs by which the gentleman's committee, or the gentleman
himself, with his capacious pockets, does not have to account to the
House for every bill assigned to him by the Speaker. I have taken the
trouble to examine a little into the gentleman's past record--he has been
chairman of such committees for years past, and I find no trace that
bills inimical to certain great interests have ever been reported back by
him. The Pingsquit bill involves the vital principle of competition. I
have read it with considerable care and believe it to be, in itself, a
good measure, which deserves a fair hearing. I have had no conversation
whatever with those who are said to be its promoters. If the bill is to
pass, it has little enough time to get to the Senate. By the gentleman
from Putnam's own statement his committee have given it its share of
attention, and I believe this House is entitled to know the verdict, is
entitled to accept or reject a report. I hope the motion will prevail."

He sat down amidst a storm of applause which would have turned the head
of a lesser man. No such personal ovation had been seen in the House for
years. How the Speaker got order; how the Honourable Brush Bascom
declared that Mr. Crewe would be called upon to prove his statements; how
Mr. Botcher regretted that a new member of such promise should go off at
half-cock; how Mr. Ridout hinted that the new member might think he had
an animus; how Mr. Terry of Lee and Mr. Widgeon of Hull denounced, in
plain hill language, the Northeastern Railroads and lauded the man of
prominence who had the grit to oppose them, need not be gone into. Mr.
Crewe at length demanded the previous question, which was carried, and
the motion was carried, too, two hundred and fifty to one hundred and
fifty-two. The House adjourned.

We will spare the blushes of the hero of this occasion, who was
threatened with suffocation by an inundation from the back seats. In
answer to the congratulations and queries, he replied modestly that
nobody else seemed to have had the sand to do it, so he did it himself.
He regarded it as a matter of duty, however unpleasant and unforeseen;
and if, as they said, he had been a pioneer, education and a knowledge of
railroads and the world had helped him. Whereupon, adding tactfully that
he desired the evening to himself to prepare for the battle of the morrow
(of which he foresaw he was to bear the burden), he extricated himself
from his admirers and made his way unostentatiously out of a side door
into his sleigh. For the man who had kindled a fire--the blaze of which
was to mark an epoch--he was exceptionally calm. Not so the only visitor
whom Waters had instructions to admit that evening.

"Say, you hit it just right," cried the visitor, too exultant to take off
his overcoat. "I've been down through the Pelican, and there ain't been
such excitement since Snow and Giddings had the fight for United States
senator in the '80's. The place is all torn up, and you can't get a room
there for love or money. They tell me they've been havin' conferences
steady in Number Seven since the session closed, and Hilary Vane's sent
for all the Federal and State office-holders to be here in the morning
and lobby. Botcher and Jane and Bascom are circulatin' like hot water,
tellin' everybody that because they wouldn't saddle the State with a debt
with your bills you turned sour on 'em, and that you're more of a
corporation and railroad man than any of 'em. They've got their machine
to working a thousand to the minute, and everybody they have a slant on
is going into line. One of them fellers, a conductor, told me he had to
go with 'em. But our boys ain't idle, I can tell you that. I was in the
back of the gallery when you spoke up, and I shook 'em off the leash
right away."

Mr. Crewe leaned back from the table and thrust his hands in his pockets
and smiled. He was in one of his delightful moods.

"Take off your overcoat, Tooting," he said; "you'll find one of my best
political cigars over there, in the usual place."

"Well, I guessed about right, didn't I?" inquired Mr. Tooting, biting off
one of the political cigars. "I gave you a pretty straight tip, didn't I,
that young Tom Gaylord was goin' to have somebody make that motion
to-day? But say, it's funny he couldn't get a better one than that feller
Harper. If you hadn't come along, they'd have smashed him to pulp. I'll
bet the most surprised man in the State to-night, next to Brush Bascom,
is young Tom Gaylord. It's a wonder he ain't been up here to thank you."

"Maybe he has been," replied Mr. Crewe. "I told Waters to keep everybody
out to-night because I want to know exactly what I'm going to say on the
floor tomorrow. I don't want 'em to give me trouble. Did you bring some
of those papers with you?"

Mr. Tooting fished a bundle from his overcoat pocket. The papers in
question, of which he had a great number stored away in Ripton,
represented the foresight, on Mr. Tooting's part, of years. He was a
young man with a praiseworthy ambition to get on in the world, and during
his apprenticeship in the office of the Honourable Hilary Vane many
letters and documents had passed through his hands. A less industrious
person would have neglected the opportunity. Mr. Tooting copied them; and
some, which would have gone into the waste-basket, he laid carefully
aside, bearing in mind the adage about little scraps of paper--if there
is one. At any rate, he now had a manuscript collection which was unique
in its way, which would have been worth much to a great many men, and
with characteristic generosity he was placing it at the disposal of Mr.
Crewe.

Mr. Crewe, in reading them, had other sensations. He warmed with
indignation as an American citizen that a man should sit in a mahogany
office in New York and dictate the government of a free and sovereign
State; and he found himself in the grip of a righteous wrath when he
recalled what Mr. Flint had written to him. "As a neighbour, it will give
me the greatest pleasure to help you to the extent of my power, but the
Northeastern Railroads cannot interfere in legislative or political
matters." The effrontery of it was appalling! Where, he demanded of Mr.
Tooting, did the common people come in? And this extremely pertinent
question Mr. Tooting was unable to answer.

But the wheels of justice had begun to turn.

Mr. Tooting had not exaggerated the tumult and affright at the Pelican
Hotel. The private telephone in Number Seven was busy all evening, while
more or less prominent gentlemen were using continually the public ones
in the boxes in the reading room downstairs. The Feudal system was
showing what it could do, and the word had gone out to all the holders of
fiefs that the vassals should be summoned. The Duke of Putnam had sent
out a general call to the office-holders in that county. Theirs not to
reason why--but obey; and some of them, late as was the hour, were
already travelling (free) towards the capital. Even the congressional
delegation in Washington had received telegrams, and sent them again to
Federal office-holders in various parts of the State. If Mr. Crewe had
chosen to listen, he could have heard the tramp of armed men. But he was
not of the metal to be dismayed by the prospect of a great conflict. He
was as cool as Cromwell, and after Mr. Tooting had left him to take
charge once more of his own armies in the yield, the genlemon from Leith
went to bed and slept soundly.

The day of the battle dawned darkly, with great flakes flying. As early
as seven o'clock the later cohorts began to arrive, and were soon as
thick as bees in the Pelican, circulating in the lobby, conferring in
various rooms of which they had the numbers with occupants in bed and
out. A wonderful organization, that Feudal System, which could mobilize
an army overnight! And each unit of it, like the bee, working unselfishly
for the good of the whole; like the bee, flying straight for the object
to be attained. Every member of the House from Putnam County, for
instance, was seen by one of these indefatigable captains, and if the
member had a mortgage or an ambition, or a wife and family that made life
a problem, or a situation on the railroad or in some of the larger
manufacturing establishments, let him beware! If he lived in lodgings in
the town, he stuck his head out of the window to perceive a cheery
neighbour from the country on his doorstep. Think of a system which could
do this, not for Putnam County alone, but for all the counties in the
State!

The Honourable Hilary Vane, captain-general of the Forces, had had but
four hours' sleep, and his Excellency, the Honourable Asa Gray, when he
arose in the twilight of the morning, had to step carefully to avoid the
cigar butts on the floor which--like so many empty cartridge shells were
unpleasant reminders that a rebellion of no mean magnitude had arisen
against the power to which he owed allegiance, and by the favour of which
he was attended with pomp and circumstance wherever he chose to go.

Long before eleven o'clock the paths to the state-house were thronged
with people. Beside the office-holders and their friends who were in
town, there were many residents of the capital city in the habit of going
to hear the livelier debates. Not that the powers of the Empire had
permitted debates on most subjects, but there could be no harm in
allowing the lower House to discuss as fiercely as they pleased dog and
sheep laws and hedgehog bounties. But now! The oldest resident couldn't
remember a case of high treason and rebellion against the Northeastern
such as this promised to be, and the sensation took on an added flavour
from the fact that the arch rebel was a figure of picturesque interest, a
millionaire with money enough to rent the Duncan house and fill its
long-disused stable with horses, who was a capitalist himself and a
friend of Mr. Flint's; of whom it was said that he was going to marry Mr.
Flint's daughter!

Long before eleven, too, the chiefs over tens and the chiefs over
hundreds had gathered their men and marched them into the state-house;
and Mr. Tooting, who was everywhere that morning, noticed that some of
these led soldiers had pieces of paper in their hands. The chaplain arose
to pray for guidance, and the House was crowded to its capacity, and the
gallery filled with eager and expectant faces--but the hero of the hour
had not yet arrived. When at length he did walk down the aisle, as
unconcernedly as though he were an unknown man entering a theatre,
feminine whispers of "There he is!" could plainly be heard above the
buzz, and simultaneous applause broke out in spots, causing the Speaker
to rap sharply with his gavel. Poor Mr. Speaker Doby! He looked more like
the mock-turtle than ever! and might have exclaimed, too, that once he
had been a real turtle: only yesterday, in fact, before he had made the
inconceivable blunder of recognizing Mr. Humphrey Crewe. Mr. Speaker Doby
had spent a part of the night in room Number Seven listening to things
about himself. Herminius the unspeakable has given the enemy a foothold
in Rome.

Apparently unaware that he was the centre of interest, Mr. Crewe,
carrying a neat little bag full of papers, took his seat beside the
Honourable Jacob Botcher, nodding to that erstwhile friend as a man of
the world should. And Mr. Botcher, not to be outdone, nodded back.

We shall skip over the painful interval that elapsed before the bill in
question was reached: painful, at least, for every one but Mr. Crewe, who
sat with his knees crossed and his arms folded. The hosts were facing
each other, awaiting the word; the rebels prayerfully watching their
gallant leader; and the loyal vassals--whose wavering ranks had been
added to overnight--with their eyes on Mr. Bascom. And in justice to that
veteran it must be said, despite the knock-out blow he had received, that
he seemed as debonair as ever.

       "Now while the three were tightening
        The harness on their backs."

Mr. Speaker Doby read many committee reports, and at the beginning of
each there was a stir of expectation that it might be the signal for
battle. But at length he fumbled among his papers, cleared away the lump
in his throat, and glanced significantly at Mr. Bascom.

"The Committee on Incorporations, to whom was referred House bill number
302, entitled "An act to incorporate the Pingsquit Railroad," having
considered the same, report the same with the following resolution:
'Resolved, that it is inexpedient to legislate. Brush Bascom, for the
Committee.' Gentlemen, are you ready for the question? As many as are of
opinion that the report of the Committee should be adopted--the gentleman
from Putnam, Mr. Bascom."

Again let us do exact justice, and let us not be led by our feelings to
give a prejudiced account of this struggle. The Honourable Brush Bascom,
skilled from youth in the use of weapons, opened the combat so adroitly
that more than once the followers of his noble opponent winced and
trembled. The bill, Mr. Bascom said, would have been reported that day,
anyway--a statement received with mingled cheers and jeers. Then followed
a brief and somewhat intimate history of the Gaylord Lumber Company, not
at all flattering to that corporation. Mr. Bascom hinted, at an animus:
there was no more need for a railroad in the Pingsquit Valley than there
was for a merry-go-round in the cellar of the state-house. (Loud laughter
from everybody, some irreverent person crying out that a merry-go-round
was better than poker tables.) When Mr. Bascom came to discuss the
gentleman from Leith, and recited the names of the committees for which
Mr. Crewe--in his desire to be of service to the State had applied, there
was more laughter, even amongst Mr. Crewe's friends, and Mr. Speaker Doby
relaxed so far as to smile sadly. Mr. Bascom laid his watch on the
clerk's desk and began to read the list of bills Mr. Crewe had
introduced, and as this reading proceeded some of the light-minded showed
a tendency to become slightly hysterical. Mr. Bascom said that he would
like to see all those bills grow into laws,--with certain slight
changes,--but that he could not conscientiously vote to saddle the people
with another Civil War debt. It was well for the State, he hinted, that
those committees were composed of stanch men who would do their duty in
all weathers, regardless of demagogues who sought to gratify inordinate
ambitions.

The hope of the revolutionists bore these strokes and others as mighty
with complacency, as though they had been so many playful taps; and while
the battle surged hotly around him he sat calmly listening or making
occasional notes with a gold pencil. Born leader that he was, he was
biding his time. Mr. Bascom's attack was met valiantly, but unskillfully,
from the back seats. The Honourable Jacob Botcher arose, and filled the
hall with extracts from the "Book of Arguments"--in which he had been
coached overnight by the Honourable Hilary Vane. Mr. Botcher's tone
towards his erstwhile friend was regretful,--a good man gone wrong
through impulse and inexperience.  "I am, sir," said Mr. Bascom to the
Speaker, "sincerely sorry--sincerely sorry that an individual of such
ability as the member from Leith should be led, by the representations of
political adventurers and brigands and malcontents, into his present
deplorable position of criticising a State which is his only by adoption,
the political conditions of which were as sound and as free from
corporate domination, sir, as those of any State in the broad Union."
(Loud cheers.) This appeal to State pride by Mr. Botches is a master
stroke, and the friends of the champion of the liberties of the people
are beginning (some of them) to be a little nervous and doubtful.

Following Mr. Botches were wild and scattering speeches from the back
benches--unskillful and pitiable counter-strokes. Where was the champion?
Had he been tampered with overnight, and persuaded of the futility of
rebellion? Persuaded that his head would be more useful on his own neck
in the councils of the nation than on exhibition to the populace from the
point of a pike? It looks, to a calm spectator from the gallery, as
though the rebel forces are growing weaker and more demoralized every
moment. Mr. Redbrook's speech, vehement and honest, helps a little;
people listen to an honest and forceful man, however he may lack
technical knowledge, but the majority of the replies are mere incoherent
denunciations of the Northeastern Railroads.

On the other hand, the astounding discipline amongst the legions of the
Empire excites the admiration and despair even of their enemies; there is
no random fighting here and breaking of ranks to do useless hacking. A
grave farmer with a beard delivers a short and temperate speech (which he
has by heart), mildly inquiring what the State would do without the
Northeastern Railroads; and the very moderation of this query coming from
a plain and hard-headed agriculturist (the boss of Grenville, if one but
knew it!) has a telling effect. And then to cap the climax, to make the
attitude of the rebels even more ridiculous in the minds of thinking
people, Mr. Ridout is given the floor. Skilled in debate when he chooses
to enter it, his knowledge of the law only exceeded by his knowledge of
how it is to be evaded--to Lartius is assigned the task of following up
the rout. And Mr. Crewe has ceased taking notes.

When the House leader and attorney for the Northeastern took his seat,
the victory to all appearances was won. It was a victory for conservatism
and established order against sensationalism and anarchy--Mr. Ridout had
contrived to make that clear without actually saying so. It was as if the
Ute Indians had sought to capture Washington and conduct the government.
Just as ridiculous as that! The debate seemed to be exhausted, and the
long-suffering Mr. Doby was inquiring for the fiftieth time if the House
were ready for the question, when Mr. Crewe of Leith arose and was
recognized. In three months he had acquired such a remarkable knowledge
of the game of parliamentary tactics as to be able, patiently, to wait
until the bolt of his opponents had been shot; and a glance sufficed to
revive the drooping spirits of his followers, and to assure them that
their leader knew what he was about.

"Mr. Speaker," he said, "I have listened with great care to the masterly
defence of that corporation on which our material prosperity and civic
welfare is founded (laughter); I have listened to the gentleman's learned
discussion of the finances of that road, tending to prove that it is an
eleemosynary institution on a grand scale. I do not wish to question
unduly the intellects of those members of this House who by their votes
will prove that they have been convinced by the gentleman's argument."
Here Mr. Crewe paused and drew a slip of paper from his pocket and
surveyed the back seats. "But I perceive," he continued, "that a great
interest has been taken in this debate--so great an interest that since
yesterday numbers of gentlemen have come in from various parts of the
State to listen to it (laughter and astonishment), gentlemen who hold
Federal and State offices. (Renewed laughter and searching of the House.)
I repeat, Mr. Speaker, that I do not wish to question the intellects of
my fellow-members, but I notice that many of them who are seated near the
Federal and State office-holders in question have in their hands slips of
paper similar to this. And I have reason to believe that these slips were
written by somebody in room Number Seven of the Pelican Hotel."
(Tremendous commotion, and craning to see whether one's neighbour has a
slip. The, faces of the redoubtable three a study.)

"I procured one of these slips," Mr. Crewe continued, "through a
fellow-member who has no use for it--whose intelligence, in fact, is
underrated by the gentlemen in Number Seven. I will read the slip.

"'Vote yes on the question. Yes means that the report of the Committee
will be accepted, and that the Pingsquit bill will not pass. Wait for
Bascom's signal, and destroy this paper."'

There was no need, indeed, for Mr. Crewe to say any more than that--no
need for the admirable discussion of railroad finance from an expert's
standpoint which followed to controvert Mr. Ridout's misleading
statements. The reading of the words on the slip of paper of which he had
so mysteriously got possession (through Mr. Hamilton Tooting) was
sufficient to bring about a disorder that for a full minute--Mr. Speaker
Doby found it impossible to quell. The gallery shook with laughter, and
honourable members with slips of paper in their hands were made as
conspicuous as if they had been caught wearing dunces' caps.

It was then only, with belated wisdom, that Mr. Bascom and his two noble
companions gave up the fight, and let the horde across the bridge--too
late, as we shall see. The populace, led by a redoubtable leader, have
learned their strength. It is true that the shining senatorial twenty of
the body-guard stand ready to be hacked to pieces at their posts before
the Pingsquit bill shall become a law; and should unutterable treason
take place here, his Excellency is prepared to be drawn and quartered
rather than sign it. It is the Senate which, in this somewhat inaccurate
repetition of history, hold the citadel if not the bridge; and in spite
of the howling mob below their windows, scornfully refuse even to discuss
the Pingsquit bill. The Honourable Hilary Vane, whose face they study at
dinner time, is not worried. Popular wrath does not continue to boil, and
many changes will take place in the year before the Legislature meets
again.

This is the Honourable Hilary's public face. But are there not private
conferences in room Number Seven of which we can know nothing
--exceedingly uncomfortable conferences for Horatius and his companions?
Are there not private telegrams and letters to the president of the
Northeastern in New York advising him that the Pingsquit bill has passed
the House, and that a certain Mr. Crewe is primarily responsible? And are
there not queries--which history may disclose in after years--as to
whether Mr. Crewe's abilities as a statesman have not been seriously
underrated by those who should have been the first to perceive them?
Verily, pride goeth before a fall.

In this modern version of ours, the fathers throng about another than
Horatius after the session of that memorable morning. Publicly and
privately, Mr. Crewe is being congratulated, and we know enough of his
character to appreciate the modesty with which the congratulations are
accepted. He is the same Humphrey Crewe that he was before he became the
corner-stone of the temple; success is a mere outward and visible sign of
intrinsic worth in the inner man, and Mr. Crewe had never for a moment
underestimated his true value.

"There's, no use wasting time in talking about it," he told the grateful
members who sought to press his hands. "Go home and organize. I've got
your name. Get your neighbours into line, and keep me informed. I'll pay
for the postage-stamps. I'm no impractical reformer, and if we're going
to do this thing, we'll have to do it right."

They left him, impressed by the force of this argument, with an added
respect for Mr. Crewe, and a vague feeling that they were pledged to
something which made not a few of them a trifle uneasy. Mr. Redbrook was
one of these.

The felicitations of his new-found friend and convert, Mr. Tooting, Mr.
Crewe cut short with the terseness of a born commander.

"Never mind that," he said, "and follow 'em up and get 'em pledged if you
can."

Get 'em pledged! Pledged to what? Mr. Tooting evidently knew, for he
wasted no precious moments in asking questions.

There is no time at this place to go into the feelings of Mr. Tom Gaylord
the younger when he learned that his bill had passed the House. He, too,
meeting Mr. Crewe in the square, took the opportunity to express his
gratitude to the member from Leith.

"Come in on Friday afternoon, Gaylord," answered Mr. Crewe. "I've got
several things to talk to you about. Your general acquaintance around the
State will be useful, and there must be men you know of in the lumber
sections who can help us considerably."

"Help us?" repeated young Tom, in same surprise.

"Certainly," replied Mr. Crewe; "you don't think we're going to drop the
fight here, do you? We've got to put a stop in this State to political
domination by a railroad, and as long as there doesn't seem to be anyone
else to take hold, I'm going to. Your bill's a good bill, and we'll pass
it next session."

Young Tom regarded Mr. Crewe with a frank stare.

"I'm going up to the Pingsquit Valley on Friday," he answered.

"Then you'd better come up to Leith to see me as soon as you get back,"
said Mr. Crewe. "These things can't wait, and have to be dealt with
practically."

Young Tom had not been the virtual head of the Gaylord Company for some
years without gaining a little knowledge of politics and humanity. The
invitation to Leith he valued, of course, but he felt that it would not
do to accept it with too much ardour. He was, he said, a very busy man.

"That's the trouble with most people," declared Mr. Crewe; "they won't
take the time to bother about politics, and then they complain when
things don't go right. Now I'm givin' my time to it, when I've got other
large interests to attend to."

On his way back to the Pelican, young Tom halted several times
reflectively, as certain points in this conversation which he seemed to
have missed at the time--came back to him. His gratitude to Mr. Crewe as
a public benefactor was profound, of course; but young Tom's sense of
humour was peculiar, and he laughed more than once, out loud, at nothing
at all. Then he became grave again, and went into the hotel and wrote a
long letter, which he addressed to Mr. Austen Vane.

And now, before this chapter which contains these memorable events is
closed, one more strange and significant fact is to be chronicled. On the
evening of the day which saw Mr. Crewe triumphantly leading the insurgent
forces to victory, that gentleman sent his private secretary to the
office of the State Tribune to leave an order for fifty copies of the
paper to be delivered in the morning. Morning came, and the fifty copies,
and Mr. Crewe's personal copy in addition, were handed to him by the
faithful Waters when he entered his dining room at an early hour. Life is
full of disillusions. Could this be the State Tribune he held in his
hand? The State Tribune of Mr. Peter Pardriff, who had stood so staunchly
for Mr. Crewe and better things? Who had hitherto held the words of the
Leith statesman in such golden estimate as to curtail advertising columns
when it was necessary to print them for the public good?

Mr. Crewe's eye travelled from column to column, from page to page, in
vain. By some incredible oversight on the part of Mr. Pardriff, the
ringing words were not there,--nay, the soul-stirring events of that
eventful day appeared, on closer inspection, to have been deliberately
edited out! The terrible indignation of the righteous arose as Mr. Crewe
read (in the legislative proceedings of the day before) that the
Pingsquit bill had been discussed by certain members--of whom he was one
--and passed. This was all--literally all! If Mr. Pardriff had lived in
the eighteenth century, he would probably have referred as casually to
the Boston massacre as a street fight--which it was.

Profoundly disgusted with human kind,--as the noblest of us will be at
times,--Mr. Crewe flung down the paper, and actually forgot to send the
fifty copies to his friends!




CHAPTER XV

THE DISTURBANCE OF JUNE SEVENTH

After Mr. Speaker Doby had got his gold watch from an admiring and
apparently reunited House, and had wept over it, the Legislature
adjourned. This was about the first of April, that sloppiest and windiest
of months in a northern climate, and Mr. Crewe had intended, as usual, to
make a little trip southward to a club of which he was a member. A sense
of duty, instead, took him to Leith, where he sat through the days in his
study, dictating letters, poring over a great map of the State which he
had hung on the wall, and scanning long printed lists. If we could stand
behind him, we should see that these are what are known as check-lists,
or rosters of the voters in various towns.

Mr. Crewe also has an unusual number of visitors for this muddy weather,
when the snow-water is making brooks of the roads. Interested observers
--if there were any--might have remarked that his friendship with Mr.
Hamilton Tooting had increased, that gentleman coming up from Ripton at
least twice a week, and aiding Mr. Crewe to multiply his acquaintances by
bringing numerous strangers to see him. Mr. Tooting, as we know, had
abandoned the law office of the Honourable Hilary Vane and was now
engaged in travelling over the State, apparently in search of health.
These were signs, surely, which the wise might have read with profit: in
the offices, for instance, of the Honourable Hilary Vane in Ripton
Square, where seismic disturbances were registered; but the movement of
the needle (to the Honourable Hilary's eye) was almost imperceptible.
What observer, however experienced, would have believed that such
delicate tracings could herald a volcanic eruption?

Throughout the month of April the needle kept up its persistent
registering, and the Honourable Hilary continued to smile. The Honourable
Jacob Botcher, who had made a trip to Ripton and had cited that very
decided earthquake shock of the Pingsquit bill, had been ridiculed for
his pains, and had gone away again comforted by communion with a strong
man. The Honourable Jacob had felt little shocks in his fief: Mr. Tooting
had visited it, sitting with his feet on the tables of hotel
waiting-rooms, holding private intercourse with gentlemen who had been
disappointed in office. Mr. Tooting had likewise been a sojourner in the
domain of the Duke of Putnam. But the Honourable Brush was not troubled,
and had presented Mr. Tooting with a cigar.

In spite of the strange omission of the State Tribune to print his speech
and to give his victory in the matter of the Pingsquit bill proper
recognition, Mr. Crewe was too big a man to stop his subscription to the
paper. Conscious that he had done his duty in that matter, neither
praise nor blame could affect him; and although he had not been mentioned
since, he read it assiduously every afternoon upon its arrival at Leith,
feeling confident that Mr. Peter Pardriff (who had always in private
conversation proclaimed himself emphatically for reform) would not
eventually refuse--to a prophet--public recognition. One afternoon
towards the end of that month of April, when the sun had made the last
snow-drift into a pool, Mr. Crewe settled himself on his south porch and
opened the State Tribune, and his heart gave a bound as his eye fell upon
the following heading to the leading editorial:--

     A WORTHY PUBLIC SERVANT FOR GOVERNOR

Had his reward come at last? Had Mr. Peter Pardriff seen the error of his
way? Mr. Crewe leisurely folded back the sheet, and called to his
secretary, who was never far distant.

"Look here," he said, "I guess Pardriff's recovered his senses. Look
here!"

The tired secretary, ready with his pencil and notebook to order fifty
copies, responded, staring over his employer's shoulder. It has been said
of men in battle that they have been shot and have run forward some
hundred feet without knowing what has happened to them. And so Mr. Crewe
got five or six lines into that editorial before he realized in full the
baseness of Mr. Pardriff's treachery.

"These are times" (so ran Mr. Pardriff's composition) "when the sure and
steadying hand of a strong man is needed at the helm of State. A man of
conservative, business habits of mind; a man who weighs the value of
traditions equally with the just demands of a new era; a man with a
knowledge of public affairs derived from long experience;" (!!!) "a man
who has never sought office, but has held it by the will of the people,
and who himself is a proof that the conduct of State institutions in the
past has been just and equitable. One who has served with distinction
upon such boards as the Railroad Commission, the Board of Equalization,
etc., etc." (!!!) "A stanch Republican, one who puts party before--" here
the newspaper began to shake a little, and Mr. Crewe could not for the
moment see whether the next word were place or principle. He skipped a
few lines. The Tribune, it appeared, had a scintillating idea, which
surely must have occurred to others in the State. "Why not the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton for the next governor?"

The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton!

It is a pleasure to record, at this crisis, that Mr. Crewe fixed upon his
secretary as steady an eye as though Mr. Pardriff's bullet had missed its
mark.

"Get me," he said coolly, "the 'State Encyclopaedia of Prominent Men.'"
(Just printed. Fogarty and Co., Newcastle, publishers.)

The secretary fetched it, open at the handsome and lifelike
steel-engraving of the Honourable Adam, with his broad forehead and
kindly, twinkling eyes, and the tuft of beard on his chin; with his ample
statesman's coat in natural creases, and his white shirt-front and little
black tie. Mr. Crewe gazed at this work of art long and earnestly. The
Honourable Adam B. Hunt did not in the least have the appearance of a
bolt from the blue. And then Mr. Crewe read his biography.

Two things he shrewdly noted about that biography; it was placed, out of
alphabetical order, fourth in the book, and it was longer than any other
with one exception that of Mr. Ridout, the capital lawyer. Mr. Ridout's
place was second in this invaluable volume, he being preceded only by a
harmless patriarch. These facts were laid before Mr. Tooting, who was
directed by telephone to come to Leith as soon as he should arrive in
Ripton from his latest excursion. It was nine o'clock at night when that
long-suffering and mud-bespattered individual put in an appearance at the
door of his friend's study.

"Because I didn't get on to it," answered Mr. Tooting, in response to a
reproach for not having registered a warning--for he was Mr. Crewe's
seismograph. "I knew old Adam was on the Railroads' governor's bench, but
I hadn't any notion he'd been moved up to the top of the batting list. I
told you right. Ridout was going to be their next governor if you hadn't
singed him with the Pingsquit bill. This was done pretty slick, wasn't
it? Hilary got back from New York day before yesterday, and Pardriff has
the editorial to-day. Say, I always told you Pardriff wasn't a reformer,
didn't I?"

Mr. Crewe looked pained.

"I prefer to believe the best of people until I know the worst," he said.
"I did not think Mr. Pardriff capable of ingratitude."

What Mr. Crewe meant by this remark is enigmatical.

"He ain't," replied Mr. Tooting, "he's grateful for that red ticket he
carries around with him when he travels, and he's grateful to the
Honourable Adam B. Hunt for favours to come. Peter Pardriff's a grateful
cuss, all-right, all right."

Mr. Crewe tapped his fingers on the desk thoughtfully.

"The need of a reform campaign is more apparent than ever," he remarked.

Mr. Tooting put his tongue in his cheek; and, seeing a dreamy expression
on his friend's face, accidentally helped himself to a cigar out of the
wrong box.

"It's up to a man with a sense of duty and money to make it," Mr. Tooting
agreed, taking a long pull at the Havana.

"As for the money," replied Mr. Crewe, "the good citizens of the State
should be willing to contribute largely. I have had a list of men of
means prepared, who will receive notices at the proper time."

Mr. Hamilton Tooting spread out his feet, and appeared to be studying
them carefully.

"It's funny you should have mentioned cash," he said, after a moment's
silence, "and it's tough on you to have to be the public-spirited man to
put it up at the start. I've got a little memorandum here," he added,
fumbling apologetically in his pocket; "it certainly costs something to
move the boys around and keep 'em indignant."

Mr. Tooting put the paper on the edge of the desk, and Mr. Crewe, without
looking, reached out his hand for it, the pained expression returning to
his face.

"Tooting," he said, "you've got a very flippant way of speaking of
serious things. It strikes me that these expenses are out of all
proportion to the simplicity of the task involved. It strikes me--ahem
that you might find, in some quarters at least, a freer response to a
movement founded on principle."

"That's right," declared Mr. Tooting, "I've thought so myself. I've got
mad, and told 'em so to their faces. But you've said yourself, Mr. Crewe,
that we've got to deal with this thing practically."

"Certainly," Mr. Crewe interrupted. He loved the word.

"And we've got to get workers, haven't we? And it costs money to move 'em
round, don't it? We haven't got a bushel basket of passes. Look here,"
and he pushed another paper at Mr. Crewe, "here's ten new ones who've
made up their minds that you're the finest man in the State. That makes
twenty."

Mr. Crewe took that paper deprecatingly, but nevertheless began a fire of
cross-questions on Mr. Tooting as to the personality, habits, and
occupations of the discerning ten in question, making certain little
marks of his own against each name. Thus it will be seen that Mr. Crewe
knew perfectly what he was about--although no one else did except Mr.
Tooting, who merely looked mysterious when questioned on the streets of
Ripton or Newcastle or Kingston. It was generally supposed, however, that
the gentleman from Leith was going to run for the State Senate, and was
attempting to get a following in other counties, in order to push through
his measures next time. Hence the tiny fluctuations of Hilary Vane's
seismograph an instrument, as will be shown, utterly out-of-date. Not so
the motto toujours l'audace. Geniuses continue (at long intervals) to be
born, and to live up to that motto.

That seismograph of the Honourable Hilary's persisted in tracing only a
slightly ragged line throughout the beautiful month of May, in which
favourable season the campaign of the Honourable Adam B. Hunt took root
and flourished--apparently from the seed planted by the State Tribune.
The ground, as usual, had been carefully prepared, and trained gardeners
raked, and watered, and weeded the patch. It had been decreed and
countersigned that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt was the flower that was to
grow this year.

There must be something vitally wrong with an instrument which failed to
register the great earthquake shock of June the seventh!

Now that we have come to the point where this shock is to be recorded on
these pages, we begin to doubt whether our own pen will be able
adequately to register it, and whether the sheet is long enough and broad
enough upon which to portray the relative importance of the disturbance
created. The trouble is, that there is nothing to measure it by. What
other event in the history of the State produced the vexation of spirit,
the anger, the tears, the profanity; the derision, the laughter of fools,
the contempt; the hope, the glee, the prayers, the awe, the dumb
amazement at the superb courage of this act? No, for a just comparison we
shall have to reach back to history and fable: David and Goliath; Theseus
and the Minotaur; or, better still, Cadmus and the Dragon! It was Cadmus
(if we remember rightly) who wasted no time whatever, but actually jumped
down the dragon's throat and cut him up from the inside! And it was
Cadmus, likewise, who afterwards sowed the dragon's teeth.

That wondrous clear and fresh summer morning of June the seventh will not
be forgotten for many years. The trees were in their early leaf in Ripton
Square, and the dark pine patches on Sawanec looked (from Austen's little
office) like cloud shadows against the shimmer of the tender green. He
sat at his table, which was covered with open law-books and papers, but
his eyes were on the distant mountain, and every scent-laden breeze
wafted in at his open window seemed the bearer of a tremulous, wistful,
yet imperious message--"Come!" Throughout the changing seasons Sawanec
called to him in words of love: sometimes her face was hidden by cloud
and fog and yet he heard her voice! Sometimes her perfume as to-day--made
him dream; sometimes, when the western heavens were flooded with the
golden light of the infinite, she veiled herself in magic purple, when to
gaze at her was an exquisite agony, and she became as one forbidden to
man. Though his soul cried out to her across the spaces, she was not for
him. She was not for him!

With a sigh he turned to his law-books again, and sat for a while staring
steadfastly at a section of the 'Act of Consolidation of the Northeastern
Railroads' which he had stumbled on that morning. The section, if he read
its meaning aright, was fraught with the gravest consequences for the
Northeastern Railroads; if he read its meaning aright, the Northeastern
Railroads had been violating it persistently for many years and were
liable for unknown sums in damages. The discovery of it had dazed him,
and the consequences resulting from a successful suit under the section
would be so great that he had searched diligently, though in vain, for
some modification of it since its enactment. Why had not some one
discovered it before? This query appeared to be unanswerable, until the
simple--though none the less remarkable--solution came to him, that
perhaps no definite occasion had hitherto arisen for seeking it.
Undoubtedly the Railroads' attorneys must know of its existence--his own
father, Hilary Vane, having been instrumental in drawing up the Act. And
a long period had elapsed under which the Northeastern Railroads had been
a law unto themselves.

The discovery was of grave import to Austen. A month before, chiefly
through the efforts of his friend, Tom, who was gradually taking his
father's place in the Gaylord Lumber Company, Austen had been appointed
junior counsel for that corporation. The Honourable Galusha Hammer still
remained the senior counsel, but was now confined in his house at
Newcastle by an illness which made the probability of his return to
active life extremely doubtful; and Tom had repeatedly declared that in
the event of his non-recovery Austen should have Mr. Hammer's place. As
counsel for the Gaylord Lumber Company, it was clearly his duty to call
the attention of young Mr. Gaylord to the section; and in case Mr. Hammer
did not resume his law practice, it would fall upon Austen himself to
bring the suit. His opponent in this matter would be his own father.

The consequences of this culminating conflict between them, the coming of
which he had long dreaded--although he had not foreseen its specific
cause--weighed heavily upon Austen. It was Tom Gaylord himself who
abruptly aroused him from his revery by bursting in at the door.

"Have you heard what's up?" he cried, flinging down a newspaper before
Austen's eyes. "Have you seen the Guardian?"

"What's the matter now, Tom?"

"Matter!" exclaimed Tom; "read that. Your friend and client, the
Honourable Humphrey Crewe, is out for governor."

"Humphrey Crewe for governor!"

"On an anti-railroad platform. I might have known something of the kind
was up when he began to associate with Tooting, and from the way he spoke
to me in March. But who'd have thought he'd have the cheek to come out
for governor? Did you ever hear of such tommyrot?"

Austen looked grave.

"I'm not sure it's such tommyrot," he said.

"Not tommyrot?" Tom ejaculated. "Everybody's laughing. When I passed the
Honourable Hilary's door just now, Brush Bascom and some of the old
liners were there, reciting parts of the proclamation, and the boys down
in the Ripton House are having the time of their lives."

Austen took the Guardian, and there, sure enough, filling a leading
column, and in a little coarser type than the rest of the page, he read:

          DOWN WITH RAILROAD RULE!

     The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith, at the request
     of twenty prominent citizens, consents to become a candidate
     for the Republican Nomination for Governor.

     Ringing letter of acceptance, in which he denounces the
     political power of the Northeastern Railroads, and declares
     that the State is governed from a gilded suite of offices in
     New Pork.

"The following letter, evincing as it does a public opinion thoroughly
aroused in all parts of the State against the present disgraceful
political conditions, speaks for itself. The standing and character of
its signers give it a status which Republican voters cannot ignore."

The letter followed. It prayed Mr. Crewe, in the name of decency and good
government, to carry the standard of honest men to victory. Too long had
a proud and sovereign State writhed under the heel of an all-devouring
corporation! Too long had the Northeastern Railroads elected, for their
own selfish ends, governors and legislatures and controlled railroad
commissions The spirit of 1776 was abroad in the land. It was eminently
fitting that the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith, who had dared to
fling down the gauntlet in the face of an arrogant power, should be the
leader of the plain people, to recover the rights which had been wrested
from them. Had he not given the highest proof that he had the people's
interests at heart? He was clearly a man who "did things."

At this point Austen looked up and smiled.

"Tom," he asked, "has it struck you that this is written in the same
inimitable style as a part of the message of the Honourable Asa Gray?"

Tom slapped his knee.

"That's exactly what I said I!" he cried. "Tooting wrote it. I'll swear
to it."

"And the twenty prominent citizens--do you know any of 'em, Tom?"

"Well," said Tom, in delighted appreciation, "I've heard of three of 'em,
and that's more than any man I've met can boast of. Ed Dubois cuts my
hair when I go to Kingston. He certainly is a prominent citizen in the
fourth ward. Jim Kendall runs the weekly newspaper in Grantley--I
understood it was for sale. Bill Clements is prominent enough up at
Groveton. He wanted a trolley franchise some years ago, you remember."

"And didn't get it."

Mr. Crewe's answer was characteristically terse and businesslike. The
overwhelming compliment of a request from such gentlemen must be treated
in the nature of a command--and yet he had hesitated for several weeks,
during which period he had cast about for another more worthy of the
honour. Then followed a somewhat technical and (to the lay mind) obscure
recapitulation of the iniquities the Northeastern was committing, which
proved beyond peradventure that Mr. Crewe knew what he was talking about;
such phrases as "rolling stock," "milking the road"--an imposing array of
facts and figures. Mr. Crewe made it plain that he was a man who "did
things." And if it were the will of Heaven that he became governor,
certain material benefits would as inevitably ensue as the day follows
the night. The list of the material benefits, for which there was a
crying need, bore a strong resemblance to a summary of the worthy
measures upon which Mr. Crewe had spent so much time and labour in the
last Legislature.

Austen laid down the paper, leaned back in his chair, and thrust his
hands in his pockets, and with a little vertical pucker in his forehead,
regarded his friend.

"What do you think of that?" Tom demanded. "Now, what do you think of
it?"

"I think," said Austen, "that he'll scare the life out of the
Northeastern before he gets through with them."

"What!" exclaimed Tom, incredulously. He had always been willing to
accept Austen's judgment on men and affairs, but this was pretty stiff.
"What makes you think so?"

"Well, people don't know Mr. Crewe, for one thing. And they are beginning
to have a glimmer of light upon the Railroad."

"Do you mean to say he has a chance for the nomination?"

"I don't know. It depends upon how much the voters find out about him
before the convention."

Tom sat down rather heavily.

"You could have been governor," he complained reproachfully, "by raising
your hand. You've got more ability than any man in the State, and you sit
here gazin' at that mountain and lettin' a darned fool millionaire walk
in ahead of you."

Austen rose and crossed over to Mr. Gaylord's chair, and, his hands still
in his pockets, looked down thoughtfully into that gentleman's square and
rugged face.

"Tom," he said, "there's no use discussing this delusion of yours, which
seems to be the only flaw in an otherwise sane character. We must try to
keep it from the world."

Tom laughed in spite of himself.

"I'm hanged if I understand you," he declared, "but I never did. You
think Crewe and Tooting may carry off the governorship, and you don't
seem to care."

"I do care," said Austen, briefly. He went to the window and stood for a
moment with his back to his friend, staring across at Sawanec. Tom had
learned by long experience to respect these moods, although they were to
him inexplicable. At length Austen turned.

"Tom," he said, "can you come in to-morrow about this time? If you can't,
I'll go to your office if you will let me know when you'll be in. There's
a matter of business I want to talk to you about."

Tom pulled out his watch.

"I've got to catch a train for Mercer," he replied, "but I will come in
in the morning and see you."

A quarter of an hour later Austen went down the narrow wooden flight of
stairs into the street, and as he emerged from the entry almost bumped
into the figure of a young man that was hurrying by. He reached out and
grasped the young man by the collar, pulling him up so short as almost to
choke him.

"Hully gee!" cried the young man whose progress had been so rudely
arrested. "Great snakes!" (A cough.) "What're you tryin' to do? Oh,"
(apologetically) "it's you, Aust. Let me go. This day ain't long enough
for me. Let me go."

Austen kept his grip and regarded Mr. Tooting thoughtfully.

"I want to speak to you, Ham," he said; "better come upstairs."

"Say, Aust, on the dead, I haven't time. Pardriff's waitin' for some copy
now."

"Just for a minute, Ham," said Austen; "I won't keep you long."

"Leggo my collar, then, if you don't want to choke me. Say, I don't
believe you know how strong you are."

"I didn't know you wore a collar any more, Ham," said Austen.

Mr. Tooting grinned in appreciation of this joke.

"You must think you've got one of your Wild West necktie parties on," he
gasped. "I'll come. But if you love me, don't let the boys in Hilary's
office see me."

"They use the other entry," answered Austen, indicating that Mr. Tooting
should go up first--which he did. When they reached the office Austen
shut the door, and stood with his back against it, regarding Mr. Tooting
thoughtfully.

At first Mr. Tooting returned the look with interest swagger--aggression
would be too emphatic, and defiance would not do. His was the air,
perhaps, of Talleyrand when he said, "There seems to be an inexplicable
something in me that brings bad luck to governments that neglect me:" the
air of a man who has made a brilliant coup d'etat. All day he had worn
that air--since five o'clock in the morning, when he had sprung from his
pallet. The world might now behold the stuff that was in Hamilton
Tooting. Power flowed out of his right hand from an inexhaustible
reservoir which he had had the sagacity to tap, and men leaped into
action at his touch. He, the once, neglected, had the destiny of a State
in his keeping.

Gradually, however, it became for some strange reason difficult to
maintain that aggressive stare upon Austen Vane, who shook his head
slowly.

"Ham, why did you do it?" he asked.

"Why?" cried Mr. Tooting, fiercely biting back a treasonable smile. "Why
not? Ain't he the best man in the State to make a winner? Hasn't he got
the money, and the brains, and the get-up-and-git? Why, it's a sure
thing. I've been around the State, and I know the sentiment. We've got
'em licked, right now. What have you got against it? You're on our side,
Aust."

"Ham," said Austen, "are you sure you have the names and addresses of
those twenty prominent citizens right, so that any voter may go out and
find 'em?"

"What are you kidding about, Aust?" retorted Mr. Tooting, biting back the
smile again. "Say, you never get down to business with me. You don't
blame Crewe for comin' out, do you?"

"I don't see how Mr. Crewe could have resisted such an overwhelming
demand," said Austen. "He couldn't shirk such a duty. He says so himself,
doesn't he?"

"Oh, go on!" exclaimed Mr. Tooting, who was not able to repress a grin.

"The letter of the twenty must have been a great surprise to Mr. Crewe.
He says he was astonished. Did the whole delegation go up to Leith, or
only a committee?"

Mr. Tooting's grin had by this time spread all over his face--a flood
beyond his control.

"Well, there's no use puffin' it on with you, Aust. That was done pretty
slick, that twenty-prominent-citizen business, if I do say it myself. But
you don't know that feller Crewe--he's a full-size cyclone when he gets
started, and nothin' but a range of mountains could stop him."

"It must be fairly exciting to--ride him, Ham."

"Say, but it just is. Kind of breathless, though. He ain't very well
known around the State, and he was bound to run--and I just couldn't let
him come out without any clothes on."

"I quite appreciate your delicacy, Ham."

Mr. Tooting's face took on once more a sheepish look, which changed
almost immediately to one of disquietude.

"Say, I'll come back again some day and kid with you. I've got to go,
Aust--that's straight. This is my busy day."

"Wouldn't you gain some time if you left by the window?" Austen asked.

At this suggestion Mr. Tooting's expressive countenance showed genuine
alarm.

"Say, you ain't going to put up any Wild West tricks on me, are you? I
heard you nearly flung Tom Gaylord out of the one in the other room."

"If this were a less civilized place, Ham, I'd initiate you into what is
known as the bullet dance. As it is, I have a great mind to speed you on
your way by assisting you downstairs."

Mr. Hamilton Tooting became ashy pale.

"I haven't done anything to you, Aust. Say--you didn't--?" He did not
finish.

Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been
there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without
completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced
for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that he
missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the entry.
Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the
Talleyrands--but rarely creep into their biographies.

Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not
smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner
of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the
open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street
windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom
and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat
Billings.

"Howdy, Austen?" said Brush, genially, lookin' for the Honourable Hilary?
Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a couple of
hours ago. He'll be back at two."

"Have you read the pronunciamento?" inquired Mr. Billings. "Say, Austen,
knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty prominent
citizens."

"All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together," Mr. Bascom
suggested; "you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned
the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in
and made you an offer."

News travels fast in Ripton.

"Austen kicked him downstairs," said Jimmy Towle, the office boy, who had
made a breathless entrance during the conversation, and felt it to be the
psychological moment to give vent to the news with which he was bursting.

"Is that straight?" Mr. Billings demanded. He wished he had done it
himself. "Is that straight?" he repeated, but Austen had gone.

"Of course it's straight," said Jimmy Towle, vigorously. A shrewd
observer of human nature, he had little respect for Senator Billings.
"Ned Johnson saw him pick himself up at the foot of Austen's stairway."

The Honourable Brush's agate eyes caught the light, and he addressed Mr.
Billings in a voice which, by dint of long training, only carried a few
feet.

"There's the man the Northeastern's got to look out for," he said. "The
Humphrey Crewes don't count. But if Austen Vane ever gets started,
there'll be trouble. Old man Flint's got some such idea as that, too. I
overheard him givin' it to old Hilary once, up at Fairview, and Hilary
said he couldn't control him. I guess nobody else can control him. I wish
I'd seen him kick Ham downstairs."

"I'd like to kick him downstairs," said Mr. Billings, savagely biting off
another cigar.

"I guess you hadn't better try it, Nat," said Mr. Bascom.

Meanwhile Austen had returned to his own office, and shut the door. His
luncheon hour came and went, and still he sat by the open window gazing
out across the teeming plain, and up the green valley whence the Blue
came singing from the highlands. In spirit he followed the water to
Leith, and beyond, where it swung in a wide circle and hurried between
wondrous hills like those in the backgrounds of the old Italians: hills
of close-cropped pastures, dotted with shapely sentinel oaks and maples
which cast sharp, rounded shadows on the slopes at noonday; with thin
fantastic elms on the gentle sky-lines, and forests massed here and
there--silent, impenetrable hills from a story-book of a land of mystery.
The river coursed between them on its rocky bed, flinging its myriad gems
to the sun. This was the Vale of the Blue, and she had touched it with
meaning for him, and gone.

He drew from his coat a worn pocket-book, and from the pocket-book a
letter. It was dated in New York in February, and though he knew it by
heart he found a strange solace in the pain which it gave him to reread
it. He stared at the monogram on the paper, which seemed so emblematic of
her; for he had often reflected that her things--even such minute
insignia as this--belonged to her. She impressed them not only with her
taste, but with her character. The entwined letters, Y. F., of the design
were not, he thought, of a meaningless, frivolous daintiness, but stood
for something. Then he read the note again. It was only a note.

   "MY DEAR MR. VANE: I have come back to find my mother ill, and I am
   taking her to France. We are sailing, unexpectedly, to-morrow,
   there being a difficulty about a passage later. I cannot refrain
   from sending you a line before I go to tell you that I did you an
   injustice. You will no doubt think it strange that I should write
   to you, but I shall be troubled until it is off my mind. I am
   ashamed to have been so stupid. I think I know now why you would
   not consent to be a candidate, and I respect you for it.

                    "Sincerely your friend,

                    "VICTORIA FLINT."

What did she know? What had she found out? Had she seen her father and
talked to him? That was scarcely possible, since her mother had been ill
and she had left at once. Austen had asked himself these questions many
times, and was no nearer the solution. He had heard nothing of her since,
and he told himself that perhaps it was better, after all, that she was
still away. To know that she was at Fairview, and not to be able to see
her, were torture indeed.

The note was formal enough, and at times he pretended to be glad that it
was. How could it be otherwise? And why should he interpret her interest
in him in other terms than those in which it was written? She had a warm
heart--that he knew; and he felt for her sake that he had no right to
wish for more than the note expressed. After several unsuccessful
attempts; he had answered it in a line, "I thank you, and I understand."




CHAPTER XVI

THE "BOOK OF ARGUMENTS" IS OPENED

The Honourable Hilary Vane returned that day from Fairview in no very
equable frame of mind. It is not for us to be present at the Councils on
the Palatine when the "Book of Arguments" is opened, and those fitting
the occasion are chosen and sent out to the faithful who own
printing-presses and free passes. The Honourable Hilary Vane bore away
from the residence of his emperor a great many memoranda in an envelope,
and he must have sighed as he drove through the leafy roads for Mr.
Hamilton Tooting, with his fertile mind and active body. A year ago, and
Mr. Tooting would have seized these memoranda of majesty, and covered
their margins with new suggestions: Mr. Tooting, on occasions, had even
made additions to the "Book of Arguments" itself--additions which had
been used in New York and other States with telling effect against Mr.
Crewes there. Mr. Tooting knew by heart the time of going to press of
every country newspaper which had passes (in exchange for advertising!).
It was two o'clock when the Honourable Hilary reached his office, and by
three all the edicts would have gone forth, and the grape-shot and
canister would have been on their way to demolish the arrogance of this
petty Lord of Leith..

"Tooting's a dangerous man, Vane. You oughtn't to have let him go," Mr.
Flint had said. "I don't care a snap of my finger for the other fellow."

How Mr. Tooting's ears would have burned, and how his blood would have
sung with pride to have heard himself called dangerous by the president
of the Northeastern!

He who, during all the valuable years of his services, had never had a
sign that that potentate was cognizant of his humble existence.

The Honourable Brush Bascom, as we know, was a clever man; and although
it had never been given him to improve on the "Book of Arguments," he had
ideas of his own. On reading Mr. Crewe's defiance that morning, he had,
with characteristic promptitude and a desire to be useful, taken the
first train out of Putnam for Ripton, to range himself by the side of the
Honourable Hilary in the hour of need. The Feudal System anticipates, and
Mr. Bascom did not wait for a telegram.

On the arrival of the chief counsel from Fairview other captains had put
in an appearance, but Mr. Bascom alone was summoned, by a nod, into the
private office. What passed between them seems too sacred to write about.
The Honourable Hilary would take one of the slips from the packet and
give it to Mr. Bascom.

"If that were recommended, editorially, to the Hull Mercury, it might
serve to clear away certain misconceptions in that section.

"Certain," Mr. Bascom would reply.

"It has been thought wise," the Honourable Hilary continued, "to send an
annual to the Groveton News. Roberts, his name is. Suppose you recommend
to Mr. Roberts that an editorial on this subject would be timely."

Slip number two. Mr. Bascom marks it 'Roberts.' Subject: "What would the
State do without the Railroad?"

"And Grenville, being a Prohibition centre, you might get this worked up
for the Advertiser there."

Mr. Bascom's agate eyes are full of light as he takes slip number three.
Subject: "Mr. Humphrey Crewe has the best-stocked wine cellar in the
State, and champagne every night for dinner." Slip number four, taken
direct from the second chapter of the "Book of Arguments": "Mr. Crewe is
a reformer because he has been disappointed in his inordinate ambitions,"
etc. Slip number five: "Mr. Crewe is a summer resident, with a house in
New York," etc., etc.

Slip number six, "Book of Arguments," paragraph, chapter: "Humphrey
Crewe, Defamer of our State." Assigned, among others, to the Ripton
Record.

"Paul Pardriff went up to Leith to-day," said Mr. Bascom.

"Go to see him," replied the Honourable Hilary. "I've been thinking for
some time that the advertising in the Ripton Record deserves an
additional annual."

Mr. Bascom, having been despatched on this business, and having
voluntarily assumed control of the Empire Bureau of Publication, the
chief counsel transacted other necessary legal business with State
Senator Billings and other gentlemen who were waiting. At three o'clock
word was sent in that Mr. Austen Vane was outside, and wished to speak
with his father as soon as the latter was at leisure. Whereupon the
Honourable Hilary shooed out the minor clients, leaned back in his chair,
and commanded that his son be admitted.

"Judge," said Austen, as he closed the door behind him, "I don't want to
bother you."

The Honourable Hilary regarded his son for a moment fixedly out of his
little eyes.

"Humph" he said.

Austen looked down at his father. The Honourable Hilary's expression was
not one which would have aroused, in the ordinary man who beheld him, a
feeling of sympathy or compassion: it was the impenetrable look with
which he had faced his opponents for many years. But Austen felt
compassion.

"Perhaps I'd better come in another time--when you are less busy," he
suggested.

"Who said I was busy?" inquired the Honourable Hilary.

Austen smiled a little sadly. One would have thought, by that smile, that
the son was the older and wiser of the two.

"I didn't mean to cast any reflection on your habitual industry, Judge,"
he said.

"Humph!" exclaimed Mr. Vane. "I've got more to do than sit in the window
and read poetry, if that's what you mean."

"You never learned how to enjoy life, did you, Judge?" he said. "I don't
believe you ever really had a good time. Own up."

"I've had sterner things to think about. I've had 'to earn my living
--and give you a good time."

"I appreciate it," said Austen.

"Humph! Sometimes I think you don't show it a great deal," the Honourable
Hilary answered.

"I show it as far as I can, Judge," said his son. "I can't help the way I
was made."

"I try to take account of that," said the Honourable Hilary.

Austen laughed.

"I'll drop in to-morrow morning," he said.

But the Honourable Hilary pointed to a chair on the other side of the
desk.

"Sit down. To-day's as good as to-morrow," he remarked, with sententious
significance, characteristically throwing the burden of explanation on
the visitor.

Austen found the opening unexpectedly difficult. He felt that this was a
crisis in their relations, and that it had come at an unfortunate hour.

"Judge," he said, trying to control the feeling that threatened to creep
into his voice, "we have jogged along for some years pretty peaceably,
and I hope you won't misunderstand what I'm going to say."

The Honourable Hilary grunted.

"It was at your request that I went into the law. I have learned to like
that profession. I have stuck to it as well as my wandering, Bohemian
nature will permit, and while I do not expect you necessarily to feel any
pride in such progress as I have made, I have hoped--that you might feel
an interest."

The Honourable Hilary grunted again.

"I suppose I am by nature a free-lance," Austen continued. "You were good
enough to acknowledge the force of my argument when I told you it would
be best for me to strike out for myself. And I suppose it was inevitable,
such being the case, and you the chief counsel for the Northeastern
Railroads, that I should at some time or another be called upon to bring
suits against your client. It would have been better, perhaps, if I had
not started to practise in this State. I did so from what I believe was a
desire common to both of us to--to live together."

The Honourable Hilary reached for his Honey Dew, but he did not speak.

"To live together," Austen repeated. "I want to say that, if I had gone
away, I believe I should always have regretted the fact." He paused, and
took from his pocket a slip of paper.  "I made up my mind from the start
that I would always be frank with you. In spite of my desire to amass
riches, there are some suits against the Northeastern which I have
--somewhat quixotically--refused. Here is a section of the act which
permitted the consolidation of the Northeastern Railroads. You are no
doubt aware of its existence."

The Honourable Hilary took the slip of paper in his hand and stared at
it. "The rates for fares and freights existing at the time of the passage
of this act shall mot be increased on the roads leased or united under
it." What his sensations were when he read it no man might have read in
his face, but his hand trembled a little, and along silence ensued before
he gave it back to his son with the simple comment:--"Well?"

"I do not wish to be understood to ask your legal opinion, although you
probably know that lumber rates have been steadily raised, and if a suit
under that section were successful the Gaylord Lumber Company could
recover a very large sum of money from the Northeastern Railroads," said
Austen. "Having discovered the section, I believe it to be my duty to
call it to the attention of the Gaylords. What I wish to know is, whether
my taking the case would cause you any personal inconvenience or
distress? If so, I will refuse it."

"No," answered the Honourable Hilary, "it won't. Bring suit. Much use
it'll be. Do you expect they can recover under that section?"

"I think it is worth trying," said Austen.

"Why didn't somebody try it before?" asked the Honourable Hilary.

"See here, Judge, I wish you'd let me out of an argument about it. Suit
is going to be brought, whether I bring it or another man. If you would
prefer for any reason that I shouldn't bring it--I won't. I'd much rather
resign as counsel for the Gaylords--and I am prepared to do so."

"Bring suit," answered the Honourable Hilary, quickly, "bring suit by all
means. And now's your time. This seems to be a popular season for
attacking the property which is the foundation of the State's
prosperity." ("Book of Arguments," chapter 3.)

In spite of himself, Austen smiled again. Long habit had accustomed
Hilary Vane to put business considerations before family ties; and this
habit had been the secret of his particular success. And now, rather than
admit by the least sign the importance of his son's discovery of the
statute (which he had had in mind for many years, and to which he had
more than once, by the way, called Mr. Flint's attention), the Honourable
Hilary deliberately belittled the matter as part and parcel of the
political tactics against the Northeastern.

Sears caused by differences of opinion are soon healed; words count for
nothing, and it is the soul that attracts or repels. Mr. Vane was not
analytical, he had been through a harassing day, and he was unaware that
it was not Austen's opposition, but Austen's smile, which set the torch
to his anger. Once, shortly after his marriage, when he had come home in
wrath after a protracted quarrel with Mr. Tredway over the orthodoxy of
the new minister, in the middle of his indignant recital of Mr. Tredway's
unwarranted attitude, Sarah Austen had smiled. The smile had had in it,
to be sure, nothing of conscious superiority, but it had been utterly
inexplicable to Hilary Vane. He had known for the first time what it was
to feel murder in the heart, and if he had not rushed out of the room, he
was sure he would have strangled her. After all, the Hilary Vanes of this
world cannot reasonably be expected to perceive the humour in their
endeavours.

Now the son's smile seemed the reincarnation of the mother's. That smile
was in itself a refutation of motive on Austen's part which no words
could have made more emphatic; it had in it (unconsciously, too)
compassion for and understanding of the Honourable Hilary's mood and
limitations. Out of the corner of his mental vision--without grasping
it--the Honourable Hilary perceived this vaguely. It was the smile in
which a parent privately indulges when a child kicks his toy locomotive
because its mechanism is broken. It was the smile of one who, unforgetful
of the scheme of the firmament and the spinning planets, will not be
moved to anger by him who sees but the four sides of a pit.

Hilary Vane grew red around the eyes--a danger signal of the old days.

"Take the suit," he said. "If you don't, I'll make it known all over the
State that you started it. I'll tell Mr. Flint to-morrow. Take it, do you
hear me? You ask me if I have any pride in you. I answer, yes. I'd like
to see what you can do. I've done what I could for you, and now I wash my
hands of you. Go,--ruin yourself if you want to. You've always been
headed that way, and there's no use trying to stop you. You don't seem to
have any notion of decency or order, or any idea of the principle on
which this government was based. Attack property destroy it. So much the
better for you and your kind. Join the Humphrey Crewes--you belong with
'em. Give those of us who stand for order and decency as much trouble as
you can. Brand us as rascals trying to enrich ourselves with politics,
and proclaim yourselves saints nobly striving to get back the rights of
the people. If you don't bring that suit, I tell you I'll give you the
credit for it--and I mean what I say."

Austen got to his feet. His own expression, curiously enough, had not
changed to one of anger. His face had set, but his eyes held the look
that seemed still to express compassion, and what he felt was a sorrow
that went to the depths of his nature. What he had so long feared--what
he knew they had both feared--had come at last.

"Good-by, Judge," he said.

Hilary Vane stared at him dumbly. His anger had not cooled, his eyes
still flamed, but he suddenly found himself bereft of speech. Austen put
his hand on his father's shoulder, and looked down silently into his
face. But Hilary was stiff as in a rigour, expressionless save for the
defiant red in his eye.

"I don't think you meant all that, Judge, and I don't intend to hold it
against you."

Still Hilary stared, his lips in the tight line which was the emblem of
his character, his body rigid. He saw his son turn and walk to the door,
and turn again with his handle on the knob, and Hilary did not move. The
door closed, and still he sat there, motionless, expressionless.

Austen was hailed by those in the outer office, but he walked through
them as though the place were empty. Rumours sprang up behind him of
which he was unconscious; the long-expected quarrel had come; Austen had
joined the motley ranks of the rebels under Mr. Crewe. Only the office
boy, Jimmy Towle, interrupted the jokes that were flying by repeating,
with dogged vehemence, "I tell you it ain't so. Austen kicked Ham
downstairs. Ned Johnson saw him." Nor was it on account of this
particular deed that Austen was a hero in Jimmy's eyes.

Austen, finding himself in the square, looked at his watch. It was four
o'clock. He made his way under the maples to the house in Hanover Street,
halted for a moment contemplatively before the familiar classic pillars
of its porch, took a key from his pocket, and (unprecedented action!)
entered by the front door. Climbing to the attic, he found two
valises--one of which he had brought back from Pepper County--and took
them to his own room. They held, with a little crowding, most of his
possessions, including a photograph of Sarah Austen, which he left on the
bureau to the last. Once or twice he paused in his packing to gaze at the
face, striving to fathom the fleeting quality of her glance which the
photograph had so strangely caught. In that glance nature had stamped her
enigma--for Sarah Austen was a child of nature. Hers was the gentle look
of wild things--but it was more; it was the understanding of--the
unwritten law of creation, the law by which the flowers grow, and wither;
the law by which the animal springs upon its prey, and, unerring, seeks
its mate; the law of the song of the waters, and the song of the morning
stars; the law that permits evil and pain and dumb, incomprehensible
suffering; the law that floods at sunset the mountain lands with colour
and the soul with light; and the law that rends the branches in the blue
storm. Of what avail was anger against it, or the puny rage of man?
Hilary Vane, not recognizing it, had spent his force upon it, like a hawk
against a mountain wall, but Austen looked at his mother's face and
understood. In it was not the wisdom of creeds and cities, but the
unworldly wisdom which comprehends and condones.

His packing finished, with one last glance at the room Austen went
downstairs with his valises and laid them on the doorstep. Then he went
to the stable and harnessed Pepper, putting into the buggy his stable
blanket and halter and currycomb, and, driving around to the front of the
house, hitched the horse at the stone post, and packed the valises in the
back of the buggy. After that he walked slowly to the back of the house
and looked in at the kitchen window. Euphrasia, her thin arms bare to the
elbow, was bending over a wash-tub. He spoke her name, and as she lifted
her head a light came into her face which seemed to make her young again.
She dried her hands hastily on her apron as she drew towards him. He
sprang through the window, and patted her on the back--his usual
salutation. And as she raised her eyes to his (those ordinarily sharp
eyes of Euphrasia's), they shone with an admiration she had accorded to
no other human being since he had come into the world. Terms of
endearment she had, characteristically, never used, she threw her soul
into the sounding of his name.

"Off to the hills, Austen? I saw you a-harnessing of Pepper."

"Phrasie," he said, still patting her, "I'm going to the country for a
while."

"To the country?" she repeated.

"To stay on a farm for a sort of vacation."

Her face brightened.

"Goin' to take a real vacation, be you?"

He laughed.

"Oh, I don't have to work very hard, Phrasie. You know I get out a good
deal. I just thought--I just thought I'd like to--sleep in the country
--for a while."

"Well," answered Euphrasia, "I guess if you've took the notion, you've
got to go. It was that way with your mother before you. I've seen her
leave the house on a bright Sabbath half an hour before meetin' to be
gone the whole day, and Hilary and all the ministers in town couldn't
stop her."

"I'll drop in once in a while to see you, Phrasie. I'll be at Jabe
Jenney's."

"Jabe's is not more than three or four miles from Flint's place,"
Euphrasia remarked.

"I've thought of that," said Austen.

"You'd thought of it!"

Austen coloured.

"The distance is nothing," he said quickly, "with Pepper."

"And you'll come and see me?" asked Euphrasia.

"If you'll do something for me," he said.

"I always do what you want, Austen. You know I'm not able to refuse you."

He laid his hands on her shoulders.

"You'll promise?" he asked.

"I'll promise," said Euphrasia, solemnly.

He was silent for a moment, looking down at her.

"I want you to promise to stay here and take care of the Judge."

Fright crept into her eyes, but his own were smiling, reassuring.

"Take care of him!" she cried, the very mention of Hilary raising the
pitch of her voice. "I guess I'll have to. Haven't I took care of him
nigh on forty years, and small thanks and recompense I get for it except
when you're here. I've wore out my life takin' care of him" (more
gently). "What do you mean by makin' me promise such a thing, Austen?"

"Well," said Austen, slowly, "the Judge is worried now. Things are not
going as smoothly with him as usual."

"Money?" demanded Euphrasia. "He ain't lost money, has he?"

A light began to dance in Austen's eyes in spite of the weight within
him.

"Now, Phrasie," he said, lifting her chin a little, "you know you don't
care any more about money than I do."

"Lord help me," she exclaimed, "Lord help me if I didn't! And as long as
you don't care for it, and no sense can be knocked into your head about
it, I hope you'll marry somebody that does know the value of it. If
Hilary was to lose what he has now, before it comes rightly to you, he'd
ought to be put in jail."

Austen laughed, and shook his head.

"Phrasie, the Lord did you a grave injustice when he didn't make you a
man, but I suppose he'll give you a recompense hereafter. No, I believe I
am safe in saying that the Judge's securities are still secure. Not that
I really know--or care--" (shakes of the head from Euphrasia). "Poor old
Judge! Worse things than finance are troubling him now."

"Not a woman!" cried Euphrasia, horror-stricken at the very thought. "He
hasn't took it into his head after all these years--"

"No," said Austen, laughing, "no, no. It's not quite as bad as that, but
it's pretty bad."

"In Heaven's name, what is it?" she demanded. "Reformers," said Austen.

"Reformers?" she repeated. "What might they be?"

"Well," answered Austen, "you might call them a new kind of caterpillar
--only they feed on corporations instead of trees."

Euphrasia shook her head vigorously.

"Go 'long," she exclaimed. "When you talk like that I never can follow
you, Austen. If Hilary has any worries, I guess he brought 'em on
himself. I never knew him to fail."

"Ambitious and designing persons are making trouble for his railroad."

"Well, I never took much stock in that railroad," said Euphrasia, with
emphasis. "I never was on it but an engine gave out, and the cars was
jammed, and it wasn't less than an hour late. And then they're eternally
smashin' folks or runnin' 'em down. You served 'em right when you made
'em pay that Meader man six thousand dollars, and I told Hilary so." She
paused, and stared at Austen fixedly as a thought came into her head.
"You ain't leavin' him because of this trouble, are you, Austen?"

"Phrasie," he said, "I--I don't want to quarrel with him now. I think it
would be easy to quarrel with him."

"You mean him quarrel with you," returned Euphrasia. "I'd like to see
him! If he did, it wouldn't take me long to pack up and leave."

"That's just it. I don't want that to happen. And I've had a longing to
go out and pay a little visit to Jabe up in the hills, and drive his
colts for him. You see," he said, "I've got a kind of affection for the
Judge."

Euphrasia looked at him, and her lips trembled.

"He don't deserve it," she declared, "but I suppose he's your father."

"He can't get out of that," said Austen.

"I'd like to see him try it," said Euphrasia. "Come in soon, Austen," she
whispered, "come in soon."

She stood on the lawn and watched him as he drove away, and he waved
good-by to her over the hood of the buggy. When he was out of sight she
lifted her head, gave her eyes a vigorous brush with her checked apron,
and went back to her washing.

It was not until Euphrasia had supper on the table that Hilary Vane came
home, and she glanced at him sharply as he took his usual seat. It is a
curious fact that it is possible for two persons to live together for
more than a third of a century, and at the end of that time understand
each other little better than at the beginning. The sole bond between
Euphrasia and Hilary was that of Sarah Austen and her son. Euphrasia
never knew when Hilary was tired, or when he was cold, or hungry, or
cross, although she provided for all these emergencies. Her service to
him was unflagging, but he had never been under the slightest delusion
that it was not an inheritance from his wife. There must have been some
affection between Mr. Vane and his housekeeper, hidden away in the strong
boxes of both but up to the present this was only a theory--not quite as
probable as that about the inhabitants of Mars.

He ate his supper to-night with his usual appetite, which had always been
sparing; and he would have eaten the same amount if the Northeastern
Railroads had been going into the hands of a receiver the next day. Often
he did not exchange a word with Euphrasia between home-coming and
bed-going, and this was apparently to be one of these occasions. After
supper he went, as usual, to sit on the steps of his porch, and to cut
his piece of Honey Dew, which never varied a milligram. Nine o'clock
struck, and Euphrasia, who had shut up the back of the house, was on her
way to bed with her lamp in her hand, when she came face to face with him
in the narrow passageway.

"Where's Austen?" he asked.

Euphrasia halted. The lamp shook, but she raised it to the level of his
eyes.

"Don't you know?" she demanded.

"No," he said, with unparalleled humility.

She put down the lamp on the little table that stood beside her.

"He didn't tell you he was a-goin'?"

"No," said Hilary.

"Then how did you know he wasn't just buggy-ridin'?" she said.

Hilary Vane was mute.

"You've be'n to his room!" she exclaimed. "You've seen his things are
gone!"

He confessed it by his silence. Then, with amazing swiftness and vigour
for one of her age, Euphrasia seized him by the arms and shook him.

"What have you done to him?" she cried; "what have you done to him? You
sent him off. You've never understood him--you've never behaved like a
father to him. You ain't worthy to have him." She flung herself away and
stood facing Hilary at a little distance. What a fool I was! What a fool!
I might have known it, and I promised him."

"Promised him?" Hilary repeated. The shaking, the vehemence and anger, of
Euphrasia seemed to have had no effect whatever on the main trend of his
thoughts.

"Where has he gone?"

"You can find out for yourself," she retorted bitterly. "I wish on your
account it was to China. He came here this afternoon, as gentle as ever,
and packed up his things, and said he was goin' away because you was
worried. Worried!" she exclaimed scornfully. "His worry and his trouble
don't count--but yours. And he made me promise to stay with you. If it
wasn't for him," she cried, picking up the lamp, "I'd leave you this very
night."

She swept past him, and up the narrow stairway to her bedroom.




CHAPTER XVII

BUSY DAYS AT WEDDERBURN

There is no blast so powerful, so withering, as the blast of ridicule.
Only the strongest men can withstand it, only reformers who are such in
deed, and not alone in name, can snap their fingers at it, and liken it
to the crackling of thorns under a pot. Confucius and Martin Luther must
have been ridiculed, Mr. Crewe reflected, and although he did not have
time to assure himself on these historical points, the thought stayed
him. Sixty odd weekly newspapers, filled with arguments from the Book,
attacked him all at once; and if by chance he should have missed the best
part of this flattering personal attention, the editorials which
contained the most spice were copied at the end of the week into the
columns of his erstwhile friend, the State Tribune, now the organ of that
mysterious personality, the Honourable Adam B. Hunt. 'Et tu, Brute!'

Moreover, Mr. Peter Pardriff had something of his own to say. Some
gentlemen of prominence (not among the twenty signers of the new
Declaration of Independence) had been interviewed by the Tribune reporter
on the subject of Mr. Crewe's candidacy. Here are some of the answers,
duly tabulated.

"Negligible."--Congressman Fairplay.

"One less vote for the Honourable Adam B. Hunt."--The Honourable Jacob
Botcher.

"A monumental farce."--Ex-Governor Broadbent.

"Who is Mr. Crewe?"--Senator Whitredge. (Ah ha! Senator, this want shall
be supplied, at least.)

"I have been very busy. I do not know what candidates are in the
field."--Mr. Augustus P. Flint, president of the Northeastern Railroads.
(The unkindest cut of all!)

"I have heard that a Mr. Crewe is a candidate, but I do not know much
about him. They tell me he is a summer resident at Leith."--The
Honourable Hilary Vane.

"A millionaire's freak--not to be taken seriously.--State Senator
Nathaniel Billings."

The State Tribune itself seemed to be especially interested in the past
careers of the twenty signers. Who composed this dauntless band, whose
members had arisen with remarkable unanimity and martyr's zeal in such
widely scattered parts of the State? Had each been simultaneously
inspired with the same high thought, and--more amazing still--with the
idea of the same peerless leader? The Tribune modestly ventured the
theory that Mr. Crewe had appeared to each of the twenty in a dream, with
a flaming sword pointing to the steam of the dragon's breath. Or,
perhaps, a star had led each of the twenty to Leith. (This likening of
Mr. H--n T--g to a star caused much merriment among that gentleman's
former friends and acquaintances.) The Tribune could not account for this
phenomenon by any natural laws, and was forced to believe that the thing
was a miracle--in which case it behooved the Northeastern Railroads to
read the handwriting on the wall. Unless--unless the twenty did not
exist! Unless the whole thing were a joke! The Tribune remembered a time
when a signed statement, purporting to come from a certain Mrs. Amanda P.
Pillow, of 22 Blair Street, Newcastle, had appeared, to the effect that
three bottles of Rand's Peach Nectar had cured her of dropsy. On
investigation there was no Blair Street, and Mrs. Amanda P. Pillow was as
yet unborn. The one sure thing about the statement was that Rand's Peach
Nectar could be had, in large or small quantities, as desired. And the
Tribune was prepared to state; on its own authority, that a Mr. Humphrey
Crewe did exist, and might reluctantly consent to take the nomination for
the governorship. In industry and zeal he was said to resemble the
celebrated and lamented Mr. Rand, of the Peach Nectar.

Ingratitude merely injures those who are capable of it, although it
sometimes produces sadness in great souls. What were Mr. Crewe's feelings
when he read this drivel? When he perused the extracts from the "Book of
Arguments" which appeared (with astonishing unanimity, too!) in sixty odd
weekly newspapers of the State--an assortment of arguments for each
county.

"Brush Bascom's doin' that work now," said Mr. Tooting, contemptuously,
"and he's doin' it with a shovel. Look here! He's got the same squib in
three towns within a dozen miles of each other, the one beginning
'Political conditions in this State are as clean as those of any State in
the Union, and the United Northeastern Railroads is a corporation which
is, fortunately, above calumny. A summer resident who, to satisfy his
lust for office, is rolling to defame--'"

"Yes," interrupted Mr. Crewe, "never mind reading any more of that rot."

"It's botched," said Mr. Tooting, whose artistic soul was jarred. "I'd
have put that in Avalon County, and Weave, and Marshall. I know men that
take all three of those papers in Putnam."

No need of balloonists to see what the enemy is about, when we have a Mr.
Tooting.

"They're stung!" he cried, as he ran rapidly through the bundle of
papers--Mr. Crewe having subscribed, with characteristic generosity, to
the entire press of the State. "Flint gave 'em out all this stuff about
the railroad bein' a sacred institution. You've got 'em on the run right
now, Mr. Crewe. You'll notice that, Democrats and Republicans, they've
dropped everybody else, that they've all been sicked on to you. They're
scared."

"I came to that conclusion some time ago," replied Mr. Crewe, who was
sorting over his letters.

"And look there!" exclaimed Mr. Tooting, tearing out a paragraph,
"there's the best campaign material we've had yet. Say, I'll bet Flint
taken that doddering idiot's pass away for writing that."

Mr. Crewe took the extract, and read:--

     "A summer resident of Leith, who is said to be a millionaire
     many times over, and who had a somewhat farcical career as a
     legislator last winter, has announced himself as a candidate
     for the Republican nomination on a platform attacking the
     Northeastern Railroads. Mr. Humphrey Crewe declares that the
     Northeastern Railroads govern us. What if they do? Every
     sober-minded citizen, will agree that they give us a pretty
     good government. More power to them."

Mr. Crewe permitted himself to smile.

"They are playing into our hands, sure enough. What?"

This is an example of the spirit in which the ridicule and abuse was met.

It was Senator Whitredge--only, last autumn so pleased to meet Mr. Crewe
at Mr. Flint's--who asked the hypocritical question, "Who is Humphrey
Crewe?" A biography (in pamphlet form, illustrated,--send your name and
address) is being prepared by the invaluable Mr. Tooting, who only sleeps
six hours these days. We shall see it presently, when it emerges from
that busy hive at Wedderburn.

Wedderburn was a hive, sure enough. Not having a balloon ourselves, it is
difficult to see all that is going on there; but there can be no mistake
(except by the Honourable Hilary's seismograph) that it has become the
centre of extraordinary activity. The outside world has paused to draw
breath at the spectacle, and members of the metropolitan press are
filling the rooms of the Ripton House and adding to the prosperity of its
livery-stable. Mr. Crewe is a difficult man to see these days--there are
so many visitors at Wedderburn, and the representatives of the
metropolitan press hitch their horses and stroll around the grounds, or
sit on the porch and converse with gentlemen from various counties of the
State who (as the Tribune would put it) have been led by a star to Leith.

On the occasion of one of these gatherings, when Mr. Crewe had been
inaccessible for four hours, Mrs. Pomfret drove up in a victoria with her
daughter Alice.

"I'm sure I don't know when we're going to see poor dear Humphrey again,"
said Mrs. Pomfret, examining the group on the porch through her
gold-mounted lenses; these awful people are always here when I come. I
wonder if they sleep here, in the hammocks and lounging chairs! Alice, we
must be very polite to them--so much depends on it."

"I'm always polite, mother," answered Alice, "except when you tell me not
to be. The trouble is I never know myself."

The victoria stopped in front of the door, and the irreproachable Waters
advanced across the porch.

"Waters," said Mrs. Pomfret, "I suppose Mr. Crewe is too busy to come
out."

"I'm afraid so, madam," replied Waters; "there's a line of gentlemen
waitin' here" (he eyed them with no uncertain disapproval). and I've
positive orders not to disturb him, madam."

"I quite understand, at a time like this," said Mrs. Pomfret, and added,
for the benefit of her audience, "when Mr. Crewe has been public-spirited
and unselfish enough to undertake such a gigantic task. Tell him Miss
Pomfret and I call from time to time because we are so interested, and
that the whole of Leith wishes him success."

"I'll tell him, madam," said Waters,

But Mrs. Pomfret did not give the signal for her coachman to drive on.
She looked, instead, at the patient gathering.

"Good morning, gentlemen," she said.

"Mother!" whispered Alice, "what are you going to do?"

The gentlemen rose.

"I'm Mrs. Pomfret," she said, as though that simple announcement were
quite sufficient,--as it was, for the metropolitan press. Not a man of
them who had not seen Mrs. Pomfret's important movements on both sides of
the water chronicled. "I take the liberty of speaking to you, as we all
seem to be united in a common cause. How is the campaign looking?"

Some of the gentlemen shifted their cigars from one hand to the other,
and grinned sheepishly.

"I am so interested," continued Mrs. Pomfret; "it is so unusual in
America for a gentleman to be willing to undertake such a thing, to
subject himself to low criticism, and to have his pure motives
questioned. Mr. Crewe has rare courage--I have always said so. And we are
all going to put our shoulder to the wheel, and help him all we can."

There was one clever man there who was quick to see his opportunity, and
seize it for his newspaper.

"And are you going to help Mr. Crewe in his campaign, Mrs. Pomfret?"

"Most assuredly," answered Mrs. Pomfret. "Women in this country could do
so much if they only would. You know," she added, in her most winning
manner, "you know that a woman can often get a vote when a man can't."

"And you, and--other ladies will go around to the public meetings?"

"Why not, my friend; if Mr. Crewe has no objection? and I can conceive of
none."

"You would have an organization of society ladies to help Mr. Crewe?"

"That's rather a crude way of putting it," answered Mrs. Pomfret, with
her glasses raised judicially. "Women in what you call I society are, I
am glad to say, taking an increasing interest in politics. They are
beginning to realize that it is a duty."

"Thank you," said the reporter; "and now would you mind if I took a
photograph of you in your carriage."

"Oh, mother," protested Alice, "you won't let him do that!"

"Be quiet, Alice. Lady Aylestone and the duchess are photographed in
every conceivable pose for political purposes. Wymans, just drive around
to the other side of the circle."

The article appeared next day, and gave, as may be imagined, a tremendous
impetus to Mr. Crewe's cause. "A new era in American politics!" "Society
to take a hand in the gubernatorial campaign of Millionaire Humphrey
Crewe!" "Noted social leader, Mrs. Patterson Pomfret, declares it a duty,
and saga that English women have the right idea." And a photograph of
Mrs. Patterson Pomfret herself, in her victoria, occupied a generous
portion of the front page.

"What's all this rubbish about Mrs. Pomfret?" was Mr. Crewe's grateful
comment when he saw it. "I spent two valuable hours with that reporter
givin' him material and statistics, and I can't find that he's used a
word of it."

"Never you mind about that," Mr. Tooting replied. "The more advertising
you get, the better, and this shows that the right people are behind you.
Mrs. Pomfret's a smart woman, all right. She knows her job. And here's
more advertising," he continued, shoving another sheet across the desk,
"a fine likeness of you in caricature labelled, 'Ajax defying the
Lightning.' Who's Ajax? There was an Italian, a street contractor, with
that name--or something like it--in Newcastle a couple of years ago--in
the eighth ward."

In these days, when false rumours fly apace to the injury of innocent
men, it is well to get at the truth, if possible. It is not true that Mr.
Paul Pardriff, of the 'Ripton Record,' has been to Wedderburn. Mr.
Pardriff was getting into a buggy to go--somewhere--when he chanced to
meet the Honourable Brush Bascom, and the buggy was sent back to the
livery-stable. Mr. Tooting had been to see Mr. Pardriff before the
world-quaking announcement of June 7th, and had found Mr. Pardriff a
reformer who did not believe that the railroad should run the State. But
the editor of the Ripton Record was a man after Emerson's own heart: "a
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"--and Mr. Pardriff
did not go to Wedderburn. He went off on an excursion up the State
instead, for he had been working too hard; and he returned, as many men
do from their travels, a conservative. He listened coldly to Mr.
Tooting's impassioned pleas for cleaner politics, until Mr. Tooting
revealed the fact that his pockets were full of copy. It seems that a
biography was to be printed--a biography which would, undoubtedly, be in
great demand; the biography of a public benefactor, illustrated with
original photographs and views in the country. Mr. Tooting and Mr.
Pardriff both being men of the world, some exceeding plain talk ensued
between them, and when two such minds unite, a way out is sure to be
found. One can be both a conservative and a radical--if one is clever.
There were other columns in Mr. Pardriff's paper besides editorial
columns; editorial columns, Mr. Pardriff said, were sacred to his
convictions. Certain thumb-worn schedules were referred to. Paul
Pardriff, Ripton, agreed to be the publisher of the biography.

The next edition of the Record was an example of what Mr. Emerson meant.
Three columns contained extracts of absorbing interest from the
forthcoming biography and, on another page, an editorial.  The Honourable
Humphrey Crewe, of Leith, is an estimable gentleman and a good citizen,
whose public endeavours have been of great benefit to the community. A
citizen of Avalon County, the Record regrets that it cannot support his
candidacy for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. We are not among
those who seek to impugn motives, and while giving Mr. Crewe every credit
that his charges against the Northeastern Railroads are made in good
faith, we beg to differ from him. That corporation is an institution
which has stood the test of time, and enriches every year the State
treasury by a large sum in taxes. Its management is in safe, conservative
hands. No one will deny Mr. Crewe's zeal for the State's welfare, but it
must be borne in mind that he is a newcomer in politics, and that
conditions, seen from the surface, are sometimes deceptive. We predict
for Mr. Crewe a long and useful career, but we do not think that at this
time, and on this platform, he will obtain the governorship."

"Moral courage is what the age needs," had been Mr. Crewe's true and
sententious remark when he read this editorial. But, bearing in mind a
biblical adage, he did not blame Mr. Tooting for his diplomacy. "Send in
the next man."

Mr. Tooting opened the study door and glanced over the public-spirited
citizens awaiting, on the porch, the pleasure of their leader.

"Come along, Caldwell," said Mr. Tooting. "He wants your report from
Kingston. Get a hustle on!"

Mr. Caldwell made his report, received many brief and business-like
suggestions, and retired, impressed. Whereupon Mr. Crewe commanded Mr.
Tooting to order his automobile--an occasional and rapid spin over the
country roads being the only diversion the candidate permitted himself.
Wishing to be alone with his thoughts, he did not take Mr. Tooting with
him on these excursions.

"And by the way," said Mr. Crewe, as he seized the steering wheel a few
moments later, "just drop a line to Austen Vane, will you, and tell him I
want to see him up here within a day or two. Make an appointment. It has
occurred to me that he might be very useful."

Mr. Tooting stood on the driveway watching the cloud of dust settle on
the road below. Then he indulged in a long and peculiarly significant
whistle through his teeth, rolled his eyes heavenward, and went into the
house. He remembered Austen's remark about riding a cyclone.

Mr. Crewe took the Tunbridge road. On his excursion of the day before he
had met Mrs. Pomfret, who had held up her hand, and he had protestingly
brought the car to a stop.

"Your horses don't frighten," he had said.

"No, but I wanted to speak to you, Humphrey," Mrs. Pomfret had replied;
"you are becoming so important that nobody ever has a glimpse of you. I
wanted to tell you what an interest we take in this splendid thing you
are doing."

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, "it was a plain duty, and nobody else seemed
willing to undertake it."

Mrs. Pomfret's eyes had flashed.

"Men of that type are scarce," she answered. "But you'll win. You're the
kind of man that wins."

"Oh, yes, I'll win," said Mr. Crewe.

"You're so magnificently sure of yourself," cried Mrs. Pomfret. "Alice is
taking such an interest. Every day she asks, 'When is Humphrey going to
make his first speech?' You'll let us know in time, won't you?"

"Did you put all that nonsense in the New York Flare?" asked Mr. Crewe.

"Oh, Humphrey, I hope you liked it," cried Mrs. Pomfret. "Don't make the
mistake of despising what women can do. They elected the Honourable Billy
Aylestone--he said so himself. I'm getting all the women interested."

"Who've you been calling on now?" he inquired.

Mrs. Pomfret hesitated.

"I've been up at Fairview to see about Mrs. Flint. She isn't much
better."

"Is Victoria home?" Mr. Crewe demanded, with undisguised interest.

"Poor dear girl!" said Mrs. Pomfret, "of course I wouldn't have mentioned
the subject to her, but she wanted to know all about it. It naturally
makes an awkward situation between you and her, doesn't it?"

"Oh, Victoria's level-headed enough," Mr. Crewe had answered; "I guess
she knows something about old Flint and his methods by this time. At any
rate, it won't make any difference with me," he added magnanimously, and
threw in his clutch. He had encircled Fairview in his drive that day, and
was, curiously enough, headed in that direction now. Slow to make up his
mind in some things, as every eligible man must be, he was now coming
rapidly to the notion that he might eventually decide upon Victoria as
the most fitting mate for one in his position. Still, there was no hurry.
As for going to Fairview House, that might be awkward, besides being open
to misconstruction by his constituents. Mr. Crewe reflected, as he rushed
up the hills, that he had missed Victoria since she had been abroad--and
a man so continually occupied as he did not have time to miss many
people. Mr. Crewe made up his mind he would encircle Fairview every day
until he ran across her.

The goddess of fortune sometimes blesses the persistent even before they
begin to persist--perhaps from sheer weariness at the remembrance of
previous importuning. Victoria, on a brand-new and somewhat sensitive
five-year-old, was coming out of the stone archway when Mr. Crewe
(without any signal this time!) threw on his brakes. An exhibition of
horsemanship followed, on Victoria's part, which Mr. Crewe beheld with
admiration. The five-year-old swung about like a weathercock in a gust of
wind, assuming an upright position, like the unicorn in the British coat
of arms. Victoria cut him, and he came down on all fours and danced into
the wire fence that encircled the Fairview domain, whereupon he got
another stinging reminder that there was some one on his back.

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Crewe, leaning on the steering wheel and watching the
performance with delight. Never, he thought, had Victoria been more
appealing; strangely enough, he had not remembered that she was quite so
handsome, or that her colour was so vivid; or that her body was so
straight and long and supple. He liked the way in which she gave it to
that horse, and he made up his mind that she would grace any position,
however high. Presently the horse made a leap into the road in front of
the motor and stood trembling, ready to bolt.

"For Heaven's sake, Humphrey," she cried, "shut off your power? Don't sit
there like an idiot--do you think I'm doing this for pleasure?"

Mr. Crewe good-naturedly turned off his switch, and the motor, with a
dying sigh, was silent. He even liked the notion of being commanded to do
a thing; there was a relish about it that was new. The other women of his
acquaintance addressed him more deferentially.

"Get hold of the bridle," he said to the chauffeur. "You've got no
business to have an animal like that," was his remark to Victoria.

"Don't touch him!" she said to the man, who was approaching with a true
machinist's fear of a high-spirited horse. "You've got no business to
have a motor like that, if you can't handle it any better than you do."

"You managed him all right. I'll say that for you," said Mr. Crewe.

"No thanks to you," she replied. Now that the horse was comparatively
quiet, she sat and regarded Mr. Crewe with an amusement which was
gradually getting the better of her anger. A few moments since, and she
wished with great intensity that she had been using the whip on his
shoulders instead. Now that she had time to gather up the threads of the
situation, the irresistibly comic aspect of it grew upon her, and little
creases came into the corners of her eyes--which Mr. Crewe admired. She
recalled--with indignation, to be sure--the conversation she had
overheard in the dining room of the Duncan house, but her indignation was
particularly directed, on that occasion, towards Mr. Tooting. Here was
Humphrey Crewe, sitting talking to her in the road--Humphrey Crewe, whose
candidacy for the governorship impugned her father's management of the
Northeastern Railroads--and she was unable to take the matter seriously!
There must be something wrong with her, she thought.

"So you're home again," Mr. Crewe observed, his eyes still bearing
witness to the indubitable fact. "I shouldn't have known it--I've been so
busy."

"Is the Legislature still in session?" Victoria soberly inquired.

"You are a little behind the times--ain't you?" said Mr. Crewe, in
surprise. "How long have you been home? Hasn't anybody told you what's
going on?"

"I only came up ten days ago," she answered, "and I'm afraid I've been
something of a recluse. What is going on?"

"Well," he declared, "I should have thought you'd heard it, anyway. I'll
send you up a few newspapers when I get back. I'm a candidate for the
governorship."

Victoria bit her lip, and leaned over to brush a fly from the neck of her
horse.

"You are getting on rapidly, Humphrey," she said. "Do you think you've
got--any chance?"

"Any chance!" he repeated, with some pardonable force. "I'm sure to be
nominated. There's an overwhelming sentiment among the voters of this
State for decent politics. It didn't take me long to find that out. The
only wonder is that somebody hasn't seen it before."

"Perhaps," she answered, giving him a steady look, "perhaps somebody
has."

One of Mr. Crewe's greatest elements of strength was his imperviousness
to this kind of a remark.

"If anybody's seen it," he replied, "they haven't the courage of their
convictions." Such were the workings of Mr. Crewe's mind that he had
already forgotten that first talk with Mr. Hamilton Tooting. "Not that I
want to take too much credit on myself," he added, with becoming modesty,
"I have had some experience in the world, and it was natural that I
should get a fresh view. Are you coming down to Leith in a few days?"

"I may," said Victoria.

"Telephone me," said Mr. Crewe, "and if I can get off, I will. I'd like
to talk to you. You have more sense than most women I know."

"You overwhelm me, Humphrey. Compliments sound strangely on your lips."

"When I say a thing, I mean it," Mr. Crewe declared. "I don't pay
compliments. I'd make it a point to take a little time off to talk to
you. You see, so many men are interested in this thing from various parts
of the State, and we are so busy organizing, that it absorbs most of my
day."

"I couldn't think of encroaching," Victoria protested.

"That's all right--you can be a great help. I've got confidence in your
judgment. By the way," he asked suddenly, "you haven't seen your friend
Austen Vane since you got back, have you?"

"Why do you call him my friend?" said Victoria. Mr. Crew perceived that
the exercise had heightened her colour, and the transition appealed to
his sense of beauty.

"Perhaps I put it a little strongly," he replied. "You seemed to take an
interest in him, for some reason. I suppose it's because you like new
types."

"I like Mr. Vane very much,--and for himself," she said quietly. "But I
haven't seen him since I came back. Nor do I think I am likely to see
him. What made you ask about him?"

"Well, he seems to be a man of some local standing, and he ought to be in
this campaign. If you happen to see him, you might mention the subject to
him. I've sent for him to come up and see me."

"Mr. Vane doesn't seem to me to be a person one can send for like that,"
Victoria remarked judicially. "As to advising him as to what course he
should take politically--that would even be straining my friendship for
you, Humphrey. On reflection," she added, smiling, "there may appear to
you reasons why I should not care to meddle with--politics, just now."

"I can't see it," said Mr. Crewe; "you've got a mind of your own, and
you've never been afraid to use it, so far as I know. If you should see
that Vane man, just give him a notion of what I'm trying to do."

"What are you trying to do?" inquired Victoria, sweetly.

"I'm trying to clean up this State politically," said Mr. Crewe, "and I'm
going to do it. When you come down to Leith, I'll tell you about it, and
I'll send you the newspapers to-day. Don't be in a hurry," he cried,
addressing over his shoulder two farmers in a wagon who had driven up a
few moments before, and who were apparently anxious to pass. "Wind her
up, Adolphe."

The chauffeur, standing by the crank, started the engine instantly, and
the gears screamed as Mr. Crewe threw in his low speed. The five-year-old
whirled, and bolted down the road at a pace which would have seemed to
challenge a racing car; and the girl in the saddle, bending to the motion
of the horse, was seen to raise her hand in warning.

"Better stay whar you be," shouted one of the farmers; "don't go to
follerin' her. The hoes is runnin' away."

Mr. Crewe steered his car into the Fairview entrance, and backed into the
road again, facing the other way. He had decided to go home.

"That lady can take care of herself," he said, and started off towards
Leith, wondering how it was that Mr. Flint had not confided his recent
political troubles to his daughter.

"That hoss is ugly, sure enough," said the farmer who had spoken before.

Victoria flew on, down the narrow road. After twenty strides she did not
attempt to disguise from herself the fact that the five-year-old was in a
frenzy of fear, and running away. Victoria had been run away with before,
and having some knowledge of the animal she rode, she did not waste her
strength by pulling on the curb, but sought rather to quiet him with her
voice, which had no effect whatever. He was beyond appeal, his head was
down, and his ears trembling backwards and straining for a sound of the
terror that pursued him. The road ran through the forest, and Victoria
reflected that the grade, on the whole, was downward to the East
Tunbridge station, where the road crossed the track and took to the hills
beyond. Once among them, she would be safe--he might run as far, as he
pleased. But could she pass the station? She held a firm rein, and tried
to keep her mind clear.

Suddenly, at a slight bend of the road, the corner of the little red
building came in sight, some hundreds of yards ahead; and, on the side
where it stood, in the clearing, was a white mass which Victoria
recognized as a pile of lumber. She saw several men on the top of the
pile, standing motionless; she heard one of them shout; the horse
swerved, and she felt herself flung violently to the left.

Her first thought, after striking, was one of self-congratulation that
her safety stirrup and habit had behaved properly. Before she could rise,
a man was leaning over her--and in the instant she had the impression
that he was a friend. Other people had had this impression of him on
first acquaintance--his size, his genial, brick-red face, and his honest
blue eyes all doubtless contributing.

"Are you hurt, Miss Flint?" he asked.

"Not in the least," she replied, springing to her feet to prove the
contrary.  What's become of my horse?"

"Two of the men have gone after him," he said, staring at her with
undisguised but honest admiration. Whereupon he became suddenly
embarrassed, and pulled out a handkerchief the size of a table napkin.
"Let me dust you off."

"Thank you," said Victoria, laughing, and beginning the process herself.
Her new acquaintance plied the handkerchief, his face a brighter
brick-red than ever.

"Thank God, there wasn't a freight on the siding," he remarked, so
fervently that Victoria stole a glance at him. The dusting process
continued.

"There," she exclaimed, at last, adjusting her stock and shaking her
skirt, "I'm ever so much obliged. It was very foolish in me to tumble
off, wasn't it?"

"It was the only thing you could have done," he declared. "I had a good
view of it, and he flung you like a bean out of a shooter. That's a
powerful horse. I guess you're the kind that likes to take risks."

Victoria laughed at his expressive phrase, and crossed the road, and sat
down on the edge of the lumber pile, in the shade.

"There seems to be nothing to do but wait," she said, "and to thank you
again. Will you tell me your name?"

"I'm Tom Gaylord," he replied.

Her colour, always so near the surface, rose a little as she regarded
him. So this was Austen Vane's particular friend, whom he had tried to
put out of his window. A Herculean task, Victoria thought, from Tom's
appearance. Tom sat down within a few feet of her.

"I've seen you a good many times, Miss Flint," he remarked, applying the
handkerchief to his face.

"And I've seen you--once, Mr. Gaylord," some mischievous impulse prompted
her to answer. Perhaps the impulse was more deep-seated, after all.

"Where?" demanded Tom, promptly.

"You were engaged," said Victoria, "in a struggle in a window on Ripton
Square. It looked, for a time," she continued, "as if you were going to
be dropped on the roof of the porch."

Tom gazed at her in confusion and surprise.

"You seem to be fond, too, of dangerous exercise," she observed.

"Do you mean to say you remembered me from that?" he exclaimed. "Oh, you
know Austen Vane, don't you?"

"Does Mr. Vane acknowledge the acquaintance?" Victoria inquired.

"It's funny, but you remind me of Austen," said Tom, grinning; "you seem
to have the same queer way of saying things that he has." Here he was
conscious of another fit of embarrassment. "I hope you don't mind what I
say, Miss Flint."

"Not at all," said Victoria. She turned, and looked across the track.

"I suppose they are having a lot of trouble in catching my horse," she
remarked.

"They'll get him," Tom assured her, "one of those men is my manager. He
always gets what he starts out for. What were we talking about? Oh,
Austen Vane. You see, I've known him ever since I was a shaver, and I
think the world of him. If he asked me to go to South America and get him
a zebra to-morrow, I believe I'd do it."

"That is real devotion," said Victoria. The more she saw of young Tom,
the better she liked him, although his conversation was apt to be
slightly embarrassing.

"We've been through a lot of rows together," Tom continued, warming to
his subject, "in school and college. You see, Austen's the kind of man
who doesn't care what anybody thinks, if he takes it into his head to do
a thing. It was a great piece of luck for me that he shot that fellow out
West, or he wouldn't be here now. You heard about that, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Victoria, "I believe I did."

"And yet," said Tom, "although I'm as good a friend as he has, I never
quite got under his skin. There's some things I wouldn't talk to him
about. I've learned that. I never told him, for instance, that I saw him
out in a sleigh with you at the capital."

"Oh," said Victoria; and she added, "Is he ashamed of it?"

"It's not that," replied Tom, hastily, "but I guess if he'd wanted me to
know about it, he'd have told me."

Victoria had begun to realize that, in the few minutes which had elapsed
since she had found herself on the roadside, gazing up into young Tom's
eyes, she had somehow become quite intimate with him.

"I fancy he would have told you all there was to tell about it--if the
matter had occurred to him again," she said, with the air of finally
dismissing a subject already too prolonged. But Tom knew nothing of the
shades and conventions of the art of conversation.

"He's never told me he knew you at all!" he exclaimed, staring at
Victoria. Apparently some of the aspects of this now significant omission
on Austen's part were beginning to dawn on Tom.

"It wasn't worth mentioning," said Victoria, briefly, seeking for a
pretext to change the subject.

"I don't believe that," said Tom, "you can't expect me to sit here and
look at you and believe that. How long has he known you?"

"I saw him once or twice last summer, at Leith," said Victoria, now
wavering between laughter and exasperation. She had got herself into a
quandary indeed when she had to parry the appalling frankness of such
inquiries.

"The more you see of him, the more you'll admire him, I'll prophesy,"
said Tom. "If he'd been content to travel along the easy road, as most
fellows are, he would have been counsel for the Northeastern. Instead of
that--" here Tom halted abruptly, and turned scarlet: "I forgot," he
said, "I'm always putting my foot in it, with ladies."

He was so painfully confused that Victoria felt herself suffering with
him, and longed to comfort him.

"Please go on, Mr. Gaylord," she said; "I am very much interested in my
neighbours here, and I know that a great many of them think that the
railroad meddles in politics. I've tried to find out what they think, but
it is so difficult for a woman to understand. If matters are wrong, I'm
sure my father will right them when he knows the situation. He has so
much to attend to." She paused. Tom was still mopping his forehead. "You
may say anything you like to me, and I shall not take offence."

Tom's admiration of her was heightened by this attitude.

"Austen wouldn't join Mr. Crewe in his little game, anyway," he said.
"When Ham Tooting, Crewe's manager, came to him he kicked him
downstairs."

Victoria burst out laughing.

"I constantly hear of these ferocious deeds which Mr. Vane commits," she
said, "and yet he seems exceptionally good-natured and mild-mannered."

"That's straight--he kicked him downstairs. Served Tooting right, too."

"There does seem to have been an element of justice in it," Victoria
remarked.

"You haven't seen Austen since he left his father?" Mr. Gaylord inquired.

"Left him! Where--has he gone?"

"Gone up to live with Jabe Jenney. If Austen cared anything about money,
he never would have broken with the old man, who has some little put
away."

"Why did he leave his father?" asked Victoria, not taking the trouble now
to conceal her interest.

"Well," said Tom, "you know they never did get along. It hasn't been
Austen's fault--he's tried. After he came back from the West he stayed
here to please old Hilary, when he might have gone to New York and made a
fortune at the law, with his brains. But after Austen saw the kind of law
the old man practised he wouldn't stand for it, and got an office of his
own."

Victoria's eyes grew serious.

"What kind of law does Hilary Vane practise?" she asked.

Tom hesitated and began to mop his forehead again.

"Please don't mind me," Victoria pleaded.

"Well, all right," said Tom, "I'll tell you the truth, or die for it. But
I don't want to make you-unhappy."

"You will do me a kindness, Mr. Gaylord," she said, "by telling me what
you believe to be true."

There was a note in her voice which young Tom did not understand.
Afterwards, when he reflected about the matter, he wondered if she were
unhappy.

"I don't want to blame Hilary too much," he answered. "I know Austen
don't. Hilary's grown up with that way of doing things, and in the old
days there was no other way. Hilary is the chief counsel for the
Northeastern, and he runs the Republican organization in this State for
their benefit. But Austen made up his mind that there was no reason why
he should grow up that way. He says that a lawyer should keep to his
profession, and not become a lobbyist in the interest of his clients. He
lived with the old man until the other day, because he has a real soft
spot for him. Austen put up with a good deal. And then Hilary turned
loose on him and said a lot of things he couldn't stand. Austen didn't
answer, but went up and packed his bags and made Hilary's housekeeper
promise to stay with him, or she'd have left, too. They say Hilary's
sorry, now. He's fond of Austen, but he can't get along with him."

"Do--Do you know what they quarreled about?" asked Victoria, in a low
voice.

"This spring," said Tom, "the Gaylord Lumber Company made Austen junior
counsel. He ran across a law the other day that nobody else seems to have
had sense enough to discover, by which we can sue the railroad for
excessive freight rates. It means a lot of money. He went right in to
Hilary and showed him the section, told him that suit was going to be
brought, and offered to resign. Hilary flew off the track--and said if he
didn't bring suit he'd publish it all over the State that Austen started
it. Galusha Hammer, our senior counsel, is sick, and I don't think he'll
ever get well. That makes Austen senior counsel. But he persuaded old
Tom, my father, not to bring this suit until after the political
campaign, until Mr. Crewe gets through with his fireworks. Hilary doesn't
know that."

"I see," said Victoria.

Down the hill, on the far side of the track, she perceived the two men
approaching with a horse; then she remembered the fact that she had been
thrown, and that it was her horse. She rose to her feet.

"I'm ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Gaylord," she said; "you have done
me a great favour by--telling me these things. And thanks for letting
them catch the horse. I'm afraid I've put you to a lot of bother."

"Not at all," said Tom, "not at all." He was studying her face. Its
expression troubled and moved him strangely, for he was not an analytical
person. "I didn't mean to tell you those things when I began," he
apologized, "but you wanted to hear them."

"I wanted to hear them," repeated Victoria. She held out her hand to him.

"You're not going to ride home!" he exclaimed. "I'll take you up in my
buggy--it's in the station shed."

She smiled, turned and questioned and thanked the men, examined the
girths and bridle, and stroked the five-year-old on the neck. He was wet
from mane to fetlocks.

"I don't think he'll care to run much farther," she said. "If you'll pull
him over to the lumber pile, Mr. Gaylord, I'll mount him."

They performed her bidding in silence, each paying her a tribute in his
thoughts. As for the five-year-old, he was quiet enough by this time.
When she was in the saddle she held out her hand once more to Tom.

"I hope we shall meet soon again," she said, and smiling back at him,
started on her way towards Fairview.

Tom stood for a moment looking after her, while the two men indulged in
surprised comments.

"Andrews," said young Mr. Gaylord, "just fetch my buggy and follow her
until she gets into the gate."




CHAPTER XVIII

A SPIRIT IN THE WOODS

Empires crack before they crumble, and the first cracks seem easily
mended--even as they have been mended before. A revolt in Gaul or Britain
or Thrace is little to be minded, and a prophet in Judea less. And yet
into him who sits in the seat of power a premonition of something
impending gradually creeps--a premonition which he will not acknowledge,
will not define. Yesterday, by the pointing of a finger, he created a
province; to-day he dares not, but consoles himself by saying he does not
wish to point. No antagonist worthy of his steel has openly defied him,
worthy of recognition by the opposition of a legion. But the sense of
security has been subtly and indefinably shaken.

By the strange telepathy which defies language, to the Honourable Hilary
Vane, Governor of the Province, some such unacknowledged forebodings have
likewise been communicated. A week after his conversation with Austen, on
the return of his emperor from a trip to New York, the Honourable Hilary
was summoned again to the foot of the throne, and his thoughts as he
climbed the ridges towards Fairview were not in harmony with the carols
of the birds in the depths of the forest and the joy of the bright June
weather. Loneliness he had felt before, and to its ills he had applied
the antidote of labour. The burden that sat upon his spirit to-day was
not mere loneliness; to the truth of this his soul attested, but Hilary
Vane had never listened to the promptings of his soul. He would have been
shocked if you had told him this. Did he not confess, with his eyes shut,
his sins every Sunday? Did he not publicly acknowledge his soul?

Austen Vane had once remarked that, if some keen American lawyer would
really put his mind to the evasion of the Ten Commandments, the High
Heavens themselves might be cheated. This saying would have shocked the
Honourable Hilary inexpressibly. He had never been employed by a
syndicate to draw up papers to avoid these mandates; he revered them, as
he revered the Law, which he spelled with a capital. He spelled the word
Soul with a capital likewise, and certainly no higher recognition could
be desired than this! Never in the Honourable Hilary's long, laborious,
and preeminently model existence had he realized that happiness is
harmony. It would not be true to assert that, on this wonderful June day,
a glimmering of this truth dawned upon him. Such a statement would be
open to the charge of exaggeration, and his frame of mind was
pessimistic. But he had got so far as to ask himself the question,--Cui
bono? and repeated it several times on his drive, until a verse of
Scripture came, unbidden, to his lips. "For what hate man of all his
labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under
the sun?" and "there is one event unto all." Austen's saying, that he had
never learned how to enjoy life, he remembered, too. What had Austen
meant by that?

Hitherto Hilary Vane had never failed of self-justification in any event
which had befallen him; and while this consciousness of the rectitude of
his own attitude had not made him happier, there had been a certain grim
pleasure in it. To the fact that he had ruined, by sheer
over-righteousness, the last years of the sunny life of Sarah Austen he
had been oblivious--until to-day. The strange, retrospective mood which
had come over him this afternoon led his thoughts into strange paths, and
he found himself wondering if, after all, it had not been in his power to
make her happier. Her dryad-like face, with its sweet, elusive smile,
seemed to peer at him now wistfully out of the forest, and suddenly a new
and startling thought rose up within him--after six and thirty years.
Perhaps she had belonged in the forest! Perhaps, because he had sought to
cage her, she had pined and died! The thought gave Hilary unwonted pain,
and he strove to put it away from him; but memories such as these, once
aroused, are not easily set at rest, and he bent his head as he recalled
(with a new and significant pathos) those hopeless and pitiful flights
into the wilds she loved.

Now Austen had gone. Was there a Law behind these actions of mother and
son which he had persisted in denouncing as vagaries? Austen was a man: a
man, Hilary could not but see, who had the respect of his fellows, whose
judgment and talents were becoming recognized. Was it possible that he,
Hilary Vane, could have been one of those referred to by the Preacher?
During the week which had passed since Austen's departure the house in
Hanover Street had been haunted for Hilary. The going of his son had not
left a mere void,--that would have been pain enough. Ghosts were there,
ghosts which he could but dimly feel and see, and more than once, in the
long evenings, he had taken to the streets to avoid them.

In that week Hilary's fear of meeting his son in the street or in the
passages of the building had been equalled by a yearning to see him.
Every morning, at the hour Austen was wont to drive Pepper to the Ripton
House stables across the square, Hilary had contrived to be standing near
his windows--a little back, and out of sight. And--stranger still!--he
had turned from these glimpses to the reports of the Honourable Brush
Bascom and his associates with a distaste he had never felt before.

With some such thoughts as these Hilary Vane turned into the last
straight stretch of the avenue that led to Fairview House, with its red
and white awnings gleaming in the morning sun. On the lawn, against a
white and purple mass of lilacs and the darker background of pines, a
straight and infinitely graceful figure in white caught his eye and held
it. He recognized Victoria. She wore a simple summer gown, the soft
outline of its flounces mingling subtly with the white clusters behind
her. She turned her head at the sound of the wheels and looked at him;
the distance was not too great for a bow, but Hilary did not bow.
Something in her face deterred him from this act,--something which he
himself did not understand or define. He sought to pronounce the incident
negligible. What was the girl, or her look, to him? And yet (he found
himself strangely thinking) he had read in her eyes a trace of the riddle
which had been relentlessly pursuing him; there was an odd relation in
her look to that of Sarah Austen. During the long years he had been
coming to Fairview, even before the new house was built, when Victoria
was in pinafores, he had never understood her. When she was a child, he
had vaguely recognized in her a spirit antagonistic to his own, and her
sayings had had a disconcerting ring. And now this simple glance of hers
had troubled him--only more definitely.

It was a new experience for the Honourable Hilary to go into a business
meeting with his faculties astray. Absently he rang the stable bell,
surrendered his horse, and followed a footman to the retired part of the
house occupied by the railroad president. Entering the oak-bound sanctum,
he crossed it and took a seat by the window, merely nodding to Mr. Flint,
who was dictating a letter. Mr. Flint took his time about the letter, but
when it was finished he dismissed the stenographer with an impatient and
powerful wave of the hand--as though brushing the man bodily out of the
room. Remaining motionless until the door had closed, Mr. Flint turned
abruptly and fixed his eyes on the contemplative figure of his chief
counsel.

"Well?" he said.

"Well, Flint," answered the Honourable Hilary.

"Well," said Mr. Flint, "that bridge over Maple River has got loosened up
so by the freshet that we have to keep freight cars on it to hold it
down, and somebody is trying to make trouble by writing a public letter
to the Railroad Commission, and calling attention to the head-on
collision at Barker's Station."

"Well," replied the Honourable Hilary, again, "that won't have any
influence on the Railroad Commission."

"No," said Mr. Flint, "but it all goes to increase this confounded public
sentiment that's in the air, like smallpox. Another jackass pretends to
have kept a table of the through trains on the Sumsic division, and says
they've averaged forty-five minutes late at Edmundton. He says the
through express made the run faster thirty years ago."

"I guess that's so," said the Honourable Hilary, "I was counsel for that
road then. I read that letter. He says there isn't an engine on the
division that could pull his hat off, up grade."

Neither of the two gentlemen appeared to deem this statement humorous.

"What these incendiaries don't understand," said Mr. Flint, "is that we
have to pay dividends."

"It's because they don't get 'em," replied Mr. Vane, sententiously.

"The track slid into the water at Glendale," continued Mr. Flint. "I
suppose they'll tell us we ought to rock ballast that line. You'll see
the Railroad Commission, and give 'em a sketch of a report."

"I had a talk with Young yesterday," said Mr. Vane, his eyes on the
stretch of lawn and forest framed by the window. For the sake of the
ignorant, it may be well to add that the Honourable Orrin Young was the
chairman of the Commission.

"And now," said Mr. Flint, "not that this Crewe business amounts to that"
(here the railroad president snapped his fingers with the intensity of a
small pistol shot), "but what's he been doing?"

"Political advertising," said the Honourable Hilary.

"Plenty of it, I guess," Mr. Flint remarked acidly. "That's one thing
Tooting can't teach him. He's a natural-born genius at it."

"Tooting can help--even at that," answered Mr. Vane, ironically. "They've
got a sketch of so-called Northeastern methods in forty weekly newspapers
this week, with a picture of that public benefactor and martyr, Humphrey
Crewe. Here's a sample of it."

Mr. Flint waved the sample away.

"You've made a list of the newspapers that printed it?" Mr. Flint
demanded. Had he lived in another age he might have added, "Have the
malefactors burned alive in my garden."

"Brush has seen some of 'em," said Mr. Vane, no doubt referring to the
editors, "and I had some of 'em come to Ripton. They've got a lot to say
about the freedom of the press, and their right to take political
advertising. Crewe's matter is in the form of a despatch, and most of 'em
pointed out at the top of the editorial columns that their papers are not
responsible for despatches in the news columns. Six of 'em are out and
out for Crewe, and those fellows are honest enough."

"Take away their passes and advertising," said Mr. Flint. ("Off with
their heads!" said the Queen of Hearts.)

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Flint; they might make capital out of
it. I think you'll find that five of 'em have sent their passes back,
anyway."

"Freeman will give you some new ideas" (from the "Book of Arguments,"
although Mr. Flint did not say so) "which have occurred to me might be
distributed for editorial purposes next week. And, by the way, what have
you done about that brilliant Mr. Coombes of the 'Johnstown Ray,' who
says 'the Northeastern Railroads give us a pretty good government'?"

The Honourable Hilary shook his head.

"Too much zeal," he observed. "I guess he won't do it again."

For a while after that they talked of strictly legal matters, which the
chief counsel produced in order out of his bag. But when these were
finally disposed of, Mr. Flint led the conversation back to the
Honourable Humphrey Crewe, who stood harmless--to be sure--like a bull on
the track which it might be unwise to run over.

"He doesn't amount to a soap bubble in a gale," Mr. Flint declared
contemptuously. "Sometimes I think we made a great mistake to notice him.

"We haven't noticed him," said Mr. Vane; "the newspapers have."

Mr. Flint brushed this distinction aside.

"That," he said irritably, "and letting Tooting go--"

The Honourable Hilary's eyes began to grow red. In former days Mr. Flint
had not often questioned his judgment.

"There's one thing more I wanted to mention to you," said the chief
counsel. "In past years I have frequently drawn your attention to that
section of the act of consolidation which declares that rates and fares
existing at the time of its passage shall not be increased."

"Well," said Mr. Flint, impatiently, "well, what of it?"

"Only this," replied the Honourable Hilary, "you disregarded my advice,
and the rates on many things are higher than they were."

"Upon my word, Vane," said Mr. Flint, "I wish you'd chosen some other day
to croak. What do you want me to do? Put all the rates back because this
upstart politician Crewe is making a noise? Who's going to dig up that
section?"

"Somebody has dug it up," said Mr. Vane:

This was the last straw.

"Speak out, man!" he cried. "What are you leading up to?"

"Just this," answered the Honourable Hilary; "that the Gaylord Lumber
Company are going to bring suit under that section."

Mr. Flint rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, and paced the room
twice.

"Have they got a case?" he demanded.

"It looks a little that way tome," said Mr. Vane. "I'm not prepared to
give a definite opinion as yet."

Mr. Flint measured the room twice again.

"Did that old fool Hammer stumble on to this?"

"Hammer's sick," said Mr. Vane; "they say he's got Bright's disease. My
son discovered that section."

There was a certain ring of pride in the Honourable Hilary's voice, and a
lifting of the head as he pronounced the words "my son," which did not
escape Mr. Flint. The railroad president walked slowly to the arm of the
chair in which his chief counsel was seated, and stood looking down at
him. But the Honourable Hilary appeared unconscious of what was
impending.

"Your son!" exclaimed Mr. Flint. "So your son, the son of the man who has
been my legal adviser and confidant and friend for thirty years, is going
to join the Crewel and Tootings in their assaults on established decency
and order! He's out for cheap political preferment, too, is he? By
thunder! I thought that he had some such thing in his mind when he came
in here and threw his pass in my face and took that Meader suit. I don't
mind telling you that he's the man I've been afraid of all along. He's
got a head on him--I saw that at the start. I trusted to you to control
him, and this is how you do it."

It was characteristic of the Honourable Hilary, when confronting an angry
man, to grow cooler as the other's temper increased.

"I don't want to control him," he said.

"I guess you couldn't," retorted Mr. Flint.

"That's a better way of putting it," replied the Honourable Hilary, "I
couldn't."

The chief counsel for the Northeastern Railroads got up and went to the
window, where he stood for some time with his back turned to the
president. Then Hilary Vane faced about.

"Mr. Flint," he began, in his peculiar deep and resonant voice, "you've
said some things to-day that I won't forget. I want to tell you, first of
all, that I admire my son."

"I thought so," Mr. Flint interrupted.

"And more than that," the Honourable Hilary continued, "I prophesy that
the time will come when you'll admire him. Austen Vane never did an
underhanded thing in his life--or committed a mean action. He's be'n
wild, but he's always told me the truth. I've done him injustice a good
many times, but I won't stand up and listen to another man do him
injustice." Here he paused, and picked up his bag. "I'm going down to
Ripton to write out my resignation as counsel for your roads, and as soon
as you can find another man to act, I shall consider it accepted."

It is difficult to put down on paper the sensations of the president of
the Northeastern Railroads as he listened to these words from a man with
whom he had been in business relations for over a quarter of a century, a
man upon whose judgment he had always relied implicitly, who had been a
strong fortress in time of trouble. Such sentences had an incendiary,
blasphemous ring on Hilary Vane's lips--at first. It was as if the sky
had fallen, and the Northeastern had been wiped out of existence.

Mr. Flint's feelings were, in a sense, akin to those of a traveller by
sea who wakens out of a sound sleep in his cabin, with peculiar and
unpleasant sensations, which he gradually discovers are due to cold
water, and he realizes that the boat on which he is travelling is
sinking.

The Honourable Hilary, with his bag, was halfway to the door, when Mr.
Flint crossed the room in three strides and seized him by the arm.

"Hold on, Vane," he said, speaking with some difficulty; "I'm--I'm a
little upset this morning, and my temper got the best of me. You and I
have been good friends for too many years for us to part this way. Sit
down a minute, for God's sake, and let's cool off. I didn't intend to say
what I did. I apologize."

Mr. Flint dropped his counsel's arm, and pulled out a handkerchief, and
mopped his face. "Sit down, Hilary," he said.

The Honourable Hilary's tight lips trembled. Only three or four times in
their long friendship had the president made use of his first name.

"You wouldn't leave me in the lurch now, Hilary," Mr. Flint continued,
"when all this nonsense is in the air? Think of the effect such an
announcement would have! Everybody knows and respects you, and we can't
do without your advice and counsel. But I won't put it on that ground.
I'd never forgive myself, as long as I lived, if I lost one of my oldest
and most valued personal friends in this way."

The Honourable Hilary looked at Mr. Flint, and sat down. He began to cut
a piece of Honey Dew, but his hand shook. It was difficult, as we know,
for him to give expression to his feelings.

"All right," he said.

Half an hour later Victoria, from under the awning of the little balcony
in front of her mother's sitting room, saw her father come out bareheaded
into the sun and escort the Honourable Hilary Vane to his buggy. This was
an unwonted proceeding.

Victoria loved to sit in that balcony, a book lying neglected in her lap,
listening to the summer sounds: the tinkle of distant cattle bells, the
bass note of a hurrying bee, the strangely compelling song of the
hermit-thrush, which made her breathe quickly; the summer wind, stirring
wantonly, was prodigal with perfumes gathered from the pines and the
sweet June clover in the fields and the banks of flowers; in the
distance, across the gentle foreground of the hills, Sawanec beckoned
--did Victoria but raise her eyes!--to a land of enchantment.

The appearance of her father and Hilary had broken her reverie, and a new
thought, like a pain, had clutched her. The buggy rolled slowly down the
drive, and Mr. Flint, staring after it a moment, went in the house. After
a few minutes he emerged again, an old felt hat on his head which he was
wont to wear in the country and a stick in his hand. Without raising his
eyes, he started slowly across the lawn; and to Victoria, leaning forward
intently over the balcony rail, there seemed an unwonted lack of purpose
in his movements. Usually he struck out briskly in the direction of the
pastures where his prize Guernseys were feeding, stopping on the way to
pick up the manager of his farm. There are signs, unknown to men, which
women read, and Victoria felt her heart beating, as she turned and
entered the sitting room through the French window. A trained nurse was
softly closing the door of the bedroom on the right.

"Mrs. Flint is asleep," she said.

"I am going out for a little while, Miss Oliver," Victoria answered, and
the nurse returned a gentle smile of understanding.

Victoria, descending the stairs, hastily pinned on a hat which she kept
in the coat closet, and hurried across the lawn in the direction Mr.
Flint had taken. Reaching the pine grove, thinned by a famous landscape
architect, she paused involuntarily to wonder again at the ultramarine of
Sawanec through the upright columns of the trunks under the high canopy
of boughs. The grove was on a plateau, which was cut on the side nearest
the mountain by the line of a gray stone wall, under which the land fell
away sharply. Mr. Flint was seated on a bench, his hands clasped across
his stick, and as she came softly over the carpet of the needles he did
not hear her until she stood beside him.

"You didn't tell me that you were going for a walk," she said
reproachfully.

He started, and dropped his stick. She stooped quickly, picked it up for
him, and settled herself at his side.

"I--I didn't expect to go, Victoria," he answered.

"You see," she said, "it's useless to try to slip away. I saw you from
the balcony."

"How's your mother feeling?" he asked.

"She's asleep. She seems better to me since she's come back to Fairview."

Mr. Flint stared at the mountain with unseeing eyes.

"Father," said Victoria, "don't you think you ought to stay up here at
least a week, and rest? I think so."

"No," he said, "no. There's a directors' meeting of a trust company
to-morrow which I have to attend. I'm not tired."

Victoria shook her head, smiling at him with serious eyes.

"I don't believe you know when you are tired," she declared. "I can't see
the good of all these directors' meetings. Why don't you retire, and live
the rest of your life in peace? You've got--money enough, and even if you
haven't," she added, with the little quiver of earnestness that sometimes
came into her voice, "we could sell this big house and go back to the
farmhouse to live. We used to be so happy there."

He turned abruptly, and fixed upon her a steadfast, searching stare that
held, nevertheless, a strange tenderness in it.

"You don't care for all this, do you, Victoria?" he demanded, waving his
stick to indicate the domain of Fairview.

She laughed gently, and raised her eyes to the green roof of the needles.

"If we could only keep the pine grove!" she sighed. "Do you remember what
good times we had in the farmhouse, when you and I used to go off for
whole days together?"

"Yes," said Mr. Flint, "yes."

"We don't do that any more," said Victoria. "It's only a little drive and
a walk, now and then. And they seem to be growing--scarcer."

Mr. Flint moved uneasily, and made an attempt to clear his voice.

"I know it," he said, and further speech seemingly failed him. Victoria
had the greater courage of the two.

"Why don't we?" she asked.

"I've often thought of it," he replied, still seeking his words with
difficulty. "I find myself with more to do every year, Victoria, instead
of less."

"Then why don't you give it up?"

"Why?" he asked, "why? Sometimes I wish with my whole soul I could give
it up. I've always said that you had more sense than most women, but even
you could not understand."

"I could understand," said Victoria.

He threw at her another glance,--a ring in her words proclaimed their
truth in spite of his determined doubt. In her eyes--had he but known
it!--was a wisdom that exceeded his.

"You don't realize what you're saying," he exclaimed; "I can't leave the
helm."

"Isn't it," she said, "rather the power that is so hard to relinquish?"

The feelings of Augustus Flint when he heard this question were of a
complex nature. It was the second time that day he had been shocked,
--the first being when Hilary Vane had unexpectedly defended his son. The
word Victoria had used, power, had touched him on the quick. What had she
meant by it? Had she been his wife and not his daughter, he would have
flown into a rage. Augustus Flint was not a man given to the
psychological amusement of self-examination; he had never analyzed his
motives. He had had little to do with women, except Victoria. The Rose of
Sharon knew him as the fountainhead from which authority and money
flowed, but Victoria, since her childhood, had been his refuge from care,
and in the haven of her companionship he had lost himself for brief
moments of his life. She was the one being he really loved, with whom he
consulted on such affairs of importance as he felt to be within her scope
and province,--the cattle, the men on the place outside of the household,
the wisdom of buying the Baker farm; bequests to charities, paintings,
the library; and recently he had left to her judgment the European baths
and the kind of treatment which her mother had required. Victoria had
consulted with the physicians in Paris, and had made these decisions
herself. From a child she had never shown a disposition to evade
responsibility.

To his intimate business friends, Mr. Flint was in the habit of speaking
of her as his right-hand man, but she was circumscribed by her sex,--or
rather by Mr. Flint's idea of her sex,--and it never occurred to him that
she could enter into the larger problems of his life. For this reason he
had never asked himself whether such a state of affairs would be
desirable. In reality it was her sympathy he craved, and such an
interpretation of himself as he chose to present to her.

So her question was a shock. He suddenly beheld his daughter transformed,
a new personality who had been thinking, and thinking along paths which
he had never cared to travel.

"The power!" he repeated. "What do you mean by that, Victoria?"

She sat for a moment on the end of the bench, gazing at him with a
questioning, searching look which he found disconcerting. What had
happened to his daughter? He little guessed the tumult in her breast. She
herself could not fully understand the strange turn the conversation had
taken towards the gateway of the vital things.

"It is natural for men to love power, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," said Mr. Flint, uneasily. "I don't know what you're
driving at, Victoria."

"You control the lives and fortunes of a great many people."

"That's just it," answered Mr. Flint, with a dash at this opening; "my
responsibilities are tremendous. I can't relinquish them."

"There is no--younger man to take your place? Not that I mean you are
old, father," she continued, "but you have worked very hard all your
life, and deserve a holiday the rest of it."

"I don't know of any younger man," said Mr. Flint. "I don't mean to say
I'm the only person in the world who can safeguard the stockholders'
interests in the Northeastern. But I know the road and its problems. I
don't understand this from you, Victoria. It doesn't sound like you. And
as for letting go the helm now," he added, with a short laugh tinged with
bitterness, "I'd be posted all over the country as a coward."

"Why?" asked Victoria, in the same quiet way.

"Why? Because a lot of discontented and disappointed people who have made
failures of their lives are trying to give me as much trouble as they
can."

"Are you sure they are all disappointed and discontented, father?" she
said.

"What," exclaimed Mr. Flint, "you ask me that question? You, my own
daughter, about people who are trying to make me out a rascal!"

"I don't think they are trying to make you out a rascal--at least most of
them are not," said Victoria. "I don't think the--what you might call the
personal aspect enters in with the honest ones."

Mr. Flint was inexpressibly amazed. He drew a long breath.

"Who are the honest ones?" he cried. "Do you mean to say that you, my own
daughter, are defending these charlatans?"

"Listen, father," said Victoria. "I didn't mean to worry you, I didn't
mean to bring up that subject to-day. Come--let's go for a walk and see
the new barn."

But Mr. Flint remained firmly planted on the bench.

"Then you did intend to bring up the subject--some day?" he asked.

"Yes," said Victoria. She sat down again. "I have often wanted to hear
--your side of it."

"Whose side have you heard?" demanded Mr. Flint.

A crimson flush crept into her cheek, but her father was too disturbed to
notice it.

"You know," she said gently, "I go about the country a good deal, and I
hear people talking,--farmers, and labourers, and people in the country
stores who don't know that I'm your daughter."

"What do they say?" asked Mr. Flint, leaning forward eagerly and
aggressively.

Victoria hesitated, turning over the matter in her mind.

"You understand, I am merely repeating what they say--"

"Yes, yes," he interrupted, "I want to know how far this thing has gone
among them."

"Well," continued Victoria, looking at him bravely, "as nearly as I can
remember their argument it is this: that the Northeastern Railroads
control the politics of the State for their own benefit. That you appoint
the governors and those that go to the Legislature, and that--Hilary
Vane gets them elected. They say that he manages a political
machine--that's the right word, isn't it?--for you. And that no laws can
be passed of which you do not approve. And they say that the politicians
whom Hilary Vane commands, and the men whom they put into office are all
beholden to the railroad, and are of a sort which good citizens cannot
support. They say that the railroad has destroyed the people's
government."

Mr. Flint, for the moment forgetting or ignoring the charges, glanced at
her in astonishment. The arraignment betrayed an amount of thought on the
subject which he had not suspected.

"Upon my word, Victoria," he said, "you ought to take the stump for
Humphrey Crewe."

She reached out with a womanly gesture, and laid her hand upon his.

"I am only telling you--what I hear," she said.

"Won't you explain to me the way you look at it? These people don't all
seem to be dishonest men or charlatans. Some of them, I know, are
honest." And her colour rose again.

"Then they are dupes and fools," Mr. Flint declared vehemently. "I don't
know how to explain it to you the subject is too vast, too far-reaching.
One must have had some business experience to grasp it. I don't mean to
say you're not intelligent, but I'm at a loss where to begin with you.
Looked at from their limited point of view, it would seem as if they had
a case. I don't mean your friend, Humphrey Crewe--it's anything to get
office with him. Why, he came up here and begged me--"

"I wasn't thinking of Humphrey Crewe," said Victoria. Mr. Flint gave an
ejaculation of distaste.

"He's no more of a reformer than I am. And now we've got that wild son of
Hilary Vane's--the son of one of my oldest friends and associates
--making trouble. He's bitten with this thing, too, and he's got some
brains in his head. Why," exclaimed Mr. Flint, stopping abruptly and
facing his daughter, "you know him! He's the one who drove you home that
evening from Crewe's party."

"I remember," Victoria faltered, drawing her hand away.

"I wasn't very civil to him that night, but I've always been on the
lookout for him. I sent him a pass once, and he came up here and gave me
as insolent a talking to as I ever had in my life."

How well Victoria recalled that first visit, and how she had wondered
about the cause of it! So her father and Austen Vane had quarrelled from
the first.

"I'm sure he didn't mean to be insolent," she said, in a low voice. "He
isn't at all that sort."

"I don't know what sort he is, except that he isn't my sort," Mr. Flint
retorted, intent upon the subject which had kindled his anger earlier in
the day. "I don't pretend to understand him. He could probably have been
counsel for the road if he had behaved decently. Instead, he starts in
with suits against us. He's hit upon something now."

The president of the Northeastern dug savagely into the ground with his
stick, and suddenly perceived that his daughter had her face turned away
from his, towards the mountain.

"Well, I won't bore you with that."

She turned with a look in her eyes that bewildered him.

"You're not--boring me," she said.

"I didn't intend to go into all that," he explained more calmly, "but the
last few days have been trying, we've got to expect the wind to blow from
all directions."

Victoria smiled at him faintly.

"I have told you," she said, "that what you need is a trip abroad.
Perhaps some day you will remember it."

"Maybe I'll go in the autumn," he answered, smiling back at her. "These
little flurries don't amount to anything more than mosquito-bites--only
mosquitoes are irritating. You and I understand each other, Victoria, and
now listen. I'll give you the broad view of this subject, the view I've
got to take, and I've lived in the world and seen more of it than some
folks who think they know it all. I am virtually the trustee for
thousands of stockholders, many of whom are widows and orphans. These
people are innocent; they rely on my ability, and my honesty, for their
incomes. Few men who have not had experience in railroad management know
one-tenth of the difficulties and obstructions encountered by a railroad
president who strives to do his duty by the road. My business is to run
the Northeastern as economically as is consistent with good service and
safety, and to give the stockholders the best return for their money. I
am the steward--and so long as I am the steward," he exclaimed, "I'm
going to do what I think is right, taking into consideration all the
difficulties that confront me."

He got up and took a turn or two on the pine-needles. Victoria regarded
him in silence. He appeared to her at that moment the embodiment of the
power he represented. Force seemed to emanate from him, and she
understood more clearly than ever how, from a poor boy on an obscure farm
in Truro, he had risen to his present height.

"I don't say the service is what it should be," he went on, "but give me
time--give me time. With all this prosperity in the country we can't
handle the freight. We haven't got cars enough, tracks enough, engines
enough. I won't go into that with you. But I do expect you to understand
this: that politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt as
long as I have known them, and in my opinion they always will be. The
Northeastern is the largest property holder in the State, pays the
biggest tax, and has the most at stake. The politicians could ruin us in
a single session of the Legislature--and what's more, they would do it.
We'd have to be paying blackmail all the time to prevent measures that
would compel us to go out of business. This is a fact, and not a theory.
What little influence I exert politically I have to maintain in order to
protect the property of my stockholders from annihilation. It isn't to be
supposed," he concluded, "that I'm going to see the State turned over to
a man like Humphrey Crewe. I wish to Heaven that this and every other
State had a George Washington for governor and a majority of Robert
Morrises in the Legislature. If they exist, in these days, the people
won't elect 'em--that's all. The kind of man the people will elect, if
you let 'em alone, is--a man who brings in a bill and comes to you
privately and wants you to buy him off."

"Oh, father," Victoria cried, "I can't believe that of the people I see
about here! They seem so kind and honest and high-principled."

Mr. Flint gave a short laugh.

"They're dupes, I tell you. They're at the mercy of any political schemer
who thinks it worth his while to fool 'em. Take Leith, for instance.
There's a man over there who has controlled every office in that town for
twenty-five years or more. He buys and sells votes and credentials like
cattle. His name is Job Braden."

"Why," said Victoria, I saw him at Humphrey Crewe's garden-party."

"I guess you did," said Mr. Flint, "and I guess Humphrey Crewe saw him
before he went."

Victoria was silent, the recollection of the talk between Mr. Tooting and
Mr. Crewe running through her mind, and Mr. Tooting's saying that he had
done "dirty things" for the Northeastern. She felt that this was
something she could not tell her father, nor could she answer his
argument with what Tom Gaylord had said. She could not, indeed, answer
Mr. Flint's argument at all; the subject, as he had declared, being too
vast for her. And moreover, as she well knew, Mr. Flint was a man whom
other men could not easily answer; he bore them down, even as he had
borne her down. Involuntarily her mind turned to Austen, and she wondered
what he had said; she wondered how he would have answered her
father--whether he could have answered him. And she knew not what to
think. Could it be right, in a position of power and responsibility, to
acknowledge evil and deal with it as evil? That was, in effect, the gist
of Mr. Flint's contention. She did not know. She had never (strangely
enough, she thought) sought before to analyze the ethical side of her
father's character. One aspect of him she had shared with her mother,
that he was a tower of defence and strength, and that his name alone had
often been sufficient to get difficult things done.

Was he right in this? And were his opponents charlatans, or dupes, or
idealists who could never be effective? Mr. Crewe wanted an office; Tom
Gaylord had a suit against the road, and Austen Vane was going to bring
that suit! What did she really know of Austen Vane? But her soul cried
out treason at this, and she found herself repeating, with intensity, "I
believe in him! I believe in him!" She would have given worlds to have
been able to stand up before her father and tell him that Austen would
not bring the suit at this time that Austen had not allowed his name to
be mentioned for office in this connection, and had spurned Mr. Crewe's
advances. But she had not seen Austen since February.

What was his side of it? He had never told her, and she respected his
motives--yet, what was his side? Fresh from the inevitably deep
impressions which her father's personality had stamped upon her, she
wondered if Austen could cope with the argument before which she had been
so helpless.

The fact that she made of each of these two men the embodiment of a
different and opposed idea did not occur to Victoria until that
afternoon. Unconsciously, each had impersonated the combatants in a
struggle which was going on in her own breast. Her father himself,
instinctively, had chosen Austen Vane for his antagonist without knowing
that she had an interest in him. Would Mr. Flint ever know? Or would the
time come when she would be forced to take a side? The blood mounted to
her temples as she put the question from her.




CHAPTER XIX

MR. JABE JENNEY ENTERTAINS

Mr. Flint had dropped the subject with his last remark, nor had Victoria
attempted to pursue it. Bewildered and not a little depressed (a new
experience for her), she had tried to hide her feelings. He, too, was
harassed and tired, and she had drawn him away from the bench and through
the pine woods to the pastures to look at his cattle and the model barn
he was building for them. At half-past three, in her runabout, she had
driven him to the East Tunbridge station, where he had taken the train
for New York. He had waved her a good-by from the platform, and smiled:
and for a long time, as she drove through the silent roads, his words and
his manner remained as vivid as though he were still by her side. He was
a man who had fought and conquered, and who fought on for the sheer love
of it.

It was a blue day in the hill country. At noon the clouds had crowned
Sawanec--a sure sign of rain; the rain had come and gone, a June
downpour, and the overcast sky lent (Victoria fancied) to the
country-side a new atmosphere. The hills did not look the same. It was
the kind of a day when certain finished country places are at their
best--or rather seem best to express their meaning; a day for an event; a
day set strangely apart with an indefinable distinction. Victoria
recalled such days in her youth when weddings or garden-parties had
brought canopies into service, or news had arrived to upset the routine
of the household. Raindrops silvered the pines, and the light winds shook
them down on the road in a musical shower.

Victoria was troubled, as she drove, over a question which had recurred
to her many times since her talk that morning: had she been hypocritical
in not telling her father that she had seen more of Austen Vane than she
had implied by her silence? For many years Victoria had chosen her own
companions; when the custom had begun, her mother had made a protest
which Mr. Flint had answered with a laugh; he thought Victoria's judgment
better than his wife's. Ever since that time the Rose of Sharon had taken
the attitude of having washed her hands of responsibility for a course
which must inevitably lead to ruin. She discussed some of Victoria's
acquaintances with Mrs. Pomfret and other intimates; and Mrs. Pomfret had
lost no time in telling Mrs. Flint about her daughter's sleigh-ride at
the State capital with a young man from Ripton who seemed to be seeing
entirely too much of Victoria. Mrs. Pomfret had marked certain danger
signs, and as a conscientious woman was obliged to speak of them. Mrs.
Pomfret did not wish to see Victoria make a mesalliance.

"My dear Fanny," Mrs. Flint had cried, lifting herself from the lace
pillows, "what do you expect me to do especially when I have nervous
prostration? I've tried to do my duty by Victoria--goodness knows--to
bring her up--among the sons and daughters of the people who are my
friends. They tell me that she has temperament--whatever that may be. I'm
sure I never found out, except that the best thing to do with people who
have it is to let them alone and pray for them. When we go abroad I like
the Ritz and Claridge's and that new hotel in Rome. I see my friends
there. Victoria, if you please, likes the little hotels in the narrow
streets where you see nobody, and where you are most uncomfortable."
(Miss Oliver, it's time for those seven drops.) "As I was saying,
Victoria's enigmatical hopeless, although a French comtesse who wouldn't
look at anybody at the baths this spring became wild about her, and a
certain type of elderly English peer always wants to marry her. (I
suppose I do look pale to-day.) Victoria loves art, and really knows
something about it. She adores to potter around those queer places abroad
where you see strange English and Germans and Americans with red books in
their hands. What am I to do about this young man of whom you
speak--whatever his name is? I suppose Victoria will marry him--it would
be just like her. But what can I do, Fanny? I can't manage her, and it's
no use going to her father. He would only laugh. Augustus actually told
me once there was no such thing as social position in this country!"

"American men of affairs," Mrs. Pomfret judicially replied, "are too busy
to consider position. They make it, my dear, as a by-product." Mrs.
Pomfret smiled, and mentally noted this aptly technical witticism for use
again.

"I suppose they do," assented the Rose of Sharon, "and their daughters
sometimes squander it, just as their sons squander their money."

"I'm not at all sure that Victoria is going to squander it," was Mrs.
Pomfret's comforting remark. "She is too much of a personage, and she has
great wealth behind her. I wish Alice were more like her, in some ways.
Alice is so helpless, she has to be prodded and prompted continually. I
can't leave her for a moment. And when she is married, I'm going into a
sanatorium for six months."

"I hear," said Mrs. Flint, "that Humphrey Crewe is quite epris."

"Poor dear Humphrey!" exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret, "he can think of nothing
else but politics."

But we are not to take up again, as yet, the deeds of the crafty Ulysses.
In order to relate an important conversation between Mrs. Pomfret and the
Rose of Sharon, we have gone back a week in this history, and have left
Victoria--absorbed in her thoughts--driving over a wood road of many
puddles that led to the Four Corners, near Avalon. The road climbed the
song-laden valley of a brook, redolent now with scents of which the rain
had robbed the fern, but at length Victoria reached an upland where the
young corn was springing from the, black furrows that followed the
contours of the hillsides, where the big-eyed cattle lay under the heavy
maples and oaks or gazed at her across the fences.

Victoria drew up in front of an unpainted farm-house straggling beside
the road, a farm-house which began with the dignity of fluted pilasters
and ended in a tumble-down open shed filled with a rusty sleigh and a
hundred nondescript articles--some of which seemed to be moving. Intently
studying this phenomenon from her runabout, she finally discovered that
the moving objects were children; one of whom, a little girl, came out
and stared at her.

"How do you do, Mary?" said Victoria. "Isn't your name Mary?"

The child nodded.

"I remember you," she said; "you're the rich lady, mother met at the
party, that got father a job."

Victoria smiled. And such was the potency of the smile that the child
joined in it.

"Where's brother?" asked Victoria. "He must be quite grown up since we
gave him lemonade."

Mary pointed to the woodshed.

"O dear!" exclaimed Victoria, leaping out of the runabout and hitching
her horse, "aren't you afraid some of those sharp iron things will fall
on him?" She herself rescued brother from what seemed untimely and
certain death, and set him down in safety in the middle of the grass
plot. He looked up at her with the air of one whose dignity has been
irretrievably injured, and she laughed as she reached down and pulled his
nose. Then his face, too, became wreathed in smiles.

"Mary, how old are you?"

"Seven, ma'am."

"And I'm five," Mary's sister chimed in.

"I want you to promise me," said Victoria, "that you won't let brother
play in that shed. And the very next time I come I'll bring you both the
nicest thing I can think of."

Mary began to dance.

"We'll promise, we'll promise!" she cried for both, and at this juncture
Mrs. Fitch, who had run from the washtub to get into her Sunday waist,
came out of the door.

"So you hain't forgot me!" she exclaimed. "I was almost afeard you'd
forgot me."

"I've been away," said Victoria, gently taking the woman's hand and
sitting down on the doorstep.

"Don't set there," said Mrs. Fitch; "come into the parlour. You'll dirty
your dress--Mary!" This last in admonition.

"Let her stay where she is," said Victoria, putting her arm around the
child. "The dress washes, and it's so nice outside."

"You rich folks certainly do have strange notions," declared Mrs. Fitch,
fingering the flounce on Victoria's skirt, which formed the subject of
conversation for the next few minutes.

"How are you getting on?" Victoria asked at length.

A look of pain came into the woman's eyes.

"You've be'n so good to us, and done so much gettin' Eben a job on your
father's place, that I don't feel as if I ought to lie to you. He done it
again--on Saturday night. First time in three months. The manager up at
Fairview don't know it. Eben was all right Monday."

"I'm sorry," said Victoria, simply. "Was it bad?"

"It might have be'n. Young Mr. Vane is stayin' up at Jabe Jenney's--you
know, the first house as you turn off the hill road. Mr. Vane heard some
way what you'd done for us, and he saw Eben in Ripton Saturday night, and
made him get into his buggy and come home. I guess he had a time with
Eben. Mr. Vane, he came around here on Sunday, and gave him as stiff a
talkin' to as he ever got, I guess. He told Eben he'd ought to be ashamed
of himself goin' back on folks who was tryin' to help him pay his
mortgage. And I'll say this for Eben, he was downright ashamed. He told
Mr. Vane he could lick him if he caught him drunk again, and Mr. Vane
said he would. My, what a pretty colour you've got to-day."

Victoria rose. "I'm going to send you down some washing," she said.

Mrs. Fitch insisted upon untying the horse, while Victoria renewed her
promises to the children.

There were two ways of going back to Fairview,--a long and a short way,
--and the long way led by Jabe Jenney's farm. Victoria came to the fork
in the road, paused,--and took the long way. Several times after this,
she pulled her horse down to a walk, and was apparently on the point of
turning around again: a disinterested observer in a farm wagon, whom she
passed, thought that she had missed her road. "The first house after you
turn off the hill road," Mrs. Fitch had said. She could still, of course,
keep on the hill road, but that would take her to Weymouth, and she would
never get home.

It is useless to go into the reasons for this act of Victoria's. She did
not know them herself. The nearer Victoria got to Mr. Jenney's, the more
she wished herself back at the forks. Suppose Mrs. Fitch told him of her
visit! Perhaps she could pass the Jenneys' unnoticed. The chances of
this, indeed, seemed highly favourable, and it was characteristic of her
sex that she began to pray fervently to this end. Then she turned off the
hill road, feeling as though she had but to look back to see the smoke of
the burning bridges.

Victoria remembered the farm now; for Mr. Jabe Jenney, being a person of
importance in the town of Leith, had a house commensurate with his
estate. The house was not large, but its dignity was akin to Mr. Jenney's
position: it was painted a spotless white, and not a shingle or a nail
was out of place. Before it stood the great trees planted by Mr. Jenney's
ancestors, which Victoria and other people had often paused on their
drives to admire, and on the hillside was a little, old-fashioned flower
garden; lilacs clustered about the small-paned windows, and a
bitter-sweet clung to the roof and pillars of the porch. These details of
the place (which she had never before known as Mr. Jenney's) flashed into
Victoria's mind before she caught sight of the great trees themselves
looming against the sombre blue-black of the sky: the wind, rising
fitfully, stirred the leaves with a sound like falling waters, and a
great drop fell upon her cheek. Victoria raised her eyes in alarm, and
across the open spaces, toward the hills which piled higher and higher
yet against the sky, was a white veil of rain. She touched with her whip
the shoulder of her horse, recalling a farm a quarter of a mile beyond
--she must not be caught here!

More drops followed, and the great trees seemed to reach out to her a
protecting shelter. She spoke to the horse. Beyond the farm-house, on the
other side of the road, was a group of gray, slate-shingled barns, and
here two figures confronted her. One was that of the comfortable,
middle-aged Mr. Jenney himself, standing on the threshold of the barn,
and laughing heartily, and crying: "Hang on to him That's right--get him
by the nose!"

The person thus addressed had led a young horse to water at the spring
which bubbled out of a sugar-kettle hard by; and the horse, quivering,
had barely touched his nostrils to the water when he reared backward,
jerking the halter-rope taut. Then followed, with bewildering rapidity, a
series of manoeuvres on the part of the horse to get away, and on the
part of the person to prevent this, and inasmuch as the struggle took
place in the middle of the road, Victoria had to stop. By the time the
person had got the horse by the nose,--shutting off his wind,--the rain
was coming down in earnest.

"Drive right in," cried Mr. Jenney, hospitably; "you'll get wet. Look
out, Austen, there's a lady comin'. Why, it's Miss Flint!"

Victoria knew that her face must be on fire. She felt Austen Vane's quick
glance upon her, but she did not dare look to the right or left as she
drove into the barn. There seemed no excuse for any other course.

"How be you?" said Mr. Jenney; "kind of lucky you happened along here,
wahn't it? You'd have been soaked before you got to Harris's. How be you?
I ain't seen you since that highfalutin party up to Crewe's."

"It's very kind of you to let me come in, Mr. Jenney."

"But I have a rain-coat and a boot, and--I really ought to be going on."

Here Victoria produced the rain-coat from under the seat. The garment was
a dark blue, and Mr. Jenney felt of its gossamer weight with a
good-natured contempt.

"That wouldn't be any more good than so much cheesecloth," he declared,
nodding in the direction of the white sheet of the storm. "Would it,
Austen."

She turned her head slowly and met Austen's eyes. Fortunate that the barn
was darkened, that he might not see how deep the colour mantling in her
temples! His head was bare, and she had never really marked before the
superb setting of it on his shoulders, for he wore a gray flannel shirt
open at the neck, revealing a bronzed throat. His sinewy arms
--weather-burned, too--were bare above the elbows.

Explanations of her presence sprang to her lips, but she put them from
her as subterfuges unworthy of him. She would not attempt to deceive him
in the least. She had wished to see him again--nor did she analyze her
motives. Once more beside him, the feeling of confidence, of belief in
him, rose within her and swept all else away--burned in a swift consuming
flame the doubts of absence. He took her hand, but she withdrew it
quickly.

"This is a fortunate accident," he said, "fortunate, at least, for me."

"Perhaps Mr. Jenney will not agree with you," she retorted.

But Mr. Jenney was hitching the horse and throwing a blanket over him.
Suddenly, before they realized it, the farmer had vanished into the
storm, and this unexplained desertion of their host gave rise to an
awkward silence between them, which each for a while strove vainly to
break. In the great moments of life, trivialities become dwarfed and
ludicrous, and the burden of such occasions is on the woman.

"So you've taken to farming," she said,-"isn't it about haying time?"

He laughed.

"We begin next week. And you--you've come back in season for it. I hope
that your mother is better."

"Yes," replied Victoria, simply, "the baths helped her. But I'm glad to
get back,--I like my own country so much better,--and especially this
part of it," she added. "I can bear to be away from New York in the
winter, but not from Fairview in the summer."

At this instant Mr. Jenney appeared at the barn door bearing a huge green
umbrella.

"Come over to the house--Mis' Jenney is expectin' you," he said.

Victoria hesitated. To refuse would be ungracious; moreover, she could
risk no misinterpretation of her acts, and she accepted. Mrs. Jenney met
her on the doorstep, and conducted her into that sanctum reserved for
occasions, the parlour, with its Bible, its flat, old-fashioned piano,
its samplers, its crayon portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Jenney after their
honeymoon; with its aroma that suggested Sundays and best manners. Mrs.
Jenney, with incredible rapidity (for her figure was not what it had been
at the time of the crayon portrait), had got into a black dress, over
which she wore a spotless apron. She sat in the parlour with her guest
until Mr. Jenney reappeared with shining face and damp hair.

"You'll excuse me, my dear," said Mrs. Jenney, "but the supper's on the
stove, and I have to run out now and then."

Mr. Jenney was entertaining. He had the shrewd, humorous outlook upon
life characteristic of the best type of New England farmer, and Victoria
got along with him famously. His comments upon his neighbours were kindly
but incisive, except when the question of spirituous liquors occurred to
him. Austen Vane he thought the world of, and dwelt upon this subject a
little longer than Victoria, under the circumstances, would have wished.

"He comes out here just like it was home," said Mr. Jenney, "and helps
with the horses and cows the same as if he wasn't gettin' to be one of
the greatest lawyers in the State."

"O dear, Mr. Jenney," said Victoria, glancing out of the window, "I'll
really have to go home. I'm sure it won't stop raining for hours. But I
shall be perfectly dry in my rain-coat,--no matter how much you may
despise it."

"You're not a-going to do anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Jenney from
the doorway. "Supper's all ready, and you're going to walk right in."

"Oh, I really have to go," Victoria exclaimed.

"Now I know it ain't as grand as you'd get at home," said Mr. Jenney.
"It ain't what we'd give you, Miss Victoria,--that's only simple home
fare,--it's what you'd give us. It's the honour of having you," he
added,--and Victoria thought that no courtier could have worded an
invitation better. She would not be missed at Fairview. Her mother was
inaccessible at this hour, and the servants would think of her as dining
at Leith. The picture of the great, lonely house, of the ceremonious
dinner which awaited her single presence, gave her an irresistible
longing to sit down with these simple, kindly souls. Austen was the only
obstacle. He, too, had changed his clothes, and now appeared, smiling at
her behind Mrs. Jenney. The look of prospective disappointment in the
good woman's face decided Victoria.

"I'll stay, with pleasure," she said.

Mr. Jenney pronounced grace. Victoria sat across the table from Austen,
and several times the consciousness of his grave look upon her as she
talked heightened the colour in her cheek. He said but little during the
meal. Victoria heard how well Mrs. Jenney's oldest son was doing in
Springfield, and how the unmarried daughter was teaching, now, in the
West. Asked about Europe, that land of perpetual mystery to the native
American, the girl spoke so simply and vividly of some of the wonders she
had seen that she held the older people entranced long after the meal was
finished. But at length she observed, with a start, the gathering
darkness. In the momentary happiness of this experience, she had been
forgetful.

"I will drive home with you, if you'll allow me," said Austen.

"Oh, no, I really don't need an escort, Mr. Vane. I'm so used to driving
about at night, I never think of it," she answered.

"Of course he'll drive home with you, dear," said Mrs. Jenney. "And,
Jabe, you'll hitch up and go and fetch Austen back."

"Certain," Mr. Jenney agreed.

The rain had ceased, and the indistinct outline of the trees and fences
betrayed the fact that the clouds were already thinning under the moon.
Austen had lighted the side lamps of the runabout, revealing the shining
pools on the road as they drove along--for the first few minutes in
silence.

"It was very good of you to stay," he said; "you do not know how much
pleasure you have given them."

Her feminine appreciation responded to the tact of this remark: it was so
distinctly what he should have said.

How delicate, she thought, must be his understanding of her, that he
should have spoken so!

"I was glad to stay," she answered, in a low voice. "I--enjoyed it, too."

"They have very little in their lives," he said, and added, with a
characteristic touch, "I do not mean to say that your coming would not be
an event in any household."

She laughed with him, softly, at this sally.

"Not to speak of the visit you are making them," she replied.

"Oh, I'm one of the family," he said; "I come and go. Jabe's is my
country house, when I can't stand the city any longer."

She saw that he did not intend to tell her why he had left Ripton on this
occasion. There fell another silence. They were like prisoners, and each
strove to explore the bounds of their captivity: each sought a lawful
ground of communication. Victoria suddenly remembered--with an access of
indignation--her father's words, "I do not know what sort he is, but he
is not my sort." A while ago, and she had blamed herself vehemently for
coming to Jabe Jenney's, and now the act had suddenly become sanctified
in her sight. She did not analyze her feeling for Austen, but she was
consumed with a fierce desire that justice should be done him. "He was
honourable--honourable!" she found herself repeating under her breath. No
man or woman could look into his face, take his hand, sit by his side,
without feeling that he was as dependable as the stars in their courses.
And her father should know this, must be made to know it. This man was to
be distinguished from opportunists and self-seekers, from fanatics who
strike at random. His chief possession was a priceless one--a conscience.

As for Austen, it sufficed him for the moment that he had been lifted, by
another seeming caprice of fortune, to a seat of torture the agony
whereof was exquisite. An hour, and only the ceaseless pricking memory of
it would abide. The barriers had risen higher since he had seen her last,
but still he might look into her face and know the radiance of her
presence. Could he only trust himself to guard his tongue! But the heart
on such occasions will cheat language of its meaning.

"What have you been doing since I saw you last?" she asked. "It seems
that you still continue to lead a life of violence."

"Sometimes I wish I did," he answered, with a laugh; "the humdrum
existence of getting practice enough to keep a horse is not the most
exciting in the world. To what particular deed of violence do you refer?"

"The last achievement, which is in every one's mouth, that of assisting
Mr. Tooting down-stairs."

"I have been defamed," Austen laughed; "he fell down, I believe. But as I
have a somewhat evil reputation, and as he came out of my entry, people
draw their own conclusions. I can't imagine who told you that story."

"Never mind," she answered. "You see, I have certain sources of
information about you."

He tingled over this, and puzzled over it so long that she laughed.

"Does that surprise you?" she asked. "I fail to see why I should be
expected to lose all interest in my friends--even if they appear to have
lost interest in me."

"Oh, don't say that!" he cried so sharply that she wished her words
unsaid. "You can't mean it! You don't know!"

She trembled at the vigorous passion he put into the words.

"No, I don't mean it," she said gently.

The wind had made a rent in the sheet of the clouds, and through it burst
the moon in her full glory, flooding field and pasture, and the black
stretches of pine forest at their feet. Below them the land fell away,
and fell again to the distant broadening valley, to where a mist of white
vapour hid the course of the Blue. And beyond, the hills rose again, tier
upon tier, to the shadowy outline of Sawanec herself against the hurrying
clouds and the light-washed sky. Victoria, gazing at the scene, drew a
deep breath, and turned and looked at him in the quick way which he
remembered so well.

"Sometimes," she said, "it is so beautiful that it hurts to look at it.
You love it--do you ever feel that way?"

"Yes," he said, but his answer was more than the monosyllable. "I can see
that mountain from my window, and it seriously interferes with my work. I
really ought to move into another building."

There was a little catch in her laugh.

"And I watch it," she continued, "I watch it from the pine grove by the
hour. Sometimes it smiles, and sometimes it is sad, and sometimes it is
far, far away, so remote and mysterious that I wonder if it is ever to
come back and smile again."

"Have you ever seen the sunrise from its peak?" said Austen.

"No. Oh, how I should love to see it!" she exclaimed.

"Yes, you would like to see it," he answered simply.  He would like to
take her there, to climb, with her hand in his, the well-known paths in
the darkness, to reach the summit in the rosy-fingered dawn: to see her
stand on the granite at his side in the full glory of the red light, and
to show her a world which she was henceforth to share with him.

Some such image, some such vision of his figure on the rock, may have
been in her mind as she turned her face again toward the mountain.

"You are cold," he said, reaching for the mackintosh in the back of the
trap.

"No," she said. But she stopped the horse and acquiesced by slipping her
arms into the coat, and he felt upon his hand the caress of a stray wisp
of hair at her neck. Under a spell of thought and feeling, seemingly laid
by the magic of the night, neither spoke for a space. And then Victoria
summoned her forces, and turned to him again. Her tone bespoke the subtle
intimacy that always sprang up between them, despite bars and
conventions.

"I was sure you would understand why I wrote you from New York," she
said, "although I hesitated a long time before doing so. It was very
stupid of me not to realize the scruples which made you refuse to be a
candidate for the governorship, and I wanted to--to apologize."

"It wasn't necessary," said Austen, "but--I valued the note." The words
seemed so absurdly inadequate to express his appreciation of the treasure
which he carried with him, at that moment, in his pocket. "But, really,"
he added, smiling at her in the moonlight, "I must protest against your
belief that I could have been an effective candidate! I have roamed about
the State, and I have made some very good friends here and there among
the hill farmers, like Mr. Jenney. Mr. Redbrook is one of these. But it
would have been absurd of me even to think of a candidacy founded on
personal friendships. I assure you," he added, smiling, "there was no
self denial in my refusal."

She gave him an appraising glance which he found at once enchanting and
disconcerting.

"You are one of those people, I think, who do not know their own value.
If I were a man, and such men as Mr. Redbrook and Mr. Jenney knew me and
believed sufficiently in me and in my integrity of purpose to ask me to
be their candidate" (here she hesitated an instant), "and I believed that
the cause were a good one, I should not have felt justified in refusing.
That is what I meant. I have always thought of you as a man of force and
a man of action. But I did not see--the obstacle in your way."

She hesitated once more, and added, with a courage which did not fail of
its direct appeal, "I did not realize that you would be publicly opposing
your father. And I did not realize that you would not care to criticise
--mine."

On the last word she faltered and glanced at his profile.

Had she gone too far?

"I felt that you would understand," he answered. He could not trust
himself to speak further. How much did she know? And how much was she
capable of grasping?

His reticence served only to fortify her trust--to elevate it. It was
impossible for her not to feel something of that which was in him and
crying for utterance. She was a woman. And if this one action had been
but the holding of her coat, she would have known. A man who could keep
silent under these conditions must indeed be a rock of might and honour;
and she felt sure now, with a surging of joy, that the light she had seen
shining from it was the beacon of truth. A question trembled on her
lips--the question for which she had long been gathering strength.
Whatever the outcome of this communion, she felt that there must be
absolute truth between them.

"I want to ask you something, Mr. Vane--I have been wanting to for a long
time."

She saw the muscles of his jaw tighten,--a manner he had when earnest or
determined,--and she wondered in agitation whether he divined what she
was going to say. He turned his face slowly to hers, and his eyes were
troubled.

"Yes," he said.

"You have always spared my feelings," she went on. "Now--now I am asking
for the truth--as you see it. Do the Northeastern Railroads wrongfully
govern this State for their own ends?"

Austen, too, as he thought over it afterwards, in the night, was
surprised at her concise phrasing, suggestive; as it was, of much
reflection. But at the moment, although he had been prepared for and had
braced himself against something of this nature, he was nevertheless
overcome by the absolute and fearless directness of her speech.

"That is a question," he answered, "which you will have to ask your
father."

"I have asked him," she said, in a low voice; "I want to know what--you
believe."

"You have asked him!" he repeated, in astonishment.

"Yes. You mustn't think that, in asking you, I am unfair to him in any
way--or that I doubt his sincerity. We have been" (her voice caught a
little) "the closest friends ever since I was a child." She paused. "But
I want to know what you believe."

The fact that she emphasized the last pronoun sent another thrill through
him. Did it, then, make any difference to her what he believed? Did she
mean to differentiate him from out of the multitude? He had to steady
himself before he answered:--"I have sometimes thought that my own view
might not be broad enough."

She turned to him again.

"Why are you evading?" she asked. "I am sure it is not because you have
not settled convictions. And I have asked you--a favour."

"You have done me an honour," he answered, and faced her suddenly. "You
must see," he cried, with a power and passion in his voice that startled
and thrilled her in turn, "you must see that it's because I wish to be
fair that I hesitate. I would tell you--anything. I do not agree with my
own father,--we have been--apart--for years because of this. And I
do--not agree with Mr. Flint. I am sure that they both are wrong. But I
cannot help seeing their point of view. These practices are the result of
an evolution, of an evolution of their time. They were forced to cope
with conditions in the way they did, or go to the wall. They make the
mistake of believing that the practices are still necessary to-day."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, a great hope rising within her at these words. "Oh,
and you believe they are not!" His explanation seemed so simple, so
inspiring. And above and beyond that, he was sure. Conviction rang in
every word. Had he not, she remembered, staked his career by disagreeing
with his father? Yes, and he had been slow to condemn; he had seen their
side. It was they who condemned him. He must have justice--he should have
it!

"I believe such practices are not necessary now," he said firmly. "A new
generation has come--a generation more jealous of its political rights,
and not so willing to be rid of them by farming them out. A change has
taken place even in the older men, like Mr. Jenney and Mr. Redbrook, who
simply did not think about these questions ten years ago. Men of this
type, who could be leaders, are ready to assume their responsibilities,
are ready to deal fairly with railroads and citizens alike. This is a
matter of belief. I believe it--Mr. Flint and my father do not. They see
the politicians, and I see the people. I belong to one generation, and
they to another. With the convictions they have, added to the fact that
they are in a position of heavy responsibility toward the owners of their
property, they cannot be blamed for hesitating to try any experiments."

"And the practices are--bad?" Victoria asked.

"They are entirely subversive of the principles of American government,
to say the least," replied Austen, grimly. He was thinking of the pass
which Mr. Flint had sent him, and of the kind of men Mr. Flint employed
to make the practices effective.

They descended into the darkness of a deep valley, scored out between the
hills by one of the rushing tributaries of the Blue. The moon fell down
behind the opposite ridge, and the road ran through a deep forest. He no
longer saw the shades of meaning in her face, but in the blackness of
Erebus he could have sensed her presence at his side. Speech, though of
this strange kind of which neither felt the strangeness, had come and
gone between them, and now silence spoke as eloquently. Twice or thrice
their eyes met through the gloom,--and there was light. At length she
spoke with the impulsiveness in her voice that he found so appealing.

"You must see my father--you must talk to him. He doesn't know how fair
you are!"

To Austen the inference was obvious that Mr. Flint had conceived for him
a special animosity, which he must have mentioned to Victoria, and this
inference opened the way to a wide speculation in which he was at once
elated and depressed. Why had he been so singled out? And had Victoria
defended him? Once before he remembered that she had told him he must see
Mr. Flint. They had gained the ridge now, and the moon had risen again
for them, striking black shadows from the maples on the granite-cropped
pastures. A little farther on was a road which might have been called the
rear entrance to Fairview.

What was he to say?

"I am afraid Mr. Flint has other things to do than to see me," he
answered. "If he wished to see me, he would say so."

"Would you go to see him, if he were to ask you?" said Victoria.

"Yes," he replied, "but that is not likely to happen. Indeed, you are
giving my opinion entirely too much importance in your father's eyes," he
added, with an attempt to carry it off lightly; "there is no more reason
why he should care to discuss the subject with me than with any other
citizen of the State of my age who thinks as I do."

"Oh, yes, there is," said Victoria; "he regards you as a person whose
opinion has some weight. I am sure of that. He thinks of you as a person
of convictions--and he has heard things about you. You talked to him
once," she went on, astonished at her own boldness, "and made him angry.
Why don't you talk to him again?" she cried, seeing that Austen was
silent. "I am sure that what you said about the change of public opinion
in the State would appeal to him. And oh, don't quarrel with him! You
have a faculty of differing with people without quarrelling with them. My
father has so many cares, and he tries so hard to do right as he sees it.
You must remember that he was a poor farmer's son, and that he began to
work at fourteen in Brampton, running errands for a country printer. He
never had any advantages except those he made for himself, and he had to
fight his way in a hard school against men who were not always
honourable. It is no wonder that he sometimes takes--a material view of
things. But he is reasonable and willing to listen to what other men have
to say, if he is not antagonized."

"I understand," said Austen, who thought Mr. Flint blest in his advocate.
Indeed, Victoria's simple reference to her father's origin had touched
him deeply. "I understand, but I cannot go to him. There is every reason
why I cannot," he added, and she knew that he was speaking with
difficulty, as under great emotion.

"But if he should send for you?" she asked. She felt his look fixed upon
her with a strange intensity, and her heart leaped as she dropped her
eyes.

"If Mr. Flint should send for me," he answered slowly, "I would come--and
gladly. But it must be of his own free will."

Victoria repeated the words over to herself, "It must be of his own free
will," waiting until she should be alone to seek their full
interpretation. She turned, and looked across the lawn at Fairview House
shining in the light. In another minute they had drawn up before the open
door.

"Won't you come in--and wait for Mr. Jenney?" she asked.

He gazed down into her face, searchingly, and took her hand.

"Good night," he said; "Mr. Jenney is not far behind. I think--I think I
should like the walk."




CHAPTER XX

MR. CREWE: AN APPRECIATION (1)

It is given to some rare mortals--with whom fame precedes grey hairs or
baldness to read, while still on the rising tide of their efforts, that
portion of their lives which has already been inscribed on the scroll of
history--or something like it. Mr. Crewe in kilts at five; and (prophetic
picture!) with a train of cars which--so the family tradition runs--was
afterwards demolished; Mr. Crewe at fourteen, in delicate health; this
picture was taken abroad, with a long-suffering tutor who could speak
feelingly, if he would, of embryo geniuses. Even at this early period
Humphrey Crewe's thirst for knowledge was insatiable: he cared little,
the biography tells us, for galleries and churches and ruins, but his
comments upon foreign methods of doing business were astonishingly
precocious. He recommended to amazed clerks in provincial banks the use
of cheques, ridiculed to speechless station-masters the side-entrance
railway carriage with its want of room, and the size of the goods trucks.
He is said to have been the first to suggest that soda-water fountains
might be run at a large profit in London.

In college, in addition to keeping up his classical courses, he found
time to make an exhaustive study of the railroads of the United States,
embodying these ideas in a pamphlet published shortly after graduation.
This pamphlet is now, unfortunately, very rare, but the anonymous
biographer managed to get one and quote from it. If Mr. Crewe's
suggestions had been carried out, seventy-five per cent of the railroad
accidents might have been eliminated. Thorough was his watchword even
then. And even at that period he foresaw, with the prophecy of genius,
the days of single-track congestion.

His efforts to improve Leith and the State in general, to ameliorate the
condition of his neighbours, were fittingly and delicately dwelt upon. A
desire to take upon himself the burden of citizenship led--as we know--to
further self-denial. He felt called upon to go to the Legislature--and
this is what he saw:--(Mr. Crewe is quoted here at length in an
admirable, concise, and hair-raising statement given in an interview to
his biographer. But we have been with him, and know what he saw. It is,
for lack of space, reluctantly omitted.)

And now we are to take up where the biography left off; to relate, in a
chapter if possible, one of the most remarkable campaigns in the history
of this country. A certain reformer of whose acquaintance the honest
chronicler boasts (a reformer who got elected!) found, on his first visit
to the headquarters he had hired--two citizens under the influence of
liquor and a little girl with a skip rope. Such are the beginnings that
try men's souls.

The window of every independent shopkeeper in Ripton contained a
large-sized picture of the Leith statesman, his determined chin slightly
thrust down into the Gladstone collar. Underneath were the words, "I will
put an end to graft and railroad rule. I am a Candidate of the People.
Opening rally of the People's Campaign at the Opera House, at 8 P.M.,
July 10th. The Hon. Humphrey Crewe, of Leith, will tell the citizens of
Ripton how their State is governed."

"Father," said Victoria, as she read this announcement (three columns
wide, in the Ripton Record) as they sat at breakfast together, "do you
mind my going? I can get Hastings Weare to take me."

"Not at all," said Mr. Flint, who had returned from New York in a better
frame of mind. "I should like a trustworthy account of that meeting.
Only," he added, "I should advise you to go early, Victoria, in order to
get a seat."

"You don't object to my listening to criticism of you?"

"Not by Humphrey Crewe," laughed Mr. Flint.

Early suppers instead of dinners were the rule at Leith on the evening of
the historic day, and the candidate himself, in his red Leviathan, was
not inconsiderably annoyed, on the way to Ripton, by innumerable
carryalls and traps filled with brightly gowned recruits of that
organization of Mrs. Pomfret's which Beatrice Chillingham had nicknamed
"The Ladies' Auxiliary.". In vain Mr. Crewe tooted his horn: the sound of
it was drowned by the gay talk and laughter in the carryalls, and shrieks
ensued when the Leviathan cut by with only six inches to spare, and the
candidate turned and addressed the drivers in language more forceful than
polite, and told the ladies they acted as if they were going to a
Punch-and-Judy show.

"Poor dear Humphrey!" said, Mrs. Pomfret, "is so much in earnest. I
wouldn't give a snap for a man without a temper."

"Poor dear Humphrey" said Beatrice Chillingham, in an undertone to her
neighbour, "is exceedingly rude and ungrateful. That's what I think."

The occupants of one vehicle heard the horn, and sought the top of a
grassy mound to let the Leviathan go by. And the Leviathan, with
characteristic contrariness, stopped.

"Hello," said Mr. Crewe, with a pull at his cap. "I intended to be on the
lookout for you."

"That is very thoughtful, Humphrey, considering how many things you have
to be on the lookout for this evening," Victoria replied.

"That's all right," was Mr. Crewe's gracious reply. "I knew you'd be
sufficiently broad-minded to come, and I hope you won't take offence at
certain remarks I think it my duty to make."

"Don't let my presence affect you," she answered, smiling; "I have come
prepared for anything."

"I'll tell Tooting to give you a good seat," he called back, as he
started onward.

Hastings Weare looked up at her, with laughter-brimming eyes.

"Victoria, you're a wonder!" he remarked. "Say, do you remember that tall
fellow we met at Humphrey's party, Austen Vane?"

Yes."

"I saw him on the street in Ripton the other day, and he came right up
and spoke to me. He hadn't forgotten my name. Now, he'd be my notion of a
candidate. He makes you feel as if your presence in the world meant
something to him."

"I think he does feel that way," replied Victoria.

"I don't blame him if he feels that way about you," said Hastings, who
made love openly.

"Hastings," she answered, "when you get a little older, you will learn to
confine yourself to your own opinions."

"When I do," he retorted audaciously, "they never make you blush like
that."

"It's probably because you have never learned to be original," she
replied. But Hastings had been set to thinking.

Mrs. Pomfret, with her foresight and her talent for management, had given
the Ladies' Auxiliary notice that they were not to go farther forward
than the twelfth row. She herself, with some especially favoured ones,
occupied a box, which was the nearest thing to being on the stage. One
unforeseen result of Mrs. Pomfret's arrangement was that the first eleven
rows were vacant, with the exception of one old man and five or six
schoolboys. Such is the courage of humanity in general! On the arrival of
the candidate, instead of a surging crowd lining the sidewalk, he found
only a fringe of the curious, whose usual post of observation was the
railroad station, standing silently on the curb. Within, Mr. Tooting's
duties as an usher had not been onerous. He met Mr. Crewe in the
vestibule, and drew him into the private office.

"The railroad's fixed 'em," said the manager, indignantly, but sotto
voce; "I've found that out. Hilary Vane had the word passed around town
that if they came, somethin' would fall on 'em. The Tredways and all the
people who own factories served notice on their men that if they paid any
attention to this meeting they'd lose their job. But say, the people are
watchin' you, just the same."

"How many people are in there?" Mr. Crewe demanded.

"Twenty-seven, when I came out," said Mr. Tooting, with commendable
accuracy. "But it wants fifteen minutes to eight."

"And who," asked Mr. Crewe, "is to introduce me?"

An expression of indignation spread over Mr. Tooting's face.

"There ain't a man in Ripton's got sand enough!" he exclaimed. "Sol
Gridley was a-goin' to, but he went to New York on the noon train. I
guess it's a pleasure trip," Mr. Tooting hinted darkly.

"Why," said Mr. Crewe, "he's the fellow--"

"Exactly," Mr. Tooting replied, "and he did get a lot of 'em, travelling
about. But Sol has got to work on the quiet, you understand. He feels he
can't come out right away."

"And how about Amos Ricketts? Where's he?"

"Amos," said Mr. Tooting, regretfully, "was taken very sudden about five
o'clock. One of his spells come on, and he sent me word to the Ripton
House. He had his speech all made up, and it was a good one, too. He was
going to tell folks pretty straight how the railroad beat him for mayor."

Mr. Crewe made a gesture of disgust.

"I'll introduce myself," he said. "They all know me, anyhow."

"Say," said Mr. Tooting, laying a hand on his candidate's arm. "You
couldn't do any better. I've bin for that all along."

"Hold on," said Mr. Crewe, listening, "a lot of people are coming in
now."

What Mr. Crewe had heard, however, was the arrival of the Ladies'
Auxiliary,--five and thirty strong, from Leith. But stay! Who are these
coming? More ladies--ladies in groups of two and three and five! ladies
of Ripton whose husbands, for some unexplained reason, have stayed at
home; and Mr. Tooting, as he watched them with mingled feelings, became a
woman's suffragist on the spot. He dived into the private office once
more, where he found Mr. Crewe seated with his legs crossed, calmly
reading a last winter's playbill. (Note for a more complete biography.)

"Well, Tooting," he said, "I thought they'd begin to come."

"They're mostly women," Mr. Tooting informed him.

"Women!"

"Hold on!" said Mr. Tooting, who had the true showman's instinct. "Can't
you see that folks are curious? They're afraid to come 'emselves, and
they're sendin' their wives and daughters. If you get the women tonight,
they'll go home and club the men into line."

Eight strokes boomed out from the tower of the neighbouring town hall,
and an expectant flutter spread over the audience,--a flatter which
disseminated faint odours of sachet and other mysterious substances in
which feminine apparel is said to the laid away. The stage was empty,
save for a table which held a pitcher of water and a glass.

"It's a pretty good imitation of a matinee," Hastings Weare remarked. "I
wonder whom the front seats are reserved for. Say, Victoria, there's your
friend Mr. Vane in the corner. He's looking over here."

"He has a perfect right to look where he chooses," said Victoria. She
wondered whether he would come over and sit next to her if she turned
around, and decided instantly that he wouldn't. Presently, when she
thought Hastings was off his guard, she did turn, to meet, as she
expected, Austen's glance fixed upon her. Their greeting was the signal
of two people with a mutual understanding. He did not rise, and although
she acknowledged to herself a feeling of disappointment, she gave him
credit for a nice comprehension of the situation. Beside him was his
friend Tom Gaylord, who presented to her a very puzzled face. And then,
if there had been a band, it would have been time to play "See, the
Conquering Hero Comes!"

Why wasn't there a band? No such mistake, Mr. Tooting vowed, should be
made at the next rally.

It was Mrs. Pomfret who led the applause from her box as the candidate
walked modestly up the side aisle and presently appeared, alone, on the
stage. The flutter of excitement was renewed, and this time it might
almost be called a flutter of apprehension. But we who have heard Mr.
Crewe speak are in no alarm for our candidate. He takes a glass of iced
water; he arranges, with the utmost sangfroid, his notes on the desk and
adjusts the reading light. Then he steps forward and surveys the
scattered groups.

"Ladies--" a titter ran through the audience,--a titter which started
somewhere in the near neighbourhood of Mr. Hastings Weare--and rose
instantly to several hysterical peals of feminine laughter. Mrs. Pomfret,
outraged, sweeps the frivolous offenders with her lorgnette; Mr. Crewe,
with his arm resting, on the reading-desk, merely raises the palm of his
hand to a perpendicular reproof,--"and gentlemen." At this point the
audience is thoroughly cowed. "Ladies and gentlemen and fellow citizens.
I thank you for the honour you have done me in coming here to listen to
the opening speech of my campaign to-night. It is a campaign for decency
and good government, and I know that the common people of the State--of
whom I have the honour to be one--demand these things. I cannot say as
much for the so-called prominent citizens," said Mr. Crewe, glancing
about him; "not one of your prominent citizens in Ripton would venture to
offend the powers that be by consenting to introduce me to-night, or
dared come into this theatre and take seats within thirty feet of this
platform." Here Mr. Crewe let his eyes rest significantly on the eleven
empty rows, while his hearers squirmed in terrified silence at this
audacity. Even the Ripton women knew that this was high treason beneath
the walls of the citadel, and many of them glanced furtively at the
strangely composed daughter of Augustus P. Flint.

"I will show you that I can stand on my own feet," Mr. Crewe continued.
"I will introduce myself. I am Humphrey Crewe of Leith, and I claim to
have added something to the welfare and prosperity of this State, and I
intend to add more before I have finished."

At this point, as might have been expected, spontaneous applause broke
forth, originating in the right-hand stage box. Here was a daring
defiance indeed, a courage of such a high order that it completely
carried away the ladies and drew reluctant plaudits from the male
element. "Give it to 'em, Humphrey!" said one of those who happened to be
sitting next to Miss Flint, and who received a very severe pinch in the
arm in consequence.

"I thank the gentleman," answered Mr. Crewe, "and I propose to
--(Handclapping and sachet.) I propose to show that you spend something
like two hundred thousand dollars a year to elect legislators and send
'em to the capital, when the real government of your State is in a room
in the Pelican Hotel known as the Railroad Room, and the real governor is
a citizen of your town, the Honourable Hilary Vane, who sits there and
acts for his master, Mr. Augustus P. Flint of New York. And I propose to
prove to you that, before the Honourable Adam B. Hunt appeared as that
which has come to be known as the 'regular' candidate, Mr. Flint sent for
him to go to New York and exacted certain promises from him. Not that it
was necessary, but the Northeastern Railroads never take any chances.
(Laughter.) The Honourable Adam B. Hunt is what they call a 'safe' man,
meaning by that a man who will do what Mr. Flint wants him to do. While I
am not 'safe' because I have dared to defy them in your name, and will do
what the people want me to do. (Clapping and cheers from a gentleman in
the darkness, afterwards identified as Mr. Tooting.) Now, my friends, are
you going to continue to allow a citizen of New York to nominate your
governors, and do you intend, tamely, to give the Honourable Adam B. Hunt
your votes?"

"They ain't got any votes," said a voice--not that of Mr. Hastings Weare,
for it came from the depths of the gallery.

"'The hand that rocks the cradle sways the world,'" answered Mr. Crewe,
and there was no doubt about the sincerity of the applause this time.

"The campaign of the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith," said the State
Tribune next day, "was inaugurated at the Opera House in Ripton last
night before an enthusiastic audience consisting of Mr. Austen Vane, Mr.
Thomas Gaylord, Jr., Mr. Hamilton Tooting, two reporters, and
seventy-four ladies, who cheered the speaker to the echo. About half of
these ladies were summer residents of Leith in charge of the well-known
social leader, Mrs. Patterson Pomfret,--an organized league which, it is
understood, will follow the candidate about the State in the English
fashion, kissing the babies and teaching the mothers hygienic cooking and
how to ondule the hair."

After speaking for an hour and a half, the Honourable Humphrey Crewe
declared that he would be glad to meet any of the audience who wished to
shake his hand, and it was Mrs. Pomfret who reached him first.

"Don't be discouraged, Humphrey,--you are magnificent," she whispered.

"Discouraged!" echoed Mr. Crewe. "You can't kill an idea, and we'll see
who's right and who's wrong before I get through with 'em."

"What a noble spirit!" Mrs. Pomfret exclaimed aside to Mrs. Chillingham.
Then she added, in a louder tone, "Ladies, if you will kindly tell me
your names, I shall be happy to introduce you to the candidate. Well,
Victoria, I didn't expect to see you here."

"Why not?" said Victoria. "Humphrey, accept my congratulations."

"Did you like it?" asked Mr. Crewe. "I thought it was a pretty good
speech myself. There's nothing like telling the truth, you know. And, by
the way, I hope to see you in a day or two, before I start for Kingston.
Telephone me when you come down to Leith."

The congratulations bestowed on the candidate by the daughter of the
president of the Northeastern Railroads quite took the breath out of the
spectators who witnessed the incident, and gave rise to the wildest
conjectures. And the admiration of Mr. Hastings Weare was unbounded.

"You've got the most magnificent nerve I ever saw, Victoria," he
exclaimed, as they made their way towards the door.

"You forget Humphrey," she replied.

Hastings looked at her and chuckled. In fact, he chuckled all the way
home. In the vestibule they met Mr. Austen Vane and Mr. Thomas Gaylord,
the latter coming forward with a certain palpable embarrassment. All
through the evening Tom had been trying to account for her presence at
the meeting, until Austen had begged him to keep his speculations to
himself. "She can't be engaged to him!" Mr. Gaylord had exclaimed more
than once, under his breath. "Why not?" Austen had answered; "there's a
good deal about him to admire."  "Because she's got more sense," said Tom
doggedly. Hence he was at a loss for words when she greeted him.

"Well, Mr. Gaylord," she said, "you see no bones were broken, after all.
But I appreciated your precaution in sending the buggy behind me,
although it wasn't necessary.

"I felt somewhat responsible," replied Tom, and words failed him. "Here's
Austen Vane," he added, indicating by a nod of the head the obvious
presence of that gentleman. "You'll excuse me. There's a man here I want
to see."

"What's the matter with Mr. Gaylord?" Victoria asked. "He seems so
--queer."

They were standing apart, alone, Hastings Weare having gone to the
stables for the runabout.

"Mr. Gaylord imagines he doesn't get along with the opposite sex," Austen
replied, with just a shade of constraint.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Victoria; "we got along perfectly the other day
when he rescued me from the bushes. What's the matter with him?"

Austen laughed, and their eyes met.

"I think he is rather surprised to see you here," he said.

"And you?" returned Victoria. "Aren't you equally out of place?"

He did not care to go into an explanation of Tom's suspicion in regard to
Mr. Crewe.

"My curiosity was too much for me," he replied, smiling.

"So was mine," she replied, and suddenly demanded: "What did you think of
Humphrey's speech?"

Their eyes met. And despite the attempted seriousness of her tone they
joined in an irresistible and spontaneous laughter. They were again on
that plane of mutual understanding and intimacy for which neither could
account.

"I have no criticism to make of Mr. Crewe as an orator, at least," he
said.

Then she grew serious again, and regarded him steadfastly.

"And--what he said?" she asked.

Austen wondered again at the courage she had displayed. All he had been
able to think of in the theatre, while listening to Mr. Crewe's words of
denunciation of the Northeastern Railroads, had been of the effect they
might have on Victoria's feelings, and from time to time he had glanced
anxiously at her profile. And now, looking into her face, questioning,
trustful--he could not even attempt to evade. He was silent.

"I shouldn't have asked you that," she said. "One reason I came was
because--because I wanted to hear the worst. You were too considerate to
tell me--all."

He looked mutely into her eyes, and a great desire arose in him to be
able to carry her away from it all. Many times within the past year, when
the troubles and complications of his life had weighed upon him, his
thoughts had turned to, that Western country, limited only by the bright
horizons where the sun rose and set. If he could only take her there, or
into his own hills, where no man might follow them! It was a primeval
longing, and, being a woman and the object of it, she saw its essential
meaning in his face. For a brief moment they stood as completely alone as
on the crest of Sawanec.

"Good night," she said, in a low voice.

He did not trust himself to speak at once, but went down the steps with
her to the curb, where Hastings Weare was waiting in the runabout.

"I was just telling Miss Flint," said that young gentleman, "that you
would have been my candidate."

Austen's face relaxed.

"Thank you, Mr. Weare," he said simply; and to Victoria, "Good night."

At the corner, when she turned, she saw him still standing on the edge of
the sidewalk, his tall figure thrown into bold relief by the light which
flooded from the entrance. The account of the Ripton meeting,
substantially as it appeared in the State Tribune, was by a singular
coincidence copied at once into sixty-odd weekly newspapers, and must
have caused endless merriment throughout the State. Congressman
Fairplay's prophecy of "negligible" was an exaggeration, and one
gentleman who had rashly predicted that Mr. Crewe would get twenty
delegates out of a thousand hid himself for shame. On the whole, the
"monumental farce" forecast seemed best to fit the situation. A
conference was held at Leith between the candidate, Mr. Tooting, and the
Honourable Timothy Watling of Newcastle, who was preparing the nominating
speech, although the convention was more than two months distant. Mr.
Watling was skilled in rounded periods of oratory and in other things
political; and both he and Mr. Tooting reiterated their opinion that
there was no particle of doubt about Mr. Crewe's nomination.

"But we'll have to fight fire with fire," Mr. Tooting declared. It was
probably an accident that he happened to kick, at this instant, Mr.
Watling under cover of the table. Mr. Watling was an old and valued
friend.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Crewe, "I haven't the slightest doubt of my
nomination, either. I do not hesitate to say, however, that the expenses
of this campaign, at this early stage, seem to me out of all proportion.
Let me see what you have there."

The Honourable Timothy Wading had produced a typewritten list containing
some eighty towns and wards, each followed by a name and the number of
the delegates therefrom--and figures.

"They'd all be enthusiastic Crewe men--if they could be seen by the right
party," declared Mr. Tooting.

Mr. Crewe ran his eye over the list.

"Whom would you suggest to see 'em?" he asked coldly.

"There's only one party I know of that has much influence over 'em," Mr.
Tooting replied, with a genial but deferential indication of his friend.

At this point Mr. Crewe's secretary left the room on an errand, and the
three statesmen went into executive session. In politics, as in charity,
it is a good rule not to let one's right hand know what the left hand
doeth. Half an hour later the three emerged into the sunlight, Mr.
Tooting and Mr. Watling smoking large cigars.

"You've got a great lay-out here, Mr. Crewe," Mr. Watling remarked. "It
must have stood you in a little money, eh? Yes, I'll get mileage books,
and you'll hear from me every day or two."

And now we are come to the infinitely difficult task of relating in a
whirlwind manner the story of a whirlwind campaign--a campaign that was
to make the oldest resident sit up and take notice. In the space of four
short weeks a miracle had begun to show itself. First, there was the
Kingston meeting, with the candidate, his thumb in his watch-pocket,
seated in an open carriage beside Mr. Hamilton Tooting,--a carriage
draped with a sheet on which was painted "Down with Railroad Ring Rule."

The carriage was preceded by the Kingston Brass Band, producing throbbing
martial melodies, and followed (we are not going to believe the State
Tribune any longer) by a jostling' and cheering crowd. The band halts
before the G.A.R. Hall; the candidate alights, with a bow of
acknowledgment, and goes to the private office until the musicians are
seated in front of the platform, when he enters to renewed cheering and
the tune of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"

An honest historian must admit that there were two accounts of this
meeting. Both agree that Mr. Crewe introduced himself, and poured a
withering sarcasm on the heads of Kingston's prominent citizens. One
account, which the ill-natured declared to be in Mr. Tooting's style, and
which appeared (in slightly larger type than that of the other columns)
in the Kingston and local papers, stated that the hall was crowded to
suffocation, and that the candidate was "accorded an ovation which lasted
for fully five minutes."

Mr. Crewe's speech was printed--in this slightly larger type. Woe to the
Honourable Adam B. Hunt, who had gone to New York to see whether he could
be governor! Why didn't he come out on the platform? Because he couldn't.
"Safe" candidates couldn't talk. His subservient and fawning reports on
accidents while chairman of the Railroad Commission were ruthlessly
quoted (amid cheers and laughter). What kind of railroad service was
Kingston getting compared to what it should have? Compared, indeed, to
what it had twenty years ago? An informal reception was held afterwards.

More meetings followed, at the rate of four a week, in county after
county. At the end of fifteen days a selectman (whose name will go down
in history) voluntarily mounted the platform and introduced the
Honourable Humphrey Crewe to the audience; not, to be sure, as the
saviour of the State; and from that day onward Mr. Crewe did not lack for
a sponsor. On the other hand, the sponsors became more pronounced, and at
Harwich (a free-thinking district) a whole board of selectmen and five
prominent citizens sat gravely beside the candidate in the town hall.

(1) Paul Pardriff, Ripton. Sent post free, on application, to voters and
others.




MR. CREWE'S CAREER

By Winston Churchill
BOOK 3.




CHAPTER XXI

ST. GILES OF THE BLAMELESS LIFE

The burden of the valley of vision: woe to the Honourable Adam B. Hunt!
Where is he all this time? On the porch of his home in Edmundton, smoking
cigars, little heeding the rising of the waters; receiving visits from
the Honourables Brush Bascom, Nat Billings, and Jacob Botcher, and
signing cheques to the order of these gentlemen for necessary expenses.
Be it known that the Honourable Adam was a man of substance in this
world's goods. To quote from Mr. Crewe's speech at Hull: "The
Northeastern Railroads confer--they do not pay, except in passes. Of late
years their books may be searched in vain for evidence of the use of
political funds. The man upon whom they choose to confer your
governorship is always able to pay the pipers." (Purposely put in the
plural.)

Have the pipers warned the Honourable Adam of the rising tide against
him? Have they asked him to gird up his loins and hire halls and smite
the upstart hip and thigh? They have warned him, yes, that the expenses
may be a little greater than ordinary. But it is not for him to talk, or
to bestir himself in any unseemly manner, for the prize which he was to
have was in the nature of a gift. In vain did Mr. Crewe cry out to him
four times a week for his political beliefs, for a statement of what he
would do if he were elected governor. The Honourable Adam's dignified
answer was that he had always been a good Republican, and would die one.
Following a time-honoured custom, he refused to say anything, but it was
rumoured that he believed in the gold standard.

It is August, and there is rejoicing in--Leith. There is no doubt now
that the campaign of the people progresses; no need any more for the true
accounts of the meetings, in large print, although these are still
continued. The reform rallies resemble matinees no longer, and two real
reporters accompany Mr. Crewe on his tours. Nay, the campaign of
education has already borne fruit, which the candidate did not hesitate
to mention in his talks Edmundton has more trains, Kingston has more
trains, and more cars. No need now to stand up for twenty miles on a hot
day; and more cars are building, and more engines; likewise some rates
have been lowered. And editors who declare that the Northeastern gives
the State a pretty good government have, like the guinea pigs, long been
suppressed.

In these days were many councils at Fairview and in the offices of the
Honourable Hilary Vane at Ripton; councils behind closed doors, from
which the councillors emerged with smiling faces that men might not know
the misgivings in their hearts; councils, nevertheless, out of which
leaked rumours of dissension and recrimination conditions hitherto
unheard of. One post ran to meet another, and one messenger ran to meet
another; and it was even reported--though on doubtful authority--after
the rally in his town the Honourable Jacob Botcher had made the remark
that, under certain conditions, he might become a reformer.

None of these upsetting rumours, however, were allowed by Mr. Bascom and
other gentlemen close to the Honourable Adam B. Hunt to reach that
candidate, who continued to smoke in tranquillity on the porch of his
home until the fifteenth day of August. At eight o'clock that morning the
postman brought him a letter marked personal, the handwriting on which he
recognized as belonging to the Honourable Hilary Vane. For some reason,
as he read, the sensations of the Honourable Adam were disquieting; the
contents of the letter, to say the least, were peculiar. "To-morrow, at
noon precisely, I shall be driving along the Broad Brook road by the
abandoned mill--three miles towards Edmundton from Hull. I hope you will
find it convenient to be there."

These were the strange words the Honourable Hilary had written, and the
Honourable Adam knew that it was an order. At that very instant Mr. Hunt
had been reading in the Guardian the account of an overflow meeting in
Newcastle, by his opponent, in which Mr. Crewe had made some particularly
choice remarks about him; and had been cheered to the echo. The
Honourable Adam put the paper down, and walked up the street to talk to
Mr. Burrows, the postmaster whom, with the aid of Congressman Fairplay,
he had had appointed at Edmundton. The two racked their brains for three
hours; and Postmaster Burrows, who was the fortunate possessor of a pass,
offered to go down to Ripton in the interest of his liege lord and see
what was up. The Honourable Adam, however, decided that he could wait for
twenty-four hours.

The morning of the sixteenth dawned clear, as beautiful a summer's day
for a drive as any man could wish. But the spirit of the Honourable Adam
did not respond to the weather, and he had certain vague forebodings as
his horse jogged toward Hull, although these did not take such a definite
shape as to make him feel a premonitory pull of his coat-tails. The
ruined mill beside the rushing stream was a picturesque spot, and the
figure of the Honourable Hilary Vane, seated on the old millstone, in the
green and gold shadows of a beech, gave an interesting touch of life to
the landscape. The Honourable Adam drew up and eyed his friend and
associate of many years before addressing him.

"How are you, Hilary?"

"Hitch your horse," said Mr. Vane.

The Honourable Adam was some time in picking out a convenient tree. Then
he lighted a cigar, and approached Mr. Vane, and at length let himself
down, cautiously, on the millstone. Sitting on his porch had not improved
Mr. Hunt's figure.

"This is kind of mysterious, ain't it, Hilary?" he remarked, with a tug
at his goatee.

"I don't know but what it is," admitted Mr. Vane, who did not look as
though the coming episode were to give him unqualified joy.

"Fine weather," remarked the Honourable Adam, with a brave attempt at
geniality.

"The paper predicts rain to-morrow," said the Honourable Hilary.

"You don't smoke, do you?" asked the Honourable Adam.

"No," said the Honourable Hilary.

A silence, except for the music of the brook over the broken dam.

"Pretty place," said the Honourable Adam; "I kissed my wife here once
--before I was married."

This remark, although of interest, the Honourable Hilary evidently
thought did not require an answer:

"Adam," said Mr. Vane, presently, "how much money have you spent so far?"

"Well," said Mr. Hunt, "it has been sort of costly, but Brush and the
boys tell me the times are uncommon, and I guess they are. If that crazy
cuss Crewe hadn't broken loose, it would have been different. Not that
I'm uneasy about him, but all this talk of his and newspaper advertising
had to be counteracted some. Why, he has a couple of columns a week right
here in the Edmundton Courier. The papers are bleedin' him to death,
certain."

"How much have you spent?" asked the Honourable Hilary.

The Honourable Adam screwed up his face and pulled his goatee
thoughtfully.

"What are you trying to get at, Hilary," he inquired, sending for me to
meet you out here in the woods in this curious way? If you wanted to see
me, why didn't you get me to go down to Ripton, or come up and sit on my
porch? You've been there before."

"Times," said the Honourable Hilary, repeating, perhaps unconsciously,
Mr. Hunt's words, "are uncommon. This man Crewe's making more headway
than you think. The people don't know him, and he's struck a popular
note. It's the fashion to be down on railroads these days."

"I've taken that into account," replied Mr. Hunt.

"It's unlucky, and it comes high. I don't think he's got a show for the
nomination, but my dander's up, and I'll beat him if I have to mortgage
my house."

The Honourable Hilary grunted, and ruminated.

"How much did you say you'd spent, Adam?"

"If you think I'm not free enough, I'll loosen up a little more," said
the Honourable Adam.

"How free have you been?" said the Honourable Hilary.

For some reason the question, put in this form, was productive of
results.

"I can't say to a dollar, but I've got all the amounts down in a book. I
guess somewhere in the neighbourhood of nine thousand would cover it."

Mr. Vane grunted again.

"Would you take a cheque, Adam?" he inquired.

"What for?" cried the Honourable Adam.

"For the amount you've spent," said the Honourable Hilary, sententiously.

The Honourable Adam began to breathe with apparent difficulty, and his
face grew purple. But Mr. Vane did not appear to notice these alarming
symptoms. Then the candidate turned about, as on a pivot, seized Mr. Vane
by the knee, and looked into his face.

"Did you come up here with orders for me to get out?" he demanded, with
some pardonable violence. "By thunder, I didn't think that of my old
friend, Hilary Vane. You ought to have known me better, and Flint ought
to have known me better. There ain't a mite of use of our staying here
another second, and you can go right back and tell Flint what I said.
Flint knows I've been waiting to be governor for eight years, and each
year it's been just a year ahead. You ask him what he said to me when he
sent for me to go to New York. I thought he was a man of his word, and he
promised me that I should be governor this year."

The Honourable Hilary gave no indication of being moved by this righteous
outburst.

"You can be governor next year, when this reform nonsense has blown
over," he said. "You can't be this year, even if you stay in the race."

"Why not?" the Honourable Adam asked pugnaciously.

"Your record won't stand it--not just now," said Mr. Vane, slowly.

"My record is just as good as yours, or any man's," said the Honourable
Adam.

"I never run for office," answered Mr. Vane.

"Haven't I spent the days of my active life in the service of that road
--and is this my reward? Haven't I done what Flint wanted always?"

"That's just the trouble," said the Honourable Hilary; too many folks
know it. If we're going to win this time, we've got to have a man who's
never had any Northeastern connections."

"Who have you picked?" demanded the Honourable Adam, with alarming
calmness.

"We haven't picked anybody yet," said Mr. Vane, "but the man who goes in
will give you a cheque for what you've spent, and you can be governor
next time."

"Well, if this isn't the d-dest, coldest-blooded proposition ever made, I
want to know!" cried the Honourable Adam. "Will Flint put up a bond of
one hundred thousand dollars that I'll be nominated and elected next
year? This is the clearest case of going back on an old friend I ever
saw. If this is the way you fellows get scared because a sham reformer
gets up and hollers against the road, then I want to serve notice on you
that I'm not made of that kind of stuff. When I go into a fight, I go in
to stay, and you can't pull me out by the coat-tails in favour of a saint
who's never done a lick of work for the road. You tell Flint that."

"All right, Adam," said Hilary.

Some note in Hilary's voice, as he made this brief answer, suddenly
sobered the Honourable Adam, and sent a cold chill down his spine. He had
had many dealings with Mr. Vane, and he had always been as putty in the
chief counsel's hands. This simple acquiescence did more to convince the
Honourable Adam that his chances of nomination were in real danger than a
long and forceful summary of the situation could have accomplished. But
like many weak men, the Honourable Adam had a stubborn streak, and a
fatuous idea that opposition and indignation were signs of strength.

"I've made sacrifices for the road before, and effaced myself. But by
thunder, this is too much!"

Corporations, like republics, are proverbially ungrateful. The Honourable
Hilary might have voiced this sentiment, but refrained.

"Mr. Flint's a good friend of yours, Adam. He wanted me to say that he'd
always taken care of you, and always would, so far as in his power. If
you can't be landed this time, it's common sense for you to get out, and
wait--isn't it? We'll see that you get a cheque to cover what you've put
out."

The humour in this financial sacrifice of Mr. Flint's (which the unknown
new candidate was to make with a cheque) struck neither the Honourable
Adam nor the Honourable Hilary. The transaction, if effected, would
resemble that of the shrine to the Virgin built by a grateful Marquis of
Mantua--which a Jew paid for.

The Honourable Adam got to his feet.

"You can tell Flint," he said, "that if he will sign a bond of one
hundred thousand dollars to elect me next time, I'll get out. That's my
last word."

"All right, Adam," replied Mr. Vane, rising also.

Mr. Hunt stared at the Honourable Hilary thoughtfully; and although the
gubernatorial candidate was not an observant man, he was suddenly struck
by the fact that the chief counsel was growing old.

"I won't hold this against you, Hilary," he said.

"Politics," said the Honourable Hilary, "are business matters."

"I'll show Flint that it would have been good business to stick to me,"
said the Honourable Adam. "When he gets panicky, and spends all his money
on new equipment and service, it's time for me to drop him. You can tell
him so from me."

"Hadn't you better write him?" said the Honourable Hilary.

The rumour of the entry of Mr. Giles Henderson of Kingston into the
gubernatorial contest preceded, by ten days or so, the actual event. It
is difficult for the historian to unravel the precise circumstances which
led to this candidacy. Conservative citizens throughout the State, it was
understood, had become greatly concerned over the trend political affairs
were taking; the radical doctrines of one candidate--propounded for very
obvious reasons--they turned from in disgust; on the other hand, it was
evident that an underlying feeling existed in certain sections that any
candidate who was said to have had more or less connection with the
Northeastern Railroads was undesirable at the present time. This was not
to be taken as a reflection on the Northeastern, which had been the chief
source of the State's prosperity, but merely as an acknowledgment that a
public opinion undoubtedly existed, and ought to be taken into
consideration by the men who controlled the Republican party.

This was the gist of leading articles which appeared simultaneously in
several newspapers, apparently before the happy thought of bringing
forward Mr. Giles Henderson had occurred to anybody. He was mentioned
first, and most properly, by the editor of the "Kingston Pilot;" and the
article, with comments upon it, ran like wildfire through the press of
the State,--appearing even in those sheets which maintained editorially
that they were for the Honourable Adam B. Hunt first and last and, all
the time. Whereupon Mr. Giles Henderson began to receive visits from the
solid men--not politicians of the various cities and counties. For
instance, Mr. Silas Tredway of Ripton, made such a pilgrimage and, as a
citizen who had voted in 1860 for Abraham Lincoln (showing Mr. Tredway
himself to have been a radical once), appealed to Mr. Henderson to save
the State.

At first Mr. Henderson would give no ear to these appeals, but shook his
head pessimistically. He was not a politician--so much the better, we
don't want a politician; he was a plain business man exactly what is
needed; a conservative, level-headed business man wholly lacking in those
sensational qualities which are a stench in the nostrils of good
citizens. Mr. Giles Henderson admitted that the time had come when a man
of these qualities was needed--but he was not the man. Mr. Tredway was
the man--so he told Mr. Tredway; Mr. Gates of Brampton was the man--so he
assured Mr. Gates. Mr. Henderson had no desire to meddle in politics; his
life was a happy and a full one. But was it not Mr. Henderson's duty?
Cincinnatus left the plough, and Mr. Henderson should leave the ledger at
the call of his countrymen.

Mr. Giles Henderson was mild-mannered and blue-eyed, with a scanty beard
that was turning white; he was a deacon of the church, a member of the
school board, president of the Kingston National Bank; the main business
of his life had been in coal (which incidentally had had to be
transported over the Northeastern Railroads); and coal rates, for some
reason, were cheaper from Kingston than from many points out of the State
the distances of which were nearer. Mr. Henderson had been able to sell
his coal at a lower price than any other large dealer in the eastern part
of the State. Mr. Henderson was the holder of a large amount of stock in
the Northeastern, inherited from his father. Facts of no special
significance, and not printed in the weekly newspapers. Mr. Henderson
lived in a gloomy Gothic house on High Street, ate three very plain meals
a day, and drank iced water. He had been a good husband and a good
father, and had always voted the Republican ticket. He believed in the
gold standard, a high tariff, and eternal damnation. At last his
resistance was overcome, and he consented to allow his name to be used.

It was used, with a vengeance. Spontaneous praise of Mr. Giles Henderson
bubbled up all over the State, and editors who were for the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt suddenly developed a second choice. No man within the
borders of the commonwealth had so many good qualities as the new
candidate, and it must have been slightly annoying to one of that
gentleman's shrinking nature to read daily, on coming down to breakfast,
a list of virtues attributed to him as long as a rate schedule. How he
must have longed for the record of one wicked deed to make him human!

Who will pick a flaw in the character of the Honourable Giles Henderson?
Let that man now stand forth.

The news of the probable advent of Mr. Giles Henderson on the field, as
well as the tidings of his actual consent to be a candidate, were not
slow in reaching Leith. And--Mr. Crewe's Bureau of Information being in
perfect working order--the dastardly attempt on the Honourable Adam B.
Hunt's coat-tails was known there. More wonders to relate: the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt had become a reformer; he had made a statement at last, in
which he declared with vigour that no machine or ring was behind him; he
stood on his own merits, invited the minutest inspection of his record,
declared that he was an advocate of good government, and if elected would
be the servant of no man and of no corporation.

Thrice-blessed State, in which there were now three reform candidates for
governor!

All of these happenings went to indicate confusion in the enemy's camp,
and corresponding elation in Mr. Crewe's. Woe to the reputation for
political sagacity of the gentleman who had used the words "negligible"
and "monumental farce"! The tide was turning, and the candidate from
Leith redoubled his efforts. Had he been confounded by the advent of the
Honourable Giles? Not at all. Mr. Crewe was not given to satire; his
methods, as we know, were direct. Hence the real author of the following
passage in his speech before an overflow meeting in the State capital
remains unknown:

"My friends," Mr. Crewe had said, "I have been waiting for the time when
St. Giles of the Blameless Life would be pushed forward, apparently as
the only hope of our so-called 'solid citizens.' (Prolonged laughter, and
audible repetitions of Mr. Henderson's nickname, which was to stick.) I
will tell you by whose desire St. Giles became a candidate, and whose
bidding he will do if he becomes governor as blindly and obediently as
the Honourable Adam B. Hunt ever did. (Shouts of "Flint!" and, "The
Northeastern!") I see you know. Who sent the solid citizens to see Mr.
Henderson? ("Flint!") This is a clever trick--exactly what I should have
done if I'd been running their campaign--only they didn't do it early
enough. They picked Mr. Giles Henderson for two reasons: because he lives
in Kingston, which is anti-railroad and supported the Gaylord bill, and,
because he never in his life committed any positive action, good or
bad--and he never will. And they made another mistake--the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt wouldn't back out." (Laughter and cheers.)




CHAPTER XXII

IN WHICH EUPHRASIA TAKES A HAND

Austen had not forgotten his promise to Euphrasia, and he had gone to
Hanover Street many times since his sojourn at Mr. Jabe Jenney's. Usually
these visits had taken place in the middle of the day, when Euphrasia,
with gentle but determined insistence, had made him sit down before some
morsel which she had prepared against his coming, and which he had not
the heart to refuse. In answer to his inquiries about Hilary, she would
toss her head and reply, disdainfully, that he was as comfortable as he
should be. For Euphrasia had her own strict ideas of justice, and to her
mind Hilary's suffering was deserved. That suffering was all the more
terrible because it was silent, but Euphrasia was a stern woman. To know
that he missed Austen, to feel that Hilary was being justly punished for
his treatment of her idol, for his callous neglect and lack of
realization of the blessings of his life--these were Euphrasia's grim
compensations.

At times, even, she had experienced a strange rejoicing that she had
promised Austen to remain with his father, for thus it had been given her
to be the daily witness of a retribution for which she had longed during
many years. Nor did she strive to hide her feelings. Their intercourse,
never voluminous, had shrunk to the barest necessities for the use of
speech; but Hilary, ever since the night of his son's departure, had read
in the face of his housekeeper a knowledge of his suffering, an
exultation a thousand times more maddening than the little reproaches of
language would have been. He avoided her more than ever, and must many
times have regretted bitterly the fact that he had betrayed himself to
her. As for Euphrasia, she had no notion of disclosing Hilary's torture
to his son. She was determined that the victory, when it came, should be
Austen's, and the surrender Hilary's.

"He manages to eat his meals, and gets along as common," she would reply.
"He only thinks of himself and that railroad."

But Austen read between the lines.

"Poor old Judge," he would answer; "it's because he's made that way,
Phrasie. He can't help it, any more than I can help flinging law-books on
the floor and running off to the country to have a good time. You know as
well as I do that he hasn't had much joy out of life; that he'd like to
be different, only he doesn't know how."

"I can't see that it takes much knowledge to treat a wife and son like
human beings," Euphrasia retorted; "that's only common humanity. For a
man that goes to meetin' twice a week, you'd have thought he'd have
learned something by this time out of the New Testament. He's prayed
enough in his life, goodness knows!"

Now Euphrasia's ordinarily sharp eyes were sharpened an hundred fold by
affection; and of late, at odd moments during his visits, Austen had
surprised them fixed on him with a penetration that troubled him.

"You don't seem to fancy the tarts as much as you used to," she would
remark. "Time was when you'd eat three and four at a sittin'."

"Phrasie, one of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy."

"You ain't yourself," said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, "and you
ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you
up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't
worth it. He eats better than you do."

"I'm not worrying much about that," Austen answered, smiling. "The Judge
and I will patch it up before long--I'm sure. He's worried now over these
people who are making trouble for his railroad."

"I wish railroads had never been invented," cried Euphrasia. "It seems to
me they bring nothing but trouble. My mother used to get along pretty
well in a stage-coach."

One evening in September, when the summer days were rapidly growing
shorter and the mists rose earlier in the valley of the Blue, Austen, who
had stayed late at the office preparing a case, ate his supper at the
Ripton House. As he sat in the big dining room, which was almost empty,
the sense of loneliness which he had experienced so often of late came
over him, and he thought of Euphrasia. His father, he knew, had gone to
Kingston for the night, and so he drove up Hanover Street and hitched
Pepper to the stone post before the door. Euphrasia, according to an
invariable custom, would be knitting in the kitchen at this hour; and at
the sight of him in the window, she dropped her work with a little,
joyful cry.

"I was just thinking of you!" she said, in a low voice of tenderness
which many people would not have recognized as Euphrasia's; as though her
thoughts of him were the errant ones of odd moments! "I'm so glad you
come. It's lonesome here of evenings, Austen."

He entered silently and sat down beside her, in a Windsor chair which had
belonged to some remote Austen of bygone days.

"You don't have as good things to eat up at Mis' Jenney's as I give you,"
she remarked. "Not that you appear to care much for eatables any more.
Austen, are you feeling poorly?"

"I can dig more potatoes in a day than any other man in Ripton," he
declared.

"You'd ought to get married," said Euphrasia, abruptly. "I've told you
that before, but you never seem to pay any attention to what I say."

"Why haven't you tried it, Phrasie?" he retorted.

He was not prepared for what followed. Euphrasia did not answer at once,
but presently her knitting dropped to her lap, and she sat staring at the
old clock on the kitchen shelf.

"He never asked me," she said, simply.

Austen was silent. The answer seemed to recall, with infinite pathos,
Euphrasia's long-lost youth, and he had not thought of youth as a quality
which could ever have pertained to her. She must have been young once,
and fresh, and full of hope for herself; she must have known, long ago,
something of what he now felt, something of the joy and pain, something
of the inexpressible, never ceasing yearning for the fulfilment of a
desire that dwarfed all others. Euphrasia had been denied that
fulfilment. And he--would he, too, be denied it?

Out of Euphrasia's eyes, as she gazed at the mantel-shelf, shone the
light of undying fires within--fires which at a touch could blaze forth
after endless years, transforming the wrinkled face, softening the
sterner lines of character. And suddenly there was a new bond between the
two. So used are the young to the acceptance of the sacrifice of the old
that they lose sight of that sacrifice. But Austen saw now, in a flash,
the years of Euphrasia's self-denial, the years of memories, the years of
regrets for that which might have been.

"Phrasie," he said, laying a hand on hers, which rested on the arm of the
chair, I was only joking, you know."

"I know, I know," Euphrasia answered hastily, and turned and looked into
his face searchingly. Her eyes were undimmed, and the light was still in
them which revealed a soul of which he had had no previous knowledge.

"I know you was, dear. I never told that to a living being except your
mother. He's dead now--he never knew. But I told her--I couldn't help it.
She had a way of drawing things out of you, and you just couldn't resist.
I'll never forget that day she came in here and looked at me and took my
hand--same as you have it now. She wasn't married then. I'll never forget
the sound of her voice as she said, 'Euphrasia, tell me about it.'" (Here
Euphrasia's own voice trembled.) "I told her, just as I'm telling
you,--because I couldn't help it. Folks, had to tell her things."

She turned her hand and clasped his tightly with her own thin fingers.

"And oh, Austen," she cried, "I want so that you should be happy! She was
so unhappy, it doesn't seem right that you should be, too."

"I shall be, Phrasie," he said; "you mustn't worry about that."

For a while the only sound in the room was the ticking of the old clock
with the quaint, coloured picture on its panel. And then, with a movement
which, strangely, was an acute reminder of a way Victoria had, Euphrasia
turned and searched his face once more.

"You're not happy," she said.

He could not put this aside--nor did he wish to. Her own confidence had
been so simple, so fine, so sure of his sympathy, that he felt it would
be unworthy to equivocate; the confessions of the self-reliant are sacred
things. Yes, and there had been times when he had longed to unburden
himself; but he had had no intimate on this plane, and despite the great
sympathy between them--that Euphrasia might understand had never occurred
to him. She had read his secret.

In that instant Euphrasia, with the instinct which love lends to her sex,
had gone farther; indignation seized her--and the blame fell upon the
woman. Austen's words, unconsciously, were an answer to her thoughts.

"It isn't anybody's fault but my own," he said.

Euphrasia's lips were tightly closed. Long ago the idol of her youth had
faded into the substance of which dreams are made--to be recalled by
dreams alone; another worship had filled her heart, and Austen Vane had
become--for her--the fulness and the very meaning of life itself; one to
be admired of all men, to be desired of all women. Visions of Austen's
courtship had at times risen in her mind, although Euphrasia would not
have called it a courtship. When the time came, Austen would confer; and
so sure of his judgment was Euphrasia that she was prepared to take the
recipient of the priceless gift into her arms. And now! Was it possible
that a woman lived who would even hesitate? Curiosity seized Euphrasia
with the intensity of a passion. Who was this woman? When and where had
he seen her? Ripton could not have produced her--for it was
characteristic of Euphrasia that no girl of her acquaintance was worthy
to be raised to such a height; Austen's wife would be an unknown of ideal
appearance and attainments. Hence indignation rocked Euphrasia, and
doubts swayed her. In this alone she had been an idealist, but she might
have known that good men were a prey to the unworthy of the opposite sex.

She glanced at Austen's face, and he smiled at her gently, as though he
divined something of her thoughts.

"If it isn't your fault, that you're not happy, then the matter's easily
mended," she said.

He shook his head at her, as though in reproof.

"Was yours--easily mended?" he asked.

Euphrasia was silent a moment.

"He never knew," she repeated, in a low voice.

"Well, Phrasie, it looks very much as if we were in the same boat," he
said.

Euphrasia's heart gave a bound.

"Then you haven't spoke!" she cried; "I knew you hadn't. I--I was a
woman--but sometimes I've thought I'd ought to have given him some sign.
You're a man, Austen; thank God for it, you're a man. If a man loves a
woman, he's only got to tell her so."

"It isn't as simple as that," he answered.

Euphrasia gave him a startled glance.

"She ain't married?" she exclaimed.

"No," he said, and laughed in spite of himself.

Euphrasia breathed again. For Sarah Austen had had a morality of her own,
and on occasions had given expression to extreme views.

"She's not playin' with you?" was Euphrasia's next question, and her tone
boded ill to any young person who would indulge in these tactics with
Austen.

He shook his head again, and smiled at her vehemence.

"No, she's not playing with me--she isn't that kind. I'd like to tell
you, but I can't--I can't. It was only because you guessed that I said
anything about it." He disengaged his hand, and rose, and patted her on
the cheek. "I suppose I had to tell somebody," he said, "and you seemed,
somehow, to be the right person, Phrasie."

Euphrasia rose abruptly and looked up intently into his face. He thought
it strange afterwards, as he drove along the dark roads, that she had not
answered him.

Even though the matter were on the knees of the gods, Euphrasia would
have taken it thence, if she could. Nor did Austen know that she shared
with him, that night, his waking hours.

The next morning Mr. Thomas Gaylord, the younger, was making his way
towards the office of the Gaylord Lumber Company, conveniently situated
on Willow Street, near the railroad. Young Tom was in a particularly
jovial frame of mind, despite the fact that he had arrived in Ripton, on
the night express, as early as five o'clock in the morning. He had been
touring the State ostensibly on lumber business, but young Tom had a
large and varied personal as well as commercial acquaintance, and he had
the inestimable happiness of being regarded as an honest man, while his
rough and genial qualities made him beloved. For these reasons and others
of a more material nature, suggestions from Mr. Thomas Gaylord were apt
to be well received--and Tom had been making suggestions.

Early as he was at his office--the office-boy was sprinkling the floor
--young Tom had a visitor who was earlier still. Pausing in the doorway,
Mr. Gaylord beheld with astonishment a prim, elderly lady in a stiff,
black dress sitting upright on the edge of a capacious oak chair which
seemed itself rather discomfited by what it contained,--for its
hospitality had hitherto been extended to visitors of a very different
sort.

"Well, upon my soul," cried young Tom, "if it isn't Euphrasia!"

"Yes, it's me," said Euphrasia; "I've been to market, and I had a notion
to see you before I went home."

Mr. Gaylord took the office-boy lightly by the collar of his coat and
lifted him, sprinkling can and all, out of the doorway and closed the
door. Then he drew his revolving chair close to Euphrasia, and sat down.
They were old friends, and more than once in a youth far from model Tom
had experienced certain physical reproof at her hands, for which he bore
no ill-will. There was anxiety on his face as he asked:--"There hasn't
been any accident, has there, Euphrasia?"

"No," she said.

"No new row?" inquired Tom.

"No," said Euphrasia. She was a direct person, as we know, but true
descendants of the Puritans believe in the decency of preliminaries, and
here was certainly an affair not to be plunged into. Euphrasia was a
spinster in the strictest sense of that formidable and highly descriptive
term, and she intended ultimately to discuss with Tom a subject of which
she was supposed by tradition to be wholly ignorant, the mere mention of
which still brought warmth to her cheeks. Such a delicate matter should
surely be led up to delicately. In the meanwhile Tom was mystified.

"Well, I'm mighty glad to see you, anyhow," he said heartily. "It was
fond of you to call, Euphrasia. I can't offer you a cigar."

"I should think not," said Euphrasia.

Tom reddened. He still retained for her some of his youthful awe.

"I can't do the honours of hospitality as I'd wish to," he went on; "I
can't give you anything like the pies you used to give me."

"You stole most of 'em," said Euphrasia.

"I guess that's so," said young Tom, laughing, "but I'll never taste pies
like 'em again as long as I live. Do you know, Euphrasia, there were two
reasons why those were the best pies I ever ate?"

"What were they?" she asked, apparently unmoved.

"First," said Tom, "because you made 'em, and second, because they were
stolen."

Truly, young Tom had a way with women, had he only been aware of it.

"I never took much stock in stolen things," said Euphrasia.

"It's because you never were tempted with such pie as that," replied the
audacious Mr. Gaylord.

"You're gettin' almighty stout," said Euphrasia.

As we see her this morning, could she indeed ever have had a love affair?

"I don't have to use my legs as much as I once did," said Tom. And this
remark brought to an end the first phase of this conversation,--brought
to an end, apparently, all conversation whatsoever. Tom racked his brain
for a new topic, opened his roll-top desk, drummed on it, looked up at
the ceiling and whistled softly, and then turned and faced again the
imperturbable Euphrasia.

"Euphrasia," he said, you're not exactly a politician, I believe."

"Well," said Euphrasia, "I've be'n maligned a good many times, but nobody
ever went that far."

Mr. Gaylord shook with laughter.

"Then I guess there's no harm in confiding political secrets to you," he
said. "I've been around the State some this week, talking to people I
know, and I believe if your Austen wasn't so obstinate, we could make him
governor."

"Obstinate?" ejaculated Euphrasia.

"Yes," said Tom, with a twinkle in his eye, "obstinate. He doesn't seem
to want something that most men would give their souls for."

"And why should he dirty himself with politics?" she demanded. "In the
years I've lived with Hilary Vane I've seen enough of politicians,
goodness knows. I never want to see another."

"If Austen was governor, we'd change some of that. But mind, Euphrasia,
this is a secret," said Tom, raising a warning finger. "If Austen hears
about it now, the jig's up."

Euphrasia considered and thawed a little.

"They don't often have governors that young, do they?" she asked.

"No," said Tom, forcibly, "they don't. And so far as I know, they haven't
had such a governor for years as Austen would make. But he won't push
himself. You know, Euphrasia, I have always believed that he will be
President some day."

Euphrasia received this somewhat startling prediction complacently. She
had no doubt of its accuracy, but the enunciation of it raised young Tom
in her estimation, and incidentally brought her nearer her topic.

"Austen ain't himself lately," she remarked.

"I knew that he didn't get along with Hilary," said Tom, sympathetically,
beginning to realize now that Euphrasia had come to talk about her idol.

"It's Hilary doesn't get along with him," she retorted indignantly. "He's
responsible--not Austen. Of all the narrow, pig-headed, selfish men the
Lord ever created, Hilary Vane's the worst. It's Hilary drove him out of
his mother's house to live with strangers. It's Austen that comes around
to inquire for his father--Hilary never has a word to say about Austen."
A trace of colour actually rose under Euphrasia's sallow skin, and she
cast her eyes downward. "You've known him a good while, haven't you,
Tom?"

"All my life," said Tom, mystified again, "all my life. And I, think more
of him than of anybody else in the world."

"I calculated as much," she said; "that's why I came." She hesitated.
Artful Euphrasia! We will let the ingenuous Mr. Gaylord be the first to
mention this delicate matter, if possible. "Goodness knows, it ain't
Hilary I came to talk about. I had a notion that you'd know if anything
else was troubling Austen."

"Why," said Tom, "there can't be any business troubles outside of those
Hilary's mixed up in. Austen doesn't spend any money to speak of, except
what he gives away, and he's practically chief counsel for our company."

Euphrasia was silent a moment.

"I suppose there's nothing else that could bother him," she remarked. She
had never held Tom Gaylord's powers of comprehension in high estimation,
and the estimate had not risen during this visit. But she had undervalued
him; even Tom could rise to an inspiration--when the sources of all other
inspirations were eliminated.

"Why," he exclaimed, with a masculine lack of delicacy, "he may be in
love--"

"That's struck you, has it?" said Euphrasia.

But Tom appeared to be thinking; he was, in truth, engaged in collecting
his cumulative evidence: Austen's sleigh-ride at the capital, which he
had discovered; his talk with Victoria after her fall, when she had
betrayed an interest in Austen which Tom had thought entirely natural;
and finally Victoria's appearance at Mr. Crewe's rally in Ripton. Young
Mr. Gaylord had not had a great deal of experience in affairs of the
heart, and he was himself aware that his diagnosis in such a matter would
not carry much weight. He had conceived a tremendous admiration for
Victoria, which had been shaken a little by the suspicion that she might
be intending to marry Mr. Crewe. Tom Gaylord saw no reason why Austen
Vane should not marry Mr. Flint's daughter if he chose--or any other
man's daughter; partaking, in this respect, somewhat of Euphrasia's view.
As for Austen himself, Tom had seen no symptoms; but then, he reflected,
he would not be likely to see any. However, he perceived the object now
of Euphrasia's visit, and began to take the liveliest interest in it.

"So you think Austen's in love?" he demanded.

Euphrasia sat up straighter, if anything.

"I didn't say anything of the kind," she returned.

"He wouldn't tell me, you know," said Tom; "I can only guess at it."

"And the--lady?" said Euphrasia, craftily.

"I'm up a tree there, too. All I know is that he took her sleigh-riding
one afternoon at the capital, and wouldn't tell me who he was going to
take. And then she fell off her horse down at East Tunbridge Station--"

"Fell off her horse!" echoed Euphrasia, an accident comparable in her
mind to falling off a roof. What manner of young woman was this who fell
off horses?

"She wasn't hurt," Tom continued, "and she rode the beast home. He was a
wild one, I can tell you, and she's got pluck. That's the first time I
ever met her, although I had often seen her and thought she was a stunner
to look at. She talked as if she took an interest in Austen."

An exact portrayal of Euphrasia's feelings at this description of the
object of Austen's affections is almost impossible. A young woman who was
a stunner, who rode wild horses and fell off them and rode them again,
was beyond the pale not only of Euphrasia's experience but of her
imagination likewise. And this hoyden had talked as though she took an
interest in Austen! Euphrasia was speechless.

"The next time I saw her," said Tom, "was when she came down here to
listen to Humphrey Crewe's attacks on the railroad. I thought that was a
sort of a queer thing for Flint's daughter to do, but Austen didn't seem
to look at it that way. He talked to her after the show was over."

At this point Euphrasia could contain herself no longer, and in her
excitement she slipped off the edge of the chair and on to her feet.

"Flint's daughter?" she cried; "Augustus P. Flint's daughter?"

Tom looked at her in amazement.

"Didn't you know who it was?" he stammered. But Euphrasia was not
listening.

"I've seen her," she was saying; "I've seen her ridin' through Ripton in
that little red wagon, drivin' herself, with a coachman perched up beside
her. Flint's daughter!"  Euphrasia became speechless once more, the
complications opened up being too vast for intelligent comment.
Euphrasia, however, grasped some of the problems which Austen had had to
face. Moreover, she had learned what she had come for, and the obvious
thing to do now was to go home and reflect. So, without further ceremony,
she walked to the door and opened it, and turned again with her hand on
the knob. "Look here, Tom Gaylord," she said, "if you tell Austen I was
here, I'll never forgive you. I don't believe you've got any more sense
than to do it."

And with these words she took her departure, ere the amazed Mr. Gaylord
had time to show her out. Half an hour elapsed before he opened his
letters.

When she arrived home in Hanover Street it was nine o'clock--an hour well
on in the day for Euphrasia. Unlocking the kitchen door, she gave a
glance at the stove to assure herself that it had not been misbehaving,
and went into the passage on her way up-stairs to take off her gown
before sitting down to reflect upon the astonishing thing she had heard.
Habit had so crystallized in Euphrasia that no news, however amazing,
could have shaken it. But in the passage she paused; an unwonted, or
rather untimely, sound reached her ears, a sound which came from the
front of the house--and at nine o'clock in the morning! Had Austen been
at home, Euphrasia would have thought nothing of it. In her remembrance
Hilary Vane, whether he returned from a journey or not, had never been
inside the house at that hour on a week-day; and, unlike the gentleman in
"La Vie de Boheme," Euphrasia did not have to be reminded of the Sabbath.

Perhaps Austen had returned! Or perhaps it was a burglar! Euphrasia,
undaunted, ran through the darkened front hall to where the graceful
banister ended in a curve at the foot of the stairs, and there, on the
bottom step, sat a man with his head in his hands. Euphrasia shrieked. He
looked up, and she saw that it was Hilary Vane. She would have shrieked,
anyway.

"What in the world's the matter with you?" she cried.

"I--I stumbled coming down the stairs," he said.

"But what are you doing at home in the middle of the morning?" she
demanded.

He did not answer her. The subdued light which crept under the porch and
came in through the fan shaped window over the door fell on his face.

"Are you sick?" said Euphrasia. In all her life she had never seen him
look like that.

He shook his head, but did not attempt to rise. A Hilary Vane without
vigour!

"No," he said, "no. I just came up here from the train to--get somethin'
I'd left in my room."

"A likely story!" said Euphrasia. "You've never done that in thirty
years. You're sick, and I'm a-going for the doctor."

She put her hand to his forehead, but he thrust it away and got to his
feet, although in the effort he compressed his lips and winced.

"You stay where you are," he said; "I tell you I'm not sick, and I'm
going down to the square. Let, the doctors alone--I haven't got any use
for 'em."

He walked to the door, opened it, and went out and slammed it in her
face. By the time she had got it open again--a crack--he had reached the
sidewalk, and was apparently in full possession of his powers and
faculties.




CHAPTER XXIII

A FALLING-OUT IN HIGH PLACES

Although one of the most exciting political battles ever fought is fast
coming to its climax, and a now jubilant Mr. Crewe is contesting every
foot of ground in the State with the determination and pertinacity which
make him a marked man; although the convention wherein his fate will be
decided is now but a few days distant, and everything has been done to
secure a victory which mortal man can do, let us follow Hilary Vane to
Fairview. Not that Hilary has been idle. The "Book of Arguments" is
exhausted, and the chiefs and the captains have been to Ripton, and
received their final orders, but more than one has gone back to his fief
with the vision of a changed Hilary who has puzzled them. Rumours have
been in the air that the harmony between the Source of Power and the
Distribution of Power is not as complete as it once was. Certainly,
Hilary Vane is not the man he was--although this must not even be
whispered. Senator Whitredge had told--but never mind that. In the old
days an order was an order; there were no rebels then. In the old days
there was no wavering and rescinding, and if the chief counsel told you,
with brevity, to do a thing, you went and did it straightway, with the
knowledge that it was the best thing to do. Hilary Vane had aged
suddenly, and it occurred for the first time to many that, in this
utilitarian world, old blood must be superseded by young blood.

Two days before the convention, immediately after taking dinner at the
Ripton House with Mr. Nat Billings, Hilary Vane, in response to a
summons, drove up to Fairview. One driving behind him would have observed
that the Honourable Hilary's horse took his own gaits, and that the
reins, most of the time, drooped listlessly on his quarters. A September
stillness was in the air, a September purple clothed the distant hills,
but to Hilary the glories of the day were as things non-existent. Even
the groom at Fairview, who took his horse, glanced back at him with a
peculiar expression as he stood for a moment on the steps with a
hesitancy the man had never before remarked.

In the meantime Mr. Flint, with a pile of letters in a special basket on
the edge of his desk, was awaiting his counsel; the president of the
Northeastern was pacing his room, as was his wont when his activities
were for a moment curbed, or when he had something on his mind; and every
few moments he would glance towards his mantel at the clock which was set
to railroad time. In past days he had never known Hilary Vane to be a
moment late to an appointment. The door was open, and five and twenty
minutes had passed the hour before he saw the lawyer in the doorway. Mr.
Flint was a man of such preoccupation of mind that he was not likely to
be struck by any change there might have been in his counsel's
appearance.

"It's half-past three," he said.

Hilary entered, and sat down beside the window.

"You mean that I'm late," he replied.

"I've got some engineers coming here in less than an hour," said Mr.
Flint.

"I'll be gone in less than an hour," said Hilary.

"Well," said Mr. Flint, "let's get down to hardtack. I've got to be frank
with you, Vane, and tell you plainly that this political business is all
at sixes and sevens."

"It isn't necessary to tell me that," said Hilary.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I know it."

"To put it mildly," the president of the Northeastern continued, "it's
the worst mixed-up campaign I ever knew. Here we are with the convention
only two days off, and we don't know where we stand, how many delegates
we've got, or whether this upstart at Leith is going to be nominated over
our heads. Here's Adam Hunt with his back up, declaring he's a reformer,
and all his section of the State behind him. Now if that could have been
handled otherwise--"

"Who told Hunt to go in?" Hilary inquired.

"Things were different then," said Mr. Flint, vigorously. "Hunt had been
promised the governorship for a long time, and when Ridout became out of
the question--"

"Why did Ridout become out of the question?" asked Hilary.

Mr. Flint made a gesture of impatience.

"On account of that foolishness in the Legislature, of course."

"That foolishness in the Legislature, as you call it, represented a
sentiment all over the State," said Hilary. "And if I'd been you, I
wouldn't have let Hunt in this year. But you didn't ask my opinion. You
asked me when you begged me to get Adam out, and I predicted that he
wouldn't get out."

Mr. Flint took a turn up and down the room.

"I'm sorry I didn't send for him to go to New York," he said.  "Well,
anyway, the campaign's been muddled, that's certain,--whoever muddled
it." And the president looked at his counsel as though he, at least, had
no doubts on this point. But Hilary appeared unaware of the implication,
and made no reply.

"I can't find out what Bascom and Botcher are doing," Mr. Flint went on;
"I don't get any reports--they haven't been here. Perhaps you know.
They've had trip passes enough to move the whole population of Putnam
County. Fairplay says they're gettin' delegates for Adam Hunt instead of
Giles Henderson. And Whitredge says that Jake Botcher is talking reform."

"I guess Botcher and Bascom know their business," said Mr. Vane. If Mr.
Flint had been a less concentrated man, he might have observed that the
Honourable Hilary had not cut a piece of Honey Dew this afternoon.

"What is their business?" asked Mr. Flint--a little irrelevantly for him.

"What you and I taught 'em," said Mr. Vane.

Mr. Flint considered this a moment, and decided to let it pass. He looked
at the Honourable Hilary more closely, however.

"What's the matter with you, Vane? You're not sick, are you?"

"No."

Mr. Flint took another turn.

"Now the question is, what are we going to do? If you've got any plan, I
want to hear it."

Mr. Vane was silent.

"Suppose Crewe goes into the convention with enough delegates to lock it
up, so that none of the three has a majority?"

"I guess he'll do that," said Mr. Vane. He fumbled in his pocket, and
drew out a typewritten list. It must be explained that the caucuses, or
primaries, had been held in the various towns of the State at odd dates,
and that the delegates pledged for the different candidates had been
published in the newspapers from time to time--although very much in
accordance with the desires of their individual newspapers. Mr. Crewe's
delegates necessarily had been announced by what is known as political
advertising. Mr. Flint took the Honourable Hilary's list, ran his eye
over it, and whistled.

"You mean he claims three hundred and fifty out of the thousand."

"No," said Hilary, "he claims six hundred. He'll have three hundred and
fifty."

In spite of the 'Book of Arguments,' Mr. Crewe was to have three hundred!
It was incredible, preposterous. Mr. Flint looked at his counsel once
more, and wondered whether he could be mentally failing.

"Fairplay only gives him two hundred."

"Fairplay only gave him ten, in the beginning," said Hilary.

"You come here two days before the convention and tell me Crewe has three
hundred and fifty!" Mr. Flint exclaimed, as though Hilary Vane were
personally responsible for Mr. Crewe's delegates. A very different tone
from that of other times, when conventions were mere ratifications of
Imperial decrees. "Do you realize what it means if we lose control?
Thousands and thousands of dollars in improvements--rolling stock, better
service, new bridges, and eliminations of grade crossings. And they'll
raise our tax rate to the average, which means thousands more. A new
railroad commission that we can't talk to, and lower dividends--lower
dividends, do you understand? That means trouble with the directors, the
stockholders, and calls for explanations. And what explanations can I
make which can be printed in a public report?"

"You were always pretty good at 'em, Flint," said Hilary.

This remark, as was perhaps natural, did not improve the temper of the
president of the Northeastern.

"If you think I like this political business any better than you do,
you're mightily mistaken," he replied. "And now I want to hear what plan
you've got for the convention. Suppose there's a deadlock, as you say
there will be, how are you going to handle it? Can you get a deal through
between Giles Henderson and Adam Hunt? With all my other work, I've had
to go into this myself. Hunt hasn't got a chance. Bascom and Botcher are
egging him on and making him believe he has. When Hunt gets into the
convention and begins to fall off, you've got to talk to him, Vane. And
his delegates have all got to be seen at the Pelican the night before and
understand that they're to swing to Henderson after two ballots. You've
got to keep your hand on the throttle in the convention, you understand.
And I don't need to impress upon you how grave are the consequences if
this man Crewe gets in, with public sentiment behind him and a
reactionary Lower House. You've got to keep your hand on the throttle."

"That's part of my business, isn't it?" Hilary asked, without turning his
head.

Mr. Flint did not answer, but his eye rested again on his counsel's face.

"I'm that kind of a lawyer," Hilary continued, apparently more to himself
than to his companion. "You pay me for that sort of thing more than for
the work I do in the courts. Isn't that so, Flint?"

Mr. Flint was baffled. Two qualities which were very dear to him he
designated as sane and safe, and he had hitherto regarded his counsel as
the sanest and safest of men. This remark made him wonder seriously
whether the lawyer's mind were not giving away; and if so, to whom was he
to turn at this eleventh hour? No man in the State knew the ins and outs
of conventions as did Hilary Vane; and, in the rare times when there had
been crises, he had sat quietly in the little room off the platform as at
the keyboard of an organ, and the delegates had responded to his touch.
Hilary Vane had named the presidents of conventions, and the committees,
and by pulling out stops could get such resolutions as he wished--or as
Mr. Flint wished. But now?

Suddenly a suspicion invaded Mr. Flint's train of thought; he repeated
Hilary's words over to himself. "I'm that kind of a lawyer," and another
individuality arose before the president of the Northeastern. Instincts
are curious things. On the day, some years before, when Austen Vane had
brought his pass into this very room and laid it down on his desk, Mr.
Flint had recognized a man with whom he would have to deal,--a stronger
man than Hilary. Since then he had seen Austen's hand in various
disturbing matters, and now it was as if he heard Austen speaking. "I'm
that kind of a lawyer." Not Hilary Vane, but Hilary Vane's son was
responsible for Hilary Vane's condition--this recognition came to Mr.
Flint in a flash. Austen had somehow accomplished the incredible feat of
making Hilary Vane ashamed--and when such men as Hilary are ashamed,
their usefulness is over. Mr. Flint had seen the thing happen with a
certain kind of financiers, one day aggressive, combative, and the next
broken, querulous men. Let a man cease to believe in what he is doing,
and he loses force.

The president of the Northeastern used a locomotive as long as possible,
but when it ceased to be able to haul a train up-grade, he sent it to the
scrap-heap. Mr. Flint was far from being a bad man, but he worshipped
power, and his motto was the survival of the fittest. He did not yet feel
pity for Hilary--for he was angry. Only contempt,--contempt that one who
had been a power should come to this. To draw a somewhat far-fetched
parallel, a Captain Kidd or a Caesar Borgia with a conscience would never
have been heard of. Mr. Flint did not call it a conscience--he had a
harder name for it. He had to send Hilary, thus vitiated, into the
Convention to conduct the most important battle since the founding of the
Empire, and Austen Vane was responsible.

Mr. Flint had to control himself. In spite of his feelings, he saw that
he must do so. And yet he could not resist saying: "I get a good many
rumours here. They tell me that there may be another candidate in the
field--a dark horse."

"Who?" asked Hilary.

"There was a meeting in the room of a man named Redbrook during the
Legislature to push this candidate," said Mr. Flint, eyeing his counsel
significantly, "and now young Gaylord has been going quietly around the
State in his interest."

Suddenly the listless figure of Hilary Vane straightened, and the old
look which had commanded the respect and obedience of men returned to his
eye.

"You mean my son?" he demanded.

"Yes," said Mr. Flint; "they tell me that when the time comes, your, son
will be a candidate on a platform opposed to our interests."

"Then," said Hilary, "they tell you a damned lie."

Hilary Vane had not sworn for a quarter of a century, and yet it is to be
doubted if he ever spoke more nobly. He put his hands on the arms of his
chair and lifted himself to his feet, where he stood for a moment, a tell
figure to be remembered. Mr. Flint remembered it for many years. Hilary
Vane's long coat was open, and seemed in itself to express this strange
and new-found vigour in its flowing lines; his head was thrown back, and
a look on his face which Mr. Flint had never seen there. He drew from an
inner pocket a long envelope, and his hand trembled, though with seeming
eagerness, as he held it out to Mr. Flint.

"Here!" he said.

"What's this?" asked Mr. Flint. He evinced no desire to take it, but
Hilary pressed it on him.

"My resignation as counsel for your road."

The president of the Northeastern, bewildered by this sudden
transformation, stared at the envelope.

"What? Now--to-day?" he said.

"No," answered Hilary; "read it. You'll see it takes effect the day after
the State convention. I'm not much use any more you've done your best to
bring that home to me, and you'll need a new man to do--the kind of work
I've been doing for you for twenty-five years. But you can't get a new
man in a day, and I said I'd stay with you, and I keep my word. I'll go
to the convention; I'll do my best for you, as I always have. But I don't
like it, and after that I'm through. After that I become a
lawyer--lawyer, do you understand?"

"A lawyer?" Mr. Flint repeated.

"Yes, a lawyer. Ever since last June, when I came up here, I've realized
what I was. A Brush Bascom, with a better education and more brains, but
a Brush Bascom--with the brains prostituted. While things were going
along smoothly I didn't know--you never attempted to talk to me this way
before. Do you remember how you took hold of me that day, and begged me
to stay? I do, and I stayed. Why? Because I was a friend of yours.
Association with you for twenty-five years had got under my skin, and I
thought it had got under yours." Hilary let his hand fall. "To-day you've
given me a notion of what friendship is. You've given me a chance to
estimate myself on a new basis, and I'm much obliged to you for that. I
haven't got many years left, but I'm glad to have found out what my life
has been worth before I die."

He buttoned up his coat slowly, glaring at Mr. Flint the while with a
courage and a defiance that were superb. And he had picked up his hat
before Mr. Flint found his tongue.

"You don't mean that, Vane," he cried. "My God, think what you've said!"

Hilary pointed at the desk with a shaking finger.

"If that were a scaffold, and a rope were around my neck, I'd say it over
again. And I thank God I've had a chance to say it to you." He paused,
cleared his throat, and continued in a voice that all at once had become
unemotional and natural. "I've three tin boxes of the private papers you
wanted. I didn't think of 'em to-day, but I'll bring 'em up to you myself
on Thursday."

Mr. Flint reflected afterwards that what made him helpless must have been
the sudden change in Hilary's manner to the commonplace. The president of
the Northeastern stood where he was, holding the envelope in his hand,
apparently without the power to move or speak. He watched the tall form
of his chief counsel go through the doorway, and something told him that
that exit was coincident with the end of an era.

The end of an era of fraud, of self-deception, of conditions that
violated every sacred principle of free government which men had shed
blood to obtain.




CHAPTER XXIV

AN ADVENTURE OF VICTORIA'S

Mrs. Pomfret was a proud woman, for she had at last obtained the consent
of the lion to attend a lunch party. She would have liked a dinner much
better, but beggars are not choosers, and she seized eagerly on the
lunch. The two days before the convention Mr. Crewe was to spend at
Leith; having continual conferences, of course, receiving delegations,
and discussing with prominent citizens certain offices which would be in
his gift when he became governor. Also, there was Mr. Watling's
nominating speech to be gone over carefully, and Mr. Crewe's own speech
of acceptance to be composed. He had it in his mind, and he had decided
that it should have two qualities: it should be brief and forceful.

Gratitude, however, is one of the noblest qualities of man, and a
statesman should not fail to reward his faithful workers and adherents.
As one of the chiefest of these, Mrs. Pomfret was entitled to high
consideration. Hence the candidate had consented to have a lunch given in
his honour, naming the day and the hour; and Mrs. Pomfret, believing that
a prospective governor should possess some of the perquisites of royalty,
in a rash moment submitted for his approval a list of guests. This
included two distinguished foreigners who were staying at the Leith Inn,
an Englishman and an Austrian, and an elderly lady of very considerable
social importance who was on a visit to Mrs. Pomfret.

Mr. Crewe had graciously sanctioned the list, but took the liberty of
suggesting as an addition to it the name of Miss Victoria Flint,
explaining over the telephone to Mrs. Pomfret that he had scarcely seen
Victoria all summer, and that he wanted particularly to see her. Mrs.
Pomfret declared that she had only left out Victoria because her presence
might be awkward for both of them, but Mr. Crewe waved this aside as a
trivial and feminine objection; so Victoria was invited, and another
young man to balance the table.

Mrs. Pomfret, as may have been surmised, was a woman of taste, and her
villa at Leith, though small, had added considerably to her reputation
for this quality. Patterson Pomfret had been a gentleman with red cheeks
and an income, who incidentally had been satisfied with both. He had
never tried to add to the income, which was large enough to pay the dues
of the clubs the lists of which he thought worthy to include his name;
large enough to pay hotel bills in London and Paris and at the baths, and
to free the servants at country houses; large enough to clothe his wife
and himself, and to teach Alice the three essentials of music, French,
and deportment. If that man is notable who has mastered one thing well,
Patterson Pomfret was a notable man: he had mastered the possibilities of
his income, and never in any year had he gone beyond it by so much as a
sole d vin blanc or a pair of red silk stockings. When he died, he left a
worthy financial successor in his wife.

Mrs. Pomfret, knowing the income, after an exhaustive search decided upon
Leith as the place to build her villa. It must be credited to her
foresight that, when she built, she saw the future possibilities of the
place. The proper people had started it. And it must be credited to her
genius that she added to these possibilities of Leith by bringing to it
such families as she thought worthy to live in the neighbourhood
--families which incidentally increased the value of the land. Her villa
had a decided French look, and was so amazingly trim and neat and
generally shipshape as to be fit--for only the daintiest and most
discriminating feminine occupation. The house was small, and its
metamorphosis from a plain wooden farm-house had been an achievement that
excited general admiration. Porches had been added, and a coat of
spotless white relieved by an orange striping so original that many
envied, but none dared to copy it. The striping went around the white
chimneys, along the cornice, under the windows and on the railings of the
porch: there were window boxes gay with geraniums and abundant awnings
striped white and red, to match the flowers: a high, formal hemlock hedge
hid the house from the road, through which entered a blue-stone drive
that cut the close-cropped lawn and made a circle to the doorway. Under
the great maples on the lawn were a tea-table, rugs, and wicker chairs,
and the house itself was furnished by a variety of things of a design not
to be bought in the United States of America: desks, photograph frames,
writing-sets, clocks, paperknives, flower baskets, magazine racks,
cigarette boxes, and dozens of other articles for the duplicates of which
one might have searched Fifth Avenue in vain.

Mr. Crewe was a little late. Important matters, he said, had detained him
at the last moment, and he particularly enjoined Mrs. Pomfret's butler to
listen carefully for the telephone, and twice during lunch it was
announced that Mr. Crewe was wanted. At first he was preoccupied, and
answered absently across the table the questions of the Englishman and
the Austrian about American politics, and talked to the lady of social
prominence on his right not at all; nor to Mrs. Pomfret'--who excused
him. Being a lady of discerning qualities, however, the hostess remarked
that Mr. Crewe's eyes wandered more than once to the far end of the oval
table, where Victoria sat, and even Mrs. Pomfret could not deny the
attraction. Victoria wore a filmy gown of mauve that infinitely became
her, and a shadowy hat which, in the semi-darkness of the dining room,
was a wondrous setting for her shapely head. Twice she caught Mr. Crewe's
look upon her and returned it amusedly from under her lashes,--and once
he could have sworn that she winked perceptibly. What fires she kindled
in his deep nature it is impossible to say.

She had kindled other fires at her side. The tall young Englishman had
lost interest in American politics, had turned his back upon poor Alice
Pomfret, and had forgotten the world in general. Not so the Austrian, who
was on the other side of Alice, and who could not see Victoria. Mr.
Crewe, by his manner and appearance, had impressed him as a person of
importance, and he wanted to know more. Besides, he wished to improve his
English, and Alice had been told to speak French to him. By a lucky
chance, after several blind attempts, he awakened the interest of the
personality.

"I hear you are what they call reform in America?"

This was not the question that opened the gates.

"I don't care much for the word," answered Mr. Crewe, shortly; "I prefer
the word progressive."

Discourse on the word "progressive" by the Austrian almost a monologue.
But he was far from being discouraged.

"And Mrs. Pomfret tells me they play many detestable tricks on you--yes?"

"Tricks!" exclaimed Mr. Crewe, the memory of many recent ones being fresh
in his mind; "I should say so. Do you know what a caucus is?"

"Caucus--caucus? It brings something to my head. Ah, I have seen a
picture of it, in some English book. A very funny picture--it is in fun,
yes?"

"A picture?" said Mr. Crewe. "Impossible!"

"But no," said the Austrian, earnestly, with one finger to his temples.
"It is a funny picture, I know. I cannot recall. But the word caucus I
remember. That is a droll word."

"Perhaps, Baron," said Victoria, who had been resisting an almost
uncontrollable desire to laugh, "you have been reading 'Alice in
Wonderland.'"

The Englishman, Beatrice Chillingham, and some others (among whom were
not Mr. Crewe and Mrs. Pomfret) gave way to an extremely pardonable
mirth, in which the good-natured baron joined.

"Ach!" he cried. "It is so, I have seen it in 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
Here the puzzled expression returned to his face, "But they are birds,
are they not?"

Men whose minds are on serious things are impatient of levity, and Mr.
Crewe looked at the baron:

"No," he said, "they are not birds."

This reply was the signal for more laughter.

"A thousand pardons," exclaimed the baron. "It is I who am so ignorant.
You will excuse me--yes?"

Mr. Crewe was mollified. The baron was a foreigner, he had been the
object of laughter, and Mr. Crewe's chivalrous spirit resented it.

"What we call a caucus in the towns of this State," he said, "is a
meeting of citizens of one party to determine who their candidates shall
be. A caucus is a primary. There is a very loose primary law in this
State, purposely kept loose by the politicians of the Northeastern
Railroads, in order that they may play such tricks on decent men as they
have been playing on me."

At this mention of the Northeastern Railroads the lady on Mr. Crewe's
right, and some other guests, gave startled glances at Victoria. They
observed with surprise that she seemed quite unmoved.

"I'll tell you one or two of the things those railroad lobbyists have
done," said Mr. Crewe, his indignation rising with the subject, and still
addressing the baron. "They are afraid to let the people into the
caucuses, because they know I'll get the delegates. Nearly everywhere I
speak to the people, I get the delegates. The railroad politicians send
word to the town rings to hold snap caucuses' when they hear I'm coming
into a town to speak, and the local politicians give out notices only a
day before, and only to the voters they want in the caucus. In Hull the
other day, out of a population of two thousand, twenty men elected four
delegates for the railroad candidate."

"It is corruption!" cried the baron, who had no idea who Victoria was,
and a very slim notion of what Mr. Crewe was talking about.

"Corruption!" said Mr. Crewe. "What can you expect when a railroad owns a
State? The other day in Britain, where they elect fourteen delegates, the
editor of a weekly newspaper printed false ballots with two of my men at
the top and one at the bottom, and eleven railroad men in the middle.
Fortunately some person with sense discovered the fraud before it was too
late."

"You don't tell me!" said the baron.

"And every State and federal office-holder has been distributing passes
for the last three weeks."

"Pass?" repeated the baron. "You mean they fight with the fist--so? To
distribute a pass--so," and the baron struck out at an imaginary enemy.
"It is the American language. I have read it in the prize-fight. I am
told to read the prize-fight and the base-ball game."

Mr. Crewe thought it obviously useless to continue this conversation.

"The railroad," said the baron, "he is the modern Machiavelli."

"I say," Mr. Rangely, the Englishman, remarked to Victoria, "this is a
bit rough on you, you know."

"Oh, I'm used to it," she laughed.

"Mr. Crewe," said Mrs. Pomfret, to the table at large, "deserves
tremendous credit for the fight he has made, almost single-handed. Our
greatest need in this country is what you have in England, Mr. Rangely,
--gentlemen in politics. Our country gentlemen, like Mr. Crewe, are now
going to assume their proper duties and responsibilities." She laid her
napkin on the table and glanced at Alice as she continued: "Humphrey, I
shall have to appoint you, as usual, the man of the house. Will you take
the gentlemen into the library?"

Another privilege of celebrity is to throw away one's cigar, and walk out
of the smoking room if one is bored. Mr. Crewe was, in a sense, the host.
He indicated with a wave of his hand the cigars and cigarettes which Mrs.
Pomfret had provided, and stood in a thoughtful manner before the empty
fireplace, with his hands in his pockets, replying in brief sentences to
the questions of Mr. Chillingham and the others. To tell the truth, Mr.
Crewe was bringing to bear all of his extraordinary concentration of mind
upon a problem with which he had been occupied for some years past. He
was not a man, as we know, to take the important steps of life in a
hurry, although; like the truly great, he was capable of making up his
mind in a very brief period when it was necessary to strike. He had now,
after weighing the question with the consideration which its gravity
demanded, finally decided upon definite action. Whereupon he walked out
of the library, leaving the other guests to comment as they would; or not
comment at all, for all he cared. Like all masterful men, he went direct
to the thing he wanted.

The ladies were having coffee under the maples, by the tea-table. At some
little distance from the group Beatrice Chillingham was walking with
Victoria, and it was evident that Victoria found Miss Chillingham's
remarks amusing. These were the only two in the party who did not observe
Mr. Crewe's approach. Mrs. Pomfret, when she saw the direction which he
was taking, lost the thread of her conversation, and the lady who was
visiting her wore a significant expression.

"Victoria," said Mr. Crewe, "let's go around to the other side of the
house and look at the view."

Victoria started and turned to him from Miss Chillingham, with the fun
still sparkling in her eyes. It was, perhaps, as well for Mr. Crewe that
he had not overheard their conversation; but this might have applied to
any man.

"Are you sure you can spare the time?" she asked.

Mr. Crewe looked at his watch--probably from habit.

"I made it a point to leave the smoking room early," he replied.

"We're flattered--aren't we, Beatrice?"

Miss Chillingham had a turned-up nose, and a face which was apt to be
slightly freckled at this time of year; for she contemned vanity and
veils. For fear of doing her an injustice, it must be added that she was
not at all bad-looking; quite the contrary All that can be noted in this
brief space is that Beatrice Chillingham was herself. Some people
declared that she was possessed of the seven devils of her sex which Mr.
Stockton wrote about.

"I'm flattered," she said, and walked off towards the tea-table with a
glance in which Victoria read many meanings. Mr. Crewe paid no attention
either to words, look, or departure.

"I want to talk to you," he said.

"You've made that very plain, at least," answered Victoria. "Why did you
pretend it was the view?"

"Some conventionalities have to be observed, I suppose," he said. "Let's
go around there. It is a good view."

"Don't you think this is a little--marked?" asked Victoria, surveying him
with her hands behind her back.

"I can't help it if it is," said Mr. Crewe. "Every hour is valuable to
me, and I've got to take my chances when I get 'em. For some reason, you
haven't been down at Leith much this summer. Why didn't you telephone me,
as I asked you."

"Because I've suddenly grown dignified, I suppose," she said. "And then,
of course, I hesitated to intrude upon such a person of importance as you
have become, Humphrey."

"I've always got time to see you," he replied. "I always shall have. But
I appreciate your delicacy. That sort of thing counts with a man more
than most women know."

"Then I am repaid," said Victoria, "for exercising self-control."

"I find it always pays," declared Mr. Crewe, and he glanced at her with
distinct approval. They were skirting the house, and presently came out
upon a tiny terrace where young Ridley had made a miniature Italian
garden when the Electric dividends had increased, and from which there
was a vista of the shallows of the Blue. Here was a stone garden-seat
which Mrs. Pomfret had brought from Italy, and over which she had
quarrelled with the customs authorities. Mr. Crewe, with a wave of his
hand, signified his pleasure that they should sit, and cleared his
throat.

"It's just as well, perhaps," he began, "that we haven't had the chance
to see each other earlier. When a man starts out upon an undertaking of
the gravest importance, wherein he stakes his reputation, an undertaking
for which he is ridiculed and reviled, he likes to have his judgment
justified. He likes to be vindicated, especially in the eyes of--people
whom he cares about. Personally, I never had any doubt that I should be
the next governor, because I knew in the beginning that I had estimated
public sentiment correctly. The man who succeeds in this world is the man
who has sagacity enough to gauge public sentiment ahead of time, and the
courage to act on his beliefs." Victoria looked at him steadily. He was
very calm, and he had one knee crossed over the other.

"And the sagacity," she added, "to choose his lieutenants in the fight."

"Exactly," said Mr. Crewe. "I have always declared, Victoria, that you
had a natural aptitude for affairs."

"I have heard my father say," she continued, still maintaining her steady
glance, "that Hamilton Tooting is one of the shrewdest politicians he has
ever known. Isn't Mr. Tooting one of your right-hand men?"

"He could hardly be called that," Mr. Crewe replied. "In fact, I haven't
any what you might call 'right-hand men.' The large problems I have had
to decide for myself. As for Tooting, he's well enough in his way; he
understands the tricks of the politicians--he's played 'em, I guess. He's
uneducated; he's merely a worker. You see," he went on, "one great reason
why I've been so successful is because I've been practical. I've taken
materials as I've found them."

"I see," answered Victoria, turning her head and gazing over the terrace
at the sparkling reaches of the river. She remembered the close of that
wintry afternoon in Mr. Crewe's house at the capital, and she was quite
willing to do him exact justice, and to believe that he had forgotten it
--which, indeed, was the case.

"I want to say," he continued, "that although I have known and--ahem
--admired you for many years, Victoria, what has struck me most forcibly
in your favour has been your open-mindedness--especially on the great
political questions this summer. I have no idea how much you know about
them, but one would naturally have expected you, on account of your
father, to be prejudiced. Sometime, when I have more leisure, I shall go
into them, fully with you. And in the meantime I'll have my secretary
send you the complete list of my speeches up to date, and I know you will
read them carefully."

"You are very kind, Humphrey," she said.

Absorbed in the presentation of his subject (which chanced to be
himself), Mr. Crewe did not observe that her lips were parted, and that
there were little creases around her eyes.

"And sometime," said Mr. Crewe, when all this has blown over a little, I
shall have a talk with your father. He undoubtedly understands that there
is scarcely any question of my election. He probably realizes, too, that
he has been in the--wrong, and that railroad domination must cease--he
has already made several concessions, as you know. I wish you would tell
him from me that when I am governor, I shall make it a point to discuss
the whole matter with him, and that he will find in me no foe of
corporations. Justice is what I stand for. Temperamentally, I am too
conservative, I am too much of a business man, to tamper with vested
interests."

"I will tell him, Humphrey," said Victoria.

Mr. Crewe coughed, and looked at his watch once, more. "And now, having
made that clear," he said, "and having only a quarter of an hour before I
have to leave to keep an appointment, I am going to take up another
subject. And I ask you to believe it is not done lightly, or without due
consideration, but as the result of some years of thought."

Victoria turned to him seriously--and yet the creases were still around
her eyes.

"I can well believe it, Humphrey," she answered. "But--have you time?"

"Yes," he said, "I have learned the value of minutes."

"But not of hours, perhaps," she replied.

"That," said Mr. Crewe, indulgently, "is a woman's point of view. A man
cannot dally through life, and your kind of woman has no use for a man
who dallies. First, I will give you my idea of a woman."

"I am all attention," said Victoria.

"Well," said Mr. Crewe, putting the tops of his fingers together, "she
should excel as a housewife. I haven't any use for your so-called
intellectual woman. Of course, what I mean by a housewife is something a
little less bourgeoise; she should be able to conduct an establishment
with the neatness and despatch and economy of a well-run hotel. She
should be able to seat a table instantly and accurately, giving to the
prominent guests the prestige they deserve. Nor have I any sympathy with
the notion that makes a married woman a law unto herself. She enters
voluntarily into an agreement whereby she puts herself under the control
of her husband: his interests, his career, his--"

"Comfort?" suggested Victoria.

"Yes, his comfort--all that comes first. And his establishment is
conducted primarily, and his guests selected, in the interests of his
fortunes. Of course, that goes without saying of a man in high place in
public life. But he must choose for his wife a woman who is equal to all
these things,--to my mind her highest achievement,--who makes the most of
the position he gives her, presides at his table and entertainments, and
reaches such people as, for any reason, he is unable to reach. I have
taken the pains to point out these things in a general way, for obvious
reasons. My greatest desire is to be fair."

"What," asked Victoria, with her eyes on the river, "what are the wages?"

Mr. Crewe laughed. Incidentally, he thought her profile very fine.

"I do not believe in flattery," he said, "but I think I should add to the
qualifications personality and a sense of humour. I am quite sure I could
never live with a woman--who didn't have a sense of humour."

"I should think it would be a little difficult," said Victoria, "to get a
woman with the qualifications you enumerate and a sense of humour thrown
in."

"Infinitely difficult," declared Mr. Crewe, with more ardour than he had
yet shown. "I have waited a good many years, Victoria."

"And yet," she said, "you have been happy. You have a perpetual source of
enjoyment denied to some people."

"What is that?" he asked. It is natural for a man to like to hear the
points of his character discussed by a discerning woman.

"Yourself," said Victoria, suddenly looking him full in the face. "You
are complete, Humphrey, as it is. You are happily married already.
Besides," she added, laughing a little, "the qualities you have
mentioned--with the exception of the sense of humour--are not those of a
wife, but of a business partner of the opposite sex. What you really want
is a business partner with something like a fifth interest, and whose
name shall not appear in the agreement."

Mr. Crewe laughed again. Nevertheless, he was a little puzzled over this
remark.

"I am not sentimental," he began.

"You certainly are not," she said.

"You have a way," he replied, with a shade of reproof in his voice, "you
have a way at times of treating serious things with a little less gravity
than they deserve. I am still a young man, but I have seen a good deal of
life, and I know myself pretty well. It is necessary to treat matrimony
from a practical as well as a sentimental point of view. There wouldn't
be half the unhappiness and divorces if people took time to do this,
instead of rushing off and getting married immediately. And of course it
is especially important for a man in my position to study every aspect of
the problem before he takes a step."

By this time a deep and absorbing interest in a new aspect of Mr. Crewe's
character had taken possession of Victoria.

"And you believe that, by taking thought, you can get the kind of a wife
you want?" she asked.

"Certainly," he replied; "does that strike you as strange?"

"A little," said Victoria. "Suppose," she added gently, "suppose that the
kind of wife you'd want wouldn't want you?"

Mr. Crewe laughed again.

"That is a contingency which a strong man does not take into
consideration," he answered. "Strong men get what they want. But upon my
word, Victoria, you have a delicious way of putting things. In your
presence I quite forget the problems and perplexities which beset me.
That," he said, with delicate meaning, "that is another quality I should
desire in a woman."

"It is one, fortunately, that isn't marketable," she said, "and it's the
only quality you've mentioned that's worth anything."

"A woman's valuation," said Mr. Crewe.

"If it made you forget your own affairs, it would be priceless."

"Look here, Victoria," cried Mr. Crewe, uncrossing his knees, "joking's
all very well, but I haven't time for it to-day. And I'm in a serious
mood. I've told you what I want, and now that I've got to go in a few
minutes, I'll come to the point. I don't suppose a man could pay a woman
a higher compliment than to say that his proposal was the result of some
years of thought and study."

Here Victoria laughed outright, but grew serious again at once.

"Unless he proposed to her the day he met her. That would be a real
compliment."

"The man," said Mr. Crewe, impatiently, "would be a fool."

"Or else a person of extreme discernment," said Victoria. "And love is
lenient with fools. By the way, Humphrey, it has just occurred to me that
there's one quality which some people think necessary in a wife, which
you didn't mention."

"What's that?"

"Love," said Victoria.

"Love, of course," he agreed; "I took that for granted."

"I supposed you did," said Victoria, meekly.

"Well, now, to come to the point--" he began again.

But she interrupted him by glancing at the watch on her gown, and rising.

"What's the matter?" he asked, with some annoyance.

"The fifteen minutes are up," she announced. "I cannot take the
responsibility of detaining you."

"We will put in tantalizing as another attractive quality," he laughed.
"I absolve you of all responsibility. Sit down."

"I believe you mentioned obedience," she answered, and sat down again at
the end of the bench, resting her chin on her gloved hand, and looking at
him. By this time her glances seemed to have gained a visibly disturbing
effect. He moved a little nearer to her, took off his hat (which he had
hitherto neglected to do), and thrust his hands abruptly into his
pockets--as much as to say that he would not be responsible for their
movements if they were less free.

"Hang it all, Victoria," he exclaimed, "I'm a practical man, and I try to
look at this, which is one of the serious things in life, in a practical
way."

"One of the serious things," she repeated, as though to herself.

"Yes," he said, "certainly."

"I merely asked to be sure of the weight you gave it. Go on."

"In a practical way, as I was saying. Long ago I suspected that you had
most of those qualities."

"I'm overwhelmed, Humphrey," she cried, with her eyes dancing.  "But--do
you think I could cultivate the rest?"

"Oh, well," said Mr. Crewe, I put it that way because no woman is
perfect, and I dislike superlatives."

"I should think superlatives would be very hard to live with," she
reflected. "But--dreadful thought!--suppose I should lack an essential?"

"What--for instance?"

"Love--for instance. But then you did not put it first. It was I who
mentioned it, and you who took it for granted."

"Affection seems to be a more sensible term for it," he said. "Affection
is the lasting and sensible thing. You mentioned a partnership, a word
that singularly fits into my notion of marriage. I want to be honest with
you, and understate my feelings on that subject."

Victoria, who had been regarding him with a curious look that puzzled
him, laughed again.

"I have been hoping you haven't exaggerated them," she replied.

"They're stronger than you think," he declared. "I never felt this way in
my life before. What I meant to say was, that I never understood running
away with a woman."

"That does not surprise me," said Victoria.

"I shouldn't know where to run to," he proclaimed.

"Perhaps the woman would, if you got a clever one. At any rate, it
wouldn't matter. One place is as good as another. Some go to Niagara, and
some to Coney Island, and others to Venice. Personally, I should have no
particular preference."

"No preference!" he exclaimed.

"I could be happy in Central Park," she declared.

"Fortunately," said Mr. Crewe, "you will never be called upon to make the
trial."

Victoria was silent. Her thoughts, for the moment, had flown elsewhere,
but Mr. Crewe did not appear to notice this. He fell back into the
rounded hollow of the bench, and it occurred to him that he had never
quite realized that profile. And what an ornament she would be to his
table.

"I think, Humphrey," she said, "that we should be going back."

"One moment, and I'll have finished," he cried. "I've no doubt you are
prepared for what I am going to say. I have purposely led up to it, in
order that there might be no misunderstanding. In short, I have never
seen another woman with personal characteristics so well suited for my
life, and I want you to marry me, Victoria. I can offer you the position
of the wife of a man with a public career--for which you are so well
fitted."

Victoria shook her head slowly, and smiled at him.

"I couldn't fill the position," she said.

"Perhaps," he replied, smiling back at her, "perhaps I am the best judge
of that."

"And you thought," she asked slowly, "that I was that kind of a woman?"

"I know it to be a practical certainty," said Mr. Crewe.

"Practical certainties," said Victoria, "are not always truths. If I
should sign a contract, which I suppose, as a business man, you would
want, to live up to the letter of your specifications,--even then I could
not do it. I should make life a torture for you, Humphrey. You see, I am
honest with you, too--much as your offer dazzles me." And she shook her
head again.

"That," exclaimed Mr. Crewe, impatiently, "is sheer nonsense. I want you,
and I mean to have you."

There came a look into her eyes which Mr. Crewe did not see, because her
face was turned from him.

"I could be happy," she said, "for days and weeks and years in a but on
the side of Sawanec. I could be happy in a farm-house where I had to do
all the work. I am not the model housewife which your imagination
depicts, Humphrey. I could live in two rooms and eat at an Italian
restaurant--with the right man. And I am afraid the wrong one would wake
up one day and discover that I had gone. I am sorry to disillusionize
you, but I don't care a fig for balls and garden-parties and salons. It
would be much more fun to run away from them to the queer places of the
earth--with the right man. And I should have to possess one essential to
put up with--greatness and what you call a public career."

"And what is that essential?" he asked.

"Love," said Victoria. He heard the word but faintly, for her face was
still turned away from him. "You've offered me the things that are
attainable by taking thought, by perseverance, by pertinacity, by the
outwitting of your fellow-men, by the stacking of coins. And I want--the
unattainable, the divine gift which is bestowed, which cannot be
acquired. If it could be acquired, Humphrey," she added, looking at him,
"I am sure you would acquire it--if you thought it worth while."

"I don't understand you," he said,--and looked it.

"No," said Victoria, "I was afraid you wouldn't. And moreover, you never
would. There is no use in my trying to make myself any clearer, and
you'll have to keep your appointment. I hesitate to contradict you, but I
am not the kind of woman you want. That is one reason I cannot marry you.
And the other is, that I do not love you."

"You can't be in love with any one else?" he cried.

"That does seem rather preposterous, I'll admit," she answered. "But if I
were, it wouldn't make any difference."

"You won't marry me?" he said, getting to his feet. There was incredulity
in his voice, and a certain amount of bewilderment. The thing was indeed
incredible!

"No," said Victoria, "I won't."

And he had only to look into her face to see that it was so. Hitherto nil
desperandum had been a good working motto, but something told him it was
useless in this case. He thrust on his hat and pulled out his watch.

"Well," he said, "that settles it. I must--say I can't see your point of
view--but that settles it. I must say, too, that your refusal is
something of a shock after what I had been led to expect after the past
few years."

"The person you are in love with led you to expect it, Humphrey, and that
person is--yourself. You are in love temporarily with your own ideal of
me."

"And your refusal comes at an unfortunate tune for me," he continued, not
heeding her words, "when I have an affair on my hands of such magnitude,
which requires concentrated thought. But I'm not a man to cry, and I'll
make the best of it."

"If I thought it were more than a temporary disappointment, I should be
sorry for you," said Victoria. "I remember that you felt something like
this when Mr. Rutter wouldn't sell you his land. The lady you really
want," she added, pointing with her parasol at the house, "is in there,
waiting for you."

Mr. Crewe did not reply to this prophecy, but followed Victoria around
the house to the group on the lawn, where he bade his hostess a somewhat
preoccupied farewell, and bowed distantly to the guests.

"He has so much on his mind," said Mrs. Pomfret. "And oh, I quite
forgot--Humphrey!" she cried, calling after him, "Humphrey!"

"Yes," he said, turning before he reached his automobile. "What is it?"

"Alice and I are going to the convention, you know, and I meant to tell
you that there would be ten in the party--but I didn't have a chance."
Here Mrs. Pomfret glanced at Victoria, who had been joined at once by the
tall Englishman.  "Can you get tickets for ten?"

Mr. Crewe made a memorandum.

"Yes," he said, "I'll get the tickets--but I don't see what you want to
go for."




CHAPTER XXV

MORE ADVENTURER

Victoria had not, of course, confided in Beatrice Chillingham what had
occurred in the garden, although that lady had exhibited the liveliest
interest, and had had her suspicions. After Mr. Crewe's departure Mr.
Rangely, the tall young Englishman, had renewed his attentions
assiduously, although during the interval in the garden he had found Miss
Chillingham a person of discernment.

"She's not going to marry that chap, is she, Miss Chillingham?" he had
asked.

"No," said Beatrice; "you have my word for it, she isn't."

As she was leaving, Mrs. Pomfret had taken Victoria's hand and drawn her
aside, and looked into her face with a meaning smile.

"My dear!" she exclaimed, "he particularly asked that you be invited."

"Who?" said Victoria.

"Humphrey. He stipulated that you should be here."

"Then I'm very much obliged to him," said Victoria, "for I've enjoyed
myself immensely. I like your Englishman so much."

"Do you?" said Mrs. Pomfret, searching Victoria's face, while her own
brightened. "He's heir to one of the really good titles, and he has an
income of his own. I couldn't put him up here, in this tiny box, because
I have Mrs. Fronde. We are going to take him to the convention--and if
you'd care to go, Victoria--?"

Victoria laughed.

"It isn't as serious as that," she said. "And I'm afraid I can't go to
the convention--I have some things to do in the neighbourhood."

Mrs. Pomfret looked wise.

"He's a most attractive man, with the best prospects. It would be a
splendid match for you, Victoria."

"Mrs. Pomfret," replied Victoria, wavering between amusement and a desire
to be serious, "I haven't the slightest intention of making what you call
a 'match.'" And there was in her words a ring of truth not to be
mistaken.

Mrs. Pomfret kissed her.

"One never can tell what may happen," she said. "Think of him, Victoria.
And your dear mother--perhaps you will know some day what the
responsibility is of seeing a daughter well placed in life."

Victoria coloured, and withdrew her hand.

"I fear that time is a long way off, Mrs. Pomfret," she replied.

"I think so much of Victoria," Mrs. Pomfret declared a moment later to
her guest; "she's like my own daughter. But at times she's so hopelessly
unconventional. Why, I believe Rangely's actually going home with her."

"He asked her to drop him at the Inn," said Mrs. Fronde. "He's head over
heels in love already."

"It would be such a relief to dear Rose," sighed Mrs. Pomfret.

"I like the girl," replied Mrs. Fronde, dryly. "She has individuality,
and knows her own mind. Whoever she marries will have something to him."

"I devoutly hope so!" said Mrs. Pomfret.

It was quite true that Mr. Arthur Rangely had asked Victoria to drop him
at the Inn. But when they reached it he made another request.

"Do you mind if I go a bit farther, Miss Flint?" he suggested. "I'd
rather like the walk back."

Victoria laughed.

"Do come," she said.

He admired the country, but he looked at Victoria, and asked a hundred
exceedingly frank questions about Leith, about Mrs. Pomfret, whom he had
met at his uncle's seat in Devonshire, and about Mr. Crewe and the
railroads in politics. Many of these Victoria parried, and she came
rapidly to the conclusion that Mr. Arthur Rangely was a more astute
person than--to a casual observer he would seem.

He showed no inclination to fix the limits of his walk, and made no
protest as she drove under the stone archway at the entrance of Fairview.
Victoria was amused and interested, and she decided that she liked Mr.
Rangely.

"Will you come up for tea?" she asked. "I'll send you home."

He accepted with alacrity. They had reached the first turn when their
attention was caught by the sight of a buggy ahead of them, and facing
towards them. The horse, with the reins hanging loosely over the shafts,
had strayed to the side of the driveway and was contentedly eating the
shrubbery that lined it. Inside the vehicle, hunched up in the corner of
the seat, was a man who presented an appearance of helplessness which
struck them both with a sobering effect.

"Is the fellow drunk?" said Mr. Rangely.

Victoria's answer was a little cry which startled him, and drew his look
to her. She had touched her horse with the whip, and her eyes had widened
in real alarm.

"It's Hilary Vane!" she exclaimed. "I--I wonder what can have happened!"

She handed the reins to Mr. Rangely, and sprang out and flew to Hilary's
side.

"Mr. Vane!" she cried. "What's the matter? Are you ill?"

She had never seen him look so. To her he had always been as one on whom
pity would be wasted, as one who long ago had established his credit with
the universe to his own satisfaction. But now, suddenly, intense pity
welled up within her, and even in that moment she wondered if it could be
because he was Austen's father. His hands were at his sides, his head was
fallen forward a little, and his face was white. But his eyes frightened
her most; instead of the old, semi-defiant expression which she
remembered from childhood, they had in them a dumb suffering that went to
her heart. He looked at her, tried to straighten up, and fell back again.

"N--nothing's the matter," he said, "nothing. A little spell. I'll be all
right in a moment."

Victoria did not lose an instant, but climbed into the buggy at his side
and gathered up the reins, and drew the fallen lap-robe over his knees.

"I'm going to take you back to Fairview," she said. "And we'll telephone
for a doctor."

But she had underrated the amount of will left in him. He did not move,
though indeed if he had seized the reins from her hands, he could have
given her no greater effect of surprise. Life came back into the eyes at
the summons, and dominance into the voice, although he breathed heavily.

"No, you're not," he said; "no, you're not. I'm going to Ripton--do you
understand? I'll be all right in a minute, and I'll take the lines."

Victoria, when she got over her astonishment at this, reflected quickly.
She glanced at him, and the light of his expression was already fading.
There was some reason why he did not wish to go back to Fairview, and
common sense told her that agitation was not good for him; besides, they
would have to telephone to Ripton for a physician, and it was quicker to
drive there. Quicker to drive in her own runabout, did she dare to try to
move him into it. She made up her mind.

"Please follow on behind with that trap," she called out to Rangely; "I'm
going to Ripton."

He nodded understandingly, admiringly, and Victoria started Hilary's
horse out of the bushes towards the entrance way. From time to time she
let her eyes rest upon him anxiously.

"Are you comfortable?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, "yes. I'm all right. I'll be able to drive in a minute."

But the minutes passed, and he made no attempt to take the reins.
Victoria had drawn the whalebone whip from its socket, and was urging on
the horse as fast as humanity would permit; and the while she was aware
that Hilary's look was fixed upon her--in fact, never left her. Once or
twice, in spite of her anxiety to get him home, Victoria blushed faintly,
as she wondered what he was thinking about.

And all the while she asked herself what it was that had brought him to
this condition. Victoria knew sufficient of life and had visited
hospitals enough to understand that mental causes were generally
responsible for such breakdowns--Hilary had had a shock. She remembered
how in her childhood he had been the object of her particular animosity;
how she used to put out her tongue at him, and imitate his manner, and
how he had never made the slightest attempt to conciliate her; most
people of this sort are sensitive to the instincts of children; but
Hilary had not been. She remembered--how long ago it seemed now!--the day
she had given him, in deviltry, the clipping about Austen shooting Mr.
Blodgett.

The Hilary Vane who sat beside her to-day was not the same man. It was
unaccountable, but he was not. Nor could this changed estimate of him be
attributed to her regard for Austen, for she recalled a day only a few
months since--in June--when he had come up to Fairview and she was
standing on the lawn, and she had looked at him without recognition; she
had not, then, been able to bring herself to bow to him; to her childhood
distaste had been added the deeper resentment of Austen's wrongs. Her
early instincts about Hilary had been vindicated, for he had treated his
son abominably and driven Austen from his mother's home. To misunderstand
and maltreat Austen Vane, of all people Austen, whose consideration for
his father had been what it had! Could it be that Hilary felt remorse?
Could it be that he loved Austen in some peculiar manner all his own?

Victoria knew now--so strangely--that the man beside her was capable of
love, and she had never felt that way about Hilary Vane. And her mind was
confused, and her heart was troubled and wrung. Insight flashed upon her
of the terrible loneliness of a life surrounded by outstretched, loving
arms to which one could not fly; scenes from a famous classic she had
read with a favourite teacher at school came to her, and she knew that
she was the witness of a retribution, of a suffering beyond conception of
a soul prepared for suffering,--not physical suffering, but of that
torture which is the meaning of hell.

However, there was physical suffering. It came and went, and at such
moments she saw the traces of it in the tightening of his lips, and
longed with womanly intuition to alleviate it. She had not spoken
--although she could have cried aloud; she knew not what to say. And then
suddenly she reached out and touched his hand. Nor could she have
accounted for the action.

"Are you in much pain?" she asked.

She felt him tremble.

"No," he said; "it's only a spell--I've had 'em before. I--I can drive in
a few minutes."

"And do you think," she asked, "that I would allow you to go the rest of
the way alone?"

"I guess I ought to thank you for comin' with me," he said.

Victoria looked at him and smiled. And it was an illuminating smile for
her as well as for Hilary. Suddenly, by that strange power of sympathy
which the unselfish possess, she understood the man, understood Austen's
patience with him and affection for him. Suddenly she had pierced the
hard layers of the outer shell, and had heard the imprisoned spirit
crying with a small persistent voice,--a spirit stifled for many years
and starved--and yet it lived and struggled still.

Yes, and that spirit itself must have felt her own reaching out to it
--who can, say? And how it must have striven again for utterance--

"It was good of you to come," he said.

"It was only common humanity," she answered, touching the horse.

"Common humanity," he repeated. "You'd have done it for anybody along the
road, would you?"

At this remark, so characteristic of Hilary, Victoria, hesitated. She
understood it now. And yet she hesitated to give him an answer that was
hypocritical.

"I have known you all my life, Mr. Vane, and you are a very old friend of
my father's."

"Old," he repeated, "yes, that's it. I'm ready for the scrap-heap
--better have let me lie, Victoria."

Victoria started. A new surmise had occurred to her upon which she did
not like to dwell.

"You have worked too hard, Mr. Vane--you need a rest. And I have been
telling father that, too. You both need a rest."

He shook his head.

"I'll never get it," he said. "Stopping work won't give it to me."

She pondered on these words as she guided the horse over a crossing. And
all that Austen had said to her, all that she had been thinking of for a
year past, helped her to grasp their meaning. But she wondered still more
at the communion which, all at once, had been established between Hilary
Vane and herself, and why he was saying these things to her. It was all
so unreal and inexplicable.

"I can imagine that people who have worked hard all their lives must feel
that way," she answered, though her voice was not as steady as she could
have wished. "You--you have so much to live for."

Her colour rose. She was thinking of Austen--and she knew that Hilary
Vane knew that she was thinking of Austen. Moreover, she had suddenly
grasped the fact that the gentle but persistently strong influence of the
son's character had brought about the change in the father. Hilary Vane's
lips closed again, as in pain, and she divined the reason.

Victoria knew the house in Hanover Street, with its classic porch, with
its certain air of distinction and stability, and long before she had
known it as the Austen residence she remembered wondering who lived in
it. The house had individuality, and (looked at from the front) almost
perfect proportions; consciously--it bespoke the gentility of its
builders. Now she drew up before it and called to Mr. Rangely, who was
abreast, to tie his horse and ring the bell. Hilary was already feeling
with his foot for the step of the buggy.

"I'm all right," he insisted; "I can manage now," but Victoria seized his
arm with a firm, detaining hand.

"Please wait,--Mr. Vane," she pleaded.

But the feeling of shame at his helplessness was strong.

"It's over now. I--I can walk. I'm much obliged to you, Victoria--much
obliged."

Fortunately Hilary's horse showed no inclination to go any farther--even
to the stable. And Victoria held on to his arm. He ceased to protest, and
Mr. Rangely quickly tied the other horse and came to Victoria's aid.
Supported by the young Englishman, Hilary climbed the stone steps and
reached the porch, declaring all the while that he needed no assistance,
and could walk alone. Victoria rang the bell, and after an interval the
door was opened by Euphrasia Cotton.

Euphrasia stood upright with her hand on the knob, and her eyes flashed
over the group and rested fixedly on the daughter of Mr. Flint.

"Mr. Vane was not very well," Victoria explained, "and we came home with
him."

"I'm all right," said Hilary, once more, and to prove it he stepped--not
very steadily--across the threshold into the hall, and sat down on a
chair which had had its place at the foot of the stairs from time
immemorial. Euphrasia stood still.

"I think," said Victoria, "that Mr. Vane had better see a doctor. Have
you a telephone?"

"No, we haven't," said Euphrasia.

Victoria turned to Mr. Rangely, who had been a deeply interested
spectator to this scene.

"A little way down the street, on the other side, Dr. Tredway lives. You
will see his sign."

"And if he isn't in, go to the hospital. It's only a few doors farther
on."

"I'll wait," said Victoria, simply, when he had gone; "my father will
wish to know about Mr. Vane."

"Hold on," said Hilary, "I haven't any use for a doctor--I won't see one.
I know what the trouble is, and I'm all right."

Victoria became aware--for the first time that Hilary Vane's housekeeper
had not moved; that Euphrasia Cotton was still staring at her in a most
disconcerting manner, and was paying no attention whatever to Hilary.

"Come in and set down," she said; and seeing Victoria glance at Hilary's
horse, she added, "Oh, he'll stand there till doomsday."

Victoria, thinking that the situation would be less awkward, accepted the
invitation, and Euphrasia shut the door. The hall, owing to the fact that
the shutters of the windows by the stairs were always closed, was in
semidarkness. Victoria longed to let in the light, to take this strange,
dried-up housekeeper and shake her into some semblance of natural
feeling. And this was Austen's home! It was to this house, made gloomy by
these people, that he had returned every night! Infinitely depressed, she
felt that she must take some action, or cry aloud.

"Mr. Vane," she said, laying a hand upon his shoulder, "I think you
ought, at least, to lie down for a little while. Isn't there a sofa in
--in the parlour?" she asked Euphrasia.

"You can't get him to do anything," Euphrasia replied, with decision;
"he'll die some day for want of a little common sense. I shouldn't wonder
if he was took on soon."

"Oh!" cried Victoria. She could think of no words to answer this remark.

"It wouldn't surprise me," Euphrasia continued. "He fell down the stairs
here not long ago, and went right on about his business. He's never paid
any attention to anybody, and I guess it's a mite late to expect him to
begin now. Won't you set down?"

There was another chair against the low wainscoting, and Victoria drew it
over beside Hilary and sat down in it. He did not seem to notice the
action, and Euphrasia continued to stand. Standing seemed to be the
natural posture of this remarkable woman, Victoria thought--a posture of
vigilance, of defiance. A clock of one of the Austen grandfathers stood
obscurely at the back of the hall, and the measured swing of its pendulum
was all that broke the silence. This was Austen's home. It seemed
impossible for her to realize that he could be the product of this
environment--until a portrait on the opposite wall, above the stairs,
came out of the gloom and caught her eye like the glow of light. At
first, becoming aware of it with a start, she thought it a likeness of
Austen himself. Then she saw that the hair was longer, and more wavy than
his, and fell down a little over the velvet collar of a coat with a wide
lapel and brass buttons, and that the original of this portrait had worn
a stock. The face had not quite the strength of Austen's, she thought,
but a wondrous sweetness and intellect shone from it, like an expression
she had seen on his face. The chin rested on the hand, an intellectual
hand,--and the portrait brought to her mind that of a young English
statesman she had seen in the National Gallery in London.

"That's Channing Austen,--he was minister to Spain."

Victoria started. It was Euphrasia who was speaking, and unmistakable
pride was in her voice.

Fortunately for Victoria, who would not in the least have known what to
reply, steps were heard on the porch, and Euphrasia opened the door. Mr.
Rangely had returned.

"Here's the doctor, Miss Flint," he said, "and I'll wait for you
outside."

Victoria rose as young Dr. Tredway came forward. They were old friends,
and the doctor, it may be recalled, had been chiefly responsible for the
preservation of the life of Mr. Zebulun Meader.

"I have sent for you, Doctor," she said, "against instructions and on my
own responsibility. Mr. Vane is ill, although he refuses to admit it."

Dr. Tredway had a respect for Victoria and her opinions, and he knew
Hilary. He opened the door a little wider, and looked critically at Mr.
Vane.

"It's nothing but a spell," Hilary insisted. "I've had 'em before. I
suppose it's natural that they should scare the women-folks some."

"What kind of a spell was it, Mr. Vane?" asked the doctor.

"It isn't worth talking about," said Hilary. "You might as well pick up
that case of yours and go home again. I'm going down to the square in a
little while."

"You see," Euphrasia put in, "he's made up his mind to kill himself."

"Perhaps," said the doctor, smiling a little, "Mr. Vane wouldn't object
to Miss Flint telling me what happened."

Victoria glanced at the doctor and hesitated. Her sympathy for Hilary,
her new understanding of him, urged her on--and yet never in her life had
she been made to feel so distinctly an intruder. Here was the doctor,
with his case; here was this extraordinary housekeeper, apparently ready
to let Hilary walk to the square, if he wished, and to shut the door on
their backs; and here was Hilary himself, who threatened at any moment to
make his word good and depart from their midst. Only the fact that she
was convinced that Hilary was in real danger made her relate, in a few
brief words, what had occurred, and when she had finished Mr. Vane made
no comment whatever.

Dr. Tredway turned to Hilary.

"I am going to take a mean advantage of you, Mr. Vane," he said, "and sit
here awhile and talk to you. Would you object to waiting a little while,
Miss Flint? I have something to say to you," he added significantly, "and
this meeting will save me a trip to Fairview."

"Certainly I'll wait," she said.

"You can come along with me," said Euphrasia, "if you've a notion to."

Victoria was of two minds whether to accept this invitation. She had an
intense desire to get outside, but this was counter-balanced by a sudden
curiosity to see more of this strange woman who loved but one person in
the world. Tom Gaylord had told Victoria that. She followed Euphrasia to
the back of the hall.

"There's the parlour," said Euphrasia; "it's never be'n used since Mrs.
Vane died,--but there it is."

"Oh," said Victoria, with a glance into the shadowy depths of the room,
"please don't open it for me. Can't we go," she added, with an
inspiration, "can't we go into--the kitchen?" She knew it was Euphrasia's
place.

"Well," said Euphrasia, "I shouldn't have thought you'd care much about
kitchens." And she led the way onward; through the little passage, to the
room where she had spent most of her days. It was flooded with level,
yellow rays of light that seemed to be searching the corners in vain for
dust. Victoria paused in the doorway.

"I'm afraid you do me an injustice," she said. "I like some kitchens."

"You don't look as if you knew much about 'em," was Euphrasia's answer.
With Victoria once again in the light, Euphrasia scrutinized her with
appalling frankness, taking in every detail of her costume and at length
raising her eyes to the girl's face. Victoria coloured. On her visits
about the country-side she had met women of Euphrasia's type before, and
had long ago ceased to be dismayed by their manner. But her instinct
detected in Euphrasia a hostility for which she could not account.

In that simple but exquisite gown which so subtly suited her, the
creation of which had aroused the artist in a celebrated Parisian
dressmaker, Victoria was, indeed, a strange visitant in that kitchen. She
took a seat by the window, and an involuntary exclamation of pleasure
escaped her as her eyes fell upon the little, old-fashioned flower garden
beneath it. The act and the exclamation for the moment disarmed
Euphrasia.

"They were Sarah Austen's--Mrs. Vane's," she explained, "just as she
planted them the year she died. I've always kept 'em just so."

"Mrs. Vane must have loved flowers," said Victoria.

"Loved 'em! They were everything to her--and the wild flowers, too. She
used to wander off and spend whole days in the country, and come back
after sunset with her arms full."

"It was nature she loved," said Victoria, in a low voice.

"That was it--nature," said Euphrasia. "She loved all nature. There
wasn't a living, creeping thing that wasn't her friend. I've seen birds
eat out of her hand in that window where you're settin', and she'd say to
me, 'Phrasie, keep still! They'd love you, too, if they only knew you,
but they're afraid you'll scrub 'em if you get hold of them, the way you
used to scrub me.'"

Victoria smiled--but it was a smile that had tears in it. Euphrasia
Cotton was standing in the shaft of sunlight at the other window, staring
at the little garden.

"Yes, she used to say funny things like that, to make you laugh when you
were all ready to cry. There wasn't many folks understood her. She knew
every path and hilltop within miles of here, and every brook and spring,
and she used to talk about that mountain just as if it was alive."

Victoria caught her breath.

"Yes," continued Euphrasia, "the mountain was alive for her. 'He's angry
to-day, Phrasie. That's because, you lost your temper and scolded
Hilary.' It's a queer thing, but there have been hundreds of times since
when he needed scoldin' bad, and I've looked at the mountain and held my
tongue. It was just as if I saw her with that half-whimsical,
half-reproachful expression in her eyes, holding up her finger at me. And
there were other mornings when she'd say, 'The mountain's lonesome today,
he wants me.' And I vow, I'd look at the mountain and it would seem
lonesome. That sounds like nonsense, don't it?" Euphrasia demanded, with
a sudden sharpness.

"No," said Victoria, "it seems very real to me."

The simplicity, the very ring of truth, and above all the absolute lack
of self-consciousness in the girl's answer sustained the spell.

"She'd go when the mountain called her, it didn't make any difference
whether it was raining--rain never appeared to do her any hurt. Nothin'
natural ever did her any hurt. When she was a little child flittin' about
like a wild creature, and she'd come in drenched to the skin, it was all
I could do to catch her and change her clothes. She'd laugh at me. 'We're
meant to be wet once in a while, Phrasie,' she'd say; 'that's what the
rain's for, to wet us. It washes some of the wickedness out of us.' It
was the unnatural things that hurt her--the unkind words and makin' her
act against her nature. 'Phrasie,' she said once, 'I can't pray in the
meeting-house with my eyes shut--I can't, I can't. I seem to know what
they're all wishing for when they pray,--for more riches, and more
comfort, and more security, and more importance. And God is such a long
way off. I can't feel Him, and the pew hurts my back.' She used to read
me some, out of a book of poetry, and one verse I got by heart--I guess
her prayers were like that."

"Do you--remember the verse?" asked Victoria.

Euphrasia went to a little shelf in the corner of the kitchen and
produced a book, which, she opened and handed to Victoria.

"There's the verse!" she said; "read it aloud. I guess you're better at
that than I am."

And Victoria read:--

     "Higher still and higher
      From the earth thou springest
     Like a cloud of fire;
      The blue deep thou wingest,
     And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest."

Victoria let fall the volume on her lap.

"There's another verse in that book she liked," said Euphrasia, "but it
always was sad to me."

Victoria took the book, and read again:--

     "Weary wind, who wanderest
      Like the world's rejected guest,
     Hast thou still some secret nest
      On the tree or billow?"

Euphrasia laid the volume tenderly on the shelf, and turned and faced
Victoria.

"She was unhappy like that before she died," she exclaimed, and added,
with a fling of her head towards the front of the house, "he killed her."

"Oh, no!" cried Victoria, involuntarily rising to her feet. "Oh, no! I'm
sure he didn't mean to. He didn't understand her!"

"He killed her," Euphrasia repeated. "Why didn't he understand her? She
was just as simple as a child, and just as trusting, and just as loving.
He made her unhappy, and now he's driven her son out of her house, and
made him unhappy. He's all of her I have left, and I won't see him
unhappy."

Victoria summoned her courage.

"Don't you think," she asked bravely, "that Mr. Austen Vane ought to be
told that his father is--in this condition?"

"No," said Euphrasia, determinedly. "Hilary will have to send for him.
This time it'll be Austen's victory."

"But hasn't he had--a victory?" Victoria persisted earnestly. "Isn't
this--victory enough?"

"What do you mean?" Euphrasia cried sharply.

"I mean," she answered, in a low voice, "I mean that Mr. Vane's son is
responsible for his condition to-day. Oh--not consciously so. But the
cause of this trouble is mental--can't you see it? The cause of this
trouble is remorse. Can't you see that it has eaten into his soul? Do you
wish a greater victory than this, or a sadder one? Hilary Vane will not
ask for his son--because he cannot. He has no more power to send that
message than a man shipwrecked on an island. He can only give signals of
distress--that some may heed. Would She have waited for such a victory as
you demand? And does Austen Vane desire it? Don't you think that he would
come to his father if he knew? And have you any right to keep the news
from him? Have you any right to decide what their vengeance shall be?"

Euphrasia had stood mute as she listened to these words which she had so
little expected, but her eyes flashed and her breath came quickly. Never
had she been so spoken to! Never had any living soul come between her and
her cherished object the breaking of the heart of Hilary Vane! Nor,
indeed, had that object ever been so plainly set forth as Victoria had
set it forth. And this woman who dared to do this had herself brought
unhappiness to Austen. Euphrasia had almost forgotten that, such had been
the strange harmony of their communion.

"Have you the right to tell Austen?" she demanded.

"Have I?" Victoria repeated. And then, as the full meaning of the
question came to her; the colour flooded into her face, and she would
have fled, if she could, bud Euphrasia's words came in a torrent.

"You've made him unhappy, as well as Hilary. He loves you--but he
wouldn't speak of it to you. Oh, no, he didn't tell me who it was, but I
never rested till I found out. He never would have told me about it at
all, or anybody else, but that I guessed it. I saw he was unhappy, and I
calculated it wasn't Hilary alone made him so. One night he came in here,
and I knew all at once--somehow--there was a woman to blame, and I asked
him, and he couldn't lie to me. He said it wasn't anybody's fault but his
own--he wouldn't say any more than that, except that he hadn't spoken to
her. I always expected the time was coming when there would be--a woman.
And I never thought the woman lived that he'd love who wouldn't love him.
I can't see how any woman could help lovin' him.

"And then I found out it was that railroad. It came between Sarah Austen
and her happiness, and now it's come between Austen and his. Perhaps you
don't love him!" cried Euphrasia. "Perhaps you're too rich and high and
mighty. Perhaps you're a-going to marry that fine young man who came with
you in the buggy. Since I heard who you was, I haven't had a happy hour.
Let me tell you there's no better blood in the land than the Austen
blood. I won't mention the Vanes. If you've led him on, if you've
deceived him, I hope you may be unhappy as Sarah Austen was--"

"Don't!" pleaded Victoria; "don't! Please don't!" and she seized
Euphrasia by the arms, as though seeking by physical force to stop the
intolerable flow of words. "Oh, you don't know me; you can't understand
me if you say that. How can you be so cruel?"

In another moment she had gone, leaving Euphrasia standing in the middle
of the floor, staring after her through the doorway.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE FOCUS OF WRATH

Victoria, after leaving Euphrasia, made her way around the house towards
Mr. Rangely, who was waiting in the runabout, her one desire for the
moment being to escape. Before she had reached the sidewalk under the
trees, Dr. Tredway had interrupted her.

"Miss Flint," he called out, "I wanted to say a word to you before you
went."

"Yes," she said, stopping and turning to him.

He paused a moment before speaking, as he looked into her face.

"I don't wonder this has upset you a little," he said; "a reaction always
comes afterwards--even with the strongest of us."

"I am all right," she replied, unconsciously repeating Hilary's words.
"How is Mr. Vane?"

"You have done a splendid thing," said the doctor, gravely. And he
continued, after a moment: "It is Mr. Vane I wanted to speak to you
about. He is an intimate friend, I believe, of your father's, as well as
Mr. Flint's right-hand man in--in a business way in this State. Mr. Vane
himself will not listen to reason. I have told him plainly that if he
does not drop all business at once, the chances are ten to one that he
will forfeit his life very shortly. I understand that there is a--a
convention to be held at the capital the day after to-morrow, and that it
is Mr. Vane's firm intention to attend it. I take the liberty of
suggesting that you lay these facts before your father, as Mr. Flint
probably has more influence with Hilary Vane than any other man.
However," he added, seeing Victoria hesitate, "if there is any reason
why you should not care to speak to Mr. Flint--"

"Oh, no," said Victoria; "I'll speak to him, certainly. I was going to
ask you--have you thought of Mr. Austen Vane? He might be able to do
something."

"Of course," said the doctor, after a moment, "it is an open secret that
Austen and his father have--have, in short, never agreed. They are not
now on speaking terms."

"Don't you think," asked Victoria, summoning her courage, "that Austen
Vane ought to be told?"

"Yes," the doctor repeated decidedly, "I am sure of it. Everybody who
knows Austen Vane as I do has the greatest admiration for him. You
probably remember him in that Meader case,--he isn't a man one would be
likely to forget,--and I know that this quarrel with his father isn't of
Austen's seeking."

"Oughtn't he to be told--at once?" said Victoria.

"Yes," said the doctor; "time is valuable, and we can't predict what
Hilary will do. At any rate, Austen ought to know--but the trouble is,
he's at Jenney's farm. I met him on the way out there just before your
friend the Englishman caught me. And unfortunately I have a case which I
cannot neglect. But I can send word to him."

"I know where Jenney's farm is," said Victoria; "I'll drive home that
way."

"Well," exclaimed Dr. Tredway, heartily, "that's good of you. Somebody
who knows Hilary's situation ought to see him, and I can think of no
better messenger than you."

And he helped her into the runabout.

Young Mr. Rangely being a gentleman, he refrained from asking Victoria
questions on the drive out of Ripton, and expressed the greatest
willingness to accompany her on this errand and to see her home
afterwards. He had been deeply impressed, but he felt instinctively that
after such a serious occurrence, this was not the time to continue to
give hints of his admiration. He had heard in England that many American
women whom he would be likely to meet socially were superficial and
pleasure-loving; and Arthur Rangely came of a family which had long been
cited as a vindication of a government by aristocracy,--a family which
had never shirked responsibilities. It is not too much to say that he had
pictured Victoria among his future tenantry; she had appealed to him
first as a woman, but the incident of the afternoon had revealed her to
him, as it were, under fire.

They spoke quietly of places they both had visited, of people whom they
knew in common, until they came to the hills--the very threshold of
Paradise on that September evening. Those hills never failed to move
Victoria, and they were garnished this evening in no earthly colours,
--rose-lighted on the billowy western pasture slopes and pearl in the
deep clefts of the streams, and the lordly form of Sawanec shrouded in
indigo against a flame of orange. And orange fainted, by the subtlest of
colour changes, to azure in which swam, so confidently, a silver evening
star.

In silence they drew up before Mr. Jenney's ancestral trees, and through
the deepening shadows beneath these the windows of the farm-house glowed
with welcoming light. At Victoria's bidding Mr. Rangely knocked to ask
for Austen Vane, and Austen himself answered the summons. He held a book
in his hand, and as Rangely spoke she saw Austen's look turn quickly to
her, and met it through the gathering gloom between them. In an instant
he was at her side, looking up questioningly into her face, and the
telltale blood leaped into hers. What must he think of her for coming
again? She could not speak of her errand too quickly.

"Mr. Vane, I came to leave a message."

"Yes?" he said, and glanced at the broad-shouldered, well-groomed figure
of Mr. Rangely, who was standing at a discreet distance.

"Your father has had an attack of some kind,--please don't be alarmed, he
seems to be recovered now,--and I thought and Dr. Tredway thought you
ought to know about it. The doctor could not leave Ripton, and I offered
to come and tell you."

"An attack?" he repeated.

"Yes." Hilary and she related simply how she had found Hilary at
Fairview, and how she had driven him home. But, during the whole of her
recital, she could not rid herself of the apprehension that he was
thinking her interference unwarranted, her coming an indelicate
repetition of the other visit. As he stood there listening in the
gathering dusk, she could not tell from his face what he thought. His
expression, when serious, had a determined, combative, almost grim note
in it, which came from a habit he had of closing his jaw tightly; and his
eyes were like troubled skies through which there trembled an occasional
flash of light.

Victoria had never felt his force so strongly as now, and never had he
seemed more distant; at times--she had thought--she had had glimpses of
his soul; to-night he was inscrutable, and never had she realized the
power (which she bad known he must possess) of making himself so. And to
her? Her pride forbade her recalling at that moment the confidences which
had passed between them and which now seemed to have been so impossible.
He was serious because he was listening to serious news--she told
herself. But it was more than this: he had shut himself up, he was
impenetrable. Shame seized her; yes, and anger; and shame again at the
remembrance of her talk with Euphrasia--and anger once more. Could he
think that she would make advances to tempt his honour, and risk his good
opinion and her own?

Confidence is like a lute-string, giving forth sweet sounds in its
perfection; there are none so discordant as when it snaps.

Victoria scarcely heard Austen's acknowledgments of her kindness, so
perfunctory did they seem, so unlike the man she had known; and her own
protestations that she had done nothing to merit his thanks were to her
quite as unreal. She introduced him to the Englishman.

"Mr. Rangely has been good enough to come with me," she said.

"I've never seen anybody act with more presence of mind than Miss Flint,"
Rangely declared, as he shook Austen's hand. "She did just the right
thing, without wasting any time whatever."

"I'm sure of it," said Austen, cordially enough. But to Victoria's keener
ear, other tones which she had heard at other times were lacking. Nor
could she, clever as she was, see the palpable reason standing before
her!

"I say," said Rangely, as they drove away, "he strikes me as a remarkably
sound chap, Miss Flint. There is something unusual about him, something
clean cut."

"I've heard other people say so," Victoria replied. For the first time
since she had known him, praise of Austen was painful to her. What was
this curious attraction that roused the interest of all who came in
contact with him? The doctor had it, Mr. Redbrook, Jabe Jenney,--even
Hamilton Tooting, she remembered. And he attracted women as well as men
--it must be so. Certainly her own interest in him--a man beyond the
radius of her sphere--and their encounters had been strange enough! And
must she go on all her life hearing praises of him? Of one thing she was
sure--who was not?--that Austen Vane had a future. He was the type of man
which is inevitably impelled into places of trust.

Manly men, as a rule, do not understand women. They humour them blindly,
seek to comfort them--if they weep--with caresses, laugh with them if
they have leisure, and respect their curious and unaccountable moods by
keeping out of the way. Such a husband was Arthur Rangely destined to
make; a man who had seen any number of women and understood none,--as
wondrous mechanisms. He had merely acquired the faculty of appraisal,
although this does not mean that he was incapable of falling in love.

Mr. Rangely could not account for the sudden access of gayety in
Victoria's manner as they drove to Fairview through the darkness, nor did
he try. He took what the gods sent him, and was thankful. When he reached
Fairview he was asked to dinner, as he could not possibly get back to the
Inn in time. Mr. Flint had gone to Sumner with the engineers, leaving
orders to be met at the East Tunbridge station at ten; and Mrs. Flint,
still convalescent, had dined in her sitting room. Victoria sat opposite
her guest in the big dining room, and Mr. Rangely pronounced the occasion
decidedly jolly. He had, he proclaimed, with the exception of Mr. Vane's
deplorable accident, never spent a better day in his life.

Victoria wondered at her own spirits, which were feverish, as she
listened to transatlantic gossip about girls she had known who had
married Mr. Rangely's friends, and stories of Westminster and South
Africa, and certain experiences of Mr. Rangely's at other places than
Leith on the American continent, which he had grown sufficiently
confidential to relate. At times, lifting her eyes to him as he sat
smoking after dinner on the other side of the library fire, she almost
doubted his existence. He had come into her life at one o'clock that
day--it seemed an eternity since. And a subconscious voice, heard but not
heeded, told her that in the awakening from this curious dream he would
be associated in her memory with tragedy, just as a tune or a book or a
game of cards reminds one of painful periods of one's existence.
To-morrow the--episode would be a nightmare; to-night her one desire was
to prolong it.

And poor Mr. Rangely little imagined the part he was playing--as little
as he deserved it. Reluctant to leave, propriety impelled him to ask for
a trap at ten, and it was half past before he finally made his exit from
the room with a promise to pay his respects soon--very soon.

Victoria stood before the fire listening to the sound of the wheels
gradually growing fainter, and her mind refused to work. Hanover Street,
Mr. Jenney's farm-house, were unrealities too. Ten minutes later--if she
had marked the interval--came the sound of wheels again, this time
growing louder. Then she heard a voice in the hall, her father's voice.

"Towers, who was that?"

"A young gentleman, sir, who drove home with Miss Victoria. I didn't get
his name, sir."

"Has Miss Victoria retired?"

"She's in the library, sir. Here are some telegrams, Mr. Flint."

Victoria heard her father tearing open the telegrams and walking towards
the library with slow steps as he read them. She did not stir from her
place before the fire. She saw him enter and, with a characteristic
movement which had become almost habitual of late, crush the telegrams in
front of him with both hands.

"Well, Victoria?" he said.

"Well, father?"

It was characteristic of him, too, that he should momentarily drop the
conversation, unravel the ball of telegrams, read one, crush them once
more,--a process that seemed to give him relief. He glanced at his
daughter--she had not moved. Whatever Mr. Flint's original character may
have been in his long-forgotten youth on the wind-swept hill farm in
Truro, his methods of attack lacked directness now; perhaps a long
business and political experience were responsible for this trait.

"Your mother didn't come down to dinner, I suppose."

"No," said Victoria.

Simpson tells me the young bull got loose and cut himself badly. He says
it's the fault of the Eben Fitch you got me to hire."

"I don't believe it was Eben's fault--Simpson doesn't like him," Victoria
replied.

"Simpson tells me Fitch drinks."

"Let a man get a bad name," said Victoria, "and Simpson will take care
that he doesn't lose it." The unexpected necessity of defending one of
her proteges aroused her. "I've made it a point to see Eben every day for
the last three months, and he hasn't touched a drop. He's one of the best
workers we have on the place."

"I've got too much on my mind to put up with that kind of thing," said
Mr. Flint, "and I won't be worried here on the place. I can get capable
men to tend cattle, at least. I have to put up with political rascals who
rob and deceive me as soon as my back is turned, I have to put up with
inefficiency and senility, but I won't have it at home."

"Fitch will be transferred to the gardener if you think best," she said.

It suddenly occurred to Victoria, in the light of a new discovery, that
in the past her father's irritability had not extended to her. And this
discovery, she knew, ought to have some significance, but she felt
unaccountably indifferent to it. Mr. Flint walked to a window at the far
end of the room and flung apart the tightly closed curtains before it.

"I never can get used to this new-fangled way of shutting everything up
tight," he declared. "When I lived in Centre Street, I used to read with
the curtains up every night, and nobody ever shot me." He stood looking
out at the starlight for awhile, and turned and faced her again.

"I haven't seen much of you this summer, Victoria," he remarked.

"I'm sorry, father. You know I always like to walk with you every day you
are here." He had aroused her sufficiently to have a distinct sense that
this was not the time to refer to the warning she had given him that he
was working too hard. But he was evidently bent on putting this
construction on her answer.

"Several times I have asked for you, and you have been away," he said.

"If you had only let me know, I should have made it a point to be at
home."

"How can I tell when these idiots will give me any rest?" he asked. He
crushed the telegrams again, and came down the room and stopped in front
of her. "Perhaps there has been a particular reason why you have not been
at home as much as usual."

"A particular reason?" she repeated, in genuine surprise.

"Yes," he said; "I have been hearing things which, to put it mildly, have
astonished me."

"Hearing things?"

"Yes," he exclaimed. "I may be busy, I may be harassed by tricksters and
bunglers, but I am not too busy not to care something about my daughter's
doings. I expect them to deceive me, Victoria, but I pinned my faith
somewhere. I pinned it on you. On you, do you understand?"

She raised her head for the first time and looked at him, with her lips
quivering. But she did not speak.

"Ever since you were a child you have been everything to me, all I had to
fly to. I was always sure of one genuine, disinterested love--and that
was yours. I was always sure of hearing the truth from your lips."

"Father!" she cried.

He seemed not to hear the agonized appeal in her voice. Although he spoke
in his usual tones, Augustus Flint was, in fact, beside himself.

"And now," he said, "and now I learn that you have been holding
clandestine meetings with a man who is my enemy, with a man who has done
me more harm than any other single individual, with a man whom I will not
have in my house--do you understand? I can only say that before to-night,
I gave him credit for having the decency not to enter it, not to sit down
at my table."

Victoria turned away from him, and seized the high oak shelf of the
mantel with both hands. He saw her shoulders rising and falling as her
breath came deeply, spasmodically--like sobbing. But she was not sobbing
as she turned again and looked into his face. Fear was in her eye, and
the high courage to look: fear and courage. She seemed to be looking at
another man, at a man who was not her father. And Mr. Flint, despite his
anger, vaguely interpreting her meaning, was taken aback. He had never
seen anybody with such a look. And the unexpected quiet quality of her
voice intensified his strange sensation.

"A Mr. Rangely, an Englishman, who is staying at the Leith Inn, was here
to dinner to-night. He has never been here before."

"Austen Vane wasn't here to-night?"

"Mr. Vane has never been in this house to my knowledge but once, and you
knew more about that meeting than I do."

And still Victoria spoke quietly, inexplicably so to Mr. Flint--and to
herself. It seemed to her that some other than she were answering with
her voice, and that she alone felt. It was all a part of the nightmare,
all unreal, and this was not her father; nevertheless, she suffered now,
not from anger alone, nor sorrow, nor shame for him and for herself, nor
disgust, nor a sense of injustice, nor cruelty--but all of these played
upon a heart responsive to each with a different pain.

And Mr. Flint, halted for the moment by her look and manner, yet goaded
on by a fiend of provocation which had for months been gathering
strength, and which now mastered him completely, persisted. He knew not
what he did or said.

"And you haven't seen him to-day, I suppose," he cried.

"Yes, I have seen him to-day."

"Ah, you have! I thought as much. Where did you meet him to-day?"

Victoria turned half away from him, raised a hand to the mantel-shelf
again, and lifted a foot to the low brass fender as she looked down into
the fire. The movement was not part of a desire to evade him, as he
fancied in his anger, but rather one of profound indifference, of
profound weariness--the sunless deeps of sorrow. And he thought her
capable of deceiving him! He had been her constant companion from
childhood, and knew only the visible semblance of her face, her form, her
smile. Her sex was the sex of subterfuge.

"I went to the place where he is living, and asked for him," she said,
"and he came out and spoke to me."

"You?" he repeated incredulously. There was surely no subterfuge in her
tone, but an unreal, unbelievable note which his senses seized, and to
which he clung. "You! My daughter!"

"Yes," she answered, "I, your daughter. I suppose you think I am
shameless. It is true--I am."

Mr. Flint was utterly baffled. He was at sea. He had got beyond the range
of his experience; defence, denial, tears, he could have understood and
coped with. He crushed the telegrams into a tighter ball, sought for a
footing, and found a precarious one.

"And all this has been going on without my knowledge, when you knew my
sentiments towards the man?"

"Yes," she said. "I do not know what you include in that remark, but I
have seen him many times as many times, perhaps, as you have heard
about."

He wheeled, and walked over to a cabinet between two of the great windows
and stood there examining a collection of fans which his wife had bought
at a famous sale in Paris. Had he suddenly been asked the question, he
could not have said whether they were fans or beetles. And it occurred to
Victoria, as her eyes rested on his back, that she ought to be sorry for
him--but wasn't, somehow. Perhaps she would be to-morrow. Mr. Flint
looked at the fans, and an obscure glimmering of the truth came to him
that instead of administering a severe rebuke to the daughter he believed
he had known all his life, he was engaged in a contest with the soul of a
woman he had never known. And the more she confessed, the more she
apparently yielded, the more impotent he seemed, the tighter the demon
gripped him. Obstacles, embarrassments, disappointments, he had met early
in his life, and he had taken them as they came. There had followed a
long period when his word had been law. And now, as age came on, and he
was meeting with obstacles again, he had lost the magic gift of sweeping
them aside; the growing certainty that he was becoming powerless haunted
him night and day. Unbelievably strange, however, it was that the rays of
his anger by some subconscious process had hovered from the first about
the son of Hilary Vane, and were now, by the trend of event after event,
firmly focussed there.

He left the cabinet abruptly and came back to Victoria.

She was standing in the same position.

"You have spared me something," he said. "He has apparently undermined me
with my own daughter. He has evidently given you an opinion of me which
is his. I think I can understand why you have not spoken of these
--meetings."

"It is an inference that I expected," said Victoria. Then she lifted her
head and looked at him, and again he could not read her expression, for a
light burned in her eyes that made them impenetrable to him,--a light
that seemed pitilessly to search out and reveal the dark places and the
weak places within him which he himself had not known were there. Could
there be another standard by which men and women were measured and
judged?

Mr. Flint snapped his fingers, and turned and began to pace the room.

"It's all pretty clear," he said; "there's no use going into it any
farther. You believe, with the rest of them, that I'm a criminal and
deserve the penitentiary. I don't care a straw about the others," he
cried, snapping his fingers again. "And I suppose, if I'd had any sense,
I might have expected it from you, too, Victoria--though you are my
daughter."

He was aware that her eyes followed him.

"How many times have you spoken with Austen Vane?" she asked.

"Once," he exclaimed; "that was enough. Once."

"And he gave you the impression," she continued slowly, "that he was
deceitful, and dishonourable, and a coward? a man who would say things
behind your back that he dared not say to your face? who desired reward
for himself at any price, and in any manner? a man who would enter your
house and seek out your daughter and secretly assail your character?"

Mr. Flint stopped in the middle of the floor.

"And you tell me he has not done these things?"

"Suppose I did tell you so," said Victoria, "would you believe me? I have
no reason to think that you would. I am your daughter, I have been your
most intimate companion, and I had the right to think that you should
have formed some estimate of my character. Suppose I told you that Austen
Vane has avoided me, that he would not utter a word against you or in
favour of himself? Suppose I told you that I, your daughter, thought
there might be two sides to the political question that is agitating you,
and wished in fairness to hear the other side, as I intended to tell you
when you were less busy? Suppose I told you that Austen Vane was the soul
of honour, that he saw your side and presented it as ably as you have
presented it? that he had refrained in many matters which might have been
of advantage to him--although I did not hear of them from him--on account
of his father? Would you believe me?"

"And suppose I told you," cried Mr. Flint--so firmly fastened on him was
the long habit of years of talking another down, "suppose I told you that
this was the most astute and the craftiest course he could take? I've
always credited him with brains. Suppose I told you that he was
intriguing now, as he has been all along, to obtain the nomination for
the governorship? Would you believe me?"

"No," answered Victoria, quietly.

Mr. Flint went to the lamp, unrolled the ball of telegrams, seized one
and crossed the room quickly, and held it out to her. His hand shook a
little.

"Read that!" he said.

She read it: "Estimate that more than half of delegates from this section
pledged to Henderson will go to Austen Vane when signal is given in
convention. Am told on credible authority same is true of other sections,
including many of Hunt's men and Crewe's. This is the result of quiet but
persistent political work I spoke about. BILLINGS."

She handed the telegram back to her father in silence. "Do you believe it
now?" he demanded exultantly.

"Who is the man whose name is signed to that message?" she asked.

Mr. Flint eyed her narrowly.

"What difference does that make?" he demanded.

"None," said Victoria. But a vision of Mr. Billings rose before her. He
had been pointed out to her as the man who had opposed Austen in the
Meader suit.  "If the bishop of the diocese signed it, I would not believe
that Austen Vane had anything to do with the matter."

"Ah, you defend him!" cried Mr. Flint. "I thought so--I thought so. I
take off my hat to him, he is a cleverer man even than I. His own father,
whom he has ruined, comes up here and defends him."

"Does Hilary Vane defend him?" Victoria asked curiously.

"Yes," said Mr. Flint, beside himself; "incredible as it may seem, he
does. I have Austen Vane to thank for still another favour--he is
responsible for Hilary's condition to-day. He has broken him down--he has
made him an imbecile. The convention is scarcely thirty-six hours off,
and Hilary is about as fit to handle it as--as Eben Fitch. Hilary, who
never failed me in his life!"

Victoria did not speak for a moment, and then she reached out her hand
quickly and laid it on his that still held the telegram. A lounge stood
on one side of the fireplace, and she drew him gently to it, and he sat
down at her side. His acquiescence to her was a second nature, and he was
once more bewildered. His anger now seemed to have had no effect upon her
whatever.

"I waited up to tell you about Hilary Vane, father," she said gently. "He
has had a stroke, which I am afraid is serious."

"A stroke!" cried Mr. Flint, "Why didn't you tell me? How do you know?"

Victoria related how she had found Hilary coming away from Fairview, and
what she had done, and the word Dr. Tredway had sent.

"Good God!" cried Mr. Flint, "he won't be able to go to the convention!"
And he rose and pressed the electric button. "Towers," he said, when the
butler appeared, "is Mr. Freeman still in my room? Tell him to telephone
to Ripton at once and find out how Mr. Hilary Vane is. They'll have to
send a messenger. That accounts for it," he went on, rather to himself
than to Victoria, and he began to pace the room once more; "he looked
like a sick man when he was here. And who have we got to put in his
place? Not a soul!"

He paced awhile in silence. He appeared to have forgotten Victoria.

"Poor Hilary!" he said again, "poor Hilary! I'll go down there the first
thing in the morning."

Another silence, and then Mr. Freeman, the secretary, entered.

"I telephoned to Dr. Tredway's, Mr. Flint. I thought that would be
quickest. Mr. Vane has left home. They don't know where he's gone."

"Left home! It's impossible!" and he glanced at Victoria, who had risen
to her feet. "There must be some mistake."

"No, sir. First I got the doctor, who said that Mr. Vane was gone--at the
risk of his life. And then I talked to Mr. Austen Vane himself, who was
there consulting with the doctor. It appears that Mr. Hilary Vane had
left home by eight o'clock, when Mr. Austen Vane got there."

"Hilary's gone out of his head," exclaimed Mr. Flint. "This thing has
unhinged him. Here, take these telegrams. No, wait a minute, I'll go out
there. Call up Billings, and see if you can get Senator Whitredge."

He started out of the room, halted, and turned his head and hesitated.

"Father," said Victoria, "I don't think Hilary Vane is out of his mind."

"You don't?" he said quickly. "Why?"

By some unaccountable change in the atmosphere, of which Mr. Flint was
unconscious, his normal relation to his daughter had been suddenly
reestablished. He was giving ear, as usual, to her judgment.

"Did Hilary Vane tell you he would go to the convention?" she asked.

"Yes." In spite of himself, he had given the word an apologetic
inflection.

"Then he has gone already," she said. "I think, if you will telephone a
little later to the State capital, you will find that he is in his room
at the Pelican Hotel."

"By thunder, Victoria!" he ejaculated, "you may be right. It would be
like him."




CHAPTER XXVII

THE ARENA AND THE DUST

Alas! that the great genius who described the battle of Waterloo is not
alive to-day and on this side of the Atlantic, for a subject worthy of
his pen is at hand,--nothing less than that convention of conventions at
which the Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith is one of the candidates.
One of the candidates, indeed! Will it not be known, as long as there are
pensions, and a governor and a state-house and a seal and State
sovereignty and a staff, as the Crewe Convention? How charge after charge
was made during the long, hot day and into the night; how the delegates
were carried out limp and speechless and starved and wet through, and
carried in to vote again,--will all be told in time. But let us begin at
the beginning, which is the day before.

But look! it is afternoon, and the candidates are arriving at the
Pelican. The Honourable Adam B. Hunt is the first, and walks up the hill
from the station escorted by such prominent figures as the Honourables
Brush Bascom and Jacob Botcher, and surrounded by enthusiastic supporters
who wear buttons with the image of their leader--goatee and all--and the
singularly prophetic superscription, 'To the Last Ditch!' Only veterans
and experts like Mr. Bascom and Mr. Botcher can recognize the last ditch
when they see it.

Another stir in the street--occasioned by the appearance of the
Honourable Giles Henderson,--of the blameless life. Utter a syllable
against him if you can! These words should be inscribed on his buttons if
he had any--but he has none. They seem to be, unuttered, on the tongues
of the gentlemen who escort the Honourable Giles, United States Senator
Greene and the Honourable Elisha Jane, who has obtained leave of absence
from his consular post to attend the convention,--and incidentally to
help prepare for it.

But who and what is this? The warlike blast of a siren horn is heard, the
crowd in the lobby rushes to the doors, people up-stairs fly to the
windows, and the Honourable Adam B. Hunt leans out and nearly falls out,
but is rescued by Division Superintendent Manning of the Northeastern
Railroads, who has stepped in from Number Seven to give a little private
tug of a persuasive nature to the Honourable Adam's coat-tails. A red
Leviathan comes screaming down Main Street with a white trail of dust
behind it, smothering the occupants of vehicles which have barely
succeeded in getting out of the way, and makes a spectacular finish
before the Pelican by sliding the last fifty feet on locked rear wheels.

A group in the street raises a cheer. It is the People's Champion! Dust
coat, gauntlets, goggles, cannot hide him; and if they did, some one
would recognize that voice, familiar now and endeared to many, and so
suited to command:--"Get that baggage off, and don't waste any time!
Jump out, Watling--that handle turns the other way. Well, Tooting, are
the headquarters ready? What was the matter that I couldn't get you on
the telephone?" (To the crowd.) "Don't push in and scratch the paint.
He's going to back out in a minute, and somebody'll get hurt."

Mr. Hamilton Tooting (Colonel Hamilton Tooting that is to be--it being an
open secret that he is destined for the staff) is standing hatless on the
sidewalk ready to receive the great man. The crowd in the rotunda makes a
lane, and Mr. Crewe, glancing neither to the right nor left, walks
upstairs; and scarce is he installed in the bridal suite, surrounded by
his faithful workers for reform, than that amazing reception begins. Mr.
Hamilton Tooting, looking the very soul of hospitality, stands by the
doorway with an open box of cigars in his left hand, pressing them upon
the visitors with his right. Reform, contrary to the preconceived opinion
of many, is not made of icicles, nor answers with a stone a request for
bread. As the hours run on, the visitors grow more and more numerous, and
after supper the room is packed to suffocation, and a long line is
waiting in the corridor, marshalled and kept in good humour by able
lieutenants; while Mr. Crewe is dimly to be perceived through clouds of
incense burning in his honour--and incidentally at his expense--with a
welcoming smile and an appropriate word for each caller, whose waistcoat
pockets, when they emerge, resemble cartridge-belts of cigars.

More cigars were hastily sent for, and more. There are to be but a
thousand delegates to the convention, and at least two thousand men have
already passed through the room--and those who don't smoke have friends.
It is well that Mr. Crewe has stuck to his conservative habit of not
squeezing hands too hard.

"Isn't that Mr. Putter, who keeps a livery-stable here?" inquired Mr.
Crewe, about nine o'clock--our candidate having a piercing eye of his
own. Mr. Putter's coat, being brushed back, has revealed six cigars.

"Why, yes--yes," says Mr. Watling.

"Is he a delegate?" Mr. Crewe demanded.

"Why, I guess he must be," says Mr. Watling.

But Mr. Putter is not a delegate.

"You've stood up and made a grand fight, Mr. Crewe," says another
gentleman, a little later, with a bland, smooth shaven face and strong
teeth to clinch Mr. Crewe's cigars. "I wish I was fixed so as I could
vote for you."

Mr. Crewe looks at him narrowly.

"You look very much like a travelling man from New York, who tried to
sell me farm machinery," he answers.

"Where are you from?"

"You ain't exactly what they call a tyro, are you?" says the bland-faced
man; "but I guess you've missed the mark this shot. Well, so long."

"Hold on!" says Mr. Crewe, "Watling will talk to you."

And, as the gentleman follows Mr. Wailing through the press, a pamphlet
drops from his pocket to the floor. It is marked 'Catalogue of the Raines
Farm Implement Company.' Mr. Watling picks it up and hands it to the
gentleman, who winks again.

"Tim," he says, "where can we sit down? How much are you getting out of
this? Brush and Jake Botcher are bidding high down-stairs, and the
quotation on delegates has gone up ten points in ten minutes. It's mighty
good of you to remember old friends, Tim, even if they're not delegates."

Meanwhile Mr. Crewe is graciously receiving others who are crowding to
him.

"How are you, Mr. Giddings? How are the cows? I carry some stock that'll
make you sit up--I believe I told you when I was down your way. Of
course, mine cost a little money, but that's one of my hobbies. Come and
see 'em some day. There's a good hotel in Ripton, and I'll have you met
there and drive you back."

Thus, with a genial and kindly remark to each, he passes from one to the
other, and when the members of the press come to him for his estimate of
the outcome on the morrow, he treats them with the same courtly
consideration.

"Estimate!" cries Mr. Crewe. "Where have your eyes been to-night, my
friends? Have you seen the people coming into these headquarters? Have
you seen 'em pouring into any other headquarters? All the State and
federal office-holders in the country couldn't stop me now. Estimate!
I'll be nominated on the first ballot."

They wrote it down.

"Thank you, Mr. Crewe," they said; "that's the kind of talk we like to
hear."

"And don't forget," said Mr. Crewe, "to mention this reception in the
accounts."

Mr. Tooting, who makes it a point from time to time to reconnoitre,
saunters halfway down-stairs and surveys the crowded rotunda from the
landing. Through the blue medium produced by the burning of many cigars
(mostly Mr. Crewe's) he takes note of the burly form of Mr. Thomas
Gaylord beside that of Mr. Redbrook and other rural figures; he takes
note of a quiet corner with a ring of chairs surrounded by scouts and
outposts, although it requires a trained eye such as Mr. Tooting's to
recognize them as such--for they wear no uniforms. They are, in truth,
minor captains of the feudal system, and their present duties consist (as
Mr. Tooting sees clearly) in preventing the innocent and inquisitive from
unprofitable speech with the Honourable Jacob Botcher, who sits in the
inner angle conversing cordially with those who are singled out for this
honour. Still other scouts conduct some of the gentlemen who have talked
with Mr. Botcher up the stairs to a mysterious room on the second floor.
Mr. Tooting discovers that the room is occupied by the Honourable Brush
Bascom; Mr. Tooting learns with indignation that certain of these guests
of Mr. Bascom's are delegates pledged to Mr. Crewe, whereupon he rushes
back to the bridal suite to report to his chief. The cigars are giving
out again, and the rush has slackened, and he detaches the People's
Champion from the line and draws him to the inner room.

"Brush Bascom's conducting a bourse on the second floor and is running the
price up right along," cried the honest and indignant Mr. Tooting.  He's
stringin' Adam Hunt all right. They say he's got Adam to cough up six
thousand extra since five o'clock, but the question is--ain't he
stringin' us? He paid six hundred for a block of ten not quarter of an
hour ago--and nine of 'em were our delegates."

It must be remembered that these are Mr. Tooting's words, and Mr. Crewe
evidently treated them as the product of that gentleman's vivid
imagination. Translated, they meant that the Honourable Adam B. Hunt has
no chance for the nomination, but that the crafty Messrs. Botcher and
Bascom are inducing him to think that he has--by making a supreme effort.
The supreme effort is represented by six thousand dollars.

"Are you going to lie down under that?" Mr. Tooting demanded, forgetting
himself in his zeal for reform and Mr. Crewe. But Mr. Tooting, in some
alarm, perceived the eye of his chief growing virtuous and glassy.

"I guess I know when I'm strung, as you call it, Mr. Tooting," he replied
severely. "This cigar bill alone is enough to support a large family for
several months."

And with this merited reproof he turned on his heel and went back to his
admirers without, leaving Mr. Tooting aghast, but still resourceful. Ten
minutes later that gentleman was engaged in a private conversation with
his colleague, the Honourable Timothy Wading.

"He's up on his hind legs at last," said Mr. Tooting; "it looks as if he
was catching on."

Mr. Wading evidently grasped these mysterious words, for he looked grave.

"He thinks he's got the nomination cinched, don't he?"

"That's the worst of it," cried Mr. Tooting.

"I'll see what I can do," said the Honourable Tim. "He's always talking
about thorough, let him do it thorough." And Mr. Watling winked.

"Thorough," repeated Mr. Tooting, delightedly.

"That's it--Colonel," said Mr. Watling. "Have you ordered your uniform
yet, Ham?"

Mr. Tooting plainly appreciated this joke, for he grinned.

"I guess you won't starve if you don't get that commissionership, Tim,"
he retorted.

"And I guess," returned Mr. Watling, "that you won't go naked if you
don't have a uniform."

Victoria's surmise was true. At ten o'clock at night, two days before the
convention, a tall figure had appeared in the empty rotunda of the
Pelican, startling the clerk out of a doze. He rubbed his eyes and
stared, recognized Hilary Vane, and yet failed to recognize him. It was
an extraordinary occasion indeed which would cause Mr. McAvoy to lose his
aplomb; to neglect to seize the pen and dip it, with a flourish, into the
ink, and extend its handle towards the important guest; to omit a few
fitting words of welcome. It was Hilary who got the pen first, and wrote
his name in silence, and by this time Mr. McAvoy had recovered his
presence of mind sufficiently to wield the blotter.

"We didn't expect you to-night, Mr. Vane," he said, in a voice that
sounded strange to him, "but we've kept Number Seven, as usual. Front!"

"The old man's seen his day, I guess," Mr. McAvoy remarked, as he studied
the register with a lone reporter. "This Crewe must have got in on 'em
hard, from what they tell me, and Adam Hunt has his dander up."

The next morning at ten o'clock, while the workmen were still tacking
down the fireproof carpets in headquarters upstairs, and before even the
advance guard of the armies had begun to arrive, the eye of the clerk was
caught by a tall young man rapidly approaching the desk.

"Is Mr. Hilary Vane here?"

"He's in Number Seven," said Mr. McAvoy, who was cudgelling his brains.
"Give me your card, and I'll send it up."

"I'll go up," said the caller, turning on his heel and suiting the action
to the word, leaving Mr. McAvoy to make active but futile inquiries among
the few travelling men and reporters seated about.

"Well, if you fellers don't know him, I give up," said the clerk,
irritably, "but he looks as if he ought to be somebody. He knows his
business, anyway."

In the meantime Mr. Vane's caller had reached the first floor; he
hesitated just a moment before knocking at the door of Number Seven, and
the Honourable Hilary's voice responded. The door opened.

Hilary was seated, as usual, beside the marble-topped table, which was
covered with newspapers and memoranda. In the room were Mr. Ridout, the
capital lawyer, and Mr. Manning, the division superintendent. There was
an instant of surprised silence on the part of the three, but the
Honourable Hilary was the only one who remained expressionless.

"If you don't mind, gentlemen," said the visitor, "I should like to talk
to my father for a few minutes."

"Why, certainly, Austen," Mr. Ridout replied, with an attempt at
heartiness. Further words seemed to fail him, and he left the room
somewhat awkwardly, followed by Mr. Manning; but the Honourable Hilary
appeared to take no notice of this proceeding.

"Judge," said Austen, when the door had closed behind them, "I won't keep
you long. I didn't come down here to plead with you to abandon what you
believe to be your duty, because I know that would be useless. I have had
a talk with Dr. Tredway," he added gently, "and I realize that you are
risking your life. If I could take you back to Ripton I would, but I know
that I cannot. I see your point of view, and if I were in your place I
should do the same thing. I only wanted to tell you this--" Austen's
voice caught a little, "if--anything should happen, I shall be at Mrs.
Peasley's on Maple Street, opposite the Duncan house." He laid his hand
for an instant, in the old familiar way, on Hilary's shoulder, and looked
down into the older man's face. It may have been that Hilary's lips
trembled a little. "I--I'll see you later, Judge, when it's all over.
Good luck to you."

He turned slowly, went to the door and opened it, gave one glance at the
motionless figure in the chair, and went out. He did not hear the voice
that called his name, for the door had shut.

Mr. Ridout and Mr. Manning were talking together in low tones at the head
of the stairs. It was the lawyer who accosted Austen.

"The old gentleman don't seem to be quite himself, Austen. Don't seem
well. You ought to hold him in he can't work as hard as he used to."

"I think you'll find, Mr. Ridout," answered Austen, deliberately, "that
he'll perform what's required of him with his usual efficiency."

Mr. Ridout followed Austen's figure with his eyes until he was hidden by
a turn of the stairs. Then he whistled.

"I can't make that fellow out," he exclaimed. "Never could. All I know is
that if Hilary Vane pulls us through this mess, in the shape he's in,
it'll be a miracle.

"His mind seems sound enough to-day--but he's lost his grip, I tell you.
I don't wonder Flint's beside himself. Here's Adam Hunt with both feet in
the trough, and no more chance of the nomination than I have, and Bascom
and Botcher teasing him on, and he's got enough votes with Crewe to lock
up that convention for a dark horse. And who's the dark horse?"

Mr. Manning, who was a silent man, pointed with his thumb in the
direction Austen had taken.

"Hilary Vane's own son," said Mr. Ridout, voicing the gesture; "they tell
me that Tom Gaylord's done some pretty slick work. Now I leave it to you,
Manning, if that isn't a mess!"

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance on the
stairway of the impressive form of United States Senator Whitredge,
followed by a hall boy carrying the senatorial gripsack. The senator's
face wore a look of concern which could not possibly be misinterpreted.

"How's Hilary?" were his first words.

Mr. Ridout and Mr. Manning glanced at each other.

"He's in Number Seven; you'd better take a look at him, Senator."

The senator drew breath, directed that his grip be put in the room where
he was to repose that night, produced an amber cigar-holder from a case,
and a cigar from his waistcoat pocket.

"I thought I'd better come down early," he said, "things aren't going
just as they should, and that's the truth. In fact," he added,
significantly tapping his pocket, "I've got a letter from Mr. Flint to
Hilary which I may have to use. You understand me."

"I guessed as much," said Mr. Ridout.

"Ahem! I saw young Vane going out of the hotel just now," the senator
remarked. "I am told, on pretty good authority, that under certain
circumstances, which I must confess seem not unlikely at present, he may
be a candidate for the nomination. The fact that he is in town tends to
make the circumstance more probable."

"He's just been in to see Hilary," said Mr. Ridout.

"You don't tell me!" said the senator, pausing as he lighted his cigar;
"I was under the impression that they were not on speaking terms."

"They've evidently got together now, that--" said Mr. Ridout. "I wonder
how old Hilary would feel about it. We couldn't do much with Austen Vane
if he was governor--that's a sure thing."

The senator pondered a moment.

"It's been badly managed," he muttered; "there's no doubt of that. Hunt
must be got out of the way. When Bascom and Botcher come, tell them I
want to see them in my room, not in Number Seven."

And with this impressive command, received with nods of understanding,
Senator Whitredge advanced slowly towards Number Seven, knocked, and
entered. Be it known that Mr. Flint, with characteristic caution, had not
confided even to the senator that the Honourable Hilary had had a stroke.

"Ah, Vane," he said, in his most affable tones, "how are you?"

The Honourable Hilary, who was looking over some papers, shot at him a
glance from under his shaggy eyebrows.

"Came in here to find out--didn't you, Whitredge?" he replied.

"What?" said the senator, taken aback; and for once at a loss for words.

The Honourable Hilary rose and stood straighter than usual, and looked
the senator in the eye.

"What's your diagnosis?" he asked. "Superannuated--unfit for duty
--unable to cope with the situation ready to be superseded? Is that about
it?"

To say that Senator Whitredge was startled and uncomfortable would be to
put his case mildly. He had never before seen Mr. Vane in this mood.

"Ha-ha!" he laughed; "the years are coming over us a little, aren't they?
But I guess it isn't quite time for the youngsters to step in yet."

"No, Whitredge," said Mr. Vane, slowly, without taking his eye from the
senator's, "and it won't be until this convention is over. Do you
understand?"

"That's the first good news I've heard this morning," said the senator,
with the uneasy feeling that, in some miraculous way, the Honourable
Hilary had read the superseding orders from highest authority through his
pocket.

"You may take it as good news or bad news, as you please, but it's a
fact. And now I want 'YOU' to tell Ridout that I wish to see him again,
and to bring in Doby, who is to be chairman of the convention."

"Certainly," assented the senator, with alacrity, as he started for the
door. Then he turned. "I'm glad to see you're all right, Vane," he added;
"I'd heard that you were a little under the weather--a bilious attack on
account of the heat--that's all I meant." He did not wait for an answer,
nor would he have got one. And he found Mr. Ridout in the hall.

"Well?" said the lawyer, expectantly, and looking with some curiosity at
the senator's face.

"Well," said Mr. Whitredge, with marked impatience, "he wants to see you
right away."

All day long Hilary Vane held conference in Number Seven, and at six
o'clock sent a request that the Honourable Adam visit him. The Honourable
Adam would not come; and the fact leaked out--through the Honourable
Adam.

"He's mad clean through," reported the Honourable Elisha Jane, to whose
tact and diplomacy the mission had been confided. "He said he would teach
Flint a lesson. He'd show him he couldn't throw away a man as useful and
efficient as he'd been, like a sucked orange."

"Humph! A sucked orange. That's what he said, is it? A sucked orange,"
Hilary repeated.

"That's what he said," declared Mr. Jane, and remembered afterwards how
Hilary had been struck by the simile.

At ten o'clock at night, at the very height of the tumult, Senator
Whitredge had received an interrogatory telegram from Fairview, and had
called a private conference (in which Hilary was not included) in a back
room on the second floor (where the conflicting bands of Mr. Crewe and
Mr. Hunt could not be heard), which Mr. Manning and Mr. Jane and State
Senator Billings and Mr. Ridout attended. Query: the Honourable Hilary
had quarrelled with Mr. Flint, that was an open secret; did not Mr. Vane
think himself justified, from his own point of view, in taking a singular
revenge in not over-exerting himself to pull the Honourable Adam out,
thereby leaving the field open for his son, Austen Vane, with whom he was
apparently reconciled? Not that Mr. Flint had hinted of such a thing! He
had, in the telegram, merely urged the senator himself to see Mr. Hunt,
and to make one more attempt to restrain the loyalty to that candidate of
Messrs. Bascom and Botcher.

The senator made the attempt, and failed signally.

It was half-past midnight by the shining face of the clock on the tower
of the state-house, and hope flamed high in the bosom of the Honourable
Adam B. Hunt a tribute to the bellows-like skill of Messrs. Bascom and
Botcher. The bands in the street had blown themselves out, the delegates
were at last seeking rest, the hall boys in the corridors were turning
down the lights, and the Honourable Adam, in a complacent and even
jubilant frame of mind, had put on his carpet slippers and taken off his
coat, when there came a knock at his door. He was not a little amazed and
embarrassed, upon opening it, to see the Honourable Hilary. But these
feelings gave place almost immediately to a sense of triumph; gone were
the days when he had to report to Number Seven. Number Seven, in the
person of Hilary (who was Number Seven), had been forced to come to him!

"Well, upon my soul!" he exclaimed heartily. "Come in, Hilary."

He turned up the jets of the chandelier, and gazed at his friend, and was
silent.

"Have a seat, Hilary," he said, pushing up an armchair.

Mr. Vane sat down. Mr. Hunt took a seat opposite, and waited for his
visitor to speak. He himself seemed to find no words.

"Adam," said Mr. Vane, at length, "we've known each other for a good many
years."

"That's so, Hilary. That's so," Mr. Hunt eagerly assented. What was
coming?

"And whatever harm I've done in my life," Hilary continued, "I've always
tried to keep my word. I told you, when we met up there by the mill this
summer, that if Mr. Flint had consulted me about your candidacy, before
seeing you in New York, I shouldn't have advised it--this time."

The Honourable Adam's face stiffened.

"That's what you said. But--"

"And I meant it," Mr. Vane interrupted. "I was never pledged to your
candidacy, as a citizen. I've been thinking over my situation some, this
summer, and I'll tell you in so many plain words what it is. I guess you
know--I guess everybody knows who's thought about it. I deceived myself
for a long time by believing that I earned my living as the attorney for
the Northeastern Railroads. I've drawn up some pretty good papers for
them, and I've won some pretty difficult suits. I'm not proud of 'em all,
but let that go. Do you know what I am?"

The Honourable Adam was capable only of a startled ejaculation. Was
Hilary Vane in his right senses?

"I'm merely their paid political tool," Mr. Vane continued, in the same
tone. "I've sold them my brain, and my right of opinion as a citizen. I
wanted to make this clear to you first of all. Not that you didn't know
it, but I wished you to know that I know it. When Mr. Flint said that you
were to be the Republican nominee, my business was to work to get you
elected, which I did. And when it became apparent that you couldn't be
nominated--"

"Hold on!" cried the Honourable Adam.

"Please wait until I have finished. When it became apparent that you
couldn't be nominated, Mr. Flint sent me to try to get you to withdraw,
and he decreed that the new candidate should pay your expenses up to
date. I failed in that mission."

"I don't blame you, Hilary," exclaimed Mr. Hunt. "I told you so at the
time. But I guess I'll soon be in a position where I can make Flint walk
the tracks--his own tracks."

"Adam," said Mr. Vane, "it is because I deserve as much of the blame as
Mr. Flint that I am here."

Again Mr. Hunt was speechless. The Honourable Hilary Vane in an
apologetic mood! A surmise flashed into the brain of the Honourable Adam,
and sparkled there. The Honourable Giles Henderson was prepared to
withdraw, and Hilary had come, by authority, to see if he would pay the
Honourable Giles' campaign expenses. Well, he could snap his fingers at
that.

"Flint has treated me like a dog," he declared.

"Mr. Flint never pretended," answered Mr. Vane, coldly, "that the
nomination and election of a governor was anything but a business
transaction. His regard for you is probably unchanged, but the interests
he has at stake are too large to admit of sentiment as a factor."

"Exactly," exclaimed Mr. Hunt. "And I hear he hasn't treated you just
right, Hilary. I understand--"

Hilary's eyes flashed for the first time.

"Never mind that, Adam," he said quietly; "I've been treated as I
deserve. I have nothing whatever to complain of from Mr. Flint. I will
tell you why I came here to-night. I haven't felt right about you since
that interview, and the situation to-night is practically what it was
then. You can't be nominated."

"Can't be nominated!" gasped Mr: Hunt. And he reached to the table for
his figures. "I'll have four hundred on the first ballot, and I've got
two hundred and fifty more pledged to me as second choice. If you've come
up here at this time of night to try to deceive me on that, you might as
well go back and wire Flint it's no use. Why, I can name the delegates,
if you'll listen."

Mr. Vane shook his head sadly. And, confident as he was, the movement
sent a cold chill down the Honourable Adam's spine, for faith in Mr.
Vane's judgment had become almost a second nature. He had to force
himself to remember that this was not the old Hilary.

"You won't have three hundred, Adam, at any time," answered Mr. Vane.
"Once you used to believe what I said, and if you won't now, you won't.
But I can't go away without telling you what I came for."

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Hunt, wonderingly.

"It's this," replied Hilary, with more force than he had yet shown. "You
can't get that nomination. If you'll let me know what your campaign
expenses have been up to date,--all of 'em, you understand, to-night
too,--I'll give you a check for them within the next two weeks."

"Who makes this offer?" demanded Mr. Hunt, with more curiosity than
alarm; "Mr. Flint?"

"No," said Hilary; "Mr. Flint does not use the road's funds for such
purposes."

"Henderson?"

"No," said Hilary; "I can't see what difference it makes to you."

The Honourable Adam had an eminently human side, and he laid his hand on
Mr. Vane's knee.

"I think I've got a notion as to where that money would come from,
Hilary," he said. "I'm much obliged to you, my friend. I wouldn't take it
even if I thought you'd sized up the situation right. But--I don't agree
with you this time. I know I've got the nomination. And I want to say
once more, that I think you're a square man, and I don't hold anything
against you."

Mr. Vane rose.

"I'm sorry, Adam," he said; my offer holds good after to-morrow."

"After to-morrow!"

"Yes," said the Honourable Hilary. "I don't feel right about this thing.
Er--good night, Adam."

"Hold on!" cried Mr. Hunt, as a new phase of the matter struck him. "Why,
if I got out--"

"What then?" said Mr. Vane, turning around.

"Oh, I won't get out," said Mr. Hunt, "but if I did,--why, there
wouldn't, according to your way of thinking, be any chance for a dark
horse."

"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Vane.

"Now don't get mad, Hilary. I guess, and you know, that Flint hasn't
treated you decently this summer after all you've done for him, and I
admire the way you're standing by him. I wouldn't do it. I just wanted to
say," Mr. Hunt added slowly, "that I respect you all the more for trying
to get me out. If--always according to your notion of the convention--if
I don't get out, and haven't any chance, they tell me on pretty good
authority Austen Vane will get the nomination."

Hilary Vane walked to the door, opened it and went out, and slammed it
behind him.

It is morning,--a hot morning, as so many recall,--and the partisans of
the three leaders are early astir, and at seven-thirty Mr. Tooting
discovers something going on briskly which he terms "dealing in futures."
My vote is yours as long as you are in the race, but after that I have
something negotiable. The Honourable Adam Hunt strolls into the rotunda
after an early breakfast, with a toothpick in his mouth, and is pointed
out by the sophisticated to new arrivals as the man who spent seven
thousand dollars over night, much of which is said to have stuck in the
pockets of two feudal chiefs who could be named. Is it possible that
there is a split in the feudal system at last? that the two feudal chiefs
(who could be named) are rebels against highest authority? A smile from
the sophisticated one. This duke and baron have merely stopped to pluck a
bird; it matters not whether or not the bird is an erstwhile friend--he
has been outlawed by highest authority, and is fair game. The bird (with
the toothpick in his mouth) creates a smile from other chiefs of the
system in good standing who are not too busy to look at him. They have
ceased all attempts to buttonhole him, for he is unapproachable.

The other bird, the rebel of Leith, who has never been in the feudal
system at all, they have stopped laughing at. It is he who has brought
the Empire to its most precarious state.

And now, while strangers from near and far throng into town, drawn by the
sensational struggle which is to culminate in battle to-day, Mr. Crewe is
marshalling his forces. All the delegates who can be collected, and who
wear the button with the likeness and superscription of Humphrey Crewe,
are drawn up beside the monument in the park, where the Ripton Band is
stationed; and presently they are seen by cheering crowds marching to
martial music towards the convention hall, where they collect in a body,
with signs and streamers in praise of the People's Champion well to the
front and centre. This is generally regarded as a piece of consummate
general ship on the part of their leader. They are applauded from the
galleries,--already packed,--especially from one conspicuous end where
sit that company of ladies (now so famed) whose efforts have so
materially aided the cause of the People's Champion. Gay streamers vie
with gayer gowns, and morning papers on the morrow will have something to
say about the fashionable element and the special car which brought them
from Leith.

"My, but it is hot!"

The hall is filled now, with the thousand delegates, or their
representatives who are fortunate enough to possess their credentials.
Something of this matter later. General Doby, chairman of the convention,
an impressive but mournful figure, could not call a roll if he wanted to.
Not that he will want to! Impossible to tell, by the convenient laws of
the State, whether the duly elected delegates of Hull or Mercer or Truro
are here or not, since their credentials may be bought or sold or
conferred. Some political giants, who have not negotiated their
credentials, are recognized as they walk down the aisle: the
statesmanlike figure of Senator Whitredge (a cheer); that of Senator
Green (not so statesmanlike, but a cheer); Congressman Fairplay (cheers);
and--Hilary Vane! His a figure that does not inspire cheers,--least of
all to-day,--the man upon whose shoulders rests the political future of
the Northeastern. The conservative Mr. Tredways and other Lincoln
radicals of long ago who rely on his strength and judgment are not the
sort to cheer. And yet--and yet Hilary inspires some feeling when, with
stooping gait, he traverses the hall, and there is a hush in many
quarters as delegates and spectators watch his progress to the little
room off the platform: the general's room, as the initiated know.

Ah, but few know what a hateful place it is to Hilary Vane to-day, this
keyboard at which he has sat so complacently in years gone by, the envied
of conventions. He sits down wearily at the basswood table, and scarcely
hears the familiar sounds without, which indicate that the convention of
conventions has begun. Extraordinary phenomenon at such a time, scenes of
long ago and little cherished then, are stealing into his mind.

The Reverend Mr. Crane (so often chaplain of the Legislature, and known
to the irreverent as the chaplain of the Northeastern) is praying now for
guidance in the counsels of this great gathering of the people's
representatives. God will hear Mr. Botcher better if he closes his eyes;
which he does. Now the platform is being read by State Senator Billings;
closed eyes would best suit this proceeding, too. As a parallel to that
platform, one can think only of the Ten Commandments. The Republican
Party (chosen children of Israel) must be kept free from the domination
of corporations. (Cheers and banner waving for a full minute.) Some
better method of choosing delegates which will more truly reflect the
will of the people. (Plank of the Honourable Jacob Botcher, whose
conscience is awakening.) Never mind the rest. It is a triumph for Mr.
Crewe, and is all printed in that orthodox (reform) newspaper, the State
Tribune, with urgent editorials that it must be carried out to the
letter.

And what now? Delegates, credential holders, audience, and the Reverend
Mr. Crane draw long breaths of heated carbon dioxide. Postmaster Burrows
of Edmundton, in rounded periods, is putting in nomination his
distinguished neighbour and fellow-citizen, the Honourable Adam B. Hunt,
who can subscribe and say amen to every plank in that platform. He
believes it, he has proclaimed it in public, and he embodies it. Mr.
Burrows indulges in slight but effective sarcasm of sham reformers and
so-called business men who perform the arduous task of cutting coupons
and live in rarefied regions where they can only be seen by the common
people when the light is turned on. (Cheers from two partisan bodies and
groans and hisses from another. General Doby, with a pained face,
pounding with the gavel. This isn't a circumstance to what's coming,
General.)

After General Doby has succeeded in abating the noise in honour-of the
Honourable Adam, there is a hush of expectancy. Humphrey Crewe, who has
made all this trouble and enthusiasm, is to be nominated next, and the
Honourable Timothy Wailing of Newcastle arises to make that celebrated
oration which the cynical have called the "thousand-dollar speech." And
even if they had named it well (which is not for a moment to be
admitted!), it is cheap for the price. How Mr. Crewe's ears must tingle
as he paces his headquarters in the Pelican! Almost would it be sacrilege
to set down cold, on paper, the words that come, burning, out of the
Honourable Timothy's loyal heart. Here, gentlemen, is a man at last, not
a mere puppet who signs his name when a citizen of New York pulls the
string; one who is prepared to make any sacrifice,--to spend his life, if
need be, in their service. (A barely audible voice, before the cheering
commences, "I guess that's so.") Humphrey Crewe needs no defence--the
Honourable Timothy avers--at his hands, or any one's. Not merely an
idealist, but a practical man who has studied the needs of the State;
unselfish to the core; longing, like Washington, the Father of his
Country, to remain in a beautiful country home, where he dispenses
hospitality with a flowing hand to poor and rich alike, yet harking to
the call of duty. Leaving, like the noble Roman of old, his plough in the
furrow--(Same voice as before, "I wish he'd left his automobil' thar!"
Hisses and laughter.) The Honourable Timothy, undaunted, snatches his
hand from the breast of his Prince Albert and flings it, with a superb
gesture, towards the Pelican. "Gentlemen, I have the honour to nominate
to this convention that peerless leader for the right, the Honourable
Humphrey Crewe of Leith--our next governor."

General Andrew Jackson himself, had he been alive and on this historic
ground and chairman of that convention, could scarce have quelled the
tumult aroused by this name and this speech--much less General Doby.
Although a man of presence, measurable by scales with weights enough, our
general has no more ponderosity now than a leaf in a mountain storm at
Hale--and no more control over the hurricane. Behold him now, pounding
with his gavel on something which should give forth a sound, but doesn't.
Who is he (to change the speech's figure--not the general's), who is he
to drive a wild eight-horse team, who is fit only to conduct Mr. Flint's
oxen in years gone by?

It is a memorable scene, sketched to life for the metropolitan press. The
man on the chair, his face lighted by a fanatic enthusiasm, is the
Honourable Hamilton Tooting, coatless and collarless, leading the cheers
that shake the building, that must have struck terror to the soul of
Augustus P. Flint himself--fifty miles away. But the endurance of the
human throat is limited.

Why, in the name of political strategy, has United States Senator Greene
been chosen to nominate the Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston? Some
say that it is the will of highest authority, others that the senator is
a close friend of the Honourable Giles--buys his coal from him,
wholesale. Both surmises are true. The senator's figure is not
impressive, his voice less so, and he reads from manuscript, to the
accompaniment of continual cries of "Louder!" A hook for Leviathan! "A
great deal of dribble," said the senator, for little rocks sometimes
strike fire, "has been heard about the 'will of the people.'"

The Honourable Giles Henderson is beholden to no man and to no
corporation, and will go into office prepared to do justice impartially
to all."

"Bu--copia verborum--let us to the main business!"

To an hundred newspapers, to Mr. Flint at Fairview, and other important
personages ticks out the momentous news that the balloting has begun. No
use trying to hold your breath until the first ballot is announced; it
takes time to obtain the votes of one thousand men--especially when
neither General Doby nor any one else knows who they are! The only way is
to march up on the stage by counties and file past the ballot-box.
Putnam, with their glitter-eyed duke, Mr. Bascom, at their head
--presumably solid for Adam B. Hunt; Baron Burrows, who farms out the
post-office at Edmundton, leads Edmunds County; Earl Elisha Jane, consul
at some hot place where he spends the inclement months drops the first
ticket for Haines County, ostensibly solid for home-made virtue and the
Honourable Giles.

An hour and a quarter of suspense and torture passes, while collars wilt
and coats come off, and fans in the gallery wave incessantly, and excited
conversation buzzes in every quarter. And now, see! there is whispering
on the stage among the big-bugs. Mr. Chairman Doby rises with a paper in
his hand, and the buzzing dies down to silence.

   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . .398
   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 353
   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has. .  249
   And a majority being required, there is no choice!

Are the supporters of the People's Champion crest-fallen, think you? Mr.
Tooting is not leading them for the moment, but is pressing through the
crowd outside the hall and flying up the street to the Pelican and the
bridal suite, where he is first with the news. Note for an unabridged
biography: the great man is discovered sitting quietly by the window,
poring over a book on the modern science of road-building, some notes
from which he is making for his first message. And instead of the reek of
tobacco smoke, the room is filled with the scent of the floral tributes
brought down by the Ladies' Auxiliary from Leith. In Mr. Crewe's
right-hand pocket, neatly typewritten, is his speech of acceptance. He is
never caught unprepared. Unkind, now, to remind him of that prediction
made last night about the first ballot to the newspapers--and useless.

"I told you last night they were buyin' 'em right under our noses," cried
Mr. Tooting, in a paroxysm of indignation, "and you wouldn't believe me.
They got over one hundred and sixty away from us."

"It strikes me, Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe, "that it was your business
to prevent that."

There will no doubt be a discussion, when the biographer reaches this
juncture, concerning the congruity of reform delegates who can be bought.
It is too knotty a point of ethics to be dwelt upon here.

"Prevent it!" echoed Mr. Tooting, and in the strong light of the
righteousness of that eye reproaches failed him. "But there's a whole lot
of 'em can be seen, right now, while the ballots are being taken. It
won't be decided on the next ballot."

"Mr. Tooting," said Mr. Crewe, indubitably proving that he had the
qualities of a leader--if such proof were necessary, "go back to the
convention. I have no doubt of the outcome, but that doesn't mean you are
to relax your efforts. Do you understand?"

"I guess I do," replied Mr. Tooting, and was gone. "He still has his flag
up," he whispered into the Honourable Timothy Watling's ear, when he
reached the hall. "He'll stand a little more yet."

Mr. Tooting, at times, speaks a language unknown to us--and the second
ballot is going on. And during its progress the two principal lieutenants
of the People's Champion were observed going about the hall apparently
exchanging the time of day with various holders of credentials. Mr. Jane,
too, is going about the hall, and Postmaster Burrows, and Postmaster Bill
Fleeting of Brampton, and the Honourable Nat Billings, and Messrs. Bascom
and Botcher, and Mr. Manning, division superintendent, and the Honourable
Orrin Young, railroad commissioner and candidate for reappointment--all
are embracing the opportunity to greet humble friends or to make new
acquaintances. Another hour and a quarter, with the temperature steadily
rising and the carbon dioxide increasing--and the second ballot is
announced.

   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 440
   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . . 336
   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has . . . 255

And there are three votes besides improperly made out!

What the newspapers call indescribable excitement ensues. The three votes
improperly made out are said to be trip passes accidentally dropped into
the box by the supporters of the Honourable Elisha Jane. And add up the
sum total of the votes! Thirty-one votes more than there are credentials
in the hall! Mystery of mysteries how can it be? The ballot, announces
General Doby, after endless rapping, is a blank. Cheers, recriminations,
exultation, disgust of decent citizens, attempts by twenty men to get the
eye of the president (which is too watery to see any of them), and rushes
for the platform to suggest remedies or ask what is going to be done
about such palpable fraud. What can be done? Call the roll! How in blazes
can you call the roll when you don't know who's here? Messrs. Jane,
Botcher, Bascom, and Fleming are not disturbed, and improve their time.
Watling and Tooting rush to the bridal suite, and rush back again to
demand justice. General Doby mingles his tears with theirs, and somebody
calls him a jellyfish. He does not resent it. Friction makes the air
hotter and hotter--Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would scarce enter
into this furnace,--and General Doby has a large damp spot on his back as
he pounds and pounds and pounds until we are off again on the third
ballot. No dinner, and three-thirty P.M.! Two delegates have fainted, but
the essential parts of them--the credentials--are left behind.

Four-forty, whispering again, and the gavel drops.

   The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 412
   The Honourable Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 325
   The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has. . . 250
   And there is no choice on the third ballot!

Thirteen delegates are actually missing this time. Scour the town! And
now even the newspaper adjectives describing the scene have given out. A
persistent and terrifying rumour goes the rounds, where's Tom Gaylord?
Somebody said he was in the hall a moment ago, on a Ripton credential. If
so, he's gone out again--gone out to consult the dark horse, who is in
town, somewhere. Another ominous sign: Mr. Redbrook, Mr. Widgeon of Hull,
and the other rural delegates who have been voting for the People's
Champion, and who have not been observed in friendly conversation with
anybody at all, now have their heads together. Mr. Billings goes
sauntering by, but cannot hear what they are saying. Something must be
done, and right away, and the knowing metropolitan reporters are winking
at each other and declaring darkly that a sensation is about to turn up.

Where is Hilary Vane? Doesn't he realize the danger? Or--traitorous
thought!--doesn't he care? To see his son nominated would be a singular
revenge for the indignities which are said to have been heaped upon him.
Does Hilary Vane, the strong man of the State, merely sit at the
keyboard, powerless, while the tempest itself shakes from the organ a new
and terrible music? Nearly, six hours he has sat at the basswood table,
while senators, congressmen, feudal chiefs, and even Chairman Doby
himself flit in and out, whisper in his ear, set papers before him, and
figures and problems, and telegrams from highest authority. He merely
nods his head, says a word now and then, or holds his peace. Does he know
what he's about? If they had not heard things concerning his health,--and
other things,--they would still feel safe. He seems the only calm man to
be found in the hall--but is the calm aberration?

A conference in the corner of the platform, while the fourth ballot is
progressing, is held between Senators Whitredge and Greene, Mr. Ridout
and Mr. Manning. So far the Honourable Hilary has apparently done nothing
but let the storm take its course; a wing-footed messenger has returned
who has seen Mr. Thomas Gaylord walking rapidly up Maple Street, and
Austen Vane (most astute and reprehensible of politicians) is said to be
at the Widow Peasley's, quietly awaiting the call. The name of Austen
Vane--another messenger says--is running like wildfire through the hall,
from row to row. Mr. Crewe has no chance--so rumour goes. A reformer (to
pervert the saying of a celebrated contemporary humorist) must fight
Marquis of Queensberry to win; and the People's Champion, it is averred,
has not. Shrewd country delegates who had listened to the Champion's
speeches and had come to the capital prepared to vote for purity, had
been observing the movements since yesterday, of Mr. Tooting and Mr.
Wading with no inconsiderable interest. Now was the psychological moment
for Austen Vane, but who was to beard Hilary?

No champion was found, and the Empire, the fate of which was in the hands
of a madman, was cracking. Let an individual of character and known
anti-railroad convictions (such as the gentleman said to be at the Widow
Peasley's) be presented to the convention, and they would nominate him.
Were Messrs. Bascom and Botcher going to act the part of Samsons? Were
they working for revenge and a new regime? Mr. Whitredge started for the
Pelican, not at his ordinary senatorial gait, to get Mr. Flint on the
telephone.

The result of the fourth ballot was announced, and bedlam broke loose.

The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . 419 The Honourable
Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . . 337 The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of
Edmundton has . . . 256

Total, one thousand and eleven out of a thousand! Two delegates abstained
from voting, and proclaimed the fact, but were heard only a few feet
away. Other delegates, whose flesh and blood could stand the atmosphere
no longer, were known to have left the hall! Aha! the secret is out, if
anybody could hear it. At the end of every ballot several individuals
emerge and mix with the crowd in the street. Astute men sometimes make
mistakes, and the following conversation occurs between one of the
individuals in question and Mr. Crewe's chauffeur.

   Individual: "Do you want to come in and see the convention and
   vote?"

   Chauffeur: "I am Frenchman."

   Individual: "That doesn't cut any ice. I'll make out the ballot,
   and all you'll have to do is to drop it in the box."
   Chauffeur: "All right; I vote for Meester Crewe."

Sudden disappearance of the individual.

Nor is this all. The Duke of Putnam, for example, knows how many
credentials there are in his county--say, seventy-six. He counts the men
present and voting, and his result is sixty-one. Fifteen are absent,
getting food or--something else. Fifteen vote over again. But, as the
human brain is prone to error, and there are men in the street, the Duke
miscalculates; the Earl of Haines miscalculates, too. Result--eleven over
a thousand votes, and some nine hundred men in the hall!

How are you going to stop it? Mr. Watling climbs up on the platform and
shakes his fist in General Doby's face, and General Doby tearfully
appeals for an honest ballot--to the winds.

In the meantime the Honourable Elisha Jane, spurred on by desperation and
thoughts of a 'dolce far niente' gone forever; has sought and cornered
Mr. Bascom.

"For God's sake, Brush," cries the Honourable Elisha, "hasn't this thing
gone far enough? A little of it is all right--the boys understand that;
but have you thought what it means to you and me if these blanked
reformers get in,--if a feller like Austen Vane is nominated?"

That cold, hard glitter which we have seen was in Mr. Bascom's eyes.

"You fellers have got the colic," was the remark of the arch-rebel. "Do
you think old Hilary doesn't know what he's about?"

"It looks that way to me," said Mr. Jane.

"It looks that way to Doby too, I guess," said Mr. Bascom, with a glance
of contempt at the general; "he's lost about fifteen pounds to-day. Did
Hilary send you down here?" he demanded.

"No," Mr. Jane confessed.

"Then go back and chase yourself around the platform some more," was Mr.
Bascom's unfeeling advice, "and don't have a fit here. All the brains in
this hall are in Hilary's room. When he's ready to talk business with me
in behalf of the Honourable Giles Henderson, I guess he'll do so."

But fear had entered the heart of the Honourable Elisha, and there was a
sickly feeling in the region of his stomach which even the strong
medicine administered by the Honourable Brush failed to alleviate. He
perceived Senator Whitredge, returned from the Pelican. But the advice
--if any--the president of the Northeastern has given the senator is not
forthcoming in practice. Mr. Flint, any more than Ulysses himself, cannot
recall the tempests when his own followers have slit the bags--and in
sight of Ithaca! Another conference at the back of the stage, out of
which emerges State Senator Nat Billings and gets the ear of General
Doby.

"Let 'em yell," says Mr. Billings--as though the general, by raising one
adipose hand, could quell the storm. Eyes are straining, scouts are
watching at the back of the hall and in the street, for the first glimpse
of the dreaded figure of Mr. Thomas Gaylord. "Let 'em yell;" counsels Mr.
Billings, "and if they do nominate anybody nobody'll hear 'em. And send
word to Putnam County to come along on their fifth ballot."

It is Mr. Billings himself who sends word to Putnam County, in the name
of the convention's chairman. Before the messenger can reach Putnam
County another arrives on the stage, with wide pupils, "Tom Gaylord is
coming!" This momentous news, Marconi-like, penetrates the storm, and is
already on the floor. Mr. Widgeon and Mr. Redbrook are pushing their way
towards the door. The conference, emboldened by terror, marches in a body
into the little room, and surrounds the calmly insane Lieutenant-general
of the forces; it would be ill-natured to say that visions of lost
railroad commissionerships, lost consulships, lost postmasterships,
--yes, of lost senatorships, were in these loyal heads at this crucial
time.

It was all very well (so said the first spokesman) to pluck a few
feathers from a bird so bountifully endowed as the Honourable Adam, but
were not two gentlemen who should be nameless carrying the joke a little
too far? Mr. Vane unquestionably realized what he was doing, but--was it
not almost time to call in the two gentlemen and--and come to some
understanding?

"Gentlemen," said the Honourable Hilary, apparently unmoved, "I have not
seen Mr. Bascom or Mr. Botcher since the sixteenth day of August, and I
do not intend to."

Some clearing of throats followed this ominous declaration,--and a
painful silence. The thing must be said and who would say it? Senator
Whitredge was the hero.

Mr. Thomas Gaylord has just entered the convention hall, and is said to
be about to nominate--a dark horse. The moment was favourable, the
convention demoralized, and at least one hundred delegates had left the
hall. (How about the last ballot, Senator, which showed 1011?)

The Honourable Hilary rose abruptly, closed the door to shut out the
noise, and turned and looked Mr. Whitredge in the eye.

"Who is the dark horse?" he demanded.

The members of the conference coughed again, looked at each other, and
there was a silence. For some inexplicable reason, nobody cared to
mention the name of Austen Vane.

The Honourable Hilary pointed at the basswood table.

"Senator," he said, "I understand you have been telephoning Mr. Flint.
Have you got orders to sit down there?"

"My dear sir," said the Senator, "you misunderstand me."

"Have you got orders to sit down there?" Mr. Vane repeated.

"No," answered the Senator, "Mr. Flint's confidence in you--"

The Honourable Hilary sat down again, and at that instant the door was
suddenly flung open by Postmaster Bill Fleeting of Brampton, his genial
face aflame with excitement and streaming with perspiration. Forgotten,
in this moment, is senatorial courtesy and respect for the powers of the
feudal system.

"Say, boys," he cried, "Putnam County's voting, and there's be'n no
nomination and ain't likely to be. Jim Scudder, the station-master at
Wye, is here on credentials, and he says for sure the thing's fizzled
out, and Tom Gaylord's left the hall!"

Again a silence, save for the high hum let in through the open doorway.
The members of the conference stared at the Honourable Hilary, who seemed
to have forgotten their presence; for he had moved his chair to the
window, and was gazing out over the roofs at the fast-fading red in the
western sky.

An hour later, when the room was in darkness save for the bar of light
that streamed in from the platform chandelier, Senator Whitredge entered.

"Hilary!" he said.

There was no answer. Mr. Whitredge felt in his pocket for a match, struck
it, and lighted the single jet over the basswood table. Mr. Vane still
sat by the window. The senator turned and closed the door, and read from
a paper in his hand; so used was he to formality that he read it
formally, yet with a feeling of intense relief, of deference, of apology.

"Fifth ballot:--The Honourable Giles Henderson of Kingston has . . . 587;
The Honourable Adam B. Hunt of Edmundton has . . . 230; The Honourable
Humphrey Crewe of Leith has . . . 154.

And Giles Henderson is nominated--Hilary?"

"Yes," said Mr. Vane.

"I don't think any of us were--quite ourselves to-day. It wasn't that we
didn't believe in you--but we didn't have all the threads in our hands,
and--for reasons which I think I can understand--you didn't take us into
your confidence. I want to--"

The words died on the senator's lips. So absorbed had he been in his
momentous news, and solicitous over the result of his explanation, that
his eye looked outward for the first time, and even then accidentally.

"Hilary!" he cried; "for God's sake, what's the matter? Are you sick?"

"Yes, Whitredge," said Mr. Vane, slowly, "sick at heart."

It was but natural that these extraordinary and incomprehensible words
should have puzzled and frightened the senator more than ever.

"Your heart!" he repeated.

"Yes, my heart," said Hilary.

The senator reached for the ice-water on the table.

"Here," he cried, pouring out a glass, "it's only the heat--it's been a
hard day--drink this."

But Hilary did not raise his arm. The door opened others coming to
congratulate Hilary Vane on the greatest victory he had ever won. Offices
were secure once more, the feudal system intact, and rebels justly
punished; others coming to make their peace with the commander whom,
senseless as they were, they had dared to doubt.

They crowded past each other on the threshold, and stood grouped beyond
the basswood table, staring--staring--men suddenly come upon a tragedy
instead of a feast, the senator still holding the glass of water in a
hand that trembled and spilled it. And it was the senator, after all, who
first recovered his presence of mind. He set down the water, pushed his
way through the group into the hall, where the tumult and the shouting
die. Mr. Giles Henderson, escorted, is timidly making his way towards the
platform to read his speech of acceptance of a willing bondage, when a
voice rings out:--"If there is a physician in the house, will he please
come forward?"

And then a hush,--and then the buzz of comment. Back to the little room
once more, where they are gathered speechless about Hilary Vane. And the
doctor comes young Dr. Tredway of Ripton, who is before all others.

"I expected this to happen, gentlemen," he said, "and I have been here
all day, at the request of Mr. Vane's son, for this purpose."

"Austen!"

It was Hilary who spoke.

"I have sent for him," said the doctor. "And now, gentlemen, if you will
kindly--"

They withdrew and the doctor shut the door. Outside, the Honourable Giles
is telling them how seriously he regards the responsibility of the honour
thrust upon him by a great party. But nobody hears him in the wild
rumours that fly from mouth to mouth as the hall empties. Rushing in
against the tide outpouring, tall, stern, vigorous, is a young man whom
many recognize, whose name is on many lips as they make way for him, who
might have saved them if he would. The door of the little room opens, and
he stands before his father, looking down at him. And the stern
expression is gone from his face.

"Austen!" said Mr. Vane.

"Yes, Judge."

"Take me away from here. Take me home--now--to-night."

Austen glanced at Dr. Tredway.

"It is best," said the doctor; "we will take him home--to-night."




CHAPTER XXVIII

THE VOICE OF AN ERA

They took him home, in the stateroom of the sleeper attached to the night
express from the south, although Mr. Flint, by telephone, had put a
special train at his disposal. The long service of Hilary Vane was over;
he had won his last fight for the man he had chosen to call his master;
and those who had fought behind him, whose places, whose very luminary
existences, had depended on his skill, knew that the end had come; nay,
were already speculating, manoeuvring, and taking sides. Who would be the
new Captain-general? Who would be strong enough to suppress the straining
ambitions of the many that the Empire might continue to flourish in its
integrity and gather tribute? It is the world-old cry around the palace
walls: Long live the new ruler--if you can find him among the curdling
factions.

They carried Hilary home that September night, when Sawanec was like a
gray ghost-mountain facing the waning moon, back to the home of those
strange, Renaissance Austens which he had reclaimed for a grim
puritanism, and laid him in the carved and canopied bedstead Channing
Austen had brought from Spain. Euphrasia had met them at the door, but a
trained nurse from the Ripton hospital was likewise in waiting; and a New
York specialist had been summoned to prolong, if possible, the life of
one from whom all desire for life had passed.

Before sunrise a wind came from the northern spruces; the dawn was
cloudless, fiery red, and the air had an autumn sharpness. At ten o'clock
Dr. Harmon arrived, was met at the station by Austen, and spent half an
hour with Dr. Tredway. At noon the examination was complete. Thanks to
generations of self-denial by the Vanes of Camden Street, Mr. Hilary Vane
might live indefinitely, might even recover, partially; but at present he
was condemned to remain, with his memories, in the great canopied bed.

The Honourable Hilary had had another caller that morning besides Dr.
Harmon,--no less a personage than the president of the Northeastern
Railroads himself, who had driven down from Fairview immediately after
breakfast. Austen having gone to the station, Dr. Tredway had received
Mr. Flint in the darkened hall, and had promised to telephone to Fairview
the verdict of the specialist. At present Dr. Tredway did not think it
wise to inform Hilary of Mr. Flint's visit--not, at least, until after
the examination.

Mr. Vane exhibited the same silent stoicism on receiving the verdict of
Dr. Harmon as he had shown from the first. With the clew to Hilary's life
which Dr. Tredway had given him, the New York physician understood the
case; one common enough in his practice in a great city where the fittest
survive--sometimes only to succumb to unexpected and irreparable blows in
the evening of life.

On his return from seeing Dr. Harmon off Austen was met on the porch by
Dr. Tredway.

"Your father has something on his mind," said the doctor, "and perhaps it
is just as well that he should be relieved. He is asking for you, and I
merely wished to advise you to make the conversation as short as
possible."

Austen climbed the stairs in obedience to this summons, and stood before
his father at the bedside. Hilary lay, back among the pillows, and the
brightness of that autumn noonday only served to accentuate the pallor of
his face, the ravages of age which had come with such incredible
swiftness, and the outline of a once vigorous frame. The eyes alone shone
with a strange new light, and Austen found it unexpectedly difficult to
speak. He sat down on the bed and laid his hand on the helpless one that
rested on the coverlet.

"Austen," said Mr. Vane, "I want you to go to Fairview."

His son's hand tightened over his own.

"Yes, Judge."

"I want you to go now."

"Yes, Judge."

"You know the combination of my safe at the office. It's never been
changed since--since you were there. Open it. You will find two tin
boxes, containing papers labelled Augustus P. Flint. I want you to take
them to Fairview and put them into the hands of Mr. Flint himself. I--I
cannot trust any one else. I promised to take them myself, but--Flint
will understand."

"I'll go right away," said Austen, rising, and trying to speak
cheerfully. "Mr. Flint was here early this morning--inquiring for you."

Hilary Vane's lips trembled, and another expression came into his eyes.

"Rode down to look at the scrap-heap,--did he?"

Austen strove to conceal his surprise at his father's words and change of
manner.

"Tredway saw him," he said. "I'm pretty sure Mr. Flint doesn't feel that
way, Judge. He has taken your illness very much to heart, I know, and he
left some fruit and flowers for you."

"I guess his daughter sent those," said Hilary.

"His daughter?" Austen repeated.

"If I didn't think so," Mr. Vane continued, "I'd send 'em back. I never
knew what she was until she picked me up and drove me down here. I've
always done Victoria an injustice."

Austen walked to the door, and turned slowly.

"I'll go at once, Judge," he said.

In the kitchen he was confronted by Euphrasia.

"When is that woman going away?" she demanded. "I've took care of Hilary
Vane nigh on to forty years, and I guess I know as much about nursing,
and more about Hilary, than that young thing with her cap and apron. I
told Dr. Tredway so. She even came down here to let me know what to cook
for him, and I sent her about her business."

Austen smiled. It was the first sign, since his return the night before,
Euphrasia had given that an affection for Hilary Vane lurked beneath the
nature.

"She won't stay long, Phrasie," he answered, and added mischievously,
"for a very good reason."

"And what's that?" asked Euphrasia.

"Because you won't allow her to. I have a notion that she'll pack up and
leave in about three days, and that all the doctors in Ripton couldn't
keep her here."

"Get along with you," said Euphrasia, who could not for the life of her
help looking a little pleased.

"I'm going off for a few hours," he said more seriously. "Dr. Tredway
tells me they do not look for any developments--for the worse."

"Where are you going?" asked Euphrasia, sharply.

"To Fairview," he said.

Euphrasia moved the kettle to another part of the stove.

"You'll see her?" she said.

"Who?" Austen asked. But his voice must have betrayed him a little, for
Euphrasia turned and seized him by the elbows and looked up into his
face.

"Victoria," she said.

He felt himself tremble at the name,--at the strangeness of its sound on
Euphrasia's lips.

"I do not expect to see Miss Flint," he answered, controlling himself as
well as he was able. "I have an errand for the Judge with Mr. Flint
himself."

Euphrasia had guessed his secret! But how?

"Hadn't you better see her?" said Euphrasia, in a curious monotone.

"But I have no errand with her," he objected, mystified yet excited by
Euphrasia's manner.

"She fetched Hilary home," said Euphrasia.

"Yes."

She couldn't have be'n kinder if she was his own daughter."

"I know--" he began, but Euphrasia interrupted.

"She sent that Englishman for the doctor, and waited to take the news to
her father, and she came out in this kitchen and talked to me."

Austen started. Euphrasia was not looking at him now, and suddenly she
dropped his arms and went to the window overlooking the garden.

"She wouldn't go in the parlour, but come right out here in her fine
clothes. I told her I didn't think she belonged in a kitchen--but I guess
I did her an injustice," said Euphrasia, slowly.

"I think you did," he said, and wondered.

"She looked at that garden," Euphrasia went on, "and cried out. I didn't
callate she was like that. And the first thing I knew I was talking about
your mother, and I'd forgot who I was talking to. She wahn't like a
stranger--it was just as if I'd known her always. I haven't understood it
yet. And after a while I told her about that verse, and she wanted to see
it--the verse about the skylark, you know--"

"Yes," said Austen.

"Well, the way she read it made me cry, it brought back Sarah Austen so.
Somehow, I can't account for it, she puts me in mind of your mother."

Austen did not speak.

"In more ways than one," said Euphrasia. "I didn't look to find her so
natural--and so gentle. And their she has a way of scolding you, just as
Sarah Austen had, that you'd never suspect."

"Did she scold you--Phrasie?" asked Austen. And the irresistible humour
that is so near to sorrow made him smile again.

"Indeed she did! And it surprised, me some--coming right out of a summer
sky. I told her what I thought about Hilary, and how he'd driven you out
of your own mother's house. She said you'd ought to be sent for, and I
said you oughtn't to set foot in this house until Hilary sent for you.
She said I'd no right to take such a revenge--that you'd come right away
if you knew Hilary'd had a stroke, and that Hilary'd never send for you
--because he couldn't. She said he was like a man on a desert island."

"She was right," answered Austen.

"I don't know about that," said Euphrasia; "she hadn't put up with Hilary
for forty years, as I had, and seen what he'd done to your mother and
you. But that's what she said. And she went for you herself, when she
found the doctor couldn't go. Austen, ain't you going to see her?"

Austen shook his head gently, and smiled at her.

"I'm afraid it's no use, Phrasie," he said. "Just because she has been
--kind we mustn't be deceived. It's h er nature to be kind."

Euphrasia crossed the room swiftly, and seized his arm again.

"She loves you, Austen," she cried; "she loves you. Do you think that I'd
love her, that I'd plead for her, if she didn't?"

Austen's breath came deeply. He disengaged himself, and went to the
window.

"No," he said, "you don't know. You can't--know. I have only seen her--a
few times. She lives a different life--and with other people. She will
marry a man who can give her more."

"Do you think I could be deceived?" exclaimed Euphrasia, almost fiercely.
"It's as true as the sun shining on that mountain. You believe she loves
the Englishman, but I tell you she loves you--you."

He turned towards her.

"How do you know?" he asked, as though he were merely curious.

"Because I'm a woman, and she's a woman," said Euphrasia. "Oh, she didn't
confess it. If she had, I shouldn't think so much of her. But she told me
as plain as though she had spoken it in words, before she left this
room."

Austen shook his head again.

"Phrasie," he said, "I'm afraid you've been building castles in Spain."
And he went out, and across to the stable to harness Pepper.

Austen did not believe Euphrasia. On that eventful evening when Victoria
had called at Jabe Jenney's, the world's aspect had suddenly changed for
him; old values had faded,--values which, after all, had been but tints
and glows,--and sterner but truer colours took their places. He saw
Victoria's life in a new perspective,--one in which his was but a small
place in the background of her numerous beneficences; which was, after
all, the perspective in which he had first viewed it. But, by degrees,
the hope that she loved him had grown and grown until it had become
unconsciously the supreme element of his existence,--the hope that stole
sweetly into his mind with the morning light, and stayed him through the
day, and blended into the dreams of darkness.

By inheritance, by tradition, by habits of thought, Austen Vane was an
American,--an American as differentiated from the citizen of any other
nation upon the earth. The French have an expressive phrase in speaking
of a person as belonging to this or that world, meaning the circle by
which the life of an individual is bounded; the true American recognizes
these circles--but with complacency, and with a sure knowledge of his
destiny eventually to find himself within the one for which he is best
fitted by his talents and his tastes. The mere fact that Victoria had
been brought up amongst people with whom he had nothing in common would
not have deterred Austen Vane from pressing his suit; considerations of
honour had stood in the way, and hope had begun to whisper that these
might, in the end, be surmounted. Once they had disappeared, and she
loved him, that were excuse and reason enough.

And suddenly the sight of Victoria with a probable suitor--who at once
had become magnified into an accepted suitor--had dispelled hope.
Euphrasia! Euphrasia had been deceived as he had, by a loving kindness
and a charity that were natural. But what so natural (to one who had
lived the life of Austen Vane) as that she should marry amongst those
whose ways of life were her ways? In the brief time in which he had seen
her and this other man, Austen's quickened perceptions had detected tacit
understanding, community of interest, a habit of thought and manner,--in
short, a common language, unknown to him, between the two. And, more than
these, the Victoria of the blissful excursions he had known was changed
as she had spoken to him--constrained, distant, apart; although still
dispensing kindness, going out of her way to bring Hilary home, and to
tell him of Hilary's accident. Rumour, which cannot be confined in casks
or bottles, had since informed Austen Vane that Mr. Rangely had spent the
day with Victoria, and had remained at Fairview far into the evening;
rumour went farther (thanks to Mrs. Pomfret) and declared the engagement
already an accomplished fact. And to Austen, in the twilight in front of
Jabe Jenney's, the affair might well have assumed the proportions of an
intimacy of long standing rather than that of the chance acquaintance of
an hour. Friends in common, modes of life in common, and incidents in
common are apt to sweep away preliminaries.

Such were Austen's thoughts as he drove to Fairview that September
afternoon when the leaves were turning their white backs to the northwest
breeze. The sun was still high, and the distant hills and mountains were
as yet scarce stained with blue, and stood out in startling clearness
against the sky. Would he see her? That were a pain he scarce dared
contemplate.

He reached the arched entrance, was on the drive. Here was the path again
by which she had come down the hillside; here was the very stone on which
she had stood--awaiting him. Why? Why had she done that? Well-remembered
figure amidst the yellow leaves dancing in the sunlight! Here he had
stopped, perforce, and here he had looked up into his face and smiled and
spoken!

At length he gained the plateau across which the driveway ran, between
round young maples, straight to Fairview House, and he remembered the
stares from the tea-tables, and how she had come out to his rescue. Now
the lawn was deserted, save for a gardener among the shrubs. He rang the
stable-bell, and as he waited for an answer to his summons, the sense of
his remoteness from these surroundings of hers deepened, and with a touch
of inevitable humour he recalled the low-ceiled bedroom at Mr. Jenney's
and the kitchen in Hanover Street; the annual cost of the care of that
lawn and driveway might well have maintained one of these households.

He told the stable-boy to wait. It is to be remarked as curious that the
name of the owner of the house on Austen's lips brought the first thought
of him to Austen's mind. He was going to see and speak with Mr. Flint, a
man who had been his enemy ever since the day he had come here and laid
down his pass on the president's desk; the man who--so he believed until
three days ago--had stood between him and happiness. Well, it did not
matter now.

Austen followed the silent-moving servant through the hall. Those were
the stairs which knew her feet, these the rooms--so subtly
flower-scented--she lived in; then came the narrow passage to the sterner
apartment of the master himself. Mr. Flint was alone, and seated upright
behind the massive oak desk, from which bulwark the president of the
Northeastern was wont to meet his opponents and his enemies; and few
visitors came into his presence, here or elsewhere, who were not to be
got the better of, if possible. A life-long habit had accustomed Mr.
Flint to treat all men as adversaries until they were proved otherwise.
His square, close-cropped head, his large features, his alert eyes, were
those of a fighter.

He did not rise, but nodded. Suddenly Austen was enveloped in a flame of
wrath that rose without warning and blinded him, and it was with a
supreme effort to control himself that he stopped in the doorway. He was
frightened, for he had felt this before, and he knew it for the anger
that demands physical violence.

"Come in, Mr. Vane," said the president.

Austen advanced to the desk, and laid the boxes before Mr. Flint.

"Mr. Vane told me to say that he would have brought these himself, had it
been possible. Here is the list, and I shall be much obliged if you will
verify it before I go back."

"Sit down." said Mr. Flint.

Austen sat down, with the corner of the desk between them, while Mr.
Flint opened the boxes and began checking off the papers on the list.

"How is your father this afternoon?" he asked, without looking up.

"As well as can be expected," said Austen.

"Of course nobody knew his condition but himself," Mr. Flint continued;
"but it was a great shock to me--when he resigned as my counsel three
days ago."

Austen laid his forearm on the desk, and his hand closed.

"He resigned three days ago?" he exclaimed.

Mr. Flint was surprised, but concealed it.

"I can understand, under the circumstances, how he has overlooked telling
you. His resignation takes effect to-day."

Austen was silent a moment, while he strove to apply this fact to his
father's actions.

"He waited until after the convention."

"Exactly," said Mr. Flint, catching the implied accusation in Austen's
tone; "and needless to say, if I had been able to prevent his going, in
view of what happened on Monday night, I should have done so. As you
know, after his--accident, he went to the capital without informing any
one."

"As a matter of honour," said Austen.

Mr. Flint looked up from the papers, and regarded him narrowly, for the
tone in which this was spoken did not escape the president of the
Northeastern. He saw, in fact, that at the outset he had put a weapon
into Austen's hands. Hilary's resignation was a vindication of Austen's
attitude, an acknowledgment that the business and political practices of
his life had been wrong.

What Austen really felt, when he had grasped the significance of that
fact, was relief--gratitude. A wave of renewed affection for his father
swept over him, of affection and pity and admiration, and for the instant
he forgot Mr. Flint.

"As a matter of honour," Mr. Flint repeated. "Knowing he was ill, Mr.
Vane insisted upon going to that convention, even at the risk of his
life. It is a fitting close to a splendid career, and one that will not
soon be forgotten."

Austen merely looked at Mr. Flint, who may have found the glance a trifle
disconcerting, for he turned to the papers again.

"I repeat," he went on presently, "that this illness of Mr. Vane's is not
only a great loss to the Northeastern system, but a great blow to me
personally. I have been associated with him closely for more than a
quarter of a century, and I have never seen a lawyer of greater
integrity, clear-headedness, and sanity of view. He saw things as they
were, and he did as much to build up the business interests and the
prosperity of this State as any man I know of. He was true to his word,
and true to his friends."

Still Austen did not reply. He continued to look at Mr. Flint, and Mr.
Flint continued to check the papers only more slowly. He had nearly
finished the first box.

"A wave of political insanity, to put it mildly, seems to be sweeping
over this country," said the president of the Northeastern. "Men who
would paralyze and destroy the initiative of private enterprise, men who
themselves are ambitious, and either incapable or unsuccessful, have
sprung up; writers who have no conscience, whose one idea is to make
money out of a passing craze against honest capital, have aided them.
Disappointed and dangerous politicians who merely desire office and power
have lifted their voices in the hue and cry to fool the honest voter. I
am glad to say I believe that the worst of this madness and rascality is
over; that the common sense of the people of this country is too great to
be swept away by the methods of these self-seekers; that the ordinary man
is beginning to see that his bread and butter depends on the brain of the
officers who are trying honestly to conduct great enterprises for the
benefit of the average citizen.

"We did not expect to escape in this State," Mr. Flint went on, raising
his head and meeting Austen's look; "the disease was too prevalent and
too catching for the weak-minded. We had our self-seekers who attempted
to bring ruin upon an institution which has done more for our population
than any other. I do not hesitate to speak of the Northeastern Railroads
as an institution, and as an institution which has been as
conscientiously and conservatively conducted as any in the country, and
with as scrupulous a regard for the welfare of all. Hilary Vane, as you
doubtless know, was largely responsible for this. My attention, as
president of all the roads, has been divided. Hilary Vane guarded the
interests in this State, and no man could have guarded them better. He
well deserves the thanks of future generations for the uncompromising
fight he made against such men and such methods. It has broken him down
at a time of life when he has earned repose, but he has the satisfaction
of knowing that he has won the battle for conservative American
principles, and that he has nominated a governor worthy of the traditions
of the State."

And Mr. Flint started checking off the papers again. Had the occasion
been less serious, Austen could have smiled at Mr. Flint's ruse--so
characteristic of the tactics of the president of the Northeastern--of
putting him into a position where criticism of the Northeastern and its
practices would be criticism of his own father. As it was, he only set
his jaw more firmly, an expression indicative of contempt for such
tactics. He had not come there to be lectured out of the "Book of
Arguments" on the divine right of railroads to govern, but to see that
certain papers were delivered in safety.

Had his purpose been deliberately to enter into a contest with Mr. Flint,
Austen could not have planned the early part of it any better than by
pursuing this policy of silence. To a man of Mr. Flint's temperament and
training, it was impossible to have such an opponent within reach without
attempting to hector him into an acknowledgment of the weakness of his
position. Further than this, Austen had touched him too often on the
quick merely to be considered in the light of a young man who held
opposite and unfortunate views--although it was Mr. Flint's endeavour to
put him in this light. The list of injuries was too fresh in Mr. Flint's
mind--even that last conversation with Victoria, in which she had made it
plain that her sympathies were with Austen.

But with an opponent who would not be led into ambush, who had the
strength to hold his fire under provocation, it was no easy matter to
maintain a height of conscious, matter-of-fact rectitude and implied
reproof. Austen's silence, Austen's attitude, declared louder than words
the contempt for such manoeuvres of a man who knows he is in the right
--and knows that his adversary knows it. It was this silence and this
attitude which proclaimed itself that angered Mr. Flint, yet made him
warily conceal his anger and change his attack.

"It is some years since we met, Mr. Vane," he remarked presently.

Austen's face relaxed into something of a smile.

"Four, I think," he answered.

"You hadn't long been back from that Western experience. Well, your
father has one decided consolation; you have fulfilled his hope that you
would settle down here and practise in the State. And I hear that you are
fast forging to the front. You are counsel for the Gaylord Company, I
believe."

"The result of an unfortunate accident," said Austen; "Mr. Hammer died."

"And on the occasion when you did me the honour to call on me," said Mr.
Flint, "if I remember rightly, you expressed some rather radical views
--for the son of Hilary Vane."

"For the son of Hilary Vane," Austen agreed, with a smile.

Mr. Flint ignored the implication in the repetition.

"Thinking as mach as I do of Mr. Vane, I confess that your views at that
time rather disturbed me. It is a matter of relief to learn that you have
refused to lend yourself to the schemes of men like our neighbour, Mr.
Humphrey Crewe, of Leith."

"Honesty compels me to admit," answered Austen, "that I did not refrain
on Mr. Crewe's account."

"Although," said Mr. Flint, drumming on the table, "there was some talk
that you were to be brought forward as a dark horse in the convention,
and as a candidate unfriendly to the interests of the Northeastern
Railroads, I am glad you did not consent to be put in any such position.
I perceive that a young man of your ability and--popularity, a Vane of
Camden Street, must inevitably become a force in this State. And as a
force, you must retain the conservatism of the Vanes--the traditional
conservatism of the State. The Northeastern Railroads will continue to be
a very large factor in the life of the people after you and I are gone,
Mr. Vane. You will have to live, as it were, with that corporation, and
help to preserve it. We shall have to work together, perhaps, to that
end--who can say? I repeat, I am glad that your good sense led you to
refrain from coming as a candidate before that Convention. There is time
enough in the future, and you could not have been nominated."

"On the contrary," answered Austen, quietly, "I could have been
nominated."

Mr. Flint smiled knowingly--but with an effort. What a relief it would
have been to him to charge horse and foot, to forget that he was a
railroad president dealing with a potential power.

"Do you honestly believe that?" he asked.

"I am not accustomed to dissemble my beliefs," said Austen, gravely. "The
fact that my father had faith enough in me to count with certainty on my
refusal to go before the convention enabled him to win the nomination for
the candidate of your railroads."

Mr. Flint continued to smile, but into his eyes had crept a gleam of
anger.

"It is easy to say such things--after the convention," he remarked.

"And it would have been impossible to say their before," Austen responded
instantly, with a light in his own eyes. "My nomination was the only
disturbing factor in the situation for you and the politicians who had
your interests in hand, and it was as inevitable as night and day that
the forces of the candidates who represented the two wings of the machine
of the Northeastern Railroads should have united against Mr. Crewe. I
want to say to you frankly that if my father had not been the counsel for
your corporation, and responsible for its political success, or if he
could have resigned with honour before the convention, I should not have
refused to let my name go in. After all," he added, in a lower tone, and
with a slight gesture characteristic of him when a subject was
distasteful, "it doesn't matter who is elected governor this autumn."

"What?" cried Mr. Flint, surprised out of his attitude as much by
Austen's manner as by Austen's words.

"It doesn't matter," said Austen, "whether the Northeastern Railroads
have succeeded this time in nominating and electing a governor to whom
they can dictate, and who will reappoint railroad commissioners and other
State officials in their interests. The practices by which you have
controlled this State, Mr. Flint, and elected governors and councillors
and State and national senators are doomed. However necessary these
practices may have been from your point of view, they violated every
principle of free government, and were they to continue, the nation to
which we belong would inevitably decay and become the scorn of the world.
Those practices depended for their success on one condition,--which in
itself is the most serious of ills in a republic,--the ignorance and
disregard of the voter. You have but to read the signs of the times to
see clearly that the day of such conditions is past, to see that the
citizens of this State and this country are thinking for themselves, as
they should; are alive to the dangers and determined to avert it. You may
succeed in electing one more governor and one more senate, or two, before
the people are able to destroy the machinery you have built up and repeal
the laws you have made to sustain it. I repeat, it doesn't matter in the
long run. The era of political domination by a corporation, and mainly
for the benefit of a corporation, is over."

Mr. Flint had been drumming on the desk, his face growing a darker red as
Austen proceeded: Never, since he had become president of the
Northeastern Railroads, had any man said such things to his face. And the
fact that Austen Vane had seemingly not spoken in wrath, although
forcefully enough to compel him to listen, had increased Mr. Flint's
anger. Austen apparently cared very little for him or his opinions in
comparison with his own estimate of right and wrong.

"It seems," said Mr. Flint, "that you have grown more radical since your
last visit."

"If it be radical to refuse to accept a pass from a railroad to bind my
liberty of action as an attorney and a citizen, then I am radical,"
replied Austen. "If it be radical to maintain that the elected
representatives of the people should not receive passes, or be beholden
to any man or any corporation, I acknowledge the term. If it be radical
to declare that these representatives should be elected without
interference, and while in office should do exact justice to the body of
citizens on the one hand and the corporations on the other, I declare
myself a radical. But my radicalism goes back behind the establishment of
railroads, Mr. Flint, back to the foundation of this government, to the
idea from which it sprang."

Mr. Flint smiled again.

"We have changed materially since then," he said. "I am afraid such a
utopian state of affairs, beautiful as it is, will not work in the
twentieth century. It is a commercial age, and the interests which are
the bulwark of the country's strength must be protected."

"Yes," said Austen, "we have changed materially. The mistake you make,
and men like you, is the stress which you lay on that word material. Are
there no such things as moral interests, Mr. Flint? And are they not
quite as important in government, if not more important, than material
interests? Surely, we cannot have commercial and political stability
without cominertial and political honour! if, as a nation, we lose sight
of the ideals which have carried us so far, which have so greatly
modified the conditions of other peoples than ourselves, we shall perish
as a force in the world. And if this government proves a failure, how
long do you think the material interests of which you are so solicitous
will endure? Or do you care whether they endure beyond your lifetime?
Perhaps not. But it is a matter of importance, not only to the nation,
but to the world, whether or not the moral idea of the United States of
America is perpetuated, I assure you."

"I begin to fear, Mr. Vane," said the president of the Northeastern,
"that you have missed your vocation. Suppose I were to grant you, for the
sake of argument, that the Northeastern Railroads, being the largest
taxpayers in this State, have taken an interest in seeing that
conservative men fill responsible offices. Suppose such to be the case,
and we abruptly cease--to take such an interest. What then? Are we not at
the mercy of any and all unscrupulous men who build up a power of their
own, and start again the blackmail of the old days?"

"You have put the case mildly," said Austen, and ingeniously. "As a
matter of fact, Mr. Flint, you know as well as I do that for years you
have governed this State absolutely, for the purpose of keeping down your
taxes, avoiding unnecessary improvements for safety and comfort, and
paying high dividends--"

"Perhaps you realize that in depicting these criminal operations so
graphically," cried Mr. Flint, interrupting, "you are involving the
reputation of one of the best citizens the State ever had--your own
father."

Austen Vane leaned forward across the desk, and even Mr. Flint (if the
truth were known) recoiled a little before the anger he had aroused. It
shot forth from Austen's eyes, proclaimed itself in the squareness of the
face, and vibrated in every word he spoke.

"Mr. Flint," he said, "I refrain from comment upon your methods of
argument. There were many years in which my father believed the practices
which he followed in behalf of your railroad to be necessary--and hence
justified. And I have given you the credit of holding the same belief.
Public opinion would not, perhaps, at that time have protected your
property from political blackmail. I merely wished you to know, Mr.
Flint, that there is no use in attempting to deceive me in regard to the
true colour of those practices. It is perhaps useless for me to add that
in my opinion you understand as well as I do the real reason for Mr.
Vane's resignation and illness. Once he became convinced that the
practices were wrong, he could no longer continue them without violating
his conscience. He kept his word to you--at the risk of his life, and, as
his son, I take a greater pride in him to-day than I ever have before."

Austen got to his feet. He was formidable even to Mr. Flint, who had met
many formidable, and angry men in his time--although not of this type.
Perhaps--who can say?--he was the in the mind of the president
unconscious embodiment of the Northeastern of the new forces which had
arisen against him,--forces which he knew in his secret soul he could not
combat, because they were the irresistible forces of things not material.
All his life he had met and successfully conquered forces of another
kind, and put down with a strong hand merely physical encroachments.

Mr. Flint's nature was not an introspective one, and if he had tried, he
could not have accounted for his feelings. He was angry--that was
certain. But he measured the six feet and more of Austen Vane with his
eye, and in spite of himself experienced the compelled admiration of one
fighting man for another. A thought, which had made itself vaguely felt
at intervals in the past half hour, shot suddenly and poignantly through
Mr. Flint's mind what if this young man, who dared in spite of every
interest to oppose him, should in the apparently inevitable trend of
things, become...?

Mr. Flint rose and went to the window, where he stood silent for a space,
looking out, played upon by unwonted conflicting thoughts and emotions.
At length, with a characteristic snap of the fingers, he turned abruptly.
Austen Vane was still standing beside the desk. His face was still
square, determined, but Mr. Flint noted curiously that the anger was gone
from his eyes, and that another--although equally human--expression had
taken its place,--a more disturbing expression, to Mr. Flint.

"It appears, Mr. Vane," he said, gathering up the papers and placing them
in the boxes, "it appears that we are able to agree upon one point, at
least--Hilary Vane."

"Mr. Flint," said Austen, "I did not come up here with any thought of
arguing with you, of intruding any ideas--I may hold, but you have
yourself asked me one question which I feel bound to answer to the best
of my ability before I go. You have asked me what, in my opinion, would
happen if you ceased--as you express it--to take an interest in the
political, affairs of this State.

"I believe, as firmly as I stand here, that the public opinion which
exists to-day would protect your property, and I base that belief on the
good sense of the average American voter. The public would protect you
not only in its own interests, but from an inherent sense of fair play.
On the other hand, if you persist in a course of political manipulation
which is not only obsolete but wrong, you will magnify the just charges
against you, and the just wrath; you will put ammunition into the hands
of the agitators you rightly condemn. The stockholders of your
corporation, perhaps, are bound to suffer some from the fact that you
have taken its life-blood to pay dividends, and the public will demand
that it be built up into a normal and healthy condition. On the other
hand, it could not have gone on as it was. But the corporation will
suffer much more if a delayed justice is turned into vengeance.

"You ask me what I could do. I should recognize, frankly, the new
conditions, and declare as frankly what the old ones were, and why such
methods of defence as you adopted were necessary and justified. I should
announce, openly, that from this day onward the Northeastern Railroads
depended for fair play on an enlightened public--and I think your trust
would be well founded, and your course vindicated. I should declare, from
this day onward, that the issue of political passes, newspaper passes,
and all other subterfuges would be stopped, and that all political
hirelings would be dismissed. I should appeal to the people of this State
to raise up political leaders who would say to the corporations, 'We will
protect you from injustice if you will come before the elected
representatives of the people, openly, and say what you want and why you
want it.' By such a course you would have, in a day, the affection of the
people instead of their distrust. They would rally to your defence. And,
more than that, you would have done a service for American government the
value of which cannot well be estimated."

Mr. Flint rang the bell on his desk, and his secretary appeared.

"Put these in my private safe, Mr. Freeman," he said.

Mr. Freeman took the boxes, glanced curiously at Austen, and went out. It
was the same secretary, Austen recalled, who had congratulated him four
years before. Then Mr. Flint laid his hand deliberately on the desk, and
smiled slightly as he turned to Austen.

"If you had run a railroad as long as I have, Mr. Vane," he said, "I do
you the credit of thinking that you would have intelligence enough to
grasp other factors which your present opportunities for observation have
not permitted you to perceive. Nevertheless, I am much obliged to you for
your opinion, and I value the--frankness in which it was given. And I
shall hope to hear good news of your father. Remember me to him, and tell
him how deeply I feel his affliction. I shall call again in a day or
two."

Austen took up his hat.

"Good day, Mr. Flint," he said; "I will tell him."

By the time he had reached the door, Mr. Flint had gone back to the
window once more, and appeared to have forgotten his presence.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE VALE OF THE BLUE

Austen himself could not well have defined his mental state as he made
his way through the big rooms towards the door, but he was aware of one
main desire--to escape from Fairview. With the odours of the flowers in
the tall silver vases on the piano--her piano!--the spirit of desire
which had so long possessed him, waking and sleeping, returned,--returned
to torture him now with greater skill amidst these her possessions; her
volume of Chopin on the rack, bound in red leather and stamped with her
initials, which compelled his glance as he passed, and brought vivid to
his memory the night he had stood in the snow and heard her playing. So,
he told himself, it must always be, for him to stand in the snow
listening.

He reached the hall, with a vast relief perceived that it was empty, and
opened the door and went out. Strange that he should note, first of all,
as he parsed a moment at the top of the steps, that the very day had
changed. The wind had fallen; the sun, well on his course towards the rim
of western hills, poured the golden light of autumn over field and
forest, while Sawanec was already in the blue shadow; the expectant
stillness of autumn reigned, and all unconsciously Austen's blood was
quickened though a quickening of pain.

The surprise of the instant over, he noticed that his horse was gone,
--had evidently been taken to the stables. And rather than ring the bell
and wait in the mood in which he found himself, he took the path through
the shrubbery from which he had seen the groom emerge.

It turned beyond the corner of the house, descended a flight of stone
steps, and turned again.

They stood gazing each at the other for a space of time not to be
computed before either spoke, and the sense of unreality which comes with
a sudden fulfilment of intense desire--or dread--was upon Austen. Could
this indeed be her figure, and this her face on which he watched the
colour rise (so he remembered afterwards) like the slow flood of day?
Were there so many Victorias, that a new one--and a strange one--should
confront him at every meeting? And, even while he looked, this Victoria,
too,--one who had been near him and departed,--was surveying him now from
an unapproachable height of self-possession and calm. She held out her
hand, and he took it, scarce knowing--that it was hers.

"How do you do, Mr. Vane?" she said; "I did not expect to meet you here."

"I was searching for the stable, to get my horse," he answered lamely.

"And your father?" she asked quickly; "I hope he is not--worse."

It was thus she supplied him, quite naturally, with an excuse for being
at Fairview. And yet her solicitude for Hilary was wholly unaffected.

"Dr. Harmon, who came from New York, has been more encouraging than I had
dared to hope," said Austen. "And, by the way, Mr. Vane believes that you
had a share in the fruit and flowers which Mr. Flint so kindly brought.
If--he had known that I were to see you, I am sure he would have wished
me to thank you."

Victoria turned, and tore a leaf from the spiraea.

"I will show you where the stables are," she said; "the path divides a
little farther on--and you might find yourself in the kitchen."

Austen smiled, and as she went on slowly, he followed her, the path not
being wide enough for them to walk abreast, his eyes caressing the stray
hairs that clustered about her neck and caught the light. It seemed so
real, and yet so unrealizable, that he should be here with her.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I did not express my gratitude as I should
have done the evening you were good enough to come up to Jabe Jenney's."

He saw her colour rise again, but she did not pause.

"Please don't say anything about it, Mr. Vane. Of course I understand how
you felt," she cried.

"Neither my father nor myself will forget that service," said Austen.

"It was nothing," answered Victoria, in a low voice. "Or, rather, it was
something I shall always be glad that I did not miss. I have seen Mr.
Vane all my life, but I never=-never really knew him until that day. I
have come to the conclusion," she added, in a lighter tone, "that the
young are not always the best judges of the old. There," she added, "is
the path that goes to the kitchen, which you probably would have taken."

He laughed. Past and future were blotted out, and he lived only in the
present. He could think of nothing but that she was here beside him.
Afterwards, cataclysms might come and welcome.

"Isn't there another place," he asked, "where I might lose my way?"

She turned and gave him one of the swift, searching looks he recalled so
well: a look the meaning of which he could not declare, save that she
seemed vainly striving to fathom something in him--as though he were not
fathomable! He thought she smiled a little as she took the left-hand
path.

"You will remember me to your father?" she said. "I hope he is not
suffering."

"He is not suffering," Austen replied. "Perhaps--if it were not too much
to ask--perhaps you might come to see him, sometime? I can think of
nothing that would give him greater pleasure."

"I will come--sometime," she answered. "I am going away to-morrow, but--"

"Away?" he repeated, in dismay. Now that he was beside her, all
unconsciously the dominating male spirit which was so strong in him, and
which moves not woman alone, but the world, was asserting itself. For the
moment he was the only man, and she the only woman, in the universe.

"I am going on a promised visit to a friend of mine."

"For how long?" he demanded.

"I don't know, said Victoria, calmly; probably until she gets tired of
me. And there," she added, "are the stables, where no doubt you will find
your faithful Pepper."

They had come out upon an elevation above the hard service drive, and
across it, below them, was the coach house with its clock-tower and
weather-vane, and its two wings, enclosing a paved court where a
whistling stable-boy was washing a carriage. Austen regarded this scene
an instant, and glanced back at her profile. It was expressionless.

"Might I not linger--a few minutes?" he asked.

Her lips parted slightly in a smile, and she turned her head. How
wonderfully, he thought, it was poised upon her shoulders.

"I haven't been very hospitable, have I?" she said. But then, you seemed
in such a hurry to go, didn't you? You were walking so fast when I met
you that you quite frightened me."

"Was I?" asked Austen, in surprise.

She laughed.

"You looked as if you were ready to charge somebody. But this isn't a
very nice place--to linger, and if you really will stay awhile," said
Victoria, "we might walk over to the dairy, where that model protege of
yours, Eben Fitch, whom you once threatened with corporal chastisement if
he fell from grace, is engaged. I know he will be glad to see you."

Austen laughed as he caught up with her. She was already halfway across
the road.

"Do you always beat people if they do wrong?" she asked.

"It was Eben who requested it, if I remember rightly," he said.
"Fortunately, the trial has not yet arrived. Your methods," he added,
"seem to be more successful with Eben."

They went down the grassy slope with its groups of half-grown trees;
through an orchard shot with slanting, yellow sunlight,--the golden
fruit, harvested by the morning winds, littering the ground; and then by
a gate into a dimpled, emerald pasture slope where the Guernseys were
feeding along a water run. They spoke of trivial things that found no
place in Austen's memory, and at times, upon one pretext or another, he
fell behind a little that he might feast his eyes upon her.

Eben was not at the dairy, and Austen betraying no undue curiosity as to
his whereabouts, they walked on up the slopes, and still upward towards
the crest of the range of hills that marked the course of the Blue. He
did not allow his mind to dwell upon this new footing they were on, but
clung to it. Before, in those delicious moments with her, seemingly
pilfered from the angry gods, the sense of intimacy had been deep; deep,
because robbing the gods together, they had shared the feeling of guilt,
had known that retribution would coma. And now the gods had locked their
treasure-chest, although themselves powerless to redeem from him the
memory of what he had gained. Nor could they, apparently, deprive him of
the vision of her in the fields and woods beside him, though transformed
by their magic into a new Victoria, keeping him lightly and easily at a
distance.

Scattering the sheep that flecked the velvet turf of the uplands, they
stood at length on the granite crown of the crest itself. Far below them
wound the Blue into its vale of sapphire shadows, with its hillsides of
the mystic fabric of the backgrounds of the masters of the Renaissance.
For a while they stood in silence under the spell of the scene's
enchantment, and then Victoria seated herself on the rock, and he dropped
to a place at her side.

"I thought you would like the view," she said; "but perhaps you have been
here, perhaps I am taking you to one of your own possessions."

He had flung his hat upon the rock, and she glanced at his serious,
sunburned face. His eyes were still fixed, contemplatively, on the Yale
of the Blue, but he turned to her with a smile.

"It has become yours by right of conquest," he answered.

She did not reply to that. The immobility of her face, save for the one
look she had flashed upon him, surprised and puzzled him more and more
--the world--old, indefinable, eternal feminine quality of the Spring.

"So you refused to be governor? she said presently,--surprising him
again.

"It scarcely came to that," he replied.

"What did it come to?" she demanded.

He hesitated.

"I had to go down to the capital, on my father's account, but I did not
go to the convention. I stayed," he said slowly, "at the little cottage
across from the Duncan house where--you were last winter." He paused, but
she gave no sign. "Tom Gaylord came up there late in the afternoon, and
wanted me to be a candidate."

"And you refused?"

"Yes."

"But you could have been nominated!"

"Yes," he admitted; "it is probable. The conditions were chaotic."

"Are you sure you have done right?" she asked. "It has always seemed to
me from what I know and have heard of you that you were made for
positions of trust. You would have been a better governor than the man
they have nominated."

His expression became set.

"I am sure I have done right," he answered deliberately. "It doesn't make
any difference who is governor this time."

"Doesn't make any difference!" she exclaimed.

"No," he said. "Things have changed--the people have changed. The old
method of politics, which was wrong, although it had some justification
in conditions, has gone out. A new and more desirable state of affairs
has come. I am at liberty to say this much to you now," he added, fixing
his glance upon her, "because my father has resigned as counsel for the
Northeastern, and I have just had a talk with--Mr. Flint."

"You have seen my father?" she asked, in a low voice, and her face was
averted.

"Yes," he answered.

"You--did not agree," she said quickly.

His blood beat higher at the question and the manner of her asking it,
but he felt that he must answer it honestly, unequivocally, whatever the
cost.

"No, we did not agree. It is only fair to tell you that we differed
--vitally. On the other hand, it is just that you should know that we did
not part in anger, but, I think, with a mutual respect."

She drew breath.

"I knew," she said, "I knew if he could but talk to you he would
understand that you were sincere--and you have proved it. I am glad--I am
glad that you saw him." The quality of the sunlight changed, the very
hills leaped, and the river sparkled. Could she care? Why did she wish
her father to know that he was sincere.

"You are glad that I saw him!" he repeated.

But she met his glance steadily.

"My father has so little faith in human nature," she answered.  "He has a
faculty of doubting the honesty of his opponents--I suppose because so
many of them have been dishonest. And--I believe in my friends," she
added, smiling. "Isn't it natural that I should wish to have my judgment
vindicated?"

He got to his feet and walked slowly to the far edge of the rock, where
he stood for a while, seemingly gazing off across the spaces to Sawanec.
It was like him, thus to question the immutable. Victoria sat motionless,
but her eyes followed irresistibly the lines of power in the tall figure
against the sky--the breadth of shoulder and slimness of hip and length
of limb typical of the men who had conquered and held this land for their
descendants. Suddenly, with a characteristic movement of determination;
he swung about and came towards her, and at the same instant she rose.

"Don't you think we should be going back?" she said.

Rut he seemed not to hear her.

"May I ask you something?" he said.

"That depends," she answered.

"Are you going to marry Mr. Rangely?"

"No," she said, and turned away. "Why did you think that?"

He quivered.

"Victoria!"

She looked up at him, swiftly, half revealed, her eyes like stars
surprised by the flush of dawn in her cheeks. Hope quickened at the
vision of hope, the seats of judgment themselves were filled with
radiance, and rumour, cowered and fled like the spirit of night. He could
only gaze, enraptured.

"Yes?" she answered.

His voice was firm but low, yet vibrant with sincerity, with the vast
store of feeling, of compelling magnetism that was in the man and moved
in spite of themselves those who knew him. His words Victoria remembered
afterwards--all of them; but it was to the call of the voice she
responded. His was the fibre which grows stronger in times of crisis.
Sure of himself, proud of the love which he declared, he spoke as a man
who has earned that for which he prays,--simply and with dignity.

"I love you," he said; "I have known it since I have known you, but you
must see why I could not tell you so. It was very hard, for there were
times when I led myself to believe that you might come to love me. There
were times when I should have gone away if I hadn't made a promise to
stay in Ripton. I ask you to marry me, because I--know that I shall love
you as long as I live. I can give you this, at least, and I can promise
to protect and cherish you. I cannot give you that to which you have been
accustomed all your life, that which you have here at Fairview, but I
shouldn't say this to you if I believed that you cared for them above
--other things."

"Oh, Austen!" she cried, "I do not--I--do not! They would be hateful to
me--without you. I would rather live with you--at Jabe Jenney's," and her
voice caught in an exquisite note between laughter and tears. "I love
you, do you understand, you! Oh, how could you ever have doubted it? How
could you? What you believe, I believe. And, Austen, I have been so
unhappy for three days."

He never knew whether, as the most precious of graces ever conferred upon
man, with a womanly gesture she had raised her arms and laid her hands
upon his shoulders before he drew her to him and kissed her face, that
vied in colour with the coming glow in the western sky. Above the prying
eyes of men, above the world itself, he held her, striving to realize
some little of the vast joy of this possession, and failing. And at last
she drew away from him, gently, that she might look searchingly into his
face again, and shook her head slowly.

"And you were going away," she said, "without a word I thought--you
didn't care. How could I have known that you were just--stupid?"

His eyes lighted with humour and tenderness.

"How long have you cared, Victoria?" he asked.

She became thoughtful.

"Always, I think," she answered; "only I didn't know it. I think I loved
you even before I saw you."

"Before you saw me!"

"I think it began," said Victoria, "when I learned that you had shot Mr.
Blodgett--only I hope you will never do such a thing again. And you will
please try to remember," she added, after a moment, "that I am neither
Eben Fitch nor your friend, Tom Gaylord."

Sunset found them seated on the rock, with the waters of the river turned
to wine at the miracle in the sky their miracle. At times their eyes
wandered to the mountain, which seemed to regard them from a discreet
distance--with a kindly and protecting majesty.

"And you promised," said Victoria, "to take me up there. When will you do
it?"

"I thought you were going away," he replied.

"Unforeseen circumstances," she answered, "have compelled me to change my
plans."

"Then we will go tomorrow," he said.

"To the Delectable Land," said Victoria, dreamily; "your land, where we
shall be--benevolent despots. Austen?"

"Yes?" He had not ceased to thrill at the sound of his name upon her
lips.

"Do you think," she asked, glancing at him, "do you think you have money
enough to go abroad--just for a little while?"

He laughed joyously.

"I don't know," he said, "but I shall make it a point to examine my
bank-account to-night. I haven't done so--for some time."

"We will go to Venice, and drift about in a gondola on one of those gray
days when the haze comes in from the Adriatic and touches the city with
the magic of the past. Sometimes I like the gray days best--when I am
happy. And then," she added, regarding him critically, "although you are
very near perfection, there are some things you ought to see and learn to
make your education complete. I will take you to all the queer places I
love. When you are ambassador to France, you know, it would be
humiliating to have to have an interpreter, wouldn't it?"

"What's the use of both of us knowing the language?" he demanded.

"I'm afraid we shall be--too happy," she sighed, presently.

"Too happy!" he repeated.

"I sometimes wonder," she said, "whether happiness and achievement go
together. And yet--I feel sure that you will achieve."

"To please you, Victoria," he answered, "I think I should almost be
willing to try."




CHAPTER XXX

P.S.

By request of one who has read thus far, and is still curious.

Yes, and another who, in spite of himself, has fallen in love with
Victoria and would like to linger a while longer, even though it were
with the paltry excuse of discussing that world-old question of hers--Can
sublime happiness and achievement go together? Novels on the problem of
sex nowadays often begin with marriages, but rarely discuss the happy
ones; and many a woman is forced to sit wistfully at home while her
companion soars.

        "Yet may I look with heart unshook
         On blow brought home or missed--
         Yet may I hear with equal ear
         The clarions down the List;
         Yet set my lance above mischance
         And ride the barriere--
         Oh, hit or miss, how little 'tis,
         My Lady is not there!"

A verse, in this connection, which may be a perversion of Mr. Kipling's
meaning, but not so far from it, after all. And yet, would the eagle
attempt the great flights if contentment were on the plain? Find the
mainspring of achievement, and you hold in your hand the secret of the
world's mechanism. Some aver that it is woman.

Do the gods ever confer the rarest of gifts upon him to whom they have
given pinions? Do they mate him, ever, with another who soars as high as
he, who circles higher that he may circle higher still? Who can answer?
Must those who soar be condemned to eternal loneliness, and was it a
longing they did not comprehend which bade them stretch their wings
toward the sun? Who can say?

Alas, we cannot write of the future of Austen and Victoria Vane! We can
only surmise, and hope, and pray,--yes, and believe. Romance walks with
parted lips and head raised to the sky; and let us follow her, because
thereby our eyes are raised with hers. We must believe, or perish.

Postscripts are not fashionable. The satiated theatre goer leaves before
the end of the play, and has worked out the problem for himself long
before the end of the last act. Sentiment is not supposed to exist in the
orchestra seats. But above (in many senses) is the gallery, from whence
an excited voice cries out when the sleeper returns to life, "It's Rip
Van Winkle!" The gallery, where are the human passions which make this
world our world; the gallery, played upon by anger, vengeance, derision,
triumph, hate, and love; the gallery, which lingers and applauds long
after the fifth curtain, and then goes reluctantly home--to dream. And he
who scorns the gallery is no artist, for there lives the soul of art. We
raise our eyes to it, and to it we dedicate this our play;--and for it we
lift the curtain once more after those in the orchestra have departed.

It is obviously impossible, in a few words, to depict the excitement in
Ripton, in Leith, in the State at large, when it became known that the
daughter of Mr. Flint was to marry Austen Vane,--a fitting if unexpected
climax to a drama. How would Mr. Flint take it? Mr. Flint, it may be
said, took it philosophically; and when Austen went up to see him upon
this matter, he shook hands with his future son-in-law,--and they agreed
to disagree. And beyond this it is safe to say that Mr. Flint was
relieved; for in his secret soul he had for many years entertained a
dread that Victoria might marry a foreigner. He had this consolation at
any rate.

His wife denied herself for a day to her most intimate friends,--for it
was she who had entertained visions of a title; and it was characteristic
of the Rose of Sharon that she knew nothing of the Vanes beyond the name.
The discovery that the Austens were the oldest family in the State was in
the nature of a balm; and henceforth, in speaking of Austen, she never
failed to mention the fact that his great-grandfather was Minister to
Spain in the '30's,--a period when her own was engaged in a far different
calling.

And Hilary Vane received the news with a grim satisfaction, Dr. Tredway
believing that it had done more for him than any medicine or specialists.
And when, one warm October day, Victoria herself came and sat beside the
canopied bed, her conquest was complete: he surrendered to her as he had
never before surrendered to man or woman or child, and the desire to live
surged back into his heart,--the desire to live for Austen and Victoria.
It became her custom to drive to Ripton in the autumn mornings and to sit
by the hour reading to Hilary in the mellow sunlight in the lee of the
house, near Sarah Austen's little garden. Yes, Victoria believed she had
developed in him a taste for reading; although he would have listened to
Emerson from her lips.

And sometimes, when she paused after one of his long silences to glance
at him, she would see his eyes fixed, with a strange rapt look, on the
garden or the dim lavender form of Sawanec through the haze, and knew
that he was thinking of a priceless thing which he had once possessed,
and missed. Then Victoria would close the volume, and fall to dreaming,
too.

What was happiness? Was it contentment? If it were, it might endure,
--contentment being passive. But could active, aggressive, exultant joy
exist for a lifetime, jealous of its least prerogative, perpetually
watchful for its least abatement, singing unending anthems on its
conquest of the world? The very intensity of her feelings at such times
sobered Victoria--alarmed her. Was not perfection at war with the world's
scheme, and did not achievement spring from a void?

But when Austen appeared, with Pepper, to drive her home to Fairview, his
presence never failed to revive the fierce faith that it was his destiny
to make the world better, and hers to help him. Wondrous afternoons they
spent together in that stillest and most mysterious of seasons in the
hill country--autumn! Autumn and happiness! Happiness as shameless as the
flaunting scarlet maples on the slopes, defiant of the dying year of the
future, shadowy and unreal as the hills before them in the haze. Once,
after a long silence, she started from a revery with the sudden
consciousness of his look intent upon her, and turned with parted lips
and eyes which smiled at him out of troubled depths.

"Dreaming, Victoria?" he said.

"Yes," she answered simply, and was silent once more. He loved these
silences of hers,--hinting, as they did, of unexplored chambers in an
inexhaustible treasure-house which by some strange stroke of destiny was
his. And yet he felt at times the vague sadness of them, like the sadness
of the autumn, and longed to dispel it.

"It is so wonderful," she went on presently, in a low voice, "it is so
wonderful I sometimes think that it must be like--like this; that it
cannot last. I have been wondering whether we shall be as happy when the
world discovers that you are great."

He shook his head at her slowly, in mild reproof.

"Isn't that borrowing trouble, Victoria?" he said. "I think you need have
no fear of finding the world as discerning as yourself."

She searched his face.

"Will you ever change?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "No man can stand such flattery as that without
deteriorating, I warn you. I shall become consequential, and pompous, and
altogether insupportable, and then you will leave me and never realize
that it has been all your fault."

Victoria laughed. But there was a little tremor in her voice, and her
eyes still rested on his face.

"But I am serious, Austen," she said. "I sometimes feel that, in the
future, we shall not always have many such days as these. It's selfish,
but I can't help it. There are so many things you will have to do without
me. Don't you ever think of that?"

His eyes grew grave, and he reached out and took her hand in his.

"I think, rather, of the trials life may bring, Victoria," he answered,
"of the hours when judgment halts, when the way is not clear. Do you
remember the last night you came to Jabe Jenney's? I stood in the road
long after you had gone, and a desolation such as I had never known came
over me. I went in at last, and opened a book to some verses I had been
reading, which I shall never forget. Shall I tell you what they were?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"They contain my answer to your question," he said.

       "What became of all the hopes,
        Words and song and lute as well?
        Say, this struck you 'When life gropes
        Feebly for the path where fell
        Light last on the evening slopes,

       "'One friend in that path shall be,
        To secure my step from wrong;
        One to count night day for me,
        Patient through the watches long,
        Serving most with none to see.'"

"Victoria, can you guess who that friend is?"

She pressed his hand and smiled at him, but her eyes were wet.

"I have thought of it in that way, too, dear. But--but I did not know
that you had. I do not think that many men have that point of view,
Austen."

"Many men," he answered, "have not the same reason to be thankful as I."

There is a time, when the first sharp winds which fill the air with
flying leaves have come and gone, when the stillness has come again, and
the sunlight is tinged with a yellower gold, and the pastures are still a
vivid green, and the mountain stained with a deeper blue than any gem,
called Indian summer. And it was in this season that Victoria and Austen
were married, in a little church at Tunbridge, near Fairview, by the
bishop of the diocese, who was one of Victoria's dearest friends. Mr.
Thomas Gaylord (for whose benefit there were many rehearsals) was best
man, Miss Beatrice Chillingham maid of honour; and it was unanimously
declared by Victoria's bridesmaids, who came up from New York, that they
had fallen in love with the groom.

How describe the wedding breakfast and festivities at Fairview House, on
a November day when young ladies could walk about the lawns in the
filmiest of gowns! how recount the guests and leave out no friends--for
none were left out! Mr. Jabe Jenney and Mrs. Jenney, who wept as she
embraced both bride and groom; and Euphrasia, in a new steel-coloured
silk and a state of absolute subjection and incredulous happiness. Would
that there were time to chronicle that most amazing of conquests of
Victoria over Euphrasia! And Mrs. Pomfret, who, remarkable as it may
seem, not only recognized Austen without her lorgnette, but quite
overwhelmed him with an unexpected cordiality, and declared her intention
of giving them a dinner in New York.

"My dear," she said, after kissing Victoria twice, "he is most
distinguished-looking--I had no idea--and a person who grows upon one.
And I am told he is descended from Channing Austen, of whom I have often
heard my grandfather speak. Victoria, I always had the greatest
confidence in your judgment."

Although Victoria had a memory (what woman worth her salt has not?), she
was far too happy to remind Mrs. Pomfret of certain former occasions, and
merely smiled in a manner which that lady declared to be enigmatic. She
maintained that she had never understood Victoria, and it was
characteristic of Mrs. Pomfret that her respect increased in direct
proportion to her lack of understanding.

Mr. Thomas Gaylord, in a waistcoat which was the admiration of all who
beheld it, proposed the health of the bride; and proved indubitably that
the best of oratory has its origin in the heart and not in the mind,--for
Tom had never been regarded by his friends as a Demosthenes. He was
interrupted from time to time by shouts of laughter; certain episodes in
the early career of Mr. Austen Vane (in which, if Tom was to be believed,
he was an unwilling participant) were particularly appreciated. And
shortly after that, amidst a shower of miscellaneous articles and rice,
Mr. and Mrs. Vane took their departure.

They drove through the yellow sunlight to Ripton, with lingering looks at
the hills which brought back memories of boys and sorrows, and in Hanover
Street bade good-by to Hilary Vane. A new and strange contentment shone
in his face as he took Victoria's hands in his, and they sat with him
until Euphrasia came. It was not until they were well on their way to New
York that they opened the letter he had given them, and discovered that
it contained something which would have enabled them to remain in Europe
the rest of their lives had they so chosen.

We must leave them amongst the sunny ruins of Italy and Greece and
southern France, on a marvellous journey that was personally conducted by
Victoria.

Mr. Crewe was unable to go to the wedding, having to attend a directors'
meeting of some importance in the West. He is still in politics, and
still hopeful; and he was married, not long afterwards, to Miss Alice
Pomfret.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

   Fame sometimes comes in the line of duty
   Genius is almost one hundred percent directness
   In a frenzy of anticipation, garnished and swept the room
   It's noble, but it don't pay
   Treason to party he regarded with a deep-seated abhorrence
   Battles of selfish interests ebbed and flowed
   A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
   His strength was his imperviousness to this kind of a remark
   Many a silent tear of which they knew nothing
   Politicians are politicians; they have always been corrupt
   Gratitude, however, is one of the noblest qualities of man
   One of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy
   The burden of the valley of vision
   Thrice-blessed State, in which there were now three reform candidates
   Years of regrets for that which might have been






A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill


BOOK 1.



I.

My name is Hugh Paret. I was a corporation lawyer, but by no means a
typical one, the choice of my profession being merely incidental, and
due, as will be seen, to the accident of environment. The book I am about
to write might aptly be called The Autobiography of a Romanticist. In
that sense, if in no other, I have been a typical American, regarding my
country as the happy hunting-ground of enlightened self-interest, as a
function of my desires. Whether or not I have completely got rid of this
romantic virus I must leave to those the aim of whose existence is to
eradicate it from our literature and our life. A somewhat Augean task!

I have been impelled therefore to make an attempt at setting forth, with
what frankness and sincerity I may, with those powers of selection of
which I am capable, the life I have lived in this modern America; the
passions I have known, the evils I have done. I endeavour to write a
biography of the inner life; but in order to do this I shall have to
relate those causal experiences of the outer existence that take place in
the world of space and time, in the four walls of the home, in the school
and university, in the noisy streets, in the realm of business and
politics. I shall try to set down, impartially, the motives that have
impelled my actions, to reveal in some degree the amazing mixture of good
and evil which has made me what I am to-day: to avoid the tricks of
memory and resist the inherent desire to present myself other and better
than I am. Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child who
believes in miracles, whose needs are mostly baubles, whose desires are
dreams. Expediency is his motto. Innocent of a knowledge of the
principles of the universe, he lives in a state of ceaseless activity,
admitting no limitations, impatient of all restrictions. What he wants,
he wants very badly indeed. This wanting things was the corner-stone of
my character, and I believe that the science of the future will bear me
out when I say that it might have been differently built upon. Certain it
is that the system of education in vogue in the 70's and 80's never
contemplated the search for natural corner-stones.

At all events, when I look back upon the boy I was, I see the beginnings
of a real person who fades little by little as manhood arrives and
advances, until suddenly I am aware that a stranger has taken his
place....

I lived in a city which is now some twelve hours distant from the
Atlantic seaboard. A very different city, too, it was in youth, in my
grandfather's day and my father's, even in my own boyhood, from what it
has since become in this most material of ages.

There is a book of my photographs, preserved by my mother, which I have
been looking over lately. First is presented a plump child of two, gazing
in smiling trustfulness upon a world of sunshine; later on a lean boy in
plaided kilts, whose wavy, chestnut-brown hair has been most carefully
parted on the side by Norah, his nurse. The face is still childish. Then
appears a youth of fourteen or thereabout in long trousers and the
queerest of short jackets, standing beside a marble table against a
classic background; he is smiling still in undiminished hope and trust,
despite increasing vexations and crossings, meaningless lessons which had
to be learned, disciplines to rack an aspiring soul, and long,
uncomfortable hours in the stiff pew of the First Presbyterian Church.
Associated with this torture is a peculiar Sunday smell and the faint
rustling of silk dresses. I can see the stern black figure of Dr. Pound,
who made interminable statements to the Lord.

"Oh, Lord," I can hear him say, "thou knowest..."

These pictures, though yellowed and faded, suggest vividly the being I
once was, the feelings that possessed and animated me, love for my
playmates, vague impulses struggling for expression in a world forever
thwarting them. I recall, too, innocent dreams of a future unidentified,
dreams from which I emerged vibrating with an energy that was lost for
lack of a definite objective: yet it was constantly being renewed. I
often wonder what I might have become if it could have been harnessed,
directed! Speculations are vain. Calvinism, though it had begun to make
compromises, was still a force in those days, inimical to spontaneity and
human instincts. And when I think of Calvinism I see, not Dr. Pound, who
preached it, but my father, who practised and embodied it. I loved him,
but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy,
but punishment, the, suppression rather than the expansion of
aspirations. His religion seemed woven all of austerity, contained no
shining threads to catch my eye. Dreams, to him, were matters for
suspicion and distrust.

I sometimes ask myself, as I gaze upon his portrait now, the duplicate of
the one painted for the Bar Association, whether he ever could have felt
the secret, hot thrills I knew and did not identify with religion. His
religion was real to him, though he failed utterly to make it
comprehensible to me. The apparent calmness, evenness of his life awed
me. A successful lawyer, a respected and trusted citizen, was he lacking
somewhat in virility, vitality? I cannot judge him, even to-day. I never
knew him. There were times in my youth when the curtain of his unfamiliar
spirit was withdrawn a little: and once, after I had passed the crisis of
some childhood disease, I awoke to find him bending over my bed with a
tender expression that surprised and puzzled me.

He was well educated, and from his portrait a shrewd observer might
divine in him a genteel taste for literature. The fine features bear
witness to the influence of an American environment, yet suggest the
intellectual Englishman of Matthew Arnold's time. The face is
distinguished, ascetic, the chestnut hair lighter and thinner than my
own; the side whiskers are not too obtrusive, the eyes blue-grey. There
is a large black cravat crossed and held by a cameo pin, and the coat has
odd, narrow lapels. His habits of mind were English, although he
harmonized well enough with the manners and traditions of a city whose
inheritance was Scotch-Irish; and he invariably drank tea for breakfast.
One of my earliest recollections is of the silver breakfast service and
egg-cups which my great-grandfather brought with him from Sheffield to
Philadelphia shortly after the Revolution. His son, Dr. Hugh Moreton
Paret, after whom I was named, was the best known physician of the city
in the decorous, Second Bank days.

My mother was Sarah Breck. Hers was my Scotch-Irish side. Old Benjamin
Breck, her grandfather, undaunted by sea or wilderness, had come straight
from Belfast to the little log settlement by the great river that
mirrored then the mantle of primeval forest on the hills. So much for
chance. He kept a store with a side porch and square-paned windows, where
hams and sides of bacon and sugar loaves in blue glazed paper hung beside
ploughs and calico prints, barrels of flour, of molasses and rum, all of
which had been somehow marvellously transported over the passes of those
forbidding mountains,--passes we blithely thread to-day in dining cars
and compartment sleepers. Behind the store were moored the barges that
floated down on the swift current to the Ohio, carrying goods to even
remoter settlements in the western wilderness.

Benjamin, in addition to his emigrant's leather box, brought with him
some of that pigment that was to dye the locality for generations a deep
blue. I refer, of course, to his Presbyterianism. And in order the better
to ensure to his progeny the fastness of this dye, he married the
granddaughter of a famous divine, celebrated in the annals of New
England,--no doubt with some injustice,--as a staunch advocate on the
doctrine of infant damnation. My cousin Robert Breck had old Benjamin's
portrait, which has since gone to the Kinley's. Heaven knows who painted
it, though no great art were needed to suggest on canvas the tough fabric
of that sitter, who was more Irish than Scotch. The heavy stick he holds
might, with a slight stretch of the imagination, be a blackthorn; his
head looks capable of withstanding many blows; his hand of giving many.
And, as I gazed the other day at this picture hanging in the shabby
suburban parlour, I could only contrast him with his anaemic descendants
who possessed the likeness. Between the children of poor Mary
Kinley,--Cousin Robert's daughter, and the hardy stock of the old country
there is a gap indeed!

Benjamin Breck made the foundation of a fortune. It was his son who built
on the Second Bank the wide, corniced mansion in which to house
comfortably his eight children. There, two tiers above the river, lived
my paternal grandfather, Dr. Paret, the Breck's physician and friend; the
Durretts and the Hambletons, iron-masters; the Hollisters, Sherwins, the
McAlerys and Ewanses,--Breck connections,--the Willetts and Ogilvys; in
short, everyone of importance in the days between the 'thirties and the
Civil War. Theirs were generous houses surrounded by shade trees, with
glorious back yards--I have been told--where apricots and pears and
peaches and even nectarines grew.

The business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to my
mother's first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore. The very
sound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight; but the
Claremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis, and the place
is now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots and connected
with Boyne Street and the business section of the city by trolley lines.
Then it was "the country," and fairly saturated with romance. Cousin
Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought
with him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma. He was no
suburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper contempt
for dwellers in towns.

Every summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility. And such
was my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when I
heard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect--

"If you're really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr.
Paret" (she generally addressed my father thus formally), "I think I'll
go to Robert's and take Hugh."

"Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother," I would exclaim, starting up.

"We'll see what your father thinks, my dear."

"Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh," he would say.

Released at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with me,
and then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters domain
next door, eager, with the refreshing lack of consideration
characteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses--who were to remain
at home the news of my good fortune. There would be Tom and Alfred and
Russell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained knees, faring
forth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady western yard. Myra
was too young not to look wistful at my news, but the others pretended
indifference, seeking to lessen my triumph. And it was Julia who
invariably retorted "We can go out to Uncle Jake's farm whenever we want
to. Can't we, Tom?"...

No journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely trip
of thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hot
fields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smelling
woods to Claremore. No silent palace "sleeping in the sun," no edifice
decreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house of
Cousin Robert Breck.

It stood half a mile from the drowsy village, deep in its own grounds
amidst lawns splashed with shadows, with gravel paths edged--in barbarous
fashion, if you please with shells. There were flower beds of equally
barbarous design; and two iron deer, which, like the figures on Keats's
Grecian urn, were ever ready poised to flee,--and yet never fled. For
Cousin Robert was rich, as riches went in those days: not only rich, but
comfortable. Stretching behind the house were sweet meadows of hay and
red clover basking in the heat, orchards where the cows cropped beneath
the trees, arbours where purple clusters of Concords hung beneath warm
leaves: there were woods beyond, into which, under the guidance of Willie
Breck, I made adventurous excursions, and in the autumn gathered
hickories and walnuts. The house was a rambling, wooden mansion painted
grey, with red scroll-work on its porches and horsehair furniture inside.
Oh, the smell of its darkened interior on a midsummer day! Like the
flavour of that choicest of tropical fruits, the mangosteen, it baffles
analysis, and the nearest I can come to it is a mixture of matting and
corn-bread, with another element too subtle to define.

The hospitality of that house! One would have thought we had arrived, my
mother and I, from the ends of the earth, such was the welcome we got
from Cousin Jenny, Cousin Robert's wife, from Mary and Helen with the
flaxen pig-tails, from Willie, whom I recall as permanently without shoes
or stockings. Met and embraced by Cousin Jenny at the station and driven
to the house in the squeaky surrey, the moment we arrived she and my
mother would put on the dressing-sacks I associated with hot weather, and
sit sewing all day long in rocking-chairs at the coolest end of the
piazza. The women of that day scorned lying down, except at night, and as
evening came on they donned starched dresses; I recall in particular one
my mother wore, with little vertical stripes of black and white, and a
full skirt. And how they talked, from the beginning of the visit until
the end! I have often since wondered where the topics came from.

It was not until nearly seven o'clock that the train arrived which
brought home my Cousin Robert. He was a big man; his features and even
his ample moustache gave a disconcerting impression of rugged integrity,
and I remember him chiefly in an alpaca or seersucker coat. Though much
less formal, more democratic--in a word--than my father, I stood in awe
of him for a different reason, and this I know now was because he
possessed the penetration to discern the flaws in my youthful
character,--flaws that persisted in manhood. None so quick as Cousin
Robert to detect deceptions which were hidden from my mother.

His hobby was carpentering, and he had a little shop beside the stable
filled with shining tools which Willie and I, in spite of their
attractions, were forbidden to touch. Willie, by dire experience, had
learned to keep the law; but on one occasion I stole in alone, and
promptly cut my finger with a chisel. My mother and Cousin Jenny accepted
the fiction that the injury had been done with a flint arrowhead that
Willie had given me, but when Cousin Robert came home and saw my bound
hand and heard the story, he gave me a certain look which sticks in my
mind.

"Wonderful people, those Indians were!" he observed. "They could make
arrowheads as sharp as chisels."

I was most uncomfortable....

He had a strong voice, and spoke with a rising inflection and a marked
accent that still remains peculiar to our locality, although it was much
modified in my mother and not at all noticeable in my father; with an odd
nasal alteration of the burr our Scotch-Irish ancestors had brought with
them across the seas. For instance, he always called my father Mr.
Par-r-ret. He had an admiration and respect for him that seemed to forbid
the informality of "Matthew." It was shared by others of my father's
friends and relations.

"Sarah," Cousin Robert would say to my mother, "you're coddling that boy,
you ought to lam him oftener. Hand him over to me for a couple of
months--I'll put him through his paces.... So you're going to send him to
college, are you? He's too good for old Benjamin's grocery business."

He was very fond of my mother, though he lectured her soundly for her
weakness in indulging me. I can see him as he sat at the head of the
supper table, carving liberal helpings which Mary and Helen and Willie
devoured with country appetites, watching our plates.

"What's the matter, Hugh? You haven't eaten all your lamb."

"He doesn't like fat, Robert," my mother explained.

"I'd teach him to like it if he were my boy."

"Well, Robert, he isn't your boy," Cousin Jenny would remind him.... His
bark was worse than his bite. Like many kind people he made use of
brusqueness to hide an inner tenderness, and on the train he was hail
fellow well met with every Tom, Dick and Harry that commuted,--although
the word was not invented in those days,--and the conductor and brakeman
too. But he had his standards, and held to them....

Mine was not a questioning childhood, and I was willing to accept the
scheme of things as presented to me entire. In my tenderer years, when I
had broken one of the commandments on my father's tablet (there were more
than ten), and had, on his home-coming, been sent to bed, my mother would
come softly upstairs after supper with a book in her hand; a book of
selected Bible stories on which Dr. Pound had set the seal of his
approval, with a glazed picture cover, representing Daniel in the lions'
den and an angel standing beside him. On the somewhat specious plea that
Holy Writ might have a chastening effect, she was permitted to minister
to me in my shame. The amazing adventure of Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego particularly appealed to an imagination needing little
stimulation. It never occurred to me to doubt that these gentlemen had
triumphed over caloric laws. But out of my window, at the back of the
second storey, I often saw a sudden, crimson glow in the sky to the
southward, as though that part of the city had caught fire. There were
the big steel-works, my mother told me, belonging to Mr. Durrett and Mr.
Hambleton, the father of Ralph Hambleton and the grandfather of Hambleton
Durrett, my schoolmates at Miss Caroline's. I invariably connected the
glow, not with Hambleton and Ralph, but with Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego! Later on, when my father took me to the steel-works, and I
beheld with awe a huge pot filled with molten metal that ran out of it
like water, I asked him--if I leaped into that stream, could God save me?
He was shocked. Miracles, he told me, didn't happen any more.

"When did they stop?" I demanded.

"About two thousand years ago, my son," he replied gravely.

"Then," said I, "no matter how much I believed in God, he wouldn't save
me if I jumped into the big kettle for his sake?"

For this I was properly rebuked and silenced.

My boyhood was filled with obsessing desires. If God, for example, had
cast down, out of his abundant store, manna and quail in the desert, why
couldn't he fling me a little pocket money? A paltry quarter of a dollar,
let us say, which to me represented wealth. To avoid the reproach of the
Pharisees, I went into the closet of my bed-chamber to pray, requesting
that the quarter should be dropped on the north side of Lyme Street,
between Stamford and Tryon; in short, as conveniently near home as
possible. Then I issued forth, not feeling overconfident, but hoping. Tom
Peters, leaning over the ornamental cast-iron fence which separated his
front yard from the street, presently spied me scanning the sidewalk.

"What are you looking for, Hugh?" he demanded with interest.

"Oh, something I dropped," I answered uneasily.

"What?"

Naturally, I refused to tell. It was a broiling, midsummer day; Julia and
Russell, who had been warned to stay in the shade, but who were engaged
in the experiment of throwing the yellow cat from the top of the lattice
fence to see if she would alight on her feet, were presently attracted,
and joined in the search. The mystery which I threw around it added to
its interest, and I was not inconsiderably annoyed. Suppose one of them
were to find the quarter which God had intended for me? Would that be
justice?

"It's nothing," I said, and pretended to abandon the quest--to be renewed
later. But this ruse failed; they continued obstinately to search; and
after a few minutes Tom, with a shout, picked out of a hot crevice
between the bricks--a nickel!

"It's mine!" I cried fiercely.

"Did you lose it?" demanded Julia, the canny one, as Tom was about to
give it up.

My lying was generally reserved for my elders.

"N-no," I said hesitatingly, "but it's mine all the same. It was--sent to
me."

"Sent to you!" they exclaimed, in a chorus of protest and derision. And
how, indeed, was I to make good my claim? The Peterses, when assembled,
were a clan, led by Julia and in matters of controversy, moved as one.
How was I to tell them that in answer to my prayers for twenty-five
cents, God had deemed five all that was good for me?

"Some--somebody dropped it there for me."

"Who?" demanded the chorus. "Say, that's a good one!"

Tears suddenly blinded me. Overcome by chagrin, I turned and flew into
the house and upstairs into my room, locking the door behind me. An
interval ensued, during which I nursed my sense of wrong, and it pleased
me to think that the money would bring a curse on the Peters family. At
length there came a knock on the door, and a voice calling my name.

"Hugh! Hugh!"

It was Tom.

"Hughie, won't you let me in? I want to give you the nickel."

"Keep it!" I shouted back. "You found it."

Another interval, and then more knocking.

"Open up," he said coaxingly. "I--I want to talk to you."

I relented, and let him in. He pressed the coin into my hand. I refused;
he pleaded.

"You found it," I said, "it's yours."

"But--but you were looking for it."

"That makes no difference," I declared magnanimously.

Curiosity overcame him.

"Say, Hughie, if you didn't drop it, who on earth did?"

"Nobody on earth," I replied cryptically....

Naturally, I declined to reveal the secret. Nor was this by any means the
only secret I held over the Peters family, who never quite knew what to
make of me. They were not troubled with imaginations. Julia was a little
older than Tom and had a sharp tongue, but over him I exercised a
distinct fascination, and I knew it. Literal himself, good-natured and
warm-hearted, the gift I had of tingeing life with romance (to put the
thing optimistically), of creating kingdoms out of back yards--at which
Julia and Russell sniffed--held his allegiance firm.




II.

I must have been about twelve years of age when I realized that I was
possessed of the bard's inheritance. A momentous journey I made with my
parents to Boston about this time not only stimulated this gift, but gave
me the advantage of which other travellers before me have likewise
availed themselves--of being able to take certain poetic liberties with a
distant land that my friends at home had never seen. Often during the
heat of summer noons when we were assembled under the big maple beside
the lattice fence in the Peters' yard, the spirit would move me to relate
the most amazing of adventures. Our train, for instance, had been held up
in the night by a band of robbers in black masks, and rescued by a
traveller who bore a striking resemblance to my Cousin Robert Breck. He
had shot two of the robbers. These fabrications, once started, flowed
from me with ridiculous ease. I experienced an unwonted exhilaration,
exaltation; I began to believe that they had actually occurred. In vain
the astute Julia asserted that there were no train robbers in the east.
What had my father done? Well, he had been very brave, but he had had no
pistol. Had I been frightened? No, not at all; I, too, had wished for a
pistol. Why hadn't I spoken of this before? Well, so many things had
happened to me I couldn't tell them all at once. It was plain that Julia,
though often fascinated against her will, deemed this sort of thing
distinctly immoral.

I was a boy divided in two. One part of me dwelt in a fanciful realm of
his own weaving, and the other part was a commonplace and protesting
inhabitant of a world of lessons, disappointments and discipline. My
instincts were not vicious. Ideas bubbled up within me continually from
an apparently inexhaustible spring, and the very strength of the longings
they set in motion puzzled and troubled my parents: what I seem to see
most distinctly now is a young mind engaged in a ceaseless struggle for
self-expression, for self-development, against the inertia of a tradition
of which my father was the embodiment. He was an enigma to me then. He
sincerely loved me, he cherished ambitions concerning me, yet thwarted
every natural, budding growth, until I grew unconsciously to regard him
as my enemy, although I had an affection for him and a pride in him that
flared up at times. Instead of confiding to him my aspirations, vague
though they were, I became more and more secretive as I grew older. I
knew instinctively that he regarded these aspirations as evidences in my
character of serious moral flaws. And I would sooner have suffered many
afternoons of his favourite punishment--solitary confinement in my
room--than reveal to him those occasional fits of creative fancy which
caused me to neglect my lessons in order to put them on paper. Loving
literature, in his way, he was characteristically incapable of
recognizing the literary instinct, and the symptoms of its early stages
he mistook for inherent frivolity, for lack of respect for the truth; in
brief, for original sin. At the age of fourteen I had begun secretly
(alas, how many things I did secretly!) to write stories of a sort,
stories that never were finished.

He regarded reading as duty, not pleasure. He laid out books for me,
which I neglected. He was part and parcel of that American environment in
which literary ambition was regarded as sheer madness. And no one who has
not experienced that environment can have any conception of the pressure
it exerted to stifle originality, to thrust the new generation into its
religious and commercial moulds. Shall we ever, I wonder, develop the
enlightened education that will know how to take advantage of such
initiative as was mine? that will be on the watch for it, sympathize with
it and guide it to fruition?

I was conscious of still another creative need, that of dramatizing my
ideas, of converting them into action. And this need was to lead me
farther than ever afield from the path of righteousness. The concrete
realization of ideas, as many geniuses will testify, is an expensive
undertaking, requiring a little pocket money; and I have already touched
upon that subject. My father did not believe in pocket money. A sea story
that my Cousin Donald Ewan gave me at Christmas inspired me to compose
one of a somewhat different nature; incidentally, I deemed it a vast
improvement on Cousin Donald's book. Now, if I only had a boat, with the
assistance of Ham Durrett and Tom Peters, Gene Hollister and Perry
Blackwood and other friends, this story of mine might be staged. There
were, however, as usual, certain seemingly insuperable difficulties: in
the first place, it was winter time; in the second, no facilities existed
in the city for operations of a nautical character; and, lastly, my
Christmas money amounted only to five dollars. It was my father who
pointed out these and other objections. For, after a careful perusal of
the price lists I had sent for, I had been forced to appeal to him to
supply additional funds with which to purchase a row-boat. Incidentally,
he read me a lecture on extravagance, referred to my last month's report
at the Academy, and finished by declaring that he would not permit me to
have a boat even in the highly improbable case of somebody's presenting
me with one. Let it not be imagined that my ardour or my determination
were extinguished. Shortly after I had retired from his presence it
occurred to me that he had said nothing to forbid my making a boat, and
the first thing I did after school that day was to procure, for
twenty-five cents, a second-hand book on boat construction. The woodshed
was chosen as a shipbuilding establishment. It was convenient--and my
father never went into the back yard in cold weather. Inquiries of
lumber-yards developing the disconcerting fact that four dollars and
seventy-five cents was inadequate to buy the material itself, to say
nothing of the cost of steaming and bending the ribs, I reluctantly
abandoned the ideal of the graceful craft I had sketched, and compromised
on a flat bottom. Observe how the ways of deception lead to
transgression: I recalled the cast-off lumber pile of Jarvis, the
carpenter, a good-natured Englishman, coarse and fat: in our
neighbourhood his reputation for obscenity was so well known to mothers
that I had been forbidden to go near him or his shop. Grits Jarvis, his
son, who had inherited the talent, was also contraband. I can see now the
huge bulk of the elder Jarvis as he stood in the melting, soot-powdered
snow in front of his shop, and hear his comments on my pertinacity.

"If you ever wants another man's missus when you grows up, my lad, Gawd
'elp 'im!"

"Why should I want another man's wife when I don't want one of my own?" I
demanded, indignant.

He laughed with his customary lack of moderation.

"You mind what old Jarvis says," he cried. "What you wants, you gets."

I did get his boards, by sheer insistence. No doubt they were not very
valuable, and without question he more than made up for them in my
mother's bill. I also got something else of equal value to me at the
moment,--the assistance of Grits, the contraband; daily, after school, I
smuggled him into the shed through the alley, acquiring likewise the
services of Tom Peters, which was more of a triumph than it would seem.
Tom always had to be "worked up" to participation in my ideas, but in the
end he almost invariably succumbed. The notion of building a boat in the
dead of winter, and so far from her native element, naturally struck him
at first as ridiculous. Where in Jehoshaphat was I going to sail it if I
ever got it made? He much preferred to throw snowballs at innocent wagon
drivers.

All that Tom saw, at first, was a dirty, coal-spattered shed with dim
recesses, for it was lighted on one side only, and its temperature was
somewhere below freezing. Surely he could not be blamed for a tempered
enthusiasm! But for me, all the dirt and cold and discomfort were blotted
out, and I beheld a gallant craft manned by sturdy seamen forging her way
across blue water in the South Seas. Treasure Island, alas, was as yet
unwritten; but among my father's books were two old volumes in which I
had hitherto taken no interest, with crude engravings of palms and coral
reefs, of naked savages and tropical mountains covered with jungle, the
adventures, in brief, of one Captain Cook. I also discovered a book by a
later traveller. Spurred on by a mysterious motive power, and to the
great neglect of the pons asinorum and the staple products of the
Southern States, I gathered an amazing amount of information concerning a
remote portion of the globe, of head-hunters and poisoned stakes, of
typhoons, of queer war-craft that crept up on you while you were
dismantling galleons, when desperate hand-to-hand encounters ensued.
Little by little as I wove all this into personal adventures soon to be
realized, Tom forgot the snowballs and the maddened grocery-men who
chased him around the block; while Grits would occasionally stop sawing
and cry out:--"Ah, s'y!" frequently adding that he would be G--d--d.

The cold woodshed became a chantry on the New England coast, the alley
the wintry sea soon to embrace our ship, the saw-horses--which stood
between a coal-bin on one side and unused stalls filled with rubbish and
kindling on the other--the ways; the yard behind the lattice fence became
a backwater, the flapping clothes the sails of ships that took refuge
there--on Mondays and Tuesdays. Even my father was symbolized with
unparalleled audacity as a watchful government which had, up to the
present, no inkling of our semi-piratical intentions! The cook and the
housemaid, though remonstrating against the presence of Grits, were
friendly confederates; likewise old Cephas, the darkey who, from my
earliest memory, carried coal and wood and blacked the shoes, washed the
windows and scrubbed the steps.

One afternoon Tom went to work....

The history of the building of the good ship Petrel is similar to that of
all created things, a story of trial and error and waste. At last, one
March day she stood ready for launching. She had even been caulked; for
Grits, from an unknown and unquestionably dubious source, had procured a
bucket of tar, which we heated over afire in the alley and smeared into
every crack. It was natural that the news of such a feat as we were
accomplishing should have leaked out, that the "yard" should have been
visited from time to time by interested friends, some of whom came to
admire, some to scoff, and all to speculate. Among the scoffers, of
course, was Ralph Hambleton, who stood with his hands in his pockets and
cheerfully predicted all sorts of dire calamities. Ralph was always a
superior boy, tall and a trifle saturnine and cynical, with an amazing
self-confidence not wholly due to the wealth of his father, the
iron-master. He was older than I.

"She won't float five minutes, if you ever get her to the water," was his
comment, and in this he was supported on general principles by Julia and
Russell Peters. Ralph would have none of the Petrel, or of the South Seas
either; but he wanted,--so he said,--"to be in at the death." The
Hambletons were one of the few families who at that time went to the sea
for the summer, and from a practical knowledge of craft in general Ralph
was not slow to point out the defects of ours. Tom and I defended her
passionately.

Ralph was not a romanticist. He was a born leader, excelling at organized
games, exercising over boys the sort of fascination that comes from doing
everything better and more easily than others. It was only during the
progress of such enterprises as this affair of the Petrel that I
succeeded in winning their allegiance; bit by bit, as Tom's had been won,
fanning their enthusiasm by impersonating at once Achilles and Homer,
recruiting while relating the Odyssey of the expedition in glowing
colours. Ralph always scoffed, and when I had no scheme on foot they went
back to him. Having surveyed the boat and predicted calamity, he
departed, leaving a circle of quaint and youthful figures around the
Petrel in the shed: Gene Hollister, romantically inclined, yet somewhat
hampered by a strict parental supervision; Ralph's cousin Ham Durrett,
who was even then a rather fat boy, good-natured but selfish; Don and
Harry Ewan, my second cousins; Mac and Nancy Willett and Sam and Sophy
McAlery. Nancy was a tomboy, not to be denied, and Sophy her shadow. We
held a council, the all-important question of which was how to get the
Petrel to the water, and what water to get her to. The river was not to
be thought of, and Blackstone Lake some six miles from town. Finally,
Logan's mill-pond was decided on,--a muddy sheet on the outskirts of the
city. But how to get her to Logan's mill-pond? Cephas was at length
consulted. It turned out that he had a coloured friend who went by the
impressive name of Thomas Jefferson Taliaferro (pronounced Tolliver), who
was in the express business; and who, after surveying the boat with some
misgivings,--for she was ten feet long,--finally consented to transport
her to "tide-water" for the sum of two dollars. But it proved that our
combined resources only amounted to a dollar and seventy-five cents. Ham
Durrett never contributed to anything. On this sum Thomas Jefferson
compromised.

Saturday dawned clear, with a stiff March wind catching up the dust into
eddies and whirling it down the street. No sooner was my father safely on
his way to his office than Thomas Jefferson was reported to be in the
alley, where we assembled, surveying with some misgivings Thomas
Jefferson's steed, whose ability to haul the Petrel two miles seemed
somewhat doubtful. Other difficulties developed; the door in the back of
the shed proved to be too narrow for our ship's beam. But men embarked on
a desperate enterprise are not to be stopped by such trifles, and the
problem was solved by sawing out two adjoining boards. These were
afterwards replaced with skill by the ship's carpenter, Able Seaman Grits
Jarvis. Then the Petrel by heroic efforts was got into the wagon, the
seat of which had been removed, old Thomas Jefferson perched himself
precariously in the bow and protestingly gathered up his rope-patched
reins.

"Folks'll 'low I'se plum crazy, drivin' dis yere boat," he declared,
observing with concern that some four feet of the stern projected over
the tail-board. "Ef she topples, I'll git to heaven quicker'n a bullet."

When one is shanghaied, however,--in the hands of buccaneers,--it is too
late to withdraw. Six shoulders upheld the rear end of the Petrel, others
shoved, and Thomas Jefferson's rickety horse began to move forward in
spite of himself. An expression of sheer terror might have been observed
on the old negro's crinkled face, but his voice was drowned, and we swept
out of the alley. Scarcely had we travelled a block before we began to be
joined by all the boys along the line of march; marbles, tops, and even
incipient baseball games were abandoned that Saturday morning; people ran
out of their houses, teamsters halted their carts. The breathless
excitement, the exaltation I had felt on leaving the alley were now
tinged with other feelings, unanticipated, but not wholly lacking in
delectable quality,--concern and awe at these unforeseen forces I had
raised, at this ever growing and enthusiastic body of volunteers
springing up like dragon's teeth in our path. After all, was not I the
hero of this triumphal procession? The thought was consoling,
exhilarating. And here was Nancy marching at my side, a little subdued,
perhaps, but unquestionably admiring and realizing that it was I who had
created all this. Nancy, who was the aptest of pupils, the most loyal of
followers, though I did not yet value her devotion at its real worth,
because she was a girl. Her imagination kindled at my touch. And on this
eventful occasion she carried in her arms a parcel, the contents of which
were unknown to all but ourselves. At length we reached the muddy shores
of Logan's pond, where two score eager hands volunteered to assist the
Petrel into her native element.

Alas! that the reality never attains to the vision. I had beheld, in my
dreams, the Petrel about to take the water, and Nancy Willett standing
very straight making a little speech and crashing a bottle of wine across
the bows. This was the content of the mysterious parcel; she had stolen
it from her father's cellar. But the number of uninvited spectators,
which had not been foreseen, considerably modified the programme,--as the
newspapers would have said. They pushed and crowded around the ship, and
made frank and even brutal remarks as to her seaworthiness; even Nancy,
inured though she was to the masculine sex, had fled to the heights, and
it looked at this supreme moment as though we should have to fight for
the Petrel. An attempt to muster her doughty buccaneers failed; the
gunner too had fled,--Gene Hollister; Ham Durrett and the Ewanses were
nowhere to be seen, and a muster revealed only Tom, the fidus Achates,
and Grits Jarvis.

"Ah, s'y!" he exclaimed in the teeth of the menacing hordes. "Stand back,
carn't yer? I'll bash yer face in, Johnny. Whose boat is this?"

Shall it be whispered that I regretted his belligerency? Here, in truth,
was the drama staged,--my drama, had I only been able to realize it. The
good ship beached, the headhunters hemming us in on all sides, the scene
prepared for one of those struggles against frightful odds which I had so
graphically related as an essential part of our adventures.

"Let's roll the cuss in the fancy collar," proposed one of the
head-hunters,--meaning me.

"I'll stove yer slats if yer touch him," said Grits, and then resorted to
appeal. "I s'y, carn't yer stand back and let a chap 'ave a charnst?"

The head-hunters only jeered. And what shall be said of the Captain in
this moment of peril? Shall it be told that his heart was beating
wildly?--bumping were a better word. He was trying to remember that he
was the Captain. Otherwise, he must admit with shame that he, too, should
have fled. So much for romance when the test comes. Will he remain to
fall fighting for his ship? Like Horatius, he glanced up at the hill,
where, instead of the porch of the home where he would fain have been, he
beheld a wisp of a girl standing alone, her hat on the back of her head,
her hair flying in the wind, gazing intently down at him in his danger.
The renegade crew was nowhere to be seen. There are those who demand the
presence of a woman in order to be heroes....

"Give us a chance, can't you?" he cried, repeating Grits's appeal in not
quite such a stentorian tone as he would have liked, while his hand
trembled on the gunwale. Tom Peters, it must be acknowledged, was much
more of a buccaneer when it was a question of deeds, for he planted
himself in the way of the belligerent chief of the head-hunters (who
spoke with a decided brogue).

"Get out of the way!" said Tom, with a little squeak in his voice. Yet
there he was, and he deserves a tribute.

An unlooked-for diversion saved us from annihilation, in the shape of one
who had a talent for creating them. We were bewilderingly aware of a
girlish figure amongst us.

"You cowards!" she cried. "You cowards!"

Lithe, and fairly quivering with passion, it was Nancy who showed us how
to face the head-hunters. They gave back. They would have been brave
indeed if they had not retreated before such an intense little nucleus of
energy and indignation!...

"Ah, give 'em a chanst," said their chief, after a moment.... He even
helped to push the boat towards the water. But he did not volunteer to be
one of those to man the Petrel on her maiden voyage. Nor did Logan's
pond, that wild March day, greatly resemble the South Seas. Nevertheless,
my eye on Nancy, I stepped proudly aboard and seized an "oar." Grits and
Tom followed,--when suddenly the Petrel sank considerably below the
water-line as her builders had estimated it. Ere we fully realized this,
the now friendly head-hunters had given us a shove, and we were off! The
Captain, who should have been waving good-bye to his lady love from the
poop, sat down abruptly,--the crew likewise; not, however, before she had
heeled to the scuppers, and a half-bucket of iced water had run it.
Head-hunters were mere daily episodes in Grits's existence, but water...
He muttered something in cockney that sounded like a prayer.... The wind
was rapidly driving us toward the middle of the pond, and something cold
and ticklish was seeping through the seats of our trousers. We sat like
statues....

The bright scene etched itself in my memory--the bare brown slopes with
which the pond was bordered, the Irish shanties, the clothes-lines with
red flannel shirts snapping in the biting wind; Nancy motionless on the
bank; the group behind her, silent now, impressed in spite of itself at
the sight of our intrepidity.

The Petrel was sailing stern first.... Would any of us, indeed, ever see
home again? I thought of my father's wrath turned to sorrow because he
had refused to gratify a son's natural wish and present him with a real
rowboat.... Out of the corners of our eyes we watched the water creeping
around the gunwale, and the very muddiness of it seemed to enhance its
coldness, to make the horrors of its depths more mysterious and hideous.
The voice of Grits startled us.

"O Gawd," he was saying, "we're a-going to sink, and I carn't swim! The
blarsted tar's give way back here."

"Is she leaking?" I cried.

"She's a-filling up like a bath tub," he lamented.

Slowly but perceptibly, in truth, the bow was rising, and above the
whistling of the wind I could hear his chattering as she settled.... Then
several things happened simultaneously: an agonized cry behind me,
distant shouts from the shore, a sudden upward lunge of the bow, and the
torture of being submerged, inch by inch, in the icy, yellow water.
Despite the splashing behind me, I sat as though paralyzed until I was
waist deep and the boards turned under me, and then, with a spasmodic
contraction of my whole being I struck out--only to find my feet on the
muddy bottom. Such was the inglorious end of the good ship Petrel! For
she went down, with all hands, in little more than half a fathom of
water.... It was not until then I realized that we had been blown clear
across the pond!

Figures were running along the shore. And as Tom and I emerged dragging
Grits between us,--for he might have been drowned there abjectly in the
shallows,--we were met by a stout and bare-armed Irishwoman whose scanty
hair, I remember, was drawn into a tight knot behind her head; and who
seized us, all three, as though we were a bunch of carrots.

"Come along wid ye!" she cried.

Shivering, we followed her up the hill, the spectators of the tragedy,
who by this time had come around the pond, trailing after. Nancy was not
among them. Inside the shanty into which we were thrust were two small
children crawling about the floor, and the place was filled with steam
from a wash-tub against the wall and a boiler on the stove. With a
vigorous injunction to make themselves scarce, the Irishwoman slammed the
door in the faces of the curious and ordered us to remove our clothes.
Grits was put to bed in a corner, while Tom and I, provided with various
garments, huddled over the stove. There fell to my lot the red flannel
shirt which I had seen on the clothes-line. She gave us hot coffee, and
was back at her wash-tub in no time at all, her entire comment on a
proceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravity
being, "By's will be by's!" The final ironical touch was given the
anti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief of
the head-hunters himself! He had lingered perforce with his brothers and
sister outside the cabin until dinner time, and when he came in he was
meek as Moses.

Thus the ready hospitality of the poor, which passed over the heads of
Tom and me as we ate bread and onions and potatoes with a ravenous
hunger. It must have been about two o'clock in the afternoon when we bade
good-bye to our preserver and departed for home....

At first we went at a dog-trot, but presently slowed down to discuss the
future looming portentously ahead of us. Since entire concealment was now
impossible, the question was,--how complete a confession would be
necessary? Our cases, indeed, were dissimilar, and Tom's incentive to
hold back the facts was not nearly so great as mine. It sometimes seemed
to me in those days unjust that the Peterses were able on the whole to
keep out of criminal difficulties, in which I was more or less
continuously involved: for it did not strike me that their sins were not
those of the imagination. The method of Tom's father was the slipper. He
and Tom understood each other, while between my father and myself was a
great gulf fixed. Not that Tom yearned for the slipper; but he regarded
its occasional applications as being as inevitable as changes in the
weather; lying did not come easily to him, and left to himself he much
preferred to confess and have the matter over with. I have already
suggested that I had cultivated lying, that weapon of the weaker party,
in some degree, at least, in self-defence.

Tom was loyal. Moreover, my conviction would probably deprive him for six
whole afternoons of my company, on which he was more or less dependent.
But the defence of this case presented unusual difficulties, and we
stopped several times to thrash them out. We had been absent from dinner,
and doubtless by this time Julia had informed Tom's mother of the
expedition, and anyone could see that our clothing had been wet. So I
lingered in no little anxiety behind the Peters stable while he made the
investigation. Our spirits rose considerably when he returned to report
that Julia had unexpectedly been a trump, having quieted his mother by
the surmise that he was spending the day with his Aunt Fanny. So far, so
good. The problem now was to decide upon what to admit. For we must both
tell the same story.

It was agreed that we had fallen into Logan's Pond from a raft: my
suggestion. Well, said Tom, the Petrel hadn't proved much better than a
raft, after all. I was in no mood to defend her.

This designation of the Petrel as a "raft" was my first legal quibble.
The question to be decided by the court was, What is a raft? just as the
supreme tribunal of the land has been required, in later years, to
decide, What is whiskey? The thing to be concealed if possible was the
building of the "raft," although this information was already in the
possession of a number of persons, whose fathers might at any moment see
fit to congratulate my own on being the parent of a genius. It was a
risk, however, that had to be run. And, secondly, since Grits Jarvis was
contraband, nothing was to be said about him.

I have not said much about my mother, who might have been likened on such
occasions to a grand jury compelled to indict, yet torn between loyalty
to an oath and sympathy with the defendant. I went through the Peters
yard, climbed the wire fence, my object being to discover first from
Ella, the housemaid, or Hannah, the cook, how much was known in high
quarters. It was Hannah who, as I opened the kitchen door, turned at the
sound, and set down the saucepan she was scouring.

"Is it home ye are? Mercy to goodness!" (this on beholding my shrunken
costume) "Glory be to God you're not drownded! and your mother worritin'
her heart out! So it's into the wather ye were?"

I admitted it.

"Hannah?" I said softly.

"What then?"

"Does mother know--about the boat?"

"Now don't ye be wheedlin'."

I managed to discover, however, that my mother did not know, and surmised
that the best reason why she had not been told had to do with Hannah's
criminal acquiescence concerning the operations in the shed. I ran into
the front hall and up the stairs, and my mother heard me coming and met
me on the landing.

"Hugh, where have you been?"

As I emerged from the semi-darkness of the stairway she caught sight of
my dwindled garments, of the trousers well above my ankles. Suddenly she
had me in her arms and was kissing me passionately. As she stood before
me in her grey, belted skirt, the familiar red-and-white cameo at her
throat, her heavy hair parted in the middle, in her eyes was an odd,
appealing look which I know now was a sign of mother love struggling with
a Presbyterian conscience. Though she inherited that conscience, I have
often thought she might have succeeded in casting it off--or at least
some of it--had it not been for the fact that in spite of herself she
worshipped its incarnation in the shape of my father. Her voice trembled
a little as she drew me to the sofa beside the window.

"Tell me about what happened, my son," she said.

It was a terrible moment for me. For my affections were still quiveringly
alive in those days, and I loved her. I had for an instant an instinctive
impulse to tell her the whole story,--South Sea Islands and all! And I
could have done it had I not beheld looming behind her another figure
which represented a stern and unsympathetic Authority, and somehow made
her, suddenly, of small account. Not that she would have understood the
romance, but she would have comprehended me. I knew that she was
powerless to save me from the wrath to come. I wept. It was because I
hated to lie to her,--yet I did so. Fear gripped me, and--like some
respectable criminals I have since known--I understood that any
confession I made would inexorably be used against me.... I wonder
whether she knew I was lying? At any rate, the case appeared to be a
grave one, and I was presently remanded to my room to be held over for
trial....

Vividly, as I write, I recall the misery of the hours I have spent, while
awaiting sentence, in the little chamber with the honeysuckle wall-paper
and steel engravings of happy but dumpy children romping in the fields
and groves. On this particular March afternoon the weather had become
morne, as the French say; and I looked down sadly into the grey back yard
which the wind of the morning had strewn with chips from the Petrel. At
last, when shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, I heard
footsteps. Ella appeared, prim and virtuous, yet a little commiserating.
My father wished to see me, downstairs. It was not the first time she had
brought that summons, and always her manner was the same!

The scene of my trials was always the sitting room, lined with grim books
in their walnut cases. And my father sat, like a judge, behind the big
desk where he did his work when at home. Oh, the distance between us at
such an hour! I entered as delicately as Agag, and the expression in his
eye seemed to convict me before I could open my mouth.

"Hugh," he said, "your mother tells me that you have confessed to going,
without permission, to Logan's Pond, where you embarked on a raft and
fell into the water."

The slight emphasis he contrived to put on the word raft sent a colder
shiver down my spine than the iced water had done. What did he know? or
was this mere suspicion? Too late, now, at any rate, to plead guilty.

"It was a sort of a raft, sir," I stammered.

"A sort of a raft," repeated my father. "Where, may I ask, did you find
it?"

"I--I didn't exactly find it, sir."

"Ah!" said my father. (It was the moment to glance meaningly at the
jury.) The prisoner gulped. "You didn't exactly find it, then. Will you
kindly explain how you came by it?"

"Well, sir, we--I--put it together."

"Have you any objection to stating, Hugh, in plain English, that you made
it?"

"No, sir, I suppose you might say that I made it."

"Or that it was intended for a row-boat?"

Here was the time to appeal, to force a decision as to what constituted a
row-boat.

"Perhaps it might be called a row-boat, sir," I said abjectly.

"Or that, in direct opposition to my wishes and commands in forbidding
you to have a boat, to spend your money foolishly and wickedly on a whim,
you constructed one secretly in the woodshed, took out a part of the back
partition, thus destroying property that did, not belong to you, and had
the boat carted this morning to Logan's Pond?" I was silent, utterly
undone. Evidently he had specific information.... There are certain
expressions that are, at times, more than mere figures of speech, and now
my father's wrath seemed literally towering. It added visibly to his
stature.

"Hugh," he said, in a voice that penetrated to the very corners of my
soul, "I utterly fail to understand you. I cannot imagine how a son of
mine, a son of your mother who is the very soul of truthfulness and
honour--can be a liar." (Oh, the terrible emphasis he put on that word!)
"Nor is it as if this were a new tendency--I have punished you for it
before. Your mother and I have tried to do our duty by you, to instil
into you Christian teaching. But it seems wholly useless. I confess that
I am at a less how to proceed. You seem to have no conscience whatever,
no conception of what you owe to your parents and your God. You not only
persistently disregard my wishes and commands, but you have, for many
months, been leading a double life, facing me every day, while you were
secretly and continually disobeying me. I shudder to think where this
determination of yours to have what you desire at any price will lead you
in the future. It is just such a desire that distinguishes wicked men
from good."

I will not linger upon a scene the very remembrance of which is painful
to this day.... I went from my father's presence in disgrace, in an agony
of spirit that was overwhelming, to lock the door of my room and drop
face downward on the bed, to sob until my muscles twitched. For he had,
indeed, put into me an awful fear. The greatest horror of my boyish
imagination was a wicked man. Was I, as he had declared, utterly depraved
and doomed in spite of myself to be one?

There came a knock at my door--Ella with my supper. I refused to open,
and sent her away, to fall on my knees in the darkness and pray wildly to
a God whose attributes and character were sufficiently confused in my
mind. On the one hand was the stern, despotic Monarch of the Westminster
Catechism, whom I addressed out of habit, the Father who condemned a
portion of his children from the cradle. Was I one of those who he had
decreed before I was born must suffer the tortures of the flames of hell?
Putting two and two together, what I had learned in Sunday school and
gathered from parts of Dr. Pound's sermons, and the intimation of my
father that wickedness was within me, like an incurable disease,--was not
mine the logical conclusion? What, then, was the use of praying?... My
supplications ceased abruptly. And my ever ready imagination, stirred to
its depths, beheld that awful scene of the last day: the darkness, such
as sometimes creeps over the city in winter, when the jaundiced smoke
falls down and we read at noonday by gas-light. I beheld the tortured
faces of the wicked gathered on the one side, and my mother on the other
amongst the blessed, gazing across the gulf at me with yearning and
compassion. Strange that it did not strike me that the sight of the
condemned whom they had loved in life would have marred if not destroyed
the happiness of the chosen, about to receive their crowns and harps!
What a theology--that made the Creator and Preserver of all mankind thus
illogical!




III.

Although I was imaginative, I was not morbidly introspective, and by the
end of the first day of my incarceration my interest in that solution had
waned. At times, however, I actually yearned for someone in whom I could
confide, who could suggest a solution. I repeat, I would not for worlds
have asked my father or my mother or Dr. Pound, of whom I had a wholesome
fear, or perhaps an unwholesome one. Except at morning Bible reading and
at church my parents never mentioned the name of the Deity, save to
instruct me formally. Intended or no, the effect of my religious training
was to make me ashamed of discussing spiritual matters, and naturally I
failed to perceive that this was because it laid its emphasis on personal
salvation.... I did not, however, become an unbeliever, for I was not of
a nature to contemplate with equanimity a godless universe....

My sufferings during these series of afternoon confinements did not come
from remorse, but were the result of a vague sense of injury; and their
effect was to generate within me a strange motive power, a desire to do
something that would astound my father and eventually wring from him the
confession that he had misjudged me. To be sure, I should have to wait
until early manhood, at least, for the accomplishment of such a coup.
Might it not be that I was an embryonic literary genius? Many were the
books I began in this ecstasy of self-vindication, only to abandon them
when my confinement came to an end.

It was about this time, I think, that I experienced one of those shocks
which have a permanent effect upon character. It was then the custom for
ladies to spend the day with one another, bringing their sewing; and
sometimes, when I unexpectedly entered the sitting-room, the voices of my
mother's visitors would drop to a whisper. One afternoon I returned from
school to pause at the head of the stairs. Cousin Bertha Ewan and Mrs.
McAlery were discussing with my mother an affair that I judged from the
awed tone in which they spoke might prove interesting.

"Poor Grace," Mrs. McAlery was saying, "I imagine she's paid a heavy
penalty. No man alive will be faithful under those circumstances."

I stopped at the head of the stairs, with a delicious, guilty feeling.

"Have they ever heard of her?" Cousin Bertha asked.

"It is thought they went to Spain," replied Mrs. McAlery, solemnly, yet
not without a certain zest. "Mr. Jules Hollister will not have her name
mentioned in his presence, you know. And Whitcomb chased them as far as
New York with a horse-pistol in his pocket. The report is that he got to
the dock just as the ship sailed. And then, you know, he went to live
somewhere out West,--in Iowa, I believe."

"Did he ever get a divorce?" Cousin Bertha inquired.

"He was too good a church member, my dear," my mother reminded her.

"Well, I'd have got one quick enough, church member or no church member,"
declared Cousin Bertha, who had in her elements of daring.

"Not that I mean for a moment to excuse her," Mrs. McAlery put in, "but
Edward Whitcomb did have a frightful temper, and he was awfully strict
with her, and he was old enough, anyhow, to be her father. Grace
Hollister was the last woman in the world I should have suspected of
doing so hideous a thing. She was so sweet and simple."

"Jennings was very attractive," said my Cousin Bertha. "I don't think I
ever saw a handsomer man. Now, if he had looked at me--"

The sentence was never finished, for at this crucial moment I dropped a
grammar....

I had heard enough, however, to excite my curiosity to the highest pitch.
And that evening, when I came in at five o'clock to study, I asked my
mother what had become of Gene Hollister's aunt.

"She went away, Hugh," replied my mother, looking greatly troubled.

"Why?" I persisted.

"It is something you are too young to understand."

Of course I started an investigation, and the next day at school I asked
the question of Gene Hollister himself, only to discover that he believed
his aunt to be dead! And that night he asked his mother if his Aunt Grace
were really alive, after all? Whereupon complications and explanations
ensued between our parents, of which we saw only the surface signs.... My
father accused me of eavesdropping (which I denied), and sentenced me to
an afternoon of solitary confinement for repeating something which I had
heard in private. I have reason to believe that my mother was also
reprimanded.

It must not be supposed that I permitted the matter to rest. In addition
to Grits Jarvis, there was another contraband among my acquaintances,
namely, Alec Pound, the scrape-grace son of the Reverend Doctor Pound.
Alec had an encyclopaedic mind, especially well stocked with the kind of
knowledge I now desired; first and last he taught me much, which I would
better have got in another way. To him I appealed and got the story, my
worst suspicions being confirmed. Mrs. Whitcomb's house had been across
the alley from that of Mr. Jennings, but no one knew that anything was
"going on," though there had been signals from the windows--the
neighbours afterwards remembered....

I listened shudderingly.

"But," I cried, "they were both married!"

"What difference does that make when you love a woman?" Alec replied
grandly. "I could tell you much worse things than that."

This he proceeded to do. Fascinated, I listened with a sickening
sensation. It was a mild afternoon in spring, and we stood in the deep
limestone gutter in front of the parsonage, a little Gothic wooden house
set in a gloomy yard.

"I thought," said I, "that people couldn't love any more after they were
married, except each other."

Alec looked at me pityingly.

"You'll get over that notion," he assured me.

Thus another ingredient entered my character. Denied its food at home,
good food, my soul eagerly consumed and made part of itself the
fermenting stuff that Alec Pound so willing distributed. And it was
fermenting stuff. Let us see what it did to me. Working slowly but
surely, it changed for me the dawning mystery of sex into an evil instead
of a holy one. The knowledge of the tragedy of Grace Hollister started me
to seeking restlessly, on bookshelves and elsewhere, for a secret that
forever eluded me, and forever led me on. The word fermenting aptly
describes the process begun, suggesting as it does something closed up,
away from air and sunlight, continually working in secret, engendering
forces that fascinated, yet inspired me with fear. Undoubtedly this
secretiveness of our elders was due to the pernicious dualism of their
orthodox Christianity, in which love was carnal and therefore evil, and
the flesh not the gracious soil of the spirit, but something to be
deplored and condemned, exorcised and transformed by the miracle of
grace. Now love had become a terrible power (gripping me) whose
enchantment drove men and women from home and friends and kindred to the
uttermost parts of the earth....

It was long before I got to sleep that night after my talk with Alec
Pound. I alternated between the horror and the romance of the story I had
heard, supplying for myself the details he had omitted: I beheld the
signals from the windows, the clandestine meetings, the sudden and
desperate flight. And to think that all this could have happened in our
city not five blocks from where I lay!

My consternation and horror were concentrated on the man,--and yet I
recall a curious bifurcation. Instead of experiencing that automatic
righteous indignation which my father and mother had felt, which had
animated old Mr. Jules Hollister when he had sternly forbidden his
daughter's name to be mentioned in his presence, which had made these
people outcasts, there welled up within me an intense sympathy and pity.
By an instinctive process somehow linked with other experiences, I seemed
to be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts, to
understand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that had led
them to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which I myself
was at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by mankind. Was
there something within me that might eventually draw me to do likewise?
The desire in me to which my father had referred, which would brook no
opposition, which twisted and squirmed until it found its way to its
object? I recalled the words of Jarvis, the carpenter, that if I ever set
my heart on another man's wife, God help him. God help me!

A wicked man! I had never beheld the handsome and fascinating Mr.
Jennings, but I visualised him now; dark, like all villains, with a black
moustache and snapping black eyes. He carried a cane. I always associated
canes with villains. Whereupon I arose, groped for the matches, lighted
the gas, and gazing at myself in the mirror was a little reassured to
find nothing sinister in my countenance....

Next to my father's faith in a Moral Governor of the Universe was his
belief in the Tariff and the Republican Party. And this belief, among
others, he handed on to me. On the cinder playground of the Academy we
Republicans used to wage, during campaigns, pitched battles for the
Tariff. It did not take a great deal of courage to be a Republican in our
city, and I was brought up to believe that Democrats were irrational,
inferior, and--with certain exceptions like the Hollisters--dirty beings.
There was only one degree lower, and that was to be a mugwump. It was no
wonder that the Hollisters were Democrats, for they had a queer streak in
them; owing, no doubt, to the fact that old Mr. Jules Hollister's mother
had been a Frenchwoman. He looked like a Frenchman, by the way, and
always wore a skullcap.

I remember one autumn afternoon having a violent quarrel with Gene
Hollister that bade fair to end in blows, when he suddenly
demanded:--"I'll bet you anything you don't know why you're a
Republican."

"It's because I'm for the Tariff," I replied triumphantly.

But his next question floored me. What, for example, was the Tariff? I
tried to bluster it out, but with no success.

"Do you know?" I cried finally, with sudden inspiration.

It turned out that he did not.

"Aren't we darned idiots," he asked, "to get fighting over something we
don't know anything about?"

That was Gene's French blood, of course. But his question rankled. And
how was I to know that he would have got as little satisfaction if he had
hurled it into the marching ranks of those imposing torch-light
processions which sometimes passed our house at night, with drums beating
and fifes screaming and torches waving,--thousands of citizens who were
for the Tariff for the same reason as I: to wit, because they were
Republicans.

Yet my father lived and died in the firm belief that the United States of
America was a democracy!

Resolved not to be caught a second time in such a humiliating position by
a Democrat, I asked my father that night what the Tariff was. But I was
too young to understand it, he said. I was to take his word for it that
the country would go to the dogs if the Democrats got in and the Tariff
were taken away. Here, in a nutshell, though neither he nor I realized
it, was the political instruction of the marching hordes. Theirs not to
reason why. I was too young, they too ignorant. Such is the method of
Authority!

The steel-mills of Mr. Durrett and Mr. Hambleton, he continued, would be
forced to shut down, and thousands of workmen would starve. This was just
a sample of what would happen. Prosperity would cease, he declared. That
word, Prosperity, made a deep impression on me, and I recall the certain
reverential emphasis he laid on it. And while my solicitude for the
workmen was not so great as his and Mr. Durrett's, I was concerned as to
what would happen to us if those twin gods, the Tariff and Prosperity,
should take their departure from the land. Knowing my love for the good
things of the table, my father intimated, with a rare humour I failed to
appreciate, that we should have to live henceforth in spartan simplicity.
After that, like the intelligent workman, I was firmer than ever for the
Tariff.

Such was the idealistic plane on which--and from a good man--I received
my first political instruction! And for a long time I connected the
dominance of the Republican Party with the continuation of manna and
quails, in other words, with nothing that had to do with the spiritual
welfare of any citizen, but with clothing and food and material comforts.
My education was progressing....

Though my father revered Plato and Aristotle, he did not, apparently,
take very seriously the contention that that government alone is good
"which seeks to attain the permanent interests of the governed by
evolving the character of its citizens." To put the matter brutally,
politics, despite the lofty sentiments on the transparencies in
torchlight processions, had only to do with the belly, not the soul.

Politics and government, one perceives, had nothing to do with religion,
nor education with any of these. A secularized and disjointed world! Our
leading citizens, learned in the classics though some of them might be,
paid no heed to the dictum of the Greek idealist, who was more practical
than they would have supposed. "The man who does not carry his city
within his heart is a spiritual starveling."

One evening, a year or two after that tariff campaign, I was pretending
to study my lessons under the student lamp in the sitting-room while my
mother sewed and my father wrote at his desk, when there was a ring at
the door-bell. I welcomed any interruption, even though the visitor
proved to be only the druggist's boy; and there was always the
possibility of a telegram announcing, for instance, the death of a
relative. Such had once been the case when my Uncle Avery Paret had died
in New York, and I was taken out of school for a blissful four days for
the funeral.

I went tiptoeing into the hall and peeped over the banisters while Ella
opened the door. I heard a voice which I recognized as that of Perry
Blackwood's father asking for Mr. Paret; and then to my astonishment, I
saw filing after him into the parlour some ten or twelve persons. With
the exception of Mr. Ogilvy, who belonged to one of our old families, and
Mr. Watling, a lawyer who had married the youngest of Gene Hollister's
aunts, the visitors entered stealthily, after the manner of burglars;
some of these were heavy-jowled, and all had an air of mystery that
raised my curiosity and excitement to the highest pitch. I caught hold of
Ella as she came up the stairs, but she tore herself free, and announced
to my father that Mr. Josiah Blackwood and other gentlemen had asked to
see him. My father seemed puzzled as he went downstairs.... A long
interval elapsed, during which I did not make even a pretence of looking
at my arithmetic. At times the low hum of voices rose to what was almost
an uproar, and on occasions I distinguished a marked Irish brogue.

"I wonder what they want?" said my mother, nervously.

At last we heard the front door shut behind them, and my father came
upstairs, his usually serene face wearing a disturbed expression.

"Who in the world was it, Mr. Paret?" asked my mother.

My father sat down in the arm-chair. He was clearly making an effort for
self-control.

"Blackwood and Ogilvy and Watling and some city politicians," he
exclaimed.

"Politicians!" she repeated. "What did they want? That is, if it's
anything you can tell me," she added apologetically.

"They wished me to be the Republican candidate for the mayor of this
city."

This tremendous news took me off my feet. My father mayor!

"Of course you didn't consider it, Mr. Paret," my mother was saying.

"Consider it!" he echoed reprovingly. "I can't imagine what Ogilvy and
Watling and Josiah Blackwood were thinking of! They are out of their
heads. I as much as told them so."

This was more than I could bear, for I had already pictured myself
telling the news to envious schoolmates.

"Oh, father, why didn't you take it?" I cried.

By this time, when he turned to me, he had regained his usual expression.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Hugh," he said. "Accept a
political office! That sort of thing is left to politicians."

The tone in which he spoke warned me that a continuation of the
conversation would be unwise, and my mother also understood that the
discussion was closed. He went back to his desk, and began writing again
as though nothing had happened.

As for me, I was left in a palpitating state of excitement which my
father's self-control or sang-froid only served to irritate and enhance,
and my head was fairly spinning as, covertly, I watched his pen steadily
covering the paper.

How could he--how could any man of flesh and blood sit down calmly after
having been offered the highest honour in the gift of his community! And
he had spurned it as if Mr. Blackwood and the others had gratuitously
insulted him! And how was it, if my father so revered the Republican
Party that he would not suffer it to be mentioned slightingly in his
presence, that he had refused contemptuously to be its mayor?...

The next day at school, however, I managed to let it be known that the
offer had been made and declined. After all, this seemed to make my
father a bigger man than if he had accepted it. Naturally I was asked why
he had declined it.

"He wouldn't take it," I replied scornfully. "Office-holding should be
left to politicians."

Ralph Hambleton, with his precocious and cynical knowledge of the world,
minimized my triumph by declaring that he would rather be his
grandfather, Nathaniel Durrett, than the mayor of the biggest city in the
country. Politicians, he said, were bloodsuckers and thieves, and the
only reason for holding office was that it enabled one to steal the
taxpayers' money....

As I have intimated, my vision of a future literary career waxed and
waned, but a belief that I was going to be Somebody rarely deserted me.
If not a literary lion, what was that Somebody to be? Such an environment
as mine was woefully lacking in heroic figures to satisfy the romantic
soul. In view of the experience I have just related, it is not surprising
that the notion of becoming a statesman did not appeal to me; nor is it
to be wondered at, despite the somewhat exaggerated respect and awe in
which Ralph's grandfather was held by my father and other influential
persons, that I failed to be stirred by the elements of greatness in the
grim personality of our first citizen, the iron-master. For he possessed
such elements. He lived alone in Ingrain Street in an uncompromising
mansion I always associated with the Sabbath, not only because I used to
be taken there on decorous Sunday visits by my father, but because it was
the very quintessence of Presbyterianism. The moment I entered its
"portals"--as Mr. Hawthorne appropriately would have called them--my
spirit was overwhelmed and suffocated by its formality and orderliness.
Within its stern walls Nathaniel Durrett had made a model universe of his
own, such as the Deity of the Westminster Confession had no doubt meant
his greater one to be if man had not rebelled and foiled him.... It was a
world from which I was determined to escape at any cost.

My father and I were always ushered into the gloomy library, with its
high ceiling, with its long windows that reached almost to the rococo
cornice, with its cold marble mantelpiece that reminded me of a
tombstone, with its interminable book shelves filled with yellow
bindings. On the centre table, in addition to a ponderous Bible, was one
of those old-fashioned carafes of red glass tipped with blue surmounted
by a tumbler of blue tipped with red. Behind this table Mr. Durrett sat
reading a volume of sermons, a really handsome old man in his black tie
and pleated shirt; tall and spare, straight as a ramrod, with a finely
moulded head and straight nose and sinewy hands the colour of mulberry
stain. He called my father by his first name, an immense compliment,
considering how few dared to do so.

"Well, Matthew," the old man would remark, after they had discussed Dr.
Pound's latest flight on the nature of the Trinity or the depravity of
man, or horticulture, or the Republican Party, "do you have any better
news of Hugh at school?"

"I regret to say, Mr. Durrett," my father would reply, "that he does not
yet seem to be aroused to a sense of his opportunities."

Whereupon Mr. Durrett would gimble me with a blue eye that lurked beneath
grizzled brows, quite as painful a proceeding as if he used an iron tool.
I almost pity myself when I think of what a forlorn stranger I was in
their company. They two, indeed, were of one kind, and I of another sort
who could never understand them,--nor they me. To what depths of despair
they reduced me they never knew, and yet they were doing it all for my
good! They only managed to convince me that my love of folly was
ineradicable, and that I was on my way head first for perdition. I always
looked, during these excruciating and personal moments, at the coloured
glass bottle.

"It grieves me to hear it, Hugh," Mr. Durrett invariably declared.
"You'll never come to any good without study. Now when I was your age..."

I knew his history by heart, a common one in this country, although he
made an honourable name instead of a dishonourable one. And when I
contrast him with those of his successors whom I was to know later...!
But I shall not anticipate. American genius had not then evolved the
false entry method of overcapitalization. A thrilling history, Mr.
Durrett's, could I but have entered into it. I did not reflect then that
this stern old man must have throbbed once; nay, fire and energy still
remained in his bowels, else he could not have continued to dominate a
city. Nor did it occur to me that the great steel-works that lighted the
southern sky were the result of a passion, of dreams similar to those
possessing me, but which I could not express. He had founded a family
whose position was virtually hereditary, gained riches which for those
days were great, compelled men to speak his name with a certain awe. But
of what use were such riches as his when his religion and morality
compelled him to banish from him all the joys in the power of riches to
bring?

No, I didn't want to be an iron-master. But it may have been about this
time that I began to be impressed with the power of wealth, the adulation
and reverence it commanded, the importance in which it clothed all who
shared in it....

The private school I attended in the company of other boys with whom I
was brought up was called Densmore Academy, a large, square building of a
then hideous modernity, built of smooth, orange-red bricks with threads
of black mortar between them. One reads of happy school days, yet I fail
to recall any really happy hours spent there, even in the yard, which was
covered with black cinders that cut you when you fell. I think of it as a
penitentiary, and the memory of the barred lower windows gives substance
to this impression.

I suppose I learned something during the seven years of my incarceration.
All of value, had its teachers known anything of youthful psychology, of
natural bent, could have been put into me in three. At least four
criminally wasted years, to say nothing of the benumbing and desiccating
effect of that old system of education! Chalk and chalk-dust! The
Mediterranean a tinted portion of the map, Italy a man's boot which I
drew painfully, with many yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as it
unrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous
distillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and
counter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be
learned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th General
So-and-so proceeded with his whole army--" where? What does it matter?
One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding,
were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil!
"Paret" (a shiver), "begin at the one hundred and thirtieth line and
translate!" I can hear myself droning out in detestable English a
meaningless portion of that endless journey of the pious AEneas; can see
Gene Hollister, with heart-rending glances of despair, stumbling through
Cornelius Nepos in an unventilated room with chalk-rubbed blackboards and
heavy odours of ink and stale lunch. And I graduated from Densmore
Academy, the best school in our city, in the 80's, without having been
taught even the rudiments of citizenship.

Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse, which bit by bit we painfully
dissected. We never glimpsed the living, growing thing, never experienced
the Spirit, the same spirit that was able magically to waft me from a
wintry Lyme Street to the South Seas, the energizing, electrifying Spirit
of true achievement, of life, of God himself. Little by little its flames
were smothered until in manhood there seemed no spark of it left alive.
Many years were to pass ere it was to revive again, as by a miracle. I
travelled. Awakening at dawn, I saw, framed in a port-hole, rose-red
Seriphos set in a living blue that paled the sapphire; the seas Ulysses
had sailed, and the company of the Argonauts. My soul was steeped in
unimagined colour, and in the memory of one rapturous instant is gathered
what I was soon to see of Greece, is focussed the meaning of history,
poetry and art. I was to stand one evening in spring on the mound where
heroes sleep and gaze upon the plain of Marathon between darkening
mountains and the blue thread of the strait peaceful now, flushed with
pink and white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on the
cliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis fought
and lost.... In that port-hole glimpse a Themistocles was revealed, a
Socrates, a Homer and a Phidias, an AEschylus, and a Pericles; yes, and a
John brooding Revelations on his sea-girt rock as twilight falls over the
waters....

I saw the Roman Empire, that Scarlet Woman whose sands were dyed crimson
with blood to appease her harlotry, whose ships were laden with treasures
from the immutable East, grain from the valley of the Nile, spices from
Arabia, precious purple stuffs from Tyre, tribute and spoil, slaves and
jewels from conquered nations she absorbed; and yet whose very emperors
were the unconscious instruments of a Progress they wot not of, preserved
to the West by Marathon and Salamis. With Caesar's legions its message
went forth across Hispania to the cliffs of the wild western ocean,
through Hercynian forests to tribes that dwelt where great rivers roll up
their bars by misty, northern seas, and even to Celtic fastnesses beyond
the Wall....




IV.

In and out of my early memories like a dancing ray of sunlight flits the
spirit of Nancy. I was always fond of her, but in extreme youth I
accepted her incense with masculine complacency and took her allegiance
for granted, never seeking to fathom the nature of the spell I exercised
over her. Naturally other children teased me about her; but what was
worse, with that charming lack of self-consciousness and consideration
for what in after life are called the finer feelings, they teased her
about me before me, my presence deterring them not at all. I can see them
hopping around her in the Peters yard crying out:--"Nancy's in love with
Hugh! Nancy's in love with Hugh!"

A sufficiently thrilling pastime, this, for Nancy could take care of
herself. I was a bungler beside her when it came to retaliation, and not
the least of her attractions for me was her capacity for anger: fury
would be a better term. She would fly at them--even as she flew at the
head-hunters when the Petrel was menaced; and she could run like a deer.
Woe to the unfortunate victim she overtook! Masculine strength, exercised
apologetically, availed but little, and I have seen Russell Peters and
Gene Hollister retire from such encounters humiliated and weeping. She
never caught Ralph; his methods of torture were more intelligent and
subtle than Gene's and Russell's, but she was his equal when it came to a
question of tongues.

"I know what's the matter with you, Ralph Hambleton," she would say.
"You're jealous." An accusation that invariably put him on the defensive.
"You think all the girls are in love with you, don't you?"

These scenes I found somewhat embarrassing. Not so Nancy. After
discomfiting her tormenters, or wounding and scattering them, she would
return to my side.... In spite of her frankly expressed preference for me
she had an elusiveness that made a continual appeal to my imagination.
She was never obvious or commonplace, and long before I began to
experience the discomforts and sufferings of youthful love I was
fascinated by a nature eloquent with contradictions and inconsistencies.
She was a tomboy, yet her own sex was enhanced rather than overwhelmed by
contact with the other: and no matter how many trees she climbed she
never seemed to lose her daintiness. It was innate.

She could, at times, be surprisingly demure. These impressions of her
daintiness and demureness are particularly vivid in a picture my memory
has retained of our walking together, unattended, to Susan Blackwood's
birthday party. She must have been about twelve years old. It was the
first time I had escorted her or any other girl to a party; Mrs. Willett
had smiled over the proceeding, but Nancy and I took it most seriously,
as symbolic of things to come. I can see Powell Street, where Nancy
lived, at four o'clock on a mild and cloudy December afternoon, the
decorous, retiring houses, Nancy on one side of the pavement by the iron
fences and I on the other by the tree boxes. I can't remember her dress,
only the exquisite sense of her slimness and daintiness comes back to me,
of her dark hair in a long braid tied with a red ribbon, of her slender
legs clad in black stockings of shining silk. We felt the occasion to be
somehow too significant, too eloquent for words....

In silence we climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the
Blackwood mansion, when suddenly the door was opened, letting out sounds
of music and revelry. Mr. Blackwood's coloured butler, Ned, beamed at us
hospitably, inviting us to enter the brightness within. The shades were
drawn, the carpets were covered with festal canvas, the folding doors
between the square rooms were flung back, the prisms of the big
chandeliers flung their light over animated groups of matrons and
children. Mrs. Watling, the mother of the Watling twins--too young to be
present was directing with vivacity the game of "King William was King
James's son," and Mrs. McAlery was playing the piano.

       "Now choose you East, now choose you West,
        Now choose the one you love the best!"

Tom Peters, in a velvet suit and consequently very miserable, refused to
embrace Ethel Hollister; while the scornful Julia lurked in a corner:
nothing would induce her to enter such a foolish game. I experienced a
novel discomfiture when Ralph kissed Nancy.... Afterwards came the feast,
from which Ham Durrett, in a pink paper cap with streamers, was at length
forcibly removed by his mother. Thus early did he betray his love for the
flesh pots....

It was not until I was sixteen that a player came and touched the keys of
my soul, and it awoke, bewildered, at these first tender notes. The music
quickened, tripping in ecstasy, to change by subtle phrases into themes
of exquisite suffering hitherto unexperienced. I knew that I loved Nancy.

With the advent of longer dresses that reached to her shoe tops a change
had come over her. The tomboy, the willing camp-follower who loved me and
was unashamed, were gone forever, and a mysterious, transfigured being,
neither girl nor woman, had magically been evolved. Could it be possible
that she loved me still? My complacency had vanished; suddenly I had
become the aggressor, if only I had known how to "aggress"; but in her
presence I was seized by an accursed shyness that paralyzed my tongue,
and the things I had planned to say were left unuttered. It was
something--though I did not realize it--to be able to feel like that.

The time came when I could no longer keep this thing to myself. The need
of an outlet, of a confidant, became imperative, and I sought out Tom
Peters. It was in February; I remember because I had ventured--with
incredible daring--to send Nancy an elaborate, rosy Valentine; written on
the back of it in a handwriting all too thinly disguised was the
following verse, the triumphant result of much hard thinking in school
hours:--

          Should you of this the sender guess
          Without another sign,
          Would you repent, and rest content
          To be his Valentine

I grew hot and cold by turns when I thought of its possible effects on my
chances.

One of those useless, slushy afternoons, I took Tom for a walk that led
us, as dusk came on, past Nancy's house. Only by painful degrees did I
succeed in overcoming my bashfulness; but Tom, when at last I had blurted
out the secret, was most sympathetic, although the ailment from which I
suffered was as yet outside of the realm of his experience. I have used
the word "ailment" advisedly, since he evidently put my trouble in the
same category with diphtheria or scarlet fever, remarking that it was
"darned hard luck." In vain I sought to explain that I did not regard it
as such in the least; there was suffering, I admitted, but a degree of
bliss none could comprehend who had not felt it. He refused to be
envious, or at least to betray envy; yet he was curious, asking many
questions, and I had reason to think before we parted that his admiration
for me was increased. Was it possible that he, too, didn't love Nancy?
No, it was funny, but he didn't. He failed to see much in girls: his tone
remained commiserating, yet he began to take an interest in the progress
of my suit.

For a time I had no progress to report. Out of consideration for those
members of our weekly dancing class whose parents were Episcopalians the
meetings were discontinued during Lent, and to call would have demanded a
courage not in me; I should have become an object of ridicule among my
friends and I would have died rather than face Nancy's mother and the
members of her household. I set about making ingenious plans with a view
to encounters that might appear casual. Nancy's school was dismissed at
two, so was mine. By walking fast I could reach Salisbury Street, near
St. Mary's Seminary for Young Ladies, in time to catch her, but even then
for many days I was doomed to disappointment. She was either in company
with other girls, or else she had taken another route; this I surmised
led past Sophy McAlery's house, and I enlisted Tom as a confederate. He
was to make straight for the McAlery's on Elm while I followed Powell,
two short blocks away, and if Nancy went to Sophy's and left there alone
he was to announce the fact by a preconcerted signal. Through long and
persistent practice he had acquired a whistle shrill enough to wake the
dead, accomplished by placing a finger of each hand between his teeth;--a
gift that was the envy of his acquaintances, and the subject of much
discussion as to whether his teeth were peculiar. Tom insisted that they
were; it was an added distinction.

On this occasion he came up behind Nancy as she was leaving Sophy's gate
and immediately sounded the alarm. She leaped in the air, dropped her
school-books and whirled on him.

"Tom Peters! How dare you frighten me so!" she cried.

Tom regarded her in sudden dismay.

"I--I didn't mean to," he said. "I didn't think you were so near."

"But you must have seen me."

"I wasn't paying much attention," he equivocated,--a remark not
calculated to appease her anger.

"Why were you doing it?"

"I was just practising," said Tom.

"Practising!" exclaimed Nancy, scornfully. "I shouldn't think you needed
to practise that any more."

"Oh, I've done it louder," he declared, "Listen!"

She seized his hands, snatching them away from his lips. At this critical
moment I appeared around the corner considerably out of breath, my heart
beating like a watchman's rattle. I tried to feign nonchalance.

"Hello, Tom," I said. "Hello, Nancy. What's the matter?"

"It's Tom--he frightened me out of my senses." Dropping his wrists, she
gave me a most disconcerting look; there was in it the suspicion of a
smile. "What are you doing here, Hugh?"

"I heard Tom," I explained.

"I should think you might have. Where were you?"

"Over in another street," I answered, with deliberate vagueness. Nancy
had suddenly become demure. I did not dare look at her, but I had a most
uncomfortable notion that she suspected the plot. Meanwhile we had begun
to walk along, all three of us, Tom, obviously ill at ease and
discomfited, lagging a little behind. Just before we reached the corner I
managed to kick him. His departure was by no means graceful.

"I've got to go;" he announced abruptly, and turned down the side street.
We watched his sturdy figure as it receded.

"Well, of all queer boys!" said Nancy, and we walked on again.

"He's my best friend," I replied warmly.

"He doesn't seem to care much for your company," said Nancy.

"Oh, they have dinner at half past two," I explained.

"Aren't you afraid of missing yours, Hugh?" she asked wickedly.

"I've got time. I'd--I'd rather be with you." After making which
audacious remark I was seized by a spasm of apprehension. But nothing
happened. Nancy remained demure. She didn't remind me that I had
reflected upon Tom.

"That's nice of you, Hugh."

"Oh, I'm not saying it because it's nice," I faltered. "I'd rather be
with you than--with anybody."

This was indeed the acme of daring. I couldn't believe I had actually
said it. But again I received no rebuke; instead came a remark that set
me palpitating, that I treasured for many weeks to come.

"I got a very nice valentine," she informed me.

"What was it like?" I asked thickly.

"Oh, beautiful! All pink lace and--and Cupids, and the picture of a young
man and a young woman in a garden."

"Was that all?"

"Oh, no, there was a verse, in the oddest handwriting. I wonder who sent
it?"

"Perhaps Ralph," I hazarded ecstatically.

"Ralph couldn't write poetry," she replied disdainfully. "Besides, it was
very good poetry."

I suggested other possible authors and admirers. She rejected them all.
We reached her gate, and I lingered. As she looked down at me from the
stone steps her eyes shone with a soft light that filled me with
radiance, and into her voice had come a questioning, shy note that
thrilled the more because it revealed a new Nancy of whom I had not
dreamed.

"Perhaps I'll meet you again--coming from school," I said.

"Perhaps," she answered. "You'll be late to dinner, Hugh, if you don't
go...."

I was late, and unable to eat much dinner, somewhat to my mother's alarm.
Love had taken away my appetite.... After dinner, when I was wandering
aimlessly about the yard, Tom appeared on the other side of the fence.

"Don't ever ask me to do that again," he said gloomily.

I did meet Nancy again coming from school, not every day, but nearly
every day. At first we pretended that there was no arrangement in this,
and we both feigned surprise when we encountered one another. It was
Nancy who possessed the courage that I lacked. One afternoon she
said:--"I think I'd better walk with the girls to-morrow, Hugh."

I protested, but she was firm. And after that it was an understood thing
that on certain days I should go directly home, feeling like an exile.
Sophy McAlery had begun to complain: and I gathered that Sophy was
Nancy's confidante. The other girls had begun to gossip. It was Nancy who
conceived the brilliant idea--the more delightful because she said
nothing about it to me--of making use of Sophy. She would leave school
with Sophy, and I waited on the corner near the McAlery house. Poor
Sophy! She was always of those who piped while others danced. In those
days she had two straw-coloured pigtails, and her plain, faithful face is
before me as I write. She never betrayed to me the excitement that filled
her at being the accomplice of our romance.

Gossip raged, of course. Far from being disturbed, we used it, so to
speak, as a handle for our love-making, which was carried on in an
inferential rather than a direct fashion. Were they saying that we were
lovers? Delightful! We laughed at one another in the sunshine.... At last
we achieved the great adventure of a clandestine meeting and went for a
walk in the afternoon, avoiding the houses of our friends. I've forgotten
which of us had the boldness to propose it. The crocuses and tulips had
broken the black mould, the flower beds in the front yards were beginning
to blaze with scarlet and yellow, the lawns had turned a living green.
What did we talk about? The substance has vanished, only the flavour
remains.

One awoke of a morning to the twittering of birds, to walk to school
amidst delicate, lace-like shadows of great trees acloud with old gold:
the buds lay curled like tiny feathers on the pavements. Suddenly the
shade was dense, the sunlight white and glaring, the odour of lilacs
heavy in the air, spring in all its fulness had come,--spring and Nancy.
Just so subtly, yet with the same seeming suddenness had budded and come
to leaf and flower a perfect understanding, which nevertheless remained
undefined. This, I had no doubt, was my fault, and due to the
incomprehensible shyness her presence continued to inspire. Although we
did not altogether abandon our secret trysts, we began to meet in more
natural ways; there were garden parties and picnics where we strayed
together through the woods and fields, pausing to tear off, one by one,
the petals of a daisy, "She loves me, she loves me not." I never ventured
to kiss her; I always thought afterwards I might have done so, she had
seemed so willing, her eyes had shone so expectantly as I sat beside her
on the grass; nor can I tell why I desired to kiss her save that this was
the traditional thing to do to the lady one loved. To be sure, the very
touch of her hand was galvanic. Paradoxically, I saw the human side of
her, the yielding gentleness that always amazed me, yet I never overcame
my awe of the divine; she was a being sacrosanct. Whether this idealism
were innate or the result of such romances as I had read I cannot say....
I got, indeed, an avowal of a sort. The weekly dancing classes having
begun again, on one occasion when she had waltzed twice with Gene
Hollister I protested.

"Don't be silly, Hugh," she whispered. "Of course I like you better than
anyone else--you ought to know that."

We never got to the word "love," but we knew the feeling.

One cloud alone flung its shadow across these idyllic days. Before I was
fully aware of it I had drawn very near to the first great junction-point
of my life, my graduation from Densmore Academy. We were to "change
cars," in the language of Principal Haime. Well enough for the fortunate
ones who were to continue the academic journey, which implied a
postponement of the serious business of life; but month after month of
the last term had passed without a hint from my father that I was to
change cars. Again and again I almost succeeded in screwing up my courage
to the point of mentioning college to him,--never quite; his manner,
though kind and calm, somehow strengthened my suspicion that I had been
judged and found wanting, and doomed to "business": galley slavery, I
deemed it, humdrum, prosaic, degrading! When I thought of it at night I
experienced almost a frenzy of self-pity. My father couldn't intend to do
that, just because my monthly reports hadn't always been what he thought
they ought to be! Gene Hollister's were no better, if as good, and he was
going to Princeton. Was I, Hugh Paret, to be denied the distinction of
being a college man, the delights of university existence, cruelly
separated and set apart from my friends whom I loved! held up to the
world and especially to Nancy Willett as good for nothing else! The
thought was unbearable. Characteristically, I hoped against hope.

I have mentioned garden parties. One of our annual institutions was Mrs.
Willett's children's party in May; for the Willett house had a garden
that covered almost a quarter of a block. Mrs. Willett loved children,
the greatest regret of her life being that providence had denied her a
large family. As far back as my memory goes she had been something of an
invalid; she had a sweet, sad face, and delicate hands so thin as to seem
almost transparent; and she always sat in a chair under the great tree on
the lawn, smiling at us as we soared to dizzy heights in the swing, or
played croquet, or scurried through the paths, and in and out of the
latticed summer-house with shrieks of laughter and terror. It all ended
with a feast at a long table made of sawhorses and boards covered with a
white cloth, and when the cake was cut there was wild excitement as to
who would get the ring and who the thimble.

We were more decorous, or rather more awkward now, and the party began
with a formal period when the boys gathered in a group and pretended
indifference to the girls. The girls were cleverer at it, and actually
achieved the impression that they were indifferent. We kept an eye on
them, uneasily, while we talked. To be in Nancy's presence and not alone
with Nancy was agonizing, and I wondered at a sang-froid beyond my power
to achieve, accused her of coldness, my sufferings being the greater
because she seemed more beautiful, daintier, more irreproachable than I
had ever seen her. Even at that early age she gave evidence of the social
gift, and it was due to her efforts that we forgot our best clothes and
our newly born self-consciousness. When I begged her to slip away with me
among the currant bushes she whispered:--"I can't, Hugh. I'm the hostess,
you know."

I had gone there in a flutter of anticipation, but nothing went right
that day. There was dancing in the big rooms that looked out on the
garden; the only girl with whom I cared to dance was Nancy, and she was
busy finding partners for the backward members of both sexes; though she
was my partner, to be sure, when it all wound up with a Virginia reel on
the lawn. Then, at supper, to cap the climax of untoward incidents, an
animated discussion was begun as to the relative merits of the various
colleges, the girls, too, taking sides. Mac Willett, Nancy's cousin, was
going to Yale, Gene Hollister to Princeton, the Ewan boys to our State
University, while Perry Blackwood and Ralph Hambleton and Ham Durrett
were destined for Harvard; Tom Peters, also, though he was not to
graduate from the Academy for another year. I might have known that Ralph
would have suspected my misery. He sat triumphantly next to Nancy
herself, while I had been told off to entertain the faithful Sophy.
Noticing my silence, he demanded wickedly:--"Where are you going, Hugh?"

"Harvard, I think," I answered with as bold a front as I could muster. "I
haven't talked it over with my father yet." It was intolerable to admit
that I of them all was to be left behind.

Nancy looked at me in surprise. She was always downright.

"Oh, Hugh, doesn't your father mean to put you in business?" she
exclaimed.

A hot flush spread over my face. Even to her I had not betrayed my
apprehensions on this painful subject. Perhaps it was because of this
very reason, knowing me as she did, that she had divined my fate. Could
my father have spoken of it to anyone?

"Not that I know of," I said angrily. I wondered if she knew how deeply
she had hurt me. The others laughed. The colour rose in Nancy's cheeks,
and she gave me an appealing, almost tearful look, but my heart had
hardened. As soon as supper was over I left the table to wander, nursing
my wrongs, in a far corner of the garden, gay shouts and laughter still
echoing in my ears. I was negligible, even my pathetic subterfuge had
been detected and cruelly ridiculed by these friends whom I had always
loved and sought out, and who now were so absorbed in their own prospects
and happiness that they cared nothing for mine. And Nancy! I had been
betrayed by Nancy!... Twilight was coming on. I remember glancing down
miserably at the new blue suit I had put on so hopefully for the first
time that afternoon.

Separating the garden from the street was a high, smooth board fence with
a little gate in it, and I had my hand on the latch when I heard the
sound of hurrying steps on the gravel path and a familiar voice calling
my name.

"Hugh! Hugh!"

I turned. Nancy stood before me.

"Hugh, you're not going!"

"Yes, I am."

"Why?"

"If you don't know, there's no use telling you."

"Just because I said your father intended to put you in business! Oh,
Hugh, why are you so foolish and so proud? Do you suppose that
anyone--that I--think any the worse of you?"

Yes, she had read me, she alone had entered into the source of that
prevarication, the complex feelings from which it sprang. But at that
moment I could not forgive her for humiliating me. I hugged my grievance.

"It was true, what I said," I declared hotly. "My father has not spoken.
It is true that I'm going to college, because I'll make it true. I may
not go this year."

She stood staring in sheer surprise at sight of my sudden, quivering
passion. I think the very intensity of it frightened her. And then,
without more ado, I opened the gate and was gone....

That night, though I did not realize it, my journey into a Far Country
was begun.

The misery that followed this incident had one compensating factor.
Although too late to electrify Densmore and Principal Haime with my
scholarship, I was determined to go to college now, somehow, sometime. I
would show my father, these companions of mine, and above all Nancy
herself the stuff of which I was made, compel them sooner or later to
admit that they had misjudged me. I had been possessed by similar
resolutions before, though none so strong, and they had a way of sinking
below the surface of my consciousness, only to rise again and again until
by sheer pressure they achieved realization.

Yet I might have returned to Nancy if something had not occurred which I
would have thought unbelievable: she began to show a marked preference
for Ralph Hambleton. At first I regarded this affair as the most obvious
of retaliations. She, likewise, had pride. Gradually, however, a feeling
of uneasiness crept over me: as pretence, her performance was altogether
too realistic; she threw her whole soul into it, danced with Ralph as
often as she had ever danced with me, took walks with him, deferred to
his opinions until, in spite of myself, I became convinced that the
preference was genuine. I was a curious mixture of self-confidence and
self-depreciation, and never had his superiority seemed more patent than
now. His air of satisfaction was maddening.

How well I remember his triumph on that hot, June morning of our
graduation from Densmore, a triumph he had apparently achieved without
labour, and which he seemed to despise. A fitful breeze blew through the
chapel at the top of the building; we, the graduates, sat in two rows
next to the platform, and behind us the wooden benches nicked by many
knives--were filled with sisters and mothers and fathers, some anxious,
some proud and some sad. So brief a span, like that summer's day, and
youth was gone! Would the time come when we, too, should sit by the
waters of Babylon and sigh for it? The world was upside down.

We read the one hundred and third psalm. Then Principal Haime, in his
long "Prince Albert" and a ridiculously inadequate collar that emphasized
his scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we had formed,
of the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who were the
privileged of the city. "We had crossed to-day," he said, "an invisible
threshold. Some were to go on to higher institutions of learning.
Others..." I gulped. Quoting the Scriptures, he complimented those who
had made the most of their opportunities. And it was then that he called
out, impressively, the name of Ralph Forrester Hambleton. Summa cum
laude! Suddenly I was seized with passionate, vehement regrets at the
sound of the applause. I might have been the prize scholar, instead of
Ralph, if I had only worked, if I had only realized what this focussing
day of graduation meant! I might have been a marked individual, with
people murmuring words of admiration, of speculation concerning the
brilliancy of my future!... When at last my name was called and I rose to
receive my diploma it seemed as though my incompetency had been
proclaimed to the world...

That evening I stood in the narrow gallery of the flag-decked gymnasium
and watched Nancy dancing with Ralph.

I let her go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed to
have taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with
sadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hitherto
spontaneous, warm and living was withering within me.




V.

It was true to my father's character that he should have waited until the
day after graduation to discuss my future, if discussion be the proper
word. The next evening at supper he informed me that he wished to talk to
me in the sitting-room, whither I followed him with a sinking heart. He
seated himself at his desk, and sat for a moment gazing at me with a
curious and benumbing expression, and then the blow fell.

"Hugh, I have spoken to your Cousin Robert Breck about you, and he has
kindly consented to give you a trial."

"To give me a trial, sir!" I exclaimed.

"To employ you at a small but reasonable salary."

I could find no words to express my dismay. My dreams had come to this,
that I was to be made a clerk in a grocery store! The fact that it was a
wholesale grocery store was little consolation.

"But father," I faltered, "I don't want to go into business."

"Ah!" The sharpness of the exclamation might have betrayed to me the pain
in which he was, but he recovered himself instantly. And I could see
nothing but an inexorable justice closing in on me mechanically; a blind
justice, in its inability to read my soul. "The time to have decided
that," he declared, "was some years ago, my son. I have given you the
best schooling a boy can have, and you have not shown the least
appreciation of your advantages. I do not enjoy saying this, Hugh, but in
spite of all my efforts and of those of your mother, you have remained
undeveloped and irresponsible. My hope, as you know, was to have made you
a professional man, a lawyer, and to take you into my office. My father
and grandfather were professional men before me. But you are wholly
lacking in ambition."

And I had burned with it all my life!

"I have ambition," I cried, the tears forcing themselves to my eyes.

"Ambition--for what, my son?"

I hesitated. How could I tell him that my longings to do something, to be
somebody in the world were never more keen than at that moment? Matthew
Arnold had not then written his definition of God as the stream of
tendency by which we fulfil the laws of our being; and my father, at any
rate, would not have acquiesced in the definition. Dimly but passionately
I felt then, as I had always felt, that I had a mission to perform, a
service to do which ultimately would be revealed to me. But the
hopelessness of explaining this took on, now, the proportions of a
tragedy. And I could only gaze at him.

"What kind of ambition, Hugh?" he repeated sadly.

"I--I have sometimes thought I could write, sir, if I had a chance. I
like it better than anything else. I--I have tried it. And if I could
only go to college--"

"Literature!" There was in his voice a scandalized note.

"Why not, father?" I asked weakly.

And now it was he who, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss to
express himself. He turned in his chair, and with a sweep of the hand
indicated the long rows of musty-backed volumes. "Here," he said, "you
have had at your disposal as well-assorted a small library as the city
contains, and you have not availed yourself of it. Yet you talk to me of
literature as a profession. I am afraid, Hugh, that this is merely
another indication of your desire to shun hard work, and I must tell you
frankly that I fail to see in you the least qualification for such a
career. You have not even inherited my taste for books. I venture to say,
for instance, that you have never even read a paragraph of Plutarch, and
yet when I was your age I was completely familiar with the Lives. You
will not read Scott or Dickens."

The impeachment was not to be denied, for the classics were hateful to
me. Naturally I was afraid to make such a damning admission. My father
had succeeded in presenting my ambition as the height of absurdity and
presumption, and with something of the despair of a shipwrecked mariner
my eyes rested on the green expanses of those book-backs, Bohn's Standard
Library! Nor did it occur to him or to me that one might be great in
literature without having read so much as a gritty page of them....

He finished his argument by reminding me that worthless persons sought to
enter the arts in the search for a fool's paradise, and in order to
satisfy a reprehensible craving for notoriety. The implication was clear,
that imaginative production could not be classed as hard work. And he
assured me that literature was a profession in which no one could afford
to be second class. A Longfellow, a Harriet Beecher Stowe, or nothing.
This was a practical age and a practical country. We had indeed produced
Irvings and Hawthornes, but the future of American letters was, to say
the least, problematical. We were a utilitarian people who would never
create a great literature, and he reminded me that the days of the
romantic and the picturesque had passed. He gathered that I desired to be
a novelist. Well, novelists, with certain exceptions, were fantastic
fellows who blew iridescent soap-bubbles and who had no morals. In the
face of such a philosophy as his I was mute. The world appeared a dreary
place of musty offices and smoky steel-works, of coal dust, of labour
without a spark of inspiration. And that other, the world of my dreams,
simply did not exist.

Incidentally my father had condemned Cousin Robert's wholesale grocery
business as a refuge of the lesser of intellect that could not achieve
the professions,--an inference not calculated to stir my ambition and
liking for it at the start.

I began my business career on the following Monday morning. At breakfast,
held earlier than usual on my account, my mother's sympathy was the more
eloquent for being unspoken, while my father wore an air of unwonted
cheerfulness; charging me, when I departed, to give his kindest
remembrances to my Cousin Robert Breck. With a sense of martyrdom somehow
deepened by this attitude of my parents I boarded a horse-car and went
down town. Early though it was, the narrow streets of the wholesale
district reverberated with the rattle of trucks and echoed with the
shouts of drivers. The day promised to be scorching. At the door of the
warehouse of Breck and Company I was greeted by the ineffable smell of
groceries in which the suggestion of parched coffee prevailed. This is
the sharpest remembrance of all, and even to-day that odour affects me
somewhat in the manner that the interior of a ship affects a person prone
to seasickness. My Cousin Robert, in his well-worn alpaca coat, was
already seated at his desk behind the clouded glass partition next the
alley at the back of the store, and as I entered he gazed at me over his
steel-rimmed spectacles with that same disturbing look of clairvoyance I
have already mentioned as one of his characteristics. The grey eyes were
quizzical, and yet seemed to express a little commiseration.

"Well, Hugh, you've decided to honour us, have you?" he asked.

"I'm much obliged for giving me the place, Cousin Robert," I replied.

But he had no use for that sort of politeness, and he saw through me, as
always.

"So you're not too tony for the grocery business, eh?"

"Oh, no, sir."

"It was good enough for old Benjamin Breck," he said. "Well, I'll give
you a fair trial, my boy, and no favouritism on account of relationship,
any more than to Willie."

His strong voice resounded through the store, and presently my cousin
Willie appeared in answer to his summons, the same Willie who used to
lead me, on mischief bent, through the barns and woods and fields of
Claremore. He was barefoot no longer, though freckled still, grown lanky
and tall; he wore a coarse blue apron that fell below his knees, and a
pencil was stuck behind his ear.

"Get an apron for Hugh," said his father.

Willie's grin grew wider.

"I'll fit him out," he said.

"Start him in the shipping department," directed Cousin Robert, and
turned to his letters.

I was forthwith provided with an apron, and introduced to the slim and
anaemic but cheerful Johnny Hedges, the shipping clerk, hard at work in
the alley. Secretly I looked down on my fellow-clerks, as one destined
for a higher mission, made out of better stuff,--finer stuff. Despite my
attempt to hide this sense of superiority they were swift to discover it;
and perhaps it is to my credit as well as theirs that they did not resent
it. Curiously enough, they seemed to acknowledge it. Before the week was
out I had earned the nickname of Beau Brummel.

"Say, Beau," Johnny Hedges would ask, when I appeared of a morning, "what
happened in the great world last night?"

I had an affection for them, these fellow-clerks, and I often wondered at
their contentment with the drab lives they led, at their
self-congratulation for "having a job" at Breck and Company's.

"You don't mean to say you like this kind of work?" I exclaimed one day
to Johnny Hedges, as we sat on barrels of XXXX flour looking out at the
hot sunlight in the alley.

"It ain't a question of liking it, Beau," he rebuked me. "It's all very
well for you to talk, since your father's a millionaire" (a fiction so
firmly embedded in their heads that no amount of denial affected it),
"but what do you think would happen to me if I was fired? I couldn't go
home and take it easy--you bet not. I just want to shake hands with
myself when I think that I've got a home, and a job like this. I know a
feller--a hard worker he was, too who walked the pavements for three
months when the Colvers failed, and couldn't get nothing, and took to
drink, and the last I heard of him he was sleeping in police stations and
walking the ties, and his wife's a waitress at a cheap hotel. Don't you
think it's easy to get a job."

I was momentarily sobered by the earnestness with which he brought home
to me the relentlessness of our civilization. It seemed incredible. I
should have learned a lesson in that store. Barring a few discordant days
when the orders came in too fast or when we were short handed because of
sickness, it was a veritable hive of happiness; morning after morning
clerks and porters arrived, pale, yet smiling, and laboured with
cheerfulness from eight o'clock until six, and departed as cheerfully for
modest homes in obscure neighbourhoods that seemed to me areas of exile.
They were troubled with no visions of better things. When the travelling
men came in from the "road" there was great hilarity. Important
personages, these, looked up to by the city clerks; jolly, reckless,
Elizabethan-like rovers, who had tasted of the wine of liberty--and of
other wines with the ineradicable lust for the road in their blood. No
more routine for Jimmy Bowles, who was king of them all. I shudder to
think how much of my knowledge of life I owe to this Jimmy, whose stories
would have filled a quarto volume, but could on no account have been
published; for a self-respecting post-office would not have allowed them
to pass through the mails. As it was, Jimmy gave them circulation enough.
I can still see his round face, with the nose just indicated, his wicked,
twinkling little eyes, and I can hear his husky voice fall to a whisper
when "the boss" passed through the store. Jimmy, when visiting us, always
had a group around him. His audacity with women amazed me, for he never
passed one of the "lady clerks" without some form of caress, which they
resented but invariably laughed at. One day he imparted to me his code of
morality: he never made love to another man's wife, so he assured me, if
he knew the man! The secret of life he had discovered in laughter, and by
laughter he sold quantities of Cousin Robert's groceries.

Mr. Bowles boasted of a catholic acquaintance in all the cities of his
district, but before venturing forth to conquer these he had learned his
own city by heart. My Cousin Robert was not aware of the fact that Mr.
Bowles "showed" the town to certain customers. He even desired to show it
to me, but an epicurean strain in my nature held me back. Johnny Hedges
went with him occasionally, and Henry Schneider, the bill clerk, and I
listened eagerly to their experiences, afterwards confiding them to
Tom....

There were times when, driven by an overwhelming curiosity, I ventured
into certain strange streets, alone, shivering with cold and excitement,
gripped by a fascination I did not comprehend, my eyes now averted, now
irresistibly raised toward the white streaks of light that outlined the
windows of dark houses....

One winter evening as I was going home, I encountered at the mail-box a
young woman who shot at me a queer, twisted smile. I stood still, as
though stunned, looking after her, and when halfway across the slushy
street she turned and smiled again. Prodigiously excited, I followed her,
fearful that I might be seen by someone who knew me, nor was it until she
reached an unfamiliar street that I ventured to overtake her. She
confounded me by facing me.

"Get out!" she cried fiercely.

I halted in my tracks, overwhelmed with shame. But she continued to
regard me by the light of the street lamp.

"You didn't want to be seen with me on Second Street, did you? You're one
of those sneaking swells."

The shock of this sudden onslaught was tremendous. I stood frozen to the
spot, trembling, convicted, for I knew that her accusation was just; I
had wounded her, and I had a desire to make amends.

"I'm sorry," I faltered. "I didn't mean--to offend you. And you smiled--"
I got no farther. She began to laugh, and so loudly that I glanced
anxiously about. I would have fled, but something still held me,
something that belied the harshness of her laugh.

"You're just a kid," she told me. "Say, you get along home, and tell your
mamma I sent you."

Whereupon I departed in a state of humiliation and self-reproach I had
never before known, wandering about aimlessly for a long time. When at
length I arrived at home, late for supper, my mother's solicitude only
served to deepen my pain. She went to the kitchen herself to see if my
mince-pie were hot, and served me with her own hands. My father remained
at his place at the head of the table while I tried to eat, smiling
indulgently at her ministrations.

"Oh, a little hard work won't hurt him, Sarah," he said. "When I was his
age I often worked until eleven o'clock and never felt the worse for it.
Business must be pretty good, eh, Hugh?"

I had never seen him in a more relaxing mood, a more approving one. My
mother sat down beside me.... Words seem useless to express the
complicated nature of my suffering at that moment,--my remorse, my sense
of deception, of hypocrisy,--yes, and my terror. I tried to talk
naturally, to answer my father's questions about affairs at the store,
while all the time my eyes rested upon the objects of the room, familiar
since childhood. Here were warmth, love, and safety. Why could I not be
content with them, thankful for them? What was it in me that drove me
from these sheltering walls out into the dark places? I glanced at my
father. Had he ever known these wild, destroying desires? Oh, if I only
could have confided in him! The very idea of it was preposterous. Such
placidity as theirs would never understand the nature of my temptations,
and I pictured to myself their horror and despair at my revelation. In
imagination I beheld their figures receding while I drifted out to sea,
alone. Would the tide--which was somehow within me--carry me out and out,
in spite of all I could do?

     "Give me that man
     That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
     In my heart's core...."

I did not shirk my tasks at the store, although I never got over the
feeling that a fine instrument was being employed where a coarser one
would have done equally well. There were moments when I was almost
overcome by surges of self-commiseration and of impotent anger: for
instance, I was once driven out of a shop by an incensed German grocer
whom I had asked to settle a long-standing account. Yet the days passed,
the daily grind absorbed my energies, and when I was not collecting, or
tediously going over the stock in the dim recesses of the store, I was
running errands in the wholesale district, treading the burning brick of
the pavements, dodging heavy trucks and drays and perspiring clerks who
flew about with memorandum pads in their hands, or awaiting the pleasure
of bank tellers. Save Harvey, the venerable porter, I was the last to
leave the store in the evening, and I always came away with the taste on
my palate of Breck and Company's mail, it being my final duty to "lick"
the whole of it and deposit it in the box at the corner. The gum on the
envelopes tasted of winter-green.

My Cousin Robert was somewhat astonished at my application.

"We'll make a man of you yet, Hugh," he said to me once, when I had
performed a commission with unexpected despatch....

Business was his all-in-all, and he had an undisguised contempt for
higher education. To send a boy to college was, in his opinion, to run no
inconsiderable risk of ruining him. What did they amount to when they
came home, strutting like peacocks, full of fads and fancies, and much
too good to associate with decent, hard-working citizens? Nevertheless
when autumn came and my friends departed with eclat for the East, I was
desperate indeed! Even the contemplation of Robert Breck did not console
me, and yet here, in truth, was a life which might have served me as a
model. His store was his castle; and his reputation for integrity and
square dealing as wide as the city. Often I used to watch him with a
certain envy as he stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, and
greeted fellow-merchant and banker with his genuine and dignified
directness. This man was his own master. They all called him "Robert,"
and they made it clear by their manner that they knew they were
addressing one who fulfilled his obligations and asked no favours.

Crusty old Nathaniel Durrett once declared that when you bought a bill of
goods from Robert Breck you did not have to check up the invoice or
employ a chemist. Here was a character to mould upon. If my ambition
could but have been bounded by Breck and Company, I, too, might have come
to stand in that doorway content with a tribute that was greater than
Caesar's.

I had been dreading the Christmas holidays, which were indeed to be no
holidays for me. And when at length they arrived they brought with them
from the East certain heroes fashionably clad, citizens now of a larger
world than mine. These former companions had become superior beings, they
could not help showing it, and their presence destroyed the Balance of
Things. For alas, I had not wholly abjured the feminine sex after all!
And from being a somewhat important factor in the lives of Ruth Hollister
and other young women I suddenly became of no account. New interests, new
rivalries and loyalties had arisen in which I had no share; I must
perforce busy myself with invoices of flour and coffee and canned fruits
while sleigh rides and coasting and skating expeditions to Blackstone
Lake followed one another day after day,--for the irony of circumstances
had decreed a winter uncommonly cold. There were evening parties, too,
where I felt like an alien, though my friends were guilty of no conscious
neglect; and had I been able to accept the situation simply, I should not
have suffered.

The principal event of those holidays was a play given in the old
Hambleton house (which later became the Boyne Club), under the direction
of the lively and talented Mrs. Watling. I was invited, indeed, to
participate; but even if I had had the desire I could not have done so,
since the rehearsals were carried on in the daytime. Nancy was the
leading lady. I have neglected to mention that she too had been away
almost continuously since our misunderstanding, for the summer in the
mountains,--a sojourn recommended for her mother's health; and in the
autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at
Farmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously
acquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certain
frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane.
She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she
played. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcely
recognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above me, suggesting a
sphere of power and luxury hitherto unimagined and beyond the scope of
the world to which I belonged.

Her triumph was genuine. When the play was over she was immediately
surrounded by enthusiastic admirers eager to congratulate her, to dance
with her. I too would have gone forward, but a sense of inadequacy, of
unimportance, of an inability to cope with her, held me back, and from a
corner I watched her sweeping around the room, holding up her train, and
leaning on the arm of Bob Lansing, a classmate whom Ralph had brought
home from Harvard. Then it was Ralph's turn: that affair seemed still to
be going on. My feelings were a strange medley of despondency and
stimulation....

Our eyes met. Her partner now was Ham Durrett. Capriciously releasing
him, she stood before me,

"Hugh, you haven't asked me to dance, or even told me what you thought of
the play."

"I thought it was splendid," I said lamely.

Because she refrained from replying I was farther than ever from
understanding her. How was I to divine what she felt? or whether any
longer she felt at all? Here, in this costume of a woman of the world,
with the string of pearls at her neck to give her the final touch of
brilliancy, was a strange, new creature who baffled and silenced me....
We had not gone halfway across the room when she halted abruptly.

"I'm tired," she exclaimed. "I don't feel like dancing just now," and led
the way to the big, rose punch-bowl, one of the Durretts' most cherished
possessions. Glancing up at me over the glass of lemonade I had given her
she went on: "Why haven't you been to see me since I came home? I've
wanted to talk to you, to hear how you are getting along."

Was she trying to make amends, or reminding me in this subtle way of the
cause of our quarrel? What I was aware of as I looked at her was an
attitude, a vantage point apparently gained by contact with that
mysterious outer world which thus vicariously had laid its spell on me; I
was tremendously struck by the thought that to achieve this attitude
meant emancipation, invulnerability against the aches and pains which
otherwise our fellow-beings had the power to give us; mastery over
life,--the ability to choose calmly, as from a height, what were best for
one's self, untroubled by loves and hates. Untroubled by loves and hates!
At that very moment, paradoxically, I loved her madly, but with a love
not of the old quality, a love that demanded a vantage point of its own.
Even though she had made an advance--and some elusiveness in her manner
led me to doubt it I could not go to her now. I must go as a
conqueror,--a conqueror in the lists she herself had chosen, where the
prize is power.

"Oh, I'm getting along pretty well," I said. "At any rate, they don't
complain of me."

"Somehow," she ventured, "somehow it's hard to think of you as a business
man."

I took this for a reference to the boast I had made that I would go to
college.

"Business isn't so bad as it might be," I assured her.

"I think a man ought to go away to college," she declared, in what seemed
another tone. "He makes friends, learns certain things,--it gives him
finish. We are very provincial here."

Provincial! I did not stop to reflect how recently she must have acquired
the word; it summed up precisely the self-estimate at which I had
arrived. The sting went deep. Before I could think of an effective reply
Nancy was being carried off by the young man from the East, who was
clearly infatuated. He was not provincial. She smiled back at me brightly
over his shoulder.... In that instant were fused in one resolution all
the discordant elements within me of aspiration and discontent. It was
not so much that I would show Nancy what I intended to do--I would show
myself; and I felt a sudden elation, and accession of power that enabled
me momentarily to despise the puppets with whom she danced.... From this
mood I was awakened with a start to feel a hand on my shoulder, and I
turned to confront her father, McAlery Willett; a gregarious, easygoing,
pleasure-loving gentleman who made only a pretence of business, having
inherited an ample fortune from his father, unique among his generation
in our city in that he paid some attention to fashion in his dress; good
living was already beginning to affect his figure. His mellow voice had a
way of breaking an octave.

"Don't worry, my boy," he said. "You stick to business. These college
fellows are cocks of the walk just now, but some day you'll be able to
snap your fingers at all of 'em."

The next day was dark, overcast, smoky, damp-the soft, unwholesome
dampness that follows a spell of hard frost. I spent the morning and
afternoon on the gloomy third floor of Breck and Company, making a list
of the stock. I remember the place as though I had just stepped out of
it, the freight elevator at the back, the dusty, iron columns, the
continuous piles of cases and bags and barrels with narrow aisles between
them; the dirty windows, spotted and soot-streaked, that looked down on
Second Street. I was determined now to escape from all this, and I had my
plan in mind.

No sooner had I swallowed my supper that evening than I set out at a
swift pace for a modest residence district ten blocks away, coming to a
little frame house set back in a yard,--one of those houses in which the
ringing of the front door-bell produces the greatest commotion;
children's voices were excitedly raised and then hushed. After a brief
silence the door was opened by a pleasant-faced, brown-bearded man, who
stood staring at me in surprise. His hair was rumpled, he wore an old
house coat with a hole in the elbow, and with one finger he kept his
place in the book which he held in his hand.

"Hugh Paret!" he exclaimed.

He ushered me into a little parlour lighted by two lamps, that bore every
evidence of having been recently vacated. Its features somehow bespoke a
struggle for existence; as though its occupants had worried much and
loved much. It was a room best described by the word "home"--home made
more precious by a certain precariousness. Toys and school-books strewed
the floor, a sewing-bag and apron lay across the sofa, and in one corner
was a roll-topped desk of varnished oak. The seats of the chairs were
comfortably depressed.

So this was where Mr. Wood lived! Mr. Wood, instructor in Latin and Greek
at Densmore Academy. It was now borne in on me for the first time that he
did live and have his ties like any other human being, instead of just
appearing magically from nowhere on a platform in a chalky room at nine
every morning, to vanish again in the afternoon. I had formerly stood in
awe of his presence. But now I was suddenly possessed by an
embarrassment, and (shall I say it?) by a commiseration bordering on
contempt for a man who would consent to live thus for the sake of being a
schoolteacher. How strange that civilization should set such a high value
on education and treat its functionaries with such neglect!

Mr. Wood's surprise at seeing me was genuine. For I had never shown a
particular interest in him, nor in the knowledge which he strove to
impart.

"I thought you had forgotten me, Hugh," he said, and added whimsically:
"most boys do, when they graduate."

I felt the reproach, which made it the more difficult for me to state my
errand.

"I knew you sometimes took pupils in the evening, Mr. Wood."

"Pupils,--yes," he replied, still eyeing me. Suddenly his eyes twinkled.
He had indeed no reason to suspect me of thirsting for learning. "But I
was under the impression that you had gone into business, Hugh."

"The fact is, sir," I explained somewhat painfully, "that I am not
satisfied with business. I feel--as if I ought to know more. And I came
to see if you would give me lessons about three nights a week, because I
want to take the Harvard examinations next summer."

Thus I made it appear, and so persuaded myself, that my ambition had been
prompted by a craving for knowledge. As soon as he could recover himself
he reminded me that he had on many occasions declared I had a brain.

"Your father must be very happy over this decision of yours," he said.

That was the point, I told him. It was to be a surprise for my father; I
was to take the examinations first, and inform him afterwards.

To my intense relief, Mr. Wood found the scheme wholly laudable, and
entered into it with zest. He produced examinations of preceding years
from a pigeonhole in his desk, and inside of half an hour the arrangement
was made, the price of the lessons settled. They were well within my
salary, which recently had been raised....

When I went down town, or collecting bills for Breck and Company, I took
a text-book along with me in the street-cars. Now at last I had behind my
studies a driving force. Algebra, Latin, Greek and history became worth
while, means to an end. I astonished Mr. Wood; and sometimes he would
tilt back his chair, take off his spectacles and pull his beard.

"Why in the name of all the sages," he would demand, "couldn't you have
done this well at school? You might have led your class, instead of Ralph
Hambleton."

I grew very fond of Mr. Wood, and even of his thin little wife, who
occasionally flitted into the room after we had finished. I fully
intended to keep up with them in after life, but I never did. I forgot
them completely....

My parents were not wholly easy in their minds concerning me; they were
bewildered by the new aspect I presented. For my lately acquired motive
was strong enough to compel me to restrict myself socially, and the
evenings I spent at home were given to study, usually in my own room.
Once I was caught with a Latin grammar: I was just "looking over it," I
said. My mother sighed. I knew what was in her mind; she had always been
secretly disappointed that I had not been sent to college. And presently,
when my father went out to attend a trustee's meeting, the impulse to
confide in her almost overcame me; I loved her with that affection which
goes out to those whom we feel understand us, but I was learning to
restrain my feelings. She looked at me wistfully.... I knew that she
would insist on telling my father, and thus possibly frustrate my plans.
That I was not discovered was due to a certain quixotic twist in my
father's character. I was working now, and though not actually earning my
own living, he no longer felt justified in prying into my affairs.

When June arrived, however, my tutor began to show signs that his
conscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum.
The joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he found
praiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father were
informed of them; he was determined to call at my father's office.

The next morning was blue with the presage of showers; blue, too, with
the presage of fate. An interminable morning. My tasks had become utterly
distasteful. And in the afternoon, so when I sat down to make out
invoices, I wrote automatically the names of the familiar customers, my
mind now exalted by hope, now depressed by anxiety. The result of an
interview perhaps even now going on would determine whether or no I
should be immediately released from a slavery I detested. Would Mr. Wood
persuade my father? If not, I was prepared to take more desperate
measures; remain in the grocery business I would not. In the evening, as
I hurried homeward from the corner where the Boyne Street car had dropped
me, I halted suddenly in front of the Peters house, absorbing the scene
where my childhood had been spent: each of these spreading maples was an
old friend, and in these yards I had played and dreamed. An unaccountable
sadness passed over me as I walked on toward our gate; I entered it,
gained the doorway of the house and went upstairs, glancing into the
sitting room. My mother sat by the window, sewing. She looked up at me
with an ineffable expression, in which I read a trace of tears.

"Hugh!" she exclaimed.

I felt very uncomfortable, and stood looking down at her.

"Why didn't you tell us, my son?" In her voice was in truth reproach; yet
mingled with that was another note, which I think was pride.

"What has father said?" I asked.

"Oh, my dear, he will tell you himself. I--I don't know--he will talk to
you."

Suddenly she seized my hands and drew me down to her, and then held me
away, gazing into my face with a passionate questioning, her lips
smiling, her eyes wet. What did she see? Was there a subtler relationship
between our natures than I guessed? Did she understand by some
instinctive power the riddle within me? divine through love the force
that was driving me on she knew not whither, nor I? At the sound of my
father's step in the hall she released me. He came in as though nothing
had happened.

"Well, Hugh, are you home?" he said....

Never had I been more impressed, more bewildered by his self-command than
at that time. Save for the fact that my mother talked less than usual,
supper passed as though nothing had happened. Whether I had shaken him,
disappointed him, or gained his reluctant approval I could not tell.
Gradually his outward calmness turned my suspense to irritation....

But when at length we were alone together, I gained a certain
reassurance. His manner was not severe. He hesitated a little before
beginning.

"I must confess, Hugh; that I scarcely know what to say about this
proceeding of yours. The thing that strikes me most forcibly is that you
might have confided in your mother and myself."

Hope flashed up within me, like an explosion.

"I--I wanted to surprise you, father. And then, you see, I thought it
would be wiser to find out first how well I was likely to do at the
examinations."

My father looked at me. Unfortunately he possessed neither a sense of
humour nor a sense of tragedy sufficient to meet such a situation. For
the first time in my life I beheld him at a disadvantage; for I had,
somehow, managed at length to force him out of position, and he was
puzzled. I was quick to play my trump card.

"I have been thinking it over carefully," I told him, "and I have made up
my mind that I want to go into the law."

"The law!" he exclaimed sharply.

"Why, yes, sir. I know that you were disappointed because I did not do
sufficiently well at school to go to college and study for the bar."

I felt indeed a momentary pang, but I remembered that I was fighting for
my freedom.

"You seemed satisfied where you were," he said in a puzzled voice, "and
your Cousin Robert gives a good account of you."

"I've tried to do the work as well as I could, sir," I replied. "But I
don't like the grocery business, or any other business. I have a feeling
that I'm not made for it."

"And you think, now, that you are made for the law?" he asked, with the
faint hint of a smile.

"Yes, sir, I believe I could succeed at it. I'd like to try," I replied
modestly.

"You've given up the idiotic notion of wishing to be an author?"

I implied that he himself had convinced me of the futility of such a
wish. I listened to his next words as in a dream.

"I must confess to you, Hugh, that there are times when I fail to
understand you. I hope it is as you say, that you have arrived at a
settled conviction as to your future, and that this is not another of
those caprices to which you have been subject, nor a desire to shirk
honest work. Mr. Wood has made out a strong case for you, and I have
therefore determined to give you a trial. If you pass the examinations
with credit, you may go to college, but if at any time you fail to make
good progress, you come home, and go into business again. Is that
thoroughly understood?"

I said it was, and thanked him effusively.... I had escaped,--the prison
doors had flown open. But it is written that every happiness has its
sting; and my joy, intense though it was, had in it a core of remorse....

I went downstairs to my mother, who was sitting in the hall by the open
door.

"Father says I may go!" I said.

She got up and took me in her arms.

"My dear, I am so glad, although we shall miss you dreadfully.... Hugh?"

"Yes, mother."

"Oh, Hugh, I so want you to be a good man!"

Her cry was a little incoherent, but fraught with a meaning that came
home to me, in spite of myself....

A while later I ran over to announce to the amazed Tom Peters that I was
actually going to Harvard with him. He stood in the half-lighted hallway,
his hands in his pockets, blinking at me.

"Hugh, you're a wonder!" he cried. "How in Jehoshaphat did you work
it?"...

I lay long awake that night thinking over the momentous change so soon to
come into my life, wondering exultantly what Nancy Willett would say now.
I was not one, at any rate, to be despised or neglected.




VI.

The following September Tom Peters and I went East together. In the early
morning Boston broke on us like a Mecca as we rolled out of the old
Albany station, joint lords of a "herdic." How sharply the smell of the
salt-laden east wind and its penetrating coolness come back to me! I seek
in vain for words to express the exhilarating effect of that briny
coolness on my imagination, and of the visions it summoned up of the
newer, larger life into which I had marvellously been transported. We
alighted at the Parker House, full-fledged men of the world, and tried to
act as though the breakfast of which we partook were merely an incident,
not an Event; as though we were Seniors, and not freshmen, assuming an
indifference to the beings by whom we were surrounded and who were
breakfasting, too,--although the nice-looking ones with fresh faces and
trim clothes were all undoubtedly Olympians. The better to proclaim our
nonchalance, we seated ourselves on a lounge of the marble-paved lobby
and smoked cigarettes. This was liberty indeed! At length we departed for
Cambridge, in another herdic.

Boston! Could it be possible? Everything was so different here as to give
the place the aspect of a dream: the Bulfinch State House, the decorous
shops, the still more decorous dwellings with the purple-paned windows
facing the Common; Back Bay, still boarded up, ivy-spread, suggestive of
a mysterious and delectable existence. We crossed the Charles River,
blue-grey and still that morning; traversed a nondescript district, and
at last found ourselves gazing out of the windows at the mellowed,
plum-coloured bricks of the University buildings.... All at once our
exhilaration evaporated as the herdic rumbled into a side street and
backed up before the door of a not-too-inviting, three-storied house with
a queer extension on top. Its steps and vestibule were, however,
immaculate. The bell was answered by a plainly overworked servant girl,
of whom we inquired for Mrs. Bolton, our landlady. There followed a
period of waiting in a parlour from which the light had been almost
wholly banished, with slippery horsehair furniture and a marble-topped
table; and Mrs. Bolton, when she appeared, dressed in rusty black,
harmonized perfectly with the funereal gloom. She was a tall, rawboned,
severe lady with a peculiar red-mottled complexion that somehow reminded
one of the outcropping rocks of her native New England soil.

"You want to see your rooms, I suppose," she remarked impassively when we
had introduced ourselves, and as we mounted the stairs behind her Tom, in
a whisper, nicknamed her "Granite Face." Presently she left us.

"Hospitable soul!" said Tom, who, with his hands in his pockets, was
gazing at the bare walls of our sitting-room. "We'll have to go into the
house-furnishing business, Hughie. I vote we don't linger here
to-day--we'll get melancholia."

Outside, however, the sun was shining brightly, and we departed
immediately to explore Cambridge and announce our important presences to
the proper authorities.... We went into Boston to dine.... It was not
until nine o'clock in the evening that we returned and the bottom
suddenly dropped out of things. He who has tasted that first, acute
homesickness of college will know what I mean. It usually comes at the
opening of one's trunk. The sight of the top tray gave me a pang I shall
never forget. I would not have believed that I loved my mother so much!
These articles had been packed by her hands; and in one corner, among the
underclothes on which she had neatly sewed my initials, lay the new Bible
she had bought. "Hugh Moreton Paret, from his Mother. September, 1881." I
took it up (Tom was not looking) and tried to read a passage, but my eyes
were blurred. What was it within me that pressed and pressed until I
thought I could bear the pain of it no longer? I pictured the
sitting-room at home, and my father and mother there, thinking of me.
Yes, I must acknowledge it; in the bitterness of that moment I longed to
be back once more in the railed-off space on the floor of Breck and
Company, writing invoices....

Presently, as we went on silently with our unpacking, we became aware of
someone in the doorway.

"Hello, you fellows!" he cried. "We're classmates, I guess."

We turned to behold an ungainly young man in an ill-fitting blue suit.
His face was pimply, his eyes a Teutonic blue, his yellow hair rumpled,
his naturally large mouth was made larger by a friendly grin.

"I'm Hermann Krebs," he announced simply. "Who are you?"

We replied, I regret to say, with a distinct coolness that did not seem
to bother him in the least. He advanced into the room, holding out a
large, red, and serviceable hand, evidently it had never dawned on him
that there was such a thing in the world as snobbery. But Tom and I had
been "coached" by Ralph Hambleton and Perry Blackwood, warned to be
careful of our friendships. There was a Reason! In any case Mr. Krebs
would not have appealed to us. In answer to a second question he was
informed what city we hailed from, and he proclaimed himself likewise a
native of our state.

"Why, I'm from Elkington!" he exclaimed, as though the fact sealed our
future relationships. He seated himself on Tom's trunk and added:
"Welcome to old Harvard!"

We felt that he was scarcely qualified to speak for "old Harvard," but we
did not say so.

"You look as if you'd been pall-bearers for somebody," was his next
observation.

To this there seemed no possible reply.

"You fellows are pretty well fixed here," he went on, undismayed, gazing
about a room which had seemed to us the abomination of desolation. "Your
folks must be rich. I'm up under the skylight."

Even this failed to touch us. His father--he told us with undiminished
candour--had been a German emigrant who had come over in '49, after the
cause of liberty had been lost in the old country, and made eye-glasses
and opera glasses. There hadn't been a fortune in it. He, Hermann, had
worked at various occupations in the summer time, from peddling to
farming, until he had saved enough to start him at Harvard. Tom, who had
been bending over his bureau drawer, straightened up.

"What did you want to come here for?" he demanded.

"Say, what did you?" Mr. Krebs retorted genially. "To get an education,
of course."

"An education!" echoed Tom.

"Isn't Harvard the oldest and best seat of learning in America?" There
was an exaltation in Krebs's voice that arrested my attention, and made
me look at him again. A troubled chord had been struck within me.

"Sure," said Tom.

"What did you come for?" Mr. Krebs persisted.

"To sow my wild oats," said Tom. "I expect to have something of a crop,
too."

For some reason I could not fathom, it suddenly seemed to dawn on Mr.
Krebs, as a result of this statement, that he wasn't wanted.

"Well, so long," he said, with a new dignity that curiously belied the
informality of his farewell.

An interval of silence followed his departure.

"Well, he's got a crust!" said Tom, at last.

My own feeling about Mr. Krebs had become more complicated; but I took my
cue from Tom, who dealt with situations simply.

"He'll come in for a few knockouts," he declared. "Here's to old Harvard,
the greatest institution of learning in America! Oh, gee!"

Our visitor, at least, made us temporarily forget our homesickness, but
it returned with redoubled intensity when we had put out the lights and
gone to bed.

Before we had left home it had been mildly hinted to us by Ralph and
Perry Blackwood that scholarly eminence was not absolutely necessary to
one's welfare and happiness at Cambridge. The hint had been somewhat
superfluous; but the question remained, what was necessary? With a view
of getting some light on this delicate subject we paid a visit the next
evening to our former friends and schoolmates, whose advice was conveyed
with a masterly circumlocution that impressed us both. There are some
things that may not be discussed directly, and the conduct of life at a
modern university--which is a reflection of life in the greater world--is
one of these. Perry Blackwood and Ham did most of the talking, while
Ralph, characteristically, lay at full length on the window-seat,
interrupting with an occasional terse and cynical remark very much to the
point. As a sophomore, he in particular seemed lifted immeasurably above
us, for he was--as might have been expected already a marked man in his
class. The rooms which he shared with his cousin made a tremendous
impression on Tom and me, and seemed palatial in comparison to our
quarters at Mrs. Bolton's, eloquent of the freedom and luxury of
undergraduate existence; their note, perhaps, was struck by the profusion
of gay sofa pillows, then something of an innovation. The heavy,
expensive furniture was of a pattern new to me; and on the mantel were
three or four photographs of ladies in the alluring costume of the
musical stage, in which Tom evinced a particular interest.

"Did grandfather send 'em?" he inquired.

"They're Ham's," said Ralph, and he contrived somehow to get into those
two words an epitome of his cousin's character. Ham was stouter, and his
clothes were more striking, more obviously expensive than ever.... On our
way homeward, after we had walked a block or two in silence, Tom
exclaimed:--"Don't make friends with the friendless!--eh, Hughie? We knew
enough to begin all right, didn't we?"...

Have I made us out a pair of deliberate, calculating snobs? Well, after
all it must be remembered that our bringing up had not been of sufficient
liberality to include the Krebses of this world. We did not, indeed,
spend much time in choosing and weighing those whom we should know and
those whom we should avoid; and before the first term of that Freshman
year was over Tom had become a favourite. He had the gift of making men
feel that he delighted in their society, that he wished for nothing
better than to sit for hours in their company, content to listen to the
arguments that raged about him. Once in a while he would make a droll
observation that was greeted with fits of laughter. He was always
referred to as "old Tom," or "good old Tom"; presently, when he began to
pick out chords on the banjo, it was discovered that he had a good tenor
voice, though he could not always be induced to sing.... Somewhat to the
jeopardy of the academic standard that my father expected me to sustain,
our rooms became a rendezvous for many clubable souls whose maudlin,
midnight attempts at harmony often set the cocks crowing.

       "Free from care and despair,
        What care we?
       'Tis wine, 'tis wine
        That makes the jollity."

As a matter of truth, on these occasions it was more often beer; beer
transported thither in Tom's new valise,--given him by his mother,--and
stuffed with snow to keep the bottles cold. Sometimes Granite Face,
adorned in a sky-blue wrapper, would suddenly appear in the doorway to
declare that we were a disgrace to her respectable house: the university
authorities should be informed, etc., etc. Poor woman, we were
outrageously inconsiderate of her.... One evening as we came through the
hall we caught a glimpse in the dimly lighted parlour of a young man
holding a shy and pale little girl on his lap, Annie, Mrs. Bolton's
daughter: on the face of our landlady was an expression I had never seen
there, like a light. I should scarcely have known her. Tom and I paused
at the foot of the stairs. He clutched my arm.

"Darned if it wasn't our friend Krebs!" he whispered.

While I was by no means so popular as Tom, I got along fairly well. I had
escaped from provincialism, from the obscure purgatory of the wholesale
grocery business; new vistas, exciting and stimulating, had been opened
up; nor did I offend the sensibilities and prejudices of the new friends
I made, but gave a hearty consent to a code I found congenial. I
recognized in the social system of undergraduate life at Harvard a
reflection of that of a greater world where I hoped some day to shine;
yet my ambition did not prey upon me. Mere conformity, however, would not
have taken me very far in a sphere from which I, in common with many
others, desired not to be excluded.... One day, in an idle but inspired
moment, I paraphrased a song from "Pinafore," applying it to a college
embroglio, and the brief and lively vogue it enjoyed was sufficient to
indicate a future usefulness. I had "found myself." This was in the last
part of the freshman year, and later on I became a sort of amateur, class
poet-laureate. Many were the skits I composed, and Tom sang them....

During that freshman year we often encountered Hermann Krebs, whistling
merrily, on the stairs.

"Got your themes done?" he would inquire cheerfully.

And Tom would always mutter, when he was out of earshot: "He has got a
crust!"

When I thought about Krebs at all,--and this was seldom indeed,--his
manifest happiness puzzled me. Our cool politeness did not seem to bother
him in the least; on the contrary, I got the impression that it amused
him. He seemed to have made no friends. And after that first evening,
memorable for its homesickness, he never ventured to repeat his visit to
us.

One windy November day I spied his somewhat ludicrous figure striding
ahead of me, his trousers above his ankles. I was bundled up in a new
ulster,--of which I was secretly quite proud,--but he wore no overcoat at
all.

"Well, how are you getting along?" I asked, as I overtook him.

He made clear, as he turned, his surprise that I should have addressed
him at all, but immediately recovered himself.

"Oh, fine," he responded. "I've had better luck than I expected. I'm
correspondent for two or three newspapers. I began by washing windows,
and doing odd jobs for the professors' wives." He laughed. "I guess that
doesn't strike you as good luck."

He showed no resentment at my patronage, but a self-sufficiency that made
my sympathy seem superfluous, giving the impression of an inner harmony
and content that surprised me.

"I needn't ask how you're getting along," he said....

At the end of the freshman year we abandoned Mrs. Bolton's for more
desirable quarters.

I shall not go deeply into my college career, recalling only such
incidents as, seen in the retrospect, appear to have had significance. I
have mentioned my knack for song-writing; but it was not, I think, until
my junior year there was startlingly renewed in me my youthful desire to
write, to create something worth while, that had so long been dormant.

The inspiration came from Alonzo Cheyne, instructor in English; a
remarkable teacher, in spite of the finicky mannerisms which Tom
imitated. And when, in reading aloud certain magnificent passages, he
forgot his affectations, he managed to arouse cravings I thought to have
deserted me forever. Was it possible, after all, that I had been right
and my father wrong? that I might yet be great in literature?

A mere hint from Alonzo Cheyne was more highly prized by the grinds than
fulsome praise from another teacher. And to his credit it should be
recorded that the grinds were the only ones he treated with any
seriousness; he took pains to answer their questions; but towards the
rest of us, the Chosen, he showed a thinly veiled contempt. None so quick
as he to detect a simulated interest, or a wily effort to make him
ridiculous; and few tried this a second time, for he had a rapier-like
gift of repartee that transfixed the offender like a moth on a pin. He
had a way of eyeing me at times, his glasses in his hand, a queer smile
on his lips, as much as to imply that there was one at least among the
lost who was made for better things. Not that my work was poor, but I
knew that it might have been better. Out of his classes, however, beyond
the immediate, disturbing influence of his personality I would relapse
into indifference....

Returning one evening to our quarters, which were now in the "Yard," I
found Tom seated with a blank sheet before him, thrusting his hand
through his hair and biting the end of his penholder to a pulp. In his
muttering, which was mixed with the curious, stingless profanity of which
he was master, I caught the name of Cheyne, and I knew that he was facing
the crisis of a fortnightly theme. The subject assigned was a narrative
of some personal experience, and it was to be handed in on the morrow. My
own theme was already, written.

"I've been holding down this chair for an hour, and I can't seem to think
of a thing." He rose to fling himself down on the lounge. "I wish I was
in Canada."

"Why Canada?"

"Trout fishing with Uncle Jake at that club of his where he took me last
summer." Tom gazed dreamily at the ceiling. "Whenever I have some darned
foolish theme like this to write I want to go fishing, and I want to go
like the devil. I'll get Uncle Jake to take you, too, next summer."

"I wish you would."

"Say, that's living all right, Hughie, up there among the tamaracks and
balsams!" And he began, for something like the thirtieth time, to relate
the adventures of the trip.

As he talked, the idea presented itself to me with sudden fascination to
use this incident as the subject of Tom's theme; to write it for him,
from his point of view, imitating the droll style he would have had if he
had been able to write; for, when he was interested in any matter, his
oral narrative did not lack vividness. I began to ask him questions: what
were the trees like, for instance? How did the French-Canadian guides
talk? He had the gift of mimicry: aided by a partial knowledge of French
I wrote down a few sentences as they sounded. The canoe had upset and he
had come near drowning. I made him describe his sensations.

"I'll write your theme for you," I exclaimed, when he had finished.

"Gee, not about that!"

"Why not? It's a personal experience."

His gratitude was pathetic.... By this time I was so full of the subject
that it fairly clamoured for expression, and as I wrote the hours flew.
Once in a while I paused to ask him a question as he sat with his chair
tilted back and his feet on the table, reading a detective story. I
sketched in the scene with bold strokes; the desolate bois brule on the
mountain side, the polished crystal surface of the pool broken here and
there with the circles left by rising fish; I pictured Armand, the guide,
his pipe between his teeth, holding the canoe against the current; and I
seemed to smell the sharp tang of the balsams, to hear the roar of the
rapids below. Then came the sudden hooking of the big trout, habitant
oaths from Armand, bouleversement, wetness, darkness, confusion; a
half-strangled feeling, a brief glimpse of green things and sunlight, and
then strangulation, or what seemed like it; strangulation, the sense of
being picked up and hurled by a terrific force whither? a blinding
whiteness, in which it was impossible to breathe, one sharp, almost
unbearable pain, then another, then oblivion.... Finally, awakening, to
be confronted by a much worried Uncle Jake.

By this time the detective story had fallen to the floor, and Tom was
huddled up in his chair, asleep. He arose obediently and wrapped a wet
towel around his head, and began to write. Once he paused long enough to
mutter:--"Yes, that's about it,--that's the way I felt!" and set to work
again, mechanically,--all the praise I got for what I deemed a literary
achievement of the highest order! At three o'clock, a.m., he finished,
pulled off his clothes automatically and tumbled into bed. I had no
desire for sleep. My brain was racing madly, like an engine without a
governor. I could write! I could write! I repeated the words over and
over to myself. All the complexities of my present life were blotted out,
and I beheld only the long, sweet vista of the career for which I was now
convinced that nature had intended me. My immediate fortunes became
unimportant, immaterial. No juice of the grape I had ever tasted made me
half so drunk.... With the morning, of course, came the reaction, and I
suffered the after sensations of an orgie, awaking to a world of
necessity, cold and grey and slushy, and necessity alone made me rise
from my bed. My experience of the night before might have taught me that
happiness lies in the trick of transforming necessity, but it did not.
The vision had faded,--temporarily, at least; and such was the
distraction of the succeeding days that the subject of the theme passed
from my mind....

One morning Tom was later than usual in getting home. I was writing a
letter when he came in, and did not notice him, yet I was vaguely aware
of his standing over me. When at last I looked up I gathered from his
expression that something serious had happened, so mournful was his face,
and yet so utterly ludicrous.

"Say, Hugh, I'm in the deuce of a mess," he announced.

"What's the matter?" I inquired.

He sank down on the table with a groan.

"It's Alonzo," he said.

Then I remembered the theme.

"What--what's he done?" I demanded.

"He says I must become a writer. Think of it, me a writer! He says I'm a
young Shakespeare, that I've been lazy and hid my light under a bushel!
He says he knows now what I can do, and if I don't keep up the quality,
he'll know the reason why, and write a personal letter to my father. Oh,
hell!"

In spite of his evident anguish, I was seized with a convulsive laughter.
Tom stood staring at me moodily.

"You think it's funny,--don't you? I guess it is, but what's going to
become of me? That's what I want to know. I've been in trouble before,
but never in any like this. And who got me into it? You!"

Here was gratitude!

"You've got to go on writing 'em, now." His voice became desperately
pleading. "Say, Hugh, old man, you can temper 'em down--temper 'em down
gradually. And by the end of the year, let's say, they'll be about normal
again."

He seemed actually shivering.

"The end of the year!" I cried, the predicament striking me for the first
time in its fulness. "Say, you've got a crust!"

"You'll do it, if I have to hold a gun over you," he announced grimly.

Mingled with my anxiety, which was real, was an exultation that would not
down. Nevertheless, the idea of developing Tom into a Shakespeare,--Tom,
who had not the slightest desire to be one I was appalling, besides
having in it an element of useless self-sacrifice from which I recoiled.
On the other hand, if Alonzo should discover that I had written his
theme, there were penalties I did not care to dwell upon .... With such a
cloud hanging over me I passed a restless night.

As luck would have it the very next evening in the level light under the
elms of the Square I beheld sauntering towards me a dapper figure which I
recognized as that of Mr. Cheyne himself. As I saluted him he gave me an
amused and most disconcerting glance; and when I was congratulating
myself that he had passed me he stopped.

"Fine weather for March, Paret," he observed.

"Yes, sir," I agreed in a strange voice.

"By the way," he remarked, contemplating the bare branches above our
heads, "that was an excellent theme your roommate handed in. I had no
idea that he possessed such--such genius. Did you, by any chance, happen
to read it?"

"Yes, sir,--I read it."

"Weren't you surprised?" inquired Mr. Cheyne.

"Well, yes, sir--that is--I mean to say he talks just like that,
sometimes--that is, when it's anything he cares about."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Cheyne. "That's interesting, most interesting. In all
my experience, I do not remember a case in which a gift has been
developed so rapidly. I don't want to give the impression--ah that there
is no room for improvement, but the thing was very well done, for an
undergraduate. I must confess I never should have suspected it in Peters,
and it's most interesting what you say about his cleverness in
conversation." He twirled the head of his stick, apparently lost in
reflection. "I may be wrong," he went on presently, "I have an idea it is
you--" I must literally have jumped away from him. He paused a moment,
without apparently noticing my panic, "that it is you who have influenced
Peters."

"Sir?"

"I am wrong, then. Or is this merely commendable modesty on your part?"

"Oh, no, sir."

"Then my hypothesis falls to the ground. I had greatly hoped," he added
meaningly, "that you might be able to throw some light on this mystery."

I was dumb.

"Paret," he asked, "have you time to come over to my rooms for a few
minutes this evening?"

"Certainly, sir."

He gave me his number in Brattle Street....

Like one running in a nightmare and making no progress I made my way
home, only to learn from Hallam,--who lived on the same floor,--that Tom
had inconsiderately gone to Boston for the evening, with four other weary
spirits in search of relaxation! Avoiding our club table, I took what
little nourishment I could at a modest restaurant, and restlessly paced
the moonlit streets until eight o'clock, when I found myself in front of
one of those low-gabled colonial houses which, on less soul-shaking
occasions, had exercised a great charm on my imagination. My hand hung
for an instant over the bell.... I must have rung it violently, for there
appeared almost immediately an old lady in a lace cap, who greeted me
with gentle courtesy, and knocked at a little door with glistening
panels. The latch was lifted by Mr. Cheyne himself.

"Come in, Paret," he said, in a tone that was unexpectedly hospitable.

I have rarely seen a more inviting room. A wood fire burned brightly on
the brass andirons, flinging its glare on the big, white beam that
crossed the ceiling, and reddening the square panes of the windows in
their panelled recesses. Between these were rows of books,--attractive
books in chased bindings, red and blue; books that appealed to be taken
down and read. There was a table covered with reviews and magazines in
neat piles, and a lamp so shaded as to throw its light only on the white
blotter of the pad. Two easy chairs, covered with flowered chintz, were
ranged before the fire, in one of which I sank, much bewildered, upon
being urged to do so.

I utterly failed to recognize "Alonzo" in this new atmosphere. And he
had, moreover, dropped the subtly sarcastic manner I was wont to
associate with him.

"Jolly old house, isn't it?" he observed, as though I had casually
dropped in on him for a chat; and he stood, with his hands behind him
stretched to the blaze, looking down at me. "It was built by a certain
Colonel Draper, who fought at Louisburg, and afterwards fled to England
at the time of the Revolution. He couldn't stand the patriots, I'm not so
sure that I blame him, either. Are you interested in colonial things, Mr.
Paret?"

I said I was. If the question had concerned Aztec relics my answer would
undoubtedly have been the same. And I watched him, dazedly, while he took
down a silver porringer from the shallow mantel shelf.

"It's not a Revere," he said, in a slightly apologetic tone as though to
forestall a comment, "but it's rather good, I think. I picked it up at a
sale in Dorchester. But I have never been able to identify the coat of
arms."

He showed me a ladle, with the names of "Patience and William Simpson"
engraved quaintly thereon, and took down other articles in which I
managed to feign an interest. Finally he seated himself in the chair
opposite, crossed his feet, putting the tips of his fingers together and
gazing into the fire.

"So you thought you could fool me," he said, at length.

I became aware of the ticking of a great clock in the corner. My mouth
was dry.

"I am going to forgive you," he went on, more gravely, "for several
reasons. I don't flatter, as you know. It's because you carried out the
thing so perfectly that I am led to think you have a gift that may be
cultivated, Paret. You wrote that theme in the way Peters would have
written it if he had not been--what shall I say?--scripturally
inarticulate. And I trust it may do you some good if I say it was
something of a literary achievement, if not a moral one."

"Thank you, sir," I faltered.

"Have you ever," he inquired, lapsing a little into his lecture-room
manner, "seriously thought of literature as a career? Have you ever
thought of any career seriously?"

"I once wished to be a writer, sir," I replied tremulously, but refrained
from telling him of my father's opinion of the profession. Ambition--a
purer ambition than I had known for years--leaped within me at his words.
He, Alonzo Cheyne, had detected in me the Promethean fire!

I sat there until ten o'clock talking to the real Mr. Cheyne, a human Mr.
Cheyne unknown in the lecture-room. Nor had I suspected one in whom
cynicism and distrust of undergraduates (of my sort) seemed so ingrained,
of such idealism. He did not pour it out in preaching; delicately,
unobtrusively and on the whole rather humorously he managed to present to
me in a most disillusionizing light that conception of the university
held by me and my intimate associates. After I had left him I walked the
quiet streets to behold as through dissolving mists another Harvard, and
there trembled in my soul like the birth-struggle of a flame something of
the vision later to be immortalized by St. Gaudens, the spirit of Harvard
responding to the spirit of the Republic--to the call of Lincoln, who
voiced it. The place of that bronze at the corner of Boston Common was as
yet empty, but I have since stood before it to gaze in wonder at the
light shining in darkness on mute, uplifted faces, black faces! at
Harvard's son leading them on that the light might live and prevail.

I, too, longed for a Cause into which I might fling myself, in which I
might lose myself... I halted on the sidewalk to find myself staring from
the opposite side of the street at a familiar house, my old landlady's,
Mrs. Bolton's, and summoned up before me was the tired, smiling face of
Hermann Krebs. Was it because when he had once spoken so crudely of the
University I had seen the reflection of her spirit in his eyes? A light
still burned in the extension roof--Krebs's light; another shone dimly
through the ground glass of the front door. Obeying a sudden impulse, I
crossed the street.

Mrs. Bolton, in the sky-blue wrapper, and looking more forbidding than
ever, answered the bell. Life had taught her to be indifferent to
surprises, and it was I who became abruptly embarrassed.

"Oh, it's you, Mr. Paret," she said, as though I had been a frequent
caller. I had never once darkened her threshold since I had left her
house.

"Yes," I answered, and hesitated.... "Is Mr. Krebs in?"

"Well," she replied in a lifeless tone, which nevertheless had in it a
touch of bitterness, "I guess there's no reason why you and your friends
should have known he was sick."

"Sick!" I repeated. "Is he very sick?"

"I calculate he'll pull through," she said. "Sunday the doctor gave him
up. And no wonder! He hasn't had any proper food since he's be'n here!"
She paused, eyeing me. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I was just going
up to him when you rang."

"Certainly," I replied awkwardly. "Would you be so kind as to tell
him--when he's well enough--that I came to see him, and that I'm sorry?"

There was another pause, and she stood with a hand defensively clutching
the knob.

"Yes, I'll tell him," she said.

With a sense of having been baffled, I turned away.

Walking back toward the Yard my attention was attracted by a slowly
approaching cab whose occupants were disturbing the quiet of the night
with song.

"Shollity--'tis wine, 'tis wine, that makesh--shollity."

The vehicle drew up in front of a new and commodious building,--I believe
the first of those designed to house undergraduates who were willing to
pay for private bathrooms and other modern luxuries; out of one window of
the cab protruded a pair of shoeless feet, out of the other a hatless
head I recognized as belonging to Tom Peters; hence I surmised that the
feet were his also. The driver got down from the box, and a lively
argument was begun inside--for there were other occupants--as to how Mr.
Peters was to be disembarked; and I gathered from his frequent references
to the "Shgyptian obelisk" that the engineering problem presented struck
him as similar to the unloading of Cleopatra's Needle.

"Careful, careful!" he cautioned, as certain expelling movements began
from within, "Easy, Ham, you jam-fool, keep the door shut, y'll break
me."

"Now, Jerry, all heave sh'gether!" exclaimed a voice from the blackness
of the interior.

"Will ye wait a minute, Mr. Durrett, sir?" implored the cabdriver.
"You'll be after ruining me cab entirely." (Loud roars and vigorous
resistance from the obelisk, the cab rocking violently.) "This gintleman"
(meaning me) "will have him by the head, and I'll get hold of his feet,
sir." Which he did, after a severe kick in the stomach.

"Head'sh all right, Martin."

"To be sure it is, Mr. Peters. Now will ye rest aisy awhile, sir?"

"I'm axphyxiated," cried another voice from the darkness, the mined voice
of Jerome Kyme, our classmate.

"Get the tackles under him!" came forth in commanding tones from
Conybear.

In the meantime many windows had been raised and much gratuitous advice
was being given. The three occupants of the cab's seat who had previously
clamoured for Mr. Peters' removal, now inconsistently resisted it;
suddenly he came out with a jerk, and we had him fairly upright on the
pavement minus a collar and tie and the buttons of his evening waistcoat.
Those who remained in the cab engaged in a riotous game of hunt the
slipper, while Tom peered into the dark interior, observing gravely the
progress of the sport. First flew out an overcoat and a much-battered
hat, finally the pumps, all of which in due time were adjusted to his
person, and I started home with him, with much parting counsel from the
other three.

"Whereinell were you, Hughie?" he inquired. "Hunted all over for you. Had
a sousin' good time. Went to Babcock's--had champagne--then to see Babesh
in--th'--Woods. Ham knows one of the Babesh had supper with four of 'em.
Nice Babesh!"

"For heaven's sake don't step on me again!" I cried.

"Sh'poloshize, old man. But y'know I'm William Shakespheare. C'n do
what I damplease." He halted in the middle of the street and recited
dramatically:--

    "'Not marble, nor th' gilded monuments
     Of prinches sh'll outlive m' powerful rhyme.'"

"How's that, Alonzho, b'gosh?"

"Where did you learn it?" I demanded, momentarily forgetting his
condition.

"Fr'm Ralph," he replied, "says I wrote it. Can't remember...."

After I had got him to bed,--a service I had learned to perform with more
or less proficiency,--I sat down to consider the events of the evening,
to attempt to get a proportional view. The intensity of my disgust was
not hypocritical as I gazed through the open door into the bedroom and
recalled the times when I, too, had been in that condition. Tom Peters
drunk, and sleeping it off, was deplorable, without doubt; but Hugh Paret
drunk was detestable, and had no excuse whatever. Nor did I mean by this
to set myself on a higher ethical plane, for I felt nothing but despair
and humility. In my state of clairvoyance I perceived that he was a
better man, than I, and that his lapses proceeded from a love of liquor
and the transcendent sense of good-fellowship that liquor brings.




VII.

The crisis through which I passed at Cambridge, inaugurated by the events
I have just related, I find very difficult to portray. It was a religious
crisis, of course, and my most pathetic memory concerning it is of the
vain attempts to connect my yearnings and discontents with the theology I
had been taught; I began in secret to read my Bible, yet nothing I hit
upon seemed to point a way out of my present predicament, to give any
definite clew to the solution of my life. I was not mature enough to
reflect that orthodoxy was a Sunday religion unrelated to a world whose
wheels were turned by the motives of self-interest; that it consisted of
ideals not deemed practical, since no attempt was made to put them into
practice in the only logical manner,--by reorganizing civilization to
conform with them. The implication was that the Christ who had preached
these ideals was not practical.... There were undoubtedly men in the
faculty of the University who might have helped me had I known of them;
who might have given me, even at that time, a clew to the modern, logical
explanation of the Bible as an immortal record of the thoughts and acts
of men who had sought to do just what I was seeking to do,--connect the
religious impulse to life and make it fruitful in life: an explanation,
by the way, a thousand-fold more spiritual than the old. But I was
hopelessly entangled in the meshes of the mystic, the miraculous and
supernatural. If I had analyzed my yearnings, I might have realized that
I wanted to renounce the life I had been leading, not because it was
sinful, but because it was aimless. I had not learned that the Greek word
for sin is "a missing of the mark." Just aimlessness! I had been stirred
with the desire to perform some service for which the world would be
grateful: to write great literature, perchance. But it had never been
suggested to me that such swellings of the soul are religious, that
religion is that kind of feeling, of motive power that drives the writer
and the scientist, the statesman and the sculptor as well as the priest
and the Prophet to serve mankind for the joy of serving: that religion is
creative, or it is nothing: not mechanical, not a force imposed from
without, but a driving power within. The "religion" I had learned was
salvation from sin by miracle: sin a deliberate rebellion, not a pathetic
missing of the mark of life; useful service of man, not the wandering of
untutored souls who had not been shown the way. I felt religious. I
wanted to go to church, I wanted to maintain, when it was on me, that
exaltation I dimly felt as communion with a higher power, with God, and
which also was identical with my desire to write, to create....

I bought books, sets of Wordsworth and Keats, of Milton and Shelley and
Shakespeare, and hid them away in my bureau drawers lest Tom and my
friends should see them. These too I read secretly, making excuses for
not joining in the usual amusements. Once I walked to Mrs. Bolton's and
inquired rather shamefacedly for Hermann Krebs, only to be informed that
he had gone out.... There were lapses, of course, when I went off on the
old excursions,--for the most part the usual undergraduate follies,
though some were of a more serious nature; on these I do not care to
dwell. Sex was still a mystery.... Always I awoke afterwards to bitter
self-hatred and despair.... But my work in English improved, and I earned
the commendation and friendship of Mr. Cheyne. With a wisdom for which I
was grateful he was careful not to give much sign of it in classes, but
the fact that he was "getting soft on me" was evident enough to be
regarded with suspicion. Indeed the state into which I had fallen became
a matter of increasing concern to my companions, who tried every means
from ridicule to sympathy, to discover its cause and shake me out of it.
The theory most accepted was that I was in love.

"Come on now, Hughie--tell me who she is. I won't give you away," Tom
would beg. Once or twice, indeed, I had imagined I was in love with the
sisters of Boston classmates whose dances I attended; to these parties
Tom, not having overcome his diffidence in respect to what he called
"social life," never could be induced to go.

It was Ralph who detected the true cause of my discontent. Typical as no
other man I can recall of the code to which we had dedicated ourselves,
the code that moulded the important part of the undergraduate world and
defied authority, he regarded any defection from it in the light of
treason. An instructor, in a fit of impatience, had once referred to him
as the Mephistopheles of his class; he had fatal attractions, and a
remarkable influence. His favourite pastime was the capricious exercise
of his will on weaker characters, such as his cousin, Ham Durrett; if
they "swore off," Ralph made it his business to get them drunk again, and
having accomplished this would proceed himself to administer a new oath
and see that it was kept. Alcohol seemed to have no effect whatever on
him. Though he was in the class above me, I met him frequently at a club
to which I had the honour to belong, then a suite of rooms over a shop
furnished with a pool and a billiard table, easy-chairs and a bar. It has
since achieved the dignity of a house of its own.

We were having, one evening, a "religious" argument, Cinibar, Laurens and
myself and some others. I can't recall how it began; I think Cinibar had
attacked the institution of compulsory chapel, which nobody defended;
there was something inherently wrong, he maintained, with a religion to
which men had to be driven against their wills. Somewhat to my surprise I
found myself defending a Christianity out of which I had been able to
extract but little comfort and solace. Neither Laurens nor Conybear,
however, were for annihilating it: although they took the other side of
the discussion of a subject of which none of us knew anything, their
attacks were but half-hearted; like me, they were still under the spell
exerted by a youthful training.

We were all of us aware of Ralph, who sat at some distance looking over
the pages of an English sporting weekly. Presently he flung it down.

"Haven't you found out yet that man created God, Hughie?" he inquired.
"And even if there were a personal God, what reason have you to think
that man would be his especial concern, or any concern of his whatever?
The discovery of evolution has knocked your Christianity into a cocked
hat."

I don't remember how I answered him. In spite of the superficiality of
his own arguments, which I was not learned enough to detect, I was
ingloriously routed. Darwin had kicked over the bucket, and that was all
there was to it.... After we had left the club both Conybear and Laurens
admitted they were somewhat disturbed, declaring that Ralph had gone too
far. I spent a miserable night, recalling the naturalistic assertions he
had made so glibly, asking myself again and again how it was that the
religion to which I so vainly clung had no greater effect on my actions
and on my will, had not prevented me from lapses into degradation. And I
hated myself for having argued upon a subject that was still sacred. I
believed in Christ, which is to say that I believed that in some
inscrutable manner he existed, continued to dominate the world and had
suffered on my account.

To whom should I go now for a confirmation of my wavering beliefs? One of
the results--it will be remembered of religion as I was taught it was a
pernicious shyness, and even though I had found a mentor and confessor, I
might have hesitated to unburden myself. This would be different from
arguing with Ralph Hambleton. In my predicament, as I was wandering
through the yard, I came across a notice of an evening talk to students
in Holder Chapel, by a clergyman named Phillips Brooks. This was before
the time, let me say in passing, when his sermons at Harvard were
attended by crowds of undergraduates. Well, I stood staring at the
notice, debating whether I should go, trying to screw up my courage; for
I recognized clearly that such a step, if it were to be of any value,
must mean a distinct departure from my present mode of life; and I recall
thinking with a certain revulsion that I should have to "turn good." My
presence at the meeting would be known the next day to all my friends,
for the idea of attending a religious gathering when one was not forced
to do so by the authorities was unheard of in our set. I should be
classed with the despised "pious ones" who did such things regularly. I
shrank from the ridicule. I had, however, heard of Mr. Brooks from Ned
Symonds, who was by no means of the pious type, and whose parents
attended Mr. Brooks's church in Boston.... I left my decision in
abeyance. But when evening came I stole away from the club table, on the
plea of an engagement, and made my way rapidly toward Holder Chapel. I
had almost reached it--when I caught a glimpse of Symonds and of some
others approaching,--and I went on, to turn again. By this time the
meeting, which was in a room on the second floor, had already begun.
Palpitating, I climbed the steps; the door of the room was slightly ajar;
I looked in; I recall a distinct sensation of surprise,--the atmosphere
of that meeting was so different from what I had expected. Not a "pious"
atmosphere at all! I saw a very tall and heavy gentleman, dressed in
black, who sat, wholly at ease, on the table! One hand was in his pocket,
one foot swung clear of the ground; and he was not preaching, but talking
in an easy, conversational tone to some forty young men who sat intent on
his words. I was too excited to listen to what he was saying, I was
making a vain attempt to classify him. But I remember the thought, for it
struck me with force,--that if Christianity were so thoroughly
discredited by evolution, as Ralph Hambleton and other agnostics would
have one believe, why should this remarkably sane and able-looking person
be standing up for it as though it were still an established and
incontrovertible fact?

He had not, certainly, the air of a dupe or a sentimentalist, but
inspired confidence by his very personality. Youthlike, I watched him
narrowly for flaws, for oratorical tricks, for all kinds of histrionic
symptoms. Again I was near the secret; again it escaped me. The argument
for Christianity lay not in assertions about it, but in being it. This
man was Christianity.... I must have felt something of this, even though
I failed to formulate it. And unconsciously I contrasted his strength,
which reinforced the atmosphere of the room, with that of Ralph
Hambleton, who was, a greater influence over me than I have recorded, and
had come to sway me more and more, as he had swayed others. The strength
of each was impressive, yet this Mr. Brooks seemed to me the bodily
presentment of a set of values which I would have kept constantly before
my eyes.... I felt him drawing me, overcoming my hesitation, belittling
my fear of ridicule. I began gently to open the door--when something
happened,--one of those little things that may change the course of a
life. The door made little noise, yet one of the men sitting in the back
of the room chanced to look around, and I recognized Hermann Krebs. His
face was still sunken from his recent illness. Into his eyes seemed to
leap a sudden appeal, an appeal to which my soul responded yet I hurried
down the stairs and into the street. Instantly I regretted my retreat, I
would have gone back, but lacked the courage; and I strayed unhappily for
hours, now haunted by that look of Krebs, now wondering what the
remarkably sane-looking and informal clergyman whose presence dominated
the little room had been talking about. I never learned, but I did live
to read his biography, to discover what he might have talked about,--for
he if any man believed that life and religion are one, and preached
consecration to life's task.

Of little use to speculate whether the message, had I learned it then,
would have fortified and transformed me!

In spite of the fact that I was unable to relate to a satisfying
conception of religion my new-born determination, I made up my mind, at
least, to renounce my tortuous ways. I had promised my father to be a
lawyer; I would keep my promise, I would give the law a fair trial; later
on, perhaps, I might demonstrate an ability to write. All very
praiseworthy! The season was Lent, a fitting time for renunciations and
resolves. Although I had more than once fallen from grace, I believed
myself at last to have settled down on my true course--when something
happened. The devil interfered subtly, as usual--now in the person of
Jerry Kyme. It should be said in justice to Jerry that he did not look
the part. He had sunny-red, curly hair, mischievous blue eyes with long
lashes, and he harboured no respect whatever for any individual or
institution, sacred or profane; he possessed, however, a shrewd sense of
his own value, as many innocent and unsuspecting souls discovered as
early as our freshman year, and his method of putting down the
presumptuous was both effective and unique. If he liked you, there could
be no mistake about it.

One evening when I was engaged in composing a theme for Mr. Cheyne on no
less a subject than the interpretation of the work of William Wordsworth,
I found myself unexpectedly sprawling on the floor, in my descent kicking
the table so vigorously as to send the ink-well a foot or two toward the
ceiling. This, be it known, was a typical proof of Jerry's esteem. For he
had entered noiselessly, jerking the back of my chair, which chanced to
be tilted, and stood with his hands in his pockets, surveying the ruin he
had wrought, watching the ink as it trickled on the carpet. Then he
picked up the book.

"Poetry, you darned old grind!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "Say, Parry, I
don't know what's got into you, but I want you to come home with me for
the Easter holidays. It'll do you good. We'll be on the Hudson, you know,
and we'll manage to make life bearable somehow."

I forgot my irritation, in sheer surprise.

"Why, that's mighty good of you, Jerry--" I began, struggling to my feet.

"Oh, rot!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't ask you if I didn't want you."

There was no denying the truth of this, and after he had gone I sat for a
long time with my pen in my mouth, reflecting as to whether or not I
should go. For I had the instinct that here was another cross-roads, that
more depended on my decision than I cared to admit. But even then I knew
what I should do. Ridiculous not to--I told myself. How could a week or
ten days with Jerry possibly affect my newborn, resolve?

Yet the prospect, now, of a visit to the Kymes' was by no means so
glowing as it once would have been. For I had seen visions, I had dreamed
dreams, beheld a delectable country of my very own. A year ago--nay, even
a month ago--how such an invitation would have glittered!... I returned
at length to my theme, over which, before Jerry's arrival, I had been
working feverishly. But now the glamour had gone from it.

Presently Tom came in.

"Anyone been here?" he demanded.

"Jerry," I told him.

"What did he want?"

"He wanted me to go home with him at Easter."

"You're going, of course."

"I don't know. I haven't decided."

"You'd be a fool not to," was Tom's comment. It voiced, succinctly, a
prevailing opinion.

It was the conclusion I arrived at in my own mind. But just why I had
been chosen for the honour, especially at such a time, was a riddle.
Jerry's invitations were charily given, and valued accordingly; and more
than once, at our table, I had felt a twinge of envy when Conybear or
someone else had remarked, with the proper nonchalance, in answer to a
question, that they were going to Weathersfield. Such was the name of the
Kyme place....

I shall never forget the impression made on me by the decorous luxury of
that big house, standing amidst its old trees, halfway up the gentle
slope that rose steadily from the historic highway where poor Andre was
captured. I can see now the heavy stone pillars of its portico vignetted
in a flush of tenderest green, the tulips just beginning to flame forth
their Easter colours in the well-kept beds, the stately, well-groomed
evergreens, the vivid lawns, the clipped hedges. And like an overwhelming
wave of emotion that swept all before it, the impressiveness of wealth
took possession of me. For here was a kind of wealth I had never known,
that did not exist in the West, nor even in the still Puritan environs of
Boston where I had visited. It took itself for granted, proclaimed itself
complacently to have solved all problems. By ignoring them, perhaps. But
I was too young to guess this. It was order personified, gaining effect
at every turn by a multitude of details too trivial to mention were it
not for the fact that they entered deeply into my consciousness, until
they came to represent, collectively, the very flower of achievement. It
was a wealth that accepted tribute calmly, as of inherent right. Law and
tradition defended its sanctity more effectively than troops. Literature
descended from her high altar to lend it dignity; and the long, silent
library displayed row upon row of the masters, appropriately clad in
morocco or calf,--Smollett, Macaulay, Gibbon, Richardson, Fielding,
Scott, Dickens, Irving and Thackeray, as though each had striven for a
tablet here. Art had denied herself that her canvases might be hung on
these walls; and even the Church, on that first Sunday of my visit,
forgot the blood of her martyrs that she might adorn an appropriate niche
in the setting. The clergyman, at one of the dinner parties, gravely
asked a blessing as upon an Institution that included and absorbed all
other institutions in its being....

The note of that house was a tempered gaiety. Guests arrived from New
York, spent the night and departed again without disturbing the even
tenor of its ways. Unobtrusive servants ministered to their wants,--and
to mine....

Conybear was there, and two classmates from Boston, and we were treated
with the amiable tolerance accorded to college youths and intimates of
the son of the house. One night there was a dance in our honour. Nor have
I forgotten Jerry's sister, Nathalie, whom I had met at Class Days, a
slim and willowy, exotic young lady of the Botticelli type, with a crown
of burnished hair, yet more suggestive of a hothouse than of spring. She
spoke English with a French accent. Capricious, impulsive, she captured
my interest because she put a high value on her favour; she drove me over
the hills, informing me at length that I was sympathique--different from
the rest; in short, she emphasized and intensified what I may call the
Weathersfield environment, stirred up in me new and vague aspirations
that troubled yet excited me.

Then there was Mrs. Kyme, a pretty, light-hearted lady, still young, who
seemed to have no intention of growing older, who romped and played songs
for us on the piano. The daughter of an old but now impecunious
Westchester family, she had been born to adorn the position she held, she
was adapted by nature to wring from it the utmost of the joys it offered.
From her, rather than from her husband, both of the children seemed to
have inherited. I used to watch Mr. Grosvenor Kyme as he sat at the end
of the dinner-table, dark, preoccupied, taciturn, symbolical of a wealth
new to my experience, and which had about it a certain fabulous quality.
It toiled not, neither did it spin, but grew as if by magic, day and
night, until the very conception of it was overpowering. What must it be
to have had ancestors who had been clever enough to sit still until a
congested and discontented Europe had begun to pour its thousands and
hundreds of thousands into the gateway of the western world, until that
gateway had become a metropolis? ancestors, of course, possessing what
now suddenly appeared to me as the most desirable of gifts--since it
reaped so dazzling a harvest-business foresight. From time to time these
ancestors had continued to buy desirable corners, which no amount of
persuasion had availed to make them relinquish. Lease them, yes; sell
them, never! By virtue of such a system wealth was as inevitable as human
necessity; and the thought of human necessity did not greatly bother me.
Mr. Kyme's problem of life was not one of making money, but of investing
it. One became automatically a personage....

It was due to one of those singular coincidences--so interesting a
subject for speculation--that the man who revealed to me this golden
romance of the Kyme family was none other than a resident of my own city,
Mr. Theodore Watling, now become one of our most important and
influential citizens; a corporation lawyer, new and stimulating
qualification, suggesting as it did, a deus ex machina of great affairs.
That he, of all men, should come to Weathersfield astonished me, since I
was as yet to make the connection between that finished, decorous,
secluded existence and the source of its being. The evening before my
departure he arrived in company with two other gentlemen, a Mr. Talbot
and a Mr. Saxes, whose names were spoken with respect in a sphere of
which I had hitherto taken but little cognizance-Wall Street. Conybear
informed me that they were "magnates,"... We were sitting in the
drawing-room at tea, when they entered with Mr. Watling, and no sooner
had he spoken to Mrs. Kyme than his quick eye singled me out of the
group.

"Why, Hugh!" he exclaimed, taking my hand. "I had no idea I should meet
you here--I saw your father only last week, the day I left home." And he
added, turning to Mrs. Kyme, "Hugh is the son of Mr. Matthew Paret, who
has been the leader of our bar for many years."

The recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously given
that I warmed with gratitude and pride, while Mr. Kyme smiled a little,
remarking that I was a friend of Jerry's. Theodore Watling, for being
here, had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence, though
the note he struck in that house was a strange one. It was, however, his
own note, and had a certain distinction, a ring of independence, of the
knowledge of self-worth. Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters had
usually found rather an oppressive ceremony, with its shaded lights and
precise ritual over which Mr. Kyme presided like a high priest;
conversation had been restrained. That night, as Johnnie Laurens
afterwards expressed it, "things loosened up," and Mr. Watling was
responsible for the loosening. Taking command of the Kyme dinner table
appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did,
without being vulgar or noisy or assertive. Suavitar in modo, forbiter in
re. If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had
paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would
formerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short of
my notion of a gentleman; it had been my father's opinion; but Mr.
Watling's marriage to Gene Hollister's aunt had given him a standing with
us at home. He possessed virility, vitality in a remarkable degree, yet
some elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy--though related
to these differentiated him from the commonplace, self-made man of
ability. He was just off the type. To liken him to a clothing store model
of a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a firm neck, a handsome,
rather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional, drooping
moustache would be slanderous; yet he did suggest it. Suggesting it, he
redeemed it: and the middle western burr in his voice was rather
attractive than otherwise. He had not so much the air of belonging there,
as of belonging anywhere--one of those anomalistic American citizens of
the world who go abroad and make intimates of princes. Before the meal
was over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride, enlisted the
admiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens; we followed him
into the smoking-room, sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behind
our elders.

Here, now that the gentlemen were alone, there was an inspiring largeness
in their talk that fired the imagination. The subject was investments, at
first those of coal and iron in my own state, for Mr. Watling, it
appeared, was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works.

"It will pay you to keep an eye on that company, Mr. Kyme," he said,
knocking the ashes from his cigar. "Now that old Mr. Durrett's gone--"

"You don't mean to say Nathaniel Durrett's dead!" said Mr. Kyme.

The lawyer nodded.

"The old regime passed with him. Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may
take my word for it, he's a coming man. Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of
men, recognized that. Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to
be a foreman. For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his
shoulders...."

Little by little the scope of the discussion was enlarged until it ranged
over a continent, touching lightly upon lines of railroad, built or
projected, across the great west our pioneers had so lately succeeded in
wresting from the savages, upon mines of copper and gold hidden away
among the mountains, and millions of acres of forest and grazing lands
which a complacent government would relinquish provided certain
technicalities were met: touching lightly, too, very lightly,--upon
senators and congressmen at Washington. And for the first time I learned
that not the least of the functions of these representatives of the
people was to act as the medium between capital and investment, to
facilitate the handing over of the Republic's resources to those in a
position to develop them. The emphasis was laid on development, or rather
on the resulting prosperity for the country: that was the justification,
and it was taken for granted as supreme. Nor was it new to me; this cult
of prosperity. I recalled the torch-light processions of the tariff
enthusiasts of my childhood days, my father's championship of the
Republican Party. He had not idealized politicians, either. For the
American, politics and ethics were strangers.

Thus I listened with increasing fascination to these gentlemen in evening
clothes calmly treating the United States as a melon patch that existed
largely for the purpose of being divided up amongst a limited and favored
number of persons. I had a feeling of being among the initiated. Where,
it may be asked, were my ideals? Let it not be supposed that I believed
myself to have lost them. If so, the impression I have given of myself
has been wholly inadequate. No, they had been transmuted, that is all,
transmuted by the alchemy of Weathersfield, by the personality of
Theodore Watling into brighter visions. My eyes rarely left his face; I
hung on his talk, which was interspersed with native humour, though he
did not always join in the laughter, sometimes gazing at the fire, as
though his keen mind were grappling with a problem suggested. I noted the
respect in which his opinions were held, and my imagination was fired by
an impression of the power to be achieved by successful men of his
profession, by the evidence of their indispensability to capital
itself.... At last when the gentlemen rose and were leaving the room, Mr.
Watling lingered, with his hand on my arm.

"Of course you're going through the Law School, Hugh," he said.

"Yes, sir," I replied.

"Good!" he exclaimed emphatically. "The law, to-day, is more of a career
than ever, especially for a young man with your antecedents and
advantages, and I know of no city in the United States where I would
rather start practice, if I were a young man, than ours. In the next
twenty years we shall see a tremendous growth. Of course you'll be going
into your father's office. You couldn't do better. But I'll keep an eye
on you, and perhaps I'll be able to help you a little, too."

I thanked him gratefully.

A famous artist, who started out in youth to embrace a military career
and who failed to pass an examination at West Point, is said to have
remarked that if silicon had been a gas he would have been a soldier. I
am afraid I may have given the impression that if I had not gone to
Weathersfield and encountered Mr. Watling I might not have been a lawyer.
This impression would be misleading. And while it is certain that I have
not exaggerated the intensity of the spiritual experience I went through
at Cambridge, a somewhat belated consideration for the truth compels me
to register my belief that the mood would in any case have been
ephemeral. The poison generated by the struggle of my nature with its
environment had sunk too deep, and the very education that was supposed
to make a practical man of me had turned me into a sentimentalist. I
became, as will be seen, anything but a practical man in the true sense,
though the world in which I had been brought up and continued to live
deemed me such. My father was greatly pleased when I wrote him that I was
now more than ever convinced of the wisdom of choosing the law as my
profession, and was satisfied that I had come to my senses at last. He
had still been prepared to see me "go off at a tangent," as he expressed
it. On the other hand, the powerful effect of the appeal made by
Weathersfield and Mr. Watling must not be underestimated. Here in one
object lesson was emphasized a host of suggestions each of which had made
its impression. And when I returned to Cambridge Alonzo Cheyne knew that
he had lost me....

I pass over the rest of my college course, and the years I spent at the
Harvard Law School, where were instilled into me without difficulty the
dictums that the law was the most important of all professions, that
those who entered it were a priestly class set aside to guard from
profanation that Ark of the Covenant, the Constitution of the United
States. In short, I was taught law precisely as I had been taught
religion,--scriptural infallibility over again,--a static law and a
static theology,--a set of concepts that were supposed to be equal to any
problems civilization would have to meet until the millennium. What we
are wont to call wisdom is often naively innocent of impending change. It
has no barometric properties.

I shall content myself with relating one incident only of this period. In
the January of my last year I went with a party of young men and girls to
stay over Sunday at Beverly Farms, where Mrs. Fremantle--a young Boston
matron had opened her cottage for the occasion. This "cottage," a roomy,
gabled structure, stood on a cliff, at the foot of which roared the
wintry Atlantic, while we danced and popped corn before the open fires.
During the daylight hours we drove about the country in sleighs, or made
ridiculous attempts to walk on snow-shoes.

On Sunday afternoon, left temporarily to my own devices, I wandered along
the cliff, crossing into the adjoining property. The wind had fallen; the
waves, much subdued, broke rhythmically against the rocks; during the
night a new mantle of snow had been spread, and the clouds were still low
and menacing. As I strolled I became aware of a motionless figure ahead
of me,--one that seemed oddly familiar; the set of the shabby overcoat on
the stooping shoulders, the unconscious pose contributed to a certain
sharpness of individuality; in the act of challenging my memory, I
halted. The man was gazing at the seascape, and his very absorption gave
me a sudden and unfamiliar thrill. The word absorption precisely
expresses my meaning, for he seemed indeed to have become a part of his
surroundings,--an harmonious part. Presently he swung about and looked at
me as though he had expected to find me there--and greeted me by name.

"Krebs!" I exclaimed.

He smiled, and flung out his arm, indicating the scene. His eyes at that
moment seemed to reflect the sea,--they made the gaunt face suddenly
beautiful.

"This reminds me of a Japanese print," he said.

The words, or the tone in which he spoke, curiously transformed the
picture. It was as if I now beheld it, anew, through his vision: the grey
water stretching eastward to melt into the grey sky, the massed, black
trees on the hillside, powdered with white, the snow in rounded,
fantastic patches on the huge boulders at the foot of the cliff. Krebs
did not seem like a stranger, but like one whom I had known always,--one
who stood in a peculiar relationship between me and something greater I
could not define. The impression was fleeting, but real.... I remember
wondering how he could have known anything about Japanese prints.

"I didn't think you were still in this part of the country," I remarked
awkwardly.

"I'm a reporter on a Boston newspaper, and I've been sent up here to
interview old Mr. Dome, who lives in that house," and he pointed to a
roof above the trees. "There is a rumour, which I hope to verify, that he
has just given a hundred thousand dollars to the University."

"And--won't he see you?"

"At present he's taking a nap," said Krebs. "He comes here occasionally
for a rest."

"Do you like interviewing?" I asked.

He smiled again.

"Well, I see a good many different kinds of people, and that's
interesting."

"But--being a reporter?" I persisted.

This continued patronage was not a conscious expression of superiority on
my part, but he did not seem to resent it. He had aroused my curiosity.

"I'm going into the law," he said.

The quiet confidence with which he spoke aroused, suddenly, a twinge of
antagonism. He had every right to go into the law, of course, and yet!...
my query would have made it evident to me, had I been introspective in
those days, that the germ of the ideal of the profession, implanted by
Mr. Watling, was expanding. Were not influential friends necessary for
the proper kind of career? and where were Krebs's? In spite of the
history of Daniel Webster and a long line of American tradition, I felt
an incongruity in my classmate's aspiration. And as he stood there, gaunt
and undoubtedly hungry, his eyes kindling, I must vaguely have classed
him with the revolutionaries of all the ages; must have felt in him,
instinctively, a menace to the stability of that Order with which I had
thrown my fortunes. And yet there were comparatively poor men in the Law
School itself who had not made me feel this way! He had impressed me
against my will, taken me by surprise, commiseration had been mingled
with other feelings that sprang out of the memory of the night I had
called on him, when he had been sick. Now I resented something in him
which Tom Peters had called "crust."

"The law!" I repeated. "Why?"

"Well," he said, "even when I was a boy, working at odd jobs, I used to
think if I could ever be a lawyer I should have reached the top notch of
human dignity."

Once more his smile disarmed me.

"And now" I asked curiously.

"You see, it was an ideal with me, I suppose. My father was responsible
for that. He had the German temperament of '48, and when he fled to this
country, he expected to find Utopia." The smile emerged again, like the
sun shining through clouds, while fascination and antagonism again
struggled within me. "And then came frightful troubles. For years he
could get only enough work to keep him and my mother alive, but he never
lost his faith in America. 'It is man,' he would say, 'man has to grow up
to it--to liberty.' Without the struggle, liberty would be worth nothing.
And he used to tell me that we must all do our part, we who had come
here, and not expect everything to be done for us. He had made that
mistake. If things were bad, why, put a shoulder to the wheel and help to
make them better.

"That helped me," he continued, after a moment's pause. "For I've seen a
good many things, especially since I've been working for a newspaper.
I've seen, again and again, the power of the law turned against those
whom it was intended to protect, I've seen lawyers who care a great deal
more about winning cases than they do about justice, who prostitute their
profession to profit making,--profit making for themselves and others.
And they are often the respectable lawyers, too, men of high standing,
whom you would not think would do such things. They are on the side of
the powerful, and the best of them are all retained by rich men and
corporations. And what is the result? One of the worst evils, I think,
that can befall a country. The poor man goes less and less to the courts.
He is getting bitter, which is bad, which is dangerous. But men won't see
it."

It was on my tongue to refute this, to say that everybody had a chance. I
could indeed recall many arguments that had been drilled into me;
quotations, even, from court decisions. But something prevented me from
doing this,--something in his manner, which was neither argumentative nor
combative.

"That's why I am going into the law," he added. "And I intend to stay in
it if I can keep alive. It's a great chance for me--for all of us. Aren't
you at the Law School?"

I nodded. Once more, as his earnest glance fell upon me, came that
suggestion of a subtle, inexplicable link between us; but before I could
reply, steps were heard behind us, and an elderly servant, bareheaded,
was seen coming down the path.

"Are you the reporter?" he demanded somewhat impatiently of Krebs. "If
you want to see Mr. Dome, you'd better come right away. He's going out
for a drive."

For a while, after he had shaken my hand and departed, I stood in the
snow, looking after him....




VIII

On the Wednesday of that same week the news of my father's sudden and
serious illness came to me in a telegram, and by the time I arrived at
home it was too late to see him again alive. It was my first experience
with death, and what perplexed me continually during the following days
was an inability to feel the loss more deeply. When a child, I had been
easily shaken by the spectacle of sorrow. Had I, during recent years, as
a result of a discovery that emotions arising from human relationships
lead to discomfort and suffering, deliberately been forming a shell,
until now I was incapable of natural feelings? Of late I had seemed
closer to my father, and his letters, though formal, had given evidence
of his affection; in his repressed fashion he had made it clear that he
looked forward to the time when I was to practise with him. Why was it
then, as I gazed upon his fine features in death, that I experienced no
intensity of sorrow? What was it in me that would not break down? He
seemed worn and tired, yet I had never thought of him as weary, never
attributed to him any yearning. And now he was released.

I wondered what had been his private thoughts about himself, his private
opinions about life; and when I reflect now upon my lack of real
knowledge at five and twenty, I am amazed at the futility of an expensive
education which had failed to impress upon me the simple, basic fact that
life was struggle; that either development or retrogression is the fate
of all men, that characters are never completely made, but always in the
making. I had merely a disconcerting glimpse of this truth, with no
powers of formulation, as I sat beside my mother in the bedroom, where
every article evoked some childhood scene. Here was the dent in the
walnut foot-board of the bed made, one wintry day, by the impact of my
box of blocks; the big arm-chair, covered with I know not what stiff
embroidery, which had served on countless occasions as a chariot driven
to victory. I even remembered how every Wednesday morning I had been
banished from the room, which had been so large a part of my childhood
universe, when Ella, the housemaid, had flung open all its windows and
crowded its furniture into the hall.

The thought of my wanderings since then became poignant, almost
terrifying. The room, with all its memories, was unchanged. How safe I
had been within its walls! Why could I not have been, content with what
it represented? of tradition, of custom,--of religion? And what was it
within me that had lured me away from these?

I was miserable, indeed, but my misery was not of the kind I thought it
ought to be. At moments, when my mother relapsed into weeping, I glanced
at her almost in wonder. Such sorrow as hers was incomprehensible. Once
she surprised and discomfited me by lifting her head and gazing fixedly
at me through her tears.

I recall certain impressions of the funeral. There, among the
pall-bearers, was my Cousin Robert Breck, tears in the furrows of his
cheeks. Had he loved my father more than I? The sight of his grief moved
me suddenly and strongly.... It seemed an age since I had worked in his
store, and yet here he was still, coming to town every morning and
returning every evening to Claremore, loving his friends, and mourning
them one by one. Was this, the spectacle presented by my Cousin Robert,
the reward of earthly existence? Were there no other prizes save those
known as greatness of character and depth of human affections? Cousin
Robert looked worn and old. The other pall-bearers, men of weight, of
long standing in the community, were aged, too; Mr. Blackwood, and Mr.
Jules Hollister; and out of place, somehow, in this new church building.
It came to me abruptly that the old order was gone,--had slipped away
during my absence. The church I had known in boyhood had been torn down
to make room for a business building on Boyne Street; the edifice in
which I sat was expensive, gave forth no distinctive note; seemingly
transitory with its hybrid interior, its shiny oak and blue and red
organ-pipes, betokening a compromised and weakened faith. Nondescript,
likewise, seemed the new minister, Mr. Randlett, as he prayed unctuously
in front of the flowers massed on the platform. I vaguely resented his
laudatory references to my father.

The old church, with its severity, had actually stood for something. It
was the Westminster Catechism in wood and stone, and Dr. Pound had been
the human incarnation of that catechism, the fit representative of a
wrathful God, a militant shepherd who had guarded with vigilance his
respectable flock, who had protested vehemently against the sins of the
world by which they were surrounded, against the "dogs, and sorcerers,
and whoremongers, and murderers and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie." How Dr. Pound would have put the emphasis of the
Everlasting into those words!

Against what was Mr. Randlett protesting?

My glance wandered to the pews which held the committees from various
organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Bar Association,
which had come to do honour to my father. And there, differentiated from
the others, I saw the spruce, alert figure of Theodore Watling. He, too,
represented a new type and a new note,--this time a forceful note, a
secular note that had not belonged to the old church, and seemed likewise
anomalistic in the new....

During the long, slow journey in the carriage to the cemetery my mother
did not raise her veil. It was not until she reached out and seized my
hand, convulsively, that I realized she was still a part of my existence.

In the days that followed I became aware that my father's death had
removed a restrictive element, that I was free now to take without
criticism or opposition whatever course in life I might desire. It may be
that I had apprehended even then that his professional ideals would not
have coincided with my own. Mingled with this sense of emancipation was a
curious feeling of regret, of mourning for something I had never valued,
something fixed and dependable for which he had stood, a rock and a
refuge of which I had never availed myself!... When his will was opened
it was found that the property had been left to my mother during her
lifetime. It was larger than I had thought, four hundred thousand
dollars, shrewdly invested, for the most part, in city real estate. My
father had been very secretive as to money matters, and my mother had no
interest in them.

Three or four days later I received in the mail a typewritten letter
signed by Theodore Watling, expressing sympathy for my bereavement, and
asking me to drop in on him, down town, before I should leave the city.
In contrast to the somewhat dingy offices where my father had practised
in the Blackwood Block, the quarters of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon on the
eighth floor of the new Durrett Building were modern to a degree,
finished in oak and floored with marble, with a railed-off space where
young women with nimble fingers played ceaselessly on typewriters. One of
them informed me that Mr. Watling was busy, but on reading my card added
that she would take it in. Meanwhile, in company with two others who may
have been clients, I waited. This, then, was what it meant to be a lawyer
of importance, to have, like a Chesterfield, an ante-room where clients
cooled their heels and awaited one's pleasure...

The young woman returned, and led me through a corridor to a door on
which was painted Mr. Wailing.

I recall him tilted back in his chair in a debonnair manner beside his
polished desk, the hint of a smile on his lips; and leaning close to him
was a yellow, owl-like person whose eyes, as they turned to me, gave the
impression of having stared for years into hard, artificial lights. Mr.
Watling rose briskly.

"How are you, Hugh?" he said, the warmth of his greeting tempered by just
the note of condolence suitable to my black clothes. "I'm glad you came.
I wanted to see you before you went back to Cambridge. I must introduce
you to Judge Bering, of our State Supreme Court. Judge, this is Mr.
Paret's boy."

The judge looked me over with a certain slow impressiveness, and gave me
a soft and fleshy hand.

"Glad to know you, Mr. Paret. Your father was a great loss to our bar,"
he declared.

I detected in his tone and manner a slight reservation that could not be
called precisely judicial dignity; it was as though, in these few words,
he had gone to the limit of self-commitment with a stranger--a striking
contrast to the confidential attitude towards Mr. Watling in which I had
surprised him.

"Judge," said Mr. Watling, sitting down again, "do you recall that time
we all went up to Mr. Paret's house and tried to induce him to run for
mayor? That was before you went on the lower bench."

The judge nodded gloomily, caressing his watch chain, and suddenly rose
to go.

"That will be all right, then?" Mr. Watling inquired cryptically, with a
smile. The other made a barely perceptible inclination of the head and
departed. Mr. Watling looked at me. "He's one of the best men we have on
the bench to-day," he added. There was a trace of apology in his tone.

He talked a while of my father, to whom, so he said, he had looked up
ever since he had been admitted to the bar.

"It would be a pleasure to me, Hugh, as well as a matter of pride," he
said cordially, but with dignity, "to have Matthew Paret's son in my
office. I suppose you will be wishing to take your mother somewhere this
summer, but if you care to come here in the autumn, you will be welcome.
You will begin, of course, as other young men begin,--as I began. But I
am a believer in blood, and I'll be glad to have you. Mr. Fowndes and Mr.
Ripon feel the same way." He escorted me to the door himself.

Everywhere I went during that brief visit home I was struck by change, by
the crumbling and decay of institutions that once had held me in thrall,
by the superimposition of a new order that as yet had assumed no definite
character. Some of the old landmarks had disappeared; there were new and
aggressive office buildings, new and aggressive residences, new and
aggressive citizens who lived in them, and of whom my mother spoke with
gentle deprecation. Even Claremore, that paradise of my childhood, had
grown shrivelled and shabby, even tawdry, I thought, when we went out
there one Sunday afternoon; all that once represented the magic word
"country" had vanished. The old flat piano, made in Philadelphia ages
ago, the horsehair chairs and sofa had been replaced by a nondescript
furniture of the sort displayed behind plate-glass windows of the city's
stores: rocking-chairs on stands, upholstered in clashing colours, their
coiled springs only half hidden by tassels, and "ornamental" electric
fixtures, instead of the polished coal-oil lamps. Cousin Jenny had grown
white, Willie was a staid bachelor, Helen an old maid, while Mary had
married a tall, anaemic young man with glasses, Walter Kinley, whom
Cousin Robert had taken into the store. As I contemplated the Brecks odd
questions suggested themselves: did honesty and warm-heartedness
necessarily accompany a lack of artistic taste? and was virtue its own
reward, after all? They drew my mother into the house, took off her
wraps, set her down in the most comfortable rocker, and insisted on
making her a cup of tea.

I was touched. I loved them still, and yet I was conscious of
reservations concerning them. They, too, seemed a little on the defensive
with me, and once in a while Mary was caustic in her remarks.

"I guess nothing but New York will be good enough for Hugh now. He'll be
taking Cousin Sarah away from us."

"Not at all, my dear," said my mother, gently, "he's going into Mr.
Watling's office next autumn."

"Theodore Watling?" demanded Cousin Robert, pausing in his carving.

"Yes, Robert. Mr. Watling has been good enough to say that he would like
to have Hugh. Is there anything--?"

"Oh, I'm out of date, Sarah," Cousin Robert replied, vigorously severing
the leg of the turkey. "These modern lawyers are too smart for me.
Watling's no worse than the others, I suppose,--only he's got more
ability."

"I've never heard anything against him," said my mother in a pained
voice. "Only the other day McAlery Willett congratulated me that Hugh was
going to be with him."

"You mustn't mind Robert, Sarah," put in Cousin Jenny,--a remark
reminiscent of other days.

"Dad has a notion that his generation is the only honest one," said
Helen, laughingly, as she passed a plate.

I had gained a sense of superiority, and I was quite indifferent to
Cousin Robert's opinion of Mr. Watling, of modern lawyers in general.
More than once a wave of self-congratulation surged through me that I had
possessed the foresight and initiative to get out of the wholesale
grocery business while there was yet time. I looked at Willie, still
freckled, still literal, still a plodder, at Walter Kinley, and I thought
of the drabness of their lives; at Cousin Robert himself as he sat
smoking his cigar in the bay-window on that dark February day, and
suddenly I pitied him. The suspicion struck me that he had not prospered
of late, and this deepened to a conviction as he talked.

"The Republican Party is going to the dogs," he asserted.

"It used to be an honourable party, but now it is no better than the
other. Politics are only conducted, now, for the purpose of making
unscrupulous men rich, sir. For years I furnished this city with good
groceries, if I do say it myself. I took a pride in the fact that the
inmates of the hospitals, yes, and the dependent poor in the city's
institutions, should have honest food. You can get anything out of the
city if you are willing to pay the politicians for it. I lost my city
contracts. Why? Because I refused to deal with scoundrels. Weill and
Company and other unscrupulous upstarts are willing to do so, and poison
the poor and the sick with adulterated groceries! The first thing I knew
was that the city auditor was holding back my bills for supplies, and
paying Weill's. That's what politics and business, yes, sir, and the law,
have come to in these days. If a man wants to succeed, he must turn into
a rascal."

I was not shocked, but I was silent, uncomfortable, wishing that it were
time to take the train back to the city. Cousin Robert's face was more
worn than I had thought, and I contrasted him inevitably with the
forceful person who used to stand, in his worn alpaca coat, on the
pavement in front of his store, greeting with clear-eyed content his
fellow merchants of the city. Willie Breck, too, was silent, and Walter
Kinley took off his glasses and wiped them. In the meanwhile Helen had
left the group in which my mother sat, and, approaching us, laid her
hands on her father's shoulders.

"Now, dad," she said, in affectionate remonstrance, "you're excited about
politics again, and you know it isn't good for you. And besides, they're
not worth it."

"You're right, Helen," he replied. Under the pressure of her hands he
made a strong effort to control himself, and turned to address my mother
across the room.

"I'm getting to be a crotchety old man," he said. "It's a good thing I
have a daughter to remind me of it."

"It is a good thing, Robert," said my mother.

During the rest of our visit he seemed to have recovered something of his
former spirits and poise, taking refuge in the past. They talked of their
own youth, of families whose houses had been landmarks on the Second
Bank.

"I'm worried about your Cousin Robert, Hugh," my mother confided to me,
when we were at length seated in the train. "I've heard rumours that
things are not so well at the store as they might be." We looked out at
the winter landscape, so different from that one which had thrilled every
fibre of my being in the days when the railroad on which we travelled had
been a winding narrow gauge. The orchards--those that remained--were
bare; stubble pricked the frozen ground where tassels had once waved in
the hot, summer wind. We flew by row after row of ginger-bread, suburban
houses built on "villa plots," and I read in large letters on a hideous
sign-board, "Woodbine Park."

"Hugh, have you ever heard anything against--Mr. Watling?"

"No, mother," I said. "So far as I knew, he is very much looked up to by
lawyers and business men. He is counsel, I believe, for Mr. Blackwood's
street car line on Boyne Street. And I told you, I believe, that I met
him once at Mr. Kyme's."

"Poor Robert!" she sighed. "I suppose business trouble does make one
bitter,--I've seen it so often. But I never imagined that it would
overtake Robert, and at his time of life! It is an old and respected
firm, and we have always had a pride in it." ...

That night, when I was going to bed, it was evident that the subject was
still in her mind. She clung to my hand a moment.

"I, too, am afraid of the new, Hugh," she said, a little tremulously. "We
all grow so, as age comes on."

"But you are not old, mother," I protested.

"I have a feeling, since your father has gone, that I have lived my life,
my dear, though I'd like to stay long enough to see you happily
married--to have grandchildren. I was not young when you were born." And
she added, after a little while, "I know nothing about business affairs,
and now--now that your father is no longer here, sometimes I'm afraid--"

"Afraid of what, mother?"

She tried to smile at me through her tears. We were in the old
sitting-room, surrounded by the books.

"I know it's foolish, and it isn't that I don't trust you. I know that
the son of your father couldn't do anything that was not honourable. And
yet I am afraid of what the world is becoming. The city is growing so
fast, and so many new people are coming in. Things are not the same.
Robert is right, there. And I have heard your father say the same thing.
Hugh, promise me that you will try to remember always what he was, and
what he would wish you to be!"

"I will, mother," I answered. "But I think you would find that Cousin
Robert exaggerates a little, makes things seem worse than they really
are. Customs change, you know. And politics were never well--Sunday
schools." I, too, smiled a little. "Father knew that. And he would never
take an active part in them."

"He was too fine!" she exclaimed.

"And now," I continued, "Cousin Robert has happened to come in contact
with them through business. That is what has made the difference in him.
Before, he always knew they were corrupt, but he rarely thought about
them."

"Hugh," she said suddenly, after a pause, "you must remember one
thing,--that you can afford to be independent. I thank God that your
father has provided for that!"

I was duly admitted, the next autumn, to the bar of my own state, and was
assigned to a desk in the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Larry
Weed was my immediate senior among the apprentices, and Larry was a
hero-worshipper. I can see him now. He suggested a bullfrog as he sat in
the little room we shared in common, his arms akimbo over a law book, his
little legs doubled under him, his round, eyes fixed expectantly on the
doorway. And even if I had not been aware of my good fortune in being
connected with such a firm as Theodore Watling's, Larry would shortly
have brought it home to me. During those weeks when I was making my first
desperate attempts at briefing up the law I was sometimes interrupted by
his exclamations when certain figures went by in the corridor.

"Say, Hugh, do you know who that was?"

"No."

"Miller Gorse."

"Who's he?"

"Do you mean to say you never heard of Miller Gorse?"

"I've been away a long time," I would answer apologetically. A person of
some importance among my contemporaries at Harvard, I had looked forward
to a residence in my native city with the complacency of one who has seen
something of the world,--only to find that I was the least in the new
kingdom. And it was a kingdom. Larry opened up to me something of the
significance and extent of it, something of the identity of the men who
controlled it.

"Miller Gorse," he said impressively, "is the counsel for the railroad."

"What railroad? You mean the--" I was adding, when he interrupted me
pityingly.

"After you've been here a while you'll find out there's only one railroad
in this state, so far as politics are concerned. The Ashuela and
Northern, the Lake Shore and the others don't count."

I refrained from asking any more questions at that time, but afterwards I
always thought of the Railroad as spelled with a capital.

"Miller Gorse isn't forty yet," Larry told me on another occasion.
"That's doing pretty well for a man who comes near running this state."

For the sake of acquiring knowledge, I endured Mr. Weed's patronage. I
inquired how Mr. Gorse ran the state.

"Oh, you'll find out soon enough," he assured me.

"But Mr. Barbour's president of the Railroad."

"Sure. Once in a while they take something up to him, but as a rule he
leaves things to Gorse."

Whereupon I resolved to have a good look at Mr. Gorse at the first
opportunity. One day Mr. Watling sent out for some papers.

"He's in there now;" said Larry. "You take 'em."

"In there" meant Mr. Watling's sanctum. And in there he was. I had only a
glance at the great man, for, with a kindly but preoccupied "Thank you,
Hugh," Mr. Watling took the papers and dismissed me. Heaviness, blackness
and impassivity,--these were the impressions of Mr. Gorse which I carried
away from that first meeting. The very solidity of his flesh seemed to
suggest the solidity of his position. Such, say the psychologists, is the
effect of prestige.

I remember well an old-fashioned picture puzzle in one of my boyhood
books. The scene depicted was to all appearances a sylvan, peaceful one,
with two happy lovers seated on a log beside a brook; but presently, as
one gazed at the picture, the head of an animal stood forth among the
branches, and then the body; more animals began to appear, bit by bit; a
tiger, a bear, a lion, a jackal, a fox, until at last, whenever I looked
at the page, I did not see the sylvan scene at all, but only the
predatory beasts of the forest. So, one by one, the figures of the real
rulers of the city superimposed themselves for me upon the simple and
democratic design of Mayor, Council, Board of Aldermen, Police Force,
etc., that filled the eye of a naive and trusting electorate which fondly
imagined that it had something to say in government. Miller Gorse was one
of these rulers behind the screen, and Adolf Scherer, of the Boyne Iron
Works, another; there was Leonard Dickinson of the Corn National Bank;
Frederick Grierson, becoming wealthy in city real estate; Judah B.
Tallant, who, though outlawed socially, was deferred to as the owner of
the Morning Era; and even Ralph Hambleton, rapidly superseding the
elderly and conservative Mr. Lord, who had hitherto managed the great
Hambleton estate. Ralph seemed to have become, in a somewhat gnostic
manner, a full-fledged financier. Not having studied law, he had been
home for four years when I became a legal fledgling, and during the early
days of my apprenticeship I was beholden to him for many "eye openers"
concerning the conduct of great affairs. I remember him sauntering into
my room one morning when Larry Weed had gone out on an errand.

"Hello, Hughie," he said, with his air of having nothing to do. "Grinding
it out? Where's Watling?"

"Isn't he in his office?"

"No."

"Well, what can we do for you?" I asked.

Ralph grinned.

"Perhaps I'll tell you when you're a little older. You're too young." And
he sank down into Larry Weed's chair, his long legs protruding on the
other side of the table. "It's a matter of taxes. Some time ago I found
out that Dickinson and Tallant and others I could mention were paying a
good deal less on their city property than we are. We don't propose to do
it any more--that's all."

"How can Mr. Watling help you?" I inquired.

"Well, I don't mind giving you a few tips about your profession, Hughie.
I'm going to get Watling to fix it up with the City Hall gang. Old Lord
doesn't like it, I'll admit, and when I told him we had been contributing
to the city long enough, that I proposed swinging into line with other
property holders, he began to blubber about disgrace and what my
grandfather would say if he were alive. Well, he isn't alive. A good deal
of water has flowed under the bridges since his day. It's a mere matter
of business, of getting your respectable firm to retain a City Hall
attorney to fix it up with the assessor."

"How about the penitentiary?" I ventured, not too seriously.

"I shan't go to the penitentiary, neither will Watling. What I do is to
pay a lawyer's fee. There isn't anything criminal in that, is there?"

For some time after Ralph had departed I sat reflecting upon this new
knowledge, and there came into my mind the bitterness of Cousin Robert
Breck against this City Hall gang, and his remarks about lawyers. I
recalled the tone in which he had referred to Mr. Watling. But Ralph's
philosophy easily triumphed. Why not be practical, and become master of a
situation which one had not made, and could not alter, instead of being
overwhelmed by it? Needless to say, I did not mention the conversation to
Mr. Watling, nor did he dwindle in my estimation. These necessary
transactions did not interfere in any way with his personal
relationships, and his days were filled with kindnesses. And was not Mr.
Ripon, the junior partner, one of the evangelical lights of the
community, conducting advanced Bible classes every week in the Church of
the Redemption?... The unfolding of mysteries kept me alert. And I
understood that, if I was to succeed, certain esoteric knowledge must be
acquired, as it were, unofficially. I kept my eyes and ears open, and
applied myself, with all industry, to the routine tasks with which every
young man in a large legal firm is familiar. I recall distinctly my pride
when, the Board of Aldermen having passed an ordinance lowering the water
rates, I was intrusted with the responsibility of going before the court
in behalf of Mr. Ogilvy's water company, obtaining a temporary
restricting order preventing the ordinance from going at once into
effect. Here was an affair in point. Were it not for lawyers of the
calibre of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon, hard-earned private property would
soon be confiscated by the rapacious horde. Once in a while I was made
aware that Mr. Watling had his eye on me.

"Well, Hugh," he would say, "how are you getting along? That's right,
stick to it, and after a while we'll hand the drudgery over to somebody
else."

He possessed the supreme quality of a leader of men in that he took pains
to inform himself concerning the work of the least of his subordinates;
and he had the gift of putting fire into a young man by a word or a touch
of the hand on the shoulder. It was not difficult for me, therefore, to
comprehend Larry Weed's hero-worship, the loyalty of other members of the
firm or of those occupants of the office whom I have not mentioned. My
first impression of him, which I had got at Jerry Kyme's, deepened as
time went on, and I readily shared the belief of those around me that his
legal talents easily surpassed those of any of his contemporaries. I can
recall, at this time, several noted cases in the city when I sat in court
listening to his arguments with thrills of pride. He made us all feel--no
matter how humble may have been our contributions to the
preparation--that we had a share in his triumphs. We remembered his
manner with judges and juries, and strove to emulate it. He spoke as if
there could be no question as to his being right as to the law and the
facts, and yet, in some subtle way that bated analysis, managed not to
antagonize the court. Victory was in the air in that office. I do not
mean to say there were not defeats; but frequently these defeats, by
resourcefulness, by a never-say-die spirit, by a consummate knowledge,
not only of the law, but of other things at which I have hinted, were
turned into ultimate victories. We fought cases from one court to
another, until our opponents were worn out or the decision was reversed.
We won, and that spirit of winning got into the blood. What was most
impressed on me in those early years, I think, was the discovery that
there was always a path--if one were clever enough to find it--from one
terrace to the next higher. Staying power was the most prized of all the
virtues. One could always, by adroitness, compel a legal opponent to
fight the matter out all over again on new ground, or at least on ground
partially new. If the Court of Appeals should fail one, there was the
Supreme Court; there was the opportunity, also, to shift from the state
to the federal courts; and likewise the much-prized device known as a
change of venue, when a judge was supposed to be "prejudiced."




IX.

As my apprenticeship advanced I grew more and more to the inhabitants of
our city into two kinds, the who were served, and the inefficient, who
were separate efficient, neglected; but the mental process of which the
classification was the result was not so deliberate as may be supposed.
Sometimes, when an important client would get into trouble, the affair
took me into the police court, where I saw the riff-raff of the city
penned up, waiting to have justice doled out to them: weary women who had
spent the night in cells, indifferent now as to the front they presented
to the world, the finery rued that they had tended so carefully to catch
the eyes of men on the darkened streets; brazen young girls, who blazed
forth defiance to all order; derelict men, sodden and hopeless, with
scrubby beards; shifty looking burglars and pickpockets. All these I
beheld, at first with twinges of pity, later to mass them with the ugly
and inevitable with whom society had to deal somehow. Lawyers, after all,
must be practical men. I came to know the justices of these police
courts, as well as other judges. And underlying my acquaintance with all
of them was the knowledge--though not on the threshold of my
consciousness--that they depended for their living, every man of them,
those who were appointed and those who were elected, upon a political
organization which derived its sustenance from the element whence came
our clients. Thus by degrees the sense of belonging to a special
priesthood had grown on me.

I recall an experience with that same Mr. Nathan. Weill, the wholesale
grocer of whose commerce with the City Hall my Cousin Robert Breck had so
bitterly complained. Late one afternoon Mr. Weill's carriage ran over a
child on its way up-town through one of the poorer districts. The
parents, naturally, were frantic, and the coachman was arrested. This was
late in the afternoon, and I was alone in the office when the telephone
rang. Hurrying to the police station, I found Mr. Weill in a state of
excitement and abject fear, for an ugly crowd had gathered outside.

"Could not Mr. Watling or Mr. Fowndes come?" demanded the grocer.

With an inner contempt for the layman's state of mind on such occasions I
assured him of my competency to handle the case. He was impressed, I
think, by the sergeant's deference, who knew what it meant to have such
an office as ours interfere with the affair. I called up the prosecuting
attorney, who sent to Monahan's saloon, close by, and procured a release
for the coachman on his own recognizance, one of many signed in blank and
left there by the justice for privileged cases. The coachman was hustled
out by a back door, and the crowd dispersed.

The next morning, while a score or more of delinquents sat in the anxious
seats, Justice Garry recognized me and gave me precedence. And Mr. Weill,
with a sigh of relief, paid his fine.

"Mr. Paret, is it?" he asked, as we stood together for a moment on the
sidewalk outside the court. "You have managed this well. I will
remember."

He was sued, of course. When he came to the office he insisted on
discussing the case with Mr. Watling, who sent for me.

"That is a bright young man," Mr. Weill declared, shaking my hand. "He
will get on."

"Some day," said Mr. Watling, "he may save you a lot of money, Weill."

"When my friend Mr. Watling is United States Senator,--eh?"

Mr. Watling laughed. "Before that, I hope. I advise you to compromise
this suit, Weill," he added. "How would a thousand dollars strike you?
I've had Paret look up the case, and he tells me the little girl has had
to have an operation."

"A thousand dollars!" cried the grocer. "What right have these people to
let their children play on the streets? It's an outrage."

"Where else have the children to play?" Mr. Watling touched his arm.
"Weill," he said gently, "suppose it had been your little girl?" The
grocer pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his bald forehead. But he
rallied a little.

"You fight these damage cases for the street railroads all through the
courts."

"Yes," Mr. Watling agreed, "but there a principle is involved. If the
railroads once got into the way of paying damages for every careless
employee, they would soon be bankrupt through blackmail. But here you
have a child whose father is a poor janitor and can't afford sickness.
And your coachman, I imagine, will be more particular in the future."

In the end Mr. Weill made out a cheque and departed in a good humour,
convinced that he was well out of the matter. Here was one of many
instances I could cite of Mr. Watling's tenderness of heart. I felt,
moreover, as if he had done me a personal favour, since it was I who had
recommended the compromise. For I had been to the hospital and had seen
the child on the cot,--a dark little thing, lying still in her pain, with
the bewildered look of a wounded animal....

Not long after this incident of Mr. Weill's damage suit I obtained a more
or less definite promotion by the departure of Larry Weed. He had
suddenly developed a weakness of the lungs. Mr. Watling got him a place
in Denver, and paid his expenses west.

The first six or seven years I spent in the office of Wading, Fowndes and
Ripon were of importance to my future career, but there is little to
relate of them. I was absorbed not only in learning law, but in acquiring
that esoteric knowledge at which I have hinted--not to be had from my
seniors and which I was convinced was indispensable to a successful and
lucrative practice. My former comparison of the organization of our city
to a picture puzzle wherein the dominating figures become visible only
after long study is rather inadequate. A better analogy would be the
human anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and
industrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall
politicians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law,
politics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous system
too complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hard
and often late, I still found time for convivialities, for social
gaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losing
zest for the companionship of my former intimates. My mind was becoming
polarized by the contemplation of one object, success, and to it human
ties were unconsciously being sacrificed.

Tom Peters began to feel this, even at a time when I believed myself
still to be genuinely fond of him. Considering our respective
temperaments in youth, it is curious that he should have been the first
to fall in love and marry. One day he astonished me by announcing his
engagement to Susan Blackwood.

"That ends the liquor, Hughie," he told me, beamingly. "I promised her
I'd eliminate it."

He did eliminate it, save for mild relapses on festive occasions. A more
seemingly incongruous marriage could scarcely be imagined, and yet it was
a success from the start. From a slim, silent, self-willed girl Susan had
grown up into a tall, rather rawboned and energetic young woman. She was
what we called in those days "intellectual," and had gone in for
kindergartens, and after her marriage she turned out to be excessively
domestic; practising her theories, with entire success, upon a family
that showed a tendency to increase at an alarming rate. Tom, needless to
say, did not become intellectual. He settled down--prematurely, I
thought--into what is known as a family man, curiously content with the
income he derived from the commission business and with life in general;
and he developed a somewhat critical view of the tendencies of the
civilization by which he was surrounded. Susan held it also, but she said
less about it. In the comfortable but unpretentious house they rented on
Cedar Street we had many discussions, after the babies had been put to
bed and the door of the living-room closed, in order that our voices
might not reach the nursery. Perry Blackwood, now Tom's brother-in-law,
was often there. He, too, had lapsed into what I thought was an odd
conservatism. Old Josiah, his father, being dead, he occupied himself
mainly with looking after certain family interests, among which was the
Boyne Street car line. Among "business men" he was already getting the
reputation of being a little difficult to deal with. I was often the
subject of their banter, and presently I began to suspect that they
regarded my career and beliefs with some concern. This gave me no
uneasiness, though at limes I lost my temper. I realized their affection
for me; but privately I regarded them as lacking in ambition, in force,
in the fighting qualities necessary for achievement in this modern age.
Perhaps, unconsciously, I pitied them a little.

"How is Judah B. to-day, Hughie?" Tom would inquire. "I hear you've put
him up for the Boyne Club, now that Mr. Watling has got him out of that
libel suit."

"Carter Ives is dead," Perry would add, sarcastically, "let bygones be
bygones."

It was well known that Mr. Tallant, in the early days of his newspaper,
had blackmailed Mr. Ives out of some hundred thousand dollars. And that
this, more than any other act, stood in the way, with certain
recalcitrant gentlemen, of his highest ambition, membership in the Boyne.

"The trouble with you fellows is that you refuse to deal with conditions
as you find them," I retorted. "We didn't make them, and we can't change
them. Tallant's a factor in the business life of this city, and he has to
be counted with."

Tom would shake his head exasperatingly.

"Why don't you get after Ralph?" I demanded. "He doesn't antagonize
Tallant, either."

"Ralph's hopeless," said Tom. "He was born a pirate, you weren't, Hughie.
We think there's a chance for his salvation, don't we, Perry?"

I refused to accept the remark as flattering.

Another object of their assaults was Frederick Grierson, who by this time
had emerged from obscurity as a small dealer in real estate into a
manipulator of blocks and corners.

"I suppose you think it's a lawyer's business to demand an ethical bill
of health of every client," I said. "I won't stand up for all of
Tallant's career, of course, but Mr. Wading has a clear right to take his
cases. As for Grierson, it seems to me that's a matter of giving a dog a
bad name. Just because his people weren't known here, and because he has
worked up from small beginnings. To get down to hard-pan, you fellows
don't believe in democracy,--in giving every man a chance to show what's
in him."

"Democracy is good!" exclaimed Perry. "If the kind of thing we're coming
to is democracy, God save the state!"...

On the other hand I found myself drawing closer to Ralph Hambleton,
sometimes present at these debates, as the only one of my boyhood friends
who seemed to be able to "deal with conditions as he found them." Indeed,
he gave one the impression that, if he had had the making of them, he
would not have changed them.

"What the deuce do you expect?" I once heard him inquire with
good-natured contempt. "Business isn't charity, it's war.

"There are certain things," maintained Perry, stoutly, "that gentlemen
won't do."

"Gentlemen!" exclaimed Ralph, stretching his slim six feet two: We were
sitting in the Boyne Club. "It's ungentlemanly to kill, or burn a town or
sink a ship, but we keep armies and navies for the purpose. For a man
with a good mind, Perry, you show a surprising inability to think things,
out to a logical conclusion. What the deuce is competition, when you come
down to it? Christianity? Not by a long shot! If our nations are
slaughtering men and starving populations in other countries,--are
carried on, in fact, for the sake of business, if our churches are filled
with business men and our sky pilots pray for the government, you can't
expect heathen individuals like me to do business on a Christian
basis,--if there is such a thing. You can make rules for croquet, but not
for a game that is based on the natural law of the survival of the
fittest. The darned fools in the legislatures try it occasionally, but we
all know it's a sop to the 'common people.' Ask Hughie here if there ever
was a law put on the statute books that his friend Watling couldn't get
'round'? Why, you've got competition even among the churches. Yours,
where I believe you teach in the Sunday school, would go bankrupt if it
proclaimed real Christianity. And you'll go bankrupt if you practise it,
Perry, my boy. Some early, wide-awake, competitive, red-blooded bird will
relieve you of the Boyne Street car line."

It was one of this same new and "fittest" species who had already
relieved poor Mr. McAlery Willett of his fortune. Mr. Willett was a
trusting soul who had never known how to take care of himself or his
money, people said, and now that he had lost it they blamed him. Some had
been saved enough for him and Nancy to live on in the old house, with
careful economy. It was Nancy who managed the economy, who accomplished
remarkable things with a sum they would have deemed poverty in former
days. Her mother had died while I was at Cambridge. Reverses did not
subdue Mr. Willett's spirits, and the fascination modern "business" had
for him seemed to grow in proportion to the misfortunes it had caused
him. He moved into a tiny office in the Durrett Building, where he
appeared every morning about half-past ten to occupy himself with heaven
knows what short cuts to wealth, with prospectuses of companies in Mexico
or Central America or some other distant place: once, I remember, it was
a tea, company in which he tried to interest his friends, to raise in the
South a product he maintained would surpass Orange Pekoe. In the
afternoon between three and four he would turn up at the Boyne Club, as
well groomed, as spruce as ever, generally with a flower in his
buttonhole. He never forgot that he was a gentleman, and he had a
gentleman's notions of the fitness of things, and it was against his
principles to use, a gentleman's club for the furtherance of his various
enterprises.

"Drop into my office some day, Dickinson," he would say. "I think I've
got something there that might interest you!"

He reminded me, when I met him, that he had always predicted I would get
along in life....

The portrait of Nancy at this period is not so easily drawn. The decline
of the family fortunes seemed to have had as little effect upon her as
upon her father, although their characters differed sharply. Something of
that spontaneity, of that love of life and joy in it she had possessed in
youth she must have inherited from McAlery Willett, but these qualities
had disappeared in her long before the coming of financial reverses. She
was nearing thirty, and in spite of her beauty and the rarer distinction
that can best be described as breeding, she had never married. Men
admired her, but from a distance; she kept them at arm's length, they
said: strangers who visited the city invariably picked her out of an
assembly and asked who she was; one man from New York who came to visit
Ralph and who had been madly in love with her, she had amazed many people
by refusing, spurning all he might have given her. This incident seemed a
refutation of the charge that she was calculating. As might have been
foretold, she had the social gift in a remarkable degree, and in spite of
the limitations of her purse the knack of dressing better than other
women, though at that time the organization of our social life still
remained comparatively simple, the custom of luxurious and expensive
entertainment not having yet set in.

The more I reflect upon those days, the more surprising does it seem that
I was not in love with her. It may be that I was, unconsciously, for she
troubled my thoughts occasionally, and she represented all the qualities
I admired in her sex. The situation that had existed at the time of our
first and only quarrel had been reversed, I was on the highroad to the
worldly success I had then resolved upon, Nancy was poor, and for that
reason, perhaps, prouder than ever. If she was inaccessible to others,
she had the air of being peculiarly inaccessible to me--the more so
because some of the superficial relics of our intimacy remained, or
rather had been restored. Her very manner of camaraderie seemed
paradoxically to increase the distance between us. It piqued me. Had she
given me the least encouragement, I am sure I should have responded; and
I remember that I used occasionally to speculate as to whether she still
cared for me, and took this method of hiding her real feelings. Yet, on
the whole, I felt a certain complacency about it all; I knew that
suffering was disagreeable, I had learned how to avoid it, and I may have
had, deep within me, a feeling that I might marry her after all.
Meanwhile my life was full, and gave promise of becoming even fuller,
more absorbing and exciting in the immediate future.

One of the most fascinating figures, to me, of that Order being woven,
like a cloth of gold, out of our hitherto drab civilization,--an Order
into which I was ready and eager to be initiated,--was that of Adolf
Scherer, the giant German immigrant at the head of the Boyne Iron Works.
His life would easily lend itself to riotous romance. In the old country,
in a valley below the castle perched on the rack above, he had begun life
by tending his father's geese. What a contrast to "Steeltown" with its
smells and sickening summer heat, to the shanty where Mrs. Scherer took
boarders and bent over the wash-tub! She, too, was an immigrant, but
lived to hear her native Wagner from her own box at Covent Garden; and he
to explain, on the deck of an imperial yacht, to the man who might have
been his sovereign certain processes in the manufacture of steel hitherto
untried on that side of the Atlantic. In comparison with Adolf Scherer,
citizen of a once despised democracy, the minor prince in whose dominions
he had once tended geese was of small account indeed!

The Adolf Scherer of that day--though it is not so long ago as time
flies--was even more solid and impressive than the man he afterwards
became, when he reached the dizzier heights from which he delivered to an
eager press opinions on politics and war, eugenics and woman's suffrage
and other subjects that are the despair of specialists. Had he stuck to
steel, he would have remained invulnerable. But even then he was
beginning to abandon the field of production for that of exploitation:
figuratively speaking, he had taken to soap, which with the aid of water
may be blown into beautiful, iridescent bubbles to charm the eye. Much
good soap, apparently, has gone that way, never to be recovered.
Everybody who was anybody began to blow bubbles about that time, and the
bigger the bubble the greater its attraction for investors of hard-earned
savings. Outside of this love for financial iridescence, let it be
called, Mr. Scherer seemed to care little then for glitter of any sort.
Shortly after his elevation to the presidency of the Boyne Iron Works he
had been elected a member of the Boyne Club,--an honour of which, some
thought, he should have been more sensible; but generally, when in town,
he preferred to lunch at a little German restaurant annexed to a saloon,
where I used often to find him literally towering above the cloth,--for
he was a giant with short legs,--his napkin tucked into his shirt front,
engaged in lively conversation with the ministering Heinrich. The chef at
the club, Mr. Scherer insisted, could produce nothing equal to Heinrich's
sauer-kraut and sausage. My earliest relationship with Mr. Scherer was
that of an errand boy, of bringing to him for his approval papers which
might not be intrusted to a common messenger. His gruffness and brevity
disturbed me more than I cared to confess. I was pretty sure that he eyed
me with the disposition of the self-made to believe that college
educations and good tailors were the heaviest handicaps with which a
young man could be burdened: and I suspected him of an inimical attitude
toward the older families of the city. Certain men possessed his
confidence; and he had built, as it were, a stockade about them, sternly
keeping the rest of the world outside. In Theodore Watling he had a
childlike faith.

Thus I studied him, with a deliberation which it is the purpose of these
chapters to confess, though he little knew that he was being made the
subject of analysis. Nor did I ever venture to talk with him, but held
strictly to my role of errand boy,--even after the conviction came over
me that he was no longer indifferent to my presence. The day arrived,
after some years, when he suddenly thrust toward me a big, hairy hand
that held the document he was examining.

"Who drew this, Mr. Paret!" he demanded.

Mr. Ripon, I told him.

The Boyne Works were buying up coal-mines, and this was a contract
looking to the purchase of one in Putman County, provided, after a
certain period of working, the yield and quality should come up to
specifications. Mr. Scherer requested me to read one of the sections,
which puzzled him. And in explaining it an idea flashed over me.

"Do you mind my making a suggestion, Mr. Scherer?" I ventured.

"What is it?" he asked brusquely.

I showed him how, by the alteration of a few words, the difficulty to
which he had referred could not only be eliminated, but that certain
possible penalties might be evaded, while the apparent meaning of the
section remained unchanged. In other words, it gave the Boyne Iron Works
an advantage that was not contemplated. He seized the paper, stared at
what I had written in pencil on the margin, and then stared at me.
Abruptly, he began to laugh.

"Ask Mr. Wading what he thinks of it?"

"I intended to, provided it had your approval, sir," I replied.

"You have my approval, Mr. Paret," he declared, rather cryptically, and
with the slight German hardening of the v's into which he relapsed at
times. "Bring it to the Works this afternoon."

Mr. Wading agreed to the alteration. He looked at me amusedly.

"Yes, I think that's an improvement, Hugh," he said. I had a feeling that
I had gained ground, and from this time on I thought I detected a change
in his attitude toward me; there could be no doubt about the new attitude
of Mr. Scherer, who would often greet me now with a smile and a joke, and
sometimes went so far as to ask my opinions.... Then, about six months
later, came the famous Ribblevale case that aroused the moral indignation
of so many persons, among whom was Perry Blackwood.

"You know as well as I do, Hugh, how this thing is being manipulated," he
declared at Tom's one Sunday evening; "there was nothing the matter with
the Ribblevale Steel Company--it was as right as rain before Leonard
Dickinson and Grierson and Scherer and that crowd you train with began to
talk it down at the Club. Oh, they're very compassionate. I've heard 'em.
Dickinson, privately, doesn't think much of Ribblevale paper, and Pugh"
(the president of the Ribblevale) "seems worried and looks badly. It's
all very clever, but I'd hate to tell you in plain words what I'd call
it."

"Go ahead," I challenged him audaciously. "You haven't any proof that the
Ribblevale wasn't in trouble."

"I heard Mr. Pugh tell my father the other day it was a d--d outrage. He
couldn't catch up with these rumours, and some of his stockholders were
liquidating."

"You, don't suppose Pugh would want to admit his situation, do you?" I
asked.

"Pugh's a straight man," retorted Perry. "That's more than I can say for
any of the other gang, saving your presence. The unpleasant truth is that
Scherer and the Boyne people want the Ribblevale, and you ought to know
it if you don't." He looked at me very hard through the glasses he had
lately taken to wearing. Tom, who was lounging by the fire, shifted his
position uneasily. I smiled, and took another cigar.

"I believe Ralph is right, Perry, when he calls you a sentimentalist. For
you there's a tragedy behind every ordinary business transaction. The
Ribblevale people are having a hard time to keep their heads above water,
and immediately you smell conspiracy. Dickinson and Scherer have been
talking it down. How about it, Tom?"

But Tom, in these debates, was inclined to be noncommittal, although it
was clear they troubled him.

"Oh, don't ask me, Hughie," he said.

"I suppose I ought to cultivate the scientific point of view, and look
with impartial interest at this industrial cannibalism," returned Perry,
sarcastically. "Eat or be eaten that's what enlightened self-interest has
come to. After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world over
again, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and the
lawyer--how shall I put it?--facilitating the processes of swallowing and
digesting...."

There was no use arguing with Perry when he was in this vein....

Since I am not writing a technical treatise, I need not go into the
details of the Ribblevale suit. Since it to say that the affair, after a
while, came apparently to a deadlock, owing to the impossibility of
getting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which had
been taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own,
remained out of the state also; the ordinary course of summoning him
before a magistrate in another state had naturally been resorted to, but
the desired evidence was not forthcoming.

"The trouble is," Mr. Wading explained to Mr. Scherer, "that there is no
law in the various states with a sufficient penalty attached that will
compel the witness to divulge facts he wishes to conceal."

It was the middle of a February afternoon, and they were seated in deep,
leather chairs in one corner of the reading room of the Boyne Club. They
had the place to themselves. Fowndes was there also, one leg twisted
around the other in familiar fashion, a bored look on his long and sallow
face. Mr. Wading had telephoned to the office for me to bring them some
papers bearing on the case.

"Sit down, Hugh," he said kindly.

"Now we have present a genuine legal mind," said Mr. Scherer, in the
playful manner he had adopted of late, while I grinned appreciatively and
took a chair. Mr. Watling presently suggested kidnapping the Ribblevale
treasurer until he should promise to produce the books as the only way
out of what seemed an impasse. But Mr. Scherer brought down a huge fist
on his knee.

"I tell you it is no joke, Watling, we've got to win that suit," he
asserted.

"That's all very well," replied Mr. Watling. "But we're a respectable
firm, you know. We haven't had to resort to safe-blowing, as yet."

Mr. Scherer shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say it were a matter of
indifference to him what methods were resorted to. Mr. Watling's eyes met
mine; his glance was amused, yet I thought I read in it a query as to the
advisability, in my presence, of going too deeply into the question of
ways and means. I may have been wrong. At any rate, its sudden effect was
to embolden me to give voice to an idea that had begun to simmer in my
mind, that excited me, and yet I had feared to utter it. This look of my
chief's, and the lighter tone the conversation had taken decided me.

"Why wouldn't it be possible to draw up a bill to fit the situation?" I
inquired.

Mr. Wading started.

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly.

All three looked at me. I felt the blood come into my face, but it was
too late to draw back.

"Well--the legislature is in session. And since, as Mr. Watling says,
there is no sufficient penalty in other states to compel the witness to
produce the information desired, why not draw up a bill and--and have it
passed--" I paused for breath--"imposing a sufficient penalty on home
corporations in the event of such evasions. The Ribblevale Steel Company
is a home corporation."

I had shot my bolt.... There followed what was for me an anxious silence,
while the three of them continued to stare at me. Mr. Watling put the
tips of his fingers together, and I became aware that he was not
offended, that he was thinking rapidly.

"By George, why not, Fowndes?" he demanded.

"Well," said Fowndes, "there's an element of risk in such a proceeding I
need not dwell upon."

"Risk!" cried the senior partner vigorously. "There's risk in everything.
They'll howl, of course. But they howl anyway, and nobody ever listens to
them. They'll say it's special legislation, and the Pilot will print
sensational editorials for a few days. But what of it? All of that has
happened before. I tell you, if we can't see those books, we'll lose the
suit. That's in black and white. And, as a matter of justice, we're
entitled to know what we want to know."

"There might be two opinions as to that," observed Fowndes, with his
sardonic smile.

Mr. Watling paid no attention to this remark. He was already deep in
thought. It was characteristic of his mind to leap forward, seize a
suggestion that often appeared chimerical to a man like Fowndes and turn
it into an accomplished Fact. "I believe you've hit it, Hugh," he said.
"We needn't bother about the powers of the courts in other states. We'll
put into this bill an appeal to our court for an order on the clerk to
compel the witness to come before the court and testify, and we'll
provide for a special commissioner to take depositions in the state where
the witness is. If the officers of a home corporation who are outside of
the state refuse to testify, the penalty will be that the ration goes
into the hands of a receiver."

Fowndes whistled.

"That's going some!" he said.

"Well, we've got to go some. How about it, Scherer?"

Even Mr. Scherer's brown eyes were snapping.

"We have got to win that suit, Watling."

We were all excited, even Fowndes, I think, though he remained
expressionless. Ours was the tense excitement of primitive man in chase:
the quarry which had threatened to elude us was again in view, and not
unlikely to fall into our hands. Add to this feeling, on my part, the
thrill that it was I who had put them on the scent. I had all the
sensations of an aspiring young brave who for the first time is admitted
to the councils of the tribe!

"It ought to be a popular bill, too," Mr. Schemer was saying, with a
smile of ironic appreciation at the thought of demagogues advocating it.
"We should have one of Lawler's friends introduce it."

"Oh, we shall have it properly introduced," replied Mr. Wading.

"It may come back at us," suggested Fowndes pessimistically. "The Boyne
Iron Works is a home corporation too, if I am not mistaken."

"The Boyne Iron Works has the firm of Wading, Fowndes and Ripon behind
it," asserted Mr. Scherer, with what struck me as a magnificent faith.

"You mustn't forget Paret," Mr. Watling reminded him, with a wink at me.

We had risen. Mr. Scherer laid a hand on my arm.

"No, no, I do not forget him. He will not permit me to forget him."

A remark, I thought, that betrayed some insight into my character... Mr.
Watling called for pen and paper and made then and there a draft of the
proposed bill, for no time was to be lost. It was dark when we left the
Club, and I recall the elation I felt and strove to conceal as I
accompanied my chief back to the office. The stenographers and clerks
were gone; alone in the library we got down the statutes and set to work.
to perfect the bill from the rough draft, on which Mr. Fowndes had
written his suggestions. I felt that a complete yet subtle change had
come over my relationship with Mr. Watling.

In the midst of our labours he asked me to call up the attorney for the
Railroad. Mr. Gorse was still at his office.

"Hello! Is that you, Miller?" Mr. Watling said. "This is Wading. When can
I see you for a few minutes this evening? Yes, I am leaving for
Washington at nine thirty. Eight o'clock. All right, I'll be there."

It was almost eight before he got the draft finished to his satisfaction,
and I had picked it out on the typewriter. As I handed it to him, my
chief held it a moment, gazing at me with an odd smile.

"You seem to have acquired a good deal of useful knowledge, here and
there, Hugh," he observed.

"I've tried to keep my eyes open, Mr. Watling," I said.

"Well," he said, "there are a great many things a young man practising
law in these days has to learn for himself. And if I hadn't given you
credit for some cleverness, I shouldn't have wanted you here. There's
only one way to look at--at these matters we have been discussing, my
boy, that's the common-sense way, and if a man doesn't get that point of
view by himself, nobody can teach it to him. I needn't enlarge upon it"

"No, sir," I said.

He smiled again, but immediately became serious.

"If Mr. Gorse should approve of this bill, I'm going to send you down to
the capital--to-night. Can you go?"

I nodded.

"I want you to look out for the bill in the legislature. Of course there
won't be much to do, except to stand by, but you will get a better idea
of what goes on down there."

I thanked him, and told him I would do my best.

"I'm sure of that," he replied. "Now it's time to go to see Gorse."

The legal department of the Railroad occupied an entire floor of the Corn
Bank building. I had often been there on various errands, having on
occasions delivered sealed envelopes to Mr. Gorse himself, approaching
him in the ordinary way through a series of offices. But now, following
Mr. Watling through the dimly lighted corridor, we came to a door on
which no name was painted, and which was presently opened by a
stenographer. There was in the proceeding a touch of mystery that revived
keenly my boyish love for romance; brought back the days when I had been,
in turn, Captain Kidd and Ali Baba.

I have never realized more strongly than in that moment the psychological
force of prestige. Little by little, for five years, an estimate of the
extent of Miller Gorse's power had been coming home to me, and his
features stood in my mind for his particular kind of power. He was a
tremendous worker, and often remained in his office until ten and eleven
at night. He dismissed the stenographer by the wave of a hand which
seemed to thrust her bodily out of the room.

"Hello, Miller," said Mr. Watling.

"Hello, Theodore," replied Mr. Gorse.

"This is Paret, of my office."

"I know," said Mr. Gorse, and nodded toward me. I was impressed by the
felicity with which a cartoonist of the Pilot had once caricatured him by
the use of curved lines. The circle of the heavy eyebrows ended at the
wide nostrils; the mouth was a crescent, but bowed downwards; the heavy
shoulders were rounded. Indeed, the only straight line to be discerned
about him was that of his hair, black as bitumen, banged across his
forehead; even his polished porphyry eyes were constructed on some
curvilinear principle, and never seemed to focus. It might be said of Mr.
Gorse that he had an overwhelming impersonality. One could never be quite
sure that one's words reached the mark.

In spite of the intimacy which I knew existed between them, in my
presence at least Mr. Gorse's manner was little different with Mr.
Watling than it was with other men. Mr. Wading did not seem to mind. He
pulled up a chair close to the desk and began, without any preliminaries,
to explain his errand.

"It's about the Ribblevale affair," he said. "You know we have a suit."

Gorse nodded.

"We've got to get at the books, Miller,--that's all there is to it. I
told you so the other day. Well, we've found out a way, I think."

He thrust his hand in his pocket, while the railroad attorney remained
impassive, and drew out the draft of the bill. Mr. Gorse read it, then
read it over again, and laid it down in front of him.

"Well," he said.

"I want to put that through both houses and have the governor's signature
to it by the end of the week."

"It seems a little raw, at first sight, Theodore," said Mr. Gorse, with
the suspicion of a smile.

My chief laughed a little.

"It's not half so raw as some things I might mention, that went through
like greased lightning," he replied. "What can they do? I believe it will
hold water. Tallant's, and most of the other newspapers in the state,
won't print a line about it, and only Socialists and Populists read the
Pilot. They're disgruntled anyway. The point is, there's no other way out
for us. Just think a moment, bearing in mind what I've told you about the
case, and you'll see it."

Mr. Gorse took up the paper again, and read the draft over.

"You know as well as I do, Miller, how dangerous it is to leave this
Ribblevale business at loose ends. The Carlisle steel people and the Lake
Shore road are after the Ribblevale Company, and we can't afford to run
any risk of their getting it. It's logically a part of the Boyne
interests, as Scherer says, and Dickinson is ready with the money for the
reorganization. If the Carlisle people and the Lake Shore get it, the
product will be shipped out by the L and G, and the Railroad will lose.
What would Barbour say?"

Mr. Barbour, as I have perhaps mentioned, was the president of the
Railroad, and had his residence in the other great city of the state. He
was then, I knew, in the West.

"We've got to act now," insisted Mr. Watling. "That's open and shut. If
you have any other plan, I wish you'd trot it out. If not, I want a
letter to Paul Varney and the governor. I'm going to send Paret down with
them on the night train."

It was clear to me then, in the discussion following, that Mr. Watling's
gift of persuasion, though great, was not the determining factor in Mr.
Gorse's decision. He, too, possessed boldness, though he preferred
caution. Nor did the friendship between the two enter into the
transaction. I was impressed more strongly than ever with the fact that a
lawsuit was seldom a mere private affair between two persons or
corporations, but involved a chain of relationships and nine times out of
ten that chain led up to the Railroad, which nearly always was vitally
interested in these legal contests. Half an hour of masterly presentation
of the situation was necessary before Mr. Gorse became convinced that the
introduction of the bill was the only way out for all concerned.

"Well, I guess you're right, Theodore," he said at length. Whereupon he
seized his pen and wrote off two notes with great rapidity. These he
showed to Mr. Watling, who nodded and returned them. They were folded and
sealed, and handed to me. One was addressed to Colonel Paul Varney, and
the other to the Hon. W. W. Trulease, governor of the state.

"You can trust this young man?" demanded Mr. Gorse.

"I think so," replied Mr. Watling, smiling at me. "The bill was his own
idea."

The railroad attorney wheeled about in his chair and looked at me; looked
around me, would better express it, with his indefinite, encompassing yet
inclusive glance. I had riveted his attention. And from henceforth, I
knew, I should enter into his calculations. He had made for me a
compartment in his mind.

"His own idea!" he repeated.

"I merely suggested it," I was putting in, when he cut me short.

"Aren't you the son of Matthew Paret?"

"Yes," I said.

He gave me a queer glance, the significance of which I left untranslated.
My excitement was too great to analyze what he meant by this mention of
my father....

When we reached the sidewalk my chief gave me a few parting instructions.

"I need scarcely say, Hugh," he added, "that your presence in the capital
should not be advertised as connected with this--legislation. They will
probably attribute it to us in the end, but if you're reasonably careful,
they'll never be able to prove it. And there's no use in putting our
cards on the table at the beginning."

"No indeed, sir!" I agreed.

He took my hand and pressed it.

"Good luck," he said. "I know you'll get along all right."






A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill


BOOK 2.



X.

This was not my first visit to the state capital. Indeed, some of that
recondite knowledge, in which I took a pride, had been gained on the
occasions of my previous visits. Rising and dressing early, I beheld out
of the car window the broad, shallow river glinting in the morning
sunlight, the dome of the state house against the blue of the sky. Even
at that early hour groups of the gentlemen who made our laws were
scattered about the lobby of the Potts House, standing or seated within
easy reach of the gaily coloured cuspidors that protected the marble
floor: heavy-jawed workers from the cities mingled with moon-faced but
astute countrymen who manipulated votes amongst farms and villages; fat
or cadaverous, Irish, German or American, all bore in common a certain
indefinable stamp. Having eaten my breakfast in a large dining-room that
resounded with the clatter of dishes, I directed my steps to the
apartment occupied from year to year by Colonel Paul Barney,
generalissimo of the Railroad on the legislative battlefield,--a position
that demanded a certain uniqueness of genius.

"How do you do, sir," he said, in a guarded but courteous tone as he
opened the door. I entered to confront a group of three or four figures,
silent and rather hostile, seated in a haze of tobacco smoke around a
marble-topped table. On it reposed a Bible, attached to a chain.

"You probably don't remember me, Colonel," I said. "My name is Pared, and
I'm associated with the firm of Watling, Fowndes, and Ripon."

His air of marginality,--heightened by a grey moustache and goatee a la
Napoleon Third,--vanished instantly; he became hospitable, ingratiating.

"Why--why certainly, you were down heah with Mr. Fowndes two years ago."
The Colonel spoke with a slight Southern accent. "To be sure, sir. I've
had the honour of meeting your father. Mr. Norris, of North Haven, meet
Mr. Paret--one of our rising lawyers..." I shook hands with them all and
sat down. Opening his long coat, Colonel Varney revealed two rows of
cigars, suggesting cartridges in a belt. These he proceeded to hand out
as he talked. "I'm glad to see you here, Mr. Paret. You must stay awhile,
and become acquainted with the men who--ahem--are shaping the destinies
of a great state. It would give me pleasure to escort you about."

I thanked him. I had learned enough to realize how important are the
amenities in politics and business. The Colonel did most of the
conversing; he could not have filled with efficiency and ease the
important post that was his had it not been for the endless fund of
humorous anecdotes at his disposal. One by one the visitors left, each
assuring me of his personal regard: the Colonel closed the door, softly,
turning the key in the lock; there was a sly look in his black eyes as he
took a chair in proximity to mine.

"Well, Mr. Paret," he asked softly, "what's up?"

Without further ado I handed him Mr. Gorse's letter, and another Mr.
Watling had given me for him, which contained a copy of the bill. He read
these, laid them on the table, glancing at me again, stroking his goatee
the while. He chuckled.

"By gum!" he exclaimed. "I take off my hat to Theodore Watling, always
did." He became contemplative. "It can be done, Mr. Paret, but it's going
to take some careful driving, sir, some reaching out and flicking 'em
when they r'ar and buck. Paul Varney's never been stumped yet. Just as
soon as this is introduced we'll have Gates and Armstrong down
here--they're the Ribblevale attorneys, aren't they? I thought so,--and
the best legal talent they can hire. And they'll round up all the
disgruntled fellows, you know,--that ain't friendly to the Railroad.
We've got to do it quick, Mr. Paret. Gorse gave you a letter to the
Governor, didn't he?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, come along. I'll pass the word around among the boys, just to let
'em know what to expect." His eyes glittered again. "I've been following
this Ribblevale business," he added, "and I understand Leonard
Dickinson's all ready to reorganize that company, when the time comes. He
ought to let me in for a little, on the ground floor."

I did not venture to make any promises for Mr. Dickinson.

"I reckon it's just as well if you were to meet me at the Governor's
office," the Colonel added reflectively, and the hint was not lost on me.
"It's better not to let 'em find out any sooner than they have to where
this thing comes from,--you understand." He looked at his watch. "How
would nine o'clock do? I'll be there, with Trulease, when you come,--by
accident, you understand. Of course he'll be reasonable, but when they
get to be governors they have little notions, you know, and you've got to
indulge 'em, flatter 'em a little. It doesn't hurt, for when they get
their backs up it only makes more trouble."

He put on a soft, black felt hat, and departed noiselessly...

At nine o'clock I arrived at the State House and was ushered into a great
square room overlooking the park. The Governor was seated at a desk under
an elaborate chandelier, and sure enough, Colonel Varney was there beside
him; making barely perceptible signals.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Paret," said Mr.
Trulease. "Your name is a familiar one in your city, sir. And I gather
from your card that you are associated with my good friend, Theodore
Watling."

I acknowledged it. I was not a little impressed by the perfect blend of
cordiality, democratic simplicity and impressiveness Mr. Trulease had
achieved. For he had managed, in the course of a long political career,
to combine in exact proportions these elements which, in the public mind,
should up the personality of a chief executive. Momentarily he overcame
the feeling of superiority with which I had entered his presence;
neutralized the sense I had of being associated now with the higher
powers which had put him where he was. For I knew all about his "record."

"You're acquainted with Colonel Varney?" he inquired.

"Yes, Governor, I've met the Colonel," I said.

"Well, I suppose your firm is getting its share of business these days,"
Mr. Trulease observed. I acknowledged it was, and after discussing for a
few moments the remarkable growth of my native city the Governor tapped
on his desk and inquired what he could do for me. I produced the letter
from the attorney for the Railroad. The Governor read it gravely.

"Ah," he said, "from Mr. Gorse." A copy of the proposed bill was
enclosed, and the Governor read that also, hemmed and hawed a little,
turned and handed it to Colonel Varney, who was sitting with a detached
air, smoking contemplatively, a vacant expression on his face. "What do
you think of this, Colonel?"

Whereupon the Colonel tore himself away from his reflections.

"What's that, Governor?"

"Mr. Gorse has called my attention to what seems to him a flaw in our
statutes, an inability to obtain testimony from corporations whose books
are elsewhere, and who may thus evade, he says, to a certain extent, the
sovereign will of our state."

The Colonel took the paper with an admirable air of surprise, adjusted
his glasses, and became absorbed in reading, clearing his throat once or
twice and emitting an exclamation.

"Well, if you ask me, Governor," he said, at length, "all I can say is
that I am astonished somebody didn't think of this simple remedy before
now. Many times, sir, have I seen justice defeated because we had no such
legislation as this."

He handed it back. The Governor studied it once more, and coughed.

"Does the penalty," he inquired, "seem to you a little severe?"

"No, sir," replied the Colonel, emphatically. "Perhaps it is because I am
anxious, as a citizen, to see an evil abated. I have had an intimate
knowledge of legislation, sir, for more than twenty years in this state,
and in all that time I do not remember to have seen a bill more concisely
drawn, or better calculated to accomplish the ends of justice. Indeed, I
often wondered why this very penalty was not imposed. Foreign magistrates
are notoriously indifferent as to affairs in another state than their
own. Rather than go into the hands of a receiver I venture to say that
hereafter, if this bill is made a law, the necessary testimony will be
forthcoming."

The Governor read the bill through again.

"If it is introduced, Colonel," he said, "the legislature and the people
of the state ought to have it made clear to them that its aim is to
remedy an injustice. A misunderstanding on this point would be
unfortunate."

"Most unfortunate, Governor."

"And of course," added the Governor, now addressing me, "it would be
improper for me to indicate what course I shall pursue in regard to it if
it should come to me for my signature. Yet I may go so far as to say that
the defect it seeks to remedy seems to me a real one. Come in and see me,
Mr. Paret, when you are in town, and give my cordial regards to Mr.
Watling."

So gravely had the farce been carried on that I almost laughed, despite
the fact that the matter in question was a serious one for me. The
Governor held out his hand, and I accepted my dismissal.

I had not gone fifty steps in the corridor before I heard the Colonel's
voice in my ear.

"We had to give him a little rope to go through with his act," he
whispered confidentially. "But he'll sign it all right. And now, if
you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I'll lay a few mines. See you at the hotel,
sir."

Thus he indicated, delicately, that it would be better for me to keep out
of sight. On my way to the Potts House the bizarre elements in the
situation struck me again with considerable force. It seemed so
ridiculous, so puerile to have to go through with this political farce in
order that a natural economic evolution might be achieved. Without doubt
the development of certain industries had reached a stage where the units
in competition had become too small, when a greater concentration of
capital was necessary. Curiously enough, in this mental argument of
justification, I left out all consideration of the size of the probable
profits to Mr. Scherer and his friends. Profits and brains went together.
And, since the Almighty did not limit the latter, why should man attempt
to limit the former? We were playing for high but justifiable stakes; and
I resented the comedy which an hypocritical insistence on the forms of
democracy compelled us to go through. It seemed unworthy of men who
controlled the destinies of state and nation. The point of view, however,
was consoling. As the day wore on I sat in the Colonel's room, admiring
the skill with which he conducted the campaign: a green country lawyer
had been got to introduce the bill, it had been expedited to the
Committee on the Judiciary, which would have an executive session
immediately after dinner. I had ventured to inquire about the hearings.

"There won't be any hearings, sir," the Colonel assured me. "We own that
committee from top to bottom."

Indeed, by four o'clock in the afternoon the message came that the
committee had agreed to recommend the bill.

Shortly after that the first flurry occurred. There came a knock at the
door, followed by the entrance of a stocky Irish American of about forty
years of age, whose black hair was plastered over his forehead. His
sea-blue eyes had a stormy look.

"Hello, Jim," said the Colonel. "I was just wondering where you were."

"Sure, you must have been!" replied the gentleman sarcastically.

But the Colonel's geniality was unruffled.

"Mr. Maker," he said, "you ought to know Mr. Paret. Mr. Maker is the
representative from Ward Five of your city, and we can always count on
him to do the right thing, even if he is a Democrat. How about it, Jim?"

Mr. Maker relighted the stump of his cigar.

"Take a fresh one, Jim," said the Colonel, opening a bureau drawer.

Mr. Maker took two.

"Say, Colonel," he demanded, "what's this bill that went into the
judiciary this morning?"

"What bill?" asked the Colonel, blandly.

"So you think I ain't on?" Mr. Maker inquired.

The Colonel laughed.

"Where have you been, Jim?"

"I've been up to the city, seem' my wife--that's where I've been."

The Colonel smiled, as at a harmless fiction.

"Well, if you weren't here, I don't see what right you've got to
complain. I never leave my good Democratic friends on the outside, do I?"

"That's all right," replied Mr. Maker, doggedly, "I'm on, I'm here now,
and that bill in the Judiciary doesn't pass without me. I guess I can
stop it, too. How about a thousand apiece for five of us boys?"

"You're pretty good at a joke, Jim," remarked the Colonel, stroking his
goatee.

"Maybe you're looking for a little publicity in this here game," retorted
Mr. Maker, darkly. "Say, Colonel, ain't we always treated the Railroad on
the level?"

"Jim," asked the Colonel, gently, "didn't I always take care of you?"

He had laid his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Maker, who appeared slightly
mollified, and glanced at a massive silver watch.

"Well, I'll be dropping in about eight o'clock," was his significant
reply, as he took his leave.

"I guess we'll have to grease the wheels a little," the Colonel remarked
to me, and gazed at the ceiling....

The telegram apropos of the Ward Five leader was by no means the only
cipher message I sent back during my stay. I had not needed to be told
that the matter in hand would cost money, but Mr. Watling's parting
instruction to me had been to take the Colonel's advice as to specific
sums, and obtain confirmation from Fowndes. Nor was it any surprise to me
to find Democrats on intimate terms with such a stout Republican as the
Colonel. Some statesman is said to have declared that he knew neither
Easterners nor Westerners, Northerners nor Southerners, but only
Americans; so Colonel Varney recognized neither Democrats nor
Republicans; in our legislature party divisions were sunk in a greater
loyalty to the Railroad.

At the Colonel's suggestion I had laid in a liberal supply of cigars and
whiskey. The scene in his room that evening suggested a session of a
sublimated grand lodge of some secret order, such were the mysterious
comings and goings, knocks and suspenses. One after another the
"important" men duly appeared and were introduced, the Colonel supplying
the light touch.

"Why, cuss me if it isn't Billy! Mr. Paret, I want you to shake hands
with Mr. Donovan, the floor leader of the 'opposition,' sir. Mr. Donovan
has had the habit of coming up here for a friendly chat ever since he
first came down to the legislature. How long is it, Billy?"

"I guess it's nigh on to fifteen years, Colonel."

"Fifteen years!" echoed the Colonel, "and he's so good a Democrat it
hasn't changed his politics a particle."

Mr. Donovan grinned in appreciation of this thrust, helped himself
liberally from the bottle on the mantel, and took a seat on the bed. We
had a "friendly chat."

Thus I made the acquaintance also of the Hon. Joseph Mecklin, Speaker of
the House, who unbent in the most flattering way on learning my identity.

"Mr. Paret's here on that little matter, representing Watling, Fowndes
and Ripon," the Colonel explained. And it appeared that Mr. Mecklin knew
all about the "little matter," and that the mention of the firm of
Watling, Fowndes and Ripon had a magical effect in these parts. The
President of the Senate, the Hon. Lafe Giddings, went so far as to say
that he hoped before long to see Mr. Watling in Washington. By no means
the least among our callers was the Hon. Fitch Truesdale, editor of the
St. Helen's Messenger, whose editorials were of the trite effectiveness
that is taken widely for wisdom, and were assiduously copied every week
by other state papers and labeled "Mr. Truesdale's Common Sense." At
countless firesides in our state he was known as the spokesman of the
plain man, who was blissfully ignorant of the fact that Mr. Truesdale was
owned body and carcass by Mr. Cyrus Ridden, the principal manufacturer of
St. Helen's and a director in several subsidiary lines of the Railroad.
In the legislature, the Hon. Fitch's function was that of the moderate
counsellor and bellwether for new members, hence nothing could have been
more fitting than the choice of that gentleman for the honour of moving,
on the morrow, that Bill No. 709 ought to pass.

Mr. Truesdale reluctantly consented to accept a small "loan" that would
help to pay the mortgage on his new press....

When the last of the gathering had departed, about one o'clock in the
morning, I had added considerably to my experience, gained a pretty
accurate idea of who was who in the legislature and politics of the
state, and established relationships--as the Colonel reminded me--likely
to prove valuable in the future. It seemed only gracious to congratulate
him on his management of the affair,--so far. He appeared pleased, and
squeezed my hand.

"Well, sir, it did require a little delicacy of touch. And if I do say it
myself, it hasn't been botched," he admitted. "There ain't an outsider,
as far as I can learn, who has caught on to the nigger in the wood-pile.
That's the great thing, to keep 'em ignorant as long as possible. You
understand. They yell bloody murder when they do find out, but generally
it's too late, if a bill's been handled right."

I found myself speculating as to who the "outsiders" might be. No
Ribblevale attorneys were on the spot as yet,--of that I was satisfied.
In the absence of these, who were the opposition? It seemed to me as
though I had interviewed that day every man in the legislature.

I was very tired. But when I got into bed, it was impossible to sleep. My
eyes smarted from the tobacco smoke; and the events of the day, in
disorderly manner, kept running through my head. The tide of my
exhilaration had ebbed, and I found myself struggling against a revulsion
caused, apparently, by the contemplation of Colonel Varney and his
associates; the instruments, in brief, by which our triumph over our
opponents was to be effected. And that same idea which, when launched
amidst the surroundings of the Boyne Club, had seemed so brilliant, now
took on an aspect of tawdriness. Another thought intruded itself,--that
of Mr. Pugh, the president of the Ribblevale Company. My father had known
him, and some years before I had traveled halfway across the state in his
company; his kindliness had impressed me. He had spent a large part of
his business life, I knew, in building up the Ribblevale, and now it was
to be wrested from him; he was to be set aside, perhaps forced to start
all over again when old age was coming on! In vain I accused myself of
sentimentality, and summoned all my arguments to prove that in commerce
efficiency must be the only test. The image of Mr. Pugh would not down.

I got up and turned on the light, and took refuge in a novel I had in my
bag. Presently I grew calmer. I had chosen. I had succeeded. And now that
I had my finger at last on the nerve of power, it was no time to weaken.

It was half-past six when I awoke and went to the window, relieved to
find that the sun had scattered my morbid fancies with the darkness; and
I speculated, as I dressed, whether the thing called conscience were not,
after all, a matter of nerves. I went downstairs through the
tobacco-stale atmosphere of the lobby into the fresh air and sparkly
sunlight of the mild February morning, and leaving the business district
I reached the residence portion of the little town. The front steps of
some of the comfortable houses were being swept by industrious servant
girls, and out of the chimneys twisted, fantastically, rich blue smoke;
the bare branches of the trees were silver-grey against the sky; gaining
at last an old-fashioned, wooden bridge, I stood for awhile gazing at the
river, over the shallows of which the spendthrift hand of nature had
flung a shower of diamonds. And I reflected that the world was for the
strong, for him who dared reach out his hand and take what it offered. It
was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power, the self-expression
conferred by power. A single experience such as I had had the night
before would since to convince any sane man that democracy was a failure,
that the world-old principle of aristocracy would assert itself, that the
attempt of our ancestors to curtail political power had merely resulted
in the growth of another and greater economic power that bade fair to be
limitless. As I walked slowly back into town I felt a reluctance to
return to the noisy hotel, and finding myself in front of a little
restaurant on a side street, I entered it. There was but one other
customer in the place, and he was seated on the far side of the counter,
with a newspaper in front of him; and while I was ordering my breakfast I
was vaguely aware that the newspaper had dropped, and that he was looking
at me. In the slight interval that elapsed before my brain could register
his identity I experienced a distinct shock of resentment; a sense of the
reintrusion of an antagonistic value at a moment when it was most
unwelcome....

The man had risen and was coming around the counter. He was Hermann
Krebs.

"Paret!" I heard him say.

"You here?" I exclaimed.

He did not seem to notice the lack of cordiality in my tone. He appeared
so genuinely glad to see me again that I instantly became rather ashamed
of my ill nature.

"Yes, I'm here--in the legislature," he informed me.

"A Solon!"

"Exactly." He smiled. "And you?" he inquired.

"Oh, I'm only a spectator. Down here for a day or two."

He was still lanky, his clothes gave no evidence of an increased
prosperity, but his complexion was good, his skin had cleared. I was more
than ever baked by a resolute good humour, a simplicity that was not
innocence, a whimsical touch seemingly indicative of a state of mind that
refused to take too seriously certain things on which I set store. What
right had he to be contented with life?

"Well, I too am only a spectator here," he laughed. "I'm neither fish,
flesh nor fowl, nor good red herring."

"You were going into the law, weren't you?" I asked. "I remember you said
something about it that day we met at Beverly Farms."

"Yes, I managed it, after all. Then I went back home to Elkington to try
to make a living."

"But somehow I have never thought of you as being likely to develop
political aspirations, Krebs," I said.

"I should say not! he exclaimed.

"Yet here you are, launched upon a political career! How did it happen?"

"Oh, I'm not worrying about the career," he assured me. "I got here by
accident, and I'm afraid it won't happen again in a hurry. You see, the
hands in those big mills we have in Elkington sprang a surprise on the
machine, and the first thing I knew I was nominated for the legislature.
A committee came to my boarding-house and told me, and there was the
deuce to pay, right off. The Railroad politicians turned in and worked
for the Democratic candidate, of course, and the Hutchinses, who own the
mills, tried through emissaries to intimidate their operatives."

"And then?" I asked.

"Well,--I'm here," he said.

"Wouldn't you be accomplishing more," I inquired, "if you hadn't
antagonized the Hutchinses?"

"It depends upon what you mean by accomplishment," he answered, so mildly
that I felt more rued than ever.

"Well, from what you say, I suppose you're going in for reform, that
these workmen up at Elkington are not satisfied with their conditions and
imagine you can help to better them. Now, provided the conditions are not
as good as they might be, how are you going to improve them if you find
yourself isolated here, as you say?"

"In other words, I should cooperate with Colonel Varney and other
disinterested philanthropists," he supplied, and I realized that I was
losing my temper.

"Well, what can you do?" I inquired defiantly.

"I can find out what's going on," he said. "I have already learned
something, by the way."

"And then?" I asked, wondering whether the implication were personal.

"Then I can help--disseminate the knowledge. I may be wrong, but I have
an idea that when the people of this country learn how their legislatures
are conducted they will want to change things."

"That's right!" echoed the waiter, who had come up with my griddle-cakes.
"And you're the man to tell 'em, Mr. Krebs."

"It will need several thousand of us to do that, I'm afraid," said Krebs,
returning his smile.

My distaste for the situation became more acute, but I felt that I was
thrown on the defensive. I could not retreat, now.

"I think you are wrong," I declared, when the waiter had departed to
attend to another customer. "The people the great majority of them, at
least are indifferent, they don't want to be bothered with politics.
There will always be labour agitation, of course,--the more wages those
fellows get, the more they want. We pay the highest wages in the world
to-day, and the standard of living is higher in this country than
anywhere else. They'd ruin our prosperity, if we'd let 'em."

"How about the thousands of families who don't earn enough to live
decently even in times of prosperity?" inquired Krebs.

"It's hard, I'll admit, but the inefficient and the shiftless are bound
to suffer, no matter what form of government you adopt."

"You talk about standards of living,--I could show you some examples of
standards to make your heart sick," he said. "What you don't realize,
perhaps, is that low standards help to increase the inefficient of whom
you complain."

He smiled rather sadly. "The prosperity you are advocating," he added,
after a moment, "is a mere fiction, it is gorging the few at the expense
of the many. And what is being done in this country is to store up an
explosive gas that some day will blow your superstructure to atoms if you
don't wake up in time."

"Isn't that a rather one-sided view, too?" I suggested.

"I've no doubt it may appear so, but take the proceedings in this
legislature. I've no doubt you know something about them, and that you
would maintain they are justified on account of the indifference of the
public, and of other reasons, but I can cite an instance that is simply
legalized thieving." For the first time a note of indignation crept into
Krebs's voice. "Last night I discovered by a mere accident, in talking to
a man who came in on a late train, that a bill introduced yesterday,
which is being rushed through the Judiciary Committee of the House--an
apparently innocent little bill--will enable, if it becomes a law, the
Boyne Iron Works, of your city, to take possession of the Ribblevale
Steel Company, lock, stock, and barrel. And I am told it was conceived by
a lawyer who claims to be a respectable member of his profession, and who
has extraordinary ability, Theodore Watling."

Krebs put his hand in his pocket and drew out a paper. "Here's a copy of
it,--House Bill 709." His expression suddenly changed. "Perhaps Mr.
Watling is a friend of yours."

"I'm with his firm," I replied....

Krebs's fingers closed over the paper, crumpling it.

"Oh, then, you know about this," he said. He was putting the paper back
into his pocket when I took it from him. But my adroitness, so carefully
schooled, seemed momentarily to have deserted me. What should I say? It
was necessary to decide quickly.

"Don't you take rather a--prejudiced view of this, Krebs?" I said. "Upon
my word, I can't see why you should accept a rumour running around the
lobbies that Mr. Watling drafted this bill for a particular purpose."

He was silent. But his eyes did not leave my face.

"Why should any sensible man, a member of the legislature, take stock in
that kind of gossip?" I insisted. "Why not judge this bill by its face,
without heeding a cock and bull story as to how it may have originated?
It is a good bill, or a bad bill? Let's see what it says."

I read it.

"So far as I can see, it is legislation which we ought to have had long
ago, and tends to compel a publicity in corporation affairs that is much
needed, to put a stop to practices which every decent citizen deplores."

He drew the paper out of my hand.

"You needn't go on, Paret," he told me. "It's no use."

"Well, I'm sorry we don't agree," I said, and got up. I left him twisting
the paper in his fingers.

Beside the clerk's desk in the Potts House, relating one of his
anecdotes, I spied Colonel Varney, and managed presently to draw him
upstairs to his room. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Do you know a man named Krebs in the House?" I said.

"From Elkington? Why, that's the man the Hutchinses let slip
through,--the Hutchinses, who own the mills over there. The agitators put
up a job on them." The Colonel was no longer the genial and social
purveyor of anecdotes. He had become tense, alert, suspicious. "What's he
up to?"

"He's found out about this bill," I replied.

"How?"

"I don't know. But someone told him that it originated in our office, and
that we were going to use it in our suit against the Ribblevale."

I related the circumstances of my running across Krebs, speaking of
having known him at Harvard. Colonel Varney uttered an oath, and strode
across to the window, where he stood looking down into the street from
between the lace curtains.

"We'll have to attend to him, right off," he said.

I was surprised to find myself resenting the imputation, and deeply. "I'm
afraid he's one of those who can't be 'attended to,'" I answered.

"You mean that he's in the employ of the Ribblevale people?" the Colonel
inquired.

"I don't mean anything of the kind," I retorted, with more heat, perhaps,
than I realized. The Colonel looked at me queerly.

"That's all right, Mr. Paret. Of course I don't want to question your
judgment, sir. And you say he's a friend of yours."

"I said I knew him at college."

"But you will pardon me," the Colonel went on, "when I tell you that I've
had some experience with that breed, and I have yet to see one of 'em you
couldn't come to terms with in some way--in some way," he added,
significantly. I did not pause to reflect that the Colonel's attitude,
from his point of view (yes, and from mine,--had I not adopted it?) was
the logical one. In that philosophy every man had his price, or his
weakness. Yet, such is the inconsistency of human nature, I was now
unable to contemplate this attitude with calmness.

"Mr. Krebs is a lawyer. Has he accepted a pass from the Railroad?" I
demanded, knowing the custom of that corporation of conferring this
delicate favour on the promising young talent in my profession.

"I reckon he's never had the chance," said Mr. Varney.

"Well, has he taken a pass as a member of the legislature?"

"No,--I remember looking that up when he first came down. Sent that back,
if I recall the matter correctly." Colonel Varney went to a desk in the
corner of the room, unlocked it, drew forth a black book, and running his
fingers through the pages stopped at the letter K. "Yes, sent back his
legislative pass, but I've known 'em to do that when they were holding
out for something more. There must be somebody who can get close to him."

The Colonel ruminated awhile. Then he strode to the door and called out
to the group of men who were always lounging in the hall.

"Tell Alf Young I want to see him, Fred."

I waited, by no means free from uneasiness and anxiety, from a certain
lack of self-respect that was unfamiliar. Mr. Young, the Colonel
explained, was a legal light in Galesburg, near Elkington,--the Railroad
lawyer there. And when at last Mr. Young appeared he proved to be an oily
gentleman of about forty, inclining to stoutness, with one of those
"blue," shaven faces.

"Want me, Colonel?" he inquired blithely, when the door had closed behind
him; and added obsequiously, when introduced to me, "Glad to meet you,
Mr. Paret. My regards to Mr. Watling, when you go back.

"Alf," demanded the Colonel, "what do you know of this fellow Krebs?"

Mr. Young laughed. Krebs was "nutty," he declared--that was all there was
to it.

"Won't he--listen to reason?"

"It's been tried, Colonel. Say, he wouldn't know a hundred-dollar bill if
you showed him one."

"What does he want?"

"Oh, something,--that's sure, they all want something." Mr. Young
shrugged his shoulder expressively, and by a skillful manipulation of his
lips shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other without
raising his hands. "But it ain't money. I guess he's got a notion that
later on the labour unions'll send him to the United States Senate some
day. He's no slouch, either, when it comes to law. I can tell you that."

"No--no flaw in his--record?" Colonel Varney's agate eyes sought those of
Mr. Young, meaningly.

"That's been tried, too," declared the Galesburg attorney. "Say, you can
believe it or not, but we've never dug anything up so far. He's been too
slick for us, I guess."

"Well," exclaimed the Colonel, at length, "let him squeal and be d--d! He
can't do any more than make a noise. Only I hoped we'd be able to grease
this thing along and slide it through the Senate this afternoon, before
they got wind of it."

"He'll squeal, all right, until you smother him," Mr. Young observed.

"We'll smother him some day!" replied the Colonel, savagely.

Mr. Young laughed.

But as I made my way toward the State House I was conscious of a feeling
of relief. I had no sooner gained a front seat in the gallery of the
House of Representatives when the members rose, the Senate marched
gravely in, the Speaker stopped jesting with the Chaplain, and over the
Chaplain's face came suddenly an agonized expression. Folding his hands
across his stomach he began to call on God with terrific fervour, in an
intense and resounding voice. I was struck suddenly by the irony of it
all. Why have a legislature when Colonel Paul Varney was so efficient!
The legislature was a mere sop to democratic prejudice, to pray over it
heightened the travesty. Suppose there were a God after all? not
necessarily the magnified monarch to whom these pseudo-democrats prayed,
but an Intelligent Force that makes for righteousness. How did He, or It,
like to be trifled with in this way? And, if He existed, would not His
disgust be immeasurable as He contemplated that unctuous figure in the
"Prince Albert" coat, who pretended to represent Him?

As the routine business began I searched for Krebs, to find him presently
at a desk beside a window in the rear of the hall making notes on a
paper; there was, confessedly, little satisfaction in the thought that
the man whose gaunt features I contemplated was merely one of those
impractical idealists who beat themselves to pieces against the forces
that sway the world and must forever sway it. I should be compelled to
admit that he represented something unique in that assembly if he had the
courage to get up and oppose House Bill 709. I watched him narrowly; the
suggestion intruded itself--perhaps he had been "seen," as the Colonel
expressed it. I repudiated it. I grew impatient, feverish; the monotonous
reading of the clerk was interrupted now and then by the sharp tones of
the Speaker assigning his various measures to this or that committee,
"unless objection is offered," while the members moved about and murmured
among themselves; Krebs had stopped making notes; he was looking out of
the window. At last, without any change of emphasis in his droning voice,
the clerk announced the recommendation of the Committee on Judiciary that
House Bill 709 ought to pass.

Down in front a man had risen from his seat--the felicitous Mr.
Truesdale. Glancing around at his fellow-members he then began to explain
in the impressive but conversational tone of one whose counsels are in
the habit of being listened to, that this was merely a little measure to
remedy a flaw in the statutes. Mr. Truesdale believed in corporations
when corporations were good, and this bill was calculated to make them
good, to put an end to jugglery and concealment. Our great state, he
said, should be in the forefront of such wise legislation, which made for
justice and a proper publicity; but the bill in question was of greater
interest to lawyers than to laymen, a committee composed largely of
lawyers had recommended it unanimously, and he was sure that no
opposition would develop in the House. In order not to take up their time
he asked: therefore, that it be immediately put on its second and third
reading and allowed to pass.

He sat down, and I looked at Krebs. Could he, could any man, any lawyer,
have the presumption to question such an obviously desirable measure, to
arraign the united judgment of the committee's legal talent? Such was the
note Mr. Truesdale so admirably struck. As though fascinated, I continued
to gaze at Krebs. I hated him, I desired to see him humiliated, and yet
amazingly I found myself wishing with almost equal vehemence that he
would be true to himself. He was rising,--slowly, timidly, I thought, his
hand clutching his desk lid, his voice sounding wholly inadequate as he
addressed the Speaker. The Speaker hesitated, his tone palpably
supercilious.

"The gentleman from--from Elkington, Mr. Krebs."

There was a craning of necks, a staring, a tittering. I burned with
vicarious shame as Krebs stood there awkwardly, his hand still holding
the desk. There were cries of "louder" when he began; some picked up
their newspapers, while others started conversations. The Speaker rapped
with his gavel, and I failed to hear the opening words. Krebs paused, and
began again. His speech did not, at first, flow easily.

"Mr. Speaker, I rise to protest against this bill, which in my opinion is
not so innocent as the gentleman from St. Helen's would have the House
believe. It is on a par, indeed, with other legislation that in past
years has been engineered through this legislature under the guise of
beneficent law. No, not on a par. It is the most arrogant, the most
monstrous example of special legislation of them all. And while I do not
expect to be able to delay its passage much longer than the time I shall
be on my feet--"

"Then why not sit down?" came a voice, just audible.

As he turned swiftly toward the offender his profile had an eagle-like
effect that startled me, seemingly realizing a new quality in the man. It
was as though he had needed just the stimulus of that interruption to
electrify and transform him. His awkwardness disappeared; and if he was a
little bombastic, a little "young," he spoke with the fire of conviction.

"Because," he cried, "because I should lose my self-respect for life if I
sat here and permitted the political organization of a railroad, the
members of which are here under the guise of servants of the people, to
cow me into silence. And if it be treason to mention the name of that
Railroad in connection with its political tyranny, then make the most of
it." He let go of the desk, and tapped the copy of the bill. "What are
the facts? The Boyne Iron Works, under the presidency of Adolf Scherer,
has been engaged in litigation with the Ribblevale Steel Company for some
years: and this bill is intended to put into the hands of the attorneys
for Mr. Scherer certain information that will enable him to get
possession of the property. Gentlemen, that is what 'legal practice' has
descended to in the hands of respectable lawyers. This device originated
with the resourceful Mr. Theodore Watling, and if it had not had the
approval of Mr. Miller Gorse, it would never have got any farther than
the judiciary committee. It was confided to the skillful care of Colonel
Paul Varney to be steered through this legislature, as hundreds of other
measures have been steered through,--without unnecessary noise. It may be
asked why the Railroad should bother itself by lending its political
organization to private corporations? I will tell you. Because
corporations like the Boyne corporation are a part of a network of
interests, these corporations aid the Railroad to maintain its monopoly,
and in return receive rebates."

Krebs had raised his voice as the murmurs became louder. At this point a
sharp-faced lawyer from Belfast got to his feet and objected that the
gentleman from Elkington was wasting the time of the House, indulging in
hearsay. His remarks were not germane, etc. The Speaker rapped again,
with a fine show of impartiality, and cautioned the member from
Elkington.

"Very well," replied Krebs. "I have said what I wanted to say on that
score, and I know it to be the truth. And if this House does not find it
germane, the day is coming when its constituents will."

Whereupon he entered into a discussion of the bill, dissecting it with
more calmness, with an ability that must have commanded, even from some
hostile minds, an unwilling respect. The penalty, he said, was
outrageous, hitherto unheard of in law,--putting a corporation in the
hands of a receiver, at the mercy of those who coveted it, because one of
its officers refused, or was unable, to testify. He might be in China, in
Timbuctoo when the summons was delivered at his last or usual place of
abode. Here was an enormity, an exercise of tyrannical power exceeding
all bounds, a travesty on popular government.... He ended by pointing out
the significance of the fact that the committee had given no hearings; by
declaring that if the bill became a law, it would inevitably react upon
the heads of those who were responsible for it.

He sat down, and there was a flutter of applause from the scattered
audience in the gallery.

"By God, that's the only man in the whole place!"

I was aware, for the first time, of a neighbour at my side,--a solid,
red-faced man, evidently a farmer. His trousers were tucked into his
boots, and his gnarled and powerful hands, ingrained with dirt, clutched
the arms of the seat as he leaned forward.

"Didn't he just naturally lambaste 'em?" he cried excitedly. "They'll
down him, I guess,--but say, he's right. A man would lose his
self-respect if he didn't let out his mind at them hoss thieves, wouldn't
he? What's that fellow's name?"

I told him.

"Krebs," he repeated. "I want to remember that. Durned if I don't shake
hands with him."

His excitement astonished me. Would the public feel like that, if they
only knew?... The Speaker's gavel had come down like a pistol shot.

One "war-hoss"--as my neighbour called them--after another proceeded to
crush the member from Elkington. It was, indeed, very skillfully done,
and yet it was a process from which I did not derive, somehow, much
pleasure. Colonel Varney's army had been magnificently trained to meet
just this kind of situation: some employed ridicule, others declared, in
impassioned tones, that the good name of their state had been wantonly
assailed, and pointed fervently to portraits on the walls of patriots of
the past,--sentiments that drew applause from the fickle gallery. One
gentleman observed that the obsession of a "railroad machine" was a sure
symptom of a certain kind of insanity, of which the first speaker had
given many other evidences. The farmer at my side remained staunch.

"They can't fool me," he said angrily, "I know 'em. Do you see that
fellow gettin' up to talk now? Well, I could tell you a few things about
him, all right. He comes from Glasgow, and his name's Letchworth. He's
done more harm in his life than all the criminals he's kept out of
prison,--belongs to one of the old families down there, too."

I had, indeed, remarked Letchworth's face, which seemed to me peculiarly
evil, its lividity enhanced by a shock of grey hair. His method was
withering sarcasm, and he was clearly unable to control his animus....

No champion appeared to support Krebs, who sat pale and tense while this
denunciation of him was going on. Finally he got the floor. His voice
trembled a little, whether with passion, excitement, or nervousness it
was impossible to say. But he contented himself with a brief defiance. If
the bill passed, he declared, the men who voted for it, the men who were
behind it, would ultimately be driven from political life by an indignant
public. He had a higher opinion of the voters of the state than those who
accused him of slandering it, than those who sat silent and had not
lifted their voices against this crime.

When the bill was put to a vote he demanded a roll call. Ten members
besides himself were recorded against House Bill No. 709!

In spite of this overwhelming triumph my feelings were not wholly those
of satisfaction when I returned to the hotel and listened to the
exultations and denunciations of such politicians as Letchworth, Young,
and Colonel Varney. Perhaps an image suggesting Hermann Krebs as some
splendid animal at bay, dragged down by the hounds, is too strong: he had
been ingloriously crushed, and defeat, even for the sake of conviction,
was not an inspiring spectacle.... As the chase swept on over his
prostrate figure I rapidly regained poise and a sense of proportion; a
"master of life" could not permit himself to be tossed about by
sentimentality; and gradually I grew ashamed of my bad quarter of an hour
in the gallery of the House, and of the effect of it--which lingered
awhile--as of a weakness suddenly revealed, which must at all costs be
overcome. I began to see something dramatic and sensational in Krebs's
performance....

The Ribblevale Steel Company was the real quarry, after all. And such had
been the expedition, the skill and secrecy, with which our affair was
conducted, that before the Ribblevale lawyers could arrive, alarmed and
breathless, the bill had passed the House, and their only real chance of
halting it had been lost. For the Railroad controlled the House, not by
owning the individuals composing it, but through the leaders who
dominated it,--men like Letchworth and Truesdale. These, and Colonel
Varney, had seen to it that men who had any parliamentary ability had
been attended to; all save Krebs, who had proved a surprise. There were
indeed certain members who, although they had railroad passes in their
pockets (which were regarded as just perquisites,--the Railroad being so
rich!), would have opposed the bill if they had felt sufficiently sure of
themselves to cope with such veterans as Letchworth. Many of these had
allowed themselves to be won over or cowed by the oratory which had
crushed Krebs.

Nor did the Ribblevale people--be it recorded--scruple to fight fire with
fire. Their existence, of course, was at stake, and there was no public
to appeal to. A part of the legal army that rushed to the aid of our
adversaries spent the afternoon and most of the night organizing all
those who could be induced by one means or another to reverse their
sentiments, and in searching for the few who had grievances against the
existing power. The following morning a motion was introduced to
reconsider; and in the debate that followed, Krebs, still defiant, took
an active part. But the resolution required a two-thirds vote, and was
lost.

When the battle was shifted to the Senate it was as good as lost. The
Judiciary Committee of the august body did indeed condescend to give
hearings, at which the Ribblevale lawyers exhausted their energy and
ingenuity without result with only two dissenting votes the bill was
calmly passed. In vain was the Governor besieged, entreated,
threatened,--it was said; Mr. Trulease had informed protesters--so
Colonel Varney gleefully reported--that he had "become fully convinced of
the inherent justice of the measure." On Saturday morning he signed it,
and it became a law....

Colonel Varney, as he accompanied me to the train, did not conceal his
jubilation.

"Perhaps I ought not to say it, Mr. Paret, but it couldn't have been done
neater. That's the art in these little affairs, to get 'em runnin' fast,
to get momentum on 'em before the other party wakes up, and then he can't
stop 'em." As he shook hands in farewell he added, with more gravity:
"We'll see each other often, sir, I guess. My very best regards to Mr.
Watling."

Needless to say, I had not confided to him the part I had played in
originating House Bill No. 709, now a law of the state. But as the train
rolled on through the sunny winter landscape a sense of well-being, of
importance and power began to steal through me. I was victoriously
bearing home my first scalp,--one which was by no means to be
despised.... It was not until we reached Rossiter, about five o'clock,
that I was able to get the evening newspapers. Such was the perfection of
the organization of which I might now call myself an integral part that
the "best" publications contained only the barest mention,--and that in
the legislative news,--of the signing of the bill. I read with
complacency and even with amusement the flaring headlines I had
anticipated in Mr. Lawler's 'Pilot.'

"The Governor Signs It!"

"Special legislation, forced through by the Railroad Lobby, which will
drive honest corporations from this state."

"Ribblevale Steel Company the Victim."

It was common talk in the capital, the article went on to say, that
Theodore Watling himself had drawn up the measure.... Perusing the
editorial page my eye fell on the name, Krebs. One member of the
legislature above all deserved the gratitude of the people of the
state,--the member from Elkington. "An unknown man, elected in spite of
the opposition of the machine, he had dared to raise his voice against
this iniquity," etc., etc.

We had won. That was the essential thing. And my legal experience had
taught me that victory counts; defeat is soon forgotten. Even the
discontented, half-baked and heterogeneous element from which the Pilot
got its circulation had short memories.




XI.

The next morning, which was Sunday, I went to Mr. Watling's house in,
Fillmore Street--a new residence at that time, being admired as the
dernier cri in architecture. It had a mediaeval look, queer dormers in a
steep roof of red tiles, leaded windows buried deep in walls of rough
stone. Emerging from the recessed vestibule on a level with the street
were the Watling twins, aglow with health, dressed in identical costumes
of blue. They had made their bow to society that winter.

"Why, here's Hugh!" said Frances. "Doesn't he look pleased with himself?"

"He's come to take us to church," said Janet.

"Oh, he's much too important," said Frances. "He's made a killing of some
sort,--haven't you, Hugh?"...

I rang the bell and stood watching them as they departed, reflecting that
I was thirty-two years of age and unmarried. Mr. Watling, surrounded with
newspapers and seated before his library fire, glanced up at me with a
welcoming smile: how had I borne the legislative baptism of fire? Such, I
knew, was its implication.

"Everything went through according to schedule, eh? Well, I congratulate
you, Hugh," he said.

"Oh, I didn't have much to do with it," I answered, smiling back at him.
"I kept out of sight."

"That's an art in itself."

"I had an opportunity, at close range, to study the methods of our
lawmakers."

"They're not particularly edifying," Mr. Watling replied. "But they seem,
unfortunately, to be necessary."

Such had been my own thought.

"Who is this man Krebs?" he inquired suddenly. "And why didn't Varney get
hold of him and make him listen to reason?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't have been any use," I replied. "He was in my
class at Harvard. I knew him--slightly. He worked his way through, and
had a pretty hard time of it. I imagine it affected his ideas."

"What is he, a Socialist?"

"Something of the sort." In Theodore Watling's vigorous, sanity-exhaling
presence Krebs's act appeared fantastic, ridiculous. "He has queer
notions about a new kind of democracy which he says is coming. I think he
is the kind of man who would be willing to die for it."

"What, in these days!" Mr. Watling looked at me incredulously. "If that's
so, we must keep an eye on him, a sincere fanatic is a good deal more
dangerous than a reformer who wants something. There are such men," he
added, "but they are rare. How was the Governor, Trulease?" he asked
suddenly. "Tractable?"

"Behaved like a lamb, although he insisted upon going through with his
little humbug," I said.

Mr. Watling laughed. "They always do," he observed, "and waste a lot of
valuable time. You'll find some light cigars in the corner, Hugh."

I sat down beside him and we spent the morning going over the details of
the Ribblevale suit, Mr. Watling delegating to me certain matters
connected with it of a kind with which I had not hitherto been entrusted;
and he spoke again, before I left, of his intention of taking me into the
firm as soon as the affair could be arranged. Walking homeward, with my
mind intent upon things to come, I met my mother at the corner of Lyme
Street coming from church. Her face lighted up at sight of me.

"Have you been working to-day, Hugh?" she asked.

I explained that I had spent the morning with Mr. Watling.

"I'll tell you a secret, mother. I'm going to be taken into the firm."

"Oh, my dear, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "I often think, if only your
father were alive, how happy he would be, and how proud of you. I wish he
could know. Perhaps he does know."

Theodore Watling had once said to me that the man who can best keep his
own counsel is the best counsel for other men to keep. I did not go about
boasting of the part I had played in originating the now famous Bill No.
709, the passage of which had brought about the capitulation of the
Ribblevale Steel Company to our clients. But Ralph Hambleton knew of it,
of course.

"That was a pretty good thing you pulled off, Hughie," he said. "I didn't
think you had it in you."

It was rank patronage, of course, yet I was secretly pleased. As the
years went on I was thrown more and more with him, though in boyhood
there had been between us no bond of sympathy. About this time he was
beginning to increase very considerably the Hambleton fortune, and a
little later I became counsel for the Crescent Gas and Electric Company,
in which he had shrewdly gained a controlling interest. Even toward the
colossal game of modern finance his attitude was characteristically that
of the dilettante, of the amateur; he played it, as it were,
contemptuously, even as he had played poker at Harvard, with a cynical
audacity that had a peculiarly disturbing effect upon his companions. He
bluffed, he raised the limit in spite of protests, and when he lost one
always had the feeling that he would ultimately get his money back twice
over. At the conferences in the Boyne Club, which he often attended, his
manner toward Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Scherer and even toward Miller Gorse
was frequently one of thinly veiled amusement at their seriousness. I
often wondered that they did not resent it. But he was a privileged
person.

His cousin, Ham Durrett, whose inheritance was even greater than Ralph's
had been, had also become a privileged person whose comings and goings
and more reputable doings were often recorded in the newspapers. Ham had
attained to what Gene Hollister aptly but inadvertently called
"notoriety": as Ralph wittily remarked, Ham gave to polo and women that
which might have gone into high finance. He spent much of his time in the
East; his conduct there and at home would once have created a black
scandal in our community, but we were gradually leaving our Calvinism
behind us and growing more tolerant: we were ready to Forgive much to
wealth especially if it was inherited. Hostesses lamented the fact that
Ham was "wild," but they asked him to dinners and dances to meet their
daughters.

If some moralist better educated and more far-seeing than Perry Blackwood
(for Perry had become a moralist) had told these hostesses that Hambleton
Durrett was a victim of our new civilization, they would have raised
their eyebrows. They deplored while they coveted. If Ham had been told he
was a victim of any sort, he would have laughed.

He enjoyed life; he was genial and jovial, both lavish and
parsimonious,--this latter characteristic being the curious survival of
the trait of the ancestors to which he owed his millions. He was growing
even heavier, and decidedly red in the face.

Perry used to take Ralph to task for not saving Ham from his iniquities,
and Ralph would reply that Ham was going to the devil anyway, and not
even the devil himself could stop him.

"You can stop him, and you know it," Perry retorted indignantly.

"What do you want me to do with him?" asked Ralph. "Convert him to the
saintly life I lead?"

This was a poser.

"That's a fact," sand Perry, "you're no better than he is."

"I don't know what you mean by 'better,'" retorted Ralph, grinning. "I'm
wiser, that's all." (We had been talking about the ethics of business
when Perry had switched off to Ham.) "I believe, at least, in restraint
of trade. Ham doesn't believe in restraint of any kind."

When, therefore, the news suddenly began to be circulated in the Boyne
Club that Ham was showing a tendency to straighten up, surprise and
incredulity were genuine. He was drinking less,--much less; and it was
said that he had severed certain ties that need not again be definitely
mentioned. The theory of religious regeneration not being tenable, it was
naturally supposed that he had fallen in love; the identity of the
unknown lady becoming a fruitful subject of speculation among the
feminine portion of society. The announcement of the marriage of
Hambleton Durrett would be news of the first magnitude, to be absorbed
eagerly by the many who had not the honour of his acquaintance,
--comparable only to that of a devastating flood or a murder mystery
or a change in the tariff.

Being absorbed in affairs that seemed more important, the subject did not
interest me greatly. But one cold Sunday afternoon, as I made my way, in
answer to her invitation, to see Nancy Willett, I found myself wondering
idly whether she might not be by way of making a shrewd guess as to the
object of Hambleton's affections. It was well known that he had
entertained a hopeless infatuation for her; and some were inclined to
attribute his later lapses to her lack of response. He still called on
her, and her lectures, which she delivered like a great aunt with a
recondite knowledge of the world, he took meekly. But even she had seemed
powerless to alter his habits....

Powell Street, that happy hunting-ground of my youth, had changed its
character, become contracted and unfamiliar, sooty. The McAlerys and
other older families who had not decayed with the neighbourhood were
rapidly deserting it, moving out to the new residence district known as
"the Heights." I came to the Willett House. That, too, had an air of
shabbiness,--of well-tended shabbiness, to be sure; the stone steps had
been scrupulously scrubbed, but one of them was cracked clear across, and
the silver on the polished name-plate was wearing off; even the act of
pulling the knob of a door-bell was becoming obsolete, so used had we
grown to pushing porcelain buttons in bright, new vestibules. As I waited
for my summons to be answered it struck me as remarkable that neither
Nancy nor her father had been contaminated by the shabbiness that
surrounded them.

She had managed rather marvellously to redeem one room from the
old-fashioned severity of the rest of the house, the library behind the
big "parlour." It was Nancy's room, eloquent of her daintiness and taste,
of her essential modernity and luxuriousness; and that evening, as I was
ushered into it, this quality of luxuriousness, of being able to shut out
the disagreeable aspects of life that surrounded and threatened her,
particularly impressed me. She had not lacked opportunities to escape. I
wondered uneasily as I waited why she had not embraced them. I strayed
about the room. A coal fire burned in the grate, the red-shaded lamps
gave a subdued but cheerful light; some impulse led me to cross over to
the windows and draw aside the heavy hangings. Dusk was gathering over
that garden, bleak and frozen now, where we had romped together as
children. How queer the place seemed! How shrivelled! Once it had had the
wide range of a park. There, still weathering the elements, was the
old-fashioned latticed summer-house, but the fruit-trees that I recalled
as clouds of pink and white were gone.... A touch of poignancy was in
these memories. I dropped the curtain, and turned to confront Nancy, who
had entered noiselessly.

"Well, Hugh, were you dreaming?" she said.

"Not exactly," I replied, embarrassed. "I was looking at the garden."

"The soot has ruined it. My life seems to be one continual struggle
against the soot,--the blacks, as the English call them. It's a more
expressive term. They are like an army, you know, overwhelming in their
relentless invasion. Well, do sit down. It is nice of you to come. You'll
have some tea, won't you?"

The maid had brought in the tray. Afternoon tea was still rather a new
custom with us, more of a ceremony than a meal; and as Nancy handed me my
cup and the thinnest of slices of bread and butter I found the intimacy
of the situation a little disquieting. Her manner was indeed intimate,
and yet it had the odd and disturbing effect of making her seem more
remote. As she chatted I answered her perfunctorily, while all the time I
was asking myself why I had ceased to desire her, whether the old longing
for her might not return--was not even now returning? I might indeed go
far afield to find a wife so suited to me as Nancy. She had beauty,
distinction, and position. She was a woman of whom any man might be
proud....

"I haven't congratulated you yet, Hugh," she said suddenly, "now that you
are a partner of Mr. Watling's. I hear on all sides that you are on the
high road to a great success."

"Of course I'm glad to be in the firm," I admitted.

It was a new tack for Nancy, rather a disquieting one, this discussion of
my affairs, which she had so long avoided or ignored. "You are getting
what you have always wanted, aren't you?"

I wondered in some trepidation whether by that word "always" she was
making a deliberate reference to the past.

"Always?" I repeated, rather fatuously.

"Nearly always, ever since you have been a man."

I was incapable of taking advantage of the opening, if it were one. She
was baffling.

"A man likes to succeed in his profession, of course," I said.

"And you made up your mind to succeed more deliberately than most men. I
needn't ask you if you are satisfied, Hugh. Success seems to agree with
you,--although I imagine you will never be satisfied."

"Why do you say that?" I demanded.

"I haven't known you all your life for nothing. I think I know you much
better than you know yourself."

"You haven't acted as if you did," I exclaimed.

She smiled.

"Have you been interested in what I thought about you?" she asked.

"That isn't quite fair, Nancy," I protested. "You haven't given me much
evidence that you did think about me."

"Have I received much encouragement to do so?" she inquired.

"But you haven't seemed to invite--you've kept me at arm's length."

"Oh, don't fence!" she cried, rather sharply.

I had become agitated, but her next words gave me a shock that was
momentarily paralyzing.

"I asked you to come here to-day, Hugh, because I wished you to know that
I have made up my mind to marry Hambleton Durrett."

"Hambleton Durrett!" I echoed stupidly. "Hambleton Durrett!"

"Why not?"

"Have you--have you accepted him?"

"No. But I mean to do so."

"You--you love him?"

"I don't see what right you have to ask."

"But you just said that you invited me here to talk frankly."

"No, I don't love him."

"Then why, in heaven's name, are you going to marry him?"

She lay back in her chair, regarding me, her lips slightly parted. All at
once the full flavour of her, the superfine quality was revealed after
years of blindness.--Nor can I describe the sudden rebellion, the
revulsion that I experienced. Hambleton Durrett! It was an outrage, a
sacrilege! I got up, and put my hand on the mantel. Nancy remained
motionless, inert, her head lying back against the chair. Could it be
that she were enjoying my discomfiture? There is no need to confess that
I knew next to nothing of women; had I been less excited, I might have
made the discovery that I still regarded them sentimentally. Certain
romantic axioms concerning them, garnered from Victorian literature,
passed current in my mind for wisdom; and one of these declared that they
were prone to remain true to an early love. Did Nancy still care for me?
The query, coming as it did on top of my emotion, brought with it a
strange and overwhelming perplexity. Did I really care for her? The many
years during which I had practised the habit of caution began to exert an
inhibiting pressure. Here was a situation, an opportunity suddenly thrust
upon me which might never return, and which I was utterly unprepared to
meet. Would I be happy with Nancy, after all? Her expression was still
enigmatic.

"Why shouldn't I marry him?" she demanded.

"Because he's not good enough for you."

"Good!" she exclaimed, and laughed. "He loves me. He wants me without
reservation or calculation." There was a sting in this. "And is he any
worse," she asked slowly, "than many others who might be mentioned?"

"No," I agreed. I did not intend to be led into the thankless and
disagreeable position of condemning Hambleton Durrett. "But why have you
waited all these years if you did not mean to marry a man of ability, a
man who has made something of himself?"

"A man like you, Hugh?" she said gently.

I flushed.

"That isn't quite fair, Nancy."

"What are you working for?" she suddenly inquired, straightening up.

"What any man works for, I suppose."

"Ah, there you have hit it,--what any man works for in our world.
Power,--personal power. You want to be somebody,--isn't that it? Not the
noblest ambition, you'll have to admit,--not the kind of thing we used to
dream about, when we did dream. Well, when we find we can't realize our
dreams, we take the next best thing. And I fail to see why you should
blame me for taking it when you yourself have taken it. Hambleton Durrett
can give it to me. He'll accept me on my own terms, he won't interfere
with me, I shan't be disillusionized,--and I shall have a position which
I could not hope to have if I remained unmarried, a very marked position
as Hambleton Durrett's wife. I am thirty, you know."

Her frankness appalled me.

"The trouble with you, Hugh, is that you still deceive yourself. You
throw a glamour over things. You want to keep your cake and eat it too.

"I don't see why you say that. And marriage especially--"

She took me up.

"Marriage! What other career is open to a woman? Unless she is married,
and married well, according to the money standard you men have set up,
she is nobody. We can't all be Florence Nightingales, and I am unable to
imagine myself a Julia Ward Howe or a Harriet Beecher Stowe. What is
left? Nothing but marriage. I'm hard and cynical, you will say, but I
have thought, and I'm not afraid, as I have told you, to look things in
the face. There are very few women, I think, who would not take the real
thing if they had the chance before it were too late, who wouldn't be
willing to do their own cooking in order to get it."

She fell silent suddenly. I began to pace the room.

"For God's sake, don't do this, Nancy!" I begged.

But she continued to stare into the fire, as though she had not heard me.

"If you had made up your mind to do it, why did you tell me?" I asked.

"Sentiment, I suppose. I am paying a tribute to what I once was, to what
you once were," she said. A--a sort of good-bye to sentiment."

"Nancy!" I said hoarsely.

She shook her head.

"No, Hugh. Surely you can't misjudge me so!" she answered reproachfully.
"Do you think I should have sent for you if I had meant--that!"

"No, no, I didn't think so. But why not? You--you cared once, and you
tell me plainly you don't love him. It was all a terrible mistake. We
were meant for each other."

"I did love you then," she said. "You never knew how much. And there is
nothing I wouldn't give to bring it all back again. But I can't. It's
gone. You're gone, and I'm gone. I mean what we were. Oh, why did you
change?"

"It was you who changed," I declared, bewildered.

"Couldn't you see--can't you see now what you did? But perhaps you
couldn't help it. Perhaps it was just you, after all."

"What I did?"

"Why couldn't you have held fast to your faith? If you had, you would
have known what it was I adored in you. Oh, I don't mind telling you now,
it was just that faith, Hugh, that faith you had in life, that faith you
had in me. You weren't cynical and calculating, like Ralph Hambleton, you
had imagination. I--I dreamed, too. And do you remember the time when you
made the boat, and we went to Logan's Pond, and you sank in her?"

"And you stayed," I went on, "when all the others ran away? You ran down
the hill like a whirlwind."

She laughed.

"And then you came here one day, to a party, and said you were going to
Harvard, and quarrelled with me."

"Why did you doubt met" I asked agitatedly. "Why didn't you let me see
that you still cared?"

"Because that wasn't you, Hugh, that wasn't your real self. Do you
suppose it mattered to me whether you went to Harvard with the others?
Oh, I was foolish too, I know. I shouldn't have said what I did. But what
is the use of regrets?" she exclaimed. "We've both run after the
practical gods, and the others have hidden their faces from us. It may be
that we are not to blame, either of us, that the practical gods are too
strong. We've learned to love and worship them, and now we can't do
without them."

"We can try, Nancy," I pleaded.

"No," she answered in a low voice, "that's the difference between you and
me. I know myself better than you know yourself, and I know you better."
She smiled again. "Unless we could have it all back again, I shouldn't
want any of it. You do not love me--"

I started once more to protest.

"No, no, don't say it!" she cried.

"You may think you do, just this moment, but it's only because--you've
been moved. And what you believe you want isn't me, it's what I was. But
I'm not that any more,--I'm simply recalling that, don't you see? And
even then you wouldn't wish me, now, as I was. That sounds involved, but
you must understand. You want a woman who will be wrapped up in your
career, Hugh, and yet who will not share it,--who will devote herself
body and soul to what you have become. A woman whom you can shape. And
you won't really love her, but only just so much of her as may become the
incarnation of you. Well, I'm not that kind of woman. I might have been,
had you been different. I'm not at all sure. Certainly I'm not that kind
now, even though I know in my heart that the sort of career you have made
for yourself, and that I intend to make for myself is all dross. But now
I can't do without it."

"And yet you are going to marry Hambleton Durrett!" I said.

She understood me, although I regretted my words at once.

"Yes, I am going to marry him." There was a shade of bitterness, of
defiance in her voice. "Surely you are not offering me the--the other
thing, now. Oh, Hugh!"

"I am willing to abandon it all, Nancy."

"No," she said, "you're not, and I'm not. What you can't see and won't
see is that it has become part of you. Oh, you are successful, you will
be more and more successful. And you think I should be somebody, as your
wife, Hugh, more perhaps, eventually, than I shall be as Hambleton's. But
I should be nobody, too. I couldn't stand it now, my dear. You must
realize that as soon as you have time to think it over. We shall be
friends."

The sudden gentleness in her voice pierced me through and through. She
held out her hand. Something in her grasp spoke of a resolution which
could not be shaken.

"And besides," she added sadly, "I don't love you any more, Hugh. I'm
mourning for something that's gone. I wanted to have just this one talk
with you. But we shan't mention it again,--we'll close the book."...

At that I fled out of the house, and at first the thought of her as
another man's wife, as Hambleton Durrett's wife, was seemingly not to be
borne. It was incredible! "We'll close the book." I found myself
repeating the phrase; and it seemed then as though something within me I
had believed dead--something that formerly had been all of me--had
revived again to throb with pain.

It is not surprising that the acuteness of my suffering was of short
duration, though I remember certain sharp twinges when the announcement
of the engagement burst on the city. There was much controversy over the
question as to whether or not Ham Durrett's reform would be permanent;
but most people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; it was
time he settled down and took the position in the community that was to
be expected of one of his name; and as for Nancy, it was generally agreed
that she had done well for herself. She was not made for poverty--and who
so well as she was fitted for the social leadership of our community?

They were married in Trinity Church in the month of May, and I was one of
Ham's attendants. Ralph was "best man." For the last time the old Willett
mansion in Powell Street wore the gala air of former days; carpets were
spread over the sidewalk, and red and white awnings; rooms were filled
with flowers and flung open to hundreds of guests. I found the wedding
something of an ordeal. I do not like to dwell upon it--especially upon
that moment when I came to congratulate Nancy as she stood beside Ham at
the end of the long parlour. She seemed to have no regrets. I don't know
what I expected of her--certainly not tears and tragedy. She seemed
taller than ever, and very beautiful in her veil and white satin gown and
the diamonds Ham had given her; very much mistress of herself, quite a
contrast to Ham, who made no secret of his elation. She smiled when I
wished her happiness.

"We'll be home in the autumn, Hugh, and expect to see a great deal of
you," she said.

As I paused in a corner of the room my eye fell upon Nancy's father.
McAlery Willett's elation seemed even greater than Ham's. With a gardenia
in his frock-coat and a glass of champagne in his hand he went from group
to group; and his familiar laughter, which once had seemed so full of
merriment and fun, gave me to-day a somewhat scandalized feeling. I heard
Ralph's voice, and turned to discover him standing beside me, his long
legs thrust slightly apart, his hands in his pockets, overlooking the
scene with typical, semi-contemptuous amusement.

"This lets old McAlery out, anyway," he said.

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"One or two little notes of his will be cancelled, sooner or
later--that's all."

For a moment I was unable to speak.

"And do you think that she--that Nancy found out--?" I stammered.

"Well, I'd be willing to take that end of the bet," he replied. "Why the
deuce should she marry Ham? You ought to know her well enough to
understand how she'd feel if she discovered some of McAlery's financial
coups? Of course it's not a thing I talk about, you understand. Are you
going to the Club?"

"No, I'm going home," I said. I was aware of his somewhat compassionate
smile as I left him....




XII.

One November day nearly two years after my admission as junior member of
the firm of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon seven gentlemen met at luncheon in
the Boyne Club; Mr. Barbour, President of the Railroad, Mr. Scherer, of
the Boyne Iron Works and other corporations, Mr. Leonard Dickinson, of
the Corn National Bank, Mr. Halsey, a prominent banker from the other
great city of the state, Mr. Grunewald, Chairman of the Republican State
Committee, and Mr. Frederick Grierson, who had become a very important
man in our community. At four o'clock they emerged from the club:
citizens in Boyne Street who saw them chatting amicably on the steps
little suspected that in the last three hours these gentlemen had chosen
and practically elected the man who was to succeed Mr. Wade as United
States Senator in Washington. Those were the days in which great affairs
were simply and efficiently handled. No democratic nonsense about leaving
the choice to an electorate that did not know what it wanted.

The man chosen to fill this high position was Theodore Watling. He said
he would think about the matter.

In the nation at large, through the defection of certain Northern states
neither so conservative nor fortunate as ours, the Democratic party was
in power, which naturally implies financial depression. There was no
question about our ability to send a Republican Senator; the choice in
the Boyne Club was final; but before the legislature should ratify it, a
year or so hence, it were just as well that the people of the state
should be convinced that they desired Mr. Watling more than any other
man; and surely enough, in a little while such a conviction sprang up
spontaneously. In offices and restaurants and hotels, men began to
suggest to each other what a fine thing it would be if Theodore Watling
might be persuaded to accept the toga; at the banks, when customers
called to renew their notes and tight money was discussed and Democrats
excoriated, it was generally agreed that the obvious thing to do was to
get a safe man in the Senate. From the very first, Watling sentiment
stirred like spring sap after a hard winter.

The country newspapers, watered by providential rains, began to put forth
tender little editorial shoots, which Mr. Judah B. Tallant presently
collected and presented in a charming bouquet in the Morning Era. "The
Voice of the State Press;" thus was the column headed; and the remarks of
the Hon. Fitch Truesdale, of the St. Helen's Messenger, were given a
special prominence. Mr. Truesdale was the first, in his section, to be
inspired by the happy thought that the one man preeminently fitted to
represent the state in the present crisis, when her great industries had
been crippled by Democratic folly, was Mr. Theodore Watling. The Rossiter
Banner, the Elkington Star, the Belfast Recorder, and I know not how many
others simultaneously began to sing Mr. Watling's praises.

"Not since the troublous times of the Civil War," declared the Morning
Era, "had the demand for any man been so unanimous." As a proof of it,
there were the country newspapers, "which reflected the sober opinion of
the firesides of the common people."

There are certain industrious gentlemen to whom little credit is given,
and who, unlike the average citizen who reserves his enthusiasm for
election time, are patriotic enough to labour for their country's good
all the year round. When in town, it was their habit to pay a friendly
call on the Counsel for the Railroad, Mr. Miller Gorse, in the Corn Bank
Building. He was never too busy to converse with them; or, it might
better be said, to listen to them converse. Let some legally and
politically ambitious young man observe Mr. Gorse's method. Did he
inquire what the party worker thought of Mr. Watling for the Senate? Not
at all! But before the party worker left he was telling Mr. Gorse that
public sentiment demanded Mr. Watling. After leaving Mr. Gorse they
wended their way to the Durrett Building and handed their cards over the
rail of the offices of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Mr. Watling shook
hands with scores of them, and they departed, well satisfied with the
flavour of his cigars and intoxicated by his personality. He had a
marvellous way of cutting short an interview without giving offence. Some
of them he turned over to Mr. Paret, whom he particularly desired they
should know. Thus Mr. Paret acquired many valuable additions to his
acquaintance, cultivated a memory for names and faces that was to stand
him in good stead; and kept, besides, an indexed note-book into which he
put various bits of interesting information concerning each. Though not
immediately lucrative, it was all, no doubt, part of a lawyer's
education.

During the summer and the following winter Colonel Paul Varney came often
to town and spent much of his time in Mr. Paret's office smoking Mr.
Watling's cigars and discussing the coming campaign, in which he took a
whole-souled interest.

"Say, Hugh, this is goin' slick!" he would exclaim, his eyes glittering
like round buttons of jet. "I never saw a campaign where they fell in the
way they're doing now. If it was anybody else but Theodore Watling, it
would scare me. You ought to have been in Jim Broadhurst's campaign," he
added, referring to the junior senator, "they wouldn't wood up at all,
they was just listless. But Gorse and Barbour and the rest wanted him,
and we had to put him over. I reckon he is useful down there in
Washington, but say, do you know what he always reminded me of? One of
those mud-turtles I used to play with as a boy up in Columbia
County,--shuts up tight soon as he sees you coming. Now Theodore Watling
ain't like that, any way of speaking. We can get up some enthusiasm for a
man of his sort. He's liberal and big. He's made his pile, and he don't
begrudge some of it to the fellows who do the work. Mark my words, when
you see a man who wants a big office cheap, look out for him."

This, and much more wisdom I imbibed while assenting to my chief's
greatness. For Mr. Varney was right,--one could feel enthusiasm for
Theodore Watling; and my growing intimacy with him, the sense that I was
having a part in his career, a share in his success, became for the
moment the passion of my life. As the campaign progressed I gave more and
more time to it, and made frequent trips of a confidential nature to the
different counties of the state. The whole of my being was energized. The
national fever had thoroughly pervaded my blood--the national fever to
win. Prosperity--writ large--demanded it, and Theodore Watling
personified, incarnated the cause. I had neither the time nor the desire
to philosophize on this national fever, which animated all my associates:
animated, I might say, the nation, which was beginning to get into a
fever about games. If I remember rightly, it was about this time that
golf was introduced, tennis had become a commonplace, professional
baseball was in full swing; Ham Durrett had even organized a local polo
team.... The man who failed to win something tangible in sport or law or
business or politics was counted out. Such was the spirit of America, in
the closing years of the nineteenth century.

And yet, when one has said this, one has failed to express the national
Geist in all its subtlety. In brief, the great American sport was not so
much to win the game as to beat it; the evasion of rules challenged our
ingenuity; and having won, we set about devising methods whereby it would
be less and less possible for us winners to lose in the future. No better
illustration of this tendency could be given than the development which
had recently taken place in the field of our city politics, hitherto the
battle-ground of Irish politicians who had fought one another for
supremacy. Individualism had been rampant, competition the custom; you
bought an alderman, or a boss who owned four or five aldermen, and then
you never could be sure you were to get what you wanted, or that the
aldermen and the bosses would "stay bought." But now a genius had
appeared, an American genius who had arisen swiftly and almost silently,
who appealed to the imagination, and whose name was often mentioned in a
whisper,--the Hon. Judd Jason, sometimes known as the Spider, who
organized the City Hall and capitalized it; an ultimate and logical
effect--if one had considered it--of the Manchester school of economics.
Enlightened self-interest, stripped of sentiment, ends on Judd Jasons. He
ran the city even as Mr. Sherrill ran his department store; you paid your
price. It was very convenient. Being a genius, Mr. Jason did not wholly
break with tradition, but retained those elements of the old muddled
system that had their value, chartering steamboats for outings on the
river, giving colossal picnics in Lowry Park. The poor and the wanderer
and the criminal (of the male sex at least) were cared for. But he was
not loved, as the rough-and-tumble Irishmen had been loved; he did not
make himself common; he was surrounded by an aura of mystery which I
confess had not failed of effect on me. Once, and only once during my
legal apprenticeship, he had been pointed out to me on the street, where
he rarely ventured. His appearance was not impressive....

Mr. Jason could not, of course, prevent Mr. Watling's election, even did
he so desire, but he did command the allegiance of several city
candidates--both democratic and republican--for the state legislature,
who had as yet failed to announce their preferences for United States
Senator. It was important that Mr. Watling's vote should be large, as
indicative of a public reaction and repudiation of Democratic national
folly. This matter among others was the subject of discussion one July
morning when the Republican State Chairman was in the city; Mr. Grunewald
expressed anxiety over Mr. Jason's continued silence. It was expedient
that somebody should "see" the boss.

"Why not Paret?" suggested Leonard Dickinson. Mr. Watling was not present
at this conference. "Paret seems to be running Watling's campaign,
anyway."

It was settled that I should be the emissary. With lively sensations of
curiosity and excitement, tempered by a certain anxiety as to my ability
to match wits with the Spider, I made my way to his "lair" over Monahan's
saloon, situated in a district that was anything but respectable. The
saloon, on the ground floor, had two apartments; the bar-room proper
where Mike Monahan, chamberlain of the establishment, was wont to stand,
red faced and smiling, to greet the courtiers, big and little, the party
workers, the district leaders, the hangers-on ready to be hired, the city
officials, the police judges,--yes, and the dignified members of state
courts whose elections depended on Mr. Jason's favour: even Judge Bering,
whose acquaintance I had made the day I had come, as a law student, to
Mr. Watling's office, unbent from time to time sufficiently to call there
for a small glass of rye and water, and to relate, with his owl-like
gravity, an anecdote to the "boys." The saloon represented Democracy, so
dear to the American public. Here all were welcome, even the
light-fingered gentlemen who enjoyed the privilege of police protection;
and who sometimes, through fortuitous circumstances, were hauled before
the very magistrates with whom they had rubbed elbows on the polished
rail. Behind the bar-room, and separated from it by swinging doors only
the elite ventured to thrust apart, was an audience chamber whither Mr.
Jason occasionally descended. Anecdote and political reminiscence gave
place here to matters of high policy.

I had several times come to the saloon in the days of my apprenticeship
in search of some judge or official, and once I had run down here the
city auditor himself. Mike Monahan, whose affair it was to know everyone,
recognized me. It was part of his business, also, to understand that I
was now a member of the firm of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon.

"Good morning to you, Mr. Paret," he said suavely. We held a colloquy in
undertones over the bar, eyed by the two or three customers who were
present. Mr. Monahan disappeared, but presently returned to whisper:
"Sure, he'll see you," to lead the way through the swinging doors and up
a dark stairway. I came suddenly on a room in the greatest disorder, its
tables and chairs piled high with newspapers and letters, its windows
streaked with soot. From an open door on its farther side issued a voice.

"Is that you, Mr. Paret? Come in here."

It was little less than a command.

"Heard of you, Mr. Paret. Glad to know you. Sit down, won't you?"

The inner room was almost dark. I made out a bed in the corner, and
propped up in the bed a man; but for the moment I was most aware of a
pair of eyes that flared up when the man spoke, and died down again when
he became silent. They reminded me of those insects which in my childhood
days we called "lightning bugs." Mr. Jason gave me a hand like a woman's.
I expressed my pleasure at meeting him, and took a chair beside the bed.

"I believe you're a partner of Theodore Watling's now aren't you? Smart
man, Watling."

"He'll make a good senator," I replied, accepting the opening.

"You think he'll get elected--do you?" Mr. Jason inquired.

I laughed.

"Well, there isn't much doubt about that, I imagine."

"Don't know--don't know. Seen some dead-sure things go wrong in my time."

"What's going to defeat him?" I asked pleasantly.

"I don't say anything," Mr. Jason replied. "But I've known funny things
to happen--never does to be dead sure."

"Oh, well, we're as sure as it's humanly possible to be," I declared. The
eyes continued to fascinate me, they had a peculiar, disquieting effect.
Now they died down, and it was as if the man's very presence had gone
out, as though I had been left alone; and I found it exceedingly
difficult, under the circumstances, to continue to address him. Suddenly
he flared up again.

"Watling send you over here?" he demanded.

"No. As a matter of fact, he's out of town. Some of Mr. Watling's
friends, Mr. Grunewald and Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Gorse and others, suggested
that I see you, Mr. Jason."

There came a grunt from the bed.

"Mr. Watling has always valued your friendship and support," I said.

"What makes him think he ain't going to get it?"

"He hasn't a doubt of it," I went on diplomatically. "But we felt--and I
felt personally, that we ought to be in touch with you, to work along
with you, to keep informed how things are going in the city."

"What things?"

"Well--there are one or two representatives, friends of yours, who
haven't come out for Mr. Watling. We aren't worrying, we know you'll do
the right thing, but we feel that it would have a good deal of influence
in some other parts of the state if they declared themselves. And then
you know as well as I do that this isn't a year when any of us can afford
to recognize too closely party lines; the Democratic administration has
brought on a panic, the business men in that party are down on it, and it
ought to be rebuked. And we feel, too, that some of the city's Democrats
ought to be loyal to Mr. Watling,--not that we expect them to vote for
him in caucus, but when it comes to the joint ballot--"

"Who?" demanded Mr. Jason.

"Senator Dowse and Jim Maher, for instance," I suggested.

"Jim voted for Bill 709 all right--didn't he?" said Mr. Jason abruptly.

"That's just it," I put in boldly. "We'd like to induce him to come in
with us this time. But we feel that--the inducement would better come
through you."

I thought Mr. Jason smiled. By this time I had grown accustomed to the
darkness, the face and figure of the man in the bed had become
discernible. Power, I remember thinking, chooses odd houses for itself.
Here was no overbearing, full-blooded ward ruffian brimming with
vitality, but a thin, sallow little man in a cotton night-shirt, with
iron-grey hair and a wiry moustache; he might have been an overworked
clerk behind a dry-goods counter; and yet somehow, now that I had talked
to him, I realized that he never could have been. Those extraordinary
eyes of his, when they were functioning, marked his individuality as
unique. It were almost too dramatic to say that he required darkness to
make his effect, but so it seemed. I should never forget him. He had in
truth been well named the Spider.

"Of course we haven't tried to get in touch with them. We are leaving
them to you," I added.

"Paret," he said suddenly, "I don't care a damn about Grunewald--never
did. I'd turn him down for ten cents. But you can tell Theodore Watling
for me, and Dickinson, that I guess the 'inducement' can be fixed."

I felt a certain relief that the interview had come to an end, that the
moment had arrived for amenities. To my surprise, Mr. Jason anticipated
me.

"I've been interested in you, Mr. Paret," he observed. "Know who you are,
of course, knew you were in Watling's office. Then some of the boys spoke
about you when you were down at the legislature on that Ribblevale
matter. Guess you had more to do with that bill than came out in the
newspapers--eh?"

I was taken off my guard.

"Oh, that's talk," I said.

"All right, it's talk, then? But I guess you and I will have some more
talk after a while,--after Theodore Watling gets to be United States
Senator. Give him my regards, and--and come in when I can do anything for
you, Mr. Paret."

Thanking him, I groped my way downstairs and let myself out by a side
door Monahan had shown me into an alleyway, thus avoiding the saloon. As
I walked slowly back to the office, seeking the shade of the awnings, the
figure in the darkened room took on a sinister aspect that troubled
me....

The autumn arrived, the campaign was on with a whoop, and I had my first
taste of "stump" politics. The acrid smell of red fire brings it back to
me. It was a medley of railroad travel, of committees provided with
badges--and cigars, of open carriages slowly drawn between lines of
bewildered citizens, of Lincoln clubs and other clubs marching in serried
ranks, uniformed and helmeted, stalwarts carrying torches and banners.
And then there were the draughty opera-houses with the sylvan scenery
pushed back and plush chairs and sofas pushed forward; with an ominous
table, a pitcher of water on it and a glass, near the footlights. The
houses were packed with more bewildered citizens. What a wonderful study
of mob-psychology it would have offered! Men who had not thought of the
grand old Republican party for two years, and who had not cared much
about it when they had entered the dooms, after an hour or so went mad
with fervour. The Hon. Joseph Mecklin, ex-Speaker of the House, with whom
I traveled on occasions, had a speech referring to the martyred
President, ending with an appeal to the revolutionary fathers who
followed Washington with bleeding feet. The Hon. Joseph possessed that
most valuable of political gifts, presence; and when with quivering voice
he finished his peroration, citizens wept with him. What it all had to do
with the tariff was not quite clear. Yet nobody seemed to miss the
connection.

We were all of us most concerned, of course, about the working-man and
his dinner pail,--whom the Democrats had wantonly thrown out of
employment for the sake of a doctrinaire theory. They had put him in
competition with the serf of Europe. Such was the subject-matter of my
own modest addresses in this, my maiden campaign. I had the sense to see
myself in perspective; to recognize that not for me, a dignified and
substantial lawyer of affairs, were the rhetorical flights of the Hon.
Joseph Mecklin. I spoke with a certain restraint. Not too dryly, I hope.
But I sought to curb my sentiments, my indignation, at the manner in
which the working-man had been treated; to appeal to the common sense
rather than to the passions of my audiences. Here were the statistics!
(drawn, by the way, from the Republican Campaign book). Unscrupulous
demagogues--Democratic, of course--had sought to twist and evade them.
Let this terrible record of lack of employment and misery be compared
with the prosperity under Republican rule.

"One of the most effective speakers in this campaign for the restoration
of Prosperity," said the Rossiter Banner, "is Mr. Hugh Paret, of the firm
of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon. Mr. Paret's speech at the Opera-House last
evening made a most favourable impression. Mr. Paret deals with facts.
And his thoughtful analysis of the situation into which the Democratic
party has brought this country should convince any sane-minded voter that
the time has come for a change."

I began to keep a scrap-book, though I locked it up in the drawer of my
desk. In it are to be found many clippings of a similarly gratifying
tenor....

Mecklin and I were well contrasted. In this way, incidentally, I made
many valuable acquaintances among the "solid" men of the state, the local
capitalists and manufacturers, with whom my manner of dealing with public
questions was in particular favour. These were practical men; they rather
patronized the Hon. Joseph, thus estimating, to a nicety, a mans value;
or solidity, or specific gravity, it might better be said, since our
universe was one of checks and balances. The Hon. Joseph and his like,
skyrocketing through the air, were somehow necessary in the scheme of
things, but not to be taken too seriously. Me they did take seriously,
these provincial lords, inviting me to their houses and opening their
hearts. Thus, when we came to Elkington, Mr. Mecklin reposed in the
Commercial House, on the noisy main street. Fortunately for him, the
clanging of trolley cars never interfered with his slumbers. I slept in a
wide chamber in the mansion of Mr. Ezra Hutchins. There were many
Hutchinses in Elkington,--brothers and cousins and uncles and
great-uncles,--and all were connected with the woollen mills. But there
is always one supreme Hutchins, and Ezra was he: tall, self-contained,
elderly, but well preserved through frugal living, essentially American
and typical of his class, when he entered the lobby of the Commercial
House that afternoon the babel of political discussion was suddenly
hushed; politicians, traveling salesmen and the members of the local
committee made a lane for him; to him, the Hon. Joseph and I were
introduced. Mr. Hutchins knew what he wanted. He was cordial to Mr.
Mecklin, but he took me. We entered a most respectable surrey with
tassels, driven by a raw-boned coachman in a black overcoat, drawn by two
sleek horses.

"How is this thing going, Paret?" he asked.

I gave him Mr. Grunewald's estimated majority.

"What do you think?" he demanded, a shrewd, humorous look in his blue
eyes.

"Well, I think we'll carry the state. I haven't had Grunewald's
experience in estimating."

Ezra Hutchins smiled appreciatively.

"What does Watling think?"

"He doesn't seem to be worrying much."

"Ever been in Elkington before?"

I said I hadn't.

"Well, a drive will do you good."

It was about four o'clock on a mild October afternoon. The little town,
of fifteen thousand inhabitants or so, had a wonderful setting in the
widening valley of the Scopanong, whose swiftly running waters furnished
the power for the mills. We drove to these through a gateway over which
the words "No Admittance" were conspicuously painted, past long brick
buildings that bordered the canals; and in the windows I caught sight of
drab figures of men and women bending over the machines. Half of the
buildings, as Mr. Hutchins pointed out, were closed,--mute witnesses of
tariff-tinkering madness. Even more eloquent of democratic folly was that
part of the town through which we presently passed, streets lined with
rows of dreary houses where the workers lived. Children were playing on
the sidewalks, but theirs seemed a listless play; listless, too, were the
men and women who sat on the steps,--listless, and somewhat sullen, as
they watched us passing. Ezra Hutchins seemed to read my thought.

"Since the unions got in here I've had nothing but trouble," he said.
"I've tried to do my duty by my people, God knows. But they won't see
which side their bread's buttered on. They oppose me at every step, they
vote against their own interests. Some years ago they put up a job on us,
and sent a scatter-brained radical to the legislature."

"Krebs."

"Do you know him?"

"Slightly. He was in my class at Harvard.... Is he still here?" I asked,
after a pause.

"Oh, yes. But he hasn't gone to the legislature this time, we've seen to
that. His father was a respectable old German who had a little shop and
made eye-glasses. The son is an example of too much education. He's a
notoriety seeker. Oh, he's clever, in a way. He's given us a good deal of
trouble, too, in the courts with damage cases."...

We came to a brighter, more spacious, well-to-do portion of the town,
where the residences faced the river. In a little while the waters
widened into a lake, which was surrounded by a park, a gift to the city
of the Hutchins family. Facing it, on one side, was the Hutchins Library;
on the other, across a wide street, where the maples were turning, were
the Hutchinses' residences of various dates of construction, from that of
the younger George, who had lately married a wife, and built in bright
yellow brick, to the old-fashioned mansion of Ezra himself. This, he told
me, had been good enough for his father, and was good enough for him. The
picture of it comes back to me, now, with singular attractiveness. It was
of brick, and I suppose a modification of the Georgian; the kind of house
one still sees in out-of-the way corners of London, with a sort of
Dickensy flavour; high and square and uncompromising, with small-paned
windows, with a flat roof surrounded by a low balustrade, and many
substantial chimneys. The third storey was lower than the others,
separated from them by a distinct line. On one side was a wide porch.
Yellow and red leaves, the day's fall, scattered the well-kept lawn.
Standing in the doorway of the house was a girl in white, and as we
descended from the surrey she came down the walk to meet us. She was
young, about twenty. Her hair was the colour of the russet maple leaves.

"This is Mr. Paret, Maude." Mr. Hutchins looked at his watch as does a
man accustomed to live by it. "If you'll excuse me, Mr. Paret, I have
something important to attend to. Perhaps Mr. Paret would like to look
about the grounds?" He addressed his daughter.

I said I should be delighted, though I had no idea what grounds were
meant. As I followed Maude around the house she explained that all the
Hutchins connection had a common back yard, as she expressed it. In
reality, there were about two blocks of the property, extending behind
all the houses. There were great trees with swings, groves, orchards
where the late apples glistened between the leaves, an old-fashioned
flower garden loath to relinquish its blooming. In the distance the
shadowed western ridge hung like a curtain of deep blue velvet against
the sunset.

"What a wonderful spot!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, it is nice," she agreed, "we were all brought up here--I mean my
cousins and myself. There are dozens of us. And dozens left," she added,
as the shouts and laughter of children broke the stillness.

A boy came running around the corner of the path. He struck out at Maude.
With a remarkably swift movement she retaliated.

"Ouch!" he exclaimed.

"You got him that time," I laughed, and, being detected, she suddenly
blushed. It was this act that drew my attention to her, that defined her
as an individual. Before that I had regarded her merely as a shy and
provincial girl. Now she was brimming with an unsuspected vitality. A
certain interest was aroused, although her shyness towards me was not
altered. I found it rather a flattering shyness.

"It's Hugh," she explained, "he's always trying to be funny. Speak to Mr.
Paret, Hugh."

"Why, that's my name, too," I said.

"Is it?"

"She knocked my hat off a little while ago," said Hugh. "I was only
getting square."

"Well, you didn't get square, did you?" I asked.

"Are you going to speak in the tows hall to-night?" the boy demanded. I
admitted it. He went off, pausing once to stare back at me.... Maude and
I walked on.

"It must be exciting to speak before a large audience," she said. "If I
were a man, I think I should like to be in politics."

"I cannot imagine you in politics," I answered.

She laughed.

"I said, if I were a man."

"Are you going to the meeting?"

"Oh, yes. Father promised to take me. He has a box."

I thought it would be pleasant to have her there.

"I'm afraid you'll find what I have to say rather dry," I said.

"A woman can't expect to understand everything," she answered quickly.

This remark struck me favourably. I glanced at her sideways. She was not
a beauty, but she was distinctly well-formed and strong. Her face was
oval, her features not quite regular,--giving them a certain charm; her
colour was fresh, her eyes blue, the lighter blue one sees on Chinese
ware: not a poetic comparison, but so I thought of them. She was
apparently not sophisticated, as were most of the young women at home
whom I knew intimately (as were the Watling twins, for example, with one
of whom, Frances, I had had, by the way, rather a lively flirtation the
spring before); she seemed refreshingly original, impressionable and
plastic....

We walked slowly back to the house, and in the hallway I met Mrs.
Hutchins, a bustling, housewifely lady, inclined to stoutness, whose
creased and kindly face bore witness to long acquiescence in the
discipline of matrimony, to the contentment that results from an
essentially circumscribed and comfortable life. She was, I learned later,
the second Mrs. Hutchins, and Maude their only child. The children of the
first marriage, all girls, had married and scattered.

Supper was a decorous but heterogeneous meal of the old-fashioned sort
that gives one the choice between tea and cocoa. It was something of an
occasion, I suspected. The minister was there, the Reverend Mr.
Doddridge, who would have made, in appearance at least, a perfect Puritan
divine in a steeple hat and a tippet. Only--he was no longer the leader
of the community; and even in his grace he had the air of deferring to
the man who provided the bounties of which we were about to partake
rather than to the Almighty. Young George was there, Mr. Hutchins's
nephew, who was daily becoming more and more of a factor in the
management of the mills, and had built the house of yellow brick that
stood out so incongruously among the older Hutchinses' mansions, and
marked a transition. I thought him rather a yellow-brick gentleman
himself for his assumption of cosmopolitan manners. His wife was a
pretty, discontented little woman who plainly deplored her environment,
longed for larger fields of conquest: George, she said, must remain where
he was, for the present at least,--Uncle Ezra depended on him; but
Elkington was a prosy place, and Mrs. George gave the impression that she
did not belong here. They went to the city on occasions; both cities. And
when she told me we had a common acquaintance in Mrs. Hambleton
Durrett--whom she thought so lovely!--I knew that she had taken Nancy as
an ideal: Nancy, the social leader of what was to Mrs. George a
metropolis.

Presently the talk became general among the men, the subject being the
campaign, and I the authority, bombarded with questions I strove to
answer judicially. What was the situation in this county and in that? the
national situation? George indulged in rather a vigorous arraignment of
the demagogues, national and state, who were hurting business in order to
obtain political power. The Reverend Mr. Doddridge assented, deploring
the poverty that the local people had brought on themselves by heeding
the advice of agitators; and Mrs. Hutchins, who spent much of her time in
charity work, agreed with the minister when he declared that the trouble
was largely due to a decline in Christian belief. Ezra Hutchins, too,
nodded at this.

"Take that man Krebs, for example," the minister went on, stimulated by
this encouragement, "he's an atheist, pure and simple." A sympathetic
shudder went around the table at the word. George alone smiled. "Old
Krebs was a free-thinker; I used to get my glasses of him. He was at
least a conscientious man, a good workman, which is more than can be said
for the son. Young Krebs has talent, and if only he had devoted himself
to the honest practice of law, instead of stirring up dissatisfaction
among these people, he would be a successful man to-day."

Mr. Hutchins explained that I was at college with Krebs.

"These people must like him," I said, "or they wouldn't have sent him to
the legislature."

"Well, a good many of them do like him," the minister admitted. "You see,
he actually lives among them. They believe his socialistic doctrines
because he's a friend of theirs."

"He won't represent this town again, that's sure," exclaimed George. "You
didn't see in the papers that he was nominated,--did you, Paret?"

"But if the mill people wanted him, George, how could it be prevented?"
his wife demanded.

George winked at me.

"There are more ways of skinning a cat than one," he said cryptically.

"Well, it's time to go to the meeting, I guess," remarked Ezra, rising.
Once more he looked at his watch.

We were packed into several family carriages and started off. In front of
the hall the inevitable red fire was burning, its quivering light
reflected on the faces of the crowd that blocked the street. They stood
silent, strangely apathetic as we pushed through them to the curb, and
the red fire went out suddenly as we descended. My temporary sense of
depression, however, deserted me as we entered the hall, which was well
lighted and filled with people, who clapped when the Hon. Joseph and I,
accompanied by Mr. Doddridge and the Hon. Henry Clay Mellish from
Pottstown, with the local chairman, walked out on the stage. A glance
over the audience sufficed to ascertain that that portion of the
population whose dinner pails we longed to fill was evidently not present
in large numbers. But the farmers had driven in from the hills, while the
merchants and storekeepers of Elkington had turned out loyally.

The chairman, in introducing me, proclaimed me as a coming man, and
declared that I had already achieved, in the campaign, considerable
notoriety. As I spoke, I was pleasantly aware of Maude Hutchins leaning
forward a little across the rail of the right-hand stage box--for the
town hall was half opera-house; her attitude was one of semi-absorbed
admiration; and the thought that I had made an impression on her
stimulated me. I spoke with more aplomb. Somewhat to my surprise, I found
myself making occasional, unexpected witticisms that drew laughter and
applause. Suddenly, from the back of the hall, a voice called out:--"How
about House Bill 709?"

There was a silence, then a stirring and craning of necks. It was my
first experience of heckling, and for the moment I was taken aback. I
thought of Krebs. He had, indeed, been in my mind since I had risen to my
feet, and I had scanned the faces before me in search of his. But it was
not his voice.

"Well, what about Bill 709?" I demanded.

"You ought to know something about it, I guess," the voice responded.

"Put him out!" came from various portions of the hall.

Inwardly, I was shaken. Not--in orthodox language from any "conviction of
sin." Yet it was my first intimation that my part in the legislation
referred to was known to any save a select few. I blamed Krebs, and a hot
anger arose within me against him. After all, what could they prove?

"No, don't put him out," I said. "Let him come up here to the platform.
I'll yield to him. And I'm entirely willing to discuss with him and
defend any measures passed in the legislature of this state by a
Republican majority. Perhaps," I added, "the gentleman has a copy of the
law in his pocket, that I may know what he is talking about, and answer
him intelligently."

At this there was wild applause. I had the audience with me. The offender
remained silent and presently I finished my speech. After that Mr.
Mecklin made them cheer and weep, and Mr. Mellish made them laugh. The
meeting had been highly successful.

"You polished him off, all right," said George Hutchins, as he took my
hand.

"Who was he?"

"Oh, one of the local sore-heads. Krebs put him up to it, of course."

"Was Krebs here?" I asked.

"Sitting in the corner of the balcony. That meeting must have made him
feel sick." George bent forward and whispered in my ear: "I thought Bill
709 was Watling's idea."

"Oh, I happened to be in the Potts House about that time," I explained.

George, of whom it may be gathered that he was not wholly
unsophisticated, grinned at me appreciatively.

"Say, Paret," he replied, putting his hand through my arm, "there's a
little legal business in prospect down here that will require some
handling, and I wish you'd come down after the campaign and talk it over,
with us. I've just about made up my mind that you're he man to tackle
it."

"All right, I'll come," I said.

"And stay with me," said George....

We went to his yellow-brick house for refreshments, salad and ice-cream
and (in the face of the Hutchins traditions) champagne. Others had been
invited in, some twenty persons.... Once in a while, when I looked up, I
met Maude's eyes across the room. I walked home with her, slowly, the
length of the Hutchinses' block. Floating over the lake was a waning
October moon that cast through the thinning maples a lace-work of shadows
at our feet; I had the feeling of well-being that comes to heroes, and
the presence of Maude Hutchins was an incense, a vestal incense far from
unpleasing. Yet she had reservations which appealed to me. Hers was not a
gushing provincialism, like that of Mrs. George.

"I liked your speech so much, Mr. Paret," she told me. "It seemed so
sensible and--controlled, compared to the others. I have never thought a
great deal about these things, of course, and I never understood before
why taking away the tariff caused so much misery. You made that quite
plain.

"If so, I'm glad," I said.

She was silent a moment.

"The working people here have had a hard time during the last year," she
went on. "Some of the mills had to be shut down, you know. It has
troubled me. Indeed, it has troubled all of us. And what has made it more
difficult, more painful is that many of them seem actually to dislike us.
They think it's father's fault, and that he could run all the mills if he
wanted to. I've been around a little with mother and sometimes the women
wouldn't accept any help from us; they said they'd rather starve than
take charity, that they had the right to work. But father couldn't run
the mills at a loss--could he?"

"Certainly not," I replied.

"And then there's Mr. Krebs, of whom we were speaking at supper, and who
puts all kinds of queer notions into their heads. Father says he's an
anarchist. I heard father say at supper that he was at Harvard with you.
Did you like him?"

"Well," I answered hesitatingly, "I didn't know him very well."

"Of course not," she put in. "I suppose you couldn't have."

"He's got these notions," I explained, "that are mischievous and
crazy--but I don't dislike him."

"I'm glad to hear you say that!" she answered quietly. "I like him,
too--he seems so kind, so understanding."

"Do you know him?"

"Well,--" she hesitated--"I feel as though I do. I've only met him once,
and that was by accident. It was the day the big strike began, last
spring, and I had been shopping, and started for the mills to get father
to walk home with me, as I used to do. I saw the crowds blocking the
streets around the canal. At first I paid no attention to them, but after
a while I began to be a little uneasy, there were places where I had to
squeeze through, and I couldn't help seeing that something was wrong, and
that the people were angry. Men and women were talking in loud voices.
One woman stared at me, and called my name, and said something that
frightened me terribly. I went into a doorway--and then I saw Mr. Krebs.
I didn't know who he was. He just said, 'You'd better come with me, Miss
Hutchins,' and I went with him. I thought afterwards that it was a very
courageous thing for him to do, because he was so popular with the mill
people, and they had such a feeling against us. Yet they didn't seem to
resent it, and made way for us, and Mr. Krebs spoke to many of them as we
passed. After we got to State Street, I asked him his name, and when he
told me I was speechless. He took off his hat and went away. He had such
a nice face--not at all ugly when you look at it twice--and kind eyes,
that I just couldn't believe him to be as bad as father and George think
he is. Of course he is mistaken," she added hastily, "but I am sure he is
sincere, and honestly thinks he can help those people by telling them
what he does."

The question shot at me during the meeting rankled still; I wanted to
believe that Krebs had inspired it, and her championship of him gave me a
twinge of jealousy,--the slightest twinge, to be sure, yet a perceptible
one. At the same time, the unaccountable liking I had for the man stirred
to life. The act she described had been so characteristic.

"He's one of the born rebels against society," I said glibly. "Yet I do
think he's sincere."

Maude was grave. "I should be sorry to think he wasn't," she replied.
After I had bidden her good night at the foot of the stairs, and gone to
my room, I reflected how absurd it was to be jealous of Krebs. What was
Maude Hutchins to me? And even if she had been something to me, she never
could be anything to Krebs. All the forces of our civilization stood
between the two; nor was she of a nature to take plunges of that sort.
The next day, as I lay back in my seat in the parlour-car and gazed at
the autumn landscape, I indulged in a luxurious contemplation of the
picture she had made as she stood on the lawn under the trees in the
early morning light, when my carriage had driven away; and I had turned,
to perceive that her eyes had followed me. I was not in love with her, of
course. I did not wish to return at once to Elkington, but I dwelt with a
pleasant anticipation upon my visit, when the campaign should be over,
with George.




XIII.

"The good old days of the Watling campaign," as Colonel Paul Varney is
wont to call them, are gone forever. And the Colonel himself, who stuck
to his gods, has been through the burning, fiery furnace of
Investigation, and has come out unscathed and unrepentant. The flames of
investigation, as a matter of fact, passed over his head in their vain
attempt to reach the "man higher up," whose feet they licked; but him
they did not devour, either. A veteran in retirement, the Colonel is
living under his vine and fig tree on the lake at Rossiter; the vine
bears Catawba grapes, of which he is passionately fond; the fig tree, the
Bartlett pears he gives to his friends. He has saved something from the
spoils of war, but other veterans I could mention are not so fortunate.
The old warriors have retired, and many are dead; the good old methods
are becoming obsolete. We never bothered about those mischievous things
called primaries. Our county committees, our state committees chose the
candidates for the conventions, which turned around and chose the
committees. Both the committees and the conventions--under advice--chose
the candidates. Why, pray, should the people complain, when they had
everything done for them? The benevolent parties, both Democratic and
Republican, even undertook the expense of printing the ballots! And
generous ballots they were (twenty inches long and five wide!),
distributed before election, in order that the voters might have the
opportunity of studying and preparing them: in order that Democrats of
delicate feelings might take the pains to scratch out all the Democratic
candidates, and write in the names of the Republican candidates.
Patriotism could go no farther than this....

I spent the week before election in the city, where I had the opportunity
of observing what may be called the charitable side of politics. For a
whole month, or more, the burden of existence had been lifted from the
shoulders of the homeless. No church or organization, looked out for
these frowsy, blear-eyed and ragged wanderers who had failed to find a
place in the scale of efficiency. For a whole month, I say, Mr. Judd
Jason and his lieutenants made them their especial care; supported them
in lodging-houses, induced the night clerks to give them attention; took
the greatest pains to ensure them the birth-right which, as American
citizens, was theirs,--that of voting. They were not only given homes for
a period, but they were registered; and in the abundance of good feeling
that reigned during this time of cheer, even the foreigners were
registered! On election day they were driven, like visiting notables, in
carryalls and carriages to the polls! Some of them, as though in
compensation for ills endured between elections, voted not once, but many
times; exercising judicial functions for which they should be given
credit. For instance, they were convinced that the Hon. W. W. Trulease
had made a good governor; and they were Watling enthusiasts,--intent on
sending men to the legislature who would vote for him for senator; yet
there were cases in which, for the minor offices, the democrat was the
better man!

It was a memorable day. In spite of Mr. Lawler's Pilot, which was as a
voice crying in the wilderness, citizens who had wives and homes and
responsibilities, business men and clerks went to the voting booths and
recorded their choice for Trulease, Watling and Prosperity: and
working-men followed suit. Victory was in the air. Even the policemen
wore happy smiles, and in some instances the election officers themselves
in absent-minded exuberance thrust bunches of ballots into the boxes!

In response to an insistent demand from his fellow-citizens Mr. Watling,
the Saturday evening before, had made a speech in the Auditorium, decked
with bunting and filled with people. For once the Morning Era did not
exaggerate when it declared that the ovation had lasted fully ten
minutes. "A remarkable proof" it went on to say, "of the esteem and
confidence in which our fellow-citizen is held by those who know him
best, his neighbours in the city where he has given so many instances of
his public spirit, where he has achieved such distinction in the practice
of the law. He holds the sound American conviction that the office should
seek the man. His address is printed in another column, and we believe it
will appeal to the intelligence and sober judgment of the state. It is
replete with modesty and wisdom."

Mr. Watling was introduced by Mr. Bering of the State Supreme Court (a
candidate for re-election), who spoke with deliberation, with owl-like
impressiveness. He didn't believe in judges meddling in politics, but
this was an unusual occasion. (Loud applause.) Most unusual. He had come
here as a man, as an American, to pay his tribute to another man, a
long-time friend, whom he thought to stand somewhat aside and above mere
party strife, to represent values not merely political.... So
accommodating and flexible is the human mind, so "practical" may it
become through dealing with men and affairs, that in listening to Judge
Bering I was able to ignore the little anomalies such a situation might
have suggested to the theorist, to the mere student of the institutions
of democracy. The friendly glasses of rye and water Mr. Bering had taken
in Monahan's saloon, the cases he had "arranged" for the firm of Watling,
Fowndes and Ripon were forgotten. Forgotten, too, when Theodore Watling
stood up and men began, to throw their hats in the air,--were the
cavilling charges of Mr. Lawler's Pilot that, far from the office seeking
the man, our candidate had spent over a hundred thousand dollars of his
own money, to say nothing of the contributions of Mr. Scherer, Mr.
Dickinson and the Railroad! If I had been troubled with any weak, ethical
doubts, Mr. Watling would have dispelled them; he had red blood in his
veins, a creed in which he believed, a rare power of expressing himself
in plain, everyday language that was often colloquial, but never--as the
saying goes--"cheap." The dinner-pail predicament was real to him. He
would present a policy of our opponents charmingly, even persuasively,
and then add, after a moment's pause: "There is only one objection to
this, my friends--that it doesn't work." It was all in the way he said
it, of course. The audience would go wild with approval, and shouts of
"that's right" could be heard here and there. Then he proceeded to show
why it didn't work. He had the faculty of bringing his lessons home, the
imagination to put himself into the daily life of those who listened to
him,--the life of the storekeeper, the clerk, of the labourer and of the
house-wife. The effect of this can scarcely be overestimated. For the
American hugs the delusion that there are no class distinctions, even
though his whole existence may be an effort to rise out of once class
into another. "Your wife," he told them once, "needs a dress. Let us
admit that the material for the dress is a little cheaper than it was
four years ago, but when she comes to look into the family stocking--"
(Laughter.) "I needn't go on. If we could have things cheaper, and more
money to buy them with, we should all be happy, and the Republican party
could retire from business."

He did not once refer to the United States Senatorship.

It was appropriate, perhaps, that many of us dined on the evening of
election day at the Boyne Club. There was early evidence of a Republican
land-slide. And when, at ten o'clock, it was announced that Mr. Trulease
was re-elected by a majority which exceeded Mr. Grunewald's most hopeful
estimate, that the legislature was "safe," that Theodore Watling would be
the next United States Senator, a scene of jubilation ensued within those
hallowed walls which was unprecedented. Chairs were pushed back, rugs
taken up, Gene Hollister played the piano and a Virginia reel started; in
a burst of enthusiasm Leonard Dickinson ordered champagne for every
member present. The country was returning to its senses. Theodore Watling
had preferred, on this eventful night, to remain quietly at home. But
presently carriages were ordered, and a "delegation" of enthusiastic
friends departed to congratulate him; Dickinson, of course, Grierson,
Fowndes, Ogilvy, and Grunewald. We found Judah B. Tallant there,--in
spite of the fact that it was a busy night for the Era; and Adolf Scherer
himself, in expansive mood, was filling the largest of the library
chairs. Mr. Watling was the least excited of them all; remarkably calm, I
thought, for a man on the verge of realizing his life's high ambition. He
had some old brandy, and a box of cigars he had been saving for an
occasion. He managed to convey to everyone his appreciation of the value
of their cooperation....

It was midnight before Mr. Scherer arose to take his departure. He seized
Mr. Watling's hand, warmly, in both of his own.

"I have never," he said, with a relapse into the German f's, "I have
never had a happier moment in my life, my friend, than when I
congratulate you on your success." His voice shook with emotion. "Alas,
we shall not see so much of you now."

"He'll be on guard, Scherer," said Leonard Dickinson, putting his arm
around my chief.

"Good night, Senator," said Tallant, and all echoed the word, which
struck me as peculiarly appropriate. Much as I had admired Mr. Watling
before, it seemed indeed as if he had undergone some subtle change in the
last few hours, gained in dignity and greatness by the action of the
people that day. When it came my turn to bid him good night, he retained
my hand in his.

"Don't go yet, Hugh," he said.

"But you must be tired," I objected.

"This sort of thing doesn't make a man tired," he laughed, leading me
back to the library, where he began to poke the fire into a blaze. "Sit
down awhile. You must be tired, I think,--you've worked hard in this
campaign, a good deal harder than I have. I haven't said much about it,
but I appreciate it, my boy." Mr. Watling had the gift of expressing his
feelings naturally, without sentimentality. I would have given much for
that gift.

"Oh, I liked it," I replied awkwardly.

I read a gentle amusement in his eyes, and also the expression of
something else, difficult to define. He had seated himself, and was
absently thrusting at the logs with the poker.

"You've never regretted going into law?" he asked suddenly, to my
surprise.

"Why, no, sir," I said.

"I'm glad to hear that. I feel, to a considerable extent, responsible for
your choice of a profession."

"My father intended me to be a lawyer," I told him. "But it's true that
you gave me my--my first enthusiasm."

He looked up at me at the word.

"I admired your father. He seemed to me to be everything that a lawyer
should be. And years ago, when I came to this city a raw country boy from
upstate, he represented and embodied for me all the fine traditions of
the profession. But the practice of law isn't what it was in his day,
Hugh."

"No," I agreed, "that could scarcely be expected."

"Yes, I believe you realize that," he said. "I've watched you, I've taken
a personal pride in you, and I have an idea that eventually you will
succeed me here--neither Fowndes nor Ripon have the peculiar ability you
have shown. You and I are alike in a great many respects, and I am
inclined to think we are rather rare, as men go. We are able to keep one
object vividly in view, so vividly as to be able to work for it day and
night. I could mention dozens who had and have more natural talent for
the law than I, more talent for politics than I. The same thing may be
said about you. I don't regard either of us as natural lawyers, such as
your father was. He couldn't help being a lawyer."

Here was new evidence of his perspicacity.

"But surely," I ventured, "you don't feel any regrets concerning your
career, Mr. Watling?"

"No," he said, "that's just the point. But no two of us are made wholly
alike. I hadn't practised law very long before I began to realize that
conditions were changing, that the new forces at work in our industrial
life made the older legal ideals impracticable. It was a case of choosing
between efficiency and inefficiency, and I chose efficiency. Well, that
was my own affair, but when it comes to influencing others--" He paused.
"I want you to see this as I do, not for the sake of justifying myself,
but because I honestly believe there is more to it than expediency,--a
good deal more. There's a weak way of looking at it, and a strong way.
And if I feel sure you understand it, I shall be satisfied.

"Because things are going to change in this country, Hugh. They are
changing, but they are going to change more. A man has got to make up his
mind what he believes in, and be ready to fight for it. We'll have to
fight for it, sooner perhaps than we realize. We are a nation divided
against ourselves; democracy--Jacksonian democracy, at all events, is a
flat failure, and we may as well acknowledge it. We have a political
system we have outgrown, and which, therefore, we have had to nullify.
There are certain needs, certain tendencies of development in nations as
well as in individuals,--needs stronger than the state, stronger than the
law or constitution. In order to make our resources effective,
combinations of capital are more and more necessary, and no more to be
denied than a chemical process, given the proper ingredients, can be
thwarted. The men who control capital must have a free hand, or the
structure will be destroyed. This compels us to do many things which we
would rather not do, which we might accomplish openly and unopposed if
conditions were frankly recognized, and met by wise statesmanship which
sought to bring about harmony by the reshaping of laws and policies. Do
you follow me?"

"Yes," I answered. "But I have never heard the situation stated so
clearly. Do you think the day will come when statesmanship will recognize
this need?"

"Ah," he said, "I'm afraid not--in my time, at least. But we shall have
to develop that kind of statesmen or go on the rocks. Public opinion in
the old democratic sense is a myth; it must be made by strong individuals
who recognize and represent evolutionary needs, otherwise it's at the
mercy of demagogues who play fast and loose with the prejudice and
ignorance of the mob. The people don't value the vote, they know nothing
about the real problems. So far as I can see, they are as easily swayed
to-day as the crowd that listened to Mark Antony's oration about Caesar.
You've seen how we have to handle them, in this election and--in other
matters. It isn't a pleasant practice, something we'd indulge in out of
choice, but the alternative is unthinkable. We'd have chaos in no time.
We've just got to keep hold, you understand--we can't leave it to the
irresponsible."

"Yes," I said. In this mood he was more impressive than I had ever known
him, and his confidence flattered and thrilled me.

"In the meantime, we're criminals," he continued. "From now on we'll have
to stand more and more denunciation from the visionaries, the
dissatisfied, the trouble makers. We may as well make up our minds to it.
But we've got something on our side worth fighting for, and the man who
is able to make that clear will be great."

"But you--you are going to the Senate," I reminded him.

He shook his head.

"The time has not yet come," he said. "Confusion and misunderstanding
must increase before they can diminish. But I have hopes of you, Hugh, or
I shouldn't have spoken. I shan't be here now--of course I'll keep in
touch with you. I wanted to be sure that you had the right view of this
thing."

"I see it now," I said. "I had thought of it, but never--never as a
whole--not in the large sense in which you have expressed it." To attempt
to acknowledge or deprecate the compliment he had paid me was impossible;
I felt that he must have read my gratitude and appreciation in my manner.

"I mustn't keep you up until morning." He glanced at the clock, and went
with me through the hall into the open air. A meteor darted through the
November night. "We're like that," he observed, staring after it, a
"flash across the darkness, and we're gone."

"Only--there are many who haven't the satisfaction of a flash," I was
moved to reply.

He laughed and put his hand on my shoulder as he bade me good night.

"Hugh, you ought to get married. I'll have to find a nice girl for you,"
he said. With an elation not unmingled with awe I made my way homeward.

Theodore Watling had given me a creed.

A week or so after the election I received a letter from George Hutchins
asking me to come to Elkington. I shall not enter into the details of the
legal matter involved. Many times that winter I was a guest at the
yellow-brick house, and I have to confess, as spring came on, that I made
several trips to Elkington which business necessity did not absolutely
demand.

I considered Maude Hutchins, and found the consideration rather a
delightful process. As became an eligible and successful young man, I was
careful not to betray too much interest; and I occupied myself at first
with a review of what I deemed her shortcomings. Not that I was thinking
of marriage--but I had imagined the future Mrs. Paret as tall; Maude was
up to my chin: again, the hair of the fortunate lady was to be dark, and
Maude's was golden red: my ideal had esprit, lightness of touch, the
faculty of seizing just the aspect of a subject that delighted me, and a
knowledge of the world; Maude was simple, direct, and in a word
provincial. Her provinciality, however, was negative rather than
positive, she had no disagreeable mannerisms, her voice was not nasal;
her plasticity appealed to me. I suppose I was lost without knowing it
when I began to think of moulding her.

All of this went on at frequent intervals during the winter, and while I
was organizing the Elkington Power and Traction Company for George I
found time to dine and sup at Maude's house, and to take walks with her.
I thought I detected an incense deliciously sweet; by no means
overpowering, like the lily's, but more like the shy fragrance of the
wood flower. I recall her kind welcomes, the faint deepening of colour in
her cheeks when she greeted me, and while I suspected that she looked up
to me she had a surprising and tantalizing self-command.

There came moments when I grew slightly alarmed, as, for instance, one
Sunday in the early spring when I was dining at the Ezra Hutchins's house
and surprised Mrs. Hutchins's glance on me, suspecting her of seeking to
divine what manner of man I was. I became self-conscious; I dared not
look at Maude, who sat across the table; thereafter I began to feel that
the Hutchins connection regarded me as a suitor. I had grown intimate
with George and his wife, who did not refrain from sly allusions; and
George himself once remarked, with characteristic tact, that I was most
conscientious in my attention to the traction affair; I have reason to
believe they were even less delicate with Maude. This was the logical
time to withdraw--but I dallied. The experience was becoming more
engrossing,--if I may so describe it,--and spring was approaching. The
stars in their courses were conspiring. I was by no means as yet a
self-acknowledged wooer, and we discussed love in its lighter phases
through the medium of literature. Heaven forgive me for calling it so!
About that period, it will be remembered, a mushroom growth of volumes of
a certain kind sprang into existence; little books with "artistic"
bindings and wide margins, sweetened essays, some of them written in
beautiful English by dilettante authors for drawing-room consumption; and
collections of short stories, no doubt chiefly bought by philanderers
like myself, who were thus enabled to skate on thin ice over deep water.
It was a most delightful relationship that these helped to support, and I
fondly believed I could reach shore again whenever I chose.

There came a Sunday in early May, one of those days when the feminine
assumes a large importance. I had been to the Hutchinses' church; and
Maude, as she sat and prayed decorously in the pew beside me, suddenly
increased in attractiveness and desirability. Her voice was very sweet,
and I felt a delicious and languorous thrill which I identified not only
with love, but also with a reviving spirituality. How often the two seem
to go hand in hand!

She wore a dress of a filmy material, mauve, with a design in gold thread
running through it. Of late, it seemed, she had had more new dresses: and
their modes seemed more cosmopolitan; at least to the masculine eye. How
delicately her hair grew, in little, shining wisps, around her white
neck! I could have reached out my hand and touched her. And it was this
desire,--although by no means overwhelming,--that startled me. Did I
really want her? The consideration of this vital question occupied the
whole time of the sermon; made me distrait at dinner,--a large family
gathering. Later I found myself alone with heron a bench in the
Hutchinses' garden where we had walked the day of my arrival, during the
campaign.

The gardens were very different, now. The trees had burst forth again
into leaf, the spiraea bushes seemed weighted down with snow, and with a
note like that of the quivering bass string of a 'cello the bees hummed
among the fruit blossoms. And there beside me in her filmy dress was
Maude, a part of it all--the meaning of all that set my being clamouring.
She was like some ripened, delicious flower ready to be picked.... One of
those pernicious, make-believe volumes had fallen on the bench between
us, for I could not read any more; I could not think; I touched her hand,
and when she drew it gently away I glanced at her. Reason made a valiant
but hopeless effort to assert itself. Was I sure that I wanted her--for
life? No use! I wanted her now, no matter what price that future might
demand. An awkward silence fell between us--awkward to me, at least--and
I, her guide and mentor, became banal, apologetic, confused. I made some
idiotic remark about being together in the Garden of Eden.

"I remember Mr. Doddridge saying in Bible class that it was supposed to
be on the Euphrates," she replied. "But it's been destroyed by the
flood."

"Let's make another--one of our own," I suggested.

"Why, how silly you are this afternoon."

"What's to prevent us--Maude?" I demanded, with a dry throat.

"Nonsense!" she laughed. In proportion as I lost poise she seemed to gain
it.

"It's not nonsense," I faltered. "If we were married."

At last the fateful words were pronounced--irrevocably. And, instead of
qualms, I felt nothing but relief, joy that I had been swept along by the
flood of feeling. She did not look at me, but gazed straight ahead of
her.

"If I love you, Maude?" I stammered, after a moment.

"But I don't love you," she replied, steadily.

Never in my life had I been so utterly taken aback.

"Do you mean," I managed to say, "that after all these months you don't
like me a little?"

"'Liking' isn't loving." She looked me full in the face. "I like you very
much."

"But--" there I stopped, paralyzed by what appeared to me the
quintessence of feminine inconsistency and caprice. Yet, as I stared at
her, she certainly did not appear capricious. It is not too much to say
that I was fairly astounded at this evidence of self-command and
decision, of the strength of mind to refuse me. Was it possible that she
had felt nothing and I all? I got to my feet.

"I hate to hurt your feelings," I heard her say. "I'm very sorry."... She
looked up at me. Afterwards, when reflecting on the scene, I seemed to
remember that there were tears in her eyes. I was not in a condition to
appreciate her splendid sincerity. I was overwhelmed and inarticulate. I
left her there, on the bench, and went back to George's, announcing my
intention of taking the five o'clock train....

Maude Hutchins had become, at a stroke, the most desirable of women. I
have often wondered how I should have felt on that five-hour journey back
to the city if she had fallen into my arms! I should have persuaded
myself, no doubt, that I had not done a foolish thing in yielding to an
impulse and proposing to an inexperienced and provincial young woman, yet
there would have been regrets in the background. Too deeply chagrined to
see any humour in the situation, I settled down in a Pullman seat and
went over and over again the event of that afternoon until the train
reached the city.

As the days wore on, and I attended to my cases, I thought of Maude a
great deal, and in those moments when the pressure of business was
relaxed, she obsessed me. She must love me,--only she did not realize it.
That was the secret! Her value had risen amazingly, become supreme; the
very act of refusing me had emphasized her qualifications as a wife, and
I now desired her with all the intensity of a nature which had been
permitted always to achieve its objects. The inevitable process of
idealization began. In dusty offices I recalled her freshness as she had
sat beside me in the garden,--the freshness of a flower; with Berkeleyan
subjectivism I clothed the flower with colour, bestowed it with
fragrance. I conferred on Maude all the gifts and graces that woman had
possessed since the creation. And I recalled, with mingled bitterness and
tenderness, the turn of her head, the down on her neck, the half-revealed
curve of her arm.... In spite of the growing sordidness of Lyme Street,
my mother and I still lived in the old house, for which she very
naturally had a sentiment. In vain I had urged her from time to time to
move out into a brighter and fresher neighbourhood. It would be time
enough, she said, when I was married.

"If you wait for that, mother," I answered, "we shall spend the rest of
our lives here."

"I shall spend the rest of my life here," she would declare. "But
you--you have your life before you, my dear. You would be so much more
contented if--if you could find some nice girl. I think you live--too
feverishly."

I do not know whether or not she suspected me of being in love, nor
indeed how much she read of me in other ways. I did not confide in her,
nor did it strike me that she might have yearned for confidences; though
sometimes, when I dined at home, I surprised her gentle face--framed now
with white hair--lifted wistfully toward me across the table. Our
relationship, indeed, was a pathetic projection of that which had existed
in my childhood; we had never been confidants then. The world in which I
lived and fought, of great transactions and merciless consequences
frightened her; her own world was more limited than ever. She heard
disquieting things, I am sure, from Cousin Robert Breck, who had become
more and more querulous since the time-honoured firm of Breck and Company
had been forced to close its doors and the home at Claremore had been
sold. My mother often spent the day in the scrolled suburban cottage with
the coloured glass front door where he lived with the Kinleys and
Helen....

If my mother suspected that I was anticipating marriage, and said
nothing, Nancy Durrett suspected and spoke out.

Life is such a curious succession of contradictions and surprises that I
record here without comment the fact that I was seeing much more of Nancy
since her marriage than I had in the years preceding it. A comradeship
existed between us. I often dined at her house and had fallen into the
habit of stopping there frequently on my way home in the evening. Ham did
not seem to mind. What was clear, at any rate, was that Nancy, before
marriage, had exacted some sort of an understanding by which her
"freedom" was not to be interfered with. She was the first among us of
the "modern wives."

Ham, whose heartstrings and purse-strings were oddly intertwined, had
stipulated that they were to occupy the old Durrett mansion; but when
Nancy had made it "livable," as she expressed it, he is said to have
remarked that he might as well have built a new house and been done with
it. Not even old Nathaniel himself would have recognized his home when
Nancy finished what she termed furnishing: out went the horsehair, the
hideous chandeliers, the stuffy books, the Recamier statuary, and an army
of upholsterers, wood-workers, etc., from Boston and New York invaded the
place. The old mahogany doors were spared, but matched now by Chippendale
and Sheraton; the new, polished floors were covered with Oriental rugs,
the dreary Durrett pictures replaced by good canvases and tapestries.
Nancy had what amounted to a genius for interior effects, and she was the
first to introduce among us the luxury that was to grow more and more
prevalent as our wealth increased by leaps and bounds. Only Nancy's
luxury, though lavish, was never vulgar, and her house when completed had
rather marvellously the fine distinction of some old London mansion
filled with the best that generations could contribute. It left Mrs.
Frederick Grierson--whose residence on the Heights had hitherto been our
"grandest"--breathless with despair.

With characteristic audacity Nancy had chosen old Nathaniel's sanctum for
her particular salon, into which Ham himself did not dare to venture
without invitation. It was hung in Pompeiian red and had a little
wrought-iron balcony projecting over the yard, now transformed by an
expert into a garden. When I had first entered this room after the
metamorphosis had taken place I inquired after the tombstone mantel.

"Oh, I've pulled it up by the roots," she said.

"Aren't you afraid of ghosts?" I inquired.

"Do I look it?" she asked. And I confessed that she didn't. Indeed, all
ghosts were laid, nor was there about her the slightest evidence of
mourning or regret. One was forced to acknowledge her perfection in the
part she had chosen as the arbitress of social honours. The candidates
were rapidly increasing; almost every month, it seemed, someone turned up
with a fortune and the aspirations that go with it, and it was Mrs.
Durrett who decided the delicate question of fitness. With these, and
with the world at large, her manner might best be described as difficult;
and I was often amused at the way in which she contrived to keep them at
arm's length and make them uncomfortable. With her intimates--of whom
there were few--she was frank.

"I suppose you enjoy it," I said to her once.

"Of course I enjoy it, or I shouldn't do it," she retorted. "It isn't the
real thing, as I told you once. But none of us gets the real thing. It's
power.... Just as you enjoy what you're doing--sorting out the unfit.
It's a game, it keeps us from brooding over things we can't help. And
after all, when we have good appetites and are fairly happy, why should
we complain?"

"I'm not complaining," I said, taking up a cigarette, "since I still
enjoy your favour."

She regarded me curiously.

"And when you get married, Hugh?"

"Sufficient unto the day," I replied.

"How shall I get along, I wonder, with that simple and unsophisticated
lady when she appears?"

"Well," I said, "you wouldn't marry me."

She shook her head at me, and smiled....

"No," she corrected me, "you like me better as Hams' wife than you would
have as your own."

I merely laughed at this remark.... It would indeed have been difficult
to analyze the new relationship that had sprung up between us, to say
what elements composed it. The roots of it went back to the beginning of
our lives; and there was much of sentiment in it, no doubt. She
understood me as no one else in the world understood me, and she was fond
of me in spite of it.

Hence, when I became infatuated with Maude Hutchins, after that Sunday
when she so unexpectedly had refused me, I might have known that Nancy's
suspicions would be aroused. She startled me by accusing me, out of a
clear sky, of being in love. I denied it a little too emphatically.

"Why shouldn't you tell me, Hugh, if it's so?" she asked. "I didn't
hesitate to tell you."

It was just before her departure for the East to spend the summer. We
were on the balcony, shaded by the big maple that grew at the end of the
garden.

"But there's nothing to tell," I insisted.

She lay back in her chair, regarding me.

"Did you think that I'd be jealous?"

"There's nothing to be jealous about."

"I've always expected you to get married, Hugh. I've even predicted the
type."

She had, in truth, with an accuracy almost uncanny.

"The only thing I'm afraid of is that she won't like me. She lives in
that place you've been going to so much, lately,--doesn't she?"

Of course she had put two and two together, my visits to Elkington and my
manner, which I had flattered myself had not been distrait. On the chance
that she knew more, from some source, I changed my tactics.

"I suppose you mean Maude Hutchins," I said.

Nancy laughed.

"So that's her name!"

"It's the name of a girl in Elkington. I've been doing legal work for the
Hutchinses, and I imagine some idiot has been gossiping. She's just a
young girl--much too young for me."

"Men are queer creatures," she declared. "Did you think I should be
jealous?"

It was exactly what I had thought, but I denied it.

"Why should you be--even if there were anything to be jealous about? You
didn't consult me when you got married. You merely announced an
irrevocable decision."

Nancy leaned forward and laid her hand on my arm.

"My dear," she said, "strange as it may seem, I want you to be happy. I
don't want you to make a mistake, Hugh, too great a mistake."

I was surprised and moved. Once more I had a momentary glimpse of the
real Nancy....

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Ralph Hambleton....




XIV.

However, thoughts of Maude continued to possess me. She still appeared
the most desirable of beings, and a fortnight after my repulse, without
any excuse at all, I telegraphed the George Hutchinses that I was coming
to pay them a visit. Mrs. George, wearing a knowing smile, met me at the
station in a light buck-board.

"I've asked Maude to dinner," she said....

Thus with masculine directness I returned to the charge, and Maude's
continued resistance but increased my ardour; could not see why she
continued to resist me.

"Because I don't love you," she said.

This was incredible. I suggested that she didn't know what love was, and
she admitted it was possible: she liked me very, very much. I told her,
sagely, that this was the best foundation for matrimony. That might be,
but she had had other ideas. For one thing, she felt that she did not
know me.... In short, she was charming and maddening in her defensive
ruses, in her advances and retreats, for I pressed her hard during the
four weeks which followed, and in them made four visits. Flinging caution
to the winds, I did not even pretend to George that I was coming to see
him on business. I had the Hutchins family on my side, for they had the
sense to see that the match would be an advantageous one; I even summoned
up enough courage to talk to Ezra Hutchins on the subject.

"I'll not attempt to influence Maude, Mr. Paret--I've always said I
wouldn't interfere with her choice. But as you are a young man of sound
habits, sir, successful in your profession, I should raise no objection.
I suppose we can't keep her always."

To conceal his emotion, he pulled out the watch he lived by. "Why, it's
church time!" he said.... I attended church regularly at Elkington....

On a Sunday night in June, following a day during which victory seemed
more distant than ever, with startling unexpectedness Maude capitulated.
She sat beside me on the bench, obscured, yet the warm night quivered
with her presence. I felt her tremble.... I remember the first exquisite
touch of her soft cheek. How strange it was that in conquest the tumult
of my being should be stilled, that my passion should be transmuted into
awe that thrilled yet disquieted! What had I done? It was as though I had
suddenly entered an unimagined sanctuary filled with holy flame....

Presently, when we began to talk, I found myself seeking more familiar
levels. I asked her why she had so long resisted me, accusing her of
having loved me all the time.

"Yes, I think I did, Hugh. Only--I didn't know it."

"You must have felt something, that afternoon when I first proposed to
you!"

"You didn't really want me, Hugh. Not then."

Surprised, and a little uncomfortable at this evidence of intuition, I
started to protest. It seemed to me then as though I had always wanted
her.

"No, no," she exclaimed, "you didn't. You were carried away by your
feelings--you hadn't made up your mind. Indeed, I can't see why you want
me now."

"You believe I do," I said, and drew her toward me.

"Yes, I--I believe it, now. But I can't see why. There must be so many
attractive girls in the city, who know so much more than I do."

I sought fervidly to reassure her on this point.... At length when we
went into the house she drew away from me at arm's length and gave me one
long searching look, as though seeking to read my soul.

"Hugh, you will always love me--to the very end, won't you?"

"Yes," I whispered, "always."

In the library, one on each side of the table, under the lamp, Ezra
Hutchins and his wife sat reading. Mrs. Hutchins looked up, and I saw
that she had divined.

"Mother, I am engaged to Hugh," Maude said, and bent over and kissed her.
Ezra and I stood gazing at them. Then he turned to me and pressed my
hand.

"Well, I never saw the man who was good enough for her, Hugh. But God
bless you, my son. I hope you will prize her as we prize her."

Mrs. Hutchins embraced me. And through her tears she, too, looked long
into my face. When she had released me Ezra had his watch in his hand.

"If you're going on the ten o'clock train, Hugh--"

"Father!" Maude protested, laughing, "I must say I don't call that very
polite."...

In the train I slept but fitfully, awakening again and again to recall
the extraordinary fact that I was now engaged to be married, to go over
the incidents of the evening. Indifferent to the backings and the
bumpings of the car, the voices in the stations, the clanging of
locomotive bells and all the incomprehensible startings and stoppings,
exalted yet troubled I beheld Maude luminous with the love I had
amazingly awakened, a love somewhere beyond my comprehension. For her
indeed marriage was made in heaven. But for me? Could I rise now to the
ideal that had once been mine, thrust henceforth evil out of my life?
Love forever, live always in this sanctuary she had made for me? Would
the time come when I should feel a sense of bondage?...

The wedding was set for the end of September. I continued to go every
week to Elkington, and in August, Maude and I spent a fortnight at the
sea. There could be no doubt as to my mother's happiness, as to her
approval of Maude; they loved each other from the beginning. I can
picture them now, sitting together with their sewing on the porch of the
cottage at Mattapoisett. Out on the bay little white-caps danced in the
sunlight, sail-boats tacked hither and thither, the strong cape breeze,
laden with invigorating salt, stirred Maude's hair, and occasionally
played havoc with my papers.

"She is just the wife for you, Hugh," my mother confided to me. "If I had
chosen her myself I could not have done better," she added, with a smile.

I was inclined to believe it, but Maude would have none of this illusion.

"He just stumbled across me," she insisted....

We went on long sails together, towards Wood's Hole and the open sea, the
sprays washing over us. Her cheeks grew tanned.... Sometimes, when I
praised her and spoke confidently of our future, she wore a troubled
expression.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked her once.

"You mustn't put me on a pedestal," she said gently. "I want you to see
me as I am--I don't want you to wake up some day and be disappointed.
I'll have to learn a lot of things, and you'll have to teach me. I can't
get used to the fact that you, who are so practical and successful in
business, should be such a dreamer where I am concerned."

I laughed, and told her, comfortably, that she was talking nonsense.

"What did you think of me, when you first knew me?" I inquired.

"Well," she answered, with the courage that characterized her, "I thought
you were rather calculating, that you put too high a price on success. Of
course you attracted me. I own it."

"You hid your opinions rather well," I retorted, somewhat discomfited.

She flushed.

"Have you changed them?" I demanded.

"I think you have that side, and I think it a weak side, Hugh. It's hard
to tell you this, but it's better to say so now, since you ask me. I do
think you set too high a value on success.'

"Well, now that I know what success really is, perhaps I shall reform," I
told her.

"I don't like to think that you fool yourself," she replied, with a
perspicacity I should have found extraordinary.

Throughout my life there have been days and incidents, some trivial, some
important, that linger in my memory because they are saturated with
"atmosphere." I recall, for instance, a gala occasion in youth when my
mother gave one of her luncheon parties; on my return from school, the
house and its surroundings wore a mysterious, exciting and unfamiliar
look, somehow changed by the simple fact that guests sat decorously
chatting in a dining-room shining with my mother's best linen and
treasured family silver and china. The atmosphere of my wedding-day is no
less vivid. The house of Ezra Hutchins was scarcely recognizable: its
doors and windows were opened wide, and all the morning people were being
escorted upstairs to an all-significant room that contained a collection
like a jeweller's exhibit,--a bewildering display. There was a massive
punch-bowl from which dangled the card of Mr. and Mrs. Adolf Scherer, a
really wonderful tea set of old English silver given by Senator and Mrs.
Watling, and Nancy Willett, with her certainty of good taste, had sent an
old English tankard of the time of the second Charles. The secret was in
that room. And it magically transformed for me (as I stood, momentarily
alone, in the doorway where I had first beheld Maude) the accustomed
scene, and charged with undivined significance the blue shadows under the
heavy foliage of the maples. The September sunlight was heavy, tinged
with gold....

So fragmentary and confused are the events of that day that a cubist
literature were necessary to convey the impressions left upon me. I had
something of the feeling of a recruit who for the first time is taking
part in a brilliant and complicated manoeuvre. Tom and Susan Peters flit
across the view, and Gene Hollister and Perry Blackwood and the
Ewanses,--all of whom had come up in a special car; Ralph Hambleton was
"best man," looking preternaturally tall in his frock-coat: and his
manner, throughout the whole proceeding, was one of good-natured
tolerance toward a folly none but he might escape.

"If you must do it, Hughie, I suppose you must," he had said to me. "I'll
see you through, of course. But don't blame me afterwards."

Maude was a little afraid of him....

I dressed at George's; then, like one of those bewildering shifts of a
cinematograph, comes the scene in church, the glimpse of my mother's
wistful face in the front pew; and I found myself in front of the austere
Mr. Doddridge standing beside Maude--or rather beside a woman I tried
hard to believe was Maude--so veiled and generally encased was she. I was
thinking of this all the time I was mechanically answering Mr. Doddridge,
and even when the wedding march burst forth and I led her out of the
church. It was as though they had done their best to disguise her, to put
our union on the other-worldly plane that was deemed to be its only
justification, to neutralize her sex at the very moment it should have
been most enhanced. Well, they succeeded. If I had not been as
conventional as the rest, I should have preferred to have run away with
her in the lavender dress she wore when I first proposed to her. It was
only when we had got into the carriage and started for the house and she
turned to me her face from which the veil had been thrown back that I
realized what a sublime meaning it all had for her. Her eyes were wet.
Once more I was acutely conscious of my inability to feel deeply at
supreme moments. For months I had looked forward with anticipation and
impatience to my wedding-day.

I kissed her gently. But I felt as though she had gone to heaven, and
that the face I beheld enshrouded were merely her effigy. Commonplace
words were inappropriate, yet it was to these I resorted.

"Well--it wasn't so bad after all! Was it?"

She smiled at me.

"You don't want to take it back?"

She shook her head.

"I think it was a beautiful wedding, Hugh. I'm so glad we had a good
day."...

She seemed shy, at once very near and very remote. I held her hand
awkwardly until the carriage stopped.

A little later we were standing in a corner of the parlour, the
atmosphere of which was heavy with the scent of flowers, submitting to
the onslaught of relatives. Then came the wedding breakfast: croquettes,
champagne, chicken salad, ice-cream, the wedding-cake, speeches and more
kisses.... I remember Tom Peters holding on to both my hands.

"Good-bye, and God bless you, old boy," he was saying. Susan, in view of
the occasion, had allowed him a little more champagne than usual--enough
to betray his feelings, and I knew that these had not changed since our
college days. I resolved to see more of him. I had neglected him and
undervalued his loyalty.... He had followed me to my room in George's
house where I was dressing for the journey, and he gave it as his
deliberate judgment that in Maude I had "struck gold."

"She's just the girl for you, Hughie," he declared. "Susan thinks so,
too."

Later in the afternoon, as we sat in the state-room of the car that was
bearing us eastward, Maude began to cry. I sat looking at her helplessly,
unable to enter into her emotion, resenting it a little. Yet I tried
awkwardly to comfort her.

"I can't bear to leave them," she said.

"But you will see them often, when we come back," I reassured her. It was
scarcely the moment for reminding her of what she was getting in return.
This peculiar family affection she evinced was beyond me; I had never
experienced it in any poignant degree since I had gone as a freshman to
Harvard, and yet I was struck by the fact that her emotions were so
rightly placed. It was natural to love one's family. I began to feel,
vaguely, as I watched her, that the new relationship into which I had
entered was to be much more complicated than I had imagined. Twilight was
coming on, the train was winding through the mountain passes, crossing
and re-crossing a swift little stream whose banks were massed with alder;
here and there, on the steep hillsides, blazed the goldenrod....
Presently I turned, to surprise in her eyes a wide, questioning
look,--the look of a child. Even in this irrevocable hour she sought to
grasp what manner of being was this to whom she had confided her life,
and with whom she was faring forth into the unknown. The experience was
utterly unlike my anticipation. Yet I responded. The kiss I gave her had
no passion in it.

"I'll take good care of you, Maude," I said.

Suddenly, in the fading light, she flung her arms around me, pressing me
tightly, desperately.

"Oh, I know you will, Hugh, dear. And you'll forgive me, won't you, for
being so horrid to-day, of all days? I do love you!"

Neither of us had ever been abroad. And although it was before the days
of swimming-pools and gymnasiums and a la carte cafes on ocean liners,
the Atlantic was imposing enough. Maude had a more lasting capacity for
pleasure than I, a keener enjoyment of new experiences, and as she lay
beside me in the steamer-chair where I had carefully tucked her she would
exclaim:

"I simply can't believe it, Hugh! It seems so unreal. I'm sure I shall
wake up and find myself back in Elkington."

"Don't speak so loud, my dear," I cautioned her. There were some very
formal-looking New Yorkers next us.

"No, I won't," she whispered. "But I'm so happy I feel as though I should
like to tell everyone."

"There's no need," I answered smiling.

"Oh, Hugh, I don't want to disgrace you!" she exclaimed, in real alarm.
"Otherwise, so far as I am concerned, I shouldn't care who knew."

People smiled at her. Women came up and took her hands. And on the fourth
day the formidable New Yorkers unexpectedly thawed.

I had once thought of Maude as plastic. Then I had discovered she had a
mind and will of her own. Once more she seemed plastic; her love had made
her so. Was it not what I had desired? I had only to express a wish, and
it became her law. Nay, she appealed to me many times a day to know
whether she had made any mistakes, and I began to drill her in my silly
traditions,--gently, very gently.

"Well, I shouldn't be quite so familiar with people, quite so ready to
make acquaintances, Maude. You have no idea who they may be. Some of
them, of course, like the Sardells, I know by reputation."

The Sardells were the New Yorkers who sat next us.

"I'll try, Hugh, to be more reserved, more like the wife of an important
man." She smiled.

"It isn't that you're not reserved," I replied, ignoring the latter half
of her remark. "Nor that I want you to change," I said. "I only want to
teach you what little of the world I know myself."

"And I want to learn, Hugh. You don't know how I want to learn!"

The sight of mist-ridden Liverpool is not a cheering one for the American
who first puts foot on the mother country's soil, a Liverpool of
yellow-browns and dingy blacks, of tilted funnels pouring out smoke into
an atmosphere already charged with it. The long wharves and shed roofs
glistened with moisture.

"Just think, Hugh, it's actually England!" she cried, as we stood on the
wet deck. But I felt as though I'd been there before.

"No wonder they're addicted to cold baths," I replied. "They must feel
perfectly at home in them, especially if they put a little lampblack in
the water."

Maude laughed.

"You grumpy old thing!" she exclaimed.

Nothing could dampen her ardour, not the sight of the rain-soaked stone
houses when we got ashore, nor even the frigid luncheon we ate in the
lugubrious hotel. For her it was all quaint and new. Finally we found
ourselves established in a compartment upholstered in light grey, with
tassels and arm-supporters, on the window of which was pasted a poster
with the word reserved in large, red letters. The guard inquired
respectfully, as the porter put our new luggage in the racks, whether we
had everything we wanted. The toy locomotive blew its toy whistle, and we
were off for the north; past dingy, yellow tenements of the smoking
factory towns, and stretches of orderly, hedge-spaced rain-swept country.
The quaint cottages we glimpsed, the sight of distant, stately mansions
on green slopes caused Maude to cry out with rapture:--"Oh, Hugh, there's
a manor-house!"

More vivid than were the experiences themselves of that journey are the
memories of them. We went to windswept, Sabbath-keeping Edinburgh, to
high Stirling and dark Holyrood, and to Abbotsford. It was through Sir
Walter's eyes we beheld Melrose bathed in autumn light, by his aid
repeopled it with forgotten monks eating their fast-day kale.

And as we sat reading and dreaming in the still, sunny corners I forgot,
that struggle for power in which I had been so furiously engaged since
leaving Cambridge. Legislatures, politicians and capitalists receded into
a dim background; and the gift I had possessed, in youth, of living in a
realm of fancy showed astonishing signs of revival.

"Why, Hugh," Maude exclaimed, "you ought to have been a writer!"

"You've only just begun to fathom my talents," I replied laughingly. "Did
you think you'd married just a dry old lawyer?"

"I believe you capable of anything," she said....

I grew more and more to depend on her for little things.

She was a born housewife. It was pleasant to have her do all the packing,
while I read or sauntered in the queer streets about the inns. And she
took complete charge of my wardrobe.

She had a talent for drawing, and as we went southward through England
she made sketches of the various houses that took our fancy--suggestions
for future home-building; we spent hours in the evenings in the inn
sitting-rooms incorporating new features into our residence, continually
modifying our plans. Now it was a Tudor house that carried us away, now a
Jacobean, and again an early Georgian with enfolding wings and a
wrought-iron grill. A stage of bewilderment succeeded.

Maude, I knew, loved the cottages best. She said they were more
"homelike." But she yielded to my liking for grandeur.

"My, I should feel lost in a palace like that!" she cried, as we gazed at
the Marquis of So-and-So's country-seat.

"Well, of course we should have to modify it," I admitted.
"Perhaps--perhaps our family will be larger."

She put her hand on my lips, and blushed a fiery red....

We examined, with other tourists, at a shilling apiece historic mansions
with endless drawing-rooms, halls, libraries, galleries filled with
family portraits; elaborate, formal bedrooms where famous sovereigns had
slept, all roped off and carpeted with canvas strips to protect the
floors. Through mullioned windows we caught glimpses of gardens and
geometrical parterres, lakes, fountains, statuary, fantastic topiary and
distant stretches of park. Maude sighed with admiration, but did not
covet. She had me. But I was often uncomfortable, resenting the vulgar,
gaping tourists with whom we were herded and the easy familiarity of the
guides. These did not trouble Maude, who often annoyed me by asking naive
questions herself. I would nudge her.

One afternoon when, with other compatriots, we were being hurried through
a famous castle, the guide unwittingly ushered us into a drawing-room
where the owner and several guests were seated about a tea-table. I shall
never forget the stares they gave us before we had time precipitately to
retreat, nor the feeling of disgust and rebellion that came over me. This
was heightened by the remark of a heavy, six-foot Ohioan with an
infantile face and a genial manner.

"I notice that they didn't invite us to sit down and have a bite," he
said. "I call that kind of inhospitable."

"It was 'is lordship himself!" exclaimed the guide, scandalized.

"You don't say!" drawled our fellow-countryman. "I guess I owe you
another shilling, my friend."

The guide, utterly bewildered, accepted it. The transatlantic point of
view towards the nobility was beyond him.

"His lordship could make a nice little income if he set up as a side
show," added the Ohioan.

Maude giggled, but I was furious. And no sooner were we outside the gates
than I declared I should never again enter a private residence by the
back door.

"Why, Hugh, how queer you are sometimes," she said.

"I maybe queer, but I have a sense of fitness," I retorted.

She asserted herself.

"I can't see what difference it makes. They didn't know us. And if they
admit people for money--"

"I can't help it. And as for the man from Ohio--"

"But he was so funny!" she interrupted. "And he was really very nice."

I was silent. Her point of view, eminently sensible as it was,
exasperated me. We were leaning over the parapet of a little-stone
bridge. Her face was turned away from me, but presently I realized that
she was crying. Men and women, villagers, passing across the bridge,
looked at us curiously. I was miserable, and somewhat appalled;
resentful, yet striving to be gentle and conciliatory. I assured her that
she was talking nonsense, that I loved her. But I did not really love her
at that moment; nor did she relent as easily as usual. It was not until
we were together in our sitting-room, a few hours later, that she gave
in. I felt a tremendous sense of relief.

"Hugh, I'll try to be what you want. You know I am trying. But don't kill
what is natural in me."

I was touched by the appeal, and repentant...

It is impossible to say when the little worries, annoyances and
disagreements began, when I first felt a restlessness creeping over me. I
tried to hide these moods from her, but always she divined them. And yet
I was sure that I loved Maude; in a surprisingly short period I had
become accustomed to her, dependent on her ministrations and the normal,
cosy intimacy of our companionship. I did not like to think that the keen
edge of the enjoyment of possession was wearing a little, while at the
same time I philosophized that the divine fire, when legalized, settles
down to a comfortable glow. The desire to go home that grew upon me I
attributed to the irritation aroused by the spectacle of a fixed social
order commanding such unquestioned deference from the many who were
content to remain resignedly outside of it. Before the setting in of the
Liberal movement and the "American invasion" England was a country in
which (from my point of view) one must be "somebody" in order to be
happy. I was "somebody" at home; or at least rapidly becoming so....

London was shrouded, parliament had risen, and the great houses were
closed. Day after day we issued forth from a musty and highly respectable
hotel near Piccadilly to a gloomy Tower, a soggy Hampton Court or a
mournful British Museum. Our native longing for luxury--or rather my
native longing--impelled me to abandon Smith's Hotel for a huge hostelry
where our suite overlooked the Thames, where we ran across a man I had
known slightly at Harvard, and other Americans with whom we made
excursions and dined and went to the theatre. Maude liked these persons;
I did not find them especially congenial. My life-long habit of
unwillingness to accept what life sent in its ordinary course was
asserting itself; but Maude took her friends as she found them, and I was
secretly annoyed by her lack of discrimination. In addition to this, the
sense of having been pulled up by the roots grew upon me.

"Suppose," Maude surprised me by suggesting one morning as we sat at
breakfast watching the river craft flit like phantoms through the
yellow-green fog--"suppose we don't go to France, after all, Hugh?"

"Not go to France!" I exclaimed. "Are you tired of the trip?"

"Oh, Hugh!" Her voice caught. "I could go on, always, if you were
content."

"And--what makes you think that I'm not content?"

Her smile had in it just a touch of wistfulness.

"I understand you, Hugh, better than you think. You want to get back to
your work, and--and I should be happier. I'm not so silly and so ignorant
as to think that I can satisfy you always. And I'd like to get settled at
home,--I really should."

There surged up within me a feeling of relief. I seized her hand as it
lay on the table.

"We'll come abroad another time, and go to France," I said. "Maude,
you're splendid!"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no, I'm not."

"You do satisfy me," I insisted. "It isn't that at all. But I think,
perhaps, it would be wiser to go back. It's rather a crucial time with
me, now that Mr. Watling's in Washington. I've just arrived at a position
where I shall be able to make a good deal of money, and later on--"

"It isn't the money, Hugh," she cried, with a vehemence which struck me
as a little odd. "I sometimes think we'd be a great deal happier
without--without all you are going to make."

I laughed.

"Well, I haven't made it yet."

She possessed the frugality of the Hutchinses. And some times my
lavishness had frightened her, as when we had taken the suite of rooms we
now occupied.

"Are you sure you can afford them, Hugh?" she had asked when we first
surveyed them.

I began married life, and carried it on without giving her any conception
of the state of my finances. She had an allowance from the first.

As the steamer slipped westward my spirits rose, to reach a climax of
exhilaration when I saw the towers of New York rise gleaming like huge
stalagmites in the early winter sun. Maude likened them more happily--to
gigantic ivory chessmen. Well, New York was America's chessboard, and the
Great Players had already begun to make moves that astonished the world.
As we sat at breakfast in a Fifth Avenue hotel I ran my eye eagerly over
the stock-market reports and the financial news, and rallied Maude for a
lack of spirits.

"Aren't you glad to be home?" I asked her, as we sat in a hansom.

"Of course I am, Hugh!" she protested. "But--I can't look upon New York
as home, somehow. It frightens me."

I laughed indulgently.

"You'll get used to it," I said. "We'll be coming here a great deal, off
and on."

She was silent. But later, when we took a hansom and entered the streams
of traffic, she responded to the stimulus of the place: the movement, the
colour, the sight of the well-appointed carriages, of the well-fed,
well-groomed people who sat in them, the enticement of the shops in which
we made our purchases had their effect, and she became cheerful again....

In the evening we took the "Limited" for home.

We lived for a month with my mother, and then moved into our own house.
It was one which I had rented from Howard Ogilvy, and it stood on the
corner of Baker and Clinton streets, near that fashionable neighbourhood
called "the Heights." Ogilvy, who was some ten years older than I, and
who belonged to one of our old families, had embarked on a career then
becoming common, but which at first was regarded as somewhat meteoric:
gradually abandoning the practice of law, and perceiving the
possibilities of the city of his birth, he had "gambled" in real estate
and other enterprises, such as our local water company, until he had
quadrupled his inheritance. He had built a mansion on Grant Avenue, the
wide thoroughfare bisecting the Heights. The house he had vacated was not
large, but essentially distinctive; with the oddity characteristic of the
revolt against the banal architecture of the 80's. The curves of the
tiled roof enfolded the upper windows; the walls were thick, the note one
of mystery. I remember Maude's naive delight when we inspected it.

"You'd never guess what the inside was like, would you, Hugh?" she cried.

From the panelled box of an entrance hall one went up a few steps to a
drawing-room which had a bowed recess like an oriel, and window-seats.
The dining-room was an odd shape, and was wainscoted in oak; it had a
tiled fireplace and (according to Maude) the "sweetest" china closet
built into the wall. There was a "den" for me, and an octagonal
reception-room on the corner. Upstairs, the bedrooms were quite as
unusual, the plumbing of the new pattern, heavy and imposing. Maude
expressed the air of seclusion when she exclaimed that she could almost
imagine herself in one of the mediaeval towns we had seen abroad.

"It's a dream, Hugh," she sighed. "But--do you think we can afford
it?"...

"This house," I announced, smiling, "is only a stepping-stone to the
palace I intend to build you some day."

"I don't want a palace!" she cried. "I'd rather live here, like this,
always."

A certain vehemence in her manner troubled me. I was charmed by this
disposition for domesticity, and yet I shrank from the contemplation of
its permanency. I felt vaguely, at the time, the possibility of a future
conflict of temperaments. Maude was docile, now. But would she remain
docile? and was it in her nature to take ultimately the position that was
desirable for my wife? Well, she must be moulded, before it were too
late. Her ultra-domestic tendencies must be halted. As yet blissfully
unaware of the inability of the masculine mind to fathom the subtleties
of feminine relationships, I was particularly desirous that Maude and
Nancy Durrett should be intimates. The very day after our arrival, and
while we were still at my mother's, Nancy called on Maude, and took her
out for a drive. Maude told me of it when I came home from the office.

"Dear old Nancy!" I said. "I know you liked her."

"Of course, Hugh. I should like her for your sake, anyway. She's--she's
one of your oldest and best friends."

"But I want you to like her for her own sake."

"I think I shall," said Maude. She was so scrupulously truthful! "I was a
little afraid of her, at first."

"Afraid of Nancy!" I exclaimed.

"Well, you know, she's much older than I. I think she is sweet. But she
knows so much about the world--so much that she doesn't say. I can't
describe it."

I smiled.

"It's only her manner. You'll get used to that, when you know what she
really is."

"Oh, I hope so," answered Maude. "I'm very anxious to like her--I do like
her. But it takes me such a lot of time to get to know people."

Nancy asked us to dinner.

"I want to help Maude all I can,--if she'll let me," Nancy said.

"Why shouldn't she let you?" I asked.

"She may not like me," Nancy replied.

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed.

Nancy smiled.

"It won't be my fault, at any rate, if she doesn't," she said. "I wanted
her to meet at first just the right people your old friends and a few
others. It is hard for a woman--especially a young woman--coming among
strangers." She glanced down the table to where Maude sat talking to Ham.
"She has an air about her,--a great deal of self-possession."

I, too, had noticed this, with pride and relief. For I knew Maude had
been nervous.

"You are luckier than you deserve to be," Nancy reminded me. "But I hope
you realize that she has a mind of her own, that she will form her own
opinions of people, independently of you."

I must have betrayed the fact that I was a little startled, for the
remark came as a confirmation of what I had dimly felt.

"Of course she has," I agreed, somewhat lamely. "Every woman has, who is
worth her salt."

Nancy's smile bespoke a knowledge that seemed to transcend my own.

"You do like her?" I demanded.

"I like her very much indeed," said Nancy, a little gravely. "She's
simple, she's real, she has that which so few of us possess
nowadays--character. But--I've got to be prepared for the possibility
that she may not get along with me."

"Why not?" I demanded.

"There you are again, with your old unwillingness to analyze a situation
and face it. For heaven's sake, now that you have married her, study her.
Don't take her for granted. Can't you see that she doesn't care for the
things that amuse me, that make my life?"

"Of course, if you insist on making yourself out a hardened,
sophisticated woman--" I protested. But she shook her head.

"Her roots are deeper,--she is in touch, though she may not realize it,
with the fundamentals. She is one of those women who are race-makers."

Though somewhat perturbed, I was struck by the phrase. And I lost sight
of Nancy's generosity. She looked me full in the face.

"I wonder whether you can rise to her," she said. "If I were you, I
should try. You will be happier--far happier than if you attempt to use
her for your own ends, as a contributor to your comfort and an auxiliary
to your career. I was afraid--I confess it--that you had married an
aspiring, simpering and empty-headed provincial like that Mrs. George
Hutchins' whom I met once, and who would sell her soul to be at my table.
Well, you escaped that, and you may thank God for it. You've got a
chance, think it over.

"A chance!" I repeated, though I gathered something of her meaning.

"Think it over, said Nancy again. And she smiled.

"But--do you want me to bury myself in domesticity?" I demanded, without
grasping the significance of my words.

"You'll find her reasonable, I think. You've got a chance now, Hugh.
Don't spoil it."

She turned to Leonard Dickinson, who sat on her other side....

When we got home I tried to conceal my anxiety as to Maude's impressions
of the evening. I lit a cigarette, and remarked that the dinner had been
a success.

"Do you know what I've been wondering all evening?" Maude asked. "Why you
didn't marry Nancy instead of me."

"Well," I replied, "it just didn't come off. And Nancy was telling me at
dinner how fortunate I was to have married you."

Maude passed this.

"I can't see why she accepted Hambleton Durrett. It seems horrible that
such a woman as she is could have married--just for money.

"Nancy has an odd streak in her," I said. "But then we all have odd
streaks. She's the best friend in the world, when she is your friend."

"I'm sure of it," Maude agreed, with a little note of penitence.

"You enjoyed it," I ventured cautiously.

"Oh, yes," she agreed. "And everyone was so nice to me--for your sake of
course."

"Don't be ridiculous!" I said. "I shan't tell you what Nancy and the
others said about you."

Maude had the gift of silence.

"What a beautiful house!" she sighed presently. "I know you'll think me
silly, but so much luxury as that frightens me a little. In England, in
those places we saw, it seemed natural enough, but in America--! And they
all your friends--seem to take it as a matter of course."

"There's no reason why we shouldn't have beautiful things and well served
dinners, too, if we have the money to pay for them."

"I suppose not," she agreed, absently.




XV.

That winter many other entertainments were given in our honour. But the
conviction grew upon me that Maude had no real liking for the social side
of life, that she acquiesced in it only on my account. Thus, at the very
outset of our married career, an irritant developed: signs of it, indeed,
were apparent from the first, when we were preparing the house we had
rented for occupancy. Hurrying away from my office at odd times to
furniture and department stores to help decide such momentous questions
as curtains, carpets, chairs and tables I would often spy the tall,
uncompromising figure of Susan Peters standing beside Maude's, while an
obliging clerk spread out, anxiously, rugs or wall-papers for their
inspection.

"Why don't you get Nancy to help you, too!" I ventured to ask her once.

"Ours is such a little house--compared to Nancy's, Hugh."

My attitude towards Susan had hitherto remained undefined. She was Tom's
wife and Tom's affair. In spite of her marked disapproval of the modern
trend in business and social life,--a prejudice she had communicated to
Tom, as a bachelor I had not disliked her; and it was certain that these
views had not mitigated Tom's loyalty and affection for me. Susan had
been my friend, as had her brother Perry, and Lucia, Perry's wife: they
made no secret of the fact that they deplored in me what they were
pleased to call plutocratic obsessions, nor had their disapproval always
been confined to badinage. Nancy, too, they looked upon as a renegade. I
was able to bear their reproaches with the superior good nature that
springs from success, to point out why the American tradition to which
they so fatuously clung was a things of the past. The habit of taking
dinner with them at least once a week had continued, and their arguments
rather amused me. If they chose to dwell in a backwater out of touch with
the current of great affairs, this was a matter to be deplored, but I did
not feel strongly enough to resent it. So long as I remained a bachelor
the relationship had not troubled me, but now that I was married I began
to consider with some alarm its power to affect my welfare.

It had remained for Nancy to inform me that I had married a woman with a
mind of her own. I had flattered myself that I should be able to control
Maude, to govern her predilections, and now at the very beginning of our
married life she was showing a disquieting tendency to choose for
herself. To be sure, she had found my intimacy with the Peterses and
Blackwoods already formed; but it was an intimacy from which I was
growing away. I should not have quarrelled with her if she had not
discriminated: Nancy made overtures, and Maude drew back; Susan presented
herself, and with annoying perversity and in an extraordinarily brief
time Maude had become her intimate. It seemed to me that she was always
at Susan's, lunching or playing with the children, who grew devoted to
her; or with Susan, choosing carpets and clothes; while more and more
frequently we dined with the Peterses and the Blackwoods, or they with
us. With Perry's wife Maude was scarcely less intimate than with Susan.
This was the more surprising to me since Lucia Blackwood was a
dyed-in-the-wool "intellectual," a graduate of Radcliffe, the daughter of
a Harvard professor. Perry had fallen in love with her during her visit
to Susan. Lucia was, perhaps, the most influential of the group; she
scorned the world, she held strong views on the higher education of
women; she had long discarded orthodoxy for what may be called a
Cambridge stoicism of simple living and high thinking; while Maude was a
strict Presbyterian, and not in the least given to theories. When, some
months after our homecoming, I ventured to warn her gently of the dangers
of confining one's self to a coterie--especially one of such narrow
views--her answer was rather bewildering.

"But isn't Tom your best friend?" she asked.

I admitted that he was.

"And you always went there such a lot before we were married."

This, too, was undeniable. "At the same time," I replied, "I have other
friends. I'm fond of the Blackwoods and the Peterses, I'm not advocating
seeing less of them, but their point of view, if taken without any
antidote, is rather narrowing. We ought to see all kinds," I suggested,
with a fine restraint.

"You mean--more worldly people," she said with her disconcerting
directness.

"Not necessarily worldly," I struggled on. "People who know more of the
world--yes, who understand it better."

Maude sighed.

"I do try, Hugh,--I return their calls,--I do try to be nice to them. But
somehow I don't seem to get along with them easily--I'm not myself, they
make me shy. It's because I'm provincial."

"Nonsense!" I protested, "you're not a bit provincial." And it was true;
her dignity and self-possession redeemed her.

Nancy was not once mentioned. But I think she was in both our minds....

Since my marriage, too, I had begun to resent a little the attitude of
Tom and Susan and the Blackwoods of humorous yet affectionate tolerance
toward my professional activities and financial creed, though Maude
showed no disposition to take this seriously. I did suspect, however,
that they were more and more determined to rescue Maude from what they
would have termed a frivolous career; and on one of these occasions--so
exasperating in married life when a slight cause for pique tempts husband
or wife to try to ask myself whether this affair were only a squall,
something to be looked for once in a while on the seas of matrimony, and
weathered: or whether Maude had not, after all, been right when she
declared that I had made a mistake, and that we were not fitted for one
another? In this gloomy view endless years of incompatibility stretched
ahead; and for the first time I began to rehearse with a certain cold
detachment the chain of apparently accidental events which had led up to
my marriage: to consider the gradual blindness that had come over my
faculties; and finally to wonder whether judgment ever entered into
sexual selection. Would Maude have relapsed into this senseless fit if
she had realized how fortunate she was? For I was prepared to give her
what thousands of women longed for, position and influence. My resentment
rose again against Perry and Tom, and I began to attribute their lack of
appreciation of my achievements to jealousy. They had not my ability;
this was the long and short of it.... I pondered also, regretfully, on my
bachelor days. And for the first time, I, who had worked so hard to
achieve freedom, felt the pressure of the yoke I had fitted over my own
shoulders. I had voluntarily, though unwittingly, returned to slavery.
This was what had happened. And what was to be done about it? I would not
consider divorce.

Well, I should have to make the best of it. Whether this conclusion
brought on a mood of reaction, I am unable to say. I was still annoyed by
what seemed to the masculine mind a senseless and dramatic performance on
Maude's part, an incomprehensible case of "nerves." Nevertheless, there
stole into my mind many recollections of Maude's affection, many passages
between us; and my eye chanced to fall on the ink-well she had bought me
out of the allowance I gave her. An unanticipated pity welled up within
me for her loneliness, her despair in that room upstairs. I got up--and
hesitated. A counteracting, inhibiting wave passed through me. I
hardened. I began to walk up and down, a prey to conflicting impulses.
Something whispered, "go to her"; another voice added, "for your own
peace of mind, at any rate." I rejected the intrusion of this motive as
unworthy, turned out the light and groped my way upstairs. The big clock
in the hall struck twelve.

I listened outside the door of the bedroom, but all was silent within. I
knocked.

"Maude!" I said, in a low voice.

There was no response.

"Maude--let me in! I didn't mean to be unkind--I'm sorry."

After an interval I heard her say: "I'd rather stay here,--to-night."

But at length, after more entreaty and self-abasement on my part, she
opened the door. The room was dark. We sat down together on the
window-seat, and all at once she relaxed and her head fell on my
shoulder, and she began weeping again. I held her, the alternating moods
still running through me.

"Hugh," she said at length, "how could you be so cruel? when you know I
love you and would do anything for you."

"I didn't mean to be cruel, Maude," I answered.

"I know you didn't. But at times you seem so--indifferent, and you can't
understand how it hurts. I haven't anybody but you, now, and it's in your
power to make me happy or--or miserable."

Later on I tried to explain my point of view, to justify myself.

"All I mean," I concluded at length, "is that my position is a little
different from Perry's and Tom's. They can afford to isolate themselves,
but I'm thrown professionally with the men who are building up this city.
Some of them, like Ralph Hambleton and Mr. Ogilvy, I've known all my
life. Life isn't so simple for us, Maude--we can't ignore the social
side."

"I understand," she said contentedly. "You are more of a man of
affairs--much more than Tom or Perry, and you have greater
responsibilities and wider interests. I'm really very proud of you.
Only--don't you think you are a little too sensitive about yourself, when
you are teased?"

I let this pass....

I give a paragraph from a possible biography of Hugh Paret which, as then
seemed not improbable, might in the future have been written by some
aspiring young worshipper of success.

"On his return from a brief but delightful honeymoon in England Mr. Paret
took up again, with characteristic vigour, the practice of the law. He
was entering upon the prime years of manhood; golden opportunities
confronted him as, indeed, they confronted other men--but Paret had the
foresight to take advantage of them. And his training under Theodore
Watling was now to produce results.... The reputations had already been
made of some of that remarkable group of financial geniuses who were
chiefly instrumental in bringing about the industrial evolution begun
after the Civil War: at the same time, as is well known, a political
leadership developed that gave proof of a deplorable blindness to the
logical necessity of combinations in business. The lawyer with initiative
and brains became an indispensable factor," etc., etc.

The biography might have gone on to relate my association with and
important services to Adolf Scherer in connection with his constructive
dream. Shortly after my return from abroad, in answer to his summons, I
found him at Heinrich's, his napkin tucked into his shirt front, and a
dish of his favourite sausages before him.

"So, the honeymoon is over!" he said, and pressed my hand. "You are right
to come back to business, and after awhile you can have another
honeymoon, eh? I have had many since I married. And how long do you think
was my first? A day! I was a foreman then, and the wedding was at six
o'clock in the morning. We went into the country, the wife and I."

He laid down his knife and fork, possessed by the memory. "I have grown
rich since, and we've been to Europe and back to Germany, and travelled
on the best ships and stayed at the best hotels, but I never enjoyed a
holiday more than that day. It wasn't long afterwards I went to Mr.
Durrett and told him how he could save much money. He was always ready to
listen, Mr. Durrett, when an employee had anything to say. He was a big
man,--an iron-master. Ah, he would be astonished if only he could wake up
now!"

"He would not only have to be an iron-master," I agreed, "but a financier
and a railroad man to boot."

"A jack of all trades," laughed Mr. Scherer. "That's what we are--men in
my position. Well, it was comparatively simple then, when we had no
Sherman law and crazy statutes, such as some of the states are passing,
to bother us. What has got into the politicians, that they are indulging
in such foolishness?" he exclaimed, more warmly. "We try to build up a
trade for this country, and they're doing their best to tie our hands and
tear it down. When I was in Washington the other day I was talking with
one of those Western senators whose state has passed those laws. He said
to me, 'Mr. Scherer, I've been making a study of the Boyne Iron Works.
You are clever men, but you are building up monopolies which we propose
to stop.' 'By what means?'" I asked. "'Rebates, for one,' said he, 'you
get preferential rates from your railroad which give you advantages over
your competitors.' Foolishness!" Mr. Scherer exclaimed. "I tell him the
railroad is a private concern, built up by private enterprise, and it has
a right to make special rates for large shippers. No,--railroads are
public carriers with no right to make special rates. I ask him what else
he objects to, and he says patented processes. As if we don't have a
right to our own patents! We buy them. I buy them, when other steel
companies won't touch 'em. What is that but enterprise, and business
foresight, and taking risks? And then he begins to talk about the tariff
taking money out of the pockets of American consumers and making men like
me rich. I have come to Washington to get the tariff raised on steel
rails; and Watling and other senators we send down there are raising it
for us. We are building up monopolies! Well, suppose we are. We can't
help it, even if we want to. Has he ever made a study of the other side
of the question--the competition side? Of course he hasn't."

He brought down his beer mug heavily on the table. In times of excitement
his speech suggested the German idiom. Abruptly his air grew mysterious;
he glanced around the room, now becoming empty, and lowered his voice.

"I have been thinking a long time, I have a little scheme," he said, "and
I have been to Washington to see Watling, to talk over it. Well, he
thinks much of you. Fowndes and Ripon are good lawyers, but they are not
smart like you. See Paret, he says, and he can come down and talk to me.
So I ask you to come here. That is why I say you are wise to get home.
Honeymoons can wait--eh?"

I smiled appreciatively.

"They talk about monopoly, those Populist senators, but I ask you what is
a man in my place to do? If you don't eat, somebody eats you--is it not
so? Like the boa-constrictors--that is modern business. Look at the
Keystone Plate people, over there at Morris. For years we sold them steel
billets from which to make their plates, and three months ago they serve
notice on us that they are getting ready to make their own billets, they
buy mines north of the lakes and are building their plant. Here is a big
customer gone. Next year, maybe, the Empire Tube Company goes into the
business of making crude steel, and many more thousands of tons go from
us. What is left for us, Paret?"

"Obviously you've got to go into the tube and plate business yourselves,"
I said.

"So!" cried Mr. Scherer, triumphantly, "or it is close up. We are not
fools, no, we will not lie down and be eaten like lambs for any law.
Dickinson can put his hand on the capital, and I--I have already bought a
tract on the lakes, at Bolivar, I have already got a plant designed with
the latest modern machinery. I can put the ore right there, I can send
the coke back from here in cars which would otherwise be empty, and
manufacture tubes at eight dollars a ton less than they are selling. If
we can make tubes we can make plates, and if we can make plates we can
make boilers, and beams and girders and bridges.... It is not like it was
but where is it all leading, my friend? The time will come--is right on
us now, in respect to many products--when the market will be flooded with
tubes and plates and girders, and then we'll have to find a way to limit
production. And the inefficient mills will all be forced to shut down."

The logic seemed unanswerable, even had I cared to answer it.... He
unfolded his campaign. The Boyne Iron Works was to become the Boyne Iron
Works, Ltd., owner of various subsidiary companies, some of which were as
yet blissfully ignorant of their fate. All had been thought out as calmly
as the partition of Poland--only, lawyers were required; and ultimately,
after the process of acquisition should have been completed, a delicate
document was to be drawn up which would pass through the meshes of that
annoying statutory net, the Sherman Anti-trust Law. New mines were to be
purchased, extending over a certain large area; wide coal deposits;
little strips of railroad to tap them. The competition of the Keystone
Plate people was to be met by acquiring and bringing up to date the plate
mills of King and Son, over the borders of a sister state; the
Somersworth Bridge and Construction Company and the Gring Steel and Wire
Company were to be absorbed. When all of this should have been
accomplished, there would be scarcely a process in the steel industry,
from the smelting of the ore to the completion of a bridge, which the
Boyne Iron Works could not undertake. Such was the beginning of the
"lateral extension" period.

"Two can play at that game," Mr. Scherer said. "And if those fellows
could only be content to let well enough alone, to continue buying their
crude steel from us, there wouldn't be any trouble."...

It was evident, however, that he really welcomed the "trouble," that he
was going into battle with enthusiasm. He had already picked out his
points of attack and was marching on them. Life, for him, would have been
a poor thing without new conflicts to absorb his energy; and he had
already made of the Boyne Iron Works, with its open-hearth furnaces, a
marvel of modern efficiency that had opened the eyes of the Steel world,
and had drawn the attention of a Personality in New York,--a Personality
who was one of the new and dominant type that had developed with such
amazing rapidity, the banker-dinosaur; preying upon and superseding the
industrial-dinosaur, conquering type of the preceding age, builder of the
railroads, mills and manufactories. The banker-dinosaurs, the gigantic
ones, were in Wall Street, and strove among themselves for the industrial
spoils accumulated by their predecessors. It was characteristic of these
monsters that they never fought in the open unless they were forced to.
Then the earth rocked, huge economic structures tottered and fell, and
much dust arose to obscure the vision of smaller creatures, who were
bewildered and terrified. Such disturbances were called "panics," and
were blamed by the newspapers on the Democratic party, or on the
reformers who had wantonly assailed established institutions. These
dominant bankers had contrived to gain control of the savings of
thousands and thousands of fellow-citizens who had deposited them in
banks or paid them into insurance companies, and with the power thus
accumulated had sallied forth to capture railroads and industries. The
railroads were the strategic links. With these in hand, certain favoured
industrial concerns could be fed, and others starved into submission.

Adolf Scherer might be said to represent a transitional type. For he was
not only an iron-master who knew every detail of his business, who kept
it ahead of the times; he was also a strategist, wise in his generation,
making friends with the Railroad while there had yet been time, at length
securing rebates and favours. And when that Railroad (which had been
constructed through the enterprise and courage of such men as Nathaniel
Durrett) had passed under the control of the banker-personality to whom I
have referred, and had become part of a system, Adolf Scherer remained in
alliance, and continued to receive favours.... I can well remember the
time when the ultimate authority of our Railroad was transferred,
quietly, to Wall Street. Alexander Barbour, its president, had been a
great man, but after that he bowed, in certain matters, to a greater one.

I have digressed.... Mr. Scherer unfolded his scheme, talking about
"units" as calmly as though they were checkers on a board instead of
huge, fiery, reverberating mills where thousands and thousands of human
beings toiled day and night--beings with families, and hopes and fears,
whose destinies were to be dominated by the will of the man who sat
opposite me. But--did not he in his own person represent the triumph of
that American creed of opportunity? He, too, had been through the fire,
had sweated beside the blasts, had handled the ingots of steel. He was
one of the "fittest" who had survived, and looked it. Had he no memories
of the terrors of that struggle?... Adolf Scherer had grown to be a
giant. And yet without me, without my profession he was a helpless giant,
at the mercy of those alert and vindictive lawmakers who sought to
restrain and hamper him, to check his growth with their webs. How
stimulating the idea of his dependence! How exhilarating too, the thought
that that vision which had first possessed me as an undergraduate--on my
visit to Jerry Kyme--was at last to be realized! I had now become the
indispensable associate of the few who divided the spoils, I was to have
a share in these myself.

"You're young, Paret," Mr. Scherer concluded. "But Watling has confidence
in you, and you will consult him frequently. I believe in the young men,
and I have already seen something of you--so?"...

When I returned to the office I wrote Theodore Watling a letter
expressing my gratitude for the position he had, so to speak, willed me,
of confidential legal adviser to Adolf Scherer. Though the opportunity
had thrust itself upon me suddenly, and sooner than I expected it, I was
determined to prove myself worthy of it. I worked as I had never worked
before, making trips to New York to consult leading members of this new
branch of my profession there, trips to Washington to see my former
chief. There were, too, numerous conferences with local personages, with
Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Grierson, and Judah B. Tallant,--whose newspaper
was most useful; there were consultations and negotiations of a delicate
nature with the owners and lawyers of other companies to be "taken in."
Nor was it all legal work, in the older and narrower sense. Men who are
playing for principalities are making war. Some of our operations had all
the excitement of war. There was information to be got, and it was
got--somehow. Modern war involves a spy system, and a friendly telephone
company is not to be despised. And all of this work from first to last
had to be done with extreme caution. Moribund distinctions of right and
wrong did not trouble me, for the modern man labours religiously when he
knows that Evolution is on his side.

For all of these operations a corps of counsel had been employed,
including the firm of Harrington and Bowes next to Theodore Watling, Joel
Harrington was deemed the ablest lawyer in the city. We organized in due
time the corporation known as the Boyne Iron Works, Limited; a trust
agreement was drawn up that was a masterpiece of its kind, one that
caused, first and last, meddling officials in the Department of Justice
at Washington no little trouble and perplexity. I was proud of the fact
that I had taken no small part in its composition.... In short, in
addition to certain emoluments and opportunities for investment, I
emerged from the affair firmly established in the good graces of Adolf
Scherer, and with a reputation practically made.

A year or so after the Boyne Company, Ltd., came into existence I chanced
one morning to go down to the new Ashuela Hotel to meet a New Yorker of
some prominence, and was awaiting him in the lobby, when I overheard a
conversation between two commercial travellers who were sitting with
their backs to me.

"Did you notice that fellow who went up to the desk a moment ago?" asked
one.

"The young fellow in the grey suit? Sure. Who is he? He looks as if he
was pretty well fixed."

"I guess he is," replied the first. "That's Paret. He's Scherer's
confidential counsel. He used to be Senator Watling's partner, but they
say he's even got something on the old man."

In spite of the feverish life I led, I was still undoubtedly
young-looking, and in this I was true to the incoming type of successful
man. Our fathers appeared staid at six and thirty. Clothes, of course,
made some difference, and my class and generation did not wear the sombre
and cumbersome kind, with skirts and tails; I patronized a tailor in New
York. My chestnut hair, a little darker than my father's had been, showed
no signs of turning grey, although it was thinning a little at the crown
of the forehead, and I wore a small moustache, clipped in a straight line
above the mouth. This made me look less like a college youth. Thanks to a
strong pigment in my skin, derived probably from Scotch-Irish ancestors,
my colour was fresh. I have spoken of my life as feverish, and yet I am
not so sure that this word completely describes it. It was full to
overflowing--one side of it; and I did not miss (save vaguely, in rare
moments of weariness) any other side that might have been developed. I
was busy all day long, engaged in affairs I deemed to be alone of vital
importance in the universe. I was convinced that the welfare of the city
demanded that supreme financial power should remain in the hands of the
group of men with whom I was associated, and whose battles I fought in
the courts, in the legislature, in the city council, and sometimes in
Washington,--although they were well cared for there. By every means
ingenuity could devise, their enemies were to be driven from the field,
and they were to be protected from blackmail.

A sense of importance sustained me; and I remember in that first flush of
a success for which I had not waited too long--what a secret satisfaction
it was to pick up the Era and see my name embedded in certain dignified
notices of board meetings, transactions of weight, or cases known to the
initiated as significant. "Mr. Scherer's interests were taken care of by
Mr. Hugh Paret." The fact that my triumphs were modestly set forth gave
me more pleasure than if they had been trumpeted in headlines. Although I
might have started out in practice for myself, my affection and regard
for Mr. Watling kept me in the firm, which became Watling, Fowndes and
Paret, and a new, arrangement was entered into: Mr. Ripon retired on
account of ill health.

There were instances, however, when a certain amount of annoying
publicity was inevitable. Such was the famous Galligan case, which
occurred some three or four years after my marriage. Aloysius Galligan
was a brakeman, and his legs had become paralyzed as the result of an
accident that was the result of defective sills on a freight car. He had
sued, and been awarded damages of $15,000. To the amazement and
indignation of Miller Gorse, the Supreme Court, to which the Railroad had
appealed, affirmed the decision. It wasn't the single payment of $15,000
that the Railroad cared about, of course; a precedent might be
established for compensating maimed employees which would be expensive in
the long run. Carelessness could not be proved in this instance. Gorse
sent for me. I had been away with Maude at the sea for two months, and
had not followed the case.

"You've got to take charge, Paret, and get a rehearing. See Bering, and
find out who in the deuce is to blame for this. Chesley's one, of course.
We ought never to have permitted his nomination for the Supreme Bench. It
was against my judgment, but Varney and Gill assured me that he was all
right."

I saw Judge Bering that evening. We sat on a plush sofa in the parlour of
his house in Baker Street.

"I had a notion Gorse'd be mad," he said, "but it looked to me as if they
had it on us, Paret. I didn't see how we could do anything else but
affirm without being too rank. Of course, if he feels that way, and you
want to make a motion for a rehearing, I'll see what can be done."

"Something's got to be done," I replied. "Can't you see what such a
decision lets them in for?"

"All right," said the judge, who knew an order when he heard one, "I
guess we can find an error." He was not a little frightened by the report
of Mr. Gorse's wrath, for election-day was approaching. "Say, you
wouldn't take me for a sentimental man, now, would you?"

I smiled at the notion of it.

"Well, I'll own up to you this kind of got under my skin. That Galligan
is a fine-looking fellow, if there ever was one, and he'll never be of a
bit of use any more. Of course the case was plain sailing, and they ought
to have had the verdict, but that lawyer of his handled it to the queen's
taste, if I do say so. He made me feel real bad, by God,--as if it was my
own son Ed who'd been battered up. Lord, I can't forget the look in that
man Galligan's eyes. I hate to go through it again, and reverse it, but I
guess I'll have to, now."

The Judge sat gazing at the flames playing over his gas log.

"Who was the lawyer?" I asked.

"A man by the name of Krebs," he replied. "Never heard of him before.
He's just moved to the city."

"This city?" I ejaculated.

The Judge glanced at me interestedly.

"This city, of course. What do you know about him?"

"Well," I answered, when I had recovered a little from the shock--for it
was a distinct shock--"he lived in Elkington. He was the man who stirred
up the trouble in the legislature about Bill 709."

The Judge slapped his knee.

"That fellow!" he exclaimed, and ruminated. "Why didn't somebody tell
me?" he added, complainingly. "Why didn't Miller Gorse let me know about
it, instead of licking up a fuss after it's all over?"...

Of all men of my acquaintance I had thought the Judge the last to grow
maudlin over the misfortunes of those who were weak or unfortunate enough
to be defeated and crushed in the struggle for existence, and it was not
without food for reflection that I departed from his presence. To make
Mr. Bering "feel bad" was no small achievement, and Krebs had been
responsible for it, of course,--not Galligan. Krebs had turned up once
more! It seemed as though he were destined to haunt me. Well, I made up
my mind that he should not disturb me again, at any rate: I, at least,
had learned to eliminate sentimentality from business, and it was not
without deprecation I remembered my experience with him at the Capital,
when he had made me temporarily ashamed of my connection with Bill 709. I
had got over that. And when I entered the court room (the tribunal having
graciously granted a rehearing on the ground that it had committed an
error in the law!) my feelings were of lively curiosity and zest. I had
no disposition to underrate his abilities, but I was fortified by the
consciousness of a series of triumphs behind me, by a sense of
association with prevailing forces against which he was helpless. I could
afford to take a superior attitude in regard to one who was destined
always to be dramatic.

As the case proceeded I was rather disappointed on the whole that he was
not dramatic--not even as dramatic as he had been when he defied the
powers in the Legislature. He had changed but little, he still wore
ill-fitting clothes, but I was forced to acknowledge that he seemed to
have gained in self-control, in presence. He had nodded at me before the
case was called, as he sat beside his maimed client; and I had been on
the alert for a hint of reproach in his glance: there was none. I smiled
back at him....

He did not rant. He seemed to have rather a remarkable knowledge of the
law. In a conversational tone he described the sufferings of the man in
the flannel shirt beside him, but there could be no question of the fact
that he did produce an effect. The spectators were plainly moved, and it
was undeniable that some of the judges wore rather a sheepish look as
they toyed with their watch chains or moved the stationery in front of
them. They had seen maimed men before, they had heard impassioned,
sentimental lawyers talk about wives and families and God and justice.
Krebs did none of this. Just how he managed to bring the thing home to
those judges, to make them ashamed of their role, just how he managed--in
spite of my fortified attitude to revive something of that sense of
discomfort I had experienced at the State House is difficult to say. It
was because, I think, he contrived through the intensity of his own
sympathy to enter into the body of the man whose cause he pleaded, to
feel the despair in Galligan's soul--an impression that was curiously
conveyed despite the dignified limits to which he confined his speech. It
was strange that I began to be rather sorry for him, that I felt a
certain reluctant regret that he should thus squander his powers against
overwhelming odds. What was the use of it all!

At the end his voice became more vibrant--though he did not raise it--as
he condemned the Railroad for its indifference to human life, for its
contention that men were cheaper than rolling-stock.

I encountered him afterward in the corridor. I had made a point of
seeking him out, perhaps from some vague determination to prove that our
last meeting in the little restaurant at the Capital had left no traces
of embarrassment in me: I was, in fact, rather aggressively anxious to
reveal myself to him as one who has thriven on the views he condemned, as
one in whose unity of mind there is no rift. He was alone, apparently
waiting for someone, leaning against a steam radiator in one of his
awkward, angular poses, looking out of the court-house window.

"How are you?" I said blithely. "So you've left Elkington for a wider
field." I wondered whether my alert cousin-in-law, George Hutchins, had
made it too hot for him.

He turned to me unexpectedly a face of profound melancholy; his
expression had in it, oddly, a trace of sternness; and I was somewhat
taken aback by this evidence that he was still bearing vicariously the
troubles of his client. So deep had been the thought I had apparently
interrupted that he did not realize my presence at first.

"Oh, it's you, Paret. Yes, I've left Elkington," he said.

"Something of a surprise to run up against you suddenly, like this."

"I expected to see you," he answered gravely, and the slight emphasis he
gave the pronoun implied not only a complete knowledge of the situation
and of the part I had taken in it, but also a greater rebuke than if his
accusation had been direct. But I clung to my affability.

"If I can do anything for you, let me know," I told him. He said nothing,
he did not even smile. At this moment he was opportunely joined by a man
who had the appearance of a labour leader, and I walked away. I was
resentful; my mood, in brief, was that of a man who has done something
foolish and is inclined to talk to himself aloud: but the mood was
complicated, made the more irritating by the paradoxical fact that that
last look he had given me seemed to have borne the traces of
affection....

It is perhaps needless to add that the court reversed its former
decision.




XVI.

The Pilot published a series of sensational articles and editorials about
the Galligan matter, a picture of Galligan, an account of the destitute
state of his wife and family. The time had not yet arrived when such
newspapers dared to attack the probity of our courts, but a system of law
that permitted such palpable injustice because of technicalities was
bitterly denounced. What chance had a poor man against such a moloch as
the railroad, even with a lawyer of such ability as had been exhibited by
Hermann Krebs? Krebs was praised, and the attention of Mr. Lawler's
readers was called to the fact that Krebs was the man who, some years
before, had opposed single-handed in the legislature the notorious Bill
No. 709. It was well known in certain circles--the editorial went on to
say--that this legislation had been drawn by Theodore Watling in the
interests of the Boyne Iron Works, etc., etc. Hugh Paret had learned at
the feet of an able master. This first sight of my name thus
opprobriously flung to the multitude gave me an unpleasant shock. I had
seen Mr. Scherer attacked, Mr. Gorse attacked, and Mr. Watling: I had all
along realized, vaguely, that my turn would come, and I thought myself to
have acquired a compensating philosophy. I threw the sheet into the waste
basket, presently picked it out again and reread the sentence containing
my name. Well, there were certain penalties that every career must pay. I
had become, at last, a marked man, and I recognized the fact that this
assault would be the forerunner of many.

I tried to derive some comfort and amusement from the thought of certain
operations of mine that Mr. Lawler had not discovered, that would have
been matters of peculiar interest to his innocent public: certain
extra-legal operations at the time when the Bovine corporation was being
formed, for instance. And how they would have licked their chops had they
learned of that manoeuvre by which I had managed to have one of Mr.
Scherer's subsidiary companies in another state, with property and assets
amounting to more than twenty millions, reorganized under the laws of New
Jersey, and the pending case thus transferred to the Federal court, where
we won hands down! This Galligan affair was nothing to that.
Nevertheless, it was annoying. As I sat in the street car on my way
homeward, a man beside me was reading the Pilot. I had a queer sensation
as he turned the page, and scanned the editorial; and I could not help
wondering what he and the thousands like him thought of me; what he would
say if I introduced myself and asked his opinion. Perhaps he did not
think at all: undoubtedly he, and the public at large, were used to Mr.
Lawler's daily display of "injustices." Nevertheless, like slow acid,
they must be eating into the public consciousness. It was an
outrage--this freedom of the press.

With renewed exasperation I thought of Krebs, of his disturbing and
almost uncanny faculty of following me up. Why couldn't he have remained
in Elkington? Why did he have to follow me here, to make capital out of a
case that might never have been heard of except for him?... I was still
in this disagreeable frame of mind when I turned the corner by my house
and caught sight of Maude, in the front yard, bending bareheaded over a
bed of late flowers which the frost had spared. The evening was sharp,
the dusk already gathering.

"You'll catch cold," I called to her.

She looked up at the sound of my voice.

"They'll soon be gone," she sighed, referring to the flowers. "I hate
winter."

She put her hand through my arm, and we went into the house. The curtains
were drawn, a fire was crackling on the hearth, the lamps were lighted,
and as I dropped into a chair this living-room of ours seemed to take on
the air of a refuge from the vague, threatening sinister things of the
world without. I felt I had never valued it before. Maude took up her
sewing and sat down beside the table.

"Hugh," she said suddenly, "I read something in the newspaper--"

My exasperation flared up again.

"Where did you get that disreputable sheet?" I demanded.

"At the dressmaker's!" she answered. "I--I just happened to see the name,
Paret."

"It's just politics," I declared, "stirring up discontent by
misrepresentation. Jealousy."

She leaned forward in her chair, gazing into the flames.

"Then it isn't true that this poor man, Galligan--isn't that his
name?--was cheated out of the damages he ought to have to keep himself
and his family alive?"

"You must have been talking to Perry or Susan," I said. "They seem to be
convinced that I am an oppressor of the poor.

"Hugh!" The tone in which she spoke my name smote me. "How can you say
that? How can you doubt their loyalty, and mine? Do you think they would
undermine you, and to me, behind your back?"

"I didn't mean that, of course, Maude. I was annoyed about something
else. And Tom and Perry have an air of deprecating most of the
enterprises in which I am professionally engaged. It's very well for them
to talk. All Perry has to do is to sit back and take in receipts from the
Boyne Street car line, and Tom is content if he gets a few commissions
every week. They're like militiamen criticizing soldiers under fire. I
know they're good friends of mine, but sometimes I lose patience with
them."

I got up and walked to the window, and came back again and stood before
her.

"I'm sorry for this man, Galligan," I went on, "I can't tell you how
sorry. But few people who are not on the inside, so to speak, grasp the
fact that big corporations, like the Railroad, are looked upon as fair
game for every kind of parasite. Not a day passes in which attempts are
not made to bleed them. Some of these cases are pathetic. It had cost the
Railroad many times fifteen thousand dollars to fight Galligan's case.
But if they had paid it, they would have laid themselves open to
thousands of similar demands. Dividends would dwindle. The stockholders
have a right to a fair return on their money. Galligan claims that there
was a defective sill on the car which is said to have caused the wreck.
If damages are paid on that basis, it means the daily inspection of every
car which passes over their lines. And more than that: there are certain
defects, as in the present case, which an inspection would not reveal.
When a man accepts employment on a railroad he assumes a certain amount
of personal risk,--it's not precisely a chambermaid's job. And the lawyer
who defends such cases, whatever his personal feelings may be, cannot
afford to be swayed by them. He must take the larger view."

"Why didn't you tell me about it before?" she asked.

"Well, I didn't think it of enough importance--these things are all in
the day's work."

"But Mr. Krebs? How strange that he should be here, connected with the
case!"

I made an effort to control myself.

"Your old friend," I said. "I believe you have a sentiment about him."

She looked up at me.

"Scarcely that," she replied gravely, with the literalness that often
characterized her, "but he isn't a person easily forgotten. He may be
queer, one may not agree with his views, but after the experience I had
with him I've never been able to look at him in the way George does, for
instance, or even as father does."

"Or even as I do," I supplied.

"Well, perhaps not even as you do," she answered calmly. "I believe you
once told me, however, that you thought him a fanatic, but sincere."

"He's certainly a fanatic!" I exclaimed.

"But sincere, Hugh-you still think him sincere."

"You seem a good deal concerned about a man you've laid eyes on but
once."

She considered this.

"Yes, it is surprising," she admitted, "but it's true. I was sorry for
him, but I admired him. I was not only impressed by his courage in taking
charge of me, but also by the trust and affection the work-people showed.
He must be a good man, however mistaken he may be in the methods he
employs. And life is cruel to those people."

"Life is-life," I observed. "Neither you nor I nor Krebs is able to
change it."

"Has he come here to practice?" she asked, after a moment.

"Yes. Do you want me to invite him to dinner?" and seeing that she did
not reply I continued: "In spite of my explanation I suppose you think,
because Krebs defended the man Galligan, that a monstrous injustice has
been done."

"That is unworthy of you," she said, bending over her stitch.

I began to pace the room again, as was my habit when overwrought.

"Well, I was going to tell you about this affair if you had not
forestalled me by mentioning it yourself. It isn't pleasant to be
vilified by rascals who make capital out of vilification, and a man has a
right to expect some sympathy from his wife."

"Did I ever deny you that, Hugh?" she asked. "Only you don't ever seem to
need it, to want it."

"And there are things," I pursued, "things in a man's province that a
woman ought to accept from her husband, things which in the very nature
of the case she can know nothing about."

"But a woman must think for herself," she declared. "She shouldn't become
a mere automaton,--and these questions involve so much! People are
discussing them, the magazines and periodicals are beginning to take them
up."

I stared at her, somewhat appalled by this point of view. There had,
indeed, been signs of its development before now, but I had not heeded
them. And for the first time I beheld Maude in a new light.

"Oh, it's not that I don't trust you," she continued, "I'm open to
conviction, but I must be convinced. Your explanation of this Galligan
case seems a sensible one, although it's depressing. But life is hard and
depressing sometimes I've come to realize that. I want to think over what
you've said, I want to talk over it some more. Why won't you tell me more
of what you are doing? If you only would confide in me--as you have now!
I can't help seeing that we are growing farther and farther apart, that
business, your career, is taking all of you and leaving me nothing." She
faltered, and went on again. "It's difficult to tell you this--you never
give me the chance. And it's not for my sake alone, but for yours, too.
You are growing more and more self-centred, surrounding yourself with a
hard shell. You don't realize it, but Tom notices it, Perry notices it,
it hurts them, it's that they complain of. Hugh!" she cried appealingly,
sensing my resentment, forestalling the words of defence ready on my
lips. "I know that you are busy, that many men depend on you, it isn't
that I'm not proud of you and your success, but you don't understand what
a woman craves,--she doesn't want only to be a good housekeeper, a good
mother, but she wants to share a little, at any rate, in the life of her
husband, in his troubles as well as in his successes. She wants to be of
some little use, of some little help to him."

My feelings were reduced to a medley.

"But you are a help to me--a great help," I protested.

She shook her head. "I wish I were," she said.

It suddenly occurred to me that she might be. I was softened, and alarmed
by the spectacle she had revealed of the widening breach between us. I
laid my hand on her shoulder.

"Well, I'll try to do better, Maude."

She looked up at me, questioningly yet gratefully, through a mist of
tears. But her reply--whatever it might have been--was forestalled by the
sound of shouts and laughter in the hallway. She sprang up and ran to the
door.

"It's the children," she exclaimed, "they've come home from Susan's
party!"

It begins indeed to look as if I were writing this narrative upside down,
for I have said nothing about children. Perhaps one reason for this
omission is that I did not really appreciate them, that I found it
impossible to take the same minute interest in them as Tom, for instance,
who was, apparently, not content alone with the six which he possessed,
but had adopted mine. One of them, little Sarah, said "Uncle Tom" before
"Father." I do not mean to say that I had not occasional moments of
tenderness toward them, but they were out of my thoughts much of the
time. I have often wondered, since, how they regarded me; how, in their
little minds, they defined the relationship. Generally, when I arrived
home in the evening I liked to sit down before my study fire and read the
afternoon newspapers or a magazine; but occasionally I went at once to
the nursery for a few moments, to survey with complacency the medley of
toys on the floor, and to kiss all three. They received my caresses with
a certain shyness--the two younger ones, at least, as though they were at
a loss to place me as a factor in the establishment. They tumbled over
each other to greet Maude, and even Tom. If I were an enigma to them,
what must they have thought of him? Sometimes I would discover him on the
nursery floor, with one or two of his own children, building towers and
castles and railroad stations, or forts to be attacked and demolished by
regiments of lead soldiers. He was growing comfortable-looking, if not
exactly stout; prematurely paternal, oddly willing to renounce the
fiercer joys of life, the joys of acquisition, of conquest, of youth.

"You'd better come home with me, Chickabiddy," he would say, "that father
of yours doesn't appreciate you. He's too busy getting rich."

"Chickabiddy," was his name for little Sarah. Half of the name stuck to
her, and when she was older we called her Biddy.

She would gaze at him questioningly, her eyes like blue flower cups, a
strange little mixture of solemnity and bubbling mirth, of shyness and
impulsiveness. She had fat legs that creased above the tops of the absurd
little boots that looked to be too tight; sometimes she rolled and
tumbled in an ecstasy of abandon, and again she would sit motionless, as
though absorbed in dreams. Her hair was like corn silk in the sun,
twisting up into soft curls after her bath, when she sat rosily presiding
over her supper table.

As I look back over her early infancy, I realize that I loved her,
although it is impossible for me to say how much of this love is
retrospective. Why I was not mad about her every hour of the day is a
puzzle to me now. Why, indeed, was I not mad about all three of them?
There were moments when I held and kissed them, when something within me
melted: moments when I was away from them, and thought of them. But these
moments did not last. The something within me hardened again, I became
indifferent, my family was wiped out of my consciousness as though it had
never existed.

There was Matthew, for instance, the oldest. When he arrived, he was to
Maude a never-ending miracle, she would have his crib brought into her
room, and I would find her leaning over the bedside, gazing at him with a
rapt expression beyond my comprehension. To me he was just a brick-red
morsel of humanity, all folds and wrinkles, and not at all remarkable in
any way. Maude used to annoy me by getting out of bed in the middle of
the night when he cried, and at such times I was apt to wonder at the odd
trick the life-force had played me, and ask myself why I got married at
all. It was a queer method of carrying on the race. Later on, I began to
take a cursory interest in him, to watch for signs in him of certain
characteristics of my own youth which, in the philosophy of my manhood, I
had come to regard as defects. And it disturbed me somewhat to see these
signs appear. I wished him to be what I had become by force of will--a
fighter. But he was a sensitive child, anxious for approval; not robust,
though spiritual rather than delicate; even in comparative infancy he
cared more for books than toys, and his greatest joy was in being read
to. In spite of these traits--perhaps because of them--there was a
sympathy between us. From the time that he could talk the child seemed to
understand me. Occasionally I surprised him gazing at me with a certain
wistful look that comes back to me as I write.

Moreton, Tom used to call Alexander the Great because he was a fighter
from the cradle, beating his elder brother, too considerate to strike
back, and likewise--when opportunity offered--his sister; and
appropriating their toys. A self-sufficient, doughty young man, with the
round head that withstands many blows, taking by nature to competition
and buccaneering in general. I did not love him half so much as I did
Matthew--if such intermittent emotions as mine may be called love. It was
a standing joke of mine--which Maude strongly resented--that Moreton
resembled Cousin George of Elkington.

Imbued with the highest ambition of my time, I had set my barque on a
great circle, and almost before I realized it the barque was burdened
with a wife and family and the steering had insensibly become more
difficult; for Maude cared nothing about the destination, and when I took
any hand off the wheel our ship showed a tendency to make for a quiet
harbour. Thus the social initiative, which I believed should have been
the woman's, was thrust back on me. It was almost incredible, yet
indisputable, in a day when most American women were credited with a
craving for social ambition that I, of all men, should have married a
wife in whom the craving was wholly absent! She might have had what other
women would have given their souls for. There were many reasons why I
wished her to take what I deemed her proper place in the community as my
wife--not that I cared for what is called society in the narrow sense;
with me, it was a logical part of a broader scheme of life; an auxiliary
rather than an essential, but a needful auxiliary; a means of dignifying
and adorning the position I was taking. Not only that, but I felt the
need of intercourse--of intercourse of a lighter and more convivial
nature with men and women who saw life as I saw it. In the evenings when
we did not go out into that world our city afforded ennui took possession
of me: I had never learned to care for books, I had no resources outside
of my profession, and when I was not working on some legal problem I
dawdled over the newspapers and went to bed. I don't mean to imply that
our existence, outside of our continued intimacy with the Peterses and
the Blackwoods, was socially isolated. We gave little dinners that Maude
carried out with skill and taste; but it was I who suggested them; we
went out to other dinners, sometimes to Nancy's--though we saw less and
less of her--sometimes to other houses. But Maude had given evidence of
domestic tastes and a disinclination for gaiety that those who
entertained more were not slow to sense. I should have liked to take a
larger house, but I felt the futility of suggesting it; the children were
still small, and she was occupied with them. Meanwhile I beheld, and at
times with considerable irritation, the social world changing, growing
larger and more significant, a more important function of that higher
phase of American existence the new century seemed definitely to have
initiated. A segregative process was away to which Maude was wholly
indifferent. Our city was throwing off its social conservatism; wealth
(which implied ability and superiority) was playing a greater part,
entertainments were more luxurious, lines more strictly drawn. We had an
elaborate country club for those who could afford expensive amusements.
Much of this transformation had been due to the initiative and leadership
of Nancy Durrett....

Great and sudden wealth, however, if combined with obscure antecedents
and questionable qualifications, was still looked upon askance. In spite
of the fact that Adolf Scherer had "put us on the map," the family of the
great iron-master still remained outside of the social pale. He himself
might have entered had it not been for his wife, who was supposed to be
"queer," who remained at home in her house opposite Gallatin Park and
made little German cakes,--a huge house which an unknown architect had
taken unusual pains to make pretentious and hideous, for it was Rhenish,
Moorish and Victorian by turns. Its geometric grounds matched those of
the park, itself a monument to bad taste in landscape. The neighbourhood
was highly respectable, and inhabited by families of German extraction.
There were two flaxen-haired daughters who had just graduated from an
expensive boarding-school in New York, where they had received the polish
needful for future careers. But the careers were not forthcoming.

I was thrown constantly with Adolf Scherer; I had earned his gratitude, I
had become necessary to him. But after the great coup whereby he had
fulfilled Mr. Watling's prophecy and become the chief factor in our
business world he began to show signs of discontent, of an irritability
that seemed foreign to his character, and that puzzled me. One day,
however, I stumbled upon the cause of this fermentation, to wonder that I
had not discovered it before. In many ways Adolf Scherer was a child. We
were sitting in the Boyne Club.

"Money--yes!" he exclaimed, apropos of some demand made upon him by a
charitable society. "They come to me for my money--there is always
Scherer, they say. He will make up the deficit in the hospitals. But what
is it they do for me? Nothing. Do they invite me to their houses, to
their parties?"

This was what he wanted, then,--social recognition. I said nothing, but I
saw my opportunity: I had the clew, now, to a certain attitude he had
adopted of late toward me, an attitude of reproach; as though, in return
for his many favours to me, there were something I had left undone. And
when I went home I asked Maude to call on Mrs. Scherer.

"On Mrs. Scherer!" she repeated.

"Yes, I want you to invite them to dinner." The proposal seemed to take
away her breath. "I owe her husband a great deal, and I think he feels
hurt that the wives of the men he knows down town haven't taken up his
family." I felt that it would not be wise, with Maude, to announce my
rather amazing discovery of the iron-master's social ambitions.

"But, Hugh, they must be very happy, they have their friends. And after
all this time wouldn't it seem like an intrusion?"

"I don't think so," I said, "I'm sure it would please him, and them. You
know how kind he's been to us, how he sent us East in his private car
last year."

"Of course I'll go if you wish it, if you're sure they feel that way."
She did make the call, that very week, and somewhat to my surprise
reported that she liked Mrs. Scherer and the daughters: Maude's likes and
dislikes, needless to say, were not governed by matters of policy.

"You were right, Hugh," she informed me, almost with enthusiasm, "they
did seem lonely. And they were so glad to see me, it was rather pathetic.
Mr. Scherer, it seems, had talked to them a great deal about you. They
wanted to know why I hadn't come before. That was rather embarrassing.
Fortunately they didn't give me time to talk, I never heard people talk
as they do. They all kissed me when I went away, and came down the steps
with me. And Mrs. Scherer went into the conservatory and picked a huge
bouquet. There it is," she said, laughingly, pointing to several vases.
"I separated the colours as well as I could when I got home. We had
coffee, and the most delicious German cakes in the Turkish room, or the
Moorish room, whichever it is. I'm sure I shan't be able to eat anything
more for days. When do you wish to have them for dinner?"

"Well," I said, "we ought to have time to get the right people to meet
them. We'll ask Nancy and Ham."

Maude opened her eyes.

"Nancy! Do you think Nancy would like them?"

"I'm going to give her a chance, anyway," I replied....

It was, in some ways, a memorable dinner. I don't know what I expected in
Mrs. Scherer--from Maude's description a benevolent and somewhat stupid,
blue-eyed German woman, of peasant extraction. There could be no doubt
about the peasant extraction, but when she hobbled into our little
parlour with the aid of a stout, gold-headed cane she dominated it. Her
very lameness added to a distinction that evinced itself in a dozen ways.
Her nose was hooked, her colour high,--despite the years in
Steelville,--her peculiar costume heightened the effect of her
personality; her fire-lit black eyes bespoke a spirit accustomed to rule,
and instead of being an aspirant for social honours, she seemed to confer
them. Conversation ceased at her entrance.

"I'm sorry we are late, my dear," she said, as she greeted Maude
affectionately, "but we have far to come. And this is your husband!" she
exclaimed, as I was introduced. She scrutinized me. "I have heard
something of you, Mr. Paret. You are smart. Shall I tell you the smartest
thing you ever did?" She patted Maude's shoulder. "When you married your
wife--that was it. I have fallen in love with her. If you do not know it,
I tell you."

Next, Nancy was introduced.

"So you are Mrs. Hambleton Durrett?"

Nancy acknowledged her identity with a smile, but the next remark was a
bombshell.

"The leader of society."

"Alas!" exclaimed Nancy, "I have been accused of many terrible things."

Their glances met. Nancy's was amused, baffling, like a spark in amber.
Each, in its way, was redoubtable. A greater contrast between two women
could scarcely have been imagined. It was well said (and not snobbishly)
that generations had been required to make Nancy's figure: she wore a
dress of blue sheen, the light playing on its ripples; and as she stood,
apparently wholly at ease, looking down at the wife of Adolf Scherer, she
reminded me of an expert swordsman who, with remarkable skill, was
keeping a too pressing and determined aspirant at arm's length. I was
keenly aware that Maude did not possess this gift, and I realized for the
first time something of the similarity between Nancy's career and my own.
She, too, in her feminine sphere, exercised, and subtly, a power in which
human passions were deeply involved.

If Nancy Durrett symbolized aristocracy, established order and prestige,
what did Mrs. Scherer represent? Not democracy, mob rule--certainly. The
stocky German peasant woman with her tightly drawn hair and heavy jewels
seemed grotesquely to embody something that ultimately would have its
way, a lusty and terrible force in the interests of which my own services
were enlisted; to which the old American element in business and
industry, the male counterpart of Nancy Willett, had already succumbed.
And now it was about to storm the feminine fastnesses! I beheld a woman
who had come to this country with a shawl aver her head transformed into
a new species of duchess, sure of herself, scorning the delicate
euphemisms in which Fancy's kind were wont to refer to asocial realm,
that was no less real because its boundaries had not definitely been
defined. She held her stick firmly, and gave Nancy an indomitable look.

"I want you to meet my daughters. Gretchen, Anna, come here and be
introduced to Mrs. Durrett."

It was not without curiosity I watched these of the second generation as
they made their bows, noted the differentiation in the type for which an
American environment and a "finishing school" had been responsible.
Gretchen and Anna had learned--in crises, such as the present--to
restrain the superabundant vitality they had inherited. If their
cheekbones were a little too high, their Delft blue eyes a little too
small, their colour was of the proverbial rose-leaves and cream. Gene
Hollister's difficulty was to know which to marry. They were nice
girls,--of that there could be no doubt; there was no false modesty in
their attitude toward "society"; nor did they pretend--as so many silly
people did, that they were not attempting to get anywhere in particular,
that it was less desirable to be in the centre than on the dubious outer
walks. They, too, were so glad to meet Mrs. Durrett.

Nancy's eyes twinkled as they passed on.

"You see what I have let you in for?" I said.

"My dear Hugh," she replied, "sooner or later we should have had to face
them anyhow. I have recognized that for some time. With their money, and
Mr. Scherer's prestige, and the will of that lady with the stick, in a
few years we should have had nothing to say. Why, she's a female
Napoleon. Hilda's the man of the family."

After that, Nancy invariably referred to Mrs. Scherer as Hilda.

If Mrs. Scherer was a surprise to us, her husband was a still greater
one; and I had difficulty in recognizing the Adolf Scherer who came to
our dinner party as the personage of the business world before whom
lesser men were wont to cringe. He seemed rather mysteriously to have
shed that personality; become an awkward, ingratiating, rather too
exuberant, ordinary man with a marked German accent. From time to time I
found myself speculating uneasily on this phenomenon as I glanced down
the table at his great torso, white waist-coated for the occasion. He was
plainly "making up" to Nancy, and to Mrs. Ogilvy, who sat opposite him.
On the whole, the atmosphere of our entertainment was rather electric.
"Hilda" was chiefly responsible for this; her frankness was of the
breath-taking kind. Far from attempting to hide or ignore the struggle by
which she and her husband had attained their present position, she
referred with the utmost naivete to incidents in her career, while the
whole table paused to listen.

"Before we had a carriage, yes, it was hard for me to get about. I had to
be helped by the conductors into the streetcars. I broke my hip when we
lived in Steelville, and the doctor was a numbskull. He should be put in
prison, is what I tell Adolf. I was standing on a clothes-horse, when it
fell. I had much washing to do in those days."

"And--can nothing be done, Mrs. Scherer?" asked Leonard Dickinson,
sympathetically.

"For an old woman? I am fifty-five. I have had many doctors. I would put
them all in prison. How much was it you paid Dr. Stickney, in New York,
Adolf? Five thousand dollars? And he did nothing--nothing. I'd rather be
poor again, and work. But it is well to make the best of it."...

"Your grandfather was a fine man, Mr. Durrett," she informed Hambleton.
"It is a pity for you, I think, that you do not have to work."

Ham, who sat on her other side, was amused.

"My grandfather did enough work for both of us," he said.

"If I had been your grandfather, I would have started you in puddling,"
she observed, as she eyed with disapproval the filling of his third glass
of champagne. "I think there is too much gay life, too much games for
rich young men nowadays. You will forgive me for saying what I think to
young men?"

"I'll forgive you for not being my grandfather, at any rate," replied
Ham, with unaccustomed wit.

She gazed at him with grim humour.

"It is bad for you I am not," she declared.

There was no gainsaying her. What can be done with a lady who will not
recognize that morality is not discussed, and that personalities are
tabooed save between intimates. Hilda was a personage as well as a
Tartar. Laws, conventions, usages--to all these she would conform when it
pleased her. She would have made an admirable inquisitorial judge, and
quite as admirable a sick nurse. A rare criminal lawyer, likewise, was
wasted in her. She was one of those individuals, I perceived, whose
loyalties dominate them; and who, in behalf of those loyalties, carry
chips on their shoulders.

"It is a long time that I have been wanting to meet you," she informed
me. "You are smart."

I smiled, yet I was inclined to resent her use of the word, though I was
by no means sure of the shade of meaning she meant to put into it. I had,
indeed, an uneasy sense of the scantiness of my fund of humour to meet
and turn such a situation; for I was experiencing, now, with her, the
same queer feeling I had known in my youth in the presence of Cousin
Robert Breck--the suspicion that this extraordinary person saw through
me. It was as though she held up a mirror and compelled me to look at my
soul features. I tried to assure myself that the mirror was distorted. I
lost, nevertheless, the sureness of touch that comes from the conviction
of being all of a piece. She contrived to resolve me again into
conflicting elements. I was, for the moment, no longer the self-confident
and triumphant young attorney accustomed to carry all before him, to
command respect and admiration, but a complicated being whose unity had
suddenly been split. I glanced around the table at Ogilvy, at Dickinson,
at Ralph Hambleton. These men were functioning truly. But was I? If I
were not, might not this be the reason for the lack of synthesis--of
which I was abruptly though vaguely aware between my professional life,
my domestic relationships, and my relationships with friends. The loyalty
of the woman beside me struck me forcibly as a supreme trait. Where she
had given, she did not withdraw. She had conferred it instantly on Maude.
Did I feel that loyalty towards a single human being? towards Maude
herself--my wife? or even towards Nancy? I pulled myself together, and
resolved to give her credit for using the word "smart" in its
unobjectionable sense. After all; Dickens had so used it.

"A lawyer must needs know something of what he is about, Mrs. Scherer, if
he is to be employed by such a man as your husband," I replied.

Her black eyes snapped with pleasure.

"Ah, I suppose that is so," she agreed. "I knew he was a great man when I
married him, and that was before Mr. Nathaniel Durrett found it out."

"But surely you did not think, in those days, that he would be as big as
he has become? That he would not only be president of the Boyne Iron
Works, but of a Boyne Iron Works that has exceeded Mr. Durrett's wildest
dreams."

She shook her head complacently.

"Do you know what I told him when he married me? I said, 'Adolf, it is a
pity you are born in Germany.' And when he asked me why, I told him that
some day he might have been President of the United States."

"Well, that won't be a great deprivation to him," I remarked. "Mr.
Scherer can do what he wants, and the President cannot."

"Adolf always does as he wants," she declared, gazing at him as he sat
beside the brilliant wife of the grandson of the man whose red-shirted
foreman he had been. "He does what he wants, and gets what he wants. He
is getting what he wants now," she added, with such obvious meaning that
I found no words to reply. "She is pretty, that Mrs. Durrett, and
clever,--is it not so?"

I agreed. A new and indescribable note had come into Mrs. Scherer's
voice, and I realized that she, too, was aware of that flaw in the
redoubtable Mr. Scherer which none of his associates had guessed. It
would have been strange if she had not discovered it. "She is beautiful,
yes," the lady continued critically, "but she is not to compare with your
wife. She has not the heart,--it is so with all your people of society.
For them it is not what you are, but what you have done, and what you
have."

The banality of this observation was mitigated by the feeling she threw
into it.

"I think you misjudge Mrs. Durrett," I said, incautiously. "She has never
before had the opportunity of meeting Mr. Scherer of appreciating him."

"Mrs. Durrett is an old friend of yours?" she asked.

"I was brought up with her."

"Ah!" she exclaimed, and turned her penetrating glance upon me. I was
startled. Could it be that she had discerned and interpreted those
renascent feelings even then stirring within me, and of which I myself
was as yet scarcely conscious? At this moment, fortunately for me, the
women rose; the men remained to smoke; and Scherer, as they discussed
matters of finance, became himself again. I joined in the conversation,
but I was thinking of those instants when in flashes of understanding my
eyes had met Nancy's; instants in which I was lifted out of my humdrum,
deadly serious self and was able to look down objectively upon the life I
led, the life we all led--and Nancy herself; to see with her the comic
irony of it all. Nancy had the power to give me this exquisite sense of
detachment that must sustain her. And was it not just this sustenance she
could give that I needed? For want of it I was hardening, crystallizing,
growing blind to the joy and variety of existence. Nancy could have saved
me; she brought it home to me that I needed salvation.... I was struck by
another thought; in spite of our separation, in spite of her marriage and
mine, she was still nearer to me--far nearer--than any other being.

Later, I sought her out. She looked up at me amusedly from the
window-seat in our living-room, where she had been talking to the Scherer
girls.

"Well, how did you get along with Hilda?" she asked. "I thought I saw you
struggling."

"She's somewhat disconcerting," I said. "I felt as if she were turning me
inside out."

Nancy laughed.

"Hilda's a discovery--a genius. I'm going to have them to dinner myself."

"And Adolf?" I inquired. "I believe she thought you were preparing to run
away with him. You seemed to have him hypnotized."

"I'm afraid your great man won't be able to stand--elevation," she
declared. "He'll have vertigo. He's even got it now, at this little
height, and when he builds his palace on Grant Avenue, and later moves to
New York, I'm afraid he'll wobble even more."

"Is he thinking of doing all that?" I asked.

"I merely predict New York--it's inevitable," she replied. "Grant Avenue,
yes; he wants me to help him choose a lot. He gave me ten thousand
dollars for our Orphans' Home, but on the whole I think I prefer Hilda
even if she doesn't approve of me."

Nancy rose. The Scherers were going. While Mr. Scherer pressed my hand in
a manner that convinced me of his gratitude, Hilda was bidding an
affectionate good night to Maude. A few moments later she bore her
husband and daughters away, and we heard the tap-tap of her cane on the
walk outside....




XVII.

The remembrance of that dinner when with my connivance the Scherers made
their social debut is associated in my mind with the coming of the
fulness of that era, mad and brief, when gold rained down like manna from
our sooty skies. Even the church was prosperous; the Rev. Carey Heddon,
our new minister, was well abreast of the times, typical of the new and
efficient Christianity that has finally buried the hatchet with
enlightened self-interest. He looked like a young and prosperous man of
business, and indeed he was one.

The fame of our city spread even across the Atlantic, reaching obscure
hamlets in Europe, where villagers gathered up their lares and penates,
mortgaged their homes, and bought steamship tickets from
philanthropists,--philanthropists in diamonds. Our Huns began to arrive,
their Attilas unrecognized among them: to drive our honest Americans and
Irish and Germans out of the mills by "lowering the standard of living."
Still--according to the learned economists in our universities,
enlightened self-interest triumphed. Had not the honest Americans and
Germans become foremen and even presidents of corporations? What greater
vindication for their philosophy could be desired?

The very aspect of the city changed like magic. New buildings sprang high
in the air; the Reliance Trust (Mr. Grierson's), the Scherer Building,
the Hambleton Building; a stew hotel, the Ashuela, took proper care of
our visitors from the East,--a massive, grey stone, thousand-awninged
affair on Boyne Street, with a grill where it became the fashion to go
for supper after the play, and a head waiter who knew in a few weeks
everyone worth knowing.

To return for a moment to the Huns. Maude had expressed a desire to see a
mill, and we went, one afternoon, in Mr. Scherer's carriage to
Steelville, with Mr. Scherer himself,--a bewildering, educative, almost
terrifying experience amidst fumes and flames, gigantic forces and
titanic weights. It seemed a marvel that we escaped being crushed or
burned alive in those huge steel buildings reverberating with sound. They
appeared a very bedlam of chaos, instead of the triumph of order,
organization and human skill. Mr. Scherer was very proud of it all, and
ours was a sort of triumphal procession, accompanied by superintendents,
managers and other factotums. I thought of my childhood image of
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and our progress through the flames
seemed no less remarkable and miraculous.

Maude, with alarm in her eyes, kept very close to me, as I supplemented
the explanations they gave her. I had been there many times before.

"Why, Hugh," she exclaimed, "you seem to know a lot about it!"

Mr. Scherer laughed.

"He's had to talk about it once or twice in court--eh, Hugh? You didn't
realize how clever your husband was did you, Mrs. Paret?"

"But this is so--complicated," she replied. "It is overwhelming."

"When I found out how much trouble he had taken to learn about my
business," added Mr. Scherer, "there was only one thing to do. Make him
my lawyer. Hugh, you have the floor, and explain the open-hearth
process."

I had almost forgotten the Huns. I saw Maude gazing at them with a new
kind of terror. And when we sat at home that evening they still haunted
her.

"Somehow, I can't bear to think about them," she said. "I'm sure we'll
have to pay for it, some day."

"Pay for what?" I asked.

"For making them work that way. And twelve hours! It can't be right,
while we have so much, and are so comfortable."

"Don't be foolish," I exclaimed. "They're used to it. They think
themselves lucky to get the work--and they are. Besides, you give them
credit for a sensitiveness that they don't possess. They wouldn't know
what to do with such a house as this if they had it."

"I never realized before that our happiness and comfort were built on
such foundations;" she said, ignoring my remark.

"You must have seen your father's operatives, in Elkington, many times a
week."

"I suppose I was too young to think about such things," she reflected.
"Besides, I used to be sorry for them, sometimes. But these men at the
steel mills--I can't tell you what I feel about them. The sight of their
great bodies and their red, sullen faces brought home to me the cruelty
of life. Did you notice how some of them stared at us, as though they
were but half awake in the heat, with that glow on their faces? It made
me afraid--afraid that they'll wake up some day, and then they will be
terrible. I thought of the children. It seems not only wicked, but mad to
bring ignorant foreigners over here and make them slaves like that, and
so many of them are hurt and maimed. I can't forget them."

"You're talking Socialism," I said crossly, wondering whether Lucia had
taken it up as her latest fad.

"Oh, no, I'm not," said Maude, "I don't know what Socialism is. I'm
talking about something that anyone who is not dazzled by all this luxury
we are living in might be able to see, about something which, when it
comes, we shan't be able to help."

I ridiculed this. The prophecy itself did not disturb me half as much as
the fact that she had made it, as this new evidence that she was
beginning to think for herself, and along lines so different from my own
development.

While it lasted, before novelists, playwrights, professors and ministers
of the Gospel abandoned their proper sphere to destroy it, that Golden
Age was heaven; the New Jerusalem--in which we had ceased to
believe--would have been in the nature of an anticlimax to any of our
archangels of finance who might have attained it. The streets of our own
city turned out to be gold; gold likewise the acres of unused, scrubby
land on our outskirts, as the incident of the Riverside Franchise--which
I am about to relate--amply proved.

That scheme originated in the alert mind of Mr. Frederick Grierson, and
in spite of the fact that it has since become notorious in the eyes of a
virtue-stricken public, it was entered into with all innocence at the
time: most of the men who were present at the "magnate's" table at the
Boyne Club the day Mr. Grierson broached it will vouch for this. He
casually asked Mr. Dickinson if he had ever noticed a tract lying on the
river about two miles beyond the Heights, opposite what used to be in the
old days a road house.

"This city is growing so fast, Leonard," said Grierson, lighting a
special cigar the Club kept for him, "that it might pay a few of us to
get together and buy that tract, have the city put in streets and sewers
and sell it in building lots. I think I can get most of it at less than
three hundred dollars an acre."

Mr. Dickinson was interested. So were Mr. Ogilvy and Ralph Hambleton, and
Mr. Scherer, who chanced to be there. Anything Fred Grierson had to say
on the question of real estate was always interesting. He went on to
describe the tract, its size and location.

"That's all very well, Fred," Dickinson objected presently, "but how are
your prospective householders going to get out there?"

"Just what I was coming to," cried Grierson, triumphantly, "we'll get a
franchise, and build a street-railroad out Maplewood Avenue, an extension
of the Park Street line. We can get the franchise for next to nothing, if
we work it right." (Mr. Grierson's eye fell on me), "and sell it out to
the public, if you underwrite it, for two million or so."

"Well, you've got your nerve with you, Fred, as usual," said Dickinson.
But he rolled his cigar in his mouth, an indication, to those who knew
him well, that he was considering the matter. When Leonard Dickinson
didn't say "no" at once, there was hope. "What do you think the property
holders on Maplewood Avenue would say? Wasn't it understood, when that
avenue was laid out, that it was to form part of the system of
boulevards?"

"What difference does it make what they say?" Ralph interposed.

Dickinson smiled. He, too, had an exaggerated respect for Ralph. We all
thought the proposal daring, but in no way amazing; the public existed to
be sold things to, and what did it matter if the Maplewood residents, as
Ralph said; and the City Improvement League protested?

Perry Blackwood was the Secretary of the City Improvement League, the
object of which was to beautify the city by laying out a system of
parkways.

The next day some of us gathered in Dickinson's office and decided that
Grierson should go ahead and get the options. This was done; not, of
course, in Grierson's name. The next move, before the formation of the
Riverside Company, was to "see" Mr. Judd Jason. The success or failure of
the enterprise was in his hands. Mahomet must go to the mountain, and I
went to Monahan's saloon, first having made an appointment. It was not
the first time I had been there since I had made that first memorable
visit, but I never quite got over the feeling of a neophyte before
Buddha, though I did not go so far as to analyze the reason,--that in Mr.
Jason I was brought face to face with the concrete embodiment of the
philosophy I had adopted, the logical consequence of enlightened
self-interest. If he had ever heard of it, he would have made no pretence
of being anything else. Greatness, declares some modern philosopher, has
no connection with virtue; it is the continued, strong and logical
expression of some instinct; in Mr. Jason's case, the predatory instinct.
And like a true artist, he loved his career for itself--not for what its
fruits could buy. He might have built a palace on the Heights with the
tolls he took from the disreputable houses of the city; he was contented
with Monahan's saloon: nor did he seek to propitiate a possible God by
endowing churches and hospitals with a portion of his income. Try though
I might, I never could achieve the perfection of this man's contempt for
all other philosophies. The very fact of my going there in secret to that
dark place of his from out of the bright, respectable region in which I
lived was in itself an acknowledgment of this. I thought him a thief--a
necessary thief--and he knew it: he was indifferent to it; and it amused
him, I think, to see clinging to me, when I entered his presence, shreds
of that morality which those of my world who dealt with him thought so
needful for the sake of decency.

He was in bed, reading newspapers, as usual. An empty coffee-cup and a
plate were on the littered table.

"Sit down, sit down, Paret," he said. "What do you hear from the
Senator?"

I sat down, and gave him the news of Mr. Watling. He seemed, as usual,
distrait, betraying no curiosity as to the object of my call, his lean,
brown fingers playing with the newspapers on his lap. Suddenly, he
flashed out at me one of those remarks which produced the uncanny
conviction that, so far as affairs in the city were concerned, he was
omniscient.

"I hear somebody has been getting options on that tract of land beyond
the Heights, on the river."

He had "focussed."

"How did you hear that?" I asked.

He smiled.

"It's Grierson, ain't it?"

"Yes, it's Grierson," I said.

"How are you going to get your folks out there?" he demanded.

"That's what I've come to see you about. We want a franchise for
Maplewood Avenue."

"Maplewood Avenue!" He lay back with his eyes closed, as though trying to
visualize such a colossal proposal....

When I left him, two hours later, the details were all arranged, down to
Mr. Jason's consideration from Riverside Company and the "fee" which his
lawyer, Mr. Bitter, was to have for "presenting the case" before the
Board of Aldermen. I went back to lunch at the Boyne Club, and to receive
the congratulations of my friends. The next week the Riverside Company
was formed, and I made out a petition to the Board of Aldermen for a
franchise; Mr. Bitter appeared and argued: in short, the procedure so
familiar to modern students of political affairs was gone through. The
Maplewood Avenue residents rose en masse, supported by the City
Improvement League. Perry Blackwood, as soon as he heard of the petition,
turned up at my office. By this time I was occupying Mr. Watling's room.

"Look here," he began, as soon as the office-boy had closed the door
behind him, "this is going it a little too strong."

"What is?" I asked, leaning back in my chair and surveying him.

"This proposed Maplewood Avenue Franchise. Hugh," he said, "you and I
have been friends a good many years, Lucia and I are devoted to Maude."

I did not reply.

"I've seen all along that we've been growing apart," he added sadly.
"You've got certain ideas about things which I can't share. I suppose I'm
old fashioned. I can't trust myself to tell you what I think--what Tom
and I think about this deal."

"Go ahead, Perry," I said.

He got up, plainly agitated, and walked to the window. Then he turned to
me appealingly.

"Get out of it, for God's sake get out of it, before it's too late. For
your own sake, for Maude's, for the children's. You don't realize what
you are doing. You may not believe me, but the time will come when these
fellows you are in with will be repudiated by the community,--their money
won't help them. Tom and I are the best friends you have," he added, a
little irrelevantly.

"And you think I'm going to the dogs."

"Now don't take it the wrong way," he urged.

"What is it you object to about the Maplewood franchise?" I asked. "If
you'll look at a map of the city, you'll see that development is bound to
come on that side. Maplewood Avenue is the natural artery, somebody will
build a line out there, and if you'd rather have eastern capitalists--"

"Why are you going to get this franchise?" he demanded. "Because we
haven't a decent city charter, and a healthy public spirit, you fellows
are buying it from a corrupt city boss, and bribing a corrupt board of
aldermen. That's the plain language of it. And it's only fair to warn you
that I'm going to say so, openly."

"Be sensible," I answered. "We've got to have street railroads,--your
family has one. We know what the aldermen are, what political conditions
are. If you feel this way about it, the thing to do is to try to change
them. But why blame me for getting a franchise for a company in the only
manner in which, under present conditions, a franchise can be got? Do you
want the city to stand still? If not, we have to provide for the new
population."

"Every time you bribe these rascals for a franchise you entrench them,"
he cried. "You make it more difficult to oust them. But you mark my
words, we shall get rid of them some day, and when that fight comes, I
want to be in it."

He had grown very much excited; and it was as though this excitement
suddenly revealed to me the full extent of the change that had taken
place in him since he had left college. As he stood facing me, almost
glaring at me through his eye-glasses, I beheld a slim, nervous,
fault-finding doctrinaire, incapable of understanding the world as it
was, lacking the force of his pioneer forefathers. I rather pitied him.

"I'm sorry we can't look at this thing alike, Perry," I told him. "You've
said solve pretty hard things, but I realize that you hold your point of
view in good faith, and that you have come to me as an old friend. I hope
it won't make any difference in our personal relations."

"I don't see how it can help making a difference," he answered slowly.
His excitement had cooled abruptly: he seemed dazed. At this moment my
private stenographer entered to inform me that I was being called up on
the telephone from New York. "Well, you have more important affairs to
attend to, I won't bother you any more," he added.

"Hold on," I exclaimed, "this call can wait. I'd like to talk it over
with you."

"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use, Hugh," he said, and went out.

After talking with the New York client whose local interests I
represented I sat thinking over the conversation with Perry. Considering
Maude's intimacy with and affection for the Blackwoods, the affair was
awkward, opening up many uncomfortable possibilities; and it was the
prospect of discomfort that bothered me rather than regret for the
probable loss of Perry's friendship. I still believed myself to have an
affection for him: undoubtedly this was a sentimental remnant....

That evening after dinner Tom came in alone, and I suspected that Perry
had sent him. He was fidgety, ill at ease, and presently asked if I could
see him a moment in my study. Maude's glance followed us.

"Say, Hugh, this is pretty stiff," he blurted out characteristically,
when the door was closed.

"I suppose you mean the Riverside Franchise," I said. He looked up at me,
miserably, from the chair into which he had sunk, his hands in his
pockets.

"You'll forgive me for talking about it, won't you? You used to lecture
me once in a while at Cambridge, you know."

"That's all right--go ahead," I replied, trying to speak amiably.

"You know I've always admired you, Hugh,--I never had your ability," he
began painfully, "you've gone ahead pretty fast,--the truth is that Perry
and I have been worried about you for some time. We've tried not to be
too serious in showing it, but we've felt that these modern business
methods were getting into your system without your realizing it. There
are some things a man's friends can tell him, and it's their duty to tell
him. Good God, haven't you got enough, Hugh,--enough success and enough
money, without going into a thing like this Riverside scheme?"

I was intensely annoyed, if not angry; and I hesitated a moment to calm
myself.

"Tom, you don't understand my position," I said. "I'm willing to discuss
it with you, now that you've opened up the subject. Perry's been talking
to you, I can see that. I think Perry's got queer ideas,--to be plain
with you, and they're getting queerer."

He sat down again while, with what I deemed a rather exemplary patience,
I went over the arguments in favour of my position; and as I talked, it
clarified in my own mind. It was impossible to apply to business an
individual code of ethics,--even to Perry's business, to Tom's business:
the two were incompatible, and the sooner one recognized that the better:
the whole structure of business was built up on natural, as opposed to
ethical law. We had arrived at an era of frankness--that was the
truth--and the sooner we faced this truth the better for our peace of
mind. Much as we might deplore the political system that had grown up, we
had to acknowledge, if we were consistent, that it was the base on which
our prosperity was built. I was rather proud of having evolved this
argument; it fortified my own peace of mind, which had been disturbed by
Tom's attitude. I began to pity him. He had not been very successful in
life, and with the little he earned, added to Susan's income, I knew that
a certain ingenuity was required to make both ends meet. He sat listening
with a troubled look. A passing phase of feeling clouded for a brief
moment my confidence when there arose in my mind an unbidden memory of my
youth, of my father. He, too, had mistrusted my ingenuity. I recalled how
I had out-manoeuvred him and gone to college; I remembered the March day
so long ago, when Tom and I had stood on the corner debating how to
deceive him, and it was I who had suggested the nice distinction between
a boat and a raft. Well, my father's illogical attitude towards boyhood
nature, towards human nature, had forced me into that lie, just as the
senseless attitude of the public to-day forced business into a position
of hypocrisy.

"Well, that's clever," he said, slowly and perplexedly, when I had
finished. "It's damned clever, but somehow it looks to me all wrong. I
can't pick it to pieces." He got up rather heavily. "I--I guess I ought
to be going. Susan doesn't know where I am."

I was exasperated. It was clear, though he did not say so, that he
thought me dishonest. The pain in his eyes had deepened.

"If you feel that way--" I said.

"Oh, God, I don't know how I feel!" he cried. "You're the oldest friend I
have, Hugh,--I can't forget that. We'll say nothing more about it." He
picked up his hat and a moment later I heard the front door close behind
him. I stood for a while stock-still, and then went into the living-room,
where Maude was sewing.

"Why, where's Tom?" she inquired, looking up.

"Oh, he went home. He said Susan didn't know where he was."

"How queer! Hugh, was there anything the matter? Is he in trouble?" she
asked anxiously.

I stood toying with a book-mark, reflecting. She must inevitably come to
suspect that something had happened, and it would be as well to fortify
her.

"The trouble is," I said after a moment, "that Perry and Tom would like
to run modern business on the principle of a charitable institution.
Unfortunately, it is not practical. They're upset because I have been
retained by a syndicate whose object is to develop some land out beyond
Maplewood Avenue. They've bought the land, and we are asking the city to
give us a right to build a line out Maplewood Avenue, which is the
obvious way to go. Perry says it will spoil the avenue. That's nonsense,
in the first place. The avenue is wide, and the tracks will be in a grass
plot in the centre. For the sake of keeping tracks off that avenue he
would deprive people of attractive homes at a small cost, of the good air
they can get beyond the heights; he would stunt the city's development."

"That does seem a little unreasonable," Maude admitted. "Is that all he
objects to?"

"No, he thinks it an outrage because, in order to get the franchise, we
have to deal with the city politicians. Well, it so happens, and always
has happened, that politics have been controlled by leaders, whom Perry
calls 'bosses,' and they are not particularly attractive men. You
wouldn't care to associate with them. My father once refused to be mayor
of the city for this reason. But they are necessities. If the people
didn't want them, they'd take enough interest in elections to throw them
out. But since the people do want them, and they are there, every time a
new street-car line or something of that sort needs to be built they have
to be consulted, because, without their influence nothing could be done.
On the other hand, these politicians cannot afford to ignore men of local
importance like Leonard Dickinson and Adolf Scherer and Miller Gorse who
represent financial substance and' responsibility. If a new
street-railroad is to be built, these are the logical ones to build it.
You have just the same situation in Elkington, on a smaller scale.

"Your family, the Hutchinses, own the mills and the street-railroads, and
any new enterprise that presents itself is done with their money, because
they are reliable and sound."

"It isn't pleasant to think that there are such people as the
politicians, is it?" said Maude, slowly.

"Unquestionably not," I agreed. "It isn't pleasant to think of some other
crude forces in the world. But they exist, and they have to be dealt
with. Suppose the United States should refuse to trade with Russia
because, from our republican point of view, we regarded her government as
tyrannical and oppressive? or to cooperate with England in some
undertaking for the world's benefit because we contended that she ruled
India with an iron hand? In such a case, our President and Senate would
be scoundrels for making and ratifying a treaty. Yet here are Perry and
Tom, and no doubt Susan and Lucia, accusing me, a lifetime friend, of
dishonesty because I happen to be counsel for a syndicate that wishes to
build a street-railroad for the convenience of the people of the city."

"Oh, no, not of dishonesty!" she exclaimed. "I can't--I won't believe
they would do that."

"Pretty near it," I said. "If I listened to them, I should have to give
up the law altogether."

"Sometimes," she answered in a low voice, "sometimes I wish you would."

"I might have expected that you would take their point of view."

As I was turning away she got up quickly and put her hand on my shoulder.

"Hugh, please don't say such things--you've no right to say them."

"And you?" I asked.

"Don't you see," she continued pleadingly, "don't you see that we are
growing apart? That's the only reason I said what I did. It isn't that I
don't trust you, that I don't want you to have your work, that I demand
all of you. I know a woman can't ask that,--can't have it. But if you
would only give me--give the children just a little, if I could feel that
we meant something to you and that this other wasn't gradually becoming
everything, wasn't absorbing you more and more, killing the best part of
you. It's poisoning our marriage, it's poisoning all your relationships."

In that appeal the real Maude, the Maude of the early days of our
marriage flashed forth again so vividly that I was taken aback. I
understood that she had had herself under control, had worn a mask--a
mask I had forced on her; and the revelation of the continued existence
of that other Maude was profoundly disturbing. Was it true, as she said,
that my absorption in the great game of modern business, in the modern
American philosophy it implied was poisoning my marriage? or was it that
my marriage had failed to satisfy and absorb me? I was touched--but
sentimentally touched: I felt that this was a situation that ought to
touch me; I didn't wish to face it, as usual: I couldn't acknowledge to
myself that anything was really wrong... I patted her on the shoulder, I
bent over and kissed her.

"A man in my position can't altogether choose just how busy he will be,"
I said smiling. "Matters are thrust upon me which I have to accept, and I
can't help thinking about some of them when I come home. But we'll go off
for a real vacation soon, Maude, to Europe--and take the children."

"Oh, I hope so," she said.

From this time on, as may be supposed, our intercourse with both the
Blackwoods began to grow less frequent, although Maude continued to see a
great deal of Lucia; and when we did dine in their company, or they with
us, it was quite noticeable that their former raillery was suppressed.
Even Tom had ceased to refer to me as the young Napoleon of the Law: he
clung to me, but he too kept silent on the subject of business. Maude of
course must have noticed this, must have sensed the change of atmosphere,
have known that the Blackwoods, at least, were maintaining appearances
for her sake. She did not speak to me of the change, nor I to her; but
when I thought of her silence, it was to suspect that she was weighing
the question which had led up to the difference between Perry and me, and
I had a suspicion that the fact that I was her husband would not affect
her ultimate decision. This faculty of hers of thinking things out
instead of accepting my views and decisions was, as the saying goes,
getting a little "on my nerves": that she of all women should have
developed it was a recurring and unpleasant surprise. I began at times to
pity myself a little, to feel the need of sympathetic companionship
--feminine companionship....

I shall not go into the details of the procurement of what became known
as the Riverside Franchise. In spite of the Maplewood residents, of the
City Improvement League and individual protests, we obtained it with
absurd ease. Indeed Perry Blackwood himself appeared before the Public
Utilities Committee of the Board of Aldermen, and was listened to with
deference and gravity while he discoursed on the defacement of a
beautiful boulevard to satisfy the greed of certain private individuals.
Mr. Otto Bitter and myself, who appeared for the petitioners, had a
similar reception. That struggle was a tempest in a tea-pot. The reformer
raged, but he was feeble in those days, and the great public believed
what it read in the respectable newspapers. In Mr. Judah B. Tallant's
newspaper, for instance, the Morning Era, there were semi-playful
editorials about "obstructionists." Mr. Perry Blackwood was a
well-meaning, able gentleman of an old family, etc., but with a sentiment
for horse-cars. The Era published also the resolutions which (with
interesting spontaneity!) had been passed by our Board of Trade and
Chamber of Commerce and other influential bodies in favour of the
franchise; the idea--unknown to the public--of Mr. Hugh Paret, who wrote
drafts of the resolutions and suggested privately to Mr. Leonard
Dickinson that a little enthusiasm from these organizations might be
helpful. Mr. Dickinson accepted the suggestion eagerly, wondering why he
hadn't thought of it himself. The resolutions carried some weight with a
public that did not know its right hand from its left.

After fitting deliberation, one evening in February the Board of Aldermen
met and granted the franchise. Not unanimously, oh, no! Mr. Jason was not
so simple as that! No further visits to Monahan's saloon on my part, in
this connection were necessary; but Mr. Otto Bitter met me one day in the
hotel with a significant message from the boss.

"It's all fixed," he informed me. "Murphy and Scott and Ottheimer and
Grady and Loth are the decoys. You understand?"

"I think I gather your meaning," I said.

Mr. Bitter smiled by pulling down one corner of a crooked mouth.

"They'll vote against it on principle, you know," he added. "We get a
little something from the Maple Avenue residents."

I've forgotten what the Riverside Franchise cost. The sum was paid in a
lump sum to Mr. Bitter as his "fee,"--so, to their chagrin, a grand jury
discovered in later years, when they were barking around Mr. Jason's hole
with an eager district attorney snapping his whip over them. I remember
the cartoon. The municipal geese were gone, but it was impossible to
prove that this particular fox had used his enlightened reason in their
procurement. Mr. Bitter was a legally authorized fox, and could take
fees. How Mr. Jason was to be rewarded by the land company's left-hand,
unknown, to the land company's right hand, became a problem worthy of a
genius. The genius was found, but modesty forbids me to mention his name,
and the problem was solved, to wit: the land company bought a piece of
downtown property from--Mr. Ryerson, who was Mr. Grierson's real estate
man and the agent for the land company, for a consideration of thirty
thousand dollars. An unconfirmed rumour had it that Mr. Ryerson turned
over the thirty thousand to Mr. Jason. Then the Riverside Company issued
a secret deed of the same property back to Mr. Ryerson, and this deed was
not recorded until some years later.

Such are the elaborate transactions progress and prosperity demand.
Nature is the great teacher, and we know that her ways are at times
complicated and clumsy. Likewise, under the "natural" laws of economics,
new enterprises are not born without travail, without the aid of legal
physicians well versed in financial obstetrics. One hundred and fifty to
two hundred thousand, let us say, for the right to build tracks on
Maplewood Avenue, and we sold nearly two million dollars worth of the
securities back to the public whose aldermen had sold us the franchise.
Is there a man so dead as not to feel a thrill at this achievement? And
let no one who declares that literary talent and imagination are
nonexistent in America pronounce final judgment until he reads that
prospectus, in which was combined the best of realism and symbolism, for
the labours of Alonzo Cheyne were not to be wasted, after all. Mr.
Dickinson, who was a director in the Maplewood line, got a handsome
underwriting percentage, and Mr. Berringer, also a director, on the bonds
and preferred stock he sold. Mr. Paret, who entered both companies on the
ground floor, likewise got fees. Everybody was satisfied except the
trouble makers, who were ignored. In short, the episode of the Riverside
Franchise is a triumphant proof of the contention that business men are
the best fitted to conduct the politics of their country.

We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs, we knew that the Happy
Hunting-Grounds are here and now, while the Reverend Carey Heddon
continued to assure the maimed, the halt and the blind that their kingdom
was not of this world, that their time was coming later. Could there have
been a more idyl arrangement! Everybody should have been satisfied, but
everybody was not. Otherwise these pages would never have been written.






A FAR COUNTRY

By Winston Churchill


BOOK 3.



XVIII.

As the name of our city grew to be more and more a byword for sudden and
fabulous wealth, not only were the Huns and the Slavs, the Czechs and the
Greeks drawn to us, but it became the fashion for distinguished
Englishmen and Frenchmen and sometimes Germans and Italians to pay us a
visit when they made the grand tour of America. They had been told that
they must not miss us; scarcely a week went by in our community--so it
was said--in which a full-fledged millionaire was not turned out. Our
visitors did not always remain a week,--since their rapid journeyings
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to the Gulf rarely occupied
more than four,--but in the books embodying their mature comments on the
manners, customs and crudities of American civilization no less than a
chapter was usually devoted to us; and most of the adjectives in their
various languages were exhausted in the attempt to prove how symptomatic
we were of the ambitions and ideals of the Republic. The fact that many
of these gentlemen--literary and otherwise--returned to their own shores
better fed and with larger balances in the banks than when they departed
is neither here nor there. Egyptians are proverbially created to be
spoiled.

The wiser and more fortunate of these travellers and students of life
brought letters to Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton Durrett. That household was
symptomatic--if they liked--of the new order of things; and it was rare
indeed when both members of it were at home to entertain them. If Mr.
Durrett were in the city, and they did not happen to be Britons with
sporting proclivities, they simply were not entertained: when Mrs.
Durrett received them dinners were given in their honour on the Durrett
gold plate, and they spent cosey and delightful hours conversing with her
in the little salon overlooking the garden, to return to their hotels and
jot down paragraphs on the superiority of the American women over the
men. These particular foreigners did not lay eyes on Mr. Durrett, who was
in Florida or in the East playing polo or engaged in some other pursuit.
One result of the lavishness and luxury that amazed them they wrote--had
been to raise the standard of culture of the women, who were our leisure
class. But the travellers did not remain long enough to arrive at any
conclusions of value on the effect of luxury and lavishness on the sacred
institution of marriage.

If Mr. Nathaniel Durrett could have returned to his native city after
fifteen years or so in the grave, not the least of the phenomena to
startle him would have been that which was taking place in his own house.
For he would have beheld serenely established in that former abode of
Calvinism one of the most reprehensible of exotic abominations, a
'mariage de convenance;' nor could he have failed to observe, moreover,
the complacency with which the descendants of his friends, the pew
holders in Dr. Pound's church, regarded the matter: and not only these,
but the city at large. The stronghold of Scotch Presbyterianism had
become a London or a Paris, a Gomorrah!

Mrs. Hambleton Durrett went her way, and Mr. Durrett his. The less said
about Mr. Durrett's way--even in this suddenly advanced age--the better.
As for Nancy, she seemed to the distant eye to be walking through life in
a stately and triumphant manner. I read in the newspapers of her doings,
her comings and goings; sometimes she was away for months together, often
abroad; and when she was at home I saw her, but infrequently, under
conditions more or less formal. Not that she was formal,--or I: our
intercourse seemed eloquent of an intimacy in a tantalizing state of
suspense. Would that intimacy ever be renewed? This was a question on
which I sometimes speculated. The situation that had suspended or put an
end to it, as the case might be, was never referred to by either of us.

One afternoon in the late winter of the year following that in which we
had given a dinner to the Scherers (where the Durretts had rather
marvellously appeared together) I left my office about three o'clock--a
most unusual occurrence. I was restless, unable to fix my mind on my
work, filled with unsatisfied yearnings the object of which I sought to
keep vague, and yet I directed my steps westward along Boyne Street until
I came to the Art Museum, where a loan exhibition was being held. I
entered, bought a catalogue, and presently found myself standing before
number 103, designated as a portrait of Mrs. Hambleton Durrett,--painted
in Paris the autumn before by a Polish artist then much in vogue,
Stanislaus Czesky. Nancy--was it Nancy?--was standing facing me, tall,
superb in the maturity of her beauty, with one hand resting on an antique
table, a smile upon her lips, a gentle mockery in her eyes as though
laughing at the world she adorned. With the smile and the
mockery--somehow significant, too, of an achieved inaccessibility--went
the sheen of her clinging gown and the glint of the heavy pearls drooping
from her high throat to her waist. These caught the eye, but failed at
length to hold it, for even as I looked the smile faded, the mockery
turned to wistfulness. So I thought, and looked again--to see the
wistfulness: the smile had gone, the pearls seemed heavier. Was it a
trick of the artist? had he seen what I saw, or thought I saw? or was it
that imagination which by now I might have learned to suspect and
distrust. Wild longings took possession of me, for the portrait had
seemed to emphasize at once how distant now she was from me, and yet how
near! I wanted to put that nearness to the test. Had she really changed?
did anyone really change? and had I not been a fool to accept the
presentment she had given me? I remembered those moments when our glances
had met as across barriers in flashes of understanding. After all, the
barriers were mere relics of the superstition of the past. What if I went
to her now? I felt that I needed her as I never had needed anyone in all
my life.... I was aroused by the sound of lowered voices beside me.

"That's Mrs. Hambleton Durrett," I heard a woman say. "Isn't she
beautiful?"

The note of envy struck me sharply--horribly. Without waiting to listen
to the comment of her companion I hurried out of the building into the
cold, white sunlight that threw into bold relief the mediocre houses of
the street. Here was everyday life, but the portrait had suggested that
which might have been--might be yet. What did I mean by this? I didn't
know, I didn't care to define it,--a renewal of her friendship, of our
intimacy. My being cried out for it, and in the world in which I lived we
took what we wanted--why not this? And yet for an instant I stood on the
sidewalk to discover that in new situations I was still subject to
unaccountable qualms of that thing I had been taught to call
"conscience"; whether it were conscience or not must be left to the
psychologists. I was married--terrible word! the shadow of that
Institution fell athwart me as the sun went under a cloud; but the sun
came out again as I found myself walking toward the Durrett house
reflecting that numbers of married men called on Nancy, and that what I
had in mind in regard to her was nothing that the court would have
pronounced an infringement upon the Institution.... I reached her steps,
the long steps still guarded by the curved wrought-iron railings
reminiscent of Nathaniel's day, though the "portals" were gone, a modern
vestibule having replaced them; I rang the bell; the butler, flung open
the doors. He, at any rate, did not seem surprised to see me here, he
greeted me with respectful cordiality and led me, as a favoured guest,
through the big drawing-room into the salon.

"Mr. Paret, Madam!"

Nancy, rose quickly from the low chair where she sat cutting the pages of
a French novel.

"Hugh!" she exclaimed. "I'm out if anyone calls. Bring tea," she added to
the man, who retired. For a moment we stood gazing at each other,
questioningly. "Well, won't you sit down and stay awhile?" she asked.

I took a chair on the opposite side of the fire.

"I just thought I'd drop in," I said.

"I am flattered," said Nancy, "that a person so affaire should find time
to call on an old friend. Why, I thought you never left your office until
seven o'clock."

"I don't, as a rule, but to-day I wasn't particularly busy, and I thought
I'd go round to the Art Museum and look at your portrait."

"More flattery! Hugh, you're getting quite human. What do you think of
it?"

"I like it. I think it quite remarkable."

"Have a cigarette!"

I took one.

"So you really like it," she said.

"Don't you?"

"Oh, I think it's a trifle--romantic," she replied "But that's Czesky. He
made me quite cross,--the feminine presentation of America, the spoiled
woman who has shed responsibilities and is beginning to have a
glimpse--just a little one--of the emptiness of it all."

I was stirred.

"Then why do you accept it, if it isn't you?" I demanded. "One doesn't
refuse Czesky's canvases," she replied. "And what difference does it
make? It amused him, and he was fairly subtle about it. Only those who
are looking for romance, like you, are able to guess what he meant, and
they would think they saw it anyway, even if he had painted me--extinct."

"Extinct!" I repeated.

She laughed.

"Hugh, you're a silly old goose!"

"That's why I came here, I think, to be told so," I said.

Tea was brought in. A sense of at-homeness stole over me,--I was more at
home here in this room with Nancy, than in any other place in the world;
here, where everything was at once soothing yet stimulating, expressive
of her, even the smaller objects that caught my eye,--the crystal
inkstand tipped with gold, the racks for the table books, her
paper-cutter. Nancy's was a discriminating luxury. And her talk! The
lightness with which she touched life, the unexplored depths of her,
guessed at but never fathomed! Did she feel a little the need of me as I
felt the need of her?

"Why, I believe you're incurably romantic, Hugh," she said laughingly,
when the men had left the room. "Here you are, what they call a paragon
of success, a future senator, Ambassador to England. I hear of those
remarkable things you have done--even in New York the other day a man was
asking me if I knew Mr. Paret, and spoke of you as one of the coming men.
I suppose you will be moving there, soon. A practical success! It always
surprises me when I think of it, I find it difficult to remember what a
dreamer you were and here you turn out to be still a dreamer! Have you
discovered, too, the emptiness of it all?" she inquired provokingly. "I
must say you don't look it"--she gave me a critical, quizzical
glance--"you look quite prosperous and contented, as though you enjoyed
your power."

I laughed uneasily.

"And then," she continued, "and then one day when your luncheon has
disagreed with you--you walk into a gallery and see a portrait of--of an
old friend for whom in youth, when you were a dreamer, you professed a
sentimental attachment, and you exclaim that the artist is a discerning
man who has discovered the secret that she has guarded so closely. She's
sorry that she ever tried to console herself with baubles it's what
you've suspected all along. But you'll just run around to see for
yourself--to be sure of it." And she handed me my tea. "Come now,
confess. Where are your wits--I hear you don't lack them in court."

"Well," I said, "if that amuses you--"

"It does amuse me," said Nancy, twining her fingers across her knee and
regarding me smilingly, with parted lips, "it amuses me a lot--it's so
characteristic."

"But it's not true, it's unjust," I protested vigorously, smiling, too,
because the attack was so characteristic of her.

"What then?" she demanded.

"Well, in the first place, my luncheon didn't disagree with me. It never
does."

She laughed. "But the sentiment--come now--the sentiment? Do you perceive
any hint of emptiness--despair?"

Our chairs were very close, and she leaned forward a little.

"Emptiness or no emptiness," I said a little tremulously, "I know that I
haven't been so contented, so happy for a long time."

She sat very still, but turned her gaze on the fire.

"You really wouldn't want to find that, Hugh," she said in another voice,
at which I exclaimed. "No, I'm not being sentimental. But, to be serious,
I really shouldn't care to think that of you. I'd like to think of you as
a friend--a good friend--although we don't see very much of one another."

"But that's why I came, Nancy," I explained. "It wasn't just an
impulse--that is, I've been thinking of you a great deal, all along. I
miss you, I miss the way you look at things--your point of view. I can't
see any reason why we shouldn't see something of each other--now--"

She continued to stare into the fire.

"No," she said at length, "I suppose there isn't any reason." Her mood
seemed suddenly to change as she bent over and extinguished the flame
under the kettle. "After all," she added gaily, "we live in a tolerant
age, we've reached the years of discretion, and we're both too
conventional to do anything silly--even if we wanted to--which we don't.
We're neither of us likely to quarrel with the world as it is, I think,
and we might as well make fun of it together. We'll begin with our
friends. What do you think of Mr. Scherer's palace?"

"I hear you're building it for him."

"I told him to get Eyre," said Nancy, laughingly, "I was afraid he'd
repeat the Gallatin Park monstrosity on a larger scale, and Eyre's the
only man in this country who understands the French. It's been rather
amusing," she went on, "I've had to fight Hilda, and she's no mean
antagonist. How she hates me! She wanted a monstrosity, of course, a
modernized German rock-grotto sort of an affair, I can imagine. She's
been so funny when I've met her at dinner. 'I understand you take a great
interest in the house, Mrs. Durrett.' Can't you hear her?"

"Well, you did get ahead of her," I said.

"I had to. I couldn't let our first citizen build a modern Rhine castle,
could I? I have some public spirit left. And besides, I expect to build
on Grant Avenue myself."

"And leave here?"

"Oh, it's too grubby, it's in the slums," said Nancy. "But I really owe
you a debt of gratitude, Hugh, for the Scherers."

"I'm told Adolf's lost his head over you."

"It's not only over me, but over everything. He's so ridiculously proud
of being on the board of the Children's Hospital.... You ought to hear
him talking to old Mrs. Ogilvy, who of course can't get used to him at
all,--she always has the air of inquiring what he's doing in that galley.
She still thinks of him as Mr. Durrett's foreman."

The time flew. Her presence was like a bracing, tingling atmosphere in
which I felt revived and exhilarated, self-restored. For Nancy did not
question--she took me as I was. We looked out on the world, as it were,
from the same window, and I could not help thinking that ours, after all,
was a large view. The topics didn't matter--our conversation was fragrant
with intimacy; and we were so close to each other it seemed incredible
that we ever should be parted again. At last the little clock on the
mantel chimed an hour, she started and looked up.

"Why, it's seven, Hugh!" she exclaimed, rising. "I'd no idea it was so
late, and I'm dining with the Dickinsons. I've only just time to dress."

"It's been like a reunion, hasn't it?--a reunion after many years," I
said. I held her hand unconsciously--she seemed to be drawing me to her,
I thought she swayed, and a sudden dizziness seized me. Then she drew
away abruptly, with a little cry. I couldn't be sure about the cry,
whether I heard it or not, a note was struck in the very depths of me.

"Come in again," she said, "whenever you're not too busy." And a minute
later I found myself on the street.

This was the beginning of a new intimacy with Nancy, resembling the old
intimacy yet differing from it. The emotional note of our parting on the
occasion I have just related was not again struck, and when I went
eagerly to see her again a few days later I was conscious of
limitations,--not too conscious: the freedom she offered and which I
gladly accepted was a large freedom, nor am I quite sure that even I
would have wished it larger, though there were naturally moments when I
thought so: when I asked myself what I did wish, I found no answer.
Though I sometimes chafed, it would have been absurd of me to object to a
certain timidity or caution I began to perceive in her that had been
absent in the old Nancy; but the old Nancy had ceased to exist, and here
instead was a highly developed, highly specialized creature in whom I
delighted; and after taking thought I would not have robbed her of fine
acquired attribute. As she had truly observed, we were both conventional;
conventionality was part of the price we had willingly paid for
membership in that rarer world we had both achieved. It was a world, to
be sure, in which we were rapidly learning to take the law into our own
hands without seeming to defy it, in order that the fear of it might
remain in those less fortunately placed and endowed: we had begun with
the appropriation of the material property of our fellow-citizens, which
we took legally; from this point it was, of course, merely a logical step
to take--legally, too other gentlemen's human property--their wives, in
short: the more progressive East had set us our example, but as yet we
had been chary to follow it.

About this time rebellious voices were beginning to make themselves heard
in the literary wilderness proclaiming liberty--liberty of the sexes.
There were Russian novels and French novels, and pioneer English novels
preaching liberty with Nietzschean stridency, or taking it for granted. I
picked these up on Nancy's table.

"Reading them?" she said, in answer to my query. "Of course I'm reading
them. I want to know what these clever people are thinking, even if I
don't always agree with them, and you ought to read them too. It's quite
true what foreigners say about our men,--that they live in a groove, that
they haven't any range of conversation."

"I'm quite willing to be educated," I replied. "I haven't a doubt that I
need it."

She was leaning back in her chair, her hands behind her head, a posture
she often assumed. She looked up at me amusedly.

"I'll acknowledge that you're more teachable than most of them," she
said. "Do you know, Hugh, sometimes you puzzle me greatly. When you are
here and we're talking together I can never think of you as you are out
in the world, fighting for power--and getting it. I suppose it's part of
your charm, that there is that side of you, but I never consciously
realize it. You're what they call a dual personality."

"That's a pretty hard name!" I exclaimed.

She laughed.

"I can't help it--you are. Oh, not disagreeably so, quite
normally--that's the odd thing about you. Sometimes I believe that you
were made for something different, that in spite of your success you have
missed your 'metier.'"

"What ought I to have been?"

"How can I tell? A Goethe, perhaps--a Goethe smothered by a
twentieth-century environment. Your love of adventure isn't dead, it's
been merely misdirected, real adventure, I mean, forth faring, straying
into unknown paths. Perhaps you haven't yet found yourself."

"How uncanny!" I said, stirred and startled.

"You have a taste for literature, you know, though you've buried it. Give
me Turgeniev. We'll begin with him...."

Her reading and the talks that followed it were exciting, amazingly
stimulating.... Once Nancy gave me an amusing account of a debate which
had taken place in the newly organized woman's discussion club to which
she belonged over a rather daring book by an English novelist. Mrs.
Dickinson had revolted.

"No, she wasn't really shocked, not in the way she thought she was," said
Nancy, in answer to a query of mine.

"How was she shocked, then?"

"As you and I are shocked."

"But I'm not shocked," I protested.

"Oh, yes, you are, and so am I--not on the moral side, nor is it the
moral aspect that troubles Lula Dickinson. She thinks it's the moral
aspect, but it's really the revolutionary aspect, the menace to those
precious institutions from which we derive our privileges and comforts."

I considered this, and laughed.

"What's the use of being a humbug about it," said Nancy.

"But you're talking like a revolutionary," I said.

"I may be talking like one, but I'm not one. I once had the makings of
one--of a good one,--a 'proper' one, as the English would say." She
sighed.

"You regret it?" I asked curiously.

"Of course I regret it!" she cried. "What woman worth her salt doesn't
regret it, doesn't want to live, even if she has to suffer for it? And
those people--the revolutionaries, I mean, the rebels--they live, they're
the only ones who do live. The rest of us degenerate in a painless
paralysis we think of as pleasure. Look at me! I'm incapable of
committing a single original act, even though I might conceive one. Well,
there was a time when I should have been equal to anything and wouldn't
have cared a--a damn."

I believed her....

I fell into the habit of dropping in on Nancy at least twice a week on my
way from the office, and I met her occasionally at other houses. I did
not tell Maude of that first impulsive visit; but one evening a few weeks
later she asked me where I had been, and when I told her she made no
comment. I came presently to the conclusion that this renewed intimacy
did not trouble her--which was what I wished to believe. Of course I had
gone to Nancy for a stimulation I failed to get at home, and it is the
more extraordinary, therefore, that I did not become more discontented
and restless: I suppose this was because I had grown to regard marriage
as most of the world regarded it, as something inevitable and humdrum, as
a kind of habit it is useless to try to shake off. But life is so full of
complexities and anomalies that I still had a real affection for Maude,
and I liked her the more because she didn't expect too much of me, and
because she didn't complain of my friendship with Nancy although I should
vehemently have denied there was anything to complain of. I respected
Maude. If she was not a squaw, she performed religiously the traditional
squaw duties, and made me comfortable: and the fact that we lived
separate mental existences did not trouble me because I never thought of
hers--or even that she had one. She had the children, and they seemed to
suffice. She never renewed her appeal for my confidence, and I forgot
that she had made it.

Nevertheless I always felt a tug at my heartstrings when June came around
and it was time for her and the children to go to Mattapoisett for the
summer; when I accompanied them, on the evening of their departure, to
the smoky, noisy station and saw deposited in the sleeping-car their
luggage and shawls and bundles. They always took the evening train to
Boston; it was the best. Tom and Susan were invariably there with candy
and toys to see them off--if Susan and her children had not already
gone--and at such moments my heart warmed to Tom. And I was astonished as
I clung to Matthew and Moreton and little Biddy at the affection that
welled up within me, saddened when I kissed Maude good-bye. She too was
sad, and always seemed to feel compunctions for deserting me.

"I feel so selfish in leaving you all alone!" she would say. "If it
weren't for the children--they need the sea air. But I know you don't
miss me as I miss you. A man doesn't, I suppose.... Please don't work so
hard, and promise me you'll come on and stay a long time. You can if you
want to. We shan't starve." She smiled. "That nice room, which is yours,
at the southeast corner, is always waiting for you. And you do like the
sea, and seeing the sail-boats in the morning."

I felt an emptiness when the train pulled out. I did love my family,
after all! I would go back to the deserted house, and I could not bear to
look in at the nursery door, at the little beds with covers flung over
them. Why couldn't I appreciate these joys when I had them?

One evening, as we went home in an open street-car together, after such a
departure, Tom blurted out:--"Hugh, I believe I care for your family as
much as for my own. I often wonder if you realize how wonderful these
children are! My boys are just plain ruffians--although I think they're
pretty decent ruffians, but Matthew has a mind--he's thoughtful--and an
imagination. He'll make a name for himself some day if he's steered
properly and allowed to develop naturally. Moreton's more like my boys.
And as for Chickabiddy!--" words failed him.

I put my hand on his knee. I actually loved him again as I had loved and
yearned for him as a child,--he was so human, so dependable. And why
couldn't this feeling last? He disapproved--foolishly, I thought--of my
professional career, and this was only one of his limitations. But I knew
that he was loyal. Why hadn't I been able to breathe and be reasonably
happy in that atmosphere of friendship and love in which I had been
placed--or rather in which I had placed myself?.... Before the summer was
a day or two older I had grown accustomed to being alone, and enjoyed the
liberty; and when Maude and the children returned in the autumn,
similarly, it took me some days to get used to the restrictions imposed
by a household. I run the risk of shocking those who read this by
declaring that if my family had been taken permanently out of my life, I
should not long have missed them. But on the whole, in those years my
marriage relation might be called a negative one. There were moments, as
I have described, when I warmed to Maude, moments when I felt something
akin to a violent antagonism aroused by little mannerisms and tricks she
had. The fact that we got along as well as we did was probably due to the
orthodox teaching with which we had been inoculated,--to the effect that
matrimony was a moral trial, a shaking-down process. But moral trials
were ceasing to appeal to people, and more and more of them were refusing
to be shaken down. We didn't cut the Gordian knot, but we managed to
loosen it considerably.

I have spoken of a new species of titans who inhabited the giant
buildings in Wall Street, New York, and fought among themselves for
possession of the United States of America. It is interesting to note
that in these struggles a certain chivalry was observed among the
combatants, no matter how bitter the rivalry: for instance, it was deemed
very bad form for one of the groups of combatants to take the public into
their confidence; cities were upset and stirred to the core by these
conflicts, and the citizens never knew who was doing the fighting, but
imagined that some burning issue was at stake that concerned them. As a
matter of fact the issue always did concern them, but not in the way they
supposed.

Gradually, out of the chaotic melee in which these titans were engaged
had emerged one group more powerful than the rest and more respectable,
whose leader was the Personality to whom I have before referred. He and
his group had managed to gain control of certain conservative fortresses
in various cities such as the Corn National Bank and the Ashuela
Telephone Company--to mention two of many: Adolf Scherer was his ally,
and the Boyne Iron Works, Limited, was soon to be merged by him into a
greater corporation still. Leonard Dickinson might be called his local
governor-general. We manned the parapets and kept our ears constantly to
the ground to listen for the rumble of attacks; but sometimes they burst
upon us fiercely and suddenly, without warning. Such was the assault on
the Ashuela, which for years had exercised an apparently secure monopoly
of the city's telephone service, which had been able to ignore with
complacency the shrillest protests of unreasonable subscribers. Through
the Pilot it was announced to the public that certain benevolent "Eastern
capitalists" were ready to rescue them from their thraldom if the city
would grant them a franchise. Mr. Lawler, the disinterestedness of whose
newspaper could not be doubted, fanned the flame day by day, sent his
reporters about the city gathering instances of the haughty neglect of
the Ashuela, proclaiming its instruments antiquated compared with those
used in more progressive cities, as compared with the very latest
inventions which the Automatic Company was ready to install provided they
could get their franchise. And the prices! These, too, would fall--under
competition. It was a clever campaign. If the city would give them a
franchise, that Automatic Company--so well named! would provide automatic
instruments. Each subscriber, by means of a numerical disk, could call up
any other, subscriber; there would be no central operator, no listening,
no tapping of wires; the number of calls would be unlimited. As a proof
of the confidence of these Eastern gentlemen in our city, they were
willing to spend five millions, and present more than six hundred
telephones free to the city departments! What was fairer, more generous
than this! There could be no doubt that popular enthusiasm was enlisted
in behalf of the "Eastern Capitalists," who were made to appear in the
light of Crusaders ready to rescue a groaning people from the thrall of
monopoly. The excitement approached that of a presidential election, and
became the dominant topic at quick-lunch counters and in street-cars.
Cheap and efficient service! Down with the Bastille of monopoly!

As counsel for the Ashuela, Mr. Ogilvy sent for me, and by certain secret
conduits of information at my disposal I was not long in discovering the
disquieting fact that a Mr. Orthwein, who was described as a gentleman
with fat fingers and a plausible manner, had been in town for a week and
had been twice seen entering and emerging from Monahan's saloon. In
short, Mr. Jason had already been "seen." Nevertheless I went to him
myself, to find him for the first time in my experience absolutely
non-committal.

"What's the Ashuela willing to do?" he demanded.

I mentioned a sum, and he shook his head. I mentioned another, and still
he shook his head.

"Come 'round again," he said...

I was compelled to report this alarming situation to Ogilvy and Dickinson
and a few chosen members of a panicky board of directors.

"It's that damned Grannis crowd," said Dickinson, mentioning an
aggressive gentleman who had migrated from Chicago to Wall Street some
five years before in a pink collar.

"But what's to be done?" demanded Ogilvy, playing nervously with a gold
pencil on the polished table. He was one of those Americans who in a
commercial atmosphere become prematurely white, and today his boyish,
smooth-shaven face was almost as devoid of colour as his hair. Even
Leonard Dickinson showed anxiety, which was unusual for him.

"You've got to fix it, Hugh," he said.

I did not see my way, but I had long ago learned to assume the unruffled
air and judicial manner of speaking that inspires the layman with almost
superstitious confidence in the lawyer....

"We'll find a way out," I said.

Mr. Jason, of course, held the key to the situation, and just how I was
to get around him was problematical. In the meantime there was the
public: to permit the other fellow to capture that was to be lacking in
ordinary prudence; if its votes counted for nothing, its savings were
desirable; and it was fast getting into a state of outrage against
monopoly. The chivalry of finance did not permit of a revelation that Mr.
Grannis and his buccaneers were behind the Automatic, but it was possible
to direct and strengthen the backfire which the Era and other
conservative newspapers had already begun. Mr. Tallant for delicate
reasons being persona non grata at the Boyne Club, despite the fact that
he had so many friends there, we met for lunch in a private room at the
new hotel, and as we sipped our coffee and smoked our cigars we planned a
series of editorials and articles that duly appeared. They made a strong
appeal to the loyalty of our citizens to stand by the home company and
home capital that had taken generous risks to give them service at a time
when the future of the telephone business was by no means assured; they
belittled the charges made by irresponsible and interested "parties," and
finally pointed out, not without effect, that one logical consequence of
having two telephone companies would be to compel subscribers in
self-defence to install two telephones instead of one. And where was the
saving in that?

"Say, Paret," said Judah B. when we had finished our labours; "if you
ever get sick of the law, I'll give you a job on the Era's staff. This is
fine, the way you put it. It'll do a lot of good, but how in hell are you
going to handle Judd?...."

For three days the inspiration was withheld. And then, as I was strolling
down Boyne Street after lunch gazing into the store windows it came
suddenly, without warning. Like most inspirations worth anything, it was
very simple. Within half an hour I had reached Monahan's saloon and found
Mr. Jason out of bed, but still in his bedroom, seated meditatively at
the window that looked over the alley.

"You know the crowd in New York behind this Automatic company as well as
I do, Jason," I said. "Why do you want to deal with them when we've
always been straight with you, when we're ready to meet them and go one
better? Name your price."

"Suppose I do--what then," he replied. "This thing's gone pretty far.
Under that damned new charter the franchise has got to be bid for--hasn't
it? And the people want this company. There'll be a howl from one end of
this town to the other if we throw 'em down."

"We'll look out for the public," I assured him, smiling.

"Well," he said, with one of his glances that were like flashes, "what
you got up your sleeve?"

"Suppose another telephone company steps in, and bids a little higher for
the franchise. That relieves, your aldermen of all responsibility,
doesn't it?"

"Another telephone company!" he repeated.

I had already named it on my walk.

"The Interurban," I said.

"A dummy company?" said Mr. Jason.

"Lively enough to bid something over a hundred thousand to the city for
its franchise," I replied.

Judd Jason, with a queer look, got up and went to a desk in a dark
corner, and after rummaging for a few moments in one of the pigeon-holes,
drew forth a glass cylinder, which he held out as he approached me.

"You get it, Mr. Paret," he said.

"What is it?" I asked, "a bomb!"

"That," he announced, as he twisted the tube about in his long fingers,
holding it up to the light, "is the finest brand of cigars ever made in
Cuba. A gentleman who had every reason to be grateful to me--I won't say
who he was--gave me that once. Well, the Lord made me so's I can't
appreciate any better tobacco than those five-cent 'Bobtails' Monahan's
got downstairs, and I saved it. I saved it for the man who would put
something over me some day, and--you get it."

"Thank you," I said, unconsciously falling in with the semi-ceremony of
his manner. "I do not flatter myself that the solution I have suggested
did not also occur to you."

"You'll smoke it?" he asked.

"Surely."

"Now? Here with me?"

"Certainly," I agreed, a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out
the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and
rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard
on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared
at the door.

"Bobtails," said Mr. Jason, laconically.

"It's them I thought ye'd be wanting," said the saloon-keeper, holding
out a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began smoking reflectively.

I gazed about the mean room, with its litter of newspapers and reports,
its shabby furniture, and these seemed to have become incongruous, out of
figure in the chair facing me keeping with the thoughtful figure in the
chair facing me.

"You had a college education, Mr. Paret," he remarked at length.

"Yes."

"Life's a queer thing. Now if I'd had a college education, like you, and
you'd been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I'd be livin' up there on
Grant Avenue and you'd be down here over the saloon."

"Maybe," I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply a
similarity in our gifts. But his manner remained impassive, speculative.

"Ever read Carlyle's 'French Revolution'?" he asked suddenly.

"Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago."

"When you was in college?"

"Yes."

"I've got a little library here," he said, getting up and raising the
shades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped my
attention. He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf.

"Wouldn't think I cared for such things, would you?" he demanded as he
handed it to me.

"Well, you never can tell what a man's real tastes are until you know
him," I observed, to conceal my surprise.

"That's so," he agreed. "I like books--some books. If I'd had an
education, I'd have liked more of 'em, known more about 'em. Now I can
read this one over and over. That feller Carlyle was a genius, he could
look right into the bowels of the volcano, and he was on to how men and
women feet down there, how they hate, how they square 'emselves when they
get a chance."

He had managed to bring before me vividly that terrible, volcanic flow on
Versailles of the Paris mob. He put back the book and resumed his seat.

"And I know how these people fed down here, below the crust," he went on,
waving his cigar out of the window, as though to indicate the whole of
that mean district. "They hate, and their hate is molten hell. I've been
through it."

"But you've got on top," I suggested.

"Sure, I've got on top. Do you know why? it's because I hated--that's
why. A man's feelings, if they're strong enough, have a lot to do with
what he becomes."

"But he has to have ability, too," I objected.

"Sure, he has to have ability, but his feeling is the driving power if he
feels strong enough, he can make a little ability go a long way."

I was struck by the force of this remark. I scarcely recognized Judd
Jason. The man, as he revealed himself, had become at once more sinister
and more fascinating.

"I can guess how some of those Jacobins felt when they had the
aristocrats in the dock. They'd got on top--the Jacobins, I mean. It's
human nature to want to get on top--ain't it?" He looked at me and
smiled, but he did not seem to expect a reply. "Well, what you call
society, rich, respectable society like you belong to would have made a
bum and a criminal out of me if I hadn't been too smart for 'em, and it's
a kind of satisfaction to have 'em coming down here to Monahan's for
things they can't have without my leave. I've got a half Nelson on 'em. I
wouldn't live up on Grant Avenue if you gave me Scherer's new house."

I was silent.

"Instead of starting my career in college, I started in jail," he went
on, apparently ignoring any effect he may have produced. So subtly, so
dispassionately indeed was he delivering himself of these remarks that it
was impossible to tell whether he meant their application to be personal,
to me, or general, to my associates. "I went to jail when I was fourteen
because I wanted a knife to make kite sticks, and I stole a razor from a
barber. I was bitter when they steered me into a lockup in Hickory
Street. It was full of bugs and crooks, and they put me in the same cell
with an old-timer named 'Red' Waters; who was one of the slickest
safe-blowers around in those days. Red took a shine to me, found out I
had a head piece, and said their gang could use a clever boy. If I'd go
in with him, I could make all kinds of money. I guess I might have joined
the gang if Red hadn't kept talking--about how the boss of his district
named Gallagher would come down and get him out,--and sure enough
Gallagher did come down and get him out. I thought I'd rather be
Gallagher than Red--Red had to serve time once in a while. Soon as he got
out I went down to Gallagher's saloon, and there was Red leaning over the
bar. 'Here's a smart kid! he says, 'He and me were room-mates over in
Hickory Street.' He got to gassing me, and telling me I'd better come
along with him, when Gallagher came in. 'What is it ye'd like to be, my
son?' says he. A politician, I told him. I was through going to jail.
Gallagher had a laugh you could hear all over the place. He took me on as
a kind of handy boy around the establishment, and by and by I began to
run errands and find out things for him. I was boss of that ward myself
when I was twenty-six.... How'd you like that cigar?"

I praised it.

"It ought to have been a good one," he declared. "Well, I don't want to
keep you here all afternoon telling you my life story."

I assured him I had been deeply interested.

"Pretty slick idea of yours, that dummy company, Mr. Paret. Go ahead and
organize it." He rose, which was contrary to his custom on the departure
of a visitor. "Drop in again. We'll talk about the books."...

I walked slowly back reflecting on this conversation, upon the motives
impelling Mr. Jason to become thus confidential; nor was it the most
comforting thought in the world that the artist in me had appealed to the
artist in him, that he had hailed me as a breather. But for the grace of
God I might have been Mr. Jason and he Mr. Paret: undoubtedly that was
what he had meant to imply... And I was forced to admit that he had
succeeded--deliberately or not--in making the respectable Mr. Paret just
a trifle uncomfortable.

In the marble vestibule of the Corn National Bank I ran into Tallant,
holding his brown straw hat in his hand and looking a little more
moth-eaten than usual.

"Hello, Paret," he said "how is that telephone business getting along?"

"Is Dickinson in?" I asked.

Tallant nodded.

We went through the cool bank, with its shining brass and red mahogany,
its tiled floor, its busy tellers attending to files of clients, to the
president's sanctum in the rear. Leonard Dickinson, very spruce and
dignified in a black cutaway coat, was dictating rapidly to a woman,
stenographer, whom he dismissed when he saw us. The door was shut.

"I was just asking Paret about the telephone affair," said Mr. Tallant.

"Well, have you found a way out?" Leonard Dickinson looked questioningly
at me.

"It's all right," I answered. "I've seen Jason."

"All right!" they both ejaculated at once.

"We win," I said.

They stood gazing at me. Even Dickinson, who was rarely ruffled, seemed
excited.

"Do you mean to say you've fixed it?" he demanded.

I nodded. They stared at me in amazement.

"How the deuce did you manage it?"

"We organize the Interurban Telephone Company, and bid for the
franchise--that's all."

"A dummy company!" cried Tallant. "Why, it's simple as ABC!"

Dickinson smiled. He was tremendously relieved, and showed it.

"That's true about all great ideas, Tallant," he said. "They're simple,
only it takes a clever man to think of them."

"And Jason agrees?" Tallant demanded.

I nodded again. "We'll have to outbid the Automatic people. I haven't
seen Bitter yet about the--about the fee."

"That's all right," said Leonard Dickinson, quickly. "I take off my hat
to you. You've saved us. You can ask any fee you like," he added
genially. "Let's go over to--to the Ashuela and get some lunch." He had
been about to say the Club, but he remembered Mr. Tallant's presence in
time. "Nothing's worrying you, Hugh?" he added, as we went out, followed
by the glances of his employees.

"Nothing," I said....




XVIX.

Making money in those days was so ridiculously easy! The trouble was to
know how to spend it. One evening when I got home I told Maude I had a
surprise for her.

"A surprise?" she asked, looking up from a little pink smock she was
making for Chickabiddy.

"I've bought that lot on Grant Avenue, next to the Ogilvys'."

She dropped her sewing, and stared at me.

"Aren't you pleased?" I asked. "At last we are going to have a house of
our very own. What's the matter?"

"I can't bear the thought of leaving here. I'm so used to it. I've grown
to love it. It's part of me."

"But," I exclaimed, a little exasperated, "you didn't expect to live here
always, did you? The house has been too small for us for years. I thought
you'd be delighted." (This was not strictly true, for I had rather
expected some such action on her part.) "Most women would. Of course, if
it's going to make such a difference to you as that, I'll sell the lot.
That won't be difficult."

I got up, and started to go into my study. She half rose, and her sewing
fell to the floor.

"Oh, why are we always having misunderstandings? Do sit down a minute,
Hugh. Don't think I'm not appreciative," she pleaded. "It was--such a
shock."

I sat down rather reluctantly.

"I can't express what I think," she continued, rather breathlessly, "but
sometimes I'm actually frightened, we're going through life so fast in
these days, and it doesn't seem as if we were getting the real things out
of it. I'm afraid of your success, and of all the money you're making."

I smiled.

"I'm not so rich yet, as riches go in these days, that you need be
alarmed," I said.

She looked at me helplessly a moment.

"I feel that it isn't--right, somehow, that you'll pay for it, that we'll
pay for it. Goodness knows, we have everything we want, and more too.
This house--this house is real, and I'm afraid that won't be a home,
won't be real. That we'll be overwhelmed with--with things!"...

She was interrupted by the entrance of the children. But after dinner,
when she had seen them to bed, as was her custom, she came downstairs
into my study and said quietly:--"I was wrong, Hugh. If you want to build
a house, if you feel that you'd be happier, I have no right to object. Of
course my sentiment for this house is natural, the children were born
here, but I've realized we couldn't live here always."

"I'm glad you look at it that way," I replied. "Why, we're already
getting cramped, Maude, and now you're going to have a governess I don't
know where you'd put her."

"Not too large, a house," she pleaded. "I know you think I'm silly, but
this extravagance we see everywhere does make me uneasy. Perhaps it's
because I'm provincial, and always shall be."

"Well, we must have a house large enough to be comfortable in," I said.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't be comfortable." I thought it as well
not to confess my ambitions, and I was greatly relieved that she did not
reproach me for buying the lot without consulting her. Indeed, I was
grateful for this unanticipated acquiescence, I felt nearer to her, than
I had for a long time. I drew up another chair to my desk.

"Sit down and we'll make a few sketches, just for fun," I urged.

"Hugh," she said presently, as we were blacking out prospective rooms,
"do you remember all those drawings and plans we made in England, on our
wedding trip, and how we knew just what we wanted, and changed our minds
every few days? And now we're ready to build, and haven't any ideas at
all!"

"Yes," I answered--but I did not look at her.

"I have the book still--it's in the attic somewhere, packed away in a
box. I suppose those plans would seem ridiculous now."

It was quite true,--now that we were ready to build the home that had
been deferred so long, now that I had the money to spend without stint on
its construction, the irony of life had deprived me of those strong
desires and predilections I had known on my wedding trip. What a joy it
would have been to build then! But now I found myself: wholly lacking in
definite ideas as to style and construction. Secretly, I looked forward
to certain luxuries, such as a bedroom and dressing-room and warm tiled
bathroom all to myself bachelor privacies for which I had longed. Two
mornings later at the breakfast table Maude asked me if I had thought of
an architect.

"Why, Archie Lammerton, I suppose. Who else is there? Have you anyone
else in mind?"

"N-no," said Maude. "But I heard of such a clever man in Boston, who
doesn't charge Mr. Lammerton's prices; and who designs such beautiful
private houses."

"But we can afford to pay Lammerton's prices," I replied, smiling. "And
why shouldn't we have the best?"

"Are you sure--he is the best, Hugh?"

"Everybody has him," I said.

Maude smiled in return.

"I suppose that's a good reason," she answered.

"Of course it's a good reason," I assured her. "These people--the people
we know--wouldn't have had Lammerton unless he was satisfactory. What's
the matter with his houses?"

"Well," said Maude, "they're not very original. I don't say they're not
good, in away, but they lack a certain imagination. It's difficult for me
to express what I mean, 'machine made' isn't precisely the idea, but
there should be a certain irregularity in art--shouldn't there? I saw a
reproduction in one of the architectural journals of a house in Boston by
a man named Frey, that seemed to me to have great charm."

Here was Lucia, unmistakably.

"That's all very well," I said impatiently, "but when one has to live in
a house, one wants something more than artistic irregularity. Lammerton
knows how to build for everyday existence; he's a practical man, as well
as a man of taste, he may not be a Christopher Wrenn, but he understands
conveniences and comforts. His chimneys don't smoke, his windows are
tight, he knows what systems of heating are the best, and whom to go to:
he knows what good plumbing is. I'm rather surprised you don't appreciate
that, Maude, you're so particular as to what kind of rooms the children
shall have, and you want a schoolroom-nursery with all the latest
devices, with sun and ventilation. The Berringers wouldn't have had him,
the Hollisters and Dickinsons wouldn't have had him if his work lacked
taste."

"And Nancy wouldn't have had him," added Maude, and she smiled once more.

"Well, I haven't consulted Nancy, or anyone else," I replied--a little
tartly, perhaps. "You don't seem to realize that some fashions may have a
basis of reason. They are not all silly, as Lucia seems to think. If
Lammerton builds satisfactory houses, he ought to be forgiven for being
the fashion, he ought to have a chance." I got up to leave. "Let's see
what kind of a plan he'll draw up, at any rate."

Her glance was almost indulgent.

"Of course, Hugh. I want you to be satisfied, to be pleased," she said.

"And you?" I questioned, "you are to live in the house more than I."

"Oh, I'm sure it will turn out all right," she replied. "Now you'd better
run along, I know you're late."

"I am late," I admitted, rather lamely. "If you don't care for
Lammerton's drawings, we'll get another architect."

Several years before Mr. Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux Arts
moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others. We
found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, always
ready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals,
tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the last
moment. One of his most appealing attributes was his "belief" in our
city,--a form of patriotism that culminated, in later years, in "million
population" clubs. I have often heard him declare, when the ladies had
left the dining-room, that there was positively no limit to our future
growth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth. Such sentiments as these
could not fail to add to any man's popularity, and his success was a
foregone conclusion. Almost before we knew it he was building the new
Union Station of which he had foreseen the need, to take care of the
millions to which our population was to be swelled; building the new Post
Office that the unceasing efforts of Theodore Watling finally procured
for us: building, indeed, Nancy's new house, the largest of our private
mansions save Mr. Scherer's, a commission that had immediately brought
about others from the Dickinsons and the Berringers.... That very day I
called on him in his offices at the top of one of our new buildings,
where many young draftsmen were bending over their boards. I was ushered
into his private studio.

"I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh," he said, looking at me
over his cigarette, "something commensurate with these fees I hear you
are getting."

"Well, I want to be comfortable," I admitted.

We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements.

When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on the
living-room table Maude drew in her breath.

"Why, Hugh," she exclaimed in dismay, "it's as big as--as big as the
White House!"

"Not quite," I answered, laughing with Archie. "We may as well take our
ease in our old age."

"Take our ease!" echoed Maude. "We'll rattle 'round in it. I'll never get
used to it."

"After a month, Mrs. Paret, I'll wager you'll be wondering how you ever
got along without it," said Archie.

It was not as big as the White House, yet it could not be called small. I
had seen, to that. The long facade was imposing, dignified, with a touch
of conventionality and solidity in keeping with my standing in the city.
It was Georgian, of plum-coloured brick with marble trimmings and marble
wedges over the ample windows, some years later I saw the house by
Ferguson, of New York, from which Archie had cribbed it. At one end, off
the dining-room, was a semicircular conservatory. There was a small
portico, with marble pillars, and in the ample, swift sloping roof many
dormers; servants' rooms, Archie explained. The look of anxiety on
Maude's face deepened as he went over the floor plans, the
reception-room; dining room to seat thirty, the servants' hall; and
upstairs Maude's room, boudoir and bath and dress closet, my "apartments"
adjoining on one side and the children's on the other, and the
guest-rooms with baths....

Maude surrendered, as one who gives way to the inevitable. When the
actual building began we both of us experienced, I think; a certain mild
excitement; and walked out there, sometimes with the children, in the
spring evenings, and on Sunday afternoons. "Excitement" is, perhaps, too
strong a word for my feelings: there was a pleasurable anticipation on my
part, a looking forward to a more decorous, a more luxurious existence; a
certain impatience at the delays inevitable in building. But a new legal
commercial enterprise of magnitude began to absorb me at his time, and
somehow the building of this home--the first that we possessed was not
the event it should have been; there were moments when I felt cheated,
when I wondered what had become of that capacity for enjoyment which in
my youth had been so keen. I remember indeed, one grey evening when I
went there alone, after the workmen had departed, and stood in the litter
of mortar and bricks and boards gazing at the completed front of the
house. It was even larger than I had imagined it from the plans; in the
Summer twilight there was an air about it,--if not precisely menacing, at
least portentous, with its gaping windows and towering roof. I was a
little tired from a hard day; I had the odd feeding of having raised up
something with which--momentarily at least--I doubted my ability to cope:
something huge, impersonal; something that ought to have represented a
fireside, a sanctuary, and yet was the embodiment of an element quite
alien to the home; a restless element with which our American atmosphere
had, by invisible degrees, become charged. As I stared at it, the odd
fancy seized me that the building somehow typified my own career.... I
had gained something, in truth, but had I not also missed something?
something a different home would have embodied?

Maude and the children had gone, to the seaside.

With a vague uneasiness I turned away from the contemplation of those
walls. The companion mansions were closed, their blinds tightly drawn;
the neighbourhood was as quiet as the country, save for a slight but
persistent noise that impressed itself on my consciousness. I walked
around the house to spy in the back yard; a young girl rather stealthily
gathering laths, and fragments of joists and flooring, and loading them
into a child's express-wagon. She started when she saw me. She was
little, more than a child, and the loose calico dress she wore seemed to
emphasize her thinness. She stood stock-still, staring at me with
frightened yet defiant eyes. I, too, felt a strange timidity in her
presence.

"Why do you stop?" I asked at length.

"Say, is this your heap?" she demanded.

I acknowledged it. A hint of awe widened her eyes. Then site glanced at
the half-filled wagon.

"This stuff ain't no use to you, is it?"

"No, I'm glad to have you take it."

She shifted to the other foot, but did not continue her gathering. An
impulse seized me, I put down my walkingstick and began picking up pieces
of wood, flinging them into the wagon. I looked at her again, rather
furtively; she had not moved. Her attitude puzzled me, for it was one
neither of surprise nor of protest. The spectacle of the "millionaire"
owner of the house engaged in this menial occupation gave her no thrills.
I finished the loading.

"There!" I said, and drew a dollar bill out of my pocket and gave it to
her. Even then she did not thank me, but took up the wagon tongue and
went off, leaving on me a disheartening impression of numbness, of life
crushed out. I glanced up once more at the mansion I had built for myself
looming in the dusk, and walked hurriedly away....

One afternoon some three weeks after we had moved into the new house, I
came out of the Club, where I had been lunching in conference with
Scherer and two capitalists from New York. It was after four o'clock, the
day was fading, the street lamps were beginning to cast sickly streaks of
jade-coloured light across the slush of the pavements. It was the sight
of this slush (which for a brief half hour that morning had been pure
snow, and had sent Matthew and Moreton and Biddy into ecstasies at the
notion of a "real Christmas"), that brought to my mind the immanence of
the festival, and the fact that I had as yet bought no presents. Such was
the predicament in which I usually found myself on Christmas eve; and it
was not without a certain sense of annoyance at the task thus abruptly
confronting me that I got into my automobile and directed the chauffeur
to the shopping district. The crowds surged along the wet sidewalks and
overflowed into the street, and over the heads of the people I stared at
the blazing shop-windows decked out in Christmas greens. My chauffeur, a
bristly-haired Parisian, blew his horn insolently, men and women jostled
each other to get out of the way, their holiday mood giving place to
resentment as they stared into the windows of the limousine. With the
American inability to sit still I shifted from one corner of the seat to
another, impatient at the slow progress of the machine: and I felt a
certain contempt for human beings, that they should make all this fuss,
burden themselves with all these senseless purchases, for a tradition.
The automobile stopped, and I fought my way across the sidewalk into the
store of that time-honoured firm, Elgin, Yates and Garner, pausing
uncertainly before the very counter where, some ten years before, I had
bought an engagement ring. Young Mr. Garner himself spied me, and handing
over a customer to a tired clerk, hurried forward to greet me, his manner
implying that my entrance was in some sort an event. I had become used to
this aroma of deference.

"What can I show you, Mr. Paret?" he asked.

"I don't know--I'm looking around," I said, vaguely, bewildered by the
glittering baubles by which I was confronted. What did Maude want? While
I was gazing into the case, Mr. Garner opened a safe behind him, laying
before me a large sapphire set with diamonds in a platinum brooch; a
beautiful stone, in the depths of it gleaming a fire like a star in an
arctic sky. I had not given Maude anything of value of late. Decidedly,
this was of value; Mr. Garner named the price glibly; if Mrs. Paret
didn't care for it, it might be brought back or exchanged. I took it,
with a sigh of relief. Leaving the store, I paused on the edge of the
rushing stream of humanity, with the problem of the children's gifts
still to be solved. I thought of my own childhood, when at Christmastide
I had walked with my mother up and down this very street, so changed and
modernized now; recalling that I had had definite desires, desperate
ones; but my imagination failed me when I tried to summon up the emotions
connected with them. I had no desires now: I could buy anything in reason
in the whole street. What did Matthew and Moreton want? and little Biddy?
Maude had not "spoiled" them; but they didn't seem to have any definite
wants. The children made me think, with a sudden softening, of Tom
Peters, and I went into a tobacconist's and bought him a box of expensive
cigars. Then I told the chauffeur to take me to a toy-shop, where I stood
staring through a plate-glass window at the elaborate playthings devised
for the modern children of luxury. In the centre was a toy man-of-war,
three feet in length, with turrets and guns, and propellers and a real
steam-engine. As a boy I should have dreamed about it, schemed for it,
bartered my immortal soul for it. But--if I gave it to Matthew, what was
there for Moreton? A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate.
Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state
bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense
alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the
price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an
obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every
sentence. For Biddy I chose a doll that was all but human; when held by a
young woman for my inspection, it elicited murmurs of admiration from the
women shoppers by whom we were surrounded. The proprietor promised to
make a special delivery of the three articles before seven o'clock....

Presently the automobile, after speeding up the asphalt of Grant Avenue,
stopped before the new house. In spite of the change that house had made
in my life, in three weeks I had become amazingly used to it; yet I had
an odd feeling that Christmas eve as I stood under the portico with my
key in the door, the same feeling of the impersonality of the place which
I had experienced before. Not that for one moment I would have exchanged
it for the smaller house we had left. I opened the door. How often, in
that other house, I had come in the evening seeking quiet, my brain
occupied with a problem, only to be annoyed by the romping of the
children on the landing above. A noise in one end of it echoed to the
other. But here, as I entered the hall, all was quiet: a dignified,
deep-carpeted stairway swept upward before me, and on either side were
wide, empty rooms; and in the subdued light of one of them I saw a dark
figure moving silently about--the butler. He came forward to relieve me,
deftly, of my hat and overcoat. Well, I had it at last, this
establishment to which I had for so long looked forward. And yet that
evening, as I hesitated in the hall, I somehow was unable to grasp that
it was real and permanent, the very solidity of the walls and doors
paradoxically suggested transientness, the butler a flitting ghost. How
still the place was! Almost oppressively still. I recalled oddly a story
of a peasant who, yearning for the great life, had stumbled upon an empty
palace, its tables set with food in golden dishes. Before two days had
passed he had fled from it in horror back to his crowded cottage and his
drudgery in the fields. Never once had the sense of possession of the
palace been realized. Nor did I feel that I possessed this house, though
I had the deeds of it in my safe and the receipted bills in my files. It
eluded me; seemed, in my, bizarre mood of that evening, almost to mock
me. "You have built me," it seemed to say, "but I am stronger than you,
because you have not earned me." Ridiculous, when the years of my labour
and the size of my bank account were considered! Such, however, is the
verbal expression of my feeling. Was the house empty, after all? Had
something happened? With a slight panicky sensation I climbed the stairs,
with their endless shallow treads, to hurry through the silent hallway to
the schoolroom. Reassuring noises came faintly through the heavy door. I
opened it. Little Biddy was careening round and round, crying
out:--"To-morrow's Chris'mas! Santa Claus is coming tonight."

Matthew was regarding her indulgently, sympathetically, Moreton rather
scornfully. The myth had been exploded for both, but Matthew still hugged
it. That was the difference between them. Maude, seated on the floor,
perceived me first, and glanced up at me with a smile.

"It's father!" she said.

Biddy stopped in the midst of a pirouette. At the age of seven she was
still shy with me, and retreated towards Maude.

"Aren't we going to have a tree, father?" demanded Moreton, aggressively.
"Mother won't tell us--neither will Miss Allsop."

Miss Allsop was their governess.

"Why do you want a tree?" I asked.

"Oh, for Biddy," he said.

"It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree," Matthew declared, "--and Santa
Claus," he added, for his sister's benefit.

"Perhaps Santa Claus, when he sees we've got this big house, will think
we don't need anything, and go on to some poorer children," said Maude.
"You wouldn't blame him if he did that,--would you?"

The response to this appeal cannot be said to have been enthusiastic....

After dinner, when at last all of them were in bed, we dressed the tree;
it might better be said that Maude and Miss Allsop dressed it, while I
gave a perfunctory aid. Both the women took such a joy in the process,
vying with each other in getting effects, and as I watched them eagerly
draping the tinsel and pinning on the glittering ornaments I wondered why
it was that I was unable to find the same joy as they. Thus it had been
every Christmas eve. I was always tired when I got home, and after dinner
relaxation set in.

An electrician had come while we were at the table, and had fastened on
the little electric bulbs which did duty as candles.

"Oh," said Maude, as she stood off to survey the effect, "isn't it
beautiful! Come, Miss Allsop, let's get the presents."

They flew out of the room, and presently hurried back with their arms
full of the usual parcels: parcels from Maude's family in Elkington, from
my own relatives, from the Blackwoods and the Peterses, from Nancy. In
the meantime I had had my own contributions brought up, the man of war,
the locomotive, the big doll. Maude stood staring.

"Hugh, they'll be utterly ruined!" she exclaimed.

"The boys might as well have something instructive," I replied, "and as
for Biddy--nothing's too good for her."

"I might have known you wouldn't forget them, although you are so
busy."....

We filled the three stockings hung by the great fireplace. Then, with a
last lingering look at the brightness of the tree, she stood in the
doorway and turned the electric switch.

"Not before seven to-morrow morning, Miss Allsop," she said. "Hugh, you
will get up, won't you? You mustn't miss seeing them. You can go back to
bed again."

I promised.

Evidently, this was Reality to Maude. And had it not been one of my
dreams of marriage, this preparing for the children's Christmas,
remembering the fierce desires of my own childhood? It struck me, after I
had kissed her good night and retired to my dressing-room, that fierce
desires burned within me still, but the objects towards which their
flames leaped out differed. That was all. Had I remained a child, since
my idea of pleasure was still that of youth? The craving far excitement,
adventure, was still unslaked; the craving far freedom as keen as ever.
During the whole of my married life, I had been conscious of an inner
protest against "settling down," as Tom Peters had settled down. The
smaller house from which we had moved, with its enforced propinquity,
hard emphasized the bondage of marriage. Now I had two rooms to myself,
in the undisputed possession of which I had taken a puerile delight. On
one side of my dressing-room Archie Lammerton had provided a huge closet
containing the latest devices for the keeping of a multitudinous
wardrobe; there was a reading-lamp, and the easiest of easy-chairs,
imported from England, while between the windows were shelves of Italian
walnut which I had filled with the books I had bought while at Cambridge,
and had never since opened. As I sank down in my chair that odd feeling
of uneasiness, of transience and unreality, of unsatisfaction I had had
ever since we had moved suddenly became intensified, and at the very
moment when I had gained everything I had once believed a man could
desire! I was successful, I was rich, my health had not failed, I had a
wife who catered to my wishes, lovable children who gave no trouble and
yet--there was still the void to be filled, the old void I had felt as a
boy, the longing for something beyond me, I knew not what; there was the
strange inability to taste any of these things, the need at every turn
for excitement, for a stimulus. My marriage had been a disappointment,
though I strove to conceal this from myself; a disappointment because it
had not filled the requirements of my category--excitement and mystery: I
had provided the setting and lacked the happiness. Another woman
Nancy--might have given me the needed stimulation; and yet my thoughts
did not dwell on Nancy that night, my longings were not directed towards
her, but towards the vision of a calm, contented married happiness I had
looked forward to in youth,--a vision suddenly presented once more by the
sight of Maude's simple pleasure in dressing the Christmas tree. What
restless, fiendish element in me prevented my enjoying that? I had
something of the fearful feeling of a ghost in my own house and among my
own family, of a spirit doomed to wander, unable to share in what should
have been my own, in what would have saved me were I able to partake of
it. Was it too late to make that effort?.... Presently the strains of
music pervaded my consciousness, the chimes of Trinity ringing out in the
damp night the Christmas hymn, Adeste Fideles. It was midnight it was
Christmas. How clear the notes rang through the wet air that came in at
my window! Back into the dim centuries that music led me, into candle-lit
Gothic chapels of monasteries on wind-swept heights above the firs, and
cathedrals in mediaeval cities. Twilight ages of war and scourge and
stress and storm--and faith. "Oh, come, all ye Faithful!" What a strange
thing, that faith whose flame so marvellously persisted, piercing the
gloom; the Christmas myth, as I had heard someone once call it. Did it
possess the power to save me? Save me from what? Ah, in this hour I knew.
In the darkness the Danger loomed up before me, vague yet terrible, and I
trembled. Why was not this Thing ever present, to chasten and sober me?
The Thing was myself.

Into my remembrance, by what suggestion I know not, came that March
evening when I had gone to Holder Chapel at Harvard to listen to a
preacher, a personality whose fame and influence had since spread
throughout the land. Some dim fear had possessed me then. I recalled
vividly the man, and the face of Hermann Krebs as I drew back from the
doorway....

When I awoke my disquieting, retrospective mood had disappeared, and yet
there clung to me, minus the sanction of fear or reward or revealed
truth, a certain determination to behave, on this day at least, more like
a father and a husband: to make an effort to enter into the spirit of the
festival, and see what happened. I dressed in cheerful haste, took the
sapphire pendant from its velvet box, tiptoed into the still silent
schoolroom and hung it on the tree, flooding on the electric light that
set the tinsel and globes ablaze. No sooner had I done this than I heard
the patter of feet in the hallway, and a high-pitched voice--Biddy's
--crying out:--"It's Santa Claus!"

Three small, flannel-wrappered figures stood in the doorway.

"Why, it's father!" exclaimed Moreton.

"And he's all dressed!" said Matthew.

"Oh-h-h!" cried Biddy, staring at the blazing tree, "isn't it beautiful!"

Maude was close behind them. She gave an exclamation of delighted
surprise when she saw me, and then stood gazing with shining eyes at the
children, especially at Biddy, who stood dazzled by the glory of the
constellation confronting her.... Matthew, too, wished to prolong the
moment of mystery. It was the practical Moreton who cried:--"Let's see
what we've got!"

The assault and the sacking began. I couldn't help thinking as I watched
them of my own wildly riotous, Christmas-morning sensations, when all the
gifts had worn the aura of the supernatural; but the arrival of these
toys was looked upon by my children as a part of the natural order of the
universe. At Maude's suggestion the night before we had placed my
presents, pieces de resistance, at a distance from the tree, in the hope
that they would not be spied at once, that they would be in some sort a
climax. It was Matthew who first perceived the ship, and identified it,
by the card, as his property. To him it was clearly wonderful, but no
miracle. He did not cry out, or call the attention of the others to it,
but stood with his feet apart, examining it, his first remark being a
query as to why it didn't fly the American flag. It's ensign was British.
Then Moreton saw the locomotive, was told that it was his, and took
possession of it violently. Why wasn't there more track? Wouldn't I get
more track? I explained that it would go by steam, and he began
unscrewing the cap on the little boiler until he was distracted by the
man-of-war, and with natural acquisitiveness started to take possession
of that. Biddy was bewildered by the doll, which Maude had taken up and
was holding in her lap. She had had talking dolls before, and dolls that
closed their eyes; she recognized this one, indeed, as a sort of
super-doll, but her little mind was modern, too, and set no limits on
what might be accomplished. She patted it, but was more impressed by the
raptures of Miss Allsop, who had come in and was admiring it with some
extravagance. Suddenly the child caught sight of her stocking, until now
forgotten, and darted for the fireplace.

I turned to Maude, who stood beside me, watching them.

"But you haven't looked on the tree yourself," I reminded her.

She gave me an odd, questioning glance, and got up and set down the doll.
As she stood for a moment gazing at the lights, she seemed very girlish
in her dressing-gown, with her hair in two long plaits down her back.

"Oh, Hugh!" She lifted the pendant from the branch and held it up. Her
gratitude, her joy at receiving a present was deeper than the children's!

"You chose it for me?"

I felt something like a pang when I thought how little trouble it had
been.

"If you don't like it," I said, "or wish to have it changed--"

"Changed!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "Do you think I'd change it?
Only--it's much too valuable--"

I smiled.... Miss Allsop deftly undid the clasp and hung it around
Maude's neck.

"How it suits you, Mrs. Paret!" she cried....

This pendant was by no means the only present I had given Maude in recent
years, and though she cared as little for jewels as for dress she seemed
to attach to it a peculiar value and significance that disturbed and
smote me, for the incident had revealed a love unchanged and
unchangeable. Had she taken my gift as a sign that my indifference was
melting?

As I went downstairs and into the library to read the financial page of
the morning newspaper I asked myself, with a certain disquiet, whether,
in the formal, complicated, and luxurious conditions in which we now
lived it might be possible to build up new ties and common interests. I
reflected that this would involve confessions and confidences on my part,
since there was a whole side of my life of which Maude knew nothing. I
had convinced myself long ago that a man's business career was no affair
of his wife's: I had justified that career to myself: yet I had always
had a vague feeling that Maude, had she known the details, would not have
approved of it. Impossible, indeed, for a woman to grasp these problems.
They were outside of her experience.

Nevertheless, something might be done to improve our relationship,
something which would relieve me of that uneasy lack of unity I felt when
at home, of the lassitude and ennui I was wont to feel creeping over me
on Sundays and holidays....




XX.

I find in relating those parts of my experience that seem to be of most
significance I have neglected to tell of my mother's death, which
occurred the year before we moved to Grant Avenue. She had clung the rest
of her days to the house in which I had been born. Of late years she had
lived in my children, and Maude's devotion to her had been unflagging.
Truth compels me to say that she had long ceased to be a factor in my
life. I have thought of her in later years.

Coincident with the unexpected feeling of fruitlessness that came to me
with the Grant Avenue house, of things achieved but not realized or
appreciated, was the appearance of a cloud on the business horizon; or
rather on the political horizon, since it is hard to separate the two
realms. There were signs, for those who could read, of a rising popular
storm. During the earliest years of the new century the political
atmosphere had changed, the public had shown a tendency to grow restless;
and everybody knows how important it is for financial operations, for
prosperity, that the people should mind their own business. In short, our
commercial-romantic pilgrimage began to meet with unexpected resistance.
It was as though the nation were entering into a senseless conspiracy to
kill prosperity.

In the first place, in regard to the Presidency of the United States, a
cog had unwittingly been slipped. It had always been recognized--as I
have said--by responsible financial personages that the impulses of the
majority of Americans could not be trusted, that these--who had inherited
illusions of freedom--must be governed firmly yet with delicacy; unknown
to them, their Presidents must be chosen for them, precisely as Mr.
Watling had been chosen for the people of our state, and the popular
enthusiasm manufactured later. There were informal meetings in New York,
in Washington, where candidates were discussed; not that such and such a
man was settled upon,--it was a process of elimination. Usually the
affair had gone smoothly. For instance, a while before, a benevolent
capitalist of the middle west, an intimate of Adolf Scherer, had become
obsessed with the idea that a friend of his was the safest and sanest man
for the head of the nation, had convinced his fellow-capitalists of this,
whereupon he had gone ahead to spend his energy and his money freely to
secure the nomination and election of this gentleman.

The Republican National Committee, the Republican National Convention
were allowed to squabble to their hearts' content as to whether Smith,
Jones or Brown should be nominated, but it was clearly understood that if
Robinson or White were chosen there would be no corporation campaign
funds. This applied also to the Democratic party, on the rare occasions
when it seemed to have an opportunity of winning. Now, however, through
an unpardonable blunder, there had got into the White House a President
who was inclined to ignore advice, who appealed over the heads of the
"advisers" to the populace; who went about tilting at the industrial
structures we had so painfully wrought, and in frequent blasts of
presidential messages enunciated new and heretical doctrines; who
attacked the railroads, encouraged the brazen treason of labour unions,
inspired an army of "muck-rakers" to fill the magazines with the wildest
and most violent of language. State legislatures were emboldened to pass
mischievous and restrictive laws, and much of my time began to be
occupied in inducing, by various means, our courts to declare these
unconstitutional. How we sighed for a business man or a lawyer in the
White House! The country had gone mad, the stock-market trembled, the cry
of "corporation control" resounded everywhere, and everywhere demagogues
arose to inaugurate "reform campaigns," in an abortive attempt to "clean
up politics." Down with the bosses, who were the tools of the
corporations!

In our own city, which we fondly believed to be proof against the
prevailing madness, a slight epidemic occurred; slight, yet momentarily
alarming. Accidents will happen, even in the best regulated political
organizations,--and accidents in these days appeared to be the rule. A
certain Mr. Edgar Greenhalge, a middle-aged, mild-mannered and
inoffensive man who had made a moderate fortune in wholesale drugs, was
elected to the School Board. Later on some of us had reason to suspect
that Perry Blackwood--with more astuteness than he had been given credit
for--was responsible for Mr. Greenhalge's candidacy. At any rate, he was
not a man to oppose, and in his previous life had given no hint that he
might become a trouble maker. Nothing happened for several months. But
one day on which I had occasion to interview Mr. Jason on a little matter
of handing over to the Railroad a piece of land belonging to the city,
which was known as Billings' Bowl, he inferred that Mr. Greenhaige might
prove a disturber of that profound peace with which the city
administration had for many years been blessed.

"Who the hell is he?" was Mr. Jason's question.

It appeared that Mr. G.'s private life had been investigated, with
disappointingly barren results; he was, seemingly, an anomalistic being
in our Nietzschean age, an unaggressive man; he had never sold any drugs
to the city; he was not a church member; nor could it be learned that he
had ever wandered into those byways of the town where Mr. Jason might
easily have got trace of him: if he had any vices, he kept them locked up
in a safe-deposit box that could not be "located." He was very genial,
and had a way of conveying disturbing facts--when he wished to convey
them--under cover of the most amusing stories. Mr. Jason was not a man to
get panicky. Greenhalge could be handled all right, only--what was there
in it for Greenhalge?--a nut difficult for Mr. Jason to crack. The two
other members of the School Board were solid. Here again the wisest of
men was proved to err, for Mr. Greenhalge turned out to have powers of
persuasion; he made what in religious terms would have been called a
conversion in the case of another member of the board, an hitherto
staunch old reprobate by the name of Muller, an ex-saloon-keeper in
comfortable circumstances to whom the idea of public office had appealed.

Mr. Greenhalge, having got wind of certain transactions that interested
him extremely, brought them in his good-natured way to the knowledge of
Mr. Gregory, the district attorney, suggesting that he investigate. Mr.
Gregory smiled; undertook, as delicately as possible, to convey to Mr.
Greenhalge the ways of the world, and of the political world in
particular, wherein, it seemed, everyone was a good fellow. Mr.
Greenhalge was evidently a good fellow, and didn't want to make trouble
over little things. No, Mr. Greenhalge didn't want to make trouble; he
appreciated a comfortable life as much as Mr. Gregory; he told the
district attorney a funny story which might or might not have had an
application to the affair, and took his leave with the remark that he had
been happy to make Mr. Gregory's acquaintance. On his departure the
district attorney's countenance changed. He severely rebuked a
subordinate for some trivial mistake, and walked as rapidly as he could
carry his considerable weight to Monahan's saloon.... One of the things
Mr. Gregory had pointed out incidentally was that Mr. Greenhalge's
evidence was vague, and that a grand jury wanted facts, which might be
difficult to obtain. Mr. Greenhalge, thinking over the suggestion, sent
for Krebs. In the course of a month or two the investigation was
accomplished, Greenhalge went back to Gregory; who repeated his homilies,
whereupon he was handed a hundred or so typewritten pages of evidence.

It was a dramatic moment.

Mr. Gregory resorted to pleading. He was sure that Mr. Greenhalge didn't
want to be disagreeable, it was true and unfortunate that such things
were so, but they would be amended: he promised all his influence to
amend them. The public conscience, said Mr. Gregory, was being aroused.
Now how much better for the party, for the reputation, the fair name of
the city if these things could be corrected quietly, and nobody indicted
or tried! Between sensible and humane men, wasn't that the obvious way?
After the election, suit could be brought to recover the money. But Mr.
Greenhalge appeared to be one of those hopeless individuals without a
spark of party loyalty; he merely continued to smile, and to suggest that
the district attorney prosecute. Mr. Gregory temporized, and presently
left the city on a vacation. A day or two after his second visit to the
district attorney's office Mr. Greenhalge had a call from the city
auditor and the purchasing agent, who talked about their families,--which
was very painful. It was also intimated to Mr. Greenhalge by others who
accosted him that he was just the man for mayor. He smiled, and modestly
belittled his qualifications....

Suddenly, one fine morning, a part of the evidence Krebs had gathered
appeared in the columns of the Mail and State, a new and enterprising
newspaper for which the growth and prosperity of our city were
responsible; the sort of "revelations" that stirred to amazement and
wrath innocent citizens of nearly every city in our country: politics and
"graft" infesting our entire educational system, teachers and janitors
levied upon, prices that took the breath away paid to favoured firms for
supplies, specifications so worded that reasonable bids were barred. The
respectable firm of Ellery and Knowles was involved. In spite of our
horror, we were Americans and saw the humour of the situation, and
laughed at the caricature in the Mail and State representing a scholar
holding up a pencil and a legend under it, "No, it's not gold, but it
ought to be."

Here I must enter into a little secret history. Any affair that
threatened the integrity of Mr. Jason's organization was of serious
moment to the gentlemen of the financial world who found that
organization invaluable and who were also concerned about the fair name
of their community; a conference in the Boyne Club decided that the city
officials were being persecuted, and entitled therefore to "the very best
of counsel,"--in this instance, Mr. Hugh Paret. It was also thought wise
by Mr. Dickinson, Mr. Gorse, and Mr. Grierson, and by Mr. Paret himself
that he should not appear in the matter; an aspiring young attorney, Mr.
Arbuthnot, was retained to conduct the case in public. Thus capital came
to the assistance of Mr. Jason, a fund was raised, and I was given carte
blanche to defend the miserable city auditor and purchasing agent, both
of whom elicited my sympathy; for they were stout men, and rapidly losing
weight. Our first care was to create a delay in the trial of the case in
order to give the public excitement a chance to die down. For the public
is proverbially unable to fix its attention for long on one object,
continually demanding the distraction that our newspapers make it their
business to supply. Fortunately, a murder was committed in one of our
suburbs, creating a mystery that filled the "extras" for some weeks, and
this was opportunely followed by the embezzlement of a considerable sum
by the cashier of one of our state banks. Public interest was divided
between baseball and the tracking of this criminal to New Zealand.

Our resentment was directed, not so much against Commissioner Greenhalge
as against Krebs. It is curious how keen is the instinct of men like
Grierson, Dickinson, Tallant and Scherer for the really dangerous
opponent. Who the deuce was this man Krebs? Well, I could supply them
with some information: they doubtless recalled the Galligan, case; and
Miller Gorse, who forgot nothing, also remembered his opposition in the
legislature to House Bill 709. He had continued to be the obscure legal
champion of "oppressed" labour, but how he had managed to keep body and
soul together I knew not. I had encountered him occasionally in court
corridors or on the street; he did not seem to change much; nor did he
appear in our brief and perfunctory conversations to bear any resentment
against me for the part I had taken in the Galligan affair. I avoided him
when it was possible.... I had to admit that he had done a remarkably
good piece of work in collecting Greenhalge's evidence, and how the,
erring city officials were to be rescued became a matter of serious
concern. Gregory, the district attorney, was in an abject funk; in any
case a mediocre lawyer, after the indictment he was no help at all. I had
to do all the work, and after we had selected the particular "Railroad"
judge before whom the case was to be tried, I talked it over with him.
His name was Notting, he understood perfectly what was required of him,
and that he was for the moment the chief bulwark on which depended the
logical interests of capital and sane government for their defence; also,
his re-election was at stake. It was indicated to newspapers (such as the
Mail and State) showing a desire to keep up public interest in the affair
that their advertising matter might decrease; Mr. Sherrill's great
department store, for instance, did not approve of this sort of
agitation. Certain stationers, booksellers and other business men had got
"cold feet," as Mr. Jason put it, the prospect of bankruptcy suddenly
looming ahead of them,--since the Corn National Bank held certain
paper....

In short, when the case did come to trial, it "blew up," as one of our
ward leaders dynamically expressed it. Several important witnesses were
mysteriously lacking, and two or three school-teachers had suddenly
decided--to take a trip to Europe. The district attorney was ill, and
assigned the prosecution to a mild assistant; while a sceptical
jury--composed largely of gentlemen who had the business interests of the
community, and of themselves, at heart returned a verdict of "not
guilty." This was the signal for severely dignified editorials in Mr.
Tallant's and other conservative newspapers, hinting that it might be
well in the future for all well-meaning but misguided reformers to think
twice before subjecting the city to the cost of such trials, and
uselessly attempting to inflame public opinion and upset legitimate
business. The Era expressed the opinion that no city in the United States
was "more efficiently and economically governed than our own."
"Irregularities" might well occur in every large organization; and it
would better have become Mr. Greenhalge if, instead of hiring an unknown
lawyer thirsting for notoriety to cook up charges, he had called the
attention of the proper officials to the matter, etc., etc. The Pilot
alone, which relied on sensation for its circulation, kept hammering away
for a time with veiled accusations. But our citizens had become weary....

As a topic, however, this effective suppression of reform was referred to
with some delicacy by my friends and myself. Our interference had been
necessary and therefore justified, but we were not particularly proud of
it, and our triumph had a temporarily sobering effect. It was about this
time, if I remember correctly, that Mr. Dickinson gave the beautiful
stained-glass window to the church....

Months passed. One day, having occasion to go over to the Boyne Iron
Works to get information at first hand from certain officials, and having
finished my business, I boarded a South Side electric car standing at the
terminal. Just before it started Krebs came down the aisle of the car and
took the seat in front of me.

"Well," I said, "how are you?" He turned in surprise, and thrust his big,
bony hand across the back of the seat. "Come and sit here." He came. "Do
you ever get back to Cambridge in these days?" I asked cordially.

"Not since I graduated from newspaper work in Boston. That's a good many
years ago. By the way, our old landlady died this year."

"Do you mean--?" "Granite Face," I was about to say. I had forgotten her
name, but that homesick scene when Tom and I stood before our open
trunks, when Krebs had paid us a visit, came back to me. "You've kept in
touch with her?" I asked, in surprise.

"Well," said Krebs, "she was one of the few friends I had at Cambridge. I
had a letter from the daughter last week. She's done very well, and is an
instructor in biology in one of the western universities."

I was silent a moment.

"And you,--you never married, did you?" I inquired, somewhat
irrelevantly.

His semi-humorous gesture seemed to deny that such a luxury was for him.
The conversation dragged a little; I began to feel the curiosity he
invariably inspired. What was his life? What were his beliefs? And I was
possessed by a certain militancy, a desire to "smoke him out." I did not
stop to reflect that mine was in reality a defensive rather than an
aggressive attitude.

"Do you live down here, in this part of the city?" I asked.

No, he boarded in Fowler Street. I knew it as in a district given over to
the small houses of working-men.

"I suppose you are still a socialist."

"I suppose I am," he admitted, and added, "at any rate, that is as near
as you can get to it."

"Isn't it fairly definite?"

"Fairly, if my notions are taken in general as the antithesis of what you
fellows believe."

"The abolition of property, for instance."

"The abolition of too much property."

"What do you mean by 'too much'?"

"When it ceases to be real to a man, when it represents more than his
need, when it drives him and he becomes a slave to it."

Involuntarily I thought of my new house,--not a soothing reflection.

"But who is going to decree how much property, a man should have?"

"Nobody--everybody. That will gradually tend to work itself out as we
become more sensible and better educated, and understand more clearly
what is good for us."

I retorted with the stock, common-sense phrase.

"If we had a division to-morrow, within a few years or so the most
efficient would contrive to get the bulk of it back in their hands."

"That's so," he admitted. "But we're not going to have a division
to-morrow."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed.

He regarded me.

"The 'efficient' will have to die or be educated first. That will take
time."

"Educated!"

"Paret, have you ever read any serious books on what you call socialism?"
he asked.

I threw out an impatient negative. I was going on to protest that I was
not ignorant of the doctrine.

"Oh, what you call socialism is merely what you believe to be the more or
less crude and utopian propaganda of an obscure political party. That
isn't socialism. Nor is the anomalistic attempt that the Christian
Socialists make to unite modern socialistic philosophy with Christian
orthodoxy, socialism."

"What is socialism, then?" I demanded, somewhat defiantly.

"Let's call it education, science," he said smilingly, "economics and
government based on human needs and a rational view of religion. It has
been taught in German universities, and it will be taught in ours
whenever we shall succeed in inducing your friends, by one means or
another, not to continue endowing them. Socialism, in the proper sense,
is merely the application of modern science to government."

I was puzzled and angry. What he said made sense somehow, but it sounded
to me like so much gibberish.

"But Germany is a monarchy," I objected.

"It is a modern, scientific system with monarchy as its superstructure.
It is anomalous, but frank. The monarchy is there for all men to see, and
some day it will be done away with. We are supposedly a democracy, and
our superstructure is plutocratic. Our people feel the burden, but they
have not yet discovered what the burden is."

"And when they do?" I asked, a little defiantly.

"When they do," replied Krebs, "they will set about making the plutocrats
happy. Now plutocrats are discontented, and never satisfied; the more
they get, the more they want, the more they are troubled by what other
people have."

I smiled in spite of myself.

"Your interest in--in plutocrats is charitable, then?"

"Why, yes," he said, "my interest in all kinds of people is charitable.
However improbable it may seem, I have no reason to dislike or envy
people who have more than they know what to do with." And the worst of it
was he looked it. He managed somehow simply by sitting there with his
strange eyes fixed upon me--in spite of his ridiculous philosophy--to
belittle my ambitions, to make of small worth my achievements, to bring
home to me the fact that in spite of these I was neither contented nor
happy though he kept his humour and his poise, he implied an experience
that was far deeper, more tragic and more significant than mine. I was
goaded into making an injudicious remark.

"Well, your campaign against Ennerly and Jackson fell through, didn't
it?" Ennerly and Jackson were the city officials who had been tried.

"It wasn't a campaign against them," he answered. "And considering the
subordinate part I took in it, it could scarcely be called mine."

"Greenhalge turned to you to get the evidence."

"Well, I got it," he said.

"What became of it?"

"You ought to know."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say, Paret," he answered slowly. "You ought to know, if
anyone knows."

I considered this a moment, more soberly. I thought I might have counted
on my fingers the number of men cognizant of my connection with the case.
I decided that he was guessing.

"I think you should explain that," I told him.

"The time may come, when you'll have to explain it."

"Is that a threat?" I demanded.

"A threat?" he repeated. "Not at all."

"But you are accusing me--"

"Of what?" he interrupted suddenly.

He had made it necessary for me to define the nature of his charges.

"Of having had some connection with the affair in question."

"Whatever else I may be, I'm not a fool," he said quietly. "Neither the
district attorney's office, nor young Arbuthnot had brains enough to get
them out of that scrape. Jason didn't have influence enough with the
judiciary, and, as I happen to know, there was a good deal of money
spent."

"You may be called upon to prove it," I retorted, rather hotly.

"So I may."

His tone, far from being defiant, had in it a note of sadness. I looked
at him. What were his potentialities? Was it not just possible that I
should have to revise my idea of him, acknowledge that he might become
more formidable than I had thought?

There was an awkward silence.

"You mustn't imagine, Paret, that I have any personal animus against you,
or against any of the men with whom you're associated," he went on, after
a moment. "I'm sorry you're on that side, that's all,--I told you so once
before. I'm not calling you names, I'm not talking about morality and
immorality. Immorality, when you come down to it, is often just the
opposition to progress that comes from blindness. I don't make the
mistake of blaming a few individuals for the evils of modern industrial
society, and on the other hand you mustn't blame individuals for the
discomforts of what you call the reform movement, for that movement is
merely a symptom--a symptom of a disease due to a change in the structure
of society. We'll never have any happiness or real prosperity until we
cure that disease. I was inclined to blame you once, at the capital that
time, because it seemed to me that a man with all the advantages you have
had and a mind like yours didn't have much excuse. But I've thought about
it since; I realize now that I've had a good many more 'advantages' than
you, and to tell you the truth, I don't see how you could have come out
anywhere else than where you are,--all your surroundings and training
were against it. That doesn't mean that you won't grasp the situation
some day--I have an idea you will. It's just an idea. The man who ought
to be condemned isn't the man that doesn't understand what's going on,
but the man who comes to understand and persists in opposing it." He rose
and looked down at me with the queer, disturbing smile I remembered. "I
get off at this corner," he added, rather diffidently. "I hope you'll
forgive me for being personal. I didn't mean to be, but you rather forced
it on me."

"Oh, that's all right," I replied. The car stopped, and he hurried off. I
watched his tall figure as it disappeared among the crowd on the
sidewalk....

I returned to my office in one of those moods that are the more
disagreeable because conflicting. To-day in particular I had been aroused
by what Tom used to call Krebs's "crust," and as I sat at my desk warm
waves of resentment went through me at the very notion of his telling me
that my view was limited and that therefore my professional conduct was
to be forgiven! It was he, the fanatic, who saw things in the larger
scale! an assumption the more exasperating because at the moment he made
it he almost convinced me that he did, and I was unable to achieve for
him the measure of contempt I desired, for the incident, the measure of
ridicule it deserved. My real animus was due to the fact that he had
managed to shake my self-confidence, to take the flavour out of my
achievements,--a flavour that was in the course of an hour to be
completely restored by one of those interesting coincidences occasionally
occurring in life. A young member of my staff entered with a telegram; I
tore it open, and sat staring at it a moment before I realized that it
brought to me the greatest honour of my career.

The Banker-Personality in New York had summoned me for consultation. To
be recognized by him conferred indeed an ennoblement, the Star and
Garter, so to speak, of the only great realm in America, that of high
finance; and the yellow piece of paper I held in my hand instantly
re-magnetized me, renewed my energy, and I hurried home to pack my bag in
order to catch the seven o'clock train. I announced the news to Maude.

"I imagine it's because he knows I have made something of a study of the
coal roads situation," I added.

"I'm glad, Hugh," she said. "I suppose it's a great compliment."

Never had her inadequacy to appreciate my career been more apparent! I
looked at her curiously, to realize once more with peculiar sharpness how
far we were apart; but now the resolutions I had made--and never carried
out--on that first Christmas in the new home were lacking. Indeed, it was
the futility of such resolutions that struck me at this moment. If her
manner had been merely one of indifference, it would in a way have been
easier to bear; she was simply incapable of grasping the significance of
the event, the meaning to me of the years of unceasing, ambitious effort
it crowned.

"Yes, it is something of a recognition," I replied. "Is there anything I
can get for you in New York? I don't know how long I shall have to
stay--I'll telegraph you when I'm getting back." I kissed her and hurried
out to the automobile. As I drove off I saw her still standing in the
doorway looking after me.... In the station I had a few minutes to
telephone Nancy.

"If you don't see me for a few days it's because I've gone to New York,"
I informed her.

"Something important, I'm sure."

"How did you guess?" I demanded, and heard her laugh.

"Come back soon and tell me about it," she said, and I walked,
exhilarated, to the train.... As I sped through the night, staring out of
the window into the darkness, I reflected on the man I was going to see.
But at that time, although he represented to me the quintessence of
achievement and power, I did not by any means grasp the many sided
significance of the phenomenon he presented, though I was keenly aware of
his influence, and that men spoke of him with bated breath. Presidents
came and went, kings and emperors had responsibilities and were subject
daily to annoyances, but this man was a law unto himself. He did exactly
what he chose, and compelled other men to do it. Wherever commerce
reigned,--and where did it not?--he was king and head of its Holy Empire,
Pope and Emperor at once. For he had his code of ethics, his religion,
and those who rebelled, who failed to conform, he excommunicated; a code
something like the map of Europe,--apparently inconsistent in places.
What I did not then comprehend was that he was the American Principle
personified, the supreme individual assertion of the conviction that
government should remain modestly in the background while the efficient
acquired the supremacy that was theirs by natural right; nor had I
grasped at that time the crowning achievement of a unity that fused
Christianity with those acquisitive dispositions said to be inherent in
humanity. In him the Lion and the Lamb, the Eagle and the Dove dwelt
together in amity and power.

New York, always a congenial place to gentlemen of vitality and means and
influential connections, had never appeared to me more sparkling, more
inspiring. Winter had relented, spring had not as yet begun. And as I sat
in a corner of the dining-room of my hotel looking out on the sunlit
avenue I was conscious of partaking of the vigour and confidence of the
well-dressed, clear-eyed people who walked or drove past my window with
the air of a conquering race. What else was there in the world more worth
having than this conquering sense? Religion might offer charms to the
weak. Yet here religion itself became sensible, and wore the garb of
prosperity. The stonework of the tall church on the corner was all lace;
and the very saints in their niches, who had known martyrdom and poverty,
seemed to have renounced these as foolish, and to look down complacently
on the procession of wealth and power.. Across the street, behind a sheet
of glass, was a carrosserie where were displayed the shining yellow and
black panels of a closed automobile, the cost of which would have built a
farm-house and stocked a barn.

At eleven o'clock, the appointed hour, I was in Wall Street. Sending in
my name, I was speedily ushered into a room containing a table, around
which were several men; but my eyes were drawn at once to the figure of
the great banker who sat, massive and preponderant, at one end, smoking a
cigar, and listening in silence to the conversation I had interrupted. He
rose courteously and gave me his hand, and a glance that is
unforgettable.

"It is good of you to come, Mr. Paret," he said simply, as though his
summons had not been a command. "Perhaps you know some of these
gentlemen."

One of them was our United States Senator, Theodore Watling. He, as it
turned out, had been summoned from Washington. Of course I saw him
frequently, having from time to time to go to Washington on various
errands connected with legislation. Though spruce and debonnair as ever,
in the black morning coat he invariably wore, he appeared older than he
had on the day when I had entered his office. He greeted me warmly, as
always.

"Hugh, I'm glad to see you here," he said, with a slight emphasis on the
last word. My legal career was reaching its logical climax, the climax he
had foreseen. And he added, to the banker, that he had brought me up.

"Then he was trained in a good school," remarked that personage, affably.

Mr. Barbour, the president of our Railroad, was present, and nodded to me
kindly; also a president of a smaller road. In addition, there were two
New York attorneys of great prominence, whom I had met. The banker's own
special lieutenant of the law, Mr. Clement T. Grolier, for whom I looked,
was absent; but it was forthwith explained that he was offering, that
morning, a resolution of some importance in the Convention of his Church,
but that he would be present after lunch.

"I have asked you to come here, Mr. Paret," said the banker, "not only
because I know something personally of your legal ability, but because I
have been told by Mr. Scherer and Mr. Barbour that you happen to have
considerable knowledge of the situation we are discussing, as well as
some experience with cases involving that statute somewhat hazy to lay
minds, the Sherman anti-trust law."

A smile went around the table. Mr. Watling winked at me; I nodded, but
said nothing. The banker was not a man to listen to superfluous words.
The keynote of his character was despatch....

The subject of the conference, like many questions bitterly debated and
fought over in their time, has in the year I write these words come to be
of merely academic interest. Indeed, the very situation we discussed that
day has been cited in some of our modern text-books as a classic
consequence of that archaic school of economics to which the name of
Manchester is attached. Some half dozen or so of the railroads running
through the anthracite coal region had pooled their interests,--an
extremely profitable proceeding. The public paid. We deemed it quite
logical that the public should pay--having been created largely for that
purpose; and very naturally we resented the fact that the meddling Person
who had got into the White House without asking anybody's leave,--who
apparently did not believe in the infallibility of our legal Bible, the
Constitution,--should maintain that the anthracite roads had formed a
combination in restraint of trade, should lay down the preposterous
doctrine--so subversive of the Rights of Man--that railroads should not
own coal mines. Congress had passed a law to meet this contention, suit
had been brought, and in the lower court the government had won.

As the day wore on our numbers increased, we were joined by other lawyers
of renown, not the least of whom was Mr. Grolier himself, fresh from his
triumph over religious heresy in his Church Convention. The note of the
conference became tinged with exasperation, and certain gentlemen seized
the opportunity to relieve their pent-up feelings on the subject of the
President and his slavish advisers,--some of whom, before they came under
the spell of his sorcery, had once been sound lawyers and sensible men.
With the exception of the great Banker himself, who made few comments,
Theodore Watling was accorded the most deference; as one of the leaders
of that indomitable group of senators who had dared to stand up against
popular clamour, his opinions were of great value, and his tactical
advice was listened to with respect. I felt more pride than ever in my
former chief, who had lost none of his charm. While in no way minimizing
the seriousness of the situation, his wisdom was tempered, as always,
with humour; he managed, as it were, to neutralize the acid injected into
the atmosphere by other gentlemen present; he alone seemed to bear no
animus against the Author of our troubles; suave and calm, good natured,
he sometimes brought the company into roars of laughter and even
succeeded in bringing occasional smiles to the face of the man who had
summoned us--when relating some characteristic story of the queer genius
whom the fates (undoubtedly as a practical joke) had made the chief
magistrate of the United States of America. All geniuses have weaknesses;
Mr. Wading had made a study of the President's, and more than once had
lured him into an impasse. The case had been appealed to the Supreme
Court, and Mr. Wading, with remarkable conciseness and penetration,
reviewed the characteristics of each and every member of that tribunal,
all of whom he knew intimately. They were, of course, not subject to
"advice," as were some of the gentlemen who sat on our state courts; no
sane and self-respecting American would presume to "approach" them.
Nevertheless they were human, and it were wise to take account, in the
conduct of the case, of the probable bias of each individual.

The President, overstepping his constitutional, Newtonian limits, might
propose laws, Congress might acquiesce in them, but the Supreme Court,
after listening to lawyers like Grolier (and he bowed to the attorney),
made them: made them, he might have added, without responsibility to any
man in our unique Republic that scorned kings and apotheosized lawyers. A
Martian with a sense of humour witnessing a stormy session of Congress
would have giggled at the thought of a few tranquil gentlemen in another
room of the Capitol waiting to decide what the people's representatives
meant--or whether they meant anything....

For the first time since I had known Theodore Watling, however, I saw him
in the shadow of another individual; a man who, like a powerful magnet,
continually drew our glances. When we spoke, we almost invariably
addressed him, his rare words fell like bolts upon the consciousness.
There was no apparent rift in that personality.

When, about five o'clock, the conference was ended and we were dismissed,
United States Senator, railroad presidents, field-marshals of the law,
the great banker fell into an eager conversation with Grolier over the
Canon on Divorce, the subject of warm debate in the convention that day.
Grolier, it appeared, had led his party against the theological liberals.
He believed that law was static, but none knew better its plasticity;
that it was infallible, but none so well as he could find a text on
either side. His reputation was not of the popular, newspaper sort, but
was known to connoisseurs, editors, financiers, statesmen and judges,--to
those, in short, whose business it is to make themselves familiar with
the instruments of power. He was the banker's chief legal adviser, the
banker's rapier of tempered steel, sheathed from the vulgar view save
when it flashed forth on a swift errand.

"I'm glad to be associated with you in this case, Mr. Paret," Mr. Grolier
said modestly, as we emerged into the maelstrom of Wall Street. "If you
can make it convenient to call at my office in the morning, we'll go over
it a little. And I'll see you in a day or two in Washington, Watling.
Keep your eye on the bull," he added, with a twinkle, "and don't let him
break any more china than you can help. I don't know where we'd be if it
weren't for you fellows."

By "you fellows," he meant Mr. Watling's distinguished associates in the
Senate....

Mr. Watling and I dined together at a New York club. It was not a dinner
of herbs. There was something exceedingly comfortable about that club,
where the art of catering to those who had earned the right to be catered
to came as near perfection as human things attain. From the great,
heavily curtained dining-room the noises of the city had been carefully
excluded; the dust of the Avenue, the squalour and smells of the brown
stone fronts and laddered tenements of those gloomy districts lying a
pistol-shot east and west. We had a vintage champagne, and afterwards a
cigar of the club's special importation.

"Well," said Mr. Watling, "mow that you're a member of the royal council,
what do you think of the King?"

"I've been thinking a great deal about him," I said, and indeed it was
true. He had made, perhaps, his greatest impression when I had shaken his
hand in parting. The manner in which he had looked at me then had puzzled
me; it was as though he were seeking to divine something in me that had
escaped him. "Why doesn't the government take him over?" I exclaimed.

Mr. Watling smiled.

"You mean, instead of his mines and railroads and other properties?"

"Yes. But that's your idea. Don't you remember you said something of the
kind the night of the election, years ago? It occurred to me to-day, when
I was looking at him."

"Yes," he agreed thoughtfully, "if some American genius could find a way
to legalize that power and utilize the men who created it the worst of
our problems would be solved. A man with his ability has a right to
power, and none would respond more quickly or more splendidly to a call
of the government than he. All this fight is waste, Hugh, damned waste of
the nation's energy." Mr. Watling seldom swore. "Look at the President!
There's a man of remarkable ability, too. And those two oughtn't to be
fighting each other. The President's right, in a way. Yes, he is, though
I've got to oppose him."

I smiled at this from Theodore Watling, though I admired him the more for
it. And suddenly, oddly, I happened to remember what Krebs had said, that
our troubles were not due to individuals, but to a disease that had
developed in industrial society. If the day should come when such men as
the President and the great banker would be working together, was it not
possible, too, that the idea of Mr. Watling and the vision of Krebs might
coincide? I was struck by a certain seeming similarity in their views;
but Mr. Watling interrupted this train of thought by continuing to
express his own.

"Well,--they're running right into a gale when they might be sailing with
it," he said.

"You think we'll have more trouble?" I asked.

"More and more," he replied. "It'll be worse before it's better I'm
afraid." At this moment a club servant announced his cab, and he rose.
"Well, good-bye, my son," he said. "I'll hope to see you in Washington
soon. And remember there's no one thinks any more of you than I do."

I escorted him to the door, and it was with a real pang I saw him wave to
me from his cab as he drove away. My affection for him was never more
alive than in this hour when, for the first time in my experience, he had
given real evidence of an inner anxiety and lack of confidence in the
future.




XXI.

In spite of that unwonted note of pessimism from Mr. Watling, I went home
in a day or two flushed with my new honours, and it was impossible not to
be conscious of the fact that my aura of prestige was increased
--tremendously increased--by the recognition I had received. A certain
subtle deference in the attitude of the small minority who owed
allegiance to the personage by whom I had been summoned was more
satisfying than if I had been acclaimed at the station by thousands of my
fellow-citizens who knew nothing of my journey and of its significance,
even though it might have a concern for them. To men like Berringer,
Grierson and Tallant and our lesser great lights the banker was a
semi-mythical figure, and many times on the day of my return I was
stopped on the street to satisfy the curiosity of my friends as to my
impressions. Had he, for instance, let fall any opinions,
prognostications on the political and financial situation? Dickinson and
Scherer were the only other men in the city who had the honour of a
personal acquaintance with him, and Scherer was away, abroad, gathering
furniture and pictures for the house in New York Nancy had predicted, and
which he had already begun to build! With Dickinson I lunched in private,
in order to give him a detailed account of the conference. By five
o'clock I was ringing the door-bell of Nancy's new mansion on Grant
Avenue. It was several blocks below my own.

"Well, how does it feel to be sent for by the great sultan?" she asked,
as I stood before her fire. "Of course, I have always known that
ultimately he couldn't get along without you."

"Even if he has been a little late in realizing it," I retorted.

"Sit down and tell me all about him," she commanded.

"I met him once, when Ham had the yacht at Bar Harbor."

"And how did he strike you?"

"As somewhat wrapped up in himself," said Nancy.

We laughed together.

"Oh, I fell a victim," she went on. "I might have sailed off with him, if
he had asked me."

"I'm surprised he didn't ask you."

"I suspect that it was not quite convenient," she said. "Women are
secondary considerations to sultans, we're all very well when they
haven't anything more serious to occupy them. Of course that's why they
fascinate us. What did he want with you, Hugh?"

"He was evidently afraid that the government would win the coal roads
suit unless I was retained."

"More laurels!" she sighed. "I suppose I ought to be proud to know you."

"That's exactly what I've been trying to impress on you all these years,"
I declared. "I've laid the laurels at your feet, in vain."

She sat with her head back on the cushions, surveying me.

"Your dress is very becoming," I said irrelevantly.

"I hoped it would meet your approval," she mocked.

"I've been trying to identify the shade. It's elusive--like you."

"Don't be banal.... What is the colour?"

"Poinsetta!"

"Pretty nearly," she agreed, critically.

I took the soft crepe between my fingers.

"Poet!" she smiled. "No, it isn't quite poinsetta. It's nearer the
red-orange of a tree I remember one autumn, in the White Mountains, with
the setting sun on it. But that wasn't what we were talking about.
Laurels! Your laurels."

"My laurels," I repeated. "Such as they are, I fling them into your lap."

"Do you think they increase your value to me, Hugh?"

"I don't know," I said thickly.

She shook her head.

"No, it's you I like--not the laurels."

"But if you care for me--?" I began.

She lifted up her hands and folded them behind the knot of her hair.

"It's extraordinary how little you have changed since we were children,
Hugh. You are still sixteen years old, that's why I like you. If you got
to be the sultan of sultans yourself, I shouldn't like you any better, or
any worse."

"And yet you have just declared that power appeals to you!"

"Power--yes. But a woman--a woman like me--wants to be first, or
nothing."

"You are first," I asserted. "You always have been, if you had only
realized it."

She gazed up at me dreamily.

"If you had only realized it! If you had only realized that all I wanted
of you was to be yourself. It wasn't what you achieved. I didn't want you
to be like Ralph or the others."

"Myself? What are you trying to say?"

"Yourself. Yes, that is what I like about you. If you hadn't been in such
a hurry--if you hadn't misjudged me so. It was the power in you, the
craving, the ideal in you that I cared for--not the fruits of it. The
fruits would have come naturally. But you forced them, Hugh, for quicker
results."

"What kind of fruits?" I asked.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "how can I tell what they might have been! You have
striven and striven, you have done extraordinary things, but have they
made you any happier? have you got what you want?"

I stooped down and seized her wrists from behind her head.

"I want you, Nancy," I said. "I have always wanted you. You're more
wonderful to-day than you have ever been. I could find myself--with you."

She closed her eyes. A dreamy smile was on her face, and she lay
unresisting, very still. In that tremendous moment, for which it seemed I
had waited a lifetime, I could have taken her in my arms--and yet I did
not. I could not tell why: perhaps it was because she seemed to have
passed beyond me--far beyond--in realization. And she was so still!

"We have missed the way, Hugh," she whispered, at last.

"But we can find it again, if we seek it together," I urged.

"Ah, if I only could!" she said. "I could have once. But now I'm
afraid--afraid of getting lost." Slowly she straightened up, her hands
falling into her lap. I seized them again, I was on my knees in front of
her, before the fire, and she, intent, looking down at me, into me,
through me it seemed--at something beyond which yet was me.

"Hugh," she asked, "what do you believe? Anything?"

"What do I believe?"

"Yes. I don't mean any cant, cut-and-dried morality. The world is getting
beyond that. But have you, in your secret soul, any religion at all? Do
you ever think about it? I'm not speaking about anything orthodox, but
some religion--even a tiny speck of it, a germ--harmonizing with life,
with that power we feel in us we seek to express and continually
violate."

"Nancy!" I exclaimed.

"Answer me--answer me truthfully," she said....

I was silent, my thoughts whirling like dust atoms in a storm.

"You have always taken things--taken what you wanted. But they haven't
satisfied you, convinced you that that is all of life."

"Do you mean--that we should renounce?" I faltered.

"I don't know what I mean. I am asking, Hugh, asking. Haven't you any
clew? Isn't there any voice in you, anywhere, deep down, that can tell
me? give me a hint? just a little one?"

I was wracked. My passion had not left me, it seemed to be heightened,
and I pressed her hands against her knees. It was incredible that my
hands should be there, in hers, feeling her. Her beauty seemed as fresh,
as un-wasted as the day, long since, when I despaired of her. And yet and
yet against the tumult and beating of this passion striving to throb down
thought, thought strove. Though I saw her as a woman, my senses and my
spirit commingled and swooned together.

"This is life," I murmured, scarcely knowing what I said.

"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and her voice pierced me with pain, "are we to
be lost, overpowered, engulfed, swept down its stream, to come up below
drifting--wreckage? Where, then, would be your power? I'm not speaking of
myself. Isn't life more than that? Isn't it in us, too,--in you? Think,
Hugh. Is there no god, anywhere, but this force we feel, restlessly
creating only to destroy? You must answer--you must find out."

I cannot describe the pleading passion in her voice, as though hell and
heaven were wrestling in it. The woman I saw, tortured yet uplifted, did
not seem to be Nancy, yet it was the woman I loved more than life itself
and always had loved.

"I can't think," I answered desperately, "I can only feel--and I can't
express what I feel. It's mixed, it's dim, and yet bright and
shining--it's you."

"No, it's you," she said vehemently. "You must interpret it." Her voice
sank: "Could it be God?" she asked.

"God!" I exclaimed sharply.

Her hands fell away from mine.... The silence was broken only by the
crackling of the wood fire as a log turned over and fell. Never before,
in all our intercourse that I could remember, had she spoken to me about
religion.... With that apparent snap in continuity incomprehensible to
the masculine mind-her feminine mood had changed. Elements I had never
suspected, in Nancy, awe, even a hint of despair, entered into it, and
when my hand found hers again, the very quality of its convulsive
pressure seemed to have changed. I knew then that it was her soul I loved
most; I had been swept all unwittingly to its very altar.

"I believe it is God," I said. But she continued to gaze at me, her lips
parted, her eyes questioning.

"Why is it," she demanded, "that after all these centuries of certainty
we should have to start out to find him again? Why is it when something
happens like--like this, that we should suddenly be torn with doubts
about him, when we have lived the best part of our lives without so much
as thinking of him?"

"Why should you have qualms?" I said. "Isn't this enough? and doesn't it
promise--all?"

"I don't know. They're not qualms--in the old sense." She smiled down at
me a little tearfully. "Hugh, do you remember when we used to go to
Sunday-school at Dr. Pound's church, and Mrs. Ewan taught us? I really
believed something then--that Moses brought down the ten commandments of
God from the mountain, all written out definitely for ever and ever. And
I used to think of marriage" (I felt a sharp twinge), "of marriage as
something sacred and inviolable,--something ordained by God himself. It
ought to be so--oughtn't it? That is the ideal."

"Yes--but aren't you confusing--?" I began.

"I am confusing and confused. I shouldn't be--I shouldn't care if there
weren't something in you, in me, in our--friendship, something I can't
explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in
which we have lived our lives--something which, I think, we saw clearer
as children. We have lost it in our hasty groping. Oh, Hugh, I couldn't
bear to think that we should never find it! that it doesn't really exist!
Because I seem to feel it. But can we find it this way, my dear?" Her
hand tightened on mine.

"But if the force drawing us together, that has always drawn us together,
is God?" I objected.

"I asked you," she said. "The time must come when you must answer, Hugh.
It may be too late, but you must answer."

"I believe in taking life in my own hands," I said.

"It ought to be life," said Nancy. "It--it might have been life.... It is
only when a moment, a moment like this comes that the quality of what we
have lived seems so tarnished, that the atmosphere which we ourselves
have helped to make is so sordid. When I think of the intrigues, and
divorces, the self-indulgences,--when I think of my own marriage--" her
voice caught. "How are we going to better it, Hugh, this way? Am I to get
that part of you I love, and are you to get what you crave in me? Can we
just seize happiness? Will it not elude us just as much as though we
believed firmly in the ten commandments?"

"No," I declared obstinately.

She shook her head.

"What I'm afraid of is that the world isn't made that way--for you--for
me. We're permitted to seize those other things because they're just
baubles, we've both found out how worthless they are. And the worst of it
is they've made me a coward, Hugh. It isn't that I couldn't do without
them, I've come to depend on them in another way. It's because they give
me a certain protection,--do you see? they've come to stand in the place
of the real convictions we've lost. And--well, we've taken the baubles,
can we reach out our hands and take--this? Won't we be punished for it,
frightfully punished?"

"I don't care if we are," I said, and surprised myself.

"But I care. It's weak, it's cowardly, but it's so. And yet I want to
face the situation--I'm trying to get you to face it, to realize how
terrible it is."

"I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I'll
take care of you--"

I seized her arms, I drew her down to me.

"Don't!" she cried. "Oh, don't!" and struggled to her feet and stood
before me panting. "You must go away now--please, Hugh. I can't bear any
more--I want to think."

I released her. She sank into the chair and hid her face in her hands....

As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life into a
tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and romanticist
than myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what the old
moralists called the devious paths of sin. In my passion I had not
hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and the strong
took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a consistent
disciple in the professional and business realm. A logical buccaneer,
superman, "master of life" would promptly have extended this doctrine to
the realm of sex. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and I, our
development, was all that mattered, especially my development. Let every
man and woman look out for his or her development, and in the end the
majority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one better.
When it came to putting that theory into practice, however, one needed
convictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that convictions
were precisely what we lacked; what our world in general lacked. We had
desires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not by defying the
world, but by conforming to it: we were ready to defy only when our
desires overcame the resistance of our synapses, and even then not until
we should have exhausted every legal and conventional means.

A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great passion
has made him a superman is in rather a predicament, especially if he be
one who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not by
challenging laws and conventions, but by getting around them. My wife and
family loved me; and paradoxically I still had affection for them, or
thought I had. But the superman creed is, "be yourself, realize yourself,
no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so." One trouble
with me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still clung to
me. I would be cruel if I had to, but I hoped I shouldn't have to:
something would turn up, something in the nature of an intervening
miracle that would make it easy for me. Perhaps Maude would take the
initiative and relieve me.... Nancy had appealed for a justifying
doctrine, and it was just what I didn't have and couldn't evolve. In the
meanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to a
situation that might well be called anomalous.

This "accommodation" was not unaccompanied by fever. My longing to
realize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of
"nerves"; for our relationship had merely gone one step farther, we had
reached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other, and
paradoxically halted there; Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctions
with a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me. And yet,
when I look back upon it all, I can see that some of the difficulty lay
with me: if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had mine--and
kept it to myself. It was part of my romantic nature not to want to break
her down. Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman herself, though
that scarcely seems possible.

We saw each other constantly. And though we had instinctively begun to be
careful, I imagine there was some talk among our acquaintances. It is to
be noted that the gossip never became riotous, for we had always been
friends, and Nancy had a saving reputation for coldness. It seemed
incredible that Maude had not discovered my secret, but if she knew of
it, she gave no sign of her knowledge. Often, as I looked at her, I
wished she would. I can think of no more expressive sentence in regard to
her than the trite one that she pursued the even tenor of her way; and I
found the very perfection of her wifehood exasperating. Our relationship
would, I thought, have been more endurable if we had quarrelled. And yet
we had grown as far apart, in that big house, as though we had been
separated by a continent; I lived in my apartments, she in hers; she
consulted me about dinner parties and invitations; for, since we had
moved to Grant Avenue, we entertained and went out more than before. It
seemed as though she were making every effort consistent with her
integrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she conformed to the
mould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person had developed. It
had not been a spontaneous development, but one in resistance to
pressure; and was probably all the stronger for that reason. At times her
will revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected flashes, as when once
she announced that she was going to change Matthew's school.

"He's old enough to go to boarding-school," I said. "I'll look up a place
for him."

"I don't wish him to go to boarding-school yet, Hugh," she said quietly.

"But that's just what he needs," I objected. "He ought to have the
rubbing-up against other boys that boarding-school will give him. Matthew
is timid, he should have learned to take care of himself. And he will
make friendships that will help him in a larger school."

"I don't intend to send him," Maude said.

"But if I think it wise?"

"You ought to have begun to consider such things many years ago. You have
always been too--busy to think of the children. You have left them to me.
I am doing the best I can with them."

"But a man should have something to say about boys. He understands them."

"You should have thought of that before."

"They haven't been old enough."

"If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listen
to you."

"Maude!" I exclaimed reproachfully.

"No, Hugh," she went on, "you have been too busy making money. You have
left them to me. It is my task to see that the money they are to inherit
doesn't ruin them."

"You talk as though it were a great fortune," I said.

But I did not press the matter. I had a presentiment that to press it
might lead to unpleasant results.

It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything but
freedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of living
with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling
will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments I
looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: her
complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked
with her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour;
perhaps she had grown a little stouter. There could be no doubt about the
fact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her face
indicative of what is called character. Beneath her pliability she was
now all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery. It cannot be said
that I went so far as to hate her for this,--when it was in my mind,--but
my feelings were of a strong antipathy. And then again there were rare
moments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and passion; I
melted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened and I saw the
tragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as these. I am
speaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless companion of the
years, the mother of my children, the woman I was used to and should--by
all canons I had known--have loved....

And there were the children. Days and weeks passed when I scarcely saw
them, and then some little incident would happen to give me an unexpected
wrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came home from a
long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had entered
the library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under the lamp at the
end of the big room reading from "Don Quixote"; Matthew and Biddy were at
her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was taking
apart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy caught sight
of me.

"It's father!" she cried, getting up and flying to me.

"Oh, father, do come and listen! The story's so exciting, isn't it,
Matthew?"

I looked down into the boy's eyes shining with an expression that
suddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself. Matthew was
far away among the mountains and castles of Spain.

"Matthew," demanded his sister, "why did he want to go fighting with all
those people?"

"Because he was dotty," supplied Moreton, who had an interesting habit of
picking up slang.

"It wasn't at all," cried Matthew, indignantly, interrupting Maude's
rebuke of his brother.

"What was it, then?" Moreton demanded.

"You wouldn't understand if I told you," Matthew was retorting, when
Maude put her hand on his lips.

"I think that's enough for to-night," she said, as she closed the book.
"There are lessons to do--and father wants to read his newspaper in
quiet."

This brought a protest from Biddy.

"Just a little more, mother! Can't we go into the schoolroom? We shan't
disturb father there."

"I'll read to them--a few minutes," I said.

As I took the volume from her and sat down Maude shot at me a swift look
of surprise. Even Matthew glanced at me curiously; and in his glance I
had, as it were, a sudden revelation of the boy's perplexity concerning
me. He was twelve, rather tall for his age, and the delicate modelling of
his face resembled my father's. He had begun to think.. What did he think
of me?

Biddy clapped her hands, and began to dance across the carpet.

"Father's going to read to us, father's going to read to us," she cried,
finally clambering up on my knee and snuggling against me.

"Where is the place?" I asked.

But Maude had left the room. She had gone swiftly and silently.

"I'll find it," said Moreton.

I began to read, but I scarcely knew what I was reading, my fingers
tightening over Biddy's little knee....

Presently Miss Allsop, the governess, came in. She had been sent by
Maude. There was wistfulness in Biddy's voice as I kissed her good night.

"Father, if you would only read oftener!" she said, "I like it when you
read--better than anyone else."....

Maude and I were alone that night. As we sat in the library after our
somewhat formal, perfunctory dinner, I ventured to ask her why she had
gone away when I had offered to read.

"I couldn't bear it, Hugh," she answered.

"Why?" I asked, intending to justify myself.

She got up abruptly, and left me. I did not follow her. In my heart I
understood why....

Some years had passed since Ralph's prophecy had come true, and Perry and
the remaining Blackwoods had been "relieved" of the Boyne Street line.
The process need not be gone into in detail, being the time-honoured one
employed in the Ribblevale affair of "running down" the line, or perhaps
it would be better to say "showing it up." It had not justified its
survival in our efficient days, it had held out--thanks to Perry--with
absurd and anachronous persistence against the inevitable consolidation.
Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published many complaints of the age and
scarcity of the cars, etc.; and alarmed holders of securities, in whose
vaults they had lain since time immemorial, began to sell.... I saw
little of Perry in those days, as I have explained, but one day I met him
in the Hambleton Building, and he was white.

"Your friends are doing thus, Hugh," he said.

"Doing what?"

"Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city, a
company that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving better
service right now than any of your consolidated lines."...

He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was distinctly
unpleasant. I don't remember what I said sething to the effect that he
was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after he had walked
off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given a chance, and
one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and pointed out
that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only reasonable,
he might come into the new corporation on the same terms with the others.

All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the office
by Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the other
stockholders.

"He utterly failed to see the point of view," Murphree reported in some
astonishment to Dickinson.

"What else did he say?" Mr. Dickinson asked.

Murphree hesitated.

"Well--what?" the banker insisted.

"He wasn't quite himself," said Murphree, who was a comparative newcomer
in the city and had a respect for the Blackwood name. "He said that that
was the custom of thieves: when they were discovered, they offered to
divide. He swore that he would get justice in the courts."

Mr. Dickinson smiled....

Thus Perry, through his obstinacy and inability to adapt himself to new
conditions, had gradually lost both caste and money. He resigned from the
Boyne Club. I was rather sorry for him. Tom naturally took the matter to
heart, but he never spoke of it; I found that I was seeing less of him,
though we continued to dine there at intervals, and he still came to my
house to see the children. Maude continued to see Lucia. For me, the
situation would have been more awkward had I been less occupied, had my
relationship with Maude been a closer one. Neither did she mention Perry
in those days. The income that remained to him being sufficient for him
and his family to live on comfortably, he began to devote most of his
time to various societies of a semipublic nature until--in the spring of
which I write his activities suddenly became concentrated in the
organization of a "Citizens Union," whose avowed object was to make a
campaign against "graft" and political corruption the following autumn.
This announcement and the call for a mass-meeting in Kingdon Hall was
received by the newspapers with a good-natured ridicule, and in
influential quarters it was generally hinted that this was Mr.
Blackwood's method of "getting square" for having been deprived of the
Boyne Street line. It was quite characteristic of Ralph Hambleton that he
should go, out of curiosity, to the gathering at Kingdon Hall, and drop
into my office the next morning.

"Well, Hughie, they're after you," he said with a grin.

"After me? Why not include yourself?"

He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled as
he gaped.

"Oh, they'll never get me," he said. And I knew, as I gazed at him, that
they never would.

"What sort of things did they say?" I asked.

"Haven't you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?"

"I just glanced over them. Did they call names?"

"Call names! I should say they did. They got drunk on it, worked
themselves up like dervishes. They didn't cuss you personally,--that'll
come later, of course. Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they said he
couldn't exist a minute if it wasn't for the 'respectable'
crowd--capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools. Fact
is, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind of
way."

"Truth!" I exclaimed irritatedly.

Ralph laughed. He was evidently enjoying himself.

"Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?"

"It's an outrage."

"I think it's funny," said Ralph. "We haven't had such a circus for
years. Never had. Of course I shouldn't like to see you go behind the
bars,--not that. But you fellows can't expect to go on forever skimming
off the cream without having somebody squeal sometime. You ought to be
reasonable."

"You've skimmed as much cream as anybody else."

"You've skimmed the cream, Hughie,--you and Dickinson and Scherer and
Grierson and the rest,--I've only filled my jug. Well, these fellows are
going to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off of
everything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are so
fond of."

"Dump it where?" I asked curiously.

"Oh," answered Ralph, "they didn't say. Out into the country, anywhere."

"But that's damned foolishness," I declared.

"Didn't say it wasn't," Ralph admitted. "They talked a lot of that, too,
incidentally. They're going to close the saloons and dance halls and make
this city sadder than heaven. When they get through, it'll all be over
but the inquest."

"What did Perry do?" I asked.

"Well, he opened the meeting,--made a nice, precise, gentlemanly speech.
Greenhalge and a few young highbrows and a reformed crook named Harrod
did most of the hair-raising. They're going to nominate Greenhalge for
mayor; and he told 'em something about that little matter of the school
board, and said he would talk more later on. If one of the ablest lawyers
in the city hadn't been hired by the respectable crowd and a lot of other
queer work done, the treasurer and purchasing agent would be doing time.
They seemed to be interested, all right."

I turned over some papers on my desk, just to show Ralph that he hadn't
succeeded in disturbing me.

"Who was in the audience? anyone you ever heard of?" I asked.

"Sure thing. Your cousin Robert Breck; and that son-in-law of his--what's
his name? And some other representatives of our oldest families,--Alec
Pound. He's a reformer now, you know. They put him on the resolutions
committee. Sam Ogilvy was there, he'd be classed as respectably
conservative. And one of the Ewanses. I could name a few others, if you
pressed me. That brother of Fowndes who looks like an up-state minister.
A lot of women--Miller Gorse's sister, Mrs. Datchet, who never approved
of Miller. Quite a genteel gathering, I give you my word, and all
astonished and mad as hell when the speaking was over. Mrs. Datchet said
she had been living in a den of iniquity and vice, and didn't know it."

"It must have been amusing," I said.

"It was," said Ralph. "It'll be more amusing later on. Oh, yes, there was
another fellow who spoke I forgot to mention--that queer Dick who was in
your class, Krebs, got the school board evidence, looked as if he'd come
in by freight. He wasn't as popular as the rest, but he's got more sense
than all of them put together."

"Why wasn't he popular?"

"Well, he didn't crack up the American people,--said they deserved all
they got, that they'd have to learn to think straight and be straight
before they could expect a square deal. The truth was, they secretly
envied these rich men who were exploiting their city, and just as long as
they envied them they hadn't any right to complain of them. He was going
into this campaign to tell the truth, but to tell all sides of it, and if
they wanted reform, they'd have to reform themselves first. I admired his
nerve, I must say."

"He always had that," I remarked. "How did they take it?"

"Well, they didn't like it much, but I think most of them had a respect
for him. I know I did. He has a whole lot of assurance, an air of knowing
what he's talking about, and apparently he doesn't give a continental
whether he's popular or not. Besides, Greenhalge had cracked him up to
the skies for the work he'd done for the school board."

"You talk as if he'd converted you," I said.

Ralph laughed as he rose and stretched himself.

"Oh, I'm only the intelligent spectator, you ought to know that by this
time, Hughie. But I thought it might interest you, since you'll have to
go on the stump and refute it all. That'll be a nice job. So long."

And he departed. Of course I knew that he had been baiting me, his scent
for the weaknesses of his friends being absolutely fiendish. I was angry
because he had succeeded,--because he knew he had succeeded. All the
morning uneasiness possessed me, and I found it difficult to concentrate
on the affairs I had in hand. I felt premonitions, which I tried in vain
to suppress, that the tide of the philosophy of power and might were
starting to ebb: I scented vague calamities ahead, calamities I
associated with Krebs; and when I went out to the Club for lunch this
sense of uneasiness, instead of being dissipated, was increased.
Dickinson was there, and Scherer, who had just got back from Europe; the
talk fell on the Citizens Union, which Scherer belittled with an air of
consequence and pompousness that struck me disagreeably, and with an eye
newly critical I detected in him a certain disintegration, deterioration.
Having dismissed the reformers, he began to tell of his experiences
abroad, referring in one way or another to the people of consequence who
had entertained him.

"Hugh," said Leonard Dickinson to me as we walked to the bank together,
"Scherer will never be any good any more. Too much prosperity. And he's
begun to have his nails manicured."

After I had left the bank president an uncanny fancy struck me that in
Adolf Scherer I had before me a concrete example of the effect of my
philosophy on the individual....

Nothing seemed to go right that spring, and yet nothing was absolutely
wrong. At times I became irritated, bewildered, out of tune, and unable
to understand why. The weather itself was uneasy, tepid, with long spells
of hot wind and dust. I no longer seemed to find refuge in my work. I was
unhappy at home. After walking for many years in confidence and security
along what appeared to be a certain path, I had suddenly come out into a
vague country in which it was becoming more and more difficult to
recognize landmarks. I did not like to confess this; and yet I heard
within me occasional whispers. Could it be that I, Hugh Paret, who had
always been so positive, had made a mess of my life? There were moments
when the pattern of it appeared to have fallen apart, resolved itself
into pieces that refused to fit into each other.

Of course my relationship with Nancy had something to do with this....

One evening late in the spring, after dinner, Maude came into the
library.

"Are you busy, Hugh?" she asked.

I put down my newspapers.

"Because," she went on, as she took a chair near the table where I was
writing, "I wanted to tell you that I have decided to go to Europe, and
take the children."

"To Europe!" I exclaimed. The significance of the announcement failed at
once to register in my brain, but I was aware of a shock.

"Yes."

"When?" I asked.

"Right away. The end of this month."

"For the summer?"

"I haven't decided how long I shall stay."

I stared at her in bewilderment. In contrast to the agitation I felt
rising within me, she was extraordinarily calm, unbelievably so.

"But where do you intend to go in Europe?"

"I shall go to London for a month or so, and after that to some quiet
place in France, probably at the sea, where the children can learn French
and German. After that, I have no plans."

"But--you talk as if you might stay indefinitely."

"I haven't decided," she repeated.

"But why--why are you doing this?"

I would have recalled the words as soon as I had spoken them. There was
the slightest unsteadiness in her voice as she replied:--"Is it necessary
to go into that, Hugh? Wouldn't it be useless as well as a little
painful? Surely, going to Europe without one's husband is not an unusual
thing in these days. Let it just be understood that I want to go, that
the children have arrived at an age when it will do them good."

I got up and began to walk up and down the room, while she watched me
with a silent calm which was incomprehensible. In vain I summoned my
faculties to meet it.

I had not thought her capable of such initiative.

"I can't see why you want to leave me," I said at last, though with a
full sense of the inadequacy of the remark, and a suspicion of its
hypocrisy.

"That isn't quite true," she answered. "In the first place, you don't
need me. I am not of the slightest use in your life, I haven't been a
factor in it for years. You ought never to have married me,--it was all a
terrible mistake. I began to realize that after we had been married a few
months--even when we were on our wedding trip. But I was too
inexperienced--perhaps too weak to acknowledge it to myself. In the last
few years I have come to see it plainly. I should have been a fool if I
hadn't. I am not your wife in any real sense of the word, I cannot hold
you, I cannot even interest you. It's a situation that no woman with
self-respect can endure."

"Aren't those rather modern sentiments, for you, Maude?" I said.

She flushed a little, but otherwise retained her remarkable composure.

"I don't care whether they are 'modern' or not, I only know that my
position has become impossible."

I walked to the other end of the room, and stood facing the carefully
drawn curtains of the windows; fantastically, they seemed to represent
the impasse to which my mind had come. Did she intend, ultimately, to get
a divorce? I dared not ask her. The word rang horribly in my ears, though
unpronounced; and I knew then that I lacked her courage, and the
knowledge was part of my agony.

I turned.

"Don't you think you've overdrawn things, Maude exaggerated them? No
marriages are perfect. You've let your mind dwell until it has become
inflamed on matters which really don't amount to much."

"I was never saner, Hugh," she replied instantly. And indeed I was forced
to confess that she looked it. That new Maude I had seen emerging of late
years seemed now to have found herself; she was no longer the woman I had
married,--yielding, willing to overlook, anxious to please, living in me.

"I don't influence you, or help you in any way. I never have."

"Oh, that's not true," I protested.

But she cut me short, going on inexorably:--"I am merely your
housekeeper, and rather a poor one at that, from your point of view. You
ignore me. I am not blaming you for it--you are made that way. It's true
that you have always supported me in luxury,--that might have been enough
for another woman. It isn't enough for me--I, too, have a life to live, a
soul to be responsible for. It's not for my sake so much as for the
children's that I don't want it to be crushed."

"Crushed!" I repeated.

"Yes. You are stifling it. I say again that I'm not blaming you, Hugh.
You are made differently from me. All you care for, really, is your
career. You may think that you care, at times, for--other things, but it
isn't so."

I took, involuntarily, a deep breath. Would she mention Nancy? Was it in
reality Nancy who had brought about this crisis? And did Maude suspect
the closeness of that relationship?

Suddenly I found myself begging her not to go; the more astonishing
since, if at any time during the past winter this solution had presented
itself to me as a possibility, I should eagerly have welcomed it! But
should I ever have had the courage to propose a separation? I even wished
to delude myself now into believing that what she suggested was in
reality not a separation. I preferred to think of it as a trip.... A
vision of freedom thrilled me, and yet I was wracked and torn. I had an
idea that she was suffering, that the ordeal was a terrible one for her;
and at that moment there crowded into my mind, melting me, incident after
incident of our past.

"It seems to me that we have got along pretty well together, Maude. I
have been negligent--I'll admit it. But I'll try to do better in the
future. And--if you'll wait a month or so, I'll go to Europe with you,
and we'll have a good time."

She looked at me sadly,--pityingly, I thought.

"No, Hugh, I've thought it all out. You really don't want me. You only
say this because you are sorry for me, because you dislike to have your
feelings wrung. You needn't be sorry for me, I shall be much happier away
from you."

"Think it over, Maude," I pleaded. "I shall miss you and the children. I
haven't paid much attention to them, either, but I am fond of them, and
depend upon them, too."

She shook her head.

"It's no use, Hugh. I tell you I've thought it all out. You don't care
for the children, you were never meant to have any."

"Aren't you rather severe in your judgments?"

"I don't think so," she answered. "I'm willing to admit my faults, that I
am a failure so far as you are concerned. Your ideas of life and mine are
far apart."

"I suppose," I exclaimed bitterly, "that you are referring to my
professional practices."

A note of weariness crept into her voice. I might have known that she was
near the end of her strength.

"No, I don't think it's that," she said dispassionately. "I prefer to put
it down, that part of it, to a fundamental difference of ideas. I do not
feel qualified to sit in judgment on that part of your life, although
I'll admit that many of the things you have done, in common with the men
with whom you are associated, have seemed to me unjust and inconsiderate
of the rights and feelings of others. You have alienated some of your
best friends. If I were to arraign you at all, it would be on the score
of heartlessness. But I suppose it isn't your fault, that you haven't any
heart."

"That's unfair," I put in.

"I don't wish to be unfair," she replied. "Only, since you ask me, I have
to tell you that that is the way it seems to me. I don't want to
introduce the question of right and wrong into this, Hugh, I'm not
capable of unravelling it; I can't put myself into your life, and see
things from your point of view, weigh your problems and difficulties. In
the first place, you won't let me. I think I understand you, partly--but
only partly. You have kept yourself shut up. But why discuss it? I have
made up my mind."

The legal aspect of the matter occurred to me. What right had she to
leave me? I might refuse to support her. Yet even as these thoughts came
I rejected them; I knew that it was not in me to press this point. And
she could always take refuge with her father; without the children, of
course. But the very notion sickened me. I could not bear to think of
Maude deprived of the children. I had seated myself again at the table. I
put my hand to my forehead.

"Don't make it hard, Hugh," I heard her say, gently. "Believe me, it is
best. I know. There won't be any talk about it,--right away, at any rate.
People will think it natural that I should wish to go abroad for the
summer. And later--well, the point of view about such affairs has
changed. They are better understood."

She had risen. She was pale, still outwardly composed,--but I had a
strange, hideous feeling that she was weeping inwardly.

"Aren't you coming back--ever?" I cried.

She did not answer at once.

"I don't know," she said, "I don't know," and left the room abruptly....

I wanted to follow her, but something withheld me. I got up and walked
around the room in a state of mind that was near to agony, taking one of
the neglected books out of the shelves, glancing at its meaningless
print, and replacing it; I stirred the fire, opened the curtains and
gazed out into the street and closed them again. I looked around me, a
sudden intensity of hatred seized me for this big, silent, luxurious
house; I recalled Maude's presentiment about it. Then, thinking I might
still dissuade her, I went slowly up the padded stairway--to find her
door locked; and a sense of the finality of her decision came over me. I
knew then that I could not alter it even were I to go all the lengths of
abjectness. Nor could I, I knew, have brought myself to have feigned a
love I did not feel.

What was it I felt? I could not define it. Amazement, for one thing, that
Maude with her traditional, Christian view of marriage should have come
to such a decision. I went to my room, undressed mechanically and got
into bed....

She gave no sign at the breakfast table of having made the decision of
the greatest moment in our lives; she conversed as usual, asked about the
news, reproved the children for being noisy; and when the children had
left the table there were no tears, reminiscences, recriminations. In
spite of the slight antagonism and envy of which I was conscious,--that
she was thus superbly in command of the situation, that she had developed
her pinions and was thus splendidly able to use them,--my admiration for
her had never been greater. I made an effort to achieve the frame of mind
she suggested: since she took it so calmly, why should I be tortured by
the tragedy of it? Perhaps she had ceased to love me, after all! Perhaps
she felt nothing but relief. At any rate, I was grateful to her, and I
found a certain consolation, a sop to my pride in the reflection that the
initiative must have been hers to take. I could not have deserted her.

"When do you think of leaving?" I asked.

"Two weeks from Saturday on the Olympic, if that is convenient for you."
Her manner seemed one of friendly solicitude. "You will remain in the
house this summer, as usual, I suppose?"

"Yes," I said.

It was a sunny, warm morning, and I went downtown in the motor almost
blithely. It was the best solution after all, and I had been a fool to
oppose it.... At the office, there was much business awaiting me; yet
once in a while, during the day, when the tension relaxed, the
recollection of what had happened flowed back into my consciousness.
Maude was going!

I had telephoned Nancy, making an appointment for the afternoon.
Sometimes--not too frequently--we were in the habit of going out into the
country in one of her motors, a sort of landaulet, I believe, in which we
were separated from the chauffeur by a glass screen. She was waiting for
me when I arrived, at four; and as soon as we had shot clear of the city,
"Maude is going away," I told her.

"Going away?" she repeated, struck more by the tone of my voice than by
what I had said.

"She announced last night that she was going abroad indefinitely."

I had been more than anxious to see how Nancy would take the news. A
flush gradually deepened in her cheeks.

"You mean that she is going to leave you?"

"It looks that way. In fact, she as much as said so."

"Why?" said Nancy.

"Well, she explained it pretty thoroughly. Apparently, it isn't a sudden
decision," I replied, trying to choose my words, to speak composedly as I
repeated the gist of our conversation. Nancy, with her face averted,
listened in silence--a silence that continued some time after I had
ceased to speak.

"She didn't--she didn't mention--?" the sentence remained unfinished.

"No," I said quickly, "she didn't. She must know, of course, but I'm sure
that didn't enter into it."

Nancy's eyes as they returned to me were wet, and in them was an
expression I had never seen before,--of pain, reproach, of questioning.
It frightened me.

"Oh, Hugh, how little you know!" she cried.

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"That is what has brought her to this decision--you and I."

"You mean that--that Maude loves me? That she is jealous?" I don't know
how I managed to say it.

"No woman likes to think that she is a failure," murmured Nancy.

"Well, but she isn't really," I insisted. "She could have made another
man happy--a better man. It was all one of those terrible mistakes our
modern life seems to emphasize so."

"She is a woman," Nancy said, with what seemed a touch of vehemence.
"It's useless to expect you to understand.... Do you remember what I said
to you about her? How I appealed to you when you married to try to
appreciate her?"

"It wasn't that I didn't appreciate her," I interrupted, surprised that
Nancy should have recalled this, "she isn't the woman for me, we aren't
made for each other. It was my mistake, my fault, I admit, but I don't
agree with you at all, that we had anything to do with her decision. It
is just the--the culmination of a long period of incompatibility. She has
come to realize that she has only one life to live, and she seems
happier, more composed, more herself than she has ever been since our
marriage. Of course I don't mean to say it isn't painful for her.... But
I am sure she isn't well, that it isn't because of our seeing one
another," I concluded haltingly.

"She is finer than either of us, Hugh,--far finer."

I did not relish this statement.

"She's fine, I admit. But I can't see how under the circumstances any of
us could have acted differently." And Nancy not replying, I continued:
"She has made up her mind to go,--I suppose I could prevent it by taking
extreme measures,--but what good would it do? Isn't it, after all, the
most sensible, the only way out of a situation that has become
impossible? Times have changed, Nancy, and you yourself have been the
first to admit it. Marriage is no longer what it was, and people are
coming to look upon it more sensibly. In order to perpetuate the
institution, as it was, segregation, insulation, was the only course. Men
segregated their wives, women their husbands,--the only logical method of
procedure, but it limited the individual. Our mothers and fathers thought
it scandalous if husband or wife paid visits alone. It wasn't done. But
our modern life has changed all that. A marriage, to be a marriage,
should be proof against disturbing influences, should leave the
individuals free; the binding element should be love, not the force of an
imposed authority. You seemed to agree to all this."

"Yes, I know," she admitted. "But I cannot think that happiness will ever
grow out of unhappiness."

"But Maude will not be unhappy," I insisted. "She will be happier, far
happier, now that she has taken the step."

"Oh, I wish I thought so," Nancy exclaimed. "Hugh, you always believe
what you want to believe. And the children. How can you bear to part with
them?"

I was torn, I had a miserable sense of inadequacy.

"I shall miss them," I said. "I have never really appreciated them. I
admit I don't deserve to have them, and I am willing to give them up for
you, for Maude..."

We had made one of our favourite drives among the hills on the far side
of the Ashuela, and at six were back at Nancy's house. I did not go in,
but walked slowly homeward up Grant Avenue. It had been a trying
afternoon. I had not expected, indeed, that Nancy would have rejoiced,
but her attitude, her silences, betraying, as they did, compunctions,
seemed to threaten our future happiness.




XXII.

One evening two or three days later I returned from the office to gaze up
at my house, to realize suddenly that it would be impossible for me to
live there, in those great, empty rooms, alone; and I told Maude that I
would go to the Club--during her absence. I preferred to keep up the
fiction that her trip would only be temporary. She forbore from
contradicting me, devoting herself efficiently to the task of closing the
house, making it seem, somehow, a rite,--the final rite in her capacity
as housewife. The drawing-room was shrouded, and the library; the books
wrapped neatly in paper; a smell of camphor pervaded the place; the
cheerful schoolroom was dismantled; trunks and travelling bags appeared.
The solemn butler packed my clothes, and I arranged for a room at the
Club in the wing that recently had been added for the accommodation of
bachelors and deserted husbands. One of the ironies of those days was
that the children began to suggest again possibilities of happiness I had
missed--especially Matthew. With all his gentleness, the boy seemed to
have a precocious understanding of the verities, and the capacity for
suffering which as a child I had possessed. But he had more self-control.
Though he looked forward to the prospect of new scenes and experiences
with the anticipation natural to his temperament, I thought he betrayed
at moments a certain intuition as to what was going on.

"When are you coming over, father?" he asked once. "How soon will your
business let you?"

He had been brought up in the belief that my business was a tyrant.

"Oh, soon, Matthew,--sometime soon," I said.

I had a feeling that he understood me, not intellectually, but
emotionally. What a companion he might have been!.... Moreton and Biddy
moved me less. They were more robust, more normal, less introspective and
imaginative; Europe meant nothing to them, but they were frankly
delighted and excited at the prospect of going on the ocean, asking
dozens of questions about the great ship, impatient to embark.....

"I shan't need all that, Hugh," Maude said, when I handed her a letter of
credit. "I--I intend to live quite simply, and my chief expenses will be
the children's education. I am going to give them the best, of course."

"Of course," I replied. "But I want you to live over there as you have
been accustomed to live here. It's not exactly generosity on my part,--I
have enough, and more than enough."

She took the letter.

"Another thing--I'd rather you didn't go to New York with us, Hugh. I
know you are busy--"

"Of course I'm going," I started to protest.

"No," she went on, firmly. "I'd rather you didn't. The hotel people will
put me on the steamer very comfortably,--and there are other reasons why
I do not wish it." I did not insist.... On the afternoon of her
departure, when I came uptown, I found her pinning some roses on her
jacket.

"Perry and Lucia sent them," she informed me. She maintained the
friendly, impersonal manner to the very end; but my soul, as we drove to
the train, was full of un-probed wounds. I had had roses put in her
compartments in the car; Tom and Susan Peters were there with more roses,
and little presents for the children. Their cheerfulness seemed forced,
and I wondered whether they suspected that Maude's absence would be
prolonged.

"Write us often, and tell us all about it, dear," said Susan, as she sat
beside Maude and held her hand; Tom had Biddy on his knee. Maude was
pale, but smiling and composed.

"I hope to get a little villa in France, near the sea," she said. "I'll
send you a photograph of it, Susan."

"And Chickabiddy, when she comes back, will be rattling off French like a
native," exclaimed Tom, giving her a hug.

"I hate French," said Biddy, and she looked at him solemnly. "I wish you
were coming along, Uncle Tom."

Bells resounded through the great station. The porter warned us off. I
kissed the children one by one, scarcely realizing what I was doing. I
kissed Maude. She received my embrace passively.

"Good-bye, Hugh," she said.

I alighted, and stood on the platform as the train pulled out. The
children crowded to the windows, but Maude did not appear.... I found
myself walking with Tom and Susan past hurrying travellers and porters to
the Decatur Street entrance, where my automobile stood waiting.

"I'll take you home, Susan," I said.

"We're ever so much obliged, Hugh," she answered, "but the street-cars go
almost to ferry's door. We're dining there."

Her eyes were filled with tears, and she seemed taller, more ungainly
than ever--older. A sudden impression of her greatness of heart was borne
home to me, and I grasped the value of such rugged friendship as hers--as
Tom's.

"We shouldn't know how to behave in an automobile," he said, as though to
soften her refusal. And I stood watching their receding figures as they
walked out into the street and hailed the huge electric car that came to
a stop beyond them. Above its windows was painted "The Ashuela Traction
Company," a label reminiscent of my professional activities. Then I heard
the chauffeur ask:--"Where do you wish to go, sir?"

"To the Club," I said.

My room was ready, my personal belongings, my clothes had been laid out,
my photographs were on the dressing-table. I took up, mechanically, the
evening newspaper, but I could not read it; I thought of Maude, of the
children, memories flowed in upon me,--a flood not to be dammed....
Presently the club valet knocked at my door. He had a dinner card.

"Will you be dining here, sir?" he inquired.

I went downstairs. Fred Grierson was the only man in the dining-room.

"Hello, Hugh," he said, "come and sit down. I hear your wife's gone
abroad."

"Yes," I answered, "she thought she'd try it instead of the South Shore
this summer."

Perhaps I imagined that he looked at me queerly. I had made a great deal
of money out of my association with Grierson, I had valued very highly
being an important member of the group to which he belonged; but
to-night, as I watched him eating and drinking greedily, I hated him even
as I hated myself. And after dinner, when he started talking with a
ridicule that was a thinly disguised bitterness about the Citizens Union
and their preparations for a campaign I left him and went to bed.

Before a week had passed my painful emotions had largely subsided, and
with my accustomed resiliency I had regained the feeling of self-respect
so essential to my happiness. I was free. My only anxiety was for Nancy,
who had gone to New York the day after my last talk with her; and it was
only by telephoning to her house that I discovered when she was expected
to return.... I found her sitting beside one of the open French windows
of her salon, gazing across at the wooded hills beyond the Ashuela. She
was serious, a little pale; more exquisite, more desirable than ever; but
her manner implied the pressure of control, and her voice was not quite
steady as she greeted me.

"You've been away a long time," I said.

"The dressmakers," she answered. Her colour rose a little. "I thought
they'd never get through."

"But why didn't you drop me a line, let me know when you were coming?" I
asked, taking a chair beside her, and laying my hand on hers. She drew it
gently away.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I've been thinking it all over--what we're doing. It doesn't seem right,
it seems terribly wrong."

"But I thought we'd gone over all that," I replied, as patiently as I
could. "You're putting it on an old-fashioned, moral basis."

"But there must be same basis," she urged. "There are responsibilities,
obligations--there must be!--that we can't get away from. I can't help
feeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains; we
made a choice--it's cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what we
want--we shall be punished for it."

"But I'm willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you loved
me--"

"Hugh!" she exclaimed, and I was silent. "You don't understand," she went
on, a little breathlessly, "what I mean by punishment is deterioration.
Do you remember once, long ago, when you came to me before I was married,
I said we'd both run after false gods, and that we couldn't do without
them? Well, and now this has come; it seems so wonderful to me, coming
again like that after we had passed it by, after we thought it had gone
forever; it's opened up visions for me that I never hoped to see again.
It ought to restore us, dear--that's what I'm trying to say--to redeem
us, to make us capable of being what we were meant to be. If it doesn't
do that, if it isn't doing so, it's the most horrible of travesties, of
mockeries. If we gain life only to have it turn into death--slow death;
if we go to pieces again, utterly. For now there's hope. The more I
think, the more clearly I see that we can't take any step without
responsibilities. If we take this, you'll have me, and I'll have you. And
if we don't save each other--"

"But we will," I said.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "if we could start new, without any past. I married
Ham with my eyes open."

"You couldn't know that he would become--well, as flagrant as he is. You
didn't really know what he was then."

"There's no reason why I shouldn't have anticipated it. I can't claim
that I was deceived, that I thought my marriage was made in heaven. I
entered into a contract, and Ham has kept his part of it fairly well. He
hasn't interfered with my freedom. That isn't putting it on a high plane,
but there is an obligation involved. You yourself, in your law practice,
are always insisting upon the sacredness of contract as the very basis of
our civilization."

Here indeed would have been a home thrust, had I been vulnerable at the
time. So intent was I on overcoming her objections, that I resorted
unwittingly to the modern argument I had more than once declared in court
to be anathema-the argument of the new reform in reference to the common
law and the constitution.

"A contract, no matter how seriously entered into at the time it was
made, that later is seen to violate the principles of humanity should be
void. And not only this, but you didn't consent that he should disgrace
you."

Nancy winced.

"I never told you that he paid my father's debts, I never told anyone,"
she said, in a low voice.

"Even then," I answered after a moment, "you ought to see that it's too
terrible a price to pay for your happiness. And Ham hasn't ever pretended
to consider you in any way. It's certain you didn't agree that he should
do--what he is doing."

"Suppose I admitted it," she said, "there remain Maude and your children.
Their happiness, their future becomes my responsibility as well as
yours."

"But I don't love Maude, and Maude doesn't love me. I grant it's my
fault, that I did her a wrong in marrying her, but she is right in
leaving me. I should be doing her a double wrong. And the children will
be happy with her, they will be well brought up. I, too, have thought
this out, Nancy," I insisted, "and the fact is that in our respective
marriages we have been, each of us, victims of our time, of our
education. We were born in a period of transition, we inherited views of
life that do not fit conditions to-day. It takes courage to achieve
happiness, initiative to emancipate one's self from a morality that
begins to hamper and bind. To stay as we are, to refuse to take what is
offered us, is to remain between wind and water. I don't mean that we
should do anything--hastily. We can afford to take a reasonable time, to
be dignified about it. But I have come to the conclusion that the only
thing that matters in the world is a love like ours, and its fulfilment.
Achievement, success, are empty and meaningless without it. And you do
love me--you've admitted it."

"Oh, I don't want to talk about it," she exclaimed, desperately.

"But we have to talk about it," I persisted. "We have to thrash it out,
to see it straight, as you yourself have said."

"You speak of convictions, Hugh,--new convictions, in place of the old we
have discarded. But what are they? And is there no such thing as
conscience--even though it be only an intuition of happiness or
unhappiness? I do care for you, I do love you--"

"Then why not let that suffice?" I exclaimed, leaning towards her.

She drew back.

"But I want to respect you, too," she said.

I was shocked, too shocked to answer.

"I want to respect you," she repeated, more gently. "I don't want to
think that--that what we feel for each other is--unconsecrated."

"It consecrates itself," I declared.

She shook her head.

"Surely it has its roots in everything that is fine in both of us."

"We both went wrong," said Nancy. "We both sought to wrest power and
happiness from the world, to make our own laws. How can we assert
that--this is not merely a continuation of it?"

"But can't we work out our beliefs together?" I demanded. "Won't you
trust me, trust our love for one another?"

Her breath came and went quickly.

"Oh, you know that I want you, Hugh, as much as you want me, and more.
The time may come when I can't resist you."

"Why do you resist me?" I cried, seizing her hands convulsively, and
swept by a gust of passion at her confession.

"Try to understand that I am fighting for both of us!" she pleaded--an
appeal that wrung me in spite of the pitch to which my feelings had been
raised. "Hugh, dear, we must think it out. Don't now."

I let her hands drop....

Beyond the range of hills rising from the far side of the Ashuela was the
wide valley in which was situated the Cloverdale Country Club, with its
polo field, golf course and tennis courts; and in this same valley some
of our wealthy citizens, such as Howard Ogilvy and Leonard Dickinson, had
bought "farms," week-end playthings for spring and autumn. Hambleton
Durrett had started the fashion. Capriciously, as he did everything else,
he had become the owner of several hundred acres of pasture, woodland and
orchard, acquired some seventy-five head of blooded stock, and proceeded
to house them in model barns and milk by machinery; for several months he
had bored everyone in the Boyne Club whom he could entice into
conversation on the subject of the records of pedigreed cows, and spent
many bibulous nights on the farm in company with those parasites who
surrounded him when he was in town. Then another interest had intervened;
a feminine one, of course, and his energies were transferred (so we
understood) to the reconstruction and furnishing of a little residence in
New York, not far from Fifth Avenue. The farm continued under the expert
direction of a superintendent who was a graduate of the State
Agricultural College, and a select clientele, which could afford to pay
the prices, consumed the milk and cream and butter. Quite consistent with
their marital relations was the fact that Nancy should have taken a fancy
to the place after Ham's interest had waned. Not that she cared for the
Guernseys, or Jerseys, or whatever they may have been; she evinced a
sudden passion for simplicity,--occasional simplicity, at least,--for a
contrast to and escape from a complicated life of luxury. She built
another house for the superintendent banished him from the little
farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the
superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the
easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with
wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the
hardwood floors. The pseudo-classic porch over the doorway, which had
suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished
with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and shaded with gay awnings.

Here, to the farm, accompanied by a maid, she had been in the habit of
retiring from time to time, and here she came in early July. Here,
dressed in the simplest linen gowns of pink or blue or white, I found a
Nancy magically restored to girlhood,--anew Nancy, betraying only traces
of the old, a new Nancy in a new Eden. We had all the setting, all the
illusion of that perfect ideal of domesticity, love in a cottage. Nancy
and I, who all our lives had spurned simplicity, laughed over the joy we
found in it: she made a high art of it, of course; we had our simple
dinners, which Mrs. Olsen cooked and served in the open air; sometimes on
the porch, sometimes under the great butternut tree spreading its shade
over what in a more elaborate country-place, would have been called a
lawn,--an uneven plot of grass of ridges and hollows that ran down to the
orchard. Nancy's eyes would meet mine across the little table, and often
our gaze would wander over the pastures below, lucent green in the level
evening light, to the darkening woods beyond, gilt-tipped in the setting
sun. There were fields of ripening yellow grain, of lusty young corn that
grew almost as we watched it: the warm winds of evening were heavy with
the acrid odours of fecundity. Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yet
insistent charm of that country; and Nancy's, of course, was the
transforming touch that made it paradise. It was thus, in the country, I
suggested that we should spend the rest of our existence. What was the
use of amassing money, when happiness was to be had so simply?

"How long do you think you could stand it?" she asked, as she handed me a
plate of blackberries.

"Forever, with the right woman," I announced.

"How long could the woman stand it?".... She humoured, smilingly, my
crystal-gazing into our future, as though she had not the heart to
deprive me of the pleasure.

"I simply can't believe in it, Hugh," she said when I pressed her for an
answer.

"Why not?"

"I suppose it's because I believe in continuity, I haven't the romantic
temperament,--I always see the angel with the flaming sword. It isn't
that I want to see him."

"But we shall redeem ourselves," I said. "It won't be curiosity and
idleness. We are not just taking this thing, and expecting to give
nothing for it in return."

"What can we give that is worth it?" she exclaimed, with one of her
revealing flashes.

"We won't take it lightly, but seriously," I told her. "We shall find
something to give, and that something will spring naturally out of our
love. We'll read together, and think and plan together."

"Oh, Hugh, you are incorrigible," was all she said.

The male tendency in me was forever strained to solve her, to deduce from
her conversation and conduct a body of consistent law. The effort was
useless. Here was a realm, that of Nancy's soul, in which there was
apparently no such thing as relevancy. In the twilight, after dinner, we
often walked through the orchard to a grassy bank beside the little
stream, where we would sit and watch the dying glow in the sky. After a
rain its swollen waters were turbid, opaque yellow-red with the clay of
the hills; at other times it ran smoothly, temperately, almost clear
between the pasture grasses and wild flowers. Nancy declared that it
reminded her of me. We sat there, into the lush, warm nights, and the
moon shone down on us, or again through long silences we searched the
bewildering, starry chart of the heavens, with the undertones of the
night-chorus of the fields in our ears. Sometimes she let my head rest
upon her knee; but when, throbbing at her touch, with the life-force
pulsing around us, I tried to take her in my arms, to bring her lips to
mine, she resisted me with an energy of will and body that I could not
overcome, I dared not overcome. She acknowledged her love for me, she
permitted me to come to her, she had the air of yielding but never
yielded. Why, then, did she allow the words of love to pass? and how draw
the line between caresses? I was maddened and disheartened by that
elusive resistance in her--apparently so frail a thing!--that neither
argument nor importunity could break down. Was there something lacking in
me? or was it that I feared to mar or destroy the love she had. This,
surely, had not been the fashion of other loves, called unlawful, the
classic instances celebrated by the poets of all ages rose to mock me.

"Incurably romantic," she had called me, in calmer moments, when I was
able to discuss our affair objectively. And once she declared that I had
no sense of tragedy. We read "Macbeth" together, I remember, one rainy
Sunday. The modern world, which was our generation, would seem to be cut
off from all that preceded it as with a descending knife. It was
precisely from "the sense of tragedy" that we had been emancipated: from
the "agonized conscience," I should undoubtedly have said, had I been
acquainted then with Mr. Santayana's later phrase. Conscience--the old
kind of conscience,--and nothing inherent in the deeds themselves, made
the tragedy; conscience was superstition, the fear of the wrath of the
gods: conscience was the wrath of the gods. Eliminate it, and behold!
there were no consequences. The gods themselves, that kind of gods,
became as extinct as the deities of the Druids, the Greek fates, the
terrible figures of German mythology. Yes, and as the God of Christian
orthodoxy.

Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths, of whose personal
lives we happened to know something? Had not these great ones broken with
impunity all the laws of traditional morality? They ground the faces of
the poor, played golf and went to church with serene minds, untroubled by
criticism; they appropriated, quite freely, other men's money, and some
of them other men's wives, and yet they were not haggard with remorse.
The gods remained silent. Christian ministers regarded these modern
transgressors of ancient laws benignly and accepted their contributions.
Here, indeed, were the supermen of the mad German prophet and philosopher
come to life, refuting all classic tragedy. It is true that some of these
supermen were occasionally swept away by disease, which in ancient days
would have been regarded as a retributive scourge, but was in fact
nothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene, the result of
overwork. Such, though stated more crudely, were my contentions when
desire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent. And I did not fail
to remind Nancy, constantly, that this was the path on which her feet had
been set; that to waver now was to perish. She smiled, yet she showed
concern.

"But suppose you don't get what you want?" she objected. "What then?
Suppose one doesn't become a superman? or a superwoman? What's to happen
to one? Is there no god but the superman's god, which is himself? Are
there no gods for those who can't be supermen? or for those who may
refuse to be supermen?"

To refuse, I maintained, were a weakness of the will.

"But there are other wills," she persisted, "wills over which the
superman may conceivably have no control. Suppose, for example, that you
don't get me, that my will intervenes, granting it to be conceivable that
your future happiness and welfare, as you insist, depend upon your
getting me--which I doubt."

"You've no reason to doubt it."

"Well, granting it, then. Suppose the orthodoxies and superstitions
succeed in inhibiting me. I may not be a superwoman, but my will, or my
conscience, if you choose, may be stronger than yours. If you don't get
what you want, you aren't happy. In other words, you fail. Where are your
gods then? The trouble with you, my dear Hugh, is that you have never
failed," she went on, "you've never had a good, hard fall, you've always
been on the winning side, and you've never had the world against you. No
wonder you don't understand the meaning and value of tragedy."

"And you?" I asked.

"No," she agreed, "nor I. Yet I have come to feel, instinctively, that
somehow concealed in tragedy is the central fact of life, the true
reality, that nothing is to be got by dodging it, as we have dodged it.
Your superman, at least the kind of superman you portray, is petrified.
Something vital in him, that should be plastic and sensitive, has turned
to stone."

"Since when did you begin to feel this?" I inquired uneasily.

"Since--well, since we have been together again, in the last month or
two. Something seems to warn me that if we take--what we want, we shan't
get it. That's an Irish saying, I know, but it expresses my meaning. I
may be little, I may be superstitious, unlike the great women of history
who have dared. But it's more than mere playing safe--my instinct, I
mean. You see, you are involved. I believe I shouldn't hesitate if only
myself were concerned, but you are the uncertain quantity--more uncertain
than you have any idea; you think you know yourself, you think you have
analyzed yourself, but the truth is, Hugh, you don't know the meaning of
struggle against real resistance."

I was about to protest.

"I know that you have conquered in the world of men and affairs," she
hurried on, "against resistance, but it isn't the kind of resistance I
mean. It doesn't differ essentially from the struggle in the animal
kingdom."

I bowed. "Thank you," I said.

She laughed a little.

"Oh, I have worshipped success, too. Perhaps I still do--that isn't the
point. An animal conquers his prey, he is in competition, in constant
combat with others of his own kind, and perhaps he brings to bear a
certain amount of intelligence in the process. Intelligence isn't the
point, either. I know what I'm saying is trite, it's banal, it sounds
like moralizing, and perhaps it is, but there is so much confusion to-day
that I think we are in danger of losing sight of the simpler verities,
and that we must suffer for it. Your super-animal, your supreme-stag
subdues the other stags, but he never conquers himself, he never feels
the need of it, and therefore he never comprehends what we call tragedy."

"I gather your inference," I said, smiling.

"Well," she admitted, "I haven't stated the case with the shade of
delicacy it deserves, but I wanted to make my meaning clear. We have
raised up a class in America, but we have lost sight, a
little--considerably, I think--of the distinguishing human
characteristics. The men you were eulogizing are lords of the forest,
more or less, and we women, who are of their own kind, what they have
made us, surrender ourselves in submission and adoration to the lordly
stag in the face of all the sacraments that have been painfully
inaugurated by the race for the very purpose of distinguishing us from
animals. It is equivalent to saying that there is no moral law; or, if
there is, nobody can define it. We deny, inferentially, a human realm as
distinguished from the animal, and in the denial it seems to me we are
cutting ourselves off from what is essential human development. We are
reverting to the animal. I have lost and you have lost--not entirely,
perhaps, but still to a considerable extent--the bloom of that fervour,
of that idealism, we may call it, that both of us possessed when we were
in our teens. We had occasional visions. We didn't know what they meant,
or how to set about their accomplishment, but they were not, at least,
mere selfish aspirations; they implied, unconsciously no doubt, an
element of service, and certainly our ideal of marriage had something
fine in it."

"Isn't it for a higher ideal of marriage that we are searching?" I asked.

"If that is so," Nancy objected, "then all the other elements of our
lives are sadly out of tune with it. Even the most felicitous union of
the sexes demands sacrifice, an adjustment of wills, and these are the
very things we balk at; and the trouble with our entire class in this
country is that we won't acknowledge any responsibility, there's no
sacrifice in our eminence, we have no sense of the whole."

"Where did you get all these ideas?" I demanded.

She laughed.

"Well," she admitted, "I've been thrashing around a little; and I've read
some of the moderns, you know. Do you remember my telling you I didn't
agree with them? and now this thing has come on me like a judgment. I've
caught their mania for liberty, for self-realization--whatever they call
it--but their remedies are vague, they fail to convince me that
individuals achieve any quality by just taking what they want, regardless
of others."....

I was unable to meet this argument, and the result was that when I was
away from her I too began to "thrash around" among the books in a vain
search for a radical with a convincing and satisfying philosophy. Thus we
fly to literature in crises of the heart! There was no lack of writers
who sought to deal--and deal triumphantly with the very situation in
which I was immersed. I marked many passages, to read them over to Nancy,
who was interested, but who accused me of being willing to embrace any
philosophy, ancient or modern, that ran with the stream of my desires. It
is worth recording that the truth of this struck home. On my way back to
the city I reflected that, in spite of my protests against Maude's
going--protests wholly sentimental and impelled by the desire to avoid
giving pain on the spot--I had approved of her departure because I didn't
want her. On the other hand I had to acknowledge if I hadn't wanted
Nancy, or rather, if I had become tired of her, I should have been
willing to endorse her scruples.... It was not a comforting thought.

One morning when I was absently opening the mail I found at my office I
picked up a letter from Theodore Watling, written from a seaside resort
in Maine, the contents of which surprised and touched me, troubled me,
and compelled me to face a situation with which I was wholly unprepared
to cope. He announced that this was to be his last term in the Senate. He
did not name the trouble his physician had discovered, but he had been
warned that he must retire from active life. "The specialist whom I saw
in New York," he went on, "wished me to resign at once, but when I
pointed out to him how unfair this would be to my friends in the state,
to my party as a whole--especially in these serious and unsettled
times--he agreed that I might with proper care serve out the remainder of
my term. I have felt it my duty to write to Barbour and Dickinson and one
or two others in order that they might be prepared and that no time may
be lost in choosing my successor. It is true that the revolt within the
party has never gained much headway in our state, but in these days it is
difficult to tell when and where a conflagration may break out, or how
far it will go. I have ventured to recommend to them the man who seems to
me the best equipped to carry on the work I have been trying to do
here--in short, my dear Hugh, yourself. The Senate, as you know, is not a
bed of roses just now for those who think as we do; but I have the less
hesitancy in making the recommendation because I believe you are not one
to shun a fight for the convictions we hold in common, and because you
would regard, with me, the election of a senator with the new views as a
very real calamity. If sound business men and lawyers should be
eliminated from the Senate, I could not contemplate with any peace of
mind what might happen to the country. In thus urging you, I know you
will believe me when I say that my affection and judgment are equally
involved, for it would be a matter of greater pride than I can express to
have you follow me here as you have followed me at home. And I beg of you
seriously to consider it.... I understand that Maude and the children are
abroad. Remember me to them affectionately when you write. If you can
find it convenient to come here, to Maine, to discuss the matter, you may
be sure of a welcome. In any case, I expect to be in Washington in
September for a meeting of our special committee. Sincerely and
affectionately yours, Theodore Watling."

It was characteristic of him that the tone of the letter should be
uniformly cheerful, that he should say nothing whatever of the blow this
must be to his ambitions and hopes; and my agitation at the new and
disturbing prospect thus opened up for me was momentarily swept away by
feelings of affection and sorrow. A sharp realization came to me of how
much I admired and loved this man, and this was followed by a pang at the
thought of the disappointment my refusal would give him. Complications I
did not wish to examine were then in the back of my mind; and while I
still sat holding the letter in my hand the telephone rang, and a message
came from Leonard Dickinson begging me to call at the bank at once.

Miller Gorse was there, and Tallant, waving a palm-leaf while sitting
under the electric fan. They were all very grave, and they began to talk
about the suddenness of Mr. Watling's illness and to speculate upon its
nature. Leonard Dickinson was the most moved of the three; but they were
all distressed, and showed it--even Tallant, whom I had never credited
with any feelings; they spoke about the loss to the state. At length
Gorse took a cigar from his pocket and lighted it; the smoke, impelled by
the fan, drifted over the panelled partition into the bank.

"I suppose Mr. Watling mentioned to you what he wrote to us," he said.

"Yes," I admitted.

"Well," he asked, "what do you think of it?"

"I attribute it to Mr. Watling's friendship," I replied.

"No," said Gorse, in his businesslike manner, "Watling's right, there's
no one else." Considering the number of inhabitants of our state, this
remark had its humorous aspect.

"That's true," Dickinson put in, "there's no one else available who
understands the situation as you do, Hugh, no one else we can trust as we
trust you. I had a wire from Mr. Barbour this morning--he agrees. We'll
miss you here, but now that Watling will be gone we'll need you there.
And he's right--it's something we've got to decide on right away, and get
started on soon, we can't afford to wobble and run any chances of a
revolt."

"It isn't everybody the senatorship comes to on a platter--especially at
your age," said Tallant.

"To tell you the truth," I answered, addressing Dickinson, "I'm not
prepared to talk about it now. I appreciate the honour, but I'm not at
all sure I'm the right man. And I've been considerably upset by this news
of Mr. Watling."

"Naturally you would be," said the banker, sympathetically, "and we share
your feelings. I don't know of any man for whom I have a greater
affection than I have for Theodore Wading. We shouldn't have mentioned it
now, Hugh, if Watling hadn't started the thing himself, if it weren't
important to know where we stand right away. We can't afford to lose the
seat. Take your time, but remember you're the man we depend upon."

Gorse nodded. I was aware, all the time Dickinson was speaking, of being
surrounded by the strange, disquieting gaze of the counsel for the
Railroad....

I went back to my office to spend an uneasy morning. My sorrow for Mr.
Watling was genuine, but nevertheless I found myself compelled to
consider an honour no man lightly refuses. Had it presented itself at any
other time, had it been due to a happier situation than that brought
about by the illness of a man whom I loved and admired, I should have
thought the prospect dazzling indeed, part and parcel of my amazing luck.
But now--now I was in an emotional state that distorted the factors of
life, all those things I hitherto had valued; even such a prize as this I
weighed in terms of one supreme desire: how would the acceptance of the
senatorship affect the accomplishment of this desire? That was the
question. I began making rapid calculations: the actual election would
take place in the legislature a year from the following January; provided
I were able to overcome Nancy's resistance--which I was determined to
do--nothing in the way of divorce proceedings could be thought of for
more than a year; and I feared delay. On the other hand, if we waited
until after I had been duly elected to get my divorce and marry Nancy my
chances of reelection would be small. What did I care for the senatorship
anyway--if I had her? and I wanted her now, as soon as I could get her.
She--a life with her represented new values, new values I did not define,
that made all I had striven for in the past of little worth. This was a
bauble compared with the companionship of the woman I loved, the woman
intended for me, who would give me peace of mind and soul and develop
those truer aspirations that had long been thwarted and starved for lack
of her. Gradually, as she regained the ascendency over my mind she
ordinarily held--and from which she had been temporarily displaced by the
arrival of Mr. Watling's letter and the talk in the bank--I became
impatient and irritated by the intrusion. But what answer should I give
to Dickinson and Gorse? what excuse for declining such an offer? I
decided, as may be imagined, to wait, to temporize.

The irony of circumstances--of what might have been--prevented now my
laying this trophy at Nancy's feet, for I knew I had only to mention the
matter to be certain of losing her.




XXIII.

I had bought a small automobile, which I ran myself, and it was my custom
to arrive at the farm every evening about five o'clock. But as I look
back upon those days they seem to have lost succession, to be fused
together, as it were, into one indeterminable period by the intense
pressure of emotion; unsatisfied emotion,--and the state of physical and
mental disorganization set up by it is in the retrospect not a little
terrifying. The world grew more and more distorted, its affairs were
neglected, things upon which I had set high values became as nothing. And
even if I could summon back something of the sequence of our intercourse,
it would be a mere repetition--growing on my part more irrational and
insistent--of what I have already related. There were long, troubled, and
futile silences when we sat together on the porch or in the woods and
fields; when I wondered whether it were weakness or strength that caused
Nancy to hold out against my importunities: the fears she professed of
retribution, the benumbing effects of the conventional years, or the
deep-rooted remnants of a Calvinism which--as she proclaimed--had lost
definite expression to persist as an intuition. I recall something she
said when she turned to me after one of these silences.

"Do you know how I feel sometimes? as though you and I had wandered
together into a strange country, and lost our way. We have lost our way,
Hugh--it's all so clandestine, so feverish, so unnatural, so unrelated to
life, this existence we're leading. I believe it would be better if it
were a mere case of physical passion. I can't help it," she went on, when
I had exclaimed against this, "we are too--too complicated, you are too
complicated. It's because we want the morning stars, don't you see?" She
wound her fingers tightly around mine. "We not only want this, but all of
life besides--you wouldn't be satisfied with anything less. Oh, I know
it. That's your temperament, you were made that way, and I shouldn't be
satisfied if you weren't. The time would come when you would blame me I
don't mean vulgarly--and I couldn't stand that. If you weren't that way,
if that weren't your nature, I mean, I should have given way long ago."

I made some sort of desperate protest.

"No, if I didn't know you so well I believe I should have given in long
ago. I'm not thinking of you alone, but of myself, too. I'm afraid I
shouldn't be happy, that I should begin to think--and then I couldn't
stop. The plain truth, as I've told you over and over again, is that I'm
not big enough." She continued smiling at me, a smile on which I could
not bear to look. "I was wrong not to have gone away," I heard her say.
"I will go away."

I was, at the time, too profoundly discouraged to answer....

One evening after an exhausting talk we sat, inert, on the grass hummock
beside the stream. Heavy clouds had gathered in the sky, the light had
deepened to amethyst, the valley was still, swooning with expectancy,
louder and louder the thunder rolled from behind the distant hills, and
presently a veil descended to hide them from our view. Great drops began
to fall, unheeded.

"We must go in," said Nancy, at length.

I followed her across the field and through the orchard. From the porch
we stood gazing out at the whitening rain that blotted all save the
nearer landscape, and the smell of wet, midsummer grasses will always be
associated with the poignancy of that moment.... At dinner, between the
intervals of silence, our talk was of trivial things. We made a mere
pretence of eating, and I remember having my attention arrested by the
sight of a strange, pitying expression on the face of Mrs. Olsen, who
waited on us. Before that the woman had been to me a mere ministering
automaton. But she must have had ideas and opinions, this transported
Swedish peasant.... Presently, having cleared the table, she retired....
The twilight deepened to dusk, to darkness. The storm, having spent the
intensity of its passion in those first moments of heavy downpour and
wind, had relaxed to a gentle rain that pattered on the roof, and from
the stream came recurringly the dirge of the frogs. All I could see of
Nancy was the dim outline of her head and shoulders: she seemed
fantastically to be escaping me, to be fading, to be going; in sudden
desperation I dropped on my knees beside her, and I felt her hands
straying with a light yet agonized touch, over my head.

"Do you think I haven't suffered, too? that I don't suffer?" I heard her
ask.

Some betraying note for which I had hitherto waited in vain must have
pierced to my consciousness, yet the quiver of joy and the swift,
convulsive movement that followed it seemed one. Her strong, lithe body
was straining in my arms, her lips returning my kisses.... Clinging to
her hands, I strove to summon my faculties of realization; and I began to
speak in broken, endearing sentences.

"It's stronger than we are--stronger than anything else in the world,"
she said.

"But you're not sorry?" I asked.

"I don't want to think--I don't care," she replied. "I only know that I
love you. I wonder if you will ever know how much!"

The moments lengthened into hours, and she gently reminded me that it was
late. The lights in the little farmhouses near by had long been
extinguished. I pleaded to linger; I wanted her, more of her, all of her
with a fierce desire that drowned rational thought, and I feared that
something might still come between us, and cheat me of her.

"No, no," she cried, with fear in her voice. "We shall have to think it
out very carefully--what we must do. We can't afford to make any
mistakes."

"We'll talk it all over to-morrow," I said.

With a last, reluctant embrace I finally left her, walked blindly to
where the motor car was standing, and started the engine. I looked back.
Outlined in the light of the doorway I saw her figure in what seemed an
attitude of supplication....

I drove cityward through the rain, mechanically taking the familiar turns
in the road, barely missing a man in a buggy at a four-corners. He
shouted after me, but the world to which he belonged didn't exist. I
lived again those moments that had followed Nancy's surrender, seeking to
recall and fix in my mind every word that had escaped from her lips--the
trivial things that to lovers are so fraught with meaning. I lived it all
over again, as I say, but the reflection of it, though intensely
emotional, differed from the reality in that now I was somewhat able to
regard the thing, to regard myself, objectively; to define certain
feelings that had flitted in filmy fashion through my consciousness,
delicate shadows I recognized at the time as related to sadness. When she
had so amazingly yielded, the thought for which my mind had been vaguely
groping was that the woman who lay there in my arms, obscured by the
darkness, was not Nancy at all! It was as if this one precious woman I
had so desperately pursued had, in the capture, lost her identity, had
mysteriously become just woman, in all her significance, yes, and
helplessness. The particular had merged (inevitably, I might have known)
into the general: the temporary had become the lasting, with a chain of
consequences vaguely implied that even in my joy gave me pause. For the
first time in my life I had a glimpse of what marriage might
mean,--marriage in a greater sense than I had ever conceived it, a sort
of cosmic sense, implying obligations transcending promises and
contracts, calling for greatness of soul of a kind I had not hitherto
imagined. Was there in me a grain of doubt of my ability to respond to
such a high call? I began to perceive that such a union as we
contemplated involved more obligations than one not opposed to
traditional views of morality. I fortified myself, however,--if indeed I
really needed fortification in a mood prevailingly triumphant and
exalted,--with the thought that this love was different, the real thing,
the love of maturity steeped in the ideals of youth. Here was a love for
which I must be prepared to renounce other things on which I set a high
value; prepared, in case the world, for some reason, should not look upon
us with kindliness. It was curious that such reflections as these should
have been delayed until after the achievement of my absorbing desire,
more curious that they should have followed so closely on the heels of
it. The affair had shifted suddenly from a basis of adventure, of
uncertainty; to one of fact, of commitment; I am exaggerating my concern
in order to define it; I was able to persuade myself without much
difficulty that these little, cloudy currents in the stream of my joy
were due to a natural reaction from the tremendous strain of the past
weeks, mere morbid fancies.

When at length I reached my room at the Club I sat looking out at the
rain falling on the shining pavements under the arc-lights. Though waves
of heat caused by some sudden recollection or impatient longing still ran
through my body, a saner joy of anticipation was succeeding emotional
tumult, and I reflected that Nancy had been right in insisting that we
walk circumspectly in spite of passion. After all, I had outwitted
circumstance, I had gained the prize, I could afford to wait a little. We
should talk it over to-morrow,--no, to-day. The luminous face of the city
hall clock reminded me that midnight was long past....

I awoke with the consciousness of a new joy, suddenly to identify it with
Nancy. She was mine! I kept repeating it as I dressed; summoning her, not
as she had lain in my arms in the darkness--though the intoxicating
sweetness of that pervaded me--but as she had been before the
completeness of her surrender, dainty, surrounded by things expressing an
elusive, uniquely feminine personality. I could afford to smile at the
weather, at the obsidian sky, at the rain still falling persistently; and
yet, as I ate my breakfast, I felt a certain impatience to verify what I
knew was a certainty, and hurried to the telephone booth. I resented the
instrument, its possibilities of betrayal, her voice sounded so
matter-of-fact as she bade me good morning and deplored the rain.

"I'll be out as soon as I can get away," I said. "I have a meeting at
three, but it should be over at four." And then I added irresistibly:
"Nancy, you're not sorry? You--you still--?"

"Yes, don't be foolish," I heard her reply, and this time the telephone
did not completely disguise the note for which I strained. I said
something more, but the circuit was closed....

I shall not attempt to recount the details of our intercourse during the
week that followed. There were moments of stress and strain when it
seemed to me that we could not wait, moments that strengthened Nancy's
resolution to leave immediately for the East: there were other, calmer
periods when the wisdom of her going appealed to me, since our ultimate
union would be hastened thereby. We overcame by degrees the
distastefulness of the discussion of ways and means.... We spent an
unforgettable Sunday among the distant high hills, beside a little lake
of our own discovery, its glinting waters sapphire and chrysoprase. A
grassy wood road, at the inviting entrance to which we left the
automobile, led down through an undergrowth of laurel to a pebbly shore,
and there we lunched; there we lingered through the long summer
afternoon, Nancy with her back against a tree, I with my head in her lap
gazing up at filmy clouds drifting imperceptibly across the sky,
listening to the droning notes of the bees, notes that sometimes rose in
a sharp crescendo, and again were suddenly hushed. The smell of the
wood-mould mingled with the fainter scents of wild flowers. She had
brought along a volume by a modern poet: the verses, as Nancy read them,
moved me,--they were filled with a new faith to which my being responded,
the faith of the forth-farer; not the faith of the anchor, but of the
sail. I repeated some of the lines as indications of a creed to which I
had long been trying to convert her, though lacking the expression. She
had let the book fall on the grass. I remember how she smiled down at me
with the wisdom of the ages in her eyes, seeking my hand with a gesture
that was almost maternal.

"You and the poets," she said, "you never grow up. I suppose that's the
reason why we love you--and these wonderful visions of freedom you have.
Anyway, it's nice to dream, to recreate the world as one would like to
have it."

"But that's what you and I are doing," I insisted.

"We think we're doing it--or rather you think so," she replied. "And
sometimes, I admit that you almost persuade me to think so. Never quite.
What disturbs me," she continued, "is to find you and the poets founding
your new freedom on new justifications, discarding the old law only to
make a new one,--as though we could ever get away from necessities,
escape from disagreeable things, except in dreams. And then, this
delusion of believing that we are masters of our own destiny--" She
paused and pressed my fingers.

"There you go-back to predestination!" I exclaimed.

"I don't go back to anything, or forward to anything," she exclaimed.
"Women are elemental, but I don't expect you to understand it. Laws and
codes are foreign to us, philosophies and dreams may dazzle us for the
moment, but what we feel underneath and what we yield to are the primal
forces, the great necessities; when we refuse joys it's because we know
these forces by a sort of instinct, when we're overcome it's with a full
knowledge that there's a price. You've talked a great deal, Hugh, about
carving out our future. I listened to you, but I resisted you. It wasn't
the morality that was taught me as a child that made me resist, it was
something deeper than that, more fundamental, something I feel but can't
yet perceive, and yet shall perceive some day. It isn't that I'm clinging
to the hard and fast rules because I fail to see any others, it isn't
that I believe that all people should stick together whether they are
happily married or not, but--I must say it even now--I have a feeling I
can't define that divorce isn't for us. I'm not talking about right and
wrong in the ordinary sense--it's just what I feel. I've ceased to
think."

"Nancy!" I reproached her.

"I can't help it--I don't want to be morbid. Do you remember my asking
you about God?--the first day this began? and whether you had a god?
Well, that's the trouble with us all to-day, we haven't any God, we're
wanderers, drifters. And now it's just life that's got hold of us, my
dear, and swept us away together. That's our justification--if we needed
one--it's been too strong for us." She leaned back against the tree and
closed her eyes. "We're like chips in the torrent of it, Hugh."....

It was not until the shadow of the forest had crept far across the lake
and the darkening waters were still that we rose reluctantly to put the
dishes in the tea basket and start on our homeward journey. The tawny
fires of the sunset were dying down behind us, the mist stealing,
ghostlike, into the valleys below; in the sky a little moon curled like a
freshly cut silver shaving, that presently turned to gold, the white star
above it to fire.

Where the valleys widened we came to silent, decorous little towns and
villages where yellow-lit windows gleaming through the trees suggested
refuge and peace, while we were wanderers in the night. It was Nancy's
mood; and now, in the evening's chill, it recurred to me poignantly. In
one of these villages we passed a church, its doors flung open; the
congregation was singing a familiar hymn. I slowed down the car; I felt
her shoulder pressing against my own, and reached out my hand and found
hers.

"Are you warm enough?" I asked....

We spoke but little on that drive, we had learned the futility of words
to express the greater joys and sorrows, the love that is compounded of
these.

It was late when we turned in between the white dates and made our way up
the little driveway to the farmhouse. I bade her good night on the steps
of the porch.

"You do love me, don't you?" she whispered, clinging to me with a sudden,
straining passion. "You will love me, always no matter what happens?"

"Why, of course, Nancy," I answered.

"I want to hear you say it, 'I love you, I shall love you always.'"

I repeated it fervently....

"No matter what happens?"

"No matter what happens. As if I could help it, Nancy! Why are you so sad
to-night?"

"Ah, Hugh, it makes me sad--I can't tell why. It is so great, it is so
terrible, and yet it's so sweet and beautiful."

She took my face in her hands and pressed a kiss against my forehead....

The next day was dark. At two o'clock in the afternoon the electric light
was still burning over my desk when the telephone rang and I heard
Nancy's voice.

"Is that you, Hugh?"

"Yes."

"I have to go East this afternoon."

"Why?" I asked. Her agitation had communicated itself to me. "I thought
you weren't going until Thursday. What's the matter?"

"I've just had a telegram," she said. "Ham's been hurt--I don't know how
badly--he was thrown from a polo pony this morning at Narragansett, in
practice, and they're taking him to Boston to a private hospital. The
telegram's from Johnny Shephard. I'll be at the house in town at four."

Filled with forebodings I tried in vain to suppress I dropped the work I
was doing and got up and paced the room, pausing now and again to gaze
out of the window at the wet roofs and the grey skies. I was aghast at
the idea of her going to Ham now even though he were hurt badly hurt; and
yet I tried to think it was natural, that it was fine of her to respond
to such a call. And she couldn't very well refuse his summons. But it was
not the news of her husband's accident that inspired the greater fear,
which was quelled and soothed only to rise again when I recalled the note
I had heard in her voice, a note eloquent of tragedy--of tragedy she had
foreseen. At length, unable to remain where I was any longer, I descended
to the street and walked uptown in the rain. The Durrett house was
closed, the blinds of its many windows drawn, but Nancy was watching for
me and opened the door. So used had I grown to seeing her in the simple
linen dresses she had worn in the country, a costume associated with
exclusive possession, that the sight of her travelling suit and hat
renewed in me an agony of apprehension. The unforeseen event seemed to
have transformed her once more. Her veil was drawn up, her face was pale,
in her eyes were traces of tears.

"You're going?" I asked, as I took her hands.

"Hugh, I have to go."

She led me through the dark, shrouded drawing room into the little salon
where the windows were open on the silent city-garden. I took her in my
arms; she did not resist, as I half expected, but clung to me with what
seemed desperation.

"I have to go, dear--you won't make it too hard for me! It's
only--ordinary decency, and there's no one else to go to him."

She drew me to the sofa, her eyes beseeching me.

"Listen, dear, I want you to see it as I see it. I know that you will,
that you do. I should never be able to forgive myself if I stayed away
now, I--neither of us could ever be happy about it. You do see, don't
you?" she implored.

"Yes," I admitted agitatedly.

Her grasp on my hand tightened.

"I knew you would. But it makes me happier to hear you say it."

We sat for a moment in helpless silence, gazing at one another. Slowly
her eyes had filled.

"Have you heard anything more?" I managed to ask.

She drew a telegram from her bag, as though the movement were a relief.

"This is from the doctor in Boston--his name is Magruder. They have got
Ham there, it seems. A horse kicked him in the head, after he fell,--he
had just recovered consciousness."

I took the telegram. The wordy seemed meaningless, all save those of the
last sentence. "The situation is serious, but by no means hopeless."
Nancy had not spoken of that. The ignorant cruelty of its convention! The
man must have known what Hambleton Durrett was! Nancy read my thoughts,
and took the paper from my hand.

"Hugh, dear, if it's hard for you, try to understand that it's terrible
for me to think that he has any claim at all. I realize now, as I never
did before, how wicked it was in me to marry him. I hate him, I can't
bear the thought of going near him."

She fell into wild weeping. I tried to comfort her, who could not comfort
myself; I don't remember my inadequate words. We were overwhelmed,
obliterated by the sense of calamity.... It was she who checked herself
at last by an effort that was almost hysterical.

"I mustn't yield to it!" she said. "It's time to leave and the train goes
at six. No, you mustn't come to the station, Hugh--I don't think I could
stand it. I'll send you a telegram." She rose. "You must go now--you
must."

"You'll come back to me?" I demanded thickly, as I held her.

"Hugh, I am yours, now and always. How can you doubt it?"

At last I released her, when she had begged me again. And I found myself
a little later walking past the familiar, empty houses of those
streets....

The front pages of the evening newspapers announced the accident to
Hambleton Durrett, and added that Mrs. Durrett, who had been lingering in
the city, had gone to her husband's bedside. The morning papers contained
more of biography and ancestry, but had little to add to the bulletin;
and there was no lack of speculation at the Club and elsewhere as to
Ham's ability to rally from such a shock. I could not bear to listen to
these comments: they were violently distasteful to me. The unforeseen
accident and Nancy's sudden departure had thrown my life completely out
of gear: I could not attend to business, I dared not go away lest the
news from Nancy be delayed. I spent the hours in an exhausting mental
state that alternated between hope and fear, a state of unmitigated,
intense desire, of balked realization, sometimes heightening into that
sheer terror I had felt when I had detected over the telephone that note
in her voice that seemed of despair. Had she had a presentiment, all
along, that something would occur to separate us? As I went back over the
hours we had passed together since she had acknowledged her love, in
spite of myself the conviction grew on me that she had never believed in
the reality of our future. Indeed, she had expressed her disbelief in
words. Had she been looking all along for a sign--a sign of wrath? And
would she accept this accident of Ham's as such?

Retrospection left me trembling and almost sick.

It was not until the second morning after her departure that I received a
telegram giving the name of her Boston hotel, and saying that there was
to be a consultation that day, and as soon as it had taken place she
would write. Such consolation as I could gather from it was derived from
four words at the end,--she missed me dreadfully. Some tremor of pity for
her entered into my consciousness, without mitigating greatly the
wildness of my resentment, of my forebodings.

I could bear no longer the city, the Club, the office, the daily contact
with my associates and clients. Six hours distant, near Rossiter, was a
small resort in the mountains of which I had heard. I telegraphed Nancy
to address me there, notified the office, packed my bag, and waited
impatiently for midday, when I boarded the train. At seven I reached a
little station where a stage was waiting to take me to Callender's Mill.

It was not until morning that I beheld my retreat, when little wisps of
vapour were straying over the surface of the lake, and the steep green
slopes that rose out of the water on the western side were still in
shadow. The hotel, a much overgrown and altered farm-house, stood,
surrounded by great trees, in an ancient clearing that sloped gently to
the water's edge, where an old-fashioned, octagonal summerhouse
overlooked a landing for rowboats. The resort, indeed, was a survival of
simpler times....

In spite of the thirty-odd guests, people of very moderate incomes who
knew the place and had come here year after year, I was as much alone as
if I had been the only sojourner. The place was so remote, so peaceful in
contrast to the city I had left, which had become intolerable. And at
night, during hours of wakefulness, the music of the waters falling over
the dam was soothing. I used to walk down there and sit on the stones of
the ruined mill; or climb to the crests on the far side of the pond to
gaze for hours westward where the green billows of the Alleghenies lost
themselves in the haze. I had discovered a new country; here, when our
trials should be over, I would bring Nancy, and I found distraction in
choosing sites for a bungalow. In my soul hope flowered with little
watering. Uncertain news was good news. After two days of an impatience
all but intolerable, her first letter arrived, I learned that the
specialists had not been able to make a diagnosis, and I began to take
heart again. At times, she said, Ham was delirious and difficult to
manage; at other times he sank into a condition of coma; and again he
seemed to know her and Ralph, who had come up from Southampton, where he
had been spending the summer. One doctor thought that Ham's remarkable
vitality would pull him through, in spite of what his life had been. The
shock--as might have been surmised--had affected the brain.... The
letters that followed contained no additional news; she did not dwell on
the depressing reactions inevitable from the situation in which she found
herself--one so much worse than mine; she expressed a continual longing
for me; and yet I had trouble to convince myself that they did not lack
the note of reassurance for which I strained as I eagerly scanned
them--of reassurance that she had no intention of permitting her
husband's condition to interfere with that ultimate happiness on which it
seemed my existence depended. I tried to account for the absence of this
note by reflecting that the letters were of necessity brief, hurriedly
scratched off at odd moments; and a natural delicacy would prevent her
from referring to our future at such a time. They recorded no change in
Ham's condition save that the periods of coma had ceased. The doctors
were silent, awaiting the arrival in this country of a certain New York
specialist who was abroad. She spent most of her days at the hospital,
returning to the hotel at night exhausted: the people she knew in the
various resorts around Boston had been most kind, sending her flowers,
and calling when in town to inquire. At length came the news that the New
York doctor was home again; and coming to Boston. In that letter was a
sentence which rang like a cry in my ears: "Oh, Hugh, I think these
doctors know now what the trouble is, I think I know. They are only
waiting for Dr. Jameson to confirm it."

It was always an effort for me to control my impatience after the first
rattling was heard in the morning of the stage that brought the mail, and
I avoided the waiting group in front of the honeycombed partition of
boxes beside the "office." On the particular morning of which I am now
writing the proprietor himself handed me a letter of ominous thickness
which I took with me down to the borders of the lake before tearing open
the flap. In spite of the calmness and restraint of the first lines,
because of them, I felt creeping over me an unnerving sensation I knew
for dread....

"Hugh, the New York doctor has been here. It is as I have feared for some
weeks, but I couldn't tell you until I was sure. Ham is not exactly
insane, but he is childish. Sometimes I think that is even worse. I have
had a talk with Dr. Jameson, who has simply confirmed the opinion which
the other physicians have gradually been forming. The accident has
precipitated a kind of mental degeneration, but his health, otherwise,
will not be greatly affected.

"Jameson was kind, but very frank, for which I was grateful. He did not
hesitate to say that it would have been better if the accident had been
fatal. Ham won't be helpless, physically. Of course he won't be able to
play polo, or take much active exercise. If he were to be helpless, I
could feel that I might be of some use, at least of more use. He knows
his friends. Some of them have been here to see him, and he talks quite
rationally with them, with Ralph, with me, only once in a while he says
something silly. It seems odd to write that he is not responsible, since
he never has been,--his condition is so queer that I am at a loss to
describe it. The other morning, before I arrived from the hotel and when
the nurse was downstairs, he left the hospital, and we found him several
blocks along Commonwealth Avenue, seated on a bench, without a hat--he
was annoyed that he had forgotten it, and quite sensible otherwise. We
began by taking him out every morning in an automobile. To-day he had a
walk with Ralph, and insisted on going into a club here, to which they
both belong. Two or three men were there whom they knew, and he talked to
them about his fall from the pony and told them just how it happened.

"At such times only a close observer can tell from his manner that
everything is not right.

"Ralph, who always could manage him, prevented his taking anything to
drink. He depends upon Ralph, and it will be harder for me when he is not
with us. His attitude towards me is just about what it has always been. I
try to amuse him by reading the newspapers and with games; we have a
chess-board. At times he seems grateful, and then he will suddenly grow
tired and hard to control. Once or twice I have had to call in Dr.
Magruder, who owns the hospital.

"It has been terribly hard for me to write all this, but I had to do it,
in order that you might understand the situation completely. Hugh dear, I
simply can't leave him. This has been becoming clearer and clearer to me
all these weeks, but it breaks my heart to have to write it. I have
struggled against it, I have lain awake nights trying to find
justification for going to you, but it is stronger than I. I am afraid of
it--I suppose that's the truth. Even in those unforgettable days at the
farm I was afraid of it, although I did not know what it was to be. Call
it what you like, say that I am weak. I am willing to acknowledge that it
is weakness. I wish no credit for it, it gives me no glow, the thought of
it makes my heart sick. I'm not big enough I suppose that's the real
truth. I once might have been; but I'm not now,--the years of the life I
chose have made a coward of me. It's not a question of morals or duty
it's simply that I can't take the thing for which my soul craves. It's
too late. If I believed in prayer I'd pray that you might pity and
forgive me. I really can't expect you to understand what I can't myself
explain. Oh, I need pity--and I pity you, my dear. I can only hope that
you will not suffer as I shall, that you will find relief away to work
out your life. But I will not change my decision, I cannot change it.
Don't come on, don't attempt to see me now. I can't stand any more than I
am standing, I should lose my mind."

Here the letter was blotted, and some words scratched out. I was unable
to reconstruct them.

"Ralph and I," she proceeded irrelevantly, "have got Ham to agree to go
to Buzzard's Bay, and we have taken a house near Wareham. Write and tell
me that you forgive and pity me. I love you even more, if such a thing is
possible, than I have ever loved you. This is my only comfort and
compensation, that I have had and have been able to feel such a love, and
I know I shall always feel it.--Nancy." The first effect of this letter
was a paralyzing one. I was unable to realize or believe the thing that
had happened to me, and I sat stupidly holding the sheet in my hand until
I heard voices along the path, and then I fled instinctively, like an
animal, to hide my injury from any persons I might meet. I wandered down
the shore of the lake, striking at length into the woods, seeking some
inviolable shelter; nor was I conscious of physical effort until I found
myself panting near the crest of the ridge where there was a pasture,
which some ancient glacier had strewn with great boulders. Beside one of
these I sank. Heralded by the deep tones of bells, two steers appeared
above the shoulder of a hill and stood staring at me with bovine
curiosity, and fell to grazing again. A fleet of white clouds, like ships
pressed with sail, hurried across the sky as though racing for some
determined port; and the shadows they cast along the hillsides
accentuated the high brightness of the day, emphasized the vivid and
hateful beauty of the landscape. My numbness began to be penetrated by
shooting pains, and I grasped little by little the fulness of my
calamity, until I was in the state of wild rebellion of one whom life for
the first time has foiled in a supreme desire. There was no fate about
this thing, it was just an absurd accident. The operation of the laws of
nature had sent a man to the ground: another combination of circumstances
would have killed him, still another, and he would have arisen unhurt.
But because of this particular combination my happiness was ruined, and
Nancy's! She had not expected me to understand. Well, I didn't
understand, I had no pity, in that hour I felt a resentment almost
amounting to hate; I could see only unreasoning superstition in the woman
I wanted above everything in the world. Women of other days had indeed
renounced great loves: the thing was not unheard of. But that this should
happen in these times--and to me! It was unthinkable that Nancy of all
women shouldn't be emancipated from the thralls of religious inhibition!
And if it wasn't "conscience," what was it?

Was it, as she said, weakness, lack of courage to take life when it was
offered her?.... I was suddenly filled with the fever of composing
arguments to change a decision that appeared to me to be the result of a
monstrous caprice and delusion; writing them out, as they occurred to me,
in snatches on the backs of envelopes--her envelopes. Then I proceeded to
make the draft of a letter, the effort required for composition easing me
until the draft was finished; when I started for the hotel, climbing
fences, leaping streams, making my way across rock faces and through
woods; halting now and then as some reenforcing argument occurred to me
to write it into my draft at the proper place until the sheets were
interlined and blurred and almost illegible. It was already three o'clock
when I reached my room, and the mail left at four. I began to copy and
revise my scrawl, glancing from time to time at my watch, which I had
laid on the table. Hurriedly washing my face and brushing my hair, I
arrived downstairs just as the stage was leaving....

After the letter had gone still other arguments I might have added began
to occur to me, and I regretted that I had not softened some of the
things I wrote and made others more emphatic. In places argument had
degenerated into abject entreaty. Never had my desire been so importunate
as now, when I was in continual terror of losing her. Nor could I see how
I was to live without her, life lacking a motive being incomprehensible:
yet the fire of optimism in me, though died down to ashes, would not be
extinguished. At moments it flared up into what almost amounted to a
conviction that she could not resist my appeal. I had threatened to go to
her, and more than once I started packing....

Three days later I received a brief note in which she managed to convey
to me, though tenderly and compassionately, that her decision was
unalterable. If I came on, she would refuse to see me. I took the
afternoon stage and went back to the city, to plunge into affairs again;
but for weeks my torture was so acute that it gives me pain to recall it,
to dwell upon it to-day.... And yet, amazing as it may seem, there came a
time when hope began to dawn again out of my despair. Perhaps my life had
not been utterly shattered, after all: perhaps Ham Durrett would get
well: such things happened, and Nancy would no longer have an excuse for
continuing to refuse me. Little by little my anger at what I had now
become convinced was her weakness cooled, and--though paradoxically I had
continued to love her in spite of the torture for which she was
responsible, in spite of the resentment I felt, I melted toward her. True
to my habit of reliance on miracles, I tried to reconcile myself to a
period of waiting.

Nevertheless I was faintly aware--consequent upon if not as a result of
this tremendous experience--of some change within me. It was not only
that I felt at times a novel sense of uneasiness at being a prey to
accidents, subject to ravages of feeling; the unity of mind that had
hitherto enabled me to press forward continuously toward a concrete goal
showed signs of breaking up:--the goal had lost its desirability. I
seemed oddly to be relapsing into the states of questioning that had
characterized my earlier years. Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to
say that I actually began to speculate on the possible existence of a
realm where the soul might find a refuge from the buffetings of life,
from which the philosophy of prosperity was powerless to save it....




XXIV.

It was impossible, of course, that my friends should have failed to
perceive the state of disorganization I was in, and some of them at least
must have guessed its cause. Dickinson, on his return from Maine, at once
begged me to go away. I rather congratulated myself that Tom had chosen
these months for a long-delayed vacation in Canada. His passion for
fishing still persisted.

In spite of the fact I have noted, that I had lost a certain zest for
results, to keep busy seemed to be the only way to relieve my mind of an
otherwise intolerable pressure: and I worked sometimes far into the
evening. In the background of my thoughts lay the necessity of coming to
a decision on the question of the senatorship; several times Dickinson
and Gorse had spoken of it, and I was beginning to get letters from
influential men in other parts of the state. They seemed to take it for
granted that there was no question of my refusing. The time came when I
had grown able to consider the matter with a degree of calmness. What
struck me first, when I began to debate upon it, was that the senatorship
offered a new and possibly higher field for my energies, while at the
same time the office would be a logical continuation of a signal legal
career. I was now unable to deny that I no longer felt any exhilaration
at the prospect of future legal conquests similar to those of the past;
but once in the Senate, I might regain something of that intense
conviction of fighting for a just and sound cause with which Theodore
Wading had once animated me: fighting there, in the Capitol at
Washington, would be different; no stigma of personal gain attached to
it; it offered a nearer approach to the ideal I had once more begun to
seek, held out hopes of a renewal of my unity of mind. Mr. Watling had
declared that there was something to fight for; I had even glimpsed that
something, but I had to confess that for some years I had not been
consciously fighting for it. I needed something to fight for.

There was the necessity, however, of renewing my calculations. If
Hambleton Durrett should recover, even during the ensuing year, and if
Nancy relented it would not be possible for us to be divorced and married
for some time. I still clung tenaciously to the belief that there were no
relationships wholly unaffected by worldly triumphs, and as Senator I
should have strengthened my position. It did not strike me--even after
all my experience--that such a course as I now contemplated had a
parallel in the one that I had pursued in regard to her when I was young.

It seemed fitting that Theodore Watling should be the first to know of my
decision. I went to Washington to meet him. It pained me to see him
looking more worn, but he was still as cheerful, as mentally vigorous as
ever, and I perceived that he did not wish to dwell upon his illness. I
did venture to expostulate with him on the risk he must be running in
serving out his term. We were sitting in the dining room of his house.

"We've only one life to live, Hugh," he answered, smiling at me, "and we
might as well get all out of it we can. A few years more or less doesn't
make much difference--and I ought to be satisfied. I'd resign now, to
please my wife, to please my friends, but we can't trust this governor to
appoint a safe man. How little we suspected when we elected him that he'd
become infected. You never can tell, in these days, can you?"

It was the note of devotion to his cause that I had come to hear: I felt
it renewing me, as I had hoped. The threat of disease, the louder
clamourings of the leaders of the mob had not sufficed to dismay
him--though he admitted more concern over these. My sympathy and
affection were mingled with the admiration he never failed to inspire.

"But you, Hugh," he said concernedly, "you're not looking very well, my
son. You must manage to take a good rest before coming here--before the
campaign you'll have to go through. We can't afford to have anything
happen to you--you're too young."

I wondered whether he had heard anything.... He spoke to me again about
the work to be done, the work he looked to me to carry on.

"We'll have to watch for our opportunity," he said, "and when it comes we
can handle this new movement not by crushing it, but by guiding it. I've
come to the conclusion that there is a true instinct in it, that there
are certain things we have done which have been mistakes, and which we
can't do any more. But as for this theory that all wisdom resides in the
people, it's buncombe. What we have to do is to work out a practical
programme."

His confidence in me had not diminished. It helped to restore confidence
in myself.

The weather was cool and bracing for September, and as we drove in a
motor through the beautiful avenues of the city he pointed out a house
for me on one of the circles, one of those distinguished residences,
instances of a nascent good taste, that are helping to redeem the
polyglot aspect of our national capital. Mr. Watling spoke--rather
tactfully, I thought--of Maude and the children, and ventured the surmise
that they would be returning in a few months. I interpreted this, indeed,
as in rather the nature of a kindly hint that such a procedure would be
wise in view of the larger life now dawning for me, but I made no
comment.... He even sympathized with Nancy Durrett.

"She did the right thing, Hugh," he said, with the admirable casual
manner he possessed of treating subjects which he knew to be delicate.
"Nancy's a fine woman. Poor devil!" This in reference to Ham....

Mr. Watling reassured me on the subject of his own trouble, maintaining
that he had many years left if he took care. He drove me to the station.
I travelled homeward somewhat lifted out of myself by this visit to him;
with some feeling of spaciousness derived from Washington itself, with
its dignified Presidential Mansion among the trees, its granite shaft
drawing the eye upward, with its winged Capitol serene upon the hill.
Should we deliver these heirlooms to the mob? Surely Democracy meant more
than that!

All this time I had been receiving, at intervals, letters from Maude and
the children. Maude's were the letters of a friend, and I found it easy
to convince myself that their tone was genuine, that the separation had
brought contentment to her; and those independent and self-sufficient
elements in her character I admired now rather than deplored. At Etretat,
which she found much to her taste, she was living quietly, but making
friends with some American and English, and one French family of the same
name, Buffon, as the great naturalist. The father was a retired silk
manufacturer; they now resided in Paris, and had been very kind in
helping her to get an apartment in that city for the winter. She had
chosen one on the Avenue Kleber, not far from the Arc. It is interesting,
after her arraignment of me, that she should have taken such pains to
record their daily life for my benefit in her clear, conscientious
handwriting. I beheld Biddy, her dresses tucked above slim little knees,
playing in the sand on the beach, her hair flying in the wind and lighted
by the sun which gave sparkle to the sea. I saw Maude herself in her
beach chair, a book lying in her lap, its pages whipped by the breeze.
And there was Moreton, who must be proving something of a handful, since
he had fought with the French boys on the beach and thrown a "rock"
through the windows of the Buffon family. I remember one of his
letters--made perfect after much correcting and scratching,--in which he
denounced both France and the French, and appealed to me to come over at
once to take him home. Maude had enclosed it without comment. This letter
had not been written under duress, as most of his were.

Matthew's letters--he wrote faithfully once a week--I kept in a little
pile by themselves and sometimes reread them. I wondered whether it were
because of the fact that I was his father--though a most inadequate
one--that I thought them somewhat unusual. He had learned French--Maude
wrote--with remarkable ease. I was particularly struck in these letters
with the boy's power of observation, with his facile use of language,
with the vivid simplicity of his descriptions of the life around him, of
his experiences at school. The letters were thoughtful--not dashed off in
a hurry; they gave evidence in every line of the delicacy of feeling that
was, I think, his most appealing quality, and I put them down with the
impression strong on me that he, too, longed to return home, but would
not say so. There was a certain pathos in this youthful restraint that
never failed to touch me, even in those times when I had been most
obsessed with love and passion.... The curious effect of these letters
was that of knowing more than they expressed. He missed me, he wished to
know when I was coming over. And I was sometimes at a loss whether to be
grateful to Maude or troubled because she had as yet given him no hint of
our separation. What effect would it have on him when it should be
revealed to him?.... It was through Matthew I began to apprehend certain
elements in Maude I had both failed to note and appreciate; her little
mannerisms that jarred, her habits of thought that exasperated, were
forgotten, and I was forced to confess that there was something fine in
the achievement of this attitude of hers that was without ill will or
resentment, that tacitly acknowledged my continued rights and interest in
the children. It puzzled and troubled me.

The Citizens Union began its campaign early that autumn, long before the
Hons. Jonathan Parks and Timothy MacGuire--Republican and Democratic
candidates for Mayor--thought of going on the stump. For several weeks
the meetings were held in the small halls and club rooms of various
societies and orders in obscure portions of the city.

The forces of "privilege and corruption" were not much alarmed. Perry
Blackwood accused the newspapers of having agreed to a "conspiracy of
silence"; but, as Judah B. Tallant remarked, it was the business of the
press to give the public what it wanted, and the public as yet hadn't
shown much interest in the struggle being waged in its behalf. When the
meetings began to fill up it would be time to report them in the columns
of the Era. Meanwhile, however, the city had been quietly visited by an
enterprising representative of a New York periodical of the new type that
developed with the opening years of the century--one making a specialty
of passionate "muck-raking." And since the people of America love nothing
better than being startled, Yardley's Weekly had acquired a circulation
truly fabulous. The emissary of the paper had attended several of the
Citizens meetings; interviewed, it seemed, many persons: the result was a
revelation to make the blood of politicians, capitalists and corporation
lawyers run cold. I remember very well the day it appeared on our news
stands, and the heated denunciations it evoked at the Boyne Club. Ralph
Hambleton was the only one who took it calmly, who seemed to derive a
certain enjoyment from the affair. Had he been a less privileged person,
they would have put him in chancery. Leonard Dickinson asserted that
Yardley's should be sued for libel.

"There's just one objection to that," said Ralph.

"What?" asked the banker.

"It isn't libel."

"I defy them to prove it," Dickinson snapped. "It's a d--d outrage! There
isn't a city or village in the country that hasn't exactly the same
conditions. There isn't any other way to run a city--"

"That's what Mr. Krebs says," Ralph replied, "that the people ought to
put Judd Jason officially in charge. He tells 'em that Jason is probably
a more efficient man than Democracy will be able to evolve in a coon's
age, that we ought to take him over, instead of letting the capitalists
have him."

"Did Krebs say that?" Dickinson demanded.

"You can't have read the article very thoroughly, Leonard," Ralph
commented. "I'm afraid you only picked out the part of it that
compliments you. This fellow seems to have been struck by Krebs, says
he's a coming man, that he's making original contributions to the
people's cause. Quite a tribute. You ought to read it."

Dickinson, who had finished his lunch, got up and left the table after
lighting his cigar. Ralph's look followed him amusedly.

"I'm afraid it's time to cash in and be good," he observed.

"We'll get that fellow Krebs yet," said Grierson, wrathfully. Miller
Gorse alone made no remarks, but in spite of his silence he emanated an
animosity against reform and reformers that seemed to charge the very
atmosphere, and would have repressed any man but Ralph....

I sat in my room at the Club that night and reread the article, and if
its author could have looked into my soul and observed the emotions he
had set up, he would, no doubt, have experienced a grim satisfaction. For
I, too, had come in for a share of the comment. Portions of the matter
referring to me stuck in my brain like tar, such as the reference to my
father, to the honoured traditions of the Parets and the Brecks which I
had deliberately repudiated. I had less excuse than many others. The part
I had played in various reprehensible transactions such as the Riverside
Franchise and the dummy telephone company affair was dwelt upon, and I
was dismissed with the laconic comment that I was a graduate of
Harvard....

My associates and myself were referred to collectively as a "gang," with
the name of our city prefixed; we were linked up with and compared to the
gangs of other cities--the terminology used to describe us being that of
the police reporter. We "operated," like burglars; we "looted": only, it
was intimated in one place, "second-story men" were angels compared to
us, who had never seen the inside of a penitentiary. Here we were, all
arraigned before the bar of public opinion, the relentless Dickinson, the
surfeited Scherer, the rapacious Grierson, the salacious Tallant. I have
forgotten what Miller Gorse was called; nothing so classic as a Minotaur;
Judd Jason was a hairy spider who spread his net and lurked in darkness
for his victims. Every adjective was called upon to do its duty.... Even
Theodore Watling did not escape, but it was intimated that he would be
dealt with in another connection in a future number.

The article had a crude and terrifying power, and the pain it aroused,
following almost immediately upon the suffering caused by my separation
from Nancy, was cumulative in character and effect, seeming actively to
reenforce the unwelcome conviction I had been striving to suppress, that
the world, which had long seemed so acquiescent in conforming itself to
my desires, was turning against me.

Though my hunger for Nancy was still gnawing, I had begun to fear that I
should never get her now; and the fact that she would not even write to
me seemed to confirm this.

Then there was Matthew--I could not bear to think that he would ever read
that article.

In vain I tried that night to belittle to myself its contentions and
probable results, to summon up the heart to fight; in vain I sought to
reconstruct the point of view, to gain something of that renewed hope and
power, of devotion to a cause I had carried away from Washington after my
talk with Theodore Watling. He, though stricken, had not wavered in his
faith. Why should I?

Whether or not as the result of the article in Yardley's, which had been
read more or less widely in the city, the campaign of the Citizens Union
gained ground, and people began to fill the little halls to hear Krebs,
who was a candidate for district attorney. Evidently he was entertaining
and rousing them, for his reputation spread, and some of the larger halls
were hired. Dickinson and Gorse became alarmed, and one morning the
banker turned up at the Club while I was eating my breakfast.

"Look here, Hugh," he said, "we may as well face the fact that we've got
a fight ahead of us,--we'll have to start some sort of a back-fire right
away."

"You think Greenhalge has a chance of being elected?" I asked.

"I'm not afraid of Greenhalge, but of this fellow Krebs. We can't afford
to have him district attorney, to let a demagogue like him get a start.
The men the Republicans and Democrats have nominated are worse than
useless. Parks is no good, and neither is MacGuire. If only we could have
foreseen this thing we might have had better candidates put up--but
there's no use crying over spilt milk. You'll have to go on the stump,
Hugh--that's all there is to it. You can answer him, and the newspapers
will print your speeches in full. Besides it will help you when it comes
to the senatorship."

The mood of extreme dejection that had followed the appearance of the
article in Yardley's did not last. I had acquired aggressiveness: an
aggressiveness, however, differing in quality from the feeling I once
would have had,--for this arose from resentment, not from belief. It was
impossible to live in the atmosphere created by the men with whom I
associated--especially at such a time--without imbibing something of the
emotions animating them,--even though I had been free from these emotions
myself. I, too, had begun to be filled with a desire for revenge; and
when this desire was upon me I did not have in my mind a pack of
reformers, or even the writer of the article in Yardley's. I thought of
Hermann Krebs. He was my persecutor; it seemed to me that he always had
been....

"Well, I'll make speeches if you like," I said to Dickinson.

"I'm glad," he replied. "We're all agreed, Gorse and the rest of us, that
you ought to. We've got to get some ginger into this fight, and a good
deal more money, I'm afraid. Jason sends word we'll need more. By the
way, Hugh, I wish you'd drop around and talk to Jason and get his idea of
how the land lies."

I went, this time in the company of Judah B. Tallant. Naturally we didn't
expect to see Mr. Jason perturbed, nor was he. He seemed to be in an odd,
rather exultant mood--if he can be imagined as exultant. We were not long
in finding out what pleased him--nothing less than the fact that Mr.
Krebs had proposed him for mayor!

"D--d if I wouldn't make a good one, too," he said. "D--d if I wouldn't
show 'em what a real mayor is!"

"I guess there's no danger of your ever being mayor, Judd," Tallant
observed, with a somewhat uneasy jocularity.

"I guess there isn't, Judah," replied the boss, quickly, but with a
peculiar violet flash in his eyes. "They won't ever make you mayor,
either, if I can help it. And I've a notion I can. I'd rather see Krebs
mayor."

"You don't think he meant to propose you seriously," Tallant exclaimed.

"I'm not a d--d fool," said the boss. "But I'll say this, that he half
meant it. Krebs has a head-piece on him, and I tell you if any of this
reform dope is worth anything his is. There's some sense in what he's
talking, and if all the voters was like him you might get a man like me
for mayor. But they're not, and I guess they never will be."

"Sure," said Mr. Jason. "The people are dotty--there ain't one in ten
thousand understands what he's driving at when he gets off things like
that. They take it on the level."

Tallant reflected.

"By gum, I believe you're right," he said. "You think they will blow up?"
he added.

"Krebs is the whole show, I tell you. They wouldn't be anywhere without
him. The yaps that listen to him don't understand him, but somehow he
gets under their skins. Have you seen him lately?"

"Never saw him," replied Tallant.

"Well, if you had, you'd know he was a sick man."

"Sick!" I exclaimed. "How do you know?"

"It's my business to know things," said Judd Jason, and added to Tallant,
"that your reporters don't find out."

"What's the matter with him?" Tallant demanded. A slight exultation in
his tone did not escape me.

"You've got me there," said Jason, "but I have it pretty straight. Any
one of your reporters will tell you that he looks sick."....

The Era took Mr. Jason's advice and began to publish those portions of
Krebs's speeches that were seemingly detrimental to his own cause. Other
conservative newspapers followed suit....

Both Tallant and I were surprised to hear these sentiments out of the
mouth of Mr. Jason.

"You don't think that crowd's going to win, do you?" asked the owner of
the Era, a trifle uneasily.

"Win!" exclaimed the boss contemptuously. "They'll blow up, and you'll
never hear of 'em. I'm not saying we won't need a little--powder," he
added--which was one of the matters we had come to talk about. He gave us
likewise a very accurate idea of the state of the campaign, mentioning
certain things that ought to be done. "You ought to print some of Krebs's
speeches, Judah, like what he said about me. They're talking it all
around that you're afraid to."

"Print things like his proposal to make you mayor!"

The information that I was to enter the lists against Krebs was received
with satisfaction and approval by those of our friends who were called in
to assist at a council of war in the directors' room of the Corn National
Bank. I was flattered by the confidence these men seemed to have in my
ability. All were in a state of anger against the reformers; none of them
seriously alarmed as to the actual outcome of the campaign,--especially
when I had given them the opinion of Mr. Jason. What disturbed them was
the possible effect upon the future of the spread of heretical,
socialistic doctrines, and it was decided to organize a publicity bureau,
independently of the two dominant political parties, to be in charge of a
certain New York journalist who made a business of such affairs, who was
to be paid a sum commensurate with the emergency. He was to have carte
blanche, even in the editorial columns of our newspapers. He was also to
flood the city with "literature." We had fought many wars before this,
and we planned our campaign precisely as though we were dealing with one
of those rebellions in the realm of finance of which I have given an
instance. But now the war chest of our opponents was negligible; and we
were comforted by the thought that, however disagreeable the affair might
be while it lasted, in the long run capital was invincible.

Before setting to work to prepare my speeches it was necessary to make an
attempt to familiarize myself with the seemingly unprecedented line of
argument Krebs had evolved--apparently as disconcerting to his friends as
to his opponents. It occurred to me, since I did not care to attend
Krebs's meetings, to ask my confidential stenographer, Miss McCoy, to go
to Turner's Hall and take down one of his speeches verbatim. Miss McCoy
had never intruded on me her own views, and I took for granted that they
coincided with my own.

"I'd like to get an accurate record of what he is saying," I told her.
"Do you mind going?"

"No, I'll be glad to go, Mr. Paret," she said quietly.

"He's doing more harm than we thought," I remarked, after a moment. "I've
known him for a good many years. He's clever. He's sowing seeds of
discontent, starting trouble that will be very serious unless it is
headed off."

Miss McCoy made no comment....

Before noon the next day she brought in the speech, neatly typewritten,
and laid it on my desk. Looking up and catching her eye just as she was
about to withdraw, I was suddenly impelled to ask:--"Well, what did you
think of it?"

She actually flushed, for the first time in my dealings with her
betraying a feeling which I am sure she deemed most unprofessional.

"I liked it, Mr. Paret," she replied simply, and I knew that she had
understated. It was quite apparent that Krebs had captivated her. I tried
not to betray my annoyance.

"Was there a good audience?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"How many do you think?"

She hesitated.

"It isn't a very large hall, you know. I should say it would hold about
eight hundred people."

"And--it was full?"--I persisted.

"Oh, yes, there were numbers of people standing."

I thought I detected in her tone-although it was not apologetic--a desire
to spare my feelings. She hesitated a moment more, and then left the
room, closing the door softly behind her...

Presently I took up the pages and began to read. The language was simple
and direct, an appeal to common sense, yet the words strangely seemed
charged with an emotional power that I found myself resisting. When at
length I laid down the sheets I wondered whether it were imagination, or
the uncomfortable result of memories of conversations I had had with him.

I was, however, confronted with the task of refuting his arguments: but
with exasperating ingenuity, he seemed to have taken the wind out of our
sails. It is difficult to answer a man who denies the cardinal principle
of American democracy,--that a good mayor or a governor may be made out
of a dog-catcher. He called this the Cincinnatus theory: that any
American, because he was an American, was fit for any job in the gift of
state or city or government, from sheriff to Ambassador to Great Britain.
Krebs substituted for this fallacy what may be called the doctrine of
potentiality. If we inaugurated and developed a system of democratic
education, based on scientific principles, and caught the dog-catcher,
young enough, he might become a statesman or thinker or scientist and
make his contribution to the welfare and progress of the nation: again,
he might not; but he would have had his chance, he would not be in a
position to complain.

Here was a doctrine, I immediately perceived, which it would be suicidal
to attempt to refute. It ought, indeed, to have been my line. With a
growing distaste I began to realize that all there was left for me was to
flatter a populace that Krebs, paradoxically, belaboured. Never in the
history of American "uplift" had an electorate been in this manner wooed!
upbraided for expediency, a proneness to demand immediate results, an
unwillingness to think, yes, and an inability to think straight. Such an
electorate deserved to be led around by the nose by the Jasons and
Dickinsons, the Gorses and the Griersons and the Parets.

Yes, he had mentioned me. That gave me a queer sensation. How is one to
handle an opponent who praises one with a delightful irony? We, the
Dickinsons, Griersons, Parets, Jasons, etc., had this virtue at least,
and it was by no means the least of the virtues,--that we did think. We
had a plan, a theory of government, and we carried it out. He was
inclined to believe that morality consisted largely, if not wholly, in
clear thinking, and not in the precepts of the Sunday-school. That was
the trouble with the so-called "reform" campaigns, they were conducted on
lines of Sunday-school morality; the people worked themselves up into a
sort of revivalist frenzy, an emotional state which, if the truth were
told, was thoroughly immoral, unreasonable and hypocritical: like all
frenzies, as a matter of course it died down after the campaign was over.
Moreover, the American people had shown that they were unwilling to make
any sacrifices for the permanent betterment of conditions, and as soon as
their incomes began to fall off they turned again to the bosses and
capitalists like an abject flock of sheep.

He went on to explain that he wasn't referring now to that part of the
electorate known as the labour element, the men who worked with their
hands in mills, factories, etc. They had their faults, yet they possessed
at least the virtue of solidarity, a willingness to undergo sacrifices in
order to advance the standard of conditions; they too had a tenacity of
purpose and a plan, such as it was, which the small business men, the
clerks lacked....

We must wake up to the fact that we shouldn't get Utopia by turning out
Mr. Jason and the highly efficient gentlemen who hired and financed him.
It wasn't so simple as that. Utopia was not an achievement after all, but
an undertaking, a state of mind, the continued overcoming of resistance
by a progressive education and effort. And all this talk of political and
financial "wickedness" was rubbish; the wickedness they complained of did
not reside merely in individuals it was a social disorder, or rather an
order that no longer suited social conditions. If the so-called good
citizens would take the trouble to educate themselves, to think instead
of allowing their thinking to be done for them they would see that the
"evils" which had been published broadcast were merely the symptoms of
that disease which had come upon the social body through their collective
neglect and indifference. They held up their hands in horror at the
spectacle of a commercial, licensed prostitution, they shunned the
prostitute and the criminal; but there was none of us, if honest, who
would not exclaim when he saw them, "there, but for the Grace of God, go
I!" What we still called "sin" was largely the result of lack of
opportunity, and the active principle of society as at present organized
tended more and more to restrict opportunity. Lack of opportunity, lack
of proper nutrition,--these made sinners by the wholesale; made, too,
nine-tenths of the inefficient of whom we self-righteously complained. We
had a national philosophy that measured prosperity in dollars and cents,
included in this measurement the profits of liquor dealers who were
responsible for most of our idiots. So long as we set our hearts on that
kind of prosperity, so long as we failed to grasp the simple and
practical fact that the greatest assets of a nation are healthy and sane
and educated, clear-thinking human beings, just so long was prostitution
logical, Riverside Franchises, traction deals, Judd Jasons, and the
respectable gentlemen who continued to fill their coffers out of the
public purse inevitable.

The speaker turned his attention to the "respectable gentlemen" with the
full coffers, amongst whom I was by implication included. We had simply
succeeded under the rules to which society tacitly agreed. That was our
sin. He ventured to say that there were few men in the hall who at the
bottom of their hearts did not envy and even honour our success. He, for
one, did not deem these "respectable gentlemen" utterly reprehensible; he
was sufficiently emancipated to be sorry for us. He suspected that we
were not wholly happy in being winners in such a game,--he even believed
that we could wish as much as any others to change the game and the
prizes. What we represented was valuable energy misdirected and
misplaced, and in a reorganized community he would not abolish us, but
transform us: transform, at least, the individuals of our type, who were
the builders gone wrong under the influence of an outworn philosophy. We
might be made to serve the city and the state with the same effectiveness
that we had served ourselves.

If the best among the scientists, among the university professors and
physicians were willing to labour--and they were--for the advancement of
humanity, for the very love of the work and service without
disproportionate emoluments, without the accumulation of a wealth
difficult to spend, why surely these big business men had been moulded in
infancy from no different clay! All were Americans. Instance after
instance might be cited of business men and lawyers of ability making
sacrifices, giving up their personal affairs in order to take places of
honour in the government in which the salary was comparatively small,
proving that even these were open to inducements other than merely
mercenary ones.

It was unfortunate, he went on, but true, that the vast majority of
people of voting age in the United States to-day who thought they had
been educated were under the obligation to reeducate themselves. He
suggested, whimsically, a vacation school for Congress and all
legislative bodies as a starter. Until the fact of the utter inadequacy
of the old education were faced, there was little or no hope of solving
the problems that harassed us. One thing was certain--that they couldn't
be solved by a rule-of-thumb morality. Coincident with the appearance of
these new and mighty problems, perhaps in response to them, a new and
saner view of life itself was being developed by the world's thinkers,
new sciences were being evolved, correlated sciences; a psychology making
a truer analysis of human motives, impulses, of human possibilities; an
economics and a theory of government that took account of this
psychology, and of the vast changes applied science had made in
production and distribution. We lived in a new world, which we sought to
ignore; and the new education, the new viewpoint was in truth nothing but
religion made practical. It had never been thought practical before. The
motive that compelled men to work for humanity in science, in medicine,
in art--yes, and in business, if we took the right view of it, was the
religious motive. The application of religion was to-day extending from
the individual to society. No religion that did not fill the needs of
both was a true religion.

This meant the development of a new culture, one to be founded on the
American tradition of equality of opportunity. But culture was not a weed
that grew overnight; it was a leaven that spread slowly and painfully,
first inoculating a few who suffered and often died for it, that it might
gradually affect the many. The spread of culture implied the recognition
of leadership: democratic leadership, but still leadership. Leadership,
and the wisdom it implied, did not reside in the people, but in the
leaders who sprang from the people and interpreted their needs and
longings.... He went on to discuss a part of the programme of the
Citizens Union....

What struck me, as I laid down the typewritten sheets, was the
extraordinary resemblance between the philosophies of Hermann Krebs and
Theodore Watling. Only--Krebs's philosophy was the bigger, held the
greater vision of the two; I had reluctantly and rather bitterly to admit
it. The appeal of it had even reached and stirred me, whose task was to
refute it! Here indeed was something to fight for--perhaps to die for, as
he had said: and as I sat there in my office gazing out of the window I
found myself repeating certain phrases he had used--the phrase about
leadership, for instance. It was a tremendous conception of Democracy,
that of acquiescence to developed leadership made responsible; a
conception I was compelled to confess transcended Mr. Watling's, loyal as
I was to him.... I began to reflect how novel all this was in a political
speech--although what I have quoted was in the nature of a preamble. It
was a sermon, an educational sermon. Well, that is what sermons always
had been,--and even now pretended to be,--educational and stirring,
appealing to the emotions through the intellect. It didn't read like the
Socialism he used to preach, it had the ring of religion. He had called
it religion.

With an effort of the will I turned from this ironical and dangerous
vision of a Hugh Paret who might have been enlisted in an inspiring
struggle, of a modern yet unregenerate Saul kicking against the pricks,
condemned to go forth breathing fire against a doctrine that made a true
appeal; against the man I believed I hated just because he had made this
appeal. In the act of summoning my counter-arguments I was interrupted by
the entrance of Grierson. He was calling on a matter of business, but
began to talk about the extracts from Krebs's speech he had read in the
Mail and State.

"What in hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?" he demanded. "It sounds
to me like the ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so much of us,
and the way we run the town, what's he squawking about?"

I looked at Grierson, and conceived an intense aversion for him. I
wondered how I had ever been able to stand him, to work with him. I saw
him in a sudden flash as a cunning, cruel bird of prey, a gorged, drab
vulture with beady eyes, a resemblance so extraordinary that I wondered I
had never remarked it before. For he had the hooked vulture nose, while
the pink baldness of his head was relieved by a few scanty tufts of hair.

"The people seem to like what he's got to say," I observed.

"It beats me," said Grierson. "They don't understand a quarter of
it--I've been talking to some of 'em. It's their d--d curiosity, I guess.
You know how they'll stand for hours around a street fakir."

"It's more than that," I retorted.

Grierson regarded me piercingly.

"Well, we'll put a crimp in him, all right," he said, with a laugh.

I was in an unenviable state of mind when he left me. I had an impulse to
send for Miss McCoy and ask her if she had understood what Krebs was
"driving at," but for reasons that must be fairly obvious I refrained. I
read over again that part of Krebs's speech which dealt with the
immediate programme of the Citizens Union. After paying a tribute to
Greenhalge as a man of common sense and dependability who would make a
good mayor, he went on to explain the principle of the new charter they
hoped ultimately to get, which should put the management of the city in
the hands of one man, an expert employed by a commission; an expert whose
duty it would be to conduct the affairs of the city on a business basis,
precisely as those of any efficient corporation were conducted. This plan
had already been adopted, with encouraging results, in several smaller
cities of the country. He explained in some detail, with statistics, the
waste and inefficiency and dishonesty in various departments under the
present system, dwelling particularly upon the deplorable state of
affairs in the city hospital.

I need not dwell upon this portion of his remarks. Since then text-books
and serious periodicals have dealt with these matters thoroughly. They
are now familiar to all thinking Americans.




XXV.

My entrance into the campaign was accompanied by a blare of publicity,
and during that fortnight I never picked up a morning or evening
newspaper without reading, on the first page, some such headline as
"Crowds flock to hear Paret." As a matter of fact, the crowds did flock;
but I never quite knew as I looked down from platforms on seas of faces
how much of the flocking was spontaneous. Much of it was so, since the
struggle had then become sufficiently dramatic to appeal to the larger
public imagination that is but occasionally waked; on the other hand, the
magic of advertising cannot be underestimated; nor must the existence be
ignored of an organized corps of shepherds under the vigilant direction
of Mr. Judd Jason, whose duty it was to see that none of our meetings was
lacking in numbers and enthusiasm. There was always a demonstrative
gathering overflowing the sidewalk in front of the entrance, swaying and
cheering in the light of the street lamps, and on the floor within an
ample scattering of suspiciously bleary-eyed voters to start the stamping
and applauding. In spite of these known facts, the impression of
popularity, of repudiation of reform by a large majority of level-headed
inhabitants had reassuring and reenforcing effects.

Astute citizens, spectators of the fray--if indeed there were any--might
have remarked an unique and significant feature of that campaign: that
the usual recriminations between the two great parties were lacking. Mr.
Parks, the Republican candidate, did not denounce Mr. MacGuire, the
Democratic candidate. Republican and Democratic speakers alike expended
their breath in lashing Mr. Krebs and the Citizens Union.

It is difficult to record the fluctuations of my spirit. When I was in
the halls, speaking or waiting to speak, I reacted to that phenomenon
known as mob psychology, I became self-confident, even exhilarated; and
in those earlier speeches I managed, I think, to strike the note for
which I strove--the judicial note, suitable to a lawyer of weight and
prominence, of deprecation rather than denunciation. I sought to embody
and voice a fine and calm sanity at a time when everyone else seemed in
danger of losing their heads, and to a large extent achieved it. I had
known Mr. Krebs for more than twenty years, and while I did not care to
criticise a fellow-member of the bar, I would go so far as to say that he
was visionary, that the changes he proposed in government would, if
adopted, have grave and far-reaching results: we could not, for instance,
support in idleness those who refused to do their share of the work of
the world. Mr. Krebs was well-meaning. I refrained from dwelling too long
upon him, passing to Mr. Greenhalge, also well-meaning, but a man of
mediocre ability who would make a mess of the government of a city which
would one day rival New York and Chicago. (Loud cheers.) And I pointed
out that Mr. Perry Blackwood had been unable to manage the affairs of the
Boyne Street road. Such men, well-intentioned though they might be, were
hindrances to progress. This led me naturally to a discussion of the
Riverside Franchise and the Traction Consolidation. I was one of those
whose honesty and good faith had been arraigned, but I would not stoop to
refute the accusations. I dwelt upon the benefits to the city, uniform
service, electricity and large comfortable cars instead of rattletrap
conveyances, and the development of a large and growing population in the
Riverside neighbourhood: the continual extension of lines to suburban
districts that enabled hard-worked men to live out of the smoke: I called
attention to the system of transfers, the distance a passenger might be
conveyed, and conveyed quickly, for the sum of five cents. I spoke of our
capitalists as men more sinned against than sinning. Their money was
always at the service of enterprises tending to the development of our
metropolis.

When I was not in the meetings, however, and especially when in my room
at night, I was continually trying to fight off a sense of loneliness
that seemed to threaten to overwhelm me. I wanted to be alone, and yet I
feared to be. I was aware, in spite of their congratulations on my
efforts, of a growing dislike for my associates; and in the appalling
emptiness of the moments when my depression was greatest I was forced to
the realization that I had no disinterested friend--not one--in whom I
could confide. Nancy had failed me; I had scarcely seen Tom Peters that
winter, and it was out of the question to go to him. For the third time
in my life, and in the greatest crisis of all, I was feeling the need of
Something, of some sustaining and impelling Power that must be presented
humanly, possessing sympathy and understanding and love.... I think I had
a glimpse just a pathetic glimpse--of what the Church might be of human
solidarity, comfort and support, of human tolerance, if stripped of the
superstition of an ancient science. My tortures weren't of the flesh, but
of the mind. My mind was the sheep which had gone astray. Was there no
such thing, could there be no such thing as a human association that
might at the same time be a divine organism, a fold and a refuge for the
lost and divided minds? The source of all this trouble was social....

Then toward the end of that last campaign week, madness suddenly came
upon me. I know now how near the breaking point I was, but the immediate
cause of my "flying to pieces"--to use a vivid expression--was a speech
made by Guptill, one of the Citizens Union candidates for alderman, a
young man of a radical type not uncommon in these days, though new to my
experience: an educated man in the ultra-radical sense, yet lacking poise
and perspective, with a certain brilliance and assurance. He was a
journalist, a correspondent of some Eastern newspapers and periodicals.
In this speech, which was reported to me--for it did not get into the
newspapers--I was the particular object of his attack. Men of my kind,
and not the Judd Jasons (for whom there was some excuse) were the least
dispensable tools of the capitalists, the greatest menace to
civilization. We were absolutely lacking in principle, we were ready at
any time to besmirch our profession by legalizing steals; we fouled our
nests with dirty fees. Not all that he said was vituperation, for he knew
something of the modern theory of the law that legal radicals had begun
to proclaim, and even to teach in some tolerant universities.

The next night, in the middle of a prepared speech I was delivering to a
large crowd in Kingdom Hall there had been jeers from a group in a corner
at some assertion I made. Guptill's accusations had been festering in my
mind. The faces of the people grew blurred as I felt anger boiling,
rising within me; suddenly my control gave way, and I launched forth into
a denunciation of Greenhalge, Krebs, Guptill and even of Perry Blackwood
that must have been without license or bounds. I can recall only
fragments of my remarks: Greenhalge wanted to be mayor, and was willing
to put the stigma of slander on his native city in order to gain his
ambition; Krebs had made a failure of his profession, of everything save
in bringing shame on the place of his adoption; and on the single
occasion heretofore when he had been before the public, in the School
Board fiasco, the officials indicted on his supposed evidence had
triumphantly been vindicated--, Guptill was gaining money and notoriety
out of his spleen; Perry Blackwood was acting out of spite.... I returned
to Krebs, declaring that he would be the boss of the city if that ticket
were elected, demanding whether they wished for a boss an agitator
itching for power and recognition....

I was conscious at the moment only of a wild relief and joy in letting
myself go, feelings heightened by the clapping and cheers with which my
characterizations were received. The fact that the cheers were mingled
with hisses merely served to drive me on. At length, when I had returned
to Krebs, the hisses were redoubled, angering me the more because of the
evidence they gave of friends of his in my audiences. Perhaps I had made
some of these friends for him! A voice shouted out above the uproar:--"I
know about Krebs. He's a d--d sight better man than you." And this
started a struggle in a corner of the hall.... I managed, somehow, when
the commotion had subsided, to regain my poise, and ended by uttering the
conviction that the common sense of the community would repudiate the
Citizens Union and all it stood for....

But that night, as I lay awake listening to the street noises and staring
at the glint from a street lamp on the brass knob of my bedstead, I knew
that I had failed. I had committed the supreme violation of the self that
leads inevitably to its final dissolution.... Even the exuberant
headlines of the newspapers handed me by the club servant in the morning
brought but little relief.

On the Saturday morning before the Tuesday of election there was a
conference in the directors' room of the Corn National. The city reeked
with smoke and acrid, stale gas, the electric lights were turned on to
dispel the November gloom. It was not a cheerful conference, nor a
confident one. For the first time in a collective experience the men
gathered there were confronted with a situation which they doubted their
ability to control, a situation for which there was no precedent. They
had to reckon with a new and unsolvable equation in politics and
finance,--the independent voter. There was an element of desperation in
the discussion. Recriminations passed. Dickinson implied that Gorse with
all his knowledge of political affairs ought to have foreseen that
something like this was sure to happen, should have managed better the
conventions of both great parties. The railroad counsel retorted that it
had been as much Dickinson's fault as his. Grierson expressed a regret
that I had broken out against the reformers; it had reacted, he
said,--and this was just enough to sting me to retaliate that things had
been done in the campaign, chiefly through his initiative, that were not
only unwise, but might land some of us in the penitentiary if Krebs were
elected.

"Well," Grierson exclaimed, "whether he's elected or not, I wouldn't give
much now for your chances of getting to the Senate. We can't afford to
fly in the face of the dear public."

A tense silence followed this remark. In the street below the rumble of
the traffic came to us muffled by the heavy plate-glass windows. I saw
Tallant glance at Gorse and Dickinson, and I knew the matter had been
decided between themselves, that they had been merely withholding it from
me until after election. I was besmirched, for the present at least.

"I think you will do me the justice, gentlemen," I remember saying
slowly, with the excessive and rather ridiculous formality of a man who
is near the end of his tether, "that the idea of representing you in the
Senate was yours, not mine. You begged me to take the appointment against
my wishes and my judgment. I had no desire to go to Washington then, I
have less to-day. I have come to the conclusion that my usefulness to you
is at an end."

I got to my feet. I beheld Miller Gorse sitting impassive, with his
encompassing stare, the strongest man of them all. A change of firmaments
would not move him. But Dickinson had risen and put his hand on my
shoulder. It was the first time I had ever seen him white.

"Hold on, Hugh," he exclaimed, "I guess we're all a little cantankerous
today. This confounded campaign has got on our nerves, and we say things
we don't mean. You mustn't think we're not grateful for the services
you've rendered us. We're all in the same boat, and there isn't a man
who's been on our side of this fight who could take a political office at
this time. We've got to face that fact, and I know you have the sense to
see it, too. I, for one, won't be satisfied until I see you in the
Senate. It's where you belong, and you deserve to be there. You
understand what the public is, how it blows hot and cold, and in a few
years they'll be howling to get us back, if these demagogues win.

"Sure," chimed in Grierson, who was frightened, "that's right, Hugh. I
didn't mean anything. Nobody appreciates you more than I do, old man."

Tallant, too, added something, and Berringer,--I've forgotten what. I was
tired, too tired to meet their advances halfway. I said that I had a
speech to get ready for that night, and other affairs to attend to, and
left them grouped together like crestfallen conspirators--all save Miller
Gorse, whose pervasive gaze seemed to follow me after I had closed the
door.

An elevator took me down to the lobby of the Corn Bank Building. I paused
for a moment, aimlessly regarding the streams of humanity hurrying in and
out, streaking the white marble floor with the wet filth of the streets.
Someone spoke my name. It was Bitter, Judd Jason's "legal" tool, and I
permitted myself to be dragged out of the eddies into a quiet corner by
the cigar stand.

"Say, I guess we've got Krebs's goat all right, this time," he told me
confidentially, in a voice a little above a whisper; "he was busy with
the shirt-waist girls last year, you remember, when they were striking.
Well, one of 'em, one of the strike leaders, has taken to easy street;
she's agreed to send him a letter to-night to come 'round to her room
after his meeting, to say that she's sick and wants to see him. He'll go,
all right. We'll have some fun, we'll be ready for him. Do you get me? So
long. The old man's waiting for me."

It may seem odd that this piece of information did not produce an
immediately revolting effect. I knew that similar practices had been
tried on Krebs, but this was the first time I had heard of a definite
plan, and from a man like Bitter. As I made my way out of the building I
had, indeed, a nauseated feeling; Jason's "lawyer" was a dirty little
man, smelling of stale cigars, with a blue-black, unshaven face. In spite
of the shocking nature of his confidence, he had actually not succeeded
in deflecting the current of my thoughts; these were still running over
the scene in the directors' room. I had listened to him passively while
he had held my buttonhole, and he had detained me but an instant.

When I reached the street I was wondering whether Gorse and Dickinson and
the others, Grierson especially, could possibly have entertained the
belief that I would turn traitor? I told myself that I had no intention
of this. How could I turn traitor? and what would be the object? revenge?
The nauseated feeling grew more acute.... Reaching my office, I shut the
door, sat down at my desk, summoned my will, and began to jot down random
notes for the part of my speech I was to give the newspapers, notes that
were mere silly fragments of arguments I had once thought effective. I
could no more concentrate on them than I could have written a poem.
Gradually, like the smoke that settled down on our city until we lived in
darkness at midday, the horror of what Bitter had told me began to
pervade my mind, until I was in a state of terror.

Had I, Hugh Paret, fallen to this, that I could stand by consenting to an
act which was worse than assassination? Was any cause worth it? Could any
cause survive it? But my attempts at reasoning might be likened to the
strainings of a wayfarer lost on a mountain side to pick his way in the
gathering dusk. I had just that desperate feeling of being lost, and with
it went an acute sense of an imminent danger; the ground, no longer firm
under my feet, had become a sliding shale sloping toward an unseen
precipice. Perhaps, like the wayfarer, my fears were the sharper for the
memory of the beauty of the morning on that same mountain, when, filled
with vigour, I had gazed on it from the plain below and beheld the sun
breaking through the mists....

The necessity of taking some action to avert what I now realized as an
infamy pressed upon me, yet in conflict with the pressure of this
necessity there persisted that old rebellion, that bitterness which had
been growing all these years against the man who, above all others,
seemed to me to represent the forces setting at nought my achievements,
bringing me to this pass....

I thought of appealing to Leonard Dickinson, who surely, if he knew of
it, would not permit this thing to be done; and he was the only man with
the possible exception of Miller Gorse who might be able to restrain Judd
Jason. But I delayed until after the luncheon hour, when I called up the
bank on the telephone, to discover that it was closed. I had forgotten
that the day was Saturday. I was prepared to say that I would withdraw
from the campaign, warn Krebs myself if this kind of tactics were not
suppressed. But I could not get the banker. Then I began to have doubts
of Dickinson's power in the matter. Judd Jason had never been tractable,
by any means; he had always maintained a considerable independence of the
financial powers, and to-day not only financial control, but the
dominance of Jason himself was at stake. He would fight for it to the
last ditch, and make use of any means. No, it was of no use to appeal to
him. What then? Well, there was a reaction, or an attempt at one. Krebs
had not been born yesterday, he had avoided the wiles of the politicians
heretofore, he wouldn't be fool enough to be taken in now. I told myself
that if I were not in a state bordering on a nervous breakdown, I should
laugh at such morbid fears, I steadied myself sufficiently to dictate the
extract from my speech that was to be published. I was to make addresses
at two halls, alternating with Parks, the mayoralty candidate. At four
o'clock I went back to my room in the Club to try to get some rest....

Seddon's Hall, the place of my first meeting, was jammed that Saturday
night. I went through my speech automatically, as in a dream, the habit
of long years asserting itself. And yet--so I was told afterwards--my
delivery was not mechanical, and I actually achieved more emphasis, gave
a greater impression of conviction than at any time since the night I had
lost my control and violently denounced the reformers. By some
astonishing subconscious process I had regained my manner, but the
applause came to me as from a distance. Not only was my mind not there;
it did not seem to be anywhere. I was dazed, nor did I feel--save once--a
fleeting surge of contempt for the mob below me with their silly faces
upturned to mine. There may have been intelligent expressions among them,
but they failed to catch my eye.

I remember being stopped by Grierson as I was going out of the side
entrance. He took my hand and squeezed it, and there was on his face an
odd, surprised look.

"That was the best yet, Hugh," he said.

I went on past him. Looking back on that evening now, it would almost
seem as though the volition of another possessed me, not my own:
seemingly, I had every intention of going on to the National Theatre, in
which Parks had just spoken, and as I descended the narrow stairway and
emerged on the side street I caught sight of my chauffeur awaiting me by
the curb.

"I'm not going to that other meeting," I found myself saying. "I'm pretty
tired."

"Shall I drive you back to the Club, sir?" he inquired.

"No--I'll walk back. Wait a moment." I entered the ear, turned on the
light and scribbled a hasty note to Andrews, the chairman of the meeting
at the National, telling him that I was too tired to speak again that
night, and to ask one of the younger men there to take my place. Then I
got out of the car and gave the note to the chauffeur.

"You're all right, sir?" he asked, with a note of anxiety in his voice.
He had been with me a long time.

I reassured him. He started the car, and I watched it absently as it
gathered speed and turned the corner. I began to walk, slowly at first,
then more and more rapidly until I had gained a breathless pace; in ten
minutes I was in West Street, standing in front of the Templar's Hall
where the meeting of the Citizens Union west in progress. Now that I had
arrived there, doubt and uncertainty assailed me. I had come as it were
in spite of myself, thrust onward by an impulse I did not understand,
which did not seem to be mine. What was I going to do? The proceeding
suddenly appeared to me as ridiculous, tinged with the weirdness of
somnambulism. I revolted, walked away, got as far as the corner and stood
beside a lamp post, pretending to be waiting for a car. The street lights
were reflected in perpendicular, wavy-yellow ribbons on the wet asphalt,
and I stood staring with foolish intentness at this phenomenon, wondering
how a painter would get the effect in oils. Again I was walking back
towards the hall, combating the acknowledgment to myself that I had a
plan, a plan that I did not for a moment believe I would carry out. I was
shivering.

I climbed the steps. The wide vestibule was empty except for two men who
stopped a low-toned conversation to look at me. I wondered whether they
recognized me; that I might be recognized was an alarming possibility
which had not occurred to me.

"Who is speaking?" I asked.

"Mr. Krebs," answered the taller man of the two.

The hum of applause came from behind the swinging doors. I pushed them
open cautiously, passing suddenly out of the cold into the reeking,
heated atmosphere of a building packed with human beings. The space
behind the rear seats was filled with men standing, and those nearest
glanced around with annoyance at the interruption of my entrance. I made
my way along the wall, finally reaching a side aisle, whence I could get
sight of the platform and the speaker.

I heard his words distinctly, but at first lacked the faculty of
stringing them together, or rather of extracting their collective sense.
The phrases indeed were set ringing through my mind, I found myself
repeating them without any reference to their meaning; I had reached the
peculiar pitch of excitement that counterfeits abnormal calm, and all
sense of strangeness at being there in that meeting had passed away. I
began to wonder how I might warn Krebs, and presently decided to send him
a note when he should have finished speaking--but I couldn't make up my
mind whether to put my name to the note or not. Of course I needn't have
entered the hall at all: I might have sent in my note at the side door.

I must have wished to see Krebs, to hear him speak; to observe, perhaps,
the effect on the audience. In spite of my inability to take in what he
was saying, I was able to regard him objectively,--objectively, in a
restricted sense. I noticed that he had grown even thinner; the flesh had
fallen away from under his cheek-bones, and there were sharp, deep,
almost perpendicular lines on either side of his mouth. He was emaciated,
that was the word. Once in a while he thrust his hand through his dry,
ashy hair which was of a tone with the paleness of his face. Such was his
only gesture.

He spoke quietly, leaning with one elbow against the side of his reading
stand. The occasional pulsations of applause were almost immediately
hushed, as though the people feared to lose even a word that should fall
from his dry lips. What was it he was talking about? I tried to
concentrate my attention, with only partial success. He was explaining
the new theory of city government that did not attempt to evade, but
dealt frankly with the human needs of to-day, and sought to meet those
needs in a positive way...  What had happened to me, though I did not
realize it, was that I had gradually come under the influence of a tragic
spell not attributable to the words I heard, existing independently of
them, pervading the spacious hall, weaving into unity dissentient minds.
And then, with what seemed a retarded rather than sudden awareness, I
knew that he had stopped speaking. Once more he ran his hand through his
hair, he was seemingly groping for words that would not come. I was
pierced by a strange agony--the amazing source of which, seemed to be a
smile on the face of Hermann Krebs, an ineffable smile illuminating the
place like a flash of light, in which suffering and tragedy, comradeship
and loving kindness--all were mingled. He stood for a moment with that
smile on his face--swayed, and would have fallen had it not been for the
quickness of a man on the platform behind him, and into whose arms he
sank.

In an instant people had risen in their seats, men were hurrying down the
aisles, while a peculiar human murmur or wail persisted like an undertone
beneath the confusion of noises, striking the very note of my own
feelings. Above the heads of those about me I saw Krebs being carried off
the platform.... The chairman motioned for silence and inquired if there
were a physician in the audience, and then all began to talk at once. The
man who stood beside me clutched my arm.

"I hope he isn't dead! Say, did you see that smile? My God, I'll never
forget it!"

The exclamation poignantly voiced the esteem in which Krebs was held. As
I was thrust along out of the hall by the ebb of the crowd still other
expressions of this esteem came to me in fragments, expressions of sorrow
and dismay, of a loyalty I had not imagined. Mingled with these were
occasional remarks of skeptics shaken, in human fashion, by the
suggestion of the inevitable end that never fails to sober and terrify
humanity.

"I guess he was a bigger man than we thought. There was a lot of sense in
what he had to say."

"There sure was," the companion of this speaker answered.

They spoke of him in the past tense. I was seized and obsessed by the
fear that I should never see him again, and at the same moment I realized
sharply that this was the one thing I wanted--to see him. I pushed
through the people, gained the street, and fairly ran down the alley that
led to the side entrance of the hall, where a small group was gathered
under the light that hung above the doorway. There stood on the step, a
little above the others, a young man in a grey flannel shirt, evidently a
mechanic. I addressed him.

"What does the doctor say?"

Before replying he surveyed me with surprise and, I think, with
instinctive suspicion of my clothes and bearing.

"What can he say?" he retorted.

"You mean--?" I began.

"I mean Mr. Krebs oughtn't never to have gone into this campaign," he
answered, relenting a trifle, perhaps at the tone of my voice. "He knew
it, too, and some of us fellows tried to stop him. But we couldn't do
nothing with him," he added dejectedly.

"What is--the trouble?" I asked.

"They tell me it's his heart. He wouldn't talk about it."

"When I think of what he done for our union!" exclaimed a thick-set man,
plainly a steel worker. "He's just wore himself out, fighting that
crooked gang." He stared with sudden aggressiveness at me. "Haven't I
seen you some-wheres?" he demanded.

A denial was on my lips when the sharp, sinister strokes of a bell were
heard coming nearer.

"It's the ambulance," said the man on the step.

Glancing up the alley beyond the figures of two policemen who had arrived
and were holding the people back, I saw the hood of the conveyance as it
came to a halt, and immediately a hospital doctor and two assistants
carrying a stretcher hurried towards us, and we made way for them to
enter. After a brief interval, they were heard coming slowly down the
steps inside. By the white, cruel light of the arc I saw Krebs lying
motionless.... I laid hold of one of the men who had been on the
platform. He did not resent the act, he seemed to anticipate my question.

"He's conscious. The doctors expect him to rally when he gets to the
hospital."

I walked back to the Club to discover that several inquiries had been
made about me. Reporters had been there, Republican Headquarters had
telephoned to know if I were ill. Leaving word that I was not to be
disturbed under any circumstances, I went to my room, and spent most of
the night in distracted thought. When at last morning came I breakfasted
early, searching the newspapers for accounts of the occurrence at
Templar's Hall; and the fact that these were neither conspicuous nor
circumstantial was in the nature of a triumph of self-control on the part
of editors and reporters. News, however sensational, had severely to be
condensed in the interest of a cause, and at this critical stage of the
campaign to make a tragic hero of Hermann Krebs would have been the
height of folly. There were a couple of paragraphs giving the gist of his
speech, and a statement at the end that he had been taken ill and
conveyed to the Presbyterian Hospital....

The hospital itself loomed up before me that Sunday morning as I
approached it along Ballantyne Street, a diluted sunshine washing the
extended, businesslike facade of grimy, yellow brick. We were proud of
that hospital in the city, and many of our foremost citizens had
contributed large sums of money to the building, scarcely ten years old.
It had been one of Maude's interests. I was ushered into the reception
room, where presently came the physician in charge, a Dr. Castle, one of
those quiet-mannered, modern young medical men who bear on their persons
the very stamp of efficiency, of the dignity of a scientific profession.
His greeting implied that he knew all about me, his presence seemed to
increase the agitation I tried not to betray, and must have betrayed.

"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Paret?" he asked.

"I have come to inquire about Mr. Krebs, who was brought here last night,
I believe."

I was aware for an instant of his penetrating, professional glance, the
only indication of the surprise he must have felt that Hermann Krebs, of
all men, should be the object of my solicitude.

"Why, we sent him home this morning. Nineteen twenty six Fowler Street.
He wanted to go, and there was no use in his staying."

"He will recover?" I asked.

The physician shook his head, gazing at me through his glasses.

"He may live a month, Mr. Paret, he may die to-morrow. He ought never to
have gone into this campaign, he knew he had this trouble. Hepburn warned
him three months ago, and there's no man who knows more about the heart
than Hepburn."

"Then there's no hope?" I asked.

"Absolutely none. It's a great pity." He added, after a moment, "Mr.
Krebs was a remarkable man."

"Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street?" I repeated.

"Yes."

I held out my hand mechanically, and he pressed it, and went with me to
the door.

"Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street," he repeated...

The mean and sordid aspect of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed to
typify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as it
stifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more than
sweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, "Sunday" look, and the faint
November sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were making
a semblance of play. Monotonous rows of red houses succeeded one another,
some pushed forward, others thrust back behind little plots of stamped
earth. Into one of these I turned. It seemed a little cleaner, better
kept, less sordid than the others. I pulled the bell, and presently the
door was opened by a woman whose arms were bare to the elbow. She wore a
blue-checked calico apron that came to her throat, but the apron was
clean, and her firm though furrowed face gave evidences of recent
housewifely exertions. Her eyes had the strange look of the cheerfulness
that is intimately acquainted with sorrow. She did not seem surprised at
seeing me.

"I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs," I told her.

"Oh, yes," she said, "there's been so many here this morning already.
It's wonderful how people love him, all kinds of people. No, sir, he
don't seem to be in any pain. Two gentlemen are up there now in his room,
I mean."

She wiped her arms, which still bore traces of soap-suds, and then, with
a gesture natural and unashamed, lifted the corner of her apron to her
eyes.

"Do you think I could see him--for a moment?" I asked. "I've known him
for a long time."

"Why, I don't know," she said, "I guess so. The doctor said he could see
some, and he wants to see his friends. That's not strange--he always did.
I'll ask. Will you tell me your name?"

I took out a card. She held it without glancing at it, and invited me in.

I waited, unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall
beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Once
before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago
with something of the same feelings. But now they were greatly
intensified. Now he was dying....

The woman was descending.

"He says he wants to see you, sir," she said rather breathlessly, and I
followed her. In the semi-darkness of the stairs I passed the three men
who had been with Krebs, and when I reached the open door of his room he
was alone. I hesitated just a second, swept by the heat wave that follows
sudden shyness, embarrassment, a sense of folly it is too late to avert.

Krebs was propped up with pillows.

"Well, this is good of you," he said, and reached out his hand across the
spread. I took it, and sat down beside the shiny oak bedstead, in a chair
covered with tobacco-colored plush.

"You feel better?" I asked.

"Oh, I feel all right," he answered, with a smile. "It's queer, but I
do."

My eye fell upon the long line of sectional book-cases that lined one
side of the room. "Why, you've got quite a library here," I observed.

"Yes, I've managed to get together some good books. But there is so much
to read nowadays, so much that is really good and new, a man has the
hopeless feeling he can never catch up with it all. A thousand writers
and students are making contributions today where fifty years ago there
was one."

"I've been following your speeches, after a fashion,--I wish I might have
been able to read more of them. Your argument interested me. It's new,
unlike the ordinary propaganda of--"

"Of agitators," he supplied, with a smile.

"Of agitators," I agreed, and tried to return his smile. "An agitator who
appears to suggest the foundations of a constructive programme and who
isn't afraid to criticise the man with a vote as well as the capitalist
is an unusual phenomenon."

"Oh, when we realize that we've only got a little time left in which to
tell what we think to be the truth, it doesn't require a great deal of
courage, Paret. I didn't begin to see this thing until a little while
ago. I was only a crude, hot-headed revolutionist. God knows I'm crude
enough still. But I began to have a glimmering of what all these new
fellows in the universities are driving at." He waved his hand towards
the book-cases. "Driving at collectively, I mean. And there are attempts,
worthy attempts, to coordinate and synthesize the sciences. What I have
been saying is not strictly original. I took it on the stump, that's all.
I didn't expect it to have much effect in this campaign, but it was an
opportunity to sow a few seeds, to start a sense of personal
dissatisfaction in the minds of a few voters. What is it Browning says?
It's in Bishop Blougram, I believe. 'When the fight begins within
himself, a man's worth something.' It's an intellectual fight, of
course."

His words were spoken quietly, but I realized suddenly that the
mysterious force which had drawn me to him now, against my will, was an
intellectual rather than apparently sentimental one, an intellectual
force seeming to comprise within it all other human attractions. And yet
I felt a sudden contrition.

"See here, Krebs," I said, "I didn't come here to bother you about these
matters, to tire you. I mustn't stay. I'll call in again to see how you
are--from time to time."

"But you're not tiring me," he protested, stretching forth a thin,
detaining hand. "I don't want to rot, I want to live and think as long as
I can. To tell you the truth, Paret, I've been wishing to talk to
you--I'm glad you came in."

"You've been wishing to talk to me?" I said.

"Yes, but I didn't expect you'd come in. I hope you won't mind my saying
so, under the circumstances, but I've always rather liked you, admired
you, even back in the Cambridge days. After that I used to blame you for
going out and taking what you wanted, and I had to live a good many years
before I began to see that it's better for a man to take what he wants
than to take nothing at all. I took what I wanted, every man worth his
salt does. There's your great banker friend in New York whom I used to
think was the arch-fiend. He took what he wanted, and he took a good
deal, but it happened to be good for him. And by piling up his
corporations, Ossa on Pelion, he is paving the way for a logical economic
evolution. How can a man in our time find out what he does want unless he
takes something and gives it a trial?"

"Until he begins to feel that it disagrees with him," I said. "But then,"
I added involuntarily, "then it may be too late to try something else,
and he may not know what to try." This remark of mine might have
surprised me had it not been for the feeling--now grown definite--that
Krebs had something to give me, something to pass on to me, of all men.
Indeed, he had hinted as much, when he acknowledged a wish to talk to me.
"What seems so strange," I said, as I looked at him lying back on his
pillows, "is your faith that we shall be able to bring order out of all
this chaos--your belief in Democracy."

"Democracy's an adventure," he replied, "the great adventure of mankind.
I think the trouble in many minds lies in the fact that they persist in
regarding it as something to be made safe. All that can be done is to try
to make it as safe as possible. But no adventure is safe--life itself is
an adventure, and neither is that safe. It's a hazard, as you and I have
found out. The moment we try to make life safe we lose all there is in it
worth while."

I thought a moment.

"Yes, that's so," I agreed. On the table beside the bed in company with
two or three other volumes, lay a Bible. He seemed to notice that my eye
fell upon it.

"Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son?" he asked. "Well, that's
the parable of democracy, of self-government in the individual and in
society. In order to arrive at salvation, Paret, most of us have to take
our journey into a far country."

"A far country!" I exclaimed. The words struck a reminiscent chord.

"We have to leave what seem the safe things, we have to wander and suffer
in order to realize that the only true safety lies in development. We
have first to cast off the leading strings of authority. It's a delusion
that we can insure ourselves by remaining within its walls--we have to
risk our lives and our souls. It is discouraging when we look around us
to-day, and in a way the pessimists are right when they say we don't see
democracy. We see only what may be called the first stage of it; for
democracy is still in a far country eating the husks of individualism,
materialism. What we see is not true freedom, but freedom run to riot,
men struggling for themselves, spending on themselves the fruits of their
inheritance; we see a government intent on one object alone--exploitation
of this inheritance in order to achieve what it calls prosperity. And God
is far away."

"And--we shall turn?" I asked.

"We shall turn or perish. I believe that we shall turn." He fixed his
eyes on my face. "What is it," he asked, "that brought you here to me,
to-day?"

I was silent.

"The motive, Paret--the motive that sends us all wandering into is
divine, is inherited from God himself. And the same motive, after our
eyes shall have been opened, after we shall have seen and known the
tragedy and misery of life, after we shall have made the mistakes and
committed the sins and experienced the emptiness--the same motive will
lead us back again. That, too, is an adventure, the greatest adventure of
all. Because, when we go back we shall not find the same God--or rather
we shall recognize him in ourselves. Autonomy is godliness, knowledge is
godliness. We went away cringing, superstitious, we saw everywhere omens
and evidences of his wrath in the earth and sea and sky, we burned
candles and sacrificed animals in the vain hope of averting scourges and
other calamities. But when we come back it will be with a knowledge of
his ways, gained at a price,--the price he, too, must have paid--and we
shall be able to stand up and look him in the face, and all our childish
superstitions and optimisms shall have been burned away."

Some faith indeed had given him strength to renounce those things in life
I had held dear, driven him on to fight until his exhausted body failed
him, and even now that he was physically helpless sustained him. I did
not ask myself, then, the nature of this faith. In its presence it could
no more be questioned than the light. It was light; I felt bathed in it.
Now it was soft, suffused: but I remembered how the night before in the
hall, just before he had fallen, it had flashed forth in a smile and
illumined my soul with an ecstasy that yet was anguish....

"We shall get back," I said at length. My remark was not a question--it
had escaped from me almost unawares.

"The joy is in the journey," he answered. "The secret is in the search."

"But for me?" I exclaimed.

"We've all been lost, Paret. It would seem as though we have to be."

"And yet you are--saved," I said, hesitating over the word.

"It is true that I am content, even happy," he asserted, "in spite of my
wish to live. If there is any secret, it lies, I think, in the struggle
for an open mind, in the keeping alive of a desire to know more and more.
That desire, strangely enough, hasn't lost its strength. We don't know
whether there is a future life, but if there is, I think it must be a
continuation of this." He paused. "I told you I was glad you came
in--I've been thinking of you, and I saw you in the hall last night. You
ask what there is for you--I'll tell you,--the new generation."

"The new generation."

"That's the task of every man and woman who wakes up. I've come to see
how little can be done for the great majority of those who have reached
our age. It's hard--but it's true. Superstition, sentiment, the habit of
wrong thinking or of not thinking at all have struck in too deep, the
habit of unreasoning acceptance of authority is too paralyzing. Some may
be stung back into life, spurred on to find out what the world really is,
but not many. The hope lies in those who are coming after us--we must do
for them what wasn't done for us. We really didn't have much of a chance,
Paret. What did our instructors at Harvard know about the age that was
dawning? what did anybody know? You can educate yourself--or rather
reeducate yourself. All this"--and he waved his hand towards his
bookshelves--"all this has sprung up since you and I were at Cambridge;
if we don't try to become familiar with it, if we fail to grasp the point
of view from which it's written, there's little hope for us. Go away from
all this and get straightened out, make yourself acquainted with the
modern trend in literature and criticism, with modern history, find out
what's being done in the field of education, read the modern sciences,
especially biology, and psychology and sociology, and try to get a
glimpse of the fundamental human needs underlying such phenomena as the
labour and woman's movements. God knows I've just begun to get my
glimpse, and I've floundered around ever since I left college.... I don't
mean to say we can ever see the whole, but we can get a clew, an idea,
and pass it on to our children. You have children, haven't you?"

"Yes," I said....

He said nothing--he seemed to be looking out of the window.

"Then the scientific point of view in your opinion hasn't done away with
religion?" I asked presently.

"The scientific point of view is the religious point of view," he said
earnestly, "because it's the only self-respecting point of view. I can't
believe that God intended to make a creature who would not ultimately
weigh his beliefs with his reason instead of accepting them blindly.
That's immoral, if you like--especially in these days."

"And are there, then, no 'over-beliefs'?" I said, remembering the
expression in something I had read.

"That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient science, which was
upside down,--a mere confusion with faith. Faith and belief are two
different things; faith is the emotion, the steam, if you like, that
drives us on in our search for truth. Theories, at a stretch, might be
identified with 'over-beliefs' but when it comes to confusing our
theories with facts, instead of recognizing them as theories, when it
comes to living by 'over-beliefs' that have no basis in reason and
observed facts,--that is fatal. It's just the trouble with so much of our
electorate to-day--unreasoning acceptance without thought."

"Then," I said, "you admit of no other faculty than reason?"

"I confess that I don't. A great many insights that we seem to get from
what we call intuition I think are due to the reason, which is
unconsciously at work. If there were another faculty that equalled or
transcended reason, it seems to me it would be a very dangerous thing for
the world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on ourselves
the trouble with the world is that it has been relying on it. Reason is
the mind--it leaps to the stars without realizing always how it gets
there. It is through reason we get the self-reliance that redeems us."

"But you!" I exclaimed. "You rely on something else besides reason?"

"Yes, it is true," he explained gently, "but that Thing
Other-than-Ourselves we feel stirring in us is power, and that power, or
the Source of it, seems to have given us our reason for guidance--if it
were not so we shouldn't have a semblance of freedom. For there is
neither virtue nor development in finding the path if we are guided. We
do rely on that power for movement--and in the moments when it is
withdrawn we are helpless. Both the power and the reason are God's."

"But the Church," I was moved by some untraced thought to ask, "you
believe there is a future for the Church?"

"A church of all those who disseminate truth, foster open-mindedness,
serve humanity and radiate faith," he replied--but as though he were
speaking to himself, not to me....

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and the woman of the
house entered to say that Dr. Hepburn had arrived. I rose and shook
Krebs's hand: sheer inability to express my emotion drove me to
commonplaces.

"I'll come in soon again, if I may," I told him.

"Do, Paret," he said, "it's done me good to talk to you--more good than
you imagine."

I was unable to answer him, but I glanced back from the doorway to see
him smiling after me. On my way down the stairs I bumped into the doctor
as he ascended. The dingy brown parlour was filled with men, standing in
groups and talking in subdued voices. I hurried into the street, and on
the sidewalk stopped face to face with Perry Blackwood.

"Hugh!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to inquire for Krebs," I answered. "I've seen him."

"You--you've been talking to him?" Perry demanded.

I nodded. He stared at me for a moment with an astonishment to which I
was wholly indifferent. He did not seem to know just how to act.

"Well, it was decent of you, Hugh, I must say. How does he seem?"

"Not at all like--like what you'd expect, in his manner."

"No," agreed Perry agitatedly, "no, he wouldn't. My God, we've lost a big
man in him."

"I think we have," I said.

He stared at me again, gave me his hand awkwardly, and went into the
house. It was not until I had walked the length of the block that I began
to realize what a shock my presence there must have been to him, with his
head full of the contrast between this visit and my former attitude.
Could it be that it was only the night before I had made a speech against
him and his associates? It is interesting that my mind rejected all sense
of anomaly and inconsistency. Krebs possessed me; I must have been in
reality extremely agitated, but this sense of being possessed seemed a
quiet one. An amazing thing had happened--and yet I was not amazed. The
Krebs I had seen was the man I had known for many years, the man I had
ridiculed, despised and oppressed, but it seemed to me then that he had
been my friend and intimate all my life: more than that, I had an odd
feeling he had always been a part of me, and that now had begun to take
place a merging of personality. Nor could I feel that he was a dying man.
He would live on....

I could not as yet sort and appraise, reduce to order the possessions he
had wished to turn over to me.

It was noon, and people were walking past me in the watery, diluted
sunlight, men in black coats and top hats and women in bizarre,
complicated costumes bright with colour. I had reached the more
respectable portion of the city, where the churches were emptying. These
very people, whom not long ago I would have acknowledged as my own kind,
now seemed mildly animated automatons, wax figures. The day was like
hundreds of Sundays I had known, the city familiar, yet passing strange.
I walked like a ghost through it....




XXVI.

Accompanied by young Dr. Strafford, I went to California. My physical
illness had been brief. Dr. Brooke had taken matters in his own hands and
ordered an absolute rest, after dwelling at some length on the vicious
pace set by modern business and the lack of consideration and knowledge
shown by men of affairs for their bodies. There was a limit to the wrack
and strain which the human organism could stand. He must of course have
suspected the presence of disturbing and disintegrating factors, but he
confined himself to telling me that only an exceptional constitution had
saved me from a serious illness; he must in a way have comprehended why I
did not wish to go abroad, and have my family join me on the Riviera, as
Tom Peters proposed. California had been my choice, and Dr. Brooke
recommended the climate of Santa Barbara.

High up on the Montecito hills I found a villa beside the gateway of one
of the deep canons that furrow the mountain side, and day after day I lay
in a chair on the sunny terrace, with a continually recurring amazement
at the brilliancy of my surroundings. In the early morning I looked down
on a feathery mist hiding the world, a mist presently to be shot with
silver and sapphire-blue, dissolved by slow enchantment until there lay
revealed the plain and the shimmering ocean with its distant islands
trembling in the haze. At sunset my eyes sought the mountains, mountains
unreal, like glorified scenery of grand opera, with violet shadows in the
wooded canon clefts, and crags of pink tourmaline and ruby against the
skies. All day long in the tempered heat flowers blazed around me,
insects hummed, lizards darted in and out of the terrace wall, birds
flashed among the checkered shadows of the live oaks. That grove of
gnarled oaks summoned up before me visions of some classic villa poised
above Grecian seas, shining amidst dark foliage, the refuge of forgotten
kings. Below me, on the slope, the spaced orange trees were heavy with
golden fruit.

After a while, as I grew stronger, I was driven down and allowed to walk
on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the
sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from
the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little
birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny
footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the
southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes I
sat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoing
water rolling the pebbles after it, making a gleaming floor for the light
to dance.

At first I could not bear to recall the events that had preceded and
followed my visit to Krebs that Sunday morning. My illness had begun that
night; on the Monday Tom Peters had come to the Club and insisted upon my
being taken to his house.... When I had recovered sufficiently there had
been rather a pathetic renewal of our friendship. Perry came to see me.
Their attitude was one of apprehension not unmixed with wonder; and
though they, knew of the existence of a mental crisis, suspected, in all
probability, some of the causes of it, they refrained carefully from all
comments, contenting themselves with telling me when I was well enough
that Krebs had died quite suddenly that Sunday afternoon; that his
death--occurring at such a crucial moment--had been sufficient to turn
the tide of the election and make Edgar Greenhalge mayor. Thousands who
had failed to understand Hermann Krebs, but whom he had nevertheless
stirred and troubled, suddenly awoke to the fact that he had had elements
of greatness....

My feelings in those first days at Santa Barbara may be likened, indeed,
to those of a man who has passed through a terrible accident that has
deprived him of sight or hearing, and which he wishes to forget. What I
was most conscious of then was an aching sense of loss--an ache that by
degrees became a throbbing pain as life flowed back into me, re-inflaming
once more my being with protest and passion, arousing me to revolt
against the fate that had overtaken me. I even began at moments to feel a
fierce desire to go back and take up again the fight from which I had
been so strangely removed--removed by the agency of things still obscure.
I might get Nancy yet, beat down her resistance, overcome her, if only I
could be near her and see her. But even in the midst of these surges of
passion I was conscious of the birth of a new force I did not understand,
and which I resented, that had arisen to give battle to my passions and
desires. This struggle was not mentally reflected as a debate between
right and wrong, as to whether I should or should not be justified in
taking Nancy if I could get her: it seemed as though some new and small
yet dogged intruder had forced an entrance into me, an insignificant
pigmy who did not hesitate to bar the pathway of the reviving giant of my
desires. These contests sapped my strength. It seemed as though in my
isolation I loved Nancy, I missed her more than ever, and the flavour she
gave to life.

Then Hermann Krebs began to press himself on me. I use the word as
expressive of those early resentful feelings,--I rather pictured him then
as the personification of an hostile element in the universe that had
brought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall; I attributed the
disagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency; I did not wish to
think of him, for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared to
contemplate. Yet the illusion of his presence, once begun, continued to
grow upon me, and I find myself utterly unable to describe that struggle
in which he seemed to be fighting as against myself for my confidence;
that process whereby he gradually grew as real to me as though he still
lived--until I could almost hear his voice and see his smile. At moments
I resisted wildly, as though my survival depended on it; at other moments
he seemed to bring me peace. One day I recalled as vividly as though it
were taking place again that last time I had been with him; I seemed once
more to be listening to the calm yet earnest talk ranging over so many
topics, politics and government, economics and science and religion. I
did not yet grasp the synthesis he had made of them all, but I saw them
now all focussed in him elements he had drawn from human lives and human
experiences. I think it was then I first felt the quickenings of a new
life to be born in travail and pain.... Wearied, yet exalted, I sank down
on a stone bench and gazed out at the little island of Santa Cruz afloat
on the shimmering sea.

I have mentioned my inability to depict the terrible struggle that went
on in my soul. It seems strange that Nietzsche--that most ruthless of
philosophers to the romantic mind!--should express it for me. "The genius
of the heart, from contact with which every man goes away richer, not
'blessed' and overcome,....but richer himself, fresher to himself than
before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind; more
uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more bruised; but full of hopes which
as yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full of a new
unwillingness and counterstriving."....

Such was my experience with Hermann Krebs. How keenly I remember that new
unwillingness and counter-striving! In spite of the years it has not
wholly died down, even to-day....

Almost coincident with these quickenings of which I have spoken was the
consciousness of a hunger stronger than the craving for bread and meat,
and I began to meditate on my ignorance, on the utter inadequacy and
insufficiency of my early education, on my neglect of the new learning
during the years that had passed since I left Harvard. And I remembered
Krebs's words--that we must "reeducate ourselves." What did I know? A
system of law, inherited from another social order, that was utterly
unable to cope with the complexities and miseries and injustices of a
modern industrial world. I had spent my days in mastering an inadequate
and archaic code--why? in order that I might learn how to evade it? This
in itself condemned it. What did I know of life? of the shining universe
that surrounded me? What did I know of the insect and the flower, of the
laws that moved the planets and made incandescent the suns? of the human
body, of the human soul and its instincts? Was this knowledge acquired at
such cost of labour and life and love by my fellow-men of so little worth
to me that I could ignore it? declare that it had no significance for me?
no bearing on my life and conduct? If I were to rise and go forward--and
I now felt something like a continued impulse, in spite of relaxations
and revolts--I must master this knowledge, it must be my guide, form the
basis of my creed. I--who never had had a creed, never felt the need of
one! For lack of one I had been rudely jolted out of the frail shell I
had thought so secure, and stood, as it were, naked and shivering to the
storms, staring at a world that was no function of me, after all. My
problem, indeed, was how to become a function of it....

I resolved upon a course of reading, but it was a question what books to
get. Krebs could have told me, if he had lived. I even thought once of
writing Perry Blackwood to ask him to make a list of the volumes in
Krebs's little library; but I was ashamed to do this.

Dr. Strafford still remained with me. Not many years out of the medical
school, he had inspired me with a liking for him and a respect for his
profession, and when he informed me one day that he could no longer
conscientiously accept the sum I was paying him, I begged him to stay on.
He was a big and wholesome young man, companionable, yet quiet and
unobtrusive, watchful without appearing to be so, with the innate as well
as the cultivated knowledge of psychology characteristic of the best
modern physicians. When I grew better I came to feel that he had given
his whole mind to the study of my case, though he never betrayed it in
his conversation.

"Strafford," I said to him one morning with such an air of unconcern as I
could muster, "I've an idea I'd like to read a little science. Could you
recommend a work on biology?"

I chose biology because I thought he would know something about it.

"Popular biology, Mr. Paret?"

"Well, not too popular," I smiled. "I think it would do me good to use my
mind, to chew on something. Besides, you can help me over the tough
places."

He returned that afternoon with two books.

"I've been rather fortunate in getting these," he said. "One is fairly
elementary. They had it at the library. And the other--" he paused
delicately, "I didn't know whether you might be interested in the latest
speculations on the subject."

"Speculations?" I repeated.

"Well, the philosophy of it." He almost achieved a blush under his tan.
He held out the second book on the philosophy of the organism. "It's the
work of a German scientist who stands rather high. I read it last winter,
and it interested me. I got it from a clergyman I know who is spending
the winter in Santa Barbara."

"A clergyman!"

Strafford laughed. "An 'advanced' clergyman," he explained. "Oh, a lot of
them are reading science now. I think it's pretty decent of them."

I looked at Strafford, who towered six feet three, and it suddenly struck
me that he might be one of the forerunners of a type our universities
were about to turn out. I wondered what he believed. Of one thing I was
sure, that he was not in the medical profession to make money. That was a
faith in itself.

I began with the elementary work.

"You'd better borrow a Century Dictionary," I said.

"That's easy," he said, and actually achieved it, with the clergyman's
aid.

The absorption in which I fought my way through those books may prove
interesting to future generations, who, at Sunday-school age, when the
fable of Adam and Eve was painfully being drummed into me (without any
mention of its application), will be learning to think straight,
acquiring easily in early youth what I failed to learn until after forty.
And think of all the trouble and tragedy that will have been averted. It
is true that I had read some biology at Cambridge, which I had promptly
forgotten; it had not been especially emphasized by my instructors as
related to life--certainly not as related to religion: such incidents as
that of Adam and Eve occupied the religious field exclusively. I had been
compelled to commit to memory, temporarily, the matter in those books;
but what I now began to perceive was that the matter was secondary
compared to the view point of science--and this had been utterly
neglected. As I read, I experienced all the excitement of an
old-fashioned romance, but of a romance of such significance as to touch
the very springs of existence; and above all I was impressed with the
integrity of the scientific method--an integrity commensurate with the
dignity of man--that scorned to quibble to make out a case, to affirm
something that could not be proved.

Little by little I became familiar with the principles of embryonic
evolution, ontogeny, and of biological evolution, phylogeny; realized,
for the first time, my own history and that of the ancestors from whom I
had developed and descended. I, this marvellously complicated being, torn
by desires and despairs, was the result of the union of two microscopic
cells. "All living things come from the egg," such had been Harvey's
dictum. The result was like the tonic of a cold douche. I began to feel
cleansed and purified, as though something sticky-sweet which all my life
had clung to me had been washed away. Yet a question arose, an insistent
question that forever presses itself on the mind of man; how could these
apparently chemical and mechanical processes, which the author of the
book contented himself with recording, account for me? The spermia darts
for the egg, and pierces it; personal history begins. But what mysterious
shaping force is it that repeats in the individual the history of the
race, supervises the orderly division of the cells, by degrees directs
the symmetry, sets aside the skeleton and digestive tract and supervises
the structure?

I took up the second book, that on the philosophy of the organism, to
read in its preface that a much-to-be-honoured British nobleman had
established a foundation of lectures in a Scotch University for
forwarding the study of a Natural Theology. The term possessed me. Unlike
the old theology woven of myths and a fanciful philosophy of the decadent
period of Greece, natural theology was founded on science itself, and
scientists were among those who sought to develop it. Here was a
synthesis that made a powerful appeal, one of the many signs and portents
of a new era of which I was dimly becoming cognizant; and now that I
looked for signs, I found them everywhere, in my young Doctor, in Krebs,
in references in the texts; indications of a new order beginning to make
itself felt in a muddled, chaotic human world, which might--which must
have a parallel with the order that revealed itself in the egg! Might not
both, physical and social, be due to the influence of the same invisible,
experimenting, creating Hand?

My thoughts lingered lovingly on this theology so well named "natural,"
on its conscientiousness, its refusal to affirm what it did not prove, on
its lack of dogmatic dictums and infallible revelations; yet it gave me
the vision of a new sanction whereby man might order his life, a sanction
from which was eliminated fear and superstition and romantic hope, a
sanction whose doctrines--unlike those of the sentimental theology--did
not fly in the face of human instincts and needs. Nor was it a theology
devoid of inspiration and poetry, though poetry might be called its
complement. With all that was beautiful and true in the myths dear to
mankind it did not conflict, annulling only the vicious dogmatism of
literal interpretation. In this connection I remembered something that
Krebs had said--in our talk about poetry and art,--that these were
emotion, religion expressed by the tools reason had evolved. Music, he
had declared, came nearest to the cry of the human soul....

That theology cleared for faith an open road, made of faith a reasonable
thing, yet did not rob it of a sense of high adventure; cleansed it of
the taints of thrift and selfish concern. In this reaffirmation of
vitalism there might be a future, yes, an individual future, yet it was
far from the smug conception of salvation. Here was a faith conferred by
the freedom of truth; a faith that lost and regained itself in life; it
was dynamic in its operation; for, as Lessing said, the searching after
truth, and not its possession, gives happiness to man. In the words of an
American scientist, taken from his book on Heredity, "The evolutionary
idea has forced man to consider the probable future of his own race on
earth and to take measures to control that future, a matter he had
previously left largely to fate."

Here indeed was another sign of the times, to find in a strictly
scientific work a sentence truly religious! As I continued to read these
works, I found them suffused with religion, religion of a kind and
quality I had not imagined. The birthright of the spirit of man was
freedom, freedom to experiment, to determine, to create--to create
himself, to create society in the image of God! Spiritual creation the
function of cooperative man through the coming ages, the task that was to
make him divine. Here indeed was the germ of a new sanction, of a new
motive, of a new religion that strangely harmonized with the concepts of
the old--once the dynamic power of these was revealed.

I had been thinking of my family--of my family in terms of Matthew--and
yet with a growing yearning that embraced them all. I had not informed
Maude of my illness, and I had managed to warn Tom Peters not to do so. I
had simply written her that after the campaign I had gone for a rest to
California; yet in her letters to me, after this information had reached
her, I detected a restrained anxiety and affection that troubled me.
Sequences of words curiously convey meanings and implications that
transcend their literal sense, true thoughts and feelings are difficult
to disguise even in written speech. Could it be possible after all that
had happened that Maude still loved me? I continually put the thought
away from me, but continually it returned to haunt me. Suppose Maude
could not help loving me, in spite of my weaknesses and faults, even as I
loved Nancy in spite of hers? Love is no logical thing.

It was Matthew I wanted, Matthew of whom I thought, and trivial,
long-forgotten incidents of the past kept recurring to me constantly. I
still received his weekly letters; but he did not ask why, since I had
taken a vacation, I had not come over to them. He represented the medium,
the link between Maude and me that no estrangement, no separation could
break.

All this new vision of mine was for him, for the coming generation, the
soil in which it must be sown, the Americans of the future. And who so
well as Matthew, sensitive yet brave, would respond to it? I wished not
only to give him what I had begun to grasp, to study with him, to be his
companion and friend, but to spare him, if possible, some of my own
mistakes and sufferings and punishments. But could I go back? Happy
coincidences of desires and convictions had been so characteristic of
that other self I had been struggling to cast off: I had so easily been
persuaded, when I had had a chance of getting Nancy, that it was the
right thing to do! And now, in my loneliness, was I not growing just as
eager to be convinced that it was my duty to go back to the family which
in the hour of self-sufficiency I had cast off? I had believed in divorce
then--why not now? Well, I still believed in it. I had thought of a union
with Nancy as something that would bring about the "self-realization that
springs from the gratification of a great passion,"--an appealing phrase
I had read somewhere. But, it was at least a favourable symptom that I
was willing now to confess that the "self-realization" had been a
secondary and sentimental consideration, a rosy, self-created halo to
give a moral and religious sanction to my desire. Was I not trying to do
that very thing now? It tortured me to think so; I strove to achieve a
detached consideration of the problem,--to arrive at length at a thought
that seemed illuminating: that the it "wrongness" or "rightness," utility
and happiness of all such unions depend upon whether or not they become a
part of the woof and warp of the social fabric; in other words, whether
the gratification of any particular love by divorce and remarriage does
or does not tend to destroy a portion of that fabric. Nancy certainly
would have been justified in divorce. It did not seem in the retrospect
that I would have been: surely not if, after I had married Nancy, I had
developed this view of life that seemed to me to be the true view. I
should have been powerless to act upon it. But the chances were I should
not have developed it, since it would seem that any salvation for me at
least must come precisely through suffering, through not getting what I
wanted. Was this equivocating?

My mistake had been in marrying Maude instead of Nancy--a mistake largely
due to my saturation with a false idea of life. Would not the attempt to
cut loose from the consequences of that mistake in my individual case
have been futile? But there was a remedy for it--the remedy Krebs had
suggested: I might still prevent my children from making such a mistake,
I might help to create in them what I might have been, and thus find a
solution for myself. My errors would then assume a value.

But the question tortured me: would Maude wish it? Would it be fair to
her if she did not? By my long neglect I had forfeited the right to go.
And would she agree with my point of view if she did permit me to stay? I
had less concern on this score, a feeling that that development of hers,
which once had irritated me, was in the same direction as my own....

I have still strangely to record moments when, in spite of the
aspirations I had achieved, of the redeeming vision I had gained, at the
thought of returning to her I revolted. At such times recollections came
into my mind of those characteristics in her that had seemed most
responsible for my alienation.... That demon I had fed so mightily still
lived. By what right--he seemed to ask--had I nourished him all these
years if now I meant to starve him? Thus sometimes he defied me, took on
Protean guises, blustered, insinuated, cajoled, managed to make me
believe that to starve him would be to starve myself, to sap all there
was of power in me. Let me try and see if I could do it! Again he
whispered, to what purpose had I gained my liberty, if now I renounced
it? I could not live in fetters, even though the fetters should be
self-imposed. I was lonely now, but I would get over that, and life lay
before me still.

Fierce and tenacious, steel in the cruelty of his desires, fearful in the
havoc he had wrought, could he be subdued? Foiled, he tore and rent
me....

One morning I rode up through the shady canon, fragrant with bay, to the
open slopes stained smoky-blue by the wild lilac, where the twisted
madrona grows. As I sat gazing down on tiny headlands jutting out into a
vast ocean my paralyzing indecision came to an end. I turned my horse
down the trail again. I had seen at last that life was bigger than I,
bigger than Maude, bigger than our individual wishes and desires. I felt
as though heavy shackles had been struck from me. As I neared the house I
spied my young doctor in the garden path, his hands in his pockets
watching a humming-bird poised over the poppies. He greeted me with a
look that was not wholly surprise at my early return, that seemed to have
in it something of gladness.

"Strafford," I said, "I've made up my mind to go to Europe."

"I have been thinking for some time, Mr. Paret," he replied, "that a
sea-voyage is just what you need to set you on your feet."

I started eastward the next morning, arriving in New York in time to
catch one of the big liners sailing for Havre. On my way across the
continent I decided to send a cable to Maude at Paris, since it were only
fair to give her an opportunity to reflect upon the manner in which she
would meet the situation. Save for an impatience which at moments I
restrained with difficulty, the moods that succeeded one another as I
journeyed did not differ greatly from those I had experienced in the past
month. I was alternately exalted and depressed; I hoped and doubted and
feared; my courage, my confidence rose and fell. And yet I was aware of
the nascence within me of an element that gave me a stability I had
hitherto lacked: I had made my decision, and I felt the stronger for it.

It was early in March. The annual rush of my countrymen and women for
foreign shores had not as yet begun, the huge steamer was far from
crowded. The faint throbbing of her engines as she glided out on the
North River tide found its echo within me as I leaned on the heavy rail
and watched the towers of the city receding in the mist; they became
blurred and ghostlike, fantastic in the grey distance, sad, appealing
with a strange beauty and power. Once the sight of them, sunlit, standing
forth sharply against the high blue of American skies, had stirred in me
that passion for wealth and power of which they were so marvellously and
uniquely the embodiment. I recalled the bright day of my home-coming with
Maude, when she too had felt that passion drawing me away from her, after
the briefest of possessions.... Well, I had had it, the power. I had
stormed and gained entrance to the citadel itself. I might have lived
here in New York, secure, defiant of a veering public opinion that envied
while it strove to sting. Why was I flinging it all away? Was this a
sudden resolution of mine, forced by events, precipitated by a failure to
achieve what of all things on earth I had most desired? or was it the
inevitable result of the development of the Hugh Paret of earlier days,
who was not meant for that kind of power?

The vibration of the monster ship increased to a strong, electric
pulsation, the water hummed along her sides, she felt the swell of the
open sea. A fine rain began to fall that hid the land--yes, and the life
I was leaving. I made my way across the glistening deck to the saloon
where, my newspapers and periodicals neglected, I sat all the morning
beside a window gazing out at the limited, vignetted zone of waters
around the ship. We were headed for the Old World. The wind rose, the
rain became pelting, mingling with the spume of the whitecaps racing
madly past: within were warmth and luxury, electric lights, open fires,
easy chairs, and men and women reading, conversing as unconcernedly as
though the perils of the deep had ceased to be. In all this I found an
impelling interest; the naive capacity in me for wonder, so long dormant,
had been marvellously opened up once more. I no longer thought of myself
as the important man of affairs; and when in the progress of the voyage I
was accosted by two or three men I had met and by others who had heard of
me it was only to feel amazement at the remoteness I now felt from a
world whose realities were stocks and bonds, railroads and corporations
and the detested new politics so inimical to the smooth conduct of
"business."

It all sounded like a language I had forgotten.

It was not until near the end of the passage that we ran out of the
storm. A morning came when I went on deck to survey spaces of a blue and
white sea swept by the white March sunlight; to discern at length against
the horizon toward which we sped a cloud of the filmiest and most
delicate texture and design. Suddenly I divined that the cloud was
France! Little by little, as I watched, it took on substance. I made out
headlands and cliffs, and then we were coasting beside them. That night I
should be in Paris with Maude. My bag was packed, my steamer trunk
closed. I strayed about the decks, in and out of the saloons, wondering
at the indifference of other passengers who sat reading in steamer-chairs
or wrote last letters to be posted at Havre. I was filled with
impatience, anticipation, yes, with anxiety concerning the adventure that
was now so imminent; with wavering doubts. Had I done the wisest thing
after all? I had the familiar experience that often comes just before
reunion after absence of recalling intimate and forgotten impressions of
those whom I was about to see again the tones of their voices, little
gestures....

How would they receive me?

The great ship had slowed down and was entering the harbour, carefully
threading her way amongst smaller craft, the passengers lining the rails
and gazing at the animated scene, at the quaint and cheerful French city
bathed in sunlight.... I had reached the dock and was making my way
through the hurrying and shifting groups toward the steamer train when I
saw Maude. She was standing a little aside, scanning the faces that
passed her.

I remember how she looked at me, expectantly, yet timidly, almost
fearfully. I kissed her.

"You've come to meet me!" I exclaimed stupidly. "How are the children?"

"They're very well, Hugh. They wanted to come, too, but I thought it
better not."

Her restraint struck me as extraordinary; and while I was thankful for
the relief it brought to a situation which might have been awkward, I was
conscious of resenting it a little. I was impressed and puzzled. As I
walked along the platform beside her she seemed almost a stranger: I had
difficulty in realizing that she was my wife, the mother of my children.
Her eyes were clear, more serious than I recalled them, and her physical
as well as her moral tone seemed to have improved. Her cheeks glowed with
health, and she wore a becoming suit of dark blue.

"Did you have a good trip, Hugh?" she asked.

"Splendid," I said, forgetting the storm. We took our seats in an empty
compartment. Was she glad to see me? She had come all the way from Paris
to meet me! All the embarrassment seemed to be on my side. Was this
composure a controlled one or had she indeed attained to the
self-sufficiency her manner and presence implied? Such were the questions
running through my head.

"You've really liked Paris?" I asked.

"Yes, Hugh, and it's been very good for us all. Of course the boys like
America better, but they've learned many things they wouldn't have
learned at home; they both speak French, and Biddy too. Even I have
improved."

"I'm sure of it," I said.

She flushed.

"And what else have you been doing?"

"Oh, going to galleries. Matthew often goes with me. I think he quite
appreciates the pictures. Sometimes I take him to the theatre, too, the
Francais. Both boys ride in the Bois with a riding master. It's been
rather a restricted life for them, but it won't have hurt them. It's good
discipline. We have little excursions in an automobile on fine days to
Versailles and other places of interest around Paris, and Matthew and I
have learned a lot of history. I have a professor of literature from the
Sorbonne come in three times a week to give me lessons."

"I didn't know you cared for literature."

"I didn't know it either." She smiled. "Matthew loves it. Monsieur
Despard declares he has quite a gift for language."

Maude had already begun Matthew's education!

"You see a few people?" I inquired.

"A few. And they have been very kind to us. The Buffons, whom I met at
Etretat, and some of their friends, mostly educated French people."

The little railway carriage in which we sat rocked with speed as we flew
through the French landscape. I caught glimpses of solid, Norman farm
buildings, of towers and keeps and delicate steeples, and quaint towns;
of bare poplars swaying before the March gusts, of green fields ablaze in
the afternoon sun. I took it all in distractedly. Here was Maude beside
me, but a Maude I had difficulty in recognizing, whom I did not
understand: who talked of a life she had built up for herself and that
seemed to satisfy her; one with which I had nothing to do. I could not
tell how she regarded my re-intrusion. As she continued to talk, a
feeling that was almost desperation grew upon me. I had things to say to
her, things that every moment of this sort of intercourse was making more
difficult. And I felt, if I did not say them now, that perhaps I never
should: that now or never was the appropriate time, and to delay would be
to drift into an impossible situation wherein the chance of an
understanding would be remote.

There was a pause. How little I had anticipated the courage it would take
to do this thing! My blood was hammering.

"Maude," I said abruptly, "I suppose you're wondering why I came over
here."

She sat gazing at me, very still, but there came into her eyes a
frightened look that almost unnerved me. She seemed to wish to speak, to
be unable to. Passively, she let my hand rest on hers.

"I've been thinking a great deal during the last few months," I went on
unsteadily. "And I've changed a good many of my ideas--that is, I've got
new ones, about things I never thought of before. I want to say, first,
that I do not put forth any claim to come back into your life. I know I
have forfeited any claim. I've neglected you, and I've neglected the
children. Our marriage has been on a false basis from the start, and I've
been to blame for it. There is more to be said about the chances for a
successful marriage in these days, but I'm not going to dwell on that
now, or attempt to shoulder off my shortcomings on my bringing up, on the
civilization in which we have lived. You've tried to do your share, and
the failure hasn't been your fault. I want to tell you first of all that
I recognize your right to live your life from now on, independently of
me, if you so desire. You ought to have the children--" I hesitated a
moment. It was the hardest thing I had to say. "I've never troubled
myself about them, I've never taken on any responsibility in regard to
their bringing up."

"Hugh!" she cried.

"Wait--I've got more to tell you, that you ought to know. I shouldn't be
here to-day if Nancy Durrett had consented to--to get a divorce and marry
me. We had agreed to that when this accident happened to Ham, and she
went back to him. I have to tell you that I still love her--I can't say
how much, or define my feelings toward her now. I've given up all idea of
her. I don't think I'd marry her now, even if I had the chance, and you
should decide to live away from me. I don't know. I'm not so sure of
myself as I once was. The fact is, Maude, circumstances have been too
much for me. I've been beaten. And I'm not at all certain that it wasn't
a cowardly thing for me to come back to you at all."

I felt her hand trembling under mine, but I had not the courage to look
at her. I heard her call my name again a little cry, the very poignancy
of pity and distress. It almost unnerved me.

"I knew that you loved her, Hugh," she said. "It was only--only a little
while after you married me that I found it out. I guessed it--women do
guess such things--long before you realized it yourself. You ought to
have married her instead of me. You would have been happier with her."

I did not answer.

"I, too, have thought a great deal," she went on, after a moment. "I
began earlier than you, I had to." I looked up suddenly and saw her
smiling at me, faintly, through her tears. "But I've been thinking more,
and learning more since I've been over here. I've come to see that that
our failure hasn't been as much your fault as I once thought, as much as
you yourself declare. You have done me a wrong, and you've done the
children a wrong. Oh, it is frightful to think how little I knew when I
married you, but even then I felt instinctively that you didn't love me
as I deserved to be loved. And when we came back from Europe I knew that
I couldn't satisfy you, I couldn't look upon life as you saw it, no
matter how hard I tried. I did try, but it wasn't any use. You'll never
know how much I've suffered all these years.

"I have been happier here, away from you, with the children; I've had a
chance to be myself. It isn't that I'm--much. It isn't that I don't need
guidance and counsel and--sympathy. I've missed those, but you've never
given them to me, and I've been learning more and more to do without
them. I don't know why marriage should suddenly have become such a
mockery and failure in our time, but I know that it is, that ours hasn't
been such an exception as I once thought. I've come to believe that
divorce is often justified."

"It is justified so far as you are concerned, Maude," I replied. "It is
not justified for me. I have forfeited, as I say, any rights over you. I
have been the aggressor and transgressor from the start. You have been a
good wife and a good mother, you have been faithful, I have had
absolutely nothing to complain of."

"Sometimes I think I might have tried harder," she said. "At least I
might have understood better. I was stupid. But everything went wrong.
And I saw you growing away from me all the time, Hugh, growing away from
the friends who were fond of you, as though you were fading in the
distance. It wasn't wholly because--because of Nancy that I left you.
That gave me an excuse--an excuse for myself. Long before that I realized
my helplessness, I knew that whatever I might have done was past doing."

"Yes, I know," I assented.

We sat in silence for a while. The train was skirting an ancient town set
on a hill, crowned with a castle and a Gothic church whose windows were
afire in the setting sun.

"Maude," I said, "I have not come to plead, to appeal to your pity as
against your judgment and reason. I can say this much, that if I do not
love you, as the word is generally understood, I have a new respect for
you, and a new affection, and I think that these will grow. I have no
doubt that there are some fortunate people who achieve the kind of mutual
love for which it is human to yearn, whose passion is naturally
transmuted into a feeling that may be even finer, but I am inclined to
think, even in such a case, that some effort and unselfishness are
necessary. At any rate, that has been denied to us, and we can never know
it from our own experience. We can only hope that there is such a
thing,--yes, and believe in it and work for it."

"Work for it, Hugh?" she repeated.

"For others--for our children. I have been thinking about the children a
great deal in the last few months especially about Matthew."

"You always loved him best," she said.

"Yes," I admitted. "I don't know why it should be so. And in spite of it,
I have neglected him, neglected them, failed to appreciate them all. I
did not deserve them. I have reproached myself, I have suffered for it,
not as much as I deserved. I came to realize that the children were a
bond between us, that their existence meant something greater than either
of us. But at the same time I recognized that I had lost my right over
them, that it was you who had proved yourself worthy.... It was through
the children that I came to think differently, to feel differently toward
you. I have come to you to ask your forgiveness."

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried.

"Wait," I said.... "I have come to you, through them. I want to say again
that I should not be here if I had obtained my desires. Yet there is more
to it than that. I think I have reached a stage where I am able to say
that I am glad I didn't obtain them. I see now that this coming to you
was something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the cowardly
thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had conquered
the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't come to
you to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must have
something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for our
lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are
entitled to decline to take the risk. I don't fool myself that it will be
all plain sailing, that there won't be difficulties and discouragements.
But I'll promise to try."

"What is it?" she asked, in a low voice. "I--I think I know."

"Perhaps you have guessed it. I am willing to try to devote what is left
of my life to you and to them. And I need your help. I acknowledge it.
Let us try to make more possible for them the life we have missed."

"The life we have missed!" she said.

"Yes. My mistakes, my failures, have brought us to the edge of a
precipice. We must prevent, if we can, those mistakes and failures for
them. The remedy for unhappy marriages, for all mistaken, selfish and
artificial relationships in life is a preventive one. My plan is that we
try to educate ourselves together, take advantage of the accruing
knowledge that is helping men and women to cope with the problems, to
think straight. We can then teach our children to think straight, to
avoid the pitfalls into which we have fallen."

I paused. Maude did not reply. Her face was turned away from me, towards
the red glow of the setting sun above the hills.

"You have been doing this all along, you have had the vision, the true
vision, while I lacked it, Maude. I offer to help you. But if you think
it is impossible for us to live together, if you believe my feeling
toward you is not enough, if you don't think I can do what I propose, or
if you have ceased to care for me--"

She turned to me with a swift movement, her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Hugh, don't say any more. I can't stand it. How little you know, for
all your thinking. I love you, I always have loved you. I grew to be
ashamed of it, but I'm not any longer. I haven't any pride any more, and
I never want to have it again."

"You're willing to take me as I am,--to try?" I said.

"Yes," she answered, "I'm willing to try." She smiled at me. "And I have
more faith than you, Hugh. I think we'll succeed."....

At nine o'clock that night, when we came out through the gates of the
big, noisy station, the children were awaiting us. They had changed, they
had grown. Biddy kissed me shyly, and stood staring up at me.

"We'll take you out to-morrow and show you how we can ride," said
Moreton.

Matthew smiled. He stood very close to me, with his hand through my arm.

"You're going to stay, father?" he asked.

"I'm going to stay, Matthew," I answered, "until we all go back to
America."....


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

      Barriers were mere relics of the superstition of the past
      Benumbing and desiccating effect of that old system of education
      Conscience was superstition, the fear of the wrath of the gods
      Conventionality was part of the price we had willingly paid
      Conviction that government should remain modestly in the background
      Everybody should have been satisfied, but everybody was not
      I hated to lie to her,--yet I did so
      I'm incapable of committing a single original act
      It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power
      Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse
      Marriage! What other career is open to a woman?
      Meaningless lessons which had to be learned
      Opponent who praises one with a delightful irony
      Righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy
      Staunch advocate on the doctrine of infant damnation
      That's the great thing, to keep 'em ignorant as long as possible
      The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public
      They deplored while they coveted
      We lived separate mental existences
      We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs
      What you wants, you gets
      Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child






CONISTON

By Winston Churchill

   "We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as
   what was strong. We have begun obscurely to recognize that things
   do not go of themselves, and that popular government is not in
   itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the
   virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men
   undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon, the dangers and
   responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function. Above
   all, it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no
   government can be carried on by declamation."

                 --JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.


BOOK I



CHAPTER I

First I am to write a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while
after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the
world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six Presidents had
closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras. Certain
gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer
determination to get on top, arose,--and got in top. So many of these
gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and
they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal
the people's chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era. After
the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many minds, and
found more chinks in the Constitution: bigger chinks, for the Things were
bigger, and they stole more chestnuts. But I am getting far ahead of my
love-story--and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters,
come to an end: and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no book.
Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is
only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love story
later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may
not be disappointed.

The hills seem to leap up against the sky as I describe that region where
Cynthia Ware was born, and the very old country names help to summon up
the picture. Coniston Mountain, called by some the Blue Mountain, clad in
Hercynian forests, ten good miles in length, north and south, with its
notch road that winds over the saddle behind the withers of it. Coniston
Water, that oozes out from under the loam in a hundred places, on the
eastern slope, gathers into a rushing stream to cleave the very granite,
flows southward around the south end of Coniston Mountain, and having
turned the mills at Brampton, idles through meadows westward in its own
green valley until it comes to Harwich, where it works again and tumbles
into a river. Brampton and Harwich are rivals, but Coniston Water gives
of its power impartially to each. From the little farm clearings on the
western slope of Coniston Mountain you can sweep the broad valley of a
certain broad river where grew (and grow still) the giant pines that gave
many a mast to King George's navy as tribute for the land. And beyond
that river rises beautiful Farewell Mountain of many colors, now
sapphire, now amethyst, its crest rimmed about at evening with saffron
flame; and, beyond Farewell, the emerald billows of the western peaks
catching the level light. A dozen little brooks are born high among the
western spruces on Coniston to score deep, cool valleys in their way
through Clovelly township to the broad music of the water and fresh
river-valleys full of the music of the water and fresh with the odor of
the ferns.

To this day the railroad has not reached Coniston Village--nay, nor
Coniston Flat, four miles nearer Brampton. The village lies on its own
little shelf under the forest-clad slope of the mountain, and in the
midst of its dozen houses is the green triangle where the militia used to
drill on June days. At one end of the triangle is the great pine mast
that graced no frigate of George's, but flew the stars and stripes on
many a liberty day. Across the road is Jonah Winch's store, with a
platform so high that a man may step off his horse directly on to it;
with its checker-paned windows, with its dark interior smelling of coffee
and apples and molasses, yes, and of Endea rum--for this was before the
days of the revivals.

How those checker-paned windows bring back the picture of that village
green! The meeting-house has them, lantern-like, wide and high, in three
sashes--white meeting-house, seat alike of government and religion, with
its terraced steeple, with its classic porches north and south. Behind it
is the long shed, and in front, rising out of the milkweed and the
flowering thistle, the horse block of the first meeting-house, where many
a pillion has left its burden in times bygone. Honest Jock Hallowell
built that second meeting-house--was, indeed, still building it at the
time of which we write. He had hewn every beam and king post in it, and
set every plate and slip. And Jock Hallowell is the man who, unwittingly
starts this chronicle.

At noon, on one of those madcap April days of that Coniston country, Jock
descended from his work on the steeple to perceive the ungainly figure of
Jethro Bass coming toward him across the green. Jethro was about thirty
years of age, and he wore a coonskin cap even in those days, and trousers
tacked into his boots. He carried his big head bent forward, a little to
one aide, and was not, at first sight, a prepossessing-looking person. As
our story largely concerns him and we must get started somehow, it may as
well be to fix a little attention on him.

"Heigho!" said Jock, rubbing his hands on his leather apron.

"H-how be you, Jock?" said Jethro, stopping.

"Heigho!" cried Jock, "what's this game of fox and geese you're a-playin'
among the farmers?"

"C-callate to git the steeple done before frost?" inquired Jethro,
without so much as a smile. "B-build it tight, Jock--b-build it tight."

"Guess he'll build his'n tight, whatever it is," said Jock, looking after
him as Jethro made his way to the little tannery near by.

Let it be known that there was such a thing as social rank in Coniston;
and something which, for the sake of an advantageous parallel, we may
call an Established Church. Coniston was a Congregational town still, and
the deacons and dignitaries of that church were likewise the pillars of
the state. Not many years before the time of which we write actual
disestablishment had occurred, when the town ceased--as a town--to pay
the salary of Priest Ware, as the minister was called. The father of
Jethro Bass, Nathan the currier, had once, in a youthful lapse, permitted
a Baptist preacher to immerse him in Coniston Water. This had been the
extent of Nathan's religion; Jethro had none at all, and was, for this
and other reasons, somewhere near the bottom of the social scale.

"Fox and geese!" repeated Jock, with his eyes still on Jethro's
retreating back. The builder of the meetinghouse rubbed a great, brown
arm, scratched his head, and turned and came face to face with Cynthia
Ware, in a poke bonnet.

Contrast is a favorite trick of authors, and no greater contrast is to be
had in Coniston than that between Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass. In the
first place; Cynthia was the minister's daughter, and twenty-one. I can
summon her now under the great maples of the village street, a virginal
figure, gray eyes that kindled the face shaded by the poke bonnet, and up
you went above the clouds.

"What about fox and geese, Jock?" said Cynthia.

"Jethro Bass," said Jock, who, by reason of his ability, was a privileged
character. "Mark my words, Cynthy, Jethro Bass is an all-fired sight
smarter that folks in this town think he be. They don't take notice of
him, because he don't say much, and stutters. He hain't be'n eddicated a
great deal, but I wouldn't be afeard to warrant he'd make a racket in the
world some of these days."

"Jock Hallowell!" cried Cynthia, the gray beginning to dance, "I suppose
you think Jethro's going to be President."

"All right," said Jock, "you can laugh. Ever talked with Jethro?"

"I've hardly spoken two words to him in my life," she replied. And it was
true, although the little white parsonage was scarce two hundred yards
from the tannery house.

"Jethro's never ailed much," Jock remarked, having reference to Cynthia's
proclivities for visiting the sick. "I've seed a good many different men
in my time, and I tell you, Cynthia Ware, that Jethro's got a kind of
power you don't often come acrost. Folks don't suspicion it."

In spite of herself, Cynthia was impressed by the ring of sincerity in
the builder's voice. Now that she thought of it, there was rugged power
in Jethro's face, especially when he took off the coonskin cap. She
always nodded a greeting when she saw him in the tannery yard or on the
road, and sometimes he nodded back, but oftener he had not appeared to
see her. She had thought this failure to nod stupidity, but it might
after all be abstraction.

"What makes you think he has ability?" she asked, picking flowers from a
bunch of arbutus she held.

"He's rich, for one thing," said Jock. He had not intended a dissertation
on Jethro Bass, but he felt bound to defend his statements.

"Rich!"

"Wal, he hain't poor. He's got as many as thirty mortgages round among
the farmers--some on land, and some on cattle."

"How did he make the money?" demanded Cynthia, in surprise.

"Hides an' wool an' bark--turned 'em over an' swep' in. Gits a load, and
Lyman Hull drives him down to Boston with that six-hoss team. Lyman gits
drunk, Jethro keeps sober and saves."

Jock began to fashion some wooden pegs with his adze, for nails were
scarce in those days. Still Cynthia lingered, picking flowers from the
bunch.

"What did you mean by 'fox and geese' Jock?" she said presently.

Jock laughed. He did not belong to the Establishment, but was a
Universalist; politically he admired General Jackson. "What'd you say if
Jethro was Chairman of the next Board of Selectmen?" he demanded.

No wonder Cynthia gasped. Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the
honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in
Coniston! The idea was heresy. As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered
it as a playful exaggeration. Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom
there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch's store that
morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away
the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated
for town office. Jock Hallowell had paused once or twice on his work on
the steeple to look across the tree-tops at Coniston shouldering the sky.
He had been putting two and two together, and now he was merely making
five out of it, instead of four. He remembered that Jethro Bass had for
some years been journeying through the town, baying his hides and wool,
and collecting the interest on his mortgages.

Cynthia would have liked to reprove Jock Hallowell, and tell him there
were some subjects which should not be joked about. Jethro Bass, Chairman
of the Board of Selectmen!

"Well, here comes, young Moses, I do believe," said Jock, gathering his
pegs into his apron and preparing to ascend once more. "Callated he'd
spring up pretty soon."

"Jock, you do talk foolishly for a man who is able to build a church,"
said Cynthia, as she walked away. The young Moses referred to was Moses
Hatch, Junior, son of the pillar of the Church and State, and it was an
open secret that he was madly in love with Cynthia. Let it be said of him
that he was a steady-going young man, and that he sighed for the moon.

"Moses," said the girl, when they came in sight of the elms that, shaded
the gable of the parsonage, "what do you think of Jethro Bass?"

"Jethro Bass!" exclaimed honest Moses, "whatever put him into your head,
Cynthy?" Had she mentioned perhaps, any other young man in Coniston,
Moses would have been eaten with jealousy.

"Oh, Jock was joking about him. What do you think of him?"

"Never thought one way or t'other," he answered. "Jethro never had much
to do with the boys. He's always in that tannery, or out buyin' of hides.
He does make a sharp bargain when he buys a hide. We always goes shares
on our'n."

Cynthia was not only the minister's daughter,--distinction enough,--her
reputation for learning was spread through the country roundabout, and at
the age of twenty she had had an offer to teach school in Harwich. Once a
week in summer she went to Brampton, to the Social library there, and sat
at the feet of that Miss Lucretia Penniman of whom Brampton has ever been
so proud--Lucretia Penniman, one of the first to sound the clarion note
for the intellectual independence of American women; who wrote the "Hymn
to Coniston"; who, to the awe of her townspeople, went out into the great
world and became editress of a famous woman's journal, and knew
Longfellow and Hawthorne and Bryant. Miss Lucretia it was who started the
Brampton Social Library, and filled it with such books as both sexes
might read with profit. Never was there a stricter index than hers.
Cynthia, Miss Lucretia loved, and the training of that mind was the
pleasantest task of her life.

Curiosity as a factor has never, perhaps, been given its proper weight by
philosophers. Besides being fatal to a certain domestic animal, as an
instigating force it has brought joy and sorrow into the lives of men and
women, and made and marred careers. And curiosity now laid hold of
Cynthia Ware. Why in the world she should ever have been curious about
Jethro Bass is a mystery to many, for the two of them were as far apart
as the poles. Cynthia, of all people, took to watching the tanner's son,
and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah
Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and
it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there
was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when a woman
begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually increases. On
one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to find his eyes
fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely akin to fear,
she found something distinctly pleasurable in it.

May came, and the pools dried up, the orchards were pink and white, the
birches and the maples were all yellow-green on the mountain sides
against the dark pines, and Cynthia was driving the minister's gig to
Brampton. Ahead of her, in the canon made by the road between the great
woods, strode an uncouth but powerful figure--coonskin cap, homespun
breeches tucked into boots, and all. The gig slowed down, and Cynthia
began to tremble with that same delightful fear. She knew it must be
wicked, because she liked it so much. Unaccountable thing! She felt all
akin to the nature about her, and her blood was coursing as the sap
rushes through a tree. She would not speak to him; of that she was sure,
and equally sure that he would not speak to her. The horse was walking
now, and suddenly Jethro Bass faced around, and her heart stood still.

"H-how be you, Cynthy?" he asked.

"How do you do, Jethro?"

A thrush in the woods began to sing a hymn, and they listened. After that
a silence, save for the notes of answering birds quickened by the song,
the minister's horse nibbling at the bushes. Cynthia herself could not
have explained why she lingered. Suddenly he shot a question at her.

"Where be you goin'?"

"To Brampton, to get Miss Lucretia to change this book," and she held it
up from her lap. It was a very large book.

"Wh-what's it about," he demanded.

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Who was be?"

"He was a very strong man. He began life poor and unknown, and fought his
way upward until he conquered the world."

"C-conquered the world, did you say? Conquered the world?"

"Yes."

Jethro pondered.

"Guess there's somethin' wrong about that book--somethin' wrong. Conquer
the United States?"

Cynthia smiled. She herself did not realize that we were not a part of
the world, then.

"He conquered Europe; where all the kings and queens are, and became a
king himself--an emperor."

"I want to-know!" said Jethro. "You said he was a poor boy?"

"Why don't you read the book, Jethro?" Cynthia answered. "I am sure I can
get Miss Lucretia to let you have it."

"Don't know as I'd understand it," he demurred.

"I'll try to explain what you don't understand," said Cynthia, and her
heart gave a bound at the very idea.

"Will You?" he said, looking at her eagerly. "Will you? You mean it?"

"Certainly," she answered, and blushed, not knowing why. "I-I must be
going," and she gathered up the reins.

"When will you give it to me?"

"I'll stop at the tannery when I come back from Brampton," she said, and
drove on. Once she gave a fleeting glance over her shoulder, and he was
still standing where she had left him.

When she returned, in the yellow afternoon light that flowed over wood
and pasture, he came out of the tannery door. Jake Wheeler or Speedy
Bates, the journeyman tailoress, from whom little escaped, could not have
said it was by design--thought nothing, indeed, of that part of it.

"As I live!" cried Speedy from the window to Aunt Lucy Prescott in the
bed, "if Cynthy ain't givin' him a book as big as the Bible!"

Aunt Lucy hoped, first, that it was the Bible, and second, that Jethro
would read it. Aunt Lucy, and Established Church Coniston in general,
believed in snatching brands from the burning, and who so deft as Cynthia
at this kind of snatching! So Cynthia herself was a hypocrite for once,
and did not know it. At that time Jethro's sins were mostly of omission.
As far as rum was concerned, he was a creature after Aunt Lucy's own
heart, for he never touched it: true, gaunt Deacon Ira Perkins,
tithing-man, had once chided him for breaking the Sabbath--shooting at a
fox.

To return to the book. As long as he lived, Jethro looked back to the joy
of the monumental task of mastering its contents. In his mind, Napoleon
became a rough Yankee general; of the cities, villages, and fortress he
formed as accurate a picture as a resident of Venice from Marco Polo's
account of Tartary. Jethro had learned to read, after a fashion, to
write, add, multiply, and divide. He knew that George Washington and
certain barefooted companions had forced a proud Britain to her knees,
and much of the warring in the book took color from Captain Timothy
Prescott's stories of General Stark and his campaigns, heard at Jonah
Winch's store. What Paris looked like, or Berlin, or the Hospice of St.
Bernard--though imaged by a winter Coniston--troubled Jethro not at all;
the thing that stuck in his mind was that Napoleon--for a considerable
time, at least--compelled men to do his bidding. Constitutions crumble
before the Strong. Not that Jethro philosophized about constitutions.
Existing conditions presented themselves, and it occurred to him that
there were crevices in the town system, and ways into power through the
crevices for men clever enough to find them.

A week later, and in these same great woods on the way to Brampton,
Cynthia overtook him once more. It was characteristic of him that he
plunged at once into the subject uppermost in his mind.

"Not a very big place, this Corsica--not a very big place."

"A little island in the Mediterranean," said Cynthia.

"Hum. Country folks, the Bonapartes--country folks?"

Cynthia laughed.

"I suppose you might call them so," she said. "They were poor, and lived
out of the world."

"He was a smart man. But he found things goin' his way. Didn't have to
move 'em."

"Not at first;" she admitted; "but he had to move mountains later. How
far have you read?"

"One thing that helped him," said Jethro, in indirect answer to this
question, "he got a smart woman for his wife--a smart woman."

Cynthia looked down at the reins in her lap, and she felt again that
wicked stirring within her,--incredible stirring of minister's daughter
for tanner's son. Coniston believes, and always will believe, that the
social bars are strong enough. So Cynthia looked down at the reins.

"Poor Josephine!" she said, "I always wish he had not cast her off."

"C-cast her off?" said Jethro. "Cast her off! Why did he do that?"

"After a while, when he got to be Emperor, he needed a wife who would be
more useful to him. Josephine had become a drag. He cared more about
getting on in the world than he did about his wife."

Jethro looked away contemplatively.

"Wa-wahn't the woman to blame any?" he said.

"Read the book, and you'll see," retorted Cynthia, flicking her horse,
which started at all gaits down the road. Jethro stood in his tracks,
staring, but this time he did not see her face above the hood of the gig.
Presently he trudged on, head downward, pondering upon another problem
than Napoleon's. Cynthia, at length, arrived in Brampton Street, in a
humor that puzzled the good Miss Lucretia sorely.




CHAPTER II

The sun had dropped behind the mountain, leaving Coniston in amethystine
shadow, and the last bee had flown homeward from the apple blossoms in
front of Aunt Lucy Prescott's window, before Cynthia returned. Aunt Lucy
was Cynthia's grandmother, and eighty-nine years of age. Still she sat in
her window beside the lilac bush, lost in memories of a stout, rosy lass
who had followed a stalwart husband up a broad river into the wilderness
some seventy years agone in Indian days--Weathersfield Massacre days.
That lass was Aunt Lucy herself, and in just such a May had Timothy's axe
rung through the Coniston forest and reared the log cabin, where six of
her children were born. Likewise in review passed the lonely months when
Timothy was fighting behind his rugged General Stark for that privilege
more desirable to his kind than life--self government. Timothy Prescott
would pull the forelock to no man, would have such God-fearing persons as
he chose make his laws for him.

Honest Captain Timothy and his Stark heroes, Aunt Lucy and her memories,
have long gone to rest. Little did they dream of the nation we have lived
to see, straining at her constitution like a great ship at anchor in a
gale, with funnels belching forth smoke, and a new race of men thronging
her decks for the mastery. Coniston is there still behind its mountain,
with its rusty firelocks and its hillside graves.

Cynthia, driving back from Brampton in the gig, smiled at Aunt Lucy in
the window, but she did not so much as glance at the tannery house
farther on. The tannery house, be it known, was the cottage where Jethro
dwelt, and which had belonged to Nathan, his father; and the tannery
sheds were at some distance behind it, nearer Coniston Water. Cynthia did
not glance at the tannery house, for a wave of orthodox indignation had
swept over her: at any rate, we may call it so. In other words, she was
angry with herself: pitied and scorned herself, if the truth be told, for
her actions--an inevitable mood.

In front of the minister's barn under the elms on the hill Cynthia pulled
the harness from the tired horse with an energy that betokened activity
of mind. She was not one who shrank from self-knowledge, and the question
put itself to her, "Whither was this matter tending?" The fire that is in
strong men has ever been a lure to women; and many, meaning to play with
it, have been burnt thereby since the world began. But to turn the fire.
to some use, to make the world better for it or stranger for it, that
were an achievement indeed! The horse munching his hay, Cynthia lingered
as the light fainted above the ridge, with the thought that this might be
woman's province, and Miss Lucretia Penniman might go on leading her
women regiments to no avail. Nevertheless she was angry with Jethro, not
because of what he had said, but because of what he was.

The next day is Sunday, and there is mild excitement in Coniston. For
Jethro Bass, still with the coonskin cap, but in a brass-buttoned coat
secretly purchased in Brampton, appeared at meeting! It made no
difference that he entered quietly, and sat in the rear slip, orthodox
Coniston knew that he was behind them: good Mr. Ware knew it, and changed
a little his prayers and sermon: Cynthia knew it, grew hot and cold by
turns under her poke bonnet. Was he not her brand, and would she not get
the credit of snatching him? How willingly, then, would she have given up
that credit to the many who coveted it--if it were a credit. Was Jethro
at meeting for any religious purpose?

Jethro's importance to Coniston lay in his soul, and that soul was
numbered at present ninety and ninth. When the meeting was over, Aunt
Lucy Prescott hobbled out at an amazing pace to advise him to read
chapter seven of Matthew, but he had vanished: via the horse sheds; if
she had known it, and along Coniston Water to the house by the tannery,
where he drew breath in a state of mind not to be depicted. He had gazed
at the back of Cynthia's poke bonnet for two hours, but he had an uneasy
feeling that he would have to pay a price.

The price was paid, in part, during the next six days. To do Jethro's
importance absolute justice, he did inspire fear among his
contemporaries, and young men and women did not say much to his face;
what they did say gave them little satisfaction. Grim Deacon Ira stopped
him as he was going to buy hides, and would have prayed over him if
Jethro had waited; dear Aunt Lucy did pray, but in private. In six days
orthodox Coniston came to the conclusion that this ninety and ninth soul
were better left to her who had snatched it, Cynthia Ware.

As for Cynthia, nothing was farther from her mind. Unchristian as was the
thought, if this thing she had awakened could only have been put back to
sleep again, she would have thought herself happy. But would she have
been happy? When Moses Hatch congratulated her, with more humor than
sincerity, he received the greatest scare of his life. Yet in those days
she welcomed Moses's society as she never had before; and Coniston,
including Moses himself, began thinking of a wedding.

Another Saturday came, and no Cynthia went to Brampton. Jethro may or may
not have been on the road. Sunday, and there was Jethro on the back seat
in the meetinghouse: Sunday noon, over his frugal dinner, the minister
mildly remonstrates with Cynthia for neglecting one who has shown signs
of grace, citing certain failures of others of his congregation: Cynthia
turns scarlet, leaving the minister puzzled and a little uneasy: Monday,
Miss Lucretia Penniman, alarmed, comes to Coniston to inquire after
Cynthia's health: Cynthia drives back with her as far as Four Corners,
talking literature and the advancement of woman; returns on foot,
thinking of something else, when she discerns a figure seated on a log by
the roadside, bent as in meditation. There was no going back the thing to
do was to come on, as unconcernedly as possible, not noticing
anything,--which Cynthia did, not without a little inward palpitating and
curiosity, for which she hated herself and looked the sterner. The figure
unfolded itself, like a Jack from a box.

"You say the woman wahn't any to blame--wahn't any to blame?"

The poke bonnet turned away. The shoulders under it began to shake, and
presently the astonished Jethro heard what seemed to be faint peals of
laughter. Suddenly she turned around to him, all trace of laughter gone.

"Why don't you read the book?"

"So I am," said Jethro, "so I am. Hain't come to this casting-off yet."

"And you didn't look ahead to find out?" This with scorn.

"Never heard of readin' a book in that fashion. I'll come to it in
time--g-guess it won't run away."

Cynthia stared at him, perhaps with a new interest at this plodding
determination. She was not quite sure that she ought to stand talking to
him a third time in these woods, especially if the subject of
conversation were not, as Coniston thought, the salvation of his soul.
But she stayed. Here was a woman who could be dealt with by no known
rules, who did not even deign to notice a week of marked coldness.

"Jethro," she said, with a terrifying sternness, "I am going to ask you a
question, and you must answer me truthfully."

"G-guess I won't find any trouble about that," said Jethro, apparently
not in the least terrified.

"I want you to tell me why you are going to meeting."

"To see you," said Jethro, promptly, "to see you."

"Don't you know that that is wrong?"

"H-hadn't thought much about it," answered Jethro.

"Well, you should think about it. People don't go to meeting to--to look
at other people."

"Thought they did," said Jethro. "W-why do they wear their best
clothes--why do they wear their best clothes?"

"To honor God," said Cynthia, with a shade lacking in the conviction, for
she added hurriedly: "It isn't right for you to go to church to
see--anybody. You go there to hear the Scriptures expounded, and to have
your sins forgiven. Because I lent you that book, and you come to
meeting, people think I'm converting you."

"So you be," replied Jethro, and this time it was he who smiled, "so you
be."

Cynthia turned away, her lips pressed together: How to deal with such a
man! Wondrous notes broke on the stillness, the thrush was singing his
hymn again, only now it seemed a paean. High in the azure a hawk wheeled,
and floated.

"Couldn't you see I was very angry with you?"

"S-saw you was goin' with Moses Hatch more than common."

Cynthia drew breath sharply. This was audacity--and yet she liked it.

"I am very fond of Moses," she said quickly.

"You always was charitable, Cynthy," said he.

"Haven't I been charitable to you?" she retorted.

"G-guess it has be'n charity," said Jethro. He looked down at her
solemnly, thoughtfully, no trace of anger in his face, turned, and
without another word strode off in the direction of Coniston Flat.

He left a tumultuous Cynthia, amazement and repentance struggling with
anger, which forbade her calling him back: pride in her answering to
pride in him, and she rejoicing fiercely that he had pride. Had he but
known it, every step he took away from her that evening was a step in
advance, and she gloried in the fact that he did not once look back. As
she walked toward Coniston, the thought came to her that she was rid of
the thing she had stirred up, perhaps forever, and the thrush burst into
his song once more.

That night, after Cynthia's candle had gone out, when the minister sat on
his doorsteps looking at the glory of the moon on the mountain forest, he
was startled by the sight of a figure slowly climbing toward him up the
slope. A second glance told him that it was Jethro's. Vaguely troubled,
he watched his approach; for good Priest Ware, while able to obey
one-half the scriptural injunction, had not the wisdom of the serpent,
and women, as typified by Cynthia, were a continual puzzle to him. That
very evening, Moses Hatch had called, had been received with more favor
than usual, and suddenly packed off about his business. Seated in the
moonlight, the minister wondered vaguely whether Jethro Bass were
troubling the girl. And now Jethro stood before him, holding out a book.
Rising, Mr. Ware bade him good evening, mildly and cordially.

"C-come to leave this book for Cynthy," said Jethro.

Mr. Ware took it, mechanically.

"Have you finished it?" he asked kindly.

"All I want," replied Jethro, "all I want."

He turned, and went down the slope. Twice the words rose to the
minister's lips to call him back, and were suppressed. Yet what to say to
him if he came? Mr. Ware sat down again, sadly wondering why Jethro Bass
should be so difficult to talk to.

The parsonage was of only one story, with a steep, sloping roof. On the
left of the doorway was Cynthia's room, and the minister imagined he
heard a faint, rustling noise at her window. Presently he arose, barred
the door; could be heard moving around in his room for a while, and
after that all was silence save for the mournful crying of a whippoorwill
in the woods. Then a door opened softly, a white vision stole into the
little entry lighted by the fan-window, above, seized the book and stole
back. Had the minister been a prying man about his household, he would
have noticed next day that Cynthia's candle was burned down to the
socket. He saw nothing of the kind: he saw, in fact, that his daughter
flitted about the house singing, and he went out into the sun to drop
potatoes.

No sooner had he reached the barn than this singing ceased. But how was
Mr. Ware to know that?

Twice Cynthia, during the week that followed, got halfway down the slope
of the parsonage hill, the book under her arm, on her way to the tannery;
twice went back, tears of humiliation and self-pity in her eyes at the
thought that she should make advances to a man, and that man the tanner's
son. Her household work done, a longing for further motion seized her,
and she walked out under the maples of the village street. Let it be
understood that Coniston was a village, by courtesy, and its shaded road
a street. Suddenly, there was the tannery, Jethro standing in front of
it, contemplative. Did he see her? Would he come to her? Cynthia, seized
by a panic of shame, flew into Aunt Lucy Prescott's, sat through half an
hour of torture while Aunt Lucy talked of redemption of sinners, during
ten minutes of which Jethro stood, still contemplative. What tumult was
in his breast, or whether there was any tumult, Cynthia knew not. He went
into the tannery again, and though she saw him twice later in the week,
he gave no sign of seeing her.

On Saturday Cynthia bought a new bonnet in Brampton; Sunday morning put
it on, suddenly remembered that one went to church to honor God, and wore
her old one; walked to meeting in a flutter of expectancy not to be
denied, and would have looked around had that not been a cardinal sin in
Coniston. No Jethro! General opinion (had she waited to hear it among the
horse sheds or on the green), that Jethro's soul had slid back into the
murky regions, from which it were folly for even Cynthia to try to drag
it.




CHAPTER III

To prove that Jethro's soul had not slid back into the murky regions, and
that it was still indulging in flights, it is necessary to follow him
(for a very short space) to Boston. Jethro himself went in Lyman Hull's
six-horse team with a load of his own merchandise--hides that he had
tanned, and other country produce. And they did not go by the way of
Truro Pass to the Capital, but took the state turnpike over the ranges,
where you can see for miles and miles and miles on a clear summer day
across the trembling floors of the forest tops to lonely sentinel
mountains fourscore miles away.

No one takes the state turnpike nowadays except crazy tourists who are
willing to risk their necks and their horses' legs for the sake of
scenery. The tough little Morgans of that time, which kept their feet
like cats, have all but disappeared, but there were places on that road
where Lyman Hull put the shoes under his wheels for four miles at a
stretch. He was not a companion many people would have chosen with whom
to enjoy the beauties of such a trip, and nearly everybody in Coniston
was afraid of him. Jethro Bass would sit silent on the seat for hours
and--it is a fact to be noted that when he told Lyman to do a thing,
Lyman did it; not, perhaps, without cursing and grumbling. Lyman was a
profane and wicked man--drover, farmer, trader, anything. He had a cider
mill on his farm on the south slopes of Coniston which Mr. Ware had
mentioned in his sermons, and which was the resort of the ungodly. The
cider was not so good as Squire Northcutt's, but cheaper. Jethro was not
afraid of Lyman, and he had a mortgage on the six-horse team, and on the
farm and the cider mill.

After six days, Jethro and Lyman drove over Charlestown bridge and into
the crooked streets of Boston, and at length arrived at a drover's hotel,
or lodging-house that did not, we may be sure, front on Mount Vernon
Street or face the Mall. Lyman proceeded to get drunk, and Jethro to sell
the hides and other merchandise which Lyman had hauled for him.

There was a young man in Boston, when Jethro arrived in Lyman Hull's
team, named William Wetherell. By extraordinary circumstances he and
another connected with him are to take no small part in this story, which
is a sufficient excuse for his introduction. His father had been a
prosperous Portsmouth merchant in the West India trade, a man of many
attainments, who had failed and died of a broken heart; and William, at
two and twenty, was a clerk in the little jewellery shop of Mr. Judson in
Cornhill.

William Wetherell had literary aspirations, and sat from morning till
night behind the counter, reading and dreaming: dreaming that he was to
be an Irving or a Walter Scott, and yet the sum total of his works in
after years consisted of some letters to the Newcastle Guardian, and a
beginning of the Town History of Coniston!

William had a contempt for the awkward young countryman who suddenly
loomed up before him that summer's morning across the counter. But a
moment before the clerk had been in a place where he would fain have
lingered--a city where blue waters flow swiftly between white palaces
toward the sunrise.

     "And I have fitted up some chambers there
     Looking toward the golden Eastern air,
     And level with the living winds, which flow
     Like waves above the living waves below."

Little did William Wetherell guess, when he glanced up at the intruder,
that he was looking upon one of the forces of his own life! The
countryman wore a blue swallow tail coat (fashioned by the hand of Speedy
Bates), a neck-cloth, a coonskin cap, and his trousers were tucked into
rawhide boots. He did not seem a promising customer for expensive
jewellery, and the literary clerk did not rise, but merely closed his
book with his thumb in it.

"S-sell things here," asked the countryman, "s-sell things here?"

"Occasionally, when folks have money to buy them."

"My name's Jethro Bass," said the countryman, "Jethro Bass from Coniston.
Ever hear of Coniston?"

Young Mr. Wetherell never had, but many years afterward he remembered his
name, heaven knows why. Jethro Bass! Perhaps it had a strange ring to it.

"F-folks told me to be careful," was Jethro's next remark. He did not
look at the clerk, but kept his eyes fixed on the things within the
counter.

"Somebody ought to have come with you," said the clerk, with a smile of
superiority.

"D-don't know much about city ways."

"Well," said the clerk, beginning to be amused, "a man has to keep his
wits about him."

Even then Jethro spared him a look, but continued to study the contents
of the case.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Bass? We have some really good things here.
For example, this Swiss watch, which I will sell you cheap, for one
hundred and fifty dollars."

"One hundred and fifty dollars--er--one hundred and fifty?"

Wetherell nodded. Still the countryman did not look up.

"F-folks told me to be careful," he repeated without a smile. He was
looking at the lockets, and finally pointed a large finger at one of
them--the most expensive, by the way. "W-what d'ye get for that?" he
asked.

"Twenty dollars," the clerk promptly replied. Thirty was nearer the
price, but what did it matter.

"H-how much for that?" he said, pointing to another. The clerk told him.
He inquired about them all, deliberately repeating the sums, considering
with so well-feigned an air of a purchaser that Mr. Wetherell began to
take a real joy in the situation. For trade was slack in August, and
diversion scarce. Finally he commanded that the case be put on the top of
the counter, and Wetherell humored him. Whereupon he picked up the locket
he had first chosen. It looked very delicate in his huge, rough hand, and
Wetherell was surprised that the eyes of Mr. Bass had been caught by the
most expensive, for it was far from being the showiest.

"T-twenty dollars?" he asked.

"We may as well call it that," laughed Wetherell.

"It's not too good for Cynthy," he said.

"Nothing's too good for Cynthy," answered Mr. Wetherell, mockingly,
little knowing how he might come to mean it.

Jethro Bass paid no attention to this speech. Pulling a great cowhide
wallet from his pocket, still holding the locket in his hand, to the
amazement of the clerk he counted out twenty dollars and laid them down.

"G-guess I'll take that one, g-guess I'll take that one," he said.

Then he looked at Mr. Wetherell for the first time.

"Hold!" cried the clerk, more alarmed than he cared to show, "that's not
the price. Did you think I could sell it for that price?"

"W-wahn't that the price you fixed?"

"You simpleton!" retorted Wetherell, with a conviction now that he was
calling him the wrong name. "Give me back the locket, and you shall have
your money, again."

"W-wahn't that the price you fixed?"

"Yes, but--"

"G-guess I'll keep the locket--g-guess I'll keep the locket."

Wetherell looked at him aghast, and there was no doubt about his
determination. With a sinking heart the clerk realized that he should
have to make good to Mr. Judson the seven odd dollars of difference, and
then he lost his head. Slipping round the counter to the door of the
shop, he turned the key, thrust it in his pocket, and faced Mr. Bass
again--from behind the counter.

"You don't leave this shop," cried the clerk, "until you give me back
that locket."

Jethro Bass turned. A bench ran along the farther wall, and there he
planted himself without a word, while the clerk stared at him,--with what
feelings of uneasiness I shall not attempt to describe,--for the customer
was plainly determined to wait until hunger should drive one of them
forth. The minutes passed, and Wetherell began to hate him. Then some one
tried the door, peered in through the glass, perceived Jethro, shook the
knob, knocked violently, all to no purpose. Jethro seemed lost in a
reverie.

"This has gone far enough," said the clerk, trying to keep his voice from
shaking "it is beyond a joke. Give me back the locket." And he tendered
Jethro the money again.

"W-wahn't that the price you fixed?" asked Jethro, innocently.

Wetherell choked. The man outside shook the door again, and people on the
sidewalk stopped, and presently against the window panes a sea of curious
faces gazed in upon them. Mr. Bass's thoughts apparently were fixed on
Eternity--he looked neither at the people nor at Wetherell. And then, the
crowd parting as for one in authority, as in a bad dream the clerk saw
his employer, Mr. Judson, courteously pushing away the customer at the
door who would not be denied. Another moment, and Mr. Judson had gained
admittance with his private key, and stood on the threshold staring at
clerk and customer. Jethro gave no sign that the situation had changed.

"William," said Mr. Judson, in a dangerously quiet voice, "perhaps you
can explain this extraordinary state of affairs."

"I can, sir," William cried. "This gentleman" (the word stuck in his
throat), "this gentleman came in here to examine lockets which I had no
reason to believe he would buy. I admit my fault, sir. He asked the price
of the most expensive, and I told him twenty dollars, merely for a jest,
sir." William hesitated.

"Well?" said Mr. Judson.

"After pricing every locket in the case, he seized the first one, handed
me twenty dollars, and now refuses to give it up, although he knows the
price is twenty-seven."

"Then?"

"Then I locked the door, sir. He sat down there, and hasn't moved since."

Mr. Judson looked again at Mr. Bass; this time with unmistakable
interest. The other customer began to laugh, and the crowd was pressing
in, and Mr. Judson turned and shut the door in their faces. All this time
Mr. Bass had not moved, not so much as to lift his head or shift one of
his great cowhide boots.

"Well, sir," demanded Mr. Judson, "what have you to say?"

"N-nothin'. G-guess I'll keep the locket. I've, paid for it--I've paid
for it."

"And you are aware, my friend," said Mr. Judson, "that my clerk has given
you the wrong price?"

"Guess that's his lookout." He still sat there, doggedly unconcerned.

A bull would have seemed more at home in a china shop than Jethro Bass in
a jewellery store. But Mr. Judson himself was a man out of the ordinary,
and instead of getting angry he began to be more interested.

"Took you for a greenhorn, did he?" he remarked.

"F-folks told me to be careful--to be careful," said Mr. Bass.

Then Mr. Judson laughed. It was all the more disconcerting to William
Wetherell, because his employer laughed rarely. He laid his hand on
Jethro's shoulder.

"He might have spared himself the trouble, my young friend," he said.
"You didn't expect to find a greenhorn behind a jewellery counter, did
you?"

"S-surprised me some," said Jethro.

Mr. Judson laughed again, all the while looking at him.

"I am going to let you keep the locket," he said, "because it will teach
my greenhorn a lesson. William, do you hear that?"

"Yes, sir," William said, and his face was very red.

Mr. Bass rose solemnly, apparently unmoved by his triumph in a somewhat
remarkable transaction, and William long remembered how he towered over
all of them. He held the locket out to Mr. Judson, who stared at it,
astonished.

"What's this?" said that gentleman; "you don't want it?"

"Guess I'll have it marked," said Jethro, "ef it don't cost extry."

"Marked!" gasped Mr. Judson, "marked!"

"Ef it don't cost extry," Jethro repeated.

"Well, I'll--" exclaimed Mr. Judson, and suddenly recalled the fact that
he was a church member. "What inscription do you wish put into it?" he
asked, recovering himself with an effort.

Jethro thrust his hand into his pocket, and again the cowhide wallet came
out. He tendered Mr. Judson a somewhat soiled piece of paper, and Mr.
Judson read:--

        "Cynthy, from Jethro"

"Cynthy," Mr. Judson repeated, in a tremulous voice, "Cynthy, not
Cynthia."

"H-how is it written," said Jethro, leaning over it, "h-how is it
written?"

"Cynthy," answered Mr. Judson, involuntarily.

"Then make it Cynthy--make it Cynthy."

"Cynthy it shall be," said Mr. Judson, with conviction.

"When'll you have it done?"

"To-night," replied Mr. Judson, with a twinkle in his eye, "to-night, as
a special favor."

"What time--w-what time?"

"Seven o'clock, sir. May I send it to your hotel? The Tremont House, I
suppose?"

"I-I'll call," said Jethro, so solemnly that Mr. Judson kept his laughter
until he was gone.

From the door they watched him silently as he strode across the street
and turned the corner. Then Mr. Judson turned. "That man will make his
mark, William," he said; and added thoughtfully, "but whether for good or
evil, I know not."




CHAPTER IV

What Cynthia may have thought or felt during Jethro's absence in Boston,
and for some months thereafter, she kept to herself. Honest Moses Hatch
pursued his courting untroubled, and never knew that he had a rival.
Moses would as soon have questioned the seasons or the weather as
Cynthia's changes of moods,--which were indeed the weather for him, and
when storms came he sat with his back to them, waiting for the sunshine.
He had long ceased proposing marriage, in the firm belief that Cynthia
would set the day in her own good time. Thereby he was saved much
suffering.

The summer flew on apace, for Coniston. Fragrant hay was cut on hillsides
won from rock and forest, and Coniston Water sang a gentler melody--save
when the clouds floated among the spruces on the mountain and the rain
beat on the shingles. During the still days before the turn of the
year,--days of bending fruit boughs, crab-apples glistening red in the
soft sunlight,--rumor came from Brampton to wrinkle the forehead of Moses
Hatch as he worked among his father's orchards.

The rumor was of a Mr. Isaac Dudley Worthington, a name destined to make
much rumor before it was to be carved on the marble. Isaac D.
Worthington, indeed, might by a stretch of the imagination be called the
pioneer of all the genus to be known in the future as City Folks, who
were, two generations later, to invade the country like a devouring army
of locusts.

At that time a stranger in Brampton was enough to set the town agog. But
a young man of three and twenty, with an independent income of four
hundred dollars a year!--or any income at all not derived from his own
labor--was unheard of. It is said that when the stage from over Truro Gap
arrived in Brampton Street a hundred eyes gazed at him unseen, from
various ambushes, and followed him up the walk to Silas Wheelock's, where
he was to board. In half an hour Brampton knew the essentials of Isaac
Worthington's story, and Sam Price was on his way with it to Coniston for
distribution at Jonah Winch's store.

Young Mr. Worthington was from Boston--no less; slim, pale, medium
height, but with an alert look, and a high-bridged nose. But his clothes!
Sam Price's vocabulary was insufficient here, they were cut in such a
way, and Mr. Worthington was downright distinguished-looking under his
gray beaver. Why had he come to Brampton? demanded Deacon Ira Perkins.
Sam had saved this for the last. Young Mr. Worthington was threatened
with consumption, and had been sent to live with his distant relative,
Silas Wheelock.

The presence of a gentleman of leisure--although threatened with
consumption--became an all-absorbing topic in two villages and three
hamlets, and more than one swain, hitherto successful, felt the wind blow
colder. But in a fortnight it was known that a petticoat did not make
Isaac Worthington even turn his head. Curiosity centred on Silas
Wheelock's barn, where Mr. Worthington had fitted up a shop, and,
presently various strange models of contrivances began to take shape
there. What these were, Silas himself knew not; and the gentleman of
leisure was, alas! close-mouthed. When he was not sawing and hammering
and planing, he took long walks up and down Coniston Water, and was
surprised deep in thought at several places.

Nathan Bass's story-and-a-half house, devoid of paint, faced the road,
and behind it was the shed, or barn, that served as the tannery, and
between the tannery and Coniston Water were the vats. The rain flew in
silvery spray, and the drops shone like jewels on the coat of a young man
who stood looking in at the tannery door. Young Jake Wheeler, son of the
village spendthrift, was driving a lean white horse round in a ring: to
the horse was attached a beam, and on the beam a huge round stone rolled
on a circular oak platform. Jethro Bass, who was engaged in pushing
hemlock bark under the stone to be crushed, straightened. Of the three,
the horse had seen the visitor first, and stopped in his tracks.

"Jethro!" whispered Jake, tingling with an excitement that was but
natural. Jethro had begun to sweep the finer pieces of bark toward the
centre. "It's the city man, walked up here from Brampton."

It was indeed Mr. Worthington, slightly more sunburned and less
citified-looking than on his arrival, and he wore a woollen cap of
Brampton make. Even then, despite his wavy hair and delicate appearance,
Isaac Worthington had the hawk-like look which became famous in later
years, and at length he approached Jethro and fixed his eye upon him.

"Kind of slow work, isn't it?" remarked Mr. Worthington.

The white horse was the only one to break the silence that followed, by
sneezing with all his might.

"How is the tannery business in these parts?" essayed Mr. Worthington
again.

"Thinkin' of it?" said Jethro. "T-thinkin' of it, be you?"

"No," answered Mr. Worthington, hastily. "If I were," he added, "I'd put
in new machinery. That horse and stone is primitive."

"What kind of machinery would you put in?" asked Jethro.

"Ah," answered Worthington, "that will interest you. All New Englanders
are naturally progressive, I take it."

"W-what was it you took?"

"I was merely remarking on the enterprise of New Englanders," said
Worthington, flushing. "On my journey up here, beside the Merrimac, I had
the opportunity to inspect the new steam-boiler, the falling-mill, the
splitting machine, and other remarkable improvements. In fact, these
suggested one or two little things to me, which might be of interest to
you."

"Well," said Jethro, "they might, and then again they mightn't. Guess it
depends."

"Depends!" exclaimed the man of leisure, "depends on what?"

"H-how much you know about it."

Young Mr. Worthington, instead of being justly indignant, laughed and
settled himself comfortably on a pile of bark. He thought Jethro a
character, and he was not mistaken. On the other hand, Mr. Worthington
displayed a knowledge of the falling-mill and splitting-machine and the
process of tanneries in general that was surprising. Jethro, had Mr.
Worthington but known it, was more interested in animate machines: more
interested in Mr. Worthington than the falling-mill or, indeed, the
tannery business.

At length the visitor fell silent, his sense of superiority suddenly
gone. Others had had this same feeling with Jethro, even the minister;
but the man of leisure (who was nothing of the sort) merely felt a kind
of bewilderment.

"Callatin' to live in Brampton--be you?" asked Jethro.

"I am living there now."

"C-callatin' to set up a mill some day?"

Mr. Worthington fairly leaped off the bark pile.

"What makes you say that?" he demanded.

"G-guesswork," said Jethro, starting to shovel again, "g-guesswork."

To take a walk in the wild, to come upon a bumpkin in cowhide boots
crushing bark, to have him read within twenty minutes a cherished and
well-hidden ambition which Brampton had not discovered in a month (and
did not discover for many years) was sufficiently startling. Well might
Mr. Worthington tremble for his other ambitions, and they were many.

Jethro stepped out, passing Mr. Worthington as though he had already
forgotten that gentleman's existence, and seized an armful of bark that
lay under cover of a lean-to. Just then, heralded by a brightening of the
western sky, a girl appeared down the road, her head bent a little as in
thought, and if she saw the group by the tannery house she gave no sign.
Two of them stared at her--Jake Wheeler and Mr. Worthington. Suddenly
Jake, implike, turned and stared at Worthington.

"Cynthy Ware, the minister's daughter," he said.

"Haven't I seen her in Brampton?" inquired Mr. Worthington, little
thinking of the consequences of the question.

"Guess you have," answered Jake. "Cynthy goes to the Social Library, to
git books. She knows more'n the minister himself, a sight more."

"Where does the minister live?" asked Mr. Worthington.

Jake pulled him by the sleeve toward the road, and pointed to the low
gable of the little parsonage under the elms on the hill beyond the
meeting-house. The visitor gave a short glance at it, swung around and
gave a longer glance at the figure disappearing in the other direction.
He did not suspect that Jake was what is now called a news agency. Then
Mr. Worthington turned to Jethro, who was stooping over the bark.

"If you come to Brampton, call and see me," he said. "You'll find me at
Silas Wheelock's."

He got no answer, but apparently expected none, and he started off down
the Brampton road in the direction Cynthia had taken.

"That makes another," said Jake, significantly, "and Speedy Bates says he
never looks at wimmen. Godfrey, I wish I could see Moses now."

Mr. Worthington had not been quite ingenuous with Jake. To tell the
truth, he had made the acquaintance of the Social Library and Miss
Lucretia, and that lady had sung the praises of her favorite. Once out of
sight of Jethro, Mr. Worthington quickened his steps, passed the store,
where he was remarked by two of Jonah's customers, and his blood leaped
when he saw the girl in front of him, walking faster now. Yes, it is a
fact that Isaac Worthington's blood once leaped. He kept on, but when
near her had a spasm of fright to make his teeth fairly chatter, and than
another spasm followed, for Cynthia had turned around.

"How do you do Mr. Worthington?" she said, dropping him a little
courtesy. Mr. Worthington stopped in his tracks, and it was some time
before he remembered to take off his woollen cap and sweep the mud with
it.

"You know my name!" he exclaimed.

"It is known from Tarleton Four Corners to Harwich," said Cynthia, "all
that distance. To tell the truth," she added, "those are the boundaries
of my world." And Mr. Worthington being still silent, "How do you like
being a big frog in a little pond?"

"If it were your pond, Miss Cynthia," he responded gallantly, "I should
be content to be a little frog."

"Would you?" she said; "I don't believe you."

This was not subtle flattery, but the truth--Mr. Worthington would never
be content to be a little anything. So he had been judged twice in an
afternoon, once by Jethro and again by Cynthia.

"Why don't you believe me?" he asked ecstatically.

"A woman's instinct, Mr. Worthington, has very little reason in it."

"I hear, Miss Cynthia," he said gallantly, "that your instinct is
fortified by learning, since Miss Penniman tells me that you are quite
capable of taking a school in Boston."

"Then I should be doubly sure of your character," she retorted with a
twinkle.

"Will you tell my fortune?" he said gayly.

"Not on such a slight acquaintance," she replied. "Good-by, Mr.
Worthington."

"I shall see you in Brampton," he cried, "I--I have seen you in
Brampton."

She did not answer this confession, but left him, and presently
disappeared beyond the triangle of the green, while Mr. Worthington
pursued his way to Brampton by the road,--his thoughts that evening not
on waterfalls or machinery. As for Cynthia's conduct, I do not defend or
explain it, for I have found out that the best and wisest of women can at
times be coquettish.

It was that meeting which shook the serenity of poor Moses, and he
learned of it when he went to Jonah Winch's store an hour later. An hour
later, indeed, Coniston was discussing the man of leisure in a new light.
It was possible that Cynthia might take him, and Deacon Ira Perkins made
a note the next time he went to Brampton to question Silas Wheelock on
Mr. Worthington's origin, habits, and orthodoxy.

Cynthia troubled herself very little about any of these. Scarcely any
purpose in the world is single, but she had had a purpose in talking to
Mr. Worthington, besides the pleasure it gave her. And the next Saturday,
when she rode off to Brampton, some one looked through the cracks in the
tannery shed and saw that she wore her new bonnet.

There is scarcely a pleasanter place in the world than Brampton Street on
a summer's day. Down the length of it runs a wide green, shaded by
spreading trees, and on either side, tree-shaded, too, and each in its
own little plot, gabled houses of that simple, graceful architecture of
our forefathers. Some of these had fluted pilasters and cornices, the
envy of many a modern architect, and fan-shaped windows in dormer and
doorway. And there was the church, then new, that still stands to the
glory of its builders; with terraced steeple and pillared porch and the
widest of checker-paned sashes to let in the light on high-backed pews
and gallery.

The celebrated Social Library, halfway up the street, occupied part of
Miss Lucretia's little house; or, it might better be said, Miss Lucretia
boarded with the Social Library. There Cynthia hitched her horse, gave
greeting to Mr. Ezra Graves and others who paused, and, before she was
fairly in the door, was clasped in Miss Lucretia's arms. There were new
books to be discussed, arrived by the stage the day before; but scarce
half an hour had passed before Cynthia started guiltily at a timid knock,
and Miss Lucretia rose briskly.

"It must be Ezra Graves come for the Gibbon," she said. "He's early." And
she went to the door. Cynthia thought it was not Ezra. Then came Miss
Lucretia's voice from the entry:--

"Why, Mr. Worthington! Have you read the Last of the Mohicans already?"

There he stood, indeed, the man of leisure, and to-day he wore his beaver
hat. No, he had not yet read the 'Last of the Mohicans.' There were
things in it that Mr. Worthington would like to discuss with Miss
Penniman. Was it not a social library? At this juncture there came a
giggle from within that made him turn scarlet, and he scarcely heard Miss
Lucretia offering to discuss the whole range of letters. Enter Mr.
Worthington, bows profoundly to Miss Lucretia's guest, his beaver in his
hand, and the discussion begins, Cynthia taking no part in it. Strangely
enough, Mr. Worthington's remarks on American Indians are not only
intelligent, but interesting. The clock strikes four, Miss Lucretia
starts up, suddenly remembering that she has promised to read to an
invalid, and with many regrets from Mr. Worthington, she departs. Then he
sits down again, twirling his beaver, while Cynthia looks at him in quiet
amusement.

"I shall walk to Coniston again, next week," he announced.

"What an energetic man!" said Cynthia.

"I want to have my fortune told."

"I hear that you walk a great deal," she remarked, "up and down Coniston
Water. I shall begin to think you romantic, Mr. Worthington--perhaps a
poet."

"I don't walk up and down Coniston Water for that reason," he answered
earnestly.

"Might I be so bold as to ask the reason?" she ventured.

Great men have their weaknesses. And many, close-mouthed with their own
sex, will tell their cherished hopes to a woman, if their interests are
engaged. With a bas-relief of Isaac Worthington in the town library
to-day (his own library), and a full-length portrait of him in the
capitol of the state, who shall deny this title to greatness?

He leaned a little toward her, his face illumined by his subject, which
was himself.

"I will confide in you," he said, "that some day I shall build here in
Brampton a woollen mill which will be the best of its kind. If I gain
money, it will not be to hoard it or to waste it. I shall try to make the
town better for it, and the state, and I shall try to elevate my
neighbors."

Cynthia could not deny that these were laudable ambitions.

"Something tells me," he continued, "that I shall succeed. And that is
why I walk on Coniston Water--to choose the best site for a dam."

"I am honored by your secret, but I feel that the responsibility you
repose in me is too great," she said.

"I can think of none in whom I would rather confide," said he.

"And am I the only one in all Brampton, Harwich, and Coniston who knows
this?" she asked.

Mr. Worthington laughed.

"The only one of importance," he answered. "This week, when I went to
Coniston, I had a strange experience. I left the brook at a tannery, and
a most singular fellow was in the shed shovelling bark. I tried to get
him to talk, and told him about some new tanning machinery I had seen.
Suddenly he turned on me and asked me if I was 'callatin' to set up a
mill.' He gave me a queer feeling. Do you have many such odd characters
in Coniston, Miss Cynthia? You're not going?"

Cynthia had risen, and all of the laugher was gone from her eyes. What
had happened to make her grow suddenly grave, Isaac Worthington never
knew.

"I have to get my father's supper," she said.

He, too, rose, puzzled and disconcerted at this change in her.

"And may I not come to Coniston?" he asked.

"My father and I should be glad to see you, Mr. Worthington," she
answered.

He untied her horse and essayed one more topic.

"You are taking a very big book," he said. "May I look at the title?"

She showed it to him in silence. It was the "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte."




CHAPTER V

Isaac Worthington came to Coniston not once, but many times, before the
snow fell; and afterward, too, in Silas Wheelock's yellow sleigh through
the great drifts under the pines, the chestnut Morgan trotting to one
side in the tracks. On one of these excursions he fell in with that
singular character of a bumpkin who had interested him on his first
visit, in coonskin cap and overcoat and mittens. Jethro Bass was plodding
in the same direction, and Isaac Worthington, out of the goodness of his
heart, invited him into the sleigh. He was scarcely prepared for the
bumpkin's curt refusal, but put it down to native boorishness, and
thought no more about it then.

What troubled Mr. Worthington infinitely more was the progress of his
suit; for it had become a snit, though progress is a wrong word to use in
connection with it. So far had he got,--not a great distance,--and then
came to what he at length discovered was a wall, and apparently
impenetrable. He was not even allowed to look over it. Cynthia was kind,
engaging; even mirthful, at times, save when he approached it; and he
became convinced that a certain sorrow lay in the forbidden ground. The
nearest he had come to it was when he mentioned again, by accident, that
life of Napoleon.

That Cynthia would accept him, nobody doubted for an instant. It would be
madness not to. He was orthodox, so Deacon Ira had discovered, of good
habits, and there was the princely four hundred a year--almost a
minister's salary! Little people guessed that there was no
love-making--only endless discussions of books beside the great centre
chimney, and discussions of Isaac Worthington's career.

It is a fact--for future consideration--that Isaac Worthington proposed
to Cynthia Ware, although neither Speedy Bates nor Deacon Ira Perkins
heard him do so. It had been very carefully prepared, that speech, and
was a model of proposals for the rising young men of all time. Mr.
Worthington preferred to offer himself for what he was going to be--not
for what he was. He tendered to Cynthia a note for a large amount,
payable in some twenty years, with interest. The astonishing thing to
record is that in twenty years he could have more than paid the note,
although he could not have foreseen at that time the Worthington Free
Library and the Truro Railroad, and the stained-glass window in the
church and the great marble monument on the hill--to another woman. All
of these things, and more, Cynthia might have had if she had only
accepted that promise to pay! But she did not accept it. He was a trifle
more robust than when he came to Brampton in the summer, but perhaps she
doubted his promise to pay.

It may have been guessed, although the language we have used has been
purposely delicate, that Cynthia was already in love with--somebody else.
Shame of shames and horror of horrors--with Jethro Bass! With Strength,
in the crudest form in which it is created, perhaps, but yet with
Strength. The strength might gradually and eventually be refined. Such
was her hope, when she had any. It is hard, looking back upon that
virginal and cultured Cynthia, to be convinced that she could have loved
passionately, and such a man! But love she did, and passionately, too,
and hated herself for it, and prayed and struggled to cast out what she
believed, at times, to be a devil.

The ancient allegory of Cupid and the arrows has never been improved
upon: of Cupid, who should never in the world have been trusted with a
weapon, who defies all game laws, who shoots people in the bushes and
innocent bystanders generally, the weak and the helpless and the strong
and self-confident! There is no more reason in it than that. He shot
Cynthia Ware, and what she suffered in secret Coniston never guessed.
What parallels in history shall I quote to bring home the enormity of
such a mesalliance? Orthodox Coniston would have gone into sackcloth and
ashes,--was soon to go into these, anyway.

I am not trying to keep the lovers apart for any mere purposes of
fiction,--this is a true chronicle, and they stayed apart most of that
winter. Jethro went about his daily tasks, which were now become
manifold, and he wore the locket on its little chain himself. He did not
think that Cynthia loved him--yet, but he had the effrontery to believe
that she might, some day; and he was content to wait. He saw that she
avoided him, and he was too proud to go to the parsonage and so incur
ridicule and contempt.

Jethro was content to wait. That is a clew to his character throughout
his life. He would wait for his love, he would wait for his hate: he had
waited ten years before putting into practice the first step of a little
scheme which he had been gradually developing during that time, for which
he had been amassing money, and the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by the
way, had given him some valuable ideas. Jethro, as well as Isaac D.
Worthington, had ambitions, although no one in Coniston had hitherto
guessed them except Jock Hallowell--and Cynthia Ware, after her curiosity
had been aroused.

Even as Isaac D. Worthington did not dream of the Truro Railroad and of
an era in the haze of futurity, it did not occur to Jethro Bass that his
ambitions tended to the making of another era that was at hand. Makers of
eras are too busy thinking about themselves and like immediate matters to
worry about history. Jethro never heard the expression about "cracks in
the Constitution," and would not have known what it meant,--he merely had
the desire to get on top. But with Established Church Coniston tight in
the saddle (in the person of Moses Hatch, Senior), how was he to do it?

As the winter wore on, and March town meeting approached, strange rumors
of a Democratic ticket began to drift into Jonah Winch's store,--a
Democratic ticket headed by Fletcher Bartlett, of all men, as chairman of
the board. Moses laughed when he first heard of it, for Fletcher was an
easy-going farmer of the Methodist persuasion who was always in debt, and
the other members of the ticket, so far as Moses could learn of it--were
remarkable neither for orthodoxy or solidity. The rumors persisted, and
still Moses laughed, for the senior selectman was a big man with flesh on
him, who could laugh with dignity.

"Moses," said Deacon Lysander Richardson as they stood on the platform of
the store one sunny Saturday in February, "somebody's put Fletcher up to
this. He hain't got sense enough to act that independent all by himself."

"You be always croakin', Lysander," answered Moses.

Cynthia Ware, who had come to the store for buttons for Speedy Bates, who
was making a new coat for the minister, heard these remarks, and stood
thoughtfully staring at the blue coat-tails of the elders. A brass button
was gone from Deacon Lysander's, and she wanted to sew it on. Suddenly
she looked up, and saw Jock Hallowell standing beside her. Jock
winked--and Cynthia blushed and hurried homeward without a word. She
remembered, vividly enough, what Jack had told her the spring before, and
several times during the week that followed she thought of waylaying him
and asking what he knew. But she could not summon the courage. As a
matter of fact, Jock knew nothing, but he had a theory. He was a strange
man, Jock, who whistled all day on roof and steeple and meddled with
nobody's business, as a rule. What had impelled him to talk to Cynthia in
the way he had must remain a mystery.

Meanwhile the disquieting rumors continued to come in. Jabez Miller, on
the north slope, had told Samuel Todd, who told Ephraim Williams, that he
was going to vote for Fletcher. Moses Hatch hitched up his team and went
out to see Jabez, spent an hour in general conversation, and then plumped
the question, taking, as he said, that means of finding out. Jabez hemmed
and hawed, said his farm was mortgaged; spoke at some length about the
American citizen, however humble, having a right to vote as he chose. A
most unusual line for Jabez, and the whole matter very mysterious and not
a little ominous. Moses drove homeward that sparkling day, shutting his
eyes to the glare of the ice crystals on the pines, and thinking
profoundly. He made other excursions, enough to satisfy himself that this
disease, so new and unheard of (the right of the unfit to hold office),
actually existed. Where the germ began that caused it, Moses knew no
better than the deacon, since those who were suspected of leanings toward
Fletcher Bartlett were strangely secretive. The practical result of
Moses' profound thought was a meeting, in his own house, without respect
to party, Democrats and Whigs alike, opened by a prayer from the minister
himself. The meeting, after a futile session, broke up dismally. Sedition
and conspiracy existed; a chief offender and master mind there was,
somewhere. But who was he?

Good Mr. Ware went home, troubled in spirit, shaking his head. He had a
cold, and was not so strong as he used to be, and should not have gone to
the meeting at all. At supper, Cynthia listened with her eyes on her
plate while he told her of the affair.

"Somebody's behind this, Cynthia," he said. "It's the most astonishing
thing in my experience that we cannot discover who has incited them. All
the unattached people in the town seem to have been organized." Mr. Ware
was wont to speak with moderation even at his own table. He said
unattached--not ungodly.

Cynthia kept her eyes on her plate, but she felt as though her body were
afire. Little did the minister imagine, as he went off to write his
sermon, that his daughter might have given him the clew to the mystery.
Yes, Cynthia guessed; and she could not read that evening because of the
tumult of her thoughts. What was her duty in the matter? To tell her
father her suspicions? They were only suspicions, after all, and she
could make no accusations. And Jethro! Although she condemned him, there
was something in the situation that appealed to a most reprehensible
sense of humor. Cynthia caught herself smiling once or twice, and knew
that it was wicked. She excused Jethro, and told herself that, with his
lack of training, he could know no better. Then an idea came to her, and
the very boldness of it made her grow hot again. She would appeal to him
tell him that that power he had over other men could be put to better and
finer uses. She would appeal to him, and he would abandon the matter.
That the man loved her with the whole of his rude strength she was sure,
and that knowledge had been the only salve to her shame.

So far we have only suspicions ourselves; and, strange to relate, if we
go around Coniston with Jethro behind his little red Morgan, we shall
come back with nothing but--suspicions. They will amount to convictions,
yet we cannot prove them. The reader very naturally demands some specific
information--how did Jethro do it? I confess that I can only indicate in
a very general way: I can prove nothing. Nobody ever could prove anything
against Jethro Bass. Bring the following evidence before any grand jury
in the country, and see if they don't throw it out of court.

Jethro in the course of his weekly round of strictly business visits
throughout the town, drives into Samuel Todd's farmyard, and hitches on
the sunny side of the red barns. The town of Coniston, it must be
explained for the benefit of those who do not understand the word "town"
in the New England senses was a tract of country about ten miles by ten,
the most thickly settled portion of which was the village of Coniston,
consisting of twelve houses. Jethro drives into the barnyard, and Samuel
Todd comes out. He is a little man, and has a habit of rubbing the sharp
ridge of his nose.

"How be you, Jethro?" says Samuel. "Killed the brindle Thursday. Finest
hide you ever seed."

"G-goin' to town meetin' Tuesday--g-goin' to town meetin'
Tuesday--Sam'l?" says Jethro.

"I was callatin' to, Jethro."

"Democrat--hain't ye--Democrat?"

"Callate to be."

"How much store do ye set by that hide?"

Samuel rubs his nose. Then he names a price that the hide might fetch,
under favorable circumstances, in Boston--Jethro does not wince.

"Who d'ye callate to vote for, Sam'l?"

Samuel rubs his nose.

"Heerd they was a-goin' to put up Fletcher and Amos Cuthbert, an' Sam
Price for Moderator." (What a convenient word is they when used
politically!) "Hain't made up my mind, clear," says Samuel.

"C-comin' by the tannery after town meetin'?" inquired Jethro, casually.

"Don't know but what I kin."

"F-fetch the hide--f-fetch the hide."

And Jethro drives off, with Samuel looking after him, rubbing his nose.
"No bill," says the jury--if you can get Samuel into court. But you
can't. Even Moses Hatch can get nothing out of Samuel, who then talks
Jacksonian principles and the nights of an American citizen.

Let us pursue this matter a little farther, and form a committee of
investigation. Where did Mr. Todd learn anything about Jacksonian
principles? From Mr. Samuel Price, whom they have spoken of for
Moderator. And where did Mr. Price learn of these principles? Any one in
Coniston will tell you that Mr. Price makes a specialty of orators and
oratory; and will hold forth at the drop of a hat in Jonah Winch's store
or anywhere else. Who is Mr. Price? He is a tall, sallow young man of
eight and twenty, with a wedge-shaped face, a bachelor and a Methodist,
who farms in a small way on the southern slope, and saves his money. He
has become almost insupportable since they have named him for Moderator.

Get Mr. Sam Price into court. Here is a man who assuredly knows who they
are: if we are, not much mistaken, he is their mouthpiece. Get, an eel
into court. There is only one man in town who can hold an eel, and he
isn't on the jury. Mr. Price will talk plentifully, in his nasal way; but
he won't tell you anything.

Mr. Price has been nominated to fill Deacon Lysander Richardson's shoes
in the following manner: One day in the late autumn a man in a coonskin
cap stops beside Mr. Price's woodpile, where Mr. Price has been chopping
wood, pausing occasionally to stare off through the purple haze at the
south shoulder of Coniston Mountain.

"How be you, Jethro?" says Mr. Price, nasally.

"D-Democrats are talkin' some of namin' you Moderator next meetin'," says
the man in the coonskin cap.

"Want to know!" ejaculates Mr. Price, dropping the axe and straightening
up in amazement. For Mr. Price's ambition soared no higher, and he had
made no secret of it. "Wal! Whar'd you hear that, Jethro?"

"H-heerd it round--some. D-Democrat--hain't you--Democrat?"

"Always callate to be."

"J-Jacksonian Democrat?"

"Guess I be."

Silence for a while, that Mr. Price may feel the gavel in his hand, which
he does.

"Know somewhat about Jacksonian principles, don't ye--know somewhat?"

"Callate to," says Mr. Price, proudly.

"T-talk 'em up, Sam--t-talk 'em up. C-canvass, Sam."

With these words of brotherly advice Mr. Bass went off down the road, and
Mr. Price chopped no more wood that night; but repeated to himself many
times in his nasal voice, "I want to know!" In the course of the next few
weeks various gentlemen mentioned to Mr. Price that he had been spoken of
for Moderator, and he became acquainted with the names of the other
candidates on the same mysterious ticket who were mentioned. Whereupon he
girded up his loins and went forth and preached the word of Jacksonian
Democracy in all the farmhouses roundabout, with such effect that Samuel
Todd and others were able to talk with some fluency about the rights of
American citizens.

Question before the Committee, undisposed of: Who nominated Samuel Price
for Moderator? Samuel Price gives the evidence, tells the court he does
not know, and is duly cautioned and excused.

Let us call, next, Mr. Eben Williams, if we can. Moses Hatch, Senior, has
already interrogated him with all the authority of the law and the
church, for Mr. Williams is orthodox, though the deacons have to remind
him of his duty once in a while. Eben is timid, and replies to us, as to
Moses, that he has heard of the Democratic ticket, and callates that
Fletcher Bartlett, who has always been the leader of the Democratic
party, has named the ticket. He did not mention Jethro Bass to Deacon
Hatch. Why should he? What has Jethro Bass got to do with politics?

Eben lives on a southern spur, next to Amos Cuthbert, where you can look
off for forty miles across the billowy mountains of the west. From no
spot in Coniston town is the sunset so fine on distant Farewell Mountain,
and Eben's sheep feed on pastures where only mountain-bred sheep can
cling and thrive. Coniston, be it known, at this time is one of the
famous wool towns of New England: before the industry went West, with
other industries. But Eben Williams's sheep do not wholly belong to him
they are mortgaged--and Eben's farm is mortgaged.

Jethro Bass--Eben testifies to us--is in the habit of visiting him once a
month, perhaps, when he goes to Amos Cuthbert's. Just friendly calls. Is
it not a fact that Jethro Bass holds his mortgage? Yes, for eight hundred
dollars. How long has he held that mortgage? About a year and a half. Has
the interest been paid promptly? Well, the fact is that Eben hasn't paid
any interest yet.

Now let us take the concrete incident. Before that hypocritical thaw
early in February, Jethro called upon Amos Cuthbert--not so surly then as
he has since become--and talked about buying his wool when it should be
duly cut, and permitted Amos to talk about the position of second
selectman, for which some person or persons unknown to the jury had
nominated him. On his way down to the Four Corners, Jethro had merely
pulled up his sleigh before Eben Williams's house, which stood behind a
huge snow bank and practically on the road. Eben appeared at the door, a
little dishevelled in hair and beard, for he had been sleeping.

"How be you, Jethro?" he said nervously. Jethro nodded.

"Weather looks a mite soft."

No answer.

"About that interest," said Eben, plunging into the dread subject, "don't
know as I'm ready this month after all."

"G-goin' to town meetin', Eben?"

"Wahn't callatin' to," answered Eben.

"G-goin' to town meetin', Eben?"

Eben, puzzled and dismayed, ran his hand through his hair.

"Wahn't callatin' to--but I kin--I kin."

"D-Democrat--hain't ye--D-Democrat?"

"I kin be," said Eben. Then he looked at Jethro and added in a startled
voice, "Don't know but what I be--Yes, I guess I be."

"H-heerd the ticket?"

Yes, Eben had heard the ticket. What man had not. Some one has been most
industrious, and most disinterested, in distributing that ticket.

"Hain't a mite of hurry about the interest right now--right now," said
Jethro. "M-may be along the third week in March--may be--c-can t tell."

And Jethro clucked to his horse, and drove away. Eben Williams went back
into his house and sat down with his head in his hands. In about two
hours, when his wife called him to fetch water, he set down the pail on
the snow and stared across the next ridge at the eastern horizon,
whitening after the sunset.

The third week in March was the week after town meeting!

"M-may be--c-can't tell," repeated Eben to himself, unconsciously
imitating Jethro's stutter. "Godfrey, I'll hev to git that ticket
straight from Amos."

Yes, we may have our suspicions. But how can we get a bill on this
evidence? There are some thirty other individuals in Coniston whose
mortgages Jethro holds, from a horse to a house and farm. It is not
likely that they will tell Beacon Hatch, or us; that they are going to
town meeting and vote for that fatherless ticket because Jethro Bass
wishes them to do so. And Jethro has never said that he wishes them to.
If so, where are your witnesses? Have we not come back to our
starting-point, even as Moses Hatch drove around in a circle.. And we
have the advantage over Moses, for we suspect somebody, and he did not
know whom to suspect. Certainly not Jethro Bass, the man that lived under
his nose and never said anything--and had no right to. Jethro Bass had
never taken any active part in politics, though some folks had heard, in
his rounds on business, that he had discussed them, and had spread the
news of the infamous ticket without a parent. So much was spoken of at
the meeting over which Priest Ware prayed. It was even declared that,
being a Democrat, Jethro might have influenced some of those under
obligations to him. Sam Price was at last fixed upon as the malefactor,
though people agreed that they had not given him credit for so much
sense, and Jacksonian principles became as much abhorred by the orthodox
as the spotted fever.

We can call a host of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky,
happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former
years. Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who have
been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and innocent
method of the new Era of politics note dawning--they never will. Nothing
proved. But here is part of the ticket which nobody started:--

     For

     SENIOR SELECTMAN, FLETCHER BARTLETT.

     (Farm and buildings on Thousand Acre Hill mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     SECOND SELECTMAN, AMOS CUTHBERT.

     (Farm and buildings on Town's End Ridge mortgaged to Jethro
     Bass.)

     THIRD SELECTMAN, CHESTER PERKINS.

     (Sop of some kind to the Established Church party. Horse and
     cow mortgaged to Jethro Bass, though his father, the tithing-man,
doesn't know  it.)

     MODERATOR, SAMUEL PRICE.

     (Natural ambition--dove of oratory and Jacksonian principles.)

     etc., etc.

The notes are mine, not Moses's. Strange that they didn't occur to Moses.
What a wealthy man has our hero become at thirty-one! Jethro Bass was
rich beyond the dreams of avarice--for Coniston. Truth compels me to
admit that the sum total of all his mortgages did not amount to nine
thousand "dollars"; but that was a large sum of money for Coniston in
those days, and even now. Nathan Bass had been a saving man, and had left
to his son one-half of this fortune. If thrift and the ability to gain
wealth be qualities for a hero, Jethro had them--in those days.

The Sunday before March meeting, it blew bitter cold, and Priest Ware,
preaching in mittens, denounced sedition in general. Underneath him, on
the first landing of the high pulpit, the deacons sat with knitted brows,
and the key-note from Isaiah Prescott's pitch pipe sounded like mournful
echo of the mournful wind without.

Monday was ushered in with that sleet storm to which the almanacs still
refer, and another scarcely less important event occurred that day which
we shall have to pass by for the present; on Tuesday, the sleet still
raging, came the historic town meeting. Deacon Moses Hatch, his chores
done and his breakfast and prayers completed, fought his way with his
head down through a white waste to the meeting-house door, and unlocked
it, and shivered as he made the fire. It was certainly not good election
weather, thought Moses, and others of the orthodox persuasion, high in
office, were of the same opinion as they stood with parted coat tails
before the stove. Whoever had stirred up and organized the hordes,
whoever was the author of that ticket of the discontented, had not
counted upon the sleet. Heaven-sent sleet, said Deacon Ira Perkins, and
would not speak to his son Chester, who sat down just then in one of the
rear slips. Chester had become an agitator, a Jacksonian Democrat, and an
outcast, to be prayed for but not spoken to.

We shall leave them their peace of mind for half an hour more, those
stanch old deacons and selectmen, who did their duty by their
fellow-citizens as they saw it and took no man's bidding. They could not
see the trackless roads over the hills, now becoming tracked, and the
bent figures driving doggedly against the storm, each impelled by a
motive: each motive strengthened by a master mind until it had become
imperative. Some, like Eben Williams behind his rickety horse, came
through fear; others through ambition; others were actuated by both; and
still others were stung by the pain of the sleet to a still greater
jealousy and envy, and the remembrance of those who had been in power. I
must not omit the conscientious Jacksonians who were misguided enough to
believe in such a ticket.

The sheds were not large enough to hold the teams that day. Jethro's barn
and tannery were full, and many other barns in the village. And now the
peace of mind of the orthodox is a thing of the past. Deacon Lysander
Richardson, the moderator, sits aghast in his high place as they come
trooping in, men who have not been to town meeting for ten years. Deacon
Lysander, with his white band of whiskers that goes around his neck like
a sixteenth-century ruff under his chin, will soon be a memory. Now
enters one, if Deacon Lysander had known it symbolic of the new Era. One
who, though his large head is bent, towers over most of the men who make
way for him in the aisle, nodding but not speaking, and takes his place
in the chair under the platform on the right of the meeting-pause under
one of the high, three-part windows. That chair was always his in future
years, and there he sat afterward, silent, apparently taking no part. But
not a man dropped a ballot into the box whom Jethro Bass did not see and
mark.

And now, when the meeting-house is crowded as it has never been before,
when Jonah Winch has arranged his dinner booth in the corner, Deacon
Lysander raps for order and the minister prays. They proceed, first, to
elect a representative to the General Court. The Jacksonians do not
contest that seat,--this year,--and Isaiah Prescott, fourteenth child of
Timothy, the Stark hero, father of a young Ephraim whom we shall hear
from later, is elected. And now! Now for a sensation, now for disorder
and misrule!

"Gentlemen," says Deacon Lysander, "you will prepare your ballots for the
choice of the first Selectman."

The Whigs have theirs written out, Deacon Moses Hatch. But who has
written out these others that are being so assiduously passed around? Sam
Price, perhaps, for he is passing them most assiduously. And what name is
written on them? Fletcher Bartlett, of course; that was on the ticket.
Somebody is tricked again. That is not the name on the ticket. Look over
Sara Price's shoulder and you will see the name--Jethro Bass.

It bursts from the lips of Fletcher Bartlett himself--of Fletcher,
inflammable as gunpowder.

"Gentlemen, I withdraw as your candidate, and nominate a better and an
abler man,--Jethro Bass."

"Jethro Bass for Chairman of the Selectmen!"

The cry is taken up all over the meeting-house, and rises high above the
hiss of the sleet on the great windows. Somebody's got on the stove, to
add to the confusion and horror. The only man in the whole place who is
not excited is Jethro Bass himself, who sits in his chair regardless of
those pressing around him. Many years afterward he confessed to some one
that he was surprised--and this is true. Fletcher Bartlett had surprised
and tricked him, but was forgiven. Forty men are howling at the
moderator, who is pounding on the table with a blacksmith's blows. Squire
Asa Northcutt, with his arms fanning like a windmill from the edge of the
platform, at length shouts down everybody else--down to a hum. Some
listen to him: hear the words "infamous outrage"--"if Jethro Bass is
elected Selectman, Coniston will never be able to hold up her head among
her sister towns for very shame." (Momentary blank, for somebody has got
on the stove again, a scuffle going on there.) "I see it all now," says
the Squire--(marvel of perspicacity!) "Jethro Bass has debased and
debauched this town--" (blank again, and the squire points a finger of
rage and scorn at the unmoved offender in the chair) "he has bought and
intimidated men to do his bidding. He has sinned against heaven, and
against the spirit of that most immortal of documents--" (Blank again.
Most unfortunate blank, for this is becoming oratory, but somebody from
below has seized the squire by the leg.) Squire Northcutt is too
dignified and elderly a person to descend to rough and tumble, but he did
get his leg liberated and kicked Fletcher Bartlett in the face. Oh,
Coniston, that such scenes should take place in your town meeting! By
this time another is orating, Mr. Sam Price, Jackson Democrat. There was
no shorthand reporter in Coniston in those days, and it is just as well,
perhaps, that the accusations and recriminations should sink into
oblivion.

At last, by mighty efforts of the peace loving in both parties, something
like order is restored, the ballots are in the box, and Deacon Lysander
is counting them: not like another moderator I have heard of, who spilled
the votes on the floor until his own man was elected. No. Had they
registered his own death sentence, the deacon would have counted them
straight, and needed no town clerk to verify his figures. But when he
came to pronounce the vote, shame and sorrow and mortification overcame
him. Coniston, his native town, which he had served and revered, was
dishonored, and it was for him, Lysander Richardson, to proclaim her
disgrace. The deacon choked, and tears of bitterness stood in his eyes,
and there came a silence only broken by the surging of the sleet as he
rapped on the table.

"Seventy-five votes have been cast for Jethro Bass--sixty-three for Moses
Hatch. Necessary for a choice, seventy--and Jethro Bass is elected senior
Selectman."

The deacon sat down, and men say that a great sob shook him, while
Jacksonian Democracy went wild--not looking into future years to see what
they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of
Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists
never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and
usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner,
who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his
wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher
Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been
calamity enough. But Jethro Bass!

This man whom they had despised was the master mind who had organized and
marshalled the loose vote, was the author of that ticket, who sat in his
corner unmoved alike by the congratulations of his friends and the
maledictions of his enemies; who rose to take his oath of office as
unconcerned as though the house were empty, albeit Deacon Lysander could
scarcely get the words out. And then Jethro sat down again in his
chair--not to leave it for six and thirty years. From this time forth
that chair became a seat of power, and of dominion over a state.

Thus it was that Jock Hallowell's prophecy, so lightly uttered, came to
pass.

How the remainder of that Jacksonian ticket was elected, down to the very
hog-reeves, and amid what turmoil of the Democracy and bitterness of
spirit of the orthodox, I need not recount. There is no moral to the
story, alas--it was one of those things which inscrutable heaven
permitted to be done. After that dark town-meeting day some of those
stern old fathers became broken men, and it is said in Coniston that this
calamity to righteous government, and not the storm, gave to Priest Ware
his death-stroke.




CHAPTER VI

And now we must go back for a chapter--a very short chapter--to the day
before that town meeting which had so momentous an influence upon the
history of Coniston and of the state. That Monday, too, it will be
remembered, dawned in storm, the sleet hissing in the wide throats of the
centre-chimneys, and bearing down great boughs of trees until they broke
in agony. Dusk came early, and howling darkness that hid a muffled figure
on the ice-bound road staring at the yellow cracks in the tannery door.
Presently the figure crossed the yard; the door, flying open, released a
shaft of light that shot across the white ground, revealed a face beneath
a hood to him who stood within.

"Jethro!"

She darted swiftly past him, seizing the door and drawing it closed after
her. A lantern hung on the central post and flung its rays upon his face.
Her own, mercifully, was in the shadow, and burning now with a shame that
was insupportable. Now that she was there, beside him, her strength
failed her, and her courage--courage that she had been storing for this
dread undertaking throughout the whole of that dreadful day. Now that she
was there, she would have given her life to have been able to retrace her
steps, to lose herself in the wild, dark places of the mountain.

"Cynthy!" His voice betrayed the passion which her presence had
quickened.

The words she would have spoken would not come. She could think of
nothing but that she was alone with him, and in bodily terror of him. She
turned to the door again, to grasp the wooden latch; but he barred the
way, and she fell back.

"Let me go," she cried. "I did not mean to come. Do you hear?--let me
go!"

To her amazement he stepped aside--a most unaccountable action for him.
More unaccountable still, she did not move, now that she was free, but
stood poised for flight, held by she knew not what.

"G-go if you've a mind to, Cynthy--if you've a mind to."

"I've come to say something to you," she faltered. It was not, at all the
way she had pictured herself as saying it.

"H-haven't took' Moses--have you?"

"Oh," she cried, "do you think I came here to speak of such a thing as
that?"

"H-haven't took--Moses, have you?"

She was trembling, and yet she could almost have smiled at this
well-remembered trick of pertinacity.

"No," she said, and immediately hated herself for answering him.

"H-haven't took that Worthington cuss?"

He was jealous!

"I didn't come to discuss Mr. Worthington," she replied.

"Folks say it's only a matter of time," said he. "Made up your mind to
take him, Cynthy? M-made up your mind?"

"You've no right to talk to me in this way," she said, and added, the
words seeming to slip of themselves from her lips, "Why do you do it?"

"Because I'm--interested," he said.

"You haven't shown it," she flashed back, forgetting the place, and the
storm, and her errand even, forgetting that Jake Wheeler, or any one in
Coniston, might come and surprise her there.

He took a step toward her, and she retreated. The light struck her face,
and he bent over her as though searching it for a sign. The cape on her
shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.

"'Twahn't charity, Cynthy--was it? 'Twahn't charity?"

"It was you who called it such," she answered, in a low voice.

A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern
flickered.

"Wahn't it charity."

"It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should
not have brought back the book."

"Friendship," he repeated, "y-you said friendship?"

"Yes."

"M-meant friendship?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious
fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a
stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.

"G-guess it's because I'm not good enough to be anything more," he
remarked suddenly. "Is that it?"

"You have not tried even to be a friend," she said.

"H-how about Worthington?" he persisted. "Just friends with him?"

"I won't talk about Mr. Worthington," cried Cynthia, desperately, and
retreated toward the lantern again.

"J-just friends with Worthington?"

"Why?" she asked, her words barely heard above the gust, "why do you want
to know?"

He came after her. It was as if she had summoned some unseen,
uncontrollable power, only to be appalled by it, and the mountain-storm
without seemed the symbol of it. His very voice seemed to partake of its
strength.

"Cynthy," he said, "if you'd took him, I'd have killed him. Cynthy, I
love you--I want you to be my woman--"

"Your woman!"

He caught her, struggling wildly, terror-stricken, in his arms, beat down
her hands, flung back her hood, and kissed her forehead--her hair, blown
by the wind--her lips. In that moment she felt the mystery of heaven and
hell, of all kinds of power. In that moment she was like a seed flying in
the storm above the mountain spruces whither, she knew not, cared not.
There was one thought that drifted across the chaos like a blue light of
the spirit: Could she control the storm? Could she say whither the winds
might blow, where the seed might be planted? Then she found herself
listening, struggling no longer, for he held her powerless. Strangest of
all, most hopeful of all, his own mind was working, though his soul
rocked with passion.

"Cynthy--ever since we stopped that day on the road in Northcutt's woods,
I've thought of nothin' but to marry you--m-marry you. Then you give me
that book--I hain't had much education, but it come across me if you was
to help me that way--And when I seed you with Worthington, I could have
killed him easy as breakin' bark."

"Hush, Jethro."

She struggled free and leaped away from him, panting, while he tore open
his coat and drew forth something which gleamed in the lantern's rays--a
silver locket. Cynthia scarcely saw it. Her blood was throbbing in her
temples, she could not reason, but she knew that the appeal for the sake
of which she had stooped must be delivered now.

"Jethro," she said, "do you know why I came here--why I came to you?"

"No," he said. "No. W--wanted me, didn't you? Wanted me--I wanted you,
Cynthy."

"I would never have come to you for that," she cried, "never!"

"L-love me, Cynthy--love me, don't you?"

How could he ask, seeing that she had been in his arms, and had not fled?
And yet she must go through with what she had come to do, at any cost.

"Jethro, I have come to speak to you about the town meeting tomorrow."

He halted as though he had been struck, his hand tightening over the
locket.

"T-town meetin'?"

"Yes. All this new organization is your doing," she cried. "Do you think
that I am foolish enough to believe that Fletcher Bartlett or Sam Price
planned this thing? No, Jethro. I know who has done it, and I could have
told them if they had asked me."

He looked at her, and the light of a new admiration was in his eye.

"Knowed it--did you?"

"Yes," she answered, a little defiantly, "I did."

"H-how'd you know it--how'd you know it, Cynthy?" How did she know it,
indeed?

"I guessed it," said Cynthia, desperately, "knowing you, I guessed it."

"A-always thought you was smart, Cynthy."

"Tell me, did you do this thing?"

"Th-thought you knowed it--th-thought you knowed."

"I believe that these men are doing your bidding."

"Hain't you guessin' a little mite too much; Cynthy?"

"Jethro," she said, "you told me just now that--that you loved me. Don't
touch me!" she cried, when he would have taken her in his arms again. "If
you love me, you will tell me why you have done such a thing."

What instinct there was in the man which forbade him speaking out to her,
I know not. I do believe that he would have confessed, if he could. Isaac
Worthington had been impelled to reveal his plans and aspirations, but
Jethro Bass was as powerless in this supreme moment of his life as was
Coniston Mountain to move the granite on which it stood. Cynthia's heart
sank, and a note of passionate appeal came into her voice.

"Oh, Jethro!" she cried, "this is not the way to use your power, to
compel men like Eben Williams and Samuel Todd and--and Lyman Hull, who is
a drunkard and a vagabond, to come in and vote for those who are not fit
to hold office." She was using the minister's own arguments. "We have
always had clean men, and honorable and good men."

He did not speak, but dropped his hands to his sides. His thoughts were
not to be fathomed, yet Cynthia took the movement for silent
confession,--which it was not, and stood appalled at the very magnitude
of his accomplishment, astonished at the secrecy he had maintained. She
had heard that his name had been mentioned in the meeting at the house of
Moses Hatch as having taken part in the matter, and she guessed something
of certain of his methods. But she had felt his force, and knew that this
was not the only secret of his power.

What might he not aspire to, if properly guided? No, she did not believe
him to be, unscrupulous--but merely ignorant: a man who was capable of
such love as she felt was in him, a man whom she could love, could not
mean to be unscrupulous. Defence of him leaped to her own lips.

"You did not know what you were doing," she said. "I was sure of it, or I
would not have come to you. Oh, Jethro! you must stop it--you must
prevent this election."

Her eyes met his, her own pleading, and the very wind without seemed to
pause for his answer. But what she asked was impossible. That wind which
he himself had loosed, which was to topple over institutions, was rising,
and he could no more have stopped it then than he could have hushed the
storm.

"You will not do what I ask--now?" she said, very slowly. Then her voice
failed her, she drew her hands together, and it was as if her heart had
ceased to beat. Sorrow and anger and fierce shame overwhelmed her, and
she turned from him in silence and went to the door.

"Cynthy," he cried hoarsely, "Cynthy!"

"You must never speak to me again," she said, and was gone into the
storm.

Yes, she had failed. But she did not know that she had left something
behind which he treasured as long as he lived.

In the spring, when the new leaves were green on the slopes of Coniston,
Priest Ware ended a life of faithful service. The high pulpit, taken from
the old meeting house, and the cricket on which he used to stand and the
Bible from which he used to preach have remained objects of veneration in
Coniston to this day. A fortnight later many tearful faces gazed after
the Truro coach as it galloped out of Brampton in a cloud of dust, and
one there was watching unseen from the spruces on the hill, who saw
within it a girl dressed in black, dry-eyed, staring from the window.




CHAPTER VII

Out of the stump of a blasted tree in the Coniston woods a flower will
sometimes grow, and even so the story which I have now to tell springs
from the love of Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass. The flower, when it came
to bloom, was fair in life, and I hope that in these pages it will not
lose too much of its beauty and sweetness.

For a little while we are going to gallop through the years as before we
have ambled through the days, although the reader's breath may be taken
away in the process. How Cynthia Ware went over the Truro Pass to Boston,
and how she became a teacher in a high school there;--largely through the
kindness of that Miss Lucretia Penniman of whom we have spoken, who wrote
in Cynthia's behalf to certain friends she had in that city; how she met
one William Wetherell, no longer a clerk in Mr. Judson's jewellery shop,
but a newspaper man with I know not what ambitions--and limitations in
strength of body and will; how, many, many years afterward, she nursed
him tenderly through a sickness and--married him, is all told in a
paragraph. Marry him she did, to take care of him, and told him so. She
made no secret of the maternal in this love.

One evening, the summer after their marriage, they were walking in the
Mall under the great elms that border the Common on the Tremont Street
side. They often used to wander there, talking of the books he was to
write when strength should come and a little leisure, and sometimes their
glances would linger longingly on Colonnade Row that Bulfinch built
across the way, where dwelt the rich and powerful of the city--and yet he
would not have exchanged their lot for his. Could he have earned with his
own hands such a house, and sit Cynthia there in glory, what happiness!
But, I stray.

They were walking in the twilight, for the sun had sunk all red in the
marshes of the Charles, when there chanced along a certain Mr. Judson, a
jeweller, taking the air likewise. So there came into Wetherell's mind
that amusing adventure with the country lad and the locket. His name, by
reason of some strange quality in it, he had never forgotten, and
suddenly he recalled that the place the countryman had come from was
Coniston.

"Cynthia," said her husband, when Mr. Judson was gone, "did you know any
one in Coniston named Jethro Bass?"

She did not answer him. And, thinking she had not heard, he spoke again.

"Why do you ask?" she said, in a low tone, without looking at him.

He told her the story. Not until the end of it did the significance of
the name engraved come to him--Cynthy.

"Cynthy, from Jethro."

"Why, it might have been you!" he said jestingly. "Was he an admirer of
yours, Cynthia, that strange, uncouth countryman? Did he give you the
locket?"

"No," she answered, "he never did."

Wetherell glanced at her in surprise, and saw that her lip was quivering,
that tears were on her lashes. She laid her hand on his arm.

"William," she said, drawing him to a bench, "come, let us sit down, and
I will tell you the story of Jethro Bass. We have been happy together,
you and I, for I have found peace with you. I have tried to be honest
with you, William, and I will always be so. I told you before we were
married that I loved another man. I have tried to forget him, but as God
is my judge, I cannot. I believe I shall love him until I die."

They sat in the summer twilight, until darkness fell, and the lights
gleamed through the leaves, and a deep, cool breath coming up from the
sea stirred the leaves above their heads. That she should have loved
Jethro seemed as strange to her as to him, and yet Wetherell was to feel
the irresistible force of him. Hers was not a love that she chose, or
would have chosen, but something elemental that cried out from the man to
her, and drew her. Something that had in it now, as of yore, much of pain
and even terror, but drew her. Strangest of all was that William
Wetherell understood and was not jealous of this thing: which leads us to
believe that some essence of virility was lacking in him, some substance
that makes the fighters and conquerors in this world. In such mood he
listened to the story of Jethro Bass.

"My dear husband," said Cynthia, when she had finished, her hand
tightening over his, "I have never told you this for fear that it might
trouble you as it has troubled me. I have found in your love sanctuary;
and all that remains of myself I have given to you."

"You have found a weakling to protect, and an invalid to nurse," he
answered. "To have your compassion, Cynthia, is all I crave."

So they lived through the happiest and swiftest years of his life,
working side by side, sharing this strange secret between them. And after
that night Cynthia talked to him often of Coniston, until he came to know
the mountain that lay along the western sky, and the sweet hillsides by
Coniston Water under the blue haze of autumn, aye, and clothed in the
colors of spring, the bright blossoms of thorn and apple against the
tender green of the woods and fields. So he grew to love the simple
people there, but little did he foresee that he was to end his life among
them!

But so it came to pass, she was taken from him, who had been the one joy
and inspiration of his weary days, and he was driven, wandering, into
unfrequented streets that he might not recall, the places where she had
once trod, and through the wakeful nights her voice haunted him,--its
laughter, its sweet notes of seriousness; little ways and manners of her
look came to twist his heart, and he prayed God to take him, too, until
it seemed that Cynthia frowned upon him for his weakness. One mild Sunday
afternoon, he took little Cynthia by the hand and led her, toddling, out
into the sunny Common, where he used to walk with her mother, and the
infant prattle seemed to bring--at last a strange peace to his
storm-tossed soul.

For many years these Sunday walks in the Common were Wetherell's greatest
pleasure and solace, and it seemed as though little Cynthia had come into
the world with an instinct, as it were, of her mission that lent to her
infant words a sweet gravity and weight. Many people used to stop and
speak to the child, among them a great physician whom they grew to know.
He was, there every Sunday, and at length it came to be a habit with him
to sit down on the bench and take Cynthia on his knee, and his stern face
would soften as he talked to her.

One Sunday when Cynthia was eight years old he missed them, and the next,
and at dusk he strode into their little lodging behind the hill and up to
the bedside. He glanced at Wetherell, patting Cynthia on the head the
while, and bade her cheerily to go out of the room. But she held tight
hold of her father's hand and looked up at the doctor bravely.

"I am taking care of my father," she said.

"So you shall, little woman," he answered. "I would that we had such
nurses as you at the hospital. Why didn't you send for me at once?"

"I wanted to," said Cynthia.

"Bless her good sense;" said the doctor; "she has more than you,
Wetherell. Why didn't you take her advice? If your father does not do as
I tell him, he will be a very sick man indeed. He must go into the
country and stay there."

"But I must live, Doctor," said William Wetherell.

The doctor looked at Cynthia.

"You will not live if you stay here," he replied.

"Then he will go," said Cynthia, so quietly that he gave her another
look, strange and tender and comprehending. He, sat and talked of many
things: of the great war that was agonizing the nation; of the strong man
who, harassed and suffering himself, was striving to guide it, likening
Lincoln unto a physician. So the doctor was wont to take the minds of
patients from themselves. And before he left he gave poor Wetherell a
fortnight to decide.

As he lay on his back in that room among the chimney tops trying vainly
to solve the problem of how he was to earn his salt in the country, a
visitor was climbing the last steep flight of stairs. That visitor was
none other than Sergeant Ephraim Prescott, son of Isaiah of the
pitch-pipe, and own cousin of Cynthia Ware's. Sergeant Ephraim was just
home from the war and still clad in blue, and he walked with a slight
limp by reason of a bullet he had got in the Wilderness, and he had such
an honest, genial face that little Cynthia was on his knee in a moment.

"How be you, Will? Kind of poorly, I callate. So Cynthy's b'en took," he
said sadly. "Always thought a sight of Cynthy. Little Cynthy favors her
some. Yes, thought I'd drop in and see how you be on my way home."

Sergeant Ephraim had much to say about the great war, and about Coniston.
True to the instincts of the blood of the Stark hero, he had left the
plough and the furrow' at the first call, forty years of age though he
was. But it had been otherwise with many in Coniston and Brampton and
Harwich. Some of these, when the drafting came, had fled in bands to the
mountain and defied capture. Mr. Dudley Worthington, now a mill owner,
had found a substitute; Heth Sutton of Clovelly had been drafted and had
driven over the mountain to implore Jethro Bass abjectly to get him out
of it. In short, many funny things had happened--funny things to Sergeant
Ephraim, but not at all to William Wetherell, who sympathized with Heth
in his panic.

"So Jethro Bass has become a great man," said Wetherell.

"Great!" Ephraim ejaculated. "Guess he's the biggest man in the state
to-day. Queer how he got his power began twenty-four years ago when I
wahn't but twenty. I call that town meetin' to mind as if 'twas yesterday
never was such an upset. Jethro's be'n first Selectman ever sense, though
he turned Republican in '60. Old folks don't fancy Jethro's kind of
politics much, but times change. Jethro saved my life, I guess."

"Saved your life!" exclaimed Wetherell.

"Got me a furlough," said Ephraim. "Guess I would have died in the
hospital if he hadn't got it so all-fired quick, and he druv down to
Brampton to fetch me back. You'd have thought I was General Grant the way
folks treated me."

"You went back to the war after your leg healed?" Wetherell asked, in
wondering admiration of the man's courage.

"Well," said Ephraim, simply, "the other boys was gettin' full of bullets
and dysentery, and it didn't seem just right. The leg troubles me some on
wet days, but not to amount to much. You hain't thinkin' of dyin'
yourself, be ye, William?"

William was thinking very seriously of it, but it was Cynthia who spoke,
and startled them both.

"The doctor says he will die if he doesn't go to the country."

"Somethin' like consumption, William?" asked Ephraim.

"So the doctor said."

"So I callated," said Ephraim. "Come back to Coniston with me; there
hain't a healthier place in New England."

"How could I support myself in Coniston?" Wetherell asked.

Ephraim ruminated. Suddenly he stuck his hand into the bosom of his blue
coat, and his face lighted and even gushed as he drew out a crumpled
letter.

"It don't take much gumption to run a store, does it, William? Guess you
could run a store, couldn't you?"

"I would try anything," said Wetherell.

"Well," said Ephraim' "there's the store at Coniston. With folks goin'
West, and all that, nobody seems to want it much." He looked at the
letter. "Lem Hallowell' says there hain't nobody to take it."

"Jonah Winch's!" exclaimed Wetherell.

"Jonah made it go, but that was before all this hullabaloo about
Temperance Cadets and what not. Jonah sold good rum, but now you can't
get nothin' in Coniston but hard cider and potato whiskey. Still, it's
the place for somebody without much get-up," and he eyed his cousin by
marriage. "Better come and try it, William."

So much for dreams! Instead of a successor to Irving and Emerson, William
Wetherell became a successor to Jonah Winch.

That journey to Coniston was full of wonder to Cynthia, and of wonder and
sadness to Wetherell, for it was the way his other Cynthia had come to
Boston. From the state capital the railroad followed the same deep valley
as the old coach road, but ended at Truro, and then they took stage over
Truro Pass for Brampton, where honest Ephraim awaited them and their
slender luggage with a team. Brampton, with its wide-shadowed green, and
terrace-steepled church; home once of the Social Library and Lucretia
Penniman, now famous; home now of Isaac Dudley Worthington, whose great
mills the stage driver had pointed out to them on Coniston Water as they
entered the town.

Then came a drive through the cool evening to Coniston, Ephraim showing
them landmarks. There was Deacon Lysander's house, where little Rias
Richardson lived now; and on that slope and hidden in its forest nook,
among the birches and briers, the little schoolhouse where Cynthia had
learned to spell; here, where the road made an aisle in the woods, she
had met Jethro. The choir of the birds was singing an evening anthem now
as then, to the lower notes of Coniston Water, and the moist, hothouse
fragrance of the ferns rose from the deep places.

At last they came suddenly upon the little hamlet of Coniston itself.
There was the flagpole and the triangular green, scene of many a muster;
Jonah Winch's store, with its horse block and checker-paned windows, just
as Jonah had left it; Nathan Bass's tannery shed, now weather-stained and
neglected, for Jethro lived on Thousand Acre Hill now; the Prescott
house, home of the Stark hero, where Ephraim lived, "innocent of paint"
(as one of Coniston's sons has put it), "innocent of paint as a Coniston
maiden's face"; the white meeting-house, where Priest Ware had
preached--and the parsonage. Cynthia and Wetherell loitered in front of
it, while the blue shadow of the mountain deepened into night, until Mr.
Satterlee, the minister, found them there, and they went in and stood
reverently in the little chamber on the right of the door, which had been
Cynthia's.

Long Wetherell lay awake that night, in his room at the gable-end over
the store, listening to the rustling of the great oak beside the windows,
to the whippoorwills calling across Coniston Water. But at last a peace
descended upon him, and he slept: yes, and awoke with the same sense of
peace at little Cynthia's touch, to go out into the cool morning, when
the mountain side was in myriad sheens of green under the rising sun.
Behind the store was an old-fashioned garden, set about by a neat stone
wall, hidden here and there by the masses of lilac and currant bushes,
and at the south of it was a great rose-covered boulder of granite. And
beyond, through the foliage of the willows and the low apple trees which
Jonah Winch had set out, Coniston Water gleamed and tumbled. Under an
arching elm near the house was the well, stone-rimmed, with its long pole
and crotch, and bucket all green with the damp moss which clung to it.

Ephraim Prescott had been right when he had declared that it did not take
much gumption to keep store in Coniston. William Wetherell merely assumed
certain obligations at the Brampton bank, and Lem Hallowell, Jock's son,
who now drove the Brampton stage, brought the goods to the door. Little
Rias Richardson was willing to come in, and help move the barrels, and on
such occasions wore carpet slippers to save his shoes. William still had
time for his books; in that Coniston air he began to feel stronger, and
to wonder whether he might not be a Washington Irving yet. And yet he had
one worry and one fear, and both of these concerned one man,--Jethro
Bass. Him, by her own confession, Cynthia Ware had loved to her dying
day, hating herself for it: and he, William Wetherell, had married this
woman whom Jethro had loved so violently, and must always love--so
Wetherell thought: that was the worry. How would Jethro treat him? that
was the fear. William Wetherell was not the most courageous man in the
world.

Jethro Bass had not been in Coniston since William's arrival. No need to
ask where he was. Jake Wheeler, Jethro's lieutenant in Coniston, gave
William a glowing account of that Throne Room in the Pelican Hotel at the
capital, from whence Jethro ruled the state during the sessions of the
General Court. This legislature sat to him as a sort of advisory
committee of three hundred and fifty: an expensive advisory committee to
the people, relic of an obsolete form of government. Many stories of the
now all-powerful Jethro William heard from the little coterie which made
their headquarters in his store--stories of how those methods of which we
have read were gradually spread over other towns and other counties. Not
that Jethro held mortgages in these towns and counties, but the local
lieutenants did, and bowed to him as an overlord. There were funny
stories, and grim stories of vengeance which William Wetherell heard and
trembled at. Might not Jethro wish to take vengeance upon him?

One story he did not hear, because no one in Coniston knew it. No one
knew that Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass had ever loved each other.

At last, toward the end of June, it was noised about that the great man
was coming home for a few days. One beautiful afternoon William Wetherell
stood on the platform of the store, looking off at Coniston, talking to
Moses Hatch--young Moses, who is father of six children now and has
forgotten Cynthia Ware. Old Moses sleeps on the hillside, let us hope in
the peace of the orthodox and the righteous. A cloud of dust arose above
the road to the southward, and out of it came a country wagon drawn by a
fat horse, and in the wagon the strangest couple Wetherell had ever seen.
The little woman who sat retiringly at one end of the seat was all in
brilliant colors from bonnet to flounce, like a paroquet, red and green
predominating. The man, big in build, large-headed, wore an old-fashioned
blue swallow-tailed coat with brass buttons, a stock, and coonskin hat,
though it was summer, and the thumping of William Wetherell's heart told
him that this was Jethro Bass. He nodded briefly at Moses Hatch, who
greeted him with genial obsequiousness.

"Legislatur' through?" shouted Moses.

The great man shook his head and drove on.

"Has Jethro Bass ever been a member of the Legislature?" asked the
storekeeper, for the sake of something to say.

"Never would take any office but Chairman of the Selectmen," answered
Moses, who apparently bore no ill will for his father's sake. "Jethro
kind of fathers the Legislatur', I guess, though I don't take much stock
in politics. Goes down sessions to see that they don't get too gumptious
and kick off the swaddlin' clothes."

"And--was that his wife?" Wetherell asked, hesitatingly.

"Aunt Listy, they call her. Nobody ever knew how he come to marry her.
Jethro went up to Wisdom once, in the centre of the state, and come back
with her. Funny place to bring a wife from--Wisdom! Funnier place to
bring Listy from. He loads her down with them ribbons and gewgaws--all
the shades of the rainbow! Says he wants her to be the best-dressed woman
in the state. Callate she is," added Moses, with conviction. "Listy's a
fine woman, but all she knows is enough to say, 'Yes, Jethro,' and 'No,
Jethro.'--Guess that's all Jethro wants in a wife; but he certainly is
good to her."

"And why has he come back before the Legislature's over?" said Wetherell.

"Cuttin' of his farms. Always comes back hayin' time. That's the way
Jethro spends the money he makes in politics, and he hain't no more of a
farmer than--" Moses looked at Wetherell.

"Than I'm a storekeeper," said the latter, smiling.

"Than I'm a lawyer," said Moses, politely.

They were interrupted at this moment by the appearance of Jake Wheeler
and Sam Price, who came gaping out of the darkness of the store.

"Was that Jethro, Mose?" demanded Jake. "Guess we'll go along up and see
if there's any orders."

"I suppose the humblest of God's critturs has their uses," Moses remarked
contemplatively, as he watched the retreating figures of Sam and Jake.
"Leastwise that's Jethro's philosophy. When you come to know him, you'll
notice how much those fellers walk like him. Never seed a man who had so
many imitators. Some of,'em's took to talkie' like him, even to
stutterin'. Bijah Bixby, over to Clovelly, comes pretty nigh it, too."

Moses loaded his sugar and beans into his wagon, and drove off.

An air of suppressed excitement seemed to pervade those who came that
afternoon to the store to trade and talk--mostly to talk. After such
purchases as they could remember were made, they lingered on the barrels
and on the stoop, in the hope of seeing Jethro, whose habit; it was,
apparently, to come down and dispense such news as he thought fit for
circulation. That Wetherell shared this excitement, too, he could not
deny, but for a different cause. At last, when the shadows of the big
trees had crept across the green, he came, the customers flocking to the
porch to greet him, Wetherell standing curiously behind them in the door.
Heedless of the dust, he strode down the road with the awkward gait that
was all his own, kicking up his heels behind. And behind him, heels
kicking up likewise, followed Jake and Sam, Jethro apparently oblivious
of their presence. A modest silence was maintained from the stoop, broken
at length by Lem Hallowell, who (men said) was an exact reproduction of
Jock, the meeting-house builder. Lem alone was not abashed in the
presence of greatness.

"How be you, Jethro?" he said heartily. "Air the Legislatur' behavin'
themselves?"

"B-bout as common," said Jethro.

Surely nothing very profound in this remark, but received as though it
were Solomon's.

Be prepared for a change in Jethro, after the galloping years. He is now
fifty-seven, but he might be any age. He is still smooth-shaven, his skin
is clear, and his eye is bright, for he lives largely on bread and milk,
and eschews stimulants. But the lines in his face have deepened and his
big features seem to have grown bigger.

"Who be you thinkin' of for next governor, Jethro?" queries Rias
Richardson, timidly.

"They say Alvy Hopkins of Gosport is willin' to pay for it," said Chester
Perkins, sarcastically. Chester; we fear, is a born agitator, fated to
remain always in opposition. He is still a Democrat, and Jethro, as is
well known, has extended the mortgage so as to include Chester's farm.

"Wouldn't give a Red Brook Seedling for Alvy," ejaculated the nasal Mr.
Price.

"D-don't like Red Brook Seedlings, Sam? D-don't like 'em?" said Jethro.
He had parted his blue coat tails and seated himself on the stoop, his
long legs hanging over it.

"Never seed a man who had a good word to say for 'em," said Mr. Price,
with less conviction.

"Done well on mine," said Jethro, "d-done well. I was satisfied with my
Red Brook Seedlings."

Mr. Price's sallow face looked as if he would have contradicted another
man.

"How was that, Jethro?" piped up Jake Wheeler, voicing the general
desire.

Jethro looked off into the blue space beyond the mountain line.

"G-got mine when they first come round--seed cost me considerable. Raised
more than a hundred bushels L-Listy put some of 'em on the table--t-then
gave some to my old hoss Tom. Tom said: 'Hain't I always been a good
beast, Jethro? Hain't I carried you faithful, summer and winter, for a
good many years? And now you give me Red Brook Seedlings?'"

Here everybody laughed, and stopped abruptly, for Jethro still looked
contemplative.

"Give some of 'em to the hogs. W-wouldn't touch 'em. H-had over a hundred
bushels on hand--n-new variety. W-what's that feller's name down to Ayer,
Massachusetts, deals in all kinds of seeds? Ellett--that's it. Wrote to
Ellet, said I had a hundred bushels of Red Brooks to sell, as fine a
lookin' potato as I had in my cellar. Made up my mind to take what he
offered, if it was only five cents. He wrote back a dollar a bushel. I-I
was always satisfied with my Red Brook Seedlings, Sam. But I never raised
any more--n-never raised any more."

Uproarious laughter greeted the end of this story, and continued in fits
as some humorous point recurred to one or the other of the listeners.
William Wetherell perceived that the conversation, for the moment at
least, was safely away from politics, and in that dubious state where it
was difficult to reopen. This was perhaps what Jethro wanted. Even Jake
Wheeler was tongue-tied, and Jethro appeared to be lost in reflection.

At this instant a diversion occurred--a trifling diversion, so it seemed
at the time. Around the corner of the store, her cheeks flushed and her
dark hair flying, ran little Cynthia, her hands, browned already by the
Coniston sun, filled with wild strawberries.

"See what I've found, Daddy!" she cried, "see what I've found!"

Jethro Bass started, and flung back his head like a man who has heard a
voice from another world, and then he looked at the child with a kind of
stupefaction. The cry, died on Cynthia's lips, and she stopped, gazing up
at him with wonder in her eyes.

"F-found strawberries?" said Jethro, at last.

"Yes," she answered. She was very grave and serious now, as was her
manner in dealing with people.

"S-show 'em to me," said Jethro.

Cynthia went to him, without embarrassment, and put her hand on his knee.
Not once had he taken his eyes from her face. He put out his own hand
with an awkward, shy movement, picked a strawberry from her fingers, and
thrust it in his mouth.

"Mm," said Jethro, gravely. "Er--what's your name, little gal--what's
your name?"

"Cynthia."

There was a long pause.

"Er--er--Cynthia?" he said at length, "Cynthia?"

"Cynthia."

"Er-er, Cynthia--not Cynthy?"

"Cynthia," she said again.

He bent over her and lowered his voice.

"M-may I call you Cynthy--Cynthy?" he asked.

"Y-yes," answered Cynthia, looking up to her father and then glancing
shyly at Jethro.

His eyes were on the mountain, and he seemed to have forgotten her until
she reached out to him, timidly, another strawberry. He seized her little
hand instead and held it between his own--much to the astonishment of his
friends.

"Whose little gal be you?" he asked.

"Dad's."

"She's Will Wetherell's daughter," said Lem Hallowell. "He's took on the
store. Will," he added, turning to Wetherell, "let me make you acquainted
with Jethro Bass."

Jethro rose slowly, and towered above Wetherell on the stoop. There was
an inscrutable look in his black eyes, as of one who sees without being
seen. Did he know who William Wetherell was? If so, he gave no sign, and
took Wetherell's hand limply.

"Will's kinder hipped on book-l'arnin'," Lemuel continued kindly. "Come
here to keep store for his health. Guess you may have heerd, Jethro, that
Will married Cynthy Ware. You call Cynthy to mind, don't ye?"

Jethro Bass dropped Wetherell's hand, but answered nothing.




CHAPTER VIII

A week passed, and Jethro did not appear in the village, report having it
that he was cutting his farms on Thousand Acre Hill. When Jethro was
farming,--so it was said,--he would not stop to talk politics even with
the President of the United States were that dignitary to lean over his
pasture fence and beckon to him. On a sultry Friday morning, when William
Wetherell was seated at Jonah Winch's desk in the cool recesses of the
store slowly and painfully going over certain troublesome accounts which
seemed hopeless, he was thrown into a panic by the sight of one staring
at him from the far side of a counter. History sometimes reverses itself.

"What can I do for you--Mr. Bass?" asked the storekeeper, rather weakly.

"Just stepped in--stepped in," he answered. "W-where's Cynthy?"

"She was in the garden--shall I get her?"

"No," he said, parting his coat tails and seating himself on the counter.
"Go on figurin', don't mind me."

The thing was manifestly impossible. Perhaps Wetherell indicated as much
by his answer.

"Like storekeepin'?" Jethro asked presently, perceiving that he did not
continue his work.

"A man must live, Mr. Bass," said Wetherell; "I had to leave the city for
my health. I began life keeping store," he added, "but I little thought I
should end it so."

"Given to book-l'arnin' then, wahn't you?" Jethro remarked. He did not
smile, but stared at the square of light that was the doorway, "Judson's
jewellery store, wahn't it? Judson's?"

"Yes, Judson's," Wetherell answered, as soon as he recovered from his
amazement. There was no telling from Jethro's manner whether he were
enemy or friend; whether he bore the storekeeper a grudge for having
attained to a happiness that had not been his.

"Hain't made a great deal out of life, hev you? N-not a great deal?"
Jethro observed at last.

Wetherell flushed, although Jethro had merely stated a truth which had
often occurred to the storekeeper himself.

"It isn't given to all of us to find Rome in brick and leave it in
marble," he replied a little sadly.

Jethro Bass looked at him quickly.

"Er-what's that?" he demanded. "F-found Rome in brick, left it in marble.
Fine thought." He ruminated a little. "Never writ anything--did
you--never writ anything?"

"Nothing worth publishing," answered poor William Wetherell.

"J-just dreamed'--dreamed and kept store. S--something to have
dreamed--eh--something to have dreamed?"

Wetherell forgot his uneasiness in the unexpected turn the conversation
had taken. It seemed very strange to him that he was at last face to face
again wish the man whom Cynthia Ware had never been able to drive from
her heart. Would, he mention her? Had he continued to love her, in spite
of the woman he had married and adorned? Wetherell asked himself these
questions before he spoke.

"It is more to have accomplished," he said.

"S-something to have dreamed," repeated Jethro, rising slowly from the
counter. He went toward the doorway that led into the garden, and there
he halted and stood listening.

"C-Cynthy!" he said, "C-Cynthy!"

Wetherell dropped his pen at the sound of the name on Jethro's lips. But
it was little Cynthia he was calling little Cynthia in the garden. The
child came at his voice, and stood looking up at him silently.

"H-how old be you, Cynthy?"

"Nine," answered Cynthia, promptly.

"L-like the country, Cynthy--like the country better than the city?"

"Oh, yes," said Cynthia.

"And country folks? L--like country folks better than city folks?"

"I didn't know many city folks," said Cynthia. "I liked the old doctor
who sent Daddy up here ever so much, and I liked Mrs. Darwin."

"Mis' Darwin?"

"She kept the house we lived in. She used to give me cookies," said
Cynthia, "and bread to feed the pigeons."

"Pigeons? F-folks keep pigeons in the city?"

"Oh, no," said Cynthia, laughing at such an idea; "the pigeons came on
the roof under our window, and they used to fly right up on the
window-sill and feed out of my hand. They kept me company while Daddy,
was away, working. On Sundays we used to go into the Common and feed
them, before Daddy got sick. The Common was something like the country,
only not half as nice."

"C-couldn't pick flowers in the Common and go barefoot--e--couldn't go
barefoot, Cynthy?"

"Oh, no," said Cynthia, laughing again at his sober face.

"C-couldn't dig up the Common and plant flowers--could you?"

"Of course you couldn't."

"P-plant 'em out there?" asked Jethro.

"Oh, yes," cried Cynthia; "I'll show you." She hesitated a moment, and
then thrust her hand into his. "Do you want to see?"

"Guess I do," said he, energetically, and she led him into the garden,
pointing out with pride the rows of sweet peas and pansies, which she had
made herself. Impelled by a strange curiosity, William Wetherell went to
the door and watched them. There was a look on the face of Jethro Bass
that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the wondrous
things around them that summer's day,--the flowers and the bees and the
brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the songs of
the vireo and the hermit thrush.

"Hain't lonely here, Cynthy--hain't lonely here?" he said.

"Not in the country," said Cynthia. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his
with a questioning look. "Are you lonely, sometimes?"

He did not answer at once.

"Not with you, Cynthy--not with you."

By all of which it will be seen that the acquaintance was progressing.
They sat down for a while on the old millstone that formed the step, and
there discussed Cynthia's tastes. She was too old for dolls, Jethro
supposed. Yes, Cynthia was too old for dolls. She did not say so, but the
only doll she had ever owned had become insipid when the delight of such
a reality as taking care of a helpless father had been thrust upon her.
Books, suggested Jethro. Books she had known from her earliest infancy:
they had been piled around that bedroom over the roof. Books and book
lore and the command of the English tongue were William Wetherell's only
legacies to his daughter, and many an evening that spring she had read
him to sleep from classic volumes of prose and poetry I hesitate to name,
for fear you will think her precocious. They went across the green to
Cousin Ephraim Prescott's harness shop, where Jethro had tied his horse,
and it was settled that Cynthia liked books.

On the morning following this extraordinary conversation, Jethro Bass and
his wife departed for the state capital. Listy was bedecked in amazing
greens and yellows, and Jethro drove, looking neither to the right nor
left, his coat tails hanging down behind the seat, the reins lying slack
across the plump quarters of his horse--the same fat Tom who, by the way,
had so indignantly spurned the Iced Brook Seedlings. And Jake Wheeler
went along to bring back the team from Brampton. To such base uses are
political lieutenants sometimes put, although fate would have told you it
was an honor, and he came back to the store that evening fairly bristling
with political secrets which he could not be induced to impart.

One evening a fortnight later, while the lieutenant was holding forth in
commendably general terms on the politics of the state to a speechless if
not wholly admiring audience, a bomb burst in their midst. William
Wetherell did not know that it was a periodical bomb, like those flung at
regular intervals from the Union mortars into Vicksburg. These bombs, at
any rate, never failed to cause consternation and fright in Coniston,
although they never did any harm. One thing noticeable, they were always
fired in Jethro's absence. And the bombardier was always Chester Perkins,
son of the most unbending and rigorous of tithing-men, but Chester
resembled his father in no particular save that he, too, was a deacon and
a pillar of the church. Deacon Ira had been tall and gaunt and sunken and
uncommunicative. Chester was stout, and said to perspire even in winter,
apoplectic, irascible, talkative, and still, as has been said, a
Democrat. He drove up to the store this evening to the not inappropriate
rumble of distant thunder, and he stood up in his wagon in front of the
gathering and shook his fist in Jake Wheeler's face.

"This town's tired of puttin' up with a King," he cried. "Yes, King-=I
said it, and I don't care who hears me. It's time to stop this one-man
rule. You kin go and tell him I said it, Jake Wheeler, if you've a mind
to. I guess there's plenty who'll do that."

An uneasy silence followed--the silence which cries treason louder than
any voice. Some shifted uneasily, and spat, and Jake Wheeler thrust his
hands in his pockets and walked away, as much as to say that it was
treason even to listen to such talk. Lem Hallowell seemed unperturbed.

"On the rampage agin, Chet?" he remarked.

"You'd ought to know better, Lem," cried the enraged Chester; "hain't the
hull road by the Four Corners ready to drop into the brook? What be you
a-goin' to do about it?"

"I'll show you when I git to it," answered Lem, quietly. And, show them
he did.

"Git to it!" shouted Chester, scornfully, "I'll git to it. I'll tell you
right now I'm a candidate for the Chairman of the Selectmen, if town
meetin' is eight months away. An', Sam Price, I'll expect the Democrats
to git into line."

With this ultimatum Chester drove away as rapidly as he had come.

"I want to know!" said Sam Price, an exclamation peculiarly suited to his
voice. But nevertheless Sam might be counted on in each of these little
rebellions. He, too, had remained steadfast to Jacksonian principles, and
he had never forgiven Jethro about a little matter of a state office
which he (Sam) had failed to obtain.

Before he went to bed Jake Wheeler had written a letter which he sent off
to the state capital by the stage the next morning. In it he indicted no
less than twenty of his fellow-townsmen for treason; and he also thought
it wise to send over to Clovelly for Bijah Bixby, a lieutenant in that
section, to come and look over the ground and ascertain by his well-known
methods how far the treason had eaten into the body politic. Such was
Jake's ordinary procedure when the bombs were fired, for Mr. Wheeler was
nothing if not cautious.

Three mornings later, a little after seven o'clock, when the storekeeper
and his small daughter were preparing to go to Brampton upon a very
troublesome errand, Chester Perkins appeared again. It is always easy to
stir up dissatisfaction among the ne'er-do-wells (Jethro had once done it
himself), and during the three days which had elapsed since Chester had
flung down the gauntlet there had been more or less of downright treason
heard in the store. William Wetherell, who had perplexities of his own,
had done his best to keep out of the discussions that had raged on his
cracker boxes and barrels, for his head was a jumble of figures which
would not come right. And now as he stood there in the freshness of the
early summer morning, waiting for Lem Hallowell's stage, poor Wetherell's
heart was very heavy.

"Will Wetherell," said Chester, "you be a gentleman and a student, hain't
you? Read history, hain't you?"

"I have read some," said William Wetherell.

"I callate that a man of parts," said Chester, "such as you be, will help
us agin corruption and a dictator. I'm a-countin' on you, Will Wetherell.
You've got the store, and you kin tell the boys the difference between
right and wrong. They'll listen to you, because you're eddicated."

"I don't know anything about politics," answered Wetherell, with an
appealing glance at the silent group,--group that was always there. Rias
Richardson, who had donned the carpet slippers preparatory to tending
store for the day, shuffled inside. Deacon Lysander, his father, would
not have done so.

"You know somethin' about history and the Constitootion, don't ye?"
demanded Chester, truculently. N'Jethro Bass don't hold your mortgage,
does he? Bank in Brampton holds it--hain't that so? You hain't afeard of
Jethro like the rest on 'em, be you?"

"I don't know what right you have to talk to me that way, Mr. Perkins,"
said Wetherell.

"What right? Jethro holds my mortgage--the hull town knows it-and he kin
close me out to-morrow if he's a mind to--"

"See here, Chester Perkins," Lem Hallowell interposed, as he drove up
with the stage, "what kind of free principles be you preachin'? You'd
ought to know better'n coerce."

"What be you a-goin' to do about that Four Corners road?" Chester cried
to the stage driver.

"I give 'em till to-morrow night to fix it," said Lem. "Git in, Will.
Cynthy's over to the harness shop with Eph. We'll stop as we go 'long."

"Give 'em till to-morrow night!" Chester shouted after them. "What you
goin' to do then?"

But Lem did not answer this inquiry. He stopped at the harness shop,
where Ephraim came limping out and lifted Cynthia to the seat beside her
father, and they joggled off to Brampton. The dew still lay in myriad
drops on the red herd's-grass, turning it to lavender in the morning sun,
and the heavy scent of the wet ferns hung in the forest. Lem whistled,
and joked with little Cynthia, and gave her the reins to drive, and of
last they came in sight of Brampton Street, with its terrace-steepled
church and line of wagons hitched to the common rail, for it was market
day. Father and daughter walked up and down, hand in hand, under the
great trees, and then they went to the bank.

It was a brick building on a corner opposite the common, imposing for
Brampton, and very imposing to Wetherell. It seemed like a tomb as he
entered its door, Cynthia clutching his fingers, and never but once in
his life had he been so near to leaving all hope behind. He waited
patiently by the barred windows until the clerk, who was counting bills,
chose to look up at him.

"Want to draw money?" he demanded.

The words seemed charged with irony. William Wetherell told him,
falteringly, his name and business, and he thought the man looked at him
compassionately.

"You'll have to see Mr. Worthington," he said; "he hasn't gone to the
mills yet."

"Dudley Worthington?" exclaimed Wetherell.

The teller smiled.

"Yes. He's the president of this bank."'

He opened a door in the partition, and leaving Cynthia dangling her feet
from a chair, Wetherell was ushered, not without trepidation, into the
great man's office, and found himself at last in the presence of Mr.
Isaac D. Worthington, who used to wander up and down Coniston Water
searching for a mill site.

He sat behind a table covered with green leather, on which papers were
laid with elaborate neatness, and he wore a double-breasted skirted coat
of black, with braided lapels, a dark purple blanket cravat with a large
red cameo pin. And Mr. Worthington's features harmonized perfectly with
this costume--those of a successful, ambitious man who followed custom
and convention blindly; clean-shaven, save for reddish chops, blue eyes
of extreme keenness, and thin-upped mouth which had been tightening year
by year as the output of the Worthington Minx increased.

"Well, sir," he said sharply, "what can I do for you?"

"I am William Wetherell, the storekeeper at Coniston."

"Not the Wetherell who married Cynthia Ware!"

No, Mr. Worthington did not say that. He did not know that Cynthia Ware
was married, or alive or dead, and--let it be confessed at once--he did
not care.

This is what he did say:--

"Wetherell--Wetherell. Oh, yes, you've come about that note--the mortgage
on the store at Coniston." He stared at William Wetherell, drummed with
his fingers on the table, and smiled slightly. "I am happy to say that
the Brampton Bank does not own this note any longer. If we did,--merely
as a matter of business, you understand" (he coughed),--"we should have
had to foreclose."

"Don't own the note!" exclaimed Wetherell. "Who does own it?"

"We sold it a little while ago--since you asked for the extension--to
Jethro Bass."

"Jethro Bass!" Wetherell's feet seemed to give way under him, and he sat
down.

"Mr. Bass is a little quixotic--that is a charitable way to put
it--quixotic. He does--strange things like this once in awhile."

The storekeeper found no words to answer, but sat mutely staring at him.
Mr. Worthington coughed again.

"You appear to be an educated man. Haven't I heard some story of your
giving up other pursuits in Boston to come up here for your health?
Certainly I place you now. I confess to a little interest in literature
myself--in libraries."

In spite of his stupefaction at the news he had just received, Wetherell
thought of Mr. Worthington's beaver hat, and of that gentleman's first
interest in libraries, for Cynthia had told the story to her husband.

"It is perhaps an open secret," continued Mr. Worthington, "that in the
near future I intend to establish a free library in Brampton. I feel it
my duty to do all I can for the town where I have made my success, and
there is nothing which induces more to the popular welfare than a good
library." Whereupon he shot at Wetherell another of his keen looks. "I do
not talk this way ordinarily to my customers, Mr. Wetherell," he began;
"but you interest me, and I am going to tell you something in confidence.
I am sure it will not be betrayed."

"Oh, no," said the bewildered storekeeper, who was in no condition to
listen to confidences.

He went quietly to the door, opened it, looked out, and closed it softly.
Then he looked out of the window.

"Have a care of this man Bass," he said, in a lower voice. "He began many
years ago by debauching the liberties of that little town of Coniston,
and since then he has gradually debauched the whole state, judges and
all. If I have a case to try" (he spoke now with more intensity and
bitterness), "concerning my mills, or my bank, before I get through I
find that rascal mixed up in it somewhere, and unless I arrange matters
with him, I--"

He paused abruptly, his eyes going out of the window, pointing with a
long finger at a grizzled man crossing the street with a yellow and red
horse blanket thrown over his shoulders.

"That man, Judge Baker, holding court in this town now, Bass owns body
and soul."

"And the horse blanket?" Wetherell queried, irresistibly.

Dudley Worthington did not smile.

"Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell, and pay off that note somehow." An odor
of the stable pervaded the room, and a great unkempt grizzled head and
shoulders, horse blanket and all, were stuck into it.

"Mornin', Dudley," said the head, "busy?"

"Come right in, Judge," answered Mr. Worthington. "Never too busy to see
you." The head disappeared.

"Take my advice, Mr. Wetherell."

And then the storekeeper went into the bank.

For some moments he stood dazed by what he had heard, the query ringing
in his head: Why had Jethro Bass bought that note? Did he think that the
storekeeper at Coniston would be of use to him, politically? The words
Chester Perkins had spoken that morning came back to Wetherell as he
stood in the door. And how was he to meet Jethro Bass again with no money
to pay even the interest on the note? Then suddenly he missed Cynthia,
hurried out, and spied her under the trees on the common so deep in
conversation with a boy that she did not perceive him until he spoke to
her. The boy looked up, smiling frankly at something Cynthia had said to
him. He had honest, humorous eyes, and a browned, freckled face, and was,
perhaps, two years older than Cynthia.

"What's the matter?" said Wetherell.

Cynthia's face was flushed, and she was plainly vexed about something.

"I gave her a whistle," said the boy, with a little laugh of vexation,
"and now she says she won't take it because I owned up I made it for
another girl."

Cynthia held it out to him, not deigning to appeal her ease.

"You must take it back," she said.

"But I want you to have it," said the boy.

"It wouldn't be right for me to take it when you made it for somebody
else."

After all, people with consciences are born, not made. But this was a
finer distinction that the boy had ever met with in his experience.

"I didn't know you when I made the whistle," he objected, puzzled and
downcast.

"That doesn't make any difference."

"I like you better than the other girl."

"You have no right to," retorted the casuist; "you've known her longer."

"That doesn't make any difference," said the boy; "there are lots of
people I don't like I have always known. This girl doesn't live in
Brampton, anyway."

"Where does she live?" demanded Cynthia,--which was a step backward.

"At the state capital. Her name's Janet Duncan. There, do you believe me
now?"

William Wetherell had heard of Janet Duncan's father, Alexander Duncan,
who had the reputation of being the richest man in the state. And he
began to wonder who the boy could be.

"I believe you," said Cynthia; "but as long as you made it for her, it's
hers. Will you take it?"

"No," said he, determinedly.

"Very well," answered Cynthia. She laid down the whistle beside him on
the rail, and went off a little distance and seated herself on a bench.
The boy laughed.

"I like that girl," he remarked; "the rest of 'em take everything I give
'em, and ask for more. She's prettier'n any of 'em, too."

"What is your name?" Wetherell asked him, curiously, forgetting his own
troubles.

"Bob Worthington."

"Are you the son of Dudley Worthington"

"Everybody asks me that," he said; "I'm tired of it. When I grow up,
they'll have to stop it."

"But you should be proud of your father."

"I am proud of him, everybody's proud of him, Brampton's proud of
him--he's proud of himself. That's enough, ain't it?" He eyed Wetherell
somewhat defiantly, then his glance wandered to Cynthia, and he walked
over to her. He threw himself down on the grass in front of her, and lay
looking up at her solemnly. For a while she continued to stare inflexibly
at the line of market wagons, and then she burst into a laugh.

"Thought you wouldn't hold out forever," he remarked.

"It's because you're so foolish," said Cynthia, "that's why I laughed."
Then she grew sober again and held out her hand to him. "Good-by."

"Where are you going?"

"I must go back to my father. I--I think he doesn't feel very well."

"Next time I'll make a whistle for you," he called after her.

"And give it to somebody else," said Cynthia.

She had hold of her father's hand by that, but he caught up with her,
very red in the face.

"You know that isn't true," he cried angrily, and taking his way across
Brampton Street, turned, and stood staring after them until they were out
of sight.

"Do you like him, Daddy?" asked Cynthia.

William Wetherell did not answer. He had other things to think about.

"Daddy?"

"Yes."

"Does your trouble feel any better?"

"Some, Cynthia. But you mustn't think about it."

"Daddy, why don't you ask Uncle Jethro to help you?"

At the name Wetherell started as if he had had a shock.

"What put him into your head, Cynthia?" he asked sharply. "Why do you
call him 'Uncle Jethro'?"

"Because he asked me to. Because he likes me, and I like him."

The whole thing was a riddle he could not solve--one that was best left
alone. They had agreed to walk back the ten miles to Coniston, to save
the money that dinner at the hotel would cost. And so they started,
Cynthia flitting hither and thither along the roadside, picking the
stately purple iris flowers in the marshy places, while Wetherell
pondered.






CONISTON


BOOK 2.



CHAPTER IX

When William Wetherell and Cynthia had reached the last turn in the road
in Northcutt's woods, quarter of a mile from Coniston, they met the nasal
Mr. Samuel Price driving silently in the other direction. The word
"silently" is used deliberately, because to Mr. Price appertained a
certain ghostlike quality of flitting, and to Mr. Price's horse and wagon
likewise. He drew up for a brief moment when he saw Wetherell.

"Wouldn't hurry back if I was you, Will."

"Why not?"

Mr. Price leaned out of the wagon.

"Bije has come over from Clovelly to spy around a little mite."

It was evident from Mr. Price's manner that he regarded the storekeeper
as a member of the reform party.

"What did he say, Daddy?" asked Cynthia, as Wetherell stood staring after
the flitting buggy in bewilderment.

"I haven't the faintest idea, Cynthia," answered her father, and they
walked on.

"Don't you know who 'Bije' is?

"No," said her father, "and I don't care."

It was almost criminal ignorance for a man who lived in that part of the
country not to know Bijah Bixby of Clovelly, who was paying a little
social visit to Coniston that day on his way home from the state
capital,--tending, as it were, Jethro's flock. Still, Wetherell must be
excused because he was an impractical literary man with troubles of his
own. But how shall we chronicle Bijah's rank and precedence in the Jethro
army, in which there are neither shoulder-straps nor annual registers? To
designate him as the Chamberlain of that hill Rajah, the Honorable Heth
Sutton, would not be far out of the way. The Honorable Heth, whom we all
know and whom we shall see presently, is the man of substance and of
broad acres in Clovelly: Bijah merely owns certain mortgages in that
town, but he had created the Honorable Heth (politically) as surely as
certain prime ministers we could name have created their sovereigns. The
Honorable Heth was Bijah's creation, and a grand creation he was, as no
one will doubt when they see him.

Bijah--as he will not hesitate to tell you--took Heth down in his pocket
to the Legislature, and has more than once delivered him, in certain
blocks of five and ten, and four and twenty, for certain considerations.
The ancient Song of Sixpence applies to Bijah, but his pocket was
generally full of proxies instead of rye, and the Honorable Heth was
frequently one of the four and twenty blackbirds. In short, Bijah was the
working bee, and the Honorable Heth the ornamental drone.

I do not know why I have dwelt so long on such a minor character as
Bijah, except that the man fascinates me. Of all the lieutenants in the
state, his manners bore the closest resemblance to those of Jethro Bass.
When he walked behind Jethro in the corridors of the Pelican, kicking up
his heels behind, he might have been taken for Jethro's shadow. He was of
a good height and size, smooth-shaven, with little eyes that kindled, and
his mouth moved not at all when he spoke: unlike Jethro, he "used"
tobacco.

When Bijah had driven into Coniston village and hitched his wagon to the
rail, he went direct to the store. Chester Perkins and others were
watching him with various emotions from the stoop, and Bijah took a seat
in the midst of them, characteristically engaging in conversation without
the usual conventional forms of greeting, as if he had been there all
day.

"H-how much did you git for your wool, Chester--h-how much?"

"Guess you hain't here to talk about wool, Bije," said Chester, red with
anger.

"Kind of neglectin' the farm lately, I hear," observed Bijah.

"Jethro Bass sent you up to find out how much I was neglectin' it,"
retorted Chester, throwing all caution to the winds.

"Thinkin' of upsettin' Jethro, be you? Thinkin' of upsettin' Jethro?"
remarked Bije, in a genial tone.

"Folks in Clovelly hain't got nothin' to do with it, if I am," said
Chester.

"Leetle early for campaignin', Chester, leetle early."

"We do our campaignin' when we're a mind to."

Bijah looked around.

"Well, that's funny. I could have took oath I seed Rias Richardson here."

There was a deep silence.

"And Sam Price," continued Bijah, in pretended astonishment, "wahn't he
settin' on the edge of the stoop when I drove up?"

Another silence, broken only by the enraged breathing of Chester, who was
unable to retort. Moses Hatch laughed. The discreet departure of these
gentlemen certainly had its comical side.

"Rias as indoostrious as ever, Mose?" inquired Bijah.

"He has his busy times," said Mose, grinning broadly.

"See you've got the boys with their backs up, Chester," said Bijah.

"Some of us are sick of tyranny," cried Chester; "you kin tell that to
Jethro Bass when you go back, if he's got time to listen to you buyin'
and sellin' out of railroads."

"Hear Jethro's got the Grand Gulf Road in his pocket to do as he's a mind
to with," said Moses, with a view to drawing Bijah out. But the remark
had exactly the opposite effect, Bijah screwing up his face into an
expression of extraordinary secrecy and cunning.

"How much did you git out of it, Bije?" demanded Chester.

"Hain't looked through my clothes yet," said Bijah, his face screwed up
tighter than ever. "N-never look through my clothes till I git home,
Chester, it hain't safe."

It has become painfully evident that Mr. Bixby is that rare type of man
who can sit down under the enemy's ramparts and smoke him out. It was a
rule of Jethro's code either to make an effective departure or else to
remain and compel the other man to make an ineffective departure. Lem
Hallowell might have coped with him; but the stage was late, and after
some scratching of heads and delving for effectual banter (through which
Mr. Bixby sat genial and unconcerned), Chester's followers took their
leave, each choosing his own pretext.

In the meantime William Wetherell had entered the store by the back
door--unperceived, as he hoped. He had a vehement desire to be left in
peace, and to avoid politics and political discussions forever--vain
desire for the storekeeper of Coniston. Mr. Wetherell entered the store,
and to take his mind from his troubles, he picked up a copy of Byron:
gradually the conversation on the stoop died away, and just as he was
beginning to congratulate himself and enjoy the book, he had an
unpleasant sensation of some one approaching him measuredly. Wetherell
did not move; indeed, he felt that he could not--he was as though charmed
to the spot. He could have cried aloud, but the store was empty, and
there was no one to hear him. Mr. Bixby did not speak until he was within
a foot of his victim's ear. His voice was very nasal, too.

"Wetherell, hain't it?"

The victim nodded helplessly.

"Want to see you a minute."

"What is it?"

"Where can we talk private?" asked Mr. Bixby, looking around.

"There's no one here," Wetherell answered. "What do you wish to say?"

"If the boys was to see me speakin' to you, they might git
suspicious--you understand," he confided, his manner conveying a hint
that they shared some common policy.

"I don't meddle with politics," said Wetherell, desperately.

"Exactly!" answered Bijah, coming even closer. "I knowed you was a
level-headed man, moment I set eyes on you. Made up my mind I'd have a
little talk in private with you--you understand. The boys hain't got no
reason to suspicion you care anything about politics, have they?"

"None whatever."

"You don't pay no attention to what they say?"

"None."

You hear it?"

"Sometimes I can't help it."

"Ex'actly! You hear it."

"I told you I couldn't help it."

"Want you should vote right when the time comes," said Bijah. "D-don't
want to see such an intelligent man go wrong an' be sorry for it--you
understand. Chester Perkins is hare-brained. Jethro Bass runs things in
this state."

"Mr. Bixby--"

"You understand," said Bijah, screwing up his face. "Guess your watch is
a-comin' out." He tucked it back caressingly, and started for the
door--the back door. Involuntarily Wetherell put his hand to his pocket,
felt something crackle under it, and drew the something out. To his
amazement it was a ten-dollar bill.

"Here!" he cried so sharply in his fright that Mr. Bixby, turned around.
Wetherell ran after him. "Take this back!"

"Guess you got me," said Bijah. "W-what is it?"

"This money is yours," cried Wetherell, so loudly that Bijah started and
glanced at the front of the store.

"Guess you made some mistake," he said, staring at the storekeeper with
such amazing innocence that he began to doubt his senses, and clutched
the bill to see if it was real.

"But I had no money in my pocket," said Wetherell, perplexedly. And then,
gaining, indignation, "Take this to the man who sent you, and give it
back to him."

But Bijah merely whispered caressingly in his ear, "Nobody sent me,--you
understand,--nobody sent me," and was gone. Wetherell stood for a moment,
dazed by the man's audacity, and then, hurrying to the front stoop, the
money still in his hand, he perceived Mr. Bixby in the sunlit road
walking, Jethro-fashion, toward Ephraim Prescott's harness shop.

"Why, Daddy," said Cynthia, coming in from the garden, "where did you get
all that money? Your troubles must feel better."

"It is not mine," said Wetherell, starting. And then, quivering with
anger and mortification, he sank down on the stoop to debate what he
should do.

"Is it somebody else's?" asked the child, presently.

"Yes."

"Then why don't you give it back to them, Daddy?"

How was Wetherell to know, in his fright, that Mr. Bixby had for once
indulged in an overabundance of zeal in Jethro's behalf? He went to the
door, laughter came to him across the green from the harness shop, and
his eye following the sound, fastened on Bijah seated comfortably in the
midst of the group there. Bitterly the storekeeper comprehended that, had
he possessed courage, he would have marched straight after Mr. Bixby and
confronted him before them all with the charge of bribery. The blood
throbbed in his temples, and yet he sat there, trembling, despising
himself, repeating that he might have had the courage if Jethro Bass had
not bought the mortgage. The fear of the man had entered the
storekeeper's soul.

"Does it belong to that man over there?" asked Cynthia.

"Yes."

"I'll take it to him, Daddy," and she held out her hand.

"Not now," Wetherell answered nervously, glancing at the group. He went
into the store, addressed an envelope to "Mr. Bijah Bixby of Clovelly,"
and gave it to Cynthia. "When he comes back for his wagon, hand it to
him," he said, feeling that he would rather, at that moment, face the
devil himself than Mr. Bixby.

Half an hour later, Cynthia gave Mr. Bixby the envelope as he unhitched
his horse; and so deftly did Bijah slip it into his pocket, that he must
certainly have misjudged its contents. None of the loungers at Ephraim's
remarked the transaction.

If Jethro had indeed instructed Bijah to look after his flock at
Coniston, it was an ill-conditioned move, and some of the flock resented
it when they were quite sure that Bijah was climbing the notch road
toward Clovelly. The discussion (from which the storekeeper was
providentially omitted) was in full swing when the stage arrived, and Lem
Hallowell's voice silenced the uproar. It was Lem's boast that he never
had been and never would be a politician.

"Why don't you folks quit railin' against Jethro and do somethin'?" he
said. "Bije turns up here, and you all scatter like a flock of crows. I'm
tired of makin' complaints about that Brampton road, and to-day the hull
side of it give way, and put me in the ditch. Sure as the sun rises
to-morrow, I'm goin' to make trouble for Jethro."

"What be you a-goin' to do, Lem?"

"Indict the town," replied Lem, vigorously. "Who is the town? Jethro,
hain't he? Who has charge of the highways? Jethro Bass, Chairman of the
Selectmen. I've spoke to him, time and agin, about that piece, and he
hain't done nothin'. To-night I go to Harwich and git the court to
app'int an agent to repair that road, and the town'll hev to pay the
bill."

The boldness of Lem's intention for the moment took away their breaths,
and then the awe-stricken hush which followed his declaration was broken
by the sound of Chester's fist hammering on the counter.

"That's the sperrit," he cried; "I'll go along with you, Lem."

"No, you won't," said Lem, "you'll stay right whar you be."

"Chester wants to git credit for the move," suggested Sam Price, slyly.

"It's a lie, Sam Price," shouted Chester. "What made you sneak off when
Bije Bixby come?"

"Didn't sneak off," retorted Sam, indignantly, through his nose; "forgot
them eggs I left to home."

"Sam," said Lem, with a wink at Moses Hatch, "you hitch up your hoss and
fetch me over to Harwich to git that indictment. Might git a chance to
see that lady."

"Wal, now, I wish I could, Lem, but my hoss is stun lame."

There was a roar of laughter, during which Sam tried to look unconcerned.

"Mebbe Rias'll take me over," said Lem, soberly. "You hitch up, Rias?"

"He's gone," said Joe Northcutt, "slid out the door when you was speakin'
to Sam."

"Hain't none of you folks got spunk enough to carry me over to see the
jedge?" demanded Lem; "my horses ain't fit to travel to-night." Another
silence followed, and Lem laughed contemptuously but good-naturedly, and
turned on his heel. "Guess I'll walk, then," he said.

"You kin have my white hoss, Lem," said Moses Hatch.

"All right," said Lem; "I'll come round and hitch up soon's I git my
supper."

An hour later, when Cynthia and her father and Millicent Skinner--who
condescended to assist in the work and cooking of Mr. Wetherell's
household--were seated at supper in the little kitchen behind the store,
the head and shoulders of the stage-driver were thrust in at the window,
his face shining from its evening application of soap and water. He was
making eyes at Cynthia.

"Want to go to Harwich, Will?" he asked.

William set his cup down quickly.

"You hain't afeard, be you?" he continued. "Most folks that hasn't went
West or died is afeard of Jethro Bass."

"Daddy isn't afraid of him, and I'm not," said Cynthia.

"That's right, Cynthy," said Lem, leaning over and giving a tug to the
pigtail that hung down her back; "there hain't nothin' to be afeard of."

"I like him," said Cynthia; "he's very good to me."

"You stick to him, Cynthy," said the stage driver.

"Ready, Will?"

It may readily be surmised that Mr. Wetherell did not particularly wish
to make this excursion, the avowed object of which was to get Mr. Bass
into trouble. But he went, and presently he found himself jogging along
on the mountain road to Harwich. From the crest of Town's End ridge they
looked upon the western peaks tossing beneath a golden sky. The spell of
the evening's beauty seemed to have fallen on them both, and for a long
time Lem spoke not a word, and nodded smilingly but absently to the
greetings that came from the farm doorways.

"Will," he said at last, "you acted sensible. There's no mite of use of
your gettin' mixed up in politics. You're too good for 'em."

"Too good!" exclaimed the storekeeper.

"You're eddicated," Lem replied, with a tactful attempt to cover up a
deficiency; "you're a gentleman, ef you do keep store."

Lemuel apparently thought that gentlemen and politics were
contradictions. He began to whistle, while Wetherell sat and wondered
that any one could be so care-free on such a mission. The day faded, and
went out, and the lights of Harwich twinkled in the valley. Wetherell was
almost tempted to mention his trouble to this man, as he had been to
Ephraim: the fear that each might think he wished to borrow money held
him back.

"Jethro's all right," Lem remarked, "but if he neglects the road, he's
got to stand for it, same's any other. I writ him twice to the capital,
and give him fair warning afore he went. He knows I hain't doin' of it
for politics. I've often thought," Lem continued, "that ef some smart,
good woman could have got hold of him when he was young, it would have
made a big difference. What's the matter?"

"Have you room enough?"

"I guess I've got the hull seat," said Lem. "As I was sayin', if some
able woman had married Jethro and made him look at things a little mite
different, he would have b'en a big man. He has all the earmarks. Why,
when he comes back to Coniston, them fellers'll hunt their holes like
rabbits, mark my words."

"You don't think--"

"Don't think what?"

"I understand he holds the mortgages of some of them," said Wetherell.

"Shouldn't blame him a great deal ef he did git tired and sell Chester
out soon. This thing happens regular as leap year."

"Jethro Bass doesn't seem to frighten you," said the storekeeper.

"Well," said Lem, "I hain't afeard of him, that's so. For the life of me,
I can't help likin' him, though he does things that I wouldn't do for all
the power in Christendom. Here's Jedge Parkinson's house."

Wetherell remained in the wagon while Lemuel went in to transact his
business. The judge's house, outlined in the starlight, was a modest
dwelling with a little porch and clambering vines, set back in its own
garden behind a picket fence. Presently, from the direction of the lines
of light in the shutters, came the sound of voices, Lem's deep and
insistent, and another, pitched in a high nasal key, deprecatory and
protesting. There was still another, a harsh one that growled something
unintelligible, and Wetherell guessed, from the fragments which he heard,
that the judge before sitting down to his duty was trying to dissuade the
stage driver from a step that was foolhardy. He guessed likewise that Lem
was not to be dissuaded. At length a silence followed, then the door
swung open, and three figures came down the illuminated path.

"Like to make you acquainted with Jedge Abner Parkinson, Mr. Wetherell,
and Jim Irving. Jim's the sheriff of Truro County, and I guess the jedge
don't need any recommendation as a lawyer from me. You won't mind stayin'
awhile with the jedge while Jim and I go down town with the team? You're
both literary folks."

Wetherell followed the judge into the house. He was sallow, tall and
spare and stooping, clean-shaven, with a hooked nose and bright eyes--the
face of an able and adroit man, and he wore the long black coat of the
politician-lawyer. The room was filled with books, and from these Judge
Parkinson immediately took his cue, probably through a fear that
Wetherell might begin on the subject of Lemuel's errand. However, it
instantly became plain that the judge was a true book lover, and despite
the fact that Lem's visit had disturbed him not a little, he soon grew
animated in a discussion on the merits of Sir Walter Scott, paced the
room, pitched his nasal voice higher and higher, covered his table with
volumes of that author to illustrate his meaning. Neither of them heard a
knock, and they both stared dumfounded at the man who filled the doorway.

It was Jethro Bass!

He entered the room with characteristic unconcern, as if he had just left
it on a trivial errand, and without a "How do you do?" or a "Good
evening," parted his coat tails, and sat down in the judge's armchair.
The judge dropped the volume of Scott on the desk, and as for Wetherell,
he realized for once the full meaning of the biblical expression of a
man's tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth; the gleam of one of
Jethro's brass buttons caught his eye and held it fascinated.

"Literary talk, Judge?" said Jethro. "D-don't mind me--go on."

"Thought you were at the capital," said the judge, reclaiming some of his
self-possession.

"Good many folks thought so," answered Jethro, "g-good many folks."

There was no conceivable answer to this, so the judge sat down with an
affectation of ease. He was a man on whom dignity lay heavily, and was
not a little ruffled because Wetherell had been a witness of his
discomfiture. He leaned back in his chair, then leaned forward,
stretching his neck and clearing his throat, a position in which he bore
a ludicrous resemblance to a turkey gobbler.

"Most through the Legislature?" inquired the judge.

"'Bout as common," said Jethro.

There was a long silence, and, forgetful for the moment of his own
predicament, Wetherell found a fearful fascination in watching the
contortions of the victim whose punishment was to precede his. It had
been one of the delights of Louis XI to contemplate the movements of a
certain churchman whom he had had put in a cage, and some inkling of the
pleasure to be derived from this pastime of tyrants dawned on Wetherell.
Perhaps the judge, too, thought of this as he looked at "Quentin Durward"
on the table.

"I was just sayin' to Lem Hallowell," began the judge, at last, "that I
thought he was a little mite hasty--"

"Er--indicted us, Judge?" said Jethro.

The judge and Wetherell heard the question with different emotions. Mr.
Parkinson did not seem astonished at the miracle which had put Jethro in
possession of this information, but heaved a long sigh of relief, as a
man will when the worst has at length arrived.

"I had to, Jethro--couldn't help it. I tried to get Hallowell to wait
till you come back and talk it over friendly, but he wouldn't listen;
said the road was dangerous, and that he'd spoken about it too often. He
said he hadn't anything against you."

"Didn't come in to complain," said Jethro, "didn't come in to complain.
Road is out of repair. W-what's the next move?"

"I'm sorry, Jethro--I swan I'm sorry." He cleared his throat. "Well," he
continued in his judicial manner, "the court has got to appoint an agent
to repair that road, the agent will present the bill, and the town will
have to pay the bill--whatever it is. It's too bad, Jethro, that you have
allowed this to be done."

"You say you've got to app'int an agent?"

"Yes--I'm sorry--"

"Have you app'inted one?"

"No."

"G-got any candidates?"

The judge scratched his head.

"Well, I don't know as I have."

"Well, have you?"

"No," said the judge.

"A-any legal objection to my bein' app'inted?" asked Jethro.

The judge looked at him and gasped. But the look was an involuntary
tribute of admiration.

"Well," he said hesitatingly, "I don't know as there is, Jethro. No,
there's no legal objection to it."

"A-any other kind of objection?" said Jethro.

The judge appeared to reflect.

"Well, no," he said at last, "I don't know as there is."

"Well, is there?" said Jethro, again.

"No," said the judge, with the finality of a decision. A smile seemed to
be pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Well, I'm a candidate," said Jethro.

"Do you tell me, Jethro, that you want me to appoint you agent to fix
that road?"

"I-I'm a candidate."

"Well," said the judge, rising, "I'll do it."

"When?" said Jethro, sitting still.

"I'll send the papers over to you within two or three days.

"O-ought to be done right away, Judge. Road's in bad shape."

"Well, I'll send the papers over to you to-morrow."

"How long--would it take to make out that app'intment--how long?"

"It wouldn't take but a little while."

"I'll wait," said Jethro.

"Do you want to take the appointment along with you to-night?" asked the
judge, in surprise.

"G-guess that's about it."

Without a word the judge went over to his table, and for a while the
silence was broken only by the scratching of his pen.

"Er--interested in roads,--Will,--interested in roads?"

The judge stopped writing to listen, since it was now the turn of the
other victim.

"Not particularly," answered Mr. Wetherell, whose throat was dry.

"C-come over for the drive--c-come over for the drive?"

"Yes," replied the storekeeper, rather faintly.

"H-how's Cynthy?" said Jethro.

The storekeeper was too astonished to answer. At that moment there was a
heavy step in the doorway, and Lem Hallowell entered the room. He took
one long look at Jethro and bent over and slapped his hand on his knee,
and burst out laughing.

"So here you be!" he cried. "By Godfrey! ef you don't beat all outdoors,
Jethro. Wal, I got ahead of ye for once, but you can't say I didn't warn
ye. Come purty nigh bustin' the stage on that road today, and now I'm
a-goin' to hev an agent app'inted."

"W-who's the agent?" said Jethro.

"We'll git one. Might app'int Will, there, only he don't seem to want to
get mixed up in it."

"There's the agent," cried the judge, holding out the appointment to
Jethro.

"Wh-what?" ejaculated Lem.

Jethro took the appointment, and put it in his cowhide wallet.

"Be you the agent?" demanded the amazed stage driver.

"C-callate to be," said Jethro, and without a smile or another word to
any one he walked out into the night, and after various exclamations of
astonishment and admiration, the stage driver followed.

No one, indeed, could have enjoyed this unexpected coup of Jethro's more
than Lem himself, and many times on their drive homeward he burst into
loud and unexpected fits of laughter at the sublime conception of the
Chairman of the Selectmen being himself appointed road agent.

"Will," said he, "don't you tell this to a soul. We'll have some fun out
of some of the boys to-morrow."

The storekeeper promised, but he had an unpleasant presentiment that he
himself might be one of the boys in question.

"How do you suppose Jethro Bass knew you were going to indict the town?"
he asked of the stage driver.

Lem burst into fresh peals of laughter; but this was something which he
did not attempt to answer.




CHAPTER X

It so happened that there was a certain spinster whom Sam Price had been
trying to make up his mind to marry for ten years or more, and it was
that gentleman's habit to spend at least one day in the month in Harwich
for the purpose of paying his respects. In spite of the fact that his
horse had been "stun lame" the night before, Mr. Price was able to start
for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving
along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel,
humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty,
and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he
nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom
coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell and
the storekeeper had kept their secret so well that Sam, if he was
thinking about Jethro at all, believed him at that moment to be seated in
the Throne Room at the Pelican House, in the capital.

Mr. Price, however, was one of an adaptable nature, and by the time he
had pulled up beside Jethro he had recovered sufficiently to make a few
remarks on farming subjects, and finally to express a polite surprise at
Jethro's return.

"But you come a little mite late, hain't you, Jethro?" he asked finally,
with all of the indifference he could assume.

"H-how's that, Sam--how's that?"

"It's too bad,--I swan it is,--but Lem Hallowell rode over to Harwich
last night and indicted the town for that piece of road by the Four
Corners. Took Will Wetherell along with him."

"D-don't say so!" said Jethro.

"I callate he done it," responded Sam, pulling a long face. "The court'll
hev to send an agent to do the job, and I guess you'll hev to foot the
bill, Jethro."

"C-court'll hev to app'int an agent?"

"I callate."

"Er--you a candidate--Sam--you a candidate?"

"Don't know but what I be," answered the usually wary Mr. Price.

"G-goin' to Harwich--hain't you?"

"Mebbe I be, and mebbe I hain't," said Sam, not able to repress a
self-conscious snicker.

"M-might as well be you as anybody, Sam," said Jethro, as he drove on.

It was not strange that the idea, thus planted, should grow in Mr.
Price's favor as he proceeded. He had been surprised at Jethro's
complaisance, and he wondered whether, after all, he had done well to
help Chester stir people up at this time. When he reached Harwich,
instead of presenting himself promptly at the spinster's house, he went
first to the office of Judge Parkinson, as became a prudent man of
affairs.

Perhaps there is no need to go into the details of Mr. Price's
discomfiture on the occasion of this interview. The judge was by nature
of a sour disposition, but he haw-hawed so loudly as he explained to Mr.
Price the identity of the road agent that the judge of probate in the
next office thought his colleague had gone mad. Afterward Mr. Price stood
for some time in the entry, where no one could see him, scratching his
head and repeating his favorite exclamation, "I want to know!" It has
been ascertained that he omitted to pay his respects to the spinster on
that day.

Cyamon Johnson carried the story back to Coniston, where it had the
effect of eliminating Mr. Price from local politics for some time to
come.

That same morning Chester Perkins was seen by many driving wildly about
from farm to farm, supposedly haranguing his supporters to make a final
stand against the tyrant, but by noon it was observed by those
naturalists who were watching him that his activity had ceased. Chester
arrived at dinner time at Joe Northcutt's, whose land bordered on the
piece of road which had caused so much trouble, and Joe and half a dozen
others had been at work there all morning under the road agent whom Judge
Parkinson had appointed. Now Mrs. Northcutt was Chester's sister, a woman
who in addition to other qualities possessed the only sense of humor in
the family. She ushered the unsuspecting Chester into the kitchen, and
there, seated beside Joe and sipping a saucer of very hot coffee, was
Jethro Bass himself. Chester halted in the doorway, his face brick-red,
words utterly failing him, while Joe sat horror-stricken, holding aloft
on his fork a smoking potato. Jethro continued to sip his coffee.

"B-busy times, Chester," he said, "b-busy times."

Chester choked. Where were the burning words of denunciation which came
so easily to his tongue on other occasions? It is difficult to denounce a
man who insists upon drinking coffee.

"Set right down, Chester," said Mrs. Northcutt, behind him.

Chester sat down, and to this day he cannot account for that action. Once
seated, habit asserted itself; and he attacked the boiled dinner with a
ferocity which should have been exercised against Jethro.

"I suppose the stores down to the capital is finer than ever, Mr. Bass,"
remarked Mrs. Northcutt.

"So-so, Mis' Northcutt, so-so."

"I was there ten years ago," remarked Mrs. Northcutt, with a sigh of
reminiscence, "and I never see such fine silks and bonnets in my life.
Now I've often wanted to ask you, did you buy that bonnet with the
trembly jet things for Mis' Bass?"

"That bonnet come out full better'n I expected," answered Jethro,
modestly.

"You have got taste in wimmin's fixin's, Mr. Bass. Strange? Now I
wouldn't let Joe choose my things for worlds."

So the dinner progressed, Joe with his eyes on his plate, Chester silent,
but bursting with anger and resentment, until at last Jethro pushed back
his chair, and said good day to Mrs. Northcutt and walked out. Chester
got up instantly and went after him, and Joe, full of forebodings,
followed his brother-in-law! Jethro was standing calmly on the grass
plot, whittling a toothpick. Chester stared at him a moment, and then
strode off toward the barn, unhitched his horse and jumped in his wagon.
Something prompted him to take another look at Jethro, who was still
whittling.

"C-carry me down to the road, Chester--c-carry me down to the road?" said
Jethro.

Joe Northcutt's knees gave way under him, and he sat down on a sugar
kettle. Chester tightened up his reins so suddenly that his horse reared,
while Jethro calmly climbed into the seat beside him and they drove off.
It was some time before Joe had recovered sufficiently to arise and
repair to the scene of operations on the road.

It was Joe who brought the astounding news to the store that evening.
Chester was Jethro's own candidate for senior Selectman! Jethro himself
had said so, that he would be happy to abdicate in Chester's favor, and
make it unanimous--Chester having been a candidate so many times, and
disappointed.

"Whar's Chester?" said Lem Hallowell.

Joe pulled a long face.

"Just come from his house, and he hain't done a lick of work sence noon
time. Jest sets in a corner--won't talk, won't eat--jest sets thar."

Lem sat down on the counter and laughed until he was forced to brush the
tears from his cheeks at the idea of Chester Perkins being Jethro's
candidate. Where was reform now? If Chester were elected, it would be in
the eyes of the world as Jethro's man. No wonder he sat in a corner and
refused to eat.

"Guess you'll ketch it next, Will, for goin' over to Harwich with Lem,"
Joe remarked playfully to the storekeeper, as he departed.

These various occurrences certainly did not tend to allay the uneasiness
of Mr. Wetherell. The next afternoon, at a time when a slack trade was
slackest, he had taken his chair out under the apple tree and was sitting
with that same volume of Byron in his lap--but he was not reading. The
humorous aspects of the doings of Mr. Bass did not particularly appeal to
him now; and he was, in truth, beginning to hate this man whom the fates
had so persistently intruded into his life. William Wetherell was not, it
may have been gathered, what may be called vindictive. He was a
sensitive, conscientious person whose life should have been in the vale;
and yet at that moment he had a fierce desire to confront Jethro Bass
and--and destroy him. Yes, he felt equal to that.

Shocks are not very beneficial to sensitive natures. William Wetherell
looked up, and there was Jethro Bass on the doorstep.

"G-great resource--readin'--great resource," he remarked.

In this manner Jethro snuffed out utterly that passion to destroy, and
another sensation took its place--a sensation which made it very
difficult for William Wetherell to speak, but he managed to reply that
reading had been a great resource to him. Jethro had a parcel in his
hand, and he laid it down on the step beside him; and he seemed, for once
in his life, to be in a mood for conversation.

"It's hard for me to read a book," he observed. "I own to it--it's a
little mite hard. H-hev to kind of spell it out in places. Hain't had
much time for readin'. But it's kind of pleasant to l'arn what other
folks has done in the world by pickin' up a book. T-takes your mind off
things--don't it?"

Wetherell felt like saying that his reading had not been able to do that
lately. Then he made the plunge, and shuddered as he made it.

"Mr. Bass--I--I have been waiting to speak to you about that mortgage."

"Er--yes," he answered, without moving his head, "er--about the
mortgage."

"Mr. Worthington told me that you had bought it."

"Yes, I did--yes, I did."

"I'm afraid you will have to foreclose," said Wetherell; "I cannot
reasonably ask you to defer the payments any longer."

"If I foreclose it, what will you do?" he demanded abruptly.

There was but one answer--Wetherell would have to go back to the city and
face the consequences. He had not the strength to earn his bread on a
farm.

"If I'd a b'en in any hurry for the money--g-guess I'd a notified you,"
said Jethro.

"I think you had better foreclose, Mr. Bass," Wetherell answered; "I
can't hold out any hopes to you that it will ever be possible for me to
pay it off. It's only fair to tell you that."

"Well," he said, with what seemed a suspicion of a smile, "I don't know
but what that's about as honest an answer as I ever got."

"Why did you do it?" Wetherell cried, suddenly goaded by another fear;
"why did you buy that mortgage?"

But this did not shake his composure.

"H-have a little habit of collectin' 'em," he answered, "same as you do
books. G-guess some of 'em hain't as valuable."

William Wetherell was beginning to think that Jethro knew something also
of such refinements of cruelty as were practised by Caligula. He drew
forth his cowhide wallet and produced from it a folded piece of newspaper
which must, Wetherell felt sure, contain the mortgage in question.

"There's one power I always wished I had," he observed, "the power to
make folks see some things as I see 'em. I was acrost the Water to-night,
on my hill farm, when the sun set, and the sky up thar above the mountain
was all golden bars, and the river all a-flamin' purple, just as if it
had been dyed by some of them Greek gods you're readin' about. Now if I
could put them things on paper, I wouldn't care a haycock to be
President. No, sir."

The storekeeper's amazement as he listened to this speech may be
imagined. Was this Jethro Bass? If so, here was a side of him the
existence of which no one suspected. Wetherell forgot the matter in hand.

"Why don't you put that on paper?" he exclaimed.

Jethro smiled, and made a deprecating motion with his thumb.

"Sometimes when I hain't busy, I drop into the state library at the
capital and enjoy myself. It's like goin' to another world without any
folks to bother you. Er--er--there's books I'd like to talk to you
about--sometime."

"But I thought you told me you didn't read much, Mr. Bass?"

He made no direct reply, but unfolded the newspaper in his hand, and then
Wetherell saw that it was only a clipping.

"H-happened to run across this in a newspaper--if this hain't this
county, I wahn't born and raised here. If it hain't Coniston Mountain
about seven o'clock of a June evening, I never saw Coniston Mountain.
Er--listen to this."

Whereupon he read, with a feeling which Wetherell had not supposed he
possessed, an extract: and as the storekeeper listened his blood began to
run wildly. At length Jethro put down the paper without glancing at his
companion.

"There's somethin' about that that fetches you spinnin' through the air,"
he said slowly. "Sh-showed it to Jim Willard, editor of the Newcastle
Guardian. Er--what do you think he said?"

"I don't know," said Wetherell, in a low voice.

"Willard said, 'Bass, w-wish you'd find me that man. I'll give him five
dollars every week for a letter like that--er--five dollars a week.'"

He paused, folded up the paper again and put it in his pocket, took out a
card and handed it to Wetherell.

        James G. Willard, Editor.
         Newcastle Guardian.

"That's his address," said Jethro. "Er--guess you'll know what to do with
it. Er--five dollars a week--five dollars a week."

"How did you know I wrote this article?" said Wetherell, as the card
trembled between his fingers.

"K-knowed the place was Coniston seen from the 'east, knowed there wahn't
any one is Brampton or Harwich could have done it--g-guessed the
rest--guessed the rest."

Wetherell could only stare at him like a man who, with the halter about
his neck, has been suddenly reprieved. But Jethro Bass did not appear to
be waiting for thanks. He cleared his throat, and had Wetherell not been
in such a condition himself, he would actually have suspected him of
embarrassment.

"Er--Wetherell?"

"Yes?"

"W-won't say nothin' about the mortgage--p-pay it when you can."

This roused the storekeeper to a burst of protest, but he stemmed it.

"Hain't got the money, have you?"

"No--but--"

"If I needed money, d'ye suppose I'd bought the mortgage?"

"No," answered the still bewildered Wetherell, "of course not." There he
stuck, that other suspicion of political coercion suddenly rising
uppermost. Could this be what the man meant? Wetherell put his hand to
his head, but he did not dare to ask the question. Then Jethro Bass fixed
his eyes upon him.

"Hain't never mixed any in politics--hev you n-never mixed any?"

Wetherell's heart sank.

"No," he answered.

"D-don't--take my advice--d-don't."

"What!" cried the storekeeper, so loudly that he frightened himself.

"D-don't," repeated Jethro, imperturbably.

There was a short silence, the storekeeper being unable to speak.
Coniston Water, at the foot of the garden, sang the same song, but it
seemed to Wetherell to have changed its note from sorrow to joy.

"H-hear things, don't you--hear things in the store?"

"Yes."

"Don't hear 'em. Keep out of politics, Will, s-stick to store-keepin'
and--and literature."

Jethro got to his feet and turned his back on the storekeeper and picked
up the parcel he had brought.

"C-Cynthy well?" he inquired.

"I--I'll call her," said Wetherell, huskily. "She--she was down by the
brook when you came."

But Jethro Bass did not wait. He took his parcel and strode down to
Coniston Water, and there he found Cynthia seated on a rock with her toes
in a pool.

"How be you, Cynthy?" said he, looking down at her.

"I'm well, Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia.

"R-remembered what I told you to call me, hev you," said Jethro, plainly
pleased. "Th-that's right. Cynthy?"

Cynthia looked up at him inquiringly.

"S-said you liked books--didn't you? S-said you liked books?"

"Yes, I do," she replied simply, "very much."

He undid the wrapping of the parcel, and there lay disclosed a book with
a very gorgeous cover. He thrust it into the child's lap.

"It's 'Robinson Crusoe'!" she exclaimed, and gave a little shiver of
delight that made ripples in the pool. Then she opened it--not without
awe, for William Wetherell's hooks were not clothed in this magnificent
manner. "It's full of pictures," cried Cynthia. "See, there he is making
a ship!"

"Y-you read it, Cynthy?" asked Jethro, a little anxiously.

No, Cynthia hadn't.

"L-like it, Cynthy--l-like it?" said he, not quite so anxiously.

Cynthia looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

"F-fetched it up from the capital for you, Cynthy--for you."

"For me!"

A strange thrill ran through Jethro Bass as he gazed upon the wonder and
delight in the face of the child.

"F-fetched it for you, Cynthy."

For a moment Cynthia sat very still, and then she slowly closed the book
and stared at the cover again, Jethro looking down at her the while. To
tell the truth, she found it difficult to express the emotions which the
event had summoned up.

"Thank you--Uncle Jethro," she said.

Jethro, however, understood. He had, indeed, never failed to understand
her from the beginning. He parted his coat tails and sat down on the rock
beside her, and very gently opened the book again, to the first chapter.

"G-goin' to read it, Cynthy?"

"Oh, yes," she said, and trembled again.

"Er--read it to me?"

So Cynthia read "Robinson Crusoe" to him while the summer afternoon wore
away, and the shadows across the pool grew longer and longer.




CHAPTER XI

Thus William Wetherell became established in Coniston, and was started at
last--poor man--upon a life that was fairly tranquil. Lem Hallowell had
once covered him with blushes by unfolding a newspaper in the store and
reading an editorial beginning: "We publish today a new and attractive
feature of the Guardian, a weekly contribution from a correspondent whose
modesty is to be compared only with his genius as a writer. We are
confident that the readers of our Raper will appreciate the letter in
another column signed 'W. W.'" And from that day William was accorded
much of the deference due to a litterateur which the fates had hitherto
denied him. Indeed, during the six years which we are about to skip over
so lightly, he became a marked man in Coniston, and it was voted in towns
meeting that he be intrusted with that most important of literary labors,
the Town History of Coniston.

During this period, too, there sprang up the strangest of intimacies
between him and Jethro Bass. Surely no more dissimilar men than these
have ever been friends, and that the friendship was sometimes misjudged
was one of the clouds on William Wetherell's horizon. As the years went
on he was still unable to pay off the mortgage; and sometimes, indeed, he
could not even meet the interest, in spite of the princely sum he
received from Mr. Willard of the Guardian. This was one of the clouds on
Jethro's horizon, too, if men had but known it, and he took such moneys
as Wetherell insisted upon giving him grudgingly enough. It is needless
to say that he refrained from making use of Mr. Wetherell politically,
although no poorer vessel for political purposes was ever constructed. It
is quite as needless to say, perhaps, that Chester Perkins never got to
be Chairman of the Board of Selectmen.

After Aunt Listy died, Jethro was more than ever to be found, when in
Coniston, in the garden or the kitchen behind the store. Yes, Aunt Listy
is dead. She has flitted through these pages as she flitted through life
itself, arrayed by Jethro like the rainbow, and quite as shadowy and
unreal. There is no politician of a certain age in the state who does not
remember her walking, clad in dragon-fly colors, through the streets of
the capital on Jethro's arm, or descending the stairs of the Pelican
House to supper. None of Jethro's detractors may say that he ever failed
in kindness to her, and he loved her as much as was in his heart to love
any woman after Cynthia Ware. As for Aunt Listy, she never seemed to feel
any resentment against the child Jethro brought so frequently to Thousand
Acre Hill. Poor Aunt Listy! some people used to wonder whether she ever
felt any emotion at all. But I believe that she did, in her own way.

It is a well-known fact that Mr. Bijah Bixby came over from Clovelly, to
request the place of superintendent of the funeral, a position which had
already been filled. A special office, too, was created on this occasion
for an old supporter of Jethro's, Senator Peleg Hartington of Brampton.
He was made chairman of the bearers, of whom Ephraim Prescott was one.

After this, as we have said, Jethro was more than ever at the store--or
rather in that domestic domain behind it which Wetherell and Cynthia
shared with Miss Millicent Skinner. Moses Hatch was wont to ask Cynthia
how her daddies were. It was he who used to clear out the road to the
little schoolhouse among the birches when the snow almost buried the
little village, and on sparkling mornings after the storms his oxen would
stop to breathe in front of the store, a cluster of laughing children
clinging to the snow-plough and tumbling over good-natured Moses in their
frolics. Cynthia became a country girl, and grew long and lithe of limb,
and weather-burnt, and acquired an endurance that spoke wonders for the
life-giving air of Coniston. But she was a serious child, and Wetherell
and Jethro sometimes wondered whether she was ever a child at all. When
Eben Hatch fell from the lumber pile on the ice, it was she who bound the
cut in his head; and when Tom Richardson unexpectedly embraced the
schoolhouse stove, Cynthia, not Miss Rebecca Northcutt, took charge of
the situation.

It was perhaps inevitable, with such a helpless father, that the girl
should grow up with a sense of responsibility, being what she was. Did
William Wetherell go to Brampton, Cynthia examined his apparel, and he
was marched shamefacedly back to his room to change; did he read too late
at night, some unseen messenger summoned her out of her sleep, and he was
packed off to bed. Miss Millicent Skinner, too, was in a like mysterious
way compelled to abdicate her high place in favor of Cynthia, and
Wetherell was utterly unable to explain how this miracle was
accomplished. Not only did Millicent learn to cook, but Cynthia, at the
age of fourteen, had taught her. Some wit once suggested that the
national arms of the United States should contain the emblem of crossed
frying-pans, and Millicent was in this respect a true American. When
Wetherell began to suffer from her pies and doughnuts, the revolution
took place--without stampeding, or recriminations, or trouble of any
kind. One evening he discovered Cynthia, decked in an apron, bending over
the stove, and Millicent looking on with an expression that was (for
Millicent) benign.

This was to some extent explained, a few days later, when Wetherell found
himself gazing across the counter at the motherly figure of Mrs. Moses
Hatch, who held the well-deserved honor of being the best cook in
Coniston.

"Hain't had so much stomach trouble lately, Will?" she remarked.

"No," he answered, surprised; "Cynthia is learning to cook."

"Guess she is," said Mrs. Moses. "That gal is worth any seven grown-up
women in town. And she was four nights settin' in my kitchen before I
knowed what she was up to."

"So you taught her, Amanda?

"I taught her some. She callated that Milly was killin' you, and I guess
she was."

During her school days, Jethro used frequently to find himself in front
of the schoolhouse when the children came trooping out--quite by
accident, of course. Winter or summer, when he went away on his
periodical trips, he never came back without a little remembrance in his
carpet bag, usually a book, on the subject of which he had spent hours in
conference with the librarian at the state library at the capital. But in
June of the year when Cynthia was fifteen, Jethro yielded to that passion
which was one of the man's strangest characteristics, and appeared one
evening in the garden behind the store with a bundle which certainly did
not contain a book. With all the gravity of a ceremony he took off the
paper, and held up in relief against the astonished Cynthia a length of
cardinal cloth. William Wetherell, who was looking out of the window,
drew his breath, and even Jethro drew back with an exclamation at the
change wrought in her. But Cynthia snatched the roll from his hand and
wound it up with a feminine deftness.

"Wh-what's the matter, Cynthy?"

"Oh, I can't wear that, Uncle Jethro," she said.

"C-can't wear it! Why not?"

Cynthia sat down on the grassy mound under the apple tree and clasped her
hands across her knees. She looked up at him and shook her head.

"Don't you see that I couldn't wear it, Uncle Jethro?"

"Why not?" he demanded. "Ch-change it if you've a mind to hev green."

She shook her head, and smiled at him a little sadly.

"T-took me a full hour to choose that, Cynthy," said he. "H-had to go to
Boston so I got it there."

He was, indeed, grievously disappointed at this reception of his gift,
and he stood eying the cardinal cloth very mournfully as it lay on the
paper. Cynthia, remorseful, reached up and seized his hand.

"Sit down here, Uncle Jethro." He sat down on the mound beside her, very
much perplexed. She still held his hand in hers. "Uncle Jethro," she said
slowly, "you mustn't think I'm not grateful."

"N-no," he answered; "I don't think that, Cynthy. I know you be."

"I am grateful--I'm very grateful for everything you give me, although I
should love you just as much if you didn't give me anything."

She was striving very hard not to offend him, for in some ways he was as
sensitive as Wetherell himself. Even Coniston folk had laughed at the
idiosyncrasy which Jethro had of dressing his wife in brilliant colors,
and the girl knew this.

"G-got it for you to wear to Brampton on the Fourth of July, Cynthy," he
said.

"Uncle Jethro, I couldn't wear that to Brampton!"

"You'd look like a queen," said he.

"But I'm not a queen," objected Cynthia.

"Rather hev somethin' else?"

"Yes," she said, looking at him suddenly with the gleam of laughter in
her eyes, although she was on the verge of tears.

"Wh-what?" Jethro demanded.

"Well," said Cynthia, demurely gazing down at her ankles, "shoes and
stockings." The barefooted days had long gone by.

Jethro laughed. Perhaps some inkling of her reasons came to him, for he
had a strange and intuitive understanding of her. At any rate, he
accepted her decision with a meekness which would have astonished many
people who knew only that side of him which he showed to the world.
Gently she released her hand, and folded up the bundle again and gave it
to him.

"B-better keep it--hadn't you?"

"No, you keep it. And I will wear it for you when I am rich, Uncle
Jethro."

Jethro did keep it, and in due time the cardinal cloth had its uses. But
Cynthia did not wear it on the Fourth of July.

That was a great day for Brampton, being not only the nation's birthday,
but the hundredth year since the adventurous little band of settlers from
Connecticut had first gazed upon Coniston Water at that place. Early in
the morning wagon loads began to pour into Brampton Street from Harwich,
from Coniston, from Tarleton Four Corners, and even from distant
Clovelly, and Brampton was banner-hung for the occasion--flags across the
stores, across the dwellings, and draped along the whole breadth of the
meeting-house; but for sheer splendor the newly built mansion of Isaac D.
Worthington outshone them all. Although its owner was a professed
believer in republican simplicity, no such edifice ornamented any town to
the west of the state capital. Small wonder that the way in front of it
was blocked by a crowd lost in admiration of its Gothic proportions! It
stands to-day one of many monuments to its builder, with its windows of
one pane (unheard-of magnificence), its tower of stone, its porch with
pointed arches and scroll-work. No fence divides its grounds from the
public walk, and on the smooth-shaven lawn between the ornamental flower
beds and the walk stand two stern mastiffs of iron, emblematic of the
solidity and power of their owner. It was as much to see this house as to
hear the oratory that the countryside flocked to Brampton that day.

All the day before Cynthia and Milly, and many another housewife, had
been making wonderful things for the dinners they were to bring, and
stowing them in the great basket ready for the early morning start. At
six o'clock Jethro's three-seated farm wagon was in front of the store.
Cousin Ephraim Prescott, in a blue suit and an army felt hat with a cord,
got up behind, a little stiffly by reason of that Wilderness bullet; and
there were also William Wetherell and Lem Hallowell, his honest face
shining, and Sue, his wife, and young Sue and Jock and Lilian, all
a-quiver with excitement in their Sunday best.

And as they drove away there trotted up behind them Moses and Amandy
Hatch, with their farm team, and all the little Hatches,--Eben and George
and Judy and Liza. As they jogged along they drank in the fragrance of
the dew-washed meadows and the pines, and a great blue heron stood
knee-deep on the far side of Deacon Lysander's old mill-pond, watching
them philosophically as they passed.

It was eight o'clock when they got into the press of Brampton Street, and
there was a hush as they made their way slowly through the throng, and
many a stare at the curious figure in the old-fashioned blue swallowtail
and brass buttons and tall hat, driving the farm wagon. Husbands pointed
him out to their wives, young men to sisters and sweethearts, some
openly, some discreetly. "There goes Jethro Bass," and some were bold
enough to say, "Howdy, Jethro?" Jake Wheeler was to be observed in the
crowd ahead of them, hurried for once out of his Jethro step, actually
running toward the tavern, lest such a one arrive unheralded. Commotion
is perceived on the tavern porch,--Mr. Sherman, the proprietor, bustling
out, Jake Wheeler beside him; a chorus of "How be you, Jethros?" from the
more courageous there,--but the farm team jogs on, leaving a discomfited
gathering, into the side street, up an alley, and into the cool,
ammonia-reeking sheds of lank Jim Sanborn's livery stable. No
obsequiousness from lank Jim, who has the traces slipped and the reins
festooned from the bits almost before Jethro has lifted Cynthia to the
floor. Jethro, walking between Cynthia and her father, led the way,
Ephraim, Lem, and Sue Hallowell following, the children, in unwonted
shoes and stockings, bringing up the rear. The people parted, and
presently they found themselves opposite the new-scrolled band stand
among the trees, where the Harwich band in glittering gold and red had
just been installed. The leader; catching sight of Jethro's party, and of
Ephraim's corded army hat, made a bow, waved his baton, and they struck
up "Marching through Georgia." It was, of course, not dignified to cheer,
but I think that the blood of every man and woman and child ran faster
with the music, and so many of them looked at Cousin Ephraim that he
slipped away behind the line of wagons. So the day began.

"Jest to think of bein' that rich, Will!" exclaimed Amanda Hatch to the
storekeeper, as they stood in the little group which had gathered in
front of the first citizen's new mansion. "I own it scares me. Think how
much that house must hev cost, and even them dogs," said Amanda, staring
at the mastiffs with awe. "They tell me he has a grand piano from New
York, and guests from Boston railroad presidents. I call Isaac
Worthington to mind when he wahn't but a slip of a boy with a cough,
runnin' after Cynthy Ware." She glanced down at Cynthia with something of
compassion. "Just to think, child, he might have be'n your father!"

"I'm glad he isn't," said Cynthia, hotly.

"Of course, of course," replied the good-natured and well-intentioned
Amanda, "I'd sooner have your father than Isaac Worthington. But I was
only thinkin' how nice it would be to be rich."

Just then one of the glass-panelled doors of this house opened, and a
good-looking lad of seventeen came out.

"That's Bob Worthington," said Amanda, determined that they should miss
nothing. "My! it wahn't but the other day when he put on long pants. It
won't be a great while before he'll go into the mills and git all that
money. Guess he'll marry some city person. He'd ought to take you,
Cynthy."

"I don't want him," said Cynthia, the color flaming into her cheeks. And
she went off across the green in search of Jethro.

There was a laugh from the honest country folk who had listened. Bob
Worthington came to the edge of the porch and stood there, frankly
scanning the crowd, with an entire lack of self-consciousness. Some of
them shifted nervously, with the New Englander's dislike of being caught
in the act of sight-seeing.

"What in the world is he starin' at me for?" said Amanda, backing behind
the bulkier form of her husband. "As I live, I believe he's comin' here."

Young Mr. Worthington was, indeed, descending the steps and walking
across the lawn toward them, nodding and smiling to acquaintances as he
passed. To Wetherell's astonishment he made directly for the place where
he was standing and held out his hand.

"How do you do, Mr. Wetherell?" he said. "Perhaps you don't remember
me,--Bob Worthington."

"I can't say that I should have known you," answered the storekeeper. They
were all absurdly silent, thinking of nothing to say and admiring the boy
because he was at ease.

"I hope you have a good seat at the exercises," he said, pressing
Wetherell's hand again, and before he could thank him, Bob was off in the
direction of the band stand.

"One thing," remarked Amanda, "he ain't much like his dad. You'd never
catch Isaac Worthington bein' that common."

Just then there came another interruption for William Wetherell, who was
startled by the sound of a voice in his ear--a nasal voice that awoke
unpleasant recollections. He turned to confront, within the distance of
eight inches, the face of Mr. Bijah Bixby of Clovelly screwed up into a
greeting. The storekeeper had met Mr. Bixby several times since that
first memorable meeting, and on each occasion, as now, his hand had made
an involuntary movement to his watch pocket.

"Hain't seed you for some time, Will," remarked Mr. Bixby; "goin' over to
the exercises? We'll move along that way," and he thrust his hand under
Mr. Wetherell's elbow. "Whar's Jethro?"

"He's here somewhere," answered the storekeeper, helplessly, moving along
in spite of himself.

"Keepin' out of sight, you understand," said Bijah, with a knowing wink,
as much as to say that Mr. Wetherell was by this time a past master in
Jethro tactics. Mr. Bixby could never disabuse his mind of a certain
interpretation which he put on the storekeeper's intimacy with Jethro.
"You done well to git in with him, Will. Didn't think you had it in you
when I first looked you over."

Mr. Wetherell wished to make an indignant denial, but he didn't know
exactly how to begin.

"Smartest man in the United States of America--guess you know that," Mr.
Bixby continued amiably. "They can't git at him unless he wants 'em to.
There's a railroad president at Isaac Worthington's who'd like to git at
him to-day,--guess you know that,--Steve Merrill."

Mr. Wetherell didn't know, but he was given no time to say so.

"Steve Merrill, of the Grand Gulf and Northern. He hain't here to see
Worthington; he's here to see Jethro, when Jethro's a mind to. Guess you
understand."

"I know nothing about it," answered Wetherell, shortly. Mr. Bixby gave
him a look of infinite admiration, as though he could not have pursued
any more admirable line.

"I know Steve Merrill better'n I know you," said Mr. Bixby, "and he knows
me. Whenever he sees me at the state capital he says, 'How be you, Bije?'
just as natural as if I was a railroad president, and slaps me on the
back. When be you goin' to the capital, Will? You'd ought to come down
and be thar with the boys on this Truro Bill. You could reach some on 'em
the rest of us couldn't git at."

William Wetherell avoided a reply to this very pointed inquiry by
escaping into the meeting-house, where he found Jethro and Cynthia and
Ephraim already seated halfway up the aisle.

On the platform, behind a bank of flowers, are the velvet covered chairs
which contain the dignitaries of the occasion. The chief of these is, of
course, Mr. Isaac Worthington, the one with the hawk-like look, sitting
next to the Rev. Mr. Sweet, who is rather pudgy by contrast. On the other
side of Mr. Sweet, next to the parlor organ and the quartette, is the
genial little railroad president Mr. Merrill, batting the flies which
assail the unprotected crown of his head, and smiling benignly on the
audience.

Suddenly his eye becomes fixed, and he waves a fat hand vigorously at
Jethro, who answers the salute with a nod of unwonted cordiality for him.
Then comes a hush, and the exercises begin.

There is a prayer, of course, by the Rev. Mr. Sweet, and a rendering of
"My Country" and "I would not Change my Lot," and other choice selections
by the quartette; and an original poem recited with much feeling by a
lady admirer of Miss Lucretia Penniman, and the "Hymn to Coniston"
declaimed by Mr. Gamaliel Ives, president of the Brampton Literary Club.
But the crowning event is, of course, the oration by Mr. Isaac D.
Worthington, the first citizen, who is introduced under that title by the
chairman of the day; and as the benefactor of Brampton, who has bestowed
upon the town the magnificent gift which was dedicated such a short time
ago, the Worthington Free Library.

Mr. Isaac D. Worthington stood erect beside the table, his hand thrust
into the opening of his coat, and spoke at the rate of one hundred and
eight words a minute, for exactly one hour. He sketched with much skill
the creed of the men who had fought their way through the forests to
build their homes by Coniston Water, who had left their clearings to risk
their lives behind Stark and Ethan Allen for that creed; he paid a
graceful tribute to the veterans of the Civil War, scattered among his
hearers--a tribute, by the way, which for some reason made Ephraim very
indignant. Mr. Worthington went on to outline the duty of citizens of the
present day, as he conceived it, and in this connection referred, with
becoming modesty, to the Worthington Free Library. He had made his money
in Brampton, and it was but right that he should spend it for the benefit
of the people of Brampton. The library, continued Mr. Worthington when
the applause was over, had been the dream of a certain delicate youth who
had come, many years ago, to Brampton for his health. (It is a curious
fact, by the way, that Mr. Worthington seldom recalled the delicate youth
now, except upon public occasions.)

Yes, the dream of that youth had been to benefit in some way that
community in which circumstances had decreed that he should live, and in
this connection it might not be out of place to mention a bill then
before the Legislature of the state, now in session. If the bill became a
law, the greatest modern factor of prosperity, the railroad, would come
to Brampton. The speaker was interrupted here by more applause. Mr.
Worthington did not deem it dignified or necessary to state that the
railroad to which he referred was the Truro Railroad; and that he, as the
largest stockholder, might indirectly share that prosperity with
Brampton. That would be wandering too far, from his subject, which, it
will be recalled, was civic duties. He took a glass of water, and went on
to declare that he feared--sadly feared--that the ballot was not held as
sacred as it had once been. He asked the people of Brampton, and of the
state, to stop and consider who in these days made the laws and granted
the franchises. Whereupon he shook his head very slowly and sadly, as
much as to imply that, if the Truro Bill did not pass, the corruption of
the ballot was to blame. No, Mr. Worthington could think of no better
subject on this Birthday of Independence than a recapitulation of the
creed of our forefathers, from which we had so far wandered.

In short, the first citizen, as became him, had delivered the first
reform speech ever heard in Brampton, and the sensation which it created
was quite commensurate to the occasion. The presence in the audience of
Jethro Bass, at whom many believed the remarks to have been aimed, added
no little poignancy to that sensation, although Jethro gave no outward
signs of the terror and remorse by which he must have been struck while
listening to Mr. Worthington's ruminations of the corruption of the
ballot. Apparently unconscious of the eyes upon him, he walked out of the
meeting-house with Cynthia by his side, and they stood waiting for
Wetherell and Ephraim under the maple tree there.

The be-ribboned members of the Independence Day committee were now on the
steps, and behind them came Isaac Worthington and Mr. Merrill. The
people, scenting a dramatic situation, lingered. Would the mill owner
speak to the boss? The mill owner, with a glance at the boss, did nothing
of the kind, but immediately began to talk rapidly to Mr. Merrill. That
gentleman, however, would not be talked to, but came running over to
Jethro and seized his hand, leaving Mr. Worthington to walk on by
himself.

"Jethro," cried the little railroad president, "upon my word. Well, well.
And Miss Jethro," he took off his hat to Cynthia, "well, well. Didn't
know you had a girl, Jethro."

"W-wish she was mine, Steve," said Jethro. "She's a good deal to me as it
is. Hain't you, Cynthy?"

"Yes," said Cynthia.

"Well, well," said Mr. Merrill, staring at her, "you'll have to look out
for her some day--keep the boys away from her--eh? Upon my word! Well,
Jethro," said he, with a twinkle in his eye, "are you goin' to reform?
I'll bet you've got an annual over my road in your pocket right now."

"Enjoy the speech-makin', Steve?" inquired Mr. Bass, solemnly.

Mr. Merrill winked at Jethro, and laughed heartily.

"Keep the boys away from her, Jethro," he repeated, laying his hand on
the shoulder of the lad who stood beside him. "It's a good thing Bob's
going off to Harvard this fall. Seems to me I heard about some cutting up
at Andover--eh, Bob?"

Bob grinned, showing a line of very white teeth.

Mr. Merrill took Jethro by the arm and led him off a little distance,
having a message of some importance to give him, the purport of which
will appear later. And Cynthia and Bob were left face to face. Of course
Bob could have gone on, if he had wished it.

"Don't remember me, do you?" he said.

"I do now," said Cynthia, looking at him rather timidly through her
lashes. Her face was hot, and she had been, very uncomfortable during Mr.
Merrill's remarks. Furthermore, Bob had not taken his eyes off her.

"I remembered you right away," he said reproachfully; "I saw you in front
of the house this morning, and you ran away."

"I didn't runaway," replied Cynthia, indignantly.

"It looked like it, to me," said Bob.. "I suppose you were afraid I was
going to give you anther whistle."

Cynthia bit her lip, and then she laughed. Then she looked around to see
where Jethro was, and discovered that they were alone in front of the
meeting-house. Ephraim and her father had passed on while Mr. Merrill was
talking.

"What's the matter?" asked Bob.

"I'm afraid they've gone," said Cynthia. "I ought to be going after them.
They'll miss me."

"Oh, no, they won't," said Bob, easily, "let's sit down under the tree.
They'll come back."

Whereupon he sat down under the maple. But Cynthia remained standing,
ready to fly. She had an idea that it was wrong to stay--which made it
all the more delightful.

"Sit down--Cynthia," said he.

She glanced down at him, startled. He was sitting, with his legs crossed,
looking up at her intently.

"I like that name," he observed. "I like it better than any girl's name I
know. Do be good-natured and sit down." And he patted the ground close
beside him.

Shy laughed again. The laugh had in it an exquisite note of shyness,
which he liked.

"Why do you want me to sit down?" she asked suddenly.

"Because I want to talk to you."

"Can't you talk to me standing up?"

"I suppose I could," said Bob, "but--I shouldn't be able to say such nice
things to you."

The corners of her mouth trembled a little.

"And whose loss would that be?" she asked.

Bob Worthington was surprised at this retort, and correspondingly
delighted. He had not expected it in a country storekeeper's daughter,
and he stared at Cynthia so frankly that she blushed again, and turned
away. He was a young man who, it may be surmised, had had some experience
with the other sex at Andover and elsewhere. He had not spent all of his
life in Brampton.

"I've often thought of you since that day when you wouldn't take the
whistle," he declared. "What are you laughing at?"

"I'm laughing at you," said Cynthia, leaning against the tree, with her
hands behind her.

"You've been laughing at me ever since you've stood there," he said,
aggrieved that his declarations should not betaken more seriously.

"What have you thought about me?" she demanded. She was really beginning
to enjoy this episode.

"Well--" he began, and hesitated--and broke down and laughed--Cynthia
laughed with him.

"I can tell you what I didn't think," said Bob.

"What?" asked Cynthia, falling into the trap.

"I didn't think you'd be so--so good-looking," said he, quite boldly.

"And I didn't think you'd be so rude," responded Cynthia. But though she
blushed again, she was not exactly displeased.

"What are you going to do this afternoon?" he asked. "Let's go for a
walk."

"I'm going back to Coniston."

"Let's go for a walk now," said he, springing to his feet. "Come on."

Cynthia looked at him and shook her head smilingly.

"Here's Uncle Jethro--"

"Uncle Jethro!" exclaimed Bob, "is he your uncle?"

"Oh, no, not really. But he's just the same. He's very good to me."

"I wonder whether he'd mind if I called him Uncle Jethro, too," said Bob,
and Cynthia laughed at the notion. This young man was certainly very
comical, and very frank. "Good-by," he said; "I'll come to see you some
day in Coniston."




CHAPTER XII

That evening, after Cynthia had gone to bed, William Wetherell sat down
at Jonah Winch's desk in the rear of the store to gaze at a blank sheet
of paper until the Muses chose to send him subject matter for his weekly
letter to the Guardian. The window was open, and the cool airs from the
mountain spruces mingled with the odors of corn meal and kerosene and
calico print. Jethro Bass, who had supped with the storekeeper, sat in
the wooden armchair silent, with his head bent. Sometimes he would sit
there by the hour while Wetherell wrote or read, and take his departure
when he was so moved without saying good night. Presently Jethro lifted
his chin, and dropped it again; there was a sound of wheels without, and,
after an interval, a knock at the door.

William Wetherell dropped his pen with a start of surprise, as it was
late for a visitor in Coniston. He glanced at Jethro, who did not move,
and then he went to the door and shot back the great forged bolt of it,
and stared out. On the edge of the porch stood a tallish man in a
double-breasted frock coat.

"Mr. Worthington!" exclaimed the storekeeper.

Mr. Worthington coughed and pulled at one of his mutton-chop whiskers,
and seemed about to step off the porch again. It was, indeed, the first
citizen and reformer of Brampton. No wonder William Wetherell was
mystified.

"Can I do anything for you?" he asked. "Have you missed your way?"

Wetherell thought he heard him muttering, "No, no," and then he was
startled by another voice in his ear. It was Jethro who was standing
beside him.

"G-guess he hain't missed his way a great deal. Er--come in--come in."

Mr. Worthington took a couple of steps forward.

"I understood that you were to be alone," he remarked, addressing Jethro
with an attempted severity of manner.

"Didn't say so--d-didn't say so, did I?" answered Jethro.

"Very well," said Mr. Worthington, "any other time will do for this
little matter."

"Er--good night," said Jethro, shortly, and there was the suspicion of a
gleam in his eye as Mr. Worthington turned away. The mill-owner, in fact,
did not get any farther than the edge of the porch before he wheeled
again.

"The affair which I have to discuss with you is of a private nature, Mr.
Bass," he said.

"So I callated," said Jethro.

"You may have the place to yourselves, gentlemen," Wetherell put in
uneasily, and then Mr. Worthington came as far as the door, where he
stood looking at the storekeeper with scant friendliness. Jethro turned
to Wetherell.

"You a politician, Will?" he demanded.

"No," said Wetherell.

"You a business man?"

"No," he said again.

"You ever tell folks what you hear other people say?"

"Certainly not," the storekeeper answered; "I'm not interested in other
people's business."

"Exactly," said Jethro. "Guess you'd better stay."

"But I don't care to stay," Wetherell objected.

"Stay to oblige me--stay to oblige me?" he asked.

"Well, yes, if you put it that way," Wetherell said, beginning to get
some amusement out of the situation.

He did not know what Jethro's object was in this matter; perhaps others
may guess.

Mr. Worthington, who had stood by with ill-disguised impatience during
this colloquy, note broke in.

"It is most unusual, Mr. Bass, to have a third person present at a
conference in which he has no manner of concern. I think on the whole,
since you have insisted upon my coming to you--"

"H-hain't insisted that I know of," said Jethro.

"Well," said Mr. Worthington, "never mind that.

"Perhaps it would be better for me to come to you some other time, when
you are alone."

In the meantime Wetherell had shut the door, and they had gradually
walked to the rear of the store. Jethro parted his coat tails, and sat
down again in the armchair. Wetherell, not wishing to be intrusive, went
to his desk again, leaving the first citizen standing among the barrels.

"W-what other time?" Jethro asked.

"Any other time," said Mr. Worthington.

"What other time?"

"To-morrow night?" suggested Mr. Worthington, striving to hide his
annoyance.

"B-busy to-morrow night," said Jethro.

"You know that what I have to talk to you about is of the utmost
importance," said Worthington. "Let us say Saturday night."

"B-busy Saturday night," said Jethro. "Meet you to-morrow."

"What time?"

"Noon," said Jethro, "noon."

"Where?" asked Mr. Worthington, dubiously.

"Band stand in Brampton Street," said Jethro, and the storekeeper was
fain to bend over his desk to conceal his laughter, busying himself with
his books. Mr. Worthington sat down with as much dignity as he could
muster on one of Jonah's old chairs, and Jonah Winch's clock ticked and
ticked, and Wetherell's pen scratched and scratched on his weekly letter
to Mr. Willard, although he knew that he was writing the sheerest
nonsense. As a matter of fact, he tore up the sheets the next morning
without reading them. Mr. Worthington unbuttoned his coat, fumbled in his
pocket, and pulled out two cigars, one of which he pushed toward Jethro,
who shook his head. Mr. Worthington lighted his cigar and cleared his
throat.

"Perhaps you have observed, Mr. Bass," he said, "that this is a rapidly
growing section of the state--that the people hereabouts are every day
demanding modern and efficient means of communication with the outside
world."

"Struck you as a mill owner, has it?" said Jethro.

"I do not care to emphasize my private interests," answered Mr.
Worthington, at last appearing to get into his stride again. "I wish to
put the matter on broader grounds. Men like you and me ought not to be so
much concerned with our own affairs as with those of the population
amongst whom we live. And I think I am justified in putting it to you on
these grounds."

"H-have to be justified, do you--have to be justified?" Jethro inquired.
"Er--why?"

This was a poser, and for a moment he stared at Jethro, blankly, until he
decided how to take it. Then he crossed his legs and blew smoke toward
the ceiling.

"It is certainly fairer to everybody to take the broadest view of a
situation," he remarked; "I am trying to regard this from the aspect of a
citizen, and I am quite sure that it will appeal to you in the same
light. If the spirit which imbued the founders of this nation means
anything, Mr. Bass, it means that the able men who are given a chance to
rise by their own efforts must still retain the duties and
responsibilities of the humblest citizens. That, I take it, is our
position, Mr. Bass,--yours and mine."

Mr. Worthington had uncrossed his legs, and was now by the inspiration of
his words impelled to an upright position. Suddenly he glanced at Jethro,
and started for Jethro had sunk down on the small of his back, his chin
on his chest, in an attitude of lassitude if not of oblivion. There was a
silence perhaps a little disconcerting for Mr. Worthington, who chose the
opportunity to relight his cigar.

"G-got through?" said Jethro, without moving, "g-got through?"

"Through?" echoed Mr. Worthington, "through what?"

"T-through Sunday-school," said Jethro.

Worthington dropped his match and stamped on it, and Wetherell began to
wonder how much the man would stand. It suddenly came over the
storekeeper that the predicament in which Mr. Worthington found himself
whatever it was--must be a very desperate one. He half rose in his chair,
sat down again, and lighted another match.

"Er--director in the Truro Road, hain't you, Mr. Worthington?" asked
Jethro, without looking at him.

"Yes."

"Er--principal stockholder--ain't you?"

"Yes--but that is neither here nor there, sir."

"Road don't pay--r-road don't pay, does it?"

"It certainly does not."

"W-would pay if it went to Brampton and Harwich?"

"Mr. Bass, the company consider that they are pledged to the people of
this section to get the road through. I am not prepared to say whether
the road would pay, but it is quite likely that it would not."

"Ch-charitable organization?" said Jethro, from the depths of his chair.

"The pioneers in such matters take enormous risks for the benefit of the
community, sir. We believe that we are entitled to a franchise, and in my
opinion the General Court are behaving disgracefully in refusing us one.
I will not say all I think about that affair, Mr. Bass. I am convinced
that influences are at work--" He broke off with a catch in his throat.

"T-tried to get a franchise, did you?"

"I am not here to quibble with you, Mr. Bass. We tried to get it by every
legitimate means, and failed, and you know it as well as I do."

"Er--Heth Sutton didn't sign his receipt--er--did he?"

The storekeeper, not being a politician, was not aware that the somewhat
obscure reference of Jethro's to the Speaker of the House concerned an
application which Mr. Worthington was supposed to have made to that
gentleman, who had at length acknowledged his inability to oblige, and
had advised Mr. Worthington to go to headquarters. And Mr. Stephen
Merrill, who had come to Brampton out of the kindness of his heart, had
only arranged this meeting in a conversation with Jethro that day, after
the reform speech.

Mr. Worthington sprang to his feet, and flung out a hand toward Jethro.

"Prove your insinuations, air," he cried; "I defy you to prove your
insinuations."

But Jethro still sat unmoved.

"H-Heth in the charitable organization, too?" he asked.

"People told me I was a fool to believe in honesty, but I thought better
of the lawmakers of my state. I'll tell you plainly what they said to me,
sir. They said, 'Go to Jethro Bass.'"

"Well, so you have, hain't you? So you have."

"Yes, I have. I've come to appeal to you in behalf of the people of your
section to allow that franchise to go through the present Legislature."

"Er--come to appeal, have you--come to appeal?"

"Yes," said Mr. Worthington, sitting down again; "I have come to-night to
appeal to you in the name of the farmers and merchants of this
region--your neighbors,--to use your influence to get that franchise. I
have come to you with the conviction that I shall not have appealed in
vain."

"Er--appealed to Heth in the name of the farmers and merchants?"

"Mr. Sutton is Speaker of the House."

"F-farmers and merchants elected him," remarked Jethro, as though stating
a fact.

Worthington coughed.

"It is probable that I made a mistake in going to Sutton," he admitted.

"If I w-wanted to catch a pike, w-wouldn't use a pin-hook."

"I might have known," remarked Worthington, after a pause, "that Sutton
could not have been elected Speaker without your influence."

Jethro did not answer that, but still remained sunk in his chair. To all
appearances he might have been asleep.

"W-worth somethin' to the farmers and merchants to get that road
through--w-worth somethin', ain't it?"

Wetherell held his breath. For a moment Mr. Worthington sat very still,
his face drawn, and then he wet his lips and rose slowly.

"We may as well end this conversation, Mr. Bass," he said, and though he
tried to speak firmly his voice shook, "it seems to be useless. Good
night."

He picked up his hat and walked slowly toward the door, but Jethro did
not move or speak. Mr. Worthington reached the door opened it, and the
night breeze started the lamp to smoking. Wetherell got up and turned it
down, and the first citizen was still standing in the doorway. His back
was toward them, but the fingers of his left hand--working convulsively
caught Wetherell's eye and held it; save for the ticking of the clock and
the chirping of the crickets in the grass, there was silence. Then Mr.
Worthington closed the door softly, hesitated, turned, and came back and
stood before Jethro.

"Mr. Bass," he said, "we've got to have that franchise."

William Wetherell glanced at the countryman who, without moving in his
chair, without raising his voice, had brought the first citizen of
Brampton to his knees. The thing frightened the storekeeper, revolted
him, and yet its drama held him fascinated. By some subtle process which
he had actually beheld, but could not fathom, this cold Mr. Worthington,
this bank president who had given him sage advice, this preacher of
political purity, had been reduced to a frenzied supplicant. He stood
bending over Jethro.

"What's your price? Name it, for God's sake."

"B-better wait till you get the bill--hadn't you? b-better wait till you
get the bill."

"Will you put the franchise through?"

"Goin' down to the capital soon?" Jethro inquired.

"I'm going down on Thursday."

"B-better come in and see me," said Jethro.

"Very well," answered Mr. Worthington; "I'll be in at two o'clock on
Thursday." And then, without another word to either of them, he swung on
his heel and strode quickly out of the store. Jethro did not move.

William Wetherell's hand was trembling so that he could not write, and he
could not trust his voice to speak. Although Jethro had never mentioned
Isaac Worthington's name to him, Wetherell knew that Jethro hated the
first citizen of Brampton.

At length, when the sound of the wheels had died away, Jethro broke the
silence.

"Er--didn't laugh--did he, Will? Didn't laugh once--did he?"

"Laugh!" echoed the storekeeper, who himself had never been further from
laughter in his life.

"M-might have let him off easier if he'd laughed," said Jethro, "if he'd
laughed just once, m-might have let him off easier."

And with this remark he went out of the store and left Wetherell alone.




CHAPTER XIII

The weekly letter to the Newcastle Guardian was not finished that night,
but Coniston slept, peacefully, unaware of Mr. Worthington's visit; and
never, indeed, discovered it, since the historian for various reasons of
his own did not see fit to insert the event in his plan of the Town
History. Before another sun had set Jethro Bass had departed for the
state capital, not choosing to remain to superintend the haying of the
many farms which had fallen into his hand,--a most unusual omission for
him.

Presently rumors of a mighty issue about the Truro Railroad began to be
discussed by the politicians at the Coniston store, and Jake Wheeler held
himself in instant readiness to answer a summons to the capital--which
never came.

Delegations from Brampton and Harwich went to petition the Legislature
for the franchise, and the Brampton Clarion and Harwich Sentinel declared
that the people of Truro County recognized in Isaac Worthington a great
and public-spirited man, who ought by all means to be the next
governor--if the franchise went through.

One evening Lem Hallowell, after depositing a box of trimmings at Ephraim
Prescott's harness shop, drove up to the platform of the store with the
remark that "things were gittin' pretty hot down to the capital in that
franchise fight."

"Hain't you b'en sent for yet, Jake?" he cried, throwing his reins over
the backs of his sweating Morgans; "well, that's strange. Guess the fight
hain't as hot as we hear about. Jethro hain't had to call out his best
men."

"I'm a-goin' down if there's trouble," declared Jake, who consistently
ignored banter.

"Better git up and git," said Lem; "there's three out of the five
railroads against Truro, and Steve Merrill layin' low. Bije Bixby's down
there, and Heth Sutton, and Abner Parkinson, and all the big bugs. Better
get aboard, Jake."

At this moment the discussion was interrupted by the sight of Cynthia
Wetherell coming across the green with an open letter in her hand.

"It's a message from Uncle Jethro," she said.

The announcement was sufficient to warrant the sensation it produced on
all sides.

"'Tain't a letter from Jethro, is it?" exclaimed Sam Price, overcome by a
pardonable curiosity. For it was well known that one of Jethro's fixed
principles in life was embodied in his own motto, "Don't write--send."

"It's very funny," answered Cynthia, looking down at the paper with a
puzzled expression. "'Dear Cynthia: Judge Bass wished me to say to you
that he would be pleased if you and Will would come to the capital and
spend a week with him at the Pelican House, and see the sights. The judge
says Rias Richardson will tend store. Yours truly, P. Hartington.' That's
all," said Cynthia, looking up.

For a moment you could have heard a pine needle drop on the stoop. Then
Rias thrust his hands in his pockets and voiced the general sentiment.

"Well, I'll be--goldurned!" said he.

"Didn't say nothin' about Jake?" queried Lem.

"No," answered Cynthia, "that's all--except two pieces of cardboard with
something about the Truro Railroad and our names. I don't know what they
are." And she took them from the envelope.

"Guess I could tell you if I was pressed," said Lem, amid a shout of
merriment from the group.

"Air you goin', Will?" said Sam Price, pausing with his foot on the step
of his buggy, that he might have the complete news before he left.

"Godfrey, Will," exclaimed Rigs, breathlessly, "you hain't a-goin' to
throw up a chance to stay a hull week at the Pelican, be you?" The mere
possibility of refusal overpowered Rias.

Those who are familiar with that delightful French song which treats of
the leave-taking of one Monsieur Dumollet will appreciate, perhaps, the
attentions which were showered upon William Wetherell and Cynthia upon
their departure for the capital next morning. Although Mr. Wetherell had
at one time been actually a resident of Boston, he received quite as many
cautions from his neighbors as Monsieur Dumollet. Billets doux and
pistols were, of course, not mentioned, but it certainly behooved him,
when he should have arrived at that place of intrigues, to be on the
lookout for cabals.

They took the stage-coach from Brampton over the pass: picturesque
stage-coach with its apple-green body and leather springs, soon to be
laid away forever if the coveted Truro Franchise Bill becomes a law;
stage-coach which pulls up defiantly beside its own rival at Truro
station, where our passengers take the train down the pleasant waterways
and past the little white villages among the fruit trees to the capital.
The thrill of anticipation was in Cynthia's blood, and the flush of
pleasure on her cheeks, when they stopped at last under the sheds. The
conductor snapped his fingers and cried, "This way, Judge," and there was
Jethro in his swallow-tailed coat and stove-pipe hat awaiting them. He
seized Wetherell's carpet-bag with one hand and Cynthia's arm with the
other, and shouldered his way through the people, who parted when they
saw who it was.

"Uncle Jethro," cried Cynthia, breathlessly, "I didn't know you were a
judge. What are you judge of?"

"J-judge of clothes, Cynthy. D-don't you wish you had the red cloth to
wear here?"

"No, I don't," said Cynthia. "I'm glad enough to be here without it."

"G-glad to hev you in any fixin's, Cynthy," he said, giving her arm a
little squeeze, and by that time they were up the hill and William
Wetherell quite winded. For Jethro was strong as an ox, and Cynthia's
muscles were like an Indian's.

They were among the glories of Main Street now. The capital was then, and
still remains, a typically beautiful New England city, with wide streets
shaded by shapely maples and elms, with substantial homes set back amidst
lawns and gardens. Here on Main Street were neat brick business buildings
and banks and shops, with the park-like grounds of the Capitol farther
on, and everywhere, from curb to doorway, were knots of men talking
politics; broad-faced, sunburned farmers in store clothes, with beards
that hid their shirt fronts; keen-featured, sallow, country lawyers in
long black coats crumpled from much sitting on the small of the back;
country storekeepers with shrewd eyes, and local proprietors and
manufacturers.

"Uncle Jethro, I didn't know you were such a great man," she said.

"H-how did ye find out, Cynthy?"

"The way people treat you here. I knew you were great, of course," she
hastened to add.

"H-how do they treat me?" he asked, looking down at her.

"You know," she answered. "They all stop talking when you come along and
stare at you. But why don't you speak to them?"

Jethro smiled and squeezed her arm again, and then they were in the
corridor of the famous Pelican Hotel, hazy with cigar smoke and filled
with politicians. Some were standing, hanging on to pillars,
gesticulating, some were ranged in benches along the wall, and a chosen
few were in chairs grouped around the spittoons. Upon the appearance of
Jethro's party, the talk was hushed, the groups gave way, and they
accomplished a kind of triumphal march to the desk. The clerk, descrying
them, desisted abruptly from a conversation across the cigar counter, and
with all the form of a ceremony dipped the pen with a flourish into the
ink and handed it to Jethro.

"Your rooms are ready, Judge," he said.

As they started for the stairs, Jethro and Cynthia leading the way,
Wetherell felt a touch on his elbow and turned to confront Mr. Bijah
Bixby--at very close range, as usual.

"C-come down at last, Will?" he said. "Thought ye would. Need everybody
this time--you understand."

"I came on pleasure," retorted Mr. Wetherell, somewhat angrily.

Mr. Bixby appeared hugely to enjoy the joke.

"So I callated," he cried, still holding Wetherell's hand in a mild, but
persuasive grip. "So I callated. Guess I done you an injustice, Will."

"How's that?"

"You're a leetle mite smarter than I thought you was. So long. Got a
leetle business now--you understand a leetle business."

Was it possible, indeed, for the simple-minded to come to the capital and
not become involved in cabals? With some misgivings William Wetherell
watched Mr. Bixby disappear among the throng, kicking up his heels
behind, and then went upstairs. On the first floor Cynthia was standing
by an open door.

"Dad," she cried, "come and see the rooms Uncle Jethro's got for us!" She
took Wetherell's hand and led him in. "See the lace curtains, and the
chandelier, and the big bureau with the marble top."

Jethro had parted his coat tails and seated himself enjoyably on the bed.

"D-don't come often," he said, "m-might as well have the best."

"Jethro," said Wetherell, coughing nervously and fumbling in the pocket
of his coat, "you've been very kind to us, and we hardly know how to
thank you. I--I didn't have any use for these."

He held out the pieces of cardboard which had come in Cynthia's letter.
He dared not look at Jethro, and his eye was fixed instead upon the
somewhat grandiose signature of Isaac D. Worthington, which they bore.
Jethro took them and tore them up, and slowly tossed the pieces into a
cuspidor conveniently situated near the foot of the bed. He rose and
thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Er--when you get freshened up, come into Number 7," he said.

Number 7! But we shall come to that later. Supper first, in a great
pillared dining room filled with notables, if we only had the key. Jethro
sits silent at the head of the table eating his crackers and milk, with
Cynthia on his left and William Wetherell on his right. Poor William,
greatly embarrassed by his sudden projection into the limelight, is
helpless in the clutches of a lady-waitress who is demanding somewhat
fiercely that he make an immediate choice from a list of dishes which she
is shooting at him with astonishing rapidity. But who is this, sitting
beside him, who comes to William's rescue, and demands that the lady
repeat the bill of fare? Surely a notable, for he has a generous
presence, and jet-black whiskers which catch the light, which give the
gentleman, as Mr. Bixby remarked, "quite a settin'." Yes, we have met him
at last. It is none other than the Honorable Heth Sutton, Rajah of
Clovelly, Speaker of the House, who has condescended to help Mr.
Wetherell.

His chamberlain, Mr. Bijah Bixby, sits on the other side of the Honorable
Heth, and performs the presentation of Mr. Wetherell. But Mr. Sutton, as
becomes a man of high position, says little after he has rebuked the
waitress, and presently departs with a carefully chosen toothpick;
whereupon Mr. Bixby moves into the vacant seat--not to Mr. Wetherell's
unqualified delight.

"I've knowed him ever sense we was boys," said Mr. Bixby; "you saw how
intimate we was. When he wants a thing done, he says, 'Bije, you go out
and get 'em.' Never counts the cost. He was nice to you--wahn't he,
Will?" And then Mr. Bixby leaned over and whispered in Mr. Wetherell's
ear; "He knows--you understand--he knows."

"Knows what?" demanded Mr. Wetherell.

Mr. Bixby gave him another admiring look.

"Knows you didn't come down here with Jethro jest to see the sights."

At this instant the talk in the dining room fell flat, and looking up
William Wetherell perceived a portly, rubicund man of middle age being
shown to his seat by the headwaiter. The gentleman wore a great,
glittering diamond in his shirt, and a watch chain that contained much
fine gold. But the real cause of the silence was plainly in the young
woman who walked beside him, and whose effective entrance argued no
little practice and experience. She was of a type that catches the eye
involuntarily and holds it,--tall, well-rounded, fresh-complexioned, with
heavy coils of shimmering gold hair. Her pawn, which was far from
unbecoming, was in keeping with those gifts with which nature had endowed
her. She carried her head high, and bestowed swift and evidently fatal
glances to right and left during her progress through the room. Mr.
Bixby's voice roused the storekeeper from this contemplation of the
beauty.

"That's Alvy Hopkins of Gosport and his daughter. Fine gal, hain't she?
Ever sense she come down here t'other day she's stirred up more turmoil
than any railroad bill I ever seed. She was most suffocated at the
governor's ball with fellers tryin' to get dances--some of 'em old
fellers, too. And you understand about Alvy?"

"What about him?"

"Alvy says he's a-goin' to be the next governor, or fail up." Mr. Bixby's
voice sank to a whisper, and he spoke into Mr. Wetherell's ear. "Alvy
says he has twenty-five thousand dollars to put in if necessary. I'll
introduce you to him, Will," he added meaningly. "Guess you can help him
some--you understand?"

"Mr. Bixby!" cried Mr. Wetherell, putting down his knife and fork.

"There!" said Mr. Bixby, reassuringly; "'twon't be no bother. I know him
as well as I do you--call each other by our given names. Guess I was the
first man he sent for last spring. He knows I go through all them river
towns. He says, 'Bije, you get 'em.' I understood."

William Wetherell began to realize the futility of trying to convince Mr.
Bixby of his innocence in political matters, and glanced at Jethro.

"You wouldn't think he was listenin', would you, Will?" Mr. Bixby
remarked.

"Listening?"

"Ears are sharp as a dog's. Callate he kin hear as far as the governor's
table, and he don't look as if he knows anything. One way he built up his
power--listenin' when they're talkin' sly out there in the rotunda.
They're almighty surprised when they l'arn he knows what they're up to.
Guess you understand how to go along by quiet and listen when they're
talkin' sly."

"I never did such a thing in my life," cried William Wetherell,
indignantly aghast.

But Mr. Bixby winked.

"So long, Will," he said, "see you in Number 7."

Never, since the days of Pompadour and Du Barry, until modern American
politics were invented, has a state been ruled from such a place as
Number 7 in the Pelican House--familiarly known as the Throne Room. In
this historic cabinet there were five chairs, a marble-topped table, a
pitcher of iced water, a bureau, a box of cigars and a Bible, a
chandelier with all the gas jets burning, and a bed, whereon sat such
dignitaries as obtained an audience,--railroad presidents, governors and
ex-governors and prospective governors, the Speaker, the President of the
Senate, Bijah Bixby, Peleg Hartington, mighty chiefs from the North
Country, and lieutenants from other parts of the state. These sat on the
bed by preference. Jethro sat in a chair by the window, and never took
any part in the discussions that raged, but listened. Generally there was
some one seated beside him who talked persistently in his ear; as at
present, for instance, Mr. Chauncey Weed, Chairman of the Committee on
Corporations of the House, who took the additional precaution of putting
his hand to his mouth when he spoke.

Mr. Stephen Merrill was in the Throne Room that evening, and
confidentially explained to the bewildered William Wetherell the exact
situation in the Truro Franchise fight. Inasmuch as it has become our
duty to describe this celebrated conflict,--in a popular and engaging
manner, if possible,--we shall have to do so through Mr. Wetherell's
eyes, and on his responsibility. The biographies of some of the gentlemen
concerned have since been published, and for some unaccountable reason
contain no mention of the Truro franchise.

"All Gaul," said Mr. Merrill--he was speaking to a literary man--"all
Gaul is divided into five railroads. I am one, the Grand Gulf and
Northern, the impecunious one. That is the reason I'm so nice to
everybody, Mr. Wetherell. The other day a conductor on my road had a
shock of paralysis when a man paid his fare. Then there's Batch,
president of the 'Down East' road, as we call it. Batch and I are out of
this fight,--we don't care whether Isaac D. Worthington gets his
franchise or not, or I wouldn't be telling you this. The two railroads
which don't want him to get it, because the Truro would eventually become
a competitor with them, are the Central and the Northwestern. Alexander
Duncan is president of the Central."

"Alexander Duncan!" exclaimed Wetherell. "He's the richest man in the
state, isn't he?"

"Yes," said Mr. Merrill, "and he lives in a big square house right here
in the capital. He ain't a bad fellow, Duncan. You'd like him. He loves
books. I wish you could see his library."

"I'm afraid there's not much chance of that," answered Wetherell.

"Well, as I say, there's Duncan, of the Central, and the other is
Lovejoy, of the Northwestern. Lovejoy's a bachelor and a skinflint. Those
two, Duncan and Lovejoy, are using every means in their power to prevent
Worthington from getting that franchise. Have I made myself clear?"

"Do you think Mr. Worthington will get it?" asked Wetherell, who had in
mind a certain nocturnal visit at his store.

Mr. Merrill almost leaped out of his chair at the question. Then he
mopped his face, and winked very deliberately at the storekeeper. Then
Mr. Merrill laughed.

"Well, well," he said, "for a man who comes down here to stay with Jethro
Bass to ask me that!" Whereupon Mr. Wetherell flushed, and began to
perspire himself. "Didn't you hear Isaac D. Worthington's virtuous appeal
to the people at Brampton?" said Mr. Merrill.

"Yes," replied Wetherell, getting redder.

"I like you, Will," said Mr. Merrill, unexpectedly, "darned if I don't.
I'll tell you what I know about it, and you can have a little fun while
you're here, lookin' on, only it won't do to write about it to the
Newcastle Guardian. Guess Willard wouldn't publish it, anyhow. I suppose
you know that Jethro pulls the strings, end we little railroad presidents
dance. We're the puppets now, but after a while, when I'm crowded out,
all these little railroads will get together and there'll be a row worth
looking at, or I'm mistaken. But to go back to Worthington," continued
Mr. Merrill, "he made a little mistake with his bill in the beginning.
Instead of going to Jethro, he went to Heth Sutton, and Heth got the bill
as far as the Committee on Corporations, and there she's been ever since,
with our friend Chauncey Weed, who's whispering over there."

"Mr. Sutton couldn't even get it out of the Committee!" exclaimed
Wetherell.

"Not an inch. Jethro saw this thing coming about a year ago, and he took
the precaution to have Chauncey Weed and the rest of the Committee in his
pocket--and of course Heth Sutton's always been there."

William Wetherell thought of that imposing and manly personage, the
Honorable Heth Sutton, being in Jethro's pocket, and marvelled. Mr.
Chauncey Weed seemed of a species better able to thrive in the atmosphere
of pockets.

"Well, as I say, there was the Truro Franchise Bill sound asleep in the
Committee, and when Isaac D. Worthington saw that his little arrangement
with Heth Sutton wasn't any good, and that the people of the state didn't
have anything more to say about it than the Crow Indians, and that the
end of the session was getting nearer and nearer, he got desperate and
went to Jethro, I suppose. You know as well as I do that Jethro has
agreed to put the bill through."

"Then why doesn't he get the Committee to report it and put it through?"
asked Wetherell.

"Bless your simple literary nature," exclaimed Mr Merrill, "Jethro's got
more power than any man in the state, but that isn't saying that he
doesn't have to fight occasionally. He has to fight now. He has seven of
the twelve senators hitched, and the governor. But Duncan and Lovejoy
have bought up all the loose blocks of representatives, and it is
supposed that the franchise forces only control a quorum. The end of the
session is a week off, and never in all my experience have I seen a more
praiseworthy attendance on the part of members."

"Do you mean that they are being paid to remain in their seats?" cried
the amazed Mr. Wetherell.

"Well," answered Mr. Merrill, with a twinkle in his eye, "that is a
little bald and--and unparliamentary, perhaps, but fairly accurate. Our
friend Jethro is confronted with a problem to tax even his faculties, and
to look at him, a man wouldn't suspect he had a care in the world."

Jethro was apparently quite as free from anxiety the next morning when he
offered, after breakfast, to show Wetherell and Cynthia the sights of the
town, though Wetherell could not but think that the Throne Room and the
Truro Franchise Bill were left at a very crucial moment to take care of
themselves. Jethro talked to Cynthia--or rather, Cynthia talked to Jethro
upon innumerable subject's; they looked upon the statue of a great
statesman in the park, and Cynthia read aloud the quotation graven on the
rock of the pedestal, "The People's Government, made for the People, made
by the People, and answerable to the People." After that they went into
the state library, where Wetherell was introduced to the librarian, Mr.
Storrow. They did not go into the State House because, as everybody
knows, Jethro Bass never went there. Mr. Bijah Bixby and other
lieutenants might be seen in the lobbies, and the governor might sign
bills in his own apartment there, but the real seat of government was
that Throne Room into which we have been permitted to enter.

They walked out beyond the outskirts of the town, where there was a grove
or picnic ground which was also used as a park by some of the
inhabitants. Jethro liked the spot, and was in the habit sometimes of
taking refuge there when the atmosphere of the Pelican House became too
thick. The three of them had sat down on one of the board benches to
rest, when presently two people were seen at a little distance walking
among the trees, and the sight of them, for some reason, seemed to give
Jethro infinite pleasure.

"Why," exclaimed Cynthia, "one of them is that horrid girl everybody was
looking at in the dining room last night."

"D-don't like her, Cynthy?" said Jethro.

"No," said Cynthia, "I don't."

"Pretty--hain't she--pretty?"

"She's brazen," declared Cynthia.

It was, indeed, Miss Cassandra Hopkins, daughter of that Honorable Alva
who--according to Mr. Bixby was all ready with a certain sum of money to
be the next governor. Miss Cassandra was arrayed fluffily in cool, pink
lawn, and she carried a fringed parasol, and she was gazing upward with
telling effect into the face of the gentleman by her side. This would
have all been very romantic if the gentleman had been young and handsome,
but he was certainly not a man to sweep a young girl off her feet. He was
tall, angular, though broad-shouldered, with a long, scrawny neck that
rose out of a very low collar, and a large head, scantily covered with
hair--a head that gave a physical as well as a mental effect of hardness.
His smooth-shaven face seemed to bear witness that its owner was one who
had pushed frugality to the borders of a vice. It was not a pleasant
face, but now it wore an almost benign expression under the influence of
Miss Cassandra's eyes. So intent, apparently, were both of them upon each
other that they did not notice the group on the bench at the other side
of the grove. William Wetherell ventured to ask Jethro who the man was.

"N-name's Lovejoy," said Jethro.

"Lovejoy!" ejaculated the storekeeper, thinking of what Mr. Merrill had
told him of the opponents of the Truro Franchise Bill. "President of the
'Northwestern' Railroad?"

Jethro gave his friend a shrewd look.

"G-gettin' posted--hain't you, Will?" he said.

"Is she going to marry that old man?" asked Cynthia.

Jethro smiled a little. "G-guess not," said he, "g-guess not, if the old
man can help it. Nobody's married him yet, and hain't likely to."

Jethro was unusually silent on the way back to the hotel, but he did not
seem to be worried or displeased. He only broke his silence once, in
fact, when Cynthia called his attention to a large poster of some
bloodhounds on a fence, announcing the fact in red letters that "Uncle
Tom's Cabin" would be given by a certain travelling company at the Opera
House the next evening.

"L-like to go, Cynthy?"

"Oh, Uncle Jethro, do you think we can go?"

"Never b'en to a show--hev you--never b'en to a show?"

"Never in my life," said Cynthia.

"We'll all go," said Jethro, and he repeated it once or twice as they
came to Main Street, seemingly greatly tickled at the prospect. And there
was the Truro Franchise Bill hanging over him, with only a week left of
the session, and Lovejoy's and Duncan's men sitting so tight in their
seats! William Wetherell could not understand it.




CHAPTER XIV

Half an hour later, when Mr. Wetherell knocked timidly at Number
7,--drawn thither by an irresistible curiosity,--the door was opened by a
portly person who wore a shining silk hat and ample gold watch chain. The
gentleman had, in fact, just arrived; but he seemed perfectly at home as
he laid down his hat on the marble-topped bureau, mopped his face, took a
glass of iced water at a gulp, chose a cigar, and sank down gradually on
the bed. Mr. Wetherell recognized him instantly as the father of the
celebrated Cassandra.

"Well, Jethro," said the gentleman, "I've got to come into the Throne
Room once a day anyhow, just to make sure you don't forget me--eh?"

"A-Alvy," said Jethro, "I want you to shake hands with a particular
friend of mine, Mr. Will Wetherell of Coniston. Er--Will, the Honorable
Alvy Hopkins of Gosport."

Mr. Hopkins rose from the bed as gradually as he had sunk down upon it,
and seized Mr. Wetherell's hand impressively. His own was very moist.

"Heard you was in town, Mr. Wetherell," he said heartily. "If Jethro
calls you a particular friend, it means something, I guess. It means
something to me, anyhow."

"Will hain't a politician," said Jethro. "Er--Alvy?"

"Hello!" said Mr. Hopkins.

"Er--Will don't talk."

"If Jethro had been real tactful," said the Honorable Alvy, sinking down
again, "he'd have introduced me as the next governor of the state.
Everybody knows I want to be governor, everybody knows I've got twenty
thousand dollars in the bank to pay for that privilege. Everybody knows
I'm going to be governor if Jethro says so."

William Wetherell was a little taken aback at this ingenuous statement of
the gentleman from Gosport. He looked out of the window through the
foliage of the park, and his eye was caught by the monument there in
front of the State House, and he thought of the inscription on the base
of it, "The People's Government." The Honorable Alva had not mentioned
the people--undoubtedly.

"Yes, Mr. Wetherell, twenty thousand dollars." He sighed. "Time was when
a man could be governor for ten. Those were the good old days--eh,
Jethro?"

"A-Alvy, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin's' comin' to town tomorrow--to-morrow."

"You don't tell me," said the Honorable Alva, acquiescing cheerfully in
the change of subject. "We'll go. Pleased to have you, too, Mr.
Wetherell."

"Alvy," said Jethro, again, "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' comes to town
to-morrow."

Mr. Hopkins stopped fanning himself, and glanced at Jethro questioningly.

"A-Alvy, that give you an idea?" said Jethro, mildly.

Mr. Wetherell looked blank: it gave him no idea whatsoever, except of
little Eva and the bloodhounds. For a few moments the Honorable Alva
appeared to be groping, too, and then his face began to crease into a
smile of comprehension.

"By Godfrey, Jethro, but you are smart." he exclaimed, with involuntary
tribute; "you mean buy up the theatre?"

"C-callate you'll find it's bought up."

"You mean pay for it?" said Mr. Hopkins.

"You've guessed it, Alvy, you've guessed it."

Mr. Hopkins gazed at him in admiration, leaned out of the perpendicular,
and promptly drew from his trousers' pocket a roll of stupendous
proportions. Wetting his thumb, he began to push aside the top bills.

"How much is it?" he demanded.

But Jethro put up his hand.

"No hurry, Alvy--n-no hurry. H-Honorable Alvy Hopkins of
Gosport--p-patron of the theatre. Hain't the first time you've b'en a
patron, Alvy."

"Jethro," said Mr. Hopkins, solemnly, putting up his money, "I'm much
obliged to you. I'm free to say I'd never have thought of it. If you
ain't the all-firedest smartest man in America to-day,--I don't except
any, even General Grant,--then I ain't the next governor of this state."

Whereupon he lapsed into an even more expressive silence, his face still
glowing.

"Er--Alvy," said Jethro presently, "what's the name of your gal?"

"Well," said Mr. Hopkins, "I guess you've got me. We did christen her
Lily, but she didn't turn out exactly Lily. She ain't the type," said Mr.
Hopkins, slowly, not without a note of regret, and lapsed into silence.

"W-what did you say her name was, Alvy?"

"I guess her name's Cassandra," said the Honorable Alva.

"C-Cassandry?"

"Well, you see," he explained a trifle apologetically, "she's kind of
taken some matters in her own hands, my gal. Didn't like Lily, and it
didn't seem to fit her anyway, so she called herself Cassandra. Read it
in a book. It means, 'inspirer of love,' or some such poetry, but I don't
deny that it goes with her better than Lily would."

"Sh-she's a good deal of a gal, Alvy--fine-appearin' gal, Alvy."

"Upon my word, Jethro, I didn't know you ever looked at a woman. But I
suppose you couldn't help lookin' at my gal--she does seem to draw men's
eyes as if she was magnetized some way." Mr. Hopkins did not speak as
though this quality of his daughter gave him unmixed delight. "But she's
a good-hearted gal, Cassy is, high-spirited, and I won't deny she's
handsome and smart."

"She'll kind of grace my position when I'm governor. But to tell you the
truth, Jethro, one old friend to another, durned if I don't wish she was
married. It's a terrible thing for a father to say, I know, but I'd feel
easier about her if she was married to some good man who could hold her.
There's young Joe Turner in Gosport, he'd give his soul to have her, and
he'd do. Cassy says she's after bigger game than Joe. She's young--that's
her only excuse. Funny thing happened night before last," continued Mr.
Hopkins, laughing. "Lovejoy saw her, and he's b'en out of his head ever
since. Al must be pretty near my age, ain't he? Well, there's no fool
like an old fool."

"A-Alvy introduce me to Cassandry sometime will you?"

"Why, certainly," answered Mr. Hopkins, heartily, "I'll bring her in
here. And now how about gettin' an adjournment to-morrow night for 'Uncle
Tom's Cabin'? These night sessions kind of interfere."

Half an hour later, when the representatives were pouring into the
rotunda for dinner, a crowd was pressing thickly around the desk to read
a placard pinned on the wall above it. The placard announced the coming
of Mr. Glover's Company for the following night, and that the Honorable
Alva Hopkins of Gosport, ex-Speaker of the House, had bought three
hundred and twelve seats for the benefit of the members. And the
Honorable Alva himself, very red in the face and almost smothered, could
be dimly discerned at the foot of the stairs trying to fight his way out
of a group of overenthusiastic friends and admirers. Alva--so it was said
on all sides--was doing the right thing.

So it was that one sensation followed another at the capital, and the
politicians for the moment stopped buzzing over the Truro Franchise Bill
to discuss Mr. Hopkins and his master-stroke. The afternoon Chronicle
waxed enthusiastic on the subject of Mr. Hopkins's generosity, and
predicted that, when Senator Hartington made the motion in the upper
house and Mr. Jameson in the lower, the General Court would unanimously
agree that there would be no evening session on the following day. The
Honorable Alva was the hero of the hour.

That afternoon Cynthia and her father walked through the green park to
make their first visit to the State House. They stood hand in hand on the
cool, marble-paved floor of the corridor, gazing silently at the stained
and battered battle-flags behind the glass, and Wetherell seemed to be
listening again to the appeal of a great President to a great Country in
the time of her dire need--the soul calling on the body to fight for
itself. Wetherell seemed to feel again the thrill he felt when he saw the
blue-clad men of this state crowded in the train at Boston: and to hear
again the cheers, and the sobs, and the prayers as he looked upon the
blood that stained stars and stripes alike with a holy stain. With that
blood the country had been consecrated, and the state--yes, and the
building where they stood. So they went on up the stairs, reverently, nor
heeded the noise of those in groups about them, and through a door into
the great hall of the representatives of the state.

Life is a mixture of emotions, a jumble of joy and sorrow and reverence
and mirth and flippancy, of right feeling and heresy. In the morning
William Wetherell had laughed at Mr. Hopkins and the twenty thousand
dollars he had put in the bank to defraud the people; but now he could
have wept over it, and as he looked down upon the three hundred members
of that House, he wondered how many of them represented their neighbors
who supposedly had sent them here--and how many Mr. Lovejoy's railroad,
Mr. Worthington's railroad, or another man's railroad.

But gradually he forgot the battle-flags, and his mood changed. Perhaps
the sight of Mr. Speaker Sutton towering above the House, the very
essence and bulk of authority, brought this about. He aroused in
Wetherell unwilling admiration and envy when he arose to put a question
in his deep voice, or rapped sternly with his gavel to silence the tumult
of voices that arose from time to time; or while some member was
speaking, or the clerk was reading a bill at breathless speed, he turned
with wonderful nonchalance to listen to the conversation of the gentlemen
on the bench beside him, smiled, nodded, pulled his whiskers, at once
conscious and unconscious of his high position. And, most remarkable of
all to the storekeeper, not a man of the three hundred, however obscure,
could rise that the Speaker did not instantly call him by name.

William Wetherell was occupied by such reflections as these when suddenly
there fell a hush through the House. The clerk had stopped reading, the
Speaker had stopped conversing, and, seizing his gavel, looked
expectantly over the heads of the members and nodded. A sleek,
comfortably dressed mail arose smilingly in the middle of the House, and
subdued laughter rippled from seat to seat as he addressed the chair.

"Mr. Jameson of Wantage."

Mr. Jameson cleared his throat impressively and looked smilingly about
him.

"Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House," he said, "if I desired to
arouse the enthusiasm--the just enthusiasm--of any gathering in this
House, or in this city, or in this state, I should mention the name of
the Honorable Alva Hopkins of Gosport. I think I am right."

Mr. Jameson was interrupted, as he no doubt expected, by applause from
floor and gallery. He stood rubbing his hands together, and it seemed to
William Wetherell that the Speaker did not rap as sharply with his gavel
as he had upon other occasions.

"Gentlemen of the House," continued Mr. Jameson, presently, "the
Honorable Alva Hopkins, whom we all know and love, has with unparalleled
generosity--unparalleled, I say--bought up three hundred and twelve seats
in Fosters Opera House for to-morrow night" (renewed applause), "in order
that every member of this august body may have the opportunity to witness
that most classic of histrionic productions, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'." (Loud
applause, causing the Speaker to rap sharply.) "That we may show a proper
appreciation of this compliment--I move you, Mr. Speaker, that the House
adjourn not later than six o'clock to-morrow, Wednesday evening, not to
meet again until Thursday morning."

Mr. Jameson of Wantage handed the resolution to a page and sat down
amidst renewed applause. Mr. Wetherell noticed that many members turned
in their seats as they clapped, and glancing along the gallery he caught
a flash of red and perceived the radiant Miss Cassandra herself leaning
over the rail, her hands clasped in ecstasy. Mr. Lovejoy was not with
her--he evidently preferred to pay his attentions in private.

"There she is again," whispered Cynthia, who had taken an instinctive and
extraordinary dislike to Miss Cassandra. Then Mr. Sutton rose
majestically to put the question.

"Gentlemen, are you ready for the question?" he cried. "All those in
favor of the resolution of the gentleman from Wantage, Mr. Jameson--" the
Speaker stopped abruptly. The legislators in the front seats swung
around, and people in the gallery craned forward to see a member standing
at his seat in the extreme rear of the hall. He was a little man in an
ill-fitting coat, his wizened face clean-shaven save for the broom-shaped
beard under his chin, which he now held in his hand. His thin, nasal
voice was somehow absurdly penetrating as he addressed the chair. Mr.
Sutton was apparently, for once, taken by surprise, and stared a moment,
as though racking his brain for the name.

"The gentleman from Suffolk, Mr. Heath," he said, and smiling a little,
sat down.

The gentleman from Suffolk, still holding on to his beard, pitched in
without preamble.

"We farmers on the back seats don't often get a chance to be heard, Mr.
Speaker," said he, amidst a general tittering from the front seats. "We
come down here without any l'arnin' of parli'ment'ry law, and before we
know what's happened the session's over, and we hain't said nothin'."
(More laughter.) "There's b'en a good many times when I wanted to say
somethin', and this time I made up my mind I was a-goin' to--law or no
law."

(Applause, and a general show of interest in the gentleman from Suffolk.)
"Naow, Mr. Speaker, I hain't ag'in' 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' It's a good
play, and it's done an almighty lot of good. And I hain't sayin' nothin'
ag'in' Alvy Hopkins nor his munificence. But I do know there's a sight of
little bills on that desk that won't be passed if we don't set to-morrow
night--little bills that are big bills for us farmers. That thar
woodchuck bill, for one." (Laughter.) "My constituents want I should have
that bill passed. We don't need a quorum for them bills, but we need
time. Naow, Mr. Speaker, I say let all them that wants to go and see
'Uncle Tom's Cabin' go and see it, but let a few of us fellers that has
woodchuck bills and other things that we've got to get through come down
here and pass 'em. You kin put 'em on the docket, and I guess if anything
comes along that hain't jest right for everybody, somebody can challenge
a quorum and bust up the session. That's all."

The gentleman from Suffolk sat down amidst thunderous applause, and
before it died away Mr. Jameson was on his feet, smiling and rubbing his
hands together, and was recognized.

"Mr. Speaker," he said, as soon as he could be heard, "if the gentleman
from Suffolk desires to pass woodchuck bills" (renewed laughter), "he can
do so as far as I'm concerned. I guess I know where most of the members
of this House will be to-morrow night-" (Cries of 'You're right', and
sharp rapping of the gavel.) "Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my resolution."

"The gentleman from Wantage," said the Speaker, smiling broadly now,
"withdraws his resolution."

As William Wetherell was returning to the Pelican House, pondering over
this incident, he almost ran into a distinguished-looking man walking
briskly across Main Street.

"It was Mr. Worthington!" said Cynthia, looking after him.

But Mr. Worthington had a worried look on his face, and was probably too
much engrossed in his own thoughts to notice his acquaintances. He had,
in fact, just come from the Throne Room, where he had been to remind
Jethro that the session was almost over, and to ask him what he meant to
do about the Truro Bill. Jethro had given him no satisfaction.

"Duncan and Lovejoy have their people paid to sit there night and day,"
Mr. Worthington had said. "We've got a bare majority on a full House; but
you don't seem to dare to risk it. What are you going to do about it, Mr.
Bass?"

"W-want the bill to pass--don't you?"

"Certainly," Mr. Worthington had cried, on the edge of losing his temper.

"L-left it to me--didn't you?

"Yes, but I'm entitled to know what's being done. I'm paying for it."

"H-hain't paid for it yet--hev you?"

"No, I most assuredly haven't."

"B-better wait till you do."

There was very little satisfaction in this, and Mr. Worthington had at
length been compelled to depart, fuming, to the house of his friend the
enemy, Mr. Duncan, there to attempt for the twentieth time to persuade
Mr. Duncan to call off his dogs who were sitting with such praiseworthy
pertinacity in their seats. As the two friends walked on the lawn, Mr.
Worthington tried to explain, likewise for the twentieth time, that the
extension of the Truro Railroad could in no way lessen the Canadian
traffic of the Central, Mr. Duncan's road. But Mr. Duncan could not see
it that way, and stuck to his present ally, Mr. Lovejoy, and refused
point-blank to call off his dogs. Business was business.

It is an apparently inexplicable fact, however, that Mr. Worthington and
his son Bob were guests at the Duncan mansion at the capital. Two
countries may not be allies, but their sovereigns may be friends. In the
present instance, Mr. Duncan and Mr. Worthington's railroads were
opposed, diplomatically, but another year might see the Truro Railroad
and the Central acting as one. And Mr. Worthington had no intention
whatever of sacrificing Mr. Duncan's friendship. The first citizen of
Brampton possessed one quality so essential to greatness--that of looking
into the future, and he believed that the time would come when an event
of some importance might create a perpetual alliance between himself and
Mr. Duncan. In short, Mr. Duncan had a daughter, Janet, and Mr.
Worthington, as we know, had a son. And Mr. Duncan, in addition to his
own fortune, had married one of the richest heiresses in New England.
Prudens futuri, that was Mr. Worthington's motto.

The next morning Cynthia, who was walking about the town alone, found
herself gazing over a picket fence at a great square house with a very
wide cornice that stood by itself in the centre of a shade-flecked lawn.
There were masses of shrubbery here and there, and a greenhouse, and a
latticed summer-house: and Cynthia was wondering what it would be like to
live in a great place like that, when a barouche with two shining horses
in silver harness drove past her and stopped before the gate. Four or
five girls and boys came laughing out on the porch, and one of them, who
held a fishing-rod in his hand, Cynthia recognized. Startled and ashamed,
she began to walk on as fast as she could in the opposite direction, when
she heard the sound of footsteps on the lawn behind her, and her own name
called in a familiar voice. At that she hurried the faster; but she could
not run, and the picket fence was half a block long, and Bob Worthington
had an advantage over her. Of course it was Bob, and he did not scruple
to run, and in a few seconds he was leaning over the fence in front of
her. Now Cynthia was as red as a peony by this time, and she almost hated
him.

"Well, of all people, Cynthia Wetherell!" he cried; "didn't you hear me
calling after you?"

"Yes," said Cynthia.

"Why didn't you stop?"

"I didn't want to," said Cynthia, glancing at the distant group on the
porch, who were watching them. Suddenly she turned to him defiantly. "I
didn't know you were in that house, or in the capital," she said.

"And I didn't know you were," said Bob, upon whose masculine intelligence
the meaning of her words was entirely lost. "If I had known it, you can
bet I would have looked you up. Where are you staying?"

"At the Pelican House."

"What!" said Bob, "with all the politicians? How did you happen to go
there?"

"Mr. Bass asked my father and me to come down for a few days," answered
Cynthia, her color heightening again. Life is full of contrasts, and
Cynthia was becoming aware of some of them.

"Uncle Jethro?" said Bob.

"Yes, Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia, smiling in spite of herself. He always
made her smile.

"Uncle Jethro owns the Pelican House," said Bob.

"Does he? I knew he was a great man, but I didn't know how great he was
until I came down here."

Cynthia said this so innocently that Bob repented his flippancy on the
spot. He had heard occasional remarks of his elders about Jethro.

"I didn't mean quite that," he said, growing red in his turn. "Uncle
Jethro--Mr. Bass--is a great man of course. That's what I meant."

"And he's a very good man," said Cynthia, who understood now that he had
spoken a little lightly of Jethro, and resented it.

"I'm sure of it," said Bob, eagerly. Then Cynthia began to walk on,
slowly, and he followed her on the other side of the fence. "Hold on," he
cried, "I haven't said half the things I want to say--yet."

"What do you want to say?" asked Cynthia, still walking. "I have to go."

"Oh, no, you don't! Wait just a minute--won't you?"

Cynthia halted, with apparent unwillingness, and put out her toe between
the pickets. Then she saw that there was a little patch on that toe, and
drew it in again.

"What do you want to say?" she repeated. "I don't believe you have
anything to say at all." And suddenly she flashed a look at him that made
his heart thump.

"I do--I swear I do!" he protested. "I'm coming down to the Pelican
to-morrow morning to get you to go for a walk."

Cynthia could not but think that the remoteness of the time he set was
scarce in keeping with his ardent tone.

"I have something else to do to-morrow morning," she answered.

"Then I'll come to-morrow afternoon," said Bob, instantly.

"Who lives here?" she asked irrelevantly.

"Mr. Duncan. I'm visiting the Duncans."

At this moment a carryall joined the carriage at the gate. Cynthia
glanced at the porch again. The group there had gown larger, and they
were still staring. She began to feel uncomfortable again, and moved on
slowly.

"Mayn't I come?" asked Bob, going after her; and scraping the butt of the
rod along the palings.

"Aren't there enough girls here to satisfy you?" asked Cynthia.

"They're enough--yes," he said, "but none of 'em could hold a candle to
you."

Cynthia laughed outright.

"I believe you tell them all something like that," she said.

"I don't do any such thing," he retorted, and then he laughed himself,
and Cynthia laughed again.

"I like you because you don't swallow everything whole," said Bob,
"and--well, for a good many other reams." And he looked into her face
with such frank admiration that Cynthia blushed and turned away.

"I don't believe a word you say," she answered, and started to walk off,
this time in earnest.

"Hold on," cried Bob. They were almost at the end of the fence by this,
and the pickets were sharp and rather high, or he would have climbed
them.

Cynthia paused hesitatingly.

"I'll come at two o'clock to-morrow," said he; "We're going on a picnic
to-day, to Dalton's Bend, on the river. I wish I could get out of it."

Just then there came a voice from the gateway.

"Bob! Bob Worthington!"

They both turned involuntarily. A slender girl with light brown hair was
standing there, waving at him.

"Who's that?" asked Cynthia.

"That?" said Bob, in some confusion, "oh, that's Janet Duncan."

"Good-by," said Cynthia.

"I'm coming to-morrow," he called after her, but she did not turn. In a
little while she heard the carryall behind her clattering down the
street, its passengers laughing and joking merrily. Her face burned, for
she thought that they were laughing at her; she wished with all her heart
that she had not stopped to talk with him at the palings. The girls,
indeed, were giggling as the carryall passed, and she heard somebody call
out his name, but nevertheless he leaned out of the seat and waved his
hat at her, amid a shout of laughter. Poor Cynthia! She did not look at
him. Tears of vexation were in her eyes, and the light of her joy at this
visit to the capital flickered, and she wished she were back in Coniston.
She thought it would be very nice to be rich, and to live in a great
house in a city, and to go on picnics.

The light flickered, but it did not wholly go out. If it has not been
shown that Cynthia was endowed with a fair amount of sense, many of these
pages have been written in vain. She sat down for a while in the park and
thought of the many things she had to be thankful for--not the least of
which was Jethro's kindness. And she remembered that she was to see
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" that evening.

Such are the joys and sorrows of fifteen!




CHAPTER XV

Mr. Amos Cuthbert named it so--our old friend Amos who lives high up in
the ether of Town's End ridge, and who now represents Coniston in the
Legislature. He is the same silent, sallow person as when Jethro first
took a mortgage on his farm, only his skin is beginning to resemble dried
parchment, and he is a trifle more cantankerous. On the morning of that
memorable day when, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came to the capital, Amos had
entered the Throne Room and given vent to his feelings in regard to the
gentleman in the back seat who had demanded an evening sitting on behalf
of the farmers.

"Don't that beat all?" cried Amos. "Let them have their darned woodchuck
session; there won't nobody go to it. For cussed, crisscross
contrariness, give me a moss-back Democrat from a one-boss, one-man town
like Suffolk. I'm a-goin' to see the show."

"G-goin' to the show, be you, Amos?" said Jethro.

"Yes, I be," answered Amos, bitterly. "I hain't agoin' nigh the house
to-night." And with this declaration he departed.

"I wonder if he really is going?" queried Mr. Merrill looking at the
ceiling. And then he laughed.

"Why shouldn't he go?" asked William Wetherell.

Mr. Merrill's answer to this question was a wink, whereupon he, too,
departed. And while Wetherell was pondering over the possible meaning of
these words the Honorable Alva Hopkins entered, wreathed in smiles, and
closed the door behind him.

"It's all fixed," he said, taking a seat near Jethro in the window.

"S-seen your gal--Alvy--seen your gal?"

Mr. Hopkins gave a glance at Wetherell.

"Will don't talk," said Jethro, and resumed his inspection through the
lace curtains of what was going on in the street.

"Cassandry's, got him to go," said Mr. Hopkins. "It's all fixed, as sure
as Sunday. If it misses fire, then I'll never mention the governorship
again. But if it don't miss fire," and the Honorable Alva leaned over and
put his hand on Jethro's knee, "if it don't miss fire, I get the
nomination. Is that right?"

"Y-you've guessed it, Alvy."

"That's all I want to know," declared the Honorable Alva; "when you say
that much, you never go back on it. And, you can go ahead and give the
orders, Jethro. I have to see that the boys get the tickets. Cassandry's
got a head on her shoulders, and she kind of wants to be governor, too."
He got as far as the door, when he turned and bestowed upon Jethro a
glance of undoubted tribute. "You've done a good many smart things," said
he, "but I guess you never beat this, and never will."

"H-hain't done it yet, Alvy," answered Jethro, still looking out through
the window curtains at the ever ganging groups of gentlemen in the
street. These groups had a never ceasing interest for Jethro Bass.

Mr. Wetherell didn't talk, but had he been the most incurable of gossips
he felt that he could have done no damage to this mysterious affair,
whatever it was. In a certain event, Mr. Hopkins was promised the
governorship: so much was plain. And it was also evident that Miss
Cassandra Hopkins was in some way to be instrumental. William Wetherell
did not like to ask Jethro, but he thought a little of sounding Mr.
Merrill, and then he came to the conclusion that it would be wiser for
him not to know.

"Er--Will," said Jethro, presently, "you know Heth Sutton--Speaker Heth
Sutton?"

"Yes."

"Er--wouldn't mind askin' him to step in and see me before the
session--if he was comin' by--would you?"

"Certainly not."

"Er--if he was comin' by," said Jethro.

Mr. Wetherell found Mr. Speaker Sutton glued to a pillar in the rotunda
below. He had some difficulty in breaking through the throng that pressed
around him, and still more in attracting his attention, as Mr. Sutton
took no manner of notice of the customary form of placing one's hand
under his elbow and pressing gently up. Summoning up his courage, Mr.
Wetherell tried the second method of seizing him by the buttonhole. He
paused in his harangue, one hand uplifted, and turned and glanced at the
storekeeper abstractedly.

"Mr. Bass asked me to tell you to drop into Number 7," said Wetherell,
and added, remembering express instructions, "if you were going by."

Wetherell had not anticipated the magical effect this usual message would
have on Mr. Sutton, nor had he thought that so large and dignified a body
would move so rapidly. Before the astonished gentlemen who had penned him
could draw a breath, Mr. Sutton had reached the stairway and, was
mounting it with an agility that did him credit. Five minutes later
Wetherell saw the Speaker descending again, the usually impressive
quality of his face slightly modified by the twitching of a smile.

Thus the day passed, and the gentlemen of the Lovejoy and Duncan factions
sat, as tight as ever in their seats, and the Truro Franchise bill still
slumbered undisturbed in Mr. Chauncey Weed's committee.

At supper there was a decided festal air about the dining room of the
Pelican House, the little band of agricultural gentlemen who wished to
have a session not being patrons of that exclusive hotel. Many of the
Solons had sent home for their wives; that they might do the utmost
justice to the Honorable Alva's hospitality. Even Jethro, as he ate his
crackers and milk, had a new coat with bright brass buttons, and Cynthia,
who wore a fresh gingham which Miss Sukey Kittredge of Coniston had
helped to design, so far relented in deference to Jethro's taste as to
tie a red bow at her throat.

The middle table under the chandelier was the immediate firmament of Miss
Cassandra Hopkins. And there, beside the future governor, sat the
president of the "Northwestern" Railroad, Mr. Lovejoy, as the chief of
the revolving satellites. People began to say that Mr. Lovejoy was hooked
at last, now that he had lost his head in such an unaccountable fashion
as to pay his court in public; and it was very generally known that he
was to make one of the Honorable Alva's immediate party at the
performance of "Uncle Tam's Cabin."

Mr. Speaker Sutton, of course, would have to forego the pleasure of the
theatre as a penalty of his high position. Mr. Merrill, who sat at
Jethro's table next to Cynthia that evening, did a great deal of joking
with the Honorable Heth about having to preside aver a woodchuck session,
which the Speaker, so Mr. Wetherell thought, took in astonishingly good
part, and seemed very willing to make the great sacrifice which his duty
required of him.

After supper Mr. Wetherell took a seat in the rotunda. As an observer of
human nature, he had begun to find a fascination in watching the group of
politicians there. First of all he encountered Mr. Amos Cuthbert, his
little coal-black eyes burning brightly, and he was looking very
irritable indeed.

"So you're going to the show, Amos?" remarked the storekeeper, with an
attempt at cordiality.

To his bewilderment, Amos turned upon him fiercely.

"Who said I was going to the show?" he snapped.

"You yourself told me."

"You'd ought to know whether I'm a-goin' or not," said Amos, and walked
away.

While Mr. Wetherell sat meditating, upon this inexplicable retort, a
retired, scholarly looking gentleman with a white beard, who wore
spectacles, came out of the door leading from the barber shop and quietly
took a seat beside him. The storekeeper's attention was next distracted
by the sight of one who wandered slowly but ceaselessly from group to
group, kicking up his heels behind, and halting always in the rear of the
speakers. Needless to say that this was our friend Mr. Bijah Bixby, who
was following out his celebrated tactics of "going along by when they
were talkin' sly." Suddenly Mr. Bixby's eye alighted on Mr. Wetherell,
who by a stretch of imagination conceived that it expressed both
astonishment and approval, although he was wholly at a loss to understand
these sentiments. Mr. Bixby winked--Mr. Wetherell was sure of that. But
to his surprise, Bijah did not pause in his rounds to greet him.

Mr. Wetherell was beginning to be decidedly uneasy, and was about to go
upstairs, when Mr. Merrill came down the rotunda whistling, with his
hands in his pockets. He stopped whistling when he spied the storekeeper,
and approached him in his usual hearty manner.

"Well, well, this is fortunate," said Mr. Merrill; "how are you, Duncan?
I want you to know Mr. Wetherell. Wetherell writes that weekly letter for
the Guardian you were speaking to me about last year. Will, this is Mr.
Alexander Duncan, president of the 'Central.'"

"How do you do, Mr. Wetherell?" said the scholarly gentleman with the
spectacles, putting out his hand. "I'm glad to meet you, very glad,
indeed. I read your letters with the greatest pleasure."

Mr. Wetherell, as he took Mr. Duncan's hand, had a variety of emotions
which may be imagined, and need not be set down in particular.

"Funny thing," Mr. Merrill continued, "I was looking for you, Duncan. It
occurred to me that you would like to meet Mr. Wetherell. I was afraid
you were in Boston."

"I have just got back," said Mr. Duncan.

"I wanted Wetherell to see your library. I was telling him about it."

"I should be delighted to show it to him," answered Mr. Duncan. That
library, as is well known, was a special weakness of Mr. Duncan's.

Poor William Wetherell, who was quite overwhelmed by the fact that the
great Mr. Duncan had actually read his letters and liked them, could
scarcely utter a sensible word. Almost before he realized what had
happened he was following Mr. Duncan out of the Pelican House, when the
storekeeper was mystified once more by a nudge and another wink from Mr.
Bixby, conveying unbounded admiration.

"Why don't you write a book, Mr. Wetherell?" inquired the railroad
president, when they were crossing the park.

"I don't think I could do it," said Mr. Wetherell, modestly. Such incense
was overpowering, and he immediately forgot Mr. Bixby.

"Yes, you can," said Mr. Duncan, "only you don't know it. Take your
letters for a beginning. You can draw people well enough, when you try.
There was your description of the lonely hill-farm on the spur--I shall
always remember that: the gaunt farmer, toiling every minute between sun
and sun; the thin, patient woman bending to a task that never charged or
lightened; the children growing up and leaving one by one, some to the
cities, some to the West, until the old people are left alone in the
evening of life--to the sunsets and the storms. Of course you must write
a book."

Mr. Duncan quoted other letters, and William Wetherell thrilled. Poor
man! he had had little enough incense in his time, and none at all from
the great. They came to the big square house with the cornice which
Cynthia had seen the day before, and walked across the lawn through the
open door. William Wetherell had a glimpse of a great drawing-room with
high windows, out of which was wafted the sound of a piano and of
youthful voice and laughter, and then he was in the library. The thought
of one man owning all those books overpowered him. There they were, in
stately rows, from the floor to the high ceiling, and a portable ladder
with which to reach them.

Mr. Duncan, understanding perhaps something of the storekeeper's
embarrassment, proceeded to take down his treasures: first editions from
the shelves, and folios and mistrals from drawers in a great iron safe in
one corner and laid them on the mahogany desk. It was the railroad
president's hobby, and could he find an appreciative guest, he was happy.
It need scarcely be said that he found William Wetherell appreciative,
and possessed of knowledge of Shaksperiana and other matters that
astonished his host as well as pleased him. For Wetherell had found his
tongue at last.

After a while Mr. Duncan drew out his watch and gave a start.

"By George!" he exclaimed, "it's after eight o'clock. I'll have to ask
you to excuse me to-night, Mr. Wetherell. I'd like to show you the rest
of them--can't you come around to-morrow afternoon?"

Mr. Wetherell, who had forgotten his own engagement and "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," said he would be happy to come. And they went out together and
began to walk toward the State House.

"It isn't often I find a man who knows anything at all about these
things," continued Mr. Duncan, whose heart was quite won. "Why do you
bury yourself in Coniston?"

"I went there from Briton for my health," said the storekeeper.

"Jethro Bass lives there, doesn't he" said Mr. Duncan, with a laugh. But
I suppose you don't know anything about politics."

"I know nothing at all," said Mr. Wetherell, which was quite true. He had
been in dreamland, but now the fact struck him again, with something of a
shock, that this mild-mannered gentleman was one of those who had been
paying certain legislators to remain in their seats. Wetherell thought of
speaking to Mr. Duncan of his friendship with Jethro Bass, but the
occasion passed.

"I wish to heaven I didn't have to know anything about politics," Mr.
Duncan was saying; "they disgust me. There's a little matter on now,
about an extension of the Truro Railroad to Harwich, which wouldn't
interest you, but you can't conceive what a nuisance it has been to watch
that House day and night, as I've had to. It's no joke to have that
townsman of yours; Jethro Bass, opposed to you. I won't say anything
against him, for he many be a friend of yours, and I have to use him
sometimes myself." Mr. Duncan sighed. "It's all very sordid and annoying.
Now this evening, for instance, when we might have enjoyed ourselves with
those books, I've' got to go to the House, just because some backwoods
farmers want to talk about woodchucks. I suppose it's foolish," said Mr.
Duncan; "but Bass has tricked us so often that I've got into the habit of
being watchful. I should have been here twenty minutes ago."

By this time they had come to the entrance of the State House, and
Wetherell followed Mr. Duncan in, to have a look at the woodchuck session
himself. Several members hurried by and up the stairs, some of them in
their Sunday black; and the lobby above seemed, even to the storekeeper's
unpractised eye, a trifle active for a woodchuck session. Mr. Duncan
muttered something, and quickened his gait a little on the steps that led
to the gallery. This place was almost empty. They went down to the rail,
and the railroad president cast his eye over the House.

"Good God!" he said sharply, "there's almost a quorum here." He ran his
eye over the members. "There is a quorum here."

Mr. Duncan stood drumming nervously with his fingers on the rail,
scanning the heads below. The members were scattered far and wide through
the seats, like an army in open order, listening in silence to the
droning voice of the clerk. Moths burned in the gas flames, and June bugs
hummed in at the high windows and tilted against the walls. Then Mr.
Duncan's finger nails whitened as his thin hands clutched the rail, and a
sense of a pending event was upon Wetherell. Slowly he realized that he
was listening to the Speaker's deep voice.

"'The Committee on Corporations, to whom was referred House Bill Number
109, entitled, 'An Act to extend the Truro Railroad to Harwich, having
considered the same, report the same with the following resolution:
Resolved, that the bill ought to pass. Chauncey Weed, for the
Committee.'"

The Truro Franchise! The lights danced, and even a sudden weakness came
upon the storekeeper. Jethro's trick! The Duncan and Lovejoy
representatives in the theatre, the adherents of the bill here! Wetherell
saw Mr. Duncan beside him, a tense figure leaning on the rail, calling to
some one below. A man darted up the centre, another up the side aisle.
Then Mr. Duncan flashed at William Wetherell from his blue eye such a
look of anger as the storekeeper never forgot, and he, too, was gone.
Tingling and perspiring, Wetherell leaned out over the railing as the
Speaker rapped calmly for order. Hysteric laughter, mingled with hoarse
cries, ran over the House, but the Honorable Heth Sutton did not even
smile.

A dozen members were on their feet shouting to the chair. One was
recognized, and that man Wetherell perceived with amazement to be Mr.
Jameson of Wantage, adherent of Jethro's--he who had moved to adjourn for
"Uncle Tom's Cabin"! A score of members crowded into the aisles, but the
Speaker's voice again rose above the tumult.

"The doorkeepers will close the doors! Mr. Jameson of Wantage moves that
the report of the Committee be accepted, and on this motion a roll-call
is ordered."

The doorkeepers, who must have been inspired, had already slammed the
doors in the faces of those seeking wildly to escape. The clerk already
had the little, short-legged desk before him and was calling the roll
with incredible rapidity. Bewildered and excited as Wetherell was, and
knowing as little of parliamentary law as the gentleman who had proposed
the woodchuck session, he began to form some sort of a notion of Jethro's
generalship, and he saw that the innocent rural members who belonged to
Duncan and Lovejoy's faction had tried to get away before the roll-call,
destroy the quorum, and so adjourn the House. These, needless to say,
were not parliamentarians, either. They had lacked a leader, they were
stunned by the suddenness of the onslaught, and had not moved quickly
enough. Like trapped animals, they wandered blindly about for a few
moments, and then sank down anywhere. Each answered the roll-call
sullenly, out of necessity, for every one of them was a marked man. Then
Wetherell remembered the two members who had escaped, and Mr. Duncan, and
fell to calculating how long it would take these to reach Fosters Opera
House, break into the middle of an act, and get out enough partisans to
come back and kill the bill. Mr. Wetherell began to wish he could witness
the scene there, too, but something held him here, shaking with
excitement, listening to each name that the clerk called.

Would the people at the theatre get back in time?

Despite William Wetherell's principles, whatever these may have been, he
was so carried away that he found himself with his watch in his hand,
counting off the minutes as the roll-call went on. Fosters Opera House
was some six squares distant, and by a liberal estimate Mr. Duncan and
his advance guard ought to get back within twenty minutes of the time he
left. Wetherell was not aware that people were coming into the gallery
behind him; he was not aware that one sat at his elbow until a familiar
voice spoke, directly into his ear.

"Er--Will--held Duncan pretty tight--didn't you? He's a hard one to fool,
too. Never suspected a mite, did he? Look out for your watch!"

Mr. Bixby seized it or it would have fallen. If his life had depended on
it, William Wetherell could not have spoken a word to Mr. Bixby then.

"You done well, Will, sure enough," that gentleman continued to whisper.
"And Alvy's gal done well, too--you understand. I guess she's the only
one that ever snarled up Al Lovejoy so that he didn't know where he was
at. But it took a fine, delicate touch for her job and yours, Will.
Godfrey, this is the quickest roll-call I ever seed! They've got halfway
through Truro County. That fellow can talk faster than a side-show,
ticket-seller at a circus."

The clerk was, indeed, performing prodigies of pronunciation. When he
reached Wells County, the last, Mr. Bixby so far lost his habitual sang
froid as to hammer on the rail with his fist.

"If there hain't a quorum, we're done for," he said. "How much time has
gone away? Twenty minutes! Godfrey, some of 'em may break loose and git
here is five minutes!"

"Break loose?" Wetherell exclaimed involuntarily.

Mr. Bixby screwed up his face.

"You understand. Accidents is liable to happen."

Mr. Wetherell didn't understand in the least, but just then the clerk
reached the last name on the roll; an instant of absolute silence, save
for the June-bugs, followed, while the assistant clerk ran over his
figures deftly and handed them to Mr. Sutton, who leaned forward to
receive them.

"One hundred and twelve gentlemen have voted in the affirmative and
forty-eight in the negative, and the report of the Committee is
accepted."

"Ten more'n a quorum!" ejaculated Mr. Bixby, in a voice of thanksgiving,
as the turmoil below began again. It seemed as though every man in the
opposition was on his feet and yelling at the chair: some to adjourn;
some to indefinitely postpone; some demanding roll-calls; others swearing
at these--for a division vote would have opened the doors. Others tried
to get out, and then ran down the aisles and called fiercely on the
Speaker to open the doors, and threatened him. But the Honorable Heth
Sutton did not lose his head, and it may be doubted whether he ever
appeared to better advantage than at that moment. He had a voice like one
of the Clovelly bulls that fed in his own pastures in the valley, and by
sheer bellowing he got silence, or something approaching it,--the
protests dying down to a hum; had recognised another friend of the bill,
and was putting another question.

"Mr. Gibbs of Wareham moves that the rules of the House be so far
suspended that this bill be read a second and third time by its title,
and be put upon its final passage at this time. And on this motion,"
thundered Mr. Sutton, above the tide of rising voices, "the yeas and nays
are called for. The doorkeepers will keep the doors shut."

"Abbey of Ashburton."

The nimble clerk had begun on the roll almost before the Speaker was
through, and checked off the name. Bijah Bixby mopped his brow with a
blue pocket-handkerchief.

"My God," he said, "what a risk Jethro's took! they can't git through
another roll-call. Jest look at Heth! Ain't he carryin' it magnificent?
Hain't as ruffled as I be. I've knowed him ever sence he wahn't no
higher'n that desk. Never would have b'en in politics if it hadn't b'en
for me. Funny thing, Will--you and I was so excited we never thought to
look at the clock. Put up your watch. Godfrey, what's this?"

The noise of many feet was heard behind them. Men and women were crowding
breathlessly into the gallery.

"Didn't take it long to git noised araound," said Mr. Bixby. "Say, Will,
they're bound to have got at 'em in the thea'tre. Don't see how they held
'em off, c-cussed if I do."

The seconds ticked into minutes, the air became stifling, for now the
front of the gallery was packed. Now, if ever, the fate of the Truro
Franchise hung in the balance, and, perhaps, the rule of Jethro Bass. And
now, as in the distance, came a faint, indefinable stir, not yet to be
identified by Wetherell's ears as a sound, but registered somewhere in
his brain as a warning note. Bijah Bixby, as sensitive as he,
straightened up to listen, and then the whispering was hushed. The
members below raised their heads, and some clutched the seats in front of
them and looked up at the high windows. Only the Speaker sat like a wax
statue of himself, and glanced neither to the right nor to the left.

"Harkness of Truro," said the clerk.

"He's almost to Wells County again," whispered Bijah, excitedly. "I
didn't callate he could do it. Will?"

"Yes?"

"Will--you hear somethin'?"

A distant shout floated with the night breeze in at the windows; a man on
the floor got to his feet and stood straining: a commotion was going on
at the back of the gallery, and a voice was heard crying out:--

"For the love of God, let me through!"

Then Wetherell turned to see the crowd at the back parting a little, to
see a desperate man in a gorgeous white necktie fighting his way toward
the rail. He wore no hat, his collar was wilted, and his normally ashen
face had turned white. And, strangest of all, clutched tightly in his
hand was a pink ribbon.

"It's Al Lovejoy," said Bijah, laconically.

Unmindful of the awe-stricken stares he got from those about him when his
identity became known, Mr. Lovejoy gained the rail and shoved aside a man
who was actually making way for him. Leaning far out, he scanned the
house with inarticulate rage while the roll-call went monotonously on.
Some of the members looked up at him and laughed; others began to make
frantic signs, indicative of helplessness; still others telegraphed him
obvious advice about reenforcements which, if anything, increased his
fury. Mr. Bixby was now fanning himself with the blue handkerchief.

"I hear 'em!" he said, "I hear 'em, Will!"

And he did. The unmistakable hum of the voices of many men and the sound
of feet on stone flagging shook the silent night without. The clerk read
off the last name on the roll.

"Tompkins of Ulster."

His assistant lost no time now. A mistake would have been fatal, but he
was an old hand. Unmindful of the rumble on the wooden stairs below, Mr.
Sutton took the list with an admirable deliberation.

"One hundred and twelve gentlemen have voted in the affirmative,
forty-eight in the negative, the rules of the House are suspended, and"
(the clerk having twice mumbled the title of the bill) "the question is:
Shall the bill pass? As many as are of opinion that the bill pass will
say Aye, contrary minded No."

Feet were in the House corridor now, and voices rising there, and noises
that must have been scuffling--yes, and beating of door panels. Almost
every member was standing, and it seemed as if they were all
shouting,--"personal privilege," "fraud," "trickery," "open the doors."
Bijah was slowly squeezing the blood out of William Wetherell's arm.

"The doorkeepers has the keys in their pockets!" Mr. Bixby had to shout,
for once.

Even then the Speaker did not flinch. By a seeming miracle he got a
semblance of order, recognized his man, and his great voice rang through
the hall and drowned all other sounds.

"And on this question a roll-call is ordered. The doorkeepers will close
the doors!"

Then, as in reaction, the gallery trembled with a roar of laughter. But
Mr. Sutton did not smile. The clerk scratched off the names with
lightning rapidity, scarce waiting for the answers. Every man's color was
known, and it was against the rules to be present and fail to vote. The
noise in the corridors grew louder, some one dealt a smashing kick on a
panel, and Wetherell ventured to ask Mr. Bixby if he thought the doors
would hold.

"They can break in all they've a mind to now," he chuckled; "the Truro
Franchise is safe."

"What do you mean?" Wetherell demanded excitedly.

"If a member hain't present when a question is put, he can't git into a
roll-call," said Bijah.

The fact that the day was lost was evidently brought home to those below,
for the strife subsided gradually, and finally ceased altogether. The
whispers in the gallery died down, the spectators relayed a little.
Lovejoy alone remained tense, though he had seated himself on a bench,
and the hot anger in which he had come was now cooled into a
vindictiveness that set the hard lines of his face even harder. He still
clutched the ribbon. The last part of that famous roll-call was conducted
so quietly that a stranger entering the House would have suspected
nothing unusual. It was finished in absolute silence.

"One hundred and twelve gentlemen have voted in the affirmative,
forty-eight in the negative, and the bill passes. The House will attend
to the title of the bill."

"An act to extend the Truro Railroad to Harwich," said the clerk, glibly.

"Such will be the title of the bill unless otherwise ordered by the
House," said Mr. Speaker Sutton. "The doorkeepers will open the doors."

Somebody moved to adjourn, the motion was carried, and thus ended what
has gone down to history as the Woodchuck Session. Pandemonium reigned.
One hundred and forty belated members fought their way in at the four
entrances, and mingled with them were lobbyists of all sorts and
conditions, residents and visitors to the capital, men and women to whom
the drama of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was as nothing to that of the Truro
Franchise Bill. It was a sight to look down upon. Fierce wrangles began
in a score of places, isolated personal remarks rose above the din, but
your New Englander rarely comes to blows; in other spots men with broad
smiles seized others by the hands and shook them violently, while Mr.
Speaker Sutton seemed in danger of suffocation by his friends. His
enemies, for the moment, could get nowhere near him. On this scene Mr.
Bijah Bixby gazed with pardonable pleasure.

"Guess there wahn't a mite of trouble about the river towns," he said, "I
had 'em in my pocket. Will, let's amble round to the theatre. We ought to
git in two acts."

William Wetherell went. There is no need to go into the psychology of the
matter. It may have been numbness; it may have been temporary insanity
caused by the excitement of the battle he had witnessed, for his brain
was in a whirl; or Mr. Bixby may have hypnotized him. As they walked
through the silent streets toward the Opera House, he listened perforce
to Mr. Bixby's comments upon some of the innumerable details which Jethro
had planned and quietly carried out while sitting, in the window of the
Throne Room. A great light dawned on William Wetherell, but too late.

Jethro's trusted lieutenants (of whom, needless to say, Mr. Bixby was
one) had been commanded to notify such of their supporters whose fidelity
and secrecy could be absolutely depended upon to attend the Woodchuck
Session; and, further to guard against surprise, this order had not gone
out until the last minute (hence Mr. Amos Cuthbert's conduct). The seats
of these members at the theatre had been filled by accommodating
townspeople and visitors. Forestalling a possible vote on the morrow to
recall and reconsider, there remained some sixty members whose loyalty
was unquestioned, but whose reputation for discretion was not of the
best. So much for the parliamentary side of the affair, which was a
revelation of generalship and organization to William Wetherell. By the
time he had grasped it they were come in view of the lights of Fosters
Opera House, and they perceived, among a sprinkling of idlers, a
conspicuous and meditative gentleman leaning against a pillar. He was
ludicrously tall and ludicrously thin, his hands were in his trousers
pockets, and the skirts of his Sunday broadcloth coat hung down behind
him awry. One long foot was crossed over the other and rested on the
point of the toe, and his head was tilted to one side. He had, on the
whole, the appearance of a rather mournful stork. Mr. Bixby approached
him gravely, seized him by the lower shoulder, and tilted him down until
it was possible to speak into his ear. The gentleman apparently did not
resent this, although he seemed in imminent danger of being upset.

"How be you, Peleg? Er--you know Will?"

"No," said the gentleman.

Mr. Bixby seized Mr. Wetherell under the elbow, and addressed himself to
the storekeeper's ear.

"Will, I want you to shake hands with Senator Peleg Hartington, of
Brampton. This is Will Wetherell, Peleg,--from Coniston--you understand."

The senator took one hand from his pocket.

"How be you?" he said. Mr. Bixby was once more pulling down on his
shoulder.

"H-haow was it here?" he demanded.

"Almighty funny," answered Senator Hartington, sadly, and waved at the
lobby. "There wahn't standin' room in the place."

"Jethro Bass Republican Club come and packed the entrance," explained Mr.
Bixby with a wink. "You understand, Will? Go on, Peleg."

"Sidewalk and street, too," continued Mr. Hartington, slowly. "First come
along Ball of Towles, hollerin' like blazes. They crumpled him all up and
lost him. Next come old man Duncan himself."

"Will kep' Duncan," Mr. Bixby interjected.

"That was wholly an accident," exclaimed Mr. Wetherell, angrily.

"Will wahn't born in the country," said Mr. Bixby.

Mr. Hartington bestowed on the storekeeper a mournful look, and
continued:--

"Never seed Duncan sweatin' before. He didn't seem to grasp why the boys
was there."

"Didn't seem to understand," put in Mr. Bixby, sympathetically.

"'For God's sake, gentlemen,' says he, 'let me in! The Truro Bill!' 'The
Truro Bill hain't in the theatre, Mr. Duncan,' says Dan Everett. Cussed
if I didn't come near laughin'. 'That's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Mr. Duncan,'
says Dan. 'You're a dam fool,' says Duncan. I didn't know he was profane.
'Make room for Mr. Duncan,' says Dan, 'he wants to see the show.' 'I'm
a-goin' to see you in jail for this, Everett,' says Duncan. They let him
push in about half a rod, and they swallowed him. He was makin' such a
noise that they had to close the doors of the theatre--so's not to
disturb the play-actors."

"You understand," said Mr. Bixby to Wetherell. Whereupon he gave another
shake to Mr. Hartington, who had relapsed into a sort of funereal
meditation.

"Well," resumed that personage, "there was some more come, hollerin'
about the Truro Bill. Not many. Guess they'll all have to git their
wimmen-folks to press their clothes to-morrow. Then Duncan wanted to git
out again, but 'twan't exactly convenient. Callated he was
suffocatin'--seemed to need air. Little mite limp when he broke loose,
Duncan was."

The Honorable Peleg stopped again, as if he were overcome by the
recollection of Mr. Duncan's plight.

"Er--er--Peleg!"

Mr. Hartington started.

"What'd they do?--what'd they do?"

"Do?"

"How'd they git notice to 'em?"

"Oh," said Mr. Hartington, "cussed if that wuhn't funny. Let's see, where
was I? After awhile they went over t'other side of the street, talkin'
sly, waitin' for the act to end. But goldarned if it ever did end."

For once Mr. Bixby didn't seem to understand.

"D-didn't end?"

"No," explained Mr. Hartington; "seems they hitched a kind of nigger
minstrel show right on to it--banjos and thingumajigs in front of the
curtain while they was changin' scenes, and they hitched the second act
right on to that. Nobody come out of the theatre at all. Funny notion,
wahn't it?"

Mr. Bixby's face took on a look of extreme cunning. He smiled broadly and
poked Mr. Wetherell in an extremely sensitive portion of his ribs. On
such occasions the nasal quality of Bijah's voice seemed to grow.

"You see?" he said.

"Know that little man, Gibbs, don't ye?" inquired Mr. Hartington.

"Airley Gibbs, hain't it? Runs a livery business daown to Rutgers, on
Lovejoy's railroad," replied Mr. Bixby, promptly. "I know him. Knew old
man Gibbs well's I do you. Mean cuss."

"This Airley's smart--wahn't quite smart enough, though. His bright idea
come a little mite late. Hunted up old Christy, got the key to his law
office right here in the Duncan Block, went up through the skylight,
clumb down to the roof of Randall's store next door, shinned up the
lightnin' rod on t'other side, and stuck his head plump into the Opery
House window."

"I want to know!" ejaculated Mr. Bixby.

"Somethin' terrible pathetic was goin' on on the stage," resumed Mr.
Hartington, "the folks didn't see him at first,--they was all cryin' and
everythin' was still, but Airley wahn't affected. As quick as he got his
breath he hollered right out loud's he could: 'The Truro Bill's up in the
House, boys. We're skun if you don't git thar quick.' Then they tell me'
the lightnin' rod give way; anyhow, he came down on Randall's gravel roof
considerable hard, I take it."

Mr. Hartington, apparently, had an aggravating way of falling into
mournful revery and of forgetting his subject. Mr. Bixby was forced to
jog him again.

"Yes, they did," he said, "they did. They come out like the theatre was
afire. There was some delay in gettin' to the street, but not much--not
much. All the Republican Clubs in the state couldn't have held 'em then,
and the profanity they used wahn't especially edifyin'."

"Peleg's a deacon--you understand," said Mr. Bixby. "Say, Peleg, where
was Al Lovejoy?"

"Lovejoy come along with the first of 'em. Must have hurried some--they
tell me he was settin' way down in front alongside of Alvy Hopkins's gal,
and when Airley hollered out she screeched and clutched on to Al, and Al
said somethin' he hadn't ought to and tore off one of them pink gew-gaws
she was covered with. He was the maddest man I ever see. Some of the club
was crowded inside, behind the seats, standin' up to see the show. Al was
so anxious to git through he hit Si Dudley in the mouth--injured him
some, I guess. Pity, wahn't it?"

"Si hain't in politics, you understand," said Mr. Bixby. "Callate Si paid
to git in there, didn't he, Peleg?"

"Callate he did," assented Senator Hartington.

A long and painful pause followed. There seemed, indeed, nothing more to
be said. The sound of applause floated out of the Opera House doors,
around which the remaining loiterers were clustered.

"Goin' in, be you, Peleg?" inquired Mr. Bixby.

Mr. Hartington shook his head.

"Will and me had a notion to see somethin' of the show," said Mr. Bixby,
almost apologetically. "I kep' my ticket."

"Well," said Mr. Hartington, reflectively, "I guess you'll find some of
the show left. That hain't b'en hurt much, so far as I can ascertain."

The next afternoon, when Mr. Isaac D. Worthington happened to be sitting
alone in the office of the Truro Railroad at the capital, there came a
knock at the door, and Mr. Bijah Bixby entered. Now, incredible as it may
seem, Mr. Worthington did not know Mr. Bixby--or rather, did not remember
him. Mr. Worthington had not had at that time much of an experience in
politics, and he did not possess a very good memory for faces.

Mr. Bixby, who had, as we know, a confidential and winning manner, seated
himself in a chair very close to Mr. Worthington--somewhat to that
gentleman's alarm. "How be you?" said Bijah, "I-I've got a little bill
here--you understand."

Mr. Worthington didn't understand, and he drew his chair away from Mr.
Bixby's.

"I don't know anything about it, sir," answered the president of the
Truro Railroad, indignantly; "this is neither the manner nor the place to
present a bill. I don't want to see it."

Mr. Bixby moved his chair up again. "Callate you will want to see this
bill, Mr. Worthington," he insisted, not at all abashed. "Jethro Bass
sent it--you understand--it's engrossed."

Whereupon Mr. Bixby drew from his capacious pocket a roll, tied with
white ribbon, and pressed it into Mr. Worthington's hands. It was the
Truro Franchise Bill.

It is safe to say that Mr. Worthington understood.




CHAPTER XVI

There are certain instruments used by scientists so delicate that they
have to be wrapped in cotton wool and kept in ductless places, and so
sensitive that the slightest shock will derange them. And there are
certain souls which cannot stand the jars of life--souls created to
register thoughts and sentiments too fine for those of coarser
construction. Such was the soul of the storekeeper of Coniston. Whether
or not he was one of those immortalized in the famous Elegy, it is not
for us to say. A celebrated poet who read the letters to the Guardian--at
Miss Lucretia Penniman's request--has declared Mr. Wetherell to have been
a genius. He wrote those letters, as we know, after he had piled his
boxes and rolled his barrels into place; after he had added up the
columns in his ledger and recorded, each week, the small but ever
increasing deficit which he owed to Jethro Bass. Could he have been
removed from the barrels and the ledgers, and the debts and the cares and
the implications, what might we have had from his pen? That will never be
known.

We left him in the lobby of the Opera House, but he did not go in to see
the final act of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." He made his way, alone, back to the
hotel, slipped in by a side entrance, and went directly to his room,
where Cynthia found him, half an hour later, seated by the open window in
the dark.

"Aren't you well, Dad?" she asked anxiously. "Why didn't you come to see
the play?"

"I--I was detained Cynthia," he said. "Yes--I am well."

She sat down beside him and felt his forehead and his hands, and the
events of the evening which were on her lips to tell him remained
unspoken.

"You ought not to have left Coniston," she said; "the excitement is too
much for you. We will go back tomorrow."

"Yes, Cynthia, we will go back to-morrow."

"In the morning?"

"On the early train," said Wetherell, "and now you must go to sleep."

"I am glad," said Cynthia, as she kissed him good night. "I have enjoyed
it here, and I am grateful to Uncle Jethro for bringing us, but--but I
like Coniston best."

William Wetherell could have slept but a few hours. When he awoke the
sparrows were twittering outside, the fresh cool smells of the morning
were coming in at his windows, and the sunlight was just striking across
the roofs through the green trees of the Capitol Park. The remembrance of
a certain incident of the night before crept into his mind, and he got
up, and drew on his clothes and thrust his few belongings into the
carpet-bag, and knocked on Cynthia's door. She was already dressed, and
her eyes rested searchingly on his face.

"Dad, you aren't well. I know it," she said.

But he denied that he was not.

Her belongings were in a neat little bundle under her arm. But when she
went to put them in the bag she gave an exclamation, knelt down, took
everything out that he had packed, and folded each article over again
with amazing quickness. Then she made a rapid survey of the room lest she
had forgotten anything, closed the bag, and they went out and along the
corridor. But when Wetherell turned to go down the stairs, she stopped
him.

"Aren't you going to say goodby to Uncle Jethro?"

"I--I would rather go on and get in the train, Cynthia," he said. "Jethro
will understand."

Cynthia was worried, but she did not care to leave him; and she led him,
protesting, into the dining room. He had a sinking fear that they might
meet Jethro there, but only a few big-boned countrymen were scattered
about, attended by sleepy waitresses. Lest Cynthia might suspect how his
head was throbbing, Wetherell tried bravely to eat his breakfast. He did
not know that she had gone out, while they were waiting, and written a
note to Jethro, explaining that her father was ill, and that they were
going back to Coniston. After breakfast, when they went to the desk, the
clerk stared at them in astonishment.

"Going, Mr. Wetherell?" he exclaimed.

"I find that I have to get back," stammered the storekeeper. "Will you
tell me the amount of my bill?"

"Judge Bass gave me instructions that he would settle that."

"It is very kind of Mr. Bass," said Wetherell, "but I prefer to pay it
myself."

The man hesitated.

"The judge will be very angry, Mr. Wetherell."

"Kindly give me the bill."

The clerk made it out and handed it over in silence. Wetherell had in his
pocket the money from several contributions to the Guardian, and he paid
him. Then they set out for the station, bought their tickets and hurried
past the sprinkling of people there. The little train for Truro was
standing under the sheds, the hissing steam from the locomotive rising
perpendicular in the still air of the morning, and soon they were settled
in one of the straight-backed seats. The car was almost empty, for few
people were going up that day, and at length, after what, seemed an
eternity of waiting, they started, and soon were in the country once more
in that wonderful Truro valley with its fruit trees and its clover
scents; with its sparkling stream that tumbled through the passes and
mirrored between green meadow-banks the blue and white of the sky. How
hungrily they drank in the freshness of it.

They reached Truro village at eleven. Outside the little tavern there,
after dinner, the green stage was drawn up; and Tom the driver cracked
his long whip over the Morgan leaders and they started, swaying in the
sand ruts and jolting over the great stones that cropped out of the road.
Up they climbed, through narrow ways in the forest--ways hedged with
alder and fern and sumach and wild grape, adorned with oxeye daisies and
tiger lilies, and the big purple flowers which they knew and loved so
well. They passed, too, wild lakes overhung with primeval trees, where
the iris and the waterlily grew among the fallen trunks and the
water-fowl called to each other across the blue stretches. And at length,
when the sun was beginning visibly to fall, they came out into an open
cut on the western side and saw again the long line of Coniston once more
against the sky.

"Dad," said Cynthia, as she gazed, "don't you love it better than any
other place in the world?"

He did. But he could not answer her.

An hour later, from the hilltops above Isaac Worthington's mills, they
saw the terraced steeple of Brampton church, and soon the horses were
standing with drooping heads and wet sides in front of Mr. Sherman's
tavern in Brampton Street; and Lem Hallowell, his honest face aglow with
joy, was lifting Cynthia out of the coach as if she were a bundle of
feathers.

"Upon my word," he cried, "this is a little might sudden! What's the
matter with the capital, Will? Too wicked and sophisticated down thar to
suit ye?" By this time, Wetherell, too, had reached the ground, and as
Lem Hallowell gazed into his face the laughter in his own died away and
gave place to a look of concern. "Don't wonder ye come back," he said,
"you're as white as Moses's hoss."

"He isn't feeling very well, Lem;" said Cynthia.

"Jest tuckered, that's all," answered Lem; "you git him right into the
stage, Cynthy, I won't be long. Hurry them things off, Tom," he called,
and himself seized a huge crate from the back of the coach and flung it
on his shoulder. He had his cargo on in a jiffy, clucked to his horses,
and they turned into the familiar road to Coniston just as the sun was
dipping behind the south end of the mountain.

"They'll be surprised some, and disappointed some," said Lem, cheerily;
"they was kind of plannin' a little celebration when you come back,
Will--you and Cynthy. Amandy Hatch was a-goin' to bake a cake, and the
minister was callatin' to say some word of welcome. Wahn't goin' to be
anything grand--jest homelike. But you was right to come if you was
tuckered. I guess Cynthy fetched you. Rias he kep' store and done it
well,--brisker'n I ever see him, Rias was. Wait till I put some of them
things back, and make you more comfortable, Will."

He moved a few parcels and packages from Wetherell's feet and glanced at
Cynthia as he did so. The mountain cast its vast blue shadow over forest
and pasture, and above the pines the white mist was rising from Coniston
Water--rising in strange shapes. Lem's voice seemed to William Wetherell
to have given way to a world-wide silence, in the midst of which he
sought vainly for Cynthia and the stage driver. Most extraordinary of
all, out of the silence and the void came the checker-paned windows of
the store at Coniston, then the store itself, with the great oaks bending
over it, then the dear familiar faces,--Moses and Amandy, Eph Prescott
limping toward them, and little Rias Richardson in an apron with a scoop
shovel in his hand, and many others. They were not smiling at the
storekeeper's return--they looked very grave. Then somebody lifted him
tenderly from the stage and said:--

"Don't you worry a mite, Cynthy. Jest tuckered, that's all."

William Wetherell was "just tuckered." The great Dr. Coles, authority on
pulmonary troubles, who came all the way from Boston, could give no
better verdict than that. It was Jethro Bass who had induced Dr. Coles to
come to Coniston--much against the great man's inclination, and to the
detriment of his patients: Jethro who, on receiving Cynthia's note, had
left the capital on the next train and had come to Coniston, and had at
once gone to Boston for the specialist.

"I do not know why I came," said the famous physician to Dr. Abraham
Rowell of Tarleton, "I never shall know. There is something about that
man Jethro Bass which compels you to do his will. He has a most
extraordinary personality. Is this storekeeper a great friend of his?"

"The only intimate friend he had in the world," answered Dr. Rowell;
"none of us could ever understand it. And as for the girl, Jethro Bass
worships her."

"If nursing could cure him, I'd trust her to do it. She's a natural-born
nurse."

The two physicians were talking in low tones in the little garden behind
the store when Jethro came out of the doorway.

"He looks as if he were suffering too," said the Boston physician, and he
walked toward Jethro and laid a hand upon his shoulders. "I give him
until winter, my friend," said Dr. Coles.

Jethro Bass sat down on the doorstep--on that same millstone where he had
talked with Cynthia many years before--and was silent for a long while.
The doctor was used to scenes of sorrow, but the sight of this man's
suffering unnerved him, and he turned from it.

"D-doctor?" said Jethro, at last.

The doctor turned again: "Yes?" he said.

"D-doctor--if Wetherell hadn't b'en to the capital would he have
lived--if he hadn't been to the capital?"

"My friend," said Dr. Coles, "if Mr. Wetherell had always lived in a warm
house, and had always been well fed, and helped over the rough places and
shielded from the storms, he might have lived longer. It is a marvel to
me that he has lived so long."

And then the doctor went way, back to Boston. Many times in his long
professional life had the veil been lifted for him--a little. But as he
sat in the train he said to himself that in this visit to the hamlet of
Coniston he had had the strangest glimpse of all. William Wetherell
rallied, as Dr. Coles had predicted, from that first sharp attack, and
one morning they brought up a reclining chair which belonged to Mr.
Satterlee, the minister, and set it in the window. There, in the still
days of the early autumn, Wetherell looked down upon the garden he had
grown to love, and listened to the song of Coniston Water. There Cynthia,
who had scarcely left his side, read to him from Keats and Shelley and
Tennyson--yet the thought grew on her that he did not seem to hear. Even
that wonderful passage of Milton's, beginning "So sinks the day-star in
the ocean bed," which he always used to beg her to repeat, did not seem
to move him now.

The neighbors came and sat with him, but he would not often speak. Cheery
Lem Hallowell and his wife, and Cousin Ephraim, to talk about the war,
hobbling slowly up the stairs--for rheumatism had been added to that
trouble of the Wilderness bullet now, and Ephraim was getting along in
years; and Rias Richardson stole up in his carpet slippers; and Moses,
after his chores were done, and Amandy with her cakes and delicacies,
which he left untouched--though Amandy never knew it. Yes, and Jethro
came. Day by day he would come silently into the room, and sit silently
for a space, and go as silently out of it. The farms were neglected now
on Thousand Acre Hill. William Wetherell would take his hand, and speak
to him, but do no more than that.

There were times when Cynthia leaned over him, listening as he breathed
to know whether he slept or were awake. If he were not sleeping, he would
speak her name: he repeated it often in those days, as though the sound
of it gave him comfort; and he would fall asleep with it on his lips,
holding her hand, and thinking, perhaps, of that other Cynthia who had
tended and nursed and shielded him in other days. Then she would steal
down the stairs to Jethro on the doorstep: to Jethro who would sit there
for hours at a time, to the wonder and awe of his neighbors. Although
they knew that he loved the storekeeper as he loved no other man, his was
a grief that they could not understand.

Cynthia used to go to Jethro in the garden. Sorrow had brought them very
near together; and though she had loved him before, now he had become her
reliance and her refuge. The first time Cynthia saw him; when the worst
of the illness had passed and the strange and terrifying apathy had come,
she had hidden her head on his shoulder and wept there. Jethro kept that
coat, with the tear stains on it, to his dying day, and never wore it
again.

"Sometimes--sometimes I think if he hadn't gone to the capital, Cynthy,
this mightn't hev come," he said to her once.

"But the doctor said that didn't matter, Uncle Jethro," she answered,
trying to comfort him. She, too, believed that something had happened at
the capital.

"N-never spoke to you about anything there--n-never spoke to you,
Cynthia?"

"No, never," she said. "He--he hardly speaks at all, Uncle Jethro."

One bright morning after the sun had driven away the frost, when the
sumacs and maples beside Coniston Water were aflame with red, Bias
Richardson came stealing up the stairs and whispered something to
Cynthia.

"Dad," she said, laying down her book, "it's Mr. Merrill. Will you see
him?"

William Wetherell gave her a great fright. He started up from his
pillows, and seized her wrist with a strength which she had not thought
remained in his fingers.

"Mr. Merrill!" he cried--"Mr. Merrill here!"

"Yes," answered Cynthia, agitatedly, "he's downstairs--in the store."

"Ask him to come up," said Wetherell, sinking back again, "ask him to
come up."

Cynthia, as she stood in the passage, was of two minds about it. She was
thoroughly frightened, and went first to the garden to ask Jethro's
advice. But Jethro, so Milly Skinner said, had gone off half an hour
before, and did not know that Mr. Merrill had arrived. Cynthia went back
again to her father.

"Where's Mr. Merrill?" asked Wetherell.

"Dad, do you think you ought to see him? He--he might excite you."

"I insist upon seeing him, Cynthia."

William Wetherell had never said anything like that before. But Cynthia
obeyed him, and presently led Mr. Merrill into the room. The kindly
little railroad president was very serious now. The wasted face of the
storekeeper, enhanced as it was by the beard, gave Mr. Merrill such a
shock that he could not speak for a few moments--he who rarely lacked for
cheering words on any occasion. A lump rose in his throat as he went over
and stood by the chair and took the sick man's hand.

"I am glad you came, Mr. Merrill," said Wetherell, simply, "I wanted to
speak to you. Cynthia, will you leave us alone for a few minutes?"

Cynthia went, troubled and perplexed, wondering at the change in him. He
had had something on his mind--now she was sure of it--something which
Mr. Merrill might be able to relieve.

It was Mr. Merrill who spoke first when she was gone.

"I was coming up to Brampton," he said, "and Tom Collins, who drives the
Truro coach, told me you were sick. I had not heard of it."

Mr. Merrill, too, had something on his mind, and did not quite know how
to go on. There was in William Wetherell, as he sat in the chair with his
eyes fixed on his visitor's face, a dignity which Mr. Merrill had not
seen before--had not thought the man might possess.

"I was coming to see you, anyway," Mr. Merrill said.

"I did you a wrong--though as God judges me, I did not think of it at the
time. It was not until Alexander Duncan spoke to me last week that I
thought of it at all."

"Yes," said Wetherell.

"You see," continued Mr. Merrill wiping his brow, for he found the matter
even more difficult than he had imagined, "it was not until Duncan told
me how you had acted in his library that I guessed the truth--that I
remembered myself how you had acted. I knew that you were not mixed up in
politics, but I also knew that you were an intimate friend of Jethro's,
and I thought that you had been let into the secret of the woodchuck
session. I don't defend the game of politics as it is played, Mr.
Wetherell, but all of us who are friends of Jethro's are generally
willing to lend a hand in any little manoeuvre that is going on, and have
a practical joke when we can. It was not until I saw you sitting there
beside Duncan that the idea occurred to me. It didn't make a great deal
of difference whether Duncan or Lovejoy got to the House or not, provided
they didn't learn of the matter too early, because some of their men had
been bought off that day. It suited Jethro's sense of humor to play the
game that way--and it was very effective. When I saw you there beside
Duncan I remembered that he had spoken about the Guardian letters, and
the notion occurred to me to get him to show you his library. I have
explained to him that you were innocent. I--I hope you haven't been
worrying."

William Wetherell sat very still for a while, gazing out of the window,
but a new look had come into his eyes.

"Jethro Bass did not know that you--that you had used me?" he asked at
length.

"No," replied Mr. Merrill thickly, "no. He didn't know a thing about
it--he doesn't know it now, I believe."

A smile came upon Wetherell's face, but Mr. Merrill could not look at it.

"You have made me very happy," said the storekeeper, tremulously. "I--I
have no right to be proud--I have taken his money--he has supported my
daughter and myself all these years. But he had never asked me to--to do
anything, and I liked to think that he never would."

Mr. Merrill could not speak. The tears were streaming down his cheeks.

"I want you to promise me, Mr. Merril!" he went on presently, "I want you
to promise me that you will never speak to Jethro, of this, or to my
daughter, Cynthia."

Mr. Merrill merely nodded his head in assent. Still he could not speak.

"They might think it was this that caused my death. It was not. I know
very well that I am worn out, and that I should have gone soon in any
case. And I must leave Cynthia to him. He loves her as his own child."

William Wetherell, his faith in Jethro restored, was facing death as he
had never faced life. Mr. Merrill was greatly affected.

"You must not speak of dying, Wetherell," said he, brokenly. "Will you
forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive, now that you have explained matters, Mr.
Merrill" said the storekeeper, and he smiled again. "If my fibre had been
a little tougher, this thing would never have happened. There is only one
more request I have to make. And that is, to assure Mr. Duncan, from me,
that I did not detain him purposely."

"I will see him on my way to Boston," answered Mr. Merrill.

Then Cynthia was called. She was waiting anxiously in the passage for the
interview to be ended, and when she came in one glance at her father's
face told her that he was happier. She, too, was happier.

"I wish you would come every day, Mr. Merrill" she said, when they
descended into the garden after the three had talked awhile. "It is the
first time since he fell ill that he seems himself."

Mr. Merrill's answer was to take her hand and pat it. He sat down on the
millstone and drew a deep breath of that sparkling air and sighed, for
his memory ran back to his own innocent boyhood in the New England
country. He talked to Cynthia until Jethro came.

"I have taken a fancy to this girl, Jethro," said the little railroad
president, "I believe I'll steal her; a fellow can't have too many of
'em, you know. I'll tell you one thing,--you won't keep her always shut
up here in Coniston. She's much too good to waste on the desert air."
Perhaps Mr. Merrill, too, had been thinking of the Elegy that morning. "I
don't mean to run down Coniston it's one of the most beautiful places I
ever saw. But seriously, Jethro, you and Wetherell ought to send her to
school in Boston after a while. She's about the age of my girls, and she
can live in my house: Ain't I right?"

"D-don't know but what you be, Steve," Jethro answered slowly.

"I am right," declared Mr. Merrill "you'll back me in this, I know it.
Why, she's like your own daughter. You remember what I say. I mean
it.--What are you thinking about, Cynthia?"

"I couldn't leave Dad and Uncle Jethro," she said.

"Why, bless your soul," said Mr. Merrill "bring Dad along. We'll find
room for him. And I guess Uncle Jethro will get to Boston twice a month
if you're there."

And Mr. Merrill got into the buggy with Mr. Sherman and drove away to
Brampton, thinking of many things.

"S-Steve's a good man," said Jethro. "C-come up here from Brampton to see
your father--did he?"

"Yes," answered Cynthia, "he is very kind." She was about to tell Jethro
what a strange difference this visit had made in her father's spirits,
but some instinct kept her silent. She knew that Jethro had never ceased
to reproach himself for inviting Wetherell to the capital, and she was
sure that something had happened there which had disturbed her father and
brought on that fearful apathy. But the apathy was dispelled now, and she
shrank from giving Jethro pain by mentioning the fact.

He never knew, indeed, until many years afterward, what had brought
Stephen Merrill to Coniston. When Jethro went up the stairs that
afternoon, he found William Wetherell alone, looking out over the garden
with a new peace and contentment in his eyes. Jethro drew breath when he
saw that look, as if a great load had been lifted from his heart.

"F-feelin' some better to-day, Will?" he said.

"I am well again, Jethro," replied the storekeeper, pressing Jethro's
hand for the first time in months.

"S-soon be, Will," said Jethro, "s-soon be."

Wetherell, who was not speaking of the welfare of the body, did not
answer.

"Jethro," he said presently, "there is a little box lying in the top of
my trunk over there in the corner. Will you get it for me."

Jethro rose and opened the rawhide trunk and handed the little rosewood
box to his friend. Wetherell took it and lifted the lid reverently, with
that same smile on his face and far-off look in his eyes, and drew out a
small daguerreotype in a faded velvet frame. He gazed at the picture a
long time, and then he held it out to Jethro; and Jethro looked at it,
and his hand trembled.

It was a picture of Cynthia Ware. And who can say what emotions it awoke
in Jethro's heart? She was older than the Cynthia he had known, and yet
she did not seem so. There was the same sweet, virginal look in the gray
eyes, and the same exquisite purity in the features. He saw her again--as
if it were yesterday--walking in the golden green light under the village
maples, and himself standing in the tannery door; he saw the face under
the poke bonnet on the road to Brampton, and heard the thrush singing in
the woods. And--if he could only blot out that scene from his
life!--remembered her, a transformed Cynthia,--remembered that face in
the lantern-light when he had flung back the hood that shaded it; and
that hair which he had kissed, wet, then, from the sleet. Ah, God, for
that briefest of moments she had been his!

So he stared at the picture as it lay in the palm of his hand, and forgot
him who had been her husband. But at length he started, as from a dream,
and gave it back to Wetherell, who was watching him. Her name had never
been mentioned between the two men, and yet she had been the one woman in
the world to both.

"It is strange," said William Wetherell, "it is strange that I should
have had but two friends in my life, and that she should have been one
and you the other. She found me destitute and brought me back to life and
married me, and cared for me until she died. And after that--you cared
for me."

"You--you mustn't think of that, Will, 'twahn't much what I did--no more
than any one else would hev done!"

"It was everything," answered the storekeeper, simply; "each of you came
between me and destruction. There is something that I have always meant
to tell you, Jethro,--something that it may be a comfort for you to know.
Cynthia loved you."

Jethro Bass did not answer. He got up and stood in the window, looking
out.

"When she married me," Wetherell continued steadily, "she told me that
there was one whom she had never been able to drive from her heart. And
one summer evening, how well I recall it!--we were walking under the
trees on the Mall and we met my old employer, Mr. Judson, the jeweller.
He put me in mind of the young countryman who had come in to buy a
locket, and I asked her if she knew you. Strange that I should have
remembered your name, wasn't it? It was then that she led me to a bench
and confessed that you were the man whom she could not forget. I used to
hate you then--as much as was in me to hate. I hated and feared you when
I first came to Coniston. But now I can tell you--I can even be happy in
telling you."

Jethro Bass groaned. He put his hand to his throat as though he were
stifling. Many, many years ago he had worn the locket there. And now? Now
an impulse seized him, and he yielded to it. He thrust his hand in his
coat and drew out a cowhide wallet, and from the wallet the oval locket
itself. There it was, tarnished with age, but with that memorable
inscription still legible,--"Cynthy, from Jethro"; not Cynthia, but
Cynthy. How the years fell away as he read it! He handed it in silence to
the storekeeper, and in silence went to the window again. Jethro Bass was
a man who could find no outlet for his agony in speech or tears.

"Yes," said Wetherell, "I thought you would have kept it. Dear, dear, how
well I remember it! And I remember how I patronized you when you came
into the shop. I believed I should live to be something in the world,
then. Yes, she loved you, Jethro. I can die more easily now that I have
told you--it has been on my mind all these years."

The locket fell open in William Wetherell's hand, for the clasp had
become worn with time, and there was a picture of little Cynthia within:
of little Cynthia,--not so little now,--a photograph taken in Brampton
the year before. Wetherell laid it beside the daguerreotype.

"She looks like her," he said aloud; "but the child is more vigorous,
more human--less like a spirit. I have always thought of Cynthia Ware as
a spirit."

Jethro turned at the words, and came and stood looking over Wetherell's
shoulder at the pictures of mother and daughter. In the rosewood box was
a brooch and a gold ring--Cynthia Ware's wedding ring--and two small
slips of yellow paper. William Wetherell opened one of these, disclosing
a little braid of brown hair. He folded the paper again and laid it in
the locket, and handed that to Jethro.

"It is all I have to give you," he said, "but I know that you will
cherish it, and cherish her, when I am gone. She--she has been a daughter
to both of us."

"Yes," said Jethro, "I will."

William Wetherell lived but a few days longer. They laid him to rest at
last in the little ground which Captain Timothy Prescott had hewn out of
the forest with his axe, where Captain Timothy himself lies under his
slate headstone with the quaint lettering of bygone days.--That same
autumn Jethro Bass made a pilgrimage to Boston, and now Cynthia Ware
sleeps there, too, beside her husband, amid the scenes she loved so well.






CONISTON


BOOK III



CHAPTER I

One day, in the November following William Wetherell's death, Jethro Bass
astonished Coniston by moving to the little cottage in the village which
stood beside the disused tannery, and which had been his father's. It was
known as the tannery house. His reasons for this step, when at length
discovered, were generally commended: they were, in fact, a
disinclination to leave a girl of Cynthia's tender age alone on Thousand
Acre Hill while he journeyed on his affairs about the country. The Rev.
Mr. Satterlee, gaunt, red-faced, but the six feet of him a man and a
Christian, from his square-toed boots to the bleaching yellow hair around
his temples, offered to become her teacher. For by this time Cynthia had
exhausted the resources of the little school among the birches.

The four years of her life in the tannery house which are now briefly to
be chronicled were, for her, full of happiness and peace. Though the
young may sorrow, they do not often mourn. Cynthia missed her father; at
times, when the winds kept her wakeful at night, she wept for him. But
she loved Jethro Bass and served him with a devotion that filled his
heart with strange ecstasies--yes, and forebodings. In all his existence
he had never known a love like this. He may have imagined it once, back
in the bright days of his youth; but the dreams of its fulfilment had
fallen far short of the exquisite touch of the reality in which he now
spent his days at home. In summer, when she sat, in the face of all the
conventions of the village, reading under the butternut tree before the
house, she would feel his eyes upon her, and the mysterious yearning in
them would startle her. Often during her lessons with Mr. Satterlee in
the parlor of the parsonage she would hear a noise outside and perceive
Jethro leaning against the pillar. Both Cynthia and Mr. Satterlee knew
that he was there, and both, by a kind of tacit agreement, ignored the
circumstance.

Cynthia, in this period, undertook Jethro's education, too. She could
have induced him to study the making of Latin verse by the mere asking.
During those days which he spent at home, and which he had grown to value
beyond price, he might have been seen seated on the ground with his back
to the butternut tree while Cynthia read aloud from the well-worn books
which had been her father's treasures, books that took on marvels of
meaning from her lips. Cynthia's powers of selection were not remarkable
at this period, and perhaps it was as well that she never knew the effect
of the various works upon the hitherto untamed soul of her listener.
Milton and Tennyson and Longfellow awoke in him by their very music
troubled and half-formed regrets; Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" set up
tumultuous imaginings; but the "Life of Jackson" (as did the story of
Napoleon long ago) stirred all that was masterful in his blood.
Unlettered as he was, Jethro had a power which often marks the American
of action--a singular grasp of the application of any sentence or
paragraph to his own life; and often, about this time, he took away the
breath of a judge or a senator by flinging at them a chunk of Carlyle or
Parton.

It was perhaps as well that Cynthia was not a woman at this time, and
that she had grown up with him, as it were. His love, indeed, was that of
a father for a daughter; but it held within it as a core the revived love
of his youth for Cynthia, her mother. Tender as were the manifestations
of this love, Cynthia never guessed the fires within, for there was in
truth something primeval in the fierceness of his passion. She was his
now--his alone, to cherish and sweeten the declining years of his life,
and when by a chance Jethro looked upon her and thought of the suitor who
was to come in the fulness of her years, he burned with a hatred which it
is given few men to feel. It was well for Jethro that these thoughts came
not often.

Sometimes, in the summer afternoons, they took long drives through the
town behind Jethro's white horse on business. "Jethro's gal," as Cynthia
came to be affectionately called, held the reins while Jethro went in to
talk to the men folk. One August evening found Cynthia thus beside a
poplar in front of Amos Cuthbert's farmhouse, a poplar that shimmered
green-gold in the late afternoon, and from the buggy-seat Cynthia looked
down upon a thousand purple hilltops and mountain peaks of another state.
The view aroused in the girl visions of the many wonders which life was
to hold, and she did not hear the sharp voice beside her until the woman
had spoken twice. Jethro came out in the middle of the conversation,
nodded to Mrs. Cuthbert, and drove off.

"Uncle Jethro," asked Cynthia, presently, "what is a mortgage?"

Jethro struck the horse with the whip, an uncommon action with him, and
the buggy was jerked forward sharply over the boulders.

"Er--who's b'en talkin' about mortgages, Cynthy?" he demanded.

"Mrs. Cuthbert said that when folks had mortgage held over them they had
to take orders whether they liked them or not. She said that Amos had to
do what you told him because there was a mortgage. That isn't so is it?"

Jethro did not speak. Presently Cynthia laid her hand over his.

"Mrs. Cuthbert is a spiteful woman," she said. "I know the reason why
people obey you--it's because you're so great. And Daddy used to tell me
so."

A tremor shook Jethro's frame and the hand on which hers rested, and all
the way down the mountain valleys to Coniston village he did not speak
again. But Cynthia was used to his silences, and respected them.

To Ephraim Prescott, who, as the days went on, found it more and more
difficult to sew harness on account of his rheumatism, Jethro was not
only a great man but a hero. For Cynthia was vaguely troubled at having
found one discontent. She was wont to entertain Ephraim on the days when
his hands failed him, when he sat sunning himself before his door; and
she knew that he was honest.

"Who's b'en talkin' to you, Cynthia?" he cried. "Why, Jethro's the
biggest man I know, and the best. I don't like to think where some of us
would have b'en if he hadn't given us a lift."

"But he has enemies, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, still troubled. "What
great man hain't?" exclaimed the soldier. "Jethro's enemies hain't worth
thinkin' about."

The thought that Jethro had enemies was very painful to Cynthia, and she
wanted to know who they were that she might show them a proper contempt
if she met them. Lem Hallowell brushed aside the subject with his usual
bluff humor, and pinched her cheek and told her not to trouble her head;
Amanda Hatch dwelt upon the inherent weakness in the human race, and the
Rev. Mr. Satterlee faced the question once, during a history lesson. The
nation's heroes came into inevitable comparison with Jethro Bass. Was
Washington so good a man? and would not Jethro have been as great as the
Father of his Country if he had had the opportunities?

The answers sorely tried Mr. Satterlee's conscience, albeit he was not a
man of the world. It set him thinking. He liked Jethro, this man of
rugged power whose word had become law in the state. He knew best that
side of him which Cynthia saw; and--if the truth be told--as a native of
Coniston Mr. Satterlee felt in the bottom of his heart a certain pride in
Jethro. The minister's opinions well represented the attitude of his
time. He had not given thought to the subject--for such matters had came
to be taken for granted. A politician now was a politician, his ways and
standards set apart from those of other citizens, and not to be judged by
men without the pale of public life. Mr. Satterlee in his limited vision
did not then trace the matter to its source, did not reflect that Jethro
Bass himself was almost wholly responsible in that state for the
condition of politics and politicians. Coniston was proud of Jethro,
prouder of him than ever since his last great victory in the Legislature,
which brought the Truro Railroad through to Harwich and settled their
townsman more firmly than ever before in the seat of power. Every
statesman who drove into their little mountain village and stopped at the
tannery house made their blood beat faster. Senators came, and
representatives, and judges, and governors, "to git their orders," as
Rias Richardson briefly put it, and Jethro could make or unmake them at a
word. Each was scanned from the store where Rias now reigned supreme, and
from the harness shop across the road. Some drove away striving to bite
from their lips the tell-tale smile which arose in spite of them; others
tried to look happy, despite the sentence of doom to which they had
listened.

Jethro Bass was indeed a great man to make such as these tremble or
rejoice. When he went abroad with Cynthia awheel or afoot, some took off
their hats--an unheard-of thing in Coniston. If he stopped at the store,
they scanned his face for the mood he was in before venturing their
remarks; if he lingered for a moment in front of the house of Amanda
Hatch, the whole village was advised of the circumstance before
nightfall.

Two personages worthy of mention here visited the tannery house during
the years that Cynthia lived with Jethro. The Honorable Heth Sutton drove
over from Clovelly attended by his prime minister, Mr. Bijah Bixby. The
Honorable Heth did not attempt to conceal the smile with which he went
away, and he stopped at the store long enough to enable Rias to produce
certain refreshments from depths unknown to the United States Internal
Revenue authorities. Mr. Sutton shook hands with everybody, including
Jake Wheeler. Well he might. He came to Coniston a private citizen, and
drove away to all intents and purposes a congressman: the darling wish of
his life realized after heaven knows how many caucuses and conventions of
disappointment, when Jethro had judged it expedient for one reason or
another that a north countryman should go. By the time the pair reached
Brampton, Chamberlain Bixby was introducing his chief as Congressman
Sutton, and by this title he was known for many years to come.

Another day, when the snow lay in great billows on the ground and filled
the mountain valleys, when the pines were rusty from the long winter, two
other visitors drove to Coniston in a two-horse sleigh. The sun was
shining brightly, the wind held its breath, and the noon-day warmth was
almost like that of spring. Those who know the mountain country will
remember the joy of many such days. Cynthia, standing in the sun on the
porch, breathing deep of the pure air, recognized, as the sleigh drew
near, the somewhat portly gentleman driving, and the young woman beside
him regally clad in furs who looked patronizingly at the tannery house as
she took the reins. The young woman was Miss Cassandra Hopkins, and the
portly gentleman, the Honorable Alva himself, patron of the drama, who
had entered upon his governorship and now wished to be senator.

"Jethro Bass home?" he called out.

"Mr. Bass is home," answered Cynthia. The girl in the sleigh murmured
something, laughing a little, and Cynthia flushed. Mr. Hopkins gave a
somewhat peremptory knock at the door and was admitted by Millicent
Skinner, but Cynthia stood staring at Cassandra in the sleigh, some
instinct warning her of a coming skirmish.

"Do you live here all the year round?"

"Of course," said Cynthia.

Miss Cassandra shrugged as though that were beyond her comprehension.

"I'd die in a place like this," she said. "No balls, or theatres. Doesn't
your father take you around the state?"

"My father's dead," said Cynthia.

"Oh! Your name's Cynthia Wetherell, isn't it? You know Bob Worthington,
don't you? He's gone to Harvard now, but he was a great friend of mine at
Andover."

Cynthia didn't answer. It would not be fair to say that she felt a pang,
though it might add to the romance of this narrative. But her dislike for
the girl in the sleigh decidedly increased. How was she, in her
inexperience, to know that the radiant beauty in furs was what the boys
at Phillips Andover called an "old stager."

"So you live with Jethro Bass," was Miss Cassandra's next remark. "He's
rich enough to take you round the state and give you everything you
want."

"I have everything I want," replied Cynthia.

"I shouldn't call living here having everything I wanted," declared Miss
Hopkins, with a contemptuous glance at the tannery house.

"I suppose you wouldn't," said Cynthia.

Miss Hopkins was nettled. She was out of humor that day, besides she
shared some of her father's political ambition. If he went to Washington,
she went too.

"Didn't you know Jethro Bass was rich?" she demanded, imprudently. "Why,
my father gave twenty thousand dollars to be governor, and Jethro Bass
must have got half of it."

Cynthia's eyes were of that peculiar gray which, lighted by love or
anger, once seen, are never forgotten. One hand was on the dashboard of
the cutter, the other had seized the seat. Her voice was steady, and the
three words she spoke struck Miss Hopkins with startling effect.

Miss Hopkins's breath was literally taken away, and for once she found no
retort. Let it be said for her that this was a new experience with a new
creature. A demure country girl turn into a wildcat before her very eyes!
Perhaps it was as well for both that the door of the house opened and the
Honorable Alva interrupted their talk, and without so much as a glance at
Cynthia he got hurriedly into the sleigh and drove off. When Cynthia
turned, the points of color still high in her cheeks and the light still
ablaze in her eyes, she surprised Jethro gazing at her from the porch,
and some sorrow she felt rather than beheld stopped the confession on her
lips. It would be unworthy of her even to repeat such slander, and the
color surged again into her face for very shame of her anger. Cassandra
Hopkins had not been worthy of it.

Jethro did not speak, but slipped his hand into hers, and thus they stood
for a long time gazing at the snow fields between the pines on the
heights of Coniston.

The next summer, was the first which the painter--pioneer of summer
visitors there--spent at Coniston. He was an unsuccessful painter, who
became, by a process which he himself does not to-day completely
understand, a successful writer of novels. As a character, however, he
himself confesses his inadequacy, and the chief interest in him for the
readers of this narrative is that he fell deeply in love with Cynthia
Wetherell at nineteen. It is fair to mention in passing that other young
men were in love with Cynthia at this time, notably Eben Hatch--history
repeating itself. Once, in a moment of madness, Eben confessed his love,
the painter never did: and he has to this day a delicious memory which
has made Cynthia the heroine of many of his stories. He boarded with
Chester Perkins, and he was humored by the village as a harmless but
amiable lunatic.

The painter had never conceived that a New England conscience and a
temper of no mean proportions could dwell together in the body of a wood
nymph. When he had first seen Cynthia among the willows by Coniston
Water, he had thought her a wood nymph. But she scolded him for his
impropriety with so unerring a choice of words that he fell in love with
her intellect, too. He spent much of his time to the neglect of his
canvases under the butternut tree in front of Jethro's house trying to
persuade Cynthia to sit for her portrait; and if Jethro himself had not
overheard one of these arguments, the portrait never would have been
painted. Jethro focussed a look upon the painter.

"Er--painter-man, be you? Paint Cynthy's picture?"

"But I don't want to be painted, Uncle Jethro. I won't be painted!"

"H-how much for a good picture? Er--only want the best--only want the
best."

The painter said a few things, with pardonable heat, to the effect--well,
never mind the effect. His remarks made no impression whatever upon
Jethro.

"Er---paint the picture--paint the picture, and then we'll talk about the
price. Er--wait a minute."

He went into the house, and they heard him lumbering up the stairs.
Cynthia sat with her back to the artist, pretending to read, but
presently she turned to him.

"I'll never forgive you--never, as long as I live," she cried, "and I
won't be painted!"

"N-not to please me, Cynthy?" It was Jethro's voice.

Her look softened. She laid down the book and went up to him on the porch
and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Do you really want it so much as all that, Uncle Jethro?" she said.

"Callate I do, Cynthy," he answered. He held a bundle covered with
newspaper in his hand, he looked down at Cynthia.

He seated himself on the edge of the porch and for the moment seemed lost
in revery. Then he began slowly to unwrap the newspaper from the bundle:
there were five layers of it, but at length he disclosed a bolt of
cardinal cloth.

"Call this to mind, Cynthy?"

"Yes," she answered with a smile.

"H-how's this for the dress, Mr. Painter-man?" said Jethro, with a pride
that was ill-concealed.

The painter started up from his seat and took the material in his hands
and looked at Cynthia. He belonged to a city club where he was popular
for his knack of devising costumes, and a vision of Cynthia as the
daughter of a Doge of Venice arose before his eyes. Wonder of wonders,
the daughter of a Doge discovered in a New England hill village! The
painter seized his pad and pencil and with a few strokes, guided by
inspiration, sketched the costume then and there and held it up to
Jethro, who blinked at it in astonishment. But Jethro was suspicious of
his own sensations.

"Er--well--Godfrey--g-guess that'll do." Then came the involuntary:
"W-wouldn't a-thought you had it in you. How about it, Cynthy?" and he
held it up for her inspection.

"If you are pleased, it's all I care about, Uncle Jethro," she answered,
and then, her face suddenly flushing, "You must promise me on your honor
that nobody in Coniston shall know about it, 'Mr. Painter-man'."

After this she always called him "Mr. Painter-man,"--when she was pleased
with him.

So the cardinal cloth was come to its usefulness at last. It was
inevitable that Sukey Kittredge, the village seamstress, should be taken
into confidence. It was no small thing to take Sukey into confidence, for
she was the legitimate successor in more ways than one of Speedy Bates,
and much of Cynthia and the artist's ingenuity was spent upon devising a
form of oath which would hold Sukey silent. Sukey, however, got no small
consolation from the sense of the greatness of the trust confided in her,
and of the uproar she could make in Coniston if she chose. The painter,
to do him justice, was the real dressmaker, and did everything except cut
the cloth and sew it together. He sent to friends of his in the city for
certain paste jewels and ornaments, and one day Cynthia stood in the old
tannery shed--hastily transformed into a studio--before a variously moved
audience. Sukey, having adjusted the last pin, became hysterical over her
handiwork, Millicent Skinner stared openmouthed, words having failed her
for once, and Jethro thrust his hands in his pockets in a quiet ecstasy
of approbation.

"A-always had a notion that cloth'd set you off, Cynthy," said he,
"er--next time I go to the state capital you come along--g-guess it'll
surprise 'em some."

"I guess it would, Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia, laughing.

Jethro postponed two political trips of no small importance to be present
at the painting of that picture, and he would sit silently by the hour in
a corner of the shed watching every stroke of the brush. Never stood
Doge's daughter in her jewels and seed pearls amidst stranger
surroundings,--the beam, and the centre post around which the old white
horse had toiled in times gone by, and all the piled-up, disused
machinery of forgotten days. And never was Venetian lady more unconscious
of her environment than Cynthia.

The portrait was of the head and shoulders alone, and when he had given
it the last touch, the painter knew that, for once in his life, he had
done a good thing. Never before; perhaps, had the fire of such
inspiration been given him. Jethro, who expressed himself in terms (for
him) of great enthusiasm, was for going to Boston immediately to purchase
a frame commensurate with the importance of such a work of art, but the
artist had his own views on that subject and sent to New York for this
also.

The day after the completion of the picture a rugged figure in rawhide
boots and coonskin cap approached Chester Perkins's house, knocked at the
door, and inquired for the "Painter-man." It was Jethro. The
"Painter-man" forthwith went out into the rain behind the shed, where a
somewhat curious colloquy took place.

"G-guess I'm willin' to pay you full as much as it's worth," said Jethro,
producing a cowhide wallet. "Er--what figure do you allow it comes to
with the frame?"

The artist was past taking offence, since Jethro had long ago become for
him an engrossing study.

"I will send you the bill for the frame, Mr. Bass," he said, "the picture
belongs to Cynthia."

"Earn your livin' by paintin', don't you--earn your livin'?"

The painter smiled a little bitterly.

"No," he said, "if I did, I shouldn't be--alive. Mr. Bass, have you ever
done anything the pleasure of doing which was pay enough, and to spare?"

Jethro looked at him, and something very like admiration came into the
face that was normally expressionless.

He put up his wallet a little awkwardly, and held out his hand more
awkwardly.

"You be more of a feller than I thought for," he said, and strode off
through the drizzle toward Coniston. The painter walked slowly to the
kitchen, where Chester Perkins and his wife were sitting down to supper.

"Jethro got a mortgage on you, too?" asked Chester.

The artist had his reward, for when the picture was hung at length in the
little parlor of the tannery house it became a source of pride to
Coniston second only to Jethro himself.




CHAPTER II

Time passes, and the engines of the Truro Railroad are now puffing in and
out of the yards of Worthington's mills in Brampton, and a fine layer of
dust covers the old green stage which has worn the road for so many years
over Truro Gap. If you are ever in Brampton, you can still see the stage,
if you care to go into the back of what was once Jim Sanborn's livery
stable, now owned by Mr. Sherman of the Brampton House.

Conventions and elections had come and gone, and the Honorable Heth
Sutton had departed triumphantly to Washington, cheered by his neighbors
in Clovelly. Chamberlain Bixby was left in charge there, supreme. Who
could be more desirable as a member of Congress than Mr. Sutton, who had
so ably served his party (and Jethro) by holding the House against the
insurgents in the matter of the Truro Bill? Mr. Sutton was, moreover, a
gentleman, an owner of cattle and land, a man of substance whom lesser
men were proud to mention as a friend--a very hill-Rajah with stock in
railroads and other enterprises, who owed allegiance and paid tribute
alone to the Great Man of Coniston.

Mr. Sutton was one who would make himself felt even in the capital of the
United States--felt and heard. And he had not been long in the Halls of
Congress before he made a speech which rang under the very dome of the
Capitol. So said the Brampton and Harwich papers, at least, though rivals
and detractors of Mr. Sutton declared that they could find no matter in
it which related to the subject of a bill, but that is neither here nor
there. The oration began with a lengthy tribute to the resources and
history of his state, and ended by a declaration that the speaker was in
Congress at no man's bidding, but as the servant of the common people of
his district.

Under the lamp of the little parlor in the tannery house, Cynthia (who
has now arrived at the very serious age of nineteen) was reading the
papers to Jethro and came upon Mr. Sutton's speech. There were four
columns of it, but Jethro seemed to take delight in every word; and
portions of the noblest parts of it, indeed, he had Cynthia read over
again. Sometimes, in the privacy of his home, Jethro was known to
chuckle, and to Cynthia's surprise he chuckled more than usual that
evening.

"Uncle Jethro," she said at length, when she had laid the paper down, "I
thought that you sent Mr. Sutton to Congress."

Jethro leaned forward.

"What put that into your head, Cynthy?" he asked.

"Oh," answered the girl, "everybody says so,--Moses Hatch, Rias, and
Cousin Eph. Didn't you?"

Jethro looked at her, as she thought, strangely.

"You're too young to know anything about such things, Cynthy," he said,
"too young."

"But you make all the judges and senators and congressmen in the state, I
know you do. Why," exclaimed Cynthia, indignantly, "why does Mr. Sutton
say the people elected him when he owes everything to you?"

Jethro, arose abruptly and flung a piece of wood into the stove, and then
he stood with his back to her. Her instinct told her that he was
suffering, though she could not fathom the cause, and she rose swiftly
and drew him down into the chair beside her.

"What is it?" she said anxiously. "Have you got rheumatism, too, like
Cousin Eph? All old men seem to have rheumatism."

"No, Cynthy, it hain't rheumatism," he managed to answer; "wimmen folks
hadn't ought to mix up in politics. They--they don't understand 'em,
Cynthy."

"But I shall understand them some day, because I am your daughter--now
that--now that I have only you, I am your daughter, am I not?"

"Yes, yes," he answered huskily, with his hand on her hair.

"And I know more than most women now," continued Cynthia, triumphantly.
"I'm going to be such a help to you soon--very soon. I've read a lot of
history, and I know some of the Constitution by heart. I know why old
Timothy Prescott fought in the Revolution--it was to get rid of kings,
wasn't it, and to let the people have a chance? The people can always be
trusted to do what is right, can't they, Uncle Jethro?"

Jethro was silent, but Cynthia did not seem to notice that. After a space
she spoke again:--"I've been thinking it all out about you, Uncle
Jethro."

"A-about me?"

"Yes, I know why you are able to send men to Congress and make judges of
them. It's because the people have chosen you to do all that for
them--you are so great and good."

Jethro did not answer.

Although the month was March, it was one of those wonderful still nights
that sometimes come in the mountain-country when the wind is silent in
the notches and the stars seem to burn nearer to the earth. Cynthia awoke
and lay staring for an instant at the red planet which hung over the
black and ragged ridge, and then she arose quickly and knocked at the
door across the passage.

"Are you ill, Uncle Jethro?"

"No," he answered, "no, Cynthy. Go to bed. Er--I was just
thinkin'--thinkin', that's all, Cynthy."

Though all his life he had eaten sparingly, Cynthia noticed that he
scarcely touched his breakfast the next morning, and two hours later he
went unexpectedly to the state capital. That day, too, Coniston was
clothed in clouds, and by afternoon a wild March snowstorm was sweeping
down the face of the mountain, piling against doorways and blocking the
roads. Through the storm Cynthia fought her way to the harness shop, for
Ephraim Prescott had taken to his bed, bound hand and foot by rheumatism.

Much of that spring Ephraim was all but helpless, and Cynthia spent many
days nursing him and reading to him. Meanwhile the harness industry
languished. Cynthia and Ephraim knew, and Coniston guessed, that Jethro
was taking care of Ephraim, and strong as was his affection for Jethro
the old soldier found dependence hard to bear. He never spoke of it to
Cynthia, but he used to lie and dream through the spring days of what he
might have done if the war had not crippled him. For Ephraim Prescott,
like his grandfather, was a man of action--a keen, intelligent American
whose energy, under other circumstances, might have gone toward the
making of the West. Ephraim, furthermore, had certain principles which
some in Coniston called cranks; for instance, he would never apply for a
pension, though he could easily have obtained one. Through all his
troubles, he held grimly to the ideal which meant more to him than ease
and comfort,--that he had served his country for the love of it.

With the warm weather he was able to be about again, and occasionally to
mend a harness, but Doctor Rowell shook his head when Jethro stopped his
buggy in the road one day to inquire about Ephraim. Whereupon Jethro went
on to the harness shop. The inspiration, by the way, had come from
Cynthia.

"Er--Ephraim, how'd you like to, be postmaster? H-haven't any objections
to that kind of a job, hev you?"

"Why no," said Ephraim. "We hain't agoin' to hev a post-office at
Coniston--air we?"

"H-how'd you like to be postmaster at Brampton?" demanded Jethro,
abruptly.

Ephraim dropped the trace he was shaving.

"Postmaster at Brampton!" he exclaimed.

"H-how'd you like it?" said Jethro again.

"Well," said Ephraim, "I hain't got any objections."

Jethro started out of the shop, but paused again at the door.

"W-won't say nothin' about it, will you, Eph?" he inquired.

"Not till I git it," answered Ephraim. The sorrows of three years were
suddenly lifted from his shoulders, and for an instant Ephraim wanted to
dance until he remembered the rheumatism and the Wilderness leg. Suddenly
a thought struck him, and he hobbled to the door and called out after
Jethro's retreating figure. Jethro returned.

"Well?" he said, "well?"

"What's the pay?" said Ephraim, in a whisper.

Jethro named the sum instantly, also in a whisper.

"You don't tell me!" said Ephraim, and sank stupefied into the chair in
front of the shop, where lately he had spent so much of his time.

Jethro chuckled twice on his way home: he chuckled twice again to
Cynthia's delight at supper, and after supper he sent Millicent Skinner
to find Jake Wheeler. Jake as usual, was kicking his heels in front of
the store, talking to Rias and others about the coming Fourth of July
celebration at Brampton. Brampton, as we know, was famous for its Fourth
of July celebrations. Not neglecting to let it be known that Jethro had
sent for him, Jake hurried off through the summer twilight to the tannery
house, bowed ceremoniously to Cynthia under the butternut tree, and
discovered Jethro behind the shed. It was usually Jethro's custom to
allow the other man to begin the conversation, no matter how trivial the
subject--a method which had commended itself to Mr. Bixby and other minor
politicians who copied him. And usually the other man played directly
into Jethro's hands. Jake Wheeler always did, and now, to cover the
awkwardness of the silence, he began on the Brampton celebration.

"They tell me Heth Sutton's a-goin' to make the address--seems prouder
than ever sence he went to Congress. I guess you'll tell him what to say
when the time comes, Jethro."

"Er--goin' to Clovelly after wool this week, Jake?"

"I kin go to-morrow," said Jake, scenting an affair.

"Er--goin' to Clovelly after wool this week, Jake?"

Jake reflected. He saw it was expedient that this errand should not smell
of haste.

"I was goin' to see Cutter on Friday," he answered.

"Er--if you should happen to meet Heth--"

"Yes," interrupted Jake.

"If by chance you should happen to meet Heth, or Bije" (Jethro knew that
Jake never went to Clovelly without a conference with one or the other of
these personages, if only to be able to talk about it afterward at the
store), "er--what would you say to 'em?"

"Why," said Jake, scratching his head for the answer, "I'd tell him you
was at Coniston."

"Think we'll have rain, Jake?" inquired Jethro, blandly.

Jake wended his way back to the store, filled with renewed admiration for
the great man. Jethro had given him no instructions whatever, could deny
before a jury if need be that he had sent him (Jake) to Clovelly to tell
Heth Sutton to come to Coniston for instructions on the occasion of his
Brampton speech. And Jake was filled with a mysterious importance when he
took his seat once more in the conclave.

Jake Wheeler, although in many respects a fool, was one of the most
efficient pack of political hounds that the state has ever known. By six
o'clock on Friday morning he was descending a brook valley on the
Clovelly side of the mountain, and by seven was driving between the
forest and river meadows of the Rajah's domain, and had come in sight of
the big white house with its somewhat pretentious bay-windows and Gothic
doorway; it might be dubbed the palace of these parts. The wide river
flowed below it, and the pastures so wondrously green in the morning sun
were dotted with fat cattle and sheep. Jake was content to borrow a cut
of tobacco from the superintendent and wonder aimlessly around the farm
until Mr. Sutton's family prayers and breakfast were accomplished. We
shall not concern ourselves with the message or the somewhat lengthy
manner in which it was delivered. Jake had merely dropped in by accident,
but the Rajah listened coldly while he picked his teeth, said he didn't
know whether he was going to Brampton or not--hadn't decided; didn't know
whether he could get to Coniston or not--his affairs were multitudinous
now. In short, he set Jake to thinking deeply as his horse walked up the
western heights of Coniston on the return journey. He had, let it be
repeated, a sure instinct once his nose was fairly on the scent, and he
was convinced that a war of great magnitude was in the air, and he; Jake
Wheeler, was probably the first in all the elate to discover it! His
blood leaped at the thought.

The hill-Rajah's defiance, boiled down, could only mean one thing,--that
somebody with sufficient power and money was about to lock horns with
Jethro Bass. Not for a moment did Jake believe that, for all his pomp and
circumstance, the Honorable Heth Sutton was a big enough man to do this.
Jake paid to the Honorable Heth all the outward respect that his high
position demanded, but he knew the man through and through. He thought of
the Honorable Heth's reform speech in Congress, and laughed loudly in the
echoing woods. No, Mr. Sutton was not the man to lead a fight. But to
whom had he promised his allegiance? This question puzzled Mr. Wheeler
all the way home, and may it be said finally for many days thereafter. He
slid into Coniston in the dusk, big with impending events, which he could
not fathom. As to giving Jethro the careless answer of the hill-Rajah,
that was another matter.

The Fourth of July came at last, nor was any contradiction made in the
Brampton papers that the speech of the Honorable Heth Sutton had been
cancelled. Instead, advertisements appeared in the 'Brampton Clarion'
announcing the fact in large letters. When Cynthia read this
advertisement to Jethro, he chuckled again. They were under the butternut
tree, for the evenings were long now.

"Will you take me to Brampton, Uncle Jethro?" said she, letting fall the
paper on her lap.

"W-who's to get in the hay?" said Jethro.

"Hay on the Fourth of July!" exclaimed Cynthia, "why, that's--sacrilege!
You'd much better come and hear Mr. Sutton's speech--it will do you
good."

Cynthia could see that Jethro was intensely amused, for his eyes had a
way of snapping on such occasions when he was alone with her. She was
puzzled and slightly offended, because, to tell the truth, Jethro had
spoiled her.

"Very well, then," she said, "I'll go with the Painter-man."

Jethro came and stood over her, his expression the least bit wistful.

"Er--Cynthy," he said presently, "hain't fond of that Painter-man, be
you?"

"Why, yes," said Cynthia, "aren't you?"

"He's fond of you," said Jethro, "sh-shouldn't be surprised if he was in
love with you."

Cynthia looked up at him, the corners of her mouth twitching, and then
she laughed. The Rev. Mr. Satterlee, writing his Sunday sermon in his
study, heard her and laid down his pen to listen.

"Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia, "sometimes I forget that you're a great,
wise man, and I think that you are just a silly old goose."

Jethro wiped his face with his blue cotton handkerchief.

"Then you hain't a-goin' to marry the Painter-man?" he said.

"I'm not going to marry anybody," cried Cynthia, contritely; "I'm going
to live with you and take care of you all my life."

On the morning of the Fourth, Cynthia drove to Brampton with the
Painter-man, and when he perceived that she was dreaming, he ceased to
worry her with his talk. He liked her dreaming, and stole many glances at
her face of which she knew nothing at all. Through the cool and fragrant
woods, past the mill-pond stained blue and white by the sky, and scented
clover fields and wayside flowers nodding in the morning air--Cynthia saw
these things in the memory of another journey to Brampton. On that Fourth
her father had been with her, and Jethro and Ephraim and Moses and Amanda
Hatch and the children. And how well she recalled, too, standing amidst
the curious crowd before the great house which Mr. Worthington had just
built.

There are weeks and months, perhaps, when we do not think of people, when
our lives are full and vigorous, and then perchance a memory will bring
them vividly before us--so vividly that we yearn for them. There rose
before Cynthia now the vision of a boy as he stood on the Gothic porch of
the house, and how he had come down to the wondering country people with
his smile and his merry greeting, and how he had cajoled her into
lingering in front of the meeting-house. Had he forgotten her? With just
a suspicion of a twinge, Cynthia remembered that Janet Duncan she had
seen at the capital, whom she had been told was the heiress of the state.
When he had graduated from Harvard, Bob would, of course, marry her. That
was in the nature of things.

To some the great event of that day in Brampton was to be the speech of
the Honorable Heth Sutton in the meeting-house at eleven; others (and
this party was quite as numerous) had looked forward to the base-ball
game between Brampton and Harwich in the afternoon. The painter would
have preferred to walk up meeting-house hill with Cynthia, and from the
cool heights look down upon the amphitheatre in which the town was built.
But Cynthia was interested in history, and they went to the meeting-house
accordingly, where she listened for an hour and a half to the patriotic
eloquence of the representative. The painter was glad to see and hear so
great a man in the hour of his glory, though so much as a fragment of the
oration does not now remain in his memory. In size, in figure, in
expression, in the sonorous tones of his voice, Mr. Sutton was everything
that a congressman should be. "The people," said Isaac D. Worthington in
presenting him, "should indeed be proud of such an able and high-minded
representative." We shall have cause to recall that word high-minded.

Many persons greeted Cynthia outside the meetinghouse, for the girl
seemed genuinely loved by all who knew her--too much loved, her companion
thought, by certain spick-and-span young men of Brampton. But they ate
the lunch Cynthia had brought, far from the crowd, under the trees by
Coniston Water. It was she who proposed going to the base-ball game, and
the painter stifled a sigh and acquiesced. Their way brought them down
Brampton Street, past a house with great iron dogs on the lawn, so
imposing and cityfied that he hung back and asked who lived there.

"Mr. Worthington," answered Cynthia, making to move on impatiently.

Her escort did not think much of the house, but it interested him as the
type which Mr. Worthington had built. On that same Gothic porch,
sublimely unconscious of the covert stares and subdued comments of the
passers-by, the first citizen himself and the Honorable Heth Sutton might
be seen. Mr. Worthington, whose hawklike look had become more pronounced,
sat upright, while the Honorable Heth, his legs crossed, filled every
nook and cranny of an arm-chair, and an occasional fragrant whiff from
his cigar floated out to those on the tar sidewalk. Although the
pedestrians were but twenty feet away, what Mr. Worthington said never
reached them; but the Honorable Heth on public days carried his voice of
the Forum around with him.

"Come on," said Cynthia, in one of those startling little tempers she was
subject to; "don't stand there like an idiot."

Then the voice of Mr. Sutton boomed toward them.

"As I understand, Worthington," they heard him say, "you want me to
appoint young Wheelock for the Brampton post-office." He stuck his thumb
into his vest pocket and recrossed his legs "I guess it can be arranged."

When the painter at last overtook Cynthia the jewel paints he had so
often longed to catch upon a canvas were in her eyes. He fell back,
wondering how he could so greatly have offended, when she put her hand on
his sleeve.

"Did you hear what he said about the Brampton postoffice?" she cried.

"The Brampton post-office?" he repeated; dazed.

"Yes," said Cynthia; "Uncle Jethro has promised it to Cousin Ephraim, who
will starve without it. Did you hear this man say he would give it to Mr.
Wheelock?"

Here was a new Cynthia, aflame with emotions on a question of politics of
which he knew nothing. He did, understand, however, her concern for
Ephraim Prescott, for he knew that she loved the soldier. She turned from
the painter now with a gesture which he took to mean that his profession
debarred him from such vital subjects, and she led the way to the
fair-grounds. There he meekly bought tickets, and they found themselves
hurried along in the eager crowd toward the stand.

The girl was still unaccountably angry over that mysterious affair of the
post-office, and sat with flushed cheeks staring out on the green field,
past the line of buggies and carryalls on the farther side to the
southern shoulder of Coniston towering, above them all. The painter,
already, beginning to love his New England folk, listened to the homely
chatter about him, until suddenly a cheer starting in one corner ran like
a flash of gunpowder around the field, and eighteen young men trotted
across the turf. Although he was not a devotee of sport, he noticed that
nine of these, as they took their places on the bench, wore blue,--the
Harwich Champions. Seven only of those scattering over the field wore
white; two young gentlemen, one at second base and the other behind the
batter, wore gray uniforms with crimson stockings, and crimson piping on
the caps, and a crimson H embroidered on the breast--a sight that made
the painter's heart beat a little faster, the honored livery of his own
college.

"What are those two Harvard men doing here?" he asked.

Cynthia, who was leaning forward, started, and turned to him a face which
showed him that his question had been meaningless. He repeated it.

"Oh," said she, "the tall one, burned brick-red like an Indian, is Bob
Worthington."

"He's a good type," the artist remarked.

"You're right, Mister, there hain't a finer young feller anywhere,"
chimed in Mr. Dodd, a portly person with a tuft of yellow beard on his
chin. Mr. Dodd kept the hardware store in Brampton.

"And who," asked the painter, "is the bullet-headed little fellow, with
freckles and short red hair, behind the bat?"

"I don't know," said Cynthia, indifferently.

"Why," exclaimed Mr. Dodd, with just a trace of awe in his voice, "that's
Somers Duncan, son of Millionaire Duncan down to the capital. I guess,"
he added, "I guess them two will be the richest men in the state some
day. Duncan come up from Harvard with Bob."

In a few minutes the game was in full swing, Brampton against Harwich,
the old rivalry in another form. Every advantage on either side awoke
thundering cheers from the partisans; beribboned young women sprang to
their feet and waved the Harwich blue at a home run, and were on the
verge of tears when the Brampton pitcher struck out their best batsman.
But beyond the facts that the tide was turning in Brampton's favor; that
young Mr. Worthington stopped a ball flying at a phenomenal speed and
batted another at a still more phenomenal speed which was not stopped;
that his name and Duncan's were mingled generously in the cheering, the
painter remembered little of the game. The exhibition of human passions
which the sight of it drew from an undemonstrative race: the shouting,
the comments wrung from hardy spirits off their guard, the joy and the
sorrow,--such things interested him more. High above the turmoil
Coniston, as through the ages, looked down upon the scene impassive.

He was aroused from these reflections by an incident. Some one had leaped
over the railing which separated the stand from the field and stood
before Cynthia,--a tanned and smiling young man in gray and crimson. His
honest eyes were alight with an admiration that was unmistakable to the
painter--perhaps to Cynthia also, for a glow that might have been of
annoyance or anger, and yet was like the color of the mountain sunrise,
answered in her cheek. Mr. Worthington reached out a large brown hand and
seized the girl's as it lay on her lap.

"Hello, Cynthia," he cried, "I've been looking for you all day. I thought
you might be here. Where were you?"

"Where did you look?" answered Cynthia, composedly, withdrawing her hand.

"Everywhere," said Bob, "up and down the street, all through the hotel. I
asked Lem Hallowell, and he didn't know where you were. I only got here
last night myself."

"I was in the meeting-house," said Cynthia.

"The meeting-house!" he echoed. "You don't mean to tell me that you
listened to that silly speech of Sutton's?"

This remark, delivered in all earnestness, was the signal for uproarious
laughter from Mr. Dodd and others sitting near by, attending earnestly to
the conversation.

Cynthia bit her lip.

"Yes, I did," she said; "but I'm sorry now."

"I should think you would be," said Bob; "Sutton's a silly, pompous old
fool. I had to sit through dinner with him. I believe I could represent
the district better myself."

"By gosh!" exploded Mr. Dodd, "I believe you could!"

But Bob paid no attention to him. He was looking at Cynthia.

"Cynthia, you've grown up since I saw you," he said. "How's Uncle Jethro.

"He's well--thanks," said Cynthia, and now she was striving to put down a
smile.

"Still running the state?" said Bob. "You tell him I think he ought to
muzzle Sutton. What did he send him down to Washington for?"

"I don't know," said Cynthia.

"What are you going to do after the game?" Bob demanded.

"I'm going home of course," said Cynthia.

His face fell.

"Can't you come to the house for supper and stay for the fireworks?" he
begged pleadingly. "We'd be mighty glad to have your friend, too."

Cynthia introduced her escort.

"It's very good of you, Bob," she said, with that New England demureness
which at times became her so well, "but we couldn't possibly do it. And
then I don't like Mr. Sutton."

"Oh, hang him!" exclaimed Bob. He took a step nearer to her. "Won't you
stay this once? I have to go West in the morning."

"I think you are very lucky," said Cynthia.

Bob scanned her face searchingly, and his own fell.

"Lucky!" he cried, "I think it's the worst thing that ever happened to
me. My father's so hard-headed when he gets his mind set--he's making me
do it. He wants me to see the railroads and the country, so I've got to
go with the Duncans. I wanted to stay--" He checked himself, "I think
it's a blamed nuisance."

"So do I," said a voice behind him.

It was not the first time that Mr. Somers Duncan had spoken, but Bob
either had not heard him or pretended not to. Mr. Duncan's freckled face
smiled at them from the top of the railing, his eyes were on Cynthia's
face, and he had been listening eagerly. Mr. Duncan's chief
characteristic, beyond his freckles, was his eagerness--a quality
probably amounting to keenness.

"Hello," said Bob, turning impatiently, "I might have known you couldn't
keep away. You're the cause of all my troubles--you and your father's
private car."

Somers became apologetic.

"It isn't my fault," he said; "I'm sure I hate going as much as you do.
It's spoiled my summer, too."

Then he coughed and looked at Cynthia.

"Well," said Bob, "I suppose I'll have to introduce you. This," he added,
dragging his friend over the railing, "is Mr. Somers Duncan."

"I'm awfully glad to meet you, Miss. Wetherell," said Somers, fervently;
"to tell you the truth, I thought he was just making up yarns."

"Yarns?" repeated Cynthia, with a look that set Mr. Duncan floundering.

"Why, yes," he stammered. "Worthy said that you were up here, but I
thought he was crazy the way he talked--I didn't think--"

"Think what?" inquired Cynthia, but she flushed a little.

"Oh, rot, Somers!" said Bob, blushing furiously under his tan; "you ought
never to go near a woman--you're the darndest fool with 'em I ever saw."

This time even the painter laughed outright, and yet he was a little
sorrowful, too, because he could not be even as these youths. But Cynthia
sat serene, the eternal feminine of all the ages, and it is no wonder
that Bob Worthington was baffled as he looked at her. He lapsed into an
awkwardness quite as bad as that of his friend.

"I hope you enjoyed the game," he said at last, with a formality that was
not at all characteristic.

Cynthia did not seem to think it worth while to answer this, so the
painter tried to help him out.

"That was a fine stop you made, Mr. Worthington," he said; "wasn't it,
Cynthia?"

"Everybody seemed to think so," answered Cynthia, cruelly; "but if I were
a man and had hands like that" (Bob thrust them in his pockets), "I
believe I could stop a ball, too."

Somers laughed uproariously.

"Good-by," said Bob, with uneasy abruptness, "I've got to go into the
field now. When can I see you?"

"When you get back from the West--perhaps," said Cynthia.

"Oh," cried Bob (they were calling him), "I must see you to-night!" He
vaulted over the railing and turned. "I'll come back here right after the
game," he said; "there's only one more inning."

"We'll come back right after the game," repeated Mr. Duncan.

Bob shot one look at him,--of which Mr. Duncan seemed blissfully
unconscious,--and stalked off abruptly to second base.

The artist sat pensive for a few moments, wondering at the ways of women,
his sympathies unaccountably enlisted in behalf of Mr. Worthington.

"Weren't you a little hard on him?" he said.

For answer Cynthia got to her feet.

"I think we ought to be going home," she said.

"Going home!" he ejaculated in amazement.

"I promised Uncle Jethro I'd be there for supper," and she led the way
out of the grand stand.

So they drove back to Coniston through the level evening light, and when
they came to Ephraim Prescott's harness shop the old soldier waved at
them cheerily from under the big flag which he had hung out in honor of
the day. The flag was silk, and incidentally Ephraim's most valued
possession. Then they drew up before the tannery house, and Cynthia
leaped out of the buggy and held out her hand to the painter with a
smile.

"It was very good of you to take me," she said.

Jethro Bass, rugged, uncouth, in rawhide boots and swallowtail and
coonskin cap, came down from the porch to welcome her, and she ran toward
him with an eagerness that started the painter to wondering afresh over
the contrasts of life. What, he asked himself, had Fate in store for
Cynthia Wetherell?




CHAPTER III

"H-have a good time, Cynthy?" said Jethro, looking down into her face.
Love had wrought changes in Jethro; mightier changes than he suspected,
and the girl did not know how zealous were the sentries of that love, how
watchful they were, and how they told him often and again whether her
heart, too, was smiling.

"It was very gay," said Cynthia.

"P-painter-man gay?" inquired Jethro.

Cynthia's eyes were on the orange line of the sunset over Coniston, but
she laughed a little, indulgently.

"Cynthy?"

"Yes."

"Er--that Painter-man hain't such a bad fellow--w-why didn't you ask him
in to supper?"

"I'll give you three guesses," said Cynthia, but she did not wait for
them. "It was because I wanted to be alone with you. Milly's gone out,
hasn't she?"

"G-gone a-courtin'," said Jethro.

She smiled, and went into the house to see whether Milly had done her
duty before she left. It was characteristic of Cynthia not to have
mentioned the subject which was agitating her mind until they were seated
on opposite sides of the basswood table.

"Uncle Jethro," she said, "I thought you told Mr. Sutton to give Cousin
Eph the Brampton post-office? Do you trust Mr. Sutton?" she demanded
abruptly.

"Er--why?" said Jethro. "Why?"

"Because I don't," she answered with conviction; "I think he's a big
fraud. He must have deceived you, Uncle Jethro. I can't see why you ever
sent him to Congress."

Although Jethro was in no mood for mirth, he laughed in spite of himself,
for he was an American. His lifelong habit would have made him defend
Heth to any one but Cynthia.

"'D you see Heth, Cynthy?" he asked.
 "Yes," replied the girl, disgustedly, "I should say I did, but not to
speak to him. He was sitting on Mr. Worthington's porch, and I heard him
tell Mr. Worthington he would give the Brampton post-office to Dave
Wheelock. I don't want you to think that I was eavesdropping," she added
quickly; "I couldn't help hearing it."

Jethro did not answer.

"You'll make him give the post-office to Cousin Eph, won't you, Uncle
Jethro?"

"Yes;" said Jethro, very simply, "I will." He meditated awhile, and then
said suddenly, "W-won't speak about it--will you, Cynthy?"

"You know I won't," she answered.

Let it not be thought by any chance that Coniston was given over to
revelry and late hours, even on the Fourth of July. By ten o'clock the
lights were out in the tannery house, but Cynthia was not asleep. She sat
at her window watching the shy moon peeping over Coniston ridge, and she
was thinking, to be exact, of how much could happen in one short day and
how little in a long month. She was aroused by the sound of wheels and
the soft beat of a horse's hoofs on the dirt road: then came stifled
laughter, and suddenly she sprang up alert and tingling. Her own name
came floating to her through the darkness.

The next thing that happened will be long remembered in Coniston. A
tentative chord or two from a guitar, and then the startled village was
listening with all its might to the voices of two young men singing "When
I first went up to Harvard"--probably meant to disclose the identity of
the serenaders, as if that were necessary! Coniston, never having
listened to grand opera, was entertained and thrilled, and thought the
rendering of the song better on the whole than the church choir could
have done it, or even the quartette that sung at the Brampton
celebrations behind the flowers. Cynthia had her own views on the
subject.

There were five other songs--Cynthia remembers all of them, although she
would not confess such a thing. "Naughty, naughty Clara," was another
one; the other three were almost wholly about love, some treating it
flippantly, others seriously--this applied to the last one, which had
many farewells in it. Then they went away, and the crickets and frogs on
Coniston Water took up the refrain.

Although the occurrence was unusual,--it might almost be said
epoch-making,--Jethro did not speak of it until they had reached the
sparkling heights of Thousand Acre Hill the next morning. Even then he
did not look at Cynthia.

"Know who that was last night, Cynthy?" he inquired, as though the matter
were a casual one.

"I believe," said Cynthia heroically, "I believe it was a boy named
Somers Duncan-and Bob Worthington."

"Er--Bob Worthington," repeated Jethro, but said nothing more.

Of course Coniston, and presently Brampton, knew that Bob Worthington had
serenaded Cynthia--and Coniston and Brampton talked. It is noteworthy
that (with the jocular exceptions of Ephraim and Lem Hallowell) they did
not talk to the girl herself. The painter had long ago discovered that
Cynthia was an individual. She had good blood in her: as a mere child she
had shouldered the responsibility of her father; she had a natural
aptitude for books--a quality reverenced in the community; she visited,
as a matter of habit; the sick and the unfortunate; and lastly (perhaps
the crowning achievement) she had bound Jethro Bass, of all men, with the
fetters of love. Of course I have ended up by making her a paragon,
although I am merely stating what people thought of her. Coniston decided
at once that she was to marry the heir to the Brampton Mills.

But the heir had gone West, and as the summer wore on, the gossip died
down. Other and more absorbing gossip took its place: never distinctly
formulated, but whispered; always wishing for more definite news that
never came. The statesmen drove out from Brampton to the door of the
tannery house, as usual, only it was remarked by astute observers and
Jake Wheeler that certain statesmen did not come who had been in the
habit of coming formerly. In short, those who made it a custom to observe
such matters felt vaguely a disturbance of some kind. The organs of the
people felt it, and became more guarded in their statements. What no one
knew, except Jake and a few in high places, was that a war of no mean
magnitude was impending.

There were three men in the State--and perhaps only three--who realized
from the first that all former political combats would pale in comparison
to this one to come. Similar wars had already started in other states,
and when at length they were fought out another twist had been given to
the tail of a long-suffering Constitution; political history in the
United States had to be written from an entirely new and unforeseen
standpoint, and the unsuspecting people had changed masters.

This was to be a war of extermination of one side or the other. No
quarter would be given or asked, and every weapon hitherto known to
politics would be used. Of the three men who realized this, and all that
would happen if one side or the other were victorious, one was Alexander
Duncan, another Isaac D. Worthington, and the third was Jethro Bass.

Jethro would never have been capable of being master of the state had he
not foreseen the time when the railroads, tired of paying tribute, would
turn and try to exterminate the boss. The really astonishing thing about
Jethro's foresight (known to few only) was that he perceived clearly that
the time would come when the railroads and other aggregations of capital
would exterminate the boss, or at least subserviate him. This alone, the
writer thinks, gives him some right to greatness. And Jethro Bass made up
his mind that the victory of the railroads, in his state at least, should
not come in his day. He would hold and keep what he had fought all his
life to gain.

Jethro knew, when Jake Wheeler failed to bring him a message back from
Clovelly, that the war had begun, and that Isaac D. Worthington,
commander of the railroad forces in the field, had captured his pawn, the
hill-Rajah. By getting through to Harwich, the Truro had made a sad
muddle in railroad affairs. It was now a connecting link; and its
president, the first citizen of Brampton, a man of no small importance in
the state. This fact was not lost upon Jethro, who perceived clearly
enough the fight for consolidation that was coming in the next
Legislature.

Seated on an old haystack on Thousand Acre Hill, that sits in turn on the
lap of Coniston, Jethro smiled as he reflected that the first trial of
strength in this mighty struggle was to be over (what the unsuspecting
world would deem a trivial matter) the postmastership of Brampton. And
Worthington's first move in the game would be to attempt to capture for
his faction the support of the Administration itself.

Jethro thought the view from Thousand Acre Hill, especially in September,
to be one of the sublimest efforts of the Creator. It was September,
first of the purple months in Coniston, not the red-purple of the Maine
coast, but the blue-purple of the mountain, the color of the bloom on the
Concord grape. His eyes, sweeping the mountain from the notch to the
granite ramp of the northern buttress, fell on the weather-beaten little
farmhouse in which he had lived for many years, and rested lovingly on
the orchard, where the golden early apples shone among the leaves. But
Jethro was not looking at the apples.

"Cynthy," he called out abruptly, "h-how'd you like to go to Washington?"

"Washington!" exclaimed Cynthia. "When?"

"N-now--to-morrow." Then he added uneasily, "C-can't you get ready?"

Cynthia laughed.

"Why, I'll go to-night, Uncle Jethro," she answered.

"Well," he said admiringly, "you hain't one of them clutterin' females.
We can get some finery for you in New York, Cynthy. D-don't want any of
them town ladies to put you to shame. Er--not that they would," he added
hastily--"not that they would."

Cynthia climbed up beside him on the haystack.

"Uncle Jethro," she said solemnly, "when you make a senator or a judge, I
don't interfere, do I?"

He looked at her uneasily, for there were moments when he could not for
the life of him make out her drift.

"N-no," he assented, "of course not, Cynthy."

"Why is it that I don't interfere?"

"I callate," answered Jethro, still more uneasily, "I callate it's
because you're a woman."

"And don't you think," asked Cynthia, "that a woman ought to know what
becomes her best?"

Jethro reflected, and then his glance fell on her approvingly.

"G-guess you're right, Cynthy," he said. "I always had some success in
dressin' up Listy, and that kind of set me up."

On such occasions he spoke of his wife quite simply. He had been
genuinely fond of her, although she was no more than an episode in his
life. Cynthia smiled to herself as they walked through the orchard to the
place where the horse was tied, but she was a little remorseful. This
feeling, on the drive homeward, was swept away by sheer elation at the
prospect of the trip before her. She had often dreamed of the great world
beyond Coniston, and no one, not even Jethro, had guessed the longings to
see it which had at times beset her. Often she had dropped her book to
summon up a picture of what a great city was like, to reconstruct the
Boston of her early childhood. She remembered the Mall, where she used to
walk with her father, and the row of houses where the rich dwelt, which
had seemed like palaces. Indeed, when she read of palaces, these houses
always came to her mind. And now she was to behold a palace even greater
than these,--and the house where the President himself dwelt. But why was
Jethro going to Washington?

As if in answer to the question, he drove directly to the harness shop
instead of to the tannery house. Ephraim greeted them from within with a
cheery hail, and hobbled out and stood between the wheels of the buggy.

"That bridle bust again?" he inquired.

"Er--Ephraim," said Jethro, "how long since you b'en away from
Coniston--how long?"

Ephraim reflected.

"I went to Harwich with Moses before that bad spell I had in March," he
answered.

Cynthia smiled from pure happiness, for she began to see the drift of
things now.

"H-how long since you've b'en in foreign parts?" said Jethro.

"'Sixty-five," answered Ephraim, with astonishing promptness.

"Er--like to go to Washington with us to-morrow like to go to
Washington?"

Ephraim gasped, even as Cynthia had.

"Washin'ton!" he ejaculated.

"Cynthy and I was thinkin' of takin' a little trip," said Jethro, almost
apologetically, "and we kind of thought we'd like to have you with us.
Didn't we, Cynthy? Er--we might see General Grant," he added meaningly.

Ephraim was a New Englander, and not an adept in expressing his emotions.
Both Cynthia and Jethro felt that he would have liked to have said
something appropriate if he had known how. What he actually said
was:--"What time to-morrow?"

"C-callate to take the nine o'clock from Brampton," said Jethro.

"I'll report for duty at seven," said Ephraim, and it was then he
squeezed the hand that he found in his. He watched them calmly enough
until they had disappeared in the barn behind the tannery house, and
then his thoughts became riotous. Rumors had been rife that summer,
prophecies of changes to come, and the resignation of the old man who had
so long been postmaster at Brampton was freely discussed--or rather the
matter of his successor. As the months passed, Ephraim had heard David
Wheelock mentioned with more and more assurance for the place. He had had
many nights when sleep failed him, but it was characteristic of the old
soldier that he had never once broached the subject since Jethro had
spoken to him two months before. Ephraim had even looked up the law to
see if he was eligible, and found that he was, since Coniston had no
post-office, and was within the limits of delivery of the Brampton
office.

The next morning Coniston was treated to a genuine surprise. After
loading up at the store, Lem Hallowell, instead of heading for Brampton,
drove to the tannery house, left his horses standing as he ran in, and
presently emerged with a little cowhide trunk that bore the letter W.
Following the trunk came a radiant Cynthia, following Cynthia, Jethro
Bass in a stove-pipe hat, with a carpetbag, and hobbling after Jethro,
Ephraim Prescott, with another carpet-bag. It was remarked in the buzz of
query that followed the stage's departure that Ephraim wore the blue suit
and the army hat with a cord around it which he kept for occasions.
Coniston longed to follow them, in spirit at least, but even Milly
Skinner did not know their destination.

Fortunately we can follow them. At Brampton station they got into the
little train that had just come over Truro Pass, and steamed, with many
stops, down the valley of Coniston Water until it stretched out into a
wide range of shimmering green meadows guarded by blue hills veiled in
the morning haze. Then, bustling Harwich, and a wait of half an hour
until the express from the north country came thundering through the Gap;
then a five-hours' journey down the broad river that runs southward
between the hills, dinner in a huge station amidst a pleasant buzz of
excitement and the ringing of many bells. Then into another train,
through valleys and factory towns and cities until they came, at
nightfall, to the metropolis itself.

Cynthia will always remember the awe with which that first view of New
York inspired her, and Ephraim confessed that he, too, had felt it, when
he had first seen the myriad lights of the city after the long, dusty
ride from the hills with his regiment. For all the flags and bunting it
had held in '61, Ephraim thought that city crueller than war itself. And
Cynthia thought so too, as she clung to Jethro's arm between the
carriages and the clanging street-cars, and looked upon the riches and
poverty around her. There entered her soul that night a sense of that
which is the worst cruelty of all--the cruelty of selfishness. Every man
going his own pace, seeking to gratify his own aims and desires,
unconscious and heedless of the want with which he rubs elbows. Her
natural imagination enhanced by her life among the hills, the girl
peopled the place in the street lights with all kinds of strange
evil-doers of whose sins she knew nothing, adventurers, charlatans, alert
cormorants, who preyed upon the unwary. She shrank closer to Ephraim from
a perfumed lady who sat next to her in the car, and was thankful when at
last they found themselves in the corridor of the Astor House standing
before the desk.

Hotel clerks, especially city ones, are supernatural persons. This one
knew Jethro, greeted him deferentially as Judge Bass, and dipped the pen
in the ink and handed it to him that he might register. By half-past nine
Cynthia was dreaming of Lem Hallowell and Coniston, and Lem was driving a
yellow street-car full of queer people down the road to Brampton.

There were few guests in the great dining room when they breakfasted at
seven the next morning. New York, in the sunlight, had taken on a more
kindly expression, and those who were near by smiled at them and seemed
full of good-will. Persons smiled at them that day as they walked the
streets or stood spellbound before the shop windows, and some who saw
them felt a lump rise in their throats at the memories they aroused of
forgotten days: the three seemed to bring the very air of the hills with
them into that teeming place, and many who, had come to the city with
high hopes, now in the shackles of drudgery; looked after them. They were
a curious party, indeed: the straight, dark girl with the light in her
eyes and the color in her cheeks; the quaint, rugged figure of the
elderly man in his swallow-tail and brass buttons and square-toed,
country boots; and the old soldier hobbling along with the aid of his
green umbrella, clad in the blue he had loved and suffered for. Had they
remained until Sunday, they might have read an amusing account of their
visit,--of Jethro's suppers of crackers and milk at the Astor House, of
their progress along Broadway. The story was not lacking in pathos,
either, and in real human feeling, for the young reporter who wrote it
had come, not many years before, from the hills himself. But by that time
they had accomplished another marvellous span in their journey, and were
come to Washington itself.




CHAPTER IV

Cynthia was deprived, too, of that thrilling first view of the capital
from the train which she had pictured, for night had fallen when they
reached Washington likewise. As the train slowed down, she leaned a
little out of the window and looked at the shabby houses and shabby
streets revealed by the flickering lights in the lamp-posts. Finally they
came to a shabby station, were seized upon by a grinning darky hackman,
who would not take no for an answer, and were rattled away to the hotel.
Although he had been to Washington but once in his life before, as a
Lincoln elector, Jethro was greeted as an old acquaintance by this clerk
also.

"Glad to see you, Judge," said he, genially. "Train late? You've come
purty nigh, missin' supper."

A familiar of great men, the clerk was not offended when he got no
response to his welcome. Cynthia and Ephraim, intent on getting rid
of some of the dust of their journey, followed the colored hallboy
up the stairs. Jethro stood poring over the register, when a
distinguished-looking elderly gentleman with a heavy gray beard and eyes
full of shrewdness and humor paused at the desk to ask a question.

"Er--Senator?"

The senator (for such he was, although he did not represent Jethro's
state) turned and stared, and then held out his hand with unmistakable
warmth.

"Jethro Bass," he exclaimed, "upon my word! What are you doing in
Washington?"

Jethro took the hand, but he did not answer the question.

"Er--Senator--when can I see the President?"

"Why," answered the senator, somewhat taken aback, "why, to-night, if you
like. I'm going to the White House in a few minutes and I think I can
arrange it."

"T-to-morrow afternoon--t-to-morrow afternoon?"

The senator cast his eye over the swallow-tail coat and stove-pipe hat
tilted back, and laughed.

"Thunder!" he exclaimed, "you haven't changed a bit. I'm beginning to
look like an old man; but that milk-and-crackers diet seems to keep you
young, Jethro. I'll fix it for to-morrow afternoon."

"W-what time--two?"

"Well, I'll fix it for two to-morrow afternoon. I never could understand
you, Jethro; you don't do things like other men. Do I smell gunpowder?
What's up now--what do you want to see Grant about?"

Jethro cast his eye around the corridor, where a few men were taking
their ease after supper, and looked at the senator mysteriously.

"Any place where we can talk?" he demanded.

"We can go into the writing room and shut the door," answered the
senator, more amused than ever.

When Cynthia came downstairs, Jethro was standing with the gentleman in
the corridor leading to the dining room, and she heard the gentleman say
as he took his departure:--"I haven't forgotten what you did for us in
'70, Jethro. I'll go right along and see to it now."

Cynthia liked the gentleman's looks, and rightly surmised that he was one
of the big men of the nation. She was about to ask Jethro his name when
Ephraim came limping along and put the matter out of her mind, and the
three went into the almost empty dining room. There they were served with
elaborate attention by a darky waiter who had, in some mysterious way,
learned Jethro's name and title. Cynthia reflected with pride that
Jethro, too, was one of the nation's great men, who could get anything he
wanted simply by coming to the capital and asking for it.

Ephraim was very much excited on finding himself in Washington, the sight
of the place reviving in his mind a score of forgotten incidents of the
war. After supper they found seats in a corner of the corridor, where a
number of people were scattered about, smoking and talking. It did not
occur to Jethro or Cynthia, or even to Ephraim, that these people were
all of the male sex, and on the other hand the guests of the hotel were
apparently used once in a while to see a lady from the country seated
there. At any rate, Cynthia was but a young girl, and her two companions,
however unusual their appearance, were clearly most respectable. Jethro,
his hands in his pockets and his hat tilted, sat on the small of his back
rapt in meditation; Cynthia, her head awhirl, looked around her with
sparkling eyes; while Ephraim was smoking a cigar he had saved for just
such a festal occasion. He did not see the stout man with the button and
corded hat until he was almost on top of him.

"Eph Prescott, I believe!" exclaimed the stout one. "How be you,
Comrade?"

Heedless of his rheumatism, Ephraim sprang to his feet and dropped the
cigar, which the stout one picked up with much difficulty.

"Well," said Ephraim, in a voice that shook with unwonted emotion, "you
kin skin me if it ain't Amasy Beard!" His eye travelled around Amasa's
figure. "Wouldn't a-knowed you, I swan, I wouldn't. Why, when I seen you
last, Amasy, your stomach was havin' all it could do to git hold of your
backbone."

Cynthia laughed outright, and even Jethro sat up and smiled.

"When was it?" said Amasa, still clinging on to Ephraim's hand and
incidentally to the cigar, which Ephraim had forgotten; "Beaver Creek,
wahn't it?"

"July 10, 1863," said Ephraim, instantly.

Gradually they reached a sitting position, the cigar was restored to its
rightful owner, and Mr. Beard was introduced, with some ceremony, to
Cynthia and Jethro. From Beaver Creek they began to fight the war over
again, backward and forward, much to Cynthia's edification, when her
attention was distracted by the entrance of a street band of wind
instruments. As the musicians made their way to another corner and began
tuning up, she glanced mischievously at Jethro, for she knew his
peculiarities by heart. One of these was a most violent detestation of
any but the best music. He had often given her this excuse, laughingly,
for not going to meeting in Coniston. How he had come by his love for
good music, Cynthia never knew--he certainly had not heard much of it.

Suddenly a great volume of sound filled the corridor, and the band burst
forth into what many supposed to be "The Watch on the Rhine." Some people
were plainly delighted; the veterans, once recovered from their surprise,
shouted their reminiscences above the music, undismayed; Jethro held on
to himself until the refrain, when he began to squirm, and as soon as the
tune was done and the scattering applause had died down, he reached over
and grabbed Mr. Amasa Beard by the knee. Mr. Beard did not immediately
respond, being at that moment behind logworks facing a rebel charge; he
felt vaguely that some one was trying to distract his attention, and in
some lobe of his brain was registered the fact that that particular knee
had gout in it. Jethro increased the pressure, and then Mr. Beard
abandoned his logworks and swung around with a snort of pain.

"H-how much do they git for that noise--h-how much do they git?"

Mr. Beard tenderly lifted the hand from his knee and stared at Jethro
with his mouth open, like a man aroused from a bad dream.

"Who? What noise?" he demanded.

"The Dutchmen," said Jethro. "H-how much do they git for that noise?"

"Oh!" Mr. Beard glanced at the band and began to laugh. He thought Jethro
a queer customer, no doubt, but he was a friend of Comrade Prescott's.
"By gum!" said Mr. Beard, "I thought for a minute a rebel chain-shot had
took my leg off. Well, sir, I guess that band gets about two dollars.
They've come in here every evening since I've been at the hotel."

"T-two dollars? Is that the price? Er--you say two dollars is their
price?"

"Thereabouts," answered Mr. Beard, uneasily. Veteran as he was, Jethro's
appearance and earnestness were a little alarming.

"You say two dollars is their price?"

"Thereabouts," shouted Mr. Beard, seating himself on the edge of his
chair.

But Jethro paid no attention to him. He rose, unfolding by degrees his
six feet two, and strode diagonally across the corridor toward the band
leader. Conversation was hushed at the sight of his figure, a titter ran
around the walls, but Jethro was oblivious to these things. He drew a
great calfskin wallet from an inside pocket of his coat, and the band
leader, a florid German, laid down his instrument and made an elaborate
bow. Jethro waited until the man had become upright and then held out a
two-dollar bill.

"Is that about right for the performance?" he said "is that about right?"

"Ja, mein Herr," said the man, nodding vociferously.

"I want to pay what's right--I want to pay what's right," said Jethro.

"I thank you very much, sir," said the leader, finding his English, "you
haf pay for all."

"P-paid for everything--everything to-night?" demanded Jethro.

The leader spread out his hands.

"You haf pay for one whole evening," said he, and bowed again.

"Then take it, take it," said Jethro, pushing the bill into the man's
palm; "but don't you come back to-night--don't you come back to-night."

The amazed leader stared at Jethro--and words failed him. There was
something about this man that compelled him to obey, and he gathered up
his followers and led the way silently out of the hotel. Roars of
laughter and applause arose on all sides; but Jethro was as one who heard
them not as he made his way back to his seat again.

"You did a good job, my friend," said Mr. Beard, approvingly. "I'm going
to take Eph Prescott down the street to see some of the boys. Won't you
come, too?"

Mr. Beard doubtless accepted it as one of the man's eccentricities that
Jethro did not respond to him, for without more ado he departed arm in
arm with Ephraim. Jethro was looking at Cynthia, who was staring toward
the desk at the other end of the corridor, her face flushed, and her
fingers closed over the arms of her chair. It never occurred to Jethro
that she might have been embarrassed.

"W-what's the matter, Cynthy?" he asked, sinking into the chair beside
her.

Her breath caught sharply, but she tried to smile at him. He did not
discover what was the matter until long afterward, when he recalled that
evening to mind. Jethro was a man used to hotel corridors, used to
sitting in an attitude that led the unsuspecting to believe he was half
asleep; but no person of note could come or go whom he did not remember.
He had seen the distinguished party arrive at the desk, preceded by a
host of bell-boys with shawls and luggage. On the other hand, some of the
distinguished party had watched the proceeding of paying off the band
with no little amusement. Miss Janet Duncan had giggled audibly, her
mother had smiled, while her father and Mr. Worthington had pretended to
be deeply occupied with the hotel register. Somers was not there. Bob
Worthington laughed heartily with the rest until his eye, travelling down
the line of Jethro's progress, fell on Cynthia, and now he was striding
across the floor toward them. And even in the horrible confusion of that
moment Cynthia had a vagrant thought that his clothes had an enviable cut
and became him remarkably.

"Well, of all things, to find you here!" he cried; "this is the best luck
that ever happened. I am glad to see you. I was going to steal away to
Brampton for a couple of days before the term opened, and I meant to look
you up there. And Mr. Bass," said Bob, turning to Jethro, "I'm glad to
see you too."

Jethro looked at the young man and smiled and held out his hand. It was
evident that Bob was blissfully unaware that hostilities between powers
of no mean magnitude were about to begin; that the generals themselves
were on the ground, and that he was holding treasonable parley with the
enemy. The situation appealed to Jethro, especially as he glanced at the
backs of the two gentlemen facing the desk. These backs seemed to him
full of expression. "Th-thank you, Bob, th-thank you," he answered.

"I like the way you fixed that band," said Bob; "I haven't laughed as
much for a year. You hate music, don't you? I hope you'll forgive that
awful noise we made outside of your house last July, Mr. Bass."

"You--you make that noise, Bob, you--you make that?"

"Well," said Bob, "I'm afraid I did most of it. There was another fellow
that helped some and played the guitar. It was pretty bad," he added,
with a side glance at Cynthia, "but it was meant for a compliment."

"Oh," said she, "it was meant for a compliment, was it?"

"Of course," he answered, glad of the opportunity to turn his attention
entirely to her. "I was for slipping away right after supper, but my
father headed us off."

"Slipping away?" repeated Cynthia.

"You see, he had a kind of a reception and fireworks afterward. We didn't
get away till after nine, and then I thought I'd have a lecture when I
got home."

"Did you?" asked Cynthia.

"No," said Bob, "he didn't know where I'd been."

Cynthia felt the blood rush to her temples, but by habit and instinct she
knew when to restrain herself.

"Would it have made any difference to him where you had been?" she asked
calmly enough.

Bob had a presentiment that he was on dangerous ground. This new and
self-possessed Cynthia was an enigma to him--certainly a fascinating
enigma.

"My father world have thought I was a fool to go off serenading," he
answered, flushing. Bob did not like a lie; he knew that his father would
have been angry if he had heard he had gone to Coniston; he felt, in the
small of his back, that his father was angry mow, and guessed the reason.

She regarded him gravely as he spoke, and then her eyes left his face and
became fixed upon an object at the far end of the corridor. Bob turned in
time to see Janet Duncan swing on her heel and follow her mother up the
stairs. He struggled to find words to tide over what he felt was an
awkward moment.

"We've had a fine trip;" he said, "though I should much rather have
stayed at home. The West is a wonderful country, with its canons and
mountains and great stretches of plain. My father met us in Chicago, and
we came here. I don't know why, because Washington's dead at this time of
the year. I suppose it must be on account of politics." Looking at Jethro
with a sudden inspiration, "I hadn't thought of that."

Jethro had betrayed no interest in the conversation. He was seated, as
usual, on the small of his back. But he saw a young man of short stature,
with a freckled face and close-cropped, curly red hair, come into the
corridor by another entrance; he saw Isaac D. Worthington draw him aside
and speak to him, and he saw the young man coming towards them.

"How do you do, Miss Wetherell?" cried the young man joyously, while
still ten feet away, "I'm awfully glad to see you, upon my word; I am.
How long are you going to be in Washington?"

"I don't know, Mr. Duncan," answered Cynthia.

"Did Worthy know you were here?" demanded Mr. Duncan, suspiciously.

"He did when he saw me," said Cynthia, smiling.

"Not till then?" asked Mr. Duncan. "Say, Worthy; your father wants to see
you right away. I'm going to be in Washington a day or two--will you go
walking with me to-morrow morning, Miss Wetherell?"

"She's going walking with me," said Bob, not in the best of tempers.

"Then I'll go along," said Mr. Duncan, promptly.

By this time Cynthia got up and was holding out her hand to Bob
Worthington. "I'm not going walking with either of you," she said "I have
another engagement. And I think I'll have to say good night, because I'm
very tired."

"When can I see you?" Both the young men asked the question at once.

"Oh, you'll have plenty of chances," she answered, and was gone.

The young men looked at each other somewhat blankly; and then down at
Jethro, who did not seem to know that they were there, and then they made
their way toward the desk. But Isaac D. Worthington and his friends had
disappeared.

A few minutes later the distinguished-looking senator with whom Jethro
had been in conversation before supper entered the hotel. He seemed
preoccupied, and heedless of the salutations he received; but when he
caught sight of Jethro he crossed the corridor rapidly and sat down
beside him. Jethro did not move. The corridor was deserted now, save for
the two.

"Bass," began the senator, "what's the row up in your state?"

"H-haven't heard of any row," said Jethro.

"What did you come to Washington for?" demanded the senator, somewhat
sharply.

"Er--vacation," said Jethro, "vacation--to show my gal, Cynthy, the
capital."

"Now see here, Bass," said the senator, "I don't forget what happened in
'70. I don't object to wading through a swarm of bees to get a little
honey for a friend, but I think I'm entitled to know why he wants it."

"G-got the honey?" asked Jethro.

The senator took off his hat and wiped his brow, and then he stole a look
at Jethro, with apparently barren results.

"Jethro," he said, "people say you run that state of yours right up to
the handle. What's all this trouble about a two-for-a-cent
postmastership?"

"H-haven't heard of any trouble," said Jethro.

"Well, there is trouble," said the senator, losing patience at last. "When
I told Grant you were here and mentioned that little Brampton matter to
him,--it didn't seem much to me,--the bees began to fly pretty thick, I
can tell you. I saw right away that somebody had been stirring 'em up. It
looks to me, Jethro," said the senator gravely, "it looks to me as if you
had something of a rebellion on your hands."

"W-what'd Grant say?" Jethro inquired.

"Well, he didn't say a great deal--he isn't much of a talker, you know,
but what he did say was to the point. It seems that your man, Prescott,
doesn't come from Brampton, in the first place, and Grant says that while
he likes soldiers, he hasn't any use for the kind that want to lie down
and make the government support 'em. I'll tell you what I found out.
Worthington and Duncan wired the President this morning, and they've gone
up to the White House now. They've got a lot of railroad interests back
of them, and they've taken your friend Sutton into camp; but I managed to
get the President to promise not to do anything until he saw you tomorrow
afternoon at two."

Jethro sat silent so long that the senator began to think he wasn't going
to answer him at all. In his opinion, he had told Jethro some very grave
facts.

"W-when are you going to see the President again?" said Jethro, at last.

"To-morrow morning," answered the senator; "he wants me to walk over with
him to see the postmaster-general, who is sick in bed."

"What time do you leave the White House?--"

"At eleven," said the senator, very much puzzled.

"Er--Grant ever pay any attention to an old soldier on the street?"

The senator glanced at Jethro, and a twinkle came into his eye.

"Sometimes he has been known to," he answered.

"You--you ever pay any attention to an old soldier on the street?"

Then the senator's eyes began to snap.

"Sometimes I have been known to."

"Er--suppose an old soldier was in front of the White House at eleven
o'clock--an old soldier with a gal suppose?"

The senator saw the point, and took no pains to restrain his admiration.

"Jethro," he said, slapping him on the shoulder, "I'm willing to bet a
few thousand dollars you'll run your state for a while yet."




CHAPTER V

"Heard you say you was goin' for a walk this morning, Cynthy," Jethro
remarked, as they sat at breakfast the next morning.

"Why, of course," answered Cynthia, "Cousin Eph and I are going out to
see Washington, and he is to show me the places that he remembers." She
looked at Jethro appealingly. "Aren't you coming with us?" she asked.

"M-meet you at eleven, Cynthy," he said.

"Eleven!" exclaimed Cynthia in dismay, "that's almost dinner-time."

"M-meet you in front of the White House at eleven," said Jethro, "plumb
in front of it, under a tree."

By half-past seven, Cynthia and Ephraim with his green umbrella were in
the street, but it would be useless to burden these pages with a
description of all the sights they saw, and with the things that Ephraim
said about them, and incidentally about the war. After New York, much of
Washington would then have seemed small and ragged to any one who lacked
ideals and a national sense, but Washington was to Cynthia as Athens to a
Greek. To her the marble Capitol shining on its hill was a sacred temple,
and the great shaft that struck upward through the sunlight, though yet
unfinished, a fitting memorial to him who had led the barefoot soldiers
of the colonies through ridicule to victory. They looked up many
institutions and monument, they even had time to go to the Navy Yard, and
they saved the contemplation of the White House till the last. The White
House, which Cynthia thought the finest and most graceful mansion in all
the world, in its simplicity and dignity, a fitting dwelling for the
chosen of the nation. Under the little tree which Jethro had mentioned,
Ephraim stood bareheaded before the walls which had sheltered Lincoln,
which were now the home of the greatest of his captains, Grant: and
wondrous emotions played upon the girl's spirit, too, as she gazed. They
forgot the present in the past and the future, and they did not see the
two gentlemen who had left the portico some minutes before and were now
coming toward them along the sidewalk.

The two gentlemen, however, slowed their steps involuntarily at a sight
which was uncommon, even in Washington. The girl's arm was in the
soldier's, and her face, which even in repose had a true nobility, now
was alight with an inspiration that is seen but seldom in a lifetime. In
marble, could it have been wrought by a great sculptor, men would have
dreamed before it of high things.

The two, indeed, might have stood for a group, the girl as the spirit,
the man as the body which had risked and suffered all for it, and still
held it fast. For the honest face of the soldier reflected that spirit as
truly as a mirror.

Ephraim was aroused from his thoughts by Cynthia nudging his arm. He
started, put on his hat, and stared very hard at a man smoking a cigar
who was standing before him. Then he stiffened and raised his hand in an
involuntary salute. The man smiled. He was not very tall, he had a
closely trimmed light beard that was growing a little gray, he wore a
soft hat something like Ephraim's, a black tie on a white pleated shirt,
and his eyeglasses were pinned to his vest. His eyes were all kindness.

"How do you do, Comrade?" he said, holding out his hand.

"General," said Ephraim, "Mr. President," he added, correcting himself,
"how be you?" He shifted the green umbrella, and shook the hand timidly
but warmly.

"General will do," said the President, with a smiling glance at the tall
senator beside him, "I like to be called General."

"You've growed some older, General," said Ephraim, scanning his face with
a simple reverence and affection, "but you hain't changed so much as I'd
a thought since I saw you whittlin' under a tree beside the Lacy house in
the Wilderness."

"My duty has changed some," answered the President, quite as simply. He
added with a touch of sadness, "I liked those days best, Comrade."

"Well, I guess!" exclaimed Ephraim, "you're general over everything now,
but you're not a mite bigger man to me than you was."

The President took the compliment as it was meant.

"I found it easier to run an army than I do to run a country," he said.

Ephraim's blue eyes flamed with indignation.

"I don't take no stock in the bull-dogs and the gold harness at Long
Branch and--and all them lies the dratted newspapers print about
you,"--Ephraim hammered his umbrella on the pavement as an expression of
his feelings,--"and what's more, the people don't."

The President glanced at the senator again, and laughed a little,
quietly.

"Thank you; Comrade," he said.

"You're a plain, common man," continued Ephraim, paying the highest
compliment known to rural New England; "the people think a sight of you,
or they wouldn't hev chose you twice, General."

"So you were in the Wilderness?" said the President, adroitly changing
the subject.

"Yes, General. I was pressed into orderly duty the first day--that's when
I saw you whittlin' under the tree, and you didn't seem to have no more
consarn than if it had been a company drill. Had a cigar then, too. But
the second day; May the 6th, I was with the regiment. I'll never forget
that day," said Ephraim, warming to the subject, "when we was fightin'
Ewell up and down the Orange Plank Road, playin' hide-and-seek with the
Johnnies in the woods. You remember them woods, General?"

The President nodded, his cigar between his teeth. He looked as though
the scene were coming back to him.

"Never seen such woods," said Ephraim, "scrub oak and pine and cedars and
young stuff springin' up until you couldn't see the length of a company,
and the Rebs jumpin' and hollerin' around and shoutin' every which way.
After a while a lot of them saplings was mowed off clean by the bullets,
and then the woods caught afire, and that was hell."

"Were you wounded?" asked the President, quickly.

"I was hurt some, in the hip," answered Ephraim.

"Some!" exclaimed Cynthia, "why, you have walked lame ever since." She
knew the story by heart, but the recital of it never failed to stir her
blood! They carried him out just as he was going to be burned up, in a
blanket hung from rifles, and he was in the hospital nine months, and had
to come home for a while."

"Cynthy," said Ephraim in gentle reproof, "I callate the General don't
want to hear that."

Cynthia flushed, but the President looked at her with an added interest.

"My dear young lady," he said, "that seems to me the vital part of the
story. If I remember rightly," he added, turning again to Ephraim, the
Fifth Corps was on the Orange turnpike. What brigade were you in?"

"The third brigade of the First Division," answered Ephraim.

"Griffin's," said the President. "There were several splendid New England
regiments in that brigade. I sent them with Griffin to help Sheridan at
Five Forks."

"I was thar too," cried Ephraim.

"What!" said the President, "with the lame hip?"

"Well, General, I went back, I couldn't help it. I couldn't stay away
from the boys--just couldn't. I didn't limp as bad then as I do now. I
wahn't much use anywhere else, and I had l'arned to fight. Five Forks!"
exclaimed Ephraim. "I call that day to mind as if it was yesterday. I
remember how the boys yelled when they told us we was goin' to Sheridan.
We got started about daylight, and it took us till four o'clock in the
afternoon to git into position. The woods was just comin' a little green,
and the white dogwoods was bloomin' around. Sheridan, he galloped up to
the line with that black horse of his'n and hollered out, 'Come on, boys,
go in at a clean, jump or You won't ketch one of 'em.' You know how men,
even veterans like that Fifth Corps, sometimes hev to be pushed into a
fight. There was a man from a Maine regiment got shot in the head fust
thing. 'I'm killed,' said he. 'Oh, no, you're not,' says Sheridan,
'pickup your gun and go for 'em.' But he was killed. Well, we went for
'em through all the swamps and briers and everything, and Sheridan, thar
in front, had got the battle-flag and was rushin' round with it swearin'
and prayin' and shoutin', and the first thing we knowed he'd jumped his
horse clean over their logworks and landed right on top of the
Johnnie's."

"Yes," said the President, "that was Sheridan, sure enough."

"Mr. President," said the senator, who stood by wonderingly while General
Grant had lost himself in this conversation, "do you realize what time it
is?"

"Yes, yes," said the President, "we must go on. What was your rank,
Comrade?"

"Sergeant, General."

"I hope you have got a good pension for that hip," said the President,
kindly. It may be well to add that he was not always so incautious, but
this soldier bore the unmistakable stamp of simplicity and sincerity on
his face.

Ephraim hesitated.

"He never would ask for a pension, General," said Cynthia.

"What!" exclaimed the President in real astonishment, "are you so rich as
all that?" and he glanced at the green umbrella.

"Well, General," said Ephraim, uncomfortably, "I never liked the notion
of gittin' paid for it. You see, I was what they call a war-Democrat."

"Good Lord!" said the President, but more to himself. "What do you do
now?"

"I callate to make harness," answered Ephraim.

"Only he can't make it any more on account of his rheumatism, Mr.
President," Cynthia put in.

"I think you might call me General, too," he said, with the grace that
many simple people found inherent in him. "And may I ask your name, young
lady?"

"Cynthia Wetherell--General," she said smiling.

"That sounds more natural," said the President, and then to Ephraim,
"Your daughter?"

"I couldn't think more of her if she was," answered Ephraim; "Cynthy's
pulled me through some tight spells. Her mother was my cousin, General.
My name's Prescott--Ephraim Prescott."

"Ephraim Prescott!" ejaculated the President, sharply, taking his cigar
from his mouth, "Ephraim Prescott!"

"Prescott--that's right--Prescott, General," repeated Ephraim, sorely
puzzled by these manifestations of amazement.

"What did you come to Washington for?" asked the President.

"Well, General, I kind of hate to tell you--I didn't intend to mention
that. I guess I won't say nothin' about it," he added, "we've had such a
sociable time. I've always b'en a little mite ashamed of it, General,
ever since 'twas first mentioned."

"Good Lord!" said the President again, and then he looked at Cynthia.
"What is it, Miss Cynthia?" he asked.

It was now Cynthia's turn to be a little confused.

"Uncle Jethro--that is, Mr. Bass" (the President nodded), "went to Cousin
Eph when he couldn't make harness any more and said he'd give him the
Brampton post-office."

The President's eyes met the senator's, and both gentlemen laughed.
Cynthia bit her lip, not seeing any cause for mirth in her remark, while
Ephraim looked uncomfortable and mopped the perspiration from his brow.

"He said he'd give it to him, did he?" said the President. "Is Mr. Bass
your uncle?"

"Oh, no, General," replied Cynthia, "he's really no relation. He's done
everything for me, and I live with him since my father died. He was going
to meet us here," she continued, looking around hurriedly, "I'm sure I
can't think what's kept him."

"Mr. President, we are half an hour late already," said the senator,
hurriedly.

"Well, well," said the President, "I suppose I must go. Good-by, Miss
Cynthia," said he, taking the girl's hand warmly. "Good-by, Comrade. If
ever you want to see General Grant, just send in your name. Good-by."

The President lifted his hat politely to Cynthia and passed. He said
something to the senator which they did not hear, and the senator laughed
heartily. Ephraim and Cynthia watched them until they were out of sight.

"Godfrey!" exclaimed Ephraim, "they told me he was hard to talk to. Why,
Cynthy, he's as simple as a child."

"I've always thought that all great men must be simple," said Cynthia;
"Uncle Jethro is."

"To think that the President of the United States stood talkin' to us on
the sidewalk for half an hour," said Ephraim, clutching Cynthia's arm.
"Cynthy, I'm glad we didn't press that post-office matter it was worth
more to me than all the post-offices in the Union to have that talk with
General Grant."

They waited some time longer under the tree, happy in the afterglow of
this wonderful experience. Presently a clock struck twelve.

"Why, it's dinner-time, Cynthy," said Ephraim. "I guess Jethro haint'
a-comin'--must hev b'en delayed by some of them politicians."

"It's the first time I ever knew him to miss an appointment," said
Cynthia, as they walked back to the hotel.

Jethro was not in the corridor, so they passed on to the dining room and
looked eagerly from group to group. Jethro was not there, either, but
Cynthia heard some one laughing above the chatter of the guests, and drew
back into the corridor. She had spied the Duncans and the Worthingtons
making merry by themselves at a corner table, and it was Somers's laugh
that she heard. Bob, too, sitting next to Miss Duncan, was much amused
about something. Suddenly Cynthia's exaltation over the incident of the
morning seemed to leave her, and Bob Worthington's words which she had
pondered over in the night came back to her with renewed force. He did
not find it necessary to steal away to see Miss Duncan. Why should he
have "stolen away" to see her? Was it because she was a country girl, and
poor? That was true; but on the other hand, did she not live in the
sunlight, as it were, of Uncle Jethro's greatness, and was it not an
honor to come to his house and see any one? And why had Mr. Worthington
turned hid back on Jethro, and sent for Bob when he was talking to them?
Cynthia could not understand these things, and her pride was sorely
wounded by them.

"Perhaps Jethro's in his room," suggested Ephraim.

And indeed they found him there seated on the bed, poring over some
newspapers, and both in a breath demanded where he had been. Ephraim did
not wait for an answer.

"We seen General Grant, Jethro," he cried; "while we was waitin' for you
under the tree he come up and stood talkin' to us half an hour. Full half
an hour, wahn't it, Cynthy?"

"Oh, yes," answered Cynthia, forgetting her own grievance at the
recollection; "only it didn't seem nearly that long."

"W-want to know!" exclaimed Jethro, in astonishment, putting down his
paper. "H-how did it happen?"

"Come right up and spoke to us," said Ephraim, in a tone he might have
used to describe a miracle, "jest as if he was common folk. Never had a
more sociable talk with anybody. Why, there was times when I clean forgot
he was President of the United States. The boys won't believe it when we
git back at Coniston."

And Ephraim, full of his subject, began to recount from the beginning the
marvellous affair, occasionally appealing to Cynthia for confirmation.
How he had lived over again the Wilderness and Five Forks; how the
General had changed since he had seen him whittling under a tree; how the
General had asked about his pension.

"D-didn't mention the post-office, did you, Ephraim?"

"Why, no," replied Ephraim, "I didn't like to exactly. You see, we was
havin' such a good time I didn't want to spoil it, but Cynthy--"

"I told the President about it, Uncle Jethro; I told him how sick Cousin
Eph had been, and that you were going to give him the postmastership
because he couldn't work any more with his hands."

The training of a lifetime had schooled Jethro not to betray surprise.

"K-kind of mixin' up in politics, hain't you, Cynthy? P-President say
he'd give you the postmastership, Eph?" he asked.

"He didn't say nothin' about it, Jethro," answered Ephraim slowly; "I
callate he has other views for the place, and he was too kind to come
right out with 'em and spoil our mornin'. You see, Jethro, I wahn't only
a sergeant, and Brampton's gittin' to be a big town."

"But, surely," cried Cynthia, who could scarcely wait for him to finish,
"surely you're going to give Cousin Eph the post-office, aren't you,
Uncle Jethro? All you have to do is to tell the President that you want
it for him. Why, I had an idea that we came down for that."

"Now, Cynthy," Ephraim put in, deprecatingly.

"Who else would get the post-office?" asked Cynthia. "Surely you're not
going to let Mr. Sutton have it for Dave Wheelock!"

"Er--Cynthy," said Jethro, slyly, "w-what'd you say to me once about
interferin' with women's fixin's?"

Cynthia saw the point. She perceived also that the mazes of politics were
not to be understood by a young woman, of even by an old soldier. She
laughed and seized Jethro's hands and pulled him from the bed.

"We won't get any dinner unless we hurry," she said.

When they reached the dining room she was relieved to discover that the
party in the corner had gone.

In the afternoon there were many more sights to be viewed, but they were
back in the hotel again by half-past four, because Ephraim's Wilderness
leg had its limits of endurance. Jethro (though he had not mentioned the
fact to them) had gone to the White House.

It was during the slack hours that our friend the senator, whose interest
in the matter of the Brampton post office out-weighed for the present
certain grave problems of the Administration in which he was involved,
hurried into the Willard Hotel, looking for Jethro Bass. He found him
without much trouble in his usual attitude, occupying one of the chairs
in the corridor.

"Well," exclaimed the senator, with a touch of eagerness he did not often
betray, "did you see Grant? How about your old soldier? He's one of the
most delightful characters I ever met--simple as a child," and he laughed
at the recollection. "That was a masterstroke of yours, Bass, putting him
under that tree with that pretty girl. I doubt if you ever did anything
better in your life. Did they tell you about it?"

"Yes," said Jethro, "they told me about it."

"And how about Grant? What did he say to you?"

"W-well, I went up there and sent in my card. D-didn't have to wait a
great while, as I was pretty early, and soon he came in, smokin' a black
cigar, head bent forward a little. D-didn't ask me to sit down, and what
talkin' we did we did standin'. D-didn't ask me what he could do for me,
what I wanted, or anything else, but just stood there, and I stood there.
F-fust time in my life I didn't know how to commerce or what to say;
looked--looked at me--didn't take his eye off me. After a while I got
started, somehow; told him I was there to ask him to appoint Ephraim
Prescott to the Brampton postoffice--t-told him all about Ephraim from
the time he was locked in the cradle--never was so hard put that I could
remember. T-told him how Ephraim shook butternuts off my fathers
tree--for all I know. T-told him all about Ephraim's war
record--leastways all I could call to mind--and, by Godfrey! before I got
through, I wished I'd listened to more of it. T-told him about Ephraim's
Wilderness bullets--t-told him about Ephraim's rheumatism,--how it
bothered him when he went to bed and when he got up again."

If Jethro had glanced at his companion, he would have seen the senator
was shaking with silent and convulsive laughter.

"All the time I talked to him I didn't see a muscle move in his face,"
Jethro continued, "so I started in again, and he looked--looked--looked
right at me. W-wouldn't wink--don't think he winked once while I was in
that room. I watched him as close as I could, and I watched to see if a
muscle moved or if I was makin' any impression. All he would do was to
stand there and look--look--look. K-kept me there ten minutes and never
opened his mouth at all. Hardest man to talk to I ever met--never see a
man before but what I could get him to say somethin', if it was only a
cuss word. I got tired of it after a while, made up my mind that I had
found one man I couldn't move. Then what bothered me was to get out of
that room. If I'd a had a Bible I believe I'd a read it to him. I didn't
know what to say, but I did say this after a while:--"'W-well, Mr.
President, I guess I've kept you long enough--g-guess you're a pretty
busy man. H-hope you'll give Mr. Prescott that postmastership. Er--er
good-by.'

"'Wait, sir,' he said.

"'Yes,' I said, 'I-I'll wait.'

"Thought you was goin' to give him that postmastership, Mr. Bass,' he
said."

At this point the senator could not control his mirth, and the empty
corridor echoed his laughter.

"By thunder! what did you say to that?"

"Er--I said, 'Mr. President, I thought I was until a while ago.'

"'And when did you change your mind?' says he."

Then he laughed a little--not much--but he laughed a little.

"'I understand that your old soldier lives within the limits of the
delivery of the Brampton office,' said he."

"'That's correct, Mr. President,' said I."

"'Well,' said he, 'I will app'int him postmaster at Brampton, Mr. Bass.'"

"'When?' said I."

Then he laughed a little more.

"I'll have the app'intment sent to your hotel this afternoon,' said he."

"'Then I said to him, 'This has come out full better than I expected, Mr.
President. I'm much obliged to you.' He didn't say nothin' more, so I
come out."

"Grant didn't say anything about Worthington or Duncan, did he?" asked
the senator, curiously, as he rose to go.

"G-guess I've told you all he said," answered Jethro; "'twahn't a great
deal."

The senator held out his hand.

"Bass," he said, laughing, "I believe you came pretty near meeting your
match. But if Grant's the hardest man in the Union to get anything out
of, I've a notion who's the second." And with this parting shot the
senator took his departure, chuckling to himself as he went.

As has been said, there were but few visitors in Washington at this time,
and the hotel corridor was all but empty. Presently a substantial-looking
gentleman came briskly in from the street, nodding affably to the colored
porters and bell-boys, who greeted him by name. He wore a flowing Prince
Albert coat, which served to dignify a growing portliness, and his
coal-black whiskers glistened in the light. A voice, which appeared to
come from nowhere in particular, brought the gentleman up standing.

"How be you, Heth?"

It may not be that Mr. Sutton's hand trembled, but the ashes of his cigar
fell to the floor. He was not used to visitations, and for the instant,
if the truth be told, he was not equal to looking around.

"Like Washington, Heth--like Washington?"

Then Mr. Sutton turned. His presence of mind, and that other presence of
which he was so proud, seemed for the moment to have deserted him.

"S-stick pretty close to business, Heth, comin' down here out of session
time. S-stick pretty close to business, don't you, since the people sent
you to Congress?"

Mr. Sutton might have offered another man a cigar or a drink, but (as is
well known) Jethro was proof against tobacco or stimulants.

"Well," said the Honorable Heth, catching his breath and making a dive,
"I am surprised to see you, Jethro," which was probably true.

"Th-thought you might be," said Jethro. "Er--glad to see me, Heth--glad
to see me?"

As has been recorded, it is peculiarly difficult to lie to people who are
not to be deceived.

"Why, certainly I am," answered the Honorable Heth, swallowing hard,
"certainly I am, Jethro. I meant to have got to Coniston this summer, but
I was so busy--"

"Peoples' business, I understand. Er--hear you've gone in for high-minded
politics, Heth--r-read a highminded speech of yours--two high-minded
speeches. Always thought you was a high-minded man, Heth."

"How did you like those speeches, Jethro?" asked Mr. Sutton, striving as
best he might to make some show of dignity.

"Th-thought they was high-minded," said Jethro.

Then there was a silence, for Mr. Sutton could think of nothing more to
say. And he yearned to depart with a great yearning, but something held
him there.

"Heth," said Jethro after a while, "you was always very friendly and
obliging. You've done a great many favors for me in your life."

"I've always tried to be neighborly, Jethro," said Mr. Sutton, but his
voice sounded a little husky even to himself.

"And I may have done one or two little things for you, Heth," Jethro
continued, "but I can't remember exactly. Er--can you remember, Heth."

Mr. Sutton was trying with becoming nonchalance to light the stump of his
cigar. He did not succeed this time. He pulled himself together with a
supreme effort.

"I think we've both been mutually helpful, Jethro," he said, "mutually
helpful."

"Well," said Jethro, reflectively, "I don't know as I could have put it
as well as that--there's somethin' in being an orator."

There was another silence, a much longer one. The Honorable Heth threw
his butt away, and lighted another cigar. Suddenly, as if by magic, his
aplomb returned, and in a flash of understanding he perceived the
situation. He saw himself once more as the successful congressman, the
trusted friend of the railroad interests, and he saw Jethro as a
discredited boss. He did not stop to reflect that Jethro did not act like
a discredited boss, as a keener man might have done. But if the Honorable
Heth had been a keener man, he would not have been at that time a
congressman. Mr. Sutton accused himself of having been stupid in not
grasping at once that the tables were turned, and that now he was the one
to dispense the gifts.

"K-kind of fortunate you stopped to speak to me, Heth. N-now I come to
think of it, I hev a little favor to ask of you."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Sutton, blowing out the smoke; "of course anything I
can do, Jethro--anything in reason."

"W-wouldn't ask a high-minded man to do anything he hadn't ought to,"
said Jethro; "the fact is, I'd like to git Eph Prescott appointed at the
Brampton post-office. You can fix that, Heth--can't you--you can fix
that?"

Mr. Sutton stuck his thumb into his vest pocket and cleared his throat.

"I can't tell you how sorry I am not to oblige you, Jethro, but I've
arranged to give that post-office to Dave Wheelock."

"A-arranged it, hev You--a-arranged it?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Sutton, scarcely believing his own ears. Could it be
possible that he was using this patronizingly kind tone to Jethro Bass?

"Well, that's too bad," said Jethro; "g-got it all fixed, hev you?"

"Practically," answered Mr. Sutton, grandly; "indeed, I may go as far as
to say that it is as certain as if I had the appointment here in my
pocket. I'm sorry not to oblige you, Jethro; but these are matters which
a member of Congress must look after pretty closely." He held out his
hand, but Jethro did not appear to see it,--he had his in his pockets.
"I've an important engagement," said the Honorable Heth, consulting a
large gold watch. "Are you going to be in Washington long?"

"G-guess I've about got through, Heth--g-guess I've about got through,"
said Jethro.

"Well, if you have time and there's any other little thing, I'm in Room
29," said Mr. Sutton, as he put his foot on the stairway.

"T-told Worthington you got that app'intment for Wheelock--t-told
Worthington?" Jethro called out after him.

Mr. Sutton turned and waved his cigar and smiled in acknowledgment of
this parting bit of satire. He felt that he could afford to smile. A few
minutes later he was ensconced on the sofa of a private sitting room
reviewing the incident, with much gusto, for the benefit of Mr. Isaac D.
Worthington and Mr. Alexander Duncan. Both of these gentlemen laughed
heartily, for the Honorable Heth Sutton knew the art of telling a story
well, at least, and was often to be seen with a group around him in the
lobbies of Congress.




CHAPTER VI

About five o'clock that afternoon Ephraim was sitting in his
shirt-sleeves by the window of his room, and Cynthia was reading aloud to
him an article (about the war, of course) from a Washington paper, which
his friend, Mr. Beard, had sent him. There was a knock at the door, and
Cynthia opened it to discover a colored hall-boy with a roll in his hand.

"Mistah Ephum Prescott?" he said.

"Yes," answered Ephraim, "that's me."

Cynthia shut the door and gave him the roll, but Ephraim took it as
though he were afraid of its contents.

"Guess it's some of them war records from Amasy," he said.

"Oh, Cousin Eph," exclaimed Cynthia, excitedly, "why don't you open it?
If you don't I will."

"Guess you'd better, Cynthy," and he held it out to her with a trembling
hand.

Cynthia did open it, and drew out a large document with seals and
printing and signatures.

"Cousin Eph," she cried, holding it under his nose, "Cousin Eph, you're
postmaster of Brampton!"

Ephraim looked at the paper, but his eyes swam, and he could only make
out a dancing, bronze seal.

"I want to know!" he exclaimed. "Fetch Jethro."

But Cynthia had already flown on that errand. Curiously enough, she ran
into Jethro in the hall immediately outside of Ephraim's door. Ephraim
got to his feet; it was very difficult for him to realize that his
troubles were ended, that he was to earn his living at last. He looked at
Jethro, and his eyes filled with tears. "I guess I can't thank you as I'd
ought to, Jethro," he said, "leastways, not now."

"I'll thank him for you, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia. And she did.

"D-don't thank me," said Jethro, "I didn't have much to do with it, Eph.
Thank the President."

Ephraim did thank the President, in one of the most remarkable letters,
from a literary point of view, ever received at the White House. For the
art of literature largely consists in belief in what one is writing, and
Ephraim's letter had this quality of sincerity, and no lack of vividness
as well. He spent most of the evening in composing it.

Cynthia, too, had received a letter that day--a letter which she had read
several times, now with a smile, and again with a pucker of the forehead
which was meant for a frown. "Dear Cynthia," it said. "Where do you keep
yourself? I am sure you would not be so cruel if you knew that I was
aching to see you." Aching! Cynthia repeated the word, and remembered the
glimpse she had had of him in the dining room with Miss Janet Duncan.
"Whenever I have been free" (Cynthia repeated this also, somewhat
ironically, although she conceded it the merit of frankness), "Whenever I
have been free, I have haunted the corridors for a sight of you. Think of
me as haunting the hotel desk for an answer to this, telling me when I
can see you--and where. P.S. I shall be around all evening." And it was
signed, "Your friend and playmate, R. Worthington."

It is a fact--not generally known--that Cynthia did answer the
letter--twice. But she sent neither answer. Even at that age she was
given to reflection, and much as she may have approved of the spirit of
the letter, she liked the tone of it less. Cynthia did not know a great
deal of the world, it is true, but the felt instinctively that something
was wrong when Bob resorted to such means of communication. And she was
positively relieved, or thought that she was, when she went down to
supper and discovered that the table in the corner was empty.

After supper Ephraim had his letter to write, and Jethro wished to sit in
the corridor. But Cynthia had learned that the corridor was not the place
for a girl, so she explained--to Jethro that he would find her in the
parlor if he wanted her, and that she was going there to read. That
parlor Cynthia thought a handsome room, with its high windows and lace
curtains, its long mirrors and marble-topped tables. She established
herself under a light, on a sofa in one corner, and sat, with the book on
her lap watching the people who came and went. She had that delicious
sensation which comes to the young when they first travel--the sensation
of being a part of the great world; and she wished that she knew these
people, and which were the great, and which the little ones. Some of them
looked at her intently, she thought too intently, and at such times she
pretended to read. She was aroused by hearing some one saying:--"Isn't
this Miss Wetherell?"

Cynthia looked up and caught her breath, for the young lady who had
spoken was none other than Miss Janet Duncan herself. Seen thus
startlingly at close range, Miss Duncan was not at all like what Cynthia
had expected--but then most people are not. Janet Duncan was, in fact,
one of those strange persons who do not realize the picture which their
names summon up. She was undoubtedly good-looking; her hair, of a more
golden red than her brother's, was really wonderful; her neck was
slender; and she had a strange, dreamy face that fascinated Cynthia, who
had never seen anything like it.

She put down her book on the sofa and got up, not without a little tremor
at this unexpected encounter.

"Yes, I'm Cynthia Wetherell," she replied.

To add to her embarrassment, Miss Duncan seized both her hands
impulsively and gazed into her face.

"You're really very beautiful," she said. "Do you know it?"

Cynthia's only answer to this was a blush. She wondered if all city girls
were like Miss Duncan.

"I was determined to come up and speak to you the first chance I had,"
Janet continued. "I've been making up stories about you."

"Stories!" exclaimed Cynthia, drawing away her hands.

"Romances," said Miss Duncan--"real romances. Sometimes I think I'm going
to be a novelist, because I'm always weaving stories about people that I
see people who interest me, I mean. And you look as if you might be the
heroine of a wonderful romance."

Cynthia's breath was now quite taken away.

"Oh," she said, "I--had never thought that I looked like that."

"But you do," said Miss Duncan; "you've got all sorts of possibilities in
your face--you look as if you might have lived for ages."

"As old as that?" exclaimed Cynthia, really startled.

"Perhaps I don't express myself very well" said the other, hastily; "I
wish you could see what I've written about you already. I can do it so
much better with pen and ink. I've started quite a romance already."

"What is it?" asked Cynthia, not without interest.

"Sit down on the sofa and I'll tell you," said Miss Duncan; "I've done it
all from your face, too. I've made you a very poor girl brought up by
peasants, only you are really of a great family, although nobody knows
it. A rich duke sees you one day when he is hunting and falls in love
with you, and you have to stand a lot of suffering and persecution
because of it, and say nothing. I believe you could do that," added
Janet, looking critically at Cynthia's face.

"I suppose I could if I had to," said Cynthia, "but I shouldn't like it."

"Oh, it would do you good," said Janet; "it would ennoble your character.
Not that it needs it," she added hastily. "And I could write another
story about that quaint old man who paid the musicians to go away, and
who made us all laugh so much."

Cynthia's eye kindled.

"Mr. Bass isn't a quaint old man," she said; "he's the greatest man in
the state."

Miss Duncan's patronage had been of an unconscious kind. She knew that
she had offended, but did not quite realize how.

"I'm so sorry," she cried, "I didn't mean to hurt you. You live with him,
don't you--Coniston?"

"Yes," replied Cynthia, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

"I've heard about Coniston. It must be quite a romance in itself to live
all the year round in such a beautiful place and to make your own
clothes. Yours become you very well," said Miss Duncan, "although I don't
know why. They're not at all in style, and yet they give you quite an air
of distinction. I wish I could live in Coniston for a year, anyway, and
write a book about you. My brother and Bob Worthington went out there one
night and serenaded you, didn't they?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, that peculiar flash coming into her eyes again, "and
I think it was very foolish of them."

"Do you?" exclaimed Miss Duncan, in surprise; "I wish somebody would
serenade me. I think it was the most romantic thing Bob ever did. He's
wild about you, and so is Somers they have both told me so in
confidence."

Cynthia's face was naturally burning now.

"If it were true," she said, "they wouldn't have told you about it."

"I suppose that's so," said Miss Duncan, thoughtfully, "only you're very
clever to have seen it. Now that I know you, I think you a more
remarkable person than ever. You don't seem at all like a country girl,
and you don't talk like one."

Cynthia laughed outright. She could not help liking Janet Duncan, mere
flesh and blood not being proof against such compliments.

"I suppose it's because my father was an educated man," she said; "he
taught me to read and speak when I was young."

"Why, you are just like a person out of a novel! Who was your father?"

"He kept the store at Coniston," answered Cynthia, smiling a little
sadly. She would have liked to have added that William Wetherell would
have been a great man if he had had health, but she found it difficult to
give out confidences, especially when they were in the nature of
surmises.

"Well," said Janet, stoutly, "I think that is more like a story than
ever. Do you know," she continued, "I saw you once at the state capital
outside of our grounds the day Bob ran after you. That was when I was in
love with him. We had just come back from Europe then, and I thought he
was the most wonderful person I had ever seen."

If Cynthia had felt any emotion from this disclosure, she did not betray
it. Janet, moreover, was not looking for it.

"What made you change your mind?" asked Cynthia, biting her lip.

"Oh, Bob hasn't the temperament," said Janet, making use of a word that
she had just discovered; "he's too practical--he never does or says the
things you want him to. He's just been out West with us on a trip, and he
was always looking at locomotives and brakes and grades and bridges and
all such tiresome things. I should like to marry a poet," said Miss
Duncan, dreamily; "I know they want me to marry Bob, and Mr. Worthington
wants it. I'm sure, of that. But he wouldn't at all suit me."

If Cynthia had been able to exercise an equal freedom of speech, she
might have been impelled to inquire what young Mr. Worthington's views
were in the matter. As it was, she could think of nothing appropriate to
say, and just then four people entered the room and came towards them.
Two of these were Janet's mother and father, and the other two were Mr.
Worthington, the elder, and the Honorable Heth Sutton. Mrs. Duncan, whom
Janet did not at all resemble was a person who naturally commanded
attention. She had strong features, and a very decided, though not
disagreeable, manner.

"I couldn't imagine what had become of you, Janet," she said, coming
forward and throwing off her lace shawl. "Whom have you found--a school
friend?"

"No, Mamma," said Janet, "this is Cynthia Wetherell." "Oh," said Mrs.
Duncan, looking very hard at Cynthia in a near-sighted way, and, not
knowing in the least who she was; "you haven't seen Senator and Mrs.
Meade, have you, Janet? They were to be here at eight o'clock."

"No," said Janet, turning again to Cynthia and scarcely hearing the
question.

"Janet hasn't seen them, Dudley," said Mrs. Duncan, going up to Mr.
Worthington, who was pulling his chop whiskers by the door. "Janet has
discovered such a beautiful creature," she went on, in a voice which she
did not take the trouble to lower. "Do look at her, Alexander. And you,
Mr. Sutton--who are such a bureau of useful information, do tell me who
she is. Perhaps she comes from your part of the country--her name's
Wetherell."

"Wetherell? Why, of course I know her," said Mr. Sutton, who was greatly
pleased because Mrs. Duncan had likened him to an almanac: greatly
pleased this evening in every respect, and even the diamond in his bosom
seemed to glow with a brighter fire. He could afford to be generous
to-night, and he turned to Mr. Worthington and laughed knowingly. "She's
the ward of our friend Jethro," he explained.

"What is she?" demanded Mrs. Duncan, who knew and cared nothing about
politics, a country girl, I suppose."

"Yes," replied Mr. Sutton, "a country girl from a little village not far
from Clovelly. A good girl, I believe, in spite of the atmosphere in
which she has been raised."

"It's really wonderful, Mr. Sutton, how you seem to know every one in
your district, including the women and children," said the lady; "but I
suppose you wouldn't be where you are if you didn't."

The Honorable Heth cleared his throat.

"Wetherell," Mr. Duncan was saying, staring at Cynthia through his
spectacles, "where have I heard that name?"

He must suddenly have remembered, and recalled also that he and his ally
Worthington had been on opposite sides in the Woodchuck Session, for he
sat down abruptly beside the door, and remained there for a while. For
Mr. Duncan had never believed Mr. Merrill's explanation concerning poor
William Wetherell' s conduct.

"Pretty, ain't she?" said Mr. Sutton to Mr. Worthington. "Guess she's
more dangerous than Jethro, now that we've clipped his wings a little."
The congressman had heard of Bob's infatuation.

Isaac D. Worthington, however, was in a good humor this evening and was
moved by a certain curiosity to inspect the girl. Though what he had seen
and heard of his son's conduct with her had annoyed him, he did not
regard it seriously.

"Aren't you going to speak to your constituent, Mr. Sutton?" said Mrs.
Duncan, who was bored because her friends had not arrived; "a congressman
ought to keep on the right side of the pretty girls, you know."

It hadn't occurred to the Honorable Heth to speak to his constituent. The
ways of Mrs. Duncan sometimes puzzled him, and he could not see why that
lady and her daughter seemed to take more than a passing interest in the
girl. But if they could afford to notice her, certainly he could; so he
went forward graciously and held out his hand to Cynthia; interrupting
Miss Duncan in the middle of a discourse upon her diary.

"How do you do, Cynthia?" said Mr. Sutton. Had he been in Coniston, he
would have said, "How be you?"

Cynthia took the hand, but did not rise, somewhat to Mr. Sutton's
annoyance. A certain respect was due to a member of Congress and the
Rajah of Clovelly.

"How do you do, Mr. Sutton?" said Cynthia, very coolly.

"I like her," remarked Mrs. Duncan to Mr. Worthington.

"This is a splendid trip for you, eh, Cynthia?" Mr. Sutton persisted,
with a praiseworthy determination to be pleasant.

"It has turned out to be so, Mr. Sutton," replied Cynthia. This was not
precisely the answer Mr. Sutton expected, and to tell the truth, he
didn't know quite what to make of it.

"A great treat to see Washington and New York, isn't it?" said Mr.
Sutton, kindly, "a great treat for a Coniston girl. I suppose you came
through New York and saw the sights?"

"Is there another way to get to Washington?" asked Cynthia.

Mrs. Duncan nudged Mr. Worthington and drew a little nearer, while Mr.
Sutton began to wish he had not been lured into the conversation. Cynthia
had been very polite, but there was something in the quiet manner in
which the girl's eyes were fixed upon him that made him vaguely uneasy.
He could not back out with dignity, and he felt himself on the verge of
becoming voluble. Mr. Sutton prided himself on never being voluble.

"Why, no," he answered, "we have to go to New York to get anywhere in
these days." There was a slight pause. "Uncle Jethro taking you and Mr.
Prescott on a little pleasure trip?" He had not meant to mention Jethro's
name, but he found himself, to his surprise, a little at a loss for a
subject.

"Well, partly a pleasure trip. It's always a pleasure for Uncle Jethro to
do things for others," said Cynthia, quietly, "although people do not
always appreciate what he does for them."

The Honorable Heth coughed. He was now very uncomfortable, indeed. How
much did this astounding young person know, whom he had thought so
innocent?

"I didn't discover he was in town until I ran across him in the corridor
this evening. Should have liked to have introduced him to some of the
Washington folks--some of the big men, although not many of 'em are
here," Mr. Sutton ran on, not caring to notice the little points of light
in Cynthia's eyes. (The idea of Mr. Sutton introducing Uncle Jethro to
anybody!) "I haven't seen Ephraim Prescott. It must be a great treat for
him, too, to get away on a little trip and see his army friends. How is
he?"

"He's very happy," said Cynthia.

"Happy!" exclaimed Mr. Sutton. "Oh, yes, of course, Ephraim's always
happy, in spite of his troubles and his rheumatism. I always liked
Ephraim Prescott."

Cynthia did not answer this remark at all, and Mr. Sutton suspected
strongly that she did not believe it, therefore he repeated it.

"I always liked Ephraim. I want you to tell Jethro that I'm downright
sorry I couldn't get him that Brampton postmastership."

"I'll tell him that you are sorry, Mr. Sutton," replied Cynthia, gravely,
"but I don't think it'll do any good."

Not do any good!--What did the girl mean? Mr. Sutton came to the
conclusion that he had been condescending enough, that somehow he was
gaining no merit in Mrs. Duncan's eyes by this kindness to a constituent.
He buttoned up his coat rather grandly.

"I hope you won't misunderstand me, Cynthia," he said. "I regret
extremely that my sense of justice demanded that I should make David
Wheelock postmaster at Brampton, and I have made him so."

It was now Cynthia's turn to be amazed.

"But," she exclaimed, "but Cousin Ephraim is postmaster of Brampton."

Mr. Sutton started violently, and that part of his face not hidden by his
whiskers seemed to pale, and Mr: Worthington, usually self-possessed,
took a step forward and seized him by the arm.

"What does this mean, Sutton?" he said.

Mr. Sutton pulled himself together, and glared at Cynthia.

"I think you are mistaken," said he, "the congressman of the district
usually arranges these matters, and the appointment will be sent to Mr.
Wheelock to-morrow."

"But Cousin Ephraim already has the appointment," said Cynthia; "it was
sent to him this afternoon, and he is up in his room now writing to thank
the President for it."

"What in the world's the matter?" cried Mrs. Duncan, in astonishment.

Cynthia's simple announcement had indeed caused something of a panic
among the gentlemen present. Mr. Duncan had jumped up from his seat
beside the door, and Mr. Worthington, his face anything but impassive,
tightened his hold on the congressman's arm.

"Good God, Sutton!" he exclaimed, "can this be true?"

As for Cynthia, she was no less astonished than Mrs. Duncan. by the fact
that these rich and powerful gentlemen were so excited over a little
thing like the postmastership of Brampton. But Mr. Sutton laughed; it was
not hearty, but still it might have passed muster for a laugh.

"Nonsense," he exclaimed, making a fair attempt to regain his composure,
"the girl's got it mixed up with something else--she doesn't know what
she's talking about."

Mrs. Duncan thought the girl did look uncommonly as if she knew what she
was talking about, and Mr. Duncan and Mr. Worthington had some such
impression, too, as they stared at her. Cynthia's eyes flashed, but her
voice was no louder than before.

"I am used to being believed, Mr. Sutton," she said, "but here's Uncle
Jethro himself. You might ask him."

They all turned in amazement, and one, at least, in trepidation, to
perceive Jethro Bass standing behind them with his hands in his pockets,
as unconcerned as though he were under the butternut tree in Coniston.

"How be you, Heth?" he said. "Er--still got that appointment
p-practically in your pocket?"

"Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia, "Mr. Sutton does not believe me when I tell
him that Cousin Ephraim has been made postmaster of Brampton. He would
like to have you tell him whether it is so or not."

But this, as it happened, was exactly what the Honorable Heth did not
want to have Jethro tell him. How he got out of the parlor of the Willard
House he has not to this day a very clear idea. As a matter of fact, he
followed Mr. Worthington and Mr. Duncan, and they made their exit by the
farther door. Jethro did not appear to take any notice of their
departure.

"Janet," said Mrs. Duncan, "I think Senator and Mrs. Meade must have gone
to our sitting room." Then, to Cynthia's surprise, the lady took her by
the hand. "I can't imagine what you've done, my dear," she said
pleasantly, "but I believe that you are capable of taking care of
yourself, and I like you."

Thus it will be seen that Mrs. Duncan was an independent person.
Sometimes heiresses are apt to be.

"And I like you, too," said Janet, taking both of Cynthia's hands, "and I
hope to see you very, very often."

Jethro looked after them.

"Er--the women folks seem to have some sense," he said. Then he turned to
Cynthia. "B-be'n havin' some fun with Heth, Cynthy?" he inquired.

"I haven't any respect for Mr. Sutton," said Cynthia, indignantly; "it
serves him right for presuming to think that he could give a post-office
to any one."

Jethro made no remark concerning this presumption on the part of the
congressman of the district. Cynthia's indignation against Mr. Sutton was
very real, and it was some time before she could compose herself
sufficiently to tell Jethro what had happened. His enjoyment as he
listened may be imagined but presently he forgot this, and became aware
that something really troubled her.

"Uncle Jethro," she asked suddenly, "why do they treat me as they do?"

He did not answer at once. This was because of a pain around his
heart--had she known it. He had felt that pain before.

"H-how do they treat you, Cynthy?"

She hesitated. She had not yet learned to use the word patronize in the
social sense, and she was at a loss to describe the attitude of Mrs.
Duncan and her daughter, though her instinct had registered it. She was
at a loss to account for Mr. Worthington's attitude, too. Mr. Sutton's
she bitterly resented.

"Are they your enemies?" she demanded.

Jethro was in real distress.

"If they are," she continued, "I won't speak to them again. If they can't
treat me as--as your daughter ought to be treated, I'll turn my back on
them. I am--I am just like your daughter--am I not, Uncle Jethro?"

He put out his hand and seized hers roughly, and his voice was thick with
suffering.

"Yes, Cynthy," he said, "you--you're all I've got in the world."

She squeezed his hand in return.

"I know it, Uncle Jethro," she cried contritely, "I oughtn't to have
troubled you by asking. You--you have done everything for me, much more
than I deserve. And I shan't be hurt after this when people are too small
to appreciate how good you are, and how great."

The pain tightened about Jethro's heart--tightened so sharply that he
could not speak, and scarcely breathe because of it. Cynthia picked up
her novel, and set the bookmark.

"Now that Cousin Eph is provided for, let's go back to Coniston, Uncle
Jethro." A sudden longing was upon her for the peaceful life in the
shelter of the great ridge, and she thought of the village maples all red
and gold with the magic touch of the frosts. "Not that I haven't enjoyed
my trip," she added; "but we are so happy there."

He did not look at her, because he was afraid to.

"C-Cynthy," he said, after a little pause, "th-thought we'd go to
Boston."

"Boston, Uncle Jethro!"

"Er--to-morrow--at one--to-morrow--like to go to Boston?"

"Yes," she said thoughtfully, "I remember parts of it. The Common, where
I used to walk with Daddy, and the funny old streets that went uphill. It
will be nice to go back to Coniston that way--over Truro Pass in the
train."

That night a piece of news flashed over the wires to New England, and the
next morning a small item appeared in the Newcastle Guardian to the
effect that one Ephraim Prescott had bean appointed postmaster at
Brampton. Copied in the local papers of the state, it caused some
surprise in Brampton, to be sure, and excitement in Coniston. Perhaps
there were but a dozen men, however, who saw its real significance, who
knew through this item that Jethro Bass was still supreme--that the
railroads had failed to carry this first position in their war against
him.

It was with a light heart the next morning that Cynthia, packed the
little leather trunk which had been her father's. Ephraim was in the
corridor regaling his friend, Mr. Beard, with that wonderful encounter
with General Grant which sounded so much like a Fifth Reader anecdote of
a chance meeting with royalty. Jethro's room was full of visiting
politicians. So Cynthia, when she had finished her packing, went out to
walk about the streets alone, scanning the people who passed her, looking
at the big houses, and wondering who lived in them. Presently she found
herself, in the middle of the morning, seated on a bench in a little
park, surrounded by colored mammies and children playing in the paths. It
seemed a long time since she had left the hills, and this glimpse of
cities had given her many things to think and dream about. Would she
always live in Coniston? Or was her future to be cast among those who
moved in the world and helped to sway it? Cynthia felt that she was to be
of these, though she could not reason why, and she told herself that the
feeling was foolish. Perhaps it was that she knew in the bottom of her
heart that she had been given a spirit and intelligence to cope with a
larger life than that of Coniston. With a sense that such imaginings were
vain, she tried to think what the would do if she were to become a great
lady like Mrs. Duncan.

She was aroused from these reflections by a distant glimpse, through the
trees, of Mr. Robert Worthington. He was standing quite alone on the edge
of the park, his hands in his pockets, staring at the White House.
Cynthia half rose, and then sat down and looked at him again. He wore a
light gray, loose-fitting suit and a straw hat, and she could not but
acknowledge that there was something stalwart and clean and altogether
appealing in him. She wondered, indeed, why he now failed to appeal to
Miss Duncan, and she began to doubt the sincerity of that young lady's
statements. Bob certainly was not romantic, but he was a man--or would be
very soon.

Cynthia sat still, although her impulse was to go away. She scarcely
analyzed her feeling of wishing to avoid him. It may not be well, indeed,
to analyze them on paper too closely. She had an instinct that only pain
could come from frequent meetings, and she knew now what but a week ago
was a surmise, that he belonged to the world of which she had been
dreaming--Mrs. Duncan's world. Again, there was that mysterious barrier
between them of which she had seen so many evidences. And yet she sat
still on her bench and looked at him.

Presently he turned, slowly, as if her eyes had compelled his. She sat
still--it was too late, then. In less than a minute he was standing
beside her, looking down at her with a smile that had in it a touch of
reproach.

"How do you do, Mr. Worthington?" said Cynthia, quietly.

"Mr. Worthington!" he cried, "you haven't called me that before. We are
not children any more," she said.

"What difference does that make?"

"A great deal," said Cynthia, not caring to define it.

"Cynthia," said Mr. Worthington, sitting down on the beach and facing
her, "do you think you've treated me just right?"

"Of course I do," she said, "or I should have treated you differently."

Bob ignored such quibbling.

"Why did you run away from that baseball game in Brampton? And why
couldn't you have answered my letter yesterday, if it were only a line?
And why have you avoided me here in Washington?"

It is very difficult to answer for another questions which one cannot
answer for one's self.

"I haven't avoided you," said Cynthia.

"I've been looking for you all over town this morning," said Bob, with
pardonable exaggeration, "and I believe that idiot Somers has, too."

"Then why should you call him an idiot?" Cynthia flashed.

Bob laughed.

"How you do catch a fellow up!" said he; admiringly. "We both found out
you'd gone out for a walk alone."

"How did you find it out?"

"Well," said Bob, hesitating, "we asked the colored doorkeeper."

"Mr. Worthington," said Cynthia, with an indignation that made him quail,
"do you think it right to ask a doorkeeper to spy on my movements?"

"I'm sorry, Cynthia," he gasped, "I--I didn't think of it that way--and
he won't tell. Desperate cases require desperate remedies, you know."

But Cynthia was not appeased.

"If you wanted to see me," she said, "why didn't you send your card to my
room, and I would have come to the parlor."

"But I did send a note, and waited around all day."

How was she to tell him that it was to the tone of the note she
objected--to the hint of a clandestine meeting? She turned the light of
her eyes full upon him.

"Would you have been content to see me in the parlor?" she asked. "Did
you mean to see me there?"

"Why, yes," said he; "I would have given my head to see you anywhere,
only--"

"Only what?"

"Duncan might have came in and spoiled it."

"Spoiled what?"

Bob fidgeted.

"Look here, Cynthia," he said, "you're not stupid--far from it. Of course
you know a fellow would rather talk to you alone."

"I should have been very glad to have seen Mr. Duncan, too."

"You would, would you!" he exclaimed. "I shouldn't have thought that."

"Isn't he your friend?" asked Cynthia.

"Oh, yes," said Bob, "and one of the best in the world. Only--I shouldn't
have thought you'd care to talk to him." And he looked around for fear
the vigilant Mr. Duncan was already in the park and had discovered them.
Cynthia smiled, and immediately became grave again.

"So it was only on Mr. Duncan's account that you didn't ask me to come
down to the parlor?" she said.

Bob was in a quandary. He was a truthful person, and he had learned
something of the world through his three years at Cambridge. He had seen
many young women, and many kinds of them. But the girl beside him was
such a mixture of innocence and astuteness that he was wholly at a loss
how to deal with her--how to parry her searching questions.

"Naturally--I wanted to have you all to myself," he said; "you ought to
know that."

Cynthia did not commit herself on this point. She wished to go
mercilessly to the root of the matter, but the notion of what this would
imply prevented her. Bob took advantage of her silence.

"Everybody who sees you falls a victim, Cynthia," he went on; "Mrs.
Duncan and Janet lost their hearts. You ought to have heard them praising
you at breakfast." He paused abruptly, thinking of the rest of that
conversation, and laughed. Bob seemed fated to commit himself that day.
"I heard the way you handled Heth Sutton," he said, plunging in. "I'll
bet he felt as if he'd been dropped out of the third-story window," and
Bob laughed again. "I'd have given a thousand dollars to have been there.
Somers and I went out to supper with a classmate who lives in Washington,
in that house over there," and he pointed casually to one of the imposing
mansions fronting on the park. "Mrs. Duncan said she'd never heard
anybody lay it on the way you did. I don't believe you half know what
happened, Cynthia. You made a ten-strike."

"A ten-strike?" she repeated.

"Well," he said, "you not only laid out Heth, but my father and Mr.
Duncan, too. Mrs. Duncan laughed at 'em--she isn't afraid of anything.
But they didn't say a word all through breakfast. I've never seen my
father so mad. He ought to have known better than to run up against Uncle
Jethro."

"How did they run up against Uncle Jethro?" asked Cynthia, now keenly
interested.

"Don't you know?" exclaimed Bob, in astonishment.

"No," said Cynthia, "or I shouldn't have asked."

"Didn't Uncle Jethro tell you about it?"

"He never tells me anything about his affairs," she answered.

Bob's astonishment did not wear off at once. Here was a new phase, and he
was very hard put. He had heard, casually, a good deal of abuse of Jethro
and his methods in the last two days.

"Well," he said, "I don't know anything about politics. I don't know
myself why father and Mr. Duncan were so eager for this post-mastership.
But they were. And I heard them say something about the President going
back on them when they had telegraphed from Chicago and come to see him
here. And maybe they didn't let Heth in for it. It seems Uncle Jethro
only had to walk up to the White House. They ought to have sense enough
to know that he runs the state. But what's the use of wasting time over
this business?" said Bob. "I told you I was going to Brampton before the
term begins just to see you, didn't I?"

"Yes, but I didn't believe you," said Cynthia.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Because it's my nature, I suppose," she replied.

This was too much for Bob, exasperated though he was, and he burst into
laughter.

"You're the queerest girl I've ever known," he said.

Not a very original remark.

"That must be saying a great deal," she answered.

"Why?"

"You must have known many."

"I have," he admitted, "and none of 'em, no matter how much they'd
knocked about, were able to look out for themselves any better than you."

"Not even Cassandra Hopkins?" Cynthia could not resist saying. She saw
that she had scored; his expressions registered his sensations so
accurately.

"What do you know about her?" he said.

"Oh," said Cynthia, mysteriously, "I heard that you were very fond of her
at Andover."

Bob could not help pluming himself a little. He thought the fact that she
had mentioned the matter a flaw in Cynthia's armor, as indeed it was. And
yet he was not proud of the Cassandra Hopkins episode in his career.

"Cassandra is one of the institutions at Andover," said he; "most fellows
have to take a course in Cassandra to complete their education."

"Yours seems to be very complete," Cynthia retorted.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed, looking at her, "no wonder you made
mince-meat of the Honorable Heth. Where did you learn it all, Cynthia?"

Cynthia did not know. She merely wondered where she would be if she
hadn't learned it. Something told her that if it were not for this anchor
she would be drifting out to sea: might, indeed, soon be drifting out to
sea in spite of it. It was one thing for Mr. Robert Worthington, with his
numerous resources, to amuse himself with a girl in her position; it
would be quite another thing for the girl. She got to her feet and held
out her hand to him.

"Good-by," she said.

"Good-by?"

"We are leaving Washington at one o'clock, and Uncle Jethro will be
worried if I am not in time for dinner."

"Leaving at one! That's the worst luck I've had yet. But I'm going back
to the hotel myself."

Cynthia didn't see how she was to prevent him walking with her. She would
not have admitted to herself that she had enjoyed this encounter, since
she was trying so hard not to enjoy it. So they started together out of
the park. Bob, for a wonder, was silent awhile, glancing now and then at
her profile. He knew that he had a great deal to say, but he couldn't
decide exactly what it was to be. This is often the case with young men
in his state of mind: in fact, to be paradoxical again, he might hardly
be said at this time to have had a state of mind. He lacked both an
attitude and a policy.

"If you see Duncan before I do, let me know," he remarked finally.

Cynthia bit her lip. "Why should I?" she asked.

"Because we've only got five minutes more alone together, at best. If we
see him in time, we can go down a side street."

"I think it would be hard to get away from Mr. Duncan if we met him--even
if we wanted to," she said, laughing outright.

"You don't know how true that is," he replied, with feeling.

"That sounds as though you'd tried it before."

He paid no attention to this thrust.

"I shan't see you again till I get to Brampton," he said; "that will be a
whole week. And then," he ventured to look at her, "I shan't see you
until the Christmas holidays. You might be a little kind, Cynthia. You
know I've--I've always thought the world of you. I don't know how I'm
going to get through the three months without seeing you."

"You managed to get through a good many years," said Cynthia, looking at
the pavement.

"I know," he said; "I was sent away to school and college, and our lives
separated."

"Yes, our lives separated," she assented.

"And I didn't know you were going to be like--like this," he went on,
vaguely enough, but with feeling.

"Like what?"

"Like--well, I'd rather be with you and talk to you than any girl I ever
saw. I don't care who she is," Bob declared, "or how much she may have
traveled." He was running into deep water. "Why are you so cold,
Cynthia?" "Why can't you be as you used to be? You used to like me well
enough."

"And I like you now," answered Cynthia. They were very near the hotel by
this time.

"You talk as if you were ten years older than I," he said, smiling
plaintively.

She stopped and turned to him, smiling. They had reached the steps.

"I believe I am, Bob," she replied. "I haven't seen much of the world,
but I've seen something of its troubles. Don't be foolish. If you're
coming to Brampton just to see me, don't come. Good-by." And she gave him
her hand frankly.

"But I will come to Brampton," he cried, taking her hand and squeezing
it. "I'd like to know why I shouldn't come."

As Cynthia drew her hand away a gentleman came out of the hotel, paused
for a brief moment by the door and stared at them, and then passed on
without a word or a nod of recognition. It was Mr. Worthington. Bob
looked after his father, and then glanced at Cynthia. There was a trifle
more color in her cheeks, and her head was raised a little, and her eyes
were fixed upon him gravely.

"You should know why not," she said, and before he could answer her she
was gone into the hotel. He did not attempt to follow her, but stood
where she had left him in the sunlight.

He was aroused by the voice of the genial colored doorkeeper.

"Wal, suh, you found the lady, Mistah Wo'thington. Thought you would,
suh. T'other young gentleman come in while ago--looked as if he was
feelin' powerful bad, Mistah Wo'thington."




CHAPTER VII

When they reached Boston, Cynthia felt almost as if she were home again,
and Ephraim declared that he had had the same feeling when he returned
from the war. Though it be the prosperous capital of New England, it is a
city of homes, and the dwellers of it have held stanchly to the belief of
their forefathers that the home is the very foundation-rock of the
nation. Held stanchly to other beliefs, too: that wealth carries with it
some little measure of responsibility. The stranger within the gates of
that city feels that if he falls, a heedless world will not go charging
over his body: that a helping hand will be stretched out,--a helping and
a wise hand that will inquire into the circumstances of his fall--but
still a human hand.

They were sitting in the parlor of the Tremont House that morning with
the sun streaming in the windows, waiting for Ephraim.

"Uncle Jethro," Cynthia asked, abruptly, "did you ever know my mother?"

Jethro started, and looked at her quickly.

"W-why, Cynthy?" he asked.

"Because she grew up in Coniston," answered Cynthia. "I never thought of
it before, but of course you must have known her."

"Yes, I knew her," he said.

"Did you know her well?" she persisted.

Jethro got up and went over to the window, where he stood with his back
toward her.

"Yes, Cynthy," he answered at length.

"Why haven't you ever told me about her?" asked Cynthia. How was she to
know that her innocent questions tortured him cruelly; that the spirit of
the Cynthia who had come to him in the tannery house had haunted him all
his life, and that she herself, a new Cynthia, was still that spirit? The
bygone Cynthia had been much in his thoughts since they came to Boston.

"What was she like?"

"She--she was like you, Cynthy," he said, but he did not turn round. "She
was a clever woman, and a good woman, and--a lady, Cynthy."

The girl said nothing for a while, but she tingled with pleasure because
Jethro had compared her to her mother. She determined to try to be like
that, if he thought her so.

"Uncle Jethro," she said presently, "I'd like to go to see the house
where she lived."

"Er--Ephraim knows it," said Jethro.

So when Ephraim came the three went over the hill; past the State House
which Bulfinch set as a crown on the crest of it looking over the sweep
of the Common, and on into the maze of quaint, old-world streets on the
slope beyond: streets with white porticos, and violet panes in the
windows. They came to an old square hidden away on a terrace of the hill,
and after that the streets grew narrower and dingier. Ephraim, whose
memory never betrayed him, hobbled up to a shabby house in the middle of
one of these blocks and rang the bell.

"Here's where I found Will when I come back from the war," he said, and
explained the matter in full to the slatternly landlady who came to the
door. She was a good-natured woman, who thought her boarder would not
mind, and led the way up the steep stairs to the chamber over the roofs
where Wetherell and Cynthia had lived and hoped and worked together;
where he had written those pages by which, with the aid of her loving
criticism, he had thought to become famous. The room was as bare now as
it had been then, and Ephraim, poking his stick through a hole in the
carpet, ventured the assertion that even that had not been changed.
Jethro, staring out over the chimney tops, passed his hand across his
eyes. Cynthia Ware had come to this!

"I found him right here in that bed," Ephraim was saying, and he poked
the bottom boards, too. "The same bed. Had a shack when I saw him.
Callate he wouldn't have lived two months if the war hadn't bust up and I
hadn't come along."

"Oh, Cousin Eph!" exclaimed Cynthia.

The old soldier turned and saw that there were tears in her eyes. But,
stranger than that, Cynthia saw that there were tears in his own. He took
her gently by the arm and led her down the stairs again, she supporting
him, and Jethro following.

That same morning, Jethro, whose memory was quite as good as Ephraim's,
found a little shop tucked away in Cornhill which had been miraculously
spared in the advance of prosperity. Mr. Judson's name, however, was no
longer in quaint lettering over the door. Standing before it, Jethro told
the story in his droll way, of a city clerk and a country bumpkin, and
Cynthia and Ephraim both laughed so heartily that the people who were
passing turned round to look at them and laughed too. For the three were
an unusual group, even in Boston. It was not until they were seated at
dinner in the hotel, Ephraim with his napkin tucked under his chin, that
Jethro gave them the key to the characters in this story.

"And who was the locket for, Uncle Jethro?" demanded Cynthia.

Jethro, however, shook his head, and would not be induced to tell.

They were still so seated when Cynthia perceived coming toward them
through the crowded dining roam a merry, middle-aged gentleman with a
bald head. He seemed to know everybody in the room, for he was kept busy
nodding right and left at the tables until he came to theirs. He was Mr.
Merrill who had come to see her father in Coniston, and who had spoken so
kindly to her on that occasion.

"Well, well, well," he said; "Jethro, you'll be the death of me yet.
'Don't write-send,' eh? Well, as long as you sent word you were here, I
don't complain. So you licked 'em again, eh--down in Washington? Never
had a doubt but what you would. Is this the new postmaster? How are you,
Mr. Prescott--and Cynthia--a young lady! Bless my soul," said Mr.
Merrill, looking her over as he shook her hand. "What have you done to
her, Jethro? What kind of beauty powder do they use in Coniston?"

Mr. Merrill took the seat next to her and continued to talk, scattering
his pleasantries equally among the three, patting her arm when her own
turn came. She liked Mr. Merrill very much; he seemed to her (as, indeed,
he was) honest and kind-hearted. Cynthia was not lacking in a proper
appreciation of herself--that may have been discovered. But she was
puzzled to know why this gentleman should make it a point to pay such
particular attention to a young country girl. Other railroad presidents
whom she could name had not done so. She was thinking of these things,
rather than listening to Mr. Merrill's conversation, when the sound of
Mr. Worthington's name startled her.

"Well, Jethro," Mr. Merrill was saying, "you certainly nipped this little
game of Worthington's in the bud. Thought he'd take you in the rear by
going to Washington, did he? Ha, ha! I'd like to know how you did it.
I'll get you to tell me to-night--see if I don't. You're all coming in to
supper to-night, you know, at seven o'clock."

Ephraim laid down his knife and fork for the first time. Were the wonders
of this journey never to cease? And Jethro, once in his life, looked
nervous.

"Er--er--Cyn'thy'll go, Steve--Cynthy'll go."

"Yes, Cynthy'll go," laughed Mr. Merrill, "and you'll go, and Ephraim'll
go." Although he by no means liked everybody, as would appear at first
glance, Mr. Merrill had a way of calling people by their first names when
he did fancy them.

"Er--Steve," said Jethro, "what would your wife say if I was to drink
coffee out of my saucer?"

"Let's see," said Mr. Merrill grave for once. "What's the punishment for
that in my house? I know what she'd do if you didn't drink it. What do
you think she'd do, Cynthy?"

"Ask him what was the matter with it," said Cynthia, promptly.

"Well, Cynthy," said he, "I know why these old fellows take you round
with 'em. To take care of 'em, eh? They're not fit to travel alone."

And so it was settled, after much further argument, that they were all to
sup at Mr. Merrill's house, Cynthia stoutly maintaining that she would
not desert them. And then Mr. Merrill, having several times repeated the
street and number, went, back to his office. There was much mysterious
whispering between Ephraim and Jethro in the hotel parlor after dinner,
while Cynthia was turning over the leaves of a magazine, and then Ephraim
proposed going out to see the sights.

"Where's Uncle Jethro going?" she asked.

"He'll meet us," said Ephraim, promptly, but his voice was not quite
steady.

"Oh, Uncle Jethro!" cried Cynthia, "you're trying to get out of it. You
remember you promised to meet us in Washington."

"Guess he'll keep this app'intment," said Ephraim, who seemed to be full
of a strange mirth that bubbled over, for he actually winked at Jethro.
 Cynthia's mind flew to Bunker Bill and the old North Church, but they
went first to Faneuil Hall. Presently they found themselves among the
crowd in Washington Street, where Ephraim confessed the trepidation which
he felt over the coming supper party: a trepidation greater, so he
declared many times, than he had ever experienced before any of his
battles in the war. He stopped once or twice in the eddy of the crowd to
glance up at the numbers; and finally came to a halt before the windows
of a large dry-goods store.

"I guess I ought to buy a new shirt for this occasion, Cynthy," he said,
staring hard at the articles of apparel displayed there: "Let's go in."

Cynthia laughed outright, since Ephraim could not by any chance have worn
any of the articles in question.

"Why, Cousin Ephraim," she exclaimed, "you can't buy gentlemen's things
here."

"Oh, I guess you can," said Ephraim, and hobbled confidently in at the
doorway. There we will leave him for a while conversing in an undertone
with a floor-walker, and follow Jethro. He, curiously enough, had some
fifteen minutes before gone in at the same doorway, questioned the same
floor-walker, and he found himself in due time walking amongst a
bewildering lot of models on the third floor, followed by a giggling
saleswoman.

"What kind of a dress do you want, sir?" asked the saleslady,--for we are
impelled to call her so.

"S-silk cloth," said Jethro.

"What shades of silk would you like, sir?"

"Shades? shades? What do you mean by shades?"

"Why, colors," said the saleslady, giggling openly.

"Green," said Jethro, with considerable emphasis.

The saleslady clapped her hand over her mouth and led the way to another
model.

"You don't call that green--do you? That's not green enough."

They inspected another dress, and then another and another,--not all of
them were green,--Jethro expressing very decided if not expert views on
each of them. At last he paused before two models at the far end of the
room, passing his hand repeatedly over each as he had done so often with
the cattle of Coniston.

"These two pieces same kind of goods?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Er-this one is a little shinier than that one?"

"Perhaps the finish is a little higher," ventured the saleslady.

"Sh-shinier," said Jethro.

"Yes, shinier, if you please to call it so."

"W-what would you call it?"

By this time the saleslady had become quite hysterical, and altogether
incapable of performing her duties. Jethro looked at her for a moment in
disgust, and in his predicament cast around for another to wait on him.
There was no lack of these, at a safe distance, but they all seemed to be
affected by the same mania. Jethro's eye alighted upon the back of
another customer. She was, apparently, a respectable-looking lady of
uncertain age, and her own attention was so firmly fixed in the
contemplation of a model that she had not remarked the merriment about
her, nor its cause. She did not see Jethro, either, as he strode across
to her. Indeed, her first intimation of his presence was a dig in her
arm. The lady turned, gave a gasp of amazement at the figure confronting
her, and proceeded to annihilate it with an eye that few women possess.

"H-how do, Ma'am," he said. Had he known anything about the appearance of
women in general, he might have realized that he had struck a tartar.
This lady was at least sixty-five, and probably unmarried. Her face,
though not at all unpleasant, was a study in character-development: she
wore ringlets, a peculiar bonnet of a bygone age, and her clothes had
certain eccentricities which, for, lack of knowledge, must be omitted. In
short, the lady was no fool, and not being one she glanced at the
giggling group of saleswomen and--wonderful to relate--they stopped
giggling. Then she looked again at Jethro and gave him a smile. One of
superiority, no doubt, but still a smile.

"How do you do, sir?"

"T-trying to buy a silk cloth gown for a woman. There's two over here I
fancied a little. Er--thought perhaps you'd help me."

"Where are the dresses?" she demanded abruptly.

Jethro led the way in silence until they came to the models. She planted
herself in front of them and looked them over swiftly but critically.

"What is the age of the lady?"

"W-what difference does that make?" said Jethro, whose instinct was
against committing himself to strangers.

"Difference!" she exclaimed sharply, "it makes a considerable difference.
Perhaps not to you, but to the lady. What coloring is she?"

"C-coloring? She's white."

His companion turned her back on him.

"What size is she?"

"A-about that size," said Jethro, pointing to a model.

"About! about!" she ejaculated, and then she faced him. "Now look here,
my friend," she said vigorously, "there's something very mysterious about
all this. You look like a good man, but you may be a very wicked one for
all I know. I've lived long enough to discover that appearances,
especially where your sex is concerned, are deceitful. Unless you are
willing to tell me who this lady is for whom you are buying silk dresses,
and what your relationship is to her, I shall leave you. And mind, no
evasions. I can detect the truth pretty well when I hear it."

Unexpected as it was, Jethro gave back a step or two before this
onslaught of feminine virtue, and the movement did not tend to raise him
in the lady's esteem. He felt that he would rather face General Grant a
thousand times than this person. She was, indeed, preparing to sweep away
when there came a familiar tap-tap behind them on the bare floor, and he
turned to behold Ephraim hobbling toward them with the aid of his green
umbrella, Cynthia by his side.

"Why, it's Uncle Jethro," cried Cynthia, looking at him and the lady in
astonishment, and then with equal astonishment at the models. "What in
the world are you doing here?" Then a light seemed to dawn on her.

"You frauds! So this is what you were whispering about! This is the way
Cousin Ephraim buys his shirts!"

"C-Cynthy," said Jethro, apologetically, "d-don't you think you ought to
have a nice city dress for that supper party?"

"So you're ashamed of my country clothes, are you?" she asked gayly.

"W-want you to have the best, Cynthy," he replied. "I-I-meant to have it
all chose and bought when you come, but I got into a kind of argument
with this lady."

"Argument!" exclaimed the lady. But she did not seem displeased. She had
been staring very fixedly at Cynthia. "My dear," she continued kindly,
"you look like some one I used to know a long, long time ago, and I'll be
glad to help you. Your uncle may be sensible enough in other matters, but
I tell him frankly he is out of place here. Let him go away and sit down
somewhere with the other gentleman, and we'll get the dress between us,
if he'll tell us how much to pay."

"P-pay anything, so's you get it," said Jethro.

"Uncle Jethro, do you really want it so much?"

It must not be thought that Cynthia did not wish for a dress, too. But
the sense of dependence on Jethro and the fear of straining his purse
never quite wore off. So Jethro and Ephraim took to a bench at some
distance, and at last a dress was chosen--not one of the gorgeous models
Jethro had picked out, but a pretty, simple, girlish gown which Cynthia
herself had liked and of which the lady highly approved. Not content with
helping to choose it, the lady must satisfy herself that it fit, which it
did perfectly. And so Cynthia was transformed into a city person, though
her skin glowed with a health with which few city people are blessed.

"My dear," said the lady, still staring at her, "you look very well. I
should scarcely have supposed it." Cynthia took the remark in good part,
for she thought the lady a character, which she was. "I hope you will
remember that we women were created for a higher purpose than mere
beauty. The Lord gave us brains, and meant that we should use them. If
you have a good mind, as I believe you have, learn to employ it for the
betterment of your sex, for the time of our emancipation is at hand."
Having delivered this little lecture, the lady continued to stare at her
with keen eyes. "You look very much like someone I used to love when I
was younger. What is your name."

"Cynthia Wetherell."

"Cynthia Wetherell? Was your mother Cynthia Ware, from Coniston?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, amazed.

In an instant the strange lady had risen and had taken Cynthia in her
embrace, new dress and all.

"My dear," she said, "I thought your face had a familiar look. It was
your mother I knew and loved. I'm Miss Lucretia Penniman."

Miss Lucretia Penniman! Could this be, indeed, the authoress of the "Hymn
to Coniston," of whom Brampton was so proud? The Miss Lucretia Penniman
who sounded the first clarion note for the independence of American
women, the friend of Bryant and Hawthorne and Longfellow? Cynthia had
indeed heard of her. Did not all Brampton point to the house which had
held the Social Library as to a shrine?

"Cynthia," said Miss Lucretia, "I have a meeting now of a girls' charity
to which I must go, but you will come to me at the offices of the Woman's
Hour to-morrow morning at ten. I wish to talk to you about your mother
and yourself."

Cynthia promised, provided they did not leave for Coniston earlier, and
in that event agreed to write. Whereupon Miss Lucretia kissed her again
and hurried off to her meeting. On the way back to the Tremont House
Cynthia related excitedly the whole circumstance to Jethro and Ephraim.
Ephraim had heard of Miss Lucretia, of course. Who had not? But he did
not read the Woman's Hour. Jethro was silent. Perhaps he was thinking of
that fresh summer morning, so long ago, when a girl in a gig had
overtaken him in the canon made by the Brampton road through the woods.
The girl had worn a poke bonnet, and was returning a book to this same
Miss Lucretia Penniman's Social Library. And the book was the "Life of
Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Uncle Jethro, shall we still be in Boston to-morrow morning?" Cynthia
asked.

He roused himself. "Yes," he said, "yes." "When are you going home?"

He did not answer this simple question, but countered. "Hain't you
enjoyin' yourself, Cynthy?"

"Of course I am," she declared. But she thought it strange that he would
not tell her when they would be in Coniston.

Ephraim did buy a new shirt, and also (in view of the postmastership in
his packet) a new necktie, his old one being slightly frayed.

The grandeur of the approaching supper party and the fear of Mrs. Merrill
hung very heavy over him; nor was Jethro's mind completely at rest.
Ephraim even went so far as to discuss the question as to whether Mr.
Merrill had not surpassed his authority in inviting him, and full
expected to be met at the door by that gentleman uttering profuse
apologies, which Ephraim was quite prepared and willing to take in good
faith.

Nothing of the kind happened, however. Mr. Merrill's railroad being a
modest one, his house was modest likewise. But Ephraim thought it grand
enough, and yet acknowledged a homelike quality in its grandeur. He began
by sitting on the edge of the sofa and staring at the cut-glass
chandelier, but in five minutes he discovered with a shock of surprise
that he was actually leaning back, describing in detail how his regiment
had been cheered as they marched through Boston. And incredible as it may
seem, the person whom he was entertaining in this manner was Mrs. Stephen
Merrill herself. Mrs. Merrill was as tall as Mr. Merrill was short. She
wore a black satin dress with a big cameo brooch pinned at her throat,
her hair was gray, and her face almost masculine until it lighted up with
a wonderfully sweet smile. That smile made Ephraim and Jethro feel at
home; and Cynthia, too, who liked Mrs. Merrill the moment she laid eyes
on her.

Then there were the daughters, Jane and Susan, who welcomed her with a
hospitality truly amazing for city people. Jane was big-boned like her
mother, but Susan was short and plump and merry like her father. Susan
talked and laughed, and Jane sat and listened and smiled, and Cynthia
could not decide which she liked the best. And presently they all went
into the dining room to supper, where there was another chandelier over
the table. There was also real silver, which shone brilliantly on the
white cloth--but there was nothing to eat.

"Do tell us another story, Mr. Prescott," said Susan, who had listened to
his last one.

The sight of the table, however, had for the moment upset Ephraim, "Get
Jethro to tell you how he took dinner with Jedge Binney," he said.

This suggestion, under the circumstances, might not have been a happy
one, but its lack of appropriateness did not strike Jethro either. He
yielded to the demand.

"Well," he said, "I supposed I was goin' to set down same as I would at
home, where we put the vittles on the table. W-wondered what I was goin'
to eat--wahn't nothin' but a piece of bread on the table. S-sat there and
watched 'em--nobody ate anything. Presently I found out that Binney's
wife ran her house same as they run hotels. Pretty soon a couple of girls
come in and put down some food and took it away again before you had a
chance. A-after a while we had coffee, and when I set my cup on the
table, I noticed Mis' Binney looked kind of cross and began whisperin' to
the girls. One of 'em fetched a small plate and took my cup and set it on
the plate. That was all right. I used the plate.

"Well, along about next summer Binney had to come to Coniston to see me
on a little matter and fetched his wife. Listy, my wife, was alive then.
I'd made up my mind that if I could ever get Mis' Binney to eat at my
place I would, so I asked 'em to stay to dinner. When we set down, I
said: 'Now, Mis' Binney, you and the Judge take right hold, and anything
you can't reach, speak out and we'll wait on you.' And Mis' Binney?'

"Yes," she said. She was a little mite scared, I guess. B-begun to
suspect somethin'."

"Mis' Binney," said I, "y-you can set your cup and sarcer where you've a
mind to.' O-ought to have heard the Judge laugh. Says he to his wife:
'Fanny, I told you Jethro'd get even with you some time for that sarcer
business.'"

This story, strange as it may seem, had a great success at Mr. Merrill's
table. Mr. Merrill and his daughter Susan shrieked with laughter when it
was finished, while Mrs. Merrill and Jane enjoyed themselves quite as
much in their quiet way. Even the two neat Irish maids, who were serving
the supper very much as poor Mis' Binney's had been served, were fain to
leave the dining room abruptly, and one of them disgraced herself at
sight of Jethro when she came in again, and had to go out once mare. Mrs.
Merrill insisted that Jethro should pour out his coffee in what she was
pleased to call the old-fashioned way. All of which goes to prove that
table-silver and cut glass chandeliers do not invariably make their
owners heartless and inhospitable. And Ephraim, whose plan of campaign
had been to eat nothing to speak of and have a meal when he got back to
the hotel, found that he wasn't hungry when he arose from the table.

There was much bantering of Jethro by Mr. Merrill, which the ladies did
not understand--talk of a mighty coalition of the big railroads which was
to swallow up the little railroads. Fortunately, said Mr. Merrill,
humorously, fortunately they did not want his railroad. Or unfortunately,
which was it? Jethro didn't know. He never laughed at anybody's jokes.
But Cynthia, who was listening with one ear while Susan talked into the
other, gathered that Jethro had been struggling with the railroads, and
was sooner or later to engage in a mightier struggle with them. How, she
asked herself in her innocence, was any one, even Uncle Jethro, to
struggle with a railroad? Many other people in these latter days have
asked themselves that very question.

All together the evening at Mr. Merrill's passed off so quickly and so
happily that Ephraim was dismayed when he discovered that it was ten
o'clock, and he began to make elaborate apologies to the ladies. But
Jethro and Mr. Merrill were still closeted together in the dining room:
once Mrs. Merrill had been called to that conference, and had returned
after a while to take her place quietly again among the circle of
Ephraim's listeners. Now Mr. Merrill came out of the dining room alone.

"Cynthia," he said, and his tone was a little more grave than usual,
"your Uncle Jethro wants to speak to you."

Cynthia rose, with a sense of something in the air which concerned her,
and went into the dining room. Was it the light falling from above that
brought out the lines of his face so strongly? Cynthia did not know, but
she crossed the room swiftly and sat down beside him.

"What is it, Uncle Jethro?"

"C-Cynthy," he said, putting his hand over hers on the table, "I want you
to do something for me er--for me," he repeated, emphasizing the last
word.

"I'll do anything in the world for you, Uncle Jethro," she answered; "you
know that. What--what is it?"

"L-like Mr. Merrill, don't you?" "Yes, indeed."

"L-like Mrs. Merrill--like the gals--don't you?" "Very much," said
Cynthia, perplexedly.

"Like 'em enough to--to live with 'em a winter?"

"Live with them a winter!"

"C-Cynthy, I want you should stay in Boston this winter and go to a young
ladies' school."

It was out. He had said it, though he never quite knew where he had found
the courage.

"Uncle Jethro!" she cried. She could only look at him in dismay, but the
tears came into her eyes and sparkled.

"You--you'll be happy here, Cynthy. It'll be a change for you. And I
shan't be so lonesome as you'd think. I'll--I'll be busy this winter,
Cynthy."

"You know that I wouldn't leave you, Uncle Jethro," she said
reproachfully. "I should be lonesome, if you wouldn't. You would be
lonesome--you know you would be."

"You'll do this for me, Cynthy. S-said you would, didn't you--said you
would?"

"Why do you want me to do this?"

"W-want you to go to school for a winter, Cynthy. Shouldn't think I'd
done right by you if I didn't."

"But I have been to school. Daddy taught me a lot, and Mr. Satterlee has
taught me a great deal more. I know as much as most girls of my age, and
I will study so hard in Coniston this winter, if that is what you want.
I've never neglected my lessons, Uncle Jethro."

"Tain't book-larnin'--'tain't what you'd get in book larnin' in Boston,
Cynthy."

"What, then?" she asked.

"Well," said Jethro, "they'd teach you to be a lady, Cynthy."

"A lady!"

"Your father come of good people, and--and your mother was a lady. I'm
only a rough old man, Cynthy, and I don't know much about the ways of
fine folks. But you've got it in ye, and I want you should be equal to
the best of 'em: You can. And I shouldn't die content unless I'd felt
that you'd had the chance. Er--Cynthy--will you do it for me?"

She was silent a long while before she turned to him, and then the tears
were running very swiftly down her cheeks.

"Yes, I will do it for you," she answered. "Uncle Jethro, I believe you
are the best man, in the world."

"D-don't say that, Cynthy--d-don't say that," he exclaimed, and a sharp
agony was in his voice. He got to his feet and went to the folding doors
and opened them. "Steve!" he called, "Steve!"

"S-says she'll stay, Steve."

Mr. Merrill had come in, followed by his wife. Cynthia saw them but dimly
through her tears. And while she tried to wipe the tears away she felt
Mrs. Merrill's arm about her, and heard that lady say:--"We'll try to
make you very happy, my dear, and send you back safely in the spring."




CHAPTER VIII

An attempt will be made in these pages to set down such incidents which
alone may be vital to this chronicle, now so swiftly running on. The
reasons why Mr. Merrill was willing to take Cynthia into his house must
certainly be clear to the reader. In the first place, he was under very
heavy obligations to Jethro Bass for many favors; in the second place,
Mr. Merrill had a real affection for Jethro, which, strange as it may
seem to some, was quite possible; and in the third place, Mr. Merrill had
taken a fancy to Cynthia, and he had never forgotten the unintentional
wrong he had done William Wetherell. Mr. Merrill was a man of impulses,
and generally of good impulses. Had he not himself urged upon Jethro the
arrangement, it would never have come about. Lastly, he had invited
Cynthia to his house that his wife might inspect her, and Mrs. Merrill's
verdict had been instant and favorable--a verdict not given in words. A
single glance was sufficient, for these good people so understood each
other that Mrs. Merrill had only to raise her eyes to her husband's, and
this she did shortly after the supper party began; while she was pouring
the coffee, to be exact. Thus the compact that Cynthia was to spend the
winter in their house was ratified.

There was, first of all, the parting with Jethro and the messages with
which he and Ephraim were laden for the whole village and town of
Coniston. It was very hard, that parting, and need not be dwelt upon.
Ephraim waved his blue handkerchief as the train pulled out, but Jethro
stood on the platform, silent and motionless: more eloquent in his
sorrow--so Mr. Merrill thought--than any human being he had ever known.
Mr. Merrill wondered if Jethro's sorrow were caused by this parting
alone; he believed it was not, and suddenly guessed at the true note of
it. Having come by chance upon the answer to the riddle, Mr. Merrill
stood still with his hand on the carriage door and marvelled that he had
not seen it all sooner. He was a man to take to heart the troubles of his
friends. A subtle change had indeed come over Jethro, and he was not the
same man Mr. Merrill had known for many years. Would others, the men with
whom Jethro contended and the men he commanded, mark this change? And
what effect would it have on the conflict for the mastery of a state
which was to be waged from now on?

"Father," said his daughter Susan, "if you don't get in and close the
door, we'll drive off and leave you standing on the sidewalk."

Thus Cynthia went to her new friends in their own carriage. Mrs. Merrill
was goodness itself, and loved the girl for what she was. How, indeed,
was she to help loving her? Cynthia was scrupulous in her efforts to give
no trouble, and yet she never had the air of a dependent or a
beneficiary; but held her head high, and when called upon gave an opinion
as though she had a right to it. The very first morning Susan, who was
prone to be late to breakfast, came down in a great state of excitement
and laughter.

"What do you think Cynthia's done, Mother?" she cried. "I went into her
room a while ago, and it was all swept and aired, and she was making up
the bed."

"That's an excellent plan," said Mrs. Merrill, "tomorrow morning you
three girls will have a race to see who makes up her room first."

It is needless to say that the race at bed-making never came off, Susan
and Jane having pushed Cynthia into a corner as soon as breakfast was
over, and made certain forcible representations which she felt bound to
respect, and a treaty was drawn up and faithfully carried out, between
the three, that she was to do her own room if necessary to her happiness.
The chief gainer by the arrangement was the chambermaid.

Odd as it may seem, the Misses Merrill lived amicably enough with
Cynthia. It is a difficult matter to force an account of the relationship
of five people living in one house into a few pages, but the fact that
the Merrills had large hearts makes this simpler. There are few families
who can accept with ease the introduction of a stranger into their midst,
even for a time, and there are fewer strangers who can with impunity be
introduced. The sisters quarrelled among themselves as all sisters will,
and sometimes quarrelled with Cynthia. But oftener they made her the
arbiter of their disputes, and asked her advice on certain matters.
Especially was this true of Susan, whom certain young gentlemen from
Harvard College called upon more or less frequently, and Cynthia had all
of Susan's love affairs--including the current one--by heart in a very
short time.

As for Cynthia, there were many subjects on which she had to take the
advice of the sisters. They did not criticise the joint creations of
herself and Miss Sukey Kittredge as frankly as Janet Duncan had done; but
Jethro had left in Mrs. Merrill's hands a certain sufficient sum for new
dresses for Cynthia, and in due time the dresses were got and worn. To do
them justice, the sisters were really sincere in their rejoicings over
the very wonderful transformation which they had been chiefly
instrumental in effecting.

It is not a difficult task to praise a heroine, and one that should be
indulged in but charily. But let some little indulgence be accorded this
particular heroine by reason of the life she had led, and the situation
in which she now found herself: a poor Coniston girl, dependent on one
who was not her father, though she loved him as a father; beholden to
these good people who dwelt in a world into which she had no reasonable
expectations of entering, and which, to tell the truth, she now feared.

It was inevitable that Cynthia should be brought into contact with many
friends and relations of the family. Some of these noticed and admired
her; others did neither; others gossiped about Mrs. Merrill behind her
back at her own dinners and sewing circles and wondered what folly could
have induced her to bring the girl into her house. But Mrs. Merrill, like
many generous people who do not stop to calculate a kindness, was always
severely criticised.

And then there were Jane's and Susan's friends, in and out of Miss
Sadler's school. For Mrs. Merrill's influence had been sufficient to
induce Miss Sadler to take Cynthia as a day scholar with her own
daughters. This, be it known, was a great concession on the part of Miss
Sadler, who regarded Cynthia's credentials as dubious enough; and her
young ladies were inclined to regard them so, likewise. Some of these
young ladies came from other cities,--New York and Philadelphia and
elsewhere,--and their fathers and mothers were usually people to be
mentioned as a matter of course--were, indeed, frequently so mentioned by
Miss Sadler, especially when a visitor called at the school.

"Isabel, I saw that your mother sailed for Europe yesterday," or, "Sally,
your father tells me he is building a gallery for his collection." Then
to the visitor, "You know the Broke house in Washington Square, of
course."

Of course the visitor did. But Sally or Isabel would often imitate Miss
Sadler behind her back, showing how well they understood her
snobbishness.

Miss Sadler was by no means the type which we have come to recognize in
the cartoons as the Boston school ma'am. She was a little, round person
with thin lips and a sharp nose all out of character with her roundness,
and bright eyes like a bird's. To do her justice, so far as instruction
went, her scholars were equally well cared for, whether they hailed from
Washington Square or Washington Court House. There were, indeed, none
from such rural sorts of places--except Cynthia. But Miss Sadler did not
take her hand on the opening day--or afterward--and ask her about Uncle
Jethro. Oh, no. Miss Sadler had no interest for great men who did not
sail for Europe or add picture galleries on to their houses. Cynthia
laughed, a little bitterly, perhaps, at the thought of a picture gallery
being added to the tannery house. And she told herself stoutly that Uncle
Jethro was a greater man than any of the others, even if Miss Sadler did
not see fit to mention him. So she had her first taste of a kind of
wormwood that is very common in the world though it did not grow in
Coniston.

For a while after Cynthia's introduction to the school she was calmly
ignored by many of the young ladies there, and once openly--snubbed, to
use the word in its most disagreeable sense. Not that she gave any of
them any real cause to snub her. She did not intrude her own affairs upon
them, but she was used to conversing kindly with the people about her as
equals, and for this offence; on the third day, Miss Sally Broke snubbed
her. It is hard not to make a heroine of Cynthia, not to be able to
relate that she instantly put Miss Sally's nose out of joint. Susan
Merrill tried to do that, and failed signally, for Miss Sally's nose was
not easily dislodged. Susan fought more than one of Cynthia's battles. As
a matter of fact, Cynthia did not know that she had been affronted until
that evening. She did not tell her friends how she spent the night
yearning fiercely for Coniston and Uncle Jethro, at times weeping for
them, if the truth be told; how she had risen before the dawn to write a
letter, and to lay some things in the rawhide trunk. The letter was never
sent, and the packing never finished. Uncle Jethro wished her to stay and
to learn to be a lady, and stay she would, in spite of Miss Broke and the
rest of them. She went to school the next day, and for many days and
weeks thereafter, and held communion with the few alone who chose to
treat her pleasantly. Unquestionably this is making a heroine of Cynthia.

If young men are cruel in their schools, what shall be written of young
women? It would be better to say that both are thoughtless. Miss Sally
Broke, strange as it may seem, had a heart, and many of the other young
ladies whose fathers sailed for Europe and owned picture galleries; but
these young ladies were absorbed, especially after vacation, in affairs
of which a girl from Coniston had no part. Their friends were not her
friends, their amusements not her amusements, and their talk not her
talk. But Cynthia watched them, as was her duty, and gradually absorbed
many things which are useful if not essential--outward observances of
which the world takes cognizance, and which she had been sent there by
Uncle Jethro to learn. Young people of Cynthia's type and nationality are
the most adaptable in the world.

Before the December snows set in Cynthia had made one firm friend, at
least, in Boston; outside of the Merrill family. That friend was Miss
Lucretia Penniman, editress of the Woman's Hour. Miss Lucretia lived in
the queerest and quaintest of the little houses tucked away under the
hill, with the back door a story higher than the fronts an arrangement
which in summer enabled the mistress to walk out of her sitting-room
windows into a little walled garden. In winter that sitting room was the
sunniest, cosiest room in the city, and Cynthia spent many hours there,
reading or listening to the wisdom that fell from the lips of Miss
Lucretia or her guests. The sitting room had uneven, yellow-white
panelling that fairly shone with enamel, mahogany bookcases filled with
authors who had chosen to comply with Miss Lucretia's somewhat rigorous
censorship; there was a table laden with such magazines as had to do with
the uplifting of a sex, a delightful wavy floor covered with a rose
carpet; and, needless to add, not a pin or a pair of scissors out of
place in the whole apartment.

There is no intention of enriching these pages with Miss Lucretia's
homilies. Their subject-matter may be found in the files of the Woman's
Hour. She did not always preach, although many people will not believe
this statement. Miss Lucretia, too, had a heart, though she kept it
hidden away, only to be brought out on occasions when she was sure of its
appreciation, and she grew strangely interested in this self-contained
girl from Coniston whose mother she had known. Miss Lucretia understood
Cynthia, who also was the kind who kept her heart hidden, the kind who
conceal their troubles and sufferings because they find it difficult to
give them out. So Miss Lucretia had Cynthia to take supper with her at
least once in the week, and watched her quietly, and let her speak of as
much of her life as she chose--which was not much, at first. But Miss
Lucretia was content to wait, and guessed at many things which Cynthia
did not tell her, and made some personal effort, unknown to Cynthia, to
find out other things. It will be said that she had designs on the girl.
If so, they were generous designs; and perhaps it was inevitable that
Miss Lucretia should recognize in every young woman of spirit and brains
a possible recruit for the cause.

It has now been shown in some manner and as briefly as possible how
Cynthia's life had changed, and what it had become. We have got her
partly through the winter, and find her still dreaming of the sparkling
snow on Coniston and of the wind whirling it on clear, cold days like
smoke among the spruces; of Uncle Jethro sitting by his stove through the
long evenings all alone; of Rias in his store and Moses Hatch and Lem
Hallowell, and Cousin Ephraim in his new post-office. Uncle Jethro wrote
for the first time in his life--letters: short letters, but in his own
handwriting, and deserving of being read for curiosity's sake if there
were time. The wording was queer enough and guarded enough, but they were
charged with a great affection which clung to them like lavender.

And Cynthia kept them every one, and read them over on such occasions
when she felt that she could not live another minute out of sight of her
mountain.

Such was the state of affairs one gray afternoon in December when
Cynthia, who was sitting in Mrs. Merrill's parlor, suddenly looked up
from her book to discover that two young men were in the room. The young
men were apparently quite as much surprised as she, and the parlor maid
stood grinning behind them.

"Tell Miss Susan and Miss Jane, Ellen," said Cynthia, preparing to
depart. One of the young men she recognized from a photograph on Susan's
bureau. He was, for the time being, Susan's. His name, although it does
not matter much, was Morton Browne, and he would have been considerably
astonished if he had guessed how much of his history Cynthia knew. It was
Mr. Browne's habit to take Susan for a walk as often as propriety
permitted, and on such occasions he generally brought along a
good-natured classmate to take care of Jane. This, apparently, was one of
the occasions. Mr. Browne was tall and dark and generally good-looking,
while his friends were usually distinguished for their good nature.

Mr. Browne stood between her and the door and looked at her rather
fixedly. Then he said:--"Excuse me."

A great many friendships, and even love affairs, have been inaugurated by
just such an opening.

"Certainly," said Cynthia, and tried to pass out. But Mr. Browne had no
intention of allowing her to do so if he could help it.

"I hope I am not intruding," he said politely.

"Oh, no," answered Cynthia, wondering how she could get by him.

"Were you waiting for Miss Merrill?"

"Oh, no," said Cynthia again.

The other young man turned his back and became absorbed in the picture of
a lion getting ready to tear a lady to pieces. But Mr. Browne was of that
mettle which is not easily baffled in such matters. He introduced
himself, and desired to know whom he had the honor of addressing. Cynthia
could not but enlighten him. Mr. Browne was greatly astonished, and
showed it.

"So you are the mysterious young lady who has been staying here in the
house this winter," he exclaimed, as though it were a marvellous thing.
"I have heard Miss Merrill speak of you. She admires you very much. Is it
true that you come from--Coniston?"

"Yes," she said.

"Let me see--where is Coniston?" inquired Mr. Browne.

"Do you know where Brampton is?" asked Cynthia. "Coniston is near
Brampton."

"Brampton!" exclaimed Mr. Browne, "I have a classmate who comes from
Brampton--Bob Worthington--You must know Bob, then."

Yes, Cynthia knew Mr. Worthington.

"His father's got a mint of money, they say. I've been told that old
Worthington was the whole show up in those parts. Is that true?"

"Not quite," said Cynthia.

Not quite! Mr. Morton Browne eyed her in surprise, and from that moment
she began to have decided possibilities. Just then Jane and Susan entered
arrayed for the walk, but Mr. Browne showed himself in no hurry to
depart: began to speak, indeed, in a deprecating way about the weather,
appealed to his friend, Mr. King, if it didn't look remarkably like rain,
or hail, or snow. Susan sat down, Jane sat down, Mr. Browne and his
friend prepared to sit down when Cynthia moved toward the door.

"You're not going, Cynthia!" cried Susan, in a voice that may have had a
little too much eagerness in it. "You must stay and help us entertain Mr.
Browne." (Mr. King, apparently, was not to be entertained.) "We've tried
so hard to make her come down when people called, Mr. Browne, but she
never would."

Cynthia was not skilled in the art of making excuses. She hesitated for
one, and was lost. So she sat down, as far from Mr. Browne as possible,
next to Jane. In a few minutes Mr. Browne was seated beside her, and how
he accomplished this manoeuvre Cynthia could not have said, so skilfully
and gradually was it done. For lack of a better subject he chose Mr.
Robert Worthington. Related, for Cynthia's delectation, several of Bob's
escapades in his freshman year: silly escapades enough, but very bold and
daring and original they sounded to Cynthia, who listened (if Mr. Browne
could have known it) with almost breathless interest, and forgot all
about poor Susan talking to Mr. King. Did Mr. Worthington still while
away his evenings stealing barber poles and being chased around Cambridge
by irate policemen? Mr. Browne laughed at the notion. O dear, no! seniors
never descended to that. Had not Miss Wetherell heard the song wherein
seniors were designated as grave and reverend? Yes, Miss Wetherell had
heard the song. She did not say where, or how. Mr. Worthington, said his
classmate, had become very serious-minded this year. Was captain of the
base-ball team and already looking toward the study of law.

"Study law!" exclaimed Cynthia, "I thought he would go into his father's
mills."

"Do you know Bob very well?" asked Mr. Browne.

She admitted that she did not.

"He's been away from Brampton a good deal, of course," said Mr. Browne,
who seemed pleased by her admission. To do him justice, he would not
undermine a classmate, although he had other rules of conduct which might
eventually require a little straightening out. "Worthy's a first-rate
fellow, a little quick-tempered, perhaps, and inclined to go his own way.
He's got a good mind, and he's taken to using it lately. He has come
pretty near being suspended once or twice."

Cynthia wanted to ask what "suspended" was. It sounded rather painful.
But at this instant there was the rattle of a latch key at the door, and
Mr. Merrill walked in.

"Well, well," he said, spying Cynthia, "so you have got Cynthia to come
down and entertain the young men at last."

"Yes," said Susan, "we have got Cynthia to come down at last."

Susan did not go to Cynthia's room that night to chat, as usual, and Mr.
Morton Browne's photograph was mysteriously removed from the prominent
position it had occupied. If Susan had carried out a plan which she
conceived in a moment of folly of placing that photograph on Cynthia's
bureau, there would undoubtedly have been a quarrel. Cynthia's own
feelings--seeing that Mr. Browne had not dazzled her--were not--enviable.

But she held her peace, which indeed was all she could do, and the next
time Mr. Browne called, though he took care to mention her name
particularly at the door, she would not go down to entertain him: though
Susan implored and Jane appealed, she would not go down. Mr. Browne
called several times again, with the same result. Cynthia was
inexorable--she would have none of him. Then Susan forgave her. There was
no quarrel, indeed, but there was a reconciliation, which is the best
part of a quarrel. There were tears, of Susan's shedding; there was a
character-sketch of Mr. Browne, of Susan's drawing, and that gentleman
flitted lightly out of Susan's life.

Some ten days subsequent to this reconciliation Ellen, the parlor maid,
brought up a card to Cynthia's room. The card bore the name of Mr. Robert
Worthington. Cynthia stared at it, and bent it in her fingers, while
Ellen explained how the gentleman had begged that she might see him. To
tell the truth, Cynthia had wondered more than once why he had not come
before, and smiled when she thought of all the assurances of undying
devotion she had heard in Washington. After all, she reflected, why
should she not see him--once? He might give her news of Brampton and
Coniston. Thus willingly deceiving herself, she told Ellen that she would
go down: much to the girl's delight, for Cynthia was a favorite in the
house.

As she entered the parlor Mr. Worthington was standing in the window.
When he turned and saw her he started to come forward in his old
impetuous way, and stopped and looked at her in surprise. She herself did
not grasp the reason for this.

"Can it be possible," he said, "can it be possible that this is my friend
from the country?" And he took her hand with the greatest formality,
pressed it the least little bit, and released it. "How do you do, Miss
Wetherell? Do you remember me?"

"How do you do--Bob," she answered, laughing in spite of herself at his
banter. "You haven't changed, anyway."

"It was Mr. Worthington in Washington," said he. "Now it is 'Bob' and
'Miss Wetherell.' Rank patronage! How did you do it, Cynthia?"

"You are like all men," said Cynthia, "you look at the clothes, and not
the woman. They are not very fine clothes; but if they were much finer,
they wouldn't change me."

"Then it must be Miss Sadler."

"Miss Sadler would willingly change me--if she could," said Cynthia, a
little bitterly. "How did you find out I was at Miss Sadler's?"

"Morton Browne told me yesterday," said Bob. "I felt like punching his
head."

"What did he tell you?" she asked with some concern.

"He said that you were here, visiting the Merrills, among other things,
and said that you knew me."

The "other things" Mr. Browne had said were interesting, but flippant. He
had seen Bob at a college club and declared that he had met a witch of a
country girl at the Merrills. He couldn't make her out, because she had
refused to see him every time he called again. He had also repeated
Cynthia's remark about Bob's father not being quite the biggest man in
his part of the country, and ventured the surmise that she was the
daughter of a rival mill owner.

"Why didn't you let me know you were in Boston?" said Bob, reproachfully.

"Why should I?" asked Cynthia, and she could not resist adding, "Didn't
you find it out when you went to Brampton--to see me?"

"Well," said he, getting fiery red, "the fact is--I didn't go to
Brampton."

"I'm glad you were sensible enough to take my advice, though I suppose
that didn't make any difference. But--from the way you spoke, I should
have thought nothing could have kept you away."

"To tell you the truth," said Bob, "I'd promised to visit a fellow named
Broke in my class, who lives in New York. And I couldn't get out of it.
His sister, by the way, is in Miss Sadler's. I suppose you know her. But
if I'd thought you'd see me, I should have gone to Brampton, anyway. You
were so down on me in Washington."

"It was very good of you to take the trouble to come to see me here.
There must be a great many girls in Boston you have to visit."

He caught the little note of coolness in her voice. Cynthia was asking
herself whether, if Mr. Browne had not seen fit to give a good report of
her, he would have come at all. He would have come, certainly. It is to
be hoped that Bob Worthington's attitude up to this time toward Cynthia
has been sufficiently defined by his conversation and actions. There had
been nothing serious about it. But there can be no question that Mr.
Browne's openly expressed admiration had enhanced her value in his eyes.

"There's no girl in Boston that I care a rap for," he said.

"I'm relieved to hear it," said Cynthia, with feeling.

"Are you really?"

"Didn't you expect me to be, when you said it?"

He laughed uncomfortably.

"You've learned more than one thing since you've been in the city," he
remarked, "I suppose there are a good many fellows who come here all the
time."

"Yes, there are," she said demurely.

"Well," he remarked, "you've changed a lot in three months. I always
thought that, if you had a chance, there'd be no telling where you'd end
up."

"That doesn't sound very complimentary," said Cynthia. She had, indeed,
changed. "In what terrible place do you think I'll end up?"

"I suppose you'll marry one of these Boston men."

"Oh," she laughed, "that wouldn't be so terrible, would it?"

"I believe you're engaged to one of 'em now," he remarked, looking very
hard at her.

"If you believed that, I don't think you would say it," she answered.

"I can't make you out. You used to be so frank with me, and now you're
not at all so. Are you going to Coniston for the holidays?"

Her face fell at the question.

"Oh, Bob," she cried, surprising him utterly by a glimpse of the real
Cynthia, "I wish I were--I wish I were! But I don't dare to."

"Don't dare to?"

"If I went, I should' never come back--never. I should stay with Uncle
Jethro. He's so lonesome up there, and I'm so lonesome down here, without
him. And I promised him faithfully I'd stay a whole winter at school in
Boston."

"Cynthia," said Bob, in a strange voice as he leaned toward her, "do
you--do you care for him as much as all that?"

"Care for him?" she repeated.

"Care for--for Uncle Jethro?"

"Of course I care for him," she cried, her eyes flashing at the thought.
"I love him better than anybody in the world. Certainly no one ever had
better reason to care for a person. My father failed when he came to
Coniston--he was not meant for business, and Uncle Jethro took care of
him all his life, and paid his debts. And he has taken care of me and
given me everything that a girl could wish. Very few people know what a
fine character Uncle Jethro has," continued Cynthia, carried away as she
was by the pent-up flood of feeling within her. "I know what he has done
for others, and I should love him for that even if he never had done
anything for me."

Bob was silent. He was, in the first place, utterly amazed at this
outburst, revealing as it did a depth of passionate feeling in the girl
which he had never suspected, and which thrilled him. It was unlike her,
for she was usually so self-repressed; and, being unlike her, accentuated
both sides of her character the more.

But what was he to say of the defence of Jethro Bass? Bob was not a young
man who had pondered much over the problems of life, because these
problems had hitherto never touched him. But now he began to perceive,
dimly, things that might become the elements of a tragedy, even as Mr.
Merrill had perceived them some months before. Could a union endure
between so delicate a creature as the girl before him and Jethro Bass?
Could Cynthia ever go back to him again, and live with him happily,
without seeing many things which before were hidden by reason of her
youth and innocence?

Bob had not been nearly four years at college without learning something
of the world; and it had not needed the lecture from his father, which he
got upon leaving Washington, to inform him of Jethro's political
practices. He had argued soundly with his father on that occasion, having
the courage to ask Mr. Worthington in effect whether he did not sanction
his underlings to use the same tools as Jethro used. Mr. Worthington was
righteously angry, and declared that Jethro had inaugurated those
practices in the state, and had to be fought with his own weapons. But
Mr. Worthington had had the sense at that time not to mention Cynthia's
name. He hoped and believed that that affair was not serious, and merely
a boyish fancy--as indeed it was.

It remains to be said, however, that the lecture had not been without its
effect upon Bob. Jethro Bass, after all, was--Jethro Bass. All his life
Bob had heard him familiarly and jokingly spoken of as the boss of the
state, and had listened to the tales, current in all the country towns,
of how Jethro had outwitted this man or that. Some of them were not
refined tales. Jethro Bass as the boss of the state--with the tolerance
with which the public in general regard politics--was one thing. Bob was
willing to call him "Uncle Jethro," admire his great strength and
shrewdness, and declare that the men he had outwitted had richly deserved
it. But Jethro Bass as the ward of Cynthia Wetherell was quite another
thing.

It was not only that Cynthia had suddenly and inevitably become a lady.
That would not have mattered, for such as she would have borne Coniston
and the life of Coniston cheerfully. But Bob reflected, as he walked back
to his rooms in the dark through the snow-laden streets, that Cynthia,
young though she might be, possessed principles from which no love would
sway her a hair's breadth. How, indeed, was she to live with Jethro once
her eyes were opened?

The thought made him angry, but returned to him persistently during the
days that followed,--in the lecture room, in the gymnasium, in his own
study, where he spent more time than formerly. By these tokens it will be
perceived that Bob, too, had changed a little. And the sight of Cynthia
in Mrs. Merrill's parlor had set him to thinking in a very different
manner than the sight of her in Washington had affected him. Bob had
managed to shift the subject from Jethro, not without an effort, though
he had done it in that merry, careless manner which was so characteristic
of him. He had talked of many things,--his college life, his
friends,--and laughed at her questions about his freshman escapades. But
when at length, at twilight, he had risen to go, he had taken both her
hands and looked down into her face with a very different expression than
she had seen him wear before--a much more serious expression, which
puzzled her. It was not the look of a lover, nor yet that of a man who
imagines himself in love. With either of these her instinct would have
told her how to deal. It was more the look of a friend, with much of the
masculine spirit of protection in it.

"May I come to see you again?" he asked.

Gently she released her hands, and she did not answer at once. She went
to the window, and stared across the sloping street at the grilled
railing before the big house opposite, thinking. Her reason told her that
he should not come, but her spirit rebelled against that reason. It was a
pleasure to see him, so she freely admitted to herself. Why should she
not have that pleasure? If the truth be told, she had argued it all out
before, when she had wondered whether he would come. Mrs. Merrill, she
thought, would not object to his coming. But--there was the question she
had meant to ask him.

"Bob," she said, turning to him, "Bob, would your father want you to
come?"

It was growing dark, and she could scarcely see his face. He hesitated,
but he did not attempt to evade the question.

"No, he would not," he answered. And added, with a good deal of force and
dignity: "I am of age, and can choose my own friends. I am my own master.
If he knew you as I knew you, he would look at the matter in a different
light."

Cynthia felt that this was not quite true. She smiled a little sadly.

"I am afraid you don't know me very well, Bob." He was about to protest,
but she went on, bravely, "Is it because he has quarrelled with Uncle
Jethro?"

"Yes," said Bob. She was making it terribly hard for him, sparing indeed
neither herself nor him.

"If you come here to see me, it will cause a quarrel between you and your
father. I--I cannot do that."

"There is nothing wrong in my seeing you," said Bob, stoutly; "if he
cares to quarrel with me for that, I cannot help it. If the people I
choose for my friends are good people, he has no right to an objection,
even though he is my father."

Cynthia had never come so near real admiration for him as at that moment.

"No, Bob, you must not come," she said. "I will not have you quarrel with
him on my account."

"Then I will quarrel with him on my own account," he had answered.
"Good-by. You may expect me this day week."

He went into the hall to put on his overcoat. Cynthia stood still on the
spot of the carpet where he had left her. He put his head in at the door.

"This day week," he said.

"Bob, you must not come," she answered. But the street door closed after
him as he spoke.




CHAPTER IX

"You must not come." Had Cynthia made the prohibition strong enough?
Ought she not to have said, "If you do come, I will not see you?" Her
knowledge of the motives of the men and women in the greater world was
largely confined to that which she had gathered from novels--not trashy
novels, but those by standard authors of English life. And many another
girl of nineteen has taken a novel for a guide when she has been suddenly
confronted with the first great problem outside of her experience.
Somebody has declared that there are only seven plots in the world. There
are many parallels in English literature to Cynthia's position,--so far
as she was able to define that position,--the wealthy young peer, the
parson's or physician's daughter, and the worldly, inexorable parents who
had other plans.

Cynthia was, of course, foolish. She would not look ahead, yet there was
the mirage in the sky when she allowed herself to dream. It can
truthfully be said that she was not in love with Bob Worthington. She
felt, rather than knew, that if love came to her the feeling she had for
Jethro Bass--strong though that was--would be as nothing to it. The girl
felt the intensity of her nature, and shrank from it when her thoughts
ran that way, for it frightened her.

"Mrs. Merrill" she said, a few days later, when she found herself alone
with that lady, "you once told me you would have no objection if a friend
came to see me here."

"None whatever, my dear," answered Mrs. Merrill. "I have asked you to
have your friends here."

Mrs. Merrill knew that a young man had called on Cynthia. The girls had
discussed the event excitedly, had teased Cynthia about it; they had
discovered, moreover, that the young man had not been a tiller of the
soil or a clerk in a country store. Ellen, with the enthusiasm of her
race, had painted him in glowing colors--but she had neglected to read
the name on his card.

"Bob Worthington came to see me last week, and he wants to come again. He
lives in Brampton," Cynthia explained, "and is at Harvard College."

Mrs. Merrill was decidedly surprised. She went on with her sewing,
however, and did not betray the fact. She knew of Dudley Worthington as
one of the richest and most important men in his state; she had heard her
husband speak of him often; but she had never meddled with politics and
railroad affairs.

"By all means let him come, Cynthia," she replied.

When Mr. Merrill got home that evening she spoke of the matter to him.

"Cynthia is a strange character," she said. "Sometimes I can't understand
her--she seems so much older than our girls, Stephen. Think of her
keeping this to herself for four days!"

Mr. Merrill laughed, but he went off to a little writing room he had and
sat for a long time looking into the glowing coals. Then he laughed
again. Mr. Merrill was a philosopher. After all, he could not forbid
Dudley Worthington's son coming to his house, nor did he wish to.

That same evening Cynthia wrote a letter and posted it. She found it a
very difficult letter to write, and almost as difficult to drop into the
mail-box. She reflected that the holidays were close at hand, and then he
would go to Brampton and forget, even as he had forgotten before. And she
determined when Wednesday afternoon came around that she would take a
long walk in the direction of Brookline. Cynthia loved these walks, for
she sadly missed the country air,--and they had kept the color in her
cheeks and the courage in her heart that winter. She had amazed the
Merrill girls by the distances she covered, and on more than one occasion
she had trudged many miles to a spot from which there was a view of Blue
Hills. They reminded her faintly of Coniston.

Who can speak or write with any certainty of the feminine character, or
declare what unexpected twists perversity and curiosity may give to it?
Wednesday afternoon came, and Cynthia did not go to Brookline. She put on
her coat, and took it off again. Would he dare to come in the face of the
mandate he had received? If he did come, she wouldn't see him. Ellen had
received her orders.

At four o'clock the doorbell rang, and shortly thereafter Ellen appeared,
simpering and apologetic enough, with a card. She had taken the trouble
to read it this time. Cynthia was angry, or thought she was, and her
cheeks were very red.

"I told you to excuse me, Ellen. Why did you let him in?"

"Miss Cynthia, darlin'," said Ellen, "if it was made of flint I was,
wouldn't he bring the tears out of me with his wheedlin' an' coaxin'? An'
him such a fine young gintleman! And whin he took to commandin' like,
sure I couldn't say no to him at all at all. 'Take the card to her,
Ellen,' he says--didn't he know me name!--'an' if she says she won't see
me, thin I won't trouble her more.' Thim were his words, Miss."

There he was before the fire, his feet slightly apart and his hands in
his pockets, waiting for her. She got a glimpse of him standing thus, as
she came down the stairs. It was not the attitude of a culprit. Nor did
he bear the faintest resemblance to a culprit as he came up to her in the
doorway. The chief recollection she carried away of that moment was that
his teeth were very white and even when he smiled. He had the impudence
to smile. He had the impudence to seize one of her hands in his, and to
hold aloft a sheet of paper in the other.

"What does this mean?" said he.

"What do you thick it means?" retorted Cynthia, with dignity.

"A summons to stay away," said Bob, thereby more or less accurately
describing it. "What would you have thought of me if I had not come?"

Cynthia was not prepared for any such question as this. She had meant to
ask the questions herself. But she never lacked for words to protect
herself.

"I'll tell you what I think of you for coming, Bob, for insisting upon
seeing me as you did," she said, remembering with shame Ellen's account
of that proceeding. "It was very unkind and very thoughtless of you."

"Unkind?" Thus she succeeded in putting him on the defensive.

"Yes, unkind, because I know it is best for you not to come to see me,
and you know it, and yet you will not help me when I try to do what is
right. I shall be blamed for these visits," she said. The young ladies in
the novels always were. But it was a serious matter for poor Cynthia, and
her voice trembled a little. Her troubles seemed very real.

"Who will blame you?" asked Bob, though he knew well enough. Then he
added, seeing that she did not answer: "I don't at all agree with you
that it is best for me not to see you. I know of nobody in the world it
does me more good to see than yourself. Let's sit down and talk it all
over," he said, for she still remained standing uncompromisingly by the
door.

The suspicion of a smile came over Cynthia's face. She remembered how
Ellen had been wheedled. Her instinct told her that now was the time to
make a stand or never.

"It wouldn't do any good, Bob," she replied, shaking her head; "we talked
it all over last week."

"Not at all," said he, "we only touched upon a few points last week. We
ought to thrash it out. Various aspects of the matter have occurred to me
which I ought to call to your attention."

He could not avoid this bantering tone, but she saw that he was very much
in earnest too. He realized the necessity of winning; likewise, and he
had got in and meant to stay.

"I don't want to argue," said Cynthia. "I've thought it all out."

"So have I," said Bob. "I haven't thought of anything else, to speak of.
And by the way," he declared, shaking the envelope, "I never got a colder
and more formal letter in my life. You must have taken it from one of
Miss Sadler's copy books."

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to equal the warmth of your other
correspondents," said Cynthia, smiling at the mention of Miss Sadler.

"You've got a good many degrees yet to go," he replied.

"I have no idea of doing so," said Cynthia.

If Cynthia had lured him there, and had carefully thought out a plan of
fanning his admiration into a flame, she could not have done better than
to stand obstinately by the door. Nothing appeals to a man like
resistance--resistance for a principle appealed to Bob, although he did
not care a fig about that particular principle. In his former dealings
with young women--and they had not been few--the son of Dudley
Worthington had encountered no resistance worth the mentioning. He looked
at the girl before him, and his blood leaped at the thought of a conquest
over her. She was often demure, but behind that demureness was firmness:
she was mistress of herself, and yet possessed a marvellous vitality.

"And now," said Cynthia, "don't you think you had better go?"

Go! He laughed outright. Never! He would sit down under that fortress,
and some day he meant to scale the walls. Like John Paul Jones, he had
not yet begun to fight. But he did not sit down just yet, because Cynthia
remained standing.

"I'm here now," he said, "what's the good of going away? I might as well
stay the rest of the afternoon."

"You will find a photograph album on the table," said Cynthia, "with
pictures of all the Merrill family and their friends and relations."

In spite of the threat this remark conveyed, he could not help laughing
at it. Mrs. Merrill in her sitting room heard the laugh, and felt that
she would like Bob Worthington.

"It's a heavy album, Cynthia," he said; "perhaps you would hold up one
side of it."

It was Cynthia's turn to laugh. She could not decide whether he were a
man or a boy. Sometimes, she had to admit, he was very much of a man.

"Where are you going?" he cried.

"Upstairs, of course," she answered.

This was really alarming. But fate thrust a final weapon into his hands.

"All right," said he, "I'll look at the album. What time does Mr. Merrill
get home?"

"About six," answered Cynthia. "Why?"

"When he comes," said Bob, "I shall put on my most disconsolate
expression. He'll ask me what I'm doing, and I'll tell him you went
upstairs at half-past four and haven't come down. He'll sympathize, I'll
bet anything."

Whether Bob were really capable of doing this, Cynthia could not tell.
She believed he was. Perhaps she really did not intend to go upstairs
just then. To his intense relief she seated herself on a straight-backed
chair near the door, although she had the air of being about to get up
again at any minute. It was not a surrender, not at all--but a parley, at
least.

"I really want to talk to you seriously, Bob," she said, and her voice
was serious. "I like you very much--I always have--and I want you to
listen seriously. All of us have friends. Some people--you, for
instance--have a great many. We have but one father." Her voice failed a
little at the word. "No friend can ever be the same to you as your
father, and no friendship can make up what his displeasure will cost you.
I do not mean to say that I shan't always be your friend, for I shall
be."

Young men seldom arrive at maturity by gradual steps--something sets them
thinking, a week passes, and suddenly the world has a different aspect.
Bob had thought much of his father during that week, and had considered
their relationship very carefully. He had a few precious memories of his
mother before she had been laid to rest under that hideous and
pretentious monument in the Brampton hill cemetery. How unlike her was
that monument! Even as a young boy, when on occasions he had wandered
into the cemetery, he used to stand before it with a lump in his throat
and bitter resentment in his heart, and once he had shaken his fist at
it. He had grown up out of sympathy with his father, but he had never
until now began to analyze the reasons for it. His father had given him
everything except that communion of which Cynthia spoke so feelingly. Mr.
Worthington had acted according to his lights: of all the people in the
world he thought first of his son. But his thoughts and care had been
alone of what the son would be to the world: how that son would carry on
the wealth and greatness of Isaac D. Worthington.

Bob had known this before, but it had had no such significance for him
then as now. He was by no means lacking in shrewdness, and as he had
grown older he had perceived clearly enough Mr. Worthington's reasons for
throwing him socially with the Duncans. Mr. Worthington had never been a
plain-spoken man, but he had as much as told his son that it was decreed
that he should marry the heiress of the state. There were other plans
connected with this. Mr. Worthington meant that his son should eventually
own the state itself, for he saw that the man who controlled the highways
of a state could snap his fingers at governor and council and legislature
and judiciary: could, indeed, do more--could own them even more
completely than Jethro Bass now owned them, and without effort. The
dividends would do the work: would canvass the counties and persuade this
man and that with sufficient eloquence. By such tokens it will be seen
that Isaac D. Worthington is destined to become great, though the
greatness will be akin to that possessed by those gentlemen who in past
ages had built castles across the highway between Venice and the North
Sea. All this was in store for Bob Worthington, if he could only be
brought to see it. These things would be given him, if he would but
confine his worship to the god of wealth.

We are running ahead, however, of Bob's reflections in Mr. Merrill's
parlor in Mount Vernon Street, and the ceremony of showing him the cities
of his world from Brampton hill was yet to be gone through. Bob knew his
father's plans only in a general way, but in the past week he had come to
know his father with a fair amount of thoroughness. If Isaac D.
Worthington had but chosen a worldly wife, he might have had a more
worldly son. As it was, Bob's thoughts were a little bitter when Cynthia
spoke of his father, and he tried to think instead what his mother would
have him do. He could not, indeed, speak of Mr. Worthington's
shortcomings as he understood them, but he answered Cynthia vigorously
enough--even if his words were not as serious as she desired.

"I tell you I am old enough to judge for myself, Cynthia," said he, "and
I intend to judge for myself. I don't pretend to be a paragon of virtue,
but I have a kind of a conscience which tells me when I am doing wrong,
if I listen to it. I have not always listened to it. It tells me I'm
doing right now, and I mean to listen to it."

Cynthia could not but think there was very little self-denial attached to
this. Men are not given largely to self-denial.

"It is easy enough to listen to your conscience when you think it impels
you to do that which you want to do, Bob," she answered, laughing at his
argument in spite of herself.

"Are you wicked?" he demanded abruptly.

"Why, no, I don't think I am," said Cynthia, taken aback. But she
corrected herself swiftly, perceiving his bent. "I should be doing wrong
to let you come here."

He ignored the qualification.

"Are you vain and frivolous?"

She remembered that she had looked in the glass before she had come down
to him, and bit her lip.

"Are you given over to idle pursuits, to leading young men from their
occupations and duties?"

"If you've come here to recite the Blue Laws," said she, laughing again,
"I have something better to do than to listen to them."

"Cynthia," he cried, "I'll tell you what you are. I'll draw your
character for you, and then, if you can give me one good reason why I
should not associate with you, I'll go away and never come back."

"That's all very well," said Cynthia, "but suppose I don't admit your
qualifications for drawing my character. And I don't admit them, not for
a minute."

"I will draw it," said he, standing up in front of her. "Oh, confound
it!"

This exclamation, astonishing and out of place as it was, was caused by a
ring at the doorbell. The ring was followed by a whispering and giggling
in the hall, and then by the entrance of the Misses Merrill into the
parlor. Curiosity had been too strong for them. Susan was human, and here
was the opportunity for a little revenge. In justice to her, she meant
the revenge to be very slight.

"Well, Cynthia, you should have come to the concert," she said; "it was
fine, wasn't it, Jane? Is this Mr. Worthington? How do you do. I'm Miss
Susan Merrill, and this is Miss Jane Merrill." Susan only intended to
stay a minute, but how was Bob to know that? She was tempted into staying
longer. Bob lighted the gas, and she inspected him and approved. Her
approval increased when he began to talk to her in his bantering way, as
if he had known her always. Then, when she was fully intending to go, he
rose to take his leave.

"I'm awfully glad to have met you at last," he said to Susan, "I've heard
so much about you." His leave-taking of Jane was less effusive, and then
he turned to Cynthia and took her hand. "I'm going to Brampton on
Friday," he said, "for the holidays. I wish you were going."

"We couldn't think of letting her go, Mr. Worthington," cried Susan, for
the thought of the hills had made Cynthia incapable of answering. "We're
only to have her for one short winter, you know."

"Yes, I know," said Mr. Worthington, gravely. "I'll see old Ephraim, and
tell him you're well, and what a marvel of learning, you've become.
And--and I'll go to Coniston if that will please you."

"Oh, no, Bob, you mustn't do anything of the kind," answered Cynthia,
trying to keep back the tears. "I--I write to Uncle Jethro very often.
Good-by. I hope you will enjoy your holidays."

"I'm coming to see you the minute I get back and tell you all about
everybody," said he.

How was she to forbid him to come before Susan and Jane! She could only
be silent.

"Do come, Mr. Worthington," said Susan, warmly, wondering at Cynthia's
coldness and, indeed, misinterpreting it. "I am sure she will be glad to
see you. And we shall always make you welcome, at any rate."

As soon as he was out of the door, Susan became very repentant, and
slipped her hand about Cynthia's waist.

"We shouldn't have come in at all if we had known he would go so soon,
indeed we shouldn't, Cynthia." And seeing that Cynthia was still silent,
she added: "I wouldn't do such a mean thing, Cynthia, I really wouldn't.
Won't you believe me and forgive me?"

Cynthia scarcely heard her at first. She was thinking of Coniston
mountain, and how the sun had just set behind it. The mountain would be
ultramarine against the white fields, and the snow on the hill pastures
to the east stained red as with wine. What would she not have given to be
going back to-morrow--yes, with Bob. She confessed--though startled by
the very boldness of the thought--that she would like to be going there
with Bob. Susan's appeal brought her back to Boston and the gas-lit
parlor.

"Forgive you, Susan! There's nothing to forgive. I wanted him to go."

"You wanted him to go?" repeated Susan, amazed. She may be pardoned if
she did not believe this, but a glance at Cynthia's face scarcely left a
room for doubt. "Cynthia Wetherell, you're the strangest girl I've ever
known in all my life. If I had a--a friend" (Susan had another word on
her tongue) "if I had such a friend as Mr. Worthington, I shouldn't be in
a hurry to let him leave me. Of course," she added, "I shouldn't let him
know it."

Cynthia's heart was very heavy during the next few days, heavier by far
than her friends in Mount Vernon Street imagined. They had grown to love
her almost as one of themselves, and because of the sympathy which comes
of such love they guessed that her thoughts would be turning homeward at
Christmastide. At school she had listened, perforce, to the festival
plans of thirty girls of her own age; to accounts of the probable
presents they were to receive, the cost of some of which would support a
family in Coniston for several months; to arrangements for visits, during
which there were to be theatre-parties and dances and other gaieties.
Cynthia could not help wondering, as she listened in silence to this
talk, whether Uncle Jethro had done wisely in sending her to Miss
Sadler's; whether she would not have been far happier if she had never
known about such things.

Then came the last day of school, which began with leave-takings and
embraces. There were not many who embraced Cynthia, though, had she known
it, this was largely her own fault. Poor Cynthia! how was she to know it?
Many more of them than she imagined would have liked to embrace her had
they believed that the embrace would be returned. Secretly they had grown
to admire this strange, dark girl, who was too proud to bend for the good
opinion of any one--even of Miss Sally Broke. Once during the term
Cynthia had held some of them--in the hollow of her hand, and had
incurred the severe displeasure of Miss Sadler by refusing to tell what
she knew of certain mischief-makers.

Now, Miss Sadler was going about among them in the school parlor saying
good-by, sending particular remembrance to such of the fathers and
mothers as she thought worthy of that honor; kissing some, shaking, hands
with all. It was then that a dramatic incident occurred--dramatic for a
girls' school, at least. Cynthia deliberately turned her back on Miss
Sadler and looked out of the window. The chatter in the room was hushed,
and for a moment a dangerous wrath flamed in Miss Sadler's eyes. Then she
passed on with a smile, to send most particular messages to the mother of
Miss Isabel Burrage.

Some few moments afterward Cynthia felt a touch on her arm, and turned to
find herself confronted by Miss Sally Broke. Unfortunately there is not
much room for Miss Broke in this story, although she may appear in
another one yet to be written. She was extremely good-looking, with real
golden hair and mischievous blue eyes. She was, in brief, the leader of
Miss Sadler's school.

"Cynthia," she said, "I was rude to you when you first came here, and I'm
sorry for it. I want to beg your pardon." And she held out her hand.

There was a moment's suspense for those watching to see if Cynthia would
take it. She did take it.

"I'm sorry, too," said Cynthia, simply, "I couldn't see what I'd done to
offend you. Perhaps you'll explain now."

Miss Broke blushed violently, and for an instant looked decidedly
uncomfortable. Then she burst into laughter,--merry, irresistible
laughter that carried all before it.

"I was a snob, that's all," said she, "just a plain, low down snob. You
don't understand what that means, because you're not one." (Cynthia did
understand, ) "But I like you, and I want you to be my friend. Perhaps
when I get to know you better, you will come home with me sometime for a
visit."

Go home with her for a visit to that house in Washington Square with the
picture gallery!

"I want to say that I'd give my head to have been able to turn my back on
Miss Sadler as you did," continued Miss Broke; "if you ever want a
friend, remember Sally Broke."

Some of Cynthia's trouble, at least, was mitigated by this episode; and
Miss Broke having led the way, Miss Broke's followers came shyly, one by
one, with proffers of friendship. To the good-hearted Merrill girls the
walk home that day was a kind of a triumphal march, a victory over Miss
Sadler and a vindication of their friend. Mrs. Merrill, when she heard of
it, could not find it in her heart to reprove Cynthia. Miss Sadler had
got her just deserts. But Miss Sadler was not a person who was likely to
forget such an incident. Indeed, Mrs. Merrill half expected to receive a
note before the holidays ended that Cynthia's presence was no longer
desired at the school. No such note came, however.

If one had to be away from home on Christmas, there could surely be no
better place to spend that day than in the Merrill household. Cynthia
remembers still, when that blessed season comes around, how each member
of the family vied with the others to make her happy; how they showered
presents on her, and how they strove to include her in the laughter and
jokes at the big family dinner. Mr. Merrill's brother was there with his
wife, and Mrs. Merrill's aunt and her husband, and two broods of cousins.
It may be well to mention that the Merrill relations, like Sally Broke,
had overcome their dislike for Cynthia.

There were eatables from Coniston on that board. A turkey sent by Jethro
for which, Mr. Merrill declared, the table would have to be strengthened;
a saddle of venison--Lem Hallowell having shot a deer on the mountain two
Sundays before; and mince-meat made by Amanda Hatch herself. Other
presents had come to Cynthia from the hills: a gorgeous copy of Mr.
Longfellow's poems from Cousin Ephraim, and a gold locket from Uncle
Jethro. This locket was the precise counterpart (had she but known it) of
a silver one bought at Mr. Judson's shop many years before, though the
inscription "Cynthy, from Uncle Jethro," was within. Into the other side
exactly fitted that daguerreotype of her mother which her father had
given her when he died. The locket had a gold chain with a clasp, and
Cynthia wore it hidden beneath her gown-too intimate a possession to be
shown.

There was still another and very mysterious present, this being a huge
box of roses, addressed to Miss Cynthia Wetherell, which was delivered on
Christmas morning. If there had been a card, Susan Merrill would
certainly have found it. There was no card. There was much pretended
speculation on the part of the Merrill girls as to the sender, sly
reference to Cynthia's heightened color, and several attempts to pin on
her dress a bunch of the flowers, and Susan declared that one of them
would look stunning in her hair. They were put on the dining-room table
in the centre of the wreath of holly, and under the mistletoe which hung
from the chandelier. Whether Cynthia surreptitiously stole one has never
been discovered.

So Christmas came and went: not altogether unhappily, deferring for a day
at least the knotty problems of life. Although Cynthia accepted the
present of the roses with such magnificent unconcern, and would not make
so much as a guess as to who sent them, Mr. Robert Worthington was
frequently in her thoughts. He had declared his intention of coming to
Mount Vernon Street as soon as the holidays ended, and had been cordially
invited by Susan to do so. Cynthia took the trouble to procure a Harvard
catalogue from the library, and discovered that he had many holidays yet
to spend. She determined to write another letter, which he would find in
his rooms when he returned. Just what terrible prohibitory terms she was
to employ in that letter Cynthia could not decide in a moment, nor yet in
a day, or a week. She went so far as to make several drafts, some of
which she destroyed for the fault of leniency, and others for that of
severity. What was she to say to him? She had expended her arguments to
no avail. She could wound him, indeed, and at length made up her mind
that this was the only resource left her, although she would thereby
wound herself more deeply. When she had arrived at this decision, there
remained still more than a week in which to compose the letter.

On the morning after New Year's, when the family were assembled around
the breakfast table, Mrs. Merrill remarked that her husband was
neglecting a custom which had been his for many years.

"Didn't the newspaper come, Stephen?" she asked.

Mr. Merrill had read it.

"Read it!" repeated his wife, in surprise, "you haven't been down long
enough to read a column."

"It was full of trash," said Mr. Merrill, lightly, and began on his usual
jokes with the girls. But Mrs. Merrill was troubled. She thought his
jokes not as hearty as they were wont to be, and disquieting surmises of
business worries filled her mind. The fact that he beckoned her into his
writing room as soon as breakfast was over did not tend to allay her
suspicions. He closed and locked the door after her, and taking the paper
from a drawer in his desk bade her read a certain article in it.

The article was an arraignment of Jethro Bass--and a terrible arraignment
indeed. Step by step it traced his career from the beginning, showing
first of all how he had debauched his own town of Coniston; how,
enlarging on the same methods, he had gradually extended his grip over
the county and finally over the state; how he had bought and sold men for
his own power and profit, deceived those who had trusted in him,
corrupted governors and legislators, congressmen and senators, and even
justices of the courts: how he had trafficked ruthlessly in the
enterprises of the people. Instance upon instance was given, and men of
high prominence from whom he had received bribes were named, not the
least important of these being the Honorable Alva Hopkins of Gosport.

Mrs. Merrill looked up from the paper in dismay.

"It's copied from the Newcastle Guardian," she said, for lack of
immediate power to comment. "Isn't the Guardian the chief paper in that
state?"

"Yes, Worthington's bought it, and he instigated the article, of course.
I've been afraid of this for a long time, Carry," said Mr. Merrill,
pacing up and down. "There's a bigger fight than they've ever had coming
on up there, and this is the first gun. Worthington, with Duncan behind
him, is trying to get possession of and consolidate all the railroads in
the western part of that state. If he succeeds, it will mean the end of
Jethro's power. But he won't succeed."

"Stephen," said his wife, "do you mean to say that Jethro Bass will try
to defeat this consolidation simply to keep his power?"

"Well, my dear," answered Mr. Merrill, still pacing, "two wrongs don't
make a right, I admit. I've known these things a long time, and I've
thought about them a good deal. But I've had to run along with the tide,
or give place to another man who would; and--and starve."

Mrs. Merrill's eyes slowly filled with tears.

"Stephen," she began, "do you mean to say--?" There she stopped, utterly
unable to speak. He ceased his pacing and sat down beside her and took
her hand.

"Yes, my dear, I mean to say I've submitted to these things. God knows
whether I've been right or wrong, but I have. I've often thought I'd be
happier if I resigned my office as president of my road and became a
clerk in a store. I don't attempt to excuse myself, Carry, but my sin has
been in holding on to my post. As long as I remain president I have to
cope with things as I find them."

Mr. Merrill spoke thickly, for the sight of his wife's tears wrung his
heart.

"Stephen," she said, "when we were first married and you were a district
superintendent, you used to tell me everything."

Stephen Merrill was a man, and a good man, as men go. How was he to tell
her the degrees by which he had been led into his present situation? How
was he to explain that these degrees had been so gradual that his
conscience had had but a passing wrench here and there? Politics being
what they were, progress and protection had to be obtained in accordance
with them, and there was a duty to the holders of bonds and stocks.

His wife had a question on her lips, a question for which she had to
summon all her courage. She chose that form for it which would hurt him
least.

"Mr. Worthington is going to try to change these things?"

Mr. Merrill roused himself at the words, and his eyes flashed. He became
a different man.

"Change them!" he cried bitterly, "change them for the worse, if he can.
He will try to wrest the power from Jethro Bass. I don't defend him. I
don't defend myself. But I like Jethro Bass. I won't deny it. He's human,
and I like him, and whatever they say about him I know that he's been a
true friend to me. And I tell you as I hope for happiness here and
hereafter, that if Worthington succeeds in what he is trying to do, if
the railroads win in this fight, there will be no mercy for the people of
that state. I'm a railroad man myself, though I have no interest in this
affair. My turn may come later. Will come later, I suppose. Isaac D.
Worthington has a very little heart or soul or mercy himself; but the
corporation which he means to set up will have none at all. It will grind
the people and debase them and clog their progress a hundred times more
than Jethro Bass has done. Mark my words, Carry. I'm running ahead of the
times a little, but I can see it all as clearly as if it existed now."

Mrs. Merrill went about her duties that morning with a heavy heart, and
more than once she paused to wipe away a tear that would have fallen on
the linen she was sorting. At eleven o'clock the doorbell rang, and Ellen
appeared at the entrance to the linen closet with a card in her hand.
Mrs. Merrill looked at it with a, flurry of surprise. It read:--

           MISS LUCRETIA PENNIMAN

            The Woman's Hour




CHAPTER X

It was certainly affinity that led Miss Lucretia to choose the rosewood
sofa of a bygone age, which was covered with horsehair. Miss Lucretia's
features seemed to be constructed on a larger and more generous principle
than those of women are nowadays. Her face was longer. With her curls and
her bonnet and her bombazine,--which she wore in all seasons,--she was in
complete harmony with the sofa. She had thrown aside the storm cloak
which had become so familiar to pedestrians in certain parts of Boston.

"My dear Miss Penniman," said Mrs. Merrill, "I am delighted and honored.
I scarcely hoped for such a pleasure. I have so long admired you and your
work, and I have heard Cynthia speak of you so kindly."

"It is very good of you to say so, Mrs. Merrill" answered Miss Lucretia,
in her full, deep voice. It was by no means an unpleasant voice. She
settled herself, though she sat quite upright, in the geometrical centre
of the horsehair sofa, and cleared her throat. "To be quite honest with
you, Mrs. Merrill," she continued, "I came upon particular errand, though
I believe it would not be a perversion of the truth if I were to add that
I have had for a month past every intention of paying you a friendly
call."

Good Mrs. Merrill's breath was a little taken away by this extremely
scrupulous speech. She also began to feel a misgiving about the cause of
the visit, but she managed to say something polite in reply.

"I have come about Cynthia," announced Miss Lucretia, without further
preliminaries.

"About Cynthia?" faltered Mrs. Merrill.

Miss Lucretia opened a reticule at her waist and drew forth a newspaper
clipping, which she unfolded and handed to Mrs. Merrill.

"Have you seen this?" she demanded.

Mrs. Merrill took it, although she guessed very well what it was, glanced
at it with a shudder, and handed it back.

"Yes, I have read it," she said.

"I have come to ask you, Mrs. Merrill" said Miss Lucretia, "if it is
true."

Here was a question, indeed, for the poor lady to answer! But Mrs.
Merrill was no coward.

"It is partly true, I believe."

"Partly?" said Miss Lucretia, sharply.

"Yes, partly," said Mrs. Merrill, rousing herself for the trial; "I have
never yet seen a newspaper article which was wholly true."

"That is because newspapers are not edited by women," observed Miss
Lucretia. "What I wish you to tell me, Mrs. Merrill, is this: how much of
that article is true, and how much of it is false?"

"Really, Miss Penniman," replied Mrs. Merrill, with spirit, "I don't see
why you should expect me to know."

"A woman should take an intelligent interest in her husband's affairs,
Mrs. Merrill. I have long advocated it as an entering wedge."

"An entering wedge!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill, who had never read a page of
the Woman's Hour.

"Yes. Your husband is the president of a railroad, I believe, which is
largely in that state. I should like to ask him whether these statements
are true in the main. Whether this Jethro Bass is the kind of man they
declare him to be."

Mrs. Merrill was in a worse quandary than ever. Her own spirits were none
too good, and Miss Lucretia's eye, in its search for truth, seemed to
pierce into her very soul. There was no evading that eye. But Mrs.
Merrill did what few people would have had the courage or good sense to
do.

"That is a political article, Miss Penniman," she said, "inspired by a
bitter enemy of Jethro Bass, Mr, Worthington, who has bought the
newspaper from which it was copied. For that reason, I was right in
saying that it is partly true. You nor I, Miss Penniman, must not be the
judges of any man or woman, for we know nothing of their problems or
temptations. God will judge them. We can only say that they have acted
rightly or wrongly according to the light that is in us. You will find it
difficult to get a judgment of Jethro Bass that is not a partisan
judgment, and yet I believe that that article is in the main a history of
the life of Jethro Bass. A partisan history, but still a history. He has
unquestionably committed many of the acts of which he is accused."

Here was talk to make the author of the "Hymn to Coniston" sit up, if she
hadn't been sitting up already.

"And don't you condemn him for those acts?" she gasped.

"Ah," said Mrs. Merrill, thinking of her own husband. Yesterday she would
certainly have condemned. Jethro Bass. But now! "I do not condemn
anybody, Miss Penniman."

Miss Lucretia thought this extraordinary, to say the least.

"I will put the question in another way, Mrs. Merrill," said she. "Do you
think this Jethro Bass a proper guardian for Cynthia Wetherell?"

To her amazement Mrs. Merrill did not give her an instantaneous answer to
this question. Mrs. Merrill was thinking of Jethro's love for the girl,
manifold evidences of which she had seen, and her heart was filled with a
melting pity. It was such a love, Mrs. Merrill knew, as is not given to
many here below. And there was Cynthia's love for him. Mrs. Merrill had
suffered that morning thinking of this tragedy also.

"I do not think he is a proper guardian for her, Miss Penniman."

It was then that the tears came to Mrs. Merrill's eyes for there is a
limit to all human endurance. The sight of these caused a remarkable
change in Miss Lucretia, and she leaned forward and seized Mrs. Merrill's
arm.

"My dear," she cried, "my dear, what are we to do? Cynthia can't go back
to that man. She loves him, I know, she loves him as few girls are
capable of loving. But when she, finds out what he is! When she finds out
how he got the money to support her father!" Miss Lucretia fumbled in her
reticule and drew forth a handkerchief and brushed her own eyes--eyes
which a moment ago were so piercing. "I have seen many young women," she
continued; "but I have known very few who were made of as fine a fibre
and who have such principles as Cynthia Wetherell."

"That is very true," assented Mrs. Merrill too much cast down to be
amazed by this revelation of Miss Lucretia's weakness.

"But what are we to do?" insisted that lady; "who is to tell her what he
is? How is it to be kept from her, indeed?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Merrill, "there will be more, articles. Mr. Merrill says
so. It seems there is to be a great political struggle in that state."

"Precisely," said Miss Lucretia, sadly. "And whoever tells the girl will
forfeit her friendship. I--I am very fond of her," and here she applied
again to the reticule.

"Whom would she believe?" asked Mrs. Merrill, whose estimation of Miss
Lucretia was increasing by leaps and bounds.

"Precisely," agreed Miss Lucretia. "But she must hear about it sometime."

"Wouldn't it be better to let her hear?" suggested Mrs. Merrill; "we
cannot very well soften that shock: I talked the matter over a little
with Mr. Merrill, and he thinks that we must take time over it, Miss
Penniman. Whatever we do, we must not act hastily."

"Well," said Miss Lucretia, "as I said, I am very fond of the girl, and I
am willing to do my duty, whatever it may be. And I also wished to say,
Mrs. Merrill, that I have thought about another matter very carefully. I
am willing to provide for the girl. I am getting too old to live alone. I
am getting too old, indeed, to do my work properly, as I used to do it. I
should like to have her to live with me."

"She has become as one of my own daughters," said Mrs. Merrill. Yet she
knew that this offer of Miss Lucretia's was not one to be lightly set
aside, and that it might eventually be the best solution of the problem.
After some further earnest discussion it was agreed between them that the
matter was, if possible, to be kept from Cynthia for the present, and
when Miss Lucretia departed Mrs. Merrill promised her an early return of
her call.

Mrs. Merrill had another talk with her husband, which lasted far into the
night. This talk was about Cynthia alone, and the sorrow which threatened
her. These good people knew that it would be no light thing to break the
faith of such as she, and they made her troubles their own.

Cynthia little guessed as she exchanged raillery with Mr. Merrill the
next morning that he had risen fifteen minutes earlier than usual to
search his newspaper through. He would read no more at breakfast, so he
declared in answer to his daughters' comments; it was a bad habit which
did not agree with his digestion. It was something new for Mr. Merrill to
have trouble with his digestion.

There was another and scarcely less serious phase of the situation which
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill had yet to discuss between them--a phase of which
Miss Lucretia Penniman knew nothing.

The day before Miss Sadler's school was to reopen nearly a week before
the Harvard term was to commence--a raging, wet snowstorm came charging
in from the Atlantic. Snow had no terrors for a Coniston person, and
Cynthia had been for her walk. Returning about five o'clock, she was
surprised to have the door opened for her by Susan herself.

"What a picture you are in those furs!" she cried, with an intention
which for the moment was lost upon Cynthia. "I thought you would never
come. You must have walked to Dedham this time. Who do you think is here?
Mr. Worthington."

"Mr. Worthington!"

"I have been trying to entertain him, but I am afraid I have been a very
poor substitute. However, I have persuaded him to stay for supper."

"It needed but little persuasion," said Bob, appearing in the doorway.
All the snowstorms of the wide Atlantic could not have brought such color
to her cheeks. Cynthia, for all her confusion at the meeting, had not
lost her faculty of observation. He seemed to have changed again, even
during the brief time he had been absent. His tone was grave.

"He needs to be cheered up, Cynthia," Susan went on, as though reading
her thoughts. "I have done my best, without success. He won't confess to
me that he has come back to make up some of his courses. I don't mind
owning that I've got to finish a theme to be handed in tomorrow."

With these words Susan departed, and left them standing in the hall
together. Bob took hold of Cynthia's jacket and helped her off with it.
He could read neither pleasure nor displeasure in her face, though he
searched it anxiously enough. It was she who led the way into the parlor
and seated herself, as before, on one of the uncompromising,
straight-backed chairs. Whatever inward tremors the surprise of this
visit had given her, she looked at him clearly and steadily, completely
mistress of herself, as ever.

"I thought your holidays did not end until next week," she said.

"They do not."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I could not stay away, Cynthia," he answered. It was not the
manner in which he would have said it a month ago. There was a note of
intense earnestness in his voice--now, and to it she could make no light
reply. Confronted again with an unexpected situation, she could not
decide at once upon a line of action.

"When did you leave Brampton?" she asked, to gain time. But with the
words her thoughts flew to the hill country.

"This morning," he said, "on the early train. They have three feet of
snow up there." He, too, seemed glad of a respite from something.
"They're having a great fuss in Brampton about a new teacher for the
village school. Miss Goddard has got married. Did you know Miss Goddard,
the lanky one with the glasses?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, beginning to be amused at the turn the conversation
was taking.

"Well, they can't find anybody smart enough to replace Miss Goddard. Old
Ezra Graves, who's on the prudential committee, told Ephraim they ought
to get you. I was in the post-office when they were talking about it.
Just see what a reputation for learning you have in Brampton!"

Cynthia was plainly pleased by the compliment.

"How is Cousin Eph?" she asked.

"Happy as a lark," said Bob, "the greatest living authority in New
England on the Civil War. He's made the post-office the most popular
social club I ever saw. If anybody's missing in Brampton, you can nearly
always find them in the post-office. But I smiled at the notion of your
being a school ma'am."

"I don't see anything so funny about it," replied Cynthia, smiling too.
"Why shouldn't I be? I should like it."

"You were made for something different," he answered quietly.

It was a subject she did not choose to discuss with him, and dropped her
lashes before the plainly spoken admiration in his eyes. So a silence
fell between them, broken only by the ticking of the agate clock on the
mantel and the music of sleigh-bells in a distant street. Presently the
sleigh-bells died away, and it seemed to Cynthia that the sound of her
own heartbeats must be louder than the ticking of the clock. Her tact had
suddenly deserted her; without reason, and she did not dare to glance
again at Bob as he sat under the lamp. That minute--for it was a full
minute--was charged with a presage which she could not grasp. Cynthia's
instincts were very keen. She understood, of course, that he had cut
short his holiday to come to see her, and she might have dealt with him
had that been all. But--through that sixth sense with which some women
are endowed--she knew that something troubled him. He, too, had never yet
been at a loss for words.

The silence forced him to speak first, and he tried to restore the light
tone to the conversation.

"Cousin Ephraim gave me a piece of news," he said. "Ezra Graves got it,
too. He told us you were down in Boston at a fashionable school. Cousin
Ephraim knows a thing or two. He says he always callated you were cut out
for a fine lady."

"Bob," said Cynthia, nerving herself for the ordeal, "did you tell Cousin
Ephraim you had seen me?"

"I told him and Ezra that I had been a constant and welcome visitor at
this house."

"Did, you tell your father that you had seen me?"

This was too serious a question to avoid.

"No, I did not. There was no reason why I should have."

"There was every reason," said Cynthia, "and you know it. Did you tell
him why you came to Boston to-day?"

"No."

"Why does he think you came?"

"He doesn't think anything about it," said Bob. "He went off to Chicago
yesterday to attend a meeting of the board of directors of a western
railroad."

"And so," she said reproachfully, "you slipped off as soon as his back
was turned. I would not have believed that of you, Bob. Do you think that
was fair to him or me?"

Bob Worthington sprang to his feet and stood over her. She had spoken to
a boy, but she had aroused a man, and she felt an amazing thrill at the
result. The muscles in his face tightened, and deepened the lines about
his mouth, and a fire was lighted about his eyes.

"Cynthia," he said slowly, "even you shall not speak to me like that. If
I had believed it were right, if I had believed that it would have done
any good to you or me, I should have told my father the moment I got to
Brampton. In affairs of this kind--in a matter of so much importance in
my life," he continued, choosing his words carefully, "I am likely to
know whether I am doing right or wrong. If my mother were alive, I am
sure that she would approve of this--this friendship."

Having got so far, he paused. Cynthia felt that she was trembling, as
though the force and feeling that was in him had charged her also.

"I did not intend to come so soon," he went on, "but--I had a reason for
coming. I knew that you did not want me."

"You know that that is not true, Bob," she faltered. His next words
brought her to her feet.

"Cynthia," he said, in a voice shaken by the intensity of his passion, "I
came because I love you better than all the world--because I always will
love you so. I came to protect you, and care for you whatever happens. I
did not mean to tell you so, now. But it cannot matter, Cynthia!"

He seized her, roughly indeed, in his arms, but his very roughness was a
proof of the intensity of his love. For an instant she lay palpitating
against him, and as long as he lives he will remember the first exquisite
touch of her firm but supple figure and the marvellous communion of her
lips. A current from the great store that was in her, pent up and all
unknown, ran through him, and then she had struggled out of his arms and
fled, leaving him standing alone in the parlor.

It is true that such things happen, and no man or woman may foretell the
day or the hour thereof. Cynthia fled up the stairs, miraculously
arriving unnoticed at her own room, and locked the door and flung herself
on the bed.

Tears came--tears of shame, of joy, of sorrow, of rejoicing, of regret;
tears that burned, and yet relieved her, tears that pained while they
comforted. Had she sinned beyond the pardon of heaven, or had she
committed a supreme act of right? One moment she gloried in it, and the
next upbraided herself bitterly. Her heart beat with tumult, and again
seemed to stop. Such, though the words but faintly describe them, were
her feelings, for thoughts were still to emerge out of chaos. Love comes
like a flame to few women, but so it came to Cynthia Wetherell, and
burned out for a while all reason.

Only for a while. Generations which had practised self-restraint were
strong in her--generations accustomed, too, to thinking out, so far as in
them lay, the logical consequences of their acts; generations ashamed of
these very instants when nature has chosen to take command. After a time
had passed, during which the world might have shuffled from its course,
Cynthia sat up in the darkness. How was she ever to face the light again?
Reason had returned.

So she sat for another space, and thought of what she had done--thought
with a surprising calmness now which astonished her. Then she thought of
what she would do, for there was an ordeal still to be gone through.
Although she shrank from it, she no longer lacked the courage to endure
it. Certain facts began to stand out clearly from the confusion. The
least important and most immediate of these was that she would have to
face him, and incidentally face the world in the shape of the Merrill
family, at supper. She rose mechanically and lighted the gas and bathed
her face and changed her gown. Then she heard Susan's voice at the door.

"Cynthia, what in the world are you doing?"

Cynthia opened the door and the sisters entered. Was it possible that
they did not read her terrible secret in her face? Apparently not. Susan
was busy commenting on the qualities and peculiarities of Mr. Robert
Worthington, and showering upon Cynthia a hundred questions which she
answered she knew not how; but neither Susan nor Jane, wonderful as it
may seem, betrayed any suspicion. Did he send the flowers? Cynthia had
not asked him. Did he want to know whether she read the newspapers? He
had asked Susan that, before Cynthia came. Susan was ready to repeat the
whole of her conversation with him. Why did he seem so particular about
newspapers? Had he notions that girls ought not to read them?

The significance of Bob's remarks about newspapers was lost upon Cynthia
then. Not till afterward did she think of them, or connect them with his
unexpected visit. Then the supper bell rang, and they went downstairs.

The reader will be spared Mr. Worthington's feelings after Cynthia left
him, although they were intense enough, and absorbing and far-reaching
enough. He sat down on a chair and buried his head in his hands. His
impulse had been to leave the house and return again on the morrow, but
he remembered that he had been asked to stay for supper, and that such a
proceeding would cause comment. At length he got up and stood before the
fire, his thoughts still above the clouds, and it was thus that Mr.
Merrill found him when he entered.

"Good evening," said that gentleman, genially, not knowing in the least
who Bob was, but prepossessed in his favor by the way he came forward and
shook his hand and looked him clearly in the eye.

"I'm Robert Worthington, Mr. Merrill" said he.

"Eh!" Mr. Merrill gasped, "eh! Oh, certainly, how do you do, Mr.
Worthington?" Mr. Merrill would have been polite to a tax collector or a
sheriff. He separated the office from the man, which ought not always to
be done. "I'm glad to see you, Mr. Worthington. Well, well, bad storm,
isn't it? I had an idea the college didn't open until next week."

"Mr. Worthington's going to stay for supper, Papa," said Susan, entering.

"Good!" cried Mr. Merrill. "Capital! You won't miss the old folks after
supper, will you, girls? Your mother wants me to go to a whist party."

"It can't be helped, Carry," said Mr. Merrill to his wife, as they walked
up the hill to a neighbor's that evening.

"He's in love with Cynthia," said Mrs. Merrill, somewhat sadly; "it's as
plain as the nose on your face, Stephen."

"That isn't very plain. Suppose he is! You can dam a mountain stream, but
you can't prevent it reaching the sea, as we used to say when I was a boy
in Edmundton. I like Bob," said Mr. Merrill, with his usual weakness for
Christian names, "and he isn't any more like Dudley Worthington than I
am. If you were to ask me, I'd say he couldn't do a better thing than
marry Cynthia."

"Stephen!" exclaimed Mrs. Merrill. But in her heart she thought so, too.
"What will Mr. Worthington say when he hears the young man has been
coming to our house to see her?"

Mr. Merrill had been thinking of that very thing, but with more amusement
than concern.

To return to Mr. Merrill's house, the three girls and the one young man
were seated around the fire, and their talk, Merrill as it had begun, was
becoming minute by minute more stilted. This was largely the fault of
Susan, who would not be happy until she had taken Jane upstairs and left
Mr. Worthington and Cynthia together. This matter had been arranged
between the sisters before supper. Susan found her opening at last, and
upbraided Jane for her unfinished theme; Jane, having learned her lesson
well, accused Susan. But Cynthia, who saw through the ruse, declared that
both themes were finished. Susan, naturally indignant at such
ingratitude, denied this. The manoeuvre, in short, was executed very
clumsily and very obviously, but executed nevertheless--the sisters
marching out of the room under a fire of protests. The reader, too, will
no doubt think it a very obvious manoeuvre, but some things are managed
badly in life as well as in books.

Cynthia and Bob were left alone: left, moreover, in mortal terror of each
other. It is comparatively easy to open the door of a room and rush into
a lady's arms if the lady be willing and alone. But to be abandoned, as
Susan had abandoned them, and with such obvious intent, creates quite a
different atmosphere. Bob had dared to hope for such an opportunity: had
made up his mind during supper, while striving to be agreeable, just what
he would do if the opportunity came. Instead, all he could do was to sit
foolishly in his chair and look at the coals, not so much as venturing to
turn his head until the sound of footsteps had died away on the upper
floors. It was Cynthia who broke the silence and took command--a very
different Cynthia from the girl who had thrown herself on the bed not
three hours before. She did not look at him, but stared with
determination into the fire.

"Bob, you must go," she said.

"Go!" he cried. Her voice loosed the fetters of his passion, and he dared
to seize the band that lay on the arm of her chair. She did not resist
this.

"Yes, you must go. You should not have stayed for supper."

"Cynthia," he said, "how can I leave you? I will not leave you."

"But you can and must," she replied.

"Why?" he asked, looking at her in dismay.

"You know the reason," she answered.

"Know it?" he cried. "I know why I should stay. I know that I love you
with my whole heart and soul. I know that I love you as few men have ever
loved--and that you are the one woman among millions who can inspire such
a love."

"No, Bob, no," she said, striving hard to keep her head, withdrawing her
hand that it might not betray the treason of her lips. Aware, strange as
it may seem, of the absurdity of the source of what she was to say, for a
trace of a smile was about her mouth as she gazed at the coals. "You will
get over this. You are not yet out of college, and many such fancies
happen there."

For the moment he was incapable of speaking, incapable of finding an
answer sufficiently emphatic. How was he to tell her of the rocks upon
which his love was built?

How was he to declare that the very perils which threatened her had made
a man of him, with all of a man's yearning to share these perils and
shield her from them? How was he to speak at all of those perils? He did
not declaim, yet when he spoke, an enduring sincerity which she could not
deny was in his voice.

"You know in your heart that what you say is not true, Cynthia. Whatever
happens, I shall always love you."

Whatever happens: She shuddered at the words, reminding her as they did
of all her vague misgivings and fears.

"Whatever happens!" she found herself repeating them involuntarily.

"Yes, whatever happens I will love you truly and faithfully. I will never
desert you, never deny you, as long as I live. And you love me, Cynthia,"
he cried, "you love me, I know it."

"No, no," she answered, her breath coming fast. He was on his feet now,
dangerously near her, and she rose swiftly to avoid him.

She turned her head, that he might not read the denial in her eyes; and
yet had to look at him again, for he was coming toward her quickly.
"Don't touch me," she said, "don't touch me."

He stopped, and looked at her so pitifully that she could scarce keep
back her tears.

"You do love me," he repeated.

So they stood for a moment, while Cynthia made a supreme effort to speak
calmly.

"Listen, Bob," she said at last, "if you ever wish to see me again, you
must do as I say. You must write to your father, and tell him what you
have done and--and what you wish to do. You may come to me and tell me
his answer, but you must not come to me before." She would have said
more, but her strength was almost gone. Yes, and more would have implied
a promise or a concession. She would not bind herself even by a hint. But
of this she was sure: that she would not be the means of wrecking his
opportunities. "And now--you must go."

He stayed where he was, though his blood leaped within him, his
admiration and respect for the girl outran his passion. Robert
Worthington was a gentleman.

"I will do as you say, Cynthia," he answered, "but I am doing it for you.
Whatever my father's reply may be will not change my love or my
intentions. For I am determined that you shall be my wife."

With these words, and one long, lingering look, he turned and left her.
He had lacked the courage to speak of his father's bitterness and
animosity. Who will blame him? Cynthia thought none the less of him for
not telling her. There was, indeed, no need now to describe Dudley
Worthington's feelings.

When the door had closed she stoke to the window, and listened to his
footfalls in the snow until she heard them no more.






CONISTON


BOOK IV



CHAPTER XI

The next morning Cynthia's heart was heavy as she greeted her new friends
at Miss Sadler's school. Life had made a woman of her long ago, while
these girls had yet been in short dresses, and now an experience had come
to her which few, if any, of these could ever know. It was of no use for
her to deny to herself that she loved Bob Worthington--loved him with the
full intensity of the strong nature that was hers. To how many of these
girls would come such a love? and how many would be called upon to make
such a renunciation as hers had been? No wonder she felt out of place
among them, and once more the longing to fly away to Coniston almost
overcame her. Jethro would forgive her, she knew, and stretch out his
arms to receive her, and understand that some trouble had driven her to
him.

She was aroused by some one calling her name--some one whose voice
sounded strangely familiar. Cynthia was perhaps the only person in the
school that day who did not know that Miss Janet Duncan had entered it.
Miss Sadler certainly knew it, and asked Miss Duncan very particularly
about her father and mother and even her brother. Miss Sadler knew, even
before Janet's unexpected arrival, that Mr. and Mrs. Duncan had come to
Boston after Christmas, and had taken a large house in the Back Bay in
order to be near their son at Harvard. Mrs. Duncan was, in fact, a
Bostonian, and more at home there than at any other place.

Miss Sadler observed with a great deal of astonishment the warm embrace
that Janet bestowed on Cynthia. The occurrence started in Miss Sadler a
train of thought, as a result of which she left the drawing-room where
these reunions were held, and went into her own private study to write a
note. This she addressed to Mrs. Alexander Duncan, at a certain number on
Beacon Street, and sent it out to be posted immediately. In the meantime,
Janet Duncan had seated herself on the sofa beside Cynthia, not having
for an instant ceased to talk to her. Of what use to write a romance,
when they unfolded themselves so beautifully in real life! Here was the
country girl she had seen in Washington already in a fine way to become
the princess, and in four months! Janet would not have thought it
possible for any one to change so much in such a time. Cynthia listened,
and wondered what language Miss Duncan would use if she knew how great
and how complete that change had been. Romances, Cynthia thought sadly,
were one thing to theorize about and quite another thing to endure--and
smiled at the thought. But Miss Duncan had no use for a heroine without a
heartache.

It is not improbable that Miss Janet Duncan may appear with Miss Sally
Broke in another volume. The style of her conversation is known, and
there is no room to reproduce it here. She, too, had a heart, but she was
a young woman given to infatuations, as Cynthia rightly guessed. Cynthia
must spend many afternoons at her house--lunch with her, drive with her.
For one omission Cynthia was thankful: she did not mention Bob
Worthington's name. There was the romance under Miss Duncan's nose, and
she did not see it. It is frequently so with romancers.

Cynthia's impassiveness, her complete poise, had fascinated Miss Duncan
with the others. Had there been nothing beneath that exterior, Janet
would never have guessed it, and she would have been quite as happy.
Cynthia saw very clearly that Mr. Worthington or no other man or woman
could force Bob to marry Janet.

The next morning, in such intervals as her studies permitted, Janet
continued her attentions to Cynthia. That same morning she had brought a
note from her father to Miss Sadler, of the contents of which Janet knew
nothing. Miss Sadler retired into her study to read it, and two newspaper
clippings fell out of it under the paper-cutter. This was the note:--

   "My DEAR MISS SADLER:

   "Mrs. Duncan has referred your note to me, and I enclose two
   clippings which speak for themselves. Miss Wetherell, I believe,
   stands in the relation of ward to the person to whom they refer, and
   her father was a sort of political assistant to this person.
   Although, as you say, we are from that part of the country (Miss
   Sadler bad spoken of the Duncans as the people of importance there),
   it was by the merest accident that Miss Wetherell's connection with
   this Jethro Bass was brought to my notice.

   "Sincerely yours,

   "ALEXANDER DUNCAN."

It is pleasant to know that there were people in the world who could snub
Miss Sadler; and there could be no doubt, from the manner in which she
laid the letter down and took up the clippings, that Miss Sadler felt
snubbed: equally, there could be no doubt that the revenge would fall on
other shoulders than Mr. Duncan's. And when Miss Sadler proceeded to read
the clippings, her hair would have stood on end with horror had it not
been so efficiently plastered down. Miss Sadler seized her pen, and began
a letter to Mrs. Merrill. Miss Sadler's knowledge of the
proprieties--together with other qualifications--had made her school what
it was. No Cynthia Wetherells had ever before entered its sacred portals,
or should again.

The first of these clippings was the article containing the arraignment
of Jethro Bass which Mr. Merrill had shown to his wife, and which had
been the excuse for Miss Penniman's call. The second was one which Mr.
Duncan had clipped from the Newcastle Guardian of the day before, and
gave, from Mr. Worthington's side, a very graphic account of the conflict
which was to tear the state asunder. The railroads were tired of paying
toll to the chief of a band of thieves and cutthroats, to a man who had
long throttled the state which had nourished him, to--in short,--to
Jethro Bass. Miss Sadler was not much interested in the figures and
metaphors of political compositions. Right had found a champion--the
article continued--in Mr. Isaac D. Worthington of Brampton, president of
the Truro Road and owner of large holdings elsewhere. Mr. Worthington,
backed by other respectable property interests, would fight this monster
of iniquity to the death, and release the state from his thraldom. Jethro
Bass, the article alleged, was already about his abominable work--had
long been so--as in mockery of that very vigilance which is said to be
the price of liberty. His agents were busy in every town of the state,
seeing to it that the slaves of Jethro Bass should be sent to the next
legislature.

And what was this system which he had built up among these rural
communities? It might aptly be called the System of Mortgages. The
mortgage--dread name for a dreadful thing--was the chief weapon of the
monster. Even as Jethro Bass held the mortgages of Coniston and Tarleton
and round about, so his lieutenants held mortgages in every town and
hamlet of the state, What was a poor farmer to do--? His choice was not
between right and wrong, but between a roof over the heads of his wife
and children and no roof. He must vote for the candidate of Jethro Bass
end corruption or become a homeless wanderer. How the gentleman and his
other respectable backers were to fight the system the article did not
say. Were they to buy up all the mortgages? As a matter of fact, they
intended to buy up enough of these to count, but to mention this would be
to betray the methods of Mr. Worthington's reform. The first bitter
frontier fighting between the advance cohorts of the new giant and the
old--the struggle for the caucuses and the polls--had begun. Miss Sadler
cared but little and understood less of all this matter. She lingered
over the sentences which described Jethro Bass as a monster of iniquity,
as a pariah with whom decent men would have no intercourse, and in the
heat of her passion that one who had touched him had gained admittance to
the most exclusive school for young ladies in the country she wrote a
letter.

Miss Sadler wrote the letter, and three hours later tore it up and wrote
another and more diplomatic one. Mrs. Merrill, though not by any means of
the same importance as Mrs. Duncan, was not a person to be wantonly
offended, and might--knowing nothing about the monster--in the goodness
of her heart have taken the girl into her house. Had it been otherwise,
surely Mrs. Merrill would not have had the effrontery! She would give
Mrs. Merrill a chance. The bell of release from studies was ringing as
she finished this second letter, and Miss Sadler in her haste forgot to
enclose the clippings. She ran out in time to intercept Susan Merrill at
the door, and to press into her hands the clippings and the note, with a
request to take both to her mother.

Although the Duncans dined in the evening, the Merrills had dinner at
half-past one in the afternoon, when the girls returned from school. Mr.
Merrill usually came home, but he had gone off somewhere for this
particular day, and Mrs. Merrill had a sewing circle. The girls sat down
to dinner alone. When they got up from the table, Susan suddenly
remembered the note which she had left in her coat pocket. She drew out
the clippings with it.

"I wonder what Miss Sadler is sending mamma clippings for," she said.
"Why, Cynthia, they're about your uncle. Look!"

And she handed over the article headed "Jethro Bass." Jane, who had
quicker intuitions than her sister, would have snatched it from Cynthia's
hand, and it was a long time before Susan forgave herself for her folly.
Thus Miss Sadler had her revenge.

It is often mercifully ordained that the mightiest blows of misfortune
are tempered for us. During the winter evenings in Coniston, Cynthia had
read little newspaper attacks on Jethro, and scorned them as the cowardly
devices of enemies. They had been, indeed, but guarded and covert
allusions--grimaces from a safe distance. Cynthia's first sensation as
she read was anger--anger so intense as to send all the blood in her body
rushing to her head. But what was this? "Right had found a champion at
last" in--in Isaac D. Worthington! That was the first blow, and none but
Cynthia knew the weight of it. It sank but slowly into her consciousness,
and slowly the blood left her face, slowly but surely: left it at length
as white as the lace curtain of the window which she clutched in her
distress. Words which somebody had spoken were ringing in her ears.
Whatever happens! "Whatever happens I will never desert you, never deny
you, as long as I live." This, then, was what he had meant by newspapers,
and why he had come to her!

The sisters, watching her, cried out in dismay. There was no need to tell
them that they were looking on at a tragedy, and all the love and
sympathy in their hearts went out to her.

"Cynthia! Cynthia! What is it?" cried Susan, who, thinking she would
faint, seized her in her arms. "What have I done?"

Cynthia did not faint, being made of sterner substance. Gently, but with
that inexorable instinct of her kind which compels them to look for
reliance within themselves even in the direst of extremities, Cynthia
released herself from Susan's embrace and put a hand to her forehead.

"Will you leave me here a little while--alone?" she said.

It was Jane now who drew Susan out and shut the door of the parlor after
them. In utter misery they waited on the stairs while Cynthia fought out
her battle for herself.

When they were gone she sank down into the big chair under the reading
lamp--the very chair in which he had sat only two nights before. She saw
now with a terrible clearness the thing which for so long had been but a
vague premonition of disaster, and for a while she forgot the clippings.
And when after a space the touch of them in her hand brought them back to
her remembrance, she lacked the courage to read them through. But not for
long. Suddenly her fear of them gave place to a consuming hatred of the
man who had inspired these articles: of Isaac D. Worthington, for she
knew that he must have inspired them. And then she began again to read
them.

Truth, though it come perverted from the mouth of an enemy, has in itself
a note to which the soul responds, let the mind deny as vehemently as it
will. Cynthia read, and as she read her body was shaken with sobs, though
the tears came not. Could it be true? Could the least particle of the
least of these fearful insinuations be true? Oh, the treason of those
whispers in a voice that was surely not her own, and yet which she could
not hush! Was it possible that such things could be printed about one
whom she had admired and respected above all men--nay, whom she had so
passionately adored from childhood? A monster of iniquity, a pariah! The
cruel, bitter calumny of those names! Cynthia thought of his goodness and
loving kindness and his charity to her and to many others. His charity!
The dreaded voice repeated that word, and sent a thought that struck
terror into her heart: Whence had come the substance of that charity?
Then came another word--mortgage. There it was on the paper, and at sight
of it there leaped out of her memory a golden-green poplar shimmering
against the sky and the distant blue billows of mountains in the west.
She heard the high-pitched voice of a woman speaking the word, and even
then it had had a hateful sound, and she heard herself asking, "Uncle
Jethro, what is a mortgage?" He had struck his horse with the whip.

Loyal though the girl was, the whispers would not hush, nor the doubts
cease to assail her. What if ever so small a portion of this were true?
Could the whole of this hideous structure, tier resting upon tier, have
been reared without something of a foundation? Fiercely though she told
herself she would believe none of it, fiercely though she hated Mr.
Worthington, fervently though she repeated aloud that her love for Jethro
and her faith in him had not changed, the doubts remained. Yet they
remained unacknowledged.

An hour passed. It was a thing beyond belief that one hour could have
held such a store of agony. An hour passed, and Cynthia came dry-eyed
from the parlor. Susan and Jane, waiting to give her comfort when she was
recovered a little from this unknown but overwhelming affliction, were
fain to stand mute when they saw her to pay a silent deference to one
whom sorrow had lifted far above them and transfigured. That was the look
on Cynthia's face. She went up the stairs, and they stood in the hall not
knowing what to do, whispering in awe-struck voices. They were still
there when Cynthia came down again, dressed for the street. Jane seized
her by the hand.

"Where are you going, Cynthia?" she asked.

"I shall be back by five," said Cynthia.

She went up the hill, and across to old Louisburg Square, and up the hill
again. The weather had cleared, the violet-paned windows caught the
slanting sunlight and flung it back across the piles of snow. It was a
day for wedding-bells. At last Cynthia came to a queerly fashioned little
green door that seemed all askew with the slanting street, and rang the
bell, and in another moment was standing on the threshold of Miss
Lucretia Penniman's little sitting room. To Miss Lucretia, at her writing
table, one glance was sufficient. She rose quickly to meet the girl,
kissed her unresponsive cheek, and led her to a chair. Miss Lucretia was
never one to beat about the bush, even in the gravest crisis.

"You have read the articles," she said.

Read them! During her walk hither Cynthia had been incapable of thought,
but the epithets and arraignments and accusations, the sentences and
paragraphs, wars printed now, upon her brain, never, she believed, to be
effaced. Every step of the way she had been unconsciously repeating them.

"Have you read them?" asked Cynthia.

"Yes, my dear."

"Has everybody read them?" Did the whole world, then, know of her shame?

"I am glad you came to me, my dear," said Miss Lucretia, taking her hand.
"Have you talked of this to any one else?"

"No," said Cynthia, simply.

Miss Lucretia was puzzled. She had not looked for apathy, but she did not
know all of Cynthia's troubles. She wondered whether she had misjudged
the girl, and was misled by her attitude.

"Cynthia," she said, with a briskness meant to hide emotion for Miss
Lucretia had emotions, "I am a lonely old woman, getting too old, indeed,
to finish the task of my life. I went to see Mrs. Merrill the other day
to ask her if she would let you come and live with me. Will you?"

Cynthia shook her head.

"No, Miss Lucretia, I cannot," she answered.

"I won't press it on you now," said Miss Lucretia.

"I cannot, Miss Lucretia. I'm going to Coniston."

"Going to Coniston!" exclaimed Miss Lucretia.

The name of that place--magic name, once so replete with visions of
happiness and content--seemed to recall Cynthia's spirit from its flight.
Yes, the spirit was there, for it flashed in her eyes as she turned and
looked into Miss Lucretia's face.

"Are these the articles you read?" she asked; taking the clippings from
her muff.

Miss Lucretia put on her spectacles.

"I have seen both of them," she said.

"And do you believe what they say about--about Jethro Bass?"

Poor Miss Lucretia! For once in her life she was at a loss. She, too,
paid a deference to that face, young as it was. She had robbed herself of
sleep trying to make up her mind what she would say upon such an occasion
if it came. A wonderful virgin faith had to be shattered, and was she to
be the executioner? She loved the girl with that strange, intense
affection which sometimes comes to the elderly and the lonely, and she
had prayed that this cup might pass from her. Was it possible that it was
her own voice using very much the same words for which she had rebuked
Mrs. Merrill?

"Cynthia," she said, "those articles were written by politicians, in a
political controversy. No such articles can ever be taken literally."

"Miss Lucretia, do you believe what it says about Jethro Bass?" repeated
Cynthia.

How was she to avoid those eyes? They pierced into, her soul, even as her
own had pierced into Mrs. Merrill's. Oh, Miss Lucretia, who pride
yourself on your plain speaking, that you should be caught quibbling!
Miss Lucretia blushed for the first time in many, years, and into her
face came the light of battle.

"I am a coward, my dear. I deserve your rebuke. To the best of my
knowledge and belief, and so far as I can judge from the inquiries I have
undertaken, Jethro Bass has made his living and gained and held his power
by the methods described in those articles."

Miss Lucretia took off her spectacles and wiped them. She had committed a
fine act of courage.

Cynthia stood up.

"Thank you," she said, "that is what I wanted to know."

"But--" cried Miss Lucretia, in amazement and apprehension, "but what are
you going to do?"

"I am going to Coniston," said Cynthia, "to ask him if those things are
true."

"To ask him!"

"Yes. If he tells me they are true, then I shall believe them."

"If he tells you?" Miss Lucretia gasped. Here was a courage of which she
had not reckoned. "Do you think he will tell you?"

"He will tell me, and I shall believe him, Miss Lucretia."

"You are a remarkable girl, Cynthia," said Miss Lucretia, involuntarily.
Then she paused for a moment. "Suppose he tells you they are true? You
surely can't live with him again, Cynthia."

"Do you suppose I am going to desert him, Miss Lucretia?" she asked. "He
loves me, and--and I love him." This was the first time her voice had
faltered. "He kept my father from want and poverty, and he has brought me
up as a daughter. If his life has been as you say, I shall make my own
living!"

"How?" demanded Miss Lucretia, the practical part of her coming
uppermost.

"I shall teach school. I believe I can get a position, in a place where I
can see him often. I can break his heart, Miss Lucretia, I--I can bring
sadness to myself, but I will not desert him."

Miss Lucretia stared at her for a moment, not knowing what to say or do.
She perceived that the girl had a spirit as strong as her own: that her
plans were formed, her mind made up, and that no arguments could change
her.

"Why did you come to me?" she asked irrelevantly.

"Because I thought that you would have read the articles, and I knew if
you had, you would have taken the trouble to inform yourself of the
world's opinion."

Again Miss Lucretia stared at her.

"I will go to Coniston with you," she said, "at least as far as
Brampton."

Cynthia's face softened a little at the words.

"I would rather go alone, Miss Lucretia," she answered gently, but with
the same firmness. "I--I am very grateful to you for your kindness to me
in Boston. I shall not forget it--or you. Good-by, Miss Lucretia."

But Miss Lucretia, sobbing openly, gathered the girl in her arms and
pressed her. Age was coming on her indeed, that she should show such
weakness. For a long time she could not trust herself to speak, and then
her words were broken. Cynthia must come to her at the first sign of
doubt or trouble: this, Miss Lucretia's house, was to be a refuge in any
storm that life might send--and Miss Lucretia's heart. Cynthia promised,
and when she went out at last through the little door her own tears were
falling, for she loved Miss Lucretia.

Cynthia was going to Coniston. That journey was as fixed, as inevitable,
as things mortal can be. She would go to Coniston unless she perished on
the way. No loving entreaties, no fears of Mrs. Merrill or her daughters,
were of any avail. Mrs. Merrill too, was awed by the vastness of the
girl's sorrow, and wondered if her own nature were small by comparison.
She had wept, to be sure, at her husband's confession, and lain awake
over it in the night watches, and thought of the early days of their
marriage.

And then, Mrs. Merrill told herself, Cynthia would have to talk with Mr.
Merrill. How was he to come unscathed out of that? There was pain and
bitterness in that thought, and almost resentment against Cynthia,
quivering though she was with sympathy for the girl. For Mrs. Merrill,
though the canker remained, had already pardoned her husband and had
asked the forgiveness of God for that pardon. On other occasions, in
other crisis, she had waited and watched for him in the parlor window,
and to-night she was at the door before his key was in the lock, while he
was still stamping the snow from his boots. She drew him into the room
and told him what had happened.

"Oh, Stephen," she cried, "what are you going to say to her?"

What, indeed? His wife had sorrowed, but she had known the obstacles and
perils by which he had been beset. But what was he to say to Cynthia? Her
very name had grown upon him, middle-aged man of affairs though he was,
until the thought of it summoned up in his mind a figure of purity, and
of the strength which was from purity. He would not have believed it
possible that the country girl whom they had taken into their house three
months before should have wrought such an influence over them all.

Even in the first hour of her sorrow which she had spent that afternoon
in the parlor, Cynthia had thought of Mr. Merrill. He could tell her
whether those accusations were true or false, for he was a friend of
Jethro's. Her natural impulse--the primeval one of a creature which is
hurt--had been to hide herself; to fly to her own room, and perhaps by
nightfall the courage would come to her to ask him the terrible
questions. He was a friend of Jethro's. An illuminating flash revealed to
her the meaning of that friendship--if the accusations were true. It was
then she had thought of Miss Lucretia Penniman, and somehow she had found
the courage to face the sunlight and go to her. She would spare Mr.
Merrill.

But had she spared him? Sadly the family sat down to supper without her,
and after supper Mr. Merrill sent a message to his club that he could not
attend a committee meeting there that evening. He sat with his wife in
the little writing room, he pretending to read and she pretending to sew,
until the silence grew too oppressive, and they spoke of the matter that
was in their hearts. It was one of the bitterest evenings in Mr.
Merrill's life, and there is no need to linger on it. They talked
earnestly of Cynthia, and of her future. But they both knew why she did
not come down to them.

"So she is really going to Coniston," said Mr. Merrill.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Merrill, "and I think she is doing right, Stephen."

Mr. Merrill groaned. His wife rose and put her hand on his shoulder.

"Come, Stephen," she said gently, "you will see her in the morning.

"I will go to Coniston with her," he said.

"No," replied Mrs. Merrily "she wants to go alone. And I believe it is
best that she should."




CHAPTER XII

Great afflictions generally bring in their train a host of smaller
sorrows, each with its own little pang. One of these sorrows had been the
parting with the Merrill family. Under any circumstance it was not easy
for Cynthia to express her feelings, and now she had found it very
difficult to speak of the gratitude and affection which she felt. But
they understood--dear, good people that they were: no eloquence was
needed with them. The ordeal of breakfast over, and the tearful "God
bless you, Miss Cynthia," of Ellen the parlor-maid, the whole family had
gone with her to the station. For Susan and Jane had spent their last day
at Miss Sadler's school.

Mr. Merrill had sent for the conductor and bidden him take care of Miss
Wetherell, and recommend her in his name to a conductor on the Truro
Road. The man took off his cap to Mr. Merrill and called him by name and
promised. It was a dark day, and long after the train had pulled out
Cynthia remembered the tearful faces of the family standing on the damp
platform of the station. As they fled northward through the flat
river-meadows, the conductor would have liked to talk to her of Mr.
Merrill; there were few employees on any railroad who did not know the
genial and kindly president of the Grand Gulf and sympathize with his
troubles. But there was a look on the girl's face that forbade intrusion.
Passengers stared at her covertly, as though fascinated by that look, and
some tried to fathom it. But her eyes were firmly fixed upon a point far
beyond their vision. The car stopped many times, and flew on again, but
nothing seemed to break her absorption.

At last she was aroused by the touch of the conductor on her sleeve. The
people were beginning to file out of the car, and the train was under the
shadow of the snow-covered sheds in the station of the state capital.
Cynthia recognized the place, though it was cold and bare and very
different in appearance from what it had been on the summer's evening
when she had come into it with her father. That, in effect, had been her
first glimpse of the world, and well she recalled the thrill it had given
her. The joy of such things was gone now, the rapture of holidays and new
sights. These were over, so she told herself. Sorrow had quenched the
thrills forever.

The kind conductor led her to the eating room, and when she would not eat
his concern drew greater than ever. He took a strange interest in this
young lady who had such a face and such eyes. He pointed her out to his
friend the Truro conductor, and gave him some sandwiches and fruit which
he himself had bought, with instructions to press them on her during the
afternoon.

Cynthia could not eat. She hated this place, with its memories. Hated it,
too, as a mart where men were bought and sold, for the wording of those
articles ran in her head as though some priest of evil were chanting them
in her ears. She did not remember then the sweeter aspect of the old
town, its pretty homes set among their shaded gardens--homes full of good
and kindly people. State House affairs were far removed from most of
these, and the sickness and corruption of the body politic. And this
political corruption, had she known it, was no worse than that of the
other states in the wide Union: not so bad, indeed, as many, though this
was small comfort. No comfort at all to Cynthia, who did not think of it.

After a while she rose and followed the new conductor to the Truro train,
glad to leave the capital behind her. She was going to the hills--to the
mountains. They, in truth, could not change, though the seasons passed
over them, hot and cold, wet and dry. They were immutable in their
goodness. Presently she saw them, the lower ones: the waters of the
little stream beside her broke the black bonds of ice and raced over the
rapids; the engine was puffing and groaning on the grade. Then the sun
crept out, slowly, from the indefinable margin of vapor that hung massed
over the low country.

Yes, she had come to the hills. Up and up climbed the train, through the
little white villages in the valley nooks, banked with whiter snow;
through the narrow gorges,--sometimes hanging over them,--under steep
granite walls seared with ice-filled cracks, their brows hung with
icicles.

Truro Pass is not so high as the Brenner, but it has a grand, wild look
in winter, remote as it is from the haunts of men. A fitting refuge, it
might be, for a great spirit heavy with the sins of the world below. Such
a place might have been chosen, in the olden time, for a monastery--a
gray fastness built against the black forest over the crag looking down
upon the green clumps of spruces against the snow. Some vague longing for
such a refuge was in Cynthia's heart as she gazed upon that silent place,
and then the waters had already begun to run westward--the waters of
Tumble Down brook, which flowed into Coniston Water above Brampton. The
sun still had more than two hours to go on its journey to the hill crests
when the train pulled into Brampton station. There were but a few people
on the platform, but the first face she saw as she stepped from the car
was Lem Hallowell's. It was a very red face, as we know, and its owner
was standing in front of the Coniston stage, on runners now. He stared at
her for an instant, and no wonder, and then he ran forward with
outstretched hands.

"Cynthy--Cynthy Wetherell!" he cried. "Great Godfrey!"

He got so far, he seized her hands, and then he stopped, not knowing why.
There were many more ejaculations and welcomes and what not on the end of
his tongue. It was not that she had become a lady--a lady of a type he
had never before seen. He meant to say that, too, in his own way, but he
couldn't. And that transformation would have bothered Lem but little.
What was the change, then? Why was he in awe of her--he, Lem Hallowell,
who had never been in awe of any one? He shook his head, as though openly
confessing his inability to answer that question. He wanted to ask
others, but they would not come.

"Lem," she said, "I am so glad you are here."

"Climb right in, Cynthy. I'll get the trunk." There it lay, the little
rawhide one before him on the boards, and he picked it up in his bare
hands as though it had been a paper parcel. It was a peculiarity of the
stage driver that he never wore gloves, even in winter, so remarkable was
the circulation of his blood. After the trunk he deposited, apparently
with equal ease, various barrels and boxes, and then he jumped in beside
Cynthia, and they drove down familiar Brampton Street, as wide as a wide
river; past the meeting-house with the terraced steeple; past the
postoffice,--Cousin Ephraim's postoffice,--where Lem gave her a
questioning look--but she shook her head, and he did not wait for the
distribution of the last mail that day; past the great mansion of Isaac
D. Worthington, where the iron mastiffs on the lawn were up to their
muzzles in snow. After that they took the turn to the right, which was
the road to Coniston.

Well-remembered road, and in winter or summer, Cynthia knew every tree
and farmhouse beside it. Now it consisted of two deep grooves in the deep
snow; that was all, save for a curving turnout here and there for team to
pass team. Well-remembered scene! How often had Cynthia looked upon it in
happier days! Such a crust was on the snow as would bear a heavy man; and
the pasture hillocks were like glazed cakes in the window of a baker's
shop. Never had the western sky looked so yellow through the black
columns of the pine trunks. A lonely, beautiful road it was that evening.

For a long time the silence of the great hills was broken only by the
sweet jingle of the bells on the shaft. Many a day, winter and summer,
Lem had gone that road alone, whistling, and never before heeding that
silence. Now it seemed to symbolize a great sorrow: to be in subtle
harmony with that of the girl at his side. What that sorrow was he could
not guess. The good man yearned to comfort her, and yet he felt his
comfort too humble to be noticed by such sorrow. He longed to speak, but
for the first time in his life feared the sound of his own voice. Cynthia
had not spoken since she left the station, had not looked at him, had not
asked for the friends and neighbors whom she had loved so well--had not
asked for Jethro! Was there any sorrow on earth to be felt like that? And
was there one to feel it?

At length, when they reached the great forest, Lem Hallowell knew that he
must speak or cry aloud. But what would be the sound of his voice--after
such an age of disuse? Could he speak at all? Broken and hoarse and
hideous though the sound might be, he must speak. And hoarse and broken
it was. It was not his own, but still it was a voice.

"Folks--folks'll be surprised to see you, Cynthy."

No, he had not spoken at all. Yes, he had, for she answered him.

"I suppose they will, Lem."

"Mighty glad to have you back, Cynthy. We think a sight of you. We missed
you."

"Thank you, Lem."

"Jethro hain't lookin' for you by any chance, be he?

"No," she said. But the question startled her. Suppose he had not been at
home! She had never once thought of that. Could she have borne to wait
for him?

After that Lem gave it up. He had satisfied himself as to his vocal
powers, but he had not the courage even to whistle. The journey to
Coniston was faster in the winter, and at the next turn of the road the
little village came into view. There it was, among the snows. The pain in
Cynthia's heart, so long benumbed, quickened when she saw it. How write
of the sharpness of that pain to those who have never known it? The sight
of every gable brought its agony,--the store with the checker-paned
windows, the harness shop, the meeting-house, the white parsonage on its
little hill. Rias Richardson ran out of the store in his carpet slippers,
bareheaded in the cold, and gave one shout. Lem heeded him not; did not
stop there as usual, but drove straight to the tannery house and pulled
up under the butternut tree. Milly Skinner ran out on the porch, and gave
one long look, and cried:--

"Good Lord, it's Cynthy!"

"Where's Jethro?" demanded Lem.

Milly did not answer at once. She was staring at Cynthia.

"He's in the tannery shed," she said, "choppin' wood." But still she kept
her eyes on Cynthia's face. "I'll fetch him."

"No," said Cynthia, "I'll go to him there."

She took the path, leaving Millicent with her mouth open, too amazed to
speak again, and yet not knowing why.

In the tannery shed! Would Jethro remember what happened there almost six
and thirty years before? Would he remember how that other Cynthia had
come to him there, and what her appeal had been?

Cynthia came to the doors. One of these was open now--both had been
closed that other evening against the storm of sleet--and she caught a
glimpse of him standing on the floor of chips and bark--tan-bark no more.
Cynthia caught a glimpse of him, and love suddenly welled up into her
heart as waters into a spring after a drought. He had not seen her, not
heard the sound of the sleigh-bells. He was standing with his foot upon
the sawbuck and the saw across his knee, he was staring at the woodpile,
and there was stamped upon his face a look which no man or woman had ever
seen there, a look of utter loneliness and desolation, a look as of a
soul condemned to wander forever through the infinite, cold spaces
between the worlds--alone.

Cynthia stopped at sight of it. What had been her misery and affliction
compared to this? Her limbs refused her, though she knew not whether she
would have fled or rushed into his arms. How long she stood thus, and he
stood, may not be said, but at length he put down his foot and took the
saw from his knee, his eyes fell upon her, and his lips spoke her name.

"Cynthy!"

Speechless, she ran to him and flung her arms about his neck, and he
dropped the saw and held her tightly--even as he had held that other
Cynthia in that place in the year gone by. And yet not so. Now he clung
to her with a desperation that was terrible, as though to let go of her
would be to fall into nameless voids beyond human companionship and love.
But at last he did release her, and stood looking down into her face, as
if seeking to read a sentence there.

And how was she to pronounce that sentence! Though her faith might be
taken away, her love remained, and grew all the greater because he needed
it. Yet she knew that no subterfuge or pretence would avail her to hide
why she had come. She could not hide it. It must be spoken out now,
though death was preferable.

And he was waiting. Did he guess? She could not tell. He had spoken no
word but her name. He had expressed no surprise at her appearance, asked
no reasons for it. Superlatives of suffering or joy or courage are hard
to convey--words fall so far short of the feeling. And Cynthia's pain was
so far beyond tears.

"Uncle Jethro," she said, "yesterday something--something happened. I
could not stay in Boston any longer."

He nodded.

"I had to come to you. I could not wait."

He nodded again.

"I--I read something." To take a white-hot iron and sear herself would
have been easier than this.

"Yes," he said.

She felt that the look was coming again--the look which she had surprised
in his face. His hands dropped lifelessly from her shoulders, and he
turned and went to the door, where he stood with his back to her,
silhouetted against the eastern sky all pink from the reflection of
sunset. He would not help her. Perhaps he could not. The things were
true. There had been a grain of hope within her, ready to sprout.

"I read two articles from the Newcastle Guardian about you--about your
life."

"Yes," he said. But he did not turn.

"How you had--how you had earned your living. How you had gained your
power," she went on, her pain lending to her voice an exquisite note of
many modulations.

"Yes--Cynthy," he said, and still stared at the eastern sky.

She took two steps toward him, her arms outstretched, her fingers opening
and closing. And then she stopped.

"I would believe no one," she said, "I will believe no one--until--unless
you tell me. Uncle Jethro," she cried in agony, "Uncle Jethro, tell me
that those things are not true!"

She waited a space, but he did not stir. There was no sound, save the
song of Coniston Water under the shattered ice.

"Won't you speak to me?" she whispered. "Won't you tell me that they are
not true?"

His shoulders shook convulsively. O for the right to turn to her and tell
her that they were lies! He would have bartered his soul for it. What was
all the power in the world compared to this priceless treasure he had
lost? Once before he had cast it away, though without meaning to. Then he
did not know the eternal value of love--of such love as those two women
had given him. Now he knew that it was beyond value, the one precious
gift of life, and the knowledge had come too late. Could he have saved
his life if he had listened to that other Cynthia?

"Won't you tell me that they are not true?"

Even then he did not turn to her, but he answered. Curious to relate,
though his heart was breaking, his voice was steady--steady as it always
had been.

"I--I've seen it comin', Cynthy," he said. "I never knowed anything I was
afraid of before--but I was afraid of this. I knowed what your notions of
right and wrong was--your--your mother had them. They're the principles
of good people. I--I knowed the day would come when you'd ask, but I
wanted to be happy as long as I could. I hain't been happy, Cynthy. But
you was right when you said I'd tell you the truth. S-so I will. I guess
them things which you speak about are true--the way I got where I am, and
the way I made my livin'. They--they hain't put just as they'd ought to
be, perhaps, but that's the way I done it in the main."

It was thus that Jethro Bass met the supreme crisis of his life. And who
shall say he did not meet it squarely and honestly? Few men of finer
fibre and more delicate morals would have acquitted themselves as well.
That was a Judgment Day for Jethro; and though he knew it not, he spoke
through Cynthia to his Maker, confessing his faults freely and humbly,
and dwelling on the justness of his punishment; putting not forward any
good he may have done; nor thinking of it; nor seeking excuse because of
the light that was in him. Had he been at death's door in the face of
nameless tortures, no man could have dragged such a confession from him.
But a great love had been given him, and to that love he must speak the
truth, even at the cost of losing it.

But he was not to lose it. Even as he was speaking a thrill of admiration
ran through Cynthia, piercing her sorrow. The superb strength of the man
was there in that simple confession, and it is in the nature of woman to
admire strength. He had fought his fight, and gained, and paid the price
without a murmur, seeking no palliation. Cynthia had not come to that
trial--so bitter for her--as a judge. If the reader has seen youth and
innocence sitting in the seat of justice, with age and experience at the
bar, he has mistaken Cynthia. She came to Coniston inexorable, it is
true, because hers was a nature impelled to do right though it perish.
She did not presume to say what Jethro's lights and opportunities might
have been. Her own she knew, and by them she must act accordingly.

When he had finished speaking, she stole silently to his side and slipped
her hand in his. He trembled violently at her touch.

"Uncle Jethro," she said in a low tone, "I love you."

At the words he trembled more violently still.

"No, no, Cynthy," he answered thickly, "don't say that--I--I don't expect
it, Cynthy, I know you can't--'twouldn't be right, Cynthy. I hain't fit
for it."

"Uncle Jethro," she said, "I love you better than I have ever loved you
in my life."

Oh, how welcome were the tears! and how human! He turned, pitifully
incredulous, wondering that she should seek by deceit to soften the blow;
he saw them running down her cheeks, and he believed. Yes, he believed,
though it seemed a thing beyond belief. Unworthy, unfit though he were,
she loved him. And his own love as he gazed at her, sevenfold increased
as it had been by the knowledge of losing her, changed in texture from
homage to worship--nay, to adoration. His punishment would still be
heavy; but whence had come such a wondrous gift to mitigate it?

"Oh, don't you believe me?" she cried, "can't you see that it is true?"

And yet he could only hold her there at arm's length with that new and
strange reverence in his face. He was not worthy to touch her, but still
she loved him.

The flush had faded from the eastern sky, and the faintest border of
yellow light betrayed the ragged outlines of the mountain as they walked
together to the tannery house.

Millicent, in the kitchen, was making great preparations--for Millicent.
Miss Skinner was a person who had hitherto laid it down as a principle of
life to pay deference or do honor to no human made of mere dust, like
herself. Millicent's exception; if Cynthia had thought about it, was a
tribute of no mean order. Cynthia, alas, did not think about it: she did
not know that, in her absence, the fire had not been lighted in the
evening, Jethro supping on crackers and milk and Milly partaking of the
evening meal at home. Moreover, Miss Skinner had an engagement with a
young man. Cynthia saw the fire, and threw off her sealskin coat which
Mr. and Mrs. Merrill had given her for Christmas, and took down the
saucepan from the familiar nail on which it hung. It was a miraculous
fact, for which she did not attempt to account, that she was almost
happy: happy, indeed, in comparison to that which had been her state
since the afternoon before. Millicent snatched the saucepan angrily from
her hand.

"What be you doin', Cynthy?" she demanded.

Such was Miss Skinner's little way of showing deference. Though deference
is not usually vehement, Miss Skinner's was very real, nevertheless.

"Why, Milly, what's the matter?" exclaimed Cynthia, in astonishment.

"You hain't a-goin' to do any cookin', that's all," said Milly, very red
in the face.

"But I've always helped," said Cynthia. "Why not?"

Why not? A tribute was one thing, but to have to put the reasons for that
tribute, into words was quite another.

"Why not?" cried Milly, "because you hain't a-goin' to, that's all."

Strange deference! But Cynthia turned and looked at the girl with a
little, sad smile of comprehension and affection. She took her by the
shoulders and kissed her.

Whereupon a most amazing thing happened--Millicent burst into
tears--wild, ungovernable tears they were.

"Because you hain't a-goin' to," she repeated, her words interspersed
with violent sobs. "You go 'way, Cynthy," she cried, "git out!"

"Milly," said Cynthia, shaking her head, "you ought to be ashamed of
yourself." But they were not words of reproof. She took a little lamp
from the shelf, and went up the narrow stairs to her own room in the
gable, where Lemuel had deposited the rawhide trunk.

Though she had had nothing all day, she felt no hunger, but for Milly's
sake she tried hard to eat the supper when it came. Before it had fairly
begun Moses Hatch had arrived, with Amandy and Eben; and Rias Richardson
came in, and other neighbors, to say a word of welcome to hear (if the
truth be not too disparaging to their characters) the reasons for her
sudden appearance, and such news of her Boston experiences as she might
choose to give them. They had learned from Lem Hallowell that Cynthia had
returned a lady: a real lady, not a sham one who relied on airs and
graces, such as had come to Coniston the summer before to look for a
summer place on the painter's recommendation. Lem was not a gossip, in
the disagreeable sense of the term, and he had not said a word to his
neighbors of his feelings on that terrible drive from Brampton. Knowing
that some blow had fallen upon Cynthia, he would have spared her these
visits if he could. But Lem was wise and kind, so he merely said that she
had returned a lady.

And they had found a lady. As they stood or sat around the kitchen (Eben
and Rias stood), Cynthia talked to them--about Coniston: rather, be it
said, that they talked about Coniston in answer to her questions. The
sledding had been good; Moses had hauled so many thousand feet of lumber
to Brampton; Sam Price's woman (she of Harwich) had had a spell of
sciatica; Chester Perkins's bull had tossed his brother-in-law, come from
Iowy on a visit, and broke his leg; yes, Amandy guessed her dyspepsy was
somewhat improved since she had tried Graham's Golden Remedy--it made her
feel real lighthearted; Eben (blushing furiously) was to have the Brook
Farm in the spring; there was a case of spotted fever in Tarleton.

Yes, Lem Hallowell had been right, Cynthia was a lady, but not a mite
stuck up. What was the difference in her? Not her clothes, which she wore
as if she had been used to them all her life. Poor Cynthia, the clothes
were simple enough. Not her manner, which was as kind and sweet as ever.
What was it that compelled their talk about themselves, that made them
refrain from asking those questions about Boston, and why she had come
back? Some such query was running in their minds as they talked, while
Jethro, having finished his milk and crackers, sat silent at the end of
the table with his eyes upon her. He rose when Mr. Satterlee came in.

Mr. Satterlee looked at her, and then he went quietly across the room and
kissed her. But then Mr. Satterlee was the minister. Cynthia thought his
hair a little thinner and the lines in his face a little deeper. And Mr.
Satterlee thought perhaps he was the only one of the visitors who guessed
why she had come back. He laid his thin hand on her head, as though in
benediction, and sat down beside her.

"And how is the learning, Cynthia?" he asked.

Now, indeed, they were going to hear something at last. An intuition
impelled Cynthia to take advantage of that opportunity.

"The learning has become so great, Mr. Satterlee," she said, "that I have
come back to try to make some use of it. It shall be wasted no more."

She did not dare to look at Jethro, but she was aware that he had sat
down abruptly. What sacrifice will not a good woman make to ease the
burden of those whom she loves! And Jethro's burden would be heavy
enough. Such a woman will speak almost gayly, though her heart be heavy.
But Cynthia's was lighter now than it had been.

"I was always sure you would not waste your learning, Cynthia," said Mr.
Satterlee, gravely; "that you would make the most of the advantages God
has given you."

"I am going to try, Mr. Satterlee. I cannot be content in idleness. I was
wasting time in Boston, and I--I was not happy so far away from you
all--from Uncle Jethro. Mr. Satterlee, I am going to teach school. I have
always wanted to, and now I have made up my mind to do it."

This was Jethro's punishment. But had she not lightened it for him a
little by choosing this way of telling him that she could not eat his
bread or partake of his bounty? Though by reason of that bounty she was
what she was, she could not live and thrive on it longer, coming as it
did from such a source. Mr. Satterlee might perhaps surmise the truth,
but the town and village would think her ambition a very natural one,
certainly no better time could have been chosen to announce it.

"To teach school." She was sure now that Mr. Satterlee knew and approved,
and perceived something, at least, of her little ruse. He was a man whose
talents fitted him for a larger flock than he had at Coniston, but he
possessed neither the graces demanded of city ministers nor the power of
pushing himself. Never was a more retiring man. The years she had spent
in his study had not gone for nothing, for he who has cherished the bud
can predict what the flower will be, and Mr. Satterlee knew her
spiritually better than any one else in Coniston. He had heard of her
return, and had walked over to the tannery house, full of fears, the
remembrance of those expressions of simple faith in Jethro coming back to
his mind. Had the revelation which he had so long expected come at last?
and how had she taken it? would it embitter her? The good man believed
that it would not, and now he saw that it had not, and rejoiced
accordingly.

"To teach school," he said. "I expected that you would wish to, Cynthia.
It is a desire that most of us have, who like books and what is in them.
I should have taught school if I had not become a minister. It is a high
calling, and an absorbing one, to develop the minds of the young." Mr.
Satterlee was often a little discursive, though there was reason for it
on this occasion, and Moses Hatch half closed his eyes and bowed his head
a little out of sheer habit at the sound of the minister's voice. But he
raised it suddenly at the next words. "I was in Brampton yesterday, and
saw Mr. Graves, who is on the prudential committee of that district. You
may not have heard that Miss Goddard has left. They have not yet
succeeded in filling her place, and I think it more than likely that you
can get it."

Cynthia glanced at Jethro, but the habit of years was so strong in him
that he gave no sign.

"Do you think so, Mr. Satterlee?" she said gratefully. "I had heard of
the place, and hoped for it, because it is near enough for me to spend
the Saturdays and Sundays with Uncle Jethro. And I meant to go to
Brampton tomorrow to see about it."

"I will go with you," said the minister; "I have business in Brampton
to-morrow." He did not mention that this was the business.

When at length they had all departed, Jethro rose and went about the
house making fast the doors, as was his custom, while Cynthia sat staring
through the bars at the dying embers in the stove. He knew now, and it
was inevitable that he should know, what she had made up her mind to do.
It had been decreed that she, who owed him everything, should be made to
pass this most dreadful of censures upon his whole life. Oh, the cruelty
of that decree!

How, she mused, would it affect him? Had the blow been so great that he
would relinquish those practices which had become a lifelong habit with
him? Would he (she caught her breath at this thought) would he abandon
that struggle with Isaac D. Worthington in which he was striving to
maintain the mastery of the state by those very practices? Cynthia hated
Mr. Worthington. The term is not too strong, and it expresses her
feeling. But she would have got down on her knees on the board floor of
the kitchen that very night and implored Jethro to desist from that
contest, if she could. She remembered how, in her innocence, she had
believed that the people had given Jethro his power,--in those days when
she was so proud of that very power,--now she knew that he had wrested it
from them. What more supreme sacrifice could he make than to relinquish
it! Ah, there was a still greater sacrifice that Jethro was to make, had
she known it.

He came and stood over her by the stove, and she looked up into his face
with these yearnings in her eyes. Yes, she would have thrown herself on
her knees, if she could. But she could not. Perhaps he would abandon that
struggle. Perhaps--perhaps his heart was broken. And could a man with a
broken heart still fight on? She took his hand and pressed it against her
face, and he felt that it was wet with her tears.

"B-better go to bed now, Cynthy," he said; "m-must be worn out--m-must be
worn out."

He stooped and kissed her on the forehead. It was thus that Jethro Bass
accepted his sentence.




CHAPTER XIII

At sunrise, in that Coniston hill-country, it is the western hills which
are red; and a distant hillock on the meadow farm which was soon to be
Eden's looked like the daintiest conical cake with pink icing as Cynthia
surveyed the familiar view the next morning. There was the mountain, the
pastures on the lower slopes all red, too, and higher up the dark masses
of bristling spruce and pine and hemlock mottled with white where the
snow-covered rocks showed through.

Sunrise in January is not very early, and sunrise at any season is not
early for Coniston. Cynthia sat at her window, and wondered whether that
beautiful landscape would any longer be hers. Her life had grown up on
it; but now her life had changed. Would the beauty be taken from it, too?
Almost hungrily she gazed at the scene. She might look upon it
again--many times, perhaps--but a conviction was strong in her that its
daily possession would now be only a memory.

Mr. Satterlee was as good as his word, for he was seated in the stage
when it drew up at the tannery house, ready to go to Brampton. And as
they drove away Cynthia took one last look at Jethro standing on the
porch. It seemed to her that it had been given her to feel all things,
and to know all things: to know, especially, this strange man, Jethro
Bass, as none other knew him, and to love him as none other loved him.
The last severe wrench was come, and she had left him standing there
alone in the cold, divining what was in his heart as though it were in
her own. How worthless was this mighty power which he had gained, how
hateful, when he could not bestow the smallest fragment of it upon one
whom he loved? Someone has described hell as disqualification in the face
of opportunity. Such was Jethro's torment that morning as he saw her
drive away, the minister in the place where he should have been, at her
side, and he, Jethro Bass, as helpless as though he had indeed been in
the pit among the flames. Had the prudential committee at Brampton
promised the appointment ten times over, he might still have obtained it
for her by a word. And he must not speak even that word. Who shall say
that a large part of the punishment of Jethro Bass did not come to him in
the life upon this earth.

Some such thoughts were running in Cynthia's head as they jingled away to
Brampton that dazzling morning. Perhaps the stage driver, too, who knew
something of men and things and who meddled not at all, had made a guess
at the situation. He thought that Cynthia's spirits seemed lightened a
little, and he meant to lighten them more; so he joked as much as his
respect for his passengers would permit, and told the news of Brampton.
Not the least of the news concerned the first citizen of that place.
There was a certain railroad in the West which had got itself much into
Congress, and much into the newspapers, and Isaac D. Worthington had got
himself into that railroad: was gone West, it was said on that business,
and might not be back for many weeks. And Lem Hallowell remembered when
Mr. Worthington was a slim-cheated young man wandering up and down
Coniston Water in search of health. Good Mr. Satterlee, thinking this a
safe subject, allowed himself to be led into a discussion of the first
citizen's career, which indeed had something fascinating in it.

Thus they jingled into Brampton Street and stopped before the cottage of
Judge Graves--a courtesy title. The judge himself came to the door and
bestowed a pronounced bow on the minister, for Mr. Satterlee was honored
in Brampton. Just think of what Ezra Graves might have looked like, and
you have him. He greeted Cynthia, too, with a warm welcome--for Ezra
Graves,--and ushered them into a best parlor which was reserved for
ministers and funerals and great occasions in general, and actually
raised the blinds. Then Mr. Satterlee, with much hemming and hawing,
stated the business which had brought them, while Cynthia looked out of
the window.

Mr. Graves sat and twirled his lean thumbs. He went so far as to say that
he admired a young woman who scorned to live in idleness, who wished to
impart the learning with which she had been endowed. Fifteen applicants
were under consideration for the position, and the prudential committee
had so far been unable to declare that any of them were completely
qualified. (It was well named, that prudential committee?) Mr. Graves,
furthermore, volunteered that he had expressed a wish to Colonel Prescott
(Oh, Ephraim, you too have got a title with your new honors!), to Colonel
Prescott and others, that Miss Wetherell might take the place. The middle
term opened on the morrow, and Miss Bruce, of the Worthington Free
Library, had been induced to teach until a successor could be appointed,
although it was most inconvenient for Miss Bruce.

Could Miss Wetherell start in at once, provided the committee agreed?
Cynthia replied that she would like nothing better. There would be an
examination before Mr. Errol, the Brampton Superintendent of Schools. In
short, owing to the pressing nature of the occasion, the judge would take
the liberty of calling the committee together immediately. Would Mr.
Satterlee and Miss Wetherell make themselves at home in the parlor?

It very frequently happens that one member of a committee is the brain,
and the other members form the body of it. It was so in this case. Ezra
Graves typified all of prudence there was about it, which, it must be
admitted, was a great deal. He it was who had weighed in the balance the
fifteen applicants and found them wanting. Another member of the
committee was that comfortable Mr. Dodd, with the tuft of yellow beard,
the hardware dealer whom we have seen at the baseball game. Mr. Dodd was
not a person who had opinions unless they were presented to him from
certain sources, and then he had been known to cling to them tenaciously.
It is sufficient to add that, when Cynthia Wetherell's name was mentioned
to him, he remembered the girl to whom Bob Worthington had paid such
marked attentions on the grand stand. He knew literally nothing else
about Cynthia. Judge Graves, apparently, knew all about her; this was
sufficient, at that time, for Mr. Dodd; he was sick and tired of the
whole affair, and if, by the grace of heaven, an applicant had been sent
who conformed with Judge Graves's multitude of requirements, he was
devoutly thankful. The other member, Mr. Hill, was a feed and lumber
dealer, and not a very good one, for he was always in difficulties;
certain scholarly attainments were attributed to him, and therefore he
had been put on the committee. They met in Mr. Dodd's little office back
of the store, and in five minutes Cynthia was a schoolmistress, subject
to examination by Mr. Errol.

Just a word about Mr. Errol. He was a retired lawyer, with some means,
who took an interest in town affairs to occupy his time. He had a very
delicate wife, whom he had been obliged to send South at the beginning of
the winter. There she had for a while improved, but had been taken ill
again, and two days before Cynthia's appointment he had been summoned to
her bedside by a telegram. Cynthia could go into the school, and her
examination would take place when Mr. Errol returned.

All this was explained by the judge when, half an hour after he had left
them, he returned to the best parlor. Miss Wetherell would, then, be
prepared to take the school the following morning. Whereupon the judge
shook hands with her, and did not deny that he had been instrumental in
the matter.

"And, Mr. Satterlee, I am so grateful to you," said Cynthia, when they
were in the street once more.

"My dear Cynthia, I did nothing," answered the minister, quite bewildered
by the quick turn affairs had taken; "it is your own good reputation that
got you the place."

Nevertheless Mr. Satterlee had done his share in the matter. He had known
Mr. Graves for a long time, and better than any other person in Brampton.
Mr. Graves remembered Cynthia Ware, and indeed had spoken to Cynthia that
day about her mother. Mr. Graves had also read poor William Wetherell's
contributions to the Newcastle Guardian, and he had not read that paper
since they had ceased. From time to time Mr. Satterlee had mentioned his
pupil to the judge, whose mind had immediately flown to her when the
vacancy occurred. So it all came about.

"And now," said Mr. Satterlee, "what will you do, Cynthia? We've got the
good part of a day to arrange where you will live, before the stage
returns."

"I won't go back to-night, I think," said Cynthia, turning her head away;
"if you would be good enough to tell Uncle Jethro to send my trunk and
some other things."

"Perhaps that is just as well," assented the minister, understanding
perfectly. "I have thought that Miss Bruce might be glad to board you,"
he continued, after a pause. "Let us go to see her."

"Mr. Satterlee," said Cynthia, "would you mind if we went first to see
Cousin Ephraim?"

"Why, of course, we must see Ephraim," said Mr. Satterlee, briskly. So
they walked on past the mansion of the first citizen, and the new block
of stores which the first citizen had built, to the old brick building
which held the Brampton post-office, and right through the door of the
partition into the sanctum of the postmaster himself, which some one had
nicknamed the Brampton Club. On this occasion the postmaster was seated
in his shirt sleeves by the stove, alone, his listeners being
conspicuously absent. Cynthia, who had caught a glimpse of him through
the little mail-window, thought he looked very happy and comfortable.

"Great Tecumseh!" he cried,--an exclamation he reserved for extraordinary
occasions, "if it hain't Cynthy!"

He started to hobble toward her, but Cynthia ran to him.

"Why," said he, looking at her closely after the greeting was over, "you
be changed, Cynthy. Mercy, I don't know as I'd have dared done that if
I'd seed you first. What have you b'en doin' to yourself? You must have
seed a whole lot down there in Boston. And you're a full-blown lady,
too."

"Oh, no, I'm not, Cousin Eph," she answered, trying to smile.

"Yes, you be," he insisted, still scrutinizing her, vainly trying to
account for the change. Tact, as we know, was not Ephraim's strong point.
Now he shook his head. "You always was beyond me. Got a sort of air about
you, and it grows on you, too. Wouldn't be surprised," he declared,
speaking now to the minister, "wouldn't be a mite surprised to see her in
the White House, some day."

"Now, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, coloring a little, "you mustn't talk
nonsense. What have you done with your coat? You have no business to go
without it with your rheumatism."

"It hain't b'en so bad since Uncle Sam took me over again, Cynthy," he
answered, "with nothin' to do but sort letters in a nice hot room." The
room was hot, indeed. "But where did you come from?"

"I grew tired of being taught, Cousin Eph. I--I've always wanted to
teach. Mr. Satterlee has been with me to see Mr. Graves, and they've
given me Miss Goddard's place. I'm coming to Brampton to live, to-day."

"Great Tecumseh!" exclaimed Ephraim again, overpowered by the yews. "I
want to know! What does Jethro say to that?"

"He--he is willing," she replied in a low voice.

"Well," said Ephraim, "I always thought you'd come to it. It's in the
blood, I guess--teachin'. Your mother had it too. I'm kind of sorry for
Jethro, though, so I be. But I'm glad for myself, Cynthy. So you're
comin' to Brampton to live with me!

"I was going to ask Miss Bruce to take me in," said Cynthia.

"No you hain't, anything of the kind," said Ephraim, indignantly. "I've
got a little house up the street, and a room all ready for you."

"Will you let me share expenses, Cousin Eph?"

"I'll let you do anything you want," said he, "so's you come. Don't you
think she'd ought to come and take care of an old man, Mr. Satterlee?"

Mr. Satterlee turned. He had been contemplating, during this
conversation, a life-size print of General Grant under two crossed flags,
that was hung conspicuously on the wall.

"I do not think you could do better, Cynthia," he answered, smiling. The
minister liked Ephraim, and he liked a little joke, occasionally. He felt
that one would not be, particularly out of place just now; so he
repeated, "I do not think you could do better than to accept the offer of
Colonel Prescott."

Ephraim grew very red, as was his wont when twitted about his new title.
He took things literally.

"I hain't a colonel, no more than you be, Mr. Satterlee. But the boys
down here will have it so."

Three days later, by the early train which leaves the state capital at an
unheard-of hour in the morning, a young man arrived in Brampton. His jaw
seemed squarer than ever to the citizens who met the train out of
curiosity, and to Mr. Dodd, who was expecting a pump; and there was a set
look on his face like that of a man who is going into a race or a fight.
Mr. Dodd, though astonished, hastened toward him.

"Well, this is unexpected, Bob," said he. "How be you? Harvard College
failed up?"

For Mr. Dodd never let slip a chance to assure a member of the
Worthington family of his continued friendship.

"How are you, Mr. Dodd?" answered Bob, nodding at him carelessly, and
passing on. Mr. Dodd did not dare to follow. What was young Worthington
doing in Brampton, and his father in the West on that railroad business?
Filled with curiosity, Mr. Dodd forgot his pump, but Bob was already
striding into Brampton Street, carrying his bag. If he had stopped for a
few moments with the hardware dealer, or chatted with any of the dozen
people who bowed and stared at him, he might have saved himself a good
deal of trouble. He turned in at the Worthington mansion, and rang the
bell, which was answered by Sarah, the housemaid.

"Mr. Bob!" she exclaimed.

"Where's Mrs. Holden?" he asked.

Mrs. Holden was the elderly housekeeper. She had gone, unfortunately, to
visit a bereaved relative; unfortunately for Bob, because she, too, might
have told him something.

"Get me some breakfast, Sarah. Anything," he commanded, "and tell Silas
to hitch up the black trotters to my cutter."

Sarah, though in consternation, did as she was bid. The breakfast was
forthcoming, and in half an hour Silas had the black trotters at the
door. Bob got in without a word, seized the reins, the cutter flew down
Brampton Street (observed by many of the residents thereof) and turned
into the Coniston road. Silas said nothing. Silas, as a matter of fact,
never did say anything. He had been the Worthington coachman for five and
twenty years, and he was known in Brampton as Silas the Silent. Young Mr.
Worthington had no desire to talk that morning.

The black trotters covered the ten miles in much quicker time than Lem
Hallowell could do it in his stage, but the distance seemed endless to
Bob. It was not much more than half an hour after he had left Brampton
Street, however, that he shot past the store, and by the time Rias
Richardson in his carpet slippers reached the platform the cutter was in
front of the tannery house, and the trotters, with their sides smoking,
were pawing up the snow under the butternut tree.

Bob leaped out, hurried up the path, and knocked at the door. It was
opened by Jethro Bass himself!

"How do you do, Mr. Bass," said the young man, gravely, and he held out
his hand. Jethro gave him such a scrutinizing look as he had given many a
man whose business he cared to guess, but Bob looked fearlessly into his
eyes. Jethro took his hand.

"C-come in," he said.

Bob went into that little room where Jethro and Cynthia had spent so many
nights together, and his glance flew straight to the picture on the
wall,--the portrait of Cynthia Wetherell in crimson and seed pearls, so
strangely set amidst such surroundings. His glance went to the portrait,
and his feet followed, as to a lodestone. He stood in front of it for
many minutes, in silence, and Jethro watched him. At last he turned.

"Where is she?" he asked.

It was a queer question, and Jethro's answer was quite as lacking in
convention.

"G-gone to Brampton--gone to Brampton."

"Gone to Brampton! Do you mean to say--? What is she doing there?" Bob
demanded.

"Teachin' school," said Jethro; "g-got Miss Goddard's place."

Bob did not reply for a moment. The little schoolhouse was the only
building in Brampton he had glanced at as he came through. Mrs. Merrill
had told him that she might take that place, but he had little imagined
she was already there on her platform facing the rows of shining little
faces at the desks. He had deemed it more than possible that he might see
Jethro at Coniston, but he had not taken into account that which he might
say to him. Bob had, indeed, thought of nothing but Cynthia, and of the
blow that had fallen upon her. He had tried to realize the, multiple
phases of the situation which confronted him. Here was the man who, by
the conduct of his life, had caused the blow; he, too, was her
benefactor; and again, this same man was engaged in the bitterest of
conflicts with his father, Isaac D. Worthington, and it was this conflict
which had precipitated that blow. Bob could not have guessed, by looking
at Jethro Bass, how great was the sorrow which had fallen upon him. But
Bob knew that Jethro hated his father, must hate him now, because of
Cynthia, with a hatred given to few men to feel. He thought that Jethro
would crush Mr. Worthington and ruin him if he could; and Bob believed he
could.

What was he to say? He did not fear Jethro, for Bob Worthington had
courage enough; but these things were running in his mind, and he felt
the power of the man before him, as all men did. Bob went to the window
and came back again. He knew that he must speak.

"Mr. Bass," he said at last, "did Cynthia ever mention me to you?"

"No," said Jethro.

"Mr. Bass, I love her. I have told her so, and I have asked her to be my
wife."

There was no need, indeed, to have told Jethro this. The shock of that
revelation had come to him when he had seen the trotters, had been
confirmed when the young man had stood before the portrait. Jethro's face
might have twitched when Bob stood there with his back to him.

Jethro could not speak. Once more there had come to him a moment when he
would not trust his voice to ask a question. He dreaded the answer,
though none might have surmised this. He knew Cynthia. He knew that, when
she had given her heart, it was for all time. He dreaded the answer;
because it might mean that her sorrow was doubled.

"I believe," Bob continued painfully, seeing that Jethro would say
nothing, "I believe that Cynthia loves me. I should not dare to say it or
to hope it, without reason. She has not said so, but--" the words were
very hard for him, yet he stuck manfully to the truth; "but she told me
to write to my father and let him know what I had done, and not to come
back to her until I had his answer. This," he added, wondering that a man
could listen to such a thing without a sign, "this was before--before she
had any idea of coming home."

Yes, Cynthia, did love him. There was no doubt about it in Jethro's mind.
She would not have bade Bob write to his father if she had not loved him.
Still Jethro did not speak, but by some intangible force compelled Bob to
go on.

"I shall write to my father as soon as he comes back from the West, but I
wish to say to you, Mr. Bass, that whatever his answer contains, I mean
to marry Cynthia. Nothing can shake me from that resolution. I tell you
this because my father is fighting you, and you know what he will say."
(Jethro knew Dudley Worthington well enough to appreciate that this would
make no particular difference in his opposition to the marriage except to
make that opposition more vehement.) "And because you do not know me,"
continued Bob. "When I say a thing, I mean it. Even if my father cuts me
off and casts me out, I will marry Cynthia. Good-by, Mr. Bass."

Jethro took the young man's hand again. Bob imagined that he even pressed
it--a little--something he had never done before.

"Good-by, Bob."

Bob got as far as the door.

"Er--go back to Harvard, Bob?"

"I intend to, Mr. Bass."

"Er--Bob?"

"Yes?"

"D-don't quarrel with your father--don't quarrel with your father."

"I shan't be the one to quarrel, Mr. Bass."

"Bob--hain't you pretty young--pretty young?"

"Yes," said Bob, rather unexpectedly, "I am." Then he added, "I know my
own mind."

"P-pretty young. Don't want to get married yet awhile--do you?"

"Yes, I do," said Bob, "but I suppose I shan't be able to."

"Er--wait awhile, Bob. Go back to Harvard. W-wouldn't write that letter
if I was you."

"But I will. I'll not have him think I'm ashamed of what I've done. I'm
proud of it, Mr. Bass."

In the eyes of Coniston, which had been waiting for his reappearance, Bob
Worthington jumped into the sleigh and drove off. He left behind him
Jethro Bass, who sat in his chair the rest of the morning with his head
bent in revery so deep that Millicent had to call him twice to his simple
dinner. Bob left behind him, too, a score of rumors, sprung full grown
into life with his visit. Men and women an incredible distance away heard
them in an incredible time: those in the village found an immediate
pretext for leaving their legitimate occupation and going to the store,
and a gathering was in session there when young Mr. Worthington drove
past it on his way back. Bob thought little about the rumors, and not
thinking of them it did not occur to him that they might affect Cynthia.
The only person then in Coniston whom he thought about was Jethro Bass.
Bob decided that his liking for Jethro had not diminished, but rather
increased; he admired Jethro for the advice he had given, although he did
not mean to take it. And for the first time he pitied him.

Bob did not know that rumor, too, was spreading in Brampton. He had his
dinner in the big walnut dining room all alone, and after it he smoked
his father's cigars and paced up and down the big hall, watching the
clock. For he could not go to her in the school hours. At length he put
on his hat and hurried out, crossing the park-like enclosure in the
middle of the street; bowed at by Mr. Dodd, who always seemed to be on
hand, and others, and nodding absently in return. Concealment was not in
Bob Worthington's nature. He reached the post-office, where the partition
door was open, and he walked right into a comparatively full meeting of
the Brampton Club. Ephraim sat in their midst, and for once he was not
telling war stories. He was silent. And the others fell suddenly silent,
too, at Bob's entrance.

"How do you do, Mr. Prescott?" he said, as Ephraim struggled to his feet.
"How is the rheumatism?"

"How be you, Mr. Worthington?" said Ephraim; "this is a kind of a
surprise, hain't it?" Ephraim was getting used to surprises. "Well, it is
good-natured of you to come in and shake hands with an old soldier."

"Don't mention it, Mr. Prescott," answered honest Bob, a little abashed,
"I should have done so anyway, but the fact is, I wanted to speak to you
a moment in private."

"Certain," said Ephraim, glancing helplessly around him, "jest come out
front." That space, where the public were supposed to be, was the only
private place in the Brampton post-office. But the members of the
Brampton Club could take a hint, and with one consent began to make
excuses. Bob knew them all from boyhood and spoke to them all. Some of
them ventured to ask him if Harvard had bust up.

"Where does Cynthia-live?" he demanded, coming straight to the point.

Ephraim stared at him for a moment in a bewildered fashion, and then a
light began to dawn on him.

"Lives with me," he answered. He was quite as ashamed, for Bob's sake, as
if he himself had asked the question, and he went on talking to cover
that embarrassment. "It's made some difference, too, sence she come.
House looks like a different place. Afore she, come I cooked with a kit,
same as I used to in the harness shop. I l'arned it in the army. Cynthy's
got a stove."

It was not the way Ephraim would have gone about a love affair, had he
had one. Sam Price's were the approved methods in that section of the
country, though Sam had overdone them somewhat. It was an unheard-of
thing to ask a man right out like that where a girl lived.

"Much obliged," said Bob, and was gone. Ephraim raised his hands in
despair, and hobbled to the little window to get a last look at him.
Where were the proprieties in these days? The other aspect of the affair,
what Mr. Worthington would think of it when he returned, did not occur to
the innocent mind of the old soldier until people began to talk about it
that afternoon. Then it worried him into another attack of rheumatism.

Half of Brampton must have seen Bob Worthington march up to the little
yellow house which Ephraim had rented from John Billings. It had four
rooms around the big chimney in the middle, and that was all. Simple as
it was, an architect would have said that its proportions were nearly
perfect. John Billings had it from his Grandfather Post, who built it,
and though Brampton would have laughed at the statement, Isaac D.
Worthington's mansion was not to be compared with it for beauty. The old
cherry furniture was still in it, and the old wall papers and the
panelling in the little room to the right which Cynthia had made into a
sitting room.

Half of Brampton, too, must have seen Cynthia open the door and Bob walk
into the entry. Then the door was shut. But it had been held open for an
appreciable time, however,--while you could count twenty,--because
Cynthia had not the power to close it. For a while she could only look
into his eyes, and he into hers. She had not seen him coming, she had but
answered the knock. Then, slowly, the color came into her cheeks, and she
knew that she was trembling from head to foot.

"Cynthia," he said, "mayn't I come in?"

She did not answer, for fear her voice would tremble, too. And she could
not send him away in the face of all Brampton. She opened the door a
little wider, a very little, and he went in. Then she closed it, and for
a moment they stood facing each other in the entry, which was lighted
only by the fan-light over the door, Cynthia with her back against the
wall. He spoke her name again, his voice thick with the passion which had
overtaken him like a flood at the sight of her--a passion to seize her in
his arms, and cherish and comfort and protect her forever and ever. All
this he felt and more as he looked into her face and saw the traces of
her great sorrow there. He had not thought that that face could be more
beautiful in its strength and purity, but it was even so.

"Cynthia-my love!" he cried, and raised his arms. But a look as of a
great fear came into her eyes, which for one exquisite moment had yielded
to his own; and her breath came quickly, as though she were spent--as
indeed she was. So far spent that the wall at her back was grateful.

"No!" she said; "no--you must not--you must not--you must not!" Again and
again she repeated the words, for she could summon no others. They were a
mandate--had he guessed it--to herself as to him. For the time her brain
refused its functions, and she could think of nothing but the fact that
he was there, beside her, ready to take her in his arms. How she longed
to fly into them, none but herself knew--to fly into them as into a
refuge secure against the evil powers of the world. It was not reason
that restrained her then, but something higher in her, that restrained
him likewise. Without moving from the wall she pushed open the door of
the sitting room.

"Go in there," she said.

He went in as she bade him and stood before the flickering logs in the
wide and shallow chimney-place--logs that seemed to burn on the very
hearth itself, and yet the smoke rose unerring into the flue. No stove
had ever desecrated that room. Bob looked into the flames and waited, and
Cynthia stood in the entry fighting this second great battle which had
come upon her while her forces were still spent with that other one.
Woman in her very nature is created to be sheltered and protected; and
the yearning in her, when her love is given, is intense as nature itself
to seek sanctuary in that love. So it was with Cynthia leaning against
the entry wall, her arms full length in front of her, and her hands
clasped as she prayed for strength to withstand the temptation. At last
she grew calmer, though her breath still came deeply, and she went into
the sitting room.

Perhaps he knew, vaguely, why she had not followed him at once. He had
grown calmer himself, calmer with that desperation which comes to a man
of his type when his soul and body are burning with desire for a woman.
He knew that he would have to fight for her with herself. He knew now
that she was too strong in her position to be carried by storm, and the
interval had given him time to collect himself. He did not dare at first
to look up from the logs, for fear he should forget himself and be
defeated instantly.

"I have been to Coniston, Cynthia," he said.

"Yes."

"I have been to Coniston this morning, and I have seen Mr. Bass, and I
have told him that I love you, and that I will never give you up. I told
you so in Boston, Cynthia," he said; "I knew that this this trouble would
come to you. I would have given my life to have saved you from it--from
the least part of it. I would have given my life to have been able to say
'it shall not touch you.' I saw it flowing in like a great sea between
you and me, and yet I could not tell you of it. I could not prepare you
for it. I could only tell you that I would never give you up, and I can
only repeat that now."

"You must, Bob," she answered, in a voice so low that it was almost a
whisper; "you must give me up."

"I would not," he said, "I would not if the words were written on all the
rocks of Coniston Mountain. I love you."

"Hush," she said gently. "I have to say some things to you. They will be
very hard to say, but you must listen to them."

"I will listen," he said doggedly; "but they will not affect my
determination."

"I am sure you do not wish to drive me away from Brampton," she
continued, in the same low voice, "when I have found a place to earn my
living near-near Uncle Jethro."

These words told him all he had suspected--almost as much as though he
had been present at the scene in the tannery shed in Coniston. She knew
now the life of Jethro Bass, but he was still "Uncle Jethro" to her. It
was even as Bob had supposed,--that her affection once given could not be
taken away.

"Cynthia," he said, "I would not by an act or a word annoy or trouble
you. If you bade me, I would go to the other side of the world to-morrow.
You must know that. But I should come back again. You must know, that,
too. I should come back again for you."

"Bob," she said again, and her voice faltered a very little now, "you
must know that I can never be your wife."

"I do not know it," he exclaimed, interrupting her vehemently, "I will
not know it."

"Think," she said, "think! I must say what I, have to say, however it
hurts me. If it had not been for--for your father, those things never
would have been written. They were in his newspaper, and they express his
feelings toward--toward Uncle Jethro."

Once the words were out, she marvelled that she had found the courage to
pronounce them.

"Yes," he said, "yes, I know that, but listen--"

"Wait," she went on, "wait until I have finished. I am not speaking of
the pain I had when I read these things, I--I am not speaking of the
truth that may be in them--I have learned from them what I should have
known before, and felt, indeed, that your father will never consent
to--to a marriage between us."

"And if he does not," cried Bob, "if he does not, do you think that I
will abide by what he says, when my life's happiness depends upon you,
and my life's welfare? I know that you are a good woman, and a true
woman, that you will be the best wife any man could have. Though he is my
father, he shall not deprive me of my soul, and he shall not take my life
away from me."

As Cynthia listened she thought that never had words sounded sweeter than
these--no, and never would again. So she told herself as she let them run
into her heart to be stored among the treasures there. She believed in
his love--believed in it now with all her might. (Who, indeed, would
not?) She could not demean herself now by striving to belittle it or
doubt its continuance, as she had in Boston. He was young, yes; but he
would never be any older than this, could never love again like this. So
much was given her, ought she not to be content? Could she expect more?

She understood Isaac Worthington, now, as well as his son understood him.
She knew that, if she were to yield to Bob Worthington, his father would
disown and disinherit him. She looked ahead into the years as a woman
will, and allowed herself for the briefest of moments to wonder whether
any happiness could thrive in spite of the violence of that schism--any
happiness for him. She would be depriving him of his birthright, and it
may be that those who are born without birthrights often value them the
most. Cynthia saw these things, and more, for those who sit at the feet
of sorrow soon learn the world's ways. She saw herself pointed out as the
woman whose designs had beggared and ruined him in his youth, and
(agonizing and revolting thought!) the name of one would be spoken from
whom she had learned such craft. Lest he see the scalding tears in her
eyes, she turned away and conquered them. What could she do? Where should
she hide her love that it might not be seen of men? And how, in truth,
could she tell him these things?

"Cynthia," he went on, seeing that she did not answer, and taking heart,
"I will not say a word against my father. I know you would not respect me
if I did. We are different, he and I, and find happiness in different
ways." Bob wondered if his father had ever found it. "If I had never met
you and loved you, I should have refused to lead the life my father
wishes me to lead. It is not in me to do the things he will ask. I shall
have to carve out my own life, and I feel that I am as well able to do it
as he was. Percy Broke, a classmate of mine and my best friend, has a
position for me in a locomotive works in which his father is largely
interested.  We are going in together, the day after we graduate; it is
all arranged, and his father has agreed. I shall work very hard, and in a
few years, Cynthia, we shall be together, never to part again. Oh,
Cynthia," he cried, carried away by the ecstasy of this dream which he
had, summoned up, "why do you resist me? I love you as no man has ever
loved," he exclaimed, with scornful egotism and contempt of those who had
made the world echo with that cry through the centuries, "and you love
me! Ah, do you think I do not see it--cannot feel it? You love me--tell
me so."

He was coming toward her, and how was she to prevent his taking her by
storm? That was his way, and well she knew it. In her dreams she had felt
herself lifted and borne off, breathless in his arms, to Elysium. Her
breath was going now, her strength was going, and yet she made him pause
by the magic of a word. A concession was in that word, but one could not
struggle so piteously and concede nothing.

"Bob," she said, "do you love me?"

Love her! If there was a love that acknowledged no bounds, that was
confined by no superlatives, it was his. He began to speak, but she
interrupted him with a wild passion that was new to her. As he sat in the
train on his way back to Cambridge through the darkening afternoon, the
note of it rang in his ears and gave him hope--yes, and through many
months afterward.

"If you love me I beg, I implore, I beseech you in the name of that
love--for your, sake and my sake, to leave me. Oh, can you not see why
you must go?"

He stopped, even as he had before in the parlor in Mount Vernon Street.
He could but stop in the face of such an appeal--and yet the blood beat
in his head with a mad joy.

"Tell me that you love me,--once," he cried,--"once, Cynthia."

"Do-do not ask me," she faltered. "Go."

Her words were a supplication, not a command. And in that they were a
supplication he had gained a victory. Yes, though she had striven with
all her might to deny, she had bade him hope. He left her without so much
as a touch of the hand, because she had wished it. And yet she loved him!
Incredible fact! Incredible conjury which made him doubt that his feet
touched the snow of Brampton Street, which blotted, as with a golden
glow, the faces and the houses of Brampton from his sight. He saw no one,
though many might have accosted him. That part of him which was clay,
which performed the menial tasks of his being, had kindly taken upon
itself to fetch his bag from the house to the station, and to board the
train.

Ah, but Brampton had seen him!




CHAPTER XIV

Great events, like young Mr. Worthington's visit to Brampton, are all
very well for a while, but they do not always develop with sufficient
rapidity to satisfy the audiences of the drama. Seven days were an
interlude quite long enough in which to discuss every phase and bearing
of this opening scene, and after that the play in all justice ought to
move on. But there it halted--for a while--and the curtain obstinately
refused to come up. If the inhabitants of Brampton had only known that
the drama, when it came, would be well worth waiting for, they might have
been less restless.

It is unnecessary to enrich the pages of this folio with all the
footnotes and remarks of, the sages of Brampton. These can be condensed
into a paragraph of two--and we can ring up the curtain when we like on
the next scene, for which Brampton had to wait considerably over a month.
There is to be no villain in this drama with the face of an Abbe Maury
like the seven cardinal sins. Comfortable looking Mr. Dodd of the
prudential committee, with his chin-tuft of yellow beard, is cast for the
part of the villain, but will play it badly; he would have been better
suited to a comedy part.

Young Mr. Worthington left Brampton on the five o'clock train, and at six
Mr. Dodd met his fellow-member of the committee, Judge Graves.

"Called a meetin'?" asked Mr. Dodd, pulling the yellow tuft.

"What for?" said the judge, sharply.

"What be you a-goin' to do about it?" said Mr. Dodd.

"Do about what?" demanded the judge, looking at the hardware dealer from
under his eyebrows.

Mr. Dodd knew well enough that this was not ignorance on the part of Mr.
Graves, whose position in the matter dad been very well defined in the
two sentences he had spoken. Mr. Dodd perceived that the judge was trying
to get him to commit himself, and would then proceed to annihilate him.
He, Levi Dodd, had no intention of walking into such a trap.

"Well," said he, with a final tug at the tuft, "if that's the way you
feel about it."

"Feel about what?" said the judge, fiercely.

"Callate you know best," said Mr. Dodd, and passed on up the street. But
he felt the judge's gimlet eyes boring holes in his back. The judge's
position was very fine, no doubt for the judge. All of which tends to
show that Levi Dodd had swept his mind, and that it was ready now for the
reception of an opinion.

Six weeks or more, as has been said, passed before the curtain rose
again, but the snarling trumpets of the orchestra played a fitting
prelude. Cynthia's feelings and Cynthia's life need not be gone into
during this interval knowing her character, they may well be imagined.
They were trying enough, but Brampton had no means of guessing them.
During the weeks she came and went between the little house and the
little school, putting all the strength that was in her into her duties.
The Prudential Committee, which sometimes sat on the platform, could find
no fault with the performance of these duties, or with the capability of
the teacher, and it is not going too far to state that the children grew
to love her better than Miss Goddard had been loved. It may be declared
that children are the fittest citizens of a republic, because they are
apt to make up their own minds on any subject without regard to public
opinion. It was so with the scholars of Brampton village lower school:
they grew to love the new teacher, careless of what the attitude of their
elders might be, and some of them could have been seen almost any day
walking home with her down the street.

As for the attitude of the elders--there was none. Before assuming one
they had thought it best, with characteristic caution, to await the next
act in the drama. There were ladies in Brampton whose hearts prompted
them, when they called on the new teacher, to speak a kindly word of
warning and advice; but somehow, when they were seated before her in the
little sitting room of the John Billings house, their courage failed
them. There was something about this daughter of the Coniston storekeeper
and ward of Jethro Bass that made them pause. So much for the ladies of
Brampton. What they said among themselves would fill a chapter, and more.

There was, at this time, a singular falling-off in the attendance of the
Brampton Club. Ephraim sat alone most of the day in his Windsor chair by
the stove, pretending to read newspapers. But he did not mention this
fact to Cynthia. He was more lonesome than ever on the Saturdays and
Sundays which she spent with Jethro Bass.

Jethro Bass! It is he who might be made the theme of the music of the
snarling trumpets. What was he about during those six weeks? That is what
the state at large was beginning to wonder, and the state at large was
looking on at a drama, too. A rumor reached the capital and radiated
thence to every city and town and hamlet, and was followed by other
rumors like confirmations. Jethro Bass, for the first time in a long life
of activity, was inactive: inactive, too, at this most critical period of
his career, the climax of it, with a war to be waged which for bitterness
and ferocity would have no precedent; with the town meetings at hand,
where the frontier fighting was to be done, and no quarter given.
Lieutenants had gone to Coniston for further orders and instructions, and
had come back without either. Achilles was sulking in the tannery
house--some said a broken Achilles. Not a word could be got out of him,
or the sign of an intention. Jake Wheeler moped through the days in Rias
Richardson's store, too sore at heart to speak to any man, and could have
wept if tears had been a relief to him. No more blithe errands over the
mountain to Clovelly and elsewhere, though Jake knew the issue now and
itched for the battle, and the vassals of the hill-Rajah under a jubilant
Bijah Bixby were arming cap-a-pie. Lieutenant-General-and-Senator Peleg
Hartington of Brampton, in his office over the livery stable, shook his
head like a mournful stork when questioned by brother officers from afar.
Operations were at a standstill, and the sinews of war relaxed. Rural
givers of mortgages, who had not had the opportunity of selling them or
had feared to do so, began (mirabile dictu) to express opinions. Most
ominous sign of all--the proprietor of the Pelican Hotel had confessed
that the Throne Room had not been engaged for the coming session.

Was it possible that Jethro Bass lay crushed under the weight of the
accusations which had been printed, and were still being printed, in the
Newcastle Guardian? He did not answer them, or retaliate in other
newspapers, but Jethro Bass had never made use of newspapers in this way.
Still, nothing ever printed about him could be compared with those
articles. Had remorse suddenly overtaken him in his old age? Such were
the questions people we're asking all over the state--people, at least,
who were interested in politics, or in those operations which went by the
name of politics: yes, and many private citizens--who had participated in
politics only to the extent of voting for such candidates as Jethro in
his wisdom had seen fit to give them, read the articles and began to say
that boss domination was at an end. A new era was at hand, which they
fondly (and very properly) believed was to be a golden era. It was,
indeed, to be a golden era--until things got working; and then the gold
would cease. The Newcastle Guardian, with unconscious irony, proclaimed
the golden era; and declared that its columns, even in other days and
under other ownership, had upheld the wisdom of Jethro Bass. And he was
still a wise man, said the Guardian, for he had had sense enough to give
up the fight.

Had he given up the fight? Cynthia fervently hoped and prayed that he
had, but she hoped and prayed in silence. Well she knew, if the event in
the tannery shed had not made him abandon his affairs, no appeal could do
so. Her happiest days in this period were the Saturdays and Sundays spent
with him in Coniston, and as the weeks went by she began to believe that
the change, miraculous as it seemed, had indeed taken place. He had given
up his power. It was a pleasure that made the weeks bearable for her.
What did it matter--whether he had made the sacrifice for the sake of his
love for her? He had made it.

On these Saturdays and Sundays they went on long drives together over the
hills, while she talked to him of her life in Brampton or the books she
was reading, and of those she had chosen for him to read. Sometimes they
did not turn homeward until the delicate tracery of the branches on the
snow warned them of the rising moon. Jethro was often silent for hours at
a time, but it seemed to Cynthia that it was the silence of peace--of a
peace he had never known before. There came no newspapers to the tannery
house now: during the mid-week he read the books of which she had spoken
William Wetherell's books; or sat in thought, counting, perhaps; the days
until she should come again. And the boy of those days for him was more
pathetic than much that is known to the world as sorrow.

And what did Coniston think? Coniston, indeed, knew not what to think,
when, little by little, the great men ceased to drive up to the door of
the tannery house, and presently came no more. Coniston sank then from
its proud position as the real capital of the state to a lonely hamlet
among the hills. Coniston, too, was watching the drama, and had had a
better view of the stage than Brampton, and saw some reason presently for
the change in Jethro Bass. Not that Mr. Satterlee told, but such evidence
was bound, in the end, to speak for itself. The Newcastle Guardian had
been read and debated at the store--debated with some heat by Chester
Perkins and other mortgagors; discussed, nevertheless, in a political
rather than a moral light. Then Cynthia had returned home; her face had
awed them by its sorrow, and she had begun to earn her own living. Then
the politicians had ceased to come. The credit belongs to Rias Richardson
for hawing been the first to piece these three facts together, causing
him to burn his hand so severely on the stove that he had to carry it
bandaged in soda for a week. Cynthia Wetherell had reformed Jethro.

Though the village loved and revered Cynthia, Coniston as a whole did not
rejoice in that reform. The town had fallen from its mighty estate, and
there were certain envious ones who whispered that it had remained for a
young girl who had learned city ways to twist Jethro around her finger;
that she had made him abandon his fight with Isaac D. Worthington because
Mr. Worthington had a son--but there is no use writing such scandal.
Stripped of his power--even though he stripped himself--Jethro began to
lose their respect, a trait tending to prove that the human race may have
had wolves for ancestors as well as apes. People had small opportunity,
however, of showing a lack of respect to his person, for in these days he
noticed no one and spoke to none.

When the lion is crippled, the jackals begin to range. A jackal
reconnoitered the lair to see how badly the lion was crippled, and
conceived with astounding insolence the plan of capturing the lion's
quarry. This jackal, who was an old one, well knew how to round up a
quarry, and fled back over the hills to consult with a bigger jackal, his
master. As a result, two days before March town-meeting day, Mr. Bijah
Bixby paid a visit to the Harwich bank and went among certain Coniston
farmers looking over the sheep, his clothes bulging out in places when he
began, and seemingly normal enough when he had finished. History repeats
itself, even among lions and jackals. Thirty-six years before there had
been a town-meeting in Coniston and a surprise. Established Church,
decent and orderly selectmen and proceedings had been toppled over that
day, every outlying farm sending its representative through the sleet to
do it. And now retribution was at hand. This March-meeting day was mild,
the grass showing a green color on the south slopes where the snow had
melted, and the outlying farmers drove through mud-holes up to the axles.
Drove, albeit, in procession along the roads, grimly enough, and the
sheds Jock Hallowell had built around the meeting-house could not hold
the horses; they lined the fences and usurped the hitching posts of the
village street, and still they came. Their owners trooped with muddy
boots into the meeting-house, and when the moderator rapped for order the
Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Jethro Bass, was not in his place;
never, indeed, would be there again. Six and thirty years he had been
supreme in that town--long enough for any man. The beams and king posts
would know him no more. Mr. Amos Cuthbert was elected Chairman, not
without a gallant and desperate but unsupported fight of a minority led
by Mr. Jake Wheeler, whose loyalty must be taken as a tribute to his
species. Farmer Cuthbert was elected, and his mortgage was not
foreclosed! Had it been, there was more money in the Harwich bank.

There was no telegraph to Coniston in these days, and so Mr. Sam Price,
with his horse in a lather, might have been seen driving with unseemly
haste toward Brampton, where in due time he arrived. Half an hour later
there was excitement at Newcastle, sixty-five miles away, in the office
of the Guardian, and the next morning the excitement had spread over the
whole state.

Jethro Bass was dethroned in Coniston--discredited in his own town!

And where was Jethro? Did his heart ache, did he bow his head as he
thought of that supremacy, so hardly won, so superbly held, gone forever?
Many were the curious eyes on the tannery house that day, and for days
after, but its owner gave no signs of concern. He read and thought and
chopped wood in the tannery shed as usual. Never, I believe, did man,
shorn of power, accept his lot more quietly. His struggle was over, his
battle was fought, a greater peace than he had ever thought to hope for
was won. For the opinion and regard of the world he had never cared. A
greater reward awaited him, greater than any knew--the opinion and regard
and the praise of one whom he loved beyond all the world. On Friday she
came to him, on Friday at sunset, for the days were growing longer, and
that was the happiest sunset of his life. She said nothing as she raised
her face to his and kissed him and clung to him in the little parlor, but
he knew, and he had his reward. So much for earthly power Cynthia brought
the little rawhide trunk this time, and came to Coniston for the March
vacation--a happy two weeks that was soon gone. Happy by comparison, that
is, with what they both had suffered, and a haven of rest after the
struggle and despair of the wilderness. The bond between them had, in
truth, never been stronger, for both the young girl and the old man had
denied themselves the thing they held most dear. Jethro had taken refuge
and found comfort in his love. But Cynthia! Her greatest love had now
been bestowed elsewhere.

If there were letters for the tannery house, Milly Skinner, who made it a
point to meet the stage, brought them. And there were letters during
Cynthia's sojourn,--many of them, bearing the Cambridge postmark. One
evening it was Jethro who laid the letter on the table beside her as she
sat under the lamp. He did not look at her or speak, but she felt that he
knew her secret--felt that he deserved to have from her own lips what he
had been too proud--yes--and too humble to ask. Whose sympathy could she
be sure of, if not of his? Still she had longed to keep this treasure to
herself. She took the letter in her hand.

"I do not answer them, Uncle Jethro, but--I cannot prevent his writing
them," she faltered. She did not confess that she kept them, every one,
and read them over and over again; that she had grown, indeed, to look
forward to them as to a sustenance. "I--I do love him, but I will not
marry him."

Yes, she could be sure of Jethro's sympathy, though he could not express
it in words. Yet she had not told him for this. She had told him, much as
the telling had hurt her, because she feared to cut him more deeply by
her silence.

It was a terrible moment for Jethro, and never had he desired the gift of
speech as now. Had it not been for him; Cynthia might have been Robert
Worthington's wife. He sat down beside her and put his hand over hers
that lay on the letter in her lap. It was the only answer he could make,
but perhaps it was the best, after all. Of what use were words at such a
time!

Four days afterward, on a Monday morning, she went back to Brampton to
begin the new term.

That same Monday a circumstance of no small importance took place in
Brampton--nothing less than the return, after a prolonged absence in the
West and elsewhere, of its first citizen. Isaac D. Worthington was again
in residence. No bells were rung, indeed, and no delegation of citizens
as such, headed by the selectmen, met him at the station; and other
feudal expressions of fealty were lacking. No staff flew Mr.
Worthington's arms; nevertheless the lord of Brampton was in his castle
again, and Brampton felt that he was there. He arrived alone, wearing the
silk hat which had become habitual with him now, and stepping into his
barouche at the station had been driven up Brampton Street behind his
grays, looking neither to the right nor left. His reddish chop whiskers
seemed to cling a little more closely to his face than formerly, and long
years of compression made his mouth look sterner than ever. A hawk-like
man, Isaac Worthington, to be reckoned with and feared, whether in a
frock coat or in breastplate and mail.

His seneschal, Mr. Flint, was awaiting him in the library. Mr. Flint was
large and very ugly, big-boned, smooth-shaven, with coarse features all
askew, and a large nose with many excrescences, and thick lips. He was
forty-two. From a foreman of the mills he had risen, step by step, to his
present position, which no one seemed able to define. He was, indeed, a
seneschal. He managed the mills in his lord's absence, and--if the truth
be told--in his presence; knotty questions of the Truro Railroad were
brought to Mr. Flint and submitted to Mr. Worthington, who decided them,
with Mr. Flint's advice; and, within the last three months, Mr. Flint had
invaded the realm of politics, quietly, as such a man would, under the
cover of his patron's name and glory. Mr. Flint it was who had bought the
Newcastle Guardian, who went occasionally to Newcastle and spoke a few
effective words now and then to the editor; and, if the truth will out,
Mr. Flint had largely conceived that scheme about the railroads which was
to set Mr. Worthington on the throne of the state, although the scheme
was not now being carried out according to Mr. Flint's wishes. Mr. Flint
was, in a sense, a Bismarck, but he was not as yet all powerful.
Sometimes his august master or one of his fellow petty sovereigns would
sweep Mr. Flint's plans into the waste basket, and then Mr. Flint would
be content to wait. To complete the character sketch, Mr. Flint was not
above hanging up his master's hat and coat, Which he did upon the present
occasion, and went up to Mr. Worthington's bedroom to fetch a pocket
handkerchief out of the second drawer. He even knew where the
handkerchiefs were kept. Lucky petty sovereigns sometimes possess Mr.
Flints to make them emperors.

The august personage seated himself briskly at his desk.

"So that scoundrel Bass is actually discredited at last," he said,
blowing his nose in the pocket handkerchief Mr. Flint had brought him. "I
lose patience when I think how long we've stood the rascal in this state.
I knew the people would rise in their indignation when they learned the
truth about him."

Mr. Flint did not answer this. He might have had other views.

"I wonder we did not think of it before," Mr. Worthington continued. "A
very simple remedy, and only requiring a little courage and--and--" (Mr.
Worthington was going to say money, but thought better of it) "and the
chimera disappears. I congratulate you, Flint."

"Congratulate yourself," said Mr. Flint; "that would not have been my
way."

"Very well, I congratulate myself," said the august personage, who was in
too good a humor to be put out by the rejection of a compliment. "You
remember what I said: the time was ripe, just publish a few biographical
articles telling people what he was, and Jethro Bass would snuff out like
a candle. Mr. Duncan tells me the town-meeting results are very good all
over the state. Even if we hadn't knocked out Jethro Bass, we'd have a
fair majority for our bill in the next legislature."

"You know Bass's saying," answered Mr. Flint, "You can hitch that kind of
a hoss, but they won't always stay hitched."

"I know, I know," said Mr. Worthington; "don't croak, Flint. We can buy
more hitch ropes, if necessary. Well, what's the outlay up to the
present? Large, I suppose. Well, whatever it is, it's small compared to
what we'll get for it." He laughed a little and rubbed his hands, and
then he remembered that capacity in which he stood before the world. Yes,
and he stood before himself in the same capacity. Isaac Worthington may
have deceived himself, but he may or may not have been a hero to his
seneschal. "We have to fight fire with fire," he added, in a pained
voice. "Let me see the account."

"I have tabulated the expense in the different cities and towns,"
answered Mr. Flint; "I will show you the account in a little while. The
expenses in Coniston were somewhat greater than the size of the town
justified, perhaps. But Sutton thought--"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Mr. Worthington, "if it had cost as much to carry
Coniston as Newcastle, it would have been worth it--for the moral effect
alone."

Moral effect! Mr. Flint thought of Mr. Bixby with his bulging pockets
going about the hills, and smiled at the manner in which moral effects
are sometimes obtained.

"Any news, Flint?"

No news yet, Mr. Flint might have answered. In a few minutes there might
be news, and plenty of it, for it lay ready to be hatched under Mr.
Worthington's eye. A letter in the bold and upright hand of his son was
on the top of the pile, placed there by Mr. Flint himself, who had
examined Mr. Worthington's face closely when he came in to see how much
he might know of its contents. He had decided that Mr. Worthington was in
too good a humor to know anything of them. Mr. Flint had not steamed the
letter open, and read the news; but he could guess at them pretty
shrewdly, and so could have the biggest fool in Brampton. That letter
contained the opening scene of the next act in the drama.

Mr. Worthington cut the envelope and began to read, and while he did so
Mr. Flint, who was not afraid of man or beast, looked at him. It was a
manly and straight forward letter, and Mr. Worthington, no matter what
his opinions on the subject were, should have been proud of it. Bob
announced, first of all, that he was going to marry Cynthia Wetherell;
then he proceeded with praiseworthy self-control (for a lover) to
describe Cynthia's character and attainments: after which he stated that
Cynthia had refused him--twice, because she believed that Mr. Worthington
would oppose the marriage, and had declared that she would never be the
cause of a breach between father and son. Bob asked for his father's
consent, and hoped to have it, but he thought it only right to add that
he had given his word and his love, and did not mean to retract either.
He spoke of his visit to Brampton, and explained that Cynthia was
teaching school there, and urged his father to see her before he made a
decision. Mr. Worthington read it through to the end, his lips closing
tighter and tighter until his mouth was but a line across his face. There
was pain in the face, too, the kind of pain which anger sends, and which
comes with the tottering of a pride that is false. Of what gratification
now was the overthrow of Jethro Bass?

He stared at the letter for a moment after he had finished it, and his
face grew a dark red. Then he seized the paper and tore it slowly,
deliberately, into bits.

Dudley Worthington was not thinking then--not he!--of the young man in
the white beaver who had called at the Social Library many years before
to see a young woman whose name, too, had been Cynthia.--He was thinking,
in fact, for he was a man to think in anger, whether it were not possible
to remove this Cynthia from the face of the earth--at least to a place
beyond his horizon and that of his son. Had he worn the chain mail
instead of the frock coat he would have had her hung outside the town
walls.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. And the words sounded profane indeed as he
fixed his eyes upon Mr. Flint. "You knew that Robert had been to
Brampton."

"Yes," said Flint, "the whole village knew it."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Worthington again, "why was I not informed of this?
Why was I not warned of this? Have I no friends? Do you pretend to look
after my interests and not take the trouble to write me on such a
subject."

"Do you think I could have prevented it?" asked Mr. Flint, very calmly.

"You allow this--this woman to come here to Brampton and teach school in
a place where she can further her designs? What were you about?"

"When the prudential committee appointed her, nothing of this was known,
Mr. Worthington."

"Yes, but now--now! What are you doing, what are they doing to allow her
to remain? Who are on that committee?"

Mr. Flint named the men. They had been reelected, as usual, at the recent
town-meeting. Mr. Errol, who had also been reelected, had returned but
had not yet issued the certificate or conducted the examination.

"Send for them, have them here at once," commanded Mr. Worthington,
without listening to this.

"If you take my advice, you will do nothing of the kind," said Mr. Flint,
who, as usual, had the whole situation at his fingers' ends. He had taken
the trouble to inform himself about the girl, and he had discovered,
shrewdly enough, that she was the kind which might be led, but not
driven. If Mr. Flint's advice had been listened to, this story might have
had quite a different ending. But Mr. Flint had not reached the stage
where his advice was always listened to, and he had a maddened man to
deal with now. At that moment, as if fate had determined to intervene,
the housemaid came into the room.

"Mr. Dodd to see you, sir," she said.

"Show him in," shouted Mr. Worthington; "show him in!"

Mr. Dodd was not a man who could wait for a summons which he had felt in
his bones was coming. He was ordinarily, as we have seen, officious. But
now he was thoroughly frightened. He had seen the great man in the
barouche as he drove past the hardware store, and he had made up his mind
to go up at once, and have it over with. His opinions were formed now, He
put a smile on his face when he was a foot outside of the library door.

"This is a great pleasure, Mr. Worthington, a great pleasure, to see you
back," he said, coming forward. "I callated--"

But the great man sat in his chair, and made no attempt to return the
greeting.

"Mr. Dodd, I thought you were my friend," he said.

Mr. Dodd went all to pieces at this reception.

"So I be, Mr. Worthington--so I be," he cried. "That's why I'm here now.
I've b'en a friend of yours ever since I can remember--never fluctuated.
I'd rather have chopped my hand off than had this happen--so I would. If
I could have foreseen what she was, she'd never have had the place, as
sure as my name's Levi Dodd."

If Mr. Dodd had taken the trouble to look at the seneschal's face, he
would have seen a well-defined sneer there.

"And now that you know what she is," cried Mr. Worthington, rising and
smiting the pile of letters on his desk, "why do you keep her there an
instant?"

Mr. Dodd stopped to pick up the letters, which had flown over the floor.
But the great man was now in the full tide of his anger.

"Never mind the letters," he shouted; "tell me why you keep her there."

"We callated we'd wait and see what steps you'd like taken," said the
trembling townsman.

"Steps! Steps! Good God! What kind of man are you to serve in such a
place when you allow the professed ward of Jethro Bass--of Jethro Bass,
the most notoriously depraved man in this state, to teach the children of
this town. Steps! How soon can you call your committee together?"

"Right away," answered Mr. Dodd, breathlessly. He would have gone on to
exculpate himself, but Mr. Worthington's inexorable finger was pointing
at the door.

"If you are a friend of mine," said that gentleman, "and if you have any
regard for the fair name of this town, you will do so at once."

Mr. Dodd departed precipitately, and Mr. Worthington began to pace the
room, clasping his hands now in front of him, now behind him, in his
agony: repeating now and again various appellations which need not be
printed here, which he applied in turn to the prudential committee, to
his son, and to Cynthia Wetherell.

"I'll run her out of Brampton," he said at last.

"If you do," said Mr. Flint, who had been watching him apparently
unmoved, "you may have Jethro Bass on your back."

"Jethro Bass?" shouted Mr. Worthington, with a laugh that was not
pleasant to hear, "Jethro Bass is as dead as Julius Caesar."

It was one thing for Mr. Dodd to promise so readily a meeting of the
committee, and quite another to decide how he was going to get through
the affair without any more burns and scratches than were absolutely
necessary. He had reversed the usual order, and had been in the fire--now
he was going to the frying-pan. He stood in the street for some time,
pulling at his tuft, and then made his way to Mr. Jonathan Hill's feed
store. Mr. Hill was reading "Sartor Resartus" in his little office, the
temperature of which must have been 95, and Mr. Dodd was perspiring when
he got there.

"It's come," said Mr. Dodd, sententiously.

"What's come?" inquired Mr. Hill, mildly.

"Isaac D.'s come, that's what," said Mr. Dodd. "I hain't b'en sleepin'
well of nights, lately. I can't think what we was about, Jonathan,
puttin' that girl in the school. We'd ought to've knowed she wahn't fit."

"What's the matter with her?" inquired Mr. Hill.

"Matter with her!" exclaimed his fellow-committeeman, "she lives with
Jethro Bass--she's his ward."

"Well, what of it?" said Mr. Hill, who never bothered himself about
gossip or newspapers, or indeed about anything not between the covers of
a book, except when he couldn't help it.

"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Dodd, "he's the most notorious, depraved man in
the state. Hain't we got to look out for the fair name of Brampton?"

Mr. Hill sighed and closed his book.

"Well," he said; "I'd hoped we were through with that. Let's go up and
see what Judge Graves says about it."

"Hold on," said Mr. Dodd, seizing the feed dealer by the coat, "we've got
to get it fixed in our minds what we're goin' to do, first. We can't
allow no notorious people in our schools. We've got to stand up to the
jedge, and tell him so. We app'inted her on his recommendation, you
know."

"I like the girl," replied Mr. Hill. "I don't think we ever had a better
teacher. She's quiet, and nice appearin', and attends to her business."

Mr. Dodd pulled his tuft, and cocked his head.

"Mr. Worthington holds a note of yours, don't he, Jonathan?"

Mr. Hill reflected. He said he thought perhaps Mr. Worthington did.

"Well," said Mr. Dodd, "I guess we might as well go along up to the jedge
now as any time."

But when they got there Mr. Dodd's knock was so timid that he had to
repeat it before the judge came to the door and peered at them over his
spectacles.

"Well, gentlemen, what can I do for you?" he asked, severely, though he
knew well enough. He had not been taken by surprise many times during the
last forty years. Mr. Dodd explained that they wished a little meeting of
the committee. The judge ushered them into his bedroom, the parlor being
too good for such an occasion.

"Now, gentlemen," said he, "let us get down to business. Mr. Worthington
arrived here to-day, he has seen Mr. Dodd, and Mr. Dodd has seen Mr.
Hill. Mr. Worthington is a political opponent of Jethro Bass, and wishes
Miss Wetherell dismissed. Mr. Dodd and Mr. Hill have agreed, for various
reasons which I will spare you, that Miss Wetherell should be dismissed.
Have I stated the case, gentlemen, or have I not?"

Mr. Graves took off his spectacles and wiped them, looking from one to
the other of his very uncomfortable fellow-members. Mr. Hill did not
attempt to speak; but Mr. Dodd, who was not sure now that this was not
the fire and the other the frying-pan, pulled at his tuft until words
came to him.

"Jedge," he said finally, "I must say I'm a mite surprised. I must say
your language is unwarranted."

"The truth is never unwarranted," said the judge.

"For the sake of the fair name of Brampton," began Mr. Dodd, "we cannot
allow--"

"Mr. Dodd," interrupted the judge, "I would rather have Mr. Worthington's
arguments from Mr. Worthington himself, if I wanted them at all. There is
no need of prolonging this meeting. If I were to waste my breath until
six o'clock, it would be no use. I was about to say that your opinions
were formed, but I will alter that, and say that your minds are fixed.
You are determined to dismiss Miss Wetherell. Is it not so?"

"I wish you'd hear me, Jedge," said Mr. Dodd, desperately.

"Will you kindly answer me yes or no to that question," said the judge;
"my time is valuable."

"Well, if you put it that way, I guess we are agreed that she hadn't
ought to stay. Not that I've anything against her personally--"

"All right," said the judge, with a calmness that made them tremble. They
had never bearded him before. "All right, you are two to one and no
certificate has been issued. But I tell you this, gentlemen, that you
will live to see the day when you will bitterly regret this injustice to
an innocent and a noble woman, and Isaac D. Worthington will live to
regret it. You may tell him I said so. Good day, gentlemen."

They rose.

"Jedge," began Mr. Dodd again, "I don't think you've been quite fair with
us."

"Fair!" repeated the judge, with unutterable scorn. "Good day,
gentlemen." And he slammed the door behind them.

They walked down the street some distance before either of them spoke.

"Goliah," said Mr. Dodd, at last, "did you ever hear such talk? He's got
the drattedest temper of any man I ever knew, and he never callates to
make a mistake. It's a little mite hard to do your duty when a man talks
that way."

"I'm not sure we've done it," answered Mr. Hill.

"Not sure!" ejaculated the hardware dealer, for he was now far enough
away from the judge's house to speak in his normal tone, "and she
connected with that depraved--"

"Hold on," said Mr. Hill, with an astonishing amount of spirit for him,
"I've heard that before."

Mr. Dodd looked at him, swallowed the wrong way and began to choke.

"You hain't wavered, Jonathan?" he said, when he got his breath.

"No, I haven't," said Mr. Hill, sadly; "but I wish to hell I had."

Mr. Dodd looked at him again, and began to choke again. It was the first
time he had known Jonathan Hill to swear.

"You're a-goin' to stick by what you agreed--by your principles?"

"I'm going to stick by my bread and butter," said Mr. Hill, "not by my
principles. I wish to hell I wasn't."

And so saying that gentleman departed, cutting diagonally across the
street through the snow, leaving Mr. Dodd still choking and pulling at
his tuft. This third and totally-unexpected shaking-up had caused him to
feel somewhat deranged internally, though it had not altered the opinions
now so firmly planted in his head. After a few moments, however, he had
collected himself sufficiently to move on once more, when he discovered
that he was repeating to himself, quite unconsciously, Mr. Hill's
profanity "I wish to hell I wasn't." The iron mastiffs glaring at him
angrily out of the snow banks reminded him that he was in front of Mr.
Worthington's door, and he thought he might as well go in at once and
receive the great man's gratitude. He certainly deserved it. But as he
put his hand on the bell Mr. Worthington himself came out of the house,
and would actually have gone by without noticing Mr. Dodd if he had not
spoken.

"I've got that little matter fixed, Mr. Worthington," he said, "called
the committee, and we voted to discharge the--the young woman." No, he
did not deliver Judge Graves's message.

"Very well, Mr. Dodd," answered the great man, passing on so that Mr.
Dodd was obliged to follow him in order to hear, "I'm glad you've come to
your senses at last. Kindly step into the library and tell Miss Bruce
from me that she may fill the place to-morrow."

"Certain," said Mr. Dodd, with his hand to his chin. He watched the great
man turn in at his bank in the new block, and then he did as he was bid.

By the time school was out that day the news had leaped across Brampton
Street and spread up and down both sides of it that the new teacher had
been dismissed. The story ran fairly straight--there were enough clews,
certainly. The great man's return, the visit of Mr. Dodd, the call on
Judge Graves, all had been marked. The fiat of the first citizen had gone
forth that the ward of Jethro Bass must be got rid of; the designing
young woman who had sought to entrap his son must be punished for her
amazing effrontery.

Cynthia came out of school happily unaware that her name was on the lips
of Brampton: unaware, too, that the lord of the place had come into
residence that day. She had looked forward to living in the same town
with Bob's father as an evil which was necessary to be borne, as one of
the things which are more or less inevitable in the lives of those who
have to make their own ways in the world. The children trooped around
her, and the little girls held her hand, and she talked and laughed with
them as she came up the street in the eyes of Brampton,--came up the
street to the block of new buildings where the bank was. Stepping out of
the bank, with that businesslike alertness which characterized him, was
the first citizen--none other. He found himself entangled among the
romping children and--horror of horrors he bumped into the schoolmistress
herself! Worse than this, he had taken off his hat and begged her pardon
before he looked at her and realized the enormity of his mistake. And the
schoolmistress had actually paid no attention to him, but with merely
heightened color had drawn the children out of his way and passed on
without a word. The first citizen, raging inwardly, but trying to appear
unconcerned, walked rapidly back to his house. On the street of his own
town, before the eyes of men, he had been snubbed by a school-teacher.
And such a schoolteacher!

Mr. Worthington, as he paced his library burning with the shame of this
occurrence, remembered that he had had to glance at her twice before it
came over him who she was. His first sensation had been astonishment. And
now, in spite of his bitter anger, he had to acknowledge that the face
had made an impression on him--a fact that only served to increase his
rage. A conviction grew upon him that it was a face which his son, or any
other man, would not be likely to forget. He himself could not forget it.

In the meantime Cynthia had reached her home, her cheeks still smarting,
conscious that people had stared at her. This much, of course, she
knew--that Brampton believed Bob Worthington to be in love with her: and
the knowledge at such times made her so miserable that the thought of
Jethro's isolation alone deterred her from asking Miss Lucretia Penniman
for a position in Boston. For she wrote to Miss Lucretia about her life
and her reading, as that lady had made her promise to do. She sat down
now at the cherry chest of drawers that was also a desk, to write: not to
pour out her troubles, for she never had done that,--but to calm her mind
by drawing little character sketches of her pupils. But she had only
written the words, "My dear Miss Lucretia," when she looked out of the
window and saw Judge Graves coming up the path, and ran to open the door
for him.

"How do you do, Judge?" she said, for she recognized Mr. Graves as one of
her few friends in Brampton. "I have sent to Boston for the new reader,
but it has not come."

The judge took her hand and pressed it and led her into the little
sitting room. His face was very stern, but his eyes, which had flung fire
at Mr. Dodd, looked at her with a vast compassion. Her heart misgave her.

"My dear," he said,--it was long since the judge had called any woman "my
dear,"--"I have bad news for you. The committee have decided that you
cannot teach any longer in the Brampton school."

"Oh, Judge," she answered, trying to force back the tears which would
come, "I have tried so hard. I had begun to believe that I could fill the
place."

"Fill the place!" cried the judge, startling her with his sudden anger.
"No woman in the state can fill it better than you."

"Then why am I dismissed?" she asked breathlessly.

The judge looked at her in silence, his blue lips quivering. Sometimes
even he found it hard to tell the truth. And yet he had come to tell it,
that she might suffer less. He remembered the time when Isaac D.
Worthington had done him a great wrong.

"You are dismissed," he said, "because Mr. Worthington has come home, and
because the two other members of the committee are dogs and cowards." Mr.
Graves never minced matters when he began, and his voice shook with
passion. "If Mr. Errol had examined you, and you had your certificate, it
might have been different. Errol is not a sycophant. Worthington does not
hold his mortgage."

"Mortgage!" exclaimed Cynthia. The word always struck terror to her soul.

"Mr. Worthington holds Mr. Hill's mortgage," said Mr. Graves, more than
ever beside himself at the sight of her suffering. "That man's tyranny is
not to be borne. We will not give up, Cynthia. I will fight him in this
matter if it takes my last ounce of strength, so help me God!"

Mortgage! Cynthia sank down in the chair by the desk. In spite of the
misery the news had brought, the thought that his father, too, who was
fighting Jethro Bass as a righteous man, dealt in mortgages and coerced
men to do his will, was overwhelming. So she sat for a while staring at
the landscape on the old wall paper.

"I will go to Coniston to-night," she said at last.

"No," cried the judge, seizing her shoulder in his excitement, "no. Do
you think that I have been your friend--that I am your friend?"

"Oh, Judge Graves--"

"Then stay here, where you are. I ask it as a favor to me. You need not
go to the school to-morrow--indeed, you cannot. But stay here for a day
or two at least, and if there is any justice left in a free country, we
shall have it. Will you stay, as a favor to me?"

"I will stay, since you ask it," said Cynthia. "I will do what you think
right."

Her voice was firmer than he expected--much firmer. He glanced at her
quickly, with something very like admiration in his eye.

"You are a good woman, and a brave woman," he said, and with this
somewhat surprising tribute he took his departure instantly.

Cynthia was left to her thoughts, and these were harassing and sorrowful
enough. One idea, however, persisted through them all. Mr. Worthington,
whose power she had lived long enough in Brampton to know, was an unjust
man and a hypocrite. That thought was both sweet and bitter: sweet, as a
retribution; and bitter, because he was Bob's father. She realized, now,
that Bob knew these things, and she respected and loved him the more, if
that were possible, because he had refrained from speaking of them to
her. And now another thought came, and though she put it resolutely from
her, persisted. Was she not justified now in marrying him? The reasoning
was false, so she told herself. She had no right to separate Bob from his
father, whatever his father might be. Did not she still love Jethro Bass?
Yes, but he had renounced his ways. Her heart swelled gratefully as she
spoke the words to herself, and she reflected that he, at least, had
never been a hypocrite.

Of one thing she was sure, now. In the matter of the school she had right
on her side, and she must allow Judge Graves to do whatever he thought
proper to maintain that right. If Isaac D. Worthington's character had
been different, this would not have been her decision. Now she would not
leave Brampton in disgrace, when she had done nothing to merit it. Not
that she believed that the judge would prevail against such mighty odds.
So little did she think so that she fell, presently, into a despondency
which in all her troubles had not overtaken her--the despondency which
comes even to the pure and the strong when they feel the unjust strength
of the world against them. In this state her eyes fell on the letter she
had started to Miss Lucretia Penniman, and in desperation she began to
write.

It was a short letter, reserved enough, and quite in character. It was
right that she should defend herself, which she did with dignity, saying
that she believed the committee had no fault to find with her duties, but
that Mr. Worthington had seen fit to bring influence to bear upon them
because of her connection with Jethro Bass.

It was not the whole truth, but Cynthia could not bring herself to write
of that other reason. At the end she asked, very simply, if Miss Lucretia
could find her something to do in Boston in case her dismissal became
certain. Then she put on her coat, and walked to the postoffice to post
the letter, for she resolved that there could be no shame without reason
for it. There was a little more color in her cheeks, and she held her
head high, preparing to be slighted. But she was not slighted, and got
more salutations, if anything, than usual. She was, indeed, in the right
not to hide her head, and policy alone would have forbade it, had Cynthia
thought of policy.




CHAPTER XV

Public opinion is like the wind--it bloweth where it listeth. It whistled
around Brampton the next day, whirling husbands and wives apart, and
families into smithereens. Brampton had a storm all to itself--save for a
sympathetic storm raging in Coniston--and all about a school-teacher.

Had Cynthia been a certain type of woman, she would have had all the men
on her side and all of her own sex against her. It is a decided point to
be recorded in her favor that she had among her sympathizers as many
women as men. But the excitement of a day long remembered in Brampton
began, for her, when a score or more of children assembled in front of
the little house, tramping down the snow on the grass plots, shouting for
her to come to school with them. Children give no mortgages, or keep no
hardware stores.

Cynthia, trying to read in front of the fire, was all in a tremble at the
sound of the high-pitched little voices she had grown to love, and she
longed to go out and kiss them, every one. Her nature, however, shrank
from any act which might appear dramatic or sensational. She could not
resist going to the window and smiling at them, though they appeared but
dimly--little dancing figures in a mist. And when they shouted, the more
she shook her head and put her finger to her lips in reproof and vanished
from their sight. Then they trooped sadly on to school, resolved to make
matters as disagreeable as possible for poor Miss Bruce, who had not
offended in any way.

Two other episodes worthy of a place in this act of the drama occurred
that morning, and one had to do with Ephraim. Poor Ephraim! His way had
ever been to fight and ask no questions, and in his journey through the
world he had gathered but little knowledge of it. He had limped home the
night before in a state of anger of which Cynthia had not believed him
capable, and had reappeared in the sitting room in his best suit of blue.

"Where are you going, Cousin Eph?" Cynthia had asked suspiciously.

"Never you mind, Cynthy."

"But I do mind," she said, catching hold of his sleeve. "I won't let you
go until you confess."

"I'm a-goin' to tell Isaac Worthington what I think of him, that's whar
I'm a-goin'," cried Ephraim "what I always hev thought of him sence he
sent a substitute to the war an' acted treasonable here to home talkin'
ag'in' Lincoln."

"Oh, Cousin Eph, you mustn't," said Cynthia, clinging to him with all her
strength in her dismay. It had taken every whit of her influence to
persuade him to relinquish his purpose. Cynthia knew very well that
Ephraim meant to lay hands on Mr. Worthington, and it would indeed have
been a disastrous hour for the first citizen if the old soldier had ever
got into his library. Cynthia pointed out, as best she might, that it
would be an evil hour for her, too, and that her cause would be greatly
injured by such a proceeding; she knew very well that it would ruin
Ephraim, but he would not have listened to such an argument.

The next thing he wished to do was to go to Coniston and rouse Jethro.
Cynthia's heart stood still when he proposed this, for it touched upon
her greatest fear,--which had impelled her to go to Coniston. But she had
hoped and believed that Jethro, knowing her feelings, would do
nothing--since for her sake he had chosen to give up his power. Now an
acute attack of rheumatism had come to her rescue, and she succeeded in
getting Ephraim off to bed, swathed in bandages.

The next morning he had insisted upon hobbling away to the postoffice,
where in due time he was discovered by certain members of the Brampton
Club nailing to the wall a new engraving of Abraham Lincoln, and draping
it with a little silk flag he had bought in Boston. By which it will be
seen that a potion of the Club were coming back to their old haunt. This
portion, it may be surmised, was composed of such persons alone as were
likely to be welcomed by the postmaster. Some of these had grievances
against Mr. Worthington or Mr. Flint; others, in more prosperous
circumstances, might have been moved by envy of these gentlemen; still
others might have been actuated largely by righteous resentment at what
they deemed oppression by wealth and power. These members who came that
morning comprised about one-fourth of those who formerly had been in the
habit of dropping in for a chat, and their numbers were a fair indication
of the fact that those who from various motives took the part of the
schoolteacher in Brampton were as one to three.

It is not necessary to repeat their expressions of indignation and
sympathy. There was a certain Mr. Gamaliel Ives in the town, belonging to
an old Brampton family, who would have been the first citizen if that
other first citizen had not, by his rise to wealth and power, so
completely overshadowed him. Mr. Ives owned a small mill on Coniston
Water below the town. He fairly bubbled over with civic pride, and he was
an authority on all matters pertaining to Brampton's history. He knew
the "Hymn to Coniston" by heart. But we are digressing a little. Mr.
Ives, like that other Gamaliel of old, had exhorted his fellow-townsmen
to wash their hands of the controversy. But he was an intimate of Judge
Graves, and after talking with that gentleman he became a partisan
overnight; and when he had stopped to get his mail he had been lured
behind the window by the debate in progress. He was in the midst of some
impromptu remarks when he recognized a certain brisk step behind him, and
Isaac D. Worthington himself entered the sanctum!

It must be explained that Mr. Worthington sometimes had an important
letter to be registered which he carried to the postoffice with his own
hands. On such occasions--though not a member of the Brampton Club--he
walked, as an overlord will, into any private place he chose, and
recognized no partitions or barriers. Now he handed the letter (addressed
to a certain person in Cambridge, Massachusetts) to the postmaster.

"You will kindly register that and give me a receipt, Mr. Prescott," he
said.

Ephraim turned from his contemplation of the features of the martyred
President, and on his face was something of the look it might have worn
when he confronted his enemies over the log-works at Five Forks. No, for
there was a vast contempt in his gaze now, and he had had no contempt for
the Southerners, and would have shaken hands with any of them the moment
the battle was over. Mr. Worthington, in spite of himself, recoiled a
little before that look, fearing, perhaps, physical violence.

"I hain't a-goin' to hurt you, Mr. Worthington," Ephraim said, "but I am
a-goin' to ask you to git out in front, and mighty quick. If you hev any
business with the postmaster, there's the window," and Ephraim pointed to
it with his twisted finger. "I don't allow nobody but my friends here,
Mr. Worthington, and people I respect."

Mr. Worthington looked--well, eye-witnesses give various versions as to
how he looked. All agree that his lip trembled; some say his eyes
watered: at any rate, he quailed, stood a moment undecided, and then
swung on his heel and walked to the partition door. At this safe distance
he turned.

"Mr. Prescott," he said, his voice quivering with passion and perhaps
another emotion, "I will make it my duty to report to the
postmaster-general the manner in which this office is run. Instead of
attending to your business, you make the place a resort for loafers and
idlers. Good morning, sir."

Ten minutes later Mr. Flint himself came to register the letter. But it
was done at the window, and the loafers and idlers were still there.

The curtain had risen again, indeed, and the action was soon fast enough
for the most impatient that day. No sooner had the town heard with bated
breath of the expulsion of the first citizen from the inner sanctuary of
the post-office, than the news of another event began to go the rounds.
Mr. Worthington had other and more important things to think about than
minor postmasters, and after his anger and--yes, and momentary fear had
subsided, he forgot the incident except to make a mental note to remember
to deprive Mr. Prescott of his postmastership, which he believed could be
done readily enough now that Jethro Bass was out of the way. Then he had
stepped into the bank, which he had come to regard as his own bank, as he
regarded most institutions in Brampton. He had, in the old days, been
president of it, as we know. He stepped into the bank, and then--he
stepped out again.

Most people have experienced that sickly feeling of the diaphragm which
sometimes comes from a sadden shock. Mr. Worthington had it now as he
hurried up the street, and he presently discovered that he was walking in
the direction opposite to that of his own home. He crossed the street,
made a pretence of going into Mr. Goldthwaite's drug store, and hurried
back again. When he reached his own library, he found Mr. Flint busy
there at his desk. Mr. Flint rose. Mr. Worthington sat down and began to
pull the papers about in a manner which betrayed to his seneschal (who
knew every mood of his master) mental perturbation.

"Flint," he said at last, striving his best for an indifferent accent,
"Jethro Bass is here--I ran across him just now drawing money in the
bank."

"I could have told you that this morning," answered Mr. Flint. "Wheeler,
who runs errands for him in Coniston, drove him in this morning, and he's
been with Peleg Hartington for two hours over Sherman's livery stable."

An interval of silence followed, during which Mr. Worthington shuffled
with his letters and pretended to read them.

"Graves has called a mass meeting to-night, I understand," he remarked in
the same casual way. "The man's a demagogue, and mad as a loon. I believe
he sent back one of our passes once, didn't he? I suppose Bass has come
in to get Hartington to work up the meeting. They'll be laughed out of
the town hall, or hissed out."

"I guess you'll find Bass has come down for something else," said Mr.
Flint, looking up from a division report.

"What do you mean?" demanded Mr. Worthington, changing his attitude to
one of fierceness. But he was well aware that whatever tone he took with
his seneschal, he never fooled him.

"I mean what I told you yesterday," said Flint, "that you've stirred up
the dragon."

Even Mr. Flint did not know how like a knell his words sounded in Isaac
Worthington's ears.

"Nonsense!" he cried, "you're talking nonsense, Flint. We maimed him too
thoroughly for that. He hasn't power enough left to carry his own town."

"All right," said the seneschal.

"What do you mean by that?" said his master, with extreme irritation.

"I mean what I said yesterday, that we haven't maimed him at all. He had
his own reasons for going into his hole, and he never would have come out
again if you hadn't goaded him. Now he's out, and we'll have to step
around pretty lively, I can tell you, or he'll maim us."

All of which goes to show that Mr. Flint had some notion of men and
affairs. He became, as may be predicted, the head of many material things
in later days, and he may sometime reappear in company with other
characters in this story.

The sickly feeling in Mr. Worthington's diaphragm had now returned.

"I think you will find you are mistaken, Flint," he said, attempting
dignity now. "Very much mistaken."

"Very well," said Flint, "perhaps I am. But I believe you'll find he left
for the capital on the eleven o'clock, and if you take the trouble to
inquire from Bedding you will probably learn that the Throne Room is
bespoken for the session."

All of that which Mr, Flint had predicted turned out to be true. The
dragon had indeed waked up. It all began with the news Milly Skinner had
got from the stage driver, imparted to Jethro as he sat reading about
Hiawatha. And terrible indeed had been that awakening. This dragon did
not bellow and roar and lash his tail when he was roused, but he stood
up, and there seemed to emanate from him a fire which frightened poor
Milly Skinner, upset though she was by the news of Cynthia's dismissal.
O, wondrous and paradoxical might of love, which can tame the most
powerful of beasts, and stir them again into furies by a touch!

Coniston was the first to tremble, as though the forces stretching
themselves in the tannery house were shaking the very ground, and the
name of Jethro Bass took on once more, as by magic, a terrible meaning.
When Vesuvius is silent, pygmies may make faces on the very lip of the
crater, and they on the slopes forget the black terror of the fiery hail.
Jake Wheeler himself, loyal as he was, did not care to look into the
crater now that he was summoned; but a force pulled him all the way to
the tannery house. He left behind him an awe-stricken gathering at the
store, composed of inhabitants who had recently spoken slightingly of the
volcano.

We are getting a little mixed in our metaphors between lions and dragons
and volcanoes, and yet none of them are too strong to represent Jethro
Bass when he heard that Isaac Worthington had had the teacher dismissed
from Brampton lower school. He did not stop to reason then that action
might distress her. The beast in him awoke again; the desire for
vengeance on a man whom he had hated most of his life, and who now had
dared to cause pain to the woman whom he loved with all his soul, and
even idolize, was too great to resist. He had no thought of resisting it,
for the waters of it swept over his soul like the Atlantic over a lost
continent. He would crush Isaac Worthington if it took the last breath
from his body.

Jake went to the tannery house and received his orders--orders of which
he made a great mystery afterward at the store, although they consisted
simply of directions to be prepared to drive Jethro to Brampton the next
morning. But the look of the man had frightened Jake. He had never seen
vengeance so indelibly written on that face, and he had never before
realized the terrible power of vengeance. Mr. Wheeler returned from that
meeting in such a state of trepidation that he found it necessary to
accompany Rias to a certain keg in the cellar; after which he found his
tongue. His description of Jethro's appearance awed his hearers, and Jake
declared that he would not be in Isaac Worthington's shoes for all of
Isaac Worthington's money. There were others right here in Coniston, Jake
hinted, who might now find it convenient to emigrate to the far West.

Jethro's face had not changed when Jake drove him out of Coniston the
next morning. Good Mr. Satterlee saw it, and felt that the visit he had
wished to make would have been useless; Mr. Amos Cuthbert and Mr. Sam
Price saw it, from a safe distance within the store, and it is a fact
that Mr. Price seriously thought of taking Mr. Wheeler's advice about a
residence in the West; Mr. Cuthbert, of a sterner nature, made up his
mind to be hung and quartered. A few minutes before Jethro walked into
his office over the livery stable, Senator Peleg Hartington would have
denied, with that peculiar and mournful scorn of which he was master,
that Jethro Bass could ever again have any influence over him. Peleg was,
indeed, at that moment preparing, in his own way, to make overtures to
the party of Isaac D. Worthington. Jethro walked into the office, leaving
Jake below with Mr. Sherman; and Senator Hartington was very glad he had
not made the overtures. And when he accompanied Jethro to the station
when he left for the capital, the senator felt that the eyes of men were
upon him.

And Cynthia? Happily, Cynthia passed the day in ignorance that Jethro had
gone through Brampton. Ephraim, though he knew of it, did not speak of it
when he came home to his dinner; Mr. Graves had called, and informed her
of the meeting in the town hall that night.

"It is our only chance," he said obdurately, in answer to her protests.
"We must lay the case before the people of Brampton. If they have not the
courage to right the wrong, and force your reinstatement through public
opinion, there is nothing more to be done."

To Cynthia, the idea of having a mass meeting concerning herself was
particularly repellent.

"Oh, Judge Graves!" she cried, "if there isn't any other way, please drop
the matter. There are plenty of teachers who will--be acceptable to
everybody."

"Cynthia," said the judge, "I can understand that this publicity is very
painful to you. I beg you to remember that we are contending for a
principle. In such cases the individual must be sacrificed to the common
good."

"But I cannot go to the meeting--I cannot."

"No," said the judge; "I don't think that will be necessary."

After he was gone, she could think of nothing but the horror of having
her name--yes, and her character--discussed in that public place; and it
seemed to her, if she listened, she could hear a clatter of tongues
throughout the length of Brampton Street, and that she must fain stop her
ears or go mad. The few ladies who called during the day out of kindness
or curiosity, or both, only added to her torture. She was not one who
could open her heart to acquaintances: the curious ones got but little
satisfaction, and the kind ones thought her cold, and they did not
perceive that she was really grateful for their little attentions.
Gratitude, on such occasions, does not always consist in pouring out
one's troubles in the laps of visitors.

So the visitors went home, wondering whether it were worth while after
all to interest themselves in the cause of such a self-contained and
self-reliant young woman. In spite of all her efforts, Cynthia had never
wholly succeeded in making most of the Brampton ladies believe that she
did not secretly deem herself above them. They belonged to a reserved
race themselves; but Cynthia had a reserve which was even different from
their own.

As night drew on the predictions of Mr. Worthington seemed likely to be
fulfilled, and it looked as if Judge Graves would have a useless bill to
pay for gas in the new town hall. The judge had never been a man who
could compel a following, and he had no magnetism with which to lead a
cause: the town tradesmen, especially those in the new brick block, would
be chary as to risking the displeasure of their best customer. At
half-past seven Mr. Graves: came in, alone, and sat on the platform
staring grimly at his gas. Is there a lecturer, or, a playwright, or a
politician, who has not, at one time or another, been in the judge's
place? Who cannot sympathize with him as he watched the thin and
hesitating stream of people out of the corner of his eye as they came in
at the door? The judge despised them with all his soul, but it is human
nature not to wish to sit in a hall or a theatre that is three-quarters
empty.

At sixteen minutes to eight a mild excitement occurred, an incident of
some significance which served to detain many waverers. Senator Peleg
Hartington walked up the aisle, and the judge rose and shook him by the
hand, and as Deacon Hartington he was invited to sit on the platform. The
senator's personal influence was not to be ignored; and it had sufficed
to carry his district in the last election against the Worthington
forces, in spite of the abdication of Jethro Bass. Mr. Page, the editor
of the Clarion, Senator Hartington's organ, was also on the platform. But
where was Mr. Ives? Where was that Gamaliel who had been such a warm
partisan in the postoffice that morning?

"Saw him outside the hall--wahn't but ten minutes ago," said Deacon
Hartington, sadly; "thought he was a-comin' in."

Eight o'clock came, and no Mr. Ives; ten minutes past--fifteen minutes
past. If the truth must be told, Mr. Ives had been on the very threshold
of the hall, and one glance at the poor sprinkling of people there had
decided him. Mr. Ives had a natural aversion to being laughed at, and as
he walked back on the darker side of the street he wished heartily that
he had stuck to his original Gamaliel-advocacy of no interference, of
allowing the Supreme Judge to decide. Such opinions were inevitably just,
Mr. Ives was well aware, though not always handed down immediately. If he
were to humble the first citizen, Mr. Ives reflected that a better
opportunity might present itself. The whistle of the up-train served to
strengthen his resolution, for he was reminded thereby that his mill
often had occasion to ask favors of the Truro Railroad.

In the meantime it was twenty minutes past eight in the town hall, and
Mr. Graves had not rapped for order. Deacon Hartington sat as motionless
as a stork on the borders of a glassy lake at sunrise, the judge had
begun seriously to estimate the gas bill, and Mr. Page had chewed up the
end of a pencil. There was one, at least, in the audience of whom the
judge could be sure. A certain old soldier in blue sat uncompromisingly
on the front bench with his hands crossed over the head of his stick; but
the ladies and gentlemen nearest the door were beginning to vanish, one
by one, silently as ghosts, when suddenly the judge sat up. He would have
rubbed his eyes, had he been that kind of a man. Four persons had entered
the hall--he was sure of it--and with no uncertain steps as if frightened
by its emptiness. No, they came boldly. And after them trooped others,
and still others were heard in the street beyond, not whispering, but
talking in the unmistakable tones of people who had more coming behind
them. Yes, and more came. It was no illusion, or delusion: there they
were filling the hall as if they meant to stay, and buzzing with
excitement. The judge was quivering with excitement now, but he, too, was
only a spectator of the drama. And what a drama, with a miracle-play for
Brampton!

Mr. Page rose from his chair and leaned over the edge of the platform
that something might be whispered in his ear. The news, whatever it was,
was apparently electrifying, and after the first shock he turned to
impart it to Mr. Graves; but turned too late, for the judge had already
rapped for order and was clearing his throat. He could not account for
this extraordinary and unlooked-for audience, among whom he spied many
who had thought it wiser not to protest against the dictum of the first
citizen, and many who had professed to believe that the teacher's
connection with Jethro Bass was a good and sufficient reason for
dismissal. The judge was prepared to take advantage of the tide, whatever
its cause.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I take the liberty of calling this
meeting to order. And before a chairman be elected, I mean to ask your
indulgence to explain my purposes in requesting the use of this hall
to-night. In our system of government, the inalienable and most precious
gift--"

Whatever the gift was, the judge never explained. He paused at the words,
and repeated them, and stopped altogether because no one was paying any
attention to him. The hall was almost full, the people had risen, with a
hum, and as one man had turned toward the door. Mr. Gamaliel Ives was
triumphantly marching down the aisle, and with him was--well, another
person. Nay, personage would perhaps be the better word.

Let us go back for a moment. There descended from that train of which we
have heard the whistle a lady with features of no ordinary moulding, with
curls and a string bonnet and a cloak that seemed strangely to harmonize
with the lady's character. She had the way of one in authority, and Mr.
Sherman himself ran to open the door of his only closed carriage, and the
driver galloped off with her all the way to the Brampton House. Once
there, the lady seized the pen as a soldier seizes the sword, and wrote
her name in most uncompromising characters on the register, Miss Lucretia
Penniman, Boston. Then she marched up to her room.

Miss Lucretia Penniman, author of the "Hymn to Coniston," in the
reflected glory of whose fame Brampton had shone for thirty years! Whose
name was lauded and whose poem was recited at every Fourth of July
celebration, that the very children might learn it and honor its
composer! Stratford-on-Avon is not prouder of Shakespeare than Brampton
of Miss Lucretia, and now she was come back, unheralded, to her
birthplace. Mr. Raines, the clerk, looked at the handwriting on the book,
and would not believe his own sight until it was vouched for by sundry
citizens who had followed the lady from the station--on foot. And then
there was a to-do.

Send for Mr. Gamaliel Ives; send for Miss Bruce, the librarian; send for
Mr. Page, editor of the Clarion, and notify the first citizen. He,
indeed, could not be sent for, but had he known of her coming he would
undoubtedly have had her met at the portals and presented with the keys
in gold. Up and down the street flew the news which overshadowed and
blotted out all other, and the poor little school-teacher was forgotten.

One of these notables was at hand, though he did not deserve to be. Mr.
Gamaliel Ives sent up his card to Miss Lucretia, and was shown
deferentially into the parlor, where he sat mopping his brow and growing
hot and cold by turns. How would the celebrity treat him? The celebrity
herself answered the question by entering the room in such stately manner
as he had expected, to the rustle of the bombazine. Whereupon Mr. Ives
bounced out of his chair and bowed, though his body was not formed to
bend that way.

"Miss Penniman," he exclaimed, "what an honor for Brampton! And what a
pleasure, the greater because so unexpected! How cruel not to have given
us warning, and we could have greeted you as your great fame deserves!
You could never take time from your great duties to accept the
invitations of our literary committee, alas! But now that you are here,
you will find a warm welcome, Miss Penniman. How long it has been--thirty
years,--you see I know it to a day, thirty years since you left us.
Thirty years, I may say, we have kept burning the vestal fire in your
worship, hoping for this hour."

Miss Lucretia may have had her own ideas about the propriety of the
reference to the vestal fire.

"Gamaliel," she said sharply, "straighten up and don't talk nonsense to
me. I've had you on my knee, and I knew your mother and father."

Gamaliel did straighten up, as though Miss Lucretia had applied a lump of
ice to the small of his back. So it is when the literary deities, vestal
or otherwise, return to their Stratfords. There are generally surprises
in store for the people they have had on their knees, and for others.

"Gamaliel," said Miss Lucretia, "I want to see the prudential committee
for the village district."

"The prudential committee!" Mr. Ives fairly shrieked the words in his
astonishment.

"I tried to speak plainly," said Miss Lucretia. "Who are on that
committee?"

"Ezra Graves," said Mr. Ives, as though mechanically compelled, for his
head was spinning round. "Ezra Graves always has run it, until now. But
he's in the town hall."

"What's he doing there?"

Mr. Ives was no fool. Some inkling of the facts began to shoot through
his brain, and he saw his chance.

"He called a mass meeting to protest against the dismissal of a teacher."

"Gamaliel," said Miss Lucretia, "you will conduct me to that meeting. I
will get my cloak."

Mr. Ives wasted no time in the interval, and he fairly ran out into the
office. Miss Lucretia Penniman was in town, and would attend the mass
meeting. Now, indeed, it was to be a mass meeting. Away flew the tidings,
broadcast, and people threw off their carpet slippers and dressing gowns,
and some who had gone to bed got up again. Mr. Dodd heard it, and changed
his shoes three times, and his intentions three times three. Should he
go, or should he not? Already he heard in imagination the first distant
note of the populace, and he was not of the metal to defend a Bastille or
a Louvre for his royal master with the last drop of his blood.

In the meantime Gamaliel Ives was conducting Miss Lucretia toward, the
town hall, and speaking in no measured tones of indignation of the
cringing, truckling qualities of that very Mr. Dodd. The injustice to
Miss Wetherell, which Mr. Ives explained as well as he could, made his
blood boil: so he declared.

And note we are back again at the meeting, when the judge, with his hand
on his Adam's apple, is pronouncing the word "gift." Mr. Ives is
triumphantly marching down the aisle, escorting the celebrity of Brampton
to the platform, and quite aware of the heart burnings of his
fellow-citizens on the benches. And Miss Lucretia, with that stern
composure with which celebrities accept public situations, follows up the
steps as of right and takes the chair he assigns her beside the chairman.
The judge, still grasping his Adam's apple, stares at the newcomer in
amazement, and recognizes her in spite of the years, and trembles. Miss
Lucretia Penniman! Blucher was not more welcome to Wellington, or
Lafayette to Washington, than was Miss Lucretia to Ezra Graves as he
turned his back on the audience and bowed to her deferentially. Then he
turned again, cleared his throat once more to collect his senses, and was
about to utter the familiar words, "We have with us tonight," when they
were taken out of his mouth--taken out of his mouth by one who had in all
conscience stolen enough thunder for one man,--Mr. Gamaliel Ives.

"Mr. Chairman," said Mr. Ives, taking a slight dropping of the judge's
lower jaw for recognition, "and ladies and gentlemen of Brampton. It is
our great good fortune to have with us to-night, most unexpectedly, one
of whom Brampton is, and for many years has been, justly proud."
(Cheers.) "One whose career Brampton has followed with a mother's eyes
and with a mother's heart. One who has chosen a broader field for the
exercise of those great powers with which Nature endowed her than
Brampton could give. One who has taken her place among the luminaries of
literature of her time." (Cheers.) "One who has done more than any other
woman of her generation toward the uplifting of the sex which she
honors." (Cheers and clapping of hands.) "And one who, though her lot has
fallen among the great, has not forgotten the home of her childhood. For
has she not written those beautiful lines which we all know by heart?

     'Ah, Coniston! Thy lordly form I see
     Before mine eyes in exile drear.'

"Mr. Chairman and fellow-townsmen and women, I have the extreme honor of
introducing to you one whom we all love and revere, the author of the
'Hymn to Coniston,' the editor of the Woman's Hour, Miss Lucretia
Penniman.'" (Loud and long-continued applause.)

Well might Brampton be proud, too, of Gamaliel Ives, president of its
literary club, who could make such a speech as this on such short notice.
If the truth be told, the literary club had sent Miss Lucretia no less
than seven invitations, and this was the speech Mr. Ives had intended to
make on those seven occasions. It was unquestionably a neat speech, and
Judge Graves or no other chairman should cheat him out of making it. Mr.
Ives, with a wave of his hand toward the celebrity, sat down by no means
dissatisfied with himself. What did he care how the judge glared. He did
not see how stiffly Miss Lucretia sat in her chair. She could not take
him on her knee then, but she would have liked to.

Miss Lucretia rose, and stood quite as stiffly as she had sat, and the
judge rose, too. He was very angry, but this was not the time to get even
with Mr. Ives. As it turned out, he did not need to bother about getting
even.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said he, "in the absence of any other chairman I
take pleasure in introducing to you Miss Lucretia Penniman."

More applause was started, but Miss Lucretia put a stop to it by the
lifting of a hand. Then there was a breathless silence. Then she cast her
eyes around the hall, as though daring any one to break that silence, and
finally they rested upon Mr. Ives.

"Mr. Chairman," she said, with an inclination toward the judge, "my
friends--for I hope you will be my friends when I have finished" (Miss
Lucretia made it quite clear by her tone that it entirely depended upon
them whether they would be or not), "I understood when I came here that
this was to be a mass meeting to protest against an injustice, and not a
feast of literature and oratory, as Gamaliel Ives seems to suppose."

She paused, and when the first shock of amazement was past an audible
titter ran through the audience, and Mr. Ives squirmed visibly.

"Am I right, Mr. Chairman?" asked Miss Lucretia.

"You are unquestionably right, Miss Penniman," answered the chairman,
rising, "unquestionably."

"Then I will proceed," said Miss Lucretia. "I wrote the Hymn to Coniston'
many years ago, when I was younger, and yet it is true that I have always
remembered Brampton with kindly feelings. The friends of our youth are
dear to us. We look indulgently upon their failings, even as they do on
ours. I have scanned the faces here in the hall to-night, and there are
some that have not changed beyond recognition in thirty years. Ezra
Graves I remember, and it is a pleasure to see him in that chair." (Mr.
Graves inclined his head, reverently. None knew how the inner man
exulted.) "But there was one who was often in Brampton in those days,"
Miss Lucretia continued, "whom we all loved and with whom we found no
fault, and I confess that when I have thought of Brampton I have oftenest
thought of her. Her name," said Miss Lucretia, her hand now in the
reticule, "her name was Cynthia Ware."

There was a decided stir among the audience, and many leaned forward to
catch every word.

"Even old people may have an ideal," said Miss Lucretia, "and you will
forgive me for speaking of mine. Where should I speak of it, if not in
this village, among those who knew her and among their children? Cynthia
Ware, although she was younger than I, has been my ideal, and is still.
She was the daughter of the Rev. Samuel Ware of Coniston, and a
descendant of Captain Timothy Prescott, whom General Stark called 'Honest
Tim.' She was, to me, all that a woman should be, in intellect, in her
scorn of all that is ignoble and false, and in her loyalty to her
friends." Here the handkerchief came out of the reticule. "She went to
Boston to teach school, and some time afterward I was offered a position
in New York, and I never saw her again. But she married in Boston a man
of learning and literary attainments, though his health was feeble and he
was poor, William Wetherell." (Another stir.) "Mr. Wetherell was a
gentleman--Cynthia Ware could have married no other--and he came of good
and honorable people in Portsmouth. Very recently I read a collection of
letters which he wrote to the Newcastle Guardian, which some of you may
know. I did not trust my own judgment as to those letters, but I took
them to an author whose name is known wherever English is spoken, but
which I will not mention. And the author expressed it as his opinion, in
writing to me, that William Wetherell was undoubtedly a genius of a high
order, and that he would have been so recognized if life had given him a
chance. Mr. Wetherell, after his wife died, was taken in a dying
condition to Coniston, where he was forced, in order to earn his living,
to become the storekeeper there. But he took his books with him, and
found time to write the letters of which I have spoken, and to give his
daughter an early education such as few girls have.

"My friends, I am rejoiced to see that the spirit of justice and the
sense of right are as strong in Brampton as they used to be--strong
enough to fill this town hall to overflowing because a teacher has been
wrongly--yes, and iniquitously--dismissed from the lower school." (Here
there was a considerable stir, and many wondered whether Miss Lucretia
was aware of the irony in her words.) "I say wrongly and iniquitously,
because I have had the opportunity in Boston this winter of learning to
know and love that teacher. I am not given to exaggeration, my friends,
and when I tell you that I know her, that her character is as high and
pure as her mother's, I can say no more. I am here to tell you this
to-night because I do not believe you know her as I do. During the
seventy years I have lived I have grown to have but little faith in
outward demonstration, to believe in deeds and attainments rather than
expressions. And as for her fitness to teach, I believe that even the
prudential committee could find no fault with that." (I wonder whether
Mr. Dodd was in the back of the hall.) "I can find no fault with it. I am
constantly called upon to recommend teachers, and I tell you I should
have no hesitation in sending Cynthia Wetherell to a high school, young
as she is."

"And now, my friends, why was she dismissed? I have heard the facts,
though not from her. Cynthia Wetherell does not know that I have come to
Brampton, unless somebody has told her, and did not know that I was
coming. I have heard the facts, and I find it difficult to believe that
so great a wrong could be attempted against a woman, and if the name of
Cynthia Wetherell had meant no more to me than the letters in it I should
have travelled twice as far as Brampton, old as I am, to do my utmost to
right that wrong. I give you my word of honor that I have never been so
indignant in my life. I do not come here to stir up enmities among you,
and I will mention no more names. I prefer to believe that the prudential
committee of this district has made a mistake, the gravity of which they
must now realize, and that they will reinstate Cynthia Wetherell
to-morrow. And if they should not of their own free will, I have only to
look around this meeting to be convinced that they will be compelled to.
Compelled to, my friends, by the sense of justice and the righteous
indignation of the citizens of Brampton."

Miss Lucretia sat down, her strong face alight with the spirit that was
in her. Not the least of the compelling forces in this world is righteous
anger, and when it is exercised by a man or a woman whose life has been a
continual warfare against the pests of wrong, it is well-nigh
irresistible. While you could count five seconds the audience sat silent,
and then began such tumult and applause as had never been seen in
Brampton--all started, so it is said, by an old soldier in the front row
with his stick. Isaac D. Worthington, sitting alone in the library of his
mansion, heard it, and had no need to send for Mr. Flint to ask what it
was, or who it was had fired the Third Estate. And Mr. Dodd heard it. He
may have been in the hall, but now he sat at home, seeing visions of the
lantern, and he would have fled to the palace had he thought to get any
sympathy from his sovereign. No, Mr. Dodd did not hold the Bastille or
even fight for it. Another and a better man gave up the keys, for heroes
are sometimes hidden away in meek and retiring people who wear spectacles
and have a stoop to their shoulders. Long before the excitement died away
a dozen men were on their feet shouting at the chairman, and among them
was the tall, stooping man with spectacles. He did not shout, but Judge
Graves saw him and made up his mind that this was the man to speak. The
chairman raised his hand and rapped with his gavel, and at length he had
obtained silence.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I am going to recognize Mr. Hill of the
prudential committee, and ask him to step up on the platform."

There fell another silence, as absolute as the first, when Mr. Hill
walked down the aisle and climbed the steps. Indeed, people were
stupefied, for the feed dealer was a man who had never opened his mouth
in town-meeting; who had never taken an initiative of any kind; who had
allowed other men to take advantage of him, and had never resented it.
And now he was going to speak. Would he defend the prudential committee,
or would he declare for the teacher? Either course, in Mr. Hill's case,
required courage, and he had never been credited with any. If Mr. Hill
was going to speak at all, he was going to straddle.

He reached the platform, bowed irresolutely to the chairman, and then
stood awkwardly with one knee bent, peering at his audience over his
glasses. He began without any address whatever.

"I want to say," he began in a low voice, "that I had no intention of
coming to this meeting. And I am going to confess--I am going to confess
that I was afraid to come." He raised his voice a little defiantly a the
words, and paused. One could almost hear the people breathing. "I was
afraid to come for fear that I should do the very thing I am going to do
now. And yet I was impelled to come. I want to say that my conscience has
not been clear since, as a member of the prudential committee, I gave my
consent to the dismissal of Miss Wetherell. I know that I was influenced
by personal and selfish considerations which should have had no weight.
And after listening to Miss Penniman I take this opportunity to declare,
of my own free will, that I will add my vote to that of Judge Graves to
reinstate Miss Wetherell."

Mr. Hill bowed slightly, and was about to descend the steps when the
chairman, throwing parliamentary dignity to the winds, arose and seized
the feed dealer's hand. And the people in the hall almost as one man
sprang to their feet and cheered, and some--Ephraim Prescott among
these--even waved their hats and shouted Mr. Hill's name. A New England
audience does not frequently forget itself, but there were few present
who did not understand the heroism of the man's confession, who were not
carried away by the simple and dramatic dignity of it. He had no need to
mention Mr. Worthington's name, or specify the nature of his obligations
to that gentleman. In that hour Jonathan Hill rose high in the respect of
Brampton, and some pressed into the aisle to congratulate him on his way
back to his seat. Not a few were grateful to him for another reason. He
had relieved the meeting of the necessity of taking any further action:
of putting their names, for instance, in their enthusiasm to a paper
which the first citizen might see.

Judge Graves, whose sense of a climax was acute, rapped for order.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in a voice not wholly free from emotion,
"you will all wish to pay your respects to the famous lady, who is with
us. I see that the Rev. Mr. Sweet is present, and I suggest that we
adjourn, after he has favored us with a prayer."

As the minister came forward, Deacon Hartington dropped his head and
began to flutter his eyelids. The Rev. Mr. Sweet prayed, and so was
brought to an end the most exciting meeting ever held in Brampton town
hall.

But Miss Lucretia did not like being called "a famous lady."




CHAPTER XVI

While Miss Lucretia was standing, unwillingly enough, listening to the
speeches that were poured into her ear by various members of the
audience, receiving the incense and myrrh to which so great a celebrity
was entitled, the old soldier hobbled away to his little house as fast as
his three legs would carry him. Only one event in his life had eclipsed
this in happiness--the interview in front of the White House. He rapped
on the window with his stick, thereby frightening Cynthia half out of her
wits as she sat musing sorrowfully by the fire.

"Cousin Ephraim," she said, taking off his corded hat, "what in the
world's the matter with you?"

"You're a schoolmarm again, Cynthy."

"Do you mean to say?"

"Miss Lucretia Penniman done it."

"Miss Lucretia Penniman!" Cynthia began to think his rheumatism was
driving him out of his mind.

"You bet. 'Long toward the openin' of the engagement there wahn't
scarcely anybody thar but me, and they was a-goin'. But they come fast
enough when they l'arned she was in town, and she blew 'em up higher'n
the Petersburg crater. Great Tecumseh, there's a woman! Next to General
Grant, I'd sooner shake her hand than anybody's livin'."

"Do you mean to say that Miss Lucretia is in Brampton and spoke at the
mass meeting?"

"Spoke!" exclaimed Ephraim, "callate she did--some. Tore 'em all up.
They'd a hung Isaac D. Worthington or Levi Dodd if they'd a had 'em
thar."

Cynthia, striving to be calm herself, got him into a chair and took his
stick and straightened out his leg, and then Ephraim told her the story,
and it lost no dramatic effect in his telling. He would have talked all
night. But at length the sound of wheels was heard in the street, Cynthia
flew to the door, and a familiar voice came out of the darkness.

"You need not wait, Gamaliel. No, thank you, I think I will stay at the
hotel."

Gamaliel was still protesting when Miss Lucretia came in and seized
Cynthia in her arms, and the door was closed behind her.

"Oh, Miss Lucretia, why did you come?" said Cynthia, "if I had known you
would do such a thing, I should never have written that letter. I have
been sorry to-day that I did write it, and now I'm sorrier than ever."

"Aren't you glad to see me?" demanded Miss Lucretia.

"Miss Lucretia!"

"What are friends for?" asked Miss Lucretia, patting her hand. "If you
had known how I wished to see you, Cynthia, and I thought a little trip
would be good for such a provincial Bostonian as I am. Dear, dear, I
remember this house. It used to belong to Gabriel Post in my time, and
right across from it was the Social Library, where I have spent so many
pleasant hours with your mother. And this is Ephraim Prescott. I thought
it was, when I saw him sitting in the front row, and I think he must have
been very lonesome there at one time."

"Yes, ma'am," said Ephraim, giving her his gnarled fingers; "I was just
sayin' to Cynthy that I'd ruther shake your hand than anybody's livin'
exceptin' General Grant."

"And I'd rather shake yours than the General's," said Miss Lucretia, for
the Woman's Hour had taken the opposition side in a certain recent public
question concerning women.

"If you'd a fit with him, you wouldn't say that, Miss Lucrety."

"I haven't a word to say against his fighting qualities," she replied.

"Guess the General might say the same of you," said Ephraim. "If you'd a
b'en a man, I callate you'd a come out of the war with two stars on your
shoulder. Godfrey, Miss Lucrety, you'd ought to've b'en a man."

"A man!" cried Miss Lucretia, "and 'stars on my shoulder'! I think this
kind of talk has gone far enough, Ephraim Prescott."

"Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, laughing, "you're no match for Miss Lucretia,
and it's long past your bedtime."

"A man!" repeated Miss Lucretia, after he had retired, and after Cynthia
had tried to express her gratitude and had been silenced. They sat side
by side in front of the chimney. "I suppose he meant that as a
compliment. I never yet saw the man I couldn't back down, and I haven't
any patience with a woman who gives in to them." Miss Lucretia poked
vigorously a log which had fallen down, as though that were a man, too,
and she was putting him back in his proper place.

Cynthia, strange to say, did not reply to this remark.

"Cynthia," said Miss Lucretia, abruptly, "you don't mean to say that you
are in love!"

Cynthia drew a long breath, and grew as red as the embers.

"Miss Lucretia!" she exclaimed, in astonishment and dismay.

"Well," Miss Lucretia said, "I should have thought you could have gotten
along, for a while at least, without anything of that kind. My dear," she
said leaning toward Cynthia, "who is he?"

Cynthia turned away. She found it very hard to speak of her troubles,
even to Miss Lucretia, and she would have kept this secret even from
Jethro, had it been possible.

"You must let him know his place," said Miss Lucretia, "and I hope he is
in some degree worthy of you."

"I do not intend to marry him," said Cynthia, with head still turned
away.

It was now Miss Lucretia who was silent.

"I came near getting married once," she said presently, with
characteristic abruptness.

"You!" cried Cynthia, looking around in amazement.

"You see, I am franker than you, my dear--though I never told any one
else. I believe you can keep a secret."

"Of course I can. Who--was it anyone in Brampton, Miss Lucretia?" The
question was out before Cynthia realized its import. She was turning the
tables with a vengeance.

"It was Ezra Graves," said Miss Lucretia.

"Ezra Graves!" And then Cynthia pressed Miss Lucretia's hand in silence,
thinking how strange it was that both of them should have been her
champions that evening.

Miss Lucretia poked the fire again.

"It was shortly after that, when I went to Boston, that I wrote the 'Hymn
to Coniston.' I suppose we must all be fools once or twice, or we should
not be human."

"And--weren't you ever--sorry?" asked Cynthia.

Again there was a silence.

"I could not have done the work I have had to do in the world if I had
married. But I have often wondered whether that work was worth the while.
Such a feeling must come over all workers, occasionally. Yes," said Miss
Lucretia, "there have been times when I have been sorry, my dear, though
I have never confessed it to another soul. I am telling you this for your
own good--not mine. If you have the love of a good man, Cynthia, be
careful what you do with it."

The tears had come into Cynthia's eyes.

"I should have told you, Miss Lucretia," she faltered. "If I could have
married him, it would have been easier."

"Why can't you marry him?" demanded Miss Lucretia, sharply--to hide her
own emotion.

"His name," said Cynthia, "is Bob Worthington:"

"Isaac Worthington's son?"

"Yes."

Another silence, Miss Lucretia being utterly unable to say anything for a
space.

"Is he a good man?"

Cynthia was on the point of indignant-protest, but she stopped herself in
time.

"I will tell you what he has done," she answered, "and then you shall
judge for yourself."

And she told Miss Lucretia, simply, all that Bob had done, and all that
she herself had done.

"He is like his mother, Sarah Hollingsworth; I knew her well," said Miss
Lucretia. "If Isaac Worthington were a man, he would be down on his knees
begging you to marry his son. He tried hard enough to marry your own
mother."

"My mother!" exclaimed Cynthia, who had never believed that rumor.

"Yes," said Miss Lucretia, "and you may thank your stars he didn't
succeed. I mistrusted him when he was a young man, and now I know that he
hasn't changed. He is a coward and a hypocrite."

Cynthia could not deny this.

"And yet," she said, after a moment's silence, "I am sure you will say
that I have been right. My own conscience tells me that it is wrong to
deprive Bob of his inheritance, and to separate him from his father,
whatever his father--may be."

"We shall see what happens in five years," said Miss Lucretia.

"Five years!" said Cynthia, in spite of herself.

"Jacob served seven for Rachel," answered Miss Lucretia; "that period is
scarcely too short to test a man, and you are both young."

"No," said Cynthia, "I cannot marry him, Miss Lucretia. The world would
accuse me of design, and I feel that I should not be happy. I am sure
that he would never reproach me, even if things went wrong, but--the day
might come when--when he would wish that it had been otherwise."

Miss Lucretia kissed her.

"You are very young, my dear," she repeated, "and none of us may say what
changes time may bring forth. And now I must go."

Cynthia insisted upon walking with her friend down the street to the
hotel--an undertaking that was without danger in Brampton. And it was
only a step, after all. A late moon floated in the sky, throwing in
relief the shadow of the Worthington mansion against the white patches of
snow. A light was still burning in the library.

The next morning after breakfast Miss Lucretia appeared at the little
house, and informed Cynthia that she would walk to school with her.

"But I have not yet been notified by the Committee," said Cynthia. There
was a knock at the door, and in walked Judge Ezra Graves. Miss Lucretia
may have blushed, but it is certain that Cynthia did. Never had she seen
the judge so spick and span, and he wore the broadcloth coat he usually
reserved for Sundays. He paused at the threshold, with his hand on his
Adam's apple.

"Good morning, ladies," he said, and looked shyly at Miss Lucretia and
cleared his throat, and spoke with the elaborate decorum he used on
occasions, "Miss Penniman, I wish to thank you again for your noble
action of last evening."

"Don't 'Miss Penniman' me, Ezra Graves," retorted Miss Lucretia; "the
only noble action I know of was poor Jonathan Hill's--unless it was
paying for the gas."

This was the way in which Miss Lucretia treated her lover after thirty
years! Cynthia thought of what the lady had said to her a few hours
since, by this very fire, and began to believe she must have dreamed it.
Fires look very differently at night--and sometimes burn brighter then.
The judge parted his coat tails, and seated himself on the wooden edge of
a cane-bottomed chair.

"Lucretia," he said, "you haven't changed."

"You have, Ezra," she replied, looking at the Adam's apple.

"I'm an old man," said Ezra Graves.

Cynthia could not help thinking that he was a very different man, in Miss
Lucretia's presence, than when at the head of the prudential committee.

"Ezra," said Miss Lucretia, "for a man you do very well."

The judge smiled.

"Thank you, Lucretia," said he. He seemed to appreciate the full extent
of the compliment.

"Judge Graves," said Cynthia, "I can tell you how good you are, at least,
and thank you for your great kindness to me, which I shall never forget."

She took his withered hands from his knees and pressed them. He returned
the pressure, and then searched his coat tails, found a handkerchief, and
blew his nose violently.

"I merely did my duty, Miss Wetherell," he said. "I would not wilfully
submit to a wrong."

"You called me Cynthia yesterday."

"So I did," he answered, "so I did." Then he looked at Miss Lucretia.

"Ezra," said that lady, smiling a little, "I don't believe you have
changed, after all."

What she meant by that nobody knows.

"I had thought, Cynthia," said the judge, "that it might be more
comfortable for you to have me go to the school with you. That is the
reason for my early call."

"Judge Graves, I do appreciate your kindness," said Cynthia; "I hope you
won't think I'm rude if I say I'd rather go alone."

"On the contrary, my dear," replied the judge, "I think I can understand
and esteem your feeling in the matter, and it shall be as you wish."

"Then I think I had better be going," said Cynthia. The judge rose in
alarm at the words, but she put her hand on his shoulder. "Won't you sit
down and stay," she begged, "you haven't seen Miss Lucretia for how many
years,--thirty, isn't it?"

Again he glanced at Miss Lucretia, uncertainly. "Sit down, Ezra," she
commanded, "and for goodness' sake don't be afraid of the cane bottom.
You won't go through it. I should like to talk to you, and most of the
gossips of our day are dead. I shall stay in Brampton to-day, Cynthia,
and eat supper with you here this evening."

Cynthia, as she went out of the door, wondered what they would talk
about. Then she turned toward the school. It was not the March wind that
burned her cheeks; as she thought of the mass meeting the night before,
which was all about her, she wished she might go to school that morning
through the woods and pasture lots rather than down Brampton Street.
What--what would Bob say when he heard of the meeting? Would he come
again to Brampton? If he did, she would run away to Boston with Miss
Lucretia. Every day it had been a trial to pass the Worthington house,
but she could not cross the wide street to avoid it. She hurried a
little, unconsciously, when she came to it, for there was Mr. Worthington
on the steps talking to Mr. Flint. How he must hate her now, Cynthia
reflected! He did not so much as look up when she passed.

The other citizens whom she met made up for Mr. Worthington's coldness,
and gave her a hearty greeting, and some stopped to offer their
congratulations. Cynthia did not pause to philosophize: she was learning
to accept the world as it was, and hurried swiftly on to the little
schoolhouse. The children saw her coming, and ran to meet her and
escorted her triumphantly in at the door. Of their welcome she could be
sure. Thus she became again teacher of the lower school.

How the judge and Miss Lucretia got along that morning, Cynthia never
knew. Miss Lucretia spent the day in her old home, submitting to
hero-worship, and attended an evening party in her honor at Mr. Gamaliel
Ives's house--a mansion not so large as the first citizen's, though it
had two bay-windows and was not altogether unimposing. The first citizen,
needless to say, was not there, but the rest of the elite attended. Mr.
Ives will tell you all about the entertainment if you go to Brampton, but
the real reason Miss Lucretia consented to go was to please Lucy Baird,
who was Gamaliel's wife, and to chat with certain old friends whom she
had not seen. The next morning she called at the school to bid Cynthia
good-by, and to whisper something in her ear which made her very red
before all the scholars. She shook her head when Miss Lucretia said it,
for it had to do with an incident in the 29th chapter of Genesis.

While Jonathan Hill was being made a hero of in the little two-by-four
office of the feed store the morning after the mass meeting (though
nobody offered to take over his mortgage), Mr. Dodd was complaining to
his wife of shooting pains, and "callated" he would stay at home that
day.

"Shootin' fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Dodd. "Get along down to the store and
face the music, Levi Dodd. You'd have had shootin' pains if you'd a went
to the meetin'."

"I might stop by at Mr. Worthington's house and explain how powerless I
was--"

"For goodness' sake git out, Levi. I guess he knows how powerless you are
with your shootin' pains. If you only could forget Isaac D. Worthington
for three minutes, you wouldn't have 'em."

Mr. Dodd's two clerks saw him enter the store by the back door and he was
very much interested in the new ploughs which were piled up in crates
outside of it. Then he disappeared into his office and shut the door, and
supposedly became very much absorbed in book-keeping. If any one called,
he was out--any one. Plenty of people did call, but he was not
disturbed--until ten o'clock. Mr. Dodd had a very sensitive ear, and he
could often recognize a man by his step, and this man he recognized.

"Where's Mr. Dodd?" demanded the owner of the step, indignantly.

"He's out, Mr. Worthington. Anything I can do for you, Mr. Worthington?"

"You can tell him to come up to my house the moment he comes in."

Unfortunately Mr. Dodd in the office had got into a strained position. He
found it necessary to move a little; the day-book fell heavily to the
floor, and the perspiration popped out all over his forehead. Come out,
Levi Dodd. The Bastille is taken, but there are other fortresses still in
the royal hands where you may be confined.

"Who's in the office?"

"I don't know, sir," answered the clerk, winking at his companion, who
was sorting nails.

In three strides the great man had his hand on the office door and had
flung it open, disclosing the culprit cowering over the day-book on the
floor.

"Mr. Dodd," cried the first citizen, "what do you mean by--?"

Some natures, when terrified, are struck dumb. Mr. Dodd's was the kind
which bursts into speech.

"I couldn't help it, Mr. Worthington," he cried, "they would have it. I
don't know what got into 'em. They lost their senses, Mr. Worthington,
plumb lost their senses. If you'd a b'en there, you might have brought
'em to. I tried to git the floor, but Ezry Graves--"

"Confound Ezra Graves, and wait till I have done, can't you," interrupted
the first citizen, angrily. "What do you mean by putting a bath-tub into
my house with the tin loose, so that I cut my leg on it?"

Mr. Dodd nearly fainted from sheer relief.

"I'll put a new one in to-day, right now," he gasped.

"See that you do," said the first citizen, "and if I lose my leg, I'll
sue you for a hundred thousand dollars."

"I was a-goin' to explain about them losin' their heads at the mass
meetin'--"

"Damn their heads!" said the first citizen. "And yours, too," he may have
added under his breath as he stalked out. It was not worth a swing of the
executioner's axe in these times of war. News had arrived from the state
capital that morning of which Mr. Dodd knew nothing. Certain feudal
chiefs from the North Country, of whose allegiance Mr. Worthington had
felt sure, had obeyed the summons of their old sovereign, Jethro Bass,
and had come South to hold a conclave under him at the Pelican. Those
chiefs of the North Country, with their clans behind them as one man,
what a power they were in the state! What magnificent qualities they had,
in battle or strategy, and how cunning and shrewd was their generalship!
Year after year they came down from their mountains and fought shoulder
to shoulder, and year after year they carried back the lion's share of
the spoils between them. The great South, as a whole, was powerless to
resist them, for there could be no lasting alliance between Harwich and
Brampton and Newcastle and Gosport. Now their king had come back, and the
North Country men were rallying again to his standard. No wonder that
Levi Dodd's head, poor thing that it was, was safe for a while.

"Organize what you have left, and be quick about it," said Mr. Flint,
when the news had come, and they sat in the library planning a new
campaign in the face of this evident defection. There was no time to cry
over spilt milk or reinstated school-teachers. The messages flew far and
wide to the manufacturing towns to range their guilds into line for the
railroads. The seneschal wrote the messages, and sent the summons to the
sleek men of the cities, and let it be known that the coffers were full
and not too tightly sealed, that the faithful should not lack for the
sinews of war. Mr. Flint found time, too, to write some carefully worded
but nevertheless convincing articles for the Newcastle Guardian, very
damaging to certain commanders who had proved unfaithful.

"Flint," said Mr. Worthington, when they had worked far into the night,
"if Bass beats us, I'm a crippled man."

"And if you postpone the fight now that you have begun it? What then?"

The answer, Mr. Worthington knew, was the same either way. He did not
repeat it. He went to his bed, but not to sleep for many hours, and when
he came down to his breakfast in the morning, he was in no mood to read
the letter from Cambridge which Mrs. Holden had put on his plate. But he
did read it, with what anger and bitterness may be imagined. There was
the ultimatum,--respectful, even affectionate, but firm. "I know that you
will, in all probability, disinherit me as you say, and I tell you
honestly that I regret the necessity of quarrelling with you more than I
do the money. I do not pretend to say that I despise money, and I like
the things that it buys, but the woman I love is more to me than all that
you have."

Mr. Worthington laid the letter down, and there came irresistibly to his
mind something that his wife had said to him before she died, shortly
after they had moved into the mansion. "Dudley, how happy we used to be
together before we were rich!" Money had not been everything to Sarah
Worthington, either. But now no tender wave of feeling swept over him as
he recalled those words. He was thinking of what weapon he had to prevent
the marriage beyond that which was now useless--disinheritance. He would
disinherit Bob, and that very day. He would punish his son to the utmost
of his power for marrying the ward of Jethro Bass. He wondered bitterly,
in case a certain event occurred, whether he would have much to alienate.

When Mr. Flint arrived, fresh as usual in spite of the work he had
accomplished and the cigars he had smoked the night before, Mr.
Worthington still had the letter in his hand, and was pacing his library
floor, and broke into a tirade against his son.

"After all I have done for him, building up for him a position and a
fortune that is only surpassed by young Duncan's, to treat me in this
way, to drag down the name of Worthington in the mire. I'll never forgive
him. I'll send for Dixon and leave the money for a hospital in Brampton.
Can't you suggest any way out of this, Flint?"

"No," said Flint, "not now. The only chance you have is to ignore the
thing from now on. He may get tired of her--I've known such things to
happen."

"When she hears that I've disinherited him, she will get tired of him,"
declared Mr. Worthington.

"Try it and see, if you like," said Flint.

"Look here, Flint, if the woman has a spark of decent feeling, as you
seem to think, I'll send for her and tell her that she will ruin Robert
if she marries him." Mr. Worthington always spoke of his son as "Robert."

"You ought to have thought of that before the mass meeting. Perhaps it
would have done some good then."

"Because this Penniman woman has stirred people up--is that what you
mean? I don't care anything about that. Money counts in the long run."

"If money counted with this school-teacher, it would be a simple matter.
I think you'll find it doesn't."

"I've known you to make some serious mistakes," snapped Mr. Worthington.

"Then why do you ask for my advice?"

"I'll send for her, and appeal to her better nature," said Mr.
Worthington, with an unconscious and sublime irony.

Flint gave no sign that he heard. Mr. Worthington seated himself at his
desk, and after some thought wrote on a piece of note-paper the following
lines: "My dear Miss Wetherell, I should be greatly obliged if you would
find it convenient to call at my house at eight o'clock this evening,"
and signed them, "Sincerely Yours." He sealed them up in an envelope and
addressed it to Miss Wetherell, at the schoolhouse; and handed it to Mr.
Flint. That gentleman got as far as the door, and then he hesitated and
turned.

"There is just one way out of this for you, that I can see, Mr.
Worthington," he said. "It's a desperate measure, but it's worth thinking
about."

"What's that?"

It took some courage for Mr. Flint, to make the suggestion. "The girl's a
good girl, well educated, and by no means bad looking. Bob might do a
thousand times worse. Give your consent to the marriage, and Jethro Bass
will go back to Coniston."

It was wisdom such as few lords get from their seneschals, but Isaac D.
Worthington did not so recognize it. His anger rose and took away his
breath as he listened to it.

"I will never give my consent to it, never--do you hear?--never. Send
that note!" he cried.

Mr. Flint walked out, sent the note, and returned and took his place
silently at his own table. He was a man of concentration, and he put his
mind on the arguments he was composing to certain political leaders. Mr.
Worthington merely pretended to work as he waited for the answer to come
back. And presently, when it did come back, he tore it open and read it
with an expression not often on his lips. He flung the paper at Mr.
Flint.

"Read that," he said.

This is what Mr. Flint read: "Miss Wetherell begs to inform Mr. Isaac D.
Worthington that she can have no communication or intercourse with him
whatsoever."

Mr. Flint handed it back without a word. His opinion of the
school-teacher had risen mightily, but he did not say so. Mr. Worthington
took the note, too, without a word. Speech was beyond him, and he crushed
the paper as fiercely as he would have liked to have crushed Cynthia, had
she been in his hands.

One accomplishment which Cynthia had learned at Miss Sadler's school was
to write a letter in the third person, Miss Sadler holding that there
were occasions when it was beneath a lady's dignity to write a direct
note. And Cynthia, sitting at her little desk in the schoolhouse during
her recess, had deemed this one of the occasions. She could not bring
herself to write, "My dear Mr. Worthington." Her anger, when the note had
been handed to her, was for the moment so great that she could not go on
with her classes; but she had controlled it, and compelled Silas to stand
in the entry until recess, when she sat with her pen in her hand until
that happy notion of the third person occurred to her. And after Silas
had gone she sat still; though trembling a little at intervals, picturing
with some satisfaction Mr. Worthington's appearance when he received her
answer. Her instinct told her that he had received his son's letter, and
that he had sent for her to insult her. By sending for her, indeed, he
had insulted her irrevocably, and that is why she trembled.

Poor Cynthia! her troubles came thick and fast upon her in those days.
When she reached home, there was the letter which Ephraim had left on the
table addressed in the familiar, upright handwriting, and when Cynthia
saw it, she caught her hand sharply at her breast, as if the pain there
had stopped the beating of her heart. Well it was for Bob's peace of mind
that he could not see her as she read it, and before she had come to the
end there were drops on the sheets where the purple ink had run. How
precious would have been those drops to him! He would never give her up.
No mandate or decree could separate them--nothing but death. And he was
happier now so he told her--than he had been for months: happy in the
thought that he was going out into the world to win bread for her, as
became a man. Even if he had not her to strive for, he saw now that such
was the only course for him. He could not conform.

It was a manly letter,--how manly Bob himself never knew. But Cynthia
knew, and she wept over it and even pressed it to her lips--for there
was no one to see. Yes, she loved him as she would not have believed it
possible to love, and she sat through the afternoon reading his words and
repeating them until it seemed that he were there by her side, speaking
them. They came, untrammelled and undefiled, from his heart into hers.

And now that he had quarrelled with his father for her sake, and was bent
with all the determination of his character upon making his own way in
the world, what was she to do? What was her duty? Not one letter of the
twoscore she had received (so she kept their count from day to day)--not
one had she answered. His faith had indeed been great. But she must
answer this: must write, too, on that subject of her dismissal, lest it
should be wrongly told him. He was rash in his anger, and fearless; this
she knew, and loved him for such qualities as he had.

She must stay in Brampton and do her work,--so much was clearly her duty,
although she longed to flee from it. And at last she sat down and wrote
to him. Some things are too sacred to be set forth on a printed page, and
this letter is one of those things. Try as she would, she could not find
it in her heart at such a time to destroy his hope,--or her own. The hope
which she would not acknowledge, and the love which she strove to conceal
from him seeped up between the words of her letter like water through
grains of sand. Words, indeed, are but as grains of sand to conceal
strong feelings, and as Cynthia read the letter over she felt that every
line betrayed her, and knew that she could compose no lines which would
not.

She said nothing of the summons which she had received that morning, or
of her answer; and her account of the matter of the dismissal and
reinstatement was brief and dignified, and contained no mention of Mr.
Worthington's name or agency. It was her duty, too, to rebuke Bob for the
quarrel with his father, to point out the folly of it, and the wrong, and
to urge him as strongly as she could to retract, though she felt that all
this was useless. And then--then came the betrayal of hope. She could not
ask him never to see her again, but she did beseech him for her sake, and
for the sake of that love which he had declared, not to attempt to see
her: not for a year, she wrote, though the word looked to her like
eternity. Her reasons, aside from her own scruples, were so obvious,
while she taught in Brampton, that she felt that he would consent to
banishment--until the summer holidays in July, at least: and then she
would be in Coniston,--and would have had time to decide upon future
steps. A reprieve was all she craved,--a reprieve in which to reflect,
for she was in no condition to reflect now. Of one thing she was sure,
that it would not be right at this time to encourage him although she had
a guilty feeling that the letter had given him encouragement in spite of
all the prohibitions it contained. "If, in the future years," thought
Cynthia, as she sealed the envelope, "he persists in his determination,
what then?" You, Miss Lucretia, of all people in the world, have planted
the seeds with your talk about Genesis!

The letter was signed "One who will always remain your friend, Cynthia
Wetherell." And she posted it herself.

When Ephraim came home to supper that evening, he brought the Brampton
Clarion, just out, and in it was an account of Miss Lucretia Penniman's
speech at the mass meeting, and of her visit, and of her career. It was
written in Mr. Page's best vein, and so laudatory was it that we shall
have to spare Miss Lucretia in not repeating it here: yes, and omit the
encomiums, too, on the teacher of the Brampton lower school. Mr.
Worthington was not mentioned, and for this, at least, Cynthia drew along
breath of relief, though Ephraim was of the opinion that the first
citizen should have been scored as he deserved, and held up to the
contempt of his fellow-townsmen. The dismissal of the teacher, indeed,
was put down to a regrettable misconception on the part of "one of the
prudential committee," who had confessed his mistake in "a manly and
altogether praiseworthy speech." The article was as near the truth,
perhaps, as the Clarions may come on such matters--which is not very
near. Cynthia would have been better pleased if Mr. Page had spared his
readers the recital of her qualities, and she did not in the least
recognize the paragon whom Miss Lucretia had befriended and defended. She
was thankful that Mr. Page did pot state that the celebrity had come up
from Boston on her account. Miss Penniman had been "actuated by a sudden
desire to see once more the beauties of her old home, to look into the
faces of the old friends who had followed her career with such pardonable
pride." The speech of the president of the literary club, you may be
sure, was printed in full, for Mr. Ives himself had taken the trouble to
write it out for the editor--by request, of course.

Cynthia turned over the sheet, and read many interesting items: one
concerning the beauty and fashion and intellect which attended the party
at Mr. Gamaliel Ives's; in the Clovelly notes she saw that Miss Judy
Hatch, of Coniston, was visiting relatives there; she learned the output
of the Worthington Mills for the past week. Cynthia was about to fold up
the paper and send it to Miss Lucretia, whom she thought it would amuse,
when her eyes were arrested by the sight of a familiar name.

        "Jethro Bass come to life again.
          From the State Tribune."

That was the heading. "One of the greatest political surprises in many
years was the arrival in the capital on Wednesday of Judge Bass, whom it
was thought, had permanently retired from politics. This, at least, seems
to have been the confident belief of a faction in the state who have at
heart the consolidation of certain lines of railroads. Judge Bass was
found by a Tribune reporter in the familiar Throne Room at the Pelican,
but, as usual, he could not be induced to talk for publication. He was in
conference throughout the afternoon with several well-known leaders from
the North Country. The return of Jethro Bass to activity seriously
complicates the railroad situation, and many prominent politicians are
freely predicting to-night that, in spite of the town-meeting returns,
the proposed bill for consolidation will not go through. Judge Bass is a
man of such remarkable personality that he has regained at a stroke much
of the influence that he lost by the sudden and unaccountable retirement
which electrified the state some months since. His reappearance, the news
of which was the one topic in all political centres yesterday, is equally
unaccountable. It is hinted that some action on the part of Isaac D.
Worthington has brought Jethro Bass to life. They are known to be bitter
enemies, and it is said that Jethro Bass has but one object in returning
to the field--to crush the president of the Truro Railroad. Another
theory is that the railroads and interests opposed to the consolidation
have induced Judge Bass to take charge of their fight for them. All
indications point to the fiercest struggle the state has ever seen in
June, when the Legislature meets. The Tribune, whose sentiments are well
known to be opposed to the iniquity of consolidation, extends a hearty
welcome to the judge. No state, we believe, can claim a party leader of a
higher order of ability than Jethro Bass."

Cynthia dropped the paper in her lap, and sat very still. This, then, was
what happened when Jethro had heard of her dismissal--he had left
Coniston without writing her a word and passed through Brampton without
seeing her. He had gone back to that life which he had abandoned for her
sake; the temptation had been too strong, the desire for vengeance too
great. He had not dared to see her. And yet the love for her which had
been strong enough to make him renounce the homage of men, and even incur
their ridicule, had incited him to this very act of vengeance.

What should she do now, indeed? Had those peaceful and happy Saturdays
and Sundays in Coniston passed away forever? Should she follow him to the
capital and appeal to him? Ah no, she felt that were a useless pain to
them both. She believed, now, that he had gone away from her for all
time, that the veil of limitless space was set between, them. Silently
she arose,--so silently that Ephraim, dozing by the fire, did not awake.
She went into her own room and wept, and after many hours fell into a
dreamless sleep of sheer exhaustion.

The days passed, and the weeks; the snow ran from the brown fields, and
melted at length even in the moist crotches under the hemlocks of the
northern slopes; the robin and bluebird came, the hillsides were mottled
with exquisite shades of green, and the scent of fruit blossom and balm
of Gilead was in the air. June came as a maiden and grew into womanhood.
But Jethro Bass did not return to Coniston.




CHAPTER XVII

The legends which surround the famous war which we are about to touch
upon are as dim as those of Troy or Tuscany. Decorous chronicles and
biographies and monographs and eulogies exist, bound in leather and
stamped in gold, each lauding its own hero: chronicles written in really
beautiful language, and high-minded and noble, out of which the heroes
come unstained. Horatius holds the bridge, and not a dent in his armor;
and swims the Tiber without getting wet or muddy. Castor and Pollux fight
in the front rank at Lake Regillus, in the midst of all that gore and
slaughter, and emerge all white and pure at the end of the day--but they
are gods.

Out of the classic wars to which we have referred sprang the great Roman
Republic and Empire, and legend runs into authentic and written history.
Just so, parva componere magnis, out of the cloud-wrapped conflicts of
the five railroads of which our own Gaul is composed, emerged one
imperial railroad, authentically and legally written down on the statute
books, for all men to see. We cannot go behind that statute except to
collect the legends and write homilies about the heroes who held the
bridges.

If we were not in mortal terror of the imperial power, and a little
fearful, too, of tiring our readers, we would write out all the legends
we have collected of this first fight for consolidation, and show the
blood, too.

In the statute books of a certain state may be found a number of laws
setting forth the various things that a railroad or railroads may do, and
on the margin of these pages is invariably printed a date, that being the
particular year in which these laws were passed. By a singular
coincidence it is the very year at which we have now arrived in our
story. We do not intend to give a map of the state, or discuss the merits
or demerits of the consolidation of the Central and the Northwestern and
the Truro railroads. Such discussions are not the province of a novelist,
and may all be found in the files of the Tribune at the State Library.
There were, likewise, decisions without number handed down by the various
courts before and after that celebrated session,--opinions on the
validity of leases, on the extension of railroads, on the rights of
individual stockholders--all dry reading enough.

At the risk of being picked to pieces by the corporation lawyers who may
read these pages, we shall attempt to state the situation and with all
modesty and impartiality--for we, at least, hold no brief. When Mr. Isaac
D. Worthington obtained that extension of the Truro Railroad (which we
have read about from the somewhat verdant point of view of William
Wetherell), that railroad then formed a connection with another road
which ran northward from Harwich through another state, and with which we
have nothing to do. Having previously purchased a line to the southward
from the capital, Mr. Worthington's railroad was in a position to compete
with Mr. Duncan's (the "Central") for Canadian traffic, and also to cut
into the profits of the "Northwestern," Mr. Lovejoy's road. In brief, the
Truro Railroad found itself very advantageously placed, as Mr.
Worthington and Mr. Flint had foreseen. There followed a period of
bickering and recrimination, of attempts of the other two railroads to
secure representation in the Truro directorate, of suits and injunctions
and appeals to the Legislature and I know not what else--in all of which
affairs Mr. Bijah Bixby and other gentlemen we could name found both
pleasure and remuneration.

Oh, that those halcyon days of the little wars would come again, when a
captain could ride out almost any time at the held of his band of
mercenaries and see honest fighting and divide honest spoils! There was
much knocking about of men and horses, but very little bloodshed, so we
are told. Mr. Bixby will sit on the sunny side of his barns in Clovelly
and tell you stories of that golden period with tears in his eyes, when
he went to conventions with a pocketful of proxies from the river towns,
and controlled in the greatest legislative year of all a "block" which
included the President of the Senate, for which he got the fabulous sum
of----. He will tell you, but I won't. Mr. Bixby's occupation is gone
now. We have changed all that, and we are ruled from imperial Rome. If
you don't do right, they cut off your (political) head, and it is of no
use to run away, because there is no one to run to.

It was Isaac D. Worthington--or shall we say Mr. Flint?--who was
responsible for this pernicious change for the worse, who conceived the
notion of leasing for the Truro the Central and the Northwestern,--thus
making one railroad out of the three. If such a gigantic undertaking
could be got through, Mr. Worthington very rightly deemed that the other
railroads of the state would eventually fall like ripe fruit into their
caps--owning the ground under the tree, as they would. A movement, which
we need not go unto, was first made upon the courts, and for a while
adverse decisions came down like summer rain. A genius by the name of
Jethro Bass had for many years presided (in the room of the governor and
council at the State House) at the political birth of justices of the
Supreme Court. None of them actually wore livery, but we have seen one of
them--along time ago--in a horse blanket. None of them were favorable to
the plans of Mr. Worthington and Mr. Duncan.

We have listened to the firing on the skirmish lines for a long time, and
now the real battle is at hand. It is June, and the Legislature is
meeting, and Bijah Bixby has come down to the capital at the head of his
regiment of mercenaries, of which Mr. Sutton is the honorary colonel; the
clans are here from the north, well quartered and well fed; the Throne
Room, within the sacred precincts of which we have been before, is
occupied. But there is another headquarters now, too, in the Pelican
House--a Railroad Room; larger than the Throne Room, with a bath-room
leading out of it. Another old friend of ours, Judge Abner Parkinson of
Harwich, he who gave the sardonic laugh when Sam Price applied for the
post of road agent, may often be seen in that Railroad Room from now on.
The fact is that the judge is about to become famous far beyond the
confines of Harwich; for he, and none other, is the author of the
Consolidation Bill itself.

Mr. Flint is the generalissimo of the allied railroads, and sits in his
headquarters early and late, going over the details of the campaign with
his lieutenants; scanning the clauses of the bill with Judge Parkinson
for the last time, and giving orders to the captains of mercenaries as to
the disposition of their forces; writing out passes for the deserving and
the true. For these latter, also, and for the wavering there is a
claw-hammer on the marble-topped mantel wielded by Mr. Bijah Bixby, pro
tem chief of staff--or of the hammer, for he is self-appointed and very
useful. He opens the mysterious packing cases which come up to the
Railroad Room thrice a week, and there is water to be had in the
bath-room--and glasses. Mr. Bixby also finds time to do some of the
scouting about the rotunda and lobbies, for which he is justly
celebrated, and to drill his regiment every day. The Honorable Heth
Sutton, M.C.,--who held the bridge in the Woodchuck Session,--is there
also, sitting in a corner, swelled with importance, smoking big Florizel
cigars which come from--somewhere. There are, indeed, many great and
battle-scarred veterans who congregate in that room--too numerous and
great to mention; and saunterers in the Capitol Park opposite know when a
council of war is being held by the volumes of smoke which pour out of
the window, just as the Romans are made cognizant by the smoking of a
chimney of when another notable event takes place.

Who, then, are left to frequent the Throne Room? Is that ancient seat of
power deserted, and does Jethro Bass sit there alone behind the curtains,
in his bitterness, thinking of other bright June days that are gone?

Of all those who had been amazed when Jethro Bass suddenly emerged from
his retirement and appeared in the capital some months before, none were
more thunderstruck than certain gentlemen who had been to Coniston
repeatedly, but in vain, to urge him to make this very fight. The most
important of these had been Mr. Balch, president of the "Down East" Road,
and the representatives of two railroads of another state. They had at
last offered Jethro fabulous sums to take charge of their armies in the
field--sums, at least, that would seem fabulous to many people, and had
seemed so to them. When they heard that the lion had roused and shaken
himself and had unaccountably come forth of his own accord, they hastened
to the state capital to renew their offers. Another shock, but of a
different kind, was in store for them. Mr. Balch had not actually driven
the pack-mules, laden with treasure, to the door of the Pelican House,
where Jethro might see them from his window; but he requested a private
audience, and it was probably accidental that the end of his personal
check-book protruded a little from his pocket. He was a big,
coarse-grained man, Mr. Balch, who had once been a brakeman, and had
risen by what is known as horse sense to the presidency of his road.
There was a wonderful sunset beyond the Capitol, but Mr. Balch did not
talk about the sunset, although Jethro was watching it from behind the
curtains.

"If you are willing to undertake this fight against consolidation," said
Mr. Balch, "we are ready to talk business with you."

"D-don't know what you're going to, do," answered Jethro; "I'm going to
prevent consolidation, if I can."

"All right," said Balch, smiling. He regarded this reply as one of
Jethro's delicate euphemisms. "We're prepared to give that same little
retainer."

Jethro did not look up. Mr. Balch went to the table and seized a pen and
filled out a check for an amount that shall be nameless.

"I have made it payable to bearer, as usual," he said, and he handed it
to Jethro.

Jethro took it, and absently tore it into little pieces, and threw the
pieces on the floor. Mr. Balch watched him in consternation. He began to
think the report that Jethro had reached his second childhood was true.

"What in Halifax are you doing, Bass?" he cried.

"W-want to stop this consolidation, don't you--want' to stop it?"

"Certainly I do."

"G-goin' to do all you can to stop it hain't you?"

"Certainly I am."

"I-I'll help you," said Jethro.

"Help us!" exclaimed Balch. "Great Scott, we want you to take charge of
it."

"I-I'll do all I can, but I won't guarantee it--w-won't guarantee it,"
said Jethro.

"We don't ask you to guarantee it. If you'll do all you can, that's
enough. You won't take a retainer?"

"W-won't take anything," said Jethro.

"You mean to say you don't want anything for your for your time and your
services if the bill is defeated?"

"T-that's about it, Ed. Little p-private matter with both of us. You
don't want consolidation, and I don't. I hain't offered to give you a
retainer--have I?"

"No," said the astounded Mr. Balch. He scratched his head and fingered
the leaves of his check-book. The captains over the tens and the captains
over the hundreds would want little retainers--and who was to pay these?
"How about the boys?" asked Mr. Balch.

"S-still got the same office in the depot--hain't you, Ed, s-same
office?"

"Yes."

"G-guess the boys hev b'en there before," said Jethro.

Mr. Balch went away, meditating upon those sayings, and took the train
for Boston. If he had waked up of a fine morning to find himself at the
head of some benevolent and charitable organization, instead of the "Down
East" Railroad, he could not have been more astonished than he had been
at the unaccountable change of heart of Jethro Bass. He did not know what
to make of it, and told his colleagues so; and at first they feared one
of two things,--treachery or lunacy. But a little later a rumor reached
Mr. Balch's ears that Jethro's hatred of Isaac D. Worthington was at the
bottom of his reappearance in public life, although Jethro himself never
mentioned Mr. Worthington's name. Jethro sat in the Throne Room,
consulting, directing day after day, and when the Legislature assembled,
"the boys" began to call at Mr. Balch's office. But Mr. Balch never again
broached the subject of money to Jethro Bass.

We have to sing the song of sixpence for the last time in these pages;
and as it is an old song now, there will be no encores. If you can buy
one member of the lower house for ten dollars, how many members can you
buy for fifty? It was no such problem in primary arithmetic that Mr.
Balch and his associates had to solve--theirs was in higher mathematics,
in permutations and combinations, and in least squares. No wonder the old
campaigners speak with tears in their eyes of the days of that ever
memorable summer. There were spoils to be picked up in the very streets
richer than the sack of the thirty cities; and as the session wore on it
is affirmed by men still living that money rained down in the Capitol
Park and elsewhere like manna from the skies, if you were one of a chosen
band. If you were, all you had to do was to look in your vest pockets
when you took your clothes off in the evening and extract enough legal
tender to pay your bill at the Pelican for a week. Mr. Lovejoy having
been overheard one day to make a remark concerning the diet of hogs, the
next morning certain visitors to the capital were horrified to discover
trails of corn leading from the Pelican House to their doorways. Men who
had never seen a receiving teller opened bank accounts. No, it was not a
problem in simple arithmetic, and Mr. Balch and Mr. Flint, and even Mr.
Duncan and Mr. Worthington, covered whole sheets with figures during the
stifling days in July. Some men are so valuable that they can be bought
twice, or even three times, and they make figuring complicated.

Jethro Bass did no calculating. He sat behind the curtains, and he must
have kept the figures in his head.

The battle had closed in earnest, and for twelve long, sultry weeks it
raged with unabated fierceness. Consolidation had a terror for the rural
mind, and the state Tribune skilfully played its stream upon the
constituents of those gentlemen who stood tamely at the Worthington
hitching-posts, and the constituents flocked to the capital; that able
newspaper, too, found space to return, with interest, the attacks of Mr.
Worthington's organ, the Newcastle Guardian. These amenities are much too
personal to reproduce here, now that the smoke of battle has rolled away.
An epic could be written upon the conflict, if there were space: Canto
One, the first position carried triumphantly, though at some expense, by
the Worthington forces, who elect the Speaker. That had been a crucial
time before the town meetings, when Jethro abdicated. The Worthington
Speaker goes ahead with his committees, and it is needless to say that
Mr. Chauncey Weed is not made Chairman of the Committee on Corporations.
As an offset to this, the Jethro forces gain on the extreme right, where
the Honorable Peleg Hartington is made President of the Senate, etc.

For twelve hot weeks, with a public spirit which is worthy of the highest
praise, the Committee sit in their shirt sleeves all day long and listen
to arguments for and against consolidation; and ask learned questions
that startle rural witnesses; and smoke big Florizel cigars (a majority
of them). Judge Abner Parkinson defends his bill, quoting from the
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and the Bible; a
celebrated lawyer from the capital riddles it, using the same
authorities, and citing the Federalist and the Golden Rule in addition.
The Committee sit open-minded, listening with laudable impartiality; it
does not become them to arrive at a hasty decision on a question of such
magnitude. In the meantime the House passes an important bill dealing
with the bounty on hedgehogs, and there are several card games going on
in the cellar, where it is cool.

The governor of the state is a free lance, and may be seen any afternoon
walking through the park, consorting with no one. He may be recognized
even at a distance by his portly figure, his silk hat, and his dignified
mien. Yes, it is an old and valued friend, the Honorable Alva Hopkins,
patron of the drama, and sometimes he has a beautiful young woman (still
unattached) by his side. He lives in a suite of rooms at the Pelican. It
is a well-known fact (among Mr. Worthington's supporters) that the
Honorable Alva promised in January, when Mr. Bass retired, to sign the
Consolidation Bill, and that he suddenly became open-minded in March, and
has remained open-minded ever since, listening gravely to arguments, and
giving much study to the subject. He is an executive now, although it is
the last year of his term, and of course he is never seen either in the
Throne Room or the Railroad Room. And besides, he may become a senator.

August has come, and the forces are spent and panting, and neither side
dares to risk the final charge. The reputation of Jethro Bass is at
stake. Should he risk and lose, he must go back to Coniston a beaten man,
subject to the contempt of his neighbors and his state. People do not
know that he has nothing now to go back to, and that he cares nothing for
contempt. As he sits in his window day after day he has only one thought
and one wish,--to ruin Isaac D. Worthington. And he will do it if he can.
Those who know--and among them is Mr. Balch himself--say that Jethro has
never conducted a more masterly campaign than this, and that all the
others have been mere childish trials of strength compared to it. So he
sits there through those twelve weeks while the session slips by, while
his opponents grumble, and while even his supporters, eager for the
charge, complain. The truth is that in all the years of his activity be
has never had such an antagonist as Mr. Flint. Victory hangs in the
balance, and a false move will throw it to either side.

Victory hangs now, to be explicit, upon two factors. The first and most
immediate of these is a certain canny captain of many wars whose regiment
is still at the disposal of either army--for a price, a regiment which
has hitherto remained strictly neutral. And what a regiment it is! A
block of river towns and a senator, and not a casualty since they marched
boldly into camp twelve weeks ago. Mr. Batch is getting very much worried
about this regiment, and beginning to doubt Jethro's judgment.

"I tell you, Bass," he said one evening, "if you allow him to run around
loose much longer, we're lost, that's all there is to it!" (Mr. Batch
referred to the captain in question.) "They'll buy up his block at his
figure--see, if they don't. They're getting desperate. Don't you think
I'd better bid him in?"

"B-bid him in if you've a mind to; Ed."

"Look here, Jethro," said Mr. Batch, savagely biting off the end of a
cigar, "I'm beginning to think you don't care a continental about this
business. Which side are you on, anyway?" The heat and the length and the
uncertainty of the struggle were telling on the nerves of the railroad
president. "You sit there from morning till night and won't say anything;
and now, when there's only one block out, you won't give the word to buy
it."

"N-never told you to buy anything, did I--Ed?"

"No," answered Mr. Batch, "you haven't. I don't know what the devil's got
into you."

"D-done all the payin' without consultin' me, hain't you, Ed?"

"Yes; I have. What are you driving at?"

"D-done it if I hadn't b'en here, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, and more too," said Mr. Batch.

"W-wouldn't make much difference to you if I wasn't here--would it?"

"Great Scott, Jethro, what do you mean?" cried the railroad president, in
genuine alarm; "you're not going to pull out, are you?"

"W-wouldn't make much odds if I did--would it, Ed?"

"The devil it wouldn't!" exclaimed Mr. Balch. "If you pulled out, we'd
lose the North Country, and Peleg, and Gosport, and nobody can tell which
way Alva Hopkins will swing. I guess you know what he'll do--you're so
d--d secretive I can't tell whether you do or not. If you pulled out,
they'd have their bill on Friday."

"H-hain't under any obligations to you, Ed--am I?"

"No," said Mr. Batch, "but I don't see why you keep harping on that."

"J-dust wanted to have it clear," said Jethro, and relapsed into silence.

There was a fireproof carpet on the Throne Room, and Mr. Batch flung down
his cigar and stamped on it and went out. No wonder he could not
understand Jethro's sudden scruples about money and obligations--about
railroad money, that is. Jethro was spending some of his own, but not in
the capital, and in a manner which was most effective. In short, at the
very moment when Mr. Batch stamped on his cigar, Jethro had the victory
in his hands--only he did not choose to say so. He had had a mysterious
telegram that day from Harwich, signed by Chauncey Weed, and Mr. Weed
himself appeared at the door of Number 7, fresh from his travels, shortly
after Mr. Batch had gone out of it. Mr. Weed closed the door gently, and
locked it, and sat down in a rocking chair close to Jethro and put his
hand over his mouth. We cannot hear what Mr. Weed is saying. All is
mystery here, and in order to preserve that mystery we shall delay for a
little the few words which will explain Mr. Weed's successful mission.

Mr. Batch, angry and bewildered, descended into the rotunda, where he
shortly heard two astounding pieces of news. The first was that the
Honorable Heth Sutton had abandoned the Florizel cigars and had gone home
to Clovelly. The second; that Mr. Bijah Bixby had resigned the
claw-hammer and had ceased to open the packing cases in the Railroad
Room. Consternation reigned in that room, so it was said (and this was
true). Mr. Worthington and Mr. Duncan and Mr. Lovejoy were closeted there
with Mr. Flint, and the door was locked and the transom shut, and smoke
was coming out of the windows.

Yes, Mr. Bijah Bixby is the canny captain of whom Mr. Balch spoke: he it
is who owns that block of river towns, intact, and the one senator.
Impossible! We have seen him opening the packing cases, we have seen him
working for the Worthington faction for the last two years. Mr. Bixby was
very willing to open boxes, and to make himself useful and agreeable; but
it must be remembered that a good captain of mercenaries owes a sacred
duty to his followers. At first Mr. Flint had thought he could count on
Mr. Bixby; after a while he made several unsuccessful attempts to talk
business with him; a particularly difficult thing to do, even for Mr.
Flint, when Mr. Bixby did not wish to talk business. Mr. Balch had found
it quite as difficult to entice Mr. Bixby away from the boxes and the
Railroad Room. The weeks drifted on, until twelve went by, and then Mr.
Bixby found himself, with his block of river towns and one senator, in
the incomparable position of being the arbiter of the fate of the
Consolidation Bill in the House and Senate. No wonder Mr. Balch wanted to
buy the services of that famous regiment at any price!

But Mr. Bixby, for once in his life, had waited too long.

When Mr. Balch, rejoicing, but not a little indignant at not having been
taken into confidence, ascended to the Throne Room after supper to
question Jethro concerning the meaning of the things he had heard, he
found Senator Peleg Hartington seated mournfully on the bed, talking at
intervals, and Jethro listening.

"Come up and eat out of my hand," said the senator.

"Who?" demanded Mr. Balch.

"Bije," answered the senator.

"Great Scott, do you mean to say you've got Bixby?" exclaimed the
railroad president. He felt as if he would like to shake the senator, who
was so deliberate and mournful in his answers. "What did you pay him?"

Mr. Hartington appeared shocked by the question.

"Guess Heth Sutton will settle with him," he said.

"Heth Sutton! Why the--why should Heth pay him?"

"Guess Heth'd like to make him a little present, under the circumstances.
I was goin' through the barber shop," Mr. Hartington continued, speaking
to Jethro and ignoring the railroad president, "and I heard somebody
whisperin' my name. Sound came out of that little shampoo closet; went in
there and found Bije. 'Peleg,' says he, right into my ear, 'tell Jethro
it's all right--you understand. We want Heth to go back--break his heart
if he didn't--you understand. If I'd knowed last winter Jethro meant
business, I wouldn't hev' helped Gus Flint out. Tell Jethro he can have
'em--you know what I mean.' Bije waited a little mite too long," said the
senator, who had given a very fair imitation of Mr. Bixby's nasal voice
and manner.

"Well, I'm d--d!" ejaculated Mr. Balch, staring at Jethro. "How did you
work it?"

"Sent Chauncey through the deestrict," said Mr. Hartington.

Mr. Chauncey Weed had, in truth, gone through a part of the congressional
district of the Honorable Heth Sutton with a little leather bag. Mr. Weed
had been able to do some of his work (with the little leather bag) in the
capital itself. In this way Mr. Bixby's regiment, Sutton was the honorary
colonel, had been attacked in the rear and routed. Here was to be a
congressional convention that autumn, and a large part of Mr. Sutton's
district lay in the North Country, which, as we have seen, was loyal to
Jethro to the back bone. The district, too, was largely rural, and
therefore anti-consolidation, and the inability of the Worthington forces
to get their bill through had made it apparent that Jethro Bass was as
powerful as ever. Under these circumstances it had not been very
difficult for a gentleman of Mr. Chauncey Weed's powers of persuasion to
induce various lieutenants in the district to agree to send delegates to
the coming convention who would be conscientiously opposed to Mr.
Sutton's renomination: hence the departure from the capital of Mr.
Sutton; hence the generous offer of Mr. Bixby to put his regiment at the
disposal of Mr. Bass--free of charge.

The second factor on which victory hung (we can use the past tense now)
was none other than his Excellency Alva Hopkins, governor of the state.
The bill would never get to his Excellency now--so people said; would
never get beyond that committee who had listened so patiently to the
twelve weeks of argument. These were only rumors, after all, for the
rotunda never knows positively what goes on in high circles; but the
rotunda does figuring, too, when at length the problem is reduced to a
simple equation, with Bijah Bixby as x. If it were true that Bijah had
gone over to Jethro Bass, the Consolidation Bill was dead.




CHAPTER XVIII

When Jethro Bass walked out of the hotel that evening men looked at him,
and made way for him, but none spoke to him. There was something in his
face that forbade speech. He was a great man once more--a greater man
than ever; and he had, if the persistent rumors were true, accomplished
an almost incomprehensible feat, even for Jethro Bass. There was another
reason, too, why they stared at him. In all those twelve weeks of that
most trying of all sessions he had not once gone into the street, and he
had been less than ever common in the eyes of men. Twice a day he had
descended to the dining room for a simple meal--that was all; and fewer
had gained entrance to Room Number 7 this session than ever before.

There is a river that flows by the capital, a wide and gentle river
bordered by green meadows and fringed with willows; higher up, if you go
far enough, a forest comes down to the water on the western side. Jethro
walked through the hooded bridge, and up the eastern bank until he could
see the forest like a black band between the orange sky and the orange
river, and there he sat down upon a fallen log on the edge of the bank.
But Jethro was thinking of another scene,--of a granite-ribbed pasture on
Coniston Mountain that swings in limitless space, from either end of
which a man may step off into eternity. William Wetherell, in one of his
letters, had described that place as the Threshold of the Nameless
Worlds, and so it had seemed to Jethro in the years of his desolation. He
was thinking of it now, even as it had been in his mind that winter's
evening when Cynthia had come to Coniston and had surprised him with that
look of terrible loneliness on his face.

Yes, and he was thinking of Cynthia. When, indeed, had he not been
thinking of her? How many tunes had he rehearsed the events in the
tannery house--for they were the events of his life now. The triumphs
over his opponents and enemies fell away, and the pride of power. Such
had not been his achievements. She had loved him, and no man had reached
a higher pinnacle than that.

Why he had forfeited that love for vengeance, he could not tell. The
embers of a man's passions will suddenly burst into flame, and he will
fiddle madly while the fire burns his soul. He had avenged her as well as
himself; but had he avenged her, now that he held Isaac Worthington in
his power? By crushing him, had he not added to her trouble and her
sorrow? She had confessed that she loved Isaac Worthington's son, and was
not he (Jethro) widening the breach between Cynthia and the son by
crushing the father? Jethro had not thought of this. But he had thought
of her, night and day, as he had sat in his room directing the battle.
Not a day had passed that he had not looked for a letter, hoping against
hope. If she had written to him once, if she had come to him once, would
he have desisted? He could not say--the fires of hatred had burned so
fiercely, and still burned so fiercely, that he clenched his fists when
it came over him that Isaac Worthington was at last in his power.

A white line above the forest was all that remained of the sunset when he
rose up and took from his coat a silver locket and opened it and held it
to the fading light. Presently he closed it again, and walked slowly
along the river bank toward the little city twinkling on its hill. He
crossed the hooded bridge and climbed the slope, stopping for a moment at
a little stationery shop; he passed through the groups which were still
loudly discussing this thing he had done, and gained his room and locked
the door. Men came to it and knocked and got no answer. The room was in
darkness, and the night breeze stirred among the trees in the park and
blew in at the window.

At last Jethro got up and lighted the gas and paused at the centre table.
He was to violate more than one principle of his life that night, though
not without a struggle; and he sat for a long while looking at the blank
paper before him. Then he wrote, and sealed the letter--which contained
three lines--and pulled the bell cord. The call was answered by a
messenger who had been far many years in the service of the Pelican
House, and who knew many secrets of the gods. The man actually grew pale
when he saw the address on the envelope which was put in his hand and
read the denomination of the crisp note under it that was the price of
silence.

"F-find the gentleman and give it to him yourself. Er--John?"

"Yes, Mr. Bass?"

"If you don't find him, bring it--back."

When the man had gone, Jethro turned down the gas and went again to his
chair by the window. For a while voices came up to him from the street,
but at length the groups dispersed, one by one; and a distant clock
boomed out eleven solemn strokes. Twice the clock struck again, at the
half-hour and midnight, and the noises in the house--the banging of doors
and the jangling of keys and the hurrying of feet in the corridors--were
hushed. Jethro took no thought of these or of time, and sat gazing at the
stars in the depths of the sky above the capital dome until a shadow
emerged from the black mass of the trees opposite and crossed the street.
In a few minutes there were footsteps in the corridor,--stealthy
footsteps--and a knock on the door. Jethro got up and opened it, and
closed it again and locked it. Then he turned up the gas.

"S-sit down," he said, and nodded his head toward the chair by the table.

Isaac Worthington laid his silk hat on the table, and sat down. He looked
very haggard and worn in that light, very unlike the first citizen who
had entered Brampton in triumph on his return from the West not many
months before. The long strain of a long fight, in which he had risked
much for which he had labored a life to gain, had told on him, and there
were crow's-feet at the corners of, his eyes, and dark circles under
them. Isaac Worthington had never lost before, and to destroy the fruits
of such a man's ambition is to destroy the man. He was not as young as he
had once been. But now, in the very hour of defeat, hope had rekindled
the fire in the eyes and brought back the peculiar, tight-lipped, mocking
smile to the mouth. An hour ago, when he had been pacing Alexander
Duncan's library, the eyes and the mouth had been different.

Long habit asserts itself at the strangest moments. Jethro Bass took his
seat by the window, and remained silent. The clock tolled the half-hour
after midnight.

"You wanted to see me," said Mr. Worthington, finally.

Jethro nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"I suppose," said Mr. Worthington, slowly, "I suppose you are ready to
sell out." He found it a little difficult to control his voice.

"Yes," answered Jethro, "r-ready to sell out."

Mr. Worthington was somewhat taken aback by this simple admission. He
glanced at Jethro sitting motionless by the window, and in his heart he
feared him: he had come into that room when the gas was low, afraid.
Although he would not confess it to himself, he had been in fear of
Jethro Bass all his life, and his fear had been greater than ever since
the March day when Jethro had left Coniston. And could he have known,
now, the fires of hatred burning in Jethro's breast, Isaac Worthington
would have been in terror indeed.

"What have you got to sell?" he demanded sharply.

"G-guess you know, or you wouldn't have come here."

"What proof have I that you have it to sell?"

Jethro looked at him for an instant.

"M-my word," he said.

Isaac Worthington was silent for a while: he was striving to calm
himself, for an indefinable something had shaken him. The strange
stillness of the hour and the stranger atmosphere which seemed to
surround this transaction filled him with a nameless dread. The man in
the window had been his lifelong enemy: more than this, Jethro Bass, was
not like ordinary men--his ways were enshrouded in mystery, and when he
struck, he struck hard. There grew upon Isaac Worthington a sense that
this midnight hour was in some way to be the culmination of the long
years of hatred between them.

He believed Jethro: he would have believed him even if Mr. Flint had not
informed him that afternoon that he was beaten, and bitterly he wished he
had taken Mr. Flint's advice many months before. Denunciation sprang to
his lips which he dared not utter. He was beaten, and he must pay--the
pound of flesh. Isaac Worthington almost thought it would be a pound of
flesh.

"How much do you want?" he said.

Again Jethro looked at him.

"B-biggest price you can pay," he answered.

"You must have made up your mind what you want. You've had time enough."

"H-have made up my mind," said Jethro.

"Make your demand," said Mr. Worthington, "and I'll give you my answer."

"B-biggest price you can pay," said Jethro, again.

Mr. Worthington's nerves could stand it no longer.

"Look here," he cried, rising in his chair, "if you've brought me here to
trifle with me, you've made a mistake. It's your business to get control
of things that belong to other people, and sell them out. I am here to
buy. Nothing but necessity brings me here, and nothing but necessity will
keep me here a moment longer than I have to stay to finish this
abominable affair. I am ready to pay you twenty thousand dollars the day
that bill becomes a law."

This time Jethro did not look at him.

"P-pay me now," he said.

"I will pay you the day the bill becomes a law. Then I shall know where I
stand."

Jethro did not answer this ultimatum in any manner, but remained
perfectly still looking out of the window. Mr. Worthington glanced at
him, twice, and got his fingers on the brim of his hat, but he did not
pick it up. He stood so for a while, knowing full well that if he went
out of that room his chance was gone. Consolidation might come in other
years, but he, Isaac Worthington, would not be a factor in it.

"You don't want a check, do you?" he said at last.

"No--d-don't want a check."

"What in God's name do you want? I haven't got twenty thousand dollars in
currency in my pocket."

"Sit down, Isaac Worthington," said Jethro.

Mr. Worthington sat down--out of sheer astonishment, perhaps.

"W-want the consolidation--don't you? Want it bad--don't you?"

Mr. Worthington did, not answer. Jethro stood over him now, looking down
at him from the other side of the narrow table.

"Know Cynthy Wetherell?" he said.

Then Isaac Worthington understood that his premonitions had been real.
The pound of flesh was to be demanded, but strangely enough, he did not
yet comprehend the nature of it.

"I know that there is such a person," he answered, for his pride would
not permit him to say more.

"W-what do you know about her?"

Isaac Worthington was bitterly angry--the more so because he was
helpless, and could not question Jethro's right to ask. What did he know
about her? Nothing, except that she had intrigued to marry his son. Bob's
letter had described her, to be sure, but he could not be expected to
believe that: and he had not heard Miss Lucretia Penniman's speech. And
yet he could not tell Jethro that he knew nothing about her, for he was
shrewd enough to perceive the drift of the next question.

"Kn-know anything against her?" said Jethro.

Mr. Worthington leaned back in his chair.

"I can't see what Miss Wetherell has to do with the present occasion," he
replied.

"H-had her dismissed by the prudential committee had her
dismissed--didn't you?"

"They chose to act as they saw fit."

"T-told Levi Dodd to dismiss her--didn't you?"

That was a matter of common knowledge in Brampton, having leaked out
through Jonathan Hill.

"I must decline to discuss this," said Mr. Worthington.

"W-wouldn't if I was you."

"What do you mean?"

"What I say. T-told Levi Dodd to dismiss her, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did." Isaac Worthington had lost in self-esteem by not saying so
before.

"Why? Wahn't she honest? Wahn't she capable? Wahn't she a lady?"

"I can't say that I know anything against Miss Wetherell's character, if
that's what you mean."

"F-fit to teach--wahn't she--fit to teach?"

"I believe she has since qualified before Mr. Errol."

"Fit to teach--wahn't fit to marry your son--was she?"

Isaac Worthington clutched the table and started from his chair. He grew
white to his lips with anger, and yet he knew that he must control
himself.

"Mr. Bass," he said, "you have something to sell, and I have something to
buy--if the price is not ruinous. Let us confine ourselves to that. My
affairs and my son's affairs are neither here nor there. I ask you again,
how much do you want for this Consolidation Bill?"

"N-no money will buy it."

"What!"

"C-consent to this marriage, c-consent to this marriage." There was yet
room for Isaac Worthington to be amazed, and for a while he stared up at
Jethro, speechless.

"Is that your price?" he asked at last.

"Th-that's my price," said Jethro.

Isaac Worthington got up and went to the window and stood looking out
above the black mass of trees at the dome outlined against the
star-flecked sky. At first his anger choked him, and he could not think;
he had just enough reason left not to walk out of the door. But presently
habit asserted itself in him, too, and he began to reflect and calculate
in spite of his anger. It is strange that memory plays so small a part in
such a man. Before he allowed his mind to dwell on the fearful price, he
thought of his ambitions gratified; and yet he did not think then of the
woman to whom he had once confided those ambitions--the woman who was the
girl's mother. Perhaps Jethro was thinking of her.

It may have been--I know not--that Isaac Worthington wondered at this
revelation of the character of Jethro Bass, for it was a revelation. For
this girl's sake Jethro was willing to forego his revenge, was willing at
the end of his days to allow the world to believe that he had sold out to
his enemy, or that he had been defeated by him.

But when he thought of the marriage, Isaac Worthington ground his teeth.
A certain sentiment which we may call pride was so strong in him that he
felt ready to make almost any sacrifice to prevent it. To hinder it he
had quarrelled with his son, and driven him away, and threatened
disinheritance. The price was indeed heavy--the heaviest he could pay.
But the alternative--was not that heavier? To relinquish his dream of
power, to sink for a while into a crippled state; for he had spent large
sums, and one of those periodical depressions had come in the business of
the mills, and those Western investments were not looking so bright now.

So, with his hands opening and closing in front of him, Isaac Worthington
fought out his battle. A terrible war, that, between ambition and
pride--a war to the knife. The issue may yet have been undecided when he
turned round to Jethro with a sneer which he could not resist.

"Why doesn't she marry him without my consent?"

In a moment Mr. Worthington knew he had gone too far. A certain kind of
an eye is an incomparable weapon, and armed men have been cowed by those
who possess it, though otherwise defenceless. Jethro Bass had that kind
of an eye.

"G-guess you wouldn't understand if I was to tell you," he said.

Mr. Worthington walked to the window again, perhaps to compose himself,
and then came back again.

"Your proposition is," he said at length, "that if I give my consent to
this marriage, we are to have Bixby and the governor, and the
Consolidation Bill will become a law. Is that it?"

"Th-that's it," said Jethro, taking his accustomed seat.

"And this consent is to be given when the bill becomes a law?"

"Given now. T-to-night."

Mr. Worthington took another turn as far as the door, and suddenly came
and stood before Jethro.

"Well, I consent."

Jethro nodded toward the table.

"Er--pen and paper there," he said.

"What do you want me to do?" demanded Mr. Worthington.

"W-write to Bob--write to Cynthy. Nice letters."

"This is carrying matters with too high a hand, Mr. Bass. I will write
the letters to-morrow morning." It was intolerable that he, the first
citizen of Brampton, should have to submit to such humiliation.

"Write 'em now. W-want to see 'em."

"But if I give you my word they will be written and sent to you to-morrow
afternoon?"

"T-too late," said Jethro; "sit down and write 'em now."

Mr. Worthington went irresolutely to the table, stood for a minute, and
dropped suddenly into the chair there. He would have given anything
(except the realization of his ambitions) to have marched out of the room
and to have slammed the door behind him. The letter paper and envelopes
which Jethro had bought stood in a little pile, and Mr. Worthington
picked up the pen. The clock struck two as he wrote the date, as though
to remind him that he had written it wrong. If Flint could see him now!
Would Flint guess? Would anybody guess? He stared at the white paper, and
his rage came on again like a gust of wind, and he felt that he would
rather beg in the streets than write such a thing. And yet--and yet he
sat there. Surely Jethro Bass must have known that he could have taken no
more exquisite vengeance than this, to compel a man--and such a man--to
sit down in the white heat of passion--and write two letters of
forgiveness! Jethro sat by the window, to all appearances oblivious to
the tortures of his victim.

He who has tried to write a note--the simplest note when his mind was
harassed, will understand something of Isaac Worthington's sensations. He
would no sooner get an inkling of what his opening sentence was to be
than the flames of his anger would rise and sweep it away. He could not
even decide which letter he was to write first: to his son, who had
defied him and who (the father knew in his heart) condemned him? or to
the schoolteacher, who was responsible for all his misery; who--Mr.
Worthington believed--had taken advantage of his son's youth by feminine
wiles of no mean order so as to gain possession of him. I can almost
bring myself to pity the first citizen of Brampton as he sits there with
his pen poised over the paper, and his enemy waiting to read those tender
epistles of forgiveness which he has yet to write. The clock has almost
got round to the half-hour again, and there is only the date--and a wrong
one at that.

"My dear Miss Wetherell,--Circumstances (over which I have no
control?)"--ought he not to call her Cynthia? He has to make the letter
credible in the eyes of the censor who sits by the window. "My dear Miss
Wetherell, I have come to the conclusion"--two sheets torn up, or thrust
into Mr. Worthington's pocket. By this time words have begun to have a
colorless look. "My dear Miss Wetherell,--Having become convinced of the
sincere attachment which my son Robert has for you, I am writing him
to-night to give my full consent to his marriage. He has given me to
understand that you have hitherto persistently refused to accept him
because I have withheld that consent, and I take this opportunity of
expressing my admiration of this praiseworthy resolution on your part."
(If this be irony, it is sublime! Perhaps Isaac Worthington has a little
of the artist in him, and now that he is in the heat of creation has
forgotten the circumstances under which he is composing.) "My son's
happiness and career in life are of such moment to me that, until the
present, I could not give my sanction to what I at first regarded as a
youthful fancy. Now that, my son, for your sake, has shown his
determination and ability to make his own way in the world," (Isaac
Worthington was not a little proud of this) "I have determined that it is
wise to withdraw my opposition, and to recall Robert to his proper place,
which is near me. I am sure that my feelings in this matter will be clear
to you, and that you will look with indulgence upon any acts of mine
which sprang from a natural solicitation for the welfare and happiness of
my only child. I shall be in Brampton in a day or two, and I shall at
once give myself the pleasure of calling on you. Sincerely yours, Isaac
D. Worthington."

Perhaps a little formal and pompous for some people, but an admirable and
conciliatory letter for the first citizen of Brampton. Written under such
trying circumstances, with I know not how many erasures and false starts,
it is little short of a marvel in art: neither too much said, nor too
little, for a relenting parent of Mr. Worthington's character, and I
doubt whether Talleyrand or Napoleon or even Machiavelli himself could
have surpassed it. The second letter, now that Mr. Worthington had got
into the swing, was more easily written. "My dear Robert" (it said), "I
have made up my mind to give my consent to your marriage to Miss
Wetherell, and I am ready to welcome you home, where I trust I shall see
you shortly. I have not been unimpressed by the determined manner in
which you have gone to work for yourself, but I believe that your place
is in Brampton, where I trust you will show the same energy in learning
to succeed me in the business which I have founded there as you have
exhibited in Mr. Broke's works. Affectionately, your Father."

A very creditable and handsome letter for a forgiving father. When Mr.
Worthington had finished it, and had addressed both the envelopes, his
shame and vexation had, curious to relate, very considerably abated. Not
to go too deeply into the somewhat contradictory mental and cardiac
processes of Mr. Worthington, he had somehow tricked himself by that
magic exercise of wielding his pen into thinking that he was doing a
noble and generous action: into believing that in the course of a very
few days--or weeks, at the most, he would have recalled his erring son
and have given Cynthia his blessing. He would, he told himself, have been
forced eventually to yield when that paragon of inflexibility, Bob,
dictated terms to him at the head of the locomotive works. Better let the
generosity be on his (Mr. Worthington's) side. At all events, victory had
never been bought more cheaply. Humiliation, in Mr. Worthington's eyes,
had an element of publicity in it, and this episode had had none of that
element; and Jethro Bass, moreover, was a highwayman who had held a
pistol to his head. In such logical manner he gradually bolstered up
again his habitual poise and dignity. Next week, at the latest, men would
point to him as the head of the largest railroad interests in the state.

He pushed back his chair, and rose, merely indicating the result of his
labors by a wave of his hand. And he stood in the window as Jethro Bass
got up and went to the table. I would that I had a pen able to describe
Jethro's sensations when he read them. Unfortunately, he is a man with
few facial expressions. But I believe that he was artist enough himself
to appreciate the perfections of the first citizen's efforts. After a
much longer interval than was necessary for their perusal, Mr.
Worthington turned.

"G-guess they'll do," said Jethro, as he folded them up. He was too
generous not to indulge, for once, in a little well-deserved praise.
"Hain't underdone it, and hain't overdone it a mite hev you? M-man of
resource. Callate you couldn't hev beat that if you was to take a week to
it."

"I think it only fair to tell you," said Mr. Worthington, picking up his
silk hat, "that in those letters I have merely anticipated a very little
my intentions in the matter. My son having proved his earnestness, I was
about to consent to the marriage of my own accord."

"G-goin' to do it anyway--was you?"

"I had so determined."

"A-always thought you was high-minded," said Jethro.

Mr. Worthington was on the point of giving a tart reply to this, but
restrained himself.

"Then I may look upon the matter as settled?" he said. "The Consolidation
Bill is to become a law?"

"Yes," said Jethro, "you'll get your bill." Mr. Worthington had got his
hand on the knob of the door when Jethro stopped him with a word. He had
no facial expressions, but he had an eye, as we have seen--an eye that
for the second time appeared terrible to his visitor. "Isaac
Worthington," he said, "a-act up to it. No trickery--or look out--look
out."

Then, the incident being closed so far as he was concerned, Jethro went
back to his chair by the window, but it is to be recorded that Isaac
Worthington did not answer him immediately. Then he said:--

"You seem to forget that you are talking to a gentleman."

"That's so," answered Jethro, "so you be."

He sat where he was long after the sky had whitened and the stars had
changed from gold to silver and gone out, and the sunlight had begun to
glance upon the green leaves of the park. Perhaps he was thinking of the
life he had lived, which was spent now: of the men he had ruled, of the
victories he had gained from that place which would know him no more. He
had won the last and the greatest of his victories there, compared to
which the others had indeed been as vanities. Perhaps he looked back over
the highway of his life and thought of the woman whom he had loved, and
wondered what it had been if she had trod it by his side. Who will judge
him? He had been what he had been; and as the Era was, so was he. Verily,
one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.

When Mr. Isaac Worthington arrived at Mr. Duncan's house, where he was
staying, at three o'clock in the morning, he saw to his surprise light
from the library windows lying in bars across the lawn under the trees.
He found Mr. Duncan in that room with Somers, his son, who had just
returned from a seaside place, and they were discussing a very grave
event. Miss Janet Duncan had that day eloped with a gentleman who--to
judge from the photograph Somers held--was both handsome and
romantic-looking. He had long hair and burning eyes, and a title not to
be then verified, and he owned a castle near some place on the peninsula
of Italy not on the map.




CHAPTER XIX

We are back in Brampton, owning, as we do, an annual pass over the Truro
Railroad. Cynthia has been there all the summer, and as it is now the
first of September, her school has begun again. I do not by any means
intend to imply that Brampton is not a pleasant place to spend the
summer: the number of its annual visitors is a refutation of that; but to
Cynthia the season had been one of great unhappiness. Several times Lem
Hallowell had stopped the stage in front of Ephraim's house to beg her to
go to Coniston, and Mr. Satterlee had come himself; but she could not
have borne to be there without Jethro. Nor would she go to Boston, though
urged by Miss Lucretia; and Mrs. Merrill and the girls had implored her
to join them at a seaside place on the Cape.

Cynthia had made a little garden behind Ephraim's house, and she spent
the summer there with her flowers and her books, many of which Lem had
fetched from Coniston. Ephraim loved to sit there of an evening and smoke
his pipe and chat with Ezra Graves and the neighbors who dropped in.
Among these were Mr. Gamaliel Ives, who talked literature with Cynthia;
and Lucy Baird, his wife, who had taken Cynthia under her wing. I wish I
had time to write about Lucy Baird. And Mr. Jonathan Hill came--his
mortgage not having been foreclosed, after all. When Cynthia was alone
with Ephraim she often read to him,--generally from books of a martial
flavor,--and listened with an admirable hypocrisy to certain narratives
which he was in the habit of telling.

They never spoke of Jethro. Ephraim was not a casuist, and his sense of
right and wrong came largely through his affections. It is safe to say
that he never made an analysis of the sorrow which he knew was afflicting
the girl, but he had had a general and most sympathetic understanding of
it ever since the time when Jethro had gone back to the capital; and
Ephraim never brought home his Guardian or his Clarion now, but read them
at the office, that their contents might not disturb her.

No wonder that Cynthia was unhappy. The letters came, almost every day,
with the postmark of the town in New Jersey where Mr. Broke's locomotive
works were; and she answered them now (but oh, how scrupulously!), though
not every day. If the waters of love rose up through the grains of sand,
it was, at least, not Cynthia's fault. Hers were the letters of a friend.
She was reading such and such a book--had he read it? And he must not
work too hard. How could her letters be otherwise when Jethro Bass, her
benefactor, was at the capital working to defeat and perhaps to ruin
Bob's father? when Bob's father had insulted and persecuted her? She
ought not to have written at all; but the lapses of such a heroine are
very rare, and very dear.

Yes, Cynthia's life was very bitter that summer, with but little hope on
the horizon of it. Her thoughts were divided between Bob and Jethro. Many
a night she lay awake resolving to write to Jethro, even to go to him,
but when morning came she could not bring herself to do so. I do not
think it was because she feared that he might believe her appeal would be
made in behalf of Bob's father. Knowing Jethro as she did, she felt that
it would be useless, and she could not bear to make it in vain; if the
memory of that evening in the tannery shed would not serve, nothing would
serve. And again--he had gone to avenge her.

It was inevitable that she should hear tidings from the capital. Isaac
Worthington's own town was ringing with it. And as week after week of
that interminable session went by, the conviction slowly grew upon
Brampton that its first citizen had been beaten by Jethro Bass. Something
of Mr. Worthington's affairs was known: the mills, for instance, were not
being run to their full capacity. And then had come the definite news
that Mr. Worthington was beaten, a local representative having arrived
straight from the rotunda. Cynthia overheard Lem Hallowell telling it to
Ephraim, and she could not for the life of her help rejoicing, though she
despised herself for it. Isaac Worthington was humbled now, and Jethro
had humbled him to avenge her. Despite her grief over his return to that
life, there was something to compel her awe and admiration in the way he
had risen and done this thing after men had fallen from him. Her mother
had had something of these same feelings, without knowing why.

People who had nothing but praise for him before were saying hard things
about Isaac Worthington that night. When the baron is defeated, the serfs
come out of their holes in the castle rock and fling their curses across
the moat. Cynthia slept but little, and was glad when the day came to
take her to her scholars, to ease her mind of the thoughts which tortured
it.

And then, when she stopped at the post-office to speak to Ephraim on her
way homeward in the afternoon, she heard men talking behind the
partition, and she stood, as one stricken, listening beside the window.
Other tidings had come in the shape of a telegram. The first rumor had
been false. Brampton had not yet received the details, but the
Consolidation Bill had gone into the House that morning, and would be a
law before the week was out. A part of it was incomprehensible to
Cynthia, but so much she had understood. She did not wait to speak to
Ephraim, and she was going out again when a man rushed past her and
through the partition door. Cynthia paused instinctively, for she
recognized him as one of the frequenters of the station and a bearer of
news.

"Jethro's come home, boys," he shouted; "come in on the four o'clock, and
went right off to Coniston. Guess he's done for, this time, for certain.
Looks it. By Godfrey, he looks eighty! Callate his day's over, from the
way the boys talked on the train."

Cynthia lingered to hear no more, and went out, dazed, into the September
sunshine: Jethro beaten, and broken, and gone to Coniston. Resolution
came to her as she walked. Arriving home, she wrote a little note and
left it on the table for Ephraim; and going out again, ran by the back
lane to Mr. Sherman's livery stable behind the Brampton House, and in
half an hour was driving along that familiar road to Coniston, alone; for
she had often driven Jethro's horses, and knew every turn of the way. And
as she gazed at the purple mountain through the haze and drank in the
sweet scents of the year's fulness, she was strangely happy. There was
the village green in the cool evening light, and the flagstaff with its
tip silvered by the departing sun. She waved to Rias and Lem and Moses at
the store, but she drove on to the tannery house, and hitched the horse
at the rough granite post, and went in, and through the house, softly, to
the kitchen.

Jethro was standing in the doorway, and did not turn. He may have thought
she was Millicent Skinner. Cynthia could see his face. It was older,
indeed, and lined and worn, but that fearful look of desolation which she
had once surprised upon it, and which she in that instant feared to see,
was not there. Jethro's soul was at peace, though Cynthia could not
understand why it was so. She stole to him and flung her arms about his
neck, and with a cry he seized her and held her against him for I know
not how long. Had it been possible to have held her there always, he
would never have let her go. At last he looked down into her tear-wet
face, into her eyes that were shining with tears.

"D-done wrong, Cynthy."

Cynthia did not answer that, for she remembered how she, too, had exulted
when she had believed him to have accomplished Isaac Worthington's
downfall. Now that he had failed, and she was in his arms, it was not for
her to judge--only to rejoice.

"Didn't look for you to come back--didn't expect it."

"Uncle Jethro!" she faltered. Love for her had made him go, and she would
not say that, either.

"D-don't hate me, Cynthy--don't hate me?"

She shook her head.

"Love me--a little?"

She reached up her hands and brushed back his hair, tenderly, from his
forehead. Such--a loving gesture was her answer.

"You are going to stay here always, now," she said, in a low voice, "you
are never going away again."

"G-goin' to stay always," he answered. Perhaps he was thinking of the
hillside clearing in the forest--who knows! "You'll come-sometime,
Cynthy--sometime?"

"I'll come every Saturday and Sunday, Uncle Jethro," she said, smiling up
at him. "Saturday is only two days away, now. I can hardly wait."

"Y-you'll come sometime?"

"Uncle Jethro, do you think I'll be away from you, except--except when I
have to?"

"C-come and read to me--won't you--come and read?"

"Of course I will!"

"C-call to mind the first book you read to me, Cynthy?"

"It was 'Robinson Crusoe,'" she said.

"'R-Robinson Crusoe.' Often thought of that book. Know some of it by
heart. R-read it again, sometime, Cynthy?"

She looked up at him a little anxiously. His eyes were on the great hill
opposite, across Coniston Water.

"I will, indeed, Uncle Jethro, if we can find it," she answered.

"Guess I can find it," said Jethro. "R-remember when you saw him makin' a
ship?"

"Yes," said Cynthia, "and I had my feet in the pool."

The book had made a profound impression upon Jethro, partly because
Cynthia had first read it to him, and partly for another reason. The
isolation of Crusoe; depicted by Defoe's genius, had been comparable to
his own isolation, and he had pondered upon it much of late. Yes, and
upon a certain part of another book which he had read earlier in life:
Napoleon had ended his days on St. Helena.

They walked out under the trees to the brook-side and stood listening to
the tinkling of the cowbells in the wood lot beyond. The light faded
early on these September evenings, and the smoky mist had begun to rise
from the water when they turned back again. The kitchen windows were
already growing yellow, and through them the faithful Millicent could be
seen bustling about in her preparations for supper. But Cynthia, having
accomplished her errand, would not go in. She could not have borne to
have any one drive back with her to Brampton then, and she must not be
late upon the road.

"I will come Friday evening, Uncle Jethro," she said, as she kissed him
and gave one last, lingering look at his face. Had it been possible, she
would not have left him, and on her way to Brampton through the gathering
darkness she mused anxiously upon that strange calmness he had shown
after defeat.

She drove her horse on to the floor of Mr. Sherman's stable, that
gentleman himself gallantly assisting her to alight, and walked homeward
through the lane. Ephraim had not yet returned from the postoffice, which
did not close until eight, and Cynthia smiled when she saw the utensils
of his cooking-kit strewn on the hearth. In her absence he invariably
unpacked and used it, and of course Cynthia at once set herself to
cleaning and packing it again. After that she got her own supper--a very
simple affair--and was putting the sitting room to rights when Ephraim
came thumping in.

"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed when he saw her. "I didn't look for you to
come back so soon, Cynthy. Put up the kit--hev you?" He stood in front of
the fireplace staring with apparent interest at the place where the kit
had been, and added in a voice which he strove to make quite casual, "How
be Jethro?"

"He looks older, Cousin Eph," she answered, after a pause, "and I think
he is very tired. But he seems he seems more tranquil and contented than
I hoped to find him."

"I want to know," said Ephraim. "I am glad to hear it. Glad you went up,
Cynthy--you done right to go.

"I'd have gone with you, if you'd only told me. I'll git a chance to go
up Sunday."

There was an air of repressed excitement about the veteran which did not
escape Cynthia. He held two letters in his hand, and, being a postmaster,
he knew the handwriting on both. One had come from that place in New
Jersey, and drew no comment. But the other! That one had been postmarked
at the capital, and as he had sat at his counter at the post-office
waiting for closing time he bad turned it over and over with many
ejaculations and futile guesses. Past master of dissimulation that he
was, he had made up his mind--if he should find Cynthia at home--to lay
the letters indifferently on the table and walk into his bedroom. This
campaign he now proceeded to carry out.

Cynthia smiled again when he was gone, and shook her head and picked up
the letters: Bob's was uppermost and she read that first, without a
thought of the other one. And she smiled as she read for Bob had had a
promotion. He was not yet at the head of the locomotive works, he
hastened to add, for fear that Cynthia might think that Mr. Broke had
resigned the presidency in his favor; and Cynthia never failed to laugh
at these little facetious asides. He was now earning the princely sum of
ninety dollars a month--not enough to marry on, alas! On Saturday nights
he and Percy Broke scrubbed as much as possible of the grime from their
hands and faces and went to spend Sunday at Elberon, the Broke place on
the Hudson; from whence Miss Sally Broke, if she happened to be at home,
always sent Cynthia her love. As Cynthia is still a heroine, I shall not
describe how she felt about Sally Broke's love. There was plenty of Bob's
own in the letter. Cynthia would got have blamed him if he bad fallen in
love with Miss Broke. It seemed to her little short of miraculous that,
amidst such surroundings, he could be true to her.

After a period which was no briefer than that usually occupied by Bob's
letters, Cynthia took the other one from her lap, and stared at it in
much perplexity before she tore it open. We have seen its contents over
Mr. Worthington's shoulder, and our hearts will not stop beating--as
Cynthia's did. She read it twice before the full meaning of it came to
her, and after that she could not well mistake it,--the language being so
admirable in every way. She sat very still for a long while, and
presently she heard Ephraim go out. But Cynthia did not move. Mr.
Worthington relented and Bob recalled! The vista of happiness suddenly
opened up, widened and widened until it was too bright for Cynthia's
vision, and she would compel her mind to dwell on another prospect,--that
of the father and son reconciled. Although her temples throbbed, she
tried to analyze the letter. It implied that Mr. Worthington had allowed
Bob to remain away on a sort of probation; it implied that it had been
dictated by a strong paternal love mingled with a strong paternal
justice. And then there was the appeal to her: "You will look with
indulgence upon any acts of mine which sprang from a natural solicitation
for the welfare and happiness of my only child." A terrible insight is
theirs to whom it is given to love as Cynthia loved.

Suddenly there came a knock which frightened her, for her mind was
running on swiftly from point to point: had, indeed, flown as far as
Coniston by now, and she was thinking of that strange look of peace on
Jethro's face which had troubled her. One letter she thrust into her
dress, but the other she laid aside, and her knees trembled under her as
she rose and went into the entry and raised the latch and opened the
door. There was a moon, and the figure in the frock coat and the silk hat
was the one which she expected to see. The silk hat came off very
promptly.

"I hope I am not disturbing you, Miss Wetherell," said the owner of it.

"No," answered Cynthia, faintly.

"May I come in?"

Cynthia held open the door a little wider, and Mr. Worthington walked in.
He seemed very majestic and out of place in the little house which
Gabriel Post had built, and he carried into it some of the atmosphere of
the walnut and high ceilings of his own mansion. His manner of laying his
hat, bottom up, on the table, and of unbuttoning his coat, subtly
indicated the honor which he was conferring upon the place. And he eyed
Cynthia, standing before him in the lamplight, with a modification of the
hawk-like look which was meant to be at once condescending and
conciliatory. He did not imprint a kiss upon her brow, as some
prospective fathers-in-law would have done. But his eyes, perhaps
involuntarily, paid a tribute to her personal appearance which heightened
her color. She might not, after all, be such a discredit to the
Worthington family.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked.

"Thank you, Cynthia," he said; "I hope I may now be allowed to call you
Cynthia?"

She did not answer him, but sat down herself, and he followed her
example; with his eyes still upon her.

"You have doubtless received my letter," began Mr. Worthington. "I only
arrived in Brampton an hour ago, but I thought it best to come to you at
once, under the circumstances."

"Yes," replied Cynthia, "I received the letter."

"I am glad," said Mr. Worthington. He was beginning to be a little taken
aback by her calmness and her apparent absence of joy. It was scarcely
the way in which a school-teacher should receive the advances of the
first citizen, come to give a gracious consent to her marriage with his
son. Had he known it, Cynthia was anything but calm. "I am glad," he
said, "because I took pains to explain the exact situation in that
letter, and to set forth my own sentiments. I hope you understood them."

"Yes, I understood them," said Cynthia, in a low tone.

This was enigmatical, to say the least. But Mr. Worthington had come with
such praiseworthy intentions that he was disposed to believe that the
girl was overwhelmed by the good fortune which had suddenly overtaken
her. He was therefore disposed to be a little conciliatory.

"My conduct may have appeared harsh to you," he continued. "I will not
deny that I opposed the matter at first. Robert was still in college, and
he has a generous, impressionable nature which he inherits from his poor
mother--the kind of nature likely to commit a rash act which would ruin
his career. I have since become convinced that he has--ahem--inherited
likewise a determination of purpose and an ability to get on in the world
which I confess I had underestimated. My friend, Mr. Broke, has written
me a letter about him, and tells me that he has already promoted him."

"Yes," said Cynthia.

"You hear from him?" inquired Mr. Worthington, giving her a quick glance.

"Yes," said Cynthia, her color rising a little.

"And yet," said Mr. Worthington, slowly, "I have been under the
impression that you have persistently refused to marry him."

"That is true," she answered.

"I cannot refrain from complimenting you, Cynthia, upon such rare
conduct," said he. "You will be glad to know that it has contributed more
than anything else toward my estimation of your character, and has
strengthened me in my resolution that I am now doing right. It may be
difficult for you to understand a father's feelings. The complete
separation from my only son was telling on me severely, and I could not
forget that you were the cause of that separation. I knew nothing about
you, except--" He hesitated, for she had turned to him.

"Except what?" she asked.

Mr. Worthington coughed. Mr. Flint had told him, that very morning, of
her separation from Jethro, and of the reasons which people believed had
caused it. Unfortunately, we have not time to go into that conversation
with Mr. Flint, who had given a very good account of Cynthia indeed.
After all (Mr. Worthington reflected), he had consented to the marriage,
and there was no use in bringing Jethro's name into the conversation.
Jethro would be forgotten soon.

"I will not deny to You that I had other plans for my son," he said. "I
had hoped that he would marry a daughter of a friend of mine. You must be
a little indulgent with parents, Cynthia," he added with a little smile,
"we have our castles in the air, too. Sometimes, as in this case, by a
wise provision of providence they go astray. I suppose you have heard of
Miss Duncan's marriage."

"No," said Cynthia.

"She ran off with a worthless Italian nobleman. I believe, on the whole,"
he said, with what was an extreme complaisance for the first citizen,
"that I have reason to congratulate myself upon Robert's choice. I have
made inquiries about you, and I find that I have had the pleasure of
knowing your mother, whom I respected very much. And your father, I
understand, came of very good people, and was forced by circumstances to
adopt the means of livelihood he did. My attention has been called to the
letters he wrote to the Guardian, which I hear have been highly praised
by competent critics, and I have ordered a set of them for the files of
the library. You yourself, I find, are highly thought of in Brampton" (a,
not unimportant factor, by the way); "you have been splendidly educated,
and are a lady. In short, Cynthia, I have come to give my formal consent
to your engagement to my son Robert."

"But I am not engaged to him," said Cynthia.

"He will be here shortly, I imagine," said Mr. Worthington.

Cynthia was trembling more than ever by this time. She was very angry,
and she had found it very difficult to repress the things which she had
been impelled to speak. She did not hate Isaac Worthington now--she
despised him. He had not dared to mention Jethro, who had been her
benefactor, though he had done his best to have her removed from the
school because of her connection with Jethro.

"Mr. Worthington," she said, "I have not yet made up my mind whether I
shall marry your son."

To say that Mr. Worthington's breath was taken away when he heard these
words would be to use a mild expression. He doubted his senses.

"What?" he exclaimed, starting forward, "what do you mean?"

Cynthia hesitated a moment. She was not frightened, but she was trying to
choose her words without passion.

"I refused to marry him," she said, "because you withheld your consent,
and I did not wish to be the cause of a quarrel between you. It was not
difficult to guess your feelings toward me, even before certain things
occurred of which I will not speak. I did my best, from the very first,
to make Bob give up the thought of marrying me, although I loved and
honored him. Loving him as I do, I do not want to be the cause of
separating him from his father, and of depriving him of that which is
rightfully his. But something was due to myself. If I should ever make up
my mind to marry him," continued Cynthia, looking at Mr. Worthington
steadfastly, "it will not be because your consent is given or withheld."

"Do you tell me this to my face?" exclaimed Mr. Worthington, now in a
rage himself at such unheard-of presumption.

"To your face," said Cynthia, who got more self-controlled as he grew
angry. "I believe that that consent, which you say you have given freely,
was wrung from you."

It was unfortunate that the first citizen might not always have Mr. Flint
by him to restrain and caution him. But Mr. Flint could have no command
over his master's sensations, and anger and apprehension goaded Mr.
Worthington to indiscretion.

"Jethro Bass told you this!" he cried out.

"No," Cynthia answered, not in the least surprised by the admission, "he
did not tell me--but he will if I ask him. I guessed it from your letter.
I heard that he had come back to-day, and I went to Coniston to see him,
and he told me--he had been defeated."

Tears came into her eyes at the remembrance of the scene in the tannery
house that afternoon, and she knew now why Jethro's face had worn that
look of peace. He had made his supreme sacrifice--for her. No, he had
told her nothing, and she might never have known. She sat thinking of the
magnitude of this thing Jethro had done, and she ceased to speak, and the
tears coursed down her cheeks unheeded.

Isaac Worthington had a habit of clutching things when he was in a rage,
and now he clutched the arms of the chair. He had grown white. He was
furious with her, furious with himself for having spoken that which might
be construed into a confession. He had not finished writing the letters
before he had stood self-justified, and he had been self-justified ever
since. Where now were these arguments so wonderfully plausible? Where
were the refutations which he had made ready in case of a barely possible
need? He had gone into the Pelican House intending to tell Jethro of his
determination to agree to the marriage. That was one. He had done
so--that was another--and he had written the letters that Jethro might be
convinced of his good will. There were still more, involving Jethro's
character for veracity and other things. Summoning these, he waited for
Cynthia to have done speaking, but when she had finished--he said
nothing. He looked a her, and saw the tears on her face, and he saw that
she had completely forgotten his presence.

For the life of him, Isaac Worthington could not utter a word. He was a
man, as we know, who did not talk idly, and he knew that Cynthia would
not hear what he said; and arguments and denunciations lose their effect
when repeated. Again, he knew that she would not believe him. Never in
his life had Isaac Worthington been so ignored, so put to shame, as by
this school-teacher of Brampton. Before, self-esteem and sophistry had
always carried him off between them; sometimes, in truth, with a
wound--the wound had always healed. But he had a feeling, to-night, that
this woman had glanced into his soul, and had turned away from it. As he
looked at her the texture of his anger changed; he forgot for the first
time that which he had been pleased to think of as her position in life,
and he feared her. He had matched his spirit against hers.

Before long the situation became intolerable to him, for Cynthia still
sat silent. She was thinking of how she had blamed Jethro for going back
to that life, even though his love for her had made him do it. But Isaac
Worthington did not know of what she was thinking--he thought only of
himself and his predicament. He could not remain, and yet he could not
go--with dignity. He who had come to bestow could not depart like a
whipped dog.

Suddenly a fear transfixed him: suppose that this woman, from whom he
could not hide the truth, should tell his son what he had done. Bob would
believe her. Could he, Isaac Worthington, humble his pride and ask her to
keep her suspicions to herself? He would then be acknowledging that they
were more than suspicions. If he did so, he would have to appear to
forgive her in spite of what she had said to him. And Bob was coming
home. Could he tell Bob that he had changed his mind and withdrawn his
consent to the marriage? There world be the reason, and again Bob would
believe her. And again, if he withdrew his consent, there was Jethro to
reckon with. Jethro must have a weapon still, Mr. Worthington thought,
although he could not imagine what it might be. As Isaac Worthington sat
there, thinking, it grew clear, to him at last that there was but one
exit out of a, very desperate situation.

He glanced at Cynthia again, this time appraisingly. She had dried her
eyes, but she made no effort to speak. After all, she would make such a
wife for his son as few men possessed. He thought of Sarah Hollingsworth.
She had been a good woman, but there had been many times when he had
deplored--especially in his travels the lack of other qualities in his
wife. Cynthia, he thought, had these qualities,--so necessary for the
wife of one who would succeed to power--though whence she had got them
Isaac Worthington could not imagine. She would become a personage; she
was a woman of whom they had no need to be ashamed at home or abroad.
Having completed these reflections, he broke the silence.

"I am sorry that you should have been misled into thinking such a thing
as you have expressed, Cynthia," he said, "but I believe that I can
understand something of the feelings which prompted you. It is natural
that you should have a resentment against me after everything that has
happened. It is perhaps natural, too, that I should lose my temper under
the circumstances. Let us forget it. And I trust that in the future we
shall grow into the mutual respect and affection which our nearer
relationship will demand."

He rose, and took up his hat, and Cynthia rose too. There was something
very fine, he thought, about her carriage and expression as she stood in
front of him.

"There is my hand," he said,--"will you take it?"

"I will take it," Cynthia answered, "because you are Bob's father."

And then Mr. Worthington went away.




CHAPTER XX

I am able to cite one notable instance, at least, to disprove the saying
a part of which is written above, and I have yet to hear of a case in
which a gentleman ever hesitated a single instant on account of the first
letter of a lady's last name. I know, indeed, of an occasion when
locomotives could not go fast enough, when thirty miles an hour seemed a
snail's pace to a young main who sat by the open window of a train that
crept northward on a certain hazy September morning up the beautiful
valley of a broad river which we know.

It was after three o'clock before he caught sight of the familiar crest
of Farewell Mountain, and the train ran into Harwich. How glad he was to
see everybody there, whether he knew them or not! He came near hugging
the conductor of the Truro accommodation; who, needless to say, did not
ask him for a ticket, or even a pass. And then the young man went forward
and almost shook the arms off of the engineer and the fireman, and
climbed into the cab, and actually drove the engine himself as far as
Brampton, where it arrived somewhat ahead of schedule, having taken some
of the curves and bridges at a speed a little beyond the law. The
engineer was richer by five dollars, and the son of a railroad president
is a privileged character, anyway.

Yes, here was Brampton, and in spite of the haze the sun had never shone
so brightly on the terraced steeple of the meeting-house. He leaped out
of the cab almost before the engine had stopped, and beamed upon
everybody on the platform,--even upon Mr. Dodd, who chanced to be there.
In a twinkling the young man is in Mr. Sherman's hack, and Mr. Sherman
galloping his horse down Brampton Street, the young man with his head out
of the window, smiling; grinning would be a better word. Here are the
iron mastiffs, and they seem to be grinning, too. The young man flings
open the carriage door and leaps out, and the door is almost broken from
its hinges by the maple tree. He rushes up the steps and through the
hall, and into the library, where the first citizen and his seneschal are
sitting.

"Hello, Father, you see I didn't waste any time," he cried; grasping his
father's hand in a grip that made Mr. Worthington wince. "Well, you are a
trump, after all. We're both a little hot-headed, I guess, and do things
we're sorry for,--but that's all over now, isn't it? I'm sorry. I might
have known you'd come round when you found out for yourself what kind of
a girl Cynthia was. Did you ever see anybody like her?"

Mr. Flint turned his back, and started to walk out of the room.

"Don't go, Flint, old boy," Bob called out, seizing Mr. Flint's hand,
too. "I can't stay but a minute, now. How are you?"

"All right, Bob," answered Mr. Flint, with a curious, kindly look in his
eyes that was not often there. "I'm glad to see you home. I have to go to
the bank."

"Well, Father," said Bob, "school must be out, and I imagine you know
where I'm going. I just thought I'd stop in to--to thank you, and get a
benediction."

"I am very happy to have you back, Robert," replied Mr. Worthington, and
it was true. It would have been strange indeed if some tremor of
sentiment had not been in his voice and some gleam of pride in his eye as
he looked upon his son.

"So you saw her, and couldn't resist her," said Bob. "Wasn't that how it
happened?"

Mr. Worthington sat down again at the desk, and his hand began to stray
among the papers. He was thinking of Mr. Flint's exit.

"I do not arrive at my decisions quite in that way, Robert," he answered.

"But you have seen her?"

"Yes, I have seen her."

There was a hesitation, an uneasiness in his father's tone for which Bob
could not account, and which he attributed to emotion. He did not guess
that this hour of supreme joy could hold for Isaac Worthington another
sensation.

"Isn't she the finest girl in the world?" he demanded. "How does she
seem? How does she look?"

"She looks extremely well," said Mr. Worthington, who had now schooled
his voice. "In fact, I am quite ready to admit that Cynthia Wetherell
possesses the qualifications necessary for your wife. If she had not, I
should never have written you."

Bob walked to the window.

"Father;" he said, speaking with a little difficulty, "I can't tell you
how much I appreciate your--your coming round. I wanted to do the right
thing, but I just couldn't give up such a girl as that."

"We shall let bygones be bygones, Robert," answered Mr. Worthington,
clearing his throat.

"She never would have me without your consent. By the way," he cried,
turning suddenly, "did she say she'd have me now?"

"I believe," said Mr. Worthington, clearing his throat again, "I believe
she reserved her decision."

"I must be off," said Bob, "she goes to Coniston on Fridays. I'll drive
her out. Good-by, Father."

He flew out of the room, ran into Mrs. Holden, whom he astonished by
saluting on the cheek, and astonished even more by asking her to tell
Silas to drive his black horses to Gabriel Post's house--as the cottage
was still known in Brampton. And having hastily removed some of the
cinders, he flew out of the door and reached the park-like space in the
middle of Brampton Street. Then he tried to walk decorously, but it was
hard work. What if she should not be in?

The door and windows of the little house were open that balmy afternoon,
and the bees were buzzing among the flowers which Cynthia had planted on
either side of the step. Bob went up the path, and caught a glimpse of
her through the entry standing in the sitting room. She was, indeed,
waiting for the Coniston stage, and she did not see him. Shall I destroy
the mental image of the reader who has known her so long by trying to
tell what she looked like? Some heroines grow thin and worn by the
troubles which they are forced to go through. Cynthia was not this kind
of a heroine. She was neither tall nor short, and the dark blue gown
which she wore set off (so Bob thought) the curves of her figure to
perfection. Her face had become a little more grave--yes, and more noble;
and the eyes and mouth had an indescribable, womanly sweetness.

He stood for a moment outside the doorway gazing at her; hesitating to
desecrate that revery, which seemed to him to have a touch of sadness in
it. And then she turned her head, slowly, and saw him, and her lips
parted, and a startled look came into her eyes, but she did not move. He
came quickly into the room and stopped again, quivering from head to foot
with the passion which the sight of her never failed to unloose within
him. Still she did not speak, but her lip trembled, and the love leaping
in his eyes kindled a yearning in hers,--a yearning she was powerless to
resist. He may by that strange power have drawn her toward him--he never
knew. Neither of them could have given evidence on that marvellous
instant when the current bridged the space between them. He could not say
whether this woman whom he had seized by force before had shown alike
vitality in her surrender. He only knew that her arms were woven about
his neck, and that the kiss of which he had dreamed was again on his
lips, and that he felt once more her wonderful, supple body pressed
against his, and her heart beating, and her breast heaving. And he knew
that the strength of the love in her which he had gained was beyond
estimation.

Thus for a time they swung together in ethereal space, breathless with
the motion of their flight. The duration of such moments is--in
words--limitless. Now he held her against him, and again he held her away
that his eyes might feast upon hers until she dropped her lashes and the
crimson tide flooded into her face and she hid it again in the refuge she
had longed for,--murmuring his name. But at last, startled by some sound
without and so brought back to earth, she led him gently to the window at
the side and looked up at him searchingly. He was tanned no longer.

"I was afraid you had been working too hard," she said.

"So you do love me?" was Bob's answer to this remark.

Cynthia smiled at him with her eyes: gravely, if such a thing may be said
of a smile.

"Bob, how can you ask?"

"Oh, Cynthia," he cried, "if you knew what I have been through, you
wouldn't have held out, I know it. I began to think I should never have
you."

"But you have me now," she said, and was silent.

"Why do you look like that?" he asked.

She smiled up at him again.

"I, too, have suffered, Bob," she said. "And I have thought of you night
and day."

"God bless you, sweetheart," he cried, and kissed her again,--many times.
"It's all right now, isn't it? I knew my father would give his consent
when he found out what you were."

The expression of pain which had troubled him crossed her face again, and
she put her hand on his shoulder.

"Listen, dearest," she said, "I love you. I am doing this for you. You
must understand that."

"Why, yes, Cynthia, I understand it--of course I do," he answered,
perplexed. "I understand it, but I don't deserve it."

"I want you to know," she continued in a low voice, "that I should have
married you anyway. I--I could not have helped it."

"Cynthia!"

"If you were to go back to the locomotive works' tomorrow, I would marry
you."

"On ninety dollars a month?" exclaimed Bob.

"If you wanted me," she said.

"Wanted you! I could live in a log cabin with you the rest of my life."

She drew down his face to hers, and kissed him.

"But I wished you to be reconciled with your father," she said; "I could
not bear to come between you. You--you are reconciled, aren't you?"

"Indeed, we are," he said.

"I am glad, Bob," she answered simply. "I should not have been happy if I
had driven you away from the place where you should be, which is your
home."

"Wherever you are will be my home; sweetheart," he said, and pressed her
to him once more.

At length, looking past his shoulder into the street, she saw Lem
Hallowell pulling up the Brampton stage before the door.

"Bob," she said, "I must go to Coniston and see Uncle Jethro. I promised
him."

Bob's answer was to walk into the entry, where he stood waving the most
joyous of greetings at the surprised stage driver.

"I guess you won't get anybody here, Lem," he called out.

"But, Bob," protested Cynthia, from within, afraid to show her face just
then, "I have to go, I promised. And--and I want to go," she added when
he turned.

"I'm running a stage to Coniston to-day myself, Lem," said he "and I'm
going to steal your best passenger."

Lemuel immediately flung down his reins and jumped out of the stage and
came up the path and into the entry, where he stood confronting Cynthia.

"Hev you took him, Cynthy?" he demanded.

"Yes, Lem," she answered, "won't you congratulate me?"

The warm-hearted stage driver did congratulate her in a most unmistakable
manner.

"I think a sight of her, Bob," he said after he had shaken both of Bob's
hands and brushed his own eyes with his coat sleeve. "I've knowed her so
long--" Whereupon utterance failed him, and he ran down the path and
jumped into his stage again and drove off.

And then Cynthia sent Bob on an errand--not a very long one, and while he
was gone, she sat down at the table and tried to realize her happiness,
and failed. In less than ten minutes Bob had come back with Cousin
Ephraim, as fast as he could hobble. He flung his arms around her, stick
and all, and he was crying. It is a fact that old soldiers sometimes cry.
But his tears did not choke his utterance.

"Great Tecumseh!" said Cousin Ephraim, "so you've went and done it,
Cynthy. Siege got a little mite too hot. I callated she'd capitulate in
the end, but she held out uncommon long."

"That she did," exclaimed Bob, feelingly.

"I--I was tellin' Bob I hain't got nothin' against him," continued
Ephraim.

"Oh, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, laughing in spite of herself, and
glancing at Bob, "is that all you can say?"

"Cousin Eph's all right," said Bob, laughing too. "We understand each
other."

"Callate we do," answered Ephraim. "I'll go so far as to say there hain't
nobody I'd ruther see you marry. Guess I'll hev to go back to the kit,
now. What's to become of the old pensioner, Cynthy?"

"The old pensioner needn't worry," said Cynthia.

Then drove up Silas the Silent, with Bob's buggy and his black trotters.
All of Brampton might see them now; and all of Brampton did see them.
Silas got out,--his presence not being required,--and Cynthia was helped
in, and Bob got in beside her, and away they went, leaving Ephraim waving
his stick after them from the doorstep.

It is recorded against the black trotters that they made very poor time
to Coniston that day, though I cannot discover that either of them was
lame. Lem Hallowell, who was there nearly an hour ahead of them, declares
that the off horse had a bunch of branches in his mouth. Perhaps Bob held
them in on account of the scenery that September afternoon. Incomparable
scenery! I doubt if two lovers of the renaissance ever wandered through a
more wondrous realm of pleasance--to quote the words of the poet. Spots
in it are like a park, laid out by that peerless landscape gardener,
nature: dark, symmetrical pine trees on the sward, and maples in the
fulness of their leaf, and great oaks on the hillsides, and, coppices;
and beyond, the mountain, the evergreens massed like cloud-shadows on its
slopes; and all-trees and coppice and mountain--flattened by the haze
until they seemed woven in the softest of blues and blue greens into one
exquisite picture of an ancient tapestry. I, myself, have seen these
pictures in that country, and marvelled.

So they drove on through that realm, which was to be their realm, and
came all too soon to Coniston green. Lem Hallowell had spread the
well-nigh incredible news, that Cynthia Wetherell was to marry the son of
the mill-owner and railroad president of Brampton, and it seemed to
Cynthia that every man and woman and child of the village was gathered at
the store. Although she loved them, every one, she whispered something to
Bob when she caught sight of that group on the platform, and he spoke to
the trotters. Thus it happened that they flew by, and were at the tannery
house before they knew it; and Cynthia, all unaided, sprang out of the
buggy and ran in, alone. She found Jethro sitting outside of the kitchen
door with a volume on his knee, and she saw that the print of it was
large, and she knew that the book was "Robinson Crusoe."

Cynthia knelt down on the grass beside him and caught his hands in hers.

"Uncle Jethro," she said, "I am going to marry Bob Worthington."

"Yes, Cynthy," he answered. And taking the initiative for the first time
in his life, he stooped down and kissed her.

"I knew--you would be happy--in my happiness," she said, the tears
brimming in her eyes.

"N-never have been so happy, Cynthy,--never have."

"Uncle Jethro, I never will desert you. I shall always take care of you."

"R-read to me sometimes, Cynthy--r-read to me?"

But she could not answer him. She was sobbing on the pages of that book
he had given her--long ago.

I like to dwell on happiness, and I am reluctant to leave these people
whom I have grown to love. Jethro Bass lived to take Cynthia's children
down by the brook and to show them the pictures, at least, in that
wonderful edition of "Robinson Crusoe." He would never depart from the
tannery house, but Cynthia went to him there, many times a week. There is
a spot not far from the Coniston road, and five miles distant alike from
Brampton and Coniston, where Bob Worthington built his house, and where
he and Cynthia dwelt many years; and they go there to this day, in the
summer-time. It stands in the midst of broad lands, and the ground in
front of it slopes down to Coniston Water, artificially widened here by a
stone dam into a little lake. From the balcony of the summer-house which
overhangs the lake there is a wonderful view of Coniston Mountain, and
Cynthia Worthington often sits there with her sewing or her book,
listening to the laughter of her children, and thinking, sometimes, of
bygone days.




AFTERWORD

The reality of the foregoing pages has to the author, at least, become so
vivid that he regrets the necessity of having to add an afterword. Every
novel is, to some extent, a compound of truth and fiction, and he has
done his best to picture conditions as they were, and to make the spirit
of his book true. Certain people who were living in St. Louis during the
Civil War have been mentioned as the originals of characters in "The
Crisis," and there are houses in that city which have been pointed out as
fitting descriptions in that novel. An author has, frequently, people,
houses, and localities in mind when he writes; but he changes them,
sometimes very materially, in the process of literary construction.

It is inevitable, perhaps, that many people of a certain New England
state will recognize Jethro Bass. There are different opinions extant
concerning the remarkable original of this character; ardent defenders
and detractors of his are still living, but all agree that he was a
strange man of great power. The author disclaims any intention of writing
a biography of him. Some of the things set down in this book he did, and
others he did not do. Some of the anecdotes here related concerning him
are, in the main, true, and for this material the author acknowledges his
indebtedness particularly to Colonel Thomas B. Cheney of Ashland, New
Hampshire, and to other friends who have helped him. Jethro Bass was
typical of his Era, and it is of the Era that this book attempts to
treat.

Concerning the locality where Jethro Bass was born and lived, it will and
will not be recognized. It would have been the extreme of bad taste to
have put into these pages any portraits which might have offended
families or individuals, and in order that it may be known that the
author has not done so he has written this Afterword. Nor has he
particularly chosen for the field of this novel a state of which he is a
citizen, and for which he has a sincere affection. The conditions here
depicted, while retaining the characteristics of the locality, he
believes to be typical of the Era over a large part of the United States.

Many of the Puritans who came to New England were impelled to emigrate
from the old country, no doubt, by an aversion to pulling the forelock as
well as by religious principles, and the spirit of these men prevailed
for a certain time after the Revolution was fought. Such men lived and
ruled in Coniston before the rise of Jethro Bass.

Self-examination is necessary for the moral health of nations as well as
men, and it is the most hopeful of signs that in the United States we are
to-day going through a period of self-examination.

We shall do well to ascertain the causes which have led us gradually to
stray from the political principles laid down by our forefathers for all
the world to see. Some of us do not even know what those principles were.
I have met many intelligent men, in different states of the Union, who
could not even repeat the names of the senators who sat for them in
Congress. Macaulay said, in 1852, "We now know, by the clearest of all
proof, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no
security, against the establishment of arbitrary power." To quote James
Russell Lowell, writing a little later: "We have begun obscurely to
recognize that . . . popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no
better than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of the people
make it so."

As Americans, we cannot but believe that our political creed goes down in
its foundations to the solid rock of truth. One of the best reasons for
our belief lies in the fact that, since 1776, government after government
has imitated our example. We have, by our very existence and rise to
power, made any decided retrogression from these doctrines impossible. So
many people have tried to rule themselves, and are still trying, that one
begins to believe that the time is not far distant when the United
States, once the most radical, will become the most conservative of
nations.

Thus the duty rests to-day, more heavily than ever, upon each American
citizen to make good to the world those principles upon which his
government was built. To use a figure suggested by the calamity which has
lately befallen one of the most beloved of our cities, there is a theory
that earthquakes are caused by a necessary movement on the part of the
globe to regain its axis. Whether or not the theory be true, it has its
political application. In America to-day we are trying--whatever the
cost--to regain the true axis established for us by the founders of our
Republic.

HARLAKENDEN HOUSE, May 7, 1906.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

    Books she had known from her earliest infancy
    But I wanted to be happy as long as I could
    Curiosity as a factor has never been given its proper weight
    Even old people may have an ideal
    Every novel is, to some extent, a compound of truth and fiction
    Fond of her, although she was no more than an episode in his life
    Giant pines that gave many a mast to King George's navy
    Had exhausted the resources of the little school
    He hain't be'n eddicated a great deal
    Life had made a woman of her long ago
    Not that I've anything against her personally--
    Pious belief in democracy, with a firmer determination to get on top
    Riddle he could not solve--one that was best left alone
    Stray from the political principles laid down by our forefathers
    That which is the worst cruelty of all--the cruelty of selfishness
    The home is the very foundation-rock of the nation
    The old soldier found dependence hard to bear
    The one precious gift of life
    They don't take notice of him, because he don't say much
    Though his heart was breaking, his voice was steady
    We know nothing of their problems or temptations






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Volume 1.
I.     THE WARING PROBLEMS
II.    MR. LANGMAID'S MISSION
III.   THE PRIMROSE PATH
IV.    SOME RIDDLES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Volume 2.
V.     THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
VI.    "WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT"
VII.   THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD
VIII.  THE LINE of LEAST RESISTANCE.

Volume 3.
IX.    THE DIVINE DISCONTENT
X.     THE MESSENGER IN THE CHURCH
XI.    THE LOST PARISHIONER
XII.   THE WOMAN OF THE SONG

Volume 4.
XIII.  WINTERBOURNE
XIV.   A SATURDAY AFTERNOON
XV.    THE CRUCIBLE
XVI.   AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM

Volume 5.
XVII.  RECONSTRUCTION
XVIII. THE RIDDLE OF CAUSATION
XIX.   MR. GOODRICH BECOMES A PARTISAN

Volume 6.
XX.    THE ARRAIGNMENT
XXI.   ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
XXII.  WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT!

Volume 7.
XXIII.  THE CHOICE
XXIV.   THE VESTRY MEETS
XXV.   "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
XXVI.   THE CURRENT OF LIFE

Volume 8.
XXVII.  RETRIBUTION
XXVIII. LIGHT



THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

Volume 1.


CHAPTER I

THE WARING PROBLEMS


I

With few exceptions, the incidents recorded in these pages take place in
one of the largest cities of the United States of America, and of that
portion called the Middle West,--a city once conservative and provincial,
and rather proud of these qualities; but now outgrown them, and linked by
lightning limited trains to other teeming centers of the modern world: a
city overtaken, in recent years, by the plague which has swept our
country from the Atlantic to the Pacific--Prosperity. Before its advent,
the Goodriches and Gores, the Warings, the Prestons and the Atterburys
lived leisurely lives in a sleepy quarter of shade trees and spacious
yards and muddy macadam streets, now passed away forever. Existence was
decorous, marriage an irrevocable step, wives were wives, and the
Authorized Version of the Bible was true from cover to cover. So Dr.
Gilman preached, and so they believed.

Sunday was then a day essentially different from other days--you could
tell it without looking at the calendar. The sun knew it, and changed
the quality of his light the very animals, dogs and cats and horses, knew
it: and most of all the children knew it, by Sunday school, by Dr.
Gilman's sermon, by a dizzy afternoon connected in some of their minds
with ceramics and a lack of exercise; by a cold tea, and by church bells.
You were not allowed to forget it for one instant. The city suddenly
became full of churches, as though they had magically been let down from
heaven during Saturday night. They must have been there on week days,
but few persons ever thought of them.

Among the many church bells that rang on those bygone Sundays was
that of St. John's, of which Dr. Gilman, of beloved memory, was rector.
Dr. Gilman was a saint, and if you had had the good luck to be baptized
or married or buried by him, you were probably fortunate in an earthly as
well as heavenly sense. One has to be careful not to deal exclusively in
superlatives, and yet it is not an exaggeration to say that St. John's
was the most beautiful and churchly edifice in the city, thanks chiefly
to several gentlemen of sense, and one gentleman, at least, of taste--Mr.
Horace Bentley. The vicissitudes of civil war interrupted its building;
but when, in 1868, it stood completed, its stone unsoiled as yet by
factory smoke, its spire delicately pointing to untainted skies, its rose
window glowing above the porch, citizens on Tower Street often stopped to
gaze at it diagonally across the vacant lot set in order by Mr. Thurston
Gore, with the intent that the view might be unobstructed.

Little did the Goodriches and Gores, the Warings and Prestons and
Atterburys and other prominent people foresee the havoc that prosperity
and smoke were to play with their residential plans! One by one, sooty
commerce drove them out, westward, conservative though they were, from
the paradise they had created; blacker and blacker grew the gothic facade
of St. John's; Thurston Gore departed, but leased his corner first for a
goodly sum, his ancestors being from Connecticut; leased also the vacant
lot he had beautified, where stores arose and hid the spire from Tower
Street. Cable cars moved serenely up the long hill where a panting third
horse had been necessary, cable cars resounded in Burton Street, between
the new factory and the church where Dr. Gilman still preached of peace
and the delights of the New-Jerusalem. And before you could draw your
breath, the cable cars had become electric. Gray hairs began to appear
in the heads of the people Dr. Gilman had married in the '60's and their
children were going East to College.



II

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Asa, Waring still clung to
the imposing, early Victorian mansion in Hamilton Street. It presented
an uncompromising and rather scornful front to the sister mansions with
which it had hitherto been on intimate terms, now fast degenerating into
a shabby gentility, seeking covertly to catch the eye of boarders, but as
yet refraining from open solicitation. Their lawns were growing a little
ragged, their stone steps and copings revealing cracks.

Asa Waring looked with a stern distaste upon certain aspects of modern
life. And though he possessed the means to follow his friends and
erstwhile neighbours into the newer paradise five miles westward, he had
successfully resisted for several years a formidable campaign to uproot
him. His three married daughters lived in that clean and verdant
district surrounding the Park (spelled with a capital), while Evelyn and
Rex spent most of their time in the West End or at the Country Clubs.
Even Mrs. Waring, who resembled a Roman matron, with her wavy white hair
parted in the middle and her gentle yet classic features, sighed secretly
at times at the unyielding attitude of her husband, although admiring him
for it. The grandchildren drew her.

On the occasion of Sunday dinner, when they surrounded her, her heart was
filled to overflowing.

The autumn sunlight, reddened somewhat by the slight haze of smoke,
poured in at the high windows of the dining-room, glinted on the silver,
and was split into bewildering colors by the prisms of the chandelier.
Many precious extra leaves were inserted under the white cloth, and Mrs.
Waring's eyes were often dimmed with happiness as she glanced along the
ranks on either side until they rested on the man with whom she had
chosen to pass her life. Her admiration for him had gradually grown into
hero-worship. His anger, sometimes roused, had a terrible moral quality
that never failed to thrill her, and the Loyal Legion button on his black
frock coat seemed to her an epitome of his character. He sat for the
most part silent, his remarkable, penetrating eyes, lighting under his
grizzled brows, smiling at her, at the children, at the grandchildren.
And sometimes he would go to the corner table, where the four littlest
sat, and fetch one back to perch on his knee and pull at his white,
military mustache.

It was the children's day. Uproar greeted the huge white cylinder of
ice-cream borne by Katie, the senior of the elderly maids; uproar greeted
the cake; and finally there was a rush for the chocolates, little tablets
wrapped in tinfoil and tied with red and blue ribbon. After that, the
pandemonium left the dining-room, to spread itself over the spacious
house from the basement to the great playroom in the attic, where the
dolls and blocks and hobby-horses of the parental generation stoically
awaited the new.

Sometimes a visitor was admitted to this sacramental feat, the dearest
old gentleman in the world, with a great, high bridged nose, a slight
stoop, a kindling look, and snow white hair, though the top of his head
was bald. He sat on Mrs. Waring's right, and was treated with the
greatest deference by the elders, and with none at all by the children,
who besieged him. The bigger ones knew that he had had what is called a
history; that he had been rich once, with a great mansion of his own, but
now he lived on Dalton Street, almost in the slums, and worked among the
poor. His name was Mr. Bentley.

He was not there on the particular Sunday when this story opens,
otherwise the conversation about to be recorded would not have taken
place. For St. John's Church was not often mentioned in Mr. Bentley's
presence.

"Well, grandmother," said Phil Goodrich, who was the favourite
son-in-law, "how was the new rector to-day?"

"Mr. Hodder is a remarkable young man, Phil," Mrs. Waring declared,
"and delivered such a good sermon. I couldn't help wishing that you
and Rex and Evelyn and George had been in church."

"Phil couldn't go," explained the unmarried and sunburned Evelyn, "he had
a match on of eighteen holes with me."

Mrs. Waring sighed.

"I can't think what's got into the younger people these days that they
seem so indifferent to religion. Your father's a vestryman, Phil, and
I believe it has always been his hope that you would succeed him. I'm
afraid Rex won't succeed his father," she added, with a touch of regret
and a glance of pride at her husband. "You never go to church, Rex.
Phil does."

"I got enough church at boarding-school to last me a lifetime, mother,"
her son replied. He was slightly older than Evelyn, and just out of
college. "Besides, any heathen can get on the vestry--it's a financial
board, and they're due to put Phil on some day. They're always putting
him on boards."

His mother looked a little distressed.

"Rex, I wish you wouldn't talk that way about the Church--"

"I'm sorry, mother," he said, with quick penitence. "Mr. Langmaid's a
vestryman, you know, and they've only got him there because he's the best
corporation lawyer in the city. He isn't exactly what you'd call
orthodox. He never goes."

"We are indebted to Mr. Langmaid for Mr. Hodder." This was one of Mr.
Waring's rare remarks.

Eleanor Goodrich caught her husband's eye, and smiled.

"I wonder why it is," she said, "that we are so luke-warm about church in
these days? I don't mean you, Lucy, or Laureston," she added to her
sister, Mrs. Grey. "You're both exemplary." Lucy bowed ironically.
"But most people of our ages with whom we associate. Martha Preston, for
instance. We were all brought up like the children of Jonathan Edwards.
Do you remember that awful round-and-round feeling on Sunday afternoons,
Sally, and only the wabbly Noah's Ark elephant to play with, right in
this house? instead of THAT!" There was a bump in the hall without, and
shrieks of laughter. "I'll never forget the first time it occurred to
me--when I was reading Darwin--that if the ark were as large as Barnum's
Circus and the Natural History Museum put together, it couldn't have held
a thousandth of the species on earth. It was a blow."

"I don't know what we're coming to," exclaimed Mrs. Waring gently.

"I didn't mean to be flippant, mother," said Eleanor penitently, "but I
do believe the Christian religion has got to be presented in a different
way, and a more vital way, to appeal to a new generation. I am merely
looking facts in the face."

"What is the Christian religion?" asked Sally's husband, George Bridges,
who held a chair of history in the local flourishing university. "I've
been trying to find out all my life."

"You couldn't be expected to know, George," said his wife. "You were
brought up an Unitarian, and went to Harvard."

"Never mind, professor," said Phil Goodrich, in a quizzical, affectionate
tone. "Take the floor and tell us what it isn't."

George Bridges smiled. He was a striking contrast in type to his
square-cut and vigorous brother-in-law; very thin, with slightly
protruding eyes the color of the faded blue glaze of ancient pottery, and
yet humorous.

"I've had my chance, at any rate. Sally made me go last Sunday and hear
Mr. Hodder."

"I can't see why you didn't like him, George," Lucy cried. "I think he's
splendid."

"Oh, I like him," said Mr. Bridges.

"That's just it!" exclaimed Eleanor. "I like him. I think he's sincere.
And that first Sunday he came, when I saw him get up in the pulpit and
wave that long arm of his, all I could think of was a modern Savonarola.
He looks one. And then, when he began to preach, it was maddening. I
felt all the time that he could say something helpful, if he only would.
But he didn't. It was all about the sufficiency of grace,--whatever that
may be. He didn't explain it. He didn't give me one notion as to how to
cope a little better with the frightful complexities of the modern lives
we live, or how to stop quarrelling with Phil when he stays at the office
and is late for dinner."

"Eleanor, I think you're unjust to him," said Lucy, amid the laughter of
the men of the family. "Most people in St. John's think he is a
remarkable preacher."

"So were many of the Greek sophists," George Bridges observed.

"Now if it were only dear old Doctor Gilman," Eleanor continued, "I could
sink back into a comfortable indifference. But every Sunday this new man
stirs me up, not by what he says, but by what he is. I hoped we'd get a
rector with modern ideas, who would be able to tell me what to teach my
children. Little Phil and Harriet come back from Sunday school with all
sorts of questions, and I feel like a hypocrite. At any rate, if Mr.
Hodder hasn't done anything else, he's made me want to know."

"What do you mean by a man of modern ideas, Eleanor?" inquired Mr.
Bridges, with evident relish.

Eleanor put down her coffee cup, looked at him helplessly, and smiled.

"Somebody who will present Christianity to me in such a manner that it
will appeal to my reason, and enable me to assimilate it into my life."

"Good for you, Nell," said her husband, approvingly. "Come now,
professor, you sit up in the University' Club all Sunday morning and
discuss recondite philosophy with other learned agnostics, tell us what
is the matter with Mr. Hodder's theology. That is, if it will not shock
grandmother too much."

"I'm afraid I've got used to being shocked, Phil," said Mrs. Waring, with
her quiet smile.

"It's unfair," Mr. Bridges protested, "to ask a prejudiced pagan like me
to pronounce judgment on an honest parson who is labouring according to
his lights."

"Go on, George. You shan't get out of it that way."

"Well," said George, "the trouble is, from the theological point of view,
that your parson is preaching what Auguste Sabatier would call a
diminished and mitigated orthodoxy."

"Great heavens!" cried Phil. "What's that?"

"It's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, nor good red herring," the professor
declared. "If Mr. Hodder were cornered he couldn't maintain that he, as
a priest, has full power to forgive sins, and yet he won't assert that he
hasn't. The mediaeval conception of the Church, before Luther's day, was
consistent, at any rate, if you once grant the premises on which it was
based."

"What premises?"

"That the Almighty had given it a charter, like an insurance company,
of a monopoly of salvation on this portion of the Universe, and agreed to
keep his hands off. Under this conception, the sale of indulgences,
masses for the soul, and temporal power are perfectly logical
--inevitable. Kings and princes derive their governments from the Church.
But if we once begin to doubt the validity of this charter, as the
Reformers did, the whole system flies to pieces, like sticking a pin into
a soap bubble.

"That is the reason why--to change the figure--the so-called Protestant
world has been gradually sliding down hill ever since the Reformation.
The great majority of men are not willing to turn good, to renounce the
material and sensual rewards under their hands without some definite and
concrete guaranty that, if they do so, they are going, to be rewarded
hereafter. They demand some sort of infallibility. And when we let go
of the infallibility of the Church, we began to slide toward what looked
like a bottomless pit, and we clutched at the infallibility of the Bible.
And now that has begun to roll.

"What I mean by a mitigated orthodoxy is this: I am far from accusing Mr.
Hodder of insincerity, but he preaches as if every word of the Bible were
literally true, and had been dictated by God to the men who held the pen,
as if he, as a priest, held some supernatural power that could definitely
be traced, through what is known as the Apostolic Succession, back to
Peter."

"Do you mean to say, George," asked Mrs. Waring, with a note of pain in
her voice, "that the Apostolic Succession cannot be historically proved?"

"My dear mother," said George, "I hope you will hold me innocent of
beginning this discussion. As a harmless professor of history in our
renowned University (of which we think so much that we do not send our
sons to it) I have been compelled by the children whom you have brought
up to sit in judgment on the theology of your rector."

"They will leave us nothing!" she sighed.

"Nothing, perhaps, that was invented by man to appeal to man's
superstition and weakness. Of the remainder--who can say?"

"What," asked Mrs. Waring, "do they say about the Apostolic Succession?"

"Mother is as bad as the rest of us," said Eleanor.

"Isn't she, grandfather?"

"If I had a house to rent," said Mr. Bridges, when the laughter had
subsided, "I shouldn't advertise five bath rooms when there were only
two, or electricity when there was only gas. I should be afraid my
tenants might find it out, and lose a certain amount of confidence in me.
But the orthodox churches are running just such a risk to-day, and if any
person who contemplates entering these churches doesn't examine the
premises first, he refrains at his own cost.

"The situation in the early Christian Church is now a matter of history,
and he who runs may read. The first churches, like those of Corinth and
Ephesus and Rome, were democracies: no such thing as a priestly line to
carry on a hierarchy, an ecclesiastical dynasty, was dreamed of. It may
be gathered from the gospels that such an idea was so far from the mind
of Christ that his mission was to set at naught just such another
hierarchy, which then existed in Israel. The Apostles were no more
bishops than was John the Baptist, but preachers who travelled from place
to place, like Paul. The congregations, at Rome and elsewhere, elected
their own 'presbyteri, episcopoi' or overseers. It is, to say the least,
doubtful, and it certainly cannot be proved historically, that Peter ever
was in Rome."

"The professor ought to have a pulpit of his own," said Phil.

There was a silence. And then Evelyn, who had been eating quantities of
hothouse grapes, spoke up.

"So far as I can see, the dilemma in which our generation finds itself is
this,--we want to know what there is in Christianity that we can lay hold
of. We should like to believe, but, as George says, all our education
contradicts the doctrines that are most insisted upon. We don't know
where to turn. We have the choice of going to people like George, who
know a great deal and don't believe anything, or to clergymen like Mr.
Hodder, who demand that we shall violate the reason in us which has been
so carefully trained."

"Upon my word, I think you've put it rather well, Evelyn," said Eleanor,
admiringly.

"In spite of personalities," added Mr. Bridges.

"I don't see the use of fussing about it," proclaimed Laureston Grey, who
was the richest and sprucest of the three sons-in-law. "Why can't we let
well enough alone?"

"Because it isn't well enough," Evelyn replied. "I want the real thing
or nothing. I go to church once a month, to please mother. It doesn't
do me any good. And I don't see what good it does you and Lucy to go
every Sunday. You never think of it when you're out at dinners and
dances during the week. And besides," she added, with the arrogance of
modern youth, "you and Lucy are both intellectually lazy."

"I like that from you, Evelyn," her sister flared up.

"You never read anything except the sporting columns and the annual rules
of tennis and golf and polo."

"Must everything be reduced to terms?" Mrs. Waring gently lamented.
"Why can't we, as Laury suggests, just continue to trust?"

"They are the more fortunate, perhaps, who can, mother," George Bridges
answered, with more of feeling in his voice than he was wont to show.
"Unhappily, truth does not come that way. If Roger Bacon and Galileo and
Newton and Darwin and Harvey and the others had 'just trusted,' the
world's knowledge would still remain as stationary as it was during the
thousand-odd years the hierarchy of the Church was supreme, when theology
was history, philosophy, and science rolled into one. If God had not
meant man to know something of his origin differing from the account in
Genesis, he would not have given us Darwin and his successors.
Practically every great discovery since the Revival we owe to men who,
by their very desire for truth, were forced into opposition to the
tremendous power of the Church, which always insisted that people should
'just trust,' and take the mixture of cosmogony and Greek philosophy,
tradition and fable, paganism, Judaic sacerdotalism, and temporal power
wrongly called spiritual dealt out by this same Church as the last word
on science, philosophy, history, metaphysics, and government."

"Stop!" cried Eleanor. "You make me dizzy."

"Nearly all the pioneers to whom we owe our age of comparative
enlightenment were heretics," George persisted. "And if they could have
been headed off, or burned, most of us would still be living in mud caves
at the foot of the cliff on which stood the nobleman's castle; and kings
would still be kings by divine decree, scientists--if there were any
--workers in the black art, and every phenomenon we failed to understand,
a miracle."

"I choose the United States of America," ejaculated Evelyn.

"I gather, George," said Phil Goodrich, "that you don't believe in
miracles."

"Miracles are becoming suspiciously fewer and fewer. Once, an eclipse of
the sun was enough to throw men on their knees because they thought it
supernatural. If they were logical they'd kneel today because it has
been found natural. Only the inexplicable phenomena are miracles; and
after a while--if the theologians will only permit us to finish the job
--there won't be any inexplicable phenomena. Mystery, as I believe William
James puts it may be called the more-to-be-known."

"In taking that attitude, George, aren't you limiting the power of God?"
said Mrs. Waring.

"How does it limit the power of God, mother," her son-in-law asked, "to
discover that he chooses to work by laws? The most suicidal tendency in
religious bodies today is their mediaeval insistence on what they are
pleased to call the supernatural. Which is the more marvellous--that God
can stop the earth and make the sun appear to stand still, or that he can
construct a universe of untold millions of suns with planets and
satellites, each moving in its orbit, according to law; a universe
wherein every atom is true to a sovereign conception? And yet this
marvel of marvels--that makes God in the twentieth century infinitely
greater than in the sixteenth--would never have been discovered if the
champions of theology had had their way."

Mrs. Waring smiled a little.

"You are too strong for me, George," she said, "but you mustn't expect
an old woman to change."

"Mother, dear," cried Eleanor, rising and laying her hand on Mrs.
Waring's cheek, "we don't want you to change. It's ourselves we wish to
change, we wish for a religious faith like yours, only the same teaching
which gave it to you is powerless for us. That's our trouble. We have
only to look at you," she added, a little wistfully, "to be sure there is
something--something vital in Christianity, if we could only get at it,
something that does not depend upon what we have been led to believe is
indispensable. George, and men like him, can only show the weakness in
the old supports. I don't mean that they aren't doing the world a
service in revealing errors, but they cannot reconstruct."

"That is the clergyman's business," declared Mr. Bridges. "But he must
first acknowledge that the old supports are worthless."

"Well," said Phil, "I like your rector, in spite of his anthropomorphism
--perhaps, as George would say, because of it. There is something manly
about him that appeals to me."

"There," cried Eleanor, triumphantly, "I've always said Mr. Hodder had a
spiritual personality. You feel--you feel there is truth shut up inside
of him which he cannot communicate. I'll tell you who impresses me in
that way more strongly than any one else--Mr. Bentley. And he doesn't
come to church any more."

"Mr. Bentley," said her, mother, "is a saint. Your father tried to get
him to dinner to-day, but he had promised those working girls of his, who
live on the upper floors of his house, to dine with them. One of them
told me so. Of course he will never speak of his kindnesses."

"Mr. Bentley doesn't bother his head about theology," said Sally. "He
just lives."

"There's Eldon Parr," suggested George Bridges, mentioning the name of
the city's famous financier; "I'm told he relieved Mr. Bentley of his
property some twenty-five years ago. If Mr. Hodder should begin to
preach the modern heresy which you desire, Mr Parr might object. He's
very orthodox, I'm told."

"And Mr. Parr," remarked the modern Evelyn, sententiously, "pays the
bills, at St. John's. Doesn't he, father?"

"I fear he pays a large proportion of them," Mr. Waring admitted, in a
serious tone.

"In these days," said Evelyn, "the man who pays the bills is entitled to
have his religion as he likes it."

"No matter how he got the money to pay them," added Phil.

"That suggests another little hitch in the modern church which will have
to be straightened out," said George Bridges.

"'Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the
outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of
extortion and excess.'"

"Why, George, you of all people quoting the Bible!" Eleanor exclaimed.

"And quoting it aptly, too," said Phil Goodrich.

"I'm afraid if we began on the scribes and Pharisees, we shouldn't stop
with Mr. Parr," Asa Wiring observed, with a touch of sadness.

"In spite of all they say he has done, I can't help feeling sorry for
him," said Mrs. Waring. "He must be so lonely in that huge palace of
his beside the Park, his wife dead, and Preston running wild around the
world, and Alison no comfort. The idea of a girl leaving her father
as she did and going off to New York to become a landscape architect!"

"But, mother," Evelyn pleaded, "I can't see why a woman shouldn't lead
her own life. She only has one, like a man. And generally she doesn't
get that."

Mrs. Waring rose.

"I don't know what we're coming to. I was taught that a woman's place
was with her husband and children; or, if she had none, with her family.
I tried to teach you so, my dear."

"Well," said Evelyn, "I'm here yet. I haven't Alison's excuse. Cheer
up, mother, the world's no worse than it was."

"I don't know about that," answered Mrs. Waring.

"Listen!" ejaculated Eleanor.

Mrs. Waring's face brightened. Sounds of mad revelry came down from the
floor above.




CHAPTER II

MR. LANGMAID'S MISSION


I

Looking back over an extraordinary career, it is interesting to attempt
to fix the time when a name becomes a talisman, and passes current for
power. This is peculiarly difficult in the case of Eldon Parr. Like
many notable men before him, nobody but Mr. Parr himself suspected his
future greatness, and he kept the secret. But if we are to search what
is now ancient history for a turning-point, perhaps we should find it
in the sudden acquisition by him of the property of Mr. Bentley.

The transaction was a simple one. Those were the days when gentlemen, as
matters of courtesy, put their names on other gentlemen's notes; and
modern financiers, while they might be sorry for Mr. Bentley, would
probably be unanimous in the opinion that he was foolish to write on the
back of Thomas Garrett's. Mr. Parr was then, as now, a business man, and
could scarcely be expected to introduce philanthropy into finance. Such
had been Mr. Bentley's unfortunate practice. And it had so happened,
a few years before, for the accommodation of some young men of his
acquaintance that he had invested rather generously in Grantham mining
stock at twenty-five cents a share, and had promptly forgotten the
transaction. To cut a long story short, in addition to Mr. Bentley's
house and other effects, Mr. Parr became the owner of the Grantham stock,
which not long after went to one hundred dollars. The reader may do the
figuring.

Where was some talk at this time, but many things had happened since.
For example, Mr. Parr had given away great sums in charity. And it may
likewise be added in his favour that Mr. Bentley was glad to be rid of
his fortune. He had said so. He deeded his pew back to St. John's, and
protesting to his friends that he was not unhappy, he disappeared from
the sight of all save a few. The rising waters of Prosperity closed over
him. But Eliza Preston, now Mrs. Parr, was one of those who were never
to behold him again,--in this world, at least.

She was another conspicuous triumph in that career we are depicting.
Gradual indeed had been the ascent from the sweeping out of a store to
the marrying of a Preston, but none the less sure inevitable. For many
years after this event, Eldon Parr lived modestly in what was known as a
"stone-front" house in Ransome Street, set well above the sidewalk, with
a long flight of yellow stone steps leading to it; steps scrubbed with
Sapoho twice a week by a negro in rubber boots. There was a stable with
a tarred roof in the rear, to be discerned beyond the conventional side
lawn that was broken into by the bay window of the dining-room. There,
in that house, his two children were born: there, within those inartistic
walls, Eliza Preston lived a life that will remain a closed book forever.
What she thought, what she dreamed, if anything, will never be revealed.
She did not, at least, have neurasthenia, and for all the world knew, she
may have loved her exemplary and successful husband, with whom her life
was as regular as the Strasburg clock. She breakfasted at eight and
dined at seven; she heard her children's lessons and read them Bible
stories; and at half past ten every Sunday morning, rain or shine, walked
with them and her husband to the cars on Tower Street to attend service
at St. John's, for Mr. Parr had scruples in those days about using the
carriage on the Sabbath.

She did not live, alas, to enjoy for long the Medicean magnificence of
the mansion facing the Park, to be a companion moon in the greater orbit.
Eldon Part's grief was real, and the beautiful English window in the
south transept of the church bears witness to it. And yet it cannot be
said that he sought solace in religion, so apparently steeped in it had
he always been. It was destiny that he should take his place on the
vestry; destiny, indeed, that he should ultimately become the vestry
as well as the first layman of the diocese; unobtrusively, as he had
accomplished everything else in life, in spite of Prestons and Warings,
Atterburys, Goodriches, and Gores. And he was wont to leave his weighty
business affairs to shift for themselves while he attended the diocesan
and general conventions of his Church.

He gave judiciously, as becomes one who holds a fortune in trust, yet
generously, always permitting others to help, until St. John's was a very
gem of finished beauty. And, as the Rothschilds and the Fuggera made
money for grateful kings and popes, so in a democratic age, Eldon Parr
became the benefactor of an adulatory public. The university, the
library, the hospitals, and the parks of his chosen city bear witness.



II

For forty years, Dr. Gilman had been the rector of St. John's. One
Sunday morning, he preached his not unfamiliar sermon on the text, "For
now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face," and when the
next Sunday dawned he was in his grave in Winterbourne Cemetery,
sincerely mourned within the parish and without. In the nature of mortal
things, his death was to be expected: no less real was the crisis to be
faced At the vestry meeting that followed, the problem was tersely set
forth by Eldon Parr, his frock coat tightly buttoned about his chest, his
glasses in his hand.

"Gentlemen," he said, "we have to fulfil a grave responsibility to the
parish, to the city, and to God. The matter of choosing a rector to-day,
when clergymen are meddling with all sorts of affairs which do not
concern them, is not so simple as it was twenty years ago. We have, at
St. John's, always been orthodox and dignified, and I take it to be the
sense of this vestry that we remain so. I conceive it our duty to find
a man who is neither too old nor too young, who will preach the faith
as we received it, who is not sensational, and who does not mistake
socialism for Christianity."

By force of habit, undoubtedly, Mr. Parr glanced at Nelson Langmaid as he
sat down. Innumerable had been the meetings of financial boards at which
Mr. Parr had glanced at Langmaid, who had never failed to respond. He
was that sine qua non of modern affairs, a corporation lawyer,--although
he resembled a big and genial professor of Scandinavian extraction. He
wore round, tortoise-shell spectacles, he had a high, dome-like forehead,
and an ample light brown beard which he stroked from time to time. It is
probable that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul.

His eyes twinkled as he rose.

"I don't pretend to be versed in theology, gentlemen, as you know," he
said, and the entire vestry, even Mr. Parr, smiled. For vestries, in
spite of black coats and the gravity of demeanour which first citizens
are apt to possess, are human after all. "Mr. Parr has stated, I
believe; the requirements, and I agree with him that it is not an easy
order to fill. You want a parson who will stick to his last, who will
not try experiments, who is not too high or too low or too broad or too
narrow, who has intellect without too much initiative, who can deliver a
good sermon to those who can appreciate one, and yet will not get the
church uncomfortably full of strangers and run you out of your pews. In
short, you want a level-headed clergyman about thirty-five years old who
will mind his own business"

The smiles on the faces of the vestry deepened. The ability to put a
matter thus humorously was a part of Nelson Langmaid's power with men
and juries.

"I venture to add another qualification," he continued, "and that is
virility. We don't want a bandbox rector. Well, I happen to have in
mind a young man who errs somewhat on the other side, and who looks a
little like a cliff profile I once saw on Lake George of George
Washington or an Indian chief, who stands about six feet two.
He's a bachelor--if that's a drawback. But I am not at all sure he can
be induced to leave his present parish, where he has been for ten years."

"I am," announced Wallis Plimpton, with his hands in his pockets,
"provided the right man tackles him."



III

Nelson Langmaid's most notable achievement, before he accomplished the
greater one of getting a new rector for St. John's, had been to construct
the "water-tight box" whereby the Consolidated Tractions Company had
become a law-proof possibility. But his was an esoteric reputation,
--the greater fame had been Eldon Parr's. Men's minds had been dazzled
by the breadth of the conception of scooping all the street-car lines of
the city, long and short, into one big basket, as it were; and when the
stock had been listed in New York, butcher and baker, clerk and
proprietor, widow and maid, brought out their hoardings; the great
project was discussed in clubs, cafes, and department stores, and by
citizens hanging on the straps of the very cars that were to be
consolidated--golden word! Very little appeared about Nelson Langmaid,
who was philosophically content. But to Mr. Parr, who was known to
dislike publicity, were devoted pages in the Sunday newspapers, with
photographs of the imposing front of his house in Park Street, his altar
and window in St. John's, the Parr building, and even of his private car,
Antonia.

Later on, another kind of publicity, had come. The wind had whistled
for a time, but it turned out to be only a squall. The Consolidated
Tractions Company had made the voyage for which she had been constructed,
and thus had fulfilled her usefulness; and the cleverest of the rats who
had mistaken her for a permanent home scurried ashore before she was
broken up.

All of which is merely in the nature of a commentary on Mr. Langmaid's
genius. His reputation for judgment--which by some is deemed the highest
of human qualities--was impaired; and a man who in his time had selected
presidents of banks and trust companies could certainly be trusted to
choose a parson--particularly if the chief requirements were not of a
spiritual nature. . .

A week later he boarded an east-bound limited train, armed with plenary
powers.

His destination was the hill town where he had spent the first fifteen
years of his life, amid the most striking of New England landscapes, and
the sight of the steep yet delicately pastoral slopes never failed to
thrill him as the train toiled up the wide valley to Bremerton. The
vision of these had remained with him during the years of his toil in the
growing Western city, and embodied from the first homesick days an ideal
to which he hoped sometime permanently to return. But he never had. His
family had shown a perversity of taste in preferring the sea, and he had
perforce been content with a visit of a month or so every other summer,
accompanied usually by his daughter, Helen. On such occasions, he stayed
with his sister, Mrs. Whitely.

The Whitely mills were significant of the new Bremerton, now neither
village nor city, but partaking of the characteristics of both. French
Canadian might be heard on the main square as well as Yankee; and that
revolutionary vehicle, the automobile, had inspired there a great brick
edifice with a banner called the Bremerton House. Enterprising Italians
had monopolized the corners with fruit stores, and plate glass and
asphalt were in evidence. But the hills looked down unchanged, and in
the cool, maple-shaded streets, though dotted with modern residences,
were the same demure colonial houses he had known in boyhood.

He was met at the station by his sister, a large, matronly woman who
invariably set the world whizzing backward for Langmaid; so completely
did she typify the contentment, the point of view of an age gone by. For
life presented no more complicated problems to the middle-aged Mrs.
Whitely than it had to Alice Langmaid.

"I know what you've come for, Nelson," she said reproachfully, when she
greeted him at the station. "Dr. Gilman's dead, and you want our Mr.
Hodder. I feel it in my bones. Well, you can't get him. He's had ever
so many calls, but he won't leave Bremerton."

She knew perfectly well, however, that Nelson would get him, although her
brother characteristically did not at once acknowledge his mission.
Alice Whitely had vivid memories of a childhood when he had never failed
to get what he wanted; a trait of his of which, although it had before
now caused her much discomfort, she was secretly inordinately proud. She
was, therefore, later in the day not greatly surprised to find herself
supplying her brother with arguments. Much as they admired and loved Mr.
Hodder, they had always realized that he could not remain buried in
Bremerton. His talents demanded a wider field.

"Talents!" exclaimed Langmaid, "I didn't know he had any."

"Oh, Nelson, how can you say such a thing, when you came to get him!"
exclaimed his sister."

"I recommended him because I thought he had none," Langmaid declared.

"He'll be a bishop some day--every one says so," said Mrs. Whitely,
indignantly.

"That reassures me," said her brother.

"I can't see why they sent you--you hardly ever go to church," she cried.
"I don't mind telling you, Nelson, that the confidence men place in you
is absurd."

"You've said that before," he replied. "I agree with you. I'm not going
on my judgment--but on yours and Gerald's, because I know that you
wouldn't put up with anything that wasn't strictly all-wool orthodox."

"I think you're irreverent," said his sister, "and it's a shame that the
canons permit such persons to sit on the vestry . . . ."

"Gerald," asked Nelson Langmaid of his brother-in-law that night, after
his sister and the girls had gone to bed, "are you sure that this young
man's orthodox?"

"He's been here for over ten years, ever since he left the seminary, and
he's never done or said anything radical yet," replied the mill owner of
Bremerton. "If you don't want him, we'd be delighted to have him stay.
We're not forcing him on you, you know. What the deuce has got into you?
You've talked to him for two hours, and you've sat looking at him at the
dinner table for another two. I thought you were a judge of men."

Nelson Langmaid sat silent.

"I'm only urging Hodder to go for his own good," Mr. Whitely continued.
"I can take you to dozens of people to-morrow morning who worship him,
--people of all sorts; the cashier in the bank, men in the mills, the hotel
clerk, my private stenographer--he's built up that little church from
nothing at all. And you may write the Bishop, if you wish."

"How has he built up the church?" Langmaid demanded

"How? How does any clergyman buildup a church

"I don't know," Langmaid confessed. "It strikes me as quite a tour de
force in these days. Does he manage to arouse enthusiasm for orthodox
Christianity?"

"Well," said Gerard Whitely, "I think the service appeals. We've made it
as beautiful as possible. And then Mr. Hodder goes to see these people
and sits up with them, and they tell him their troubles. He's reformed
one or two rather bad cases. I suppose it's the man's personality."

Ah! Langmaid exclaimed, "now you're talking!"

"I can't see what you're driving at," confessed his brother-in-law.
"You're too deep for me, Nelson."

If the truth be told, Langmaid himself did not quits see. On behalf
of the vestry, he offered next day to Mr. Hodder the rectorship of St.
John's and that offer was taken under consideration; but there was in
the lawyer's mind no doubt of the acceptance, which, in the course of
a fortnight after he had returned to the West, followed.

By no means a negligible element in Nelson Langmaid's professional
success had been his possession of what may called a sixth sense, and
more than once, on his missions of trust, he had listened to its
admonitory promptings.

At times he thought he recognized these in his conversation with the
Reverend John Hodder at Bremerton,--especially in that last interview in
the pleasant little study of the rectory overlooking Bremerton Lake. But
the promptings were faint, and Langmaid out of his medium. He was not
choosing the head of a trust company.

He himself felt the pull of the young clergyman's personality, and
instinctively strove to resist it: and was more than ever struck by Mr.
Hodder's resemblance to the cliff sculpture of which he had spoken at the
vestry meeting.

He was rough-hewn indeed, with gray-green eyes, and hair the color of
golden sand: it would not stay brushed. It was this hair that hinted
most strongly of individualism, that was by no means orthodox. Langmaid
felt an incongruity, but he was fascinated; and he had discovered on the
rector's shelves evidences of the taste for classical authors that he
himself possessed. Thus fate played with him, and the two men ranged
from Euripides to Horace, from Horace to Dante and Gibbon. And when
Hodder got up to fetch this or that edition, he seemed to tower over the
lawyer, who was a big man himself.

Then they discussed business, Langmaid describing the parish, the people,
the peculiar situation in St. John's caused by Dr. Gilman's death, while
Hodder listened. He was not talkative; he made no promises; his reserve
on occasions was even a little disconcerting; and it appealed to the
lawyer from Hodder as a man, but somehow not as a clergyman. Nor did
the rector volunteer any evidences of the soundness of his theological
or political principles.

He gave Langmaid the impression--though without apparent egotism--that
by accepting the call he would be conferring a favour on St. John's; and
this was when he spoke with real feeling of the ties that bound him to
Bremerton. Langmaid felt a certain deprecation of the fact that he was
not a communicant.

For the rest, if Mr. Hodder were disposed to take himself and his
profession seriously, he was by no means lacking in an appreciation of
Langmaid s humour . . . .

The tempering of the lawyer's elation as he returned homeward to report
to Mr. Parr and the vestry may be best expressed by his own exclamation,
which he made to himself:

"I wonder what that fellow would do if he ever got started!" A parson
was, after all, a parson, and he had done his best.




IV

A high, oozing note of the brakes, and the heavy train came to a stop.
Hodder looked out of the window of the sleeper to read the sign 'Marcion'
against the yellow brick of the station set down in the prairie mud, and
flanked by a long row of dun-colored freight cars backed up to a factory.

The factory was flimsy, somewhat resembling a vast greenhouse with its
multitudinous windows, and bore the name of a firm whose offices were in
the city to which he was bound.

"We 'most in now, sah," the negro porter volunteered. "You kin see the
smoke yondah."

Hodder's mood found a figure in this portentous sign whereby the city's
presence was betrayed to travellers from afar,--the huge pall seemed an
emblem of the weight of the city's sorrows; or again, a cloud of her own
making which shut her in from the sight of heaven. Absorbed in the mad
contest for life, for money and pleasure and power she felt no need to
lift her eyes beyond the level of her material endeavours.

He, John Hodder, was to live under that cloud, to labour under it. The
mission on which he was bound, like the prophets of old, was somehow to
gain the ears of this self-absorbed population, to strike the fear of the
eternal into their souls, to convince them that there was Something above
and beyond that smoke which they ignored to their own peril.

Yet the task, at this nearer view, took on proportions overwhelming--so
dense was that curtain at which he gazed. And to-day the very skies
above it were leaden, as though Nature herself had turned atheist.
In spite of the vigour with which he was endowed, in spite of the belief
in his own soul, doubts assailed him of his ability to cope with this
problem of the modern Nineveh--at the very moment when he was about to
realize his matured ambition of a great city parish.

Leaning back on the cushioned seat, as the train started again, he
reviewed the years at Bremerton, his first and only parish. Hitherto
(to his surprise, since he had been prepared for trials) he had found the
religious life a primrose path. Clouds had indeed rested on Bremerton's
crests, but beneficent clouds, always scattered by the sun. And there,
amid the dazzling snows, he had on occasions walked with God.

His success, modest though it were, had been too simple. He had loved
the people, and they him, and the pang of homesickness he now experienced
was the intensest sorrow he had known since he had been among them. Yes,
Bremerton had been for him (he realized now that he had left it) as near
an approach to Arcadia as this life permits, and the very mountains by
which it was encircled had seemed effectively to shut out those monster
problems which had set the modern world outside to seething. Gerald
Whitely's thousand operatives had never struck; the New York newspapers,
the magazines that discussed with vivid animus the corporation-political
problems in other states, had found Bremerton interested, but unmoved;
and Mrs. Whitely, who was a trustee of the library, wasted her energy in
deploring the recent volumes on economics, sociology, philosophy, and
religion that were placed on the shelves. If Bremerton read them--and a
portion of Bremerton did--no difference was apparent in the attendance at
Hodder's church. The Woman's Club discussed them strenuously, but made
no attempt to put their doctrines into practice.

Hodder himself had but glanced at a few of them, and to do him justice
this abstention had not had its root in cowardice. His life was full
--his religion "worked." And the conditions with which these books dealt
simply did not exist for him. The fact that there were other churches in
the town less successful than his own (one or two, indeed, virtually
starving) he had found it simple to account for in that their
denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were
logically degenerating into atrophy. What better proof of the barrenness
of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than the
spectacle of other ministers--who tarried awhile on starvation salaries
--reading them and preaching from them?

He, John Hodder, had held fast to the essential efficacy of the word of
God as propounded in past ages by the Fathers. It is only fair to add
that he did so without pride or bigotry, and with a sense of thankfulness
at the simplicity of the solution (ancient, in truth!) which, apparently
by special grace, had been vouchsafed him. And to it he attributed the
flourishing condition in which he had left the Church of the Ascension at
Bremerton.

"We'll never get another rector like you," Alice Whitely had exclaimed,
with tears in her eyes, as she bade him good-by. And he had rebuked her.
Others had spoken in a similar strain, and it is a certain tribute to his
character to record that the underlying hint had been lost on Hodder.
His efficacy, he insisted, lay in the Word.

Hodder looked at his watch, only to be reminded poignantly of the chief
cause of his heaviness of spirit, for it represented concretely the
affections of those whom he had left behind; brought before him vividly
the purple haze of the Bremerton valley, and the garden party, in the
ample Whitely grounds, which was their tribute to him. And he beheld,
moving from the sunlight to shadow, the figure of Rachel Ogden. She
might have been with him now, speeding by his side into the larger life!

In his loneliness, he seemed to be gazing into reproachful eyes. Nothing
had passed between them. It, was he who had held back, a fact that in
the retrospect caused him some amazement. For, if wifehood were to be
regarded as a profession, Rachel Ogden had every qualification. And Mrs.
Whitely's skilful suggestions had on occasions almost brought him to
believe in the reality of the mirage,--never quite.

Orthodox though he were, there had been times when his humour had borne
him upward toward higher truths, and he had once remarked that promising
to love forever was like promising to become President of the United
States.

One might achieve it, but it was independent of the will. Hodder's
ideals--if he had only known--transcended the rubric. His feeling for
Rachel Ogden had not been lacking in tenderness, and yet he had recoiled
from marriage merely for the sake of getting a wife, albeit one with easy
qualification. He shrank instinctively from the humdrum, and sought the
heights, stormy though these might prove. As yet he had not analyzed
this craving.

This he did know--for he had long ago torn from his demon the draperies
of disguise--that women were his great temptation. Ordination had not
destroyed it, and even during those peaceful years at Bremerton he had
been forced to maintain a watchful guard. He had a power over women, and
they over him, that threatened to lead him constantly into wayside paths,
and often he wondered what those who listened to him from the pulpit
would think if they guessed that at times, he struggled with suggestion
even now. Yet, with his hatred of compromises, he had scorned marriage.

The yoke of Augustine! The caldron of unholy loves! Even now, as he sat
in the train, his mind took its own flight backward into that remoter
past that was still a part of him: to secret acts of his college days the
thought of which made him shudder; yes, and to riots and revels. In
youth, his had been one of those boiling, contagious spirits that carry
with them, irresistibly, tamer companions. He had been a leader in
intermittent raids into forbidden spheres; a leader also in certain more
decorous pursuits--if athletics may be so accounted; yet he had capable
of long periods of self-control, for a cause. Through it all a spark had
miraculously been kept alive. . . .

Popularity followed him from the small New England college to the Harvard
Law School. He had been soberer there, marked as a pleader, and at last
the day arrived when he was summoned by a great New York lawyer to
discuss his future. Sunday intervened. Obeying a wayward impulse, he
had gone to one of the metropolitan churches to hear a preacher renowned
for his influence over men. There is, indeed, much that is stirring to
the imagination in the spectacle of a mass of human beings thronging into
a great church, pouring up the aisles, crowding the galleries, joining
with full voices in the hymns. What drew them? He himself was singing
words familiar since childhood, and suddenly they were fraught with a
startling meaning!

          "Fill me, radiancy divine,
          Scatter all my unbelief!"

Visions of the Crusades rose before him, of a friar arousing France, of a
Maid of Orleans; of masses of soiled, war-worn, sin-worn humanity groping
towards the light. Even after all these ages, the belief, the hope would
not down.

Outside, a dismal February rain was falling, a rain to wet the soul.
The reek of damp clothes pervaded the gallery where he sat surrounded by
clerks and shop girls, and he pictured to himself the dreary rooms from
which they had emerged, drawn by the mysterious fire on that altar. Was
it a will-o'-the-wisp? Below him, in the pews, were the rich. Did they,
too, need warmth?

Then came the sermon, "I will arise and go to my father."

After the service, far into the afternoon, he had walked the wet streets
heedless of his direction, in an exaltation that he had felt before, but
never with such intensity. It seemed as though he had always wished to
preach, and marvelled that the perception had not come to him sooner.
If the man to whom he had listened could pour the light into the dark
corners of other men's souls, he, John Hodder, felt the same hot spark
within him,--despite the dark corners of his own!

At dusk he came to himself, hungry, tired, and wet, in what proved to be
the outskirts of Harlem. He could see the place now: the lonely, wooden
houses, the ramshackle saloon, the ugly, yellow gleam from the street
lamps in a line along the glistening pavement; beside him, a towering
hill of granite with a real estate sign, "This lot for sale." And he had
stood staring at it, thinking of the rock that would have to be cut away
before a man could build there,--and so read his own parable.

How much rock would have to be cut away, how much patient chipping before
the edifice of which he had been dreaming could be reared! Could he ever
do it? Once removed, he would be building on rock. But could he remove
it? . . . To help revive a faith, a dying faith, in a material age,
--that indeed were a mission for any man! He found his way to an
elevated train, and as it swept along stared unseeing at the people who
pushed and jostled him. Still under the spell, he reached his room and
wrote to the lawyer thanking him, but saying that he had reconsidered
coming to New York. It was not until he had posted the letter, and was
on his way back to Cambridge that he fully realized he had made the
decision of his life.

Misgivings, many of them, had come in the months that followed,
misgivings and struggles, mocking queries. Would it last? There was
the incredulity and amazement of nearest friends, who tried to dissuade
him from so extraordinary a proceeding. Nobody, they said, ever became
a parson in these days; nobody, at least, with his ability. He was
throwing himself away. Ethics had taken the place of religion;
intelligent men didn't go to church. And within him went on an endless
debate. Public opinion made some allowance for frailties in other
professions; in the ministry, none: he would be committing himself to
be good the rest of his life, and that seemed too vast an undertaking
for any human.

The chief horror that haunted him was not failure,--for oddly enough he
never seriously distrusted his power, it was disaster. Would God give
him the strength to fight his demon? If he were to gain the heights,
only to stumble in the sight of all men, to stumble and fall.

Seeming echoes of the hideous mockery of it rang in his ears: where is
the God that this man proclaimed? he saw the newspaper headlines,
listened in imagination to cynical comments, beheld his name trailed
through the soiled places of the cities, the shuttlecock of men and
women. "To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna,
and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written,
which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it." Might he ever win that
new name, eat of the hidden manna of a hidden power, become the possessor
of the morning star?

Unless there be in the background a mother, no portrait of a man is
complete. She explains him, is his complement. Through good mothers are
men conceived of God: and with God they sit, forever yearning, forever
reaching out, helpless except for him: with him, they have put a man into
the world. Thus, into the Supreme Canvas, came the Virgin.

John Hodder's mother was a widow, and to her, in the white, gabled house
which had sheltered stern ancestors, he travelled in the June following
his experience. Standing under the fan-light of the elm-shaded doorway,
she seemed a vision of the peace wherein are mingled joy and sorrow,
faith and tears! A tall, quiet woman, who had learned the lesson of
mothers,--how to wait and how to pray, how to be silent with a clamouring
heart.

She had lived to see him established at Bremerton, to be with him there
awhile . . . .

He awoke from these memories to gaze down through the criss-cross of a
trestle to the twisted, turbid waters of the river far below. Beyond was
the city. The train skirted for a while the hideous, soot-stained
warehouses that faced the water, plunged into a lane between humming
factories and clothes-draped tenements, and at last glided into
semi-darkness under the high, reverberating roof of the Union Station.




CHAPTER III

THE PRIMROSE PATH


I

Nelson Langmaid's extraordinary judgment appeared once more to be
vindicated.

There had been, indeed, a critical, anxious moment, emphasized by the
agitation of bright feminine plumes and the shifting of masculine backs
into the corners of the pews. None got so far as to define to themselves
why there should be an apparent incompatibility between ruggedness and
orthodoxy--but there were some who hoped and more who feared. Luther had
been orthodox once, Savonarola also: in appearance neither was more
canonical than the new rector.

His congregation, for the most part, were not analytical. But they felt
a certain anomaly in virility proclaiming tradition. It took them
several Sundays to get accustomed to it.

To those who had been used for more than a quarter of a century to seeing
old Dr. Gilman's gentle face under the familiar and faded dove of the
sounding-board, to the deliberation of his walk, and the hesitation of
his manner, the first impression of the Reverend John Hodder was somewhat
startling. They felt that there should be a leisurely element in
religion. He moved across the chancel with incredible swiftness, his
white surplice flowing like the draperies of a moving Victory, wasted
no time with the pulpit lights, announced his text in a strong and
penetrating, but by no means unpleasing voice, and began to speak with
the certainty of authority.

Here, in an age when a new rector had, ceased to be an all-absorbing
topic in social life, was a new and somewhat exhilarating experience.
And it may be privately confessed that there were some who sat in St.
John's during those first weeks of his incumbency who would indignantly
have repudiated the accusation that they were not good churchmen and
churchwomen, and who nevertheless had queer sensations in listening to
ancient doctrines set forth with Emersonian conviction. Some were
courageous enough to ask themselves, in the light of this forceful
presentation, whether they really did believe them as firmly as they
supposed they had.

Dear old Dr. Gilman had been milder--much milder as the years gained upon
him. And latterly, when he had preached, his voice had sounded like the
unavailing protest of one left far behind, who called out faintly with
unheeded warnings. They had loved him: but the modern world was a busy
world, and Dr. Gilman did not understand it. This man was different.
Here was what the Church taught, he said, and they might slight it at
their peril!

It is one thing to believe one's self orthodox, and quite another to have
that orthodoxy so definitely defined as to be compelled, whether or no,
to look it squarely in the face and own or disown it. Some indeed, like
Gordon Atterbury, stood the test; responded to the clarion call for which
they had been longing. But little Everett Constable, who also sat on the
vestry, was a trifle uncomfortable in being reminded that absence from
the Communion Table was perilous, although he would have been the last to
deny the efficacy of the Sacrament.

The new rector was plainly not a man who might be accused of policy in
pandering to the tastes of a wealthy and conservative flock. But if,
in the series of sermons which lasted from his advent until well after
Christmas, he had deliberately consulted their prejudices, he could not
have done better. It is true that he went beyond the majority of them,
but into a region which they regarded as preeminently safe,--a region the
soil of which was traditional. To wit: St. Paul had left to the world
a consistent theology. Historical research was ignored rather than
condemned. And it might reasonably have been gathered from these
discourses that the main proofs of Christ's divinity lay in his Virgin
Birth, his miracles, and in the fact that his body had risen from the
grave, had been seen by many, and even touched. Hence unbelief had no
excuse. By divine commission there were bishops, priests, and deacons in
the new hierarchy, and it was through the Apostolic Succession that he,
their rector, derived his sacerdotal powers. There were, no doubt,
many obscure passages in the Scripture, but men's minds were finite;
a catholic acceptance was imperative, and the evils of the present day
--a sufficiently sweeping statement--were wholly due to deplorable lapses
from such acceptance. The Apostolic teaching must be preserved, since it
transcended all modern wanderings after truth. Hell, though not
definitely defined in terms of flames, was no less a state of torture
(future, by implication) of which fire was but a faint symbol. And
he gave them clearly to understand that an unbaptized person ran no
inconsiderable risk. He did not declare unqualifiedly that the Church
alone had the power to save, but such was the inference.



II

It was entirely fitting, no doubt, when the felicitations of certain of
the older parishioners on his initial sermon were over, that Mr. Hodder
should be carried westward to lunch with the first layman of the diocese.
But Mr. Parr, as became a person of his responsibility, had been more
moderate in his comment. For he had seen, in his day, many men whose
promise had been unfulfilled. Tightly buttoned, silk hatted, upright,
he sat in the corner of his limousine, the tasselled speaking-tube in
his hand, from time to time cautioning his chauffeur.

"Carefully!" he cried. "I've told you not to drive so fast in this part
of town. I've never got used to automobiles," he remarked to Hodder,
"and I formerly went to church in the street-cars, but the distances
have grown so great--and I have occasionally been annoyed in them."

Hodder was not given to trite acquiescence. His homely composure belied
the alertness of his faculties; he was striving to adapt himself to the
sudden broadening and quickening of the stream of his life, and he felt a
certain excitement--although he did not betray it--in the presence of the
financier. Much as he resented the thought, it was impossible for him
not to realize that the man's pleasure and displeasure were important;
for, since his arrival, he had had delicate reminders of this from many
sources. Recurrently, it had caused him a vague uneasiness, hinted at a
problem new to him. He was jealous of the dignity of the Church, and he
seemed already to have detected in Mr. Parr's manner a subtle note of
patronage. Nor could Hodder's years of provincialism permit him to
forget that this man with whom he was about to enter into personal
relations was a capitalist of national importance.

The neighbourhood they traversed was characteristic of our rapidly
expanding American cities. There were rows of dwelling houses, once
ultra-respectable, now slatternly, and lawns gone grey; some of these
houses had been remodelled into third-rate shops, or thrown together to
make manufacturing establishments: saloons occupied all the favourable
corners. Flaming posters on vacant lots announced, pictorially, dubious
attractions at the theatres. It was a wonderful Indian summer day, the
sunlight soft and melting; and the smoke which continually harassed this
district had lifted a little, as though in deference to the Sabbath.

Hodder read the sign on a lamp post, Dalton Street. The name clung in
his memory.

"We thought, some twenty years ago, of moving the church westward," said
Mr. Parr, "but finally agreed to remain where we were."

The rector had a conviction on this point, and did not hesitate to state
it without waiting to be enlightened as to the banker's views.

"It would seem to me a wise decision," he said, looking out of the
window, and wholly absorbed in the contemplation of the evidences of
misery and vice, "with this poverty at the very doors of the church."

Something in his voice impelled Eldon Parr to shoot a glance at his
profile.

"Poverty is inevitable, Mr. Hodder," he declared. "The weak always
sink."

Hodder's reply, whatever it might have been, was prevented by the sudden
and unceremonious flight of both occupants toward the ceiling of the
limousine, caused by a deep pit in the asphalt.

"What are you doing, Gratton?" Mr. Parr called sharply through the tube.

Presently, the lawns began to grow brighter, the houses more cheerful,
and the shops were left behind. They crossed the third great transverse
artery of the city (not so long ago, Mr. Parr remarked, a quagmire), now
lined by hotels and stores with alluring displays in plate glass windows
and entered a wide boulevard that stretched westward straight to the
great Park. This boulevard the financier recalled as a country road of
clay. It was bordered by a vivid strip, of green; a row of tall and
graceful lamp posts, like sentinels, marked its course; while the
dwellings, set far back on either side, were for the most part large and
pretentious, betraying in their many tentative styles of architecture the
reaching out of a commercial nation after beauty. Some, indeed, were
simple of line and restful to the trained eye.

They came to the wide entrance of the Park, so wisely preserved as a
breathing place for future generations. A slight haze had gathered over
the rolling forests to the westward; but this haze was not smoke. Here,
in this enchanting region, the autumn sunlight was undiluted gold, the
lawns, emerald, and the red gravel around the statesman's statue
glistening. The automobile quickly swung into a street that skirted the
Park,--if street it might be called, for it was more like a generous
private driveway,--flanked on the right by fences of ornamental ironwork
and high shrubbery that concealed the fore yards of dominating private
residences which might: without great exaggeration, have been called
palaces.

"That's Ferguson's house," volunteered Mr. Parr, indicating a marble
edifice with countless windows. "He's one of your vestrymen, you know.
Ferguson's Department Store." The banker's eyes twinkled a little for
the first time. "You'll probably find it convenient. Most people do.
Clever business man, Ferguson."

But the rector was finding difficulty in tabulating his impressions.

They turned in between two posts of a gateway toward a huge house of
rough granite. And Hodder wondered whether, in the swift onward roll
of things, the time would come when this, too, would have been deemed
ephemeral. With its massive walls and heavy, red-tiled roof that sloped
steeply to many points, it seemed firmly planted for ages to come. It
was surrounded, yet not hemmed in, by trees of a considerable age. His
host explained that these had belonged to the original farm of which all
this Park Street property had made a part.

They alighted under a porte-cochere with a glass roof.

"I'm sorry," said Mr. Parr, as the doors swung open and he led the way
into the house, "I'm sorry I can't give you a more cheerful welcome, but
my son and daughter, for their own reasons, see fit to live elsewhere."

Hodder's quick ear detected in the tone another cadence, and he glanced
at Eldon Parr with a new interest . . . .

Presently they stood, face to face, across a table reduced to its
smallest proportions, in the tempered light of a vast dining-room,
an apartment that seemed to symbolize the fortress-like properties of
wealth. The odd thought struck the clergyman that this man had made his
own Tower of London, had built with his own hands the prison in which he
was to end his days. The carved oaken ceiling, lofty though it was, had
the effect of pressing downward, the heavy furniture matched the heavy
walls, and even the silent, quick-moving servants had a watchful air.

Mr. Parr bowed his head while Hodder asked grace. They sat down.

The constraint which had characterized their conversation continued,
yet there was a subtle change in the attitude of the clergyman. The
financier felt this, though it could not be said that Hodder appeared
more at his ease: his previous silences had been by no means awkward.
Eldon Parr liked self-contained men. But his perceptions were as keen as
Nelson Langmaid's, and like Langmaid, he had gradually become conscious
of a certain baffling personality in the new rector of St. John's. From
time to time he was aware of the grey-green eyes curiously fixed on him,
and at a loss to account for their expression. He had no thought of
reading in it an element of pity. Yet pity was nevertheless in the
rector's heart, and its advent was emancipating him from the limitations
of provincial inexperience.

Suddenly, the financier launched forth on a series of shrewd and
searching questions about Bremerton, its church, its people, its
industries, and social conditions. All of which Hodder answered to his
apparent satisfaction.

Coffee was brought. Hodder pushed back his chair, crossed his knees,
and sat perfectly still regarding his host, his body suggesting a repose
that did not interfere with his perceptive faculties.

"You don't smoke, Mr. Hodder?"

The rector smiled and shook his head. Mr. Parr selected a diminutive,
yellow cigar and held it up.

"This," he said, "has been the extent of my indulgence for twenty years.
They are made for me in Cuba."

Hodder smiled again, but said nothing.

"I have had a letter from your former bishop, speaking of you in the
highest terms," he observed.

"The bishop is very kind."

Mr. Parr cleared his throat.

"I am considerably older than you," he went on, "and I have the future of
St. John's very much at heart, Mr. Hodder. I trust you will remember
this and make allowances for it as I talk to you.

"I need not remind you that you have a grave responsibility on your
shoulders for so young a man, and that St. John's is the oldest parish
in the diocese."

"I think I realize it, Mr. Parr," said Hodder, gravely. "It was only the
opportunity of a larger work here that induced me to leave Bremerton."

"Exactly," agreed the banker. "The parish, I believe, is in good running
order--I do not think you will see the necessity for many--ahem--changes.
But we sadly needed an executive head. And, if I may say so, Mr. Hodder,
you strike me as a man of that type, who might have made a success in a
business career."

The rector smiled again.

"I am sure you could pay me no higher compliment," he answered.

For an instant Eldon Parr, as he stared at the clergyman, tightened his
lips,--lips that seemed peculiarly formed for compression. Then they
relaxed into what resembled a smile. If it were one, the other returned
it.

"Seriously," Mr. Parr declared, "it does me good in these days to hear,
from a young man, such sound doctrine as you preach. I am not one of
those who believe in making concessions to agnostics and atheists. You
were entirely right, in my opinion, when you said that we who belong to
the Church--and of course you meant all orthodox Christians--should stand
by our faith as delivered by the saints. Of course," he added, smiling,
"I should not insist upon the sublapsarian view of election which I was
taught in the Presbyterian Church as a boy."

Hodder laughed, but did not interrupt.

"On the other hand," Mr. Parr continued, "I have little patience with
clergymen who would make religion attractive. What does it amount to
--luring people into the churches on one pretext or another, sugar-coating
the pill? Salvation is a more serious matter. Let the churches stick
to their own. We have at St. John's a God-fearing, conservative
congregation, which does not believe in taking liberties with sound and
established doctrine. And I may confess to you, Mr. Hodder, that we were
naturally not a little anxious about Dr. Gilman's successor, that we
should not get, in spite of every precaution, a man tinged with the new
and dangerous ideas so prevalent, I regret to say, among the clergy.
I need scarcely add that our anxieties have been set at rest."

"That," said Hodder, "must be taken as a compliment to the dean of the
theological seminary from which I graduated."

The financier stared again. But he decided that Mr. Hodder had not meant
to imply that he, Mr. Parr, was attempting to supersede the dean. The
answer had been modest.

"I take it for granted that you and I and all sensible men are happily.
agreed that the Church should remain where she is. Let the people come
to her. She should be, if I may so express it, the sheet anchor of
society, our bulwark against socialism, in spite of socialists who call
themselves ministers of God. The Church has lost ground--why? Because
she has given ground. The sanctity of private property is being menaced,
demagogues are crying out from the house-tops and inciting people against
the men who have made this country what it is, who have risked their
fortunes and their careers for the present prosperity. We have no longer
any right, it seems, to employ whom we will in our factories and our
railroads; we are not allowed to regulate our rates, although the risks
were all ours. Even the women are meddling,--they are not satisfied to
stay in the homes, where they belong. You agree with me?"

"As to the women," said the rector, "I have to acknowledge that I have
never had any experience with the militant type of which you speak."

"I pray God you may never have," exclaimed Mr. Parr, with more feeling
than he had yet shown.

"Woman's suffrage, and what is called feminism in general, have never
penetrated to Bremerton. Indeed, I must confess to have been wholly out
of touch with the problems to which you refer, although of course I have
been aware of their existence."

"You will meet them here," said the banker, significantly.

"Yes," the rector replied thoughtfully, "I can see that. I know that
the problems here will be more complicated, more modern,--more difficult.
And I thoroughly agree with you that their ultimate solution is dependent
on Christianity. If I did not believe,--in spite of the evident fact
which you point out of the Church's lost ground, that her future will
be greater than her past, I should not be a clergyman."

The quiet but firm note of faith was, not lost on the financier, and yet
was not he quite sure what was to be made of it? He had a faint and
fleeting sense of disquiet, which registered and was gone.

"I hope so," he said vaguely, referring perhaps to the resuscitation of
which the rector spoke. He drummed on the table. "I'll go so far as to
say that I, too, think that the structure can be repaired. And I believe
it is the duty of the men of influence--all men of influence--to assist.
I don't say that men of influence are not factors in the Church to-day,
but I do say that they are not using the intelligence in this task which
they bring to bear, for instance, on their business."

"Perhaps the clergy might help," Hodder suggested, and added more
seriously, "I think that many of them are honestly trying to do so."

"No doubt of it. Why is it," Mr. Parr continued reflectively, "that
ministers as a whole are by no means the men they were? You will pardon
my frankness. When I was a boy, the minister was looked up to as an
intellectual and moral force to be reckoned with. I have heard it
assigned, as one reason, that in the last thirty years other careers have
opened up, careers that have proved much more attractive to young men of
ability."

"Business careers?" inquired the rector.

"Precisely!"

"In other words," said Hodder, with his curious smile, "the ministry
gets the men who can't succeed at anything else."

"Well, that's putting it rather strong," answered Mr. Parr, actually
reddening a little. "But come now, most young men would rather be a
railroad president than a bishop,--wouldn't they?"

"Most young men would," agreed Hodder, quickly, "but they are not the
young men who ought to be bishops, you'll admit that."

The financier, be it recorded to his credit, did not lack appreciation
of this thrust, and, for the first time, he laughed with something
resembling heartiness. This laughter, in which Hodder joined, seemed
suddenly to put them on a new footing--a little surprising to both.

"Come," said the financier, rising, "I'm sure you like pictures, and
Langmaid tells me you have a fancy for first editions. Would you care
to go to the gallery?"

"By all means," the rector assented.

Their footsteps, as they crossed the hardwood floors, echoed in the empty
house. After pausing to contemplate a Millet on the stair landing, they
came at last to the huge, silent gallery, where the soft but adequate
light fell upon many masterpieces, ancient and modern. And it was here,
while gazing at the Corots and Bonheurs, Lawrences, Romneys, Copleys, and
Halses, that Hodder's sense of their owner's isolation grew almost
overpowering Once, glancing over his shoulder at Mr. Parr, he surprised
in his eyes an expression almost of pain.

"These pictures must give you great pleasure," he said.

"Oh," replied the banker, in a queer voice, "I'm always glad when any one
appreciates them. I never come in here alone."

Hodder did not reply. They passed along to an upstairs sitting-room,
which must, Hodder thought, be directly over the dining-room. Between
its windows was a case containing priceless curios.

"My wife liked this room," Mr. Parr explained, as he opened the case.
When they had inspected it, the rector stood for a moment gazing out at
a formal garden at the back of the house. The stalks of late flowers lay
withering, but here and there the leaves were still vivid, and clusters
of crimson berries gleamed in the autumn sunshine. A pergola ran down
the middle, and through denuded grape-vines he caught a glimpse, at the
far end, of sculptured figures and curving marble benches surrounding a
pool.

"What a wonderful spot!" he exclaimed.

"My daughter Alison designed it."

"She must have great talent," said the rector.

"She's gone to New York and become a landscape architect," said his host
with a perceptible dryness. "Women in these days are apt to be
everything except what the Lord intended them to be."

They went downstairs, and Hodder took his leave, although he felt an odd
reluctance to go. Mr. Parr rang the bell.

"I'll send you down in the motor," he said.

"I'd like the exercise of walking," said the rector. "I begin to miss it
already, in the city."

"You look as if you had taken a great deal of it," Mr. Parr declared,
following him to the door. "I hope you'll drop in often. Even if I'm
not here, the gallery and the library are at your disposal."

Their eyes met.

"You're very good," Hodder replied, and went down the steps and through
the open doorway.

Lost in reflection, he walked eastward with long and rapid strides,
striving to reduce to order in his mind the impressions the visit had
given him, only to find them too complex, too complicated by unlooked-for
emotions. Before its occurrence, he had, in spite of an inherent common
sense, felt a little uneasiness over the prospective meeting with the
financier. And Nelson Langmaid had hinted, good-naturedly, that it was
his, Hodder's, business, to get on good terms with Mr. Parr--otherwise
the rectorship of St. John's might not prove abed of roses. Although the
lawyer had spoken with delicacy, he had once more misjudged his man--the
result being to put Hodder on his guard. He had been the more determined
not to cater to the banker.

The outcome of it all had been that the rector left him with a sense of
having crossed barriers forbidden to other men, and not understanding how
he had crossed them. Whether this incipient intimacy were ominous or
propitious, whether there were involved in it a germ (engendered by a
radical difference of temperament) capable of developing into future
conflict, he could not now decide. If Eldon Parr were Procrustes he,
Hodder, had fitted the bed, and to say the least, this was extraordinary,
if not a little disquieting. Now and again his thoughts reverted to the
garden, and to the woman who had made it. Why had she deserted?

At length, after he had been walking for nearly an hour, he halted and
looked about him. He was within a few blocks of the church, a little to
one side of Tower Street, the main east and west highway of the city,
in the midst of that district in which Mr. Parr had made the remark that
poverty was inevitable. Slovenly and depressing at noonday, it seemed
now frankly to have flung off its mask. Dusk was gathering, and with it
a smoke-stained fog that lent a sickly tinge to the lights. Women slunk
by him: the saloons, apparently closed, and many houses with veiled
windows betrayed secret and sinister gleams. In the midst of a block
rose a tall, pretentious though cheaply constructed building with the
words "Hotel Albert" in flaming electric letters above an archway. Once
more his eye read Dalton Street on a lamp . . . .

Hodder resumed his walk more slowly, and in a few minutes reached his
rooms in the parish house.




CHAPTER IV

SOME RIDDLES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY


I
Although he found the complications of a modern city parish somewhat
bewildering, the new rector entered into his duties that winter with
apostolic zeal. He was aware of limitations and anomalies, but his faith
was boundless, his energy the subject of good-natured comment by his
vestry and parishioners, whose pressing invitations' to dinners he was
often compelled to refuse. There was in John Hodder something
indefinable that inflamed curiosity and left it unsatisfied.

His excuse for attending these dinners, which indeed were relaxing and
enjoyable, he found in the obvious duty of getting to know the most
important members of his congregation. But invariably he came away from
them with an inner sense of having been baffled in this object. With a
few exceptions, these modern people seemed to have no time for friendship
in the real meaning of the word, no desire to carry a relationship beyond
a certain point. Although he was their spiritual pastor, he knew less
about most of them at the end of the winter than their butlers and their
maids.

They were kind, they were delightful, they were interested in him--he
occasionally thought--as a somewhat anachronistic phenomenon. They
petted, respected him, and deferred to him. He represented to them an
element in life they recognized, and which had its proper niche. What
they failed to acknowledge was his point of view--and this he was wise
enough not to press at dinner tables and in drawing-rooms--that religion
should have the penetrability of ether; that it should be the absorbent
of life. He did not have to commit the banality of reminding them of
this conviction of his at their own tables; he had sufficient humour and
penetration to credit them with knowing it. Nay, he went farther in his
unsuspected analysis, and perceived that these beliefs made one of his
chief attractions for them. It was pleasant to have authority in a black
coat at one's board; to defer, if not to bend to it. The traditions of
fashion demanded a clergyman in the milieu, and the more tenaciously he
clung to his prerogatives, the better they liked it.

Although they were conscious of a certain pressure, which they gently
resisted, they did not divine that the radiating and rugged young man
cherished serious designs upon them. He did not expect to transform the
world in a day, especially the modern world. He was biding his time,
awaiting individual opportunities.

They talked to him of the parish work, congratulated him on the vigour
with which he had attacked it, and often declared themselves jealous of
it because it claimed too much of him. Dear Dr. Gilman, they said, had
had neither the strength nor the perception of 'modern needs; and McCrae,
the first assistant clergyman, while a good man, was a plodder and
lacking in imagination. They talked sympathetically about the problems
of the poor. And some of them--particularly Mrs. Wallis Plimpton were
inclined to think Hodder's replies a trifle noncommittal. The trouble,
although he did not tell them so, was that he himself had by no means
solved the problem. And he felt a certain reluctance to discuss the
riddle of poverty over champagne and porcelain.

Mrs. Plimpton and Mrs. Constable, Mrs. Ferguson, Mrs. Langmaid, Mrs.
Larrabbee, Mrs. Atterbury, Mrs. Grey, and many other ladies and their
daughters were honorary members of his guilds and societies, and found
time in their busy lives to decorate the church, adorn the altar, care
for the vestments, and visit the parish house. Some of them did more:
Mrs. Larrabbee, for instance, when she was in town, often graced the
girls' classes with her presence, which was a little disquieting to
the daughters of immigrants: a little disquieting, too, to John Hodder.
During the three years that had elapsed since Mr. Larrabbee's death, she
had, with characteristic grace and ease, taken up philanthropy; become,
in particular, the feminine patron saint of Galt House, non-sectarian,
a rescue home for the erring of her sex.

There were, too, in this higher realm of wealth in and out of which
Hodder plunged, women like Mrs. Constable (much older than Mrs.
Larrabbee) with whom philanthropy and what is known as "church work"
had become second nature in a well-ordered life, and who attended with
praiseworthy regularity the meetings of charitable boards and committees,
not infrequently taking an interest in individuals in Mr. Hodder's
classes. With her, on occasions, he did discuss such matters,
only to come away from her with his bewilderment deepened.

It was only natural that he should have his moods of depression. But
the recurrent flow of his energy swept them away. Cynicism had no place
in his militant Christianity, and yet there were times when he wondered
whether these good people really wished achievements from their rector.
They had the air of saying "Bravo!" and then of turning away. And he did
not conceal from himself that he was really doing nothing but labour.
The distances were great; and between his dinner parties, classes,
services, and visits, he was forced to sit far into the night preparing
his sermons, when his brain was not so keen as it might have been.
Indeed--and this thought was cynical and out of character--he asked
himself on one occasion whether his principal achievement so far had not
consisted in getting on unusual terms with Eldon Parr. They were not
lacking who thought so, and who did not hesitate to imply it. They
evidently regarded his growing intimacy with the banker with approval,
as in some sort a supreme qualification for a rector of St. John's, and
a proof of unusual abilities. There could be no question, for instance,
that he had advanced perceptibly in the estimation of the wife of another
of his vestrymen, Mrs. Wallis Plimpton.

The daughter of Thurston Gore, with all her astuteness and real estate,
was of a naivete in regard to spiritual matters that Hodder had grown to
recognize as impermeable. In an evening gown, with a string of large
pearls testing on her firm and glowing neck, she appeared a concrete
refutation of the notion of rebirth, the triumph of an unconscious
philosophy of material common-sense. However, in parish house affairs,
Hodder had found her practical brain of no slight assistance.

"I think it quite wonderful," she remarked, on the occasion at which he
was the guest of honour in what was still called the new Gore mansion,
"that you have come to know Mr. Parr so well in such a short time. How
did you do it, Mr. Hodder? Of course Wallis knows him, and sees a great
deal of him in business matters. He relies on Wallis. But they tell me
you have grown more intimate with him than any one has been since Alison
left him."

There is, in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes, a formula for answering people
in accordance with their point of view. The rector modestly disclaimed
intimacy. And he curbed his curiosity about Alison for the reason that
he preferred to hear her story from another source.

"Oh, but you are intimate!" Mrs. Plimpton protested. "Everybody says
so--that Mr. Parr sends for you all the time. What is he like when he's
alone, and relaxed? Is he ever relaxed?" The lady had a habit of
not waiting for answers to her questions. "Do you know, it stirs my
imagination tremendously when I think of all the power that man has.
I suppose you know he has become one of a very small group of men who
control this country, and naturally he has been cruelly maligned. All he
has to do is to say a word to his secretary, and he can make men or ruin
them. It isn't that he does ruin them--I don't mean that. He uses his
wealth, Wallis says, to maintain the prosperity of the nation! He feels
his trusteeship. And he is so generous! He has given a great deal to
the church, and now," she added, "I am sure he will give more."

Hodder was appalled. He felt helpless before the weight of this
onslaught.

"I dare say he will continue to assist, as he has in the past," he
managed to say.

"Of course it's your disinterestedness," she proclaimed, examining him
frankly. "He feels that you don't want anything. You always strike me
as so splendidly impartial, Mr. Hodder."

Fortunately, he was spared an answer. Mr. Plimpton, who was wont to
apply his gifts as a toastmaster to his own festivals, hailed him from
the other end of the table.

And Nelson Langmaid, who had fallen into the habit of dropping into
Hodder's rooms in the parish house on his way uptown for a chat about
books, had been struck by the rector's friendship with the banker.

"I don't understand how you managed it, Hodder, in such a short time,"
he declared. "Mr. Parr's a difficult man. In all these years, I've been
closer to him than any one else, and I don't know him today half as well
as you do."

"I didn't manage it," said Hodder, briefly.

"Well," replied the lawyer, quizzically, "you needn't eat me up.
I'm sure you didn't do it on purpose. If you had,--to use a Hibernian
phrase,--you never would have done it. I've seen it tried before. To
tell you the truth, after I'd come back from Bremerton, that was the one
thing I was afraid of--that you mightn't get along with him."

Hodder himself was at a loss to account for the relationship. It
troubled him vaguely, for Mr. Parr was the aggressor; and often at dusk,
when Hodder was working under his study lamp, the telephone would ring,
and on taking down the receiver he would hear the banker's voice. "I'm
alone to-night, Mr. Hodder. Will you come and have dinner with me?"

Had he known it, this was a different method of communication than that
which the financier usually employed, one which should have flattered
him. If Wallis Plimpton, for instance, had received such a personal
message, the fact would not have remained unknown the next day at his
club. Sometimes it was impossible for Hodder to go, and he said so; but
he always went when he could.

The unwonted note of appeal (which the telephone seemed somehow to
enhance) in Mr. Parr's voice, never failed to find a response in the
rector's heart, and he would ponder over it as he walked across to Tower
Street to take the electric car for the six-mile trip westward.

This note of appeal he inevitably contrasted with the dry, matter-of-fact
reserve of his greeting at the great house, which loomed all the greater
in the darkness. Unsatisfactory, from many points of view, as these
evenings were, they served to keep whetted Hodder's curiosity as to the
life of this extraordinary man. All of its vaster significance for the
world, its tremendous machinery, was out of his sight.

Mr. Parr seemed indeed to regard the rest of his fellow-creatures with
the suspicion at which Langmaid had hinted, to look askance at the
amenities people tentatively held out to him. And the private watchman
whom Hodder sometimes met in the darkness, and who invariably scrutinized
pedestrians on Park Street, seemed symbolic, of this attitude. On rare
occasions, when in town, the financier dined out, limiting himself to a
few houses.

Once in a long while he attended what are known as banquets, such as
those given by the Chamber of Commerce, though he generally refused to
speak. Hodder, through Mr. Parr's intervention, had gone to one of
these, ably and breezily presided over by the versatile Mr. Plimpton.

Hodder felt not only curiosity and sympathy, but a vexing sense of the
fruitlessness of his visits to Park Street. Mr. Parr seemed to like to
have him there. And the very fact that the conversation rarely took
any vital turn oddly contributed to the increasing permanence of
the lien. To venture on any topic relating to the affairs of the day
were merely to summon forth the banker's dogmatism, and Hodder's own
opinions on such matters were now in a strange and unsettled state. Mr.
Parr liked best to talk of his treasures, and of the circumstances during
his trips abroad that had led to their acquirement. Once the banker had
asked him about parish house matters.

"I'm told you're working very hard--stirring up McCrae. He needs it."

"I'm only trying to study the situation," Hodder replied. "I don't think
you quite do justice to McCrae," he added; "he's very faithful, and seems
to understand those people thoroughly."

Mr. Parr smiled.

"And what conclusions have you come to? If you think the system should
be enlarged and reorganized I am willing at any time to go over it with
you, with a view to making an additional contribution. Personally, while
I have sympathy for the unfortunate, I'm not at all sure that much of the
energy and money put into the institutional work of churches isn't
wasted."

"I haven't come to any conclusions--yet," said the rector, with a touch
of sadness. "Perhaps I demand too much--expect too much."

The financier, deep in his leather chair under the shaded light, the tips
of his fingers pressed together, regarded the younger man thoughtfully,
but the smile lingered in his eyes.

"I told you you would meet problems," he said.



II

Hodder's cosmos might have been compared, indeed, to that set forth in
the Ptolemaic theory of the ancients. Like a cleverly carved Chinese
object of ivory in the banker s collection, it was a system of spheres,
touching, concentric, yet separate. In an outer space swung Mr. Parr;
then came the scarcely less rarefied atmosphere of the Constables and
Atterburys, Fergusons, Plimptons, Langmaids, Prestons, Larrabbees, Greys,
and Gores, and then a smaller sphere which claims but a passing mention.
There were, in the congregation of St. John's, a few people of moderate
means whose houses or apartments the rector visited; people to whom
modern life was increasingly perplexing.

In these ranks were certain maiden ladies and widows who found in church
work an outlet to an otherwise circumscribed existence. Hodder met them
continually in his daily rounds. There were people like the Bradleys,
who rented half a pew and never missed a Sunday; Mr. Bradley, an elderly
man whose children had scattered, was an upper clerk in one of Mr. Parr's
trust companies: there were bachelors and young women, married or single,
who taught in the Sunday school or helped with the night classes. For
the most part, all of these mentioned above belonged to an element that
once had had a comfortable and well-recognized place in the community,
yet had somehow been displaced. Many of them were connected by blood
with more fortunate parishioners, but economic pressure had scattered
them throughout new neighbourhoods and suburbs. Tradition still bound
them to St. John's.

With no fixed orbit, the rector cut at random through all of these
strata, and into a fourth. Not very far into it, for this apparently
went down to limitless depths, the very contemplation of which made him
dizzy. The parish house seemed to float precariously on its surface.

Owing partly to the old-fashioned ideas of Dr. Gilman, and partly to
the conservatism of its vestry, the institutionalism of St. John's was
by no means up to date. No settlement house, with day nurseries, was
maintained in the slums. The parish house, built in the, early nineties,
had its gymnasium hall and class and reading rooms, but was not what in
these rapidly moving times would be called modern. Presiding over its
activities, and seconded by a pale, but earnest young man recently
ordained, was Hodder's first assistant, the Reverend Mr. McCrae.

McCrae was another puzzle. He was fifty and gaunt, with a wide flat
forehead and thinning, grey hair, and wore steel spectacles. He had a
numerous family. His speech, of which he was sparing, bore strong traces
of a Caledonian accent. And this, with the addition of the fact that he
was painstaking and methodical in his duties, and that his sermons were
orthodox in the sense that they were extremely non-committal, was all
that Hodder knew about him for many months. He never doubted, however,
the man's sincerity and loyalty.

But McCrae had a peculiar effect on him, and as time went on, his
conviction deepened that his assistant was watching him. The fact that
this tacit criticism did not seem unkindly did not greatly alleviate
the impatience that he felt from time to time. He had formed a higher
estimate of McCrae's abilities than that generally prevailing throughout
the parish; and in spite of, perhaps because of his attitude, was drawn
toward the man. This attitude, as Hodder analyzed it from the
expressions he occasionally surprised on his assistant's face, was one
of tolerance and experience, contemplating, with a faint amusement and
a certain regret, the wasteful expenditure of youthful vitality. Yet
it involved more. McCrae looked as if he knew--knew many things that
he deemed it necessary for the new rector to find out by experience.

But he was a difficult man to talk to.

If the truth be told, the more Hodder became absorbed in these activities
of the parish house, the greater grew his perplexity, the more acute his
feeling of incompleteness; or rather, his sense that the principle was
somehow fundamentally at fault. Out of the waters of the proletariat
they fished, assiduously and benignly, but at random, strange specimens!
brought them, as it were, blinking to the light, and held them by sheer
struggling. And sometimes, when they slipped away, dived after them.
The young curate, Mr. Tompkinson, for the most part did the diving; or,
in scriptural language, the searching after the lost sheep.

The results accomplished seemed indeed, as Mr. Parr had remarked,
strangely disproportionate to the efforts, for they laboured abundantly.
The Italian mothers appeared stolidly appreciative of the altruism of
Miss Ramsay, who taught the kindergarten, in taking their charges off
their hands for three hours of a morning, and the same might be said of
the Jews and Germans and Russians. The newsboys enjoyed the gymnasium
and reading-rooms: some of them were drafted into the choir, yet the
singing of Te Deums failed somehow to accomplish the miracle of
regeneration. The boys, as a rule, were happier, no doubt; the new
environments not wholly without results. But the rector was an idealist.

He strove hard to become their friend, and that of the men; to win their
confidence, and with a considerable measure of success. On more than one
occasion he threw aside his clerical coat and put on boxing-gloves, and
he gave a series of lectures, with lantern slides, collected during the
six months he had once spent in Europe. The Irish-Americans and the
Germans were the readiest to respond, and these were for the most part
young workingmen and youths by no means destitute. When they were out
of a place, he would often run across them in the reading-room or sitting
among the lockers beside the gymnasium, and they would rise and talk to
him cordially and even familiarly about their affairs. They liked and
trusted him--on a tacit condition. There was a boundary he might not
cross. And the existence of that boundary did not seem to trouble
McCrae.

One night as he stood with his assistant in the hall after the men had
gone, Hodder could contain himself no longer.

"Look here, McCrae," he broke out, "these men never come to church--or
only a very few of them."

"No more they do," McCrae agreed.

"Why don't they?"

"Ye've asked them, perhaps."

"I've spoken to one or two of them," admitted the rector.

"And what do they tell you?"

Hodder smiled.

"They don't tell me anything. They dodge."

"Precisely," said McCrae.

"We're not making Christians of them," said Hodder, beginning to walk up
and down. "Why is it?"

"It's a big question."

"It is a big question. It's the question of all questions, it seems to
me. The function of the Church, in my opinion, is to make Christians."

"Try to teach them religion," said McCrae--he almost pronounced it
releegion--"and see what happens. Ye'll have no classes at all. They
only come, the best of them, because ye let them alone that way, and they
get a little decency and society help. It's somewhat to keep them out of
the dance-halls and saloons maybe."

"It's not enough," the rector asserted. "You've had a great deal of
experience with them. And I want to know why, in your view, more of them
don't come into the Church."

"Would ye put Jimmy Flanagan and Otto Bauer and Tony Baldassaro in Mr.
Parr's pew?" McCrae inquired, with a slight flavour of irony that was
not ill-natured. "Or perhaps Mrs. Larrabbee would make room for them?"

"I've considered that, of course," replied Hodder, thoughtfully, though
he was a little surprised that McCrae should have mentioned it. "You
think their reasons are social, then,--that they feel the gap. I feel it
myself most strongly. And yet none of these men are Socialists. If they
were, they wouldn't come here to the parish house."

"They're not Socialists," agreed McCrae.

"But there is room in the back and sides of the church, and there is the
early service and the Sunday night service, when the pews are free. Why
don't they come to these?"

"Religion doesn't appeal to them."

"Why not?"

"Ye've asked me a riddle. All I know is that the minute ye begin to
preach, off they go and never come back."

Hodder, with unconscious fixity, looked into his assistant's honest face.
He had an exasperating notion that McCrae might have said more, if he
would.

"Haven't you a theory?"

"Try yourself," said McCrae. His manner was abrupt, yet oddly enough,
not ungracious.

"Don't think I'm criticizing," said the rector, quickly.

"I know well ye're not."

"I've been trying to learn. It seems to me that we are only
accomplishing half our task, and I know that St. John's is not unique
in this respect. I've been talking to Andrews, of Trinity, about their
poor."

"Does he give you a remedy?"

"No," Hodder said. "He can't see any more than I can why Christianity
doesn't appeal any longer. The fathers and mothers of these people went
to church, in the old country and in this. Of course he sees, as you and
I do, that society has settled into layers, and that the layers won't
mix. And he seems to agree with me that there is a good deal of energy
exerted for a comparatively small return."

"I understand that's what Mr. Parr says."

These references to Mr. Parr disturbed Hodder. He had sometimes
wondered, when he had been compelled to speak about his visits to the
financier, how McCrae regarded them. He was sure that McCrae did regard
them.

"Mr. Parr is willing to be even more generous than he has been," Hodder
said. "The point is, whether it's wise to enlarge our scope on the
present plan. What do you think?"

"Ye can reach more," McCrae spoke without enthusiasm.

"What's the use of reaching them, only to touch them? In addition to
being helped materially and socially, and kept away from the dance-halls
and saloons, they ought to be fired by the Gospels, to be remade. They
should be going out into the highways and byways to bring others into the
church."

The Scotchman's face changed a little. For an instant his eyes lighted
up, whether in sympathy or commiseration or both, Hodder could not tell.

"I'm with ye, Mr. Hodder, if ye'll show me the way. But oughtn't we to
begin at both ends?"

"At both ends?" Hodder repeated.

"Surely. With the people in the pews? Oughtn't we to be firing them,
too?"

"Yes," said the rector. "You're right."

He turned away, to feel McCrae's hand on his sleeve.

"Maybe it will come, Mr. Hodder," he said. "There's no telling when the
light will strike in."

It was the nearest to optimism he had ever known his assistant to
approach.

"McCrae," he asked, "have you ever tried to do anything with Dalton
Street?"

"Dalton Street?"

The real McCrae, whom he had seemed to see emerging, retired abruptly,
presenting his former baffling and noncommittal exterior.

"Yes," Hodder forced himself to go on, and it came to him that he had
repeated virtually the same words to Mr. Parr, "it is at our very doors,
a continual reproach. There is real poverty in those rooming houses, and
I have never seen vice so defiant and shameless."

"It's a shifty place, that," McCrae replied. "They're in it one day
and gone the next, a sort of catch-basin for all the rubbish of the city.
I can recall when decent people lived there, and now it's all light
housekeeping and dives and what not."

"But that doesn't relieve us of responsibility," Hodder observed.

"I'm not denying it. I think ye'll find there's very little to get hold
of."

Once more, he had the air of stopping short, of being able to say more.
Hodder refrained from pressing him.

Dalton Street continued to haunt him. And often at nightfall, as he
hurried back to his bright rooms in the parish house from some of the
many errands that absorbed his time, he had a feeling of self-accusation
as he avoided women wearily treading the pavements, or girls and children
plodding homeward through the wet, wintry streets. Some glanced at him
with heavy eyes, others passed sullenly, with bent heads. At such
moments his sense of helplessness was overpowering. He could not follow
them to the dreary dwellings where they lodged.

Eldon Parr had said that poverty was inevitable.






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill




Volume 2.
V.    THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
VI.    "WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT"
VII.   THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD
VIII.   THE LINE of LEAST RESISTANCE.



CHAPTER V

THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT


I

Sunday after Sunday Hodder looked upon the same picture, the winter light
filtering through emblazoned windows, falling athwart stone pillars, and
staining with rich colours the marble of the centre aisle. The organ
rolled out hymns and anthems, the voices of the white robed choir echoed
among the arches. And Hodder's eye, sweeping over the decorous
congregation, grew to recognize certain landmarks: Eldon Parr, rigid at
one end of his empty pew; little Everett Constable, comfortably, but
always pompously settled at one end of his, his white-haired and
distinguished-looking wife at the other. The space between them had once
been filled by their children. There was Mr. Ferguson, who occasionally
stroked his black whiskers with a prodigious solemnity; Mrs. Ferguson,
resplendent and always a little warm, and their daughter Nan, dainty and
appealing, her eyes uplifted and questioning.

The Plimptons, with their rubicund and aggressively healthy offspring,
were always in evidence. And there was Mrs. Larrabbee. What between
wealth and youth, independence and initiative, a widowhood now emerged
from a mourning unexceptionable, an elegance so unobtrusive as to border
on mystery, she never failed to agitate any atmosphere she entered, even
that of prayer. From time to time, Hodder himself was uncomfortably
aware of her presence, and he read in her upturned face an interest
which, by a little stretch of the imagination, might have been deemed
personal . . . .

Another was Gordon Atterbury, still known as "young Gordon," though his
father was dead, and he was in the vestry. He was unmarried and
forty-five, and Mrs. Larrabbee had said he reminded her of a shrivelling
seed set aside from a once fruitful crop. He wore, invariably, checked
trousers and a black cutaway coat, eyeglasses that fell off when he
squinted, and were saved from destruction by a gold chain. No wedding or
funeral was complete without him. And one morning, as he joined Mr. Parr
and the other gentlemen who responded to the appeal, "Let your light so
shine before men," a strange, ironical question entered the rector's
mind--was Gordon Atterbury the logical product of those doctrines which
he, Hodder, preached with such feeling and conviction?

None, at least, was so fervent a defender of the faith, so punctilious
in all observances, so constant at the altar rail; none so versed in
rubrics, ritual, and canon law; none had such a knowledge of the Church
fathers. Mr. Atterbury delighted to discuss them with the rector at the
dinner parties where they met; none was more zealous for foreign
missions. He was the treasurer of St. John's.

It should undoubtedly have been a consolation to any rector to possess
Mr. Atterbury's unqualified approval, to listen to his somewhat delphic
compliments,--heralded by a clearing of the throat. He represented
the faith as delivered to the saints, and he spoke for those in the
congregation to whom it was precious. Why was it that, to Hodder,
he should gradually have assumed something of the aspect of a Cerberus?
Why was it that he incited a perverse desire to utter heresies?

Hodder invariably turned from his contemplation of Gordon Atterbury to
the double blaring pew, which went from aisle to aisle. In his heart, he
would have preferred the approval of Eleanor Goodrich and her husband,
and of Asa Waring. Instinct spoke to him here; he seemed to read in
their faces that he failed to strike in them responsive chords. He was
drawn to them: the conviction grew upon him that he did not reach them,
and it troubled him, as he thought, disproportionately.

He could not expect to reach all. But they were the type to which he
most wished to appeal; of all of his flock, this family seemed best to
preserve the vitality and ideals of the city and nation. Asa Waring was
a splendid, uncompromising survival; his piercing eyes sometimes met
Hodder's across the church, and they held for him a question and a
riddle. Eleanor Goodrich bore on her features the stamp of true nobility
of character, and her husband, Hodder knew, was a man among men. In
addition to a respected lineage, he possessed an unusual blending of
aggressiveness and personal charm that men found irresistible.

The rector's office in the parish house was a businesslike room on the
first floor, fitted up with a desk, a table, straight-backed chairs, and
a revolving bookcase. And to it, one windy morning in March, came
Eleanor Goodrich. Hodder rose to greet her with an eagerness which,
from his kindly yet penetrating glance, she did not suspect.

"Am I interrupting you, Mr. Hodder?" she asked, a little breathlessly.

"Not at all," he said, drawing up a chair. "Won't you sit down?"

She obeyed. There was an awkward pause during which the colour slowly
rose to her face.

"I wanted to ask you one or two things," she began, not very steadily.
"As perhaps you may know, I was brought up in this church, baptized and
confirmed in it. I've come to fear that, when I was confirmed, I wasn't
old enough to know what I was doing."

She took a deep breath, amazed at her boldness, for this wasn't in the
least how she had meant to begin. And she gazed at the rector anxiously.
To her surprise, he did not appear to be inordinately shocked.

"Do you know any better now?" he asked.

"Perhaps not," she admitted. "But the things of which I was sure at that
time I am not sure of now. My faith is--is not as complete."

"Faith may be likened to an egg, Mrs. Goodrich," he said. "It must be
kept whole. If the shell is chipped, it is spoiled."

Eleanor plucked up her courage. Eggs, she declared, had been used as
illustrations by conservatives before now.

Hodder relieved her by smiling in ready appreciation.

"Columbus had reference to this world," he said. "I was thinking of a
more perfect cue."

"Oh!" she cried, "I dare say there is a more perfect one. I should hate
to think there wasn't--but I can't imagine it. There's nothing in the
Bible in the way of description of it to make me really wish to go there.
The New Jerusalem is too insipid, too material. I'm sure I'm shocking
you, but I must be honest, and say what I feel."

"If some others were as honest," said the rector, "the problems of
clergymen would be much easier. And it is precisely because people will
not tell us what they feel that we are left in the dark and cannot help
them. Of course, the language of St. John about the future is
figurative."

"Figurative,--yes," she consented, "but not figurative in a way that
helps me, a modern American woman. The figures, to be of any use, ought
to appeal to my imagination--oughtn't they? But they don't. I can't see
any utility in such a heaven--it seems powerless to enter as a factor
into my life."

"It is probable that we are not meant to know anything about the future."

"Then I wish it hadn't been made so explicit. Its very definiteness is
somehow--stultifying. And, Mr. Hodder, if we were not meant to know its
details, it seems to me that if the hereafter is to have any real value
and influence over our lives here, we should know something of its
conditions, because it must be in some sense a continuation of this.
I'm not sure that I make myself clear."

"Admirably clear. But we have our Lord's example of how to live here."

"If we could be sure," said Eleanor, "just what that example meant."

Hodder was silent a moment.

"You mean that you cannot accept what the Church teaches about his life?"
he asked.

"No, I can't," she faltered. "You have helped me to say it. I want to
have the Church's side better explained,--that's why I'm here." She
glanced up at him, hesitatingly, with a puzzled wonder, such a positive,
dynamic representative of that teaching did he appear. "And my husband
can't,--so many people I know can't, Mr. Hodder. Only, some of them
don't mention the fact. They accept it. And you say things with such a
certainty--" she paused.

"I know," he replied, "I know. I have felt it since I have come here
more than ever before." He did not add that he had felt it particularly
about her, about her husband: nor did he give voice to his instinctive
conviction that he respected and admired these two more than a hundred
others whose professed orthodoxy was without a flaw. "What is it in
particular," he asked, troubled, "that you cannot accept? I will do my
best to help you."

"Well--" she hesitated again.

"Please continue to be frank," he begged.

"I can't believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth," she responded in a
low voice; "it seems to me so--so material. And I feel I am stating a
difficulty that many have, Mr. Hodder. Why should it have been thought
necessary for God to have departed from what is really a sacred and
sublime fact in nature, to resort to a material proof in order to
convince a doubting humanity that Jesus was his Son? Oughtn't the proof
of Christ's essential God-ship to lie in his life, to be discerned by the
spiritual; and wasn't he continually rebuking those who demanded material
proof? The very acceptance of a material proof, it seems to me, is a
denial of faith, since faith ceases to have any worth whatever the moment
the demand for such proof is gratified. Knowledge puts faith out of
the question, for faith to me means a trusting on spiritual grounds.
And surely the acceptance of scriptural statements like that of the
miraculous birth without investigation is not faith--it is mere
credulity. If Jesus had been born in a miraculous way, the disciples
must have known it. Joseph must have known it when he heard the answer
'I must be about my father's business,' and their doubts are
unexplained."

"I see you have been investigating," said the rector.

"Yes," replied Eleanor, with an unconscious shade of defiance, "people
want to know, Mr. Dodder,--they want to know the truth. And if you
consider the preponderance of the evidence of the Gospels themselves--my
brother-in-law says--you will find that the miraculous birth has very
little to stand on. Take out the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke,
and the rest of the four Gospels practically contradict it. The
genealogies differ, and they both trace through Joseph."

"I think people suffer in these days from giving too much weight to
the critics of Christianity," said the rector, "from not pondering more
deeply on its underlying truths. Do not think that I am accusing you
of superficiality, Mrs. Goodrich; I am sure you wish to go to the bottom,
or else you would be satisfied with what you have already read and
heard."

"I do," she murmured.

"And the more one reflects on the life of our Lord, the more one is
convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential;
without it Christianity falls to pieces. Let us go at the matter the
other way round. If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at
once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual
human person,--in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but
still a human person. That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one
to go back to, instead of the ever-present, preexistent Son of God and
mankind. I will go as far as to assert that if the virgin birth had
never been mentioned in the Gospels, it would nevertheless inevitably
have become a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. Such a truth
is too vast, too far-reaching to have been neglected, and it has a much
higher significance than the mere record of a fact. In spite of the
contradictions of science, it explains as nothing else can the mystery
of the divinity as well as the humanity of the Saviour."

Eleanor was unconvinced. She felt, as she listened, the pressure of his
sincerity and force, and had to strive to prevent her thoughts from
becoming confused.

"No, Mr. Hodder, I simply can't see any reason for resorting to a
physical miracle in order to explain a spiritual mystery. I can see why
the ancients demanded a sign of divinity as it were. But for us it has
ceased even to be that. It can't be proved. You ask me, in the face of
overwhelming evidence against it, to teach my children that the
Incarnation depends on it, but when they grow up and go to college and
find it discredited they run the risk of losing everything else with it.
And for my part, I fail utterly to see why, if with God all things are
possible, it isn't quite as believable, as we gather from St. Mark's
Gospel, that he incarnated himself in one naturally born. If you reach
the conclusion that Jesus was not a mere individual human person, you
reach it through the contemplation of his life and death."

"Then it isn't the physical miracle you object to, especially?" he asked.

"It's the uselessness of it, for this age," she exclaimed. "I think
clergymen don't understand the harm it is doing in concentrating the
attention on such a vulnerable and non-essential point. Those of us who
are striving to reorganize our beliefs and make them tenable, do not
bother our heads about miracles. They may be true, or may not, or some
of them may be. We are beginning to see that the virgin birth does not
add anything to Christ. We are beginning to see that perfection and
individuality are not incompatible,--one is divine, and the other human.
And isn't it by his very individuality that we are able to recognize
Jesus to-day?"

"You have evidently thought and read a great deal," Dodder said,
genuinely surprised. "Why didn't you come to me earlier?"

Eleanor bit her lip. He smiled a little.

"I think I can answer that for you," he went on; "you believe we are
prejudiced,--I've no doubt many of us are. You think we are bound to
stand up for certain dogmas, or go down, and that our minds are
consequently closed. I am not blaming you," he added quickly, as she
gave a sign of protest, "but I assure you that most of us, so far as my
observation has gone, are honestly trying to proclaim the truth as we see
it."

"Insincerity is the last thing I should have accused you of, Mr. Hodder,"
she said flushing. "As I told you, you seem so sure."

"I don't pretend to infallibility, except so far as I maintain that the
Church is the guardian of certain truths which human experience has
verified. Let me ask you if you have thought out the difference your
conception of the Incarnation;--the lack of a patently divine commission,
as it were,--makes in the doctrine of grace?"

"Yes, I have," she answered, "a little. It gives me more hope. I cannot
think I am totally depraved. I do not believe that God wishes me to
think so. And while I am still aware of the distance between Christ's
perfection and my own imperfection, I feel that the possibility is
greater of lessening that distance. It gives me more self-respect, more
self-reliance. George Bridges says that the logical conclusion of that
old doctrine is what philosophers call determinism--Calvinistic
predestination. I can't believe in that. The kind of grace God gives me
is the grace to help myself by drawing force from the element of him in
my soul. He gives me the satisfaction of developing."

"Of one thing I am assured, Mrs. Goodrich," Hodder replied, "that the
logical result of independent thinking is anarchy. Under this modern
tendency toward individual creeds, the Church has split and split again
until, if it keeps on, we shall have no Church at all to carry on the
work of our Lord on earth. History proves that to take anything away from
the faith is to atrophy, to destroy it. The answer to your arguments is
to be seen on every side, atheism, hypocrisy, vice, misery, insane and
cruel grasping after wealth. There is only one remedy I can see," he
added, inflexibly, yet with a touch of sadness, "believe."

"What if we can't believe?" she asked.

"You can." He spoke with unshaken conviction.

"You can if you make the effort, and I am sure you will. My experience
is that in the early stages of spiritual development we are impervious to
certain truths. Will you permit me to recommend to you certain books
dealing with these questions in a modern way?"

"I will read them gladly," she said, and rose.

"And then, perhaps, we may have another talk," he added, looking down at
her. "Give my regards to your husband."

Yet, as he stood in the window looking after her retreating figure, there
gradually grew upon him a vague and uncomfortable feeling that he had not
been satisfactory, and this was curiously coupled with the realization
that the visit had added a considerable increment to his already
pronounced liking for Eleanor Goodrich. She was, paradoxically, his
kind of a person--such was the form the puzzle took. And so ably had
she presented her difficulties that, at one point of the discussion,
it had ironically occurred to him to refer her to Gordon Atterbury.
Mr. Atterbury's faith was like an egg, and he took precious care not
to have it broken or chipped.

Hodder found himself smiling. It was perhaps inevitable that he began at
once to contrast Mrs. Goodrich with other feminine parishioners who had
sought him out, and who had surrendered unconditionally. They had
evinced an equally disturbing tendency,--a willingness to be overborne.
For had he not, indeed, overborne them? He could not help suspecting
these other ladies of a craving for the luxury of the confessional. One
thing was certain,--he had much less respect for them than for Eleanor
Goodrich . . . .

That afternoon he sent her the list of books. But the weeks passed,
and she did not come back. Once, when he met her at a dinner of Mrs.
Preston's, both avoided the subject of her visit, both were conscious
of a constraint. She did not know how often, unseen by her, his eyes had
sought her out from the chancel. For she continued to come to church as
frequently as before, and often brought her husband.



II

One bright and boisterous afternoon in March, Hodder alighted from an
electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the
stone gate-houses of that 'rus in urbe', Waverley Place, and at the gold
block-letters written thereon, "No Thoroughfare." Against those gates
and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush of the city had beaten in
vain, and, baffled, had swept around their serene enclosure, westward.

Within, a silvery sunlight lit up the grass of the island running down
the middle, and in the beds the softening earth had already been broken
by the crocus sheaves. The bare branches of the trees swayed in the
gusts. As Hodder penetrated this hallowed precinct he recognized, on
either hand, the residences of several of his parishioners, each in its
ample allotted space: Mrs. Larrabbee's; the Laureston Greys'; Thurston
Gore's, of which Mr. Wallis Plimpton was now the master,--Mr. Plimpton,
before whose pertinacity the walls of Jericho had fallen; and finally the
queer, twisted Richardson mansion of the Everett Constables, whither he
was bound, with its recessed doorway and tiny windows peeping out from
under mediaeval penthouses.

He was ushered into a library where the shades were already drawn, where
a-white-clothed tea-table was set before the fire, the red rays dancing
on the silver tea-kettle. On the centre-table he was always sure to
find, neatly set in a rack, the books about which the world was talking,
or rather would soon begin to talk; and beside them were ranged
magazines; French, English, and American, Punch, the Spectator, the
Nation, the 'Revue des deux Mondes'. Like the able general she was,
Mrs. Constable kept her communications open, and her acquaintance was by
no means confined to the city of her nativity. And if a celebrity were
passing through, it were pretty safe, if in doubt, to address him in her
care.

Hodder liked and admired her, but somehow she gave him the impression of
having attained her ascendancy at a price, an ascendancy which had
apparently been gained by impressing upon her environment a new note
--literary, aesthetic, cosmopolitan. She held herself, and those she
carried with her, abreast of the times, and he was at a loss to see how
so congenial an effort could have left despite her sweetness--the little
mark of hardness he discerned, of worldliness. For she was as well born
as any woman in the city, and her husband was a Constable. He had
inherited, so the rector had been informed, one of those modest fortunes
that were deemed affluence in the eighties. His keeping abreast of the
times was the enigma, and Hodder had often wondered how financial genius
had contrived to house itself in the well-dressed, gently pompous little
man whose lack of force seemed at times so painfully evident. And yet he
was rated one of the rich men of the city, and his name Hodder had read
on many boards with Mr. Parr's!

A person more versed in the modern world of affairs than the late rector
of Bremerton would not have been so long in arriving at the answer to
this riddle. Hodder was astute, he saw into people more than they
suspected, but he was not sophisticated.

He stood picturing, now, the woman in answer to whose summons he had
come. With her finely chiselled features, her abundant white hair, her
slim figure and erect carriage she reminded him always of a Vigee Lebrun
portrait. He turned at the sound of her voice behind him.

"How good of you to come, Mr. Hodder, when you were so busy," she said,
taking his hand as she seated herself behind the tea-kettle. "I wanted
the chance to talk to you, and it seemed the best way. What is that you
have, Soter's book?"

"I pinked it up on the table," he explained.

"Then you haven't read it? You ought to. As a clergyman, it would
interest you. Religion treated from the economic side, you know, the
effect of lack of nutrition on character. Very unorthodox, of course."

"I find that I have very little time to read," he said. "I sometimes
take a book along in the cars."

"Your profession is not so leisurely as it once was, I often think it
such a pity. But you, too, are paying the penalty of complexity." She
smiled at him sympathetically. "How is Mr. Parr? I haven't seen him for
several weeks."

"He seemed well when I saw him last," replied Hodder.

"He's a wonderful man; the amount of work he accomplishes without
apparent effort is stupendous." Mrs. Constable cast what seemed a
tentative glance at the powerful head, and handed him his tea.
"I wanted to talk to you about Gertrude," she said.

He looked unenlightened.

"About my daughter, Mrs. Warren. She lives in New York, you know
--on Long Island."

Then he had remembered something he had heard.

"Yes," he said.

"She met you, at the Fergusons', just for a moment, when she was out here
last autumn. What really nice and simple people the Fergusons are, with
all their money!"

"Very nice indeed," he agreed, puzzled.

"I have been sorry for them in the past," she went on evenly. "They had
rather a hard time--perhaps you may have heard. Nobody appreciated them.
They were entombed, so to speak, in a hideous big house over on the South
Side, which fortunately burned down, and then they bought in Park Street,
and took a pew in St. John's. I suppose the idea of that huge department
store was rather difficult to get used to. But I made up my mind it was
nonsense to draw the line at department stores, especially since Mr.
Ferguson's was such a useful and remarkable one, so I went across and
called. Mrs. Ferguson was so grateful, it was almost pathetic. And
she's a very good friend--she came here everyday when Genevieve had
appendicitis."

"She's a good woman," the rector said.

"And Nan,--I adore Nan, everybody adores Nan. She reminds me of one of
those exquisite, blue-eyed dolls her father imports. Now if I were a
bachelor, Mr. Hodder--!" Mrs. Constable left the rest to his
imagination.

He smiled.

"I'm afraid Miss Ferguson has her own ideas." Running through Hodder's
mind, a troubled current, were certain memories connected with Mrs.
Warren. Was she the divorced daughter, or was she not?

"But I was going to speak to you about Gertrude. She's had such a
hard time, poor dear, my heart has bled for her." There was a barely
perceptible tremor in Mrs. Constable's voice. "All that publicity, and
the inevitable suffering connected with it! And no one can know the
misery she went through, she is so sensitive. But now, at last, she has
a chance for happiness--the real thing has come."

"The real thing!" he echoed.

"Yes. She's going to marry a splendid man, Eldridge Sumner. I know the
family well. They have always stood for public spirit, and this Mr.
Summer, although he is little over thirty, was chairman of that Vice
Commission which made such a stir in New York a year ago. He's a lawyer,
with a fine future, and they're madly in love. And Gertrude realizes
now, after her experience, the true values in life. She was only a child
when she married Victor Warren."

"But Mr. Warren," Hodder managed to say, "is still living."

"I sometimes wonder, Mr. Hodder," she went on hurriedly, "whether we can
realize how different the world is today from what it was twenty years
ago, until something of this kind is actually brought home to us.
I shall never forget how distressed, how overwhelmed Mr. Constable and I
were when Gertrude got her divorce. I know that they are regarding such
things differently in the East, but out here!--We never dreamed that such
a thing could happen to us, and we regarded it as a disgrace. But
gradually--" she hesitated, and looked at the motionless clergyman
--"gradually I began to see Gertrude's point of view, to understand that
she had made a mistake, that she had been too young to comprehend what
she was doing. Victor Warren had been ruined by money, he wasn't
faithful to her, but an extraordinary thing has happened in his case.
He's married again, and Gertrude tells me he's absurdly happy, and has
two children."

As he listened, Hodder's dominating feeling was amazement that such a
course as her daughter had taken should be condoned by this middle-aged
lady, a prominent member of his congregation and the wife of a vestryman,
who had been nurtured and steeped in Christianity. And not only that:
Mrs. Constable was plainly defending a further step, which in his opinion
involved a breach of the Seventh Commandment! To have invaded these
precincts, the muddy, turbulent river of individualism had risen higher
than he would have thought possible . . . .

"Wait!" she implored, checking his speech,--she had been watching him
with what was plainly anxiety, "don't say anything yet. I have a letter
here which she wrote me--at the time. I kept it. Let me read a part of
it to you, that you may understand more fully the tragedy of it."

Mrs. Constable thrust her hand into her lap and drew forth a thickly
covered sheet.

"It was written just after she left him--it is an answer to my protest,"
she explained, and began to read:

"I know I promised to love Victor, mother, but how can one promise to
do a thing over which one has no control? I loved him after he stopped
loving me. He wasn't a bit suited to me--I see that now--he was
attracted by the outside of me, and I never knew what he was like until I
married him. His character seemed to change completely; he grew morose
and quick-tempered and secretive, and nothing I did pleased him. We led
a cat-and-dog life. I never let you know--and yet I see now we might
have got along in any other relationship. We were very friendly when we
parted, and I'm not a bit jealous because he cares for another woman who
I can see is much better suited to him.

"'I can't honestly regret leaving him, and I'm not conscious of having
done anything wrong. I don't want to shock you, and I know how terribly
you and father must feel, but I can see now, somehow, that I had to go
through this experience, terrible as it was, to find myself. If it were
thirty years ago, before people began to be liberal in such matters,
I shudder to think what might have become of me. I should now be one of
those terrible women between fifty and sixty who have tried one frivolity
and excess after another--but I'm not coming to that! And my friends
have really been awfully kind, and supported me--even Victor's family.
Don't, don't think that I'm not respectable! I know how you look at such
things.'" Mrs. Constable closed the letter abruptly.

"I did look at such things in that way," she added, "but I've changed.
That letter helped to change me, and the fact that it was Gertrude who
had been through this. If you only knew Gertrude, Mr. Hodder, you
couldn't possibly think of her as anything but sweet and pure."

Although the extent of Hodder's acquaintance with Mrs. Warren had been
but five minutes, the letter had surprisingly retouched to something like
brilliancy her faded portrait, the glow in her cheeks, the iris blue in
her eyes. He recalled the little shock he had experienced when told that
she was divorced, for her appeal had lain in her very freshness, her
frank and confiding manner. She was one of those women who seem to say,
"Here I am, you can't but like me:" And he had responded--he remembered
that--he had liked her. And now her letter, despite his resistance, had
made its appeal, so genuinely human was it, so honest, although it
expressed a philosophy he abhorred.

Mrs. Constable was watching him mutely, striving to read in his grave
eyes the effect of her pleadings.

"You are telling me this, Mrs. Constable--why?" he asked.

"Because I wished you to know the exact situation before I asked you, as
a great favour to me, to Mr. Constable, to--to marry her in St. John's.
Of course," she went on, controlling her rising agitation, and
anticipating a sign of protest, "we shouldn't expect to have any people,
---and Gertrude wasn't married in St. John's before; that wedding was at
Passumset our seashore place. Oh, Mr. Hodder, before you answer, think
of our feelings, Mr. Constable's and mine! If you could see Mr.
Constable, you would know how he suffers--this thing has upset him more
than the divorce. His family have such pride. I am so worried about
him, and he doesn't eat anything and looks so haggard. I told him I
would see you and explain and that seemed to comfort him a little.
She is, after all, our child, and we don't want to feel, so far as our
church is concerned, that she is an Ishmaelite; we don't want to have the
spectacle of her having to go around, outside, to find a clergyman--that
would be too dreadful! I know how strict, how unflinching you are, and I
admire you for it. But this is a special case."

She paused, breathing deeply, and Hodder gazed at her with pity. What he
felt was more than pity; he was experiencing, indeed, but with a deeper
emotion, something of that same confusion of values into which Eleanor
Goodrich's visit had thrown him. At the same time it had not escaped his
logical mind that Mrs. Constable had made her final plea on the score of
respectability.

"It gives me great pain to have to refuse you," he said gently.

"Oh, don't," she said sharply, "don't say that! I can't have made the
case clear. You are too big, too comprehending, Mr. Hodder, to have a
hard-and-fast rule. There must be times--extenuating circumstances--and
I believe the canons make it optional for a clergyman to marry the
innocent person."

"Yes, it is optional, but I do, not believe it should be. The question
is left to the clergyman's' conscience. According to my view, Mrs.
Constable, the Church, as the agent of God, effects an indissoluble bond.
And much as I should like to do anything in my power for you and Mr.
Constable, you have asked the impossible,--believing as I do, there can
be no special case, no extenuating circumstance. And it is my duty to
tell you it is because people to-day are losing their beliefs that we
have this lenient attitude toward the sacred things. If they still held
the conviction that marriage is of God, they would labour to make it a
success, instead of flying apart at the first sign of what they choose to
call incompatibility."

"But surely," she said, "we ought not to be punished for our mistakes!
I cannot believe that Christ himself intended that his religion should be
so inelastic, so hard and fast, so cruel as you imply. Surely there is
enough unhappiness without making more. You speak of incompatibility
--but is it in all cases such an insignificant matter? We are beginning
to realize in these days something of the effects of character on
character,--deteriorating effects, in many instances. With certain
persons we are lifted up, inspired to face the battle of life and
overcome its difficulties. I have known fine men and women whose lives
have been stultified or ruined because they were badly mated. And I
cannot see that the character of my own daughter has deteriorated because
she has got a divorce from a man with whom she was profoundly out of
sympathy--of harmony. On the contrary, she seems more of a person than
she was; she has clearer, saner views of life; she has made her mistake
and profited by it. Her views changed--Victor Warren's did not. She
began to realize that some other woman might have an influence over his
life--she had none, simply because he did not love her. And love is not
a thing we can compel."

"You are making it very hard for me, Mrs. Constable," he said.
"You are now advocating an individualism with which the Church can have
no sympathy. Christianity teaches us that life is probationary, and if
we seek to avoid the trials sent us, instead of overcoming them, we find
ourselves farther than ever from any solution. We have to stand by our
mistakes. If marriage is to be a mere trial of compatibility, why go
through a ceremony than which there is none more binding in human and
divine institutions? One either believes in it, or one does not. And,
if belief be lacking, the state provides for the legalization of
marriages."

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

"If persons wish to be married in church in these days merely because it
is respectable, if such be their only reason, they are committing a great
wrong. They are taking an oath before God with reservations, knowing
that public opinion will release them if the marriage does not fulfil
their expectations."

For a moment she gazed at him with parted lips, and pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes began silently to cry. The sudden spectacle,
in this condition, of a self-controlled woman of the world was infinitely
distressing to Hodder, whose sympathies were even more sensitive than
(in her attempt to play upon them) she had suspected. . . She was
aware that he had got to his feet, and was standing beside her, speaking
with an oddly penetrating tenderness.

"I did not mean to be harsh," he said, "and it is not that I do not
understand how you feel. You have made my duty peculiarly difficult."

She raised up to him a face from which the mask had fallen, from which
the illusory look of youth had fled. He turned away. . . And
presently she began to speak again; in disconnected sentences.

"I so want her to be happy--I cannot think, I will not think that she has
wrecked her life--it would be too unjust, too cruel. You cannot know
what it is to be a woman!"

Before this cry he was silent.

"I don't ask anything of God except that she shall have a chance, and it
seems to me that he is making the world better--less harsh for women."

He did not reply. And presently she looked up at him again, steadfastly
now, searchingly. The barriers of the conventions were down, she had
cast her pride to the winds. He seemed to read in her a certain relief.

"I am going to tell you something, Mr. Hodder, which you may think
strange, but I have a reason for saying it. You are still a young man,
and I feel instinctively that you have an unusual career before you. You
interested me the first time you stepped into the pulpit of St. John's
--and it will do me good to talk to you, this once, frankly. You have
reiterated to-day, in no uncertain terms, doctrines which I once
believed, which I was brought up to think infallible. But I have
lived since then, and life itself has made me doubt them.

"I recognize in you a humanity, a sympathy and breadth which you are
yourself probably not aware of, all of which is greater than the rule
which you so confidently apply to fit all cases. It seems to me that
Christ did not intend us to have such rules. He went beyond them, into
the spirit.

"Under the conditions of society--of civilization to-day, most marriages
are merely a matter of chance. Even judgment cannot foresee the
development of character brought about by circumstances, by environment.
And in many marriages I have known about intimately both the man and the
woman have missed the most precious thing that life can give something I
cannot but think--God intends us to have. You see,"--she smiled at him
sadly--"I am still a little of an idealist.

"I missed--the thing I am talking about, and it has been the great sorrow
of my life--not only on my account, but on my husband's. And so far as I
am concerned, I am telling you the truth when I say I should have been
content to have lived in a log cabin if--if the gift had been mine. Not
all the money in the world, nor the intellect, nor the philanthropy--the
so-called interests of life, will satisfy me for its denial. I am a
disappointed woman, I sometimes think a bitter woman. I can't believe
that life is meant to be so. Those energies have gone into ambition
which should have been absorbed by--by something more worth while.

"And I can see so plainly now that my husband would have been far, far
happier with another kind of woman. I drew him away from the only work
he ever enjoyed--his painting. I do not say he ever could have been a
great artist, but he had a little of the divine spark, in his enthusiasm
at least--in his assiduity. I shall never forget our first trip abroad,
after we were married--he was like a boy in the galleries, in the
studios. I could not understand it then. I had no real sympathy with
art, but I tried to make sacrifices, what I thought were Christian
sacrifices. The motive power was lacking, and no matter how hard I
tried, I was only half-hearted, and he realized it instinctively--no
amount of feigning could deceive him. Something deep in me, which was a
part of my nature, was antagonistic, stultifying to the essentials of his
own being. Of course neither of us saw that then, but the results were
not long in developing. To him, art was a sacred thing, and it was
impossible for me to regard it with equal seriousness. He drew into
himself,--closed up, as it were,--no longer discussed it. I was hurt.
And when we came home he kept on in business--he still had his father's
affairs to look after--but he had a little workroom at the top of the
house where he used to go in the afternoon . . . .

"It was a question which one of us should be warped,--which personality
should be annihilated, so to speak, and I was the stronger. And as I
look back, Mr. Hodder, what occurred seems to me absolutely inevitable,
given the ingredients, as inevitable as a chemical process. We were both
striving against each other, and I won--at a tremendous cost. The
conflict, one might say, was subconscious, instinctive rather than
deliberate. My attitude forced him back into business, although we had
enough to live on very comfortably, and then the scale of life began to
increase, luxuries formerly unthought of seemed to become necessities.
And while it was still afar off I saw a great wave rolling toward us, the
wave of that new prosperity which threatened to submerge us, and I seized
the buoy fate had placed in our hands,--or rather, by suggestion, I
induced my husband to seize it--his name.

"I recognized the genius, the future of Eldon Parr at a time when he was
not yet independent and supreme, when association with a Constable meant
much to him. Mr. Parr made us, as the saying goes. Needless to say;
money has not brought happiness, but a host of hard, false ambitions
which culminated in Gertrude's marriage with Victor Warren. I set my
heart on the match, helped it in every, way, and until now nothing but
sorrow has come of it. But my point--is this,--I see so clearly, now
that it is too late, that two excellent persons may demoralize each other
if they are ill-mated. It may be possible that I had the germs of false
ambition in me when I was a girl, yet I was conscious only of the ideal
which is in most women's hearts . . . .

"You must not think that I have laid my soul bare in the hope of changing
your mind in regard to Gertrude. I recognize clearly, now, that that is
impossible. Oh, I know you do not so misjudge me," she added, reading
his quick protest in his face.

"Indeed, I cannot analyze my reasons for telling you something of which I
have never spoken to any one else."

Mrs. Constable regarded him fixedly. "You are the strongest reason.
You have somehow drawn it out of me . . . . And I suppose I wish some
one to profit by it. You can, Mr. Hodder,--I feel sure of that. You may
insist now that my argument against your present conviction of the
indissolubility of marriage is mere individualism, but I want you to
think of what I have told you, not to answer me now. I know your
argument by heart, that Christian character develops by submission,
by suffering, that it is the woman's place to submit, to efface herself.
But the root of the matter goes deeper than that. I am far from
deploring sacrifice, yet common-sense tells us that our sacrifice should
be guided by judgment, that foolish sacrifices are worse than useless.
And there are times when the very limitations of our individuality
--necessary limitation's for us--prevent our sacrifices from counting.

"I was wrong, I grant you, grievously wrong in the course I took, even
though it were not consciously deliberate. But if my husband had been an
artist I should always have remained separated from his real life by a
limitation I had no power to remove. The more I tried, the more apparent
my lack of insight became to him, the more irritated he grew. I studied
his sketches, I studied masterpieces, but it was all hopeless. The thing
wasn't in me, and he knew it wasn't. Every remark made him quiver.

"The Church, I think, will grow more liberal, must grow more liberal, if
it wishes to keep in touch with people in an age when they are thinking
out these questions for themselves. The law cannot fit all cases, I am
sure the Gospel can. And sometimes women have an instinct, a kind of
second sight into persons, Mr. Hodder. I cannot explain why I feel that
you have in you elements of growth which will eventually bring you more
into sympathy with the point of view I have set forth, but I do feel it."

Hodder did not attempt to refute her--she had, indeed, made discussion
impossible. She knew his arguments, as she had declared, and he had the
intelligence to realize that a repetition of them, on his part, would be
useless. She brought home to him, as never before, a sense of the
anomalistic position of the Church in these modern days, of its
appallingly lessened weight even with its own members. As a successor of
the Apostles, he had no power over this woman, or very little; he could
neither rebuke her, nor sentence her to penance. She recognized his
authority to marry her daughter, to baptize her daughter's children,
but not to interfere in any way with her spiritual life. It was as a
personality he had moved her--a personality apparently not in harmony
with his doctrine. Women had hinted at this before. And while Mrs.
Constable had not, as she perceived, shaken his conviction, the very
vividness and unexpectedness of a confession from her--had stirred him to
the marrow, had opened doors, perforce, which he, himself had marked
forbidden, and given him a glimpse beyond before he could lower his eyes.
Was there, after all, something in him that responded in spite of
himself?

He sat gazing at her, his head bent, his strong hands on the arms of the
chair.

"We never can foresee how we may change," he answered, a light in his
eyes that was like a smile, yet having no suggestion of levity. And his
voice--despite his disagreement--maintained the quality of his sympathy.
Neither felt the oddity, then, of the absence of a jarring note. "You
may be sure, at least, of my confidence, and of my gratitude for what you
have told me."

His tone belied the formality of his speech. Mrs. Constable returned his
gaze in silence, and before words came again to either, a step sounded on
the threshold and Mr. Constable entered.

Hodder looked at him with a new vision. His face was indeed lined and
worn, and dark circles here under his eyes. But at Mrs. Constable's
"Here's Mr. Hodder, dear," he came forward briskly to welcome the
clergyman.

"How do you do?" he said cordially. "We don't see you very often."

"I have been telling Mr. Hodder that modern rectors of big parishes have
far too many duties," said his wife.

And after a few minutes of desultory conversation, the rector left.




CHAPTER VI

"WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?"

It was one of those moist nights of spring when the air is pungent with
the odour of the softened earth, and the gentle breaths that stirred
the curtains in Mr. Parr's big dining-room wafted, from the garden,
the perfumes of a revived creation,--delicious, hothouse smells.
At intervals, showers might be heard pattering on the walk outside.
The rector of St. John's was dining with his great parishioner.

Here indeed were a subject for some modern master, a chance to picture
for generations to come an aspect of a mighty age, an age that may some
day be deemed but a grotesque and anomalistic survival of a more ancient
logic; a gargoyle carved out of chaos, that bears on its features a
resemblance to the past and the future.

Our scene might almost be mediaeval with its encircling gloom, through
which the heavy tapestries and shadowy corners of the huge apartment may
be dimly made out. In the center, the soft red glow of the candles, the
gleaming silver, the shining cloth, the Church on one side--and what on
the other? No name given it now, no royal name, but still Power. The
two are still in apposition, not yet in opposition, but the discerning
may perchance read a prophecy in the salient features of the priest.

The Man of Power of the beginning of the twentieth century demands
a subtler analysis, presents an enigma to which the immortal portraits
of forgotten Medicis and Capets give no clew. Imagine, if you can,
a Lorenzo or a Grand Louis in a tightly-buttoned frock coat! There must
be some logical connection between the habit and the age, since crimson
velvet and gold brocade would have made Eldon Parr merely ridiculous.

He is by no means ridiculous, yet take him out of the setting and put him
in the street, and you might pass him a dozen times without noticing him.
Nature, and perhaps unconscious art, have provided him with a protective
exterior; he is the colour of his jungle. After he has crippled you
--if you survive--you will never forget him. You will remember his eye,
which can be unsheathed like a rapier; you will recall his lips as the
expression of a relentless negative. The significance of the slight
bridge on the narrow nose is less easy to define. He is neither tall
nor short; his face is clean-shaven, save for scanty, unobtrusive
reddish tufts high on the cheeks; his hair is thin.

It must be borne in mind, however, that our rector did not see him in his
jungle, and perhaps in the traditional nobility of the lion there is a
certain truth. An interesting biography of some of the powerful of this
earth might be written from the point of view of the confessor or the
physician, who find something to love, something to pity, and nothing to
fear--thus reversing the sentiments of the public.

Yet the friendship between John Hodder and Eldon Parr defied any definite
analysis on the rector's part, and was perhaps the strangest--and most
disquieting element that had as yet come into Hodder's life. The nature
of his intimacy with the banker, if intimacy it might be called, might
have surprised his other parishioners if they could have been hidden
spectators of one of these dinners. There were long silences when the
medium of communication, tenuous at best, seemed to snap, and the two sat
gazing at each other as from mountain peaks across impassable valleys.
With all the will in the world, their souls lost touch, though the sense
in the clergyman of the other's vague yearning for human companionship
was never absent. It was this yearning that attracted Hodder, who found
in it a deep pathos.

After one of these intervals of silence, Eldon Parr looked up from his
claret.

"I congratulate you, Hodder, on the stand you took in regard to
Constable's daughter," he said.

"I didn't suppose it was known," answered the rector, in surprise.

"Constable told me. I have reason to believe that he doesn't sympathize
with his wife in her attitude on this matter. It's pulled him down,
--you've noticed that he looks badly?"

"Yes," said the rector. He did not care to discuss the affair; he had
hoped it would not become known; and he shunned the congratulations of
Gordon Atterbury, which in such case would be inevitable. And in spite
of the conviction that he had done his duty, the memory of his talk with
Mrs. Constable never failed to make him, uncomfortable.

Exasperation crept into Mr. Pares voice.

"I can't think what's got into women in these times--at Mrs. Constable's
age they ought to know better. Nothing restrains them. They have
reached a point where they don't even respect the Church. And when that
happens, it is serious indeed. The Church is the governor on our social
engine, and it is supposed to impose a restraint upon the lawless."

Hodder could not refrain from smiling a little at the banker's
conception.

"Doesn't that reduce the Church somewhere to the level of the police
force?" he asked.

"Not at all," said Eldon Parr, whose feelings seemed to be rising.
"I am sorry for Constable. He feels the shame of this thing keenly,
and he ought to go away for a while to one of these quiet resorts.
I offered him my car. Sometimes I think that women have no morals.
At any rate, this modern notion of giving them their liberty is sheer
folly. Look what they have done with it! Instead of remaining at home,
where they belong, they are going out into the world and turning it
topsy-turvy. And if a man doesn't let them have a free hand, they get
a divorce and marry some idiot who will."

Mr. Parr pushed back his chair and rose abruptly, starting for the door.
The rector followed him, forcibly struck by the unusual bitterness in his
tone.

"If I have spoken strongly, it is because I feel strongly," he said in a
strange, thickened voice. "Hodder, how would you like to live in this
house--alone?"

The rector looked down upon him with keen, comprehending eyes, and saw
Eldon Parr as he only, of all men, had seen him. For he himself did not
understand his own strange power of drawing forth the spirit from its
shell, of compelling the inner, suffering thing to reveal itself.

"This poison," Eldon Parr went on unevenly, "has eaten into my own
family. My daughter, who might have been a comfort and a companion,
since she chose not to marry, was carried away by it, and thought it
incumbent upon her to have a career of her own. And now I have a choice
of thirty rooms, and not a soul to share them with. Sometimes, at night,
I make up my mind to sell this house. But I can't do it--something holds
me back, hope, superstition, or whatever you've a mind to call it.
You've never seen all of the house, have you?" he asked.

The rector slowly shook his head, and the movement might have been one
that he would have used in acquiescence to the odd whim of a child. Mr.
Parr led the way up the wide staircase to the corridor above, traversing
chamber after chamber, turning on the lights.

"These were my wife's rooms," he said, "they are just as she left them.
And these my daughter Alison's, when she chooses to pay me a visit.
I didn't realize that I should have to spend the last years of my life
alone. And I meant, when I gave my wife a house, to have it the best in
the city. I spared nothing on it, as you see, neither care nor money.
I had the best architect I could find, and used the best material.
And what good is it to me? Only a reminder--of what might have been.
But I've got a boy, Hodder,--I don't know whether I've ever spoken of him
to you--Preston. He's gone away, too. But I've always had the hope that
he might come back and get decently married, and live, here. That's why
I stay. I'll show you his picture."

They climbed to the third floor, and while Mr. Parr way searching for
the electric switch, a lightning flash broke over the forests of the
park, prematurely revealing the room. It was a boy's room, hung with
photographs of school and college crews and teams and groups of
intimates, with deep window seats, and draped pennons of Harvard
University over the fireplace. Eldon Parr turned to one of the groups on
the will, the earliest taken at school.

"There he is," he said, pointing out a sunny little face at the bottom,
a boy of twelve, bareheaded, with short, crisping yellow hair, smiling
lips and laughing eyes. "And here he is again," indicating another
group. Thus he traced him through succeeding years until they came to
those of college.

"There he is," said the rector. "I think I can pick him out now."

"Yes; that's Preston," said his father, staring hard at the picture. The
face had developed, the body had grown almost to man's estate, but the
hint of crispness was still in the hair, the mischievous laughter in the
eyes. The rector gazed earnestly at the face, remembering his own
boyhood, his own youth, his mind dwelling, too, on what he had heard
of the original of the portrait. What had happened to the boy, to bring
to naught the fair promise of this earlier presentment?

He was aroused by the voice of Eldon Parr, who had sunk into one of the
leather chairs.

"I can see him now," he was saying, "as he used to come running down that
long flight of stone steps in Ransome Street to meet me when I came home.
Such laughter! And once, in his eagerness, he fell and cut his forehead.
I shall never forget how I felt. And when I picked him up he tried to
laugh still, with the tears rolling down his face. You know the way a
child's breath catches, Hodder? He was always laughing. And how he used
to cling to me, and beg me to take him out, and show such an interest in
everything! He was a bright boy, a remarkable child, I thought, but I
suppose it was my foolishness. He analyzed all he saw, and when he used
to go off in my car, Brennan, the engineer, would always beg to have
him in the cab. And such sympathy! He knew in an instant when I was
worried. I had dreams of what that boy would become, but I was too sure
of it. I went on doing other things--there were so many things, and I
was a slave to them. And before I knew it, he'd gone off to school.
That was the year I moved up here, and my wife died. And after that,
all seemed to go wrong. Perhaps I was too severe; perhaps they didn't
understand him at boarding-school; perhaps I didn't pay enough attention
to him. At any rate, the first thing I knew his whole nature seemed to
have changed. He got into scrape after scrape at Harvard, and later he
came within an ace of marrying a woman.

"He's my weakness to-day. I can say no to everybody in the world but to
him, and when I try to remember him as he used to come down those steps
on Ransome Street . . . .

"He never knew how much I cared--that what I was doing was all for him,
building for him, that he might carry on my work. I had dreams of
developing this city, the great Southwest, and after I had gone Preston
was to bring them to fruition.

"For some reason I never was able to tell him all this--as I am telling
you. The words would not come. We had grown apart. And he seemed to
think--God knows why!--he seemed to think I disliked him. I had Langmaid
talk to him, and other men I trusted--tell him what an unparalleled
opportunity he had to be of use in the world. Once I thought I had him
started straight and then a woman came along--off the streets, or little
better. He insisted on marrying her and wrecking his life, and when
I got her out of the way, as any father would have done, he left me. He
has never forgiven me. Most of the time I haven't even the satisfaction
of knowing were he is--London, Paris, or New York. I try not to think
of what he does. I ought to cut him off,--I can't do it--I can't do it,
Hodder--he's my one weakness still. I'm afraid--he'd sink out of sight
entirely, and it's the one hold I have left on him."

Eldon Parr paused, with a groan that betokened not only a poignant
sorrow, but also something of relief--for the tortures of not being able
to unburden himself had plainly become intolerable. He glanced up and
met the compassionate eyes of the rector, who stood leaning against the
mantel.

"With Alison it was different," he said. "I never understood her--even
when she was a child--and I used to look at her and wonder that she could
be my daughter. She was moody, intense, with a yearning for affection
I've since sometimes thought--she could not express. I did not feel the
need of affection in those days, so absorbed was I in building up,
--so absorbed and driven, you might say. I suppose I must accept my
punishment as just. But the child was always distant with me, and I
always remember her in rebellion; a dark little thing with a quivering
lip, hair awry, and eyes that flashed through her tears. She would take
any amount of punishment rather than admit she had been in the wrong.
I recall she had once a fox terrier that never left her, that fought all
the dogs in the neighbourhood and destroyed the rugs and cushions in the
house. I got rid of it one summer when she was at the sea, and I think
she never forgave me. The first question she asked when she came home
was for that dog--Mischief, his name was--for Mischief. I told her what
I had done. It took more courage than I had thought. She went to her
room, locked herself in, and stayed there, and we couldn't get her to
come out for two days; she wouldn't even eat.

"Perhaps she was jealous of Preston, but she never acknowledged it. When
she was little she used once in a while to come shyly and sit on my lap,
and look at me without saying anything. I hadn't the slightest notion
what was in the child's mind, and her reserve increased as she grew
older. She seemed to have developed a sort of philosophy of her own even
before she went away to school, and to have certain strongly defined
tastes. She liked, for instance, to listen to music, and for that very
reason would never learn to play. We couldn't make her, as a child.

"Bad music, she said, offended her. She painted, she was passionately
fond of flowers, and her room was always filled with them. When she came
back from school to live with me, she built a studio upstairs. After
the first winter, she didn't care to go out much. By so pronounced a
character, young men in general were not attracted, but there were a few
who fell under a sort of spell. I can think of no other words strong
enough, and I used to watch them when they came here with a curious
interest. I didn't approve of all of them. Alison would dismiss them
or ignore them or be kind to them as she happened to feel, yet it didn't
seem to make any difference. One I suspect she was in love with
--a fellow without a cent.

"Then there was Bedloe Hubbell. I have reason enough to be thankful
now that she didn't care for him. They've made him president, you know,
of this idiotic Municipal League, as they call it. But in those days he
hadn't developed any nonsense, he was making a good start at the bar,
and was well off. His father was Elias Hubbell, who gave the Botanical
Garden to the city. I wanted her to marry Gordon Atterbury. He hung on
longer than any of them--five or six years; but she wouldn't hear of it.
That was how the real difference developed between us, although the
trouble was deep rooted, for we never really understood each other. I
had set my heart on it, and perhaps I was too dictatorial and insistent.
I don't know. I meant the best for her, God knows . . . . Gordon
never got over it. It dried him up." . . . . Irritation was creeping
back into the banker's voice.

"Then it came into Alison's head that she wanted to 'make something of
her life,'--as she expressed it. She said she was wasting herself, and
began going to lectures with a lot of faddish women, became saturated
with these nonsensical ideas about her sex that are doing so much harm
nowadays. I suppose I was wrong in my treatment from the first. I never
knew how to handle her, but we grew like flint and steel. I'll say this
for her, she kept quiet enough, but she used to sit opposite me at the
table, and I knew all the time what she was thinking of, and then I'd
break out. Of course she'd defend herself, but she had her temper under
better control than I. She wanted to go away for a year or two and study
landscape gardening, and then come back and establish herself in an
office here. I wouldn't listen to it. And one morning, when she was
late to breakfast, I delivered an ultimatum. I gave her a lecture on a
woman's place and a woman's duty, and told her that if she didn't marry
she'd have to stay here and live quietly with me, or I'd disinherit her."

Hodder had become absorbed in this portrait of Alison Parr, drawn by her
father with such unconscious vividness.

"And then?" he asked.

In spite of the tone of bitterness in which he had spoken, Eldon Parr
smiled. It was a reluctant tribute to his daughter.

"I got an ultimatum in return," he said. "Alison should have been a
man." His anger mounted quickly as he recalled the scene. "She said she
had thought it all out: that our relationship had become impossible; that
she had no doubt it was largely her fault, but that was the way she was
made, and she couldn't change. She had, naturally, an affection for me
as her father, but it was very plain we couldn't get along together: she
was convinced that she had a right to individual freedom,--as she spoke
of it,--to develop herself. She knew, if she continued to live with me
on the terms I demanded, that her character would deteriorate. Certain
kinds of sacrifice she was capable of, she thought, but what I asked
would be a useless one. Perhaps I didn't realize it, but it was slavery.
Slavery!" he repeated, "the kind of slavery her mother had lived . . . ."

He took a turn around the room.

"So far as money was concerned, she was indifferent to it. She had
enough from her mother to last until she began to make more. She
wouldn't take any from me in any case. I laughed, yet I have never been
so angry in my life. Nor was it wholly anger, Hodder, but a queer tangle
of feelings I can't describe. There was affection mixed up in it--I
realized afterward--but I longed to take her and shake her and lock her
up until she should come to her senses: I couldn't. I didn't dare. I
was helpless. I told her to go. She didn't say anything more, but there
was a determined look in her eyes when she kissed me as I left for the
office. I spent a miserable day. More than once I made up my mind to go
home, but pride stopped me. I really didn't think she meant what she
said. When I got back to the house in the afternoon she had left for New
York.

"Then I began to look forward to the time when her money would give out.
She went to Paris with another young woman, and studied there, and then
to England. She came back to New York, hired an apartment and a studio,
and has made a success."

The rector seemed to detect an unwilling note of pride at the magic word.

"It isn't the kind of success I think much of, but it's what she started
out to do. She comes out to see me, once in a while, and she designed
that garden."

He halted in front of the clergyman.

"I suppose you think it's strange, my telling you this," he said. "It
has come to the point," he declared vehemently, "where it relieves me to
tell somebody, and you seem to be a man of discretion and common-sense."

Hodder looked down into Mr. Parr's face, and was silent. Perhaps he
recognized, as never before, the futility of the traditional words of
comfort, of rebuke. He beheld a soul in torture, and realized with
sudden sharpness how limited was his knowledge of the conditions of
existence of his own time. Everywhere individualism reared its ugly
head, everywhere it seemed plausible to plead justification; and once
more he encountered that incompatibility of which Mrs. Constable had
spoken! He might blame the son, blame the daughter, yet he could not
condemn them utterly . . . . One thing he saw clearly, that Eldon
Parr had slipped into what was still, for him, a meaningless hell.

The banker's manner suddenly changed, reverted to what it had been. He
arose.

"I've tried to do my duty as I saw it, and it comes to this--that we
who have spent the best years of our lives in striving to develop this
country have no thanks from our children or from any one else."

With his hand on the electric switch, he faced Hodder almost defiantly as
he spoke these words, and suddenly snapped off the light, as though the
matter admitted of no discussion. In semi-darkness they groped down the
upper flight of stairs . . . .




CHAPTER VII

THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD


I

When summer arrived, the birds of brilliant plumage of Mr. Hodder's
flock arose and flew lightly away, thus reversing the seasons. Only the
soberer ones came fluttering into the cool church out of the blinding
heat, and settled here and there throughout the nave. The ample Mr.
Bradley, perspiring in an alpaca coat, took up the meagre collection on
the right of the centre aisle; for Mr. Parr, properly heralded, had gone
abroad on one of those periodical, though lonely tours that sent
anticipatory shivers of delight down the spines of foreign
picture-dealers. The faithful Gordon Atterbury was worshipping at the
sea, and even Mr. Constable and Mr. Plimpton, when recalled to the city
by financial cares, succumbed to the pagan influence of the sun, and were
usually to be found on Sunday mornings on the wide veranda of the country
club, with glasses containing liquid and ice beside them, and surrounded
by heaps of newspapers.

To judge by St. John's, the city was empty. But on occasions, before
he himself somewhat tardily departed,--drawn thither by a morbid though
impelling attraction, Hodder occasionally walked through Dalton Street
of an evening. If not in St. John's, summer was the season in Dalton
Street. It flung open its doors and windows and moved out on the steps
and the pavements, and even on the asphalt; and the music of its cafes
and dance-halls throbbed feverishly through the hot nights. Dalton
Street resorted neither to country club nor church.

Mr. McCrae, Hodder's assistant, seemed to regard these annual phenomena
with a grim philosophy,--a relic, perhaps, of the Calvinistic determinism
of his ancestors. He preached the same indefinite sermons, with the same
imperturbability, to the dwindled congregations in summer and the
enlarged ones in winter. But Hodder was capable of no such resignation
--if resignation it were, for the self-contained assistant continued to be
an enigma; and it was not without compunction that he left, about the
middle of July, on his own vacation. He was tired, and yet he seemed to
have accomplished nothing in this first year of the city parish whereof
he had dreamed. And it was, no doubt, for that very reason that he was
conscious of a depressing exhaustion as his train rolled eastward over
that same high bridge that spanned the hot and muddy waters of the river.
He felt a fugitive. In no months since he had left the theological
seminary, had he seemingly accomplished so little; in no months had he
had so magnificent an opportunity.

After he had reached the peaceful hills at Bremerton--where he had gone
on Mrs. Whitely's invitation--he began to look back upon the spring and
winter as a kind of mad nightmare, a period of ceaseless, distracted,
and dissipated activity, of rushing hither and thither with no results.
He had been aware of invisible barriers, restricting, hemming him in on
all sides. There had been no time for reflection; and now that he had a
breathing space, he was unable to see how he might reorganize his work in
order to make it more efficient.

There were other perplexities, brought about by the glimpses he had had
into the lives and beliefs--or rather unbeliefs--of his new parishioners.
And sometimes, in an unwonted moment of pessimism, he asked himself why
they thought it necessary to keep all that machinery going when it had so
little apparent effect on their lives? He sat wistfully in the chancel
of the little Bremerton church and looked into the familiar faces of
those he had found in it when he came to it, and of those he had brought
into it, wondering why he had been foolish enough to think himself
endowed for the larger work. Here, he had been a factor, a force in the
community, had entered into its life and affections. What was he there?

Nor did it tend to ease his mind that he was treated as one who has
passed on to higher things.

"I was afraid you'd work too hard," said Mrs. Whitely, in her motherly
way. "I warned you against it, Mr. Hodder. You never spared yourself,
but in a big city parish it's different. But you've made such a success,
Nelson tells me, and everybody likes you there. I knew they would, of
course. That is our only comfort in losing you, that you have gone to
the greater work. But we do miss you."



II

The air of Bremerton, and later the air of Bar Harbor had a certain
reviving effect. And John Hodder, although he might be cast down, had
never once entertained the notion of surrender. He was inclined to
attribute the depression through which he had passed, the disappointment
he had undergone as a just punishment for an overabundance of ego,--only
Hodder used the theological term for the same sin. Had he not, after
all, laboured largely for his own glory, and not Gods? Had he ever
forgotten himself? Had the idea ever been far from his thoughts that it
was he, John Hodder, who would build up the parish of St. John's into a
living organization of faith and works? The curious thing was that he
had the power, and save in moments of weariness he felt it in him. He
must try to remember always that this power was from God. But why had
he been unable to apply it?

And there remained disturbingly in his memory certain phrases of Mrs.
Constable's, such as "elements of growth."

He would change, she had said; and he had appeared to her as one with
depths. Unsuspected depths--pockets that held the steam, which was
increasing in pressure. At Bremerton, it had not gathered in the
pockets, he had used it all--all had counted; but in the feverish,
ceaseless activity of the city parish he had never once felt that intense
satisfaction of emptying himself, nor, the sweet weariness that follows
it. His seemed the weariness of futility. And introspection was
revealing a crack--after so many years--in that self that he had believed
to be so strongly welded. Such was the strain of the pent-up force. He
recognized the danger-signal. The same phenomenon had driven him into
the Church, where the steam had found an outlet--until now. And yet,
so far as his examination went, he had not lost his beliefs, but the
power of communicating them to others.

Bremerton, and the sight of another carrying on the work in which he had
been happy, weighed upon him, and Bar Harbor offered distraction. Mrs.
Larrabbee had not hesitated to remind him of his promise to visit her.
If the gallery of portraits of the congregation of St. John's were to be
painted, this lady's, at the age of thirty, would not be the least
interesting. It would have been out of place in no ancestral hall, and
many of her friends were surprised, after her husband's death, that she
did not choose one wherein to hang it. She might have. For she was the
quintessence of that feminine product of our country at which Europe has
never ceased to wonder, and to give her history would no more account for
her than the process of manufacture explains the most delicate of scents.
Her poise, her quick detection of sham in others not so fortunate, her
absolute conviction that all things were as they ought to be; her
charity, her interest in its recipients; her smile, which was kindness
itself; her delicate features, her white skin with its natural bloom;
the grace of her movements, and her hair, which had a different color in
changing lights--such an ensemble is not to be depicted save by a skilled
hand.

The late Mr. Larrabbee's name was still printed on millions of bright
labels encircling cubes of tobacco, now manufactured by a Trust.
However, since the kind that entered Mrs. Larrabbee's house, or houses,
was all imported from Egypt or Cuba, what might have been in the nature
of an unpleasant reminder was remote from her sight, and she never drove
into the northern part of the city, where some hundreds of young women
bent all day over the cutting-machines. To enter too definitely into
Mrs. Larrabbee's history, therefore, were merely to be crude, for she is
not a lady to caricature. Her father had been a steamboat captain--once
an honoured calling in the city of her nativity--a devout Presbyterian
who believed in the most rigid simplicity. Few who remembered the
gaucheries of Captain Corington's daughter on her first presentation
to his family's friends could recognize her in the cosmopolitan Mrs.
Larrabbee. Why, with New York and London at her disposal, she elected to
remain in the Middle West, puzzled them, though they found her answer,
"that she belonged there," satisfying Grace Larrabbee's cosmopolitanism
was of that apperception that knows the value of roots, and during her
widowhood she had been thrusting them out. Mrs. Larrabbee followed by
"of" was much more important than just Mrs. Larrabbee. And she was,
moreover, genuinely attached to her roots.

Her girlhood shyness--rudeness, some called it, mistaking the effect for
the cause--had refined into a manner that might be characterized as
'difficile', though Hodder had never found her so. She liked direct men;
to discover no guile on first acquaintance went a long way with her, and
not the least of the new rector's social triumphs had been his simple
conquest.

Enveloped in white flannel, she met his early train at the Ferry; an
unusual compliment to a guest, had he but known it, but he accepted it
as a tribute to the Church.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she said, in a voice that conveyed
indeed more than a perfunctory expression. She glanced at him as he sat
beside her on the cushions of the flying motor boat, his strange eyes
fixed upon the blue mountains of the island whither they were bound, his
unruly hair fanned by the wind.

"Why?" he asked, smiling at the face beneath the flying veil.

"You need the rest. I believe in men taking their work seriously, but
not so seriously as you do."

She was so undisguisedly glad to see him that he could scarcely have been
human if he had not responded. And she gave him, in that fortnight, a
glimpse of a life that was new and distracting: at times made him forget
--and he was willing to forget--the lower forms of which it was the
quintessence,--the factories that hummed, the forges that flung their
fires into the night in order that it might exist; the Dalton Streets
that went without. The effluvia from hot asphalt bore no resemblance to
the salt-laden air that rattled the Venetian blinds of the big bedroom to
which he was assigned. Her villa was set high above the curving shore,
facing a sheltered terrace-garden resplendent in its August glory; to
seaward, islands danced in the haze; and behind the house, in the
sunlight, were massed spruces of a brilliant arsenic green with purple
cones. The fluttering awnings were striped cardinal and white.

Nature and man seemed to have conspired to make this place vividly
unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop. There were no
half-tones, no poverty--in sight, at least; no litter. On the streets
and roads, at the casino attached to the swimming-pool and at the golf
club were to be seen bewildering arrays of well-dressed, well-fed women
intent upon pleasure and exercise. Some of them gave him glances that
seemed to say, "You belong to us," and almost succeeded in establishing
the delusion. The whole effect upon Hodder, in the state of mind in
which he found himself, was reacting, stimulating, disquieting. At
luncheons and dinners, he was what is known as a "success"--always that
magic word.

He resisted, and none so quick as women to scent resistance. His very
unbending attitude aroused their inherent craving for rigidity in his
profession; he was neither plastic, unctuous, nor subservient; his very
homeliness, redeemed by the eyes and mouth, compelled their attention.
One of them told Mrs. Larrabbee that that rector of hers would "do
something."

But what, he asked himself, was he resisting? He was by no means a
Puritan; and while he looked upon a reasonable asceticism as having its
place in the faith that he professed, it was no asceticism that prevented
a more complete acquiescence on his part in the mad carnival that
surrounded him.

"I'm afraid you don't wholly approve of Bar Harbor," his hostess
remarked; one morning.

"At first sight, it is somewhat staggering to the provincial mind," he
replied.

She smiled at him, yet with knitted brows.

"You are always putting me off--I never can tell what you think.
And yet I'm sure you have opinions. You think these people frivolous,
of course."

"Most of them are so," he answered, "but that is a very superficial
criticism. The question is, why are they so? The sight of Bar Harbor
leads a stranger to the reflection that the carnival mood has become
permanent with our countrymen, and especially our countrywomen."

"The carnival mood," she repeated thoughtfully, "yes, that expresses it.
We are light, we are always trying to get away from ourselves, and
sometimes I wonder whether there are any selves to get away from. You
ought to atop us," she added, almost accusingly, "to bring us to our
senses."

"That's just it," he agreed, "why don't we? Why can't we?"

"If more clergymen were like you, I think perhaps you might."

His tone, his expression, were revelations.

"I--!" he exclaimed sharply, and controlled himself. But in that moment
Grace Larrabbee had a glimpse of the man who had come to arouse in her an
intense curiosity. For an instant a tongue of the fires of Vulcan had
shot forth, fires that she had suspected.

"Aren't you too ambitious?" she asked gently. And again, although she
did not often blunder, she saw him wince. "I don't mean ambitious for
yourself. But surely you have made a remarkable beginning at St. John's.
Everybody admires and respects you, has confidence in you. You are so
sure of yourself," she hesitated a moment, for she had never ventured to
discuss religion with him, "of your faith. Clergymen ought not to be
apologetic, and your conviction cannot fail, in the long run, to have its
effect."

"Its effect,--on what?" he asked.

Mrs. Larrabbee was suddenly, at sea. And she prided herself on a lack of
that vagueness generally attributed to her sex.

"On--on everything. On what we were talking about,--the carnival feeling,
the levity, on the unbelief of the age. Isn't it because the control has
been taken off?"

He saw an opportunity to slip into smoother waters.

"The engine has lost its governor?"

"Exactly!" cried Mrs. Larrabbee. "What a clever simile!"

"It is Mr. Pares," said Hodder. "Only he was speaking of other symptoms,
Socialism, and its opposite, individualism,--not carnivalism."

"Poor man," said Mrs. Larrabbee, accepting the new ground as safer, yet
with a baffled feeling that Hodder had evaded her once more, "he has had
his share of individualism and carnivalism. His son Preston was here
last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable
state. And Alison hasn't been what might be called a blessing."

"She must be unusual," said the rector, musingly.

"Oh, Alison is a Person. She has become quite the fashion, and has more
work than she can possibly attend to. Very few women with her good looks
could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something
worse, perhaps. The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt
for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities. It always
amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon
Atterbury. The Goddess of Liberty linked to--what?"

Hodder thought instinctively of the Church. But he remained silent.

"As a rule, men are such fools about the women they wish to marry," she
continued. "She would have led him a dance for a year or two, and then
calmly and inexorably left him. And there was her father, with all his
ability and genius, couldn't see it either, but fondly imagined that
Alison as Gordon Atterbury's wife, would magically become an Atterbury
and a bourgeoise, see that the corners were dusted in the big house, sew
underwear for the poor, and fast in Lent."

"And she is happy--where she is?" he inquired somewhat naively.

"She is self-sufficient," said Mrs. Larrabbee, with unusual feeling,
"and that is just what most women are not, in these days. Oh, why has
life become such a problem? Sometimes I think, with all that I have,
I'm not, so well off as one of those salesgirls in Ferguson's, at home.
I'm always searching for things to do--nothing is thrust on me. There
are the charities--Galt House, and all that, but I never seem to get at
anything, at the people I'd like to help. It's like sending money to
China. There is no direct touch any more. It's like seeing one's
opportunities through an iron grating."

Hodder started at the phrase, so exactly had she expressed his own case.

"Ah," he said, "the iron grating bars the path of the Church, too."

And just what was the iron grating?

They had many moments of intimacy during that fort night, though none in
which the plumb of their conversation descended to such a depth. For he
was, as she had said, always "putting her off." Was it because he
couldn't satisfy her craving? give her the solution for which--he began
to see--she thirsted? Why didn't that religion that she seemed outwardly
to profess and accept without qualification--the religion he taught set
her at rest? show her the path?

Down in his heart he knew that he feared to ask.



That Mrs. Larrabbee was still another revelation, that she was not at
rest, was gradually revealed to him as the days passed. Her spirit, too,
like his own, like 'Mrs Constable's, like Eldon Parr's, like Eleanor
Goodrich's, was divided against itself; and this phenomenon in Mrs.
Larrabbee was perhaps a greater shock to him, since he had always
regarded her as essentially in equilibrium. One of his reasons, indeed,
--in addition to the friendship that had grown up between them,--for
coming to visit her had been to gain the effect of her poise on his own.
Poise in a modern woman, leading a modern life. It was thus she
attracted him. It was not that he ignored her frivolous side; it was
nicely balanced by the other, and that other seemed growing. The social,
she accepted at what appeared to be its own worth. Unlike Mrs. Plimpton,
for instance, she was so innately a lady that she had met with no
resistance in the Eastern watering places, and her sense of values had
remained the truer for it.

He did not admire her the less now he had discovered that the poise was
not so adjusted as he had thought it, but his feeling about her changed,
grew more personal, more complicated. She was showing an alarming
tendency to lean on him at a time when he was examining with some concern
his own supports. She possessed intelligence and fascination, she was a
woman whose attentions would have flattered and disturbed any man with a
spark of virility, and Hodder had constantly before his eyes the
spectacle of others paying her court. Here were danger-signals again!

Mrs. Plaice, a middle-aged English lady staying in the house, never
appeared until noon. Breakfast was set out in the tiled and sheltered
loggia, where they were fanned by the cool airs of a softly breathing
ocean. The world, on these mornings, had a sparkling unreality, the
cold, cobalt sea stretching to sun-lit isles, and beyond, the vividly
painted shore,--the setting of luxury had never been so complete. And
the woman who sat opposite him seemed, like one of her own nectarines,
to be the fruit that crowned it all.

Why not yield to the enchantment? Why rebel, when nobody else
complained? Were it not more simple to accept what life sent in its
orderly course instead of striving for an impossible and shadowy ideal?
Very shadowy indeed! And to what end were his labours in that smoky,
western city, with its heedless Dalton Streets, which went their
inevitable ways? For he had the choice.

To do him justice, he was slow in arriving at a realization that seemed
to him so incredible, so preposterous. He was her rector! And he had
accepted, all unconsciously, the worldly point of view as to Mrs.
Larrabbee,--that she was reserved for a worldly match. A clergyman's
wife! What would become of the clergyman? And yet other clergymen had
married rich women, despite the warning of the needle's eye.

She drove him in her buckboard to Jordan's Pond, set, like a jewel in the
hills, and even to the deep, cliff bordered inlet beyond North East,
which reminded her, she said, of a Norway fiord. And sometimes they
walked together through wooded paths that led them to beetling shores,
and sat listening to the waves crashing far below. Silences and
commonplaces became the rule instead of the eager discussions with which
they had begun,--on such safer topics as the problem of the social work
of modern churches. Her aromatic presence, and in this setting,
continually disturbed him: nature's perfumes, more definable,
--exhalations of the sea and spruce,--mingled with hers, anaesthetics
compelling lethargy. He felt himself drowning, even wished to drown,
--and yet strangely resisted.

"I must go to-morrow," he said.

"To-morrow--why? There is a dinner, you know, and Mrs. Waterman wished
so particularly to meet you."

He did not look at her. The undisguised note of pain found an echo
within him. And this was Mrs. Larrabbee!

"I am sorry, but I must," he told her, and she may not have suspected the
extent to which the firmness was feigned.

"You have promised to make other visits? The Fergusons,--they said they
expected you."

"I'm going west--home," he said, and the word sounded odd.

"At this season! But there is nobody in church, at least only a few,
and Mr. McCrae can take care of those--he always does. He likes it."

Hodder smiled in spite of himself. He might have told her that those
outside the church were troubling him. But he did not, since he had
small confidence in being able to bring them in.

"I have been away too long, I am getting spoiled," he replied, with an
attempt at lightness. He forced his eyes to meet hers, and she read in
them an unalterable resolution.

"It is my opinion you are too conscientious, even for a clergyman," she
said, and now it was her lightness that hurt. She protested no more.
And as she led the way homeward through the narrow forest path, her head
erect, still maintaining this lighter tone, he wondered how deeply she
had read him; how far her intuition had carried her below the surface;
whether she guessed the presence of that stifled thing in him which
was crying feebly for life; whether it was that she had discovered,
or something else? He must give it the chance it craved. He must get
away--he must think. To surrender now would mean destruction. . .

Early the next morning, as he left the pier in the motor boat, he saw a
pink scarf waving high above him from the loggia. And he flung up his
hand in return. Mingled with a faint sense of freedom was intense
sadness.




CHAPTER VIII

THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE

From the vantage point of his rooms in the parish house, Hodder reviewed
the situation. And despite the desires thronging after him in his flight
he had the feeling of once who, in the dark, has been very near to
annihilation. What had shaken him most was the revelation of an old
enemy which, watching its chance, had beset him at the first opportunity;
and at a time when the scheme of life, which he flattered himself to have
solved forever, was threatening once more to resolve itself into
fragments. He had, as if by a miracle, escaped destruction in some
insidious form.

He shrank instinctively from an analysis of the woman in regard to
whom his feelings were, so complicated, and yet by no means lacking in
tenderness. But as time went on, he recognized more and more that she
had come into his life at a moment when he was peculiarly vulnerable.
She had taken him off his guard. That the brilliant Mrs. Larrabbee
should have desired him--or what she believed was him--was food enough
for thought, was an indication of an idealism in her nature that he would
not have suspected. From a worldly point of view, the marriage would
have commended itself to none of her friends. Yet Hodder perceived
clearly that he could not have given her what she desired, since the
marriage would have killed it in him. She offered him the other thing.
Once again he had managed somehow to cling to his dream of what the
relationship between man and woman should be, and he saw more and more
distinctly that he had coveted not only the jewel, but its setting. He
could not see her out of it--she faded. Nor could he see himself in it.

Luxury,--of course,--that was what he had spurned. Luxury in contrast
to Dalton Street, to the whirring factories near the church which
discharged, at nightfall, their quotas of wan women and stunted children.
And yet here he was catering to luxury, providing religion for it!
Religion!

Early in November he heard that Mrs. Larrabbee had suddenly decided to go
abroad without returning home. . . .

That winter Hodder might have been likened to a Niagara for energy; an
unharnessed Niagara--such would have been his own comment. He seemed to
turn no wheels, or only a few at least, and feebly. And while the
spectacle of their rector's zeal was no doubt an edifying one to his
parishioners, they gave him to understand that they would have been
satisfied with less. They admired, but chided him gently; and in
February Mr. Parr offered to take him to Florida. He was tired, and it
was largely because he dreaded the reflection inevitable in a period of
rest, that he refused. . . . And throughout these months, the feeling
recurred, with increased strength, that McCrae was still watching him,
--the notion persisted that his assistant held to a theory of his own,
if he could but be induced to reveal it. Hodder refrained from making
the appeal. Sometimes he was on the point of losing patience with this
enigmatic person.

Congratulations on the fact that his congregation was increasing brought
him little comfort, since a cold analysis of the newcomers who were
renting pews was in itself an indication of the lack of that thing he
so vainly sought. The decorous families who were now allying themselves
with St. John's did so at the expense of other churches either more
radical or less fashionable. What was it he sought? What did he wish?
To fill the church to overflowing with the poor and needy as well as the
rich, and to enter into the lives of all. Yet at a certain point he met
a resistance that was no less firm because it was baffling. The Word, on
his lips at least, seemed to have lost it efficacy. The poor heeded it
not, and he preached to the rich as from behind a glass. They went on
with their carnival. Why this insatiate ambition on his part in an age
of unbelief? Other clergymen, not half so fortunate, were apparently
satisfied; or else--from his conversation with them--either oddly
optimistic or resigned. Why not he?

It was strange, in spite of everything, that hope sprang up within him,
a recurrent geyser.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, he found himself turning more and
more towards that line of least resistance which other churches were
following, as the one Modern Solution,--institutional work. After all,
in the rescuing of bodies some method might yet be discovered to revive
the souls. And there were the children! Hodder might have been likened
to an explorer, seeking a direct path when there was none--a royal road.
And if this were oblique it offered, at least, a definite outlet for his
energy.

Such was, approximately, the state of his mind early in March when Gordon
Atterbury came back from a conference in New York on institutional work,
and filled with enthusiasm. St. John's was incredibly behind the times,
so he told Hodder, and later the vestry. Now that they had, in Mr.
Hodder, a man of action and ability--ahem! there was no excuse for a
parish as wealthy as St. John's, a parish with their opportunities,
considering the proximity of Dalton Street neighbourhood, not enlarging
and modernizing the parish house, not building a settlement house with
kindergartens, schools, workshops, libraries, a dispensary and day
nurseries. It would undoubtedly be an expense--and Mr. Atterbury looked
at Mr. Parr, who drummed on the vestry table. They would need extra
assistants, deaconesses, trained nurses, and all that. But there were
other churches in the city that were ahead of St. John's--a reproach
--ahem!

Mr. Parr replied that he had told the rector that he stood ready to
contribute to such a scheme when he, the rector; should be ready to
approve it. And he looked at Mr. Hodder.

Mr. Hodder said he had been considering the matter ever since his
arrival. He had only one criticism of institutional work, that in his
observation it did not bring the people whom it reached into the Church
in any great numbers. Perhaps that were too much to ask, in these days.
For his part he would willingly assume the extra burden, and he was far
from denying the positive good such work accomplished through association
and by the raising of standards.

Mr. Ferguson declared his readiness to help. Many of his salesgirls, he
said, lived in this part of the city, and he would be glad to do anything
in his power towards keeping them out of the dance-halls and such places.

A committee was finally appointed consisting of Mr. Parr, Mr. Atterbury,
and the rector, to consult architects and to decide upon a site.

Hodder began a correspondence with experts in other cities,
collected plans, pamphlets, statistics; spent hours with the great
child-specialist, Dr. Jarvis, and with certain clergymen who believed
in institutionalism as the hope of the future.

But McCrae was provokingly non-committal.

"Oh, they may try it," he assented somewhat grudgingly, one day when the
rector had laid out for his inspection the architects' sketch for the
settlement house. "No doubt it will help many poor bodies along."

"Is there anything else?" the rector asked, looking searchingly at his
assistant.

"It may as well be that," replied McCrae.

The suspicion began to dawn on Hodder that the Scotch man's ideals were
as high as his own. Both of them, secretly, regarded the new scheme as a
compromise, a yielding to the inevitable . . . .

Mr. Ferguson's remark that an enlarged parish house and a new settlement
house might help to keep some of the young women employed in his
department store out of the dance-halls interested Hodder, who conceived
the idea of a dance-hall of their own. For the rector, in the course of
his bachelor shopping, often resorted to the emporium of his vestryman,
to stand on the stairway which carried him upward without lifting his
feet, to roam, fascinated, through the mazes of its aisles, where he
invariably got lost, and was rescued by suave floor-walkers or pert young
women in black gowns and white collars and cuffs. But they were not all
pert--there were many characters, many types. And he often wondered
whether they did not get tired standing on their feet all day long,
hesitating to ask them; speculated on their lives--flung as most of them
were on a heedless city, and left to shift for themselves. Why was it
that the Church which cared for Mr. Ferguson's soul was unable to get
in touch with, or make an appeal to, those of his thousand employees?

It might indeed have been said that Francis Ferguson cared for his own
soul, as he cared for the rest of his property, and kept it carefully
insured,--somewhat, perhaps, on the principle of Pascal's wager. That
he had been a benefactor to his city no one would deny who had seen the
facade that covered a whole block in the business district from Tower to
Vine, surmounted by a red standard with the familiar motto, "When in
doubt, go to Ferguson's." At Ferguson's you could buy anything from a
pen-wiper to a piano or a Paris gown; sit in a cool restaurant in summer
or in a palm garden in winter; leave your baby--if you had one--in charge
of the most capable trained nurses; if your taste were literary, mull
over the novels in the Book Department; if you were stout, you might be
reduced in the Hygiene Department, unknown to your husband and intimate
friends. In short, if there were any virtuous human wish in the power of
genius to gratify, Ferguson's was the place. They, even taught you how
to cook. It was a modern Aladdin's palace: and, like everything else
modern, much more wonderful than the original. And the soda might be
likened to the waters of Trevi,--to partake of which is to return.

"When in doubt, go to Ferguson!" Thus Mrs. Larrabbee and other ladies
interested in good works had altered his motto. He was one of the
supporters of Galt House, into which some of his own young saleswomen had
occasionally strayed; and none, save Mr. Parr alone, had been so liberal
in his gifts. Holder invariably found it difficult to reconcile the
unassuming man, whose conversation was so commonplace, with the titanic
genius who had created Ferguson's; nor indeed with the owner of the
imposing marble mansion at Number 5, Park Street.

The rector occasionally dined there. He had acquired a real affection
for Mrs. Ferguson, who resembled a burgomaster's wife in her evening
gowns and jewels, and whose simple social ambitions had been gratified
beyond her dreams. Her heart had not shrunken in the process, nor had
she forgotten her somewhat heterogeneous acquaintances in the southern
part of the city. And it was true that when Gertrude Constable had
nearly died of appendicitis, it was on this lady's broad bosom that Mrs.
Constable had wept. Mrs. Ferguson had haunted the house, regardless of
criticism, and actually quivering with sympathy. Her more important
dinner parties might have been likened to ill-matched fours-in-hand, and
Holder had sometimes felt more of pity than of amusement as she sat with
an expression of terror on her face, helplessly watching certain unruly
individuals taking their bits in their teeth and galloping madly
downhill. On one occasion, when he sat beside her, a young man, who
shall be nameless, was suddenly heard to remark in the midst of an
accidental lull:

"I never go to church. What's the use? I'm afraid most of us don't
believe in hell any more."

A silence followed: of the sort that chills. And the young man, glancing
down the long board at the clergyman, became as red as the carnation in
his buttonhole, and in his extremity gulped down more champagne.

"Things are in a dreadful state nowadays!" Mrs. Ferguson gasped to
a paralyzed company, and turned an agonized face to Holder. "I'm so
sorry," she said, "I don't know why I asked him to-night, except that
I have to have a young man for Nan, and he's just come to the city,
and I was sorry for him. He's very promising in a business way;
he's in Mr. Plimpton's trust company."

"Please don't let it trouble you." Holder turned and smiled a little,
and added whimsically: "We may as well face the truth."

"Oh, I should expect you to be good about it, but it was unpardonable,"
she cried . . . .

In the intervals when he gained her attention he strove, by talking
lightly of other things, to take her mind off the incident, but somehow
it had left him strangely and--he felt--disproportionately depressed,
--although he had believed himself capable of facing more or less
philosophically that condition which the speaker had so frankly
expressed. Yet the remark, somehow, had had an illuminating effect
like a flashlight, revealing to him the isolation of the Church as never
before. And after dinner, as they were going to the smoking-room, the
offender accosted him shamefacedly.

"I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Holder," he stammered.

That the tall rector's regard was kindly did not relieve his discomfort.
Hodder laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry about it," he answered, "I have only one regret as to what
you said--that it is true."

The other looked at him curiously.

"It's mighty decent of you to take it this way," he laid. Further speech
failed him.

He was a nice-looking young man, with firm white teeth, and honesty was
written all over his boyish face. And the palpable fact that his regret
was more on the clergyman's account than for the social faux pas drew
Holder the more, since it bespoke a genuineness of character.

He did not see the yearning in the rector's eyes as he turned away. . .
Why was it they could not be standing side by side, fighting the same
fight? The Church had lost him, and thousands like him, and she needed
them; could not, indeed, do without them.

Where, indeed, were the young men? They did not bother their heads about
spiritual matters any more. But were they not, he asked himself, franker
than many of these others, the so-called pillars of the spiritual
structure?

Mr. Plimpton accosted him. "I congratulate you upon the new plans, Mr.
Hodder,--they're great," he said. "Mr. Parr and our host are coming down
handsomely, eh? When we get the new settlement house we'll have a plant
as up-to-date as any church in the country. When do you break ground?"

"Not until autumn, I believe," Hodder replied. "There are a good many
details to decide upon yet."

"Well, I congratulate you."

Mr. Plimpton was forever congratulating.

"Up-to-date"--"plant"! More illuminating words, eloquent of Mr.
Plimpton's ideals. St. John's down at the heels, to be brought up to the
state of efficiency of Mr. Plimpton's trust company! It was by no means
the first time he had heard modern attributes on Mr. Plimpton's lips
applied to a sacred institution, but to-night they had a profoundly
disquieting effect. To-night, a certain clairvoyance had been vouchsafed
him, and he beheld these men, his associates and supporters, with a
detachment never before achieved.

They settled in groups about the room, which was square and high, and
panelled in Italian walnut, with fluted pilasters,--the capitals of which
were elaborately carved. And Hodder found himself on a deep leather sofa
in a corner engaged in a desultory and automatic conversation with
Everett Constable. Mr. Plimpton, with a large cigar between his lips,
was the radiating centre of one of the liveliest groups, and of him
the rector had fallen into a consideration, piecing together bits of
information that hitherto had floated meaninglessly in his mind.
It was Mrs. Larrabbee who had given character to the career of the still
comparatively youthful and unquestionably energetic president of the
Chamber of Commerce by likening it to a great spiral, starting somewhere
in outer regions of twilight, and gradually drawing nearer to the centre,
from which he had never taken his eyes. At the centre were Eldon Parr
and Charlotte Gore. Wallis Plimpton had made himself indispensable to
both.

His campaign for the daughter of Thurston Gore had been comparable to one
of the great sieges of history, for Mr. Plimpton was a laughing-stock
when he sat down before that fortress. At the end of ten years,
Charlotte had capitulated, with a sigh of relief, realizing at last her
destiny. She had become slightly stout, revealing, as time went on, no
wrinkles--a proof that the union was founded on something more enduring
than poetry: Statesmanship--that was the secret! Step by step, slowly
but surely, the memoranda in that matrimonial portfolio were growing
into accomplished facts; all events, such as displacements of power, were
foreseen; and the Plimptons, like Bismarck, had only to indicate, in case
of sudden news, the pigeonhole where the plan of any particular campaign
was filed.

Mrs. Larrabbee's temptation to be witty at the expense of those for whom
she had no liking had led Hodder to discount the sketch. He had not
disliked Mr. Plimpton, who had done him many little kindnesses. He was
good-natured, never ruffled, widely tolerant, hail-fellow-well-met with
everybody, and he had enlivened many a vestry meeting with his stories.
It were hypercritical to accuse him of a lack of originality. And if by
taking thought, he had arrived, from nowhere, at his present position of
ease and eminence, success had not turned to ashes in his mouth. He
fairly exhaled well-being, happiness, and good cheer. Life had gone well
with him, he wished the same to others.

But to-night, from his corner, Hodder seemed to see Mr. Plimpton with new
eyes. Not that he stood revealed a villain, which he was far from being;
it was the air of sophistication, of good-natured if cynical acceptance
of things as they were--and plenty good enough, too!--that jarred upon
the rector in his new mood, and it was made manifest to him as never
before why his appeals from the pulpit had lacked efficacy. Mr. Plimpton
didn't want the world changed! And in this desire he represented the
men in that room, and the majority of the congregation of St. John's.
The rector had felt something of this before, and it seemed to him
astonishing that the revelation had not come to him sooner. Did any one
of them, in his heart, care anything for the ideals and aspirations of
the Church?

As he gazed at them through the gathering smoke they had become
strangers, receded all at once to a great distance. . . . Across
the room he caught the name, Bedloe Hubbell, pronounced with peculiar
bitterness by Mr. Ferguson. At his side Everett Constable was alert,
listening.

"Ten years ago," said a stout Mr. Varnum, the President of the Third
National Bank, "if you'd told me that that man was to become a demagogue
and a reformer, I wouldn't have believed you. Why, his company used to
take rebates from the L. & G., and the Southern--I know it." He
emphasized the statement with a blow on the table that made the liqueur
glasses dance. "And now, with his Municipal League, he's going to clean
up the city, is he? Put in a reform mayor. Show up what he calls the
Consolidated Tractions Company scandal. Pooh!"

"You got out all right, Varnum. You won't be locked up," said Mr.
Plimpton, banteringly.

"So did you," retorted Varnum.

"So did Ferguson, so did Constable."

"So did Eldon Parr," remarked another man, amidst a climax of laughter.

"Langmaid handled that pretty well."

Hodder felt Everett Constable fidget.

"Bedloe's all right, but he's a dreamer," Mr. Plimpton volunteered.

"Then I wish he'd stop dreaming," said Mr. Ferguson, and there was more
laughter, although he had spoken savagely.

"That's what he is, a dreamer," Varnum ejaculated. "Say, he told George
Carter the other day that prostitution wasn't necessary, that in fifty
years we'd have largely done away with it. Think of that, and it's as
old as Sodom and Gomorrah!"

"If Hubbell had his way, he'd make this town look like a Connecticut
hill village--he'd drive all the prosperity out of it. All the railroads
would have to abandon their terminals--there'd be no more traffic, and
you'd have to walk across the bridge to get a drink."

"Well," said Mr. Plimpton, "Tom Beatty's good enough for me, for a
while."

Beatty, Hodder knew, was the "boss," of the city, with headquarters in a
downtown saloon.

"Beatty's been maligned," Mr. Varnum declared. "I don't say he's a
saint, but he's run the town pretty well, on the whole, and kept the vice
where it belongs, out of sight. He's made his pile, but he's entitled to
something we all are. You always know where you stand with Beatty. But
say, if Hubbell and his crowd--"

"Don't worry about Bedloe,--he'll get called in, he'll come home to roost
like the rest of them," said Mr. Plimpton, cheerfully. "The people can't
govern themselves,--only Bedloe doesn't know it. Some day he'll find it
out." . . .

The French window beside him was open, and Hodder slipped out, unnoticed,
into the warm night and stood staring at the darkness. His one desire
had been to get away, out of hearing, and he pressed forward over the
tiled pavement until he stumbled against a stone balustrade that guarded
a drop of five feet or so to the lawn below. At the same time he heard
his name called.

"Is that you, Mr. Hodder?"

He started. The voice had a wistful tremulousness, and might almost
have been the echo of the leaves stirring in the night air. Then he
perceived, in a shaft of light from one of the drawing-room windows near
by, a girl standing beside the balustrade; and as she came towards him,
with tentative steps, the light played conjurer, catching the silvery
gauze of her dress and striking an aura through the film of her hair.

"It's Nan Ferguson," she said.

"Of course," he exclaimed, collecting himself. "How stupid of me not to
have recognized you!"

"I'm so glad you came out," she went on impulsively, yet shyly, "I wanted
to tell you how sorry I was that that thing happened at the table."

"I like that young man," he said.

"Do you?" she exclaimed, with unexpected gratitude. So do I. He really
isn't--so bad as he must seem."

"I'm sure of it," said the rector, laughing.

"I was afraid you'd think him wicked," said Nan. "He works awfully hard,
and he's sending a brother through college. He isn't a bit like--some
others I know. He wants to make something of himself. And I feel
responsible, because I had mother ask him to-night."

He read her secret. No doubt she meant him to do so.

"You know we're going away next week, for the summer--that is, mother and
I," she continued. "Father comes later. And I do hope you'll make us
a visit, Mr. Hodder--we were disappointed you couldn't come last year."
Nan hesitated, and thrusting her hand into her gown drew forth an
envelope and held it out to him. "I intended to give you this to-night,
to use--for anything you thought best."

He took it gravely. She looked up at him.

"It seems so little--such a selfish way of discharging one's obligations,
just to write out a cheque, when there is so much trouble in the world
that demands human kindness as well as material help. I drove up Dalton
Street yesterday, from downtown. You know how hot it was! And I
couldn't help thinking how terrible it is that we who have everything
are so heedless of all that misery. The thought of it took away all
my pleasure.

"I'd do something more, something personal, if I could. Perhaps I shall
be able to, next winter. Why is it so difficult for all of us to know
what to do?"

"We have taken a step forward, at any rate, when we know that it is
difficult," he said.

She gazed up at him fixedly, her attention caught by an indefinable
something in his voice, in his smile, that thrilled and vaguely disturbed
her. She remembered it long afterwards. It suddenly made her shy again;
as if, in faring forth into the darkness, she had come to the threshold
of a mystery, of a revelation withheld; and it brought back the sense of
adventure, of the palpitating fear and daring with which she had come to
meet him.

"It is something to know," she repeated, half comprehending. The
scraping of chairs within alarmed her, and she stood ready to fly.

"But I haven't thanked you for this," he said, holding up the envelope.
"It may be that I shall find some one in Dalton Street--"

"Oh, I hope so," she faltered, breathlessly, hesitating a moment. And
then she was gone, into the house.





THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill



Volume 3.

IX.    THE DIVINE DISCONTENT
X.    THE MESSENGER IN THE CHURCH
XI.    THE LOST PARISHIONER
XII.   THE WOMAN OF THE SONG




CHAPTER IX

THE DIVINE DISCONTENT

I

It was the last Sunday in May, and in another week the annual flight to
the seashore and the mountains would have begun again. The breezes
stealing into the church through the open casements wafted hither and
thither the odours of the chancel flowers, and mingled with those fainter
and subtler perfumes set free by the rustling of summer gowns.

As on this day he surveyed his decorous and fashionable congregation,
Hodder had something of that sense of extremity which the great apostle
to the Gentiles himself must have felt when he stood in the midst of the
Areopagus and made his vain yet sublime appeal to Athenian indifference
and luxury. "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent." . . Some, indeed, stirred
uneasily as the rector paused, lowering their eyes before the intensity
of his glance, vaguely realizing that the man had flung the whole passion
of his being into the appeal.

Heedlessness--that was God's accusation against them, against the age.
Materialism, individualism! So absorbed were they in the pursuit of
wealth, of distraction, so satisfied with the current philosophy, so
intent on surrounding themselves with beautiful things and thus shutting
out the sterner view, that they had grown heedless of the divine message.
How few of them availed themselves of their spiritual birthright to renew
their lives at the altar rail! And they had permitted their own children
to wander away . . . . Repent!

There was a note of desperation in his appeal, like that of the hermit
who stands on a mountain crag and warns the gay and thoughtless of the
valley of the coming avalanche. Had they heard him at last? There were
a few moments of tense silence, during which he stood gazing at them.
Then he raised his arm in benediction, gathered up his surplice,
descended the pulpit steps, and crossed swiftly the chancel . . . .

He had, as it were, turned on all the power in a supreme effort to reach
them. What if he had failed again? Such was the misgiving that beset
him, after the service, as he got out of his surplice, communicated by
some occult telepathy . . . . Mr. Parr was awaiting him, and
summoning his courage, hope battling against intuition, he opened the
door into the now empty church and made his way toward the porch, where
the sound of voices warned him that several persons were lingering. The
nature of their congratulations confirmed his doubts. Mrs. Plimpton,
resplendent and looking less robust than usual in one of her summer Paris
gowns, greeted him effusively.

"Oh, Mr. Hodder, what a wonderful sermon!" she cried. "I can't express
how it made me feel--so delinquent! Of course that is exactly the effect
you wished. And I was just telling Wallis I was so glad I waited until
Tuesday to go East, or I should have missed it. You surely must come on
to Hampton and visit us, and preach it over again in our little stone
church there, by the sea. Good-by and don't forget! I'll write you,
setting the date, only we'd be glad to have you any time."

"One of the finest I ever heard--if not the finest," Mr. Plimpton
declared, with a kind of serious 'empressement', squeezing his hand.

Others stopped him; Everett Constable, for one, and the austere Mrs.
Atterbury. Hodder would have avoided the ever familiar figure of her
son, Gordon, in the invariable black cutaway and checked trousers,
but he was standing beside Mr. Parr.

"Ahem! Why, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed, squinting off his glasses,
"that was a magnificent effort. I was saying to Mr. Parr that it isn't
often one hears a sermon nowadays as able as that, and as sound. Many
clergymen refrain from preaching them, I sometimes think, because they
are afraid people won't like them."

"I scarcely think it's that," the rector replied, a little shortly.
"We're afraid people won't heed them."

He became aware, as he spoke, of a tall young woman, who had cast an
enigmatic glance first at Gordon Atterbury, and then at himself.

"It was a good sermon," said Mr. Parr. "You're coming to lunch, Hodder?"

The rector nodded. "I'm ready when you are," he answered.

"The motor's waiting," said the banker, leading the way down the steps to
the sidewalk, where he turned. "Alison, let me introduce Mr. Hodder.
This is my daughter," he added simply.

This sudden disclosure of the young woman's identity had upon Hodder a
certain electric effect, and with it came a realization of the extent to
which--from behind the scenes, so to speak--she had gradually aroused him
to a lively speculation. She seemed to have influenced, to a greater or
less degree, so many lives with which he had come into touch! Compelled
persons to make up their minds about her! And while he sympathized
with Eldon Parr in his abandonment, he had never achieved the full
condemnation which he felt--an impartial Christian morality would have
meted out.

As he uttered the conventional phrase and took her hand, he asked himself
whether her personality justified his interest. Her glance at Gordon
Atterbury in the midst of that gentleman's felicitations on the sermon
had been expressive, Hodder thought, of veiled amusement slightly
tinctured with contempt; and he, Hodder, felt himself to have grown warm
over it. He could not be sure that Alison Parr had not included, in her
inner comment, the sermon likewise, on which he had so spent himself.
What was she doing at church? As her eyes met his own, he seemed to
read a challenge. He had never encountered a woman--he decided--who
so successfully concealed her thought, and at the same time so incited
curiosity about it.

The effect of her reappearance on Gordon Atterbury was painfully
apparent, and Mrs. Larrabbee's remark, "that he had never got over it,"
recurred to Hodder. He possessed the virtue of being faithful, at least,
in spite of the lady's apostasy, and he seemed to be galvanized into a
tenfold nervousness as he hustled after them and handed her, with the
elaborate attention little men are apt to bestow upon women, into the
motor.

"Er--how long shall you be here, Alison?" he asked. "I don't know," she
answered, not unkindly, but with a touch of indifference.

"You treat us shamefully," he informed her, "upon my word! But I'm
coming to call."

"Do," said Alison. Hodder caught her eye again, and this time he was
sure that she surprised in him a certain disdain of Mr. Atterbury's zeal.
Her smile was faint, yet unmistakable.

He resented it. Indeed, it was with a well-defined feeling of antagonism
that he took his seat, and this was enhanced as they flew westward, Mr.
Parr wholly absorbed with the speaking trumpet, energetically rebuking at
every bounce. In the back of the rector's mind lay a weight, which he
identified, at intervals, with what he was now convinced was the failure
of his sermon. . . Alison took no part in the casual conversation that
began when they reached the boulevard and Mr. Parr abandoned the trumpet,
but lay back in silence and apparently with entire comfort in a corner of
the limousine.

At the lunch-table Mr. Parr plunged into a discussion of some of the
still undecided details of the new settlement house, in which, as the
plan developed, he had become more and more interested. He had made
himself responsible, from time to time, for additional sums, until the
original estimate had been almost doubled. Most of his suggestions had
come from Hodder, who had mastered the subject with a thoroughness that
appealed to the financier: and he had gradually accepted the rector's
idea of concentrating on the children. Thus he had purchased an
adjoining piece of land that was to be a model playground, in connection
with the gymnasium and swimming-pool. The hygienic department was to be
all that modern science could desire.

"If we are going to do the thing," the banker would, remark, "we may as
well do it thoroughly; we may as well be leaders and not followers."

So, little by little, the scheme had grown to proportions that sometimes
appalled the rector when he realized how largely he had been responsible
for the additions,--in spite of the lukewarmness with which he had begun.
And yet it had occasionally been Mr. Parr who, with a sweep of his hand,
had added thousands to a particular feature: thus the dance-hall had
become, in prospect, a huge sun-parlour at the top of the building, where
the children were to have their kindergartens and games in winter; and
which might be shaded and opened up to the breezes in summer. What had
reconciled Hodder to the enterprise most of all, however, was the chapel
--in the plan a beautiful Gothic church--whereby he hoped to make the
religious progress keep pace with the social. Mr. Parr was decidedly in
sympathy with this intention, and referred to it now.

"I was much impressed by what you said in your sermon to-day as to the
need of insisting upon authority in religious matters," he declared, "and
I quite agree that we should have a chapel of some size at the settlement
house for that reason. Those people need spiritual control. It's what
the age needs. And when I think of some of the sermons printed in the
newspapers to-day, and which are served up as Christianity, there is only
one term to apply to them--they are criminally incendiary."

"But isn't true Christianity incendiary, in your meaning of the word?"

It was Alison who spoke, in a quiet and musical voice that was in
striking contrast to the tone of Mr. Parr, which the rector had thought
unusually emphatic. It was the first time she had shown an inclination
to contribute to the talk. But since Hodder had sat down at the table
her presence had disturbed him, and he had never been wholly free from an
uncomfortable sense that he was being measured and weighed.

Once or twice he had stolen a glance at her as she sat, perfectly at
ease, and asked himself whether she had beauty, and it dawned upon him
little by little that the very proportion she possessed made for physical
unobtrusiveness. She was really very tall for a woman. At first he
would have said her nose was straight, when he perceived that it had a
delicate hidden curve; her eyes were curiously set, her dark hair parted
in the middle, brought down low on each side of the forehead and tied in
a Grecian knot. Thus, in truth, he observed, were seemingly all the
elements of the classic, even to the firm yet slender column of the neck.
How had it eluded him?

Her remark, if it astonished Hodder, had a dynamic effect on Eldon Parr.
And suddenly the rector comprehended that the banker had not so much been
talking to him as through him; had been, as it were, courting opposition.

"What do you mean by Christianity being incendiary?" he demanded.

"Incendiary, from your point of view--I made, the qualification,"
Alison replied, apparently unmoved by his obvious irritation. "I don't
pretend to be a Christian, as you know, but if there is one element
in Christianity that distinguishes it, it is the brotherhood of man.
That's pure nitroglycerin, though it's been mixed with so much sawdust.
Incendiary is a mild epithet. I never read the sermons you refer to;
I dare say they're crude, but they're probably attempts to release an
explosive which would blow your comfortable social system and its
authority into atoms."

Hodder, who had listened in amazement, glanced at the banker. He had
never before heard him opposed, or seen him really angry.

"I've heard that doctrine," cried Mr. Parr. "Those who are dissatisfied
with things as they are because they have been too stupid or too weak
or self-indulgent to rise, find it easy to twist the principles of
Christianity into revolutionary propaganda. It's a case of the devil
quoting Scripture. The brotherhood of man! There has never been an age
when philanthropy and organized charity were on such a scale as to-day."

A certain gallant, indomitable ring crept into Alison's voice; she did
not seem in the least dismayed or overborne.

"But isn't that just where most so-called Christians make their mistake?"
she asked. "Philanthropy and organized charity, as they exist to-day,
have very little to do with the brotherhood of man. Mightn't it be you
who are fooling yourselves instead of the incendiaries fooling themselves
So long as you can make yourselves believe that this kind of charity is
a logical carrying out of the Christian principles, so long are your
consciences satisfied with the social system which your class, very
naturally, finds so comfortable and edifying. The weak and idiotic ought
to be absurdly grateful for what is flung to them, and heaven is gained
in the throwing. In this way the rich inevitably become the elect, both
here and hereafter, and the needle's eye is widened into a gap."

There was on Mr. Parr's lips a smile not wholly pleasant to see. Indeed,
in the last few minutes there had been revealed to Hodder a side of the
banker's character which had escaped him in the two years of their
acquaintance.

"I suppose," said Mr. Parr, slowly, drumming on the table, "you would say
that of the new settlement house of St. John's, whereby we hope to raise
a whole neighbourhood."

"Yes, I should," replied Alison, with spirit. "The social system by
which you thrive, and which politically and financially you strive to
maintain, is diametrically opposed to your creed, which is supposed to be
the brotherhood of man. But if that were really your creed, you would
work for it politically and financially. You would see that your Church
is trying to do infinitesimally what the government, but for your
opposition, might do universally. Your true creed is the survival of the
fittest. You grind these people down into what is really an economic
slavery and dependence, and then you insult and degrade them by inviting
them to exercise and read books and sing hymns in your settlement house,
and give their children crackers and milk and kindergartens and sunlight!
I don't blame them for not becoming Christians on that basis. Why, the
very day I left New York a man over eighty, who had been swindled out
of all he had, rather than go to one of those Christian institutions
deliberately forged a check and demanded to be sent to the penitentiary.
He said he could live and die there with some self-respect."

"I might have anticipated that you would ultimately become a Socialist,
Alison," Mr. Parr remarked--but his voice trembled.

"I don't know whether I'm a Socialist or an Anarchist," she answered.
Hodder thought be detected a note of hopelessness in her voice, and the
spirit in it ebbed a little. Not only did she seem indifferent to her
father's feeling--which incidentally added fuel to it--but her splendid
disregard of him, as a clergyman, had made an oddly powerful appeal.
And her argument! His feelings, as he listened to this tremendous
arraignment of Eldon Parr by his daughter, are not easily to be
described. To say that she had compelled him, the rector of St. John's,
at last to look in the face many conditions which he had refused to
recognize would be too definite a statement. Nevertheless, some such
thing had occurred. Refutations sprang to his lips, and died there,
though he had no notion of uttering them. He saw that to admit her
contentions would be to behold crumble into ruins the structure that
he had spent a life in rearing; and yet something within him responded
to her words--they had the passionate, convincing ring of truth.

By no means the least of their disturbing effects was due to the fact
that they came as a climax to, as a fulfilment of the revelation he had
had at the Fergusons', when something of the true nature of Mr. Plimpton
and others of his congregation had suddenly been laid bare. And now
Hodder looked at Eldon Parr to behold another man from the one he had
known, and in that moment realized that their relationship could never
again be the same. . . Were his sympathies with the daughter?

"I don't know what I believe," said Alison, after a pause. "I've ceased
trying to find out. What's the use!" She appeared now to be addressing
no one in particular.

A servant entered with a card, and the banker's hand shook perceptibly
as he put down his claret and adjusted his glasses.

"Show him into my office upstairs, and tell him I'll see him at once," he
said, and glanced at the rector. But it was Alison whom he addressed.
"I must leave Mr. Hodder to answer your arguments," he added, with an
attempt at lightness; and then to the rector: "Perhaps you can convince
her that the Church is more sinned against than sinning, and that
Christians are not such terrible monsters after all. You'll excuse me?"

"Certainly." Hodder had risen.



II

"Shall we have coffee in the garden?" Alison asked. "It's much nicer
outside this time of year."

For an instant he was at a loss to decide whether to accede, or to make
an excuse and leave the house. Wisdom seemed to point to flight. But
when he glanced at her he saw to his surprise that the mood of
abstraction into which she had fallen still held her; that the discussion
which had aroused Eldon Parr to such dramatic anger had left her serious
and thoughtful. She betrayed no sense of triumph at having audaciously
and successfully combated him, and she appeared now only partially to be
aware of Hodder's presence. His interest, his curiosity mounted suddenly
again, overwhelming once more the antagonism which he had felt come and
go in waves; and once more his attempted classification of her was swept
away. She had relapsed into an enigma.

"I like the open air," he answered, "and I have always wished to see the
garden. I have admired it from the windows."

"It's been on my mind for some years," she replied, as she led the way
down a flight of steps into the vine-covered pergola. "And I intend to
change parts of it while I am out here. It was one of my first attempts,
and I've learned more since."

"You must forgive my ignorant praise," he said, and smiled. "I have
always thought it beautiful: But I can understand that an artist is never
satisfied."

She turned to him, and suddenly their eyes met and held in a momentary,
electric intensity that left him warm and agitated. There was nothing
coquettish in the glance, but it was the first distinct manifestation
that he was of consequence. She returned his smile, without levity.

"Is a clergyman ever satisfied?" she asked.

"He ought not to be," replied Hodder, wondering whether she had read him.

"Although you were so considerate, I suppose you must have thought it
presumptuous of me to criticize your, profession, which is religion."

"Religion, I think, should be everybody's," he answered quietly.

She made no reply. And he entered, as into another world, the circular
arbour in which the pergola ended, so complete in contrast was its
atmosphere to that of the house. The mansion he had long since grown to
recognize as an expression of the personality of its owner, but this
classic bower was as remote from it as though it were in Greece. He was
sensitive to beauty, yet the beauty of the place had a perplexing
quality, which he felt in the perfect curves of the marble bench, in the
marble basin brimming to the tip with clear water,--the surface of which,
flecked with pink petals, mirrored the azure sky through the leafy
network of the roof. In one green recess a slender Mercury hastily
adjusted his sandal.

Was this, her art, the true expression of her baffling personality? As
she had leaned back in the corner of the automobile she had given him the
impression of a languor almost Oriental, but this had been startlingly
dispelled at the lunch-table by the revelation of an animation and a
vitality which had magically transformed her. But now, as under the
spell of a new encompassment of her own weaving, she seemed to revert to
her former self, sinking, relaxed, into a wicker lounge beside the basin,
one long and shapely hand in the water, the other idle in her lap. Her
eyes, he remarked, were the contradiction in her face. Had they been
larger, and almond-shaped, the illusion might have been complete. They
were neither opaque nor smouldering,--but Western eyes, amber-coloured,
with delicately stencilled rays and long lashes. And as they gazed up at
him now they seemed to reflect, without disclosing the flitting thoughts
behind them. He felt antagonism and attraction in almost equal degree
--the situation transcended his experience.

"You don't intend to change this?" he asked, with an expressive sweep of
his hand.

"No," she said, "I've always liked it. Tell me what you feel about it."

He hesitated.

"You resent it," she declared.

"Why do you say that?" he demanded quickly.

"I feel it," she answered calmly, but with a smile.

"'Resent' would scarcely be the proper word," he contended, returning her
smile, yet hesitating again.

"You think it pagan," she told him.

"Perhaps I do," he answered simply, as though impressed by her felicitous
discovery of the adjective.

Alison laughed.

"It's pagan because I'm pagan, I suppose."

"It's very beautiful--you have managed to get an extraordinary
atmosphere," he continued, bent on doing himself an exact justice. But
I should say, if you pressed me, that it represents to me the deification
of beauty to the exclusion of all else. You have made beauty the Alpha
and Omega."

"There is nothing else for me," she said.

The coffee-tray arrived and was deposited on a wicker table beside her.
She raised herself on an elbow, filled his cup and handed it to him.

"And yet," he persisted, "from the manner in which you spoke at the
table--"

"Oh, don't imagine I haven't thought? But thinking isn't--believing."

"No," he admitted, with a touch of sadness, "you are right. There were
certain comments you made on the Christian religion--"

She interrupted him again.

"As to the political side of it, which is Socialism, so far as I can
see. If there is any other side, I have never been able to discover it.
It seems to me that if Christians were logical, they should be
Socialists. The brotherhood of man, cooperation--all that is Socialism,
isn't it? It's opposed to the principle of the survival of the fittest,
which so many of these so-called Christians practise. I used to think,
when I came back from Paris, that I was a Socialist, and I went to a lot
of their meetings in New York, and to lectures. But after a while I saw
there was something in Socialism that didn't appeal to me, something
smothering,--a forced cooperation that did not leave one free. I wanted
to be free, I've been striving all my life to be free," she exclaimed
passionately, and was silent an instant, inspecting him. "Perhaps I owe
you an apology for speaking as I did before a clergyman--especially
before an honest one."

He passed over the qualification with a characteristic smile.

"Oh, if we are going to shut our ears to criticism we'd better give up
being clergymen," he answered. "I'm afraid there is a great deal of
truth in what you said."

"That's generous of you!" she exclaimed, and thrilled him with the
tribute. Nor was the tribute wholly in the words: there had come
spontaneously into her voice an exquisite, modulated note that haunted
him long after it had died away . . . .

"I had to say what I thought," she continued earnestly; "I stood it as
long as I could. Perhaps you didn't realize it, but my father was
striking at me when he referred to your sermon, and spiritual control
--and in other things he said when you were talking about the
settlement-house. He reserves for himself the right to do as he pleases,
but insists that those who surround him shall adopt the subserviency
which he thinks proper for the rest of the world. If he were a Christian
himself, I shouldn't mind it so much."

Hodder was silent. The thought struck him with the force of a great
wind.

"He's a Pharisee," Alison went on, following the train of her thought.
"I remember the first time I discovered that--it was when I was reading
the New Testament carefully, in the hope of finding something in
Christianity I might take hold of. And I was impressed particularly by
the scorn with which Christ treated the Pharisees. My father, too, if he
had lived in those days, would have thought Christ a seditious person, an
impractical, fanatical idealist, and would have tried to trip him up with
literal questions concerning the law. His real and primary interest--is
in a social system that benefits himself and his kind, and because this
is so, he, and men like him, would have it appear that Christianity is
on the side of what they term law and order. I do not say that they are
hypocritical, that they reason this out. They are elemental; and they
feel intuitively that Christianity contains a vital spark which, if
allowed to fly, would start a conflagration beyond their control. The
theologians have helped them to cover the spark with ashes, and naturally
they won't allow the ashes to be touched, if they can help it."

She lay very still.

The rector had listened to her, at first with amazement, then with more
complicated sensations as she thus dispassionately discussed the foremost
member of his congregation and the first layman of the diocese, who was
incidentally her own father. In her masterly analysis of Eldon Parr, she
had brought Hodder face to face with the naked truth, and compelled him
to recognize it. How could he attempt to refute it, with honesty?

He remembered Mr. Parr's criticism of Alison. There had been hardness in
that, though it were the cry of a lacerated paternal affection. In that,
too, a lack of comprehension, an impotent anger at a visitation not
understood, a punishment apparently unmerited. Hodder had pitied him
then--he still pitied him. In the daughter's voice was no trace of
resentment. No one, seemingly, could be farther removed from him (the
rector of St. John's) in her opinions and views of life, than Allison
Parr; and yet he felt in her an undercurrent, deep and strong, which
moved him strangely, strongly, irresistibly; he recognized a passionate
desire for the truth, and the courage to face it at any cost, and a
capacity for tenderness, revealed in flashes.

"I have hurt you," she exclaimed. "I am sorry."

He collected himself.

"It is not you who have hurt me," he replied. "Reflections on the
contradictions and imperfections of life are always painful. And since
I have been here, I have seen a great deal of your father."

"You are fond of him!"

He hesitated. It was not an ordinary conversation they were dealing with
realities, and he had a sense that vital issues were at stake. He had,
in that moment, to make a revaluation of his sentiments for the
financier--to weigh the effect of her indictment.

"Yes," he answered slowly, "I am fond of him. He has shown me a side of
himself, perhaps, that other men have not seen,--and he is very lonely."

"You pity him." He started at her word. "I guessed that from an
expression that crossed your face when we were at the table. But surely
you must have observed the incongruity of his relationship with your
Church! Surely, in preaching as you did this morning against
materialism, individualism, absorption in the pursuit of wealth, you must
have had my father in mind as the supreme example! And yet he listened
to you as serenely as though he had never practised any of these things!

"Clergymen wonder why Christianity doesn't make more progress to-day;
well, what strikes the impartial observer who thinks about the subject at
all, as one reason, is the paralyzing inconsistency of an alliance
between those who preach the brotherhood of man and those who are opposed
to it. I've often wondered what clergymen would say about it, if they
were frank--only I never see any clergymen."

He was strongly agitated. He did not stop--strangely enough--to reflect
how far they had gone, to demand by what right she brought him to the
bar, challenged the consistency of his life. For she had struck, with a
ruthless precision, at the very core of his trouble, revealed it for what
it was.

"Yes," he said, "I can see how we may be accused of inconsistency, and
with much justice."

His refusal to excuse and vindicate himself impressed her as no attempt
at extenuation could have done. Perhaps, in that moment, her quick
instinct divined something of his case, something of the mental suffering
he strove to conceal. Contrition shone in her eyes.

"I ought not to have said that," she exclaimed gently. "It is so easy
for outsiders to criticize those who are sincere--and I am sure you are.
We cannot know all the perplexities. But when we look at the Church, we
are puzzled by that--which I have mentioned--and by other things."

"What other things?" he demanded.

She hesitated in her turn.

"I suppose you think it odd, my having gone to church, feeling as I do,"
she said. "But St. John's is now the only place vividly associated with
my mother. She was never at home here, in this house. I always go at
least once when I am out here. And I listened to your sermon intently."

"Yes."

"I wanted to tell you this: you interested me as I had not been
interested since I was twenty, when I made a desperate attempt to become
a Christian--and failed. Do you know how you struck me? It was as a man
who actually had a great truth which he was desperately trying to impart,
and could not. I have not been in a church more than a dozen times in
the last eight years, but you impressed me as a man who felt something
--whatever it is."

He did not speak.

"But why," she cried, "do you insist on what you cell authority? As a
modern woman who has learned to use her own mind, I simply can't believe,
if the God of the universe is the moral God you assert him to be, that he
has established on earth an agency of the kind you infer, and delegated
to it the power of life and death over human souls. Perhaps you do not
go so far, but if you make the claim at all you must make it in its
entirety. There is an idea of commercialism, of monopoly in that
conception which is utterly repugnant to any one who tries to approach
the subject with a fresh mind, and from an ideal point of view. And
religion must be idealism--mustn't it?

"Your ancient monks and saints weren't satisfied until they had
settled every detail of the invisible world, of the past and future.
They mapped it out as if it were a region they had actually explored,
like geographers. They used their reason, and what science they had, to
make theories about it which the churches still proclaim as the catholic
and final truth. You forbid us to use our reason. You declare, in order
to become Christians, that we have to accept authoritative statements.
Oh, can't you see that an authoritative statement is just what an
ethical person doesn't want? Belief--faith doesn't consist in the mere
acceptance of a statement, but in something much higher--if we can
achieve it. Acceptance of authority is not faith, it is mere credulity,
it is to shirk the real issue. We must believe, if we believe at all,
without authority. If we knew, there would be no virtue in striving.
If I choose a God," she added, after a pause, "I cannot take a consensus
of opinion about him,--he must be my God."

Hodder did not speak immediately. Strange as it may seem, he had
never heard the argument, and the strength of it, reenforced by the
extraordinary vitality and earnestness of the woman who had uttered it,
had a momentary stunning effect. He sat contemplating her as she lay
back among the cushions, and suddenly he seemed to see in her the
rebellious child of which her father had spoken. No wonder Eldon Parr
had misunderstood her, had sought to crush her spirit! She was to be
dealt with in no common way, nor was the consuming yearning he discerned
in her to be lightly satisfied.

"The God of the individualist," he said at length--musingly, not
accusingly.

"I am an individualist," she admitted simply. "But I am at least logical
in that philosophy, and the individualists who attend the churches to-day
are not. The inconsistency of their lives is what makes those of us who
do not go to church doubt the efficacy of their creed, which seems to
have no power to change them. The majority of people in St. John's are
no more Christians than I am. They attend service once a week, and the
rest of the time they are bent upon getting all they can of pleasure
and profit for themselves. Do you wonder that those who consider this
spectacle come inevitably to the conclusion that either Christianity
is at fault, is outworn, or else that it is presented in the wrong way?"

The rector rose abruptly, walked to the entrance of the arbour, and stood
staring out across the garden. Presently he turned and came back and
stood over her.

"Since you ask me," he said slowly, "I do not wonder at it."

She raised her eyes swiftly.

"When you speak like that," she exclaimed with an enthusiasm that
stirred him, despite the trouble of his mind, "I cannot think of you as
a clergyman,--but as a man. Indeed," she added, in the surprise of her
discovery, "I have never thought of you as a clergyman--even when I first
saw you this morning. I could not account then for a sense of duality
about you that puzzled me. Do you always preach as earnestly as that?"

"Why?"

"I felt as if you were throwing your whole soul into the effort-=oh,
I felt it distinctly. You made some of them, temporarily, a little
uncomfortable, but they do not understand you, and you didn't change
them. It seemed to me you realized this when Gordon Atterbury spoke to
you. I tried to analyze the effect on myself--if it had been in the
slightest degree possible for my reason to accept what you said you
might, through sheer personality, have compelled me to reconsider.
As it was, I found myself resisting you."

With his hands clasped behind him, he paced across the arbour and back
again.

"Have you ever definitely and sincerely tried to put what the Church
teaches into practice?" he asked.

"Orthodox Christianity? penance, asceticism, self-abnegation--repression
--falling on my knees and seeking a forgiveness out of all proportion to
the trespass, and filled with a sense of total depravity? If I did that
I should lose myself--the only valuable thing I've got."

Hodder, who had resumed his pacing, glanced at her involuntarily, and
fought an inclination to agree with her.

"I see no one upon whom I can rely but myself," she went on with the
extraordinary energy she was able to summon at will, "and I am
convinced that self-sacrifice--at least, indiscriminate, unreasoning
self-sacrifice--is worse than useless, and to teach it is criminal
ignorance. None of the so-called Christian virtues appeals to me: I hate
humility. You haven't it. The only happiness I can see in the world lies
in self-expression, and I certainly shouldn't find that in sewing
garments for the poor.

"The last thing that I could wish for would be immortality as orthodox
Christianity depicts it! And suppose I had followed the advice of my
Christian friends and remained here, where they insisted my duty was,
what would have happened to me? In a senseless self-denial I should
gradually have, withered into a meaningless old maid, with no opinions
of my own, and no more definite purpose in life than to write checks for
charities. Your Christianity commands that women shall stay at home, and
declares that they are not entitled to seek their own salvation, to have
any place in affairs, or to meddle with the realm of the intellect.
Those forbidden gardens are reserved for the lordly sex. St. Paul, you
say, put us in our proper place some twenty centuries ago, and we are to
remain there for all time."

He felt sweeping through him the reverse current of hostility.

"And what I preach," he asked, "has tended to confirm you in such a mean
conception of Christianity?"

Her eye travelled over the six feet of him--the kindling, reflecting eye
of the artist; it rested for a moment on the protesting locks of his
hair, which apparently could not be cut short enough to conform; on the
hands, which were strong and sinewy; on the wide, tolerant mouth, with
its rugged furrows, on the breadth and height of the forehead. She lay
for a moment, inert, considering.

"What you preach--yes," she answered, bravely meeting his look. "What
you are--no. You and your religion are as far apart as the poles. Oh,
this old argument, the belief that has been handed down to the man, the
authority with which he is clothed, and not the man himself! How can one
be a factor in life unless one represents something which is the fruit of
actual, personal experience? Your authority is for the weak, the timid,
the credulous,--for those who do not care to trust themselves, who run
for shelter from the storms of life to a 'papier-mache' fortress, made to
look like rock. In order to preach that logically you should be a white
ascetic, with a well-oiled manner, a downcast look lest you stumble in
your pride; lest by chance you might do something original that sprang
out of your own soul instead of being an imitation of the saints. And if
your congregation took your doctrine literally, I can see a whole army of
white, meek Christians. But you are not like that. Can't you see it for
yourself?" she exclaimed.

"Can't you feel that you are an individual, a personality, a force that
might be put to great uses? That will be because you are open-minded,
because there is room in you for growth and change?"

He strove with all his might to quell the inner conflagration which she
had fanned into leaping flames. Though he had listened before to doubt
and criticism, this woman, with her strange shifting moods of calm and
passion, with her bewildering faculty of changing from passive to active
resistance, her beauty (once manifest, never to be forgotten), her unique
individuality that now attracted, now repelled, seemed for the moment the
very incarnation of the forces opposed to him and his religion. Holder,
as he looked at her, had a flash of fierce resentment that now, of all
times, she should suddenly have flung herself across his path. For she
was to be reckoned with. Why did he not tell her she was an egoist? Why
didn't he speak out, defend his faith, denounce her views as prejudiced
and false?

"Have I made you angry?" he heard her say. "I am sorry."

It was the hint of reproach in her tone to which the man in him instantly
responded. And what he saw now was his portrait she had painted. The
thought came to him: was he indeed greater, more vital than the religion
he professed? God forbid! Did he ring true, and it false?

She returned his gaze. And gradually, under her clear olive skin, he saw
the crimson colour mounting higher . . . . She put forth her hand,
simply, naturally, and pressed his own, as though they had been friends
for a lifetime . . . .




CHAPTER X

THE MESSENGER IN THE CHURCH


I

The annual scourge of summer had descended pitilessly upon the city once
more, enervating, depressing, stagnating, and people moved languidly in
the penetrating heat that steamed from the pores of the surrounding river
bottoms.

The rector of St. John's realized that a crisis had come in his life,
--a crisis he had tried to stave off in vain. And yet there was a period
during which he pursued his shrunken duties as though nothing had
happened to him; as a man who has been struck in battle keeps on, loath
to examine, to acknowledge the gravity of his wound; fearing to, perhaps.
Sometimes, as his mind went back to the merciless conflict of his past,
his experience at the law school, it was the unchaining of that other man
he dreaded, the man he believed himself to have finally subdued. But
night and day he was haunted by the sorrowful and reproachful face of
Truth.

Had he the courage, now, to submit the beliefs which had sustained him
all these years to Truth's inexorable inspection? Did he dare to turn
and open those books which she had inspired,--the new philosophies, the
historical criticisms which he had neglected and condemned, which he had
flattered himself he could do without,--and read of the fruit of
Knowledge? Twice, thrice he had hesitated on the steps of the big
library, and turned away with a wildly beating heart.

Day by day the storm increased, until from a cloud on the horizon it
grew into a soul-shaking tempest. Profoundly moved Parr's he had been on
that Sunday afternoon, in Eldon Parr's garden, he had resolutely resolved
to thrust the woman and the incident from his mind, to defer the
consideration of the questions she had raised--grave though they were--to
a calmer period. For now he was unable to separate her, to eliminate the
emotion--he was forced to acknowledge--the thought of her aroused, from
the problems themselves. Who was she? At moments he seemed to see her
shining, accusing, as Truth herself, and again as a Circe who had drawn
him by subtle arts from his wanderings, luring him to his death; or, at
other times, as the mutinous daughter of revolt. But when he felt, in
memory, the warm touch of her hand, the old wildness of his nature
responded, he ceased to speculate or care, and he longed only to crush
and subdue her by the brute power of the man in him. For good or bad,
she had woven her spell.

Here was the old, elemental, twofold contest, carnal and spiritual,
thoroughly revived! . . .

He recalled, in his musings, the little theological school surrounded
by southern woods and fields, where he had sometime walked under autumn
foliage with the elderly gentleman who had had such an influence on his
life--the dean. Mild-mannered and frail, patient in ordinary converse,
--a lion for the faith. He would have died for it as cheerfully as any
martyr in history. By the marvels of that faith Holder had beheld, from
his pew in the chapel, the little man transformed. He knew young men,
their perplexities and temptations, and he dealt with them personally,
like a father. Holder's doubts were stilled, he had gained power of his
temptations and peace for his soul, and he had gone forth inspired by the
reminder that there was no student of whom the dean expected better
things. Where now were the thousands of which he had dreamed, and which
he was to have brought into the Church? . . .

Now, he asked himself, was it the dean, or the dean's theology through
which his regeneration had come? Might not the inherent goodness of the
dean be one thing, and his theology quite another? Personality again!
He recalled one of the many things which Alison Parr had branded on his
memory,--"the belief, the authority in which the man is clothed, and not
the man!" The dean's God had remained silent on the subject of
personality. Or, at the best, he had not encouraged it; and there were
--Hodder could not but perceive--certain contradictions in his character,
which were an anomalistic blending of that of the jealous God of Moses
and of the God of Christ. There must be continuity--God could not
change. Therefore the God of infinite love must retain the wrath which
visited sins of the fathers on the children, which demanded sacrifice,
atonement,--an exact propitiation for his anger against mankind. An
innocent life of sorrow and suffering!

And again, "You and your religion are as far apart as the poles!" Had
he, Hodder, outgrown the dean's religion, or had it ever been his own?
Was there, after all, such a thing as religion? Might it not be merely a
figment of the fertile imagination of man? He did not escape the terror
of this thought when he paused to consider his labour of the past two
years and the vanity of its results. And little by little the feeling
grew upon him, such being the state of his mind, that he ought not to
continue, for the present at least, to conduct the services. Should he
resign, or go away for a while to some quiet place before he made such a
momentous decision? There was no one to whom he could turn; no layman,
and no clergyman; not even the old bishop, whom he had more than once
mentally accused of being, too broad and too tolerant! No, he did not
wish a clergyman's solution. The significance of this thought flashed
through him--that the world itself was no longer seeking clergymen's
solutions. He must go off alone, and submit his faith to the impartial
test.

It was in a vigil of the night, when he lay in the hot darkness, unable
to sleep, that he came at length to this resolve. And now that he had
cut the knot he was too just to blame Alison Parr for having pointed out
--with what often had seemed a pitiless cruelty--something of which he
had had a constantly growing perception yet had continually sought to
evade. And he reviewed, as the church bells recorded the silent hours,
how, little by little, his confidence had crumbled before the shocks of
the successive revelations--some of them so slight that they had passed
unnoticed: comparisons, inevitably compelled; Dalton Street; the
confessions of Eleanor Goodrich and Mrs. Constable; Mr. Plimpton and his
views of life--Eldon Parr! Even the slamming of the carriage doors in
Burton Street had had a significance!

Might it not prove that this woman had let fall into the turbid waters of
his soul the drop that was to clear them forever? He would go away. He
would not see her again.

Over the sleeping city, unapprehended, stole the dawn.

He arose, but instead of falling on his knees he went to the window and
lifted his face to the whitening sky . . . . Slowly out of the
obscurity of the earth's shadow emerged the vague outlines of familiar
things until they stood sharply material, in a silence as of death. A
sparrow twittered, and suddenly the familiar, soot-grimed roofs were
bathed in light, and by a touch made beautiful . . . .

Some hours later the city was wide awake. And Hodder, bathed and
dressed, stood staring down from his study window into the street below,
full now of young men and girls; some with set faces, hurrying, intent,
others romping and laughing as they dodged the trucks and trolley cars;
all on their way to the great shoe factory around the corner, the huge
funnels of which were belching forth smoke into the morning air. The
street emptied, a bell rang, a whistle blew, the hum of distant machinery
began . . . .



II

Later that morning Hodder sat in his study. The shutters were closed,
and the intensity of the tropical glare without was softened and diffused
by the slanting green slats. His eye wandered over the long and
comfortable room which had been his sanctuary in the feverish days of
his ministry, resting affectionately on the hospitable chairs, the wide
fireplace before which he had been wont to settle himself on winter
nights, and even on the green matting--a cooling note in summer. And
there, in the low cases along the walls, were the rows of his precious
books,--his one hobby and extravagance. He had grown to love the room.
Would he ever come back to it?

A step sounded in the hall, a knock, and the well-known gaunt form and
spectacled face of McCrae appeared in the doorway.

"Ye wished to see me?" he asked.

"McCrae," said the rector, "I am going off for a while."

His assistant regarded him a moment in silence. Although Hodder had no
intention of explaining his reasons, he had a curious conviction that it
were superfluous to do so, that McCrae had guessed them.

"Why shouldn't ye? There's but a handful left to preach to in this
weather."

"I wouldn't go, in this sudden way, if it were not imperative," Hodder
added, trying to speak calmly.

"Why shouldn't ye?" McCrae repeated, almost fiercely.

Hodder smiled in spite of himself.

"There's no reason," he said, "except the added work put on you without
warning, and in this heat."

"Ye'll not need to worry," his assistant assured him, "the heat's nothing
to me." McCrae hesitated, and then demanded abruptly, "Ye'll not be
visiting?"

The question took Hodder by surprise.

"No," he answered quickly, and not quite steadily, and hesitated in his
turn, "I shan't be visiting."

"It's a rest ye need, I've been wanting to say it." McCrae took a step
forward, and for a moment it seemed as though he were at last about to
break the bonds of his reserve. Perhaps he detected an instinctive
shrinking on the rector's part. At any rate, there was another instant
of silence, in which the two men faced each other across the desk, and
McCrae held out his hand. "Good luck to ye," he said, as Hodder took it,
"and don't have the pariah on your mind. Stay till ye're rested, and
come back to us."

He left the room abruptly. Hodder remained motionless, looking after
him, and then, moved apparently by a sudden impulse, started toward the
door,--only to halt and turn before he got to it. Almost he had opened
his lips to call his assistant back. He could not do it--the moment had
come and fled when it might have been possible. Did this man hide, under
his brusqueness and brevity of speech, the fund of wisdom and the wider
sympathy and understanding he suspected? Hodder could have vouched for
it, and yet he had kept his own counsel. And he was struck suddenly by
the significance of the fact, often remarked, that McCrae in his brief
and common-sense and by no means enlivening sermons had never once
referred in any way to doctrine or dogma!

He spent half an hour in collecting and bestowing in two large valises
such articles as his simple needs would demand, and then set out for a
railroad office in the business portion of the city, where he bought his
ticket and berth. Then, after a moment of irresolution on the threshold
of the place, he turned to the right, thrusting his way through the
sluggish crowds on Tower Street until he came to the large bookstore
where he had been want to spend, from time to time, some of his leisure
moments. A clerk recognized him, and was about to lead the way to the
rear, where the precious editions were kept, when Hodder stopped him.

In casting about for a beginning in his venture over unknown seas, there
had naturally come into his mind three or four works which were anathema
to the orthodox; one of which, in seven volumes, went back to his
seminary days, and had been the subject of a ringing, denunciatory sermon
by the dean himself. Three of them were by Germans of established
reputations, another by a professor of the University of Paris. The
habit of years is strong.

And though he knew that many clergymen read these books, Hodder found it
impossible to overcome a nervous sense of adventure,--nay (knowing his
resolution), of apostasy, almost of clandestine guilt when he mentioned
them. And it seemed to him that the face of the clerk betrayed surprise.
One of the works was not in stock; he would send the others that
afternoon. Mr. Hodder would take them? They made a formidable parcel,
but a little handle was supplied and the rector hurried out, swinging
himself on a Tower Street car.

It must not be thought that the whole of what is called modern criticism
was new to Hodder. This would indeed be too much of a reflection on the
open-mindedness of the seminary from which he had graduated.
But he found himself, now, pondering a little cynically on that
"open-mindedness"; on that concession--if it had been a concession--to the
methods of science. There had been in truth a course of lectures on this
subject; but he saw now, very clearly, what a concerted effort had been
put forward in the rest of the teaching to minimize and discredit it.
Even the professor who gave the lectures had had the air of deploring
them. Here it is, but on the whole one would better let it alone,--such
was the inference. And he had let it alone, through all these years.

In the seminary, too, volumes by semi-learned clergymen had been thrust
into his hands, efforts which Hodder recalled now, in spite of his mental
state, with a smile. These invariably championed the doctrine of the
virgin birth as the pillar on which the Incarnation depended.
A favourite argument declared that although the Gospel texts in regard to
it might be proven untrustworthy, the miraculous birth must have happened
anyway! And one of these clerical authors whom he had more recently
read, actually had had the audacity to turn the weapons of the archenemy,
science, back upon itself. The virgin birth was an established fact in
nature, and had its place in the social economy of the bee. And did not
parthenogenesis occur in the silk moth?

In brief, the conclusion impressed upon him by his seminary instruction
was this: that historical criticism had corrected some ideas and put
some things in their right place. What these things were remained
sufficiently vague. But whenever it attacked a cherished dogma it was,
on general principles, wrong.

Once again in his cool study, he cut the cord with a trembling hand, and
while he was eating the lunch his housekeeper had prepared, dipped into
one of the larger volumes. As he read again the critical disproofs he
felt an acute, almost physical pain, as though a vital part of him were
being cut away, as his mind dwelt upon those beautiful legends to which
he had so often turned, and which had seemed the very fountain of his
faith. Legends! . . . .

He closed the book. The clock on the mantel struck three; his train was
to leave at five. He rose and went down into the silent church he had
grown to love, seating himself in one of the carved stalls of the choir,
his eye lingering in turn on each beautiful object: on the glowing
landscape in the window in memory of Eliza Parr, portraying the
delectable country, with the bewildered yet enraptured faces of the
pilgrims in the foreground; on the graceful, shining lectern, the
aspiring arches, the carved marble altar behind the rail, and above
it the painting of the Christ on the cross.

The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours. 'Eloi, Eloi, lama
sabachthani?' The hours when the mysterious sustaining and driving force
is withdrawn, and a lassitude and despair comes over us like that of a
deserted child: the hours when we feel we have reached the limit of
service, when our brief span of usefulness is done. Had God brought him,
John Hodder, to the height of the powers of his manhood only to abandon
him, to cast him adrift on the face of the waters--led him to this great
parish, with all its opportunities, only that he might fail and flee?

He sat staring at the face of the Man on the cross. Did he, in his
overwrought state, imagine there an expression he had never before
remarked, or had the unknown artist of the seventies actually risen above
the mediocrity of the figure in his portrayal of the features of the
Christ? The rector started, and stared again. There was no weakness in
the face, no meekness, no suggestion of the conception of the sacrificed
Lamb, no hint of a beatific vision of opening heavens--and yet no
accusation, no despair. A knowing--that were nearer--a knowing of all
things through the experiencing of all things, the suffering of all
things. For suffering without revelation were vain, indeed! A perfected
wisdom that blended inevitably with a transcendent love. Love and wisdom
were one, then? To reach comprehension through conquering experience was
to achieve the love that could exclaim, "they know not what they do!"

Human or divine? Man or God? Hodder found himself inwardly repeating
the words, the controversy which had raged for nineteen hundred years,
and not yet was stilled. Perfection is divine. Human! Hodder repeated
the word, as one groping on the threshold of a great discovery . . . .



III

He was listening--he had for a long time been listening to a sound which
had seemed only the natural accompaniment of the drama taking place in
his soul, as though some inspired organist were expressing in exquisite
music the undercurrent of his agony. Only gradually did he become aware
that it arose from the nave of the church, and, turning, his eyes fell
upon the bowed head and shoulders of a woman kneeling in one of the pews.
She was sobbing.

His movement, he recalled afterward, did not come of a conscious
volition, as he rose and descended the chancel steps and walked toward
her; he stood for what seemed a long time on the white marble of the
aisle looking down on her, his heart wrung by the violence of her grief,
which at moments swept through her like a tempest. She seemed still
young, but poverty had marked her with unmistakable signs. The white,
blue-veined hands that clung to the railing of the pew were thin; and the
shirtwaist, though clean, was cheap and frayed. At last she rose from
her knees and raised a tear-stained face to his, staring at him in a dumb
bewilderment.

"Can I do anything for you?" he said gently, "I am the rector here."
She did not answer, but continued to stare uncomprehendingly. He sat
down beside her in the pew.

"You are in trouble," he said. "Will you let me try to help you?"
A sob shook her--the beginning of a new paroxysm. He waited patiently
until it was over. Suddenly she got rather wildly and unsteadily to her
feet.

"I must go!" she cried. "Oh, God, what would I do if--if he wasn't
there?"

Hodder rose too. She had thrust herself past him into the aisle, but if
he had not taken her arm she would have fallen. Thus they went together
to the door of the church, and out into the white, burning sunlight. In
spite of her weakness she seemed actually to be leading him, impelled by
a strange force and fled down the steps of the porch to the sidewalk.
And there she paused, seeing him still beside her. Fortunately he had
his hat in his hand.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To take you home," he replied firmly, "you ought not to go alone."

A look of something like terror came into her eyes.

"Oh, no!" she protested, with a vehemence that surprised him. "I am
strong. Oh, thank you, sir,--but I can go alone. It's Dicky--my little
boy. I've never left him so long. I had gone for the medicine and I saw
the church. I used to go to church, sir, before we had our troubles--and
I just went in. It suddenly came over me that God might help me--the
doctor can do nothing."

"I will go with you," he said.

She ceased to resist, as one submitting to the fatality of a superior
will.

The pavements that afternoon, as Hodder and the forlorn woman left the
cool porticoes of St. John's, were like the floor of a stone oven, and
the work horses wore little bonnets over their heads. Keeping to the
shady side, the rector and his companion crossed Tower Street with its
trolley cars and its awninged stores, and came to that depressing
district which had reproached him since the first Sunday of his ministry
when he had traversed it with Eldon Parr. They passed the once
prosperous houses, the corner saloons pandering to two vices, decked with
the flamboyant signs of the breweries. The trees were dying along the
asphalt and in the yards, the iron fences broken here and there, the
copings stained with rust and soot. Hodder's thoughts might have been
likened to the heated air that simmered above the bricks.

They were in Dalton Street! She seemed to have forgotten his presence,
her pace quickened as she turned into a gate and flew up a flight of
dirty stone steps, broken and sagging. Hodder took in, subconsciously,
that the house was a dingy grey, of three stories and a Mansard roof,
with a bay window on the yard side, and a fly-blown sign, "Rooms to Rent"
hanging in one window. Across the street, on a lot that had once held a
similar dignified residence, was the yellow brick building of the "Albert
Hotel," and next door, on the east, a remodelled house of "apartments"
with speaking tubes in the doorway.

The woman led him up another flight of steps to the open door of
the house, through a hallway covered with a ragged carpet, where a
dilapidated walnut hat-rack stood, up the stairs, threading a dark
passage that led into a low-ceiled, stifling room at the very back.
A stout, slatternly person in a wrapper rose as they entered, but the
mother cast herself down beside the lounge where the child was. Hodder
had a moment of fear that she was indeed too late, so still the boy lay,
so pathetically wan was the little face and wasted the form under the
cotton nightgown. The mother passed her hand across his forehead.

"Dicky!" she whispered fearfully, "Dicky!"

He opened his eyes and smiled at her; feebly.

The, stout woman, who had been looking on with that intensity of sympathy
of which the poor are capable, began waving gently the palm-leaf fan.
She was German.

"He is so good, is Dicky. He smile at me when I fan him--once, twice.
He complains not at all."

The mother took the fan from her, hand.

"Thank you for staying with him, Mrs. Breitmann. I was gone longer than
I expected." The fact that the child still lived, that she was again in
his presence, the absorbing act of caring for him seemed to have calmed
her.

"It is nothing, what I do," answered Mrs. Breitmann, and turned away
reluctantly, the tears running on her cheeks. "When you go again, I come
always, Mrs. Garvin. Ach!"

Her exclamation was caused by the sight of the tall figure and black coat
of the rector, and as she left the room, Mrs. Garvin turned. And he
noticed in her eyes the same expression of dread they had held when she
had protested against his coming.

"Please don't think that I'm not thankful--" she faltered.

"I am not offering you charity," he said. "Can you not take from other
human beings what you have accepted from this woman who has just left?"

"Oh, sir, it isn't that!" she cried, with a look of trust, of appeal that
was new, "I would do anything--I will do anything. But my husband--he is
so bitter against the church, against ministers! If he came home and
found you here--"

"I know--many people feel that way," he assented, "too many. But you
cannot let a prejudice stand in the way of saving the boy's life, Mrs.
Garvin."

"It is more than that. If you knew, sir--"

"Whatever it is," he interrupted, a little sternly, "it must not
interfere. I will talk to your husband."

She was silent, gazing at him now questioningly, yet with the dawning
hope of one whose strength is all but gone, and who has found at last a
stronger to lean upon.

The rector took the fan from her arrested hand and began to ply it.

"Listen, Mrs. Garvin. If you had come to the church half an hour later,
I should have been leaving the city for a place far distant."

"You were going away? You stayed on my account?"

"I much prefer to stay, if I can be of any use, and I think I can. I am
sure I can. What is the matter with the child?"

"I don't know, sir--he just lies there listless and gets thinner and
thinner and weaker and weaker. Sometimes he feels sick, but not often.
The doctor don't seem to know."

What doctor have you?"

"His name is Welling. He's around the corner."

"Exactly," said the rector. "This is a case for Dr. Jarvis, who is the
best child specialist in the city. He is a friend of mine, and I intend
to send for him at once. And the boy must go to a hospital--"

"Oh, I couldn't, sir."

He had a poignant realization of the agony behind the cry. She breathed
quickly through her parted lips, and from the yearning in her tired eyes
--as she gazed at the poor little form--he averted his glance.

"Now, Mrs. Garvin, you must be sensible," he said. "This is no place for
a sick child. And it is such a nice little hospital, the one I have in
mind, and so many children get well and strong there," he added,
cheerfully.

"He wouldn't hear of it." Hodder comprehended that she was referring to
her husband. She added inconsequently: "If I let him go, and he never
came back! Oh, I couldn't do it--I couldn't."

He saw that it was the part of wisdom not to press her, to give her time
to become accustomed to the idea. Come back--to what? His eye wandered
about the room, that bespoke the last shifts of poverty, for he knew that
none but the desperate were driven to these Dalton Street houses, once
the dwellings of the well-to-do, and all the more pitiful for the
contrast. The heated air reeked with the smell of stale cooking.
There was a gas stove at one side, a linoleum-covered table in the
centre, littered with bottles, plates, and pitchers, a bed and chairs
which had known better days, new obviously bruised and battered by many
enforced movings. In one corner was huddled a little group of toys.

He was suddenly and guiltily aware that the woman had followed his
glance.

"We had them in Alder Street," she said. "We might have been there yet,
if we hadn't been foolish. It's a pretty street, sir--perhaps you know
it--you take the Fanshawe Avenue cars to Sherman Heights. The air is
like the country there, and all the houses are new, and Dicky had a yard
to play in, and he used to be so healthy and happy in it. . . We were
rich then,--not what you'd call rich," she added apologetically, "but we
owned a little home with six rooms, and my husband had a good place as
bookkeeper in a grocery house, and every year for ten years we put
something by, and the boy came. We never knew how well off we were,
until it was taken away from us, I guess. And then Richard--he's my
husband--put his savings into a company--he thought it was so safe, and
we were to get eight per cent--and the company failed, and he fell sick
and lost his place, and we had to sell the house, and since he got well
again he's been going around trying for something else. Oh, he's tried
so hard,--every day, and all day long. You wouldn't believe it, sir.
And he's so proud. He got a job as porter, but he wasn't able to hold
it--he wasn't strong enough. That was in April. It almost broke my
heart to see him getting shabby--he used to look so tidy. And folks
don't want you when you're shabby." . . .

There sprang to Hodder's mind a sentence in a book he had recently read:
"Our slums became filled with sick who need never have been sick; with
derelicts who need never have been abandoned."

Suddenly, out of the suffocating stillness of the afternoon a woman's
voice was heard singing a concert-hall air, accompanied by a piano played
with vigour and abandon. And Hodder, following the sound, looked out
across the grimy yard--to a window in the apartment house opposite.

"There's that girl again," said the mother, lifting her head. "She does
sing nice, and play, poor thing! There was a time when I wouldn't have
wanted to listen. But Dicky liked it so . . . . It's the very tune
he loved. He don't seem to hear it now. He don't even ask for Mr.
Bentley any more."

"Mr. Bentley?" the rector repeated. The name was somehow familiar to
him.

The piano and the song ceased abruptly, with a bang.

"He lives up the street here a way--the kindest old gentleman you ever
saw. He always has candy in his pockets for the children, and it's a
sight to see them follow him up and down the sidewalk. He takes them to
the Park in the cars on Saturday afternoons. That was all Dicky could
think about at first--would he be well enough to go with Mr. Bentley by
Saturday? And he was forever asking me to tell Mr. Bentley he was sick.
I saw the old gentleman on the street to-day, and I almost went up to
him. But I hadn't the courage."

The child moaned, stirred, and opened his eyes, gazing at them
feverishly, yet without seeming comprehension. She bent over him,
calling his name . . . . Hodder thrust the fan into her hand, and
rose.

"I am going to telephone Dr. Jarvis," he said, "and then I shall come
back, in order to be here when he arrives."

She looked up at him.

"Oh, thank you, sir,--I guess it's for the best--"

Her voice died away, and the rector, seeking for the cause, saw that a
man had entered the room. He walked up to the couch and stood for a
moment staring moodily at the child, while the woman watched him,
transfixed.

"Richard!" she said.

He paid no attention to her. She turned to Hodder. "This is my husband,
sir. . . . Richard, I went into the church--just for a moment--I--I
couldn't help it, and this gentleman--the minister--came home with me.
He wanted to--he thought I was sick. And now he's going out to get the
best doctor in the city for Dicky."

The man turned suddenly and confronted the rector.

"Why don't you let him die, you and your church people?" he asked.
"You've done your worst to kill him."

The woman put her hand fearfully, imploringly on the man's arm.

"Richard!" she whispered.

But as Hodder glanced from the derelict beside him a wave of
comprehension passed through him that swept him clean of indignation,
of resentment. And this man had been prosperous and happy!

"There is but one way to save the boy's life, Mr. Garvin," he said, "and
that is to put him in charge of Dr. Jarvis."

The man made no reply, but went over to the window, staring out into the
yard. There was something vaguely ominous in his attitude. The rector
watched him a moment, and then turned to the mother.

"You must not lose hope," he told her.

She looked at him with terror-stricken eyes that sought to be grateful.
He had picked up his hat from a corner of the littered table, and started
to leave, when Garvin, by a sudden movement, planted himself in the
doorway. Whether he had been drinking, or whether he were merely crazed
by misfortune and the hopeless search in the heat for employment, and by
lack of proper nourishment, Hodder could not say. There was a light in
his eyes like that in a wounded animal's; and although he was thin and
slight, he had the concentrated power of desperation.

"Say, what church do you come from?" he demanded.

"From St. John's," said the rector.

"Eldon Parr's church?"

Hodder started, in spite of himself, at the name.

"Mr. Parr is a member of the congregation."

"Come off! He owns it and runs it, the same as he does everything else
in this town. Maybe you don't think I read the Sunday papers. Say, I
was respectable once, and had a good place. You wouldn't believe it,
would you?"

Hodder hesitated. There was obviously no way to pass the man except by
using physical force.

"If you have anything to say to me, Mr. Garvin, I shall be glad to talk
to you later. You must not stop me now," he said with a touch of
severity.

"You'll listen to me, right here and now," cried Garvin. "If you think I
am going to let Eldon Parr's minister, or any one else belonging to him,
save that boy's life, you've got another guess comin'. That's all. I'd
rather have him die--d'ye hear? I'd rather have him die."

The woman behind them whimpered . . . . The name was ringing like a
knell in Hodder's head--Eldon Parr! Coming, as it had, like a curse from
the lips of this wretched, half-demented creature, it filled his soul
with dismay. And the accusation had in it the profound ring of truth.
He was Eldon Parr's minister, and it was Eldon Parr who stood between him
and his opportunity.

"Why do you speak of Mr. Parr?" he asked, though the question cost him a
supreme effort.

"Why do I speak of him? My God, because he ruined me. If it hadn't been
for him, damn him, I'd have a home, and health and happiness to-day, and
the boy would be well and strong instead of lying there with the life all
but gone out of him. Eldon Parr did for me, and now he's murdered my
son--that's why I mention him."

In the sudden intensity of his feeling, Hodder seized Garvin by the arms
--arms that were little more than skin and bone. The man might be
crazed, he might be drunk: that he believed what he was saying there
could be no question. He began to struggle violently, but the rector was
strong.

"Be still," he commanded. And suddenly, overcome less by the physical
power than by the aspect of the clergyman, an expression of bewilderment
came into his eyes, and he was quiet. Hodder dropped his arms. "I do
not intend to go until I hear what you have to say. It would be useless,
at any rate, since your child's life is at stake. Tell me how Mr. Parr
has ruined you."

Garvin stared at him, half in suspicion, half in amazement.

"I guess you never knew of his ruining anybody, did you?" he demanded
sullenly. "Well, I'll tell you all right, and you can go and tell him.
He won't care much--he's used to it by this time, and he gets square with
God by his churches and charities. Did you ever hear of a stock called
Consolidated Tractions?"

Consolidated Tractions! In contrast to the sordid misery and degradation
of this last refuge of the desperate Hodder saw the lofty, panelled
smoking room at Francis Ferguson's, and was listening again to Wallis
Plimpton's cynical amusement as to how he and Everett Constable and Eldon
Parr himself had "gat out" before the crash; "got out" with all the money
of the wretch who now stood before him! His parishioners! his
Christians! Oh God!

The man was speaking in his shrill voice.

"Well, I was a Traction sucker, all right, and I guess you wouldn't have
to walk more than two blocks to find another in this neighbourhood. You
think Eldon Parr's a big, noble man, don't you? You're proud to run his
church, ain't you? You wouldn't believe there was a time when I thought
he was a big man, when I was kind of proud to live in the same city with
him. She'll tell you how I used to come home from the store and talk
about him after supper, and hope that the kid there would grow up into a
financier like Eldon Parr. The boys at the store talked about him: he
sort of laid hold on our imaginations with the library he gave, and
Elmwood Park, and the picture of the big organ in your church in the
newspapers--and sometimes, Mary and me and the boy, in the baby carriage,
on Sunday afternoons we used to walk around by his house, just to look at
it. You couldn't have got me to believe that Eldon Parr would put his
name to anything that wasn't straight.

"Then Consolidated Tractions came along, with Parr's, name behind it.
Everybody was talking about it, and how it was payin' eight per cent.
from the start, and extra dividends and all, and what a marvel of finance
it was. Before the kid came, as soon as I married her, we began to save
up for him. We didn't go to the theatres or nothing. Well, I put it
all, five thousand dollars, into Consolidated. She'll tell you how we
sat up half the night after we got the first dividend talking about how
we'd send the kid to college, and after we went to bed we couldn't sleep.
It wasn't more than a year after that we began to hear things--and we
couldn't sleep for sure, and the dividends stopped and the stock tumbled.
Even then I wouldn't believe it of him, that he'd take poor people's
money that way when he had more than he knew what to do with. I made up
my mind if I went down to see him and told him about it, he'd make it
right. I asked the boss for an hour off, and headed for the Parr
building--I've been there as much as fifty times since--but he don't
bother with small fry. The clerks laugh when they see me comin' . . .
I got sick worryin', and when I was strong enough to be around they'd
filled my job at the grocery, and it wasn't long before we had to move
out of our little home in Alder Street. We've been movin' ever since,"
he cried, and tears of weakness were in his eyes, "until we've come to
this, and we'll have to get out of here in another week. God knows where
we'll go then."

Hodder shuddered.

"Then I found out how he done it--from a lawyer. The lawyer laughed at
me, too. Say, do you wonder I ain't got much use for your church people?
Parr got a corporation lawyer named Langmaid--he's another one of your
millionnaire crooks--to fix it up and get around the law and keep him out
of jail. And then they had to settle with Tim Beatty for something like
three hundred thousand. You know who Beatty is--he owns this city--his
saloon's around here on Elm Street. All the crooks had to be squared.
Say," he demanded aggressively, "are Parr and Langmaid any better than
Beatty, or any of the hold-up men Beatty covers? There's a street-walker
over there in those flats that's got a million times more chance to get
to heaven--if there is any--than those financiers, as they call 'emselves
--I ain't much on high finance, but I've got some respect for a second
story man now--he takes some risks! I'll tell you what they did, they
bought up the short car lines that didn't pay and sold 'em to themselves
for fifty times as much as they were worth; and they got controlling
interests in the big lines and leased 'em to themselves with dividends
guaranteed as high as eighteen per cent. They capitalized the
Consolidated for more millions than a little man like me can think of,
and we handed 'em our money because we thought they were honest. We
thought the men who listed the stock on the Exchange were honest. And
when the crash came, they'd got away with the swag, like any common
housebreakers. There were dummy directors, and a dummy president. Eldon
Parr didn't have a share--sold out everything when she went over two
hundred, but you bet he kept his stock in the leased lines, which
guarantee more than they earn. He cleaned up five million, they say....
My money--the money that might give that boy fresh air, and good doctors
....Say, you believe in hell, don't you? You tell Eldon Parr to keep his
charity,--he can't send any of it in here. And you'd better go back to
that church of his and pray to keep his soul out of hell." . . .

His voice, which had risen even to a higher pitch, fell silent. And all
at once, without warning, Garvin sank, or rather tumbled upon the bed,
sobbing in a way that was terrible to see. The wife stole across the
room, sat down beside him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. . . .

In spite of the intensity of his own anguish, Hodder was conscious of a
curious detachment; and for months afterward particular smells, the sight
of a gasoline stove, a certain popular tune gave him a sharp twinge of
pain. The acid distilling in his soul etched the scene, the sounds, the
odours forever in his memory: a stale hot wind from the alley rattled the
shutter-slats, and blew the door to; the child stirred; and above the
strident, irregular weeping rose main, in ironical contrast, the piano
and the voice across the yard. In that glimpse he had into the heart of
life's terrible mystery he momentarily understood many things: he knew
that behind the abandon of the woman's song was the same terror which
reigned in the room in which he stood . . . .

There were voices in the passageway without, a woman saying in a German
accent,--"It is here, sir."

There was a knock at the door . . . .




CHAPTER XI

THE LOST PARISHIONER


I

Hodder opened the door. In the dingy passageway he perceived a tall
figure which immediately turned out to be that of an old gentleman. In
spite of the heat, he wore a long coat and an old-fashioned, high collar,
a black tie, under which was exposed a triangle of immaculate, pleated
linen. In one hand he held a gold-headed stick, a large tall hat of
which the silk nap was a little rubbed, a string sustaining a parcel, the
brown paper wrapping of which was soaked: in the other, a manila bag
containing lemons.

His head was bent forward a little, the high dome of it was bald,
but the white hair clustered thickly behind the temples. The face was
clean-shaven, the cheeks touched with red, the nose high and dominating,
distinctly philanthropic. And the blue eyes rested on the clergyman with
a benevolence unfeigned.

"Good afternoon, sir," the old gentleman said; "I am told Mrs. Garvin
lives here."

Before the rector could reply Mrs. Garvin herself stood between them.

"It's Mr. Bentley!" she exclaimed.

"I fear I'm intruding, ma'am," he said. "But some of Dicky's little
friends have just informed me that he is ill, and I have taken the
liberty of calling to inquire."

Mr. Bentley entered the room,--simple words to express that which was
in some sort an event. He laid his parcels on the table, his hat and
stick on a chair, and stood looking down in silence at the thin little
form on the couch. Presently he turned.

"I'm afraid he's very ill, ma'am," he said gently. "You have your own
doctor, no doubt. But if you will permit me, as a friend, to make a
suggestion, we have in the city one of the best child specialists in the
United States, who is never weary of curing these little ones,--Dr.
Jarvis, and I shall be happy to ask him to come and see Dicky."

Mrs. Garvin glanced at Hodder, who came forward.

"I was just about to telephone for Dr. Jarvis, Mr. Bentley, when you
arrived. I am Mr. Hodder, of St. John's."

"How do you do, sir?" The kindly eyes, alight with a gentle flame, rested
upon the rugged figure of the rector. "I am glad that you, too, agree
that Dr. Jarvis is advisable, Mr. Hodder."

There was a sound from the bed. Garvin had got to his feet and was
staring wildly, with reddened lids.

"Are you Horace Bentley?" he demanded.

"That is my name, sir," Mr. Bentley replied. His expression of surprise
was only momentary. And in all his life Hodder had never beheld a
greater contrast in human beings than between that gracious and courtly
old man and the haggard, unkempt, unshaved, and starving outcast facing
him. Something like a film came over Garvin's eyes.

"He ruined you, too, twenty years back--Eldon Parr did for you, too. Oh,
I know his record, I've followed his trail--he got all the Grantham stock
that would have made you a millionnaire!"

"Ah," replied Mr. Bentley, smiling to humour him, "that's something I
have no wish to be, sir,--a millionaire." He met the frightened gaze of
the wife. "Good day, ma'am. If you will allow me, I'll come to-morrow
morning to learn what Dr. Jarvis will have had to say. Have courage,
ma'am, have courage. You may have faith in Dr. Jarvis."

The poor woman was incapable of speech. Mr. Bentley picked up his hat
and stick.

"I've taken the liberty of bringing Dicky a little ice and a few lemons."
His eyes rested again on the couch by the window. Then he turned to
Garvin, who stood mutely, staring. "Good evening, sir," he said.
"We must look for the best."



II

They went down the stairs of the shabby and battered house, stairs by the
side of which holes had been knocked through the faded wall-paper--scars
of frequent movings. The sound and smell of frying came out of the open
door of what once had been the parlour, and on the front steps a little
girl darted past them with a pitcher of beer. When they reached the
sidewalk Mr. Bentley halted.

"If you were intending to telephone Dr. Jarvis, Mr. Hodder, there is a
public station in the drug store just above here. I know that clergymen
are busy persons, and I am passing it, if you are pressed for time."

"My only concern is to get Jarvis here," said the rector.
"If I may go with you--"

Once again in the hot sunlight, reaction had set in. Hodder was suddenly
unstrung, and the kindly old gentleman beside him seemed for the instant
the only fixture in a chaotic universe. It was not until later
reflection that he realized Mr. Bentley might, by an intuitive sympathy,
a depth of understanding, have drained something of his state, since the
incidents which followed were to be accounted for on no other grounds.
In such elemental moments the frail conventions are swept away: Mr.
Bentley, whoever he might be, was no longer a stranger; and it seemed
wholly natural to be walking with him up the street, to hear him saying,
--not with perfunctory politeness but in a tone that was itself an
invitation,--"With pleasure, sir, we'll go together. And let us trust
that the doctor will be at home."

Nor did Hodder stop to wonder, then, why Mr. Bentley should have sought
in his conversation to dissipate something of the hideous blackness of a
tragedy which must have moved him profoundly. How fortunate, he
declared, that they should have arrived before it was too late! For
it was plain to be seen that these Garvins were good people who had been
broken by adversity . . . . The boy had struck him particularly--a
lovable, merry little fellow whose clothes, Mr. Bentley observed, were
always neatly mended, betokening a mother with self-respect and
character. He even spoke of Garvin: adversity, worry, the heat, constant
brooding over a happier past and an uncertain future--was it surprising
that the poor man's mind had become unhinged? They must make some plan
for Garvin, said Mr. Bentley, get the man and his wife into the country
for a while amongst kindly people. This might no doubt be arranged....

"Here we are, sir."

The familiar smell of drugs, the sound of the trickling water in the soda
fountain roused Hodder to reality, to action, and he hurried into the
telephone booth, fumbled in the dog-eared book, got Dr. Jarvis's number
and called it. An eternity seemed to elapse before he had a reply, heard
his coin jangling in the bog, recognized the voice of the great doctor's
secretary. Yes, the doctor was in would he speak to Mr. Hodder, of St.
John's? . . . An interval, during which Hodder was suddenly struck
with this designation of himself. Was he still of St. John's, then? An
aeon might have elapsed since he had walked down the white marble of its
aisle toward the crouching figure in the pew. He was not that man, but
another--and still Mr. Hodder, of St. John's. . . . Then he heard the
specialist say, "Hello, Mr. Hodder, what can I do for you?" Heard his
own voice in reply, explaining the case. Could the doctor find time?
The doctor could: he was never too busy to attend to the poor,--though he
did not say so: he would be there--by half-past six. The rector hung up
the receiver, opened the door of the booth and mopped his brow, for the
heat was stifling.

"The doctor will go," he explained in answer to Mr. Bentley's inquiring
look.

"Now, sir," said the old gentleman, when they were out of the store, "we
have done all that we can for the time being. I do not live far from
here. Perhaps you would give me the pleasure of taking supper with me,
if you have no other engagement."

No other engagement! Not until then did Hodder remember his empty rooms
in the parish house, and the train which was to have borne him away from
all this already speeding northward. He accepted gratefully, nor did he
pause to speculate upon the mystery by which the stream of his life
seemed so suddenly to have been diverted. He had, indeed, no sense of
mystery in the presence of this splendidly sane, serene old man, any more
than the children who ran after him from the dingy yards and passages,
calling his name, clinging to the skirts of his coat. These accepted
him simply as an anomalous fact in their universe, grinned at his
pleasantries, and held up grimy little hands for the kidney-shaped candy
beans he drew forth from his capacious pockets. In the intervals he
reminisced to the rector about the neighbourhood.

"It seems but a short while ago when the trees met overhead--magnificent
trees they were. The asphalt and the soot killed them. And there were
fruit trees in that yard"--he pointed with his stick to a littered sun
parched plot adjoining a battered mansion--"all pink and white with
blossoms in the spring. Mr. Hadley lived there--one of our forgotten
citizens. He is dead and gone now and his family scattered. That other
house, where the boy lies, belonged to Mr. Villars, a relation of the
Atterbury family, and I can recall very well a little girl with a pink
sash and a white dress who used to come running out to meet me with
flowers in her hands. Incredible as it may seem, she picked them in that
yard. I thought of her as I went in, how fresh and happy she used to be,
and what a different place this was for children then. She must have
some of her own by this time."

The character of the street had changed to what might be called
shabby-genteel, and they stopped before a three-story brick house--one
of a row--that showed signs of scrupulous care. The steps were newly
scrubbed, the woodwork neatly painted.

"This is where I live, sir," said Mr. Bentley, opening the door with a
latchkey and leading the way into a high room on the right, darkened and
cool, and filled with superb, old-fashioned rosewood furniture. It was
fitted up as a library, with tall shelves reaching almost to the ceiling.

An old negro appeared, dressed in a swallow-tailed coat. His hair was as
white as his master's, and his face creased with age.

"Sam," said Mr. Bentley, "I have brought home a gentleman for supper."

"Yassah, Misteh Ho'ace. I was jest agwine to open up de blin's."

He lifted the wire screens and flung back the shutters, beamed
on the rector as he relieved him of his hat, and noiselessly retired.
Curiosity, hitherto suppressed by more powerful feelings, awoke in Hodder
speculations which ordinarily would have been aroused before: every
object in the room bespoke gentility, was eloquent of a day when wealth
was honoured and respected: photographs, daguerreotypes in old-fashioned
frames bore evidence of friendships of the past, and over the marble
mantel hung a portrait of a sweet-faced woman in the costume of the
thirties, whose eyes reminded Hodder of Mr. Bentley's. Who was she?

Hodder wondered. Presently he found himself before a photograph on the
wall beyond, at which he had been staring unconsciously.

"Ah, you recognize it," said Mr. Bentley.

"St. John's!"

"Yes," Mr. Bentley repeated, "St. John's." He smiled at Hodder's glance
of bewilderment, and put his hand on the younger man's arm. "That
picture was taken before you were born, sir, I venture to say--in 1869.
I am very fond of it, for it gives the church in perspective, as you see.
That was Mr. Gore's house"--he indicated a square, heavily corniced
mansion--"where the hotel now stands, and that was his garden, next the
church, where you see the trees above the wall."

The rector turned again and looked at his host, who, was gazing at the
picture thoughtfully.

"I ought to have remembered," he said. "I have seen your name in the
church records, sir, and I have heard Mr. Waring speak of you."

"My dear Mr. Hodder, there is no reason why you should have known me.
A great many years have passed since I was a parishioner of St. John's
--a great many years."

"But it was you," the rector began, uncertainly, and suddenly spoke with
conviction, "it was you who chose the architect, who did more than other
men to make the church what it is."

"Whatever I may have done," replied Mr. Bentley, with simple dignity,
"has brought its reward. To this day I have not ceased to derive
pleasure from it, and often I go out of my way, through Burton Street,
although the view is cramped. And sometimes," he added, with the hint of
a twinkle in his eye, "I go in. This afternoon is not the first time I
have seen you, Mr. Hodder."

"But--?" said the rector. He stared at the other's face, and the
question died on his lips.

"You wonder why I am no longer a parishioner. The time came when
I could not afford to be." There was no hint of reproach in his voice,
of bitterness. He spoke regretfully, indeed, but as one stating an
incontrovertible fact. "I lost my fortune, I could not keep my pew,
so I deeded it back to the church. My old friends, Mrs. Dimock and Asa
Waring, and others, too, were very kind. But I could not accept their
hospitality."

Hodder bowed his head in silence. What thundered indictment of the
Church of Christ could have been as severe, as wholly condemning as these
few words so dispassionately uttered by the man beside him?

The old darky entered, and announced supper.

Hodder had lost his way, yet a hand had been held out to him, and he
seized it. With a sense of being led, psychically as well as physically,
he followed Mr. Bentley into a large bedroom, where a high, four-posted
bed lifted a pleated canopy toward the ceiling. And after he had washed
his hands they entered a dining-room looking out upon a little yard in
the rear, which had been transformed into a garden. Roses, morning
glories, and nasturtiums were growing against the walls; a hose lay
coiled upon the path; the bricks, baked during the day, were splashed
with water; the leaves and petals were wet, and the acrid odour of moist
earth, mingling with perfumes, penetrated the room. Hodder paused in the
window.

"Sam keeps our flowers alive," he heard Mr. Bentley say, "I don't know
how."

"I scrubs 'em, sah," said Sam. "Yassah, I washes 'em like chilluns."

He found himself, at Mr. Bentley's request, asking grace, the old darky
with reverently bent head standing behind his master; sitting down at a
mahogany table that reflected like a mirror the few pieces of old silver,
to a supper of beaten biscuits that burned one's fingers, of 'broiled
chicken and coffee, and sliced peaches and cream. Mr. Bentley was
talking of other days--not so long gone by when the great city had been a
village, or scarcely more. The furniture, it seemed, had come from his
own house in what was called the Wilderness Road, not far from the river
banks, over the site of which limited trains now rolled on their way
eastward toward the northernmost of the city's bridges. He mentioned
many names, some remembered, some forgotten, like his own; dwelt on
pleasures and customs gone by forever.

"A little while after I moved in here, I found that one old man could not
fill the whole of this house, so I let the upper floors," he explained,
smilingly. "Some day I must introduce you to my tenants, Mr. Hodder."

By degrees, as Hodder listened, he became calm. Like a child, he found
himself distracted, talking, asking questions: and the intervals grew
longer between the recurrent surges of fear when the memory rose before
him of the events of the day,--of the woman, the child, and the man: of
Eldon Parr and this deed he had done; hinting, as it did, of closed
chambers of other deeds yet to be opened, of countless, hidden miseries
still to be revealed: when he heard once more the tortured voice of the
banker, and the question: "How would you like to live in this house
--alone?" In contrast, now he beheld the peace in the face of the man
whose worldly goods Eldon Parr had taken, and whom he had driven out of
the church. Surely, this man had found a solution! . . . What was it?

Hodder thought of the child, of the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, but he
lingered on, loth to leave,--if the truth be told--afraid to leave;
drawing strength from his host's calm, wondering as to the source of it,
as to the life which was its expression; longing, yet not presuming, to
question. The twilight deepened, and the old darky lit a lamp and led
the way back to the library.

"Sam," said Mr. Bentley, "draw up the armchair for Mr. Hodder beside the
window. It is cooler there."

"I ought to go," Hodder said. "I ought to see how the child is. Jarvis
will have been there by this time, and there may be necessaries--"

"Jarvis will have attended to that," Mr. Bentley replied. "Sit down, Mr.
Hodder. I am not sure that, for the present, we have not done all in
this case that is humanly possible."

"You mean," said the rector, "that they will accept nothing from me."
It came from him, spontaneously, like a cry. He had not meant to say it.
"I don't blame them. I don't blame them for losing their faith in God
and man, in the Church. I ought to have seen it before, but I was blind,
incredibly blind--until it struck me in the face. You saw it, sir, and
you left a church from which the poor are thrust out, which refuses to
heed the first precept of its Master."

"I saw it," answered Mr. Bentley, "but I could do nothing. Perhaps you
can do--something."

"Ah!" Hodder exclaimed sharply, "why do you say that? The Church is
paralyzed, chained. How can she reach these wretched people who are the
victims of the ruthless individualism and greed of those who control her?
You know--that man, Mr. Bentley." (Hodder could not bring himself to
pronounce Eldon Parr's name.) "I had an affection for him, I pitied him,
because he suffers--"

"Yes," echoed Mr. Bentley, "he suffers."

Hodder was momentarily arrested by the sadness of his tone.

"But he doesn't know why he suffers--he cannot be made to see," the
rector went on. "And he is making others suffer,--hideously, while he
imagines himself a Christian. He is the Church to that miserable,
hopeless wretch we saw to-day, and to hundreds of the same kind whom he
has driven to desperation. And I--who am supposed to be the vicar of
God--I am powerless. They have a contempt for me, a just contempt. They
thrust me out of their doors, bid me to return and minister to their
oppressors. You were right to leave, and I should have left long since."

He had not spoken with violence, or with a lack of control. He seemed
rather to have regained a mastery of himself, and felt as a man from whom
the shackles have been struck, proclaiming his freedom. Mr. Bentley's
eyes lighted in involuntary response as he gazed at the figure and face
before him. He pressed his hands together.

"If you will forgive a curiosity, Mr. Hodder, that is somewhat due to my
interest in a church with which I have many precious associations, may I
ask if this is a sudden determination on your part?"

"No," Hodder said. "I have known ever since I came here that something
was wrong, but at first I couldn't see it, and after that I wouldn't see
it. That is about what happened, as I look back on it.

"But the farther in I went," Hodder continued, "the more tangled and
bewildered I became. I was hypnotized, I think," he added with a
gesture,--"hypnotized, as a man is who never takes his eyes from a
pattern. I wanted to get at this neighbourhood--Dalton Street--I mean,
and finally I agreed to the establishment of a settlement house over
here, to be paid for largely by Eldon Parr and Francis Ferguson. I
couldn't see the folly of such an undertaking--the supreme irony of it,
until--until it was pointed out to me." He hesitated; the remembrance of
Alison Parr ran through him, a thread of pain. "And even then I tried to
dodge the issue, I tried to make myself believe that good might flow out
of evil; that the Church, which is supposed to be founded on the highest
ideal ever presented to man, might compromise and be practical, that
she might accept money which had been wrung from a trusting public by
extortion, by thinly disguised thievery such as this Consolidated
Tractions Company fraud, and do good with it! And at last I made up
my mind to go away, to-day, to a quiet place where I might be alone,
and reflect, when by a singular circumstance I was brought into contact
with this man, Garvin. I see now, clearly enough, that if I had gone,
I should never have come back."

"And you still intend to go?" Mr. Bentley asked.

Hodder leaned his elbow against the mantel. The lamplight had a curious
effect on Mr. Bentley's face.

"What can I do?" he demanded. The question was not aimed directly at his
host--it was in the nature of a renewed appeal to a tribunal which had
been mute, but with which he now seemed vaguely aware of a certain
contact. "Even supposing I could bring myself to accept the compromise
--now that I see it clearly, that the end justifies the means--what good
could I accomplish? You saw what happened this afternoon--the man would
have driven me out if, it hadn't been for you. This whole conception of
charity is a crime against civilization--I had to have that pointed out
to me, too,--this system of legalized or semi-legalized robbery and the
distribution of largesse to the victims. The Church is doing wrong,
is stultifying herself in encouraging it. She should set her face
rigidly against it, stand for morality and justice and Christianity in
government, not for pauperizing. It is her mission to enlighten these
people, all people--to make them self-respecting, to give them some
notion of the dignity of their souls and their rights before God and
man."

"Aren't you yourself suggesting," said Mr. Bentley, "the course which
will permit you to remain?"

Hodder was silent. The thought struck him with tremendous force. Had he
suggested it? And how--why? Could it be done? Could he do it or begin
it?

"We have met at last in a singular way," he heard Mr. Bentley going on,
"in a way that has brushed aside the conventions, in a way--I am happy to
say--that has enabled you to give me your confidence. And I am an old
man,--that has made it easier. I saw this afternoon, Mr. Hodder, that
you were troubled, although you tried to hide it."

"I knew that you saw it," Hodder said.

"Nor was it difficult for me to guess something of the cause of it. The
same thing has troubled me."

"You?"

"Yes," Mr. Bentley answered. "I left St. John's, but the habits and
affections of a lifetime are not easily severed. And some time before
I left it I began to have visions of a future for it. There was a
question, many years ago, as to whether a new St. John's should not be
built in the West End, on a site convenient to the parishioners, and this
removal I opposed. Mr. Waring stood by me. We foresaw the day when
this district would be--what it is now--the precarious refuge of the
unfortunate in the battle of life, of just such unhappy families as the
Garvins, of miserable women who sell themselves to keep alive. I thought
of St. John's, as you did, as an oasis in a desert of misery and vice.
At that time I, too, believed in the system of charities which you have
so well characterized as pauperizing."

"And now?"

Mr. Bentley smiled, as at a reminiscence.

"My eyes were opened," he replied, and in these simple words summed up
and condemned it all. "They are craving bread, and we fling them atones.
I came here. It was a house I owned, which I saved from the wrecks, and
as I look back upon what the world would call a misfortune, sir, I can
see that it was a propitious event, for me. The street 'ran down,'
as the saying goes. I grew gradually to know these people, my new
neighbours, largely through their children, and I perceived many things
I had not dreamed of--before then. I saw how the Church was hampered,
fettered; I saw why they disliked and distrusted it."

"And yet you still believed that it had a mission?" Hodder interrupted.
He had been listening with rapt attention.

"I still believed it," said Mr. Bentley. "My conception of that mission
changed, grew, and yet it seemed further and further from fulfilment.
And then you came to St. John's."

"I!" The cry was involuntary.

"You," Mr. Bentley repeated. "Sometimes," he added whimsically, "I go
there, as I have told you. I saw you, I heard you preach. I talked to
my friend Waring about you. I saw that your eyes were not opened, but I
think I had a certain presentiment, for which I do not pretend to
account, that they would be opened."

"You mean," said the rector, "that if I believe in the mission of the
Church as I have partially stated it here tonight, I--should stay and
fight for it."

"Precisely," Mr. Bentley replied.

There was a note of enthusiasm, almost of militancy in the old
gentleman's tone that surprised and agitated Hodder. He took a turn
up and down the room before he answered.

"I ought to tell you that the view I expressed a moment ago is new to me.
I had not thought of it before, and it is absolutely at variance with any
previous ideas I have held. I can see that it must involve, if carried
to its logical conclusion, a change in the conception of Christianity I
have hitherto held."

He was too intent upon following up the thought to notice Mr. Bentley's
expression of assent.

"And suppose," he asked, "I were unable to come to any conclusion?
I will be frank, Mr. Bentley, and confess to you that at present I cannot
see my way. You have heard me preach--you know what my beliefs have
been. They are shattered. And, while I feel that there is some definite
connection between the view of the Church which I mentioned and her
message to the individual, I do not perceive it clearly. I am not
prepared at present to be the advocate of Christianity, because I do
not know what Christianity is. I thought I knew.

"I shall have to begin all over again, as though I had never taken
orders, submit to a thorough test, examine the evidence impartially. It
is the only way. Of this much I am sure, that the Church as a whole has
been engaged in a senseless conflict with science and progressive
thought, that she has insisted upon the acceptance of facts which are in
violation of reason and which have nothing to do with religion. She has
taught them to me--made them, in fact, a part of me. I have clung to
them as long as I can, and in throwing them over I don't know where I
shall land."

His voice was measured, his words chosen, yet they expressed a withering
indignation and contempt which were plainly the culmination of months of
bewilderment--now replaced by a clear-cut determination.

"I do not blame any individual," he continued, "but the system by which
clergymen are educated.

"I intend to stay here, now, without conducting any services, and find
out for myself what the conditions are here in Dalton Street. You know
those people, Mr. Bentley, you understand them, and I am going to ask you
to help me. You have evidently solved the problem."

Mr. Bentley rose. And he laid a hand, which was not quite steady, on the
rector's shoulder.

"Believe me, sir," he replied, "I appreciate something of what such a
course must mean to you--a clergyman." He paused, and a look came upon
his face, a look that might scarce have been called a smile--Hodder
remembered it as a glow--reminiscent of many things. In it a life was
summed ups in it understanding, beneficence, charity, sympathy, were all
expressed, yet seemingly blended into one. "I do not know what my
testimony may be worth to you, my friend, but I give it freely. I
sometimes think I have been peculiarly fortunate. But I have lived a
great many years, and the older I get and the more I see of human nature
the firmer has grown my conviction of its essential nobility and
goodness."

Hodder marvelled, and was silent.

"You will come here, often,--every day if you can. There are many men
and women, friends of mine, whom I should like you to know, who would
like to know you."

"I will, and thank you," Hodder answered. Words were inadequate for the
occasion . . . .




CHAPTER XII

THE WOMAN OF THE SONG

On leaving Mr. Bentley, Hodder went slowly down Dalton Street, wondering
that mere contact with another human being should have given him the
resolution to turn his face once again toward the house whither he was
bound. And this man had given him something more. It might hardly have
been called faith; a new courage to fare forth across the Unknown--that
was it; hope, faint but revived.

Presently he stopped on the sidewalk, looked around him, and read a sign
in glaring, electric letters, Hotel Albert. Despite the heat, the place
was ablaze with lights. Men and women were passing, pausing--going in.
A motor, with a liveried chauffeur whom he remembered having seen before,
was standing in front of the Rathskeller. The nightly carousal was
beginning.

Hodder retraced his steps, crossed the street diagonally, came to the
dilapidated gate he remembered so well, and looked up through the dusk at
the house. If death had entered it, there was no sign: death must be a
frequent visitor hereabouts. On the doorsteps he saw figures outlined,
slatternly women and men in shirt-sleeves who rose in silence to make way
for him, staring at him curiously. He plunged into the hot darkness of
the hall, groped his way up the stairs and through the passage, and
hesitated. A single gas jet burned low in the stagnant air, and after a
moment he made out, by its dim light, a woman on her knees beside the
couch, mechanically moving the tattered palm-leaf over the motionless
little figure. The child was still alive. He drew a deep breath, and
entered; at the sound of his step Mrs. Garvin suddenly started up.

"Richard!" she cried, and then stood staring at the rector. "Have you
seen my husband, sir? He went away soon after you left."

Hodder, taken by surprise, replied that he had not. Her tone, her
gesture of anxiety he found vaguely disquieting.

"The doctor has been here?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered absently. "I don't know where he can be--Richard.
He didn't even wait to see the doctor. And he thinks so much of Dicky,
sir, he sits here of an evening--"

Hodder sat down beside her, and taking the palm-leaf from her hand, began
himself to fan the child. Something of her misgiving had communicated
itself to him.

"Don't worry," he said. "Remember that you have been through a great
deal, and it is natural that you should be overwrought. Your husband
feels strongly. I don't blame him. And the sight of me this afternoon
upset him. He has gone out to walk."

"Richard is proud," she answered simply. "He used to say he'd rather
die than take charity--and now he's come to it. And it's--that man, sir,
who's got on his brain, and changed him. He wasn't always like this, but
now he can't seem to think of anything else. He wakes up in the night
. . . . And he used to have such a sweet nature--you wouldn't have
known him . . . and came home so happy in the evenings in Alder
Street, often with a little fruit, or something he'd bought for us, and
romp with Dicky in the yard, and I'd stand and laugh at them. Even after
we'd lost our money, when he was sick that time, he didn't feel this way.
It grew on him when he couldn't get work, and then he began to cut things
out of the papers about Mr. Parr. And I have sometimes thought that
that's kept him from getting work. He talks about it, and people don't
know what to make of him. They don't know how hard he'd try if they'd
give him something.". . . .

"We shall find something," said the rector, striving to throw into his
voice confidence and calm. He did not dare to look at her, but continued
to move the fan.

The child stirred a little. Mrs. Garvin put out her hand.

"Yes, the doctor was here. He was very kind. Oh, sir," she exclaimed,
"I hope you won't think us ungrateful--and that Mr. Bentley won't.
Dr. Jarvis has hopes, sir,--he says--I forget the name he called it, what
Dicky has. It's something uncommon. He says it was--brought on by the
heat, and want of food--good food. And he's coming himself in the
morning to take him out to that hospital beyond the park--in an
automobile, sir. I was just thinking what a pity it is Dicky wouldn't
realize it. He's always wanted to ride in one." Suddenly her tears
flowed, unheeded, and she clung to the little hand convulsively.
"I don't know what I shall do without him, Sir, I don't . . . . I've
always had him . . . and when he's sick, among strangers." . . .

The rector rose to the occasion.

"Now, Mrs. Garvin," he said firmly, "you must remember that there is only
one way to save the boy's life. It will be easy to get you a room near
the hospital, where you can see him constantly."

"I know--I know, sir. But I couldn't leave his father, I couldn't leave
Richard." She looked around distractedly. "Where is he?"

"He will come back presently," said the rector. "If not, I will look for
him."

She did not reply, but continued to weep in silence. Suddenly, above the
confused noises of the night, the loud notes of a piano broke, and the
woman whose voice he had heard in the afternoon began once more with
appalling vigour to sing. The child moaned.

Mrs. Garvin started up hysterically.

"I can't stand it--I can't stand her singing that now," she sobbed.

Thirty feet away, across the yard, Hodder saw the gleaming window from
which the music came. He got to his feet. Another verse began, with
more of the brazen emphasis of the concert-hall singer than ever.
He glanced at the woman beside him, irresolutely.

"I'll speak to her," he said.

Mrs. Garvin did not appear to hear him, but flung herself down beside the
lounge. As he seized his hat and left the room he had the idea of
telephoning for a nurse, when he almost ran into some one in the upper
hall, and recognized the stout German woman, Mrs. Breitmann.

"Mrs. Garvin"--he said, "she ought not to be left--"

"I am just now going," said Mrs. Breitmann. "I stay with her until her
husband come."

Such was the confidence with which, for some reason, she inspired him,
that he left with an easier mind.

It was not until the rector had arrived at the vestibule of the apartment
house next door that something--of the difficulty and delicacy of the
errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus
far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking
tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano
voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in
the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had
promised to stop it. Hodder accused himself of cowardice.

To his horror, Hodder felt stealing over him, incredible though it seemed
after the depths through which he had passed, a faint sense of
fascination in the adventure. It was this that appalled him--this
tenacity of the flesh,--which no terrors seemed adequate to drive out.
The sensation, faint as it was, unmanned him. There were still many
unexplored corners in his soul.

He turned, once more contemplated the bells, and it was not until
then he noticed that the door was ajar. He pushed it open, climbed the
staircase, and stood in the doorway of what might be called a sitting
room, his eyes fixed on a swaying back before an upright piano against
the wall; his heart seemed to throb with the boisterous beat of the
music. The woman's hair, in two long and heavy plaits falling below her
waist, suddenly fascinated him. It was of the rarest of russet reds.
She came abruptly to the end of the song.

"I beg your pardon--" he began.

She swung about with a start, her music dropping to the floor, and stared
at him. Her tattered blue kimono fell away at her elbows, her full
throat was bare, and a slipper she had kicked off lay on the floor beside
her. He recoiled a little, breathing deeply. She stared at him.

"My God, how you scared me!" she exclaimed. Evidently a second glance
brought to her a realization of his clerical costume. "Say, how did you
get in here?"

"I beg your pardon," he said again, "but there is a very sick child in
the house next door and I came to ask you if you would mind not playing
any more to-night."

She did not reply at once, and her expression he found unsolvable. Much
of it might be traced to a life which had contracted the habit of taking
nothing on trust, a life which betrayed itself in unmistakable traces
about the eyes. And Hodder perceived that the face, if the stamp of this
expression could have been removed, was not unpleasing, although
indulgence and recklessness were beginning to remould it.

"Quit stringin' me," she said.

For a moment he was at a loss. He gathered that she did not believe him,
and crossed to the open window.

"If you will come here," he said, "I will show you the room where he
lies. We hope to be able to take him to the hospital to-morrow." He
paused a moment, and added: "He enjoyed your music very much when he was
better."

The comment proved a touchstone.

"Say," she remarked, with a smile that revealed a set of surprisingly
good teeth, "I can make the box talk when I get a-goin'. There's no
stopping me this side of grand opera,--that's no fable. I'm not so bad
for an enginoo, am I?"

Thus directly appealed to, in common courtesy he assented.

"No indeed," he said.

"That's right," she declared. "But the managers won't have it at any
price. Those jays don't know anything, do they? They've only got a
dream of what the public wants. You wouldn't believe it, but I've sung
for 'em, and they threw me out. You wouldn't believe it, would you?"

"I must own," said the rector, "that I have never had any experience with
managers."

She sat still considering him from the piano stool, her knees apart, her
hands folded in her lap. Mockery came into her eyes.

"Say, what did you come in here for, honest injun?" she demanded.

He was aware of trying to speak sternly, and of failing. To save his
life he could not, then, bring up before himself the scene in the little
back room across the yard in its full terror and reality, reproduce his
own feelings of only a few minutes ago which had impelled him hither.
A month, a year might have elapsed. Every faculty was now centred on
the woman in front of him, and on her life.

"Why do you doubt me?" he asked.

She continued to contemplate him. Her eyes were strange, baffling,
smouldering, yellow-brown, shifting, yet not shifty: eyes with a history.
Her laugh proclaimed both effrontery and uneasiness.

"Don't get huffy," she said. "The kid's sick--that's on the level, is
it? You didn't come 'round to see me?" The insinuation was in her voice
as well as in her words. He did not resent it, but felt an odd thrill of
commingled pity and--fear.

"I came for the reason I have given you," he replied; and added, more
gently: "I know it is a good deal to ask, but you will be doing a great
kindness. The mother is distracted. The child, as I told you, will be
taken to the hospital in the morning."

She reached out a hand and closed the piano softly.

"I guess I can hold off for to-night," she said. "Sometimes things get
kind of dull--you know, when there's nothing doing, and this keeps me
lively. How old is the kid?"

"About nine," he estimated.

"Say, I'm sorry." She spoke with a genuineness of feeling that surprised
him. He went slowly, almost apologetically toward the door.

"Good night," he said, "and thank you."

Her look halted him.

"What's your hurry?" she demanded.

"I'm sorry," he said hastily, "but I must be going." He was, in truth,
in a panic to leave.

"You're a minister, ain't you?"

"Yes," he said.

"I guess you don't think much of me, do you?" she demanded.

He halted abruptly, struck by the challenge, and he saw that this woman
had spoken not for herself, but for an entire outlawed and desperate
class. The fact that the words were mocking and brazen made no
difference; it would have been odd had they not been so. With a shock
of surprise he suddenly remembered that his inability to reach this
class had been one of the causes of his despair! And now? With the
realization, reaction set in, an overpowering feeling of weariness, a
desire--for rest--for sleep. The electric light beside the piano danced
before his eyes, yet he heard within him a voice crying out to him to
stay. Desperately tired though he was, he must not leave now. He walked
slowly to the table, put his hat on it and sat down in a chair beside it.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Oh, cut it out!" said the woman. "I'm on to you church folks." She
laughed. "One of 'em came in here once, and wanted to pray. I made a
monkey of him."

"I hope," said the rector, smiling a little, "that is not the reason why
you wish me to stay."

She regarded him doubtfully.

"You're not the same sort," she announced at length.

"What sort was he?"

"He was easy,--old enough to know better--most of the easy ones are. He
marched in sanctimonious as you please, with his mouth full of salvation
and Bible verses." She laughed again at the recollection.

"And after that," said the rector, "you felt that ministers were a lot of
hypocrites."

"I never had much opinion of 'em," she admitted, "nor of church people,
either," she added, with emphasis.

"There's Ferguson, who has the department store,--he's 'way up' in church
circles. I saw him a couple of months ago, one Sunday morning, driving
to that church on Burton Street, where all the rich folks go. I forget
the name--"

"St. John's," he supplied. He had got beyond surprise.

"St. John's--that's it. They tell me he gives a lot of money to it
--money that he steals from the girls he hires. Oh, yes, he'll get to
heaven--I don't think."

"How do you mean that he steals money from the girls?"

"Say, you are innocent--ain't you! Did you ever go down to that store?
Do you know what a floorwalker is? Did you ever see the cheap guys
hanging around, and the young swells waiting to get a chance at the girls
behind the counters? Why do you suppose so many of 'em take to the easy
life? I'll put you next--because Ferguson don't pay 'em enough to live
on. That's why. He makes 'em sign a paper, when he hires 'em, that they
live at home, that they've got some place to eat and sleep, and they sign
it all right. That's to square up Ferguson's conscience. But say, if
you think a girl can support herself in this city and dress on what he
pays, you've got another guess comin'."

There rose up before him, unsummoned, the image of Nan Ferguson, in all
her freshness and innocence, as she had stood beside him on the porch in
Park Street. He was somewhat astonished to find himself defending his
parishioner.

"May it not be true, in order to compete with other department stores,
that Mr. Ferguson has to pay the same wages?" he said.

"Forget it. I guess you know what Galt House is? That's where women
like me can go when we get all played out and there's nothing left in the
game--it's on River Street. Maybe you've been there."

Hodder nodded.

"Well," she continued, "Ferguson pays a lot of money to keep that going,
and gets his name in the papers. He hands over to the hospitals where
some of us die--and it's all advertised. He forks out to the church.
Now, I put it to you, why don't he sink some of that money where it
belongs--in living wages? Because there's nothing in it for him
--that's why."

The rector looked at her in silence. He had not suspected her of so much
intellect. He glanced about the apartment, at the cheap portiere flung
over the sofa; at the gaudy sofa cushions, two of which bore the names
and colours of certain colleges. The gas log was almost hidden by dried
palm leaves, a cigarette stump lay on the fender; on the mantel above
were several photographs of men and at the other side an open door
revealed a bedroom.

"This is a nice place, ain't it?" she observed. "I furnished it when I
was on velvet--nothing was too good for me. Money's like champagne when
you take the cork out, it won't keep. I was rich once. It was lively
while it lasted," she added, with a sigh: "I've struck the down trail.
I oughtn't, by rights, to be here fooling with you. There's nothing in
it." She glanced at the clock. "I ought to get busy."

As the realization of her meaning came to him, he quivered.

"Is there no way but that?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Say, you're not a-goin' to preach, are you?"

"No," he answered, "God forbid! I was not asking the question of you."

She stared at him.

"Of who, then?"

He was silent.

"You've left me at the station. But on the level, you don't seem to know
much, that's a fact. You don't think the man who owns these flats is in
it for charity, do you? 'Single ladies,' like me, have to give up. And
then there are other little grafts that wouldn't interest you. What
church do you come from anyway?"

"You mentioned it a little while ago."

"St. John's!" She leaned back against the piano and laughed
unrestrainedly. "That's a good one, to think how straight I've been
talking to you."

"I'm much obliged to you," he said.

Again she gazed at him, now plainly perplexed.

"What are you giving me?"

"I mean what I say," he answered. "I am obliged to you for telling me
things I didn't know. And I appreciate--your asking me to stay."

She was sitting upright now, her expression changed, her breath came more
rapidly, her lips parted as she gazed at him.

"Do you know," she said, "I haven't had anybody speak to me like that
for four years." Her voice betrayed excitement, and differed in tone,
and she had cast off unconsciously the vulgarity of speech. At that
moment she seemed reminiscent of what she must once have been; and he
found himself going through an effort at reconstruction.

"Like what?" he asked.

"Like a woman," she answered vehemently.

"My name is John Hodder," he said, "and I live in the parish house, next
door to the church. I should like to be your friend, if you will let me.
If I can be of any help to you now, or at any other time, I shall feel
happy. I promise not to preach," he added.

She got up abruptly, and went to the window. And when she turned to him
again, it was with something of the old bravado.

"You'd better leave me alone, I'm no good;" she said. "I'm much obliged
to you, but I don't want any charity or probation houses in mine. And
honest work's a thing of the past for me--even if I could get a job.
Nobody would have me. But if they would, I couldn't work any more.
I've got out of the hang of it." With a swift and decisive movement she
crossed the room, opened a cabinet on the wall, revealing a bottle and
glasses.

"So you're bent upon going--downhill?" he said.

"What can you do to stop it?" she retorted defiantly, "Give me religion
---I guess you'd tell me. Religion's all right for those on top, but
say, it would be a joke if I got it. There ain't any danger. But if I
did, it wouldn't pay room-rent and board."

He sat mute. Once more the truth overwhelmed, the folly of his former
optimism arose to mock him. What he beheld now, in its true aspect, was
a disease of that civilization he had championed. . .

She took the bottle from the cupboard and laid it on the table.

"What's the difference?" she demanded. "It's all over in a little while,
anyway. I guess you'd tell me there was a hell. But if that's so, some
of your church folks'll broil, too. I'll take my chance on it, if they
will." She looked at him, half in defiance, half in friendliness, across
the table. "Say, you mean all right, but you're only wastin' time here.
You can't do me any good, I tell you, and I've got to get busy."

"May we not at least remain friends?" he asked, after a moment.

Her laugh was a little harsh.

"What kind of friendship would that be? You, a minister, and me a woman
on the town?"

"If I can stand it, I should think you might."

"Well, I can't stand it," she answered.

He got up, and held out his hand. She stood seemingly irresolute, and
then took it.

"Good night," he said.

"Good night," she repeated nonchalantly.

As he went out of the door she called after him:

"Don't be afraid I'll worry the kid!"

The stale odour of cigarette smoke with which the dim corridor was
charged intoxicated, threatened to overpower him. It seemed to be the
reek of evil itself. A closing door had a sinister meaning. He hurried;
obscurity reigned below, the light in the lower hall being out; fumbled
for the door-knob, and once in the street took a deep breath and mopped
his brow; but he had not proceeded half a block before he hesitated,
retraced his steps, reentered the vestibule, and stooped to peer at the
cards under the speaking tubes. Cheaply printed in large script, was the
name of the tenant of the second floor rear,--MISS KATE MARCY. . . .

In crossing Tower Street he was frightened by the sharp clanging of a
great electric car that roared past him, aflame with light. His brain
had seemingly ceased to work, and he stumbled at the curb, for he was
very tired. The events of the day no longer differentiated themselves
in his mind but lay, a composite weight, upon his heart. At length he
reached the silent parish house, climbed the stairs and searched in his
pocket for the key of his rooms. The lock yielded, but while feeling for
the switch he tripped and almost fell over an obstruction on the floor.

The flooding light revealed his travelling-bags, as he had piled them,
packed and ready to go to the station.






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill



Volume 4.

XIII.   WINTERBOURNE
XIV.   A SATURDAY AFTERNOON
XV.    THE CRUCIBLE
XVI.   AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM




CHAPTER XIII

WINTERBOURNE


I

Hodder fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, awaking during the night at
occasional intervals to recall chimerical dreams in which the events of
the day before were reflected, but caricatured and distorted. Alison
Parr was talking to the woman in the flat, and both were changed, and yet
he identified both: and on another occasion he saw a familiar figure
surrounded by romping, ragged children--a figure which turned out to be
Eldon Parr's!

Finally he was aroused by what seemed a summons from the unknown--the
prolonged morning whistle of the shoe factory. For a while he lay as one
benumbed, and the gradual realization that ensued might be likened to the
straining of stiffened wounds. Little by little he reconstructed, until
the process became unbearable, and then rose from his bed with one object
in mind,--to go to Horace Bentley. At first--he seized upon the excuse
that Mr. Bentley would wish to hear the verdict of Dr. Jarvis, but
immediately abandoned it as dishonest, acknowledging the true reason,
that in all the--world the presence of this one man alone might assuage
in some degree the terror in his soul. For the first time in his life,
since childhood, he knew a sense of utter dependence upon another human
being. He felt no shame, would make no explanation for his early visit.

He turned up Tower, deliberately avoiding Dalton Street in its lower
part, reached Mr. Bentley's door. The wrinkled, hospitable old darky
actually seemed to radiate something of the personality with which he had
so long been associated, and Hodder was conscious of a surge of relief,
a return of confidence at sight of him. Yes, Mr. Bentley was at home,
in the dining room. The rector said he would wait, and not disturb him.

"He done tole me to bring you out, sah, if you come," said Sam.

"He expects me?" exclaimed Hodder, with a shock of surprise.

"That's what he done tole me, sah, to ax you kindly for to step out when
you come."

The sun was beginning to penetrate into the little back yard, where the
flowers were still glistening with the drops of their morning bath; and
Mr. Bentley sat by the window reading his newspaper, his spectacles on
his nose, and a great grey cat rubbing herself against his legs. He rose
with alacrity.

"Good morning, sir," he said, and his welcome implied that early morning
visits were the most common and natural of occurrences. "Sam, a plate
for Mr. Hodder. I was just hoping you would come and tell me what Dr.
Jarvis had said about the case."

But Hodder was not deceived. He believed that Mr. Bentley understood
perfectly why he had come, and the knowledge of the old gentleman's
comprehension curiously added to his sense of refuge. He found himself
seated once more at the mahogany table, permitting Sam to fill his cup
with coffee.

"Jarvis has given a favourable report, and he is coming this morning
himself, in an automobile, to take the boy out to the hospital."

"That is like Jarvis," was Mr. Bentley's comment. "We will go there,
together, after breakfast, if convenient for you," he added.

"I hoped you would," replied the rector. "And I was going to ask
you a favour. I have a check, given me by a young lady to use at my
discretion, and it occurred to me that Garvin might be willing to accept
some proposal from you." He thought of Nan Ferguson, and of the hope he
lead expressed of finding some one in Dalton Street.

"I have been considering the matter," Mr. Bentley said. "I have a friend
who lives on the trolley line a little beyond the hospital, a widow. It
is like the country there, you know, and I think Mrs. Bledsoe could be
induced to take the Garvins. And then something can be arranged for him.
I will find an opportunity to speak to him this morning."

Hodder sipped his coffee, and looked out at the morning-glories opening
to the sun.

"Mrs. Garvin was alone last night. He had gone out shortly after we
left, and had not waited for the doctor. She was greatly worried."

Hodder found himself discussing these matters on which, an hour before,
he had feared to permit his mind to dwell. And presently, not without
feeling, but in a manner eliminating all account of his personal
emotions, he was relating that climactic episode of the woman at the
piano. The old gentleman listened intently, and in silence.

"Yes," he said, when the rector had finished, "that is my observation.
Most of them are driven to the life, and held in it, of course, by a
remorseless civilization. Individuals may be culpable, Mr. Hodder--are
culpable. But we cannot put the whole responsibility on individuals."

"No," Hodder assented, "I can see that now." He paused a moment, and as
his mind dwelt upon the scene and he saw again the woman standing before
him in bravado, the whole terrible meaning of her life and end flashed
through him as one poignant sensation. Her dauntless determination to
accept the consequence of her acts, her willingness to look her future in
the face, cried out to him in challenge.

"She refused unconditionally," he said.

Mr. Bentley seemed to read his thought, divine his appeal.

"We must wait," he answered.

"Do you think?--" Hodder began, and stopped abruptly.

"I remember another case, somewhat similar," said Mr. Bentley. "This
woman, too, had the spirit you describe--we could do nothing with her.
We kept an eye on her--or rather Sally Grover did--she deserves credit
--and finally an occasion presented itself."

"And the woman you speak of was--rehabilitated?" Hodder asked.
He avoided the word "saved."

"Yes, sir. It was one of the fortunate cases. There are others which
are not so fortunate."

Hodder nodded.

"We are beginning to recognize that we are dealing, in, many instances,
with a disease," Mr. Bentley went on. "I am far from saying that it
cannot be cured, but sometimes we are forced to admit that the cure is
not within our power, Mr. Hodder."

Two thoughts struck the rector simultaneously, the: revelation of what
might be called a modern enlightenment in one of Mr. Bentley's age, an
indication of uninterrupted growth, of the sense of continued youth which
had impressed him from the beginning; and, secondly, an intimation from
the use of the plural pronoun we, of an association of workers (informal,
undoubtedly) behind Mr. Bentley. While he was engaged in these
speculations the door opened.

"Heah's Miss Sally, Marse Ho'ace," said Sam.

"Good morning, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, rising from the table with his
customary courtesy, "I'm glad you came in. Let me introduce Mr. Hodder,
of St. John's."

Miss Grover had capability written all over her. She was a young woman
of thirty, slim to spareness, simply dressed in a shirtwaist and a dark
blue skirt; alert, so distinctly American in type as to give a suggestion
of the Indian. Her quick, deep-set eyes searched Hodder's face as she
jerked his hand; but her greeting was cordial, and, matter-of-fact. She
stimulated curiosity.

"Well, Sally, what's the news?" Mr. Bentley asked.

"Gratz, the cabinet-maker, was on the rampage again, Mr. Bentley. His
wife was here yesterday when I got home from work, and I went over with
her. He was in a beastly state, and all the niggers and children in the
neighbourhood, including his own, around the shop. Fusel oil, labelled
whiskey," she explained, succinctly.

"What did you do?"

"Took the bottle away from him," said Miss Grower. The simplicity of
this method, Holder thought, was undeniable. "Stayed there until he came
to. Then I reckon I scared him some."

"How?" Mr. Bentley smiled.

"I told him he'd have to see you. He'd rather serve three months than do
that--said so. I reckon he would, too," she declared grimly. "He's
better than he was last year, I think." She thrust her hand in the
pocket of her skirt and produced some bills and silver, which she
counted. "Here's three thirty-five from Sue Brady. I told her she
hadn't any business bothering you, but she swears she'd spend it."

"That was wrong, Sally."

Miss Grower tossed her head.

"Oh, she knew I'd take it, well enough."

"I imagine she did," Mr. Bentley replied, and his eyes twinkled. He rose
and led the way into the library, where he opened his desk, produced a
ledger, and wrote down the amount in a fine hand.

"Susan Brady, three dollars and thirty-five cents. I'll put it in the
savings bank to-day. That makes twenty-two dollars and forty cents for
Sue. She's growing rich."

"Some man'll get it," said Sally.

"Sally," said Mr. Bentley, turning in his chair, "Mr. Holder's been
telling me about a rather unusual woman in that apartment house just
above Fourteenth Street, on the south side of Dalton."

"I think I know her--by sight," Sally corrected herself. She appealed.
to Holder. "Red hair, and lots of it--I suppose a man would call it
auburn. She must have been something of a beauty, once."

The rector assented, in some astonishment.

"Couldn't do anything with her, could you? I reckoned not. I've noticed
her up and down Dalton Street at night."

Holder was no longer deceived by her matter-of-fact tone.

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Holder," she went on, energetically, "there's
not a particle of use running after those people, and the sooner you find
it out the less worry and trouble you give yourself."

"Mr. Holder didn't run after her, Sally," said Mr. Bentley, in gentle
reproof.

Holder smiled.

"Well," said Miss Grower, "I've had my eye on her. She has a history
--most of 'em have. But this one's out of the common. When they're brazen
like that, and have had good looks, you can nearly always tell. You've.
got to wait for something to happen, and trust to luck to be on the spot,
or near it. It's a toss-up, of course. One thing is sure, you can't
make friends with that kind if they get a notion you're up to anything."

"Sally, you must remember--" Mr. Bentley began.

Her tone became modified. Mr. Bentley was apparently the only human of
whom she stood in awe.

"All I meant was," she said, addressing the rector, "that you've got to
run across 'em in some natural way."

"I understood perfectly, and I agree with you," Holder replied. "I have
come, quite recently, to the same conclusion myself."

She gave him a penetrating glance, and he had to admit, inwardly, that a
certain satisfaction followed Miss Grower's approval.

"Mercy, I have to be going," she exclaimed, glancing at the black marble
clock on the mantel. "We've got a lot of invoices to put through to-day.
See you again, Mr. Holder." She jerked his hand once more. "Good
morning, Mr. Bentley."

"Good morning, Sally."

Mr. Bentley rose, and took his hat and gold-headed stick from the rack in
the hall.

"You mustn't mind Sally," he said, when they had reached the sidewalk.
"Sometimes her brusque manner is not understood. But she is a very
extraordinary woman."

"I can see that," the rector assented quickly, and with a heartiness
that dispelled all doubt of his liking for Miss Grower. Once more many
questions rose to his lips, which he suppressed, since Mr. Bentley
volunteered no information. Hodder became, in fact, so lost in
speculation concerning Mr. Bentley's establishment as to forget the
errand on which--they were bound. And Sally Grower's words, apropos of
the woman in the flat, seemed but an energetic driving home of the severe
lessons of his recent experiences. And how blind he had been, he
reflected, not to have seen the thing for himself! Not to have realized
the essential artificiality of his former method of approach! And then
it struck him that Sally Grower herself must have had a history.

Mr. Bentley, too, was preoccupied.

Presently, in the midst of these thoughts, Hodder's eyes were arrested by
a crowd barring the sidewalk on the block ahead; no unusual sight in that
neighbourhood, and yet one which aroused in him sensations of weakness
and nausea. Thus were the hidden vice and suffering of these sinister
places occasionally brought to light, exposed to the curious and morbid
stares of those whose own turn might come on the morrow. It was only by
degrees he comprehended that the people were gathered in front of the
house to which they were bound. An ambulance was seen to drive away: it
turned into the aide street in front of them.

"A city ambulance!" the rector exclaimed.

Mr. Bentley did not reply.

The murmuring group which overflowed the uneven brick pavement to the
asphalt was characteristic: women in calico, drudges, women in wrappers,
with sleepy, awestricken faces; idlers, men and boys who had run out of
the saloons, whose comments were more audible and caustic, and a fringe
of children ceaselessly moving on the outskirts. The crowd parted at
their approach, and they reached the gate, where a burly policeman, his
helmet in his hand, was standing in the morning sunlight mopping his face
with a red handkerchief. He greeted Mr. Bentley respectfully, by name,
and made way for them to pass in.

"What is the trouble, Ryan?" Mr. Bentley asked.

"Suicide, sir," the policeman replied. "Jumped off the bridge this
morning. A tug picked him up, but he never came to--the strength wasn't
in him. Sure it's all wore out he was. There was a letter on him, with
the home number, so they knew where to fetch him. It's a sad case, sir,
with the woman in there, and the child gone to the hospital not an hour
ago."

"You mean Garvin?" Mr. Bentley demanded.

"It's him I mean, sir."

"We'd like to go in," said Mr. Bentley. "We came to see them."

"You're welcome, air, and the minister too. It's only them I'm holdin'
back," and the policeman shook his stick at the people.

Mr. Bentley walked up the steps, and took off his hat as he went through
the battered doorway. Hodder followed, with a sense of curious faces
staring at them from the thresholds as they passed; they reached the
upper passage, and the room, and paused: the shutters were closed, the
little couch where the child had been was empty. On the bed lay a form
--covered with a sheet, and beside it a woman kneeling, shaken by sobs,
ceaselessly calling a name . . . .

A stout figure, hitherto unperceived, rose from a corner and came
silently toward them--Mrs. Breitmann. She beckoned to them, and they
followed her into a room on the same floor, where she told them what she
knew, heedless of the tears coursing ceaselessly down her cheeks.

It seemed that Mrs. Garvin had had a premonition which she had not wholly
confided to the rector. She had believed her husband never would come
back; and early in the morning, in spite of all that Mrs. Breitmann could
do, had insisted at intervals upon running downstairs and scanning the
street. At half past seven Dr. Jarvis had come and himself carried down
the child and put him in the back of his automobile. The doctor had had
a nurse with him, and had begged the mother to accompany them to the
hospital, saying that he would send her back. But she would not be
persuaded to leave the house. The doctor could not wait, and had finally
gone off with little. Dicky, leaving a powder with Mrs. Breitmann for
the mother. Then she had become uncontrollable.

"Ach, it was terrible!" said the kind woman. "She was crazy, yes--she
was not in her mind. I make a little coffee, but she will not touch it.
All those things about her home she would talk of, and how good he was,
and how she lofed him more again than the child.

"Und then the wheels in the street, and she makes a cry and runs to see
--I cannot hold her . . . ."

"It would be well not to disturb her for a while," said Mr. Bentley,
seating himself on one of the dilapidated chairs which formed apart of
the German woman's meagre furniture. "I will remain here if you, Mr.
Hodder, will make the necessary arrangements for the funeral. Have you
any objections, sir?"

"Not at all," replied the rector, and left the house, the occupants of
which had already returned to the daily round of their lives: the rattle
of dishes and the noise of voices were heard in the 'ci devant' parlour,
and on the steps he met the little waif with the pitcher of beer; in the
street the boys who had gathered around the ambulance were playing
baseball. Hodder glanced up, involuntarily, at the window of the woman
he had visited the night before, but it was empty. He hurried along the
littered sidewalks to the drug store, where he telephoned an undertaker;
and then, as an afterthought, telephoned the hospital. The boy had
arrived, and was seemingly no worse for the journey.

All this Hodder performed mechanically. Not until he was returning--not,
indeed, until he entered the house did the whiff of its degrading, heated
odours bring home to him the tragedy which it held, and he grasped the
banister on the stairs. The thought that shook him now was of the
cumulative misery of the city, of the world, of which this history on
which he had stumbled was but one insignificant incident. But he went on
into Mrs. Breitmann's room, and saw Mr. Bentley still seated where he had
left him. The old gentleman looked up at him.

"Mrs. Breitmann and I are agreed, Mr. Hodder, that Mrs. Garvin ought not
to remain in there. What do you think?"

"By all means, no," said the rector.

The German woman burst into a soliloquy of sympathy that became
incoherent.

"She will not leave him,--nein--she will not come. . . ."

They went, the three of them, to the doorway of the death chamber and
stood gazing at the huddled figure of the woman by the bedside. She had
ceased to cry out: she was as one grown numb under torture; occasionally
a convulsive shudder shook her. But when Mrs. Breitmann touched her,
spoke to her, her grief awoke again in all its violence, and it was more
by force than persuasion that she was finally removed. Mrs. Breitmann
held one arm, Mr. Bentley another, and between them they fairly carried
her out, for she was frail indeed.

As for Hodder, something held him back--some dread that he could not at
once define. And while he groped for it, he stood staring at the man on
the bed, for the hand of love had drawn back the sheet from the face.
The battle was over of this poor weakling against the world; the torments
of haunting fear and hate, of drink and despair had triumphed. The sight
of the little group of toys brought up the image of the home in Alder
Street as the wife had pictured it. Was it possible that this man, who
had gone alone to the bridge in the night, had once been happy, content
with life, grateful for it, possessed of a simple trust in his
fellow-men--in Eldon Parr? Once more, unsummoned, came the memory of that
evening of rain and thunder in the boy's room at the top of the great
horse in Park Street. He had pitied Eldon Parr then. Did he now?

He crossed the room, on tiptoe, as though he feared to wake once more
this poor wretch to his misery and hate, Gently he covered again the face
with the sheet.

Suddenly he knew the reason of his dread,--he had to face the woman!
He was a minister of Christ, it was his duty to speak to her, as he had
spoken to others in the hour of sorrow and death, of the justice and
goodness of the God to whom she had prayed in the church. What should he
say, now? In an agony of spirit, he sat down on the little couch beside
the window and buried his face in his hands. The sight of poor Garvin's
white and wasted features, the terrible contrast between this miserable
tenement and the palace with its unseen pictures and porcelains and
tapestries, brought home to him with indescribable poignancy his own
predicament. He was going to ask this woman to be comforted by faith and
trust in the God of the man who had driven her husband to death! He
beheld Eldon Parr in his pew complacently worshipping that God, who had
rewarded him with riches and success--beheld himself as another man in
his white surplice acquiescing in that God, preaching vainly . . . .

At last he got to his feet, went out of the room, reached the doorway of
that other room and looked in. Mr. Bentley sat there; and the woman,
whose tears had ceased to flow, was looking up into his face.



II

"The office ensuing," says the Book of Common Prayer, meaning the Burial
of the Dead, "is not to be used for any Unbaptized adult, any who die
excommunicate, or who have laid violent hands on themselves."

Hodder had bought, with a part of Nan Ferguson's money, a tiny plot in a
remote corner of Winterbourne Cemetery. And thither, the next morning,
the body of Richard Garvin was taken.

A few mourners had stolen into the house and up the threadbare stairs
into the miserable little back room, somehow dignified as it had never
been before, and laid their gifts upon the coffin. An odd and pitiful
assortment they were--mourners and gifts: men and women whose only bond
with the man in life had been the bond of misery; who had seen him as he
had fared forth morning after morning in the hopeless search for work,
and slunk home night after night bitter and dejected; many of whom had
listened, jeeringly perhaps, to his grievance against the world, though
it were in some sort their own. Death, for them, had ennobled him. The
little girl whom Hodder had met with the pitcher of beer came tiptoeing
with a wilted bunch of pansies, picked heaven knows where; stolen, maybe,
from one of the gardens of the West End. Carnations, lilies of the
valley, geraniums even--such were the offerings scattered loosely on the
lid until a woman came with a mass of white roses that filled the room
with their fragrance,--a woman with burnished red hair. Hodder started
as he recognized her; her gaze was a strange mixture of effrontery and
--something else; sorrow did not quite express it. The very lavishness of
her gift brought to him irresistibly the reminder of another offering.
. . . . She was speaking.

"I don't blame him for what he done--I'd have done it, too, if I'd been
him. But say, I felt kind of bad when I heard it, knowing about the kid,
and all. I had to bring something--"

Instinctively Hodder surmised that she was in doubt as to the acceptance
of her flowers. He took them from her hand, and laid them at the foot of
the coffin.

"Thank you," he said, simply.

She stared at him a moment with the perplexity she had shown at times on
the night he visited her, and went out. . .

Funerals, if they might be dignified by this name, were not infrequent
occurrences in Dalton Street, and why this one should have been looked
upon as of sufficient importance to collect a group of onlookers at the
gate it is difficult to say. Perhaps it was because of the seeming
interest in it of the higher powers--for suicide and consequent widows
and orphans were not unknown there. This widow and this orphan were to
be miraculously rescued, were to know Dalton Street no more. The rector
of a fashionable church, of all beings, was the agent in the miracle.
Thus the occasion was tinged with awe. As for Mr. Bentley, his was a
familiar figure, and had been remarked in Dalton Street funerals before.

They started, the three mourners, on the long drive to the cemetery,
through unfrequented streets lined with mediocre dwellings, interspersed
with groceries and saloons--short cuts known only to hearse drivers: they
traversed, for some distance, that very Wilderness road where Mr.
Bentley's old-fashioned mansion once had stood on its long green slope,
framed by ancient trees; the Wilderness road, now paved with hot blocks
of granite over which the carriage rattled; spread with car tracks,
bordered by heterogeneous buildings of all characters and descriptions,
bakeries and breweries, slaughter houses and markets, tumble-down
shanties, weedy corner lots and "refreshment-houses" that announced
"Lager Beer, Wines and Liquors." At last they came to a region which was
neither country nor city, where the road-houses were still in evidence,
where the glass roofs of greenhouses caught the burning rays of the sun,
where yards filled with marble blocks and half-finished tombstones
appeared, and then they turned into the gates of Winterbourne.

Like the city itself, there was a fashionable district in Winterbourne:
unlike the city, this district remained stationary. There was no soot
here, and if there had been, the dead would not have minded it. They
passed the Prestons and the Parrs; the lots grew smaller, the tombstones
less pretentious; and finally they came to an open grave on a slope where
the trees were still young, and where three men of the cemetery force
lifted the coffin from the hearse--Richard Garvin's pallbearers.

John Hodder might not read the service, but there was none to tell him
that the Gospel of John was not written for this man. He stood an the
grass beside the grave, and a breeze from across the great river near by
stirred the maple leaves above his head. "I am the resurrection and the
life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live." Nor was there any canon to forbid the words of Paul:
"It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in corruption; it is sown in
dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness; it is raised in
power; it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body."

They laid the flowers on the fresh earth, even the white roses, and then
they drove back to the city.





CHAPTER XIV

A SATURDAY AFTERNOON


I

The sight of a certain old gentleman as he walked along the shady side of
Twenty-second Street about two o'clock on a broiling Saturday afternoon
in midsummer was one not easily to be forgotten. A younger man, tall and
vigorous, clad in a thin suit of blue serge, walked by his side. They
were followed by a shouting troop of small boys who overran the
pavements, and some of whom were armed with baseball bats. The big
trolley car was hailed by a dozen dirty little hands.

Even the grumpy passengers were disarmed. The conductor took Mr.
Bentley's bill deprecatingly, as much as to say that the newly organized
Traction Company--just out of the receivers' hands--were the Moloch, not
he, and rang off the fares under protest. And Mr. Bentley, as had been
his custom for years, sat down and took off his hat, and smiled so
benignly at those around him that they immediately began to talk, to him.
It was always irresistible, this desire to talk to Mr. Bentley. If you
had left your office irritated and out of sorts, your nerves worn to an
edge by the uninterrupted heat, you invariably got off at your corner
feeling better. It was Phil Goodrich who had said that Horace Bentley
had only to get on a Tower Street car to turn it into a church. And if
he had chosen to establish that 'dernier cri' of modern civilization
where ladies go who have 'welt-schmerz' without knowing why,
--a sanitarium, he might have gained back again all the money he had lost
in giving his Grantham stock to Eldon Parr.

Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could have emptied Dalton Street of
its children. In the first place, there was the irresistible inducement
to any boy to ride several miles on a trolley without having this right
challenged by the irate guardian of the vehicle, without being summarily
requested to alight at twenty-five miles an hour: in the second place,
there was the soda water and sweet biscuit partaken of after the baseball
game in that pavilion, more imposing in one's eyes than the Taj Mahal.
Mr. Bentley would willingly have taken all Dalton Street. He had his own
'welt-schmerz', though he did not go to a sanitarium to cure it; he was
forced to set an age limit of ten, and then establish a high court of
appeal; for there were boys whose biographies, if they are ever written,
will be as hazy as those of certain world-wide celebrities who might be
mentioned concerning the date and exact spot of the entrance of their
heroes into the light. The solemn protestations, the tears,
the recrimination even, brought pangs to the old gentleman's heart,
for with all the will in the world he had been forced in the nature
of things, to set a limit.

This limit had recently been increased by the unlooked-for appearance on
these excursions of the tall man in the blue serge suit, whose knowledge
of the national game and of other matters of vital import to youth was
gratifying if sometimes disconcerting; who towered, an unruffled
Gulliver, over their Lilliputian controversies, in which bats were waved
and fists brought into play and language used on the meaning of which
the Century dictionary is silent. On one former occasion, indeed,
Mr. Bentley had found moral suasion, affection, and veneration of no
avail, and had had to invoke the friendly aid of a park policeman to
quell one of these incipient riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a
sealed book. The tall man's justice, not always worthy of the traditions
of Solomon, had in it an element of force. To be lifted off the ground
by strong arms at the moment you are about to dust the home plate with
your adversary is humiliating, but effective. It gradually became
apparent that a decision was a decision. And one Saturday this
inexplicable person carried in his hand a mysterious package which, when
opened, revealed two pairs of diminutive boxing gloves. They instantly
became popular.

By the time they had made the accidental and somewhat astounding
discovery that he was a parson, they were willing to overlook it; in
view, perhaps, of his compensating accomplishments. Instead of advising
them to turn the other cheek, he taught them uppercuts, feints, and jabs,
and on the proof of this unexpected acquaintance with a profession all of
them openly admired, the last vestige of reserve disappeared. He was
accepted without qualifications.



II

Although the field to which they resorted was not in the most frequented
section of the park, pedestrians often passed that way, and sometimes
lingered. Thus, towards the close of a certain Saturday in July, a young
woman walked out of the wood path and stood awhile gazing intently at the
active figure striding among the diminutive, darting forms. Presently,
with an amused expression, she turned her head to discover Mr. Bentley,
who sat on a green bench under a tree, his hat and stick on the grass
beside him. She was unaware that he had been looking at her.

"Aren't they having a good time!" she said, and the genuine thrill in her
voice betrayed a rare and unmistakable pleasure.

"Ah," replied Mr. Bentley, smiling back at her, "you like to see them,
too. Most persons do. Children are not meant for the city, my dear
young lady, their natural home is in the woods and fields, and these
little fellows are a proof of it. When they come out here, they run
wild. You perceive," he added with a twinkle, as an expletive of
unquestionable vigour was hurled across the diamond, "they are not
always so polite as they might be."

The young woman smiled again, but the look she gave him was a puzzled
one. And then, quite naturally, she sank, down on the grass, on the
other side of Mr. Bentley's hat, watching the game for a while in
silence.

"What a tyrant!" she exclaimed. Another uproar had been quelled,
and two vigorously protesting runners sent back to their former bases.

"Oh, a benevolent tyrant," Mr. Bentley corrected her. "Mr. Hodder has
the gift of managing boys,--he understands them. And they require a
strong hand. His generation has had the training which mine lacked. In
my day, at college, we worked off our surplus energy on the unfortunate
professors, and we carried away chapel bells and fought with the
townspeople."

It required some effort, she found, to imagine this benevolent looking
old gentleman assaulting professors.

"Nowadays they play baseball and football, and box!" He pointed to the
boxing gloves on the grass. "Mr. Hodder has taught them to settle their
differences in that way; it is much more sensible."

She picked off the white clover-tops.

"So that is Mr. Hodder, of St. John's," she said.

"Ah, you know him, then?"

"I've met him," she answered quietly. "Are these children connected with
his church?"

"They are little waifs from Dalton Street and that vicinity," said Mr.
Bentley. "Very few of them, I should imagine, have ever been inside of a
church."

She seemed surprised.

"But--is it his habit to bring them out here?" The old gentleman beamed
on her, perhaps with the hint of a smile at her curiosity.

"He has found time for it, this summer. It is very good of him."

She refrained from comment on this remark, falling into reflection,
leaning back, with one hand outstretched, on the grass. The game went on
vociferously, the shrill lithe voices piercing the silence of the summer
afternoon. Mr. Bentley's eyes continued to rest on her.

"Tell me," he inquired, after a while, "are you not Alison Parr?"

She glanced up at him, startled. "Yes."

"I thought so, although I have not seen you since you were a little girl.
I knew your mother very well indeed, but it is too much to expect you to
remember me, after all this time. No doubt you have forgotten my name.
I am Mr. Bentley."

"Mr. Bentley!" she cried, sitting upright and gazing at him. "How stupid
of me not to have known you! You couldn't have been any one else."

It was the old gentleman's turn to start. She rose impulsively and sat
down on the bench beside him, and his hand trembled as he laid it in
hers.

"Yes, my dear, I am still alive. But surely you cannot remember me,
Alison?"

The old look of almost stubborn honesty he recalled in the child came
into her eyes.

"I do--and I don't," she said, perplexed. "It seemed to me as if I ought
to have recognized you when I came up, and yet I hadn't the slightest
notion who you were. I knew you were somebody."

He shook his head, but did not speak.

"But you have always been a fact in my existence--that is what I want to
say," she went on. "It must be possible to remember a person and not
recognize him, that is what I feel. I can remember you coming to our
house in Ransome Street, and how I looked forward to your visits. And
you used to have little candy beans in your pockets," she cried. "Have
you now?"

His eyes were a little dimmed as he reached, smilingly, into the skirts
of a somewhat shiny but scrupulously brushed coat and produced a brightly
colored handful. She took one, and put it in her mouth:

"Oh," she said, "how good they were--Isn't it strange how a taste brings
back events? I can remember it all as if it were yesterday, and how I
used to sit on your knee, and mother would tell me not to bother you."

"And now--you are grown," he said.

"Something more than grown," she smiled. "I was thirty-one in May.
Tell me," she asked, choosing another of the beans which he still
absently held, "do you get them for these?" And she nodded toward the
Dalton Street waifs.

"Yes," he said, "they are children, too."

"I can remember," she said, after a pause, "I can remember my mother
speaking of you to me the year she died. I was almost grown, then. It
was after we had moved up to Park Street, and her health had already
begun to fail. That made an impression on me, but I have forgotten what
she said--it was apropos of some recollection. No--it was a photograph
--she was going over some old things." Alison ceased speaking abruptly,
for the pain in Mr. Bentley's remarkable grey eyes had not escaped her.
What was it about him? Why could she not recall? Long-forgotten,
shadowy episodes of the past tormented her, flitted provokingly through
her mind--ungrasped: words dropped in her presence which had made their
impression, but the gist of which was gone. Why had Mr. Bentley ceased
coming to the house? So strongly did she feel his presence now that the
thought occurred to her,--perhaps her mother had not wished her to forget
him!

"I did not suspect," she heard him saying, "that you would go out into
the world and create the beautiful gardens of which I have heard. But
you had no lack of spirit in those days, too."

"I was a most disagreeable child, perverse,--cantankerous--I can hear my
mother saying it! As for the gardens--they have given me something to
do, they have kept me out of mischief. I suppose I ought to be thankful,
but I still have the rebellious streak when I see what others have done,
what others are doing, and I sometimes wonder what right I ever had to
think that I might create something worth while."

He glanced at her quickly as she sat with bent head.

"Others put a higher value on what you have done."

"Oh, they don't know--" she exclaimed.

If something were revealed to him by her tone, he did not betray it, but
went on cheerfully.

"You have been away a long time, Alison. It must interest you to come
back, and see the changes in our Western civilization. We are moving
very rapidly--in certain directions," he corrected himself.

She appraised his qualification.

"In certain directions,--yes. But they are little better in the East.
I have scarcely been back," she added, "since I went to Paris to study.
I have often thought I should like to return and stay awhile, only
--I never seemed to get time. Now I am going over a garden for my father
which was one of my first efforts, and which has always reproached me."

"And you do not mind the heat?" he asked. "Those who go East to live
return to find our summers oppressive."

"Oh, I'm a salamander, I think," Alison laughed.

Thus they sat chatting, interrupted once or twice by urchins too small
to join in the game, who came running to Mr. Bentley and stood staring
at Alison as at a being beyond the borders of experience: and she would
smile at them quite as shyly,--children being beyond her own. Her
imagination was as keen, as unspoiled as a child's, and was stimulated by
a sense of adventure, of the mystery which hung about this fine old
gentleman who betrayed such sentiment for a mother whom she had loved and
admired and still secretly mourned. Here, if there had been no other,
was a compelling bond of sympathy . . . .

The shadows grew longer, the game broke up. And Hodder, surrounded by
an argumentative group keeping pace with him, came toward them from the
field; Alison watched him curiously as he turned this way and that to
answer the insistent questions with which he was pelted, and once she saw
him stride rapidly after a dodging delinquent and seize him by the collar
amidst piercing yells of approval, and derision for the rebel.

"It's remarkable how he gets along with them," said Mr. Bentley, smiling
at the scene. "Most of them have never known what discipline is."

The chorus approached. And Hodder, recognizing her, dropped the collar
he held: A young woman conversing with Mr. Bentley--was no unusual sight,
--he had made no speculations as to this one's identity. He left the
boys, and drew near.

"You know Miss Parr, I believe," the old gentleman said.

Hodder took her hand. He had often tried to imagine his feelings if he
should meet her again: what he should do and say,--what would be their
footing. And now he had no time to prepare . . . .

"It is so strange," she said, with that note of wonder at life in her
voice which he recalled so well, "that I should have come across Mr.
Bentley here after so many years. How many years, Mr. Bentley?"

"Ah, my dear," he protested, "my measurements would not be yours."

"It is better for both of us not to say, Alison declared, laughingly.

"You knew Mr. Bentley?" asked Hodder, astonished.

"He was a very dear friend of my mother's, although I used to appropriate
him when he came to our house. It was when we lived in Ransome Street,
ages ago. But I don't think Mr. Bentley has grown a bit older."

"He is one of the few who have found the secret of youth," said the
rector.

But the old gentleman had moved off into the path, or perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that he was carried off by the swarm which clustered
around him, two smaller ones tugging at his hand, and all intent upon
arriving at the soda-water pavilion near the entrance. They had followed
him with their eyes, and they saw him turn around and smile at them,
helplessly. Alison presented a perplexed face to Hodder.

"Does he bring them here,--or you?" she asked.

"I--" he hesitated. "Mr. Bentley has done this every Saturday afternoon
for years," he said, "I am merely one of them."

She looked at him quickly. They had started to follow, in the cool path
beneath the forest trees. Restraint fell upon them, brought about by the
memory of the intimacy of their former meeting, further complicated on
Hodder's part by his new attitude toward her father, and his finding her
in the company, of all persons, of Mr. Bentley. Unuttered queries
pressed on the minds of both.

"Tell me about Mr. Bentley," she said.

Hodder hesitated.

"I scarcely know where to begin," he replied, yet smiling at the
characteristic abruptness of her question. The modulations of her voice
revealed again the searching, inquisitive spirit within her, and his
responded to the intensity of the interest in Mr. Bentley.

"Begin anywhere."

"Anywhere?" he repeated, seeking to gain time.

"Yes--anywhere," she said impatiently.

"Well, he lives in Dalton Street, if you recall what kind of a place that
is" (she nodded), "and he is known from one end of it to the other."

"I see what he is--he is the most extraordinary person I have ever known.
Just to talk to him gives one such a queer feeling of--of dissatisfaction
with one's self, and seeing him once more seems to have half revived in
me a whole series of dead memories. And I have been trying to think, but
it is all so tantalizing. There is some mystery about him," she
insisted. "He disappeared suddenly, and my mother never mentioned him
but once afterward, but other persons have spoken of him since--I forget
who. He was so well known, and he used to go to St. John's."

"Yes, he used to go to St. John's."

"What happened to him--do you know? The reason he stopped coming to our
house was some misunderstanding with my father, of course. I am positive
my mother never changed her feelings toward him."

"I can only tell you what he has told me, which is all I know
--authoritatively," Hodder replied. How could he say to her that her
father had ruined Mr. Bentley? Indeed, with a woman of her fearlessness
and honesty--and above all, her intuition,--he felt the cruelty of his
position keenly. Hodder did not relish half truths; and he felt
that, however scant his intercourse in the future might be with Alison
Parr, he would have liked to have kept it on that basis of frankness in
which it had begun. But the exact stage of disillusionment she had
reached in regard to Eldon Parr was unknown to him, and he feared that
a further revelation might possibly sever the already precarious tie
between father and daughter.

He recounted, therefore, that Mr. Bentley had failed; and how he had
before that given much of his estate away in charity, how he had been
unable to keep his pew in St. John's, and had retired to the house in
Dalton Street.

For some moments after he had finished Alison did not reply.

"What is his number in Dalton Street?" she asked.

Hodder informed her.

He could not read in her face whether she suspected that he could have
told her more. And in spite of an inordinate, human joy in being again
in her presence, his desire to hide from her that which had taken place
within him, and the inability he felt to read his future, were
instinctive: the more so because of the very spontaneity they had
achieved at their first meeting. As a man, he shrank from confessing
to her, however indirectly, the fact that she herself was so vital an
element in his disillusionment. For the conversation in the garden had
been the immediate cause of the inner ferment ending in his resolution to
go away, and had directed him, by logical steps, to the encounter in the
church with Mrs. Garvin.

"You have not yet finished the garden?" he asked. "I imagined you back
in the East by this time."

"Oh, I am procrastinating," she replied. "It is a fit of sheer laziness.
I ought to be elsewhere, but I was born without a conscience. If I had
one I should try to quiet it by reminding it that I am fulfilling a
long-delayed promise--I am making a garden for Mrs. Larrabbee. You know
her, of course, since she is a member of your congregation."

"Yes, I know her," he assented. And his mind was suddenly filled with
vivid colour,--cobalt seas, and arsenic-green spruces with purple cones,
cardinal-striped awnings that rattled in the salt breeze, and he saw once
more the panorama of the life which had passed from him and the woman in
the midst of it. And his overwhelming thought was of relief that he had
somehow escaped. In spite of his unhappiness now, he would not have gone
back. He realized for the first time that he had been nearer
annihilation then than to-day.

"Grace isn't here to bother me with the ideas she has picked up in Europe
and catalogued," Alison continued.

"Catalogued!" Hodder exclaimed, struck by the pertinency of the word.

"Yes. Did you ever know anybody who had succeeded half so well in
piecing together and absorbing into a harmonized whole all the divergent,
artificial elements that enter into the conventional world to-day? Her
character might be called a triumph of synthesis. For she has actually
achieved an individuality--that is what always surprises me when I think
of her. She has put the puzzle picture together, she has become a
person."

He remembered, with a start, that this was the exact word Mrs. Larrabbee
had used about Alison Parr. If he had searched the world, he could not
have found a greater contrast than that between these two women. And
when she spoke again, he was to be further struck by her power of logical
insight.

"Grace wants me because she thinks I have become the fashion--for the
same reason that Charlotte Plimpton wants me. Only there is this
difference--Grace will know the exact value of what I shall have done.
Not that she thinks me a Le Notre"--Alison laughed--"What I mean is, she
sees behind, she sees why it is fashionable to have a garden, since she
has worked out the values of that existence. But there!" Alison added,
with a provocative touch that did not escape him, "I am picking your
parishioners to pieces again."

"You have more right than I," he replied, "they have been your friends
since childhood."

"I thought you had gone away," she said.

"Why?" he demanded. Had she been to church again?

"My father told me before he left that you were to take a cruise with him
on the yacht he has chartered."

"He wrote me from New York--I was unable to go," Hodder said slowly.

He felt her gaze upon him, but resolutely refused to meet it. . . .
They walked on in silence until they came to the more open spaces near
the edge of the Park, thronged that Saturday evening by crowds which had
sought the, city's breathing space. Perfect trees cast long, fantastic
shadows across the lawns, fountains flung up rainbows from the midst of
lakes; children of the tenements darted hither and thither, rolled and
romped on the grass; family parties picnicked everywhere, and a very
babel of tongues greeted the ear--the languages of Europe from Sweden to
Italy.

Suddenly an exclamation from her aroused and thrilled him.

"Isn't it wonderful how happy they are, and with what simple pleasures
they are satisfied! I often come over here on Saturdays and Sundays,
just to talk to them."

"Talk to them!" he echoed stupidly. "In their own languages?"

"Oh, I know a little German and Italian, though I can't lay claim to
Czech," she answered gayly. "Why are you so surprised that I should
possess such modest accomplishments?"

"It's not the accomplishments." He hesitated.

"No. You are surprised that I should be interested in humanity." She
stood facing him. "Well, I am," she said, half humorously, half
defiantly. "I believe I am more interested in human beings than in
anything else in the world--when they are natural, as these people are
and when they will tell one their joys and their troubles and their
opinions."

"Enthusiasm, self-assertion, had as usual, transformed her, and he saw
the colour glowing under her olive skin. Was she accusing him of a lack
of frankness?

"And why," he asked, collecting himself, "did you think--" he got no
further.

"It's because you have an idea that I'm a selfish Epicurean, if that
isn't tautology--because I'm interested in a form of art, the rest of the
world can go hang. You have a prejudice against artists. I wish I
really were one, but I'm not."

This speech contained so many surprises for him that he scarcely knew how
to answer it.

"Give me a little time," he begged, "and perhaps I'll get over my
prejudices. The worst of them, at any rate. You are helping me to do
so." He tried to speak lightly, but his tone was more serious in the
next sentence. "It seems to me personally that you have proved your
concern for your fellow-creatures."

Her colour grew deeper, her manner changed.

"That gives me the opportunity to say something I have hoped to say, ever
since I saw you. I hoped I should see you again."

"You are not going away soon?" he exclaimed.

The words were spoken before he grasped their significance.

"Not at once. I don't know how long I shall stay," she answered
hurriedly, intent upon what was in her mind. "I have thought a great
deal about what I said to you that afternoon, and I find it more than
ever difficult to excuse myself. I shan't attempt to. I merely mean to
ask you to forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive," he assured her, under the influence of the
feeling she had aroused.

"It's nice of you to say so, and to take it as you did--nicer than I can
express. I am afraid I shall never learn to appreciate that there may be
other points of view toward life than my own. And I should have realized
and sympathized with the difficulties of your position, and that you were
doing the best under the circumstances."

"No," he exclaimed, "don't say that! Your other instinct was the truer
one, if indeed you have really changed it--I don't believe you have." He
smiled at her again. "You didn't hurt my feelings, you did me a service.
I told you so at the time, and I meant it. And, more than that, I
understood."

"You understood--?"

"You were not criticizing me, you were--what shall I say?--merely trying
to iron out some of the inconsistencies of life. Well, you helped me to
iron out some of the inconsistencies of my own. I am profoundly
grateful."

She gazed at him, puzzled. But he did not, he could not enlighten her.
Some day she would discover what he meant.

"If so, I am glad," she said, in a low voice.

They were standing in the midst of the crowd that thronged around the
pavilion. An urchin caught hold of the rector's coat.

"Here he is! Say, Mr. Hodder, ain't you going to have any sody?"

"Certainly we are," he replied, returning Alison's faint smile . . . .
In the confusion that followed he caught a glimpse of her talking to Mr.
Bentley; and later, after he had taken her hand, his eyes followed her
figure wending its way in the evening light through the groups toward
Park Street, and he saw above the tree-tops the red tiled roof of the
great house in which she was living, alone.




CHAPTER XV

THE CRUCIBLE


I

For better or worse John Hodder had flung his treasured beliefs into the
crucible, and one by one he watched them crumble and consume away. None
but his own soul knew what it cost him to make the test; and some times,
in the early stages of it, he would cast down his book under the lamp and
walk for hours in the night. Curiosity, and the despair of one who is
lost impelled him to persist.

It had been said of him that he had a talent for the law, and he now
discovered that his mind, once freed, weighed the evidence with a
pitiless logic, paid its own tribute--despite the anguish of the heart
--to the pioneers of truth whose trail it followed into the Unknown, who
had held no Mystery more sacred than Truth itself, who had dared to
venture into the nothingness between the whirling worlds.

He considered them, those whirling worlds, at night. Once they had been
the candles of Jehovah, to light the path of his chosen nation, to herald
the birth of his Son. And now? How many billions of blind, struggling
creatures clung to them? Where now was this pin-point of humanity, in
the midst of an appalling spectacle of a grinding, remorseless nature?

And that obscure Event on which he had staked his hopes? Was He, as John
had written, the First Born of the Universe, the Word Incarnate of a
system that defied time and space, the Logos of an outworn philosophy?
Was that Universe conscious, as Berkeley had declared, or the blind
monster of substance alone, or energy, as some modern scientists brutally
and triumphantly maintained? Where was the Spirit that breathed in it of
hope?

Such were some of the questions that thronged for solution. What was
mind, what spirit? an attenuated vapour of the all-pervading substance?

He could not permit himself to dwell on these thoughts--madness lay that
way. Madness, and a watching demon that whispered of substance, and
sought to guide his wanderings in the night. Hodder clung to the shell
of reality, to the tiny panorama of the visible and the finite, to the
infinitesimal gropings that lay recorded before him on the printed page.
Let him examine these first, let him discover--despite the price--what
warrant the mind of man (the only light now vouchsafed to him in his
darkness) gave him to speculate and to hope concerning the existence
of a higher, truer Reality than that which now tossed and wounded him.
It were better to know.

Scarcely had the body been lifted from the tree than the disputes
commenced, the adulterations crept in. The spontaneity, the fire and
zeal of the self-sacrificing itinerant preachers gave place to the
paralyzing logic then pervading the Roman Empire, and which had sent its
curse down the ages to the modern sermon; the geometrical rules of Euclid
were made to solve the secrets of the universe. The simple faith of the
cross which had inspired the martyr along the bloody way from Ephesus to
the Circus at Rome was formalized by degrees into philosophy: the faith
of future ages was settled by compromises, by manipulation, by bribery in
Councils of the Church which resembled modern political conventions, and
in which pagan Emperors did not hesitate to exert their influence over
the metaphysical bishops of the factions. Recriminations, executions,
murders--so the chronicles ran.

The prophet, the idealist disappeared, the priest with his rites and
ceremonies and sacrifices, his power to save and damn, was once more in
possession of the world.

The Son of Man was degraded into an infant in his mother's arms. An
unhealthy, degenerating asceticism, drawn from pagan sources, began with
the monks and anchorites of Egypt and culminated in the spectacle of
Simeon's pillar. The mysteries of Eleusis, of Attis, Mithras, Magna
Mater and Isis developed into Christian sacraments--the symbol became
the thing itself. Baptism the confession of the new life, following
the customs of these cults, became initiation; and from the same
superstitious origins, the repellent materialistic belief that to eat
of the flesh and drink of the blood of a god was to gain immortality:
immortality of the body, of course.


Ah, when the superstitions of remote peoples, the fables and myths, were
taken away; when the manufactured history and determinism of the
Israelites from the fall of man to the coming of that Messiah, whom the
Jews crucified because he failed to bring them their material Kingdom,
were discredited; when the polemic and literal interpretations of
evangelists had been rejected, and the pious frauds of tampering monks;
when the ascetic Buddhism was removed; the cults and mysteries, the
dogmas of an ancient naive philosophy discarded; the crude science of a
Ptolemy who conceived the earth as a flat terrestrial expanse and hell
as a smoking pit beneath proved false; the revelation of a Holy City of
jasper and gold and crystal, the hierarchy with its divine franchise to
save and rule and conquer,--when all these and more were eliminated from
Christianity, what was left?

Hodder surveyed the ruins. And his mind recalled, that Sunday of rain in
New York which had been the turning-point in his life, when he had
listened to the preacher, when he had walked the streets unmindful of the
wet, led on by visions, racked by fears. And the same terror returned to
him now after all the years of respite, tenfold increased, of falling in
the sight of man from the topmost tower.

What was to become of him, now that the very driving power of life was
gone? Where would he go? to what might he turn his hand, since all were
vanity and illusion? Careers meant nothing, had any indeed been possible
to a man forty, left staring at stark reality after the rainbow had
vanished. Nineveh had mocked and conquered him who had thought himself
a conqueror. Self flew back and swung on its central pivot and took
command. His future, his fate, what was to become of him. Who else now
was to be considered? And what was to restrain him from reaching out his
hand to pluck the fruit which he desired? . . .



II

What control from the Unknown is this which now depresses and now
releases the sensitive thing called the soul of man, and sends it upward
again until the green light of hope shines through the surface water?
He might have grown accustomed, Holder thought, to the obscurity of the
deeps; in which, after a while, the sharp agony of existence became
dulled, the pressure benumbing. He was conscious himself, at such times,
of no inner recuperation. Something drew him up, and he would find
himself living again, at length to recognize the hand if not to
comprehend the power.

The hand was Horace Bentley's.

What was the source of that serenity which shone on the face of his
friend? Was it the light of faith? Faith in--what? Humanity, Mr.
Bentley had told him on that first evening when they had met: faith in a
world filled with cruelties, disillusionments, lies, and cheats! On what
Authority was it based? Holder never asked, and no word of theology ever
crossed Mr. Bentley's lips; not by so much as a sign did he betray any
knowledge he may have had of the drama taking place in Holder's soul; no
comment escaped him on the amazing anomalies of the life the rector was
leading, in the Church but not of it.

It was only by degrees Holder came to understand that no question would
be asked, and the frequency of his visits to Dalton Street increased.
He directed his steps thither sometimes hurriedly, as though pursued, as
to a haven from a storm. And a haven it was indeed! At all hours of the
day he came, and oftener in the night, in those first weeks, and if Mr.
Bentley were not at home the very sight of the hospitable old darky
brought surging up within him a sense of security, of, relief; the
library itself was filled with the peace of its owner. How many others
had brought their troubles here, had been lightened on the very threshold
of this sanctuary!

Gradually Hodder began to realize something of their numbers. Gradually,
as he was drawn more and more into the network of the relationships of
this extraordinary man,--nay, as he inevitably became a part of that
network,--a period of bewilderment ensued. He found himself involved,
and quite naturally, in unpremeditated activities, running errands,
forming human ties on a human basis. No question was asked, no
credentials demanded or rejected. Who he was made no difference
--he was a friend of Horace Bentley's. He had less time to read, less
time to think, to scan the veil of his future.

He had run through a score of volumes, critical, philosophical,
scientific, absorbing their contents, eagerly anticipating their
conclusions; filled, once he had begun, with a mania to destroy,
a savage determination to leave nothing,--to level all . . . .

And now, save for the less frequent relapsing moods, he had grown
strangely unconcerned about his future, content to live in the presence
of this man; to ignore completely the aspects of a life incomprehensible
to the few, besides Mr. Bentley, who observed it.

What he now mostly felt was relief, if not a faint self-congratulation
that he had had the courage to go through with it, to know the worst.
And he was conscious even, at times, of a faint reviving sense of freedom
he had not known since the days at Bremerton. If the old dogmas were
false, why should he regret them? He began to see that, once he had
suspected their falsity, not to have investigated were to invite decay;
and he pictured himself growing more unctuous, apologetic, plausible.
He had, at any rate, escaped the more despicable fate, and if he went to
pieces now it would be as a man, looking the facts in the face,--not as
a coward and a hypocrite.

Late one afternoon, when he dropped in at Mr. Bentley's house, he was
informed by Sam that a lady was awaiting Mr. Bentley in the library.
As Hodder opened the door he saw a tall, slim figure of a woman with her
back toward him. She was looking at the photographs on the mantel.

It was Alison Parr!

He remembered now that she had asked for Mr. Bentley's number, but it had
never occurred to him that he might one day find her here. And as she
turned he surprised in her eyes a shyness he had never seen in them
before. Thus they stood gazing at each other a moment before either
spoke.

"Oh, I thought you were Mr. Bentley," she said.

"Have you been waiting long?" he asked.

"Three quarters of an hour, but I haven't minded it. This is such an
interesting room, with its pictures and relics and books. It has a
soothing effect, hasn't it? To come here is like stepping out of the
turmoil of the modern world into a peaceful past."

He was struck by the felicity of her description.

"You have been here before?" he asked.

"Yes." She settled herself in the armchair; and Hodder, accepting the
situation, took the seat beside her. "Of course I came, after I had found
out who Mr. Bentley was. The opportunity to know him again--was not to
be missed."

"I can understand that," he assented.

"That is, if a child can even be said to know such a person as Mr.
Bentley. Naturally, I didn't appreciate him in those days--children
merely accept, without analyzing. And I have not yet been able to
analyze,--I can only speculate and consider."

Her enthusiasm never failed to stir and excite Hodder. Nor would he have
thought it possible that a new value could be added to Mr. Bentley in his
eyes. Yet so it was.

He felt within him, as she spoke, the quickening of a stimulus.

"When I came in a little while ago," Alison continued, "I found a woman
in black, with such a sweet, sad face. We began a conversation. She had
been through a frightful experience. Her husband had committed suicide,
her child had been on the point of death, and she says that she lies
awake nights now thinking in terror of what might have happened to her
if you and Mr. Bentley hadn't helped her. She's learning to be a
stenographer. Do you remember her?--her name is Garvin."

"Did she say--anything more?" Hodder anxiously demanded.

"No," said Alison, surprised by his manner, "except that Mr. Bentley had
found her a place to live, near the hospital, with a widow who was a
friend of his. And that the child was well, and she could look life in
the face again. Oh, it is terrible to think that people all around us
are getting into such straits, and that we are so indifferent to it!"

Hodder did not speak at once. He was wondering, now that she had renewed
her friendship with Mr. Bentley, whether certain revelations on her part
were not inevitable . . . .

She was regarding him, and he was aware that her curiosity was aflame.
Again he wondered whether it were curiosity or--interest.

"You did not tell me, when we met in the Park, that you were no longer
at St. John's."

Did Mr. Bentley tell you?"

"No. He merely said he saw a great deal of you. Martha Preston told me.
She is still here, and goes to church occasionally. She was much
surprised to learn that you were in the city.

"I am still living in the parish house," he said. "I am--taking my
vacation."

"With Mr. Bentley?" Her eyes were still on his face.

"With Mr. Bentley," he replied.

He had spoken without bitterness. Although there had indeed been
bitterness in his soul, it passed away in the atmosphere of Mr. Bentley's
house. The process now taking place in him was the same complication of
negative and positive currents he had felt in her presence before. He
was surprised to find that his old antipathy to agnosticism held over,
in her case; to discover, now, that he was by no means, as yet, in view
of the existence of Horace Bentley, to go the full length of unbelief!
On the other hand, he saw that she had divined much of what had happened
to him, and he felt radiating from her a sympathetic understanding which
seemed almost a claim. She had a claim, although he could not have said
of what it was constituted. Their personal relationship bore
responsibilities. It suddenly came over him, in fact, that the two
persons who in all the world were nearest him were herself and Mr.
Bentley! He responded, scarce knowing why he did so, to the positive
current.

"With Mr. Bentley," he repeated, smiling, and meeting her eyes, "I have
been learning something about the actual conditions of life in a modern
city."

She bent a little toward him in one of those spontaneous movements that
characterized her.

"Tell me--what is his life?" she asked. "I have seen so little of it,
and he has told me nothing himself. At first, in the Park, I saw only a
kindly old gentleman, with a wonderful, restful personality, who had been
a dear friend of my mother's. I didn't connect those boys with him. But
since then--since I have been here twice, I have seen other things which
make me wonder how far his influence extends." She paused.

"I, too, have wondered," said the rector, thoughtfully. "When I met him,
I supposed he were merely living in simple relationships with his
neighbours here in Dalton Street, but by degrees I have discovered that
his relationships are as wide as the city itself. And they have grown
naturally--by radiation, as it were. One incident has led to another,
one act of kindness to another, until now there seems literally no end to
the men and women with whom he is in personal touch, who are ready to do
anything in their power for him at any time. It is an institution, in
fact, wholly unorganized, which in the final analysis is one man. And
there is in it absolutely nothing of that element which has come to be
known as charity."

Alison listened with parted lips.

"To give you an example," he went on, gradually be coming fired by his
subject, by her absorption, "since you have mentioned Mrs. Garvin, I will
tell you what happened in that case. It is typical of many. It was a
question of taking care of this woman, who was worn out and crushed,
until she should recover sufficiently to take care of herself. Mr.
Bentley did not need any assistance from me to get the boy into the
hospital--Dr. Jarvis worships him. But the mother. I might possibly
have got her into an institutional home--Mr. Bentley did better than
that, far better. On the day of the funeral we went directly from the
cemetery to the house of a widow who owns a little fruit farm beyond the
Park. Her name is Bledsoe, and it is not an exaggeration to say that her
house, small as it is, contains an endowed room always at Mr. Bentley's
disposal.

"Mrs. Garvin is there now. She was received as a friend, as a guest
--not as an inmate, a recipient of charity. I shall never forget how that
woman ran out in the sun when she saw us coming, how proud she was to be
able to do this thing, how she ushered us into the little parlour, that
was all swept and polished, and how naturally and warmly she welcomed the
other woman, dazed and exhausted, and took her hat and veil and almost
carried her up the stairs. And later on I found out from Miss Grower,
who lives here, Mrs. Bledsoe's history. Eight or nine years ago her
husband was sent to prison for forgery, and she was left with four small
children, on the verge of a fate too terrible to mention. She was
brought to Mr. Bentley's attention, and he started her in life.

"And now Mrs. Garvin forms another link to that chain, which goes on
growing. In a month she will be earning her own living as stenographer
for a grain merchant whom Mr. Bentley set on his feet several years ago.
One thing has led to the next. And--I doubt if any neighbourhood could
be mentioned, north or south or west, or even in the business portion
of the city itself, where men and women are not to be found ready and
eager to do anything in their power for him. Of course there have been
exceptions, what might be called failures in the ordinary terminology
of charity, but there are not many."

When he had finished she sat quite still, musing over what he had told
her, her eyes alight.

"Yes, it is wonderful," she said at length, in a low voice. "Oh, I can
believe in that, making the world a better place to live in, making
people happier. Of course every one cannot be like Mr. Bentley, but all
may do their share in their own way. If only we could get rid of this
senseless system of government that puts a premium on the acquisition of
property! As it is, we have to depend on individual initiative. Even
the good Mr. Bentley does is a drop in the ocean compared to what might
be done if all this machinery--which has been invented, if all these
discoveries of science, by which the forces of an indifferent nature have
been harnessed, could be turned to the service of all mankind. Think of
how many Mrs. Garvins, of how many Dalton Streets there are in the world,
how many stunted children working in factories or growing up into
criminals in the slums! I was reading a book just the other day on the
effect of the lack of nutrition on character. We are breeding a million
degenerate citizens by starving them, to say nothing of the effect of
disease and bad air, of the constant fear of poverty that haunts the
great majority of homes. There is no reason why that fear should not be
removed, why the latest discoveries in medicine and science should not be
at the disposal of all."

The genuineness of her passion was unmistakable. His whole being
responded to it.

"Have you always felt like this?" he asked. Like what?"

"Indignant--that so many people were suffering."

His question threw her into reflection.

"Why, no," she answered, at length, "I never thought----I see what you
mean. Four or five years ago, when I was going to socialist lectures,
my sense of all this--inequality, injustice was intellectual. I didn't
get indignant over it, as I do now when I think of it."

"And why do you get indignant now?"

"You mean," she asked, "that I have no right to be indignant, since I do
nothing to attempt to better conditions?--"

"Not at all," Hodder disavowed. "Perhaps my question is too personal,
but I didn't intend it to be. I was merely wondering whether any event
or series of events had transformed a mere knowledge of these conditions
into feeling."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not in offence. Once more she relapsed into
thought. And as he watched her, in silence, the colour that flowed and
ebbed in her cheeks registered the coming and going of memories; of
incidents in her life hidden from him, arousing in the man the torture
of jealousy. But his faculties, keenly alert, grasped the entire field;
marked once more the empirical trait in her that he loved her unflinching
willingness to submit herself to an experiment.

"I suppose so," she replied at length, her thoughts naturally assuming
speech. "Yes, I can see that it is so. Yet my experience has not been
with these conditions with which Mr. Bentley, with which you have been
brought in contact, but with the other side--with luxury. Oh, I am sick
of luxury! I love it, I am not at all sure that I could do without it,
but I hate it, too, I rebel against it. You can't understand that."

"I think I can," he answered her.

"When I see the creatures it makes," she cried, "I hate it. My
profession has brought me in such close contact with it that I rebelled
at last, and came out here very suddenly, just to get away from it in the
mass. To renew my youth, if I could. The gardens were only an excuse.
I had come to a point where I wanted to be quiet, to be alone, to think,
and I knew my father would be going away. So much of my girlhood was
spent in that Park that I know every corner of it, and I--obeyed the
impulse. I wanted to test it."

"Yes," he said, absorbed.

"I might have gone to the mountains or the sea, but some one would have
come and found me, and I should have been bound again--on the wheel.
I shouldn't have had the strength to resist. But here--have you ever
felt," she demanded, "that you craved a particular locality at a certain
time?"

He followed her still.

"That is how I felt. These associations, that Park, the thought of my
girlhood, of my mother, who understood me as no one else has since,
assumed a certain value. New York became unbearable. It is just
there, in the very centre of our modern civilization, that one sees
the crudest passions. Oh, I have often wondered whether a man, however
disillusioned, could see New York as a woman sees it when the glamour is
gone. We are the natural prey of the conqueror still. We dream of
independence--"

She broke off abruptly.

This confession, with the sudden glimpse it gave him of the fires within
her that would not die down, but burned now more fiercely than ever,
sent the blood to his head. His face, his temples, were hot with the
fierceness of his joy in his conviction that she had revealed herself to
him. Why she had done so, he could not say. . . This was the woman
whom the world thought composed; who had triumphed over its opposition,
compelled it to bow before her; who presented to it that self-possessed,
unified personality by which he had been struck at their first meeting.
Yet, paradoxically, the personality remained,--was more elusive than
before. A thousand revelations, he felt, would not disclose it.

He was no nearer to solving it now. . Yet the fires burned! She, too,
like himself, was aflame and unsatisfied! She, too, had tasted success,
and had revolted!

"But I don't get anywhere," she said wearily. "At times I feel this
ferment, this anger that things are as they are, only to realize what
helpless anger it is. Why not take the world as it appears and live and
feel, instead of beating against the currents?"

"But isn't that inconsistent with what you said awhile ago as to a new
civilization?" Hodder asked.

"Oh, that Utopia has no reality for me. I think it has, at moments, but
it fades. And I don't pretend to be consistent. Mr. Bentley lives in a
world of his own; I envy him with all my heart, I love and admire him,
he cheers and soothes me when I am with him. But I can't see--whatever
he sees. I am only aware of a remorseless universe grinding out its
destinies. We Anglo-Saxons are fond of deceiving ourselves about life,
of dressing it up in beautiful colours, of making believe that it
actually contains happiness. All our fiction reflects this--that is
why I never cared to read English or American novels. The Continental
school, the Russians, the Frenchmen, refuse to be deluded. They are
honest."

"Realism, naturalism," he mused, recalling a course in philosophy, "one
would expect the Russian, in the conditions under which he lives,
possessing an artistic temperament combined with a paralysis of the
initiative and a sense of fate, to write in that way. And the Frenchmen,
Renan, Zola, and the others who have followed, are equally deterministic,
but viewing the human body as a highly organized machine with which we
may amuse ourselves by registering its sensations. These literatures are
true in so far as they reflect the characteristics of the nations from
which they spring. That is not to say that the philosophies of which
they are the expressions are true. Nor is it to admit that such a
literature is characteristic of the spirit of America, and can be applied
without change to our life and atmosphere. We have yet, I believe, to
develop our own literature; which will come gradually as we find
ourselves."

"Find ourselves?" she repeated.

"Yes. Isn't that what we are trying to do? We are not determinists or
fatalists, and to condemn us to such a philosophy would be to destroy us.
We live on hope. In spite of our apparent materialism, we are idealists.
And is it not possible to regard nature as governed by laws--remorseless,
if you like the word--and yet believe, with Kant and Goethe, that there
is an inner realm? You yourself struggle--you cling to ideals."

"Ideals!" she echoed. "Ideals are useless unless one is able to see, to
feel something beyond this ruthless mechanism by which we are surrounded
and hemmed in, to have some perception of another scheme. Why struggle,
unless we struggle for something definite? Oh, I don't mean heavenly
rewards. Nothing could be more insipid and senseless than the orthodox
view of the hereafter. I am talking about a scheme of life here and
now."

"So am I," answered Hodder. "But may there not be a meaning in this very
desire we have to struggle against the order of things as it appears to
us?"

"A meaning?"

"A little while ago you spoke of your indignation at the inequalities and
injustices of the world, and when I asked you if you had always felt
this, you replied that this feeling had grown upon you. My question is
this: whether that indignation would be present at all if it were not
meant to be turned into action."

"You believe that an influence is at work, an influence that impels us
against our reason?"

"I should like to think so," he said. "Why should so many persons be
experiencing such a feeling to-day, persons who, like yourself, are the
beneficiaries of our present system of privilege? Why should you, who
have every reason to be satisfied, materially, with things as they are,
be troubling yourself with thoughts of others who are less-fortunate?
And why should we have the spectacle, today, of men and women all over
this country in social work, in science and medicine and politics,
striving to better conditions while most of them might be much more
comfortable and luxurious letting well enough alone?"

"But it's human to care," she objected.

"Ah--human!" he said, and was silent. "What do we mean by human, unless
it is the distinguishing mark of something within us that the natural
world doesn't possess? Unless it is the desire and willingness to strive
for a larger interest than the individual interest, work and suffer for
others? And you spoke of making people happier. What do you mean by
happiness? Not merely the possession of material comforts, surely. I
grant you that those who are overworked and underfed, who are burning
with the consciousness of wrongs, who have no outlook ahead, are
essentially hopeless and miserable. But by 'happiness' you, mean
something more than the complacency and contentment which clothing and
food might bring, and the removal of the economic fear,--and even the
restoration of self-respect."

"That their lives should be fuller!" she exclaimed.

"That drudgery and despair should be replaced by interest and hope," he
went on, "slavery by freedom. In other words, that the whole attitude
toward life should be changed, that life should appear a bright thing
rather than a dark thing, that labour should be willing vicarious instead
of forced and personal. Otherwise, any happiness worth having is out of
the question."

She was listening now with parted lips, apparently unconscious of the
fixity of her gaze.

"You mean it is a choice between that or nothing," she said, in a low
voice. "That there is no use in lifting people out of the treadmill
--and removing the terror of poverty unless you can give them something
more--than I have got."

"And something more--than I have got,"--he was suddenly moved to reply...

Presently, while the silence still held between them, the door opened and
startled them into reality. Mr. Bentley came in.

The old gentleman gave no sign, as they rose to meet him, of a sense of
tension in the atmosphere he had entered--yet each felt--somehow, that he
knew. The tension was released. The same thought occurred to both as
they beheld the peaceful welcome shining in his face, "Here is what we
are seeking. Why try to define it?"

"To think that I have been gossiping with Mrs. Meyer, while you were
waiting for me!" he said. "She keeps the little florist's shop at the
corner of Tower Street, and she gave me these. I little guessed what
good use I should have for them, my dear."

He held out to her three fragrant, crimson roses that matched the
responsive colour in her cheeks as she thanked him and pinned them on her
gown. He regarded her an instant.

"But I'm sure Mr. Hodder has entertained you," Mr. Bentley turned, and
laid his hand on the rector's shoulder.

"Most successfully," said Alison, cutting short his protest. And she
smiled at Hodder, faintly.





CHAPTER XVI

AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM


I

Hodder, in spite of a pressing invitation to remain for supper, had left
them together. He turned his face westward, in the opposite direction
from the parish house, still under the spell of that moment of communion
which had lasted--he knew not how long, a moment of silent revelation to
them both. She, too, was storm-tossed! She, too, who had fared forth so
gallantly into life, had conquered only to be beaten down--to lose her
way.

This discovery strained the very fibres of his being. So close he had
been to her--so close that each had felt, simultaneously, complete
comprehension of the other, comprehension that defied words, overbore
disagreements. He knew that she had felt it. He walked on at first in a
bewildered ecstasy, careless of aught else save that in a moment they two
had reached out in the darkness and touched hands. Never had his
experience known such communion, never had a woman meant what this woman
meant, and yet he could not define that meaning. What need of religion,
of faith in an unseen order when this existed? To have this woman in the
midst of chaos would be enough!

Faith in an unseen order! As he walked, his mind returned to the
argument by which he had sought to combat her doubts--and his own.
Whence had the argument come? It was new to him--he had never formulated
it before--that pity and longing and striving were a justification and a
proof. Had she herself inspired, by some unknown psychological law, this
first attempt of his to reform the universe, this theory which he had
rather spoken than thought? Or had it been the knowledge of her own
longing, and his desire to assuage it? As twilight fell, as his spirits
ebbed, he could not apply it now--it meant nothing to him, evaded him,
there was in it no solace. To regain his footing once more, to climb
again without this woman whom he needed, and might not have! Better to
fall, to be engulfed. . . The vision of her, tall and straight, with
the roses on her breast, tortured him.

Thus ecstasy ebbed to despondency. He looked around him in the fading
day, to find himself opposite the closed gates of the Botanical Gardens,
in the southwestern portion of the city . . . . An hour later he had
made his way back to Dalton Street with its sputtering blue lights and
gliding figures, and paused for a moment on the far sidewalk to gaze at
Mr. Bentley's gleaming windows. Should he go in? Had that personality
suddenly lost its power over him? How strange that now he could see
nothing glowing, nothing inspiring within that house,--only a kindly old
man reading a newspaper!

He walked on, slowly, to feel stealing on him that desperate longing for
adventure which he had known so well in his younger days. And he did not
resist. The terror with which it had once inspired him was gone, or
lingered only in the form of a delicious sense of uncertainty and
anticipation. Anything might happen to him--anything would be grateful;
the thought of his study in the parish house was unbearable; the Dalton
Street which had mocked and repelled him suddenly became alluring with
its champaigns of light and inviting stretches of darkness. In the block
ahead, rising out of the night like a tower blazing with a hundred
beacons, Hodder saw a hotel, heard the faint yet eager throbbing of
music, beheld silhouetted figures flitting from automobiles and carriages
across the white glare of the pavement,--figures of men and women.

He hastened his steps, the music grew louder and louder in his ears, he
gained the ornamental posts crowned by their incandescent globes, made
his way through the loiterers, descended the stone steps of the
restaurant, and stood staring into it as at a blurred picture. The band
crashed a popular two-step above the mingled voices and laughter. He sat
down at a vacant table near the door, and presently became aware that a
waiter had been for some time at his elbow.

"What will you have, sir?"

Then he remembered that he had not eaten, discovered that he was hungry,
and ordered some sandwiches and beer. Still staring, the figures began
to differentiate themselves, although they all appeared, somehow, in
perpetual motion; hurrying, though seated. It was like gazing at a
quivering cinematograph. Here and there ribbons of smoke curled upward,
adding volume to the blue cloud that hung over the tables, which in turn
was dissipated in spots by the industrious electric fans. Everywhere he
looked he met the glances of women; even at the table next him, they were
not so absorbed in their escorts as to be able to resist flinging
him covert stares between the shrieks of laughter in which they
intermittently indulged. The cumulative effect of all these faces was
intoxicating, and for a long time he was unable to examine closely any
one group. What he saw was a composite woman with flushed cheeks and
soliciting eyes, becomingly gowned and hatted--to the masculine judgment.
On the walls, heavily frescoed in the German style, he read, in Gothic
letters:

          "Wer liebt nicht Wein, Weib, and Gesang,
          Er bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang."

The waiter brought the sandwiches and beer, yet he did not eat. In the
middle distance certain figures began insistently to stand out,--figures
of women sitting alone wherever he looked he met a provoking gaze. One
woman, a little farther away than the rest, seemed determinedly bent on
getting a nod of recognition, and it was gradually borne in upon Hodder's
consciousness that her features were familiar. In avoiding her eyes he
studied the men at the next table,--or rather one of them, who loudly
ordered the waiters about, who told brief anecdotes that were
uproariously applauded; whose pudgy, bejewelled fingers were continually
feeling for the bottle in the ice beside his chair, or nudging his
companions with easy familiarity; whose little eyes, set in a heavy face,
lighted now and again with a certain expression . . . . .

Suddenly Hodder pushed back his chair and got to his feet, overcome by a
choking sensation like that of being, asphyxiated by foul gases. He must
get out at once, or faint. What he had seen in the man's eyes had
aroused in him sheer terror, for it was the image of something in his
own soul which had summarily gained supremacy and led him hither,
unresisting, to its own abiding-place. In vain he groped to reconstruct
the process by which that other spirit--which he would fain have believed
his true spirit--had been drugged and deadened in its very flight.

He was aware, as he still stood uncertainly beside the table, of the
white-aproned waiter looking at him, and of some one else!--the woman
whose eyes had been fastened on him so persistently. She was close
beside him, speaking to him.

"Seems to me we've met before."

He looked at her, at first uncomprehendingly, then with a dawning
realization of her identity. Even her name came to him, unexpectedly,
--Kate Marcy,--the woman in the flat!

"Ain't you going to invite me to have some supper?" she whispered
eagerly, furtively, as one accustomed to be rebuffed, yet bold in spite
of it. "They'll throw me out if they think I'm accosting you."

How was it that, a moment ago, she had appeared to him mysterious,
inviting? At this range he could only see the paint on her cheeks, the
shadows under her burning eyes, the shabby finery of her gown. Her
wonderful bronze hair only made the contrast more pitiful. He acted
automatically, drawing out for her the chair opposite his own, and sat
down again.

"Say, but I'm hungry!" she exclaimed, pulling off her gloves. She smiled
at him, wanly, yet with a brazen coquettishness become habit.

"Hungry!" he repeated idly.

"I guess you'd be, if you'd only had a fried egg and a cup of coffee
to-day, and nothing last night."

He pushed over to her, hastily, with a kind of horror, the plate of
sandwiches. She began eating them ravenously; but presently paused, and
thrust them back toward him. He shook his head.

"What's the matter with you?" she demanded.

"Nothing," he replied.

"You ordered them, didn't you? Ain't you eating anything?"

"I'm not hungry," he said.

She continued eating awhile without comment. And he watched her as one
fascinated, oblivious to his surroundings, in a turmoil of thought and
emotion.

"I'm dry," she announced meaningly.

He hesitated a moment, and then gave her the bottle of beer. She made a
wry face as she poured it out.

"Have they run out of champagne?" she inquired.

This time he did not hesitate. The women of his acquaintance, at the
dinner parties he attended, drank champagne. Why should he refuse it to
this woman? A long-nosed, mediaeval-looking waiter was hovering about,
one of those bizarre, battered creatures who have long exhausted the
surprises of life, presiding over this amazing situation with all the
sang froid of a family butler. Hodder told him to bring champagne.

"What kind, sir?" he asked, holding out a card.

"The best you have."

The woman stared at him in wonder.

"You're what an English Johnny I know would call a little bit of all
right!" she declared with enthusiastic approval.

"Since you are hungry," he went on, "suppose you have something more
substantial than sandwiches. What would you like?"

She did not answer at once. Amazement grew in her eyes, amazement and a
kind of fear.

"Quit joshing!" she implored him, and he found it difficult to cope with
her style of conversation. For a while she gazed helplessly at the bill
of fare.

"I guess you'll think it's funny," she said hesitatingly, "but I feel
just like a good beefsteak and potatoes. Bring a thick one, Walter."

The waiter sauntered off.

"Why should I think it strange?" Hodder asked.

"Well, if you knew how many evenings I've sat up there in my room and
thought what I'd order if I ever again got hold of some rich guy who'd
loosen up. There ain't any use trying to put up a bluff with you.
Nothing was too good for me once, caviar, pate de foie gras" (her
pronunciation is not to be imitated), "chicken casserole, peach Melba,
filet of beef with mushrooms,--I've had 'em all, and I used to sit up and
say I'd hand out an order like that. You never do what you think you're
going to do in this life."

The truth of this remark struck him with a force she did not suspect;
stung him, as it were, into a sense of reality.

"And now," she added pathetically, "all t want is a beefsteak! Don't
that beat you?"

She appeared so genuinely surprised at this somewhat contemptible trick
fate had played her that Hodder smiled in spite of himself.

"I didn't recognize you at first in that get-up," she observed, looking
at his blue serge suit. "So you've dropped the preacher business, have
you? You're wise, all right."

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Didn't I tell you when you came 'round that time that you weren't like
the rest of 'em? You're too human."

Once more the word, and on her lips, startled him.

"Some of the best men I have ever known, the broadest and most
understanding men, have been clergymen," he found himself protesting.

"Well, they haven't dropped in on me. The only one I ever saw that
measured up to something like that was you, and now you've chucked it."

Had he, as she expressed the matter, "chucked it"? Her remark brought
him reluctantly, fearfully, remorselessly--agitated and unprepared as
he was--face to face with his future.

"You were too good for the job," she declared. "What is there in it?
There ain't nobody converted these days that I can see, and what's the
use of gettin' up and preach into a lot of sapheads that don't know what
religion is? Sure they don't."

"Do you?" he asked.

"You've called my bluff." She laughed. "Say, do YOU?" If there was
anything in it you'd have kept on preachin' to that bunch and made some
of 'em believe they was headed for hell; you'd have made one of 'em that
owns the flat house I live in, who gets fancy rents out of us poor girls,
give it up. That's a nice kind of business for a church member, ain't
it?"

"Owns the house in which you live!"

"Sure." She smiled at him compassionately, pitying his innocence and
ignorance. "Now I come to think of it, I guess he don't go to your
church,--it's the big Baptist church on the boulevard. But what's the
difference?"

"None," said Hodder, despondently.

She regarded him curiously.

"You remember when you dropped in that night, when the kid was sick?"

He nodded.

"Well, now you ain't in the business any more, I may as well tell you you
kind of got in on me. I was sorry for you--honest, I was. I couldn't
believe at first you was on the level, but it didn't take me long to see
that they had gold-bricked you, too. I saw you weren't wise to what they
were."

"You thought--" he began and paused dumfounded.

"Why not?" she retorted. "It looked easy to me,--your line. How was I
to know at first that they had you fooled? How was I to know you wasn't
in the game?"

"The game?"

"Say, what else is it but a game? You must be on now, ain't you? Why.
do they put up to keep the churches going? There ain't any coupons
coming out of 'em.

"Maybe some of these millionaires think they can play all the horses and
win,--get into heaven and sell gold bricks on the side. But I guess most
of 'em don't think about heaven. They just use the church for a front,
and take in strangers in the back alley,--downtown."

Hodder was silent, overwhelmed by the brutal aptness of her figures. Nor
did he take the trouble of a defence, of pointing out that hers was not
the whole truth. What really mattered--he saw--was what she and those
like her thought. Such minds were not to be disabused by argument; and
indeed he had little inclination for it then.

"There's nothing in it."

By this expression he gathered she meant life. And some hidden impulse
bade him smile at her.

"There is this," he answered.

She opened her mouth, closed it and stared at him, struck by his
expression, striving uneasily to fathom hidden depths in his remark.

"I don't get on to you," she said lamely. "I didn't that other time.
I never ran across anybody like you."

He tried to smile again.

"You mustn't mind me," he answered.

They fell into an oasis of silence, surrounded by mad music and laughter.
Then came the long-nosed waiter carrying the beefsteak aloft, followed by
a lad with a bucket of ice, from which protruded the green and gold neck
of a bottle. The plates were put down, the beefsteak carved, the
champagne opened and poured out with a flourish. The woman raised her
glass.

"Here's how!" she said, with an attempt at gayety. And she drank to him.
"It's funny how I ran across you again, ain't it?" She threw back her
head and laughed.

He raised his glass, tasted the wine, and put it down again. A sheet of
fire swept through him.

"What's the matter with it? Is it corked?" she demanded. "It goes to
the right spot with me."

"It seems very good," he said, trying to smile, and turning to the food
on his plate. The very idea of eating revolted him--and yet he made the
attempt: he had a feeling, ill defined, that consequences of vital
importance depended upon this attempt, on his natural acceptance of the
situation. And, while he strove to reduce the contents of his plate,
he racked his brain for some subject of conversation. The flamboyant
walls of the room pressed in on every side; comment of that which lay
within their limits was impossible,--but he could not, somehow, get
beyond them. Was there in the whole range of life one easy topic which
they might share in common? Yet a bond existed between this woman and
himself--a bond of which he now became aware, and which seemed strangely
to grow stronger as the minutes passed and no words were spoken. Why was
it that she, too, to whom speech came so easily, had fallen dumb? He
began to long for some remark, however disconcerting. The tension
increased.

She put down her knife and fork. Tears sprang into her eyes,--tears of
anger, he thought.

"Say, it's no use trying to put up a bluff with me," she cried.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"You know what I mean, all right. What did you come in here for,
anyway?"

"I don't know--I couldn't tell you," he answered.

The very honesty of his words seemed, for an instant, to disconcert her;
and she produced a torn lace handkerchief, which she thrust in her eyes.

"Why can't you leave me alone?" she demanded. "I'm all right."

If he did not at once reply, it was because of some inner change which
had taken place in himself; and he seemed to see things, suddenly, in
their true proportions. He no longer feared a scene and its
consequences. By virtue of something he had cast off or taken on,
he was aware of a newly acquired mastery of the situation, and by a
hidden and unconscious process he had managed to get at the real woman
behind the paint: had beaten down, as it were without a siege, her
defences. And he was incomparably awed by the sight of her quivering,
frightened self.

Her weeping grew more violent. He saw the people at the next table turn
and stare, heard the men laughing harshly. For the spectacle was
evidently not an uncommon one here. She pushed away her unfinished
glass, gathered up her velvet bag and rose abruptly.

"I guess I ain't hungry after all," she said, and started toward the
door. He turned to the waiter, who regarded him unmoved, and asked for a
check.

"I'll get it," he said.

Hodder drew out a ten dollar bill, and told him to keep the change. The
waiter looked at him. Some impulse moved him to remark, as he picked up
the rector's hat:

"Don't let her put it over you, sir."

Hodder scarcely heard him. He hurried up the steps and gained the
pavement, and somewhere in the black shadows beyond the arc-lights he saw
her disappearing down the street. Careless of all comment he hastened
on, overtook her, and they walked rapidly side by side. Now and again he
heard a sob, but she said nothing. Thus they came to the house where the
Garvins had lived, and passed it, and stopped in front of the dimly
lighted vestibule of the flats next door. In drawing the key from her
bag she dropped it: he picked it up and put it in the lock himself. She
led the way without comment up the darkened stairs, and on the landing
produced another key, opened the door of her rooms, fumbled for the
electric button, and suddenly the place was flooded with light. He
glanced in, and recoiled.



II

Oddly enough, the first thing he noticed in the confusion that reigned
was the absence of the piano. Two chairs were overturned, and one of
them was broken; a siphon of vichy lay on the floor beside a crushed
glass and two or three of the cheap ornaments that had been swept off
the mantel and broken on the gaudy tiles of the hearth. He glanced at
the woman, who had ceased crying, and stood surveying the wreckage with
the calmness, the philosophic nonchalance of a class that comes to look
upon misfortune as inevitable.

"They didn't do a thing to this place, did they?" was her comment.
"There was two guys in here to-night who got a notion they were funny."

Hodder had thought to have fathomed all the horrors of her existence, but
it was not until he looked into this room that the bottomless depths of
it were brought home to him. Could it be possible that the civilization
in which he lived left any human being so defenceless as to be at the
mercy of the ghouls who had been here? The very stale odours of the
spilled whiskey seemed the material expression of the essence of degraded
souls; for a moment it overpowered him. Then came the imperative need of
action, and he began to right one of the chairs. She darted forward.

"Cut it out!" she cried. "What business have you got coming in here and
straightening up? I was a fool to bring you, anyway."

It was in her eyes that he read her meaning, and yet could not credit it.
He was abashed--ashamed; nay, he could not define the feeling in his
breast. He knew that what he read was the true interpretation of her
speech, for in some manner--he guessed not how--she had begun to idealize
him, to feel that the touch of these things defiled him.

"I believe I invited myself," he answered, with attempted cheerfulness.
Then it struck him, in his predicament, that this was precisely what
others had done!

"When you asked me a little while ago whether I had left the Church, I
let you think I had. I am still connected with St. John's, but I do not
know how long I shall continue to be."

She was on her knees with dustpan and whiskbroom, cleaning up the
fragments of glass on the stained carpet. And she glanced up at him
swiftly, diviningly.

"Say--you're in trouble yourself, ain't you?"

She got up impulsively, spilling some of the contents of the pan. A
subtle change had come in her, and under the gallantly drooping feathers
of her hat he caught her eye--the human eye that so marvellously reflects
the phases of the human soul: the eye which so short a time before
hardily and brazenly had flashed forth its invitation, now actually shone
with fellowship and sympathy. And for a moment this look was more
startling, more appalling than the other; he shrank from it, resented it
even more. Was it true that they had something in common? And if so,
was it sin or sorrow, or both?

"I might have known," she said, staring at him. In spite of his gesture
of dissent, he saw that she was going over the events of the evening from
her new point of view.

"I might have known, when we were sitting there in Harrods, that you were
up against it, too, but I couldn't think of anything but the way I was
fixed. The agent's been here twice this week for the rent, and I was
kind of desperate for a square meal."

Hodder took the dustpan from her hand, and flung its contents into the
fireplace.

"Then we are both fortunate," he said, "to have met each other."

"I don't see where you come in," she told him.

He turned and smiled at her.

"Do you remember when I was here that evening about two months ago I said
I should like to be your friend? Well, I meant it. And I have often
hoped, since then, that some circumstance might bring us together again.
You seemed to think that no friendship was possible between us, but I
have tried to make myself believe that you said so because you didn't
know me."

"Honest to God?" she asked. "Is that on the level?"

"I only ask for an opportunity to prove it," he replied, striving to
speak naturally. He stooped and laid the dustpan on the hearth.
"There! Now let's sit down."

She sank on the sofa, her breast rising and falling, her gaze dumbly
fixed on him, as one under hypnosis. He took the rocker.

"I have wanted to tell you how grateful Mrs. Garvin, the boy's mother
--was for the roses you brought. She doesn't know who sent them, but I
intend to tell her, and she will thank you herself. She is living out
in the country. And the boy--you would scarcely recognize him."

"I couldn't play the piano for a week after--that thing happened." She
glanced at the space where the instrument had stood.

"You taught yourself to play?" he asked.

"I had music lessons."

"Music lessons?"

"Not here--before I left home--up the State, in a little country town,
--Madison. It seems like a long time ago, but it's only seven years in
September. Mother and father wanted all of us children to know a little
more than they did, and I guess they pinched a good deal to give us a
chance. I went a year to the high school, and then I was all for coming
to the city--I couldn't stand Madison, there wasn't anything going on.
Mother was against it,--said I was too good-looking to leave home. I
wish I never had. You wouldn't believe I was good-looking once, would
you?"

She spoke dispassionately, not seeming to expect assent, but Hodder
glanced involuntarily at her wonderful crown of hair. She had taken off
her hat. He was thinking of the typical crime of American parents,--and
suddenly it struck him that her speech had changed, that she had dropped
the suggestive slang of the surroundings in which she now lived.

"I was a fool to come, but I couldn't see it then. All I could think of
was to get away to a place where something was happening. I wanted to
get into Ferguson's--everybody in Madison knew about Ferguson's, what a
grand store it was,--but I couldn't. And after a while I got a place at
the embroidery counter at Pratt's. That's a department store, too, you
know. It looked fine, but it wasn't long before I fell wise to a few
things." (She relapsed into slang occasionally.) "Have you ever tried
to stand on your feet for nine hours, where you couldn't sit down for a
minute? Say, when Florry Kinsley and me--she was the girl I roomed with
--would get home at night, often we'd just lie down and laugh and cry, we
were so tired, and our feet hurt so. We were too used up sometimes to
get up and cook supper on the little stove we had. And sitting around a
back bedroom all evening was worse than Madison. We'd go out, tired as
we were, and walk the streets."

He nodded, impressed by the fact that she did not seem to be appealing
to his sympathy. Nor, indeed, did she appear--in thus picking up the
threads of her past--to be consciously accounting for her present.
She recognized no causation there.

"Say, did you ever get to a place where you just had to have something
happen? When you couldn't stand bein' lonely night after night, when you
went out on the streets and saw everybody on the way to a good time but
you? We used to look in the newspapers for notices of the big balls, and
we'd take the cars to the West End and stand outside the awnings watching
the carriages driving up and the people coming in. And the same with
the weddings. We got to know a good many of the swells by sight. There
was Mrs. Larrabbee,"--a certain awe crept into her voice--"and Miss
Ferguson--she's sweet--and a lot more. Some of the girls used to copy
their clothes and hats, but Florry and me tried to live honest. It was
funny," she added irrelevantly, "but the more worn out we were at night,
the more we'd want a little excitement, and we used to go to the
dance-halls and keep going until we were ready to drop."

She laughed at the recollection.

"There was a floorwalker who never let me alone the whole time I was at
Pratt's--he put me in mind of a pallbearer. His name was Selkirk, and he
had a family in Westerly, out on the Grade Suburban . . . . Some of
the girls never came back at all, except to swagger in and buy expensive
things, and tell us we were fools to work. And after a while I noticed
Florry was getting discouraged. We never had so much as a nickel left
over on Saturdays and they made us sign a paper, when they hired us, that
we lived at home. It was their excuse for paying us six dollars a week.
They do it at Ferguson's, too. They say they can get plenty of girls who
do live at home. I made up my mind I'd go back to Madison, but I kept
putting it off, and then father died, and I couldn't!

"And then, one day, Florry left. She took her things from the room when
I was at the store, and I never saw her again. I got another roommate.
I couldn't afford to pay for the room alone. You wouldn't believe I kept
straight, would you?" she demanded, with a touch of her former defiance.
"I had plenty of chances better than that floorwalker. But I knew I was
good looking, and I thought if I could only hold out I might get married
to some fellow who was well fixed. What's the matter?"

Hodder's exclamation had been involuntary, for in these last words she
had unconsciously brought home to him the relentless predicament in the
lives of these women. She had been saving herself--for what? A more
advantageous, sale!

"It's always been my luck," she went on reflectingly, "that when what I
wanted to happen did happen, I never could take advantage of it. It was
just like that to-night, when you handed me out the bill of fare, and
I ordered beefsteak. And it was like that when--when he came along
--I didn't do what I thought I was going to do. It's terrible to fall in
love, isn't it? I mean the real thing. I've read in books that it only
comes once, and I guess it's so."

Fortunately she seemed to expect no answer to this query. She was
staring at the wall with unseeing eyes.

"I never thought of marrying him, from the first. He could have done
anything with me--he was so good and generous--and it was him I was
thinking about. That's love, isn't it? Maybe you don't believe a woman
like me knows what love is. You've got a notion that goin' downhill, as
I've been doing, kills it, haven't you? I Wish to God it did--but it
don't: the ache's there, and sometimes it comes in the daytime, and
sometimes at night, and I think I'll go crazy. When a woman like me is
in love there isn't anything more terrible on earth, I tell you. If a
girl's respectable and good it's bad enough, God knows, if she can't have
the man she wants; but when she's like me--it's hell. That's the only
way I can describe it. She feels there is nothing about her that's
clean, that he wouldn't despise. There's many a night I wished I could
have done what Garvin did, but I didn't have the nerve."

"Don't say that!" he commanded sharply.

"Why not? It's the best way out."

"I can see how one might believe it to be," he answered. Indeed, it
seemed that his vision had been infinitely extended, that he had suddenly
come into possession of the solution of all the bewildered, despairing
gropings of the human soul. Only awhile ago, for instance, the mood of
self-destruction had been beyond his imagination: tonight he understood
it, though he still looked upon it with horror. And he saw that his
understanding of her--or of any human being--could never be of the
intellect. He had entered into one of those astounding yet simple
relationships wherein truth, and truth alone, is possible. He knew
that such women lied, deceived themselves; he could well conceive that
the image of this first lover might have become idealized in her
vicissitudes; that the memories of the creature-comforts, of first
passion, might have enhanced as the victim sank. It was not only
because she did not attempt to palliate that he believed her.

"I remember the time I met him,--it was only four years ago last spring,
but it seems like a lifetime. It was Decoration Day, and it was so
beautiful I went out with another girl to the Park, and we sat on the
grass and looked at the sky and wished we lived in the country. He was
in an automobile; I never did know exactly how it happened,--we looked at
each other, and he slowed up and came back and asked us to take a ride.
I had never been in one of those things--but that wasn't why I went,
I guess. Well, the rest was easy. He lost his head, and I was just as
bad. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how rich he was: it scared me
when I found out about him, and he was so handsome and full of fun and
spirits, and generous! I never knew anybody like him. Honest, I never
expected he'd want to marry me. He didn't at first,--it was only after
a while. I never asked him to, and when he began to talk about it I told
him it would cut him off from his swell friends, and I knew his father
might turn him loose. Oh, it wasn't the money! Well, he'd get mad all
through, and say he never got along with the old man, and that his
friends would have to take me, and he couldn't live without me. He said
he would have me educated, and bought me books, and I tried to read them.
I'd have done anything for him. He'd knocked around a good deal since
he'd been to Harvard College,--he wasn't what you'd call a saint, but his
heart was all right. And he changed, too, I could see it. He said he
was going to make something out of himself.

"I didn't think it was possible to be so happy, but I had a feeling all
along, inside of me, that it couldn't come off. I had a little flat in
Rutger Street, over on the south side, and everything in the world I
wanted. Well, one day, sure enough, the bell rang and I opened the door,
and there stood a man with side whiskers staring at me, and staring until
I was frightened to death. I never saw such eyes as he had. And all of
a sudden I knew it was his father.

"'Is this Miss Marcy?'" he said.

"I couldn't say anything at all, but he handed me his card and smiled,
I'll never forget how he smiled--and came right in and sat down. I'd
heard of that man all my life, and how much money he'd made, and all
that. Why, up in Madison folks used to talk about him--" she checked
herself suddenly and stared at Hodder in consternation. "Maybe you know
him!" she exclaimed. "I never thought!"

"Maybe I do," he assented wearily. In the past few moments suspicion had
become conviction.

"Well--what difference does it make--now? It's all over, and I'm not
going to bother him. I made up my mind I wouldn't, on account of him,
you understand. I never fell that low--thank God!"

Hodder nodded. He could not speak . . . . The woman seemed to be
living over again that scene, in her imagination.

"I just couldn't realize who it was sitting there beside me, but if I
hadn't known it wouldn't have made any difference. He could have done
anything with me, anyway, and he knew how to get at me. He said, now
that he'd seen me, that he was sure I was a good girl at the bottom and
loved his son, and that I wouldn't want to ruin the boy when he had such
a big future ahead of him. I wouldn't have thought, to look at the man,
that he could have been so gentle. I made a fool of myself and cried,
and told him I'd go away and never see his son any more--that I'd always
been against marrying him. Well, he almost had tears in his eyes when he
thanked me and said I'd never regret it, and he pulled an envelope out of
his pocket. I said I wouldn't take any money, and gave it back to him.
I've always been sorry since that I didn't make him take it back--it
never did anything but harm to me. But he had his way. He laid it on
the table and said he wouldn't feel right, and took my hand--and I just
didn't care.

"Well, what do you think I did after he'd gone? I went and played a
piece on the piano,--and I never can bear to hear that ragtime to this
day. I couldn't seem to feel anything. And after a while I got up and
opened the envelope--it was full of crackly new hundred dollar bills
--thirty of 'em, and as I sat there staring at 'em the pain came on, like a
toothache, in throbs, getting worse all the time until I just couldn't
stand it. I had a notion of sending the money back even then, but I
didn't. I didn't know how to do it,--and as I told you, I wasn't able to
care much. Then I remembered I'd promised to go away, and I had to have
some money for that, and if I didn't leave right off I wouldn't have the
strength to do it. I hadn't even thought where to go: I couldn't think,
so I got dressed and went down to the depot anyway. It was one of those
bright, bitter cold winter days after a thaw when the icicles are hanging
everywhere. I went inside and walked up and down that long platform
under the glass roof. My, it was cold in there! I looked over all the
signs, and made up my mind I'd go to Chicago.

"I meant to work, I never meant to spend the money, but to send it back.
I'd put it aside--and then I'd go and take a little. Say, it was easy
not to work--and I didn't care what happened to me as long as I wasn't
going to see him again. Well, I'm not trying to smooth it over,
I suppose there was something crooked about me from the start, but I just
went clean to hell with that money, and when I heard he'd gone away,
I came back here."

"Something crooked!" The words rang in Hodder's ears, in his very soul.
How was he or any man to estimate, to unravel the justice from the
injustice, to pass upon the merit of this woman's punishment? Here
again, in this vitiated life, was only to be seen the remorseless working
of law--cause and effect. Crooked! Had not the tree been crooked from
the beginning--incapable of being straightened? She had herself naively
confessed it. Was not the twist ingrained? And if so, where was the
salvation he had preached? There was good in her still,--but what was
"good"? . . . He took no account of his profound compassion.

What comfort could he give her, what hope could he hold out that the
twist, now gnarled and knotted, might be removed, that she might gain
peace of soul and body and the "happiness" of which he had talked with
Alison Parr? . . . He raised his eyes, to discover that the woman's
were fixed upon him, questioningly.

"I suppose I was a fool to tell you," she said, with a shade of her old
bitterness; "it can't do any good." Her next remark was startlingly
astute. "You've found out for yourself, I guess, that all this talk
about heaven and hell and repentance don't amount to anything. Hell
couldn't be any worse than I've been through, no matter how hot it is.
And heaven!" She laughed, burst into tears, and quickly dried them.
"You know the man I've been talking about, that bought me off. I didn't
intend to tell you, but I see you can't help knowing--Eldon Parr. I
don't say he didn't do right from his way of looking at things,--but say,
it wasn't exactly Christian, was it?"

"No," he said, "it wasn't." He bowed his head, and presently, when he
raised it again, he caught something in her look that puzzled and
disturbed him--an element of adoration.

"You're white through and through," she said, slowly and distinctly.

And he knew not how to protest.

"I'll tell you something," she went on, as one who has made a discovery.
"I liked you the first time you came in here--that night--when you wanted
me to be friends; well, there was something that seemed to make it
impossible then. I felt it, if you didn't." She groped for words.
"I can't explain what it was, but now it's gone. You're different.
I think a lot more of you. Maybe it's because of what you did at
Harrod's, sitting down with me and giving me supper when I was so hungry,
and the champagne. You weren't ashamed of me."

"Good God, why should I have been!" he exclaimed.

"You! Why shouldn't you?" she cried fiercely.

"There's hardly a man in that place that wouldn't have been. They all
know me by sight--and some of 'em better. You didn't see 'em grinning
when I came up to you, but I did. My God--it's awful--it's awful I...."
She burst into violent weeping, long deferred.

He took her hand in his, and did not speak, waiting for the fit to spend
itself . . . . And after a while the convulsive shudders that shook
her gradually ceased.

"You must trust me," he said. "The first thing tomorrow I'm going to
make arrangements for you to get out of these rooms. You can't stay here
any longer."

"That's sure," she answered, trying to smile. "I'm broke. I even owe
the co--the policeman."

"The policeman!"

"He has to turn it in to Tom Beatty and the politicians"

Beatty! Where had he heard the name? Suddenly it came to him that
Beatty was the city boss, who had been eulogized by Mr. Plimpton!

"I have some good friends who will be glad to help you to get work--and
until you do get work. You will have to fight--but we all have to fight.
Will you try?"

"Sure, I'll try," she answered, in a low voice.

Her very tone of submission troubled him. And he had a feeling that, if
he had demanded, she would have acquiesced in anything.

"We'll talk it over to-morrow," he went on, clinging to his note of
optimism. "We'll find out what you can do easiest, to begin with."

"I might give music lessons," she suggested.

The remark increased his uneasiness, for he recognized in it a sure
symptom of disease--a relapse into what might almost have been called
levity, blindness to the supreme tragedy of her life which but a moment
before had shaken and appalled her. He shook his head bravely.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't do--at first."

She rose and went into the other room, returning in a few moments with a
work basket, from which she drew a soiled and unfinished piece of
embroidery.

"There's a bureau cover I started when I was at Pratt's," she said, as
she straightened it over her knees. "It's a copy of an expensive one.
I never had the patience to finish it, but one of the sales-ladies there,
who was an expert, told me it was pretty good: She taught me the stitch,
and I had a notion at that time I might make a little money for dresses
and the theatre. I was always clever with my hands."

"The very thing!" he said, with hopeful emphasis. "I'm sure I can get
you plenty of it to do. And I'll come back in the morning."

He gave it back to her, and as she was folding it his glance fell on a
photograph in the basket.

"I kept it, I don't know why," he heard her say; "I didn't have the heart
to burn it."

He started recovered himself, and rose.

"I'll go to see the agent the first thing to-morrow," he said. "And
then--you'll be ready for me? You trust me?"

"I'd do anything for you," was her tremulous reply.

Her disquieting, submissive smile haunted him as he roped his way down
the stairs to the street, and then the face in the photograph replaced
it--the laughing eyes, the wilful, pleasure--loving mouth he had seen in
the school and college pictures of Preston Parr.






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill



Volume 5.


XVII.   RECONSTRUCTION
XVIII.  THE RIDDLE OF CAUSATION
XIX.   MR. GOODRICH BECOMES A PARTISAN




CHAPTER XVII

RECONSTRUCTION


I

Life had indeed become complicated, paradoxical. He, John Hodder, a
clergyman, rector of St. John's by virtue of not having resigned, had
entered a restaurant of ill repute, had ordered champagne for an
abandoned woman, and had no sense of sin when he awoke the next morning!
The devil, in the language of orthodox theology, had led him there. He
had fallen under the influence of the tempter of his youth, and all in
him save the carnal had been blotted out.

More paradoxes! If the devil had not taken possession of him and led him
there, it were more than probable that he could never have succeeded in
any other way in getting on a footing of friendship with this woman, Kate
Marcy. Her future, to be sure, was problematical. Here was no simple,
sentimental case he might formerly have imagined, of trusting innocence
betrayed, but a mixture of good and evil, selfishness and unselfishness.
And she had, in spite of all, known the love which effaces self! Could
the disintegration, in her case, be arrested?

Gradually Hodder was filled with a feeling which may be called amazement
because, although his brain was no nearer to a solution than before, he
was not despondent. For a month he had not permitted his mind to dwell
on the riddle; yet this morning he felt stirring within him a new energy
for which he could not account, a hope unconnected with any mental
process! He felt in touch, once more, faintly but perceptibly, with
something stable in the chaos. In bygone years he had not seen the
chaos, but the illusion of an orderly world, a continual succession of
sunrises, 'couleur de rose', from the heights above Bremerton. Now were
the scales fallen from his eyes; now he saw the evil, the injustice, the
despair; felt, in truth, the weight of the sorrow of it all, and yet that
sorrow was unaccountably transmuted, as by a chemical process, into
something which for the first time had a meaning--he could not say what
meaning. The sting of despair had somehow been taken out of it, and it
remained poignant!

Not on the obsession of the night before, when he had walked down Dalton
Street and beheld it transformed into a realm of adventure, but upon his
past life did he look back now with horror, upon the even tenor of those
days and years in the bright places. His had been the highroad of a
fancied security, from which he had feared to stray, to seek his God
across the rough face of nature, from black, forgotten capons to the
flying peaks in space. He had feared reality. He had insisted upon
gazing at the universe through the coloured glasses of an outworn
theology, instead of using his own eyes.

So he had left the highroad, the beaten way of salvation many others had
deserted, had flung off his spectacles, had plunged into reality, to be
scratched and battered, to lose his way. Not until now had something of
grim zest come to him, of an instinct which was the first groping of a
vision, as to where his own path might lie. Through what thickets and
over what mountains he knew not as yet--nor cared to know. He felt
resistance, whereas on the highroad he had felt none. On the highroad
his cry had gone unheeded and unheard, yet by holding out his hand in the
wilderness he had helped another, bruised and bleeding, to her feet!
Salvation, Let it be what it might be, he would go on, stumbling and
seeking, through reality.

Even this last revelation, of Eldon Parr's agency in another tragedy,
seemed to have no further power to affect him. . . Nor could Hodder
think of Alison as in blood-relationship to the financier, or even to the
boy, whose open, pleasure-loving face he had seen in the photograph.



II

A presage of autumn was in the air, and a fine, misty rain drifted in at
his windows as he sat at his breakfast. He took deep breaths of the
moisture, and it seemed to water and revive his parching soul. He found
himself, to his surprise, surveying with equanimity the pile of books in
the corner which had led him to the conviction of the emptiness of the
universe--but the universe was no longer empty! It was cruel, but a
warring force was at work in it which was not blind, but directed. He
could not say why this was so, but he knew it, he felt it, sensed its
energy within him as he set out for Dalton Street.

He was neither happy nor unhappy, but in equilibrium, walking with sure
steps, and the anxiety in which he had fallen asleep the night before was
gone: anxiety lest the woman should have fled, or changed her mind, or
committed some act of desperation.

In Dalton Street a thin coat of yellow mud glistened on the asphalt, but
even the dreariness of this neighbourhood seemed transient. He rang the
bell of the flat, the door swung open, and in the hall above a woman
awaited him. She was clad in black.

"You wouldn't know me, would you?" she inquired. "Say, I scarcely know
myself. I used to wear this dress at Pratt's, with white collars and
cuffs and--well, I just put it on again. I had it in the bottom of my
trunk, and I guessed you'd like it."

"I didn't know you at first," he said, and the pleasure in his face was
her reward.

The transformation, indeed, was more remarkable than he could have
believed possible, for respectability itself would seem to have been
regained by a costume, and the abundance of her remarkable hair was now
repressed. The absence of paint made her cheeks strangely white, the
hollows under the eyes darker. The eyes themselves alone betrayed the
woman of yesterday; they still burned.

"Why," he exclaimed, looking around him, "you have been busy, haven't
you?"

"I've been up since six," she told him proudly. The flat had been
dismantled of its meagre furniture, the rug was rolled up and tied, and a
trunk strapped with rope was in the middle of the floor. Her next remark
brought home to him the full responsibility of his situation. She led
him to the window, and pointed to a spot among the drenched weeds and
rubbish in the yard next door. "Do you see that bottle? That's the
first thing I did--flung it out there. It didn't break," she added
significantly, "and there are three drinks in it yet."

Once more he confined his approval to his glance.

"Now you must come and have some breakfast," he said briskly. "If I had
thought about it I should have waited to have it with you."

"I'm not hungry." In the light of his new knowledge, he connected her
sudden dejection with the sight of the bottle.

"But you must eat. You're exhausted from all this work. And a cup of
coffee will make all the difference in the world."

She yielded, pinning on her hat. And he led her, holding the umbrella
over her, to a restaurant in Tower Street, where a man in a white cap and
apron was baking cakes behind a plate-glass window. She drank the
coffee, but in her excitement left the rest of the breakfast almost
untasted.

"Say," she asked him once, "why are you doing this?"

"I don't know," he answered, "except that it gives me pleasure."

"Pleasure?"

"Yes. It makes me feel as if I were of some use."

She considered this.

"Well," she observed, reviled by the coffee, "you're the queerest
minister I ever saw."

When they had reached the pavement she asked him where they were going.

"To see a friend of mine, and a friend of yours," he told her. "He does
net live far from here."

She was silent again, acquiescing. The rain had stopped, the sun was
peeping out furtively through the clouds, the early loiterers in Dalton
Street stared at them curiously. But Hodder was thinking of that house
whither they were bound with a new gratitude, a new wonder that it should
exist. Thus they came to the sheltered vestibule with its glistening
white paint, its polished name plate and doorknob. The grinning,
hospitable darky appeared in answer to the rector's ring.

"Good morning, Sam," he said; "is Mr. Bentley in?"

Sam ushered them ceremoniously into the library, and gate Marcy gazed
about her with awe, as at something absolutely foreign to her experience:
the New Barrington Hotel, the latest pride of the city, recently erected
at the corner of Tower and Jefferson and furnished in the French style,
she might partially have understood. Had she been marvellously and
suddenly transported and established there, existence might still have
evinced a certain continuity. But this house! . .

Mr. Bentley rose from the desk in the corner.

"Oh, it's you, Hodder," he said cheerfully, laying his hand on the
rector's arm. "I was just thinking about you."

"This is Miss Marcy, Mr. Bentley," Hodder said.

Mr. Bentley took her hand and led her to a chair.

"Mr. Hodder knows how fond I am of young women," he said. "I have six of
them upstairs,--so I am never lonely."

Mr. Bentley did not appear to notice that her lips quivered.

Hodder turned his eyes from her face. "Miss Marcy has been lonely," he
explained, "and I thought we might get her a room near by, where she
might see them often. She is going to do embroidery."

"Why, Sally will know of a room," Mr. Bentley replied. "Sam!" he called.

"Yessah--yes, Mistah Ho'ace." Sam appeared at the door.

"Ask Miss Sally to come down, if she's not busy."

Kate Marcy sat dumbly in her chair, her hands convulsively clasping its
arms, her breast heaving stormily, her face becoming intense with the
effort of repressing the wild emotion within her: emotion that threatened
to strangle her if resisted, or to sweep her out like a tide and drown
her in deep waters: emotion that had no one mewing, and yet summed up a
life, mysteriously and overwhelmingly aroused by the sight of a room, and
of a kindly old gentleman who lived in it!

Mr. Bentley took the chair beside her.

"Why, I believe it's going to clear off, after all," he exclaimed.
"Sam predicted it, before breakfast. He pretends to be able to tell by
the flowers. After a while I must show you my flowers, Miss Marcy, and
what Dalton Street can do by way of a garden--Mr. Hodder could hardly
believe it, even when he saw it." Thus he went on, the tips of his
fingers pressed together, his head bent forward in familiar attitude, his
face lighted, speaking naturally of trivial things that seemed to suggest
themselves; and careful, with exquisite tact that did not betray itself,
to address both. A passing automobile startled her with the blast of its
horn. "I'm afraid I shall never get accustomed to them," he lamented.
"At first I used to be thankful there were no trolley cars on this
street, but I believe the automobiles are worse."

A figure flitted through the hall and into the room, which Hodder
recognized as Miss Grower's. She reminded him of a flying shuttle across
the warp of Mr. Bentley's threads, weaving them together; swift, sure,
yet never hurried or flustered. One glance at the speechless woman
seemed to suffice her for a knowledge of the situation.

"Mr. Hodder has brought us a new friend and neighbour, Sally,--Miss Kate
Marcy. She is to have a room near us, that we may see her often."

Hodder watched Miss Grower's procedure with a breathless interest.

"Why, Mrs. McQuillen has a room--across the street, you know, Mr.
Bentley."

Sally perched herself on the edge of the armchair and laid her hand
lightly on Kate Marcy's.

Even Sally Grover was powerless to prevent the inevitable, and the touch
of her hand seemed the signal for the release of the pent-up forces. The
worn body, the worn nerves, the weakened will gave way, and Kate Marcy
burst into a paroxysm of weeping that gradually became automatic,
convulsive, like a child's. There was no damming this torrent, once
released. Kindness, disinterested friendship, was the one unbearable
thing.

"We must bring her upstairs," said Sally Grover, quietly, "she's going to
pieces."

Hodder helping, they fairly carried her up the flight, and laid her on
Sally Grover's own bed.

That afternoon she was taken to Mrs. McQuillen's.

The fiends are not easily cheated. And during the nights and days that
followed even Sally Grower, whose slight frame was tireless, whose
stoicism was amazing, came out of the sick room with a white face and
compressed lips. Tossing on the mattress, Kate Marcy enacted over again
incident after incident of her past life, events natural to an existence
which had been largely devoid of self-pity, but which now, clearly
enough, tested the extreme limits of suffering. Once more, in her
visions, she walked the streets, wearily measuring the dark, empty
blocks, footsore, into the smaller hours of the night; slyly,
insinuatingly, pathetically offering herself--all she possessed--to the
hovering beasts of prey. And even these rejected her, with gibes, with
obscene jests that sprang to her lips and brought a shudder to those who
heard.

Sometimes they beheld flare up fitfully that mysterious thing called
the human spirit, which all this crushing process had not served to
extinguish. She seemed to be defending her rights, whatever these may
have been! She expostulated with policemen. And once, when Hodder was
present, she brought back vividly to his mind that first night he had
seen her, when she had defied him and sent him away. In moments she
lived over again the careless, reckless days when money and good looks
had not been lacking, when rich food and wines had been plentiful. And
there were other events which Sally Grower and the good-natured
Irishwoman, Mrs. McQuillen, not holding the key, could but dimly
comprehend. Education, environment, inheritance, character--what a
jumble of causes! What Judge was to unravel them, and assign the exact
amount of responsibility?

There were other terrible scenes when, more than semiconscious, she cried
out piteously for drink, and cursed them for withholding it. And it was
in the midst of one of these that an incident occurred which made a deep
impression upon young Dr. Giddings, hesitating with his opiates, and
assisting the indomitable Miss Grower to hold his patient. In the midst
of the paroxysm Mr. Bentley entered and stood over her by the bedside,
and suddenly her struggles ceased. At first she lay intensely still,
staring at him with wide eyes of fear. He sat down and took her hand,
and spoke to her, quietly and naturally, and her pupils relaxed. She
fell into a sleep, still clinging to his fingers.

It was Sally who opposed the doctor's wish to send her to a hospital.

"If it's only a question of getting back her health, she'd better die,"
she declared. "We've got but one chance with her, Dr. Giddings, to keep
her here. When she finds out she's been to a hospital, that will be the
end of it with her kind. We'll never get hold of her again. I'll take
care of Mrs. McQuillen."

Doctor Giddings was impressed by this wisdom.

"You think you have a chance, Miss Grower?" he asked. He had had a
hospital experience.

Miss Grower was wont to express optimism in deeds rather than words.

"If I didn't think so, I'd ask you to put a little more in your
hypodermic next time," she replied.

And the doctor went away, wondering . . . .

Drink! Convalescence brought little release for the watchers. The
fiends would retire, pretending to have abandoned the field, only to
swoop down again when least expected. There were periods of calm when it
seemed as though a new and bewildered personality were emerging, amazed
to find in life a kindly thing, gazing at the world as one new-born. And
again, Mrs. McQuillen or Ella Finley might be seen running bareheaded
across the street for Miss Grower. Physical force was needed, as the
rector discovered on one occasion; physical force, and something more,
a dauntlessness that kept Sally Grower in the room after the other women
had fled in terror. Then remorse, despondency, another fear . . . .

As the weeks went by, the relapses certainly became fewer. Something was
at work, as real in its effects as the sunlight, but invisible. Hodder
felt it, and watched in suspense while it fought the beasts in this
woman, rending her frame in anguish. The frame might succumb, the breath
might leave it to moulder, but the struggle, he knew, would go until the
beasts were conquered. Whence this knowledge?--for it was knowledge.

On the quieter days of her convalescence she seemed, indeed, more Madonna
than Magdalen as she sat against the pillows, her red-gold hair lying in
two heavy plaits across her shoulders, her cheeks pale; the inner,
consuming fires that smouldered in her eyes died down. At such times her
newly awakened innocence (if it might be called such--pathetic innocence,
in truth!) struck awe into Hodder; her wonder was matched by his own.
Could there be another meaning in life than the pursuit of pleasure,
than the weary effort to keep the body alive?

Such was her query, unformulated. What animated these persons who had
struggled over her so desperately, Sally Grower, Mr. Bentley, and Hodder
himself? Thus her opening mind. For she had a mind.

Mr. Bentley was the chief topic, and little by little he became exalted
into a mystery of which she sought the explanation.

"I never knew anybody like him," she would exclaim.

"Why, I'd seen him on Dalton Street with the children following him, and
I saw him again that day of the funeral. Some of the girls I knew used
to laugh at him. We thought he was queer. And then, when you brought me
to him that morning and he got up and treated me like a lady, I just
couldn't stand it. I never felt so terrible in my life. I just wanted
to die, right then and there. Something inside of me kept pressing and
pressing, until I thought I would die. I knew what it was to hate
myself, but I never hated myself as I have since then.

"He never says anything about God, and you don't, but when he comes in
here he seems like God to me. He's so peaceful,--he makes me peaceful.
I remember the minister in Madison,--he was a putty-faced man with
indigestion,--and when he prayed he used to close his eyes and try to
look pious, but he never fooled me. He never made me believe he knew
anything about God. And don't think for a minute he'd have done what you
and Miss Grower and Mr. Bentley did! He used to cross the street to get
out of the way of drunken men--he wouldn't have one of them in his
church. And I know of a girl he drove out of town because she had a baby
and her sweetheart wouldn't marry her. He sent her to hell. Hell's
here--isn't it?"

These sudden remarks of hers surprised and troubled him. But they had
another effect, a constructive effect. He was astonished, in going over
such conversations afterwards, to discover that her questions and his
efforts to answer them in other than theological terms were both
illuminating and stimulating. Sayings in the Gospels leaped out in his
mind, fired with new meanings; so simple, once perceived, that he was
amazed not to have seen them before. And then he was conscious of a
palpitating joy which left in its wake a profound thankfulness. He made
no attempt as yet to correlate these increments, these glimpses of truth
into a system, but stored them preciously away.

He taxed his heart and intellect to answer her sensible and helpfully,
and thus found himself avoiding the logic, the Greek philosophy, the
outworn and meaningless phrases of speculation; found himself employing
(with extraordinary effect upon them both) the simple words from which
many of these theories had been derived. "He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father." What she saw in Horace Bentley, he explained, was God. God
wished us to know how to live, in order that we might find happiness, and
therefore Christ taught us that the way to find happiness was to teach
others how to live,--once we found out. Such was the meaning of Christ's
Incarnation, to teach us how to live in order that we might find God and
happiness. And Hodder translated for her the word Incarnation.

Now, he asked, how were we to recognize God, how might we know how he
wished us to live, unless we saw him in human beings, in the souls into
which he had entered? In Mr. Bentley's soul? Was this too deep?

She pondered, with flushed face.

"I never had it put to me like that," she said, presently. "I never
could have known what you meant if I hadn't seen Mr. Bentley."

Here was a return flash, for him. Thus, teaching he taught. From this
germ he was to evolve for himself the sublime truth that the world grown
better, not through automatic, soul-saving machinery, but by Personality.

On another occasion she inquired about "original sin;"--a phrase which
had stuck in her memory since the stormings of the Madison preacher.
Here was a demand to try his mettle.

"It means," he replied after a moment, "that we are all apt to follow the
selfish, animal instincts of our matures, to get all we can for ourselves
without thinking of others, to seek animal pleasures. And we always
suffer for it."

"Sure," she agreed. "That's what happened to me."

"And unless we see and know some one like Mr. Bentley," he went on,
choosing his words, "or discover for ourselves what Christ was, and what
he tried to tell us, we go on 'suffering, because we don't see any way
out. We suffer because we feel that we are useless, that other persons
are doing our work."

"That's what hell is!" She was very keen. "Hell's here," she repeated.

"Hell may begin here, and so may heaven," he answered.

"Why, he's in heaven now!" she exclaimed, "it's funny I never thought of
it before." Of course she referred to Mr. Bentley.

Thus; by no accountable process of reasoning, he stumbled into the path
which was to lead him to one of the widest and brightest of his vistas,
the secret of eternity hidden in the Parable of the Talents! But it will
not do to anticipate this matter . . . .

The divine in this woman of the streets regenerated by the divine in her
fellow-creatures, was gasping like a new-born babe for breath. And with
what anxiety they watched her! She grew strong again, went with Sally
Drover and the other girls on Sunday excursions to the country, applied
herself to her embroidery with restless zeal for days, only to have it
drop from her nerveless fingers. But her thoughts were uncontrollable,
she was drawn continually to the edge of that precipice which hung over
the waters whence they had dragged her, never knowing when the vertigo
would seize her. And once Sally Drover, on the alert for just such an
occurrence, pursued her down Dalton Street and forced her back . . .

Justice to Miss Drover cannot be done in these pages. It was she who
bore the brunt of the fierce resentment of the reincarnated fiends when
the other women shrank back in fear, and said nothing to Mr. Bentley or
Hodder until the incident was past. It was terrible indeed to behold
this woman revert--almost in the twinkling of an eye--to a vicious wretch
crazed for drink, to feel that the struggle had to be fought all over
again. Unable to awe Sally Drover's spirit, she would grow piteous.

"For God's sake let me go--I can't stand it. Let me go to hell--that's
where I belong. What do you bother with me for? I've got a right."

Once the doctor had to be called. He shook his head but his eye met
Miss Grower's, and he said nothing.

"I'll never be able to pull out, I haven't got the strength," she told
Hodder, between sobs. "You ought to have left me be, that was where I
belonged. I can't stand it, I tell you. If it wasn't for that woman
watching me downstairs, and Sally Grower, I'd have had a drink before
this. It ain't any use, I've got so I can't live without it--I don't
want to live."

And then remorse, self-reproach, despair,--almost as terrible to
contemplate. She swore she would never see Mr. Bentley again, she
couldn't face him.

Yet they persisted, and gained ground. She did see Mr. Bentley, but what
he said to her, or she to him, will never be known. She didn't speak of
it . . . .

Little by little her interest was aroused, her pride in her work
stimulated. None was more surprised than Hodder when Sally Grower
informed him that the embroidery was really good; but it was thought
best, for psychological reasons, to discard the old table-cover with its
associations and begin a new one. On occasional evenings she brought her
sewing over to Mr. Bentley's, while Sally read aloud to him and the young
women in the library. Miss Grower's taste in fiction was romantic; her
voice (save in the love passages, when she forgot herself ) sing-song,
but new and unsuspected realms were opened up for Kate Marcy, who would
drop her work and gaze wide-eyed out of the window, into the darkness.

And it was Sally who must be given credit for the great experiment,
although she took Mr. Bentley and Hodder into her confidence. On it they
staked all. The day came, at last, when the new table-cover was
finished. Miss Grower took it to the Woman's Exchange, actually sold it,
and brought back the money and handed it to her with a smile, and left
her alone.

An hour passed. At the end of it Kate Marcy came out of her room,
crossed the street, and knocked at the door of Mr. Bentley's library.
Hodder happened to be there.

"Come in," Mr. Bentley said.

She entered, breathless, pale. Her eyes, which had already lost much of
the dissipated look, were alight with exaltation. Her face bore evidence
of the severity of the hour of conflict, and she was perilously near to
tears. She handed Mr. Bentley the money.

"What's this, Kate?" he asked, in his kindly way.

"It's what I earned, sir," she faltered. "Miss Grower sold the
table-cover. I thought maybe you'd put it aside for me, like you do for
the others.

"I'll take good care of it," he said.

"Oh, sir, I don't ever expect to repay you, and Miss Grower and Mr.
Hodder!

"Why, you are repaying us," he replied, cutting her short, "you are
making us all very happy. And Sally tells me at the Exchange they like
your work so well they are asking for more. I shouldn't have suspected,"
he added, with a humorous glance at the rector, "that Mr. Hodder knew so
much about embroidery."

He rose, and put the money in his desk,--such was his genius for avoiding
situations which threatened to become emotional.

"I've started another one," she told them, as she departed.

A few moments later Miss Grower appeared.

"Sally," said Mr. Bentley, "you're a wise woman. I believe I've made
that remark before. You have managed that case wonderfully."

"There was a time," replied Miss Grower, thoughtfully, when it looked
pretty black. We've got a chance with her now, I think."

"I hope so. I begin to feel so," Mr. Bentley declared.

"If we succeed," Miss Grower went on, "it will be through the heart. And
if we lose her again, it will be through the heart."

Hodder started at this proof of insight.

"You know her history, Mr. Hodder?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Well, I don't. And I don't care to. But the way to get at Kate Marcy,
light as she is in some respects, is through her feelings. And she's
somehow kept 'em alive. We've got to trust her, from now on--that's the
only way. And that's what God does, anyhow."

This was one of Miss Grover's rare references to the Deity.

Turning over that phrase in his mind, Hodder went slowly back towards the
parish house. God trusted individuals--even such as Kate Marcy. What
did that mean? Individual responsibility! He repeated it. Was the
world on that principle, then? It was as though a search-light were
flung ahead of him and he saw, dimly, a new order--a new order in
government and religion. And, as though spoken by a voice out of the
past, there sounded in his ears the text of that sermon which had so
deeply moved him, "I will arise and go to my Father."

The church was still open, and under the influence of the same strange
excitement which had driven him to walk in the rain so long ago, he
entered and went slowly up the marble aisle. Through the gathering gloom
he saw the figure on the cross. And as he stood gazing at it, a message
for which he had been waiting blazed up within him.

He would not leave the Church!




CHAPTER XVIII

THE RIDDLE OF CAUSATION


I

In order to portray this crisis in the life of Kate Marcy, the outcome of
which is still uncertain, other matters have been ignored.

How many persons besides John Hodder have seemed to read--in crucial
periods--a meaning into incidents having all the outward appearance of
accidents! What is it that leads us to a certain man or woman at a
certain time, or to open a certain book? Order and design? or influence?

The night when he had stumbled into the cafe in Dalton Street might well
have been termed the nadir of Hodder's experience. His faith had been
blotted out, and, with it had suddenly been extinguished all spiritual
sense, The beast had taken possession. And then, when it was least
expected,--nay, when despaired of, had come the glimmer of a light;
distant, yet clear. He might have traced the course of his
disillusionment, perhaps, but cause and effect were not discernible here.

They soon became so, and in the weeks that followed he grew to have the
odd sense of a guiding hand on his shoulder,--such was his instinctive
interpretation of it, rather than the materialistic one of things
ordained. He might turn, in obedience to what seemed a whim, either to
the right or left, only to recognize new blazes that led him on with
surer step; and trivial accidents became events charged with meaning.
He lived in continual wonder.

One broiling morning, for instance, he gathered up the last of the books
whose contents he had a month before so feverishly absorbed, and which
had purged him of all fallacies. At first he had welcomed them with a
fierce relief, sucked them dry, then looked upon them with loathing. Now
he pressed them gratefully, almost tenderly, as he made his way along the
shady side of the street towards the great library set in its little
park.

He was reminded, as he passed from the blinding sunlight into the cool
entrance hall, with its polished marble stairway and its statuary, that
Eldon Parr's munificence had made the building possible: that some day
Mr. Parr's bust would stand in that vestibule with that of Judge Henry
Goodrich--Philip Goodrich's grandfather--and of other men who had served
their city and their commonwealth.

Upstairs, at the desk, he was handing in the volumes to the young woman
whose duty it was to receive them when he was hailed by a brisk little
man in an alpaca coat, with a skin like brown parchment.

"Why, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed cheerfully, with a trace of German
accent, "I had an idea you were somewhere on the cool seas with our
friend, Mr. Parr. He spoke, before he left, of inviting you."

It had been Eldon Parr, indeed, who had first brought Hodder to the
library, shortly after the rector's advent, and Mr. Engel had accompanied
them on a tour of inspection; the financier himself had enjoined the
librarian to "take good care" of the clergyman. Mr. Waring, Mr.
Atterbury; and Mr. Constable were likewise trustees. And since then,
when talking to him, Hodder had had a feeling that Mr. Engel was not
unconscious of the aura--if it may be called such--of his vestry.

Mr. Engel picked up one of the books as it lay on the counter, and as he
read the title his face betrayed a slight surprise.

"Modern criticism!" he exclaimed.

"You have found me out," the rector acknowledged, smiling.

"Came into my room, and have a chat," said the librarian, coaxingly.

It was a large chamber at the corner of the building, shaded by awnings,
against which brushed the branches of an elm which had belonged to the
original park. In the centre of the room was a massive oak desk, one
whole side of which was piled high with new volumes.

"Look there," said the librarian, with a quick wave of his hand, "those
are some which came in this week, and I had them put here to look over.
Two-thirds of 'em on religion, or religious philosophy. Does that
suggest anything to you clergymen?"

"Do many persons read them, Mr. Engel?" said the rector, at length.

"Read them!" cried Mr. Engel, quizzically. "We librarians are a sort of
weather-vanes, if people only knew enough to consult us. We can hardly
get a sufficient number of these new religious books the good ones,
I mean--to supply the demand. And the Lord knows what trash is devoured,
from what the booksellers tell me. It reminds me of the days when this
library was down on Fifth Street, years ago, and we couldn't supply
enough Darwins and Huxleys and Spencers and popular science generally.
That was an agnostic age. But now you'd be surprised to see the
different kinds of men and women who come demanding books on religion
--all sorts and conditions. They're beginning to miss it out of their
lives; they want to know. If my opinion's worth anything, I should not
hesitate to declare that we're on the threshold of a greater religious
era than the world has ever seen."

Hodder thrust a book back into the pile, and turned abruptly, with a
manner that surprised the librarian. No other clergyman to whom he had
spoken on this subject had given evidence of this strong feeling, and the
rector of St. John's was the last man from whom he would have expected
it.

"Do you really think so?" Hodder demanded.

"Why, yes," said Mr. Engel, when he had recovered from his astonishment.
"I'm sure of it. I think clergymen especially--if you will pardon me
--are apt to forget that this is a reading age. That a great many people
who used to get what instruction they had--ahem--from churches, for
instance, now get it from books. I don't want to say anything to offend
you, Mr. Hodder--"

"You couldn't," interrupted the rector. He was equally surprised at the
discovery that he had misjudged Mr. Engel, and was drawn towards him now
with a strong sympathy and curiosity.

"Well," replied Mr. Engel, "I'm glad to hear you say that." He
restrained a gasp. Was this the orthodox Mr. Hodder of St. John's?

"Why," said Hodder, sitting down, "I've learned, as you have, by
experience. Only my experience hasn't been so hopeful as yours--that is,
if you regard yours as hopeful. It would be hypocritical of me not to
acknowledge that the churches are losing ground, and that those who ought
to be connected with them are not. I am ready to admit that the churches
are at fault. But what you tell me of people reading these books gives
me more courage than I have had for--for some time."

"Is it so!" ejaculated the little man, relapsing into the German idiom of
his youth.

"It is," answered the rector, with an emphasis not to be denied. "I wish
you would give me your theory about this phenomenon, and speak frankly."

"But I thought--" the bewildered librarian began. "I saw you had been
reading those books, but I thought--"

"Naturally you did," said Holder, smiling. His personality, his
ascendency, his poise, suddenly felt by the other, were still more
confusing. "You thought me a narrow, complacent, fashionable priest who
had no concern as to what happened outside the walls of his church, who
stuck obstinately to dogmas and would give nothing else a hearing. Well,
you were right."

"Ah, I didn't think all that," Mr. Engel protested, and his parchment
skin actually performed the miracle of flushing. "I am not so stupid.
And once, long ago when I was young, I was going to be a minister
myself."

"What prevented you?" asked Holder, interested.

"You want me to be frank--yes, well, I couldn't take the vows." The
brown eyes of the quiet, humorous, self-contained and dried-up custodian
of the city's reading flamed up. "I felt the call," he exclaimed. "You
may not credit it to look at me now, Mr. Hodder. They said to me, 'here
is what you must swear to believe before you can make men and women
happier and more hopeful, rescue them from sin and misery!' You know
what it was."

Hodder nodded.

"It was a crime. It had nothing to do with religion. I thought it over
for a year--I couldn't. Oh, I have since been thankful. I can see now
what would have happened to me--I should have had fatty degeneration of
the soul."

The expression was not merely forcible, it was overwhelming. It brought
up before Holder's mind, with sickening reality, the fate he had himself
escaped. Fatty degeneration of the soul!

The little man, seeing the expression on the rector's face, curbed his
excitement, and feared he had gone too far.

"You will pardon me!" he said penitently, "I forget myself. I did not
mean all clergymen."

"I have never heard it put so well," Holder declared. "That is exactly
what occurs in many cases."

"Yes, it is that," said Engel, still puzzled, but encouraged, eyeing the
strong face of the other. "And they lament that the ministry hasn't more
big men. Sometimes they get one with the doctrinal type of mind
--a Newman--but how often? And even a Newman would be of little avail
to-day. It is Eucken who says that the individual, once released from
external authority, can never be turned back to it. And they have been
released by the hundreds of thousands ever since Luther's time, are being
freed by the hundreds of thousands to-day. Democracy, learning, science,
are releasing them, and no man, no matter how great he may be, can stem
that tide. The able men in the churches now--like your Phillips Brooks,
who died too soon--are beginning to see this. They are those who
developed after the vows of the theological schools were behind them.
Remove those vows, and you will see the young men come. Young men are
idealists, Mr. Hodder, and they embrace other professions where the mind
is free, and which are not one whit better paid than the ministry.

"And what is the result," he cried, "of the senseless insistence on the
letter instead of the spirit of the poetry of religion? Matthew Arnold
was a thousand times right when he inferred that Jesus Christ never spoke
literally and yet he is still being taken literally by most churches, and
all the literal sayings which were put into his mouth are maintained as
Gospel truth! What is the result of proclaiming Christianity in terms of
an ancient science and theology which awaken no quickening response in
the minds and hearts of to-day? That!" The librarian thrust a yellow
hand towards the pile of books. "The new wine has burst the old skin and
is running all over the world. Ah, my friend, if you could only see, as
I do, the yearning for a satisfying religion which exists in this big
city! It is like a vacuum, and those books are rushing to supply it.
I little thought," he added dreamily, "when I renounced the ministry in
so much sorrow that one day I should have a church of my own. This
library is my church, and men and women of all creeds come here by the
thousands. But you must pardon me. I have been carried away--I forgot
myself."

"Mr. Engel," replied the rector, "I want you to regard me as one of your
parishioners."

The librarian looked at him mutely, and the practical, desiccated little
person seemed startlingly transformed into a mediaeval, German mystic.

"You are a great man, Mr. Hodder," he said. "I might have guessed it."

It was one of the moments when protest would have been trite,
superfluous. And Hodder, in truth, felt something great swelling within
him, something that was not himself, and yet strangely was. But just
what--in view of his past strict orthodoxy and limited congregation
--Mr. Engel meant, he could not have said. Had the librarian recognized,
without confession on his part, the change in him? divined his future
intentions?

"It is curious that I should have met you this morning, Mr. Engel," he
said. "I expressed surprise when you declared this was a religious age,
because you corroborated something I had felt, but of which I had no
sufficient proof. I felt that a great body of unsatisfied men and women
existed, but that I was powerless to get in touch with them; I had
discovered that truth, as you have so ably pointed out, is disguised and
distorted by ancient dogmas; and that the old Authority, as you say, no
longer carries weight."

"Have you found the new one?" Mr. Engel demanded.

"I think I have," the rector answered calmly, "it lies in personality.
I do not know whether you will agree with me that the Church at large has
a future, and I will confess to you that there was a time when I thought
she had not. I see now that she has, once given to her ministers that
freedom to develop of which you speak. In spite of the fact that truth
has gradually been revealed to the world by what may be called an
Apostolic Succession of Personalities,--Augustine, Dante, Francis of
Assisi, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, and our own Lincoln and Phillips
Brooks,--to mention only a few,--the Church as a whole has been blind to
it. She has insisted upon putting the individual in a straitjacket, she
has never recognized that growth is the secret of life, that the clothes
of one man are binding on another."

"Ah, you are right--a thousand times right," cried the librarian. "You
have read Royce, perhaps, when he says, 'This mortal shall put on
individuality--'"

"No," said the rector, outwardly cool, but inwardly excited by the
coruscation of this magnificent paraphrase of Paul's sentence, by the
extraordinary turn the conversation had taken. "I am ashamed to own that
I have not followed the development of modern philosophy. The books I
have just returned, on historical criticism," he went on, after a
moment's hesitation, "infer what my attitude has been toward modern
thought. We were made acquainted with historical criticism in the
theological seminary, but we were also taught to discount it. I have
discounted it, refrained from reading it,--until now. And yet I have
heard it discussed in conferences, glanced over articles in the reviews.
I had, you see, closed the door of my mind. I was in a state where
arguments make no impression."

The librarian made a gesture of sympathetic assent, which was also a
tribute to the clergyman's frankness.

"You will perhaps wonder how I could have lived these years in an
atmosphere of modern thought and have remained uninfluenced. Well, I
have recently been wondering--myself." Hodder smiled. "The name of
Royce is by no means unfamiliar to me, and he taught at Harvard when I
was an undergraduate. But the prevailing philosophy of that day among
the students was naturalism. I represent a revolt from it. At the
seminary I imbibed a certain amount of religious philosophy--but I did
not continue it, as thousands of my more liberal fellow-clergymen have
done. My religion 'worked' during the time, at least, I remained in my
first parish. I had no interest in reconciling, for instance, the
doctrine of evolution with the argument for design. Since I have been
here in this city," he added, simply, "my days have been filled with a
continued perplexity--when I was not too busy to think. Yes, there was
an unacknowledged element of fear in my attitude, though I comforted
myself with the notion that opinions, philosophical and scientific, were
in a state of flux."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Engel, "I comprehend. But, from the manner in which
you spoke just now, I should have inferred that you have been reading
modern philosophy--that of the last twenty years. Ah, you have
something before you, Mr. Hodder. You will thank God, with me, for that
philosophy. It has turned the tide, set the current running the other
way. Philosophy is no longer against religion, it is with it. And if
you were to ask me to name one of the greatest religious teachers of
our age, I should answer, William James. And there is Royce, of whom I
spoke,--one of our biggest men. The dominant philosophies of our times
have grown up since Arnold wrote his 'Literature and Dogma,' and they are
in harmony with the quickening social spirit of the age, which is a
religious spirit--a Christian spirit, I call it. Christianity is coming
to its own. These philosophies, which are not so far apart, are the
flower of the thought of the centuries, of modern science, of that most
extraordinary of discoveries, modern psychology. And they are far from
excluding religion, from denying the essential of Christ's teachings.
On the other hand, they grant that the motive-power of the world is
spiritual.

"And this," continued Mr. Engel, "brings me to another aspect of
authority. I wonder if it has struck you? In mediaeval times, when a
bishop spoke ex cathedra, his authority, so far as it carried weight,
came from two sources. First, the supposed divine charter of the Church
to save and damn. That authority is being rapidly swept away. Second,
he spoke with all the weight of the then accepted science and philosophy.
But as soon as the new science began to lay hold on people's minds, as
--for instance--when Galileo discovered that the earth moved instead of the
sun (and the pope made him take it back), that second authority began to
crumble too. In the nineteenth century science had grown so strong that
the situation looked hopeless. Religion had apparently irrevocably lost
that warrant also, and thinking men not spiritually inclined, since they
had to make a choice between science and religion, took science as being
the more honest, the more certain.

"And now what has happened? The new philosophies have restored your
second Authority, and your first, as you properly say, is replaced by the
conception of Personality. Personality is nothing but the rehabilitation
of the prophet, the seer. Get him, as Hatch says, back into your Church.
The priests with their sacrifices and automatic rites, the logicians,
have crowded him out. Why do we read the Old Testament at all? Not for
the laws of the Levites, not for the battles and hangings, but for the
inspiration of the prophets. The authority of the prophet comes through
personality, the source of which is in what Myers calls the infinite
spiritual world--in God. It was Christ's own authority.

"And as for your other authority, your ordinary man, when he reads modern
philosophy, says to himself, this does not conflict with science? But he
gets no hint, when he goes to most churches, that there is, between the
two, no real quarrel, and he turns away in despair. He may accept the
pragmatism of James, the idealism of Royce, or even what is called neo
realism. In any case, he gains the conviction that a force for good is
at worn in the world, and he has the incentive to become part of it.....
But I have given you a sermon!"

"For which I can never be sufficiently, grateful," said Hodder, with an
earnestness not to be mistaken.

The little man's eyes rested admiringly, and not without emotion, on the
salient features of the tall clergyman. And when he spoke again, it was
in acknowledgment of the fact that he had read Hodder's purpose.

"You will have opposition, my friend. They will fight you--some persons
we know. They do not wish--what you and I desire. But you will not
surrender--I knew it." Mr. Engel broke off abruptly, and rang a bell on
his desk. "I will make out for you a list. I hope you may come in
again, often. We shall have other talks,--yes? I am always here."

Then it came to pass that Hodder carried back with him another armful of
books. Those he had brought back were the Levellers of the False. These
were the Builders of the True.



II

Hodder had known for many years that the writings of Josiah Royce and of
William James had "been in the air," so to speak, and he had heard them
mentioned at dinner parties by his more intellectual parishioners, such
as Mrs. Constable and Martha Preston. Now he was able to smile at his
former attitude toward these moderns, whose perusal he had deprecated as
treason to the saints! And he remembered his horror on having listened
to a fellow-clergyman discuss with calmness the plan of the "Varieties of
Religious Experiences." A sacrilegious dissection of the lives of these
very saints! The scientific process, the theories of modern psychology
applied with sang-froid to the workings of God in the human soul!
Science he had regarded as the proclaimed enemy of religion, and in these
days of the apotheosis of science not even sacred things were spared.

Now Hodder saw what the little librarian had meant by an authority
restored. The impartial method of modern science had become so firmly
established in the mind of mankind by education and reading that the
ancient unscientific science of the Roman Empire, in which orthodox
Christianity was clothed, no longer carried authority. In so far as
modern science had discovered truth, religion had no quarrel with it.
And if theology pretended to be the science of religion, surely it must
submit to the test of the new science! The dogged clinging to the
archaic speculations of apologists, saints, and schoolmen had brought
religion to a low ebb indeed.

One of the most inspiring books he read was by an English clergyman of
his own Church whom he had formerly looked upon as a heretic, with all
that the word had once implied. It was a frank yet reverent study of the
self-consciousness of Christ, submitting the life and teachings of Jesus
to modern criticism and the scientific method. And the Saviour's
divinity, rather than being lessened, was augmented. Hodder found it
infinitely refreshing that the so-called articles of Christian belief,
instead of being put first and their acceptance insisted upon, were made
the climax of the investigation.

Religion, he began to perceive, was an undertaking, are attempt to find
unity and harmony of the soul by adopting, after mature thought, a
definite principle in life. If harmony resulted,--if the principle
worked, it was true. Hodder kept an open mind, but he became a
pragmatist so far. Science, on the other hand, was in a sphere by
herself, and need have no conflict with religion; science was not an
undertaking, but an impartial investigation by close observation of facts
in nature. Her object was to discover truths by these methods alone.
She had her theories, indeed, but they must be submitted to rigorous
tests. This from a book by Professor Perry, an advocate of the new
realism.

On the other hand there were signs that modern science, by infinitesimal
degrees, might be aiding in the solution of the Mystery . . . .

But religion, Hodder saw, was trusting. Not credulous, silly trusting,
but thoughtful trusting, accepting such facts as were definitely known.
Faith was trusting. And faith without works was dead simply because
there could be no faith without works. There was no such thing as belief
that did not result in act.

A paragraph which made a profound impression on Hodder at that time
occurs in James's essay, "Is life worth living?"

"Now-what do I mean by I trusting? Is the word to carry with it
license to define in detail an invisible world, and to authorize and
excommunicate those whose trust is different? . . Our faculties of
belief were not given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they
were given us to live by. And to trust our religions demands men first
of all to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world
which they suggest were real. It is a fact of human nature that man can
live and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single
dogma and definition."

Yet it was not these religious philosophies which had saved him, though
the stimulus of their current had started his mind revolving like a
motor. Their function, he perceived now, was precisely to compel him to
see what had saved him, to reenforce it with the intellect, with the
reason, and enable him to save others. The current set up,--by a
thousand suggestions of which he made notes,--a personal construction,
coordination, and he had the exhilaration of feeling, within him, a
creative process all his own. Behold a mystery 'a paradox'--one of many.
As his strength grew greater day by day, as his vision grew clearer, he
must exclaim with Paul: "Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with
me!"

He, Hodder, was but an instrument transmitting power. And yet--oh
paradox!--the instrument continued to improve, to grow stronger, to
develop individuality and personality day by day! Life, present and
hereafter, was growth, development, the opportunity for service in a
cause. To cease growing was to die.

He perceived at last the form all religion takes is that of consecration
to a Cause,--one of God's many causes. The meaning of life is to find
one's Cause, to lose one's self in it. His was the liberation of the
Word,--now vouchsafed to him; the freeing of the spark from under the
ashes. The phrase was Alison's. To help liberate the Church, fan into
flame the fire which was to consume the injustice, the tyranny, the
selfishness of the world, until the Garvins, the Kate Marcys, the stunted
children, and anaemic women were no longer possible.

It was Royce who, in one illuminating sentence, solved for him the
puzzle, pointed out whence his salvation had come. "For your cause can
only be revealed to you through some presence that first teaches you to
love the unity of the spiritual life. . . You must find it in human
shape."

Horace Bentley!

He, Hodder, had known this, but known it vaguely, without sanction. The
light had shone for him even in the darkness of that night in Dalton
Street, when he thought to have lost it forever. And he had awakened the
next morning, safe,--safe yet bewildered, like a half drowned man on warm
sands in the sun.

"The will of the spiritual world, the divine will, revealed in man."
What sublime thoughts, as old as the Cross itself, yet continually and
eternally new!



III

There was still another whose face was constantly before him, and the
reflection of her distressed yet undaunted soul,--Alison Parr. The
contemplation of her courage, of her determination to abide by nothing
save the truth, had had a power over him that he might not estimate, and
he loved her as a man loves a woman, for her imperfections. And he loved
her body and her mind.

One morning, as he walked back from Mrs. Bledsoe's through an
unfrequented, wooded path of the Park, he beheld her as he had summoned
her in his visions. She was sitting motionless, gazing before her with
clear eyes, as at the Fates. . .

She started on suddenly perceiving him, but it was characteristic of her
greeting that she seemed to feel no surprise at the accident which had
brought them together.

"I am afraid," he said, smiling, "that I have broken in on some profound
reflections."

She did not answer at once, but looked up at him, as he stood over her,
with one of her strange, baffling gazes, in which there was the hint of a
welcoming smile.

"Reflection seems to be a circular process with me," she answered. "I
never get anywhere--like you."

"Like me!" he exclaimed, seating himself on the bench. Apparently their
intercourse, so long as it should continue, was destined to be on the
basis of intimacy in which it had begun. It was possible at once to be
aware of her disturbing presence, and yet to feel at home in it.

"Like you, yes," she said, continuing to examine him. "You've changed
remarkably."

In his agitation, at this discovery of hers he again repeated her words.

"Why, you seem happier, you look happier. It isn't only that, I can't
explain how you impress me. It struck me when you were talking to Mr.
Bentley the other day. You seem to see something you didn't see when
I first met you, that you didn't see the first time we were at Mr.
Bentley's together. Your attitude is fixed--directed. You have made a
decision of some sort--a momentous one, I rather think."

"Yes," he replied, "you are right. It's more than remarkable that you
should have guessed it."

She remained silent

"I have decided," he found himself saying abruptly, "to continue in the
Church."

Still she was silent, until he wondered whether she would answer him. He
had often speculated to himself how she would take this decision, but he
could make no surmise from her expression as she stared off into the
wood. Presently she turned her head, slowly, and looked into his face.
Still she did not speak.

"You are wondering how I can do it," he said.

"Yes," she acknowledged, in a low voice.

"I should like you to know--that is why I spoke of it. You have never
asked me, and I have never told you that the convictions I formerly held
I lost. And with them, for a while, went everything. At least so I
believed."

"I knew it," she answered, "I could see that, too."

"When I argued with you, that afternoon,--the last time we talked
together alone,--I was trying to convince myself, and you--" he
hesitated, "--that there was something. The fact that you could not
seem to feel it stimulated me."

He read in her eyes that she understood him. And he dared not, nor did
he need to emphasize further his own intense desire that she should find
a solution of her own.

"I wish you to know what I am telling you for two reasons," he went on.
"It was you who spoke the words that led to the opening of my eyes to the
situation into which I had been drifting for two years, who compelled me
to look upon the inconsistencies and falsities which had gradually been
borne in upon me. It was you, I think, who gave me the courage to face
this situation squarely, since you possess that kind of courage
yourself."

"Oh, no," she cried. "You would have done it anyway."

He paused a moment, to get himself in hand.

"For this reason, I owed it to you to speak--to thank you. I have
realized, since that first meeting, that you became my friend then,
and that you spoke as a friend. If you had not believed in my sincerity,
you would not have spoken. I wish you to know that I am fully aware and
grateful for the honour you did me, and that I realize it is not always
easy for you to speak so--to any one."

She did not reply.

"There is another reason for my telling you now of this decision of
mine to remain a clergyman," he continued. "It is because I value your
respect and friendship, and I hope you will believe that I would not take
this course unless I saw my way clear to do it with sincerity."

"One has only to look at you to see that you are sincere," she said
gently, with a thrill in her voice that almost unmanned him. "I told you
once that I should never have forgiven myself if I had wrecked your life.
I meant it. I am very glad."

It was his turn to be silent.

"Just because I cannot see how it would be possible to remain in the
Church after one had been--emancipated, so to speak,"--she smiled at
him,--"is no reason why you may not have solved the problem."

Such was the superfine quality of her honesty. Yet she trusted him!
He was made giddy by a desire, which he fought down, to justify himself
before her. His eye beheld her now as the goddess with the scales in her
hand, weighing and accepting with outward calm the verdict of the balance
. . . . Outward calm, but inner fire.

"It makes no difference," she pursued evenly, bent on choosing her words,
"that I cannot personally understand your emancipation, that mine is
different. I can only see the preponderance of evil, of deception,
of injustice--it is that which shuts out everything else. And it's
temperamental, I suppose. By looking at you, as I told you, I can see
that your emancipation is positive, while mine remains negative. You
have somehow regained a conviction that the good is predominant, that
there is some purpose in the universe."

He assented. Once more she relapsed into thought, while he sat
contemplating her profile. She turned to him again with a tremulous
smile.

"But isn't a conviction that the good is predominant, that there is a
purpose in the universe, a long way from the positive assertions in the
Creeds?" she asked. "I remember, when I went through what you would
probably call disintegration, and which seemed to me enlightenment, that
the Creeds were my first stumbling-blocks. It seemed wrong to repeat
them."

"I am glad you spoke of this," he replied gravely. "I have arrived at
many answers to that difficulty--which did not give me the trouble I had
anticipated. In the first place, I am convinced that it was much more of
a difficulty ten, twenty, thirty years ago than it is to-day. That which
I formerly thought was a radical tendency towards atrophy, the drift of
the liberal party in my own Church and others, as well as that which I
looked upon with some abhorrence as the free-thinking speculation of many
modern writers, I have now come to see is reconstruction. The results of
this teaching of religion in modern terms are already becoming apparent,
and some persons are already beginning to see that the Creeds express
certain elemental truths in frankly archaic language. All this should be
explained in the churches and the Sunday schools,--is, in fact, being
explained in some, and also in books for popular reading by clergymen of
my own Church, both here and in England. We have got past the critical
age."

She followed him closely, but did not interrupt.

"I do not mean to say that the Creeds are not the sources of much
misunderstanding, but in my opinion they do not constitute a sufficient
excuse for any clergyman to abandon his Church on account of them.
Indeed there are many who interpret them by modern thought--which is
closer to the teachings of Christ than ancient thought--whose honesty
cannot be questioned. Personally, I think that the Creeds either ought
to be taken out of the service; or changed, or else there should be a
note inserted in the service and catechism definitely permitting a
liberal interpretation which is exactly what so many clergymen, candidly,
do now.

"When I was ordained a deacon, and then a priest, I took vows which would
appear to be literally conflicting. Compelled to choose between these
vows, I accept that as supreme which I made when I affirmed that I would
teach nothing which I should be persuaded might not be concluded and
affirmed by the Scripture. The Creeds were derived from the Scripture
--not the Scripture from the Creeds. As an individual among a body of
Christians I am powerless to change either the ordinal vows or the
Creeds, I am obliged to wait for the consensus of opinion. But if,
on the whole, I can satisfy my conscience in repeating the Creeds and
reading the service, as other honest men are doing--if I am convinced
that I have an obvious work to do in that Church, it would be cowardly
for me to abandon that work."

Her eyes lighted up.

"I see what you mean," she said, "by staying in you can do many things
that you could not do, you can help to bring about the change, by being
frank. That is your point of view. You believe m the future of the
Church."

"I believe in an universal, Christian organization," he replied.

"But while stronger men are honest," she objected, "are not your ancient
vows and ancient Creeds continually making weaker men casuists?"

"Undoubtedly," he agreed vigorously, and thought involuntarily of Mr.
Engel's phrased fatty degeneration of the soul. "Yet I can see the
signs, on all sides, of a gradual emancipation, of which I might be
deemed an example." A smile came into his eyes, like the sun on a
grey-green sea.

"Oh, you could never be a casuist!" she exclaimed, with a touch of
vehemence. "You are much too positive. It is just that note, which is
characteristic of so many clergymen, that note of smoothing-over and
apology, which you lack. I could never feel it, even when you were
orthodox. And now--" words failed her as she inspected his ruggedness.

"And now," he took her up, to cover his emotion, "now I am not to be
classified!"

Still examining him, she reflected on this.

"Classified?" Isn't it because you're so much of an individual that one
fails to classify you? You represent something new to my experience,
something which seems almost a contradiction--an emancipated Church."

"You imagined me out of the Church,--but where?" he demanded.

"That's just it," she wondered intimately, "where? When I try, I can see
no other place for you. Your place as in the pulpit."

He uttered a sharp exclamation, which she did not heed.

"I can't imagine you doing institutional work, as it is called,--you're
not fitted for it, you'd be wasted in it. You gain by the historic
setting of the Church, and yet it does not absorb you. Free to preach
your convictions, unfettered, you will have a power over people that will
be tremendous. You have a very strong personality."

She set his heart, his mind, to leaping by this unexpected confirmation
on her part of his hopes, and yet the man in him was intent upon the
woman. She had now the air of detached judgment, while he could not
refrain from speculating anxiously on the effect of his future course on
her and on their intimate relationship. He forbore from thinking, now,
of the looming events which might thrust them apart,--put a physical
distance between them,--his anxiety was concerned with the possible
snapping of the thread of sympathy which had bound them. In this
respect, he dreaded her own future as much as his own. What might she
do? For he felt, in her, a potential element of desperation; a capacity
to commit, at any moment, an irretrievable act.

"Once you have made your ideas your own," she mused, "you will have the
power of convincing people."

"And yet--"

"And yet"--she seized his unfinished sentence, "you are not at all
positive of convincing me. I'll give you the credit of forbearing to
make proselytes." She smiled at him.

Thus she read him again.

"If you call making proselytes a desire to communicate a view of life
which gives satisfaction--" he began, in his serious way.

"Oh, I want to be convinced!" she exclaimed, penitently, "I'd give
anything to feel as you feel. There's something lacking in me, there
must be, and I have only seen the disillusionizing side. You infer that
the issue of the Creeds will crumble,--preach the new, and the old will
fall away of itself. But what is the new? How, practically, do you deal
with the Creeds? We have got off that subject."

"You wish to know?" he asked.

"Yes--I wish to know."

"The test of any doctrine is whether it can be translated into life,
whether it will make any difference to the individual who accepts it.
The doctrines expressed in the Creeds must stand or fall by the test.
Consider, for instance, the fundamental doctrine in the Creeds, that of
the Trinity, which has been much scoffed at. A belief in God, you will
admit, has an influence on conduct, and the Trinity defines the three
chief aspects of the God in whom Christians believe. Of what use to
quarrel with the word Person if God be conscious? And the character of
God has an influence on conduct. The ancients deemed him wrathful,
jealous, arbitrary, and hence flung themselves before him and propitiated
him. If the conscious God of the universe be good, he is spoken of as a
Father. He is as once, in this belief, Father and Creator. And inasmuch
as it is known that the divine qualities enter into man, and that one
Man, Jesus, whose composite portrait--it is agreed--could not have been
factitiously invented, was filled with them, we speak of God in man as
the Son. And the Spirit of God that enters into the soul of man,
transforming, inspiring, and driving him, is the Third Person, so-called.
There is no difficulty so far, granted the initial belief in a beneficent
God.

"If we agree that life has a meaning, and, in order to conform to the
purpose of the Spirit of the Universe, must be lived in one way, we
certainly cannot object to calling that right way of living, that decree
of the Spirit, the Word.

"The Incarnate Word, therefore, is the concrete example of a human being
completely filled with the Spirit, who lives a perfect life according to
its decree. Ancient Greek philosophy called this decree, this meaning of
life, the Logos, and the Nicene Creed is a confession of faith in that
philosophy. Although this creed is said to have been, scandalously
forced through the council of Nicaea by an emperor who had murdered his
wife and children, and who himself was unbaptized, against a majority of
bishops who would, if they had dared Constantine's displeasure, have
given the conscience freer play, to-day the difficulty has, practically
disappeared. The creed is there in the prayer book, and so long as it
remains we are at liberty to interpret the ancient philosophy in which it
is written--and which in any event could not have been greatly improved
upon at that time--in our own modern way, as I am trying to explain it to
you.

"Christ was identified with the Logos, or Word, which must have had a
meaning for all time, before and after its, complete revelation. And
this is what the Nicene Creed is trying to express when it says,
'Begotten of his Father before all worlds.' In other words, the purpose
which Christ revealed always existed. The awkward expression of the
ancients, declaring that he 'came down' for our salvation (enlightenment)
contains a fact we may prove by experience, if we accept the meaning he
put upon existence, and adopt this meaning as our scheme of life. But
we: must first be quite clear, as: to this meaning. We may and do
express all this differently, but it has a direct bearing on life. It is
the doctrine of the Incarnation. We begins to perceive through it that
our own incarnations mean something, and that our task is to discover
what they do mean--what part in the world purpose we are designed to play
here.

"Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary is an emphasis on the
fact that man born of woman may be divine. But the ignorant masses of
the people of the Roman Empire were undoubtedly incapable of grasping a
theory of the Incarnation put forward in the terms of Greek philosophy;
while it was easy for them, with their readiness to believe in nature
miracles, to accept the explanation of Christ's unique divinity as due to
actual, physical generation by the Spirit. And the wide belief in the
Empire in gods born in this way aided such a conception. Many thousands
were converted to Christianity when a place was found in that religion
for a feminine goddess, and these abandoned the worship of Isis, Demeter,
and Diana for that of the Virgin Mary. Thus began an evolution which is
still going on, and we see now that it was impossible that the world
should understand at once the spiritual meaning of life as Christ taught
it--that material facts merely symbolize the divine. For instance, the
Gospel of John has been called the philosophical or spiritual gospel.
And in spite of the fact that it has been assailed and historically
discredited by modern critics, for me it serves to illuminate certain
truths of Christ's message and teaching that the other Gospels do not.
Mark, the earliest Gospel, does not refer to the miraculous birth. At
the commencements of Matthew and Luke you will read of it, and it is to
be noted that the rest of these narratives curiously and naively
contradict it. Now why do we find the miraculous birth in these Gospels
if it had not been inserted in order to prove, in a manner acceptable to
simple and unlettered minds, the Theory of the Incarnation, Christ's
preexistence? I do not say the insertion was deliberate. And it is
difficult for us moderns to realize the polemic spirit in which the
Gospels were written. They were clearly not written as history. The
concern of the authors, I think, was to convert their readers to Christ.

"When we turn to John, what do we find? In the opening verses of this
Gospel the Incarnation is explained, not by a virgin birth, but in a
manner acceptable to the educated and spiritually-minded, in terms of the
philosophy of the day. And yet how simply! 'In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' I prefer John's
explanation.

"It is historically true that, in the earlier days when the Apostles'
Creed was put forth, the phrase 'born of they Virgin Mary' was inserted
for the distinct purpose of laying stress on the humanity of Christ, and
to controvert the assertion of the Gnostic sect that he was not born at
all, but appeared in the world in some miraculous way.

"Thus to-day, by the aid of historical research, we are enabled to regard
the Creeds in the light of their usefulness to life. The myth of the
virgin birth probably arose through the zeal of some of the writers of
the Gospels to prove that the prophecy of Isaiah predicted the advent of
the Jewish Messiah who should be born of a virgin. Modern scholars are
agreed that the word Olmah which Isaiah uses does not mean virgin, but
young woman. There is quite a different Hebrew word for 'virgin.' The
Jews, at the time the Gospels were written, and before, had forgotten
their ancient Hebrew. Knowing this mistake, and how it arose, we may
repeat the word Virgin Mary in the sense used by many early Christians,
as designating the young woman who was the mother of Christ.

"I might mention one or two other phrases, archaic and obscure.
'The Resurrection of the Body' may refer to the phenomenon of Christ's
reappearance after death, for which modern psychology may or may not
account. A little reflection, however, convinces one that the phenomenon
did take place in some manner, or else, I think, we should never have
heard of Christ. You will remember that the Apostles fled after his
death on the cross, believing what he had told them was all only a dream.
They were human, literal and cowardly, and they still needed some kind of
inner, energizing conviction that the individuality persisted after
death, that the solution of human life was victory over it, in order to
gain the courage to go out and preach the Gospel and face death
themselves. And it was Paul who was chiefly instrumental in freeing the
message from the narrow bounds of Palestine and sending it ringing down
the ages to us. The miracle doesn't lie in what Paul saw, but in the
whole man transformed, made incandescent, journeying tirelessly to the
end of his days up and down the length and breadth of the empire,
labouring, as he says, more abundantly than they all. It is idle to say
that the thing which can transform a man's entire nature and life is not
a reality."

She had listened, motionless, as under the spell of his words.
Self-justification, as he proceeded, might easily have fused itself into
a desire to convince her of the truth of his beliefs. But he was not
deceived, he knew her well enough to understand, to feel the indomitable
spirit of resistance in her. Swayed she could be, but she would mot
easily surrender.

"There is another phrase," she said after a moment, "which I have never
heard explained, 'descended into hell.'"

"It was merely a matter of controverting those who declared Christ was
taken from the cross before he died. In the childish science of the
time, to say that one descended into hell was to affirm that he was
actually dead, since the souls of the departed were supposed to go at
once to hell. Hell and heaven were definite places. To say that Christ
ascended to heaven and sat on the right hand of the Father is to declare
one's faith that his responsible work in the spiritual realm continues."

"And the Atonement? doesn't that imply a sacrifice of propitiation?"

"Atonement may be pronounced At-one-ment," Hodder replied. "The old
idea, illustrated by a reference to the sacrifice of the ancients, fails
to convey the truth to modern minds. And moreover, as I have inferred,
these matters had to be conveyed in symbols until mankind were prepared
to grasp the underlying spiritual truths which Christ sought to convey.
Orthodox Christianity has been so profoundly affected by the ancient
Jewish religion that the conception of God as wrathful and jealous--a God
wholly outside--has persisted to our times. The Atonement means union
with the Spirit of the Universe through vicarious suffering, and
experience teaches us that our own sufferings are of no account unless
they be for a cause, for the furtherance of the design of the beneficent
Spirit which is continually at work. Christ may be said to have died for
humanity because he had to suffer death itself in order to reveal the
complete meaning of life. You once spoke to me about the sense of sin
--of being unable to feel it."

She glanced at him quickly, but did not speak.

"There is a theory concerning this," he continued, "which has undoubtedly
helped many people, and which may be found in the writings of certain
modern psychologists. It is that we have a conscious, or lower, human
self, and a subconscious, or better self. This subconscious self
stretches down, as it were, into the depths of the universe and taps the
source of spiritual power. And it is through the subconscious self that
every man is potentially divine. Potentially, because the conscious self
has to reach out by an effort of the will to effect this union with the
spiritual in the subconscious, and when it is effected, it comes from the
response of the subconscious. Apparently from without, as a gift, and
therefore, in theological language, it is called grace. This is what is
meant by being born again, the incarnation of the Spirit in the
conscious, or human. The two selves are no longer divided, and the
higher self assumes control,--takes the reins, so to speak.

"It is interesting, as a theory. And the fact that it has been seriously
combated by writers who deny such a function of the subconscious does not
at all affect the reality of the experience.

"Once we have had a vision of the true meaning of life a vision which
stirs the energies of our being, what is called 'a sense of sin'
inevitably follows. It is the discontent, the regret, in the light
of a higher knowledge, for the: lost opportunities, for a past life
which has been uncontrolled by any unifying purpose, misspent in futile
undertakings, wasted, perhaps, in follies and selfish caprices which have
not only harmed ourselves but others. Although we struggle, yet by
habit, by self-indulgence, by lack of a sustained purpose, we have formed
a character from which escape seems hopeless. And we realize that in
order to change ourselves, an actual regeneration of the will is
necessary. For awhile, perchance, we despair of this. The effort to get
out of the rut we have made for ourselves seems of no avail. And it is
not, indeed, until we arrive, gradually or otherwise, and through a
proper interpretation of the life of Christ, at the conviction that we
may even never become useful in the divine scheme that we have a sense of
what is called 'the forgiveness of sins.' This conviction, this grace,
this faith to embark on the experiment accomplishes of itself the revival
of the will, the rebirth which we had thought impossible. We discover
our task, high or humble,--our cause. We grow marvellously at one with
God's purpose, and we feel that our will is acting in the same direction
as his. And through our own atonement we see the meaning of that other
Atonement which led Christ to the Cross. We see that our conviction, our
grace, has come through him, and how he died for our sins."

"It's quite wonderful how logical and simple you make it, how thoroughly
you have gone into it. You have solved it for yourself--and you will
solve it for others many others."

She rose, and he, too, got to his feet with a medley of feelings.
The path along which they walked was already littered with green acorns.
A gray squirrel darted ahead of them, gained a walnut and paused,
quivering, halfway up the trunk, to gaze back at them. And the glance
she presently gave him seemed to partake of the shyness of the wild
thing.

"Thank you for explaining it to me," she said.

"I hope you don't think--" he began.

"Oh, it isn't that!" she cried, with unmistakable reproach. "I asked you
--I made you tell me. It hasn't seemed at all like--the confessional,"
she added, and smiled and blushed at the word. "You have put it so
nicely, so naturally, and you have given me so much to think about. But
it all depends--doesn't it?--upon whether one can feel the underlying
truth of which you spoke in the first place; it rests upon a sense of the
prevailing goodness of things. It seems to me cruel that what is called
salvation, the solution of the problem of life, should depend upon an
accidental discovery. We are all turned loose with our animal passions
and instincts, of self-preservation, by an indifferent Creator, in a
wilderness, and left to find our way out as best we can. You answer that
Christ showed us the way. There are elements in his teaching I cannot
accept--perhaps because I have been given a wrong interpretation of them.
I shall ask you more questions some day.

"But even then," she continued, "granted that Christ brought the complete
solution, as you say, why should so many millions have lived and died,
before and after his coming, who had suffered so, and who had never heard
of him? That is the way my reason works, and I can't help it. I would
help it if I could."

"Isn't it enough," he asked, "to know that a force is at work combating
evil,--even if you are not yet convinced that it is a prevailing force?
Can you not trust that it will be a prevailing force, if your sympathies
are with it, without demanding a revelation of the entire scheme of the
universe? Of what use is it to doubt the eternal justice?"

"Oh, use!" she cried, "I grant you its uselessness. Doubt seems an
ingrained quality. I can't help being a fatalist."

"And yet you have taken your life in your own hands," he reminded her,
gently.

"Only to be convinced of its futility," she replied.

Again, momentarily thrust back into himself, he wondered jealously once
more what the disillusionments had been of that experience from before
which she seemed, at times, ready to draw back a little the veil.

"A sense of futility is a sense of incompleteness," he said, "and
generally precedes a sense of power."

"Ah, you have gained that! Yet it must always have been latent in you
--you make one feel it. But now!" she exclaimed, as though the discovery
had just dawned on her, "now you will need power, now you will have to
fight as you have never fought in your life."

He found her enthusiasm as difficult to withstand as her stoicism.

"Yes, I shall have to fight," he admitted. Her partisanship was sweet.

"When you tell them what you have told me," she continued, as though
working it out in her own mind, "they will never submit to it, if they
can help it. My father will never submit to it. They will try to put
you out, as a heretic,--won't they?"

"I have an idea that they will," he conceded, with a smile.

"And won't they succeed? Haven't they the power?"

"It depends,--in the first place, on whether the bishop thinks me a
heretic."

"Have you asked him?"

"No."

"But can't they make you resign?"

"They can deprive me of my salary."

She did not press this.

"You mustn't think me a martyr," he pleaded, in a lighter tone.

She paid no heed to this protest, but continued to regard him with a face
lighted by enthusiasm.

"Oh, that's splendid of you!" she cried. "You are going to speak the
truth as you see it, and let them do their worst. Of course,
fundamentally, it isn't merely because they're orthodox that they won't
like it, although they'll say so, and perhaps think so. It will be
because if you have really found the truth--they will instinctively, fear
its release. For it has a social bearing, too--hasn't it?--although you
haven't explained that part of it."

"It has a distinct social bearing," he replied, amazed at the way her
mind flew forward and grasped the entire issue, in spite of the fact that
her honesty still refused to concede his premises. Such were the
contradictions in her that he loved. And, though she did not suspect it,
she had in her the Crusader's spirit. "I have always remembered what
you once said, that many who believed themselves Christians had an
instinctive feeling that there is a spark in Christianity which, if
allowed to fly, would start a conflagration beyond their control. And
that they had covered the spark with ashes. I, too," he added
whimsically, "was buried under the ashes."

"And the spark," she demanded, "is not Socialism--their nightmare?"

"The spark is Christianity itself--but I am afraid they will not be able
to distinguish it from Socialism. The central paradox in Christianity
consists in the harmonizing of the individual and socialistic spirit, and
this removes it as far from the present political doctrine of socialism
as it is possible to be. Christianity, looked at from a certain
viewpoint,--and I think the proper viewpoint,--is the most
individualistic of religions, since its basic principle is the
development of the individual into an autonomous being."

They stood facing each other on an open stretch of lawn. The place was
deserted. Through the trees, in the near distance, the sightless front
of the Ferguson mansion blazed under the September sun.

"Individualistic!" she repeated, as though dazed by the word applied to
the religion she had discarded. "I can't understand. Do you think I
ever can understand?" she asked him, simply.

"It seems to me you understand more than you are willing to give yourself
credit for," he answered seriously. "You don't take into account your
attitude."

"I see what you mean--a willingness to take the right road, if I can find
it. I am not at all sure that I want to take it. But you must tell me
more--more of what you have discovered. Will you?"

He just hesitated. She herself appeared to acknowledge no bar to their
further intimacy--why should he?

"I will tell you all I know," he said.

Suddenly, as if by a transference of thought, she voiced what he had in
mind.

"You are going to tell them the truth about themselves!" she exclaimed.
"--That they are not Christians!"

His silence was an admission.

"You must see," he told her, after the moment they had looked into each
other's faces, "that this is the main reason why I must stay at St.
John's, in the Church, if I conscientiously can."

"I see. The easier course would be to resign, to have scruples. And you
believe there is a future for the Church."

"I believe it," he assented.

She still held his eyes.

"Yes, it is worth doing. If you see it that way it is more worth doing
than anything else. Please don't think," she said, "that I don't
appreciate why you have told me all this, why you have given me your
reasons. I know it hasn't been easy. It's because you wish me to have
faith in you for my own sake, not for yours. And I am grateful."

"And if that faith is justified, as you will help to justify it, that it
may be transferred to a larger sphere," he answered.

She gave him her hand, but did not reply.




CHAPTER XIX

MR. GOODRICH BECOMES A PARTISAN



I

In these days of his preparation, she haunted him continually. In her he
saw typified all those who possessed the: divine discontent, the yearning
unsatisfied,--the fatalists and the dreamers. And yet she seemed to have
risen through instinct to share the fire of his vision of religion
revealed to the countless ranks of strugglers as the hidden motive-power
of the world, the impetus of scientist, statesman, artist, and
philanthropist! They had stood together on the heights of the larger
view, whence the whole of the battle-line lay disclosed.

At other and more poignant moments he saw her as waving him bravely on
while he steamed out through towering seas to safety. The impression was
that of smiling at her destiny. Had she fixed upon it? and did she
linger now only that she might inspire him in his charge? She was
capable, he knew, of taking calmly the irrevocable step, of accepting the
decree as she read it. The thought tortured, the desire to save her from
herself obsessed him; with true clairvoyance she had divined him aright
when she had said that he wished her to have faith in him for her own
sake. Could he save her in spite of herself? and how? He could not see
her, except by chance. Was she waiting until he should have crossed the
bar before she should pay some inexorable penalty of which he knew
nothing?

Thus he speculated, suffered, was at once cast down and lifted up by the
thought of her. To him, at least, she was one of those rare and
dauntless women, the red stars of history, by whom the Dantes and
Leonardos are fired to express the inexpressible, and common clay is
fused and made mad: one of those women who, the more they reveal, become
the more inscrutable. Divinely inarticulate, he called her; arousing the
passion of the man, yet stirring the sublimer efforts of the god.

What her feelings toward him, whether she loved him as a woman loves a
man he could not say, no man being a judge in the supreme instance. She
beheld him emancipated, perhaps, from what she might have called the
fetters of an orthodoxy for which she felt an instinctive antagonism; but
whether, though proclaiming himself free, the fact of his continuation in
the ministry would not of itself set up in her a reaction, he was unable
to predict. Her antipathy to forms, he saw, was inherent. Her interest
--her fascinated absorption, it might be called--in his struggle was
spiritual, indeed, but it also had mixed in it the individualistic zeal
of the nonconformist. She resented the trammels of society; though she
suffered from her efforts to transcend them. The course he had
determined upon appeared to her as a rebellion not only against a
cut-and-dried state of mind, but also against vested privilege. Yet she
had in her, as she confessed, the craving for what privilege brings in
the way of harmonious surroundings. He loved her for her contradictions.

Thus he was utterly unable to see what the future held for him in the way
of continued communion with her, to evolve any satisfactory theory as to
why she remained in the city. She had told him that the gardens were an
excuse. She had come, by her own intimation, to reflect, to decide some
momentous question. Marriage? He found this too agitating to dwell
upon, summoning, as it did, conjectures of the men she might have known;
and it was perhaps natural, in view of her attitude, that he could only
think of such a decision on her part as surrender.

That he had caught and held her attention, although by no conscious
effort of his own, was clear to him. But had he not merely arrested her?
Would she not presently disappear, leaving only in his life the scarlet
thread which she had woven into it for all time? Would he not fail to
change, permanently, the texture of hers?

Such were his hopes and fears concerning her, and they were mingled
inextricably with other hopes and fears which had to do with the great
venture of his life. He dwelt in a realm of paradoxes, discovered that
exaltation was not incompatible with anxiety and dread. He had no
thought of wavering; he had achieved to an extent he would not have
believed possible the sense of consecration which brings with it
indifference to personal fortunes, and the revelation of the inner world,
and yet he shrank from the wounds he was about to receive--and give.
Outwardly controlled, he lived in the state of intense excitement of the
leader waiting for the time to charge.



II

The moment was at hand. September had waned, the nights were cooling,
his parishioners were returning from the East. One of these was Eleanor
Goodrich, whom he met on a corner, tanned and revived from her long
summer in Massachusetts. She had inherited the kindly shrewdness of
glance characteristic of gentlefolk, the glance that seeks to penetrate
externals in its concern for the well-being of those whom it scrutinizes.
And he was subtly aware, though she greeted him cordially, that she felt
a change in him without being able to account for it.

"I hear you have been here all summer," she said reproachfully. "Mother
and father and all of us were much disappointed that you did not come to
us on the Cape."

"I should have come, if it had been possible," he replied. "It seems to
have done you a world of good."

"Oh, I!" She seemed slightly embarrassed, puzzled, and did not look at
him. "I am burned as disgracefully as Evelyn. Phil came on for a month.

"He tells me he hasn't seen you, but that isn't surprising, for he hasn't
been to church since June--and he's a vestryman now, too."

She was in mourning for her father-in-law, who had died in the spring.
Phil Goodrich had taken his place. Eleanor found the conversation,
somehow, drifting out of her control. It was not at all what she would
have desired to say. Her colour heightened.

"I have not been conducting the services, but I resume them next Sunday,"
said the rector. "I ought to tell you," he went on, regarding her, "in
view of the conversation we have had, that I have changed my mind
concerning a great many things we have talked about--although I have not
spoken of this as yet to any of the members of the congregation."

She was speechless, and could only stare at him blankly.

"I mean," he continued, with a calmness that astonished her afterwards,
"that I have changed my whole conception as to the functions and future
of the Church, that I have come to your position, that we must make up
our minds for ourselves, and not have them made up for us. And that we
must examine into the truth of all statements, and be governed
accordingly."

Her attitude was one of mingled admiration, concern, and awe. And he saw
that she had grasped something of the complications which his course was
likely to bring about.

"But you are not going to leave us!" she managed to exclaim.

"Not if it is possible to remain," he said, smiling.

"I am so glad." She was still overpowered by the disclosure. "It is
good of you to tell me. Do you mind my telling Phil?"

"Not at all," he assured her.

"Will you forgive me," she asked, after a slight pause during which she
had somewhat regained her composure, "if I say that I always thought, or
rather hoped you would change? that your former beliefs seemed so--unlike
you?"

He continued to smile at her as she stepped forward to take the car.

"I'll have to forgive you," he answered, "because you were right--"

She was still in such a state of excitement when she arrived down town
that she went direct to her husband's law office.

"I like this!" he exclaimed, as, unannounced, she opened the door of his
sanctuary. "You might have caught me with one of those good-looking
clients of mine."

"Oh, Phil!" she cried, "I've got such a piece of news, I couldn't resist
coming to tell you. I met Mr. Hodder--and he's changed."

"Changed!" Phil repeated, looking up at her flushed face beside him.
Instead of a law-book, he flung down a time table in which he had been
investigating the trains to a quail shooting club in the southern part of
the state: The transition to Mr. Hodder was, therefore, somewhat abrupt.
"Why, Nell, to look at you, I thought it could be nothing else than my
somewhat belated appointment to the United States Supreme Court. How has
Hodder changed? I always thought him pretty decent."

"Don't laugh at me," she begged, "it's really serious--and no one knows
it yet. He said I might tell you. Do you remember that talk we had at
father's, when he first came, and we likened him to a modern Savonarola?"

"And George Bridges took the floor, and shocked mother and Lucy and
Laureston," supplied Phil.

"I don't believe mother really was as much shocked as she appeared to
be," said Eleanor. "At any rate, the thing that had struck us--you and
me--was that Mr. Hodder looked as though he could say something helpful,
if he only would. And then I went to see him afterwards, in the parish
house--you remember?--after we had been reading modern criticism
together, and he told me that the faith which had come down from the
fathers was like an egg? It couldn't be chipped. I was awfully
disappointed--and yet I couldn't help liking him, he was so honest.
And the theological books he gave me to read--which were so mediaeval
and absurd! Well, he has come around to our point of view. He told
me so himself."

"But what is our point of view, Nell?" her husband asked, with a smile.
"Isn't it a good deal like Professor Bridges', only we're not quite so
learned? We're just ordinary heathens, as far as I can make out. If
Hodder has our point of view, he ought to go into the law or a trust
company."

"Oh, Phil!" she protested, "and you're on the vestry! I do believe in
Something, and so do you."

"Something," he observed, "is hardly a concrete and complete theology."

"Why do you make me laugh," she reproached him, "when the matter is so
serious? What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm sure Mr. Hodder has
worked it out. He's too sincere to remain in the Church and not have
something constructive and satisfying. I've always said that he seemed
to have a truth shut up inside of him which he could not communicate.
Well, now he looks as though he were about to communicate it, as though
he had discovered it. I suppose you think me silly, but you'll grant,
whatever Mr. Hodder may be, he isn't silly. And women can feel these
things. You know I'm not given to sentimentality, but I was never so
impressed by the growth in any personality as I was this morning by his.
He seems to have become himself, as I always imagined him. And, Phil, he
was so fine! He's absolutely incapable of posing, as you'll admit, and
he stood right up and acknowledged that he'd been wrong in our argument.
He hasn't had the services all summer, and when he resumes them next
Sunday I gathered that he intends to make his new position clear."

Mr. Goodrich thrust his hands in his pockets and gave a low whistle.

"I guess I won't go shooting Saturday, after all," he declared.
"I wouldn't miss Hodder's sermon for all the quail in Harrington County."

"It's high time you did go to church," remarked Eleanor, contemplating,
not without pride, her husband's close-cropped, pugnacious head.

Your judgments are pretty sound, Nell. I'll do you that credit. And
I've always owned up that Hodder would be a fighter if he ever got
started. It's written all over him. What's more, I've a notion that
some of our friends are already a little suspicious of him."

"You mean Mr. Parr?" she asked, anxiously.

"No, Wallis Plimpton."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with disdain in her voice.

"Mr. Parr only got back yesterday, and Wallis told me that Hodder had
refused to go on a yachting trip with him. Not only foolishness, but
high treason." Phil smiled. "Plimpton's the weather-vane, the barometer
of that crowd--he feels a disturbance long before it turns up--he's as
sensitive as the stock market."

"He is the stock market," said Eleanor.

"It's been my opinion," Phil went on reflectively, "that they've all had
just a trace of uneasiness about Hodder all along, an idea that Nelson
Langmaid slipped up for the first time in his life when he got him to
come. Oh, the feeling's been dormant, but it existed. And they've been
just a little afraid that they couldn't handle him if the time ever came.
He's not their type. When I saw Plimpton at the Country Club the other
day he wondered, in that genial, off-hand manner of his, whether Hodder
would continue to be satisfied with St. John's. Plimpton said he might
be offered a missionary diocese. Oh we'll have a fine old row."

"I believe," said Eleanor, "that that's the only thing that interests
you."

"Well, it does please me," he admitted, when I think of Gordon Atterbury
and Everett Constable and a few others,--Eldon Parr,--who believe that
religion ought to be kept archaic and innocuous, served in a form that
won't bother anybody. By the way, Nell, do you remember the verse the
Professor quoted about the Pharisees, and cleansing the outside of the
cup and platter?"

"Yes," she answered, "why?"

"Well--Hodder didn't give you any intimation as to what he intended to do
about that sort of thing, did he?"

"What sort of thing?"

"About the inside of Eldon Parr's cup,--so to speak. And the inside of
Wallis Plimpton's cup, and Everett Constable's cup, and Ferguson's cup,
and Langmaid's. Did it ever strike you that, in St. John's, we have the
sublime spectacle of Eldon Parr, the Pharisee in chief, conducting the
Church of Christ, who, uttered that denunciation? That's what George
Bridges meant. There's something rather ironical in such a situation, to
say the least."

"I see," said Eleanor, thoughtfully.

"And what's more, it's typical," continued Phil, energetically, "the big
Baptist church on the Boulevard is run by old Sedges, as canny a rascal
as you could find in the state. The inside of has cup has never been
touched, though he was once immersed in the Mississippi, they say, and
swallowed a lot of water."

"Oh, Phil!"

"Hodder's been pretty intimate with Eldon Parr--that always puzzled me,"
Phil went on. "And yet I'm like you, I never doubted Hodder's honesty.
I've always been curious to know what would happen when he found out the
kind of thing Eldon Parr is doing every day in his life, making people
stand and deliver in the interest of what he would call National
Prosperity. Why, that fellow, Funk, they sent to the penitentiary the
other day for breaking into the Addicks' house isn't a circumstance to
Eldon Parr. He's robbed his tens of thousands, and goes on robbing them
right along. By the way, Mr. Parr took most of Addicks' money before
Funk got his silver."

"Phil, you have such a ridiculous way of putting things! But I suppose
it's true."

"True! I should say it was! There was Mr. Bentley--that was mild. And
there never was a hold-up of a western express that could compare to the
Consolidated Tractions. Some of these big fellows have the same kind of
brain as the professional thieves. Well, they are professional thieves
--what's the use of mincing matters! They never try the same game twice.
Mr. Parr's getting ready to make another big haul right now. I know,
because Plimpton said as much, although he didn't confide in me what this
particular piece of rascality is. He knows better." Phil Goodrich
looked grim.

"But the law?" exclaimed his wife.

"There never was a law that Nelson Langmaid couldn't drive a horse and
carriage through."

"And Mr. Langmaid's one of the nicest men I know!"

"What I wonder," mused Phil, "is whether this is a mere doctrinal revolt
on Hodder's part, or whether he has found out a few things. There are so
many parsons in these days who don't seem to see any inconsistency in
robbing several thousand people to build settlement houses and carved
marble altars, and who wouldn't accept a Christmas box from a highwayman.
But I'll do Hodder the justice to say he doesn't strike me as that kind.
And I have an idea that Eldon Parr and Wallis Plimpton and the rest know
he isn't, know that he'd be a Tartar if he ever get started, and that's
what makes them uneasy."

"Then it isn't his change of religious opinions they would care about?"
said Eleanor.

"Oh, I don't say that Eldon Parr won't try to throw him out if he
questions the faith as delivered by the Saints."

"Phil, what a way of putting it!"

"Any indication of independence, any approach to truth would be regarded
as dangerous," Phil continued. And of course Gordon Atterbury and others
we could mention, who think they believe in the unchipped egg theory,
will be outraged. But it's deeper than that. Eldon Parr will give
orders that Hodder's to go."

"Give orders?"

"Certainly. That vestry, so far as Mr. Parr is concerned, is a mere
dummy board of directors. He's made Langmaid, and Plimpton, and even
Everett Constable, who's the son of an honourable gentleman, and ought to
know better. And he can ruin them by snapping his fingers. He can even
make the financial world too hot for Ferguson. I'll say this for Gordon
Atterbury, that Mr. Parr can't control him, but he's got a majority
without him, and Gordon won't vote for a heretic. Who are left, except
father-in-law Waring and myself?"

"He can't control either of you!" said Eleanor, proudly.

"When it comes to that, Nell--we'll move into Canada and buy a farm."

"But can he hurt you, Phil--either of you?" she asked, after a moment.

"I'd like to see him try it," Phil Goodrich declared

And his wife thought, as she looked at him, that she would like to see
Mr. Parr try it, too.



III

Phil Goodrich had once said that Mr. Plimpton's translation of the
national motto E pluribus unum, was "get together," and it was true that
not the least of Mr. Plimpton's many gifts was that of peace making.
Such was his genius that he scented trouble before it became manifest to
the world, and he stoutly declared that no difference of opinion ever
existed between reasonable men that might not be patched up before the
breach became too wide--provided that a third reasonable man contributed
his services. The qualifying word "reasonable" is to be noted. When
Mr. Bedloe Hubbell had undertaken, in the name of Reform, to make a
witch's cauldron of the city's politics, which Mr. Beatty had hitherto
conducted so smoothly from the back room of his saloon, Mr. Plimpton had
unselfishly offered his services. Bedloe Hubbell, although he had been a
playmate of Mr. Plimpton's wife's, had not proved "reasonable," and had
rejected with a scorn only to be deemed fanatical the suggestion that Mr.
Hubbell's interests and Mr. Beatty's interests need not clash, since Mr.
Hubbell might go to Congress! And Mr. Plimpton was the more hurt since
the happy suggestion was his own, and he had had no little difficulty in
getting Mr. Beatty to agree to it.

Yet Mr. Plimpton's career in the ennobling role of peacemaker had,
on the whole, been crowned with such success as to warrant his belief
in the principle. Mr. Parr, for instance,--in whose service, as in that
of any other friend, Mr. Plimpton was always ready to act--had had
misunderstandings with eminent financiers, and sometimes with United
States Senators. Mr. Plimpton had made many trips to the Capitol at
Washington, sometimes in company with Mr. Langmaid, sometimes not, and on
one memorable occasion had come away smiling from an interview with the
occupant of the White House himself.

Lest Mr. Plimpton's powers of premonition seem supernatural, it may be
well to reveal the comparative simplicity of his methods. Genius,
analyzed, is often disappointing, Mr. Plimpton's was selective and
synthetic. To illustrate in a particular case, he had met Mr. Parr in
New York and had learned that the Reverend Mr. Hodder had not only
declined to accompany the banker on a yachting trip, but had elected to
remain in the city all summer, in his rooms in the parish house, while
conducting no services. Mr. Parr had thought this peculiar. On his
return home Mr. Plimpton had one day dropped in to see a Mr. Gaines, the
real estate agent for some of his property. And Mr. Plimpton being
hale-fellow-well-met, Mr. Gaines had warned him jestingly that he would
better not let his parson know that he owned a half interest in a certain
hotel in Dalton Street, which was leased at a profitable rate.

If Mr. Plimpton felt any uneasiness, he did not betray it. And he
managed to elicit from the agent, in an entirely casual and jovial
manner, the fact that Mr. Hodder, a month or so before, had settled the
rent of a woman for a Dalton Street flat, and had been curious to
discover the name of the owner. Mr. Gaines, whose business it was to
recognize everybody, was sure of Mr. Hodder, although he had not worn
clerical clothes.

Mr. Plimpton became very thoughtful when he had left the office. He
visited Nelson Langmaid in the Parr Building. And the result of the
conference was to cause Mr. Langmaid to recall, with a twinge of
uneasiness, a certain autumn morning in a room beside Bremerton Lake
when he had been faintly yet distinctly conscious of the, admonitory
whisperings of that sixth sense which had saved him on other occasions.

"Dash it!" he said to himself, after Mr. Plimpton had departed, and
he stood in the window and gazed across at the flag on the roof of
'Ferguson's.' "It would serve me right for meddling in this parson
business. Why did I take him away from Jerry Whitely, anyhow?"

It added to Nelson Langmaid's discomfort that he had a genuine affection,
even an admiration for the parson in question. He might have known by
looking at the man that he would wake up some day,--such was the burden
of his lament. And there came to him, ironically out of the past, the
very words of Mr. Parr's speech to the vestry after Dr. Gilman's death,
that succinct list of qualifications for a new rector which he himself,
Nelson Langmaid, had humorously and even more succinctly epitomized.
Their "responsibility to the parish, to the city, and to God" had been to
find a rector "neither too old nor too young, who would preach the faith
as we received it, who was not sensational, and who did not mistake
Socialism for Christianity."  At the "Socialism" a certain sickly
feeling possessed the lawyer, and he wiped beads of perspiration from his
dome-like forehead.

He didn't pretend to be versed in theology--so he had declared--and at
the memory of these words of his the epithet "ass," self applied, passed
his lips. "You want a parson who will stick to his last, not too high or
too low or too broad or too narrow, who has intellect without too much
initiative . . . and will not get the church uncomfortably full of
strangers and run you out of your pews." Thus he had capped the
financier. Well, if they had caught a tartar, it served him, Nelson
Langmaid, right. He recalled his talk with Gerald Whitely, and how his
brother-in-law had lost his temper when they had got on the subject of
personality . . . .

Perhaps Wallis Plimpton could do something. Langmaid's hopes of this
were not high. It may have been that he had suspicions of what Mr.
Plimpton would have called Hodder's "reasonableness." One thing was
clear--that Mr. Plimpton was frightened. In the sanctuaries, the private
confessionals of high finance (and Nelson Langmaid's office may be called
so), the more primitive emotions are sometimes exhibited.

"I don't see what business it is of a clergyman, or of any one else,
whether I own property in Dalton Street," Mr. Plimpton had said, as he
sat on the edge of the lawyer's polished mahogany desk. "What does he
expect us to do,--allow our real estate to remain unproductive merely for
sentimental reasons? That's like a parson, most of 'em haven't got any
more common sense than that. What right has he got to go nosing around
Dalton Street? Why doesn't he stick to his church?"

"I thought you fellows were to build him a settlement house there,"
Langmaid observed.

"On the condition that he wouldn't turn socialist."

"You'd better have stipulated it in the bond," said the lawyer, who could
not refrain, even at this solemn moment, from the temptation of playing
upon Mr. Plimpton's apprehensions. "I'm afraid he'll make it his
business, Wallis, to find out whether you own anything in Dalton Street.
I'll bet he's got a list of Dalton Street property in his pocket right
now."

Mr. Plimpton groaned.

"Thank God I don't own any of it!" said Langmaid.

"What the deuce does he intend to do?" the other demanded.

"Read it out in church," Langmaid suggested. "It wouldn't sound pretty,
Wallis, to be advertised in the post on Monday morning as owning that
kind of a hotel."

"Oh, he's a gentleman," said Mr. Plimpton, "he wouldn't do anything as
low as that!"

"But if he's become a socialist?" objected Langmaid.

"He wouldn't do it," his friend reiterated, none too confidently.
"I shouldn't be surprised if he made me resign from the vestry and forced
me to sell my interest. It nets me five thousand a year."

"What is the place?" Langmaid asked sympathetically, "Harrod's?"

Mr. Plimpton nodded.

"Not that I am a patron," the lawyer explained somewhat hastily. "But
I've seen the building, going home."

"It looks to me as if it would burn down some day, Wallis."

"I wish it would," said Mr. Plimpton.

"If it's any comfort to you--to us," Langmaid went on, after a moment,
"Eldon Parr owns the whole block above Thirteenth, on the south side
--bought it three years ago. He thinks the business section will grow that
way."

"I know," said Mr. Plimpton, and they looked at each other.

The name predominant in both minds had been mentioned.

"I wonder if Hodder really knows what he's up against." Mr. Plimpton
sometimes took refuge in slang.

"Well, after all, we're not sure yet that he's 'up against anything,'"
replied Langmaid, who thought the time had come for comfort. "It may all
be a false alarm. There's no reason, after all, why a Christian
clergyman shouldn't rescue women in Dalton Street, and remain in the city
to study the conditions of the neighbourhood where his settlement house
is to be. And just, because you or I would not be able to resist an
invitation to go yachting with Eldon Parr, a man might be imagined who
had that amount of moral courage."

"That's just it. Hodder seems to me, now I come to think of it, just the
kind of John Brown type who wouldn't hesitate to get into a row with
Eldon Parr if he thought it was right, and pull down any amount of
disagreeable stuff about our ears."

"You're mixing your heroes, Wallis," said Langmaid.

"I can't help it. You'd catch it, too, Nelson. What in the name of
sense possessed you to get such a man?"

This being a question the lawyer was unable to answer, the conversation
came to another pause. And it was then that Mr. Plimpton's natural
optimism reasserted itself.

"It isn't done,--the thing we're afraid of, that's all," he proclaimed,
after a turn or two about the room. "Hodder's a gentleman, as I said,
and if he feels as we suspect he does he'll resign like a gentleman and a
Christian. I'll have a talk with him--oh, you can trust me! I've got an
idea. Gordon Atterbury told me the other day there is a vacancy in a
missionary diocese out west, and that Hodder's name had been mentioned,
among others, to the bishops for the place. He'd make a rattling
missionary bishop, you know, holding services in saloons and knocking
men's heads together for profanity, and he boxes like a professional.
Now, a word from Eldon Parr might turn the trick. Every parson wants to
be a bishop."

Langmaid shook his head.

"You're getting out of your depths, my friend. The Church isn't Wall
Street. And missionary bishops aren't chosen to make convenient
vacancies."

"I don't mean anything crude," Mr. Plimpton protested. "But a word from
the chief layman of a diocese like this, a man who never misses a General
Convention, and does everything handsomely, might count,--particularly if
they're already thinking of Hodder. The bishops would never suspect we
wanted to get rid of him."

"Well," said Langmaid, "I advise you to go easy, all along the line."

"Oh, I'll go easy enough," Mr. Plimpton assented, smiling. "Do you
remember how I pulled off old Senator Matthews when everybody swore he
was dead set on voting for an investigation in the matter of those coal
lands Mr. Parr got hold of in his state?"

"Matthews isn't Hodder, by a long shat," said Langmaid. "If you ask me
my opinion, I'll tell you frankly that if Hodder has made up his mind to
stay in St. John's a ton of dynamite and all the Eldon Parrs in the
nation can't get him out."

"Can't the vestry make him resign?" asked Mr. Plimpton, uncomfortably.

"You'd better, go home and study your canons, my friend. Nothing short
of conviction for heresy can do it, if he doesn't want to go."

"You wouldn't exactly call him a heretic," Mr. Plimpton said ruefully.

"Would you know a heretic if you saw one?" demanded Langmaid.

"No, but my wife would, and Gordon Atterbury and Constable would, and
Eldon Parr. But don't let's get nervous."

"Well, that's sensible at any rate," said Langmaid . . . .

So Mr. Plimpton had gone off optimistic, and felt even more so the next
morning after he had had his breakfast in the pleasant dining room of the
Gore Mansion, of which he was now master. As he looked out through the
open window at the sunshine in the foliage of Waverley Place, the
prospect of his being removed from that position of dignity and influence
on the vestry of St. John's, which he had achieved, with others, after so
much walking around the walls, seemed remote. And he reflected with
satisfaction upon the fact that his wife, who was his prime minister,
would be home from the East that day. Two heads were better than one,
especially if one of the two were Charlotte Gore's. And Mr. Plimpton had
often reflected upon the loss to the world, and the gain to himself, that
she was a woman.

It would not be gallant to suggest that his swans were geese.



IV

The successful navigation of lower Tower Street, at noonday, required
presence of mind on the part of the pedestrian. There were currents and
counter-currents, eddies and backwaters, and at the corner of Vine a
veritable maelstrom through which two lines of electric cars pushed their
way, east and weft, north and south, with incessant clanging of bells;
followed by automobiles with resounding horns, trucks and delivery wagons
with wheels reverberating on the granite. A giant Irish policeman, who
seemed in continual danger of a violent death, and wholly indifferent to
it, stood between the car tracks and halted the rush from time to time,
driving the people like sheep from one side to the other. Through the
doors of Ferguson's poured two conflicting streams of humanity, and
wistful groups of young women, on the way from hasty lunches, blocked the
pavements and stared at the finery behind the plate-glass windows.

The rector, slowly making his way westward, permitted himself to be
thrust hither and thither, halted and shoved on again as he studied the
faces of the throng. And presently he found himself pocketed before one
of the exhibits of feminine interest, momentarily helpless, listening to
the admiring and envious chorus of a bevy of diminutive shop-girls on the
merits of a Paris gown. It was at this moment that he perceived, pushing
towards him with an air of rescue, the figure of his vestryman, Mr.
Wallis Plimpton.

"Well, well, well!" he cried, as he seized Hodder by the arm and pulled
him towards the curb. "What are you doing herein the marts of trade?
Come right along with me to the Eyrie, and we'll have something, to eat."

The Eyrie was a famous lunch club, of limited membership, at the top of
the Parr Building, where financial affairs of the first importance were
discussed and settled.

Hodder explained that he had lunched at half-past twelve.

"Well, step into my office a minute. It does me good, to see you again,
upon my word, and I can't let you get by without a little pow-wow."

Mr. Plimpton's trust company, in Vine Street, resembled a Greek temple.
Massive but graceful granite columns adorned its front, while within it
was partitioned off with polished marble and ornamental grills. In the
rear, guarded by the desks and flanked by the compartments of various
subordinates, was the president's private sanctum, and into this holy of
holies Mr. Plimpton led the way with the simple, unassuming genial air of
the high priest of modern finance who understands men. The room was
eloquent almost to affectation of the system and order of great business,
inasmuch as it betrayed not the least sign of a workshop. On the dark
oak desk were two leather-bound books and a polished telephone. The
walls were panelled, there was a stone fireplace with andirons set, a
deep carpet spread over the tessellated floor, and three leather-padded
armchairs, one of which Mr. Plimpton hospitably drew forward for the
rector. He then produced a box of cigars.

"You don't smoke, Mr. Hodder. I always forget. That's the way you
manage to keep yourself in such good shape." He drew out a gold match
box and seated himself with an air of gusto opposite his guest. "And you
haven't had a vacation, they tell me."

"On the contrary," said the rector, "McCrae has taken the services all
summer."

"But you've been in the city!" Mr. Plimpton exclaimed, puffing at his
cigar.

"Yes, I've been in the city."

"Well, well, I'll bet you haven't been idle. Just between us, as
friends, Mr. Hodder, I've often wondered if you didn't work too hard
--there's such a thing as being too conscientious, you know. And I've
an idea that the rest of the vestry think so. Mr. Parr, for instance.
We know when we've got a good thing, and we don't want to wear you out.
Oh, we can appreciate your point of view, and admire it. But a little
relaxation--eh? It's too bad that you couldn't have seen your way to
take that cruise--Mr. Parr was all cut up about it. I guess you're the
only man among all of us fairly close to him, who really knows him well,"
said Mr. Plimpton, admiringly. "He thinks a great deal of you, Mr.
Hodder. By the way, have you seen him since he got back?"

"No," Hodder answered.


"The trip did him good. I thought he was a little seedy in the spring
--didn't you? Wonderful man! And when I think how he's slandered and
abused it makes me hot. And he never says anything, never complains,
lives up there all alone, and takes his medicine. That's real
patriotism, according to my view. He could retire to-morrow
--but he keeps on--why? Because he feels the weight of a tremendous
responsibility on his shoulders, because he knows if it weren't for him
and men like him upon whom the prosperity of this nation depends, we'd
have famine and anarchy on our hands in no time. And look what he's done
for the city, without ostentation, mind you! He never blows his own
horn-never makes a speech. And for the Church! But I needn't tell you.
When this settlement house and chapel are finished, they'll be coming out
here from New York to get points. By the way, I meant to have written
you. Have our revised plans come yet? We ought to break ground in
November, oughtn't we?"

"I intend to lay my views on that matter before the vestry at the next
meeting, the rector said.

"Well," declared Mr. Plimpton, after a scarcely perceptible pause, "I've
no doubt they'll be worth listening to. If I were to make a guess," he
continued, with a contemplative smile, blowing a thin stream of smoke
towards the distant ceiling, "I should bet that you have spent your
summer looking over the ground. I don't say that you have missed your
vocation, Mr. Hodder, but I don't mind telling you that for a clergyman,
for a man absorbed in spiritual matters, a man who can preach the sermons
you preach, you've got more common-sense and business thoroughness than
any one I have ever run across in your profession."

"Looking over the ground?" Hodder repeated, ignoring the compliment.

"Sure," said Mr. Plimpton, smiling more benignly than ever. "You mustn't
be modest about it. Dalton Street. And when that settlement house is
built, I'll guarantee it will be run on a business basis. No nonsense."

"What do you mean by nonsense?" Hodder asked. He did not make the
question abrupt, and there was even the hint of a smile in his eyes,
which Mr. Plimpton found the more disquieting.

"Why, that's only a form of speech. I mean you'll be practical,
efficient, that you'll get hold of the people of that neighbourhood and
make 'em see that the world isn't such a bad place after all, make 'em
realize that we in St. John's want to help 'em out. That you won't make
them more foolishly discontented than they are, and go preaching
socialism to them."

"I have no intention of preaching socialism," said Hodder. But he laid a
slight emphasis on the word which sent a cold shiver down Mr. Plimpton's
spine, and made him wonder whether there might not be something worse
than socialism.

"I knew you wouldn't," he declared, with all the heartiness he could
throw into his voice. "I repeat, you're a practical, sensible man. I'll
yield to none in my belief in the Church as a moral, uplifting, necessary
spiritual force in our civilization, in my recognition of her high
ideals, but we business men, Mr. Hodder,--as--I am sure you must agree,
--have got to live, I am sorry to say, on a lower plane. We've got to deal
with the world as we find it, and do our little best to help things
along. We can't take the Gospel literally, or we should all be ruined
in a day, and swamp everybody else. You understand me?

"I understand you," said the rector.

Mr. Plimpton's cigar had gone out. In spite of himself, he had slipped
from the easy-going, casual tone into one that was becoming persuasive,
apologetic, strenuous. Although the day was not particularly warm, he
began to perspire a little; and he repeated the words over to himself,
"I understand you." What the deuce did the rector know? He had somehow
the air of knowing everything--more than Mr. Plimpton did. And Mr.
Plimpton was beginning to have the unusual and most disagreeable feeling
of having been weighed in the balance and found wanting. He glanced at
his guest, who sat quite still, the head bent a trifle, the disturbing
gray eyes fixed contemplatively an him--accusingly. And yet the
accusation did not seem personal with the clergyman, whose eyes were
nearly the medium, the channels of a greater, an impersonal Ice. It was
true that the man had changed. He was wholly baffling to Mr. Plimpton,
whose sense of alarm increased momentarily into an almost panicky feeling
as he remembered what Langmaid had said. Was this inscrutable rector of
St. John's gazing, knowingly, at the half owner of Harrods Hotel in
Dalton Street, who couldn't take the Gospel literally? There was
evidently no way to find out at once, and suspense would be unbearable,
in vain he told himself that these thoughts were nonsense, the discomfort
persisted, and he had visions of that career in which he had become
one of the first citizens and the respected husband of Charlotte Gore
clashing down about his ears. Why? Because a clergyman should choose
to be quixotic, fanatical? He did not took quixotic, fanatical, Mr.
Plimpton had to admit,--but a good deal saner than he, Mr. Plimpton, must
have appeared at that moment. His throat was dry, and he didn't dare to
make the attempt to relight his cigar.

"There's nothing like getting together--keeping in touch with people,
Mr. Hodder," he managed to say. "I've been out of town a good deal this
summer--putting on a little flesh, I'm sorry to admit. But I've been
meaning to drop into the parish house and talk over those revised plans
with you. I will drop in--in a day or two. I'm interested in the work,
intensely interested, and so is Mrs. Plimpton. She'll help you. I'm
sorry you can't lunch with me."

He had the air, now, of the man who finds himself disagreeably and
unexpectedly closeted with a lunatic; and his language, although he
sought to control it, became even a trifle less coherent.

"You must make allowances for us business men, Mr. Hodder. I mean, of
course, we're sometimes a little lax in our duties--in the summer, that
is. Don't shoot the pianist, he's doing his--ahem! You know the story.

"By the way, I hear great things of you; I'm told it's on the cards that
you're to be made a bishop."

"Oh," answered the rector, "there are better men mentioned than I!"

"I want you to know this," said his vestryman, as he seized Hodder's
hand, "much as we value you here, bitterly as we should hate to lose you,
none of us, I am sure, would stand in the way of such a deserved
advancement."

"Thank you, Mr. Plimpton," said the rector.

Mr. Plimpton watched the vigorous form striding through the great chamber
until it disappeared. Then he seized his hat and made his way as rapidly
as possible through the crowds to the Parr Building. At the entrance of
the open-air roof garden of the Eyrie he ran into Nelson Langmaid.

"You're the very man I'm after," said Mr. Plimpton, breathlessly.
"I stopped in your office, and they said you'd gone up."

"What's the matter, Wallis?" inquired the lawyer, tranquilly. "You look
as if you'd lost a couple of bonds."

I've just seen Hodder, and he is going to do it."

"Do what?"

"Sit down here, at this table in the corner, and I'll tell you."

For a practical man, it must be admitted that Mr. Plimpton had very
little of the concrete to relate. And it appeared on cross-examination
by Mr. Langmaid, who ate his cold meat and salad with an exasperating and
undiminished appetite--that the only definite thing the rector had said
was that he didn't intend to preach socialism. This was reassuring.

"Reassuring!" exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was
lacking, "I wish you could have heard him say it!"

"The wicked," remarked the lawyer, "flee when no man pursueth. Don't
shoot the pianist!" Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his head
and laughed. "If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an
exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist
of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains
and tried to discover what it was. He's a clever man, and if he hasn't
got a list of Dalton Street property now he'll have one by to-morrow,
and the story of some of your transactions with Tom Beatty and the City
Council."

"I believe you'd joke in the electric chair," said Mr. a Plimpton,
resentfully. "I'll tell you this,--and my experience backs me up,
--if you can't get next to a man by a little plain talk, he isn't safe.
I haven't got the market sense for nothing, and I'll give you this tip,
Nelson,--it's time to stand from under. Didn't I warn you fellows that
Bedloe Hubbell meant business long before he started in? and this parson
can give Hubbell cards and spades. Hodder can't see this thing as it is.
He's been thinking, this summer. And a man of that kind is downright
dangerous when he begins to think. He's found out things, and he's put
two and two together, and he's the uncompromising type. He has a notion
that the Gospel can be taken literally, and I could feel all the time I
was talking to him he thought I was a crook."

"Perhaps he was right," observed the lawyer.

"That comes well from you," Mr. Plimpton retorted.

"Oh, I'm a crook, too," said Langmaid. "I discovered it some time ago.
The difference between you and me, Wallis, is that I am willing to
acknowledge it, and you're not. The whole business world, as we know it,
is crooked, and if we don't cut other people's throats, they'll cut
ours."

"And if we let go, what would happen to the country?" his companion
demanded.

Langmaid began to shake with silent laughter.

"Your solicitude about the country, Wallis, is touching. I was brought
up to believe that patriotism had an element of sacrifice in it, but I
can't see ours. And I can't imagine myself, somehow, as a Hercules
bearing the burden of our Constitution. From Mr. Hodder's point of view,
perhaps,--and I'm not sure it isn't the right one, the pianist is doing
his damnedest, to the tune of--Dalton Street. We might as well look this
thing in the face, my friend. You and I really don't believe in another
world, or we shouldn't be taking so much trouble to make this one as we'd
like to have it."

"I never expected to hear you talk this way," said Mr. Plimpton.

"Well, it's somewhat of a surprise to me," the lawyer admitted.

"And I don't think you put it fairly," his friend contended. "I never
can tell when you are serious, but this is damned serious. In business
we have to deal with crooks, who hold us up right and left, and if we
stood back you know as well as I do that everything would go to pot.
And if we let the reformers have their way the country would be bedlam.
We'd have anarchy and bloodshed, revolution, and the people would be
calling us, the strong men, back in no time. You can't change human
nature. And we have a sense of responsibility--we support law and order
and the Church, and found institutions, and give millions away in
charity."

The big lawyer listened to this somewhat fervent defence of his order
with an amused smile, nodding his head slightly from side to side.

"If you don't believe in it," demanded Mr. Plimpton, why the deuce don't
you drop it?"

"It's because of my loyalty," said Langmaid. "I wouldn't desert my pals.
I couldn't bear, Wallis, to see you go to the guillotine without me."

Mr. Plimpton became unpleasantly silent.

"Well, you may think it's a joke," he resumed, after a moment, "but there
will be a guillotine if we don't look out. That confounded parson is
getting ready to spring something, and I'm going to give Mr. Parr a tip.
He'll know how to handle him. He doesn't talk much, but I've got an
idea, from one or two things he let drop, that he's a little suspicious
of a change in Hodder. But he ought to be waived."

"You're in no condition to talk to Mr. Parr, or to anyone else, except
your wife, Walks," Langmaid said. "You'd better go home, and let me see
Mr. Parr. I'm responsible for Mr. Hodder, anyway."

"All right," Mr. Plimpton agreed, as though he had gained some shred of
comfort from this thought. "I guess you're in worse than any of us."






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill



Volume 6.


XX.    THE ARRAIGNMENT
XXI.   ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
XXII.   WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT!



CHAPTER XX

THE ARRAIGNMENT


I

Looking backward, Hodder perceived that he had really come to the
momentous decision of remaining at St. John's in the twilight of an
evening when, on returning home from seeing Kate Marcy at Mr. Bentley's
he had entered the darkening church. It was then that his mission had
appeared to him as a vision. Every day, afterward, his sense and
knowledge of this mission had grown stronger.

To his mind, not the least of the trials it was to impose upon him, and
one which would have to be dealt with shortly, was a necessary talk with
his assistant, McCrae. If their relationship had from the beginning been
unusual and unsatisfactory, adjectives would seem to defy what it had
become during the summer. What did McCrae think of him? For Hodder had,
it will be recalled, bidden his assistant good-by--and then had remained.
At another brief interview, during which McCrae had betrayed no surprise,
uttered no censure or comment, Hodder had announced his determination to
remain in the city, and to take no part in the services. An announcement
sufficiently astounding. During the months that followed, they had met,
at rare intervals, exchanged casual greetings, and passed on. And yet
Hodder had the feeling, more firmly planted than ever, that McCrae was
awaiting, with an interest which might be called suspense, the
culmination of the process going on within him.

Well, now that he had worked it out, now that he had reached his
decision, it was incumbent upon him to tell his assistant what that
decision was. Hodder shrank from it as from an ordeal. His affection
for the man, his admiration for McCrae's faithful, untiring, and
unrecognized services had deepened. He had a theory that McCrae
really liked him--would even sympathize with his solution; yet he
procrastinated. He was afraid to put his theory to the test. It was not
that Hodder feared that his own solution was not the right one, but that
McCrae might not find it so: he was intensely concerned that it should
also be McCrae's solution--the answer, if one liked, to McCrae's mute and
eternal questionings. He wished to have it a fruition for McCrae as well
as for himself; since theoretically, at least, he had pierced the hard
crust of his assistant's exterior, and conceived him beneath to be all
suppressed fire. In short, Hodder wished to go into battle side by side
with McCrae. Therein lay his anxiety.

Another consideration troubled him--McCrae's family, dependent on a
rather meagre salary. His assistant, in sustaining him in the struggle
he meant to enter, would be making even a greater sacrifice than himself.
For Hodder had no illusions, and knew that the odds against him were
incalculable. Whatever, if defeated, his own future might be, McCrae's
was still more problematical and tragic.

The situation, when it came, was even more difficult than Hodder
had imagined it, since McCrae was not a man to oil the wheels of
conversation. In silence he followed the rector up the stairs and into
his study, in silence he took the seat at the opposite side of the table.
And Hodder, as he hesitated over his opening, contemplated in no little
perplexity and travail the gaunt and non-committal face before him:

"McCrae," he began at length, "you must have thought my conduct this
summer most peculiar. I wish to thank you, first of all, for the
consideration you have shown me, and to tell you how deeply I appreciate
your taking the entire burden of the work of the parish."

McCrae shook his head vigorously, but did not speak.

"I owe it to you to give you some clew to what happened to me," the
rector continued, "although I have an idea that you do not need much
enlightenment on this matter. I have a feeling that you have somehow
been aware of my discouragement during the past year or so, and of the
causes of it. You yourself hold ideals concerning the Church which you
have not confided to me. Of this I am sure. I came here to St. John's
full of hope and confidence, gradually to lose both, gradually to realise
that there was something wrong with me, that in spite of all my efforts
I was unable to make any headway in the right direction. I became
perplexed, dissatisfied--the results were so meagre, so out of proportion
to the labour. And the very fact that those who may be called our chief
parishioners had no complaint merely added to my uneasiness. That kind
of success didn't satisfy me, and I venture to assume it didn't satisfy
you."

Still McCrae made no sign.

"Finally I came to what may be termed a double conclusion. In the first
place, I began to see more and more clearly that our modern civilization
is at fault, to perceive how completely it is conducted on the
materialistic theory of the survival of the fittest rather than that of
the brotherhood of man, and that those who mainly support this church
are, consciously or not, using it as a bulwark for the privilege they
have gained at the expense of their fellow-citizens. And my conclusion
was that Christianity must contain some vital germ which I had somehow
missed, and which I must find if I could, and preach and release it.
That it was the release of this germ these people feared unconsciously.
I say to you, at the risk of the accusation of conceit, that I believed
myself to have a power in the pulpit if I could only discover the truth."

Hodder thought he detected, as he spoke these words, a certain relaxation
of the tension.

"For a while, as the result of discouragement, of cowardice, I may say,
of the tearing-down process of the theological structure--built of debris
from many ruins on which my conception of Christianity rested, I lost all
faith. For many weeks I did not enter the church, as you yourself must
know. Then, when I had given up all hope, through certain incidents and
certain persona, a process of reconstruction began. In short, through no
virtue which I can claim as my own, I believe I have arrived at the
threshold of an understanding of Christianity as our Lord taught it and
lived it. And I intend to take the pulpit and begin to preach it.

"I am deeply concerned in regard to yourself as to what effect my course
may have on you. And I am not you to listen to me with a view that you
should see your way clear to support me McCrae, but rather that you
should be fully apprised of my new belief and intentions. I owe this to
you, for your loyal support in the pest. I shall go over with you,
later, if you care to listen, my whole position. It may be called the
extreme Protestant position, and I use protestant, for want of a better
word, to express what I believe is Paul's true as distinguished from the
false of his two inconsistent theologies. It was this doctrine of Paul's
of redemption by faith, of reacting grace by an inevitable spiritual law
--of rebirth, if you will--that Luther and the Protestant reformers
revived and recognized, rightly, as the vital element of Christ's
teachings, although they did not succeed in separating it wholly from the
dross which clung to it. It is the leaven which has changed governments,
and which in the end, I am firmly convinced, will make true democracy
inevitable. And those who oppose democracy inherently dread its
workings.

"I do not know your views, but it is only fair to add at this time that I
no longer believe in the external and imposed authority of the Church in
the sense in which I formerly accepted it, nor in the virgin birth, nor
in certain other dogmas in which I once acquiesced. Other clergymen of
our communion have proclaimed, in speech and writing, their disbelief in
these things. I have satisfied my conscience as they have, and I mean to
make no secret of my change. I am convinced that not one man or woman
in ten thousand to-day who has rejected Christianity ever knew what
Christianity is. The science and archaic philosophy in which
Christianity has been swaddled and hampered is discredited, and the
conclusion is drawn that Christianity itself must be discredited."

"Ye're going to preach all this?" McCrae demanded, almost fiercely.

"Yes," Hodder replied, still uncertain as to his assistant's attitude,
"and more. I have fully reflected, and I am willing to accept all the
consequences. I understand perfectly, McCrae, that the promulgation
alone of the liberal orthodoxy of which I have spoken will bring me into
conflict with the majority of the vestry and the congregation, and that
the bishop will be appealed to. They will say, in effect, that I have
cheated them, that they hired one man and that another has turned up,
whom they never would have hired. But that won't be the whole story.
If it were merely a question of doctrine, I should resign. It's deeper
than that, more sinister." Hodder doubled up his hand, and laid it on
the table. "It's a matter," he said, looking into McCrae's eyes, "of
freeing this church from those who now hold it in chains. And the two
questions, I see clearly now, the doctrinal and the economic, are so
interwoven as to be inseparable. My former, ancient presentation of
Christianity left men and women cold. It did not draw them into this
church and send them out again fired with the determination to bring
religion into everyday life, resolved to do their part in the removal of
the injustices and cruelties with which we are surrounded, to bring
Christianity into government, where it belongs. Don't misunderstand me
I'm not going to preach politics, but religion."

"I don't misunderstand ye," answered McCrae. He leaned a little forward,
staring at the rector from behind his steel spectacles with a glance
which had become piercing.

"And I am going to discourage a charity which is a mockery of
Christianity," Hodder went on, "the spectacle of which turns thousands
of men and women in sickening revolt against the Church of Christ to-day.
I have discovered, at last, how some of these persons have made their
money, and are making it. And I am going to let them know, since they
have repudiated God in their own souls, since they have denied the
Christian principle of individual responsibility, that I, as the vicar of
God, will not be a party to the transaction of using the Church as a
means of doling out ill-gotten gains to the poor."

"Mr. Parr!" McCrae exclaimed.

"Yes," said the rector, slowly, and with a touch of sadness, "since you
have mentioned him, Mr. Parr. But I need not say that this must go no
farther. I am in possession of definite facts in regard to Mr. Parr
which I shall present to him when he returns."

"Ye'll tell him to his face?"

"It is the only way."

McCrae had risen. A remarkable transformation had come over the man,
--he was reminiscent, at that moment, of some Covenanter ancestor going
into battle. And his voice shook with excitement.

"Ye may count on me, Mr. Hodder," he cried. "These many years I've
waited, these many years I've seen what ye see now, but I was not the
man. Aye, I've watched ye, since the day ye first set foot in this
church. I knew what was going on inside of ye, because it was just
that I felt myself. I hoped--I prayed ye might come to it."

The sight of this taciturn Scotchman, moved in this way, had an
extraordinary effect on Hodder himself, and his own emotion was so
inexpressibly stirred that he kept silence a moment to control it.
This proof of the truth of his theory in regard to McCrae he found
overwhelming.

"But you said nothing, McCrae," he began presently. "I felt all along
that you knew what was wrong--if you had only spoken."

"I could not," said McCrae. "I give ye my word I tried, but I just could
not. Many's the time I wanted to--but I said to myself, when I looked at
you, 'wait, it will come, much better than ye can say it.' And ye have
made me see more than I saw, Mr. Hodder,--already ye have. Ye've got the
whole thing in ye're eye, and I only had a part of it. It's because
ye're the bigger man of the two."

"You thought I'd come to it?" demanded Hodder, as though the full force
of this insight had just struck him.

"Well," said McCrae, "I hoped. It seemed, to look at ye, ye'r true
nature--what was by rights inside of ye. That's the best explaining I
can do. And I call to mind that time ye spoke about not making the men
in the classes Christians--that was what started me to thinking."

"And you asked me," returned the rector, "how welcome some of them would
be in Mr. Parr's Pew."

"Ah, it worried me," declared the assistant, with characteristic
frankness, "to see how deep ye were getting in with him."

Hodder did not reply to this. He had himself risen, and stood looking at
McCrae, filled with a new thought.

"There is one thing I should like to say to you--which is very difficult,
McCrae, but I have no doubt you see the matter as clearly as I do. In
making this fight, I have no one but myself to consider. I am a single
man--"

"Yell not need to go on," answered McCrae, with an odd mixture of
sternness and gentleness in his voice. "I'll stand and fall with ye, Mr.
Hodder. Before I ever thought of the Church I learned a trade, as a boy
in Scotland. I'm not a bad carpenter. And if worse comes to worse, I've
an idea I can make as much with my hands as I make in the ministry."

The smile they exchanged across the table sealed the compact between
them.



II

The electric car which carried him to his appointment with the financier
shot westward like a meteor through the night. And now that the hour was
actually at hand, it seemed to Hodder that he was absurdly unprepared to
meet it. New and formidable aspects, hitherto unthought of, rose in his
mind, and the figure of Eldon Parr loomed to Brobdingnagian proportions
as he approached it. In spite of his determination, the life-blood of
his confidence ebbed, a sense of the power and might of the man who had
now become his adversary increased; and that apprehension of the impact
of the great banker's personality, the cutting edge with the vast
achievements wedged in behind it, each adding weight and impetus to its
momentum the apprehension he had felt in less degree on the day of the
first meeting, and which had almost immediately evaporated--surged up
in him now. His fear was lest the charged atmosphere of the banker's
presence might deflect his own hitherto clear perception of true worth.
He dreaded, once in the midst of those disturbing currents, a bungling
presentation of the cause which inspired him, and which he knew to be
righteousness itself.

Suddenly his mood shifted, betraying still another weakness, and he saw
Eldon Parr, suddenly, vividly--more vividly, indeed, than ever before--in
the shades of the hell of his loneliness. And pity welled up, drowning
the image of incarnate greed and selfishness and lust for wealth and
power: The unique pathos of his former relationship with the man
reasserted itself, and Hodder was conscious once more of the dependence
which Eldon Parr had had on his friendship. During that friendship he,
Hodder, had never lost the sense of being the stronger of the two, of
being leaned upon: leaned upon by a man whom the world feared and hated,
and whom he had been enable to regard with anything but compassion and
the unquestionable affection which sprang from it. Appalled by this
transition, he alighted from the car, and stood for a moment alone in the
darkness gazing at the great white houses that rose above the dusky
outline of shrubbery and trees.

At any rate, he wouldn't find that sense of dependence to-night. And it
steeled him somewhat to think, as he resumed his steps, that he would
meet now the other side, the hard side hitherto always turned away. Had
he needed no other warning of this, the answer to his note asking for an
appointment would have been enough,--a brief and formal communication
signed by the banker's secretary. . .

"Mr. Parr is engaged just at present, sir," said the servant who opened
the door. "Would you be good enough to step into the library?"

Hardly had he entered the room when he heard a sound behind him, and
turned to confront Alison. The thought of her, too, had complicated
infinitely his emotions concerning the interview before him, and the
sight of her now, of her mature beauty displayed in evening dress, of her
white throat gleaming whiter against the severe black of her gown, made
him literally speechless. Never had he accused her of boldness, and now
least of all. It was the quality of her splendid courage that was borne
in upon him once more above the host of other feelings and impressions,
for he read in her eyes a knowledge of the meaning of his visit.

They stood facing each other an appreciable moment.

"Mr. Langmaid is with him now," she said, in a low voice.

"Yes," he answered.

Her eyes still rested on his face, questioningly, appraisingly, as though
she were seeking to estimate his preparedness for the ordeal before him,
his ability to go through with it successfully, triumphantly. And in her
mention of Langmaid he recognized that she had meant to sound a note of
warning. She had intimated a consultation of the captains, a council of
war. And yet he had never spoken to her of this visit. This proof of
her partisanship, that she had come to him at the crucial instant,
overwhelmed him.

"You know why I am here?" he managed to say. It had to do with the
extent of her knowledge.

"Oh, why shouldn't I?" she cried, "after what you have told me. And
could you think I didn't understand, from the beginning, that it meant
this?"

His agitation still hampered him. He made a gesture of assent.

"It was inevitable," he said.

"Yes, it' was inevitable," she assented, and walked slowly to the mantel,
resting her hand on it and bending her head. "I felt that you would not
shirk it, and yet I realize how painful it must be to you."

"And to you," he replied quickly.

"Yes, and to me. I do not know what you know, specifically,--I have
never sought to find out things, in detail. That would be horrid. But
I understand--in general--I have understood for many years." She raised
her head, and flashed him a glance that was between a quivering smile and
tears. "And I know that you have certain specific information."

He could only wonder at her intuition.

"So far as I am concerned, it is not for the world," he answered.

"Oh, I appreciate that in you!" she exclaimed. "I wished you to know it.
I wished you to know," she added, a little unsteadily, "how much I admire
you for what you are doing. They are afraid of you--they will crush you
if they can."

He did not reply.

"But you are going to speak the truth," she continued, her voice low and
vibrating, "that is splendid! It must have its effect, no matter what
happens."

"Do you feel that?" he asked, taking a step toward her.

"Yes. When I see you, I feel it, I think." . . .

Whatever answer he might have made to this was frustrated by the
appearance of the figure of Nelson Langmaid in the doorway. He seemed
to survey them benevolently through his spectacles.

"How are you, Hodder? Well, Alison, I have to leave without seeing
anything of you--you must induce your father not to bring his business
home with him. Just a word," he added to the rector, "before you go up."

Hodder turned to Alison. "Good night," he said.

The gentle but unmistakable pressure of her hand he interpreted as the
pinning on him of the badge of her faith. He was to go into battle
wearing her colours. Their eyes met.

"Good night," she answered . . . .

In the hall the lawyer took his arm.

"What's the trouble, Hodder?" he asked, sympathetically.

Hodder, although on his guard, was somewhat taken aback by the directness
of the onslaught.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Langmaid," the rector replied, "that it would take me
longer to tell you than the time at your disposal."

"Dear me," said the lawyer, "this is too bad. Why didn't you come to me?
I am a good friend of yours, Hodder, and there is an additional bond
between us on my sister's account. She is extremely fond of you, you
know. And I have a certain feeling of responsibility for you,--I brought
you here."

"You have always been very kind, and I appreciate it," Hodder replied.
"I should be sorry to cause you any worry or annoyance. But you must
understand that I cannot share the responsibility of my acts with any
one."

"A little advice from an old legal head is sometimes not out of place.
Even Dr. Gilman used to consult me. I hope you will bear in mind how
remarkably well you have been getting along at St. John's, and what a
success you've made."

"Success!" echoed the rector.

Either Mr. Langmaid read nothing in his face, or was determined to read
nothing.

"Assuredly," he answered, benignly. "You have managed to please
everybody, Mr. Parr included,--and some of us are not easy to please.
I thought I'd tell you this, as a friend, as your first friend in the
parish. Your achievement has been all the more remarkable, following,
as you did, Dr. Gilman. Now it would greatly distress me to see that
state of things disturbed, both for your sake and others. I thought I
would just give you a hint, as you are going to see Mr. Parr, that he
is in rather a nervous state. These so-called political reformers have
upset the market and started a lot of legal complications that's why I'm
here to-night. Go easy with him. I know you won't do anything foolish."

The lawyer accompanied this statement with a pat, but this time he did
not succeed in concealing his concern.

"That depends on one's point of view," Hodder returned, with a smile.
"I do not know how you have come to suspect that I am going to disturb
Mr. Parr, but what I have to say to him is between him and me."

Langmaid took up his hat from the table, and sighed.

"Drop in on me sometime," he said, "I'd like to talk to you--Hodder heard
a voice behind him, and turned. A servant was standing there.

"Mr. Parr is ready to see you, sir," he said.

The rector followed him up the stairs, to the room on the second floor,
half office, half study, where the capitalist transacted his business
when at home.



III

Eldon Parr was huddled over his desk reading a typewritten document; but
he rose, and held out his hand, which Hodder took.

"How are you, Mr. Hodder? I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but
matters of some legal importance have arisen on which I was obliged to
make a decision. You're well, I hope." He shot a glance at the rector,
and sat down again, still holding the sheets. "If you will excuse me a
moment longer, I'll finish this."

"Certainly," Hodder replied.

"Take a chair," said Mr. Parr, "you'll find the evening paper beside
you."

Hodder sat down, and the banker resumed his perusal of the document, his
eye running rapidly over the pages, pausing once in a while to scratch
out a word or to make a note on the margin. In the concentration of the
man on the task before him the rector read a design, an implication that
the affairs of the Church were of a minor importance: sensed, indeed,
the new attitude of hostility, gazed upon the undiscovered side, the
dangerous side before which other men had quailed. Alison's words
recurred to him, "they are afraid of you, they will crush you if they
can." Eldon Parr betrayed, at any rate, no sign of fear. If his mental
posture were further analyzed, it might be made out to contain an
intimation that the rector, by some act, had forfeited the right
to the unique privilege of the old relationship.

Well, the fact that the banker had, in some apparently occult manner,
been warned, would make Hodder's task easier--or rather less difficult.
His feelings were even more complicated than he had anticipated. The
moments of suspense were trying to his nerves, and he had a shrewd notion
that this making men wait was a favourite manoeuvre of Eldon Parr's; nor
had he underrated the benumbing force of that personality. It was
evident that the financier intended him to open the battle, and he was
--as he had expected--finding it difficult to marshal the regiments of his
arguments. In vain he thought of the tragedy of Garvin . . . . The
thing was more complicated. And behind this redoubtable and sinister
Eldon Parr he saw, as it were, the wraith of that: other who had once
confessed the misery of his loneliness. . . .

At last the banker rang, sharply, the bell on his desk. A secretary
entered, to whom he dictated a telegram which contained these words:
"Langmaid has discovered a way out." It was to be sent to an address in
Texas. Then he turned in his chair and crossed his knees, his hand
fondling an ivory paper-cutter. He smiled a little.

"Well, Mr. Hodder," he said.

The rector, intensely on his guard, merely inclined his head in
recognition that his turn had come.

"I was sorry," the banker continued, after a perceptible pause,--that
you could not see your way clear to have come with me on the cruise."

"I must thank you again," Hodder answered, "but I felt--as I wrote you
--that certain matters made it impossible for me to go."

"I suppose you had your reasons, but I think you would have enjoyed the
trip. I had a good, seaworthy boat--I chartered her from Mr. Lieber, the
president of the Continental Zinc, you know. I went as far as Labrador.
A wonderful coast, Mr. Hodder."

"It must be," agreed the rector. It was clear that Mr. Parr intended to
throw upon him the onus of the first move. There was a silence, brief,
indeed, but long enough for Hodder to feel more and more distinctly the
granite hardness which the other had become, to experience a rising,
reenforcing anger. He went forward, steadily but resolutely, on the
crest of it. "I have remained in the city," he continued, "and I have had
the opportunity to discover certain facts of which I have hitherto been
ignorant, and which, in my opinion, profoundly affect the welfare of the
church. It is of these I wished to speak to you."

Mr. Parr waited.

"It is not much of an exaggeration to say that ever since I came here
I have been aware that St. John's, considering the long standing of the
parish, the situation of the church in a thickly populated district, is
not fulfilling its mission. But I have failed until now to perceive the
causes of that inefficiency."

"Inefficiency?" The banker repeated the word.

"Inefficiency," said Hodder. "The reproach, the responsibility is
largely mine, as the rector, the spiritual, head of the parish. I
believe I am right when I say that the reason for the decision, some
twenty years ago, to leave the church where it is, instead of selling the
property and building in the West End, was that it might minister to the
poor in the neighbourhood, to bring religion and hope into their lives,
and to exert its influence towards eradicating the vice and misery which
surround it."

"But I thought you had agreed," said Mr. Parr, coldly, "that we were to
provide for that in the new chapel and settlement house."

"For reasons which I hope to make plain to you, Mr. Parr," Hodder
replied, "those people can never be reached, as they ought to be reached,
by building that settlement house. The principle is wrong, the day is
past when such things can be done--in that way." He laid an emphasis on
these words. "It is good, I grant you, to care for the babies and
children of the poor, it is good to get young women and men out of the
dance-halls, to provide innocent amusement, distraction, instruction.
But it is not enough. It leaves the great, transforming thing in the
lives of these people untouched, and it will forever remain untouched so
long as a sense of wrong, a continually deepening impression of an
unchristian civilization upheld by the Church herself, exists. Such an
undertaking as that settlement house--I see clearly now--is a palliation,
a poultice applied to one of many sores, a compromise unworthy of the
high mission of the Church. She should go to the root of the disease.
It is her first business to make Christians, who, by amending their own
lives, by going out individually and collectively into the life of the
nation, will gradually remove these conditions."

Mr. Parr sat drumming on the table. Hodder met his look.

"So you, too, have come to it," he said.

"Have come to what?"

"Socialism."

Hodder, in the state of clairvoyance in which he now surprisingly found
himself, accurately summed up the value and meaning of the banker's sigh.

"Say, rather," he replied, "that I have come to Christianity. We shall
never have what is called socialism until there is no longer any
necessity for it, until men, of their owe free will, are ready to
renounce selfish, personal ambition and power and work for humanity,
for the state."

Mr. Parr's gesture implied that he cared not by what name the thing was
called, but he still appeared strangely, astonishingly calm;--Hodder,
with all his faculties acute, apprehended that he was dangerously calm.
The man who had formerly been his friend was now completely obliterated,
and he had the feeling almost of being about to grapple, in mortal
combat, with some unknown monster whose tactics and resources were
infinite, whose victims had never escaped. The monster was in Eldon
Parr--that is how it came to him. The waxy, relentless demon was
aroused. It behooved him, Hodder, to step carefully . . . .

"That is all very fine, Mr. Hodder, very altruistic, very Christian,
I've no doubt-but the world doesn't work that way." (These were the
words borne in on Hodder's consciousness.) "What drives the world is the
motive furnished by the right of acquiring and holding property. If we
had a division to-day, the able men would come out on top next year."

The rector shook his head. He remembered, at that moment, Horace
Bentley.

"What drives the world is a far higher motive, Mr. Parr, the motive
with which have been fired the great lights of history, the motive of
renunciation and service which is transforming governments, which is
gradually making the world a better place in which to live. And we are
seeing men and women imbued with it, rising in ever increasing numbers on
every side to-day."

"Service!" Eldon Parr had seized upon the word as it passed and held it.
"What do you think my life has been? I suppose," he said, with a touch
of intense bitterness, "that you, too, who six months ago seemed as
reasonable a man as I ever met, have joined in the chorus of
denunciators. It has become the fashion to-day, thanks to your
socialists, reformers, and agitators, to decry a man because he is rich,
to take it for granted that he is a thief and a scoundrel, that he has no
sense of responsibility for his country and his fellow-men. The glory,
the true democracy of this nation, lies in its equal opportunity for all.
They take no account of that, of the fact that each has had the same
chance as his fellows. No, but they cry out that the man who, by the
sweat of his brow, has earned wealth ought to divide it up with the lazy
and the self-indulgent and the shiftless.

"Take my case, for instance,--it is typical of thousands. I came to this
city as a boy in my teens, with eight dollars in my pocket which I had
earned on a farm. I swept the floor, cleaned the steps, moved boxes and
ran errands in Gabriel Parker's store on Third Street. I was
industrious, sober, willing to do anything. I fought, I tell you every
inch of my way. As soon as I saved a little money I learned to use every
ounce of brain I possessed to hold on to it. I trusted a man once, and I
had to begin all over again. And I discovered, once for all, if a man
doesn't look out for himself, no one will.

"I don't pretend that I am any better than any one else, I have had to
take life as I found it, and make the best of it. I conformed to the
rules of the game; I soon had sense enough knocked into me to understand
that the conditions were not of my making. But I'll say this for
myself," Eldon Parr leaned forward over the blotter, "I had standards,
and I stuck by them. I wanted to be a decent citizen, to bring up my
children in the right way. I didn't squander my money, when I got it, on
wine and women, I respected other men's wives, I supported the Church and
the institutions of the city. I too even I had my ambitions, my ideals
--and they were not entirely worldly ones. You would probably accuse me of
wishing to acquire only the position of power which I hold. If you had
accepted my invitation to go aboard the yacht this summer, it was my
intention to unfold to you a scheme of charities which has long been
forming in my mind, and which I think would be of no small benefit to the
city where I have made my fortune. I merely mention this to prove to you
that I am not unmindful, in spite of the circumstances of my own life,
of the unfortunates whose mental equipment is not equal to my own."

By this "poor boy" argument which--if Hodder had known--Mr. Parr had
used at banquets with telling effect, the banker seemed to regain
perspective and equilibrium, to plant his feet once more on the
rock of the justification of his life, and from which, by a somewhat
extraordinary process he had not quite understood, he had been partially
shaken off. As he had proceeded with his personal history, his manner
had gradually become one of the finality of experience over theory,
of the forbearance of the practical man with the visionary. Like most
successful citizens of his type, he possessed in a high degree the
faculty of creating sympathy, of compelling others to accept
--temporarily, at least--his point of view. It was this faculty, Hodder
perceived, which had heretofore laid an enchantment upon him, and it was
not without a certain wonder that he now felt himself to be released from
the spell.

The perceptions of the banker were as keen, and his sense of security was
brief. Somehow, as he met the searching eye of the rector, he was unable
to see the man as a visionary, but beheld--and, to do him justice--felt a
twinge of respect for an adversary worthy of his steel.

He, who was accustomed to prepare for clouds when they were mere specks
on his horizon, paused even now to marvel why he had not dealt with this.
Here was a man--a fanatic, if he liked--but still a man who positively
did not fear him, to whom his wrath and power were as nothing! A new and
startling and complicated sensation--but Eldon Parr was no coward. If he
had, consciously or unconsciously, formerly looked upon the clergyman as
a dependent, Hodder appeared to be one no more. The very ruggedness of
the man had enhanced, expanded--as it were--until it filled the room.
And Hodder had, with an audacity unparalleled in the banker's experience
arraigned by implication his whole life, managed to put him on the
defensive.

"But if that be your experience," the rector said, "and it has become
your philosophy, what is it in you that impels you to give these large
sums for the public good?"

"I should suppose that you, as a clergyman, might understand that my
motive is a Christian one."

Hodder sat very still, but a higher light came into his eyes.

"Mr. Parr," he replied, "I have been a friend of yours, and I am a friend
still. And what I am going to tell you is not only in the hope that
others may benefit, but that your own soul may be saved. I mean that
literally--your own soul. You are under the impression that you are a
Christian, but you are not and never have been one. And you will not be
one until your whole life is transformed, until you become a different
man. If you do not change, it is my duty to warn you that the sorrow and
suffering, the uneasiness which you now know, and which drive you on, in
search of distraction, to adding useless sums of money to your fortune
--this suffering, I say, will become intensified. You will die in the
knowledge of it, and live on after, in the knowledge of it."

In spite of himself, the financier drew back before this unexpected
blast, the very intensity of which had struck a chill of terror in his
inmost being. He had been taken off his guard,--for he had supposed the
day long past--if it had ever existed--when a spiritual rebuke would
upset him; the day long past when a minister could pronounce one with
any force. That the Church should ever again presume to take herself
seriously had never occurred to him. And yet--the man had denounced him
in a moment of depression, of nervous irritation and exasperation against
a government which had begun to interfere with the sacred liberty of its
citizens, against political agitators who had spurred that government on.
The world was mad. No element, it seemed, was now content to remain in
its proper place. His voice, as he answered, shook with rage,--all the
greater because the undaunted sternness by which it was confronted seemed
to reduce it to futility.

"Take care!" he cried, "take care! You, nor any other man, clergyman or
no clergyman, have any right to be the judge of my conduct."

"On the contrary," said Holder, "if your conduct affects the welfare, the
progress, the reputation of the church of which I am rector, I have the
right. And I intend to exercise it. It becomes my duty, however
painful, to tell you, as a member of the Church, wherein you have
wronged the Church and wronged yourself."

He didn't raise his tone, and there was in it more of sorrow than of
indignation. The banker turned an ashen gray . . A moment elapsed
before he spoke, a transforming moment. He suddenly became ice.

"Very well," he said. "I can't pretend to account for these astounding
views you have acquired--and I am using a mild term. Let me say this:
(he leaned forward a little, across the desk) I demand that you be
specific. I am a busy man, I have little time to waste, I have certain
matters--before me which must be attended to to-night. I warn you that
I will not listen any longer to vague accusations."

It was Holder's turn to marvel. Did Eldon Purr, after all; have no sense
of guilt? Instantaneously, automatically, his own anger rose.

"You may be sure, Mr. Parr, that I should not be here unless I were
prepared to be specific. And what I am going to say to you I have
reserved for your ear alone, in the hope that you will take it to heart,
while it is not yet too late, said amend your life accordingly."

Eldon Parr shifted slightly. His look became inscrutable, was riveted on
the rector.

"I shall call your attention first to a man of whom you have probably
never heard. He is dead now--he threw himself into the river this
summer, with a curse on his lips--I am afraid--a curse against you. A
few years ago he lived happily with his wife and child in a little house
on the Grade Suburban, and he had several thousand dollars as a result of
careful saving and systematic self-denial.

"Perhaps you have never thought of the responsibilities of a great name.
This man, like thousands of others in the city, idealized you. He looked
up to you as the soul of honour, as a self-made man who by his own
unaided efforts--as you yourself have just pointed out--rose from a poor
boy to a position of power and trust in the community. He saw you a
prominent layman in the Church of God. He was dazzled by the brilliancy
of your success, inspired by a civilization which--gave such
opportunities. He recognized that he himself had not the brains for such
an achievement,--his hope and love and ambition were centred in his boy."

At the word Eldon Parr's glance was suddenly dulled by pain. He
tightened his lips.

"That boy was then of a happy, merry disposition, so the mother says, and
every summer night as she cooked supper she used to hear him laughing as
he romped in the yard with his father. When I first saw him this summer,
it was two days before his father committed suicide. The child was
lying, stifled with the heat, in the back room of one of those desolate
lodging houses in Dalton Street, and his little body had almost wasted
away.

"While I was there the father came in, and when he saw me he was filled
with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches,
because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had
wrecked his life. You had shattered his faith in humanity, his ideal.
From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a monomaniac whom
no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who needed care and
nursing. He said he hoped the boy would die.

"And what had happened? The man had bought, with all the money he had
in the world, Consolidated Tractions. He had bought it solely because
of his admiration for your ability, his faith in your name. It was
inconceivable to him that a man of your standing, a public benefactor, a
supporter of church and charities, would permit your name to be connected
with any enterprise that was not sound and just. Thousands like Garvin
lost all they had, while you are still a rich man. It is further
asserted that you sold out all your stock at a high price, with the
exception of that in the leased lines, which are guaranteed heavy
dividends."

"Have you finished?" demanded Eldon Parr.

"Not quite, on this subject," replied the rector. "Two nights after
that, the man threw himself in the river. His body was pulled out by men
on a tugboat, and his worthless stock certificate was in his pocket. It
is now in the possession of Mr. Horace Bentley. Thanks to Mr. Bentley,
the widow found a temporary home, and the child has almost recovered."

Hodder paused. His interest had suddenly become concentrated upon the
banker's new demeanour, and he would not have thought it within the range
of possibility that a man could listen to such a revelation concerning
himself without the betrayal of some feeling. But so it was,--Eldon Parr
had been coldly attentive, save for the one scarcely perceptible tremor
when the boy was mentioned. His interrogatory gesture gave the very
touch of perfection to this attitude, since it proclaimed him to have
listened patiently to a charge so preposterous that a less reasonable man
would have cut it short.

"And what leads you to suppose," he inquired, "that I am responsible in
this matter? What leads you to infer that the Consolidated Tractions
Company was not organized in good faith? Do you think that business men
are always infallible? The street-car lines of this city were at sixes
and sevens, fighting each other; money was being wasted by poor
management. The idea behind the company was a public-spirited one, to
give the citizens cheaper and better service, by a more modern equipment,
by a wider system of transfer. It seems to me, Mr. Hodder, that you put
yourself in a more quixotic position than the so-called reformers when
you assume that the men who organize a company in good faith are
personally responsible for every share of stock that is sold, and for
the welfare of every individual who may buy the stock. We force no one
to buy it. They do so at their own risk. I myself have thousands of
dollars of worthless stock in my safe. I have never complained."

The full force of Hodder's indignation went into his reply.

"I am not talking about the imperfect code of human justice under which
we live, Mr. Parr," he cried. "This is not a case in which a court of
law may exonerate you, it is between you and your God. But I have taken
the trouble to find out, from unquestioned sources, the truth about the
Consolidated Tractions Company--I shall not go into the details at
length--they are doubtless familiar to you. I know that the legal genius
of Mr. Langmaid, one of my vestry, made possible the organization of the
company, and thereby evaded the plain spirit of the law of the state.
I know that one branch line was bought for two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, and capitalized for three millions, and that most of the others
were scandalously over-capitalized. I know that while the coming
transaction was still a secret, you and other, gentlemen connected with
the matter bought up large interests in other lines, which you proceeded
to lease to yourselves at guaranteed dividends which these lines do not
earn. I know that the first large dividend was paid out of capital. And
the stock which you sold to poor Garvin was so hopelessly watered that it
never could have been anything but worthless. If, in spite of these
facts, you do not deem yourself responsible for the misery which has been
caused, if your conscience is now clear, it is my duty to tell you that
there is a higher bar of justice."

The intensity of the fire of the denunciation had, indeed, a momentary
yet visible effect in the banker's expression. Whatever the emotions
thus lashed to self-betrayal, anger, hatred,--fear, perhaps, Hodder could
not detect a trace of penitence; and he was aware, on the part of the
other, of a supreme, almost spasmodic effort for self-control. The
constitutional reluctance of Eldon Parr to fight openly could not have
been more clearly demonstrated.

"Because you are a clergyman, Mr. Hodder," he began, "because you are
the rector of St. John's, I have allowed you to say things to me which
I would not have permitted from any other man. I have tried to take
into account your point of view, which is naturally restricted, your
pardonable ignorance of what business men, who wish to do their duty by
Church and State, have to contend with. When you came to this parish you
seemed to have a sensible, a proportional view of things; you were
content to confine your activities to your own sphere, content not to
meddle with politics and business, which you could, at first hand, know
nothing about. The modern desire of clergymen to interfere in these
matters has ruined the usefulness of many of them.

"I repeat, I have tried to be patient. I venture to hope, still, that
this extraordinary change in you may not be permanent, but merely the
result of a natural sympathy with the weak and unwise and unfortunate who
are always to be found in a complex civilization. I can even conceive
how such a discovery must have shocked you, temporarily aroused your
indignation, as a clergyman, against the world as it is--and, I may add,
as it has always been. My personal friendship for you, and my interest
in your future welfare impel me to make a final appeal to you not to ruin
a career which is full of promise."

The rector did not take advantage of the pause. A purely psychological
curiosity hypnotized him to see how far the banker would go in his
apparent generosity.

"I once heard you say, I believe, in a sermon, that the Christian
religion is a leaven. It is the leaven that softens and ameliorates the
hard conditions of life, that makes our relations with our fellow-men
bearable. But life is a contest, it is war. It always has been, and
always will be. Business is war, commerce is war, both among nations and
individuals. You cannot get around it. If a man does not exterminate
his rivals they will exterminate him. In other days churches were built
and endowed with the spoils of war, and did not disdain the money.
To-day they cheerfully accept the support and gifts of business men.
I do not accuse them of hypocrisy. It is a recognition on their part
that business men, in spite of hard facts, are not unmindful of the
spiritual side of life, and are not deaf to the injunction to help
others. And when, let me ask you, could you find in the world's history
more splendid charities than are around us to-day? Institutions endowed
for medical research, for the conquest of deadly diseases? libraries,
hospitals, schools--men giving their fortunes for these things, the
fruits of a life's work so laboriously acquired? Who can say that the
modern capitalist is not liberal, is not a public benefactor?

"I dislike being personal, but you have forced it upon me. I dislike to
refer to what I have already done in the matter of charities, but I
hinted to you awhile ago of a project I have conceived and almost
perfected of gifts on a much larger scale than I have ever attempted."
The financier stared at him meaningly. "And I had you in mind as one of
the three men whom I should consult, whom I should associate with myself
in the matter. We cannot change human nature, but we can better
conditions by wise giving. I do not refer now to the settle ment house,
which I am ready to help make and maintain as the best in the country,
but I have in mind a system to be carried out with the consent and aid
of the municipal government, of play-grounds, baths, parks, places of
recreation, and hospitals, for the benefit of the people, which will
put our city in the very forefront of progress. And I believe, as a
practical man, I can convince you that the betterment which you and I so
earnestly desire can be brought about in no other way. Agitation can
only result in anarchy and misery for all."

Hodder's wrath, as he rose from his chair, was of the sort that appears
incredibly to add to the physical stature,--the bewildering spiritual
wrath which is rare indeed, and carries all before it.

"Don't tempt me, Mr. Parr!" he said. "Now that I know the truth, I tell
you frankly I would face poverty and persecution rather than consent to
your offer. And I warn you once more not to flatter yourself that
existence ends here, that you will, not be called to answer for every
wrong act you have committed in accumulating your fortune, that what
you call business is an affair of which God takes no account. What
I say may seem foolishness to you, but I tell you, in the words of that
Foolishness, that it will not profit you to gain the whole world and lose
your own soul. You remind me that the Church in old time accepted gifts
from the spoils of war, and I will add of rapine and murder. And the
Church to-day, to repeat your own parallel, grows rich with money
wrongfully got. Legally? Ah, yes, legally, perhaps. But that will not
avail you. And the kind of church you speak of--to which I, to my shame,
once consented--Our Lord repudiates. It is none of his. I warn you, Mr.
Parr, in his Name, first to make your peace with your brothers before you
presume to lay another gift on the altar."

During this withering condemnation of himself Eldon Parr sat motionless,
his face grown livid, an expression on it that continued to haunt Hodder
long afterwards. An expression, indeed, which made the banker almost
unrecognizable.

"Go," he whispered, his hand trembling visibly as he pointed towards the
door. "Go--I have had enough of this."

"Not until I have said one thing more," replied the rector, undaunted.
"I have found the woman whose marriage with your son you prevented, whom
you bought off and started on the road to hell without any sense of
responsibility. You have made of her a prostitute and a drunkard.
Whether she can be rescued or not is problematical. She, too, is in
Mr. Bentley's care, a man upon whom you once showed no mercy. I leave
Garvin, who has gone to his death, and Kate Marcy and Horace Bentley to
your conscience, Mr. Parr. That they are representative of many others,
I do not doubt. I tell you solemnly that the whole meaning of life is
service to others, and I warn you, before it is too late, to repent and
make amends. Gifts will not help you, and charities are of no avail."

At the reference to Kate Marcy Eldon Parr's hand dropped to his side.
He seemed to have physical difficulty in speaking.

"Ah, you have found that woman!" He leaned an elbow on the desk,
he seemed suddenly to have become weary, spent, old. And Hodder,
as he watched him, perceived--that his haggard look was directed towards
a photograph in a silver frame on the table--a photograph of Preston
Parr. At length he broke the silence.

"What would you have had me do?" he asked. "Permit my son to marry a
woman of the streets, I suppose. That would have been Christianity,
according to your notion. Come now, what world you have done, if your
son had been in question?"

A wave of pity swept over the rector.

"Why," he said, why did you have nothing but cruelty in your heart, and
contempt for her? When you saw that she was willing, for the love of the
son whom you loved, to give up all that life meant to her, how could you
destroy her without a qualm? The crime you committed was that you
refused to see God in that woman's soul, when he had revealed himself to
you. You looked for wile, for cunning, for self-seeking,--and they were
not there. Love had obliterated them. When you saw how meekly she
obeyed you, and agreed to go away, why did you not have pity? If you
had listened to your conscience, you would have known what to do.

"I do not say that you should not have opposed the marriage--then.
Marriage is not to be lightly entered into. From the moment you went to
see her you became responsible for her. You hurled her into the abyss,
and she has come back to haunt you. You should have had her educated and
cared for--she would have submitted, to any plan you proposed. And if,
after a sensible separation, you became satisfied as to her character and
development, and your son still wished to marry her, you should have
withdrawn your objections.

"As it is, and in consequence of your act, you have lost your son. He
left you then, and you have no more control over him."

"Stop!" cried Eldon Parr, "for God's sake stop! I won't stand any more
of this. I will not listen to criticism of my life, to strictures on my
conduct from you or any other man." He reached for a book on the corner
of his desk--a cheque book.--"You'll want money for these people, I
suppose," he added brutally. "I will give it, but it must be understood
that I do not recognize any right of theirs to demand it."

For a moment Holder did not trust himself to reply. He looked down
across the desk at the financier, who was fumbling with the leaves.

"They do not demand it, Mr. Parr," he answered, gently. "And I have
tried to make it plain to you that you have lost the right to give it.
I expected to fail in this. I have failed."

"What do you mean?" Eldon Parr let the cheque book close.

"I mean what I said," the rector replied. "That if you would save your
soul you must put an end, to-morrow, to the acquisition of money, and
devote the rest of your life to an earnest and sincere attempt to make
just restitution to those you have wronged. And you must ask the
forgiveness of God for your sins. Until you do that, your charities are
abominations in his sight. I will not trouble you any longer, except to
say that I shall be ready to come to you at any time my presence may be
of any help to you."

The banker did not speak . . . . With a single glance towards the
library Holder left the house, but paused for a moment outside to gaze
back at it, as it loomed in the darkness against the stars.




CHAPTER XXI

ALISON GOES TO CHURCH


I

On the following Sunday morning the early light filtered into Alison's
room, and she opened her strong eyes. Presently she sprang from her bed
and drew back the curtains of the windows, gazing rapturously into the
crystal day. The verdure of the Park was freshened to an incredible
brilliancy by the dew, a thin white veil of mist was spread over the
mirror of the waters, the trees flung long shadows across the turf.

A few minutes later she was out, thrilled by the silence, drawing in
deep, breaths of the morning air; lingering by still lakes catching the
blue of the sky--a blue that left its stain upon the soul; as the sun
mounted she wandered farther, losing herself in the wilderness of the
forest.

At eight o'clock, when she returned, there were signs that the city had
awakened. A mounted policeman trotted past her as she crossed a gravel
drive, and on the tree-flecked stretches, which lately had been empty as
Eden, human figures were scattered. A child, with a sailboat that
languished for lack of wind, stared at her, first with fascination and
wonder in his eyes, and then smiled at her tentatively. She returned the
smile with a start.

Children had stared at her like that before now, and for the first time
in her life she asked herself what the look might mean. She had never
really been fond of them: she had never, indeed, been brought much in
contact with them. But now, without warning, a sudden fierce yearning
took possession of her: surprised and almost frightened, she stopped
irresistibly and looked back at the thin little figure crouched beside
the water, to discover that his widened eyes were still upon her. Her
own lingered on him shyly, and thus for a moment she hung in doubt
whether to flee or stay, her heart throbbing as though she were on the
brink of some unknown and momentous adventure. She took a timid step.

"What's your name?" she asked.

The boy told her.

"What's yours?" he ventured, still under the charm.

"Alison."

He had never heard of that name, and said so. They deplored the lack of
wind. And presently, still mystified, but gathering courage, he asked
her why she blushed, at which her colour deepened.

"I can't help it," she told him.

"I like it," the boy said.

Though the grass was still wet, she got down on her knees in her white
skirt, the better to push the boat along the shore: once it drifted
beyond their reach, and was only rescued by a fallen branch discovered
with difficulty.

The arrival of the boy's father, an anaemic-looking little man, put an
end to their play. He deplored the condition of the lady's dress.

"It doesn't matter in the least," she assured him, and fled in a mood she
did not attempt to analyze. Hurrying homeward, she regained her room,
bathed, and at half past eight appeared in the big, formal dining-room,
from which the glare of the morning light was carefully screened. Her
father insisted on breakfasting here; and she found him now seated before
the white table-cloth, reading a newspaper. He glanced up at her
critically.

"So you've decided to honour me this morning," he said.

"I've been out in the Park," she replied, taking the chair opposite him.
He resumed his reading, but presently, as she was pouring out the coffee,
he lowered the paper again.

"What's the occasion to-day?" he asked.

"The occasion?" she repeated, without acknowledging that she had
instantly grasped his implication. His eyes were on her gown.

"You are not accustomed, as a rule, to pay much deference to Sunday."

"Doesn't the Bible say, somewhere," she inquired, "that the Sabbath was
made for man? Perhaps that may be broadened after a while, to include
woman."

"But you have never been an advocate, so far as I know, of women taking
advantage of their opportunity by going to Church."

"What's the use," demanded Alison, "of the thousands of working women
spending the best part of the day in the ordinary church, when their feet
and hands and heads are aching? Unless some fire is kindled in their
souls, it is hopeless for them to try to obtain any benefit from
religion--so-called--as it is preached to them in most churches."

"Fire in their souls!" exclaimed the banker.

"Yes. If the churches offered those who might be leaders among their
fellows a practical solution of existence, kindled their self-respect,
replaced a life of drudgery by one of inspiration--that would be worth
while. But you will never get such a condition as that unless your
pulpits are filled by personalities, instead of puppets who are all cast
in one mould, and who profess to be there by divine right."

"I am glad to see at least that you are taking an interest in religious
matters," her father observed, meaningly.

Alison coloured. But she retorted with spirit.

"That is true of a great many persons to-day who are thinking on the
subject. If Christianity is a solution of life, people are demanding of
the churches that they shall perform their function, and show us how, and
why, or else cease to encumber the world."

Eldon Parr folded up his newspaper.

"So you are going to Church this morning," he said.

"Yes. At what time will you be ready?"

"At quarter to eleven. But if you are going to St. John', you will have
to start earlier. I'll order a car at half past ten."

"Where are you going?" She held her breath, unconsciously, for the
answer.

"To Calvary," he replied coldly, as he rose to leave the room. "But I
hesitate to ask you to come,--I am afraid you will not find a religion
there that suits you."

For a moment she could not trust herself to speak. The secret which,
ever since Friday evening, she had been burning to learn was disclosed
. . . Her father had broken with Mr. Hodder!

"Please don't order the motor for me," she said. "I'd rather go in the
street cars."

She sat very still in the empty room, her face burning.

Characteristically, her father had not once mentioned the rector of St.
John's, yet had contrived to imply that her interest in Hodder was
greater than her interest in religion. And she was forced to admit, with
her customary honesty, that the implication was true.


The numbers who knew Alison Parr casually thought her cold. They admired
a certain quality in her work, but they did not suspect that that quality
was the incomplete expression of an innate idealism capable of being
fanned into flame,--for she was subject to rare but ardent enthusiasms
which kindled and transformed her incredibly in the eyes of the few to
whom the process had been revealed. She had had even a longer list of
suitors than any one guessed; men who--usually by accident--had touched
the hidden spring, and suddenly beholding an unimagined woman, had
consequently lost their heads. The mistake most of them had made (for
subtlety in such affairs is not a masculine trait) was the failure to
recognize and continue to present the quality in them which had awakened
her. She had invariably discovered the feet of clay.

Thus disillusion had been her misfortune--perhaps it would be more
accurate to say her fortune. She had built up, after each invasion, her
defences more carefully and solidly than before, only to be again
astonished and dismayed by the next onslaught, until at length the
question had become insistent--the question of an alliance for purposes
of greater security. She had returned to her childhood home to consider
it, frankly recognizing it as a compromise, a fall . . . .

And here, in this sanctuary of her reflection, and out of a quarter on
which she had set no watch, out of a wilderness which she had believed to
hold nothing save the ruined splendours of the past, had come one who,
like the traditional figures of the wilderness, had attracted her by his
very uncouthness and latent power. And the anomaly he presented in what
might be called the vehemence of his advocacy of an outworn orthodoxy,
in his occupation of the pulpit of St. John's, had quickened at once her
curiosity and antagonism. It had been her sudden discovery, or rather
her instinctive suspicion of the inner conflict in him which had set her
standard fluttering in response. Once more (for the last time--something
whispered--now) she had become the lady of the lists; she sat on her
walls watching, with beating heart and straining eyes, the closed helm
of her champion, ready to fling down the revived remnant of her faith as
prize or forfeit. She had staked all on the hope that he would not lower
his lance. . . . .

Saturday had passed in suspense . . . . And now was flooding in on
her the certainty that he had not failed her; that he had, with a sublime
indifference to a worldly future and success, defied the powers. With
indifference, too, to her! She knew, of course, that he loved her.
A man with less of greatness would have sought a middle way . . . .

When, at half past ten, she fared forth into the sunlight, she was filled
with anticipation, excitement, concern, feelings enhanced and not soothed
by the pulsing vibrations of the church bells in the softening air. The
swift motion of the electric car was grateful. . . But at length the
sight of familiar landmarks, old-fashioned dwellings crowded in between
the stores and factories of lower Tower Street, brought back
recollections of the days when she had come this way, other Sunday
mornings, and in a more leisurely public vehicle, with her mother.
Was it possible that she, Alison Parr, were going to church now? Her
excitement deepened, and she found it difficult to bring herself to the
realization that her destination was a church--the church of her
childhood. At this moment she could only think of St. John's as the
setting of the supreme drama.

When she alighted at the corner of Burton Street there was the
well-remembered, shifting group on the pavement in front of the church
porch. How many times, in the summer and winter, in fair weather and
cloudy, in rain and sleet and snow had she approached that group, as she
approached it now! Here were the people, still, in the midst of whom her
earliest associations had been formed, changed, indeed,-but yet the same.
No, the change was in her, and the very vastness of that change came as a
shock. These had stood still, anchored to their traditions, while she
--had she grown? or merely wandered? She had searched, at least, and seen.
She had once accepted them--if indeed as a child it could have been said
of her that she accepted anything; she had been unable then, at any rate,
to bring forward any comparisons.

Now she beheld them, collectively, in their complacent finery, as
representing a force, a section of the army blocking the heads of the
passes of the world's progress, resting on their arms, but ready at the
least uneasy movement from below to man the breastworks, to fling down
the traitor from above, to fight fiercely for the solidarity of their
order. And Alison even believed herself to detect, by something
indefinable in their attitudes as they stood momentarily conversing
in lowered voices, an aroused suspicion, an uneasy anticipation. Her
imagination went so far as to apprehend, as they greeted her unwonted
appearance, that they read in it an addition to other vague and
disturbing phenomena. Her colour was high.

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Atterbury, "I thought you had gone back to New
York long ago!"

Beside his mother stood Gordon--more dried up, it seemed, than ever.
Alison recalled him, as on this very spot, a thin, pale boy in short
trousers, and Mrs. Atterbury a beautiful and controlled young matron
associated with St. John's and with children's parties. She was
wonderful yet, with her white hair and straight nose, her erect figure
still slight. Alison knew that Mrs. Atterbury had never forgiven her for
rejecting her son--or rather for being the kind of woman who could reject
him.

"Surely you haven't been here all summer?"

Alison admitted it, characteristically, without explanations.

"It seems so natural to see you here at the old church, after all these
years," the lady went on, and Alison was aware that Mrs. Atterbury
questioned--or rather was at a loss for the motives which had led such an
apostate back to the fold. "We must thank Mr. Hodder, I suppose. He's
very remarkable. I hear he is resuming the services to-day for the first
time since June."

Alison was inclined to read a significance into Mrs. Atterbury's glance
at her son, who was clearing his throat.

"But--where is Mr. Parr?" he asked. "I understand he has come back from
his cruise."

"Yes, he is back. I came without--him---as you see."

She found a certain satisfaction in adding to the mystification, to the
disquietude he betrayed by fidgeting more than usual.

"But--he always comes when he is in town. Business--I suppose--ahem!"

"No," replied Alison, dropping her bomb with cruel precision, "he has
gone to Calvary."

The agitation was instantaneous.

"To Calvary!" exclaimed mother and son in one breath.

"Why?" It was Gordon who demanded. "A--a special occasion there--a
bishop or something?"

"I'm afraid you must ask him," she said.

She was delayed on the steps, first by Nan Ferguson, then by the
Laureston Greys, and her news outdistanced her to the porch. Charlotte
Plimpton looking very red and solid, her eyes glittering with excitement,
blocked her way.

"Alison?" she cried, in the slightly nasal voice that was a Gore
inheritance, "I'm told your father's gone to Calvary! Has Mr. Hodder
offended him? I heard rumours--Wallis seems to be afraid that something
has happened."

"He hasn't said anything about it to me, Charlotte," said Alison, in
quiet amusement, "but then he wouldn't, you know. I don't live here any
longer, and he has no reason to think that I would be interested in
church matters."

"But--why did you come?" Charlotte demanded, with Gore naivete.

Alison smiled.

"You mean--what was my motive?"

Charlotte actually performed the miracle of getting redder. She was
afraid of Alison--much more afraid since she had known of her vogue in
the East. When Alison had put into execution the astounding folly (to
the Gore mind) of rejecting the inheritance of millions to espouse a
profession, it had been Charlotte Plimpton who led the chorus of ridicule
and disapproval. But success, to the Charlotte Plimptons, is its own
justification, and now her ambition (which had ramifications) was to have
Alison "do" her a garden. Incidentally, the question had flashed through
her mind as to how much Alison's good looks had helped towards her
triumph in certain shining circles.

"Oh, of course I didn't mean that," she hastened to deny, although it was
exactly what she had meant. Her curiosity unsatisfied--and not likely to
be satisfied at once, she shifted abruptly to the other burning subject.
"I was so glad when I learned you hadn't gone. Grace Larrabbee's garden
is a dream, my dear. Wallis and I stopped there the other day and the
caretaker showed it to us. Can't you make a plan for me, so that I may
begin next spring? And there's something else I wanted to ask you.
Wallis and I are going to New York the end of the month. Shall you be
there?"

"I don't know," said Alison, cautiously.

"We want so much to see one or two of your gardens on Long Island, and
especially the Sibleys', on the Hudson. I know it will be late in the
season,--but don't you think you could take us, Alison? And I intend to
give you a dinner. I'll write you a note. Here's Wallis."

"Well, well, well," said Mr. Plimpton, shaking Alison's hand. "Where's
father? I hear he's gone to Calvary."

Alison made her escape. Inside the silent church, Eleanor Goodrich gave
her a smile and a pressure of welcome. Beside her, standing behind the
rear pew, were Asa Waring and--Mr. Bentley! Mr. Bentley returned to St.
John's!

"You have come!" Alison whispered.

He understood her. He took her hand in his and looked down into her
upturned face.

"Yes, my dear," he said, "and my girls have come Sally Grover and the
others, and some friends from Dalton Street and elsewhere."

The news, the sound of this old gentleman's voice and the touch of his
hand suddenly filled her with a strange yet sober happiness. Asa Waring,
though he had not overheard, smiled at her too, as in sympathy. His
austere face was curiously illuminated, and she knew instinctively that
in some way he shared her happiness. Mr. Bentley had come back! Yes, it
was an augury. From childhood she had always admired Asa Waring, and now
she felt a closer tie . . . .

She reached the pew, hesitated an instant, and slipped forward on her
knees. Years had gone by since she had prayed, and even now she made no
attempt to translate into words the intensity of her yearning--for what?
Hodder's success, for one thing,--and by success she meant that he might
pursue an unfaltering course. True to her temperament, she did not look
for the downfall of the forces opposed to him. She beheld him
persecuted, yet unyielding, and was thus lifted to an exaltation that
amazed. . . If he could do it, such a struggle must sorely have an
ultimate meaning! Thus she found herself, trembling, on the borderland
of faith. . .

She arose, bewildered, her pulses beating. And presently glancing about,
she took in that the church was fuller than she ever remembered having
seen it, and the palpitating suspense she felt seemed to pervade, as it
were, the very silence. With startling abruptness, the silence was
broken by the tones of the great organ that rolled and reverberated among
the arches; distant voices took up the processional; the white choir
filed past,--first the treble voices of the boys, then the deeper notes
of the--men,--turned and mounted the chancel steps, and then she saw
Hodder. Her pew being among the first, he passed very near her. Did he
know she would be there? The sternness of his profile told her nothing.
He seemed at that moment removed, set apart, consecrated--this was the
word that came to her, and yet she was keenly conscious of his presence.

Tingling, she found herself repeating, inwardly, two, lines of the hymn

          "Lay hold on life, and it shall be
          Thy joy and crown eternally."

"Lay hold on life!"

The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart; and
their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in which.
they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a racial instinct
strong in her,--she had not known how strong. Or was it something in
Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words with a new
meaning? Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his head, and found
in it still another expression of that race, the history of which had
been one of protest, of development of its own character and personality.
Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the garden, and she saw
how her intuition had recognized in him then the spirit of a people
striving to assert itself.

She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
congregation.

At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar. The hymn died
away, the congregation sat down. There was a sound in the church,
expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
wind, and then all was silent.



II

He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps. Alison could not have said
how long. She had lost all sense of time.

No sooner had the text been spoken, "Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the Kingdom of God," than she seemed to catch a fleeting
glimpse of an hitherto unimagined Personality. Hundreds of times she
had heard those words, and they had been as meaningless to her as to
Nicodemus. But now--now something was brought home to her of the
magnificent certainty with which they must first have been spoken,
of the tone and bearing and authority of him who had uttered them.
Was Christ like that? And could it be a Truth, after all, a truth
only to be grasped by one who had experienced it?

It was in vain that man had tried to evade this, the supreme revelation
of Jesus Christ, had sought to substitute ceremonies and sacrifices for
spiritual rebirth. It was in vain that the Church herself had, from time
to time, been inclined to compromise. St. Paul, once the strict Pharisee
who had laboured for the religion of works, himself had been reborn into
the religion of the Spirit. It was Paul who had liberated that message
of rebirth, which the world has been so long in grasping, from the narrow
bounds of Palestine and sent it ringing down the ages to the democracies
of the twentieth century.

And even Paul, though not consciously inconsistent, could not rid himself
completely of that ancient, automatic, conception of religion which the
Master condemned, but had on occasions attempted fruitlessly to unite the
new with the old. And thus, for a long time, Christianity had been
wrongly conceived as history, beginning with what to Paul and the Jews
was an historical event, the allegory of the Garden of Eden, the fall of
Adam, and ending with the Jewish conception of the Atonement. This was a
rationalistic and not a spiritual religion.

The miracle was not the vision, whatever its nature, which Saul beheld on
the road to Damascus. The miracle was the result of that vision, the man
reborn. Saul, the persecutor of Christians, become Paul, who spent the
rest of his days, in spite of persecution and bodily infirmities,
journeying tirelessly up and down the Roman Empire, preaching the risen
Christ, and labouring more abundantly than they all! There was no
miracle in the New Testament more wonderful than this.

The risen Christ! Let us not trouble ourselves about the psychological
problems involved, problems which the first century interpreted in its
own simple way. Modern, science has taught us this much, at least,
that we have by no means fathomed the limits even of a transcendent
personality. If proofs of the Resurrection and Ascension were demanded,
let them be spiritual proofs, and there could be none more convincing
than the life of the transformed Saul, who had given to the modern,
western world the message of salvation . . . .

That afternoon, as Alison sat motionless on a distant hillside of the
Park, gazing across the tree-dotted, rolling country to the westward, she
recalled the breathless silence in the church when he had reached this
point and paused, looking down at the congregation. By the subtle
transmission of thought, of feeling which is characteristic at dramatic
moments of bodies of people, she knew that he had already contrived to
stir them to the quick. It was not so much that these opening words
might have been startling to the strictly orthodox, but the added fact
that Hodder had uttered them. The sensation in the pews, as Alison
interpreted it and exulted over it, was one of bewildered amazement that
this was their rector, the same man who had preached to them in June.
Like Paul, of whom he spoke, he too was transformed, had come to his own,
radiating a new power that seemed to shine in his face.

Still agitated, she considered that discourse now in her solitude, what
it meant for him, for her, for the Church and civilization that a
clergyman should have had the courage to preach it. He himself had
seemed unconscious of any courage; had never once--she recalled--been
sensational. He had spoken simply, even in the intensest moments of
denunciation. And she wondered now how he had managed, without stripping
himself, without baring the intimate, sacred experiences of his own soul,
to convey to them, so nobly, the change which had taken place in him....

He began by referring to the hope with which he had come to St. John's,
and the gradual realization that the church was a failure--a dismal
failure when compared to the high ideal of her Master. By her fruits she
should be known and judged. From the first he had contemplated, with a
heavy heart, the sin and misery at their very gates. Not three blocks
distant children were learning vice in the streets, little boys of seven
and eight, underfed and anaemic, were driven out before dawn to sell
newspapers, little girls thrust forth to haunt the saloons and beg, while
their own children were warmed and fed. While their own daughters were
guarded, young women in Dayton Street were forced to sell themselves into
a life which meant slow torture, inevitable early death. Hopeless
husbands and wives were cast up like driftwood by the cruel, resistless
flood of modern civilization--the very civilization which yielded their
wealth and luxury. The civilization which professed the Spirit of
Christ, and yet was pitiless.

He confessed to them that for a long time he had been blind to the truth,
had taken the inherited, unchristian view that the disease which caused
vice and poverty might not be cured, though its ulcers might be
alleviated. He had not, indeed, clearly perceived and recognized the
disease. He had regarded Dalton Street in a very special sense as a
reproach to St. John's, but now he saw that all such neighbourhoods were
in reality a reproach to the city, to the state, to the nation. True
Christianity and Democracy were identical, and the congregation of St.
John's, as professed Christians and citizens, were doubly responsible,
inasmuch as they not only made no protest or attempt to change a
government which permitted the Dalton Streets to exist, but inasmuch also
as,--directly or indirectly,--they derived a profit from conditions which
were an abomination to God. It would be but an idle mockery for them to
go and build a settlement house, if they did not first reform their
lives.

Here there had been a decided stir among the pews. Hodder had not seemed
to notice it.

When he, their rector, had gone to Dalton Street to invite the poor and
wretched into God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: "Are the
Christians of the churches any better than we? Christians own the grim
tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are
surrounded, which devour our children. Christians own the establishments
which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our
very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail.
Is their God a God who will lift us out of our misery and distress? Are
their churches for the poor? Are not the very pews in which they sit as
closed to us as their houses?"

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou wert
cold or hot."

One inevitable conclusion of such a revelation was that he had not
preached to them the vital element of Christianity. And the very fact
that his presentation of religion had left many indifferent or
dissatisfied was proof-positive that he had dwelt upon non-essentials,
laid emphasis upon the mistaken interpretations of past ages. There
were those within the Church who were content with this, who--like the
Pharisees of old--welcomed a religion which did not interfere with their
complacency, with their pursuit of pleasure and wealth, with their
special privileges; welcomed a Church which didn't raise her voice
against the manner of their lives--against the order, the Golden Calf
which they had set up, which did not accuse them of deliberately
retarding the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Ah, that religion was not religion, for religion was a spiritual,
not a material affair. In that religion, vainly designed by man as a
compromise between God and Mammon, there was none of the divine
discontent of the true religion of the Spirit, no need of the rebirth of
the soul. And those who held it might well demand, with Nicodemus and
the rulers of the earth, "How can these things be?"

And there were others who still lingered in the Church, perplexed and
wistful, who had come to him and confessed that the so-called catholic
acceptance of divine truths, on which he had hitherto dwelt, meant
nothing to them. To these, in particular, he owed a special reparation,
and he took this occasion to announce a series of Sunday evening sermons
on the Creeds. So long as the Creeds remained in the Prayer Book it was
his duty to interpret them in terms not only of modern thought, but in
harmony with the real significance of the Person and message of Jesus
Christ. Those who had come to him questioning, he declared, were a
thousand times right in refusing to accept the interpretations of other
men, the consensus of opinion of more ignorant ages, expressed in an
ancient science and an archaic philosophy.

And what should be said of the vast and ever increasing numbers of those
not connected with the Church, who had left it or were leaving it? and of
the less fortunate to whose bodily wants they had been ministering in the
parish house, for whom it had no spiritual message, and who never entered
its doors? The necessity of religion, of getting in touch with, of
dependence on the Spirit of the Universe was inherent in man, and yet
there were thousands--nay, millions in the nation to-day in whose hearts
was an intense and unsatisfied yearning, who perceived no meaning in
life, no Cause for which to work, who did not know what Christianity was,
who had never known what it was, who wist not where to turn to find out.
Education had brought many of them to discern, in the Church's teachings,
an anachronistic medley of myths and legends, of theories of schoolmen
and theologians, of surviving pagan superstitions which could not be
translated into life. They saw, in Christianity, only the adulterations
of the centuries. If any one needed a proof of the yearning people felt,
let him go to the bookshops, or read in the publishers' lists to-day the
announcements of books on religion. There was no supply where there was
no demand.

Truth might no longer be identified with Tradition, and the day was past
when councils and synods might determine it for all mankind. The era of
forced acceptance of philosophical doctrines and dogmas was past, and
that of freedom, of spiritual rebirth, of vicarious suffering, of willing
sacrifice and service for a Cause was upon them. That cause was
Democracy. Christ was uniquely the Son of God because he had lived and
suffered and died in order to reveal to the world the meaning of this
life and of the hereafter--the meaning not only for the individual, but
for society as well. Nothing might be added to or subtracted from that
message--it was complete.

True faith was simply trusting--trusting that Christ gave to the world
the revelation of God's plan. And the Saviour himself had pointed out
the proof: "If any man do his will, he shall know of the doctrine,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak for myself." Christ had
repeatedly rebuked those literal minds which had demanded material
evidence: true faith spurned it, just as true friendship, true love
between man and man, true trust scorned a written bond. To paraphrase
St. James's words, faith without trust is dead--because faith without
trust is impossible. God is a Spirit, only to be recognized in the
Spirit, and every one of the Saviour's utterances were--not of the flesh,
of the man--but of the Spirit within him. "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father;" and "Why callest thou me good? none is good save one,
that is, God." The Spirit, the Universal Meaning of Life, incarnate in
the human Jesus.

To be born again was to overcome our spiritual blindness, and then,
and then only, we might behold the spirit shining in the soul of Christ.
That proof had sufficed for Mark, had sufficed for the writer of the
sublime Fourth Gospel, had sufficed for Paul. Let us lift this wondrous
fact, once and for all, out of the ecclesiastical setting and incorporate
it into our lives. Nor need the hearts of those who seek the Truth, who
fear not to face it, be troubled if they be satisfied, from the Gospels,
that the birth of Jesus was not miraculous. The physical never could
prove the spiritual, which was the real and everlasting, which no
discovery in science or history can take from us. The Godship of Christ
rested upon no dogma, it was a conviction born into us with the new
birth. And it becomes an integral part of our personality, our very
being.

The secret, then, lay in a presentation of the divine message which would
convince and transform and electrify those who heard it to action--a
presentation of the message in terms which the age could grasp. That is
what Paul had done, he had drawn his figures boldly from the customs of
the life of his day, but a more or less intimate knowledge of these
ancient customs were necessary before modern men and women could
understand those figures and parallels. And the Church must awake
to her opportunities, to her perception of the Cause. . . .

What, then, was the function, the mission of the Church Universal? Once
she had laid claim to temporal power, believed herself to be the sole
agency of God on earth, had spoken ex cathedra on philosophy, history,
theology, and science, had undertaken to confer eternal bliss and to damn
forever. Her members, and even her priests, had gone from murder to
mass and from mass to murder, and she had engaged in cruel wars and
persecutions to curtail the liberties of mankind. Under that conception
religion was a form of insurance of the soul. Perhaps a common,
universal belief had been necessary in the dark ages before the sublime
idea of education for the masses had come; but the Church herself
--through ignorance--had opposed the growth of education, had set her
face sternly against the development of the individual, which Christ had
taught, the privilege of man to use the faculties of the intellect which
God had bestowed upon him. He himself, their rector, had advocated a
catholic acceptance, though much modified from the mediaeval acceptance,
--one that professed to go behind it to an earlier age. Yes, he must
admit with shame that he had been afraid to trust where God trusted, had
feared to confide the working out of the ultimate Truth of the minds of
the millions.

The Church had been monarchical in form, and some strove stubbornly
and blindly to keep her monarchical. Democracy in government was
outstripping her. Let them look around, to-day, and see what was
happening in the United States of America. A great movement was going on
to transfer actual participation in government from the few to the many,
--a movement towards true Democracy, and that was precisely what was
about to happen in the Church. Her condition at present was one of
uncertainty, transition--she feared to let go wholly of the old, she
feared to embark upon the new. Just as the conservatives and politicians
feared to give up the representative system, the convention, so was she
afraid to abandon the synod, the council, and trust to man.

The light was coming slowly, the change, the rebirth of the Church by
gradual evolution. By the grace of God those who had laid the
foundations of the Church in which he stood, of all Protestantism, had
built for the future. The racial instinct in them had asserted itself,
had warned them that to suppress freedom in religion were to suppress it
in life, to paralyze that individual initiative which was the secret of
their advancement.

The new Church Universal, then, would be the militant, aggressive body of
the reborn, whose mission it was to send out into the life of the nation
transformed men and women who would labour unremittingly for the Kingdom
of God. Unity would come--but unity in freedom, true Catholicity. The
truth would gradually pervade the masses--be wrought out by them. Even
the great evolutionary forces of the age, such as economic necessity,
were acting to drive divided Christianity into consolidation, and the
starving churches of country villages were now beginning to combine.

No man might venture to predict the details of the future organization of
the united Church, although St. Paul himself had sketched it in broad
outline: every worker, lay and clerical, labouring according to his gift,
teachers, executives, ministers, visitors, missionaries, healers of sick
and despondent souls. But the supreme function of the Church was to
inspire--to inspire individuals to willing service for the cause, the
Cause of Democracy, the fellowship of mankind. If she failed to inspire,
the Church would wither and perish. And therefore she must revive again
the race of inspirers, prophets, modern Apostles to whom this gift was
given, going on their rounds, awaking cities and arousing whole
country-sides.

But whence--it might be demanded by the cynical were the prophets to
come? Prophets could not be produced by training and education; prophets
must be born. Reborn,--that was the word. Let the Church have faith.
Once her Cause were perceived, once her whole energy were directed
towards its fulfilment, the prophets would arise, out of the East and out
of the West, to stir mankind to higher effort, to denounce fearlessly the
shortcomings and evils of the age. They had not failed in past ages,
when the world had fallen into hopelessness, indifference, and darkness.
And they would not fail now.

Prophets were personalities, and Phillips Brooks himself a prophet--had
defined personality as a conscious relationship with God. "All truth,"
he had said, "comes to the world through personality." And down the ages
had come an Apostolic Succession of personalities. Paul, Augustine,
Francis, Dante, Luther, Milton,--yes, and Abraham Lincoln, and Phillips
Brooks, whose Authority was that of the Spirit, whose light had so shone
before men that they had glorified the Father which was in heaven; the
current of whose Power had so radiated, in ever widening circles, as to
make incandescent countless other souls.

And which among them would declare that Abraham Lincoln, like Stephen,
had not seen his Master in the sky?

The true prophet, the true apostle, then, was one inspired and directed
by the Spirit, the laying on of hands was but a symbol,--the symbol of
the sublime truth that one personality caught fire from another. Let the
Church hold fast to that symbol, as an acknowledgment, a reminder of a
supreme mystery. Tradition had its value when it did not deteriorate
into superstition, into the mechanical, automatic transmission
characteristic of the mediaeval Church, for the very suggestion of which
Peter had rebuked Simon in Samaria. For it would be remembered that
Simon had said: "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands,
he may receive the Holy Ghost."

The true successor to the Apostles must be an Apostle himself.

Jesus had seldom spoken literally, and the truths he sought to impress
upon the world had of necessity been clothed in figures and symbols,--for
spiritual truths might be conveyed in no other way. The supreme proof of
his Godship, of his complete knowledge of the meaning of life was to be
found in his parables. To the literal, material mind, for example, the
parable of the talents was merely an unintelligible case of injustice....
What was meant by the talents? They were opportunities for service.
Experience taught us that when we embraced one opportunity, one
responsibility, the acceptance of it invariably led to another, and so
the servant who had five talents, five opportunities, gained ten. The
servant who had two gained two more. But the servant of whom only one
little service was asked refused that, and was cast into outer darkness,
to witness another performing the task which should have been his. Hell,
here and hereafter, was the spectacle of wasted opportunity, and there is
no suffering to compare to it.

The crime, the cardinal sin was with those who refused to serve, who shut
their eyes to the ideal their Lord had held up, who strove to compromise
with Jesus Christ himself, to twist and torture his message to suit their
own notions as to how life should be led; to please God and Mammon at the
same time, to bind Christ's Church for their comfort and selfish
convenience. Of them it was written, that they shut up the Kingdom of
Heaven against men; for they neither go in themselves, neither suffer
them that are entering to go in. Were these any better than the people
who had crucified the Lord for his idealism, and because he had not
brought them the material Kingdom for which they longed?

That servant who had feared to act, who had hid his talent in the ground,
who had said unto his lord, "I knew thee that thou art an hard man,
reaping where thou hadst not sown," was the man without faith, the
atheist who sees only cruelty and indifference in the order of things,
who has no spiritual sight. But to the other servants it was said, "Thou
halt been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many
things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord."

The meaning of life, then, was service, and by life our Lord did not mean
mere human existence, which is only a part of life. The Kingdom of
heaven is a state, and may begin here. And that which we saw around us
was only one expression of that eternal life--a medium to work through,
towards God. All was service, both here and hereafter, and he that had
not discovered that the joy of service was the only happiness worth
living for could have no conception of the Kingdom. To those who knew,
there was no happiness like being able to say, "I have found my place in
God's plan, I am of use." Such was salvation . . . .

And in the parable of the Prodigal Son may be read the history of what
are known as the Protestant nations. What happens logically when the
individual is suddenly freed from the restraint of external authority
occurred when Martin Luther released the vital spark of Christianity,
which he got from Paul, and from Christ himself--the revelation of
individual responsibility, that God the Spirit would dwell, by grace, in
the individual soul. Ah, we had paid a terrible yet necessary price for
freedom. We had wandered far from the Father, we had been reduced to
the very husks of individualism, become as swine. We beheld around us,
to-day, selfishness, ruthless competition, as great contrasts between
misery and luxury as in the days of the Roman Empire. But should we, for
that reason, return to the leading-strings of authority? Could we if we
would? A little thought ought to convince us that the liberation of the
individual could not be revoked, that it had forever destroyed the power
of authority to carry conviction. To go back to the Middle Ages would be
to deteriorate and degenerate. No, we must go on. . . .

Luther's movement, in religion, had been the logical forerunner of
democracy, of universal suffrage in government, the death-knell of that
misinterpretation of Christianity as the bulwark of monarchy and
hierarchy had been sounded when he said, "Ich kann nicht anders!" The new
Republic founded on the western continent had announced to the world the
initiation of the transfer of Authority to the individual soul. God, the
counterpart of the King, the ruler in a high heaven of a flat terrestrial
expanse, outside of the world, was now become the Spirit of a million
spheres, the indwelling spirit in man. Democracy and the religion of
Jesus Christ both consisted in trusting the man--yes, and the woman--whom
God trusts. Christianity was individualism carried beyond philosophy
into religion, and the Christian, the ideal citizen of the democracy, was
free since he served not because he had to, but because he desired to of
his own will, which, paradoxically, is God's will. God was in politics,
to the confusion of politicians; God in government. And in some greater
and higher sense than we had yet perceived, the saying 'vox populi vox
dei' was eternally true. He entered into the hearts of people and moved
them, and so the world progressed. It was the function of the Church to
make Christians, until--when the Kingdom of God should come--the blending
should be complete. Then Church and State would be identical, since all
the members of the one would be the citizens of the other . . . .

"I will arise and go to my father." Rebirth! A sense of responsibility,
of consecration. So we had come painfully through our materialistic
individualism, through our selfish Protestantism, to a glimpse of the
true Protestantism--Democracy.

Our spiritual vision was glowing clearer. We were beginning to perceive
that charity did not consist in dispensing largesse after making a
fortune at the expense of one's fellow-men; that there was something
still wrong in a government that permits it. It was gradually becoming
plain to us, after two thousand years, that human bodies and souls
rotting in tenements were more valuable than all the forests on all the
hills; that government, Christian government, had something to do with
these.

We should embody, in government, those sublime words of the Master,
"Suffer little children to come unto me." And the government of the
future would care for the little children. We were beginning to do it.
Here, as elsewhere, Christianity and reason went hand in hand, for the
child became the man who either preyed on humanity and filled the prisons
and robbed his fellows, or else grew into a useful, healthy citizen. It
was nothing less than sheer folly as well as inhuman cruelty to let the
children sleep in crowded, hot rooms, reeking with diseases, and run wild
throughout the long summer, learning vice in the city streets. And we
still had slavery--economic slavery--yes, and the more horrible slavery
of women and young girls in vice--as much a concern of government as the
problem which had confronted it in 1861 . . . . We were learning that
there was something infinitely more sacred than property . . . .

And now Alison recalled, only to be thrilled again by an electric
sensation she had never before experienced with such intensity, the look
of inspiration on the preacher's face as he closed. The very mists of
the future seemed to break before his importuning gaze, and his eyes
seemed indeed to behold, against the whitening dawn of the spiritual age
he predicted, the slender spires of a new Church sprung from the
foundations of the old. A Church, truly catholic, tolerant, whose
portals were wide in welcome to all mankind. The creative impulse,
he had declared, was invariably religious, the highest art but the
expression of the mute yearnings of a people, of a race. Thus had once
arisen, all over Europe, those wonderful cathedrals which still cast
their spell upon the world, and art to-day would respond--was responding
--to the unutterable cravings of mankind, would strive once more to
express in stone and glass and pigment what nations felt. Generation
after generation would labour with unflagging zeal until the art
sculptured fragment of the new Cathedral--the new Cathedral of Democracy
--pointed upward toward the blue vault of heaven. Such was his vision
--God the Spirit, through man reborn, carrying out his great Design . . .




CHAPTER XXII

"WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT"


I

As Alison arose from her knees and made her way out of the pew, it was
the expression on Charlotte Plimpton's face which brought her back once
more to a sense of her surroundings; struck her, indeed, like a physical
blow. The expression was a scandalized one. Mrs. Plimpton had moved
towards her, as if to speak, but Alison hurried past, her exaltation
suddenly shattered, replaced by a rising tide of resentment, of angry
amazement against a materialism so solid as to remain unshaken by the
words which had so uplifted her. Eddies were forming in the aisle as
the people streamed slowly out of the church, and snatches of their
conversation, in undertones, reached her ears.

"I should never have believed it!"

"Mr. Hodder, of all men. . ."

"The bishop!"

Outside the swinging doors, in the vestibule, the voices were raised a
little, and she found her path blocked.

"It's incredible!" she heard Gordon Atterbury saying to little Everett
Constable, who was listening gloomily.

"Sheer Unitarianism, socialism, heresy."

His attention was forcibly arrested by Alison, in whose cheeks bright
spots of colour burned. He stepped aside, involuntarily, apologetically,
as though he had instinctively read in her attitude an unaccountable
disdain. Everett Constable bowed uncertainly, for Alison scarcely
noticed them.

"Ahem!" said Gordon, nervously, abandoning his former companion and
joining her, "I was just saying, it's incredible--"

She turned on him.

"It is incredible," she cried, "that persons who call themselves
Christians cannot recognize their religion when they hear it preached."

He gave back before her, visibly, in an astonishment which would have
been ludicrous but for her anger. He had never understood her--such
had been for him her greatest fascination;--and now she was less
comprehensible than ever. The time had been when he would cheerfully
have given over his hope of salvation to have been able to stir her.
He had never seen her stirred, and the sight of her even now in this
condition was uncomfortably agitating. Of all things, an heretical
sermon would appear to have accomplished this miracle!

"Christianity!" he stammered.

"Yes, Christianity." Her voice tingled. "I don't pretend to know much
about it, but Mr. Hodder has at least made it plain that it is something
more than dead dogmas, ceremonies, and superstitions."

He would have said something, but her one thought was to escape, to be
alone. These friends of her childhood were at that moment so distasteful
as to have become hateful. Some one laid a hand upon her arm.

"Can't we take you home, Alison? I don't see your motor."

It was Mrs. Constable.

"No, thanks--I'm going to walk," Alison answered, yet something in Mrs.
Constable's face, in Mrs. Constable's voice, made her pause. Something
new, something oddly sympathetic. Their eyes met, and Alison saw that
the other woman's were tired, almost haggard--yet understanding.

"Mr. Hodder was right--a thousand times right, my dear," she said.

Alison could only stare at her, and the crimson in the bright spots of
her cheeks spread over her face. Why had Mrs. Constable supposed that
she would care to hear the sermon praised? But a second glance put her
in possession of the extraordinary fact that Mrs. Constable herself was
profoundly moved.

"I knew he would change," she went on, "I have seen for some time that he
was too big a man not to change. But I had no conception that he would
have such power, and such courage, as he has shown this morning. It is
not only that he dared to tell us what we were--smaller men might have
done that, and it is comparatively easy to denounce. But he has the
vision to construct, he is a seer himself--he has really made me see
what Christianity is. And as long as I live I shall never forget
those closing sentences."

"And now?" asked Alison. "And now what will happen?"

Mrs. Constable changed colour. Her tact, on which she prided herself,
had deserted her in a moment of unlooked-for emotion.

"Oh, I know that my father and the others will try to put him out--but
can they?" Alison asked.

It was Mrs. Constable's turn to stare. The head she suddenly and
impulsively put forth trembled on Alison's wrist.

"I don't know, Alison--I'm afraid they can. It is too terrible to think
about. . . . And they can't--they won't believe that many changes are
coming, that this is but one of many signs. . . Do come and see me."

Alison left her, marvelling at the passage between them, and that, of all
persons in the congregation of St. John's, the lightning should have
struck Mrs. Constable. . .

Turning to the right on Burton Street, she soon found herself walking
rapidly westward through deserted streets lined by factories and
warehouses, and silent in the Sabbath calm . . . . She thought of
Hodder, she would have liked to go to him in that hour . . . .

In Park Street, luncheon was half over, and Nelson Langmaid was at the
table with her father. The lawyer glanced at her curiously as she
entered the room, and his usual word of banter, she thought, was rather
lame. The two went on, for some time, discussing a railroad suit in
Texas. And Alison, as she hurried through her meal, leaving the dishes
almost untouched, scarcely heard them. Once, in her reverie, her
thoughts reverted to another Sunday when Hodder had sat, an honoured
guest, in the chair which Mr. Langmaid now occupied . . . .

It was not until they got up from the table that her father turned to
her.

"Did you have a good sermon?" he asked.

It was the underlying note of challenge to which she responded.

"The only good sermon I have ever heard."

Their eyes met. Langmaid looked down at the tip of his cigar.

"Mr. Hodder," said Eldon Parr, "is to be congratulated."




II

Hodder, when the service was over, had sought the familiar recess in the
robing-room, the words which he himself had spoken still ringing in his
ears. And then he recalled the desperate prayer with which he had
entered the pulpit, that it might be given him in that hour what to say:
the vivid memories of the passions and miseries in Dalton Street, the
sudden, hot response of indignation at the complacency confronting him.
His voice had trembled with anger . . . . He remembered, as he had
paused in his denunciation of these who had eyes and saw not, meeting the
upturned look of Alison Parr, and his anger had turned to pity for their
blindness--which once had been his own; and he had gone on and on,
striving to interpret for them his new revelation of the message of the
Saviour, to impress upon them the dreadful yet sublime meaning of life
eternal. And it was in that moment the vision of the meaning of the
evolution of his race, of the Prodigal turning to responsibility--of
which he once had had a glimpse--had risen before his eyes in its
completeness--the guiding hand of God in history! The Spirit in these
complacent souls, as yet unstirred . . . .

So complete, now, was his forgetfulness of self, of his future, of the
irrevocable consequences of the step he had taken, that it was only
gradually he became aware that some one was standing near him, and
with a start he recognized McCrae.

"There are some waiting to speak to ye," his assistant said.

"Oh!" Hodder exclaimed. He began, mechanically, to divest himself of his
surplice. McCrae stood by.

"I'd like to say a word, first--if ye don't mind--" he began.

The rector looked at him quickly.

"I'd like just to thank ye for that sermon--I can say no more now," said
McCrae; he turned away, and left the room abruptly.

This characteristic tribute from the inarticulate, loyal Scotchman left
him tingling . . . . He made his way to the door and saw the people
in the choir room, standing silently, in groups, looking toward him.
Some one spoke to him, and he recognized Eleanor Goodrich.

"We couldn't help coming, Mr. Hodder--just to tell you how much we admire
you. It was wonderful, what you said."

He grew hot with gratitude, with thankfulness that there were some who
understood--and that this woman was among them, and her husband . . .
Phil Goodrich took him by the hand.

"I can understand that kind of religion," he said. "And, if necessary,
I can fight for it. I have come to enlist."

"And I can understand it, too," added the sunburned Evelyn. "I hope you
will let me help."

That was all they said, but Hodder understood. Eleanor Goodrich's eyes
were dimmed as she smiled an her sister and her husband--a smile that
bespoke the purest quality of pride. And it was then, as they made way
for others, that the full value of their allegiance was borne in upon
him, and he grasped the fact that the intangible barrier which had
separated him from them had at last been broken down: His look followed
the square shoulders and aggressive, close-cropped head of Phil Goodrich,
the firm, athletic figure of Evelyn, who had represented to him an entire
class of modern young women, vigorous, athletic, with a scorn of cant in
which he secretly sympathized, hitherto frankly untouched by spiritual
interests of any sort. She had, indeed, once bluntly told him that
church meant nothing to her . . . .

In that little company gathered in the choir room were certain members of
his congregation whom, had he taken thought, he would least have expected
to see. There were Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, an elderly couple who had
attended St. John's for thirty years; and others of the same
unpretentious element of his parish who were finding in modern life an
increasingly difficult and bewildering problem. There was little Miss
Tallant, an assiduous guild worker whom he had thought the most orthodox
of persons; Miss Ramsay, who taught the children of the Italian mothers;
Mr. Carton, the organist, a professed free-thinker, with whom Hodder had
had many a futile argument; and Martha Preston, who told him that he had
made her think about religion seriously for the first time in her life.

And there were others, types equally diverse. Young men of the choir,
and others whom he had never seen, who informed him shyly that they would
come again, and bring their friends . . . .

And all the while, in the background, Hodder had been aware of a familiar
face--Horace Bentley's. Beside him, when at length he drew near, was his
friend Asa Waring--a strangely contrasted type. The uncompromising eyes
of a born leader of men flashed from beneath the heavy white eyebrows,
the button of the Legion of Honour gleaming in his well-kept coat seemed
emblematic of the fire which in his youth had driven him forth to fight
for the honour of his country--a fire still undimmed. It was he who
spoke first.

"This is a day I never expected to see, Mr. Hodder," he said, "for it has
brought back to this church the man to whom it owes its existence. Mr.
Bentley did more, by his labour and generosity, his true Christianity,
his charity and his wisdom, for St. John's than any other individual.
It is you who have brought him back, and I wish personally to express
my gratitude."

Mr. Bentley, in mild reproof, laid his hand upon the t, shoulder of his
old friend.

"Ah, Asa," he protested, "you shouldn't say such things."

"Had it not been for Mr. Bentley," Hodder explained, "I should not be
here to-day."

Asa Waring pierced the rector with his eye, appreciating the genuine
feeling with which these words were spoken. And yet his look contained
a question.

"Mr. Bentley," Hodder added, "has been my teacher this summer."

The old gentleman's hand trembled a little on the goldheaded stick.

"It is a matter of more pride to me than I can express, sir, that you are
the rector of this church with which my most cherished memories are
associated," he said. "But I cannot take any part of the credit you give
me for the splendid vision which you have raised up before us to-day, for
your inspired interpretation of history, of the meaning of our own times.
You have moved me, you have given me more hope and courage than I have
had for many a long year--and I thank you, Mr. Hodder. I am sure that
God will prosper and guide you in what you have so nobly undertaken."

Mr. Bentley turned away, walking towards the end of the room . . . .
Asa Waring broke the silence.

"I didn't know that you knew him, that you had seen what he is doing
--what he has done in this city. I cannot trust myself, Mr. Hodder, to
speak of Horace Bentley's life. . . I feel too strongly on the
subject. I have watched, year by year, this detestable spirit of greed,
this lust for money and power creeping over our country, corrupting our
people and institutions, and finally tainting the Church itself. You
have raised your voice against it, and I respect and honour and thank you
for it, the more because you have done it without resorting to sensation,
and apparently with no thought of yourself. And, incidentally, you have
explained the Christian religion to me as I have never had it explained
in my life.

"I need not tell you you have made enemies--powerful ones. I can see
that you are a man, and that you are prepared for them. They will leave
no stone unturned, will neglect no means to put you out and disgrace you.
They will be about your ears to-morrow--this afternoon, perhaps. I need
not remind you that the outcome is doubtful. But I came here to assure
you of my friendship and support in all you hope to accomplish in making
the Church what it should be. In any event, what you have done to-day
will be productive of everlasting good."

In a corner still lingered the group which Mr. Bentley had joined. And
Hodder, as he made his way towards it, recognized the faces of some of
those who composed it. Sally Grower was there, and the young women who
lived in Mr. Bentley's house, and others whose acquaintance he had made
during the summer. Mrs. Garvin had brought little Dicky, incredibly
changed from the wan little figure he had first beheld in the stifling
back room in Dalton Street; not yet robust, but freckled and tanned by
the country sun and wind. The child, whom he had seen constantly in the
interval, ran forward joyfully, and Hodder bent down to take his hand....

These were his friends, emblematic of the new relationship in which he
stood to mankind. And he owed them to Horace Bentley! He wondered, as
he greeted them, whether they knew what their allegiance meant to him in
this hour. But it sufficed that they claimed him as their own.

Behind them all stood Kate Marcy. And it struck him for the first time,
as he gazed at her earnestly, how her appearance had changed. She gave
him a frightened, bewildered look, as though she were unable to identify
him now with the man she had known in the Dalton Street flat, in the
restaurant. She was still struggling, groping, wondering, striving to
accustom herself to the higher light of another world.

"I wanted to come," she faltered. "Sally Grower brought me. . . "

Hodder went back with them to Dalton Street. His new ministry had begun.
And on this, the first day of it, it was fitting that he should sit at
the table of Horace Bentley, even as on that other Sunday, two years
agone, he had gone to the home of the first layman of the diocese,
Eldon Parr.



III

The peace of God passes understanding because sorrow and joy are mingled
therein, sorrow and joy and striving. And thus the joy of emancipation
may be accompanied by a heavy heart. The next morning, when Hodder
entered his study, he sighed as his eye fell upon the unusual pile of
letters on his desk, for their writers had once been his friends. The
inevitable breach had come at last.

Most of the letters, as he had anticipated, were painful reading.
And the silver paper-cutter with which he opened the first had been a
Christmas present from Mrs. Burlingame, who had penned it, a lady of
signal devotion to the church, who for many years had made it her task to
supply and arrange the flowers on the altar. He had amazed and wounded
her--she declared--inexpressibly, and she could no longer remain at St.
John's--for the present, at least. A significant addition. He dropped
the letter, and sat staring out of the window . . . presently arousing
himself, setting himself resolutely to the task of reading the rest.

In the mood in which he found himself he did not atop to philosophize
on the rigid yet sincere attitude of the orthodox. His affection for
many of them curiously remained, though it was with some difficulty he
strove to reconstruct a state of mind with which he had once agreed.
If Christianity were to sweep on, these few unbending but faithful ones
must be sacrificed: such was the law. . . Many, while repudiating his
new beliefs--or unbeliefs!--added, to their regrets of the change in him,
protestations of a continued friendship, a conviction of his sincerity.
Others like Mrs. Atterbury, were frankly outraged and bitter. The
contents of one lilac-bordered envelope brought to his eyes a faint
smile. Did he know--asked the sender of this--could he know the
consternation he had caused in so many persons, including herself?
What was she to believe? And wouldn't he lunch with her on Thursday?

Mrs. Ferguson's letter brought another smile--more thoughtful.
Her incoherent phrases had sprung from the heart, and the picture rose
before him of the stout but frightened, good-natured lady who had never
accustomed herself to the enjoyment of wealth and luxury. Mr. Ferguson
was in such a state, and he must please not tell her husband that she had
written. Yet much in his sermon had struck her as so true. It seemed
wrong to her to have so much, and others so little! And he had made her
remember many things in her early life she had forgotten. She hoped he
would see Mr. Ferguson, and talk to him. . . .

Then there was Mrs. Constable's short note, that troubled and puzzled
him. This, too, had in it an undercurrent of fear, and the memory came
to him of the harrowing afternoon he had once spent with her, when she
would have seemed to have predicted the very thing which had now happened
to him. And yet not that thing. He divined instinctively that a maturer
thought on the subject of his sermon had brought on an uneasiness as the
full consequences of this new teaching had dawned upon her consequences
which she had not foreseen when she had foretold the change. And he
seemed to read between the lines that the renunciation he demanded was
too great. Would he not let her come and talk to him? . . .

Miss Brewer, a lady of no inconsiderable property, was among those who
told him plainly that if he remained they would have to give up their
pews. Three or four communications were even more threatening. Mr.
Alpheus Gore, Mrs. Plimpton's brother, who at five and forty had managed
to triple his share of the Gore inheritance, wrote that it would be his
regretful duty to send to the bishop an Information on the subject of Mr.
Hodder's sermon.

There were, indeed, a few letters which he laid, thankfully, in a pile by
themselves. These were mostly from certain humble members of his parish
who had not followed their impulses to go to him after the service, or
from strangers who had chanced to drop into the church. Some were
autobiographical, such as those of a trained nurse, a stenographer,
a hardware clerk who had sat up late Sunday night to summarize what that
sermon had meant to him, how a gray and hopeless existence had taken on a
new colour. Next Sunday he would bring a friend who lived in the same
boarding house . . . . Hodder read every word of these, and all were
in the same strain: at last they could perceive a meaning to religion,
an application of it to such plodding lives as theirs . . . .

One or two had not understood, but had been stirred, and were coming to
talk to him. Another was filled with a venomous class hatred. . . .

The first intimation he had of the writer of another letter seemed from
the senses rather than the intellect. A warm glow suffused him, mounted
to his temples as he stared at the words, turned over the sheet, and read
at the bottom the not very legible signature. The handwriting, by no
means classic, became then and there indelibly photographed on his brain,
and summed up for him the characteristics, the warring elements in Alison
Parr. "All afternoon," she wrote, "I have been thinking of your sermon.
It was to me very wonderful--it lifted me out of myself. And oh, I want
so much to believe unreservedly what you expressed so finely, that
religion is democracy, or the motive power behind democracy--the service
of humanity by the reborn. I understand it intellectually. I am willing
to work for such a Cause, but there is something in me so hard that I
wonder if it can dissolve. And then I am still unable to identify that
Cause with the Church as at present constituted, with the dogmas and
ceremonies that still exist. I am too thorough a radical to have your
patience. And I am filled with rage--I can think of no milder word--on
coming in contact with the living embodiments of that old creed, who hold
its dogmas so precious. 'Which say to the seers, See not; and to the
prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things,
prophesy deceits.'"

"You see, I have been reading Isaiah, and when I came to that paragraph
it seemed so appropriate. These people have always existed. And will
they not always continue to exist? I wish I could believe, wholly and
unreservedly, that this class, always preponderant in the world, could be
changed, diminished--done away with in a brighter future! I can, at
least, sympathize with Isaiah's wrath.

"What you said of the longing, the yearning which exists to-day amongst
the inarticulate millions moved me most--and of the place of art in
religion, to express that yearning. Religion the motive power of art,
and art, too, service. 'Consider the lilies of the field.' You have made
it, at least, all-comprehensive, have given me a new point of view for
which I can never be sufficiently grateful--and at a time when I needed
it desperately. That you have dared to do what you have done has been
and will be an inspiration, not only to myself, but to many others.
This, is a longer letter, I believe, than I have ever written in my life.
But I wanted you to know."

He reread it twice, pondering over its phrases. "A new point of view....
at a time when I needed it desperately." It was not until then that he
realized the full intensity of his desire for some expression from her
since the moment he had caught sight of her in the church. But he had
not been prepared for the unreserve, the impulsiveness with which she had
actually written. Such was his agitation that he did not heed, at first,
a knock on the door, which was repeated. He thrust the letter inside his
coat as the janitor of the parish house appeared.

"There is a gentleman to see you, sir, in the office," he said.

Hodder went down the stairs. And he anticipated, from the light yet
nervous pacing that he heard on the bare floor, that the visitor was none
other than his vestryman, Mr. Gordon Atterbury. The sight of the
gentleman's spruce figure confirmed the guess.

"Good morning, Mr. Atterbury," he said as he entered.

Mr. Atterbury stopped in his steps, as if he had heard a shot.

"Ah--good morning, Mr. Hodder. I stopped in on my way to the office."

"Sit down," said the rector.

Mr. Atterbury sat down, but with the air of a man who does so under
protest, who had not intended to. He was visibly filled and almost
quivering with an excitement which seemed to demand active expression,
and which the tall clergyman's physical calm and self-possession seemed
to augment. For a moment Mr. Atterbury stared at the rector as he sat
behind his desk. Then he cleared his throat.

"I thought of writing to you, Mr. Hodder. My mother, I believe, has done
so. But it seemed to me, on second thought, better to come to you
direct."

The rector nodded, without venturing to remark on the wisdom of the
course.

"It occurred to me," Mr. Atterbury went on, "that possibly some things I
wish to discuss might--ahem be dispelled in a conversation. That I might
conceivably have misunderstood certain statements in your sermon of
yesterday."

"I tried," said the rector, "to be as clear as possible."

"I thought you might not fully have realized the effect of what you said.
I ought to tell you, I think, that as soon as I reached home I wrote out,
as accurately as I could from memory, the gist of your remarks. And I
must say frankly, although I try to put it mildly, that they appear to
contradict and controvert the doctrines of the Church."

"Which doctrines?" Hodder asked.

Gordon Atterbury sputtered.

"Which doctrines?" he repeated. "Can it be possible that you
misunderstand me? I might refer you to those which you yourself preached
as late as last June, in a sermon which was one of the finest and most
scholarly efforts I ever heard."

"It was on that day, Mr. Atterbury," replied the rector, with a touch of
sadness in his voice, "I made the discovery that fine and scholarly
efforts were not Christianity."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Atterbury demanded.

"I mean that they do not succeed in making Christians."

"And by that you imply that the members of your congregation, those who
have been brought up and baptized and confirmed in this church, are not
Christians?"

"I am sorry to say a great many of them are not," said the rector.

"In other words, you affirm that the sacrament of baptism is of no
account."

"I affirm that baptism with water is not sufficient."

"I'm afraid that this is very grave," Mr. Hodder.

"I quite agree with you," replied the rector, looking straight at his
vestryman.

"And I understood,--" the other went on, clearing his throat once more,
"I think I have it correctly stated in my notes, but I wish to be quite
clear, that you denied the doctrine of the virgin birth."

Hodder made a strong effort to control himself.

"What I have said I have said," he answered, "and I have said it in the
hope that it might make some impression upon the lives of those to whom I
spoke. You were one of them, Mr. Atterbury. And if I repeat and amplify
my meaning now, it must be understood that I have no other object except
that of putting you in the way of seeing that the religion of Christ is
unique in that it is dependent upon no doctrine or dogma, upon no
external or material sign or proof or authority whatever. I am utterly
indifferent to any action you may contemplate taking concerning me. Read
your four Gospels carefully. If we do not arrive, through contemplation
of our Lord's sojourn on this earth, of his triumph over death, of his
message--which illuminates the meaning of our lives here--at that inner
spiritual conversion of which he continually speaks, and which alone will
give us charity, we are not Christians."

"But the doctrines of the Church, which we were taught from childhood to
believe? The doctrines which you once professed, and of which you have
now made such an unlooked-for repudiation!"

"Yes, I have changed," said the rector, gazing seriously at the twitching
figure of his vestryman, "I was bound, body and soul, by those very
doctrines." He roused himself. "But on what grounds do you declare, Mr.
Atterbury," he demanded, somewhat sternly, "that this church is fettered
by an ancient and dogmatic conception of Christianity? Where are you to
find what are called the doctrines of the Church? What may be heresy in
one diocese is not so in another, and I can refer to you volumes written
by ministers of this Church, in good standing, whose published opinions
are the same as those I expressed in my sermon of yesterday. The very
cornerstone of the Church is freedom, but many have yet to discover this,
and we have held in our Communion men of such divergent views as Dr.
Pusey and Phillips Brooks. Mr. Newman, in his Tract Ninety, which was
sincerely written, showed that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of
almost any theological interpretation. From what authoritative source
are we to draw our doctrines? In the baptismal service the articles of
belief are stated to be in the Apostles' Creed, but nowhere--in this
Church is it defined how their ancient language is to be interpreted.
That is wisely left to the individual. Shall we interpret the Gospels by
the Creeds, which in turn purport to be interpretations of the Gospels?
Or shall we draw our conclusions as to what the Creeds may mean to us by
pondering on the life of Christ, and striving to do his will?
'The letter killeth, but the Spirit maketh alive.'"

Hodder rose, and stood facing his visitor squarely. He spoke slowly, and
the fact that he made no gesture gave all the more force to his words.

"Hereafter, Mr. Atterbury," he added, "so long as I am rector of this
church, I am going to do my best to carry out the spirit of Christ's
teaching--to make Christians. And there shall be no more compromise,
so far as I can help it."

Gordon Atterbury had grown very pale. He, too, got to his feet.

"I--I cannot trust myself to discuss this matter with you any further, Mr.
Hodder. I feel too deeply--too strongly on the subject. I do not
pretend to account for this astonishing transformation in your opinions.
Up to the present I have deemed St. John's fortunate--peculiarly
fortunate, in having you for its rector. I am bound to say I think you
have not considered, in this change of attitude on your part, those who
have made St. John's what it is, who through long and familiar
association are bound to it by a thousand ties,--those who, like myself,
have what may be called a family interest in this church. My father and
mother were married here, I was baptized here. I think I may go so far
as to add, Mr. Hodder, that this is our church, the church which a
certain group of people have built in which to worship God, as was their
right. Nor do I believe we can be reproached with a lack of hospitality
or charity. We maintain this parish house, with its clubs; and at no
small inconvenience to ourselves we have permitted the church to remain
in this district. There is no better church music in this city, and we
have a beautiful service in the evening at which, all pews are free. It
is not unreasonable that we should have something to say concerning the
doctrine to be preached here, that we should insist that that doctrine be
in accordance with what we have always believed was the true doctrine as
received by this Church."

Up to this point Mr. Atterbury had had a feeling that he had not carried
out with much distinction the programme which he had so carefully
rehearsed on the way to the parish house. Hodder's poise had amazed and
baffled him--he had expected to find the rector on the defensive. But
now, burning anew with a sense of injustice, he had a sense at last of
putting his case strongly.

The feeling of triumph, however, was short lived. Hodder did not reply
at once. So many seconds, indeed, went by that Mr. Atterbury began once
more to grow slightly nervous under the strange gaze to which he was
subjected. And when the clergyman' spoke there was no anger in his
voice, but a quality--a feeling which was disturbing, and difficult to
define.

"You are dealing now, Mr. Atterbury," he said, "with the things of
Caesar, not of God. This church belongs to God--not to you. But you
have consecrated it to him. His truth, as Christ taught it, must not be
preached to suit any man's convenience. When you were young you were not
taught the truth--neither was I. It was mixed with adulterations which
obscured and almost neutralized it. But I intend to face it now, and to
preach it, and not the comfortable compromise which gives us the illusion
that we are Christians because we subscribe to certain tenets, and
permits us to neglect our Christian duties.

"And since you have spoken of charity, let me assure you that there is no
such thing as charity without the transforming, personal touch. It isn't
the bread or instruction or amusement we give people vicariously, but the
effect of our gift--even if that gift be only a cup of cold water--in
illuminating and changing their lives. And it will avail any church
little to have a dozen settlement houses while her members acquiesce in
a State which refuses to relieve her citizens from sickness and poverty.
Charity bends down only to lift others up. And with all our works, our
expenditure and toil, how many have we lifted up?"

Gordon Atterbury's indignation got the better of him. For he was the
last man to behold with patience the shattering of his idols.

"I think you have cast an unwarranted reflection on those who have built
and made this church what it is, Mr. Hodder," he exclaimed. "And that
you will find there are in it many--a great many earnest Christians who
were greatly shocked by the words you spoke yesterday, who will not
tolerate any interference with their faith. I feel it my duty to speak
frankly, Mr Hodder, disagreeable though it be, in view of our former
relations. I must tell you that I am not alone in the opinion that you
should resign. It is the least you can do, in justice to us, in justice
to yourself. There are other bodies--I cannot call them churches--which
doubtless would welcome your liberal, and I must add atrophying,
interpretation of Christianity. And I trust that reflection will
convince you of the folly of pushing this matter to the extreme. We
should greatly deplore the sensational spectacle of St. John's being
involved in an ecclesiastical trial, the unpleasant notoriety into which
it would bring a church hitherto untouched by that sort of thing. And I
ought to tell you that I, among others, am about to send an Information
to the bishop."

Gordon Atterbury hesitated a moment, but getting no reply save an
inclination of the head, took up his hat.

"Ahem--I think that is all I have to say, Mr. Hodder. Good morning."

Even then Hodder did not answer, but rose and held open the door. As he
made his exit under the strange scrutiny of the clergyman's gaze the
little vestryman was plainly uncomfortable. He cleared his throat once
more, halted, and then precipitately departed.

Hodder went to the window and thoughtfully watched the hurrying figure
of Mr. Atterbury until it disappeared, almost skipping, around the corner
. . . . The germ of truth, throughout the centuries, had lost nothing
of its dynamic potentialities. If released and proclaimed it was still
powerful enough to drive the world to insensate anger and opposition....

As he stood there, lost in reflection, a shining automobile drew up at
the curb, and from it descended a firm lady in a tight-fitting suit whom
he recognized as Mrs Wallis Plimpton. A moment later she had invaded the
office--for no less a word may be employed to express her physical
aggressiveness, the glowing health which she radiated.

"Good morning, Mr. Hodder," she said, seating herself in one of the
straight-backed chairs. "I have been so troubled since you preached that
sermon yesterday, I could scarcely sleep. And I made up my mind I'd come
to you the first thing this morning. Mr. Plimpton and I have been
discussing it. In fact, people are talking of nothing else. We dined
with the Laureston Greys last night, and they, too, were full of it."
Charlotte Plimpton looked at him, and the flow of her words suddenly
diminished. And she added, a little lamely for her, "Spiritual matters
in these days are so difficult, aren't they?"

"Spiritual matters always were difficult, Mrs. Plimpton," he said.

"I suppose so," she assented hurriedly, with what was intended for a
smile. "But what I came to ask you is this--what are we to teach our
children?"

"Teach them the truth," the rector replied.

"One of the things which troubled me most was your reference to modern
criticism," she went on, recovering her facility. "I was brought up to
believe that the Bible was true. The governess--Miss Standish, you know,
such a fine type of Englishwoman--reads the children Bible stories every
Sunday evening. They adore them, and little Wallis can repeat them
almost by heart--the pillar of cloud by day, Daniel in the lions' den,
and the Wise Men from the East. If they aren't true, some one ought to
have told us before now."

A note of injury had crept into her voice.

"How do you feel about these things yourself?" Holder inquired.

"How do I feel? Why, I have never thought about them very much--they
were there, in the Bible!"

"You were taught to believe them?"

"Of course," she exclaimed, resenting what seemed a reflection on the
Gore orthodoxy.

"Do they in any manner affect your conduct?"

"My conduct?" she repeated. "I don't know what you mean. I was brought
up in the church, and Mr. Plimpton has always gone, and we are bringing
up the children to go. Is that what you mean?"

"No," Hodder answered, patiently, "that is not what I mean. I ask
whether these stories in any way enter into your life, become part of
you, and tend to make you a more useful woman?"

"Well--I have never considered them in that way," she replied, a little
perplexed.

"Do you believe in them yourself?"

"Why--I don't know,--I've never thought. I don't suppose I do,
absolutely--not in those I have mentioned."

"And you think it right to teach things to your children which you do not
yourself believe?"

"How am I to decide?" she demanded.

"First by finding out yourself what you do believe," he replied, with a
touch of severity.

"Mr. Hodder!" she cried in a scandalized voice, "do you mean to say that
I, who have been brought up in this church, do not know what Christianity
is."

He looked at her and shook his head.

"You must begin by being honest with yourself," he went on, not heeding
her shocked expression. "If you are really in earnest in this matter,
I should be glad to help you all I can. But I warn you there is no
achievement in the world more difficult than that of becoming a,
Christian. It means a conversion of your whole being something which you
cannot now even imagine. It means a consuming desire which,--I fear,--in
consideration of your present mode of life, will be difficult to
acquire."

"My present mode of life!" she gasped.

"Precisely," said the rector. He was silent, regarding, her. There was
discernible not the slightest crack of crevice in the enamel of this
woman's worldly armour.

For the moment her outraged feelings were forgotten. The man had
fascinated her. To be told, in this authoritative manner, that she was
wicked was a new and delightful experience. It brought back to her the
real motive of her visit, which had in reality been inspired not only by
the sermon of the day before, but by sheer curiosity.

"What would you have me do?" she demanded.

"Find yourself."

"Do you mean to say that I am not--myself?" she asked, now completely
bewildered.

"I mean to say that you are nobody until you achieve conviction."

For Charlotte Plimpton, nee Gore, to be told in her own city, by the
rector of her own church that she was nobody was an event hitherto
inconceivable! It was perhaps as extraordinary that she did not resent.
it. Curiosity still led her on.

"Conviction?" she repeated. "But I have conviction, Mr. Hodder. I
believe in the doctrines of the Church."

"Belief!" he exclaimed, and checked himself strongly. "Conviction
through feeling. Not until then will you find what you were put in the
world for."

"But my husband--my children? I try to do my duty."

"You must get a larger conception of it," Hodder replied.

"I suppose you mean," she declared, "that I am to spend the rest of my
life in charity."

"How you would spend the rest of your life would be revealed to you,"
said the rector.

It was the weariness in his tone that piqued her now, the intimation
that he did not believe in her sincerity--had not believed in it from
the first. The life-long vanity of a woman used to be treated with
consideration, to be taken seriously, was aroused. This extraordinary
man had refused to enter into the details which she inquisitively craved.

Charlotte Plimpton rose.

"I shall not bother you any longer at present, Mr. Hodder," she said
sweetly. "I know you must have, this morning especially, a great deal to
trouble you."

He met her scrutiny calmly.

"It is only the things we permit to trouble us that do so, Mrs.
Plimpton," he replied. "My own troubles have arisen largely from a lack
of faith on the part of those whom I feel it is my duty to influence."

It was then she delivered her parting shot, which she repeated, with much
satisfaction, to her husband that evening. She had reached the door.
"Was there a special service at Calvary yesterday?" she asked innocently,
turning back.

"Not that I know of."

"I wondered. Mr. Parr was there; I'm told--and he's never been known
to desert St. John's except on the rarest occasions. But oh, Mr. Hodder,
I must congratulate you on your influence with Alison. When she has been
out here before she never used to come to church at all."






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill


Volume 7.

XXIII.  THE CHOICE
XXIV.   THE VESTRY MEETS
XXV.   "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
XXVI.   THE CURRENT OF LIFE



CHAPTER XXIII

THE CHOICE


I

Pondering over Alison's note, he suddenly recalled and verified some
phrases which had struck him that summer on reading Harnack's celebrated
History of Dogma, and around these he framed his reply. "To act as if
faith in eternal life and in the living Christ was the simplest thing in
the world, or a dogma to which one has to submit, is irreligious. . .
It is Christian to pray that God would give the Spirit to make us strong
to overcome the feelings and the doubts of nature. . . Where this
faith, obtained in this way, exists, it has always been supported by the
conviction that the Man lives who brought life and immortality to light.
To hold fast this faith is the goal of life, for only what we consciously
strive for is in this matter our own. What we think we possess is very
soon lost."

"The feelings and the doubts of nature!" The Divine Discontent, the
striving against the doubt that every honest soul experiences and admits.
Thus the contrast between her and these others who accepted and went
their several ways was brought home to him.

He longed to talk to her, but his days were full. Yet the very thought
of her helped to bear him up as his trials, his problems accumulated; nor
would he at any time have exchanged them for the former false peace which
had been bought (he perceived more and more clearly) at the price of
compromise.

The worst of these trials, perhaps, was a conspicuous article in a
newspaper containing a garbled account of his sermon and of the sensation
it had produced amongst his fashionable parishioners. He had refused to
see the reporter, but he had been made out a hero, a socialistic champion
of the poor. The black headlines were nauseating; and beside them, in
juxtaposition, were pen portraits of himself and of Eldon Parr. There
were rumours that the banker had left the church until the recalcitrant
rector should be driven out of it; the usual long list of Mr. Parr's
benefactions was included, and certain veiled paragraphs concerning his
financial operations. Mr. Ferguson, Mr. Plimpton, Mr. Constable, did not
escape,--although they, too, had refused to be interviewed . . . .

The article brought to the parish house a bevy of reporters who had to be
fought off, and another batch of letters, many of them from ministers, in
approval or condemnation.

His fellow-clergymen called, some to express sympathy and encouragement,
more of them to voice in person indignant and horrified protests. Dr.
Annesley of Calvary--a counterpart of whose rubicund face might have
been found in the Council of Trent or in mediaeval fish-markets
--pronounced his anathemas with his hands folded comfortably over his
stomach, but eventually threw to the winds every vestige of his
ecclesiastical dignity . . . .

Then there came a note from the old bishop, who was traveling. A kindly
note, withal, if non-committal,--to the effect that he had received
certain communications, but that his physician would not permit him to
return for another ten days or so. He would then be glad to see Mr.
Holder and talk with him.

What would the bishop do? Holder's relations with him had been more than
friendly, but whether the bishop's views were sufficiently liberal to
support him in the extreme stand he had taken he could not surmise. For
it meant that the bishop, too, must enter into a conflict with the first
layman of his diocese, of whose hospitality he had so often partaken,
whose contributions had been on so lordly a scale. The bishop was in his
seventieth year, and had hitherto successfully fought any attempt to
supply him with an assistant,--coadjutor or suffragan.

At such times the fear grew upon Hodder that he might be recommended for
trial, forced to abandon his fight to free the Church from the fetters
that bound her: that the implacable hostility of his enemies would rob
him of his opportunity.

Thus ties were broken, many hard things were said and brought to his
ears. There were vacancies in the classes and guilds, absences that
pained him, silences that wrung him. . . .

Of all the conversations he held, that with Mrs. Constable was perhaps
the most illuminating and distressing. As on that other occasion, when
he had gone to her, this visit was under the seal of confession, unknown
to her husband. And Hodder had been taken aback, on seeing her enter his
office, by the very tragedy in her face--the tragedy he had momentarily
beheld once before. He drew up a chair for her, and when she had sat
down she gazed at him some moments without speaking.

"I had to come," she said; "there are some things I feel I must ask you.
For I have been very miserable since I heard you on Sunday."

He nodded gently.

"I knew that you would change your views--become broader, greater. You
may remember that I predicted it."

"Yes," he said.

"I thought you would grow more liberal, less bigoted, if you will allow
me to say so. But I didn't anticipate--" she hesitated, and looked up at
him again.

"That I would take the extreme position I have taken," he assisted her.

"Oh, Mr. Hodder," she cried impulsively, "was it necessary to go so far?
and all at once. I am here not only because I am miserable, but I am
concerned on your account. You hurt me very much that day you came to
me, but you made me your friend. And I wonder if you really understand
the terrible, bitter feeling you have aroused, the powerful enemies you
have made by speaking so--so unreservedly?"

"I was prepared for it," he answered. "Surely, Mrs. Constable, once I
have arrived at what I believe to be the truth, you would not have me
temporize?"

She gave him a wan smile.

"In one respect, at least, you have not changed," she told him. "I am
afraid you are not the temporizing kind. But wasn't there,--mayn't there
still be a way to deal with this fearful situation? You have made it
very hard for us--for them. You have given them no loophole of escape.
And there are many, like me, who do not wish to see your career ruined,
Mr. Hodder."

"Would you prefer," he asked, "to see my soul destroyed? And your own?"

Her lips twitched.

"Isn't there any other way but that? Can't this transformation, which
you say is necessary and vital, come gradually? You carried me away as
I listened to you, I was not myself when I came out of the church.
But I have been thinking ever since. Consider my husband, Mr. Hodder,"
her voice faltered. "I shall not mince matters with you--I know you will
not pretend to misunderstand me. I have never seen him so upset since
since that time Gertrude was married. He is in a most cruel position.
I confessed to you once that Mr. Parr had made for us all the money we
possess. Everett is fond of you, but if he espouses your cause, on the
vestry, we shall be ruined."

Hodder was greatly moved.

"It is not my cause, Mrs. Constable," he said.

"Surely, Christianity is not so harsh and uncompromising as that! And do
you quite do justice to--to some of these men? There was no one to tell
them the wrongs they were committing--if they were indeed wrongs. Our
civilization is far from perfect."

"The Church may have been remiss, mistaken," the rector replied. "But
the Christianity she has taught, adulterated though it were, has never
condoned the acts which have become commonplace in modern finance. There
must have been a time, in the life of every one of these men, when they
had to take that first step against which their consciences revolted,
when they realized that fraud and taking advantage of the ignorant and
weak were wrong. They have deliberately preferred gratification in this
life to spiritual development--if indeed they believe in any future
whatsoever. For 'whosoever will save his life shall lose it' is as true
to-day as it ever was. They have had their choice--they still have it."

"I am to blame," she cried. "I drove my husband to it, I made him think
of riches, it was I who cultivated Mr. Parr. And oh, I suppose I am
justly punished. I have never been happy for one instant since that
day."

He watched her, pityingly, as she wept. But presently she raised her
face, wonderingly.

"You do believe in the future life after--after what you have been
through?"

"I do," he answered simply.

"Yes--I am sure you do. It is that, what you are, convinces me you do.
Even the remarkable and sensible explanation you gave of it when you
interpreted the parable of the talents is not so powerful as the
impression that you yourself believe after thinking it out for yourself
--not accepting the old explanations. And then," she added, with a note
as of surprise, "you are willing to sacrifice everything for it!"

"And you?" he asked. "Cannot you, too, believe to that extent?"

"Everything?" she repeated. "It would mean--poverty. No--God help me
--I cannot face it. I have become too hard. I cannot do without the
world. And even if I could! Oh, you cannot know what you ask Everett,
my husband--I must say it, you make me tell you everything--is not free.
He is little better than a slave to Eldon Parr. I hate Eldon Parr," she
added, with startling inconsequence.

"If I had only known what it would lead to when I made Everett what he
is! But I knew nothing of business, and I wanted money, position to
satisfy my craving at the loss of--that other thing. And now I couldn't
change my husband if I would. He hasn't the courage, he hasn't the
vision. What there was of him, long ago, has been killed--and I killed
it. He isn't--anybody, now."

She relapsed again into weeping.

"And then it might not mean only poverty--it might mean disgrace."

"Disgrace!" the rector involuntarily took up the word.

"There are some things he has done," she said in a low voice, "which he
thought he was obliged to do which Eldon Parr made him do."

"But Mr. Parr, too--?" Hodder began.

"Oh, it was to shield Eldon Parr. They could never be traced to him.
And if they ever came out, it would kill my husband. Tell me," she
implored, "what can I do? What shall I do? You are responsible. You
have made me more bitterly unhappy than ever."

"Are you willing," he asked, after a moment, "to make the supreme
renunciation? to face poverty, and perhaps disgrace, to save your soul
and others?"

"And--others?"

"Yes. Your sacrifice would not, could not be in vain. Otherwise I
should be merely urging on you the individualism which you once advocated
with me."

"Renunciation." She pronounced the word questioningly. "Can
Christianity really mean that--renunciation of the world? Must we take
it in the drastic sense of the Church of the early centuries-the Church
of the Martyrs?"

"Christianity demands all of us, or nothing," he replied. "But the false
interpretation of renunciation of the early Church has cast its blight on
Christianity even to our day. Oriental asceticism, Stoicism, Philo and
other influences distorted Christ's meaning. Renunciation does not mean
asceticism, retirement from the world, a denial of life. And the early
Christian, since he was not a citizen, since he took the view that this
mortal existence was essentially bad and kept his eyes steadfastly fixed
on another, was the victim at once of false philosophies and of the
literal messianic prophecies of the Jews, which were taken over with
Christianity. The earthly kingdom which was to come was to be the result
of some kind of a cataclysm. Personally, I believe our Lord merely used
the Messianic literature as a convenient framework for his spiritual
Kingdom of heaven, and that the Gospels misinterpret his meaning on this
point.

"Renunciation is not the withdrawal from, the denial of life, but the
fulfilment of life, the submission to the divine will and guidance in
order that our work may be shown us. Renunciation is the assumption,
at once, of heavenly and earthly citizenship, of responsibility for
ourselves and our fellow-men. It is the realization that the other
world, the inner, spiritual world, is here, now, and that the soul may
dwell in it before death, while the body and mind work for the coming of
what may be called the collective kingdom. Life looked upon in that way
is not bad, but good,--not meaningless, but luminous."

She had listened hungrily, her eyes fixed upon his face.

"And for me?" she questioned.

"For you," he answered, leaning forward and speaking with a conviction
that shook her profoundly, "if you make the sacrifice of your present
unhappiness, of your misery, all will be revealed. The labour which you
have shirked, which is now hidden from you, will be disclosed, you will
justify your existence by taking your place as an element of the
community. You will be able to say of yourself, at last, 'I am of use.'"

"You mean--social work?"

The likeness of this to Mrs. Plimpton's question struck him. She had
called it "charity." How far had they wandered in their teaching from
the Revelation of the Master, since it was as new and incomprehensible to
these so-called Christians as to Nicodemus himself!

"All Christian work is social, Mrs. Constable, but it is founded on love.
'Thou shaft love thy neighbour as thyself.' You hold your own soul
precious, since it is the shrine of God. And for that reason you hold
equally precious your neighbour's soul. Love comes first, as revelation,
as imparted knowledge, as the divine gist of autonomy--self-government.
And then one cannot help working, socially, at the task for which we are
made by nature most efficient. And in order to discover what that task
is, we must wait."

"Why did not some one tell me this, when I was young?" she asked--not
speaking to him. "It seems so simple."

"It is simple. The difficult thing is to put it into practice--the most
difficult thing in the world. Both courage and faith are required, faith
that is content to trust as to the nature of the reward. It is the
wisdom of foolishness. Have you the courage?"

She pressed her hands together.

"Alone--perhaps I should have. I don't know. But my husband!
I was able to influence him to his destruction, and now I am powerless.
Darkness has closed around me. He would not--he will not listen to me."

"You have tried?"

"I have attempted to talk to him, but the whole of my life contradicts my
words. He cannot see me except as, the woman who drove him into making
money. Sometimes I think he hates me."

Hodder recalled, as his eyes rested on her compassionately, the
sufferings of that other woman in Dalton Street.

"Would you have me desert him--after all these years?" she whispered.
"I often think he would be happier, even now."

"I would have you do nothing save that which God himself will reveal to
you. Go home, go into the church and pray--pray for knowledge. I think
you will find that you are held responsible for your husband. Pray that
that which you have broken, you may mend again."

"Do you think there is a chance?"

Hodder made a gesture.

"God alone can judge as to the extent of his punishments."

She got to her feet, wearily.

"I feel no hope--I feel no courage, but--I will try. I see what you
mean--that my punishment is my powerlessness."

He bent his head.

"You are so strong--perhaps you can help me."

"I shall always be ready," he replied.

He escorted her down the steps to the dark blue brougham with upstanding,
chestnut horses which was waiting at the curb. But Mrs. Constable turned
to the footman, who held open the door.

"You may stay here awhile," she said to him, and gave Hodder her hand....

She went into the church . . . .



II

Asa Waring and his son-in-law, Phil Goodrich, had been to see Hodder on
the subject of the approaching vestry meeting, and both had gone away not
a little astonished and impressed by the calmness with which the rector
looked forward to the conflict. Others of his parishioners, some of whom
were more discreet in their expressions of sympathy, were no less
surprised by his attitude; and even his theological adversaries, such as
Gordon Atterbury, paid him a reluctant tribute. Thanks, perhaps, to the
newspaper comments as much as to any other factor, in the minds of those
of all shades of opinion in the parish the issue had crystallized into a
duel between the rector and Eldon Parr. Bitterly as they resented the
glare of publicity into which St. John's had been dragged, the first
layman of the diocese was not beloved; and the fairer-minded of Hodder's
opponents, though appalled, were forced to admit in their hearts that the
methods by which Mr. Parr had made his fortune and gained his ascendency
would not bear scrutiny . . . . Some of them were disturbed, indeed,
by the discovery that there had come about in them, by imperceptible
degrees, in the last few years a new and critical attitude towards the
ways of modern finance: moat of them had an uncomfortable feeling that
Hodder was somehow right,--a feeling which they sought to stifle when
they reflected upon the consequences of facing it. For this would mean
a disagreeable shaking up of their own lives. Few of them were in a
position whence they might cast stones at Eldon Parr . . . .

What these did not grasp was the fact that that which they felt stirring
within them was the new and spiritual product of the dawning twentieth
century--the Social Conscience. They wished heartily that the new rector
who had developed this disquieting personality would peacefully resign
and leave them to the former, even tenor of their lives. They did not
for one moment doubt the outcome of his struggle with Eldon Parr. The
great banker was known to be relentless, his name was synonymous with
victory. And yet, paradoxically, Hodder compelled their inner sympathy
and admiration! . . .

Some of them, who did not attempt peremptorily to choke the a processes
made the startling discovery that they were not, after all, so shocked by
his doctrines as they had at first supposed. The trouble was that they
could not continue to listen to him, as formerly, with comfort.... One
thing was certain, that they had never expected to look forward to a
vestry meeting with such breathless interest and anxiety. This clergyman
had suddenly accomplished the surprising feat of reviving the Church as a
burning, vital factor in the life of the community! He had discerned her
enemy, and defied his power . . . .

As for Hodder, so absorbed had he been by his experiences, so wrung by
the human contacts, the personal problems which he had sought to enter,
that he had actually given no thought to the battle before him until
the autumn afternoon, heavy with smoke, had settled down into darkness.
The weather was damp and cold, and he sat musing on the ordeal now
abruptly confronting him before his study fire when he heard a step
behind him. He turned to recognize, by the glow of the embers, the heavy
figure of Nelson Langmaid.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Hodder," he said. "The janitor said you
were in, and your door is open."

"Not at all," replied the rector, rising. As he stood for a moment
facing the lawyer, the thought of their friendship, and how it had begun
in the little rectory overlooking the lake at Bremerton, was uppermost in
his mind,--yes, and the memory of many friendly, literary discussions in
the same room where they now stood, of pleasant dinners at Langmaid's
house in the West End, when the two of them had often sat talking until
late into the nights.

"I must seem very inhospitable," said Hodder. "I'll light the lamp--it's
pleasanter than the electric light."

The added illumination at first revealed the lawyer in his familiar
aspect, the broad shoulders, the big, reddish beard, the dome-like head,
--the generous person that seemed to radiate scholarly benignity, peace,
and good-will. But almost instantly the rector became aware of a new and
troubled, puzzled glance from behind the round spectacles. . ."

"I thought I'd drop in a moment on my way up town--" he began. And the
note of uncertainty in his voice, too, was new. Hodder drew towards the
fire the big chair in which it had been Langmaid's wont to sit, and
perhaps it was the sight of this operation that loosed the lawyer's
tongue.

"Confound it, Hodder!" he exclaimed, "I like you--I always have liked
you. And you've got a hundred times the ability of the average
clergyman. Why in the world did you have to go and make all this
trouble?"

By so characteristic a remark Hodder was both amused and moved. It
revealed so perfectly the point of view and predicament of the lawyer,
and it was also an expression of an affection which the rector cordially,
returned . . . . Before answering, he placed his visitor in the
chair, and the deliberation of the act was a revelation of the
unconscious poise of the clergyman. The spectacle of this self-command
on the brink of such a crucial event as the vestry meeting had taken
Langmaid aback more than he cared to show. He had lost the old sense of
comradeship, of easy equality; and he had the odd feeling of dealing with
a new man, at once familiar and unfamiliar, who had somehow lifted
himself out of the everyday element in which they heretofore had met.
The clergyman had contrived to step out of his, Langmaid's, experience:
had actually set him--who all his life had known no difficulty in dealing
with men--to groping for a medium of communication . . . .

Hodder sat down on the other side of the fireplace. He, too, seemed to
be striving for a common footing.

"It was a question of proclaiming the truth when at last I came to see
it, Langmaid. I could not help doing what I did. Matters of policy,
of a false consideration for individuals could not enter into it.
If this were not so, I should gladly admit that you had a just grievance,
a peculiar right to demand why I had not remained the strictly orthodox
person whom you induced to come here. You had every reason to
congratulate yourself that you were getting what you doubtless would call
a safe man."

"I'll admit I had a twinge of uneasiness after I came home," Langmaid
confessed.

Hodder smiled at his frankness.

"But that disappeared."

"Yes, it disappeared. You seemed to suit 'em so perfectly. I'll own up,
Hodder, that I was a little hurt that you did not come and talk to me
just before you took the extraordinary--before you changed your
opinions."

"Would it have done any good?" asked the rector, gently. "Would you
have agreed with me any better than you do now? I am perfectly willing,
if you wish, to discuss with you any views of mine which you may not
indorse. And it would make me very happy, I assure you, if I could bring
you to look upon the matter as I do."

This was a poser. And whether it were ingenuous, or had in it an element
of the scriptural wisdom of the serpent, Langmaid could not have said.
As a lawyer, he admired it.

"I wasn't in church, as usual,--I didn't hear the sermon," he replied.
"And I never could make head or tail of theology--I always told you that.
What I deplore, Hodder, is that you've contrived to make a hornets' nest
out of the most peaceful and contented congregation in America. Couldn't
you have managed to stick to religion instead of getting mixed up with
socialism?"

"So you have been given the idea that my sermon was socialistic?" the
rector said.

"Socialistic and heretical,--it seems. Of course I'm not much of an
authority on heresy, but they claim that you went out of your way to
knock some of their most cherished and sacred beliefs in the head."

"But suppose I have come to the honest conclusion that in the first
place these so-called cherished beliefs have no foundation in fact,
and no influence on the lives of the persons who cherished them, no real
connection with Christianity? What would you have me do, as a man?
Continue to preach them for the sake of the lethargic peace of which
you speak? leave the church paralyzed, as I found it?"

"Paralyzed! You've got the most influential people in the city."

Hodder regarded him for a while without replying.

"So has the Willesden Club," he said.

Langmaid laughed a little, uncomfortably.

"If Christianity, as one of the ancient popes is said to have remarked,
were merely a profitable fable," the rector continued, "there might be
something in your contention that St. John's, as a church, had reached
the pinnacle of success. But let us ignore the spiritual side of this
matter as non-vital, and consider it from the practical side. We have
the most influential people in the city, but we have not their children.
That does not promise well for the future. The children get more profit
out of the country clubs. And then there is another question: is it
going to continue to be profitable? Is it as profitable now as it was,
say, twenty years ago?

"You've got out of my depth," said Nelson Langmaid.

"I'll try to explain. As a man of affairs, I think you will admit, if
you reflect, that the return of St. John's, considering the large amount
of money invested, is scarcely worth considering. And I am surprised
that as astute a man as Mr. Pair has not been able to see this long ago.
If we clear all the cobwebs away, what is the real function of this
church as at present constituted? Why this heavy expenditure to maintain
religious services for a handful of people? Is it not, when we come down
to facts, an increasingly futile effort to bring the influences of
religion--of superstition, if you will--to bear on the so-called lower
classes in order that they may remain contented with their lot, with that
station and condition in the world where--it is argued--it has pleased
God to call them? If that were not so, in my opinion there are very few
of the privileged classes who would invest a dollar in the Church. And
the proof of it is that the moment a clergyman raises his voice to
proclaim the true message of Christianity they are up in arms with the
cry of socialism. They have the sense to see that their privileges are
immediately threatened.

"Looking at it from the financial side, it would be cheaper for them to
close up their churches. It is a mere waste of time and money, because
the influence on their less fortunate brethren in a worldly sense has
dwindled to nothing. Few of the poor come near their churches in these
days. The profitable fable is almost played out."

Hodder had spoken without bitterness, yet his irony was by no means lost
on the lawyer. Langmaid, if the truth be told, found himself for the
moment in the unusual predicament of being at a loss, for the rector had
put forward with more or less precision the very cynical view which he
himself had been clever enough to evolve.

"Haven't they the right," he asked, somewhat lamely to demand the kind of
religion they pay for?"

"Provided you don't call it religion," said the rector.

Langmaid smiled in spite of himself.

"See here, Hodder," he said, "I've always confessed frankly that I knew
little or nothing about religion. I've come here this evening as your
friend, without authority from anybody," he added significantly, "to see
if this thing couldn't somehow be adjusted peaceably, for your sake as
well as others'. Come, you must admit there's a grain of justice in the
contention against you. When I went on to Bremerton to get you I had no
real reason for supposing that these views would develop. I made a
contract with you in all good faith."

"And I with you," answered the rector. "Perhaps you do not realize,
Langmaid, what has been the chief factor in developing these views."

The lawyer was silent, from caution.

"I must be frank with you. It was the discovery that Mr. Parr and others
of my chief parishioners were so far from being Christians as to indulge,
while they supported the Church of Christ, in operations like that of the
Consolidated Tractions Company, wronging their fellow-men and condemning
them to misery and hate. And that you, as a lawyer, used your talents to
make that operation possible."

"Hold on!" cried Langmaid, now plainly agitated. "You have no right--you
can know nothing of that affair. You do not understand business."

"I'm afraid," replied the rector, sadly, "that I understand one side of
it only too well."

"The Church has no right to meddle outside of her sphere, to dictate to
politics and business."

"Her sphere," said Holder,--is the world. If she does not change the
world by sending out Christians into it, she would better close her
doors."

"Well, I don't intend to quarrel with you, Holder. I suppose it can't be
helped that we look at these things differently, and I don't intend to
enter into a defence of business. It would take too long, and it
wouldn't help any." He got to his feet. "Whatever happens, it won't
interfere with our personal friendship, even if you think me a highwayman
and I think you a--"

"A fanatic," Holder supplied. He had risen, too, and stood, with a smile
on his face, gazing at the lawyer with an odd scrutiny.

"An idealist, I was going to say," Langmaid answered, returning the
smile, "I'll admit that we need them in the world. It's only when one
of them gets in the gear-box . . . ."

The rector laughed. And thus they stood, facing each other.

"Langmaid," Holder asked, "don't you ever get tired and disgusted with
the Juggernaut car?"

The big lawyer continued to smile, but a sheepish, almost boyish
expression came over his face. He had not credited the clergyman with
so much astuteness.

"Business, nowadays, is--business, Holder. The Juggernaut car claims us
all. It has become-if you will permit me to continue to put my similes
into slang--the modern band wagon. And we lawyers have to get on it, or
fall by the wayside."

Holder stared into the fire.

"I appreciate your motive in coming here," he said, at length, "and I do
you the justice of believing it was friendly, that the fact that you are,
in a way, responsible for me to--to the congregation of St. John's did
not enter into it. I realize that I have made matters particularly
awkward for you. You have given them in me, and in good faith, something
they didn't bargain for. You haven't said so, but you want me to resign.
On the one hand, you don't care to see me tilting at the windmills, or,
better, drawing down on my head the thunderbolts of your gods. On the
other hand, you are just a little afraid for your gods. If the question
in dispute were merely an academic one, I'd accommodate you at once. But
I can't. I've thought it all out, and I have made up my mind that it is
my clear duty to remain here and, if I am strong enough, wrest this
church from the grip of Eldon Parr and the men whom he controls.

"I am speaking plainly, and I understand the situation thoroughly. You
will probably tell me, as others have done, that no one has ever opposed
Eldon Parr who has not been crushed. I go in with my eyes open, I am
willing to be crushed, if necessary. You have come here to warn me, and
I appreciate your motive. Now I am going to warn you, in all sincerity
and friendship. I may be beaten, I may be driven out. But the victory
will be mine nevertheless. Eldon Parr and the men who stand with him in
the struggle will never recover from the blow I shall give them. I shall
leave them crippled because I have the truth on my side, and the truth
is irresistible. And they shall not be able to injure me permanently.
And you, I regret deeply to say, will be hurt, too. I beg you, for no
selfish reason, to consider again the part you intend to play in this
affair."

Such was the conviction, such the unlooked-for fire with which the rector
spoke that Langmaid was visibly shaken and taken aback in spite of
himself.

"Do you mean," he demanded, when he had caught his breath, "that you
intend to attack us publicly?"

"Is that the only punishment you can conceive of?" the rector asked. The
reproach in his voice was in itself a denial.

"I beg your pardon, Hodder," said the lawyer, quickly. "And I am sure
you honestly believe what you say, but--"

"In your heart you, too, believe it, Langmaid. The retribution has
already begun. Nevertheless you will go on--for a while." He held out
his hand, which Langmaid took mechanically. "I bear you no ill-will.
I am sorry that you cannot yet see with sufficient clearness to save
yourself."

Langmaid turned and picked up his hat and stick and left the room without
another word. The bewildered, wistful look which had replaced the
ordinarily benign and cheerful expression haunted Hodder long after
the lawyer had gone. It was the look of a man who has somehow lost
his consciousness of power.




CHAPTER XXIV

THE VESTRY MEETS

At nine o'clock that evening Hodder stood alone in the arched vestry
room, and the sight of the heavy Gothic chairs ranged about the long
table brought up memories of comfortable, genial meetings prolonged by
chat and banter.... The noise of feet, of subdued voices beside the coat
room in the corridor, aroused him. All of the vestry would seem to have
arrived at once.

He regarded them with a detached curiosity as they entered, reading them
with a new insight. The trace of off-handedness in Mr. Plimpton's former
cordiality was not lost upon him--an intimation that his star had set.
Mr. Plimpton had seen many breaches healed--had healed many himself. But
he had never been known as a champion of lost causes.

"Well, here we are, Mr. Hodder, on the stroke," he remarked.
"As a vestry, I think we're entitled to the first prize for promptness.
How about it, Everett?"

Everett Constable was silent.

"Good evening, Mr. Hodder," he said. He did not offer to shake hands,
as Mr. Plimpton had done, but sat down at the far end of the table.
He looked tired and worn; sick, the rector thought, and felt a sudden
swelling of compassion for the pompous little man whose fibre was not
as tough as that of these other condottieri: as Francis Ferguson's, for
instance, although his soft hand and pink and white face framed in the
black whiskers would seem to belie any fibre whatever.

Gordon Atterbury hemmed and hawed,--"Ah, Mr. Hodder," and seated himself
beside Mr. Constable, in a chair designed to accommodate a portly bishop.
Both of them started nervously as Asa Waring, holding his head high, as a
man should who has kept his birthright, went directly to the rector.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hodder," he said, and turning defiantly,
surveyed the room. There was an awkward silence. Mr. Plimpton edged
a little nearer. The decree might have gone forth for Mr. Hodder's
destruction, but Asa Waring was a man whose displeasure was not to be
lightly incurred.

"What's this I hear about your moving out of Hamilton Place, Mr. Waring?
You'd better come up and take the Spaulding lot, in Waverley, across from
us."

"I am an old man, Mr. Plimpton," Asa Waring replied. "I do not move as
easily as some other people in these days."

Everett Constable produced his handkerchief and rubbed his nose
violently. But Mr. Plimpton was apparently undaunted.

"I have always said," he observed, "that there was something very fine in
your sticking to that neighbourhood after your friends had gone. Here's
Phil!"

Phil Goodrich looked positively belligerent, and as he took his stand
on the other side of Hodder his father-in-law smiled at him grimly.
Mr. Goodrich took hold of the rector's arm.

"I missed one or two meetings last spring, Mr. Hodder," he said, "but I'm
going to be on hand after this. My father, I believe, never missed a
vestry meeting in his life. Perhaps that was because they used to hold
most of 'em at his house."

"And serve port and cigars, I'm told," Mr. Plimpton put in.

"That was an inducement, Wallis, I'll admit," answered Phil. "But there
are even greater inducements now."

In view of Phil Goodrich's well-known liking for a fight, this was too
pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by
the entrance of. Nelson Langmaid. The lawyer, as he greeted them,
seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with
his customary joke. A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr
was seen to be standing in the doorway, surveying them.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said coldly, and without more ado went to
his customary chair, and sat down in it. Immediately followed a scraping
of other chairs. There was a dominating quality about the man not to be
gainsaid.

The rector called the meeting to order . . . .

During the routine business none of the little asides occurred which
produce laughter. Every man in the room was aware of the intensity of
Eldon Parr's animosity, and yet he betrayed it neither by voice, look,
or gesture. There was something uncanny in this self-control, this sang
froid with which he was wont to sit at boards waiting unmoved for the
time when he should draw his net about his enemies, and strangle them
without pity. It got on Langmaid's nerves--hardened as he was to it.
He had seen many men in that net; some had struggled, some had taken
their annihilation stoically; honest merchants, freebooters, and
brigands. Most of them had gone out, with their families, into that
precarious border-land of existence in which the to-morrows are ever
dreaded.

Yet here, somehow, was a different case. Langmaid found himself going
back to the days when his mother had taken him to church, and he could
not bear to look at, Hodder. Since six o'clock that afternoon--had his
companions but known it--he had passed through one of the worst periods
of his existence. . . .

After the regular business had been disposed of a brief interval was
allowed, for the sake of decency, to ensue. That Eldon Parr would not
lead the charge in person was a foregone conclusion. Whom, then, would
he put forward? For obvious reasons, not Wallis Plimpton or Langmaid,
nor Francis Ferguson. Hodder found his, glance unconsciously fixed upon
Everett Constable, who, moved nervously and slowly pushed back his chair.
He was called upon, in this hour and in the church his father had helped
to found, to make the supreme payment for the years of financial
prosperity. Although a little man, with his shoulders thrown back and
his head high, he generally looked impressive when he spoke, and his fine
features and clear-cut English contributed to the effect. But now his
face was strained, and his voice seemed to lack command as he bowed and
mentioned the rector's name. Eldon Parr sat back.

"Gentlemen," Mr. Constable began, "I feel it my duty to say something
this evening, something that distresses me. Like some of you who are
here present, I have been on this vestry for many years, and my father
was on it before me. I was brought up under Dr. Gilman, of whom I need
not speak. All here, except our present rector, knew him. This church,
St. John's, has been a part--a--large part--of my life. And anything
that seems to touch its welfare, touches me.

"When Dr. Gilman died, after so many years of faithful service, we faced
a grave problem,--that of obtaining a young man of ability, an active man
who would be able to assume the responsibilities of a large and growing
parish, and at the same time carry on its traditions, precious to us all;
one who believed in and preached, I need scarcely add, the accepted
doctrines of the Church, which we have been taught to think are sacred
and necessary to salvation. And in the discovery of the Reverend Mr.
Hodder, we had reason to congratulate ourselves and the parish. He was
all that we had hoped for, and more. His sermons were at once a pleasure
and an instruction.

"I wish to make it clear," he continued, "that in spite of the pain Mr.
Hodder's words of last Sunday have given me, I respect and honour him
still, and wish him every success. But, gentlemen, I think it is plain
to all of you that he has changed his religious convictions. As to the
causes through which that change has come about, I do not pretend to
know. To say the least, the transition is a startling one, one for which
some of us were totally unprepared. To speak restrainedly, it was a
shock--a shock which I shall remember as long as I live.

"I need not go into the doctrinal question here, except to express my
opinion that the fundamental facts of our religion were contradicted.
And we have also to consider the effect of this preaching on coming
generations for whom we are responsible. There are, no doubt, other
fields for Mr. Hodder's usefulness. But I think it may safely be taken
as a principle that this parish has the right to demand from the pulpit
that orthodox teaching which suits it, and to which it has been
accustomed. And I venture further to give it as my opinion--to put it
mildly that others have been as disturbed and shocked as I. I have seen
many, talked with many, since Sunday. For these reasons, with much
sorrow and regret, I venture to suggest to the vestry that Mr. Hodder
resign as our rector. And I may add what I believe to be the feeling
of all present, that we have nothing but good will for him, although
we think we might have been informed of what he intended to do.

"And that in requesting him to resign we are acting for his own good as
well as our own, and are thus avoiding a situation which threatens to
become impossible,--one which would bring serious reflection on him and
calamity on the church. We already, in certain articles in the
newspapers, have had an indication of the intolerable notoriety we may
expect, although I hold Mr. Hodder innocent in regard to those articles.
I am sure he will have the good sense to see this situation as I see it,
as the majority of the parish see it."

Mr. Constable sat down, breathing hard. He had not looked at the rector
during the whole of his speech, nor at Eldon Parr. There was a heavy
silence, and then Philip Goodrich rose, square, clean-cut, aggressive.

"I, too, gentlemen, have had life-long association with this church," he
began deliberately. "And for Mr. Hodder's sake I am going to give you a
little of my personal history, because I think it typical of thousands of
men of my age all over this country. It was nobody's fault, perhaps,
that I was taught that the Christian religion depended on a certain
series of nature miracles and a chain of historical events, and when I
went East to school I had more of this same sort of instruction. I have
never, perhaps, been overburdened with intellect, but the time arrived
nevertheless when I began to think for myself. Some of the older boys
went once, I remember, to the rector of the school--a dear old man--and
frankly stated our troubles. To use a modern expression, he stood pat on
everything. I do not say it was a consciously criminal act, he probably
saw no way out himself. At any rate, he made us all agnostics at one
stroke.

"What I learned in college of science and history and philosophy merely
confirmed me in my agnosticism. As a complete system for the making of
atheists and materialists, I commend the education which I received. If
there is any man here who believes religion to be an essential factor in
life, I ask him to think of his children or grandchildren before he comes
forward to the support of Mr. Constable.

"In that sermon which he preached last Sunday, Mr. Hodder, for the first
time in my life, made Christianity intelligible to me. I want him to
know it. And there are other men and women in that congregation who
feel as I do. Gentlemen, there is nothing I would not give to have had
Christianity put before me in that simple and inspiring way when I was
a boy. And in my opinion St. John's is more fortunate to-day than it
ever has been in its existence. Mr. Hodder should have an unanimous
testimonial of appreciation from this vestry for his courage. And if the
vote requesting him to resign prevails, I venture to predict that there
is not a man on this vestry who will not live to regret it."

Phil Goodrich glared at Eldon Parr, who remained unmoved.

"Permit me to add," he said, "that this controversy, in other respects
than doctrine, is more befitting to the Middle Ages than to the twentieth
century, when this Church and other denominations are passing resolutions
in their national conventions with a view to unity and freedom of
belief."

Mr. Langmaid, Mr. Plimpton, and Mr. Constable sat still. Mr. Ferguson
made no move. It was Gordon Atterbury who rushed into the breach, and
proved that the extremists are allies of doubtful value.

He had, apparently, not been idle since Sunday, and was armed cap-a pie
with time-worn arguments that need not be set down. All of which went to
show that Mr. Goodrich had not referred to the Middle Ages in vain. For
Gordon Atterbury was a born school-man. But he finished by declaring, at
the end of twenty minutes (much as he regretted the necessity of saying
it), that Mr. Hodder's continuance as rector would mean the ruin of the
church in which all present took such a pride. That the great majority
of its members would never submit to what was so plainly heresy.

It was then that Mr. Plimpton gathered courage to pour oil on the waters.
There was nothing, in his opinion, he remarked smilingly, in his function
as peacemaker, to warrant anything but the most friendly interchange of
views. He was second to none in his regard for Mr. Hodder, in his
admiration for a man who had the courage of his convictions. He had not
the least doubt that Mr. Hodder did not desire to remain in the parish
when it was so apparent that the doctrines which he now preached were not
acceptable to most of those who supported the church. And he added (with
sublime magnanimity) that he wished Mr. Hodder the success which he was
sure he deserved, and gave him every assurance of his friendship.

Asa Waring was about to rise, when he perceived that Hodder himself was
on his feet. And the eyes of every man, save one, were fixed on him
irresistibly. The rector seemed unaware of it. It was Philip Goodrich
who remarked to his father-in-law, as they walked home afterwards, of the
sense he had had at that moment that there were just two men in the
room,--Hodder and Eldon Parr. All the rest were ciphers; all had lost,
momentarily, their feelings of partisanship and were conscious only of
these two intense, radiating, opposing centres of force; and no man,
oddly enough, could say which was the stronger. They seemingly met on
equal terms. There could not be the slightest doubt that the rector did
not mean to yield, and yet they might have been puzzled if they had asked
themselves how they had read the fact in his face or manner. For he
betrayed neither anger nor impatience.

No more did the financier reveal his own feelings. He still sat back in
his chair, unmoved, in apparent contemplation. The posture was familiar
to Langmaid.

Would he destroy, too, this clergyman? For the first time in his life,
and as he looked at Hodder, the lawyer wondered. Hodder did not defend
himself, made no apologies. Christianity was not a collection of
doctrines, he reminded them,--but a mode of life. If anything were clear
to him, it was that the present situation was not, with the majority of
them, a matter of doctrines, but of unwillingness to accept the message
and precept of Jesus Christ, and lead Christian lives. They had made use
of the doctrines as a stalking-horse.

There was a stir at this, and Hodder paused a moment and glanced around
the table. But no one interrupted.

He was fully aware of his rights, and he had no intention of resigning.
To resign would be to abandon the work for which he was responsible, not
to them, but to God. And he was perfectly willing--nay, eager to defend
his Christianity before any ecclesiastical court, should the bishop
decide that a court was necessary. The day of freedom, of a truer vision
was at hand, the day of Christian unity on the vital truths, and no
better proof of it could be brought forward than the change in him.
In his ignorance and blindness he had hitherto permitted compromise, but
he would no longer allow those who made only an outward pretence of being
Christians to direct the spiritual affairs of St. John's, to say what
should and what should not be preached. This was to continue to paralyze
the usefulness of the church, to set at naught her mission, to alienate
those who most had need of her, who hungered and thirsted after
righteousness, and went away unsatisfied.

He had hardly resumed his seat when Everett Constable got up again. He
remarked, somewhat unsteadily, that to prolong the controversy would be
useless and painful to all concerned, and he infinitely regretted the
necessity of putting his suggestion that the rector resign in the form of
a resolution . . . . The vote was taken. Six men raised their hands
in favour of his resignation--Nelson Langmaid among them: two, Asa Waring
and Philip Goodrich, were against it. After announcing the result,
Hodder rose.

"For the reason I have stated, gentlemen, I decline to resign," he said.
"I stand upon my canonical rights."

Francis Ferguson arose, his voice actually trembling with anger. There
is something uncanny in the passion of a man whose life has been ordered
by the inexorable rules of commerce, who has been wont to decide all
questions from the standpoint of dollars and cents. If one of his own
wax models had suddenly become animated, the effect could not have been
more startling.

In the course of this discussion, he declared, Mr. Hodder had seen fit to
make grave and in his opinion unwarranted charges concerning the lives of
some, if not all, of the gentlemen who sat here. It surprised him that
these remarks had not been resented, but he praised a Christian
forbearance on the part of his colleagues which he was unable to achieve.
He had no doubt that their object had been to spare Mr. Hodder's feelings
as much as possible, but Mr. Hodder had shown no disposition to spare
their own. He had outraged them, Mr. Ferguson thought,--wantonly so.
He had made these preposterous and unchristian charges an excuse for his
determination to remain in a position where his usefulness had ceased.

No one, unfortunately, was perfect in this life,--not even Mr. Hodder.
He, Francis Ferguson, was far from claiming to be so. But he believed
that this arraignment of the men who stood highest in the city for
decency, law, and order, who supported the Church, who revered its
doctrines, who tried to live Christian lives, who gave their time and
their money freely to it and to charities, that this arraignment was an
arrogant accusation and affront to be repudiated. He demanded that Mr.
Hodder be definite. If he had any charges to make, let him make them
here and now.

The consternation, the horror which succeeded such a stupid and
unexpected tactical blunder on the part of the usually astute
Mr. Ferguson were felt rather than visually discerned. The atmosphere
might have been described as panicky. Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich
smiled as Wallis Plimpton, after a moment's hush, scrambled to his feet,
his face pale, his customary easiness and nonchalance now the result of
an obvious effort. He, too, tried to smile, but swallowed instead as he
remembered his property in Dalton Street . . . . Nelson Langmaid
smiled, in spite of himself. . . Mr. Plimpton implored his
fellow-members not to bring personalities into the debate, and he was
aware all the while of the curious, pitying expression of the rector. He
breathed a sigh of relief at the opening words of Hodder, who followed
him.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have no intention of being personal, even by
unanimous consent. But if Mr. Ferguson will come to me after this
meeting I shall have not the least objection to discussing this matter
with him in so far as he himself is concerned. I can only assure you
now that I have not spoken without warrant."

There was, oddly enough, no acceptance of this offer by Mr. Ferguson.
Another silence ensued, broken, at last, by a voice for which they had
all been unconsciously waiting; a voice which, though unemotional, cold,
and matter-of-fact, was nevertheless commanding, and long accustomed to
speak with an overwhelming authority. Eldon Parr did not rise.

"Mr. Hodder," he said, "in one respect seems to be under the delusion
that we are still in the Middle Ages, instead of the twentieth century,
since he assumes the right to meddle with the lives of his parishioners,
to be the sole judge of their actions. That assumption will not, be
tolerated by free men. I, for one, gentlemen, do not, propose to have
a socialist for the rector of the church which I attend and support. And
I maintain the privilege of an American citizen to set my own standards,
within the law, and to be the sole arbitrar of those standards."

"Good!" muttered Gordon Atterbury. Langmaid moved uncomfortably.

"I shall not waste words," the financier continued. "There is in my
mind no question that we are justified in demanding from our rector the
Christian doctrines to which we have given our assent, and which are
stated in the Creeds. That they shall be subject to the whims of the
rector is beyond argument. I do not pretend to, understand either,
gentlemen, the nature of the extraordinary change that has taken place
in the rector of St. John's. I am not well versed m psychology. I am
incapable of flights myself. One effect of this change is an attitude
on which reasonable considerations would seem to have no effect.

"Our resources, fortunately, are not yet at an end. It has been
my hope, on account of my former friendship with Mr. Hodder, that an
ecclesiastical trial might not be necessary. It now seems inevitable.
In the meantime, since Mr. Hodder has seen fit to remain in spite of
our protest, I do not intend to enter this church. I was prepared,
gentlemen, as some of you no doubt know, to spend a considerable sum in
adding to the beauty of St. John's and to the charitable activities of
the parish. Mr. Hodder has not disapproved of my gifts in the past, but
owing to his present scruples concerning my worthiness, I naturally
hesitate to press the matter now." Mr. Parr indulged in the semblance of
a smile. "I fear that he must take the responsibility of delaying this
benefit, with the other responsibilities he has assumed."

His voice changed. It became sharper.

"In short, I propose to withhold all contributions for whatever purpose
from this church while Mr. Hodder is rector, and I advise those of you
who have voted for his resignation to do the same. In the meantime,
I shall give my money to Calvary, and attend its services. And I shall
offer further a resolution--which I am informed is within our right--to
discontinue Mr. Hodder's salary."

There was that in the unparalleled audacity of Eldon Parr that compelled
Hodder's unwilling admiration. He sat gazing at the financier during
this speech, speculating curiously on the inner consciousness of the man
who could utter it. Was it possible that he had no sense of guilt? Even
so, he had shown a remarkable astuteness in relying on the conviction
that he (Hodder) would not betray what he knew.

He was suddenly aware that Asa Waring was standing beside him.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Waring, "I have listened to this discussion as long
as I can bear it with patience. Had I been told of it, I should have
thought it incredible that the methods of the money changers should be
applied to the direction and control of the house of God. In my opinion
there is but one word which is suitable for what has passed here
to-night, and the word is persecution. Perhaps I have lived too long I
have lived to see honourable, upright men deprived of what was rightfully
theirs, driven from their livelihood by the rapacity of those who strive
to concentrate the wealth and power of the nation into their hands.
I have seen this power gathering strength, stretching its arm little by
little over the institutions I fought to preserve, and which I cherish
over our politics, over our government, yes, and even over our courts.
I have seen it poisoning the business honour in which we formerly took
such a pride, I have seen it reestablishing a slavery more pernicious
than that which millions died to efface. I have seen it compel a
subservience which makes me ashamed, as an American, to witness."

His glance, a withering moral scorn, darted from under the grizzled
eyebrows and alighted on one man after another, and none met it. Everett
Constable coughed, Wallis Plimpton shifted his position, the others sat
like stones. Asa Waring was giving vent at last to the pent-up feelings
of many years.

"And now that power, which respects nothing, has crept into the sanctuary
of the Church. Our rector recognizes it, I recognize it,--there is not
a man here who, in his heart, misunderstands me. And when a man is found
who has the courage to stand up against it, I honour him with all my
soul, and a hope that was almost dead revives in me. For there is one
force, and one force alone, able to overcome the power of which I speak,
--the Spirit of Christ. And the mission of the Church is to disseminate
that spirit. The Church is the champion on which we have to rely, or
give up all hope of victory. The Church must train the recruits. And if
the Church herself is betrayed into the hands of the enemy, the battle is
lost.

"If Mr. Hodder is forced out of this church, it would be better to lock
the doors. St. John's will be held up, and rightfully, to the scorn of
the city. All the money in the world will not save her. Though
crippled, she has survived one disgrace, when she would not give free
shelter to the man who above all others expressed her true spirit, when
she drove Horace Bentley from her doors after he had been deprived of the
fortune which he was spending for his fellow-men. She will not survive
another.

"I have no doubt Mr. Parr's motion to take from Mr. Hodder his living
will go through. And still I urge him not to resign. I am not a rich
man, even when such property as I have is compared to moderate fortunes
of these days, but I would pay his salary willingly out of my own pocket
rather than see him go . . . .

"I call the attention of the Chairman," said Eldon Parr, after a certain
interval in which no one had ventured to speak, "to the motion before the
vestry relating to the discontinuance of Mr. Hodder's salary."

It was then that the unexpected happened. Gordon Atterbury redeemed
himself. His respect for Mr. Waring, he said, made him hesitate to take
issue with him.

He could speak for himself and for a number of people in the congregation
when he reiterated his opinion that they were honestly shocked at what
Mr. Hodder had preached, and that this was his sole motive in requesting
Mr. Hodder to resign. He thought, under the circumstances, that this was
a matter which might safely be left with the bishop. He would not vote
to deprive Mr. Hodder of his salary.

The motion was carried by a vote of five to three. For Eldon Parr well
knew that his will needed no reenforcement by argument. And this much
was to be said for him, that after he had entered a battle he never
hesitated, never under any circumstances reconsidered the probable
effect of his course.

As for the others, those who had supported him, they were cast in a less
heroic mould. Even Francis Ferguson. As between the devil and the deep
sea, he was compelled, with as good a grace as possible, to choose the
devil. He was utterly unable to contemplate the disaster which might
ensue if certain financial ties, which were thicker than cables, were
snapped. But his affection for the devil was not increased by thus being
led into a charge from which he would willingly have drawn back. Asa
Waring might mean nothing to Eldon Parr, but he meant a great deal to
Francis Ferguson, who had by no means forgotten his sensations of
satisfaction when Mrs. Waring had made her first call in Park Street on
Francis Ferguson's wife. He left the room in such a state of
absent-mindedness as actually to pass Mr. Parr in the corridor without
speaking to him.

The case of Wallis Plimpton was even worse. He had married the Gores,
but he had sought to bind himself with hoops of steel to the Warings. He
had always secretly admired that old Roman quality (which the Goodriches
--their connections--shared) of holding fast to their course unmindful
and rather scornful of influence which swayed their neighbours. The clan
was sufficient unto itself, satisfied with a moderate prosperity and a
continually increasing number of descendants. The name was unstained.
Such are the strange incongruities in the hearts of men, that few
realized the extent to which Wallis Plimpton had partaken of the general
hero-worship of Phil Goodrich. He had assiduously cultivated his regard,
at times discreetly boasted of it, and yet had never been sure of it.
And now fate, in the form of his master, Eldon Parr had ironically
compelled him at one stroke to undo the work of years. As soon as the
meeting broke up, he crossed the room.

"I can't tell you how much I regret this, Phil," he said. "Charlotte has
very strong convictions, you know, and so have I. You can understand, I
am sure, how certain articles of belief might be necessary to one person,
and not to another."

"Yes," said Phil, "I can understand. We needn't mention the articles,
Wallis." And he turned his back.

He never knew the pain he inflicted. Wallis Plimpton looked at the
rector, who stood talking to Mr. Waring, and for the first time in his
life recoiled from an overture.

Something in the faces of both men warned him away.

Even Everett Constable, as they went home in the cars together, was brief
with him, and passed no comments when Mr. Plimpton recovered sufficiently
to elaborate on the justification of their act, and upon the
extraordinary stand taken by Phil Goodrich and Mr. Waring.

"They might have told us what they were going to do."

Everett Constable eyed him.

"Would it have made any difference, Plimpton?" he demanded.

After that they rode in silence, until they came to a certain West End
corner, where they both descended. Little Mr. Constable's sensations
were, if anything, less enviable, and he had not Mr. Plimpton's
recuperative powers.  He had sold that night, for a mess of pottage,
the friendship and respect of three generations. And he had fought,
for pay, against his own people.

And lastly, there was Langmaid, whose feelings almost defy analysis. He
chose to walk through the still night the four miles--that separated him
from his home. And he went back over the years of his life until he
found, in the rubbish of the past, a forgotten and tarnished jewel. The
discovery pained him. For that jewel was the ideal he had carried away,
as a youth, from the old law school at the bottom of Hamilton Place,
--a gift from no less a man than the great lawyer and public-spirited
citizen, Judge Henry Goodrich--Philip Goodrich's grandfather, whose
seated statue marked the entrance of the library. He, Nelson Langmaid,
--had gone forth from that school resolved to follow in the footsteps
of that man,--but somehow he missed the path. Somehow the jewel had lost
its fire. There had come a tempting offer, and a struggle--just one:
a readjustment on the plea that the world had changed since the days of
Judge Goodrich, whose uncompromising figure had begun to fade: an
exciting discovery that he, Nelson Langmaid, possessed the gift of
drawing up agreements which had the faculty of passing magically through
the meshes of the Statutes. Affluence had followed, and fame, and even
that high office which the Judge himself had held, the Presidency of the
State Bar Association. In all that time, one remark, which he had tried
to forget, had cut him to the quick. Bedloe Hubbell had said on the
political platform that Langmaid got one hundred thousand dollars a year
for keeping Eldon Parr out of jail.

Once he stopped in the street, his mind suddenly going back to the action
of the financier at the vestry meeting.

"Confound him!" he said aloud, "he has been a fool for once. I told him
not to do it."

He stood at last in the ample vestibule of his house, singling out his
latch-key, when suddenly the door opened, and his daughter Helen
appeared.

"Oh, dad," she cried, "why are you so-late? I've been watching for you.
I know you've let Mr. Hodder stay."

She gazed at him with widened eyes.

"Don't tell me that you've made him resign. I can't--I won't believe
it."

"He isn't going to resign, Helen," Langmaid replied, in an odd voice.

"He--he refused to."




CHAPTER XXV

"RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"


I

The Church of St. John's, after a peaceful existence of so many years,
had suddenly become the stage on which rapid and bewildering dramas were
played: the storm-centre of chaotic forces, hitherto unperceived, drawn
from the atmosphere around her. For there had been more publicity, more
advertising. "The Rector of St. John's will not talk"--such had been
one headline: neither would the vestry talk. And yet, despite all this
secrecy, the whole story of the suspension of Hodder's salary was in
print, and an editorial (which was sent to him) from a popular and
sensational journal, on "tainted money," in which Hodder was held up
to the public as a martyr because he refused any longer to accept for
the Church ill-gotten gains from Consolidated Tractions and the like.

This had opened again the floodgates of the mails, and it seemed as
though every person who had a real or fancied grievance against Eldon
Parr had written him. Nor did others of his congregation escape. The
press of visitors at the parish house suddenly increased once more,
men and women came to pour into his ears an appalling aeries of
confessions; wrongs which, like Garvin's, had engendered bitter hatreds;
woes, temptations, bewilderments. Hodder strove to keep his feet, sought
wisdom to deal patiently with all, though at times he was tried to the
uttermost. And he held steadfastly before his mind the great thing, that
they did come. It was what he had longed for, prayed for, despaired of.
He was no longer crying in the empty wilderness, but at last in touch-in
natural touch with life: with life in all its sorrow, its crudity and
horror. He had contrived, by the grace of God, to make the connection
for his church.

That church might have been likened to a ship sailing out of the snug
harbour in which she had lain so long to range herself gallantly beside
those whom she had formerly beheld, with complacent cowardice, fighting
her fight: young men and women, enlisted under other banners than her
own, doing their part in the battle of the twentieth century for
humanity. Her rector was her captain. It was he who had cut her cables,
quelled, for a time at least, her mutineers; and sought to hearten those
of her little crew who wavered, who shrank back appalled as they realized
something of the immensity of the conflict in which her destiny was to be
wrought out.

To carry on the figure, Philip Goodrich might have been deemed her first
officer. He, at least, was not appalled, but grimly conscious of the
greatness of the task to which they had set their hands. The sudden
transformation of conservative St. John's was no more amazing than that
of the son of a family which had never been without influence in the
community. But that influence had always been conservative. And Phil
Goodrich had hitherto taken but a listless interest in the church of his
fathers. Fortune had smiled upon him, trusts had come to him unsought.
He had inherited the family talent for the law, the freedom to practise
when and where he chose. His love of active sport had led him into many
vacations, when he tramped through marsh and thicket after game, and at
five and forty there was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on his hard
body. In spite of his plain speaking, an overwhelming popularity at
college had followed him to his native place, and no organization,
sporting or serious, was formed in the city that the question was not
asked, "What does Goodrich think about it?"

His whole-souled enlistment in the cause of what was regarded as radical
religion became, therefore, the subject of amazed comment in the many
clubs he now neglected. The "squabble" in St. John's, as it was
generally referred to, had been aired in the press, but such was the
magic in a name made without conscious effort that Phil Goodrich's
participation in the struggle had a palpably disarming effect: and there
were not a few men who commonly spent their Sunday mornings behind
plate-glass windows, surrounded by newspapers, as well as some in the
athletic club (whose contests Mr. Goodrich sometimes refereed) who went
to St. John's out of curiosity and who waited, afterwards, for an
interview with Phil or the rector. The remark of one of these was typical
of others. He had never taken much stock in religion, but if Goodrich
went in for it he thought he'd go and look it over.

Scarcely a day passed that Phil did not drop in at the parish house....
And he set himself, with all the vigour of an unsquandered manhood, to
help Hodder to solve the multitude of new problems by which they were
beset.

A free church was a magnificent ideal, but how was it to be carried on
without an Eldon Parr, a Ferguson, a Constable, a Mrs. Larrabbee, or a
Gore who would make up the deficit at the end of the year? Could weekly
contributions, on the envelope system, be relied upon, provided the
people continued to come and fill the pews of absent and outraged
parishioners? The music was the most expensive in the city, although
Mr. Taylor, the organist, had come to the rector and offered to cut his
salary in half, and to leave that in abeyance until the finances could be
adjusted. And his example had been followed by some of the high-paid men
in the choir. Others had offered to sing without pay. And there were
the expenses of the parish house, an alarming sum now Eldon Parr had
withdrawn: the salaries of the assistants. Hodder, who had saved a
certain sum in past years, would take nothing for the present . . . .
Asa Waring and Phil Goodrich borrowed on their own responsibility . . .



II

Something of the overwhelming nature of the forces Hodder had summoned
was visibly apparent on that first Sunday after what many had called his
apostasy. Instead of the orderly, sprucely-dressed groups of people
which were wont to linger in greetings before the doors of St. John's,
a motley crowd thronged the pavement and streamed into the church,
pressing up the aisles and invading the sacred precincts where decorous
parishioners had for so many years knelt in comfort and seclusion.
The familiar figure of Gordon Atterbury was nowhere to be seen, and the
Atterbury pew was occupied by shop-girls in gaudy hats. Eldon Parr's pew
was filled, Everett Constable's, Wallis Plimpton's; and the ushers who
had hastily been mustered were awestricken and powerless. Such a
resistless invasion by the hordes of the unknown might well have struck
with terror some of those who hitherto had had the courage to standup
loyally in the rector's support. It had a distinct flavour of
revolution: contained, for some, a grim suggestion of a time when that
vague, irresponsible, and restless monster, the mob, would rise in its
might and brutally and inexorably take possession of all property.

Alison had met Eleanor Goodrich in Burton Street, and as the two made
their way into the crowded vestibule they encountered Martha Preston,
whose husband was Alison's cousin, in the act of flight.

"You're not going in!" she exclaimed.

"Of course we are."

Mrs. Preston stared at Alison in amazement.

"I didn't know you were still here," she said, irrelevantly. "I'm pretty
liberal, my dear, as you know,--but this is more than I can stand. Look
at them!" She drew up her skirts as a woman brushed against her.
"I believe in the poor coming to church, and all that, but this is mere
vulgar curiosity, the result of all that odious advertising in the
newspapers. My pew is filled with them. If I had stayed, I should have
fainted. I don't know what to think of Mr. Hodder."

"Mr. Hodder is not to blame for the newspapers," replied Alison, warmly.
She glanced around her at the people pushing past, her eyes shining, her
colour high, and there was the ring of passion in her voice which had do
Martha Preston a peculiarly disquieting effect. "I think it's splendid
that they are here at all! I don't care what brought them."

Mrs. Preston stared again. She was a pretty, intelligent woman, at whose
dinner table one was sure to hear the discussion of some "modern
problem": she believed herself to be a socialist. Her eyes sought
Eleanor Goodrich's, who stood by, alight with excitement.

"But surely you, Eleanor-you're not going in! You'll never be able to
stand it, even if you find a seat. The few people we know who've come
are leaving. I just saw the Allan Pendletons."

"Have you seen Phil?" Eleanor asked.

"Oh, yes, he's in there, and even he's helpless. And as I came out poor
Mr. Bradley was jammed up against the wall. He seemed perfectly stunned
. . . ."

At this moment they were thrust apart. Eleanor quivered as she was
carried through the swinging doors into the church.

"I think you're right," she whispered to Alison, "it is splendid.
There's something about it that takes hold of me, that carries one away.
It makes me wonder how it can be guided--what will come of it?"

They caught sight of Phil pushing his way towards them, and his face bore
the set look of belligerency which Eleanor knew so well, but he returned
her smile. Alison's heart warmed towards him.

"What do you think of this?" he demanded. "Most of our respectable
friends who dared to come have left in a towering rage--to institute
lawsuits, probably. At tiny rate, strangers are not being made to wait
until ten minutes after the service begins. That's one barbarous custom
abolished."

"Strangers seem to have taken matters in their own hands for once"
Eleanor smiled. "We've made up our minds to stay, Phil, even if we have
to stand."

"That's the right spirit," declared her husband, glancing at Alison, who
had remained silent, with approval and by no means a concealed surprise.
"I think I know of a place where I can squeeze you in, near Professor
Bridges and Sally, on the side aisle."

"Are George and Sally here?" Eleanor exclaimed.

"Hodder," said Phil, "is converting the heathen. You couldn't have kept
George away. And it was George who made Sally stay!"

Presently they found themselves established between a rawboned young
workingman who smelled strongly of soap, whose hair was plastered tightly
against his forehead, and a young woman who leaned against the wall. The
black in which she was dressed enhanced the whiteness and weariness of
her face, and she sat gazing ahead of her, apparently unconscious of
those who surrounded her, her hands tightly folded in her lap. In their
immediate vicinity, indeed, might have been found all the variety of type
seen in the ordinary street car. And in truth there were some who seemed
scarcely to realize they were not in a public vehicle. An elaborately
dressed female in front of them, whose expansive hat brushed her
neighbours, made audible comments to a stout man with a red neck which
was set in a crease above his low collar.

"They tell me Eldon Parr's pew has a gold plate on it. I wish I knew
which it was. It ain't this one, anyway, I'll bet."

"Say, they march in in this kind of a church, don't they?" some one said
behind them.

Eleanor, with her lips tightly pressed, opened her prayer book. Alison's
lips were slightly parted as she gazed about her, across the aisle. Her
experience of the Sunday before, deep and tense as it had been, seemed as
nothing compared to this; the presence of all these people stimulated her
inexpressibly, fired her; and she felt the blood pulsing through her
body as she contrasted this gathering with the dignified, scattered
congregation she had known. She scarcely recognized the church itself
. . . She speculated on the homes from which these had come, and the
motives which had brought them.

For a second the perfume of the woman in front, mingling with other less
definable odours, almost sickened her, evoking suggestions of tawdry,
trivial, vulgar lives, fed on sensation and excitement; but the feeling
was almost immediately swept away by a renewed sense of the bigness of
the thing which she beheld,--of which, indeed, she was a part. And her
thoughts turned more definitely to the man who had brought it all about.
Could he control it, subdue it? Here was Opportunity suddenly upon him,
like a huge, curving, ponderous wave. Could he ride it? or would it
crush him remorselessly?

Sensitive, alert, quickened as she was, she began to be aware of other
values: of the intense spiritual hunger in the eyes of the woman in
black, the yearning of barren, hopeless existences. And here and there
Alison's look fell upon more prosperous individuals whose expressions
proclaimed incredulity, a certain cynical amusement at the spectacle:
others seemed uneasy, as having got more than they had bargained for,
deliberating whether to flee . . . and then, just as her suspense was
becoming almost unbearable, the service began. . . .

How it had been accomplished, the thing she later felt, was beyond the
range of intellectual analysis. Nor could she have told how much later,
since the passage of time had gone unnoticed. Curiosities, doubts,
passions, longings, antagonisms--all these seemed--as the most natural
thing in the world--to have been fused into one common but ineffable
emotion. Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly
awoke. All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment
she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of
him had melted, imperceptibly, into that of the great congregation, once
divided against itself, which had now achieved unity of soul.

The mystery as to how this had been effected was the more elusive when
she considered the absence of all methods which might have been deemed
revivalistic. Few of those around her evinced a familiarity with the
historic service. And then occurred to her his explanation of
personality as the medium by which all truth is revealed, by which the
current of religion, the motive power in all history, is transmitted.
Surely this was the explanation, if it might be called one! That
tingling sense of a pervading spirit which was his,--and yet not his.
He was the incandescent medium, and yet, paradoxically, gained in
identity and individuality and was inseparable from the thing itself.

She could not see him. A pillar hid the chancel from her view.

The service, to which she had objected as archaic, became subordinate,
spiritualized, dominated by the personality. Hodder had departed from
the usual custom by giving out the page of the psalter: and the verses,
the throbbing responses which arose from every corner of the church,
assumed a new significance, the vision of the ancient seer revived. One
verse he read resounded with prophecy.

"Thou shalt deliver me from the strivings of the people: and thou shalt
make me the head of the heathen."

And the reply:

"A people whom I have not known shall serve me."

The working-man next to Alison had no prayer-book. She thrust her own
into his hand, and they read from it together . . . .

When they came to the second hymn the woman in front of her had
wonderfully shed her vulgarity. Her voice--a really good one--poured
itself out:

       "See a long race thy spacious courts adorn,
        See future sons, and daughters yet unborn,
        In crowding ranks on every side arise,
        Demanding life, impatient for the skies."

Once Alison would have been critical of the words She was beyond that,
now. What did it matter, if the essential Thing were present?

The sermon was a surprise. And those who had come for excitement,
for the sensation of hearing a denunciation of a class they envied and
therefore hated, and nevertheless strove to imitate, were themselves
rebuked. Were not their standards the same? And if the standard were
false, it followed inevitably that the life was false also.

Hodder fairly startled these out of their preconceived notions of
Christianity. Let them shake out of their minds everything they had
thought it to mean, churchgoing, acceptance of creed and dogma,
contributive charity, withdrawal from the world, rites and ceremonies:
it was none of these.

The motive in the world to-day was the acquisition of property; the
motive of Christianity was absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to
this. Shock their practical sense as it might, Christianity looked
forward with steadfast faith to a time when the incentive to amass
property would be done away with, since it was a source of evil and
a curse to mankind. If they would be Christians, let them face that.
Let them enter into life, into the struggles going on around them to-day
against greed, corruption, slavery, poverty, vice and crime. Let them
protest, let them fight, even as Jesus Christ had fought and protested.
For as sure as they sat there the day would come when they would be
called to account, would be asked the question--what had they done to
make the United States of America a better place to live in?

There were in the Apostolic writings and tradition misinterpretations
of life which had done much harm. Early Christianity had kept its eyes
fixed on another world, and had ignored this: had overlooked the fact
that every man and woman was put here to do a particular work. In the
first epistle of Peter the advice was given, "submit yourselves to every
ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." But Christ had preached
democracy, responsibility, had foreseen a millennium, the fulfilment of
his Kingdom, when all men, inspired by the Spirit, would make and keep
in spirit the ordinances of God.

Before they could do God's work and man's work they must first be
awakened, filled with desire. Desire was power. And he prayed that some
of them, on this day, would receive that desire, that power which nothing
could resist. The desire which would lead each and every one to the
gates of the Inner World which was limitless and eternal, filled with
dazzling light . . . .

Let them have faith then. Not credulity in a vague God they could not
imagine, but faith in the Spirit of the Universe, humanity, in Jesus
Christ who had been the complete human revelation of that Spirit, who had
suffered and died that man might not live in ignorance of it. To doubt
humanity,--such was the Great Refusal, the sin against the Holy Ghost,
the repudiation of the only true God!

After a pause, he spoke simply of his hope for St. John's. If he
remained here his ambition was that it would be the free temple of
humanity, of Jesus Christ, supported not by a few, but by all,--each in
accordance with his means. Of those who could afford nothing, nothing
would be required. Perhaps this did not sound practical, nor would it be
so if the transforming inspiration failed. He could only trust and try,
hold up to them the vision of the Church as a community of willing
workers for the Kingdom . . .



III

After the service was over the people lingered in the church, standing in
the pews and aisles, as though loath to leave. The woman with the
perfume and the elaborate hat was heard to utter a succinct remark.

"Say, Charlie, I guess he's all right. I never had it put like that."

The thick-necked man's reply was inaudible.

Eleanor Goodrich was silent and a little pale as she pressed close to
Alison. Her imagination had been stretched, as it were, and she was
still held in awe by the vastness of what she had heard and seen. Vaster
even than ever,--so it appeared now,--demanding greater sacrifices than
she had dreamed of. She looked back upon the old as at receding shores.

Alison, with absorbed fascination, watched the people; encountered, here
and there, recognitions from men and women with whom she had once danced
and dined in what now seemed a previous existence. Why had they come?
and how had they received the message? She ran into a little man, a
dealer in artists' supplies who once had sold her paints and brushes, who
stared and bowed uncertainly. She surprised him by taking his hand.

"Did you like it?" she asked, impulsively.

"It's what I've been thinking for years, Miss Parr," he responded,
"thinking and feeling. But I never knew it was Christianity. And I
never thought--" he stopped and looked at her, alarmed.

"Oh," she said, "I believe in it, too--or try to."

She left him, mentally gasping . . . . Without, on the sidewalk,
Eleanor Goodrich was engaged in conversation with a stockily built man,
inclined to stoutness; he had a brown face and a clipped, bristly
mustache. Alison paused involuntarily, and saw him start and hesitate
as his clear, direct gaze met her own.

Bedloe Hubbell was one of those who had once sought to marry her. She
recalled him as an amiable and aimless boy; and after she had gone East
she had received with incredulity and then with amusement the news of his
venture into altruistic politics. It was his efficiency she had doubted,
not his sincerity. Later tidings, contemptuous and eventually irritable
utterances of her own father, together with accounts in the New York
newspapers of his campaign, had convinced her in spite of herself that
Bedloe Hubbell had actually shaken the seats of power. And somehow, as
she now took him in, he looked it.

His transformation was one of the signs, one of the mysteries of the
times. The ridicule and abuse of the press, the opposition and enmity of
his childhood friends, had developed the man of force she now beheld, and
who came forward to greet her.

"Alison!" he exclaimed. He had changed in one sense, and not in another.
Her colour deepened as the sound of his voice brought back the lapsed
memories of the old intimacy. For she had been kind to him, kinder than
to any other; and the news of his marriage--to a woman from the Pacific
coast--had actually induced in her certain longings and regrets. When
the cards had reached her, New York and the excitement of the life into
which she had been weakly, if somewhat unwittingly, drawn had already
begun to pall.

"I'm so glad to see you," she told him. "I've heard--so many things.
And I'm very much in sympathy with what you're doing."

They crossed the street, and walked away from the church together. She
had surprised him, and made him uncomfortable.

"You've been away so long," he managed to say, "perhaps you do not
realize--"

"Oh, yes, I do," she interrupted. "I am on the other side, on your side.
I thought of writing you, when you nearly won last autumn."

"You see it, too?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I've changed, too. Not so much as you," she added, shyly.
"I always had a certain sympathy, you know, with the Robin Hoods."

He laughed at her designation, both pleased and taken aback by her
praise. . . But he wondered if she knew the extent of his criticism
of her father.

"That rector is a wonderful man," he broke out, irrelevantly. "I can't
get over' him--I can't quite grasp the fact that he exists, that he has
dared to do what he has done."

This brought her colour back, but she faced him bravely. You think he is
wonderful, then?"

"Don't you?" he demanded.

She assented. "But I am curious to know why you do. Somehow, I never
thought of--you--"

"As religious," he supplied. "And you? If I remember rightly--"

"Yes," she interrupted, "I revolted, too. But Mr. Hodder puts it so
--it makes one wonder."

"He has not only made me wonder," declared Bedloe Hubbell, emphatically,
"I never knew what religion was until I heard this man last Sunday."

"Last Sunday!"

"Until then, I hadn't been inside of a church for fifteen years,--except
to get married. My wife takes the children, occasionally, to a
Presbyterian church near us."

"And why, did you go then?" she asked.

"I am a little ashamed of my motive," he confessed. "There were rumours
--I don't pretend to know how they got about--" he hesitated, once more
aware of delicate ground. "Wallis Plimpton said something to a man who
told me. I believe I went out of sheer curiosity to hear what Hodder
would have to say. And then, I had been reading, wondering whether there
were anything in Christianity, after all."

"Yes?" she said, careless now as to what cause he might attribute her
eagerness. "And he gave you something?"

It was then she grasped the truth that this sudden renewed intimacy was
the result of the impression Hodder had left upon the minds of both.

"He gave me everything," Bedloe Hubbell replied. "I am willing to
acknowledge it freely. In his explanation of the parable of the Prodigal
Son, he gave me the clew to our modern times. What was for me an
inextricable puzzle has become clear as day. He has made me understand,
at last, the force which stirred me, which goaded me until I was fairly
compelled to embark in the movement which the majority of our citizens
still continue to regard as quixotic. I did not identify that force with
religion, then, and when I looked back on the first crazy campaign we
embarked upon, with the whole city laughing at me and at the obscure
and impractical personnel we had, there were moments when it seemed
incomprehensible folly. I had nothing to gain, and everything to lose by
such a venture. I was lazy and easy-going, as you know. I belonged to
the privileged class, I had sufficient money to live in comparative
luxury all my days, I had no grudge against these men whom I had known
all my life."

"But it must have had some beginning," said Alison.

"I was urged to run for the city council, by these very men." Bedloe
Hubbell smiled at the recollection. "They accuse me now of having
indulged once in the same practice, for which I am condemning them.
Our company did accept rebates, and we sought favours from the city
government. I have confessed it freely on the platform. Even during my
first few months in the council what may be called the old political
practices seemed natural to me. But gradually the iniquity of it all
began to dawn on me, and then I couldn't rest until I had done something
towards stopping it.

"At length I began to see," he continued, "that education of the masses
was to be our only preserver, that we should have to sink or swim by
that. I began to see, dimly, that this was true for other movements
going on to-day. Now comes Hodder with what I sincerely believe is the
key. He compels men like me to recognize that our movements are not
merely moral, but religious. Religion, as yet unidentified, is the force
behind these portentous stirrings of politics in our country, from sea to
sea. He aims, not to bring the Church into politics, but to make her the
feeder of these movements. Men join them to-day from all motives, but
the religious is the only one to which they may safely be trusted. He
has rescued the jewel from the dust-heap of tradition, and holds it up,
shining, before our eyes."

Alison looked at her companion.

"That," she said, "is a very beautiful phrase."

Bedloe Hubbell smiled queerly.

"I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I can't usually talk about
it. But the sight of that congregation this morning, mixed as it was,
and the way he managed to weld it together."

"Ah, you noticed that!" she exclaimed sharply.

"Noticed it!"

"I know. It was a question of feeling it."

There was a silence.

"Will he succeed?" she asked presently.

"Ah," said Bedloe Hubbell, "how is it possible to predict it? The forces
against him are tremendous, and it is usually the pioneer who suffers.
I agree absolutely with his definition of faith, I have it. And the work
he has done already can never be undone. The time is ripe, and it is
something that he has men like Phil Goodrich behind him, and Mr. Waring.
I'm going to enlist, and from now on I intend to get every man and woman
upon whom I have any influence whatever to go to that church . . . ."
A little later Alison, marvelling, left him.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE CURRENT OF LIFE


I

The year when Hodder had gone east--to Bremerton and Bar Harbor,
he had read in the train a magazine article which had set fire to his
imagination. It had to do with the lives of the men, the engineers who
dared to deal with the wild and terrible power of the western hills, who
harnessed and conquered roaring rivers, and sent the power hundreds of
miles over the wilderness, by flimsy wires, to turn the wheels of
industry and light the dark places of the cities. And, like all men who
came into touch with elemental mysteries, they had their moments of pure
ecstasy, gaining a tingling, intenser life from the contact with dynamic
things; and other moments when, in their struggle for mastery, they were
buffeted about, scorched, and almost overwhelmed.

In these days the remembrance of that article came back to Hodder.
It was as though he, too, were seeking to deflect and guide a force
--the Force of forces. He, too, was buffeted, scorched, and bruised,
at periods scarce given time to recover himself in the onward rush he
himself had started, and which he sought to control. Problems arose
which demanded the quick thinking of emergency. He, too, had his moments
of reward, the reward of the man who is in touch with reality.

He lived, from day to day, in a bewildering succession of encouragements
and trials, all unprecedented. If he remained at St. John's, an entire
new organization would be necessary . . . . He did not as yet see it
clearly; and in the meantime, with his vestry alienated, awaiting the
bishop's decision, he could make no definite plans, even if he had had
the leisure. Wholesale desertions had occurred in the guilds and
societies, the activities of which had almost ceased. Little Tomkinson,
the second assistant, had resigned; and McCrae, who worked harder than
ever before, was already marked, Hodder knew, for dismissal if he himself
were defeated.

And then there was the ever present question of money. It remained to
be seen whether a system of voluntary offerings were practicable. For
Hodder had made some inquiries into the so-called "free churches," only
to discover that there were benefactors behind them, benefactors the
Christianity of whose lives was often doubtful.

One morning he received in the mail the long-expected note from the
bishop, making an appointment for the next day. Hodder, as he read it
over again, smiled to himself. . . He could gather nothing of the mind
of the writer from the contents.

The piece of news which came to him on the same morning swept completely
the contemplations of the approaching interview from his mind. Sally
Grover stopped in at the parish house on her way to business.

"Kate Marcy's gone," she announced, in her abrupt fashion.

"Gone!" he exclaimed, and stared at her in dismay. "Gone where?"

"That's just it," said Miss Grover. "I wish I knew. I reckon we'd got
into the habit of trusting her too much, but it seemed the only way. She
wasn't in her room last night, but Ella Finley didn't find it out until
this morning, and she ran over scared to death, to tell us about it."

Involuntarily the rector reached for his hat.

"I've sent out word among our friends in Dalton Street," Sally continued.
An earthquake could not have disturbed her outer, matter-of-fact
calmness. But Hodder was not deceived: he knew that she was as
profoundly grieved and discouraged as himself. "And I've got old Gratz,
the cabinet-maker, on the job. If she's in Dalton Street, he'll find
her."

"But what--?" Hodder began.

Sally threw up her hands.

"You never can tell, with that kind. But it sticks in my mind she's done
something foolish."

"Foolish?"

Sally twitched, nervously.

"Somehow I don't think it's a spree--but as I say, you can't tell. She's
full of impulses. You remember how she frightened us once before, when
she went off and stayed all night with the woman she used to know in the
flat house, when she heard she was sick?"

Hodder nodded.

"You've inquired there?"

"That woman went to the hospital, you know. She may be with another one.
If she is, Gratz ought to find her. . . You know there was a time, Mr.
Hodder, when I didn't have much hope that we'd pull her through. But we
got hold of her through her feelings. She'd do anything for Mr. Bentley
--she'd do anything for you, and the way she stuck to that embroidery was
fine. I don't say she was cured, but whenever she'd feel one of those
fits coming on she'd let us know about it, and we'd watch her. And I
never saw one of that kind change so. Why, she must be almost as good
looking now as she ever was."

"You don't think she has done anything--desperate?" asked Hodder, slowly.

Sally comprehended.

"Well--somehow I don't. She used to say if she ever got drunk again
she'd never come back. But she didn't have any money--she's given Mr.
Bentley every cent of it. And we didn't have any warning. She was as
cheerful as could be yesterday morning, Mrs. McQuillen says."

"It might not do any harm to notify the police," replied Hodder, rising.
"I'll go around to headquarters now."

He was glad of the excuse for action. He could not have sat still. And
as he walked rapidly across Burton Street he realized with a pang how
much his heart had been set on Kate Marcy's redemption. In spite of the
fact that every moment of his time during the past fortnight had been
absorbed by the cares, responsibilities, and trials thrust upon him, he
reproached himself for not having gone oftener to Dalton Street. And
yet, if Mr. Bentley and Sally Grower had been unable to foresee and
prevent this, what could he have done?

At police headquarters he got no news. The chief received him
deferentially, sympathetically, took down Kate Marcy's description,
went so far as to remark, sagely, that too much mustn't be expected
of these women, and said he would notify the rector if she were found.
The chief knew and admired Mr. Bentley, and declared he was glad to meet
Mr. Hodder. . . Hodder left, too preoccupied to draw any significance
from the nature of his welcome. He went at once to Mr. Bentley's.

The old gentleman was inclined to be hopeful, to take Sally Grower's view
of the matter. . He trusted, he said, Sally's instinct. And Hodder
came away less uneasy, not a little comforted by a communion which never
failed to fortify him, to make him marvel at the calmness of that world
in which his friend lived, a calmness from which no vicarious sorrow was
excluded. And before Hodder left, Mr. Bentley had drawn from him some
account of the more recent complexities at the church. The very pressure
of his hand seemed to impart courage.

"You won't stay and have dinner with me?"

The rector regretfully declined.

"I hear the bishop has returned," said Mr. Bentley, smiling.

Hodder was surprised. He had never heard Mr. Bentley speak of the
bishop. Of course he must know him.

"I have my talk with him to-morrow."

Mr. Bentley said nothing, but pressed his hand again . . . .

On Tower Street, from the direction of the church, he beheld a young man
and a young woman approaching him absorbed in conversation. Even at a
distance both seemed familiar, and presently he identified the lithe and
dainty figure in the blue dress as that of the daughter of his vestryman,
Francis Ferguson. Presently she turned her face, alight with animation,
from her companion, and recognized him.

"It's Mr. Hodder!" she exclaimed, and was suddenly overtaken with a
crimson shyness. The young man seemed equally embarrassed as they stood
facing the rector.

"I'm afraid you don't remember me, Mr. Hodder," he said. "I met you at
Mr. Ferguson's last spring."

Then it came to him. This was the young man who had made the faux pas
which had caused Mrs. Ferguson so much consternation, and who had so
manfully apologized afterwards. His puzzled expression relaxed into a
smile, and he took the young man's hand.

"I was going to write to you," said Nan, as she looked up at the rector
from under the wide brim of her hat. "Our engagement is to be announced
Wednesday."

Hodder congratulated them. There was a brief silence, when Nan said
tremulously:

"We're coming to St. John's!"

"I'm very glad," Hodder replied, gravely. It was one of those
compensating moments, for him, when his tribulations vanished; and the
tributes of the younger generation were those to which his heart most
freely responded. But the situation, in view of the attitude of Francis
Ferguson, was too delicate to be dwelt upon.

"I came to hear you last Sunday, Mr. Hodder," the young man volunteered,
with that mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness which often
characterize his sex and age in referring to such matters. "And I had
an idea of writing you, too, to tell you how much I liked what you said.
But I know you must have had many letters. You've made me think."

He flushed, but met the rector's eye. Nan stood regarding him with
pride.

"You've made me think, too," she added. "And we intend to pitch in and
help you, if we can be of any use."

He parted from them, wondering. And it was not until he had reached the
parish house that it occurred to him that he was as yet unenlightened as
to the young man's name . . . .

His second reflection brought back to his mind Kate Mercy, for it was
with a portion of Nan Ferguson's generous check that her board had been
paid. And he recalled the girl's hope, as she had given it to him, that
he would find some one in Dalton Street to help . . . .



II

There might, to the mundane eye, have been an element of the ridiculous
in the spectacle of the rector of St. John's counting his gains, since he
had chosen--with every indication of insanity--to bring the pillars of
his career crashing down on his own head. By no means the least,
however, of the treasures flung into his lap was the tie which now bound
him to the Philip Goodriches, which otherwise would never have been
possible. And as he made his way thither on this particular evening, a
renewed sense came upon him of his emancipation from the dreary, useless
hours he had been wont to spend at other dinner tables. That existence
appeared to him now as the glittering, feverish unreality of a nightmare
filled with restless women and tired men who drank champagne, thus
gradually achieving--by the time cigars were reached--an artificial
vivacity. The caprice and superficiality of the one sex, the inability
to dwell upon or even penetrate a serious subject, the blindness to what
was going on around them; the materialism, the money standard of both,
were nauseating in the retrospect.

How, indeed, had life once appeared so distorted to him, a professed
servant of humanity, as to lead him in the name of duty into that galley?

Such was the burden of his thought when the homelike front of the
Goodrich house greeted him in the darkness, its enshrouded windows
gleaming with friendly light. As the door opened, the merry sound of
children's laughter floated down the stairs, and it seemed to Hodder as
though a curse had been lifted. . . . The lintel of this house had
been marked for salvation, the scourge had passed it by: the scourge of
social striving which lay like a blight on a free people.

Within, the note of gentility, of that instinctive good taste to which
many greater mansions aspired in vain, was sustained. The furniture, the
pictures, the walls and carpets were true expressions of the
individuality of master and mistress, of the unity of the life lived
together; and the rector smiled as he detected, in a corner of the hall,
a sturdy but diminutive hobby-horse--here the final, harmonious touch.
There was the sound of a scuffle, treble shrieks of ecstasy from above,
and Eleanor Goodrich came out to welcome him.

"Its Phil," she told him in laughing despair, "he upsets all my
discipline, and gets them so excited they don't go to sleep for hours..."

Seated in front of the fire in the drawing-room, he found Alison Parr.
Her coolness, her radiancy, her complete acceptance of the situation, all
this and more he felt from the moment he touched her hand and looked into
her face. And never had she so distinctly represented to him the
mysterious essence of fate. Why she should have made the fourth at this
intimate gathering, and whether or not she was or had been an especial
friend of Eleanor Goodrich he did not know. There was no explanation....

A bowl of superb chrysanthemums occupied the centre of the table.
Eleanor lifted them off and placed them on the sideboard.

"I've got used to looking at Phil," she explained, "and craning is so
painful."

The effect at first was to increase the intensity of the intimacy. There
was no reason--he told himself--why Alison's self-possession should have
been disturbed; and as he glanced at her from time to time he perceived
that it was not. So completely was she mistress of herself that
presently he felt a certain faint resentment rising within him,--yet
he asked himself why she should not have been. It was curious that his
imagination would not rise, now, to a realization of that intercourse on
which, at times, his fancy had dwelt with such vividness. The very
interest, the eagerness with which she took part in their discussions
seemed to him in the nature of an emphatic repudiation of any ties to him
which might have been binding.

All this was only, on Hodder's part, to be aware of the startling
discovery as to how strong his sense of possession had been, and how
irrational, how unwarranted.

For he had believed himself, as regarding her, to have made the supreme
renunciation of his life. And the very fact that he had not consulted,
could not consult her feelings and her attitude made that renunciation no
less difficult. All effort, all attempt at achievement of the only woman
for whom he had ever felt the sublime harmony of desire--the harmony of
the mind and the flesh--was cut off.

To be here, facing her again in such close proximity, was at once a
pleasure and a torture. And gradually he found himself yielding to the
pleasure, to the illusion of permanency created by her presence.
And, when all was said, he had as much to be grateful for as he could
reasonably have wished; yes, and more. The bond (there was a bond, after
all!) which united them was unbreakable. They had forged it together.
The future would take care of itself.

The range of the conversation upon which they at length embarked was a
tacit acknowledgment of a relationship which now united four persons who,
six months before, would have believed themselves to have had nothing
in common. And it was characteristic of the new interest that it
transcended the limits of the parish of St. John's, touched upon the
greater affairs to which that parish--if their protest prevailed--would
now be dedicated. Not that the church was at once mentioned, but subtly
implied as now enlisted,--and emancipated henceforth from all
ecclesiastical narrowness . . . . The amazing thing by which Hodder
was suddenly struck was the naturalness with which Alison seemed to fit
into the new scheme. It was as though she intended to remain there, and
had abandoned all intention of returning to the life which apparently she
had once permanently and definitely chosen....

Bedloe Hubbell's campaign was another topic. And Phil had observed,
with the earnestness which marked his more serious statements, that it
wouldn't surprise him if young Carter, Hubbell's candidate for mayor,
overturned that autumn the Beatty machine.

"Oh, do you think so!" Alison exclaimed with exhilaration.

"They're frightened and out of breath," said Phil, "they had no idea
that Bedloe would stick after they had licked him in three campaigns.
Two years ago they tried to buy him off by offering to send him to the
Senate, and Wallis Plimpton has never got through his head to this why
he refused."

Plimpton's head, Eleanor declared dryly, was impervious to a certain kind
of idea.

"I wonder if you know, Mr. Hodder, what an admirer Mr. Hubbell is of
yours?" Alison asked. "He is most anxious to have a talk with you."

Hodder did not know.

"Well," said Phil, enthusiastically, to the rector, "that's the best
tribute you've had yet. I can't say that Bedloe was a more unregenerate
heathen than I was, but he was pretty bad."

This led them, all save Hodder, into comments on the character of the
congregation the Sunday before, in the midst of which the rector was
called away to the telephone. Sally Grover had promised to let him know
whether or not they had found Kate Marcy, and his face was grave when he
returned . . . . He was still preoccupied, an hour later, when Alison
arose to go.

"But your carriage isn't here," said Phil, going to the window.

"Oh, I preferred to, walk," she told him, "it isn't far."



III

A blood-red October moon shed the fulness of its light on the silent
houses, and the trees, still clinging to leaf, cast black shadows across
the lawns and deserted streets. The very echoes of their footsteps on
the pavement seemed to enhance the unreality of their surroundings: Some
of the residences were already closed for the night, although the hour
was not late, and the glow behind the blinds of the others was nullified
by the radiancy from above. To Hodder, the sense of their isolation had
never been more complete.

Alison, while repudiating the notion that an escort were needed in a
neighbourhood of such propriety and peace, had not refused his offer to
accompany her. And Hodder felt instinctively, as he took his place
beside her, a sense of climax. This situation, like those of the past,
was not of his own making. It was here; confronting him, and a certain
inevitable intoxication at being once, more alone with her prevented him
from forming any policy with which to deal with it. He might either
trust himself, or else he might not. And as she said, the distance was
not great. But he could not help wondering, during those first moments
of silence, whether she comprehended the strength of the temptation to
which she subjected him . . . .

The night was warm. She wore a coat, which was open, and from time to
time he caught the gleam of the moonlight on the knotted pearls at her
throat. Over her head she had flung, mantilla-like, a black lace scarf,
the effect of which was, in the soft luminosity encircling her, to add to
the quality of mystery never exhausted. If by acquiescing in his company
she had owned to a tie between them, the lace shawl falling over the
tails of her dark hair and framing in its folds her face, had somehow
made her once more a stranger. Nor was it until she presently looked up
into his face with a smile that this impression was, if not at once
wholly dissipated, at least contradicted.

Her question, indeed, was intimate.

"Why did you come with me?"

"Why?" he repeated, taken aback.

"Yes. I'm sure you have something you wish to do, something which
particularly worries you."

"No," he answered, appraising her intuition of him, "there is nothing I
can do, to-night. A young woman in whom Mr. Bentley is interested, in
whom I am interested, has disappeared. But we have taken all the steps
possible towards finding her."

"It was nothing--more serious, then? That, of course, is serious enough.
Nothing, I mean, directly affecting your prospects of remaining--where
you are?"

"No," he answered. He rejoiced fiercely that she should have asked him.
The question was not bold, but a natural resumption of the old footing
"Not that I mean to imply," he added, returning her smile, "that those
prospects' are in any way improved."

"Are they any worse?" she said.

"I see the bishop to-morrow. I have no idea what position he will take.
But even if he should decide not to recommend me for trial many difficult
problems still remain to be solved."

"I know. It's fine," she continued, after a moment, "the way you are
going ahead as if there were no question of your not remaining; and
getting all those people into the church and influencing them as you did
when they had come for all sorts of reasons. Do you remember, the first
time I met you, I told you I could not think of you as a clergyman. I
cannot now--less than ever."

"What do you think of me as?" he asked.

"I don't know," she considered. "You are unlike any person I have ever
known. It is curious that I cannot now even think of St. John's as a
church. You have transformed it into something that seems new. I'm
afraid I can't describe what I mean, but you have opened it up, let in
the fresh air, rid it of the musty and deadening atmosphere which I have
always associated with churches. I wanted to see you, before I went
away," she went on steadily, "and when Eleanor mentioned that you were
coming to her house to-night, I asked her to invite me. Do you think me
shameless?"

The emphasis of his gesture was sufficient. He could not trust himself
to speak.

"Writing seemed so unsatisfactory, after what you had done for me, and I
never can express myself in writing. I seem to congeal."

"After what I have done for you!" he exclaimed: "What can I have done?"

"You have done more than you know," she answered, in a low voice.
"More, I think, than I know. How are such things to be measured, put
into words? You have effected some change in me which defies analysis,
a change of attitude,--to attempt to dogmatize it would ruin it. I
prefer to leave it undefined--not even to call it an acquisition of
faith. I have faith," she said, simply, "in what you have become, and
which has made you dare, superbly, to cast everything away. . .
It is that, more than anything you have said. What you are."

For the instant he lost control of himself.

"What you are," he replied. "Do you realize--can you ever realize what
your faith in me has been to me?"

She appeared to ignore this.

"I did not mean to say that you have not made many things clear, which
once were obscure, as I wrote you. You have convinced me that true
belief, for instance, is the hardest thing in the world, the denial of
practically all these people, who profess to believe, represent. The
majority of them insist that humanity is not to be trusted. . ."

They had reached, in an incredibly brief time, the corner of Park Street.

"When are you leaving?" he asked, in a voice that sounded harsh in his
own ears.

"Come!" she said gently, "I'm not going in yet, for a while."

The Park lay before them, an empty, garden filled with checquered light
and shadows under the moon. He followed her across the gravel,
glistening with dew, past the statue of the mute statesman with arm
upraised, into pastoral stretches--a delectable country which was theirs
alone. He did not take it in, save as one expression of the breathing
woman at his side. He was but partly conscious of a direction he had not
chosen. His blood throbbed violently, and a feeling of actual physical
faintness was upon him. He was being led, helplessly, all volition gone,
and the very idea of resistance became chimerical . . . .

There was a seat under a tree, beside a still lake burnished by the moon.
It seemed as though he could not bear the current of her touch, and yet
the thought of its removal were less bearable . . . For she had put
her own hand out, not shyly, but with a movement so fraught with grace,
so natural that it was but the crowning bestowal.

"Alison!" he cried, "I can't ask it of you. I have no right--"

"You're not asking it," she answered. "It is I who am asking it."

"But I have no future--I may be an outcast to-morrow. I have nothing to
offer you." He spoke more firmly now, more commandingly.

"Don't you see, dear, that it is just because your future as obscure that
I can do this? You never would have done it, I know,--and I couldn't
face that. Don't you understand that I am demanding the great
sacrifice?"

"Sacrifice!" he repeated. His fingers turned, and closed convulsively on
hers.

"Yes, sacrifice," she said gently. "Isn't it the braver thing?"

Still he failed to catch her meaning.

"Braver," she explained, with her wonderful courage, "braver if I love
you, if I need you, if I cannot do without you."

He took her in his arms, crushing her to him in his strength, in one
ineffable brief moment finding her lips, inhaling the faint perfume of
her smooth akin. Her lithe figure lay passively against him, in
marvellous, unbelievable surrender.

"I see what you mean," he said, at length, "I should have been a coward.
But I could not be sure that you loved me."

So near was her face that he could detect, even under the obscurity of
the branches, a smile.

"And so I was reduced to this! I threw my pride to the winds," she
whispered. "But I don't care. I was determined, selfishly, to take
happiness."

"And to give it," he added, bending down to her. The supreme quality of
its essence was still to be doubted, a bright star-dust which dazzled
him, to evaporate before his waking eyes. And, try as he would, he
could not realize to the full depth the boy of contact with a being whom,
by discipline, he had trained his mind to look upon as the unattainable.
They had spoken of the future, yet in these moments any consideration of
it was blotted out. . . It was only by degrees that he collected
himself sufficiently to be able to return to it. . . Alison took up
the thread.

"Surely," she said, "sacrifice is useless unless it means something,
unless it be a realization. It must be discriminating. And we should
both of us have remained incomplete if we had not taken--this. You would
always, I think, have been the one man for me,--but we should have lost
touch." He felt her tremble. "And I needed you. I have needed you all
my life--one in whom h might have absolute faith. That is my faith, of
which I could not tell you awhile ago. Is it--sacrilegious?"

She looked up at him. He shook his head, thinking of his own. It seemed
the very distillation of the divine. "All my life," she went on, "I have
been waiting for the one who would risk everything. Oh, if you had
faltered the least little bit, I don't know what I should have done.
That would have destroyed what was left of me, put out, I think, the
flickering fire that remained, instead of fanning it into flame. You
cannot know how I watched you, how I prayed! I think it was prayer--I am
sure it was. And it was because you did not falter, because you risked
all, that you gained me. You have gained only what you yourself made,
more than I ever was, more than I ever expected to be."

"Alison!" he remonstrated, "you mustn't say that."

She straightened up and gazed at him, taking one of his hands in her
lithe fingers.

"Oh, but I must! It is the truth. I felt that you cared--women are
surer in such matters than men. I must conceal nothing from you--nothing
of my craftiness. Women are crafty, you know. And suppose you fail?
Ah, I do not mean failure--you cannot fail, now. You have put yourself
forever beyond failure. But what I mean is, suppose you were compelled
to leave St. John's, and I came to you then as I have come now, and
begged to take my place beside you? I was afraid to risk it. I was
afraid you would not take me, even now, to-night. Do you realize how
austere you are at times, how you have frightened me?"

"That I should ever have done that!" he said.

"When I looked at you in the pulpit you seemed so far from me, I could
scarcely bear it. As if I had no share in you, as if you had already
gone to a place beyond, where I could not go, where I never could. Oh,
you will take me with you, now,--you won't leave me behind!"

To this cry every fibre of his soul responded. He had thought himself,
in these minutes, to have known all feelings, all thrills, but now,
as he gathered her to him again, he was to know still another, the most
exquisite of all. That it was conferred upon him to give this woman
protection, to shield and lift her, inspire her as she inspired him--this
consciousness was the most exquisite of all, transcending all conception
of the love of woman. And the very fulness of her was beyond him. A
lifetime were insufficient to exhaust her . . . .

"I wanted to come to you now, John. I want to share your failure, if it
comes--all your failures. Because they will be victories--don't you see?
I have never been able to achieve that kind of victory--real victory, by
myself. I have always succumbed, taken the baser, the easier thing."
Her cheek was wet. "I wasn't strong enough, by myself, and I never knew
the stronger one . . . .

"See what my trust in you has been! I knew that you would not refuse me
in spite of the fact that the world may misunderstand, may sneer at your
taking me. I knew that you were big enough even for that, when you
understood it, coming from me. I wanted to be with you, now, that we
might fight it out together."

"What have I done to deserve so priceless a thing?" he asked.

She smiled at him again, her lip trembling.

"Oh, I'm not priceless, I'm only real, I'm only human--human and tired.
You are so strong, you can't know how tired. Have you any idea why I
came out here, this summer? It was because I was desperate--because I
had almost decided to marry some one else."

She felt him start.

"I was afraid of it;" he said.

"Were you? Did you think, did you wonder a little about me?" There was
a vibrant note of triumph to which he reacted. She drew away from him.
a little. "Perhaps, when you know how sordid my life has been, you won't
want me."

"Is--Is that your faith, Alison?" he demanded. "God forbid! You have
come to a man who also has confessions to make."

"Oh, I am glad. I want to know all of you--all, do you understand? That
will bring us even closer together. And it was one thing I felt about
you in the beginning, that day in the garden, that you had had much to
conquer--more than most men. It was a part of your force and of your
knowledge of life. You were not a sexless ascetic who preached a mere
neutral goodness. Does that shock you?"

He smiled in turn.

"I went away from here, as I once told you, full of a high resolution not
to trail the honour of my art--if I achieved art--in the dust. But I
have not only trailed my art--I trailed myself. In New York I became
contaminated, --the poison of the place, of the people with whom I came in
contact, got into my blood. Little by little I yielded--I wanted so to
succeed, to be able to confound those who had doubted and ridiculed me!
I wasn't content to wait to deny myself for the ideal. Success was in
the air. That was the poison, and I only began to realize it after it
was too late.

"Please don't think I am asking pity--I feel that you must know. From
the very first my success--which was really failure--began to come in the
wrong way. As my father's daughter I could not be obscure. I was sought
out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose. The women petted me,
although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for a certain
kind of men--the wrong kind. I began going to dinners, house parties,
to recognize, that advantages came that way . . . . It seemed quite
natural. It was what many others of my profession tried to do, and they
envied me my opportunities.

"I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I was not in the least
cynical about it. I believed I was clinging to the ideal of art, and
that all I wanted was a chance. And the people I went with had the same
characteristics, only intensified, as those I had known here. Of course
I was actually no better than the women who were striving frivolously to
get away from themselves, and the men who were fighting to get money.
Only I didn't know it.

"Well, my chance came at last. I had done several little things, when an
elderly man who is tremendously rich, whose name you would recognize if I
mentioned it, gave me an order. For weeks, nearly every day, he came to
my studio for tea, to talk over the plans. I was really unsophisticated
then--but I can see now--well, that the garden was a secondary
consideration . . . . And the fact that I did it for him gave me a
standing I should not otherwise have had . . . . Oh, it is sickening
to look back upon, to think what an idiot I was in how little I saw....

"That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.
I was conscientious about it tried--tried to make every garden better
than the last. But I was a young woman, unconventionally living alone,
and by degrees the handicap of my sex was brought home to me. I did not
feel the pressure at first, and then--I am ashamed to say--it had in it
an element of excitement, a sense of power. The poison was at work. I
was amused. I thought I could carry it through, that the world had
advanced sufficiently for a woman to do anything if she only had the
courage. And I believed I possessed a true broadness of view, and could
impress it, so far as I was concerned, on others . . . .

"As I look back upon it all, I believe my reputation for coldness saved
me, yet it was that very reputation which increased the pressure, and
sometimes I was fairly driven into a corner. It seemed to madden some
men--and the disillusionments began to come. Of course it was my fault
--I don't pretend to say it wasn't. There were many whom, instinctively,
I was on my guard against, but some I thought really nice, whom I
trusted, revealed a side I had not suspected. That was the terrible
thing! And yet I held to my ideal, tattered as it was. . . "

Alison was silent a moment, still clinging to his hand, and when she
spoke again it was with a tremor of agitation.

"It is hard, to tell you this, but I wish you to know. At last I met a
man, comparatively young, who was making his own way in New York,
achieving a reputation as a lawyer. Shall I tell you that I fell in love
with him? He seemed to bring a new freshness into my life when I was
beginning to feel the staleness of it. Not that I surrendered at once,
but the reservations of which I was conscious at the first gradually
disappeared--or rather I ignored them. He had charm, a magnificent
self-confidence, but I think the liberality of the opinions he expressed,
in regard to women, most appealed to me. I was weak on that side, and I
have often wondered whether he knew it. I believed him incapable of a
great refusal.

"He agreed, if I consented to marry him, that I should have my freedom
--freedom to live in my own life and to carry on my profession.
Fortunately, the engagement was never announced, never even suspected.
One day he hinted that I should return to my father for a month or two
before the wedding . . . . The manner in which he said it suddenly
turned me cold. Oh," Alison exclaimed, "I was quite willing to go back,
to pay my father a visit, as I had done nearly every year, but--how can I
tell you?--he could not believe that I had definitely given up-my
father's money . . . .

"I sat still and looked at him, I felt as if I were frozen, turned to
stone. And after a long while, since I would not speak to him, he went
out. . . Three months later he came back and said that I had
misunderstood him, that he couldn't live without me. I sent him away....
Only the other day he married Amy Grant, one of my friends . . . .

"Well, after that, I was tired--so tired! Everything seemed to go out of
life. It wasn't that I loved him any longer,--all had been crushed. But
the illusion was gone, and I saw myself as I was. And for the first time
in my life I felt defenceless, helpless. I wanted refuge. Did you ever
hear of Jennings Howe?"

"The architect?"

Alison nodded. "Of course you must have--he is so well known. He has
been a widower for several years. He liked my work, saw its defects,
and was always frank about them, and I designed a good many gardens in
connection with his houses. He himself is above all things an artist,
and he fell into the habit of coming to my studio and giving me friendly
advice, in the nicest way. He seemed to understand that I was going
through some sort of a crisis. He called it 'too much society.' And
then, without any warning, he asked me to marry him.

"That is why I came out here--to think it over. I didn't love him, and I
told him so, but I respected him.

"He never compromised in his art, and I have known him over and over to
refuse houses because certain conditions were stipulated. To marry him
was an acknowledgment of defeat. I realized that. But I had come to the
extremity where I wanted peace--peace and protection. I wanted to put
myself irrevocably beyond the old life, which simply could not have gone
on, and I saw myself in the advancing years becoming tawdry and worn,
losing little by little what I had gained at a price.

"So I came here--to reflect, to see, as it were, if I could find
something left in me to take hold of, to build upon, to begin over again,
perhaps, by going back to the old associations. I could think of no
better place, and I knew that my father would, be going away after a few
weeks, and that I should be lone, yet with an atmosphere back of me,--my
old atmosphere. That was why I went to church the first Sunday, in order
to feel more definitely that atmosphere, to summon up more completely the
image of my mother. More and more, as the years have passed, I have
thought of her in moments of trouble. I have recovered her as I never
had hoped to do in Mr. Bentley. Isn't it strange," she exclaimed
wonderingly, "that he should have come into both our lives, with such an
influence, at this time?"

"And then I met you, talked to you that afternoon in the garden. Shall I
make a complete confession? I wrote to Jennings Howe that very week that
I could not marry him."

"You knew!" Hodder exclaimed: "You knew then?"

"Ah, I can't tell what I knew--or when. I knew, after I had seen you,
that I couldn't marry him! Isn't that enough?"

He drew in his breath deeply.

"I should be less than a man if I refused to take you, Alison. And--no
matter what happens, I can and will find some honest work to support you.
But oh, my dear, when I think of it, the nobility and generosity of what
you have done appalls me."

"No, no!" she protested, "you mustn't say that! I needed you more than
you need me. And haven't we both discovered the world, and renounced it?
I can at least go so far as to say that, with all my heart. And isn't
marriage truer and higher when man and wife start with difficulties and
problems to solve together? It is that thought that brings me the
greatest joy, that I may be able to help you . . . . Didn't you need
me, just a little?"

"Now that I have you, I am unable to think of the emptiness which might
have been. You came to me, like Beatrice, when I had lost my way in the
darkness of the wood. And like Beatrice, you showed me the path, and
hell and heaven."

"Oh, you would have found the path without me. I cannot claim that.
I saw from the first that you were destined to find it. And, unlike
Beatrice, I too was lost, and it was you who lifted me up. You mustn't
idealize me." . . . She stood up. "Come!" she said. He too stood,
gazing at her, and she lifted her hands to his shoulders . . . . They
moved out from under the tree and walked for a while in silence across
the dew-drenched grass, towards Park Street. The moon, which had ridden
over a great space in the sky, hung red above the blackness of the forest
to the west.

"Do you remember when we were here together, the day I met Mr. Bentley?
And you never would have spoken!"

"How could I, Alison?" he asked.

"No, you couldn't. And yet--you would have let me go!"

He put his arm in hers, and drew her towards him.

"I must talk to your father," he said, "some day--soon. I ought to tell
him--of our intentions. We cannot go on like this."

"No," she agreed, "I realize it. And I cannot stay, much longer, in Park
Street. I must go back to New York, until you send for me, dear. And
there are things I must do. Do you know, even though I antagonize him
so--my father, I mean--even though he suspects and bitterly resents any
interest in you, my affection for you, and that I have lingered because
of you, I believe, in his way, he has liked to have me here."

"I can understand it," Hodder said.

"It's because you are bigger than I, although he has quarrelled with you
so bitterly. I don't know what definite wrongs he has done to other
persons. I don't wish to know. I don't ask you to tell me what passed
between you that night. Once you said that you had an affection for him
--that he was lonely. He is lonely. In these last weeks, in spite of
his anger, I can see that he suffers terribly. It is a tragedy, because
he will never give in."

"It is a tragedy." Hodder's tone was agitated.

"I wonder if he realizes a little" she began, and paused. "Now that
Preston has come home--"

"Your brother?" Hodder exclaimed.

"Yes. I forgot to tell you. I don't know why he came," she faltered.
"I suppose he has got into some new trouble. He seems changed. I can't
describe it now, but I will tell you about it . . . . It's the first
time we've all three been together since my mother died, for Preston
wasn't back from college when I went to Paris to study . . . ."

They stood together on the pavement before the massive house, fraught
with so many and varied associations for Hodder. And as he looked up at
it, his eye involuntarily rested upon the windows of the boy's room where
Eldon Parr had made his confession. Alison startled him by pronouncing
his name, which came with such unaccustomed sweetness from her lips.
"You will write me to-morrow," she said, "after you have seen the bishop?"

"Yes, at once. You mustn't let it worry you."

"I feel as if I had cast off that kind of worry forever. It is only
--the other worries from which we do not escape, from which we do not wish
to escape."

With a wonderful smile she had dropped his hands and gone in at the
entrance, when a sound made them turn, the humming of a motor. And even
as they looked it swung into Park Street.

"It's a taxicab!" she said. As she spoke it drew up almost beside them,
instead of turning in at the driveway, the door opened, and a man
alighted.

"Preston!" Alison exclaimed.

He started, turning from the driver, whom he was about to pay. As for
Hodder, he was not only undergoing a certain shock through the sudden
contact, at such a moment, with Alison's brother: there was an additional
shock that this was Alison's brother and Eldon Parr's son. Not that his
appearance was shocking, although the well-clad, athletic figure was
growing a trifle heavy, and the light from the side lamps of the car
revealed dissipation in a still handsome face. The effect was a subtler
one, not to be analyzed, and due to a multitude of preconceptions.

Alison came forward.

"This is Mr. Hodder, Preston," she said simply.

For a moment Preston continued to stare at the rector without speaking.
Suddenly he put out his hand.

"Mr. Hodder, of St. John's?" he demanded.

"Yes," answered Hodder. His surprise deepened to perplexity at the warmth
of the handclasp that followed.

A smile that brought back vividly to Hodder the sunny expression of the
schoolboy in the picture lightened the features of the man.

"I'm very glad to see you," he said, in a tone that left no doubt of its
genuine quality.

"Thank you," Hodder replied, meeting his eye with kindness, yet with a
scrutiny that sought to penetrate the secret of an unexpected cordiality.
"I, too, have hoped to see you."

Alison, who stood by wondering, felt a meaning behind the rector's words.
She pressed his hand as he bade her, once more, good night.

"Won't you take my taxicab?" asked Preston. "It is going down town
anyway."

"I think I'd better stick to the street cars," Hodder said. His refusal
was not ungraceful, but firm. Preston did not insist.

In spite of the events of that evening, which he went over again and
again as the midnight car carried him eastward, in spite of a new-born
happiness the actuality of which was still difficult to grasp, Hodder
was vaguely troubled when he thought of Preston Parr.






THE INSIDE OF THE CUP

By Winston Churchill



Volume 8.


XXVII.  RETRIBUTION
XXVIII.  LIGHT



CHAPTER XXVII

RETRIBUTION


I

The Bishop's House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth,
bright red brick and large, plate-glass windows, situated in a plot
at the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese
in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in
American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when
as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had
pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to
darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved.

It was precisely ten o'clock in the morning when Hodder rang the bell and
was shown into the ample study which he had entered on other and less
vital occasions. He found difficulty in realizing that this pleasant
room, lined with well-worn books and overlooking a back lawn where the
clothes of the episcopal family hung in the yellow autumn sun, was to be
his judgment seat, whence he might be committed to trial for heresy.

And this was the twentieth century! The full force of the preposterous
fact smote him, and a consciousness of the distance he himself had
travelled since the comparatively recent days of his own orthodoxy.
And suddenly he was full again of a resentful impatience, not only that
he should be called away from his labours, his cares, the strangers who
were craving his help, to answer charges of such an absurd triviality,
but that the performance of the great task to which he had set his hand,
with God's help, should depend upon it. Would his enemies be permitted
to drive him out thus easily?

The old bishop came in, walking by the aid of a cane. He smiled at
Hodder, who greeted him respectfully, and bidding him sit down, took a
chair himself behind his writing table, from whence he gazed awhile
earnestly and contemplatively at the rugged features and strong shoulders
of the rector of St. John's. The effect of the look was that of a visual
effort to harmonize the man with the deed he had done, the stir he had
created in the city and the diocese; to readjust impressions.

A hint of humour crept into the bishop's blue eyes, which were watery,
yet strong, with heavy creases in the corners. He indicated by a little
gesture three bundles of envelopes, bound by rubber bands, on the corner
of his blotter.

"Hodder," he said, "see what a lot of trouble you have made for me in my
old age! All those are about you."

The rector's expression could not have been deemed stern, but it had met
the bishop's look unflinchingly. Now it relaxed into a responding smile,
which was not without seriousness.

"I am sorry, sir," Hodder answered, "to have caused you any worry--or
inconvenience."

"Perhaps," said the bishop, "I have had too much smooth sailing for a
servant of Christ. Indeed, I have come to that conclusion."

Hodder did not reply. He was moved, even more by the bishop's manner
and voice than his words. And the opening to their conversation was
unexpected. The old man put on his spectacles, and drew from the top
of one of the bundles a letter.

"This is from one of your vestrymen, Mr. Gordon Atterbury," he said, and
proceeded to read it, slowly. When he had finished he laid it down.

"Is that, according to your recollection, Mr. Hodder, a fairly accurate
summary of the sermon you gave when you resumed the pulpit at the end of
the summer?"

"Yes, sir," answered the rector, "it is surprisingly accurate, with the
exception of two or three inferences which I shall explain at the proper
moment."

"Mr. Atterbury is to be congratulated on his memory," the bishop observed
a little dryly. "And he has saved me the trouble of reading more. Now
what are the inferences to which you object?"

Hodder stated them. "The most serious one," he added, "is that which he
draws from my attitude on the virgin birth. Mr. Atterbury insists, like
others who cling to that dogma, that I have become what he vaguely calls
an Unitarian. He seems incapable of grasping my meaning, that the only
true God the age knows, the world has ever known, is the God in Christ,
is the Spirit in Christ, and is there not by any material proof, but
because we recognize it spiritually. And that doctrine and dogma,
ancient speculations as to how, definitely, that spirit came to be in
Christ, are fruitless and mischievous to-day. Mr. Atterbury and others
seem actually to resent my identification of our Lord's Spirit with the
social conscience as well as the individual conscience of our time."

The bishop nodded.

"Hodder," he demanded abruptly, leaning forward over his desk, "how did
this thing happen?"

"You mean, sir--"

There was, in the bishop's voice, a note almost pathetic. "Oh, I do not
mean to ask you anything you may deem too personal. And God forbid, as
I look at you, as I have known you, that I should doubt your sincerity.
I am not your inquisitor, but your bishop and your friend, and I am
asking for your confidence. Six months ago you were, apparently, one of
the most orthodox rectors in the diocese. I recognize that you are not
an impulsive, sensational man, and I am all the more anxious to learn
from your own lips something of the influences, of the processes which
have changed you, which have been strong enough to impel you to risk the
position you have achieved."

By this unlooked-for appeal Hodder was not only disarmed, but smitten
with self-reproach at the thought of his former misjudgment and
underestimation of the man in whose presence he sat. And it came over
him, not only the extent to which, formerly, he had regarded the bishop
as too tolerant and easygoing, but the fact that he had arrived here
today prepared to find in his superior anything but the attitude he was
showing. Considering the bishop's age, Hodder had been ready for a lack
of understanding of the step he had taken, even for querulous reproaches
and rebuke.

He had, therefore, to pull himself together, to adjust himself to the
unexpected greatness of soul with which he was being received before he
began to sketch the misgivings he had felt from the early days of his
rectorship of St. John's; the helplessness and failure which by degrees
had come over him. He related how it had become apparent to him that by
far the greater part of his rich and fashionable congregation were
Christians only in name, who kept their religion in a small and
impervious compartment where it did not interfere with their lives.
He pictured the yearning and perplexity of those who had come to him for
help, who could not accept the old explanations, and had gone away empty;
and he had not been able to make Christians of the poor who attended the
parish house. Finally, trusting in the bishop's discretion, he spoke of
the revelations he had unearthed in Dalton Street, and how these had
completely destroyed his confidence in the Christianity he had preached,
and how he had put his old faith to the test of unprejudiced modern
criticism, philosophy, and science. . .

The bishop listened intently, his head bent, his eyes on he rector.

"And you have come out--convinced?" he asked tremulously. "Yes, yes,
I see you have. It is enough."

He relapsed into thought, his wrinkled hand lying idly on the table.

"I need not tell you, my friend," he resumed at length, "that a great
deal of pressure has been brought to bear upon me in this matter, more
than I have ever before experienced. You have mortally offended, among
others, the most powerful layman in the diocese, Mr. Parr, who complains
that you have presumed to take him to task concerning his private
affairs."

"I told him," answered Holder, "that so long as he continued to live the
life he leads, I could not accept his contributions to St. John's."

"I am an old man," said the bishop, "and whatever usefulness I have had
is almost finished. But if I were young to-day, I should pray God for
the courage and insight you have shown, and I am thankful to have lived
long enough to have known you. It has, at least, been given one to
realize that times have changed, that we are on the verge of a mighty
future. I will be frank to say that ten years ago, if this had happened,
I should have recommended you for trial. Now I can only wish you
Godspeed. I, too, can see the light, my friend. I can see, I think, though
dimly, the beginnings of a blending of all sects, of all religions in the
increasing vision of the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, stripped, as you
say, of dogma, of fruitless attempts at rational explanation. In Japan
and China, in India and Persia, as well as in Christian countries, it is
coming, coming by some working of the Spirit the mystery of which is
beyond us. And nations and men who even yet know nothing of the Gospels
are showing a willingness to adopt what is Christ's, and the God of
Christ."

Holder was silent, from sheer inability to speak.

"If you had needed an advocate with me," the bishop continued, "you could
not have had one to whose counsel I would more willingly have listened,
than that of Horace Bentley. He wrote asking to come and see me, but I
went to him in Dalton Street the day I returned. And it gives me
satisfaction, Mr. Holder, to confess to you freely that he has taught me,
by his life, more of true Christianity than I have learned in all my
experience elsewhere."

"I had thought," exclaimed the rector, wonderingly, "that I owed him more
than any other man."

"There are many who think that--hundreds, I should say," the bishop
replied . . . . "Eldon Parr ruined him, drove him from the church....
It is strange how, outside of the church, his influence has silently and
continuously grown until it has borne fruit in--this. Even now," he
added after a pause, "the cautiousness, the dread of change which comes
with old age might, I think, lead me to be afraid of it if I--didn't
perceive behind it the spirit of Horace Bentley."

It struck Holder, suddenly, what an unconscious but real source of
confidence this thought had likewise been to him. He spoke of it.

"It is not that I wouldn't trust you," the bishop went on. "I have
watched you, I have talked to Asa Waring, I have read the newspapers.
In spite of it all, you have kept your head, you have not compromised the
dignity of the Church. But oh, my friend, I beg you to bear in mind that
you are launched upon deep waters, that you have raised up many enemies
--enemies of Christ--who seek to destroy you. You are still young. And
the uncompromising experiment to which you are pledged, of freeing your
church, of placing her in the position of power and influence in the
community which is rightfully hers, is as yet untried. And no stone will
be left unturned to discourage and overcome you. You have faith,--you
have made me feel it as you sat here,--a faith which will save you from
bitterness in personal defeat. You may not reap the victory, or even see
it in your lifetime. But of this I am sure, that you will be able to
say, with Paul, 'I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
increase.' Whatever happens, you may count upon my confidence and
support. I can only wish that I were younger, that my arm were stronger,
and that I had always perceived the truth as clearly as I see it now."

Holder had risen involuntarily while these words were being spoken. They
were indeed a benediction, and the intensity of his feeling warned him of
the inadequacy of any reply. They were pronounced in sorrow, yet in
hope, and they brought home to him, sharply, the nobility of the bishop's
own sacrifice.

"And you, sir?" he asked.

"Ah," answered the bishop, "with this I shall have had my life. I am
content. . . ."

"You will come to me again, Hodder? some other day," he said,
after an interval, "that we may talk over the new problems. They are
constructive, creative, and I am anxious to hear how you propose to meet
them. For one thing, to find a new basis for the support of such a
parish. I understand they have deprived you of your salary."

"I have enough to live on, for a year or so," replied the rector,
quickly. "Perhaps more."

"I'm afraid," said the bishop, with a smile in his old eyes, "that you
will need it, my friend. But who can say? You have strength, you have
confidence, and God is with you."



II

Life, as Hodder now grasped it, was a rapidly whirling wheel which gave
him no chance to catch up with the impressions and experiences through
which it was dragging him. Here, for instance, were two far-reaching
and momentous events, one crowding upon the other, and not an hour for
reflection, realization, or adjustment! He had, indeed, after his return
from the bishop's, snatched a few minutes to write Alison the unexpected
result of that interview. But even as he wrote and rang for a messenger
to carry the note to Park Street, he was conscious of an effort to seize
upon and hold the fact that the woman he had so intensely desired was now
his helpmate; and had, of her own freewill, united herself with him. A
strong sense of the dignity of their relationship alone prevented his
calling her on the telephone--as it doubtless had prevented her. While
she remained in her father's house, he could not. . .

In the little room next to the office several persons were waiting to see
him. But as he went downstairs he halted on the, landing, his hand going
to his forehead, a reflex movement significant of a final attempt to
achieve the hitherto unattainable feat of imagining her as his wife.
If he might only speak to her again--now, this morning! And yet he
knew that he needed no confirmation. The reality was there, in the
background; and though refusing to come forward to be touched, it had
already grafted itself as an actual and vital part of his being, never
to be eliminated.

Characteristically perfecting his own ideal, she had come to him in the
hour when his horizon had been most obscure. And he experienced now an
exultation, though solemn and sacred, that her faith had so far been
rewarded in the tidings he now confided to the messenger. He was not,
as yet, to be driven out from the task, to be deprived of the talent,
the opportunity intrusted to him by Lord--the emancipation of the parish
of St. John's.

The first to greet him, when he entered his office, was one who, unknown
to himself, had been fighting the battle of the God in Christ, and who
now, thanks to John Hodder, had identified the Spirit as the transforming
force. Bedloe Hubbell had come to offer his services to the Church. The
tender was unqualified.

"I should even be willing, Mr. Hodder," he said with a smile, "to venture
occasionally into a pulpit. You have not only changed my conception of
religion, but you have made it for me something which I can now speak
about naturally."

Hodder was struck by the suggestion.

"Ah, we shall need the laymen in the pulpits, Mr. Hubbell," he said
quickly. "A great spiritual movement must be primarily a lay movement.
And I promise you you shall not lack for opportunity."



III

At nine o'clock that evening, when a reprieve came, Hodder went out.
Anxiety on the score of Kate Marcy, as well as a desire to see Mr.
Bentley and tell him of the conversation with the bishop, directed his
steps toward Dalton Street. And Hodder had, indeed, an intention of
confiding to his friend, as one eminently entitled to it, the news of
his engagement to Alison Parr.

Nothing, however, had been heard of Kate. She was not in Dalton Street,
Mr. Bentley feared. The search of Gratz, the cabinet-maker, had been
fruitless. And Sally Grover had even gone to see the woman in the
hospital, whom Kate had befriended, in the hope of getting a possible
clew. They sat close together before the fire in Mr. Bentley's
comfortable library, debating upon the possibility of other methods of
procedure, when a carriage was heard rattling over the pitted asphalt
without. As it pulled up at the curb, a silence fell between them. The
door-bell rang.

Holder found himself sitting erect, rigidly attentive, listening to the
muffled sound of a woman's voice in the entry. A few moments later came
a knock at the library door, and Sam entered. The old darky was plainly
frightened.

"It's Miss Kate, Marse Ho'ace, who you bin tryin' to fin'," he stammered.

Holder sprang to his feet and made his way rapidly around the table,
where he stood confronting the woman in the doorway. There she was,
perceptibly swaying, as though the floor under her were rocked by an
earthquake. Her handsome face was white as chalk, her pupils widened in
terror. It was curious, at such an instant, that he should have taken
in her costume,--yet it was part of the mystery. She wore a new,
close-fitting, patently expensive suit of dark blue cloth and a small
hat, which were literally transforming in their effect, demanding a
palpable initial effort of identification.

He seized her by the arm.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"Oh, my God!" she cried. "He--he's out there--in the carriage."

She leaned heavily against the doorpost, shivering . . . . Holder saw
Sally Grover coming down the stairs.

"Take her," he said, and went out of the front door, which Sam had left
open. Mr. Bentley was behind him.

The driver had descended from the box and was peering into the darkness
of the vehicle when he heard them, and turned. At sight of the tall
clergyman, an expression of relief came into his face.

"I don't like the looks of this, sir," he said. "I thought he was pretty
bad when I went to fetch him--"

Holder pushed past him and looked into the carriage. Leaning back,
motionless, in the corner of the seat was the figure of a man. For a
terrible moment of premonition, of enlightenment, the rector gazed at it.

"They sent for me from a family hotel in Ayers Street," the driver was
explaining. Mr. Bentley's voice interrupted him.

"He must be brought in, at once. Do you know where Dr. Latimer's office
is, on Tower Street?" he asked the man. "Go there, and bring this
doctor back with you as quickly as possible. If he is not in, get
another, physician."

Between them, the driver and Holder got the burden out of the carriage
and up the steps. The light from the hallway confirmed the rector's
fear.

"It's Preston Parr," he said.

The next moment was too dreadful for surprise, but never had the sense of
tragedy so pierced the innermost depths of Holder's being as now, when
Horace Bentley's calmness seemed to have forsaken him; and as he gazed
down upon the features on the pillow, he wept . . . . Holder turned
away. Whatever memories those features evoked, memories of a past that
still throbbed with life these were too sacred for intrusion. The years
of exile, of uncomplaining service to others in this sordid street and
over the wide city had not yet sufficed to allay the pain, to heal the
wound of youth. Nay, loyalty had kept it fresh--a loyalty that was the
handmaid of faith. . .

The rector softly left the room, only to be confronted with another
harrowing scene in the library, where a frantic woman was struggling in
Sally Grover's grasp. He went to her assistance. . . Words of
comfort, of entreaty were of no avail,--Kate Marcy did not seem to hear
them. Hers, in contrast to that other, was the unmeaning grief, the
overwhelming sense of injustice of the child; and with her regained
physical strength the two had all they could do to restrain her.

"I will go to him," she sobbed, between her paroxysms, "you've got no
right to keep me--he's mine . . . he came back to me--he's all I ever
had . . . ."

So intent were they that they did not notice Mr. Bentley standing beside
them until they heard his voice.

"What she says is true," he told them. "Her place is in there. Let her
go."

Kate Marcy raised her head at the words, and looked at him a strange,
half-comprehending, half-credulous gaze. They released her, helped her
towards the bedroom, and closed the door gently behind her. . . The
three sat in silence until the carriage was heard returning, and the
doctor entered.

The examination was brief, and two words, laconically spoken, sufficed
for an explanation--apoplexy, alcohol. The prostrate, quivering woman
was left where they had found her.

Dr. Latimer was a friend of Mr. Bentley's, and betrayed no surprise at a
situation which otherwise might have astonished him. It was only when he
learned the dead man's name, and his parentage, that he looked up quickly
from his note book.

"The matter can be arranged without a scandal," he said, after an
instant. "Can you tell me something of the circumstances?"

It was Hodder who answered.

"Preston Parr had been in love with this woman, and separated from her.
She was under Mr. Bentley's care when he found her again, I infer, by
accident. From what the driver says, they were together in a hotel in
Ayers Street, and he died after he had been put in a carriage. In her
terror, she was bringing him to Mr. Bentley."

The doctor nodded.

"Poor woman!" he said unexpectedly. "Will you be good enough to let Mr:
Parr know that I will see him at his house, to-night?" he added, as he
took his departure.



IV

Sally Grower went out with the physician, and it was Mr. Bentley who
answered the question in the rector's mind, which he hesitated to ask.

"Mr. Parr must come here," he said.

As the rector turned, mechanically, to pick up his hat, Mr. Bentley added

"You will come back, Hodder?"

"Since you wish it, sir," the rector said.

Once in the street, he faced a predicament, but swiftly decided that the
telephone was impossible under the circumstances, that there could be no
decent procedure without going himself to Park Street. It was only a
little after ten. The electric car which he caught seemed to lag, the
stops were interminable. His thoughts flew hither and thither. Should
he try first to see Alison? He was nearest to her now of all the world,
and he could not suffer the thought of her having the news otherwise.
Yes, he must tell her, since she knew nothing of the existence of Kate
Marcy.

Having settled that,--though the thought of the blow she was to receive
lay like a weight on his heart,--Mr. Bentley's reason for summoning Eldon
Parr to Dalton Street came to him. That the feelings of Mr. Bentley
towards the financier were those of Christian forgiveness was not
for a moment to be doubted: but a meeting, particularly under such
circumstances, could not but be painful indeed. It must be, it was,
Hodder saw, for Kate Marcy's sake; yes, and for Eldon Parr's as well,
that he be given this opportunity to deal with the woman whom he had
driven away from his son, and ruined.

The moon, which had shed splendours over the world the night before,
was obscured by a low-drifting mist as Hodder turned in between the
ornamental lamps that marked the gateway of the Park Street mansion,
and by some undiscerned thought--suggestion he pictured the heart-broken
woman he had left beside the body of one who had been heir to all this
magnificence. Useless now, stone and iron and glass, pictures and
statuary. All the labour, all the care and cunning, all the stealthy
planning to get ahead of others had been in vain! What indeed were left
to Eldon Parr! It was he who needed pity,--not the woman who had sinned
and had been absolved because of her great love; not the wayward,
vice-driven boy who lay dead. The very horror of what Eldon Parr was now
to suffer turned Hodder cold as he rang the bell and listened for the
soft tread of the servant who would answer his summons.

The man who flung open the door knew him, and did not conceal his
astonishment.

"Will you take my card to Miss Parr," the rector said, "if she has not
retired, and tell her I have a message?"

"Miss Parr is still in the library, sir."

"Alone?"

"Yes, sir." The man preceded him, but before his name had been announced
Alison was standing, her book in her hand, gazing at him with startled
eyes, his name rising, a low cry, to her lips.

"John!"

He took the book from her, gently, and held her hands.

"Something has happened!" she said. "Tell me--I can bear it."

He saw instantly that her dread was for him, and it made his task the
harder.

It's your brother, Alison."

"Preston! What is it? He's done something----"

Hodder shook his head.

"He died--to-night. He is at Mr. Bentley's."

It was like her that she did not cry out, or even speak, but stood still,
her hands tightening on his, her breast heaving. She was not, he knew,
a woman who wept easily, and her eyes were dry. And he had it to be
thankful for that it was given him to be with her, in this sacred
relationship, at such a moment. But even now, such was the mystery that
ever veiled her soul, he could not read her feelings, nor know what these
might be towards the brother whose death he announced.

"I want to tell you, first, Alison, to prepare you," he said.

Her silence was eloquent. She looked up at him bravely, trustfully, in a
way that made him wince. Whatever the exact nature of her suffering, it
was too deep for speech. And yet she helped him, made it easier for him
by reason of her very trust, once given not to be withdrawn. It gave him
a paradoxical understanding of her which was beyond definition.

"You must know--you would have sometime to know that there was a woman he
loved, whom he intended to marry--but she was separated from him. She
was not what is called a bad woman, she was a working girl. I found her,
this summer, and she told me the story, and she has been under the care
of Mr. Bentley. She disappeared two or three days ago. Your brother met
her again, and he was stricken with apoplexy while with her this evening.
She brought him to Mr. Bentley's house."

"My father--bought her and sent her away."

"You knew?"

"I heard a little about it at the time, by accident. I have always
remembered it . . . . I have always felt that something like this
would happen."

Her sense of fatality, another impression she gave of living in the
deeper, instinctive currents of life, had never been stronger upon him
than now. . . . She released his hands.

"How strange," she said, "that the end should have come at Mr. Bentley's!
He loved my mother--she was the only woman he ever loved."

It came to Hodder as the completing touch of the revelation he had half
glimpsed by the bedside.

"Ah," he could not help exclaiming, "that explains much."

She had looked at him again, through sudden tears, as though divining his
reference to Mr. Bentley's grief, when a step make them turn. Eldon Parr
had entered the room. Never, not even in that last interview, had his
hardness seemed so concretely apparent as now. Again, pity seemed never
more out of place, yet pity was Hodder's dominant feeling as he met the
coldness, the relentlessness of the glance. The thing that struck him,
that momentarily kept closed his lips, was the awful, unconscious
timeliness of the man's entrance, and his unpreparedness to meet
the blow that was to crush him.

"May I ask, Mr. Hodder," he said, in an unemotional voice, "what you are
doing in this house?"

Still Hodder hesitated, an unwilling executioner.

"Father," said Alison, "Mr. Hodder has come with a message."

Never, perhaps, had Eldon Parr given such complete proof of his lack of
spiritual intuition. The atmosphere, charged with presage for him, gave
him nothing.

"Mr. Hodder takes a strange way of delivering it," was his comment.

Mercy took precedence over her natural directness. She laid her hand
gently on his arm. And she had, at that instant, no thought of the long
years he had neglected her for her brother.

"It's about--Preston," she said.

"Preston!" The name came sharply from Eldon Parr's lips. "What about
him? Speak, can't you?"

"He died this evening," said Alison, simply.

Hodder plainly heard the ticking of the clock on the mantel . . . .
And the drama that occurred was the more horrible because it was hidden;
played, as it were, behind closed doors. For the spectators, there was
only the black wall, and the silence. Eldon Parr literally did nothing,
--made no gesture, uttered no cry. The death, they knew, was taking place
in his soul, yet the man stood before them, naturally, for what seemed an
interminable time . . . .

"Where is he?" he asked.

"At Mr. Bentley's, in Dalton Street." It was Alison who replied again.

Even then he gave no sign that he read retribution in the coincidence,
betrayed no agitation at the mention of a name which, in such a
connection, might well have struck the terror of judgment into his heart.
They watched him while, with a firm step, he crossed the room and pressed
a button in the wall, and waited.

"I want the closed automobile, at once," he said, when the servant came.

"I beg pardon; sir, but I think Gratton has gone to bed. He had no
orders."

"Then wake him," said Eldon Parr, "instantly. And send for my
secretary."

With a glance which he perceived Alison comprehended, Hodder made his way
out of the room. He had from Eldon Parr, as he passed him, neither
question, acknowledgment, nor recognition. Whatever the banker might
have felt, or whether his body had now become a mere machine mechanically
carrying on a life-long habit of action, the impression was one of the
tremendousness of the man's consistency. A great effort was demanded to
summon up the now almost unimaginable experience of his confidence; of
the evening when, almost on that very spot, he had revealed to Hodder the
one weakness of his life. And yet the effort was not to be, presently,
without startling results. In the darkness of the street the picture
suddenly grew distinct on the screen of the rector's mind, the face of
the banker subtly drawn with pain as he had looked down on it in
compassion; the voice with its undercurrent of agony:

"He never knew how much I cared--that what I was doing was all for him,
building for him, that he might carry on my work."



V

So swift was the trolley that ten minutes had elapsed, after Hodder's
arrival, before the purr of an engine and the shriek of a brake broke the
stillness of upper Dalton Street and announced the stopping of a heavy
motor before the door. The rector had found Mr. Bentley in the library,
alone, seated with bent head in front of the fire, and had simply
announced the intention of Eldon Parr to come. From the chair Hodder had
unobtrusively chosen, near the window, his eyes rested on the noble
profile of his friend. What his thoughts were, Hodder could not surmise;
for he seemed again, marvellously, to have regained the outward peace
which was the symbol of banishment from the inner man of all thought of
self.

"I have prepared her for Mr. Parr's coming," he said to Hodder at length.

And yet he had left her there! Hodder recalled the words Mr. Bentley had
spoken, "It is her place." Her place, the fallen woman's, the place she
had earned by a great love and a great renunciation, of which no earthly
power might henceforth deprive her . . . .

Then came the motor, the ring at the door, the entrance of Eldon Parr
into the library. He paused, a perceptible moment, on the threshold as
his look fell upon the man whom he had deprived of home and fortune,--yes
and of the one woman in the world for them both. Mr. Bentley had risen,
and stood facing him. That shining, compassionate gaze should have been
indeed a difficult one to meet. Vengeance was the Lord's, in truth!
What ordeal that Horace Bentley in anger and retribution might have
devised could have equalled this!

And yet Eldon Parr did meet it--with an effort. Hodder, from his corner,
detected the effort, though it were barely discernible, and would have
passed a scrutiny less rigid,--the first outward and visible sign of the
lesion within. For a brief instant the banker's eyes encountered Mr.
Bentley's look with a flash of the old defiance, and fell, and then swept
the room.

"Will you come this way, Mr. Parr?" Mr. Bentley said, indicating the door
of the bedroom.

Alison followed. Her eyes, wet with unheeded tears, had never left Mr.
Bentley's face. She put out her hand to him . . . .

Eldon Parr had halted abruptly. He knew from Alison the circumstances in
which his son had died, and how he had been brought hither to this house,
but the sight of the woman beside the bed fanned into flame his fury
against a world which had cheated him, by such ignominious means, of his
dearest wish. He grew white with sudden passion.

"What is she doing here?" he demanded.

Kate Marcy, who had not seemed to hear his entrance, raised up to him a
face from which all fear had fled, a face which, by its suggestive power,
compelled him to realize the absolute despair clutching now at his own
soul, and against which he was fighting wildly, hopelessly. It was lying
in wait for him, With hideous patience, in the coming watches of the
night. Perhaps he read in the face of this woman whom he had condemned
to suffer all degradation, and over whom he was now powerless, something
which would ultimately save her from the hell now yawning for him; a
redeeming element in her grief of which she herself were not as yet
conscious, a light shining in the darkness of her soul which in eternity
would become luminous. And he saw no light for him--He thrashed in
darkness. He had nothing, now, to give, no power longer to deprive.
She had given all she possessed, the memorial of her kind which would
outlast monuments.

It was Alison who crossed the room swiftly. She laid her hand
protectingly on Kate Marcy's shoulder, and stooped, and kissed her.
She turned to her father.

"It is her right," she said. "He belonged to her, not to us. And we
must take her home with us.

"No," answered Kate Marcy' "I don't want to go. I wouldn't live," she
added with unexpected intensity, "with him."

"You would live with me," said Alison.

"I don't want to live!" Kate Marcy got up from the chair with an energy
they had not thought her to possess, a revival of the spirit which had
upheld her when she had contended, singly, with a remorseless world. She
addressed herself to Eldon Parr. "You took him from me, and I was a fool
to let you. He might have saved me and saved himself. I listened to you
when you told me lies as to how it would ruin him . . . . Well,--I had
him you never did."

The sudden, intolerable sense of wrong done to her love, the swift anger
which followed it, the justness of her claim of him who now lay in the
dignity of death clothed her--who in life had been crushed and blotted
out--with a dignity not to be gainsaid. In this moment of final
self-assertion she became the dominating person in the room, knew for
once the birthright of human worth. They watched her in silence as she
turned and gave one last, lingering look at the features of the dead;
stretched out her hand towards them, but did not touch them . . . and
then went slowly towards the door. Beside Alison she stopped.

"You are his sister?" she said.

"Yes."

She searched Alison's face, wistfully.

"I could have loved you."

"And can you not--still?"

Kate Mercy did not answer the question.

"It is because you understand," she said. "You're like those I've come
to know--here. And you're like him . . . . I don't mean in looks.
He, too, was good--and square." She spoke the words a little defiantly,
as though challenging the verdict of the world. "And he wouldn't have
been wild if he could have got going straight."

"I know," said Alison, in a low voice.

"Yes," said Kate Mercy, "you look as if you did. He thought a lot of
you, he said he was only beginning to find out what you was. I'd like
you to think as well of me as you can."

"I could not think better," Alison replied.

Kate Mercy shook her head.

"I got about as low as any woman ever got," she said

"Mr. Hodder will tell you. I want you to know that I wouldn't marry
--your brother," she hesitated over the name. "He wanted me to--he was mad
with me to night, because I wouldn't--when this happened."

She snatched her hand free from Alison's, and fled out of the room, into
the hallway.

Eldon Parr had moved towards the bed, seemingly unaware of the words they
had spoken. Perhaps, as he gazed upon the face, he remembered in his
agony the sunny, smiling child who need to come hurrying down the steps
in Ransome Street to meet him.

In the library Mr. Bentley and John Hodder, knowing nothing of her
flight, heard the front door close on Kate Marcy forever . . . .




CHAPTER XXVIII

LIGHT


I

Two days after the funeral, which had taken place from Calvary, and not
from St. John's, Hodder was no little astonished to receive a note from
Eldon Parr's secretary requesting the rector to call in Park Street. In
the same mail was a letter from Alison. "I have had," she wrote, "a talk
with my father. The initiative was his. I should not have thought of
speaking to him of my affairs so soon after Preston's death. It seems
that he strongly suspected our engagement, which of course I at once
acknowledged, telling him that it was your intention, at the proper time,
to speak to him yourself.

"I was surprised when he said he would ask you to call. I confess that
I have not an idea of what he intends to say to you, John, but I trust
you absolutely, as always. You will find him, already, terribly changed.
I cannot describe it--you will see for yourself. And it has all seemed
to happen so suddenly. As I wrote you, he sat up both nights, with
Preston--he could not be induced to leave the room. And after the first
night he was different. He has hardly spoken a word, except when he sent
for me this evening, and he eats nothing . . . . And yet, somehow,
I do not think that this will be the end. I feel that he will go on
living. . . . .

"I did not realize how much he still hoped about Preston. And on Monday,
when Preston so unexpectedly came home, he was happier than I have known
him for years. It was strange and sad that he could not see, as I saw,
that whatever will power my brother had had was gone. He could not read
it in the face of his own son, who was so quick to detect it in all
others! And then came the tragedy. Oh, John, do you think we shall ever
find that girl again?--I know you are trying but we mustn't rest until we
do. Do you think we ever shall? I shall never forgive myself for not
following her out of the door, but, I thought she had gone to you and Mr.
Bentley."

Hodder laid the letter down, and took it up again. He knew that Alison
felt, as he felt, that they never would find Kate Marcy . . . . He
read on.

"My father wished to speak to me about the money. He has plans for
much of it, it appears, even now. Oh. John, he will never understand.
I want so much to see you, to talk to you--there are times when I am
actually afraid to be alone, and without you. If it be weakness to
confess that I need your reassurance, your strength and comfort
constantly, then I am weak. I once thought I could stand alone, that
I had solved all problems for myself, but I know now how foolish I was.
I have been face to face with such dreadful, unimagined things, and in my
ignorance I did not conceive that life held such terrors. And when I
look at my father, the thought of immortality turns me faint. After you
have come here this afternoon there can be no longer any reason why we
should not meet, and all the world know it. I will go with you to Mr.
Bentley's.

"Of course I need not tell you that I refused to inherit anything. But
I believe I should have consented if I possibly could have done so. It
seemed so cruel--I can think of no other word--to have, to refuse at such
a moment. Perhaps I have been cruel to him all my life--I don't know.
As I look back upon everything, all our relations, I cannot see how I
could have been different. He wouldn't let me. I still believe to have
stayed with him would have been a foolish and useless sacrifice . . .
But he looked at me so queerly, as though he, too, had had a glimmering
of what we might have been to each other after my mother died. Why is
life so hard? And why are we always getting glimpses of things when it
is too late? It is only honest to say that if I had it to do all over
again, I should have left him as I did.

"It is hard to write you this, but he actually made the condition of my
acceptance of the inheritance that I should not marry you. I really do
not believe I convinced him that you wouldn't have me take the money
under any circumstances. And the dreadful side of it all was that I had
to make it plain to him--after what has happened that my desire to marry
you wasn't the main reason of my refusal. I had to tell him that even
though you had not been in question, I couldn't have taken what he wished
to give me, since it had not been honestly made. He asked me why I went
on eating the food bought with such money, living under his roof? But I
cannot, I will not leave him just yet . . . . It is two o'clock. I
cannot write any more to-night."



II

The appointed time was at the November dusk, hurried forward nearly an
hour by the falling panoply of smoke driven westward over the Park by the
wet east wind. And the rector was conducted, with due ceremony, to the
office upstairs which he had never again expected to enter, where that
other memorable interview had taken place. The curtains were drawn. And
if the green-shaded lamp--the only light in the room--had been arranged
by a master of dramatic effect, it could not have better served the
setting.

In spite of Alison's letter, Holder was unprepared for the ravages a few
days had made in the face of Eldon Parr. Not that he appeared older: the
impression was less natural, more sinister. The skin had drawn sharply
over the cheek-bones, and strangely the eyes both contradicted and
harmonized with the transformation of the features. These, too, had
changed. They were not dead and lustreless, but gleamed out of the
shadowy caverns into which they had sunk, unyielding, indomitable in
torment,--eyes of a spirit rebellious in the fumes . . . .

This spirit somehow produced the sensation of its being separated from
the body, for the movement of the hand, inviting Holder to seat himself,
seemed almost automatic.

"I understand," said Eldon Parr, "that you wish to marry my daughter."

"It is true that I am to marry Alison," Holder answered, "and that I
intended, later on, to come to inform you of the fact."

He did not mention the death of Preston. Condolences, under the
circumstances, were utterly out of the question.

"How do you propose to support her?" the banker demanded.

"She is of age, and independent of you. You will pardon me if I reply
that this is a matter between ourselves," Holder said.

"I had made up my mind that the day she married you I would not only
disinherit her, but refuse absolutely, to have anything to do with her."

"If you cannot perceive what she perceives, that you have already by your
own life cut her off from you absolutely and that seeing her will not
mend matters while you remain relentless, nothing I can say will convince
you." Holder did not speak rebukingly. The utter uselessness of it was
never more apparent. The man was condemned beyond all present reprieve,
at least.

"She left me," exclaimed Eldon Parr, bitterly.

"She left you, to save herself."

"We need not discuss that."

"I am far from wishing to discuss it," Holder replied.

"I do not know why you have asked me to come here, Mr. Parr. It is clear
that your attitude has not changed since our last conversation. I tried
to make it plain to you why the church could not accept your money. Your
own daughter, cannot accept it."

"There was a time," retorted the banker, "when you did not refuse to
accept it."

"Yes," Holder replied, "that is true." It came to him vividly then that
it had been Alison herself who had cast the enlightening gleam which
revealed his inconsistency. But he did not defend himself.

"I can see nothing in all this, Mr. Hodder, but a species of insanity,"
said Eldon Parr, and there crept into his tone both querulousness and
intense exasperation. "In the first place, you insist upon marrying my
daughter when neither she nor you have any dependable means of support.
She never spared her criticisms of me, and you presume to condemn me,
a man who, if he has neglected his children, has done so because he has
spent too much of his time in serving his community and his country, and
who has--if I have to say it myself--built up the prosperity which you
and others are doing your best to tear down, and which can only result in
the spread of misery. You profess to have a sympathy with the masses,
but you do not know them as I do. They cannot control themselves, they
require a strong hand. But I am not asking for your sympathy. I have
been misunderstood all my life, I have become used to ingratitude, even
from my children, and from the rector of the church for which I have done
more than any other man."

Hodder stared at him in amazement.

"You really believe that!" he exclaimed.

"Believe it!" Eldon Parr repeated. "I have had my troubles, as heavy
bereavements as a man can have. All of them, even this of my son's
death, all the ingratitude and lack of sympathy I have experienced--"
(he looked deliberately at Hodder) "have not prevented me, do not prevent
me to-day from regarding my fortune as a trust. You have deprived St.
John's, at least so long as you remain there, of some of its benefits,
and the responsibility for that is on your own head. And I am now making
arrangements to give to Calvary the settlement house which St. John's
should have had."

The words were spoken with such an air of conviction, of unconscious
plausibility, as it were, that it was impossible for Hodder to doubt the
genuineness of the attitude they expressed. And yet it was more than his
mind could grasp . . . . Horace Bentley, Richard Garvin, and the
miserable woman of the streets whom he had driven to destroy herself had
made absolutely no impression whatever! The gifts, the benefactions of
Eldon Parr to his fellow-men would go on as before!

"You ask me why I sent for you," the banker went on. "It was primarily
because I hoped to impress upon you the folly of marrying my daughter.
And in spite of all the injury and injustice you have done me, I do not
forget that you were once in a relationship to me which has been unique
in my life. I trusted you, I admired you, for your ability, for your
faculty of getting on with men. At that time you were wise enough not
to attempt to pass comment upon accidents in business affairs which are,
if deplorable, inevitable."

Eldon Parr's voice gave a momentary sign of breaking.

"I will be frank with you. My son's death has led me, perhaps weakly,
to make one more appeal. You have ruined your career by these
chimerical, socialistic notions you have taken up, and which you mistake
for Christianity. As a practical man I can tell you, positively, that
St. John's will run downhill until you are bankrupt. The people who come
to you now are in search of a new sensation, and when that grows stale
they will fall away. Even if a respectable number remain in your
congregation, after this excitement and publicity have died down, I have
reason to know that it is impossible to support a large city church on
contributions. It has been tried again and again, and failed. You have
borrowed money for the Church's present needs. When that is gone I
predict that you will find it difficult to get more."

This had every indication of being a threat, but Hodder, out of sheer
curiosity, did not interrupt. And it was evident that the banker drew a
wrong conclusion from his silence, which he may actually have taken for
reluctant acquiescence. His tone grew more assertive.

"The Church, Mr. Hodder, cannot do without the substantial business men.
I have told the bishop so, but he is failing so rapidly from old age that
I might as well not have wasted my breath. He needs an assistant, a
suffragan or coadjutor, and I intend to make it my affair to see that he
gets one. When I remember him as he was ten years ago, I find it hard to
believe that he is touched with these fancies. To be charitable, it is
senile decay. He seems to forget what I have done for him, personally,
made up his salary, paid his expenses at different times, and no appeal
for the diocese to me was ever in vain. But again, I will let that go.

"What I am getting at is this. You have made a mess of the affairs of
St. John's, you have made a mess of your life. I am willing to give you
the credit for sincerity. Some of my friends might not be. You want to
marry my daughter, and she is apparently determined to marry you. If you
are sensible and resign from St. John's now I will settle on Alison a
sufficient sum to allow you both to live in comfort and decency the rest
of your lives. I will not have it said of me that I permitted my
daughter to become destitute."

After he had finished, the rector sat for so long a time that the banker
nervously shifted in his chair. The clergyman's look had a cumulative
quality, an intensity which seemed to increase as the silence continued.
There was no anger in it, no fanaticism. On the contrary, the higher
sanity of it was disturbing; and its extraordinary implication--gradually
borne in upon Eldon Parr--was that he himself were not in his right mind.
The words, when they came, were a confirmation of this inference.

"It is what I feared, Mr. Parr," he said. "You are as yet incapable of
comprehending."

"What do you mean?" asked the banker, jerking his hand from the table.

The rector shook his head.

"If this great chastisement with which you have been visited has given
you no hint of the true meaning of life, nothing I can say will avail.
If you will not yet listen to the Spirit which is trying to make you
comprehend, how then will you listen to me? How am I to open your eyes
to the paradox of truth, that he who would save his life shall lose it,
that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for
a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God? If you will not believe him
who said that, you will not believe me. I can only beg of you, strive to
understand, that your heart many be softened, that your suffering soul
may be released."

It is to be recorded, strangely, that Eldon Parr did not grow angry in
his turn. The burning eyes looked out at Hodder curiously, as at a being
upon whom the vials of wrath were somehow wasted, against whom the
weapons of power were of no account. The fanatic had become a phenomenon
which had momentarily stilled passion to arouse interest. . . "Art
thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?"

"Do you mean to say"--such was the question that sprang to Eldon Parr's
lips--"that you take the Bible literally? What is your point of view?
You speak about the salvation of souls, I have heard that kind of talk
all my life. And it is easy, I find, for men who have never known the
responsibilities of wealth to criticize and advise. I regard
indiscriminate giving as nothing less than a crime, and I have always
tried to be painstaking and judicious. If I had taken the words you
quoted at their face value, I should have no wealth to distribute to-day.

"I, too, Mr. Hodder, odd as it may seem to you, have had my dreams--of
doing my share of making this country the best place in the world to live
in. It has pleased providence to take away my son. He was not fitted to
carry on my work,--that is the way--with dreams. I was to have taught
him to build up, and to give, as I have given. You think me embittered,
hard, because I seek to do good, to interpret the Gospel in my own way.
Before this year is out I shall have retired from all active business.

"I intend to spend the rest of my life in giving away the money I have
earned--all of it. I do not intend to spare myself, and giving will be
harder than earning. I shall found institutions for research of disease,
hospitals, playgrounds, libraries, and schools. And I shall make the
university here one of the best in the country. What more, may I ask,
would you have me do?"

"Ah," replied the rector, "it is not what I would have you do. It is
not, indeed, a question of 'doing,' but of seeing."

"Of seeing?" the banker repeated. "As I say, of using judgment."

"Judgment, yes, but the judgment which has not yet dawned for you, the
enlightenment which is the knowledge of God's will. Worldly wisdom is a
rule of thumb many men may acquire, the other wisdom, the wisdom of the
soul, is personal--the reward of revelation which springs from desire.
You ask me what I think you should do. I will tell you--but you will not
do it, you will be powerless to do it unless you see it for yourself,
unless the time shall come when you are willing to give up everything
you have held dear in life,--not your money, but your opinions, the very
judgment and wisdom you value, until you have gained the faith which
proclaims these worthless, until you are ready to receive the Kingdom of
God as a little child. You are not ready, now. Your attitude, your very
words, proclaim your blindness to all that has happened you, your
determination to carry out, so far as it is left to you, your own will.
You may die without seeing."

Crazy as it all sounded, a slight tremor shook Eldon Parr. There was
something in the eyes, in the powerful features of the clergyman that
kept him still, that made him listen with a fascination which had he
taken cognizance of it--was akin to fear. That this man believed it,
that he would impress it upon others, nay, had already done so, the
banker did not then doubt.

"You speak of giving," Hodder continued, "and you have nothing to give
--nothing. You are poorer to-day than the humblest man who has seen God.
But you have much, you have all to restore." Without raising his voice,
the rector had contrived to put a mighty emphasis on the word. "You
speak of the labour of giving, but if you seek your God and haply find
him you will not rest night or day while you live until you have restored
every dollar possible of that which you have wrongfully taken from
others."

John Hodder rose and raised his arm in effective protest against the
interruption Eldon Parr was about to make. He bore him down.

"I know what you are going to say, Mr. Parr,--that it is not practical.
That word 'practical' is the barrier between you and your God. I tell
you that God can make anything practical. Your conscience, the spirit,
tortures you to-day, but you have not had enough torture, you still think
to escape easily, to keep the sympathy of a world which despises you.
You are afraid to do what God would have you do. You have the
opportunity, through grace, by your example to leave the world better
than you found it, to do a thing of such magnitude as is given to few
men, to confess before all that your life has been blind and wicked.
That is what the Spirit is trying to teach you. But you fear the
ridicule of the other blind men, you have not the faith to believe that
many eyes would be opened by your act. The very shame of such a
confession, you think, is not to be borne."

"Suppose I acknowledge, which I do not, your preposterous charge, how
would you propose to do this thing?"

"It is very simple," said the rector, "so far as the actual method of
procedure goes. You have only to establish a board of men in whom you
have confidence,--a court of claims, so to speak,--to pass upon the
validity of every application, not from a business standpoint alone, but
from one of a broad justice and equity. And not only that. I should
have it an important part of the duties of this board to discover for
themselves other claimants who may not, for various reasons, come
forward. In the case of the Consolidated Tractions, for instances there
are doubtless many men like Garvin who invested their savings largely on
the strength of your name. You cannot bring him back to life, restore
him to his family as he was before you embittered him, but it would be a
comparatively easy matter to return to his widow, with compound interest,
the sum which he invested."

"For the sake of argument," said Eldon Parr, "what would you do with the
innumerable impostors who would overwhelm such a board with claims that
they had bought and sold stock at a loss? And that is only one case I
could mention."

"Would it be so dreadful a thing," asked Hodder, "To run the risk of
making a few mistakes? It would not be business, you say. If you had
the desire to do this, you would dismiss such an obsession from your
brain, you would prefer to err on the aide of justice and mercy. And no
matter how able your board, in making restitution you could at best
expect to mend only a fraction of the wrongs you have done."

"I shall waive, for the moment, my contention that the Consolidated
Tractions Company, had it succeeded, would greatly have benefited the
city. Even if it had been the iniquitous, piratical transaction you
suggest, why should I assume the responsibility for all who were
concerned in it?"

"If the grace were given you to do this, that question would answer
itself," the rector replied. "The awful sense of responsibility, which
you now lack, would overwhelm you."

"You have made me out a rascal and a charlatan," said Eldon Parr, "and I
have listened' patiently in my desire to be fair, to learn from your own
lips whether there were anything in the extraordinary philosophy you have
taken up, and which you are pleased to call Christianity. If you will
permit me to be as frank as you have been, it appears to me as sheer
nonsense and folly, and if it were put into practice the world would be
reduced at once to chaos and anarchy."

"There is no danger, I am sorry to say, of its being put into practice at
once," said Hodder, smiting sadly.

"I hope not," answered the banker, dryly. "Utopia is a dream in which
those who do the rough work of the world cannot afford to indulge. And
there is one more question. You will, no doubt, deride it as practical,
but to my mind it is very much to the point. You condemn the business
practices in which I have engaged all my life as utterly unchristian. If
you are logical, you will admit that no man or woman who owns stock in a
modern corporation is, according to your definition, Christian, and, to
use your own phrase, can enter the Kingdom of God. I can tell you, as
one who knows, that there is no corporation in this country which, in the
struggle to maintain itself, is not forced to adopt the natural law of
the survival of the fittest, which you condemn. Your own salary, while
you had it, came from men who had made the money in corporations.
Business is business, and admits of no sentimental considerations. If
you can get around that fact, I will gladly bow to your genius. Should
you succeed in reestablishing St. John's on what you call a free basis
--and in my opinion you will not--even then the money, you would live on,
and which supported the church, would be directly or indirectly derived
from corporations."

"I do not propose to enter into an economics argument with you, Mr. Parr,
but if you tell me that the flagrant practices indulged in by those who
organized the Consolidated Tractions Company can be excused under any
code of morals, any conception of Christianity, I tell you they cannot.
What do we see today in your business world? Boards of directors,
trusted by stockholders, betraying their trust, withholding information
in order to profit thereby, buying and selling stock secretly; stock
watering, selling to the public diluted values,--all kinds of iniquity
and abuse of power which I need not go into. Do you mean to tell me, on
the plea that business is business and hence a department by itself, that
deception, cheating, and stealing are justified and necessary? The
awakened conscience of the public is condemning you.

"The time is at hand, though neither you nor I may live to see it, when
the public conscience itself is beginning to perceive thin higher justice
hidden from you. And you are attempting to mislead when you do not
distinguish between the men who, for their own gain and power, mismanage
such corporations as are mismanaged, and those who own stock and are
misled.

"The public conscience of which I speak is the leaven of Christianity at
work. And we must be content to work with it, to await its fulfilment,
to realize that no one of us can change the world, but can only do his
part in making it better. The least we can do is to refuse to indulge
in practices which jeopardize our own souls, to remain poor if we cannot
make wealth honestly. Say what you will, the Christian government we are
approaching will not recognize property, because it is gradually becoming
clear that the holding of property delays the Kingdom at which you scoff,
giving the man who owns it a power over the body of the man who does not.
Property produces slavery, since it compels those who have none to work
for those who have.

"The possession of property, or of sufficient property to give one
individual an advantage over his fellows is inconsistent with
Christianity. Hence it will be done away with, but only when enough have
been emancipated to carry this into effect. Hence the saying of our Lord
about the needle's eye--the danger to the soul of him who owns much
property."

"And how about your Christian view of the world as a vale of tears?"
Eldon Parr inquired.

"So long as humanity exists, there will always be tears," admitted the
rector. "But it is a false Christianity which does not bid us work for
our fellow-men, to relieve their suffering and make the world brighter.
It is becoming clear that the way to do this effectively is through
communities, cooperation, through nations, and not individuals. And
this, if you like, is practical,--so practical that the men like you,
who have gained unexampled privilege, fear it more and more. The old
Christian misconception, that the world is essentially a bad place, and
which has served the ends of your privilege, is going by forever. And
the motto of the citizens of the future will be the Christian motto,
'I am my brother's keeper.' The world is a good place because the Spirit
is continually working in it, to make it better. And life is good, if
only we take the right view of it,--the revealed view."

"What you say is all very fine," said Eldon Parr. "And I have heard it
before, from the discontented, the socialists. But it does not take into
account the one essential element, human nature."

"On the other hand, your scheme of life fails to reckon with the greater
factor, divine nature," Hodder replied.

"When you have lived as long as I have, perhaps you will think
differently, Mr. Hodder." Eldon Parr's voice had abruptly grown
metallic, as though the full realization had come over him of the
severity of the clergyman's arraignment; the audacity of the man who had
ventured to oppose him and momentarily defeated him, who had won the
allegiance of his own daughter, who had dared condemn him as an evil-doer
and give advice as to his future course. He, Eldon Parr, who had been
used to settle the destinies of men! His anger was suddenly at white
heat; and his voice, which he strove to control, betrayed it.

"Since you have rejected my offer, which was made in kindness, since you
are bent on ruining my daughter's life as well as your own, and she has
disregarded my wishes, I refuse to see either of you, no matter to what
straits you may come, as long as I live. That is understood. And she
leaves this house to-day, never to enter it again. It is useless to
prolong this conversation, I think."

"Quite useless, as I feared, Mr. Parr. Do you know why Alison is willing
to marry me? It is because the strength has been given me to oppose you
in the name of humanity, and this in spite of the fact that her love for
you to-day is greater than it has ever been before. It is a part of the
heavy punishment you have inflicted on yourself that you cannot believe
in her purity. You insist on thinking that the time will come when she
will return to you for help. In senseless anger and pride you are
driving her away from you whom you will some day need. And in that day,
should God grant you a relenting heart to make the sign, she will come to
you,--but to give comfort, not to receive it. And even as you have
threatened me, I will warn you, yet not in anger. Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God, nor understand the motives of
those who would enter into it. Seek and pray for repentance."

Infuriated though he was, before the commanding yet compassionate bearing
of the rector he remained speechless. And after a moment's pause, Hodder
turned and left the room . . . .



III

When Hodder had reached the foot of the stairs, Alison came out to him.
The mourning she wore made her seem even taller. In the face upturned to
his, framed in the black veil and paler than he had known it, were traces
of tears; in the eyes a sad, yet questioning and trustful smile. They
gazed at each other an instant, before speaking, in the luminous ecstasy
of perfect communion which shone for them, undimmed, in the surrounding
gloom of tragedy. And thus, they felt, it would always shine. Of that
tragedy of the world's sin and sorrow they would ever be conscious.
Without darkness there could be no light.

"I knew," she said, reading his tidings, "it would be of no use. Tell me
the worst."

"If you marry me, Alison, your father refuses to see you again. He
insists that you leave the house."

"Then why did he wish to see you?"

"It was to make an appeal. He thinks, of course, that I have made a
failure of life, and that if I marry you I shall drag you down to poverty
and disgrace."

She raised her head, proudly.

"But he knows that it is I who insist upon marrying you! I explained it
all to him--how I had asked you. Of course he did not understand. He
thinks, I suppose, that it is simply an infatuation."

In spite of the solemnity of the moment, Hodder smiled down at her,
touched by the confession.

"That, my dear, doesn't relieve me of responsibility. I am just as
responsible as though I had spoken first, instead of you."

"But, John, you didn't--?" A sudden fear made her silent.

He took her hand and pressed it reassuringly.

"Give you up? No, Alison," he answered simply. "When you came to me,
God put you in my keeping."

She clung to him suddenly, in a passion of relief.

"Oh, I never could give you up, I never would unless you yourself told me
to. Then I would do it,--for you. But you won't ask me, now?"

He put his arm around her shoulders, and the strength of it seemed to
calm her.

"No, dear. I would make the sacrifice, ask you to make it, if it would
be of any good. As you say, he does not understand. And you couldn't go
on living with him and loving me. That solution is impossible. We can
only hope that the time will come when he will realize his need of you,
and send for you."

"And did he not ask you anything more?"

Hodder hesitated. He had intended to spare her that . . . . Her
divination startled him.

"I know, I know without your telling me. He offered you money, he
consented to our--marriage if you would give up St. John's. Oh, how
could he," she cried. "How could he so misjudge and insult you!"

"It is not me he misjudges, Alison, it is mankind, it is God. That is
his terrible misfortune." Hodder released her tenderly. "You must see
him--you must tell him that when he needs you, you will come."

"I will see him now, she said. You will wait for, me?"

"Now?" he repeated, taken aback by her resolution, though it was
characteristic.

"Yes, I will go as I am. I can send for my things. My father has given
me no choice, no reprieve,--not that I ask one. I have you, dear. I
will stay with Mr. Bentley to-night, and leave for New York to-morrow,
to do what I have to do--and then you will be ready for me."

"Yes," he said, "I shall be ready."

He lingered in the well-remembered hall . . . . And when at last she
came down again her eyes shone bravely through her tears, her look
answered the question of his own. There was no need for speech. With
not so much as a look behind she left, with him, her father's house.

Outside, the mist had become a drizzle, and as they went down the walk
together beside the driveway she slipped her arm into his, pressing close
to his side. Her intuition was perfect, the courage of her love sublime.

"I have you, dear," she whispered, "never in my life before have I been
rich."

"Alison!"

It was all he could say, but the intensity of his mingled feeling went
into the syllables of her name. An impulse made them pause and turn,
and they stood looking back together at the great house which loomed the
greater in the thickening darkness, its windows edged with glow. Never,
as in this moment when the cold rain wet their faces, had the thought of
its comfort and warmth and luxury struck him so vividly; yes, and of its
terror and loneliness now, of the tortured spirit in it that found no
rest.

"Oh, John," she cried, "if we only could!"

He understood her. Such was the perfect quality of their sympathy that
she had voiced his thought. What were rain and cold, the inclemency of
the elements to them? What the beauty and the warmth of those great,
empty rooms to Eldon Parr? Out of the heaven of their happiness they
looked down, helpless, into the horrors of the luxury of hell.

"It must be," he answered her, "in God's good time."

"Life is terrible!" she said. "Think of what he must have done to
suffer so, to be condemned to this! And when I went to him, just now,
he wouldn't even kiss me good-by. Oh, my dear, if I hadn't had you to
take me, what should I have done? . . . It never was a home to me--to any
of us. And as I look back now, all the troubles began when we moved into
it. I can only think of it as a huge prison, all the more sinister for
its costliness."

A prison! It had once been his own conceit. He drew her gently away,
and they walked together along Park Street towards the distant arc-light
at the corner which flung a gleaming band along the wet pavement.

"Perhaps it was because I was too young to know what trouble was when
we lived in Ransome Street," she continued. "But I can remember now
how sad my mother was at times--it almost seemed as though she had a
premonition." Alison's voice caught . . . .

The car which came roaring through the darkness, and which stopped
protestingly at their corner, was ablaze with electricity, almost filled
with passengers. A young man with a bundle changed his place in order
that they might sit together in one of the little benches bordering the
aisle; opposite them was a laughing, clay-soiled group of labourers going
home from work; in front, a young couple with a chubby child. He stood
between his parents, facing about, gazing in unembarrassed wonder at the
dark lady with the veil. Alison's smile seemed only to increase the
solemnity of his adoration, and presently he attempted to climb over the
barrier between them. Hodder caught him, and the mother turned in alarm,
recapturing him.

"You mustn't bother the lady, Jimmy," she said, when she had thanked the
rector. She had dimpled cheeks and sparkling blue eyes, but their
expression changed as they fell on Alison's face, expressing something
of the wonder of the child's.

"Oh, he isn't bothering me," Alison protested. "Do let him stand."

"He don't make up to everybody," explained the mother, and the manner of
her speech was such a frank tribute that Alison flushed. There had been,
too, in the look the quick sympathy for bereavement of the poor.

"Aren't they nice?" Alison leaned over and whispered to Hodder, when the
woman had turned back. "One thing, at least, I shall never regret,--that
I shall have to ride the rest of my life in the streetcars. I love them.
That is probably my only qualification, dear, for a clergyman's wife."

Hodder laughed. "It strikes me," he said, "as the supreme one."

They came at length to Mr. Bentley's door, flung open in its usual wide
hospitality by Sam. Whatever theist fortunes, they would always be
welcome here . . . . But it turned out, in answer to their question,
that their friend was not at home.

"No, sah," said Sam, bowing and smiling benignantly, "but he done tole
me to say, when you and Miss Alison come, hit was to make no diffunce,
dat you bofe was to have supper heah. And I'se done cooked it--yassah.
Will you kindly step into the liba'y, suh, and Miss Alison? Dar was a
lady 'crost de city, Marse Ho'ace said--yassah."

"John," said Alison with a questioning smile, when they were alone before
the fire, "I believe he went out on purpose,--don't you?--just that we
might be here alone."

"He knew we were coming?"

"I wrote him."

"I think he might be convicted on the evidence," Hodder agreed. "But--?"
His question remained unasked.

Alison went up to him. He had watched her, absorbed and fascinated, as
with her round arms gracefully lifted in front of the old mirror she had
taken off her hat and veil; smoothing, by a few deft touches, the dark
crown of her hair. The unwonted intimacy of the moment, invoking as it
did an endless reflection of other similar moments in their future life
together, was in its effect overwhelming, bringing with it at last a
conviction not to be denied. Her colour rose as she faced him, her
lashes fell.

"Did you seriously think, dear, that we could have deceived Mr. Bentley?
Then you are not as clever as I thought you. As soon as it happened I
sent him a note? that very night. For I felt that he ought to be told
first of all."

"And as usual," Hodder answered, "you were right."

Supper was but a continuation of that delicious sense of intimacy. And
Sam, beaming in his starched shirt and swallow-tail, had an air of
presiding over a banquet of state. And for that matter, none had ever
gone away hungry from this table, either for meat or love. It was,
indeed, a consecrated meal,--consecrated for being just there. Such
was the tact which the old darky had acquired from his master that he
left the dishes on the shining mahogany board, and bowed himself out.

"When you wants me, Miss Alison, des ring de bell."

She was seated upright yet charmingly graceful, behind the old English
coffee service which had been Mr. Bentley's mother's. And it was she
who, by her wonderful self-possession, by the reassuring smile she gave
him as she handed him his cup, endowed it all with reality.

"It's strange," she said, "but it seems as though I had been doing it all
my life, instead of just beginning."

"And you do it as though you had," he declared.

"Which is a proof," she replied, "of the superior adaptability of women."

He did not deny it. He would not then, in truth, have disputed her
wildest statement. . . But presently, after they had gone back into
the library and were seated side by side before the coals, they spoke
again of serious things, marvelling once more at a happiness which could
be tinged and yet unmarred by vicarious sorrow. Theirs was the soberer,
profounder happiness of gratitude and wonder, too wise to exult, but
which of itself is exalted; the happiness which praises, and passes
understanding.

"There are many things I want to say to you, John," she told him, once,
"and they trouble me a little. It is only because I am so utterly
devoted to you that I wish you to know me as I am. I have always had
queer views, and although much has happened to change me since I have
known and loved you, I am not quite sure how much those views have
changed. Love," she added, "plays such havoc with one's opinions."

She returned his smile, but with knitted brows.

"It's really serious--you needn't laugh. And it's only fair to you to
let you know the kind of a wife you are getting, before it is too late.
For instance, I believe in divorce, although I can't imagine it for us.
One never can, I suppose, in this condition--that's the trouble. I have
seen so many immoral marriages that I can't think God intends people
to live degraded. And I'm sick and tired of the argument that an
indissoluble marriage under all conditions is good for society. That
a man or woman, the units of society, should violate the divine in
themselves for the sake of society is absurd. They are merely setting an
example to their children to do the same thing, which means that society
in that respect will never get any better. In this love that has come
to us we have achieved an ideal which I have never thought to reach.
Oh, John, I'm sure you won't misunderstand me when I say that I would
rather die than have to lower it."

"No," he answered, "I shall not misunderstand you."

"Even though it is so difficult to put into words what I mean. I don't
feel that we really need the marriage service, since God has already
joined us together. And it is not through our own wills, somehow, but
through his. Divorce would not only be a crime against the spirit, it
would be an impossibility while we feel as we do. But if love should
cease, then God himself would have divorced us, punished us by taking
away a priceless gift of which we were not worthy. He would have shut
the gates of Eden in our faces because we had sinned against the Spirit.
It would be quite as true to say 'whom God has put asunder no man may
join together.' Am I hurting you?"

Her hand was on the arm of his chair, and the act of laying his own on it
was an assurance stronger than words. Alison sighed.

"Yes, I believed you would understand, even though I expressed myself
badly,--that you would help me, that you have found a solution. I used
to regard the marriage service as a compromise, as a lowering of the
ideal, as something mechanical and rational put in the place of the
spiritual; that it was making the Church, and therefore God, conform to
the human notion of what the welfare of society ought to be. And it is
absurd to promise to love. We have no control over our affections. They
are in God's hands, to grant or withdraw.

"And yet I am sure--this is new since I have known you--that if such a
great love as ours be withdrawn it would be an unpardonable wrong for
either of us to marry again. That is what puzzles me--confounds the
wisdom I used to have, and which in my littleness and pride I thought so
sufficient. I didn't believe in God, but now I feel him, through you,
though I cannot define him. And one of many reasons why I could not
believe in Christ was because I took it for granted that he taught, among
other things, a continuation of the marriage relation after love had
ceased to justify it."

Hodder did not immediately reply. Nor did Alison interrupt his silence,
but sat with the stillness which at times so marked her personality, her
eyes trustfully fixed on him. The current pulsing between them was
unbroken. Hodder's own look, as he gazed into the grate, was that of a
seer.

"Yes," he said at length, "it is by the spirit and not the letter of our
Lord's teaching that we are guided. The Spirit which we draw from the
Gospels. And everything written down there that does not harmonize with
it is the mistaken interpretation of men. Once the Spirit possesses us
truly, we are no longer troubled and confused by texts.

"The alpha and omega of Christ's message is rebirth into the knowledge of
that Spirit, and hence submission to its guidance. And that is what Paul
meant when he said that it freed us from the law. You are right, Alison,
when you declare it to be a violation of the Spirit for a man and woman
to live together when love does not exist. Christ shows us that laws
were made for those who are not reborn. Laws are the rules of society,
to be followed by those who have not found the inner guidance, who live
and die in the flesh. But the path which those who live under the
control of the Spirit are to take is opened up to them as they journey.
If all men and women were reborn we should have the paradox, which only
the reborn can understand, of what is best for the individual being best
for society, because under the will of the Spirit none can transgress
upon the rights and happiness of others. The Spirit would make the laws
and rules superfluous.

"And the great crime of the Church, for which she is paying so heavy an
expiation, is that her faith wavered, and she forsook the Spirit and
resumed the law her Master had condemned. She no longer insisted on that
which Christ proclaimed as imperative, rebirth. She became, as you say,
a mechanical organization, substituting, as the Jews had done, hard and
fast rules for inspiration. She abandoned the Communion of Saints, sold
her birthright for a mess of pottage, for worldly, temporal power when
she declared that inspiration had ceased with the Apostles, when she
failed to see that inspiration is personal, and comes through rebirth.
For the sake of increasing her membership, of dominating the affairs of
men, she has permitted millions who lived in the law and the flesh, who
persisted in forcing men to live by the conventions and customs Christ
repudiated, and so stultify themselves, to act in Christ's name. The
unpardonable sin against the Spirit is to doubt its workings, to maintain
that society will be ruined if it be substituted for the rules and
regulations supposed to make for the material comforts of the nations,
but which in reality suppress and enslave the weak.

"Nevertheless in spite of the Church, marvellously through the Church the
germ of our Lord's message has come down to us, and the age in which we
live is beginning to realize its purport, to condemn the Church for her
subservient rationalism.

"Let us apply the rule of the Spirit to marriage. If we examine the
ideal we shall see clearly that the marriage-service is but a symbol.
Like baptism, it is a worthless and meaningless rite unless the man and
the woman have been born again into the Spirit, released from the law.
If they are still, as St. Paul would say, in the flesh, let them have,
if they wish, a civil permit to live together, for the Spirit can have
nothing to do with such an union. True to herself, the Church symbolizes
the union of her members, the reborn. She has nothing to do with laws
and conventions which are supposedly for the good of society, nor is any
union accomplished if those whom she supposedly joins are not reborn.
If they are, the Church can neither make it or dissolve it, but merely
confirm and acknowledge the work of the Spirit. And every work of the
Spirit is a sacrament. Not baptism and communion and marriage only, but
every act of life.

"Oh, John," she exclaimed, her eyes lighting, "I can believe that! How
beautiful a thought! I see now what is meant when it is said that man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of God. That is the hourly guidance which is independent
of the law. And how terrible to think that all the spiritual beauty of
such a religion should have been hardened into chapter and verse and
regulation. You have put into language what I think of Mr. Bentley,
--that has acts are sacraments . . . . It is so simple when you explain
it this way. And yet I can see why it was said, too, that we must become
as children to understand it."

"The difficult thing," replied Holder, gravely, "is to retain it, to hold
it after we have understood it--even after we have experienced it. To
continue to live in the Spirit demands all our effort, all our courage
and patience and faith. We cannot, as you say, promise to love for life.
But the marriage service, interpreted, means that we will use all our
human endeavour, with the help of the Spirit, to remain in what may be
called the reborn state, since it is by the Spirit alone that true
marriage is sanctified. When the Spirit is withdrawn, man and woman
are indeed divorced.

"The words 'a sense of duty' belong to moral philosophy and not to
religion. Love annuls them. I do not mean to decry them, but the reborn
are lifted far above them by the subversion of the will by which our will
is submitted to God's. It is so we develop, and become, as it were, God.
And hence those who are not married in the Spirit are not spiritually man
and wife. No consecration has taken place, Church or no Church. If
rebirth occurs later, to either or both, the individual conscience--which
is the Spirit, must decide whether, as regards each other, they are bound
or free, and we must stand or fall by that. Men object that this is
opening the door to individualism. What they fail to see is that the
door is open, wide, to-day and can never again be closed: that the law
of the naturally born is losing its power, that the worn-out authority of
the Church is being set at naught because that authority was devised by
man to keep in check those who were not reborn. The only check to
material individualism is spiritual individualism, and the reborn man
or woman cannot act to the detriment of his fellow-creatures."

In her turn she was silent, still gazing at him, her breath coming
deeply, for she was greatly moved.

"Yes," she said simply, "I can see now why divorce between us would be a
sacrilege. I felt it, John, but I couldn't reason it out. It is the
consecration of the Spirit that justifies the union of the flesh. For
the Spirit, in that sense, does not deny the flesh."

"That would be to deny life," Hodder replied.

"I see. Why was it all so hidden!" The exclamation was not addressed to
him--she was staring pensively into the fire. But presently, with a
swift movement, she turned to him.

"You will preach this, John,--all of it!"

It was not a question, but the cry of a new and wider vision of his task.
Her face was transfigured. And her voice, low and vibrating, expressed
no doubts. "Oh, I am proud of you! And if they put you out and
persecute you I shall always be proud, I shall never know why it was
given me to have this, and to live. Do you remember saying to me once
that faith comes to us in some human form we love? You are my faith.
And faith in you is my faith in humanity, and faith in God."

Ere he could speak of his own faith in her, in mankind, by grace of which
he had been lifted from the abyss, there came a knock at the door. And
even as they answered it a deeper knowledge filtered into their hearts.

Horace Bentley stood before them. And the light from his face, that
shone down upon them, was their benediction.




AFTERWORD

Although these pages have been published serially, it is with a feeling
of reluctance that I send them out into the world, for better or worse,
between the covers of a book. They have been written with reverence, and
the reading of the proofs has brought back to me vividly the long winters
in which I pondered over the matter they contain, and wrote and rewrote
the chapters.

I had not thought to add anything to them by way of an afterword.
Nothing could be farther from my mind than to pose as a theologian; and,
were it not for one or two of the letters I have received, I should have
supposed that no reader could have thought of making the accusation that
I presumed to speak for any one except myself. In a book of this kind,
the setting forth of a personal view of religion is not only unavoidable,
but necessary; since, if I wrote sincerely, Mr. Hodder's solution must
coincide with my own--so far as I have been able to work one out. Such
as it is, it represents many years of experience and reflection. And I
can only crave the leniency of any trained theologian who may happen to
peruse it.

No one realizes, perhaps, the incompleteness of the religious
interpretations here presented more keenly than I. More significant,
more vital elements of the truth are the rewards of a mind which searches
and craves, especially in these days when the fruit of so many able minds
lies on the shelves of library and bookshop. Since the last chapter was
written, many suggestions have come to me which I should like to have the
time to develop for this volume. But the nature of these elements is
positive,--I can think of nothing I should care to subtract.

Here, then, so far as what may be called religious doctrine is concerned,
is merely a personal solution. We are in an age when the truth is being
worked out through many minds, a process which seems to me both Christian
and Democratic. Yet a gentleman has so far misunderstood this that he
has already accused me, in a newspaper, of committing all the heresies
condemned by the Council of Chalcedon,--and more!

I have no doubt that he is right. My consolation must be that I have as
company--in some of my heresies, at least--a goodly array of gentlemen
who wear the cloth of the orthodox churches whose doctrines he accuses me
of denying. The published writings of these clergymen are accessible to
all. The same critic declares that my interpretations are without
"authority." This depends, of course; on one's view of "authority." But
his accusation is true equally against many men who--if my observation be
correct--are doing an incalculable service for religion by giving to the
world their own personal solutions, interpreting Christianity in terms of
modern thought. No doubt these, too, are offending the champions of the
Council of Chalcedon.

And does the gentleman, may I ask, ever read the pages of the Hibbert
Journal?

Finally, I have to meet a more serious charge, that Mr. Hodder remains
in the Church because of "the dread of parting with the old, strong
anchorage, the fear of anathema and criticism, the thought of sorrowing
and disapproving friends." Or perhaps he infers that it is I who keep
Mr. Hodder in the Church for these personal reasons. Alas, the concern
of society is now for those upon whom the Church has lost her hold, who
are seeking for a solution they can accept. And the danger to-day is not
from the side of heresy. The rector of St. John's, as a result of his
struggle, gained what I believe to be a higher and surer faith than that
which he formerly held, and in addition to this the realization of the
presence of a condition which was paralyzing the Church's influence.

One thing I had hoped to make clear, that if Mr. Hodder had left the
Church under these circumstances he would have made the Great Refusal.
The situation which he faced demanded something of the sublime courage
of his Master.

Lastly, may I be permitted to add that it is far from my intention to
reflect upon any particular denomination. The instance which I have
taken is perhaps a pronounced rather than a particular case of the
problem to which I have referred, and which is causing the gravest
concern to thoughtful clergymen and laymen of all denominations.


WINSTON CHURCHILL

SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
March 31,1913.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Absurd to promise to love
     Acceptance of authority is not faith, it is mere credulity
     Always getting glimpses of things when it is too late
     Antipathy to forms
     Bad music, she said, offended her
     Can't believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth
     Clothes of one man are binding on another
     Conviction that all things were as they ought to be
     Deification of beauty to the exclusion of all else
     Economic slavery
     Elaborate attention little men are apt to bestow upon women
     Even after all these ages, the belief, the hope would not down
     Faith may be likened to an egg
     Foolish sacrifices are worse than useless
     For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter
     Futility of the traditional words of comfort
     Genius, analyzed, is often disappointing
     God himself would have divorced us
     Had a habit of not waiting for answers to her questions
     Happiness of gratitude and wonder, too wise to exult
     He was what is known as a "success"--always that magic word
     Hell's here--isn't it?
     How to be silent with a clamouring heart
     I see no one upon whom I can rely but myself
     I hate humility
     I'm always searching for things to do
     If Christians were logical, they should be Socialists
     Immortality as orthodox Christianity depicts it
     Impulse had brought him thus far
     Indiscriminate, unreasoning self-sacrifice
     Individualism with which the Church can have no sympathy
     Intellectually lazy
     Know a great deal and don't believe anything
     Knowledge puts faith out of the question
     Logical result of independent thinking is anarchy
     "Love," she added, "plays such havoc with one's opinions"
     Luxuries formerly unthought of seemed to become necessities
     Material proof, it seems to me, is a denial of faith
     Mistaking the effect for the cause
     Mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness
     Not given to trite acquiescence
     Olmah which Isaiah uses does not mean virgin
     Only one regret as to what you said--that it is true
     Pleasure? Yes. It makes me feel as if I were of some use
     Religion, I think, should be everybody's (profession)
     Rule which you so confidently apply to fit all cases
     Scandalously forced through the council of Nicaea
     Seeking a forgiveness out of all proportion to the trespass
     St Paul, you say, put us in our proper place
     Success--which was really failure
     Sunday was then a day essentially different from other days
     The law cannot fit all cases
     The weak always sink
     The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours
     Thinking isn't--believing
     Vagueness generally attributed to her sex
     Vividly unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop
     We must believe, if we believe at all, without authority
     We are always trying to get away from ourselves
     We never can foresee how we may change
     We have no control over our affections
     When our brief span of usefulness is done
     Who had learned the lesson of mothers,--how to wait
     Whole conception of charity is a crime against civilization
     You and your religion are as far apart as the poles






RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


CONTENTS

Volume 1.
I.     Lionel Carvel, of Carvel Hall
II.    Some Memories of Childhood
III.   Caught by the Tide
IV.    Grafton would heal an Old Breach
V.    "If Ladies be but Young and Fair"
VI.    I first suffer for the Cause
VII.   Grafton has his Chance

Volume 2.
VIII.  Over the Wall
IX.    Under False Colours
X.     The Red in the Carvel Blood
XI.    A Festival and a Parting
XII.   News from a Far Country

Volume 3.
XIII.  Mr. Allen shows his Hand
XIV.   The Volte Coupe
XV.    Of which the Rector has the Worst
XVI.   In which Some Things are made Clear
XVII.  South River
XVIII. The Black Moll

Volume 4.
XIX.   A Man of Destiny
XX.    A Sad Home-coming
XXI.   The Gardener's Cottage
XXII.  On the Road
XXIII. London Town
XXIV.  Castle Yard
XXV.   The Rescue

Volume 5.
XXVI.   The Part Horatio played
XXVII.  In which I am sore tempted
XXVIII. Arlington Street
XXIX.   I meet a very Great Young Man
XXX.    A Conspiracy
XXXI.   "Upstairs into the World"
XXXII.  Lady Tankerville's Drum-major
XXXIII. Drury Lane

Volume 6.
XXXIV.   His Grace makes Advances
XXXV.    In which my Lord Baltimore appears
XXXVI.   A Glimpse of Mr. Garrick
XXXVII.  The Serpentine
XXXVIII. In which I am roundly brought to task
XXXIX.   Holland House
XL.      Vauxhall
XLI.     The Wilderness

Volume 7.
XLII.   My Friends are proven
XLIII.  Annapolis once more
XLIV.   Noblesse Oblige
XLV.    The House of Memories
XLVI.   Gordon's Pride
XLVII.  Visitors
XLVIII. Multum in Parvo
XLIX.   Liberty loses a Friend

Volume 8.
L.     Farewell to Gordon's
LI.    How an Idle Prophecy came to pass
LII.   How the Gardener's Son fought the Serapis
LIII.  In which I make Some Discoveries
LIV.   More Discoveries.
LV.    The Love of a Maid for a Man
LVI.   How Good came out of Evil
LVII.  I come to my Own again



FOREWORD

My sons and daughters have tried to persuade me to remodel these memoirs
of my grandfather into a latter-day romance. But I have thought it wiser
to leave them as he wrote them. Albeit they contain some details not of
interest to the general public, to my notion it is such imperfections as
these which lend to them the reality they bear. Certain it is, when
reading them, I live his life over again.

Needless to say, Mr. Richard Carvel never intended them for publication.
His first apology would be for his Scotch, and his only defence is that
he was not a Scotchman.

The lively capital which once reflected the wit and fashion of Europe has
fallen into decay. The silent streets no more echo with the rumble of
coaches and gay chariots, and grass grows where busy merchants trod.
Stately ball-rooms, where beauty once reigned, are cold and empty and
mildewed, and halls, where laughter rang, are silent. Time was when
every wide-throated chimney poured forth its cloud of smoke, when every
andiron held a generous log,--andirons which are now gone to decorate Mr.
Centennial's home in New York or lie with a tag in the window of some
curio shop. The mantel, carved in delicate wreaths, is boarded up, and
an unsightly stove mocks the gilded ceiling. Children romp in that room
with the silver door-knobs, where my master and his lady were wont to sit
at cards in silk and brocade, while liveried blacks entered on tiptoe.
No marble Cupids or tall Dianas fill the niches in the staircase, and the
mahogany board, round which has been gathered many a famous toast and
wit, is gone from the dining room.

But Mr. Carvel's town house in Annapolis stands to-day, with its
neighbours, a mournful relic of a glory that is past.

DANIEL CLAPSADDLE CARVEL.

CALVERT HOUSE, PENNSYLVANIA,
December 21, 1876.




RICHARD CARVEL


CHAPTER I

LIONEL CARVEL, OF CARVEL HALL

Lionel Carvel, Esq., of Carvel Hall, in the county of Queen Anne, was no
inconsiderable man in his Lordship's province of Maryland, and indeed he
was not unknown in the colonial capitals from Williamsburg to Boston.
When his ships arrived out, in May or June, they made a goodly showing at
the wharves, and his captains were ever shrewd men of judgment who
sniffed a Frenchman on the horizon, so that none of the Carvel tobacco
ever went, in that way, to gladden a Gallic heart. Mr. Carvel's acres
were both rich and broad, and his house wide for the stranger who might
seek its shelter, as with God's help so it ever shall be. It has yet to
be said of the Carvels that their guests are hurried away, or that one,
by reason of his worldly goods or position, shall be more welcome than
another.

I take no shame in the pride with which I write of my grandfather, albeit
he took the part of his Majesty and Parliament against the Colonies. He
was no palavering turncoat, like my Uncle Grafton, to cry "God save the
King!" again when an English fleet sailed up the bay. Mr. Carvel's hand
was large and his heart was large, and he was respected and even loved by
the patriots as a man above paltry subterfuge. He was born at Carvel
Hall in the year of our Lord 1696, when the house was, I am told, but a
small dwelling. It was his father, George Carvel, my great-grandsire,
reared the present house in the year 1720, of brick brought from England
as ballast for the empty ships; he added on, in the years following, the
wide wings containing the ball-room, and the banquet-hall, and the large
library at the eastern end, and the offices. But it was my grandfather
who built the great stables and the kennels where he kept his beagles and
his fleeter hounds. He dearly loved the saddle and the chase, and taught
me to love them too. Many the sharp winter day I have followed the fox
with him over two counties, and lain that night, and a week after,
forsooth, at the plantation of some kind friend who was only too glad to
receive us. Often, too, have we stood together from early morning until
dark night, waist deep, on the duck points, I with a fowling-piece I was
all but too young to carry, and brought back a hundred red-heads or
canvas-backs in our bags. He went with unfailing regularity to the races
at Annapolis or Chestertown or Marlborough, often to see his own horses
run, where the coaches of the gentry were fifty and sixty around the
course; where a negro, or a hogshead of tobacco, or a pipe of Madeira was
often staked at a single throw. Those times, my children, are not ours,
and I thought it not strange that Mr. Carvel should delight in a good
main between two cocks, or a bull-baiting, or a breaking of heads at the
Chestertown fair, where he went to show his cattle and fling a guinea
into the ring for the winner.

But it must not be thought that Lionel Carvel, your ancestor, was wholly
unlettered because he was a sportsman, though it must be confessed that
books occupied him only when the weather compelled, or when on his back
with the gout. At times he would fain have me read to him as he lay in
his great four-post bed with the flowered counterpane, from the
Spectator, stopping me now and anon at some awakened memory of his youth.
He never forgave Mr. Addison for killing stout, old Sir Roger de
Coverley, and would never listen to the butler's account of his death.
Mr. Carvel, too, had walked in Gray's Inn Gardens and met adventure at
Fox Hall, and seen the great Marlborough himself. He had a fondness for
Mr. Congreve's Comedies, many of which he had seen acted; and was partial
to Mr. Gay's Trivia, which brought him many a recollection. He would
also listen to Pope. But of the more modern poetry I think Mr. Gray's
Elegy pleased him best. He would laugh over Swift's gall and wormwood,
and would never be brought by my mother to acknowledge the defects in the
Dean's character. Why? He had once met the Dean in a London
drawing-room, when my grandfather was a young spark at Christ Church,
Oxford. He never tired of relating that interview. The hostess was a
very great lady indeed, and actually stood waiting for a word with his
Reverence, whose whim it was rather to talk to the young provincial. He
was a forbidding figure, in his black gown and periwig, so my grandfather
said, with a piercing blue eye and shaggy brow. He made the mighty to
come to him, while young Carvel stood between laughter and fear of the
great lady's displeasure.

"I knew of your father," said the Dean, "before he went to the colonies.
He had done better at home, sir. He was a man of parts."

"He has done indifferently well in Maryland, sir," said Mr. Carvel,
making his bow.

"He hath gained wealth, forsooth," says the Dean, wrathfully, "and might
have had both wealth and fame had his love for King James not turned his
head. I have heard much of the colonies, and have read that doggerel
'Sot Weed Factor' which tells of the gluttonous life of ease you lead in
your own province. You can have no men of mark from such conditions, Mr.
Carvel. Tell me," he adds contemptuously, "is genius honoured among
you?"

"Faith, it is honoured, your Reverence," said my grandfather, "but never
encouraged."

This answer so pleased the Dean that he bade Mr. Carvel dine with him
next day at Button's Coffee House, where they drank mulled wine and old
sack, for which young Mr. Carvel paid. On which occasion his Reverence
endeavoured to persuade the young man to remain in England, and even
went so far as to promise his influence to obtain him preferment. But
Mr. Carvel chose rather (wisely or not, who can judge?) to come back to
Carvel Hall and to the lands of which he was to be master, and to play
the country squire and provincial magnate rather than follow the varying
fortunes of a political party at home. And he was a man much looked up
to in the province before the Revolution, and sat at the council board of
his Excellency the Governor, as his father had done before him, and
represented the crown in more matters than one when the French and
savages were upon our frontiers.

Although a lover of good cheer, Mr. Carvel was never intemperate. To the
end of his days he enjoyed his bottle after dinner, nay, could scarce get
along without it; and mixed a punch or a posset as well as any in our
colony. He chose a good London-brewed ale or porter, and his ships
brought Madeira from that island by the pipe, and sack from Spain and
Portugal, and red wine from France when there was peace. And puncheons
of rum from Jamaica and the Indies for his people, holding that no
gentleman ever drank rum in the raw, though fairly supportable as punch.

Mr. Carvel's house stands in Marlborough Street, a dreary mansion enough.
Praised be Heaven that those who inherit it are not obliged to live there
on the memory of what was in days gone by. The heavy green shutters are
closed; the high steps, though stoutly built, are shaky after these years
of disuse; the host of faithful servants who kept its state are nearly
all laid side by side at Carvel Hall. Harvey and Chess and Scipio are no
more. The kitchen, whither a boyish hunger oft directed my eyes at
twilight, shines not with the welcoming gleam of yore. Chess no longer
prepares the dainties which astonished Mr. Carvel's guests, and which he
alone could cook. The coach still stands in the stables where Harvey
left it, a lumbering relic of those lumbering times when methinks there
was more of goodwill and less of haste in the world. The great brass
knocker, once resplendent from Scipio's careful hand, no longer
fantastically reflects the guest as he beats his tattoo, and Mr. Peale's
portrait of my grandfather is gone from the dining-room wall, adorning,
as you know, our own drawing-room at Calvert House.

I shut my eyes, and there comes to me unbidden that dining-room in
Marlborough Street of a gray winter's afternoon, when I was but a lad.
I see my dear grandfather in his wig and silver-laced waistcoat and his
blue velvet coat, seated at the head of the table, and the precise Scipio
has put down the dumb-waiter filled with shining cut-glass at his left
hand, and his wine chest at his right, and with solemn pomp driven his
black assistants from the room. Scipio was Mr. Carvel's butler. He was
forbid to light the candles after dinner. As dark grew on, Mr. Carvel
liked the blazing logs for light, and presently sets the decanter on the
corner of the table and draws nearer the fire, his guests following. I
recall well how jolly Governor Sharpe, who was a frequent visitor with
us, was wont to display a comely calf in silk stocking; and how Captain
Daniel Clapsaddle would spread his feet with his toes out, and settle his
long pipe between his teeth. And there were besides a host of others who
sat at that fire whose names have passed into Maryland's history,--Whig
and Tory alike. And I remember a tall slip of a lad who sat listening by
the deep-recessed windows on the street, which somehow are always covered
in these pictures with a fine rain. Then a coach passes,--a mahogany
coach emblazoned with the Manners's coat of arms, and Mistress Dorothy
and her mother within. And my young lady gives me one of those demure
bows which ever set my heart agoing like a smith's hammer of a Monday.




CHAPTER II

SOME MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

A traveller who has all but gained the last height of the great
mist-covered mountain looks back over the painful crags he has mastered
to where a light is shining on the first easy slope. That light is ever
visible, for it is Youth.

After nigh fourscore and ten years of life that Youth is nearer to me now
than many things which befell me later. I recall as yesterday the day
Captain Clapsaddle rode to the Hall, his horse covered with sweat, and
the reluctant tidings of Captain Jack Carvel's death on his lips. And
strangely enough that day sticks in my memory as of delight rather than
sadness. When my poor mother had gone up the stairs on my grandfather's
arm the strong soldier took me on his knee, and drawing his pistol from
his holster bade me snap the lock, which I was barely able to do. And
he told me wonderful tales of the woods beyond the mountains, and of the
painted men who tracked them; much wilder and fiercer they were than
those stray Nanticokes I had seen from time to time near Carvel Hall.
And when at last he would go I clung to him, so he swung me to the back
of his great horse Ronald, and I seized the bridle in my small hands.
The noble beast, like his master, loved a child well, and he cantered off
lightly at the captain's whistle, who cried "bravo" and ran by my side
lest I should fall. Lifting me off at length he kissed me and bade me
not to annoy my mother, the tears in his eyes again. And leaping on
Ronald was away for the ferry with never so much as a look behind,
leaving me standing in the road.

And from that time I saw more of him and loved him better than any man
save my grandfather. He gave me a pony on my next birthday, and a little
hogskin saddle made especially by Master Wythe, the London saddler in the
town, with a silver-mounted bridle. Indeed, rarely did the captain
return from one of his long journeys without something for me and a
handsome present for my mother. Mr. Carvel would have had him make his
home with us when we were in town, but this he would not do. He lodged
in Church Street, over against the Coffee House, dining at that hostelry
when not bidden out, or when not with us. He was much sought after.
I believe there was scarce a man of note in any of the colonies not
numbered among his friends. 'Twas said he loved my mother, and could
never come to care for any other woman, and he promised my father in the
forests to look after her welfare and mine. This promise, you shall see,
he faithfully kept.

Though you have often heard from my lips the story of my mother, I must
for the sake of those who are to come after you, set it down here as
briefly as I may. My grandfather's bark 'Charming Sally', Captain
Stanwix, having set out from Bristol on the 15th of April, 1736, with a
fair wind astern and a full cargo of English goods below, near the
Madeiras fell in with foul weather, which increased as she entered the
trades. Captain Stanwix being a prudent man, shortened sail, knowing the
harbour of Funchal to be but a shallow bight in the rock, and worse than
the open sea in a southeaster. The third day he hove the Sally to; being
a stout craft and not overladen she weathered the gale with the loss of a
jib, and was about making topsails again when a full-rigged ship was
descried in the offing giving signals of distress. Night was coming on
very fast, and the sea was yet running too high for a boat to live, but
the gallant captain furled his topsails once more to await the morning.
It could be seen from her signals that the ship was living throughout the
night, but at dawn she foundered before the Sally's boats could be put in
the water; one of them was ground to pieces on the falls. Out of the
ship's company and passengers they picked up but five souls, four sailors
and a little girl of two years or thereabouts. The men knew nothing more
of her than that she had come aboard at Brest with her mother, a quiet,
delicate lady who spoke little with the other passengers. The ship was
'La Favourite du Roy', bound for the French Indies.

Captain Stanwix's wife, who was a good, motherly person, took charge of
the little orphan, and arriving at Carvel Hall delivered her to my
grandfather, who brought her up as his own daughter. You may be sure the
emblem of Catholicism found upon her was destroyed, and she was baptized
straightway by Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather's chaplain, into the
Established Church. Her clothes were of the finest quality, and her
little handkerchief had worked into the corner of it a coronet, with the
initials "E de T" beside it. Around her neck was that locket with the
gold chain which I have so often shown you, on one side of which is the
miniature of the young officer in his most Christian Majesty's uniform,
and on the other a yellow-faded slip of paper with these words: "Elle est
la mienne, quoiqu'elle ne porte pas mou nom." "She is mine, although she
does not bear my name."

My grandfather wrote to the owners of 'La Favourite du Roy', and likewise
directed his English agent to spare nothing in the search for some clew
to the child's identity. All that he found was that the mother had been
entered on the passenger-list as Madame la Farge, of Paris, and was bound
for Martinico. Of the father there was no trace whatever. The name "la
Farge" the agent, Mr. Dix, knew almost to a certainty was assumed, and
the coronet on the handkerchief implied that the child was of noble
parentage. The meaning conveyed by the paper in the locket, which was
plainly a clipping from a letter, was such that Mr. Carvel never showed
it to my mother, and would have destroyed it had he not felt that some
day it might aid in solving the mystery. So he kept it in his strongbox,
where he thought it safe from prying eyes. But my Uncle Grafton, ever a
deceitful lad, at length discovered the key and read the paper, and
afterwards used the knowledge he thus obtained as a reproach and a taunt
against my mother. I cannot even now write his name without repulsion.

This new member of the household was renamed Elizabeth Carvel, though
they called her Bess, and of a course she was greatly petted and spoiled,
and ruled all those about her. As she grew from childhood to womanhood
her beauty became talked about, and afterwards, when Mistress Carvel went
to the Assembly, a dozen young sparks would crowd about the door of her
coach, and older and more serious men lost their heads on her account.

Her devotion to Mr. Carvel was such, however, that she seemed to care but
little for the attention she received, and she continued to grace his
board and entertain his company. He fairly worshipped her. It was his
delight to surprise her with presents from England, with rich silks and
brocades for gowns, for he loved to see her bravely dressed. The spinet
he gave her, inlaid with ivory, we have still. And he caused a chariot
to be made for her in London, and she had her own horses and her groom in
the Carvel livery.

People said it was but natural that she should fall in love with Captain
Jack, my father. He was the soldier of the family, tall and straight and
dashing. He differed from his younger brother Grafton as day from night.
Captain Jack was open and generous, though a little given to rash
enterprise and madcap adventure. He loved my mother from a child. His
friend Captain Clapsaddle loved her too, and likewise Grafton, but it
soon became evident that she would marry Captain Jack or nobody. He was
my grandfather's favourite, and though Mr. Carvel had wished him more
serious, his joy when Bess blushingly told him the news was a pleasure to
see. And Grafton turned to revenge; he went to Mr. Carvel with the paper
he had taken from the strong-box and claimed that my mother was of
spurious birth and not fit to marry a Carvel. He afterwards spread the
story secretly among the friends of the family. By good fortune little
harm arose therefrom, since all who knew my mother loved her, and were
willing to give her credit for the doubt; many, indeed, thought the story
sprang from Grafton's jealousy and hatred. Then it was that Mr. Carvel
gave to Grafton the estate in Kent County and bade him shift for himself,
saying that he washed his hands of a son who had acted such a part.

But Captain Clapsaddle came to the wedding in the long drawing-room at
the Hall and stood by Captain Jack when he was married, and kissed the
bride heartily. And my mother cried about this afterwards, and said that
it grieved her sorely that she should have given pain to such a noble
man.

After the blow which left her a widow, she continued to keep Mr. Carvel's
home. I recall her well, chiefly as a sad and beautiful woman, stately
save when she kissed me with passion and said that I bore my father's
look. She drooped like the flower she was, and one spring day my
grandfather led me to receive her blessing and to be folded for the last
time in those dear arms. With a smile on her lips she rose to heaven to
meet my father. And she lies buried with the rest of the Carvels at the
Hall, next to the brave captain, her husband.

And so I grew up with my grandfather, spending the winters in town and
the long summers on the Eastern Shore. I loved the country best, and the
old house with its hundred feet of front standing on the gentle slope
rising from the river's mouth, the green vines Mr. Carvel had fetched
from England all but hiding the brick, and climbing to the angled roof;
and the velvet green lawn of silvery grass brought from England,
descending gently terrace by terrace to the waterside, where lay our
pungies and barges. There was then a tiny pillared porch framing the
front door, for our ancestors never could be got to realize the Maryland
climate, and would rarely build themselves wide verandas suitable to that
colony. At Carvel Hall we had, to be sure, the cool spring house under
the willows for sultry days, with its pool dished out for bathing; and a
trellised arbour, and octagonal summer house with seats where my mother
was wont to sit sewing while my grandfather dreamed over his pipe. On
the lawn stood the oaks and walnuts and sycamores which still cast their
shade over it, and under them of a summer's evening Mr. Carvel would have
his tea alone; save oftentimes when a barge would come swinging up the
river with ten velvet-capped blacks at the oars, and one of our friendly
neighbours--Mr. Lloyd or Mr. Bordley, or perchance little Mr. Manners
--would stop for a long evening with him. They seldom came without their
ladies and children. What romps we youngsters had about the old place
whilst our elders talked their politics.

In childhood the season which delighted me the most was spring. I would
count the days until St. Taminas, which, as you knew, falls on the first
of May. And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out
as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on
the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force
the gentlemen to pay down a shilling, and sometimes a crown apiece, and
the host to give them a bowl of punch. Then came June. My grandfather
celebrated his Majesty's birthday in his own jolly fashion, and I had my
own birthday party on the tenth. And on the fifteenth, unless it chanced
upon a Sunday, my grandfather never failed to embark in his pinnace at
the Annapolis dock for the Hall. Once seated in the stern between Mr.
Carvel's knees, what rapture when at last we shot out into the blue
waters of the bay and I thought of the long summer of joy before me.
Scipio was generalissimo of these arrangements, and was always at the
dock punctually at ten to hand my grandfather in, a ceremony in which he
took great pride, and to look his disapproval should we be late. As he
turned over the key of the town house he would walk away with a stern
dignity to marshal the other servants in the horse-boat.

One fifteenth of June two children sat with bated breath in the pinnace,
--Dorothy Manners and myself. Mistress Dolly was then as mischievous a
little baggage as ever she proved afterwards. She was coming to pass a
week at the Hall, her parents, whose place was next to ours, having gone
to Philadelphia on a visit. We rounded Kent Island, which lay green and
beautiful in the flashing waters, and at length caught sight of the old
windmill, with its great arms majestically turning, and the cupola of
Carvel House shining white among the trees; and of the upper spars of the
shipping, with sails neatly furled, lying at the long wharves, where the
English wares Mr. Carvel had commanded for the return trips were
unloading. Scarce was the pinnace brought into the wind before I had
leaped ashore and greeted with a shout the Hall servants drawn up in a
line on the green, grinning a welcome. Dorothy and I scampered over the
grass and into the cool, wide house, resting awhile on the easy sloping
steps within, hand in hand. And then away for that grand tour of
inspection we had been so long planning together. How well I recall that
sunny afternoon, when the shadows of the great oaks were just beginning
to lengthen. Through the greenhouses we marched, monarchs of all we
surveyed, old Porphery, the gardener, presenting Mistress Dolly with a
crown of orange blossoms, for which she thanked him with a pretty
courtesy her governess had taught her. Were we not king and queen
returned to our summer palace? And Spot and Silver and Song and Knipe,
the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous as rigid etiquette
demanded, since they were forever running after the butterflies. On we
went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of the garden, past the
weather-beaten sundial and the spinning-house and the smoke-house to the
stables. Here old Harvey, who had taught me to ride Captain Daniel's
pony, is equerry, and young Harvey our personal attendant; old Harvey
smiles as we go in and out of the stalls rubbing the noses of our trusted
friends, and gives a gruff but kindly warning as to Cassandra's heels.
He recalls my father at the same age.

Jonas Tree, the carpenter, sits sunning himself on his bench before the
shop, but mysteriously disappears when he sees us, and returns presently
with a little ship he has fashioned for me that winter, all complete with
spars and sails, for Jonas was a shipwright on the Severn in the old
country before he came as a king's passenger to the new. Dolly and I
are off directly to the backwaters of the river, where the new boat is
launched with due ceremony as the Conqueror, his Majesty's latest
ship-of-the-line. Jonas himself trims her sails, and she sets off right
gallantly across the shallows, heeling to the breeze for all the world
like a real man-o'-war. Then the King would fain cruise at once against
the French, but Queen Dorothy must needs go with him. His Majesty points
out that when fighting is to be done, a ship of war is no place for a
woman, whereat her Majesty stamps her little foot and throws her crown of
orange blossoms from her, and starts off for the milk-house in high
dudgeon, vowing she will play no more.

And it ends as it ever will end, be the children young or old, for the
French pass from his Majesty's mind and he runs after his consort to
implore forgiveness, leaving poor Jonas to take care of the Conqueror.

How short those summer days? All too short for the girl and boy who had
so much to do in them. The sun rising over the forest often found us
peeping through the blinds, and when he sank into the bay at night we
were still running, tired but happy, and begging patient Hester for half
an hour more.

"Lawd, Marse Dick," I can hear her say, "you an' Miss Dolly's been on
yo' feet since de dawn. And so's I, honey."

And so we had. We would spend whole days on the wharves, all bustle and
excitement, sometimes seated on the capstan of the Sprightly Bess or
perched in the nettings of the Oriole, of which ship old Stanwix was now
captain. He had grown gray in Mr. Carvel's service, and good Mrs.
Stanwix was long since dead. Often we would mount together on the little
horse Captain Daniel had given me, Dorothy on a pillion behind, to go
with my grandfather to inspect the farm. Mr. Starkie, the overseer,
would ride beside us, his fowling-piece slung over his shoulder and his
holster on his hip; a kind man and capable, and unlike Mr. Evans, my
Uncle Grafton's overseer, was seldom known to use his firearms or the
rawhide slung across his saddle. The negroes in their linsey-woolsey
jackets and checked trousers would stand among the hills grinning at us
children as we passed; and there was not one of them, nor of the white
servants for that matter, that I could not call by name.

And all this time I was busily wooing Mistress Dolly; but she, little
minx, would give me no satisfaction. I see her standing among the
strawberries, her black hair waving in the wind, and her red lips redder
still from the stain. And the sound of her childish voice comes back to
me now after all these years. And this was my first proposal:

"Dorothy, when you grow up and I grow up, you will marry me, and I shall
give you all these strawberries."

"I will marry none but a soldier," says she, "and a great man."

"Then will I be a soldier," I cried, "and greater than the Governor
himself." And I believed it.

"Papa says I shall marry an earl," retorts Dorothy, with a toss of her
pretty head.

"There are no earls among us," I exclaimed hotly, for even then I had
some of that sturdy republican spirit which prevailed among the younger
generation. "Our earls are those who have made their own way, like my
grandfather." For I had lately heard Captain Clapsaddle say this and
much more on the subject. But Dorothy turned up her nose.

"I shall go home when I am eighteen,"--she said, "and I shall meet his
Majesty the King."

And to such an argument I found no logical answer.

Mr. Marmaduke Manners and his lady came to fetch Dorothy home. He was a
foppish little gentleman who thought more of the cut of his waistcoat
than of the affairs of the province, and would rather have been bidden to
lead the assembly ball than to sit in council with his Excellency the
Governor. My first recollection of him is of contempt. He must needs
have his morning punch just so, and complained whiningly of Scipio if
some perchance were spilled on the glass. He must needs be taken abroad
in a chair when it rained. And though in the course of a summer he was
often at Carvel Hall he never tarried long, and came to see Mr. Carvel's
guests rather than Mr. Carvel. He had little in common with my
grandfather, whose chief business and pleasure was to promote industry
on his farm. Mr. Marmaduke was wont to rise at noon, and knew not wheat
from barley, or good leaf from bad; his hands he kept like a lady's,
rendering them almost useless by the long lace on the sleeves, and his
chief pastime was card-playing. It was but reasonable therefore, when
the troubles with the mother country began, that he chose the King's side
alike from indolence and contempt for things republican.

Of Mrs. Manners I shall say more by and by.

I took a mischievous delight in giving Mr. Manners every annoyance my
boyish fancy could conceive. The evening of his arrival he and Mr.
Carvel set out for a stroll about the house, Mr. Marmaduke mincing his
steps, for it had rained that morning. And presently they came upon the
windmill with its long arms moving lazily in the light breeze, near
touching the ground as they passed, for the mill was built in the Dutch
fashion. I know not what moved me, but hearing Mr. Manners carelessly
humming a minuet while my grandfather explained the usefulness of the
mill, I seized hold of one of the long arms as it swung by, and before
the gentlemen could prevent was carried slowly upwards. Dorothy
screamed, and her father stood stock still with amazement and fear, Mr.
Carvel being the only one who kept his presence of mind. "Hold on tight,
Richard!" I heard him cry. It was dizzy riding, though the motion was
not great, and before I had reached the right angle I regretted my
rashness. I caught a glimpse of the Bay with the red sun on it, and
as I turned saw far below me the white figure of Ivie Rawlinson, the
Scotch miller, who had run out. "O haith!" he shouted. "Hand fast,
Mr. Richard!"--And so I clung tightly and came down without much
inconvenience, though indifferently glad to feel the ground again.

Mr. Marmaduke, as I expected, was in a great temper, and swore he had
not had such a fright for years. He looked for Mr. Carvel to cane me
stoutly: But Ivie laughed heartily, and said: "I wad yell gang far for
anither laddie wi' the spunk, Mr. Manners," and with a sly look at my
grandfather, "Ilka day we hae some sic whigmeleery."

I think Mr. Carvel was not ill pleased with the feat, or with Mr.
Marmaduke's way of taking it. For afterwards I overheard him telling the
story to Colonel Lloyd, and both gentlemen laughing over Mr. Manners's
discomfiture.




CHAPTER III

CAUGHT BY THE TIDE

It is a nigh impossible task on the memory to trace those influences by
which a lad is led to form his life's opinions, and for my part I hold
that such things are bred into the bone, and that events only serve to
strengthen them. In this way only can I account for my bitterness, at a
very early age, against that King whom my seeming environment should have
made me love. For my grandfather was as stanch a royalist as ever held
a cup to majesty's health. And children are most apt before they can
reason for themselves to take the note from those of their elders who
surround them. It is true that many of Mr. Carvel's guests were of the
opposite persuasion from him: Mr. Chase and Mr. Carroll, Mr. Lloyd and
Mr. Bordley, and many others, including our friend Captain Clapsaddle.
And these gentlemen were frequently in argument, but political discussion
is Greek to a lad.

Mr. Carvel, as I have said, was most of his life a member of the Council,
a man from whom both Governor Sharpe and Governor Eden were glad to take
advice because of his temperate judgment and deep knowledge of the people
of the province. At times, when his Council was scattered, Governor
Sharpe would consult Mr. Carvel alone, and often have I known my
grandfather to embark in haste from the Hall in response to a call from
his Excellency.

'Twas in the latter part of August, in the year 1765, made memorable by
the Stamp Act, that I first came in touch with the deep-set feelings of
the times then beginning, and I count from that year the awakening of the
sympathy which determined my career. One sultry day I was wading in the
shallows after crabs, when the Governor's messenger came drifting in, all
impatience at the lack of wind. He ran to the house to seek Mr. Carvel,
and I after him, with all a boy's curiosity, as fast as my small legs
would carry me. My grandfather hurried out to order his barge to be got
ready at once, so that I knew something important was at hand. At first
he refused me permission to go, but afterwards relented, and about eleven
in the morning we pulled away strongly, the ten blacks bending to the
oars as if their lives were at stake.

A wind arose before we sighted Greensbury Point, and I saw a bark sailing
in, but thought nothing of this until Mr. Carvel, who had been silent and
preoccupied, called for his glass and swept her decks. She soon
shortened sail, and went so leisurely that presently our light barge drew
alongside, and I perceived Mr. Zachariah Hood, a merchant of the town,
returning from London, hanging over her rail. Mr. Hood was very pale
in spite of his sea-voyage; he flung up his cap at our boat, but Mr.
Carvel's salute in return was colder than he looked for. As we came
in view of the dock, a fine rain was setting in, and to my astonishment
I beheld such a mass of people assembled as I had never seen, and scarce
standing-room on the wharves. We were to have gone to the Governor's
wharf in the Severn, but my grandfather changed his intention at once.
Many of the crowd greeted him as we drew near them, and, having landed,
respectfully made room for him to pass through. I followed him a-tremble
with excitement and delight over such an unwonted experience. We had
barely gone ten paces, however, before Mr. Carvel stopped abreast of Mr.
Claude, mine host of the Coffee House, who cried:

"Hast seen his Majesty's newest representative, Mr. Carvel?"

"Mr. Hood is on board the bark, sir," replied my grandfather. "I take it
you mean Mr. Hood."

"Ay, that I do; Mr. Zachariah Hood, come to lick stamps for his
brother-colonists."

"After licking his Majesty's boots," says a wag near by, which brings a
laugh from those about us. I remembered that I had heard some talk as to
how Mr. Hood had sought and obtained from King George the office of Stamp
Distributor for the province. Now, my grandfather, God rest him! was as
doughty an old gentleman as might well be, and would not listen without
protest to remarks which bordered sedition. He had little fear of things
below, and none of a mob.

"My masters," he shouted, with a flourish of his stick, so stoutly that
people fell back from him, "know that ye are met against the law, and
endanger the peace of his Lordship's government."

"Good enough, Mr. Carvel," said Claude, who seemed to be the spokesman.
"But how if we are stamped against law and his Lordship's government?
How then, sir? Your honour well knows we have naught against either,
and are as peaceful a mob as ever assembled."

This brought on a great laugh, and they shouted from all sides, "How
then, Mr. Carvel?" And my grandfather, perceiving that he would lose
dignity by argument, and having done his duty by a protest, was wisely
content with that. They opened wider the lane for him to pass through,
and he made his way, erect and somewhat defiant, to Mr. Pryse's, the
coachmaker opposite, holding me by the hand. The second storey of
Pryse's shop had a little balcony standing out in front, and here we
established ourselves, that we might watch what was going forward.

The crowd below grew strangely silent as the bark came nearer and nearer,
until Mr. Hood showed himself on the poop, when there rose a storm of
hisses, mingled with shouts of derision. "How goes it at St. James, Mr.
Hood?" and "Have you tasted his Majesty's barley?" And some asked him
if he was come as their member of Parliament. Mr. Hood dropped a bow,
though what he said was drowned. The bark came in prettily enough, men
in the crowd even catching her lines and making them fast to the piles.
A gang-plank was thrown over. "Come out, Mr. Hood," they cried; "we are
here to do you honour, and to welcome you home again." There were
leather breeches with staves a-plenty around that plank, and faces that
meant no trifling. "McNeir, the rogue," exclaimed Mr. Carvel, "and that
hulk of a tanner, Brown. And I would know those smith's shoulders in a
thousand." "Right, sir," says Pryse, "and 'twill serve them proper.
when the King's troops come among them for quartering." Pryse being the
gentry's patron, shaped his politics according to the company he was in:
he could ill be expected to seize one of his own ash spokes and join the
resistance. Just then I caught a glimpse of Captain Clapsaddle on the
skirts of the crowd, and with him Mr. Swain and some of the dissenting
gentry. And my boyish wrath burst forth against that man smirking and
smiling on the decks of the bark, so that I shouted shrilly: "Mr. Hood
will be cudgelled and tarred as he deserves," and shook my little fist at
him, so that many under us laughed and cheered me. Mr. Carvel pushed me
back into the window and out of their sight.

The crew of the bark had assembled on the quarterdeck, stout English tars
every man of them, armed with pikes and belaying-pins; and at a word from
the mate they rushed in a body over the plank. Some were thrust off into
the water, but so fierce was their onset that others gained the wharf,
laying sharply about them in all directions, but getting full as many
knocks as they gave. For a space there was a very bedlam of cries and
broken heads, those behind in the mob surging forward to reach the
scrimmage, forcing their own comrades over the edge. McNeir had his
thigh broken by a pike, and was dragged back after the first rush was
over; and the mate of the bark was near to drowning, being rescued,
indeed, by Graham, the tanner. Mr. Hood stood white in the gangway,
dodging a missile now and then, waiting his chance, which never came.
For many of the sailors were captured and carried bodily to the "Rose and
Crown" and the "Three Blue Balls," where they became properly drunk on
Jamaica rum; others made good their escape on board. And at length the
bark cast off again, amidst jeers and threats, and one-third of her crew
missing, and drifted slowly back to the roads.

From the dock, after all was quiet, Mr. Carvel stepped into his barge and
rowed to the Governor's, whose house was prettily situated near Hanover
Street, with ground running down to the Severn. His Excellency appeared
much relieved to see my grandfather; Mr. Daniel Dulany was with him, and
the three gentlemen at once repaired to the Governor's writing-closet for
consultation.

Mr. Carvel's town house being closed, we stopped with his Excellency.
There were, indeed, scarce any of the gentry in town at that season save
a few of the Whig persuasion. Excitement ran very high; farmers flocked
in every day from the country round about to take part in the
demonstration against the Act. Mr. Hood's storehouse was burned to the
ground. Mr. Hood getting ashore by stealth, came, however, unmolested to
Annapolis and offered at a low price the goods he had brought out in the
bark, thinking thus to propitiate his enemies. This step but inflamed
them the more.

My grandfather having much business to look to, I was left to my own
devices, and the devices of an impetuous lad of twelve are not always
such as his elders would choose for him. I was continually burning with
a desire to see what was proceeding in the town, and hearing one day a
great clamour and tolling of bells, I ran out of the Governor's gate and
down Northwest Street to the Circle, where a strange sight met my eyes.
A crowd like that I had seen on the dock had collected there, Mr. Swain
and Mr. Hammond and other barristers holding them in check. Mounted
on a one-horse cart was a stuffed figure of the detested Mr. Hood.
Mr. Hammond made a speech, but for the laughter and cheering I could not
catch a word of it. I pushed through the people, as a boy will, diving
between legs to get a better view, when I felt a hand upon my shoulder,
bringing me up suddenly. And I recognized Mr. Matthias Tilghman, and
with him was Mr. Samuel Chase.

"Does your grandfather know you are here, lad?" said Mr. Tilghman.

I paused a moment for breath before I answered: "He attended the rally
at the dock himself, sir, and I believe enjoyed it."

Both gentlemen smiled, and Mr. Chase remarked that if all the other party
were like Mr. Carvel, troubles would soon cease. "I mean not Grafton,"
says he, with a wink at Mr. Tilghman.

"I'll warrant, Richard, your uncle would be but ill pleased to see you in
such company."

"Nay, sir," I replied, for I never feared to speak up, "there are you
wrong. I think it would please my uncle mightily."

"The lad hath indifferent penetration," said Mr, Tilghman, laughing, and
adding more soberly: "If you never do worse than this, Richard, Maryland
may some day be proud of you."

Mr. Hammond having finished his speech, a paper was placed in the hand of
the effigy, and the crowd bore it shouting and singing to the hill, where
Mr. John Shaw, the city carpenter, had made a gibbet. There nine and
thirty lashes were bestowed on the unfortunate image, the people crying
out that this was the Mosaic Law. And I cried as loud as any, though I
knew not the meaning of the words. They hung Mr. Hood to the gibbet and
set fire to a tar barrel under him, and so left him.

The town wore a holiday look that day, and I was loth to go back to
the Governor's house. Good patriots' shops were closed, their owners
parading as on Sunday in their best, pausing in knots at every corner
to discuss the affair with which the town simmered. I encountered old
Farris, the clockmaker, in his brown coat besprinkled behind with powder
from his queue. "How now, Master Richard?" says he, merrily. "This is
no place for young gentlemen of your persuasion."

Next I came upon young Dr. Courtenay, the wit of the Tuesday Club, of
whom I shall have more to say hereafter. He was taking the air with Mr.
James Fotheringay, Will's eldest brother, but lately back from Oxford and
the Temple.

The doctor wore five-pound ruffles and a ten-pound wig, was dressed in
cherry silk, and carried a long, clouded cane. His hat had the latest
cock, for he was our macaroni of Annapolis.

"Egad, Richard," he cries, "you are the only other loyalist I have seen
abroad to-day."

I remember swelling with indignation at the affront. "I call them
Tories, sir," I flashed back, "and I am none such." "No Tory!" says he,
nudging Mr. Fotheringay, who was with him; "I had as lief believe your
grandfather hated King George." I astonished them both by retorting that
Mr. Carvel might think as he pleased, that being every man's right; but
that I chose to be a Whig. "I would tell you as a friend, young man,"
replied the doctor, "that thy politics are not over politic." And they
left me puzzling, laughing with much relish over some catch in the
doctor's words. As for me, I could perceive no humour in them.

It was now near six of the clock, but instead of going direct to the
Governor's I made my way down Church Street toward the water. Near the
dock I saw many people gathered in the street in front of the "Ship"
tavern, a time-honoured resort much patronized by sailors. My curiosity
led me to halt there also. The "Ship" had stood in that place nigh on to
three-score years, it was said. Its latticed windows were swung open,
and from within came snatches of "Tom Bowling," "Rule Britannia," and
many songs scarce fit for a child to hear. Now and anon some one in the
street would throw back a taunt to these British sentiments, which went
unheeded. "They be drunk as lords," said Weld, the butcher's apprentice,
"and when they comes out we'll hev more than one broken head in this
street." The songs continuing, he cried again, "Come out, d-n ye." Weld
had had more than his own portion of rum that day. Spying me seated on
the gate-post opposite, he shouted: "So ho, Master Carvel, the streets
are not for his Majesty's supporters to-day." Other artisans who were
there bade him leave me in peace, saying that my grandfather was a good
friend of the people. The matter might have ended there had I been older
and wiser, but the excitement of the day had gone to my head like wine.
"I am as stout a patriot as you, Weld," I shouted back, and flushed at
the cheering that followed. And Weld ran up to me, and though I was a
good piece of a lad, swung me lightly onto his shoulder. "Harkee, Master
Richard," he said, "I can get nothing out of the poltroons by shouting.
Do you go in and say that Weld will fight any mother's son of them
single-handed."

"For shame, to send a lad into a tavern," said old Bobbins, who had known
my grandfather these many years. But the desire for a row was so great
among the rest that they silenced him. Weld set me down, and I, nothing
loth, ran through the open door.

I had never before been in the "Ship," nor, indeed, in any tavern save
that of Master Dingley, near Carvel Hall. The "Ship" was a bare place
enough, with low black beams and sanded floor, and rough tables and
chairs set about. On that September evening it was stifling hot; and
the odours from the men, and the spilled rum and tobacco smoke, well-nigh
overpowered me. The room was filled with a motley gang of sailors,
mostly from the bark Mr. Hood had come on, and some from H.M.S. Hawk,
then lying in the harbour.

A strapping man-o'-war's-man sat near the door, his jacket thrown open
and his great chest bared, and when he perceived me he was in the act of
proposing a catch; 'twas "The Great Bell o' Lincoln," I believe; and he
held a brimming cup of bumbo in his hand. In his surprise he set it
awkwardly down again, thereby spilling full half of it. "Avast," says
he, with an oath, "what's this come among us?" and he looked me over
with a comical eye. "A d-d provincial," he went on scornfully, "but a
gentleman's son, or Jack Ball's a liar." Whereupon his companions rose
from their seats and crowded round me. More than one reeled against me.
And though I was somewhat awed by the strangeness of that dark,
ill-smelling room, and by the rough company in which I found myself,
I held my ground, and spoke up as strongly as I might.

"Weld, the butcher's apprentice, bids me say he will fight any man among
you single-handed."

"So ho, my little gamecock, my little schooner with a swivel," said he
who had called himself Jack Ball, "and where can this valiant butcher be
found?"

"He waits in the street," I answered more boldly.

"Split me fore and aft if he waits long," said Jack, draining the rest of
his rum. And picking me up as easily as did Weld he rushed out of the
door, and after him as many of his mates as could walk or stagger
thither.

In the meantime the news had got abroad in the street that the butcher's
apprentice was to fight one of the Hawk's men, and when I emerged from
the tavern the crowd had doubled, and people were running hither in all
haste from both directions. But that fight was never to be. Big Jack
Ball had scarce set me down and shouted a loud defiance, shaking his fist
at Weld, who stood out opposite, when a soldierly man on a great horse
turned the corner and wheeled between the combatants. I knew at a glance
it was Captain Clapsaddle, and guiltily wished myself at the Governor's.
The townspeople knew him likewise, and many were slinking away even
before he spoke, as his charger stood pawing the ground.

"What's this I hear, you villain," said he to Weld, in his deep, ringing
voice, "that you have not only provoked a row with one of the King's
sailors, but have dared send a child into that tavern with your fool's
message?"

Weld was awkward and sullen enough, and no words came to him.

"Your tongue, you sot," the captain went on, drawing his sword in his
anger, "is it true you have made use of a gentleman's son for your low
purposes?"

But Weld was still silent, and not a sound came from either side until
old Robbins spoke up.

"There are many here can say I warned him, your honour," he said.

"Warned him!" cried the captain. "Mr. Carvel has just given you twenty
pounds for your wife, and you warned him!"

Robbins said no more; and the butcher's apprentice, hanging his head,
as well he might before the captain, I was much moved to pity for him,
seeing that my forwardness had in some sense led him on.

"Twas in truth my fault, captain," I cried out. The captain looked at
me, and said nothing. After that the butcher made bold to take up his
man's defence.

"Master Carvel was indeed somewhat to blame, sir," said he, "and Weld is
in liquor."

"And I'll have him to pay for his drunkenness," said Captain Clapsaddle,
hotly. "Get to your homes," he cried. "Ye are a lot of idle hounds, who
would make liberty the excuse for riot." He waved his sword at the pack
of them, and they scattered like sheep until none but Weld was left.
"And as for you, Weld," he continued, "you'll rue this pretty business,
or Daniel Clapsaddle never punished a cut-throat." And turning to Jack
Ball, he bade him lift me to the saddle, and so I rode with him to the
Governor's without a word; for I knew better than to talk when he was
in that mood.

The captain was made to tarry and sup with his Excellency and my
grandfather, and I sat perforce a fourth at the table, scarce daring to
conjecture as to the outcome of my escapade. But as luck would have it,
the Governor had been that day in such worry and perplexity, and my
grandfather also, that my absence had passed unnoticed. Nor did my good
friend the captain utter a word to them of what he knew. But afterwards
he called me to him and set me upon his knee. How big, and kind, and
strong he was, and how I loved his bluff soldier's face and blunt ways.
And when at last he spoke, his words burnt deep in my memory, so that
even now I can repeat them.

"Richard," he said, "I perceive you are like your father. I love your
spirit greatly, but you have been overrash to-day. Remember this, lad,
that you are a gentleman, the son of the bravest and truest gentleman I
have ever known, save one; and he is destined to high things." I know
now that he spoke of Colonel Washington. "And that your mother," here
his voice trembled,--"your mother was a lady, every inch of her, and too
good for this world. Remember, and seek no company, therefore, beyond
that circle in which you were born. Fear not to be kind and generous,
as I know you ever will be, but choose not intimates from the tavern."
Here the captain cleared his throat, and seemed to seek for words.
"I fear there are times coming, my lad," he went on presently, "when
every man must choose his side, and stand arrayed in his own colours.
It is not for me to shape your way of thinking. Decide in your own mind
that which is right, and when you have so decided,"--he drew his sword,
as was his habit when greatly moved, and placed his broad hand upon my
head,--"know then that God is with you, and swerve not from thy course
the width of this blade for any man."

We sat upon a little bench in the Governor's garden, in front of us the
wide Severn merging into the bay, and glowing like molten gold in the
setting sun. And I was thrilled with a strange reverence such as I have
sometimes since felt in the presence of heroes.




CHAPTER IV

GRAFTON WOULD HEAL AN OLD BREACH

Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather's chaplain, was as holy a man as ever
wore a gown, but I can remember none of his discourses which moved me
as much by half as those simple words Captain Clapsaddle had used. The
worthy doctor, who had baptized both my mother and father, died suddenly
at Carvel Hall the spring following, of a cold contracted while visiting
a poor man who dwelt across the river. He would have lacked but three
years of fourscore come Whitsuntide. He was universally loved and
respected in that district where he had lived so long and ably, by rich
and poor alike, and those of many creeds saw him to his last
resting-place. Mr. Carroll, of Carrollton, who was an ardent Catholic,
stood bareheaded beside the grave.

Doctor Hilliard was indeed a beacon in a time when his profession among
us was all but darkness, and when many of the scandals of the community
might be laid at the door of those whose duty it was to prevent them.
The fault lay without doubt in his Lordship's charter, which gave to the
parishioners no voice in the choosing of their pastors. This matter was
left to Lord Baltimore's whim. Hence it was that he sent among us so
many fox-hunting and gaming parsons who read the service ill and preached
drowsy and illiterate sermons. Gaming and fox-hunting, did I say? These
are but charitable words to cover the real characters of those impostors
in holy orders, whose doings would often bring the blush of shame to your
cheeks. Nay, I have seen a clergyman drunk in the pulpit, and even in
those freer days their laxity and immorality were such that many flocked
to hear the parsons of the Methodists and Lutherans, whose simple and
eloquent words and simpler lives were worthy of their cloth. Small
wonder was it, when every strolling adventurer and soldier out of
employment took orders and found favour in his Lordship's eyes, and were
given the fattest livings in place of worthier men, that the Established
Church fell somewhat into disrepute. Far be it from me to say that there
were not good men and true in that Church, but the wag who writ this
verse, which became a common saying in Maryland, was not far wrong for
the great body of them:--

       "Who is a monster of the first renown?
        A lettered sot, a drunkard in a gown."

My grandfather did not replace Dr. Hilliard at the Hall, afterwards
saying the prayers himself. The doctor had been my tutor, and in spite
of my waywardness and lack of love for the classics had taught me no
little Latin and Greek, and early instilled into my mind those principles
necessary for the soul's salvation. I have often thought with regret on
the pranks I played him. More than once at lesson-time have I gone off
with Hugo and young Harvey for a rabbit hunt, stealing two dogs from the
pack, and thus committing a double offence. You may be sure I was well
thrashed by Mr. Carvel, who thought the more of the latter misdoing,
though obliged to emphasize the former. The doctor would never raise his
hand against me. His study, where I recited my daily tasks, was that
small sunny room on the water side of the east wing; and I well recall
him as he sat behind his desk of a morning after prayers, his horn
spectacles perched on his high nose and his quill over his ear, and his
ink-powder and pewter stand beside him. His face would grow more serious
as I scanned my Virgil in a faltering voice, and as he descanted on a
passage my eye would wander out over the green trees and fields to the
glistening water. What cared I for "Arma virumque" at such a time? I
was watching Nebo a-fishing beyond the point, and as he waded ashore the
burden on his shoulders had a much keener interest for me than that
AEneas carried out of Troy.

My Uncle Grafton came to Dr. Hilliard's funeral, choosing this
opportunity to become reconciled to my grandfather, who he feared had not
much longer to live. Albeit Mr. Carvel was as stout and hale as ever.
None of the mourners at the doctor's grave showed more sorrow than did
Grafton. A thousand remembrances of the good old man returned to him,
and I heard him telling Mr. Carroll and some other gentlemen, with much
emotion, how he had loved his reverend preceptor, from whom he had
learned nothing but what was good. "How fortunate are you, Richard," he
once said, "to have had such a spiritual and intellectual teacher in your
youth. Would that Philip might have learned from such a one. And I
trust you can say, my lad, that you have made the best of your
advantages, though I fear you are of a wild nature, as your father was
before you." And my uncle sighed and crossed his hands behind his back.
"'Tis perhaps better that poor John is in his grave," he said. Grafton
had a word and a smile for every one about the old place, but little
else, being, as he said, but a younger son and a poor man. I was near to
forgetting the shilling he gave Scipio. 'Twas not so unostentatiously
done but that Mr. Carvel and I marked it. And afterwards I made Scipio
give me the coin, replacing it with another, and flung it as far into the
river as ever I could throw.

As was but proper to show his sorrow at the death of the old chaplain he
had loved so much, Grafton came to the Hall drest entirely in black. He
would have had his lady and Philip, a lad near my own age, clad likewise
in sombre colours. But my Aunt Caroline would none of them, holding it
to be the right of her sex to dress as became its charms. Her silks and
laces went but ill with the low estate my uncle claimed for his purse,
and Master Philip's wardrobe was twice the size of mine. And the family
travelled in a coach as grand as Mr. Carvel's own, with panels wreathed
in flowers and a footman and outrider in livery, from which my aunt
descended like a duchess. She embraced my grandfather with much warmth,
and kissed me effusively on both cheeks.

"And this is dear Richard?" she cried. "Philip, come at once and greet
your cousin. He has not the look of the Carvels," she continued volubly,
"but more resembles his mother, as I recall her."

"Indeed, madam," my grandfather answered somewhat testily, "he has the
Carvel nose and mouth, though his chin is more pronounced. He has
Elizabeth's eyes."

But my aunt was a woman who flew from one subject to another, and she
had already ceased to think of me. She was in the hall. "The dear old
home?" she cries, though she had been in it but once before, regarding
lovingly each object as her eye rested upon it, nay, caressingly when she
came to the great punch-bowl and the carved mahogany dresser, and the
Peter Lely over the broad fireplace. "What memories they must bring to
your mind, my dear," she remarks to her husband. "'Tis cruel, as I once
said to dear papa, that we cannot always live under the old rafters we
loved so well as children." And the good lady brushes away a tear with
her embroidered pocket-napkin. Tears that will come in spite of us all.
But she brightens instantly and smiles at the line of servants drawn up
to welcome them. "This is Scipio, my son, who was with your grandfather
when your father was born, and before." Master Philip nods graciously in
response to Scipio's delighted bow. "And Harvey," my aunt rattles on.
"Have you any new mares to surprise us with this year, Harvey?" Harvey
not being as overcome with Mrs. Grafton's condescension as was proper,
she turns again to Mr. Carvel.

"Ah, father, I see you are in sore need of a woman's hand about the old
house. What a difference a touch makes, to be sure." And she takes off
her gloves and attacks the morning room, setting an ornament here and
another there, and drawing back for the effect. "Such a bachelor's hall
as you are keeping!"

"We still have Willis, Caroline," remonstrates my grandfather, gravely.
"I have no fault to find with her housekeeping."

"Of course not, father; men never notice," Aunt Caroline replies in an
aggrieved tone. And when Willis herself comes in, auguring no good from
this visit, my aunt gives her the tips of her fingers. And I imagine I
see a spark fly between them.

As for Grafton, he was more than willing to let bygones be bygones
between his father and himself. Aunt Caroline said with feeling that
Dr. Hilliard's death was a blessing, after all, since it brought a
long-separated father and son together once more. Grafton had been
misjudged and ill-used, and he called Heaven to witness that the quarrel
had never been of his seeking,--a statement which Mr. Carvel was at no
pains to prove perjury. How attentive was Mr. Grafton to his father's
every want. He read his Gazette to him of a Thursday, though the old
gentleman's eyes are as good as ever. If Mr. Carvel walks out of an
evening, Grafton's arm is ever ready, and my uncle and his worthy lady
are eager to take a hand at cards before supper. "Philip, my dear," says
my aunt, "thy grandfather's slippers," or, "Philip, my love, thy
grandfather's hat and cane." But it is plain that Master Philip has not
been brought up to wait on his elders. He is curled with a novel in his
grandfather's easy chair by the window. "There is Dio, mamma, who has
naught to do but serve grandpapa," says he, and gives a pull at the cord
over his head which rings the bell about the servants' ears in the hall
below. And Dio, the whites of his eyes showing, comes running into the
room.

"It is nothing, Diomedes," says Mr. Carvel. "Master Philip will fetch
what I need.". Master Philip's papa and mamma stare at each other in a
surprise mingled with no little alarm, Master Philip being to all
appearances intent upon his book.

"Philip," says my grandfather, gently. I had more than once heard him
speak thus, and well knew what was coming.

"Sir," replies my cousin, without looking up. "Follow me, sir," said Mr.
Carvel, in a voice so different that Philip drops his book. They went up
the stairs together, and what occurred there I leave to the imagination.
But when next Philip was bidden to do an errand for Mr. Carvel my
grandfather said quietly: "I prefer that Richard should go, Caroline."
And though my aunt and uncle, much mortified, begged him to give Philip
another chance, he would never permit it.

Nevertheless, a great effort was made to restore Philip to his
grandfather's good graces. At breakfast one morning, after my aunt had
poured Mr. Carvel's tea and made her customary compliment to the blue and
gold breakfast china, my Uncle Grafton spoke up.

"Now that Dr. Hilliard is gone, father, what do you purpose concerning
Richard's schooling?"

"He shall go to King William's school in the autumn," Mr. Carvel replied.

"In the autumn!" cried my uncle. "I do not give Philip even the short
holiday of this visit. He has his Greek and his Virgil every day."

"And can repeat the best passages," my aunt chimes in. "Philip, my dear,
recite that one your father so delights in."

However unwilling Master Philip had been to disturb himself for errands,
he was nothing loth to show his knowledge, and recited glibly enough
several lines of his Virgil verbatim; thereby pleasing his fond parents
greatly and my grandfather not a little.

"I will add a crown to your savings, Philip," says his father.

"And here is a pistole to spend as you will," says Mr. Carvel, tossing
him the piece.

"Nay, father, I do not encourage the lad to be a spendthrift," says
Grafton, taking the pistole himself. "I will place this token of your
appreciation in his strong-box. You know we have a prodigal strain in
the family, sir." And my uncle looks at me significantly.

"Let it be as I say, Grafton," persists Mr. Carvel, who liked not to be
balked in any matter, and was not over-pleased at this reference to my
father. And he gave Philip forthwith another pistole, telling his father
to add the first to his saving if he would.

"And Richard must have his chance," says my Aunt Caroline, sweetly, as
she rises to leave the room.

"Ay, here is a crown for you, Richard," says my uncle, smiling. "Let us
hear your Latin, which should be purer than Philip's."

My grandfather glanced uneasily at me across the table; he saw clearly
the trick Grafton had played me, I think. But for once I was equal to my
uncle, and haply remembered a line Dr. Hilliard had expounded, which
fitted the present case marvellously well. With little ceremony I tossed
back the crown, and slowly repeated those words used to warn the Trojans
against accepting the Grecian horse:

        "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes."

"Egad," cried Mr. Carvel, slapping his knee, "the lad bath beaten you on
your own ground, Grafton." And he laughed as my grandfather only could
laugh, until the dishes rattled on the table. But my uncle thought it no
matter for jesting.

Philip was also well versed in politics for a lad of his age, and could
discuss glibly the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. He denounced
the seditious doings in Annapolis and Boston Town with an air of easy
familiarity, for Philip had the memory of a parrot, and 'twas easy to
perceive whence his knowledge sprang. But when my fine master spoke
disparagingly of the tradesmen as at the bottom of the trouble, my
grandfather's patience came to an end.

"And what think you lies beneath the wealth and power of England,
Philip?" he asked.

"Her nobility, sir, and the riches she draws from her colonies," retorts
Master Philip, readily enough.

"Not so," Mr. Carvel said gravely. "She owes her greatness to her
merchants, or tradesmen, as you choose to call them. And commerce must
be at the backbone of every great nation. Tradesmen!" exclaimed my
grandfather. "Where would any of us be were it not for trade? We sell
our tobacco and our wheat, and get money in return. And your father
makes a deal here and a deal there, and so gets rich in spite of his
pittance."

My Uncle Grafton raised his hand to protest, but Mr. Carvel continued:
"I know you, Grafton, I know you. When a lad it was your habit to lay
aside the money I gave you, and so pretend you had none."

"And 'twas well I learned then to be careful," said my uncle, losing for
the instant his control, "for you loved the spend-thrift best, and I
should be but a beggar now without my wisdom."

"I loved not John's carelessness with money, but other qualities in him
which you lacked," answered Mr. Carvel.

Grafton shot a swift glance at me; and so much of malice and of hatred
was conveyed in that look that with a sense of prophecy I shuddered to
think that some day I should have to cope with such craft. For he
detested me threefold, and combined the hate he bore my dead father and
mother with the ill-will he bore me for standing in his way and Philip's
with my grandfather's property. But so deftly could he hide his feelings
that he was smiling again instantly. To see once, however, the white
belly of the shark flash on the surface of the blue water is sufficient.

"I beg of you not to jest of me before the lads, father," said Grafton.

"God knows there was little jest in what I said," replied Mr. Carvell
soberly, "and I care not who hears it. Your own son will one day know
you well enough, if he does not now. Do not imagine, because I am old,
that I am grown so foolish as to believe that a black sheep can become
white save by dye. And dye will never deceive such as me. And Philip,"
the shrewd old gentleman went on, turning to my cousin, "do not let thy
father or any other make thee believe there cannot be two sides to every
question. I recognize in your arguments that which smacks of his tongue,
despite what he says of your reading the public prints and of forming
your own opinions. And do not condemn the Whigs, many of whom are worthy
men and true, because they quarrel with what they deem an unjust method
of taxation."

Grafton had given many of the old servants cause to remember him. Harvey
in particular, who had come from England early in the century with my
grandfather, spoke with bitterness of him. On the subject of my uncle,
the old coachman's taciturnity gave way to torrents of reproach. "Beware
of him as has no use for horses, Master Richard," he would say; for this
trait in Grafton in Harvey's mind lay at the bottom of all others. At my
uncle's approach he would retire into his shell like an oyster, nor could
he be got to utter more than a monosyllable in his presence. Harvey's
face would twitch, and his fingers clench of themselves as he touched his
cap. And with my Aunt Caroline he was the same. He vouchsafed but a
curt reply to all her questions, nor did her raptures over the stud
soften him in the least. She would come tripping into the stable yard,
daintily holding up her skirts, and crying, "Oh, Harvey, I have heard so
much of Tanglefoot. I must see him before I go." Tanglefoot is led out
begrudgingly enough, and Aunt Caroline goes over his points, missing the
greater part of them, and remarking on the depth of chest, which is
nothing notable in Tanglefoot. Harvey winks slyly at me the while, and
never so much as offers a word of correction. "You must take Philip to
ride, Richard, my dear," says my aunt. "His father was never as fond of
it as I could have wished. I hold that every gentleman should ride to
hounds."

"Humph!" grunts Harvey, when she is gone to the house,

"Master Philip to hunt, indeed! Foxes to hunt foxes!" And he gives vent
to a dry laugh over his joke, in which I cannot but join. "Horsemen
grows. Eh, Master Richard? There was Captain Jack, who jumped from the
cradle into the saddle, and I never once seen a horse get the better o'
him. And that's God's truth." And he smooths out Tanglefoot's mane,
adding reflectively, "And you be just like him. But there was scarce a
horse in the stables what wouldn't lay back his ears at Mr. Grafton, and
small blame to 'em, say I. He never dared go near 'em. Oh, Master
Philip comes by it honestly enough. She thinks old Harvey don't know a
thoroughbred when he sees one, sir. But Mrs. Grafton's no thoroughbred;
I tell 'ee that, though I'm saying nothing as to her points, mark ye.
I've seen her sort in the old country, and I've seen 'em here, and it's
the same the world over, in Injy and Chiny, too. Fine trappings don't
make the horse, and they don't take thoroughbreds from a grocer's cart.
A Philadelphy grocer," sniffs this old aristocrat. "I'd knowed her
father was a grocer had I seen her in Pall Mall with a Royal Highness, by
her gait, I may say. Thy mother was a thoroughbred, Master Richard, and
I'll tell 'ee another," he goes on with a chuckle, "Mistress Dorothy
Manners is such another; you don't mistake 'em with their high heads and
patreeshan ways, though her father be one of them accidents as will occur
in every stock. She's one to tame, sir, and I don't envy no young
gentleman the task. But this I knows," says Harvey, not heeding my red
cheeks, "that Master Philip, with all his satin small-clothes, will never
do it."

Indeed, it was no secret that my Aunt Caroline had been a Miss Flaven,
of Philadelphia, though she would have had the fashion of our province to
believe that she belonged to the Governor's set there; and she spoke in
terms of easy familiarity of the first families of her native city,
deceiving no one save herself, poor lady. How fondly do we believe, with
the ostrich, that our body is hidden when our head is tucked under our
wing! Not a visitor in Philadelphia but knew Terence Flaven, Mrs.
Grafton Carvel's father, who not many years since sold tea and spices and
soap and glazed teapots over his own counter, and still advertised his
cargoes in the public prints. He was a broad and charitable-minded man
enough, and unassuming, but gave way at last to the pressure brought upon
him by his wife and daughter, and bought a mansion in Front Street.
Terence Flaven never could be got to stay there save to sleep, and
preferred to spend his time in his shop, which was grown greatly,
chatting with his customers, and bowing the ladies to their chariots.
I need hardly say that this worthy man was on far better terms than his
family with those personages whose society they strove so hard to attain.

At the time of Miss Flaven's marriage to my uncle 'twas a piece of
gossip in every month that he had taken her for her dower, which was not
inconsiderable; though to hear Mr. and Mrs. Grafton talk they knew not
whence the next month's provender was to come. They went to live in Kent
County, as I have said, spending some winters in Philadelphia, where
Mr. Grafton was thought to have interests, though it never could be
discovered what his investments were. On hearing of his marriage, which
took place shortly before my father's, Mr. Carvel expressed neither
displeasure nor surprise. But he would not hear of my mother's request
to settle a portion upon his younger son.

"He has the Kent estate, Bess," said he, "which is by far too good for
him. Never doubt but that the rogue can feather his own nest far better
than can I, as indeed he hath already done. And by the Lord," cried Mr.
Carvel, bringing his fist down upon the card-table where they sat,
"he shall never get another farthing of my money while I live, nor
afterwards, if I can help it! I would rather give it over to
Mr. Carroll to found a nunnery."

And so that matter ended, for Mr. Carvel could not be moved from a
purpose he had once made. Nor would he make any advances whatsoever to
Grafton, or receive those hints which my uncle was forever dropping,
until at length he begged to be allowed to come to Dr. Hilliard's
funeral, a request my grandfather could not in decency refuse. 'Twas a
pathetic letter in truth, and served its purpose well, though it was not
as dust in the old gentleman's eyes. He called me into his bedroom and
told me that my Uncle Grafton was coming at last. And seeing that I
said nothing thereto, he gave me a queer look and bade me treat them
as civilly as I knew how. "I well know thy temper, Richard," said he,
"and I fear 'twill bring thee trouble enough in life. Try to control it,
my lad; take an old man's advice and try to control it." He was
in one of his gentler moods, and passed his arm about me, and together we
stood looking silently through the square panes out into the rain, at the
ducks paddling in the puddles until the darkness hid them.

And God knows, lad that I was, I tried to be civil to them. But my
tongue rebelled at the very sight of my uncle ('twas bred into me, I
suppose), and his fairest words seemed to me to contain a hidden sting.
Once, when he spoke in his innuendo of my father, I ran from the room to
restrain some act of violence; I know not what I should have done. And
Willis found me in the deserted, study of the doctor, where my hot tears
had stained the flowered paper on the wall. She did her best to calm me,
good soul, though she had her own troubles with my Lady Caroline to think
about at the time.

I had one experience with Master Philip before our visitors betook
themselves back to Kent, which, unfortunate as it was, I cannot but
relate here. My cousin would enter into none of those rough amusements
in which I passed my time, for fear, I took it, of spoiling his fine
broadcloths or of losing a gold buckle. He never could be got to
wrestle, though I challenged him more than once. And he was a well-built
lad, and might, with a little practice, have become skilled in that
sport. He laughed at the homespun I wore about the farm, saying it was
no costume for a gentleman's son, and begged me sneeringly to don leather
breeches. He would have none of the company of those lads with whom I
found pleasure, young Harvey, and Willis's son, who was being trained as
Mr. Starkie's assistant. Nor indeed did I disdain to join in a game with
Hugo, who had been given to me, and other negro lads. Philip saw no
sport in a wrestle or a fight between two of the boys from the quarters,
and marvelled that I could lower myself to bet with Harvey the younger.
He took not a spark of interest in the gaming cocks we raised together to
compete at the local contests and at the fair, and knew not a gaff from a
cockspur. Being one day at my wits' end to amuse my cousin, I proposed
to him a game of quoits on the green beside the spring-house, and thither
we repaired, followed by Hugo, and young Harvey come to look on. Master
Philip, not casting as well as he might, cries out suddenly to Hugo:
"Begone, you black dog! What business have you here watching a game
between gentlemen?"

"He is my servant, cousin," I said quietly, "and no dog, if you please.
And he is under my orders, not yours."

But Philip, having scarcely scored a point, was in a rage. "And I'll
not have him here," he shouted, giving poor Hugo a cuff which sent him
stumbling over the stake. And turning to me; continued insolently:
"Ever since we came here I have marked your manner toward us, as though
my father had no right in my grandfather's house."

Then could I no longer contain myself. I heard young Harvey laugh, and
remark: "'Tis all up with Master Philip now." But Philip, whatever else
he may have been, was no coward, and had squared off to face me by the
time I had run the distance between the stakes. He was heavier than I,
though not so tall; and he parried my first blow and my second, and many
more; having lively work of it, however, for I hit him as often as I was
able. To speak truth, I had not looked for such resistance, and seeing
that I could not knock him down, out of hand, I grew more cool and began
to study what I was doing.

"Take off your macaroni coat," said I. "I have no wish to ruin your
clothes."

But he only jeered in return: "Take off thy wool-sack." And Hugo,
getting to his feet, cried out to me not to hurt Marse Philip, that he
had meant no harm. But this only enraged Philip the more, and he swore
a round oath at Hugo and another at me, and dealt a vicious blow at my
stomach, whereat Harvey called out to him to fight fair. He was more
skilful at the science of boxing than I, though I was the better fighter,
having, I am sorry to say, fought but too often before. And presently,
when I had closed one of his eyes, his skill went all to pieces, and he
made a mad rush at me. As he went by I struck him so hard that he fell
heavily and lay motionless.

Young Harvey ran into the spring-house and filled his hat as I bent over
my cousin. I unbuttoned his waistcoat and felt his heart, and rejoiced
to find it beating; we poured cold water over his face and wrists. By
then, Hugo, who was badly frightened, had told the news in the house, and
I saw my Aunt Caroline come running over the green as fast as her tight
stays would permit, crying out that I had killed her boy, her dear
Philip. And after her came my Uncle Grafton and my grandfather, with all
the servants who had been in hearing. I was near to crying myself at the
thought that I should grieve my grandfather. And my aunt, as she knelt
over Philip, pushed me away, and bade me not touch him. But my cousin
opened one of his eyes, and raised his hand to his head.

"Thank Heaven he is not killed!" exclaims Aunt Caroline, fervently.

"Thank God, indeed!" echoes my uncle, and gives me a look as much as to
say that I am not to be thanked for it. "I have often warned you, sir,"
he says to Mr. Carvel, "that we do not inherit from stocks and stones.
And so much has come of our charity."

I knew, lad that I was; that he spoke of my mother; and my blood boiled
within me.

"Have a care, sir, with your veiled insults," I cried, "or I will serve
you as I have served your son."

Grafton threw up his hands.

"What have we harboured, father?" says he. But Mr. Carvel seized him by
the shoulder. "Peace, Grafton, before the servants," he said, "and cease
thy crying, Caroline. The lad is not hurt." And being a tall man, six
feet in his stockings, and strong despite his age, he raised Philip from
the grass, and sternly bade him walk to the house, which he did, leaning
on his mother's arm. "As for you, Richard," my grandfather went on, "you
will go into my study."

Into his study I went, where presently he came also, and I told him
the affair in as few words as I might. And he, knowing my hatred of
falsehood, questioned me not at all, but paced to and fro, I following
him with my eyes, and truly sorry that I had given him pain. And finally
he dismissed me, bidding me make it up with my cousin, which I was
nothing loth to do. What he said to Philip and his father I know not.
That evening we shook hands, though Philip's face was much swollen, and
my uncle smiled, and was even pleasanter than before, saying that boys
would be boys. But I think my Aunt Caroline could never wholly hide the
malice she bore me for what I had done that day.

When at last the visitors were gone, every face on the plantation wore a
brighter look. Harvey said: "God bless their backs, which is the only
part I ever care to see of their honours." And Willis gave us a supper
fit for a king. Mr. Lloyd and his lady were with us, and Mr. Carvel told
his old stories of the time of the First George, many of which I can even
now repeat: how he and two other collegians fought half a dozen Mohocks
in Norfolk Street, and fairly beat them; and how he discovered by chance
a Jacobite refugee in Greenwich, and what came of it; nor did he forget
that oft-told episode with Dean Swift. And these he rehearsed in such
merry spirit and new guise that we scarce recognized them, and Colonel
Lloyd so choked with laughter that more than once he had to be hit
between the shoulders.




CHAPTER V

"IF LADIES BE BUT YOUNG AND FAIR"

No boyhood could have been happier than mine, and throughout it, ever
present with me, were a shadow and a light. The shadow was my Uncle
Grafton. I know not what strange intuition of the child made me think
of him so constantly after that visit he paid us, but often I would wake
from my sleep with his name upon my lips, and a dread at my heart. The
light--need I say?--was Miss Dorothy Manners. Little Miss Dolly was
often at the Hall after that happy week we spent together; and her home,
Wilmot House, was scarce three miles across wood and field by our
plantation roads. I was a stout little fellow enough, and before I was
twelve I had learned to follow to hounds my grandfather's guests on my
pony; and Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Carvel when they shot on the duck points.
Ay, and what may surprise you, my dears, I was given a weak little toddy
off the noggin at night, while the gentlemen stretched their limbs before
the fire, or played at whist or loo Mr. Carvel would have no milksop, so
he said. But he early impressed upon me that moderation was the mark of
a true man, even as excess was that of a weak one.

And so it was no wonder that I frequently found my way to Wilmot House
alone. There I often stayed the whole day long, romping with Dolly at
games of our own invention, and many the time I was sent home after dark
by Mrs. Manners with Jim, the groom. About once in the week Mr. and Mrs.
Manners would bring Dorothy over for dinner or tea at the Hall. She grew
quickly--so quickly that I scarce realized--into a tall slip of a girl,
who could be wilful and cruel, laughing or forgiving, shy or impudent, in
a breath. She had as many moods as the sea. I have heard her entertain
Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Bordley and the ladies, and my grandfather, by the
hour, while I sat by silent and miserable, but proud of her all the same.
Boylike, I had grown to think of her as my possession, tho' she gave me
no reason whatever. I believe I had held my hand over fire for her, at a
word. And, indeed, I did many of her biddings to make me wonder, now,
that I was not killed. It used to please her, Ivie too, to see me go the
round of the windmill, tho' she would cry out after I left the ground.
And once, when it was turning faster than common and Ivie not there to
prevent, I near lost my hold at the top, and was thrown at the bottom
with such force that I lay stunned for a full minute. I opened my eyes
to find her bending over me with such a look of fright and remorse upon
her face as I shall never forget. Again, walking out on the bowsprit of
the 'Oriole' while she stood watching me from the dock, I lost my balance
and fell into the water. On another occasion I fought Will Fotheringay,
whose parents had come for a visit, because he dared say he would marry
her.

"She is to marry an earl," I cried, tho' I had thrashed another lad for
saying so. "Mr. Manners is to take her home when she is grown, to marry
her to an earl."

"At least she will not marry you, Master Richard," sneered Will. And
then I hit him.

Indeed, even at that early day the girl's beauty was enough to make her
talked about. And that foolish little fop, her father, had more than
once declared before a company in our dining room that it was high time
another title came into his family, and that he meant to take Dolly
abroad when she was sixteen. Lad that I was, I would mark with pain the
blush on Mrs. Manners's cheek, and clinch my fists as she tried to pass
this off as a joke of her husband's. But Dolly, who sat next me at a
side table, would make a wry little face at my angry one.

"You shall call me 'my lady,' Richard. And sometimes, if you are good,
you shall ride inside my coroneted coach when you come home."

Ah, that was the worst of it! The vixen was conscious of her beauty.
But her airs were so natural that young and old bowed before her.
Nothing but worship had she had from the cradle. I would that Mr.
Peale had painted her in her girlhood as a type of our Maryland lady of
quality. Harvey was right when he called her a thoroughbred. Her nose
was of patrician straightness, and the curves of her mouth came from
generations of proud ancestors. And she had blue eyes to conquer and
subdue; with long lashes to hide them under when she chose, and black
hair with blue gloss upon it in the slanting lights. I believe I loved
her best in the riding-habit that was the colour of the red holly in our
Maryland woods. At Christmas-tide, when we came to the eastern shore, we
would gallop together through miles of country, the farmers and servants
tipping and staring after her as she laid her silver-handled whip upon
her pony. She knew not the meaning of fear, and would take a fence or a
ditch that a man might pause at. And so I fell into the habit of leading
her the easy way round, for dread that she would be hurt.

How those Christmas times of childhood come sweeping back on my memory!
Often, and without warning, my grandfather would say to me: "Richard, we
shall celebrate at the Hall this year." And it rarely turned out that
arrangements had not been made with the Lloyds and the Bordleys and the
Manners, and other neighbours, to go to the country for the holidays. I
have no occasion in these pages to mention my intimacy with the sons and
daughters of those good friends of the Carvels', Colonel Lloyd and Mr.
Bordley. Some of them are dead now, and the rest can thank God and
look back upon worthy and useful lives. And if any of these, my old
playmates, could read this manuscript, perchance they might feel a tingle
of recollection of Children's Day, when Maryland was a province. We
rarely had snow; sometimes a crust upon the ground that was melted into
paste by the noonday sun, but more frequently, so it seems to me, a
foggy, drizzly Christmas, with the fires crackling in saloon and lady's
chamber. And when my grandfather and the ladies and gentlemen, his
guests, came down the curving stairs, there were the broadly smiling
servants drawn up in the wide hall,--all who could gather there,--and the
rest on the lawn outside, to wish "Merry Chris'mas" to "de quality." The
redemptioners in front, headed by Ivie and Jonas Tree, tho' they had long
served their terms, and with them old Harvey and his son; next the house
blacks and the outside liveries, and then the oldest slaves from the
quarters. This line reached the door, which Scipio would throw open at
"de quality's" appearance, disclosing the rest of the field servants, in
bright-coloured gowns, and the little negroes on the green. Then Mr.
Carvel would make them a little speech of thanks and of good-will, and
white-haired Johnson of the senior quarters, who had been with my
great-grandfather, would start the carol in a quaver. How clear and
sweet the melody of those negro voices comes back to me through the
generations! And the picture of the hall, loaded with holly and mistletoe
even to the great arch that spanned it, with the generous bowls of
egg-nog and punch on the mahogany by the wall! And the ladies our
guests, in cap and apron, joining in the swelling hymn; ay, and the men,
too. And then, after the breakfast of sweet ham and venison, and hot
bread and sausage, made under Mrs. Willis, and tea and coffee and
chocolate steaming in the silver, and ale for the gentlemen if they
preferred, came the prayers and more carols in the big drawing-room.
And then music in the big house, or perhaps a ride afield to greet the
neighbours, and fiddling and dancing in the two big quarters, Hank's and
Johnson's, when the tables were cleared after the bountiful feast Mr.
Carvel was wont to give them. There was no stint, my dears,--naught but
good cheer and praising God in sheer happiness at Carvel Hall.

At night there was always a ball, sometimes at Wilmot House, sometimes at
Colonel Lloyd's or Mr. Bordley's, and sometimes at Carvel Hall, for my
grandfather dearly loved the company of the young. He himself would lead
off the minuet,--save when once or twice his Excellency Governor Sharpe
chanced to be present,--and would draw his sword with the young gallants
that the ladies might pass under. And I have seen him join merrily in
the country dances too, to the clapping of hands of the company. That
was before Dolly and I were let upon the floor. We sat with the other
children, our mammies at our sides, in the narrow gallery with the tiny
rail that ran around the ball-room, where the sweet odour of the green
myrtleberry candles mixed with that of the powder and perfume of the
dancers. And when the beauty of the evening was led out, Dolly would
lean over the rail, and pout and smile by turns. The mischievous little
baggage could hardly wait for the conquering years to come.

They came soon enough, alack! The season Dorothy was fourteen, we had a
ball at the Hall the last day of the year. When she was that age she had
near arrived at her growth, and was full as tall as many young ladies of
twenty. I had cantered with her that morning from Wilmot House to Mr.
Lloyd's, and thence to Carvel Hall, where she was to stay to dinner. The
sun was shining warmly, and after young Harvey had taken our horses we
strayed through the house, where the servants were busy decorating, and
out into my grandfather's old English flower garden, and took the seat
by the sundial. I remember that it gave no shadow. We sat silent for
a while, Dorothy toying with old Knipe, lying at our feet, and humming
gayly the burden of a minuet. She had been flighty on the ride, with
scarce a word to say to me, for the prospect of the dance had gone to her
head.

"Have you a new suit to wear to-night, to see the New Year in, Master
Sober?" she asked presently, looking up. "I am to wear a brocade that
came out this autumn from London, and papa says I look like a duchess
when I have my grandmother's pearls."

"Always the ball!" cried I, slapping my boots in a temper. "Is it,
then, such a matter of importance? I am sure you have danced before--at
my birthdays in Marlboro' Street and at your own, and Will Fotheringay's,
and I know not how many others."

"Of course," replies Dolly, sweetly; "but never with a real man. Boys
like you and Will and the Lloyds do not count. Dr. Courtenay is at
Wilmot House, and is coming to-night; and he has asked me out. Think
of it, Richard! Dr. Courtenay!"

"A plague upon him! He is a fop!"

"A fop!" exclaimed Dolly, her humour bettering as mine went down. "Oh,
no; you are jealous. He is more sought after than any gentleman at the
assemblies, and Miss Dulany vows his steps are ravishing. There's for
you, my lad! He may not be able to keep pace with you in the chase, but
he has writ the most delicate verses ever printed in Maryland, and no
other man in the colony can turn a compliment with his grace. Shall I
tell you more? He sat with me for over an hour last night, until mamma
sent me off to bed, and was very angry at you because I had engaged to
ride with you to-day."

"And I suppose you wish you had stayed with him," I flung back, hotly.
"He had spun you a score of fine speeches and a hundred empty compliments
by now."

"He had been better company than you, sir," she laughed provokingly.
"I never heard you turn a compliment in your life, and you are now
seventeen. What headway do you expect to make at the assemblies?"

"None," I answered, rather sadly than otherwise. For she had touched
me upon a sore spot. "But if I cannot win a woman save by compliments,"
I added, flaring up, "then may I pay a bachelor's tax!"

My lady drew her whip across my knee.

"You must tell us we are beautiful, Richard," said she, in another tone.

"You have but to look in a pier-glass," I retorted. "And, besides, that
is not sufficient. You will want some rhyming couplet out of a mythology
before you are content."

She laughed again.

"Sir," answered she, "but you have wit, if you can but be got angry."

She leaned over the dial's face, and began to draw the Latin numerals
with her finger. So arch, withal, that I forgot my ill-humour.

"If you would but agree to stay angry for a day," she went on, in a low
tone, "perhaps--"

"Perhaps?"

"Perhaps you would be better company," said Dorothy. "You would surely
be more entertaining."

"Dorothy, I love you," I said.

"To be sure. I know that," she replied. "I think you have said that
before."

I admitted it sadly. "But I should be a better husband than Dr.
Courtenay."

"La!" cried she; "I am not thinking of husbands. I shall have a good
time, sir, I promise you, before I marry. And then I should never marry
you. You are much too rough, and too masterful. And you would require
obedience. I shall never obey any man. You would be too strict a
master, sir. I can see it with your dogs and your servants. And your
friends, too. For you thrash any boy who does not agree with you. I
want no rough squire for a husband. And then, you are a Whig. I could
never marry a Whig. You behaved disgracefully at King William's School
last year. Don't deny it!"

"Deny it!" I cried warmly; "I would as soon deny that you are an arrant
flirt, Dorothy Manners, and will be a worse one."

"Yes, I shall have my fling," said the minx. "I shall begin to-night,
with you for an audience. I shall make the doctor look to himself. But
there is the dressing-bell." And as we went into the house, "I believe
my mother is a Whig, Richard. All the Brices are."

"And yet you are a Tory?"

"I am a loyalist," says my lady, tossing her head proudly; "and we are
one day to kiss her Majesty's hand, and tell her so. And if I were the
Queen," she finished in a flash, "I would teach you surly gentlemen not
to meddle."

And she swept up the stairs so stately, that Scipio was moved to say
slyly: "Dem's de kind of ladies, Marse Richard, I jes dotes t' wait on!"

Of the affair at King William's School I shall tell later.

We had some dozen guests staying at the Hall for the ball. At dinner my
grandfather and the gentlemen twitted her, and laughed heartily at her
apt retorts, and even toasted her when she was gone. The ladies shook
their heads and nudged one another, and no doubt each of the mothers had
her notion of what she would do in Mrs. Manners's place. But when my
lady came down dressed for the ball in her pink brocade with the pearls
around her neck, fresh from the hands of Nester and those of her own
tremulous mammy, Mr. Carvel must needs go up to her and hold her at arm's
length in admiration, and then kiss her on both her cheeks. Whereat she
blushed right prettily.

"Bless me!" says he; "and can this be Richard's little playmate grown?
Upon my word, Miss Dolly, you'll be the belle of the ball. Eh, Lloyd?
Bless me, bless me, you must not mind a kiss from an old man. The young
ones may have their turn after a while." He laughed as my grandfather
only could laugh, and turned to me, who had reddened to my forehead.
"And so, Richard, she has outstripped you, fair and square. You are only
an awkward lad, and she--why, i' faith, in two years she'll be beyond my
protection. Come, Miss Dolly," says he; "I'll show you the mistletoe,
that you may beware of it."

And he led her off on his arm. "The old year and the new, gentlemen!"
he cried merrily, as he passed the door, with Dolly's mammy and Nester
simpering with pride on the landing.

The company arrived in coach and saddle, many having come so far that
they were to stay the night. Young Mr. Beall carried his bride on a
pillion behind him, her red riding-cloak flung over her ball dress. Mr.
Bordley and family came in his barge, Mr. Marmaduke and his wife in coach
and four. With them was Dr. Courtenay, arrayed in peach-coloured coat
and waistcoat, with black satin breeches and white silk stockings, and
pinchbeck buckles a-sparkle on his shoes. How I envied him as he
descended the stairs, stroking his ruffles and greeting the company with
the indifferent ease that was then the fashion. I fancied I saw his eyes
wander among the ladies, and not marking her he crossed over to where I
stood disconsolate before the fireplace.

"Why, Richard, my lad," says he, "you are quite grown since I saw you.
And the little girl that was your playmate,--Miss Dolly, I mean,--has
outstripped me, egad. She has become suddenly une belle demoiselle, like
a rose that blooms in a night."

I answered nothing at all. But I had given much to know whether my
stolid manner disconcerted him. Unconsciously I sought the bluff face
above the chimney, depicted in all its ruggedness by the painter of King
Charles's day, and contrasted with the bundle of finery at my side.
Dr. Courtenay certainly caught the look. He opened his snuff-box,
took a pinch, turned on his heel, and sauntered off.

"What did you say, Richard?" asked Mr. Lloyd, coming up to me, laughing,
for he had seen the incident.

"I looked merely at the man of Marston Moor, sir, and said nothing."

"Faith, 'twas a better answer than if you had used your tongue, I think,"
answered my friend. But he teased me a deal that night when Dolly danced
with the doctor, and my grandfather bade me look to my honours. My young
lady flung her head higher than ever, and made a minuet as well as any
dame upon the floor, while I stood very glum at the thought of the prize
slipping from my grasp. Now and then, in the midst of a figure, she
would shoot me an arch glance, as much as to say that her pinions were
strong now. But when it came to the country dances my lady comes up to
me ever so prettily and asks the favour.

"Tis a monstrous state, indeed, when I have to beg you for a reel!" says
she.

And so was I made happy.




CHAPTER VI

I FIRST SUFFER FOR THE CAUSE

In the eighteenth century the march of public events was much more
eagerly followed than now by men and women of all stations, and even
children. Each citizen was ready, nay, forward, in taking an active part
in all political movements, and the children mimicked their elders. Old
William Farris read his news of a morning before he began the mending of
his watches, and by evening had so well digested them that he was primed
for discussion with Pryse, of the opposite persuasion, at the Rose and
Crown. Sol Mogg, the sexton of St. Anne's, had his beloved Gazette in
his pocket as he tolled the church bell of a Thursday, and would hold
forth on the rights and liberties of man with the carpenter who mended
the steeple. Mrs. Willard could talk of Grenville and Townshend as
knowingly as her husband, the rich factor, and Francie Willard made many
a speech to us younger Sons of Liberty on the steps of King William's
School. We younger sons, indeed, declared bitter war against the
mother-country long before our conservative old province ever dreamed of
secession. For Maryland was well pleased with his Lordship's government.

I fear that I got at King William's School learning of a far different
sort than pleased my grandfather. In those days the school stood upon
the Stadt House hill near School Street, not having moved to its present
larger quarters. Mr. Isaac Daaken was then Master, and had under him
some eighty scholars. After all these years, Mr. Daaken stands before me
a prominent figure of the past in an ill-fitting suit of snuff colour.
How well I recall that schoolroom of a bright morning, the sun's rays
shot hither and thither, and split violet, green, and red by the bulging
glass panes of the windows. And by a strange irony it so chanced that
where the dominie sat--and he moved not the whole morning long save to
reach for his birches--the crimson ray would often rest on the end of his
long nose, and the word "rum" be passed tittering along the benches. For
some men are born to the mill, and others to the mitre, and still others
to the sceptre; but Mr. Daaken was born to the birch. His long, lanky
legs were made for striding after culprits, and his arms for caning them.
He taught, among other things, the classics, of course, the English
language grammatically, arithmetic in all its branches, book-keeping
in the Italian manner, and the elements of algebra, geometry, and
trigonometry with their applications to surveying and navigation.
He also wrote various sorts of hands, fearful and marvellous to the
uninitiated, with which he was wont to decorate my monthly reports to my
grandfather. I can shut my eyes and see now that wonderful hyperbola in
the C in Carvel, which, after travelling around the paper, ended in
intricate curves and a flourish which surely must have broken the quill.

The last day of every month would I fetch that scrolled note to Mr.
Carvel, and he laid it beside his plate until dinner was over. And then,
as sure as the sun rose that morning, my flogging would come before it
set. This done with, and another promised next month provided Mr. Daaken
wrote no better of me, my grandfather and I renewed our customary footing
of love and companionship.

But Mr. Daaken, unwittingly or designedly, taught other things than those
I have mentioned above. And though I never once heard a word of politics
fall from his lips, his school shortly became known to all good Tories as
a nursery of conspiracy and sedition. There are other ways of teaching
besides preaching, and of that which the dominie taught best he spoke not
a word. He was credited, you may well believe, with calumnies against
King George, and once my Uncle Grafton and Mr. Dulany were for clapping
him in jail, avowing that he taught treason to the young. I can account
for the tone of King William's School in no other way than to say that
patriotism was in the very atmosphere, and seemed to exude in some
mysterious way from Mr. Daaken's person. And most of us became
infected with it.

The dominie lived outside the town, in a lonely little hamlet on the
borders of the Spa. At two of the clock every afternoon he would dive
through School Street to the Coffee House, where the hostler would have
his bony mare saddled and waiting. Mr. Daaken by no chance ever entered
the tavern. I recall one bright day in April when I played truant and
had the temerity to go afishing on Spa Creek with Will Fotheringay, the
bass being plentiful there. We had royal sport of it that morning, and
two o'clock came and went with never a thought, you may be sure. And
presently I get a pull which bends my English rod near to double, and
in my excitement plunge waist deep into the water, Will crying out
directions from the shore, when suddenly the head of Mr. Daaken's mare
is thrust through the bushes, followed by Mr. Daaken himself. Will stood
stock still from fright, and I was for dropping my rod and cutting, when
I was arrested by the dominie calling out:

"Have a care, Master Carvel; have a care, sir. You will lose him. Play
him, sir; let him run a bit."

And down he leaps from his horse and into the water after me, and
together we landed a three-pound bass, thereby drenching his
snuff-coloured suit. When the big fish lay shining in the basket, the
dominie smiled grimly at William and me as we stood sheepishly by, and
without a word he drew his clasp knife and cut a stout switch from the
willow near, and then and there he gave us such a thrashing as we
remembered for many a day after. And we both had another when we reached
home.

"Mr. Carvel," said Mr. Dulany to my grandfather, "I would strongly
counsel you to take Richard from that school. Pernicious doctrines, sir,
are in the air, and like diseases are early caught by the young. 'Twas
but yesterday I saw Richard at the head of a rabble of the sons of
riff-raff, in Green Street, and their treatment of Mr. Fairbrother hath
set the whole town by the ears."

What Mr. Dulany had said was true. The lads of Mr. Fairbrother's school
being mostly of the unpopular party, we of King William's had organized
our cohorts and led them on to a signal victory. We fell upon the enemy
even as they were emerging from their stronghold, the schoolhouse, and
smote them hip and thigh, with the sheriff of Anne Arundel County a
laughing spectator. Some of the Tories (for such we were pleased to call
them) took refuge behind Mr. Fairbrother's skirts, who shook his cane
angrily enough, but without avail. Others of the Tory brood fought
stoutly, calling out: "God save the King!" and "Down with the traitors!"
On our side Francie Willard fell, and Archie Dennison raised a lump on my
head the size of a goose egg. But we fairly beat them, and afterwards
must needs attack the Tory dominie himself. He cried out lustily to the
sheriff and spectators, of whom there were many by this time, for help,
but got little but laughter for his effort. Young Lloyd and I, being
large lads for our age, fairly pinioned the screeching master, who cried
out that he was being murdered, and keeping his cane for a trophy, thrust
him bodily into his house of learning, turned the great key upon him, and
so left him. He made his escape by a window and sought my grandfather in
the Duke of Marlboro' Street as fast as ever his indignant legs would
carry him.

Of his interview with Mr. Carvel I know nothing save that Scipio was
requested presently to show him the door, and conclude therefrom that his
language was but ill-chosen. Scipio's patrician blood was wont to rise
in the presence of those whom he deemed outside the pale of good society,
and I fear he ushered Mr. Fairbrother to the street with little of that
superior manner he used to the first families. As for Mr. Daaken, I feel
sure he was not ill-pleased at the discomfiture of his rival, though it
cost him five of his scholars.

Our schoolboy battle, though lightly undertaken, was fraught with no
inconsiderable consequences for me. I was duly chided and soundly
whipped by my grandfather for the part I had played; but he was inclined
to pass the matter after that, and set it down to the desire for fighting
common to most boyish natures. And he would have gone no farther than
this had it not been that Mr. Green, of the Maryland Gazette, could not
refrain from printing the story in his paper. That gentleman, being a
stout Whig, took great delight in pointing out that a grandson of Mr.
Carvel was a ringleader in the affair. The story was indeed laughable
enough, and many a barrister's wig nodded over it at the Coffee House
that day. When I came home from school I found Scipio beside my
grandfather's empty seat in the dining-room, and I learned that Mr.
Carvel was in the garden with my Uncle Grafton and the Reverend Bennett
Allen, rector of St. Anne's. I well knew that something out of the
common was in the wind to disturb my grandfather's dinner. Into the
garden I went, and under the black walnut tree I beheld Mr. Carvel pacing
up and down in great unrest, his Gazette in his hand, while on the bench
sat my uncle and the rector of St. Anne's. So occupied was each in his
own thought that my coming was unperceived; and I paused in my steps,
seized suddenly by an instinctive dread, I know not of what. The fear of
Mr. Carvel's displeasure passed from my mind so that I cared not how
soundly he thrashed me, and my heart filled with a yearning, born of the
instant, for that simple and brave old gentleman. For the lad is nearer
to nature than the man, and the animal oft scents a danger the master
cannot see. I read plainly in Mr. Allen's handsome face, flushed red
with wine as it ever was, and in my Uncle Grafton's looks a snare to
which I knew my grandfather was blind. I never rightly understood how
it was that Mr. Carvel was deceived in Mr. Allen; perchance the secret
lay in his bold manner and in the appearance of dignity and piety he wore
as a cloak when on his guard. I caught my breath sharply and took my way
toward them, resolved to make as brave a front as I might. It was my
uncle, whose ear was ever open, that first heard my footstep and turned
upon me.

"Here is Richard, now, father," he said.

I gave him so square a look that he bent his head to the ground. My
grandfather stopped in his pacing and his eye rested upon me, in sorrow
rather than in anger, I thought.

"Richard," he began, and paused. For the first time in my life I saw him
irresolute. He looked appealingly at the rector, who rose. Mr. Allen
was a man of good height and broad shoulders, with piercing black eyes,
reminding one more of the smallsword than aught else I can think of. And
he spoke solemnly, in a deep voice, as though from the pulpit.

"I fear it is my duty, Richard, to say what Mr. Carvel cannot. It
grieves me to tell you, sir, that young as you are you have been guilty
of treason against the King, and of grave offence against his Lordship's
government. I cannot mitigate my words, sir. By your rashness, Richard,
and I pray it is such, you have brought grief to your grandfather in his
age, and ridicule and reproach upon a family whose loyalty has hitherto
been unstained."

I scarce waited for him to finish. His pompous words stung me like the
lash of a whip, and I gave no heed to his cloth as I answered:

"If I have grieved my grandfather, sir, I am heartily sorry, and will
answer to him for what I have done. And I would have you know, Mr.
Allen, that I am as able as any to care for the Carvel honour."

I spoke with a vehemence, for the thought carried me beyond myself,
that this upstart parson his Lordship had but a year since sent among
us should question our family reputation.

"Remember that Mr. Allen is of the Church, Richard," said my grandfather,
severely.

"I fear he has little respect for Church or State, sir," Grafton put in.
"You are now reaping the fruits of your indulgence."

I turned to my grandfather.

"You are my protector, sir," I cried. "And if it please you to tell me
what I now stand accused of, I submit most dutifully to your
chastisement."

"Very fair words, indeed, nephew Richard," said my uncle, "and I
draw from them that you have yet to hear of your beating an honest
schoolmaster without other provocation than that he was a loyal servant
to the King, and wantonly injuring the children of his school." He drew
from his pocket a copy of that Gazette Mr. Carvel held in his hand, and
added ironically: "Here, then, are news which will doubtless surprise
you, sir. And knowing you for a peaceful lad, never having entertained
such heresies as those with which it pleases Mr. Green to credit you,
I dare swear he has drawn on his imagination."

I took the paper in amaze, not knowing why my grandfather, who had ever
been so jealous of others taking me to task, should permit the rector and
my uncle to chide me in his presence. The account was in the main true
enough, and made sad sport of Mr. Fairbrother.

"Have I not been caned for this, sir?" said I to my grandfather.

These words seemed to touch Mr. Carvel, and I saw a tear glisten in his
eye as he answered:

"You have, Richard, and stoutly. But your uncle and Mr. Allen seem to
think that your offence warrants more than a caning, and to deem that you
have been actuated by bad principles rather than by boyish spirits." He
paused to steady his voice, and I realized then for the first time how
sacred he held allegiance to the King. "Tell me, my lad," said he, "tell
me, as you love God and the truth, whether they are right."

For the moment I shrank from speaking, perceiving what a sad blow to
Mr. Carvel my words must be. And then I spoke up boldly, catching the
exulting sneer on my Uncle Grafton's face and the note of triumph
reflected in Mr. Allen's.

"I have never deceived you, sir," I said, "and will not now hide from you
that I believe the colonies to have a just cause against his Majesty and
Parliament." The words came ready to my lips: "We are none the less
Englishmen because we claim the rights of Englishmen, and, saving your
presence, sir, are as loyal as those who do not. And if these principles
be bad," I added to my uncle, "then should we think with shame upon the
Magna Charta."

My grandfather stood astonished at such a speech from me, whom he had
thought a lad yet without a formed knowledge of public affairs. But I
was, in fact, supersaturated with that of which I spoke, and could have
given my hearers many able Whig arguments to surprise them had the season
befitted. There was silence for a space after I had finished, and then
Mr. Carvel sank right heavily upon the bench.

"A Carvel against the King!" was all he said.

Had I been alone with him I should have cast myself at his feet, for it
hurt me sorely to see him so. As it was, I held my head high.

"The Carvels ever did what they believed right, sir," I answered. "You
would not have me to go against my conscience?"

To this he replied nothing.

"The evil has been done, as I feared, father," said Grafton, presently;
"we must now seek for the remedy."

"Let me question the lad," Mr. Allen softly interposed. "Tell me,
Richard, who has influenced you to this way of thinking?"

I saw his ruse, and was not to be duped by it.

"Men who have not feared to act bravely against oppression, sir," I said.

"Thank God," exclaimed my uncle, with fervour, "that I have been more
careful of Philip's associations, and that he has not caught in the
streets and taverns this noxious creed!"

"There is no danger from Philip; he remembers his family name," said the
rector.

"No," quoth Mr. Carvel, bitterly, "there is no danger from Philip. Like
his father, he will ever believe that which best serves him."

Grafton, needless to say, did not pursue such an argument, but rising,
remarked that this deplorable affair had kept him long past his dinner
hour, and that his services were as ever at his father's disposal. He
refused to stay, though my grandfather pressed him of course, and with a
low bow of filial respect and duty and a single glance at the rector, my
uncle was gone. And then we walked slowly to the house and into the
dining room, Mr. Carvel leading the procession, and I an unwilling rear,
knowing that my fate would be decided between them. I thought Mr.
Allen's grace would never end, and the meal likewise; I ate but little,
while the two gentlemen discussed parish matters. And when at last
Scipio had retired, and the rector of St. Anne's sat sipping the old
Madeira, his countenance all gravity, but with a relish he could not
hide, my grandfather spoke up. And though he addressed himself to the
guest, I knew full well what he said was meant for me.

"As you see, sir," said he, "I am sore perplexed and troubled. We
Carvels, Mr. Allen, have ever been stanch to Church and King. My
great-grandsire fought at Naseby and Marston Moor for Charles, and
suffered exile in his name. 'Twas love for King James that sent my
father hither, though he swore allegiance to Anne and the First George.
I can say with pride that he was no indifferent servant to either,
refusing honours from the Pretender in '15, when he chanced to be at
home. An oath is an oath, sir, and we have yet to be false to ours. And
the King, say I, should, next to God, be loved and loyally served by his
subjects. And so I have served this George, and his grandfather before
him, according to the talents which were given me."

"And ably, sir, permit me to say," echoed the rector, heartily. Too
heartily, methought. And he carefully filled his pipe with choice leaf
out of Mr. Carvel's inlaid box.

"Be that as it may, I have done my best, as we must all do. Pardon me,
sir, for speaking of myself. But I have brought up this lad from a
child, Mr. Allen," said Mr. Carvel, his words coming slowly, as if each
gave him pain, "and have striven to be an example to him in all things.
He has few of those faults which I most fear; God be thanked that he
loves the truth, for there is yet a chance of his correction. A chance,
said I?" he cried, his speech coming more rapid, "nay, he shall be
cured! I little thought, fool that I was, that he would get this pox.
His father fought and died for the King; and should trouble come, which
God forbid, to know that Richard stood against his Majesty would kill
me."

"And well it might, Mr. Carvel," said the divine. He was for the
moment sobered, as weak men must be in the presence of those of strong
convictions. My grandfather had half risen in his chair, and the lines
of his smooth-shaven face deepened visibly with the pain of the feelings
to which he gave utterance. As for me, I was well-nigh swept away by a
bigness within me, and torn between love and duty, between pity and the
reason left me, and sadly tried to know whether my dear parent's life and
happiness should be weighed against what I felt to be right. I strove to
speak, but could say nothing.

"He must be removed from the influences," the rector ventured, after a
halt.

"That he must indeed," said my grandfather. "Why did I not send him to
Eton last fall? But it is hard, Mr. Allen, to part with the child of our
old age. I would take passage and go myself with him to-morrow were it
not for my duties in the Council."

"Eton! I would have sooner, I believe, wrought by the side of any
rascally redemptioner in the iron mines of the Patapsco than have gone to
Eton.

"But for the present, sir, I would counsel you to put the lad's studies
in the charge of some able and learned man, that his mind may be turned
from the disease which has fed upon it. Some one whose loyalty is beyond
question."

"And who so fit as yourself, Mr. Allen?" returned my grandfather, relief
plain in his voice. "You have his Lordship's friendship and confidence,
and never has rector of St. Anne's or of any other parish brought letters
to his Excellency to compare with yours. And so I crave your help in
this time of need."

Mr. Allen showed becoming hesitation.

"I fear you do me greater honour than I deserve, Mr. Carvel," he
answered, a strain of the pomp coming back, "though my gracious patron
is disposed to think well of me, and I shall strive to hold his good
opinion. But I have duties of parish and glebe to attend, and Master
Philip Carvel likewise in my charge."

I held my breath for my grandfather's reply. The rector, however, had
read him, and well knew that a show of reluctance would but inflame him
the more.

"How now, sir?" he exclaimed. "Surely, as you love the King, you will
not refuse me in this strait."

Mr. Allen rose and grasped him by the hand.

"Nay, sir," said he, "and you put it thus, I cannot refuse you."

The thought of it was too much. I ran to my grandfather crying: "Not Mr.
Allen, sir, not Mr. Allen. Any one else you please,--Mr. Fairbrother
even."

The rector drew back haughtily. "It is clear, Mr. Carvel," he said,
"that Richard has other preferences."

"And be damned to them!" shouted my grandfather. "Am I to be ruled by
this headstrong boy? He has beat Mr. Fairbrother, and shall have no
skimmed-milk supervision if I can help it."

And so it was settled that I should be tutored by the rector of St.
Anne's, and I took my seat beside my cousin Philip in his study the very
next day.




CHAPTER VII

GRAFTON HAS HIS CHANCE

To add to my troubles my grandfather was shortly taken very ill with the
first severe sickness he had ever in his life endured. Dr. Leiden came
and went sometimes thrice daily, and for a week he bore a look so grave
as to frighten me. Dr. Evarts arrived by horse from Philadelphia, and
the two physicians held long conversations in the morning room, while I
listened at the door and comprehended not a word of their talk save when
they spoke of bleeding. And after a very few consultations, as is often
the way in their profession, they disagreed and quarrelled, and Dr.
Evarts packed himself back to Philadelphia in high dudgeon. Then Mr.
Carvel began to mend.

There were many who came regularly to inquire of him, and each afternoon
I would see the broad shoulders and genial face of Governor Sharpe in the
gateway, completing his walk by way of Marlboro' Street. I loved and
admired him, for he had been a soldier himself before he came out to us,
and had known and esteemed my father. His Excellency should surely have
been knighted for his services in the French war. Once he spied me at
the window and shook his cane pleasantly, and in he walks to the room
where I sat reading of the victories of Blenheim and Malplaquet, for
chronicles of this sort I delighted in.

"Aha, Richard," says he, taking up the book, "'tis plain whither your
tastes lead you. Marlboro was a great general, and as sorry a scoundrel
as ever led troops to battle. Truly," says he, musing, "the Lord often
makes queer choice in his instruments for good." And he lowered himself
into the easy chair and crossed his legs, regarding me very comically.
"What's this I hear of your joining the burghers and barristers, and
trouncing poor Mr. Fairbrother and his flock, and crying 'Liberty
forever!' in the very ears of the law?" he asks. "His Majesty will have
need of such lads as you, I make no doubt, and should such proceedings
come to his ears I would not give a pipe for your chances."

I could not but laugh, confused as I was, at his Excellency's rally.
And this I may say, that had it pleased Providence to give me dealing
with such men of the King's side as he, perchance my fortunes had been
altered.

"And in any good cause, sir," I replied, "I would willingly give my life
to his Majesty."

"So," said his Excellency, raising his eyebrows, "I see clearly you are
of the rascals. But a lad must have his fancies, and when your age I was
hot for the exiled Prince. I acquired more sense as I grew older. And
better an active mind, say I, than a sluggard partisan."

At this stage of our talk came in my Uncle Grafton, and bowing low to the
Governor made apology that some of the elders of the family had not been
there to entertain him. He told his Excellency that he had never left
the house save for necessary business, which was true for once, my uncle
having taken up his abode with us during that week. But now, thanking
Heaven and Dr. Leiden and his own poor effort, he could report his dear
father to be out of danger.

Governor Sharpe answered shortly that he had been happy to hear the good
news from Scipio. "Faith," says he, "I was well enough entertained, for
I have a liking for this lad, and to speak truth I saw him here as I came
up the walk."

My uncle smiled deprecatingly, and hid any vexation he might have had
from this remark.

"I fear that Richard lacks wisdom as yet, your Excellency," said he, "and
has many of his father's headstrong qualities."

"Which you most providentially escaped," his Excellency put in.

Grafton bit his lip. "Necessity makes us all careful, sir," said he.

"Necessity does more than that, Mr. Carvel," returned the Governor, who
was something of a wit; "necessity often makes us fools, if we be not
careful. But give me ever a wanton fool rather than him of necessity's
handiwork. And as for the lad," says he, "let him not trouble you. Such
as he, if twisted a little in the growth, come out straight enough in the
end."

I think the Governor little knew what wormwood was this to my uncle.

"'Tis heartily to be hoped, sir," he said, "for his folly has brought
trouble enough behind it to those who have his education and his welfare
in hand, and I make no doubt is at the bottom of my father's illness."

At this injustice I could not but cry out, for all the town knew, and
my grandfather himself best of all, that the trouble from which he now
suffered sprang from his gout. And yet my heart was smitten at the
thought that I might have hastened or aggravated the attack. The
Governor rose. He seized his stick aggressively and looked sharply at
Grafton.

"Nonsense," he exclaimed; "my friend Mr. Carvel is far too wise to be
upset by a boyish prank which deserves no notice save a caning. And
that, my lad," he added lightly, "I dare swear you got with interest."
And he called for a glass of the old Madeira when Scipio came with the
tray, and departed with a polite inquiry after my Aunt Caroline's health,
and a prophecy that Mr. Carvel would soon be taking the air again.

There had been high doings indeed in Marlboro' Street that miserable
week. My grandfather took to his bed of a Saturday afternoon, and bade
me go down to Mr. Aikman's, the bookseller, and fetch him the latest
books and plays. That night I became so alarmed that I sent Diomedes for
Dr. Leiden, who remained the night through. Sunday was well gone before
the news reached York Street, when my Aunt Caroline came hurrying over in
her chair, and my uncle on foot. They brushed past Scipio at the door,
and were pushing up the long flight when they were stopped on the landing
by Dr. Leiden.

"How is my father, sir?" Grafton cried, "and why was I not informed at
once of his illness? I must see him."

"Your vater can see no one, Mr. Carvel," said the doctor, quietly.

"What," says my uncle, "you dare to refuse me?"

"Not so lout, I bray you," says the doctor; "I tare any ting vere life is
concerned."

"But I will see him," says Grafton, in a sort of helpless rage, for the
doctor's manner baffled him. "I will see him before he dies, and no man
alive shall say me nay."

Then my Aunt Caroline gathered up her skirt, and made shift to pass the
doctor.

"I have come to nurse him," said she, imperiously, and, turning to where
I stood near, she added: "Bid a servant fetch from York Street what I
shall have need of."

The doctor smiled, but stood firm. He cared little for aught in heaven
or earth, did Dr. Leiden, and nothing whatever for Mr. and Mrs. Grafton
Carvel.

"I peg you, matam, do not disturp yourself," said he. "Mr. Carvel is
aply attended by an excellent voman, Mrs. Villis, and he has no neet of
you."

"What," cried my aunt; "this is too much, sir, that I am thrust out of my
father-in-law's house, and my place taken by a menial. That woman able!"
she fumed, dropping suddenly her cloak of dignity; "Mr. Carvel's charity
is all that keeps her here."

Then my uncle drew himself up. "Dr. Leiden," says he, "kindly oblige me
by leaving my father's house, and consider your services here at an end.
And Richard," he goes on to me, "send my compliments to Dr. Drake, and
request him to come at once."

I was stepping forward to say that I would do nothing of the kind, when
the doctor stopped me by a signal, as much as to say that the quarrel was
wide enough without me. He stood with his back against the great arched
window flooded with the yellow light of the setting sun, a little black
figure in high relief, with a face of parchment. And he took a pinch of
snuff before he spoke.

"I am here py Mr. Carvel's orters, sir," said he, "and py tose alone vill
I leaf."

And this is how the Chippendale piece was broke, which you, my children,
and especially Bess, admire so extravagantly. It stood that day behind
the doctor, and my uncle, making a violent move to get by, struck it, and
so it fell with a great crash lengthwise on the landing; and the
wonderful vases Mr. Carroll had given my grandfather rolled down the
stairs and lay crushed at the bottom. Withal he had spoken so quietly,
Dr. Leiden possessed a temper drawn from his Teutonic ancestors. With
his little face all puckered, he swore so roundly at my uncle in some
lingo he had got from his father,--High German or Low German,--I know not
what, that Grafton and his wife were glad enough to pick their way
amongst the broken bits of glass and china, to the hall again. Dr.
Leiden shook his fist at their retreating persons, saying that the
Sabbath was no day to do murder.

I followed them with the pretence of picking up what was left of the
ornaments. What between anger against the doctor and Mrs. Willis, and
fright and chagrin at the fall of the Chippendale piece, my aunt was in
such a state of nervous flurry that she bade the ashy Scipio call her
chairmen, and vowed, in a trembling voice, she would never again enter a
house where that low-bred German was to be found. But my Uncle Grafton
was of a different nature. He deemed defeat but a postponement of the
object he wished to gain, and settled himself in the library with a copy
of "Miller on the Distinction of Ranks in Society." He appeared at
supper suave as ever, gravely concerned as to his father's health, which
formed the chief topic between us. He gave me to understand that he
would take the green room until the old gentleman was past danger. Not a
word, mind you, of Dr. Leiden, nor did my uncle express a wish to go into
the sick-room, from which even I was forbid. Nay, the next morning he
met the doctor in the hall and conversed with him at some length over the
case as though nothing had occurred between them.

While my Uncle Grafton was in the house I had opportunity of marking the
intimacy which existed between him and the rector of St. Anne's. The
latter swung each evening the muffled knocker, and was ushered on tiptoe
across the polished floor to the library where my uncle sat in state. It
was often after supper before the rector left, and coming in upon them
once I found wine between them and empty decanters on the board, and they
fell silent as I passed the doorway.

Our dear friend Captain Clapsaddle was away when my grandfather fell
sick, having been North for three months or more on some business known
to few. 'Twas generally supposed he went to Massachusetts to confer with
the patriots of that colony. Hearing the news as he rode into town, he
came booted and spurred to Marlboro' Street before going to his lodgings.
I ran out to meet him, and he threw his arms about me on the street so
that those who were passing smiled, for all knew the captain. And
Harvey, who always came to take the captain's horse, swore that he was
glad to see a friend of the family once again. I told the captain very
freely of my doings, and showed him the clipping from the Gazette, which
made him laugh heartily. But a shade came upon his face when I rehearsed
the scene we had with my uncle and Mr. Allen in the garden.

"What," says he, "Mr. Carvel hath sent you to Mr. Allen on your uncle's
advice?"

"No," I answered, "to do my uncle justice, he said not a word to Mr.
Carvel about it."

The captain turned the subject. He asked me much concerning the rector
and what he taught me, and appeared but ill-pleased at that I had to tell
him. But he left me without so much as a word of comment or counsel.
For it was a principle with Captain Clapsaddle not to influence in any
way the minds of the young, and he would have deemed it unfair to Mr.
Carvel had he attempted to win my sympathies to his. Captain Daniel was
the first the old gentleman asked to see when visitors were permitted
him, and you may be sure the faithful soldier was below stairs waiting
for the summons.

I was some three weeks with my new tutor, the rector, before my
grandfather's illness, and went back again as soon as he began to mend.
I was not altogether unhappy, owing to a certain grim pleasure I had in
debating with him, which I shall presently relate. There was much to
annoy and anger me, too. My cousin Philip was forever carping and
criticising my Greek and Latin, and it was impossible not to feel his
sneer at my back when I construed. He had pat replies ready to correct
me when called upon, and 'twas only out of consideration for Mr. Carvel
that I kept my hands from him when we were dismissed.

I think the rector disliked Philip in his way as much as did I in mine.
The Reverend Bennett Allen, indeed, might have been a very good fellow
had Providence placed him in a different setting; he was one of those
whom his Excellency dubbed "fools from necessity." He should have been
born with a fortune, though I can think of none he would not have run
through in a year or so. But nature had given him aristocratic tastes,
with no other means toward their gratification than good looks,
convincing ways, and a certain bold, half-defiant manner, which went far
with his Lordship and those like him, who thought Mr. Allen excellent
good company. With the rector, as with too many others, holy orders were
but a means to an end. It was a sealed story what he had been before he
came to Governor Sharpe with Baltimore's directions to give him the best
in the colony. But our rakes and wits, and even our solid men, like my
grandfather, received him with open arms. He had ever a tale on his
tongue's end tempered to the ear of his listener.

Who had most influenced my way of thinking, Mr. Allen had well demanded.
The gentleman was none other than Mr. Henry Swain, Patty's father. Of
her I shall speak later. He was a rising barrister and man of note among
our patriots, and member of the Lower House; a diffident man in public,
with dark, soulful eyes, and a wide, white brow, who had declined a
nomination to the Congress of '65. At his fireside, unknown to my
grandfather and to Mr. Allen, I had learned the true principles of
government. Before the House Mr. Swain spoke only under extraordinary
emotion, and then he gained every ear. He had been my friend since
childhood, but I never knew the meaning and the fire of oratory until
curiosity brought me to the gallery of the Assembly chamber in the Stadt
House, where the barrister was on his feet at the time. I well remember
the tingle in my chest as I looked and listened. And I went again and
again, until the House sat behind closed doors.

And so, when Mr. Allen brought forth for my benefit those arguments of
the King's party which were deemed their strength, I would confront him
with Mr. Swain's logic. He had in me a tough subject for conversion.
I was put to very small pains to rout my instructor out of all his
positions, because indolence, and lack of interest in the question, and
contempt for the Americans, had made him neglect the study of it. And
Philip, who entered at first glibly enough at the rector's side, was
soon drawn into depths far beyond him. Many a time was Mr. Allen fain
to laugh at his blunders. I doubt not my cousin had the facts straight
enough when he rose from the breakfast table at home; but by the time he
reached the rectory they were shaken up like so many parts of a puzzle in
a bag, and past all straightening.

The rector was especially bitter toward the good people of Boston Town,
whom he dubbed Puritan fanatics. To him Mr. Otis was but a meddling
fool, and Mr. Adams a traitor whose head only remained on his shoulders
by grace of the extreme clemency of his Majesty, which Mr. Allen was at
a loss to understand. When beaten in argument, he would laugh out some
sneer that would set my blood simmering. One morning he came in late for
the lesson, smelling strongly of wine, and bade us bring our books out
under the fruit trees in the garden. He threw back his gown and tilted
his cap, and lighting his pipe began to speak of that act of Townshend's,
passed but the year before, which afterwards proved the King's folly and
England's ruin.

"Principle!" exclaimed my fine clergyman at length, blowing a great whiff
among the white blossoms. "Oons! your Americans worship his Majesty
stamped upon a golden coin. And though he saved their tills from plunder
from the French, the miserly rogues are loth to pay for the service."

I rose, and taking a guinea-piece from my pocket, held it up before him.

"They care this much for gold, sir, and less for his Majesty, who cares
nothing for them," I said. And walking to the well near by, I dropped
the piece carelessly into the clear water. He was beside me before it
left my hand, and Philip also, in time to see the yellow coin edging this
way and that toward the bottom. The rector turned to me with a smile of
cynical amusement playing over his features.

"Such a spirit has brought more than one brave fellow to Tyburn, Master
Carvel," he said. And then he added reflectively, "But if there were
more like you, we might well have cause for alarm."





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill

Volume 2.


VIII.   Over the Wall
IX.    Under False Colours
X.    The Red in the Carvel Blood
XI.    A Festival and a Parting
XII.   News from a Far Country




CHAPTER VIII

OVER THE WALL

Dorothy treated me ill enough that spring. Since the minx had tasted
power at Carvel Hall, there was no accounting for her. On returning to
town Dr. Courtenay had begged her mother to allow her at the assemblies,
a request which Mrs. Manners most sensibly refused. Mr. Marmaduke had
given his consent, I believe, for he was more impatient than Dolly for
the days when she would become the toast of the province. But the doctor
contrived to see her in spite of difficulties, and Will Fotheringay was
forever at her house, and half a dozen other lads. And many gentlemen
of fashion like the doctor called ostensibly to visit Mrs. Manners, but
in reality to see Miss Dorothy. And my lady knew it. She would be
lingering in the drawing-room in her best bib and tucker, or strolling in
the garden as Dr. Courtenay passed, and I got but scant attention indeed.
I was but an awkward lad, and an old playmate, with no novelty about me.

"Why, Richard," she would say to me as I rode or walked beside her, or
sat at dinner in Prince George Street, "I know every twist and turn of
your nature. There is nothing you could do to surprise me. And so, sir,
you are very tiresome."

"You once found me useful enough to fetch and carry, and amusing when I
walked the Oriole's bowsprit," I replied ruefully.

"Why don't you make me jealous?" says she, stamping her foot. "A score
of pretty girls are languishing for a glimpse of you,--Jennie and Bess
Fotheringay, and Betty Tayloe, and Heaven knows how many others. They
are actually accusing me of keeping you trailing. 'La, girls!' said I,
'if you will but rid me of him for a day, you shall have my lasting
gratitude.'"

And she turned to the spinet and began a lively air. But the taunt
struck deeper than she had any notion of. That spring arrived out from
London on the Belle of the Wye a box of fine clothes my grandfather had
commanded for me from his own tailor; and a word from a maid of fifteen
did more to make me wear them than any amount of coaxing from Mr. Allen
and my Uncle Grafton. My uncle seemed in particular anxious that I
should make a good appearance, and reminded me that I should dress as
became the heir of the Carvel house. I took counsel with Patty Swain,
and then went to see Betty Tayloe, and the Fotheringay girls, and the
Dulany girls, near the Governor's. And (fie upon me!) I was not
ill-pleased with the brave appearance I made. I would show my mistress
how little I cared. But the worst of it was, the baggage seemed to
trouble less than I, and had the effrontery to tell me how happy she was
I had come out of my shell, and broken loose from her apron-strings.

"Indeed, they would soon begin to think I meant to marry you, Richard,"
says she at supper one Sunday before a tableful, and laughed with the
rest.

"They do not credit you with such good sense, my dear," says her mother,
smiling kindly at me.

And Dolly bit her lip, and did not join in that part of the merriment.

I fled to Patty Swain for counsel, nor was it the first time in my life
I had done so. Some good women seem to have been put into this selfish
world to comfort and advise. After Prince George Street with its gilt
and marbles and stately hedged gardens, the low-beamed, vine-covered
house in the Duke of Gloucester Street was a home and a rest. In my
eyes there was not its equal in Annapolis for beauty within and without.
Mr. Swain had bought the dwelling from an aged man with a history, dead
some nine years back. Its furniture, for the most part, was of the
Restoration, of simple and massive oak blackened by age, which I ever
fancied better than the Frenchy baubles of tables and chairs with spindle
legs, and cabinets of glass and gold lacquer which were then making their
way into the fine mansions of our town. The house was full of twists and
turns, and steps up and down, and nooks and passages and queer
hiding-places which we children knew, and in parts queer leaded windows of
bulging glass set high in the wall, and older than the reign of Hanover.
Here was the shrine of cleanliness, whose high-priestess was Patty
herself. Her floors were like satin-wood, and her brasses lights in
themselves. She had come honestly enough by her gifts, her father having
married the daughter of an able townsman of Salem, in the Massachusetts
colony, when he had gone north after his first great success in court.
Now the poor lady sat in a padded armchair from morning to night, beside
the hearth in winter, and under the trees in summer, by reason of a fall
she had had. There she knitted all the day long. Her placid face and
quiet way come before me as I write.

My friendship with Patty had begun early. One autumn day when I was a
little lad of eight or nine, my grandfather and I were driving back from
Whitehall in the big coach, when we spied a little maid of six by the
Severn's bank, with her apron full of chestnuts. She was trudging
bravely through the dead leaves toward the town. Mr. Carvel pulled the
cord to stop, and asked her name. "Patty Swain, and it please your
honour," the child answered, without fear. "So you are the young
barrister's daughter?" says he, smiling at something I did not
understand. She nodded. "And how is it you are so far from home, and
alone, my little one?" asked Mr. Carvel again. For some time he could
get nothing out of her; but at length she explained, with much coaxing,
that her big brother Tom had deserted her. My grandfather wished that
Tom were his brother, that he might be punished as he deserved. He
commanded young Harvey to lift the child into the coach, chestnuts and
all, and there she sat primly between us. She was not as pretty as
Dorothy, so I thought, but her clear gray eyes and simple ways impressed
me by their very honesty, as they did Mr. Carvel. What must he do but
drive her home to Green Street, where Mr. Swain then lived in a little
cottage. Mr. Carvel himself lifted her out and kissed her, and
handed her to her mother at the gate, who was vastly overcome by the
circumstance. The good lady had not then received that fall which made
her a cripple for life. "And will you not have my chestnuts, sir, for
your kindness?" says little Patty. Whereat my grandfather laughed and
kissed her again, for he loved children, and wished to know if she would
not be his daughter, and come to live in Marlboro' Street; and told the
story of Tom, for fear she would not. He was silent as we drove away,
and I knew he was thinking of my own mother at that age.

Not long after this Mr. Swain bought the house in the Duke of Gloucester
Street. This, as you know, is back to back with Marlboro. To reach
Patty's garden I had but to climb the brick wall at the rear of our
grounds, and to make my way along the narrow green lane left there for
perhaps a hundred paces of a lad, to come to the gate in the wooden
paling. In return I used to hoist Patty over the wall, and we would play
at children's games under the fruit trees that skirted it. Some instinct
kept her away from the house. I often caught her gazing wistfully at its
wings and gables. She was not born to a mansion, so she said.

"But your father is now rich," I objected. I had heard Captain Daniel
say so. "He may have a mansion of his own and he chooses. He can better
afford it than many who are in debt for the fine show they make." I was
but repeating gossip.

"I should like to see the grand company come in, when your grandfather
has them to dine," said the girl. "Sometimes we have grand gentlemen
come to see father in their coaches, but they talk of nothing but
politics. We never have any fine ladies like--like your Aunt Caroline."

I startled her by laughing derisively.

"And I pray you never may, Patty," was all I said.

I never told Dolly of my intimacy with the barrister's little girl over
the wall. This was not because I was ashamed of the friendship, but
arose from a fear-well-founded enough--that she would make sport of it.
At twelve Dolly had notions concerning the walks of life that most other
children never dream of. They were derived, of course, from Mr.
Marmaduke. But the day of reckoning arrived. Patty and I were romping
beside the back wall when suddenly a stiff little figure in a starched
frock appeared through the trees in the direction of the house, followed
by Master Will Fotheringay in his visiting clothes. I laugh now when I
think of that formal meeting between the two little ladies. There was no
time to hoist Miss Swain over the wall, or to drive Miss Manners back
upon the house. Patty stood blushing as though caught in a guilty act,
while she of the Generations came proudly on, Will sniggering behind her.

"Who is this, Richard?" asks Miss Manners, pointing a small forefinger.

"Patty Swain, if you must know!" I cried, and added boylike: "And she is
just as good as you or me, and better." I was quite red in the face, and
angry because of it. "This is Dorothy Manners, Patty, and Will
Fotheringay."

The moment was a pregnant one. But I was resolved to carry the matter
out with a bold front. "Will you join us at catch and swing?" I asked.

Will promptly declared that he would join, for Patty was good to look
upon. Dolly glanced at her dress, tossed her head, and marched back
alone.

"Oh, Richard!" cried Patty; "I shall never forgive myself! I have made
you quarrel with--"

"His sweetheart," said Will, wickedly.

"I don't care," said I. Which was not so.

Patty felt no resentment for my miss's haughty conduct, but only a
tearful penitence for having been the cause of a strife between us.
Will's arguments and mine availed nothing. I must lift her over the wall
again, and she went home. When we reached the garden we found Dolly
seated beside her mother on my grandfather's bench, from which stronghold
our combined tactics were powerless to drag her.

When Dolly was gone, I asked my grandfather in great indignation why
Patty did not play with the children I knew, with Dorothy and the
Fotheringays. He shook his head dubiously. "When you are older,
Richard, you will understand that our social ranks are cropped close.
Mr. Swain is an honest and an able man, though he believes in things I do
not. I hear he is becoming wealthy. And I have no doubt," the shrewd
old gentleman added, "that when Patty grows up she will be going to the
assemblies, though it was not so in my time." So liberal was he that he
used to laugh at my lifting her across the wall, and in his leisure
delight to listen to my accounts of her childish housekeeping. Her life
was indeed a contrast to Dorothy's. She had all the solid qualities that
my lady lacked in early years. And yet I never wavered in my liking to
the more brilliant and wayward of the two. The week before my next
birthday, when Mr. Carvel drew me to him and asked me what I wished for
a present that year, as was his custom, I said promptly:

"I should like to have Patty Swain at my party, sir."

"So you shall, my lad," he cried, taking his snuff and eying me with
pleasure. "I am glad to see, Richard, that you have none of Mr.
Marmaduke's nonsense about you. She is a good girl, i' faith, and more
of a lady now than many who call themselves such. And you shall have
your present to boot. Hark'ee, Daniel," said he to the captain; "if the
child comes to my house, the poll-parrots and follow-me-ups will be
wanting her, too."

But the getting her to go was a matter of five days. For Patty was
sensitive, like her father, and dreaded a slight. Not so with Master
Tom, who must, needs be invited, too. He arrived half an hour ahead
of time, arrayed like Solomon, and without his sister! I had to go for
Patty, indeed, after the party had begun, and to get the key to the
wicket in the wall to take her in that way, so shy was she. My dear
grandfather showed her particular attention. And Miss Dolly herself,
being in the humour, taught her a minuet.

After that she came to all my birthdays, and lost some of her shyness.
And was invited to other great houses, even as Mr. Carvel had predicted.
But her chief pleasure seemed ever her duty. Whether or no such
characters make them one and the same, who can tell? She became the
light of her father's house, and used even to copy out his briefs, at
which task I often found her of an evening.

As for Tom, that graceless scamp, I never could stomach him. I wondered
then, as I have since, how he was the brother of such a sister. He could
scarce bide his time until Mr. Swain should have a coach and a seat in
the country with the gentry. "A barrister," quoth he, "is as good as any
one else. And if my father came out a redemptioner, and worked his way,
so had old Mr. Dulany. Our family at home was the equal of his." All of
which was true, and more. He would deride Patty for sewing and baking,
vowing that they had servants enough now to do the work twice over. She
bore with him with a patience to be marvelled at; and I could never get
it through my head why Mr. Swain indulged him, though he was the elder,
and his mother's favourite. Tom began to dress early. His open
admiration was Dr. Courtenay, his confessed hope to wear five-pound
ruffles and gold sword knots. He clung to Will Fotheringay with a
tenacity that became proverbial among us boys, and his boasts at King
William's School were his father's growing wealth and intimacy with the
great men of the province.

As I grew older, I took the cue of political knowledge, as I have said,
from Mr. Swain rather than Captain Daniel, who would tell me nothing. I
fell into the habit of taking supper in Gloucester Street. The meal was
early there. And when the dishes were cleared away, and the barrister's
pipe lit, and Patty and her mother had got their sewing, he would talk by
the hour on the legality of our resistance to the King, and discuss the
march of affairs in England and the other colonies. He found me a ready
listener, and took pains to teach me clearly the right and wrong of the
situation. 'Twas his religion, even as loyalty to the King was my
grandfather's, and he did not think it wrong to spread it. He likewise
instilled into me in that way more of history than Mr. Allen had ever
taught me, using it to throw light upon this point or that. But I never
knew his true power and eloquence until I followed him to the Stadt
House.

Patty was grown a girl of fifteen then, glowing with health, and had
ample good looks of her own. 'Tis odd enough that I did not fall in
love with her when Dolly began to use me so outrageously. But a lad of
eighteen is scarce a rational creature. I went and sat before my oracle
upon the vine-covered porch under the eaves, and poured out my complaint.
She laid down her needlework and laughed.

"You silly boy," said she, "can't you see that she herself has prescribed
for you? She was right when she told you to show attention to Jenny.
And if you dangle about Miss Dolly now, you are in danger of losing her.
She knows it better than you."

I had Jenny to ride the very next day. Result: my lady smiled on me more
sweetly than ever when I went to Prince George Street, and vowed Jenny
had never looked prettier than when she went past the house. This left
my victory in such considerable doubt that I climbed the back wall
forthwith in my new top-boots.

"So you looked for her to be angry?" said Patty.

"Most certainly," said I.

"Unreasoning vanity!" she cried, for she knew how to speak plain.
"By your confession to me you have done this to please her, for she
warned you at the beginning it would please her. And now you complain
of it. I believe I know your Dorothy better than you."

And so I got but little comfort out of Patty that time.




CHAPTER IX

UNDER FALSE COLOURS

And now I come to a circumstance in my life I would rather pass over
quickly. Had I steered the straight course of my impulse I need never
have deceived that dear gentleman whom I loved and honoured above any in
this world, and with whom I had always lived and dealt openly. After my
grandfather was pronounced to be mending, I went back to Mr. Allen until
such time as we should be able to go to the country. Philip no longer
shared my studies, his hours having been changed from morning to
afternoon. I thought nothing of this, being content with the rector's
explanation that my uncle had a task for Philip in the morning, now that
Mr. Carvel was better. And I was well content to be rid of Philip's
company. But as the days passed I began to mark an absence still
stranger. I had my Horace and my Ovid still: but the two hours from
eleven to one, which he was wont to give up to history and what he was
pleased to call instruction in loyalty, were filled with other matter.
Not a word now of politics from Mr. Allen. Not even a comment from him
concerning the spirited doings of our Assembly, with which the town was
ringing. That body had met but a while before, primed to act on the
circular drawn up by Mr. Adams of Massachusetts. The Governor's message
had not been so prompt as to forestall them, and I am occupied scarce the
time in the writing of this that it took our brave members to adopt the
petition to his Majesty and to pass resolutions of support to our sister
colony of the North. This being done, and a most tart reply penned to
his Excellency, they ended that sitting and passed in procession to the
Governor's mansion to deliver it, Mr. Speaker Lloyd at their head, and a
vast concourse of cheering people at their heels. Shutters were barred
on the Tory houses we passed. And though Mr. Allen spied me in the
crowd, he never mentioned the circumstance. More than once I essayed to
draw from him an opinion of Mr. Adams's petition, which was deemed a work
of great moderation and merit, and got nothing but evasion from my tutor.
That he had become suddenly an American in principle I could not believe.
At length I made bold to ask him why our discussions were now omitted.
He looked up from the new play he was reading on the study lounge, with a
glance of dark meaning I could not fathom.

"You are learning more than I can teach you in Gloucester Street, and at
the Stadt House," he said.

In truth I was at a loss to understand his attitude until the day in June
my grandfather and I went to Carvel Hall.

The old gentleman was weak still, so feeble that he had to be carried to
his barge in a chair, a vehicle he had ever held in scorn. But he was
cheerful, and his spirit remained the same as of old: but for that spirit
I believe he had never again risen from his bed in Marlboro' Street. My
uncle and the rector were among those who walked by his side to the dock,
and would have gone to the Hall with him had he permitted them. He was
kind enough to say that my arm was sufficient to lean on.

What peace there was sitting once again under the rustling trees on the
lawn with the green river and the blue bay spread out before us, and
Scipio standing by with my grandfather's punch. Mr. Carvel would have me
rehearse again all that had passed in town and colony since his illness,
which I did with as much moderation as I was able. And as we talked he
reached out and took my hand, for I sat near him, and said:

"Richard, I have heard tidings of you that gladden my heart, and they
have done more than Dr. Leiden's physic for this old frame of mine. I
well knew a Carvel could never go a wrong course, lad, and you least of
any."

"Tidings, sir?" I said.

"Ay, tidings," answered Mr. Carvel. Such a note of relief and gladness
there was in the words as I had not heard for months from him, and a
vague fear came upon me.

"Scipio," he said merrily, "a punch for Mr. Richard." And when the glass
was brought my grandfather added: "May it be ever thus!"

I drained the toast, not falling into his humour or comprehending his
reference, but dreading that aught I might say would disturb him, held my
peace. And yet my apprehension increased. He set down his glass and
continued:

"I had no hope of this yet, Richard, for you were ever slow to change.
Your conversion does credit to Mr. Allen as well as to you. In short,
sir, the rector gives me an excellent good account of your studies, and
adds that the King hath gained another loyal servant, for which I thank
God."

I have no words to write of my feelings then. My head swam and my hand
trembled on my grandfather's, and I saw dimly the old gentleman's face
aglow with joy and pride, and knew not what to say or do. The answer I
framed, alas, remained unspoken. From his own lips I had heard how much
the news had mended him, and for once I lacked the heart, nay, the
courage, to speak the truth. But Mr. Carvel took no heed of my silence,
setting it down to another cause.

"And so, my son," he said, "there is no need of sending you to Eton next
fall. I am not much longer for this earth, and can ill spare you: and
Mr. Allen kindly consents to prepare you for Oxford."

"Mr. Allen consents to that, sir?" I gasped. I think, could I have laid
hands on the rector then, I would have thrashed him, cloth and all,
within an inch of his life.

And as if to crown my misery Mr. Carvel rose, and bearing heavily on my
shoulder led me to the stable where Harvey and one of the black grooms
stood in livery to receive us. Harvey held by the bridle a blooded bay
hunter, and her like could scarce be found in the colony. As she stood
arching her neck and pawing the ground, I all confusion and shame, my
grandfather said simply:

"Richard, this is Firefly. I have got her for you from Mr. Randolph, of
Virginia, for you are now old enough to have a good mount of your own."

All that night I lay awake, trying to sift some motive for Mr. Allen's
deceit. For the life of me I could see no farther than a desire to keep
me as his pupil, since he was well paid for his tuition. Still, the game
did not seem worth the candle. However, he was safe in his lie. Shrewd
rogue that he was, he well knew that I would not risk the attack a
disappointment might bring my grandfather.

What troubled me most of all was the fear that Grafton had reaped the
advantage of the opportunity the illness gave him, and by his insidious
arts had worked himself back into the good graces of his father. You
must not draw from this, my dears, that I feared for the inheritance.
Praised be God, I never thought of that! But I came by nature to hate
and to fear my uncle, as I hated and feared the devil. I saw him with my
father's eyes, and with my mother's, and as my grandfather had seen him
in the old days when he was strong. Instinct and reason alike made me
loathe him. As the months passed, and letters in Grafton's scroll hand
came from the Kent estate or from Annapolis, my misgivings were confirmed
by odd remarks that dropped from Mr. Carvel's lips. At length arrived
the revelation itself.

"I fear, Richard," he had said querulously, "I fear that all these years
I have done your uncle an injustice. Dear Elizabeth was wont to plead
for him before she died, but I would never listen to her. I was hearty
and strong then, and my heart was hard. And a remembrance of many things
was fresh in my mind." He paused for breath, as was his habit now. And
I said nothing. "But Grafton has striven to wipe out the past. Sickness
teaches us that we must condone, and not condemn. He has lived a
reputable life, and made the most of the little start I gave him.
He has supported his Majesty and my Lord in most trying times. And his
Excellency tells me that the coming governor, Eden, will surely reward
him with a seat in the Council."

I thought of Governor Sharpe's biting words to Grafton. The Governor
knew my uncle well, and I was sure he had never sat at his Council.

"A son is a son, Richard," continued Mr. Carvel. "You will one day find
that out. Your uncle has atoned. He hath been faithful during my
illness, despite my cold treatment. And he hath convinced me that your
welfare is at his heart. I believe he is fond of you, my lad."

No greater sign of breaking health did I need than this, that Mr. Carvel
should become blind to Grafton's hypocrisy; forget his attempts to
prevent my father's marriage, and to throw doubt upon my mother's birth.
The agony it gave me, coming as it did on top of the cruel deception,
I shall not dwell upon. And the thought bursting within me remained
unspoken.

I saw less of Dorothy then than I had in any summer of my life before.
In spite of Mrs. Manners, the chrysalis had burst into the butterfly,
and Wilmot House had never been so gay. It must be remembered that
there were times when young ladies made their entrance into the world at
sixteen, and for a beauty to be unmarried at twenty-two was rare indeed.
When I went to Wilmot House to dine, the table would be always full, and
Mr. Marmaduke simpering at the head of it, his air of importance doubled
by his reflected glory.

"We see nothing of you, my lad," he would say; "you must not let these
young gallants get ahead of you. How does your grandfather? I must pay
my compliments to-morrow."

Of gallants there were enough, to be sure. Dr. Courtenay, of course,
with a nosegay on his coat, striving to catch the beauty's eye. And Mr.
Worthington and Mr. Dulany, and Mr. Fitzhugh and Mr. Paca, and I know not
how many other young bachelors of birth and means. And Will Fotheringay,
who spent some of his time with me at the Hall. Silver and China, with
the Manners coat-of-arms, were laid out that had not seen the light for
many along day. And there were picnics, and sailing parties, and dances
galore, some of which I attended, but heard of more. It seemed to me
that my lady was tiring of the doctor's compliments, and had transferred
her fickle favour to young Mr. Fitzhugh, who was much more worthy, by the
way. As for me, I had troubles enough then, and had become used in some
sort to being shelved.

One night in July,--'twas the very day Mr. Carvel had spoken to me of
Grafton,--I had ridden over to Wilmot House to supper. I had little
heart for going, but good Mrs. Manners herself had made me promise, and
I could: not break my word. I must have sat very silent and preoccupied
at the table, where all was wit and merriment. And more than once I saw
the laughter leave Dorothy's face, and caught her eyes upon; me with such
a look as set my beast throbbing. They would not meet my own, but would
turn away instantly. I was heavy indeed that night, and did not follow
the company into the ballroom, but made my excuses to Mrs. Manners.

The lawn lay bathed in moonlight; and as I picked, my way over it toward
the stables for Firefly, I paused to look back at the house aglow, with
light, the music of the fiddles and the sound of laughter floating out
of the open windows. Even as I gaped a white figure was framed in the
doorway, paused a moment on the low stone step, and then came on until
it stood beside me.

"Are you not well, Richard?"

"Yes, I am well," I answered. I scarcely knew my own voice.

"Is your grandfather worse?"

"No, Dorothy; he seems better to-day."

She stood seemingly irresolute, her eyes new lifted, now falling before
mine. Her slender arms bare, save for the little puff at the shoulders;
her simple dress drawn a little above the waist, then falling straight to
the white slipper. How real the ecstasy of that moment, and the pain of
it!

"Why do you not coarse over, as you used to?" she asked, in a low tone.

"I am very busy," I replied evasively; "Mr. Carvel cannot attend to his
affairs." I longed to tell her the whole truth, but the words would not
come.

"I hear you are managing the estate all alone," she said.

"There is no one else to do it."

"Richard," she cried, drawing closer; "you are in trouble. I--I have
seen it. You are so silent, and--and you seem to have become older.
Tell me, is it your Uncle Grafton?"

So astonished was I at the question, and because she had divined so,
surely, that I did not answer.

"Is it?" she asked again.

"Yes," I said; "yes, in part."

And then came voices calling from the house. They had missed her.

"I am so sorry, Richard. I shall tell no one."

She laid her hand ever so lightly upon mine and was gone. I stood
staring after her until she disappeared in the door. All the way home
I marvelled, my thoughts tumultuous, my hopes rising and falling.

But when next I saw her, I thought she had forgotten.

We had little company at the Hall that year, on account of Mr. Carvel.
And I had been busy indeed. I sought with all my might to master a
business for which I had but little taste, and my grandfather
complimented me, before the season was done, upon my management.
I was wont to ride that summer at four of a morning to canter beside Mr.
Starkie afield, and I came to know the yield of every patch to a hogshead
and the pound price to a farthing. I grew to understand as well as
another the methods of curing the leaf. And the wheat pest appearing
that year, I had the good fortune to discover some of the clusters in the
sheaves, and ground our oyster-shells in time to save the crop. Many a
long evening I spent on the wharves with old Stanwix, now toothless and
living on his pension, with my eye on the glow of his pipe and my ear
bent to his stories of the sea. It was his fancy that the gift of
prophecy had come to him with the years; and at times, when his look
would wander to the black rigging in the twilight, he would speak
strangely enough.

"Faith, Mr. Richard," he would say; "tho' your father was a soldier afore
ye, ye were born to the deck of a ship-o'-war. Mark an old man's words,
sir."

"Can you see the frigate, Stanwix?" I laughed once, when he had repeated
this with more than common solemnity.

His reply rose above the singing of the locusts.

"Ay, sir, that I can. But she's no frigate, sir. Devil knows what she
is. She looks like a big merchantman to me, such as I've seed in the
Injy trade, with a high poop in the old style. And her piercin's be not
like a frigate." He said this with a readiness to startle me, and little
enough superstition I had. A light was on his seared face, and his pipe
lay neglected on the boards. "Ay, sir, and there be a flag astern of her
never yet seed on earth, nor on the waters under the earth. The tide is
settin' in, the tide is settin' in."

These were words to set me thinking. And many a time they came back to
me when the old man was laid away in the spot reserved for those who
sailed the seas for Mr. Carvel.

Every week I drew up a report for my grandfather, and thus I strove by
shouldering labour and responsibility to ease my conscience of that load
which troubled it. For often, as we walked together through the yellow
fields of an evening, it had been on my tongue to confess the lie Mr.
Allen had led me into. But the sight of the old man, trembling and
tremulous, aged by a single stroke, his childlike trust in my strength
and beliefs, and above all his faith in a political creed which he nigh
deemed needful for the soul's salvation,--these things still held me
back. Was it worth while now, I asked myself, to disturb the peace of
that mind?

Thus the summer wore on to early autumn. And one day I was standing
booted and spurred in the stables, Harvey putting the bridle upon
Firefly, when my boy Hugo comes running in.

"Marse Dick!" he cries, "Marse Satan he come in the pinnace, and young
Marse Satan and Missis Satan, and Marse Satan's pastor!"

"What the devil do you mean, Hugo?"

"Young ebony's right, sir," chuckled Harvey; "'tis the devil and his
following."

"Do you mean Mr. Grafton, fellow?" I demanded, the unwelcome truth coming
over me.

"That he does," remarked Harvey, laconically. "You won't be wanting her
now, your honour?"

"Hold my stirrup," I cried, for the news had put me in anger. "Hold my
stirrup, sirrah!"

I believe I took Firefly the best of thirty miles that afternoon and
brought her back in the half-light, my saddle discoloured with her sweat.
I clanked into the hall like a captain of horse. The night was sharp
with the first touch of autumn, and a huge backlog lay on the irons.
Around it, in a comfortable half-circle sat our guests, Grafton and Mr.
Allen and Philip smoking and drinking for a whet against supper, and Mrs.
Grafton in my grandfather's chair. There was an easy air of possession
about the party of them that they had never before assumed, and the sight
made me rattle again, the big door behind me.

"A surprise for you, my dear nephew," Grafton said gayly, "I'll, lay a
puncheon you did, not, expect us."

Mr. Carvel woke with a start at the sound of the door and said
querulously, "Guests, my lord, and I have done my poor best to make them
welcome in your absence."

The sense of change in him stung me. How different would his tone have
been a year ago!

He tattooed with his cane, which was the sign he generally made when he
was ready for bed. Toward night his speech would hurt him. I assisted
him up, the stairs, my uncle taking his arm on the other side. And
together, with Diomedes help; we undressed him, Grafton talking in low
tomes the while: Since this was, an office I was wont to perform, my
temper was now overwhelming me. But I kept my month closed. At last he
had had the simple meal Dr. Leiden allowed him, his candles were snuffed,
and my uncle and I made our way to the hall together: There my aunt and
Mr. Allen were at picquet.

"Supper is insupportably late," says she; with a yawn, and rings the
hand-bell. "Scipio," she cries, "why are we not served?"

I took a stride forward. But my uncle raised a restraining hand.

"Caroline, remember that this is not our house," says he, reprovingly.

There fell a deep silence; the log cracking; and just then the door swung
on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch of keys in
his hand.

"The buildings are all secure; Mr. Richard," he said.

"Very good, Starkie," I replied. I turned to Scipio, standing by the
low-boy, his teeth, going like a castanet.

"You may serve at the usual hour, Scipio," said I.

Supper began stiff as a state banquet. My uncle was conciliatory, with
the manners of a Crichton. My aunt, not having come from generations of
silver and self-control, flatly in a bad humour. Mr. Allen talked from
force of habit, being used to pay in such kind for his meals. But
presently the madeira, warmed these two into a better spirit. I felt
that I had victory on my side, and was nothing loth to join them at
whist, Philip and I against the rector and my aunt, and won something
like two pounds apiece from them. Grafton made it a rule never to play.

The next morning, when I returned from my inspection, I found the rector
and Philip had decamped with two of our choice horses, and that my uncle
and aunt had commanded the barge, and gone to Mr. Lloyd's. I sent for
Scipio.

"Fore de Lawd, Marse Richard," he wailed, "'twan't Scipio's fault. Marse
Grafton is dry fambly!" This was Scipio's strongest argument. "I jes'
can't refuse one of de fambly, Marse Dick; and old Marse he say he too
old now for quarrellin'."

I saw that resistance was useless. There was nothing for it but to bide
any time. And I busied myself with bills of cargo until I heard the
horses on the drive. Mr. Allen and Philip came swaggering in, flushed
with the exercise, and calling for punch, and I met them in the hall.

"A word with you, Mr. Allen!" I called out.

"A thousand, Mr. Richard, if you like," he said gayly, "as soon as this
thirst of mine be quenched."

I waited while he drained two glasses, when he followed me into the
library, closing the door behind him.

"Now, sir," I began, "though by a chance you are my mental and spiritual
adviser, I intend speaking plain. For I know you to be one of the
greatest rogues in the colony."

I watched him narrowly the while, for I had some notion he might run me
through. But I had misjudged him.

"Speak plain, by all means," he replied; "but first let me ask for some
tobacco."

He filled the bowl of his pipe, and sat him down by the window. For the
moment I was silent with sheer surprise.

"You know I can't call you out," he went on, surrounding himself with
clouds of smoke, "a lad of eighteen or so. And even if I could,
I doubt whether I should. I like you, Richard," said he. "You are
straight-spoken and commanding. In brief, sir, you are the kind of lad I
should have been had not fate pushed me into a corner, and made me squirm
for life's luxuries. I hate squirming as much as another. This is prime
tobacco, Richard."

He had come near disarming me; I was on the edge of a dangerous
admiration for this man of the world, and for the life of me, I could not
help liking him then. He had a fine presence, was undeniably handsome,
and his riding clothes were of the latest London cut.

"Are there not better methods for obtaining what you wish than those you
practise?" I asked curiously.

"No doubt," he answered carelessly; "but these are well enough, and
shorter. You were about to do me the honour of a communication?"

This brought me to my senses. I had, however, lost much of my heat in
the interval.

"I should like to know why you lied to Mr. Carvel about my convictions,
Mr. Allen," I said. "I am not of the King's party now, and never shall
be. And you know this better than another."

"Those are strong words, Richard, my lad," said he, bringing his eyebrows
together.

"They are true words," I retorted. "Why did you lie, I say?"

He said nothing for a while, but his breath came heavily.

"I will pass it, I will pass it," he said at length, "but, by God! it is
more than I have had to swallow in all my life before. Look at your
grandfather, sir!" he cried; "behold him on the very brink of the grave,
and ask me again why I lied to him! His hope of heaven is scarce less
sacred to him than his love of the King, and both are so tightly wrapped
about his heart that this knowledge of you would break it. Yes, break
his heart, I say" (and he got to his legs), "and you would kill him for
the sake of a boyish fancy!"

I knew he was acting, as well as though he had climbed upon the table and
said it. And yet he had struck the very note of my own fears, and hit
upon the one reason why I had not confessed lung ago.

"There is more you might have said, Mr. Allen," I remarked presently;
"you have a cause for keeping me under your instruction, and that is
behind all."

He gave me a strange look.

"You are too acute by far," said he; "your imagination runs with you.
I have said I like you, and I can teach you classics as well as another.
Is it not enough to admit that the money I get for your instruction keeps
me in champagne?"

"No, it is not enough," I said stoutly.

"Then you must guess again, my lad," he answered with a laugh, and left
the room with the easy grace that distinguished him.

There was armed peace the rest of my uncle's visit. They departed on the
third day. My Aunt Caroline, when she was not at picquet with Mr. Allen
or quarrelling with Mrs. Willis or with Grafton himself, yawned without
cessation. She declared in one of her altercations with her lord and
master that she would lose her wits were they to remain another day, a
threat that did not seem to move Grafton greatly. Philip ever maintained
the right to pitch it on the side of his own convenience, and he chose in
this instance to come to the rescue of his dear mamma, and turned the
scales in her favour. He was pleased to characterize the Hall as
insupportable, and vowed that his clothes would be out of fashion
before they reached Rousby Hall, their next stopping-place. To do Philip
justice, he was more honest a rascal than his father, though I am of the
opinion that he had not the brain for great craft. And he had drawn from
his mother a love of baubles which kept his mind from scheming. He had
little to say to me, and I less to him.

Grafton, as may be supposed, made me distinct advances before his
departure, perceiving the unwisdom of antagonizing me unnecessarily. He
had the imprudence once to ask of me the facts and figures of the estate;
and tho' 'twas skilfully done by contrasting his own crops in Kent, you
may be sure I was on my guard, and that he got nothing.

I was near forgetting an incident of their visit which I afterwards had
good cause to remember. The morning of my talk with Mr. Allen I went to
the stables to see how he had used Cynthia, and found old Harvey wiping
her down, and rumbling the while like a crater.

"What think you of the rector as a representative of heaven, Harvey?" I
asked.

"Him a representative of heaven!" he snorted; "I've heard tell of rotten
boroughs, and I'm thinking Mr. Allen will be standing for one. What be
him and Mr. Grafton a-doing here, sir, plotting all kinds o' crime while
the old gentleman's nigh on his back?"

"Plotting?" I said, catching at the word.

"Ay, plotting," repeated Harvey, casting his cloth away; "murder and all
the crimes in the calendar, I take it. I hear him and Mr. Grafton among
the stalls this morning, and when they sees me they look like Knipe,
here, caught with a fowl."

"And what were they saying?" I demanded.

"Saying! God only knows their wickedness. I got the words 'Upper
Marlboro' and 'South River' and 'next voyage,' and that profligate rector
wanted to know as to how 'Griggs was reliable.'"

I thought no more of it at the time, believing it to be some of the small
rascalities they were forever at. But that name of Griggs (why, the
powers only know) stuck in my mind to turn up again.




CHAPTER X.

THE RED IN THE CARVEL BLOOD

After that, when we went back to Annapolis for the winter, there was no
longer any disguise between my tutor and myself. I was not of a mind to
feign a situation that did not exist, nor to permit him to do so. I gave
him to understand that tho' I went to him for instruction, 'twas through
no fault of mine. That I would learn what I pleased and do what pleased
me. And the rector, a curse upon him, seemed well content with that; nor
could I come at his devil's reason far wanting me, save for the money,
as he had declared. There were days when he and I never touched a hook,
both being out of humour for study, when he told me yarns of Frederick of
Prussia and his giant guard, of Florence and of Venice, and of the court
of his Holiness of Rome. For he had drifted about the earth like a
log-end in the Atlantic, before his Lordship gave him his present berth.
We passed, too, whole mornings at picquet, I learning enough of Horace to
quote at the routs we both attended, but a deal more of kings and deuces.
And as I may add, that he got no more of my money than did I of his.

The wonder of it was that we never became friends. He was two men, this
rector of St. Anne's, half of him as lovable as any I ever encountered.
But trust him I never would, always meeting him on the middle ground; and
there were times, after his talks with Grafton, when his eyes were like a
cat's, and I was conscious of a sinister note in his dealing which put me
on my guard.

You will say, my dears, that some change had come over me, that I was no
longer the same lad I have been telling you of.

Those days were not these, yet I make no show of hiding or of palliation.
Was it Dorothy's conduct that drove me? Not wholly. A wild red was ever
in the Carvel blood, in Captain Jack, in Lionel, in the ancestor of King
Charles's day, who fought and bled and even gambled for his king. And my
grandfather knew this; he warned me, but he paid my debts. And I thank
Heaven he felt that my heart was right.

I was grown now, certainly in stature. And having managed one of the
largest plantations in the province, I felt the man, as lads are wont
after their first responsibilities. I commanded my wine at the Coffee
House with the best of the bucks, and was made a member of the South
River and Jockey clubs. I wore the clothes that came out to me from
London, and vied in fashion with Dr. Courtenay and other macaronies.
And I drove a carriage of mine own, the Carvel arms emblazoned thereon,
and Hugo in the family livery.

After a deal of thought upon the subject, I decided, for a while at
least, to show no political leanings at all. And this was easier of
accomplishment than you may believe, for at that time in Maryland Tory
and Whig were amiable enough, and the young gentlemen of the first
families dressed alike and talked alike at the parties they both
attended. The non-importation association had scarce made itself felt in
the dress of society. Gentlemen of degree discussed differences amicably
over their decanters. And only on such occasions as Mr. Hood's return,
and the procession of the Lower House through the streets, and the
arrival of the Good Intent, did high words arise among the quality. And
it was because class distinctions were so strongly marked that it took so
long to bring loyalists and patriots of high rank to the sword's point.

I found time to manage such business affairs of Mr. Carvel's as he could
not attend to himself. Grafton and his family dined in Marlboro' Street
twice in the week; my uncle's conduct toward me was the very soul of
consideration, and he compelled that likewise from his wife and his son.
So circumspect was he that he would have fooled one who knew him a whit
less than I. He questioned me closely upon my studies, and in my
grandfather's presence I was forced to answer. And when the rector came
to dine and read to Mr. Carvel, my uncle catechised him so searchingly on
my progress that he was pushed to the last source of his ingenuity for
replies. More than once was I tempted to blurt out the whole wretched
business, for I well understood there was some deep game between him and
Grafton. In my uncle's absence, my aunt never lost a chance for an
ill-natured remark upon Patty, whom she had seen that winter at the
assemblies and elsewhere. And she deplored the state our people of
fashion were coming to, that they allowed young girls without family to
attend their balls.

"But we can expect little else, father," she would say to Mr. Carvel
nodding in his chair, "when some of our best families openly espouse the
pernicious doctrines of republicanism. They are gone half mad over that
Wilkes who should have been hung before this. Philip, dear, pour the
wine for your grandfather."

Miss Patty had been well received. I took her to her first assembly,
where her simple and unassuming ways had made her an instant favourite;
and her face, which had the beauty of dignity and repose even so early in
life, gained her ample attention. I think she would have gone but little
had not her father laughed her out of some of her domesticity. No longer
at Sunday night supper in Gloucester Street was the guest seat empty.
There was more than one guest seat now, and the honest barrister himself
was the most pleased at the change. As I took my accustomed place on the
settle cushion,--Patty's first embroidery,--he would cry:

"Heigho, Richard, our little Miss Prim hath become a belle. And I must
have another clerk now to copy out my briefs, and a housekeeper soon, i'
faith."

Patty would never fail to flush up at the words, and run to perch on her
father's knee and put her hand over his mouth.

"How can you, Mr. Swain?" says she; "how can you, when 'tis you and
mother, and Richard here, who make me go into the world? You know I
would a thousand times rather bake your cakes and clean your silver!
But you will not hear of it."

"Fie!" says the barrister. "Listen to her, Richard! And yet she will
fly up the stairs to don a fine gown at the first rap of the knocker.
Oh, the wenches, the wenches! Are they not all alike, mother?"

"They have changed none since I was a lass," replies the quiet invalid,
with a smile. "And you should know what I was, Henry."

"I know!" cries he; "none better. Well I recall the salmon and white
your mother gave you before I came to Salem." He sighed and then laughed
at the recollection. "And when this strapping young Singleton comes,
Richard, 'twould do you good to be hiding there in that cupboard,--and it
would hold you,--and count the seconds until Miss Prim has her skirt in
her hand and her foot on the lower step. And yet how innocent is she now
before you and me."

Here he would invariably be smothered.

"Percy Singleton!" says Patty, with a fine scorn; "'twill be Mr.
Eglinton, the curate, next."

"This I know," says her father, slapping me on the shoulder, "this I
know, that you are content to see Richard without primping."

"But I have known Richard since I was six," says she. "Richard is one
of the family. There is no need of disguise from him."

I thought, ruefully enough, that it seemed my fate to be one of the
family everywhere I went.

And just then, as if in judgment, the gate snapped and the knocker
sounded, and Patty leaped down with a blush. "What said I say?" cries
the barrister. "I have not seen human nature in court for naught. Run,
now," says he, pinching her cheek as she stood hesitating whether to fly
or stay; "run and put on the new dress I have bought you. And Richard
and I will have a cup of ale in the study."

The visitor chanced to be Will Fotheringay that time. He was not the
only one worn out with the mad chase in Prince George Street, and
preferred a quiet evening with a quiet beauty to the crowded lists of
Miss Manners. Will declared that the other gallants were fools over the
rare touch of blue in the black hair: give him Miss Swain's, quoth he,
lifting his glass,--hers was; the colour of a new sovereign. Will was
not, the only one. But I think Percy Singleton was the best of them all,
tho' Patty ridiculed him--every chance she got, and even to his face.
So will: the best-hearted and soberest of women play the coquette.
Singleton was rather a reserved young Englishman of four and twenty,
who owned a large estate in Talbot which he was laying out with great
success. Of a Whig family in the old country, he had been drawn to that
party in the new, and so, had made Mr. Swain's acquaintance. The next
step in his fortunes was to fall in love with Patty, which was natural
enough. Many a night that winter I walked with him from Gloucester
Street to the Coffee House, to sit an hour over, a battle. And there
Master Tom and Dr. Hamilton, and other gay macaronies would sometimes
join us. Singleton had a greater contempt for Tom than I, but bore with
him for his sister's sake. For Tom, in addition to his other follies,
was become an open loyalist, and never missed his Majesty's health,
though he knew no better than my Hugo the question at issue. 'Twas not
zeal for King George, however, that made him drunk at one of the
assemblies, and forced his sister to leave in the midst of a dance for
very shame.

"Oh, Richard, is, there not something you can do?" she cried, when, I had
got her back in the little parlour in Gloucester Street; "father has
argued and, pleaded and threatened in vain. I thought,--I thought
perhaps you might help him."

"I think I am not one to preach, or to boast," I replied soberly.

"Yes," said she, looking grave; "I know you are wilder than you used to
be; that you play more than you ought, and higher than you ought."

I was silent.

"And I suspect at whose door it lies," said she.

"'Tis in the blood, Patty," I answered.

She glanced at me quickly.

"I know you better than you think," she said. "But Tom has not your
excuse. And if he had only your faults I would say nothing. He does not
care for those he should, and he is forever in the green-room of the
theatre."

I made haste to change the subject, and to give her what comfort I might;
for she was sobbing before she finished. And the next day I gave Tom a
round talking-to for having so little regard for his sister, the hem of
whose skirt he was not worthy to touch. He took it meekly enough, with a
barrel of pat excuses to come after. And he asked me to lend him my
phaeton, that he might go a-driving with Miss Crane, of the theatrical
company, to Round Bay!

Meanwhile I saw Miss Manners more frequently than was good for my peace
of mind, and had my turn as her partner at the balls. But I could not
bring myself to take third or fourth rank in the army that attended her.
I, who had been her playmate, would not become her courtier. Besides, I
had not the wit.

Was it strange that Dr. Courtenay should pride himself upon the discovery
of a new beauty? And in the Coffee House, and in every drawing-room in
town, prophesy for her a career of conquest such as few could boast?
She was already launched upon that career. And rumour had it that Mr.
Marmaduke was even then considering taking her home to London, where the
stage was larger and the triumph greater. Was it surprising that the
Gazette should contain a poem with the doctor's well-known ear-marks upon
it? It set the town a-wagging, and left no room for doubt as to who had
inspired it.

       "Sweet Pandora, tho' formed of Clay,
        Was fairer than the Light of Day.
        By Venus learned in Beauty's Arts,
        And destined thus to conquer Hearts.
        A Goddess of this Town, I ween,
        Fair as Pandora, scarce Sixteen,
        Is destined, e'en by Jove's Command,
        To conquer all of Maryland.
        Oh, Bachelors, play have a Care,
        For She will all your Hearts ensnare."

So it ran. I think, if dear Mrs. Manners could have had her way, Dolly
would have passed that year at a certain young ladies' school in New
York. But Mr. Marmaduke's pride in his daughter's beauty got the better
of her. The strut in his gait became more marked the day that poem
appeared, and he went to the Coffee House both morning and evening,
taking snuff to hide his emotions when Miss Manners was spoken of; and he
was perceived by many in Church Street arm in arm with Dr. Courtenay
himself.

As you may have imagined before now, the doctor's profession was leisure,
not medicine. He had known ambition once, it was said, and with reason,
for he had studied surgery in Germany for the mere love of the science.
After which, making the grand tour in France and Italy, he had taken up
that art of being a gentleman in which men became so proficient in
my young days. He had learned to speak French like a Parisian, had
hobnobbed with wit and wickedness from Versailles to Rome, and then had
come back to Annapolis to set the fashions and to spend the fortune his
uncle lately had left him. He was our censor of beauty, and passed
judgment upon all young ladies as they stepped into the arena. To be
noticed by him meant success; to be honoured in the Gazette was to be
crowned at once a reigning belle. The chord of his approval once set
a-vibrating, all minor chords sang in harmony. And it was the doctor who
raised the first public toast to Miss Manners. Alas! I might have known
it would be so!

But Miss Dorothy was not of a nature to remain dependent upon a censor's
favour. The minx deported herself like any London belle of experience,
as tho' she had known the world from her cradle. She was not to be
deceived by the face value of the ladies' praises, nor rebuffed
unmercifully by my Aunt Caroline, who had held the sceptre in the absence
of a younger aspirant. The first time these ladies clashed, which was
not long in coming, my aunt met with a wit as sharp again as her own, and
never afterwards essayed an open tilt. The homage of men Dolly took as
Caesar received tribute, as a matter of course. The doctor himself rode
to the races beside the Manners coach, leaning gallantly over the door.
My lady held court in her father's box, received and dismissed, smiled
and frowned, with Courtenay as her master of ceremonies. Mr. Dulany was
one of the presidents of the Jockey Club that year, and his horse winning
the honours he presented her with his colours, scarlet and white, which
she graciously wore. The doctor swore he would import a horse the next
season on the chance of the privilege. My aunt was furious. I have
never mentioned her beauty because I never could see it. 'Twas a coarser
type than attracted me. She was then not greatly above six and thirty,
appearing young for that age, and she knew the value of lead in judicious
quantity. At that meet gentlemen came to her box only to tally of Miss
Manners, to marvel that one so young could have the 'bel air', to praise
her beauty and addresse, or to remark how well Mr. Durlany's red and
white became her. With all of which Mrs. Grafton was fain to agree, and
must even excel, until her small stock of patience was exhausted. To add
to her chagrin my aunt lost a pretty sum to the rector by Mr. Dulany's
horse. I came upon her after the race trying to coax her head-dress,
through her coach door, Mr. Allen having tight hold of her hand the
while.

"And so he thinks he has found a divinity, does: he?" I overheard her
saying: "I, for one, am heartily sick of Dr. Courtenay's motions. Were
he, to choose, a wench out of the King's passengers I'd warrant our
macaronies to compose odes to her eyebrows." And at that moment
perceiving me she added, "Why so disconsolate, my dear nephew? Miss
Dolly is the craze now, and will last about as long as another of the
doctor's whims. And then you shall have her to yourself."

"A pretty woman is ever the fashion, Aunt Caroline," I said.

"Hoity-toity," returned my aunt, who had by then succeeded in getting her
head-gear safe within; "the fashion, yes until a prettier comes along."

"There is small danger of that for the present," I said, smiling: "Surely
you can find no fault with this choice!"

"Gadzooks! If I were blind, sir, I think I might!" she cried
unguardedly.

"I will not dispute that, Aunt Caroline," I answered.

And as I rode off I heard her giving directions in no mild tone to the
coachman through Mr. Allen.

Perchance you did not know, my dears, that Annapolis had the first
theatre in all the colonies. And if you care to search through the heap
of Maryland Gazettes in the garret, I make no doubt you will come across
this announcement for a certain night in the spring of the year 1769:

       By Permission of his Excellency, the Governor,
          at the New Theatre in Annapolis,
      by the American Company of Comedians, on Monday
    next, being the 22nd of this Instant, will be performed

              ROMEO AND JULIET.

      (Romeo by a young Gentleman for his Diversion.)
            Likewise the Farce called

              MISS IN HER TEENS.

      To begin precisely at Seven of the Clock. Tickets
    to be had at the Printing Office. Box 10s. Pit 1s 6d.
       No Person to be admitted behind the Scenes.


The gentleman to perform Romeo was none other than Dr. Courtenay himself.
He had a gentlemanly passion for the stage, as was the fashion in those
days, and had organized many private theatricals. The town was in a
ferment over the event, boxes being taken a week ahead. The doctor
himself writ the epilogue, to be recited by the beautiful Mrs. Hallam,
who had inspired him the year before to compose that famous poem
beginning:

          "Around her see the Graces play,
          See Venus' Wanton doves,
          And in her Eye's Pellucid Ray
          See little Laughing Loves.
          Ye gods! 'Tis Cytherea's Face."


You may find that likewise in Mr. Green's newspaper.

The new theatre was finished in West Street that spring, the old one
having proven too small for our gay capital. 'Twas then the best in the
New World, the censor having pronounced it far above any provincial
playhouse he had seen abroad. The scenes were very fine, the boxes
carved and gilded in excellent good taste, and both pit and gallery
commodious. And we, too, had our "Fops' Alley," where our macaronies
ogled the fair and passed from box to box.

For that night of nights when the doctor acted I received an invitation
from Dolly to Mr. Marmaduke's box, and to supper afterward in Prince
George Street. When I arrived, the playhouse was lit with myriad
candles,--to be snuffed save the footlights presently,--and the tiers
were all brilliant with the costumes of ladies and gentlemen. Miss
Tayloe and Miss Dulany were of our party, with Fitzhugh and Worthington,
and Mr. Manners for propriety. The little fop spent his evening, by the
way, in a box opposite, where my Aunt Caroline gabbled to him and Mr.
Allen during the whole performance. My lady got more looks than any in
the house. She always drew admiration; indeed, but there had been much
speculation of late whether she favoured Dr. Courtenay or Fitzhugh, and
some had it that the doctor's acting would decide between the two.

When Romeo came upon the stage he was received with loud applause. But
my lady showed no interest,--not she, while the doctor fervently recited,
"Out of her favour, where I am in love." In the first orchard scene,
with the boldness of a practised lover, he almost ignored Mrs. Hallam
in the balcony. It seemed as though he cast his burning words and
languishing glances at my lady in the box, whereupon there was a deal of
nudging round about. Miss asked for her smelling salts, and declared the
place was stifling. But I think if the doctor had cherished a hope of
her affections he lost it when he arrived at the lines, "She speaks, yet
she says nothing." At that unhappy moment Miss Dorothy was deep in
conversation with Fitzhugh, the audible titter in the audience arousing
her. How she reddened when she perceived the faces turned her way!

"What was it, Betty?" she demanded quickly.

But Betty was not spiteful, and would not tell. Fitzhugh himself
explained, and to his sorrow, for during the rest of the evening she
would have nothing to do with him. Presently she turned to me. Glancing
upward to where Patty leaned on the rail between Will Fotheringay and
Singleton, she whispered:

"I wonder you can sit here so quiet, Richard. You are showing a deal of
self-denial."

"I am happy enough," I answered, surprised.

"I hear you have a rival," says she.

"I know I have a dozen," I answered.

"I saw Percy Singleton walking with her in Mr. Galloway's fields but
yesterday," said Dolly, "and as they came out upon the road they looked
as guilty as if I had surprised them arm in arm."

Now that she should think I cared for Patty never entered my head. I was
thrown all in a heap.

"You need not be so disturbed," whispers my lady. "Singleton has a
crooked mouth, and I credit Patty with ample sense to choose between you.
I adore her, Richard. I wish I had her sweet ways."

"But," I interrupted, when I was somewhat recovered, "why should you
think me in love with Patty? I have never been accused of that before."

"Oh, fie! You deny her?" says Dolly. "I did not think that of you,
Richard."

"You should know better," I replied, with some bitterness.

We were talking in low tones, Dolly with her head turned from the stage,
whence the doctor was flinging his impassioned speeches in vain. And
though the light fell not upon her face, I seemed to feel her looking me
through and through.

"You do not care for Patty?" she whispered. And I thought a quiver of
earnestness was in her voice. Her face was so close to mine that her
breath fanned my cheek.

"No," I said. "Why do you ask me? Have I ever been one to make
pretences?"

She turned away.

"But you," I said, bending to her ear, "is it Fitzhugh, Dorothy?"

I heard her laugh softly.

"No," said she, "I thought you might divine, sir."

Was it possible? And yet she had played so much with me that I dared not
risk the fire. She had too many accomplished gallants at her feet to
think of Richard, who had no novelty and no wit. I sat still, barely
conscious of the rising and falling voices beyond the footlights, feeling
only her living presence at my side. She spoke not another word until
the playhouse servants had relighted the chandeliers, and Dr. Courtenay
came in, flushed with triumph, for his mead of praise.

"And how went it, Miss Manners?" says he, very confident.

"Why, you fell over the orchard wall, doctor," retorts my lady. "La!
I believe I could have climbed it better myself."

And all he got was a hearty laugh for his pains, Mr. Marmaduke joining in
from the back of the box. And the story was at the Coffee House early on
the morrow.




CHAPTER XI

A FESTIVAL AND A PARTING

My grandfather and I were seated at table together. It was early June,
the birds were singing in the garden, and the sweet odours of the flowers
were wafted into the room.

"Richard," says he, when Scipio had poured his claret, "my illness
cheated you out of your festival last year. I dare swear you deem
yourself too old for birthdays now."

I laughed.

"So it is with lads," said Mr. Carvel; "they will rush into manhood as
heedless as you please. Take my counsel, boy, and remain young. Do not
cross the bridge before you have to. And I have been thinking that we
shall have your fete this year, albeit you are grown, and Miss Dolly is
the belle of the province. 'Tis like sunshine into my old heart to see
the lads and lasses again, and to hear the merry, merry fiddling. I will
have his new Excellency, who seems a good and a kindly man, and Lloyd and
Tilghman and Dulany and the rest, with their ladies, to sit with me. And
there will be plenty of punch and syllabub and sangaree, I warrant; and
tarts and jellies and custards, too, for the misses. Ring for Mrs.
Willis, my son."

Willis came with her curtsey to the old gentleman, who gave his order
then and there. He never waited for a fancy of this kind to grow cold.

"We shall all be children again, on that day, Mrs. Willis," says he.
"And I catch any old people about, they shall be thrust straight in the
town stocks, i' faith."

Willis made another curtsey.

"We missed it sorely, last year, please your honour," says she, and
departs smiling.

"And you shall have your Patty Swain, Richard," Mr. Carvel continued.
"Do you mind how you once asked the favour of inviting her in the place
of a present? Oons! I loved you for that, boy. 'Twas like a Carvel.
And I love that lass, Whig or no Whig. 'Pon my soul, I do. She hath
demureness and dignity, and suits me better than yon whimsical baggage
you are all mad over. I'll have Mr. Swain beside me, too. I'll warrant
I'd teach his daughter loyalty in a day, and I had again your years and
your spirit!"

I have but to close my eyes, and my fancy takes me back to that birthday
festival. Think of it, my dears! Near threescore years are gone since
then, when this old man you call grandfather, and some--bless
me!--great-grandfather, was a lusty lad like Comyn here. But his hand is
steady as he writes these words and his head clear, because he hath not
greatly disabused that life which God has given him.

How can I, tho' her face and form are painted on my memory, tell you what
fair, pert Miss Dorothy was at that time'! Ay, I know what you would
say: that Sir Joshua's portrait hangs above, executed but the year after,
and hung at the second exhibition of the Royal Academy. As I look upon
it now, I say that no whit of its colour is overcharged. And there is
likewise Mr. Peale's portrait, done much later. I answer that these
great masters have accomplished what poor, human art can do. But Nature
hath given us a better picture. "Come hither, Bess! Yes, truly, you
have Dolly's hair, with the very gloss upon it. But fashions have
changed, my child, and that is not as Dolly wore it." Whereupon Bess
goes to the portrait, and presently comes back to give me a start.
And then we go hand in hand up the stairs of Calvert House even to the
garret, where an old cedar chest is laid away under the eaves. Bess,
the minx, well knows it, and takes out a prim little gown with the white
fading yellow, and white silk mits without fingers, and white stockings
with clocks, and a gauze cap, with wings and streamers, that sits saucily
on the black locks; and the lawn-embroidered apron; and such dainty,
high-heeled slippers with the pearls still a-glisten upon the buckles.
Away she flies to put them on. And then my heart gives a leap to see my
Dorothy back again,--back again as she was that June afternoon we went
together to my last birthday party, her girlish arms bare to the elbow,
and the lace about her slender throat. Yes, Bess hath the very tilt of
her chin, the regal grace of that slim figure, and the deep blue eyes.

"Grandfather, dear, you are crushing the gown!"

And so the fire is not yet gone out of this old frame.

Ah, yes, there they are again, those unpaved streets of old Annapolis
arched with great trees on either side. And here is Dolly, holding her
skirt in one hand and her fan in the other, and I in a brave blue coat,
and pumps with gold buttons, and a cocked hat of the newest fashion.
I had met her leaning over the gate in Prince George Street. And, what
was strange for her, so deep in thought that she jumped when I spoke her
name.

"Dorothy, I have come for you to walk to the party, as we used when we
were children."

"As we used when we were children!" cried she. And flinging wide the
gate, stretched out her hand for me to take. "And you are eighteen years
to-day! It seems but last year when we skipped hand in hand to Marlboro'
Street with Mammy Lucy behind us. Are you coming, mammy?" she called.

"Yes, mistis, I'se comin'," said a voice from behind the golden-rose
bushes, and out stepped Aunt Lucy in a new turban, making a curtsey to
me. "La, Marse Richard!" said she, "to think you'se growed to be a
fine gemman! 'Taint but t'other day you was kissin' Miss Dolly on de
plantation."

"It seems longer than that to me, Aunt Lucy," I answered, laughing at
Dolly's blushes.

"You have too good a memory, mammy," said my lady, withdrawing her
fingers from mine.

"Bress you, honey! De ole woman doan't forgit some things."

And she fell back to a respectful six paces.

"Those were happy times," said Dorothy. Then the little sigh became a
laugh. "I mean to enjoy myself to-day, Richard. But I fear I shall not
see as much of you as I used. You are old enough to play the host, now."

"You shall see as much as you will."

"Where have you been of late, sir? In Gloucester Street?"

"'Tis your own fault, Dolly. You are changeable as the sky,--to-day
sunny, and to-morrow cold. I am sure of my welcome in Gloucester
Street."

She tripped a step as we turned the corner, and came closer to my side.

"You must learn to take me as you find me, dear Richard. To-day I am in
a holiday humour."

Some odd note in her tone troubled me, and I glanced at her quickly. She
was a constant wonder and puzzle to me. After that night at the theatre
my hopes had risen for the hundredth time, but I had gone to Prince
George Street on the morrow to meet another rebuff--and Fitzhugh. So I
had learned to interpret her by other means than words, and now her mood
seemed reckless rather than merry.

"Are you not happy, Dolly?" I asked abruptly.

She laughed. "What a silly question!" she said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I believe you are not."

In surprise she looked up at me, and then down at the pearls upon her
satin slippers.

"I am going with you to your birthday festival, Richard. Could we wish
for more? I am as happy as you."

"That may well be, for I might be happier."

Again her eyes met mine, and she hummed an air. So we came to the gate,
beside which stood Diomedes and Hugo in the family claret-red. A coach
was drawn up, and another behind it, and we went down the leafy walk in
the midst of a bevy of guests.

We have no such places nowadays, my dears, as was my grandfather's. The
ground between the street and the brick wall in the rear was a great
stretch, as ample in acreage as many a small country-place we have in
these times. The house was on the high land in front, hedged in by old
trees, and thence you descended by stately tiers until you came to the
level which held the dancers. Beyond that, and lower still, a lilied
pond widened out of the sluggish brook with a cool and rustic
spring-house at one end. The spring-house was thatched, with windows
looking out upon the water. Long after, when I went to France, I was
reminded of the shy beauty of this part of my old home by the secluded
pond of the Little Trianon. So was it that King Louis's Versailles had
spread its influence a thousand leagues to our youthful continent.

My grandfather sat in his great chair on the sward beside the fiddlers,
his old friends gathering around him, as in former years.

"And this is the miss that hath already broken half the bachelor hearts
in town!" said he, gayly. "What was my prediction, Miss Dolly, when you
stepped your first dance at Carvel Hall?"

"Indeed, you do me wrong, Mr. Carvel!"

"And I were a buck, you would not break mine, I warrant, unless it were
tit for tat," said my grandfather; thereby putting me to more confusion
than Dolly, who laughed with the rest.

"'Tis well to boast, Mr. Carvel, when we are out of the battle," cried
Mr. Lloyd.

Dolly was carried off immediately, as I expected. The doctor and
Worthington and Fitzhugh were already there, and waiting. I stood by Mr.
Carvel's chair, receiving the guests, and presently came Mr. Swain and
Patty.

"Heigho!" called Mr. Carvel, when he saw her; "here is the young lady
that hath my old affections. You are right welcome, Mr. Swain. Scipio,
another chair! 'Tis not over the wall any more, Miss Patty, with our
flowered India silk. But I vow I love you best with your etui."

Patty, too, was carried off, for you may be sure that Will Fotheringay
and Singleton were standing on one foot and then the other, waiting for
Mr. Carvel to have done. Next arrived my aunt, in a wide calash and a
wider hoop, her stays laced so that she limped, and her hair wonderfully
and fearfully arranged by her Frenchman. Neither she nor Grafton was
slow to shower congratulations upon my grandfather and myself. Mr.
Marmaduke went through the ceremony after them. Dorothy's mother drew me
aside. As long as I could remember her face had been one that revealed a
life's disappointment. But to-day I thought it bore a trace of a deeper
anxiety.

"How well I recall this day, eighteen years ago, Richard," she said.
"And how proud your dear mother was that she had given a son to Captain
Jack. She had prayed for a son. I hope you will always do your parents
credit, my dear boy. They were both dear, dear friends of mine."

My Aunt Caroline's harsher voice interrupted her.

"Gadzooks, ma'am!" she cried, as she approached us, "I have never in my
life laid eyes upon such beauty as your daughter's. You will have to
take her home, Mrs. Manners, to do her justice. You owe it her, ma'am.
Come, nephew, off with you, and head the minuet with Miss Dolly!"

My grandfather was giving the word to the fiddlers. But whether a desire
to cross my aunt held me back, or a sense of duty to greet the guests not
already come, or a vague intuition of some impending news drawn from Mrs.
Manners and Dorothy, I know not. Mr. Fitzhugh was easily persuaded to
take my place, and presently I slipped unnoticed into a shaded seat on
the side of the upper terrace, whence I could see the changing figures on
the green. And I thought of the birthday festivals Dolly and I had spent
here, almost since we were of an age to walk. Wet June days, when the
broad wings of the house rang with the sound of silver laughter and
pattering feet, and echoed with music from the hall; and merry June days,
when the laughter rippled among the lilacs, and pansies and poppies and
sweet peas were outshone by bright gowns and brighter faces. And then,
as if to complete the picture of the past, my eye fell upon our mammies
modestly seated behind the group of older people, Aunt Hester and Aunt
Lucy, their honest, black faces aglow with such unselfish enjoyment as
they alone could feel.

How easily I marked Dorothy among the throng!

Other girls found it hard to compress the spirits of youth within the
dignity of a minuet, and thought of the childish romp of former years.
Not so my lady. Long afterwards I saw her lead a ball with the first
soldier and gentleman of the land, but on that Tuesday she carried
herself full as well, so well that his Excellency and the gentlemen about
him applauded heartily. As the strains died away and the couples moved
off among the privet-lined paths, I went slowly down the terrace.
Dorothy had come up to speak to her mother, Dr. Courtenay lingering
impatient at her side. And though her colour glowed deeper, and the wind
had loosed a wisp of her hair, she took his Excellency's compliments
undisturbed. Colonel Sharpe, our former governor, who now made his home
in the province, sat beside him.

"Now where a-deuce were you, Richard?" said he. "You have missed as
pleasing a sight as comes to a man in a lifetime. Why were you not here
to see Miss Manners tread a minuet? My word! Terpsichore herself could
scarce have made it go better."

"I saw the dance, sir, from a safe distance," I replied.

"I'll warrant!" said he, laughing, while Dolly shot me a wayward glance
from under her long lashes. "I'll warrant your eyes were fast on her
from beginning to end. Come, sir, confess!"

His big frame shook with the fun of it, for none in the colony could be
jollier than he on holiday occasions: and the group of ladies and
gentlemen beside him caught the infection, so that I was sore put to it.

"Will your Excellency confess likewise?" I demanded.

"So I will, Richard, and make patent to all the world that she hath the
remains of that shuttlecock, my heart."

Up gets his Excellency (for so we still called him) and makes Dolly a low
reverence, kissing the tips of her white fingers. My lady drops a mock
curtsey in return.

"Your Excellency can do no less than sue for a dance," drawled Dr.
Courtenay.

"And no more, I fear, sir, not being so nimble as I once was. I resign
in your favour, doctor," said Colonel Sharpe.

Dr. Courtenay made his bow, his hat tucked under his arm. But he had
much to learn of Miss Manners if he thought that even one who had been
governor of the province could command her. The music was just begun
again, and I making off in the direction of Patty Swain, when I was
brought up as suddenly as by a rope. A curl was upon Dorothy's lips.

"The dance belongs to Richard, doctor," she said.

"Egad, Courtenay, there you have a buffer!" cried Colonel Sharpe, as the
much-discomfited doctor bowed with a very ill grace; while I, in no small
bewilderment, walked off with Dorothy. And a parting shot of the
delighted colonel brought the crimson to my face. Like the wind or April
weather was my lady, and her ways far beyond such a great simpleton as I.

"So I am ever forced to ask you to dance!" said Dolly.

"What were you about, moping off alone, with a party in your
honour, sir?"

"I was watching you, as I told his Excellency."

"Oh, fie!" she cried. "Why don't you assert yourself, Richard? There
was a time when you gave me no peace."

"And then you rebuked me for dangling," I retorted.

Up started the music, the fiddlers bending over their bows with flushed
faces, having dipped into the cool punch in the interval. Away flung my
lady to meet Singleton, while I swung Patty, who squeezed my hand in
return. And soon we were in the heat of it,--sober minuet no longer, but
romp and riot, the screams of the lasses a-mingle with our own laughter,
as we spun them until they were dizzy. My brain was a-whirl as well, and
presently I awoke to find Dolly pinching my arm.

"Have you forgotten me, Richard?" she whispered. "My other hand, sir.
It is I down the middle."

Down we flew between the laughing lines, Dolly tripping with her head
high, and then back under the clasped hands in the midst of a fire of
raillery. Then the music stopped. Some strange exhilaration was in
Dorothy.

"Do you remember the place where I used to play fairy godmother, and wind
the flowers into my hair?" said she.

What need to ask?

"Come!" she commanded decisively.

"With all my heart!" I exclaimed, wondering at this new caprice.

"If we can but slip away unnoticed, they will never find us there," she
said. And led the way herself, silent. At length we came to the damp
shade where the brook dived under the corner of the wall. I stooped to
gather the lilies of the valley, and she wove them into her hair as of
old. Suddenly she stopped, the bunch poised in her hand.

"Would you miss me if I went away, Richard?" she asked, in a low voice.

"What do you mean, Dolly?" I cried, my voice failing. "Just that," said
she.

"I would miss you, and sorely, tho' you give me trouble enough."

"Soon I shall not be here to trouble you, Richard. Papa has decided that
we sail next week, on the Annapolis, for home."

"Home!" I gasped. "England?"

"I am going to make my bow to royalty," replied she, dropping a deep
curtsey. "Your Majesty, this is Miss Manners, of the province of
Maryland!"

"But next week!" I repeated, with a blank face. "Surely you cannot be
ready for the Annapolis!"

"McAndrews has instructions to send our things after," said she. "There!
You are the first person I have told. You should feel honoured, sir."

I sat down upon the grass by the brook, and for the moment the sap of
life seemed to have left me. Dolly continued to twine the flowers.
Through the trees sifted the voices and the music, sounds of happiness
far away. When I looked up again, she was gazing into the water.

"Are you glad to go?" I asked.

"Of course," answered the minx, readily. "I shall see the world, and
meet people of consequence."

"So you are going to England to meet people of consequence!" I cried
bitterly.

"How provincial you are, Richard! What people of consequence have we
here? The Governor and the honourable members of his Council, forsooth!
There is not a title save his Excellency's in our whole colony, and
Virginia is scarce better provided."

"In spite of my feeling I was fain to laugh at this, knowing well that
she had culled it all from little Mr. Marmaduke himself.

"All in good time," said I. "We shall have no lack of noted men
presently."

"Mere two-penny heroes," she retorted. "I know your great men, such as
Mr. Henry and Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams."

I began pulling up the grass savagely by the roots.

"I'll lay a hundred guineas you have no regrets at leaving any of us, my
fine miss!" I cried, getting to my feet. "You would rather be a lady of
fashion than have the love of an honest man,--you who have the hearts of
too many as it is."

Her eyes lighted, but with mirth. Laughing, she chose a little bunch of
the lilies and worked them into my coat.

"Richard, you silly goose!" she said; "I dote upon seeing you in a
temper."

I stood between anger and God knows what other feelings, now starting
away, now coming back to her. But I always came back.

"You have ever said you would marry an earl, Dolly," I said sadly.
"I believe you do not care for any of us one little bit."

She turned away, so that for the moment I could not see her face, then
looked at me with exquisite archness over her shoulder. The low tones of
her voice were of a richness indescribable. 'Twas seldom she made use of
them.

"You will be coming to Oxford, Richard."

"I fear not, Dolly," I replied soberly. "I fear not, now. Mr. Carvel is
too feeble for me to leave him."

At that she turned to me, another mood coming like a gust of wind on the
Chesapeake.

"Oh, how I wish they were all like you!" she cried, with a stamp of her
foot. "Sometimes I despise gallantry. I hate the smooth compliments of
your macaronies. I thank Heaven you are big and honest and clumsy and--"

"And what, Dorothy?" I asked, bewildered.

"And stupid," said she. "Now take me back, sir."

We had not gone thirty paces before we heard a hearty bass voice singing:

       "'It was a lover and his lass,
        With a hey, with a ho, with a hey nonino.'"

And there was Colonel Sharpe, straying along among the privet hedges.


And so the morning of her sailing came, so full of sadness for me. Why
not confess, after nigh threescore years, that break of day found me
pacing the deserted dock. At my back, across the open space, was the
irregular line of quaint, top-heavy shops since passed away, their
sightless windows barred by solid shutters of oak. The good ship
Annapolis, which was to carry my playmate to broader scenes, lay among
the shipping, in the gray roads just quickening with returning light.
How my heart ached that morning none shall ever know. But, as the sun
shot a burning line across the water, a new salt breeze sprang up and
fanned a hope into flame. 'Twas the very breeze that was to blow Dorothy
down the bay. Sleepy apprentices took down the shutters, and polished
the windows until they shone again; and chipper Mr. Denton Jacques, who
did such a thriving business opposite, presently appeared to wish me a
bright good morning.

I knew that Captain Waring proposed to sail at ten of the clock; but
after breakfasting, I was of two minds whether to see the last of Miss
Dorothy, foreseeing a levee in her honour upon the ship. And so it
proved. I had scarce set out in a pungy from the dock, when I perceived
a dozen boats about the packet; and when I thrust my shoulders through
the gangway, there was the company gathered at the mainmast. They made a
gay bit of colour,--Dr. Courtenay in a green coat laced with fine
Mechlin, Fitzhugh in claret and silk stockings of a Quaker gray, and the
other gentlemen as smartly drest. The Dulany girls and the Fotheringay
girls, and I know not how many others, were there to see their friend off
for home.

In the midst of them was Dorothy, in a crimson silk capuchin, for we had
had one of our changes of weather. It was she who spied me as I was
drawing down the ladder again.

"It is Richard!" I heard her cry. "He has come at last."

I gripped the rope tightly, sprang to the deck, and faced her as she came
out of the group, her lips parted, and the red of her cheeks vying with
the hood she wore. I took her hand silently.

"I had given you over, Richard," she said, her eyes looking reproachfully
into mine. "Another ten minutes, and I should not have seen you."

Indeed, the topsails were already off the caps, the captain on deck, and
the men gathered at the capstan.

"Have you not enough to wish you good-by, Dolly?" I asked.

"There must be a score of them," said my lady, making a face. "But I
wish to talk to you."

Mr. Marmaduke, however, had no notion of allowing a gathering in his
daughter's honour to be broken up. It had been wickedly said of him,
when the news of his coming departure got around, that he feared Dorothy
would fall in love with some provincial beau before he could get her
within reach of a title. When he observed me talking to her, he hurried
away from the friends come to see his wife (he had none himself), and
seizing me by the arm implored me to take good care of my dear
grandfather, and to write them occasionally of the state of his health,
and likewise how I fared.

"I think Dorothy will miss you more than any of them, Richard," said he.
"Will you not, my dear?"

But she was gone. I, too, left him without ceremony, to speak to Mrs.
Manners, who was standing apart, looking shoreward. She started when I
spoke, and I saw that tears were in her eyes.

"Are you coming back soon, Mrs. Manners?" I asked.

"Oh, Richard! I don't know," she answered, with a little choke in her
voice. "I hope it will be no longer than a year, for we are leaving all
we hold dear for a very doubtful pleasure."

She bade me write to them, as Mr. Marmaduke had, only she was sincere.
Then the mate came, with his hand to his cap, respectfully to inform
visitors that the anchor was up and down. Albeit my spirits were low,
'twas no small entertainment to watch the doctor and his rivals at their
adieus. Courtenay had at his command an hundred subterfuges to outwit
his fellows, and so manoeuvred that he was the last of them over the
side. As for me, luckily, I was not worth a thought. But as the doctor
leaned over her hand, I vowed in my heart that if Dorothy was to be
gained only in such a way I would not stoop to it. And in my heart I
doubted it. I heard Dr. Courtenay hint, looking meaningly at her cloak,
that some of his flowers would not have appeared amiss there.

"Why, doctor," says my lady aloud, with a side glance at me, "the wisdom
of Solomon might not choose out of twenty baskets."

And this was all the thanks he got for near a boat-load of roses! When
at length the impatient mate had hurried him off, Dolly turned to me. It
was not in me to say more than:

"Good-by, Dorothy. And do not forget your old playmate. He will never
forget you."

We stood within the gangway. With a quick movement she threw open her
cloak, and pinned to her gown I saw a faded bunch of lilies of the
valley.

I had but the time to press her hand. The boatswain's pipe whistled, and
the big ship was already sliding in the water as I leaped into my pungy,
which Hugo was holding to the ladder. We pulled off to where the others
waited.

But the Annapolis sailed away down the bay, and never another glimpse we
caught of my lady.




CHAPTER XII

NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY

If perchance, my dears, there creeps into this chronicle too much of an
old man's heart, I know he will be forgiven. What life ever worth living
has been without its tender attachment? Because, forsooth, my hair is
white now, does Bess flatter herself I do not know her secret? Or does
Comyn believe that these old eyes can see no farther than the spectacles
before them? Were it not for the lovers, my son, satins and broadcloths
had never been invented. And were it not for the lovers, what joys and
sorrows would we lack in our lives!

That was a long summer indeed. And tho' Wilmot House was closed, I often
rode over of a morning when the dew was on the grass. It cheered me to
smoke a pipe with old McAndrews, Mr. Manners's factor, who loved to talk
of Miss Dorothy near as much as I. He had served her grandfather, and
people said that had it not been for McAndrews, the Manners fortune had
long since been scattered, since Mr. Marmaduke knew nothing of anything
that he should. I could not hear from my lady until near the first of
October, and so I was fain to be content with memories--memories and hard
work. For I had complete charge of the plantation now.

My Uncle Grafton came twice or thrice, but without his family, Aunt
Caroline and Philip having declared their independence. My uncle's
manner to me was now of studied kindness, and he was at greater pains
than before to give me no excuse for offence. I had little to say to
him. He spent his visits reading to Mr. Carvel, who sat in his chair all
the day long. Mr. Allen came likewise, to perform the same office.

My contempt for the rector was grown more than ever. On my grandfather's
account, however, I refrained from quarrelling with him. And, when we
were alone, my plain speaking did not seem to anger him, or affect him in
any way. Others came, too. Such was the affection Mr. Carvel's friends
bore him that they did not desert him when he was no longer the companion
he had been in former years. We had more company than the summer before.

In the autumn a strange thing happened. When we had taken my grandfather
to the Hall in June, his dotage seemed to settle upon him. He became a
trembling old man, at times so peevish that we were obliged to summon
with an effort what he had been. He was suspicious and fault-finding
with Scipio and the other servants, though they were never so busy for
his wants. Mrs. Willis's dainties were often untouched, and he would
frequently sit for hours between slumber and waking, or mumble to himself
as I read the prints. But about the time of the equinoctial a great gale
came out of the south so strongly that the water rose in the river over
the boat landing; and the roof was torn from one of the curing-sheds.
The next morning dawned clear, and brittle, and blue. To my great
surprise, Mr. Carvel sent for me to walk with him about the place, that
he might see the damage with his own eyes. A huge walnut had fallen
across the drive, and when he came upon it he stopped abruptly.

"Old friend!" he cried, "have you succumbed? After all these years have
you dropped from the weight of a blow?" He passed his hand caressingly
along the trunk, and scarce ever had I seen him so affected. In truth,
for the instant I thought him deranged. He raised his cane above his
shoulder and struck the bark so heavily that the silver head sunk deep
into the wood. "Look you, Richard," he said, the water coming into his
eyes, "look you, the heart of it is gone, lad; and when the heart is
rotten 'tis time for us to go. That walnut was a life friend, my son.
We have grown together," he continued, turning from me to the giant and
brushing his cheeks, "but by God's good will we shall not die so, for my
heart is still as young as the days when you were sprouting."

And he walked back to the house more briskly than he had come, refusing,
for the first time, my arm. And from that day, I say, he began to mend.
The lacing of red came again to his cheeks, and before we went back to
town he had walked with me to Master Dingley's tavern on the highroad,
and back.

We moved into Marlboro' Street the first part of November. I had seen my
lady off for England, wearing my faded flowers, the panniers of the fine
gentleman in a neglected pile at her cabin door. But not once had she
deigned to write me. It was McAndrews who told me of her safe arrival.
In Annapolis rumours were a-flying of conquests she had already made. I
found Betty Tayloe had had a letter, filled with the fashion in caps and
gowns, and the mention of more than one noble name. All of this being,
for unknown reasons, sacred, I was read only part of the postscript, in
which I figured: "The London Season was done almost before we arrived,"
so it ran. "We had but the Opportunity to pay our Humble Respects to
their Majesties; and appear at a few Drum-Majors and Garden Fetes. Now
we are off to Brighthelmstone, and thence, so Papa says, to Spa and the
Continent until the end of January. I am pining for news of Maryland,
dearest Betty. Address me in care of Mr. Ripley, Barrister, of Lincoln's
Inn, and bid Richard Carvel write me."

"Which does not look as if she were coming back within the year," said
Betty, as she poured me a dish of tea.

Alas, no! But I did not write. I tried and failed. And then I tried to
forget. I was constant at all the gayeties, gave every miss in town a
share of my attention, rode to hounds once a week at Whitehall or the
South River Club with a dozen young beauties. But cantering through the
winter mists 'twas Dolly, in her red riding-cloak and white beaver, I saw
beside me. None of them had her seat in the saddle, and none of them her
light hand on the reins. And tho' they lacked not fire and skill, they
had not my lady's dash and daring to follow over field and fallow, stream
and searing, and be in at the death with heightened colour, but never a
look away.

Then came the first assembly of the year. I got back from Bentley Manor,
where I had been a-visiting the Fotheringays, just in time to call for
Patty in Gloucester Street.

"Have you heard the news from abroad, Richard?" she asked, as I handed
her into my chariot.

"Never a line," I replied.

"Pho!" exclaimed Patty; "you tell me that! Where have you been hiding?
Then you shall not have it from me."

I had little trouble, however, in persuading her. For news was a rare
luxury in those days, and Patty was plainly uncomfortable until she
should have it out.

"I would not give you the vapours to-night for all the world, Richard,"
she exclaimed. "But if you must,--Dr. Courtenay has had a letter from
Mr. Manners, who says that Dolly is to marry his Grace of Chartersea.
There now!"

"And I am not greatly disturbed," I answered, with a fine, careless air.

The lanthorn on the chariot was burning bright. And I saw Patty look at
me, and laugh.

"Indeed!" says she; "what a sex is that to which you belong. How ready
are men to deny us at the first whisper! And I thought you the most
constant of all. For my part, I credit not a word of it. 'Tis one of
Mr. Marmaduke's lies and vanities."

"And for my part, I think it true as gospel," I cried. "Dolly always
held a coronet above her colony, and all her life has dreamed of a duke."

"Nay," answered Patty, more soberly; "nay, you do her wrong. You will
discover one day that she is loyal to the core, tho' she has a fop of a
father who would serve his Grace's chocolate. We are all apt to talk,
my dear, and to say what we do not mean, as you are doing."

"Were I to die to-morrow, I would repeat it," I exclaimed. But I liked
Patty the better for what she had said.

"And there is more news, of less import," she continued, as I was silent.
"The Thunderer dropped anchor in the roads to-day, and her officers will
be at the assembly. And Betty tells me there is a young lord among
them,--la! I have clean forgot the string of adjectives she used,--but
she would have had me know he was as handsome as Apollo, and so dashing
and diverting as to put Courtenay and all our wits to shame. She dined
with him at the Governor's."

I barely heard her, tho' I had seen the man-o'-war in the harbour as I
sailed in that afternoon.

The assembly hall was filled when we arrived, aglow with candles and
a-tremble with music, the powder already flying, and the tables in the
recesses at either end surrounded by those at the cards. A lively scene,
those dances at the old Stadt House, but one I love best to recall with a
presence that endeared it to me. The ladies in flowered aprons and caps
and brocades and trains, and the gentlemen in brilliant coats, trimmed
with lace and stiffened with buckram. That night, as Patty had
predicted, there was a smart sprinkling of uniforms from the Thunderer.
One of those officers held my eye. He was as well-formed a lad, or man
(for he was both), as it had ever been my lot to see. He was neither
tall nor short, but of a good breadth. His fair skin was tanned by the
weather, and he wore his own wavy hair powdered, as was just become the
fashion, and tied with a ribbon behind.

"Mercy, Richard, that must be his Lordship. Why, his good looks are all
Betty claimed for them!" exclaimed Patty. Mr. Lloyd, who was standing
by, overheard her, and was vastly amused at her downright way.

"I will fetch him directly, Miss Swain," said he, "as I have done for a
dozen ladies before you." And fetch him he did.

"Miss Swain, this is my Lord Comyn," said he. "Your Lordship, one of the
boasts of our province."

Patty grew red as the scarlet with which his Lordship's coat was lined.
She curtseyed, while he made a profound bow.

"What! Another boast, Mr. Lloyd!" he cried. "Miss Swain is the tenth
I have met. But I vow they excel as they proceed."

"Then you must meet no more, my Lord," said Patty, laughing at Mr.
Lloyd's predicament.

"Egad, then, I will not," declared Comyn. "I protest I am satisfied."

Then I was presented. He had won me on the instant with his open smile
and frank, boyish manner.

"And this is young Mr. Carvel, whom I hear wins every hunt in the
colony?" said he.

"I fear you have been misinformed, my Lord," I replied, flashing with
pleasure nevertheless.

"Nay, my Lord," Mr. Lloyd struck in; "Richard could ride down the devil
himself, and he were a fox. You will see for yourself to-morrow."

"I pray we may not start the devil," said his Lordship; "or I shall be
content to let Mr. Carvel run him down."

This Comyn was a man after my own fancy, as, indeed, he took the fancy
of every one at the ball. Though a viscount in his own right, he gave
himself not half the airs over us provincials as did many of his
messmates. Even Mr. Jacques, who was sour as last year's cider over the
doings of Parliament, lost his heart, and asked why we were not favoured
in America with more of his sort.

By a great mischance Lord Comyn had fallen into the tender clutches of my
Aunt Caroline. It seemed she had known his uncle, the Honourable Arthur
Comyn, in New York; and now she undertook to be responsible for his
Lordship's pleasure at Annapolis, that he might meet only those of the
first fashion. Seeing him talking to Patty, my aunt rose abruptly from
her loo and made toward us, all paint and powder and patches, her chin in
the air, which barely enabled her to look over Miss Swain's head.

"My Lord," she cries, "I will show you our colonial reel, which is about
to begin, and I warrant you is gayer than any dance you have at home."

"Your very devoted, Mrs. Carvel," says his Lordship, with a bow, "but
Miss Swain has done me the honour."

"O Lud!" cries my aunt, sweeping the room, "I vow I cannot keep pace with
the misses nowadays. Is she here?"

"She was but a moment since, ma'am," replied Comyn, instantly, with a
mischievous look at me, while poor Patty stood blushing not a yard
distant.

There were many who overheard, and who used their fans and their napkins
to hide their laughter at the very just snub Mrs. Grafton had received.
And I wondered at the readiness with which he had read her character,
liking him all the better. But my aunt was not to be disabled by this,
--not she. After the dance she got hold of him, keeping him until certain
designing ladies with daughters took him away; their names charity
forbids me to mention. But in spite of them all he contrived to get
Patty for supper, when I took Betty Tayloe, and we were very merry at
table together. His Lordship proved more than able to take care of
himself, and contrived to send Philip about his business when he pulled
up a chair beside us. He drank a health to Miss Swain, and another to
Miss Tayloe, and was on the point of filling a third glass to the ladies
of Maryland, when he caught himself and brought his hand down on the
table.

"Gad's life!" cried he, "but I think she's from Maryland, too!"

"Who?" demanded the young ladies, in a breath.

But I knew.

"Who!" exclaimed Comyn. "Who but Miss Dorothy Manners! Isn't she from
Maryland?" And marking our astonished nods, he continued: "Why, she
descended upon Mayfair when they were so weary for something to worship,
and they went mad over her in a s'ennight. I give you Miss Manners!"

"And you know her!" exclaimed Patty, her voice quivering with excitement.

"Faith!" said his Lordship, laughing. "For a whole month I was her most
devoted, as were we all at Almack's. I stayed until the last minute for
a word with her,--which I never got, by the way,--and paid near a guinea
a mile for a chaise to Portsmouth as a consequence. Already she has had
her choice from a thousand a year up, and I tell you our English ladies
are green with envy."

I was stunned, you may be sure. And yet, I might have expected it.

"If your Lordship has left your heart in England," said Betty, with a
smile, "I give you warning you must not tell our ladies here of it."

"I care not who knows it, Miss Tayloe," he cried. That fustian,
insincerity, was certainly not one of his faults. "I care not who knows
it. To pass her chariot is to have your heart stolen, and you must needs
run after and beg mercy. But, ladies," he added, his eye twinkling;
"having seen the women of your colony, I marvel no longer at Miss
Manners's beauty."

He set us all a-laughing.

"I fear you were not born a diplomat, sir," says Patty. "You agree that
we are beautiful, yet to hear that one of us is more so is small
consolation."

"We men turn as naturally to Miss Manners as plants to the sun, ma'am,"
he replied impulsively. "Yet none of us dare hope for alliance with so
brilliant and distant an object. I make small doubt those are Mr.
Carvel's sentiments, and still he seems popular enough with the ladies.
How now, sir? How now, Mr. Carvel? You have yet to speak on so tender
a subject."

My eyes met Patty's.

"I will be no more politic than you, my Lord," I said boldly, "nor will
I make a secret of it that I adore Miss Manners full as much."

"Bravo, Richard!" cries Patty; and "Good!" cries his Lordship, while
Betty claps her hands. And then Comyn swung suddenly round in his chair.

"Richard Carvel!" says he. "By the seven chimes I have heard her mention
your name. The devil fetch my memory!"

"My name!" I exclaimed, in surprise, and prodigiously upset.

"Yes," he answered, with his hand to his head; "some such thought was in
my mind this afternoon when I heard of your riding. Stay! I have it! I
was at Ampthill, Ossory's place, just before I left. Some insupportable
coxcomb was boasting a marvellous run with the hounds nigh across
Hertfordshire, and Miss Manners brought him up with a round turn and a
half hitch by relating one of your exploits, Richard Carvel. And take my
word on't she got no small applause. She told how you had followed a
fox over one of your rough provincial counties, which means three of
Hertfordshire, with your arm broken, by Heaven! and how they lifted you
off at the death. And, Mr. Carvel," said my Lord, generously, looking at
my flushed face, "you must give me your hand for that."

So Dorothy in England had thought of me at least. But what booted it if
she were to marry a duke! My thoughts began to whirl over all Comyn had
said of her so that I scarce heard a question Miss Tayloe had put.

"Marry Chartersea! That profligate pig!" Comyn was saying. "She would
as soon marry a chairman or a chimneysweep, I'm thinking. Why, Miss
Tayloe, Sir Charles Grandison himself would scarce suit her!"

"Good lack!" said Betty, "I think Sir Charles would be the very last for
Dorothy."





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill

Volume 3.


XIII.   Mr. Allen shows his Hand
XIV.   The Volte Coupe
XV.    Of which the Rector has the Worst
XVI.   In which Some Things are made Clear
XVII.   South River
XVIII.  The Black Moll
XIX.   A Man of Destiny



CHAPTER XIII

MR. ALLEN SHOWS HIS HAND

So Dorothy's beauty had taken London by storm, even as it had conquered
Annapolis! However, 'twas small consolation to me to hear his Grace of
Chartersea called a pig and a profligate while better men danced her
attendance in Mayfair. Nor, in spite of what his Lordship had said, was
I quite easy on the score of the duke. It was in truth no small honour
to become a duchess. If Mr. Marmaduke had aught to say, there was an end
to hope. She would have her coronet. But in that hour of darkness I
counted upon my lady's spirit.

Dr. Courtenay came to the assembly very late, with a new fashion
of pinchbeck buckles on his pumps and a new manner of taking snuff.
(I caught Fotheringay practising this by the stairs shortly after.)
Always an important man, the doctor's prominence had been increased that
day by the letter he had received. He was too thorough a courtier to
profess any grief over Miss Manners's match, and went about avowing that
he had always predicted a duke for Miss Dorothy. And he drew a deal of
pleasure from the curiosity of those who begged but one look at the
letter. Show it, indeed! For no consideration. A private communication
from one gentleman to another must be respected. Will Fotheringay swore
the doctor was a sly dog, and had his own reasons for keeping it to
himself.

The doctor paid his compliment to the captain of the Thunderer, and to
his Lordship; hoped that he would see them at the meet on the morrow,
tho' his gout forbade his riding to hounds. He saluted me in the most
friendly way, for I played billiards with him at the Coffee House now,
and he won my money. He had pronounced my phaeton to be as well
appointed as any equipage in town, and had done me the honour to
drive out with me on several occasions. It was Betty that brought
him humiliation that evening.

"What do you think of the soar our Pandora hath taken, Miss Betty?"
says he. "From a Maryland manor to a ducal palace. 'Tis a fable, egad!
No less!"

"Indeed, I think it is," retorted Betty. "Mark me, doctor, Dorothy will
not put up an instant with a roue and a brute."

"A roue!" cries he, "and a brute! What the plague, Miss Tayloe!
I vow I do not understand you."

"Then ask my Lord Comyn, who knows your Duke of Chartersea," said Betty.

Dr. Courtenay's expression was worth a pistole.

"Comyn know him!" he repeated.

"That he does," replied Betty, laughing. "His Lordship says Chartersea
is a pig and a profligate, and I remember not what else. And that Dolly
will not look at him. And so little Mr. Marmaduke may go a-hunting for
another title."

No wonder I had little desire for dancing that night! I wandered out of
the assembly-room and through the silent corridors of the Stadt House,
turning over and over again what I had heard, and picturing Dorothy
reigning over the macaronies of St. James's Street. She had said nothing
of this in her letter to Betty, and had asked me to write to her. But
now, with a duke to refuse or accept, could she care to hear from her old
playmate? I took no thought of the time, until suddenly my conscience
told me I had neglected Patty.

As I entered the hall I saw her at the far end of it talking to Mr.
Allen. This I thought strange, for I knew she disliked him. Lord Comyn
and Mr. Carroll, the barrister, and Singleton, were standing by,
listening. By the time I was halfway across to them the rector turned
away. I remember thinking afterwards that he changed colour when he
said: "Your servant, Mr. Richard." But I thought nothing of it at the
time, and went on to Patty.

"I have come for a country dance, before we go, Patty," I said.

Then something in her mien struck me. Her eyes expressed a pain I had
remarked in them before only when she spoke to me of Tom, and her lips
were closed tightly. She flushed, and paled, and looked from Singleton
to Mr. Carroll. They and his Lordship remained silent.

"I--I cannot, Richard. I am going home," she said, in a low voice.

"I will see if the chariot is here," I answered, surprised, but thinking
of Tom.

She stopped me.

"I am going with Mr. Carroll," she said.

I hope a Carvel never has to be rebuffed twice, nor to be humbled by
craving an explanation before a company. I was confounded that Patty
should treat me thus, when I had done nothing to deserve it. As I made
for the door, burning and indignant, I felt as tho' every eye in the room
was upon me.' Young Harvey drove me that night.

"Marlboro' Street, Mr. Richard?" said he.

"Coffee House," replied I, that place coming first into my head.

Young Harvey seldom took liberties; but he looked down from the box.

"Better home, sir; your pardon, sir."

"D--n it!" I cried, "drive where I bid you!"

I pulled down the fore-glass, though the night was cold, and began to
cast about for the cause of Patty's action. And then it was the rector
came to my mind. Yes, he had been with her just before I came up, and I
made sure on the instant that my worthy instructor was responsible for
the trouble. I remembered that I had quarrelled with him the morning
before I had gone to Bentley Manor, and threatened to confess his villany
and my deceit to Mr. Carvel. He had answered me with a sneer and a dare.
I knew than Patty put honour and honesty before all else in the world,
and that she would not have suffered my friendship for a day had she
believed me to lack either. But she, who knew me so well, was not likely
to believe anything he might say without giving me the chance to clear
myself. And what could he have told her?

I felt my anger growing big within me, until I grew afraid of what I
would do if I were tempted. I had a long score and a heavy score against
this rector of St. Anne's,--a score that had been gathering these years.
And I felt that my uncle was somewhere behind him; that the two of them
were plotters against me, even as Harvey had declared; albeit my Uncle
Grafton was little seen in his company now. And finally, in a sinister
flash of revelation, came the thought that Grafton himself was at the
back of this deception of my grandfather, as to my principles. Fool that
I was, it had never occurred to me before. But how was he to gain by it?
Did he hope that Mr. Carvel, in a fit of anger, would disinherit me when
he found I had deceived him? Yes. And so had left the matter in
abeyance near these two years, that the shock might be the greater when
it came. I recalled now, with a shudder, that never since the spring of
my grandfather's illness had my uncle questioned me upon my politics.
I was seized with a fit of fury. I suspected that Mr. Allen would be
at the Coffee House after the assembly. And I determined to seize the
chance at once and have it out with him then and there.

The inn was ablaze, but as yet deserted; Mr. Claude expectant. He bowed
me from my chariot door, and would know what took me from the ball. I
threw him some short answer, bade Harvey go home, saying that I would
have some fellow light me to Marlboro' Street when I thought proper. And
coming into the long room I flung aside my greatcoat and commanded a
flask of Mr. Stephen Bordley's old sherry, some of which Mr. Claude had
obtained at that bachelor's demise.

The wine was scarce opened before I heard some sort of stir at the front,
and two servants in a riding livery of scarlet and white hurried in to
seek Mr. Claude. The sight of them sufficed mine host, for he went out
as fast as his legs would go, giving the bell a sharp pull as he passed
the door; and presently I heard him complimenting two gentlemen into
the house. The voice of one I knew,--being no other than Captain
Clapsaddle's; and him I had not seen for the past six months. I was
just risen to my feet when they came in at the door beside me.

"Richard!" cried the captain, and grasped my hand in both his own.
I returned his pressure, too much pleased to speak. Then his eye was
caught by my finery.

"So ho!" says he, shaking his head at me for a sad rogue. "Wine and
women and fine clothes, and not nineteen, or I mistake me. It was so
with Captain Jack, who blossomed in a week; and few could vie with him,
I warrant you, after he made his decision. But bless me!" he went on,
drawing back, "the lad looks mature, and a fair two inches broader than
last spring. But why are you not at the assembly, Richard?"

"I have but now come from there, sir," I replied, not caring in the
presence of a stranger to enter into reasons.

At my answer the captain turned from me to the gentleman behind him, who
had been regarding us both as we talked. There are some few men in the
world, I thank God for it, who bear their value on their countenance; who
stand unmistakably for qualities which command respect and admiration and
love! We seem to recognize such men, and to wonder where we have seen
them before. In reality we recognize the virtues they represent. So it
was with him I saw in front of me, and by his air and carriage I marked
him then and there as a man born to great things. You all know his face,
my dears, and I pray God it may live in the sight of those who come after
you, for generation upon generation!

"Colonel Washington," said the captain, "this is Mr. Richard Carvel, the
son of Captain Carvel."

Mr. Washington did not speak at once. He stood regarding me a full
minute, his eye seeming to penetrate the secrets of my life. And I take
pride in saying it was an eye I could meet without flinching.

"Your father was a brave man, sir," he said soberly, "and it seems you
favour him. I am happy in knowing the son."

For a moment he stood debating whether he would go to the house of one of
his many friends in Annapolis, knowing that they would be offended when
they learned he had stopped at the inn. He often came to town, indeed,
but seldom tarried long; and it had never been my fortune to see him.
Being arrived unexpectedly, and obliged to be away early on the morrow,
he decided to order rooms of Mr. Claude, sat down with me at the table,
and commenced supper. They had ridden from Alexandria. I gathered from
their conversation that they were on their way to Philadelphia upon
some private business, the nature of which, knowing Captain Daniel's
sentiments and those of Colonel Washington, I went not far to guess.
The country was in a stir about the Townshend duties; and there being
some rumour that all these were to be discharged save only that on tea,
anxiety prevailed in our middle colonies that the merchants of New York
would abandon the association formed and begin importation. It was of
some mission to these merchants that I suspected them.

As I sat beside Colonel Washington, I found myself growing calmer, and
ashamed of my lack of self-control. Unconsciously, when we come in
contact with the great of character, we mould our minds to their
qualities. His very person seemed to exhale, not sanctity, but virility.
I felt that this man could command himself and others. In his presence
self-command came to me, as a virtue gone out of him. 'Twas not his
speech, I would have you know, that took hold of me. He was by no means
a brilliant talker, and I had the good fortune to see him at his ease,
since he and the captain were old friends. As they argued upon the
questions of the day, the colonel did not seek to impress by words,
or to fascinate by manner. His opinions were calm and moderate,
and appeared to me so just as to admit of no appeal. He scrupled not
to use a forceful word when occasion demanded. And yet, now and then,
he had a lively way about him with all his dignity. When he had finished
his supper he bade Mr. Claude bring another bottle of Mr. Bordley's
sherry, having tested mine, and addressed himself to me.

He would know what my pursuits had been; for my father's sake, what were
my ambitions? He questioned me about Mr. Carvel's plantation, of which
he had heard, and appeared pleased with the answers I gave as to its
management and methods. Captain Daniel was no less so. Mr. Washington
had agriculture at his finger ends, and gave me some advice which he had
found serviceable at Mount Vernon.

"'Tis a pity, Richard," said he, smiling thoughtfully at the captain,
"'tis a pity we have no service afield open to our young men. One of
your spirit and bearing should be of that profession. Captain Jack was
as brave and dashing an officer as I ever laid eyes on."

I hesitated, the tingling at the compliment.

"I begin to think I was born for the sea, sir," I answered, at length.

"What!" cried the captain; "what news is this, Richard? 'Slife! how has
this come about?"

My anger subdued by Mr. Washington's presence, a curious mood had taken
its place. A foolish mood, I thought it, but one of feeling things to
come.

"I believe I shall one day take part in a great sea-fight," I said.
And, tho' ashamed to speak of it, I told him of Stanwix's prophecy
that I should pace the decks of a man-o'-war.

"A pox on Stanwix!" said the captain, "an artful old seadog! I never
yet knew one who did not think the sun rises and sets from poop to
forecastle, who did not wheedle with all the young blood to get them
to follow a bow-legged profession."

Colonel Washington laughed.

"Judge not, Clapsaddle," said he; "here are two of us trying to get the
lad for our own bow-legged profession. We are as hot as Methodists to
convert."

"Small conversion he needed when I was here to watch him, colonel. And
he rides with any trooper I ever laid eyes on. Why, sir, I myself threw
him on a saddle before he could well-nigh walk, and 'twere a waste of
material to put him in the navy."

"But what this old man said of a flag not yet seen in heaven or earth
interests me," said Colonel Washington. "Tell me," he added with a
penetration we both remarked, "tell me, does your Captain Stanwix follow
the times? Is he a man to read his prints and pamphlets? In other
words, is he a man who might predict out of his own heated imagination?"

"Nay, sir," I answered, "he nods over his tobacco the day long. And I
will make bold to swear, he has never heard of the Stamp Act."

"'Tis strange," said the colonel, musing; "I have heard of this second
sight--have seen it among my own negroes. But I heartily pray that this
may be but the childish fancy of an old mariner. How do you interpret
it, sir?" he added, addressing himself to me.

"If a prophecy, I can interpret it in but one way," I began, and there I
stopped.

"To be sure," said Mr. Washington. He studied me awhile as though
weighing my judgment, and went on: "Needless to say, Richard, that such a
service, if it comes, will not be that of his Majesty."

"And it were, colonel, I would not embark in it a step," I cried.

He laughed.

"The lad has his father's impulse," he said to Captain Daniel.
"But I thought old Mr. Carvel to be one of the warmest loyalists
in the colonies."

I bit my lip; for, since that unhappy deception of Mr. Carvel, I had not
meant to be drawn into an avowal of my sentiments. But I had, alas,
inherited a hasty tongue.

"Mr. Washington," said the captain, "old Mr. Carvel has ever been a good
friend to me. And, though I could not but perceive which way the lad was
tending, I had held it but a poor return for friendship had I sought by
word or deed to bring him to my way of thinking. Nor have I ever
suffered his views in my presence."

"My dear sir, I honour you for it," put in the colonel, warmly.

"It is naught to my credit," returned the captain. "I would not, for the
sake of my party and beliefs, embitter what remains of my old friend's
life."

I drew a long breath and drained the full glass before me.

"Captain Daniel!" I cried, "you must hear me now. I have been waiting
your coming these months. And if Colonel Washington gives me leave,
I will speak before him."

The colonel bade me proceed, avowing that Captain Carvel's son should
have his best assistance.

With that I told them the whole story of Mr. Allen's villany. How I had
been sent to him because of my Whig sentiments, and for thrashing a Tory
schoolmaster and his flock. This made the gentlemen laugh, tho' Captain
Daniel had heard it before. I went on to explain how Mr. Carvel had
fallen ill, and was like to die; and how Mr. Allen, taking advantage of
his weakness when he rose from his bed, had gone to him with the lie of
having converted me. But when I told of the scene between my grandfather
and me at Carvel Hall, of the tears of joy that the old gentleman shed,
and of how he had given me Firefly as a reward, the captain rose from his
chair and looked out of the window into the blackness, and swore a great
oath all to himself. And the expression I saw come into the colonel's
eyes I shall never forget.

"And you feared the consequences upon your grandfather's health?" he
asked gravely.

"So help me God!" I answered, "I truly believe that to have undeceived
him would have proved fatal."

"And so, for the sake of the sum he receives for teaching you," cried the
captain, with another oath, "this scoundrelly clergyman has betrayed you
into a lie. A scheme, by God's life! worthy of a Machiavelli!"

"I have seen too many of his type in our parishes," said Mr. Washington;
"and yet the bishop of London seems powerless. And so used have we
become in these Southern colonies to tippling and gaming parsons,
that I warrant his people accept him as nothing out of the common."

"He is more discreet than the run of them, sir. His parishioners dislike
him, not because of his irregularities, but because he is attempting to
obtain All Saints from his Lordship, in addition to St. Anne's. He is
thought too greedy."

He was silent, his brow a little furrowed, and drummed with his fingers
upon the table.

"But this I cannot reconcile," said he, presently, "that the reward is
out of all proportion to the risk. Such a clever rascal must play for
higher stakes."

I was amazed at his insight. And for the moment was impelled to make
a clean breast of my suspicions,--nay, of my convictions of the whole
devil's plot. But I had no proofs. I remembered that to the colonel
my uncle was a gentleman of respectability and of wealth, and a member
of his Excellency's Council. That to accuse him of scheming for my
inheritance would gain me nothing in Mr. Washington's esteem. And I
caught myself before I had said aught of Mr. Allen's conduct that
evening.

"Have you confronted this rector with his perfidy, Richard?" he asked.

"I have, colonel, at my first opportunity." And I related how Mr. Allen
had come to the Hall, and what I had said to him, and how he had behaved.
And finally told of the picquet we now had during lessons, not caring to
shield myself. Both listened intently, until the captain broke out.
Mr. Washington's indignation was the stronger for being repressed.

"I will call him out!" cried Captain Daniel, fingering his sword, as was
his wont when angered; "I will call him out despite his gown, or else
horse him publicly!"

"No, my dear sir, you will do nothing of the kind," said the colonel.
"You would gain nothing by it for the lad, and lose much. Such rascals
walk in water, and are not to be tracked. He cannot be approached save
through Mr. Lionel Carvel himself, and that channel, for Mr. Carvel's
sake, must be closed."

"But he must be shown up!" cried the captain.

"What good will you accomplish?" said Mr. Washington; "Lord Baltimore is
notorious, and will not remove him. Nay, sir, you must find a way to get
the lad from his influence." And he asked me how was my grandfather's
health at present.

I said that he had mended beyond my hopes.

"And does he seem to rejoice that you are of the King's party?"

"Nay, sir. Concerning politics he seems strangely apathetic, which makes
me fear he is not so well as he appears. All his life he has felt
strongly."

"Then I beg you, Richard, take pains to keep neutral. Nor let any
passing event, however great, move you to speech or action."

The captain shook his head doubtfully, as tho' questioning the ability of
one of my temper to do this.

"I do not trust myself, sir," I answered.

He rose, declaring it was past his hour for bed, and added some kind
things which I shall cherish in my memory. As he was leaving he laid his
hand on my shoulder.

"One word of advice, my lad," he said. "If by any chance your
convictions are to come to your grandfather's ears, let him have them
from your own lips." And he bade me good night.

The captain tarried but a moment longer.

"I have a notion who is to blame for this, Richard," he said. "When I
come back from New York, we shall see what we shall see."

"I fear he is too slippery for a soldier to catch," I answered.

He went away to bed, telling me to be prudent, and mind the colonel's
counsel until he returned from the North.




CHAPTER XIV

THE VOLTE COUPE

I was of a serious mind to take the advice. To prove this I called for
my wrap-rascal and cane, and for a fellow with a flambeau to light me.
But just then the party arrived from the assembly. I was tempted, and
I sat down again in a corner of the room, resolved to keep a check upon
myself, but to stay awhile.

The rector was the first in, humming a song, and spied me.

"Ho!" he cried, "will you drink, Richard? Or do I drink with you?"

He was already purple with wine.

"God save me from you and your kind!" I replied.

"'Sblood! what a devil's nest of fireworks!" he exclaimed, as he went
off down the room, still humming, to where the rest were gathered. And
they were soon between bottle and stopper, and quips a-coursing. There
was the captain of the Thunderer, Collinson by name, Lord Comyn and two
brother officers, Will Fotheringay, my cousin Philip, openly pleased to
be found in such a company, and some dozen other toadeaters who had
followed my Lord a-chair and a-foot from the ball, and would have tracked
him to perdition had he chosen to go; and lastly Tom Swain, leering and
hiccoughing at the jokes, in such a beastly state of drunkenness as I had
rarely seen him. His Lordship recognized me and smiled, and was pushing
his chair back, when something Collinson said seemed to restrain him.

I believe I was the butt of more than one jest for my aloofness, though I
could not hear distinctly for the noise they made. I commanded some
French cognac, and kept my eye on the rector, and the sight of him was
making me dangerous.

I forgot the advice I had received, and remembered only the months he had
goaded me. And I was even beginning to speculate how I could best pick a
quarrel with him on any issue but politics, when an unexpected incident
diverted me. Of a sudden the tall, ungainly form of Percy Singleton
filled the doorway, wrapped in a greatcoat. He swept the room at a
glance, and then strode rapidly toward the corner where I sat.

"I had thought to find you here," he said, and dropped into a chair
beside me. I offered him wine, but he refused.

"Now," he went on, "what has Patty done?"

"What have I done that I should be publicly insulted?" I cried.

"Insulted!" says he, "and did she insult you? She said nothing of that."

"What brings you here, then?" I demanded.

"Not to talk, Richard," he said quietly, "'tis no time tonight. I came
to fetch you home. Patty sent me."

Patty sent him! Why had Patty sent him? But this I did not ask, for I
felt the devil within me.

"We must first finish this bottle," said I, offhand, "and then I have a
little something to be done which I have set my heart upon. After that I
will go with you."

"Richard, Richard, will you never learn prudence? What is it you speak
of?"

I drew my sword and laid it upon the table.

"I mean to spit that eel of a rector," said I, "or he will bear a slap
in the face. And you must see fair play."

Singleton seized my coat, at the same time grasping the hilt of my sword
with the other hand. But neither my words nor my action had gone
unnoticed by the other end of the room. The company there fell silent
awhile, and then we heard Captain Collinson talking in even, drawling
tones.

"'Tis strange," said he, "what hot sparks a man meets in these colonies.
They should be stamped out. His Majesty pampers these d--d Americans,
is too lenient by far. Gentlemen, this is how I would indulge them!"
He raised a closed fist and brought it down on the board.

He spoke to Tories, but he forgot that Tories were Americans. In those
days only the meanest of the King's party would listen to such without
protest from an Englishman. But some of the meaner sort were there:
Philip and Tom laughed, and Mr. Allen, and my Lord's sycophants.
Fotheringay and some others of sense shook their heads one to another,
comprehending that Captain Collinson was somewhat gone in wine.
For, indeed, he had not strayed far from the sideboard at the assembly.
Comyn made a motion to rise.

"It is already past three bells, sir, and a hunt to-morrow," he said.

"From bottle to saddle, and from saddle to bottle, my Lord. We must have
our pleasure ashore, and sleep at sea," and the captain tipped his flask
with a leer. He turned his eye uncertainly first on me, then on my Lord.
"We are lately from Boston, gentlemen, that charnel-house of treason,
and before we leave, my Lord, I must tell them how Mr. Robinson of the
customs served that dog Otis, in the British Coffee House. God's word,
'twas as good as a play."

I know not how many got to their feet at that, for the story of the
cowardly beating of Mr. Otis by Robinson and the army officers had swept
over the colonies, burning like a flame all true-hearted men, Tory and
Whig alike. I wrested my sword from Singleton's hold, and in a trice I
had reached the captain over chairs and table, tearing myself from
Fotheringay on the way. I struck a blow that measured a man on the
floor. Then I drew back, amazed.

I had hit Lord Comyn instead! The captain stood a yard beyond me.

The thing had been so deftly done by the rector of St. Anne's--Comyn
jostled at the proper moment between me and Collinson--that none save me
guessed beyond an accident; least of all my Lord Comyn himself. He was
up again directly and his sword drawn, addressing me.

"Bear witness, my Lord, that I have no desire to fight with you," said I,
with what coolness I could muster. "But there is one here I would give
much for a chance to run through."

And I made a step toward Mr. Allen with such a purpose in my face and
movements that he could not mistake. I saw the blood go from his face;
yet he was no coward to physical violence. But he (or I?) was saved by
the Satan's luck that followed him, for my Lord stepped in between us
with a bow, his cheek red where I had struck him.

"It is my quarrel now, Mr. Carvel," he cried.

"As you please, my Lord," said I.

"It boots not who crosses with him," Captain Collinson put in. "His
Lordship uses the sword better than any here. But it boots not so that
he is opposed by a loyal servant of the King."

I wheeled on him for this.

"I would have you know that loyalty does not consist in outrage and
murder, sir," I answered, "nor in the ridiculing of them. And brutes
cannot be loyal save through interest."

He was angered, as I had desired. I had hopes then of shouldering the
quarrel on to him, for I had near as soon drawn against my own brother as
against Comyn. I protest I loved him then as one with whom I had been
reared.

"Let me deal with this young gamecock, Comyn," cried the captain, with an
oath. "He seems to think his importance sufficient."

But Comyn would brook no interference. He swore that no man should
strike him with impunity, and in this I could not but allow he was right.

"You shall hear from me, Mr. Carvel," he said.

"Nay," I answered, "and fighting is to be done, sir, let us be through
with it at once. A large room upstairs is at our disposal; and there is
a hunt to-morrow which one of us may like to attend."

There was a laugh at this, in which his Lordship joined.

"I would to God, Mr. Carvel," he said, "that I had no quarrel with you!"

"Amen to that, my Lord," I replied; "there are others here I would rather
fight." And I gave a meaning look at Mr. Allen. I was of two minds to
announce the scurvy trick he had played, but saw that I would lose rather
than gain by the attempt. Up to that time the wretch had not spoken a
word; now he pushed himself forward, though well clear of me.

"I think it my duty as Mr. Carvel's tutor, gentlemen, to protest against
this matter proceeding," he said, a sneer creeping into his voice. "Nor
can I be present at it. Mr. Carvel is young and, besides, is not himself
with liquor. And, in the choice of politics, he knows not which leg he
stands upon. My Lord and gentlemen, your most humble and devoted."

He made a bow and, before the retort on my lips could be spoken, left the
tavern. My cousin Philip left with him. Tom Swain had fallen asleep in
his chair.

Captain Collinson and Mr. Furness, of the Thunderer, offered to serve his
Lordship, which made me bethink that I, too, would have need of some one.
'Twas then I remembered Singleton, who had passed from my mind.

He was standing close behind me, and nodded simply when I asked him. And
Will Fotheringay came forward.

"I will act, Richard, if you allow me," he said. "I would have you know
I am in no wise hostile to you, my Lord, and I am of the King's party.
But I admire Mr. Carvel, and I may say I am not wholly out of sympathy
with that which prompted his act."

It was a noble speech, and changed Will in my eyes; and I thanked him
with warmth. He of all that company had the courage to oppose his
Lordship!

Mr. Claude was called in and, as is the custom in such cases, was told
that some of us would play awhile above. He was asked for his private
room. The good man had his suspicions, but could not refuse a party of
such distinction, and sent a drawer thither with wine and cards.
Presently we followed, leaving the pack of toadies in sad disappointment
below.

We gathered about the table and made shift at loo until the fellow had
retired, when the seconds proceeded to clear the room of furniture, and
Lord Comyn and I stripped off our coats and waistcoats. I had lost my
anger, but felt no fear, only a kind of pity that blood should be shed
between two so united in spirit as we. Yes, my dears, I thought of
Dorothy. If I died, she would hear that it was like a man--like a
Carvel. But the thought of my old grandfather tightened my heart. Then
the clock on the inn stairs struck two, and the noise of harsh laughter
floated up to us from below.

And Comyn,--of what was he thinking? Of some fair home set upon the
downs across the sea, of some heroic English mother who had kept her
tears until he was gone? Her image rose in dumb entreaty, invoked by the
lad before me. What a picture was he in his spotless shirt with the
ruffles, his handsome boyish face all that was good and honest!

I had scarce felt his Lordship's wrist than I knew I had to deal with a
pupil of Angelo. At first his attacks were all simple, without feint or
trickery, as were mine. Collinson cursed and cried out that it was
buffoonery, and called on my Lord not to let me off so easily; swore that
I fenced like a mercer, that he could have stuck me like a pin-cushion
twenty and twenty times. Often have I seen two animals thrust into a pit
with nothing but good-will between them, and those without force them
into anger and a deadly battle. And so it was, unconsciously, between
Comyn and me. I forgot presently that I was not dealing with Captain
Collinson, and my feelings went into my sword. Comyn began to press me,
nor did I give back. And then, before it came over me that we had to do
with life and death, he was upon me with a volte coupe, feinting in high
carte and thrusting in low tierce, his point passing through a fold in my
shirt. And I were not alive to write these words had I not leaped out of
his measure.

"Bravo, Richard!" cried Fotheringay.

"Well made, gads life!" from Mr. Furness.

We engaged again, our faces hot. Now I knew that if I did not carry the
matter against him I should be killed out of hand, and Heaven knows I was
not used to play a passive part. I began to go carefully, but fiercely;
tried one attack after another that my grandfather and Captain Daniel had
taught me,--flanconnades, beats, and lunges. Comyn held me even, and in
truth I had much to do to defend myself. Once I thought I had him in the
sword-arm, after a circular parry, but he was too quick for me. We were
sweating freely by now, and by reason of the buzzing in my ears I could
scarce hear the applause of the seconds.

What unlucky chance it was I know not that impelled Comyn to essay again
the trick by which he had come so near to spitting me; but try it he did,
this time in prime and seconde. I had come by nature to that intuition
which a true swordsman must have, gleaned from the eyes of his adversary.
Long ago Captain Daniel had taught me the remedy for this coupe. I
parried, circled, and straightened, my body in swift motion and my point
at Comyn's heart, when Heaven brought me recollection in the space of a
second. My sword rang clattering on the floor.

His Lordship understood, but too late. Despairing his life, he made one
wild lunge at me that had never gone home had I held to my hilt. But the
rattle of the blade had scarce reached my ears when there came a sharp
pain at my throat, and the room faded before me. I heard the clock
striking the half-hour.

I was blessed with a sturdy health such as few men enjoy, and came to
myself sooner than had been looked for, with a dash of cold water. And
the first face I beheld was that of Colonel Washington. I heard him
speaking in a voice that was calm, yet urgent and commanding.

"I pray you, gentlemen, give back. He is coming to, and must have air.
Fetch some linen!"

"Now God be praised!" I heard Captain Daniel cry.

With that his Lordship began to tear his own shirt into strips, and the
captain bringing a bowl and napkin, the colonel himself washed the wound
and bound it deftly, Singleton and Captain Daniel assisting. When Mr.
Washington had finished, he turned to Comyn, who stood, anxious and
dishevelled, at my feet.

"You may be thankful that you missed the artery, my Lord," he said.

"With all my heart, Colonel Washington!" cried his Lordship. "I owe my
life to his generosity."

"What's that, sir?"

Mr. Carvel dropped his sword, rather than run me through."

"I'll warrant!" Captain Daniel put in; "'Od's heart! The lad has skill
to point the eye of a button. I taught him myself."

Colonel Washington stood up and laid his hand on the captain's arm.

"He is Jack Carvel over again," I heard him say, in a low voice.

I tried to struggle to my feet, to speak, but he restrained me. And
sending for his servants, he ordered them to have his baggage removed
from the Roebuck, which was the best bed in the house. At this moment
the door opened, and Mr. Swain came in hurriedly.

"I pray you, gentlemen," he cried, "and he is fit to be moved, you will
let me take him to Marlboro' Street. I have a chariot at the door."




CHAPTER XV

OF WHICH THE RECTOR HAS THE WORST

'Twas late when I awoke the next day with something of a dull ache in my
neck, and a prodigious stiffness, studying the pleatings of the bed
canopy over my head. And I know not how long I lay idly thus when I
perceived Mrs. Willis moving quietly about, and my grandfather sitting
in the armchair by the window, looking into Freshwater Lane. As my eyes
fell upon him my memory came surging back,--first of the duel, then of
its cause. And finally, like a leaden weight, the thought of the
deception I had practised upon him, of which he must have learned
ere this. Nay, I was sure from the troubled look of his face that
he knew of it.

"Mr. Carvel," I said.

At the sound of my voice he got hastily from his chair and hurried to my
side.

"Richard," he answered, taking my hand, "Richard!"

I opened my mouth to speak, to confess. But he prevented me, the tears
filling the wrinkles around his eyes.

"Nay, lad, nay. We will not talk of it. I know all."

"Mr. Allen has been here--" I began.

"And be d--d to him! Be d--d to him for a wolf in sheep's clothing!"
shouted my grandfather, his manner shifting so suddenly to anger that I
was taken back. "So help me God I will never set foot in St. Anne's
while he is rector. Nor shall he come to this house!"

And he took three or four disorderly turns about the room.

"Ah!" he continued more quietly, with something of a sigh, "I might have
known how stubborn your mind should be. That you was never one to blow
from the north one day and from the south the next. I deny not that
there be good men and able of your way of thinking: Colonel Washington,
for one, whom I admire and honour; and our friend Captain Daniel. They
have been here to-day, Richard, and I promise you were good advocates."

Then I knew that I was forgiven. And I could have thrown myself at Mr.
Carvel's feet for happiness.

"Has Colonel Washington spoken in my favour, sir?"

"That he has. He is upon some urgent business for the North, I believe,
which he delayed for your sake. Both he and the captain were in my
dressing-room before I was up, ahead of that scurrilous clergyman, who
was for pushing his way to my bed-curtains. Ay, the two of them were
here at nigh dawn this morning, and Mr. Allen close after them. And I
own that Captain Daniel can swear with such a consuming violence as to
put any rogue out of countenance. 'Twas all Mr. Washington could do to
restrain Clapsaddle from booting his Reverence over the balustrade and
down two runs of the stairs, the captain declaring he would do for every
cur's son of the whelps. 'Diomedes,' says I, waking up, 'what's this
damnable racket on the landing? Is Mr. Richard home?' For I had some
notion it was you, sir, after an over-night brawl. And I profess I would
have caned you soundly. The fellow answered that Captain Clapsaddle's
honour was killing Mr. Allen, and went out; and came back presently to
say that some tall gentleman had the captain by the neck, and that Mr.
Allen was picking his way down the ice on the steps outside. With that
I went in to them in my dressing-gown.

"'What's all this to-do, gentlemen?' said I.

"'I'd have finished that son of a dog,' says the captain, 'and Colonel
Washington had let me.'

"'What, what!' said I. 'How now? What! Drive a clergyman from my
house gentlemen?'

"'What's Richard been at now?'

"Mr. Washington asked me to dress, saying that they had something very
particular to speak about; that they would stay to breakfast with me,
tho' they were in haste to be gone to New York. I made my compliments to
the colonel and had them shown to the library fire, and hurried down
after them. Then they told me of this affair last night, and they
cleared you, sir. 'Faith,' cried I, 'and I would have fought, too. The
lad was in the right of it, though I would have him a little less hasty.'
D--n me if I don't wish you had knocked that sea captain's teeth into his
throat, and his brains with them. I like your spirit, sir. A pox on
such men as he, who disgrace his Majesty's name and set better men
against him."

"And they told you nothing else, sir?" I asked, with misgiving.

"That they did. Mr. Washington repeated the confession you made to them,
sir, in a manner that did you credit. He made me compliments on you,
--said that you were a man, sir, though a trifle hasty: in the which I
agreed. Yes, d--n me, a trifle hasty like your father. I rejoice that
you did not kill his Lordship, my son."

The twilight was beginning; and the old gentleman going back to his chair
was set amusing, gazing out across the bare trees and gables falling gray
after the sunset.

What amazed me was that he did not seem to be shocked by the revelation
near as much as I had feared. So this matter had brought me happiness
where I looked for nothing but sorrow.

"And the gentlemen are gone north, sir?" said I, after a while.

"Yes, Richard, these four hours. I commanded an early dinner for them,
since the colonel was pleased to tarry long enough for a little politics
and to spin a glass. And I profess, was I to live neighbours with such a
man, I might come to his way of thinking, despite myself. Though I say
it that shouldn't, some of his Majesty's ministers are d--d rascals."

I laughed. As I live, I never hoped to hear such words from my
grandfather's lips.

"He did not seek to convince, like so many of your hotheaded
know-it-alls," said Mr. Carvel; "he leaves a man to convince himself. He
has great parts, Richard, and few can stand before him." He paused. And
then his smooth-shaven face became creased in a roguish smile which I had
often seen upon it. "What baggage is this I hear of that you quarrelled
over at the assembly? Ah, Sir, I fear you are become but a sad rake!"
says he.

But by great good fortune Dr. Leiden was shown in at this instant. And
the candles being lighted, he examined my neck, haranguing the while in
his vile English against the practice of duelling. He bade me keep my
bed for two days, thereby giving me no great pleasure.

"As I hope to live," said Mr. Carvel when the doctor was gone, "one would
have thought his Excellency himself had been pinked instead of a whip of
a lad, for the people who have been here. His Lordship and Dr. Courtenay
came before the hunt, and young Mr. Fotheringay, and half a score of
others. Mr. Swain is but now left to go to Baltimore on some barrister's
business."

I was burning to learn what the rector had said to Patty, but it was
plain Mr. Carvel knew nothing of this part of the story. He had not
mentioned Grafton among the callers. I wondered what course my uncle
would now pursue, that his plans to alienate me from my grandfather had
failed. And I began debating whether or not to lay the whole plot before
Mr. Carvel. Prudence bade me wait, since Grafton had not consorted with
the rector openly, at least--for more than a year. And yet I spoke.

"Mr. Carvel!"

He stirred in his chair.

"Yes, my son."

He had to repeat, and still I held my tongue. Even as I hesitated there
came a knock at the door, and Scipio entered, bearing candles.

"Massa Grafton, suh," he said.

My uncle was close at his heels. He was soberly dressed in dark brown
silk, and his face wore that expression of sorrow and concern he knew how
to assume at will. After greeting his father with his usual ceremony, he
came to my bedside and asked gravely how I did.

"How now, Grafton!" cried Mr. Carvel; "this is no funeral. The lad has
only a scratch, thank God!"

My uncle looked at me and forced a smile.

"Indeed I am rejoiced to find you are not worried over this matter,
father," said he. "I am but just back from Kent to learn of it, and
looked to find you in bed."

"Why, no, sir, I am not worried. I fought a duel in my own day,--over a
lass, it was."

This time Grafton's smile was not forced.

"Over a lass, was it?" he asked, and added in a tone of relief, "and how
do you, nephew?"

Mr. Carvel saved me from replying.

"'Od's life!" he cried; "no, I did not say this was over a lass. I have
heard the whole matter; how Captain Collinson, who is a disgrace to the
service, brought shame upon his Majesty's supporters, and how Richard
felled the young lord instead. I'll be sworn, and I had been there, I
myself would have run the brute through."

My uncle did not ask for further particulars, but took a chair, and a
dish of tea from Scipio. His smug look told me plainer than words that
he thought my grandfather still ignorant of my Whig sentiments.

"I often wish that this deplorable practice of duelling might be
legislated against," he remarked. "Was there no one at the Coffee House
with character enough to stop the lads?"

Here was my chance.

"Mr. Allen was there," I said.

"A devil's plague upon him!" shouted my grandfather, beating the floor
with his stick. "And the lying hypocrite ever crosses my path, by gad's
life! I'll tear his gown from his back!"

I watched Grafton narrowly. Such as he never turn pale, but he set down
his tea so hastily as to spill the most of it on the dresser.

"Why, you astound me, my dear father!" he faltered; "Mr. Allen a lying
hypocrite? What can he have done?"

"Done!" cried my grandfather, sputtering and red as a cherry with
indignation. "He is as rotten within as a pricked pear, I tell you, sir!
For the sake of retaining the lad in his tuition he came to me and lied,
sir, just after I had escaped death, and said that by his influence
Richard had become loyal, and set dependence upon Richard's fear of the
shock 'twould give me if he confessed--Richard, who never told me a
falsehood in his life! And instead of teaching him, he has gamed with
the lad at the rectory. I dare make oath he has treated your son to a
like instruction. 'Slife, sir, and he had his deserts, he would hang
from a gibbet at the Town Gate."

I raised up in bed to see the effect of this on my uncle. But however
the wind veered, Grafton could steer a course. He got up and began
pacing the room, and his agitation my grandfather took for indignation
such as his own.

"The dog!" he cried fiercely. "The villain! Philip shall leave him
to-morrow. And to think that it was I who moved you to put Richard to
him!"

His distress seemed so real that Mr. Carvel replied:

"No, Grafton, 'twas not your fault. You were deceived as much as I. You
have put your own son to him. But if I live another twelve hours I shall
write his Lordship to remove him. What! You shake your head, sir!"

"It will not do," said my uncle. "Lord Baltimore has had his reasons for
sending such a scoundrel--he knew what he was, you may be sure, father.
His Lordship, sir, is the most abandoned rake in London, and that
unmentionable crime of his but lately in the magazines--"

"Yes, yes," my grandfather interrupted; "I have seen it. But I will
publish him in Annapolis."

My uncle's answer startled me, so like was it to the argument Colonel
Washington himself had used.

"What would you publish, sir? Mr. Allen will reply that what he did
was for the lad's good, and your own. He may swear that since Richard
mentioned politics no more he had taken his conversion for granted."

My grandfather groaned, and did not speak, and I saw the futility of
attempting to bring Grafton to earth for a while yet.

My uncle had recovered his confidence. He had hoped, so he said, that
I had become a good loyalist: perchance as I grew older I would see the
folly of those who called themselves Patriots. But my grandfather cried
out to him not to bother me then. And when at last he was gone, of my
own volition I proposed to promise Mr. Carvel that, while he lived, I
would take no active part in any troubles that might come. He stopped me
with some vehemence.

"I pray God there may be no troubles, lad," he answered; "but you need
give me no promise. I would rather see you in the Whig ranks than a
trimmer, for the Carvels have ever been partisans."

I tried to express my gratitude. But he sighed and wished me good night,
bidding me get some rest.

I had scarce finished my breakfast the next morning when I heard a loud
rat-tat-tat upon the street door-surely the footman of some person of
consequence. And Scipio was in the act of announcing the names when,
greatly to his disgust, the visitors themselves rushed into my bedroom
and curtailed the ceremony. They were none other than Dr. Courtenay and
my Lord Comyn himself. His Lordship had no sooner seen me than he ran to
the bed, grasped both my hands and asked me how I did, declaring he would
not have gone to yesterday's hunt had he been permitted to visit me.

"Richard," cried the doctor, "your fame has sprung up like Jonah's gourd.
The Gazette is but just distributed. Here's for you! 'Twill set the
wags a-going, I'll warrant."

He drew the newspaper from his pocket and began to read, stopping now and
anon to laugh:

"Rumour hath it that a Young Gentleman of Quality of this Town, who is
possessed of more Valour than Discretion, and whose Skill at Fence and in
the Field is beyond his Years, crossed Swords on Wednesday Night with a
Young Nobleman from the Thunderer. The Cause of this Deplorable Quarrel,
which had its Origin at the Ball, is purported to have been a Young Lady
of Wit and Beauty. (& we doubt it not; for, alas! the Sex hath Much to
answer for of this Kind.)

"The Gentlemen, with their Seconds, repaired after the Assembly to the
Coffee House. 'Tis said upon Authority that H-s L-dsh-p owes his Life to
the Noble Spirit of our Young American, who cast down his Blade rather
than sheathe it in his Adversary's Body, thereby himself receiving a
Grievous, the' happily not Mortal, Wound. Our Young Gentleman is become
the Hero of the Town, and the Subject of Prodigious Anxiety of all the
Ladies thereof."

"There's for you, my lad!" says he; "Mr. Green has done for you both
cleverly."

"Upon my soul," I cried, raising up in bed, "he should be put in the
gatehouse for his impudence! My Lord,--"

"Don't 'My Lord' me," says Comyn; "plain 'Jack' will do."

There was no resisting such a man: and I said as much. And took his hand
and called him 'Jack,' the doctor posing before the mirror the while,
stroking his rues. "Out upon you both," says he, "for a brace of
sentimental fools!"

"Richard," said Comyn, presently, with a roguish glance at the doctor,
"there were some reason in our fighting had it been over a favour of Miss
Manners. Eh? Come, doctor," he cried, "you will break your neck looking
for the reflection of wrinkles. Come, now, we must have little Finery's
letter. I give you my word Chartersea is as ugly as all three heads of
Cerberus, and as foul as a ship's barrel of grease. I tell you Miss
Dorothy would sooner marry you."

"And she might do worse, my Lord," the doctor flung back, with a strut.

"Ay, and better. But I promise you Richard and I are not such fools as
to think she will marry his Grace. We must have the little coxcomb's
letter."

"Well, have it you must, I suppose," returns the doctor. And with that
he draws it from his pocket, where he has it buttoned in. Then he took a
pinch of Holland and began.

The first two pages had to deal with Miss Dorothy's triumph, to which her
father made full justice. Mr. Manners world have the doctor (and all the
province) to know that peers of the realm, soldiers, and statesmen were
at her feet. Orders were as plentiful in his drawing-room as the
candles. And he had taken a house in Arlington Street, where Horry
Walpole lived when not at Strawberry, and their entrance was crowded
night and day with the footmen and chairmen of the grand monde. Lord
Comyn broke in more than once upon the reading, crying,--"Hear, hear!"
and,--"My word, Mr. Manners has not perjured himself thus far. He has
not done her justice by half." And I smiled at the thought that I had
aspired to such a beauty!

"'Entre noes, mon cher Courtenay,' Mr. Manners writes, 'entre noes, our
Dorothy hath had many offers of great advantage since she hath been here.
And but yesterday comes a chariot with a ducal coronet to our door. His
Grace of Chartersea, if you please, to request a private talk with me.
And I rode with him straightway to his house in Hanover Square.'"

"'Egad! And would gladly have ridden straightway to Newgate, in a ducal
chariot!" cried his Lordship, in a fit of laughter.

"'I rode to Hanover Square,' the doctor continued, 'where we discussed
the matter over a bottle. His Grace's generosity was such that I could
not but cry out at it, for he left me to name any settlement I pleased.
He must have Dorothy at any price, said he. And I give you my honour,
mon cher Courtenay, that I lost no time in getting back to Arlington
Street, and called Dorothy down to tell her.'"

"Now may I be flayed," said Comyn, "if ever there was such another ass!"

The doctor took more snuff and fell a-laughing.

"But hark to this," said he, "here's the cream of it all:

"You will scarce believe me when I say that the baggage was near beside
herself with anger at what I had to tell her. 'Marry that misshapen
duke!' cries she, 'I would quicker marry Doctor Johnson!' And truly, I
begin to fear she hath formed an affection for some like, foul-linened
beggar. That his Grace is misshapen I cannot deny; but I tried reason
upon her. 'Think of the coronet, my dear, and of the ancient name to
which it belongs.' She only stamps her foot and cries out:

"'Coronet fiddlesticks! And are you not content with the name you bear,
sir?" 'Our name is good as any in the three kingdoms,' said I, with
truth. 'Then you would have me, for the sake of the coronet, joined to a
wretch who is steeped in debauchery. Yes, debauchery, sir! You might
then talk, forsooth, to the macaronies of Maryland, of your daughter the
Duchess.'"

"There's spirit for you, my lad!" Comyn shouted; "I give you Miss
Dorothy." And he drained a glass of punch Scipio had brought in, Doctor
Courtenay and I joining him with a will.

"I pray you go on, sir," I said to the doctor.

"A pest on your impatience!" replied he; "I begin to think you are in
love with her yourself."

"To be sure he is," said Comyn; "he had lost my esteem and he were not."

The doctor gave me an odd look. I was red enough, indeed.

"'I could say naught, my dear Courtenay, to induce her to believe that his
Grace's indiscretions arose from the wildness of youth. And I pass over
the injustice she hath unwittingly done me, whose only efforts are for
her bettering. The end of it all was that I must needs post back to the
duke, who was stamping with impatience up and down, and drinking
Burgundy. I am sure I meant him no offence, but told him in as many
words, that my daughter had refused him. And, will you believe me, sir?
He took occasion to insult me (I cannot with propriety repeat his
speech), and he flung a bottle after me as I passed out the door. Was he
not far gone in wine at the time, I assure you I had called him out for
it.'"

"And, gentlemen," said the doctor, when our merriment was somewhat spent,
"I'll lay a pipe of the best Madeira, that our little fool never knows
the figure he has cut with his Grace."




CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH SOME THINGS ARE MADE CLEAR

The Thunderer weighed the next day, Saturday, while I was still upon my
back, and Comyn sailed with her. Not, however, before I had seen him
again. Our affection was such as comes not often to those who drift
together to part. And he left me that sword with the jewelled hilt,
that hangs above my study fire, which he had bought in Toledo. He told
me that he was heartily sick of the navy; that he had entered only in
respect for a wish of his father's, the late Admiral Lord Comyn, and that
the Thunderer was to sail for New York, where he looked for a release
from his commission, and whence he would return to England. He would
carry any messages to Miss Manners that I chose to send. But I could
think of none, save to beg him to remind her that she was constantly in
my thoughts. He promised me, roguishly enough, that he would have
thought of a better than that by the time he sighted Cape Clear. And
were I ever to come to London he would put me up at Brooks's Club, and
warrant me a better time and more friends than ever had a Caribbee who
came home on a visit.

My grandfather kept his word in regard to Mr. Allen, and on Sunday
commanded the coach at eight. We drove over bad roads to the church at
South River. And he afterwards declined the voluntary aid he hitherto
had been used to give to St. Anne's. In the meantime, good Mr. Swain had
called again, bringing some jelly and cake of Patty's own making; and a
letter writ out of the sincerity of her heart, full of tender concern and
of penitence. She would never cease to blame herself for the wrong she
now knew she had done me.

Though still somewhat weak from my wound and confinement, after dinner
that Sunday I repaired to Gloucester Street. From the window she saw me
coming, and, bare-headed, ran out in the cold to meet me. Her eyes
rested first on the linen around my throat, and she seemed all in a fire
of anxiety.

"I had thought you would come to-day, when I heard you had been to South
River," she said.

I was struck all of a sudden with her looks. Her face was pale, and I
saw that she had suffered as much again as I. Troubled, I followed her
into the little library. The day was fading fast, and the leaping flames
behind the andirons threw fantastic shadows across the beams of the
ceiling. We sat together in the deep window.

"And you have forgiven me, Richard?" she asked.

"An hundred times," I replied. "I deserved all I got, and more."

"If I had not wronged and insulted you--"

"You did neither, Patty," I broke in; "I have played a double part for
the first and last time in my life, and I have been justly punished for
it."

"'Twas I sent you to the Coffee House," she cried, "where you might have
been killed. How I despise myself for listening to Mr. Allen's tales!"

"Then it was Mr. Allen!" I exclaimed, fetching a long breath.

"Yes, yes; I will tell you all."

"No," said I, alarmed at her agitation; "another time."

"I must," she answered more calmly; "it has burned me enough. You recall
that we were at supper together, with Betty Tayloe and Lord Comyn, and
how merry we were, altho' 'twas nothing but 'Dorothy' with you gentlemen.
Then you left me. Afterwards, as I was talking with Mr. Singleton, the
rector came up. I never have liked the man, Richard, but I little knew
his character. He began by twitting me for a Whig, and presently he
said: 'But we have gained one convert, Miss Swain, who sees the error of
his ways. Scarce a year since young Richard Carvel promised to be one of
those with whom his Majesty will have to reckon. And he is now become,'
--laughing,--'the King's most loyal and devoted.' I was beside myself.
'That is no subject for jest, Mr. Allen,' I cried; I will never believe
it of him!' 'Jest!' said he; I give you my word I was never soberer in
my life.' Then it all came to me of a sudden that you sat no longer by
the hour with my father, as you used, and you denounced the King's
measures and ministers no more. My father had spoken of it. 'Tell me
why he has changed?' I asked, faltering with doubt of you, which I never
before had felt. 'Indeed, I know not,' replied the rector, with his most
cynical smile; unless it is because old Mr. Carvel might disinherit a
Whig. But I see you doubt my word, Miss Swain. Here is Mr. Carroll,
and you may ask him.' God forgive me, Richard! I stopped Mr. Carroll,
who seemed mightily surprised. And he told me yes, that your grandfather
had said but a few days before, and with joy, that you were now of his
Majesty's party."

"Alas! I might have foreseen this consequence," I exclaimed. "Nor do I
blame you, Patty."

"But my father has explained all," Patty continued, brightening. "His
admiration for you is increased tenfold, Richard. Your grandfather told
him of the rector's treachery, which he says is sufficient to make him
turn Methodist or Lutheran. We went to the curate's service to-day. And
--will you hear more, sir? Or do your ears burn? That patriots and
loyalists are singing your praises from Town Gate to the dock, and
regretting that you did not kill that detestable Captain Collinson--but
I have something else, and of more importance, to tell you, Richard,"
she continued, lowering her voice.

"What Mr. Carroll had told me stunned me like a blow, such had been my
faith in you. And when Mr. Allen moved off, I stood talking to Percy
Singleton and his Lordship without understanding a word of the
conversation. I could scarce have been in my right mind. It was not
your going over to the other side that pained me so, for all your people
are Tories. But I had rather seen you dead than a pretender and a
hypocrite, selling yourself for an inheritance. Then you came.
My natural impulse should have been to draw you aside and there accuse
you. But this was beyond my strength. And when I saw you go away
without a word I knew that I had been unjust. I could have wept before
them all. Mr. Carroll went for his coach, and was a full half an hour
in getting it. But this is what I would tell you in particular, Richard.
I have not spoken of it to a soul, and it troubles me above all else:
While Maria was getting my cardinal I heard voices on the other side of
the dressing-room door. The supper-room is next, you know. I listened,
and recognized the rector's deep tones: 'He has gone to the Coffee
House,' he was saying; Collinson declares that his Lordship is our man,
if we can but contrive it. He is the best foil in the service, and was
taught by--there! I have forgot the name."

"Angelo!" I cried.

"Yes, yes, Angelo it was. How did you know?" she demanded, rising in
her excitement.

"Angelo is the great fencing-master of London," I replied.

"When I heard that," she said, "I had no doubt of your innocence. I ran
out into the assembly room as I was, in my hood, and tried to find Tom.
But he--" She paused, ashamed.

"Yes, I know," I said hurriedly; "you could not find him."

She glanced at me in gratitude.

"How everybody stared at me! But little I cared! 'Twas that gave rise
to Mr. Green's report. I thought of Percy Singleton, and stopped him in
the midst of a dance to bid him run as fast as his legs would carry him
to the Coffee House, and to see that no harm befell you. 'I shall hold
you responsible for Richard,' I whispered. 'You must get him away from
Mr. Claude's, or I shall never speak to you again.' He did not wait to
ask questions, but went at once, like the good fellow he is. Then I rode
home with Maria. I would not have Mr. Carroll come with me, though he
begged hard. Father was in here, writing his brief. But I was all in
pieces, Richard, and so shaken with sobbing that I could tell him no more
than that you had gone to the Coffee House, where they meant to draw you
into a duel. He took me up to my own room, and I heard him going out to
wake Limbo to harness, and at last heard him driving away in our coach.
I hope I may never in my life spend such another hour as I passed then."

The light in the sky had gone out. I looked up at the girl before
me as she stood gazing into the flame, her features in strong relief,
her lips parted, her hair red-gold, and the rounded outlines of her
figure softened. I wondered why I had never before known her beauty.
Perchance it was because, until that night, I had never seen her heart.

I leaped to my feet and seized her hands. For a second she looked at me,
startled. Then she tore them away and ran behind the dipping chair in
the corner.

"Richard, Richard!" she exclaimed. "Did Dorothy but know!"

"Dorothy is occupied with titles," I said.

Patty's lip quivered. And I knew, blundering fool that I was, that I had
hurt her.

"Oh, you wrong her!" she cried; "believe me when I say that she loves
you, and you only, Richard."

"Loves me!" I retorted bitterly,--brutally, I fear. "No. She may have
once, long ago. But now her head is turned."

"She loves you now," answered Patty, earnestly; "and I think ever will,
if you but deserve her."

And with that she went away, leaving me to stare after her in perplexity
and consternation.




CHAPTER XVII

SOUTH RIVER

My grandfather's defection from St. Anne's called forth a deal of comment
in Annapolis. His Excellency came to remonstrate, but to no avail, and
Mr. Carvel denounced the rector in such terms that the Governor was glad
to turn the subject. My Uncle Grafton acted with such quickness and
force as would have served to lull the sharpest suspicions. He forbid
the rector his house, attended the curate's service, and took Philip
from his care. It was decided that both my cousin and I were to go to
King's College after Christmas. Grafton's conduct greatly pleased my
grandfather. "He has behaved very loyally in this matter, Richard." he
said to me. "I grow to reproach myself more every day for the injustice
I once did him. He is heaping coals of fire upon my old head. But,
faith! I cannot stomach your Aunt Caroline. You do not seem to like
your uncle, lad."

I answered that I did not.

"It was ever the Carvel way not to forget," he went on. "Nevertheless,
Grafton hath your welfare at heart, I think. His affection for you as
his brother's son is great."

O that I had spoken the words that burned my tongue!

Christmas fell upon Monday of that year, 1769. There was to be a ball at
Upper Marlboro on the Friday before, to which many of us were invited.
Though the morning came in with a blinding snowstorm from the north, the
first of that winter, about ten of the clock we set out from Annapolis an
exceeding merry party, the ladies in four coaches-and-six, the gentlemen
and their servants riding at the wheels. We laughed and joked despite
the storm, and exchanged signals with the fair ones behind the glasses.

But we had scarce got two miles beyond the town gate when a messenger
overtook us with a note for Mr. Carvel, writ upon an odd slip of paper,
and with great apparent hurry:

HONOURED SIR,

"I have but just come to Annapolis from New York, with Instructions to
put into your Hands, & no Others, a Message of the greatest Import.
Hearing you are but now set out for Upper Marlboro I beg of you to return
for half an Hour to the Coffee House. By so doing you will be of service
to a Friend, and confer a Favour upon y'r most ob'd't Humble Servant,

"SILAS RIDGEWAY."

Our cavalcade had halted while I read, the ladies letting down the
glasses and leaning out in their concern lest some trouble had befallen
me or my grandfather. I answered them and bade them ride on, vowing that
I would overtake the coaches before they reached the Patuxent. Then I
turned Cynthia's head for town, with Hugo at my heels.

Patty, leaning from the window of the last coach, called out to me as I
passed. I waved my hand in return, and did not remember until long after
the anxiety in her eyes.

As I rode, and I rode hard, I pondered over the words of this letter. I
knew not this Mr. Ridgeway from the Lord Mayor of London; but I came to
the conclusion before I had reprised the gate that his message was from
Captain Daniel. And I greatly feared that some evil had befallen my good
friend. So I came to the Coffee House, and throwing my bridle to Hugo, I
ran in.

I found Mr. Ridgeway neither in the long room nor in the billiard room
nor the bar. Mr. Claude told me that indeed a man had arrived that
morning from the North, a spare person with a hooked nose and scant hair,
in a brown greatcoat with a torn cape. He had gone forth afoot half an
hour since. His messenger, a negro lad whose face I knew, was in the
stables with Hugo. He had never seen the stranger till he met him that
morning in State House Circle inquiring for Mr. Carvel, and had been
given a shilling to gallop after me. Impatient as I was to be gone, I
sat me down in the coffee room, thinking every minute the man must
return, and strongly apprehensive that Captain Daniel must be in some
grave predicament. That the favour he asked was of such a nature as I,
and not my grandfather, could best fulfil.

At length, about a quarter after noon, my man comes in with Mr. Claude
close behind him. I liked his looks less than his description, and the
moment I clapped eyes on him I knew that Captain Daniel had never chose
such a messenger.

"This is Mr. Richard Carvel," said Mr. Claude.

The fellow made me a low bow, which I scarcely returned.

"I am sure, 'sir," he began in a whining voice, "that I crave your
forbearance for this prodigious, stupid mistake I have made."

"Mistake!" I exclaimed hotly; "you mean to say, sir, that you have
brought me back for nothing?"

The man's eye shifted, and he made me another bow.

"I scarce know what to say, Mr. Carvel," he answered with much humility;
"to speak truth, 'twas zeal to my employers, and methought to you, that
caused you to retrace your steps in this pestiferous storm. I travel,"
he proceeded with some importance, "I travel for Messrs. Rinnell and
Runn, Barristers of the town of New York, and carry letters to men of
mark all over these middle and southern colonies. And my instructions,
sir, were to come to Annapolis with all reasonable speed with this
double-sealed enclosure for Mr. Carvel: and to deliver it to him, and him
only, the very moment I arrived. As I came through your town I made
inquiries, and was told by a black fellow in the Circle that Mr. Carvel
was but just left for Upper Marlboro with a cavalcade of four
coaches-and-six and some dozen gentlemen with their servants. I am sure
my mistake was pardonable, Mr. Carvel," he concluded with a smirk; "this
gentleman was plainly of the first quality, as was he to whom I was
directed. And as he was about to leave town for I knew not how long, I
hope I was in the right in bidding the black ride after him, for I give
you my word the business was most pressing for him. I crave your
forgiveness, and the pleasure of drinking your honour's health."

I barely heard the fellow through, and was turning on my heel in disgust,
when it struck me to ask him what Mr. Carvel he sought, for I feared lest
my grandfather had got into some lawsuit.

"And it please your honour, Mr. Grafton Carvel," said he; "your uncle, I
understand. Unfortunately he has gone to his estate in Kent County,
whither I must now follow him."

I bade Mr. Claude summon my servant, not stopping to question the man
further, such was my resentment against him. And in ten minutes we were
out of the town again, galloping between the nearly filled tracks of the
coaches, now three hours ahead of us. The storm was increasing, and the
wind cutting, but I dug into Cynthia so that poor Hugo was put to it to
hold the pace, and, tho' he had a pint of rum in him, was near perished
with the cold. As my anger cooled somewhat I began to wonder how Mr.
Silas Ridgeway, whoever he was, could have been such a simpleton as his
story made him out. Indeed, he looked more the rogue than the ass; nor
could I conceive how reliable barristers could hire such a one. I wished
heartily that I had exhausted him further, and a suspicion crossed my
brain that he might have come to Mr. Allen, who had persuaded him to
deliver a letter to Grafton intended for me. Some foreboding beset me,
and I was once close to a full mind for going back, and slacked Cynthia's
pace to a trot. But the thought of the pleasures at Upper Marlboro' and
the hope of overtaking the party at Mr. Dorsey's place, over the
Patuxent, where they looked to dine, decided me in pushing on. And thus
we came to South River, with the snow so thick that we could scarce see
ten yards in front of us.

Beyond, the road winds up the hill'around the end of Mr. Wiley's
plantation and plunges shortly into the woods, gray and cold indeed
to-day. At their skirt a trail branches off which leads to Mr. Whey's
warehouses, on the water's edge a mile or so below. And I marked that
this path was freshly trodden. I recall a small shock of surprise at
this, for the way was used only in the early autumn to connect with some
fields beyond the hill. And then I heard a sharp cry from Hugo and
pulled Cynthia short. He was some ten paces behind me.

"Marse Dick!" he shouted, the whites of his eyes rolled up. "We'se gwine
to be robbed, Marse Dick." And he pointed to the footprints in the snow;
"somefin done tole Hugo not come to-day."

"Nonsense!" I cried; "Mr. Wiley is making his lazy beggars cut wood
against Christmas."

When in this temper the poor fellow had more fear of me than of aught
else, and he closed up to my horse's flank, glancing apprehensively to
the right and left, his teeth rattling. We went at a brisk trot. We
know not, indeed, how to account for many things in this world, for with.
each beat of Cynthia's feet I found myself repeating the words South
River and Marlboro, and seeking in my mind a connection to something gone
before. Then, like a sudden gust of wind, comes to me that strange talk
between Grafton and the rector, overheard by old Harvey in the stables at
Carvel Hall. And Cynthia's ears were pointing forward.

With a quick impulse I loosed the lower frogs of my coat, for my sword
was buckled beneath, and was reaching for one of the brace of pistols in
my saddle-bags. I had but released them when Hugo cried out: "Gawd,
Marse Dick, run for yo' life!" and I caught a glimpse of him flying down
the road. As I turned a shot rang out, Cynthia reared high with a rough
brute of a fellow clinging to her bridle. I sent my charge full into his
chest, and as he tumbled in the snow I dug my spurs to the rowels.

What happened then is still a blurred picture in my brain. I know that
Cynthia was shot from under me before she had taken her leap, and we fell
heavily together. And I was scarcely up again and my sword drawn, when
the villains were pressing me from all sides. I remember spitting but
one, and then I heard a great seafaring oath, the first word out of their
mouths, and I was felled from behind with a mighty blow.




THE "BLACK MOLL"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE "BLACK MOLL"

I have no intention, my dears, of dwelling upon that part of my
adventures which must be as painful to you as to me, the very
recollection of which, after all these years, suffices to cause the blood
within me to run cold. In my youth men whose natures shrank not from
encounter with their enemies lacked not, I warrant you, a checkered
experience. Those of us who are wound the tightest go the farthest and
strike the hardest. Nor is it difficult for one, the last of whose life
is being recorded, to review the outspread roll of it, and trace the
unerring forces which have drawn for themselves.

Some, indeed, traverse this world weighing, before they partake, pleasure
and business alike. But I am not sure, my children, that they better
themselves; or that God, in His all-wise judgment, prefers them to such
as are guided by the divine impulse with which He has endowed them. Far
be it from me to advise rashness or imprudence, as such; nor do I believe
you will take me so. But I say unto you: do that which is right, and let
God, not man, be your interpreter.

My narrative awaits me.

I came to my wits with an immoderate feeling of faintness and sickness,
with no more remembrance of things past than has a man bereft of reason.
And for some time I swung between sense and oblivion before an
overpowering stench forced itself upon my nostrils, accompanied by a
creaking, straining sound and sweeping motion. I could see nothing for
the pitchy blackness. Then I recalled what had befallen me, and cried
aloud to God in my anguish, for I well knew I had been carried aboard
ship, and was at sea. I had oftentimes heard of the notorious press-gang
which supplied the need of the King's navy, and my first thought was that
I had fallen in their clutches. But I wondered that they had dared
attack a person of my consequence.

I had no pain. I lay in a bunk that felt gritty and greasy to the touch,
and my hair was matted behind by a clot of blood. I had been stripped of
my clothes, and put into some coarse and rough material, the colour and
condition of which I could not see for want of light. I began to cast
about me, to examine the size of the bunk, which I found to be narrow,
and plainly at some distance from the deck, for I laid hold upon one of
the rough beams above me. By its curvature I knew it to be a knee, and
thus I came to the caulked sides of the vessel, and for the first time
heard the rattling thud and swish of water on the far side of it. I had
no sooner made this discovery, which drew from me an involuntary groan,
when a ship's lanthorn was of a sudden thrust over me, and I perceived
behind it a head covered with shaggy hair and beard, and beetling brows.
Never had I been in such a terrifying presence.

"Damn my blood and bones, life signals at last! Another three bells
gone, my silks and laces, and we had given you to the sharks."

The man hung his lanthorn to a hook on the beam, and thrust a case-bottle
of rum toward me, at the same time biting off a great quid of tobacco.
For all my alarm I saw that his manner was not unkindly, and as I was
conscious of a consuming thirst I seized and tipped it eagerly.

"'Tis no fine Madeira, my blood," said he, "such as I fancy your palate
is acquainted with. Yet 'tis as fair a Jamaica as ever Griggs put ashore
i' the dark."

"Griggs!" I cried, the whole affair coming to me: Griggs, Upper
Marlboro', South River, Grafton and the rector plotting in the stalls,
and Mr. Silas Ridgeway the accomplice.

"Ay, Griggs," replied he; "ye may well repeat it, the-------, I'll lay a
puncheon he'll be hailing you shortly. Guinea Griggs, Gold-Coast Griggs,
Smuggler Griggs, Skull-and-Bones Griggs. Damn his soul and eyes, he hath
sent to damnation many a ship's company."

He drained what remained of the bottle, took down the lanthorn, and left
me sufficiently terrified to reflect upon my situation, which I found
desperate enough, my dears. I have no words to describe what I went
through in that vile, foul-smelling place. My tears flowed fast when I
thought of my grandfather and of the dear friends I had left behind, and
of Dorothy, whom I never hoped to see again. And then, perchance 'twas
the rum put heart into me, I vowed I would face the matter show this
cut-throat of a Griggs a bold front. Had he meant to murder me,
I reflected, he had done the business long since. Then I fell asleep.

I awoke, I know not how soon, to discover the same shaggy countenance,
and the lanthorn.

"Canst walk, Mechlin?" says he.

"I can try, at least," I answered.

He seemed pleased at this.

"You have courage a-plenty, and, by G--, you will have need of it all
with that of a Griggs!" He gave me his bottle again, and assisted me
down, and I found that my legs, save for the rocking of the ship, were
steady enough. I followed him out of the hole in which I had lain on to
a deck, which, in the half light, I saw covered with slush and filth. It
was small, and but dimly illuminated by a hatchway, up the which I pushed
after him, and then another. And so we came to the light of day, which
near blinded me: so that I was fain to clap my hand to mine eyes, and
stood for a space looking about me like a man dazed. The wind, tho'
blowing stiff, was mild, and league after league of the green sea danced
and foamed in the morning sunlight, and I perceived that I was on a large
schooner under full sail, the crew of which were littered about at
different occupations. Some gaming and some drinking, while on the
forecastle two men were settling a dispute at fisticuffs. And they gave
me no more notice, nor as much, than I had been a baboon thrust among
them. From this indifference to a captive I augured no good. Then my
conductor, whom I rightly judged to be the mate of this devil's crew,
took me roughly by the shoulder and bade me accompany him to the cabin.

As we drew near the topgallant poop there sounded in my ears a noise like
a tempest, which I soon became aware was a man swearing with a prodigious
vehemence in a fog-horn of a voice. "Sdeath and wounds! Where is that
dog-fish of a Cockle? Damn his entrails, and he is not come soon, I'll
mast-head him naked, by the seven holy spritsails!" And much more and
worse to the same tune until we passed the door and stood before him,
when he let out an oath like the death-cry of a monster.

He was a short, lean man with a leathery face and long, black ropy hair,
and beady black eyes that caught the light like a cat's. His looks,
indeed, would have scared a timid person into a fit; but I resolved I
would die rather than show the fear with which he inspired me. He was
dressed in an old navy uniform with dirty lace. His cabin was bare
enough, being scattered about with pistols and muskets and cutlasses,
with a ragged pallet in one corner, and he sat behind an oaken table
covered with greasy charts and spilled liquor and tobacco.

"So ho, you are risen from the dead, are you, my fine buck?
Mr. What-do-they-call-you?" cried the captain, with a word as foul as
any he had yet uttered. "By the Lord, you shall pay for running my bosun
through!"

"And by the Lord, Captain What's-your-name," I cried back, for the rum I
had taken had heated me, "you and your fellow-rascals shall pay in blood
for this villanous injury!"

Griggs got to his feet and seized his hanger, his face like livid marble
seamed with blue. And from force of habit I made motion for my sword, to
make the shameful discovery that I was clothed from head to foot in
linsey-woolsey.

"G-d---my soul," he roared, "if I don't slit you like a herring!
The devil burn me to a cinder if I don't give your guts to the sharks!"
And he made at me in such a fury that I would certainly have been cut to
pieces had I not grasped a cutlass and parried his blow, Cockle looking
on with his jaw dropped like a peak without haulyards. With a stroke of
my weapon I disarmed Captain Griggs, his sword flying through the cabin
window. For I made up my mind I would better die fighting than expire at
a hideous torture, which I doubted not he would inflict, and so I took up
a posture of defence, with one eye on the mate; despite the kind offices
of the latter below I knew not whether he were disposed to befriend me
before the captain. What was my astonishment, therefore, to behold
Griggs's truculent manner change.

"Avast, my man-o-war," he cried; "blood and wounds! I had more than an
eye when they brought thee aboard, else I would have killed thee like a
sucking-pig under the forecastle, as I have given oath to do. By the
Ghost, you are worth seven of that Roger Spratt whom you sent to hell in
his boots."

Wherewith Cockle, who for all his terrible appearance stood in a mighty
awe of his captain, set up a loud laugh, and vowed that Griggs knew a man
when he spared me, and was cursed for his pains.

"So you were contracted to murder me, Captain Griggs?" said I.

"Ay," he replied, a devilish gleam coming into his eye, "but I have now
got you and the money to boot. But harkye, I'll stand by my half of the
bargain, by G--. If ever you reach Maryland alive, they may hang me to
the yardarm of a ship-of-the-line."

And I live long enough, my dears, I hope some day to write for you the
account of all that befell me on this slaver, Black Moll, for so she was
called. 'Twould but delay my story now. Suffice it to say that we
sailed for a fortnight or so in the West India seas. From some
observations that fell from the mouth of Griggs I gathered that he was
searching for an island which evaded him; and each day added to his
vexation at not finding it. At times he was drunk for forty hours at a
stretch, when he would shut himself in his cabin and leave his ship to
the care of Cockle, who navigated with the sober portion of the crew.
And such a lousy, brawling lot of convicts I had never clapped eyes upon.
As for me, I was treated indifferently well, though 'twas in truth
punishment enough to live in that filthy ship, to eat their shins of beef
and briny pork and wormy biscuit, to wear rough clothes that chafed my
skin. I shared Cockle's cabin, in every way as dirty a place as the den
I had left, but with the advantage of air, for which I fervently thanked
God.

I think the mate had some little friendship for me, though he was too
hardened by the life he had led to care a deal what became of me. He
encouraged me secretly to continue to beard Griggs as I had begun, saying
that it was my sole chance of a whole skin, and vowing that if he had had
the courage to pursue the same course his own back had not been checkered
like a grating. He told me stories of the captain's cruelty which I dare
not repeat for their very horror, and indeed I lacked not for instances
to substantiate what he said; men with their backs beaten to a pulp, and
others with ears cut off, and mouths slit, and toes missing. So that I
lived in hourly fear lest in some drunken fit Griggs might command me to
be tortured. But, fortunately, he held small converse with me, and when
sober busied himself in trying to find the island and in cursing the fate
by which it eluded him.

So I existed, and prayed daily for deliverance. I plied Cockle with
questions as to what they purposed doing with me, but he was wont to turn
sulky, and would answer me not a word. But once, when he was deeper in
his cups than common, he let me know that Griggs was to sell me to a
certain planter. You may well believe that this did not serve to liven
my spirits.

At length, one morning, Captain Griggs came out of his cabin and climbed
upon the poop, calling all hands aft to the quarterdeck. Whereupon he
proceeded to make them a speech that for vileness exceeded aught I have
ever heard before or since. He finished by reminding them that this was
the anniversary of the scuttling of the sloop Jane, which had made them
all rich a year before, off the Canaries; the day that he had sent three
and twenty men over the plank to hell. Wherefore he decreed a holiday,
as the weather was bright and the trades light, and would serve quadruple
portions of rum to every man jack aboard; and they set up a cheer that
started the Mother Careys astern.

I have no language to depict the bestiality of that day; and if I had I
would think it sin to write of it. The helm was lashed on the port tack,
the haulyards set taut, and all hands down to the lad who was the cook's
scullion proceeded to get drunk. I took the precaution to have a hanger
at my side and to slip one of Cockle's pistols within the band of my
breeches. I was in an exquisite' agony of indecision as to what manner
to act and how to defend myself from their drunken brutality, for I well
knew that if I refused to imbibe with them I should probably be murdered
for my abstemiousness; and, if I drank, the stuff was so near to alcohol
that I could not hope to keep my senses. While in this predicament I
received a polite invitation to partake in the captain's company, which I
did not see my way clear to refuse, and repaired to the cabin
accordingly.

There I found Griggs and Cockle seated, and a fair-sized barrel of rum
between them that the captain had just moved thither. By way of welcome
he shot at me a volley of curses and bade me to fill up, and through fear
of offending him I took down my first mug with a fair good grace. Then,
in his own particular language, he began the account of the capture of
the Jane, taking care in the pauses to see that my mug was full. But, as
luck would have it, he got no farther than the boarding by the Black
Moll's crew, when he fell to squabbling with Cockle as to who had been
the first man over the side; and while they were settling this difference
I grasped the opportunity to escape.

The maudlin scene that met my eyes on deck defies description; some were
fighting, others grinning with a hideous laughter, and still others
shouting tavern jokes unspeakable. And suddenly, whilst I was observing
these things from a niche behind the cabin door, I heard the captain cry
from within, "The ensign, the ensign!" Forgetting his dispute with
Cockle, he bumped past me and made his way with some trouble to the poop.
I climbed the ladder after him, and to my horror beheld him in a drunken
frenzy drag a black flag with a rudely painted skull and cross-bones from
the signal-chest, and with uncertain fingers toggle it to the ensign
haulyards and hoist to the peak, where it fluttered grimly in the light
wind like an evil augur on a fair day. At sight of it the wretches on
deck fell to shouting and huzzaing, Griggs standing leering up at it.
Then he gravely pulled off his hat and made it a bow, and turned upon me.

"Salute it, ye lubberly! Ye are no first-rate here," he thundered.
"Salute the flag!"

Unless fear had kept me sober, 'tis past my understanding why I was not
as drunk as he. Be that as it may, I was near as quarrelsome, and would
as soon have worshipped the golden calf as saluted that rag. I flung
back some reply, and he lugged out and came at me with a spring like a
wild beast; and his men below, seeing us fall out, made a rush for the
poop with knives and cutlasses drawn. Betwixt them all I should soon
have been in slivers had not the main shrouds offered themselves handy.
And up them I sprung, the captain cutting at my legs as I left the
sheer-pole, and I stopped not until I reached the schooner's cross-trees,
where I drew my cutlass. They pranced around the mast and showered me
with oaths, for all the world like a lot of howling dogs which had treed
a cat.

I began to feel somewhat easier, and cried aloud that the first of them
who came up after me would go down again in two pieces. Despite my
warning a brace essayed to climb the ratlines, as pitiable an attempt as
ever I witnessed, and fell to the deck again. 'Twas a miracle that they
missed falling into the sea. And after a while, becoming convinced that
they could not get at me, and being too far gone to shoot with any
accuracy, they tumbled off the poop swearing to serve me in a hundred
horrible ways when they caught me, and fell again to drinking and
quarrelling amongst themselves. I was indeed in an unenviable plight,
by no means sure that I would not be slain out of hand when they became
sufficiently sober to capture me. As I marked the progress of their
damnable orgy I cast about for some plan to take advantage of their
condition. I observed that a stupor was already beginning to overcome a
few of them. Then suddenly an incident happened to drive all else from
my mind.

Nothing less, my dears, than a white speck of sail gleaming on the
southern horizon!

For an hour I watched it, now in a shiver of apprehension lest it pass us
by, now weeping in an ecstasy of joy over a possible deliverance. But it
grew steadily larger, and when about three miles on our port bow I saw
that the ship was a brigantine. Though she had long been in sight from
our deck, 'twas not until now that she was made out by a man on the
forecastle, who set up a cry that brought about him all who could reel
thither, Griggs staggering out of his cabin and to the nettings. The
sight sobered him somewhat, for he immediately shouted orders to cast
loose the guns, himself tearing the breeching from the nine-pounder next
him and taking out the tompion. About half the crew were in a liquorish
stupor from which the trump itself could scarce have aroused them; the
rest responded with savage oaths, swore that they would boil their
suppers in the blood of the brigantine's men and give their corpses to
the sea. They fell to work on the port battery in so ludicrous a manner
that I was fain to laugh despite the gravity of the situation. But when
they came to rig the powderhoist and a couple of them descended into the
magazine with pipes lighted, I was in imminent expectation of being blown
as high as a kite.

So absorbed had I been in these preparations that I neglected to watch
the brigantine, which I discovered to be standing on and off in a very
undecided manner, as though hesitating to attack. My spirits fell again
at this, for with all my inexperience I knew her to be a better sailer
than the Black Moll. Her master, as Griggs remarked, "was no d--d
slouching lubber, and knew a yardarm from a rattan cane."

Finally, about six bells of the watch, the stranger wore ship and bore
down across our bows, hoisting English colours, at sight of which I could
scarce forbear a cheer. At this instant, Captain Griggs woke to the fact
that his helm was still lashed, and bestowing a hearty kick on his
prostrate quartermaster stuck fast to the pitchy seams of the deck, took
the wheel himself, and easing off before the wind to bring the vessels
broadside to broadside, commanded that the guns be shooed to the muzzle,
an order that was barely executed before the brigantine came within close
range. Aboard her was all order and readiness; the men at her guns fuse
in hand, an erect and pompous figure of a man, in a cocked hat, on the
break of her poop. He raised his hand, two puffs of white smoke darted
out, and I heard first the shrieking of shot, the broadside came
crashing round us, one tearing through the mainsail below me, another
mangling two men in the waist of our schooner, and Griggs gave the order
to touch off. But two of his guns answered, one of which had been so
gorged with shot that it burst in a hundred pieces and sent the fellow
with the swab to perdition, and such a hell of blood and confusion as
resulted is indescribable. I saw Griggs in a wild fit of rage force the
helm down, the schooner flying into the wind. And by this time, the
brigantine having got round and presented her port battery, raked us at a
bare hundred yards, and I was the first to guess by the tilting forward
of the mast that our hull was hit between wind and water, and was fast
settling by the bow.

The schooner was sinking like a gallipot.

That day, with the sea flashing blue and white in the sun, I saw men go
to death with a curse upon their lips and a fever in their eyes, with
murder and defiance of God's holy will in their hearts. Overtaken in
bestiality, like the judgment of Nineveh, five and twenty disappeared
from beneath me, and I had scarce the time to throw off my cutlass before
I, too, was engulfed. So expired the Black Moll.





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


Volume 4.


XIX.   A Man of Destiny
XX.    A Sad Home-coming
XXI.   The Gardener's Cottage
XXII.   On the Road
XXIII.  London Town
XXIV.   Castle Yard
XXV.   The Rescue



CHAPTER XIX

A MAN OF DESTINY

I was picked up and thrown into the brigantine's long-boat with a head
and stomach full of salt water, and a heart as light as spray with the
joy of it all. A big, red-bearded man lifted my heels to drain me.

"The mon's deid," said he.

"Dead!" cried I, from the bottom-board. "No more dead than you!"

I turned over so lustily that he dropped my feet, and I sat up, something
to his consternation. And they had scarce hooked the ship's side when I
sprang up the sea-ladder, to the great gaping of the boat's crew, and
stood with the water running off me in rivulets before the captain
himself. I shall never forget the look of his face as he regarded my
sorry figure.

"Now by Saint Andrew," exclaimed he, "are ye kelpie or pirate?"

"Neither, captain," I replied, smiling as the comical end of it came up
to me, "but a young gentleman in misfortune."

"Hoots!" says he, frowning at the grinning half-circle about us, "it's
daft ye are--"

But there he paused, and took of me a second sizing. How he got at my
birth behind my tangled mat of hair and wringing linsey-woolsey I know
not to this day. But he dropped his Scotch and merchant-captain's
manner, and was suddenly a French courtier, making me a bow that had done
credit to a Richelieu.

"Your servant, Mr.--"

"Richard Carvel, of Carvel Hall, in his Majesty's province of Maryland."

He seemed sufficiently impressed.

"Your very humble servant, Mr. Carvel. 'Tis in faith a privilege to be
able to serve a gentleman."

He bowed me toward his cabin, and then in sharp, quick tones he gave an
order to his mate to get under way, and I saw the men turning to the
braces with wonder in their eyes. My own astonishment was as great. And
so, with my clothes sucking to my body and a trail of water behind me
like that of a wet walrus, I accompanied the captain aft. His quarters
were indeed a contrast to those of Griggs, being so neat that I paused at
the door for fear of profaning them; but was so courteously bid to enter
that I came on again. He summoned a boy from the round house.

"William," said he, "a bottle of my French brandy. And my compliments to
Mr. MacMuir, and ask him for a suit of clothes. You are a larger man
than I, Mr. Carvel," he said to me, "or I would fit you out according to
your station."

I was too overwhelmed to speak. He poured out a liberal three fingers of
brandy, and pledged me as handsomely as I had been an admiral come
thither in mine own barge, instead of a ragged lad picked off a piratical
slaver, with nothing save my bare word and address. 'Twas then I had
space to note him more particularly. His skin was the rich colour of a
well-seasoned ship's bell, and he was of the middle height, owned a
slight, graceful figure, tapering down at the waist like a top, which had
set off a silk coat to perfection and soured the beaus with envy. His
movements, however, had all the decision of a man of action and of force.
But his eye it was took possession of me--an unfathomable, dark eye,
which bore more toward melancholy than sternness, and yet had something
of both. He wore a clean, ruffled shirt, an exceeding neat coat and
breeches of blue broadcloth, with plate burnished buttons, and white
cotton stockings. Truly, this was a person to make one look twice, and
think oftener. Then, as I went to pledge him, I, too, was caught for his
name.

"Paul," said he; "John Paul, of the brigantine John, of Kirkcudbright, in
the West India trade."

"Captain Paul--" I began. But my gratitude stuck fast in my throat and
flowed out of my eyes. For the thought of the horrors from which he had
saved me for the first time swept over me; his own kind treatment
overcame me, and I blubbered like a child. With that he turned his back.

"Hoots," says he, again, "dinna ye thank me. 'Tis naething to scuttle a
nest of vermin, but the duty of ilka man who sails the seas." By this,
having got the better of his emotion, he added: "And if it has been my
good fortune to save a gentleman, Mr. Carvel, I thank God for it, as you
must."

Save for a slackness inside the leg and in the hips, Macbluir's clothes
fitted me well enough, and presently I reappeared in the captain's cabin
rigged out in the mate's shore suit of purplish drab, and brass-buckled
shoes that came high over the instep, with my hair combed clear and tied
with a ribbon behind. I felt at last that I might lay some claim to
respectability. And what was my surprise to find Captain Paul buried to
his middle in a great chest, and the place strewn about with laced and
broidered coats and waistcoats, frocks and Newmarkets, like any tailor's
shop in Church Street. So strange they looked in those tropical seas
that he was near to catching me in a laugh as he straightened up. 'Twas
then I noted that he was a younger man than I had taken him for.

"You gentlemen from the southern colonies are too well nourished, by
far," says he; "you are apt to be large of chest and limb. 'Odds bods,
Mr. Carvel, it grieves me to see you apparelled like a barber surgeon.
If the good Lord had but made you smaller, now," and he sighed, "how well
this skyblue frock had set you off."

"Indeed, I am content, and more, captain," I replied with a smile,
"and thankful to be safe amongst friends. Never, I assure you,
have I had less desire for finery."

"Ay," said he, "you may well say that, you who have worn silk all your
life, and will the rest of it, and we get safe to port. But believe me,
sir, the pleasure of seeing one of your face and figure in such a coat as
that would not be a small one."

And disregarding my blushes and protests, he held up the watchet blue
frock against me, and it was near fitting me but for my breadth,--the
skirts being prodigiously long. I wondered mightily what tailor had
thrust this garment upon him; its fashion was of the old king's time,
the cuffs slashed like a sea-officer's uniform, and the shoulders made
carefully round. But other thoughts were running within me then.

"Captain," I cut in, "you are sailing eastward."

"Yes, yes," he answered absently, fingering some Point d'Espagne.

"There is no chance of touching in the colonies?" I persisted.

"Colonies! No," said he, in the same abstraction; "I am making for the
Solway, being long overdue. But what think you of this, Mr. Carvel?"

And he held up a wondrous vellum-hole waistcoat of a gone-by vintage,
and I saw how futile it were to attempt to lead him, while in that state
of absorption, to topics which touched my affair. Of a sudden the
significance of what he had said crept over me, the word Solway repeating
itself in my mind. That firth bordered England itself, and Dorothy was
in London! I became reconciled. I had no particle of objection to the
Solway save the uneasiness my grandfather would come through, which was
beyond helping. Fate had ordered things well.

Then I fell to applauding, while the captain tried on (for he was not
content with holding up) another frock of white drab, which, cuffs and
pockets, I'll take my oath mounted no less than twenty-four: another
plain one of pink cut-velvet; tail-coats of silk, heavily broidered with
flowers, and satin waistcoats with narrow lace. He took an inconceivable
enjoyment out of this parade, discoursing the while, like a nobleman with
nothing but dress in his head, or, perhaps, like a mastercutter, about
the turn of this or that lapel, the length from armpit to fold, and the
number of button-holes that was proper. And finally he exhibited with
evident pride a pair of doeskins that buttoned over the calf to be worn
with high shoes, which I make sure he would have tried on likewise had he
been offered the slightest encouragement. So he exploited the whole of
his wardrobe, such an unlucky assortment of finery as I never wish to see
again; all of which, however, became him marvellously, though I think he
had looked well in anything. I hope I may be forgiven the perjury I did
that day. I wondered greatly that such a foible should crop out in a man
of otherwise sound sense and plain ability.

At length, when the last chest was shut again and locked, and I had
exhausted my ingenuity at commendation, and my patience also, he turned
to me as a man come out of a trance.

"Od's fish, Mr. Carvel," he cried, "you will be starved. I had forgot
your state."

I owned that hunger had nigh overcome me, whereupon he became very
solicitous, bade the boy bring in supper at once, and in a short time we
sat down together to the best meal I had seen for a month. It seemed
like a year. Porridge, and bacon nicely done, and duff and ale, with the
sea rushing past the cabin windows as we ate, touched into colour by the
setting sun. Captain Paul did not mess with his mates, not he, and he
gave me to understand that I was to share his cabin, apologizing
profusely for what he was pleased to call poor fare. He would have
it that he, and not I, were receiving favour.

"My dear sir," he said once, "you cannot know what a bit of finery is to
me, who has so little chance for the wearing of it. To discuss with a
gentleman, a connoisseur (I know a bit of French, Mr. Carvel), is a
pleasure I do not often come at."

His simplicity in this touched me; it was pathetic.

"How know you I am a gentleman, Captain Paul?" I asked curiously.

"I should lack discernment, sir," he retorted, with some heat, "if I
could not see as much. Breeding shines through sack-cloth, sir.
Besides," he continued, in a milder tone, "the look of you is candour
itself. Though I have not greatly the advantage of you in age, I have
seen many men, and I know that such a face as yours cannot lie."

Here Mr. Lowrie, the second mate, came in with a report; and I remarked
that he stood up hat in hand whilst making it, very much as if Captain
Paul commanded a frigate. The captain went to a locker and brought forth
some mellow Madeira, and after the mate had taken a glass of it standing,
he withdrew. Then we lighted pipes and sat very cosey with a lanthorn
swung between us, and Captain Paul expressed a wish to hear my story.

I gave him my early history briefly, dwelling but casually upon the
position enjoyed in Maryland by my family; but I spoke of my grandfather,
now turning seventy, gray-haired in the service of King and province.
The captain was indeed a most sympathetic listener, now throwing in a
question showing keen Scotch penetration, and anon making a most
ludicrous inquiry as to the dress livery our footmen wore, and whether
Mr. Carvel used outriders when he travelled abroad. This was the other
side of the man. As the wine warmed and the pipe soothed, I spoke at
length of Grafton and the rector; and when I came to the wretched
contrivance by which they got me aboard the Black Moll, he was stalking
hither and thither about the cabin, his fists clenched and his voice
thick, breaking into Scotch again and vowing that hell were too good for
such as they.

His indignation, which seemed real and generous, transformed him into
another man. He showered question after question upon me concerning my
uncle and Mr. Allen; declared that he had known many villains, but had
yet to hear of their equals; and finally, cooling a little, gave it as
his judgment that the crime could never be brought home to them. This
was my own opinion. He advised me, before we turned in, to "gie the
parson a Grunt" as soon as ever I could lay hands upon him.


The John made a good voyage for that season, with fair winds and clear
skies for the most part. 'Twas a stout ship and a steady, with generous
breadth of beam, and kept by the master as clean and bright as his
porringer. He was Emperor aboard her. He spelt Command with a large C,
and when he inspected, his jacks stood to attention like man-o'-war's
men. The John mounting only four guns, and but two of them ninepounders,
I expressed my astonishment that he had dared attack a pirate craft like
the Black Moll, without knowing her condition and armament.

"Richard," says he, impressively, for we had become very friendly, "I
would close with a thirty-two and she flew that flag. Why, sir, a bold
front is half the battle, using circumspection, of a course. A pretty
woman, whatever her airs and quality, is to be carried the same way, and
a man ought never to be frightened by appearances."

Sometimes, at our meals, we discussed politics. But he seemed lukewarm
upon this subject. He had told me that he had a brother William in
Virginia, who was a hot Patriot. The American quarrel seemed to interest
him very little. I should like to underscore this last sentence, my
dears, in view of what comes after. What he said on the topic leaned
perhaps to the King's side, tho' he was careful to say nothing that would
give me offence. I was not surprised, for I had made a fair guess of his
ambitions. It is only honest to declare that in my soberer moments my
estimate of his character suffered. But he was a strange man,--a genius,
as I soon discovered, to rouse the most sluggish nature to enthusiasm.

The joy of sailing is born into some men, and those who are marked for
the sea go down thither like the very streams, to be salted. Whatever
the sign, old Stanwix was not far wrong when he read it upon me, and
'twas no great while before I was part and parcel of the ship beneath my
feet, breathing deep with her every motion. What feeling can compare
with that I tasted when the brigantine lay on her side, the silver spray
hurling over the bulwarks and stinging me to life! Or, in the watches,
to hear the sea lashing along her strakes in never ending music! I gave
MacMuir his shore suit again, and hugely delighted and astonished Captain
Paul by donning a jacket of Scotch wool and a pair of seaman's boots, and
so became a sailor myself. I had no mind to sit idle the passage, and
the love of it, as I have said, was in me. In a fortnight I went aloft
with the best of the watch to reef topsails, and trod a foot-rope without
losing head or balance, bent an easing, and could lay hand on any lift,
brace, sheet, or haulyards in the racks. John Paul himself taught me to
tack and wear ship, and MacMuir to stow a headsail. The craft came to
me, as it were, in a hand-gallop.

At first I could make nothing of the crew, not being able to understand a
word of their Scotch; but I remarked, from the first, that they were sour
and sulky, and given to gathering in knots when the captain or MacMuir
had not the deck. For Mr. Lowrie, poor man, they had little respect.
But they plainly feared the first mate, and John Paul most of all. Of me
their suspicion knew no bounds, and they would give me gruff answers, or
none, when I spoke to them. These things roused both curiosity and
foreboding within me.

Many a watch I paced thro' with MacMuir, big and red and kindly, and I
was not long in letting him know of the interest which Captain Paul had
inspired within me. His own feeling for him was little short of
idolatry. I had surmised much as to the rank of life from which the
captain had sprung, but my astonishment was great when I was told that
John Paul was the son of a poor gardener.

"A gardener's son, Mr. MacMuir!" I repeated.

"Just that," said he, solemnly, "a guid man an' haly' was auld Paul.
Unco puir, by reason o' seven bairns. I kennt the daddie weel. I mak
sma' doubt the captain'll tak ye hame wi' him, syne the mither an'
sisters still be i' the cot i' Mr. Craik's croft."

"Tell me, MacMuir," said I, "is not the captain in some trouble?"

For I knew that something, whatever it was, hung heavy on John Paul's
mind as we drew nearer Scotland. At times his brow would cloud and he
would fall silent in the midst of a jest. And that night, with the stars
jumping and the air biting cold (for we were up in the 40's), and the
John wish-washing through the seas at three leagues the hour, MacMuir
told me the story of Mungo Maxwell. You may read it for yourselves, my
dears, in the life of John Paul Jones.

"Wae's me!" he said, with a heave of his big chest, "I reca' as yestreen
the night Maxwell cam aboord. The sun gaed loon a' bluidy, an' belyve
the morn rose unco mirk an' dreary, wi' bullers (rollers) frae the west
like muckle sowthers (soldiers) wi' white plumes. I tauld the captain
'twas a' the faut o' Maxwell. I ne'er cad bide the blellum. Dour an'
din he was, wi' ae girn like th' auld hornie. But the captain wadna
hark to my rede when I tauld him naught but dool wad cooin o' taking
Mungo."

It seemed that John Paul, contrary to MacMuir's advice, had shipped as
carpenter on the voyage out--near seven months since--a man by the name
of Mungo Maxwell. The captain's motive had nothing in it but kindness,
and a laudable desire to do a good turn to a playmate of his boyhood. As
MacMuir said, "they had gaed barefit thegither amang the braes." The man
hailed from Kirkbean, John Paul's own parish. But he had within him
little of the milk of kindness, being in truth a sour and mutinous devil;
and instead of the gratitude he might have shown, he cursed the fate that
had placed him under the gardener's son, whom he deemed no better than
himself. The John had scarce cleared the Solway before Maxwell showed
signs of impudence and rebellion.

The crew was three-fourths made of Kirkcudbright men who had known the
master from childhood, many of them, indeed, being older than he; they
were mostly jealous of Paul, envious of the command he had attained to
over them, and impatient under the discipline he was ever ready to
inflict. 'Tis no light task to enforce obedience from those with whom
one has birdnested. But, having more than once felt the weight of his
hand, they feared him.

Dissatisfaction among such spreads apace, if a leader is but given; and
Maxwell was such a one. His hatred for John Paul knew no bounds, and,
having once tasted of his displeasure, he lay awake o' nights scheming to
ruin him. And this was the plot: when the Azores should be in the wake,
Captain Paul was to be murdered as he paced his quarterdeck in the
morning, the two mates clapt into irons, and so brought to submission.
And Maxwell, who had no more notion of navigation than a carpenter
should, was to take the John to God knows where,--the Guinea coast,
most probably. He would have no more navy regulations on a merchant
brigantine, he promised them, nor banyan days, for the matter o' that.

Happily, MacMuir himself discovered the affair on the eve of its
perpetration, overhearing two men talking in the breadroom, and he ran to
the cabin with the sweat standing out on his forehead. But the captain
would have none of the precautions he urged; declared he would walk the
deck as usual, and vowed he could cope single-handed with a dozen cowards
like Maxwell. Sure enough, at crowdie-time, the men were seen coming
aft, with Maxwell in the van carrying a bowl, on the pretext of a
complaint against the cook.

"John Paul," said MacMuir, with admiration in his voice and gesture,
"John Paul wasna feart a pickle, but gaed to the mast, whyles I stannt
chittering i' my claes, fearfu' for his life. He teuk the horns from
Mungo, priet (tasted) a soup o' the crowdie, an' wi' that he seiz't haut
o' the man by baith shouthers ere the blastie (scoundrel) raught for 's
knife. My aith upo't, sir, the lave (rest) o' the batch cowert frae his
e'e for a' the wand like thumpit tykes.'"

So ended that mutiny, by the brave act of a brave man. The carpenter was
clapt into irons himself, and given no less of the cat-o'-nine-tails than
was good for him, and properly discharged at Tobago with such as had
supported him. But he brought Captain Paul before the vice-admiralty
court of that place, charging him with gross cruelty, and this proceeding
had delayed the brigantine six months from her homeward voyage, to the
great loss of her owners. And tho' at length the captain was handsomely
acquitted, his character suffered unjustly, for there lacked not those
who put their own interpretation upon the affair. He would most probably
lose the brigantine. "He expected as much," said MacMuir.

"There be mony aboord," he concluded, with a sigh, "as'll muckle
gash (gossip) when we win to Kirkcudbright."




CHAPTER XX

A SAD HOME-COMING

Mr. Lowrie and Auctherlonnie, the Dumfries bo'sun, both of whom would
have died for the captain, assured me of the truth of MacMuir's story,
and shook their heads gravely as to the probable outcome. The peculiar
water-mark of greatness that is woven into some men is often enough to
set their own community bitter against them. Sandie, the plodding
peasant, finds it a hard matter to forgive Jamie, who is taken from the
plough next to his, and ends in Parliament. The affair of Mungo Maxwell,
altered to suit, had already made its way on more than one vessel to
Scotland. For according to Lowrie, there was scarce a man or woman in
Kirkcudbrightshire who did not know that John Paul was master of the
John, and (in their hearts) that he would be master of more in days to
come. Human nature is such that they resented it, and cried out aloud
against his cruelty.

On the voyage I had many sober thoughts of my own to occupy me of the
terrible fate, from which, by Divine inter position, I had been rescued;
of the home I had left behind. I was all that remained to Mr. Carvel in
the world, and I was sure that he had given me up for dead. How had he
sustained the shock? I saw him heavily mounting the stairs upon Scipicks
arm when first the news was brought to him. Next Grafton would come
hurrying in from Kent to Marlboro Street, disavowing all knowledge of the
messenger from New York, and intent only upon comforting his father. And
when I pictured my uncle soothing him to his face, and grinning behind
his bed-curtains, my anger would scald me, and the realization of my
helplessness bring tears of very bitterness.

What would I not have given then for one word with that honest and
faithful friend of our family, Captain Daniel! I knew that he suspected
Grafton: he had told me as much that night at the Coffee House. Perhaps
the greatest of my fears was that my uncle would deny him access to Mr.
Carvel when he returned from the North.

In the evening, when the sun settled red upon the horizon, I would think
of Patty and my friends in Gloucester Street. For I knew they missed me
sadly of a Sunday at the supper-table. But it has ever been my nature to
turn forward instead of back, and to accept the twists and flings of
fortune with hope rather than with discouragement. And so, as we left
league after, league of the blue ocean behind us, I would set my face to
the forecastle. For Dorothy was in England.

On a dazzling morning in March, with the brigantine running like a beagle
in full cry before a heaping sea that swayed her body,--so I beheld for
the first time the misty green of the high shores of Ireland. Ah! of
what heroes' deeds was I capable as I watched the lines come out in bold
relief from a wonderland of cloud! With what eternal life I seemed to
tingle! 'Twas as though I, Richard Carvel, had discovered all this
colour; and when a tiny white speck of a cottage came out on the edge of
the cliff, I thought irresistibly of the joy to live there the year round
with Dorothy, with the wind whistling about our gables, and the sea
thundering on the rocks far below. Youth is in truth a mystery.

How long I was gazing at the shifting coast I know not, for a strange
wildness was within me that made me forget all else, until suddenly I
became conscious of a presence at my side, and turned to behold the
captain.

"'Tis a braw sight, Richard," said he, "but no sae bonnie as auld
Scotland. An' the wind hands, we shall see her shores the morn."

His voice broke, and I looked again to see two great tears rolling upon
his cheeks.

"Ah, Scotland!" he pressed on, heedless of them, "God aboon kens what
she is to me! But she hasna' been ower guid to me, laddie." And he
walked to the taffrail, and stood looking astern that two men who had
come aft to splice a haulyard might not perceive his disorder. I
followed him, emboldened to speak at last what was in me.

"Captain Paul," said I, "MacMuir has told me of your trouble. My
grandfather is rich, and not lacking in gratitude,"--here I paused for
suitable words, as I could not solve his expression,--"you, sir, whose
bravery and charity will have restored me to him, shall not want for
friends and money."

He heard me through.

"Mr. Carvel," he replied with an impressiveness that took me aback,
"reward is a thing that should not be spoken of between gentlemen."

And thus he left me, upbraiding myself that I should have mentioned
money. And yet, I reflected secondly, why not? He was no more nor less
than a master of a merchantman, and surely nothing was out of the common
in such a one accepting what he had honestly come by. Had my affection
for him been less sincere, had I not been racked with sympathy, I had
laughed over his notions of gentility. I resolved, however, that when I
had reached London and seen Mr. Dix, Mr. Carvel's agent, he should be
rewarded despite his scruples. And if he lost his ship, he should have
one of my grandfather's.

But at dinner he had plainly forgot any offence, and I had more cause
than ever to be puzzled over his odd mixture of confidence and aloofness.
He talked gayly on a score of subjects,--on dress, of which he was never
tired, and described ports in the Indies and South America, in a fashion
that betrayed prodigious powers of acute observation; nor did he lack for
wit when he spoke of the rich planters who had wined him, and had me much
in laughter. We fell into a merry mood, in Booth, jingling the glasses
in many toasts, for he had a list of healths to make me gasp, near as
long as the brigantine's articles,--Inez in Havana and Maraquita in
Cartagena, and Clotilde, the Creole, of Martinico, each had her separate
charm. Then there was Bess, in Kingston, the relict of a customs
official, Captain Paul relating with ingenuous gusto a midnight brush
with a lieutenant of his Majesty, in which the fair widow figured, and
showed her preference, too. But his adoration for the ladies of the more
northern colonies, he would have me to understand, was unbounded. For
example, Miss Arabella Pope of Norfolk, in Virginia,--and did I know her?
No, I had not that pleasure, though I assured him the Popes of Virginia
were famed. Miss Pope danced divinely as any sylph, and the very memory
of her tripping at the Norfolk Assembly roused the captain to such a
pitch of enthusiasm as I had never seen in him. Marvellous to say, his
own words failed him, and he had recourse to the poets:

          "Her feet beneath her petticoat
          Like little mice stole in and out,
          As if they feared the light;
          But, oh, she dances such a way!
          No sun upon an Easter-day
          Is half so fine a sight."

The lines, he told me, were Sir John Suckling's; and he gave them
standing, in excellent voice and elegant gesture.

He was in particular partial to the poets, could quote at will from Gay
and Thomson and Goldsmith and Gray, and even from Shakespeare, much to my
own astonishment and humiliation. Saving only Dr. Courtenay of Annapolis
I had never met his equal for versatility of speech and command of fine
language; and, having heard that he had been at sea since the age of
twelve, I made bold to ask him at what school he had got his knowledge.

"At none, Richard," he answered with pride, "saving the rudiments at the
Parish School at Kirkbean. Why, sir, I hold it to be within every man's
province to make himself what he will, and I early recognized in Learning
the only guide for such as me. I may say that I married her for the
furtherance of my fortunes, and have come to love her for her own sake.
Many and many the 'tween-watch have I passed in a coil of rope in the
tops, a volume of the classics in my hand. And 'my happiest days, when
not at sea, have been spent in my brother William's little library. He
hath a modest estate near Fredericksburg, in Virginia, and none holds
higher than he the worth of an education. Ah, Richard," he added, with a
certain sadness, "I fear you little know the value of that which hath
been so lavishly bestowed upon you. There is no creation in the world to
equal your fine gentleman!"

It struck me indeed as strange that a man of his powers should set store
by such trumpery, and, too, that these notions had not impaired his
ability as a seaman. I did not reply. He gave no heed, however, but
drew from a case a number of odes and compositions, which he told me were
his own. They were addressed to various of his enamouritas, abounded in
orrery, and were all, I make no doubt, incredibly fine, tho' not so much
as one sticks in my mind. To speak truth I listened with a very ill
grace, longing the while to be on deck, for we were about to sight the
Isle of Man. The wine and the air of the cabin had made my eyes heavy.
But presently, when he had run through with some dozen or more, he put
them by, and with a quick motion got from his chair, a light coming into
his dark eyes that startled me to attention. And I forgot the merchant
captain, and seemed to be looking forward into the years.

"Mark you, Richard," said he, "mark well when I say that my time will
come, and a day when the best of them will bow to me. And every ell of
that triumph shall be mine, sir,-ay, every inch!"

Such was his force, which sprang from some hidden fire within him, that
I believed his words as firmly as they had been writ down in the Book of
Isaiah. Brimming over with enthusiasm, I pledged his coming greatness in
a reaming glass of Malaga.

"Alack," he cried, "an' they all had your faith, laddie, a fig for the
prophecy! Ya maun ken th' incentive's the maist o' the battle."

There was more of wisdom in this than I dreamed of then. Here lay hid
the very keynote of that ambitious character: he stooped to nothing less
than greatness for a triumph over his slanderers.

I rose betimes the next morning to find the sun peeping above the wavy
line of the Scottish hills far up the. Solway, and the brigantine
sliding smoothly along in the lee of the Galloway Rhinns. And, though
the month was March, the slopes of Burrow Head were green as the lawn of
Carvel Hall in May, and the slanting rays danced on the ruffed water. By
eight of the clock we had crept into Kirkcudbright Bay and anchored off
St. Mary's Isle, the tide running ebb, and leaving a wide brown belt of
sand behind it.

St. Mary's Isle! As we looked upon it that day, John Paul and I, and it
lay low against the bright water with its bare oaks and chestnuts against
the dark pines, 'twas perhaps as well that the future was sealed to us.

Captain Paul had conned the brigantine hither with a master's hand; but
now that the anchor was on the ground, he became palpably nervous. I had
donned again good MacMuir's shore suit, and was standing by the gangway
when the captain approached me.

"What'll ye be doing now, Dickie lad?" he asked kindly.

What indeed! I was without money in a foreign port, still dependent upon
my benefactor. And since he had declared his unwillingness to accept any
return I was of no mind to go farther into his debt. I thanked him again
for his goodness in what sincere terms I could choose, and told him I
should be obliged if he would put me in the way of working my passage to
London upon some coasting vessel. But my voice was thick, my affection
for him having grown-past my understanding.

"Hoots!" he replied, moved in his turn, "whyles I hae siller ye shallna
lack. Ye maun gae post-chaise to London, as befits yere station."

And scouting my expostulations, he commanded the longboat, bidding me be
ready to go ashore with him. I had nothing to do but to say farewell to
MacMuir and Lowrie and Auctherlonnie, which was hard enough. For the
honest first mate I had a great liking, and was touched beyond speech
when he enjoined me to keep his shore suit as long as I had want of it.

"But you will be needing it, MacMuir," I said, suspecting he had no
other.

"Haith! I am but a plain man, Mr. Carvel, and ye can sen' back the claw
frae London, wi' this geordie."

He slipped a guinea into my hand, but this I positively refused to take;
and to hide my feelings I climbed quickly over the side and into the
stern of the boat, beside the captain, and was rowed away through the
little fleet of cobles gathering about the ship. Twisting my neck for a
parting look at the John, I caught a glimpse of MacMuir's ungainly
shoulders over the fokesle rail, and I was near to tears as he shouted a
hearty "God speed" after me.

As we drew near the town of Kirkcudbright, which lies very low at the
mouth of the river Dee, I made out a group of men and women on the
wharves. The captain was silent, regarding them. When we had got within
twenty feet or so of the landing, a dame in a red woollen kerchief called
out:

"What hae ye done wi' Mungo, John Paul?"

"CAPTAIN John Paul, Mither Birkie," spoke up a coarse fellow with a rough
beard. And a laugh went round.

"Ay, captain! I'll captain him!" screamed the carlin, pushing to the
front as the oars were tossed, "I'll tak aith Mr. Currie'll be captaining
him for his towmond voyage o' piratin'. He be leukin' for ye noo, John
Paul." With that some of the men on the thwarts, perceiving that matters
were likely to go ill with the captain, began to chaff with their friends
above. The respect with which he had inspired them, however, prevented
any overt insult on their part. As for me, my temper had flared up like
the burning of a loose charge of powder, and by instinct my right hand
sought the handle of the mate's hanger. The beldame saw the motion.

"An' hae ye murder't MacMuir, John Paul, an' gien's claw to a Buckskin
gowk?"

The knot stirred with an angry murmur: in truth they meant violence,
--nothing less. But they had counted without their man, for Paul was born
to ride greater crises. With his lips set in a line he stepped lightly
out of the boat into their very midst, and they looked into his eyes to
forget time and place. MacMuir had told me how those eyes could conquer
mutiny, but I had not believed had I trot been thereto see the pack of
them give back in sullen wonder. And so we walked through and on to the
little street beyond, and never a word from the captain until we came
opposite the sign of the Hurcheon."

"Do you await me here, Richard," he said quite calmly; "I mast seek Mr.
Currie, and make my report."

I have still the remembrance of that pitiful day in the clean little
village. I went into the inn and sat down upon an oak settle in a corner
of the bar, under the high lattice, and thought of the bitterness of this
home-coming. If I was amongst strangers, he was amongst worse: verily,
to have one's own people set against one is heaviness of heart to a man
whose love of Scotland was great as John Paul's. After a while the place
began to fill, Willie and Robbie and Jamie arriving to discuss Paul's
return over their nappy. The little I could make of their talk was not
to my liking, but for the captain's sake I kept my anger under as best I
could, for I had the sense to know that brawling with a lot of alehouse
frequenters would not advance his cause. At length, however, came in the
same sneering fellow I had marked on the wharf, calling loudly for swats.
"Ay, Captain Paul was noo at Mr. Curries, syne banie Alan seed him gang
forbye the kirk." The speaker's name, I learned, was Davie, and he had
been talking with each and every man in the long-boat. Yes, Mungo
Maxwell had been cat-o'-ninetailed within an inch of his life; and that
was the truth; for a trifling offence, too; and cruelly discharged at
some outlandish port because, forsooth, he would not accept the gospel
of the divinity of Captain Paul. He would as soon sign papers with the
devil.

This Davie was gifted with a dangerous kind of humour which I have heard
called innuendo, and he soon had the bar packed with listeners who
laughed and cursed turn about, filling the room to a closeness scarce
supportable. And what between the foul air and my resentment, and
apprehension lest John Paul would come hither after me, I was in
prodigious discomfort of body and mind. But there was no pushing my way
through them unnoticed, wedged as I was in a far corner; so I sat still
until unfortunately, or fortunately, the eye of Davie chanced to fall
upon me, and immediately his yellow face lighted malignantly.

"Oh! here be the gentleman the captain's brocht hame!" he cried,
emphasizing the two words; "as braw a gentleman as eer taen frae pirates,
an' nae doubt sin to ae bien Buckskin bonnet-laird."

I saw through his game of getting satisfaction out of John Paul thro'
goading me, and determined he should have his fill of it. For, all in
all, he had me mad enough to fight three times over.

"Set aside the gentleman," said I, standing up and taking off MacMuir's
coat, "and call me a lubberly clout like yourself, and we will see which
is the better clout." I put off the longsleeved jacket, and faced him
with my fists doubled, crying: "I'll teach you, you spawn of a dunghill,
to speak ill of a good man!"

A clamour of "Fecht! fecht!" arose, and some of them applauded me,
calling me a "swankie," which I believe is a compliment. A certain sense
of fairness is often to be found where least expected. They capsized the
fat, protesting browsterwife over her own stool, and were pulling Jamie's
coat from his back, when I began to suspect that a fight was not to the
sniveller's liking. Indeed, the very look of him made me laugh out
--'twas now as mild as a summer's morn.

"Wow," says Jamie, "ye maun fecht wi' a man o' yere ain size."

"I'll lay a guinea that we weigh even," said I; and suddenly remembered
that I had not so much as tuppence to bless me.

Happily he did not accept the wager. In huge disgust they hustled him
from the inn and put forward the blacksmith, who was standing at the door
in his leather apron. Now I had not bargained with the smith, who seemed
a well-natured enough man, and grinned broadly at the prospect. But they
made a ring on the floor, I going over it at one end, and he at the
other, when a cry came from the street, those about the entrance parted,
and in walked John Paul himself. At sight of him my new adversary, who
was preparing to deal me out a blow to fell an ox, dropped his arms in
surprise, and held out his big hand.

"Haith! John Paul," he shouted heartily, forgetting me, "'tis blythe I
am to see yere bonnie face ance mair!

"An' wha are ye, Jamie Darrell," said the captain, "to be bangin' yere
betters? Dinna ye ken gentry when ye see't?"

A puzzled look spread over the smith's grimy face.

"Gentry!" says he; "nae gentry that I ken, John Paul. Th' fecht be but
a bit o' fun, an' nane o' my seekin'."

"What quarrel is this, Richard?" says John Paul to me.

"In truth I have no quarrel with this honest man," I replied; "I desired
but the pleasure of beating a certain evil-tongued Davie, who seems to
have no stomach for blows, and hath taken his lies elsewhere."

So quiet was the place that the tinkle of the guidwife's needle, which
she had dropped to the flags, sounded clear to all. John Paul stood in
the middle of the ring, erect, like a man inspired, and the same strange
sense of prophecy that had stirred my blood crept over him and awed the
rest, as tho' 'twere suddenly given to see him, not as he was, but as he
would be. Then he spoke.

"You, who are my countrymen, who should be my oldest and best friends,
are become my enemies. You who were companions of my childhood are
revilers of my manhood; you have robbed me of my good name and my honour,
of my ship, of my very means of livelihood, and you are not content; you
would rob me of my country, which I hold dearer than all. And I have
never done you evil, nor spoken aught against you. As for the man
Maxwell, whose part you take, his child is starving in your very midst,
and you have not lifted your hands. 'Twas for her sake I shipped him,
and none other. May God forgive you! He alone sees the bitterness in my
heart this day. He alone knows my love for Scotland, and what it costs
me to renounce her."

He had said so much with an infinite sadness, and I read a response in
the eyes of more than one of his listeners, the guidwife weeping aloud.
But now his voice rose, and he ended with a fiery vigour.

"Renounce her I do," he cried, "now and forevermore! Henceforth I am no
countryman of yours. And if a day of repentance should come for this
evil, remember well what I have said to you."

They stood for a moment when he had finished, shifting uneasily, their
tongues gone, like lads caught in a lie. I think they felt his greatness
then, and had any one of them possessed the nobility to come forward with
an honest word, John Paul might yet have been saved to Scotland. As it
was, they slunk away in twos and threes, leaving at last only the good
smith with us. He was not a man of talk, and the tears had washed the
soot from his face in two white furrows.

"Ye'll hae a waught wi' me afore ye gang, John," he said clumsily, "for
th' morns we've paddl' 't thegither i' th' Nith."

The ale was brought by the guidwife, who paused, as she put it down, to
wipe her eyes with her apron. She gave John Paul one furtive glance and
betook herself again to her knitting with a sigh, speech having failed
her likewise. The captain grasped up his mug.

"May God bless you, Jamie," he said.

"Ye'll be gaen noo to see the mither," said Jamie, after a long space.

"Ay, for the last time. An', Jamie, ye'll see that nae harm cams to her
when I'm far awa'?"

The smith promised, and also agreed to have John Paul's chests sent by
wagon, that very day, to Dumfries. And we left him at his forge, his
honest breast torn with emotion, looking after us.




CHAPTER XXI

THE GARDENER'S COTTAGE

So we walked out of the village, with many a head craned after us and
many an eye peeping from behind a shutter, and on into the open highway.
The day was heavenly bright, the wind humming around us and playing mad
pranks with the white cotton clouds, and I forgot awhile the pity within
me to wonder at the orderly look of the country, the hedges with never a
stone out of place, and the bars always up. The ground was parcelled off
in such bits as to make me smile when I remembered our own wide tracts in
the New World. Here waste was sin: with us part and parcel of a creed.
I marvelled, too, at the primness and solidity of the houses along the
road, and remarked how their lines belonged rather to the landscape than
to themselves. But I was conscious ever of a strange wish to expand, for
I felt as tho' I were in the land of the Liliputians, and the thought of
a gallop of forty miles or so over these honeycombed fields brought me to
a laugh. But I was yet to see some estates of the gentry.

I had it on my tongue's tip to ask the captain whither he was taking me,
yet dared not intrude on the sorrow that still gripped him. Time and
time we met people plodding along, some of them nodding uncertainly,
others abruptly taking the far side of the pike, and every encounter
drove the poison deeper into his soul. But after we had travelled some
way, up hill and down dale, he vouchsafed the intelligence that we were
making for Arbigland, Mr. Craik's seat near Dumfries, which lies on the
Nith twenty miles or so up the Solway from Kirkcudbright. On that estate
stood the cottage where John Paul was born, and where his mother and
sisters still dwelt.

"I'll juist be saying guidbye, Richard," he said; "and leave them a bit
siller I hae saved, an' syne we'll be aff to London thegither, for
Scotland's no but a cauld kintra."

"You are going to London with me?" I cried.

"Ay," answered he; "this is hame nae mair for John Paul."

I made bold to ask how the John's owners had treated him.

"I have naught to complain of, laddie," he answered; "both Mr. Beck and
Mr. Currie bore the matter of the admiralty court and the delay like the
gentlemen they are. They well know that I am hard driven when I resort
to the lash. They were both sore at losing me, and says Mr. Beck: I
We'll not soon get another to keep the brigantine like a man-o'-war, as
did you, John Paul.' I thanked him, and told him I had sworn never to
take another merchantman out of the Solway. And I will keep that oath."

He sighed, and added that he never hoped for better owners. In token of
which he drew a certificate of service from his pocket, signed by Messrs.
Currie and Beck, proclaiming him the best master and supercargo they had
ever had in their service. I perceived that talk lightened him, and led
him on. I inquired how he had got the 'John'.

"I took passage on her from Kingston, laddie. On the trip both Captain
Macadam and the chief mate died of the fever. And it was I, the
passenger, who sailed her into Kirkcudbright, tho' I had never been more
than a chief mate before. That is scarce three years gone, when I was
just turned one and twenty. And old Mr. Currie, who had known my father,
was so pleased that he gave me the ship. I had been chief mate of the
'Two Friends', a slaver out of Kingston."

"And so you were in that trade!" I exclaimed.

He seemed to hesitate.

"Yes," he replied, "and sorry I am to say it. But a man must live. It
was no place for a gentleman, and I left of my own accord. Before that,
I was on a slaver out of Whitehaven."

"You must know Whitehaven, then."

I said it only to keep the talk going, but I remembered the remark long
after.

"I do," said he. "'Tis a fair sample of an English coast town. And I
have often thought, in the event of war with France, how easy 'twould be
for Louis's cruisers to harry the place, and an hundred like it, and
raise such a terror as to keep the British navy at home."

I did not know at the time that this was the inspiration of an admiral
and of a genius. The subject waned. And as familiar scenes jogged his
memory, he launched into Scotch and reminiscence. Every barn he knew,
and cairn and croft and steeple recalled stories of his boyhood.

We had long been in sight of Criffel, towering ahead of us, whose summit
had beckoned for cycles to Helvellyn and Saddleback looming up to the
southward, marking the wonderland of the English lakes. And at length,
after some five hours of stiff walking, we saw the brown Nith below us
going down to meet the Solway, and so came to the entrance of Mr. Craik's
place. The old porter recognized Paul by a mere shake of the head and
the words, "Yere back, are ye?" and a lowering of his bushy white
eyebrows. We took a by-way to avoid the manor-house, which stood on the
rising ground twixt us and the mountain, I walking close to John Paul's
shoulder and feeling for him at every step. Presently, at a turn of the
path, we were brought face to face with an elderly gentleman in black,
and John Paul stopped.

"Mr. Craik!" he said, removing his hat.

But the gentleman only whistled to his dogs and went on.

"My God, even he!" exclaimed the captain, bitterly; "even he, who thought
so highly of my father!"

A hundred yards more and we came to the little cottage nigh hid among the
trees. John Paul paused a moment, his hand upon the latch of the gate,
his eyes drinking in the familiar picture. The light of day was dying
behind Criffel, and the tiny panes of the cottage windows pulsed with the
rosy flame on the hearth within, now flaring, and again deepening. He
sighed. He walked with unsteady step to the door and pushed it open.
I followed, scarce knowing what I did, halted at the threshold and drew
back, for I had been upon holy ground.

John Paul was kneeling upon the flags by the ingleside, his face buried
on the open Bible in his mother's lap. Her snowy-white head was bent
upon his, her tears running fast, and her lips moving in silent prayer to
Him who giveth and taketh away. Verily, here in this humble place dwelt
a love that defied the hard usage of a hard world!

After a space he came to the door and called, and took me by the hand,
and I went in with him. Though his eyes were wet, he bore himself like a
cavalier.

"Mother, this is Mr. Richard Carvell heir to Carvel Hall in Maryland,--a
young gentleman whom I have had the honour to rescue from a slaver."

I bowed low, such was my respect for Dame Paul, and she rose and
curtseyed. She wore a widow's cap and a black gown, and I saw in her
deep-lined face a resemblance to her son.

"Madam," I said, the title coming naturally, "I owe Captain Paul a debt I
can never repay."

"An' him but a laddie!" she cried. "I'm thankful, John, I'm thankful for
his mither that ye saved him."

"I have no mother, Madam Paul," said I, "and my father was killed in the
French war. But I have a grandfather who loves me dearly as I love him."

Some impulse brought her forward, and she took both my hands in her own.

"Ye'll forgive an auld woman, sir," she said, with a dignity that matched
her son's, "but ye're sae young, an' ye hae sic a leuk in yere bonny gray
e'e that I ken yell aye be a true friend o' John's. He's been a guid sin
to me, an' ye maunna reek what they say o' him."

When now I think of the triumph John Paul has achieved, of the scoffing
world he has brought to his feet, I cannot but recall that sorrowful
evening in the gardener's cottage, when a son was restored but to be torn
away. The sisters came in from their day's work,--both well-favoured
lasses, with John's eyes and hair,--and cooked the simple meal of broth
and porridge, and the fowl they had kept so long against the captain's
home-coming. He carved with many a light word that cost him dear. Did
Janet reca' the simmer nights they had supped here, wi' the bumclocks
bizzin' ower the candles? And was Nancy, the cow, still i' the byre?
And did the bees still give the same bonnie hiney, and were the red
apples still in the far orchard? Ay, Meg had thocht o' him that autumn,
and ran to fetch them with her apron to her face, to come back smiling
through her tears. So it went; and often a lump would rise in my throat
that I could not eat, famished as I was, and the mother and sisters
scarce touched a morsel of the feast.

The one never failing test of a son, my dears, lies in his treatment of
his mother, and from that hour forth I had not a doubt of John Paul. He
was a man who had seen the world and become, in more than one meaning of
the word, a gentleman. Whatever foibles he may have had, he brought no
conscious airs and graces to this lowly place, but was again the humble
gardener's boy.

But time pressed, as it ever does. The hour came for us to leave, John
Paul firmly refusing to remain the night in a house that belonged to Mr.
Craik. Of the tenderness, nay, of the pity and cruelty of that parting,
I have no power to write. We knelt with bowed heads while the mother
prayed for the son, expatriated, whom she never hoped to see again on
this earth. She gave us bannocks of her own baking, and her last words
were to implore me always to be a friend to John Paul.

Then we went out into the night and walked all the way to Dumfries in
silence.

We lay that night at the sign of the "Twa Naigs," where Bonnie Prince
Charlie had rested in the Mars year(1715). Before I went to bed I called
for pen and paper, and by the light of a tallow dip sat down to compose a
letter to my grandfather, telling him that I was alive and well, and
recounting as much of my adventures as I could. I said that I was going
to London, where I would see Mr. Dix, and would take passage thence for
America. I prayed that he had been able to bear up against the ordeal of
my disappearance. I dwelt upon the obligations I was under to John Paul,
relating the misfortunes of that worthy seaman (which he so little
deserved!). And said that it was my purpose to bring him to Maryland
with me, where I knew Mr. Carvel would reward him with one of his ships,
explaining that he would accept no money. But when it came to accusing
Grafton and the rector, I thought twice, and bit the end of the feather.
The chances were so great that my grandfather would be in bed and under
the guardianship of my uncle that I forbore, and resolved instead to
write it to Captain Daniel at my first opportunity.

I arose early to discover a morning gray and drear, with a mist falling
to chill the bones. News travels apace the world over, and that of John
Paul's home-coming and of his public renunciation of Scotland at the
"Hurcheon" had reached Dumfries in good time, substantiated by the
arrival of the teamster with the chests the night before. I descended
into the courtyard in time to catch the captain in his watchet-blue frock
haggling with the landlord for a chaise, the two of them surrounded by a
muttering crowd anxious for a glimpse of Mr. Craik's gardener's son, for
he had become a nine-day sensation to the country round about. But John
Paul minded them not so much as a swarm of flies, and the teamster's
account of the happenings at Kirkcudbright had given them so wholesome a
fear of his speech and presence as to cause them to misdoubt their own
wit, which is saying a deal of Scotchmen. But when the bargain had been
struck and John Paul gone with the 'ostler to see to his chests, mine
host thought it a pity not to have a fall out of me.

"So ye be the Buckskin laud," he said, with a wink at a leering group of
farmers; "ye hae braw gentles in America."

He was a man of sixty or thereabout, with a shrewd but not unkindly face
that had something familiar in it.

"You have discernment indeed to recognize a gentleman in Scotch clothes,"
I replied, turning the laugh on him.

"Dinna raise ae Buckskin, Mr. Rawlinson," said a man in corduroy.

"Rawlinson!" I exclaimed at random, "there is one of your name in the
colonies who knows his station better."

"Trowkt!" cried mine host, "ye ken Ivie o' Maryland, Ivie my brither?"

"He is my grandfather's miller at Carvel Hall," I said.

"Syne ye maun be nane ither than Mr. Richard Carvel. Yere servan', Mr.
Carvel," and he made me a low bow, to the great dropping of jaws round
about, and led me into the inn. With trembling hands he took a packet
from his cabinet and showed me the letters, twenty-three in all, which
Ivie had written home since he had gone out as the King's passenger in
'45. The sight of them brought tears to my eyes and carried me out of
the Scotch mist back to dear old Maryland. I had no trouble in
convincing mine host that I was the lad eulogized in the scrawls,
and he put hand on the very sheet which announced my birth, nineteen
years since,--the fourth generation of Carvels Ivie had known.

So it came that the captain and I got the best chaise and pair in place
of the worst, and sat down to a breakfast such as was prepared only for
my Lord Selkirk when he passed that way, while I told the landlord of his
brother; and as I talked I remembered the day I had caught the arm of the
mill and gone the round, to find that Ivie had written of that, too!

After that our landlord would not hear of a reckoning. I might stay a
month, a year, at the "Twa Naigs" if I wished. As for John Paul, who
seemed my friend, he would say nothing, only to advise me privately that
the man was queer company, shaking his head when I defended him. He came
to me with ten guineas, which he pressed me to take for Ivies sake, and
repay when occasion offered. I thanked him, but was of no mind to accept
money from one who thought ill of my benefactor.

The refusal of these recalled the chaise, and I took the trouble to
expostulate with the captain on that score, pointing out as delicately as
I might that, as he had brought me to Scotland, I held it within my right
to incur the expense of the trip to London, and that I intended to
reimburse him when I saw Mr. Dix. For I knew that his wallet was not
over full, since he had left the half of his savings with his mother.
Much to my secret delight, he agreed to this as within the compass of a
gentleman's acceptance. Had he not, I had the full intention of leaving
him to post it alone, and of offering myself to the master of the first
schooner.

Despite the rain, and the painful scenes gone through but yesterday, and
the sour-looking ring of men and women gathered to see the start, I was
in high spirits as we went spinning down the Carlisle road, with my heart
leaping to the crack of the postilion's whip.

I was going to London and to Dorothy!




CHAPTER XXII

ON THE ROAD

Many were the ludicrous incidents we encountered on our journey to
London. As long as I live, I shall never forget John Paul's alighting
upon the bridge of the Sark to rid himself of a mighty farewell address
to Scotland he had been composing upon the road. And this he delivered
with such appalling voice and gesture as to frighten to a standstill a
chaise on the English side of the stream, containing a young gentleman in
a scarlet coat and a laced hat, and a young lady who sobbed as we passed
them. They were, no doubt, running to Gretna Green to be married.

Captain Paul, as I have said, was a man of moods, and strangely affected
by ridicule. And this we had in plenty upon the road. Landlords,
grooms, and'ostlers, and even our own post-boys, laughed and jested
coarsely at his sky-blue frock, and their sallies angered him beyond all
reason, while they afforded me so great an amusement that more than once
I was on the edge of a serious falling-out with him as a consequence of
my merriment. Usually, when we alighted from our vehicle, the expression
of mine host would sour, and his sir would shift to a master; while his
servants would go trooping in again, with many a coarse fling that they
would get no vails from such as we. And once we were invited into the
kitchen. He would be soar for half a day at a spell after a piece of
insolence out of the common, and then deliver me a solemn lecture upon
the advantages of birth in a manor. Then his natural buoyancy would lift
him again, and he would be in childish ecstasies at the prospect of
getting to London, and seeing the great world; and I began to think that
he secretly cherished the hope of meeting some of its votaries. For I
had told him, casually as possible, that I had friends in Arlington
Street, where I remembered the Manners were established.

"Arlington Street!" he repeated, rolling the words over his tongue; "it
has a fine sound, laddie, a fine sound. That street must be the very
acme of fashion."

I laughed, and replied that I did not know. And at the ordinary of the
next inn we came to, he took occasion to mention to me, in a louder voice
than was necessary, that I would do well to call in Arlington Street as
we went into town. So far as I could see, the remark did not compel any
increase of respect from our fellow-diners.

Upon more than one point I was worried. Often and often I reflected that
some hitch might occur to prevent my getting money promptly from Mr. Dix.
Days would perchance elapse before I could find the man in such a great
city as London; he might be out of town at this season, Easter being less
than a se'nnight away. For I had heard my grandfather say that the elder
Mr. Dix had a house in some merchant's suburb, and loved to play at being
a squire before he died. Again (my heart stood at the thought), the
Manners might be gone back to America. I cursed the stubborn pride which
had led the captain to hire a post-chaise, when the wagon had served us
so much better, and besides relieved him of the fusillade of ridicule he
got travelling as a gentleman. But such reflections always ended in my
upbraiding myself for blaming him whose generosity had rescued me from
perhaps a life-long misery.

But, on the whole, we rolled southward happily, between high walls and
hedges, past trim gardens and fields and meadows, and I marvelled at the
regular, park-like look of the country, as though stamped from one design
continually recurring, like our butter at Carvel Hall. The roads were
sometimes good, and sometimes as execrable as a colonial byway in winter,
with mud up to the axles. And yet, my heart went out to this country,
the home of my ancestors. Spring was at hand; the ploughboys whistled
between the furrows, the larks circled overhead, and the lilacs were
cautiously pushing forth their noses. The air was heavy with the perfume
of living things.

The welcome we got at our various stopping-places was often scanty
indeed, and more than once we were told to go farther down the street,
that the inn was full. And I may as well confess that my mind was
troubled about John Paul. Despite all I could say, he would go to the
best hotels in the larger towns, declaring that there we should meet the
people of fashion. Nor was his eagerness damped when he discovered that
such people never came to the ordinary, but were served in their own
rooms by their own servants.

"I shall know them yet," he would vow, as we started off of a morning,
after having seen no more of my Lord than his liveries below stairs.
"Am I not a gentleman in all but birth, Richard? And that is a
difficulty many before me have overcome. I have the classics, and the
history, and the poets. And the French language, though I have never
made the grand tour. I flatter myself that my tone might be worse. By
the help of your friends, I shall have a title or two for acquaintances
before I leave London; and when my money is gone, there is a shipowner I
know of who will give me employment, if I have not obtained preferment."

The desire to meet persons of birth was near to a mania with him. And I
had not the courage to dampen his hopes. But, inexperienced as I was, I
knew the kind better than he, and understood that it was easier for a
camel to enter the eye of a needle, than for John Paul to cross the
thresholds of the great houses of London. The way of adventurers is
hard, and he could scarce lay claim then to a better name.

"We shall go to Maryland together, Captain Paul," I said, "and waste no
time upon London save to see Vauxhall, and the opera, and St. James's and
the Queen's House and the Tower, and Parliament, and perchance his
Majesty himself," I added, attempting merriment, for the notion of seeing
Dolly only to leave her gave me a pang. And the captain knew nothing of
Dolly.

"So, Richard, you fear I shall disgrace you," he said reproachfully.
"Know, sir, that I have pride enough and to spare. That I can make
friends without going to Arlington Street."

I was ready to cry with vexation at this childish speech.

"And a time will come when they shall know me," he went on. "If they
insult me now they shall pay dearly for it."

"My dear captain," I cried; "nobody will insult you, and least of all my
friends, the Manners." I had my misgivings about little Mr. Marmaduke.
"But we are, neither of us, equipped for a London season. I am but an
unknown provincial, and you--" I paused for words.

For a sudden realization had come upon me that our positions were now
reversed. It seemed strange that I should be interpreting the world to
this man of power.

"And I?" he repeated bitterly.

"You have first to become an admiral," I replied, with inspiration;
"Drake was once a common seaman."

He did not answer. But that evening as we came into Windsor, I perceived
that he had not abandoned his intentions. The long light flashed on the
peaceful Thames, and the great, grim castle was gilded all over its
western side.

The captain leaned out of the window.

"Postilion," he called, "which inn here is most favoured by gentlemen?"

"The Castle," said the boy, turning in his saddle to grin at me. "But
if I might be so bold as to advise your honour, the 'Swan' is a
comfortable house, and well attended."

"Know your place, sirrah," shouted the captain, angrily, "and drive us to
the 'Castle.'"

The boy snapped his whip disdainfully, and presently pulled us up at the
inn, our chaise covered with the mud of three particular showers we had
run through that day. And, as usual, the landlord, thinking he was about
to receive quality, came scraping to the chaise door, only to turn with a
gesture of disgust when he perceived John Paul's sea-boxes tied on
behind, and the costume of that hero, as well as my own.

The captain demanded a room. But mine host had turned his back, when
suddenly a thought must have struck him, for he wheeled again.

"Stay," he cried, glancing suspiciously at the sky-blue frock; "if you
are Mr. Dyson's courier, I have reserved a suite."

This same John Paul, who was like iron with mob and mutiny, was pitiably
helpless before such a prop of the aristocracy. He flew into a rage, and
rated the landlord in Scotch and English, and I was fain to put my tongue
in my cheek and turn my back that my laughter might not anger him the
more.

And so I came face to face with another smile, behind a spying-glass,--a
smile so cynical and unpleasant withal that my own was smothered. A tall
and thin gentleman, who had come out of the inn without a hat, was
surveying the dispute with a keen delight. He was past the middle age.
His clothes bore that mark which distinguishes his world from the other,
but his features were so striking as to hold my attention unwittingly.

After a while he withdrew his glass, cast one look at me which might have
meant anything, and spoke up.

"Pray, my good Goble, why all this fol-de-rol about admitting a gentleman
to your house?"

I scarce know which was the more astonished, the landlord, John Paul, or
I. Goble bowed at the speaker.

"A gentleman, your honour!" he gasped. "Your honour is joking again.
Surely this trumpery Scotchman in Jews' finery is no gentleman, nor the
longshore lout he has got with him. They may go to the 'Swan.'"

"Jews' finery!" shouted the captain, with his fingers on his sword.

But the stranger held up a hand deprecatingly.

"'Pon my oath, Goble, I gave you credit for more penetration," he
drawled; "you may be right about the Scotchman, but your longshore lout
has had both birth and breeding, or I know nothing."

John Paul, who was in the act of bowing to the speaker, remained
petrified with his hand upon his heart, entirely discomfited. The
landlord forsook him instantly for me, then stole a glance at his guest
to test his seriousness, and looked at my face to see how greatly it were
at variance with my clothes. The temptation to lay hands on the cringing
little toadeater grew too strong for me, and I picked him up by the
scruff of the collar,--he was all skin and bones,--and spun him round
like a corpse upon a gibbet, while he cried mercy in a voice to wake the
dead. The slim gentleman under the sign laughed until he held his sides,
with a heartiness that jarred upon me. It did not seem to fit him.

"By Hercules and Vulcan," he cried, when at last I had set the landlord
down, "what an arm and back the lad has! He must have the best in the
house, Goble, and sup with me."

Goble pulled himself together.

"And he is your honour's friend," he began, with a scowl.

"Ay, he is my friend, I tell you," retorted the important personage,
impatiently.

The innkeeper, sulky, half-satisfied, yet fearing to offend, welcomed us
with what grace he could muster, and we were shown to "The Fox and the
Grapes," a large room in the rear of the house.

John Paul had not spoken since the slim gentleman had drawn the
distinction between us, and I knew that the affront was rankling in his
breast. He cast himself into a chair with such an air of dejection as
made me pity him from my heart. But I had no consolation to offer. His
first words, far from being the torrent of protest I looked for, almost
startled me into laughter.

"He can be nothing less than a duke," said the captain. "Ah, Richard,
see what it is to be a gentleman!"

"Fiddlesticks! I had rather own your powers than the best title in
England," I retorted sharply.

He shook his head sorrowfully, which made me wonder the more that a man
of his ability should be unhappy without this one bauble attainment.

"I shall begin to believe the philosophers have the right of it," he
remarked presently. "Have you ever read anything of Monsieur Rousseau's,
Richard?"

The words were scarce out of his mouth when we heard a loud rap on the
door, which I opened to discover a Swiss fellow in a private livery, come
to say that his master begged the young gentleman would sup with him.
The man stood immovable while he delivered this message, and put an
impudent emphasis upon the gentleman.

"Say to your master, whoever he may be," I replied, in some heat at the
man's sneer, "that I am travelling with Captain Paul. That any
invitation to me must include him."

The lackey stood astounded at my answer, as though he had not heard
aright. Then he retired with less assurance than he had come, and John
Paul sprang to his feet and laid his hands upon my shoulders, as was his
wont when affected. He reproached himself for having misjudged me, and
added a deal more that I have forgotten.

"And to think," he cried, "that you have forgone supping with a nobleman
on my account!"

"Pish, captain, 'tis no great denial. His Lordship--if Lordship he is
--is stranded in an inn, overcome with ennui, and must be amused. That is
all."

Nevertheless I think the good captain was distinctly disappointed, not
alone because I gave up what in his opinion was a great advantage, but
likewise because I could have regaled him on my return with an account of
the meal. For it must be borne in mind, my dears, that those days are
not these, nor that country this one. And in judging Captain Paul it
must be remembered that rank inspired a vast respect when King George
came to the throne. It can never be said of John Paul that he lacked
either independence or spirit. But a nobleman was a nobleman then.

So when presently the gentleman himself appeared smiling at our door,
which his servant had left open, we both of us rose up in astonishment
and bowed very respectfully, and my face burned at the thought of the
message I had sent him. For, after all, the captain was but twenty-one
and I nineteen, and the distinguished unknown at least fifty. He took a
pinch of snuff and brushed his waistcoat before he spoke.

"Egad," said he, with good nature, looking up at me, "Mohammed was a
philosopher, and so am I, and come to the mountain. 'Tis worth crossing
an inn in these times to see a young man whose strength has not been
wasted upon foppery. May I ask your name, sir?"

"Richard Carvel," I answered, much put aback.

"Ah, Carvel," he repeated; "I know three or four of that name. Perhaps
you are Robert Carvel's son, of Yorkshire. But what the devil do you do
in such clothes? I was resolved to have you though I am forced to take a
dozen watchet-blue mountebanks in the bargain."

"Sir, I warn you not to insult my friend," I cried, in a temper again.

"There, there, not so loud, I beg you," said he, with a gesture. "Hot as
pounded pepper,--but all things are the better for a touch of it. I had
no intention of insulting the worthy man, I give my word. I must have my
joke, sir. No harm meant." And he nodded at John Paul, who looked as if
he would sink through the floor. "Robert Carvel is as testy as the devil
with the gout, and you are not unlike him in feature."

"He is no relation of mine," I replied, undecided whether to laugh or be
angry. And then I added, for I was very young, "I am an American, and
heir to Carvel Hall in Maryland."

"Lord, lord, I might have known," exclaimed he. "Once I had the honour
of dining with your Dr. Franklin, from Pennsylvania. He dresses for all
the world like you, only worse, and wears a hat I would not be caught
under at Bagnigge Wells, were I so imprudent as to go there."

"Dr. Franklin has weightier matters than hats to occupy him, sir," I
retorted. For I was determined to hold my own.

He made a French gesture, a shrug of his thin shoulders, which caused me
to suspect he was not always so good-natured.

"Dr. Franklin would better have stuck to his newspaper, my young friend,"
said he. "But I like your appearance too well to quarrel with you, and
we'll have no politics before eating. Come, gentlemen, come! Let us see
what Goble has left after his shaking."

He struck off with something of a painful gait, which he explained was
from the gout. And presently we arrived at his parlour, where supper was
set out for us. I had not tasted its equal since I left Maryland. We
sat down to a capon stuffed with eggs, and dainty sausages, and hot
rolls, such as we had at home; and a wine which had cobwebbed and
mellowed under the Castle Inn for better than twenty years. The
personage did not drink wine. He sent his servant to quarrel with Goble
because he had not been given iced water. While he was tapping on the
table I took occasion to observe him. His was a physiognomy to strike
the stranger, not by reason of its nobility, but because of its oddity.
He had a prodigious length of face, the nose long in proportion, but not
prominent. The eyes were dark, very bright, and wide apart, with little
eyebrows dabbed over them at a slanting angle. The thin-lipped mouth
rather pursed up, which made his smile the contradiction it was. In
short, my dears, while I do not lay claim to the reading of character,
it required no great astuteness to perceive the scholar, the man of the
world, and the ascetic--and all affected. His conversation bore out the
summary. It astonished us. It encircled the earth, embraced history and
letters since the world began. And added to all this, he had a thousand
anecdotes on his tongue's tip. His words he chose with too great a
nicety; his sentences were of a foreign formation, twisted around; and
his stories were illustrated with French gesticulations. He threw in
quotations galore, in Latin, and French, and English, until the captain
began casting me odd, uncomfortable looks, as though he wished himself
well out of the entertainment. Indeed, poor John Paul's perturbation
amused me more than the gentleman's anecdotes. To be ill at ease is
discouraging to any one, but it was peculiarly fatal with the captain.
This arch-aristocrat dazzled him. When he attempted to follow in the
same vein he would get lost. And his really considerable learning
counted for nothing. He reached the height of his mortification when the
slim gentleman dropped his eyelids and began to yawn. I was wickedly
delighted. He could not have been better met. Another such encounter,
and I would warrant the captain's illusions concerning the gentry to go
up in smoke. Then he might come to some notion of his own true powers.
As for me, I enjoyed the supper which our host had insisted upon our
partaking, drank his wine, and paid him very little attention.

"May I make so bold as to ask, sir, whether you are a patron of
literature?" said the captain, at length.

"A very poor patron, my dear man," was the answer. "Merely a humble
worshipper at the shrine. And I might say that I partake of its benefits
as much as a gentleman may. And yet," he added, with a laugh and a
cough, "those silly newspapers and magazines insist on calling me a
literary man."

"And now that you have indulged in a question, and the claret is coming
on," said he, "perhaps you will tell me something of yourself, Mr.
Carvel, and of your friend, Captain Paul. And how you come to be so far
from home." And he settled himself comfortably to listen, as a man who
has bought his right to an opera box.

Here was my chance. And I resolved that if I did not further enlighten
John Paul, it would be no fault of mine.

"Sir," I replied, in as dry a monotone as I could assume, "I was
kidnapped by the connivance of some unscrupulous persons in my colony,
who had designs upon my grandfather's fortune. I was taken abroad in a
slaver and carried down to the Caribbean seas, when I soon discovered
that the captain and his crew were nothing less than pirates. For one
day all hands got into a beastly state of drunkenness, and the captain
raised the skull and cross-bones, which he had handy in his chest. I was
forced to climb the main rigging in order to escape being hacked to
pieces."

He sat bolt upright, those little eyebrows of his gone up full half an
inch, and he raised his thin hands with an air of incredulity. John Paul
was no less astonished at my little ruse.

"Holy Saint Clement!" exclaimed our host; "pirates! This begins to
have a flavour indeed. And yet you do not seem to be a lad with an
imagination. Egad, Mr. Carvel, I had put you down for one who might say,
with Alceste: 'Etre franc et sincere est mon plus grand talent.'
But pray go on, sir. You have but to call for pen and ink to rival
Mr. Fielding."

With that I pushed back my chair, got up from the table, and made him a
bow. And the captain, at last seeing my drift, did the same.

"I am not used at home to have my word doubted, sir," I said. "Sir, your
humble servant. I wish you a very good evening." He rose precipitately,
crying out from his gout, and laid a hand upon my arm.

"Pray, Mr. Carvel, pray, sir, be seated," he said, in some agitation.
"Remember that the story is unusual, and that I have never clapped eyes
on you until to-night. Are all young gentlemen from Maryland so fiery?
But I should have known from your face that you are incapable of deceit.
Pray be seated, captain."

I was persuaded to go on, not a little delighted that I had scored my
point, and broken down his mask of affectation and careless cynicism.
I told my story, leaving out the family history involved, and he listened
with every mark of attention and interest. Indeed, to my surprise, he
began to show some enthusiasm, of which sensation I had not believed him
capable.

"What a find! what a find!" he continued to exclaim, when I had
finished. "And true. You say it is true, Mr. Carvel?"

"Sir!" I replied, "I thought we had thrashed that out."

"Yes, yes, to be sure. I beg pardon," said he. And then to his servant:
"Colomb, is my writing-tablet unpacked?"

I was more mystified than ever as to his identity. Was he going to put
the story in a magazine?

After that he seemed plainly anxious to be rid of us. I bade him good
night, and he grasped my hand warmly enough. Then he turned to the
captain in his most condescending manner. But a great change had come
over John Paul. He was ever quick to see and to learn, and I rejoiced to
remark that he did not bow over the hand, as he might have done two hours
since. He was again Captain Paul, the man, who fought his way on his own
merits. He held himself as tho' he was once more pacing the deck of the
John.

The slim gentleman poured the width of a finger of claret in his glass,
soused it with water, and held it up.

"Here's to your future, my good captain," he said, "and to Mr. Carvel's
safe arrival home again. When you get to town, Mr. Carvel, don't fail to
go to Davenport, who makes clothes for most of us at Almack's, and let
him remodel you. I wish to God he might get hold of your doctor. And
put up at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall: I take it that you have
friends in London."

I replied that I had. But he did not push the inquiry.

"You should write out this history for your grandchildren, Mr. Carvel,"
he added, as he bade his Swiss light us to our room. "A strange yarn
indeed, captain."

"And therefore," said the captain, coolly, "as a stranger give it
welcome.

    "'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
     Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

Had a meteor struck at the gentleman's feet, he could not have been more
taken aback.

"What! What's this?" he cried. "You quote Hamlet! And who the devil
are you, sir, that you know my name?"

"Your name, sir!" exclaims the captain, in astonishment.

"Well, well," he said, stepping back and eying us closely, "'tis no
matter. Good night, gentlemen, good night."

And we went to bed with many a laugh over the incident.

"His name must be Horatio. We'll discover it in the morning," said John
Paul.




CHAPTER XXIII

LONDON TOWN

But he had not risen when we set out, nor would the illnatured landlord
reveal his name. It mattered little to me, since I desired to forget him
as quickly as possible. For here was one of my own people of quality,
a gentleman who professed to believe what I told him, and yet would do
no more for me than recommend me an inn and a tailor; while a poor
sea-captain, driven from his employment and his home, with no better reason
to put faith in my story, was sharing with me his last penny. Goble, in
truth, had made us pay dearly for our fun with him, and the hum of the
vast unknown fell upon our ears with the question of lodging still
unsettled. The captain was for going to the Star and Garter, the inn the
gentleman had mentioned. I was in favour of seeking a more modest and
less fashionable hostelry.

"Remember that you must keep up your condition, Richard," said John Paul.

"And if all English gentlemen are like our late friend," I said, "I would
rather stay in a city coffee-house. Remember that you have only two
guineas left after paying for the chaise, and that Mr. Dix may be out of
town."

"And your friends in Arlington Street?" said he.

"May be back in Maryland," said I; and added inwardly,

"God forbid!"

"We shall have twice the chance at the Star and Garter. They will want a
show of gold at a humbler place, and at the Star we may carry matters
with a high hand. Pick out the biggest frigate," he cried, for the tenth
time, at least, "or the most beautiful lady, and it will surprise you, my
lad, to find out how many times you will win."

I know of no feeling of awe to equal that of a stranger approaching for
the first time a huge city. The thought of a human multitude is ever
appalling as that of infinity itself, a human multitude with its infinity
of despairs and joys, disgraces and honours, each small unit with all the
world in its own brain, and all the world out of it! Each intent upon
his own business or pleasure, and striving the while by hook or crook to
keep the ground from slipping beneath his feet. For, if he falls, God
help him!

Yes, here was London, great and pitiless, and the fear of it was upon our
souls as we rode into it that day.

Holland House with its shaded gardens, Kensington Palace with the broad
green acres of parks in front of it stitched by the silver Serpentine,
and Buckingham House, which lay to the south over the hill,--all were one
to us in wonder as they loomed through the glittering mist that softened
all. We met with a stream of countless wagons that spoke of a trade
beyond knowledge, sprinkled with the equipages of the gentry floating
upon it; coach and chaise, cabriolet and chariot, gorgeously bedecked
with heraldry and wreaths; their numbers astonished me, for to my mind
the best of them were no better than we could boast in Annapolis. One
matter, which brings a laugh as I recall it, was the oddity to me of
seeing white coachmen and footmen.

We clattered down St. James's Street, of which I had often heard my
grandfather speak, and at length we drew up before the Star and Garter in
Pall Mall, over against the palace. The servants came hurrying out,
headed by a chamberlain clad in magnificent livery, a functionary we had
not before encountered. John Paul alighted to face this personage, who,
the moment he perceived us, shifted his welcoming look to one of such
withering scorn as would have daunted a more timid man than the captain.
Without the formality of a sir he demanded our business, which started
the inn people and our own boy to snickering, and made the passers-by
pause and stare. Dandies who were taking the air stopped to ogle us with
their spying-glasses and to offer quips, and behind them gathered the
flunkies and chairmen awaiting their masters at the clubs and
coffee-houses near by. What was my astonishment, therefore, to see a
change in the captain's demeanour. Truly for quick learning and the
application of it I have never known his equal. His air became the one
of careless ease habitual to the little gentleman we had met at Windsor,
and he drew from his pocket one of his guineas, which he tossed in the
man's palm.

"Here, my man," said he, snapping his fingers; "an apartment at once, or
you shall pay for this nonsense, I promise you." And walked in with his
chin in the air, so grandly as to dissolve ridicule into speculation.

For an instant the chamberlain wavered, and I trembled, for I dreaded a
disgrace in Pall Mall, where the Manners might hear of it. Then fear, or
hope of gain, or something else got the better of him, for he led us to a
snug, well-furnished suite of a parlour and bedroom on the first floor,
and stood bowing in the doorway for his honour's further commands. They
were of a sort to bring the sweat to my forehead.

"Have a fellow run to bid Davenport, the tailor, come hither as fast as
his legs will carry him. And you may make it known that this young
gentleman desires a servant, a good man, mind you, with references, who
knows a gentleman's wants. He will be well paid."

That name of Davenport was a charm,--the mention of a servant was its
finishing touch. The chamberlain bent almost double, and retired,
closing the door softly behind him. And so great had been my surprise
over these last acquirements of the captain that until now I had had no
breath to expostulate.

"I must have my fling, Richard," he answered, laughing; "I shall not be a
gentleman long. I must know how it feels to take your ease, and stroke
your velvet, and order lackeys about. And when my money is gone I shall
be content to go to sea again, and think about it o' stormy nights."

This feeling was so far beyond my intelligence that I made no comment.
And I could not for the life of me chide him, but prayed that all would
come right in the end.

In less than an hour Davenport himself arrived, bristling with
importance, followed by his man carrying such a variety of silks and
satins, flowered and plain, and broadcloths and velvets, to fill the
furniture. And close behind the tailor came a tall haberdasher from Bond
Street, who had got wind of a customer, with a bewildering lot of ruffles
and handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs, and bows of lawn and lace which (so
he informed us) gentlemen now wore in the place of solitaires. Then came
a hosier and a bootmaker and a hatter; nay, I was forgetting a jeweller
from Temple Bar. And so imposing a front did the captain wear as he
picked this and recommended the other that he got credit for me for all
he chose, and might have had more besides. For himself he ordered merely
a modest street suit of purple, the sword to be thrust through the
pocket, Davenport promising it with mine for the next afternoon. For so
much discredit had been cast upon his taste on the road to London that he
was resolved to remain indoors until he could appear with decency. He
learned quickly, as I have said.

By the time we had done with these matters, which I wished to perdition,
some score of applicants was in waiting for me. And out of them I hired
one who had been valet to the young Lord Rereby, and whose recommendation
was excellent. His name was Banks, his face open and ingenuous, his
stature a little above the ordinary, and his manner respectful. I had
Davenport measure him at once for a suit of the Carvel livery, and bade
him report on the morrow.

All this while, my dears, I was aching to be off to Arlington Street,
but a foolish pride held me back. I had heard so much of the fashion in
which the Manners moved that I feared to bring ridicule upon them in poor
MacMuir's clothes. But presently the desire to see Dolly took such hold
upon me that I set out before dinner, fought my way past the chairmen and
chaisemen at the door, and asked my way of the first civil person I
encountered. 'Twas only a little rise up the steps of St. James's
Street, Arlington Street being but a small pocket of Piccadilly, but it
seemed a dull English mile; and my heart thumped when I reached the
corner, and the houses danced before my eyes. I steadied myself by a
post and looked again. At last, after a thousand leagues of wandering,
I was near her! But how to choose between fifty severe and imposing
mansions? I walked on toward that endless race of affairs and fashion,
Piccadilly, scanning every door, nay, every window, in the hope that I
might behold my lady's face framed therein. Here a chair was set down,
there a chariot or a coach pulled up, and a clocked flunky bowing a lady
in. But no Dorothy. Finally, when I had near made the round of each
side, I summoned courage and asked a butcher's lad, whistling as he
passed me, whether he could point out the residence of Mr. Manners.

"Ay," he replied, looking me over out of the corner of his eye, "that I
can. But y'ell not get a glimpse o' the beauty this day, for she's but
just off to Kensington with a coachful o' quality."

And he led me, all in a tremble over his answer, to a large stone
dwelling with arched windows, and pillared portico with lanthorns and
link extinguishers, an area and railing beside it. The flavour of
generations of aristocracy hung about the place, and the big knocker on
the carved door seemed to regard with such a forbidding frown my shabby
clothes that I took but the one glance (enough to fix it forever in my
memory), and hurried on. Alas, what hope had I of Dorothy now!

"What cheer, Richard?" cried the captain when I returned; "have you seen
your friends?"

I told him that I had feared to disgrace them, and so refrained from
knocking--a decision which he commended as the very essence of wisdom.
Though a desire to meet and talk with quality pushed him hard, he would
not go a step to the ordinary, and gave orders to be served in our room,
thus fostering the mystery which had enveloped us since our arrival.
Dinner at the Star and Garter being at the fashionable hour of half after
four, I was forced to give over for that day the task of finding Mr. Dix.

That evening--shall I confess it?--I spent between the Green Park and
Arlington Street, hoping for a glimpse of Miss Dolly returning from
Kensington.

The next morning I proclaimed my intention of going to Mr. Dix.

"Send for him," said the captain. "Gentlemen never seek their men of
affairs."

"No," I cried; "I can contain myself in this place no longer. I must be
moving."

"As you will, Richard," he replied, and giving me a queer, puzzled look
he settled himself between the Morning Post and the Chronicle.

As I passed the servants in the lower hall, I could not but remark an
altered treatment. My friend the chamberlain, more pompous than ever,
stood erect in the door with a stony stare, which melted the moment he
perceived a young gentleman who descended behind me. I heard him cry out
"A chaise for his Lordship!" at which command two of his assistants ran
out together. Suspicion had plainly gripped his soul overnight, and
this, added to mortified vanity at having been duped, was sufficient for
him to allow me to leave the inn unattended. Nor could I greatly blame
him, for you must know, my dears, that at that time London was filled
with adventurers of all types.

I felt a deal like an impostor, in truth, as I stepped into the street,
disdaining to inquire of any of the people of the Star and Garter where
an American agent might be found. The day was gray and cheerless, the
colour of my own spirits as I walked toward the east, knowing that the
city lay that way. But I soon found plenty to distract me.

To a lad such as I, bred in a quiet tho' prosperous colonial town, a walk
through London was a revelation. Here in the Pall Mall the day was not
yet begun, tho' for some scarce ended. I had not gone fifty paces from
the hotel before I came upon a stout gentleman with twelve hours of
claret inside him, brought out of a coffee-house and put with vast
difficulty into his chair; and I stopped to watch the men stagger off
with their load to St. James's Street. Next I met a squad of redcoated
guards going to the palace, and after them a grand coach and six rattled
over the Scotch granite, swaying to a degree that threatened to shake off
the footmen clinging behind. Within, a man with an eagle nose sat
impassive, and I set him down for one of the king's ministers.

Presently I came out into a wide space, which I knew to be Charing Cross
by the statue of Charles the First which stood in the centre of it, and
the throat of a street which was just in front of me must be the Strand.
Here all was life and bustle. On one hand was Golden's Hotel, and a
crowded mail-coach was dashing out from the arch beneath it, the horn
blowing merrily; on the other hand, so I was told by a friendly man in
brown, was Northumberland House, the gloomy grandeur whereof held my eyes
for a time. And I made bold to ask in what district were those who had
dealings with the colonies. He scanned me with a puzzling look of
commiseration.

"Ye're not a-going to sell yereself for seven year, my lad?" said he.
"I was near that myself when I was young, and I thank God' to this day
that I talked first to an honest man, even as you are doing. They'll
give ye a pretty tale,--the factors,--of a land of milk and honey, when
it's naught but stripes and curses yell get."

And he was about to rebuke me hotly, when I told him I had come from
Maryland, where I was born.

"Why, ye speak like a gentleman!" he exclaimed. "I was informed that
all talk like naygurs over there. And is it not so of your
redemptioners?"

I said that depended upon the master they got.

"Then I take it ye are looking for the lawyers, who mostly represent the
planters. And y e'll find them at the Temple or Lincoln's Inn."

I replied that he I sought was not an attorney, but a man of business.
Whereupon he said that I should find all those in a batch about the North
and South American Coffee House, in Threadneedle Street. And he pointed
me into the Strand, adding that I had but to follow my nose to St.
Paul's, and there inquire.

I would I might give you some notion of the great artery of London in
those days, for it has changed much since I went down it that heavy
morning in April, 1770, fighting my way. Ay, truly, fighting my way, for
the street then was no place for the weak and timid, when bullocks ran
through it in droves on the way to market, when it was often jammed from
wall to wall with wagons, and carmen and truckmen and coachmen swung
their whips and cursed one another to the extent of their lungs. Near
St. Clement Danes I was packed in a crowd for ten minutes while two of
these fellows formed a ring and fought for the right of way, stopping the
traffic as far as I could see. Dustmen, and sweeps, and even beggars,
jostled you on the corners, bullies tried to push you against the posts
or into the kennels; and once, in Butchers' Row, I was stopped by a
flashy, soft-tongued fellow who would have lured me into a tavern near
by.

The noises were bedlam ten times over. Shopmen stood at their doors and
cried, "Rally up, rally up, buy, buy, buy!" venders shouted saloop and
barley, furmity, Shrewsbury cakes and hot peascods, rosemary and
lavender, small coal and sealing-wax, and others bawled "Pots to solder!"
and "Knives to grind!" Then there was the incessant roar of the heavy
wheels over the rough stones, and the rasp and shriek of the brewers'
sledges as they moved clumsily along. As for the odours, from that of
the roasted coffee and food of the taverns, to the stale fish on the
stalls, and worse, I can say nothing. They surpassed imagination.

At length, upon emerging from Butchers' Row, I came upon some stocks
standing in the street, and beheld ahead of me a great gateway stretching
across the Strand from house to house.

Its stone was stained with age, and the stern front of it seemed to mock
the unseemly and impetuous haste of the tide rushing through its arches.
I stood and gazed, nor needed one to tell me that those two grinning
skulls above it, swinging to the wind on the pikes, were rebel heads.
Bare and bleached now, and exposed to a cruel view, but once caressed by
loving hands, was the last of those whose devotion to the house of Stuart
had brought from their homes to Temple Bar.

I halted by the Fleet Market, nor could I resist the desire to go into
St. Paul's, to feel like a pebble in a bell under its mighty dome; and it
lacked but half an hour of noon when I had come out at the Poultry and
finished gaping at the Mansion House. I missed Threadneedle Street and
went down Cornhill, in my ignorance mistaking the Royal Exchange, with
its long piazza and high tower, for the coffeehouse I sought: in the
great hall I begged a gentleman to direct me to Mr. Dix, if he knew such
a person. He shrugged his shoulders, which mystified me somewhat, but
answered with a ready good-nature that he was likely to be found at that
time at Tom's Coffee House, in Birchin Lane near by, whither I went with
him. He climbed the stairs ahead of me and directed me, puffing, to the
news room, which I found filled with men, some writing, some talking
eagerly, and others turning over newspapers. The servant there looked me
over with no great favour, but on telling him my business he went off,
and returned with a young man of a pink and white complexion, in a green
riding-frock, leather breeches, and top boots, who said:

"Well, my man, I am Mr. Dix."

There was a look about him, added to his tone and manner, set me strong
against him. I knew his father had not been of this stamp.

"And I am Mr. Richard Carvel, grandson to Mr. Lionel Carvel, of Carvel
Hall, in Maryland," I replied, much in the same way.

He thrust his hands into his breeches and stared very hard.

"You?" he said finally, with something very near a laugh.

"Sir, a gentleman's word usually suffices!" I cried.

He changed his tone a little.

"Your pardon, Mr. Carvel," he said, "but we men of business have need to
be careful. Let us sit, and I will examine your letters. Your
determination must have been suddenly taken," he added, "for I have
nothing from Mr. Carvel on the subject of your coming."

"Letters! You have heard nothing!" I gasped, and there stopped short
and clinched the table. "Has not my grandfather written of my
disappearance?"

Immediately his expression went back to the one he had met me with.
"Pardon me," he said again.

I composed myself as best I could in the face of his incredulity,
swallowing with an effort the aversion I felt to giving him my story.

"I think it strange he has not informed you," I said; "I was kidnapped
near Annapolis last Christmas-time, and put on board of a slaver, from
which I was rescued by great good fortune, and brought to Scotland. And
I have but just made my way to London."

"The thing is not likely, Mr.--, Mr.--," he said, drumming impatiently on
the board.

Then I lost control of myself.

"As sure as I am heir to Carvel Hall, Mr. Dix," I cried, rising, "you
shall pay for your insolence by forfeiting your agency!"

Now the roan was a natural coward, with a sneer for some and a smirk for
others. He went to the smirk.

"I am but looking to Mr. Carvel's interests the best I know how," he
replied; "and if indeed you be Mr. Richard Carvel, then you must applaud
my caution, sir, in seeking proofs."

"Proofs I have none," I cried; "the very clothes on my back are borrowed
from a Scotch seaman. My God, Mr. Dix, do I look like a rogue?"

"Were I to advance money upon appearances, sir, I should be insolvent in
a fortnight. But stay," he cried uneasily, as I flung back my chair,
"stay, sir. Is there no one of your province in the town to attest your
identity?"

"Ay, that there is," I said bitterly; "you shall hear from Mr. Manners
soon, I promise you."

"Pray, Mr. Carvel," he said, overtaking me on the stairs, "you will
surely allow the situation to be--extraordinary, you will surely commend
my discretion. Permit me, sir, to go with you to Arlington Street." And
he sent a lad in haste to the Exchange for a hackney-chaise, which was
soon brought around.

I got in, somewhat mollified, and ashamed of my heat: still disliking the
man, but acknowledging he had the better right on his side. True to his
kind he gave me every mark of politeness now, asked particularly after
Mr. Carvel's health, and encouraged me to give him as much of my
adventure as I thought proper. But what with the rattle of the carriage
and the street noises and my disgust, I did not care to talk, and
presently told him as much very curtly. He persisted, how: ever, in
pointing out the sights, the Fleet prison, and where the Ludgate stood
six years gone; and the Devil's Tavern, of old Ben Jonson's time, and the
Mitre and the Cheshire Cheese and the Cock, where Dr. Johnson might be
found near the end of the week at his dinner. He showed me the King's
Mews above Charing Cross, and the famous theatre in the Haymarket, and we
had but turned the corner into Piccadilly when he cried excitedly at a
passing chariot:

"There, Mr. Carvel, there go my Lord North and Mr. Rigby!"

"The devil take them, Mr. Dix!" I exclaimed.

He was silent after that, glancing at me covertly from while to while
until we swung into Arlington Street. Before I knew we were stopped in
front of the house, but as I set foot on the step I found myself
confronted by a footman in the Manners livery, who cried out angrily to
our man: "Make way, make way for his Grace of Chartersea!" Turning, I saw
a coach behind, the horses dancing at the rear wheels of the chaise. We
alighted hastily, and I stood motionless, my heart jumping quick and hard
in the hope and fear that Dorothy was within, my eye fixed on the coach
door. But when the footman pulled it open and lowered the step, out
lolled a very broad man with a bloated face and little, beady eyes
without a spark of meaning, and something very like a hump was on the top
of his back. He wore a yellow top-coat, and red-heeled shoes of the
latest fashion, and I settled at once he was the Duke of Chartersea.

Next came little Mr. Manners, stepping daintily as ever; and then, as the
door closed with a bang, I remembered my errand. They had got halfway to
the portico.

"Mr. Manners!" I cried.

He faced about, and his Grace also, and both stared in wellbred surprise.
As I live, Mr. Manners looked into my face, into my very eyes, and gave no
sign of recognition. And what between astonishment and anger, and a
contempt that arose within me, I could not speak.

"Give the man a shilling, Manners," said his Grace; "we can't stay here
forever."

"Ay, give the man a shilling," lisped Mr. Manners to the footman. And
they passed into the house, and the door eras shut.

Then I heard Mr. Dix at my elbow, saying in a soft voice: "Now, my fine
gentleman, is there any good reason why you should not ride to Bow Street
with me?"

"As there is a God in heaven. Mr. Dix," I answered, very low, "if you
attempt to lay hands on me, you shall answer for it! And you shall hear
from me yet, at the Star and Garter hotel."

I spun on my heel and left him, nor did he follow; and a great lump was
in my throat and tears welling in my eyes.

What would John Paul say?




CHAPTER XXIV

CASTLE YARD

But I did not go direct to the Star and Garter. No, I lacked the courage
to say to John Paul: "You have trusted me, and this is how I have
rewarded your faith." And the thought that Dorothy's father, of all men,
had served me thus, after what I had gone through, filled me with a
bitterness I had never before conceived. And when my brain became
clearer I reflected that Mr. Manners had had ample time to learn of my
disappearance from Maryland, and that his action had been one of design,
and of cold blood. But I gave to Dorothy or her mother no part in it.
Mr. Manners never had had cause to hate me, and the only reason I could
assign was connected with his Grace of Chartersea, which I dismissed as
absurd.

A few drops of rain warned me to seek shelter. I knew not where I was,
nor how long I had been walking the streets at a furious pace. But a
huckster told me I was in Chelsea; and kindly directed me back to Pall
Mall. The usual bunch of chairmen was around the hotel entrance, but I
noticed a couple of men at the door, of sharp features and unkempt dress,
and heard a laugh as I went in. My head swam as I stumbled up the stairs
and fumbled at the knob, when I heard voices raised inside, and the door
was suddenly and violently thrown open. Across the sill stood a big,
rough-looking man with his hands on his hips.

"Oho! Here be the other fine bird a-homing, I'll warrant," he cried.

The place was full. I caught sight of Davenport, the tailor, with a wry
face, talking against the noise; of Banks, the man I had hired,
resplendent in my livery. One of the hotel servants was in the corner
perspiring over John Paul's chests, and beside him stood a man
disdainfully turning over with his foot the contents, as they were thrown
on the floor. I saw him kick the precious vellum-hole waistcoat across
the room in wrath and disgust, and heard him shout above the rest:
"The lot of them would not bring a guinea from any Jew in St. Martin's
Lane!"

In the other corner, by the writing-desk, stood the hatter and the
haberdasher with their heads together. And in the very centre of the
confusion was the captain himself. He was drest in his new clothes
Davenport had brought, and surprised me by his changed appearance, and
looked as fine a gentleman as any I have ever seen. His face lighted
with relief at sight of me.

"Now may I tell these rogues begone, Richard?" he cried. And turning
to the man confronting me, he added, "This gentleman will settle their
beggarly accounts."

Then I knew we had to do with bailiffs, and my heart failed me.

"Likely," laughed the big man; "I'll stake my oath he has not a groat to
pay their beggarly accounts, as year honour is pleased to call them."

They ceased jabbering and straightened to attention, awaiting my reply.
But I forgot them all, and thought only of the captain, and of the
trouble I had brought him. He began to show some consternation as I went
up to him.

"My dear friend," I said, vainly trying to steady my voice, "I beg,
I pray that you will not lose faith in me,--that you will not think any
deceit of mine has brought you to these straits. Mr. Dix did not know
me, and has had no word from my grandfather of my disappearance. And Mr.
Manners, whom I thought my friend, spurned me in the street before the
Duke of Chartersea."

And no longer master of myself, I sat down at the table and hid my face,
shaken by great sobs, to think that this was my return for his kindness.

"What," I heard him cry, "Mr. Manners spurned you, Richard! By all
the law in Coke and Littleton, he shall answer for it to me. Your
fairweather fowl shall have the chance to run me through!"

I sat up in bewilderment, doubting my senses.

"You believe me, captain," I said, overcome by the man's faith; "you
believe me when I tell you that one I have known from childhood refused
to recognize me to-day?"

He raised me in his arms as tenderly as a woman might.

"And the whole world denied you, lad, I would not. I believe you--" and
he repeated it again and again, unable to get farther.

And if his words brought tears to my eyes, my strength came with them.

"Then I care not," I replied; "I only to live to reward you."

"Mr. Manners shall answer for it to me!" cried John Paul again, and made
a pace toward the door.

"Not so fast, not so fast, captain, or admiral, or whatever you are,"
said the bailiff, stepping in his way, for he was used to such scenes;
"as God reigns, the owners of all these fierce titles be fire-eaters, who
would spit you if you spilt snuff upon 'em. Come, come, gentlemen, your
swords, and we shall see the sights o' London."

This was the signal for another uproar, the tailor shrieking that John
Paul must take off the suit, and Banks the livery; asking the man in the
corner by the sea-chests (who proved to be the landlord) who was to pay
him for his work and his lost cloth. And the landlord shook his fist at
us and shouted back, who was to pay him his four pounds odd, which
included two ten-shilling dinners and a flask of his best wine? The
other tradesmen seized what was theirs and made off with remarks
appropriate to the occasion. And when John Paul and my man were divested
of their plumes, we were marched downstairs and out through a jeering
line of people to a hackney coach.

"Now, sirs, whereaway?" said the bailiff when we were got in beside one
of his men, and burning with the shame of it; "to the prison? Or I has a
very pleasant hotel for gentlemen in Castle Yard."

The frightful stories my dear grandfather had told me of the Fleet came
flooding into my head, and I shuddered and turned sick. I glanced at
John Paul.

"A guinea will not go far in a sponging-house," said he, and the
bailiff's man laughed.

The bailiff gave a direction we did not hear, and we drove off.
He proved a bluff fellow with a bloat yet not unkindly humour, and
despite his calling seemed to have something that was human in him.
He passed many a joke on that pitiful journey in an attempt to break our
despondency, urging us not to be downcast, and reminding us that the last
gentleman he had taken from Pall Mall was in over a thousand pounds, and
that our amount was a bagatelle. And when we had gone through Temple
Bar, instead of keeping on down Fleet Street, we jolted into Chancery
Lane. This roused me.

"My friend has warned you that he has no money," I said, "and no more
have I."

The bailiff regarded me shrewdly.

"Ay," he replied, "I know. But I has seen many stripes o' men in my
time, my masters, and I know them to trust, and them whose silver I must
feel or send to the Fleet."

I told him unreservedly my case, and that he must take his chance of
being paid; that I could not hear from America for three months at least.
He listened without much show of attention, shaking his head from side to
side.

"If you ever cheated a man, or the admiral here either, then I begin over
again," he broke in with decision; "it is the fine sparks from the clubs
I has to watch. You'll not worry, sir, about me. Take my oath I'll get
interest out of you on my money."

Unwilling as we both were to be beholden to a bailiff, the alternative of
the Fleet was too terrible to be thought of. And so we alighted after
him with a shiver at the sight of the ugly, grimy face of the house, and
the dirty windows all barred with double iron. In answer to a knock we
were presently admitted by a turnkey to a vestibule as black as a tomb,
and the heavy outer door was locked behind us. Then, as the man cursed
and groped for the keyhole of the inner door, despair laid hold of me.

Once inside, in the half light of a narrow hallway, a variety of noises
greeted our ears,--laughter from above and below, interspersed with
oaths; the click of billiard balls, and the occasional hammering of a
pack of cards on a bare table before the shuffle. The air was close
almost to suffocation, and out of the coffee room, into which I glanced,
came a heavy cloud of tobacco smoke.

"Why, my masters, why so glum?" said the bailiff; "my inn is not such a
bad place, and you'll find ample good company here, I promise you."

And he led us into a dingy antechamber littered with papers, on every one
of which, I daresay, was written a tragedy. Then he inscribed our names,
ages, descriptions, and the like in a great book, when we followed him up
three flights to a low room under the eaves, having but one small window,
and bare of furniture save two narrow cots for beds, a broken chair, and
a cracked mirror. He explained that cash boarders got better, and added
that we might be happy we were not in the Fleet.

"We dine at two here, gentlemen, and sup at eight. This is not the Star
and Garter," said he as he left us.

It was the captain who spoke first, though he swallowed twice before the
words came out.

"Come, Richard, come, laddie," he said, "'tis no so bad it micht-na be
waur. We'll mak the maist o' it."

"I care not for myself, Captain Paul," I replied, marvelling the more at
him, "but to think that I have landed you here, that this is my return
for your sacrifice."

"Hoots! How was ye to foresee Mr. Manners was a blellum?" And he broke
into threats which, if Mr. Marmaduke had heard and comprehended, would
have driven him into the seventh state of fear. "Have you no other
friends in London?" he asked, regaining his English.

I shook my head. Then came--a question I dreaded.

"And Mr. Manners's family?"

"I would rather remain here for life," I said, "than to them now."

For pride is often selfish, my dears, and I did not reflect that if I
remained, the captain would remain likewise.

"Are they all like Mr. Manners?"

"That they are not," I returned with more heat than was necessary; "his
wife is goodness itself, and his daughter--" Words failed me, and I
reddened.

"Ah, he has a daughter, you say," said the captain, casting a significant
look at me and beginning to pace the little room. He was keener than I
thought, this John Paul.

If it were not so painful a task, my dears, I would give you here some
notion of what a London sponging-house was in the last century. Comyn
has heard me tell of it, and I have seen Bess cry over the story. Gaming
was the king-vice of that age, and it filled these places to overflowing.
Heaven help a man who came into the world with that propensity in the
early days of King George the Third. Many, alas, acquired it before they
were come to years of discretion. Next me, at the long table where we
were all thrown in together,--all who could not pay for private meals,
--sat a poor fellow who had flung away a patrimony of three thousand a
year. Another had even mortgaged to a Jew his prospects on the death of
his mother, and had been seized by the bailiffs outside of St. James's
palace, coming to Castle Yard direct from his Majesty's levee. Yet
another, with such a look of dead hope in his eyes as haunts me yet,
would talk to us by the hour of the Devonshire house where he was born,
of the green valley and the peaceful stream, and of the old tower-room,
caressed by trees, where Queen Bess had once lain under the carved oak
rafters. Here he had taken his young wife, and they used to sit
together, so he said, in the sunny oriel over the water, and he had sworn
to give up the cards. That was but three years since, and then all had
gone across the green cloth in one mad night in St. James's Street.
Their friends had deserted them, and the poor little woman was lodged in
Holborn near by, and came every morning with some little dainty to the
bailiff's, for her liege lord who had so used her. He pressed me to
share a fowl with him one day, but it would have choked me. God knows
where she got the money to buy it. I saw her once hanging on his neck in
the hall, he trying to shield her from the impudent gaze of his
fellow-lodgers.

But some of them lived like lords in luxury, with never a seeming regret;
and had apartments on the first floor, and had their tea and paper in
bed, and lounged out the morning in a flowered nightgown, and the rest of
the day in a laced coat. These drank the bailiff's best port and
champagne, and had nothing better than a frown or haughty look for us,
when we passed them at the landing. Whence the piper was paid I knew
not, and the bailiff cared not. But the bulk of the poor gentlemen were
a merry crew withal, and had their wit and their wine at table, and knew
each other's histories (and soon enough ours) by heart. They betted away
the week at billiards or whist or picquet or loo, and sometimes measured
swords for diversion, tho' this pastime the bailiff was greatly set
against; as calculated to deprive him of a lodger.

Although we had no money for gaming, and little for wine or tobacco, the
captain and I were received very heartily into the fraternity. After one
afternoon of despondency we both voted it the worst of bad policy to
remain aloof and nurse our misfortune, and spent our first evening in
making acquaintances over a deal of very thin "debtor's claret."
I tossed long that night on the hard cot, listening to the scurrying rats
among the roof-timbers. They ran like the thoughts in my brain. And
before I slept I prayed again and again that God would put it in my power
to reward him whom charity for a friendless foundling had brought to a
debtor's prison.

Not so much as a single complaint or reproach had passed his lips!




CHAPTER XXV

THE RESCUE

Perchance, my dears, if John Paul and I had not been cast by accident in
a debtor's prison, this great man might never have bestowed upon our
country those glorious services which contributed so largely to its
liberty. And I might never have comprehended that the American
Revolution was brought on and fought by a headstrong king, backed by
unscrupulous followers who held wealth above patriotism. It is often
difficult to lay finger upon the causes which change the drift of a man's
opinions, and so I never wholly knew why John Paul abandoned his
deep-rooted purpose to obtain advancement in London by grace of the
accomplishments he had laboured so hard to attain. But I believe the
beginning was at the meeting at Windsor with the slim and cynical
gentleman who had treated him to something between patronage and
contempt. Then my experience with Mr. Manners had so embedded itself in
his mind that he could never speak of it but with impatience and disgust.
And, lastly, the bailiff's hotel contained many born gentlemen who had
been left here to rot out the rest of their dreary lives by friends who
were still in power and opulence. More than once when I climbed to our
garret I found the captain seated on the three-legged chair, with his
head between his hands, sunk in reflection.

"You were right, Richard," said he; "your great world is a hard world for
those in the shadow of it. I see now that it must not be entered from
below, but from the cabin window. A man may climb around it, lad, and
when he is above may scourge it."

"And you will scourge it, captain!" I had no doubt of his ability one
day to do it.

"Ay, and snap my fingers at it. 'Tis a pretty organization, this
society, which kicks the man who falls to the dogs. None of your fine
gentlemen for me!"

And he would descend to talk politics with our fellow-guests. We should
have been unhappy indeed had it not been for this pastime. It seems to
me strange that these debtors took such a keen interest in outside
affairs, even tho' it was a time of great agitation. We read with
eagerness the cast-off newspapers of the first-floor gentlemen. One poor
devil who had waddled (failed) in Change Alley had collected under his
mattress the letters of Junius, then selling the Public Advertiser as few
publications had ever sold before. John Paul devoured these attacks upon
his Majesty and his ministry in a single afternoon, and ere long he had
on the tip of his tongue the name and value of every man in Parliament
and out of it. He learned, almost by heart, the history of the
astonishing fight made by Mr. Wilkes for the liberties of England, and
speedily was as good a Whig and a better than the member from Middlesex
himself.

The most of our companions were Tories, for, odd as it may appear, they
retained their principles even in Castle Yard. And in those days to be a
Tory was to be the friend of the King, and to be the friend of the King
was to have some hope of advancement and reward at his hand. They had
none. The captain joined forces with the speculator from the Alley, who
had hitherto contended against mighty odds, and together they bore down
upon the enemy--ay, and rooted him, too. For John Paul had an air about
him and a natural gift of oratory to command attention, and shortly the
dining room after dinner became the scene of such contests as to call up
in the minds of the old stagers a field night in the good days of Mr.
Pitt and the second George. The bailiff often sat by the door, an
interested spectator, and the macaroni lodgers condescended to come
downstairs and listen. The captain attained to fame in our little world
from his maiden address, in which he very shrewdly separated the
political character of Mr. Wilkes from his character as a private
gentleman, and so refuted a charge of profligacy against the people's
champion.

Altho' I never had sufficient confidence in my powers to join in these
discussions, I followed them zealously, especially when they touched
American questions, as they frequently did. This subject of the wrongs
of the colonies was the only one I could ever be got to study at King
William's School, and I believe that my intimate knowledge of it gave the
captain a surprise. He fell into the habit of seating himself on the
edge of my bed after we had retired for the night, and would hold me
talking until the small hours upon the injustice of taxing a people
without their consent, and upon the multitude of measures of coercion
which the King had pressed upon us to punish our resistance. He
declaimed so loudly against the tyranny of quartering troops upon a
peaceable state that our exhausted neighbours were driven to pounding
their walls and ceilings for peace. The news of the Boston massacre
had not then reached England.

I was not, therefore, wholly taken by surprise when he said to me one
night:

"I am resolved to try my fortune in America, lad. That is the land for
such as I, where a man may stand upon his own merits."

"Indeed, we shall go together, captain," I answered heartily, "if we are
ever free of this cursed house. And you shall taste of our hospitality
at Carvel Hall, and choose that career which pleases you. Faith, I could
point you a dozen examples in Annapolis of men who have made their way
without influence. But you shall have influence," I cried, glowing at
the notion of rewarding him; "you shall experience Mr. Carvel's gratitude
and mine. You shall have the best of our ships, and you will."

He was a man to take fire easily, and embraced me. And, strange to say,
neither he nor I saw the humour, nor the pity, of the situation. How
many another would long before have become sceptical of my promises! And
justly. For I had led him to London, spent all his savings, and then got
him into a miserable prison, and yet he had faith remaining, and to
spare!

It occurred to me to notify Mr. Dix of my residence in Castle Yard, not
from any hope that he would turn his hand to my rescue, but that he might
know where to find me if he heard from Maryland. And I penned another
letter to Mr. Carvel, but a feeling I took no pains to define compelled
me to withhold an account of Mr. Manners's conduct. And I refrained from
telling him that I was in a debtor's prison. For I believe the thought
of a Carvel in a debtor's prison would have killed him. I said only that
we were comfortably lodged in a modest part of London; that the Manners
were inaccessible (for I could not bring myself to write that they were
out of town). Just then a thought struck me with such force that I got
up with a cheer and hit the astonished captain between the shoulders.

"How now!" he cried, ruefully rubbing himself. "If these are thy
amenities, Richard, Heaven spare me thy blows."

"Why, I have been a fool, and worse," I shouted. "My grandfather's ship,
the Sprightly Bess, is overhauling this winter in the Severn. And unless
she has sailed, which I think unlikely, I have but to despatch a line to
Bristol to summon Captain Bell, the master, to London. I think he will
bring the worthy Mr. Dix to terms."

"Whether he will or no," said John Paul, hope lighting his face, "Bell
must have command of the twenty pounds to free us, and will take us back
to America. For I must own, Richard, that I have no great love for
London."

No more had I. I composed this letter to Bell in such haste that my hand
shook, and sent it off with a shilling to the bailiff's servant, that it
might catch the post. And that afternoon we had a two-shilling bottle of
port for dinner, which we shared with a broken-down parson who had been
chaplain in ordinary to my Lord Wortley, and who had preached us an
Easter sermon the day before. For it was Easter Monday. Our talk was
broken into by the bailiff, who informed me that a man awaited me in the
passage, and my heart leaped into my, throat.

There was Banks. Thinking he had come to reproach me; I asked him rather
sharply what he wanted. He shifted his hat from one hand to the other
and looked sheepish.

"Your pardon, sir," said he, "but your honour must be very ill-served
here."

"Better than I should be, Banks, for I have no money," I said, wondering
if he thought me a first-floor lodger.

He made no immediate reply to that, either, but seemed more uneasy still.
And I took occasion to note his appearance. He was exceeding neat in a
livery of his old master, which he had stripped of the trimmings. Then,
before I had guessed at his drift, he thrust his hand inside his coat and
drew forth a pile of carefully folded bank notes.

"I be a single man, sir, and has small need of this. And and I knows
your honour will pay me when your letter comes from America."

And he handed me five Bank of England notes of ten pounds apiece. I took
them mechanically, without knowing what I did. The generosity of the act
benumbed my senses, and for the instant I was inclined to accept the
offer upon the impulse of it.

"How do you know you would get your money again, Banks?" I asked
curiously.

"No fear, sir," he replied promptly, actually brightening at the
prospect. "I knows gentlemen, sir, them that are such, sir. And I will
go to America with you, and you say the word, sir."

I was more touched than I cared to show over his offer, which I scarce
knew how to refuse. In truth it was a difficult task, for he pressed me
again and again, and when he saw me firm, turned away to wipe his eyes
upon his sleeve. Then he begged me to let him remain and serve me in the
sponginghouse, saying that he would pay his own way. The very thought of
a servant in the bailiff's garret made me laugh, and so I put him off,
first getting his address, and promising him employment on the day of my
release.

On Wednesday we looked for a reply from Bristol, if not for the
appearance of Bell himself, and when neither came apprehension seized us
lest he had already sailed for Maryland. The slender bag of Thursday's
letters contained none for me. Nevertheless, we both did our best to
keep in humour, forbearing to mention to one another the hope that had
gone. Friday seemed the beginning of eternity; the day dragged through I
know not how, and toward evening we climbed back to our little room, not
daring to speak of what we knew in our hearts to be so,--that the
Sprightly Bess had sailed. We sat silently looking out over the dreary
stretch of roofs and down into a dingy court of Bernard's Inn below, when
suddenly there arose a commotion on the stairs, as of a man mounting
hastily. The door was almost flung from its hinges, some one caught me
by the shoulders, gazed eagerly into my face, and drew back. For a space
I thought myself dreaming. I searched my memory, and the name came. Had
it been Dorothy, or Mr. Carvel himself, I could not have been more
astonished, and my knees weakened under me.

"Jack!" I exclaimed; "Lord Comyn!"

He seized my hand. "Yes; Jack, whose life you saved, and no other," he
cried, with a sailor's impetuosity. "My God, Richard! it was true,
then; and you have been in this place for three weeks!"

"For three weeks," I repeated.

He looked at me, at John Paul, who was standing by in bewilderment, and
then about the grimy, cobwebbed walls of the dark garret, and then turned
his back to hide his emotion, and so met the bailiff, who was coming in.

"For how much are these gentlemen in your books?" he demanded hotly.

"A small matter, your Lordship,--a mere trifle," said the man, bowing.

"How much, I say?"

"Twenty-two guineas, five shillings, and eight pence, my Lord, counting
debts, and board,--and interest," the bailiff glibly replied; for he had
no doubt taken off the account when he spied his Lordship's coach. "And
I was very good to Mr. Carvel and the captain, as your Lordship will
discover--"

"D--n your goodness!" said my Lord, cutting him short.

And he pulled out a wallet and threw some pieces at the bailiff, bidding
him get change with all haste. "And now, Richard," he added, with a
glance of disgust about him, "pack up, and we'll out of this cursed
hole!"

"I have nothing to pack, my Lord," I said.

"My Lord! Jack, I have told you, or I leave you here."

"Well, then, Jack, and you will," said I, overflowing with thankfulness
to God for the friends He had bestowed upon me. "But before we go a
step, Jack, you must know the man but for whose bravery I should long
ago have been dead of fever and ill-treatment in the Indies, and whose
generosity has brought him hither. My Lord Comyn, this is Captain John
Paul."

The captain, who had been quite overwhelmed by this sudden arrival of a
real lord to our rescue at the very moment when we had sunk to despair,
and no less astonished by the intimacy that seemed to exist between the
newcomer and myself, had the presence of mind to bend his head, and that
was all. Comyn shook his hand heartily.

"You shall not lack reward for this, captain, I promise you," cried he.
"What you have done for Mr. Carvel, you have done for me. Captain, I
thank you. You shall have my interest."

I flushed, seeing John Paul draw his lips together. But how was his
Lordship to know that he was dealing with no common sea-captain?

"I have sought no reward, my Lord," said he. "What I have done was out
of friendship for Mr. Carvel, solely."

Comyn was completely taken by surprise by these words, and by the haughty
tone in which they were spoken. He had not looked for a gentleman, and
no wonder. He took a quizzical sizing of the sky-blue coat. Such a man
in such a station was out of his experience.

"Egad, I believe you, captain," he answered, in a voice which said
plainly that he did not. "But he shall be rewarded nevertheless, eh,
Richard? I'll see Charles Fox in this matter to-morrow. Come, come,"
he added impatiently, "the bailiff must have his change by now. Come,
Richard!" and he led the way down the winding stairs.

"You must not take offence at his ways," I whispered to the captain. For
I well knew that a year before I should have taken the same tone with one
not of my class. "His Lordship is all kindness."

"I have learned a bit since I came into England, Richard," was his sober
reply.

"'Twas a pitiful sight to see gathered on the landings the poor fellows
we had come to know in Castle Yard, whose horizons were then as gray as
ours was bright. But they each had a cheery word of congratulation for
us as we passed, and the unhappy gentleman from Devonshire pressed my
hand and begged that I would sometime think of him when I was out under
the sky. I promised even more, and am happy to be able to say, my dears,
that I saw both him and his wife off for America before I left London.
Our eyes were wet when we reached the lower hall, and I was making for
the door in an agony to leave the place, when the bailiff came out of his
little office.

"One moment, sir," he said, getting in front of me; "there is a little
form yet to be gone through. The haste of gentlemen to leave us is not
flattering."

He glanced slyly at Comyn, and his Lordship laughed a little. I stepped
unsuspectingly into the office.

"Richard!"

I stopped across the threshold as tho' I had been struck. The late
sunlight filtering through the dirt of the window fell upon the tall
figure of a girl and lighted an upturned face, and I saw tears glistening
on the long lashes.

It was Dorothy. Her hands were stretched out in welcome, and then I had
them pressed in my own. And I could only look and look again, for I was
dumb with joy.

"Thank God you are alive!" she cried; "alive and well, when we feared you
dead. Oh, Richard, we have been miserable indeed since we had news of
your disappearance."

"This is worth it all, Dolly," I said, only brokenly.

She dropped her eyes, which had searched me through in wonder and pity,
--those eyes I had so often likened to the deep blue of the sea,--and her
breast rose and fell quickly with I knew not what emotions. How the mind
runs, and the heart runs, at such a time! Here was the same Dorothy I
had known in Maryland, and yet not the same. For she was a woman now,
who had seen the great world, who had refused both titles and estates,
--and perchance accepted them. She drew her hands from mine.

"And how came you in such a place?" she asked, turning with a shudder.
"Did you not know you had friends in London, sir?"

Not for so much again would I have told her of Mr. Manners's conduct. So
I stood confused, casting about for a reply with truth in it, when Comyn
broke in upon us.

"I'll warrant you did not look for her here, Richard. Faith, but you are
a lucky dog," said my Lord, shaking his head in mock dolefulness; "for
there is no man in London, in the world, for whom she would descend a
flight of steps, save you. And now she has driven the length of the town
when she heard you were in a sponging-house, nor all the dowagers in
Mayfair could stop her."

"Fie, Comyn," said my lady, blushing and gathering up her skirts; "that
tongue of yours had hung you long since had it not been for your peer's
privilege. Richard and I were brought up as brother and sister, and you
know you were full as keen for his rescue as I."

His Lordship pinched me playfully.

"I vow I would pass a year in the Fleet to have her do as much for me,"
said he.

"But where is the gallant seaman who saved you, Richard?" asked Dolly,
stamping her foot.

"What," I exclaimed; "you know the story?"

"Never mind," said she; "bring him here."

My conscience smote me, for I had not so much as thought of John Paul
since I came into that room. I found him waiting in the passage, and
took him by the hand.

"A lady wishes to know you, captain," I said.

"A lady!" he cried. "Here? Impossible!" And he looked at his clothes.

"Who cares more for your heart than your appearance," I answered gayly,
and led him into the office.

At sight of Dorothy he stopped abruptly, confounded, as a man who
sees a diamond in a dust-heap. And a glow came over me as I said:

"Miss Manners, here is Captain Paul, to whose courage and unselfishness
I owe everything."

"Captain," said Dorothy, graciously extending her hand, "Richard has many
friends. You have put us all in your debt, and none deeper than his old
playmate."

The captain fairly devoured her with his eyes as she made him a curtsey.
But he was never lacking in gallantry, and was as brave on such occasions
as when all the dangers of the deep threatened him. With an elaborate
movement he took Miss Manners's fingers and kissed them, and then swept
the floor with a bow.

"To have such a divinity in my debt, madam, is too much happiness for one
man," he said. "I have done nothing to merit it. A lifetime were all
too short to pay for such a favour."

I had almost forgotten Miss Dolly the wayward, the mischievous. But she
was before me now, her eyes sparkling, and biting her lips to keep down
her laughter. Comyn turned to fleck the window with his handkerchief,
while I was not a little put out at their mirth. But if John Paul
observed it, he gave no sign.

"Captain, I vow your manners are worthy of a Frenchman," said my Lord;
"and yet I am given to understand you are a Scotchman."

A shadow crossed the captain's face.

"I was, sir," he said.

"You were!" exclaimed Comyn, astonished; "and pray, what are you now,
sir?"

"Henceforth, my Lord," John Paul replied with vast ceremony: "I am an
American, the compatriot of the beautiful Miss Manners!"

"One thing I'll warrant, captain," said his Lordship, "that you are a
wit."





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


Volume 5.


XXVI.   The Part Horatio played
XXVII.  In which I am sore tempted
XXVIII.  Arlington Street
XXIX.   I meet a very Great Young Man
XXX.   A Conspiracy
XXXI.   "Upstairs into the World"
XXXII.  Lady Tankerville's Drum-major
XXXIII.  Drury Lane



CHAPTER XXVI

THE PART HORATIO PLAYED

The bailiff's business was quickly settled. I heard the heavy doors
close at our backs, and drew a deep draught of the air God has made for
all His creatures alike. Both the captain and I turned to the windows to
wave a farewell to the sad ones we were leaving behind, who gathered
about the bars for a last view of us, for strange as it may seem, the
mere sight of happiness is often a pleasure for those who are sad. A
coach in private arms and livery was in waiting, surrounded by a crowd.
They made a lane for us to pass, and stared at the young lady of queenly
beauty coming out of the sponging-house until the coachman snapped his
whip in their faces and the footman jostled them back. When we were got
in, Dolly and I on the back seat, Comyn told the man to go to Mr.
Manners's.

"Oh, no!" I cried, scarce knowing what I said; "no, not there!" For the
thought of entering the house in Arlington Street was unbearable.

Both Comyn and Dorothy gazed at me in astonishment.

"And pray, Richard, why not'?" she asked. "Have not your old friends
the right to receive you."

It was my Lord who saved me, for I was in agony what to say.

"He is still proud, and won't go to Arlington Street dressed like a
bargeman. He must needs plume, Miss Manners."

I glanced anxiously at Dorothy, and saw that she was neither satisfied
nor appeased. Well I remembered every turn of her head, and every curve
of her lip! In the meantime we were off through Cursitor Street at a
gallop, nearly causing the death of a ragged urchin at the corner of
Chancery Lane. I had forgotten my eagerness to know whence they had
heard of my plight, when some words from Comyn aroused me.

"The carriage is Mr. Horace Walpole's, Richard. He has taken a great
fancy to you."

"But I have never so much as clapped eyes upon him!" I exclaimed in
perplexity.

"How about his honour with whom you supped at Windsor? how about the
landlord you spun by the neck? You should have heard the company laugh
when Horry told us that! And Miss Dolly cried out that she was sure it
must be Richard, and none other. Is it not so, Miss Manners?"

"Really, my Lord, I can't remember," replied Dolly, looking out of the
coach window. "Who put those frightful skulls upon Temple Bar?"

Then the mystery of their coming was clear to me, and the superior
gentleman at the Castle Inn had been the fashionable dabbler in arts and
letters and architecture of Strawberry Hill, of whom I remembered having
heard Dr. Courtenay speak, Horace Walpole. But I was then far too
concerned about Dorothy to listen to more. Her face was still turned
away from me, and she was silent. I could have cut out my tongue for my
blunder. Presently, when we were nearly out of the Strand, she turned
upon me abruptly.

"We have not yet heard, Richard," she said, "how you got into such a
predicament."

"Indeed, I don't know myself, Dolly. Some scoundrel bribed the captain
of the slaver. For I take it Mr. Walpole has told you I was carried off
on a slaver, if he recalled that much of the story."

"I don't mean that," answered Dolly, impatiently. "There is something
strange about all this. How is it that you were in prison?"

"Mr. Dix, my grandfather's agent, took me for an impostor and would
advance me no money," I answered, hard pushed.

But Dorothy had a woman's instinct, which is often the best of
understanding. And I was beginning to think that a suspicion was at the
bottom of her questions. She gave her head an impatient fling, and, as I
feared, appealed to John Paul.

"Perhaps you can tell me, captain, why he did not come to his friends in
his trouble."

And despite my signals to him he replied: "In truth, my dear lady, he
haunted the place for a sight of you, from the moment he set foot in
London."

Comyn laughed, and I felt the blood rise to my face, and kicked John Paul
viciously. Dolly retained her self-possession.

"Pho!" says she; "for a sight of me! You seamen are all alike. For a
sight of me! And had you not strength enough to lift a knocker, sir,
--you who can raise a man from the ground with one hand?"

"'Twas before his tailor had prepared him, madam, and he feared to
disgrace you," the captain gravely continued, and I perceived how futile
it were to attempt to stop him. "And afterward--"

"And afterward?" repeated Dorothy, leaning forward.

"And afterward he went to Arlington Street with Mr. Dix to seek Mr.
Manners, that he might be identified before that gentleman. He
encountered Mr. Manners and his Grace of Something."

"Chartersea," put in Comyn, who had been listening eagerly. "Getting out
of a coach," said the captain.

"When was this?" demanded Dorothy of me, interrupting him. Her voice was
steady, but the colour had left her face.

"About three weeks ago."

"Please be exact, Richard."

"Well, if you must," said I, "the day was Tuesday, and the time about
half an hour after two."

She said nothing for a while, trying to put down an agitation which was
beginning to show itself in spite of her effort. As for me, I was almost
wishing myself back in the sponginghouse.

"Are you sure my father saw you?" she asked presently.

"As clearly as you do now, Dolly," I said.

"But your clothes? He might have gone by you in such."

"I pray that he did, Dorothy," I replied. But I was wholly convinced
that Mr. Manners had recognized me.

"And--and what did he say?" she asked.

For she had the rare courage that never shrinks from the truth. I think
I have never admired and pitied her as at that moment.

"He said to the footman," I answered, resolved to go through with it now,
"'Give the man a shilling.' That was his Grace's suggestion."

My Lord uttered something very near an oath. And she spoke not a word
more until I handed her out in Arlington Street. The rest of us were
silent, too, Comyn now and again giving me eloquent glances expressive of
what he would say if she were not present; the captain watching her with
a furtive praise, and he vowed to me afterward she was never so beautiful
as when angry, that he loved her as an avenging Diana. But I was uneasy,
and when I stood alone with her before the house I begged her not to
speak to her father of the episode.

"Nay, he must be cleared of such an imputation, Richard," she answered
proudly. "He may have made mistakes, but I feel sure he would never turn
you away when you came to him in trouble--you, the grandson of his old
friend, Lionel Carvel."

"Why bother over matters that are past and gone? I would have borne an
hundred such trials to have you come to me as you came to-day, Dorothy.
And I shall surely see you again," I said, trying to speak lightly; "and
your mother, to whom you will present my respects, before I sail for
America."

She looked up at me, startled.

"Before you sail for America!" she exclaimed, in a tone that made me
thrill at once with joy and sadness. "And are you not, then, to see
London now you are here?"

"Are you never coming back, Dolly?" I whispered; for I feared Mr.
Marmaduke might appear at any moment; "or do you wish to remain in
England always?"

For an instant I felt her pressure on my hand, and then she had fled into
the house, leaving me standing by the steps looking after her. Comyn's
voice aroused me.

"To the Star and Garter!" I heard him command, and on the way to Pall
Mall he ceased not to rate Mr. Manners with more vigour than propriety.
"I never liked the little cur, d--n him! No one likes him, Richard," he
declared. "All the town knows how Chartersea threw a bottle at him, and
were it not for his daughter he had long since been put out of White's.
Were it not for Miss Dolly I would call him out for this cowardly trick,
and then publish him."

"Nay, my Lord, I had held that as my privilege," interrupted the captain,
"were it not, as you say, for Miss Manners."

His Lordship shot a glance at John Paul somewhat divided between
surprise, resentment, and amusement.

"Now you have seen the daughter, captain, you perceive it is impossible,"
I hastened to interpose.

"How in the name of lineage did she come to have such a father?" Comyn
went on. "I thank Heaven he's not mine. He's not fit to be her lackey.
I would sooner twenty times have a profligate like my Lord Sandwich for a
parent than a milk and water sop like Manners, who will risk nothing over
a crown piece at play or a guinea at Newmarket. By G--, Richard," said
his Lordship, bringing his fist against the glass with near force enough
to break the pane, "I have a notion why he did not choose to see you that
day. Why, he has no more blood than a louse!"

I had come to the guess as soon as he, but I dared not give it voice,
nor anything but ridicule. And so we came to the hotel, the red of
departing day fading in the sky above the ragged house-line in St.
James's Street.

It was a very different reception we got than when we had first come
there. You, my dears, who live in this Republic can have no notion of
the stir and bustle caused by the arrival of Horace Walpole's carriage
at a fashionable hotel, at a time when every innkeeper was versed in the
arms of every family of note in the three kingdoms. Our friend the
chamberlain was now humility itself, and fairly ran in his eagerness to
anticipate Comyn's demands. It was "Yes, my Lord," and "To be sure, your
Lordship," every other second, and he seized the first occasion to make
me an elaborate apology for his former cold conduct, assuring me that had
our honours been pleased to divulge the fact that we had friends in
London, such friends as my Lord Comyn and Mr. Walpole, whose great father
he had once had the distinction to serve as linkman, all would have been
well. And he was desiring me particularly to comprehend that he had been
acting under most disagreeable orders when he sent for the bailiff,
before I cut him short.

We were soon comfortably installed in our old rooms; Comyn had sent
post-haste for Davenport, who chanced to be his own tailor, and for the
whole army of auxiliaries indispensable to a gentleman's make-up; and Mr.
Dix was notified that his Lordship would receive him at eleven on the
following morning, in my rooms. I remembered the faithful Banks with a
twinge of gratitude, and sent for him. And John Paul and I, having been
duly installed in the clothes made for us, all three of us sat down
merrily to such a supper as only the cook of the Star and Garter, who had
been chef to the Comte de Maurepas, could prepare. Then I begged Comyn
to relate the story of our rescue, which I burned to hear.

"Why, Richard," said he, filling his glass, "had you run afoul any other
man in London, save perchance Selwyn, you'd have been drinking the
bailiff's triple-diluted for a month to come. I never knew such a brace
of fools as he and Horry for getting hold of strange yarns and making
them stranger; the wonder was that Horry told this as straight as he did.
He has written it to all his friends on the Continent, and had he not
been in dock with the gout ever since he reached town, he would have told
it at the opera, and at a dozen routs and suppers. Beg pardon, captain,"
said he, turning to John Paul, "but I think 'twas your peacock coat that
saved you both, for it caught Horry's eye through the window, as you got
out of the chaise, and down he came as fast as he could hobble.

"Horry had a little dinner to-day in Arlington Street, where he lives,
and Miss Dorothy was there. I have told you, Richard, there has been no
sensation in town equal to that of your Maryland beauty, since Lady Sarah
Lennox. You may have some notion of the old beau Horry can be when he
tries, and he is over-fond of Miss Dolly--she puts him in mind of
some canvas or other of Sir Peter's. He vowed he had been saving this
piece de resistance, as he was pleased to call it, expressly for her,
since it had to do somewhat with Maryland. 'What d'ye think I met at
Windsor, Miss Manners?' he cries, before we had begun the second course.

"'Perhaps a repulse from his Majesty,' says Dolly, promptly.

"'Nay,' says Mr. Walpole, making a face, for he hates a laugh at his
cost; nothing less than a young American giant, with the attire of Dr.
Benjamin Franklin and the manner of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain. But he
had a whiff of deer leather about him, and shoulders and back and legs to
make his fortune at Hockley in the Hole, had he lived two generations
since. And he had with him a strange, Scotch sea-captain, who had
rescued him from pirates, bless you, no less. That is, he said he was a
sea-captain; but he talked French like a Parisian, and quoted Shakespeare
like Mr. Burke or Dr. Johnson. He may have been M. Caron de
Beaumarchais, for I never saw him, or a soothsayer, or Cagliostro the
magician, for he guessed my name.'

"'Guessed your name!' we cried, for the story was out of the ordinary.

"'Just that,' answered he, and repeated some damned verse I never heard,
with Horatio in it, and made them all laugh."

John Paul and I looked at each other in astonishment, and we, too,
laughed heartily. It was indeed an odd coincidence.

His Lordship continued:
"'Well, be that as it may,' said Horry, 'he was an able man of sagacity,
this sea-captain, and, like many another, had a penchant for being a
gentleman. But he was more of an oddity than Hertford's beast of
Gevaudan, and was dressed like Salvinio, the monkey my Lord Holland
brought back from his last Italian tour.'"

I have laughed over this description since, my dears, and so has John
Paul. But at that time I saw nothing funny in it, and winced with him
when Comyn repeated it with such brutal unconsciousness. However, young
Englishmen of birth and wealth of that day were not apt to consider the
feelings of those they deemed below them.

"Come to your story. Comyn," I cut in testily.

But his Lordship missed entirely the cause of my displeasure.

"Listen to him!" he exclaimed good-naturedly. "He will hear of nothing
but Miss Dolly. Well, Richard, my lad, you should have seen her as Horry
went on to tell that you had been taken from Maryland, with her head
forward and her lips parted, and a light in those eyes of hers to make a
man fall down and worship. For Mr. Lloyd, or some one in your Colony,
had written of your disappearance, and I vow bliss Dorothy has not been
the same since. Nor have I been the only one to remark it," said he,
waving off my natural protest at such extravagance. "We have talked of
you more than once, she and I, and mourned you for dead. But I am off my
course again, as we sailors say, captain. Horry was describing how
Richard lifted little Goble by one hand and spun all the dignity out of
him, when Miss Manners broke in, being able to contain herself no longer.

"'An American, Mr. Walpole, and from Maryland?' she demanded. And the
way she said it made them all look at her.

"'Assurement, mademoiselle,' replied Horry, in his cursed French; and
perhaps you know him. He would gladden the heart of Frederick of
Prussia, for he stands six and three if an inch. I took such a fancy to
the lad that I invited him to sup with me, and he gave me back a message
fit for Mr. Wilkes to send to his Majesty, as haughty as you choose, that
if I desired him I must have his friend in the bargain. You Americans
are the very devil for independence, Miss Manners! 'Ods fish, I liked
his spirit so much I had his friend, Captain something or other--'and
there he stopped, caught by Miss Manners's appearance, for she was very
white.

"'The name is Richard Carvel!' she cried.

"'I'll lay a thousand it was!' I shouted, rising in my chair. And the
company stared, and Lady Pembroke vowed I had gone mad.

"'Bless me, bless me, here's a romance for certain!' cried Horry; 'it
throws my "Castle of Otranto" in the shade' ("that's some damned book he
has written," Comyn interjected).

"You may not believe me, Richard, when I say that Miss Dolly ate but
little after that, and her colour came and went like the red of a stormy
sunset at sea. 'Here's this dog Richard come to spill all our chances,' I
swore to myself. The company had been prodigiously entertained by the
tale, and clamoured for more, and when Horry had done I told how you had
fought me at Annapolis, and had saved my life. But Miss Manners sat very
still, biting her lip, and I knew she was sadly vexed that you had not
gone to her in Arlington Street. For a woman will reason thus," said his
Lordship, winking wisely. "But I more than suspected something to have
happened, so I asked Horry to send his fellow Favre over to the Star and
Garter to see if you were there, tho' I was of three minds to let you go
to the devil. You should have seen her face when he came back to say that
you had been for three weeks in a Castle Yard sponging-house! Then Horry
said he would lend me his coach, and when it was brought around Miss
Manners took our breaths by walking downstairs and into it, nor would she
listen to a word of the objections cried by my Lady Pembroke and the
rest. You must know there is no stopping the beauty when she has made her
mind. And while they were all chattering on the steps I jumped in, and
off we drove, and you will be the most talked-of man in London to-morrow.
I give you Miss Manners!" cried his Lordship, as he ended.

We all stood to the toast, I with my blood a-tingle and my brain awhirl,
so that I scarce knew what I did.




CHAPTER XXVII

IN WHICH I AM SORE TEMPTED

"Who the devil is this John Paul, and what is to become of him?" asked
Comyn, as I escorted him downstairs to a chair. "You must give him two
hundred pounds, or a thousand, if you like, and let him get out. He
can't be coming to the clubs with you."

And he pulled me into the coffee room after him.

"You don't understand the man, Comyn," said I; "he isn't that kind,
I tell you. What he has done for me is out of friendship, as he says,
and he wouldn't touch a farthing save what I owe him."

"Cursed if he isn't a rum sea-captain," he answered, shrugging his
shoulders; "cursed if I ever ran foul of one yet who would refuse a
couple of hundred and call quits. What's he to do? Is he to live like a
Lord of the Treasury upon a master's savings?"

"Jack," said I, soberly, resolved not to be angry, "I would willingly be
cast back in Castle Yard to-night rather than desert him, who might have
deserted me twenty times to his advantage. Mr. Carvel has not wealth
enough, nor I gratitude enough, to reward him. But if our family can
make his fortune, it shall be made. And I am determined to go with him
to America by the first packet I can secure."

He clutched my arm with an earnestness to startle me.

"You must not leave England now," he said.

"And why?"

"Because she will marry Chartersea if you do. And take my oath upon it,
you alone can save her from that."

"Nonsense!" I exclaimed, but my breath caught sharply.

"Listen, Richard. Mr. Manners's manoeuvres are the talk of the town, and
the beast of a duke is forever wining and dining in Arlington Street. At
first people ridiculed, now they are giving credit. It is said," he
whispered fearfully, "it is said that his Grace has got Mr. Manners in
his power,--some question of honour, you understand, which will ruin
him,--and that even now the duke is in a position to force the marriage."

He leaned forward and searched me with his keen gray eyes, as tho'
watching the effect of the intelligence upon me. I was, indeed, stunned.

"Now, had she refused me fifty times instead of only twice," my Lord
continued, "I could not wish her such a fate as that vicious scoundrel.
And since she will not have me, I would rather it were you than any man
alive. For she loves you, Richard, as surely as the world is turning."

"Oh, no!" I replied passionately; "you are deceived by the old liking she
has always had for me since we were children together." I was deeply
touched by his friendship. "But tell me how that could affect this
marriage with Chartersea. I believe her pride capable of any sacrifice
for the family honour."

He made a gesture of impatience that knocked over a candlestick.

"There, curse you, there you are again!" he said, "showing how little you
know of women and of their pride. If she were sure that you loved her,
she would never marry Chartersea or any one else. She has had near the
whole of London at her feet, and toyed with it. Now she has been amusing
herself with Charles Fox, but I vow she cares for none of them. Titles,
fame, estates, will not move her."

"If she were sure that I loved her!" I repeated, dazed by what he was
saying. "How you are talking, Comyn!"

"Just that. Ah, how I know her, Richard! She can be reckless beyond
notion. And if it were proved to her that you were in love with Miss
Swain, the barrister's daughter, over whom we were said to have fought,
she would as soon marry Chartersea, or March, or the devil, to show you
how little she cared."

"With Patty Swain!" I exclaimed.

"But if she knew you did not care a rope's end for Patty, Mr. Marmaduke
and his reputation might go into exile together," he continued, without
heeding. "So much for a woman's pride, I say. The day the news of your
disappearance arrived, Richard, she was starting out with a party to
visit Lord Carlisle's seat, Castle Howard. Not a step would she stir,
though Mr. Marmaduke whined and coaxed and threatened. And I swear to
you she has never been the same since, though few but I know why. I
might tell you more, my lad, were it not a breach of confidence."

"Then don't," I said; for I would not let my feelings run.

"Egad, then, I will!" he cried impetuously, "for the end justifies it.
You must know that after the letter came from Mr. Lloyd, we thought you
dead. I could never get her to speak of you until a fortnight ago. We
both had gone with a party to see Wanstead and dine at the Spread Eagle
upon the Forest, and I stole her away from the company and led her out
under the trees. My God, Richard, how beautiful she was in the wood
with the red in her cheeks and the wind blowing her black hair! For the
second time I begged her to be Lady Comyn. Fool that I was, I thought
she wavered, and my heart beat as it never will again. Then, as she
turned away, from her hand slipped a little gold-bound purse, and as I
picked it up a clipping from a newspaper fluttered out. 'Pon my soul,
it was that very scandalous squib of the Maryland Gazette about our duel!
I handed it back with a bow. I dared not look up at her face, but stood
with my eyes on the ground, waiting.

"'Lord Comyn,' says she, presently, with a quiver in her voice, 'before I
give you a reply you must first answer, on your word as a gentleman, what
I ask you.'

"I bowed again.

"'Is it true that Richard Carvel was in love with Miss Swain?' she
asked."

"And you said, Comyn," I broke in, unable longer to contain myself, "you
said--"

"I said: 'Dorothy, if I were to die to-morrow, I would swear Richard
Carvel loved you, and you only.'"

His Lordship had spoken with that lightness which hides only the deepest
emotion.

"And she refused you?" I cried. "Oh, surely not for that!"

"And she did well," said my Lord.

I bowed my head on my arms, for I had gone through a great deal that day,
and this final example of Comyn's generosity overwhelmed me. Then I felt
his hand laid kindly on my shoulder, and I rose up and seized it. His
eyes were dim, as were mine.

"And now, will you go to Maryland and be a fool?" asked his Lordship.

I hesitated, sadly torn between duty and inclination. John Paul could,
indeed, go to America without me. Next the thought came over me in a
flash that my grandfather might be ill, or even dead, and there would be
no one to receive the captain. I knew he would never consent to spend
the season at the Star and Garter at my expense. And then the image of
the man rose before me, of him who had given me all he owned, and gone
with me so cheerfully to prison, though he knew me not from the veriest
adventurer and impostor. I was undecided no longer.

"I must go, Jack," I said sadly; "as God judges, I must."

He looked at me queerly, as if I were beyond his comprehension, picked up
his hat, called out that he would see me in the morning, and was gone.

I went slowly upstairs, threw off my clothes mechanically, and tumbled
into bed. The captain had long been asleep. By the exertion of all the
will power I could command, I was able gradually to think more and more
soberly, and the more I thought, the more absurd, impossible, it seemed
that I, a rough provincial not yet of age, should possess the heart of a
beauty who had but to choose from the best of all England. An hundred
times I went over the scene of poor Comyn's proposal, nay, saw it
vividly, as though the whole of it had been acted before me: and as I
became calmer, the plainer I perceived that Dorothy, thinking me dead,
was willing to let Comyn believe that she had loved me, and had so eased
the soreness of her refusal. Perhaps, in truth, a sentiment had sprung
up in her breast when she heard of my disappearance, which she mistook
for love. But surely the impulse that sent her to Castle Yard was not
the same as that Comyn had depicted: it was merely the survival of the
fancy of a little girl in a grass-stained frock, who had romped on the
lawn at Carvel Hall. I sighed as I remembered the sun and the flowers
and the blue Chesapeake, and recalled the very toss of her head when she
had said she would marry nothing less than a duke.

Alas, Dolly, perchance it was to be nothing more than a duke! The
bloated face and beady eyes and the broad crooked back I had seen that
day in Arlington Street rose before me,--I should know his Grace of
Chartersea again were I to meet him in purgatory. Was it, indeed,
possible that I could prevent her marriage with this man? I fell asleep,
repeating the query, as the dawn was sifting through the blinds.

I awakened late. Banks was already there to dress me, to congratulate me
as discreetly as a well-trained servant should; nor did he remind me of
the fact that he had offered to lend me money, for which omission I liked
him the better. In the parlour I found the captain sipping his chocolate
and reading his morning Chronicle, as though all his life he had done
nothing else.

"Good morning, captain." And fetching him a lick on the back that nearly
upset his bowl, I cried as heartily as I could:

"Egad, if our luck holds, we'll be sailing before the week is out."

But he looked troubled. He hemmed and hawed, and finally broke out into
Scotch:

"Indeed, laddie, y'ell no be leaving Miss Dorothy for me."

"What nonsense has Comyn put into your head?" I demanded, with a stitch
in my side; I am no more to Miss Manners than--"

"Than John Paul! Faith, y'ell not make me believe that. Ah, Richard,"
said he, "ye're a sly dog. You and I have been as thick these twa months
as men can well live, and never a word out of you of the most sublime
creature that walks. I have seen women in many countries, lad, beauties
to set thoughts afire and swords a-play,--and 'tis not her beauty alone.
She hath a spirit for a queen to covet, and air and carriage, too."

This eloquent harangue left me purple.

"I grant it all, captain. She has but to choose her title and estate."

"Ay, and I have a notion which she'll be choosing."

"The knowledge is worth a thousand pounds at the least," I replied.
"I will lend you the sum, and warrant no lack of takers."

"Now the devil fly off with such temperament! And I had half the
encouragement she has given you, I would cast anchor on the spot, and
they might hang and quarter me to move me. But I know you well," he
exclaimed, his manner changing, "you are making this great sacrifice on
my account. And I will not be a drag on your pleasures, Richard, or
stand in the way of your prospects."

"Captain Paul," I said, sitting down beside him, "have I deserved this
from you? Have I shown a desire to desert you now that my fortunes have
changed? I have said that you shall taste of our cheer at Carvel Hall,
and have looked forward this long while to the time when I shall take you
to my grandfather and say: 'Mr. Carvel, this is he whose courage and
charity have restored you to me, and me to you.' And he will have
changed mightily if you do not have the best in Maryland. Should you
wish to continue on the sea, you shall have the Belle of the Wye,
launched last year. 'Tis time Captain Elliott took to his pension."

The captain sighed, and a gleam I did not understand came into his dark
eyes.

"I would that God had given me your character and your heart, Richard,"
he said, "in place of this striving thing I have within me. But 'tis
written that a leopard cannot change his spots."

"The passage shall be booked this day," I said.

That morning was an eventful one. Comyn arrived first, dressed in a suit
of mauve French cloth that set off his fine figure to great advantage.
He regarded me keenly as he entered, as if to discover whether I had
changed my mind over night. And I saw he was not in the best of tempers.

"And when do you sail?" he cried. "I have no doubt you have sent out
already to get passage."

"I have been trying to persuade Mr. Carvel to remain in London, my Lord,"
said the captain. "I tell him he is leaving his best interests behind
him."

"I fear that for once you have undertaken a task beyond your ability,
Captain Paul," was the rather tart reply.

"The captain has a ridiculous idea that he is the cause of my going," I
said quickly.

John Paul rose somewhat abruptly, seized his hat and bowed to his
Lordship, and in the face of a rain sallied out, remarking that he had
as yet seen nothing of the city.

"Jack, you must do me the favour not to talk of this in John Paul's
presence," I said, when the door had closed.

"If he doesn't suspect why you are going, he has more stupidity than I
gave him credit for," Comyn answered gruffly.

"I fear he does suspect," I said.

His Lordship went to the table and began to write, leaving me to the
Chronicle, the pages of which I did not see. Then came Mr. Dix, and
such a change I had never beheld in mortal man. In place of the
would-be squire I had encountered in Threadneedle Street, here was an
unctuous person of business in sober gray; but he still wore the
hypocritical smirk with no joy in it. His bow was now all respectful
obedience. Comyn acknowledged it with a curt nod.

Mr. Dix began smoothly, where a man of more honesty would have found the
going difficult.

"Mr. Carvel," he said, rubbing his hands, "I wish first to express my
profound regrets for what has happened."

"Curse your regrets," said Comyn, bluntly. "You come here on business.
Mr. Carvel does not stand in need of regrets at present."

"I was but on the safe side of Mr. Carvel's money, my Lord."

"Ay, I'll warrant you are always on the safe side of money," replied
Comyn, with a laugh. "What I wish to know, Mr. Dix," he continued, "is
whether you are willing to take my word that this is Mr. Richard Carvel,
the grandson and heir of Lionel Carvel, Esquire, of Carvel Hall in
Maryland?"

"I am your Lordship's most obedient servant," said Mr. Dix.

"Confound you, sir! Can you or can you not answer a simple question?"

Mr. Dix straightened. He may have spoken elsewhere of asserting his
dignity.

"I would not presume to doubt your Lordship's word."

"Then, if I were to be personally responsible for such sums as Mr. Carvel
may need, I suppose you would be willing to advance them to him."

"Willingly, willingly, my Lord," said Mr. Dix, and added immediately:
"Your Lordship will not object to putting that in writing? Merely a
matter of form, as your Lordship knows, but we men of affairs are held to
a strict accountability."

Comyn made a movement of disgust, took up a pen and wrote out the
indorsement.

"There," he said. "You men of affairs will at least never die of
starvation."

Mr. Dix took the paper with a low bow, began to shower me with
protestations of his fidelity to my grandfather's interests, which were
one day to be my own,--he hoped, with me, not soon,--drew from his pocket
more than sufficient for my immediate wants, said that I should have more
by a trusty messenger, and was going on to clear himself of his former
neglect and indifference, when Banks announced:

"His honour, Mr. Manners!"

Comyn and I exchanged glances, and his Lordship gave a low whistle.  Nor
was the circumstance without its effect upon Mr. Dix. With my knowledge
of the character of Dorothy's father I might have foreseen this visit,
which came, nevertheless, as a complete surprise. For a moment I
hesitated, and then made a motion to show him up. Comyn voiced my
decision.

"Why let the little cur stand in the way?" he said; "he counts for
nothing."

Mr. Marmaduke was not long in ascending, and tripped into the room as Mr.
Dix backed out of it, as gayly as tho' he had never sent me about my
business in the street. His clothes, of a cherry cut velvet, were as ever
a little beyond the fashion, and he carried something I had never before
seen, then used by the extreme dandies in London,--an umbrella.

"What! Richard Carvel! Is it possible?" he screamed in his piping
voice. "We mourned you for dead, and here you turn up in London alive
and well, and bigger and stronger than ever. Oons! one need not go to
Scripture for miracles. I shall write my congratulations to Mr. Carvel
this day, sir." And he pushed his fingers into my waistcoat, so that
Comyn and I were near to laughing in his face. For it was impossible to
be angry with a little coxcomb of such pitiful intelligence.

"Ah, good morning, my Lord.  I see your Lordship has risen early in the
same good cause, I myself am up two hours before my time.  You will
pardon the fuss I am making over the lad, Comyn, but his grandfather is
my very dear friend, and Richard was brought up with my daughter Dorothy.
They were like brother and sister. What, Richard, you will not take my
hand! Surely you are not so unreasonable as to hold against me that
unfortunate circumstance in Arlington Street! Yes, Dorothy has shocked
me. She has told me of it."

Comyn winked at me as I replied:--

"We shan't mention it, Mr. Manners. I have had my three weeks in prison,
and perhaps know the world all the better for them."

He held up his umbrella in mock dismay, and stumbled abruptly into a
chair. There he sat looking at me, a whimsical uneasiness on his face.
"We shall indeed mention it, sir. Three weeks in prison, to think of it!
And you would not so much as send me a line. Ah, Richard, pride is a
good thing, but I sometimes think we from Maryland have too much of it.
We shall indeed speak of the matter. Out of justice to me you must
understand how it occurred. You must know that I am deucedly
absentminded, and positively lost without my glass. And I had somebody
with me, so Dorothy said. Chartersea, I believe. And his Grace made me
think you were a cursed beggar. I make a point never to have to do with
'em."

"You are right, Mr. Manners," Comyn cut in dryly; "for I have known them
to be so persistently troublesome, when once encouraged, as to interfere
seriously with our arrangements."

"Eh!" Mr. Manners ejaculated, and then came to an abrupt pause, while I
wondered whether the shot had told. To relieve him I inquired after Mrs.
Manners's health.

"Ah, to be sure," he replied, beginning to fumble in his skirts; "London
agrees with her remarkably, and she is better than she has been for
years. And she is overjoyed at your most wonderful escape, Richard,
as are we all."

And he gave me a note. I concealed my eagerness as I took it and broke
the seal, to discover that it was not from Dorothy, but from Mrs. Manners
herself.

   "My dear Richard" (so it ran), "I thank God with your dear
   Grandfather over y'r Deliverance, & you must bring y'r Deliverer,
   whom Dorothy describes as Courtly and Gentlemanly despite his
   Calling, to dine with us this very Day, that we may express to him
   our Gratitude. I know you are far too Sensible not to come to
   Arlington Street. I subscribe myself, Richard, y'r sincere Friend,

                    "MARGARET MANNERS."

There was not so much as a postscript from Dolly, as I had hoped. But
the letter was whole-souled, like Mrs. Manners, and breathed the
affection she had always had for me. I honoured her the more that she
had not attempted to excuse Mr. Manners's conduct.

"You will come, Richard?" cried Mr. Marmaduke, with an attempt at
heartiness. "You must come, and the captain, too. For I hear, with
regret, that you are not to be long with us."

I caught another significant look from Comyn from between the window
curtains. But I accepted for myself, and conditionally for John Paul.
Mr. Manners rose to take his leave.

"Dorothy will be glad to see you," he said. "I often think, Richard,
that she tires of these generals and King's ministers, and longs for a
romp at Wilmot House again. Alas," he sighed, offering us a pinch of
snuff (which he said was the famous Number 37), "alas, she has had a deal
too much of attention, with his Grace of Chartersea and a dozen others
would to marry her. I fear she will go soon," and he sighed again.
"Upon my soul I cannot make her out. I'll lay something handsome, my
Lord, that the madcap adventure with you after Richard sets the gossips
going. One day she is like a schoolgirl, and I blame myself for not
taking her mother's advice to send her to Mrs. Terry, at Campden House;
and the next, egad, she is as difficult to approach as a crowned head.
Well, gentlemen, I give you good day, I have an appointment at White's.
I am happy to see you have fallen in good hands, Richard. My Lord, your
most obedient!"

"He'll lay something handsome!" said my Lord, when the door had closed
behind him.




CHAPTER XXVIII

ARLINGTON STREET

The sun having come out, and John Paul not returning by two,--being
ogling, I supposed, the ladies in Hyde Park,--I left him a message and
betook myself with as great trepidation as ever to Dorothy's house. The
door was opened by the identical footman who had so insolently offered
me money, and I think he recognized me, for he backed away as he told me
the ladies were not at home. But I had not gone a dozen paces in my
disappointment when I heard him running after me, asking if my honour
were Mr. Richard Carvel.

"The ladies will see your honour," he said, and conducted me back into
the house and up the wide stairs. I had heard that Arlington Street was
known as the street of the King's ministers, and I surmised that Mr.
Manners had rented this house, and its furniture, from some great man who
had gone out of office, plainly a person of means and taste. The hall,
like that of many of the great town-houses, was in semi-darkness, but I
remarked that the stair railing was of costly iron-work and polished
brass; and, as I went up, that the stone niches in the wall were filled
with the busts of statesmen, and I recognized among these, that of the
great Walpole. A great copper gilt chandelier hung above. But the
picture of the drawing-room I was led into, with all its colours, remains
in the eye of my mind to this day. It was a large room, the like of
which I had never seen in any private residence of the New World,
situated in the back of the house. Its balcony overlooked the fresh
expanse of the Green Park. Upon its high ceiling floated Venus and the
graces, by Zucchi; and the mantel, upon which ticked an antique and
curious French clock, was carved marble.

On the gilt panels of the walls were wreaths of red roses. At least a
half-dozen tall mirrors, framed in rococos, were placed about, the
largest taking the space between the two high windows on the park side.
And underneath it stood a gold cabinet, lacquered by Martin's inimitable
hand, in the centre of which was set a medallion of porcelain, with the
head in dark blue of his Majesty, Charles the First. The chairs and
lounges were marquetry,--satin-wood and mahogany,--with seats and backs
of blue brocade. The floor was polished to the degree of danger, and on
the walls hung a portrait by Van Dycke, another, of a young girl, by
Richardson, a landscape by the Dutch artist Ruysdael, and a water-colour
by Zaccarelli.

I had lived for four months the roughest of lives, and the room brought
before me so sharply the contrast between my estate and the grandeur and
elegance in which Dorothy lived, that my spirits fell as I looked about
me. In front of me was a vase of flowers, and beside them on the table
lay a note "To Miss Manners, in Arlington Street," and sealed with a
ducal crest. I was unconsciously turning it over, when something
impelled me to look around. There, erect in the doorway, stood Dolly,
her eyes so earnestly fixed upon me that I dropped the letter with a
start. A faint colour mounted to her crown of black hair.

"And so you have come, Richard," she said. Her voice was low, and tho'
there was no anger in it, the tone seemed that of reproach. I wondered
whether she thought the less of me for coming.

"Can you blame me for wishing to see you before I leave, Dolly?" I
cried, and crossed quickly over to her.

But she drew a step backward.

"Then it is true that you are going," said she, this time with a plain
note of coldness.

"I must, Dorothy."

"When?"

"As soon as I can get passage."

She passed me and seated herself on the lounge, leaving me to stand like
a lout before her, ashamed of my youth and of the clumsiness of my great
body.

"Ah, Richard," she laughed, "confess to your old play mate! I should
like to know how many young men of wealth and family would give up the
pleasures of a London season were there not a strong attraction in
Maryland."

How I longed to tell her that I would give ten years of my life to remain
in England: that duty to John Paul took me home. But I was dumb.

"We should make a macaroni of you to amaze our colony," said Dolly,
lightly, as I sat down a great distance away; "to accept my schooling
were to double your chances when you return, Richard. You should have
cards to everything, and my Lord Comyn or Mr. Fox or some one would
introduce you at the clubs. I vow you would be a sensation, with your
height and figure. You should meet all the beauties of England, and
perchance," she added mischievously, "perchance you might be taking one
home with you."

"Nay, Dolly," I answered; "I am not your match in jesting."

"Jesting!" she exclaimed, "I was never more sober. But where is your
captain?"

I said that I hoped that John Paul would be there shortly.

"How fanciful he is! And his conversation,--one might think he had
acquired the art at Marly or in the Fauxbourg. In truth, he should have
been born on the far side of the Channel. And he has the air of the
great man," said she, glancing up at ms, covertly. "For my part, I
prefer a little more bluntness."

I was nettled at the speech. Dorothy had ever been quick to seize upon
and ridicule the vulnerable oddities of a character, and she had all the
contempt of the great lady for those who tried to scale by pleasing arts.
I perceived with regret that she had taken a prejudice.

"There, Dorothy," I cried, "not even you shall talk so of the captain.
For you have seen him at his worst. There are not many, I warrant you,
born like him a poor gardener's son who rise by character and ability to
be a captain at three and twenty. And he will be higher yet. He has
never attended any but a parish school, and still has learning to
astonish Mr. Walpole, learning which he got under vast difficulties.
He is a gentleman, I say, far above many I have known, and he is a man.
If you would know a master, you should see him on his own ship. If you
would know a gentleman, you have been with me in his mother's cottage."
And, warming as I talked, I told her of that saddest of all homecomings
to the little cabin under Criffel's height.

Small wonder that I adored Dorothy!

Would that I could paint her moods, that I might describe the strange
light in her eyes when I had finished, that I might tell how in an
instant she was another woman. She rose impulsively and took a chair at
my side, and said:--

"'Tis so I love to hear you speak, Richard, when you uphold the absent.
For I feel it is so you must champion me when I am far away. My dear old
playmate is ever the same, strong to resent, and seeing ever the best in
his friends. Forgive me, Richard, I have been worse than silly. And
will you tell me that story of your adventures which I long to learn?"

Ay, that I would. I told it her, and she listened silently, save only
now and then a cry of wonder or of sympathy that sounded sweet to my
ears,--just as I had dreamed of her listening when I used to pace the
deck of the brigantine John, at sea. And when at length I had finished,
she sat looking out over the Green Park, as tho' she had forgot my
presence.

And so Mrs. Manners came in and found us.

It had ever pleased me to imagine that Dorothy's mother had been in her
youth like Dorothy. She had the same tall figure, grace in its every
motion, and the same eyes of deep blue, and the generous but well-formed
mouth. A man may pity, but cannot conceive the heroism that a woman of
such a mould must have gone through who has been married since early
girlhood to a man like Mr. Manners. Some women would have been driven
quickly to frivolity, and worse, but this one had struggled year after
year to maintain an outward serenity to a critical world, and had
succeeded, tho' success had cost her dear. Each trial had deepened a
line of that face, had done its share to subdue the voice which had once
rung like Dorothy's; and in the depths of her eyes lingered a sadness
indefinable.

She gazed upon me with that kindness and tenderness I had always received
since the days when, younger and more beautiful than now, she was the
companion of my mother. And the unbidden shadow of a thought came to me
that these two sweet women had had some sadness in common. Many a
summer's day I remembered them sewing together in the spring-house,
talking in subdued voices which were hushed when I came running in. And
lo! the same memory was on Dorothy's mother then, half expressed as she
laid her hands upon my shoulders.

"Poor Elizabeth!" she said,--not to me, nor yet to Dorothy; "I wish that
she might have lived to see you now. It is Captain Jack again."

She sighed, and kissed me. And I felt at last that I had come home after
many wanderings. We sat down, mother and daughter on the sofa with their
fingers locked. She did not speak of Mr. Manners's conduct, or of my
stay in the sponging-house. And for this I was thankful.

"I have had a letter from Mr. Lloyd, Richard," she said.

"And my grandfather?" I faltered, a thickness in my throat.

"My dear boy," answered Mrs. Manners, gently, "he thinks you dead. But
you have written him?" she added hurriedly.

I nodded. "From Dumfries."

"He will have the letter soon," she said cheerfully. "I thank Heaven
I am able to tell you that his health is remarkable under the
circumstances. But he will not quit the house, and sees no one except
your uncle, who is with him constantly."

It was what I expected. But the confirmation of it brought me to my feet
in a torrent of indignation, exclaiming:

"The villain! You tell me he will allow Mr. Carvel to see no one?"

She started forward, laying her hand on my arm, and Dorothy gave a little
cry.

"What are you saying, Richard? What are you saying?"

"Mrs. Manners," I answered, collecting myself, "I must tell you that I
believe it is Grafton Carvel himself that is responsible for my
abduction. He meant that I should be murdered."

Then Dorothy rose, her eyes flashing and her head high.

"He would have murdered you--you, Richard?" she cried, in such a storm
of anger as I had never seen her. "Oh, he should hang for the thought
of it! I have always suspected Grafton Carvel capable of any crime!"

"Hush, Dorothy," said her mother; "it is not seemly for a young girl to
talk so."

"Seemly!" said Dorothy. "If I were a man I would bring him to justice,
and it took me a lifetime. Nay, if I were a man and could use a sword--"

"Dorothy! Dorothy!" interrupted Mrs. Manners.

Dorothy sat down, the light lingering in her eyes. She had revealed more
of herself in that instant than in all her life before.

"It is a grave charge, Richard," said Mrs. Manners, at length. "And your
uncle is a man of the best standing in Annapolis."

"You must remember his behaviour before my mother's marriage, Mrs.
Manners."

"I do, I do, Richard," she said sadly. "And I have never trusted him
since. I suppose you are not making your accusation without cause?"

"I have cause enough," I answered bitterly.

"And proof?" she added. She should have been the man in her family.

I told her how Harvey had overheard the bits of the plot at Carvel Hall
near two years gone; and now that I had begun, I was going through with
Mr. Allen's part in the conspiracy, when Dorothy startled us both by
crying:

"Oh, there is so much wickedness in the world, I wish I had never been
born!"

She flung herself from the room in a passion of tears to shock me.
As if in answer to my troubled look, Mrs. Manners said, with a sigh:

"She has not been at all well, lately, Richard. I fear the gayety of
this place is too much for her. Indeed, I am sorry we ever left
Maryland."

I was greatly disturbed, and thought involuntarily of Comyn's words.
Could it be that Mr. Manners was forcing her to marry Chartersea?

"And has Mr. Lloyd said nothing of my uncle?" I asked after a while.

"I will not deny that ugly rumours are afloat," she answered. "Grafton,
as you know, is not liked in Annapolis, especially by the Patriot party.
But there is not the slightest ground for suspicion. The messenger--"

"Yes?"

"Your uncle denies all knowledge of. He was taken to be the tool of the
captain of the slaver, and he disappeared so completely that it was
supposed he had escaped to the ship. The story goes that you were seized
for a ransom, and killed in the struggle. Your black ran all the way to
town, crying the news to those he met on the Circle and in West Street,
but by the mercy of God he was stopped by Mr. Swain and some others
before he had reached your grandfather. In ten minutes a score of men
were galloping out of the Town Gate, Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Singleton ahead.
They found your horse dead, and the road through the woods all trampled
down, and they spurred after the tracks down to the water's edge.
Singleton recalled a slaver, the crew of which had been brawling at the
Ship tavern a few nights before. But the storm was so thick they could
not see the ship's length out into the river. They started two fast
sloops from the town wharves in chase, and your uncle has been moving
heaven and earth to obtain some clew of you. He has put notices in the
newspapers of Charlestown, Philadelphia, New York, and even Boston, and
offered a thousand pounds reward."




CHAPTER XXIX

I MEET A VERY GREAT YOUNG MAN

The French clock had struck four, and I was beginning to fear that,
despite my note, the captain's pride forbade his coming to Mr. Manners's
house, when in he walked, as tho' 'twere no novelty to have his name
announced. And so straight and handsome was he, his dark eye flashing
with the self-confidence born in the man, that the look of uneasiness I
had detected upon Mrs. Manners's face quickly changed to one of surprise
and pleasure. Of course the good lady had anticipated a sea-captain of
a far different mould. He kissed her hand with a respectful grace, and
then her daughter's, for Dorothy had come back to us, calmer. And I was
filled with joy over his fine appearance. Even Dorothy was struck by the
change the clothes had made in him. Mrs. Manners thanked him very
tactfully for restoring me to them, as she was pleased to put it, to
which John Paul modestly replied that he had done no more than another
would under the same circumstances. And he soon had them both charmed by
his address.

"Why, Richard," said Dorothy's mother aside to me, "surely this cannot be
your sea-captain!"

I nodded merrily. But John Paul's greatest triumph was yet to come. For
presently Mr. Marmaduke arrived from White's, and when he had greeted me
with effusion he levelled his glass at the corner of the room.

"Ahem!" he exclaimed. "Pray, my dear, whom have you invited to-day?" And
without awaiting her reply, as was frequently his habit, he turned to me
and said: "I had hoped we were to have the pleasure of Captain Paul's
company, Richard. For I must have the chance before you go of clasping
the hand of your benefactor."

"You shall have the chance, at least, sir," I replied, a fiery exultation
in my breast. "Mr. Manners, this is my friend, Captain Paul."

The captain stood up and bowed gravely at the little gentleman's blankly
amazed countenance.

"Ahem," said he; "dear me, is it possible!" and advanced a step, but the
captain remained immovable. Mr. Marmaduke fumbled for his snuff-box,
failed to find it, halted, and began again, for he never was known to
lack words for long: "Captain, as one of the oldest friends of Mr. Lionel
Carvel, I claim the right to thank you in his name for your gallant
conduct. I hear that you are soon to see him, and to receive his
obligations from him in person. You will not find him lacking, sir,
I'll warrant."

Such was Mr. Marmaduke's feline ingenuity! I had a retort ready, and
I saw that Mrs. Manners, long tried in such occasions, was about to pour
oil on the waters. But it was Dorothy who exclaimed:

"What captain! are you, too, going to Maryland?"

John Paul reddened.

"Ay, that he is, Dolly," I cut in hurriedly. "Did you imagine I would
let him escape so easily? Henceforth as he has said, he is to be an
American."

She flashed at me such a look as might have had a dozen different
meanings, and in a trice it was gone again under her dark lashes.

Dinner was got through I know not how. Mr. Manners led the talk, and
spoke more than was needful concerning our approaching voyage. He was at
great pains to recommend the Virginia packet, which had made the fastest
passage from the Capes; and she sailed, as was no doubt most convenient,
the Saturday following. I should find her a comfortable vessel, and he
would oblige me with a letter to Captain Alsop. Did Captain Paul know
him? But the captain was describing West Indian life to Mrs. Manners.
Dorothy had little to say; and as for me, I was in no very pleasant
humour.

I gave a deaf ear to Mr. Marmaduke's sallies, to speculate on the nature
of the disgrace which Chartersea was said to hold over his head. And
twenty times, as I looked upon Dolly's beauty, I ground my teeth at the
notion of returning home. I have ever been slow of suspicion, but
suddenly it struck me sharply that Mr. Manners's tactics must have a
deeper significance than I had thought. Why was it that he feared my
presence in London?

As we made our way back to the drawing-room, I was hoping for a talk with
Dolly (alas! I should not have many more), when I heard a voice which
sounded strangely familiar.

"You know, Comyn," it was saying, "you know I should be at the Princess's
were I not so completely worn out. I was up near all of last night with
Rosette."

Mr. Marmaduke, entering before us, cried:--

"The dear creature! I trust you have had medical attendance, Mr.
Walpole."

"Egad!" quoth Horry (for it was he), "I sent Favre to Hampstead to fetch
Dr. Pratt, where he was attending some mercer's wife. It seems that
Rosette had got into the street and eaten something horrible out of the
kennel. I discharged the footman, of course."

"A plague on your dog, Horry," said my Lord, yawning, and was about to
add something worse, when he caught sight of Dorothy.

Mr. Walpole bowed over her hand.

"And have you forgotten so soon your Windsor acquaintances, Mr. Walpole?"
she asked, laughing.

"Bless me," said Horry, looking very hard at me, "so it is, so it is.
Your hand, Mr. Carvel. You have only to remain in London, sir, to
discover that your reputation is ready-made. I contributed my mite.
For you must know that I am a sort of circulating library of odd news
which those devils, the printers, contrive to get sooner or later--Heaven
knows how! And Miss Manners herself has completed your fame. Yes, the
story of your gallant rescue is in all the clubs to-day. Egad, sir, you
come down heads up, like a loaded coin. You will soon be a factor in
Change Alley." And glancing slyly at the blushing Dolly, he continued:

"I have been many things, Miss Manners, but never before an instrument of
Providence. And so you discovered your rough diamond yesterday, and have
polished him in a day. O that Dr. Franklin had profited as well by our
London tailors! The rogue never told me, when he was ordering me about
in his swan-skin, that he had a friend in Arlington Street, and a
reigning beauty. But I like him the better for it."

"And I the worse," said Dolly.

"I perceive that he still retains his body-guard," said Mr. Walpole;
"Captain--"

"Paul," said Dolly, seeing that we would not help him out.

"Ah, yes. These young princes from the New World must have their suites.
You must bring them both some day to my little castle at Strawberry
Hill."

"Unfortunately, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Carvel finds that he must return to
America," Mr. Marmaduke interjected. He had been waiting to get in this
word.

Comyn nudged me. And I took the opportunity, in the awkward silence that
followed, to thank Mr. Walpole for sending his coach after us.

"And pray where did you get your learning?" he demanded abruptly of the
captain, in his most patronizing way. "Your talents are wasted at sea,
sir. You should try your fortune in London, where you shall be under my
protection, sir. They shall not accuse me again of stifling young
genius. Stay," he cried, warming with generous enthusiasm, "stay, I have
an opening. 'Twas but yesterday Lady Cretherton told me that she stood
in need of a tutor for her youngest son, and you shall have the
position."

"Pardon me, sir, but I shall not have the position," said John Paul,
coolly. And Horry might have heeded the danger signal. I had seen it
more than once on board the brigantine John, and knew what was coming.

"Faith, and why not, sir? If I recommend you, why not, sir?"

"Because I shall not take it," he said. "I have my profession, Mr.
Walpole, and it is an honourable one. And I would not exchange it, sir,
were it in your power to make me a Gibbon or a Hume, or tutor to his
Royal Highness, which it is not."

Thus, for the second time, the weapon of the renowned master of
Strawberry was knocked from his hand at a single stroke of his strange
adversary. I should like to describe John Paul as he made that speech,
--for 'twas not so much the speech as the atmosphere of it. Those who
heard and saw were stirred with wonder, for Destiny lay bare that
instant, just as the powers above are sometimes revealed at a single
lightning-bolt. Mr. Walpole made a reply that strove hard to be
indifferent; Mr. Marmaduke stuttered, for he was frightened, as little
souls are apt to be at such times. But my Lord Comyn, forever natural,
forever generous, cried out heartily:--

"Egad, captain, there you are a true sailor! Which would you rather
have been, I say, William Shakespeare or Sir Francis?"

"Which would you rather be, Richard," said Dolly to me, under her breath,
"Horace Walpole or Captain John Paul? I begin to like your captain
better."

Willy nilly, Mr. Walpole was forever doing me a service. Now, in order
to ignore the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr.
and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul
concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and
spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a few moments with
Dorothy.

"You are going to take the captain to Maryland, Richard?" she asked,
playing with her fan.

"I intend to get him the Belle of the Tye. 'Tis the least I can do.
For I am at my wits' end how to reward him, Dolly. And when are you
coming back?" I whispered earnestly, seeing her silent.

"I would that I knew, Richard," she replied, with a certain sadness that
went to my heart, as tho' the choice lay beyond her. Then she changed.
"Richard, there was more in Mr. Lloyd's letter than mamma told you of.
There was ill news of one of your friends."

"News!"

She looked at me fixedly, and then continued, her voice so low that I was
forced to bend over:

"Yes. You were not told that Patty Swain fell in a faint when she heard
of your disappearance. You were not told that the girl was ill for a
week afterwards. Ah, Richard, I fear you are a sad flirt. Nay, you may
benefit by the doubt,--perchance you are going home to be married."

You may be sure that this intelligence, from Dorothy's lips, only
increased my trouble and perplexity.

"You say that Patty has been ill?"

"Very ill," says she, with her lips tight closed.

"Indeed, I grieve to hear of it," I replied; "but I cannot think that my
accident had anything to do with the matter."

"Young ladies do not send their fathers to coffee-houses to prevent duels
unless their feelings are engaged," she flung back.

"You have heard the story of that affair, Dorothy. At least enough of it
to do me justice."

She was plainly agitated.

"Has Lord Comyn--"

"Lord Comyn has told you the truth," I said; "so much I know."

Alas for the exits and entrances of life! Here comes the footman.

"Mr. Fox," said he, rolling the name, for it was a great one.

Confound Mr. Fox! He might have waited five short minutes.

It was, in truth, none other than that precocious marvel of England who
but a year before had taken the breath from the House of Commons, and had
sent his fame flying over the Channel and across the wide Atlantic; the
talk of London, who set the fashions, cringed not before white hairs, or
royalty, or customs, or institutions, and was now, at one and twenty,
Junior Lord of the Admiralty--Charles James Fox. His face was dark,
forbidding, even harsh--until he smiled. His eyebrows were heavy and
shaggy, and his features of a rounded, almost Jewish mould. He put me
in mind of the Stuarts, and I was soon to learn that he was descended
from them.

As he entered the room I recall remarking that he was possessed of the
supremest confidence of any man I had ever met. Mrs. Manners he greeted
in one way, Mr. Marmaduke in another, and Mr. Walpole in still another.
To Comyn it was "Hello, Jack," as he walked by him. Each, as it were,
had been tagged with a particular value.

Chagrined as I was at the interruption, I was struck with admiration.
For the smallest actions of these rare men of master passions so compel
us. He came to Dorothy, whom he seemed not to have perceived at first,
and there passed between them such a look of complete understanding that
I suddenly remembered Comyn's speech of the night before, "Now it is
Charles Fox." Here, indeed, was the man who might have won her. And yet
I did not hate him. Nay, I loved him from the first time he addressed
me. It was Dorothy who introduced us.

"I think I have heard of you, Mr. Carvel," he said, making a barely
perceptible wink at Comyn.

"And I think I have heard of you, Mr. Fox," I replied.

"The deuce you have, Mr. Carvel!" said he, and laughed. And Comyn
laughed, and Dorothy laughed, and I laughed. We were friends from that
moment.

"Richard has appeared amongst us like a comet," put in the ubiquitous Mr.
Manners, "and, I fear, intends to disappear in like manner."

"And where is the tail of this comet?" demanded Fox, instantly; "for I
understood there was a tail."

John Paul was brought up, and the Junior Lord of the Admiralty looked him
over from head to toe. And what, my dears, do you think he said to him?

"Have you ever acted, Captain Paul?"

The captain started back in surprise.

"Acted!" he exclaimed; "really, sir, I do not know. I have never been
upon the boards."

Mr. Fox vowed that he could act: that he was sure of it, from the
captain's appearance.

"And I, too, am sure of it, Mr. Fox," cried Dorothy; clapping her hands.
"Persuade him to stay awhile in London, that you may have him at your
next theatricals at Holland House. Why, he knows Shakespeare and Pope
and--and Chaucer by heart, and Ovid and Horace,--is it not so, Mr.
Walpole?"

"Is not what so, my dear young lady?" asked Mr. Walpole, pretending not
to have heard.

"There!" exclaimed Dolly, pouting, when the laughter had subsided; "you
make believe to care something about me, and yet will not listen to what
I say."

I had seen at her feet our own Maryland gallants, the longest of whose
reputations stretched barely from the James to the Schuylkill; but here
in London men were hanging on her words whose names were familiarly
spoken in Paris, and Rome, and Geneva. Not a topic was broached by Mr.
Walpole or Mr. Fox, from the remonstrance of the Archbishop against
masquerades and the coming marriage of my Lord Albemarle to the rights
and wrongs of Mr. Wilkes, but my lady had her say. Mrs. Manners seemed
more than content that she should play the hostess, which she did to
perfection. She contrived to throw poisoned darts at the owner of
Strawberry that started little Mr. Marmaduke to fidgeting in his seat,
and he came to the rescue with all the town-talk at his command. He knew
little else. Could Mr. Walpole tell him of this club of both sexes just
started at Almack's? Mr. Walpole could tell a deal, tho' he took the
pains first to explain that he was becoming too old for such frivolous
and fashionable society. He could not, for the life of him, say why he
was included. But, in spite of Mr. Walpole, John Paul was led out in the
paces that best suited him, and finally, to the undisguised delight of
Mr. Fox, managed to trip Horry upon an obscure point in Athenian
literature. And this broke up the company.

As we took our leave Dorothy and Mr. Fox were talking together with
lowered voices.

"I shall see you before I go," I said to her.

She laughed, and glanced at Mr. Fox.

"You are not going, Richard Carvel," said she.

"That you are not, Richard Carvel," said Mr. Fox.

I smiled, rather lamely, I fear, and said good night.




CHAPTER XXX

A CONSPIRACY

"Banks, where is the captain?" I asked, as I entered the parlour the next
morning.

"Gone, sir, since seven o'clock," was the reply. "Gone!" I exclaimed;
"gone where?"

"Faith, I did not ask his honour, sir."

I thought it strange, but reflected that John Paul was given to whims.
Having so little time before him, he had probably gone to see the sights
he had missed yesterday: the Pantheon, which was building, an account of
which had appeared in all the colonial papers; or the new Blackfriars
Bridge; or the Tower; or perhaps to see his Majesty ride out. The
wonders of London might go hang, for all I cared. Who would gaze at the
King when he might look upon Dorothy! I sighed. I bade Banks dress me
in the new suit Davenport had brought that morning, and then sent him off
to seek the shipping agent of the Virginia packet to get us a cabin. I
would go to Arlington Street as soon as propriety admitted.

But I had scarce finished my chocolate and begun to smoke in a pleasant
revery, when I was startled by the arrival of two gentlemen. One was
Comyn, and the other none less than Mr. Charles Fox.

"Now where the devil has your captain flown to?" said my Lord, tossing
his whip on the table.

"I believe he must be sight-seeing," I said. "I dare swear he has taken
a hackney coach to the Tower."

"To see the liberation of the idol of the people, I'll lay ten guineas.
But they say the great Mr. Wilkes is to come out quietly, and wishes no
demonstration," said Mr. Fox. "I believe the beggar has some sense, if
the--Greek--would only let him have his way. So your captain is a
Wilkite, Mr. Carvel?" he demanded.

"I fear you run very fast to conclusions, Mr. Fox," I answered, laughing,
tho' I thought his guess was not far from wrong.

"I'll lay you the ten guineas he has been to the Tower," said Mr. Fox,
promptly.

"Done, sir," said I.

"Hark ye, Richard," said Comyn, stretching himself in an arm-chair; "we
are come to take the wind out of your sails, and leave you without an
excuse for going home. And we want your captain, alive or dead.
Charles, here, is to give him a commission in his Majesty's Navy."

Then I knew why Dorothy had laughed when I had spoken of seeing her
again. Comyn--bless him!--had told her of his little scheme.

"Egad, Charles!" cried his Lordship, "to look at his glum face, one
might think we were a couple of Jews who had cornered him."

Alas for the perversity of the heart! Instead of leaping for joy,
as no doubt they had both confidently expected, I was both troubled and
perplexed by this unlooked-for news. Oak, when bent, is even harder to
bend back again. And so it has ever been with me. I had determined,
after a bitter struggle, to go to Maryland, and had now become used to
that prospect. I was anxious to see my grandfather, and to confront
Grafton Carvel with his villany. And there was John Paul. What would
he think?

"What ails you, Richard?" Comyn demanded somewhat testily.

"Nothing, Jack," I replied. "I thank you from my heart, and you, Mr.
Fox. I know that commissions are not to be had for the asking, and I
rejoice with the captain over his good fortune. But, gentlemen," I said
soberly, "I had most selfishly hoped that I might be able to do a service
to John Paul in return for his charity to me. You offer him something
nearer his deserts, something beyond my power to give him."

Fox's eyes kindled.

"You speak like a man, Mr. Carvel," said he. "But you are too modest.
Damn it, sir, don't you see that it is you, and no one else, who has
procured this commission? Had I not been taken with you, sir, I should
scarce have promised it to your friend Comyn, through whose interest you
obtain it for your protege."

I remembered what Mr. Fox's enemies said of him, and smiled at the
plausible twist he had given the facts.

"No," I said; "no, Mr. Fox; never that. The captain must not think that
I wish to be rid of him. I will not stand in the way, though if it is to
be offered him, he must comprehend that I had naught to do with the
matter. But, sir," I continued curiously, "what do you know of John
Paul's abilities as an officer?"

Mr. Fox and Comyn laughed so immoderately as to bring the blood to my
face.

"Damme!" cried the Junior Lord, "but you Americans have odd consciences!
Do you suppose Rigby was appointed Paymaster of the Forces because of his
fitness? Why was North himself made Prime Minister? For his abilities?"
And he broke down again. "Ask Jack, here, how he got into the service,
and how much seamanship he knows."

"Faith," answered Jack, unblushingly, "Admiral Lord Comyn, my father,
wished me to serve awhile. And so I have taken two cruises, delivered
some score of commands, and scarce know a supple jack from a can of flip.
Cursed if I see the fun of it in these piping times o' peace, so I have
given it up, Richard. For Charles says this Falkland business with Spain
will blow out of the touch-hole."

I could see little to laugh over. For the very rottenness of the service
was due to the miserable and servile Ministry and Parliament of his
Majesty, by means of which instruments he was forcing the colonies to the
wall. Verily, that was a time when the greatness of England hung in the
balance! How little I suspected that the young man then seated beside
me, who had cast so unthinkingly his mighty powers on the side of
corruption, was to be one of the chief instruments of her salvation!
We were to fight George the Third across the seas. He was to wage no
less courageous a battle at home, in the King's own capital. And the
cause? Yes, the cause was to be the same as that of the Mr. Wilkes he
reviled, who obtained his liberty that day.

At length John Paul came in, calling my name. He broke off abruptly at
sight of the visitors.

"Now we shall decide," said Mr. Fox. "Captain, I have bet Mr. Carvel ten
guineas you have been to the Tower to see Squinting Jack (John Wilkes)
get his liberty at last."

The captain looked astonished.

"Anan, then, you have lost, Richard," said he. "For I have been just
there."

"And helped, no doubt, to carry off the champion on your shoulders," said
Mr. Fox, sarcastically, as I paid the debt.

"Mr. Wilkes knows full well the value of moderation, sir," replied the
captain, in the same tone.

"Well, damn the odds!" exclaimed the Junior Lord, laughing. "You may
have the magic number tattooed all over your back, for all I care. You
shall have the commission."

"The commission?"

"Yes," said Fox, carelessly; "I intend making you a lieutenant, sir, in
the Royal Navy."

The moment the words were out I was a-tremble as to how he would take the
offer. For he had a certain puzzling pride, which flew hither and
thither. But there was surely no comparison between the situations of
the master of the Belle of the Wye and an officer in the Royal Navy.
There, his talents would make him an admiral, and doubtless give him the
social position he secretly coveted. He confounded us all by his answer.

"I thank you, Mr. Fox. But I cannot accept your kindness."

"Slife!" said Fox, "you refuse? And you know what you are doing?"

"I know usually, sir."

Comyn swore. My exclamation had something of relief in it.

"Captain," I said, "I felt that I could not stand in the way of this. It
has been my hope that you will come with me, and I have sent this morning
after a cabin on the Virginia. You must know that Mr. Fox's offer is his
own, and Lord Comyn's."

"I know it well, Richard. I have not lived these three months with you
for nothing." His voice seemed to fail him. He drew near me and took my
hand. "But did you think I would require of you the sacrifice of leaving
London now?"

"It is my pleasure as well as my duty, captain."

"No," he said, "I am not like that. Yesterday I went to the city to see
a shipowner whose acquaintance I made when he was a master in the West
India trade. He has had some reason to know that I can handle a ship.
Never mind what. And he has given me the bark 'Betsy', whose former
master is lately dead of the small-pox. Richard, I sail to-morrow."


In Dorothy's coach to Whitehall Stairs, by the grim old palace out of
whose window Charles the Martyr had walked to his death. For Dorothy had
vowed it was her pleasure to see John Paul off, and who could stand in
her way? Surely not Mr. Marmaduke! and Mrs. Manners laughingly
acquiesced. Our spirits were such that we might have been some honest
mercer's apprentice and his sweetheart away for an outing.

"If we should take a wherry, Richard," said Dolly, "who would know of it?
I have longed to be in a wherry ever since I came to London."

The river was smiling as she tripped gayly down to the water, and the
red-coated watermen were smiling, too, and nudging one another. But
little cared we! Dolly in holiday humour stopped for naught. "Boat,
your honour! Boat, boat! To Rotherhithe--Redriff? Two and six apiece,
sir." For that intricate puzzle called human nature was solved out of
hand by the Thames watermen. Here was a young gentleman who never heard
of the Lord Mayor's scale of charges. And what was a shilling to such as
he! Intricate puzzle, indeed! Any booby might have read upon the young
man's face that secret which is written for all,--high and low, rich and
poor alike.

My new lace handkerchief was down upon the seat, lest Dolly soil her
bright pink lutestring. She should have worn nothing else but the hue of
roses. How the bargemen stared, and the passengers craned their necks,
and the longshoremen stopped their work as we shot past them! On her
account a barrister on the Temple Stairs was near to letting fall his bag
in the water. A lady in a wherry! Where were the whims of the quality
to lead them next? Past the tall water-tower and York Stairs, the idlers
under the straight row of trees leaning over the high river wall; past
Adelphi Terrace, where the great Garrick lived; past the white columns of
Somerset House, with its courts and fountains and alleys and architecture
of all ages, and its river gate where many a gilded royal barge had lain,
and many a fine ambassador had arrived in state over the great highway of
England; past the ancient trees in the Temple Gardens. And then under
the new Blackfriars Bridge to Southwark, dingy with its docks and
breweries and huddled houses, but forever famous,--the Southwark of
Shakespeare and Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. And the shelf upon
which they stood in the library at Carvel Hall was before my eyes.

"Yes," said Dolly; "and I recall your mother's name written in faded ink
upon the fly-leaves."

Ah, London Town, by what subtleties are you tied to the hearts of those
born across the sea? That is one of the mysteries of race.

Under the pointed arches of old London Bridge, with its hooded shelters
for the weary, to where the massive Tower had frowned for ages upon the
foolish river. And then the forest of ships, and the officious throng of
little wherries and lighters that pressed around them, seeming to say,
"You clumsy giants, how helpless would you be without us!" Soon our own
wherry was dodging among them, ships brought hither by the four winds of
the seas; many discharging in the stream, some in the docks then
beginning to be built, and hugging the huge warehouses. Hides from
frozen Russia were piled high beside barrels of sugar and rum from the
moist island cane-fields of the Indies, and pipes of wine from the
sunny hillsides of France, and big boxes of tea bearing the hall-mark of
the mysterious East. Dolly gazed in wonder. And I was commanded to show
her a schooner like the Black Moll, and a brigantine like the John.

"And Captain Paul told me you climbed the masts, Richard, and worked like
a common seaman. Tell me," says she, pointing at the royal yard of a
tall East Indiaman, "did you go as high as that when it was rough?"

And, hugely to the boatman's delight, the minx must needs put her fingers
on the hard welts on my hands, and vow she would be a sailor and she were
a man. But at length we came to a trim-built bark lying off Redriff
Stairs, with the words "Betsy, of London," painted across her stern. In
no time at all, Captain Paul was down the gangway ladder and at the
water-side, too hand Dorothy out.

"This honour overwhelms me, Miss Manners," he said; "but I know whom to
thank for it." And he glanced slyly at me.

Dorothy stepped aboard with the air of Queen Elizabeth come to inspect
Lord Howard's flagship.

"Then you will thank me," said she. "Why, I could eat my dinner off your
deck, captain! Are all merchantmen so clean?"

John Paul smiled.

"Not all, Miss Manners," he said.

"And you are still sailing at the ebb?" I asked.

"In an hour, Richard, if the wind holds good."

With what pride he showed us over his ship, the sailors gaping at the
fine young lady. It had taken him just a day to institute his navy
discipline. And Dolly went about exclaiming, and asking an hundred
questions, and merrily catechising me upon the run of the ropes. All was
order and readiness for dropping down the stream when he led us into his
cabin, where he had a bottle of wine and some refreshments laid out
against my coming.

"Had I presumed to anticipate your visit, Miss Manners, I should have had
something more suitable for a lady," he said. "What, you will not eat,
either, Richard?"

I could not, so downcast had I become at the thought of parting.
I had sat up half the night before with him in restless argument and
indecision, and even when he had left for Rotherhithe, early that
morning, my mind had not been made. My conscience had insisted that I
should sail with John Paul; that I might never see my deaf grandfather on
earth again. I had gone to Arlington Street that morning resolved to say
farewell to Dorothy. I will not recount the history of that defeat, my
dears. Nay, to this day I know not how she accomplished the matter. Not
once had she asked me to remain, or referred to my going. Nor had I
spoken of it, weakling that I was. She had come down in the pink
lutestring, smiling but pale; and traces of tears in her eyes, I thought.
From that moment I knew that I was defeated. It was she herself who had
proposed going with me to see the Betsy sail.

"I will drink some Madeira to wish you Godspeed, captain," I said.

"What is the matter with you, Richard?" Dolly cried; "you are as sour as
my Lord Sandwich after a bad Newmarket. Why, captain," said she, "I
really believe he wants to go, too. The swain pines for his provincial
beauty."

Poor John Paul! He had not yet learned that good society is seldom
literal.

"Upon my soul, Miss Manners, there you do him wrong," he retorted, with
ludicrous heat; "you, above all, should know for whom he pines."

"He has misled you by praising me. This Richard, despite his frank
exterior, is most secretive."

"There you have hit him, Miss Manners," he declared; "there you have hit
him! We were together night and day, on the sea and on the road, and,
while I poured out my life to him, the rogue never once let fall a hint
of the divine Miss Dorothy. 'Twas not till I got to London that I knew
of her existence, and then only by a chance. You astonish me. You speak
of a young lady in Maryland?"

Dorothy swept aside my protest.

"Captain," says she, gravely, "I leave you to judge. What is your
inference, when he fights a duel about a Miss with my Lord Comyn?"

"A duel!" cried the captain, astounded.

"Miss Manners persists in her view of the affair, despite my word to the
contrary," I put in rather coldly.

"But a duel!" cried the captain again; "and with Lord Comyn! Miss
Manners, I fondly thought I had discovered a constant man, but you make
me fear he has had as many flames as I. And yet, Richard," he added
meaningly, "I should think shame on my conduct and I had had such a
subject for constancy as you."

Dorothy's armour was pierced, and my ill-humour broken down, by this
characteristic speech. We both laughed, greatly to his discomfiture.

"You had best go home with him, Richard," said Dolly. "I can find my way
back to Arlington Street alone."

"Nay; gallantry forbids his going with me now," answered John Paul; "and
I have my sailing orders. But had I known of this, I should never have
wasted my breath in persuading him to remain."

"And did he stand in need of much persuasion, captain?" asked Dolly,
archly.

Time was pressing, and the owner came aboard, puffing,--a round-faced,
vociferous, jolly merchant, who had no sooner got his breath than he lost
it again upon catching sight of Dolly.

While the captain was giving the mate his final orders, Mr. Orchardson,
for such was his name, regaled us with a part of his life's history. He
had been a master himself, and mangled and clipped King George's English
as only a true master might.

"I like your own captain better than ever, Richard," whispered Dolly,
while Mr. Orchardson relieved himself of his quid over the other side;
"how commanding he is! Were I to take passage in the Betsy, I know I
should be in love with him long before we got to Norfolk."

I took it upon myself to tell Mr. Orchardson, briefly and clearly as I
could, the lamentable story of John Paul's last cruise. For I feared it
might sooner or later reach his ears from prejudiced mouths. And I ended
by relating how the captain had refused a commission in the navy because
he had promised to take the Betsy. This appeared vastly to impress him,
and he forgot Dorothy's presence.

"Passion o' my 'eart, Mr. Carvel," cried he, excitedly,

"John Paul's too big a man, an' too good a seaman, to go into the navy
without hinflooence. If flag horfocers I roots of is booted haside to
rankle like a lump o' salt butter in a gallipot, 'ow will a poor Scotch
lieutenant win hadvancement an' he be not o' the King's friends? 'Wilkes
an' Liberty,' say I; 'forever,' say I. An' w'en I see 'im goin' to the
Tower to be'old the Champion, 'Captain Paul,' says I, 'yere a man arfter
my hown 'eart.' My heye, sir, didn't I see 'im, w'n a mere lad, take the
John into Kingston 'arbour in the face o' the worst gale I hever seed
blowed in the Caribbees? An' I says, 'Bill Horchardson, an' ye Never
'ave ships o' yere own, w'ich I 'ope will be, y'ell know were to look
for a marster.' An' I tells 'im that same, Mr. Carvel. I means no
disrespect to the dead, sir, but an' John Paul 'ad discharged the Betsy,
I'd not 'a' been out twenty barrels or more this day by Thames mudlarks
an' scuffle hunters. 'Eave me flat, if 'e'll be two blocks wi' liquor
an' dischargin' cargo. An' ye may rest heasy, Mr. Carvel, I'll not do
wrong by 'im, neither."

He told me that if I would honour him in Maid Lane, Southwark, I should
have as many pounds as I liked of the best tobacco ever cured in Cuba.
And so he left me to see that the mate had signed all his lighter bills,
shouting to the captain not to forget his cockets at Gravesend. Dolly
and I stood silent while the men hove short, singing a jolly song to the
step. With a friendly wave the round figure of Mr. Orchardson
disappeared over the side, and I knew that the time had come to say
farewell. I fumbled in my waistcoat for the repeater I had bought that
morning over against Temple Bar, in Fleet Street, and I thrust it into
John Paul's hand as he came up.

"Take this in remembrance of what you have suffered so unselfishly for my
sake, Captain Paul," I said, my voice breaking. "And whatever befalls
you, do not forget that Carvel Hall is your home as well as mine."

He seemed as greatly affected as was I. Tears forced themselves to his
eyes as he held the watch, which he opened absently to read the simple
inscription I had put there.

"Oh, Dickie lad!" he cried, "I'll be missing ye sair three hours hence,
and thinking of ye for months to come in the night watches. But
something tells me I'll see ye again."

And he took me in his arms, embracing me with such fervour that there was
no doubting the sincerity of his feelings.

"Miss Dorothy," said he, when he was calmer, "I give ye Richard for a
leal and a true heart. Few men are born with the gift of keeping the
affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest. But have no
fear of Richard Carvel."

Dorothy stood a little apart, watching us, her eyes that faraway blue of
the deepening skies at twilight.

"Indeed, I have no fear of him, captain," she said gently. Then, with a
quick movement, impulsive and womanly, she unpinned a little gold brooch
at her throat, and gave it to him, saying: "In token of my gratitude for
bringing him back to us."

John Paul raised it to his lips.

"I shall treasure it, Miss Manners, as a memento of the greatest joy of
my life. And that has been," gracefully taking her hand and mine, "the
bringing you two together again."

Dorothy grew scarlet as she curtseyed. As for me, I could speak never a
word. He stepped over the side to hand her into the wherry, and embraced
me once again. And as we rowed away he waved his hat in a last good-by
from the taffrail. Then the Betsy floated down the Thames.




CHAPTER XXXI

"UPSTAIRS INTO THE WORLD"

It will be difficult, my dears, without bulging this history out of all
proportion, to give you a just notion of the society into which I fell
after John Paul left London. It was, above all, a gaming society. From
that prying and all-powerful God of Chance none, great or small, escaped.
Guineas were staked and won upon frugal King George and his beef and
barley-water; Charles Fox and his debts; the intrigues of Choiseul and
the Du Barry and the sensational marriage of the Due d'Orleans with
Madame de Montesson (for your macaroni knew his Paris as well as his
London); Lord March and his opera singer; and even the doings of Betty,
the apple-woman of St. James's Street, and the beautiful barmaid of
Nando's in whom my Lord Thurlow was said to be interested. All these,
and much more not to be repeated, were duly set down in the betting-books
at White's and Brooks's.

Then the luxury of the life was something to startle a provincial, even
tho' he came, as did I, from one of the two most luxurious colonies of
the thirteen. Annapolis might be said to be London on a small scale,
--but on a very small scale. The historian of the future need look no
farther than our houses (if any remain), to be satisfied that we had more
than the necessities of existence. The Maryland aristocrat with his town
place and his country place was indeed a parallel of the patrician at
home. He wore his English clothes, drove and rode his English horses,
and his coaches were built in Long Acre. His heavy silver service came
from Fleet Street, and his claret and Champagne and Lisbon and Madeira
were the best that could be bought or smuggled. His sons were often
educated at home, at Eton or Westminster and Oxford or Cambridge. So
would I have been if circumstances had permitted. So was James
Fotheringay, the eldest of the family, and later the Dulany boys, and
half a dozen others I might mention. And then our ladies! 'Tis but
necessary to cite my Aunt Caroline as an extreme dame of fashion, who had
her French hairdresser, Piton.

As was my aunt to the Duchess of Kingston, so was Annapolis to London.
To depict the life of Mayfair and of St. James's Street during a season
about the year of grace 1770 demands a mightier pen than wields the
writer of these simple memoirs.

And who was responsible for all this luxury and laxity? Who but the
great Mr. Pitt, then the Earl of Chatham, whose wise policy had made
Britain the ruler of the world, and rich beyond compare. From all
corners of the earth her wealth poured in upon her. Nabob and Caribbee
came from East and West to spend their money in the capital. And
fortunes near as great were acquired by the City merchants themselves.
One by one these were admitted within that charmed circle, whose motto
for ages had been "No Trade," to leaven it with their gold. And to keep
the pace,--nay, to set it, the nobility and landed gentry were sore
pressed. As far back as good Queen Anne, and farther, their ancestors
had gamed and tippled away the acres; and now that John and William,
whose forebears had been good tenants for centuries, were setting their
faces to Liverpool and Birmingham and Leeds, their cottages were empty.
So Lord and Squire went to London to recuperate, and to get their share
of the game running. St. James's Street and St. Stephen's became their
preserves. My Lord wormed himself into a berth in the Treasury, robbed
the country systematically for a dozen of years, and sold the places and
reversions under him to the highest bidder. Boroughs were to be had
somewhat dearer than a pair of colours. And my Lord spent his spare
time--he had plenty of it--in fleecing the pigeons at White's and
Almack's. Here there was no honour, even amongst thieves. And young
gentlemen were hurried through Eton and Oxford, where they learned
to drink and swear and to call a main as well as to play tennis and
billiards and to write Latin, and were thrust into Brooks's before they
knew the difference in value between a farthing and a banknote: at
nineteen they were hardened rake, or accomplished men of the world, or
both. Dissipated noblemen of middle age like March and Sandwich, wits
and beaus and fine gentlemen like Selwyn and Chesterfield and Walpole,
were familiarly called by their first names by youngsters like Fox and
Carlisle and Comyn. Difference of age was no difference. Young Lord
Carlisle was the intimate of Mr. Selwyn, born thirty years before him.

And whilst I am speaking of intimacies, that short one which sprang up
between me and the renowned Charles Fox has always seemed the most
unaccountable: not on my part, for I fell a victim to him at once. Pen
and paper, brush and canvas, are wholly inadequate to describe the charm
of the man. When he desired to please, his conversation and the
expression of his face must have moved a temperament of stone itself.
None ever had more devoted friends or more ardent admirers. They saw his
faults, which he laid bare before them, but they settled his debts again
and again, vast sums which he lost at Newmarket and at Brooks's. And not
many years after the time of which I now write Lord Carlisle was paying
fifteen hundred a year on the sum he had loaned him, cheerfully denying
himself the pleasures of London as a consequence.

It was Mr. Fox who discovered for me my lodgings in Dover Street, vowing
that I could not be so out of fashion as to live at an inn. The brief
history of these rooms, as given by him, was this: "A young cub had owned
them, whose mamma had come up from Berkshire on Thursday, beat him
soundly on Friday, paid his debts on Saturday, and had taken him back
on Sunday to hunt with Sir Henry the rest of his life." Dorothy came one
day with her mother and swept through my apartments, commanded all the
furniture to be moved about, ordered me to get pictures for the walls,
and by one fell decree abolished all the ornaments before the landlady,
used as she was to the ways of quality, had time to gasp.

"Why, Richard," says my lady, "you will be wanting no end of pretty
things to take back to Maryland when you go. You shall come with me
to-morrow to Mr. Josiah Wedgwood's, to choose some of them."

"Dorothy!" says her mother, reprovingly.

"And he must have the Chippendale table I saw yesterday at the
exhibition, and chairs to match. And every bachelor should have a punch
bowl--Josiah has such a beauty!"

But I am running far ahead. Among the notes with which my table was
laden, Banks had found a scrawl. This I made out with difficulty to
convey that Mr. Fox was not attending Parliament that day. If Mr. Carvel
would do him the honour of calling at his lodging, over Mackie's Italian
Warehouse in Piccadilly, at four o'clock, he would take great pleasure in
introducing him at Brooks's Club. In those days 'twas far better for a
young gentleman of any pretensions to remain at home than go to London
and be denied that inner sanctuary,--the younger club at Almack's. Many
the rich brewer's son has embittered his life because it was not given
him to see more than the front of the house from the far side of Pall
Mall. But to be taken there by Charles Fox was an honour falling to few.
I made sure that Dolly was at the bottom of it.

Promptly at four I climbed the stairs and knocked at Mr. Fox's door. The
Swiss who opened it shook his head dubiously when I asked for his master,
and said he had not been at home that day.

"But I had an appointment to meet him," I said, thinking it very strange.

The man's expression changed.

"An appointment, sir! Ah, sir, then you are to step in here." And to my
vast astonishment he admitted me into a small room at one side of the
entrance. It was bare as poverty, and furnished with benches, and
nothing more. On one of these was seated a person with an unmistakable
nose and an odour of St. Giles's, who sprang to his feet and then sat
down again dejectedly. I also sat down, wondering what it could mean,
and debating whether to go or stay.

"Exguse me, your honour," said the person, "but haf you seen Mister Fox?"

I said that I, too, was waiting for him, whereat he cast at me a cunning
look beyond my comprehension. Surely, I thought, a man of Fox's
inherited wealth and position could not be living in such a place!
Before the truth and humour of the situation had dawned upon me, I heard
a ringing voice without, swearing in most forcible English, and the door
was thrown open, admitting a tall young gentleman, as striking as I have
ever seen. He paid not the smallest attention to the Jew, who was bowing
and muttering behind me.

"Mr. Richard Carvel?" said he, with a merry twinkle in his eye.

I bowed.

"Gad's life, Mr. Carvel, I'm deuced sorry this should have happened.
Will you come with me?"

"Exguse me, your honour!" cried the other visitor.

"Now, what the plague, Aaron!" says he; "you wear out the stairs. Come
to-morrow, or the day after."

"Ay, 'tis always 'to-morrow' with you fine gentlemen. But I vill bring
the bailiffs, so help me--"

"Damn 'em!" says the tall young gentleman, as he slammed the door and so
shut off the wail. "Damn 'em, they worry Charles to death. If he would
only stick to quinze and picquet, and keep clear of the hounds*, he need
never go near a broker."

   [*"The "hounds," it appears, were the gentlemen of sharp practices at
   White's and Almack's.--D. C. C.]

"Do you have Jews in America, Mr. Carvel?" Without waiting for an answer,
he led me through a parlour, hung with pictures, and bewilderingly
furnished with French and Italian things, and Japan and China ware and
bronzes, and cups and trophies. "My name is Fitzpatrick, Mr. Carvel,
--yours to command, and Charles's. I am his ally for offence and defence.
We went to school together," he explained simply.

His manner was so free, and yet so dignified, as to charm me completely.
For I heartily despised all that fustian trumpery of the age. Then came
a voice from beyond, calling:--

"That you, Carvel? Damn that fellow Eiffel, and did he thrust you into
the Jerusalem Chamber?"

"The Jerusalem Chamber!" I exclaimed.

"Where I keep my Israelites," said he; "but, by Gad's life! I think they
are one and all descended from Job, and not father Abraham at all. He
must have thought me cursed ascetic, eh, Fitz? Did you find the benches
hard? I had 'em made hard as the devil. But if they were of stone, I
vow the flock could find their own straw to sit on."

"Curse it, Charles," cut in Mr. Fitzpatrick, in some temper, "can't you be
serious for once! He would behave this way, Mr. Carvel, if he were being
shriven by the Newgate ordinary before a last carting to Tyburn.
Charles, Charles, it was Aaron again, and the dog is like to snap at
last. He is talking of bailiffs. Take my advice and settle with him.
Hold Cavendish off another fortnight and settle with him."

Mr. Fox's reply was partly a laugh, and the rest of it is not to be
printed. He did not seem in the least to mind this wholesale disclosure
of his somewhat awkward affairs. And he continued to dress, or to be
dressed, alternately swearing at his valet and talking to Fitzpatrick and
to me.

"You are both of a name," said he. "Let a man but be called Richard, and
I seem to take to him. I' faith, I like the hunchback king, and believe
our friend Horry Walpole is right in defending him, despite Davie Hume.
I vow I shall like you, Mr. Carvel."

I replied that I certainly hoped so.

"Egad, you come well enough recommended," he said, pulling on his
breeches. "No, Eiffel, cursed if I go en petit maitre to-day. How does
that strike you for a demi saison, Mr. Buckskin? I wore three of 'em
through the customs last year, and March's worked olive nightgown tucked
under my greatcoat, and near a dozen pairs of shirts and stockings. And
each of my servants had on near as much. O Lud, we were amazing-like
beef-eaters or blower pigeons. Sorry you won't meet my brother,--he that
will have the title. He's out of town."

Going on in this discursory haphazard way while he dressed, he made me
feel much at home. For the young dictator--so Mr. Fitzpatrick informed
me afterward--either took to you or else he did not, and stood upon no
ceremony. After he had chosen a coat with a small pattern and his feet
had been thrust into the little red shoes with the high heels, imported
by him from France, he sent for a hackney-chaise. And the three of us
drove together to Pall Mall. Mr. Brooks was at the door, and bowed from
his hips as we entered.

"A dozen vin de Graves, Brooks!" cries Mr. Fox, and ushers me into a
dining room, with high curtained windows and painted ceiling, and
chandeliers throwing a glitter of light. There, at a long table,
surrounded by powdered lackeys, sat a bevy of wits, mostly in blue and
silver, with point ruffles, to match Mr. Fox's costume. They greeted my
companions uproariously. It was "Here's Charles at last!" "Howdy,
Charles!" "Hello, Richard!" and "What have you there? a new Caribbee?"
They made way for Mr. Fox at the head of the table, and he took the seat
as though it were his right.

"This is Mr. Richard Carvel, gentlemen, of Carvel Hall, in Maryland."

They stirred with interest when my name was called, and most of them
turned in their chairs to look at me. I knew well the reason, and felt
my face grow hot. Although you may read much of the courtesy of that
age, there was a deal of brutal frankness among young men of fashion.

"Egad, Charles, is this he the Beauty rescued from Castle Yard?"

A familiar voice relieved my embarrassment.

"Give the devil his due, Bully. You forget that I had a hand in that."

"Faith, Jack Comyn," retorted the gentleman addressed, "you're already
famous for clinging to her skirt."

"But cling to mine, Bully, and we'll all enter the temple together. But
I bid you welcome, Richard," said his Lordship; "you come with two of the
most delightful vagabonds in the world."

Mr. Fox introduced me in succession to Colonel St. John, known in St.
James's Street as the Baptist; to my Lord Bolingbroke, Colonel St. John's
brother, who was more familiarly called Bully; to Mr. Fitzpatrick's
brother, the Earl of Upper Ossory, who had come up to London, so he said,
to see a little Italian dance at the Garden; to Gilly Williams; to Sir
Charles Bunbury, who had married Lady Sarah Lennox, Fox's cousin, the
beauty who had come so near to being queen of all England; to Mr. Storer,
who was at once a Caribbee and a Crichton; to Mr. Uvedale Price. These I
remember, but there are more that escape me. Most good-naturedly they
drank my health in Charles's vin de grave, at four shillings the bottle;
and soon I was astonished to find myself launched upon the story of my
adventures, which they had besought me to tell them. When I had done,
they pledged me again, and, beginning to feel at home, I pledged them
handsomely in return. Then the conversation began. The like of it I
have never heard anywhere else in the world. There was a deal that might
not be written here, and a deal more that might, to make these pages
sparkle. They went through the meetings, of course, and thrashed over
the list of horses entered at Ipswich, and York, and Newmarket, and how
many were thought to be pulled. Then followed the recent gains and
losses of each and every individual of the company. After that there was
a roar of merriment over Mr. Storer cracking mottoes with a certain Lady
Jane; and how young Lord Stavordale, on a wager, tilted the candles and
set fire to the drawing-room at Lady Julia's drum, the day before. Mr.
Price told of the rage Topham Beauclerk had got Dr. Johnson into, by
setting down a mark for each oyster the sage had eaten, and showing him
the count. But Mr. Fox, who was the soul of the club, had the best array
of any. He related how he had gone post from Paris to Lyons, to order,
among other things, an embroidered canary waistcoat for George Selwyn
from Jabot. "' Et quel dessin, monsieur?' 'Beetles and frogs, in
green.' 'Escargots! grenouilles!' he cries, with a shriek; 'Et pour
Monsieur Selwyn! Monsieur Fox badine!' It came yesterday, by Crawford,
and I sent it to Chesterfield Street in time for George to wear to the
Duchess's. He has been twice to Piccadilly after me, and twice here, and
swears he will have my heart. And I believe he is now gone to Matson in
a funk."

After that they fell upon politics. I knew that Mr. Fox was already near
the head of the King's party, and that he had just received a substantial
reward at his Majesty's hands; and I went not far to guess that every one
of these easy-going, devil-may-care macaronies was a follower or
sympathizer with Lord North's policy. But what I heard was a revelation
indeed. I have dignified it by calling it politics. All was frankness
here amongst friends. There was no attempt made to gloss over ugly
transactions with a veneer of morality. For this much I honoured them.
But irresistibly there came into my mind the grand and simple characters
of our own public men in America, and it made me shudder to think that,
while they strove honestly for our rights, this was the type which
opposed them. Motives of personal spite and of personal gain were laid
bare, and even the barter and sale of offices of trust took place before
my very eyes. I was silent, though my tongue burned me, until one of the
gentlemen, thinking me neglected, said:

"What a-deuce is to be done with those unruly countrymen of yours, Mr.
Carvel? Are they likely to be pacified now that we have taken off all
except the tea? You who are of our party must lead a sorry life among
them. Tell me, do they really mean to go as far as rebellion?"

The blood rushed to my face.

"It is not a question of tea, sir," I answered hotly; "nor yet of
tuppence. It is a question of principle, which means more to Englishmen
than life itself. And we are Englishmen."

I believe I spoke louder than I intended, for a silence followed my
words. Fox glanced at Comyn, who of all of them at the table was not
smiling, and said:

"I thought you came of a loyalist family, Mr. Carvel."

"King George has no more loyal servants than the Americans, Mr. Fox, be
they Tory or Whig. And he has but to read our petitions to discover it,"
I said.

I spoke calmly, but my heart was thumping with excitement and resentment.
The apprehension of the untried is apt to be sharp at such moments,
and I looked for them to turn their backs upon me for an impertinent
provincial. Indeed, I think they would have, all save Comyn, had it not
been for Fox himself. He lighted a pipe, smiled, and began easily, quite
dispassionately, to address me.

"I wish you would favour us with your point of view, Mr. Carvel," said
he; "for, upon my soul, I know little about the subject."

"You know little about the subject, and you in Parliament!"

I cried.

This started them all to laughing. Why, I did not then understand. But
I was angry enough.

"Come, let's have it!" said he.

They drew their chairs closer, some wearing that smile of superiority
which to us is the Englishman's most maddening trait. I did not stop to
think twice, or to remember that I was pitted against the greatest
debater in all England. I was to speak that of which I was full, and the
heart's argument needs no logic to defend it. If it were my last word,
I would pronounce it.

I began by telling them that the Americans had paid their share of the
French war, in blood and money, twice over. And I had the figures in my
memory. Mr. Fox interrupted. For ten minutes at a space he spoke, and
in all my life I have never talked to a man who had the English of King
James's Bible, of Shakespeare, and Milton so wholly at his command. And
his knowledge of history, his classical citations, confounded me. I
forgot myself in wondering how one who had lived so fast had acquired
such learning. Afterward, when I tried to recall what he said, I laughed
at his surprising ignorance of the question at issue, and wondered where
my wits could have gone that I allowed myself to be dazzled and turned
aside at every corner. As his speech came faster he twisted fact into
fiction and fiction into fact, until I must needs close my mind and bolt
the shutters of it, or he had betrayed me into confessing the right of
Parliament to quarter troops among us. Though my head swam, I clung
doggedly to my text. And that was my salvation. He grew more excited,
and they applauded him. In truth, I myself felt near to clapping. And
then, as I stared him in the eye, marvelling how a man of such vast power
and ability could stand for such rotten practices, the thought came to me
(I know not whence) of Saint Paul the Apostle.

"Mr. Fox," I said, when he had paused, "before God, do you believe what
you are saying?"

I saw them smiling at my earnestness and simplicity. Fox seemed
surprised, and laughed evasively,--not heartily as was his wont.

"My dear Mr. Carvel," he said, glancing around the circle, political
principles are not to be swallowed like religion, but taken rather like
medicine, experimentally. If they agree with you, very good. If not,
drop them and try others. We are always ready to listen to remedies,
here."

"Ay, if they agree with you!" I exclaimed. "But food for one is poison
for another. Do you know what you are doing? You are pushing home
injustice and tyranny to the millions, for the benefit of the thousands.
For is it not true, gentlemen, that the great masses of England are
against the measures you impose upon us? Their fight is our fight. They
are no longer represented in Parliament; we have never been. Taxation
without representation is true of your rotten boroughs as well as of your
vast colonies. You are helping the King to crush freedom abroad in order
that he may the more easily break it at home. You are committing a
crime.

"I tell you we would give up all we own were the glory or honour of
England at stake. And yet you call us rebels, and accuse us of meanness
and of parsimony. If you wish money, leave the matter to our colonial
assemblies, and see how readily you will get it. But if you wish war,
persist in trying to grind the spirit from a people who have in them the
pride of your own ancestors. Yes, you are estranging the colonies,
gentlemen. A greater man than I has warned you"

And with that I rose, believing that I had given them all mortal offence.
To my astonishment several got to their feet in front of me, huzzaing,
and Comyn and Lord Ossory grasped my hands. And Charles Fox reached out
over the corner of the table and pulled me back into my chair.

"Bravo, Richard Carvel!" he cried. "Cursed if I don't love a man who
will put up a fight against odds. Who will stand bluff to what he
believes, and won't be talked out of his boots. We won't quarrel with
any such here, my buckskin, I can tell you."

And that is the simple story, my dears, of the beginning of my friendship
with one who may rightly be called the Saint Paul of English politics.
He had yet some distance to go, alas, ere he was to begin that sturdy
battle for the right for which his countrymen and ours will always bless
him. I gave him my hand with a better will than I had ever done
anything, and we pressed our fingers numb. And his was not the only hand
I clasped. And honest Jack Comyn ordered more wine, that they might
drink to a speedy reconciliation with America.

"A pint bumper to Richard Carvel!" said Mr. Fitzpatrick.

I pledged Brooks's Club in another pint. Upon which they swore that I
was a good fellow, and that if all American Whigs were like me, all cause
of quarrel was at an end. Of this I was not so sure, nor could I see
that the question had been settled one way or another. And that night I
had reason to thank the Reverend Mr. Allen, for the first and last time
in my life, that I could stand a deal of liquor, and yet not roll bottom
upward.

The dinner was settled on the Baptist, who paid for it without a murmur.
And then we adjourned to the business of the evening. The great
drawing-room, lighted by an hundred candles, was filled with gayly
dressed macaronies, and the sound of their laughter and voices in
contention mingled with the pounding of the packs on the mahogany and the
rattle of the dice and the ring of the gold pieces. The sight was
dazzling, and the noise distracting. Fox had me under his especial care,
and I was presented to young gentlemen who bore names that had been the
boast of England through the centuries. Lands their forebears had won by
lance and sword, they were squandering away as fast as ever they could.
I, too, was known. All had heard the romance of the Beauty and Castle
Yard, and some had listened to Horry Walpole tell that foolish story of
Goble at Windsor, on which he seemed to set such store. They guessed at
my weight. They betted upon it. And they wished to know if I could spin
Mr. Brooks, who was scraping his way from table to table. They gave me
choice of whist, or picquet, or quinze, or hazard. I was carried away.
Nay, I make no excuse. Tho' the times were drinking and gaming ones, I
had been brought up that a gentleman should do both in moderation. We
mounted, some dozen of us, to the floor above, and passed along to a room
of which Fox had the key; and he swung me in on his arm, the others
pressing after. And the door was scarce closed and locked again, before
they began stripping off their clothes.

To my astonishment, Fox handed me a great frieze coat, which he bade me
don, as the others were doing. Some were turning their coats inside out;
for luck, said they; and putting on footman's leather guards to save
their ruffles. And they gave me a hat with a high crown, and a broad
brim to save my eyes from the candle glare. We were as grotesque a set
as ever I laid my eyes upon. But I hasten over the scene; which has long
become distasteful to me. I mention it only to show to what heights of
folly the young men had gone. I recall a gasp when they told me they
played for rouleaux of ten pounds each, but I took out my pocket-book as
boldly as tho' I had never played for less, and laid my stake upon the
board. Fox lost, again and again; but he treated his ill-luck with such
a raillery of contemptuous wit, that we must needs laugh with him.
Comyn, too, lost, and at supper excused himself, saying that he had
promised his mother, the dowager countess, not to lose more than a
quarter's income at a sitting. But I won and won, until the fever of
it got into my blood, and as the first faint light of that morning crept
into the empty streets, we were still at it, Fox vowing that he never
waked up until daylight. That the best things he said in the House came
to him at dawn.




CHAPTER XXXII

LADY TANKERVILLE'S DRUM-MAJOR

The rising sun, as he came through the little panes of the windows,
etched a picture of that room into my brain. I can see the twisted
candles with their wax smearing the sticks, the chairs awry, the tables
littered with blackened pipes, and bottles, and spilled wine and tobacco
among the dice; and the few that were left of my companions, some with
dark lines under their eyes, all pale, but all gay, unconcerned, witty,
and cynical; smoothing their ruffles, and brushing the ashes and snuff
from the pattern of their waistcoats. As we went downstairs, singing a
song Mr. Foote had put upon the stage that week, they were good enough to
declare that I should never be permitted to go back to Maryland. That my
grandfather should buy me a certain borough, which might be had for six
thousand pounds.

The drawing-room made a dismal scene, too, after the riot and disorder of
the night. Sleepy servants were cleaning up, but Fox vowed that they
should bring us yet another bottle before going home. So down we sat
about the famous old round table, Fox fingering the dents the gold had
made in the board, and philosophizing; and reciting Orlando Furioso in
the Italian, and Herodotus in the original Greek. Suddenly casting his
eyes about, they fell upon an ungainly form stretched on a lounge, that
made us all start.

"Bully!" he cried; "I'll lay you fifty guineas that Mr. Carvel gets the
Beauty, against Chartersea."

This roused me.

"Nay, Mr. Fox, I beg of you," I protested, with all the vehemence I could
muster. "Miss Manners must not be writ down in such a way."

For answer he snapped his fingers at the drowsy Brooks, who brought the
betting book.

"There!" says he; "and there, and there," turning over the pages; "her
name adorns a dozen leaves, my fine buckskin. And it will be well to
have some truth about her. Enter the wager, Brooks."

"Hold!" shouts Bolingbroke; "I haven't accepted."

You may be sure I was in an agony over this desecration, which I was so
powerless to prevent. But as I was thanking my stars that the matter had
blown over with Bolingbroke's rejection, there occurred a most singular
thing.

The figure on the lounge, with vast difficulty, sat up. To our amazement
we beheld the bloated face of the Duke of Chartersea staring stupidly.

"Damme, Bully, you refushe bet like tha'!" he said. "I'll take doshen of
'em-doshen, egad. Gimme the book, Brooksh. Cursh Fox--lay thousand d--d
provinshial never getsh 'er--I know--"

I sat very still, seized with a loathing beyond my power to describe to
thick that this was the man Mr. Manners was forcing her to marry. Fox
laughed.

"Help his Grace to his coach," he said to two of the footmen.

"Kill fellow firsht!" cried his Grace, with his hand on his sword, and
instantly fell over, and went sound asleep.

"His Grace has sent his coach home, your honour," said one of the men,
respectfully. "The duke is very quarrelsome, sir."

"Put him in a chair, then," said Charles.

So they fearfully lifted his Grace, who was too far gone to resist, and
carried him to a chair. And Mr. Fox bribed the chairmen with two guineas
apiece, which he borrowed from me, to set his Grace down amongst the
marketwomen at Covent Garden.

The next morning Banks found in my pockets something over seven hundred
pounds more than I had had the day before.

I rose late, my head swimming with mains and nicks, and combinations of
all the numbers under the dozen; debated whether or no I would go to
Arlington Street, and decided that I had not the courage. Comyn settled
it by coming in his cabriolet, proposed that we should get the air in the
park, dine at the Cocoa Tree, and go afterwards to Lady Tankerville's
drum-major, where Dolly would undoubtedly be.

"Now you are here, Richard," said his Lordship, with his accustomed
bluntness, "and your sea-captain has relieved your Quixotic conscience,
what the deuce do you intend to do?

"Win a thousand pounds every night at Brooks's, or improve your time and
do your duty, and get Miss Manners out of his Grace's clutches? I'll
warrant something will come of that matter this morning."

"I hope so," I said shortly.

Comyn looked at me sharply.

"Would you fight him?" he asked.

"If he gave me the chance."

His Lordship whistled. "Egad, then," said he, "I shall want to be there
to see. In spite of his pudding-bag shape he handles the sword as well
as any man in England. I have crossed with him at Angelo's. And he has
a devilish tricky record, Richard."

I said nothing to that.

"Hope you do--kill him," Comyn continued. "He deserves it richly. But
that will be a cursed unpleasant way of settling the business,
--unpleasant for you, unpleasant for her, and cursed unpleasant for him,
too, I suppose. Can't you think of any other way of getting her? Ask
Charles to give you a plan of campaign. You haven't any sense, and
neither have I."

"Hang you, Jack, I have no hopes of getting her," I replied, for I was
out of humour with myself that day. "In spite of what you say, I know
she doesn't care a brass farthing to marry me. So let's drop that."

Comyn made a comic gesture of deprecation. I went on: "But I am going to
stay here and find out the truth, though it may be a foolish undertaking.
And if he is intimidating Mr. Manners--"

"You may count on me, and on Charles," said my Lord, generously; "and
there are some others I know of. Gad! You made a dozen of friends and
admirers by what you said last night, Richard. And his Grace has a few
enemies. You will not lack support."

We dined very comfortably at the Cocoa Tree, where Comyn had made an
appointment for me with two as diverting gentlemen as had ever been my
lot to meet. My Lord Carlisle was the poet and scholar of the little
clique which had been to Eton with Charles Fox, any member of which (so
'twas said) would have died for him. His Lordship, be it remarked in
passing, was as lively a poet and scholar as can well be imagined. He
had been recently sobered, so Comyn confided; which I afterwards
discovered meant married. Charles Fox's word for the same was fallen.
And I remembered that Jack had told me it was to visit Lady Carlisle at
Castle Howard that Dorothy was going when she heard of my disappearance.
Comyn's other guest was Mr. Topham Beauclerk, the macaroni friend of
Dr. Johnson. He, too, had been recently married, but appeared no more
sobered than his Lordship. Mr. Beauclerk's wife, by the way, was the
beautiful Lady Diana Spencer, who had been divorced from Lord
Bolingbroke, the Bully I had met the night before. These gentlemen
seemed both well acquainted with Miss Manners, and vowed that none but
American beauties would ever be the fashion in London more. Then we all
drove to Lady Tankerville's drum-major near Chesterfield House.

"You will be wanting a word with her when she comes in," said Comyn,
slyly divining. Poor fellow! I fear that I scarcely appreciated his
feelings as to Dorothy, or the noble unselfishness of his friendship for
me.

We sat aside in a recess of the lower hall, watching the throng as they
passed: haughty dowagers, distorted in lead and disfigured in silk and
feathers nodding at the ceiling; accomplished beaus of threescore or
more, carefully mended for the night by their Frenchmen at home; young
ladies in gay brocades with round skirts and stiff, pear-shaped bodices;
and youngsters just learning to ogle and to handle their snuff-boxes.
One by one their names were sent up and solemnly mouthed by the footman
on the landing. At length, when we had all but given her up, Dorothy
arrived. A hood of lavender silk heightened the oval of her face, and
out from under it crept rebellious wisps of her dark hair. But she was
very pale, and I noticed for the first time a worn expression that gave
me a twinge of uneasiness. 'Twas then I caught sight of the duke, a
surly stamp on his leaden features. And after him danced Mr. Manners.
Dolly gave a little cry when she saw me.

"Oh! Richard, I am so glad you are here. I was wondering what had
become of you. And Comyn, too." Whispering to me, "Mamma has had a
letter from Mrs. Brice; your grandfather has been to walk in the garden."

"And Grafton?"

"She said nothing of your uncle," she replied, with a little shudder at
the name; "but wrote that Mr. Carvel was said to be better. So there!
your conscience need not trouble you for remaining. I am sure he would
wish you to pay a visit home.

"And I have to scold you, sir. You have not been to Arlington Street for
three whole days."

It struck me suddenly that her gayety was the same as that she had worn
to my birthday party, scarce a year agone.

"Dolly, you are not well!" I said anxiously.

She flung her head saucily for answer. In the meantime his Grace,
talking coldly to Comyn, had been looking unutterable thunders at me.
I thought of him awaking in the dew at Covent Garden, and could scarce
keep from laughing in his face. Mr. Marmaduke squirmed to the front.

"Morning, Richard," he said, with a marked cordiality. "Have you met the
Duke of Chartersea? No! Your Grace, this is Mr. Richard Carvel. His
family are dear friends of ours in the colonies."

To my great surprise, the duke saluted me quite civilly. But I had the
feeling of facing a treacherous bull which would gore me as soon as ever
my back was turned. He was always putting me in mind of a bull, with his
short neck and heavy, hunched shoulders,--and with the ugly tinge of red
in the whites of his eyes.

"Mr. Manners tells me you are to remain awhile in London, Mr. Carvel," he
said, in his thick voice.

I took his meaning instantly, and replied in kind.

"Yes, your Grace, I have some business to attend to here."

"Ah," he answered; "then I shall see you again."

"Probably, sir," said I.

His Lordship watched this thrust and parry with an ill-concealed delight.
Dorothy's face was impassive, expressionless. As the duke turned to
mount the stairs, he stumbled clumsily across a young man coming to pay
his respects to Miss Manners, and his Grace went sprawling against the
wall.

"Confound you, sir!" he cried.

For the ducal temper was no respecter of presences. Then a title was a
title to those born lower, and the young man plainly had a vast honour
for a coronet.

"I beg your Grace's pardon," said he.

"Who the deuce is he?" demanded the duke petulantly of Mr. Manners,
thereby setting the poor little man all a-tremble.

"Why, why,--" he replied, searching for his spyglass.

For an instant Dolly's eyes shot scorn. Chartersea had clearly seen and
heeded that signal before.

"The gentleman is a friend of mine," she said.

Tho' I were put out of the Garden of Eden as a consequence, I itched to
have it out with his Grace then and there. I knew that I was bound to
come into collision with him sooner or later. Such, indeed, was my
mission in London. But Dorothy led the way upstairs, a spot of colour
burning each of her cheeks. The stream of guests had been arrested until
the hall was packed, and the curious were peering over the rail above.

"Lord, wasn't she superb!" exclaimed Comyn, exultingly, as we followed.
In the drawing-room the buzzing about the card tables was hushed a moment
as she went in. But I soon lost sight of her, thanks to Comyn. He drew
me on from group to group, and I was duly presented to a score of Lady
So-and-sos and honourable misses, most of whom had titles, but little
else. Mammas searched their memories, and suddenly discovered that they
had heard their parents speak of my grandfather. But, as it was a fair
presumption that most colonial gentlemen made a visit home at least once
in their lives, I did not allow the dust to get into my eyes. I was
invited to dinners, and fairly showered with invitations to balls and
drums and garden parties. I was twitted about the Beauty, most often
with only a thin coating of amiability covering the spite of the remark.
In short, if my head had not been so heavily laden with other matters, it
might well have become light under the strain. Had I been ambitious to
enter the arena I should have had but little trouble, since eligibility
then might be reduced to guineas and another element not moral. I was
the only heir of one of the richest men in the colony, vouched for by the
Manners and taken up by Mr. Fox and my Lord Comyn. Inquiries are not
pushed farther. I could not help seeing the hardness of it all, or
refrain from contrasting my situation with that of the penniless outcast
I had been but a little time before. The gilded rooms, the hundred
yellow candles multiplied by the mirrors, the powder, the perfume,
the jewels,--all put me in mind of the poor devils I had left wasting
away their lives in Castle Yard. They, too, had had their times of
prosperity, their friends who had faded with the first waning of fortune.
Some of them had known what it was to be fawned over. And how many of
these careless, flitting men of fashion I looked upon could feel the
ground firm beneath their feet; or could say with certainty what a change
of ministers, or one wild night at White's or Almack's, would bring
forth? Verily, one must have seen the under side of life to know the
upper!

Presently I was sought out by Mr. Topham Beauclerk, who had heard of the
episode below and wished to hear more. He swore at the duke.

"He will be run through some day, and serve him jolly right," said he.
"Bet you twenty pounds Charles Fox does it! His Grace knows he has the
courage to fight him."

"The courage!" I repeated.

"Yes. Angelo says the duke has diabolical skill. And then he won't
fight fair. He killed young Atwater on a foul, you know. Slipped on
the wet grass, and Chartersea had him pinned before he caught his guard.
But there is Lady Di a-calling, a-calling."

"Do all the women cheat in America too?" asked Topham, as we approached.

I thought of my Aunt Caroline, and laughed.

"Some," I answered.

"They will game, d--n 'em," said Topham, as tho' he had never gamed in
his life. "And they will cheat, till a man has to close his eyes to
keep from seeing their pretty hands. And they will cry, egad, oh so
touchingly, if the luck goes against them in spite of it all. Only last
week I had to forgive Mrs Farnham an hundred guineas. She said she'd
lost her pin-money twice over, and was like to have wept her eyes out."

Thus primed in Topham's frank terms, I knew what to expect. And I found
to my amusement he had not overrun the truth. I lost like a stoic, saw
nothing, and discovered the straight road to popularity.

"The dear things expect us to make it up at the clubs," whispered he.

I discovered how he had fallen in love with his wife, Lady Diana, and
pitied poor Bolingbroke heartily for having lost her. She was then in
her prime,--a beauty, a wit, and a great lady, with a dash of the
humanities about her that brought both men and women to her feet.

"You must come to see me, Mr. Carvel," said she. "I wish to talk to you
of Dorothy."

"Your Ladyship believes me versed in no other subject?" I asked.

"None other worth the mention," she replied instantly; "Topham tells me
you can talk horses, and that mystery of mysteries, American politics.
But look at Miss Manners Dow. I'll warrant she is making Sir Charles see
to his laurels, and young Stavordale is struck dumb."

I looked up quickly and beheld Dolly surrounded by a circle of admirers.

"Mark the shot strike!" Lady Di continued, between the deals; "that time
Chartersea went down. I fancy he is bowled over rather often," she said
slyly. "What a brute it is. And they say that that little woman she has
for a father imagines a union with the duke will redound to his glory."

"They say," remarked Mrs. Meynel, sitting next me, "that the duke has
thumbscrews of some kind on Mr. Manners."

"Miss Manners is able to take care of herself," said Topham.

"'On dit', that she has already refused as many dukes as did her Grace of
Argyle," said Mrs. Meynel.

I had lost track of the cards, and knew I was losing prodigiously. But
my eyes went back again and again to the group by the doorway, where
Dolly was holding court and dispensing justice, and perchance injustice.
The circle increased. Ribands, generals whose chests were covered with
medals of valour, French noblemen, and foreign ambassadors stopped for a
word with the Beauty and passed on their way, some smiling, some
reflecting, to make room for others. I overheard from the neighbouring
tables a spiteful protest that a young upstart from the colonies should
turn Lady Tankerville's drum into a levee. My ears tingled as I
listened. But not a feathered parrot in the carping lot of them could
deny that Miss Manners had beauty and wit enough to keep them all at bay.
Hers was not an English beauty: every line of her face and pose of her
body proclaimed her of that noble type of Maryland women, distinctly
American, over which many Englishmen before and since have lost their
heads and hearts.

"Egad!" exclaimed Mr. Storer, who was looking on; "she's already
defeated some of the Treasury Bench, and bless me if she isn't rating
North himself."

Half the heads in the room were turned toward Miss Manners, who was
exchanging jokes with the Prime Minister of Great Britain. I saw a
corpulent man, ludicrously like the King's pictures, with bulging gray
eyes that seemed to take in nothing. And this was North, upon whose
conduct with the King depended the fate of our America. Good-natured
he was, and his laziness was painfully apparent. He had the reputation
of going to sleep standing, like a horse.

"But the Beauty contrives to keep him awake," said Storer.

"If you stay among us, Mr. Carvel," said Topham, "she will get you a
commissionership for the asking."

"Look," cried Lady Di, "there comes Mr. Fox, the precocious, the
irresistible. Were he in the Bible, we should read of him passing the
time of day with King Solomon."

"Or instructing Daniel in the art of lion-taming," put in Mrs. Meynel.

There was Mr. Fox in truth, and the Beauty's face lighted up at sight of
him. And presently, when Lord North had made his bow and passed on, he
was seen to lead her out of the room, leaving her circle to go to pieces,
like an empire without a head.




CHAPTER XXXIII

DRURY LANE

After a night spent in making resolutions, I set out for Arlington
Street, my heart beating a march, as it had when I went thither on my
arrival in London. Such was my excitement that I was near to being run
over in Piccadilly like many another country gentleman, and roundly
cursed by a wagoner for my stupidity. I had a hollow bigness within me,
half of joy, half of pain, that sent me onward with ever increasing steps
and a whirling storm of contradictions in my head. Now it was: Dolly
loved me in spite of all the great men in England. Why, otherwise, had
she come to the sponging-house? Berating myself: had her affection been
other than that of a life-long friendship she would not have come an
inch. But why had she made me stay in London? Why had she spoken so to
Comyn? What interpretation might be put upon a score of little acts of
hers that came a-flooding to mind, each a sacred treasure of memory? A
lover's interpretation, forsooth. Fie, Richard! what presumption to
think that you, a raw lad, should have a chance in such a field! You
have yet, by dint of hard knocks and buffets, to learn the world.

By this I had come in sight of her house, and suddenly I trembled like a
green horse before a cannon. My courage ran out so fast that I was soon
left without any, and my legs had carried me as far as St. James's Church
before I could bring them up. Then I was sure, for the first time, that
she did not love me. In front of the church I halted, reflecting that I
had not remained in England with any hope of it, but rather to discover
the truth about Chartersea's actions, and to save her, if it were
possible. I turned back once more, and now got as far as the knocker,
and lifted it as a belfry was striking the hour of noon. I think I would
have fled again had not the door been immediately opened.

Once more I found myself in the room looking out over the Park, the
French windows open to the balcony, the sunlight flowing in with the
spring-scented air. On the table was lying a little leather book,
stamped with gold,--her prayerbook. Well I remembered it! I opened it,
to read: "Dorothy, from her Mother. Annapolis, Christmas, 1768." The
sweet vista of the past stretched before my eyes. I saw her, on such a,
Mayday as this, walking to St. Anne's under the grand old trees, their
budding leaves casting a delicate tracery at her feet. I followed her up
the aisle until she disappeared in the high pew, and then I sat beside my
grandfather and thought of her, nor listened to a word of Mr. Allen's
sermon. Why had they ever taken her to London?

When she came in I sought her face anxiously. She was still pale; and I
thought, despite her smile, that a trace of sadness lingered in her eyes.

"At last, sir, you have come," she said severely. "Sit down and give an
account of yourself at once. You have been behaving very badly."

"Dorothy--"

"Pray don't 'Dorothy' me, sir. But explain where you have been for this
week past."

"But, Dolly--"

"You pretend to have some affection for your old playmate, but you do not
trouble yourself to come to see her."

"Indeed, you do me wrong."

"Do you wrong! You prefer to gallivant about town with Comyn and Charles
Fox, and with all those wild gentlemen who go to Brooks's. Nay, I have
heard of your goings-on. I shall write to Mr. Carvel to-day, and advise
him to send for you. And tell him that you won a thousand pounds in one
night--"

"It was only seven hundred," I interrupted sheepishly. I thought she
smiled faintly.

And will probably lose twenty thousand before you have done. And I shall
say to him that you have dared to make bold rebel speeches to a Lord of
the Admiralty and to some of the King's supporters. I shall tell your
grandfather you are disgracing him."

"Rebel speeches!" I cried.

"Yes, rebel speeches at Almack's. Who ever heard of such a thing! No
doubt I shall hear next of your going to a drawing-room and instructing
his Majesty how to subdue the colonies. And then, sir, you will be sent
to the Tower, and I shan't move a finger to get you out."

"Who told you of this, Dolly?" I demanded.

"Mr. Fox, himself, for one. He thought it so good,--or so bad,--that he
took me aside last night at Lady Tankerville's, asked me why I had let
you out of Castle Yard, and told me I must manage to curb your tongue.
I replied that I had about as much influence with you as I have with Dr.
Franklin."

I laughed.

"I saw Fox lead you off," I said.

"Oh, you did, did you!" she retorted. "But you never once came near me
yourself, save when I chanced to meet you in the hall, tho' I was there a
full three hours."

"How could I!" I exclaimed. "You were surrounded by prime ministers and
ambassadors, and Heaven knows how many other great people."

"When you wish to do anything, Richard, you usually find a way."

"Nay," I answered, despairing, "I can never explain anything to you,
Dolly. Your tongue is too quick for mine."

"Why didn't you go home with your captain?" she asked mockingly.

"Do you know why I stayed?"

"I suppose because you want to be a gay spark and taste of the pleasures
of London. That is, what you men are pleased to call pleasures. I can
think of no other season."

"There is another," I said desperately.

"Ah," said Dolly. And in her old aggravating way she got up and stood in
the window, looking out over the park. I rose and stood beside her, my
very temples throbbing.

"We have no such springs at home," she said. "But oh, I wish I were at
Wilmot House to-day!"

"There is another reason," I repeated. My voice sounded far away, like
that of another. I saw the colour come into her cheeks again, slowly.
The southwest wind, with a whiff of the channel salt in it, blew the
curtains at our backs.

"You have a conscience, Richard," she said gently, without turning. "So
few of us have."

I was surprised. Nor did I know what to make of that there were so many
meanings.

"You are wild," she continued, "and impulsive, as they say your father
was. But he was a man I should have honoured. He stood firm beside his
friends. He made his enemies fear him. All strong men must have
enemies, I suppose. They must make them."

I looked at her, troubled, puzzled, but burning at her praise of Captain
Jack.

"Dolly," I cried, "you are not well. Why won't you come back to
Maryland?"

She did not reply to that. Then she faced me suddenly.

"Richard, I know now why you insisted upon going back. It was because
you would not desert your sea-captain. Comyn and Mr. Fox have told me,
and they admire you for it as much as I."

What language is worthy to describe her as she was then in that pose,
with her head high, as she was wont to ride over the field after the
hounds. Hers was in truth no beauty of stone, but the beauty of force,
--of life itself.

"Dorothy," I cried; "Dorothy, I stayed because I love you. There, I have
said it again, what has not passed my lips since we were children. What
has been in my heart ever since."

I stopped, awed. For she had stepped back, out on the balcony. She hid
her head in her hands, and I saw her breast shaken as with sobs. I
waited what seemed a day,--a year. Then she raised her face and looked
at me through the tears shining in her eyes.

"Richard," she said sadly, "why, why did you ever tell me? Why can we
not always be playmates?"

The words I tried to say choked me. I could not speak for sorrow, for
very bitterness. And yet I might have known! I dared not look at her
again.

"Dear Richard," I heard her say, "God alone understands how it hurts me
to give you pain. Had I only foreseen--"

"Had you only foreseen," I said quickly.

"I should never have let you speak."

Her words came steadily, but painfully. And when I raised my eyes she
met them bravely.

"You must have seen," I cried. "These years I have loved you, nor could
I have hidden it if I had wished. But I have little--to offer you," I
went on cruelly, for I knew not what I said; "you who may have English
lands and titles for the consenting. I was a fool."

Her tears started again. And at sight of them I was seized with such
remorse that I could have bitten my tongue in two.

"Forgive me, Dorothy, if you can," I implored. "I did not mean it. Nor
did I presume to think you loved me. I have adored,--I shall be content
to adore from far below. And I stayed,--I stayed that I might save you
if a danger threatened."

"Danger!" she exclaimed, catching her breath.

"I will come to the point," I said. "I stayed to save you from the Duke
of Chartersea."

She grasped the balcony rail, and I think would have fallen but for my
arm. Then she straightened, and only the quiver of her lip marked the
effort.

"To save me from the Duke of Chartersea?" she said, so coldly that my
conviction was shaken. "Explain yourself, sir."

"You cannot love him!" I cried, amazed.

She flashed upon me a glance I shall never forget.

"Richard Carvel," she said, "you have gone too far. Though you have been
my friend all my life, there are some things which even you cannot say to
me."

And she left me abruptly and went into the house, her head flung back.
And I followed in a tumult of mortification and wounded pride, in such a
state of dejection that I wished I had never been born. But hers was a
nature of surprises, and impulsive, like my own. Beside the cabinet she
turned, calm again, all trace of anger vanished from her face. Drawing a
hawthorn sprig from a porcelain vase I had given her, she put it in my
hand.

"Let us forget this, Richard," said she; "we have both been very
foolish."

Forget, indeed! Unless Heaven had robbed me of reason, had torn the past
from me at a single stroke. I could not have forgotten. When I reached
my lodgings I sent the anxious Banks about his business and threw myself
in a great chair before the window, the chair she had chosen. Strange to
say, I had no sensation save numbness. The time must have been about two
of the clock: I took no account of it. I recall Banks coming timidly
back with the news that two gentlemen had called. I bade him send them
away. Would my honour not have Mrs. Marble cook my dinner, and be
dressed for Lady Pembroke's ball? I sent him off again, harshly.

After a long while the slamming of a coach door roused me, and I was
straightway seized with such an agony of mind that I could have cried
aloud. 'Twas like the pain of blood flowing back into a frozen limb.
Darkness was fast gathering as I reached the street and began to walk
madly. Word by word I rehearsed the scene in the drawing-room over the
Park, but I could not think calmly, for the pain of it. Little by little
I probed, writhing, until far back in my boyhood I was tearing at the
dead roots of that cherished plant, which was the Hope of Her Love. It
had grown with my own life, and now with its death to-day I felt that I
had lost all that was dear to me. Then, in the midst of this abject
self-pity, I was stricken with shame. I thought of Comyn, who had borne
the same misfortune as a man should. Had his pain been the less because
he had not loved her from childhood? Like Comyn, I resolved to labour
for her happiness.

What hour of the night it was I know not when a man touched me on the
shoulder, and I came to myself with a start. I was in a narrow street
lined by hideous houses, their windows glaring with light. Each seemed a
skull, with rays darting from its grinning eye-holes. Within I caught
glimpses of debauchery that turned me sick. Ten paces away three women
and a man were brawling, the low angry tones of his voice mingling with
the screeches of their Billingsgate. Muffled figures were passing and
repassing unconcernedly, some entering the houses, others coming out, and
a handsome coach, without arms and with a footman in plain livery,
lumbered along and stopped farther on. All this I remarked before I took
notice of him who had intercepted me, and demanded what he wanted.

"Hey, Bill!" he cried with an oath to a man who stood on the steps
opposite; "'ere's a soft un as has put 'is gill in."

The man responded, and behind him came two more of the same feather, and
suddenly I found myself surrounded by an ill-smelling crowd of flashy men
and tawdry women. They jostled me, and I reached for my sword, to make
the discovery that I had forgotten it. Regaining my full senses, I
struck the man nearest me a blow that sent him sprawling in the dirt. A
blade gleamed under the sickly light of the fish-oil lamp overhead, but a
man crashed through from behind and caught the ruffian's sword-arm and
flung him back in the kennel.

"The watch!" he cried, "the watch!"

They vanished like rats into their holes at the shout, leaving me
standing alone with him. The affair had come and gone so quickly that I
scarce caught my breath.

"Pardon, sir," he said, knuckling, "but I followed you."

It was Banks. For a second time he had given me an affecting example of
his faithfulness. I forgot that he was my servant, and I caught his hand
and pressed it.

"You have saved my life at the risk of your own," I said; "I shall not
forget it."

But Banks had been too well trained to lose sight of his position. He
merely tipped his hat again and said imperturbably:

"Best get out of here, your honour. They'll be coming again directly."

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Drury Lane, sir," he replied, giving me just the corner of a glance;
"shall I fetch a coach, sir?" No, I preferred to walk. Before we had
turned into Long Acre I had seen all of this Sodom of London that it
should be given a man to see, if indeed we must behold some of the
bestiality of this world. Here alone, in the great city, high and low
were met equal. Sin levels rank. The devil makes no choice between my
lord and his kitchen wench who has gone astray. Here, in Sodom, painted
vice had lain for an hundred years and bred half the crime of a century.
How many souls had gone hence in that time to meet their Maker! Some
of these brazen creatures who leered at me had known how long ago!
--a peaceful home and a mother's love; had been lured in their innocence to
this place of horrors, never to leave it until death mercifully overtakes
them. Others, having fallen, had been driven hither by a cruel world
that shelters all save the helpless, that forgives all save the truly
penitent. I shuddered as I thought of Mr. Hogarth's prints, which, in
the library in Marlboro' Street at home, had had so little meaning for
me. Verily he had painted no worse than the reality. As I strode
homeward, my own sorrow subdued by the greater sorrow I had looked upon,
the craving I had had to be alone was gone, and I would have locked arms
with a turnspit. I called to Banks, who was behind at a respectful
distance, and bade him come talk to me. His presence of mind in calling
on the watch had made even a greater impression upon me than his bravery.
I told him that he should have ten pounds, and an increase of wages. And
I asked him where I had gone after leaving Dover Street, and why he had
followed me. He answered this latter question first. He had seen
gentlemen in the same state, or something like it, before: his Lordship,
his late master, after he had fought with Mr. Onslow, of the Guards, and
Sir Edward Minturn, when he had lost an inheritance and a reversion at
Brooks's, and was forced to give over his engagement to marry the
Honourable Miss Swift. "Lord, sir," he said, "but that was a sad case,
as set all London agog. And Sir Edward shot hisself at Portsmouth not a
se'nnight after."

And he relapsed into silence, no doubt longing to ask the cause of my own
affliction. Presently he surprised me by saying:

"And I might make so bold, Mr. Carvel, I would like to tell your honour
something."

I nodded. And he hawed awhile and then burst out:

"Your honour must know then that I belongs to the footman's club in
Berkeley Square, where I meets all the servants o' quality--"

"Yes," I said, wondering what footman's tale he had to tell.

"And Whipple, he's a hintimate o' mine, sir." He stopped again.

"And who may Whipple be?"

"With submission, sir. Whipple's his Grace o' Chartersea's man--and,
you'll forgive me, sir--Whipple owns his Grace is prodigious ugly, an'
killed young Mr. Atwater unfair, some think. Whipple says he would give
notice had he not promised the old duke--"

"Drat Whipple!" I cried.

"Yes, sir. To be sure, sir. His Grace was in a bloody rage when he
found hisself in a fruit bin at Covent Carding. An' two redbreasts had
carried him to the round house, sir, afore they discovered his title.
An' since his Grace ha' said time an' time afore Whipple, that he'll ha'
Mr. Carvel's heart for that, and has called you most disgustin' bad
names, sir. An' Whipple he says to me: 'Banks, drop your marster a word,
an' you get the chance. His Grace'll speak him fair to's face, but let
him look behind him.'"

"I thank you again, Banks. I shall bear in mind your devotion,"
I replied. "But I had nothing to do with sending the duke to Covent
Garden."

"Ay, sir, so I tells Whipple."

"Pray, how did you know?" I demanded curiously.

"Lord, sir! All the servants at Almack's is friends o' mine," says he.
"But Whipple declares his Grace will be sworn you did it, sir, tho' the
Lord Mayor hisself made deposition 'twas not."

"Then mark me, Banks, you are not to talk of this."

"Oh, Lord, no, your honour," he said, as he fell back. But I was not so
sure of his discretion as of his loyalty.

And so I was led to perceive that I was not to be the only aggressor in
the struggle that was to come. That his Grace did me the honour to look
upon me as an obstacle. And that he intended to seize the first
opportunity to make way with me, by fair means or foul.





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill

Volume 6.


XXXIV.   His Grace makes Advances
XXXV.    In which my Lord Baltimore appears
XXXVI.   A Glimpse of Mr. Garrick
XXXVII.  The Serpentine
XXXVIII. In which I am roundly brought to task
XXXIX.   Holland House
XL.      Vauxhall




CHAPTER XXXIV

HIS GRACE MAKES ADVANCES

The next morning I began casting about as to what I should do next.
There was no longer any chance of getting at the secret from Dorothy, if
secret there were. Whilst I am ruminating comes a great battling at the
street door, and Jack Comyn blew in like a gust of wind, rating me
soundly for being a lout and a blockhead.

"Zooks!" he cried, "I danced the soles off my shoes trying to get in here
yesterday, and I hear you were moping all the time, and paid me no more
attention than I had been a dog scratching at the door. What! and have
you fallen out with my lady?"

I confessed the whole matter to him. He was not to be resisted. He
called to Banks for a cogue of Nantsey, and swore amazingly at what he
was pleased to term the inscrutability of woman, offering up consolation
by the wholesale. The incident, he said, but strengthened his conviction
that Mr. Manners had appealed to Dorothy to save him. "And then," added
his Lordship, facing me with absolute fierceness, "and then, Richard, why
the devil did she weep? There were no tears when I made my avowal. I
tell you, man, that the whole thing points but the one way. She loves
you. I swear it by the rood."

I could not help laughing, and he stood looking at me with such a
whimsical expression that I rose and flung my arms around him.

"Jack, Jack!" I cried, "what a fraud you are! Do you remember the
argument you used when you had got me out of the sponging-house? Quoting
you, all I had to do was to put Dorothy to the proof, and she would toss
Mr. Marmaduke and his honour broadcast. Now I have confessed myself, and
what is the result? Nay, your theory is gone up in vapour."

"Then why," cried his Lordship, hotly, "why before refusing me did she
demand to know whether you had been in love with Patty Swain? 'Sdeath!
you put me in mind of a woman upon stilts--a man has always to be walking
alongside her with encouragement handy. And when a proud creature such
as our young lady breaks down as she hath done, 'tis clear as skylight
there is something wrong. And as for Mr. Manners, Hare overheard a part
of a pow-wow 'twixt him and the duke at the Bedford Arms,--and Chartersea
has all but owned in some of his drunken fits that our little fop is in
his power."

"Then she is in love with some one else," I said.

"I tell you she is not," said Comyn, still more emphatically; "and you
can write that down in red in your table book. Gossip has never been
able to connect her name with that of any man save yours, when she went
for you in Castle Yard. And, gemini, gossip is like water, and will get
in if a crack shows. When the Marquis of Wells was going to Arlington
Street once every day, she sent him about his business in a fortnight."

Despite Comyn's most unselfish optimism, I could see no light. And in
the recklessness that so often besets youngsters of my temper, on like
occasions, I went off to Newmarket next day with Mr. Fox and Lord Ossory,
in his Lordship's travelling-chaise and four. I spent a very gay week
trying to forget Miss Dolly. I was the loser by some three hundred
pounds, in addition to what I expended and loaned to Mr. Fox. This young
gentleman was then beginning to accumulate at Newmarket a most execrable
stud. He lost prodigiously, but seemed in no wise disturbed thereby.
I have never known a man who took his ill-luck with such a stoical
nonchalance. Not so while the heat was on. As I write, a most
ridiculous recollection rises of Charles dragging his Lordship and me
and all who were with him to that part of the course where the race was
highest, where he would act like a madman; blowing and perspiring, and
whipping and swearing all at a time, and rising up and down as if the
horse was throwing him.

At Newmarket I had the good--or ill-fortune to meet that incorrigible
rake and profligate, my Lord of March and Ruglen. For him the goddess of
Chance had smiled, and he was in the most complaisant humour. I was
presented to his Grace, the Duke of Grafton, whose name I had no reason
to love, and invited to Wakefield Lodge. We went instead, Mr. Fox and I,
to Ampthill, Lord Ossory's seat, with a merry troop. And then we had
more racing; and whist and quinze and pharaoh and hazard, until I was
obliged to write another draft upon Mr. Dix to settle the wails: and
picquet in the travelling-chaise all the way to London. Dining at
Brooks's, we encountered Fitzpatrick and Comyn and my Lord Carlisle.

"Now how much has Charles borrowed of you, Mr. Carvel?" demanded
Fitzpatrick, as we took our seats.

"I'll lay ten guineas that Charles has him mortgaged this day month,
though he owns as much land as William Penn, and is as rich as Fordyce."

Comyn demanded where the devil I had been, though he knew perfectly. He
was uncommonly silent during dinner, and then asked me if I had heard the
news. I told him I had heard none. He took me by the sleeve, to the
quiet amusement of the company, and led me aside.

"Curse you, Richard," says be; "you have put me in such a temper that I
vow I'll fling you over. You profess to love her, and yet you go betting
to Newmarket and carousing to Ampthill when she is ill."

"Ill!" I said, catching my breath.

"Ay! That hurts, does it? Yes, ill, I say. She was missed at Lady
Pembroke's that Friday you had the scene with her, and at Lady
Ailesbury's on Saturday. On Monday morning, when I come to you for
tidings, you are off watching Charles make an ass of himself at
Newmarket."

"And how is she now, Comyn?" I asked, catching him by the arm.

"You may go yourself and see, and be cursed, Richard Carvel. She is in
trouble, and you are pleasure-seeking in the country. Damme! you deserve
richly to lose her."

Calling for my greatcoat, and paying no heed to the jeers of the company
for leaving before the toasts and the play, I fairly ran to Arlington
Street. I was in a passion of remorse. Comyn had been but just.
Granting, indeed, that she had refused to marry me, was that any reason
why I should desert my life-long friend and playmate? A hundred little
tokens of her affection for me rose to mind, and last of all that rescue
from Castle Yard in the face of all Mayfair. And in that hour of
darkness the conviction that something was wrong came back upon me with
redoubled force. Her lack of colour, her feverish actions, and the
growing slightness of her figure, all gave me a pang, as I connected them
with that scene on the balcony over the Park.

The house was darkened, and a coach was in front of it.

"Yessir," said the footman, "Miss Manners has been quite ill. She is now
some better, and Dr. James is with her. Mrs. Manners begs company will
excuse her."

And Mr. Marmaduke? The man said, with as near a grin as he ever got,
that the marster was gone to Mrs. Cornelys's assembly. As I turned away,
sick at heart, the physician, in his tie-wig and scarlet cloak, came out,
and I stopped him. He was a testy man, and struck the stone an impatient
blow with his staff.

"'Od's life, sir. I am besieged day and night by you young gentlemen.
I begin to think of sending a daily card to Almack's."

"Sir, I am an old friend of Miss Manners," I replied, "having grown up
with her in Maryland--"

"Are you Mr. Carvel?" he demanded abruptly, taking his hat from his arm.

"Yes," I answered, surprised. In the gleam of the portico lanthorn he
scrutinized me for several seconds.

"There are some troubles of the mind which are beyond the power of physic
to remedy, Mr. Carvel," said he. "She has mentioned your name, sir, and
you are to judge of my meaning. Your most obedient, sir. Good night,
sir."

And he got into his coach, leaving me standing where I was, bewildered.

That same fear of being alone, which has driven many a man to his cups,
sent me back to Brooks's for company. I found Fox and Comyn seated at a
table in the corner of the drawing-room, for once not playing, but
talking earnestly. Their expressions when they saw me betrayed what my
own face must have been.

"What is it?" cried Comyn, half rising; "is she--is she--"

"No, she is better," I said.

He looked relieved.

"You must have frightened him badly, Jack," said Fox.

I flung myself into a chair, and Fox proposed whist, something unusual
for him. Comyn called for cards, and was about to go in search of a
fourth, when we all three caught sight of the Duke of Chartersea in the
door, surveying the room with a cold leisure. His eye paused when in
line with us, and we were seized with astonishment to behold him making
in our direction.

"Squints!" exclaimed Mr. Fox, "now what the devil can the hound want?"

"To pull your nose for sending him to market," my Lord suggested.

Fox laughed coolly.

"Lay you twenty he doesn't, Jack," he said.

His Grace plainly had some business with us, and I hoped he was coming to
force the fighting. The pieces had ceased to rattle on the round
mahogany table, and every head in the room seemed turned our way, for the
Covent Garden story was well known. Chartersea laid his hand on the back
of our fourth chair, greeted us with some ceremony, and said something
which, under the circumstances, was almost unheard of in that day:
"If you stand in need of one, gentlemen, I should deem it an honour."

The situation had in it enough spice for all of us. We welcomed him with
alacrity. The cards were cut, and it fell to his Grace to deal, which he
did very prettily, despite his heavy hands. He drew Charles Fox, and
they won steadily. The conversation between deals was anywhere; on the
virtue of Morello cherries for the gout, to which his Grace was already
subject; on Mr. Fox's Ariel, and why he had not carried Sandwich's cup at
Newmarket; on the advisability of putting three-year-olds on the track;
in short, on a dozen small topics of the kind. At length, when Comyn and
I had lost some fifty pounds between us, Chartersea threw down the cards.

"My coach waits to-night, gentlemen," said he, with some sort of an
accent that did not escape us. "It would give me the greatest pleasure
and you will sup with me in Hanover Square."




CHAPTER XXXV

IN WHICH MY LORD BALTIMORE APPEARS

His Grace's offer was accepted with a readiness he could scarce have
expected, and we all left the room in the midst of a buzz of comment.
We knew well that the matter was not so haphazard as it appeared, and on
the way to Hanover Square Comyn more than once stepped on my toe, and I
answered the pressure. Our coats and canes were taken by the duke's
lackeys when we arrived. We were shown over the house. Until now
--so his Grace informed us--it had not been changed since the time of the
fourth duke, who, as we doubtless knew, had been an ardent supporter of
the Hanoverian succession. The rooms were high-panelled and furnished in
the German style, as was the fashion when the Square was built. But some
were stripped and littered with scaffolding and plaster, new and costly
marble mantels were replacing the wood, and an Italian of some renown was
decorating the ceilings. His Grace appeared to be at some pains that the
significance of these improvements should not be lost upon us; was
constantly appealing to Mr. Fox's taste on this or that feature. But
those fishy eyes of his were so alert that we had not even opportunity to
wink. It was wholly patent, in brief, that the Duke of Chartersea meant
to be married, and had brought Charles and Comyn hither with a purpose.
For me he would have put himself out not an inch had he not understood
that my support came from those quarters.

He tempered off this exhibition by showing us a collection of pottery
famous in England, that had belonged to the fifth duke, his father.
Every piece of it, by the way, afterwards brought an enormous sum at
auction. Supper was served in a warm little room of oak. The game was
from Derresley Manor, the duke's Nottinghamshire seat, and the wine, so
he told us, was some of fifty bottles of rare Chinon he had inherited.
Melted rubies it was indeed, of the sort which had quickened the blood of
many a royal gathering at Blois and Amboise and Chenonceaux,--the
distilled peasant song of the Loire valley. In it many a careworn clown
had tasted the purer happiness of the lowly. Our restraint gave way
under its influence. His Grace lost for the moment his deformities, and
Mr. Fox made us laugh until our sides ached again. His Lordship told
many a capital yarn, and my own wit was afterwards said to be
astonishing, though I can recall none of it to support the affirmation.

Not a word or even a hint of Dorothy had been uttered, nor did Chartersea
so much as refer to his Covent Garden experience. At length, when some
half dozen of the wine was gone, and the big oak clock had struck two,
the talk lapsed. It was Charles Fox, of course, who threw the spark into
the powder box.

"We were speaking of hunting, Chartersea," he said. "Did you ever know
George Wrottlesey, of the Suffolk branch?"

"No," said his Grace, very innocent.

"No! 'Od's whips and spurs, I'll be sworn I never saw a man to beat him
for reckless riding. He would take five bars any time, egad, and sit any
colt that was ever foaled. The Wrottleseys were poor as weavers then,
with the Jews coming down in the wagon from London and hanging round the
hall gates. But the old squire had plenty of good hunters in the
stables, and haunches on the board, and a cellar that was like the
widow's cruse of oil, or barrel of meal--or whatever she had. All the
old man had to do to lose a guinea was to lay it on a card. He never
nicked in his life, so they say. Well, young George got after a rich
tea-merchant's daughter who had come into the country near by. 'Slife!
she was a saucy jade, and devilish pretty. Such a face! so Stavordale
vowed, and such a neck! and such eyes! so innocent, so ravishingly
innocent. But she knew cursed well George was after the bank deposit,
and kept him galloping. And when he got a view, halloa, egad! she was
stole away again, and no scent.

"One morning George was out after the hounds with Stavordale, who told me
the story, and a lot of fellows who had come over from Newmarket. He was
upon Aftermath, the horse that Foley bought for five hundred pounds and
was a colt then. Of course he left the field out of sight behind. He
made for a gap in the park wall (faith! there was no lack of 'em), but
the colt refused, and over went George and plumped into a cart of winter
apples some farmer's sot was taking to Bury Saint Edmunds to market. The
fall knocked the sense out of George, for he hasn't much, and Stavordale
thinks he must have struck a stake as he went in. Anyway, the apples
rolled over on top of him, and the drunkard on the seat never woke up, i'
faith. And so they came to town.

"It so chanced, egad, that the devil sent Miss Tea Merchant to Bury to
buy apples. She amused herself at playing country gentlewoman while papa
worked all week in the city. She saw the cart in the market, and ate
three (for she had the health of a barmaid), and bid in the load, and
George with it. 'Pon my soul! she did. They found his boots first.
And the lady said, before all the grinning Johns and Willums, that since
she had bought him she supposed she would have to keep him. And, by Gads
life! she has got him yet, which is a deal stranger."

Even the duke laughed. For, as Fox told it, the story was irresistible.
But it came as near to being a wanton insult as a reference to his
Grace's own episode might. The red came slowly back into his eye. Fox
stared vacantly, as was his habit when he had done or said something
especially daring. And Comyn and I waited, straining and expectant, like
boys who have prodded a wild beast and stand ready for the spring. There
was a metallic ring in the duke's voice as he spoke.

"I have heard, Mr. Carvel, that you can ride any mount offered you."

"Od's, and so he can!" cried Jack. "I'll take oath on that."

"I will lay you an hundred guineas, my Lord," says his Grace, very
off-hand, "that Mr. Carvel does not sit Baltimore's Pollux above twenty
minutes."

"Done!" says Jack, before I could draw breath.

"I'll take your Grace for another hundred," calmly added Mr. Fox.

"It seems to me, your Grace," I cried, angry all at once, "it seems to me
that I am the one to whom you should address your wagers. I am not a
jockey, to be put up at your whim, and to give you the chance to lose
money."

Chartersea swung around my way.

"Your pardon, Mr. Carvel," said he, very coolly, very politely; "yours is
the choice of the wager. And you reject it, the others must be called
off."

"Slife! I double it!" I said hotly, "provided the horse is alive, and
will stand up."

"Devilish well put, Richard!" Mr. Fox exclaimed, casting off his
restraint.

"I give you my word the horse is alive, sir," he answered, with a mock
bow; "'twas only yesterday that he killed his groom, at Hampstead."

A few moments of silence followed this revelation. It was Charles Fox
who spoke first.

"I make no doubt that your Grace, as a man of honour,"--he emphasized the
word forcibly,--"will not refuse to ride the horse for another twenty
minutes, provided Mr. Carvel is successful. And I will lay your Grace
another hundred that you are thrown, or run away with."

Truly, to cope with a wit like Mr. Fox's, the duke had need for a longer
head. He grew livid as he perceived how neatly he had been snared in his
own trap.

"Done!" he cried loudly; "done, gentlemen. It only remains to hit upon
time and place for the contest. I go to York to-morrow, to be back this
day fortnight. And if you will do me the favour of arranging with
Baltimore for the horse, I shall be obliged. I believe he intends
selling it to Astley, the showman."

"And are we to keep it?" asks Mr. Fox.

"I am dealing with men of honour," says the duke, with a bow: "I need
have no better assurance that the horse will not be ridden in the
interval."

"'Od so!" said Comyn, when we were out; "very handsome of him. But I
would not say as much for his Grace."

And Mr. Fox declared that the duke was no coward, but all other epithets
known might be called him. "A very diverting evening, Richard," said he;
"let's to your apartments and have a bowl, and talk it over."

And thither we went.

I did not sleep much that night, but 'twas of Dolly I thought rather than
of Chartersea. I was abroad early, and over to inquire in Arlington
Street, where I found she had passed a good night. And I sent Banks
a-hooting for some violets to send her, for I knew she loved that flower.

Between ten and eleven Mr. Fox and Comyn and I set out for Baltimore
House. When you go to London, my dears, you will find a vast difference
in the neighbourhood of Bloomsbury from what it was that May morning in
1770. Great Russell Street was all a sweet fragrance of gardens,
mingling with the smell of the fields from the open country to the north.
We drove past red Montagu House with its stone facings and dome, like a
French hotel, and the cluster of buildings at its great gate. It had
been then for over a decade the British Museum. The ground behind it was
a great resort for Londoners of that day. Many a sad affair was fought
there, but on that morning we saw a merry party on their way to play
prisoner's base.

Then we came to the gardens in front of Bedford House, which are now
Bloomsbury Square. For my part I preferred this latter mansion to the
French creation by its side, and admired its long and graceful lines.
Its windows commanded a sweep from Holborn on the south to Highgate on
the north. To the east of it, along Southampton Row, a few great houses
had gone up or were building; and at the far end of that was Baltimore
house, overlooking her Grace of Bedford's gardens. Beyond Lamb's Conduit
Fields stretched away to the countryside.

I own I had a lively curiosity to see that lordly ruler, the proprietor
of our province, whose birthday we celebrated after his Majesty's. Had
I not been in a great measure prepared, I should have had a revulsion
indeed.

When he heard that Mr. Fox and my Lord Comyn were below stairs he gave
orders to show them up to his bedroom, where he received us in a
night-gown embroidered with oranges. My Lord Baltimore, alas! was not
much to see. He did not make the figure a ruler should as he sat in his
easy chair, and whined and cursed his Swiss. He was scarce a year over
forty, and he had all but run his race. Dissipation and corrosion had
set their seal upon him, had stamped his yellow face with crows' feet and
blotted it with pimples. But then the glimpse of a fine gentleman just
out of bed of a morning, before he is made for the day, is unfair.

"Morning, Charles! Howdy, Jack!" said his Lordship, apathetically.
"Glad to know you, Mr. Carvel. Heard of your family. 'Slife! Wish
there were more like 'em in the province."

This sentiment not sitting very well upon his Lordship, I bowed, and said
nothing.

"By the bye," he continued, pouring out his chocolate into the dish,
"I sent a damned rake of a parson out there some years gone. Handsome
devil, too. Never seen his match with the women, egad. 'Od's fish--"
he leered. And then added with an oath and a nod and a vile remark:
"Married three times to my knowledge. Carried off dozen or so more.
Some of 'em for me. Many a good night I've had with him. Drank between
us one evening at Essex's gallon and half Champagne and Burgundy apiece.
He got to know too much, y' know," he concluded, with a wicked wink.
"Had to buy him up pack him off."

"His name, Fred?" said Comyn, with a smile at me.

"'Sdeath! That's it. Trouble to remember. Damned if I can think." And
he repeated this remark over and over.

"Allen?" said Comyn.

"Yes," said Baltimore; "Allen. And egad I think he'll find hell a hotter
place than me. You know him, Mr. Carvel?"

"Yes," I replied. I said no more. I make no reservations when I avow I
was never so disgusted in my life. But as I looked upon him, haggard and
worn, with retribution so neat at hand, I had no words to protest or
condemn.

Baltimore gave a hollow mirthless laugh, stopped short, and looked at
Charles Fox.

"Curse you, Charles! I suppose you are after that little matter I owe
you for quinze."

"Damn the little matter!" said Fox. "Come, get you perfumed and dressed,
and order up some of your Tokay while we wait. I have to go to St.
Stephens. Mr. Carvel has come to buy your horse Pollux. He has bet
Chartersea two hundred guineas he rides him for twenty minutes."

"The devil he has!" cried his Lordship, jaded no longer. "Why, you must
know, Mr. Carvel, there was no groom in my stables who would sit him
until Foley made me a present of his man, Miller, who started to ride him
to Hyde Park. As he came out of Great Russell Street, by gads life!
the horse broke and ran out the Tottenham Court Road all the way to
Hampstead. And the fiend picked out a big stone water trough and tossed
Miller against it. Then they gathered up the fragments. Damme if I like
to see suicide, Mr. Carvel. If Chartersea wants to kill you, let him try
it in the fields behind Montagu House here."

I told his Lordship that I had made the wager, and could not in honour
withdraw, though the horse had killed a dozen grooms. But already he
seemed to have lost interest. He gave a languid pull at the velvet
tassel on his bell-rope, ordered the wine; and, being informed that his
anteroom below was full of people, had them all dismissed with the
message that he was engaged upon important affairs. He told Mr. Fox
he had heard of the Jerusalem Chamber, and vowed he would have a like
institution. He told me he wished the colony of Maryland in hell; that
he was worn out with the quarrels of Governor Eden and his Assembly, and
offered to lay a guinea that the Governor's agent would get to him that
day,--will-he, nill-he. I did not think it worth while to argue with
such a man.

My Lord took three-quarters of an hour to dress, and swore he had not
accomplished the feat so quickly in a year. He washed his hands and face
in a silver basin, and the scent of the soap filled the room. He rated
his Swiss for putting cinnamon upon his ruffles in place of attar of
roses, and attempted to regale us the while with some of his choicest
adventures. In more than one of these, by the way, his Grace of
Chartersea figured. It was Fox who brought him up.

"See here, Baltimore," he said, "I'm not squeamish. But I'm cursed if I
like to hear a man who may die any time between bottles talk so."

His Lordship took the rebuke with an oath, and presently hobbled down the
stairs of the great and silent house to the stable court, where two
grooms were in waiting with the horse. He was an animal of amazing
power, about sixteen hands, and dapple gray in colour. And it required
no special knowledge to see that he had a devil inside him. It gleamed
wickedly out of his eye.

"'Od's life, Richard!" cried Charles, "he has a Jew nose; by all the
seven tribes I bid you 'ware of him."

"You have but to ride him with a gold bit, Richard," said Comyn, "and he
is a kitten, I'll warrant."

At that moment Pollux began to rear and kick, so that it took both the
'ostlers to hold him.

"Show him a sovereign," suggested Fox. "How do you feel, Richard?"

"I never feared a horse yet," I said with perfect truth, "nor do I fear
this one, though I know he may kill me."

"I'll lay you twenty pounds you have at least one bone broken, and ten
that you are killed," Baltimore puts in querulously, from the doorway.

"I'll do this, my Lord," I answered. "If I ride him, he is mine. If he
throws me, I give you twenty pounds for him."

The gentlemen laughed, and Baltimore vowed he could sell the horse to
Astley for fifty; that Pollux was the son of Renown, of the Duke of
Kingston's stud, and much more. But Charles rallied him out by a
reference to the debt at quinze, and an appeal to his honour as a
sportsman. And swore he was discouraging one of the prettiest encounters
that would take place in England for many a long day. And so the horse
was sent to the stables of the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly, and
left there at my order.




CHAPTER XXXVI

A GLIMPSE OF MR. GARRICK

Day after day I went to Arlington Street, each time to be turned away
with the same answer: that Miss Manners was a shade better, but still
confined to her bed. You will scarce believe me, my dears, when I say
that Mr. Marmaduke had gone at this crisis with his Grace to the York
races. On the fourth morning, I think, I saw Mrs. Manners. She was much
worn with the vigil she had kept, and received me with an apathy to
frighten me. Her way with me had hitherto always been one of kindness
and warmth. In answer to the dozen questions I showered upon her, she
replied that Dorothy's malady was in no wise dangerous, so Dr. James had
said, and undoubtedly arose out of the excitement of a London season. As
I knew, Dorothy was of the kind that must run and run until she dropped.
She had no notion of the measure of her own strength. Mrs. Manners hoped
that, in a fortnight, she would be recovered sufficiently to be removed
to one of the baths.

"She wishes me to thank you for the flowers, Richard. She has them
constantly by her. And bids me tell you how sorry she is that she is
compelled to miss so much of your visit to England. Are you enjoying
London, Richard? I hear that you are well liked by the best of company."

I left, prodigiously cast down, and went directly to Mr. Wedgwood's, to
choose the prettiest set of tea-cups and dishes I could find there. I
pitied Mrs. Manners from my heart, and made every allowance for her talk
with me, knowing the sorrow of her life. Here was yet another link in
the chain of the Chartersea evidence. And I made no doubt that Mr.
Manner's brutal desertion at such a time must be hard to bear. I
continued my visits of inquiry, nearly always meeting some person of
consequence, or the footman of such, come on the same errand as myself.
And once I encountered the young man she had championed against his Grace
at Lady Tankerville's.

Rather than face the array of anxieties that beset me, I plunged
recklessly into the gayeties--nay, the excesses--of Mr. Charles Fox and
his associates. I paid, in truth, a very high price for my friendship
with Mr. Fox. But, since it did not quite ruin me, I look back upon it
as cheaply bought. To know the man well, to be the subject of his
regard, was to feel an infatuation in common with the little band of
worshippers which had come with him from Eton. They remained faithful to
him all his days, nor adversity nor change of opinion could shake their
attachment. They knew his faults, deplored them, and paid for them. And
this was not beyond my comprehension, tho' many have wondered at it. Did
he ask me for five hundred pounds,--which he did,--I gave it freely, and
would gladly have given more, tho' I saw it all wasted in a night when
the dice rolled against him. For those honoured few of whom I speak
likewise knew his virtues, which were quite as large as the faults,
albeit so mingled with them that all might not distinguish.

I attended some of the routs and parties, to all of which, as a young
colonial gentleman of wealth and family, I was made welcome. I went to
a ball at Lord Stanley's, a mixture of French horns and clarionets and
coloured glass lanthorns and candles in gilt vases, and young ladies
pouring tea in white, and musicians in red, and draperies and flowers ad
libitum. There I met Mr. Walpole, looking on very critically. He was
the essence of friendliness, asked after my equerry, and said I had done
well to ship him to America. At the opera, with Lord Ossory and Mr.
Fitzpatrick, I talked through the round of the boxes, from Lady
Pembroke's on the right to Lady Hervey's on the left, where Dolly's
illness and Lady Harrington's snuffing gabble were the topics rather than
Giardini's fiddling. Mr. Storer took me to Foote's dressing-room at the
Haymarket, where we found the Duke of Cumberland lounging. I was
presented, and thought his Royal Highness had far less dignity than
the monkey-comedian we had come to see.

I must not forget the visit I made to Drury Lane Playhouse with my Lords
Carlisle and Grantham and Comyn. The great actor received me graciously
in such a company, you may be sure. He appeared much smaller off the
boards than on, and his actions and speech were quick and nervous. Gast,
his hairdresser, was making him up for the character of Richard III.

"'Ods!" said Mr. Garrick, "your Lordships come five minutes too late.
Goldsmith is but just gone hence, fresh from his tailor, Filby, of Water
Lane. The most gorgeous creature in London, gentlemen, I'll be sworn.
He is even now, so he would have me know, gone by invitation to my Lord
Denbigh's box, to ogle the ladies."

"And have you seen your latest lampoon, Mr. Garrick?" asks Comyn, winking
at me.

Up leaps Mr. Garrick, so suddenly as to knock the paint-pot from Gast's
hand.

"Nay, your Lordship jests, surely!" he cried, his voice shaking.

"Jests!" says my Lord, very serious; "do I jest, Carlisle?" And turning
to Mr. Cross, the prompter, who stood by, "Fetch me the St. James's
Evening Post," says he.

"'Ods my life!" continues poor Garrick, almost in tears; "I have loaned
Foote upwards of two thousand pounds. And last year, as your Lordship
remembers, took charge of his theatre when his leg was cut off. 'Pon my
soul, I cannot account for his ingratitude."

"'Tis not Foote," says Carlisle, biting his lip; "I know Foote's mark."

"Then Johnson," says the actor, "because I would not let him have my fine
books in his dirty den to be kicked about the floor, but put my library
at his disposal--"

"Nay, nor Johnson. Nor yet Macklin nor Murphy."

"Surely not--" cries Mr. Garrick, turning white under the rouge. The
name remained unpronounced.

"Ay, ay, Junius, in the Evening Post. He has fastened upon you at last,"
answers Comyn, taking the paper.

"'Sdeath! Garrick," Carlisle puts in, very solemn, "what have you done
to offend the Terrible Unknown? Talebearing to his Majesty, I'll
warrant! I gave you credit for more discretion."

At these words Mr. Garrick seized the chair for support, and swung
heavily into it. Whereat the young lords burst into such a tempest of
laughter that I could not refrain from joining them. As for Mr. Garrick,
he was so pleased to have escaped that he laughed too, though with a
palpable nervousness.

   [Note by the editor. It was not long after this that Mr. Garrick's
   punishment came, and for the self-same offence.]

"By the bye, Garrick," Carlisle remarked slyly, when he had recovered,
"Mrs. Crewe was vastly taken with the last 'vers' you left on her
dressing-table."

"Was she, now, my Lord?" said the great actor, delighted, but scarce over
his fright. "You must know that I have writ one to my Lady Carlisle,
on the occasion of her dropping her fan in Piccadilly." Whereupon he
proceeded to recite it, and my Lord Carlisle, being something of a poet
himself, pronounced it excellent.

Mr. Garrick asked me many questions concerning American life and manners,
having a play in his repertory the scene of which was laid in New York.
In the midst of this we were interrupted by a dirty fellow who ran in,
crying excitedly:

"Sir, the Archbishop of York is getting drunk at the Bear, and swears
he'll be d--d if he'll act to-night."

"The archbishop may go to the devil!" snapped Mr. Garrick. "I do not
know a greater rascal, except yourself."

I was little short of thunderstruck. But presently Mr. Garrick added
complainingly:

"I paid a guinea for the archbishop, but the fellow got me three
murderers to-day and the best alderman I ever clapped eyes upon. So we
are square."

After the play we supped with him at his new house in Adelphi Terrace,
next Topham Beauclerk's. 'Twas handsomely built in the Italian style,
and newly furnished throughout, for Mr. Garrick travelled now with a
coach and six and four menservants, forsooth. And amongst other things
he took pride in showing us that night was a handsome snuffbox which the
King of Denmark had given him the year before, his Majesty's portrait set
in jewels thereon.

Presently the news of the trial of Lord Baltimore's horse began to be
noised about, and was followed by a deluge of wagers at Brooks's and
White's and elsewhere. Comyn and Fox, my chief supporters, laid large
sums upon me, despite all my persuasion. But the most unpleasant part of
the publicity was the rumour that the match was connected with the
struggle for Miss Manners's hand. I was pressed with invitations to go
into the country to ride this or that horse. His Grace the Duke of
Grafton had a mount he would have me try at Wakefield Lodge, and was far
from pleasant over my refusal of his invitation. I was besieged by young
noblemen like Lord Derby and Lord Foley, until I was heartily sick of
notoriety, and cursed the indiscretion of the person who let out the
news, and my own likewise. My Lord March, who did me the honour to lay
one hundred pounds upon my skill, insisted that I should make one of a
party to the famous amphitheatre near Lambeth. Mr. Astley, the showman,
being informed of his Lordship's intention, met us on Westminster Bridge
dressed in his uniform as sergeant major of the Royal Light Dragoons and
mounted on a white charger. He escorted us to one of the large boxes
under the pent-house reserved for the gentry. And when the show was over
and the place cleared, begged, that I would ride his Indian Chief. I
refused; but March pressed me, and Comyn declared he had staked his
reputation upon my horsemanship. Astley was a large man, about my build,
and I donned a pair of his leather breeches and boots, and put Indian
Chief to his paces around the ring. I found him no more restive, nor as
much so, as Firefly. The gentlemen were good enough to clap me roundly,
and Astley vowed (no doubt because of the noble patrons present) that he
had never seen a better seat.

We all repaired afterwards for supper to Don Saltero's Coffee House and
Museum in Chelsea. And I remembered having heard my grandfather speak of
the place, and tell how he had seen Sir Richard Steele there, listening
to the Don scraping away at the "Merry Christ Church Bells" on his
fiddle. The Don was since dead, but King James's coronation sword and
King Henry VIII.'s coat of mail still hung on the walls.

The remembrance of that fortnight has ever been an appalling one.
Mr. Carvel had never attempted to teach me the value of money. My
grandfather, indeed, held but four things essential to the conduct of
life; namely, to fear God, love the King, pay your debts, and pursue your
enemies. There was no one in London to advise me, Comyn being but a wild
lad like myself. But my Lord Carlisle gave me a friendly warning:

"Have a care, Carvel," said he, kindly, "or you will run your grandfather
through, and all your relations beside. I little realized the danger of
it when I first came up." (He was not above two and twenty then.) "And
now I have a wife, am more crippled than I care to be, thanks to this
devilish high play. Will you dine with Lady Carlisle in St. James's
Place next Friday?"

My heart went out to this young nobleman. Handsome he was, as a picture.
And he knew better than most of your fine gentlemen how to put a check on
his inclinations. As a friend he had few equals, his purse being ever at
the command of those he loved. And his privations on Fox's account were
already greater than many knew.

I had a call, too, from Mr. Dix. I found him in my parlour one morning,
cringing and smiling, and, as usual, half an hour away from his point.

"I warrant you, Mr. Carvel," says he, "there are few young gentlemen not
born among the elect that make the great friends you are blessed with."

"I have been fortunate, Mr. Dix," I replied dryly.

"Fortunate!" he cried; "good Lord, sir! I hear of you everywhere with
Mr. Fox, and you have been to Astley's with my Lord March. And I have a
draft from you at Ampthill."

"Vastly well manoeuvred, Mr. Dix," I said, laughing at the guilty change
in his pink complexion. "And hence you are here."

He fidgeted, and seeing that I paid him no attention, but went on with my
chocolate, he drew a paper from his pocket and opened it.

"You have spent a prodigious sum, sir, for so short a time," said he,
unsteadily. "'Tis very well for you, Mr. Carvel, but I have to remember
that you are heir only. I am advancing you money without advices from
his Worship, your grandfather. A most irregular proceeding, sir, and one
likely to lead me to trouble. I know not what your allowance may be."

"Nor I, Mr. Dix," I replied, unreasonably enough. "To speak truth, I
have never had one. You have my Lord Comyn's signature to protect you,"
I went on ill-naturedly, for I had not had enough sleep. "And in case
Mr. Carvel protests, which is unlikely and preposterous, you shall have
ten percentum on your money until I can pay you. That should be no poor
investment."

He apologized. But he smoothed out the paper on his knee.

"It is only right to tell you, Mr. Carvel, that you have spent one
thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven odd pounds, in home money, which
is worth more than your colonial. Your grandfather's balance with me was
something less than one thousand five hundred, as I made him a remittance
in December last. I have advanced the rest. And yesterday," he went on,
resolutely for him, "yesterday I got an order for five hundred more."

And he handed me the paper. I must own that the figures startled me.
I laid it down with a fine show of indifference.

"And so you wish me to stop drawing? Very good, Mr. Dix."

He must have seen some threat implied, though I meant none. He was my
very humble servant at once, and declared he had called only to let me
know where I stood. Then he bowed himself out, wishing me luck with the
horse he had heard of, and I lighted my pipe with his accompt.




CHAPTER XXXVII

THE SERPENTINE

Whether it was Mr. Dix. that started me reflecting, or my Lord Carlisle's
warning, or a few discreet words from young Lady Carlisle herself, I know
not. At all events, I made a resolution to stop high play, and confine
myself to whist and quinze and picquet. For I conceived a notion,
enlarged by Mr. Fox, that I had more than once fallen into the tender
clutches of the hounds. I was so reflecting the morning following Lord
Carlisle's dinner, when Banks announced a footman.

"Mr. Manners's man, sir," he added significantly, and handed me a little
note. I seized it, and, to hide my emotion, told him to give the man his
beer.

The writing was Dorothy's, and some time passed after I had torn off the
wrapper before I could compose myself to read it.

"So, Sir, the Moment I am too ill to watch you you must needs lapse into
Wilde & Flity Doings, for thus y'rs are call'd even in London. Never
Mind how y'r Extravigancies are come to my Ears Sir. One Matter I have
herd that I am Most Concerned about, & I pray you, my Dear Richard do not
allow y'r Recklessness & Contemt for Danger to betray you into a Stil
more Amazing Follie or I shall be very Miserable Indeed. I have Hopes
that the Report is at Best a Rumour & you must sit down & write me that
it is Sir that my Minde may be set at Rest. I fear for you Vastly & I
beg you not Riske y'r Life Foolishly & this for the Sake of one who
subscribes herself y'r Old Playmate & Well-Wisher Dolly.

"P.S. I have writ Sir Jon Fielding to put you in the Marshallsee or New
Gate until Mr. Carvel can be tolde. I am Better & hope soon to see you
agen & have been informed of y'r Dayly Visitts & y'r Flowers are beside
me. D. M."


In about an hour and a half, Mr. Marmaduke's footman was on his way back
to Arlington Street in a condition not to be lightly spoken of. During
that period I had committed an hundred silly acts, and incidentally
learned the letter by heart. I was much distressed to think that she had
heard of the affair of the horse, and more so to surmise that the gossip
which clung to it must also have reached her. But I fear I thought most
of her anxiety concerning me, which reflection caused my hand to shake
from very happiness. "Y'r Flowers are beside me," and, "I beg you not
Riske y'r Life Foolishly," and "I shall be very Miserable Indeed" But
then: "Y'r Old Plamate & Well Wisher"! Nay, she was inscrutable as ever.

And my reply,--what was that to be? How I composed it in the state of
mind I was in, I have no conception to this day. The chimney was clogged
with papers ere (in a spelling to vie with Dolly's) I had set down my
devotion, my undying devotion, to her interests. I asked forgiveness for
my cruelty on that memorable morning I had last seen her. But even to
allude to the bet with Chartersea was beyond my powers; and as for
renouncing it, though for her sake,--that was not to be thought of.
The high play I readily promised to avoid in the future, and I signed
myself,--well, it matters not after seventy years.

The same day, Tuesday, I received a letter from his Grace of Chartersea
saying that he looked to reach London that night, but very late. He
begged that Mr. Fox and Lord Comyn and I would sup with him at the Star
and Garter at eleven, to fix matters for the trial on the morrow. Mr.
Fox could not go, but Comyn and I went to the inn, having first
attended "The Tempest" at Drury Lane with Lady Di and Mr. Beauclerk.

We found his Grace awaiting us in a private room, with Captain Lewis,
of the 60th Foot, who had figured as a second in the duel with young
Atwater. The captain was a rake and a bully and a toadeater, of course,
with a loud and profane tongue, and he had had a bottle too many in the
duke's travelling-coach. There was likewise a Sir John Brooke, a country
neighbour of his Grace in Nottinghamshire. Sir John apparently had no
business in such company. He was a hearty, fox-hunting squire who had
seen little of London; a three-bottle man who told a foul story and went
asleep immediately afterwards. Much to my disappointment, Mr. Manners
had gone to Arlington Street direct. I had longed for a chance to speak
a little of my mind to him.

This meeting, which I shall not take the time to recount, was near to
ending in an open breach of negotiations. His Grace had lost money at
York, and more to Lewis on the way to London. He was in one of his
vicious humours. He insisted that Hyde Park should be the place of the
contest. In vain did Comyn and I plead for some less public spot on
account of the disagreeable advertisement the matter had received. His
Grace would be damned before he would yield; and Lewis, adding a more
forcible contingency, hinted that our side feared a public trial. Comyn
presently shut him up.

"Do you ride the horse after his Grace is thrown," says he, "and I agree
to get on after and he does not kill you. 'Sdeath! I am not of the
army," adds my Lord, cuttingly; "I am a seaman, and not supposed to know
a stirrup from a snaffle."

"'Od's blood!" yelled the captain, "you question my horsemanship, my
Lord? Do I understand your Lordship to question my courage?"

"After I am thrown!" cries his Grace, very ugly, and fingering the jewels
on his hilt.

Sir John was awakened by the noise, and turning heavily spilled the whole
of a pint of port on the duke's satin waist coat and breeches. Whereat
Chartersea in a rage flung the bottle at his head with a curse, which it
seems was a habit with his Grace. But the servants coming in, headed by
my old friend the chamberlain, they quieted down. And it was presently
agreed that the horse was to be at noon in the King's Old Road, or Rotten
Row (as it was then beginning to be called), in Hyde Park.

I shall carry to the grave the memory of the next day. I was up betimes,
and over to the White Horse Cellar to see Pollux groomed, where I found a
crowd about the opening into the stable court. "The young American!"
called some one, and to my astonishment and no small annoyance I was
greeted with a "Huzzay for you, sir!" "My groat's on your honour!"

This good-will was owing wholly to the duke's unpopularity with all
classes. Inside, sporting gentlemen in hunting-frocks of red and green,
and velvet visored caps, were shouldering favoured 'ostlers from the
different noblemen's stables; and there was a liberal sprinkling of the
characters who attended the cock mains in Drury Lane and at Newmarket.
At the moment of my arrival the head 'ostler was rubbing down the
stallion's flank.

"Here's ten pounds to ride him, Saunders!" called one of the
hunting-frocks.

"Umph!" sniffed the 'ostler; "ride 'im is it, yere honour? Two hunner
beast eno', an' a Portugal crown i' th' boot. Sooner take me chaunces o'
Tyburn on 'Ounslow 'Eath. An' Miller waurna able to sit 'im, 'tis no for
th' likes o' me to try. Th' bloody devil took th' shirt off Teddy's back
this morn. I adwises th' young Buckskin t' order 's coffin." Just then
he perceived me, and touched his cap, something abashed. "With
submission, sir, y'r honour'll take an old man's adwise an' not go near
'im."

Pollux's appearance, indeed, was not calculated to reassure me. He
looked ugly to exaggeration, his ears laid back and his nostrils as big
as crowns, and his teeth bared time and time. Now and anon an impatient
fling of his hoof would make the grooms start away from him. Since
coming to the inn he had been walked a couple of miles each day, with two
men with loaded whips to control him. I was being offered a deal of
counsel, when big Mr. Astley came in from Lambeth, and silenced them all.

"These grooms, Mr. Carvel," he said to me, as we took a bottle in private
inside, "these grooms are the very devil for superstition. And once a
horse gets a bad name with them, good-by to him. Miller knew how to
ride, of course, but like many another of them, was too damned
over-confident. I warned him more than once for getting young horses
into a fret, and I'm willing to lay a ten-pound note that he angered
Pollux. 'Od's life! He is a vicious beast. So was his father, Culloden,
before him. But here's luck to you, sir!" says Mr. Astley, tipping his
glass; "having seen you ride, egad! I have put all the money I can
afford in your favour."

Before I left him he had given me several valuable hints as to the manner
of managing that kind of a horse: not to auger him with the spurs unless
it became plain that he meant to kill me; to try persuasion first and
force afterwards; and secondly, he taught me a little trick of twisting
the bit which I have since found very useful.

Leaving the White Horse, I was followed into Piccadilly by the crowd,
until I was forced to take refuge in a hackney chaise. The noise of the
affair had got around town, and I was heartily sorry I had not taken the
other and better method of trying conclusions with the duke, and slapped
his face. I found Jack Comyn in Dover Street, and presently Mr. Fox came
for us with his chestnuts in his chaise, Fitzpatrick with him. At Hyde
Park Corner there was quite a jam of coaches, chaises, and cabriolets and
beribboned phaetons, which made way for us, but kept us busy bowing as we
passed among them. It seemed as if everybody of consequence that I had
met in London was gathered there. One face I missed, and rejoiced that
she was absent, for I had a degraded feeling like that of being the
favourite in a cudgel-bout. And the thought that her name was connected
with all this made my face twitch. I heard the people clapping and saw
them waving in the carriages as we passed, and some stood forward before
the rest in a haphazard way, without rhyme or reason. Mr. Walpole with
Lady Di Beauclerk, and Mr. Storer and Mr. Price and Colonel St. John, and
Lord and Lady Carlisle and Lady Ossory. These I recognized. Inside, the
railing along the row was lined with people. And there stood Pollux,
bridled, with a blanket thrown over his great back and chest, surrounded
still by the hunting-frocks, who had followed him from the White Horse.
Mixed in with these, swearing, conjecturing, and betting, were some to
surprise me, whose names were connected with every track in England: the
Duke of Grafton and my Lords Sandwich and March and Bolingbroke, and Sir
Charles Bunbury, and young Lords Derby and Foley, who, after establishing
separate names for folly on the tracks, went into partnership. My Lord
Baltimore descended listlessly from his cabriolet to join the group.
They all sang out when they caught sight of our party, and greeted me
with a zeal to carry me off my feet. And my Lord Sandwich, having done
me the honour to lay something very handsome upon me, had his chief
jockey on hand to give me some final advice. I believe I was the coolest
of any of them. And at that time of all others the fact came up to me
with irresistible humour that I, a young colonial Whig, who had grown up
to detest these people, should be rubbing noses with them.

The duke put in an appearance five minutes before the hour, upon a bay
gelding, and attended by Lewis and Sir John Brooke, both mounted. As a
most particular evidence of the detestation in which Chartersea was held,
he could find nothing in common with such notorious rakes as March and
Sandwich. And it fell to me to champion these. After some discussion
between Fox and Captain Lewis, March was chosen umpire. His Lordship
took his post in the middle of the Row, drew forth an enamelled repeater
from his waistcoat, and mouthed out the conditions of the match,--the
terms, as he said, being private.

"Are you ready, Mr. Carvel?" he asked.

"I am, my Lord," I answered. The bells were pealing noon.

"Then mount, sir," said he.

The voices of the people dropped to a hum that brought to mind the long
forgotten sound of the bees swarming in the garden by the Chesapeake. My
breath began to come quickly. Through the sunny haze I saw the cows and
deer grazing by the Serpentine, and out of the back of my eye
handkerchiefs floated from the carriages banked at the gate. They took
the blanket off the stallion. Stall-fed, and excited by the crowd, he
looked brutal indeed. The faithful Banks, in a new suit of the Carvel
livery, held the stirrup, and whispered a husky "God keep you, sir!"
Suddenly I was up. The murmur was hushed, and the Park became still as a
peaceful farm in Devonshire. The grooms let go of the stallion's head.

He stood trembling like the throes of death. I gripped my knees as
Captain Daniel had taught me, years ago, when some invisible force
impelled me to look aside. From between the broad and hunching shoulders
of Chartersea I met such a venomous stare as a cattle-fish might use to
freeze his prey. Cattle--fish! The word kept running over my tongue. I
thought of the snaky arms that had already caught Mr. Marmaduke, and were
soon, perhaps, to entangle Dorothy. She had begged me not to ride, and
I was risking a life which might save hers.

The wind rushing in my ears and beating against my face awoke me all at
once. The trees ran madly past, and the water at my right was a silver
blur. The beast beneath me snorted as he rose and fell. Fainter and
fainter dropped the clamour behind me, which had risen as I started, and
the leaps grew longer and longer. Then my head was cleared like a
steamed window-pane in a cold blast. I saw the road curve in front of
me, I put all my strength into the curb, and heeling at a fearful angle
was swept into the busy Kensington Road. For the first time I knew what
it was to fear a horse. The stallion's neck was stretched, his shoes
rang on the cobbles, and my eyes were fixed on a narrow space between
carriages coming together. In a flash I understood why the duke had
insisted upon Hyde Park, and that nerved me some. I saw the frightened
coachmen pulling their horses this way and that, I heard the cries of the
foot-passengers, and then I was through, I know not how. Once more I
summoned all my power, recalled the twist Astley had spoken of, and tried
it. I bent his neck for an inch of rein. Next I got another inch, and
then came a taste--the smallest taste--of mastery like elixir. The
motion changed with it, became rougher, and the hoof-beats a fraction
less frequent. He steered like a ship with sail reduced. In and out we
dodged among the wagons, and I was beginning to think I had him, when
suddenly, without a move of warning, he came down rigid with his feet
planted together, and only a miracle and my tight grip restrained me from
shooting over his head. There he stood shaking and snorting, nor any
persuasion would move him. I resorted at last to the spurs.

He was up in the air in an instant, and came down across the road. Again
I dug in to the rowels, and clung the tighter, and this time he landed
with his head to London. A little knot of people had collected to watch
me, and out stepped a strapping fellow in the King's scarlet, from the
Guard's Horse near by.

"Hold him, sir!" he said, tipping. "Better dismount, sir. He means
murder, y'r honour."

"Keep clear, curse you!" I cried, waving him off. "What time is it?"

He stepped back, no doubt thinking me mad. Some one spoke up and said it
was five minutes past noon. I had the grace to thank him, I believe. To
my astonishment I had been gone but four minutes; they had seemed twenty.
Looking about me, I found I was in the open space before old Kensington
Church, over against the archway there. Once more I dug in the spurs,
this time with success. Almost at a jump the beast took me into the
angle of posts to the east of the churchyard gate and tore up the
footpath of Church Lane, terrified men and women ahead of me taking to
the kennel. He ran irregularly, now on the side of the posts, now
against the bricks, and then I gave myself up.

Heaven put a last expedient into my head, that I had once heard Mr.
Dulany speak of. I braced myself for a pull that should have broken the
stallion's jaw and released his mouth altogether. Incredible as it may
seem, he jarred into a trot, and presently came down to a walk, tossing
his head like fury, and sweating at every pore. I leaned over and patted
him, speaking him fair, and (marvel of marvels!) when we had got to the
dogs that guard the entrance of Camden House I had coaxed him around and
into the street, and cantered back at easy speed to the church. Without
pausing to speak to the bunch that stood at the throat of the lane, I
started toward London, thankfulness and relief swelling within me. I
understood the beast, and spoke to him when he danced aside at a wagon
with bells or a rattling load of coals, and checked him with a word and a
light hand.

Before I gained the Life Guard's House I met a dozen horsemen, amongst
them Banks on a mount of Mr. Fox's. They shouted when they saw me,
Colonel St. John calling out that he had won another hundred that I was
not dead. Sir John Brooke puffed and swore he did not begrudge his
losses to see me safe, despite Captain Lewis's sourness. Storey vowed
he would give a dinner in my honour, and, riding up beside me, whispered
that he was damned sorry the horse was now broken, and his Grace's chance
of being killed taken away. And thus escorted, I came in by the King's
New Road to avoid the people running in the Row, and so down to Hyde Park
Corner, and in among the chaises and the phaetons, where there was enough
cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs to please the most exacting
of successful generals. I rode up to my Lord March, and finding there
was a minute yet to run I went up the Row a distance and back again
amidst more huzzaing, Pollux prancing and quivering, and frothing his
bit, but never once attempting to break.

When I had got down, they pressed around me until I could scarce breathe,
crying congratulations, Comyn embracing me openly. Mr. Fox vowed he had
never seen so fine a sight, and said many impolitic things which the duke
must have overheard . . . . Lady Carlisle sent me a red rose for my
buttonhole by his Lordship. Mr. Warner, the lively parson with my Lord
March, desired to press my hand, declaring that he had won a dozen of
port upon me, which he had set his best cassock against. My Lord
Sandwich offered me snuff, and invited me to Hichinbroke. Indeed, I
should never be through were I to continue. But I must not forget my old
acquaintance Mr. Walpole, who protested that he must get permission to
present me to Princess Amelia: that her Royal Highness would not rest
content now, until she had seen me. I did not then know her Highness's
sporting propensity.

Then my Lord March called upon the duke, who stood in the midst of an
army of his toadeaters. I almost pitied him then, tho' I could not
account for the feeling. I think it was because a nobleman with so great
a title should be so cordially hated and despised. There were high words
along the railing among the duke's supporters, Captain Lewis, in his
anger, going above an inference that the stallion had been broken
privately. Chartersea came forward with an indifferent swagger, as if to
say as much: and, in truth, no one looked for more sport, and some were
even turning away. He had scarce put foot to the stirrup, when the
surprise came. Two minutes were up before he was got in the saddle,
Pollux rearing and plunging and dancing in a circle, the grooms shouting
and dodging, and his Grace cursing in a voice to wake the dead and Mr.
Fox laughing, and making small wagers that he would never be mounted.
But at last the duke was up and gripped, his face bloody red, giving vent
to his fury with the spurs.

Then something happened, and so quickly that it cannot be writ fast
enough. Pollux bolted like a shot out of a sling, vaulted the railing as
easily as you or I would hop over a stick, and galloping across the lawn
and down the embankment flung his Grace into the Serpentine. Precisely,
as Mr. Fox afterwards remarked, as the swine with the evil spirits ran
down the slope into the sea.

An indescribable bedlam of confusion followed, lords and gentlemen,
tradesmen and grooms, hostlers and apprentices, all tumbling after, many
crying with laughter. My Lord Sandwich's jockey pulled his Grace from
the water in a most pitiable state of rage and humiliation. His side
curls gone, the powder and pomatum washed from his hair, bedraggled and
muddy and sputtering oaths, he made his way to Lord March, swearing by
all divine that a trick was put on him, that he would ride the stallion
to Land's End. His Lordship, pulling his face straight, gravely informed
the duke that the match was over. With this his Grace fell flatly
sullen, was pushed into a coach by Sir John and the captain, and drove
rapidly off Kensington way, to avoid the people at the corner.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH I AM ROUNDLY BROUGHT TO TASK

I would have gone to Arlington Street direct, but my friends had no
notion of letting me escape. They carried me off to Brooks's Club, where
a bowl of punch was brewed directly, and my health was drunk to three
times three. Mr. Storer commanded a turtle dinner in my honour. We were
not many, fortunately,--only Mr. Fox's little coterie. And it was none
other than Mr. Fox who made the speech of the evening. "May I be strung
as high as Haman," said he, amid a tempest of laughter, "if ever I saw
half so edifying a sight as his Grace pitching into the Serpentine,
unless it were his Grace dragged out again. Mr. Carvel's advent has
been a Godsend to us narrow ignoramuses of this island, gentlemen.
To the Englishmen of our colonies, sirs, and that we may never underrate
or misunderstand them more!"

"Nay, Charles," cried my Lord Comyn. "Where is our gallantry? I give
you first the Englishwomen of our colonies, and in particular the pride
of Maryland, who has brought back to the old country all the graces of
the new,--Miss Manners."

His voice was drowned by a deafening shout, and we charged our glasses to
drain them brimming. And then we all went to Drury Lane to see Mrs.
Clive romp through 'The Wonder' in the spirit of the "immortal Peg." She
spoke an epilogue that Mr. Walpole had writ especial for her, and made
some witty and sarcastic remarks directed at the gentlemen in our
stagebox. We topped off a very full day by a supper at the Bedford Arms,
where I must draw the certain.

The next morning I was abed at an hour which the sobriety of old age
makes me blush abed think of. Banks had just concluded a discreet
discourse upon my accomplishment of the day before, and had left for my
newspapers, when he came running back with the information that Miss
Manners would see my honour that day. There was no note. Between us
we made my toilet in a jiffy, and presently I was walking in at the
Manners's door in an amazing hurry, and scarcely waited for a direction.
But as I ran up the stairs, I heard the tinkle of the spinet, and the
notes of an old, familiar tune fell upon my ears. The words rose in my
head with the cadence.

          "Love me little, love me long,
          Is the burthen of my song,
          Love that is too hot and strong
          Runneth soon to waste."

That simple air, already mellowed by an hundred years, had always been
her favourite. She used to sing it softly to herself as we roamed the
woods and fields of the Eastern Shore. Instinctively I paused at the
dressing-room door. Nay, my dears, you need not cry out, such was the
custom of the times. A dainty bower it was, filled with the perfume of
flowers, and rosy cupids disporting on the ceiling; and china and silver
and gold filigree strewn about, with my tea-cups on the table. The
sunlight fell like a halo round Dorothy's head, her hands strayed over
the keys, and her eyes were far away. She had not heard me. I remember
her dress,--a silk with blue cornflowers on a light ground, and the
flimsiest of lace caps resting on her hair. I thought her face paler;
but beyond that she did not show her illness.

She looked up, and perceived me, I thought, with a start. "So it is
you!" she said demurely enough; "you are come at last to give an account
of yourself."

"Are you better, Dorothy?" I asked earnestly.

"Why should you think that I have been ill?" she replied, her fingers
going back to the spinet. "It is a mistake, sir. Dr. James has given me
near a gross of his infamous powders, and is now exploiting another cure.
I have been resting from the fatigues of London, while you have been
wearing yourself out."

"Dr. James himself told me your condition was serious," I said.

"Of course," said she; "the worse the disease, the more remarkable the
cure, the more sought after the physician. When will you get over your
provincial simplicity?"

I saw there was nothing to be got out of her while in this baffling
humour. I wondered what devil impelled a woman to write one way and talk
another. In her note to me she had confessed her illness. The words I
had formed to say to her were tied on my tongue. But on the whole I
congratulated myself. She knew how to step better than I, and there were
many awkward things between us of late best not spoken of. But she kept
me standing an unconscionable time without a word, which on the whole was
cruelty, while she played over some of Dibdin's ballads.

"Are you in a hurry, sir," she asked at length, turning on me with a
smile, "are you in a hurry to join my Lord March or his Grace of Grafton?
And have you writ Captain Clapsaddle and your Whig friends at home of
your new intimacies, of Mr. Fox and my Lord Sandwich?"

I was dumb.

"Yes, you must be wishing to get away," she continued cruelly, picking up
the newspaper. "I had forgotten this notice. When I saw it this morning
I thought of you, and despaired of a glimpse of you to-day." (Reading.)
"At the Three Hats, Islington, this day, the 10th of May, will be played
a grand match at that ancient and much renowned manly diversion called
Double Stick by a sect of chosen young men at that exercise from
different parts of the West Country, for two guineas given free; those
who break the most heads to bear away the prize. Before the
above-mentioned diversion begins, Mr. Sampson and his young German will
display alternately on one, two, and three horses, various surprising and
curious feats of famous horsemanship in like manner as at the Grand
Jubilee at Stratford-upon-Avon. Admittance one shilling each person.'
Before you leave, Mr. Richard," she continued, with her eyes still on the
sheet, "I should like to talk over one or two little matters."

"Dolly--!"

"Will you sit, sir?"

I sat down uneasily, expecting the worst. She disappointed me, as usual.

"What an unspeakable place must you keep in Dover Street! I cannot send
even a footman there but what he comes back reeling."

I had to laugh at this. But there was no smile out of my lady.

"It took me near an hour and a half to answer your note," I replied.

"And 'twas a masterpiece!" exclaimed Dolly, with withering sarcasm;
"oh, a most amazing masterpiece, I'll be bound! His worship the French
Ambassador is a kitten at diplomacy beside you, sir. An hour and a half,
did you say, sir? Gemini, the Secretary of State and his whole corps
could not have composed the like in a day."

"Faith!" I cried, with feeling enough; "and if that is diplomacy, I would
rather make leather breeches than be given an embassy."

She fixed her eyes upon me so disconcertingly that mine fell.

"There was a time," she said, with a change of tone, "there was a time
when a request of mine, and it were not granted outright, would have
received some attention. This is my first experience at being ignored."

"I had made a wager," said I, "and could not retract with honour."

"So you had made a wager! Now we are to have some news at last. How
stupid of you, Richard, not to tell me before. I confess I wonder what
these wits find in your company. Here am I who have seen naught but dull
women for a fortnight, and you have failed to say anything amusing in a
quarter of an hour. Let us hear about the wager."

"Where is little to tell," I answered shortly, considerably piqued.
"I bet your friend, the Duke of Chartersea, some hundreds of pounds I
could ride Lord Baltimore's Pollux for twenty minutes, after which his
Grace was to get on and ride twenty more."

"Where did you see the duke?" Dolly interrupted, without much show of
interest.

I explained how we had met him at Brooks's, and had gone to his house.

"You went to his house?" she repeated, raising her eyebrows a trifle;
"and Comyn and Mr. Fox? And pray, how did this pretty subject come up?"

I related, very badly, I fear, Fox's story of young Wrottlesey and the
tea-merchant's daughter. And what does my lady do but get up and turn
her back, arranging some pinks in the window. I could have sworn she was
laughing, had I not known better.

"Well?"

"Well, that was a reference to a little pleasantry Mr. Fox had put up on
him some time before. His Grace flared, but tried not to show it. He
said he had heard I could do something with a horse (I believe he made it
up), and Comyn gave oath that I could; and then he offered to bet Comyn
that I could not ride this Pollux, who had killed his groom. That made
me angry, and I told the duke I was no jockey to be put up to decide
wagers, and that he must make his offers to me."

"La!" said Dolly, "you fell in head over heels."

"What do you mean by that?" I demanded.

"Nothing," said she, biting her lip. "Come, you are as ponderous as Dr.
Johnson."

"Then Mr. Fox proposed that his Grace should ride after me."

Here Dolly laughed in her handkerchief.

"I'll be bound," said she.

"Then the duke went to York," I continued hurriedly; and when he came
back we met him at the Star and Garter. He insisted that the match
should come off in Hyde Park. I should have preferred the open roads
north of Bedford House."

"Where there is no Serpentine," she interrupted, with the faintest
suspicion of a twinkle about her eyes. "On, sir, on! You are as
reluctant as our pump at Wilmot House in the dry season. I see you were
not killed, as you richly deserved. Let us have the rest of your tale."

"There is very little more to it, save that I contrived to master the
beast, and his Grace--"

"--Was disgraced. A vastly fine achievement, surely. But where are you
to stop? You will be shaming the King next by outwalking him. Pray, how
did the duke appear as he was going into the Serpentine?"

"You have heard?" I exclaimed, the trick she had played me dawning upon
me.

"Upon my word, Richard, you are more of a simpleton than I thought you.
Have you not seen your newspaper this morning?"

I explained how it was that I had not. She took up the Chronicle.

"'This Mr. Carvel has made no inconsiderable noise since his arrival in
town, and yesterday crowned his performances by defeating publicly a
noble duke at a riding match in Hyde Park, before half the quality of the
kingdom. His Lordship of March and Ruglen acted as umpire.' There, sir,
was I not right to beg Sir John Fielding to put you in safe keeping until
your grandfather can send for you?"

I made to seize the paper, but she held it from me.

"'If Mr. Carvel remains long enough in England, he bids fair to share the
talk of Mayfair with a certain honourable young gentleman of Brooks's and
the Admiralty, whose debts and doings now furnish most of the gossip for
the clubs and the card tables. Their names are both connected with this
contest. 'Tis whispered that the wager upon which the match was ridden
arose--'" here Dolly stopped shortly, her colour mounting, and cried out
with a stamp of her foot. "You are not content to bring publicity upon
yourself, who deserve it, but must needs drag innocent names into the
newspapers."

"What have they said?" I demanded, ready to roll every printer in London
in the kennel.

"Nay, you may read for yourself," said she. And, flinging the paper in
my lap, left the room.

They had not said much more, Heaven be praised. But I was angry and
mortified as I had never been before, realizing for the first time what a
botch I had made of my stay in London. In great dejection, I was picking
up my hat to leave the house, when Mrs. Manners came in upon me, and
insisted that I should stay for dinner. She was very white, and seemed
troubled and preoccupied, and said that Mr. Manners had come back from
York with a cold on his chest, but would insist upon joining the party to
Vauxhall on Monday. I asked her when she was going to the baths, and
suggested that the change would do her good. Indeed, she looked badly.

"We are not going, Richard," she replied; "Dorothy will not hear of it.
In spite of the doctor she says she is not ill, and must attend at
Vauxhall, too. You are asked?"

I said that Mr. Storer had included me. I am sure, from the way she
looked at me, that she did not heed my answer. She appeared to hesitate
on the verge of a speech, and glanced once or twice at the doors.

"Richard, I suppose you are old enough to take care of yourself, tho' you
seem still a child to me. I pray you will be careful, my boy," she said,
with something of the affection she had always borne me, "for your
grandfather's sake, I pray you will run into no more danger. I--we are
your old friends, and the only ones here to advise you."

She stopped, seemingly, to weigh the wisdom of what was to come next,
while I leaned forward with an eagerness I could not hide. Was she to
speak of the Duke of Chartersea? Alas, I was not to know. For at that
moment Dorothy came back to inquire why I was not gone to the cudgelling
at the Three Hats. I said I had been invited to stay to dinner.

"Why, I have writ a note asking Comyn," said she. "Do you think the
house will hold you both?"

His Lordship came in as we were sitting down, bursting with some news,
and he could hardly wait to congratulate Dolly on her recovery before he
delivered it.

"Why, Richard," says the dog, "what do you think some wag has done now?
They believe at Brooks's 'twas that jackanapes of a parson, Dr. Warner,
who was there yesterday with March." He drew a clipping from his pocket.
"Listen, Miss Dolly:

       "On Wednesday did a carter see
        His Grace, the Duke of Ch-rt--s-a,
        As plump and helpless as a bag,
        A-straddle of a big-boned nag.
        "Lord, Sam!" the carter loudly yelled,
        On by this wondrous sight impelled,
        "We'll run and watch this noble gander
        Master a steed, like Alexander."
        But, when the carter reached the Row,
        His Grace had left it, long ago.
        Bucephalus had leaped the green,
        The duke was in the Serpentine.
        The fervent wish of all good men
        That he may ne'er come out again!'"

Comyn's impudence took my breath, tho' the experiment interested me not
a little. My lady was pleased to laugh at the doggerel, and even Mrs.
Manners. Its effect upon Mr. Marmaduke was not so spontaneous. His
smile was half-hearted. Indeed, the little gentleman seemed to have
lost his spirits, and said so little (for him), that I was encouraged to
corner him that very evening and force him to a confession. But I might
have known he was not to be caught. It appeared almost as if he guessed
my purpose, for as soon as ever the claret was come on, he excused
himself, saying he was promised to Lady Harrington, who wanted one.

Comyn and I departed early on account of Dorothy. She had denied a dozen
who had left cards upon her.

"Egad, Richard," said my Lord, when we had got to my lodgings, "I made
him change colour, did I not? Do you know how the little fool looks to
me? 'Od's life, he looks hunted, and cursed near brought to earth. We
must fetch this thing to a point, Richard. And I am wondering what
Chartersea's next move will be," he added thoughtfully.





CHAPTER XXXIX

HOLLAND HOUSE

On the morrow, as I was setting out to dine at Brooks's, I received the
following on a torn slip of paper: "Dear Richard, we shall have a good
show to-day you may care to see." It was signed "Fox," and dated at St.
Stephen's. I lost no time in riding to Westminster, where I found a
flock of excited people in Parliament Street and in the Palace Yard. And
on climbing the wide stone steps outside and a narrower flight within I
was admitted directly into the august presence of the representatives of
the English people. They were in a most prodigious and unseemly state of
uproar.

What a place is old St. Stephen's Chapel, over St. Mary's in the Vaults,
for the great Commons of England to gather! It is scarce larger or more
imposing than our own assembly room in the Stadt House in Annapolis.
St. Stephen's measures but ten yards by thirty, with a narrow gallery
running along each side for visitors. In one of these, by the rail, I
sat down suffocated, bewildered, and deafened. And my first impression
out of the confusion was of the bewigged speaker enthroned under the
royal arms, sore put to restore order. On the table in front of him lay
the great mace of the Restoration. Three chandeliers threw down their
light upon the mob of honourable members, and I wondered what had put
them into this state of uproar.

Presently, with the help of a kind stranger on my right, who was
occasionally making shorthand notes, I got a few bearings. That was the
Treasury Bench, where Lord North sat (he was wide awake, now). And there
was the Government side. He pointed out Barrington and Weymouth and
Jerry Dyson and Sandwich, and Rigby in the court suit of purple velvet
with the sword thrust through the pocket. I took them all in, as some of
the worst enemies my country had in Britain. Then my informant seemed to
hesitate, and made bold to ask my persuasion. When I told him I was a
Whig, and an American, he begged the favour of my hand.

"There, sir," he cried excitedly, "that stout young gentleman with the
black face and eyebrows, and the blacker heart, I may say,--the one
dressed in the fantastical costume called by a French name,--is Mr.
Charles Fox. He has been sent by the devil himself, I believe, to ruin
this country. 'Ods, sir, that devil Lord Holland begot him. He is but
one and twenty, but his detestable arts have saved North's neck from
Burke and Wedderburn on two occasions this year."

"And what has happened to-day?" I asked, smiling.

The stranger smiled, too.

"Why, sir," he answered, raising his voice above the noise; "if you have
been in London any length of time, you will have read the account, with
comment, of the Duke of Grafton's speech in the Lords, signed Domitian.
Their Lordships well know it should have been over a greater signature.
This afternoon his Grace of Manchester was talking in the Upper House
about the Spanish troubles, when Lord Gower arose and desired that the
place might be cleared of strangers, lest some Castilian spy might lurk
under the gallery. That was directed against us of the press, sir, and
their Lordships knew it. 'Ad's heart, sir, there was a riot, the house
servants tumbling everybody out, and Mr. Burke and Mr. Dunning in the
boot, who were gone there on the business of this house to present a
bill. Those gentlemen are but just back, calling upon the commons to
revenge them and vindicate their honour. And my Lord North looks
troubled, as you will mark, for the matter is like to go hard against
his Majesty's friends. But hush, Mr. Burke is to speak."

The horse fell quiet to listen, and my friend began to ply his shorthand
industriously. I leaned forward with a sharp curiosity to see this great
friend of America. He was dressed in a well-worn suit of brown, and I
recall a decided Irish face, and a more decided Irish accent, which
presently I forgot under the spell of his eloquence. I have heard it
said he had many defects of delivery. He had none that day, or else I
was too little experienced to note them. Afire with indignation, he told
how the deputy black rod had hustled him like a vagabond or a thief, and
he called the House of Lords a bear garden. He was followed by Dunning,
in a still more inflammatory mood, until it seemed as if all the King's
friends in the Lower House must desert their confederates in the Upper.
No less important a retainer than Mr. Onslow moved a policy of
retaliation, and those that were left began to act like the Egyptians
when they felt the Red Sea under them. They nodded and whispered in
their consternation.

It was then that Mr. Fox got calmly up before the pack of frightened
mercenaries and argued (God save the mark!) for moderation. He had the
ear of the house in a second, and he spoke with all the confidence--this
youngster who had just reached his majority--he had used with me before
his intimates. I gaped with astonishment and admiration. The Lords,
said he, had plainly meant no insult to this honourable house, nor yet to
the honourable members. They had aimed at the common enemies of man, the
printers. And for this their heat was more than pardonable. My friend
at my side stopped his writing to swear under his breath. "Look at 'em!"
he cried; "they are turning already. He could argue Swedenborg into
popery!"

The deserters were coming back to the ranks, indeed, and North and Dyson
and Weymouth had ceased to look haggard, and were wreathed in smiles. In
vain did Mr. Burke harangue them in polished phrase. It was a language
North and Company did not understand, and cared not to learn. Their
young champion spoke the more worldly and cynical tongue of White's and
Brooks's, with its shorter sentences and absence of formality. And even
as the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose, Mr. Fox quoted history
and the classics, with plenty more that was not above the heads of the
booted and spurred country squires. And thus, for the third time, he
earned the gratitude of his gracious Majesty.

"Well, Richard," said he, slipping his arm through mine as we came out
into Parliament Street, "I promised you some sport. Have you enjoyed
it?"

I was forced to admit that I had.

"Let us to the 'Thatched House,' and have supper privately," he
suggested. "I do not feel like a company to-night." We walked on for
some time in silence. Presently he said:

"You must not leave us, Richard. You may go home to see your grandfather
die, and when you come back I will see about getting you a little borough
for what my father paid for mine. And you shall marry Dorothy, and
perchance return in ten years as governor of a principality. That is,
after we've ruined you at the club. How does that prospect sit?"

I wondered at the mood he was in, that made him choose me rather than the
adulation and applause he was sure to receive at Brooks's for the part he
had played that night. After we had satisfied our hunger,--for neither
of us had dined,--and poured out a bottle of claret, he looked up at me
quizzically.

"I have not heard you congratulate me," he said.

"Nor will you," I replied, laughing.

"I like you the better for it, Richard. 'Twas a damned poor performance,
and that's truth."

"I thought the performance remarkable," I said honestly.

"Oh, but it was not," he answered scornfully. "The moment that
dun-coloured Irishman gets up, the whole government pack begins to whine
and shiver. There are men I went to school with I fear more than Burke.
But you don't like to see the champion of America come off second best.
Is that what you're thinking?"

"No. But I was wondering why you have devoted your talents to the
devil," I said, amazed at my boldness.

He glanced at me, and half laughed again.

"You are cursed frank," said he; "damned frank."

"But you invited it."

"Yes," he replied, "so I did. Give me a man who is honest. Fill up
again," said he; "and spit out all you would like to say, Richard."

"Then," said I, "why do you waste your time and your breath in defending
a crew of political brigands and placemen, and a king who knows not the
meaning of the word gratitude, and who has no use for a man of ability?
You have honoured me with your friendship, Charles Fox, and I may take
the liberty to add that you seem to love power more than spoils. You
have originality. You are honest enough to think and act upon your own
impulses. And pardon me if I say you have very little chance on that
side of the house where you have put yourself."

"You seem to have picked up a trifle since you came into England," he
said. "A damned shrewd estimate, I'll be sworn. And for a colonial!
But, as for power," he added a little doggedly, "I have it in plenty, and
the kind I like. The King and North hate and fear me already more than
Wilkes."

"And with more cause," I replied warmly. "His Majesty perhaps knows that
you understand him better, and foresees the time when a man of your
character will give him cause to fear indeed."

He did not answer that, but called for a reckoning; and taking my arm
again, we walked out past the sleeping houses.

"Have you ever thought much of the men we have in the colonies?" I
asked.

"No," he replied; "Chatham stands for 'em, and I hate Chatham on my
father's account. That is reason enough for me."

"You should come back to America with me," I said. "And when you had
rested awhile at Carvel Hall, I would ride with you through the length of
the provinces from Massachusetts to North Carolina. You will see little
besides hard-working, self-respecting Englishmen, loyal to a king who
deserves loyalty as little as Louis of France. But with their eyes open,
and despite the course he has taken. They are men whose measure of
resolution is not guessed at."

He was silent again until we had got into Piccadilly and opposite his
lodgings.

"Are they all like you?" he demanded.

"Who?" said I. For I had forgotten my words.

"The Americans."

"The greater part feel as I do."

"I suppose you are for bed," he remarked abruptly.

"The night is not yet begun," I answered, repeating his favourite words,
and pointing at the glint of the sun on the windows.

"What do you say to a drive behind those chestnuts of mine, for a breath
of air? I have just got my new cabriolet Selwyn ordered in Paris."

Soon we were rattling over the stones in Piccadilly, wrapped in
greatcoats, for the morning wind was cold. We saw the Earl of March and
Ruglen getting out of a chair before his house, opposite the Green Park,
and he stopped swearing at the chairmen to wave at us.

"Hello, March!" Mr. Fox said affably, "you're drunk."

His Lordship smiled, bowed graciously if unsteadily to me, and did not
appear to resent the pleasantry. Then he sighed.

"What a pair of cubs it is," said he; "I wish to God I was young again.
I hear you astonished the world again last night, Charles."

We left him being assisted into his residence by a sleepy footman, paid
our toll at Hyde Park Corner, and rolled onward toward Kensington, Fox
laughing as we passed the empty park at the thought of what had so lately
occurred there. After the close night of St. Stephen's, nature seemed
doubly beautiful. The sun slanted over the water in the gardens in bars
of green and gold. The bright new leaves were on the trees, and the
morning dew had brought with it the smell of the living earth. We passed
the stream of market wagons lumbering along, pulled by sturdy, patient
farm-horses, driven by smocked countrymen, who touched their caps to the
fine gentlemen of the court end of town; who shook their heads and
exchanged deep tones over the whims of quality, unaccountable as the
weather. But one big-chested fellow arrested his salute, a scowl came
over his face, and he shouted back to the wagoner whose horses were
munching his hay:

"Hi, Jeems, keep down yere hands. Mr. Fox is noo friend of we."

This brought a hard smile on Mr. Fox's face.

"I believe, Richard," he said, "I have become more detested than any man
in Parliament."

"And justly," I replied; "for you have fought all that is good in you."

"I was mobbed once, in Parliament Street. I thought they would kill me.
Have you ever been mobbed, Richard?" he asked indifferently.

"Never, I thank Heaven," I answered fervently.

"I think I would rather be mobbed than indulge in any amusement I know
of," he continued. "Than confound Wedderburn, or drive a measure against
Burke,--which is no bad sport, my word on't. I would rather be mobbed
than have my horse win at Newmarket. There is a keen pleasure you wot
not of, my lad, in listening to Billingsgate and Spitalfields howl
maledictions upon you. And no sensation I know of is equal to that of
the moment when the mud and sticks and oranges are coming through the
windows of your coach, when the dirty weavers are clutching at your
ruffles and shaking their filthy fists under your nose."

"It is, at any rate, strictly an aristocratic pleasure," I assented,
laughing.

So we came to Holland House. Its wide fields of sprouting corn, its
woods and pastures and orchards in blossom, were smiling that morning, as
though Leviathan, the town, were not rolling onward to swallow them.
Lord Holland had bought the place from the Warwicks, with all its
associations and memories. The capped towers and quaint facades and
projecting windows were plain to be seen from where we halted in the
shaded park, and to the south was that Kensington Road we had left, over
which all the glory and royalty of England at one time or another had
rolled. Under these majestic oaks and cedars Cromwell and Ireton had
stood while the beaten Royalists lashed their horses on to Brentford.
Nor did I forget that the renowned Addison had lived here after his
unhappy marriage with Lady Warwick, and had often ridden hence to
Button's Coffee House in town, where my grandfather had had his dinner
with Dean Swift.

We sat gazing at the building, which was bathed in the early sun, at the
deer and sheep grazing in the park, at the changing colours of the young
leaves as the breeze swayed them. The market wagons had almost ceased
now, and there was little to break the stillness.

"You love the place?" I said.

He started, as though I had awakened him out of a sleep. And he was no
longer the Fox of the clubs, the cynical, the reckless. He was no longer
the best-dressed man in St. James's Street, or the aggressive youngster
of St. Stephen's.

"Love it!" he cried. "Ay, Richard, and few guess how well. You will
not laugh when I tell you that my happiest days have been passed here,
when I was but a chit, in the long room where Addison used to walk up and
down composing his Spectators: or trotting after my father through these
woods and gardens. A kinder parent does not breathe than he. Well I
remember how he tossed me in his arms under that tree when I had thrashed
another lad for speaking ill of him. He called me his knight. In all my
life he has never broken faith with me. When they were blasting down a
wall where those palings now stand, he promised me I should see it done,
and had it rebuilt and blown down again because I had missed the sight.
All he ever exacted of me was that I should treat him as an elder
brother. He had his own notion of the world I was going into, and
prepared me accordingly. He took me from Eton to Spa, where I learned
gaming instead of Greek, and gave me so much a night to risk at play."

I looked at him in astonishment. To say that I thought these relations
strange would have been a waste of words.

"To be sure," Charles continued, "I was bound to learn, and could acquire
no younger." He flicked the glossy red backs of his horses with his
whip. "You are thinking it an extraordinary education, I know," he added
rather sadly. "I hav a-told you this--God knows why! Yes, because I
like you damnably, and you would have heard worse elsewhere, both of him
and of me. I fear you have listened to the world's opinion of Lord
Holland."

Indeed, I had heard a deal of that nobleman's peculations of the public
funds. But in this he was no worse than the bulk of his colleagues.
His desertion of William Pitt I found hard to forgive.

"The best father in the world, Richard!" cried Charles. "If his former
friends could but look into his kind heart, and see him in his home,
they would not have turned their backs upon him. I do not mean such
scoundrels as Rigby. And now my father is in exile half the year in
Nice, and the other half at King's Gate. The King and Jack Bute used him
for a tool, and then cast him out. You wonder why I am of the King's
party?" said he, with something sinister in his smile; "I will tell you.
When I got my borough I cared not a fig for parties or principles. I had
only the one definite ambition, to revenge Lord Holland. Nay," he
exclaimed, stopping my protest, "I was not too young to know rottenness
as well as another. The times are rotten in England. You may have
virtue in America, amongst a people which is fresh from a struggle with
the earth and its savages. We have cursed little at home, in faith. The
King, with his barley water and rising at six, and shivering in chapel,
and his middle-class table, is rottener than the rest. The money he
saves in his damned beggarly court goes to buy men's souls. His word is
good with none. For my part I prefer a man who is drunk six days out of
the seven to one who takes his pleasure so. And I am not so great a fool
that I cannot distinguish justice from injustice. I know the wrongs of
the colonies, which you yourself have put as clear as I wish to hear,
despite Mr. Burke and his eloquence.

   [My grandfather has made a note here, which in justice should be
   added, that he was not deceived by Mr. Fox's partiality.--D. C. C.]

And perhaps, Richard," he concluded, with a last lingering look at the
old pile as he turned his horses, "perhaps some day, I shall remember
what you told us at Brooks's."

It was thus, boyishly, that Mr. Fox chose to take me into his confidence,
an honour which I shall remember with a thrill to my dying day. So did
he reveal to me the impulses of his early life, hidden forever from his
detractors. How little does the censure of this world count, which
cannot see the heart behind the embroidered waistcoat! When Charles Fox
began his career he was a thoughtless lad, but steadfast to such
principles as he had formed for himself. They were not many, but,
compared to those of the arena which he entered, they were noble. He
strove to serve his friends, to lift the name of a father from whom he
had received nothing but kindness, however misguided. And when he saw
at length the error of his ways, what a mighty blow did he strike for
the right!

"Here is a man," said Dr. Johnson, many years afterwards, "who has
divided his kingdom with Caesar; so that it was a doubt whether the
nation should be ruled by the sceptre of George the Third or the tongue
of Fox."




CHAPTER XL

VAUXHALL

Matters had come to a pretty pickle indeed. I was openly warned at
Brooks's and elsewhere to beware of the duke, who was said upon various
authority to be sulking in Hanover Square, his rage all the more
dangerous because it was smouldering. I saw Dolly only casually before
the party to Vauxhall. Needless to say, she flew in the face of Dr.
James's authority, and went everywhere. She was at Lady Bunbury's drum,
whither I had gone in another fruitless chase after Mr. Marmaduke.
Dr. Warner's verse was the laughter of the company. And, greatly to my
annoyance,--in the circumstances,--I was made a hero of, and showered
with three times as many invitations as I could accept.

The whole story got abroad, even to the awakening of the duke in Covent
Garden. And that clownish Mr. Foote, of the Haymarket, had added some
lines to a silly popular song entitled 'The Sights o' Lunnun', with which
I was hailed at Mrs. Betty's fruit-stall in St. James's Street. Here is
one of the verses:

       "In Maryland, he hunts the Fox
        From dewy Morn till Day grows dim;
        At Home he finds a Paradox,
        From Noon till Dawn the Fox hunts him."

Charles Fox laughed when he heard it. But he was serious when he came to
speak of Chartersea, and bade me look out for assassination. I had Banks
follow me abroad at night with a brace of pistols under his coat, albeit
I feared nothing save that I should not have an opportunity to meet the
duke in a fair fight. And I resolved at all hazards to run Mr. Marmaduke
down with despatch, if I had to waylay him.

Mr. Storer, who was forever giving parties, was responsible for this one
at Vauxhall. We went in three coaches, and besides Dorothy and Mr.
Marmaduke, the company included Lord and Lady Carlisle, Sir Charles and
Lady Sarah Bunbury, Lady Ossory and Lady Julia Howard, two Miss Stanleys
and Miss Poole, and Comyn, and Hare, and Price, and Fitzpatrick, the
latter feeling very glum over a sum he had dropped that afternoon to Lord
Harrington. Fox had been called to St. Stephen's on more printer's
business.

Dolly was in glowing pink, as I loved best to see her, and looked divine.
Comyn and I were in Mr. Manners's coach. The evening was fine and warm,
and my lady in very lively spirits. As we rattled over Westminster
Bridge, the music of the Vauxhall band came "throbbing through the still
night," and the sky was bright with the reflection of the lights. It was
the fashion with the quality to go late; and so eleven o'clock had struck
before we had pulled up between Vauxhall stairs, crowded with watermen
and rough mudlarks, and the very ordinary-looking house which forms the
entrance of the great garden. Leaving the servants outside, single-file
we trailed through the dark passage guarded by the wicketgate.

"Prepare to be ravished, Richard," said my lady, with fine sarcasm.

"You were yourself born in the colonies, miss," I retorted. "I confess
to a thrill, and will not pretend that I have seen such sights often
enough to be sated."

"La!" exclaimed Lady Sarah, who had overheard; "I vow this is refreshing.
Behold a new heaven and a new earth, Mr. Carvel?"

Indeed, much to the amusement of the company, I took no pains to hide my
enthusiasm at the brilliancy of the scene which burst upon me. A great
orchestra rose in the midst of a stately grove lined on all four sides
with supper-boxes of brave colours, which ran in straight tiers or swept
around in circles. These were filled with people of all sorts and
conditions, supping and making merry. Other people were sauntering under
the trees, keeping step with the music. Lamps of white and blue and red
and green hung like luminous fruit from the branches, or clustered in
stars and crescents upon the buildings.

"Why, Richard, you are as bad as Farmer Colin."

         "'O Patty! Soft in feature,
          I've been at dear Vauxhall;
          No paradise is sweeter,
          Not that they Eden call.'"

whispered Dolly, paraphrasing.

At that instant came hurrying Mr. Tom Tyers, who was one of the brothers,
proprietors of the gardens. He was a very lively young fellow who seemed
to know everybody, and he desired to know if we would walk about a little
before being shown to the boxes reserved for us.

"They are on the right side, Mr. Tyers?" demanded Mr. Storer.

"Oh, to be sure, sir. Your man was most particular to stipulate the pink
and blue flowered brocades, next the Prince of Wales's."

"But you must have the band stop that piece, Mr. Tyers," cried Lady
Sarah. "I declare, it is too much for my nerves. Let them play Dibbin's
Ephesian Matron."

"As your Ladyship wishes," responded the obliging Mr. Tyers, and sent off
an uniformed warder to the band-master.

As he led us into the Rotunda, my Lady Dolly, being in one of her
whimsical humours, began to recite in the manner of the guide-book, to
the vast diversion of our party and the honest citizens gaping at us.

"This, my lords, ladies, and gentlemen," says the minx, "is that
marvellous Rotunda commonly known as the 'umbrella,' where the music
plays on wet nights, and where we have our masquerades and ridottos.
Their Royal Highnesses are very commonly seen here on such occasions.
As you see, it is decorated with mirrors and scenes and busts, and with
gilded festoons. That picture was painted by the famous Hogarth. The
organ in the orchestra cost--you must supply the figure, Mr. Tyers,--and
the ceiling is at least two hundred feet high. Gentlemen from the
colonies and the country take notice."

By this time we were surrounded. Mr. Marmaduke was scandalized and
crushed, but Mr. Tyers, used to the vagaries of his fashionable patrons,
was wholly convulsed.

"Faith, Miss Manners, and you would consent to do this two nights more,
we should have to open another gate," he declared. Followed by the mob,
which it seems was part of the excitement, he led us out of the building
into the Grand Walk; and offered to turn on the waterfall and mill, which
(so Lady Sarah explained to me) the farmers and merchants fell down and
worshipped every night at nine, to the tinkling of bells. She told Mr.
Tyers there was diversion enough without "tin cascades." When we got to
the Grand Cross Walk he pointed out the black "Wilderness" of tall elms
and cedars looming ahead of us. And--so we came to the South Walk, with
its three triumphal arches framing a noble view of architecture at the
far end. Our gentlemen sauntered ahead, with their spy-glasses, staring
the citizens' pretty daughters out of countenance, and making cynical
remarks.

"Why, egad!" I heard Sir Charles say, "the wig-makers have no cause to
petition his Majesty for work. I'll be sworn the false hair this good
staymaker has on cost a guinea."

A remark which caused the staymaker (if such he was) such huge discomfort
that he made off with his wife in the opposite direction, to the time of
jeers and cock-crows from the bevy of Vauxhall bucks walking abreast.

"You must show us the famous 'dark walks,' Mr. Tyers," says Dorothy.

"Surely you will not care to see those, Miss Manners."

"O lud, of course you must," chimed in the Miss Stanleys; "there is no
spice in these flaps and flies."

He led us accordingly into Druid's Walk, overarched with elms, and dark
as the shades, our gentlemen singing, "'Ods! Lovers will contrive,'" in
chorus, the ladies exclaiming and drawing together. Then I felt a soft,
restraining hold on my arm, and fell back instinctively, vibrating to the
touch.

"Could you not see that I have been trying to get a word with you for
ever so long?"

"I trust you to find a way, Dolly, if you but wish," I replied, admiring
her stratagem.

"I am serious to-night." Indeed, her voice betrayed as much. How well I
recall those rich and low tones! "I said I wished you shut up in the
Marshalsea, and I meant it. I have been worrying about you."

"You make me very happy," said I; which was no lie.

"Richard, you are every bit as reckless and indifferent of danger as they
say your father was. And I am afraid--"

"Of what?" I asked quickly.

"You once mentioned a name to me--"

"Yes?" I was breathing deep.

"I have forgiven you," she said gently. "I never meant to have referred
to that incident more. You will understand whom I mean. You must know
that he is a dangerous man, and a treacherous. Oh!" she exclaimed,
"I have been in hourly terror ever since you rode against him in Hyde
Park. There! I have said it."

The tense sweetness of that moment none will ever know.

"But you have more reason to fear him than I, Dorothy."

"Hush!" she whispered, catching her breath; "what are you saying?"

"That he has more cause to fear me than I to dread him."

She came a little closer.

"You stayed in London for me, Richard. Why did you? There was no need,"
she exclaimed; "there was no need, do you hear? Oh, I shall never
forgive Comyn for his meddling! I am sure 'twas he who told you some
ridiculous story. He had no foundation for it."

"Dorothy," I demanded, my voice shaking with earnestness, "will you tell
me honestly there is no foundation for the report that the duke is
intriguing to marry you?"

That question was not answered, and regret came the instant it had left
my lips--regret and conviction both. Dorothy joined Lady Carlisle before
our absence had been noted, and began to banter Fitzpatrick upon his
losings.

We were in the lighted Grove again, and sitting down to a supper of
Vauxhall fare: transparent slices of ham (which had been a Vauxhall joke
for ages), and chickens and cheese cakes and champagne and claret, and
arrack punch. Mr. Tyers extended the concert in our favour. Mrs.
Weichsell and the beautiful Baddeley trilled sentimental ballads which
our ladies chose; and Mr. Vernon, the celebrated tenor, sang Cupid's
Recruiting Sergeant so happily that Storer sent him a bottle of
champagne. After which we amused ourselves with catches until the space
between our boxes and the orchestra was filled. In the midst of this
Comyn came quietly in from the other box and took a seat beside me.

"Chartersea is here to-night," said he.

I started. "How do you know?"

"Tyers told me he turned up half an hour since. Tom asked his Grace to
join our party," his Lordship laughed. "Duke said no--he was to be here
only half an hour, and Tom did not push him. He told me as a joke, and
thinks Chartersea came to meet some petite."

"Any one with him?" I asked.

"Yes. Tall, dark man, one eye cast,--that's Lewis. They have come on
some dirty work, Richard. Watch little Marmaduke. He has been fidgety
as a cat all night."

"That's true," said I. Looking up, I caught Dorothy's eyes upon us, her
lips parted, uneasiness and apprehension plain upon her face. Comyn
dropped his voice still lower.

"I believe she suspects something," he said, rising. "Chartersea is
gone off toward the Wilderness, so Tom says. You must not let little
Marmaduke see him. If Manners gets up to go, I will tune up Black-eked
Susan, and do you follow on some pretext. If you are not back in a
reasonable time, I'll after you."

He had been gone scant three minutes before I heard his clear voice
singing, "in the Downs", and up I got, with a precipitation far from
politic, and stepped out of the box. Our company stared in surprise.
But Dorothy rose clear from her chair. The terror I saw stamped upon her
face haunts me yet, and I heard her call my name.

I waited for nothing. Gaining the Grand Walk, I saw Mr. Marmaduke's
insignificant figure dodging fearfully among the roughs, whose hour it
was. He traversed the Cross Walk, and twenty yards farther on dived into
an opening in the high hedge bounding the Wilderness. Before he had made
six paces I had him by the shoulder, and he let out a shriek of fright
like a woman's.

"It is I, Richard Carvel, Mr. Manners," I said shortly. I could not keep
out the contempt from my tone. "I beg a word with you."

In his condition then words were impossible. His teeth rattled again,
and he trembled like a hare caught alive. I kept my hold of him, and
employed the time until he should be more composed peering into the
darkness. For all I knew Chartersea might be within ear-shot. But I
could see nothing but black trunks of trees.

"What is it, Richard?"

"You are going to meet Chartersea," I said.

He must have seen the futility of a lie, or else was scared out of all
contrivance. "Yes," he said weakly.

"You have allowed it to become the talk of London that this filthy
nobleman is blackmailing you for your daughter," I went on, without
wasting words. "Tell me, is it, or is it not, true?"

As he did not answer, I retained a handful of the grained silk on his
shoulder as a measure of precaution.

"Is this so?" I repeated.

"You must know, I suppose," he said, under his breath, and with a note of
sullenness.

"I must," I said firmly. "The knowledge is the weapon need, for I, too,
am going to meet Chartersea."

He ceased quivering all at once.

"You are going to meet him!" he cried, in another voice. "Yes, yes, it
is so,--it is so. I will tell you all."

"Keep it to yourself, Mr. Manners," I replied, with repugnance, "I have
heard all I wish. Where is he?" I demanded.

"Hold the path until you come to him. And God bless--"

I shook my head.

"No, not that! Do you go back to the company and make some excuse for
me. Do not alarm them. And if you get the chance, tell Lord Comyn where
to come."

I waited until I saw him under the lights of the Grand Walk, and fairly
running. Then I swung on my heel. I was of two minds whether to wait
for Comyn, by far the wiser course. The unthinking recklessness I had
inherited drove me on.




CHAPTER XLI

THE WILDERNESS

My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, and presently I made out a
bench ahead, with two black figures starting from it. One I should have
known on the banks of the Styx. From each came a separate oath as I
stopped abreast them, and called the duke by name.

"Mr. Carvel!" he cried; "what the devil do you here, sir?"

"I am come to keep an appointment for Mr. Manners," I said. "May I speak
to your Grace alone?"

He made a peculiar sound by sucking in his breath, meant for a sneering
laugh.

"No," says he, "damned if you shall! I have nothing in common with you,
sir. So love for Miss Manners has driven you mad, my young upstart. And
he is not the first, Lewis."

"Nor the last, by G--," says the captain.

"I have a score to settle with you, d--n you!" cried Chartersea.

"That is why I am here, your Grace," I replied; "only you have twisted
the words. There has been foul play enough. I have come to tell you,"
I cried, boiling with anger, "I have come to tell you there has been foul
play enough with a weakling that cannot protect himself, and to put an
end to your blackmail."

In the place of an oath, a hoarse laugh of derision came out of him. But
I was too angry then to note its significance. I slapped his face--nay,
boxed it so that my palm stung. I heard his sword scraping out of the
scabbard, and drew mine, stepping back to distance at the same instant.
Then, with something of a shudder, I remembered young Atwater, and a 380
brace of other instances of his villany. I looked for the captain. He
was gone.

Our blades, the duke's and mine, came together with a ring, and I felt
the strength of his wrist behind his, and of his short, powerful arm.
The steel sung with our quick changes from 'quarte' to 'tierce'. 'Twas
all by the feeling, without light to go by, and hatred between us left
little space for skill. Our lunges were furious. 'Twas not long before
I felt his point at my chest, but his reach was scant. All at once the
music swelled up voices and laughter were wafted faintly from the
pleasure world of lights beyond. But my head was filled, to the
exclusion of all else, with a hatred and fury. And (God forgive me!)
from between my teeth came a prayer that if I might kill this monster,
I would die willingly.

Suddenly, as I pressed him, he shifted ground, and there was Lewis
standing within range of my eye. His hands were nowhere--they were
behind his back! God alone knows why he had not murdered me. To keep
Chartersea between him and me I swung another quarter. The duke seemed
to see my game, struggled against it, tried to rush in under my guard,
made a vicious lunge that would have ended me then and there had he not
slipped. We were both panting like wild beasts. When next I raised my
eyes Lewis had faded into the darkness. Then I felt my head as wet as
from a plunge, the water running on my brow, and my back twitching.
Every second I thought the sting of his sword was between my ribs. But
to forsake the duke would have been the maddest of follies.

In that moment of agony came footsteps beating on the path, and by tacit
consent our swords were still. We listened.

"Richard! Richard Carvel!"

For the second time in my life I thanked Heaven for that brave and loyal
English heart. I called back, but my throat was dry and choked.

"So they are at their d--d assassins' tricks again! You need have no
fear of one murderer."

With that their steels rang out behind me, like broadswords, Lewis
wasting his breath in curses and blasphemies. I began to push Chartersea
with all my might, and the wonder of it was that we did not fight with
our fingers on each other's necks. His attacks, too, redoubled. Twice I
felt the stings of his point, once in the hand, and once in the body, but
I minded them as little as pinpricks. I was sure I had touched him, too.
I heard him blowing distressedly. The casks of wine he had drunk in his
short life were telling now, and his thrusts grew weaker. That fiercest
of all joys--of killing an enemy--was in me, when I heard a cry that rang
in my ears for many a year afterward, and the thud of a body on the
ground.

"I have done for him, your Grace," says Lewis, with an oath; and added
immediately, "I think I hear people."

Before I had reached my Lord the captain repeated this, and excitedly
begged the duke, I believe, to fly. Chartersea hissed out that he would
not move a step until he had finished me, and as I bent over the body his
point popped through my coat, and the pain shot under my shoulder. I
staggered, and fell. A second of silence ensued, when the duke said with
a laugh that was a cackle:

"He won't marry her, d--n him!" (panting). "He had me cursed near
killed, Lewis. Best give him another for luck."

I felt his heavy hand on the sword, and it tearing out of me. Next came
the single word "Dover," and they were gone. I had not lost my senses,
and was on my knees again immediately, ripping open Comyn's waistcoat
with my left hand, and murmuring his name in an agony of sorrow. I was
searching under his shirt, wet with blood, when I became aware of voices
at my side. "A duel! A murder! Call the warders! Warders, ho!"

"A surgeon!" I cried. "A surgeon first of all!"

Some one had wrenched a lamp from the Grand Walk and held it, flickering
in the wind, before his Lordship's face. Guided by its light, more
people came running through the wood, then the warders with lanthorns,
headed by Mr. Tyers, and on top of him Mr. Fitzpatrick and my Lord
Carlisle. We carried poor Jack to the house at the gate, and closed the
doors against the crowd.

By the grace of Heaven Sir Charles Blicke was walking in the gardens that
night, and, battering at the door, was admitted along with the constable
and the watch. Assisted by a young apothecary, Sir Charles washed and
dressed the wound, which was in the left groin, and to our anxious
questions replied that there was a chance of recovery.

"But you, too, are hurt, sir," he said, turning his clear eyes upon me.
Indeed, the blood had been dripping from my hand and arm during the whole
of the operation, and I began to be weak from the loss of it. By great
good fortune Chartersea's thrust, which he thought had ended my life,
passed under my armpit from behind and, stitching the skin, lodged deep
in my right nipple. This wound the surgeon bound carefully, and likewise
two smaller ones.

The constable was for carrying me to the Marshalsea. And so I was forced
to tell that I had quarrelled with Chartersea; and the watch, going out
to the scene of the fight, discovered the duke's sword which he had
pulled out of me, and Lewis's laced hat; and also a trail of blood
leading from the spot. Mr. Tyers testified that he had seen Chartersea
that night, and Lord Carlisle and Fitzpatrick to the grudge the duke bore
me. I was given my liberty.

Comyn was taken to his house in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, in Sir
Charles's coach, whither I insisted upon preceding him. 'Twas on the way
there that Fitzpatrick told me Dorothy had fainted when she heard the
alarm--a piece of news which added to my anxiety. We called up the
dowager countess, Comyn's mother, and Carlisle broke the news to her,
mercifully lightening me of a share of the blame. Her Ladyship received
the tidings with great fortitude; and instead of the torrent of
reproaches I looked for, and deserved, she implored me to go home and
care for my injuries lest I get the fever. I believe that I burst into
tears.

His Lordship was carried up the stairs with never a word or a groan from
his lips, and his heart beating out slowly.

We reached my lodgings as the watchman was crying: "Past two o'clock, and
a windy morning!"

Mr. Fitzpatrick stayed with me that night. And the next morning, save
for the soreness of the cuts I had got, I found myself well as ever. I
was again to thank the robustness of my health. Despite the protests of
Banks and Fitzpatrick, and of Mr. Fox (who arrived early, not having been
to bed at all), I jumped into a chaise and drove to Brook Street. There
I had the good fortune to get the greatest load from my mind. Comyn was
resting so much easier that the surgeon had left, and her Ladyship
retired two hours since.

The day was misting and dark, but so vast was my relief that I imagined
the sun was out as I rattled toward Arlington Street. If only Dolly were
not ill again from the shock, I should be happy indeed. She must have
heard, ere then, that I was not killed; and I had still better news to
tell her than that of Lord Comyn's condition. Mr. Fox, who got every
rumour that ran, had shouted after me that the duke and Lewis were set
out for France. How he knew I had not waited to inquire. But the report
tallied with my own surmise, for they had used the word "Dover" when they
left us for dead in the Wilderness.

I dismissed my chaise at the door.

"Mr. Manners waits on you, sir, in the drawing-room," said the footman.
"Your honour is here sooner than he looked for," he added gratuitously.

"Sooner than he looked for?"

"Yes, sir. James is gone to you but quarter of an hour since with a
message, sir."

I was puzzled.

"And Miss Manners? Is she well?"

The man smiled.

"Very well, sir, thank your honour."

To add to my surprise, Mr. Marmaduke was pacing the drawing-room in a
yellow night-gown. He met me with an expression I failed to fathom, and
then my eye was held by a letter in his hand. He cleared his throat.

"Good morning, Richard," said he, very serious,--very pompous, I thought.
"I am pleased to see that you are so well out of the deplorable affair of
last night."

I had not looked for gratitude. In truth, I had done nothing for him,
and Chartersea might have exposed him a highwayman for all I cared,--I
had fought for Dolly. But this attitude astonished me. I was about to
make a tart reply, and then thought better of it.

"Walter, a decanter of wine for Mr. Carvel," says he to the footman.
Then to me: "I am rejoiced to hear that Lord Comyn is out of danger."

I merely stared at him.

"Will you sit?" he continued. "To speak truth, the Annapolis packet
came in last night with news for you. Knowing that you have not had time
to hear from Maryland, I sent for you."

My brain was in such a state that for the moment I took no meaning from
this introduction. I was conscious only of indignation against him for
sending for me, when for all he knew I might have been unable to leave my
bed. Suddenly I jumped from the chair.

"You have heard from Maryland?" I cried. "Is Mr. Carvel dead? Oh, tell
me, is Mr. Carvel dead?" And I clutched his arm to make him wince.

He nodded, and turned away. "My dear old friend is no more," he said.
"Your grandfather passed away on the seventh of last month."

I sank into a chair and bowed my face, a flood of recollections
overwhelming me, a thousand kindnesses of my grandfather coming to mind.
One comfort alone stood forth, even had I gone home with John Paul, I had
missed him. But that he should have died alone with Grafton brought the
tears brimming to my eyes. I had thought to be there to receive his last
words and blessing, to watch over him, and to Smooth his pillow. Who had
he else in the world to bear him affection on his death-bed? The
imagination of that scene drove me mad.

Mr. Manners aroused me by a touch, and I looked up quickly. So quickly
that I surprised the trace of a smile about his weak mouth. Were I to
die to-morrow, I would swear to this on the Evangels. Nor was it the
smile which compels itself upon the weak in serious moments. Nay, there
was in it something malicious. And Mr. Manners could not even act.

"There is more, Richard," he was saying; "there is worse to come. Can
you bear it?"

His words and look roused me from my sorrow. I have ever been short of
temper with those I disliked, and (alas!) with my friends also. And now
all my pent-up wrath against this little man broke forth. I divined his
meaning, and forgot that he was Dorothy's father.

"Worse?" I shouted, while he gave back in his alarm. "Do you mean that
Grafton has got possession of the estate? Is that what you mean, sir?"

"Yes," he gasped, "yes. I pray you be calm."

"And you call that worse than losing my dearest friend on earth?"
I cried. There must have been an infinite scorn in my voice. "Then your
standards and mine are different, Mr. Manners. Your ways and mine are
different, and I thank God for it. You have played more than one double
part with me. You looked me in the face and denied me, and left me to go
to a prison. I shall not repeat my grandfather's kindnesses to you, sir.
Though you may not recall them, I do. And if your treatment of me was
known in Maryland, you would be drummed out of the colony even as Mr.
Hood was, and hung in effigy"

"As God hears me, Richard--"

"Do not add perjury to it," I said. "And have no uneasiness that I shall
publish you. Your wife and daughter have saved you before,--they will
save you now."

I paused, struck speechless by a suspicion that suddenly flashed into my
head. A glance at the contemptible form cowering within the folds of the
flowered gown clinched it to a conviction. In two strides I had seized
him by the skin over his ribs, and he shrieked with pain and fright.

"You--you snake!" I cried, in uncontrollable anger. "You well knew
Dorothy's spirit, which she has not got from you, and you lied to her.
Yes, lied, I say. To force her to marry Chartersea you made her believe
that your precious honour was in danger. And you lied to me last night,
and sent me in the dark to fight two of the most treacherous villains in
England. You wish they had killed me. The plot was between you and his
Grace. You, who have not a cat's courage, commit an indiscretion! You
never made one in your life, Tell me," I cried, shaking him until his
teeth smote together, "was it not put up between you?"

"Let me go! Let me go, and I will tell!" he wailed in the agony of my
grip. I tightened it the more.

"You shall confess it first," I said, from between my teeth.

Scarce had his lips formed the word yes, when I had flung him half across
the room. He tripped on his gown, and fell sprawling on his hands. So
the servant found us when he came back with the tray. The lackey went
out again hastily.

"My God!" I exclaimed, in bitterness and disgust; "you are a father,
and would sell both your daughter and your honour for a title, and to
the filthiest wretch in the kingdom?"

Without bestowing upon him another look, I turned on my heel and left the
room. I had set my foot on the stair, when I heard the rustle of a
dress, and the low voice which I knew so well calling my name.

"Richard."

There at my side was Dorothy, even taller in her paleness, with sorrow
and agitation in her blue eyes.

"Richard, I have heard all.--I listened. Are you going away without a
word for me?" Her breath came fast, and mine, as she laid a hand upon my
arm. "Richard, I do not care whether you are poor. What am I saying?"
she cried wildly. "Am I false to my own father? Richard, what have you
done?"

And then, while I stood dazed, she tore open her gown, and drawing forth
a little gold locket, pressed it in my palm. "The flowers you gave me on
your birthday,--the lilies of the valley, do you remember? They are
here, Richard. I have worn them upon my heart ever since."

I raised the locket to my lips.

"I shall treasure it for your sake, Dorothy," I said, "for the sake of
the old days. God keep you!"

For a moment I looked into the depths of her eyes. Then she was gone,
and I went down the stairs alone. Outside, the rain fell unheeded on my
new coat. My steps bent southward, past Whitehall, where the martyr
Charles had met death so nobly: past the stairs to the river, where she
had tripped with me so gayly not a month since. Death was in my soul
that day,--death and love, which is the mystery of life. God guided me
into the great Abbey near by, where I fell on my knees before Him and
before England's dead. He had raised them and cast them down, even as He
was casting me, that I might come to know the glory of His holy name.





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


Volume 7.


XLII.   My Friends are proven
XLIII.  Annapolis once more
XLIV.   Noblesse Oblige
XLV.   The House of Memories
XLVI.   Gordon's Pride
XLVII.  Visitors
XLVIII.  Multum in Parvo
XLIX.   Liberty loses a Friend




CHAPTER XLII

MY FRIENDS ARE PROVEN

At the door of my lodgings I was confronted by Banks, red with
indignation and fidgety from uneasiness.

"O Lord, Mr. Carvel, what has happened, sir?" he cried. "Your honour's
agent 'as been here since noon. Must I take orders from the likes o'
him, sir?"

Mr. Dix was indeed in possession of my rooms, lounging in the chair Dolly
had chosen, smoking my tobacco. I stared at him from the threshold.
Something in my appearance, or force of habit, or both brought him to his
feet, and wiped away the smirk from his face. He put down the pipe
guiltily. I told him shortly that I had heard the news which he must
have got by the packet: and that he should have his money, tho' it took
the rest of my life: and the ten per cent I had promised him provided he
would not press my Lord Comyn. He hesitated, and drummed on the table.
He was the man of business again.

"What security am I to have, Mr. Carvel?" he asked.

"My word," I said. "It has never yet been broken, I thank God, nor my
father's before me. And hark ye, Mr. Dix, you shall not be able to say
that of Grafton." Truly I thought the principal and agent were now well
matched.

"Very good, Mr. Carvel," he said; "ten per cent. I shall call with the
papers on Monday morning."

"I shall not run away before that," I replied.

He got out, with a poor attempt at a swagger, without his customary
protestations of duty and humble offers of service. And I thanked Heaven
he had not made a scene, which in my state of mind I could not have
borne, but must have laid hands upon him. Perhaps he believed Grafton
not yet secure in his title. I did not wonder then, in the heat of my
youth, that he should have accepted my honour as security. But since I
have marvelled not a little at this. The fine gentlemen at Brooks's with
whom I had been associating were none too scrupulous, and regarded
money-lenders as legitimate prey. Debts of honour they paid but tardily,
if at all. A certain nobleman had been owing my Lord Carlisle thirteen
thousand pounds for a couple of years, that his Lordship had won at
hazard. And tho' I blush to write it, Mr. Fox himself was notorious in
such matters, and was in debt to each of the coterie of fashionables of
which he was the devoted chief.

The faithful Banks vowed, with tears in his eyes, that he would never
desert me. And in that moment of dejection the poor fellow's devotion
brought me no little comfort. At such times the heart is bitter. We
look askance at our friends, and make the task of comfort doubly hard for
those that remain true. I had a great affection for the man, and had
become so used to his ways and unwearying service that I had not the
courage to refuse his prayers to go with me to America. I had not a
farthing of my own--he would serve me for nothing--nay, work for me.
"Sure," he said, taking off my coat and bringing me my gown,--"Sure, your
honour was not made to work." To cheer me he went on with some foolish
footman's gossip that there lacked not ladies with jointures who would
marry me, and be thankful. I smiled sadly.

"That was when I was Mr. Carvel's heir, Banks."

"And your face and figure, sir, and masterful ways! Faith, and what more
would a lady want!" Banks's notions of morality were vague enough, and he
would have had me sink what I had left at hazard at Almack's. He had
lived in this atmosphere. Alas! there was little chance of my ever
regaining the position I had held but yesterday. I thought of the
sponging-house, and my brow was moist. England was no place, in those
days, for fallen gentlemen. With us in the Colonies the law offered
itself. Mr. Swain, and other barristers of Annapolis, came to my mind,
for God had given me courage. I would try the law. For I had small
hopes of defeating my Uncle Grafton.

The Sunday morning dawned brightly, and the church bells ringing brought
me to my feet, and out into Piccadilly, in the forlorn hope that I might
see my lady on her way to morning service,--see her for the last time in
life, perhaps. Her locket I wore over my heart. It had lain upon hers.
To see her was the most exquisite agony in the world. But not to see
her, and to feel that she was scarce quarter of a mile away, was beyond
endurance. I stood beside an area at the entrance to Arlington Street,
and waited for an hour, quite in vain; watching every face that passed,
townsmen in their ill-fitting Sunday clothes, and fine ladies with the
footmen carrying velvet prayerbooks. And some that I knew only stared,
and others gave me distant bows from their coach windows. For those that
fall from fashion are dead to fashion.

Dorothy did not go to church that day.

It is a pleasure, my dears, when writing of that hour of bitterness, to
record the moments of sweetness which lightened it. As I climbed up to
my rooms in Dover Street, I heard merry sounds above, and a cloud of
smoke blew out of the door when I opened it.

"Here he is," cried Mr. Fox. "You see, Richard, we have not deserted you
when we can win no more of your money."

"Why, egad! the man looks as if he had had a calamity," said Mr.
Fitzpatrick.

"And there is not a Jew here," Fox continued. "Tho' it is Sunday,
the air in my Jerusalem chamber is as bad as in any crimps den in St.
Giles's. 'Slife, and I live to be forty, I shall have as many
underground avenues as his Majesty Louis the Eleventh."

"He must have a place," put in my Lord Carlisle.

"We must do something for him," said Fox, "albeit he is an American and a
Whig, and all the rest of the execrations. Thou wilt have to swallow thy
golden opinions, my buckskin, when we put thee in office."

I was too overwhelmed even to protest.

"You are not in such a cursed bad way, when all is said, Richard," said
Fitzpatrick. "Charles, when he loses a fortune, immediately borrows
another."

"If you stick to whist and quinze," said Charles, solemnly, giving me the
advice they were forever thrusting upon him, "and play with system, you
may make as much as four thousand a year, sir."

And this was how I was treated by those heathen and cynical macaronies,
Mr. Fox's friends. I may not say the same for the whole of Brooks's
Club, tho' I never darkened its doors afterwards. But I encountered my
Lord March that afternoon, and got only a blank stare in place of a bow.

Charles had collected (Heaven knows how!) the thousand pounds which he
stood in my debt, and Mr. Storer and Lord Carlisle offered to lend me as
much as I chose. I had some difficulty in refusing, and more still in
denying Charles when he pressed me to go with them to Richmond, where he
had rooms for play over Sunday.

Banks brought me the news that Lord Comyn was sitting up, and had been
asking for me that day; that he was recovering beyond belief. But I was
resolved not to go to Brook Street until the money affairs were settled
on Monday with Mr. Dix, for I knew well that his Lordship would insist
upon carrying out with the agent the contract he had so generously and
hastily made, rather than let me pay an abnormal interest.

On Monday I rose early, and went out for a bit of air before the scene
with Mr. Dix. Returning, I saw a coach with his Lordship's arms on the
panels, and there was Comyn himself in my great chair at the window,
where he had been deposited by Banks and his footman. I stared as on one
risen from the dead.

"Why, Jack, what are you doing here?" I cried.

He replied very offhand, as was his manner at such times:

"Blicke vows that Chartersea and Lewis have qualified for the College of
Surgeons," says he. "They are both born anatomists. Your job under the
arm was the worst bungle of the two, egad, for Lewis put his sword, pat
as you please, between two of my organs (cursed if I know their names),
and not so much as scratched one."

"Look you, Jack," said I, "I am not deceived. You have no right to be
here, and you know it."

"Tush!" answered his Lordship; "I am as well as you." And he took snuff
to prove the assertion. "Why the devil was you not in Brook Street
yesterday to tell me that your uncle had swindled you? I thought I was
your friend," says he, "and I learn of your misfortune through others."

"It is because you are my friend, and my best friend, that I would not
worry you when you lay next door to death on my account," I said, with
emotion.

And just then Banks announced Mr. Dix.

"Let him wait," said I, greatly disturbed.

"Show him up!" said my Lord, peremptorily.

"No, no!" I protested; "he can wait. We shall have no business now."

But Banks was gone. And I found out, long afterward, that it was put up
between them.

The agent swaggered in with that easy assurance he assumed whenever he
got the upper hand. He was the would-be squire once again, in top-boots
and a frock. I have rarely seen a man put out of countenance so easily
as was Mr. Dix that morning when he met his Lordship's fixed gaze from
the arm-chair.

"And so you are turned Jew?" says he, tapping his snuffbox. "Before
you go ahead so fast again, you will please to remember, d--n you, that
Mr. Carvel is the kind that does not lose his friends with his fortune."

Mr. Dix made a salaam, which was so ludicrous in a squire that my Lord
roared with laughter, and I feared for his wound.

"A man must live, my Lord," sputtered the agent. His discomfiture was
painful.

"At the expense of another," says Comyn, dryly. "That is your motto in
Change Alley."

"If you will permit, Jack, I must have a few words in private with Mr.
Dix," I cut in uneasily.

His Lordship would be damned first. "I am not accustomed to be thwarted,
Richard, I tell you. Ask the dowager if I have not always had my way.
I am not going to stand by and see a man who saved my life fall into the
clutches of an usurer. Yes, I said usurer, Mr. Dix. My attorney, Mr.
Kennett, of Lincoln's Inn, has instructions to settle with you."

And, despite all I could say, he would not budge an inch. At last I
submitted under the threat that he would never after have a word to say
to me. By good luck, when I had paid into Mr. Dix's hand the thousand
pounds I had received from Charles Fox, and cleared my outstanding bills,
the sum I remained in Comyn's debt was not greatly above seven hundred
pounds. And that was the end of Mr. Dix for me; when he had backed
himself out in chagrin at having lost his ten per centum, my feelings got
the better of me. The water rushed to my eyes, and I turned my back upon
his Lordship. To conceal his own emotions he fell to swearing like mad.

"Fox will get you something," he said at length, when he was a little
calmed.

I told him, sadly, that my duty took me to America.

"And Dorothy?" he said; "you will leave her?"

I related the whole miserable story (all save the part of the locket),
for I felt that I owed it him. His excitement grew as he listened, until
I had to threaten to stop to keep him quiet. But when I had done, he saw
nothing but good to come of it.

"'Od's life! Richard, lad, come here!" he cried. "Give me your hand.
Why, you ass, you have won a thousand times over what you lost. She
loves you! Did I not say so? And as for that intriguing little puppy,
her father, you have pulled his teeth, egad. She heard what you said to
him, you tell me. Then he will never deceive her again, my word on't.
And Chartersea may come back to London, and be damned."





CHAPTER XLIII

ANNAPOLIS ONCE MORE

Three days after that I was at sea, in the Norfolk packet, with the
farewells of my loyal English friends ringing in my ears. Captain
Graham, the master of the packet, and his passengers found me but a poor
companion. But they had heard of my misfortune, and vied with each other
in heaping kindnesses upon me. Nor did they intrude on my walks in the
night watches, to see me slipping a locket from under my waistcoat--ay,
and raising it to my lips. 'Twas no doubt a blessing that I had lesser
misfortunes to share my attention. God had put me in the way of looking
forward rather than behind, and I was sure that my friends in Annapolis
would help me to an honest living, and fight my cause against Grafton.

Banks was with me. The devoted soul did his best to cheer me, tho'
downcast himself at leaving England. To know what to do with him gave
me many an anxious moment. I doubted not that I could get him into a
service, but when I spoke of such a thing he burst into tears, and
demanded whether I meant to throw him off. Nor was any argument of mine
of use.

After a fair and uneventful voyage of six weeks, I beheld again my native
shores in the low spits of the Virginia capes. The sand was very hot and
white, and the waters of the Chesapeake rolled like oil under the July
sun. We were all day getting over to Yorktown, the ship's destination.
A schooner was sailing for Annapolis early the next morning, and I barely
had time to get off my baggage and catch her. We went up the bay with a
fresh wind astern, which died down at night.

The heat was terrific after England and the sea-voyage, and we slept on
the deck. And Banks sat, most of the day, exclaiming at the vast scale
on which this new country was laid out, and wondering at the myriad
islands we passed, some of them fair with grain and tobacco; and at the
low-lying shores clothed with forests, and broken by the salt marshes,
with now and then the manor-house of some gentleman-planter visible on
either side. Late on the second day I beheld again the cliffs that mark
the mouth of the Severn, then the sail-dotted roads and the roofs of
Annapolis.

We landed, Banks and I, in a pinnace from the schooner, and so full was
my heart at the sight of the old objects that I could only gulp now and
then, and utter never a word. There was the dock where I had paced up
and down near the whole night, when Dolly had sailed away; and Pryse the
coachmaker's shop, and the little balcony upon which I had stood with my
grandfather, and railed in a boyish tenor at Mr. Hood. The sun cast
sharp, black shadows. And it being the middle of the dull season, when
the quality were at their seats, and the dinner-hour besides, the town
might have been a deserted one for its stillness, as tho' the inhabitants
had walked out of it, and left it so. I made my way, Banks behind me,
into Church Street, past the "Ship" tavern, which brought memories of
the brawl there, and of Captain Clapsaddle forcing the mob, like chaff,
before his sword. The bees were humming idly over the sweet-scented
gardens, and Farris, the clock-maker, sat at his door, and nodded. He
jerked his head as I went by with a cry of "Lord, it is Mr. Richard
back!" and I must needs pause, to let him bow over my hand. Farther up
the street I came to mine host of the Coffee House standing on his steps,
with his hands behind his back.

"Mr. Claude," I said.

He looked at me as tho' I had risen from the dead.

"God save us!" he shouted, in a voice that echoed through the narrow
street. "God save us!"

He seemed to go all to pieces. To my bated questions he replied at
length, when he had got his breath, that Captain Clapsaddle had come to
town but the day before, and was even then in the coffee-room at his
dinner. Alone? Yes, alone. Almost tottering, I mounted the steps, and
turned in at the coffee-room door, and stopped. There sat the captain at
a table, the roast and wine untouched before him, his waistcoat thrown
open. He was staring out of the open window into the inn garden beyond,
with its shade of cherry trees. Mr. Claude's cry had not disturbed his
reveries, nor our talk after it. I went forward. I touched him on the
shoulder, and he sprang up, and looked once into my face, and by some
trick of the mind uttered the very words Mr. Claude had used.

"God save us! Richard!" And he opened his arms and strained me to his
great chest, calling my name again and again, while the tears coursed
down the furrows of his cheeks. For I marked the furrows for the first
time, and the wrinkles settling in his forehead and around his eyes.
What he said when he released me, nor my replies, can I remember now,
but at last he called, in his ringing voice, to mine host:

"A bottle from your choicest bin, Claude! Some of Mr. Bordley's.
For he that was lost is found."

The hundred questions I had longed to ask were forgotten. A peace stole
upon me that I had not felt since I had looked upon his face before. The
wine was brought by Mr. Claude, and opened, and it was mine host who
broke the silence, and the spell.

"Your very good health, Mr. Richard," he said; "and may you come to your
own again!"

"I drink it with all my heart, Richard," replied Captain Daniel. But he
glanced at me sadly, and his honest nature could put no hope into his
tone. "We have got him back again, Mr. Claude. And God has answered our
prayers. So let us be thankful." And he sat down in silence, gazing at
me in pity and tenderness, while Mr. Claude withdrew. "I can give you
but a sad welcome home, my lad," he said presently, with a hesitation
strange to him. "'Tis not the first bad news I have had to break in my
life to your family, but I pray it may be the last." He paused. I knew
he was thinking of the black tidings he had once brought my mother.
"Richard, your grandfather is dead," he ended abruptly.

I nodded wonderingly.

"What!" he exclaimed; "you have heard already?"

"Mr. Manners told me, in London," I said, completely mystified.

"London!" he cried, starting forward. "London and Mr. Manners! Have you
been to London?"

"You had my letters to Mr. Carvel?" I demanded, turning suddenly sick.

His eye flashed.

"Never a letter. We mourned you for dead, Richard. This is Grafton's
work!" he cried, springing to his feet and striking the table with his
great fist, so that the dishes jumped. "Grafton Carvel, the prettiest
villain in these thirteen colonies! Oh, we shall hang him some day."

"Then Mr. Carvel died without knowing that I was safe?" I interrupted.

"On that I'll lay all my worldly goods," replied Captain Daniel,
emphatically. "If any letters came to Marlboro' Street from you, Mr.
Carvel never dropped eyes on 'em."

"What a fool was I not to have written you!" I groaned.

He drew his chair around the table, and close to mine.

"Had the news that you escaped death been cried aloud in the streets, my
lad, 'twould never have got to your grandfather's ear," he said, in lower
tones. "I will tell you what happened, tho' I have it at second hand,
being in the North, as you may remember. Grafton came in from Kent and
invested Marlboro' Street. He himself broke the news to Mr. Carvel, who
took to his bed. Leiden was not in attendance, you may be sure, but that
quack-doctor Drake. Swain sent me a message, and I killed a horse
getting here from New York. But I could no more gain admittance to your
grandfather, Richard, than to King George the Third. I was met in the
hall by that crocodile, who told me with too many fair words that I
could not see my old friend; that for the present Dr. Drake denied him
everybody. Then I damned Dr. Drake, and Grafton too. And I let him know
my suspicions. He ordered me off, Richard--from that house which has
been my only home for these twenty years." His voice broke.

"Mr. Carvel thought me dead, then."

"And most mercifully. Your black Hugo, when he was somewhat recovered,
swore he had seen you killed and carried off. Sooth, they say there was
blood enough on the place. But we spared no pains to obtain a clew of
you. I went north to Boston, and Lloyd's factor south to Charleston.
But no trace of the messenger who came to the Coffee House after you
could we find. Hell had opened and swallowed him. And mark this for
consummate villany: Grafton himself spent no less than five hundred
pounds in advertising and the like."

"And he is not suspected?" I asked. This was the same question I had put
to Mrs. Manners. It caused the captain to flare up again.

"'Tis incredible how a rogue may impose upon men of worth and integrity
if he but know how to smirk piously, and never miss a service. And then
he is an exceeding rich man. Riches cover a multitude of sins in the
most virtuous community in the world. Your Aunt Caroline brought him a
pretty fortune, you know. We had ominous times this spring, with the
associations forming, and the 'Good Intent' and the rest being sent back
to England. His Excellency was at his wits' end for support. It was
Grafton Carvel who helped him most, and spent money like tobacco for the
King's cause, which, being interpreted, was for his own advancement. But
I believe Colonel Lloyd suspects him, tho' he has never said as much to
me. I have told Mr. Swain, under secrecy, what I think. He is one of
the ablest lawyers that the colony owns, Richard, and a stanch friend of
yours. He took your case of his own accord. But he says we have no
foothold as yet."

When I asked if there was a will the captain rapped out an oath.

"'Sdeath! yes," he cried, "a will in favour of Grafton and his heirs,
witnessed by Dr. Drake, they say, and another scoundrel. Your name does
not occur throughout the length and breadth of it. You were dead. But
you will have to ask Mr. Swain for those particulars. My dear old friend
was sadly gone when he wrote it, I fear. For he never lacked shrewdness
in his best days. Nor," added Captain Daniel, with force, "nor did he
want for a proper estimation of Grafton."

"He has never been the same since that first sickness," I answered sadly.

When the captain came to speak of Mr. Carvel's death, the son and
daughter he loved, and the child of his old age in the grave before him,
he proceeded brokenly, and the tears blinded him. Mr. Carvel's last
words will never be known, my dears. They sounded in the unfeeling ears
of the serpent Grafton. 'Twas said that he was seen coming out of his
father's house an hour after the demise, a smile on his face which he
strove to hide with a pucker of sorrow. But by God's grace Mr. Allen had
not read the prayers. The rector was at last removed from Annapolis, and
had obtained the fat living of Frederick which he coveted.

"As I hope for salvation," the captain concluded, "I will swear there is
not such another villain in the world as Grafton. The imagination of a
fiend alone could have conceived and brought to execution the crime he
has committed. And the Borgias were children to him. 'Twas not only the
love of money that urged him, but hatred of you and of your father. That
was his strongest motive, I believe. However, the days are coming, lad,
when he shall have his reward, unless all signs fail. And we have had
enough of sober talk," said he, pressing me to eat. "Faith, but just
now, when you came in, I was thinking of you, Richard. And--God forgive
me! complaining against the lot of my life. And thinking, now that you
were taken out of it, and your father and mother and grandfather gone,
how little I had to live for. Now you are home again," says he, his eyes
lighting on me with affection, "I count the gray hairs as nothing. Let
us have your story, and be merry. Nay, I might have guessed you had been
in London, with your fine clothes and your English servant."

'Twas a long story, as you know, my dears. He lighted his pipe and laid
his big hand over mine, and filled my glass, and I told him most of that
which had happened to me. But I left out the whole of that concerning
Mr. Manners and the Duke of Chartersea, nor did I speak of the
sponging-house. I believe my only motive for this omittance was a
reluctance to dwell upon Dorothy, and a desire to shield her father for
her sake. He dropped many a vigorous exclamation into my pauses, but
when I came to speak of my friendship with Mr. Fox, his brow clouded
over.

"'Ad's heart!" he cried, "'Ad's heart! And so you are turned Tory, and
have at last been perverted from those principles for which I loved you
most. In the old days my conscience would not allow me to advise you,
Richard, and now that I am free to speak, you are past advice."

I laughed aloud.

"And what if I tell you that I made friends with his Grace of Grafton,
and Lord Sandwich, and was invited to Hichinbroke, his Lordship's seat?"
said I.

His honest face was a picture of consternation.

"Now the good Lord deliver us!" he exclaimed fervently. "Sandwich!
Grafton! The devil!"

I gave myself over to the first real merriment I had had since I had
heard of Mr. Carvel's death.

"And when Mr. Fox learned that I had lost my fortune," I went on, "he
offered me a position under Government."

"Have you not friends enough at home to care for you, sir?" he said,
his face getting purple. "Are you Jack Carvel's son, or are you an
impostor?"

"I am Jack Carvel's son, dear Captain Daniel, and that is why I am here,"
I replied. "I am a stouter Whig than ever, and I believe I might have
converted Mr. Fox himself had I remained at home sufficiently long,"
I added, with a solemn face. And, for my own edification, I related how
I had bearded his Majesty's friends at Brooks's, whereat he gave a great,
joyful laugh, and thumped me on the back.

"You dog, Richard! You sly rogue!" And he called to Mr. Claude for
another bottle on the strength of that, and we pledged the Association.
He peppered me with questions concerning Junius, and Mr. Wilkes, and Mr.
Franklin of Philadelphia. Had I seen him in London? "I would not doubt
a Carvel's word," says the captain, "(always excepting Grafton and his
line, as usual), but you may duck me on the stool and I comprehend why
Mr. Fox and his friends took up with such a young rebel rapscallion as
you--and after the speech you made 'em."

I astonished him vastly by pointing out that Mr. Fox and his friends
cared a deal for place, and not a fig for principle; that my frankness
had entertained rather than offended them; and that, having a taste for
a bit of wild life and the money to gratify it, and being of a tolerant,
easy nature withal, I had contrived to make many friends in that set,
without aiming at influence. Whereat he gave me another lick between the
shoulders.

"It was so with Jack," he cried; "thou art a replica. He would have made
friends with the devil himself. In the French war, when all the rest of
us Royal Americans were squabbling with his Majesty's officers out of
England, and cursing them at mess, they could never be got to fight with
Jack, tho' he gave them ample provocation. There was Tetherington, of
the 22d foot,--who jeered us for damned provincials, and swaggered
through three duels in a week,--would enter no quarrel with him. I can
hear him say: 'Damn you, Carvel, you may slap my face and you will, or
walk in ahead of me at the general's dinner and you will, but I like you
too well to draw at you. I would not miss your company at table for all
the world.' And when he was killed," Captain Daniel continued, lowering
his voice, "some of them cried like women, Tetherington among 'em,--and
swore they would rather have lost their commissions at high play."

We sat talking until the summer's dusk grew on apace, and one thing this
devoted lover of my family told me, which lightened my spirits of the
greatest burden that had rested upon them since my calamity befell me.
I had dwelt at length upon my Lord Comyn, and upon the weight of his
services to me, and touched upon the sum which I stood in his debt. The
captain interrupted me.

"One day, before your mother died, she sent for me," said he, "and I came
to Carvel Hall. You were too young to remember. It was in September,
and she was sitting on the seat under the oak she loved so well,--by Dr.
Hilliard's study.

"The lace shawl your father had given her was around her shoulders, and
upon her face was the smile that gave me a pang to see. For it had
something of heaven in it, Richard. She called me 'Daniel' then for the
second time in her life. She bade me be seated beside her. 'Daniel,'
she said, 'when I am gone, and father is gone, it is you who will take
care of Richard. I sometimes believe all may not be well then, and that
he will need you.' I knew she was thinking of Grafton," said the
captain. "'I have a little money of my own, Daniel, which I have saved
lately with this in view. I give it into your charge, and if trouble
comes to him, my old friend, you will use it as you see fit.'

"It was a bit under a thousand pounds, Richard. And when she died I put
it out under Mr. Carroll's direction at safe interest. So that you have
enough to discharge your debt, and something saved against another
emergency."

He fell silent, sunk into one of those reveries which the memory of my
mother awoke in him. My own thoughts drifted across the sea. I was
again at the top of the stairs in Arlington Street, and feeling the
dearest presence in the world. The pale oval of Dorothy's face rose
before me and the troubled depths of her blue eyes. And I heard once
more the tremble in her voice as she confessed, in words of which she
took no heed, that love for which I had sought in vain.

The summer dusk was gathering. Outside, under the cherry trees, I saw
Banks holding forth to an admiring circle of negro 'ostlers. And
presently Mr. Claude came in to say that Shaw, the town carpenter, and
Sol Mogg, the ancient sexton of St. Anne's, and several more of my old
acquaintances were without, and begged the honour of greeting me.




CHAPTER XLIV

NOBLESSE OBLIGE

I lay that night in Captain Clapsaddle's lodgings opposite, and slept
soundly. Banks was on hand in the morning to assist at my toilet, and
was greatly downcast when I refused him this privilege, for the first
time. Captain Daniel was highly pleased with the honest fellow's
devotion in following me to America. To cheer him he began to question
him as to my doings in London, and the first thing of which Banks must
tell was of the riding-contest in Hyde Park, which I had omitted. It is
easy to imagine how this should have tickled the captain, who always had
my horsemanship at heart; and when it came to Chartersea's descent into
the Serpentine, I thought he would go into apoplexy. For he had put on
flesh with the years.

The news of my return had spread all over town, so that I had a deal more
handshaking to do when we went to the Coffee House for breakfast. All
the quality were in the country, of course, save only four gentlemen of
the local Patriots' committee, of which Captain Daniel was a member, and
with whom he had an appointment at ten. It was Mr. Swain who arrived
first of the four.

This old friend of my childhood was a quiet man (I may not have
specified), thin, and a little under stature, with a receding but
thoughtful forehead. But he could express as much of joy and welcome in
his face and manner as could Captain Daniel with his heartier ways.

"It does me good to see you, lad," he said, pressing my hand. "I heard
you were home, and sent off an express to Patty and the mother last
night."

"And are they not here?" I asked, with disappointment.

Mr. Swain smiled.

"I have done a rash thing since I saw you, Richard, and bought a little
plantation in Talbot, next to Singleton's. It will be my ruin," he
added. "A lawyer has no business with landed ambitions."

"A little plantation!" echoed the captain. "'Od's life, he has bought
one of his Lordship's own manors--as good an estate as there is in the
province."

"You overdo it, Daniel," said he, reprovingly.

At that moment there was a stir in the doorway, and in came Mr. Carroll,
the barrister, and Mr. Bordley and Colonel Lloyd. These gentlemen gave
me such a welcome as those warm-hearted planters and lawyers knew how to
bestow.

"What, he!" cried Mr. Lloyd, "I'm stamped and taxed if it isn't young
Richard Carvel himself. Well," says he, "I know one who will sleep
easier o' nights now,--one Clapsaddle. The gray hairs are forgot,
Daniel. We had more to-do over your disappearance than when Mr.
Worthington lost his musical nigger. Where a deuce have you been, sir?"

"He shall tell us when we come back," said Mr. Bordley. "He has brought
our worthy association to a standstill once, and now we must proceed
about our business. Will you come, Richard? I believe you have proved
yourself a sufficiently good patriot, and in this very house."

We went down Church Street, I walking behind with Colonel Lloyd, and so
proud to be in such company that I cared not a groat whether Grafton had
my acres or not. I remembered that the committee all wore plain and
sober clothes, and carried no swords. Mr. Swain alone had a wig. I had
been away but seven months, and yet here was a perceptible change. In
these dignified and determined gentlemen England had more to fear than in
all the mobs at Mr. Wilkes's back. How I wished that Charles Fox might
have been with me.

The sun beat down upon the street. The shopkeepers were gathered at
their doors, but their chattering was hushed as the dreaded committee
passed. More than one, apparently, had tasted of its discipline.
Colonel Lloyd whispered to me to keep my countenance, that they were
not after very large game that morning,--only Chipchase, the butcher.
And presently we came upon the rascal putting up his shutters in much
precipitation, although it was noon. He had shed his blood-stained smock
and breeches, and donned his Sunday best,--a white, thick-set coat,
country cloth jacket, blue broadcloth breeches, and white shirt. A
grizzled cut wig sat somewhat awry under his bearskin hat. When he
perceived Mr. Carroll at his shoulder, he dropped his shutter against the
wall, and began bowing frantically.

"You keep good hours, Master Chipchase," remarked Colonel Lloyd.

"And lose good customers," Mr. Swain added laconically.

The butcher wriggled.

"Your honours must know there be little selling when the gentry be out of
town. And I was to take a holiday to-day, to see my daughter married."

"You will have a feast, my good man?" Captain Daniel asked.

"To be sure, your honour, a feast."

"And any little ewe-lambs?" says Mr. Bordley, very innocent.

Master Chipchase turned the colour of his meat, and his wit failed him.

"'Fourthly,'" recited Mr. Carroll, with an exceeding sober face,
"'Fourthly, that we will not kill, or suffer to be killed, or sell, or
dispose to any person whom we have reason to believe intends to kill, any
ewe-lamb that shall be weaned before the first day of May, in any year
during the time aforesaid.' Have you ever heard anything of that sound,
Mr. Chipchase?"

Mr. Chipchase had. And if their honours pleased, he had a defence to
make, if their honours would but listen. And if their honours but knew,
he was as good a patriot as any in the province, and sold his wool to
Peter Psalter, and he wore the homespun in winter. Then Mr. Carroll drew
a paper from his pocket, and began to read: "Mr. Thomas Hincks,
personally known to me, deposeth and saith,--"

Master Chipchase's knees gave from under him.

"And your honours please," he cried piteously, "I killed the lamb, but
'twas at Mr. Grafton Carvel's order, who was in town with his
Excellency." (Here Mr. Swain and the captain glanced significantly at
me.) "And I lose Mr. Carvel's custom, there is twelve pounds odd gone
a year, your honours. And I am a poor man, sirs."

"Who is it owns your shop, my man?" asks Mr. Bordley, very sternly.

"Oh, I beg your honours will not have me put out--"

The wailing of his voice had drawn a crowd of idlers and brother
shopkeepers, who seemed vastly to enjoy the knave's discomfiture.
Amongst them I recognized my old acquaintance, Weld, now a rival
butcher. He pushed forward boldly.

"And your honours please," said he, "he has sold lamb to half the Tory
gentry in Annapolis."

"A lie!" cried Chipchase; "a lie, as God hears me!"

Now Captain Clapsaddle was one who carried his loves and his hatreds to
the grave, and he had never liked Weld since the day, six years gone by,
he had sent me into the Ship tavern. And when Weld heard the captain's
voice he slunk away without a word.

"Have a care, Master Weld," says he, in a quiet tone that boded no good;
"there is more evidence against you than you will like."

Master Chipchase, after being frightened almost out of his senses, was
pardoned this once by Captain Daniel's influence. We went thence to Mr.
Hildreth's shop; he was suspected of having got tea out of a South River
snow; then to Mr. Jackson's; and so on. 'Twas after two when we got back
to the Coffee House, and sat down to as good a dinner as Mr. Claude could
prepare. "And now," cried Colonel Lloyd, "we shall have your adventures,
Richard. I would that your uncle were here to listen to them," he added
dryly.

I recited them very much as I had done the night before, and I warrant
you, my dears, that they listened with more zest and eagerness than did
Mr. Walpole. But they were all shrewd men, and kept their suspicions,
if they had any, to themselves. Captain Daniel would have me omit
nothing,--my intimacy with Mr. Fox, the speech at Brooks's Club,
and the riding-match at Hyde Park.

"What say you to that, gentlemen?" he cried. "Egad, I'll be sworn he
deserves credit,--an arrant young spark out of the Colonies, scarce
turned nineteen, defeating a duke of the realm on horseback, and
preaching the gospel of 'no taxation' at Brooks's Club! Nor the favour
of Sandwich or March could turn him from his principles."

Modesty, my dears, does not permit me to picture the enthusiasm of these
good gentlemen, who bore the responsibility of the colony of Maryland
upon their shoulders. They made more of me than I deserved. In vain did
I seek to explain that if a young man was but well-born, and had a full
purse and a turn for high play, his principles might go hang, for all
Mr. Fox cared. Colonel Lloyd commanded that the famous rose punch-bowl
be filled to the brim with Mr. Claude's best summer brew, and they drank
my health and my grandfather's memory. It mattered little to them that
I was poor. They vowed I should not lose by my choice. Mr. Bordley
offered me a home, and added that I should have employment enough in the
days to come. Mr. Carroll pressed me likewise. And big-hearted Colonel
Lloyd desired to send me to King's College, as was my grandfather's wish,
where Will Fotheringay and my cousin Philip had been for a term. I might
make a barrister of myself. Mr. Swain alone was silent and thoughtful,
but I did not for an instant doubt that he would have done as much for
me.

Before we broke up for the evening the gentlemen plied me with questions
concerning the state of affairs in England, and the temper of his Majesty
and Parliament. I say without vanity that I was able to enlighten them
not a little, for I had learned a deeper lesson from the set into which
I had fallen in London than if I had become the confidant of Rockingham
himself. America was a long way from England in those days. I regretted
that I had not arrived in London in time to witness Lord Chatham's
dramatic return to politics in January, when he had completed the work
of Junius, and broken up the Grafton ministry. But I told them of the
debate I had heard in St. Stephen's, and made them laugh over Mr. Fox's
rescue of the King's friends, and the hustling of Mr. Burke from the
Lords.

They were very curious, too, about Mr. Manners; and I was put to much
ingenuity to answer their queries and not reveal my own connection with
him. They wished to know if it were true that some nobleman had flung a
bottle at his head in a rage because Dorothy would not marry him, as Dr.
Courtenay's letter had stated. I replied that it was so. I did not add
that it was the same nobleman who had been pitched into the Serpentine.
Nor did I mention the fight at Vauxhall. I made no doubt these things
would come to their ears, but I did not choose to be the one to tell
them. Mr. Swain remained after the other gentlemen, and asked me if I
would come with him to Gloucester Street; that he had something to say to
me. We went the long way thither, and I was very grateful to him for
avoiding Marlboro' Street, which must needs bring me painful
recollections. He said little on the way.

I almost expected to see Patty come tripping down from the vine-covered
porch with her needlework in her hand, and the house seemed strangely
empty without her. Mr. Swain had his negro, Romney, place chairs for us
under the apple tree, and bring out pipes and sangaree. The air was
still, and heavy with the flowers' scent, and the sun was dipping behind
the low eaves of the house. It was so natural to be there that I scarce
realized all that had happened since last I saw the back gate in the
picket fence. Alas! little Patty would never more be smuggled through it
and over the wall to Marlboro' Street. Mr. Swain recalled my thoughts.

"Captain Clapsaddle has asked me to look into this matter of the will,
Richard," he began abruptly. "Altho' we thought never to see you again,
we have hoped against hope. I fear you have little chance for your
property, my lad."

I replied that Captain Daniel had so led me to believe, and thanked him
for his kindness and his trouble.

"'Twas no trouble," he replied quickly. "Indeed, I wish it might have
been. I shall always think of your grandfather with reverence and with
sorrow. He was a noble man, and was a friend to me, in spite of my
politics, when other gentlemen of position would not invite me to their
houses. It would be the greatest happiness of my life if I could restore
his property to you, where he would have had it go, and deprive that
villain, your uncle, of the fruits of his crime."

"Then there is nothing to be got by contesting the will?" I asked.

He shook his head soberly.

"I fear not at present," said he, "nor can I with honesty hold out any
hope to you, Richard. Your uncle, by reason of his wealth, is a man of
undue influence with the powers of the colony. Even if he were not so, I
doubt greatly whether we should be the gainers. The will is undoubtedly
genuine. Mr. Carvel thought you dead, and we cannot prove undue
influence by Grafton unless we also prove that it was he who caused
your abduction. Do you think you can prove that?"

"There is one witness," I exclaimed, "who overheard my uncle and Mr.
Allen talking of South River and Griggs, the master of the slaver,
in the stables at Carvel Hall."

"And who is that?" demanded Mr. Swain, with more excitement than I
believed him capable of.

"Old Harvey."

Your grandfather's coachman? Alas, he died the day after Mr. Carvel, and
was buried the same afternoon. Have you spoken of this?"

"Not to a soul," said I.

"Then I would not. You will have to be very careful and say nothing,
Richard. Let me hear what other reasons you have for believing that your
uncle tried to do away with you."

I told him, lucidly as possible, everything I have related in these
pages, and the admission of Griggs. He listened intently, shaking his
head now and then, but not a word out of him.

"No," he said at length, "nothing is there which will be admitted, but
enough to damn him if you yourself might be a witness. I will give you
the law, briefly: descendible estates among us are of two kinds, estates
in fee simple and estates in fee tail. Had your grandfather died without
a will, his estate, which we suppose to be in fee simple, would have
descended to you as the son of his eldest son, according to the fourth of
the canons of descent in Blackstone. But with us fee simple estates are
devisable, and Mr. Carvel was wholly within his right in cutting off the
line of his eldest son. Do you follow me?"

I nodded.

"There is one chance," he continued, "and that is a very slim one.
I said that Mr. Carvel's estate was supposed to be in fee simple.
Estates tail are not devisable. Our system of registration is far from
infallible, and sometimes an old family settlement turns up to prove that
a property which has been willed out of the direct line, as in fee
simple, is in reality entailed. Is there a possibility of any such
document?"

I replied that I did not know. My grandfather had never brought up the
subject.

"We must bend our efforts in that direction," said the barrister.
"I shall have my clerks make a systematic search."

He ceased talking, and sat sipping his sangaree in the abstracted manner
common to him. I took the opportunity to ask about his family, thinking
about what Dolly had said of Patty's illness.

"The mother is as well as can be expected, Richard, and Patty very rosy
with the country air. Your disappearance was a great shock to them
both."

"And Tom?"

He went behind his reserve. "Tom is a d--d rake," he exclaimed, with
some vehemence. "I have given him over. He has taken up with that
macaroni Courtenay, who wins his money,--or rather my money,--and your
cousin Philip, when he is home from King's College. How Tom can be son
of mine is beyond me, in faith. I see him about once in two months, when
he comes here with a bill for his satins and his ruffles, and along face
of repentance, and a lot of gaming debts to involve my honour. And that
reminds me, Richard," said he, looking straight at me with his clear,
dark eyes: "have you made any plans for your future?"

I ventured to ask his advice as to entering the law.

"As the only profession open to a gentleman," he replied, smiling a
little. "No, you were no more cut out for an attorney, or a barrister,
or a judge, than was I for a macaroni doctor. The time is not far away,
my lad," he went on, seeing my shame and confusion, "when an American may
amass money in any way he chooses, and still be a gentleman, behind a
counter, if he will."

"I do not fear work, Mr. Swain," I remarked, with some pride.

"That is what I have been thinking," he said shortly. "And I am not a
man to make up my mind while you count three, Richard. I have the place
in Talbot, and no one to look after it. And--and in short I think you
are the man."

He paused to watch the effect of this upon me. But I was so taken aback
by this new act of kindness that I could not say a word.

"Tom is fast going to the devil, as I told you," he continued. "He
cannot be trusted. If I die, that estate shall be Patty's, and he may
never squander it. Captain Daniel tells me, and Mr. Bordley also, that
you managed at Carvel Hall with sense and ability. I know you are very
young, but I think I may rely upon you."

Again he hesitated, eying me fixedly.

"Ah," said he, with his quiet smile, "it is the old noblesse oblige. How
many careers has it ruined since the world began!"




CHAPTER XLV

THE HOUSE OF MEMORIES

I was greatly touched, and made Mr. Swain many awkward acknowledgments,
which he mercifully cut short. I asked him for a while to think over his
offer. This seemed to please rather than displease him. And my first
impulse on reaching the inn was to ask the captain's advice. I thought
better of it however, and at length resolved to thrash out the matter for
myself.

The next morning, as I sat reflecting, an overwhelming desire seized me
to go to Marlboro' Street. Hitherto I could not have borne the sight of
the old place. I gulped down my emotion as the gate creaked behind me,
and made my way slowly to the white seat under the big chestnut behind
the house, where my grandfather had been wont to sit reading his prints,
in the warm weather. The flowers and the hedges had grown to a certain
wildness; and the smell of the American roses carried me back-as odours
will-to long-forgotten and trivial scenes. Here I had been caned many a
day for Mr. Daaken's reports, and for earlier offences. And I recalled
my mother as she once ran out at the sound of my cries to beg me off. So
vivid was that picture that I could hear Mr. Carvel say: "He is yours,
madam, not mine. Take him!"

I started up. The house was still, the sun blistering the green paint of
the shutters. My eye was caught by those on the room that had been hers,
and which, by my grandfather's decree, had lain closed since she left it.
The image of it grew in my mind: the mahogany bed with its poppy
counterpane and creamy curtains, and the steps at the side by which she
was wont to enter it; and the 'prie-dieu', whence her soul had been
lifted up to God. And the dresser with her china and silver upon it,
covered by years of dust. For I had once stolen the key from Willis's
bunch, crept in, and crept out again, awed. That chamber would be
profaned, now, and those dear ornaments, which were mine, violated.
The imagination choked me.

I would have them. I must. Nothing easier than to pry open a door or
window in the north wing, by the ball-room. When I saw Grafton I would
tell him. Nay, I would write him that day. I was even casting about me
for an implement, when I heard a step on the gravel beside me.

I swung around, and came face to face with my uncle.

He must have perceived me. And after the first shock of my surprise had
passed, I remarked a bearing on him that I had not seen before. He was
master of the situation at last,--so it read. The realization gave him
an easier speech than ever.

"I thought I might find you here, Richard," he said, "since you were not
at the Coffee House."

He did not offer me his hand. I could only stare at him, for I had
expected anything but this.

"I came from Carvel Hall to get you," he proceeded smoothly enough.
"I heard but yesterday of your return, and some of your miraculous
adventures. Your recklessness has caused us many a trying day, Richard,
and I believe killed your grandfather. You have paid dearly, and have
made us pay dearly, for your mad frolic of fighting cut-throats on the
highroad."

The wonder was that I did not kill him on the spot. I cannot think what
possessed the man,--he must have known me better.

"My recklessness!" I shouted, fairly hoarse with anger. I paid no heed
to Mr. Swain's warning. "You d--d scoundrel!" I cried, "it was you
killed him, and you know it. When you had put me out of the way and he
was in your power, you tortured him to death. You forced him to die
alone with your sneering face, while your shrew of a wife counted cards
downstairs. Grafton Carvel, God knows you better than I, who know you
two well. And He will punish you as sure as the crack of doom."

He heard me through, giving back as I came forward, his face blanching
only a little, and wearing all the time that yellow smile which so fitted
it.

"You have finished?" says he.

"Ay, I have finished. And now you may order me from this ground you have
robbed me of. But there are some things in that house you shall not
steal, for they are mine despite you."

"Name them, Richard," he said, very sorrowful.

"The articles in my mother's room, which were hers."

"You shall have them this day," he answered.

It was his way never to lose his temper, tho' he were called by the
vilest name in the language. He must always assume this pious grief
which made me long to throttle him. He had the best of me, even now,
as he took the great key from his pocket.

"Will you look at them before you go?" he asked.

At first I was for refusing. Then I nodded. He led the way silently
around by the front; and after he had turned the lock he stepped aside
with a bow to let me pass in ahead of him. Once more I was in the
familiar hall with the stairs dividing at the back. It was cool after
the heat, and musty, and a touch of death hung in the prisoned air. We
paused for a moment on the landing, beside the high, triple-arched window
which the branches tapped on windy winter days, while Grafton took down
the bunch of keys from beside the clock. I thought of my dear
grandfather winding it every Sunday, and his ruddy face and large figure
as he stood glancing sidewise down at me. Then the sound of Grafton's
feet upon the bare steps recalled the present.

We passed Mr. Carvel's room and went down the little corridor over the
ball-room, until we came to the full-storied wing. My uncle flung open
the window and shutters opposite and gave me the key. A delicacy not
foreign to him held him where he was. Time had sealed the door, and when
at last it gave before my strength, a shower of dust quivered in the ray
of sunlight from the window. I entered reverently. I took only the
silverbound prayer-book, cast a lingering look at the old familiar
objects dimly defined, and came out and locked the door again. I said
very quietly that I would send for the things that afternoon, for my
anger was hushed by what I had seen.

We halted together on the uncovered porch in front of the house, that had
a seat set on each side of it. Marlboro' Street was still, the wide
trees which flanked it spreading their shade over walk and roadway. Not
a soul was abroad in the midday heat, and the windows of the long house
opposite were sightless.

"Richard," said my uncle, staring ahead of him, "I came to offer you a
home, and you insult me brutally, as you have done unreproved all your
life. And yet no one shall say of me that I shirk my duty. But first
I must ask you if there is aught else you desire of me."

"The black boy, Hugo, is mine," I said. I had no great love for Hugo,
save for association's sake, and I had one too many servants as it was;
but to rescue one slave from Grafton's clutches was charity.

"You shall have him," he replied, "and your chaise, and your wardrobe,
and your horses, and whatever else I have that belongs to you. As I was
saying, I will not shirk my duty. The memory of my dear father, and of
what he would have wished, will not permit me to let you go a-begging.
You shall be provided for out of the estate, despite what you have said
and done."

This was surely the quintessence of a rogue's imagination. Instinctively
I shrank from him. With a show of piety that 'turned me sick he
continued:

"Let God witness that I carry out my father's will!"

"Stop there, Grafton Carvel!" I cried; "you shall not take His name in
vain. Under this guise of holiness you and your accomplice have done the
devil's own work, and the devil will reward you."

This reference to Mr. Allen, I believe, frightened him. For a second
only did he show it.

"My--my accomplice, sir!" he stammered. And then righting himself:
"You will have to explain this, by Heaven."

"In ample time your plot shall be laid bare, and you and his Reverence
shall hang, or lie in chains."

"You threaten, Mr. Carvel?" he shouted, nearly stepping off the porch in
his excitement.

"Nay, I predict," I replied calmly. And I went down the steps and out of
the gate, he looking after me. Before I had turned the corner of
Freshwater Lane, he was in the seat, and fanning himself with his hat.

I went straight to Mr. Swain's chambers in the Circle, where I found the
good barrister and Captain Daniel in their shirt-sleeves, seated between
the windows in the back room. Mr. Swain was grave enough when he heard
of my talk with Grafton, but the captain swore I was my father's son (for
the fiftieth time since I had come back), and that a man could no more
help flying at Grafton's face than Knipe could resist his legs; or
Cynthia his back, if he went into her stall. I had scarce finished my
recital, when Mr. Renwick, the barrister's clerk, announced Mr. Tucker,
which caused Mr. Swain to let out a whistle of surprise.

"So the wind blows from that quarter, Daniel," said he. "I thought so."

Mr. Tucker proved to be the pettifogger into whose hands Grafton had put
his affairs, taking them from Mr. Dulany at Mr. Carvel's death. The man
was all in a sweat, and had hardly got in the door before he began to
talk. He had no less astonishing a proposition to make than this, which
he enunciated with much mouthing of the honour and sense of duty of Mr.
Grafton Carvel. His client offered to Mr. Richard Carvel the estate
lying in Kent County, embracing thirty-three hundred acres more or less
of arable land and woodland, with a fine new house, together with the
indented servants and negroes and other chattels thereon. Mr. Richard
Carvel would observe that in making this generous offer for the welfare
of his nephew, Mr. Tucker's client was far beyond the letter of his
obligations; wherefore Mr. Grafton Carvel made it contingent upon the
acceptance of the estate that his nephew should sign a paper renouncing
forever any claims upon the properties of the late Mr. Lionel Carvel.
This condition was so deftly rolled up in law-Latin that I did not
understand a word of it until Mr. Swain stated it very briefly in
English. His quiet laugh prodigiously disconcerted the pettifogger,
who had before been sufficiently ill at ease in the presence of the
great lawyer. Mr. Tucker blew his nose loudly to hide his confusion.

"And what say you, Richard?" said Mr. Swain, without a shade of accent in
his voice.

I bowed my head. I knew that the honest barrister had read my heart
when he spoke of noblesse oblige. That senseless pride of cast, so
deep-rooted in those born in our province, had made itself felt. To be a
factor (so I thought, for I was young) was to renounce my birth. Until
that moment of travail the doctrine of equality had seemed very pretty
to me. Your fine gentleman may talk as nobly as he pleases over his
Madeira, and yet would patronize Monsieur Rousseau if he met him; and he
takes never a thought of those who knuckle to him every day, and clean
his boots and collect his rents. But when he is tried in the fire, and
told suddenly to collect some one else's rents and curse another's
negroes, he is fainthearted for the experiment. So it was with me when
I had to meet the issue. I might take Grafton's offer, and the chance
to marry Dorothy was come again. For by industry the owner of the Kent
lands would become rich.

The room was hot, and still save for the buzzing of the flies. When I
looked up I discovered the eyes of all three upon me.

"You may tell your client, Mr. Tucker, that I refuse his offer," I said.

He got to his feet, and with the customary declaration of humble
servitude bowed himself out.

The door was scarce closed on him when the captain had me by the hands.

"What said I, Henry?" he cried. "Did I not know the lad?"

Mr. Swain did not stir from his seat. He was still gazing at me with a
curious expression. And then I saw the world in truer colour. This good
Samaritan was not only taking me into his home, but would fight for my
rights with the strong brain that had lifted him out of poverty and
obscurity. I stood, humbled before him.

"I would accept your kindness, Mr. Swain," I said, vainly trying to
steady my voice, "but I have the faithful fellow, Banks, who followed me
here from England, dependant on me, and Hugo, whom I rescued from my
uncle. I will make over the black to you and you will have him."

He rose, brushed his eyes with his shirt, and took me by the arm.
"You and the captain dine with me to-day," says he. "And as for Banks, I
think that can be arranged. Now I have an estate, I shall need a trained
butler, egad. I have some affairs to keep me in town to-day, Richard.
But we'll be off for Cordon's Pride in the morning, and I know of one
little girl will be glad to see us."

We dined out under the apple tree in Gloucester Street. And the captain
argued, in his hopeful way, that Tucker's visit betrayed a weak point in
Grafton's position. But the barrister shook his head and said that
Grafton was too shrewd a rogue to tender me an estate if he feared me.
It was Mr. Swain's opinion that the motive of my uncle was to put himself
in a good light; and perhaps, he added, there was a little revenge mixed
therein, as the Kent estate was the one Mr. Carvel had given him when he
cast him off.

A southerly wind was sending great rolls of fog before it as Mr. Swain
and I, with Banks, crossed over to Kent Island on the ferry the next
morning. We traversed the island, and were landed by the other ferry on
the soil of my native county, Queen Anne's. In due time we cantered past
Master Dingley's tavern, the sight of which gave me a sharp pang, for it
is there that the by-road turns over the bridge to Carvel Hall and Wilmot
House; and force of habit drew my reins to the right across the horse's
neck, so that I swerved into it. The barrister had no word of comment
when I overtook him again.

'Twas about two o'clock when we came to the gate Mr. Swain had erected at
the entrance to his place; the land was a little rolling, and partly
wooded, like that on the Wye. But the fields were prodigiously unkempt.
He drew up, and glanced at me.

"You will see there is much to be done with such fallows as these,"
said he. "The lessees from his Lordship were sportsmen rather than
husbandmen, and had an antipathy to a constable or a sheriff like a
rat to a boar cat. That is the curse of some of your Eastern Shore
gentlemen, especially in Dorchester," he added; "they get to be
fishmongers."

Presently we came in sight of the house, long and low, like the one in
Gloucester Street, with a new and unpainted wing just completed. That
day the mist softened its outline and blurred the trees which clustered
about it. Even as we swung into the circle of the drive a rounded and
youthful figure appeared in the doorway, gave a little cry, and stood
immovable. It was Patty, in a striped dimity gown with the sleeves
rolled up, and her face fairly shone with joy as I leaped from my horse
and took her hands.

"So you like my surprise, girl?" said her father, as he kissed her
blushing face.

For answer she tore herself away, and ran through the hall to the broad
porch in front.

"Our barrister is come, mother," we heard her exclaiming, "and whom do
you think he has brought?"

"Is it Richard?" asked the gentler voice, more hastily than usual.

I stepped out on the porch, where the invalid sat in her armchair. She
was smiling with joy, too, and she held out her wasted hands and drew me
toward her, kissing me on both cheeks.

"I thank God for His goodness," said she.

"And the boy has come to stay, mother," said her husband, as he stooped
over her.

"To stay!" cries Patty.

"Gordon's Pride is henceforth his home," replied the barrister. "And now
I can return in peace to my musty law, and know that my plantation will
be well looked after."

Patty gasped.

"Oh, I am so glad!" said she, "I could almost rejoice that his uncle
cheated him out of his property. He is to be factor of Gordon's Pride?"

"He is to be master of Gordon's Pride, my dear," says her father, smiling
and tilting her chin; "we shall have no such persons as factors here."

At that the tears forced themselves into my own eyes. I turned away, and
then I perceived for the first time the tall form of my old friend, Percy
Singleton.

"May I, too, bid you welcome, Richard," said he, in his manly way; "and
rejoice that I have got such a neighbour?"

"Thank you, Percy," I answered. I was not in a state to say much more.

"And now," exclaims Patty, "what a dinner we shall have in the prodigal's
honour! I shall make you all some of the Naples biscuit Mrs. Brice told
me of."

She flew into the house, and presently we heard her clear voice singing
in the kitchen.




CHAPTER XLVI

GORDON'S PRIDE

The years of a man's life that count the most are often those which may
be passed quickest in the story of it. And so I may hurry over the first
years I spent as Mr. Swain's factor at Gordon's Pride. The task that
came to my hand was heaven-sent.

That manor-house, I am sure, was the tidiest in all Maryland, thanks to
Patty's New England blood. She was astir with the birds of a morning,
and near the last to retire at night, and happy as the days were long.
She was ever up to her elbows in some dish, and her butter and her
biscuits were the best in the province. Little she cared to work
samplers, or peacocks in pretty wools, tho' in some way she found the
time to learn the spinet. As the troubles with the mother country
thickened, she took to a foot-wheel, and often in the crisp autumn
evenings I would hear the bumping of it as I walked to the house, and
turn the knob to come upon her spinning by the twilight. She would have
no English-made linen in that household. "If mine scratch your back,
Richard," she would say, "you must grin and bear, and console yourself
with your virtue." It was I saw to the flax, and learned from Ivie
Rawlinson (who had come to us from Carvel Hall) the best manner to ripple
and break and swingle it. And Mr. Swain, in imitation of the high
example set by Mr. Bordley, had buildings put up for wheels and the
looms, and in due time kept his own sheep.

If man or woman, white or black, fell sick on the place, it was Patty
herself who tended them. She knew the virtue of every herb in the big
chest in the storeroom. And at table she presided over her father's
guests with a womanliness that won her more admiration than mine. Now
that the barrister was become a man of weight, the house was as crowded
as ever was Carvel Hall. Carrolls and Pacas and Dulanys and Johnsons,
and Lloyds and Bordleys and Brices and Scotts and Jennings and Ridouts,
and Colonel Sharpe, who remained in the province, and many more families
of prominence which I have not space to mention, all came to Gordon's
Pride. Some of these, as their names proclaim, were of the King's side;
but the bulk of Mr. Swain's company were stanch patriots, and toasted
Miss Patty instead of his Majesty. By this I do not mean that they
lacked loyalty, for it is a matter of note that our colony loved King
George.

I must not omit from the list above the name of my good friend, Captain
Clapsaddle.

Nor was there lack of younger company. Betty Tayloe, who plied me with
questions concerning Dorothy and London, but especially about the dashing
and handsome Lord Comyn; and the Dulany girls, and I know not how many
others. Will Fotheringay, when he was home from college, and Archie
Brice, and Francis Willard (whose father was now in the Assembly) and
half a dozen more to court Patty, who would not so much as look at them.
And when I twitted her with this she would redden and reply: "I was
created for a housewife, sir, and not to make eyes from behind a fan."
Indeed, she was at her prettiest and best in the dimity frock, with the
sleeves rolled up.

'Twas a very merry place, the manor of Gordon's Pride. A generous bowl
of punch always stood in the cool hall, through which the south winds
swept from off the water, and fruit and sangaree and lemonade were on the
table there. The manor had no ball-room, but the negro fiddlers played
in the big parlour. And the young folks danced till supper time. In
three months Patty's suppers grew famous in a colony where there was no
lack of good cooks.

The sweet-natured invalid enjoyed these festivities in her quiet way,
and often pressed me to partake. So did Patty beg me, and Mr. Swain.
Perhaps a false sense of pride restrained me, but my duties held me all
day in the field, and often into the night when there was curing to be
done, or some other matters of necessity. And for the rest, I thought
I detected a change in the tone of Mr. Fotheringay, and some others, tho'
it may have been due to sensibility on my part. I would put up with no
patronage.

There was no change of tone, at least, with the elder gentlemen. They
plainly showed me an added respect. And so I fell into the habit, after
my work was over, of joining them in their suppers rather than the sons
and daughters. There I was made right welcome. The serious conversation
spiced with the wit of trained barristers and men of affairs better
suited my changed condition of life. The times were sober, and for those
who could see, a black cloud was on each horizon. 'Twas only a matter of
months when the thunder-clap was to come-indeed, enough was going on
within our own province to forebode a revolution. The Assembly to which
many of these gentlemen belonged was in a righteous state of opposition
to the Proprietary and the Council concerning the emoluments of colonial
officers and of clergymen. Honest Governor Eden had the misfortune to
see the justice of our side, and was driven into a seventh state by his
attempts to square his conscience. Bitter controversies were waging in
the Gazette, and names were called and duels fought weekly. For our
cause "The First Citizen" led the van, and the able arguments and
moderate language of his letters soon identified him as Mr. Charles
Carroll of Carrollton, one of the greatest men Maryland has ever known.
But even at Mr. Swain's, amongst his few intimate friends, Mr. Carroll
could never be got to admit his 'nom de guerre' until long after
'Antilon' had been beaten.

I write it with pride, that at these suppers I was sometimes asked to
speak; and, having been but lately to England, to give my opinion upon
the state of affairs there. Mr. Carroll honoured me upon two occasions
with his confidence, and I was made clerk to a little club they had, and
kept the minutes in my own hand.

I went about in homespun, which, if good enough for Mr. Bordley, was good
enough for me. I rode with him over the estate. This gentleman was the
most accomplished and scientific farmer we had in the province. Having
inherited his plantation on Wye Island, near Carvel Hall, he resigned his
duties as judge, and a lucrative practice, to turn all his energies to
the cultivation of the soil. His wheat was as eagerly sought after as
was Colonel Washington's tobacco.

It was to Mr. Bordley's counsel that the greater part of my success was
due. He taught me the folly of ploughing with a fluke,--a custom to
which the Eastern Shore was wedded, pointing out that a double surface
was thus exposed to the sun's rays; and explained at length why there was
more profit in small grain in that district than heavy tobacco. He gave
me Dr. Eliot's "Essays on Field Husbandry," and Mill's "Husby," which I
read from cover to cover. And I went from time to time to visit him at
Wye Island, when he would canter with me over that magnificent
plantation, and show me with pride the finished outcome of his
experiments.

Mr. Swain's affairs kept him in town the greater part of the twelve
months, and Mrs. Swain and Patty moved to Annapolis in the autumn. But
for three years I was at Cordon's Pride winter and summer alike. At the
end of that time I was fortunate enough to show my employer such
substantial results as to earn his commendation--ay, and his confidence,
which was the highest token of that man's esteem. The moneys of the
estate he left entirely at my order. And in the spring of '73, when the
opportunity was suddenly offered to buy a thousand acres of excellent
wheat land adjoining, I made the purchase for him while he was at
Williamsburg, and upon my own responsibility.

This connected the plantation on the east with Singleton's. It had been
my secret hope that the two estates might one day be joined in marriage.
For of all those who came a-courting Patty, Percy was by far the best.
He was but a diffident suitor; he would sit with me on the lawn evening
after evening, when company was there, while Fotheringay and Francis
Willard made their compliments within,--silly flatteries, at which Patty
laughed.

Percy kept his hounds, and many a run we had together' in the sparkling
days that followed the busy summer, when the crops were safe in the
bottoms; or a quiet pipe and bottle in his bachelor's hall, after a
soaking on the duck points.

And this brings me to a subject on which I am loth to write. Where Mr.
Singleton was concerned, Patty, the kindest of creatures, was cruelty
itself. Once, when I had the effrontery to venture a word in his behalf,
I had been silenced so effectively as to make my ears tingle. A thousand
little signs led me to a conclusion which pained me more than I can
express. Heaven is my witness that no baser feeling leads me to hint of
it here. Every day while the garden lasted flowers were in my room, and
it was Banks who told me that she would allow no other hands than her own
to place them by my bed. He got a round rating from me for violating the
pledge of secrecy he had given her. It was Patty who made my shirts, and
on Christmas knitted me something of comfort; who stood on the
horse-block in the early morning waving after me as I rode away, and
at my coming her eyes would kindle with a light not to be mistaken.

None of these things were lost upon Percy Singleton, and I often wondered
why he did not hate me. He was of the kind that never shows a hurt.
Force of habit still sent him to Gordon's Pride, but for days he would
have nothing to say to the mistress of it, or she to him.




CHAPTER XLVII

VISITORS

It was not often that Mr. Thomas Swain honoured Gordon's Pride with his
presence. He vowed that the sober Whig company his father brought there
gave him the vapours. He snapped his fingers at the articles of the
Patriots' Association, and still had his cocked hats and his Brussels
lace and his spyglass, and his top boots when he rode abroad, like any
other Tory buck. His intimates were all of the King's side,--of the
worst of the King's side, I should say, for I would not be thought to
cast any slur on the great number of conscientious men of that party.
But, being the son of one of the main props of the Whigs, Mr. Tom went
unpunished for his father's sake. He was not uncondemned.

Up to 1774, the times that Mr. Swain mentioned his son to me might be
counted on the fingers of one hand. It took not a great deal of
shrewdness to guess that he had paid out many a pretty sum to keep Tom's
honour bright: as bright, at least, as such doubtful metal would polish.
Tho' the barrister sought my ear in many matters, I never heard a whimper
out of him on this score.

Master Tom had no ambition beyond that of being a macaroni; his
easy-going nature led him to avoid alike trouble and responsibility.
Hence he did not bother his head concerning my position. He appeared
well content that I should make money out of the plantation for him to
spend. His visits to Gordon's Pride were generally in the late autumn,
and he brought his own company with him. I recall vividly his third or
fourth appearance, in October of '73. Well I may! The family was
preparing to go to town, and this year I was to follow them, and take
from Mr. Swain's shoulders some of his private business, for he had been
ailing a little of late from overwork.

The day of which I have spoken a storm had set in, the rain falling in
sheets. I had been in the saddle since breakfast, seeing to an hundred
repairs that had to be made before the cold weather. 'Twas near the
middle of the afternoon when I pulled up before the weaving house. The
looms were still, and Patty met me at the door with a grave look, which I
knew portended something. But her first words were of my comfort.

"Richard, will you ever learn sense? You have been wet all day long,
and have missed your dinner. Go at once and change your clothes, sir!"
she commanded severely.

"I have first to look at the warehouse, where the roof is leaking," I
expostulated.

"You shall do no such thing," replied she, "but dry yourself, and march
into the dining room. We have had the ducks you shot yesterday, and some
of your experimental hominy; but they are all gone."

I knew well she had laid aside for me some dainty, as was her habit.
I dismounted. She gave me a quick, troubled glance, and said in a low
voice:

"Tom is come. And oh, I dare not tell you whom he has with him now!"

"Courtenay?" I asked.

"Yes, of coarse. I hate the sight of the man. But your cousin, Philip
Carvel, is here, Richard. Father will be very angry. And they are
making a drinking-tavern of the house."

I gave Firefly a slap that sent her trotting stable-ward, and walked
rapidly to the house. I found the three of them drinking in the hall,
the punch spilled over the table, and staining the cards.

"Gad's life!" cries Tom, "here comes Puritan Richard, in his broad rim.
How goes the crop, Richard? 'Twill have to go well, egad, for I lost an
hundred at the South River Club last week!"

Next him sat Philip, whom I had not seen since before I was carried off.
He was lately come home from King's College; and very mysteriously, his
father giving out that his health was not all it should be. He had not
gained Grafton's height, but he was broader, and his face had something
in it of his father. He had his mother's under lip and complexion.
Grafton was sallow; Philip was a peculiar pink,--not the ruddy pink of
heartier natures, like my grandfather's, nor yet had he the peach-like
skin of Mr. Dix. Philip's was a darker and more solid colour, and I have
never seen man or woman with it and not mistrusted them. He wore a red
velvet coat embroidered with gold, and as costly ruffles as I had ever
seen in London. But for all this my cousin had a coarse look, and his
polished blue flints of eyes were those of a coarse man.

He got to his feet as Tom spoke, looking anywhere but at me, and came
forward slowly. He was loyal to no one, was Philip, not even to his
father. When he was got within three paces he halted.

"How do you, cousin?" says he.

"A little wet, as you perceive, Philip," I replied.

I left him and stood before the fire, my rough wool steaming in the heat.
He sat down again, a little awkwardly; and the situation began to please
me better.

"How do you?" I asked presently.

"I have got a devilish cold," said he. "Faith, I'll warrant the doctor
will be sworn I have been but indifferent company since we left the Hall.
Eh, doctor?"

Courtenay, with his feet stretched out, bestowed an amiable but languid
wink upon me, as much as to say that I knew what Mr. Philip's company was
at best. When I came out after my dinner, they were still sitting there,
Courtenay yawning, and Tom and Philip wrangling over last night's play.

"Come, my man of affairs, join us a hand!" says the doctor to me.
"I have known the time when you would sit from noon until supper."

"I had money then," said I.

"And you have a little now, or I am cursed badly mistook. Oons! what do
you fear?" he exclaimed, "you that have played with March and Fox?"

"I fear nothing, doctor," I answered, smiling. "But a man must have a
sorry honour when he will win fifty pounds with but ten of capital."

"One of Dr. Franklin's maxims, I presume," says he, with sarcasm.

"And if it were, it could scarce be more pat," I retorted. "'Tis Poor
Richard's maxim."

"O lud! O my soul!" cries Tom, with a hiccup and a snigger; "'tis time
you made another grand tour, Courtenay. Here's the second Whig has got
in on you within the week!"

"Thank God they have not got me down to osnabrig and bumbo yet," replies
the doctor. Coming over to me by the fire, he tapped my sleeve and added
in a low tone: "Forbearance with such a pair of asses is enough to make a
man shed bitter tears. But a little of it is necessary to keep out of
debt. You and I will play together, against both the lambs, Richard.
One of them is not far from maudlin now."

"Thank you, doctor," I answered politely, "but I have a better way to
make my living." In three years I had learned a little to control my
temper.

He shrugged his thin shoulders. "Eh bien, mon bon," says he, "I dare
swear you know your own game better than do I." And he cast a look up
the stairs, of which I quite missed the meaning. Indeed, I was wholly
indifferent. The doctor and his like had passed out of my life, and I
believed they were soon to disappear from our Western Hemisphere. The
report I had heard was now confirmed, that his fortune was dissipated,
and that he lived entirely off these young rakes who aspired to be
macaronies.

"Since your factor is become a damned Lutheran, Tom," said he, returning
to the table and stripping a pack, "it will have to be picquet. You
promised me we could count on a fourth, or I had never left Inman's."

It was Tom, as I had feared, who sat down unsteadily opposite. Philip
lounged and watched them sulkily, snuffing and wheezing and dipping into
the bowl, and cursing the house for a draughty barn. I took a pipe on
the settle to see what would come of it. I was not surprised that
Courtenay lost at first, and that Tom drank the most of the punch. Nor
was it above half an hour before the stakes were raised and the tide
began to turn in the doctor's favour.

"A plague of you, Courtenay!" cries Mr. Tom, at length, flinging down the
cards. His voice was thick, while the Selwyn of Annapolis was never
soberer in his life. Tom appealed first to Philip for the twenty pounds
he owed him.

"You know how damned stingy my father is, curse you," whined my cousin,
in return. "I told you I should not have it till the first of the
month."

Tom swore back. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and sank into
that attitude of dejection common to drunkards. Suddenly he pulled
himself up.

"'Shblood! Here's Richard t' draw from. Lemme have fifty pounds,
Richard."

"Not a farthing," I said, unmoved.

"You say wha' shall be done with my father's money!" he cried. "I call
tha' damned cool--Gad's life! I do. Eh, Courtenay?"

Courtenay had the sense not to interfere.

"I'll have you dishcharged, Gads death! so I will!" he shouted. "No
damned airs wi' me, Mr. Carvel. I'll have you know you're not wha' you
once were, but, only a cursht oversheer."

He struggled to his feet, forgot his wrath on the instant, and began to
sing drunkenly the words of a ribald air. I took him by both shoulders
and pushed him back into his chair.

"Be quiet," I said sternly; "while your mother and sister are here you
shall not insult them with such a song." He ceased, astonished. "And as
for you, gentlemen," I continued, "you should know better than to make a
place of resort out of a gentleman's house."

Courtenay's voice broke the silence that followed.

"Of all the cursed impertinences I ever saw, egad!" he drawled. "Is
this your manor, Mr. Carvel? Or have you a seat in Kent?"

I would not have it in black and white that I am an advocate of fighting.
But a that moment I was in the mood when it does not matter much one way
or the other. The drunken man carried us past the point.

"The damned in--intriguing rogue'sh worked himself into my father's
grashes," he said, counting out his words. "He'sh no more Whig than me.
I know'sh game, Courtenay--he wants t' marry Patty. Thish place'll be
hers."

The effect upon me of these words, with all their hideous implication of
gossip and scandal, was for an instant benumbing. The interpretation of
the doctor's innuendo struck me then. I was starting forward, with a
hand open to clap over Tom's mouth, when I saw the laugh die on
Courtenay's face, and him come bowing to his legs. I turned with a
start.

On the stairs stood Patty herself, pale as marble.

"Come with me, Tom," she said.

He had obeyed her from childhood. This time he tried, and failed
miserably.

"Beg pardon, Patty," he stammered, "no offensh meant. Thish factor
thinks h' ownsh Gordon's now. I say, not'll h' marries you. Good
fellow, Richard, but infernal forward. Eh, Courtenay?"

Philip turned away, while the doctor pretended to examine the silver
punch-ladle. As for me, I could only stare. It was Patty who kept her
head, and made us a stately curtsey.

"Will you do me the kindness, gentlemen," said she, "to leave me with my
brother?"

We walked silently into the parlour, and I closed the door.

"Slife!" cried Courtenay, "she's a vision. What say you, Philip? And I
might see her in that guise again, egad, I would forgive Tom his five
hundred crowns!"

"A buxom vision," agreed my cousin, "but I vow I like 'em so." He had
forgotten his cold.

"This conversation is all of a piece with the rest of your conduct," said
I, hotly.

The candles were burning brightly in the sconces. The doctor walked to
the glass, took snuff, and burnished his waistcoat before he answered.

"Sure, a fortune lies under every virtue we assume," he recited. "But
she is not for you, Richard," says he, tapping his box.

"Mr. Carvel, if you please," I replied. I felt the demon within me. But
I had the sense to realize that a quarrel with Dr. Courtenay, under the
circumstances, would be far from wise. He had no intention of
quarrelling, however. He made me a grand bow.

"Mr. Carvel, your very obedient. Hereafter I shall know better than to
forget myself with an overseer." And he gave me his back. "What say you
to a game of billiards, Philip?"

Philip seemed glad to escape. And soon I heard their voices, mingling
with the click of the balls. There followed for me one of the bitterest
half hours I have had in my life. Then Patty opened the hall door.

"Will you come in for a moment, Richard?" she said, quite calmly.

I followed her, wondering at the masterful spirit she had shown. For
there was Tom all askew in his chair, his feet one way and his hands
another, totally subdued. What was most to the point, he made me an
elaborate apology. How she had sobered his mind I know not. His body
was as helpless as the day he was born.

Long before the guests thought of rising the next morning, Patty came to
me as I was having the mare saddled. The sun was up, and the clouds were
being chased, like miscreants who have played their prank, and were now
running for it. The sharp air brought the red into her cheeks. And for
the first time in her life with me she showed shyness. She glanced up
into my face, and then down at the leaves running on the ground.

"I hope they will go to-day," said she, when I was ready to mount.

I began to tighten the girths, venting my feelings on Firefly until the
animal swung around and made a vicious pass at my arm.

"Richard!"

"Yes."

"You will not worry over that senseless speech of Tom's?"

"I see it in a properer light now, Patty," I replied. "I usually do--in
the morning."

She sighed.

"You are so--high-strung," she said, "I was afraid you would--"

"I would--?"

She did not answer until I had repeated.

"I was very silly," she said slowly, her colour mounting even higher,"
I was afraid that you would--leave us." Stroking the mare's neck, and
with a little halt in her voice, "I do not know what we should do
without you."

Indeed, I was beginning to think I would better leave, though where I
should go was more than I could say. With a quick intuition she caught
my hand as I put foot in the stirrup.

"You will not go away!" she cried. "Say you will not! What would poor
father do? He is not so well as he used to be."

The wild appeal in her eyes frightened me. It was beyond resisting. In
great agitation I put my foot to the ground again.

"Patty, I should be a graceless scamp in truth," I exclaimed. "I do not
forget that your father gave me a home when mine was taken away, and has
made me one of his family. I shall thank God if I can but lighten some
of his burdens."

But they did not depart that day, nor the next; nor, indeed, for a week
after. For Philip's cold brought on a high fever. He stuck to his bed,
and Patty herself made broth and dainties for him, and prescribed him
medicine out of the oak chest whence had come so much comfort. At first
Philip thought he would die, and forswore wine and cards, and some other
things the taste for which he had cultivated, and likewise worse vices
that had come to him by nature.

I am greatly pleased to write that the stay profited the gallant Dr.
Courtenay nothing. Patty's mature beauty and her manner of carrying off
the episode in the hall had made a deep impression upon the Censor. I
read the man's mind in his eye; here was a match to mend his fortunes,
and do him credit besides. However, his wit and his languishing glances
and double meanings fell on barren ground. No tire-woman on the
plantation was busier than Patty during the first few days of his stay.
After that he grew sulky and vented his spleen on poor Tom, winning more
money from him at billiards and picquet. Since the doctor was too much
the macaroni to ride to hounds and to shoot ducks, time began to hang
exceeding heavy on his hands.

Patty and I had many a quiet laugh over his predicament. And, to add
zest to the situation, I informed Singleton of what was going forward.
He came over every night for supper, and to my delight the bluff
Englishman was received in a fashion to make the doctor writhe and snort
with mortification. Never in his life had he been so insignificant a
person. And he, whose conversation was so sought after in the gay season
in town, was thrown for companionship upon a scarce-grown boy whose talk
was about as salted, and whose intellect as great, as those of the
cockerouse in our fable. He stood it about a se'nnight, at the end of
which space Philip was put on his horse, will-he-nill-he, and made to
ride northward.

I sat with my cousin of an evening as he lay in bed. Not, I own, from
any charity on my part, but from other motives which do me no credit.
The first night he confessed his sins, and they edified me not a little.
On the second he was well enough to sit up and swear, and to vow that
Miss Swain was an angel; that he would marry her the very next week and
his father Grafton were not such a stickler for family.

"Curse him," says his dutiful and loyal son, "he is so bally stingy with
my stipend that I am in debt to half the province. And I say it myself,
Richard, he has been a blackguard to you, tho' I allow him some little
excuse. You were faring better now, my dear cousin, and you had not
given him every reason to hate you. For I have heard him declare more
than once 'pon my soul, I have--that he would rather you were his friend
than his enemy."

My contempt for Philip kept me silent here. I might quarrel with
Grafton, who had sense enough to feel pain at a well deserved thrust.
Philip had not the intelligence to recognize insult from compliment. It
was but natural he should mistake my attitude now. He leaned forward in
his bed.

"Hark you, Richard," whispers he, with a glance at the door, "I might
tell you some things and I chose, and--and it were worth my while."

"Worth your while?" I repeated vaguely.

He traced nervously the figures on the counterpane. Next came a rush of
anger to redden his face.

"By Gad, I will tell you. Swear to Gad I will." Then, the little
cunning inherited from his father asserting itself, he added, "Look you,
Richard, I am the son of one of the richest men in the colony, and I get
the pittance of a backwoods pastor. I tell you 'tis not to be borne
with. And I am not of as much consideration at the Hall as Brady, the
Irish convict, who has become overseer."

I little wondered at this. Philip sank back, and for some moments eyed
me between narrowed lids. He continued presently with shortened breath:

"I have evidence--I have evidence to get you back a good share of the
estate, which my father will never miss. And I will do it," he cries,
suddenly bold, "I will do it for three thousand pounds down when you
receive it."

This was why he had come with Tom to Talbot! I was so dumfounded that my
speech was quite taken away. Then I got up and began pacing the room.
Was it not fair to fight a scoundrel with his own weapons? Here at last
was the witness Mr. Swain had been seeking so long, come of his own free
will. Then--Heaven help me!--my mind flew on. As time had passed I had
more than once regretted refusing the Kent plantation, which had put her
from whom my thought never wandered within my reach again. Good Mr.
Swain had erred for once. 'Twas foolish, indeed, not to accept a portion
of what was rightfully mine, when no more could be got. And now, if what
Philip said was true (and I doubted it not), here at last was the chance
come again to win her without whom I should never be happy. I glanced at
my cousin.

"Gad's life!" says he, "it is cheap enough. I might have asked you
double."

"So you might, and have been refused," I cried hotly. For I believe that
speech of his recalled me to my senses. It has ever been an instinct
with me that no real prosperity comes out of double-dealing. And
commerce with such a sneak sickened me. "Go back to your father,
Philip, and threaten him, and he may make you rich. Such as he live by
blackmail. And you may add, and you will, that the day of retribution
is coming for him."




CHAPTER XLVIII

MULTUM IN PARVO

I lost no time after getting to Annapolis in confiding to Mr. Swain the
conversation I had had with my cousin Philip. And I noticed, as he sat
listening to my account in the library in Gloucester Street, that the
barrister looked very worn. He had never been a strong man, and the
severe strain he had been under with the patriots' business was beginning
to tell.

He was very thoughtful when I had finished, and then told me briefly that
I had done well not to take the offer. "Tucker would have made but short
work of such evidence, my lad," said he, "and I think Master Philip would
have lied himself in and out a dozen times. I cannot think what witness
he would have introduced save Mr. Allen. And there is scarcely a doubt
that your uncle pays him for his silence, for I am told he is living in
Frederick in a manner far above what he gets from the parish. However,
Philip has given us something more to work on. It may be that he can put
hands on the messenger."

I rose to go.

"We shall bring them to earth yet, Richard, and I live," he added. "And
I have always meant to ask you whether you ever regretted your decision
in taking Gordon's Pride."

"And you live, sir!" I exclaimed, not heeding the question.

He smiled somewhat sadly.

"Of one thing I am sure, my lad," he continued, "which is that I have had
no regrets about taking you. Mr. Bordley has just been here, and tells
me you are the ablest young man in the province. You see that more eyes
than mine are upon you. You have proved yourself a man, Richard, and
there are very few macaronies would have done as you did. I am resolved
to add another little mite to your salary."

The "little mite" was of such a substantial nature that I protested
strongly against it. I thought of Tom's demands upon him.

"I could afford to give you double for what you have made off the place,"
he interrupted. "But I do not believe in young men having too much." He
sighed, and turned to his work.

I hesitated. "You have spent time and labour upon my case, sir, and have
asked no fee."

"I shall speak of the fee when I win it," he said dryly, "and not before.
How would you like to be clerk this winter to the Committee of
Correspondence?"

I suppose my pleasure was expressed in my face.

"Well," said he, "I have got you the appointment without much difficulty.
There are many ways in which you can be useful to the party when not
helping me with my affairs."

This conversation gave me food for reflection during a week. I was
troubled about Mr. Swain, and what he had said as to not living kept
running in my head as I wrote or figured. For I had enough to hold me
busy.

In the meantime, the clouds fast gathering on both sides of the Atlantic
grew blacker, and blacker still. I saw a great change in Annapolis. Men
of affairs went about with grave faces, while gay and sober alike were
touched by the spell. The Tory gentry, to be sure, rattled about in
their gilded mahogany coaches, in spite of jeers and sour looks. My Aunt
Caroline wore jewelled stomachers to the assemblies,--now become dry and
shrivelled entertainments. She kept her hairdresser, had three men in
livery to her chair, and a little negro in Turk's costume to wait on her.
I often met her in the streets, and took a fierce joy in staring her, in
the eye. And Grafton! By a sort of fate I was continually running
against him. He was a very busy man, was my uncle, and had a kind of
dignified run, which he used between Marlboro' Street and the Council
Chamber in the Stadt House, or the Governor's mansion. He never did me
the honour to glance at me. The Rev. Mr. Allen, too, came a-visiting
from Frederick, where he had grown stout as an alderman upon the living
and its perquisites and Grafton's additional bounty. The gossips were
busy with his doings, for he had his travelling-coach and servant now.
He went to the Tory balls with my aunt. Once I all but encountered him
on the Circle, but he ran into Northeast Street to avoid me.

Yes, that was the winter when the wise foresaw the inevitable, and the
first sharp split occurred between men who had been brothers. The old
order of things had plainly passed, and I was truly thankful that my
grandfather had not lived to witness those scenes. The greater part of
our gentry stood firm for America's rights, and they had behind them the
best lawyers in America. After the lawyers came the small planters and
most of the mechanics. The shopkeepers formed the backbone of King
George's adherents; the Tory gentry, the clergy, and those holding office
under the proprietor made the rest.

And it was all about tea, a word which, since '67, had been steadily
becoming the most vexed in the language. The East India Company had put
forth a complaint. They had Heaven knows how many tons getting stale in
London warehouses, all by reason of our stubbornness, and so it was
enacted that all tea paying the small American tax should have a rebate
of the English duties. That was truly a master-stroke, for Parliament to
give it us cheaper than it could be had at home! To cause his Majesty's
government to lose revenues for the sake of being able to say they had
caught and taxed us at last! The happy result is now history, my dears.
And this is not a history, tho' I wish it were. What occurred at Boston,
at Philadelphia, and Charleston, has since caused Englishmen, as well as
Americans, to feel proud. The chief incident in Annapolis I shall
mention in another chapter.

When it became known with us that several cargoes were on their way to
the colonies, excitement and indignation gained a pitch not reached since
the Stamp Act. Business came to a standstill, plantations lay idle, and
gentry and farmers flocked to Annapolis, and held meetings and made
resolutions anew. On my way of a morning from Mr. Swain's house to his
chambers in the Circle I would meet as many as a dozen knots of people.
Mr. Claude was one of the few patriots who reaped reward out of the
disturbance, for his inn was crowded. The Assembly met, appointed
committees to correspond with the other colonies, and was prorogued once
and again. Many a night I sat up until the small hours copying out
letters to the committees of Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and
Massachusetts. The gentlemen were wont to dine at the Coffee House,
and I would sit near the foot of the table, taking notes of their plans.
'Twas so I met many men of distinction from the other colonies. Colonel
Washington came once. He was grown a greater man than ever, and I
thought him graver than when I had last seen him. I believe a trait of
this gentleman was never to forget a face.

"How do you, Richard?" said he. How I reddened when he called me so
before all the committee. "I have heard your story, and it does you vast
credit. And the gentlemen tell me you are earning laurels, sir."

That first winter of the tea troubles was cold and wet with us, and the
sun, as if in sympathy with the times, rarely showed his face. Early in
February our apprehensions concerning Mr. Swain's health were realized.
One day, without a word to any one, he went to his bed, where Patty found
him. And I ran all the way to Dr. Leiden's. The doctor looked at him,
felt his pulse and his chest, and said nothing. But he did not rest that
night, nor did Patty or I.

Thus I came to have to do with the good barrister's private affairs. I
knew that he was a rich man, as riches went in our province, but I had
never tried to guess at his estate. I confess the sums he had paid out
in Tom's behalf frightened me. With the advice of Mr. Bordley and Mr.
Lloyd I managed his money as best I could, but by reason of the
non-importation resolutions there was little chance for good investments,
--no cargoes coming and few going. I saw, indeed, that buying the Talbot
estate had been a fortunate step, since the quantities of wheat we grew
there might be disposed of in America.

When Dr. Leiden was still coming twice a day to Gloucester Street, Mr.
Tom must needs get into a scrape with one of the ladies of the theatre,
and come to me in the Circle chambers for one hundred pounds. I told
him, in despair, that I had no authority to pay out his father's money.
"And so you have become master, sure enough!" he cried, in a passion.
For he was desperate. "You have worked your way in vastly well, egad,
with your Whig committee meetings and speeches. And now he is on his
back, and you have possession, you choose to cut me off. 'Slife, I know
what will be coming next!"

I pulled him into Mr. Swain's private room, where we would be free of the
clerks. "Yes, I am master here," I replied, sadly enough, as he stood
sullenly before me. "I should think you would be ashamed to own it.
When I came to your father I was content to be overseer in Talbot, and
thankful for his bounty. 'Tis no fault of mine, but your disgrace, that
his son is not managing his business, and supporting him in the rights of
his country. I am not very old, Tom. A year older than you, I believe.
But I have seen enough of life to prophesy your end and you do not
reform."

"We are turned preacher," he says, with a sneer.

"God forbid! But I have been in a sponging-house, and tasted the lowest
dregs. And if this country becomes free, as I think it will some day,
such as you will be driven to England, and die in the Fleet."

"Not while my father lives," retorts he, and throws aside the oiled silk
cape with a London name upon it. The day was rainy. I groaned. My
responsibility lay heavy upon me. And this was not my first scene with
him. He continued doggedly:--"You have no right to deny me what is not
yours. 'Twill be mine one day."

"You have no right to accuse me of thoughts that do not occur to men of
honour," I replied. "I am slower to anger than I once was, but I give
you warning now. Do you know that you will ruin your father in another
year and you continue?"

He gave me no answer. I reached for the ledger, and turning the pages,
called off to him the sums he had spent.

"Oh, have done, d--n it!" he cried, when I was not a third through.
"Are you or are you not to give me the money?"

"And you are to spend it upon an actress?" I should have called her by
a worse name.

"Actress!" he shouted. "Have you seen her in The Orphan? My soul, she
is a divinity!" Then he shifted suddenly to whining and cringing.
"I am ruined outright, Richard, if I do not get it."

Abjectly he confessed the situation, which had in it enough material for
a scandal to set the town wagging for a month. And the weight of it
would fall; as I well knew, upon those who deserved it least.

"I will lend you the money, or, rather, will pay it for you," I said, at
last. For I was not so foolish as to put it into his hands. "You shall
have the sum under certain conditions."

He agreed to them before they were out of my mouth, and swore in a dozen
ways that he would repay me every farthing. He was heartily tired of the
creature, and, true to his nature, afraid of her. That night when the
play was over I went to her lodging, and after a scene too distressing to
dwell upon, bought her off.

I sat with Mr. Swain many an hour that spring, with Patty sewing at the
window open to the garden. Often, as we talked, unnoticed by her father
she would drop her work and the tears glisten in her eyes. For the
barrister's voice was not as strong as it once was, and the cold would
not seem to lift from his chest. So this able man, who might have sat in
the seats of Maryland's high reward, was stricken when he was needed
most.

He was permitted two visitors a day: now 'twas Mr. Carroll and Colonel
Lloyd, again Colonel Tilghman and Captain Clapsaddle, or Mr. Yaca and Mr.
Bordley. The gentlemen took turns, and never was their business so
pressing that they missed their hour. Mr. Swain read all the prints, and
in his easier days would dictate to me his views for the committee,
or a letter signed Brutes for Mr. Green to put in the Gazette. So I
became his mouthpiece at the meetings, and learned to formulate my
thoughts and to speak clearly.

For fear of confusing this narrative, my dears, I have referred but
little to her who was in my thoughts night and day, and whose locket I
wore, throughout all those years, next my heart. I used to sit out under
the stars at Gordon's Pride, with the river lapping at my feet, and
picture her the shining centre of all the brilliant scenes I had left,
and wonder if she still thought of me.

Nor have I mentioned that faithful correspondent, and more faithful
friend, Lord Comyn. As soon as ever I had obtained from Captain Daniel
my mother's little inheritance, I sent off the debt I owed his Lordship.
'Twas a year before I got him to receive it; he despatched the money back
once, saying that I had more need of it than he. I smiled at this, for
my Lord was never within his income, and I made no doubt he had signed a
note to cover my indebtedness.

Every letter Comyn writ me was nine parts Dolly, and the rest of his
sheet usually taken up with Mr. Fox and his calamities: these had fallen
upon him very thick of late. Lord Holland had been forced to pay out a
hundred thousand pounds for Charles, and even this enormous sum did not
entirely free Mr. Fox from the discounters and the hounds. The reason
for this sudden onslaught was the birth of a boy to his brother Stephen,
who was heir to the title. "When they told Charles of it," Comyn wrote,
"said he, coolly: 'My brother Ste's son is a second Messiah, born for the
destruction of the Jews.'"

I saw no definite signs, as yet, of the conversion of this prodigy, which
I so earnestly hoped for. He had quarrelled with North, lost his place
on the Admiralty, and presently the King had made him a Lord of the
Treasury, tho' more out of fear than love. Once in a while, when he saw
Comyn at Almack's, he would desire to be remembered to me, and he always
spoke of me with affection. But he could be got to write to no one, said
my Lord, with kind exaggeration; nor will he receive letters, for fear he
may get a dun.

Alas, I got no message from Dorothy! Nor had she ever mentioned my name
to Comyn. He had not seen her for eight months after I left England, as
she had been taken to the Continent for her health. She came back to
London more ravishing than before, and (I use his Lordship's somewhat
extravagant language) her suffering had stamped upon her face even more
of character and power. She had lost much of her levity, likewise. In
short, my Lord declared, she was more of the queen than ever, and the
mystery which hung over the Vauxhall duel had served only to add to her
fame.

Dorothy having become cognizant of Mr. Marmaduke's trickery, Chartersea
seemed to have dropped out of the race. He now spent his time very
evenly between Spa and Derresley and Paris. Hence I had so much to be
thankful for,--that with all my blunders, I had saved her from his Grace.
My Lord the Marquis of Wells was now most conspicuous amongst her
suitors. Comyn had nothing particular against this nobleman, saying that
he was a good fellow, with a pretty fortune. And here is a letter, my
dears, in which he figures, that I brought to Cordon's Pride that spring:

                  "10 SOUTH PARADE, BATH,
                    "March 12, 1774.

   "DEAR RICHARD:--Miss Manners has come to Bath, with a train behind
   her longer than that which followed good Queen Anne hither, when she
   made this Gehenna the fashion. Her triumphal entry last Wednesday
   was announced by such a peal of the abbey bells as must have cracked
   the metal (for they have not rung since) and started Beau Nash
   a-cursing where he lies under the floor. Next came her serenade by
   the band. Mr. Marmaduke swore they would never have done, and
   squirmed and grinned like Punch when he thought of the fee, for he
   had hoped to get off with a crown, I warrant you. You should have
   seen his face when they would accept no fee at all for the beauty!
   Some wag has writ a verse about it, which was printed, and has set
   the whole pump-room laughing this morning.

   "She was led out by Wells in the Seasons last night. As Spring she
   is too bewildering for my pen,--all primrose and white, with the
   flowers in her blue-black hair. Had Sir Joshua seen her, he would
   never rest content till he should have another portrait. The Duc de
   Lauzun, who contrived to get two dances, might give you a
   description in a more suitable language than English. And there was
   a prodigious deal of jealousy among the fair ones on the benches,
   you may be sure, and much jaundiced comment.

   "Some half dozen of us adorers have a mess at the Bear, and have
   offered up a prize for the most appropriate toast on the beauty.
   This is in competition with Mrs. Miller. Have you not heard of her
   among your tobacco-hills? Horry calls her Mrs. 'Calliope' Miller.
   At her place near here, Bath Easton Villa, she has set up a Roman
   vase bedecked with myrtle, and into this we drop our bouts-rimes.
   Mrs. Calliope has a ball every Thursday, when the victors are
   crowned. T'other day the theme was 'A Buttered Muffin,' and her
   Grace of Northumberland was graciously awarded the prize. In faith,
   that theme taxed our wits at the Bear,--how to weave Miss Dolly's
   charms into a verse on a buttered muffin. I shall not tire you with
   mine. Storer's deserved to win, and we whisper that Mrs. Calliope
   ruled it out through spite. 'When Phyllis eats,' so it began, and I
   vow 'twas devilish ingenious.

   "We do nothing but play lasquenet and tennis, and go to the
   assembly, and follow Miss Dolly into Gill's, the pastry-cook's,
   where she goes every morning to take a jelly. The ubiquitous Wells
   does not give us much chance. He writes 'vers de societe' with the
   rest, is high in Mr. Marmaduke's favour, which alone is enough to
   damn his progress. I think she is ill of the sight of him.

   "Albeit she does not mourn herself into a tree, I'll take oath your
   Phyllis is true to you, Richard, and would live with you gladly in a
   thatched hut and you asked her. Write me more news of yourself.

                  "Your ever affectionate
                         "COMYN


   "P.S. I have had news of you through Mr. Worthington, of your
   colony, who is just arrived here. He tells me that you
   have gained a vast reputation for your plantation, and likewise that
   you are thought much of by the Whig wiseacres, and that you hold
   many seditious offices. He does not call them so. Since your
   modesty will not permit you to write me any of these things, I have
   been imagining you driving slaves with a rawhide, and seeding
   runaway convicts to the mines. Mr. W. is even now paying his
   respects to Miss Manners, and I doubt not trumpeting your praises
   there, for he seems to like you. So I have asked him to join the
   Bear mess. One more unfortunate!

   "P.S. I was near forgetting the news about Charles Fox. He sends
   you his love, and tells me to let you know that he has been turned
   out of North's house for good and all. He is sure you will be
   cursed happy over it, and says that you predicted he would go over
   to the Whigs. I can scarce believe that he will. North took a
   whole week to screw up His courage, h-s M-j-sty pricking him every
   day. And then he wrote this:

   "'Sir, his Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission of
   the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name.' Poor
   Charles! He is now without money or place, but as usual appears to
   worry least of all of us, and still reads his damned Tasso for
   amusement.
                       "C."

Perchance he was to be the Saint Paul of English politics, after all.




CHAPTER XLIX

LIBERTY LOSES A FRIEND

Mr. Bordley's sloop took Mr. Swain to Gordon's Pride in May, and placed
him in the big room overlooking the widening river. There he would lie
all day long, staring through the leaves at the water, or listening to
the sweet music of his daughter's voice as she read from the pompous
prints of the time. Gentlemen continued to come to the plantation,
for the barrister's wisdom was sorely missed at the councils. One day,
as I rode in from the field, I found Colonel Lloyd just arrived from
Philadelphia, sipping sangaree on the lawn and mopping himself with his
handkerchief. His jolly face was troubled. He waved his hand at me.

"Well, Richard," says he, "we children are to have our first whipping.
At least one of us. And the rest are resolved to defy our parent."

"Boston, Mr. Lloyd?" I asked.

"Yes, Boston," he replied; "her port is closed, and we are forbid any
intercourse with her until she comes to her senses. And her citizens
must receive his gracious Majesty's troopers into their houses. And if
a man kill one of them by any chance, he is to go to England to be tried.
And there is more quite as bad."

"'Tis bad enough!" I cried, flinging myself down. And Patty gave me a
glass in silence.

"Ay, but you must hear all," said he; "our masters are of a mind to do
the thing thoroughly. Canada is given some score of privileges. Her
French Roman Catholics, whom we fought not long since, are thrown a sop,
and those vast territories between the lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi
are given to Quebec as a price for her fidelity. And so, if the worst
comes to worst, George's regiments will have a place to land against us."

Such was the news, and though we were some hundreds of miles from
Massachusetts, we felt their cause as our own. There was no need
of the appeal which came by smoking horses from Philadelphia, for the
indignation of our people was roused to the highest pitch. Now Mr. Swain
had to take to his bed from the excitement.

This is not a history, my dears, as I have said. And time is growing
short. I shall pass over that dreary summer of '74. It required no very
keen eye to see the breakers ahead, and Mr. Bordley's advice to provide
against seven years of famine did not go unheeded. War was the last
thing we desired. We should have been satisfied with so little, we
colonies! And would have voted the duties ten times over had our rights
been respected. Should any of you doubt this, you have but to read the
"Address to the King" of our Congress, then sitting in Philadelphia. The
quarrel was so petty, and so easy of mending, that you of this generation
may wonder why it was allowed to run. I have tried to tell you that the
head of a stubborn, selfish, and wilful monarch blocked the way to
reconciliation. King George the Third is alone to blame for that hatred
of race against race which already hath done so much evil. And I pray
God that a great historian may arise whose pen will reveal the truth,
and reconcile at length those who are, and should be, brothers.

By October, that most beautiful month of all the year in Maryland, we
were again in Annapolis: One balmy day 'twas a Friday, I believe, and a
gold and blue haze hung over the Severn--Mr. Chase called in Gloucester
Street to give the barrister news of the Congress, which he had lately
left. As he came down the stairs he paused for a word with me in the
library, and remarked sadly upon Mr. Swain's condition. "He looks like
a dying man, Richard," said he, "and we can ill afford to lose him."

Even as we sat talking in subdued tones, the noise of a distant commotion
arose. We had scarce started to our feet, Mr. Chase and I, when the
brass knocker resounded, and Mr. Hammond was let in. His wig was awry,
and his face was flushed.

"I thought to find you here," he said to Mr. Chase. "The Anne Arundel
Committee is to meet at once, and we desire to have you with us."
Perceiving our blank faces, he added: "The 'Peggy Stewart' is in this
morning with over a ton of tea aboard, consigned to the Williams's."

The two jumped into a chaise, and I followed afoot, stopped at every
corner by some excited acquaintance; so that I had the whole story, and
more, ere I reached Church Street. The way was blocked before the
committee rooms, and 'twas said that the merchants, Messrs. Williams,
and Captain Jackson of the brig, were within, pleading their cause.

Presently the news leaked abroad that Mr. Anthony Stewart, the brig's
owner, had himself paid the duty on the detested plant. Some hundreds
of people were elbowing each other in the street, for the most part quiet
and anxious, until Mr. Hammond appeared and whispered to a man at the
door. In all my life before I had never heard the hum of an angry crowd.
The sound had something ominous in it, like the first meanings of a wind
that is to break off great trees at their trunks. Then some one shouted:
"To Hanover Street! To Hanover Street! We'll have him tarred and
feathered before the sun is down!" The voice sounded strangely like
Weld's. They charged at this cry like a herd of mad buffalo, the weaker
ones trampled under foot or thrust against the wall. The windows of Mr.
Aikman's shop were shattered. I ran with the leaders, my stature and
strength standing me in good stead more than once, and as we twisted into
Northwest Street I took a glance at the mob behind me, and great was my
anxiety at not being able to descry one responsible person.

Mr. Stewart's house stood, and stands to-day, amid trim gardens, in plain
sight of the Severn. Arriving there, the crowd massed in front of it,
some of the boldest pressing in at the gate and spreading over the circle
of lawn enclosed by the driveway. They began to shout hoarsely, with
what voices they had left, for Mr. Stewart to come out, calling him names
not to be spoken, and swearing they would show him how traitors were to
be served. I understood then the terror of numbers, and shuddered. A
chandler, a bold and violent man, whose leather was covered with grease,
already had his foot on the steps, when the frightened servants slammed
the door in his face, and closed the lower windows. In vain I strained
my eyes for some one who might have authority with them. They began to
pick up stones, though none were thrown.

Suddenly a figure appeared at an upper window,--a thin and wasted woman
dressed in white, with sad, sweet features. It was Mrs. Stewart.
Without flinching she looked down upon the upturned faces; but a mob of
that kind has no pity. Their leaders were the worst class in our
province, being mostly convicts who had served their terms of indenture.
They continued to call sullenly for "the traitor." Then the house door
opened, and the master himself appeared. He was pale and nervous, and
no wonder; and his voice shook as he strove to make himself heard. His
words were drowned immediately by shouts of "Seize him! Seize the d--d
traitor!" "A pot and a coat of hot tar!"

Those who were nearest started forward, and I with them. With me 'twas
the decision of an instant. I beat the chandler up the steps, and took
stand in front of the merchant, and I called out to them to fall back.

To my astonishment they halted. The skirts of the crowd were now come to
the foot of the little porch. I faced them with my hand on Mr. Stewart's
arm, without a thought of what to do next, and expecting violence. There
was a second's hush. Then some one cried out:

"Three cheers for Richard Carvel!"

They gave them with a will that dumfounded me.

"My friends," said I, when I had got my wits, "this is neither the
justice nor the moderation for which our province is noted. You have
elected your committee of your free wills, and they have claims before
you."

"Ay, ay, the committee!" they shouted. "Mr. Carvel is right. Take him
to the Committee!"

Mr. Stewart raised his hand.

"My friends," he began, as I had done, "when you have learned the
truth, you will not be so hasty to blame me for an offence of which I am
innocent. The tea was not for me. The brig was in a leaky and dangerous
state and had fifty souls aboard her. I paid the duty out of humanity--"

He had come so far, when they stopped him.

"Oh, a vile Tory!" they shouted. "He is conniving with the Council.
'Twas put up between them." And they followed this with another volley
of hard names, until I feared that his chance was gone.

"You would best go before the Committee, Mr. Stewart," I said.

"I will go with Mr. Carvel, my friends," he cried at once. And he
invited me into the house whilst he ordered his coach. I preferred to
remain outside.

I asked them if they would trust me with Mr. Stewart to Church Street.

"Yes, yes, Mr. Carvel, we know you," said several. "He has good cause to
hate Tories," called another, with a laugh. I knew the voice.

"For shame, Weld," I cried. And I saw McNeir, who was a stanch friend of
mine, give him a cuff to send him spinning.

To my vast satisfaction they melted away, save only a few of the idlest
spirits, who hung about the gate, and cheered as we drove off. Mr.
Stewart was very nervous, and profuse in his gratitude. I replied that
I had acted only as would have any other responsible citizen. On the way
he told me enough of his case to convince me that there was much to be
said on his side, but I thought it the better part of wisdom not to
commit myself. The street in front of the committee rooms was empty, and
I was informed that a town meeting had been called immediately at the
theatre in West Street. And I advised Mr. Stewart to attend. But
through anxiety or anger, or both, he was determined not to go, and drove
back to his house without me.

I had got as far as St. Anne's, halfway to the theatre, when it suddenly
struck me that Mr. Swain must be waiting for news. With a twinge I
remembered what Mr. Chase had said about the barrister's condition, and I
hurried back to Gloucester Street, much to the surprise of those I met on
their way to the meeting. I was greatly relieved, when I arrived, to
find Patty on the porch. I knew she had never been there were her father
worse. After a word with her and her mother, I went up the stairs.

It was the hour for the barrister's nap. But he was awake, lying back
on the pillows, with his eyes half closed. He was looking out into the
garden, which was part orchard, now beginning to shrivel and to brown
with the first touch of frosts.

"That is you, Richard?" he inquired, without moving. "What is going
forward to-day?"

I toned down the news, so as not to excite him, and left out the
occurrence in Hanover Street. He listened with his accustomed interest,
but when I had done he asked no questions, and lay for a long time
silent. Then he begged me to bring my chair nearer.

"Richard,--my son," said he, with an evident effort, "I have never
thanked you for your devotion to me and mine through the best years of
your life. It shall not go unrewarded, my lad."

It seemed as if my heart stood still with the presage of what was to
come.

"May God reward you, sir!" I said.

"I have wished to speak to you," he continued, "and I may not have
another chance. I have arranged with Mr. Carroll, the barrister, to take
your cause against your uncle, so that you will lose nothing when I am
gone. And you will see, in my table in the library, that I have left my
property in your hands, with every confidence in your integrity, and
ability to care for my family, even as I should have done."

I could not speak at once. A lump rose in my throat, for I had come to
look upon him as a father. His honest dealings, his charity, of which
the world knew nothing, and his plain and unassuming ways had inspired
in me a kind of worship. I answered, as steadily as I might:

"I believe I am too inexperienced for such a responsibility, Mr. Swain.
Would it not be better that Mr. Bordley or Mr. Lloyd should act?"

"No, no," he said; "I am not a man to do things unadvisedly, or to let
affection get the better of my judgment, where others dear to me are
concerned. I know you, Richard Carvel. Scarce an action of yours has
escaped my eye, though I have said nothing. You have been through the
fire, and are of the kind which comes out untouched. You will have Judge
Bordley's advice, and Mr. Carroll's. And they are too busy with the
affairs of the province to be burdened as my executors. But," he added a
little more strongly, "if what I fear is coming, Mr. Bordley will take
the trust in your absence. If we have war, Richard, you will not be
content to remain at home, nor would I wish it."

I did not reply.

"You will do what I ask?" he said.

"I would refuse you nothing, Mr. Swain," I answered. "But I have heavy
misgivings."

He sighed. "And now, if it were not for Tom, I might die content," he
said.

If it were not for Tom! The full burden of the trust began to dawn upon
me then. Presently I heard him speaking, but in so low a voice that I
hardly caught the words.

"In our youth, Richard," he was saying, "the wrath of the Almighty is
but so many words to most of us. When I was little more than a lad, I
committed a sin of which I tremble now to think. And I was the fool to
imagine, when I amended my life, that God had forgotten. His punishment
is no heavier than I deserve. But He alone knows what He has made me
suffer."

I felt that I had no right to be there.

"That is why I have paid Tom's debts," he continued; "I cannot cast off
my son. I have reasoned, implored, and appealed in vain. He is like
Reuben,--his resolutions melt in an hour. And I have pondered day and
night what is to be done for him."

"Is he to have his portion?" I asked. Indeed, the thought of the
responsibility of Tom Swain overwhelmed me.

"Yes, he is to have it," cried Mr. Swain, with a violence to bring on a
fit of coughing. "Were I to leave it in trust for a time, he would have
it mortgaged within a year. He is to have his portion, but not a penny
additional."

He lay for a long time breathing deeply, I watching him. Then, as he
reached out and took my hand, I knew by some instinct what was to come.
I summoned all my self-command to meet his eye. I knew that the
malicious and unthinking gossip of the town had reached him, and
that he had received it in the simple faith of his hopes.

"One thing more, my lad," he said, "the dearest wish of all--that you
will marry Patty. She is a good girl, Richard. And I have thought,"
he added with hesitation, "I have thought that she loves you, though her
lips have never opened on that subject."

So the blow fell. I turned away, for to save my life the words would not
come. He missed the reason of my silence.

"I understand and honour your scruples," he went on. His kindness was
like a knife.

"No, I have had none, Mr. Swain," I exclaimed. For I would not be
thought a hypocrite.

There I stopped. A light step sounded in the hall, and Patty came in
upon us. Her colour at once betrayed her understanding. To my infinite
relief her father dropped my fingers, and asked cheerily if there was any
news from the town meeting.

On the following Wednesday, with her flag flying and her sails set, the
Peggy Stewart was run ashore on Windmill Point. She rose, a sacrifice to
Liberty, in smoke to heaven, before the assembled patriots of our city.

That very night a dear friend to Liberty passed away. He failed so
suddenly that Patty had no time to call for aid, and when the mother had
been carried in, his spirit was flown. We laid him high on the hill
above the creek, in the new lot he had bought and fenced around. The
stone remains:

                HERE LIETH

            HENRY SWAIN, BARRISTER.
            BORN MAY 13, 1730 (O.S.);
             DIED OCTOBER 19, 1774.
           Fidus Amicis atque Patrice.

The simple inscription, which speaks volumes to those who knew him, was
cut after the Revolution. He was buried with the honours of a statesman,
which he would have been had God spared him to serve the New Country
which was born so soon after his death.





RICHARD CARVEL

By Winston Churchill


Volume 8.


L.    Farewell to Gordon's
LI.    How an Idle Prophecy came to pass
LII.   How the Gardener's Son fought the Serapis
LIII.   In which I make Some Discoveries
LIV.   More Discoveries.
LV.    The Love of a Maid for a Man
LVI.   How Good came out of Evil
LVII.   I come to my Own again



CHAPTER L

FAREWELL TO GORDON'S

I cannot bear to recall my misery of mind after Mr. Swain's death.
One hope had lightened all the years of my servitude. For, when I
examined my soul, I knew that it was for Dorothy I had laboured. And
every letter that came from Comyn telling me she was still free gave me
new heart for my work. By some mystic communion--I know not what--I felt
that she loved me yet, and despite distance and degree. I would wake of
a morning with the knowledge of it, and be silent for half the day with
some particle of a dream in my head, lingering like the burden of a song
with its train of memories.

So, in the days that followed, I scarce knew myself. For a while
(I shame to write it) I avoided that sweet woman who had made my comfort
her care, whose father had taken me when I was homeless. The good in me
cried out, but the flesh rebelled.

Poor Patty! Her grief for her father was pathetic to see. Weeks passed
in which she scarcely spoke a word. And I remember her as she sat in
church Sundays, the whiteness of her face enhanced by the crape she wore,
and a piteous appeal in her gray eyes. My own agony was nigh beyond
endurance, my will swinging like a pendulum from right to wrong, and back
again. Argue as I might that I had made the barrister no promise,
conscience allowed no difference. I was in despair at the trick fate
had played me; at the decree that of all women I must love her whose
sphere was now so far removed from mine. For Patty had character and
beauty, and every gift which goes to make man's happiness and to kindle
his affections.

Her sorrow left her more womanly than ever. And after the first sharp
sting of it was deadened, I noticed a marked reserve in her intercourse
with me. I knew then that she must have strong suspicions of her
father's request. Speak I could not soon after the sad event, but I
strove hard that she should see no change in my conduct.

Before Christmas we went to the Eastern Shore. In Annapolis fife and
drum had taken the place of fiddle and clarion; militia companies were
drilling in the empty streets; despatches were arriving daily from the
North; and grave gentlemen were hurrying to meetings. But if the war was
to come, I must settle what was to be done at Gordon's Pride with all
possible speed. It was only a few days after our going there, that I
rode into Oxford with a black cockade in my hat Patty had made me, and
the army sword Captain Jack had given Captain Daniel at my side. For I
had been elected a lieutenant in the Oxford company, of which Percy
Singleton was captain.

So passed that winter, the darkest of my life. One soft spring day, when
the birds were twittering amid new-born leaves, and the hyacinths and
tulips in Patty's garden were coming to their glory, Master Tom rode
leisurely down the drive at Gordon's Pride. That was a Saturday, the
29th of April, 1775. The news which had flown southward, night and day
alike, was in no hurry to run off his tongue; he had been lolling on the
porch for half an hour before he told us of the bloodshed between the
minute-men of Massachusetts and the British regulars, of the rout of
Percy's panting redcoats from Concord to Boston. Tom added, with the
brutal nonchalance which characterized his dealings with his mother and
sister, that he was on his way to Philadelphia to join a company.

The poor invalid was carried up the stairs in a faint by Banks and
Romney. Patty, with pale face and lips compressed, ran to fetch the
hartshorn. But Master Tom remained undisturbed.

"I suppose you are going, Richard," he remarked affably. For he treated
me with more consideration than his family. "We shall ride together,"
said he.

"We ride different ways, and to different destinations," I replied dryly.
"I go to serve my country, and you to fight against it."

"I think the King is right," he answered sullenly.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," I remarked, and rose. "Then you have studied
the question since last I saw you."

"No, by G-d!" he cried, "and I never will. I do not want to know your
d--d principles--or grievances, or whatever they are. We were living an
easy life, in the plenty of money, and nothing to complain of. You take
it all away, with your cursed cant--"

I left him railing and swearing. And that was the last I saw of Tom
Swain. When I returned from a final survey of the plantation; and a talk
with Percy Singleton, he had ridden North again.

I found Patty alone in the parlour. Her work (one of my own stockings
she was darning) lay idle in her lap, and in her eyes were the unshed
tears which are the greatest suffering of women. I sat down beside her
and called her name. She did not seem to hear me.

"Patty!"

She started. And my courage ebbed.

"Are you going to the war--to leave us, Richard?" she faltered.

"I fear there is no choice, Patty," I answered, striving hard to keep my
own voice steady. "But you will be well looked after. Ivie Rawlinson
is to be trusted, and Mr. Bordley has promised to keep an eye upon you."

She took up the darning mechanically.

"I shall not speak a word to keep you, Richard. He would have wished
it," she said softly. "And every strong arm in the colonies will be
needed. We shall think of you, and pray for you daily."

I cast about for a cheerful reply.

"I think when they discover how determined we are, they will revoke their
measures in a hurry. Before you know it, Patty, I shall be back again
making the rounds in my broad rim, and reading to you out of Captain
Cook."

It was a pitiful attempt. She shook her head sadly. The tears were come
now, and she was smiling through them. The sorrow of that smile!

"I have something to say to you before I go, Patty," I said. The words
stuck. I knew that there must be no pretence in that speech. It must be
true as my life after, the consequence of it. "I have something to ask
you, and I do not speak without your father's consent. Patty, if I
return, will you be my wife?"

The stocking slipped unheeded to the floor. For a moment she sat
transfixed, save for the tumultuous swelling of her breast. Then she
turned and gazed earnestly into my face, and the honesty of her eyes
smote me. For the first time I could not meet them honestly with my own.

"Richard, do you love me?" she asked.

I bowed my head. I could not answer that. And for a while there was no
sound save that of the singing of the frogs in the distant marsh.

Presently I knew that she was standing at my side. I felt her hand laid
upon my shoulder.

"Is--is it Dorothy?" she said gently.

Still I could not answer. Truly, the bitterness of life, as the joy of
it, is distilled in strong drops.

"I knew," she continued, "I have known ever since that autumn morning
when I went to you as you saddled--when I dreaded that you would leave
us. Father asked you to marry me, the day you took Mr. Stewart from the
mob. How could you so have misunderstood me, Richard?"

I looked up in wonder. The sweet cadence in her tone sprang from a
purity not of this earth. They alone who have consecrated their days to
others may utter it. And the light upon her face was of the same source.
It was no will of mine brought me to my feet. But I was not worthy to
touch her.

"I shall make another prayer, beside that for your safety, Richard," she
said.

In the morning she waved me a brave farewell from the block where she had
stood so often as I rode afield, when the dawn was in the sky. The
invalid mother sat in her chair within the door; the servants were
gathered on the lawn, and Ivie Rawlinson and Banks lingered where they
had held my stirrup. That picture is washed with my own tears.

The earth was praising God that Sunday as I rode to Mr. Bordley's. And
as it is sorrow which lifts us nearest to heaven, I felt as if I were in
church.

I arrived at Wye Island in season to dine with the good judge and his
family, and there I made over to his charge the property of Patty and her
mother. The afternoon we spent in sober talk, Mr. Bordley giving me much
sound advice, and writing me several letters of recommendation to
gentlemen in Congress. His conduct was distinguished by even more of
kindness and consideration than he had been wont to show me.

In the evening I walked out alone, skirting the acres of Carvel Hall,
each familiar landmark touching the quick of some memory of other days.
Childhood habit drew me into the path to Wilmot House. I came upon it
just as the sunlight was stretching level across the Chesapeake, and
burning its windows molten red. I had been sitting long on the stone
steps, when the gaunt figure of McAndrews strode toward me out of the
dusk.

"God be gude to us, it is Mr. Richard!" he cried. "I hae na seen ye're
bonny face these muckle years, sir, sync ye cam' back frae ae sight o'
the young mistress." (I had met him in Annapolis then.) "An' will ye be
aff to the wars?"

I told him yes. That I had come for a last look at the old place before
I left.

He sighed. "Ye're vera welcome, sir." Then he added: "Mr. Bordley's
gi'en me a fair notion o' yere management at Gordon's. The judge is
thinking there'll be nane ither lad t' hand a candle to ye."

"And what news do you hear from London?" I asked, cutting him short.

"Ill uncos, sir," he answered, shaking his head with violence. He had
indeed but a sorry tale for my ear, and one to make my heart heavier than
it was. McAndrews opened his mind to me, and seemed the better for it.
How Mr. Marmaduke was living with the establishment they wrote of was
more than the honest Scotchman could imagine. There was a country place
in Sussex now, said he, that was the latest. And drafts were coming in
before the wheat was in the ear; and the plantations of tobacco on the
Western Shore had been idle since the non-exportation, and were mortgaged
to their limit to Mr. Willard. Money was even loaned on the Wilmot House
estate. McAndrews had a shrewd suspicion that neither Mrs. Manners nor
Miss Dorothy knew aught of this state of affairs.

"Mr. Richard," he said earnestly, as he bade me good-by, "I kennt Mr.
Manners's mind when he lea'd here. There was a laird in't, sir, an' a
fortune. An' unless these come soon, I'm thinking I can spae th' en'."

In truth, a much greater fool than McAndrews might have predicted that
end.

On Monday Judge Bordley accompanied me as far as Dingley's tavern, and
showed much emotion at parting.

"You need have no fears for your friends at Gordon's Pride, Richard,"
said he. "And when the General comes back, I shall try to give him a
good account of my stewardship."

The General! That title brought old Stanwix's cobwebbed prophecy into my
head again. Here, surely, was the war which he had foretold, and I ready
to embark in it.

Why not the sea, indeed?



CHAPTER LI

HOW AN IDLE PROPHECY CAME TO PASS

Captain Clapsaddle not being at his lodgings, I rode on to the Coffee
House to put up my horse. I was stopped by Mr. Claude.

"Why, Mr. Carvel," says he, "I thought you on the Eastern Shore. There
is a gentleman within will be mightily tickled to see you, or else his
protestations are lies, which they may very well be. His name? Now,
'Pon my faith, it was Jones--no more."

This thing of being called for at the Coffee House stirred up unpleasant
associations.

"What appearance does the man make?" I demanded.

"Merciful gad!" mine host exclaimed; "once seen, never forgotten, and
once heard, never forgotten. He quotes me Thomson, and he tells me of
his estate in Virginia."

The answer was not of a sort to allay my suspicions.

"Then he appears to be a landowner?" said I.

"'Ods! Blest if I know what he is," says Mr. Claude. "He may be
anything, an impostor or a high-mightiness. But he's something to strike
the eye and hold it, for all his Quaker clothes. He is swarth and
thickset, and some five feet eight inches--full six inches under your
own height. And he comes asking for you as if you owned the town between
you. 'Send a fellow to Marlboro' Street for Mr. Richard Carvel, my good
host!' says he, with a snap of his fingers. And when I tell him the news
of you, he is prodigiously affected, and cries--but here's my gentleman
now!"

I jerked my head around. Coming down the steps I beheld my old friend
and benefactor, Captain John Paul!

"Ahoy, ahoy!" cries he. "Now Heaven be praised, I have found you at
last."

Out of the saddle I leaped, and straight into his arms.

"Hold, hold, Richard!" he gasped. "My ribs, man! Leave me some breath
that I may tell you how glad I am to see you."

"Mr. Jones!" I said, holding him out, "now where the devil got you
that?"

"Why, I am become a gentleman since I saw you," he answered, smiling.
"My poor brother left me his estate in Virginia. And a gentleman must
have three names at the least."

I dropped his shoulders and shook with laughter.

"But Jones!" I cried. "'Ad's heart! could you go no higher? Has your
imagination left you, captain?"

"Republican simplicity, sir," says he, looking a trifle hurt. But I
laughed the more.

"Well, you have contrived to mix oil and vinegar," said I. "A landed
gentleman and republican simplicity. I'll warrant you wear silk-knit
under that gray homespun, and have a cameo in your pocket."

He shook his head, looking up at me with affection.

"You might have guessed better," he answered. "All of quality I have
about me are an enamelled repeater and a gold brooch."

This made me suddenly grave, for McAndrews's words had been ringing in my
ears ever since he had spoken them. I hitched my arm into the captain's
and pulled him toward the Coffee House door.

"Come," I said, "you have not dined, and neither have I. We shall be
merry to-day, and you shall have some of the best Madeira in the
colonies." I commanded a room, that we might have privacy. As he took
his seat opposite me I marked that he had grown heavier and more browned.
But his eye had the same unfathomable mystery in it as of yore. And
first I upbraided him for not having writ me.

"I took you for one who glories in correspondence, captain," said I; "and
I did not think you could be so unfaithful. I directed twice to you in
Mr. Orchardson's care."

"Orchardson died before I had made one voyage," he replied, "and the
Betsy changed owners. But I did not forget you, Richard, and was
resolved but now not to leave Maryland until I had seen you. But I burn
to hear of you," he added. "I have had an inkling of your story from the
landlord. So your grandfather is dead, and that blastie, your uncle, of
whom you told me on the John, is in possession."

He listened to my narrative keenly, but with many interruptions. And
when I was done, he sighed.

"You are always finding friends, Richard," said he; "no matter what your
misfortunes, they are ever double discounted. As for me; I am like
Fulmer in Mr. Cumberland's 'West Indian': 'I have beat through every
quarter of the compass; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offered to
serve my country; I have'--I am engaging to betray it. No, Scotland is
no longer my country, and so I cannot betray her. It is she who has
betrayed me."

He fell into a short mood of dejection. And, indeed, I could not but
reflect that much of the character fitted him like a jacket. Not the
betrayal of his country. He never did that, no matter how roundly they
accused him of it afterward.

To lift him, I cried:

"You were one of my first friends, Captain Paul" (I could not stomach the
Jones); "but for you I should now be a West Indian, and a miserable one,
the slave of some unmerciful hidalgo. Here's that I may live to repay
you!"

"And while we are upon toasts," says he, bracing immediately, "I give you
the immortal Miss Manners! Her beauty has dwelt unfaded in my memory
since I last beheld her, aboard the Betsy." Remarking the pain in my
face, he added, with a concern which may have been comical: "And she is
not married?"

"Unless she is lately gone to Gretna, she is not," I replied, trying to
speak lightly.

"Alack! I knew it," he exclaimed. "And if there's any prophecy in my
bones, she'll be Mrs. Carvel one of these days."

"Well captain," I said abruptly, "the wheel has gone around since I saw
you. Now it is you who are the gentleman, while I am a factor. Is it
the bliss you pictured?"

I suspected that his acres were not as broad, nor his produce as salable,
as those of Mount Vernon.

"To speak truth, I am heartily tired of that life," said he. "There is
little glory in raising nicotia, and sipping bumbo, and cursing negroes.
Ho for the sea!" he cried. "The salt sea, and the British prizes. Give
me a tight frigate that leaves a singing wake. Mark me, Richard," he
said, a restless gleam coning into his dark eyes, "stirring times are
here, and a chance for all of us to make a name." For so it seemed ever
to be with him.

"They are black times, I fear," I answered.

"Black!" he said. "No, glorious is your word. And we are to have an
upheaval to throw many of us to the top."

"I would rather the quarrel were peacefully settled," said I, gravely.
"For my part, I want no distinction that is to come out of strife and
misery."

He regarded me quizzically.

"You are grown an hundred years old since I pulled you out of the sea,"
says he. "But we shall have to fight for our liberties. Here is a glass
to the prospect!"

"And so you are now an American?" I said curiously.

"Ay, strake and keelson,--as good a one as though I had got my sap in the
Maine forests. A plague of monarchs, say I. They are a blotch upon
modern civilization. And I have here," he continued, tapping his pocket,
"some letters writ to the Virginia printers, signed Demosthenes, which
Mr. Randolph and Mr. Henry have commended. To speak truth, Richard, I am
off to Congress with a portmanteau full of recommendations. And I was
resolved to stop here even till I secured your company. We shall sweep
the seas together, and so let George beware!"

I smiled. But my blood ran faster at the thought of sailing under such a
captain. However, I made the remark that Congress had as yet no army,
let alone a navy.

"And think you that gentlemen of such spirit and resources will lack
either for long?" he demanded, his eye flashing.

"Then I know nothing of a ship save the little I learned on the John," I
said.

"You were born for the sea, Richard," he exclaimed, raising his glass
high. "And I would rather have one of your brains and strength and
handiness than any merchant's mate I ever sailed with. The more
gentlemen get commissions, the better will be our new service."

At that instant came a knock at the door, and one of the inn negroes
to say that Captain Clapsaddle was below, and desired to see me.
I persuaded John Paul to descend with me. We found Captain Daniel seated
with Mr. Carroll, the barrister, and Mr. Chase.

"Captain," I said to my old friend, "I have a rare joy this day in making
known to you Mr. John Paul Jones, of whom I have spoken to you a score of
times. He it is whose bravery sank the Black Moll, whose charity took me
to London, and who got no other reward for his faith than three weeks in
a debtors' prison. For his honour, as I have told you, would allow him
to accept none, nor his principles to take the commission in the Royal
Navy which Mr. Fox offered him."

Captain Daniel rose, his honest face flushing with pleasure. "Faith, Mr.
Jones," he cried, when John Paul had finished one of his elaborate bows,
"this is well met, indeed. I have been longing these many years for a
chance to press your hand, and in the names of those who are dead and
gone to express my gratitude."

"I have my reward now, captain," replied John Paul; "a sight of you
is to have Richard's whole life revealed. And what says Mr. Congreve?

       "'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds,
        And tho' a late, a sure reward succeeds.'

"Tho' I would not have you believe that my deed was virtuous. And you,
who know Richard, may form some notion of the pleasure I had out of his
companionship."

I hastened to present my friend to the other gentlemen, who welcomed him
with warmth, though they could not keep their amusement wholly out of
their faces.

"Mr. Jones is now the possessor of an estate in Virginia, sirs," I
explained.

"And do you find it more to your taste than seafaring, Mr. Jones?"
inquired Mr. Chase.

This brought forth a most vehement protest, and another quotation.

"Why, sir," he cried, "to be

       'Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
        To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot,'

is an animal's existence. I have thrown it over, sir, with a right good
will, and am now on my way to Philadelphia to obtain a commission in the
navy soon to be born."

Mr. Chase smiled. John Paul little suspected that he was a member of the
Congress.

"This is news indeed, Mr. Jones," he said. "I have yet to hear of the
birth of this infant navy, for which we have not yet begun to make
swaddling clothes."

"We are not yet an infant state, sir," Mr. Carroll put in, with a shade
of rebuke. For Maryland was well content with the government she had
enjoyed, and her best patriots long after shunned the length of
secession. "I believe and pray that the King will come to his senses.
And as for the navy, it is folly. How can we hope to compete with
England on the sea?"

"All great things must have a beginning sir," replied John Paul,
launching forth at once, nothing daunted by such cold conservatism.
"What Israelite brickmaker of Pharaoh's dreamed of Solomon's temple?
Nay, Moses himself had no conception of it. And God will send us our
pillars of cloud and of fire. We must be reconciled to our great
destiny, Mr. Carroll. No fight ever was won by man or nation content
with half a victory. We have forests to build an hundred armadas, and I
will command a fleet and it is given me."

The gentlemen listened in astonishment.

"I' faith, I believe you, sir," cried Captain Daniel, with admiration.

The others, too, were somehow fallen under the spell of this remarkable
individuality. "What plan would you pursue, sir?" asked Mr. Chase,
betraying more interest than he cared to show.

"What plan, sir!" said Captain John Paul, those wonderful eyes of his
alight. "In the first place, we Americans build the fastest ships in the
world,--yours of the Chesapeake are as fleet as any. Here, if I am not
mistaken, one hundred and eighty-two were built in the year '71. They
are idle now. To them I would issue letters of marque, to harry
England's trade. From Carolina to Maine we have the wood and iron to
build cruisers, in harbours that may not easily be got at. And skilled
masters and seamen to elude the enemy."

"But a navy must be organized, sir. It must be an unit," objected Mr.
Carroll. "And you would not for many years have force enough, or
discipline enough, to meet England's navy."

"I would never meet it, sir," he replied instantly. "That would be the
height of folly. I would divide our forces into small, swift-sailing
squadrons, of strength sufficient to repel his cruisers. And I would
carry the war straight into his unprotected ports of trade. I can name
a score of such defenceless places, and I know every shoal of their
harbours. For example, Whitehaven might be entered. That is a town of
fifty thousand inhabitants. The fleet of merchantmen might with the
greatest ease be destroyed, a contribution levied, and Ireland's coal cut
off for a winter. The whole of the shipping might be swept out of the
Clyde. Newcastle is another likely place, and in almost any of the Irish
ports valuable vessels may be found. The Baltic and West Indian fleets
are to be intercepted. I have reflected upon these matters for years,
gentlemen. They are perfectly feasible. And I'll warrant you cannot
conceive the havoc and consternation their fulfilment would spread in
England."

If the divine power of genius ever made itself felt, 'twas on that May
evening, at candle-light, in the Annapolis Coffee House. With my own
eyes I witnessed two able and cautious statesmen of a cautious province
thrilled to the pitch of enthusiasm by this strange young man of eight
and twenty. As for good Captain Daniel, enthusiasm is but a poor word to
express his feelings. A map was sent for and spread out upon the table.
And it was a late hour when Mr. Chase and Mr. Carroll went home,
profoundly impressed. Mr. Chase charged John Paul look him up in
Congress.

The next morning I bade Captain Daniel a solemn good-by, and rode away
with John Paul to Baltimore. Thence we took stage to New Castle on the
Delaware, and were eventually landed by Mr. Tatlow's stage-boat at
Crooked Billet wharf, Philadelphia.

   A BRIEF SUMMARY, WHICH BRINGS THIS BIOGRAPHY TO THE FAMOUS
   FIGHT OF THE BON HOMME RICHARD AND THE SERAPIS

          BY DANIEL CLAPSADDLE CARVEL

Mr. Richard Carvel refers here to the narrative of his experiences in the
War of the Revolution, which he had written in the year 1805 or 1806.
The insertion of that account would swell this book, already too long,
out of all proportion. Hence I take it upon myself, with apologies, to
compress it.

Not until October of that year, 1775, was the infant navy born. Mr.
Carvel was occupied in the interval in the acquirement of practical
seamanship and the theory of maritime warfare under the most competent of
instructors, John Paul Jones. An interesting side light is thrown upon
the character of that hero by the fact that, with all his supreme
confidence in his ability, he applied to Congress only for a first
lieutenancy. This was in deference to the older men before that body.
"I hoped," said he, "in that rank to gain much useful knowledge from
those of more experience than myself." His lack of assertion for once
cost him dear. He sailed on the New Providence expedition under
Commodore Hopkins as first lieutenant of the Alfred, thirty; and he soon
discovered that, instead of gaining information, he was obliged to inform
others. He trained the men so thoroughly in the use of the great guns
"that they went through the motions of broadsides and rounds exactly as
soldiers generally perform the manual exercise."

Captain Jones was not long in fixing the attention and earning the
gratitude of the nation, and of its Commander-in-Chief, General
Washington. While in command of the Providence, twelve four-pounders,
his successful elusions of the 'Cerberus', which hounded him, and his
escape from the 'Solebay', are too famous to be dwelt upon here.
Obtaining the Alfred, he captured and brought into Boston ten thousand
suits of uniform for Washington's shivering army. Then, by the bungling
of Congress, thirteen officers were promoted over his head. The
bitterness this act engendered in the soul of one whose thirst for
distinction was as great as Captain Jones's may be imagined. To his
everlasting credit be it recorded that he remained true to the country to
which he had dedicated his life and his talents. And it was not until
1781 that he got the justice due him.

That the rough and bluff captains of the American service should have
regarded a man of Paul Jones's type with suspicion is not surprising.
They resented his polish and accomplishments, and could not understand
his language. Perhaps it was for this reason, as well as a reward for
his brilliant services, that he was always given a separate command. In
the summer of 1777 he was singled out for the highest gift in the power
of the United States, nothing less than that of the magnificent frigate
'Indien', then building at Amsterdam. And he was ordered to France in
command of the 'Ranger', a new ship then fitting at Portsmouth. Captain
Jones was the admiration of all the young officers in the navy, and was
immediately flooded with requests to sail with him. One of his first
acts, after receiving his command, was to apply to the Marine Committee
for Mr. Carvel. The favour was granted.

My grandfather had earned much commendation from his superiors. He had
sailed two cruises as master's mate of the Cabot, and was then serving as
master of the Trumbull, Captain Saltonstall. This was shortly after that
frigate had captured the two British transports off New York.

Captain Jones has been at pains to mention in his letters the services
rendered him by Mr. Carvel in fitting out the Ranger. And my grandfather
gives a striking picture of the captain. At that time the privateers,
with the larger inducements of profit they offered, were getting all the
best seamen. John Paul had but to take two turns with a man across the
dock, and he would sign papers.

Captain Jones was the first to raise the new flag of the stars and
stripes over a man-o'-war. They got away on November 14, 1777, with a
fair crew and a poor lot of officers. Mr. Carvel had many a brush with
the mutinous first lieutenant Simpson. Family influence deterred the
captain from placing this man under arrest, and even Dr. Franklin found
trouble, some years after, in bringing about his dismissal from the
service. To add to the troubles, the Ranger proved crank and
slow-sailing; and she had only one barrel of rum aboard, which made
the men discontented.

Bringing the official news of Burgoyne's surrender, which was to cause
King Louis to acknowledge the independence of the United States, the
Ranger arrived at Nantes, December 2. Mr. Carvel accompanied Captain
Jones to Paris, where a serious blow awaited him. The American
Commissioners informed him that the Indien had been transferred to France
to prevent her confiscation. That winter John Paul spent striving in
vain for a better ship, and imbibing tactics from the French admirals.
Incidentally, he obtained a salute for the American flag. The cruise of
the Ranger in English waters the following spring was a striking
fulfilment, with an absurdly poor and inadequate force, of the plan set
forth by John Paul Jones in the Annapolis Coffee House. His descent upon
Whitehaven spread terror and consternation broadcast through England, and
he was branded as a pirate and a traitor. Mr. Carvel was fortunately not
of the landing party on St. Mary's Isle, which place he had last beheld
in John Paul's company, on the brigantine John, when entering
Kirkcudbright. The object of that expedition, as is well known, was to
obtain the person of the Earl of Selkirk, in order to bring about the
rescue of the unfortunate Americans suffering in British prisons. After
the celebrated capture of the sloop-of-war Drake, Paul Jones returned to
France a hero.

If Captain Jones was ambitious of personal glory, he may never, at least,
be accused of mercenary motives. The ragged crew of the Ranger was paid
in part out of his own pocket, and for a whole month he supported the
Drake's officers and men, no provision having been made for prisoners.
He was at large expense in fitting out the Ranger, and he bought back at
twice what it was worth the plate taken from St. Mary's Isle, getting but
a tardy recognition from the Earl of Selkirk for such a noble and
unheard-of action. And, I take pride in writing it, Mr. Carvel spent
much of what he had earned at Gordon's Pride in a like honourable manner.

Mr. Carvel's description of the hero's reception at Versailles is graphic
and very humorous. For all his republican principles John Paul never got
over his love of courts, and no man was ever a more thorough courtier.
He exchanged compliments with Queen Marie Antoinette, who was then in the
bloom of her beauty, and declared that she was a "good girl, and deserved
to be happy."

The unruly Simpson sailed for America in the Ranger in July, Captain
Jones being retained in France "for a particular enterprise." And
through the kindness of Dr. Franklin, Mr. Carvel remained with him. Then
followed another period of heartrending disappointment. The fine ship
the French government promised him was not forthcoming, though Captain
Jones wrote a volume of beautiful letters to every one of importance,
from her Royal Highness the Duchess of Chartres to his Most Christian
Majesty, Louis, King of France and Navarre. At length, when he was
sitting one day in unusual dejection and railing at the vanity of courts
and kings, Mr. Carvel approached him with a book in his hand.

"What have you there, Richard?" the captain demanded.

"Dr. Franklin's Maxims," replied my grandfather. They were great
favourites with him. The captain took the book and began mechanically
to turn over the pages. Suddenly he closed it with a bang, jumped up,
and put on his coat and hat. Mr. Carvel looked on in astonishment.

"Where are you going, sir?" says he.

"To Paris, sir," says the captain. "Dr. Franklin has taught me more
wisdom in a second than I had in all my life before. 'If you wish to
have any business faithfully and expeditiously performed, go and do it
yourself; otherwise, send.'"

As a result of that trip he got the Duras, which he renamed the 'Bon
homme Richard' in honour of Dr. Franklin. The Duras was an ancient
Indiaman with a high poop, which made my grandfather exclaim, when he saw
her, at the remarkable fulfilment of old Stanwix's prophecy. She was
perfectly rotten, and in the constructor's opinion not worth refitting.
Her lowest deck (too low for the purpose) was pierced aft with three
ports on a side, and six worn-out eighteen-pounders mounted there. Some
of them burst in the action, killing their people. The main battery, on
the deck above, was composed of twenty-eight twelve-pounders. On the
uncovered deck eight nine-pounders were mounted. Captain Jones again
showed his desire to serve the cause by taking such a ship, and not
waiting for something better.

In the meantime the American frigate 'Alliance' had brought Lafayette to
France, and was added to the little squadron that was to sail with the
'Bon homme Richard'. One of the most fatal mistakes Congress ever made
was to put Captain Pierre Landais in command of her, out of compliment to
the French allies. He was a man whose temper and vagaries had failed to
get him a command in his own navy. His insulting conduct and treachery
to Captain Jones are strongly attested to in Mr. Carvel's manuscript:
they were amply proved by the written statements of other officers.

The squadron sailed from L'Orient in June, but owing to a collision
between the Bon homme Richard and the Alliance it was forced to put back
into the Groix roads for repairs. Nails and rivets were with difficulty
got to hold in the sides of the old Indianian. On August 14th John Paul
Jones again set sail for English waters, with the following vessels:
Alliance, thirty-six; Pallas, thirty; Cerf, eighteen; Vengeance, twelve;
and two French privateers. Owing to the humiliating conditions imposed
upon him by the French Minister of Marine, Commodore Jones did not have
absolute command. In a gale on the 26th the two privateers and the Cerf
parted company, never to return. After the most outrageous conduct off
the coast of Ireland, Landais, in the 'Alliance', left the squadron on
September 6th, and did not reappear until the 23d, the day of the battle.

Mr. Carvel was the third lieutenant of the 'Bon homme Richard', tho' he
served as second in the action. Her first lieutenant (afterwards the
celebrated Commodore Richard Dale) was a magnificent man, one worthy in
every respect of the captain he served. When the hour of battle arrived,
these two and the sailing master, and a number of raw midshipmen, were
the only line-officers left, and two French officers of marines.

The rest had been lost in various ways. And the crew of the 'Bon homme
Richard' was as sorry a lot as ever trod a deck. Less than three score
of the seamen were American born; near four score were British, inclusive
of sixteen Irish; one hundred and thirty-seven were French soldiers, who
acted as marines; and the rest of the three hundred odd souls to fight
her were from all over the earth,--Malays and Maltese and Portuguese.
In the hold were more than one hundred and fifty English prisoners.

This was a vessel and a force, truly, with which to conquer a fifty-gun
ship of the latest type, and with a picked crew.

Mr. Carvel's chapter opens with Landais's sudden reappearance on the
morning of the day the battle was fought. He shows the resentment and
anger against the Frenchman felt by all on board, from cabin-boy to
commodore. But none went so far as to accuse the captain of the
'Alliance' of such supreme treachery as he was to show during the action.
Cowardice may have been in part responsible for his holding aloof from
the two duels in which the Richard and the Pallas engaged. But the fact
that he poured broadsides into the Richard, and into her off side, makes
it seem probable that his motive was to sink the commodore's ship, and so
get the credit of saving the day, to the detriment of the hero who won it
despite all disasters. To account for the cry that was raised when first
she attacked the Richard, it must be borne in mind that the crew of the
'Alliance' was largely composed of Englishmen. It was thought that these
had mutinied and taken her.




CHAPTER LII

HOW THE GARDENER'S SON FOUGHT THE "SERAPIS"

When I came on deck the next morning our yards were a-drip with a clammy
fog, and under it the sea was roughed by a southwest breeze. We were
standing to the northward before it. I remember reflecting as I paused
in the gangway that the day was Thursday, September the 23d, and that we
were near two months out of Groix with this tub of an Indiaman. In all
that time we had not so much as got a whiff of an English frigate, though
we had almost put a belt around the British Isles. Then straining my
eyes through the mist, I made out two white blurs of sails on our
starboard beam.

Honest Jack Pearce, one of the few good seamen we had aboard, was rubbing
down one of the nines beside me.

"Why, Jack," said I, "what have we there? Another prize?" For that
question had become a joke on board the 'Bon homme Richard' since the
prisoners had reached an hundred and fifty, and half our crew was gone to
man the ships.

"Bless your 'art, no, sir," said he. "'Tis that damned Frenchy Landais
in th' Alliance. She turns up with the Pallas at six bells o' the middle
watch."

"So he's back, is he?"

"Ay, he's back," he returned, with a grunt that was half a growl; "arter
three weeks breakin' o' liberty. I tell 'ee what, sir, them Frenchies is
treecherous devils, an' not to be trusted the len'th of a lead line. An'
they beant seamen eno' to keep a full an' by with all their 'takteek'.
Ez fer that Landais, I hearn him whinin' at the commodore in the round
house when we was off Clear, an' sayin' as how he would tell Sartin on us
when he gets back to Paree. An' jabberin to th'other Frenchmen as was
there that this here butter-cask was er King's ship, an' that the
commodore weren't no commodore nohow. They say as how Cap'n Jones be
bound up in a hard knot by some articles of agreement, an' daresn't
punish him. Be that so, Mr. Carvel?"

I said that it was.

"Shiver my bulkheads!" cried Jack, "I gave my oath to that same, sir.
For I knowed the commodore was the lad t' string 'em to the yard-arm an'
he had the say on it. Oh, the devil take the Frenchies," said Jack,
rolling his quid to show his pleasure of the topic, "they sits on their
bottoms in Brest and L'Oriong an' talks takteek wi' their han's and
mouths, and daresn't as much as show the noses o' their three-deckers in
th' Bay o' Biscay, while Cap'n Jones pokes his bowsprit into every port
in England with a hulk the rats have left. I've had my bellyful o'
Frenchies, Mr. Carvell save it be to fight 'em. An' I tell 'ee 'twould
give me the greatest joy in life t' leave loose 'Scolding Sairy' at that
there Landais. Th' gal ain't had a match on her this here cruise, an' t'
my mind she couldn't be christened better, sir."

I left him patting the gun with a tender affection.

The scene on board was quiet and peaceful enough that morning. A knot of
midshipmen on the forecastle were discussing Landais's conduct, and
cursing the concordat which prevented our commodore from bringing him up
short. Mr. Stacey, the sailing-master, had the deck, and the coasting
pilot was conning; now and anon the boatswain's whistle piped for Garrett
or Quito or Fogg to lay aft to the mast, where the first lieutenant stood
talking to Colonel de Chamillard, of the French marines. The scavengers
were sweeping down, and part of the after guard was bending a new
bolt-rope on a storm staysail.

Then the--fore-topmast crosstrees reports a sail on the weather quarter,
the Richard is brought around on the wind, and away we go after a
brigantine, "flying like a snow laden with English bricks," as Midshipman
Coram jokingly remarks. A chase is not such a novelty with us that we
crane our necks to windward.

At noon, when I relieved Mr. Stacey of the deck, the sun had eaten up the
fog, and the shores of England stood out boldly. Spurn Head was looming
up across our bows, while that of Flamborough jutted into the sea behind
us. I had the starboard watch piped to dinner, and reported twelve
o'clock to the commodore. And had just got permission to "make it,"
according to a time-honoured custom at sea, when another "Sail, ho!" came
down from aloft.

"Where away?" called back Mr. Linthwaite, who was midshipman of the
forecastle.

"Starboard quarter, rounding Flamborough Head, sir. Looks like a
full-rigged ship, sir."

I sent the messenger into the great cabin to report. He was barely out
of sight before a second cry came from the masthead: "Another sail
rounding Flamborough, sir!"

The officers on deck hurried to the taffrail. I had my glass, but not a
dot was visible above the sea-line. The messenger was scarcely back
again when there came a third hail: "Two more rounding the head, sir!
Four in all, sir!"

Here was excitement indeed. Without waiting for instructions, I gave the
command:

"Up royal yards! Royal yardmen in the tops!"

We were already swaying out of the chains, when Lieutenant Dale appeared
and asked the coasting pilot what fleet it was. He answered that it was
the Baltic fleet, under convoy of the Countess of Scarborough, twenty
guns, and the Serapis, forty-four.

"Forty-four," repeated Mr. Dale, smiling; "that means fifty, as English
frigates are rated. We shall have our hands full this day, my lads,"
said he. "You have done well to get the royals on her, Mr. Carvel."

While he was yet speaking, three more sail were reported from aloft.
Then there was a hush on deck, and the commodore himself appeared. As he
reached the poop we saluted him and informed him of what had happened.

"The Baltic fleet," said he, promptly. "Call away the pilotboat with Mr.
Lunt to follow the brigantine, sir, and ease off before the wind. Signal
'General Chase' to the squadron, Mr. Mayrant."

The men had jumped to the weather braces before I gave the command, and
all the while more sail were counting from the crosstrees, until their
number had reached forty-one. The news spread over the ship; the
starboard watch trooped up with their dinners half eaten. Then a faint
booming of guns drifted down upon our ears.

"They've got sight of us, sir," shouted the lookout. "They be firing
guns to windward, an' letting fly their topgallant sheets."

At that the commodore hurried forward, the men falling back to the
bulwarks respectfully, and he mounted the fore-rigging as agile as any
topman, followed by his aide with a glass. From the masthead he sung out
to me to set our stu'nsails, and he remained aloft till near seven bells
of the watch. At that hour the merchantmen had all scuttled to safety
behind the head, and from the deck a great yellow King's frigate could be
plainly seen standing south to meet us, followed by her smaller consort.
Presently she hove to, and through our glasses we discerned a small boat
making for her side, and then a man clambering up her sea-ladder.

"That be the bailiff of Scarborough, sir," said the coasting pilot, "come
to tell her cap'n 'tis Paul Jones he has to fight."

At that moment the commodore lay down from aloft, and our hearts beat
high as he walked swiftly aft to the quarterdeck, where he paused for a
word with Mr. Dale. Meanwhile Mr. Mayrant hove out the signal for the
squadron to form line of battle.

"Recall the pilot-boat, Mr. Carvel," said the commodore, quietly. "Then
you may beat to quarters, and I will take the ship, sir."

"Ay, ay, sir." I raised my trumpet. "All hands clear ship for action!"

It makes me sigh now to think of the cheer which burst from that
tatterdemalion crew. Who were they to fight the bone and sinew of the
King's navy in a rotten ship of an age gone by? And who was he, that
stood so straight upon the quarter-deck, to instil this scum with love
and worship and fervour to blind them to such odds? But the bo'suns
piped and sang out the command in fog-horn voices, the drums beat the
long roll and the fifes whistled, and the decks became suddenly alive.
Breechings were loosed and gun-tackles unlashed, rammer and sponge laid
out, and pike and pistol and cutlass placed where they would be handy
when the time came to rush the enemy's decks. The powder-monkeys tumbled
over each other in their hurry to provide cartridges, and grape and
canister and doubleheaded shot were hoisted up from below. The trimmers
rigged the splinter nettings, got out spare spars and blocks and ropes
against those that were sure to be shot away, and rolled up casks of
water to put out the fires. Tubs were filled with sand, for blood is
slippery upon the boards. The French marines, their scarlet and white
very natty in contrast to most of our ragged wharf-rats at the guns, were
mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to
assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and
musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and
steerage, to make ready for the grimmest work of all.

My own duties took me to the dark lower deck, a vile place indeed, and
reeking with the smell of tar and stale victuals. There I had charge of
the battery of old eighteens, while Mr. Dale commanded the twelves on the
middle deck. We loaded our guns with two shots apiece, though I had my
doubts about their standing such a charge, and then the men stripped
until they stood naked to the waist, waiting for the fight to begin. For
we could see nothing of what was going forward. I was pacing up and
down, for it was a task to quiet the nerves in that dingy place with the
gun-ports closed, when about three bells of the dog, Mr. Mease, the
purser, appeared on the ladder.

"Lunt has not come back with the pilot-boat, Carvel," said he. "I have
volunteered for a battery, and am assigned to this. You are to report to
the commodore."

I thanked him, and climbed quickly to the quarterdeck. The 'Bon homme
Richard' was lumbering like a leaden ship before the wind, swaying
ponderously, her topsails flapping and her heavy blocks whacking against
the yards. And there was the commodore, erect, and with fire in his eye,
giving sharp commands to the men at the wheel. I knew at once that no
trifle had disturbed him. He wore a brand-new uniform; a blue coat with
red lapels and yellow buttons, and slashed cuffs and stand-up collar, a
red waistcoat with tawny lace, blue breeches, white silk stockings, and a
cocked hat and a sword. Into his belt were stuck two brace of pistols.

It took some effort to realize, as I waited silently for his attention,
that this was the man of whose innermost life I had had so intimate a
view. Who had taken me to the humble cottage under Criffel, who had
poured into my ear his ambitions and his wrongs when we had sat together
in the dingy room of the Castle Yard sponging-house. Then some of those
ludicrous scenes on the road to London came up to me, for which the
sky-blue frock was responsible. And yet this commodore was not greatly
removed from him I had first beheld on the brigantine John. His
confidence in his future had not so much as wavered since that day. That
future was now not so far distant as the horizon, and he was ready to
meet it.

"You will take charge of the battery of nines on this deck, Mr. Carvel,"
said he, at length.

"Very good, sir," I replied, and was making my way down the poop ladder,
when I heard him calling me, in a low voice, by the old name: "Richard!"

I turned and followed him aft to the taffrail, where we were clear of the
French soldiers. The sun was hanging red over the Yorkshire Wolds, the
Head of Flamborough was in the blue shadow, and the clouds were like rose
leaves in the sky. The enemy had tacked and was standing west, with
ensign and jack and pennant flying, the level light washing his sails to
the whiteness of paper. 'Twas then I first remarked that the Alliance
had left her place in line and was sailing swiftly ahead toward the
Serapis. The commodore seemed to read my exclamation.

"Landais means to ruin me yet, by hook or crook," said he.

"But he can't intend to close with them," I replied. "He has not the
courage."

"God knows what he intends," said the commodore, bitterly. "It is no
good, at all events."

My heart bled for him. Some minutes passed that he did not speak, making
shift to raise his glass now and again, and I knew that he was gripped by
a strong emotion. "'Twas so he ever behaved when the stress was
greatest. Presently he lays down the glass on the signal-chest, fumbles
in his coat, and brings out the little gold brooch I had not set eyes on
since Dolly and he and I had stood together on the Betsy's deck.

"When you see her, Richard, tell her that I have kept it as sacred as her
memory," he said thickly. "She will recall what I spoke of you when she
gave it me. You have been leal and true to me indeed, and many a black
hour have you tided me over since this war' began. Do you know how she
may be directed to?" he concluded, with abruptness.

I glanced at him, surprised at the question. He was staring at the
English shore.

"Mr. Ripley, of Lincoln's Inn, used to be Mr. Manners's lawyer," I
answered.

He took out a little note-book and wrote that down carefully. "And now,"
he continued, "God keep you, my friend. We must win, for we fight with a
rope around our necks."

"But you, Captain Paul," I said, "is--is there no one?"

His face took on the look of melancholy it had worn so often of late,
despite his triumphs. That look was the stamp of fate.

"Richard," replied he, with an ineffable sadness, "I am naught but a
wanderer upon the face of the earth. I have no ties, no kindred,--no
real friends, save you and Dale, and some of these honest fellows whom
I lead to slaughter. My ambition is seamed with a flaw. And all my life
I must be striving, striving, until I am laid in the grave. I know that
now, and it is you yourself who have taught me. For I have violently
broken forth from those bounds which God in His wisdom did set."

I pressed his hand, and with bowed head went back to my station,
profoundly struck by the truth of what he had spoken. Though he fought
under the flag of freedom, the curse of the expatriated was upon his
head.

Shortly afterward he appeared at the poop rail, straight and alert, his
eye piercing each man as it fell on him. He was the commodore once more.

The twilight deepened, until you scarce could see your hands. There was
no sound save the cracking of the cabins and the tumbling of the blocks,
and from time to time a muttered command. An age went by before the
trimmers were sent to the lee braces, and the Richard rounded lazily to.
And a great frigate loomed out of the night beside us, half a pistolshot
away.

"What ship is that?" came the hail, intense out of the silence.

"I don't hear you," replied our commodore, for he had not yet got his
distance.

Again came the hail: "What ship is that?"

John Paul Jones leaned forward over the rail.

"Pass the word below to the first lieutenant to begin the action, sir."

Hardly were the words out of my mouth before the deck gave a mighty leap,
a hot wind that seemed half of flame blew across my face, and the roar
started the pain throbbing in my ears. At the same instant the screech
of shot sounded overhead, we heard the sharp crack-crack of wood rending
and splitting,--as with a great broadaxe,--and a medley of blocks and
ropes rattled to the deck with the 'thud of the falling bodies. Then,
instead of stillness, moans and shrieks from above and below, oaths and
prayers in English and French and Portuguese, and in the heathen
gibberish of the East. As the men were sponging and ramming home in the
first fury of hatred, the carpenter jumped out under the battle-lanthorn
at the main hatch, crying in a wild voice that the old eighteens had
burst, killing half their crews and blowing up the gundeck above them.
At this many of our men broke and ran for the hatches.

"Back, back to your quarters! The first man to desert will be shot
down!"

It was the same strange voice that had quelled the mutiny on the John,
that had awed the men of Kirkcudbright. The tackles were seized and the
guns run out once more, and fired, and served again in an agony of haste.
In the darkness shot shrieked hither and thither about us like demons,
striking everywhere, sometimes sending casks of salt water over the
nettings. Incessantly the quartermaster walked to and fro scattering
sand over the black pools that kept running, running together as the
minutes were tolled out, and the red flashes from the guns revealed faces
in a hideous contortion. One little fellow, with whom I had had many a
lively word at mess, had his arm taken off at the shoulder as he went
skipping past me with the charge under his coat, and I have but to listen
now to hear the patter of the blood on the boards as they carried him
away to the cockpit below. Out of the main hatch, from that charnel
house, rose one continuous cry. It was an odd trick of the mind or soul
that put a hymn on my lips in that dreadful hour of carnage and human
misery, when men were calling the name of their Maker in vain. But as
I ran from crew to crew, I sang over and over again a long-forgotten
Christmas carol, and with it came a fleeting memory of my mother on the
stairs at Carvel Hall, and of the negroes gathered on the lawn without.

Suddenly, glancing up at the dim cloud of sails above, I saw that we were
aback and making sternway. We might have tossed a biscuit aboard the big
Serapis as she glided ahead of us. The broadsides thundered, and great
ragged scantlings brake from our bulwarks and flew as high as the
mizzen-top; and the shrieks and groans redoubled. Involuntarily my eyes
sought the poop, and I gave a sigh of relief at the sight of the
commanding figure in the midst of the whirling smoke. We shotted our
guns with double-headed, manned our lee braces, and gathered headway.

"Stand by to board!"

The boatswains' whistles trilled through the ship, pikes were seized, and
pistol and cutlass buckled on. But even as we waited with set teeth, our
bows ground into the enemy's weather quarter-gallery. For the Richard's
rigging was much cut away, and she was crank at best. So we backed and
filled once more, passing the Englishman close aboard, himself being
aback at the time. Several of his shot crushed through the bulwarks in
front of me, shattering a nine-pounder and killing half of its crew. And
it is only a miracle that I stand alive to be able to tell the tale.
Then I caught a glimpse of the quartermaster whirling the spokes of our
wheel, and over went our helm to lay us athwart the forefoot of the
'Serapis', where we might rake and rush her decks. Our old Indiaman
answered but doggedly; and the huge bowsprit of the Serapis, towering
over our heads, snapped off our spanker gaff and fouled our mizzen
rigging.

"A hawser, Mr. Stacey, a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw
the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and
wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a
smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found
the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the
severed stays and shrouds dangling from the bowsprit, the French marines
looking on.

"Don't swear, Mr. Stacey," said he, severely; "in another minute we may
all be in eternity."

I rushed back to my guns, for the wind was rapidly swinging the stern of
the Serapis to our own bow, now bringing her starboard batteries into
play. Barely had we time to light our snatches and send our broadside
into her at three fathoms before the huge vessels came crunching
together, the disordered riggings locking, and both pointed northward to
a leeward tide in a death embrace. The chance had not been given him to
shift his crews or to fling open his starboard gun-ports.

Then ensued a moment's breathless hush, even the cries of those in agony
lulling. The pall of smoke rolled a little, and a silver moonlight
filtered through, revealing the weltering bodies twisted upon the boards.
A stern call came from beyond the bulwarks.

"Have you struck, sir?"

The answer sounded clear, and bred hero-worship in our souls.

"Sir, I have not yet begun to fight."

Our men raised a hoarse yell, drowned all at once by the popping of
musketry in the tops and the bursting of grenades here and there about
the decks. A mighty muffled blast sent the Bon homme Richard rolling to
larboard, and the smoke eddied from our hatches and lifted out of the
space between the ships. The Englishman had blown off his gun-ports.
And next some one shouted that our battery of twelves was fighting them
muzzle to muzzle below, our rammers leaning into the Serapis to send
their shot home. No chance then for the thoughts which had tortured us
in moments of suspense. That was a fearful hour, when a shot had scarce
to leap a cannon's length to find its commission; when the belches of the
English guns burned the hair of our faces; when Death was sovereign,
merciful or cruel at his pleasure. The red flashes disclosed many an act
of coolness and of heroism. I saw a French lad whip off his coat when a
gunner called for a wad, and another, who had been a scavenger, snatch
the rammer from Pearce's hands when he staggered with a grape-shot
through his chest. Poor Jack Pearce! He did not live to see the work
'Scolding Sairy' was to do that night. I had but dragged him beyond
reach of the recoil when he was gone.

Then a cry came floating down from aloft. Thrice did I hear it, like one
waking out of a sleep, ere I grasped its import. "The Alliance! The
Alliance!" But hardly had the name resounded with joy throughout the
ship, when a hail of grape and canister tore through our sails from aft
forward. "She rakes us! She rakes us!" And the French soldiers tumbled
headlong down from the poop with a wail of "Les Anglais font prise!"
"Her Englishmen have taken her, and turned her guns against us!" Our
captain was left standing alone beside the staff where the stars and
stripes waved black in the moonlight.

"The Alliance is hauling off, sir!" called the midshipman of the
mizzen-top. "She is making for the Pallas and the Countess of
Scarborough."

"Very good, sir," was all the commodore said.

To us hearkening for his answer his voice betrayed no sign of dismay.
Seven times, I say, was that battle lost, and seven times regained again.
What was it kept the crews at their quarters and the officers at their
posts through that hell of flame and shot, when a madman could scarce
have hoped for victory? What but the knowledge that somewhere in the
swirl above us was still that unswerving and indomitable man who swept
all obstacles from before him, and into whose mind the thought of defeat
could not enter. His spirit held us to our task, for flesh and blood
might not have endured alone.

We had now but one of our starboard nine-pounders on its carriage, and
word came from below that our battery of twelves was all but knocked to
scrap iron, and their ports blown into one yawning gap. Indeed, we did
not have to be told that sides and stanchions had been carried away, for
the deck trembled and teetered under us as we dragged 'Scolding Sairy'
from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the
bodies. Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of
sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and
shoulders. With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull,
when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle. But, ere I
could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure
seized the rope where the dead man's hands had warmed it. Truly, the
commodore was everywhere that night.

"Down to the surgeon with you, Richard!" he cried. "I will look to the
battery."

Dazed, I put my hand to my hair to find it warm and wringing wet. When I
had been hit, I knew not. But I shook my head, for the very notion of
that cockpit turned my stomach. The blood was streaming from a gash in
his own temple, to which he gave no heed, and stood encouraging that
panting line until at last the gun was got across and hooked to the
ring-bolts of its companion that lay shattered there. "Serve her with
double-headed, my lads," he shouted, "and every shot into the
Englishman's mainmast!"

"Ay, ay, sir," came the answer from every man of that little remnant.

The Serapis, too, was now beginning to blaze aloft, and choking
wood-smoke eddied out of the Richard's hold and mingled with the powder
fumes. Then the enemy's fire abreast us seemed to lull, and Mr. Stacey
mounted the bulwarks, and cried out: "You have cleared their decks, my
hearties!" Aloft, a man was seen to clamber from our mainyard into the
very top of the Englishman, where he threw a hand-grenade, as I thought,
down her main hatch. An instant after an explosion came like a, clap of
thunder in our faces, and a great quadrant of light flashed as high as
the 'Serapis's' trucks, and through a breach in her bulwarks I saw men
running with only the collars of their shirts upon their naked bodies.

'Twas at this critical moment, when that fearful battle once more was
won, another storm of grape brought the spars about our heads, and that
name which we dreaded most of all was spread again. As we halted in
consternation, a dozen round shot ripped through our unengaged side, and
a babel of voices hailed the treacherous Landais with oaths and
imprecations. We made out the Alliance with a full head of canvas, black
and sharp, between us and the moon. Smoke hung above her rail. Getting
over against the signal fires blazing on Flamborough Head, she wore ship
and stood across our bows, the midshipman on the forecastle singing out
to her, by the commodore's orders, to lay the enemy by the board. There
was no response.

"Do you hear us?" yelled Mr. Linthwaite.

"Ay, ay," came the reply; and with it the smoke broke from her and the
grape and canister swept our forecastle. Then the Alliance sailed away,
leaving brave Mr. Caswell among the many Landais had murdered.

The ominous clank of the chain pumps beat a sort of prelude to what
happened next. The gunner burst out of the hatch with blood running down
his face, shouting that the Richard was sinking, and yelling for quarter
as he made for the ensign-staff on the poop, for the flag was shot away.
Him the commodore felled with a pistol-butt. At the gunner's heels were
the hundred and fifty prisoners we had taken, released by the master at
arms. They swarmed out of the bowels of the ship like a horde of
Tartars, unkempt and wild and desperate with fear, until I thought that
the added weight on the scarce-supported deck would land us all in the
bilges. Words fail me when I come to describe the frightful panic of
these creatures, frenzied by the instinct of self-preservation. They
surged hither and thither as angry seas driven into a pocket of a
storm-swept coast. They trampled rough-shod over the moaning heaps of
wounded and dying, and crowded the crews at the guns, who were powerless
before their numbers. Some fought like maniacs, and others flung
themselves into the sea.

Those of us who had clung to hope lost it then. Standing with my back
to the mast, beating them off with a pike, visions of an English
prison-ship, of an English gallows, came before me. I counted the
seconds until the enemy's seamen would be pouring through our ragged
ports. The seventh and last time, and we were beaten, for we had not men
enough left on our two decks to force them down again. Yes,--I shame to
confess it--the heart went clean out of me, and with that the pain
pulsed and leaped in my head like a devil unbound. At a turn of the hand
I should have sunk to the boards, had not a voice risen strong and clear
above that turmoil, compelling every man to halt trembling in his steps.

"Cast off, cast off! 'The Serapis' is sinking. To the pumps, ye fools,
if you would save your lives!"

That unerring genius of the gardener's son had struck the only chord!

They were like sheep before us as we beat them back into the reeking
hatches, and soon the pumps were heard bumping with a renewed and a
desperate vigour. Then, all at once, the towering mainmast of the enemy
cracked and tottered and swung this way and that on its loosened shrouds.
The first intense silence of the battle followed, in the midst of which
came a cry from our top:

"Their captain is hauling down, sir!"

The sound which broke from our men could scarce be called a cheer. That
which they felt as they sank exhausted on the blood of their comrades may
not have been elation. My own feeling was of unmixed wonder as I gazed
at a calm profile above me, sharp-cut against the moon.

I was moved as out of a revery by the sight of Dale swinging across to
the Serapis by the main brace pennant. Calling on some of my boarders, I
scaled our bulwarks and leaped fairly into the middle of the gangway of
the Serapis.

Such is nearly all of my remembrance of that momentous occasion. I had
caught the one glimpse of our first lieutenant in converse with their
captain and another officer, when a naked seaman came charging at me. He
had raised a pike above his shoulder ere I knew what he was about, and my
senses left me.




CHAPTER LIII

IN WHICH I MAKE SOME DISCOVERIES

The room had a prodigious sense of change about it. That came over me
with something of a shock, since the moment before I had it settled that
I was in Marlboro' Street. The bare branches swaying in the wind outside
should belong to the trees in Freshwater Lane. But beyond the branches
were houses, the like of which I had no remembrance of in Annapolis. And
then my grandfather should be sitting in that window. Surely, he was
there! He moved! He was coming toward me to say: "Richard, you are
forgiven," and to brush his eyes with his ruffles.

Then there was the bed-canopy, the pleatings of which were gone, and it
was turned white instead of the old blue. And the chimney-place! That
was unaccountably smaller, and glowed with a sea-coal fire. And the
mantel was now but a bit of a shelf, and held many things that seemed
scarce at home on the rough and painted wood,--gold filigree; and China
and Japan, and a French clock that ought not to have been just there.
Ah, the teacups! Here at last was something to touch a fibre of my
brain, but a pain came with the effort of memory. So my eyes went back
to my grandfather in the window. His face was now become black as
Scipio's, and he wore a red turban and a striped cotton gown that was too
large for him. And he was sewing. This was monstrous!

I hurried over to the tea-cups, such a twinge did that discovery give me.
But they troubled me near as much, and the sea-coal fire held strange
images. The fascination in the window was not to be denied, for it stood
in line with the houses and the trees. Suddenly there rose up before me
a gate. Yes, I knew that gate, and the girlish figure leaning over it.
They were in Prince George Street. Behind them was a mass of golden-rose
bushes, and out of these came forth a black face under a turban, saying,
"Yes, mistis, I'se comin'."

"Mammy--Mammy Lucy!"

The figure in the window stirred, and the sewing fell its ample lap.

"Now Lawd'a mercy!"

I trembled--with a violence unspeakable. Was this but one more of those
thousand voices, harsh and gentle, rough and tender, to which I had
listened in vain this age past? The black face was hovering over me now,
and in an agony of apprehension I reached up and felt its honest
roughness. Then I could have wept for joy.

"Mammy Lucy!"

"Yes, Marse Dick?"

"Where--where is Miss Dolly?"

"Now, Marse Dick, doctah done say you not t' talk, suh."

"Where is Miss Dolly?" I cried, seizing her arm.

"Hush, Marse Dick. Miss Dolly'll come terectly, suh. She's lyin' down,
suh."

The door creaked, and in my eagerness I tried to lift myself. 'Twas Aunt
Lucy's hand that restrained me, and the next face I saw was that of
Dorothy's mother. But why did it appear so old and sorrow-lined? And
why was the hair now of a whiteness with the lace of the cap? She took
my fingers in her own, and asked me anxiously if I felt any pain.

"Where am I, Mrs. Manners?"

"You are in London, Richard."

"In Arlington Street?"

She shook her head sadly. "No, my dear, not in Arlington Street. But
you are not to talk."

"And Dorothy? May I not see Dorothy? Aunt Lucy tells me she is here."

Mrs. Manners gave the old mammy a glance of reproof, a signal that
alarmed me vastly.

"Oh, tell me, Mrs. Manners! You will speak the truth. Tell me if she is
gone away?"

"My dear boy, she is here, and under this very roof. And you shall see
her as soon as Dr. Barry will permit. Which will not be soon," she added
with a smile, "if you persist in this conduct."

The threat had the desired effect. And Mrs. Manners quietly left the
room, and after a while as quietly came back again and sat down by the
fire, whispering to Aunt Lucy.

Fate, in some inexplicable way, had carried me into the enemy's country
and made me the guest of Mr. Marmaduke Manners. As I lay staring upward,
odd little bits of the past came floating to the top of my mind,
presently to be pieced together. The injuries Mr. Marmaduke had done me
were the first to collect, since I was searching for the cause of my
resentment against him. The incidents arrived haphazard as magic
lanthorn views, but very vivid. His denial of me before Mr. Dix, and his
treachery at Vauxhall, when he had sent me to be murdered. Next I felt
myself clutching the skin over his ribs in Arlington Street, when I had
flung him across the room in his yellow night-gown. That brought me to
the most painful scene of my life, when I had parted with Dorothy at the
top of the stairs. Afterward followed scraps of the years at Gordon's
Pride, and on top of them the talk with McAndrews. Here was the secret
I sought. The crash had come. And they were no longer in Mayfair, but
must have taken a house in some poorer part of London. This thought cast
me down tremendously.

And Dorothy! Had time changed her? 'Twas with that query on my lips I
fell asleep, to dream of the sun shining down on Carvel Hall and Wilmot
House; of Aunt Hester and Aunt Lucy, and a lass and a lad romping through
pleasant fields and gardens.

When I awoke it was broad day once more. A gentleman sat on the edge of
my bed. He had a queer, short face, ruddy as the harvest moon, and he
smiled good-humouredly when I opened my eyes.

"I bid you good morning, Mr. Carvel, for the first time since I have made
your acquaintance," said he. "And how do you feel, sir?"

"I have never felt better in my life," I replied, which was the whole
truth.

"Well, vastly well," says he, laughing, "prodigious well for a young man
who has as many holes in him as have you. Do you hear him, Mrs.
Manners?"

At that last word, I popped up to look about the room, and the doctor
caught hold of me with ludicrous haste. A pain shot through my body.

"Avast, avast, my hearty," cries he. "'Tis a miracle you can speak,
let alone carry your bed and walk for a while yet." And he turned to
Dorothy's mother, whom I beheld smiling at me. "You will give him the
physic, ma'am, at the hours I have chosen. Egad, I begin to think we
shall come through.

"But pray remember, ma'am, if he talks, you are to put a wad in his
mouth."

"He shall have no opportunity to talk, Dr. Barry," said Mrs. Manners.

"Save for a favour I have to ask you, doctor," I cried.

"'Od's bodkins! Already, sir? And what may that be?"

"That you will allow me to see Miss Manners."

He shook with laughter, and then winked at me very roguishly.

"Oh!" says he, "and faith, I should be worse than cruel. First she
comes imploring me to see you, and so prettily that a man of oak could
not refuse her. And now it is you begging to see her. Had your eyes
been opened, sir, you might have had many a glimpse of Miss Dolly these
three weeks past."

"What! She has been watching with me?" I asked, in a rapture not to be
expressed.

"'Od's, but those are secrets. And the medical profession is
close-mouthed, Mr. Carvel. So you want to see her? No," cries he, "'tis
not needful to swear it on the Evangels. And I let her come in, will you
give me your honour as a gentleman not to speak more than two words to
her?"

"I promise anything, and you will not deny me looking at her," said I.

He shook again, all over. "You rascal! You sad dog, sir! No, sir,
faith, you must shut your eyes. Eh, madam, must he not shut his eyes?"

"They were playmates, doctor," answers Mrs. Manners. She was laughing a
little, too.

"Well, she shall come in. But remember that I shall have my ear to the
keyhole, and you go beyond your promise, out she's whisked. So I caution
you not to spend rashly those two words, sir."

And he followed Mrs. Manners out of the room, frowning and shaking his
fist at me in mock fierceness. I would have died for the man. For a
space--a prodigious long space--I lay very still, my heart bumping like a
gun-carriage broke loose, and my eyes riveted on the crack of the door.
Then I caught the sound of a light footstep, the knob turned, and joy
poured into my soul with the sweep of a Fundy tide.

"Dorothy!" I cried. "Dorothy!"

She put her finger to her lips.

"There, sir," said she, "now you have spoken them both at once!"

She closed the door softly behind her, and stood looking down upon me
with such a wondrous love-light in her eyes as no man may describe.
My fancy had not lifted me within its compass, my dreams even had not
imagined it. And the fire from which it sprang does not burn in humbler
souls. So she stood gazing, those lips which once had been the seat of
pride now parted in a smile of infinite tenderness. But her head she
still held high, and her body straight. Down the front of her dress fell
a tucked apron of the whitest linen, and in her hand was a cup of
steaming broth.

"You are to take this, Richard," she commanded. And added, with a touch
of her old mischief, "Mind, sir, if I hear a sound out of you, I am to
disappear like the fairy godmother."

I knew full well she meant it, and the terror of losing her kept me
silent. She put down the cup, placed another pillow behind my head with
a marvellous deftness, and then began feeding me in dainty spoonfuls
something which was surely nectar. And mine eyes, too, had their feast.
Never before had I seen my lady in this gentle guise, this task of
nursing the sick, which her doing raised to a queenly art.

Her face had changed some. Years of trial unknown to me had left an
ennobling mark upon her features, increasing their power an hundred fold.
And the levity of girlish years was gone. How I burned to question her!
But her lips were now tight closed, her glance now and anon seeking mine,
and then falling with an exquisite droop to the coverlet. For the old
archness, at least, would never be eradicated. Presently, after she had
taken the cup and smoothed my pillow, I reached out for her hand. It was
a boldness of which I had not believed myself capable; but she did not
resist, and even, as I thought, pressed my fingers with her own slender
ones, the red of our Maryland holly blushing in her cheeks. And what
need of words, indeed! Our thoughts, too, flew coursing hand in hand
through primrose paths, and the angels themselves were not to be envied.

A master might picture my happiness, waking and sleeping, through the
short winter days that came and went like flashes of gray light. The
memory of them is that of a figure tall and lithe, a little more rounded
than of yore, and a chiselled face softened by a power that is one of the
world's mysteries. Dorothy had looked the lady in rags, and housewife's
cap and apron became her as well as silks or brocades. When for any
reason she was absent from my side, I moped, to the quiet amusement of
Mrs. Manners and the more boisterous delight of Aunt Lucy, who took her
turn sewing in the window. I was near to forgetting the use of words,
until at length, one rare morning when the sun poured in, the jolly
doctor dressed my wounds with more despatch than common, and vouchsafed
that I might talk awhile that day.

"Oh!" cries he, putting me as ever to confusion, "but I have a guess
whom my gentleman will be wishing to talk with. But I'll warrant, sir,
you have said a deal more than I have any notion of without opening your
lips."

And he went away, intolerably pleased with his joke.

Alas for the perversity of maiden natures! It was not my dear nurse who
brought my broth that morning, but Mrs. Manners herself. She smiled at
my fallen face, and took a chair at my bedside.

"Now, my dear boy," she said, "you may ask what questions you choose, and
I will tell you very briefly how you have come here."

"I have been thinking, Mrs. Manners," I replied, "that if it were known
that you harboured one of John Paul Jones's officers in London, very
serious trouble might follow for you."

I thought her brow clouded a little.

"No one knows of it, Richard, or is likely to. Dr. Barry, like so many
in England, is a good Whig and friend to America. And you are in a part
of London far removed from Mayfair." She hesitated, and then continued
in a voice that strove to be lighter: "This little house is in Charlotte
Street, Mary-le-Bone, for the war has made all of us suffer some. And we
are more fortunate than many, for we are very comfortable here, and
though I say it, happier than in Arlington Street. And the best of our
friends are still faithful. Mr. Fox, with all his greatness, has never
deserted us, nor my Lord Comyn. Indeed, we owe them much more than I can
tell you of now," she said, and sighed. "They are here every day of the
world to inquire for you, and it was his Lordship brought you out of
Holland."

And so I had reason once more to bless this stanch friend!

"Out of Holland?" I cried.

"Yes. One morning as we sat down to breakfast, Mr. Ripley's clerk
brought in a letter for Dorothy. But I must say first that Mr. Dulany,
who is in London, told us that you were with John Paul Jones. You can
have no conception, Richard, of the fear and hatred that name has aroused
in England. Insurance rates have gone up past belief, and the King's
ships are cruising in every direction after the traitor and pirate, as
they call him. We have prayed daily for your safety, and Dorothy--well,
here is the letter she received. It had been opened by the inspector,
and allowed to pass. And it is to be kept as a curiosity." She drew it
from the pocket of her apron and began to read.

                  "THE TEXEL, October 3, 1779

   "MY DEAR Miss DOROTHY: I would not be thought to flutter y'r Gentle
   Bosom with Needless Alarms, nor do I believe I have misjudged y'r
   Warm & Generous Nature when I write you that One who is held very
   High in y'r Esteem lies Exceeding Ill at this Place, who might by
   Tender Nursing regain his Health. I seize this Opportunity to say,
   my dear Lady, that I have ever held my too Brief Acquaintance with
   you in London as one of the Sacred Associations of my Life. From
   the Little I saw of you then I feel Sure that this Appeal will not
   pass in Vain. I remain y'r most Humble and Devoted Admirer,

                  "JAMES ORCHARDSON."


"And she knew it was from Commodore Jones?" I asked, in astonishment.

"My dear," replied Mrs. Manners, with a quiet smile, "we women have a
keener instinct than men--though I believe your commodore has a woman's
intuition. Yes, Dorothy knew. And I shall never forget the fright she
gave me as she rose from the table and handed me the sheet to read,
crying but the one word. She sent off to Brook Street for Lord Comyn,
who came at once, and, in half an hour the dear fellow was set out for
Dover. He waited for nothing, since war with Holland was looked for at
any day. And his Lordship himself will tell you about that rescue.
Within the week he had brought you to us. Your skull had been trepanned,
you had this great hole in your thigh, and your heart was beating but
slowly. By Mr. Fox's advice we sent for Dr. Barry, who is a skilled
surgeon, and a discreet man despite his manner. And you have been here
for better than three weeks, Richard, hanging between life and death."

"And I owe my life to you and to Dorothy," I said.

"To Lord Comyn and Dr. Barry, rather," she replied quickly. "We have
done little but keep the life they saved. And I thank God it was given
me to do it for the son of your mother and father."

Something of the debt I owed them was forced upon me.

They were poor, doubtless driven to make ends meet, and yet they had
taken me in, called upon near the undivided services of an able surgeon,
and worn themselves out with nursing me. Nor did I forget the risk they
ran with such a guest. For the first time in many years my heart
relented toward Mr. Marmaduke. For their sakes I forgave him over and
over what I had suffered, and my treatment of him lay like a weight upon
me. And how was I to repay them? They needed the money I had cost them,
of that I was sure. After the sums I had expended to aid the commodore
with the 'Ranger' and the 'Bon homme Richard', I had scarce a farthing to
my name. With such leaden reflections was I occupied when I heard Mrs.
Manners speaking to me.

"Richard, I have some news for you which the doctor thinks you can bear
to-day. Mr. Dulany, who is exiled like the rest of us, brought them. It
is a great happiness to be able to tell you, my dear, that you are now
the master of Carvel Hall, and like to stay so."

The tears stole into her eyes as she spoke. And the enormity of those
tidings, coming as they did on the top of my dejection, benumbed me.
All they meant was yet far away from my grasp, but the one supreme result
that was first up to me brought me near to fainting in my weakness.

"I would not raise your hopes unduly, Richard," the good lady was saying,
"but the best informed here seem to think that England cannot push the
war much farther. If the Colonies win, you are secure in your title."

"But how is it come about, Mrs. Manners?" I demanded, with my first
breath.

"You doubtless have heard that before the Declaration was signed at
Philadelphia your Uncle Grafton went to the committee at Annapolis and
contributed to the patriot cause, and took very promptly the oath of the
Associated Freemen of Maryland, thus forsaking the loyalist party--"

"Yes, yes," I interrupted, "I heard of it when I was on the Cabot. He
thought his property in danger."

"Just so," said Mrs. Manners, laughing; "he became the best and most
exemplary of patriots, even as he had been the best of Tories. He sent
wheat and money to the army, and went about bemoaning that his only son
fought under the English flag. But very little fighting has Philip done,
my dear. Well, when the big British fleet sailed up the bay in '77, your
precious uncle made the first false step in his long career of rascality.
He began to correspond with the British at Philadelphia, and one of his
letters was captured near the Head of Elk. A squad was sent to the Kent
estate, where he had been living, to arrest him, but he made his escape
to New York. And his lands were at once confiscated by the state."

"'Then they belong to the state," I said, with misgiving.

"Not so fast, Richard. At the last session of the Maryland Legislature
a bill was introduced, through the influence of Mr. Bordley and others,
to restore them to you, their rightful owner. And insomuch as you were
even then serving the country faithfully and bravely, and had a clean and
honourable record of service, the whole of the lands were given to you.
And now, my dear, you have had excitement enough for one day."




CHAPTER LIV

MORE DISCOVERIES

All that morning I pondered over the devious lane of my life, which had
led up to so fair a garden. And one thing above all kept turning and
turning in my head, until I thought I should die of waiting for its
fulfilment. Now was I free to ask Dorothy to marry me, to promise her
the ease and comfort that had once been hers, should God bring us safe
back to Maryland. The change in her was little less than a marvel to me,
when I remembered the wilful miss who had come to London bent upon
pleasure alone. Truly, she was of that rare metal which refines, and
then outshines all others. And there was much I could not understand.
A miracle had saved her from the Duke of Chartersea, but why she had
refused so many great men and good was beyond my comprehension. Not a
glimpse of her did I get that day, though my eyes wandered little from
the knob of the door. And even from Aunt Lucy no satisfaction was to be
had as to the cause of her absence.

"'Clare to goodness, Marse Dick," said she, with great solemnity, "'clare
to goodness, I'se nursed Miss Dolly since she was dat high, and neber one
minnit obher life is I knowed what de Chile gwine t' do de next. She
ain't neber yit done what I calcelated on."

The next morning, after the doctor had dressed my wounds and bantered me
to his heart's content, enters Mr. Marmaduke Manners. I was prodigiously
struck by the change in him, and pitied him then near as much as I had
once despised him. He was arrayed in finery, as of old. But the finery
was some thing shabby; the lace was frayed at the edges, there was a neat
but obvious patch in his small-clothes, and two more in his coat. His
air was what distressed me most of all, being that of a man who spends
his days seeking favours and getting none. I had seen too many of the
type not to know the sign of it.

He ran forward and gave me his hand, which I grasped as heartily as my
weakness would permit.

"They would not let me see you until to-day, my dear Richard," he
exclaimed. "I bid you welcome to what is left of our home. 'Tis not
Arlington Street, my lad."

"But more of a home than was that grander house, Mr. Manners."

He sighed heavily.

"Alas!" said he, "poverty is a bitter draught, and we have drunk deep of
it since last we beheld you. My great friends know me no more, and will
not take my note for a shilling. They do not remember the dinners and
suppers I gave them. Faith, this war has brought nothing but misery,
and how we are to get through it, God knows!"

Now I understood it was not the war, but Mr. Marmaduke himself, which had
carried his family to this pass. And some of my old resentment
rekindled.

"I know that I have brought you great additional anxiety and expense,
Mr. Manners," I answered somewhat testily. "The care I have been to Mrs.
Manners and Dorothy I may never repay. But it gives me pleasure to feel,
sir, that I am in a position to reimburse you, and likewise to loan you
something until your lands begin to pay again."

"There the Carvel speaks," he cried, "and the true son of our generous
province. You can have no conception of the misfortunes come to me out
of this quarrel. The mortgages on my Western Shore tobacco lands are
foreclosed, and Wilmot House itself is all but gone. You well know, of
course, that I would do the same by you, Richard."

I smiled, but more in sadness than amusement. Hardship had only degraded
Mr. Marmaduke the more, and even in trouble his memory was convenient as
is that of most people in prosperity. I was of no mind to jog his
recollection. But I wanted badly to ask about his Grace. Where had my
fine nobleman been at the critical point of his friend's misfortunes?
For I had had many a wakeful night over that same query since my talk
with McAndrews.

"So you have come to your own again, Richard, my lad," said Mr.
Marmaduke, breaking in upon my train. "I have felt for you deeply, and
talked many a night with Margaret and Dorothy over the wrong done you.
Between you and me," he whispered, "that uncle of yours is an arrant
knave, whom the patriots have served with justice. To speak truth, sir,
I begin myself to have a little leaning to that cause which you have so
bravely espoused."

This time I was close to laughing outright. But he was far too serious
to remark my mirth. He commenced once more, with an ahem, which gave me
a better inkling than frankness of what bothered him.

"You will have an agent here, Richard, I take it," said he. "Your
grandfather had one. Ahem! Doubtless this agent will advance you all
you shall have need of, when you are well enough to see him. Fact is,
he might come here."

"You forget, Mr. Manners, that I am a pirate and an outlaw, and that you
are the shielder of such."

That thought shook the pinch of Holland he held all over him. But he
recovered.

"My dear Richard, men of business are of no faction and of no nation.
Their motto is discretion. And to obtain the factorship in London of a
like estate to yours one of them would wear a plaster over his mouth,
I'll warrant you. You have but to summon one of the rascals, promise him
a bit of war interest, and he will leave you as much as you desire, and
nothing spoken."

"To talk plainly, Mr. Manners," I replied, "I think 'twould be the height
of folly to resort to such means. When I am better, we shall see what
can be done."

His face plainly showed his disappointment.

"To be sure," he said, in a whining tone, "I had forgotten your friends,
Lord Comyn and Mr. Fox. They may do something for you, now you own your
estate. My dear sir, I dislike to say aught against any man. Mrs.
Manners will tell you of their kindness to us, but I vow I have not been
able to see it. With all the money at their command they will not loan
me a penny in my pressing need. And I shame to say it, my own daughter
prevents me from obtaining the money to keep us out of the Fleet. I know
she has spoken to Dulany. Think of it, Richard, my own daughter, upon
whom I lavished all when I had it, who might have made a score of grand
matches when I gave her the opportunity, and now we had all been rolling
in wealth. I'll be sworn I don't comprehend her, nor her mother either,
who abets her. For they prefer to cook Maryland dainties for a living,
to put in the hands of the footmen of the ladies whose houses they once
visited. And how much of that money do you suppose I get, sir? Will you
believe it that I--" (he was shrieking now), "that I, the man of the
family, am allowed only my simple meals, a farthing for snuff, and not a
groat for chaise-hire? At my age I am obliged to walk to and from their
lordships' side entrances in patched clothes, egad, when a new suit might
obtain us a handsome year's income!"

I turned my face to the wall, completely overcome, and the tears scalding
in my eyes, at the thought of Dorothy and her mother bending over the
stove cooking delicacies for their livelihood, and watching at my bedside
night and day despite their weariness of body. And not a word out of
these noble women of their sacrifice, nor of the shame and trouble and
labour of their lives, who always had been used to every luxury! Nothing
but cheer had they brought to the sickroom, and not a sign of their
poverty and hardship, for they knew that their broths and biscuit and
jellies must have choked me. No. It remained for this contemptible
cur of a husband and father to open my eyes.

He had risen when I had brought myself to look at him. And as I hope for
heaven he took my emotion for pity of himself.

"I have worried you enough for one day with my troubles, my lad," said
he. "But they are very hard to bear, and once in a while it does me good
to speak of them."

I did not trust myself to reply.

It was Aunt Lucy who spent the morning with me, and Mrs. Manners brought
my dinner. I observed a questioning glance as she entered, which I took
for an attempt to read whether Mr. Marmaduke had spoke more than he
ought. But I would have bitten off my tongue rather than tell her of my
discoveries, though perhaps my voice may have betrayed an added concern.
She stayed to talk on the progress of the war, relating the gallant
storming of Stony Point by Mad Anthony in July, and the latest Tory
insurrection on our own Eastern Shore. She passed from these matters to
a discussion of General Washington's new policy of the defensive, for
Mrs. Manners had always been at heart a patriot. And whilst I lay
listening with a deep interest, in comes my lady herself. So was it
ever, when you least expected her, even as Mammy had said. She curtseyed
very prettily, with her chin tilted back and her cheeks red, and asked me
how I did.

"And where have you been these days gone, Miss Will-o'the-Wisp, since the
doctor has given me back my tongue?" I cried.

"I like you better when you are asleep," says she. "For then you are
sometimes witty, though I doubt not the wit is other people's."

So I saw that she had tricked me, and taken her watch at night. For I
slept like a trooper after a day's forage. As to what I might have said
in my dreams--that thought made me red as an apple.

"Dorothy, Dorothy," says her mother, smiling, "you would provoke a
saint."

"Which would be better fun than teasing a sinner," replies the minx, with
a little face at me. "Mr. Carvel, a gentleman craves the honour of an
audience from your Excellency."

"A gentleman!"

"Even so. He presents a warrant from your Excellency's physician."

With that she disappeared, Mrs. Manners going after her. And who should
come bursting in at the door but my Lord Comyn? He made one rush at me,
and despite my weakness bestowed upon me a bear's hug.

"Oh, Richard," cried he, when he had released me, "I give you my oath
that I never hoped to see you rise from that bed when we laid you there.
But they say that love works wondrous cures, and, egad, I believe that
now. 'Tis love is curing you, my lad."

He held me off at arm's length, the old-time affection beaming from his
handsome face.

"What am I to say to you, Jack?" I answered. And my voice was all but
gone, for the sight of him revived the memory of every separate debt of
the legion I owed him. "How am I to piece words enough together to thank
you for this supreme act of charity?"

"'Od's, you may thank your own devilish thick head," said my Lord Comyn.
"I should never have bothered my own about you were it not for her. Had
it not been for her happiness do you imagine I would have picked you out
of that crew of half-dead pirates in the Texel fort?"

I must needs brush my cheek, then, with the sleeve of my night-rail.

"And will you give me some account of this last prodigious turn you have
done her?" I said.

He laughed, and pinched me playfully.

"Now are you coming to your senses," said he. "There was cursed little
to the enterprise, Richard, and that's the truth. I got down to Dover,
and persuaded the master of a schooner to carry me to Rotterdam. That
was not so difficult, since your Terror of the Seas was locked up safe
enough in the Texel. In Rotterdam I had a travelling-chaise stripped,
and set off at the devil's pace for the Texel. You must know that the
whole Dutch nation was in an uproar--as much of an uproar as those boors
ever reach--over the arrival of your infamous squadron. The Court Party
and our ambassador were for having you kicked out, and the Republicans
for making you at home. I heard that their High Mightinesses had given
Paul Jones the use of the Texel fort for his wounded and his prisoners,
and thither I ran. And I was even cursing the French sentry at the
drawbridge in his own tongue, when up comes your commodore himself.
You may quarter me if wasn't knocked off my feet when I recognized the
identical peacock of a sea-captain we had pulled out of Castle Yard
along with you, and offered a commission in the Royal Navy."

"Dolly hadn't told you?"

"Dolly tell me!" exclaimed his Lordship, scornfully. "She was in a state
to tell me nothing the morning I left, save only to bring you to England
alive, and repeat it over and over. But to return to your captain,--he,
too, was taken all aback. But presently he whipt out my name, and I his,
without the Jones. And when I told him my errand, he wept on my neck,
and said he had obtained unlimited leave of absence for you from the
Paris commissioners. He took me up into a private room in the fort,
where you were; and the surgeon, who was there at the time, said that
your chances were as slim as any man's he had ever seen. Faith, you
looked it, my lad. At sight of your face I took one big gulp, for I had
no notion of getting you back to her. And rather than come without you,
and look into her eyes, I would have drowned myself in the Straits of
Dover.

"Despite the host of troubles he had on his hands, your commodore himself
came with us to Rotterdam. Now I protest I love that man, who has more
humanity in him than most of the virtuous people in England who call him
hard names. If you could have seen him leaning over you, and speaking to
you, and feeling every minute for your heart-beats, egad, you would have
cried. And when I took you off to the schooner, he gave me an hundred
directions how to care for you, and then his sorrow bowled him all in a
heap."

"And is the commodore still at the Texel?" I asked, after a space.

"Ay, that he is, with our English cruisers thick as gulls outside'
waiting for a dead fish. But he has spurned the French commission they
have offered him, saying that of the Congress is good enough for him.
And he declares openly that when he gets ready he will sail out in the
Alliance under the Stars and Stripes. And for this I honour him," added
he, "and Charles honours him, and so must all Englishmen honour him when
they come to their senses. And by Gads life, I believe he will get
clear, for he is a marvel at seamanship."

"I pray with all my heart that he may," said I, fervently.

"God help him if they catch him!" my Lord exclaimed. "You should see
the bloody piratical portraits they are scattering over London."

"Has the risk you ran getting me into England ever occurred to you,
Jack?" I asked, with some curiosity.

"Faith, not until the day after we got back, Richard," says he, "when I
met Mr. Attorney General on the street. 'Sdeath, I turned and ran the
other way like the devil was after me. For Charles Fox vows that
conscience makes cowards of the best of us."

"So that is some of Charles's wisdom!" I cried, and laughed until I was
forced to stop from pain.

"Come, my hearty," says Jack, "you owe me nothing for fishing you out of
Holland--that is her debt. But I declare that you must one day pay me
for saving her for you. What! have I not always sworn that she loved
you? Did I not pull you into the coffee-room of the Star and Garter
years ago, and tell you that same?"

My face warmed, though I said nothing.

"Oh, you sly dog! I'll warrant there has been many a tender talk just
where I'm sitting."

"Not one," said I.

"'Slife, then, what have you been doing," he cries, "seeing her every day
and not asking her to marry you, my master of Carvel Hall?"

"Since I am permitted to use my tongue, she has not come near me, save
when I slept," I answered ruefully.

"Nor will she, I'll be sworn," says he, shaken with laughter.

"'Ods, have you no invention? Egad, you must feign sleep, and seize her
unawares."

I did not inform his Lordship how excellent this plan seemed to me.

"And I possessed the love of such a woman, Richard," he said, in another
tone, "I think I should die of happiness. She will never tell you how
these weeks past she has scarce left your side. The threats combined
of her mother and the doctor, and Charles and me, would not induce her
to take any sleep. And time and time have I walked from here to Brook
Street without recognizing a step of the way, lifted clear out of myself
by the sight of her devotion."

What was my life, indeed, that such a blessing should come into it!

"When the crash came," he continued, "'twas she took command, and 'tis
God's pity she had not done so long before. Mr. Marmaduke was pushed to
the bottom of the family, where he belongs, and was given only
snuff-money. She would give him no opportunity to contract another debt,
and even charged Charles and me to loan him nothing. Nor would she
receive aught from us, but" (he glanced at me uneasily)--"but she and
Mrs. Manners must take to cooking delicacies--"

"Yes, yes, I know," I faltered.

"What! has the puppy told you?" cried he.

I nodded. "He was in here this morning, with his woes."

"And did he speak of the bargain he tried to make with our old friend,
his Grace of Chartersea?"

"He tried to sell her again?" I cried, my breath catching. "I have
feared as much since I heard of their misfortunes."

"Yes," replied Comyn, "that was the first of it. 'Twas while they were
still in Arlington Street, and before Mrs. Manners and Dorothy knew.
Mr. Marmaduke goes posting off to Nottinghamshire, and comes back inside
the duke's own carriage. And his Grace goes to dine in Arlington Street
for the first time in years. Dorothy had wind of the trouble then,
Charles having warned her. And not a word would she speak to Chartersea
the whole of the dinner, nor look to the right or left of her plate. And
when the servants are gone, up gets my lady with a sweep and confronts
him.

"'Will your Grace spare me a minute in the drawing-room?' says she.

"He blinked at her in vast astonishment, and pushed back his chair. When
she was come to the door, she turns with another sweep on Mr. Marmaduke,
who was trotting after.

"'You will please to remain here, father,' she said; 'what I am to say is
for his Grace's ear alone.'

"Of what she spoke to the duke I can form only an estimate, Richard," my
Lord concluded, "but I'll lay a fortune 'twas greatly to the point. For
in a little while Chartersea comes stumbling down the steps. And he has
never darkened the door since. And the cream of it is," said Comyn,
"that her father gave me this himself, with a face a foot long, for me
to sympathize. The little beast has strange bursts of confidence."

"And stranger confidants," I ejaculated, thinking of the morning, and of
Courtenay's letter, long ago.

But the story had made my blood leap again with pride of her. The
picture in my mind had followed his every sentence, and even the very
words she must have used were ringing in my ears.

Then, as we sat talking in low tones, the door opened, and a hearty voice
cried out:

"Now where is this rebel, this traitor? They tell me one lies hid in
this house. 'Slife, I must have at him!"

"Mr. Fox!" I exclaimed.

He took my hands in his, and stood regarding me.

"For the convenience of my friends, I was christened Charles," said he.

I stared at him in amazement. He was grown a deal stouter, but my eye
was caught and held by the blue coat and buff waistcoat he wore. They
were frayed and stained and shabby, yet they seemed all of a piece with
some new grandeur come upon the man.

"Is all the world turning virtuous? Is the millennium arrived?" I
cried.

He smiled, with his old boyish smile.

"You think me changed some since that morning we drove together to
Holland House--do you remember it after the night at St. Stephen's?"

"Remember it!" I repeated, with emphasis, "I'll warrant I can give you
every bit of our talk."

"I have seen many men since, but never have I met your equal for a most
damnable frankness, Richard Carvel. Even Jack, here, is not half so
blunt and uncompromising. But you took my fancy--God knows why!--that
first night I clapped eyes on you in Arlington Street, and I loved you
when your simplicity made us that speech at Brooks's Club. So you have
not forgotten that morning under the trees, when the dew was on the
grass. Faith, I am glad of it. What children we were!" he said, and
sighed.

"And yet you were a Junior Lord," I said.

"Which is more than I am now," he answered. "Somehow--you may laugh
--somehow I have never been able to shake off the influence of your words,
Richard. Your cursed earnestness scared me."

"Scared you?" I cried, in astonishment.

"Just that," said Charles. "Jack will bear witness that I have said
so to Dolly a score of times. For I had never imagined such a single
character as yours. You know we were all of us rakes at fifteen,
to whom everything good in the universe was a joke. And do you recall
the teamster we met by the Park, and how he arrested his salute when he
saw who it was? At another time I should have laughed over that, but it
cut me to have it happen when you were along."

"And I'll lay an hundred guineas to a farthing the fellow would put his
head on the block for Charles now," cut in his Lordship, with his hand on
Mr. Fox's shoulder. "Behold, O Prophet," he cried, "one who is become
the champion of the People he reviled! Behold the friend of Rebellion
and 'Lese Majeste', the viper in Britannia's bosom!"

"Oh, have done, Jack," said Mr. Fox, impatiently, "you have no more music
in your soul than a cow. Damned little virtue attaches to it, Richard,"
he went on. "North threw me out, and the king would have nothing to do
with me, so I had to pick up with you rebels and traitors."

"You will not believe him, Richard," cried my Lord; "you have only to
look at him to see that he lies. Take note of the ragged uniform of the
rebel army he carries, and then think of him 'en petite maitre', with his
cabriolet and his chestnuts. Egad, he might be as rich as Rigby were it
not for those principles which he chooses to deride. And I have seen him
reduced to a crown for them. I tell you, Richard," said my Lord, "by
espousing your cause Charles is become greater than the King. For he
has the hearts of the English people, which George has not, and the
allegiance of you Americans, which George will never have. And if you
once heard him, in Parliament, you should hear him now, and see the
Speaker wagging his wig like a man bewitched, and hear friends and
enemies calling out for him to go on whenever he gives the sign of a
pause."

This speech of his Lordship's may seem cold in the writing, my dears,
and you who did not know him may wonder at it. It had its birth in an
admiration few men receive, and which in Charles Fox's devoted coterie
was dangerously near to idolatry. During the recital of it Charles
walked to the window, and there stood looking out upon the gray prospect,
seemingly paying but little attention. But when Comyn had finished, he
wheeled on us with a smile.

"Egad, he will be telling you next that I have renounced the devil and
all his works, Richard," said he.

"'Oohs, that I will not," his Lordship made haste to declare. "For they
were born in him, and will die with him."

"And you, Jack," I asked, "how is it that you are not in arms for the
King, and commanding one of his frigates?"

"Why, it is Charles's fault," said my Lord, smiling. "Were it not for
him I should be helping Sir George Collier lay waste to your coast
towns."




CHAPTER LV

"THE LOVE OF A MAID FOR A MAN"

The next morning, when Dr. Barry had gone, Mrs. Manners propped me up in
bed and left me for a little, so she said. Then who should come in with
my breakfast on a tray but my lady herself, looking so fresh and
beautiful that she startled me vastly.

"A penny for your thoughts, Richard," she cried. "Why, you are as grave
as a screech-owl this brave morning."

"To speak truth, Dolly," said I, "I was wondering how the commodore is
to get away from the Texel, with half the British navy lying in wait
outside."

"Do not worry your head about that," said she, setting down the tray; "it
will be mere child's play to him. Oh but I should like to see your
commodore again, and tell him how much I love him.

"I pray that you may have the chance," I replied.

With a marvellous quickness she had tied the napkin beneath my chin, not
so much as looking at the knot. Then she stepped to the mantel and took
down one of Mr. Wedgwood's cups and dishes, and wiping them with her
apron, filled the cup with fragrant tea, which she tendered me with her
eyes sparkling.

"Your Excellency is the first to be honoured with this service," says
she, with a curtsey.

I was as a man without a tongue, my hunger gone from sheer happiness--and
fright. And yet eating the breakfast with a relish because she had made
it. She busied herself about the room, dusting here and tidying there,
and anon throwing a glance at me to see if I needed anything. My eyes
followed her hither and thither. When I had finished, she undid the
napkin, and brushed the crumbs from the coverlet.

"You are not going?" I said, with dismay.

"Did you wish anything more, sir?" she asked.

"Oh, Dorothy," I cried, "it is you I want, and you will not come near
me."

For an instant she stood irresolute. Then she put down the tray and came
over beside me.

"Do you really want me, sir?"

"Dorothy," I began, "I must first tell you that I have some guess at the
sacrifice you are making for my sake, and of the trouble and danger which
I bring you."

Without more ado she put her hand over my mouth.

"No," she said, reddening, "you shall tell me nothing of the sort."

I seized her hand, however it struggled, and holding it fast, continued:

"And I have learned that you have been watching with me by night, and
working by day, when you never should have worked at all. To think that
you should be reduced to that, and I not know it!"

Her eyes sought mine for a fleeting second.

"Why, you silly boy, I have made a fortune out of my cookery. And fame,
too, for now am I known from Mary-le-bone to Chelsea, while before my
name was unheard of out of little Mayfair. Indeed, I would not have
missed the experience for a lady-in-waiting-ship. I have learned a deal
since I saw you last, sir. I know that the world, like our Continental
money, must not be taken for the price that is stamped upon it. And as
for the watching with you," said my lady, "that had to be borne with as
cheerfully as might be. Since I had sent off for you, I was in duty
bound to do my share toward your recovery. I was even going to add
that this watching was a pleasure,--our curate says the sense of duty
performed is sure to be. But you used to cry out the most terrifying
things to frighten me: the pattering of blood and the bumping of bodies
on the decks, and the black rivulets that ran and ran and ran and never
stopped; and strange, rough commands I could not understand; and the name
of your commodore whom you love so much. And often you would repeat over
and over: 'I have not yet begun, to fight, I have not yet begun to
fight!'"

"Yes, 'twas that he answered when they asked him if he had struck,"
I exclaimed.

"It must have been an awful scene," she said, and her shoulders quivered.
"When you were at your worst you would talk of it, and sometimes of what
happened to you in London, of that ride in Hyde Park, or--or of
Vauxhall," she continued hurriedly. "And when I could bear it no longer,
I would take your hand and call you by name, and often quiet you thus."

"And did I speak of aught else?" I asked eagerly.

"Oh, yes. When you were caliper, it would be of your childhood, of your
grandfather and your birthdays, of Captain Clapsaddle, and of Patty and
her father."

"And never of Dolly, I suppose."

She turned away her head.

"And never of Dolly?"

"I will tell you what you said once, Richard," she answered, her voice
dropping very low. "I was sitting by the window there, and the dawn was
coming. And suddenly I heard you cry: 'Patty, when I return will you be
my wife?' I got up and came to your side, and you said it again, twice."

The room was very still. And the vision of Patty in the parlour of
Gordon's Pride, knitting my woollen stocking, rose before me.

"Yes," I said at length, "I asked her that the day before I left for the
war. God bless her! She has the warmest heart in the world, and the
most generous nature. Do you know what her answer was, Dorothy?"

"No." 'Twas only her lips moving that formed the word. She was twisting
absently the tassel of the bed curtain.

"She asked me if I loved her."

My lady glanced up with a start, then looked me searchingly through and
through.

"And you?" she said, in the same inaudible way.

"I could answer nothing. 'Twas because of her father's dying wish I
asked her, and she guessed that same. I would not tell her a lie, for
only the one woman lives whom I love, and whom I have loved ever since
we were children together among the strawberries. Need I say that that
woman is you, Dorothy? I loved you before we sailed to Carvel Hall
between my grandfather's knees, and I will love you till death claims
me."

Then it seemed as if my heart had stopped beating. But the snowy apron
upon her breast fluttered like a sail stirring in the wind, her head was
high, and her eyes were far away. Even my voice sounded in the distance
as I continued:

"Will you be the mistress of Carvel Hall, Dorothy? Hallowed is the day
that I can ask it."

What of this earth may excel in sweetness the surrender of that proud and
noble nature! And her words, my dears, shall be sacred to you, too, who
are descended from her. She bent forward a little, those deep blue eyes
gazing full into my own with a fondness to make me tremble.

"Dear Richard," she said, "I believe I have loved you always. If I have
been wilful and wicked, I have suffered more than you know--even as I
have made you suffer."

"And now our suffering is over, Dorothy."

"Oh, don't say that, my dear!" she cried, "but let us rather make a
prayer to God."

Down she got on her knees close beside me, and I took both of her hands
between my own. But presently I sought for a riband that was around my
neck, and drew out a locket. Within it were pressed those lilies of the
valley I had picked for her long years gone by on my birthday. And she
smiled, though the tears shone like dewdrops on her lashes.

"When Jack brought you to us for dead, we did not take it off, dear,"
she said gently. "I wept with sorrow and joy at sight of it, for I
remembered you as you were when you picked those flowers, and how lightly
I had thought of leaving you as I wound them into my hair. And then,
when I had gone aboard the 'Annapolis', I knew all at once that I would
have given anything to stay, and I thought my heart would break when we
left the Severn cliffs behind. But that, sir, has been a secret until
this day," she added, smiling archly through her tears.

She took out one of the withered flowers, and then as caressingly put it
back beside the others, and closed the locket.

"I forbade Dr. Barry to take it off, Richard, when you lay so white and
still. I knew then that you had been true to me, despite what I had
heard. And if you were to die--" her voice broke a little as she passed
her hand over my brow, "if you were to die, my single comfort would have
been that you wore it then."

"And you heard rumours of me, Dorothy?"

"George Worthington and others told me how ably you managed Mr. Swain's
affairs, and that you had become of some weight with the thinking men of
the province. Richard, I was proud to think that you had the courage to
laugh at disaster and to become a factor. I believe," she said shyly,
"twas that put the cooking into my head, and gave me courage. And when
I heard that Patty was to marry you, Heaven is my witness that I tried to
be reconciled and think it for the best. Through my own fault I had lost
you, and I knew well she would make you a better wife than I."

"And you would not even let Jack speak for me!"

"Dear Jack!" she cried; "were it not for Jack we should not be here,
Richard."

"Indeed, Dolly, two people could scarce fall deeper in debt to another
than are you and I to my Lord Viscount," I answered, with feeling. "His
honesty and loyalty to us both saved you for me at the very outset."

"Yes," she replied thoughtfully, "I believed you dead. And I should have
married him, I think. For Dr. Courtenay had sent me that piece from the
Gazette telling of the duel between you over Patty Swain--"

"Dr. Courtenay sent you that!" I interrupted.

"I was a wild young creature then, my dear, with little beside vanity
under my cap. And the notion that you could admire and love any girl but
me was beyond endurance. Then his Lordship arrived in England, brimming
with praise of you, to assure me that the affair was not about Patty at
all. This was far from making me satisfied that you were not in love
with her, and I may say now that I was miserable. Then, as we were
setting out for Castle Howard, came the news of your death on the road
to Upper Marlboro. I could not go a step. Poor Jack, he was very honest
when he proposed," she added, with a sigh.

"He loved you, Dorothy."

She did not hear me, so deep was she in thought.

"'Twas he who gave me news of you, when I was starving at Gordon's."

"And I--I starved, too, Richard," she answered softly. "Dearest, I slid
very wrong. There are some matters that must be spoken of between us,
whatever the pain they give. And my heart aches now when I think of that
dark day in Arlington Street when I gave you the locket, and you went out
of my life. I knew that I had done wrong then, Richard, as soon as ever
the door closed behind you. I should have gone with you, for better for
worse, for richer for poorer. I should have run after you in the rain
and thrown myself at your feet. And that would have been best for my
father and for me."

She covered her face with her hands, and her words were stifled by a sob.

"Dorothy, Dorothy!" I cried, drawing her to me. "Another time. Not now,
when we are so happy."

"Now, and never again, dear," she said. "Yes, I saw and heard all that
passed in the drawing-room. And I did not blame, but praised you for it.
I have never spoken a word beyond necessity to my father since. God
forgive me!" she cried, "but I have despised him from that hour. When
I knew that he had plotted to sell me to that detestable brute, working
upon me to save his honour, of which he has not the smallest spark; that
he had recognized and denied you, friendless before our house, and sent
you into the darkness at Vauxhall to be murdered, then he was no father
of mine. I would that you might know what my mother has suffered from
such a man, Richard."

"My dear, I have often pitied her from my soul," I said.

"And now I shall tell you something of the story of the Duke of
Chartersea," she went on, and I felt her tremble as she spoke that name.
"I think of all we have Lord Comyn to thank for, next to saving your life
twice, was his telling you of the danger I ran. And, Richard, after
refusing you that day on the balcony over the Park, I had no hope left.
You may thank your own nobility and courage that you remained in London
after that. Richard," she said, "do you recall my asking you in the
coach, on the way from Castle Yard, for the exact day you met my father
in Arlington Street?"

"Yes," I replied, in some excitement, "yes." For I was at last to come
at the bottom of this affair.

"The duke had made a formal offer for me when first we came to London.
I think my father wrote of that to Dr. Courtenay." (I smiled at the
recollection, now.) "Then his Grace persisted in following me
everywhere, and vowed publicly that he would marry me. I ordered him
from our house, since my father would not. At last one afternoon he came
back to dine with us, insolent to excess. I left the table. He sat with
my father two hours or more, drinking and singing, and giving orders to
the servants. I shut my door, that I might not hear. After a while my
mother came up to me, crying, saying that Mr. Manners would be branded
with dishonour and I did not consent to marry his Grace,--a most terrible
dishonour, of which she could not speak. That the duke had given my
father a month to win my consent. And that month was up, Richard, the
very afternoon you appeared with Mr. Dix in Arlington Street."

"And you agreed to marry him, Dolly?" I asked breathlessly.

"By the grace of Heaven, I did not," she answered quickly. "The utmost
that I would consent to was a two months' respite, promising to give my
hand to no one in that interval. And so I was forced to refuse you,
Richard. You must have seen even then that I loved you, dear, though
I was so cruel when you spoke of saving me from his Grace. I could not
bear to think that you knew of any stain upon our family. I think--I
think I would rather have died, or have married him. That day I threw
Chartersea's presents out of the window, but my father made the servants
gather them all which escaped breaking, and put them in the drawing-room.
Then I fell ill."

She was silent, I clinging to her, and shuddering to think how near I had
been to losing her.

"It was Jack who came to cheer me," I said presently.

"His faith in you was never shaken, sweetheart. But I went to Newmarket
and Ampthill, and behaved like the ingrate I was. I richly deserved the
scolding he had for me when I got back to town, which sent me running to
Arlington Street. There I met Dr. James coming out, who asked me if I
was Mr. Carvel, and told me that you had called my name."

"And, you goose, you never suspected," says she, smiling.

"How was I to suspect that you loved a provincial booby like me, when
you had the choice of so many accomplished gentlemen with titles and
estates?"

"How were you to perceive, indeed, that you had qualities which they
lacked?"

"And you were forever vowing that you would marry a nobleman, my lady.
For you said to me once that I should call you so, and ride in the coach
with the coroneted panels when I came home on a visit."

"And I said, too," retorted Dolly, with mischief in her eyes, "do you
remember what I told you the New Year's eve when we sat out by the
sundial at Carvel Hall, when I was so proud of having fixed Dr.
Courtenay's attentions? I said that I should never marry you, sir, who
was so rough and masterful, and thrashed every lad that did not agree
with you."

"Alas, so you did, and a deal more!" I exclaimed.

With that she broke away from me and, getting to her feet, made me a low
curtsey with the grace that was hers alone.

"You are my Lord and my King, sir," she said, "and my rough Patriot
squire, all in one."

"Are you happy, Dolly?" I asked, tremulous from my own joy.

"I have never been happy in all my life before, Richard dear," she said.

In truth, she was a being transformed, and more wondrous fair than ever.
And even then I pictured her in the brave gowns and jewels I would buy
her when times were mended, when our dear country would be free. All at
once, ere I could draw a breath, she had stooped and kissed me ever so
lightly on the forehead.

The door opened upon Aunt Lucy. She had but to look at us, and her black
face beamed at our blushes. My lady threw her arms about her neck, and
hid her face in the ample bosom.

"Now praise de good Lawd!" cried Mammy; "I knowed it dis longest time.
What's I done tole you, Miss Dolly? What's I done tole you, honey?"

But my lady flew from the room. Presently I heard the spinet playing
softly, and the words of that air came out of my heart from long ago.

          "Love me little, love me long,
          Is the burthen of my song.
          Love that is too hot and strong
          Burneth soon to waste.
          Still, I would not have thee cold,
          Nor too backward, nor too bold.
          Love that lasteth till 'tis old
          Fadeth not in haste."




CHAPTER LVI

HOW GOOD CAME OUT OF EVIL

'Twas about candlelight when I awoke, and Dorothy was sitting alone
beside me. Her fingers were resting upon my arm, and she greeted me with
a smile all tenderness.

"And does my Lord feel better after--after his excitement to-day?" she
asked.

"Dorothy, you have made me a whole man again. I could walk to Windsor
and back."

"You must have your dinner, or your supper first, sir," she answered
gayly, "and do you rest quiet until I come back to feed you. Oh, Richard
dear," she cried, "how delightful that you should be the helpless one,
and dependent on me!"

As I lay listening for the rustle of her gown, the minutes dragged
eternally. Every word and gesture of the morning passed before my mind,
and the touch of her lips still burned on my forehead. At last, when I
was getting fairly restless, the distant tones of a voice, deep and
reverberating, smote upon my ear, jarring painfully some long-forgotten
chord. That voice belonged to but one man alive, and yet I could not
name him. Even as I strained, the tones drew nearer, and they were mixed
with sweeter ones I knew well, and Dorothy's mother's voice. Whilst I
was still searching, the door opened, the voices fell calm, and Dorothy
came in bearing a candle in each hand. As she set them down on the
table, I saw an agitation in her face, which she strove to hide as she
addressed me.

"Will you see a visitor, Richard?"

"A visitor!" I repeated, with misgiving. 'Twas not so she had announced
Comyn.

"Will you see Mr. Allen?"--

"Mr. Allen, who was the rector of St. Anne's? Mr. Allen in London, and
here?"

"Yes." Her breath seemed to catch at the word. "He says he must see
you, dear, and will not be denied. How he discovered you were with us
I know not."

"See him!" I cried. "And I had but the half of my strength I would
fling him downstairs, and into the kennel. Will you tell him so for me,
Dorothy?"

And I raised up in bed, shaken with anger against the man. In a trice
she was holding me, fearfully.

"Richard, Richard, you will open your wound. I pray you be quiet."

"And Mr. Allen has the impudence to ask to see me!"

"Listen, Richard. Your anger makes you forget many things. Remember
that he is a dangerous man, and now that he knows you are in London he
holds your liberty, perhaps your life, in his hands."

It was true. And not mine alone, but the lives and liberty of others.

"Do you know what he wishes, Dorothy?"

"No, he will not tell us. But he is greatly excited, and says he must
see you at once, for your own good. For your own good, Richard!"

"I do not trust the villain, but he may come in," I said, at length.

She gave me the one lingering, anxious look, and opened the door.

Never had I beheld such a change in mortal man as there was in Mr. Allen,
my old tutor, and rector of St. Anne's. And 'twas a baffling, intangible
change. 'Twas as if the mask bad been torn from his face, for he was now
just a plain adventurer that need not have imposed upon a soul. The
coarse wine and coarse food of the lower coffee-houses of London had
replaced the rich and abundant fare of Maryland. The next day was become
one of the terrors of his life. His clothes were of poor stuff, but
aimed at the fashion. And yet--and yet, as I looked upon him, a
something was in his face to puzzle me entirely. I had seen many stamps
of men, but this thing I could not recognize.

He stepped forward with all of his old confidence, and did not regard a
farthing my cold stare.

"'Tis like gone days to see you again, Richard," he cried. "And I
perceive you have as ever fallen into the best of hands."

"I am Mr. Carvel to my enemies, if they must speak to me at all," I said.

"But, my dear fellow, I am not your enemy, or I should not be here this
day. And presently I shall prove that same." He took snuff. "But first
I must congratulate you on coming alive out of that great battle off
Flamborough. You look as though you had been very near to death, my lad.
A deal nearer than I should care to get."

What to say to the man! What to do save to knock him down, and I could
not do that.

"There can be no passing the time of day between you and me, Mr. Allen,"
I answered hotly. "You, whose machinations have come as near to ruining
me as a man's can."

"And that was your own fault, my dear sir," said he, as he brushed
himself. "You never showed me a whit of consideration, which is very
dear to men in my position."

My head swam. Then I saw Dolly by the door regarding me curiously, with
something of a smile upon her lips, but anxiety still in her eyes. With
a "by your leave, ma'am," to her, Mr. Allen took the chair abreast me.

"You have but to call me when you wish, Richard," said she.

"Nay, Dorothy, Mr. Allen can have nothing to say to me that you may not
hear," I said instantly. "And you will do me a favour to remain."

She sat down without a word, where I could look at her. Mr. Allen raised
his eyebrows at the revelation in our talk, but by the grace of God he
kept his mouth shut.

"And now, Mr. Allen," I said, "to what do I owe the pain of this visit?"

"The pain!" he exclaimed, and threw back his head and gave way to a fit
of laughter. "By the mass! your politeness drowns me. But I like you,
Richard, as I have said more than once. I believe your brutal
straight-dealing has more to do with my predilection than aught else.
For I have seen a deal of rogues in my day."

"And they have seen a deal of you, Mr. Allen."

"So they have," he cried, and laughed the more. "Egad, Miss Dorothy,
you have saved all of him, I think." Then he swung round upon me, very
careless. "Has your Uncle Grafton called to express his sympathies,
Richard?" he asked.

That name brought a cry out of my head, Dolly seizing the arm of her
chair.

"Grafton Carvel in London?" I exclaimed.

"Ay, in very pretty lodgings in Jermyn Street, for he has put by enough,
I'll warrant you, despite the loss of his lands. Your aunt is with him,
and his dutiful son, Philip, now broken of his rank in the English army.
They arrived, before yesterday, from New York."

"And to what is this an introduction?" I demanded.

"I merely thought it strange," said Mr. Allen, imperturbably, "that he
had not called to inquire after his nephew's health."

Dolly was staring at him, with eyes wide open.

"And pray, how did he discover I was in London, sir?" I said. "I was
about to ask how you knew of it, but that is one and the same thing."

He shot at me a look not to be solved.

"It is not well to bite the hand that lifts you out of the fire,
Richard," said he.

"You had not gained admission to this house were I not on my back, Mr.
Allen."

"And that same circumstance is a blessing for you," he cried.

'Twas then I saw Dorothy making me mute signals of appeal.

"I cannot think why you are here, Mr. Allen," I said. "When you consider
all the harm you have done me, and all the double-dealing I may lay at
your door, can you blame me for my feelings?"

"No," he answered, with more soberness than he had yet used; "I honour
you for them. And perchance I am here to atone for some of that harm.
For I like you, my lad, and that's God's truth."

"All this is neither here nor there, Mr. Allen," I exclaimed, wholly out
of patience. "If you have come with a message, let me have it. If not,
I beg you get out of my sight, for I have neither the will nor the desire
for palavering."

"Oh, Richard, do keep your temper!" implored Dorothy. "Can you not see
that Mr. Allen desires to do us--to do you--a service?"

"Of that I am not so sure," I replied.

"It is his way, Miss Manners," said the rector, "and I hold it not
against him. To speak truth, I looked for a worse reception, and came
steeled to withstand it. And had my skin been thin, I had left ere now."
He took more snuff. "It was Mr. Dix," he said to me slowly, "who
informed Mr. Carvel of your presence in London."

"And how the devil did Mr. Dix know?"

He did not reply, but glanced apprehensively at Dorothy.

And I have wondered since at his consideration.

"Miss Manners may not wish to hear," he said uneasily.

"Miss Manners hears all that concerns me," I answered.

He shrugged his shoulders in comprehension.

"It was Mr. Manners, then, who went to Mr. Dix, and told him under the
pledge of secrecy."

Not a sound came from Dorothy, nor did I dare to look at her face. The
whole matter was clear to me now. After his conversation with me, Mr.
Marmaduke had lost no time in seeing Mr. Dix, in order to raise money on
my prospects. And the man of business had gone straight to Grafton with
the intelligence. The suspicion flashed through me that Mr. Allen had
been sent to spy, but his very next words disarmed it.

"And now, Richard," he continued, "before I say what I have come to say,
and since you cannot now prosecute me, I mean to confess to you something
which you probably know almost to a certainty. I was in the plot to
carry you off and deprive you of your fortune. I have been paid for it,
though not very handsomely. Fears for my own safety alone kept me from
telling you and Mr. Swain. And I swear to you that I was sorry for the
venture almost before I had embarked, and ere I had received a shilling.
The scheme was laid out before I took you for a pupil; indeed, that was
part of it, as you no doubt have guessed. As God hears me, I learned to
love you, Richard, in those days at the rectory. You were all of a man,
and such an one as I might have hoped to be had I been born like you.
You said what you chose, and spoke from your own convictions, and catered
to no one. You did not whine when the luck went against you, but lost
like a gentleman, and thought no more of it. You had no fear of the
devil himself. Why should you? While your cousin Philip, with his
parrot talk and sneaking ways, turned my stomach. I was sick of him,
and sick of Grafton, I tell you. But dread of your uncle drove me on,
and I had debts to frighten me."

He paused. "Twas with a strange medley of emotions I looked at him. And
Dorothy, too, was leaning forward, her lips parted and her eyes riveted
upon his face.

"Oh, I am speaking the truth," he said bitterly. "And I assume no virtue
for the little justice it remains in my power to do. It is the lot of my
life that I must be false to some one always, and even now I am false to
your uncle. Yes, I am come to do justice, and 'tis a strange errand for
me. I know that estates have been restored to you by the Maryland
Legislature, Richard, and I believe in my heart that you will win this
war." Here he fetched a memorandum from his pocket. "But to make you
secure," said he, "in the year 1710, and on the 9th of March, old style,
your great-grandfather, Mr. George Carvel, drew up a document entailing
the lands of Carvel Hall. By this they legally pass to you."

"The family settlement Mr. Swain suspected!" I exclaimed.

"Just so," he answered.

"And what am I to pay for this information?" I asked.

Hardly were the words spoken, when Dorothy ran to my bedside, and seizing
my hand, faced him.

"He--he is not well, Mr. Allen," she cried.

The rector had risen, and stood gazing down at us with the whole of his
life written on his face. That look was fearful to see, and all of hell
was expressed therein. For what is hell if it is not hope dead and
buried, and galling regret for what might have been? With mine own great
happiness so contrasted against his torture, my heart melted.

"I am not well, indeed, Mr. Allen," I said. "God knows how hard it is
for me to forgive, but I forgive you this night."

One brief instant he stared at me, and then tumbled suddenly down into
his chair, his head falling forward on his arms. And the long sobs by
which his frame was shaken awed our very souls. Dorothy drew back
against me, clasping my shoulder, the tears wet upon her cheeks. What
we looked on, there in the candlelight, was the Revelation itself.

How long it, endured none of us might say. And when at last he raised
his face, it was haggard and worn in truth, but the evil of it seemed to
have fled. Again and again he strove to speak. The words would not
obey. And when he had mastered himself, his voice was shattered and
gone.

"Richard, I have sinned heavily in my time, and preached God's holy word
with a sneer and unbelief in my heart. He knows what I have suffered,
and what I shall yet suffer before His judgment comes for us all. But I
beg it is no sin to pray to Him for your happiness and Miss Dorothy's."

He stumbled there, and paused, and then continued with more steadiness:

"I came here to-night to betray you, and might have gone hence to your
uncle to claim my pieces of silver. I remain to tell you that Grafton
has an appointment at nine with his Majesty's chief Secretary of State.
I need not mention his motives, nor dwell upon your peril. For the
King's sentiments toward Paul Jones are well known. You must leave
London without delay, and so must Mr. Manners and his family."

Is it the generations which decide? When I remember bow Dorothy behaved
that night, I think so. Scarce had the rector ceased when she had
released me and was standing erect before him. Pity was in her eyes,
but in her face that courage which danger itself begets in heroic women.

"You have acted a noble part this day, Mr. Allen," she said, "to atone
for the wrongs you have done Richard. May God forgive you, and make you
happier than you have been!"

He struggled to his feet, listening as to a benediction. Then, with a
single glance to give me confidence, she was gone. And for a minute
there was silence between us.

"How may you be directed to?" I asked.

He leaped as out of a trance.

"Just 'the world,' Richard," said he. "For I am adrift again, and not
very like to find a harbour, now."

"You were to have been paid for this, Mr. Allen," I replied. "And a man
must live."

"A man must live!" he cried. "The devil coined that line, and made it
some men's history."

"I have you on my conscience, Mr. Allen," I went on, "for I have been at
fault as well as you. I might have treated you better, even as you have
said. And I command you to assign a place in London whence you may be
reached."

"A letter to the Mitre coffee-house will be delivered," he said.

"You shall receive it," I answered. "And now I bid you good-by, and
thank you."

He seized and held my hand. Then walked blindly to the door and turned
abruptly.

"I do not tell you that I shall change my life, Richard, for I have said
that too many times before. Indeed, I warn you that any money you may
send will be spent in drink, and--and worse. I will be no hypocrite to
you. But I believe that I am better this hour than I have been since
last I knelt at my mother's knee in the little Oxfordshire cottage where
I was born."

When Dorothy returned to me, there was neither haste in her step nor
excitement in her voice. Her very coolness inspired me.

"Do you feel strong enough for a journey, Richard?" she asked.

"To the world's end, Dolly, if you will but go with me."

She smiled faintly. "I have sent off for my Lord and Mr. Fox, and pray
that one of them may be here presently."

Scarcely greater were the visible signs of apprehension upon Mrs.
Manners. Her first care, and Dorothy's, was to catechise me most
particularly on my state. And whilst they were so occupied Mr. Marmaduke
entered, wholly frenzied from fright, and utterly oblivious to his own
blame in the matter. He was sent out again directly. After that, with
Aunt Lucy to assist, they hurriedly packed what few things might be
taken. The costly relics of Arlington Street were untouched, and the
French clock was left on the mantel to tick all the night, and for days
to come, in a silent and forsaken room; or perhaps to greet impassively
the King's officers when they broke in at the door. But I caught my lady
in the act of wrapping up the Wedgwood cups and dishes.

In the midst of these preparations Mr. Fox was heard without, and was met
at the door by Dorothy. Two sentences sufficed her to tell him what had
occurred, and two seconds for this man of action to make his decision.

"In an hour you shall have travelling chaises here, Dorothy," he said.
"You must go to Portsmouth, and take ship for Lisbon. And if Jack does
not arrive, I will go with you."

"No, Charles, you must not!" she cried, her emotion conquering her for
the nonce. "That might be to ruin your career, and perchance to lose
your life. And suppose we were to escape, what would they say of you!"

"Fish!" Charles retorted, to hide some feelings of his own; "once our
rebel is out of the country, they may speak their minds. They have never
lacked for names to call me, and I have been dubbed a traitor before now,
my dear lady."

He stepped hastily to the bed, and laid his hand on me with affection.

"Charles," I said, "this is all of a piece with your old recklessness.
You were ever one to take any risk, but I will not hear of such a venture
as this. Do you think I will allow the hope of all England to be staked
for a pirate? And would you break our commander of her rank? All that
Dorothy need do at Portsmouth is to curtsey to the first skipper she
meets, and I'll warrant he will carry us all to the antipodes."

"Egad, but that is more practical than it sounds," he replied, with a
glance of admiration at my lady, as she stood so tall before us. "She
has a cool head, Richard Carvel, and a long head, and--and I'm thinking
you are to come out of this the best of all of us. You cannot get far
off your course, my lad, with her at the helm."

It was there his voice belied the jest in his words, and he left us with
precipitation.

They lifted me out of my sheets (I was appalled to discover my weakness),
and bundled me with tender care in a dozen shawls and blankets. My feet
were thrust into two pairs of heavy woollen stockings, and Dorothy bound
her own silk kerchief at my throat, whispering anxious questions the
while. And when her mother and mammy went from the room, her arms flew
around my neck in a passion of solicitude. Then she ran away to dress
for the journey, and in a surprising short time was back again, with her
muff and her heavy cloak, and bending over me to see if I gave any signs
of failure.

Fifty and five minutes had been registered by the French clock, when the
rattle of wheels and the clatter of hoofs sounded below, and Charles Fox
panted up the stairs, muffled in a huge wrap-rascal. 'Twas he and Aunt
Lucy carried me down to the street, Dorothy walking at my side, and
propped me up in the padded corner of one of the two vehicles in waiting.
This was an ample travelling-carriage with a lamp hanging from its top,
by the light of which my lady tucked me in from head to foot, and then
took her place next me. Aunt Lucy filled most of the seat opposite. The
baggage was hoisted up behind, and Charles was about to slam the door,
when a hackney-chaise turned the corner at a gallop and pulled up in the
narrow street abreast, and the figure of my Lord Comyn suddenly leaped
within the compass of the lanthorn's rays. He was dressed as for a ball,
with only a thin rain-cloak over his shoulders, for the night was thick
with mist. He threw at us a startled look that was a question.

"Jack, Richard is to be betrayed to-night by his uncle," said Charles,
shortly. "And I am taking them to Portsmouth to get them off for
Lisbon."

"Charles," said his Lordship, sternly, "give me that greatcoat."

It was just the one time that ever I saw uncertainty on Mr. Fox's face.
He threw an uneasy glance into the chaise.

"I have brought money," his Lordship went on rapidly; "'Twas that kept
me, for I guessed at something of this kind. Give me the coat, I say."

Mr. Fox wriggled out of it, and took the oiled cape in return.

"Thank you, Jack," he said simply, and stepped into the carriage. "Who
is to mend my waistcoats now?" he cried. "Faith, I shall treasure this
against you, Richard. Good-by, my lad, and obey your rebel general.
Alas! I must even ask your permission to salute her."

And he kissed the unresisting Dorothy on both her cheeks. "God keep the
two of you," he said, "for I love you with all my heart."

Before we could answer he was gone into the night; and my Lord, standing
without, had closed the carriage door. And that was the last I saw of
this noble man, the true friend of America, who devoted his glorious
talents and his life to fighting the corruption that was rotting the
greatness of England. He who was followed by the prayers of the English
race was ever remembered in our own humble ones.




CHAPTER LVII

I COME TO MY OWN AGAIN

'Twas a rough, wild journey we made to Portsmouth, my dears, and I think
it must have killed me had not my lady been at my side. We were no
sooner started than she pulled the curtains and opened her portmanteau,
which I saw was near filled with things for my aid and comfort. And I
was made to take a spoonful of something. Never, I believe, was medicine
swallowed with a greater willingness. Talk was impossible, so I lay back
in the corner and looked at her; and now and anon she would glance at my
face, with a troubled guess in her own as to how I might stand the night.
For we were still in London. That I knew by the trot of our horses, and
by the granite we traversed from time to time. But at length we rumbled
over a bridge, there was a sharp call back from our post-boy to him of
the chaise behind, and then began that rocking and pitching and swaying
and creaking, which was to last the whole night long, save for the brief
stops at the post-houses.

After an hour of it, I was holding my breath against the lurches, like a
sea-sick man against that bottomless fall of the ship's bows on the
ocean. I had no pain,--only an over whelming exhaustion,--but the joy
of her touch and her presence kept me from failing. And though Aunt Lucy
dozed, not a wink of sleep did my lady get through all of those weary
twelve hours. Always alert was she, solicitous beyond belief, scanning
ever the dial of her watch to know when to give me brandy and physic; or
reaching across to feel my temples for the fever. The womanliness of
that last motion was a thing for a man to wonder at. But most marvellous
of all was the instinct which told her of my chief sickening discomfort,
--of the leathery, travelled smell of the carriage. As a relief for this
she charged her pocket-napkin with a most delicate perfume, and held it
to my face.

When we drew up to shift horses, Jack would come to the door to inquire
if there was aught she wanted, and to know how I was bearing up. And
often Mrs. Manners likewise. At first I was for talking with them, but
this Dorothy would not allow. Presently, indeed, it was beyond my power,
and I could only smile feebly at my Lord when I heard Dolly asking him
that the hostlers might be more quiet. Toward morning a lethargy fell
upon me. Once I awoke when the lamp had burned low, to perceive the
curtains drawn back, a black blotch of trees without, and the moonlight
streaming in on my lady's features. With the crack of a whip I was off
again.

When next consciousness came, the tarry, salt smell of a ship was in my
nostrils, and I knew that we were embarked. I lay in a clean bunk in a
fair-sized and sun-washed cabin, and I heard the scraping of ropes and
the tramp of feet on the deck above my head. Framed against the
irregular glass of the cabin window, which was greened by the water
beyond, Dorothy and my Lord stood talking in whispers.

"Jack!" I said.

At the sound they turned and ran toward me, asking how I felt.

"I feel that words are very empty, Jack, to express such a gratitude as
mine," I answered. "Twice you have saved me from death, you have paid
my debts, and have been stanch to us both in our troubles. And--" The
effort was beyond me, and I glanced appealingly at Dolly.

"And it is to you, dear Jack," she finished, "it is to you alone that we
owe the great joy of our lives."

Her eyes were shining through her tears, and her smile was like the sun
out of a rain-swept sky. His Lordship took one of her hands in his own,
and one of mine. He scanned our faces in a long, lingering look.

"You will cherish her, Richard," he said brokenly, "for her like is not
to be found in this world. I knew her worth when first she came to
London, as arrant a baggage as ever led man a dance. I saw then that a
great love alone was needed to make her the highest among women, and from
the night I fought with you at the Coffee House I have felt upon whom
that love would fall. O thou of little faith," he cried, "what little I
may have done has been for her. No, Richard, you do not deserve her, but
I would rather think of her as your wife than that of any man living."

I shall not dwell upon that painful farewell which wrung our hearts, and
made us silent for a long, long while after the ship was tossing in the
short seas of the Channel.

Nor is it my purpose to tell you of that long voyage across the Atlantic.
We reached Lisbon in safety, and after a week of lodgings in that city by
the best of fortune got passage in a swift bark bound for Baltimore. For
the Chesapeake commerce continued throughout the war, and kept alive the
credit of the young nation. There were many excitements ere we sighted
the sand-spits of Virginia, and off the Azores we were chased for a day
and a night by a British sloop of war. Our captain, however, was a cool
man and a seaman, and slipped through the cruisers lying in wait off the
Capes very triumphantly.

But the remembrance of those fair days at sea fills my soul with longing.
The weather was mild and bright for the season, and morning upon morning
two stout topmen would carry me out to a sheltered spot on the deck,
always chosen by my lady herself. There I sat by the hour, swathed in
many layers of wool, and tended by her hands alone. Every nook and
cranny of our lives were revealed to the other. She loved to hear of
Patty and my years at Gordon's, and would listen with bated breath to the
stories of the Ranger and the Bonhomme Richard, and of that strange man
whom we both loved, whose genius had made those cruises famous.
Sometimes, in low voices, we talked of our future; but often, when the
wind blew and the deck rocked and the sun flashed upon the waters, a
silence would fall between us that needed no word to interpret.

Mrs. Manners yielded to my wish for us all to go to Carvel Hall. It was
on a sparkling morning in February that we sighted the familiar toe of
Kent Island, and the good-natured skipper put about and made for the
mouth of our river. Then, as of old, the white cupola of Carvel House
gleamed a signal of greeting, to which our full hearts beat a silent
response. Once again the great windmill waved its welcome, and the same
memory was upon us both as we gazed. Of a hale old gentleman in the
sheets of a sailing pinnace, of a boy and a girl on his knees quivering
with excitement of the days to come. Dorothy gently pressed my hand as
the bark came into the wind, and the boat was dropped into the green
water. Slowly they lowered me into it, for I was still helpless, Dorothy
and her mother and Aunt Lucy were got down, and finally Mr. Marmaduke
stepped gingerly from the sea-ladder over the gunwale. The cutter leaped
under the strong strokes up the river with the tide. Then, as we rounded
the bend, we were suddenly astonished to see people gathered on the
landing at the foot of the lawn, where they had run, no doubt, in a
flurry at sight of the ship below. In the front of the group stood
out a strangely familiar figure.

"Why," exclaimed Dolly, "it is Ivie Rawlinson!"

Ivie it was, sure enough. And presently, when we drew a little closer,
he gave one big shout and whipped off the hat from his head; and off,
too, came the caps from the white heads of Scipio and Chess and Johnson
behind him. Our oars were tossed, Ivie caught our bows, and reached his
hand to Dorothy. It was fitting that she should be the first to land at
Carvel Hall.

"'Twas yere bonny face I seed first, Miss Dolly," he cried, the tears
coursing down the scars of his cheeks. "An' syne I kennt weel the young
master was here. Noo God be praised for this blythe day, that Mr.
Richard's cam to his ain at last!"

But Scipio and Chess could only blubber as they helped him to lift me
out, Dolly begging them to be careful. As they carried me up the
familiar path to the pillared porch, the first I asked Ivie was of Patty,
and next why he had left Gordon's. She was safe and well, despite the
Tories, and herself had sent him to take charge of Carvel Hall as soon as
ever Judge Bordley had brought her the news of its restoration to me. He
had supplied her with another overseer. Thanks to the good judge and to
Colonel Lloyd, who had looked to my interests since Grafton was fled,
Ivie had found the old place in good order, all the negroes quiet, and
impatient with joy against my arrival.

It is time, my children, to bring this story to a close. I would I might
write of those delicious spring days I spent with Dorothy at Carvel Hall,
waited on by the old servants of my grandfather. At our whim my chair
would be moved from one to another of the childhood haunts; on cool days
we sat in the sun by the dial, where the flowers mingled their odours
with the salt breezes off the Chesapeake; or anon, when it was warmer, in
the summer-house my mother loved, or under the shade of the great trees
on the lawn, looking out over the river. And once my lady went off very
mysteriously, her eyes brimful of mischief, to come back with the first
strawberries of the year staining her apron.

We were married on the fifteenth of June, already an anniversary for us
both, in the long drawing-room. General Clapsaddle was there from the
army to take Dorothy in his arms, even as he had embraced another bride
on the same spot in years gone by. She wore the wedding gown that was
her mother's, but when the hour was come to dress her Aunt Lucy and Aunt
Hester failed in their task, and it was Patty who performed the most of
that office, and hung the necklace of pearls about her neck.

Dear Patty! She hath often been with us since. You have heard your
mothers and fathers speak of Aunt Patty, my dears, and they will tell
you how she spoiled them when they went a-visiting to Gordon's Pride.

Ere I had regained my health, the war for Independence was won. I pray
God that time may soften the bitterness it caused, and heal the breach in
that noble race whose motto is Freedom. That the Stars and Stripes and
the Union Jack may one day float together to cleanse this world of
tyranny!




AFTERWORD

The author makes most humble apologies to any who have, or think they
have, an ancestor in this book. He has drawn the foregoing with a very
free hand, and in the Maryland scenes has made use of names rather than
of actual personages. His purpose, however poorly accomplished, was to
give some semblance of reality to this part of the story. Hence he has
introduced those names in the setting, choosing them entirely at random
from the many prominent families of the colony.

No one may read the annals of these men, who were at once brave and
courtly, and of these women, who were ladies by nature as well as by
birth, and not love them. The fascination of that free and hospitable
life has been so strong on the writer of this novel that he closes it
with a genuine regret and the hope that its perusal may lead others to
the pleasure he has derived from the history of Maryland.

As few liberties as possible have been taken with the lives of Charles
James Fox and of John Paul Jones. The latter hero actually made a voyage
in the brigantine 'John' about the time he picked up Richard Carvel from
the Black Moll, after the episode with Mungo Maxwell at Tobago. The
Scotch scene, of course, is purely imaginary. Accuracy has been aimed at
in the account of the fight between the 'Bonhomme Richard' and the
'Serapis', while a little different arrangement might have been better
for the medium of the narrative. To be sure, it was Mr. Mease, the
purser, instead of Richard Carvel, who so bravely fought the quarter-deck
guns; and in reality Midshipman Mayrant, Commodore Jones's aide, was
wounded by a pike in the thigh after the surrender. No injustice is done
to the second and third lieutenants, who were absent from the ship during
the action.

The author must acknowledge that the only good anecdote in the book and
the only verse worth printing are stolen. The story on page concerning
Mr. Garrick and the Archbishop of York may be found in Fitzgerald's life
of the actor, much better told. The verse (in Chapter X) is by an
unknown author in the Annapolis Gazette, and is republished in Mr. Elihu
Riley's excellent "History of Annapolis."


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A bold front is half the battle
     A man ought never to be frightened by appearances
     Affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest
     Ever been my nature to turn forward instead of back
     Genius honored but never encouraged
     God bless their backs, which is the only part I ever care to see
     He was our macaroni of Annapolis
     Human multitude with its infinity of despairs and joys
     It is sorrow which lifts us nearest to heaven
     No real prosperity comes out of double-dealing
     Shaped his politics according to the company he was in
     Sight of happiness is often a pleasure for those who are sad
     Sir, I have not yet begun to fight
     The worse the disease, the more remarkable the cure
     Their lines belonged rather to the landscape (cottages)
     Thy politics are not over politic
     Tis no so bad it micht-na be waur
     Within every man's province to make himself what he will
     Ya maun ken th' incentive's the maist o' the battle
     Youth is in truth a mystery






A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


CONTENTS

BOOK I.

Volume 1.
I.     WHAT'S IN HEREDITY?
II.    PERDITA RECALLED
III.   CONCERNING PROVIDENCE
IV.    OF TEMPERAMENT
V.     IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH
VI.    HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

Volume 2.
VII.   THE OLYMPIAN ORDER
VIII.  A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS
IX.    IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES
X.     IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON
XI.    WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
XII.   WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT


BOOK II

Volume 3.
I.     SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE
II.    "STAFFORD PARK"
III.   THE GREAT UNATTACHED
IV.    THE NEW DOCTRINE
V.     QUICKSANDS
VI.    GAD AND MENI

Volume 4.
VII.   OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS
VIII.  OF MENTAL PROCESSES-FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
IX.    INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE
X.     ON THE ART OF LION TAMING
XI.    CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS


BOOK III

Volume 5.
I.    ASCENDI
II.   THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY
III.  VINELAND
IV.   THE VIKING
V.    THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Volume 6.
VI.    CLIO, OR THALIA?
VII    "LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"
VIII.  IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART
IX.    WYLIE STREET
X.     THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Volume 7.
XI.    IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN
XII.   THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN
XIII.  OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES.
XIV.   CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER
XV.    THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

Volume 8.
XVI.   IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP
XVII.  THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY
XVIII. IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEES PARIS



A MODERN CHRONICLE



CHAPTER I

WHAT'S IN HEREDITY

Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in
the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century, at Nice, in France, and she
spent the early years of her life in St. Louis, a somewhat conservative
old city on the banks of the Mississippi River. Her father was Randolph
Leffingwell, and he died in the early flower of his manhood, while
filling with a grace that many remember the post of United States Consul
at Nice. As a linguist he was a phenomenon, and his photograph in the
tortoise-shell frame proves indubitably, to anyone acquainted with the
fashions of 1870, that he was a master of that subtlest of all arts,
dress. He had gentle blood in his veins, which came from Virginia through
Kentucky in a coach and six, and he was the equal in appearance and
manners of any duke who lingered beside classic seas.

Honora has often pictured to herself a gay villa set high above the
curving shore, the amethyst depths shading into emerald, laced with
milk-white foam, the vivid colours of the town, the gay costumes; the
excursions, the dinner-parties presided over by the immaculate young
consul in three languages, and the guests chosen from the haute noblesse
of Europe. Such was the vision in her youthful mind, added to by degrees
as she grew into young-ladyhood and surreptitiously became familiar with
the writings of Ouida and the Duchess, and other literature of an
educating cosmopolitan nature.

Honora's biography should undoubtedly contain a sketch of Mrs. Randolph
Leffingwell. Beauty and dash and a knowledge of how to seat a table seem
to have been the lady's chief characteristics; the only daughter of a
carefully dressed and carefully, preserved widower, likewise a
linguist,--whose super-refined tastes and the limited straits to which
he, the remaining scion of an old Southern family, had been reduced by a
gentlemanly contempt for money, led him 'to choose Paris rather than New
York as a place of residence. One of the occasional and carefully planned
trips to the Riviera proved fatal to the beautiful but reckless Myrtle
Allison. She, who might have chosen counts or dukes from the Tagus to the
Danube, or even crossed the Channel; took the dashing but impecunious
American consul, with a faith in his future that was sublime. Without
going over too carefully the upward path which led to the post of their
country's representative at the court of St. James, neither had the
slightest doubt that Randolph Leffingwell would tread it.

It is needless to dwell upon the chagrin of Honora's maternal
grandfather, Howard Allison Esquire, over this turn of affairs, this
unexpected bouleversement, as he spoke of it in private to his friends in
his Parisian club. For many years he had watched the personal attractions
of his daughter grow, and a brougham and certain other delights not to be
mentioned had gradually become, in his mind, synonymous with old age. The
brougham would have on its panels the Allison crest, and his
distinguished (and titled) son-in-law would drop in occasionally at the
little apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann. Alas, for visions, for
legitimate hopes shattered forever! On the day that Randolph Leffingwell
led Miss Allison down the aisle of the English church the vision of the
brougham and the other delights faded. Howard Allison went back to his
club.

Three years later, while on an excursion with Sir Nicholas Baker and a
merry party on the Italian aide, the horses behind which Mr. and Mrs.
Leffingwell were driving with their host ran away, and in the flight
managed to precipitate the vehicle, and themselves, down the side of one
of the numerous deep valleys of the streams seeking the Mediterranean.
Thus, by a singular caprice of destiny Honors was deprived of both her
parents at a period which--some chose to believe--was the height of their
combined glories. Randolph Leffingwell lived long enough to be taken back
to Nice, and to consign his infant daughter and sundry other unsolved
problems to his brother Tom.

Brother Tom--or Uncle Tom, as we must call him with Honora--cheerfully
accepted the charge. For his legacies in life had been chiefly blessings
in disguise. He was paying teller of the Prairie Bank, and the
thermometer registered something above 90 deg. Fahrenheit on the July
morning when he stood behind his wicket reading a letter from Howard
Allison, Esquire, relative to his niece. Mr. Leffingwell was at this
period of his life forty-eight, but the habit he had acquired of assuming
responsibilities and burdens seemed to have had the effect of making his
age indefinite. He was six feet tall, broad-shouldered, his mustache and
hair already turning; his eyebrows were a trifle bushy, and his eyes
reminded men of one eternal and highly prized quality--honesty. They were
blue grey. Ordinarily they shed a light which sent people away from his
window the happier without knowing why; but they had been known, on rare
occasions, to flash on dishonesty and fraud like the lightnings of the
Lord. Mr. Isham, the president of the bank, coined a phrase about him. He
said that Thomas Leffingwell was constitutionally honest.

Although he had not risen above the position of paying teller, Thomas
Leffingwell had a unique place in the city of his birth; and the esteem
in which he was held by capitalists and clerks proves that character
counts for something. On his father's failure and death he had entered
the Prairie Bank, at eighteen, and never left it. If he had owned it, he
could not have been treated by the customers with more respect. The city,
save for a few notable exceptions, like Mr. Isham, called him Mr.
Leffingwell, but behind his back often spoke of him as Tom.

On the particular hot morning in question, as he stood in his seersucker
coat reading the unquestionably pompous letter of Mr. Allison announcing
that his niece was on the high seas, he returned the greetings of his
friends with his usual kindness and cheer. In an adjoining compartment a
long-legged boy of fourteen was busily stamping letters.

"Peter," said Mr. Leffingwell, "go ask Mr. Isham if I may see him."

It is advisable to remember the boy's name. It was Peter Erwin, and he
was a favourite in the bank, where he had been introduced by Mr.
Leffingwell himself. He was an orphan and lived with his grandmother, an
impoverished old lady with good blood in her veins who boarded in
Graham's Row, on Olive Street. Suffice it to add, at this time, that he
worshipped Mr. Leffingwell, and that he was back in a twinkling with the
information that Mr. Isham was awaiting him.

The president was seated at his desk. In spite of the thermometer he gave
no appearance of discomfort in his frock-coat. He had scant, sandy-grey
whiskers, a tightly closed and smooth-shaven upper lip, a nose with-a
decided ridge, and rather small but penetrating eyes in which the blue
pigment had been used sparingly. His habitual mode of speech was both
brief and sharp, but people remarked that he modified it a little for Tom
Leffingwell.

"Come in, Tom," he said. "Anything the matter?"

"Mr. Isham, I want a week off, to go to New York."

The request, from Tom Leffingwell, took Mr. Isham's breath. One of the
bank president's characteristics was an extreme interest in the private
affairs of those who came within his zone of influence and especially
when these affairs evinced any irregularity.

"Randolph again?" he asked quickly.

Tom walked to the window, and stood looking out into the street. His
voice shook as he answered:

"Ten days ago I learned that my brother was dead, Mr. Isham."

The president glanced at the broad back of his teller. Mr. Isham's voice
was firm, his face certainly betrayed no feeling, but a flitting gleam of
satisfaction might have been seen in his eye.

"Of course, Tom, you may go," he answered.

Thus came to pass an event in the lives of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary, that
journey to New York (their first) of two nights and two days to fetch
Honora. We need not dwell upon all that befell them. The first view of
the Hudson, the first whiff of the salt air on this unwonted holiday, the
sights of this crowded city of wealth,--all were tempered by the thought
of the child coming into their lives. They were standing on the pier when
the windows were crimson in the early light, and at nine o'clock on that
summer's morning the Albania was docked, and the passengers came crowding
down the gang-plank. Prosperous tourists, most of them, with servants and
stewards carrying bags of English design and checked steamer rugs; and at
last a ruddy-faced bonne with streamers and a bundle of ribbons and
laces--Honora--Honora, aged eighteen months, gazing at a subjugated
world.

"What a beautiful child! exclaimed a woman on the pier."

Was it instinct or premonition that led them to accost the bonne?

"Oui, Leffingwell!" she cried, gazing at them in some perplexity. Three
children of various sizes clung to her skirts, and a younger nurse
carried a golden-haired little girl of Honora's age. A lady and gentleman
followed. The lady was beginning to look matronly, and no second glance
was required to perceive that she was a person of opinion and character.
Mr. Holt was smaller than his wife, neat in dress and unobtrusive in
appearance. In the rich Mrs. Holt, the friend of the Randolph
Leffingwells, Aunt Mary was prepared to find a more vapidly fashionable
personage, and had schooled herself forthwith.

"You are Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell?" she asked. "Well, I am relieved." The
lady's eyes, travelling rapidly over Aunt Mary's sober bonnet and brooch
and gown, made it appear that these features in Honora's future guardian
gave her the relief in question. "Honora, this is your aunt."

Honora smiled from amidst the laces, and Aunt Mary, only too ready to
capitulate, surrendered. She held out her arms. Tears welled up in the
Frenchwoman's eyes as she abandoned her charge.

"Pauvre mignonne!" she cried.

But Mrs. Holt rebuked the nurse sharply, in French,--a language with
which neither Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom was familiar. Fortunately, perhaps.
Mrs. Holt's remark was to the effect that Honora was going to a sensible
home.

"Hortense loves her better than my own children," said that lady.

Honora seemed quite content in the arms of Aunt Mary, who was gazing so
earnestly into the child's face that she did not at first hear Mrs.
Holt's invitation to take breakfast with them on Madison Avenue, and then
she declined politely. While grossing on the steamer, Mrs. Holt had
decided quite clearly in her mind just what she was going to say to the
child's future guardian, but there was something in Aunt Mary's voice and
manner which made these remarks seem unnecessary--although Mrs. Holt was
secretly disappointed not to deliver them.

"It was fortunate that we happened to, be in Nice at the time," she said
with the evident feeling that some explanation was due. "I did not know
poor Mrs. Randolph Leffingwell very--very intimately, or Mr. Leffingwell.
It was such a sudden--such a terrible affair. But Mr. Holt and I were
only too glad to do what we could."

"We feel very grateful to you," said Aunt Mary, quietly.

Mrs. Holt looked at her with a still more distinct approval, being
tolerably sure that Mrs. Thomas Leffingwell understood. She had cleared
her skirts of any possible implication of intimacy with the late Mrs.
Randolph, and done so with a master touch.

In the meantime Honora had passed to Uncle Tom. After securing the little
trunk, and settling certain matters with Mr. Holt, they said good-by to
her late kind protectors, and started off for the nearest street-cars,
Honora pulling Uncle Tom's mustache. More than one pedestrian paused to
look back at the tall man carrying the beautiful child, bedecked like a
young princess, and more than one passenger in the street cars smiled at
them both.




CHAPTER II

PERDITA RECALLED

Saint Louis, or that part of it which is called by dealers in real estate
the choice residence section, grew westward. And Uncle Tom might be said
to have been in the vanguard of the movement. In the days before Honora
was born he had built his little house on what had been a farm on the
Olive Street Road, at the crest of the second ridge from the river. Up
this ridge, with clanking traces, toiled the horse-cars that carried
Uncle Tom downtown to the bank and Aunt Mary to market.

Fleeing westward, likewise, from the smoke, friends of Uncle Tom's and
Aunt Mary's gradually surrounded them--building, as a rule, the high
Victorian mansions in favour at that period, which were placed in the
centre of commodious yards. For the friends of Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary
were for the most part rich, and belonged, as did they, to the older
families of the city. Mr. Dwyer's house, with its picture gallery, was
across the street.

In the midst of such imposing company the little dwelling which became
the home of our heroine sat well back in a plot that might almost be
called a garden. In summer its white wooden front was nearly hidden by
the quivering leaves of two tall pear trees. On the other side of the
brick walk, and near the iron fence, was an elm and a flower bed that was
Uncle Tom's pride and the admiration of the neighbourhood. Honora has but
to shut her eyes to see it aflame with tulips at Eastertide. The eastern
wall of the house was a mass of Virginia creeper, and beneath that
another flower bed, and still another in the back-yard behind the lattice
fence covered with cucumber vine. There were, besides, two maples and two
apricot trees, relics of the farm, and of blessed memory. Such apricots!
Visions of hot summer evenings come back, with Uncle Tom, in his
seersucker coat, with his green watering-pot, bending over the beds, and
Aunt Mary seated upright in her chair, looking up from her knitting with
a loving eye.

Behind the lattice, on these summer evenings, stands the militant figure
of that old retainer, Bridget the cook, her stout arms akimbo, ready to
engage in vigorous banter should Honora deign to approach.

"Whisht, 'Nora darlint, it's a young lady yell be soon, and the beaux
a-comin' 'round!" she would cry, and throw back her head and laugh until
the tears were in her eyes.

And the princess, a slim figure in an immaculate linen frock with red
ribbons which Aunt Mary had copied from Longstreth's London catalogue,
would reply with dignity:

"Bridget, I wish you would try to remember that my name is Honora."

Another spasm of laughter from Bridget.

"Listen to that now!" she would cry to another ancient retainer, Mary
Ann, the housemaid, whose kitchen chair was tilted up against the side of
the woodshed. "It'll be Miss Honora next, and George Hanbury here to-day
with his eye through a knothole in the fence, out of his head for a sight
of ye."

George Hanbury was Honora's cousin, and she did not deem his admiration a
subject fit for discussion with Bridget.

"Sure," declared Mary Ann, "it's the air of a princess the child has."

That she should be thought a princess did not appear at all remarkable to
Honora at twelve years of age. Perdita may have had such dreams. She had
been born, she knew, in some wondrous land by the shores of the summer
seas, not at all like St. Louis, and friends and relatives had not
hesitated to remark in her hearing that she resembled--her father,--that
handsome father who surely must have been a prince, whose before-mentioned
photograph in the tortoise-shell frame was on the bureau in her little
room. So far as Randolph Leffingwell was concerned, photography had not
been invented for nothing. Other records of him remained which Honora had
likewise seen: one end of a rose-covered villa--which Honora thought was
a wing of his palace; a coach and four he was driving, and which had
chanced to belong to an Englishman, although the photograph gave no
evidence of this ownership. Neither Aunt Mary nor Uncle Tom had ever
sought--for reasons perhaps obvious--to correct the child's impression of
an extraordinary paternity.

Aunt Mary was a Puritan of Southern ancestry, and her father had been a
Presbyterian minister, Uncle Tom was a member of the vestry of a church
still under Puritan influences. As a consequence for Honora, there were
Sunday afternoons--periods when the imaginative faculty, in which she was
by no means lacking, was given full play. She would sit by the hour in
the swing Uncle Tom had hung for her under the maple near the lattice,
while castles rose on distant heights against blue skies. There was her
real home, in a balconied chamber that overlooked mile upon mile of
rustling forest in the valley; and when the wind blew, the sound of it
was like the sea. Honora did not remember the sea, but its music was
often in her ears.

She would be aroused from these dreams of greatness by the appearance of
old Catherine, her nurse, on the side porch, reminding her that it was
time to wash for supper. No princess could have had a more humble
tiring-woman than Catherine.

Honora cannot be unduly blamed. When she reached the "little house under
the hill" (as Catherine called the chamber beneath the eaves), she beheld
reflected in the mirror an image like a tall, white flower that might
indeed have belonged to a princess. Her hair, the colour of burnt sienna,
fell evenly to her shoulders; her features even then had regularity and
hauteur; her legs, in their black silk stockings, were straight; and the
simple white lawn frock made the best of a slender figure. Those frocks
of Honora's were a continual source of wonder and sometimes of envy--to
Aunt Mary's friends; who returned from the seaside in the autumn, after a
week among the fashions in Boston or New York, to find Honora in the
latest models, and better dressed than their own children. Aunt Mary made
no secret of the methods by which these seeming miracles were performed,
and showed Cousin Eleanor Hanbury the fashion plates in the English
periodicals. Cousin Eleanor sighed.

"Mary, you are wonderful," she would say. "Honora's clothes are
better-looking than those I buy in the East, at such fabulous prices,
from Cavendish."

Indeed, no woman was ever farther removed from personal vanity than Aunt
Mary. She looked like a little Quakeress. Her silvered hair was parted in
the middle and had, in spite of palpable efforts towards tightness and
repression, a perceptible ripple in it. Grey was her only concession to
colour, and her gowns and bonnets were of a primness which belonged to
the past. Repression, or perhaps compression, was her note, for the
energy confined within her little body was a thing to have astounded
scientists: And Honora grew to womanhood and reflection before she had.
guessed or considered that her aunt was possessed of intense emotions
which had no outlet. Her features were regular, her shy eye had the
clearness of a forest pool. She believed in predestination, which is to
say that she was a fatalist; and while she steadfastly continued to
regard this world as a place of sorrow and trials, she concerned herself
very little about her participation in a future life. Old Dr. Ewing, the
rector of St. Anne's, while conceding that no better or more charitable
woman existed, found it so exceedingly difficult to talk to her, on the
subject of religion that he had never tried it but once.

Such was Aunt Mary. The true student of human nature should not find it
surprising that she spoiled Honora and strove--at what secret expense,
care, and self-denial to Uncle Tom and herself, none will ever know--to
adorn the child that she might appear creditably among companions whose
parents were more fortunate in this world's goods; that she denied
herself to educate Honora as these other children were educated. Nor is
it astonishing that she should not have understood the highly complex
organism of the young lady we have chosen for our heroine, who was
shaken, at the age of thirteen, by unfulfilled longings.

Very early in life Honora learned to dread the summer, when one by one
the families of her friends departed until the city itself seemed a
remote and distant place from what it had been in the spring and winter.
The great houses were closed and blinded, and in the evening the servants
who had been left behind chattered on the front steps. Honora could not
bear the sound of the trains that drifted across the night, and the sight
of the trunks piled in the Hanburys' hall, in Wayland Square, always
filled her with a sickening longing. Would the day ever come when she,
too, would depart for the bright places of the earth? Sometimes, when she
looked in the mirror, she was filled with a fierce belief in a destiny to
sit in the high seats, to receive homage and dispense bounties, to
discourse with great intellects, to know London and Paris and the marts
and centres of the world as her father had. To escape--only to escape
from the prison walls of a humdrum existence, and to soar!

Let us, if we can, reconstruct an August day when all (or nearly all) of
Honora's small friends were gone eastward to the mountains or the
seaside. In "the little house under the hill," the surface of which was a
hot slate roof, Honora would awake about seven o'clock to find old
Catherine bending over her in a dun-coloured calico dress, with the light
fiercely beating against the closed shutters that braved it so
unflinchingly throughout the day.

"The birds are before ye, Miss Honora, honey, and your uncle waterin' his
roses this half-hour."

Uncle Tom was indeed an early riser. As Honora dressed (Catherine
assisting as at a ceremony), she could see him, in his seersucker coat,
bending tenderly over his beds; he lived enveloped in a peace which has
since struck wonder to Honora's soul. She lingered in her dressing, even
in those days, falling into reveries from which Catherine gently and
deferentially aroused her; and Uncle Tom would be carving the beefsteak
and Aunt Mary pouring the coffee when she finally arrived in the dining
room to nibble at one of Bridget's unforgettable rolls or hot biscuits.
Uncle Tom had his joke, and at quarter-past eight precisely he would kiss
Aunt Mary and walk to the corner to wait for the ambling horse-car that
was to take him to the bank. Sometimes Honora went to the corner with
him, and he waved her good-by from the platform as he felt in his pocket
for the nickel that was to pay his fare.

When Honora returned, Aunt Mary had donned her apron, and was
industriously aiding Mary Ann to wash the dishes and maintain the
customary high polish on her husband's share of the Leffingwell silver
which, standing on the side table, shot hither and thither rays of green
light that filtered through the shutters into the darkened room. The
child partook of Aunt Mary's pride in that silver, made for a Kentucky
great-grandfather Leffingwell by a famous Philadelphia silversmith
three-quarters of a century before. Honora sighed.

"What's the matter, Honora?" asked Aunt Mary, without pausing in her
vigorous rubbing.

"The Leffingwells used to be great once upon a time, didn't they, Aunt
Mary?"

"Your Uncle Tom," answered Aunt Mary, quietly, "is the greatest man I
know, child."

"And my father must have been a great man, too," cried Honora, "to have
been a consul and drive coaches."

Aunt Mary was silent. She was not a person who spoke easily on difficult
subjects.

"Why don't you ever talk to me about my father, Aunt Mary? Uncle Tom
does."

"I didn't know your father, Honora."

"But you have seen him?"

"Yes," said Aunt Mary, dipping her cloth into the whiting; "I saw him at
my wedding. But he was very, young."

"What was he like?" Honora demanded. "He was very handsome, wasn't he?"

'Yes, child."

"And he had ambition, didn't he, Aunt Mary?"

Aunt Mary paused. Her eyes were troubled as she looked at Honora, whose
head was thrown back.

"What kind of ambition do you mean, Honora?"

"Oh," cried Honora, "to be great and rich and powerful, and to be
somebody."

"Who has been putting such things in your head, my dear?"

"No one, Aunt Mary. Only, if I were a man, I shouldn't rest until I
became great."

Alas, that Aunt Mary, with all her will, should have such limited powers
of expression! She resumed her scrubbing of the silver before she spoke.

"To do one's duty, to accept cheerfully and like a Christian the
responsibilities and burdens of life, is the highest form of greatness,
my child. Your Uncle Tom has had many things to trouble him; he has
always worked for others, and not for himself. And he is respected and
loved by all who know him."

"Yes, I know, Aunt Mary. But--"

"But what, Honora?"

"Then why isn't he rich, as my father was?"

"Your father wasn't rich, my dear," said Aunt Mary, sadly.

"Why, Aunt Mary!" Honora exclaimed, "he lived in a beautiful house, and
owned horses. Isn't that being rich?"

Poor Aunt Mary!

"Honora," she answered, "there are some things you are too young to
understand. But try to remember, my dear, that happiness doesn't consist
in being rich."

"But I have often heard you say that you wished you were rich, Aunt Mary,
and had nice things, and a picture gallery like Mr. Dwyer."

"I should like to have beautiful pictures, Honora."

"I don't like Mr. Dwyer," declared Honora, abruptly.

"You mustn't say that, Honora," was Aunt Mary's reproof. "Mr. Dwyer is an
upright, public-spirited man, and he thinks a great deal of your Uncle
Tom."

"I can't help it, Aunt Mary," said Honora. "I think he enjoys being
--well, being able to do things for a man like Uncle Tom."

Neither Aunt Mary nor Honora guessed what a subtle criticism this was of
Mr. Dwyer. Aunt Mary was troubled and puzzled; and she began to speculate
(not for the first time) why the Lord had given a person with so little
imagination a child like Honora to bring up in the straight and narrow
path.

"When I go on Sunday afternoons with Uncle Tom to see Mr. Dwyer's
pictures," Honora persisted, "I always feel that he is so glad to have
what other people haven't or he wouldn't have any one to show them to."

Aunt Mary shook her head. Once she had given her loyal friendship, such
faults as this became as nothing.

"And when" said Honora, "when Mrs. Dwyer has dinner-parties for
celebrated people who come here, why does she invite you in to see the
table?"

"Out of kindness, Honora. Mrs. Dwyer knows that I enjoy looking at
beautiful things."

"Why doesn't she invite you to the dinners?" asked Honora, hotly. "Our
family is just as good as Mrs. Dwyer's."

The extent of Aunt Mary's distress was not apparent.

"You are talking nonsense, my child," she said. "All my friends know that
I am not a person who can entertain distinguished people, and that I do
not go out, and that I haven't the money to buy evening dresses. And even
if I had," she added, "I haven't a pretty neck, so it's just as well."

A philosophy distinctly Aunt Mary's.

Uncle Tom, after he had listened without comment that evening to her
account of this conversation, was of the opinion that to take Honora to
task for her fancies would be waste of breath; that they would right
themselves as she grew up.

"I'm afraid it's inheritance, Tom," said Aunt Mary, at last. "And if so,
it ought to be counteracted. We've seen other signs of it. You know
Honora has little or no idea of the value of money--or of its ownership."

"She sees little enough of it," Uncle Tom remarked with a smile.

"Tom."

"Well."

"Sometimes I think I've done wrong not to dress her more simply. I'm
afraid it's given the child a taste for--for self-adornment."

"I once had a fond belief that all women possessed such a taste," said
Uncle Tom, with a quizzical look at his own exception. "To tell you the
truth, I never classed it as a fault."

"Then I don't see why you married me," said Aunt Mary--a periodical
remark of hers. "But, Tom, I do wish her to appear as well as the other
children, and (Aunt Mary actually blushed) the child has good looks."

"Why don't you go as far as old Catherine, and call her a princess?" he
asked.

"Do you want me to ruin her utterly?" exclaimed Aunt Mary.

Uncle Tom put his hands on his wife's shoulders and looked down into her
face, and smiled again. Although she held herself very straight, the top
of her head was very little above the level of his chin.

"It strikes me that you are entitled to some little indulgence in life,
Mary," he said.

One of the curious contradictions of Aunt Mary's character was a never
dying interest, which held no taint of envy, in the doings of people more
fortunate than herself. In the long summer days, after her silver was
cleaned and her housekeeping and marketing finished, she read in the
book-club periodicals of royal marriages, embassy balls, of great town
and country houses and their owners at home and abroad. And she knew, by
means of a correspondence with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury and other
intimates, the kind of cottages in which her friends sojourned at the
seashore or in the mountains; how many rooms they had, and how many
servants, and very often who the servants were; she was likewise informed
on the climate, and the ease with which it was possible to obtain fresh
vegetables. And to all of this information Uncle Tom would listen,
smiling but genuinely interested, while he carved at dinner.

One evening, when Uncle Tom had gone to play piquet with Mr. Isham, who
was ill, Honora further surprised her aunt by exclaiming: "How can you
talk of things other people have and not want them, Aunt Mary?"

"Why should I desire what I cannot have, my dear? I take such pleasure
out of my friends' possessions as I can."

"But you want to go to the seashore, I know you do. I've heard you say
so," Honora protested.

"I should like to see the open ocean before I die," admitted Aunt Mary,
unexpectedly. "I saw New York harbour once, when we went to meet you. And
I know how the salt water smells--which is as much, perhaps, as I have
the right to hope for. But I have often thought it would be nice to sit
for a whole summer by the sea and listen to the waves dashing upon the
beach, like those in the Chase picture in Mr. Dwyer's gallery."

Aunt Mary little guessed the unspeakable rebellion aroused in Honora by
this acknowledgment of being fatally circumscribed. Wouldn't Uncle Tom
ever be rich?

Aunt Mary shook her head--she saw no prospect of it.

But other men, who were not half so good as Uncle Tom, got rich.

Uncle Tom was not the kind of man who cared for riches. He was content to
do his duty in that sphere where God had placed him.

Poor Aunt Mary. Honora never asked her uncle such questions: to do so
never occurred to her. At peace with all men, he gave of his best to
children, and Honora remained a child. Next to his flowers, walking was
Uncle Tom's chief recreation, and from the time she could be guided by
the hand she went with him. His very presence had the gift of dispelling
longings, even in the young; the gift of compelling delight in simple
things. Of a Sunday afternoon, if the heat were not too great, he would
take Honora to the wild park that stretches westward of the city, and
something of the depth and intensity of his pleasure in the birds, the
forest, and the wild flowers would communicate itself to her. She learned
all unconsciously (by suggestion, as it were) to take delight in them; a
delight that was to last her lifetime, a never failing resource to which
she was to turn again and again. In winter, they went to the botanical
gardens or the Zoo. Uncle Tom had a passion for animals, and Mr. Isham,
who was a director, gave him a pass through the gates. The keepers knew
him, and spoke to him with kindly respect. Nay, it seemed to Honora that
the very animals knew him, and offered themselves ingratiatingly to be
stroked by one whom they recognized as friend. Jaded horses in the street
lifted their noses; stray, homeless cats rubbed against his legs, and
vagrant dogs looked up at him trustfully with wagging tails.

Yet his goodness, as Emerson would have said, had some edge to it. Honora
had seen the light of anger in his blue eye--a divine ray. Once he had
chastised her for telling Aunt Mary a lie (she could not have lied to
him) and Honora had never forgotten it. The anger of such a man had
indeed some element in it of the divine; terrible, not in volume, but in
righteous intensity. And when it had passed there was no occasion for
future warning. The memory of it lingered.




CHAPTER III

CONCERNING PROVIDENCE

What quality was it in Honora that compelled Bridget to stop her ironing
on Tuesdays in order to make hot waffles for a young woman who was late
to breakfast? Bridget, who would have filled the kitchen with righteous
wrath if Aunt Mary had transgressed the rules of the house, which were
like the laws of the Medes and Persians! And in Honora's early youth Mary
Ann, the housemaid, spent more than one painful evening writing home for
cockle shells and other articles to propitiate our princess, who rewarded
her with a winning smile and a kiss, which invariably melted the honest
girl into tears. The Queen of Scots never had a more devoted chamber
woman than old Catherine,--who would have gone to the stake with a smile
to save her little lady a single childish ill, and who spent her savings,
until severely taken to task by Aunt Mary, upon objects for which a
casual wish had been expressed. The saints themselves must at times have
been aweary from hearing Honora's name.

Not to speak of Christmas! Christmas in the little house was one wild
delirium of joy. The night before the festival was, to all outward
appearances, an ordinary evening, when Uncle Tom sat by the fire in his
slippers, as usual, scouting the idea that there would be any Christmas
at all. Aunt Mary sewed, and talked with maddening calmness of the news
of the day; but for Honora the air was charged with coming events of the
first magnitude. The very furniture of the little sitting-room had a
different air, the room itself wore a mysterious aspect, and the
cannel-coal fire seemed to give forth a special quality of unearthly
light.

"Is to-morrow Christmas?" Uncle Tom would exclaim. Bless me! Honora, I am
so glad you reminded me."

"Now, Uncle Tom, you knew it was Christmas all the time!"

"Kiss your uncle good night, Honora, and go right to sleep, dear,"--from
Aunt Mary.

The unconscious irony in that command of Aunt Mary's!--to go right to
sleep! Many times was a head lifted from a small pillow, straining after
the meaning of the squeaky noises that came up from below! Not Santa
Claus. Honora's belief in him had merged into a blind faith in a larger
and even more benevolent, if material providence: the kind of providence
which Mr. Meredith depicts, and which was to say to Beauchamp: "Here's
your marquise;" a particular providence which, at the proper time, gave
Uncle Tom money, and commanded, with a smile, "Buy this for Honora--she
wants it." All-sufficient reason! Soul-satisfying philosophy, to which
Honora was to cling for many years of life. It is amazing how much can be
wrung from a reluctant world by the mere belief in this kind of
providence.

Sleep came at last, in the darkest of the hours. And still in the dark
hours a stirring, a delicious sensation preceding reason, and the
consciousness of a figure stealing about the room. Honora sat up in bed,
shivering with cold and delight.

"Is it awake ye are, darlint, and it but four o'clock the morn!"

"What are you doing, Cathy?"

"Musha, it's to Mass I'm going, to ask the Mother of God to give ye many
happy Christmases the like of this, Miss Honora." And Catherine's arms
were about her.

"Oh, it's Christmas, Cathy, isn't it? How could I have forgotten it!"

"Now go to sleep, honey. Your aunt and uncle wouldn't like it at all at
all if ye was to make noise in the middle of the night--and it's little
better it is."

Sleep! A despised waste of time in childhood. Catherine went to Mass, and
after an eternity, the grey December light began to sift through the
shutters, and human endurance had reached its limit. Honora, still
shivering, seized a fleecy wrapper (the handiwork of Aunt Mary) and
crept, a diminutive ghost, down the creaking stairway to the
sitting-room. A sitting-room which now was not a sitting-room, but for
to-day a place of magic. As though by a prearranged salute of the
gods,--at Honora's entrance the fire burst through the thick blanket of
fine coal which Uncle Tom had laid before going to bed, and with a little
gasp of joy that was almost pain, she paused on the threshold. That one
flash, like Pizarro's first sunrise over Peru, gilded the edge of
infinite possibilities.

Needless to enumerate them. The whole world, as we know, was in a
conspiracy to spoil Honora. The Dwyers, the Cartwrights, the Haydens, the
Brices, the Ishams, and I know not how many others had sent their
tributes, and Honora's second cousins, the Hanburys, from the family
mansion behind the stately elms of Wayland Square--of which something
anon. A miniature mahogany desk, a prayer-book and hymnal which the
Dwyers had brought home from New York, endless volumes of a more secular
and (to Honora) entrancing nature; roller skates; skates for real ice,
when it should appear in the form of sleet on the sidewalks; a sled;
humbler gifts from Bridget, Mary Ann, and Catherine, and a wonderful
coat, with hat to match, of a certain dark green velvet. When Aunt Mary
appeared, an hour or so later, Honora was surveying her magnificence in
the glass.

"Oh, Aunt Mary!" she cried, with her arms tightly locked around her
aunt's neck, "how lovely! Did you send all the way to New York for it?"

"No, Honora," said her aunt, "it didn't come from New York." Aunt Mary
did not explain that this coat had been her one engrossing occupation for
six weeks, at such times when Honora was out or tucked away safely in
bed.

Perhaps Honora's face fell a little. Aunt Mary scanned it rather
anxiously.

"Does that cause you to like it any less, Honora?" she asked.

"Aunt Mary!" exclaimed Honora, in a tone of reproval. And added after a
little, "I suppose Mademoiselle made it."

"Does it make any difference who made it, Honora?"

"Oh, no indeed, Aunt Mary. May I wear it to Cousin Eleanor's to-day?"

"I gave it to you to wear, Honora."

Not in Honora's memory was there a Christmas breakfast during which Peter
Erwin did not appear, bringing gifts. Peter Erwin, of whom we caught a
glimpse doing an errand for Uncle Tom in the bank. With the complacency
of the sun Honora was wont to regard this most constant of her
satellites. Her awakening powers of observation had discovered him in
bondage, and in bondage he had been ever since: for their acquaintance
had begun on the first Sunday afternoon after Honora's arrival in St.
Louis at the age of eighteen months. It will be remembered that Honora
was even then a coquette, and as she sat in her new baby-carriage under
the pear tree, flirted outrageously with Peter, who stood on one foot
from embarrassment.

"Why, Peter," Uncle Tom had said slyly, "why don't you kiss her?"

That kiss had been Peter's seal of service. And he became, on Sunday
afternoons, a sort of understudy for Catherine. He took an amazing
delight in wheeling Honora up and down the yard, and up and down the
sidewalk. Brunhilde or Queen Elizabeth never wielded a power more
absolute, nor had an adorer more satisfactory; and of all his remarkable
talents, none were more conspicuous than his abilities to tell a story
and to choose a present. Emancipated from the perambulator, Honora would
watch for him at the window, and toddle to the gate to meet him, a
gentleman-in-waiting whose zeal, however arduous, never flagged.

On this particular Christmas morning, when she heard the gate slam,
Honora sprang up from the table to don her green velvet coat. Poor Peter!
As though his subjugation could be more complete!

"It's the postman," suggested Uncle Tom, wickedly.

"It's Peter!" cried Honora, triumphantly, from the hall as she flunk open
the door, letting in a breath of cold Christmas air out of the sunlight.

It was Peter, but a Peter who has changed some since perambulator days,
--just as Honora has changed some. A Peter who, instead of fourteen, is
six and twenty; a full-fledged lawyer, in the office of that most
celebrated of St. Louis practitioners, Judge Stephen Brice. For the Peter
Erwins of this world are queer creatures, and move rapidly without
appearing to the Honoras to move at all. A great many things have
happened to Peter since he had been a messenger boy in the bank.

Needless to say, Uncle Tom had taken an interest in him. And, according
to Peter, this fact accounted for all the good fortune which had
followed. Shortly before the news came of his brother's death, Uncle Tom
had discovered that the boy who did his errands so willingly was going to
night school, and was the grandson of a gentleman who had fought with
credit in the Mexican War, and died in misfortune: the grandmother was
Peter's only living relative. Through Uncle Tom, Mr. Isham became
interested, and Judge Brice. There was a certain scholarship in the
Washington University which Peter obtained, and he worked his way through
the law school afterwards.

A simple story, of which many a duplicate could be found in this country
of ours. In the course of the dozen years or so of its unravelling the
grandmother had died, and Peter had become, to all intents and purposes,
a member of Uncle Tom's family. A place was set for him at Sunday dinner;
and, if he did not appear, at Sunday tea. Sometimes at both. And here he
was, as usual, on Christmas morning, his arms so full that he had had to
push open the gate with his foot.

"Well, well, well, well!" he said, stopping short on the doorstep and
surveying our velvet-clad princess, "I've come to the wrong house."

The princess stuck her finger into her cheek.

"Don't be silly, Peter!" she said; and Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!" he replied, edging sidewise in at the door and
depositing his parcels on the mahogany horsehair sofa. He chose one, and
seized the princess--velvet coat and all!--in his arms and kissed her.
When he released her, there remained in her hand a morocco-bound diary,
marked with her monogram, and destined to contain high matters.

"How could you know what I wanted, Peter?" she exclaimed, after she had
divested it of the tissue paper, holly, and red ribbon in which he had so
carefully wrapped it. For it is a royal trait to thank with the same
graciousness and warmth the donors of the humblest and the greatest
offerings.

There was a paper-knife for Uncle Tom, and a workbasket for Aunt Mary,
and a dress apiece for Catherine, Bridget, and Mary Ann, none of whom
Peter ever forgot. Although the smoke was even at that period beginning
to creep westward, the sun poured through the lace curtains into the
little dining-room and danced on the silver coffeepot as Aunt Mary poured
out Peter's cup, and the blue china breakfast plates were bluer than ever
because it was Christmas. The humblest of familiar articles took on the
air of a present. And after breakfast, while Aunt Mary occupied herself
with that immemorial institution,--which was to lure hitherwards so many
prominent citizens of St. Louis during the day,--eggnogg, Peter surveyed
the offerings which transformed the sitting-room. The table had been
pushed back against the bookcases, the chairs knew not their
time-honoured places, and white paper and red ribbon littered the floor.
Uncle Tom, relegated to a corner, pretended to read his newspaper, while
Honora flitted from Peter's knees to his, or sat cross-legged on the
hearth-rug investigating a bottomless stocking.

"What in the world are we going to do with all these things?" said Peter.

"We?" cried Honora.

"When we get married, I mean," said Peter, smiling at Uncle Tom. "Let's
see!" and he began counting on his fingers, which were long but very
strong--so strong that Honora could never loosen even one of them when
they gripped her. "One--two--three--eight Christmases before you are
twenty-one. We'll have enough things to set us up in housekeeping. Or
perhaps you'd rather get married when you are eighteen?"

"I've always told you I wasn't going to marry you, Peter," said Honora,
with decision.

"Why by not?" He always asked that question.

Honora sighed.

"I'll make a good husband," said Peter; "I'll promise. Ugly men are
always good husbands."

"I didn't say you were ugly," declared the ever considerate Honora.

"Only my nose is too big," he quoted; "and I am too long one way and not
wide enough."

"You have a certain air of distinction in spite of it," said Honora.

Uncle Tom's newspaper began to shake, and he read more industriously than
ever.

"You've been reading--novels!" said Peter, in a terrible judicial voice.

Honora flushed guiltily, and resumed her inspection of the stocking. Miss
Rossiter, a maiden lady of somewhat romantic tendencies, was librarian of
the Book Club that year. And as a result a book called "Harold's Quest,"
by an author who shall be nameless, had come to the house. And it was
Harold who had had "a certain air of distinction."

"It isn't very kind of you to make fun of me when I pay you a
compliment," replied Honora, with dignity.

"I was naturally put out," he declared gravely, "because you said you
wouldn't marry me. But I don't intend to give up. No man who is worth his
salt ever gives up."

"You are old enough to get married now," said Honora, still considerate.

"But I am not rich enough," said Peter; "and besides, I want you."

One of the first entries in the morocco diary--which had a lock and key
to it--was a description of Honora's future husband. We cannot violate
the lock, nor steal the key from under her pillow. But this much, alas,
may be said with discretion, that he bore no resemblance to Peter Erwin.
It may be guessed, however, that he contained something of Harold, and
more of Randolph Leffingwell; and that he did not live in St. Louis.

An event of Christmas, after church, was the dinner of which Uncle Tom
and Aunt Mary and Honora partook with Cousin Eleanor Hanbury, who had
been a Leffingwell, and was a first cousin of Honora's father. Honora
loved the atmosphere of the massive, yellow stone house in Wayland
Square, with its tall polished mahogany doors and thick carpets, with its
deferential darky servants, some of whom had been the slaves of her great
uncle. To Honora, gifted with imagination, the house had an odour all its
own; a rich, clean odour significant, in later life, of wealth and luxury
and spotless housekeeping. And she knew it from top to bottom. The
spacious upper floor, which in ordinary dwellings would have been an
attic, was the realm of young George and his sisters, Edith and Mary
(Aunt Mary's namesake). Rainy Saturdays, all too brief, Honora had passed
there, when the big dolls' house in the playroom became the scene of
domestic dramas which Edith rehearsed after she went to bed, although
Mary took them more calmly. In his tenderer years, Honora even fired
George, and riots occurred which took the combined efforts of Cousin
Eleanor and Mammy Lucy to quell. It may be remarked, in passing, that
Cousin Eleanor looked with suspicion upon this imaginative gift of
Honora's, and had several serious conversations with Aunt Mary on the
subject.

It was true, in a measure, that Honora quickened to life everything she
touched, and her arrival in Wayland Square was invariably greeted with
shouts of joy. There was no doll on which she had not bestowed a history,
and by dint of her insistence their pasts clung to them with all the
reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the
huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure,
and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of
Bluebeard, when Honora submitted to decapitation with a fortitude
amounting to stoicism. Hide and seek was altogether too tame for her, a
stake of life and death, or imprisonment or treasure, being a necessity.
And many times was Edith extracted from the recesses of the cellar in a
condition bordering on hysterics, the day ending tamely with a Bible
story or a selection from "Little Women" read by Cousin Eleanor.

In autumn, and again in spring and early summer before the annual
departure of the Hanbury family for the sea, the pleasant yard with its
wide shade trees and its shrubbery was a land of enchantment threatened
by a genie. Black Bias, the family coachman, polishing the fat carriage
horses in the stable yard, was the genie; and George the intrepid knight
who, spurred by Honora, would dash in and pinch Bias in a part of his
anatomy which the honest darky had never seen. An ideal genie, for he
could assume an astonishing fierceness at will.

"I'll git you yit, Marse George!"

Had it not been for Honora, her cousins would have found the paradise in
which they lived a commonplace spot, and indeed they never could realize
its tremendous possibilities in her absence. What would the Mediterranean
Sea and its adjoining countries be to us unless the wanderings of Ulysses
and AEneas had made them real? And what would Cousin Eleanor's yard have
been without Honora? Whatever there was of romance and folklore in Uncle
Tom's library Honora had extracted at an early age, and with astonishing
ease had avoided that which was dry and uninteresting. The result was a
nomenclature for Aunt Eleanor's yard, in which there was even a terra
incognita wherefrom venturesome travellers never returned, but were
transformed into wild beasts or monkeys.

Although they acknowledged her leadership, Edith and Mary were sorry for
Honora, for they knew that if her father had lived she would have had a
house and garden like theirs, only larger, and beside a blue sea where it
was warm always. Honora had told them so, and colour was lent to her
assertions by the fact that their mother, when they repeated this to her,
only smiled sadly, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief. She was
even more beautiful when she did so, Edith told her,--a remark which
caused Mrs. Hanbury to scan her younger daughter closely; it smacked of
Honora.

"Was Cousin Randolph handsome?" Edith demanded. Mrs. Hanbury started, so
vividly there arose before her eyes a brave and dashing figure, clad in
grey English cloth, walking by her side on a sunny autumn morning in the
Rue de la Paix. Well she remembered that trip abroad with her mother,
Randolph's aunt, and how attentive he was, and showed them the best
restaurants in which to dine. He had only been in France a short time,
but his knowledge of restaurants and the world in general had been
amazing, and his acquaintances legion. He had a way, which there was no
resisting, of taking people by storm.

"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. Hanbury, absently, when the child repeated the
question, "he was very handsome."

"Honora says he would have been President," put in George. "Of course I
don't believe it. She said they lived in a palace by the sea in the south
of France, with gardens and fountains and a lot of things like that, and
princesses and princes and eunuchs--"

"And what!" exclaimed Mrs. Hanbury, aghast.

"I know," said George, contemptuously, "she got that out of the Arabian
Nights." But this suspicion did not prevent him, the next time Honora
regaled them with more adventures of the palace by the summer seas, from
listening with a rapt attention. No two tales were ever alike. His
admiration for Honora did not wane, but increased. It differed from that
of his sisters, however, in being a tribute to her creative faculties,
while Edith's breathless faith pictured her cousin as having passed
through as many adventures as Queen Esther. George paid her a
characteristic compliment, but chivalrously drew her aside to bestow it.
He was not one to mince matters.

"You're a wonder, Honora," he said. "If I could lie like that, I wouldn't
want a pony."

He was forced to draw back a little from the heat of the conflagration he
had kindled.

"George Hanbury," she cried, "don't you ever speak to me again! Never! Do
you understand?"

It was thus that George, at some cost, had made a considerable discovery
which, for the moment, shook even his scepticism. Honora believed it all
herself.

Cousin Eleanor Hanbury was a person, or personage, who took a deep and
abiding interest in her fellow-beings, and the old clothes of the Hanbury
family went unerringly to the needy whose figures most resembled those of
the original owners. For Mrs. Hanbury had a wide but comparatively
unknown charity list. She was, secretly, one of the many providence which
Honora accepted collectively, although it is by no means certain whether
Honora, at this period, would have thanked her cousin for tuition at Miss
Farmer's school, and for her daily tasks at French and music concerning
which Aunt Mary was so particular. On the memorable Christmas morning
when, arrayed in green velvet, she arrived with her aunt and uncle for
dinner in Wayland Square, Cousin Eleanor drew Aunt Mary into her bedroom
and shut the door, and handed her a sealed envelope. Without opening it,
but guessing with much accuracy its contents, Aunt Mary handed it back.

"You are doing too much, Eleanor," she said.

Mrs. Hanbury was likewise a direct person.

"I will, take it back on one condition, Mary. If you will tell me that
Tom has finished paying Randolph's debts."

Mrs. Leffingwell was silent.

"I thought not," said Mrs. Hanbury. "Now Randolph was my own cousin, and
I insist."

Aunt Mary turned over the envelope, and there followed a few moments'
silence, broken only by the distant clamour of tin horns and other
musical instruments of the season.

"I sometimes think, Mary, that Honora is a little like Randolph, and-Mrs.
Randolph. Of course, I did not know her."

"Neither did I," said Aunt Mary.

"Mary," said Mrs. Hanbury, again, "I realize how you worked to make the
child that velvet coat. Do you think you ought to dress her that way?"

"I don't see why she shouldn't be as well dressed as the children of my
friends, Eleanor."

Mrs. Hanbury laid her hand impulsively on Aunt Mary's.

"No child I know of dresses half as well," said Mrs. Hanbury. "The
trouble you take--"

"Is rewarded," said Aunt Mary.

"Yes," Mrs. Hanbury agreed. "If my own daughters were half as good
looking, I should be content. And Honora has an air of race. Oh, Mary,
can't you see? I am only thinking of the child's future."

"Do you expect me to take down all my mirrors, Eleanor? If she has good
looks," said Aunt Mary, "she has not learned it from my lips."

It was true: Even Aunt Mary's enemies, and she had some, could not accuse
her of the weakness of flattery. So Mrs. Hanbury smiled, and dropped the
subject.




CHAPTER IV

OF TEMPERAMENT

We have the word of Mr. Cyrus Meeker that Honora did not have to learn to
dance. The art came to her naturally. Of Mr. Cyrus Meeker, whose
mustaches, at the age of five and sixty, are waxed as tight as ever, and
whose little legs to-day are as nimble as of yore. He has a memory like
Mr. Gladstone's, and can give you a social history of the city that is
well worth your time and attention. He will tell you how, for instance,
he was kicked by the august feet of Mr. George Hanbury on the occasion of
his first lesson to that distinguished young gentleman; and how, although
Mr. Meeker's shins were sore, he pleaded nobly for Mr. George, who was
sent home in the carriage by himself,--a punishment, by the way, which
Mr. George desired above all things.

This celebrated incident occurred in the new ballroom at the top of the
new house of young Mrs. Hayden, where the meetings of the dancing class
were held weekly. Today the soot, like the ashes of Vesuvius, spouting
from ten thousand soft-coal craters, has buried that house and the whole
district fathoms deep in social obscurity. And beautiful Mrs. Hayden what
has become of her? And Lucy Hayden, that doll-like darling of the gods?

All this belongs, however, to another history, which may some day be
written. This one is Honora's, and must be got on with, for it is to be a
chronicle of lightning changes. Happy we if we can follow Honora, and we
must be prepared to make many friends and drop them in the process.

Shortly after Mrs. Hayden had built that palatial house (which had a high
fence around its grounds and a driveway leading to a porte-cochere) and
had given her initial ball, the dancing class began. It was on a blue
afternoon in late November that Aunt Mary and Honora, with Cousin Eleanor
and the two girls, and George sulking in a corner of the carriage, were
driven through the gates behind Bias and the fat horses of the Hanburys.

Honora has a vivid remembrance of the impression the house made on her,
with its polished floors and spacious rooms filled with a new and
mysterious and altogether inspiring fashion of things. Mrs. Hayden
represented the outposts in the days of Richardson and Davenport--had
Honora but known it. This great house was all so different from anything
she (and many others in the city) had ever seen. And she stood gazing
into the drawing room, with its curtains and decorously drawn shades, in
a rapture which her aunt and cousins were far from guessing.

"Come, Honora," said her aunt. "What's the matter, dear?"

How could she explain to Aunt Mary that the sight of beautiful things
gave her a sort of pain--when she did not yet know it herself? There was
the massive stairway, for instance, which they ascended, softly lighted
by a great leaded window of stained glass on the first landing; and the
spacious bedrooms with their shining brass beds and lace spreads (another
innovation which Honora resolved to adopt when she married); and at last,
far above all, its deep-set windows looking out above the trees towards
the park a mile to the westward, the ballroom,--the ballroom, with its
mirrors and high chandeliers, and chairs of gilt and blue set against the
walls, all of which made no impression whatever upon George and Mary and
Edith, but gave Honora a thrill. No wonder that she learned to dance
quickly under such an inspiration!

And how pretty Mrs. Hayden looked as she came forward to greet them and
kissed Honora! She had been Virginia Grey, and scarce had had a gown to
her back when she had married the elderly Duncan Hayden, who had built
her this house and presented her with a checkbook,--a check-book which
Virginia believed to be like the widow's cruse of oil-unfailing. Alas,
those days of picnics and balls; of dinners at that recent innovation,
the club; of theatre-parties and excursions to baseball games between the
young men in Mrs. Hayden's train (and all young men were) who played at
Harvard or Yale or Princeton; those days were too care-free to have
endured.

"Aunt Mary," asked Honora, when they were home again in the lamplight of
the little sitting-room, "why was it that Mr. Meeker was so polite to
Cousin Eleanor, and asked her about my dancing instead of you?"

Aunt Mary smiled.

"Because, Honora," she said, "because I am a person of no importance in
Mr. Meeker's eyes."

"If I were a man," cried Honora, fiercely, "I should never rest until I
had made enough money to make Mr. Meeker wriggle."

"Honora, come here," said her aunt, gazing in troubled surprise at the
tense little figure by the mantel. "I don't know what could have put such
things into your head, my child. Money isn't everything. In times of real
trouble it cannot save one."

"But it can save one from humiliation!" exclaimed Honora, unexpectedly.
Another sign of a peculiar precociousness, at fourteen, with which Aunt
Mary was finding herself unable to cope. "I would rather be killed than
humiliated by Mr. Meeker."

Whereupon she flew out of the room and upstairs, where old Catherine, in
dismay, found her sobbing a little later.

Poor Aunt Mary! Few people guessed the spirit which was bound up in her,
aching to extend its sympathy and not knowing how, save by an unswerving
and undemonstrative devotion. Her words of comfort were as few as her
silent deeds were many.

But Honora continued to go to the dancing class, where she treated Mr.
Meeker with a hauteur that astonished him, amused Virginia Hayden, and
perplexed Cousin Eleanor. Mr. Meeker's cringing soul responded, and in a
month Honora was the leading spirit of the class, led the marches, and
was pointed out by the little dancing master as all that a lady should be
in deportment and bearing.

This treatment, which succeeded so well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had
previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future,
she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a
tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a
high-handed way with him,--boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in
those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and
was rather undersized for his age--which was Honora's.

Needless to say, George did not approve of the dancing class; and let it
be known, both by words and deeds, that he was there under protest. Nor
did he regard with favour Honora's triumphal progress, but sat in a
corner with several congenial spirits whose feelings ranged from scorn to
despair, commenting in loud whispers upon those of his sex to whom the
terpsichorean art came more naturally. Upon one Algernon Cartwright, for
example, whose striking likeness to the Van Dyck portrait of a young king
had been more than once commented upon by his elders, and whose velveteen
suits enhanced the resemblance. Algernon, by the way, was the favourite
male pupil of Mr. Meeker; and, on occasions, Algernon and Honora were
called upon to give exhibitions for the others, the sight of which filled
George with contemptuous rage. Algernon danced altogether too much with
Honora,--so George informed his cousin.

The simple result of George's protests was to make Honora dance with
Algernon the more, evincing, even at this period of her career, a
commendable determination to resent dictation. George should have lived
in the Middle Ages, when the spirit of modern American womanhood was as
yet unborn. Once he contrived, by main force, to drag her out into the
hall.

"George," she said, "perhaps, if you'd let me alone perhaps I'd like you
better."

"Perhaps," he retorted fiercely, "if you wouldn't make a fool of yourself
with those mother's darlings, I'd like you better."

"George," said Honora, "learn to dance."

"Never!" he cried, but she was gone. While hovering around the door he
heard Mrs. Hayden's voice.

"Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear," that lady was remarking to
Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily's future millions were powerless to
compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily
married, "unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career. The child will
be a raving beauty. And she has to perfection the art of managing men."

"As her father had the art of managing women," said Mrs. Dwyer. "Dear me,
how well I remember Randolph! I would have followed him to--to Cheyenne."

Mrs. Hayden laughed. "He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,"
she said.

"He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for
it," said Mrs. Dwyer.

Virginia Hayden bit her lip. She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice,
"Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted."

"They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his
debts," continued Mrs. Dwyer, "although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury's
father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will. It was
twenty-five thousand dollars. James Hanbury, you remember, had him
appointed consul at Nice. Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of
conferring a favour when he borrowed money. I cannot understand why he
married that penniless and empty-headed beauty."

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Hayden, "it was because of his ability to borrow
money that he felt he could afford to."

The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.

"I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but
I tremble for her. She is utterly incapable of managing that child. If
Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty? She
has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of. I overheard her
with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person."

Mrs. Hayden's dimples deepened.

"Better than some grown-up women," she said. "She sat in my room while I
dressed the other afternoon. Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a note
about that French governess. And, by the way, she speaks French as though
she had lived in Paris."

Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.

"It doesn't seem natural, somehow. It doesn't seem exactly--moral, my
dear."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hayden. "Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child
the advantages which her companions have--Emily has French, hasn't she?"

"But Emily can't speak it--that way," said Mrs. Dwyer. "I don't blame
Mary Leffingwell. She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always
seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have
been brought up on bread and butter and jam."

"Honora would only have eaten the jam," said Mrs. Hayden. "But I love
her."

"I, too, am fond of the child, but I tremble for her. I am afraid she has
that terrible thing which is called temperament."

George Hanbury made a second heroic rush, and dragged Honora out once
more.

"What is this disease you've got?" he demanded.

"Disease?" she cried; "I haven't any disease."

"Mrs Dwyer says you have temperament, and that it is a terrible thing."

Honora stopped him in a corner.

"Because people like Mrs. Dwyer haven't got it," she declared, with a
warmth which George found inexplicable.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"You'll never know, either, George," she answered; "it's soul."

"Soul!" he repeated; "I have one, and its immortal," he added promptly.

In the summer, that season of desolation for Honora, when George Hanbury
and Algernon Cartwright and other young gentlemen were at the seashore
learning to sail boats and to play tennis, Peter Erwin came to his own.
Nearly every evening after dinner, while the light was still lingering
under the shade trees of the street, and Aunt Mary still placidly sewing
in the wicker chair on the lawn, and Uncle Tom making the tour of flowers
with his watering pot, the gate would slam, and Peter's tall form appear.

It never occurred to Honora that had it not been for Peter those evenings
would have been even less bearable than they were. To sit indoors with a
light and read in a St. Louis midsummer was not to be thought of. Peter
played backgammon with her on the front steps, and later on--chess.
Sometimes they went for a walk as far as Grand Avenue. And sometimes when
Honora grew older--she was permitted to go with him to Uhrig's Cave.
Those were memorable occasions indeed!

What Saint Louisan of the last generation does not remember Uhrig's Cave?
nor look without regret upon the thing which has replaced it, called a
Coliseum? The very name, Uhrig's Cave, sent a shiver of delight down
one's spine, and many were the conjectures one made as to what might be
enclosed in that half a block of impassible brick wall, over which the
great trees stretched their branches. Honora, from comparative infancy,
had her own theory, which so possessed the mind of Edith Hanbury that she
would not look at the wall when they passed in the carriage. It was a
still and sombre place by day; and sometimes, if you listened, you could
hear the whisperings of the forty thieves on the other side of the wall.
But no one had ever dared to cry "Open, Sesame!" at the great wooden
gates.

At night, in the warm season, when well brought up children were at home
or at the seashore, strange things were said to happen at Uhrig's Cave.

Honora was a tall slip of a girl of sixteen before it was given her to
know these mysteries, and the Ali Baba theory a thing of the past. Other
theories had replaced it. Nevertheless she clung tightly to Peter's arm
as they walked down Locust Street and came in sight of the wall. Above
it, and under the big trees, shone a thousand glittering lights: there
was a crowd at the gate, and instead of saying, "Open, Sesame," Peter
slipped two bright fifty-cent pieces to the red-faced German ticketman,
and in they went.

First and most astounding of disillusions of passing childhood, it was
not a cave at all! And yet the word "disillusion" does not apply. It was,
after all, the most enchanting and exciting of spots, to make one's eye
shine and one's heart beat. Under the trees were hundreds of tables
surrounded by hovering ministering angels in white, and if you were
German, they brought you beer; if American, ice-cream. Beyond the tables
was a stage, with footlights already set and orchestra tuning up, and a
curtain on which was represented a gentleman making decorous love to a
lady beside a fountain. As in a dream, Honora followed Peter to a table,
and he handed her a programme.

"Oh, Peter," she cried, "it's going to be 'Pinafore'!"

Honora's eyes shone like stars, and elderly people at the neighbouring
tables turned more than once to smile at her that evening. And Peter
turned more than once and smiled too. But Honora did not consider Peter.
He was merely Providence in one of many disguises, and Providence is
accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact.

The rapture of a young lady of temperament is a difficult thing to
picture. The bird may feel it as he soars, on a bright August morning,
high above amber cliffs jutting out into indigo seas; the novelist may
feel it when the four walls of his room magically disappear and the
profound secrets of the universe are on the point of revealing
themselves. Honora gazed, and listened, and lost herself. She was no
longer in Uhrig's Cave, but in the great world, her soul a-quiver with
harmonies.

"Pinafore," although a comic opera, held something tragic for Honora, and
opened the flood-gates to dizzy sensations which she did not understand.
How little Peter, who drummed on the table to the tune of:

       "Give three cheers and one cheer more
        For the hearty captain of the Pinafore,"

imagined what was going on beside him! There were two factors in his
pleasure; he liked the music, and he enjoyed the delight of Honora.

What is Peter? Let us cease looking at him through Honora's eyes and
taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about. From one
point of view, he is twenty-nine and elderly, with a sense of humour
unsuspected by young persons of temperament. Strive as we will, we have
only been able to see him in his role of Providence, or of the piper. Has
he no existence, no purpose in life outside of that perpetual gentleman
in waiting? If so, Honora has never considered it.

After the finale had been sung and the curtain dropped for the last time,
Honora sighed and walked out of the garden as one in a trance. Once in a
while, as he found a way for them through the crowd, Peter glanced down
at her, and something like a smile tugged at the corners of a decidedly
masculine mouth, and lit up his eyes. Suddenly, at Locust Street, under
the lamp, she stopped and surveyed him. She saw a very real, very human
individual, clad in a dark nondescript suit of clothes which had been
bought ready-made, and plainly without the bestowal of much thought, on
Fifth Street. The fact that they were a comparative fit was in itself a
tribute to the enterprise of the Excelsior Clothing Company, for Honora's
observation that he was too long one way had been just. He was too tall,
his shoulders were too high, his nose too prominent, his eyes too
deep-set; and he wore a straw hat with the brim turned up.

To Honora his appearance was as familiar as the picture of the Pope which
had always stood on Catherine's bureau. But to-night, by grace of some
added power of vision, she saw him with new and critical eyes. She was
surprised to discover that he was possessed of a quality with which she
had never associated him--youth. Not to put it too strongly--comparative
youth.

"Peter," she demanded, "why do you dress like that?"

"Like what?" he said.

Honora seized the lapel of his coat.

"Like that," she repeated. "Do you know, if you wore different clothes,
you might almost be distinguished looking. Don't laugh. I think it's
horrid of you always to laugh when I tell you things for your own good."

"It was the idea of being almost distinguished looking that--that gave me
a shock," he assured her repentantly.

"You should dress on a different principle," she insisted.

Peter appeared dazed.

"I couldn't do that," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because--because I don't dress on any principle now."

"Yes, you do," said Honora, firmly. "You dress on the principle of the
wild beasts and fishes. It's all in our natural history at Miss Farmer's.
The crab is the colour of the seaweed, and the deer of the thicket. It's
a device of nature for the protection of weak things."

Peter drew himself up proudly.

"I have always understood, Miss Leffingwell, that the king of beasts was
somewhere near the shade of the jungle."

Honora laughed in spite of this apparent refutation of her theory of his
apparel, and shook her head.

"Do be serious, Peter. You'd make much more of an impression on people if
you wore clothes that had--well, a little more distinction."

"What's the use of making an impression if you can't follow it up?" he
said.

"You can," she declared. "I never thought of it until to-night, but you
must have a great deal in you to have risen all the way from an errand
boy in the bank to a lawyer."

"Look out!" he cautioned her; "I shall become insupportably conceited."

"A little more conceit wouldn't hurt you," said Honora, critically.
"You'll forgive me, Peter, if I tell you from time to time what I think.
It's for your own good."

"I try to realize that," replied Peter, humbly. "How do you wish me to
dress--like Mr. Rossiter?"

The picture evoked of Peter arrayed like Mr. Harland Rossiter, who had
sent flowers to two generations and was preparing to send more to a
third, was irresistible. Every city, hamlet, and village has its Harland
Rossiter. He need not be explained. But Honora soon became grave again.

"No, but you ought to dress as though you were somebody, and different
from the ordinary man on the street."

"But I'm not," objected Peter.

"Oh," cried Honora, "don't you want to be? I can't understand any man not
wanting to be. If I were a man, I wouldn't stay here a day longer than I
had to."

Peter was silent as they went in at the gate and opened the door, for on
this festive occasion they were provided with a latchkey. He turned up
the light in the hall to behold a transformation quite as wonderful as
any contained in the "Arabian Nights" or Keightley's "Fairy Mythology."
This was not the Honora with whom he had left the house scarce three
hours before! The cambric dress, to be sure, was still no longer than the
tops of her ankles and the hair still hung in a heavy braid down her
back. These were positively all that remained of the original Honora, and
the change had occurred in the incredibly brief space required for the
production of the opera "Pinafore." This Honora was a woman in a strange
and disturbing state of exaltation, whose eyes beheld a vision. And
Peter, although he had been the subject of her conversation, well knew
that he was not included in the vision. He smiled a little as he looked
at her. It is becoming apparent that he is one of those unfortunate
unimaginative beings incapable of great illusions.

"You're not going!" she exclaimed.

He glanced significantly at the hall clock.

"Why, it's long after bedtime, Honora."

"I don't want to go to bed. I feel like talking," she declared. "Come,
let's sit on the steps awhile. If you go home, I shan't go to sleep for
hours, Peter."

"And what would Aunt Mary say to me?" he inquired.

"Oh, she wouldn't care. She wouldn't even know it."

He shook his head, still smiling.

"I'd never be allowed to take you to Uhrig's Cave, or anywhere else,
again," he replied. "I'll come to-morrow evening, and you can talk to me
then."

"I shan't feel like it then," she said in a tone that implied his
opportunity was now or never. But seeing him still obdurate, with
startling suddenness she flung her arms mound his neck--a method which at
times had succeeded marvellously--and pleaded coaxingly: "Only a quarter
of an hour, Peter. I've got so many things to say, and I know I shall
forget them by to-morrow."

It was a night of wonders. To her astonishment the hitherto pliant Peter,
who only existed in order to do her will, became transformed into a
brusque masculine creature which she did not recognize. With a movement
that was almost rough he released himself and fled, calling back a "good
night" to her out of the darkness. He did not even wait to assist her in
the process of locking up. Honora, profoundly puzzled, stood for a while
in the doorway gazing out into the night. When at length she turned, she
had forgotten him entirely.

It was true that she did not sleep for hours, and on awaking the next
morning another phenomenon awaited her. The "little house under the hill"
was immeasurably shrunken. Poor Aunt Mary, who did not understand that a
performance of "Pinafore" could give birth to the unfulfilled longings
which result in the creation of high things, spoke to Uncle Tom a week
later concerning an astonishing and apparently abnormal access of
industry.

"She's been reading all day long, Tom, or else shut up in her room, where
Catherine tells me she is writing. I'm afraid Eleanor Hanbury is right
when she says I don't understand the child. And yet she is the same to me
as though she were my own."

It was true that Honora was writing, and that the door was shut, and that
she did not feel the heat. In one of the bookcases she had chanced upon
that immortal biography of Dr. Johnson, and upon the letters of another
prodigy of her own sex, Madame d'Arblay, whose romantic debut as an
authoress was inspiration in itself. Honora actually quivered when she
read of Dr. Johnson's first conversation with Miss Burney. To write a
book of the existence of which even one's own family did not know, to
publish it under a nom de plume, and to awake one day to fetes and fame
would be indeed to live!

Unfortunately Honora's novel no longer exists, or the world might have
discovered a second Evelina. A regard for truth compels the statement
that it was never finished. But what rapture while the fever lasted!
Merely to take up the pen was to pass magically through marble portals
into the great world itself.

The Sir Charles Grandison of this novel was, needless to say, not Peter
Erwin. He was none other than Mr. Randolph Leffingwell, under a very thin
disguise.




CHAPTER V

IN WHICH PROVIDENCE BEEPS FAITH

Two more years have gone by, limping in the summer and flying in the
winter, two more years of conquests. For our heroine appears to be one of
the daughters of Helen, born to make trouble for warriors and others
--and even for innocent bystanders like Peter Erwin. Peter was debarred
from entering those brilliant lists in which apparel played so great a
part. George Hanbury, Guy Rossiter, Algernon Cartwright, Eliphalet Hopper
Dwyer--familiarly known as "Hoppy"--and other young gentlemen whose names
are now but memories, each had his brief day of triumph. Arrayed like
Solomon in wonderful clothes from the mysterious and luxurious East, they
returned at Christmas-tide and Easter from college to break lances over
Honora. Let us say it boldly--she was like that: she had the world-old
knack of sowing discord and despair in the souls of young men. She
was--as those who had known that fascinating gentleman were not slow to
remark--Randolph Leffingwell over again.

During the festival seasons, Uncle Tom averred, they wore out the latch
on the front gate. If their families possessed horses to spare, they took
Honora driving in Forest Park; they escorted her to those anomalous
dances peculiar to their innocent age, which are neither children's
parties nor full-fledged balls; their presents, while of no intrinsic
value--as one young gentleman said in a presentation speech--had an
enormous, if shy, significance.

"What a beautiful ring you are wearing, Honora," Uncle Tom remarked slyly
one April morning at breakfast; "let me see it."

Honora blushed, and hid her hand under the table-cloth.

And the ring-suffice it to say that her little finger was exactly
insertable in a ten-cent piece from which everything had been removed but
the milling: removed with infinite loving patience by Mr. Rossiter, and
at the expense of much history and philosophy and other less important
things, in his college bedroom at New Haven. Honora wore it for a whole
week; a triumph indeed for Mr. Rossiter; when it was placed in a box in
Honora's bedroom, which contained other gifts--not all from him--and many
letters, in the writing of which learning had likewise suffered. The
immediate cause of the putting away of this ring was said to be the
renowned Clinton Howe, who was on the Harvard football eleven, and who
visited Mr. George Hanbury that Easter. Fortunate indeed the tailor who
was called upon to practise his art on an Adonis like Mr. Howe, and it
was remarked that he scarcely left Honora's side at the garden party and
dance which Mrs. Dwyer gave in honour of the returning heroes, on the
Monday of Easter week.

This festival, on which we should like to linger, but cannot, took place
at the new Dwyer residence. For six months the Victorian mansion opposite
Uncle Tom's house had been sightless, with blue blinds drawn down inside
the plate glass windows. And the yellow stone itself was not so yellow as
it once had been, but had now the appearance of soiled manilla wrapping
paper, with black streaks here and there where the soot had run. The new
Dwyer house was of grey stone, Georgian and palatial, with a
picture-gallery twice the size of the old one; a magnificent and fitting
pioneer in a new city of palaces.

Westward the star of Empire--away from the smoke. The Dwyer mansion, with
its lawns and gardens and heavily balustraded terrace, faced the park
that stretched away like a private estate to the south and west. That
same park with its huge trees and black forests that was Ultima Thule in
Honora's childhood; in the open places there had been real farms and
hayricks which she used to slide down with Peter while Uncle Tom looked
for wild flowers in the fields. It had been separated from the city in
those days by an endless country road, like a Via Claudia stretching
towards mysterious Germanian forests, and it was deemed a feat for Peter
to ride thither on his big-wheeled bicycle. Forest Park was the country,
and all that the country represented in Honora's childhood. For Uncle Tom
on a summer's day to hire a surrey at Braintree's Livery Stable and drive
thither was like--to what shall that bliss be compared in these days when
we go to Europe with indifference?

And now Lindell Road--the Via Claudia of long, ago--had become Lindell
Boulevard, with granitoid sidewalks. And the dreary fields through which
it had formerly run were bristling with new houses in no sense Victorian,
and which were the first stirrings of a national sense of the artistic.
The old horse-cars with the clanging chains had disappeared, and you
could take an electric to within a block of the imposing grille that
surrounded the Dwyer grounds. Westward the star!

Fading fast was the glory of that bright new district on top of the
second hill from the river where Uncle Tom was a pioneer. Soot had killed
the pear trees, the apricots behind the lattice fence had withered away;
asphalt and soot were slowly sapping the vitality of the maples on the
sidewalk; and sometimes Uncle Tom's roses looked as though they might
advantageously be given a coat of paint, like those in Alice in
Wonderland. Honora should have lived in the Dwyers' mansion-people who
are capable of judging said so. People who saw her at the garden party
said she had the air of belonging in such surroundings much more than
Emily, whom even budding womanhood had not made beautiful. And Eliphalet
Hopper Dwyer, if his actions meant anything, would have welcomed her to
that house, or built her another twice as fine, had she deigned to give
him the least encouragement.

Cinderella! This was what she facetiously called herself one July morning
of that summer she was eighteen.

Cinderella in more senses than one, for never had the city seemed more
dirty or more deserted, or indeed, more stifling. Winter and its
festivities were a dream laid away in moth balls. Surely Cinderella's
life had held no greater contrasts! To this day the odour of matting
brings back to Honora the sense of closed shutters; of a stifling south
wind stirring their slats at noonday; the vision of Aunt Mary, cool and
placid in a cambric sacque, sewing by the window in the upper hall, and
the sound of fruit venders crying in the street, or of ragmen in the
alley--"Rags, bottles, old iron!" What memories of endless, burning,
lonely days come rushing back with those words!

When the sun had sufficiently heated the bricks of the surrounding houses
in order that he might not be forgotten during the night, he slowly
departed. If Honora took her book under the maple tree in the yard, she
was confronted with that hideous wooden sign "To Let" on the Dwyer's iron
fence opposite, and the grass behind it was unkempt and overgrown with
weeds. Aunt Mary took an unceasing and (to Honora's mind) morbid interest
in the future of that house.

"I suppose it will be a boarding-house," she would say, "it's much too
large for poor people to rent, and only poor people are coming into this
district now."

"Oh, Aunt Mary!"

"Well, my dear, why should we complain? We are poor, and it is
appropriate that we should live among the poor. Sometimes I think it is a
pity that you should have been thrown all your life with rich people, my
child. I am afraid it has made you discontented. It is no disgrace to be
poor. We ought to be thankful that we have everything we need."

Honora put down her sewing. For she had learned to sew--Aunt Mary had
insisted upon that, as well as French. She laid her hand upon her aunt's.

"I am thankful," she said, and her aunt little guessed the intensity of
the emotion she was seeking to control, or imagined the hidden fires.
"But sometimes--sometimes I try to forget that we are poor. Perhaps
--some day we shall not be."

It seemed to Honora that Aunt Mary derived a real pleasure from the
contradiction of this hope. She shook her head vigorously.

"We shall always be, my child. Your Uncle Tom is getting old, and he has
always been too honest to make a great deal of money. And besides," she
added, "he has not that kind of ability."

Uncle Tom might be getting old, but he seemed to Honora to be of the same
age as in her childhood. Some people never grow old, and Uncle Tom was
one of these. Fifteen years before he had been promoted to be the cashier
of the Prairie Bank, and he was the cashier to-day. He had the same quiet
smile, the same quiet humour, the same calm acceptance of life. He seemed
to bear no grudge even against that ever advancing enemy, the soot, which
made it increasingly difficult for him to raise his flowers. Those which
would still grow he washed tenderly night and morning with his
watering-pot. The greatest wonders are not at the ends of the earth, but
near us. It was to take many years for our heroine to realize this.

Strong faith alone could have withstood the continued contact with such a
determined fatalism as Aunt Mary's, and yet it is interesting to note
that Honora's belief in her providence never wavered. A prince was to
come who was to bear her away from the ragmen and the boarding-houses and
the soot: and incidentally and in spite of herself, Aunt Mary was to come
too, and Uncle Tom. And sometimes when she sat reading of an evening
under the maple, her book would fall to her lap and the advent of this
personage become so real a thing that she bounded when the gate slammed
--to find that it was only Peter.

It was preposterous, of course, that Peter should be a prince in
disguise. Peter who, despite her efforts to teach him distinction in
dress, insisted upon wearing the same kind of clothes. A mild kind of
providence, Peter, whose modest functions were not unlike those of the
third horse which used to be hitched on to the street car at the foot of
the Seventeenth-Street hill: it was Peter's task to help pull Honora
through the interminable summers. Uhrig's Cave was an old story now:
mysteries were no longer to be expected in St. Louis. There was a great
panorama--or something to that effect--in the wilderness at the end of
one of the new electric lines, where they sometimes went to behold the
White Squadron of the new United States Navy engaged in battle with mimic
forts on a mimic sea, on the very site where the country place of Madame
Clement had been. The mimic sea, surrounded by wooden stands filled with
common people eating peanuts and popcorn, was none other than Madame
Clement's pond, which Honora remembered as a spot of enchantment. And
they went out in the open cars with these same people, who stared at
Honora as though she had got in by mistake, but always politely gave her
a seat. And Peter thanked them. Sometimes he fell into conversations with
them, and it was noticeable that they nearly always shook hands with him
at parting. Honora did not approve of this familiarity.

"But they may be clients some day," he argued--a frivolous answer to
which she never deigned to reply.

Just as one used to take for granted that third horse which pulled the
car uphill, so Peter was taken for granted. He might have been on the
highroad to a renown like that of Chief Justice Marshall, and Honora had
been none the wiser.

"Well, Peter," said Uncle Tom at dinner one evening of that memorable
summer, when Aunt Mary was helping the blackberries, and incidentally
deploring that she did not live in the country, because of the cream one
got there, "I saw Judge Brice in the bank to-day, and he tells me you
covered yourself with glory in that iron foundry suit."

"The Judge must have his little joke, Mr. Leffingwell," replied Peter,
but he reddened nevertheless.

Honora thought winning an iron foundry suit a strange way to cover one's
self with glory. It was not, at any rate, her idea of glory. What were
lawyers for, if not to win suits? And Peter was a lawyer.

"In five years," said Uncle Tom, "the firm will be 'Brice and Erwin'. You
mark my words. And by that time," he added, with a twinkle in his eye,
"you'll be ready to marry Honora."

"Tom," reproved Aunt Mary, gently, "you oughtn't to say such things."

This time there was no doubt about Peter's blush. He fairly burned.
Honora looked at him and laughed.

"Peter is meant for an old bachelor," she said.

"If he remains a bachelor," said Uncle Tom, "he'll be the greatest waste
of good material I know of. And if you succeed in getting him, Honora,
you'll be the luckiest young woman of my acquaintance."

"Tom," said Aunt Mary, "it was all very well to talk that way when Honora
was a child. But now--she may not wish to marry Peter. And Peter may not
wish to marry her."

Even Peter joined in the laughter at this literal and characteristic
statement of the case.

"It's more than likely," said Honora, wickedly. "He hasn't kissed me for
two years."

"Why, Peter," said Uncle Tom, "you act as though it were warm to-night.
It was only seventy when we came in to dinner."

"Take me out to the park," commanded Honora.

"Tom," said Aunt Mary, as she stood on the step and watched them cross
the street, "I wish the child would marry him. Not now, of course," she
added hastily,--a little frightened by her own admission, "but later.
Sometimes I worry over her future. She needs a strong and sensible man. I
don't understand Honora. I never did. I always told you so. Sometimes I
think she may be capable of doing something foolish like--like
Randolph."

Uncle Tom patted his wife on the shoulder.

"Don't borrow trouble, Mary," he said, smiling a little. "The child is
only full of spirits. But she has a good heart. It is only human that she
should want things that we cannot give her."

"I wish," said Aunt Mary, "that she were not quite so good-looking."

Uncle Tom laughed. "You needn't tell me you're not proud of it," he
declared.

"And I have given her," she continued, "a taste for dress."

"I think, my dear," said her husband, "that there were others who
contributed to that."

"It was my own vanity. I should have combated the tendency in her," said
Aunt Mary.

"If you had dressed Honora in calico, you could not have changed her,"
replied Uncle Tom, with conviction.

In the meantime Honora and Peter had mounted the electric car, and were
speeding westward. They had a seat to themselves, the very first one on
the "grip"--that survival of the days of cable cars. Honora's eyes
brightened as she held on to her hat, and the stray wisps of hair about
her neck stirred in the breeze.

"Oh, I wish we would never stop, until we came to the Pacific Ocean!" she
exclaimed.

"Would you be content to stop then?" he asked. He had a trick of looking
downward with a quizzical expression in his dark grey eyes.

"No," said Honora. "I should want to go on and see everything in the
world worth seeing. Sometimes I feel positively as though I should die if
I had to stay here in St. Louis."

"You probably would die--eventually," said Peter.

Honora was justifiably irritated.

"I could shake you, Peter!"

He laughed.

"I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good," he answered.

"If I were a man," she proclaimed, "I shouldn't stay here. I'd go to New
York--I'd be somebody--I'd make a national reputation for myself."

"I believe you would," said Peter sadly, but with a glance of admiration.

"That's the worst of being a woman--we have to sit still until something
happens to us."

"What would you like to happen?" he asked, curiously. And there was a
note in his voice which she, intent upon her thoughts, did not remark.

"Oh, I don't know," she said; "anything--anything to get out of this rut
and be something in the world. It's dreadful to feel that one has power
and not be able to use it."

The car stopped at the terminal. Thanks to the early hour of Aunt Mary's
dinner, the western sky was still aglow with the sunset over the forests
as they walked past the closed grille of the Dwyer mansion into the park.
Children rolled on the grass, while mothers and fathers, tired out from
the heat and labour of a city day, sat on the benches. Peter stooped down
and lifted a small boy, painfully thin, who had fallen, weeping, on the
gravel walk. He took his handkerchief and wiped the scratch on the
child's forehead.

"There, there!" he said, smiling, "it's all right now. We must expect a
few tumbles."

The child looked at him, and suddenly smiled through his tears.

The father appeared, a red-headed Irishman.

"Thank you, Mr. Erwin; I'm sure it's very kind of you, sir, to bother
with him," he said gratefully. "It's that thin he is with the heat, I
take him out for a bit of country air."

"Why, Tim, it's you, is it?" said Peter. "He's the janitor of our
building down town," he explained to Honora, who had remained a silent
witness to this simple scene. She had been, in spite of herself,
impressed by it, and by the mingled respect and affection in the
janitor's manner towards Peter. It was so with every one to whom he
spoke. They walked on in silence for a few moments, into a path leading
to a lake, which had stolen the flaming green-gold of the sky.

"I suppose," said Honora, slowly, "it would be better for me to wish to
be contented where I am, as you are. But it's no use trying, I can't."

Peter was not a preacher.

"Oh," he said, "there are lots of things I want."

"What?" demanded Honora, interested. For she had never conceived of him
as having any desires whatever.

"I want a house like Mr. Dwyer's," he declared, pointing at the distant
imposing roof line against the fading eastern sky.

Honora laughed. The idea of Peter wishing such a house was indeed
ridiculous. Then she became grave again.

"There are times when you seem to forget that I have at last grown up,
Peter. You never will talk over serious things with me."

"What are serious things?" asked Peter.

"Well," said Honora vaguely, "ambitions, and what one is going to make of
themselves in life. And then you make fun of me by saying you want Mr.
Dwyer's house." She laughed again. "I can't imagine you in that house!"

"Why not?" he asked, stopping beside the pond and thrusting his hands in
his pockets. He looked very solemn, but she knew he was smiling inwardly.

"Why--because I can't," she said, and hesitated. The question had forced
her to think about Peter. "I can't imagine you living all alone in all
that luxury. It isn't like you."

"Why I all alone?" asked Peter.

"Don't--Don't be ridiculous," she said; "you wouldn't build a house like
that, even if you were twice as rich as Mr. Dwyer. You know you wouldn't.
And you're not the marrying kind," she added, with the superior knowledge
of eighteen.

"I'm waiting for you, Honora," he announced.

"You know I love you, Peter,"--so she tempered her reply, for Honora's
feelings were tender. What man, even Peter, would not have married her if
he could? Of course he was in earnest, despite his bantering tone, "but I
never could--marry you."

"Not even if I were to offer you a house like Mr. Dwyer's?" he said. A
remark which betrayed--although not to her--his knowledge of certain
earthly strains in his goddess.

The colours faded from the water, and it blackened.

As they walked on side by side in the twilight, a consciousness of
repressed masculine force, of reserve power, which she had never before
felt about Peter Erwin, invaded her; and she was seized with a strange
uneasiness. Ridiculous was the thought (which she lost no time in
rejecting) that pointed out the true road to happiness in marrying such a
man as he. In the gathering darkness she slipped her hand through his
arm.

"I wish I could marry you, Peter," she said.

He was fain to take what comfort he could from this expression of
good-will. If he was not the Prince Charming of her dreams, she would
have liked him to be. A little reflection on his part ought to have shown
him the absurdity of the Prince Charming having been there all the time,
and in ready-made clothes. And he, too, may have had dreams. We are not
concerned with them.

          ............................

If we listen to the still, small voice of realism, intense longing is
always followed by disappointment. Nothing should have happened that
summer, and Providence should not have come disguised as the postman. It
was a sultry day in early September-which is to say that it was
comparatively cool--a blue day, with occasional great drops of rain
spattering on the brick walk. And Honora was reclining on the hall sofa,
reading about Mr. Ibbetson and his duchess, when she perceived the
postman's grey uniform and smiling face on the far side of the screen
door. He greeted her cordially, and gave her a single letter for Aunt
Mary, and she carried it unsuspectingly upstairs.

"It's from Cousin Eleanor," Honora volunteered.

Aunt Mary laid down her sewing, smoothed the ruffles of her sacque,
adjusted her spectacles, opened the envelope, and began to read.
Presently the letter fell to her lap, and she wiped her glasses and
glanced at Honora, who was deep in her book once more. And in Honora's
brain, as she read, was ringing the refrain of the prisoner:

            "Orleans, Beaugency!
             Notre Dame de Clery!
               Vendome! Vendome!
             Quel chagrin, quel ennui
             De compter toute la nuit
               Les heures, les heures!".

The verse appealed to Honora strangely; just as it had appealed to
Ibbetson. Was she not, too, a prisoner. And how often, during the summer
days and nights, had she listened to the chimes of the Pilgrim Church
near by?

            "One, two, three, four!
             One, two, three, four!"

After Uncle Tom had watered his flowers that evening, Aunt Mary followed
him upstairs and locked the door of their room behind her. Silently she
put the letter in his hand. Here is one paragraph of it:

   "I have never asked to take the child from you in the summer,
   because she has always been in perfect health, and I know how lonely
   you would have been without her, my dear Mary. But it seems to me
   that a winter at Sutcliffe, with my, girls, would do her a world of
   good just now. I need not point out to you that Honora is, to say
   the least, remarkably good looking, and that she has developed very
   rapidly. And she has, in spite of the strict training you have
   given her, certain ideas and ambitions which seem to me, I am sorry
   to say, more or less prevalent among young American women these
   days. You know it is only because I love her that I am so frank.
   Miss Turner's influence will, in my opinion, do much to counteract
   these tendencies."

Uncle Tom folded the letter, and handed it back to his wife.

"I feel that we ought not to refuse, Tom. And I am afraid Eleanor is
right."

"Well, Mary, we've had her for seventeen years. We ought to be willing to
spare her for--how many months?"

"Nine," said Aunt Mary, promptly. She had counted them. "And Eleanor says
she will be home for two weeks at Christmas. Seventeen years! It seems
only yesterday when we brought her home, Tom. It was just about this time
of day, and she was asleep in your arms, and Bridget opened the door for
us." Aunt Mary looked out of the window. "And do you remember how she
used to play under the maple there, with her dolls?"

Uncle Tom produced a very large handkerchief, and blew his nose.

"There, there, Mary," he said, "nine months, and two weeks out at
Christmas. Nine months in eighteen years."

"I suppose we ought to be very thankful," said Aunt Mary. "But, Tom, the
time is coming soon--"

"Tut tut," exclaimed Uncle Tom. He turned, and his eyes beheld a work of
art. Nothing less than a porcelain plate, hung in brackets on the wall,
decorated by Honora at the age of ten with wild roses, and presented with
much ceremony on an anniversary morning. He pretended not to notice it,
but Aunt Mary's eyes were too quick. She seized a photograph on her
bureau, a photograph of Honora in a little white frock with a red sash.

"It was the year that was taken, Tom."

He nodded. The scene at the breakfast table came back to him, and the
sight of Catherine standing respectfully in the hall, and of Honora, in
the red sash, making the courtesy the old woman had taught her.

Honora recalled afterwards that Uncle Tom joked even more than usual that
evening at dinner. But it was Aunt Mary who asked her, at length, how she
would like to go to boarding-school. Such was the matter-of-fact manner
in which the portentous news was announced.

"To boarding-school, Aunt Mary?"

Her aunt poured out her uncle's after-dinner coffee.

"I've spilled some, my dear. Get another saucer for your uncle."

Honora went mechanically to the china closet, her heart thumping. She did
not stop to reflect that it was the rarest of occurrences for Aunt Mary
to spill the coffee.

"Your Cousin Eleanor has invited you to go this winter with Edith and
Mary to Sutcliffe."

Sutcliffe! No need to tell Honora what Sutcliffe was--her cousins had
talked of little else during the past winter; and shown, if the truth be
told, just a little commiseration for Honora. Sutcliffe was not only a
famous girls' school, Sutcliffe was the world--that world which, since
her earliest remembrances, she had been longing to see and know. In a
desperate attempt to realize what had happened to her, she found herself
staring hard at the open china closet, at Aunt Mary's best gold dinner
set resting on the pink lace paper that had been changed only last week.
That dinner set, somehow, was always an augury of festival--when, on the
rare occasions Aunt Mary entertained, the little dining room was
transformed by it and the Leffingwell silver into a glorified and
altogether unrecognizable state, in which any miracle seemed possible.

Honora pushed back her chair.

Her lips were parted.

"Oh, Aunt Mary, is it really true that I am going?" she said.

"Why," said Uncle Tom, "what zeal for learning!"

"My dear," said Aunt Mary, who, you may be sure, knew all about that
school before Cousin Eleanor's letter came, "Miss Turner insists upon
hard work, and the discipline is very strict."

"No young men," added Uncle Tom.

"That," declared Aunt Mary, "is certainly an advantage."

"And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o'clock," said Uncle Tom.

Honora, dazed, only half heard them. She laughed at Uncle Tom because she
always had, but tears were shining in her eyes. Young men and chocolate
cake! What were these privations compared to that magic word Change?
Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom's neck and kissed
his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary. They would be lonely.

"Aunt Mary, I can't bear to leave you--but I do so want to go! And it
won't be for long--will it? Only until next spring."

"Until next summer, I believe," replied Aunt Mary, gently; "June is a
summer month-isn't it, Tom?"

"It will be a summer month without question next year," answered Uncle
Tom, enigmatically.

It has been remarked that that day was sultry, and a fine rain was now
washing Uncle Tom's flowers for him. It was he who had applied that term
"washing" since the era of ultra-soot. Incredible as it may seem, life
proceeded as on any other of a thousand rainy nights. The lamps were
lighted in the sitting-room, Uncle Tom unfolded his gardening periodical,
and Aunt Mary her embroidery. The gate slammed, with its more subdued,
rainy-weather sound.

"It's Peter," said Honora, flying downstairs. And she caught him,
astonished, as he was folding his umbrella on the step. "Oh, Peter, if
you tried until to-morrow morning, you never could guess what has
happened."

He stood for a moment, motionless, staring at her, a tall figure,
careless of the rain.

"You are going away," he said.

"How did you guess it?" she exclaimed in surprise. "Yes--to
boarding-school. To Sutcliffe, on the Hudson, with Edith and Mary. Aren't
you glad? You look as though you had seen a ghost."

"Do I?" said Peter.

"Don't stand there in the rain," commanded Honora; "come into the
parlour, and I'll tell you all about it."

He came in. She took the umbrella from him, and put it in the rack.

"Why don't you congratulate me?" she demanded.

"You'll never come back," said Peter.

"What a horrid thing to say! Of course I shall come back. I shall come
back next June, and you'll be at the station to meet me."

And--what will Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary do--without you?"

"Oh," said Honora, "I shall miss them dreadfully. And I shall miss you,
Peter."

"Very much?" he asked, looking down at her with such a queer expression.
And his voice, too, sounded queer. He was trying to smile.

Suddenly Honora realized that he was suffering, and she felt the pangs of
contrition. She could not remember the time when she had been away from
Peter, and it was natural that he should be stricken at the news. Peter,
who was the complement of all who loved and served her, of Aunt Mary and
Uncle Tom and Catherine, and who somehow embodied them all. Peter, the
eternally dependable.

She found it natural that the light should be temporarily removed from
his firmament while she should be at boarding-school, and yet in the
tenderness of her heart she pitied him. She put her hands impulsively
upon his shoulders as he stood looking at her with that queer expression
which he believed to be a smile.

"Peter, you dear old thing, indeed I shall miss you! I don't know what I
shall do without you, and I'll write to you every single week."

Gently he disengaged her arms. They were standing under that which, for
courtesy's sake, had always been called the chandelier. It was in the
centre of the parlour, and Uncle Tom always covered it with holly and
mistletoe at Christmas.

"Why do you say I'll never come back?" asked Honora. "Of course I shall
come back, and live here all the rest of my life."

Peter shook his head slowly. He had recovered something of his customary
quizzical manner.

"The East is a strange country," he said. "The first thing we know you'll
be marrying one of those people we read about, with more millions than
there are cars on the Olive Street line."

Honora was a little indignant.

"I wish you wouldn't talk so, Peter," she said. "In the first place, I
shan't see any but girls at Sutcliffe. I could only see you for a few
minutes once a week if you were there. And in the second place, it isn't
exactly--Well--dignified to compare the East and the West the way you do,
and speak about people who are very rich and live there as though they
were different from the people we know here. Comparisons, as Shakespeare
said, are odorous."

"Honora," he declared, still shaking his head, "you're a fraud, but I
can't help loving you."

For a long time that night Honora lay in bed staring into the darkness,
and trying to realize what had happened. She heard the whistling and the
puffing of the trains in the cinder-covered valley to the southward, but
the quality of these sounds had changed. They were music now.




CHAPTER VI

HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

It is simply impossible to give any adequate notion of the industry of
the days that followed. No sooner was Uncle Tom out of the house in the
morning than Anne Rory marched into the sitting-room and took command,
and turned it, into a dressmaking establishment. Anne Rory, who deserves
more than a passing mention, one of the institutions of Honora's youth,
who sewed for the first families, and knew much more about them than Mr.
Meeker, the dancing-master. If you enjoyed her confidence,--as Aunt Mary
did,--she would tell you of her own accord who gave their servants enough
to eat, and who didn't. Anne Rory was a sort of inquisition all by
herself, and would have made a valuable chief of police. The reputations
of certain elderly gentlemen of wealth might have remained to this day
intact had it not been for her; she had a heaven-sent knack of
discovering peccadilloes. Anne Rory knew the gentlemen by sight, and the
gentlemen did not know Anne Rory. Uncle Tom she held to be somewhere in
the calendar of the saints.

There is not time, alas, to linger over Anne Rory or the new histories
which she whispered to Aunt Mary when Honora was out of the room. At last
the eventful day of departure arrived. Honora's new trunk--her
first--was packed by Aunt Mary's own hands, the dainty clothes and the
dresses folded in tissue paper, while old Catherine stood sniffing by.
After dinner--sign of a great occasion--a carriage came from Braintree's
Livery Stable, and Uncle Tom held the horses while the driver carried out
the trunk and strapped it on. Catherine, Mary Ann, and Bridget, all
weeping, were kissed good-by, and off they went through the dusk to the
station. Not the old Union Depot, with its wooden sheds, where Honora had
gone so often to see the Hanburys off, that grimy gateway to the fairer
regions of the earth. This new station, of brick and stone and glass and
tiles, would hold an army corps with ease. And when they alighted at the
carriage entrance, a tall figure came forward out of the shadow. It was
Peter, and he had a package under his arm. Peter checked Honora's trunk,
and Peter had got the permission--through Judge Brice--which enabled them
all to pass through the grille and down the long walk beside which the
train was standing.

They entered that hitherto mysterious conveyance, a sleeping-car, and
spoke to old Mrs. Stanley, who was going East to see her married
daughter, and who had gladly agreed to take charge of Honora. Afterwards
they stood on the platform, but in spite of the valiant efforts of Uncle
Tom and Peter, conversation was a mockery.

"Honora," said Aunt Mary, "don't forget that your trunk key is in the
little pocket on the left side of your bag."

"No, Aunt Mary."

"And your little New Testament at the bottom. And your lunch is arranged
in three packages. And don't forget to ask Cousin Eleanor about the
walking shoes, and to give her my note."

Cries reverberated under the great glass dome, and trains pulled out with
deafening roars. Honora had a strange feeling, as of pressure from
within, that caused her to take deep breaths of the smoky air. She but
half heard what was being said to her: she wished that the train would
go, and at the same time she had a sudden, surprising, and fierce longing
to stay. She had been able to eat scarcely a mouthful of that festal
dinner which Bridget had spent the afternoon in preparing, comprised
wholly of forbidden dishes of her childhood, for which Bridget and Aunt
Mary were justly famed. Such is the irony of life. Visions of one of Aunt
Mary's rare lunch-parties and of a small girl peeping covetously through
a crack in the dining-room door, and of the gold china set, rose before
her. But she could not eat.

"Bread and jam and tea at Miss Turner's," Uncle Tom had said, and she had
tried to smile at him.

And now they were standing on the platform, and the train might start at
any moment.

"I trust you won't get like the New Yorkers, Honora," said Aunt Mary. "Do
you remember how stiff they were, Tom?" She was still in the habit of
referring to that memorable trip when they had brought Honora home. "And
they say now that they hold their heads higher than ever."

"That," said Uncle Tom, gravely, "is a local disease, and comes from
staring at the tall buildings."

"Uncle Tom!"

Peter presented the parcel under his arm. It was a box of candy, and very
heavy, on which much thought had been spent.

"They are some of the things you like," he said, when he had returned
from putting it in the berth.

"How good of you, Peter! I shall never be able to eat all that."

"I hope there is a doctor on the train," said Uncle Tom.

"Yassah," answered the black porter, who had been listening with evident
relish, "right good doctah--Doctah Lov'ring."

Even Aunt Mary laughed.

"Peter," asked Honora, "can't you get Judge Brice to send you on to New
York this winter on law business? Then you could come up to Sutcliffe to
see me."

"I'm afraid of Miss Turner," declared Peter.

"Oh, she wouldn't mind you," exclaimed Honora. "I could say you were an
uncle. It would be almost true. And perhaps she would let you take me
down to New York for a matinee."

"And how about my ready-made clothes?" he said, looking down at her. He
had never forgotten that.

Honora laughed.

"You don't seem a bit sorry that I'm going," she replied, a little
breathlessly. "You know I'd be glad to see you, if you were in rags."

"All aboard!" cried the porter, grinning sympathetically.

Honora threw her arms around Aunt Mary and clung to her. How small and
frail she was! Somehow Honora had never realized it in all her life
before.

"Good-by, darling, and remember to put on your thick clothes on the cool
days, and write when you get to New York."

Then it was Uncle Tom's turn. He gave her his usual vigorous hug and
kiss.

"It won't be long until Christmas," he whispered, and was gone, helping
Aunt Mary off the train, which had begun to move.

Peter remained a moment.

"Good-by, Honora. I'll write to you often and let you know how they are.
And perhaps--you'll send me a letter once in a while."

"Oh, Peter, I will," she cried. "I can't bear to leave you--I didn't
think it would be so hard--"

He held out his hand, but she ignored it. Before he realized what had
happened to him she had drawn his face to hers, kissed it, and was
pushing him off the train. Then she watched from the, platform the three
receding figures in the yellow smoky light until the car slipped out from
under the roof into the blackness of the night. Some faint, premonitory
divination of what they represented of immutable love in a changing,
heedless, selfish world came to her; rocks to which one might cling,
successful or failing, happy or unhappy. For unconsciously she thought of
them, all three, as one, a human trinity in which her faith had never
been betrayed. She felt a warm moisture on her cheeks, and realized that
she was crying with the first real sorrow of her life.

She was leaving them--for what? Honora did not know. There had been
nothing imperative in Cousin Eleanor's letter. She need not have gone if
she had not wished. Something within herself, she felt, was impelling
her. And it is curious to relate that, in her mind, going to school had
little or nothing to do with her journey. She had the feeling of faring
forth into the world, and she had known all along that it was destined
she should. What was the cause of this longing to break the fetters and
fly away? fetters of love, they seemed to her now--and were. And the
world which she had seen afar, filled with sunlit palaces, seemed very
dark and dreary to her to-night.

"The lady's asking for you, Miss," said the porter.

She made a heroic attempt to talk to Mrs. Stanley. But at the sight of
Peter's candy, when she opened it, she was blinded once more. Dear Peter!
That box was eloquent with the care with which he had studied her
slightest desires and caprices. Marrons glaces, and Langtrys, and certain
chocolates which had received the stamp of her approval--and she could
not so much as eat one! The porter made the berths. And there had been a
time when she had asked nothing more of fate than to travel in a
sleeping-car! Far into the night she lay wide awake, dry-eyed, watching
the lamp-lit streets of the little towns they passed, or staring at the
cornfields and pastures in the darkness; thinking of the home she had
left, perhaps forever, and wondering whether they were sleeping there;
picturing them to-morrow at breakfast without her, and Uncle Tom leaving
for the bank, Aunt Mary going through the silent rooms alone, and dear
old Catherine haunting the little chamber where she had slept for
seventeen years--almost her lifetime. A hundred vivid scenes of her
childhood came back, and familiar objects oddly intruded themselves; the
red and green lambrequin on the parlour mantel--a present many years ago
from Cousin Eleanor; the what-not, with its funny curly legs, and the
bare spot near the lock on the door of the cake closet in the dining
room!

Youth, however, has its recuperative powers. The next day the excitement
of the journey held her, the sight of new cities and a new countryside.
But when she tried to eat the lunch Aunt Mary had so carefully put up,
new memories assailed her, and she went with Mrs. Stanley into the dining
car. The September dusk was made lurid by belching steel-furnaces that
reddened the heavens; and later, when she went to bed, sharp air and
towering contours told her of the mountains. Mountains which her
great-grandfather had crossed on horse back, with that very family silver
in his saddle-bags which shone on Aunt Mary's table. And then--she awoke
with the light shining in her face, and barely had time to dress before
the conductor was calling out "Jersey City."

Once more the morning, and with it new and wonderful sensations that
dispelled her sorrows; the ferry, the olive-green river rolling in the
morning sun, alive with dodging, hurrying craft, each bent upon its
destination with an energy, relentlessness, and selfishness of purpose
that fascinated Honora. Each, with its shrill, protesting whistle, seemed
to say: "My business is the most important. Make way for me." And yet,
through them all, towering, stately, imperturbable, a great ocean steamer
glided slowly towards the bay, by very might and majesty holding her way
serene and undisturbed, on a nobler errand. Honora thrilled as she gazed,
as though at last her dream were coming true, and she felt within her the
pulse of the world's artery. That irksome sense of spectatorship seemed
to fly, and she was part and parcel now of the great, moving things, with
sure pinions with which to soar. Standing rapt upon the forward deck of
the ferry, she saw herself, not an atom, but one whose going and coming
was a thing of consequence. It seemed but a simple step to the deck of
that steamer when she, too, would be travelling to the other side of the
world, and the journey one of the small incidents of life.

The ferry bumped into its slip, the windlasses sang loudly as they took
up the chains, the gates folded back, and Honora was forced with the
crowd along the bridge-like passage to the right. Suddenly she saw Cousin
Eleanor and the girls awaiting her.

"Honora," said Edith, when the greetings were over and they were all four
in the carriage, which was making its way slowly across the dirty and
irregularly paved open space to a narrow street that opened between two
saloons, "Honora, you don't mean to say that Anne Rory made that street
dress? Mother, I believe it's better-looking than the one I got at
Bremer's."

"It's very simple,", said Honora.

"And she looks fairly radiant," cried Edith, seizing her cousin's hand.
"It's quite wonderful, Honora; nobody would ever guess that you were from
the West, and that you had spent the whole summer in St. Louis."

Cousin Eleanor smiled a little as she contemplated Honora, who sat,
fascinated, gazing out of the window at novel scenes. There was a colour
in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes. They had reached Madison Square.
Madison Square, on a bright morning in late September, seen for the first
time by an ambitious young lady who had never been out of St. Louis! The
trimly appointed vehicles, the high-stepping horses, the glittering
shops, the well-dressed women and well-groomed men--all had an esprit de
corps which she found inspiring. On such a morning, and amidst such a
scene, she felt that there was no limit to the possibilities of life.

Until this year, Cousin Eleanor had been a conservative in the matter of
hotels, when she had yielded to Edith's entreaties to go to one of the
"new ones." Hotels, indeed, that revolutionized transient existence. This
one, on the Avenue, had a giant in a long blue livery coat who opened
their carriage door, and a hall in yellow and black onyx, and maids and
valets. After breakfast, when Honora sat down to write to Aunt Mary, she
described the suite of rooms in which they lived,--the brass beds, the
electric night lamps, the mahogany French furniture, the heavy carpets,
and even the white-tiled bathroom. There was a marvellous arrangement in
the walls with which Edith was never tired of playing, a circular plate
covered with legends of every conceivable want, from a newspaper to a
needle and thread and a Scotch whiskey highball.

At breakfast, more stimulants--of a mental nature, of course. Solomon in
all his glory had never broken eggs in such a dining room. It had onyx
pillars, too, and gilt furniture, and table after table of the whitest
napery stretched from one end of it to the other. The glass and silver
was all of a special pattern, and an obsequious waiter handed Honora a
menu in a silver frame, with a handle. One side of the menu was in
English, and the other in French. All around them were well-dressed,
well-fed, prosperous-looking people, talking and laughing in subdued
tones as they ate. And Honora had a strange feeling of being one of them,
of being as rich and prosperous as they, of coming into a long-deferred
inheritance.

The mad excitement of that day in New York is a faint memory now, so much
has Honora lived since then. We descendants of rigid Puritans, of pioneer
tobacco-planters and frontiersmen, take naturally to a luxury such as the
world has never seen--as our right. We have abolished kings, in order
that as many of us as possible may abide in palaces. In one day Honora
forgot the seventeen years spent in the "little house under the hill," as
though these had never been. Cousin Eleanor, with a delightful sense of
wrong-doing, yielded to the temptation to adorn her; and the saleswomen,
who knew Mrs. Hanbury, made indiscreet-remarks. Such a figure and such a
face, and just enough of height! Two new gowns were ordered, to be tried
on at Sutcliffe, and as many hats, and an ulster, and heaven knows what
else. Memory fails.

In the evening they went to a new comic opera, and it is the music of
that which brings back the day most vividly to Honora's mind.

In the morning they took an early train to Sutcliffe Manors, on the
Hudson. It is an historic place. First of all, after leaving the station,
you climb through the little town clinging to the hillside; and Honora
was struck by the quaint houses and shops which had been places of barter
before the Revolution. The age of things appealed to her. It was a
brilliant day at the very end of September, the air sharp, and here and
there a creeper had been struck crimson. Beyond the town, on the slopes,
were other new sights to stimulate the imagination: country houses--not
merely houses in the country, but mansions--enticingly hidden among great
trees in a way to whet Honora's curiosity as she pictured to herself the
blissful quality of the life which their owners must lead. Long, curving
driveways led up to the houses from occasional lodges; and once, as
though to complete the impression, a young man and two women, superbly
mounted, came trotting out of one of these driveways, talking and
laughing gayly. Honora took a good look at the man. He was not handsome,
but had, in fact, a distinguished and haunting ugliness. The girls were
straight-featured and conventional to the last degree.

Presently they came to the avenue of elms that led up to the long, low
buildings of the school.

Little more will be necessary, in the brief account of Honora's life at
boarding-school, than to add an humble word of praise on the excellence
of Miss Turner's establishment. That lady, needless to say, did not
advertise in the magazines, or issue a prospectus. Parents were more or
less in the situation of the candidates who desired the honour and
privilege of whitewashing Tom Sawyer's fence. If you were a parent, and
were allowed to confide your daughter to Miss Turner, instead of
demanding a prospectus, you gave thanks to heaven, and spoke about it to
your friends.

The life of the young ladies, of course, was regulated on the strictest
principles. Early rising, prayers, breakfast, studies; the daily walk,
rain or shine, under the watchful convoy of Miss Hood, the girls in
columns of twos; tennis on the school court, or skating on the school
pond. Cotton Mather himself could not have disapproved of the Sundays,
nor of the discourse of the elderly Doctor Moale (which you heard if you
were not a Presbyterian), although the reverend gentleman was distinctly
Anglican in appearance and manners. Sometimes Honora felt devout, and
would follow the service with the utmost attention. Her religion came in
waves. On the Sundays when the heathen prevailed she studied the
congregation, grew to distinguish the local country families; and, if the
truth must be told, watched for several Sundays for that ugly yet
handsome young man whom she had seen on horseback. But he never appeared,
and presently she forgot him.

Had there been a prospectus (which is ridiculous!), the great secret of
Miss Turner's school could not very well have been mentioned in it. The
English language, it is to be feared, is not quite flexible enough to
mention this secret with delicacy. Did Honora know it? Who can say?
Self-respecting young ladies do not talk about such things, and Honora
was nothing if not self-respecting.

               "SUTCLIFFE MANORS, October 15th.

   "DEAREST AUNT MARY: As I wrote you, I continue to miss you and Uncle
   Tom dreadfully,--and dear old Peter, too; and Cathy and Bridget and
   Mary Ann. And I hate to get up at seven o'clock. And Miss Hood,
   who takes us out walking and teaches us composition, is such a
   ridiculously strict old maid--you would laugh at her. And the
   Sundays are terrible. Miss Turner makes us read the Bible for a
   whole hour in the afternoon, and reads to us in the evening. And
   Uncle Tom was right when he said we should have nothing but jam and
   bread and butter for supper: oh, yes, and cold meat. I am always
   ravenously hungry. I count the days until Christmas, when I shall
   have some really good things to eat again. And of course I cannot
   wait to see you all.

   "I do not mean to give you the impression that I am not happy here,
   and I never can be thankful enough to dear Cousin Eleanor for
   sending me. Some of the girls are most attractive. Among others,
   I have become great friends with Ethel Wing, who is tall and blond
   and good-looking; and her clothes, though simple, are beautiful.
   To hear her imitate Miss Turner or Miss Hood or Dr. Moale is almost
   as much fun as going to the theatre. You must have heard of her
   father--he is the Mr. Wing who owns all the railroads and other
   things, and they have a house in Newport and another in New York,
   and a country place and a yacht.

   "I like Sarah Wycliffe very much. She was brought up abroad, and we
   lead the French class together. Her father has a house in Paris,
   which they only use for a month or so in the year: an hotel, as the
   French call it. And then there is Maude Capron, from Philadelphia,
   whose father is Secretary of War. I have now to go to my class in
   English composition, but I will write to you again on Saturday.

                    "Your loving niece,

                            "HONORA."

The Christmas holidays came, and went by like mileposts from the window
of an express train. There was a Glee Club: there were dances, and
private theatricals in Mrs. Dwyer's new house, in which it was imperative
that Honora should take part. There was no such thing as getting up for
breakfast, and once she did not see Uncle Tom for two whole days. He
asked her where she was staying. It was the first Christmas she
remembered spending without Peter. His present appeared, but perhaps it
was fortunate, on the whole, that he was in Texas, trying a case. It
seemed almost no time at all before she was at the station again,
clinging to Aunt Mary: but now the separation was not so hard, and she
had Edith and Mary for company, and George, a dignified and responsible
sophomore at Harvard.

Owing to the sudden withdrawal from school of little Louise Simpson, the
Cincinnati girl who had shared her room during the first term, Honora had
a new room-mate after the holidays, Susan Holt. Susan was not beautiful,
but she was good. Her nose turned up, her hair Honora described as a
negative colour, and she wore it in defiance of all prevailing modes. If
you looked very hard at Susan (which few people ever did), you saw that
she had remarkable blue eyes: they were the eyes of a saint. She was
neither tall nor short, and her complexion was not all that it might have
been. In brief, Susan was one of those girls who go through a whole term
at boarding--school without any particular notice from the more brilliant
Honoras and Ethel Wings.

In some respects, Susan was an ideal room-mate. She read the Bible every
night and morning, and she wrote many letters home. Her ruling passion,
next to religion, was order, and she took it upon herself to arrange
Honora's bureau drawers. It is needless to say that Honora accepted these
ministrations and that she found Susan's admiration an entirely natural
sentiment. Susan was self-effacing, and she enjoyed listening to Honora's
views on all topics.

Susan, like Peter, was taken for granted. She came from somewhere, and
after school was over, she would go somewhere. She lived in New York,
Honora knew, and beyond that was not curious. We never know when we are
entertaining an angel unawares. One evening, early in May, when she went
up to prepare for supper she found Susan sitting in the window reading a
letter, and on the floor beside her was a photograph. Honora picked it
up. It was the picture of a large country house with many chimneys, taken
across a wide green lawn.

"Susan, what's this?"

Susan looked up.

"Oh, it's Silverdale. My brother Joshua took it."

"Silverdale?" repeated Honora.

"It's our place in the country," Susan replied. "The family moved up last
week. You see, the trees are just beginning to bud."

Honora was silent a moment, gazing at the picture.

"It's very beautiful, isn't it? You never told me about it."

"Didn't I?" said Susan. "I think of it very often. It has always seemed
much more like home to me than our house in New York, and I love it
better than any spot I know."

Honora gazed at Susan, who had resumed her reading.

"And you are going there when school is over."

"Oh, yes," said Susan; "I can hardly wait." Suddenly she put down her
letter, and looked at Honora.

"And you," she asked, "where are you going?"

"I don't know. Perhaps--perhaps I shall go to the sea for a while with my
cousins."

It was foolish, it was wrong. But for the life of her Honora could not
say she was going to spend the long hot summer in St. Louis. The thought
of it had haunted her for weeks: and sometimes, when the other girls were
discussing their plans, she had left them abruptly. And now she was aware
that Susan's blue eyes were fixed upon her, and that they had a strange
and penetrating quality she had never noticed before: a certain
tenderness, an understanding that made Honora redden and turn.

"I wish," said Susan, slowly, "that you would come and stay awhile with
me. Your home is so far away, and I don't know when I shall see you
again."

"Oh, Susan," she murmured, "it's awfully good of you, but I'm afraid--I
couldn't."

She walked to the window, and stood looking out for a moment at the
budding trees. Her heart was beating faster, and she was strangely
uncomfortable.

"I really don't expect to go to the sea, Susan," she said. "You see, my
aunt and uncle are all alone in St. Louis, and I ought to go back to
them. If--if my father had lived, it might have been different. He died,
and my mother, when I was little more than a year old."

Susan was all sympathy. She slipped her hand into Honora's.

"Where did he live?" she asked.

"Abroad," answered Honora. "He was consul at Nice, and had a villa there
when he died. And people said he had an unusually brilliant career before
him. My aunt and uncle brought me up, and my cousin, Mrs. Hanbury,
Edith's mother, and Mary's, sent me here to school."

Honora breathed easier after this confession, but it was long before
sleep came to her that night. She wondered what it would be like to visit
at a great country house such as Silverdale, what it would be like to
live in one. It seemed a strange and cruel piece of irony on the part of
the fates that Susan, instead of Honora, should have been chosen for such
a life: Susan, who would have been quite as happy spending her summers in
St. Louis, and taking excursions in the electric cars: Susan, who had
never experienced that dreadful, vacuum-like feeling, who had no
ambitious craving to be satisfied. Mingled with her flushes of affection
for Susan was a certain queer feeling of contempt, of which Honora was
ashamed.

Nevertheless, in the days that followed, a certain metamorphosis seemed
to have taken place in Susan. She was still the same modest,
self-effacing, helpful roommate, but in Honora's eyes she had changed
--Honora could no longer separate her image from the vision of
Silverdale. And, if the naked truth must be told, it was due to
Silverdale that Susan owes the honour of her first mention in those
descriptive letters from Sutcliffe, which Aunt Mary has kept to this day.

Four days later Susan had a letter from her mother containing an
astonishing discovery. There could be no mistake,--Mrs. Holt had brought
Honora to this country as a baby.

"Why, Susan," cried Honora, "you must have been the other baby."

"But you were the beautiful one," replied Susan, generously. "I have
often heard mother tell about it, and how every one on the ship noticed
you, and how Hortense cried when your aunt and uncle took you away. And
to think we have been rooming together all these months and did not know
that we were really--old friends.

"And Honora, mother says you must come to Silverdale to pay us a visit
when school closes. She wants to see you. I think," added Susan, smiling,
"I think she feels responsible, for you. She says that you must give me
your aunts address, and that she will write to her."

"Oh, I'd so like to go, Susan. And I don't think Aunt Mary would object
---for a little while."

Honora lost no time in writing the letter asking for permission, and it
was not until after she had posted it that she felt a sudden, sharp
regret as she thought of them in their loneliness. But the postponement
of her homecoming would only be for a fortnight at best. And she had seen
so little!

In due time Aunt Mary's letter arrived. There was no mention of
loneliness in it, only of joy that Honora was to have the opportunity to
visit such a place as Silverdale. Aunt Mary, it seems, had seen pictures
of it long ago in a magazine of the book club, in an article concerning
one of Mrs. Holt's charities--a model home for indiscreet young women. At
the end of the year, Aunt Mary added, she had bought the number of the
magazine, because of her natural interest in Mrs. Holt on Honora's
account. Honora cried a little over that letter, but her determination to
go to Silverdale was unshaken.

June came at last, and the end of school. The subject of Miss Turner's
annual talk was worldliness. Miss Turner saw signs, she regretted to say,
of a lowering in the ideals of American women: of a restlessness, of a
desire for what was a false consideration and recognition; for power.
Some of her own pupils, alas! were not free from this fault. Ethel Wing,
who was next to Honora, nudged her and laughed, and passed her some of
Maillard's chocolates, which she had in her pocket. Woman's place,
continued Miss Turner, was the home, and she hoped they would all make
good wives. She had done her best to prepare them to be such.
Independence, they would find, was only relative: no one had it
completely. And she hoped that none of her scholars would ever descend to
that base competition to outdo one's neighbours, so characteristic of the
country to-day.

The friends, and even the enemies, were kissed good-by, with pledges of
eternal friendship. Cousin Eleanor Hanbury came for Edith and Mary, and
hoped Honora would enjoy herself at Silverdale. Dear Cousin Eleanor! Her
heart was large, and her charity unpretentious. She slipped into Honora's
fingers, as she embraced her, a silver-purse with some gold coins in it,
and bade her not to forget to write home very often.

"You know what pleasure it will give them, my dear," she said, as she
stepped on the train for New York.

"And I am going home soon, Cousin Eleanor," replied Honora, with a little
touch of homesickness in her voice.

"I know, dear," said Mrs. Hanbury. But there was a peculiar, almost
wistful expression on her face as she kissed Honora again, as of one who
assents to a fiction in order to humour a child.

As the train pulled out, Ethel Wing waved to her from the midst of a
group of girls on the wide rear platform of the last car. It was Mr.
Wing's private car, and was going to Newport.

"Be good, Honora!" she cried.





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


BOOK I.


Volume 2.



CHAPTER VII

THE OLYMPIAN ORDER

Lying back in the chair of the Pullman and gazing over the wide Hudson
shining in the afternoon sun, Honora's imagination ran riot until the
seeming possibilities of life became infinite. At every click of the
rails she was drawing nearer to that great world of which she had
dreamed, a world of country houses inhabited by an Olympian order. To be
sure, Susan, who sat reading in the chair behind her, was but a humble
representative of that order--but Providence sometimes makes use of such
instruments. The picture of the tall and brilliant Ethel Wing standing
behind the brass rail of the platform of the car was continually
recurring to Honora as emblematic: of Ethel, in a blue tailor-made gown
trimmed with buff braid, and which fitted her slender figure with
military exactness. Her hair, the colour of the yellowest of gold, in the
manner of its finish seemed somehow to give the impression of that metal;
and the militant effect of the costume had been heightened by a small
colonial cocked hat. If the truth be told, Honora had secretly idealized
Miss Wing, and had found her insouciance, frankness, and tendency to
ridicule delightful. Militant--that was indeed Ethel's note--militant
and positive.

"You're not going home with Susan!" she had exclaimed, making a little
face when Honora had told her. "They say that Silverdale is as slow as a
nunnery--and you're on your knees all the time. You ought to have come to
Newport with me."

It was characteristic of Miss Wing that she seemed to have taken no
account of the fact that she had neglected to issue this alluring
invitation. Life at Silverdale slow! How could it be slow amidst such
beauty and magnificence?

The train was stopping at a new little station on which hung the legend,
in gold letters, "Sutton." The sun was well on his journey towards the
western hills. Susan had touched her on the shoulder.

"Here we are, Honora," she said, and added, with an unusual tremor in her
voice, "at last!"

On the far side of the platform a yellow, two-seated wagon was waiting,
and away they drove through the village, with its old houses and its
sleepy streets and its orchards, and its ancient tavern dating from
stage-coach days. Just outside of it, on the tree-dotted slope of a long
hill, was a modern brick building, exceedingly practical in appearance,
surrounded by spacious grounds enclosed in a paling fence. That, Susan
said, was the Sutton Home.

"Your mother's charity?"

A light came into the girl's eyes.

"So you have heard of it? Yes, it is the, thing that interests mother
more than anything else in the world."

"Oh," said Honora, "I hope she will let me go through it."

"I'm sure she will want to take you there to-morrow," answered Susan, and
she smiled.

The road wound upwards, by the valley of a brook, through the hills, now
wooded, now spread with pastures that shone golden green in the evening
light, the herds gathering at the gate-bars. Presently they came to a
gothic-looking stone building, with a mediaeval bridge thrown across the
stream in front of it, and massive gates flung open. As they passed,
Honora had a glimpse of a blue driveway under the arch of the forest. An
elderly woman looked out at them through the open half of a leaded
lattice.

"That's the Chamberlin estate," Susan volunteered. "Mr. Chamberlin has
built a castle on the top of that hill."

Honora caught her breath.

"Are many of the places here like that?" she asked. Susan laughed.

"Some people don't think the place is very--appropriate," she contented
herself with replying.

A little later, as they climbed higher, other houses could be discerned
dotted about the country-side, nearly all of them varied expressions of
the passion for a new architecture which seemed to possess the rich. Most
of them were in conspicuous positions, and surrounded by wide acres.
Each, to Honora, was an inspiration.

"I had no idea there were so many people here," she said.

"I'm afraid Sutton is becoming fashionable," answered Susan.

"And don't you want it to?" asked Honora.

"It was very nice before," said Susan, quietly.

Honora was silent. They turned in between two simple stone pillars that
divided a low wall, overhung from the inside by shrubbery growing under
the forest. Susan seized her friend's hand and pressed it.

"I'm always so glad to get back here," she whispered. "I hope you'll like
it."

Honora returned the pressure.

The grey road forked, and forked again. Suddenly the forest came to an
end in a sort of premeditated tangle of wild garden, and across a wide
lawn the great house loomed against the western sky. Its architecture was
of the '60's and '70's, with a wide porte-cochere that sheltered the high
entrance doors. These were both flung open, a butler and two footmen were
standing impassively beside them, and a neat maid within. Honora climbed
the steps as in a dream, followed Susan through a hall with a
black-walnut, fretted staircase, and where she caught a glimpse of two
huge Chinese vases, to a porch on the other side of the house spread with
wicker chairs and tables. Out of a group of people at the farther end of
this porch arose an elderly lady, who came forward and clasped Susan in
her arms.

"And is this Honora? How do you do, my dear? I had the pleasure of
knowing you when you were much younger."

Honora, too, was gathered to that ample bosom. Released, she beheld a
lady in a mauve satin gown, at the throat of which a cameo brooch was
fastened. Mrs. Holt's face left no room for conjecture as to the
character of its possessor. Her hair, of a silvering blend, parted in the
middle, fitted tightly to her head. She wore earrings. In short, her
appearance was in every way suggestive of momentum, of a force which the
wise would respect.

"Where are you, Joshua?" she said. "This is the baby we brought from
Nice. Come and tell me whether you would recognize her."

Mr. Holt released his--daughter. He had a mild blue eye, white
mutton-chop whiskers, and very thin hands, and his tweed suit was
decidedly the worse for wear.

"I can't say that I should, Elvira," he replied; "although it is not hard
to believe that such a beautiful baby should, prove to be such a--er
--good-looking young woman."

"I've always felt very grateful to you for bringing me back," said
Honora.

"Tut, tut, child," said Mrs. Holt; "there was no one else to do it. And
be careful how you pay young women compliments, Joshua. They grow vain
enough. By the way, my dear, what ever became of your maternal
grandfather, old Mr. Allison--wasn't that his name?"

"He died when I was very young," replied Honora.

"He was too fond of the good things of this life," said Mrs. Holt.

"My dear Elvira!" her husband protested.

"I can't help it, he was," retorted that lady. "I am a judge of human
nature, and I was relieved, I can tell you, my dear" (to Honora), "when I
saw your uncle and aunt on the wharf that morning. I knew that I had
confided you to good hands."

"They have done everything for me, Mrs. Holt," said Honora.

The good lady patted her approvingly on the shoulder.

"I'm sure of it, my dear," she said. "And I am glad to see you appreciate
it. And now you must renew your acquaintance with the family."

A sister and a brother, Honora had already learned from Susan, had died
since she had crossed the ocean with them. Robert and Joshua, Junior,
remained. Both were heavyset, with rather stern faces, both had
close-cropped, tan-coloured mustaches and wide jaws, with blue eyes like
Susan's. Both were, with women at least, what the French would call
difficult--Robert less so than Joshua. They greeted Honora reservedly
and--she could not help feeling--a little suspiciously. And their
appearance was something of a shock to her; they did not, somehow, "go
with the house," and they dressed even more carelessly than Peter Erwin.
This was particularly true of Joshua, whose low, turned-down collar
revealed a porous, brick-red, and extremely virile neck, and whose
clothes were creased at the knees and across the back.

As for their wives, Mrs. Joshua was a merry, brown-eyed little lady
already inclining to stoutness, and Honora felt at home with her at once.
Mrs. Robert was tall and thin, with an olive face and dark eyes which
gave the impression of an uncomfortable penetration. She was dressed
simply in a shirtwaist and a dark skirt, but Honora thought her striking
looking.

The grandchildren, playing on and off the porch, seemed legion, and they
were besieging Susan. In reality there were seven of them, of all sizes
and sexes, from the third Joshua with a tennis-bat to the youngest who
was weeping at being sent to bed, and holding on to her Aunt Susan with
desperation. When Honora had greeted them all, and kissed some of them,
she was informed that there were two more upstairs, safely tucked away in
cribs.

"I'm sure you love children, don't you?" said Mrs. Joshua. She spoke
impulsively, and yet with a kind of childlike shyness.

"I adore them," exclaimed Honora.

A trellised arbour (which some years later would have been called a
pergola) led from the porch up the hill to an old-fashioned summer-house
on the crest. And thither, presently, Susan led Honora for a view of the
distant western hills silhouetted in black against a flaming western sky,
before escorting her to her room. The vastness of the house, the width of
the staircase, and the size of the second-story hall impressed our
heroine.

"I'll send a maid to you later, dear," Susan said. "If you care to lie
down for half an hour, no one will disturb you. And I hope you will be
comfortable."

Comfortable! When the door had closed, Honora glanced around her and
sighed, "comfort" seemed such a strangely inadequate word. She was
reminded of the illustrations she had seen of English country houses. The
bed alone would almost have filled her little room at home. On the
farther side, in an alcove, was a huge dressing-table; a fire was laid in
the grate of the marble mantel, the curtains in the bay window were
tightly drawn, and near by was a lounge with a reading-light. A huge
mahogany wardrobe occupied one corner; in another stood a pier glass, and
in another, near the lounge, was a small bookcase filled with books.
Honora looked over them curiously. "Robert Elsmere" and a life of Christ,
"Mr. Isaacs," a book of sermons by an eminent clergyman, "Innocents
Abroad," Hare's "Walks in Rome," "When a Man's Single," by Barrie, a book
of meditations, and "Organized Charities for Women."

Adjoining the bedroom was a bathroom in proportion, evidently all her
own,--with a huge porcelain tub and a table set with toilet bottles
containing liquids of various colours.

Dreamily, Honora slipped on the new dressing-gown Aunt Mary had made for
her, and took a book out of the bookcase. It was the volume of sermons.
But she could not read: she was forever looking about the room, and
thinking of the family she had met downstairs. Of course, when one lived
in a house like this, one could afford to dress and act as one liked. She
was aroused from her reflections by the soft but penetrating notes of a
Japanese gong, followed by a gentle knock on the door and the entrance of
an elderly maid, who informed her it was time to dress for dinner.

"If you'll excuse me, Miss," said that hitherto silent individual when
the operation was completed, "you do look lovely."

Honora, secretly, was of that opinion too as she surveyed herself in the
long glass. The simple summer silk, of a deep and glowing pink, rivalled
the colour in her cheeks, and contrasted with the dark and shining masses
of her hair; and on her neck glistened a little pendant of her mother's
jewels, which Aunt Mary, with Cousin Eleanor's assistance, had had set in
New York. Honora's figure was that of a woman of five and twenty: her
neck was a slender column, her head well set, and the look of race, which
had been hers since childhood, was at nineteen more accentuated. All this
she saw, and went down the stairs in a kind of exultation. And when on
the threshold of the drawing-room she paused, the conversation suddenly
ceased. Mr. Holt and his sons got up somewhat precipitately, and Mrs.
Holt came forward to meet her.

"I hope you weren't waiting for me," said Honora, timidly.

"No indeed, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. Tucking Honora's hand under her
arm, she led the way majestically to the dining-room, a large apartment
with a dimly lighted conservatory at the farther end, presided over by
the decorous butler and his assistants. A huge chandelier with prisms
hung over the flowers at the centre of the table, which sparkled with
glass and silver, while dishes of vermilion and yellow fruits relieved
the whiteness of the cloth. Honora found herself beside Mr. Holt, who
looked more shrivelled than ever in his evening clothes. And she was
about to address him when, with a movement as though to forestall her, he
leaned forward convulsively and began a mumbling grace.

The dinner itself was more like a ceremony than a meal, and as it
proceeded, Honora found it increasingly difficult to rid herself of a
curious feeling of being on probation.

Joshua, who sat on her other side and ate prodigiously, scarcely
addressed a word to her; but she gathered from his remarks to his father
and brother that he was interested in cows. And Mr. Holt was almost
exclusively occupied in slowly masticating the special dishes which the
butler impressively laid before him. He asked her a few questions about
Miss Turner's school, but it was not until she had admired the mass of
peonies in the centre of the table that his eyes brightened, and he
smiled.

"You like flowers?" he asked.

"I love them," slid Honora.

"I am the gardener here," he said. "You must see my garden, Miss
Leffingwell. I am in it by half-past six every morning, rain or shine."

Honora looked up, and surprised Mrs. Robert's eyes fixed on her with the
same strange expression she had noticed on her arrival. And for some
senseless reason, she flushed.

The conversation was chiefly carried on by kindly little Mrs. Joshua and
by Mrs. Holt, who seemed at once to preside and to dominate. She praised
Honora's gown, but left a lingering impression that she thought her
overdressed, without definitely saying so. And she made innumerable--and
often embarrassing--inquiries about Honora's aunt and uncle, and her life
in St. Louis, and her friends there, and how she had happened to go to
Sutcliffe to school. Sometimes Honora blushed, but she answered them all
good-naturedly. And when at length the meal had marched sedately down to
the fruit, Mrs. Holt rose and drew Honora out of the dining room.

"It is a little hard on you, my dear," she said, "to give you so much
family on your arrival. But there are some other people coming to-morrow,
when it will be gayer, I hope, for you and Susan."

"It is so good of you and Susan to want me, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora,
"I am enjoying it so much. I have never been in a big country house like
this, and I am glad there is no one else here. I have heard my aunt speak
of you so often, and tell how kind you were to take charge of me, that I
have always hoped to know you sometime or other. And it seems the
strangest of coincidences that I should have roomed with Susan at
Sutcliffe."

"Susan has grown very fond of you," said Mrs. Holt, graciously. "We are
very glad to have you, my dear, and I must own that I had a curiosity to
see you again. Your aunt struck me as a good and sensible woman, and it
was a positive relief to know that you were to be confided to her care."
Mrs. Holt, however, shook her head and regarded Honora, and her next
remark might have been taken as a clew to her thoughts. "But we are not
very gay at Silverdale, Honora."

Honora's quick intuition detected the implication of a frivolity which
even her sensible aunt had not been able to eradicate.

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she cried, "I shall be so happy here, just seeing things
and being among you. And I am so interested in the little bit I have seen
already. I caught a glimpse of your girls' home on my way from the
station. I hope you will take me there."

Mrs. Holt gave her a quick look, but beheld in Honora's clear eyes only
eagerness and ingenuousness.

The change in the elderly lady's own expression, and incidentally in the
atmosphere which enveloped her, was remarkable.

"Would you really like to go, my dear?"

"Oh, yes indeed," cried Honora. "You see, I have heard so much of it, and
I should like to write my aunt about it. She is interested in the work
you are doing, and she has kept a magazine with an article in it, and a
picture of the institution."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the lady, now visibly pleased. "It is a very modest
little work, my dear. I had no idea that--out in St. Louis--that the
beams of my little candle had carried so far. Indeed you shall see it,
Honora. We will go down the first thing in the morning."

Mrs. Robert, who had been sitting on the other side of the room, rose
abruptly and came towards them. There was something very like a smile on
her face,--although it wasn't really a smile--as she bent over and kissed
her mother-in-law on the cheek.

"I am glad to hear you are interested in--charities, Miss Leffingwell,"
she said.

Honora's face grew warm.

"I have not so far had very much to do with them, I am afraid," she
answered.

"How should she?" demanded Mrs. Holt. "Gwendolen, you're not going up
already?"

"I have some letters to write," said Mrs. Robert.

"Gwen has helped me immeasurably," said Mrs. Holt, looking after the tall
figure of her daughter-in-law, "but she has a curious, reserved
character. You have to know her, my dear. She is not at all like Susan,
for instance."

Honora awoke the next morning to a melody, and lay for some minutes in a
delicious semi-consciousness, wondering where she was. Presently she
discovered that the notes were those of a bird on a tree immediately
outside of her window--a tree of wonderful perfection, the lower branches
of which swept the ground. Other symmetrical trees, of many varieties,
dotted a velvet lawn, which formed a great natural terrace above the
forested valley of Silver Brook. On the grass, dew-drenched cobwebs
gleamed in the early sun, and the breeze that stirred the curtains was
charged with the damp, fresh odours of the morning. Voices caught her
ear, and two figures appeared in the distance. One she recognized as Mr.
Holt, and the other was evidently a gardener. The gilt clock on the
mantel pointed to a quarter of seven.

It is far too late in this history to pretend that Honora was, by
preference, an early riser, and therefore it must have been the
excitement caused by her surroundings that made her bathe and dress with
alacrity that morning. A housemaid was dusting the stairs as she
descended into the empty hall. She crossed the lawn, took a path through
the trees that bordered it, and came suddenly upon an old-fashioned
garden in all the freshness of its early morning colour. In one of the
winding paths she stopped with a little exclamation. Mr. Holt rose from
his knees in front of her, where he had been digging industriously with a
trowel. His greeting, when contrasted with his comparative taciturnity at
dinner the night before, was almost effusive--and a little pathetic.

"My dear young lady," he exclaimed, "up so early?" He held up
forbiddingly a mould-covered palm. "I can't shake hands with you."

Honora laughed.

"I couldn't resist the temptation to see your garden," she said.

A gentle light gleamed in his blue eyes, and he paused before a trellis
of June roses. With his gardening knife he cut three of them, and held
them gallantly against her white gown. Her sensitive colour responded as
she thanked him, and she pinned them deftly at her waist.

"You like gardens?" he said.

"I was brought up with them," she answered; "I mean," she corrected
herself swiftly, "in a very modest way. My uncle is passionately fond of
flowers, and he makes our little yard bloom with them all summer. But of
course," Honora added, "I've never seen anything like this."

"It has been a life work," answered Mr. Holt, proudly, "and yet I feel as
though I had not yet begun. Come, I will show you the peonies--they are
at their best--before I go in and make myself respectable for breakfast."

Ten minutes later, as they approached the house in amicable and even
lively conversation, they beheld Susan and Mrs. Robert standing on the
steps under the porte-cochere, watching them.

"Why, Honora," cried Susan, "how energetic you are! I actually had a
shock when I went to your room and found you'd gone. I'll have to write
Miss Turner."

"Don't," pleaded Honora; "you see, I had every inducement to get up."

"She has been well occupied," put in Mr. Holt. "She has been admiring my
garden."

"Indeed I have," said Honora.

"Oh, then, you have won father's heart!" cried Susan. Gwendolen Holt
smiled. Her eyes were fixed upon the roses in Honora's belt.

"Good morning, Miss Leffingwell," she said, simply.

Mr. Holt having removed the loam from his hands, the whole family,
excepting Joshua, Junior, and including an indefinite number of children,
and Carroll, the dignified butler, and Martha, the elderly maid, trooped
into the library for prayers. Mr. Holt sat down before a teak-wood table
at the end of the room, on which reposed a great, morocco-covered Bible.
Adjusting his spectacles, he read, in a mild but impressive voice, a
chapter of Matthew, while Mrs. Joshua tried to quiet her youngest. Honora
sat staring at a figure on the carpet, uncomfortably aware that Mrs.
Robert was still studying her. Mr. Holt closed the Bible reverently, and
announced a prayer, whereupon the family knelt upon the floor and leaned
their elbows on the seats of their chairs. Honora did likewise, wondering
at the facility with which Mr. Holt worded his appeal, and at the number
of things he found to pray for. Her knees had begun to ache before he had
finished.

At breakfast such a cheerful spirit prevailed that Honora began almost to
feel at home. Even Robert indulged occasionally in raillery.

"Where in the world is Josh?" asked Mrs. Holt, after they were seated.

"I forgot to tell you, mother," little Mrs. Joshua chirped up, "that he
got up at an unearthly hour, and went over to Grafton to look at a cow."

"A cow!" sighed Mrs: Holt. "Oh, dear, I might have known it. You must
understand, Honora, that every member of the Holt family has a hobby.
Joshua's is Jerseys."

"I'm sure I should adore them if I lived in the country," Honora
declared.

"If you and Joshua would only take that Sylvester farm, and build a
house, Annie," said Mr. Holt, munching the dried bread which was
specially prepared for him, "I should be completely happy. Then," he
added, turning to Honora, "I should have both my sons settled on the
place. Robert and Gwen are sensible in building."

"It's cheaper to live with you, granddad," laughed Mrs. Joshua. "Josh
says if we do that, he has more money to buy cows."

At this moment a footman entered, and presented Mrs. Holt with some mail
on a silver tray.

"The Vicomte de Toqueville is coming this afternoon, Joshua," she
announced, reading rapidly from a sheet on which was visible a large
crown. "He landed in New York last week, and writes to know if I could
have him."

"Another of mother's menagerie," remarked Robert.

"I don't think that's nice of you, Robert," said his mother. "The Vicomte
was very kind to your father and me in Paris, and invited us to his
chateau in Provence."

Robert was sceptical.

"Are you sure he had one?" he insisted.

Even Mr. Holt laughed.

"Robert," said his mother, "I wish Gwen could induce you to travel more.
Perhaps you would learn that all foreigners aren't fortune-hunters."

I've had an opportunity to observe the ones who come over here, mother."

"I won't have a prospective guest discussed," Mrs. Holt declared, with
finality. "Joshua, you remember my telling you last spring that Martha
Spence's son called on me?" she asked. "He is in business with a man
named Dallam, I believe, and making a great deal of money for a young
man. He is just a year younger than you, Robert."

"Do you mean that fat, tow-headed boy that used to come up here and eat
melons and ride my pony?" inquired Robert. "Howard Spence?"

Mrs. Holt smiled.

"He isn't fat any longer, Robert. Indeed, he's quite good-looking. Since
his mother died, I had lost trace of him. But I found a photograph of
hers when I was clearing up my desk some months ago, and sent it to him,
and he came to thank me. I forgot to tell you that I invited him for a
fortnight any time he chose, and he has just written to ask if he may
come now. I regret to say that he's on the Stock Exchange--but I was very
fond of his mother. It doesn't seem to me quite a legitimate business."

"Why!" exclaimed little Mrs. Joshua, unexpectedly, "I'm given to
understand that the Stock Exchange is quite aristocratic in these days."

"I'm afraid I am old-fashioned, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, rising. "It has
always seemed to me little better than a gambling place. Honora, if you
still wish to go to the Girls' Home, I have ordered the carriage in a
quarter of an hour."




CHAPTER VIII

A CHAPTER OF CONQUESTS

Honora's interest in the Institution was so lively, and she asked so many
questions and praised so highly the work with which the indiscreet young
women were occupied that Mrs. Holt patted her hand as they drove
homeward.

"My dear," she said, "I begin to wish I'd adopted you myself. Perhaps,
later on, we can find a husband for you, and you will marry and settle
down near us here at Silverdale, and then you can help me with the work."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she replied, "I should so like to help you, I mean. And
it would be wonderful to live in such a place. And as for marriage, it
seems such a long way off that somehow I never think of it."

"Naturally," ejaculated Mrs. Holt, with approval, "a young girl of your
age should not. But, my dear, I am afraid you are destined to have many
admirers. If you had not been so well brought up, and were not naturally
so sensible, I should fear for you."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt!" exclaimed Honora, deprecatingly, and blushing very
prettily.

"Whatever else I am," said Mrs. Holt, vigorously, "I am not a flatterer.
I am telling you something for your own good--which you probably know
already."

Honora was discreetly silent. She thought of the proud and unsusceptible
George Hanbury, whom she had cast down from the tower of his sophomore
dignity with such apparent ease; and of certain gentlemen at home, young
and middle-aged, who had behaved foolishly during the Christmas holidays.

At lunch both the Roberts and the Joshuas were away.

Afterwards, they romped with the children--she and Susan. They were shy
at first, especially the third Joshua, but Honora captivated him by
playing two sets of tennis in the broiling sun, at the end of which
exercise he regarded her with a new-born admiration in his eyes. He was
thirteen.

"I didn't think you were that kind at all," he said.

"What kind did you think I was?" asked Honora, passing her arm around his
shoulder as they walked towards the house.

The boy grew scarlet.

"Oh, I didn't think you--you could play tennis," he stammered.

Honora stopped, and seized his chin and tilted his face upward.

"Now, Joshua," she said, "look at me and say that over again."

"Well," he replied desperately, "I thought you wouldn't want to get all
mussed up and hot."

"That's better," said Honora. "You thought I was vain, didn't you?"

"But I don't think so any more," he avowed passionately. "I think you're
a trump. And we'll play again to-morrow, won't we?"

"We'll play any day you like," she declared.

It is unfair to suppose that the arrival of a real vicomte and of a
young, good-looking, and successful member of the New York Stock Exchange
were responsible for Honora's appearance, an hour later, in the
embroidered linen gown which Cousin Eleanor had given her that spring.
Tea was already in progress on the porch, and if a hush in the
conversation and the scraping of chairs is any sign of a sensation, this
happened when our heroine appeared in the doorway. And Mrs. Holt, in the
act of lifting the hot-water kettle; put it down again. Whether or not
there was approval in the lady's delft-blue eye, Honora could not have
said. The Vicomte, with the graceful facility of his race, had
differentiated himself from the group and stood before her. As soon as
the words of introduction were pronounced, he made a bow that was a
tribute in itself, exaggerated in its respect.

"It is a pleasure, Mademoiselle," he murmured, but his eyes were more
eloquent.

A description of him in his own language leaped into Honora's mind, so
much did he appear to have walked out of one of the many yellow-backed
novels she had read. He was not tall, but beautifully made, and his coat
was quite absurdly cut in at the waist; his mustache was en-croc, and its
points resembled those of the Spanish bayonets in the conservatory: he
might have been three and thirty, and he was what the novels described as
'un peu fane' which means that he had seen the world: his eyes were
extraordinarily bright, black, and impenetrable.

A greater contrast to the Vicomte than Mr. Howard Spence would have been
difficult to find. He was Honora's first glimpse of Finance, of the
powers that travelled in private cars and despatched ships across the
ocean. And in our modern mythology, he might have stood for the god of
Prosperity. Prosperity is pink, and so was Mr. Spence, in two places,
--his smooth-shaven cheeks and his shirt. His flesh had a certain
firmness, but he was not stout; he was merely well fed, as Prosperity
should be. His features were comparatively regular, his mustache a light
brown, his eyes hazel. The fact that he came from that mysterious
metropolis, the heart of which is Wall Street, not only excused but
legitimized the pink shirt and the neatly knotted green tie, the
pepper-and-salt check suit that was loose and at the same time
well-fitting, and the jewelled ring on his plump little finger. On the
whole, Mr. Spence was not only prepossessing, but he contrived to give
Honora, as she shook his hand, the impression of being brought a step
nearer to the national source of power. Unlike the Vicomte, he did not
appear to have been instantly and mortally wounded upon her arrival on
the scene, but his greeting was flattering, and he remained by her side
instead of returning to that of Mrs. Robert.

"When did you come up?" he asked.

"Only yesterday," answered Honora.

"New York," said Mr. Spence, producing a gold cigarette case on which his
monogram was largely and somewhat elaborately engraved, "New York is
played out this time of year--isn't it? I dropped in at Sherry's last
night for dinner, and there weren't thirty people there."

Honora had heard of Sherry's as a restaurant where one dined fabulously,
and she tried to imagine the cosmopolitan and blissful existence which
permitted "dropping in at" such a place. Moreover, Mr. Spence was plainly
under the impression that she too "came up" from New York, and it was
impossible not to be a little pleased.

"It must be a relief to get into the country," she ventured.

Mr. Spence glanced around him expressively, and then looked at her with a
slight smile. The action and the smile--to which she could not refrain
from responding--seemed to establish a tacit understanding between them.
It was natural that he should look upon Silverdale as a slow place, and
there was something delicious in his taking, for granted that she shared
this opinion. She wondered a little wickedly what he would say when he
knew the truth about her, and this was the birth of a resolution that his
interest should not flag.

"Oh, I can stand the country when it is properly inhabited," he said, and
their eyes met in laughter.

"How many inhabitants do you require?" she asked.

"Well," he said brazenly, "the right kind of inhabitant is worth a
thousand of the wrong kind. It is a good rule in business, when you come
across a gilt-edged security, to make a specialty of it."

Honora found the compliment somewhat singular. But she was prepared to
forgive New York a few sins in the matter of commercial slang: New York,
which evidently dressed as it liked, and talked as it liked. But not
knowing any more of a gilt-edged security than that it was something to
Mr. Spence's taste, a retort was out of the question. Then, as though she
were doomed that day to complicity, her eyes chanced to encounter an
appealing glance from the Vicomte, who was searching with the courage of
despair for an English word, which his hostess awaited in stoical
silence. He was trying to give his impressions of Silverdale, in
comparison to country places abroad, while Mrs. Robert regarded him
enigmatically, and Susan sympathetically. Honora had an almost
irresistible desire to laugh.

"Ah, Madame," he cried, still looking at Honora, "will you have the
kindness to permit me to walk about ever so little?"

"Certainly, Vicomte, and I will go with you. Get my parasol, Susan.
Perhaps you would like to come, too, Howard," she added to Mr. Spence;
"it has been so long since you were here, and we have made many changes."

"And you, Mademoiselle," said the Vicomte to Honora, you will come--yes?
You are interested in landscape?"

"I love the country," said Honora.

"It is a pleasure to have a guest who is so appreciative," said Mrs.
Holt. "Miss Leffingwell was up at seven this morning, and in the garden
with my husband."

"At seven!" exclaimed the Vicomte; "you American young ladies are
wonderful. For example--" and he was about to approach her to enlarge on
this congenial theme when Susan arrived with the parasol, which Mrs. Holt
put in his hands.

"We'll begin, I think, with the view from the summer house," she said.
"And I will show you how our famous American landscape architect, Mr.
Olmstead, has treated the slope."

There was something humorous, and a little pathetic in the contrasted
figures of the Vicomte and their hostess crossing the lawn in front of
them. Mr. Spence paused a moment to light his cigarette, and he seemed to
derive infinite pleasure from this juxtaposition.

"Got left,--didn't he?" he said.

To this observation there was, obviously, no answer.

"I'm not very strong on foreigners," he declared. "An American is good
enough for me. And there's something about that fellow which would make
me a little slow in trusting him with a woman I cared for."

"If you are beginning to worry over Mrs. Holt," said Honora, "we'd better
walk a little faster."

Mr. Spence's delight at this sally was so unrestrained as to cause the
couple ahead to turn. The Vicomte's expression was reproachful.

"Where's Susan?" asked Mrs. Holt.

"I think she must have gone in the house," Honora answered.

"You two seem to be having a very good time."

"Oh, we're hitting it off fairly well," said Mr. Spence, no doubt for the
benefit of the Vicomte. And he added in a confidential tone, "Aren't we?"

"Not on the subject of the Vicomte," she replied promptly. "I like him. I
like French people."

"What!" he exclaimed, halting in his steps, "you don't take that man
seriously?"

"I haven't known him long enough to take him seriously," said Honora.

"There's a blindness about women," he declared, "that's incomprehensible.
They'll invest in almost any old thing if the certificates are
beautifully engraved. If you were a man, you wouldn't trust that
Frenchman to give you change for five dollars."

"French people," proclaimed Honora, "have a light touch of which we
Americans are incapable. We do not know how to relax."

"A light touch!" cried Mr. Spence, delightedly, "that about describes the
Vicomte."

"I'm sure you do him an injustice," said Honora.

"We'll see," said Mr. Spence. "Mrs. Holt is always picking up queer
people like that. She's noted for it." He turned to her. How did you
happen to come here?"

"I came with Susan," she replied, amusedly, "from boarding-school at
Sutcliffe."

"From boarding-school!"

She rather enjoyed his surprise.

"You don't mean to say you are Susan's age?"

"How old did you think I was?" she asked.

"Older than Susan," he said surveying her.

"No, I'm a mere child, I'm nineteen."

"But I thought--" he began, and paused and lighted another cigarette.

Her eyes lighted mischievously.

"You thought that I had been out several years, and that I'd seen a good
deal of the world, and that I lived in New York, and that it was strange
you didn't know me. But New York is such an enormous place I suppose one
can't know everybody there."

"And--where do you come from, if I may ask?" he said.

"St. Louis. I was brought to this country before I was two years old,
from France. Mrs. Holt brought me. And I have never been out of St. Louis
since, except to go to Sutcliffe. There you have my history. Mrs. Holt
would probably have told it to you, if I hadn't."

"And Mrs. Holt brought you to this country?"

Honora explained, not without a certain enjoyment.

"And how do you happen to be here?" she demanded. "Are you a member of
--of the menagerie?"

He had the habit of throwing back his head when he laughed. This, of
course, was a thing to laugh over, and now he deemed it audacity. Five
minutes before he might have given it another name there is no use in
saying that the recital of Honora's biography had not made a difference
with Mr. Howard Pence, and that he was not a little mortified at his
mistake. What he had supposed her to be must remain a matter of
conjecture. He was, however, by no means aware how thoroughly this
unknown and inexperienced young woman had read his thoughts in her
regard. And if the truth be told, he was on the whole relieved that she
was nobody. He was just an ordinary man, provided with no sixth sense or
premonitory small voice to warn him that masculine creatures are often in
real danger at the moment when they feel most secure.

It is certain that his manner changed, and during the rest of the walk
she listened demurely when he talked about Wall Street, with casual
references to the powers that be. It was evident that Mr. Howard Spence
was one who had his fingers on the pulse of affairs. Ambition leaped in
him.

They reached the house in advance of Mrs. Holt and the Vicomte, and
Honora went to her room.

At dinner, save for a little matter of a casual remark when Mr. Holt had
assumed the curved attitude in which he asked grace, Mr. Spence had a
veritable triumph. Self-confidence was a quality which Honora admired. He
was undaunted by Mrs. Holt, and advised Mrs. Robert, if she had any
pin-money, to buy New York Central; and he predicted an era of prosperity
which would be unexampled in the annals of the country. Among other
powers, he quoted the father of Honora's schoolmate, Mr. James Wing, as
authority for this prophecy. He sat next to Susan, who maintained her
usual maidenly silence, but Honora, from time to time, and as though by
accident, caught his eye. Even Mr. Holt, when not munching his dried
bread, was tempted to make some inquiries about the market.

"So far as I am concerned," Mrs. Holt announced suddenly, "nothing can
convince me that it is not gambling."

"My dear Elvira!" protested Mr. Holt.

"I can't help it," said that lady, stoutly; "I'm old-fashioned, I
suppose. But it seems to me like legalized gambling."

Mr. Spence took this somewhat severe arraignment of his career in
admirable good nature. And if these be such a thing as an implied wink,
Honora received one as he proceeded to explain what he was pleased to
call the bona-fide nature of the transactions of Dallam and Spence.

A discussion ensued in which, to her surprise, even the ordinarily
taciturn Joshua took a part, and maintained that the buying and selling
of blooded stock was equally gambling. To this his father laughingly
agreed. The Vicomte, who sat on Mrs. Holt's right, and who apparently was
determined not to suffer a total eclipse without a struggle, gallantly
and unexpectedly came to his hostess' rescue, though she treated him as a
doubtful ally. This was because he declared with engaging frankness that
in France the young men of his monde had a jeunesse: he, who spoke to
them, had gambled; everybody gambled in France, where it was regarded as
an innocent amusement. He had friends on the Bourse, and he could see no
difference in principle between betting on the red at Monte Carlo and the
rise and fall of the shares of la Compagnie des Metaux, for example.
After completing his argument, he glanced triumphantly about the table,
until his restless black eyes encountered Honora's, seemingly seeking a
verdict. She smiled impartially.

The subject of finance lasted through the dinner, and the Vicomte
proclaimed himself amazed with the evidences of wealth which confronted
him on every side in this marvellous country. And once, when he was at a
loss for a word, Honora astonished and enchanted him by supplying it.

"Ah, Mademoiselle," he exclaimed, "I was sure when I first beheld you
that you spoke my language! And with such an accent!"

"I have studied it all my life, Vicomte," she said, modestly, "and I had
the honour to be born in your country. I have always wished to see it
again."

Monsieur de Toqueville ventured the fervent hope that her wish might soon
be gratified, but not before he returned to France. He expressed himself
in French, and in a few moments she found herself deep in a discussion
with him in that tongue. While she talked, her veins seemed filled with
fire; and she was dimly and automatically aware of the disturbance about
her, as though she were creating a magnetic storm that interfered with
all other communication. Mr. Holt's nightly bezique, which he played with
Susan, did not seem to be going as well as usual, and elsewhere
conversation was a palpable pretence. Mr. Spence, who was attempting to
entertain the two daughters-in-law, was clearly distrait--if his glances
meant anything. Robert and Joshua had not appeared, and Mrs. Holt, at the
far end of the room under the lamp, regarded Honora from time to time
over the edge of the evening newspaper.

In his capacity as a student of American manners, an unsuspected if
scattered knowledge on Honora's part of that portion of French literature
included between Theophile Gautier and Gyp at once dumfounded and
delighted the Vicomte de Toqueville. And he was curious to know whether,
amongst American young ladies, Miss Leffingwell was the exception or the
rule. Those eyes of his, which had paid to his hostess a tender respect,
snapped when they spoke to our heroine, and presently he boldly abandoned
literature to declare that the fates alone had sent her to Silverdale at
the time of his visit.

It was at this interesting juncture that Mrs. Holt rattled her newspaper
a little louder than usual, arose majestically, and addressed Mrs.
Joshua.

"Annie, perhaps you will play for us," she said, as she crossed the room,
and added to Honora: "I had no idea you spoke French so well, my dear.
What have you and Monsieur de Toqueville been talking about?"

It was the Vicomte who, springing to his feet, replied nimbly:
"Mademoiselle has been teaching me much of the customs of your country."

"And what," inquired Mrs. Holt, "have you been teaching Mademoiselle?"

The Vicomte laughed and shrugged his shoulders expressively.

"Ah, Madame, I wish I were qualified to be her teacher. The education of
American young ladies is truly extraordinary."

"I was about to tell Monsieur de Toqueville," put in Honora, wickedly,
"that he must see your Institution as soon as possible, and the work your
girls are doing."

"Madame," said the Vicomte, after a scarcely perceptible pause, "I await
my opportunity and your kindness."

"I will take you to-morrow," said Mrs. Holt.

At this instant a sound closely resembling a sneeze caused them to turn.
Mr. Spence, with his handkerchief to his mouth, had his back turned to
them, and was studiously regarding the bookcases.

After Honora had gone upstairs for the night she opened her door in
response to a knock, to find Mrs. Holt on the threshold.

"My dear," said that lady, "I feel that I must say a word to you. I
suppose you realize that you are attractive to men."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt."

"You're no fool, my dear, and it goes without saying that you-do realize
it--in the most innocent way, of course. But you have had no experience
in life. Mind you, I don't say that the Vicomte de Toqueville isn't very
much of a gentleman, but the French ideas about the relations of young
men and young women are quite different and, I regret to say, less
innocent than ours. I have no reason to believe that the Vicomte has come
to this country to--to mend his fortunes. I know nothing about his
property. But my sense of responsibility towards you has led me to tell
him that you have no dot, for you somehow manage to give the impression
of a young woman of fortune. Not purposely, my dear--I did not mean
that." Mrs. Holt tapped gently Honora's flaming cheek. "I merely felt it
my duty to drop you a word of warning against Monsieur de Toqueville
--because he is a Frenchman."

"But, Mrs. Holt, I had no idea of--of falling in love with him,"
protested Honora, as soon as she could get her breath. He seemed so kind
--and so interested in everything.

"I dare say," said Mrs. Holt, dryly. "And I have always been led to
believe that that is the most dangerous sort. I am sure, Honora, after
what I have said, you will give him no encouragement."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora again, "I shouldn't think of such a thing!"

"I am sure of it, Honora, now that you are forewarned. And your
suggestion to take him to the Institution was not a bad one. I meant to
do so anyway, and I think it will be good for him. Good night, my dear."

After the good lady bad gone, Honora stood for some moments motionless.
Then she turned out the light.




CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH THE VICOMTE CONTINUES HIS STUDIES

Mr. Robert Holt, Honora learned at breakfast, had two bobbies. She had
never heard of what is called Forestry, and had always believed the wood
of her country to be inexhaustible. It had never occurred to her to think
of a wild forest as an example of nature's extravagance, and so
flattering was her attention while Robert explained the primary
principles of caring for trees that he actually offered to show her one
of the tracts on the estate which he was treating. He could not,--he
regretted to say, take her that morning.

His other hobby was golf. He was president of the Sutton Golf Club, and
had arranged to play a match with Mr. Spence. This gentleman, it
appeared, was likewise an enthusiast, and had brought to Silverdale a
leather bag filled with sticks.

"Won't you come, too, Miss Leffingwell?" he said, as he took a second cup
of coffee.

Somewhat to the astonishment of the Holt family, Robert seconded the
invitation.

"I'll bet, Robert," said Mr. Spence, gallantly, "that Miss Leffingwell
can put it over both of us."

"Indeed, I can't play at all," exclaimed Honora in confusion. "And I
shouldn't think of spoiling your match. And besides, I am going to drive
with Susan."

"We can go another day, Honora," said Susan.

But Honora would not hear of it.

"Come over with me this afternoon, then," suggested Mr. Spence, "and I'll
give you a lesson."

She thanked him gratefully.

"But it won't be much fun for you, I'm afraid," she added, as they left
the dining room.

"Don't worry about me," he answered cheerfully. He was dressed in a
checked golf costume, and wore a pink shirt of a new pattern. And he
stood in front of her in the hall, glowing from his night's sleep,
evidently in a high state of amusement.

"What's the matter?" she demanded.

"You did for the Vicomte all right," he said. "I'd give a good deal to
see him going through the Institution."

"It wouldn't have hurt you, either," she retorted, and started up the
stairs. Once she glanced back and saw him looking after her.

At the far end of the second story hall she perceived the Vicomte, who
had not appeared at breakfast, coming out of his room. She paused with
her hand on the walnut post and laughed a little, so ludicrous was his
expression as he approached her.

"Ah, Mademoiselle, que vous etes mechante!" he exclaimed. "But I forgive
you, if you will not go off with that stock-broker. It must be that I see
the Home sometime, and if I go now it is over. I forgive you. It is in
the Bible that we must forgive our neighbour--how many times?"

"Seventy times seven," said Honora.

"But I make a condition," said the Vicomte, "that my neighbour shall be a
woman, and young and beautiful. Then I care not how many times.
Mademoiselle, if you would but have your portrait painted as you are,
with your hand on the post, by Sargent or Carolus Duran, there would be
some noise in the Salon."

"Is that you, Vicomte?" came a voice from the foot of the stairs--Mrs.
Holt's voice.

"I come this instant, Madame," he replied, looking over the banisters,
and added: "malheureux que je suis! Perhaps, when I return, you will show
me a little of the garden."

The duty of exhibiting to guests the sights of Silverdale and the
neighbourhood had so often devolved upon Susan, who was methodical, that
she had made out a route, or itinerary, for this purpose. There were some
notes to leave and a sick woman and a child to see, which caused her to
vary it a little that morning; and Honora, who sat in the sunlight and
held the horse, wondered how it would feel to play the lady bountiful. "I
am so glad to have you all to myself for a little while, Honora," Susan
said to her. "You are so popular that I begin to fear that I shall have
to be unselfish, and share you."

"Oh, Susan," she said, "every one has been so kind. And I can't tell you
how much I am enjoying this experience, which I feel I owe to you."

"I am so happy, dear, that it is giving you pleasure," said Susan.

"And don't think," exclaimed Honora, "that you won't see lots of me, for
you will."

Her heart warmed to Susan, yet she could not but feel a secret pity for
her, as one unable to make the most of her opportunities in the wonderful
neighbourhood in which she lived. As they drove through the roads and in
and out of the well-kept places, everybody they met had a bow and a smile
for her friend--a greeting such as people give to those for whom they
have only good-will. Young men and girls waved their racquets at her from
the tennis-courts; and Honora envied them and wished that she, too, were
a part of the gay life she saw, and were playing instead of being driven
decorously about. She admired the trim, new houses in which they lived,
set upon the slopes of the hills. Pleasure houses, they seemed to her,
built expressly for joys which had been denied her.

"Do you see much of--of these people, Susan?" she asked.

"Not so much as I'd like," replied Susan, seriously. "I never seem to get
time. We nearly always have guests at Silverdale, and then there are so
many things one has to attend to. Perhaps you have noticed," she added,
smiling a little, "that we are very serious and old-fashioned."

"Oh, no indeed," protested Honora. "It is such a wonderful experience for
me to be here!"

"Well," said Susan, "we're having some young people to dinner to-night,
and others next week--that's why I'm leaving these notes. And then we
shall be a little livelier."

"Really, Susan, you mustn't think that I'm not having a good time. It is
exciting to be in the same house with a real French Vicomte, and I like
Mr. Spence tremendously."

Her friend was silent.

"Don't you?" demanded Honora.

To her surprise, the usually tolerant Susan did not wholly approve of Mr.
Spence.

"He is a guest, and I ought not to criticise him," she answered. "But
since you ask me, Honora, I have to be honest. It seems to me that his
ambitions are a little sordid--that he is too intent upon growing rich."

"But I thought all New Yorkers were that way," exclaimed Honora, and
added hastily, "except a few, like your family, Susan."

Susan laughed.

"You should marry a diplomat, my dear," she said. "After all, perhaps I
am a little harsh. But there is a spirit of selfishness and--and of
vulgarity in modern, fashionable New York which appears to be catching,
like a disease. The worship of financial success seems to be in every
one's blood."

"It is power," said Honora.

Susan glanced at her, but Honora did not remark the expression on her
friend's face, so intent was she on the reflections which Susan's words
had aroused. They had reached the far end of the Silverdale domain, and
were driving along the shore of the lake that lay like a sapphire set
amongst the green hills. It was here that the new house of the Robert
Holts was building. Presently they came to Joshua's dairy farm, and
Joshua himself was standing in the doorway of one of his immaculate barn
Honora put her hand on Susan's arm.

"Can't we see the cows?" she asked.

Susan looked surprised.

"I didn't know you were interested in cows, Honora."

"I am interested in everything," said Honora: "and I think your brother
is so attractive."

It was at this moment that Joshua, with his hands in his pockets,
demanded what his sister was doing there.

"Miss Leffingwell wants to look at the cattle, Josh," called Susan.

"Won't you show them to me, Mr. Holt," begged Honora. "I'd like so much
to see some really good cattle, and to know a little more about them."

Joshua appeared incredulous. But, being of the male sex, he did not hide
the fact that he was pleased, "it seems strange to have somebody really
want to see them," he said. "I tried to get Spence to come back this way,
but the idea didn't seem to appeal to him. Here are some of the records."

"Records?" repeated Honora, looking at a mass of typewritten figures on
the wall. "Do you mean to say you keep such an exact account of all the
milk you get?"

Joshua laughed, and explained. She walked by his side over the concrete
paving to the first of the varnished stalls.

"That," he said, and a certain pride had come into his voice, "is Lady
Guinevere, and those ribbons are the prizes she has taken on both sides
of the water."

"Isn't she a dear!" exclaimed Honora; "why, she's actually beautiful. I
didn't know cows could be so beautiful."

"She isn't bad," admitted Joshua. "Of course the good points in a cow
aren't necessarily features of beauty for instance, these bones here," he
added, pointing to the hips.

"But they seem to add, somehow, to the thoroughbred appearance," Honora
declared.

"That's absolutely true," replied Joshua,--whereupon he began to talk.
And Honora, still asking questions, followed him from stall to stall.
"There are some more in the pasture," he said, when they had reached the
end of the second building.

"Oh, couldn't I see them?" she asked.

"Surely," replied Joshua, with more of alacrity than one would have
believed him capable. "I'll tell Susan to drive on, and you and I will
walk home across the fields, if you like."

"I should love to," said Honora.

It was not without astonishment that the rest of the Holt family beheld
them returning together as the gongs were sounding for luncheon. Mrs.
Holt, upon perceiving them, began at once to shake her head and laugh.

"My dear, it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in
a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought
impregnable.

Honora blushed, whether from victory or embarrassment, or both, it is
impossible to say.

"I'm afraid it's just the other way, Mrs. Holt," she replied; "Mr. Holt
has captivated me."

"We'll call it mutual, Miss Leffingwell," declared Joshua, which was for
him the height of gallantry.

"I only hope he hasn't bored you," said the good-natured Mrs. Joshua.

"Oh, dear, no," exclaimed Honora. "I don't see bow any one could be bored
looking at such magnificent animals as that Hardicanute."

It was at this moment that her eyes were drawn, by a seemingly resistless
attraction, to Mrs. Robert's face. Her comment upon this latest conquest,
though unexpressed, was disquieting. And in spite of herself, Honora
blushed again.

At luncheon, in the midst of a general conversation, Mr. Spence made a
remark sotto voce which should, in the ordinary course of events, have
remained a secret.

"Susan," he said, "your friend Miss Leffingwell is a fascinator. She's
got Robert's scalp, too, and he thought it a pretty good joke because I
offered to teach her to play golf this afternoon."

It appeared that Susan's eyes could flash indignantly. Perhaps she
resented Mr. Spence's calling her by her first name.

"Honora Leffingwell is the most natural and unspoiled person I know," she
said.

There is, undoubtedly, a keen pleasure and an ample reward in teaching a
pupil as apt and as eager to learn as Honora. And Mr. Spence, if he
attempted at all to account for the swiftness with which the hours of
that long afternoon slipped away, may have attributed their flight to the
discovery in himself of hitherto latent talent for instruction. At the
little Casino, he had bought, from the professional in charge of the
course, a lady's driver; and she practised with exemplary patience the
art of carrying one's hands through and of using the wrists in the
stroke.

"Not quite, Miss Leffingwell," he would say, "but so."

Honora would try again.

"That's unusually good for a beginner, but you are inclined to chop it
off a little still. Let it swing all the way round."

"Oh, dear, how you must hate me!"

"Hate you?" said Mr. Spence, searching in vain for words with which to
obliterate such a false impression. "Anything but that!"

"Isn't it a wonderful, spot?" she exclaimed, gazing off down the swale,
emerald green in the afternoon light between its forest walls. In the
distance, Silver Brook was gleaming amidst the meadows. They sat down on
one of the benches and watched the groups of players pass. Mr. Spence
produced his cigarette case, and presented it to her playfully.

"A little quiet whiff," he suggested. "There's not much chance over at
the convent," and she gathered that it was thus he was pleased to
designate Silverdale.

In one instant she was doubtful whether or not to be angry, and in the
next grew ashamed of the provincialism which had caused her to suspect an
insult. She took a cigarette, and he produced a gold match case, lighted
a match, and held it up for her. Honora blew it out.

"You didn't think seriously that I smoked?" she asked, glancing at him.

"Why not?" he asked; "any number of girls do."

She tore away some of the rice paper and lifted the tobacco to her nose,
and made a little grimace.

"Do you like to see women smoke?" she asked.

Mr. Spence admitted that there was something cosey about the custom, when
it was well done.

"And I imagine," he added, "that you'd do it well."

"I'm sure I should make a frightful mess of it," she protested modestly.

"You do everything well," he said.

"Even golf?" she inquired mischievously.

"Even golf, for a beginner and--and a woman; you've got the swing in an
astonishingly short time. In fact, you've been something of an eye-opener
to me," he declared. "If I had been betting, I should have placed the
odds about twenty to one against your coming from the West."

This Eastern complacency, although it did not lower Mr. Spence in her
estimation, aroused Honora's pride.

"That shows how little New Yorkers know of the West," she replied,
laughing. "Didn't you suppose there were any gentlewomen there?"

"Gentlewomen," repeated Mr. Spence, as though puzzled by the word,
"gentlewomen, yes. But you might have been born anywhere."

Even her sense of loyalty to her native place was not strong enough to
override this compliment.

"I like a girl with some dash and go to her," he proclaimed, and there
could be no doubt about the one to whom he was attributing these
qualities. "Savoir faire, as the French call it, and all that. I don't
know much about that language, but the way you talk it makes Mrs. Holt's
French and Susan's sound silly. I watched you last night when you were
stringing the Vicomte."

"Oh, did you?" said Honora, demurely.

"You may have thought I was talking to Mrs. Robert," he said.

"I wasn't thinking anything about you," replied Honora, indignantly. "And
besides, I wasn't I stringing' the Vicomte. In the West we don't use
anything like so much slang as you seem to use in New York."

"Oh, come now!" he exclaimed, laughingly, and apparently not the least
out of countenance, "you made him think he was the only pebble on the
beach. I have no idea what you were talking about."

"Literature," she said. "Perhaps that was the reason why you couldn't
understand it."

"He may be interested in literature," replied Mr. Spence, "but it
wouldn't be a bad guess to say that he was more interested in stocks and
bonds."

"He doesn't talk about them, at any rate," said Honora.

"I'd respect him more if he did," he announced. "I know those
fellows-they make love to every woman they meet. I saw him eying you at
lunch."

Honora laughed.

"I imagine the Vicomte could make love charmingly," she said.

Mr. Spence suddenly became very solemn.

"Merely as a fellow-countryman, Miss Leffingwell--" he began, when she
sprang to her feet, her eyes dancing, and finished the sentence.

"You would advise me to be on my guard against him, because, although I
look twenty-five and experienced, I am only nineteen and inexperienced.
Thank you."

He paused to light another cigarette before he followed her across the
turf. But she had the incomprehensible feminine satisfaction of knowing,
as they walked homeward, that the usual serenity of his disposition was
slightly ruffled.

A sudden caprice impelled her, in the privacy of her bedroom that
evening, to draw his portrait for Peter Erwin. The complacency of New
York men was most amusing, she wrote, and the amount of slang they used
would have been deemed vulgar in St. Louis. Nevertheless, she liked
people to be sure of themselves, and there was something "insolent" about
New York which appealed to her. Peter, when he read that letter, seemed
to see Mr. Howard Spence in the flesh; or arrayed, rather, in the kind of
cloth alluringly draped in the show-windows of fashionable tailors. For
Honora, all unconsciously, wrote literature. Literature was invented
before phonographs, and will endure after them. Peter could hear Mr.
Spence talk, for a part of that gentleman's conversation--a
characteristic part--was faithfully transcribed. And Peter detected a
strain of admiration running even through the ridicule.

Peter showed that letter to Aunt Mary, whom it troubled, and to Uncle
Tom, who laughed over it. There was also a lifelike portrait of the
Vicomte, followed by the comment that he was charming, but very French;
but the meaning of this last, but quite obvious, attribute remained
obscure. He was possessed of one of the oldest titles and one of the
oldest chateaux in France. (Although she did not say so, Honora had this
on no less authority than that of the Vicomte himself.) Mrs. Holt--with
her Victorian brooch and ear-rings and her watchful delft-blue eyes that
somehow haunted one even when she was out of sight, with her ample bosom
and the really kind heart it contained--was likewise depicted; and Mr.
Holt, with his dried bread, and his garden which Honora wished Uncle Tom
could see, and his prayers that lacked imagination. Joshua and his cows,
Robert and his forest, Susan and her charities, the Institution, jolly
Mrs. Joshua and enigmatical Mrs. Robert--all were there: and even a
picture of the dinner-party that evening, when Honora sat next to a young
Mr. Patterson with glasses and a studious manner, who knew George Hanbury
at Harvard. The other guests were a florid Miss Chamberlin, whose person
loudly proclaimed possessions, and a thin Miss Longman, who rented one of
the Silverdale cottages and sketched.

Honora was seeing life. She sent her love to Peter, and begged him to
write to her.

The next morning a mysterious change seemed to have passed over the
members of the family during the night. It was Sunday. Honora, when she
left her room, heard a swishing on the stairs--Mrs. Joshua, stiffly
arrayed for the day. Even Mrs. Robert swished, but Mrs. Holt, in a
bronze-coloured silk, swished most of all as she entered the library
after a brief errand to the housekeeper's room. Mr. Holt was already
arranging his book-marks in the Bible, while Joshua and Robert, in black
cutaways that seemed to have the benumbing and paralyzing effect of
strait-jackets, wandered aimlessly about the room, as though its walls
were the limit of their movements. The children had a subdued and
touch-me-not air that reminded Honora of her own youth.

It was not until prayers were over and the solemn gathering seated at the
breakfast table that Mr. Spence burst upon it like an aurora. His flannel
suit was of the lightest of grays; he wore white tennis shoes and a red
tie, and it was plain, as he cheerfully bade them good morning, that he
was wholly unaware of the enormity of his costume. There was a choking,
breathless moment before Mrs. Holt broke the silence.

"Surely, Howard," she said, "you're not going to church in those
clothes."

"I hadn't thought of going to church," replied Mr. Spence, helping
himself to cherries.

"What do you intend to do?" asked his hostess.

"Read the stock reports for the week as soon as the newspapers arrive."

"There is no such thing as a Sunday newspaper in my house," said Mrs.
Holt.

"No Sunday newspapers!" he exclaimed. And his eyes, as they encountered
Honora's,--who sought to avoid them,--expressed a genuine dismay.

"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that I was right when I spoke of the
pernicious effect of Wall Street upon young men. Your mother did not
approve of Sunday newspapers."

During the rest of the meal, although he made a valiant attempt to hold
his own, Mr. Spence was, so to speak, outlawed. Robert and Joshua must
have had a secret sympathy for him. One of them mentioned the Vicomte.

"The Vicomte is a foreigner," declared Mrs. Holt. "I am in no sense
responsible for him."

The Vicomte was at that moment propped up in bed, complaining to his
valet about the weakness of the coffee. He made the remark (which he
afterwards repeated to Honora) that weak coffee and the Protestant
religion seemed inseparable; but he did not attempt to discover the
whereabouts, in Sutton, of the Church of his fathers. He was not in the
best of humours that morning, and his toilet had advanced no further
when, an hour or so later, he perceived from behind his lace curtains Mr.
Howard Spence, dressed with comparative soberness, handing Honora into
the omnibus. The incident did not serve to improve the cynical mood in
which the Vicomte found himself.

Indeed, the Vicomte, who had a theory concerning Mr. Spence's
church-going, was not far from wrong. As may have been suspected, it was
to Honora that credit was due. It was Honora whom Mr. Spence sought after
breakfast, and to whom he declared that her presence alone prevented him
from leaving that afternoon. It was Honora who told him that he ought to
be ashamed of himself. And it was to Honora, after church was over and
they were walking homeward together along the dusty road, that Mr. Spence
remarked by way of a delicate compliment that "the morning had not been a
total loss, after all!"

The little Presbyterian church stood on a hillside just outside of the
village and was, as far as possible, the possession of the Holt family.
The morning sunshine illuminated the angels in the Holt memorial window,
and the inmates of the Holt Institution occupied all the back pews. Mrs.
Joshua played the organ, and Susan, with several young women and a young
man with a long coat and plastered hair, sang in the choir. The sermon of
the elderly minister had to do with beliefs rather than deeds, and was
the subject of discussion at luncheon.

"It is very like a sermon I found in my room," said Honora.

"I left that book in your room, my dear, in the hope that you would not
overlook it," said Mrs. Holt, approvingly. "Joshua, I wish you would read
that sermon aloud to us."

"Oh, do, Mr. Holt!" begged Honora.

The Vicomte, who had been acting very strangely during the meal, showed
unmistakable signs of a futile anger. He had asked Honora to walk with
him.

"Of course," added Mrs. Holt, "no one need listen who doesn't wish to.
Since you were good enough to reconsider your decision and attend divine
service, Howard, I suppose I should be satisfied."

The reading took place in the library. Through the open window Honora
perceived the form of Joshua asleep in the hammock, his Sunday coat all
twisted under him. It worried her to picture his attire when he should
wake up. Once Mrs. Robert looked in, smiled, said nothing, and went out
again. At length, in a wicker chair under a distant tree on the lawn,
Honora beheld the dejected outline of the Vicomte. He was trying to read,
but every once in a while would lay down his book and gaze protractedly
at the house, stroking his mustache. The low song of the bees around the
shrubbery vied with Mr. Holt's slow reading. On the whole, the situation
delighted Honora, who bit her lip to refrain from smiling at M. de
Toqueville. When at last she emerged from the library, he rose
precipitately and came towards her across the lawn, lifting his hands
towards the pitiless puritan skies.

"Enfin!" he exclaimed tragically. "Ah, Mademoiselle, never in my life
have I passed such a day!"

"Are you ill, Vicomte?" she asked.

"Ill! Were it not for you, I would be gone. You alone sustain me--it is
for the pleasure of seeing you that I suffer. What kind of a menage is
this, then, where I am walked around Institutions, where I am forced to
listen to the exposition of doctrines, where the coffee is weak, where
Sunday, which the bon Dieu set aside for a jour de fete resembles to a
day in purgatory?"

"But, Vicomte," Honora laughed, "you must remember that you are in
America, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs."

"Ah, no," he cried, "ah, no, it cannot all be like this! I will not
believe it. Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon, offered
to show me his collection of Chinese carvings! I, who might be at
Trouville or Cabourg! If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should not
stay here--not one little minute," he said, with a slow intensity.
"Behold what I suffer for your sake!"

"For my sake?" echoed Honora.

"For what else?" demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of
martyrdom. "It is not for my health, alas! Between the coffee and this
dimanche I have the vertigo."

Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her
childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham's curios.

"You are cruel," said the Vicomte; "you laugh at my tortures."

"On the contrary, I think I understand them," she replied. "I have often
felt the same way."

"My instinct was true, then," he cried triumphantly; "the first time my
eyes fell on you, I said to myself, 'ah! there is one who understands.'
And I am seldom mistaken."

"Your experience with the opposite sex," ventured Honora, "must have made
you infallible."

He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of
conquests.

"You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle," he said. "You are not like
these people. You have temperament, and a future--believe me. Why do you
waste your time?"

"What do you mean, Vicomte?"

"Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean. It is that you do not
choose to understand--you are far too clever. Why is it, then, that you
bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your
jeunesse? It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not
created for a religieuse. And again, it pleases you to spend hours with
the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua. He is
no companion for you."

"I am afraid," she said reprovingly, "that you do not understand Mr.
Spence."

"Par exemple!" cried the Vicomte; "have I not seen hundreds' like him? Do
not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand cocktails
and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day long? and go
to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn? Nom de nom, of what does his
conversation consist? Of the price of railroads;--is it not so? I, who
speak to you, have talked to him. Does he know how to make love?"

"That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America," Honora
replied.

"It is because you are a new country," he declared.

"And you are mad over money. Money has taken the place of love."

"Is money so despised in France?" she asked. "I have heard--that you
married for it!"

"Touch!" cried the Vicomte, laughing. "You see, I am frank with you. We
marry for money, yes, but we do not make a god of it. It is our servant.
You make it, and we enjoy it. Yes, and you, Mademoiselle--you, too, were
made to enjoy. You do not belong here," he said, with a disdainful sweep
of the arm. "Ah, I have solved you. You have in you the germ of the
Riviera. You were born there."

Honora wondered if what he said were true. Was she different? She was
having a great deal of pleasure at Silverdale; even the sermon reading,
which would have bored her at home, had interested and amused her. But
was it not from the novelty of these episodes, rather than from their
special characters, that she received the stimulus? She glanced curiously
towards the Vicomte, and met his eye.

They had been walking the while, and had crossed the lawn and entered one
of the many paths which it had been Robert's pastime to cut through the
woods. And at length they came out at a rustic summer-house set over the
wooded valley. Honora, with one foot on the ground, sat on the railing
gazing over the tree-tops; the Vicomte was on the bench beside her. His
eyes sparkled and snapped, and suddenly she tingled with a sense that the
situation was not without an element of danger.

"I had a feeling about you, last night at dinner," he said; "you reminded
me of a line of Marcel Prevost, 'Cette femme ne sera pas aimee que parmi
des drames.'"

"Nonsense," said Honora; "last night at dinner you were too much occupied
with Miss Chamberlin to think of me."

"Ah, Mademoiselle, you have read me strangely if you think that. I talked
to her with my lips, yes--but it was of you I was thinking. I was
thinking that you were born to play a part in many dramas, that you have
the fatal beauty which is rare in all ages." The Vicomte bent towards
her, and his voice became caressing. "You cannot realize how beautiful
you are," he sighed.

Suddenly he seized her hand, and before she could withdraw it she had the
satisfaction of knowing the sensation of having it kissed. It was a
strange sensation indeed. And the fact that she did not tingle with anger
alone made her all the more angry. Trembling, her face burning, she
leaped down from the railing and fled into the path. And there, seeing
that he did not follow, she turned and faced him. He stood staring at her
with eyes that had not ceased to sparkle.

"How cowardly of you!" she cried.

"Ah, Mademoiselle," he answered fervently, "I would risk your anger a
thousand times to see you like that once more. I cannot help my
feelings--they were dead indeed if they did not respond to such an
inspiration. Let them plead for my pardon."

Honora felt herself melting a little. After all, there might have been
some excuse for it, and he made love divinely. When he had caught up with
her, his contriteness was such that she was willing to believe he had not
meant to insult her. And then, he was a Frenchman. As a proof of his
versatility, if not of his good faith, he talked of neutral matters on
the way back to the house, with the charming ease and lightness that was
the gift of his race and class. On the borders of the wood they
encountered the Robert Holts, walking with their children.

"Madame," said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, "your Silverdale is enchanting.
We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley."

"And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?" she
asked, with a glance at Honora.




CHAPTER X

IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON

If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon
the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both
the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed.
Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore,
described it to Honora as a normal week. During its progress there came
and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had
heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a
youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer
interested in settlement work.

The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the
Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the
architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where
the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended
the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul's Cathedral,
of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel. Even the serious
young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle. When he had first
seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous. He had
done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left. And,
since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were going
through New York, that she would let him know. It would be a real
pleasure to show her what he was doing.

Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her
hostess.

"I can't tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear," said that
lady. "You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and I
do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart."

In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have
had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was
slowly unfolding itself. By no fault of Honora's, of course. There may
have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her
--that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama. If
experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an
expert in matters of the sex. Could it be possible, Honora asked herself
more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct
and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect?

It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the
Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly
not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte's temperament and habits
ecstatically happy. And Honora was filled with a strange and
unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the
English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study
at first hand of Americans.

The time has come to acknowledge frankly that it was Honora he was
studying--Honora as the type of young American womanhood. What he did not
suspect was that young American womanhood was studying him. Thanks to a
national System, she had had an apprenticeship; the heart-blood of
Algernon Cartwright and many others had not been shed in vain. And the
fact that she was playing with real fire, that this was a duel with the
buttons off, lent a piquancy and zest to the pastime which it had
hitherto lacked.

The Vicomte's feelings were by no means hidden processes to Honora, and
it was as though she could lift the lid of the furnace at any time and
behold the growth of the flame which she had lighted. Nay, nature had
endowed her with such a gift that she could read the daily temperature as
by a register hung on the outside, without getting scorched. Nor had
there been any design on her part in thus tormenting his soul. He had not
meant to remain more than four days at Silverdale, that she knew; he had
not meant to come to America and fall in love with a penniless
beauty--that she knew also. The climax would be interesting, if perchance
uncomfortable.

It is wonderful what we can find the time to do, if we only try. Monsieur
de Toqueville lent Honora novels, which she read in bed; but being in the
full bloom of health and of a strong constitution, this practice did not
prevent her from rising at seven to take a walk through the garden with
Mr. Holt--a custom which he had come insensibly to depend upon. And in
the brief conversations which she vouchsafed the Vicomte, they discussed
his novels. In vain he pleaded, in caressing undertones, that she should
ride with him. Honora had never been on a horse, but she did not tell him
so. If she would but drive, or walk-only a little way--he would promise
faithfully not to forget himself. Honora intimated that the period of his
probation had not yet expired. If he waylaid her on the stairs, he got
but little satisfaction.

"You converse by the hour with the missionaries, and take long promenades
with the architects and charity workers, but to me you will give
nothing," he complained.

"The persons of whom you speak are not dangerous," answered Honora,
giving him a look.

The look, and being called dangerous, sent up the temperature several
degrees. Frenchmen are not the only branch of the male sex who are
complimented by being called dangerous. The Vicomte was desolated, so he
said.

"I stay here only for you, and the coffee is slowly deranging me," he
declared in French, for most of their conversations were in that
language. If there were duplicity in this, Honora did not recognize it.
"I stay here only for you, and how you are cruel! I live for you--how,
the good God only knows. I exist--to see you for ten minutes a day."

"Oh, Vicomte, you exaggerate. If you were to count it up, I am sure you
would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether. And then, although
I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you
have made by the same arts."

"I suffer," he cried; "ah, no, you cannot look at me without perceiving
it--you who are so heartless. And when I see you play at golf with that
Mr. Spence--!"

"Surely," said Honora, "you can't object to my acquiring a new
accomplishment when I have the opportunity, and Mr. Spence is so kind and
good-natured about it."

"Do you think I have no eyes?" he exclaimed. "Have I not seen him look at
you like the great animal of Joshua when he wants his supper? He is
without esprit, without soul. There is nothing inside of him but
money-making machinery."

"The most valuable of all machinery," she replied, laughingly.

"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like
so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow,"
he declared.

"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him.

If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind,
the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale
that week was apt to be diverting. Mr. Spence held his own. He advised
the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some
day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the
practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the
missionary. Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen. But
he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to repeating
for the English lady certain phrases which she called "picturesque
expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil.

It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue
Honora's lessons in golf--or rather that she found time, in the midst of
her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them. And in this diversion
she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself. On Saturday morning, the heat
being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the fourth hole
and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which they had
visited once before and had found attractive. Honora, after bathing her
face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder. She was very fresh and
radiant.

This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr.
Silence's expression. He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled
up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing
at her with approbation. She lowered her eyes.

"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked.

Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at
him from under her blue lashes seldom misses.

"I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly.

"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her. "If I could take you
on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes
which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence. "I have to go
back to town on Monday."

If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it.

"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied.

"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again--rather awkwardly for
Mr. Spence. But Honora was silent. "I had a letter this morning from my
partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back."

"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green
scale of moss from the boulder.

"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of
considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible.
Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young
men."

"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so
hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to
them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight
until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men.
That would be a career!"

"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for."

Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista
of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the
water and took a step nearer her.

"How long have I known you?" he asked.

She started.

"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said.

"Does it seem longer than that to you?"

"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been
staying in the same house."

"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always."

Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment, that
there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some other
voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the same
tone.

"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching
you--more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any
place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me how
you've handled all the curiosities up there this week."

"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a
little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his
own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was
changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too, with
a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a glance
at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He did not,
it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been called a
thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting thrills,
and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how close a bond
of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden announcement of his
going back to New York. In a little while she too would be leaving for
St. Louis. The probability that she would never see him again seemed
graver than she would have believed.

"Will you miss me a little?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how
your--your enterprise succeeds."

"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know
my own mind. You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without
boasting that I can give you what you desire in life--after a while. I
love you. You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have
waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether
what I know to be the great happiness of my life. Will you marry me?"

She sat silent upon the rock. She heard him speak, it is true; but, try
as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her.
She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart
was involved to such an extent. He was very near her, but he had not
attempted to touch her. His voice, towards the end of his speech, had
trembled with passion--a true note had been struck. And she had struck
it, by no seeming effort! He wished to marry her!

He aroused her again.

"I have frightened you," he said.

She opened her eyes. What he beheld in them was not fright--it was
nothing he had ever seen before. For the first time in his life, perhaps,
he was awed. And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to him with
a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold. He had not
realized what he was getting.

"I am not frightened," she said. "Yes, I will marry you."

He was not sure whether--so brief was the moment!--he had held and kissed
her cheek. His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her poised
on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking back
at him over her shoulder.

He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out
into the open golf course. He tried to think, but failed. Never in his
orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him. He caught up
with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium.

"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it."

She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her
mouth.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked.

"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora.
"But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard? We'll have it for our own
secret a little while."

The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm.

"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied.

In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch--much too
rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late.

"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered
to her on the stairs.

"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing,
"only more purple, and not so ghostlike."

"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help
it. It won't come off. I want to blurt out the news to every one in the
dining-room--to that little Frenchman, in particular."

Honora laughed again. Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau
which such a proceeding would bring forth. The incredulity, the chagrin,
the indignation, even, in some quarters. He conceived the household, with
the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his arms.

Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior
training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his
entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation. His colour was high, and his
expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that he
felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before and
behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth would
save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game of golf
must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old to learn
it.

"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared.

"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retorted
Mrs. Holt. In relaxing moods she indulged in banter.

Honora stepped into the breach. She would not trust her newly acquired
fiance to extricate himself.

"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we
were late for lunch once before."

"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that
colour. I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls, and I
am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good when I
send you back to her."

"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora.

In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a
jellied egg. Honora glanced at the Vicomte. He sat very stiff, and his
manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its
claws. It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram,
which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the
meaning of it came to her.

"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt.

"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed. "He's in New
York. And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour with
me."

"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe. He
had such a good face. And you told me about him."

"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking
at her. "Only he is much older than I. He used to wheel me up and down
when I was a baby. He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom
took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer. A very good one, I
believe."

"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said
Mrs. Holt. "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask him
to spend the night."

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered.

It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's
arrival at this time. Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences!

There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room,
Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach
it. She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was
likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua--or indeed Mrs. Holt
herself. Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all. She crossed the
great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of
shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest. With a
really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to
believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense
desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same
conditions, to keep in motion. So she sat down on a bench within the
borders of the wood.

It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the
word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination
free play. The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did
not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense
of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to
dissipate. Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid
and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the
possession of these attributes. A castle founded on such a rock was not a
castle in Spain!

It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle
than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of
the Hercules she had chosen to hold it.

She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon
--one letter to both. Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them,
and of their lonely life' without her. But they would come on to New York
to visit her often, and they would be proud of her. Of one thing she was
sure--she must go home to them at once--on Tuesday. She would tell Mrs.
Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night. And, while pondering over the
probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to her
that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was
coming.

What would he say? Should she tell him? She was surprised to find that
the idea of doing so was painful to her. But she was aroused from these
reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the
Vicomte. His face wore an expression of triumph.

"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her.
Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she
remained.

"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she
remarked. "You have an instinct for the chase."

"Mon dieu?" he said. "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you. Why
should you so continually run away from me?"

"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte."

"And that other one--the stock-broker--you do not avoid him. Diable, I am
not blind, Mademoiselle. It is plain to me at luncheon that you have made
boil the sluggish blood of that one. As for me--"

"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling.

"Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her. "It is not for my
health that I stay here, as I have told you. It is for the sight of you,
for the sound of the music of that low voice. It is in the hope that you
will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little better. And
to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see you, I could
sit still no longer. I do not fear that Spence,--no. But this other--what
is he like?"

"He is the best type of American," replied Honora. "I am sure you will be
interested in him, and like him."

The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders.

"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle. You
are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this
country. Such a woman as you is thrown away here. You possess
qualities--you will pardon me--in which your countrywomen are lacking,
--esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you. I have read
you as you have not read yourself. I have seen how you have served
yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept
their friendship."

"Vicomte!" she exclaimed.

"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare--they are
sublime. They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights."

Honora was silent. She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into which
there was creeping a vibrant note of passion. She was a little
frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested. This was all so
different from what she had expected of him. What did he mean? Was she
indeed like that?

She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a
chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis
XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,--a chateau with
a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had
prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river. It was
there that his childhood had been passed. And as he spoke, she listened
with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place.

"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not
what you call an adventurer. Many of these, alas! come to your country.
And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange
to Americans. When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially
is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility."

Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples.

"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me. I would die rather
than hurt your feelings. Listen, I pray. It was to tell you frankly that
I came to this country for that purpose,--in order that I might live as
my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace a
dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished. I have soixante
quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in
your money, and which goes much farther in France. At the proper time, I
will present these matters to your guardians. I have lived, but I have a
heart, and I love you madly. Rather would I dwell with you in Provence,
where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a palace on the
Champs Elysees with another. We can come to Paris for two months, at
least. For you I can throw my prospects out of the window with a light
heart. Honore--how sweet is your name in my language--I love you to
despair."

He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently
away. It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with feeling,
and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him would be.
Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless girl! Her
own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her eyes were
filled with compassion.

"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me--that way. I
thought--I thought you were amusing yourself."

"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly. "And you--were you amusing
yourself?"

"I--I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice.

"I am engaged."

"Engaged!" He sprang to his feet. "Engaged! Ah, no, I will not believe
it. You were engaged when you came here?"

She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words.
At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within
her led her on to tell him the truth.

"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it
announced."

For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he
seemed to sway a little and to choke.

"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be! My ears have deceived me. I am not
sane. You are going to marry him--? Ah, you have sold yourself."

"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself. Mr. Spence is
an honourable man, and I love him."

The Vicomte appeared to choke again. And then, suddenly, he became
himself, although his voice was by no means natural. His elaborate and
ironic bow she remembered for many years.

"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu. You will be good enough to
convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence."

With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly, and
she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had disappeared
behind the trees near the house. When she sat down on the bench again,
she found that she was trembling a little. Was the unexpected to occur to
her from now on? Was it true, as the Vicomte had said, that she was
destined to be loved amidst the play of drama?

She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the
winds his chances of wealth for her sake--a sufficient measure of the
feelings of one of his nationality and caste. And she permitted, for an
instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had
never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his
unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him? She thought of the
romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies
with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped
in through wicket gates. And to think that she might have been a
Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle!

A poor Vicomtesse, it is true.




CHAPTER XI

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Honora sat still upon the bench. After an indefinite period she saw
through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single
passenger. And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be
Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him. She
arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation.

She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was
talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an
unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise. So much, in less
than a year, had happened to Honora! And the sight of him, and the sound
of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past. How
long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis!

Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to
sharpen her sense of certain characteristics. He was lounging in his
chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand in his pocket, and talking
to these men as though he had known them always. There was a quality
about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact
definition. It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him out
of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter Erwin
had a personality. That personality was a mixture of simplicity and
self-respect and--common sense. And as Honora listened to his cheerful
voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself clearly
and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the other
two men were listening with a certain deference. In her sensitive state
she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her between
Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry.

Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette. Never, it
seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity. An attribute
which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife,
lost something of its value. To look at Peter was to wonder whether there
could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day she
had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean face
summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps it was
this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward and
called his name. He rose precipitately.

"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand. "How do you
happen to be in the East?"

"An errand boy," he replied. "Somebody had to come, so they chose me.
Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my
education."

"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly.

"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look. "I was on the bench at
the edge of the wood." She turned again to Peter. "How good of you to
come up and see me!"

"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an
hour."

"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in
with unusual graciousness. "My mother will be disappointed not to see
you."

"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply,
gazing off across the lawn. "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West
to-night."

"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place. Come,
we'll begin with the garden."

She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had
wished, an hour ago, to avoid.

"Wouldn't you like a runabout?" suggested Joshua, hospitably.

Honora thanked him.

"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied.

"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home."

Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no
evidence of jealousy. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder.

"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and
Spence. We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in
finding us. I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West."

Peter thanked him.

For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was
meditatively silent. She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence, until
suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that Peter had
as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for especial
consideration. She could not, however, resist saying, "New Yorkers are
like that."

"Like what?" he asked.

She coloured.

"Like--Mr. Spence. A little--self-assertive, sure of themselves." She
strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was
the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended. She knew
that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but Peter's
silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak. "He has made quite an
unusual success for so young a man."

Peter looked at her and shook his head.

"New York--success! What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he
inquired.

"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried. "I wish I were going with
you."

"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides and
Forest Park and--and me?"

He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made
standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat
casting a shadow on her face. And the smile which she had known so well
since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in
his eyes. She was conscious of a slight resentment. Was there, in fact,
no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten
months since she had seen him? And rather than a tolerance in which there
was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from Peter an
open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied were hers.
She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he refused to be
dazzled by it. He insisted upon treating her as the same Honora.

"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked.

They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they
did not wish to curtail her visit. They did not expect her next week, he
knew.

Honora coloured again.

"I feel--that I ought to go to them," she said.

He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon
surprised him.

"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been
very lonesome."

She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: "And you?
Have you missed me--a little?"

He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid
a hand upon his arm.

"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I have
missed you--terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she went on
hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell me how it
happened hat you came on to New York."

"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said.

"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this
change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it
one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive
about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted to
the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice."

"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't
it? I can't get used to it myself."

"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed
reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt
and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer."

Peter laughed.

"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he.

He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in
Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever
rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond,
--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads,
--through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at
the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of
that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the
episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's
mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his
companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places.
Comparisons seemed inevitable.

She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a
long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the
valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it was
in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the die
of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. Why
had she never felt it before? She had thought his face homely--now it
seemed to shine with a transfiguring light. She recalled, with a pang,
that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the expression of
the man himself. Incredible is the range of human emotion! She felt a
longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there.

He turned at length from the view.

"How wonderful!" he said.

"I didn't know--you cared for nature so much, Peter."

He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her,
unresisting, to the bench beside him.

"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am--very happy."

"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowing
Mrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home so
soon. I do not know myself why I came. I am a matter-of-fact person, but
I acted on an impulse."

"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his
eyes.

"Yes," he said, "an impulse. I can call it by no other name. I should
have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this
morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some
use to you."

"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized
Peter with such words on his lips. "I am happy--indeed I am. Only--I am
overwrought--seeing you again--and you made me think of home."

"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared. "And if my coming has
upset you--"

"Oh, no," she cried. "Please don't think so. It has given me a sense
of--of security. That you were ready to help me if--if I needed you."

"You should always have known that," he replied. He rose and stood gazing
off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart
beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless
to stave off. And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you
for many years," he said. "You were too young for me to speak of it. I
did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day. For many years I
have hoped that some day you might be my wife. My one fear has been that
I might lose you. Perhaps--perhaps it has been a dream. But I am willing
to wait, should you wish to see more of the world. You are young yet, and
I am offering myself for all time. There is no other woman for me, and
never can be."

He paused and smiled down at her. But she did not speak. She could not.

"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious. And with your gifts I do
not blame you. I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with confidence
that I can offer you something better, something surer. I can take care
of you and protect you, and I will devote my life to your happiness. Will
you marry me?"

Her eyes were sparkling with tears,--tears, he remembered afterwards,
that were like blue diamonds.

"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could! I have always--wished that I
could. I can't."

"You can't?"

She shook her head.

"I--I have told no one yet--not even Aunt Mary. I am going to marry Mr.
Spence."

For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the
suffering in his face.

"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your
happiness. And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember
that I am your friend, to be counted on. And that I shall not change.
Will you remember that?"

"Yes," she whispered. She looked at him now, and through the veil of her
tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes. The tones of a
distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze.

Peter glanced at his watch.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house--my
train goes at seven. Can I get down to the village through the valley?"

Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees
beneath them.

"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?"

She nodded. He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone. And presently, in
a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her bravely.




CHAPTER XII

WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT

How long she sat gazing with unseeing eyes down the valley Honora did not
know. Distant mutterings of thunder aroused her; the evening sky had
darkened, and angry-looking clouds of purple were gathering over the
hills. She rose and hurried homeward. She had thought to enter by the
billiard-room door, and so gain her own chamber without encountering the
household; but she had reckoned without her hostess. Beyond the billiard
room, in the little entry filled with potted plants, she came face to
face with that lady, who was inciting a footman to further efforts in his
attempt to close a recalcitrant skylight. Honora proved of more interest,
and Mrs. Holt abandoned the skylight.

"Why, my dear," she said, "where have you been all afternoon?"

"I--I have been walking with Mr. Erwin, Mrs. Holt. I have been showing
him Silverdale."

"And where is he? It seems to me I invited him to stay all night, and
Joshua tells me he extended the invitation."

"We were in the little summer-house, and suddenly he discovered that it
was late and he had to catch the seven o'clock train," faltered Honora,
somewhat disconnectedly. "Otherwise he would have come to you himself and
told you--how much he regretted not staying. He has to go to St. Louis
to-night."

"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "this is an afternoon of surprises. The Vicomte
has gone off, too, without even waiting to say good-by."

"The Vicomte!" exclaimed Honora.

"Didn't you see him, either, before he left?" inquired Mrs. Holt; "I
thought perhaps you might be able to give me some further explanation of
it."

"I?" exclaimed Honora. She felt ready to sink through the floor, and Mrs.
Holt's delft-blue eyes haunted her afterwards like a nightmare.

"Didn't you see him, my dear? Didn't he tell you anything?"

"He--he didn't say he was going away."

"Did he seem disturbed about anything?" Mrs. Holt insisted.

"Now I think of it, he did seem a little disturbed."

"To save my life," said Mrs. Holt, "I can't understand it. He left a note
for me saying that he had received a telegram, and that he had to go at
once. I was at a meeting of my charity board. It seems a very strange
proceeding for such an agreeable and polite man as the Vicomte, although
he had his drawbacks, as all Continentals have. And at times I thought he
was grave and moody,--didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, he was moody," Honora agreed eagerly.

"You noticed it, too," said Mrs. Holt. "But he was a charming man, and so
interested in America and in the work we are doing. But I can't
understand about the telegram. I had Carroll inquire of every servant in
the house, and there is no knowledge of a telegram having come up from
the village this afternoon."

"Perhaps the Vicomte might have met the messenger in the grounds,"
hazarded Honora.

At this point their attention was distracted by a noise that bore a
striking resemblance to a suppressed laugh. The footman on the
step-ladder began to rattle the skylight vigorously.

"What on earth is the matter with you, Woods?" said Mrs. Holt.

"It must have been some dust off the skylight, Madam, that got into my
throat," he stammered, the colour of a geranium.

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Holt, "there is no dust on the skylight."

"It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam,"
he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his
former theory.

"You are very stupid not to be able to close it," she declared; "in a few
minutes the place will be flooded. Tell Carroll to come and do it."

Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the
stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows
against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting
against them. She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired.
Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and
gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel,
above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had an
instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand.

Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite.

"My dear," she began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and
welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit"
(Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and I
need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your aunt
has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. You have
been very fortunate."

"Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt," echoed Honora, in bewilderment.

"And Susan," continued Mrs. Holt, "useful and willing as she is, does not
possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them."

Honora could think of no reply to this. Her eyes--to which no one could
be indifferent--were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the
good lady to guess that her brain was reeling?

I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of--well,
of rather difficult company this summer. Next week, for instance, some
prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on
July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the
Charity Conference in New York. The Japanese Minister has promised to pay
me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable tuberculosis
homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his family. Then
there are some foreign artists."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora; "how many interesting people you see!"

"Exactly, my dear. And I thought that, in addition to the fact that I
have grown very fond of you, you would be very useful to me here, and
that a summer with me might not be without its advantages. As your aunt
will have you until you are married, which, I may say, without denying
your attractions, is likely to be for some time, I intend to write to her
to-night--with your consent--and ask her to allow you to remain with me
all summer."

Honora sat transfixed, staring painfully at the big pendant ear-rings.

"It is so kind of you, Mrs. Holt--" she faltered.

"I can realize, my dear, that you would wish to get back to your aunt.
The feeling does you infinite credit. But, on the other hand, besides the
advantages which would accrue to you, it might, to put the matter
delicately, be of a little benefit to your relations, who will have to
think of your future."

"Indeed, it is good of you, but I must go back, Mrs. Holt."

"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, with a touch of dignity--for ere now people
had left Silverdale before she wished them to--"of course, if you do not
care to stay, that is quite another thing."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt, don't say that!" cried Honora, her face burning; "I
cannot thank you enough for the pleasure you have given me. If--if things
were different, I would stay with you gladly, although I should miss my
family. But now,--now I feel that I must be with them. I--I am engaged to
be married."

Honora still remembers the blank expression which appeared on the
countenance of her hostess when she spoke these words. Mrs. Holt's cheeks
twitched, her ear-rings quivered, and her bosom heaved-once.

"Engaged to be married!" she gasped.

"Yes," replied our heroine, humbly, "I was going to tell you--to-morrow."

"I suppose," said Mrs. Holt, after a silence, "it is to the young man who
was here this afternoon, and whom I did not see. It accounts for his
precipitate departure. But I must say, Honora, since frankness is one of
my faults, that I feel it my duty to write to your aunt and disclaim all
responsibility."

"It is not to Mr. Erwin," said Honora, meekly; "it is--it is to Mr.
Spence."

Mrs. Holt seemed to find difficulty in speaking, Her former symptoms,
which Honora had come to recognize as indicative of agitation, returned
with alarming intensity. And when at length her voice made itself heard,
it was scarcely recognizable.

"You are engaged--to--Howard Spence?"

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora, "it was as great a surprise to me
--believe me--as it is to you."

But even the knowledge that they shared a common amazement did not
appear, at once, to assuage Mrs. Holt's emotions.

"Do you love him?" she demanded abruptly.

Whereupon Honora burst into tears.

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she sobbed, "how can you ask?"

From this time on the course of events was not precisely logical. Mrs.
Holt, setting in abeyance any ideas she may have had about the affair,
took Honora in her arms, and against that ample bosom was sobbed out the
pent-up excitement and emotion of an extraordinary day.

"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, stroking the dark hair, "I
should not have asked you that-forgive me." And the worthy lady,
quivering with sympathy now, remembered the time of her own engagement to
Joshua. And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed
somewhat from those of the present--in regularity, at least, increased
rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness. The
perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were
swept away by a flood of feeling. "There, there, my dear, I did not mean
to be harsh. What you told me was such a shock--such a surprise, and
marriage is such a grave and sacred thing."

"I know it," sobbed Honora.

"And you are very young."

"Yes, Mrs. Holt."

"And it happened in my house."

"No," said Honora, "it happened--near the golf course."

Mrs. Holt smiled, and wiped her eyes.

"I mean, my dear, that I shall always feel responsible for bringing you
together---for your future happiness. That is a great deal. I could have
wished that you both had taken longer to reflect, but I hope with all my
heart that you will be happy."

Honora lifted up a tear-stained face.

"He said it was because I was going away that--that he spoke," she said.
"Oh, Mrs. Holt, I knew that you would be kind about it."

"Of course I am kind about it, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "As I told you,
I have grown to have an affection for you. I feel a little as though you
belonged to me. And after this--this event, I expect to see a great deal
of you. Howard Spence's mother was a very dear friend of mine. I was one
of the first who knew her when she came to New York, from Troy, a widow,
to educate her son. She was a very fine and a very courageous woman."
Mrs. Holt paused a moment. "She hoped that Howard would be a lawyer."

"A lawyer!" Honora repeated.

"I lost sight of him for several years," continued Mrs. Holt, "but before
I invited him here I made some inquiries about him from friends of mine
in the financial world. I find that he is successful for so young a man,
and well thought of. I have no doubt he will make a good husband, my
dear, although I could wish he were not on the Stock Exchange. And I hope
you will make him happy."

Whereupon the good lady kissed Honora, and dismissed her to dress for
dinner.

"I shall write to your aunt at once," she said.

          ........................

Requited love, unsettled condition that it is supposed to bring, did not
interfere with Howard Spence's appetite at dinner. His spirits, as usual,
were of the best, and from time to time Honora was aware of his glance.
Then she lowered her eyes. She sat as in a dream; and, try as she might,
her thoughts would not range themselves. She seemed to see him but dimly,
to hear what he said faintly; and it conveyed nothing to her mind.

This man was to be her husband! Over and over she repeated it to herself.
His name was Howard Spence, and he was on the highroad to riches and
success, and she was to live in New York. Ten days before he had not
existed for her. She could not bring herself to believe that he existed
now. Did she love him? How could she love him, when she did not realize
him? One thing she knew, that she had loved him that morning.

The fetters of her past life were broken, and this she would not realize.
She had opened the door of the cage for what? These were the fragments of
thoughts that drifted through her mind like tattered clouds across an
empty sky after a storm. Peter Erwin appeared to her more than once, and
he was strangely real. But he belonged to the past. Course succeeded
course, and she talked subconsciously to Mr. Holt and Joshua--such is the
result of feminine training.

After dinner she stood on the porch. The rain had ceased, a cool damp
breeze shook the drops from the leaves, and the stars were shining.
Presently, at the sound of a step behind her, she started. He was
standing at her shoulder.

"Honora!" he said.

She did not move.

"Honora, I haven't seen you--alone--since morning. It seems like a
thousand years. Honora?"

"Yes."

"Did you mean it?

"Did I mean what?"

"When you said you'd marry me." His voice trembled a little. "I've been
thinking of nothing but you all day. You're not--sorry? You haven't
changed your mind?"

She shook her head.

"At dinner when you wouldn't look at me, and this afternoon--"

"No, I'm not sorry," she said, cutting him short. "I'm not sorry."

He put his arm about her with an air that was almost apologetic. And,
seeing that she did not resist, he drew her to him and kissed her.
Suddenly, unaccountably to her, she clung to him.

"You love me!" he exclaimed.

"Yes," she whispered, "but I am tired. I--I am going upstairs, Howard. I
am tired."

He kissed her again.

"I can't believe it!" he said. "I'll make you a queen. And we'll be
married in the autumn, Honora." He nodded boyishly towards the open
windows of the library. "Shall I tell them?" he asked. "I feel like
shouting it. I can't hold on much longer. I wonder what the old lady will
say!"

Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door. As
she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him.

"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said.

And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs.





BOOK II


Volume 3.



CHAPTER I

SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!

It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room
of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung
Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy
who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence
was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless
possibilities lay ahead.

The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had
she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting the
words of that wonderful introduction. At other weddings she had been
moved. Why was her own so unrealizable?

   "Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
   together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt
   thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
   and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
   so long as ye both shall live?"

She had promised. And they were walking out of the church, facing the
great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.

After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before her.
She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her
husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her,
looking extremely well in his top hat and frock-coat, with a white flower
in his buttonhole. He was the representative of the future she had
deliberately chosen. And yet, by virtue of the strange ceremony through
which they had passed, he seemed to have changed. In her attempt to seize
upon a reality she looked out of the window. They were just passing the
Hanbury mansion in Wayland Square, and her eyes fell upon the playroom
windows under the wide cornice; and she wondered whether the doll's house
were still in its place, its mute inhabitants waiting to be called by the
names she had given them, and quickened into life once more.

Next she recalled the arrival at the little house that had been her home,
summer and winter, for so many years of her life. A red and white awning,
stretching up the length of the walk which once had run beside the tall
pear trees, gave it an unrecognizable, gala air. Long had it stood there,
patient, unpretentious, content that the great things should pass it by!
And now, modest still, it had been singled out from amongst its
neighbours and honoured. Was it honoured? It seemed to Honora, so
fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was unnatural. Why
should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace be celebrated?

She was standing beside her husband in the little parlour, while carriage
doors slammed in the dusk outside; while one by one--a pageant of the
past which she was leaving forever the friends of her childhood came and
went. Laughter and tears and kisses! And then, in no time at all, she
found herself changing for the journey in the "little house under the
hill." There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had given her
long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written at fever
heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape from a
humdrum existence. And now--she had escaped. Aunt Mary, helpful under the
most trying circumstances, was putting her articles in a bag, the
initials on which she did not recognize--H. L. S.--Honora Leffingwell
Spence; while old Catherine, tearful and inefficient, knelt before her,
fumbling at her shoes. Honora, bending over, took the face of the
faithful old servant and kissed it.

"Don't feel badly, Catherine," she said; "I'll be coming back often to
see you, and you will be coming to see me."

"Will ye, darlint? The blessing of God be on you for those words--and you
to be such a fine lady! It always was a fine lady ye were, with such a
family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is
right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
for you."

"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
child's head!"

"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great lady she was,
and she a wee bit of a thing. And wasn't it yerself, Miss Mary, that
dressed her like a princess?"

Then came the good-bys--the real ones. Uncle Tom, always the friend of
young people, was surrounded by a group of bridesmaids in the hall. She
clung to him. And Peter, who had the carriage ready. What would her
wedding have been without Peter? As they drove towards the station, his
was the image that remained persistently in her mind, bareheaded on the
sidewalk in the light of the carriage lamps. The image of struggle.

She had married Prosperity. A whimsical question, that shocked her,
irresistibly presented itself: was it not Prosperity that she had
promised to love, honour, and obey?

It must not be thought that Honora was by any means discontented with her
Prosperity. He was new--that was all. Howard looked new. But she
remembered that he had always looked new; such was one of his greatest
charms. In the long summer days since she had bade him good-by on her way
through New York from Silverdale, Honora had constructed him: he was
perpetual yet sophisticated Youth; he was Finance and Fashion; he was
Power in correctly cut clothes. And when he had arrived in St. Louis to
play his part in the wedding festivities, she had found her swan a swan
indeed--he was all that she had dreamed of him. And she had tingled with
pride as she introduced him to her friends, or gazed at him across the
flower-laden table as he sat beside Edith Hanbury at the bridesmaids'
dinner in Wayland Square.

The wedding ceremony had somehow upset her opinion of him, but Honora
regarded this change as temporary. Julius Caesar or George Washington
himself must have been somewhat ridiculous as bridegrooms: and she had
the sense to perceive that her own agitations as a bride were partly
responsible. No matter how much a young girl may have trifled with that
electric force in the male sex known as the grand passion, she shrinks
from surrendering herself to its dominion. Honora shrank. He made love to
her on the way to the station, and she was terrified. He actually forgot
to smoke cigarettes. What he said was to the effect that he possessed at
last the most wonderful and beautiful woman in the world, and she
resented the implication of possession.

Nevertheless, in the glaring lights of the station, her courage and her
pride in him revived, and he became again a normal and a marked man.
Although the sex may resent it, few women are really indifferent to
clothes, and Howard's well-fitting check suit had the magic touch of the
metropolis. His manner matched his garments. Obsequious porters grasped
his pig-skin bag, and seized Honora's; the man at the gate inclined his
head as he examined their tickets, and the Pullman conductor himself
showed them their stateroom, and plainly regarded them as important
people far from home. Howard had the cosmopolitan air. He gave the man a
dollar, and remarked that the New Orleans train was not exactly the
Chicago and New York Limited.

"Not by a long shot," agreed the conductor, as he went out, softly
closing the door behind him.

Whereupon the cosmopolitan air dropped from Mr. Howard Spence, not
gracefully, and he became once more that superfluous and awkward and
utterly banal individual, the husband.

"Let's go out and walk on the platform until the train starts," suggested
Honora, desperately. "Oh, Howard, the shades are up! I'm sure I saw some
one looking in!"

He laughed. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
she deemed his laughter out of place. Was he, after all, an utterly
different man than what she had thought him? Still laughing, he held to
her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.

"This is good enough for me," he said. "At last--at last," he whispered,
"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me
just a little, Honora?"

"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
from a fire.

"Then what's the matter?" he demanded.

"I don't know--I want air. Howard, please let me go. It's-it's so hot
inhere. You must let me go."

Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
mental effort. She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
became enfeebled. She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
the cement platform and the cold air. When he joined her, there was
something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
him more if he had held her.

"Women beat me," he said. "They're the most erratic stock in the market."

It is worthy of remark how soon the human, and especially the feminine
brain adjusts itself to new conditions. In a day or two life became real
again, or rather romantic.

For the American husband in his proper place is an auxiliary who makes
all things possible. His ability to "get things done," before it ceases
to be a novelty, is a quality to be admired. Honora admired. An
intimacy--if the word be not too strong--sprang up between them. They
wandered through the quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of
American cities, searching out the tumbledown French houses; and Honora
was never tired of imagining the romances and tragedies which must have
taken place in them. The new scenes excited her,--the quaint cafes with
their delicious, peppery Creole cooking,--and she would sit talking for a
quarter of an hour at a time with Alphonse, who outdid himself to please
the palate of a lady with such allure. He called her "Madame"; but well
he knew, this student of human kind, that the title had not been of long
duration.

Madame came from New York, without doubt? such was one of his questions,
as he stood before them in answer to Howard's summons, rubbing his hands.
And Honora, with a little thrill, acknowledged the accuracy of his guess.
There was no dish of Alphonse's they did not taste. And Howard smilingly
paid the bills. He was ecstatically proud of his wife, and although he
did justice to the cooking, he cared but little for the mysterious
courtyards, the Spanish buildings, and the novels of Mr. George W. Cable,
which Honora devoured when she was too tired to walk about. He followed
her obediently to the battle field of New Orleans, and admired as
obediently the sunset, when the sky was all silver-green through the
magnolias, and the spreading live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and a
silver bar lay upon the Father of Waters. Honora, with beating heart and
flushed cheeks, felt these things: Howard felt them through her and
watched--not the sunset--but the flame it lighted in her eyes.

He left her but twice a day, and then only for brief periods. He even
felt a joy when she ventured to complain.

"I believe you care more for those horrid stocks than for me," she said.
"I--I am just a novelty."

His answer, since they were alone in their sitting-room, was obvious.

"Howard," she cried, "how mean of you! Now I'll have to do my hair all
over again. I've got such a lot of it--you've no idea how difficult it
is."

"You bet I have!" he declared meaningly, and Honora blushed.

His pleasure of possession was increased when people turned to look at
her on the street or in the dining room--to think that this remarkable
creature was in reality his wife! Nor did the feeling grow less intense
with time, being quite the same when they arrived at a fashionable resort
in the Virginia mountains, on their way to New York. For such were the
exactions of his calling that he could spare but two weeks for his
honeymoon.

Honora's interest in her new surroundings was as great, and the sight of
those towering ridges against the soft blue of the autumn skies inspired
her. It was Indian summer here, the tang of wood smoke was in the air; in
the valleys--as they drove--the haze was shot with the dust of gold, and
through the gaps they looked across vast, unexplored valleys to other
distant, blue-stained ridges that rose between them and the sunset.
Honora took an infinite delight in the ramshackle cabins beside the
red-clay roads, in the historic atmosphere of the ancient houses and
porticoes of the Warm Springs, where the fathers of the Republic had come
to take the waters. And one day, when a north wind had scattered the
smoke and swept the sky, Howard followed her up the paths to the ridge's
crest, where she stood like a Victory, her garments blowing, gazing off
over the mighty billows to the westward. Howard had never seen a Victory,
but his vision of domesticity was untroubled.

Although it was late in the season, the old-fashioned, rambling hotel was
well filled, and people interested Honora as well as scenery--a proof of
her human qualities. She chided Howard because he, too, was not more
socially inclined.

"How can you expect me to be--now?" he demanded.

She told him he was a goose, although secretly admitting the justice of
his defence. He knew four or five men in the hotel, with whom he talked
stocks while waiting for Honora to complete her toilets; and he gathered
from two of these, who were married, that patience was a necessary
qualification in a husband. One evening they introduced their wives.
Later, Howard revealed their identity--or rather that of the husbands.

"Bowker is one of the big men in the Faith Insurance Company, and Tyler
is president of the Gotham Trust." He paused to light a cigarette, and
smiled at her significantly. "If you can dolly the ladies along once in a
while, Honora, it won't do any harm," he added. "You have a way with you,
you know,--when you want to."

Honora grew scarlet.

"Howard!" she exclaimed.

He looked somewhat shamefaced.

"Well," he said, "I was only joking. Don't take it seriously. But it
doesn't do any harm to be polite."

"I am always polite," she answered a little coldly.

Honeymoons, after all, are matters of conjecture, and what proportion of
them contain disenchantments will never be known. Honora lay awake for a
long time that night, and the poignant and ever recurring remembrance of
her husband's remark sent the blood to her face like a flame. Would
Peter, or George Hanbury, or any of the intimate friends of her childhood
have said such a thing?

A new and wistful feeling of loneliness was upon her. For some days, with
a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not
acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking
people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards.
They were from New York--that she had discovered; and they did not mix
with the others in the hotel. She had thought it strange that Howard did
not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated
to ask him who they were. They had rather a rude manner of staring
--especially the men--and the air of deriving infinite amusement from
that which went on about them. One of them, a young man with a lisp who
was addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard
demanding as she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark
hair and the colour? Wherever she went, she was aware of them. It was
foolish, she knew, but their presence seemed--in the magnitude which
trifles are wont to assume in the night-watches--of late to have poisoned
her pleasure.

Enlightenment as to the identity of these disturbing persons came, the
next day, from an unexpected source. Indeed, from Mrs. Tyler. She loved
brides, she said, and Honora seemed to her such a sweet bride. It was
Mrs. Tyler's ambition to become thin (which was hitching her wagon to a
star with a vengeance), and she invited our heroine to share her
constitutional on the porch. Honora found the proceeding in the nature of
an ordeal, for Mrs. Tyler's legs were short, her frizzled hair very
blond, and the fact that it was natural made it seem, somehow, all the
more damning.

They had scarcely begun to walk before Honora, with a sense of dismay of
which she was ashamed, beheld some of the people who had occupied her
thoughts come out of the door and form a laughing group at the end of the
porch. She could not rid herself of the feeling that they were laughing
at her. She tried in vain to drive them from her mind, to listen to Mrs.
Tyler's account of how she, too, came as a bride to New York from some
place with a classical name, and to the advice that accompanied the
narration. The most conspicuous young woman in the group, in riding
clothes, was seated on the railing, with the toe of one boot on the
ground. Her profile was clear-cut and her chestnut hair tightly knotted
behind under her hat. Every time they turned, this young woman stared at
Honora amusedly.

"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler, suddenly and unexpectedly in the
midst of a description of the delights of life in the metropolis.

"Who?" asked Honora.

"That young Mrs. Freddy Maitland, sitting on the rail. She's the rudest
woman in New York."

A perversity of spirit which she could not control prompted Honora to
reply:

"Why, I think she is so good-looking, Mrs. Tyler. And she seems to have
so much individuality and independence."

"There!" cried Mrs. Tyler, triumphantly. "Once--not so very long ago--I
was just as inexperienced as you, my dear. She belongs to that horribly
fast set with which no self-respecting woman would be seen. It's an
outrage that they should come to a hotel like this and act as though it
belonged to them. She knows me quite as well as I know her, but when I am
face to face she acts as though I was air."

Honora could not help thinking that this, at least, required some
imagination on Mrs. Maitland's part. Mrs. Tyler had stopped for breath.

"I have been introduced to her twice," she continued, "but of course I
wouldn't speak to her. The little man with the lisp, next to her, who is
always acting in that silly way, they call Toots Cuthbert. He gets his
name in the newspapers by leading cotillons in New York and Newport. And
the tall, slim, blond one, with the green hat and the feather in it, is
Jimmy Wing. He's the son of James Wing, the financier."

"I went to school at Sutcliffe with his sister," said Honora.

It seemed to Honora that Mrs. Tyler's manner underwent a change.

"My dear," she exclaimed, "did you go to Sutcliffe? What a wonderful
school it is! I fully intend to send my daughter Louise there."

An almost irresistible desire came over Honora to run away. She excused
herself instead, and hurried back towards her room. On the way she met
Howard in the corridor, and he held a telegram in his hand.

"I've got some bad news, Honora," he said. "That is, bad from the point
of view of our honeymoon. Sid Dallam is swamped with business, and wants
me in New York. I'm afraid we've got to cut it short."

To his astonishment she smiled.

"Oh, I'm so glad, Howard," she cried. "I--I don't like this place nearly
so well as New Orleans. There are--so many people here."

He looked relieved, and patted her on the arm.

"We'll go to-night, old girl," he said.




CHAPTER II

"STAFFORD PARK"

There is a terrifying aspect of all great cities. Rome, with its
leviathan aqueducts, its seething tenements clinging to the hills, its
cruel, shining Palatine, must have overborne the provincial traveller
coming up from Ostia. And Honora, as she stood on the deck of the
ferry-boat, approaching New York for the second time in her life, could
not overcome a sense of oppression. It was on a sharp December morning,
and the steam of the hurrying craft was dazzling white in the early sun.
Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city,
somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn. Each of that
multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun
and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans. And the strife between
them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern
arms and modern methods and modern brains, in which there was no mercy.

Hidden somewhere amidst those bristling miles of masonry to the northward
of the towers was her future home. Her mind dwelt upon it now, for the
first time, and tried to construct it. Once she had spoken to Howard of
it, but he had smiled and avoided discussion. What would it be like to
have a house of one's own in New York? A house on Fifth Avenue, as her
girl friends had said when they laughingly congratulated her and begged
her to remember that they came occasionally to New York. Those of us who,
like Honora, believe in Providence, do not trouble ourselves with mere
matters of dollars and cents. This morning, however, the huge material
towers which she gazed upon seemed stronger than Providence, and she
thought of her husband. Was his fibre sufficiently tough to become
eventually the captain of one of those fortresses, to compete with the
Maitlands and the Wings, and others she knew by name, calmly and
efficiently intrenched there?

The boat was approaching the slip, and he came out to her from the cabin,
where he had been industriously reading the stock reports, his newspapers
thrust into his overcoat pocket.

"There's no place like New York, after all," he declared, and added,
"when the market's up. We'll go to a hotel for breakfast."

For some reason she found it difficult to ask the question on her lips.

"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, "I suppose we couldn't go--home,
Howard. You--you have never told me where we are to live."

As before, the reference to their home seemed to cause him amusement. He
became very mysterious.

"Couldn't you pass away a few hours shopping this morning, my dear?"

"Oh, yes," replied Honora.

"While I gather in a few dollars," he continued. "I'll meet you at lunch,
and then we'll go-home."

As the sun mounted higher, her spirits rose with it. New York, or that
strip of it which is known to the more fortunate of human beings, is a
place to raise one's spirits on a sparkling day in early winter. And
Honora, as she drove in a hansom from shop to shop, felt a new sense of
elation and independence. She was at one, now, with the prosperity that
surrounded her: her purse no longer limited, her whims existing only to
be gratified. Her reflections on this recently attained state alternated
with alluring conjectures on the place of abode of which Howard had made
such a mystery. Where was it? And why had he insisted, before showing it
to her, upon waiting until afternoon?

Newly arrayed in the most becoming of grey furs, she met him at that
hitherto fabled restaurant which in future days--she reflected--was to
become so familiar--Delmonico's. Howard was awaiting her in the
vestibule; and it was not without a little quiver of timidity and
excitement and a consequent rise of colour that she followed the waiter
to a table by the window. She felt as though the assembled fashionable
world was staring at her, but presently gathered courage enough to gaze
at the costumes of the women and the faces of the men. Howard, with a
sang froid of which she felt a little proud, ordered a meal for which he
eventually paid a fraction over eight dollars. What would Aunt Mary have
said to such extravagance? He produced a large bunch of violets.

"With Sid Dallam's love," he said, as she pinned them on her gown. "I
tried to get Lily--Mrs. Sid--for lunch, but you never can put your finger
on her. She'll amuse you, Honora."

"Oh, Howard, it's so much pleasanter lunching alone to-day. I'm glad you
didn't. And then afterwards--?"

He refused, however, to be drawn. When they emerged she did not hear the
directions he gave the cabman, and it was not until they turned into a
narrow side street, which became dingier and dingier as they bumped their
way eastward, that she experienced a sudden sinking sensation.

"Howard!" she cried. "Where are you going? You must tell me."

"One of the prettiest suburbs in New Jersey--Rivington," he said. "Wait
till you see the house."

"Suburbs! Rivington! New Jersey!" The words swam before Honora's eyes,
like the great signs she had seen printed in black letters on the tall
buildings from the ferry that morning. She had a sickening sensation, and
the odour of his cigarette in the cab became unbearable. By an ironic
trick of her memory, she recalled that she had told the clerks in the
shops where she had made her purchases that she would send them her
address later. How different that address from what she had imagined it!

"It's in the country!" she exclaimed.

To lunch at Delmonico's for eight dollars and live in Rivington

Howard appeared disturbed. More than that, he appeared astonished,
solicitous.

"Why, what's the matter, Honora?" he asked. "I thought you'd like it.
It's a brand new house, and I got Lily Dallam to furnish it. She's a
wonder on that sort of thing, and I told her to go ahead--within reason.
I talked it over with your aunt and uncle, and they agreed with me you'd
much rather live out there for a few years than in a flat."

"In a flat!" repeated Honora, with a shudder.

"Certainly," he said, flicking his ashes out of the window. "Who do you
think I am, at my age? Frederick T. Maitland, or the owner of the
Brougham Building?"

"But--Howard," she protested, "why didn't you talk it over with me?"

"Because I wanted to surprise you," he replied. "I spent a month and a
half looking for that house. And you never seemed to care. It didn't
occur to me that you would care--for the first few years," he added, and
there was in his voice a note of reproach that did not escape her. "You
never seemed inclined to discuss business with me, Honora. I didn't think
you were interested. Dallam and I are making money. We expect some day to
be on Easy Street--so to speak--or Fifth Avenue. Some day, I hope, you
can show some of these people the road. But just now what capital we have
has to go into the business."

Strangely enough, in spite of the intensity of her disappointment, she
felt nearer to her husband in that instant than at any time since their
marriage. Honora, who could not bear to hurt any one's feelings, seized
his hand repentantly. Tears started in her eyes.

"Oh, Howard, I must seem to you very ungrateful," she cried. "It was such
a--such a surprise. I have never lived in the country, and I'm sure it
will be delightful--and much more healthful than the city. Won't you
forgive me?"

If he had known as much about the fluctuations of the feminine
temperament as of those of stocks, the ease with which Honora executed
this complete change of front might have disturbed him. Howard, as will
be seen, possessed that quality which is loosely called good nature. In
marriage, he had been told (and was ready to believe), the wind blew
where it listed; and he was a wise husband who did not spend his time in
inquiry as to its sources. He kissed her before he helped her out of the
carriage. Again they crossed the North River, and he led her through the
wooden ferry house on the New Jersey side to where the Rivington train
was standing beside a platform shed.

There was no parlour car. Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours. That
there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.

After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
she had been ignorant that morning. They alighted at an old red railroad
station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
road. They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
in a very new gutter on the right.

"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
money to pay the hackman.

Honora looked around her. Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way of
red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
tracery against the orange-red of the western sky. On both sides of this
centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
houses. There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a raised
terrace and about two hundred feet apart. Beyond them, to the northward,
Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth hardwood,
interspersed with a few cedars.

Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
drawback. If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design to
make it appear imposing. It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
wood-surrounded panes in the roof. There was a large pillared porch on
its least private side--namely, the front. A white-capped maid stood in
the open doorway and smiled at Honora as she entered.

Honora walked through the rooms. There was nothing intricate about the
house; it was as simple as two times four, and really too large for her
and Howard. Her presents were installed, the pictures and photograph
frames and chairs, even Mr. Isham's dining-room table and Cousin
Eleanor's piano. The sight of these, and of the engraving which Aunt Mary
had sent on, and which all her childhood had hung over her bed in the
little room at home, brought the tears once more to her eyes. But she
forced them back bravely.

These reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the little maid
announcing that tea was ready, and bringing her two letters. One was from
Susan Holt, and the other, written in a large, slanting, and angular
handwriting, was signed Lily Dallam. It was dated from New York.

"My dear Honora," it ran, "I feel that I must call you so, for Sid and
Howard, in addition to being partners, are such friends. I hesitated so
long about furnishing your house, my dear, but Howard insisted, and said
he wished to surprise you. I am sending you this line to welcome you, and
to tell you that I have arranged with the furniture people to take any or
all things back that you do not like, and exchange them. After all, they
will be out of date in a few years, and Howard and Sid will have made so
much money by that time, I hope, that I shall be able to leave my
apartment, which is dear, and you will be coming to town."

Honora laid down the sheet, and began to tidy her hair before the glass
of the highly polished bureau in her room. A line in Susan's letter
occurred to her: "Mother hopes to see you soon. She asked me to tell you
to buy good things which will last you all your life, and says that it
pays."

The tea-table was steaming in the parlour in front of the wood fire in
the blue tiled fireplace. The oak floor reflected its gleam, and that of
the electric lights; the shades were drawn; a slight odour of steam heat
pervaded the place. Howard, smoking a cigarette, was reclining on a sofa
that evidently was not made for such a purpose, reading the evening
newspapers.

"Well, Honora," he said, as she took her seat behind the tea-table, "you
haven't told me how you like it. Pretty cosey, eh? And enough spare room
to have people out over Sundays."

"Oh, Howard, I do like it," she cried, in a desperate attempt--which
momentarily came near succeeding to convince herself that she could have
desired nothing more. "It's so sweet and clean and new--and all our own."

She succeeded, at any rate, in convincing Howard. In certain matters, he
was easily convinced.

"I thought you'd be pleased when you saw it, my dear," he said.




CHAPTER III

THE GREAT UNATTACHED

It was the poet Cowper who sang of domestic happiness as the only bliss
that has survived the Fall. One of the burning and unsolved questions of
to-day is,--will it survive the twentieth century? Will it survive rapid
transit and bridge and Woman's Rights, the modern novel and modern drama,
automobiles, flying machines, and intelligence offices; hotel, apartment,
and suburban life, or four homes, or none at all? Is it a weed that will
grow anywhere, in a crevice between two stones in the city? Or is it a
plant that requires tender care and the water of self-sacrifice? Above
all, is it desirable?

Our heroine, as may have been suspected, has an adaptable temperament.
Her natural position is upright, but like the reed, she can bend
gracefully, and yields only to spring back again blithely. Since this
chronicle regards her, we must try to look at existence through her eyes,
and those of some of her generation and her sex: we must give the four
years of her life in Rivington the approximate value which she herself
would have put upon it--which is a chapter. We must regard Rivington as a
kind of purgatory, not solely a place of departed spirits, but of those
which have not yet arrived; as one of the many temporary abodes of the
Great Unattached.

No philosophical writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change
--as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog--between the lover and
the husband. An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this
change is inevitable: some husbands--and some wives are fortunate enough
to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern
civilization. Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it is difficult to
say, but we have got to consider him henceforth as a husband; one who
regards his home as a shipyard rather than the sanctuary of a goddess; as
a launching place, the ways of which are carefully greased, that he may
slide off to business every morning with as little friction as possible,
and return at night to rest undisturbed in a comfortable berth, to ponder
over the combat of the morrow.

It would be inspiring to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling
garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to
battle and victory. Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and
most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning. There was a
period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal; a
second period when she appeared at the foot of the stairs to kiss him as
he was going out of the door; a third when, clad in an attractive
dressing-gown, she waved him good-by from the window; and lastly, a
fourth, which was only marked by an occasional protest on his part, when
the coffee was weak.

"I'd gladly come down, Howard, if it seemed to make the least difference
to you," said Honora. "But all you do is to sit with your newspaper
propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
question. You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
early."

"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.

"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
reproachfully; "I'd die. And then I am always having to get new cooks for
you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs. Men have
no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just wish you had
to go to those horrid intelligence offices. You wouldn't stay in
Rivington ten days. And all the good cooks drink."

Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
somebody. The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
the country.

It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun. And there is generally an
afterglow. In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
was touched with a certain novelty. There was a new runabout and a horse
which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
husband. On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed. But after a while certain male
competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued. Sunday, after
his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field
day. Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold Howard
taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will be dug
up and transplanted. The soil was congenial. He played poker on the train
with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them famously.
And it was to him an enigma--when occasionally he allowed his thoughts to
dwell upon such trivial matters--why Honora was not equally congenial
with the wives.

There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many
stories could be written: people with loves and fears and anxieties and
joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.
There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances
at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents
--like Honora's--came from afar, from family centres formed in a social
period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and
consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there
were--inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the
survival of the fittest--commercial calamities, and the heartrending
search for new employment.

Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in
proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners. And Honora
returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman's
Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion. In the
evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked
business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the
cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.
Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much
as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining
in Rivington the rest of their lives!

Honora was kind to these ladies. As we know, she was kind to everybody.
She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become
her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in
fashionable restaurants. Their range of discussion included babies and
Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee. It would be
interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers
met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever
to depart. The time and manner of this departure were matters to be
determined in the future.

It would be interesting to know, likewise, just at what period the
intention of moving away from Rivington became fixed in Honora's mind.
Honora circumscribed, Honora limited, Honora admitting defeat, and this
chronicle would be finished. The gods exist somewhere, though many
incarnations may, be necessary to achieve their companionship. And no
prison walls loom so high as to appall our heroine's soul. To exchange
one prison for another is in itself something of a feat, and an argument
that the thing may be done again. Neither do the wise ones beat
themselves uselessly against brick or stone. Howard--poor man!--is
fatuous enough to regard a great problem as being settled once and for
all by a marriage certificate and a benediction; and labours under the
delusion that henceforth he may come and go as he pleases, eat his
breakfast in silence, sleep after dinner, and spend his Sundays at the
Rivington Golf Club. It is as well to leave him, at present, in blissful
ignorance of his future.

Our sympathies, however, must be with Honora, who has paid the price for
heaven, and who discovers that by marriage she has merely joined the
ranks of the Great Unattached. Hitherto it had been inconceivable to her
that any one sufficiently prosperous could live in a city, or near it and
dependent on it, without being socially a part of it. Most momentous of
disillusions! With the exception of the Sidney Dallams and one or two
young brokers who occasionally came out over Sunday, her husband had no
friends in New York. Rivington and the Holt family (incongruous mixture)
formed the sum total of her acquaintance.

On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge
signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other
necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.
Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier
stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was
sure she should like if only she knew them. Once the sight of her school
friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of
recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face
with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.
Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled
sensations, the procession there. The colour, the movement, the sensation
of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy, was at once
a stimulation and a despair. Brougham after brougham passed, victoria
after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly or sat
back, impassive, amidst the cushions. Some of them, indeed, looked bored,
but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and prosperity. Even
the people--well-dressed, too--in the hansom cabs were usually animated
and smiling. On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned girls passed her,
sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and three, going in and
out of the expensive-looking shops with the large, plate-glass windows.

All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere
to go, some one to meet the very next, minute. They protested to
milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed
impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them. But Honora had
no imperative appointments. Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or
going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one
in New York.

"I'm so sorry, my dear," she would say, and add reproachfully: "why
didn't you telephone me you were coming? If you had only let me know we
might have lunched together or gone to the matinee. Now I have promised
Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house."

Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite
of one's self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned. But if
indeed Honora telephoned--as she did once or twice in her innocence--Lily
was quite as distressed.

"My dear, why didn't you let me know last night? Trixy Brent has given
Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never
forgive me if I backed out."

Although she lived in an apartment--in a most attractive one, to be sure
--there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable. She
had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous. She could have made
her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she bought
everything from "little" men and women whom she discovered herself. It
was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople eventually became
fashionable, too. Lily was kind to Honora, and gave her their addresses
before they grew to be great and insolent and careless whether one
patronized them or not.

While we are confessing the trials and weaknesses of our heroine, we
shall have to admit that she read, occasionally, the society columns of
the newspapers. And in this manner she grew to have a certain familiarity
with the doings of those favourites of fortune who had more delightful
engagements than hours in which to fulfil them. So intimate was Lily
Dallam with many of these Olympians that she spoke of them by their first
names, or generally by their nicknames. Some two years after Honora's
marriage the Dallams had taken a house in that much discussed colony of
Quicksands, where sport and pleasure reigned supreme: and more than once
the gown which Mrs. Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had been
faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she had
given at the Quicksands Club. One of these dinners, Honora learned, had
been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent.

"You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy
about you."

Time passed, however, and Mrs. Dallam made no attempt to bring about this
most desirable meeting. When Honora and Howard went to town to dine with
the Dallams, it was always at a restaurant, a 'partie carree'. Lily
Dallam thought it dull to dine at home, and they went to the theatre
afterwards--invariably a musical comedy. Although Honora did not care
particularly for musical comedies, she always experienced a certain
feverish stimulation which kept her wide awake on the midnight train to
Rivington. Howard had a most exasperating habit of dozing in the corner
of the seat.

"You are always sleepy when I have anything interesting to talk to you
about," said Honora, "or reading stock reports. I scarcely see anything
at all of you."

Howard roused himself.

"Where are we now?" he asked.

"Oh," cried Honora, "we haven't passed Hydeville. Howard, who is Trixton
Brent?"

"What about him?" demanded her husband.

"Nothing--except that he is one of Lily's friends, and she said she knew
--I should like him. I wish you would be more interested in people. Who
is he?"

"One of the best-known operators in the market," Howard answered, and his
air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed;
"a daring gambler. He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million.
He's a sport, too."

"How old is he?"

"About forty-three."

"Is he married?" inquired Honora.

"He's divorced," said Howard. And she had to be content with so much of
the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence
again. A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume,
in one of the magazines. She thought him good-looking, and wondered what
kind of a wife he had had.

Honora, when she went to town for the day, generally could be sure of
finding some one, at least, of the Holt family at home at luncheon time.
They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary
and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's
arrival in her own country. It had a wide, brownstone front, with a
basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door. Within,
solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the
prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork. On
the second floor, the library where the family assembled was more
cheerful. The books themselves, although in black-walnut cases, and the
sun pouring in, assisted in making this effect.

Here, indeed, were stability and peace. Here Honora remade the
acquaintance of the young settlement worker, and of the missionary, now
on the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Here she charmed other friends and
allies of the Holt family; and once met, somewhat to her surprise, two
young married women who differed radically from the other guests of the
house. Honora admired their gowns if not their manners; for they ignored
her, and talked to Mrs. Holt about plans for raising money for the
Working Girl's Relief Society.

"You should join us, my dear," said Mrs. Holt; "I am sure you would be
interested in our work."

"I'd be so glad to, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, "if only I didn't live in
the country."

She came away as usual, feeling of having run into a cul de sac. Mrs.
Holt's house was a refuge, not an outlet; and thither Honora directed her
steps when a distaste for lunching alone or with some of her Rivington
friends in the hateful, selfish gayety of a fashionable restaurant
overcame her; or when her moods had run through a cycle, and an
atmosphere of religion and domesticity became congenial.

"Howard," she asked unexpectedly one evening, as he sat smoking beside
the blue tiled mantel, "have you got on your winter flannels?"

"I'll bet a hundred dollars to ten cents," he cried, "that you've been
lunching with Mrs. Holt."

"I think you're horrid," said Honora.

Something must be said for her. Domestic virtue, in the face of such
mocking heresy, is exceptionally difficult of attainment.

Mrs. Holt had not been satisfied with Honora's and Susan's accounts of
the house in Stafford Park. She felt called upon to inspect it. And for
this purpose, in the spring following Honora's marriage, she made a
pilgrimage to Rivington and spent the day. Honora met her at the station,
and the drive homeward was occupied in answering innumerable questions on
the characters, conditions, and modes of life of Honora's neighbours.

"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, when they were seated before the fire
after lunch, "I want you to feel that you can come to me for everything.
I must congratulate you and Howard on being sensible enough to start your
married life simply, in the country. I shall never forget the little
house in which Mr. Holt and I began, and how blissfully happy I was." The
good lady reached out and took Honora's hand in her own. "Not that your
deep feeling for your husband will ever change. But men are more
difficult to manage as they grow older, my dear, and the best of them
require a little managing for their own good. And increased
establishments bring added cares and responsibilities. Now that I am
here, I have formed a very fair notion of what it ought to cost you to
live in such a place. And I shall be glad to go over your housekeeping
books with you, and tell you if you are being cheated as I dare say you
are."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," Honora faltered, "I--I haven't kept any books. Howard
just pays the bills."

"You mean to say he hasn't given you any allowance!" cried Mrs. Holt,
aghast. "You don't know what it costs to run this house?"

"No," said Honora, humbly. "I never thought of it. I have no idea what
Howard's income may be."

"I'll write to Howard myself--to-night," declared Mrs. Holt.

"Please don't, Mrs. Holt. I'll--I'll speak to him," said Honora.

"Very well, then," the good lady agreed, "and I will send you one of my
own books, with my own system, as soon as I get home. It is not your
fault, my dear, it is Howard's. It is little short of criminal of him. I
suppose this is one of the pernicious results of being on the Stock
Exchange. New York is nothing like what it was when I was a girl--the
extravagance by everybody is actually appalling. The whole city is bent
upon lavishness and pleasure. And I am afraid it is very often the wives,
Honora, who take the lead in prodigality. It all tends, my dear, to
loosen the marriage tie--especially this frightful habit of dining in
hotels and restaurants."

Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to
bottom, from laundry to linen closet. Suffice it to say that the
inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed
over.

"It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear," was her final
comment. "But you are wise in providing for the future."

"For the future?" Honora repeated.

Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.

"When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will--soon," she said,
smiling at Honora's colour. "Sometimes it all comes back to me--my own
joy when Joshua was a baby. I was very foolish about him, no doubt. Annie
and Gwendolen tell me so. I wouldn't even let the nurse sit up with him
when he was getting his teeth. Mercy!" she exclaimed, glancing at the
enamelled watch on her gown,--for long practice had enabled her to tell
the time upside down,--"we'll be late for the train, my dear."

After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her
window, looking out on the park. The afternoon sunlight had the silvery
tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway
was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a
vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines;
and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped
along the strip of sidewalk.

Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had
spoken? It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking
in her. Children! A home! Why was it that she did not want children? Why
should such a natural longing be absent in her? Her mind went back to the
days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large
families. She had always associated marriage with children--until she got
married. And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the
matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of
it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to
her, it was faint and shadowy indeed? Why were not her spirit and her
hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?

The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora
did not mention it to her husband. Circumstances were her excuse: he had
had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked
disinclination for the discussion of household matters. It was not until
the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between
them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually
uncommunicative and morose. Just as electrical disturbances are said to
be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain
glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were
synchronous with a depression in the market.

"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening.
"The bills are pretty stiff this month. You don't seem to have any idea
of the value of money."

"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can
you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"

"Save me so much!" he echoed.

"Yes. If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me two
hundred dollars. I took such pains--all on your account--to find a little
man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one hundred and
twenty-five."

It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed
by this argument.

"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a
receiver by Christmas. I can't see any difference between buying one suit
from Ridley--whoever he may be--and three from Lily Dallam's 'little
man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."

"Oh, I didn't get three!--I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.
Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"

"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.

"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried
reproachfully.

"To please me!"

"Who else? We-we don't know anybody in New York. And I wanted you to be
proud of me. I've tried so hard and--and sometimes you don't even look at
my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."

This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with
a hint of tears in Honora's voice. Its effect upon Howard was peculiar
--he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened. He put down his
cigarette--and Honora was on his knee! He could not deny her attractions.

"How could you be so cruel, Howard?" she asked.

"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern. It was my own idea to
save money--I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt. And
you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner
with these Rivington people. You always have champagne. If--if you're
poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
dinner gown."

"You've ordered another dinner gown!"

"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're
poor--"

She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
touch a sensitive nerve.

"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market,
and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for
awhile, Honora."

It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
visits to St. Louis.




CHAPTER IV

THE NEW DOCTRINE

This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented
with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast
finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark
well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess,
not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize
a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is
not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French,
clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are
neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is
a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is
worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette,
and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she
were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they
understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not
to bring peace, but a sword.

At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his
dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.

"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're
getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
top of his head, "is a bald spot!"

"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.

"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face.
"For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't
mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much worse.
You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another
husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they
have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm
sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.

He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the
fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly
idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs
--of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve
afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled
with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling,
illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and
self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such
a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned,
she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he
had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the
possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.

"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he
admitted.

"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If
I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat
and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have
married you--never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I
was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated
that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a
little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a
hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"

He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which
had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.

"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an
amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her
of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take
it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"

"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be
much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no
end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to
amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know
enough to keep thin."

He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.

"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but
you never broke loose this way before."

"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone.
I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you
over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any
possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get
married again."

"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
breath.

"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting
when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good
deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the
women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears
--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the
making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."

Her husband got up.

"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."

The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly
dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of
determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.

There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a
charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.
He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught
her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.

"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll
have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her
head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's--it's an
ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily
Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry
me in a minute."

He drew her down on the arm of his chair.

"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think
you've got to have one."

"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be
done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white
panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got
for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors
give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two
criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely
turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph frame or
a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous,
old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie
Farwell could have made anything out of it."

"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.

"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell?
Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if
he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this
afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't.
She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the
Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some day."

"Why not right away?" asked Howard.

"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."

"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a
feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.

Honora sprang to her feet.

"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for
dinner-and you'll never be ready."

"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.
Let's talk it over a little more--"

"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my
ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."

"For my own good!"

"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and
obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married me,"
she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing
and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save
you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared
into her room and closed the door.

We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other
people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the
week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the
subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot
like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.

Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man
was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured
under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had
been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether he had
ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the
troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we
may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had
been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had
contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that
ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask
himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at
Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which
had as yet eluded him. And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more
crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the
realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.
Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he
insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might
some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would
do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.

We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental
processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of
his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With
instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.

An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a
day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily
had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of
unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much
to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting
headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the
evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's
front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the
spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously
from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement
kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across
the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the
tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and
driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And
out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.

"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just
couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my
staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady
Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's
arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout?
Isn't he a darling?"

"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.

Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.

"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding
him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."

"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.

"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for
him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with
me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to
dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea
how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so
we've got just ourselves."

Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad,
when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.

"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a
song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could
do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?"
she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I
meant to have got home in time to kiss him."

She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature
boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked
superciliously down from the walls.

"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a
success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about
you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little
Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure
I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora.
And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as
beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."

"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.

"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid
says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is
wonderful. How do you like this dress?"

"All your things are exquisite."

"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.

Honora, indeed, had not perjured herself. Only the hypercritical, when
Mrs. Dallam was dressed, had the impression of a performed miracle. She
was the most finished of finished products. Her complexion was high and
(be it added) natural, her hair wonderfully 'onduled', and she had withal
the sweetest and kindest of smiles and the most engaging laughter in the
world. It was impossible not to love her.

"Howard," she cried, when a little later they were seated at the table,
"how mean of you to have kept Honora in a dead and alive place like
Rivington all these years! I think she's an angel to have stood it. Men
are beyond me. Do you know what an attractive wife you've got? I've just
been telling her that there wasn't a woman at my tea who compared with
her, and the men were crazy about her."

"That's the reason I live down there," proclaimed Howard, as he finished
his first glass of champagne.

"Honora," demanded Mrs. Dallam, ignoring his bravado, "why don't you take
a house at Quicksands? You'd love it, and you'd look simply divine in a
bathing suit. Why don't you come down?"

"Ask Howard," replied Honora, demurely.

"Well, Lily, I'll own up I have been considering it a little," that
gentleman admitted with gravity. "But I haven't decided anything. There
are certain drawbacks--"

"Drawbacks!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "Drawbacks at Quicksands! I'd like to
know what they are. Don't be silly, Howard. You get more for your money
there than any place I know." Suddenly the light of an inspiration came
into her eyes, and she turned to her husband. "Sid, the Alfred Fern house
is for rent, isn't it?"

"I think it must be, Lily," replied Mr. Dallam.

"Sometimes I believe I'm losing my mind," declared Mrs. Dallam. "What an
imbecile I was not to think of it! It's a dear, Honora, not five minutes
from the Club, with the sweetest furniture, and they just finished it
last fall. It would be positively wicked not to take it, Howard. They
couldn't have failed more opportunely. I'm sorry for Alfred, but I always
thought Louise Fern a little snob. Sid, you must see Alfred down town the
first thing in the morning and ask him what's the least he'll rent it
for. Tell him I wish to know."

"But--my dear Lily--began Mr. Dallam apologetically.

"There!" complained his wife, "you're always raising objections to my
most charming and sensible plans. You act as though you wanted Honora and
Howard to stay in Rivington."

"My dear Lily!" he protested again. And words failing him, he sought by a
gesture to disclaim such a sinister motive for inaction.

"What harm can it do?" she asked plaintively. "Howard doesn't have to
rent the house, although it would be a sin if he didn't. Find out the
rent in the morning, Sid, and we'll all four go down on Sunday and look
at it, and lunch at the Quicksands Club. I'm sure I can get out of my
engagement at Laura Dean's--this is so important. What do you say,
Honora?"

"I think it would be delightful," said Honora.




CHAPTER V

QUICKSANDS

To convey any adequate idea of the community familiarly known as
Quicksands a cinematograph were necessary. With a pen we can only
approximate the appearance of the shifting grains at any one time. Some
households there were, indeed, which maintained a precarious though
seemingly miraculous footing on the surface, or near it, going under for
mere brief periods, only to rise again and flaunt men-servants in the
face of Providence.

There were real tragedies, too, although a casual visitor would never
have guessed it. For tragedies sink, and that is the end of them. The
cinematograph, to be sure, would reveal one from time to time, coming
like a shadow across an endless feast, and gone again in a flash. Such
was what might appropriately be called the episode of the Alfred Ferns.
After three years of married life they had come, they had rented; the
market had gone up, they had bought and built--upon the sands. The
ancient farmhouse which had stood on the site had been torn down as
unsuited to a higher civilization, although the great elms which had
sheltered it had been left standing, in grave contrast to the twisted
cedars and stunted oaks so much in evidence round about.

The Ferns--or rather little Mrs. Fern--had had taste, and the new house
reflected it. As an indication of the quality of imagination possessed by
the owners, the place was called "The Brackens." There was a long porch
on the side of the ocean, but a view of the water was shut off from it by
a hedge which, during the successive ownerships of the adjoining
property, had attained a height of twelve feet. There was a little toy
greenhouse connecting with the porch (an "economy" indulged in when the
market had begun to go the wrong way for Mr. Fern). Exile, although
unpleasant, was sometimes found necessary at Quicksands, and even
effective.

Above all things, however, if one is describing Quicksands, one must not
be depressing. That is the unforgiveable sin there. Hence we must touch
upon these tragedies lightly.

If, after walking through the entrance in the hedge that separated the
Brackens from the main road, you turned to the left and followed a
driveway newly laid out between young poplars, you came to a mass of
cedars. Behind these was hidden the stable. There were four stalls, all
replete with brass trimmings, and a box, and the carriage-house was made
large enough for the break which Mr. Fern had been getting ready to buy
when he had been forced, so unexpectedly, to change his mind.

If the world had been searched, perhaps, no greater contrast to Rivington
could have been found than this delightful colony of quicksands, full of
life and motion and colour, where everybody was beautifully dressed and
enjoying themselves. For a whole week after her instalment Honora was in
a continual state of excitement and anticipation, and the sound of wheels
and voices on the highroad beyond the hedge sent her peeping to her
curtains a dozen times a day. The waking hours, instead of burdens, were
so many fleeting joys. In the morning she awoke to breathe a new,
perplexing, and delicious perfume--the salt sea breeze stirring her
curtains: later, she was on the gay, yellow-ochre beach with Lily Dallam,
making new acquaintances; and presently stepping, with a quiver of fear
akin to delight, into the restless, limitless blue water that stretched
southward under a milky haze: luncheon somewhere, more new acquaintances,
and then, perhaps, in Lily's light wood victoria to meet the train of
trains. For at half-past five the little station, forlorn all day long in
the midst of the twisted cedars that grew out of the heated sand, assumed
an air of gayety and animation. Vehicles of all sorts drew up in the open
space before it, wagonettes, phaetons, victorias, high wheeled hackney
carts, and low Hempstead carts: women in white summer gowns and veils
compared notes, or shouted invitations to dinner from carriage to
carriage. The engine rolled in with a great cloud of dust, the horses
danced, the husbands and the overnight guests, grimy and brandishing
evening newspapers, poured out of the special car where they had sat in
arm-chairs and talked stocks all the way from Long Island City. Some were
driven home, it is true; some to the beach, and others to the Quicksands
Club, where they continued their discussions over whiskey-and-sodas
until it was time to have a cocktail and dress for dinner.

Then came the memorable evening when Lily Dallam gave a dinner in honour
of Honora, her real introduction to Quicksands. It was characteristic of
Lily that her touch made the desert bloom. Three years before Quicksands
had gasped to hear that the Sidney Dallams had bought the Faraday house
--or rather what remained of it.

"We got it for nothing," Lily explained triumphantly on the occasion of
Honora's first admiring view. "Nobody would look at it, my dear."

It must have been this first price, undoubtedly, that appealed to Sidney
Dallam, model for all husbands: to Sidney, who had had as much of an idea
of buying in Quicksands as of acquiring a Scotch shooting box. The
"Faraday place" had belonged to the middle ages, as time is reckoned in
Quicksands, and had lain deserted for years, chiefly on account of its
lugubrious and funereal aspect. It was on a corner. Two "for rent" signs
had fallen successively from the overgrown hedge: some fifty feet back
from the road, hidden by undergrowth and in the tenebrous shades of huge
larches and cedars, stood a hideous, two-storied house with a mansard
roof, once painted dark red.

The magical transformation of all this into a sunny, smiling, white villa
with red-striped awnings and well-kept lawns and just enough shade had
done no little towards giving to Lily Dallam that ascendency which she
had acquired with such startling rapidity in the community. When Honora
and Howard drove up to the door in the deepening twilight, every window
was a yellow, blazing square, and above the sound of voices rose a waltz
from "Lady Emmeline" played with vigour on the piano. Lily Dallam greeted
Honora in the little room which (for some unexplained reason) was known
as the library, pressed into service at dinner parties as the ladies'
dressing room.

"My dear, how sweet you look in that coral! I've been so lucky to-night,"
she added in Honora's ear; "I've actually got Trixy Brent for you."

Our heroine was conscious of a pleasurable palpitation as she walked with
her hostess across the little entry to the door of the drawing-room,
where her eyes encountered an inviting and vivacious scene. Some ten or a
dozen guests, laughing and talking gayly, filled the spaces between the
furniture; an upright piano was embedded in a corner, and the lady who
had just executed the waltz had swung around on the stool, and was
smiling up at a man who stood beside her with his hand in his pocket. She
was a decided brunette, neither tall nor short, with a suggestion of
plumpness.

"That's Lula Chandos," explained Lily Dallam in her usual staccato,
following Honora's gaze, "at the piano, in ashes of roses. She's stopped
mourning for her husband. Trixy told her to-night she'd discarded the
sackcloth and kept the ashes. He's awfully clever. I don't wonder that
she's crazy about him, do you? He's standing beside her."

Honora took a good look at the famous Trixy, who resembled a certain type
of military Englishman. He had close-cropped hair and a close-cropped
mustache; and his grey eyes, as they rested amusedly on Mrs. Chandos,
seemed to have in them the light of mockery.

"Trixy!" cried his hostess, threading her way with considerable skill
across the room and dragging Honora after her, "Trixy, I want to
introduce you to Mrs. Spence. Now aren't you glad you came!"

It was partly, no doubt, by such informal introductions that Lily Dallam
had made her reputation as the mistress of a house where one and all had
such a good time. Honora, of course, blushed to her temples, and
everybody laughed--even Mrs. Chandos.

"Glad," said Mr. Brent, with his eyes on Honora, "does not quite express
it. You usually have a supply of superlatives, Lily, which you might have
drawn on."

"Isn't he irrepressible?" demanded Lily Dallam, delightedly, "he's always
teasing."

It was running through Honora's mind, while Lily Dallam's characteristic
introductions of the other guests were in progress, that "irrepressible"
was an inaccurate word to apply to Mr. Brent's manner. Honora could not
define his attitude, but she vaguely resented it. All of Lily's guests
had the air of being at home, and at that moment a young gentleman named
Charley Goodwin, who was six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds,
was loudly demanding cocktails. They were presently brought by a rather
harassed-looking man-servant.

"I can't get over how well you look in that gown, Lula," declared Mrs.
Dallam, as they went out to dinner. "Trixy, what does she remind you of?"

"Cleopatra," cried Warry Trowbridge, with an attempt to be gallant.

"Eternal vigilance," said Mr. Brent, and they sat down amidst the
laughter, Lily Dallam declaring that he was horrid, and Mrs. Chandos
giving him a look of tender reproach. But he turned abruptly to Honora,
who was on his other side.

"Where did you drop down from, Mrs. Spence?" he inquired.

"Why do you take it for granted that I have dropped?" she asked sweetly.

He looked at her queerly for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

"Because you are sitting next to Lucifer," he said. "It's kind of me to
warn you, isn't it?"

"It wasn't necessary," replied Honora. "And besides, as a dinner
companion, I imagine Lucifer couldn't be improved on."

He laughed again.

"As a dinner companion!" he repeated. "So you would limit Lucifer to
dinners? That's rather a severe punishment, since we're neighbours."

"How delightful to have Lucifer as one's neighbour," said Honora,
avoiding his eyes. "Of course I've been brought up to believe that he was
always next door, so to speak, but I've never--had any proof of it until
now."

"Proof!" echoed Mr. Brent. "Has my reputation gone before me?"

"I smell the brimstone," said Honora.

He derived, apparently, infinite amusement from this remark likewise.

"If I had known I was to have the honour of sitting here, I should have
used another perfume," he replied. "I have several."

It was Honora's turn to laugh.

"They are probably for--commercial transactions, not for ladies," she
retorted. "We are notoriously fond of brimstone, if it is not too strong.
A suspicion of it."

Her colour was high, and she was surprised at her own vivacity. It seemed
strange that she should be holding her own in this manner with the
renowned Trixton Brent. No wonder, after four years of Rivington, that
she tingled with an unwonted excitement.

At this point Mr. Brent's eye fell upon Howard, who was explaining
something to Mrs. Trowbridge at the far end of the table.

"What's your husband like?" he demanded abruptly.

Honora was a little taken aback, but recovered sufficiently to retort:
"You'd hardly expect me to give you an unprejudiced judgment."

"That's true," he agreed significantly.

"He's everything," added Honora, "that is to be expected in a husband."

"Which isn't much, in these days," declared Mr. Brent.

"On the contrary," said Honora.

"What I should like to know is why you came to Quicksands," said Mr.
Brent.

"For a little excitement," she replied. "So far, I have not been
disappointed. But why do you ask that question?" she demanded, with a
slight uneasiness. "Why did you come here?"

"Oh," he said, "you must remember that I'm--Lucifer, a citizen of the
world, at home anywhere, a sort of 'freebooter. I'm not here all the
time--but that's no reflection on Quicksands. May I make a bet with you,
Mrs. Spence?"

"What about?"

"That you won't stay in Quicksands more than six months," he answered.

"Why do you say that?" she asked curiously.

He shook his head.

"My experience with your sex," he declared enigmatically, "has not been a
slight one."

"Trixy!" interrupted Mrs. Chandos at this juncture, from his other side,
"Warry Trowbridge won't tell me whether to sell my Consolidated Potteries
stock."

"Because he doesn't know," said Mr. Brent, laconically, and readdressed
himself to Honora, who had, however, caught a glimpse of Mrs. Chandos'
face.

"Don't you think it's time for you to talk to Mrs. Chandos?" she asked.

"What for?"

"Well, for one reason, it is customary, out of consideration for the
hostess, to assist in turning the table."

"Lily doesn't care," he said.

"How about Mrs. Chandos? I have an idea that she does care."

He made a gesture of indifference.

"And how about me?" Honora continued. "Perhaps--I'd like to talk to Mr.
Dallam."

"Have you ever tried it?" he demanded.

Over her shoulder she flashed back at him a glance which he did not
return. She had never, to tell the truth, given her husband's partner
much consideration. He had existed in her mind solely as an obliging
shopkeeper with whom Lily had unlimited credit, and who handed her over
the counter such things as she desired. And to-night, in contrast to
Trixton Brent, Sidney Dallam suggested the counter more than ever before.
He was about five and forty, small, neatly made, with little hands and
feet; fast growing bald, and what hair remained to him was a jet black.
His suavity of manner and anxious desire to give one just the topic that
pleased had always irritated Honora.

Good shopkeepers are not supposed to have any tastes, predilections, or
desires of their own, and it was therefore with no little surprise that,
after many haphazard attempts, Honora discovered Mr, Dallam to be
possessed by one all-absorbing weakness. She had fallen in love, she
remarked, with little Sid on the beach, and Sidney Dallam suddenly became
transfigured. Was she fond of children? Honora coloured a little, and
said "yes." He confided to her, with an astonishing degree of feeling,
that it had been the regret of his life he had not had more children.
Nobody, he implied, who came to his house had ever exhibited the proper
interest in Sid.

"Sometimes," he said, leaning towards her confidentially, "I slip
upstairs for a little peep at him after dinner."

"Oh," cried Honora, "if you're going to-night mayn't I go with you? I'd
love to see him in bed."

"Of course I'll take you," said Sidney Dallam, and he looked at her so
gratefully that she coloured again.

"Honora," said Lily Dallam, when the women were back in the drawing-room,
"what did you do to Sid? You had him beaming--and he hates dinner
parties."

"We were talking about children," replied Honora, innocently.

"Children!"

"Yes," said Honora, "and your husband has promised to take me up to the
nursery."

"And did you talk to Trixy about children, too?" cried Lily, laughing,
with a mischievous glance at Mrs. Chandos.

"Is he interested in them?" asked Honora.

"You dear!" cried Lily, "you'll be the death of me. Lula, Honora wants to
know whether Trixy is interested in children."

Mrs. Chandos, in the act of lighting a cigarette, smiled sweetly.

"Apparently he is," she said.

"It's time he were, if he's ever going to be," said Honora, just as
sweetly.

Everybody laughed but Mrs. Chandos, who began to betray an intense
interest in some old lace in the corner of the room.

"I bought it for nothing, my dear," said Mrs. Dallam, but she pinched
Honora's arm delightedly. "How wicked of you!" she whispered, "but it
serves her right."

In the midst of the discussion of clothes and house rents and other
people's possessions, interspersed with anecdotes of a kind that was new
to Honora, Sidney Dallam appeared at the door and beckoned to her.

"How silly of you, Sid!" exclaimed his wife; "of course she doesn't want
to go."

"Indeed I do," protested Honora, rising with alacrity and following her
host up the stairs. At the end of a hallway a nurse, who had been reading
beside a lamp, got up smilingly and led the way on tiptoe into the
nursery, turning on a shaded electric light. Honora bent over the crib.
The child lay, as children will, with his little yellow head resting on
his arm. But in a moment, as she stood gazing at him, he turned and
opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she stooped and kissed him.

"Where's Daddy?" he demanded.

"We've waked him!" said Honora, remorsefully.

"Daddy," said the child, "tell me a story."

The nurse looked at Dallam reproachfully, as her duty demanded, and yet
she smiled. The noise of laughter reached them from below.

"I didn't have any to-night," the child pleaded.

"I got home late," Dallam explained to Honora, and, looking at the nurse,
pleaded in his turn; "just one."

"Just a tiny one," said the child.

"It's against all rules, Mr. Dallam," said the nurse, "but--he's been
very lonesome to-day."

Dallam sat down on one side of him, Honora on the other.

"Will you go to sleep right away if I do, Sid?" he asked.

The child shut his eyes very tight.

"Like that," he promised.

It was not the Sidney Dallam of the counting-room who told that story,
and Honora listened with strange sensations which she did not attempt to
define.

"I used to be fond of that one when I was a youngster," he explained
apologetically to her as they went out, and little Sid had settled
himself obediently on the pillow once more. "It was when I dreamed," he
added, "of less prosaic occupations than the stock market."

Sidney Dallam had dreamed!

Although Lily Dallam had declared that to leave her house before midnight
was to insult her, it was half-past eleven when Honora and her husband
reached home. He halted smilingly in her doorway as she took off her wrap
and laid it over a chair.

"Well, Honora," he asked, "how do you like--the whirl of fashion?"

She turned to him with one of those rapid and bewildering movements that
sometimes characterized her, and put her arms on his shoulders.

"What a dear old stay-at-home you were, Howard," she said. "I wonder what
would have happened to you if I hadn't rescued you in the nick of time!
Own up that you like--a little variety in life."

Being a man, he qualified his approval.

"I didn't have a bad time," he admitted. "I had a talk with Brent after
dinner, and I think I've got him interested in a little scheme. It's a
strange thing that Sid Dallam was never able to do any business with him.
If I can put this through, coming to Quicksands will have been worth
while." He paused a moment, and added: "Brent seems to have taken quite a
shine to you, Honora."

She dropped her arms, and going over to her dressing table, unclasped a
pin on the front of her gown.

"I imagine," she answered, in an indifferent tone, "that he acts so with
every new woman he meets."

Howard remained for a while in the doorway, seemingly about to speak.
Then he turned on his heel, and she heard him go into his own room.

Far into the night she lay awake, the various incidents of the evening,
like magic lantern views, thrown with bewildering rapidity on the screen
of her mind. At last she was launched into life, and the days of her
isolation gone by forever. She was in the centre of things. And yet
--well, nothing could be perfect. Perhaps she demanded too much. Once or
twice, in the intimate and somewhat uproarious badinage that had been
tossed back and forth in the drawing-room after dinner, her delicacy had
been offended: an air of revelry had prevailed, enhanced by the arrival
of whiskey-and-soda on a tray. And at the time she had been caught up by
an excitement in the grip of which she still found herself. She had been
aware, as she tried to talk to Warren Trowbridge, of Trixton Brent's
glance, and of a certain hostility from Mrs. Chandos that caused her now
to grow warm with a kind of shame when she thought of it. But she could
not deny that this man had for her a fascination. There was in him an
insolent sense of power, of scarcely veiled contempt for the company in
which he found himself. And she asked herself, in this mood of
introspection, whether a little of his contempt for Lily Dallam's guests
had not been communicated from him to her.

When she had risen to leave, he had followed her into the entry. She
recalled him vividly as he had stood before her then, a cigar in one hand
and a lighted match in the other, his eyes fixed upon her with a
singularly disquieting look that was tinged, however, with amusement.
"I'm coming to see you," he announced.

"Do be careful," she had cried, "you'll burn yourself!"

"That," he answered, tossing away the match, "is to be expected."

She laughed nervously.

"Good night," he added, "and remember my bet."

What could he have meant when he had declared that she would not remain
in Quicksands?




CHAPTER VI

GAD AND MENI

There was an orthodox place of worship at Quicksands, a temple not merely
opened up for an hour or so on Sunday mornings to be shut tight during
the remainder of the week although it was thronged with devotees on the
Sabbath. This temple, of course, was the Quicksands Club. Howard Spence
was quite orthodox; and, like some of our Puritan forefathers, did not
even come home to the midday meal on the first day of the week. But a
certain instinct of protest and of nonconformity which may have been
remarked in our heroine sent her to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea--by no means
so well attended as the house of Gad and Meni. She walked home in a
pleasantly contemplative state of mind through a field of daisies, and
had just arrived at the hedge m front of the Brackens when the sound of
hoofs behind her caused her to turn. Mr. Trixton Brent, very firmly
astride of a restive, flea-bitten polo pony, surveyed her amusedly.

"Where have you been?" said he.

"To church," replied Honora, demurely.

"Such virtue is unheard of in Quicksands."

"It isn't virtue," said Honora.

"I had my doubts about that, too," he declared.

"What is it, then?" she asked laughingly, wondering why he had such a
faculty of stirring her excitement and interest.

"Dissatisfaction," was his prompt reply.

"I don't see why you say that," she protested.

"I'm prepared to make my wager definite," said he. "The odds are a
thoroughbred horse against a personally knitted worsted waistcoat that
you won't stay in Quicksands six months."

"I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense," said Honora, "and besides, I can't
knit."

There was a short silence during which he didn't relax his disconcerting
stare.

"Won't you come in?" she asked. "I'm sorry Howard isn't home."

"I'm not," he said promptly. "Can't you come over to my box for lunch?
I've asked Lula Chandos and Warry Trowbridge."

It was not without appropriateness that Trixton Brent called his house
the "Box." It was square, with no pretensions to architecture whatever,
with a porch running all the way around it. And it was literally filled
with the relics of the man's physical prowess cups for games of all
descriptions, heads and skins from the Bitter Roots to Bengal, and masks
and brushes from England. To Honora there was an irresistible and
mysterious fascination in all these trophies, each suggesting a finished
--and some perhaps a cruel--performance of the man himself. The cups were
polished until they beat back the light like mirrors, and the glossy bear
and tiger skins gave no hint of dying agonies.

Mr. Brent's method with women, Honora observed, more resembled the noble
sport of Isaac Walton than that of Nimrod, but she could not deny that
this element of cruelty was one of his fascinations. It was very evident
to a feminine observer, for instance, that Mrs. Chandos was engaged in a
breathless and altogether desperate struggle with the slow but inevitable
and appalling Nemesis of a body and character that would not harmonize.
If her figure grew stout, what was to become of her charm as an 'enfant
gate'? Her host not only perceived, but apparently derived great
enjoyment out of the drama of this contest. From self-indulgence to
self-denial--even though inspired by terror--is a far cry. And Trixton
Brent had evidently prepared his menu with a satanic purpose.

"What! No entree, Lula? I had that sauce especially for you."

"Oh, Trixy, did you really? How sweet of you!" And her liquid eyes
regarded, with an almost equal affection, first the master and then the
dish. "I'll take a little," she said weakly; "it's so bad for my gout."

"What," asked Trixton Brent, flashing an amused glance at Honora, "are
the symptoms of gout, Lula? I hear a great deal about that trouble these
days, but it seems to affect every one differently."

Mrs. Chandos grew very red, but Warry Trowbridge saved her.

"It's a swelling," he said innocently.

Brent threw back his head and laughed.

"You haven't got it anyway, Warry," he cried.

Mr. Trowbridge, who resembled a lean and greying Irish terrier,
maintained that he had.

"It's a pity you don't ride, Lula. I understand that that's one of the
best preventives--for gout. I bought a horse last week that would just
suit you--an ideal woman's horse. He's taken a couple of blue ribbons
this summer."

"I hope you will show him to us, Mr. Brent," exclaimed Honora, in a
spirit of kindness.

"Do you ride?" he demanded.

"I'm devoted to it," she declared.

It was true. For many weeks that spring, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
mornings, she had gone up from Rivington to Harvey's Riding Academy, near
Central Park. Thus she had acquired the elements of the equestrian art,
and incidentally aroused the enthusiasm of a riding-master.

After Mrs. Chandos had smoked three of the cigarettes which her host
specially imported from Egypt, she declared, with no superabundance of
enthusiasm, that she was ready to go and see what Trixy had in the
"stables." In spite of that lady's somewhat obvious impatience, Honora
insisted upon admiring everything from the monogram of coloured sands so
deftly woven on the white in the coach house, to the hunters and polo
ponies in their rows of boxes. At last Vercingetorix, the latest
acquisition of which Brent had spoken, was uncovered and trotted around
the ring.

"I'm sorry, Trixy, but I've really got to leave," said Mrs. Chandos. "And
I'm in such a predicament! I promised Fanny Darlington I'd go over there,
and it's eight miles, and both my horses are lame."

Brent turned to his coachman.

"Put a pair in the victoria right away and drive Mrs. Chandos to Mrs.
Darlington's," he said.

She looked at him, and her lip quivered.

"You always were the soul of generosity, Trixy, but why the victoria?"

"My dear Lula," he replied, "if there's any other carriage you prefer--?"

Honora did not hear the answer, which at any rate was scarcely audible.
She moved away, and her eyes continued to follow Vercingetorix as he
trotted about the tan-bark after a groom. And presently she was aware
that Trixton Brent was standing beside her.

"What do you think of him?" he asked.

"He's adorable," declared Honora. Would you like to try him?"

"Oh--might I? Sometime?"

"Why not to-day--now?" he said. "I'll send him over to your house and
have your saddle put on him."

Before Honora could protest Mrs. Chandos came forward.

"It's awfully sweet of you, Trixy, to offer to send me to Fanny's, but
Warry says he will drive me over. Good-by, my dear," she added, holding
out her hand to Honora.

"I hope you enjoy your ride."

Mr. Trowbridge's phaeton was brought up, Brent helped Mrs. Chandos in,
and stood for a moment gazing after her. Amusement was still in his eyes
as he turned to Honora.

"Poor Lula!" he said. "Most women could have done it better than that
--couldn't they?"

"I think you were horrid to her," exclaimed Honora, indignantly. "It
wouldn't have hurt you to drive her to Mrs. Darlington's."

It did not occur to her that her rebuke implied a familiarity at which
they had swiftly but imperceptibly arrived.

"Oh, yes, it would hurt me," said he. "I'd rather spend a day in jail
than drive with Lula in that frame of mind. Tender reproaches, and all
that sort of thing, you know although I can't believe you ever indulge in
them. Don't," he added.

In spite of the fact that she was up in arms for her sex, Honora smiled.

"Do you know," she said slowly, "I'm beginning to think you are a brute."

"That's encouraging," he replied.

"And fickle."

"Still more encouraging. Most men are fickle. We're predatory animals."

"It's just as well that I am warned," said Honora. She raised her parasol
and picked up her skirts and shot him a look. Although he did not
resemble in feature the great if unscrupulous Emperor of the French, he
reminded her now of a picture she had once seen of Napoleon and a lady;
the lady obviously in a little flutter under the Emperor's scrutiny. The
picture had suggested a probable future for the lady.

"How long will it take you to dress?" he asked.

"To dress for what?"

"To ride with me."

"I'm not going to ride with you," she said, and experienced a tingle of
satisfaction from his surprise.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"In the first place, because I don't want to; and in the second, because
I'm expecting Lily Dallam."

"Lily never keeps an engagement," he said.

"That's no reason why I shouldn't," Honora answered.

"I'm beginning to think you're deuced clever," said he.

"How unfortunate for me!" she exclaimed.

He laughed, although it was plain that he was obviously put out. Honora
was still smiling.

"Deuced clever," he repeated.

"An experienced moth," suggested Honora; "perhaps one that has been
singed a little, once or twice. Good-by--I've enjoyed myself immensely."

She glanced back at him as she walked down the path to the roadway. He
was still standing where she had left him, his feet slightly apart, his
hands in the pockets of his riding breeches, looking after her.

Her announcement of an engagement with Mrs. Dallam had been, to put it
politely, fiction. She spent the rest of the afternoon writing letters
home, pausing at periods to look out of the window. Occasionally it
appeared that her reflections were amusing. At seven o'clock Howard
arrived, flushed and tired after his day of rest.

"By the way, Honora, I saw Trixy Brent at the Club, and he said you
wouldn't go riding with him."

"Do you call him Trixy to his face?" she asked.

"What? No--but everyone calls him Trixy. What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," she replied. "Only--the habit every one has in Quicksands of
speaking of people they don't know well by their nicknames seems rather
bad taste."

"I thought you liked Quicksands," he retorted. "You weren't happy until
you got down here."

"It's infinitely better than Rivington," she said.

"I suppose," he remarked, with a little irritation unusual in him, "that
you'll be wanting to go to Newport next."

"Perhaps," said Honora, and resumed her letter. He fidgeted about the
room for a while, ordered a cocktail, and lighted a cigarette.

"Look here," he began presently, "I wish you'd be decent to Brent. He's a
pretty good fellow, and he's in with James Wing and that crowd of big
financiers, and he seems to have taken a shine to me probably because
he's heard of that copper deal I put through this spring."

Honora thrust back her writing pad, turned in her chair, and faced him.

"How 'decent' do you wish me to be?" she inquired.

"How decent?" he repeated.

"Yes."

He regarded her uneasily, took the cocktail which the maid offered him,
drank it, and laid down the glass.

He had had before, in the presence of his wife, this vague feeling of
having passed boundaries invisible to him. In her eyes was a curious
smile that lacked mirth, in her voice a dispassionate note that added to
his bewilderment.

"What do you mean, Honora?"

"I know it's too much to expect of a man to be as solicitous about his
wife as he is about his business," she replied. "Otherwise he would
hesitate before he threw her into the arms of Mr. Trixton Brent. I warn
you that he is very attractive to women."

"Hang it," said Howard, "I can't see what you're driving at. I'm not
throwing you into his arms. I'm merely asking you to be friendly with
him. It means a good deal to me--to both of us. And besides, you can take
care of yourself. You're not the sort of woman to play the fool."

"One never can tell," said Honora, "what may happen. Suppose I fell in
love with him?"

"Don't talk nonsense," he said.

"I'm not so sure," she answered, meditatively, "that it is nonsense. It
would be quite easy to fall in love with him. Easier than you imagine.
curiously. Would you care?" she added.

"Care!" he cried; "of course I'd care. What kind of rot are you talking?"

"Why would you care?"

"Why? What a darned idiotic question--"

"It's not really so idiotic as you think it is," she said. "Suppose I
allowed Mr. Brent to make love to me, as he's very willing to do, would
you be sufficiently interested to compete."

"To what?"

"To compete."

"But--but we're married."

She laid her hand upon her knee and glanced down at it.

"It never occurred to me until lately," she said, "how absurd is the
belief men still hold in these days that a wedding-ring absolves them
forever from any effort on their part to retain their wives' affections.
They regard the ring very much as a ball and chain, or a hobble to
prevent the women from running away, that they may catch them whenever
they may desire--which isn't often. Am I not right?"

He snapped his cigarette case.

"Darn it, Honora, you're getting too deep for me!" he exclaimed. "You
never liked those, Browning women down at Rivington, but if this isn't
browning I'm hanged if I know what it is. An attack of nerves, perhaps.
They tell me that women go all to pieces nowadays over nothing at all."

"That's just it," she agreed, "nothing at all!"

"I thought as much," he replied, eager to seize this opportunity of
ending a conversation that had neither head nor tail, and yet was
marvellously uncomfortable. "There! be a good girl, and forget it."

He stooped down suddenly to her face to kiss her, but she turned her face
in time to receive the caress on the cheek.

"The panacea!" she said.

He laughed a little, boyishly, as he stood looking down at her.

"Sometimes I can't make you out," he said. "You've changed a good deal
since I married you."

She was silent. But the thought occurred to her that a complete
absorption in commercialism was not developing.

"If you can manage it, Honora," he added with an attempt at lightness, "I
wish you'd have a little dinner soon, and ask Brent. Will you?"

"Nothing," she replied, "would give me greater pleasure."

He patted her on the shoulder and left the room whistling. But she sat
where she was until the maid came in to pull the curtains and turn on the
lights, reminding her that guests were expected.

          .....................

Although the circle of Mr. Brent's friends could not be said to include
any university or college presidents, it was, however, both catholic and
wide. He was hail fellow, indeed, with jockeys and financiers, great
ladies and municipal statesmen of good Irish stock. He was a lion who
roamed at large over a great variety of hunting grounds, some of which it
would be snobbish to mention; for many reasons he preferred Quicksands: a
man-eater, a woman-eater, and extraordinarily popular, nevertheless. Many
ladies, so it was reported, had tried to tame him: some of them he had
cheerfully gobbled up, and others after the briefest of inspections,
disdainfully thrust aside with his paw.

This instinct for lion taming, which the most spirited of women possess,
is, by the way, almost inexplicable to the great majority of the male
sex. Honora had it, as must have been guessed. But however our faith in
her may be justified by the ridiculous ease of her previous conquests, we
cannot regard without trepidation her entrance into the arena with this
particular and widely renowned king of beasts. Innocence pitted against
sophistry and wile and might.

Two of the preliminary contests we have already witnessed. Others, more
or less similar, followed during a period of two months or more. Nothing
inducing the excessive wagging of tongues,--Honora saw to that, although
Mrs. Chandos kindly took the trouble to warn our heroine,--a scene for
which there is unfortunately no space in this chronicle; an entirely
amicable, almost honeyed scene, in Honora's boudoir. Nor can a complete
picture of life at Quicksands be undertaken. Multiply Mrs. Dallam's
dinner-party by one hundred, Howard Silence's Sundays at the Club by
twenty, and one has a very fair idea of it. It was not precisely
intellectual. "Happy," says Montesquieu, "the people whose annals are
blank in history's book." Let us leave it at that.

Late one afternoon in August Honora was riding homeward along the ocean
road. The fragrant marshes that bordered it were a vivid green under the
slanting rays of the sun, and she was gazing across them at the breakers
crashing on the beach beyond. Trixton Brent was beside her.

"I wish you wouldn't stare at me so," she said, turning to him suddenly;
"it is embarrassing."

"How did you know I was looking at you?" he asked.

"I felt it."

He drew his horse a little nearer.

"Sometimes you're positively uncanny," she added.

He laughed.

"I rather like that castles-in-Spain expression you wore," he declared.

"Castles in Spain?"

"Or in some other place where the real estate is more valuable. Certainly
not in Quicksands."

"You are uncanny," proclaimed Honora, with conviction.

"I told you you wouldn't like Quicksands," said he.

"I've never said I didn't like it," she replied. "I can't see why you
assume that I don't."

"You're ambitious," he said. "Not that I think it a fault, when it's more
or less warranted. Your thrown away here, and you know it."

She made him a bow from the saddle.

"I have not been without a reward, at least," she answered, and looked at
him.

"I have," said he.

Honora smiled.

"I'm going to be your good angel, and help you get out of it," he
continued.

"Get out of what?"

"Quicksands."

"Do you think I'm in danger of sinking?" she asked. "And is it impossible
for me to get out alone, if I wished to?"

"It will be easier with my help," he answered. "You're clever enough to
realize that--Honora."

She was silent awhile.

"You say the most extraordinary things," she remarked presently.
"Sometimes I think they are almost--"

"Indelicate," he supplied.

She coloured.

"Yes, indelicate."

"You can't forgive me for sweeping away your rose-coloured cloud of
romance," he declared, laughing. "There are spades in the pack, however
much you may wish to ignore 'em. You know very well you don't like these
Quicksands people. They grate on your finer sensibilities, and all that
sort of thing. Come, now, isn't it so?"

She coloured again, and put her horse to the trot.

"Onwards and upwards," he cried. "Veni, vidi, vici, ascendi."

"It seems to me," she laughed, "that so much education is thrown away on
the stock market."

"Whether you will be any happier higher up," he went on, "God knows.
Sometimes I think you ought to go back to the Arcadia you came from. Did
you pick out Spence for an embryo lord of high finance?"

"My excuse is," replied Honora, "that I was very young, and I hadn't met
you."

Whether the lion has judged our heroine with astuteness, or done her a
little less than justice, must be left to the reader. Apparently he is
accepting her gentle lashings with a meek enjoyment. He assisted her to
alight at her own door, sent the horses home, and offered to come in and
give her a lesson in a delightful game that was to do its share in the
disintegration of the old and tiresome order of things--bridge. The lion,
it will be seen, was self-sacrificing even to the extent of double dummy.
He had picked up the game with characteristic aptitude abroad
--Quicksands had yet to learn it.

Howard Spence entered in the midst of the lesson.

"Hello, Brent," said he, genially, "you may be interested to know I got
that little matter through without a hitch to-day."

"I continue to marvel at you," said the lion, and made it no trumps.

Since this is a veracious history, and since we have wandered so far from
home and amidst such strange, if brilliant scenes, it must be confessed
that Honora, three days earlier, had entered a certain shop in New York
and inquired for a book on bridge. Yes, said the clerk, he had such a
treatise, it had arrived from England a week before. She kept it looked
up in her drawer, and studied it in the mornings with a pack of cards
before her.

Given the proper amount of spur, anything in reason can be mastered.





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


Volume 4.



CHAPTER VII

OF CERTAIN DELICATE MATTERS

In the religious cult of Gad and Meni, practised with such enthusiasm at
Quicksands, the Saints' days were polo days, and the chief of all
festivals the occasion of the match with the Banbury Hunt Club
--Quicksands's greatest rival. Rival for more reasons than one, reasons
too delicate to tell. Long, long ago there appeared in Punch a cartoon of
Lord Beaconsfield executing that most difficult of performances, an egg
dance. We shall be fortunate indeed if we get to the end of this chapter
without breaking an egg!

Our pen fails us in a description of that festival of festivals, the
Banbury one, which took place early in September. We should have to go
back to Babylon and the days of King Nebuchadnezzar. (Who turns out to
have been only a regent, by the way, and his name is now said to be
spelled rezzar). How give an idea of the libations poured out to Gad and
the shekels laid aside for Meni in the Quicksands Temple?

Honora privately thought that building ugly, and it reminded her of a
collection of huge yellow fungi sprawling over the ground. A few of the
inevitable tortured cedars were around it. Between two of the larger
buildings was wedged a room dedicated to the worship of Bacchus, to-day
like a narrow river-gorge at flood time jammed with tree-trunks--some of
them, let us say, water-logged--and all grinding together with an
intolerable noise like a battle. If you happened to be passing the
windows, certain more or less intelligible sounds might separate
themselves from the bedlam.

"Four to five on Quicksands!"

"That stock isn't worth a d--n!"

"She's gone to South Dakota."

Honora, however, is an heretic, as we know. Without going definitely into
her reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to her.
Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of Lily
Dallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as the
most innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.

The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artistic
sense. The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond, and
the polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground;
while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agile
little horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent an
added touch of colour and movement to the scene. Amongst them, Trixton
Brent most frequently caught the eye and held it. Once Honora perceived
him flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poised
lightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft of
a cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him. He played,
indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected;
and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which she
was surrounded, followed him with fascination. Occasionally his name
rippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and she
experienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it in
the mouths of these strangers.

From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparing
them unconsciously with her Quicksands friends. Some of them she had
remarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed to
her to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable. They had come
to-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places which
Honora knew only by name, and some had driven the twenty-five odd miles
from the bunting community of Banbury in coaches and even those new and
marvellous importations--French automobiles. When the game had ended, and
Lily Dallam was cajoling the club steward to set her tea-table at once, a
group of these visitors halted on the lawn, talking and laughing gayly.
Two of the younger men Honora recognized with a start, but for a moment
she could not place them--until suddenly she remembered that she had seen
them on her wedding trip at Hot Springs. The one who lisped was Mr.
Cuthbert, familiarly known as "Toots": the other, taller and slimmer and
paler, was Jimmy Wing. A third, the regularity of whose features made one
wonder at the perfection which nature could attain when she chose, who
had a certain Gallic appearance (and who, if the truth be told, might
have reminded an impartial eye of a slightly animated wax clothing
model), turned, stared, hesitated, and bowed to Lily Dallam.

"That's Reggie Farwel, who did my house in town," she whispered to
Honora. "He's never been near me since it was finished. He's utterly
ruined."

Honora was silent. She tried not to look at the group, in which there
were two women of very attractive appearance, and another man.

"Those people are so superior," Mrs. Dallam continued.

"I'm not surprised at Elsie Shorter. Ever since she married Jerry she's
stuck to the Graingers closer than a sister. That's Cecil Grainger, my
dear, the man who looks as though he were going to fall asleep any
moment. But to think of Abby Kame acting that way! Isn't it ridiculous,
Clara?" she cried, appealing to Mrs. Trowbridge. "They say that Cecil
Grainger never leaves her side. I knew her when she first married John
Kame, the dearest, simplest man that ever was. He was twenty years older
than Abby, and made his money in leather. She took the first steamer
after his funeral and an apartment in a Roman palace for the winter. As
soon as she decently could she made for England. The English will put up
with anybody who has a few million dollars, and I don't deny that Abby's
good-looking, and clever in her way. But it's absurd for her to come over
here and act as though we didn't exist. She needn't be afraid that I'll
speak to her. They say she became intimate with Bessie Grainger through
charities. One of your friend Mrs. Holt's charities, by the way, Honora.
Where are you going?"

For Honora had risen.

"I think I'll go home, Lily," she said; "I'm rather tired."

"Home!" exclaimed Mrs. Dallam. "What can you be thinking of, my dear?
Nobody ever goes home after the Banbury match. The fun has just begun,
and we're all to stay here for dinner and dance afterwards. And Trixy
Brent promised me faithfully he'd' come here for tea, as soon as he
dressed."

"I really can't stay, Lily. I--I don't feel up to it," said Honora,
desperately.

"And you can't know how I counted on you! You look perfectly fresh, my
dear."

Honora felt an overwhelming desire to hide herself, to be alone. In spite
of the cries of protest that followed her and drew--she thought--an
unnecessary and disagreeable attention to her departure, she threaded her
way among groups of people who stared after her. Her colour was high, her
heart beating painfully; a vague sense of rebellion and shame within her
for which she did not try to account. Rather than run the gantlet of the
crowded veranda she stepped out on the lawn, and there encountered
Trixton Brent. He had, in an incredibly brief time, changed from his polo
clothes to flannels and a straw hat. He looked at her and whistled, and
barred her passage.

"Hello!" he cried. "Hoity-toity! Where are we going in such a hurry?"

"Home," answered Honora, a little breathlessly, and added for his
deception, "the game's over, isn't it? I'm glad you won."

Mr. Brent, however, continued to gaze at her penetratingly, and she
avoided his eyes.

"But why are you rushing off like a flushed partridge?--no reference to
your complexion. Has there been a row?"

"Oh, no--I was just--tired. Please let me go."

"Being your good angel--or physician, as you choose--I have a
prescription for that kind of weariness," he said smilingly.
"I--anticipated such an attack. That's why I got into my clothes in such
record time."

"I don't know what you mean," faltered Honora. "You are always imagining
all sorts of things about me that aren't true."

"As a matter of fact," said Brent, "I have promised faithfully to do a
favor for certain friends of mine who have been clamouring to be
presented to you."

"I can't--to-day--Mr. Brent," she cried. "I really don't feel
like-meeting people. I told Lily Dallam I was going home."

The group, however, which had been the object of that lady's remarks was
already moving towards them--with the exception of Mrs. Shorter and Mr.
Farwell, who had left it. They greeted Mr. Brent with great cordiality.

"Mrs. Kame," he said, "let me introduce Mrs. Spence. And Mrs. Spence, Mr.
Grainger, Mr. Wing, and Mr. Cuthbert. Mrs. Spence was just going home."

"Home!" echoed Mrs. Kame, "I thought Quicksands people never went home
after a victory."

"I've scarcely been here long enough," replied Honora, "to have acquired
all of the Quicksands habits."

"Oh," said Mrs. Kame, and looked at Honora again. "Wasn't that Mrs.
Dallam you were with? I used to know her, years ago, but she doesn't
speak to me any more."

"Perhaps she thinks you've forgotten her," said Honora.

"It would be impossible to forget Mrs. Dallam," declared Mrs. Kame.

"So I should have thought," said Honora.

Trixton Brent laughed, and Mrs. Kame, too, after a moment's hesitation.
She laid her hand familiarly on Mr. Brent's arm.

"I haven't seen you all summer, Trixy," she said. "I hear you've been
here at Quicksands, stewing in that little packing-case of yours. Aren't
you coming into our steeplechase at Banbury.

"I believe you went to school with my sister," said young Mr. Wing.

"Oh, yes," answered Honora, somewhat surprised. "I caught a glimpse of
her once, in New York. I hope you will remember me to her."

"And I've seen you before," proclaimed Mr. Cuthbert, "but I can't for the
life of me think where."

Honora did not enlighten him.

"I shan't forget, at any rate, Mrs. Spence," said Cecil Grainger, who had
not taken his eyes from her, except to blink.

Mrs. Kame saved her the embarrassment of replying.

"Can't we go somewhere and play bridge," Trixy demanded.

"I'd be delighted to offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you
call it," said Brent, "but the dining-room ceiling fell down Wednesday,
and I'm having the others bolstered up as a mere matter of precaution."

"I suppose we couldn't get a fourth, anyway. Neither Jimmy nor Toots
plays. It's so stupid of them not to learn."

"Mrs. Spence might, help us out," suggested Brent.

"Do you play?" exclaimed Mrs. Kame, in a voice of mixed incredulity and
hope.

"Play!" cried Mr. Brent, "she can teach Jerry Shorter or the Duchess of
Taunton."

"The Duchess cheats," announced Cecil Grainger. "I caught her at it at
Cannes--"

"Indeed, I don't play very well," Honora interrupted him, "and besides--"

"Suppose we go over to Mrs. Spence's house," Trixton Brent suggested.
"I'm sure she'd like to have us wouldn't you, Mrs. Spence?"

"What a brilliant idea, Trixy!" exclaimed Mrs. Kame.

"I should be delighted," said Honora, somewhat weakly. An impulse made
her glance toward the veranda, and for a fraction of a second she caught
the eye of Lily Dallam, who turned again to Mrs. Chandos.

"I say," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I don't play--but I hope I may come along."

"And me too," chimed in Mr. Wing.

Honora, not free from a certain uneasiness of conscience, led the way to
the Brackens, flanked by Mr. Grainger and Mr. Cuthbert. Her frame of mind
was not an ideal one for a hostess; she was put out with Trixton Brent,
and she could not help wondering whether these people would have made
themselves so free with another house. When tea was over, however, and
the bridge had begun, her spirits rose; or rather, a new and strange
excitement took possession of her that was not wholly due to the novel
and revolutionary experience of playing, for money--and winning. Her star
being in the ascendant, as we may perceive. She had drawn Mrs. Kame for a
partner, and the satisfaction and graciousness of that lady visibly grew
as the score mounted: even the skill of Trixton Brent could not triumph
over the hands which the two ladies held.

In the intervals the talk wandered into regions unfamiliar to Honora, and
she had a sense that her own horizon was being enlarged. A new vista, at
least, had been cut: possibilities became probabilities. Even when Mrs.
Kame chose to ridicule Quicksands Honora was silent, so keenly did she
feel the justice of her guest's remarks; and the implication was that
Honora did not belong there. When train time arrived and they were about
to climb into Trixton Brent's omnibus--for which he had obligingly
telephoned--Mrs. Kame took Honora's band in both her own. Some good
thing, after all, could come out of this community--such was the
triumphant discovery the lady's manner implied.

"My dear, don't you ever come to Banbury?" she asked. I'd be so glad to
see you. I must get Trixy to drive you over some day for lunch. We've had
such a good time, and Cecil didn't fall asleep once. Quite a record. You
saved our lives, really."

"Are you going to be in town this winter?" Mr. Grainger inquired.

"I,--I suppose so--replied Honora, for the moment taken aback, although I
haven't decided just where."

"I shall look forward to seeing you," he said.

This hope was expressed even more fervently by Mr. Cuthbert and Mr. Wing,
and the whole party waved her a cordial good-by as the carriage turned
the circle. Trixton Brent, with his hands in his pockets, stood facing
her under the electric light on the porch.

"Well?" he said.

"Well," repeated Honora.

"Nice people," said Mr. Brent.

Honora bridled.

"You invited them here," she said. "I must say I think it, was rather
--presumptuous. And you've got me into no end of trouble with Lily
Dallam."

He laughed as he held open the screen door for her.

"I wonder whether a good angel was ever so abused," he said.

"A good angel," she repeated, smiling at him in spite of herself.

"Or knight-errant," he continued, "whichever you choose. You want to get
out of Quicksands--I'm trying to make it easy for you. Before you leave
you have to arrange some place to go. Before we are off with the old we'd
better be on with the new."

"Oh, please don't say such things," she cried, "they're so--so sordid."
She looked searchingly into his face. "Do I really seem to you like
that?"

Her lip was quivering, and she was still under the influence of the
excitement which the visit of these people had brought about.

"No," said Brent--coming very close to her, "no, you don't. That's the
extraordinary part of it. The trouble with you, Honora, is that you want
something badly very badly--and you haven't yet found out what it is.

"And you won't find out," he added, "until you have tried everything.
Therefore am I a good Samaritan, or something like it."

She looked at him with startled eyes, breathing deeply.

"I wonder if that is so!" she said, in a low voice.

"Not until you have had and broken every toy in the shop," he declared.
"Out of the mouths of men of the world occasionally issues wisdom. I'm
going to help you get the toys. Don't you think I'm kind?"

"And isn't this philanthropic mood a little new to you?" she asked.

"I thought I had exhausted all novelties," he answered. "Perhaps that's
the reason why I enjoy it."

She turned and walked slowly into the drawing-room, halted, and stood
staring at the heap of gold and yellow bills that Mr. Grainger had
deposited in front of the place where she had sat. Her sensation was akin
to sickness. She reached out with a kind of shuddering fascination and
touched the gold.

"I think," she said, speaking rather to herself than to Brent, "I'll give
it to charity."

"If it is possible to combine a meritorious act with good policy, I
should suggest giving it to Mrs. Grainger for the relief of oppressed
working girls," he said.

Honora started.

"I wonder why Howard doesn't come she exclaimed, looking at the clock.

"Probably because he is holding nothing but full hands and flushes,"
hazarded Mr. Brent. "Might I propose myself for dinner?"

"When so many people are clamouring for you?" she asked.

"Even so," he said.

"I think I'll telephone to the Club," said Honora, and left the room.

It was some time before her husband responded to the call; and then he
explained that if Honora didn't object, he was going to a man's dinner in
a private room. The statement was not unusual.

"But, Howard," she said, I--I wanted you particularly to-night."

"I thought you were going to dine with Lily Dallam. She told me you were.
Are you alone?"

"Mr. Brent is here. He brought over some Banbury people to play bridge.
They've gone."

"Oh, Brent will amuse you," he replied. "I didn't know you were going to
be home, and I've promised these men. I'll come back early."

She hung up the receiver thoughtfully, paused a moment, and went back to
the drawing-room. Brent looked up.

"Well," he said, "was I right?"

"You seem always to be right," Honora, sighed.

After dinner they sat in the screened part of the porch which Mrs. Fern
had arranged very cleverly as an outside room. Brent had put a rug over
Honora's knees, for the ocean breath that stirred the leaves was cold.
Across the darkness fragments of dance music drifted fitfully from the
Club, and died away; and at intervals, when the embers of his cigar
flared up, she caught sight of her companion's face.

She found him difficult to understand. There are certain rules of thumb
in every art, no doubt,--even in that most perilous one of lion-taming.
But here was a baffling, individual lion. She liked him best, she told
herself, when he purred platonically, but she could by no means be sure
that his subjection was complete. Sometimes he had scratched her in his
play. And however natural it is to desire a lion for one's friend, to be
eaten is both uncomfortable and inglorious.

"That's, a remarkable husband of yours," he said at length.

"I shouldn't have said that you were a particularly good judge of
husbands," she retorted, after a moment of surprise.

He acknowledged with a laugh the justice of this observation.

"I stand corrected. He is by no means a remarkable husband. Permit me to
say he is a remarkable man."

"What makes you think so?" asked Honora, considerably disturbed.

"Because he induced you to marry him, for one thing," said Brent. "Of
course he got you before you knew what you were worth, but we must give
him credit for discovery and foresight."

"Perhaps," Honora could not resist replying, "perhaps he didn't know what
he was getting."

"That's probably true," Brent assented, "or he'd be sitting here now,
where I am, instead of playing poker. Although there is something in
matrimony that takes the bloom off the peach."

"I think that's a horrid, cynical remark," said Honora.

"Well," he said, "we speak according to our experiences--that is, if
we're not inclined to be hypocritical. Most women are."

Honora was silent. He had thrown away his cigar, and she could no longer
see his face. She wondered whither he was leading.

"How would you like to see your husband president of a trust company?" he
said suddenly.

"Howard--president of a trust company!" she exclaimed.

"Why not?" he demanded. And added enigmatically, "Smaller men have been."

"I wish you wouldn't joke about Howard," she said.

"How does the idea strike you?" he persisted. "Ambition satisfied
--temporarily; Quicksands a mile-stone on a back road; another toy to
break; husband a big man in the community, so far as the eye can see;
visiting list on Fifth Avenue, and all that sort of thing."

"I once told you you could be brutal," she said.

"You haven't told me what you thought of the idea."

"I wish you'd be sensible once in a while," she exclaimed.

"Howard Spence, President of the Orange Trust Company!" he recited. "I
suppose no man is a hero to his wife. Does it sound so incredible?"

It did. But Honora did not say so.

"What have I to do with it?" she asked, in pardonable doubt as to his
seriousness.

"Everything," answered Brent. "Women of your type usually have. They make
and mar without rhyme or reason--set business by the ears, alter the gold
reserve, disturb the balance of trade, and nobody ever suspects it. Old
James Wing and I have got a trust company organized, and the building up,
and the man Wing wanted for president backed out."

Honora sat up.

"Why--why did he 'back out'?" she demanded.

"He preferred to stay where he was, I suppose," replied Brent, in another
tone. "The point is that the place is empty. I'll give it to YOU."

"To me?"

"Certainly," said Brent, "I don't pretend to care anything about your
husband. He'll do as well as the next man. His duties are pretty well
--defined."

Again she was silent. But after a moment dropped back in her chair and
laughed uneasily.

"You're preposterous," she said; "I can't think why I let you talk to me
in this way."




CHAPTER VIII

OF MENTAL PROCESSES--FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE

Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat
sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation
to a conspicuous position in the world of finance. Taken in any other
sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her
face burn when she thought of them. After he had gone--or rather after
she had dismissed him--she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but
she could not read. At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent
more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly
rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.

If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That
gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer
her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination failed
her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:

This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into
her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man--even
among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be
the better word--he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner.
He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the process in her brain when
she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked
ideals. Since in business matters he never had taken her into his
confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such
things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks
of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she
should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.

When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her
light, but still lay thinking in the darkness. Her revelations had
arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her, and
with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the
account. The hour was conducive to exaggerations. Perfection in husbands
was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her right
senses. He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous, although
definite news of that prosperity never came from him--Quicksands always
knew of it first. An instance of this second-hand acquisition of
knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much
dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room. There was no apparent
reason why dignity should not have been becoming to Lily Dallam, for she
was by no means an unimpressive-looking woman; but the assumption by her
of that quality always made her a little tragic or (if one chanced to be
in the humour--Honora was not) a little ridiculous.

"I suppose I have no pride," she said, as she halted within a few feet of
the doorway.

"Why, Lily!" exclaimed Honora, pushing back the chair from her desk, and
rising.

But Mrs. Dallam did not move.

"I suppose I have no pride," she repeated in a dead voice, "but I just
couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance."

"Giving me a chance?" said Honora.

"To explain--after the way you treated me at the polo game. If I hadn't
seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it. I don't think I
should have trusted my own eyes," Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm,
"if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and
seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it."

Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind.

"Do sit down, Lily," she begged. "If I've offended you in any way, I'm
exceedingly sorry--I am, really. You ought to know me well enough to
understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings."

"And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!"
continued Mrs. Dallam. "There were other women dying to come. And you
said you had a headache, and were tired."

"I was," began Honora, fruitlessly.

"And you were so popular in Quicksands--everybody was crazy about you.
You were so sweet and so unspoiled. I might have known that it couldn't
last. And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and--"

"Lily, please don't say such things!" Honora implored, revolted.

"Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or
Newport. But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a
horrid, selfish, fast lot," Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes
with her handkerchief. "I did love you."

"If you'll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,--" said Honora.

"Reasonable! I saw you with my own eyes. Five minutes after you left me
they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the
quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen."

"Lily," Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite
themselves to one's house, it's a little difficult to refuse them
hospitality, isn't it?"

"Invite themselves?"

"Yes," replied Honora. "If I weren't--fond of you, too, I shouldn't make
this explanation. I was tired. I never felt less like entertaining
strangers. They wanted to play bridge, there wasn't a quiet spot in the
Club where they could go. They knew I was on my way home, and they
suggested my house. That is how it happened."

Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.

"May I have one of Howard's cigarettes?" she asked, and added, after this
modest wish had been supplied, that's just like them. They're willing to
make use of anybody."

"I meant," said Honora, "to have gone to your house this morning and to
have explained how it happened."

Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.

"Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?", she asked.
"I'm sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it's exactly
like one I ordered on Tuesday."

The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted. That Honora
was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam's spirits restored may be inferred from her
final remark.

"My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand
dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper? Isn't it too lovely! I'm having a
little architect make me plans for a conservatory. You know I've always
been dying for one--I don't see how I've lived all these years without
it."

Honora, after her friend had gone, sat down in one of the wicker chairs
on the porch. She had a very vague idea as to how much twenty thousand
dollars was, but she reflected that while they had lived in Rivington
Howard must have made many similar sums, of which she was unaware.
Gradually she began to realize, however, that her resentment of the lack
of confidence of her husband was by no means the only cause of the
feeling that took possession of and overwhelmed her. Something like it
she had experienced before: to-day her thoughts seemed to run through her
in pulsations, like waves of heat, and she wondered that she could have
controlled herself while listening to Lily Dallam.

Mrs. Dallam's reproaches presented themselves to Honora in new aspects.
She began to feel now, with an intensity that frightened her, distaste
and rebellion. It was intolerable that she should be called to account
for the people she chose to have in her house, that any sort of pressure
should be brought to bear on her to confine her friends to Quicksands.
Treason, heresy, disloyalty to the cult of that community--in reality
these, and not a breach of engagement, were the things of which she had
been accused. She saw now. She would not be tied to Quicksands--she would
not, she would not, she would not! She owed it no allegiance. Her very
soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made for
something better, something higher than the life she had been leading.
She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.

Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did
not know; but the belief of her childhood--that it existed somewhere--was
still intact. Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding, and
she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so
unflaggingly sought. Of two of its attributes only she was sure--that it
was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons. Honora's
development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and
of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven
her to other books besides the treatise on bridge. The library she had
collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it
from time to time. Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or
profound to enumerate.

Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish
a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact
that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving
northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab. She was in a pleasurable state
of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have felt
when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon.
During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several
times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration,
courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the
ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.

The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle
and drew up at the curb. But even then a moment of irresolution
intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the
sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the
basement floor of the building.

"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.

Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to
the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it. It was
that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie
delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm
the slenderest of walking sticks.

"Mrs. Spence!" he lisped, with every appearance of joy.

"Mr. Cuthbert!" she cried.

"Going in to see Jerry?" he inquired after he had put on his hat, nodding
up at the sign.

"I--that is, yes, I had thought of it," she answered.

"Town house?" said Mr. Cuthbert, with a knowing smile.

"I did have an idea of looking at houses," she confessed, somewhat taken
aback.

"I'm your man," announced Mr. Cuthbert.

"You!" exclaimed Honora, with an air of considering the lilies of the
field. But he did not seem to take offence.

"That's my business," he proclaimed,--"when in town. Jerry gives me a
commission. Come in and see him, while I get a list and some keys. By the
way, you wouldn't object to telling him you were a friend of mine, would
you?"

"Not at all," said Honora, laughing.

Mr. Shorter was a jovial gentleman in loose-fitting clothes, and he was
exceedingly glad to meet Mr. Cuthbert's friend.

"What kind of a house do you want, Mrs. Spence?" he asked. "Cuthbert
tells me this morning that the Whitworth house has come into the market.
You couldn't have a better location than that, on the Avenue between the
Cathedral and the Park."

"Oh," said Honora with a gasp, "that's much too expensive, I'm sure. And
there are only two of us." She hesitated, a little alarmed at the
rapidity with which affairs were proceeding, and added: "I ought to tell
you that I've not really decided to take a house. I wished to--to see
what there was to be had, and then I should have to consult my husband."

She gazed very seriously into Mr. Shorter's brown eyes, which became very
wide and serious, too. But all the time it seemed to her that other parts
of him were laughing.

"Husbands," he declared, "are kill-joys. What have they got to do with a
house--except to sleep in it? Now I haven't the pleasure of knowing you
as well as I hope to one of these days, Mrs. Spence--"

"Oh, I say!" interrupted Mr. Cuthbert.

"But I venture to predict, on a slight acquaintance," continued Mr.
Shorter, undisturbed, "that you will pick out the house you want, and
that your husband will move into it."

Honora could not help laughing. And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his
revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her
to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not
appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys
and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr.
Shorter jerked himself upright again, and became very solemn.

"Where's my hat?" he demanded.

"What do you want with your hat?" Mr. Cuthbert inquired.

"Why, I'm going with you, of course," Mr. Shorter replied. "I've decided
to take a personal interest in this matter. You may regard my presence,
Cuthbert, as justified by an artistic passion for my profession. I should
never forgive myself if Mrs. Spence didn't get just the right house."

"Oh," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I'll manage that all right. I thought you were
going to see the representative of a syndicate at eleven."

Mr. Shorter, with a sigh, acknowledged this necessity, and escorted
Honora gallantly through the office and across the sidewalk to the
waiting hansom. Cuthbert got in beside her.

"Jerry's a joker," he observed as they drove off, "you mustn't mind him."

"I think he's delightful," said Honora.

"One wouldn't believe that a man of his size and appearance could be so
fond of women," said Mr. Cuthbert. "He's the greatest old lady-killer
that ever breathed. For two cents he would have come with us this
morning, and let a five thousand dollar commission go. Do you know Mrs.
Shorter?"

"No," replied Honora. "She looks most attractive. I caught a glimpse of
her at the polo that day with you."

"I've been at her house in Newport ever since. Came down yesterday to try
to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself agreeable.
"Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too. Always in a
tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a psychologist, and
tells novelists what to put into their next books and jurists how to
decide cases. Full of modern and liberal ideas--believes in free love and
all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry the dickens for practising it."

"Oh!" exclaimed Honora.

Mr. Cuthbert, however, did not appear to realize that he had shocked her.

"By the way," he asked, "have you seen Cecil Grainger since the
Quicksands game?"

"No," she replied. "Has Mr. Grainger been at Quicksands since?"

"Nobody knows where he's been," answered Mr. Cuthbert. "It's a mystery.
He hasn't been home--at Newport, I mean-for a fortnight. He's never
stayed away so long without letting any one know where he is. Naturally
they thought he was at Mrs. Kame's in Banbury, but she hasn't laid eyes
on him. It's a mystery. My own theory is that he went to sleep in a
parlour car and was sent to the yards, and hasn't waked up."

"And isn't Mrs. Grainger worried?" asked Honora.

"Oh, you never can tell anything about her," he said. "Do you know her?
She's a sphinx. All the Pendletons are Stoics. And besides, she's been so
busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think of
Cecil. Who's that?"

"That" was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora's former neighbours, to
whom she had bowed. Life, indeed, is full of contrasts. Mr. Cuthbert,
too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.

Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list,
and afterwards went through a succession of them. Once inside, Honora
would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would
raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded
furniture.

And the rents: Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a
year. Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert;
and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized
her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.

"I'm so much obliged to you," she said, "and I hope you'll forgive me for
wasting your time."

Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.

Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark. He assumed an
attitude of reflection.

"I imagine you wouldn't care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would
you? I didn't think to ask you."

"No," she replied, blushing a little, "I shouldn't care to go over as far
as that."

He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.

"I've got it!" he cried, "the very thing--why didn't. I think of it?
Dicky Farnham's house, or rather his wife's house. I'll get it straight
after a while,--she isn't his wife any more, you know; she married
Eustace Rindge last month. That's the reason it's for rent. Dicky says
he'll never get married again--you bet! They planned it together, laid
the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished
she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge. I saw her before she
sailed, and she begged me to rent it. But it isn't furnished."

"I might look at it," said Honora, dubiously.

"I'm sure it will just suit you," he declared with enthusiasm. "It's a
real find. We'll drive around by the office and get the keys."

The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far
below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little
oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real
estate agent--a most difficult thing to remember.

Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in
through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the
entire width of the house. Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of
the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood. Behind the little hall a
cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.
And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the
sideboard for such a setting.

On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and
boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.
Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need
not penetrate. The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert
thought extremely reasonable.

"Eight thousand dollars!" As she stood with her back turned, looking out
on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that
she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot
for that exact sum. And as cashier of Mr. Isham's bank, he did not earn
so much in a year.

She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the
task remained, of getting Howard into it. In the consideration of this
most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld
herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious. She was startled
out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the
part of Mr. Cuthbert.

"Oh, he'll come round all right, when he sees the house," that young
gentleman declared.

Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in
spite of herself. It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so
irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he
became; before one knew it, an accomplice. Had he not poured out to
Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial
troubles?

"I'm afraid he'll think it frightfully expensive," she answered, becoming
thoughtful once more. And it did not occur to her that neither of them
had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.

"Wait until he's feeling tiptop," Mr. Cuthbert advised, "and then bring
him up here in a hurry. I say, I hope you do take the house," he added,
with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with
him, "and that you will let me come and see you once in a while."

She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the
large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window. And by the
middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the
antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of
leather-seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to
hold them for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them.
In a similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not
until the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a
trim, familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed
blue waters of the river--Trixton Brent's. And presently, as though the
concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.

"Where have you been all this time?" she asked. "I haven't seen you for
an age."

"To Seattle."

"To Seattle!" she exclaimed. "What were you doing there?"

"Trying to forget you," he replied promptly, "and incidentally attempting
to obtain control of some properties. Both efforts, I may add, were
unsuccessful."

"I'm sorry," said Honora.

"And what mischief," he demanded, "have you been up to?"

"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.

"Preparing for the exodus," he hazarded.

"You surely don't expect me to stay in Quicksands all winter?" she
replied, a little guiltily.

"Quicksands," he declared, "has passed into history."

"You always insist upon putting a wrong interpretation upon what I do,"
she complained.

He laughed.

"What interpretation do you put on it?" he asked.

"A most natural and praiseworthy one," she answered. "Education,
improvement, growth--these things are as necessary for a woman as for a
man. Of course I don't expect you to believe that--your idea of women not
being a very exalted one."

He did not reply, for at that instant the bell rang, the passengers
pressed forward about them, and they were soon in the midst of the
confusion of a landing. It was not until they were seated in adjoining
chairs of the parlour-car that the conversation was renewed.

"When do you move to town?" he inquired.

However simple Mr. Brent's methods of reasoning may appear to others, his
apparent clairvoyance never failed to startle Honora.

"Somebody has told you that I've been looking at houses!" she exclaimed.

"Have you found one?"

She hesitated.

"Yes--I have found one. It belongs to some people named Farnham--they're
divorced."

"Dicky Farnham's ex-wife," he supplied. "I know where it is
--unexceptionable neighbourhood and all that sort of thing."

"And it's just finished," continued Honora, her enthusiasm gaining on her
as she spoke of the object which had possessed her mind for four hours.
"It's the most enchanting house, and so sunny for New York. If I had
built it myself it could not have suited me better. Only--"

"Only--" repeated Trixton Brent, smiling.

"Well," she said slowly, "I really oughtn't to talk about it. I--I
haven't said anything to Howard yet, and he may not like it. I ran across
it by the merest accident."

"What will you give me," he said, "if I can induce Howard to like it?"

"My eternal friendship," she laughed.

"That's not enough," said Trixton Brent.




CHAPTER IX

INTRODUCING A REVOLUTIONIZING VEHICLE

"Howard," said Honora that evening, "I've been going through houses
to-day."

"Houses!" he exclaimed, looking up from his newspaper.

"And I've been most fortunate," she continued. "I found one that Mrs.
Farnham built--she is now Mrs. Rindge. It is just finished, and so
attractive. If I'd looked until doomsday I couldn't have done any
better."

"But great Scott!" he ejaculated, "what put the notion of a town house
into your head?"

"Isn't it high time to be thinking of the winter?" she asked. "It's
nearly the end of September."

He was inarticulate for a few moments, in an evident desperate attempt to
rally his forces to meet such an unforeseen attack.

"Who said anything about going to town?" he inquired.

"Now, Howard, don't be foolish," she replied. "Surely you didn't expect
to stay in Quicksands all winter?"

"Foolish!" he repeated, and added inconsequently, "why not?"

"Because," said Honora, calmly, "I have a life to lead as well as you."

"But you weren't satisfied until you got to Quicksands, and now you want
to leave it."

"I didn't bargain to stay here in the winter," she declared. "You know
very well that if you were unfortunate it would be different. But you're
quite prosperous."

"How do you know?" he demanded unguardedly.

"Quicksands tells me," she said. "It is--a little humiliating not to have
more of your confidence, and to hear such things from outsiders."

"You never seemed interested in business matters," he answered uneasily.

"I should be," said Honora, "if you would only take the trouble to tell
me about them." She stood up. "Howard, can't you see that it is making
us--grow apart? If you won't tell me about yourself and what you're
doing, you drive me to other interests. I am your wife, and I ought to
know--I want to know. The reason I don't understand is because you've
never taken the trouble to teach me. I wish to lead my own life, it is
true--to develop. I don't want to be like these other women down here.
I--I was made for something better. I'm sure of it. But I wish my life to
be joined to yours, too--and it doesn't seem to be. And sometimes--I'm
afraid I can't explain it to you--sometimes I feel lonely and frightened,
as though I might do something desperate. And I don't know what's going
to become of me."

He laid down his newspaper and stared at her helplessly, with the air of
a man who suddenly finds himself at sea in a small boat without oars.

"Oh, you can't understand!" she cried. "I might have known you never
could."

He was, indeed, thoroughly perplexed and uncomfortable: unhappy might not
be too strong a word. He got up awkwardly and put his hand on her arm.
She did not respond. He drew her, limp and unresisting, down on the
lounge beside him.

"For heaven's sake, what is the matter, Honora?" he faltered. "I--I
thought we were happy. You were getting on all right, and seemed to be
having a good time down here. You never said anything about--this."

She turned her head and looked at him--a long, searching look with
widened eyes.

"No," she said slowly, "you don't understand. I suppose it isn't your
fault."

"I'll try," he said, "I don't like to see you--upset like this. I'll do
anything I can to make you happy."

"Not things, not--not toys," Trixton Brent's expression involuntarily
coming to her lips. "Oh, can't you see I'm not that kind of a woman? I
don't want to be bought. I want you, whatever you are, if you are. I want
to be saved. Take care of me--see a little more of me--be a little
interested in what I think. God gave me a mind, and--other men have
discovered it. You don't know, you can't know, what temptations you
subject me to. It isn't right, Howard. And oh, it is humiliating not to
be able to interest one's husband."

"But you do interest me," he protested.

She shook her head.

"Not so much as your business," she said; "not nearly so much."

"Perhaps I have been too absorbed," he confessed. "One thing has followed
another. I didn't suspect that you felt this way. Come, I'll try to brace
up." He pressed her to him. "Don't feel badly. You're overwrought. You've
exaggerated the situation, Honora. We'll go in on the eight o'clock train
together and look at the house--although I'm afraid it's a little steep,"
he added cautiously.

"I don't care anything about the house," said Honora. "I don't want it."

"There!" he said soothingly, "you'll feel differently in the morning.
We'll go and look at it, anyway."

Her quick ear, however, detected an undertone which, if not precisely
resentment, was akin to the vexation that an elderly gentleman might be
justified in feeling who has taken the same walk for twenty years, and is
one day struck by a falling brick. Howard had not thought of consulting
her in regard to remaining all winter in Quicksands. And, although he
might not realize it himself, if he should consent to go to New York one
reason for his acquiescence would be that the country in winter offered a
more or less favourable atmosphere for the recurrence of similar
unpleasant and unaccountable domestic convulsions. Business demands peace
at any price. And the ultimatum at Rivington, though delivered in so
different a manner, recurred to him.

The morning sunlight, as is well known, is a dispeller of moods, a
disintegrator of the night's fantasies. It awoke Honora at what for her
was a comparatively early hour, and as she dressed rapidly she heard her
husband whistling in his room. It is idle to speculate on the phenomenon
taking place within her, and it may merely be remarked in passing that
she possessed a quality which, in a man, leads to a career and fame.
Unimagined numbers of America's women possess that quality--a fact that
is becoming more and more apparent every day.

"Why, Honora!" Howard exclaimed, as she appeared at the breakfast table.
"What's happened to you?"

"Have you forgotten already," she asked, smilingly, as she poured out her
coffee, "that we are going to town together?"

He readjusted his newspaper against the carafe.

"How much do you think Mrs. Farnham--or Mrs. Rindge--is worth?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied.

"Old Marshall left her five million dollars."

"What has that to do with it?" inquired Honora.

"She isn't going to rent, especially in that part of town, for nothing."

"Wouldn't it be wiser, Howard, to wait and see the house. You know you
proposed it yourself, and it won't take very much of your time."

He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time
to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.

"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt. We haven't been
at Silverdale all summer. Here's a note from her saying she'll be in town
to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at
her hotel. I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."

"Why don't you?" he said. "It would do you good."

"And you?" she asked.

"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora. You know that. And I wouldn't
spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the property,"
he declared.

On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were
about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton
Brent.

"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment. "Up at dawn, and the
eight o'clock train!"

"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no
other time."

"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly. "You mightn't think me a
judge of houses, but I am. I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a
good one when I see it now."

"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the
Farnham house," said Howard, smiling. There, on the deck of the
ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him
amusement. With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.

"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight
in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink. "I shouldn't like to
take the other end of the bet. Why shouldn't you? You're fat and healthy
and making money faster than you can gather it in."

Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably. Trixton Brent was
not a man to offend.

"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied. He steeled himself in
his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the
arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different
aspect to the situation.

Honora, during this colloquy, was silent. She was a little uncomfortable,
and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.

"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this
morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that. It landed three days
ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver
shots."

"Oh, I do wish you had it," said Honora, relieved by the change of
subject. "To drive in one must be such a wonderful sensation."

"I'll let you know when it stops shooting up the garage and consents to
move out," he said. "I'll take you down to Quicksands in it."

The prospective arrival of Mr. Brent's French motor car, which was looked
for daily, had indeed been one of the chief topics of conversation at
Quicksands that summer. He could appear at no lunch or dinner party
without being subjected to a shower of questions as to where it was, and
as many as half a dozen different women among whom was Mrs. Chandos
--declared that he had promised to bring them out from New York on the
occasion of its triumphal entry into the colony. Honora, needless to say,
had betrayed no curiosity.

Neither Mr. Shorter nor Mr. Cuthbert had appeared at the real estate
office when, at a little after nine o'clock; Honora asked for the keys.
And an office boy, perched on the box seat of the carriage, drove with
them to the house and opened the wrought-iron gate that guarded the
entrance, and the massive front door. Honora had a sense of unreality as
they entered, and told herself it was obviously ridiculous that she
should aspire to such a dwelling. Yesterday, under the spell of that
somewhat adventurous excursion with Mr. Cuthbert, she had pictured
herself as installed. He had contrived somehow to give her a sense of
intimacy with the people who lived thereabout--his own friends.

Perhaps it was her husband who was the disillusionizing note as he stood
on the polished floor of the sunflooded drawing-room. Although bare of
furniture, it was eloquent to Honora of a kind of taste not to be found
at Quicksands: it carried her back, by undiscernible channels of thought,
to the impression which, in her childhood, the Hanbury mansion had always
made. Howard, in her present whimsical fancy, even seemed a little
grotesque in such a setting. His inevitable pink shirt and obviously
prosperous clothes made discord there, and she knew in this moment that
he was appraising the house from a commercial standpoint. His comment
confirmed her guess.

"If I were starting out to blow myself, or you, Honora," he said, poking
with his stick a marmouset of the carved stone mantel, "I'd get a little
more for my money while I was about it."

Honora did not reply. She looked out of the window instead.

"See here, old man," said Trixton Brent, "I'm not a real estate dealer or
an architect, but if I were in your place I'd take that carriage and
hustle over to Jerry Shorter's as fast as I could and sign the lease."

Howard looked at him in some surprise, as one who had learned that
Trixton Brent's opinions were usually worth listening to.
Characteristically, he did not like to display his ignorance.

"I know what you mean, Brent," he replied, "and there may be something to
the argument. It gives an idea of conservativeness and prosperity."

"You've made a bull's-eye," said Trixton Brent, succinctly.

"But--but I'm not ready to begin on this scale," objected Howard.

"Why," cried Brent, with evident zest--for he was a man who enjoyed sport
in all its forms, even to baiting the husbands of his friends,--"when I
first set eyes on you, old fellow, I thought you knew a thing or two, and
you've made a few turns since that confirmed the opinion. But I'm
beginning to perceive that you have limitations. I could sit down here
now, if there were any place to sit, and calculate how much living in
this house would be worth to me in Wall Street."

Honora, who had been listening uneasily, knew that a shrewder or more
disturbing argument could not have been used on her husband; and it came
from Trixton Brent--to Howard at least--ex cathedra. She was filled with
a sense of shame, which was due not solely to the fact that she was a
little conscience-stricken because of her innocent complicity, nor that
her husband did not resent an obvious attempt of a high-handed man to
browbeat him; but also to the feeling that the character of the
discussion had in some strange way degraded the house itself. Why was it
that everything she touched seemed to become contaminated?

"There's no use staying any longer," she said. "Howard doesn't like it."

"I didn't say so," he interrupted. "There's something about the place
that grows on you. If I felt I could afford it--"

"At any rate," declared Honora, trying to control her voice, "I've
decided, now I've seen it a second time, that I don't want it. I only
wished him to look at it," she added, scornfully aware that she was
taking up the cudgels in his behalf. But she could not bring herself, in
Brent's presence, to declare that the argument of the rent seemed
decisive.

Her exasperation was somewhat increased by the expression on Trixton
Brent's face, which plainly declared that he deemed her last remarks to
be the quintessence of tactics; and he obstinately refused, as they went
down the stairs to the street, to regard the matter as closed.

"I'll take him down town in the Elevated," he said, as he put her into
the carriage. "The first round's a draw."

She directed the driver to the ferry again, and went back to Quicksands.
Several times during the day she was on the point of telephoning Brent
not to try to persuade Howard to rent the house, and once she even got so
far as to take down the receiver. But when she reflected, it seemed an
impossible thing to do. At four o'clock she herself was called to the
telephone by Mr. Cray, a confidential clerk in Howard's office, who
informed her that her husband had been obliged to leave town suddenly on
business, and would not be home that night.

"Didn't he say where he was going?" asked Honora.

"He didn't even tell me, Mrs. Spence," Cray replied, and Mr. Dallam
doesn't know."

"Oh, dear," said Honora, "I hope he realizes that people are coming for
dinner to-morrow evening."

"I'm positive, from what he said, that he'll be back some time
to-morrow," Cray reassured her.

She refused an invitation to dine out, and retired shortly after her own
dinner with a novel so distracting that she gradually regained an equable
frame of mind. The uneasiness, the vague fear of the future, wore away,
and she slept peacefully. In the morning, however; she found on her
breakfast tray a note from Trixton Brent.

Her first feeling after reading it was one of relief that he had not
mentioned the house. He had written from a New York club, asking her to
lunch with him at Delmonico's that day and drive home in the motor. No
answer was required: if she did not appear at one o'clock, he would know
she couldn't come.

Honora took the eleven o'clock train, which gave her an hour after she
arrived in New York to do as she pleased. Her first idea, as she stood
for a moment amidst the clamour of the traffic in front of the ferry
house, was to call on Mrs. Holt at that lady's hotel; and then she
remembered that the Charities Conference began at eleven, and decided to
pay a visit to Madame Dumond, who made a specialty of importing novelties
in dress. Her costume for the prospective excursion in the automobile had
cost Honora some thought that morning. As the day was cool, she had
brought along an ulster that was irreproachable. But how about the hat
and veil?

Madame Dumond was enchanted. She had them both,--she had landed with them
only last week. She tried them on Honora, and stood back with her hands
clasped in an ecstasy she did not attempt to hide. What a satisfaction to
sell things to Mrs. Spence! Some ladies she could mention would look like
frights in them, but Madame Spence had 'de la race'. She could wear
anything that was chic. The hat and veil, said Madame, with a simper,
were sixty dollars.

"Sixty dollars!" exclaimed Honora.

"Ah, madame, what would you?" Novelties were novelties, the United States
Custom authorities robbers.

Having attended to these important details, Honora drove to the
restaurant in her hansom cab, the blood coursing pleasantly in her veins.
The autumn air sparkled, and New York was showing signs of animation. She
glanced furtively into the little mirror at the side. Her veil was grey,
and with the hat gave her somewhat the air of a religieuse, an aspect
heightened by the perfect oval of her face; and something akin to a
religious thrill ran through her.

The automobile, with its brass and varnish shining in the sunlight, was
waiting a little way up the street, and the first person Honora met in
the vestibule of Delmonico's was Lula Chandos. She was, as usual,
elaborately dressed, and gave one the impression of being lost, so
anxiously was she scanning the face of every new arrival.

"Oh, my dear," she cried, staring hard at the hat and the veil, "have you
seen Clara Trowbridge anywhere?"

A certain pity possessed Honora as she shook her head.

"She was in town this morning," continued Mrs. Chandos, "and I was sure
she was coming here to lunch. Trixy just drove up a moment ago in his new
car. Did you see it?"

Honora's pity turned into a definite contempt.

"I saw an automobile as I came in," she said, but the brevity of her
reply seemed to have no effect upon Mrs. Chandos.

"There he is now, at the entrance to the cafe," she exclaimed.

There, indeed, was Trixton Brent, staring at them from the end of the
hall, and making no attempt to approach them.

"I think I'll go into the dressing-room and leave my coat," said Honora,
outwardly calm but inwardly desperate. Fortunately, Lula made no attempt
to follow her.

"You're a dream in that veil, my dear," Mrs. Chandos called after her.
"Don't forget that we're all dining with you to-night in Quicksands."

Once in the dressing-room, Honora felt like locking the doors and jumping
out of the window. She gave her coat to the maid, rearranged her hair
without any apparent reason, and was leisurely putting on her hat again,
and wondering what she would do next, when Mrs. Kame appeared.

"Trixy asked me to get you," she explained. "Mr. Grainger and I are going
to lunch with you."

"How nice!" said Honora, with such a distinct emphasis of relief that
Mrs. Kame looked at her queerly.

"What a fool Trixy was, with all his experience, to get mixed up with
that Chandos woman," that lady remarked as they passed through the
hallway. "She's like molasses--one can never get her off. Lucky thing he
found Cecil and me here. There's your persistent friend, Trixy," she
added, when they were seated. "Really, this is pathetic, when an
invitation to lunch and a drive in your car would have made her so
happy."

Honora looked around and beheld, indeed, Mrs. Chandos and two other
Quicksands women, Mrs. Randall and Mrs. Barclay, at a table in the corner
of the room.

"Where's Bessie to-day, Cecil--or do you know?" demanded Mrs. Kame, after
an amused glance at Brent, who had not deigned to answer her. "I promised
to go to Newport with her at the end of the week, but I haven't been able
to find her."

"Cecil doesn't know," said Trixton Brent. "The police have been looking
for him for a fortnight. Where the deuce have you been, Cecil?"

"To the Adirondacks," replied Mr Grainger, gravely.

This explanation, which seemed entirely plausible to Honora, appeared to
afford great amusement to Brent, and even to Mrs. Kame.

"When did you come to life?" demanded Brent.

"Yesterday," said Mr. Grainger, quite as solemnly as before.

Mrs. Kame glanced curiously at Honora, and laughed again.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Trixy," she said.

"Why?" he asked innocently. "There's nothing wrong in going to the
Adirondacks--is there, Cecil?"

"No," said Mr. Grainger, blinking rapidly.

"The Adirondacks," declared Mrs. Kame, "have now become classic."

"By the way," observed Mr. Grainger, "I believe Bessie's in town to-day
at a charity pow-wow, reading a paper. I've half a mind to go over and
listen to it. The white dove of peace--and all that kind of thing."

"You'd go to sleep and spoil it all," said Brent.

"But you can't, Cecil!" cried Mrs. Kame. "Don't you remember we're going
to Westchester to the Faunces' to spend the night and play bridge? And we
promised to arrive early."

"That's so, by George," said Mr. Grainger, and he drank the rest of his
whiskey-and-soda.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, if Mrs. Spence is willing," suggested Brent.
"If you start right after lunch, I'll take you out. We'll have plenty of
time," he added to Honora, "to get back to Quicksands for dinner."

"Are you sure?" she asked anxiously. "I have people for dinner tonight."

"Oh, lots of time," declared Mrs. Kame. "Trixy's car is some unheard-of
horse-power. It's only twenty-five miles to the Faunces', and you'll be
back at the ferry by half-past four."

"Easily," said Trixton Brent.




CHAPTER X

ON THE ART OF LION TAMING

After lunch, while Mrs. Kame was telephoning to her maid and Mr. Grainger
to Mrs. Faunce, Honora found herself alone with Trixton Brent in the
automobile at a moment when the Quicksands party were taking a cab. Mrs.
Chandos parsed long enough to wave her hand.

"Bon voyage!" she cried. "What an ideal party! and the chauffeur doesn't
understand English. If you don't turn up this evening, Honora, I'll
entertain your guests."

"We must get back," said Honora, involuntarily to Brent. "It would be too
dreadful if we didn't!"

"Are you afraid I'll run off with you?" he asked.

"I believe you're perfectly capable of it," she replied. "If I were wise,
I'd take the train."

"Why don't you?" he demanded.

She smiled.

"I don't know. It's because of your deteriorating influence, I suppose.
And yet I trust you, in spite of my instincts and--my eyes. I'm seriously
put out with you."

"Why?"

"I'll tell you later, if you're at a loss," she said, as Mrs. Kame and
Mr. Grainger appeared.

Eight years have elapsed since that day and this writing--an aeon in this
rapidly moving Republic of ours. The roads, although far from perfect
yet, were not then what they have since become. But the weather was dry
and the voyage to Westchester accomplished successfully. It was half-past
three when they drove up the avenue and deposited Mrs. Kame and Cecil
Grainger at the long front of the Faunce house: and Brent, who had been
driving, relinquished the wheel to the chauffeur and joined Honora in the
tonneau. The day was perfect, the woods still heavy with summer foliage,
and the only signs of autumn were the hay mounds and the yellowing
cornstalks stacked amidst the stubble of the fields.

Brent sat silently watching her, for she had raised her veil in saying
good-by to Mrs. Kame, and--as the chauffeur was proceeding slowly--had
not lowered it. Suddenly she turned and looked him full in the face.

"What kind of woman do you think I am?" she demanded.

"That's rather a big order, isn't it?" he said.

"I'm perfectly serious," continued Honora, slowly.

"I'd really like to know."

"Before I begin on the somewhat lengthy list of your qualities," he
replied, smiling, "may I ask why you'd like to know?"

"Yes," she said quickly. "I'd like to know because I think you've
misjudged me. I was really more angry than you have any idea of at the
manner in which you talked to Howard. And did you seriously suppose that
I was in earnest when we spoke about your assistance in persuading him to
take the house?"

He laughed.

"You are either the cleverest woman in the world," he declared, "or else
you oughtn't to be out without a guardian. And no judge in possession of
his five senses would appoint your husband."

Indignant as she was, she could not resist smiling. There was something
in the way Brent made such remarks that fascinated her.

"I shouldn't call you precisely eligible, either," she retorted.

He laughed again. But his eyes made her vaguely uneasy.

"Are these harsh words the reward for my charity? he asked.

"I'm by no means sure it's charity," she said. "That's what is troubling
me. And you have no right to say such things about my husband."

"How was I to know you were sensitive on the subject? he replied.

"I wonder what it would be like to be so utterly cynical as you," she
said.

"Do you mean to say you don't want the house?"

"I don't want it under those conditions," she answered with spirit. "I
didn't expect to be taken literally. And you've always insisted," she
added, "in ascribing to me motives that--that never occurred to me. You
make the mistake of thinking that because you have no ideals, other
people haven't. I hope Howard hasn't said he'd take the house. He's gone
off somewhere, and I haven't been able to see him."

Trixton Brent looked at her queerly.

"After that last manoeuvre of yours," he said, "it was all I could do to
prevent him from rushing over to Jerry Shorter's--and signing the lease."

She did not reply.

"What do these sudden, virtuous resolutions mean?" he asked. "Resignation?
Quicksands for life? Abandonment of the whole campaign?"

"There isn't any I campaign," she said--and her voice caught in something
like a sob. "I'm not that sordid kind of a person. And if I don't like
Quicksands, it's because the whole atmosphere seems to be charged with
--with just such a spirit."

Her hand was lying on the seat. He covered it with his own so quickly
that she left it there for a moment, as though paralyzed, while she
listened to the first serious words he had ever addressed to her.

"Honora, I admire you more than any woman I have ever known," he said.

Her breath came quickly, and she drew her hand away.

"I suppose I ought to feel complimented," she replied.

At this crucial instant what had been a gliding flight of the automobile
became, suddenly, a more or less uneven and jerky progress, accompanied
by violent explosions. At the first of these Honora, in alarm, leaped to
her feet. And the machine, after what seemed an heroic attempt to
continue, came to a dead stop. They were on the outskirts of a village;
children coming home from school surrounded them in a ring. Brent jumped
out, the chauffeur opened the hood, and they peered together into what
was, to Honora, an inexplicable tangle of machinery. There followed a
colloquy, in technical French, between the master and the man.

"What's the matter?" asked Honora, anxiously.

"Nothing much," said Brent, "spark-plugs. We'll fix it up in a few
minutes." He looked with some annoyance at the gathering crowd. "Stand
back a little, can't you?" he cried, "and give us room."

After some minutes spent in wiping greasy pieces of steel which the
chauffeur extracted, and subsequent ceaseless grinding on the crank, the
engine started again, not without a series of protesting cracks like
pistol shots. The chauffeur and Brent leaped in, the bystanders parted
with derisive cheers, and away they went through the village, only to
announce by another series of explosions a second disaster at the other
end of the street. A crowd collected there, too.

"Oh, dear!" said Honora, "don't you think we ought to take the train, Mr.
Brent? If I were to miss a dinner at my own house, it would be too
terrible!"

"There's nothing to worry about," he assured her. "Nothing broken. It's
only the igniting system that needs adjustment."

Although this was so much Greek to Honora, she was reassured. Trixton
Brent inspired confidence. There was another argument with the chauffeur,
a little more animated than the first; more greasy plugs taken out and
wiped, and a sharper exchange of compliments with the crowd; more
grinding, until the chauffeur's face was steeped in perspiration, and
more pistol shots. They were off again, but lamely, spurting a little at
times, and again slowing down to the pace of an ox-cart. Their progress
became a series of illustrations of the fable of the hare and the
tortoise. They passed horses, and the horses shied into the ditch: then
the same horses passed them, usually at the periods chosen by the demon
under the hood to fire its pistol shots, and into the ditch went the
horses once more, their owners expressing their thoughts in language at
once vivid and unrestrained.

It is one of the blessed compensations of life that in times of
prosperity we do not remember our miseries. In these enlightened days,
when everybody owns an automobile and calmly travels from Chicago to
Boston if he chooses, we have forgotten the dark ages when these machines
were possessed by devils: when it took sometimes as much as three hours
to go twenty miles, and often longer than that. How many of us have had
the same experience as Honora!

She was always going to take the train, and didn't. Whenever her mind was
irrevocably made up, the automobile whirled away on all four cylinders
for a half a mile or so, until they were out of reach of the railroad.
There were trolley cars, to be sure, but those took forever to get
anywhere. Four o'clock struck, five and six, when at last the fiend who
had conspired with fate, having accomplished his evident purpose of
compelling Honora to miss her dinner, finally abandoned them as suddenly
and mysteriously as he had come, and the automobile was a lamb once more.
It was half-past six, and the sun had set, before they saw the lights
twinkling all yellow on the heights of Fort George. At that hour the last
train they could have taken to reach the dinner-party in time was leaving
the New York side of the ferry.

"What will they think?" cried Honora. "They saw us leave Delmonico's at
two o'clock, and they didn't know we were going to Westchester."

It needed no very vivid imagination to summon up the probable remarks of
Mrs. Chandos on the affair. It was all very well to say the motor broke
down; but unfortunately Trixton Brent's reputation was not much better
than that of his car.

Trixton Brent, as might have been expected, was inclined to treat the
matter as a joke.

"There's nothing very formal about a Quicksands dinner-party," he said.
"We'll have a cosey little dinner in town, and call 'em up on the
telephone."

She herself was surprised at the spirit of recklessness stealing over
her, for there was, after all, a certain appealing glamour in the
adventure. She was thrilled by the swift, gliding motion of the
automobile, the weird and unfamiliar character of these upper reaches of
a great city in the twilight, where new houses stood alone or m rows on
wide levelled tracts; and old houses, once in the country, were seen high
above the roadway behind crumbling fences, surrounded by gloomy old trees
with rotting branches. She stole a glance at the man close beside her; a
delightful fear of him made her shiver, and she shrank closer into the
corner of the seat.

"Honora!"

All at once he had seized her hand again, and held it in spite of her
efforts to release it.

"Honora," he said, "I love you as I have never loved in my life. As I
never shall love again."

"Oh--you mustn't say that!" she cried.

"Why not?" he demanded. "Why not, if I feel it?"

"Because," faltered Honora, "because I can't listen to you."

Brent made a motion of disdain with his free hand.

"I don't pretend that it's right," he said. "I'm not a hypocrite, anyway,
thank God! It's undoubtedly wrong, according to all moral codes. I've
never paid any attention to them. You're married. I'm happy to say I'm
divorced. You've got a husband. I won't be guilty of the bad taste of
discussing him. He's a good fellow enough, but he never thinks about you
from the time the Exchange opens in the morning until he gets home at
night and wants his dinner. You don't love him--it would be a miracle if
a woman with any spirit did. He hasn't any more of an idea of what he
possesses by legal right than the man I discovered driving in a cart one
of the best hunters I ever had in my stables. To say that he doesn't
appreciate you is a ludicrous understatement. Any woman would have done
for him."

"Please don't!" she implored him. "Please don't!"

But for the moment she knew that she was powerless, carried along like a
chip on the crest of his passion.

"I don't pretend to say how it is, or why it is," he went on, paying no
heed to her protests. "I suppose there's one woman for every man in the
world--though I didn't use to think so. I always had another idea of
woman before I met you. I've thought I was in love with 'em, but now I
understand it was only--something else. I say, I don't know what it is in
you that makes me feel differently. I can't analyze it, and I don't want
to. You're not perfect, by a good deal, and God knows I'm not. You're
ambitious, but if you weren't, you'd be humdrum--yet there's no pitiful
artifice in you as in other women that any idiot can see through. And it
would have paralyzed forever any ordinary woman to have married Howard
Spence."

A new method of wooing, surely, and evidently peculiar to Trixton Brent.
Honora, in the prey of emotions which he had aroused in spite of her,
needless to say did not, at that moment, perceive the humour in it. His
words gave her food for thought for many months afterwards.

The lion was indeed aroused at last, and whip or goad or wile of no
avail. There came a time when she no longer knew what he was saying: when
speech, though eloquent and forceful, seemed a useless medium. Her
appeals were lost, and she found herself fighting in his arms, when
suddenly they turned into one of the crowded arteries of Harlem. She made
a supreme effort of will, and he released her.

"Oh!" she cried, trembling.

But he looked at her, unrepentant, with the light of triumph in his eyes.

"I'll never forgive you!" she exclaimed, breathless.

"I gloried in it," he replied. "I shall remember it as long as I live,
and I'll do it again."

She did not answer him. She dropped her veil, and for a long space was
silent while they rapidly threaded the traffic, and at length turned into
upper Fifth Avenue, skirting the Park. She did not so much as glance at
him. But he seemed content to watch her veiled profile in the dusk.

Her breath, in the first tumult of her thought, came and went deeply. But
gradually as the street lights burned brighter and familiar sights began
to appear, she grew more controlled and became capable of reflection. She
remembered that there was a train for Quicksands at seven-fifteen, which
Howard had taken once or twice. But she felt that the interval was too
short. In that brief period she could not calm herself sufficiently to
face her guests. Indeed, the notion of appearing alone, or with Brent, at
that dinner-party, appalled her. And suddenly an idea presented itself.

Brent leaned over, and began to direct the chauffeur to a well-known
hotel. She interrupted him.

"No," she said, "I'd rather go to the Holland House."

"Very well," he said amicably, not a little surprised at this
unlooked-for acquiescence, and then told his man to keep straight on down
the Avenue.

She began mechanically to rearrange her hat and veil; and after that,
sitting upright, to watch the cross streets with feverish anticipation,
her hands in her lap.

"Honora?" he said.

She did not answer.

"Raise the veil, just for a moment, and look at me."

She shook her head. But for some reason, best known to herself, she
smiled a little. Perhaps it was because her indignation, which would have
frightened many men into repentance, left this one undismayed. At any
rate, he caught the gleam of the smile through the film of her veil, and
laughed.

"We'll have a little table in the corner of the room," he declared, "and
you shall order the dinner. Here we are," he cried to the chauffeur.
"Pull up to the right."

They alighted, crossed the sidewalk, the doors were flung open to receive
them, and they entered the hotel.

Through the entrance to the restaurant Honora caught sight of the red
glow of candles upon the white tables, and heard the hum of voices. In
the hall, people were talking and laughing in groups, and it came as a
distinct surprise to her that their arrival seemed to occasion no remark.
At the moment of getting out of the automobile, her courage had almost
failed her.

Trixton Brent hailed one of the hotel servants.

"Show Mrs. Spence to the ladies' parlour," said he. And added to Honora,
"I'll get a table, and have the dinner card brought up in a few moments."

Honora stopped the boy at the elevator door.

"Go to the office," she said, "and find out if Mrs. Joshua Holt is in,
and the number of her room. And take me to the telephone booths. I'll
wait there."

She asked the telephone operator to call up Mr. Spence's house at
Quicksands--and waited.

"I'm sorry, madam," he said, after a little while, which seemed like half
an hour to Honora, "but they've had a fire in the Kingston exchange, and
the Quicksands line is out of order."

Honora's heart sank; but the bell-boy had reappeared. Yes, Mrs. Holt was
in.

"Take me to her room," she said, and followed him into the elevator.

In response to his knock the door was opened by Mrs. Holt herself. She
wore a dove-coloured gown, and in her hand was a copy of the report of
the Board of Missions. For a moment she peered at Honora over the glasses
lightly poised on the uncertain rim of her nose.

"Why--my dear!" she exclaimed, in astonishment. Honora!"

"Oh," cried Honora, "I'm so glad you're here. I was so afraid you'd be
out."

In the embrace that followed both the glasses and the mission report fell
to the floor. Honora picked them up.

"Sit down, my dear, and tell me how you happen to be here," said Mrs.
Holt. "I suppose Howard is downstairs."

"No, he isn't," said Honora, rather breathlessly; "that's the reason I
came here. That's one reason, I mean. I was coming to see you this
morning, but I simply didn't have time for a call after I got to town."

Mrs. Holt settled herself in the middle of the sofa, the only piece of
furniture in the room in harmony with her ample proportions. Her attitude
and posture were both judicial, and justice itself spoke in her
delft-blue eyes.

"Tell me all about it," she said, thus revealing her suspicions that
there was something to tell.

"I was just going to," said Honora, hastily, thinking of Trixton Brent
waiting in the ladies' parlour. "I took lunch at Delmomico's with Mr.
Grainger, and Mr. Brent, and Mrs. Kame--"

"Cecil Grainger?" demanded Mrs. Holt.

Honora trembled.

"Yes," she said.

"I knew his father and mother intimately," said Mrs. Holt, unexpectedly.
"And his wife is a friend of mine. She's one of the most executive women
we have in the 'Working Girls' Association,' and she read a paper today
that was masterful. You know her, of course."

"No," said Honora, "I haven't met her yet."

"Then how did you happen to be lunching with her husband?

"I wasn't lunching with him, Mrs. Holt," said Honora; "Mr. Brent was
giving the lunch."

"Who's Mr. Brent?" demanded Mrs. Holt. "One of those Quicksands people?"

"He's not exactly a Quicksands person. I scarcely know how to describe
him. He's very rich, and goes abroad a great deal, and plays polo. That's
the reason he has a little place at Quicksands. He's been awfully kind
both to Howard and me," she added with inspiration.

"And Mrs. Kame?" said Mrs. Holt.

"She's a widow, and has a place at Banbury.

"I never heard of her," said Mrs. Holt, and Honora thanked her stars.

"And Howard approves of these mixed lunches, my dear? When I was young,
husbands and wives usually went to parties together."

A panicky thought came to Honora, that Mrs. Holt might suddenly inquire
as to the whereabouts of Mr. Brent's wife.

"Oh, Howard doesn't mind," she said hastily. "I suppose times have
changed, Mrs. Holt. And after lunch we all went out in Mr. Brent's
automobile to the Faunces' in Westchester--"

"The Paul Jones Faunces?" Mrs. Holt interrupted.

"What a nice woman that young Mrs. Faunce is! She was Kitty Esterbrook,
you know. Both of them very old families."

"It was only," continued Honora, in desperation, "it was only to leave
Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Kame there to spend the night. They all said we had
plenty of time to go and get back to Quicksands by six o'clock. But
coming back the automobile broke down--"

"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, "it serves any one right for trusting to
them. I think they are an invention of the devil."

"And we've only just got back to New York this minute."

"Who?" inquired Mrs. Holt.

"Mr. Brent and I," said Honora, with downcast eyes.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the elder lady.

"I couldn't think of anything else to do but come straight here to you,"
said Honora, gazing at her friend. "And oh, I'm so glad to find you.
There's not another train to Quicksands till after nine."

"You did quite right, my dear, under the circumstances. I don't say you
haven't been foolish, but it's Howard's fault quite as much as yours. He
has no business to let you do such things."

"And what makes it worse," said Honora, "is that the wires are down to
Quicksands, and I can't telephone Howard, and we have people to dinner,
and they don't know I went to Westchester, and there's no use
telegraphing: it wouldn't be delivered till midnight or morning."

"There, there, my dear, don't worry. I know how anxious you feel on your
husband's account--"

"Oh--Mrs. Holt, I was going to ask you a great, great favour. Wouldn't
you go down to Quicksands with me and spend the night--and pay us a
little visit? You know we would so love to have you!"

"Of course I'll go down with you, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "I'm
surprised that you should think for an instant that I wouldn't. It's my
obvious duty. Martha!" she called, "Martha!"

The door of the bedroom opened, and Mrs. Holt's elderly maid appeared.
The same maid, by the way, who had closed the shutters that memorable
stormy night at Silverdale. She had, it seemed, a trick of appearing at
crises.

"Martha, telephone to Mrs. Edgerly--you know her number-and say that I am
very sorry, but an unexpected duty calls me out of town to-night, and ask
her to communicate with the Reverend Mr. Field. As for staying with you,
Honora," she continued, "I have to be back at Silverdale to-morrow night.
Perhaps you and Howard will come back with me. My frank opinion is, that
a rest from the gayety of Quicksands will do you good."

"I will come, with pleasure," said Honora. "But as for Howard--I'm afraid
he's too busy."

"And how about dinner?" asked Mrs. Holt.

"I forgot to say," said Honora, that Mr. Brent's downstairs. He brought
me here, of course. Have you any objection to his dining with us?"

"No," answered Mrs. Holt, "I think I should like to see him."

After Mrs. Holt had given instructions to her maid to pack, and Honora
had brushed some of the dust of the roads from her costume, they
descended to the ladies' parlour. At the far end of it a waiter holding a
card was standing respectfully, and Trixton Brent was pacing up and down
between the windows. When he caught sight of them he stopped in his
tracks, and stared, and stood as if rooted to the carpet. Honora came
forward.

"Oh, Mr. Brent!" she cried, "my old friend, Mrs. Holt, is here, and she's
going to take dinner with us and come down to Quicksands for the night.
May I introduce Mr. Brent."

"Wasn't it fortunate, Mr. Brent, that Mrs. Spence happened to find me?"
said Mrs. Holt, as she took his hand. "I know it is a relief to you."

It was not often, indeed, that Trixton Brent was taken off his guard; but
some allowance must be made for him, since he was facing a situation
unparalleled in his previous experience. Virtue had not often been so
triumphant, and never so dramatic as to produce at the critical instant
so emblematic a defender as this matronly lady in dove colour. For a
moment, he stared at her, speechless, and then he gathered himself
together.

"A relief?" he asked.

"It would seem so to me," said Mrs. Holt. "Not that I do not think you
are perfectly capable of taking care of her, as an intimate friend of her
husband. I was merely thinking of the proprieties. And as I am a guest in
this hotel, I expect you both to do me the honour to dine with me before
we start for Quicksands."

After all, Trixton Brent had a sense of humour, although it must not be
expected that he should grasp at once all the elements of a joke on
himself so colossal.

"I, for one," he said, with a slight bow which gave to his words a touch
somewhat elaborate, "will be delighted." And he shot at Honora a glance
compounded of many feelings, which she returned smilingly.

"Is that the waiter?" asked Mrs. Holt.

"That is a waiter," said Trixton Brent, glancing at the motionless
figure. "Shall I call him?"

"If you please," said Mrs. Holt. "Honora, you must tell me what you
like."

"Anything, Mrs. Holt," said Honora.

"If we are to leave a little after nine," said that lady, balancing her
glasses on her nose and glancing at the card, "we have not, I'm afraid,
time for many courses."

The head waiter greeted them at the door of the dining-room. He, too, was
a man of wisdom and experience. He knew Mrs. Holt, and he knew Trixton
Brent. If gravity had not been a life-long habit with him, one might have
suspected him of a desire to laugh. As it was, he seemed palpably
embarrassed,--for Mr. Brent had evidently been conversing with him.

"Two, sir?" he asked.

"Three," said Mrs. Holt, with dignity.

The head waiter planted them conspicuously in the centre of the room; one
of the strangest parties, from the point of view of a connoisseur of New
York, that ever sat down together. Mrs. Holt with her curls, and her
glasses laid flat on the bosom of her dove-coloured dress; Honora in a
costume dedicated to the very latest of the sports, and Trixton Brent in
English tweeds. The dining-room was full. But here and there amongst the
diners, Honora observed, were elderly people who smiled discreetly as
they glanced in their direction--friends, perhaps, of Mrs. Holt. And
suddenly, in one corner, she perceived a table of six where the mirth was
less restrained.

Fortunately for Mr. Brent, he had had a cocktail, or perhaps two, in
Honora's absence. Sufficient time had elapsed since their administration
for their proper soothing and exhilarating effects. At the sound of the
laughter in the corner he turned his head, a signal for renewed merriment
from that quarter. Whereupon he turned back again and faced his hostess
once more with a heroism that compelled Honora's admiration. As a
sportsman, he had no intention of shirking the bitterness of defeat.

"Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter," he remarked, "appear to be enjoying
themselves."

Honora felt her face grow hot as the merriment at the corner table rose
to a height it had not heretofore attained. And she did not dare to look
again.

Mrs. Holt was blissfully oblivious to her surroundings. She was, as
usual, extremely composed, and improved the interval, while drinking her
soup, with a more or less undisguised observation of Mr. Brent; evidently
regarding him somewhat in the manner that a suspicious householder would
look upon a strange gentleman whom he accidentally found in his front
hall. Explanations were necessary. That Mr. Brent's appearance, on the
whole, was in his favour did not serve to mitigate her suspicions.
Good-looking men were apt to be unscrupulous.

"Are you interested in working girls, Mr. Brent?" she inquired presently.

Honora, in spite of her discomfort, had an insane desire to giggle. She
did not dare to raise her eyes.

"I can't say that I've had much experience with them, Mrs. Holt," he
replied, with a gravity little short of sublime.

"Naturally you wouldn't have had," said Mrs. Holt. "What I meant was, are
you interested in the problems they have to face?"

"Extremely," said he, so unexpectedly that Honora choked. "I can't say
that I've given as many hours as I should have liked to a study of the
subject, but I don't know of any class that has a harder time. As a rule,
they're underpaid and overworked, and when night comes they are either
tired to death or bored to death, and the good-looking ones are subject
to temptations which some of them find impossible to resist, in a natural
desire for some excitement to vary the routine of their lives."

"It seems to me," said Mrs. Holt, "that you are fairly conversant with
the subject. I don't think I ever heard the problem stated so succinctly
and so well. Perhaps," she added, "it might interest you to attend one of
our meetings next month. Indeed, you might be willing to say a few
words."

"I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Holt. I'm a rather busy man,
and nothing of a public speaker, and it is rarely I get off in the
daytime."

"How about automobiling?" asked Mrs. Holt, with a smile.

"Well," said Trixton Brent, laughing in spite of himself, "I like the
working girls, I have to have a little excitement occasionally. And I
find it easier to get off in the summer than in the winter."

"Men cover a multitude of sins under the plea of business," said Mrs.
Holt, shaking her head. I can't say I think much of your method of
distraction. Why any one desires to get into an automobile, I don't see."

"Have you ever been in one?" he asked. "Mine is here, and I was about to
invite you to go down to the ferry in it. I'll promise to go slow."

"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "I don't object to going that distance, if you
keep your promise. I'll admit that I've always had a curiosity."

"And in return," said Brent, gallantly, "allow me to send you a cheque
for your working girls."

"You're very good," said Mrs. Holt.

"Oh," he protested, I'm not in the habit of giving much to charities, I'm
sorry to say. I'd like to know how it feels."

"Then I hope the sensation will induce you to try it again," said Mrs.
Holt.

"Nobody, Mrs. Holt," cried Honora, "could be kinder to his friends than
Mr. Brent!"

"We were speaking of disinterested kindness, my dear," was Mrs. Holt's
reply.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Holt," said Trixton Brent, beginning, as the
dinner progressed, to take in the lady opposite a delight that surprised
him. "I'm willing to confess that I've led an extremely selfish
existence."

"The confession isn't necessary," she replied. "It's written all over
you. You're the type of successful man who gets what he wants. I don't
mean to say that you are incapable of kindly instincts." And her eye
twinkled a little.

"I'm very grateful for that concession, at any rate," he declared.

"There might be some hope for you if you fell into the hands of a good
woman," said Mrs. Holt. "I take it you are a bachelor. Mark my words, the
longer you remain one, the more steeped in selfishness you are likely to
become in this modern and complex and sense-satisfying life which so many
people lead."

Honora trembled for what he might say to this, remembering his bitter
references of that afternoon to his own matrimonial experience. Visions
of a scene arose before her in the event that Mrs. Holt should discover
his status. But evidently Trixton Brent had no intention of discussing
his marriage.

"Judging by some of my married friends and acquaintances," he said, "I
have no desire to try matrimony as a remedy for unselfishness."

"Then," replied Mrs. Holt, "all I can say is, I should make new friends
amongst another kind of people, if I were you. You are quite right, and
if I were seeking examples of happy marriages, I should not begin my
search among the so-called fashionable set of the present day. They are
so supremely selfish that if the least difference in taste develops, or
if another man or woman chances along whom they momentarily fancy more
than their own husbands or wives, they get a divorce. Their idea of
marriage is not a mutual sacrifice which brings happiness through trials
borne together and through the making of character. No, they have a
notion that man and wife may continue to lead their individual lives.
That isn't marriage. I've lived with Joshua Holt thirty-five years last
April, and I haven't pleased myself in all that time."

"All men," said Trixton Brent, "are not so fortunate as Mr. Holt."

Honora began to have the sensations of a witness to a debate between
Mephistopheles and the powers of heaven. Her head swam. But Mrs. Holt,
who had unlooked-for flashes of humour, laughed, and shook her curls at
Brent.

"I should like to lecture you some time," she said; "I think it would do
you good."

He shook his head.

"I'm beyond redemption. Don't you think so, Honora?" he asked, with an
unexpected return of his audacity.

"I'm afraid I'm not worthy to judge you," she replied, and coloured.

"Stuff and nonsense," said Mrs. Holt; "women are superior to men, and
it's our duty to keep them in order. And if we're really going to risk
our lives in your automobile, Mr. Brent, you'd better make sure it's
there," she added, glancing at her watch.

Having dined together in an apparent and inexplicable amity, their exit
was of even more interest to the table in the corner than their entrance
had been. Mrs. Holt's elderly maid was waiting in the hall, Mrs. Holt's
little trunk was strapped on the rear of the car; and the lady herself,
with something of the feelings of a missionary embarking for the wilds of
Africa, was assisted up the little step and through the narrow entrance
of the tonneau by the combined efforts of Honora and Brent. An expression
of resolution, emblematic of a determination to die, if necessary, in the
performance of duty, was on her face as the machinery started; and her
breath was not quite normal when, in an incredibly brief period, they
descended at the ferry.

The journey to Quicksands was accomplished in a good fellowship which
Honora, an hour before, would not have dreamed of. Even Mrs. Holt was not
wholly proof against the charms of Trixton Brent when he chose to exert
himself; and for some reason he did so choose. As they stood in the
starlight on the platform of the deserted little station while he went
across to Whelen's livery stable to get a carriage, Mrs. Holt remarked to
Honora:

"Mr. Brent is a fascinating man, my dear."

"I am so glad that you appreciate him," exclaimed Honora.

"And a most dangerous one," continued Mrs. Holt. "He has probably, in his
day, disturbed the peace of mind of a great many young women. Not that I
haven't the highest confidence in you, Honora, but honesty forces me to
confess that you are young and pleasure-loving, and a little heedless.
And the atmosphere in which you live is not likely to correct those
tendencies. If you will take my advice, you will not see too much of Mr.
Trixton Brent when your husband is not present."

Indeed, as to the probable effect of this incident on the relations
between Mr. Brent and herself Honora was wholly in the dark. Although,
from her point of view, what she had done had been amply justified by the
plea of self-defence, it could not be expected that he would accept it in
the same spirit. The apparent pleasure he had taken in the present
situation, once his amazement had been overcome, profoundly puzzled her.

He returned in a few minutes with the carriage and driver, and they
started off. Brent sat in front, and Honora explained to Mrs. Holt the
appearance of the various places by daylight, and the names of their
owners. The elderly lady looked with considerable interest at the blazing
lights of the Club, with the same sensations she would no doubt have had
if she had been suddenly set down within the Moulin Rouge. Shortly
afterwards they turned in at the gate of "The Brackens." The light
streamed across the porch and driveway, and the sound of music floated
out of the open windows. Within, the figure of Mrs. Barclay could be
seen; she was singing vaudeville songs at the piano. Mrs. Holt's lips
were tightly shut as she descended and made her way up the steps.

"I hope you'll come in,", said Honora to Trixton Brent, in a low voice.

"Come in!" he replied, "I wouldn't miss it for ten thousand dollars."

Mrs. Holt was the first of the three to appear at the door of the
drawing-room, and Mrs. Barclay caught sight of her, and stopped in the
middle of a bar, with her mouth open. Some of the guests had left. A
table in the corner, where Lula Chandos had insisted on playing bridge,
was covered with scattered cards and some bills, a decanter of whiskey,
two soda bottles, and two glasses. The blue curling smoke from Mrs.
Chandos' cigarette mingled with the haze that hung between the ceiling
and the floor, and that lady was in the act of saying cheerfully to
Howard, who sat opposite,--"Trixy's run off with her."

Suddenly the chill of silence pervaded the room. Lula Chandos, whose back
was turned to the door, looked from Mrs. Barclay to Howard, who, with the
other men had risen to his feet.

"What's the matter?" she said in a frightened tone. And, following the
eyes of the others, turned her head slowly towards the doorway.

Mrs. Holt, who filled it, had been literally incapable of speech. Close
behind her stood Honora and Trixton whose face was inscrutable.

"Howard," said Honora, summoning all the courage that remained in her,
"here's Mrs. Holt. We dined with her, and she was good enough to come
down for the night. I'm so sorry not to have been here," she added to her
guests, "but we went to Westchester with Mrs. Kame and Mr. Grainger, and
the automobile broke down on the way back."

Mrs. Holt made no attempt to enter, but stared fixedly at the cigarette
that Mrs. Chandos still held in her trembling fingers. Howard crossed the
room in the midst of an intense silence.

"Glad to see you, Mrs. Holt," he said. "Er--won't you come in and--and
sit down?"

"Thank you, Howard" she replied, "I do not wish to interrupt your party.
It is my usual hour for retiring.

"And I think, my dear," she added, turning to Honora, "that I'll ask you
to excuse me, and show me to my room."

"Certainly, Mrs. Holt," said Honora, breathlessly.

"Howard, ring the bell."

She led the way up the stairs to the guest-chamber with the rose paper
and the little balcony. As she closed the door gusts of laughter reached
them from the floor below, and she could plainly distinguish the voices
of May Barclay and Trixton Brent.

"I hope you'll be comfortable, Mrs. Holt," she said. "Your maid will be
in the little room across the hall and I believe you like breakfast at
eight."

"You mustn't let me keep you from your guests, Honora."

"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she said, on the verge of tears, "I don't want to go to
them. Really, I don't."

"It must be confessed," said Mrs. Holt, opening her handbag and taking
out the copy of the mission report, which had been carefully folded,
"that they seem to be able to get along very well without you. I suppose
I am too old to understand this modern way of living. How well I remember
one night--it was in 1886--I missed the train to Silverdale, and my
telegram miscarried. Poor Mr. Holt was nearly out of his head."

She fumbled for her glasses and dropped them. Honora picked them up, and
it was then she perceived that the tears were raining down the good
lady's cheeks. At the same moment they sprang into Honora's eyes, and
blinded her. Mrs. Holt looked at her long and earnestly.

"Go down, my dear," she said gently, "you must not neglect your friends.
They will wonder where you are. And at what time do you breakfast?"

"At--at any time you like."

"I shall be down at eight," said Mrs. Holt, and she kissed her.

Honora, closing the door, stood motionless in the hall, and presently the
footsteps and the laughter and the sound of carriage wheels on the gravel
died away.




CHAPTER XI

CONTAINING SOME REVELATIONS

Honora, as she descended, caught a glimpse of the parlour maid picking up
the scattered cards on the drawing-room floor. There were voices on the
porch, where Howard was saying good-by to Mrs. Chandos and Trixton Brent.
She joined them.

"Oh, my dear!" cried Mrs. Chandos, interrupting Honora's apologies, "I'm
sure I shan't sleep a wink--she gave me such a fright. You might have
sent Trixy ahead to prepare us. When I first caught sight of her, I
thought it was my own dear mother who had come all the way from
Cleveland, and the cigarette burned my fingers. But I must say I think it
was awfully clever of you to get hold of her and save Trixy's reputation.
Good night, dear."

And she got into her carriage.

"Give my love to Mrs. Holt," said Brent, as he took Honora's hand, "and
tell her I feel hurt that she neglected to say good night to me. I
thought I had made an impression. Tell her I'll send her a cheque for her
rescue work. She inspires me with confidence."

Howard laughed.

"I'll see you to-morrow, Brent," he called out as they drove away. Though
always assertive, it seemed to Honora that her husband had an increased
air of importance as he turned to her now with his hands in his pockets.
He looked at her for a moment, and laughed again. He, too, had apparently
seen the incident only in a humorous light. "Well, Honora," he remarked,
"you have a sort of a P. T. Barnum way of doing things once in a
while--haven't you? Is the old lady really tucked away for the night, or
is she coming down to read us a sermon? And how the deuce did you happen
to pick her up?"

She had come downstairs with confession on her lips, and in the agitation
of her mind had scarcely heeded Brent's words or Mrs. Chandos'. She had
come down prepared for any attitude but the one in which she found him;
for anger, reproaches, arraignments. Nay, she was surprised to find now
that she had actually hoped for these. She deserved to be scolded: it was
her right. If he had been all of a man, he would have called her to
account. There must be--there was something lacking in his character. And
it came to her suddenly, with all the shock of a great contrast, with
what different eyes she had looked upon him five years before at
Silverdale.

He went into the house and started to enter the drawing-room, still in
disorder and reeking with smoke.

"No, not in there!" she cried sharply.

He turned to her puzzled. Her breath was coming and going quickly. She
crossed the hall and turned on the light in the little parlour there, and
he followed her.

"Don't you feel well?" he asked.

"Howard," she said, "weren't you worried?"

"Worried? No, why should I have been? Lula Chandos and May Barclay had
seen you in the automobile in town, and I knew you were high and dry
somewhere."

"High and dry," she repeated. What?"

"Nothing. They said I had run off with Mr. Brent, didn't they?"

He laughed.

"Yes, there was some joking to that effect."

"You didn't take it seriously?

"No--why should I?"

She was appalled by his lack of knowledge of her. All these years she had
lived with him, and he had not grasped even the elements of her nature.
And this was marriage! Trixton Brent--short as their acquaintance had
been--had some conception of her character and possibilities her husband
none. Where was she to begin? How was she to tell him the episode in the
automobile in order that he might perceive something of its sinister
significance?

Where was she to go to be saved from herself, if not to him?

"I might have run away with him, if I had loved him," she said after a
pause. "Would you have cared?"

"You bet your life," said Howard, and put his arm around her.

She looked up into his face. So intent had she been on what she had meant
to tell him that she did not until now perceive he was preoccupied, and
only half listening to what she was saying.

"You bet your life," he said, patting her shoulder. "What would I have
done, all alone, in the new house?"

"In the new house?" she cried. "Oh, Howard--you haven't taken it!"

"I haven't signed the lease," he replied importantly, smiling down at
her, and thrusting his hands in his pockets.

"I don't want it," said Honora; "I don't want it. I told you that I'd
decided I didn't want it when we were there. Oh, Howard, why did you take
it?"

He whistled. He had the maddening air of one who derives amusement from
the tantrums of a spoiled child.

"Well," he remarked, "women are too many for me. If there's any way of
pleasing 'em I haven't yet discovered it. The night before last you had
to have the house. Nothing else would do. It was the greatest find in New
York. For the first time in months you get up for breakfast--a pretty
sure sign you hadn't changed your mind. You drag me to see it, and when
you land me there, because I don't lose my head immediately, you say you
don't want it. Of course I didn't take you seriously--I thought you'd set
your heart on it, so I wired an offer to Shorter to-day, and he accepted
it. And when I hand you this pleasant little surprise, you go right up in
the air."

He had no air of vexation, however, as he delivered this somewhat
reproachful harangue in the picturesque language to which he commonly
resorted. Quite the contrary. He was still smiling, as Santa Claus must
smile when he knows he has another pack up the chimney.

"Why this sudden change of mind?" he demanded. "It can't be because you
want to spend the winter in Quicksands."

She was indeed at a loss what to say. She could not bring herself to ask
him whether he had been influenced by Trixton Brent. If he had, she told
herself, she did not wish to know. He was her husband, after all, and it
would be too humiliating. And then he had taken the house.

"Have you hit on a palace you like better?" he inquired, with a clumsy
attempt at banter. "They tell me the elder Maitlands are going abroad
--perhaps we could get their house on the Park."

"You said you couldn't afford Mrs. Rindge's house," she answered
uneasily, "and I--I believed you."

"I couldn't," he said mysteriously, and paused.

It seemed to her, as she recalled the scene afterwards, that in this
pause he gave the impression of physically swelling. She remembered
staring at him with wide, frightened eyes and parted lips.

"I couldn't," he repeated, with the same strange emphasis and a palpable
attempt at complacency. "But--er--circumstances have changed since then."

"What do you mean, Howard?" she whispered.

The corners of his mouth twitched in the attempt to repress a smile.

"I mean," he said, "that the president of a trust company can afford to
live in a better house than the junior partner of Dallam and Spence."

"The president of a trust company!" Honora scarcely recognized her own
voice--so distant it sounded. The room rocked, and she clutched the arm
of a chair and sat down. He came and stood over her.

"I thought that would surprise you some," he said, obviously pleased by
these symptoms. "The fact is, I hadn't meant to break it to you until
morning. But I think I'll go in on the seven thirty-five." (He glanced
significantly up at the ceiling, as though Mrs. Holt had something to do
with this decision.) "President of the Orange Trust Company at forty
isn't so bad, eh?"

"The Orange Trust Company? Did you say the Orange Trust Company?"

"Yes." He produced a cigarette. "Old James Wing and Brent practically
control it. You see, if I do say it myself, I handled some things pretty
well for Brent this summer, and he's seemed to appreciate it. He and Wing
were buying in traction stocks out West. But you could have knocked me
down with a paper-knife when he came to me--"

"When did he come to you?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yesterday. We went down town together, you remember, and he asked me to
step into his office. Well, we talked it over, and I left on the one
o'clock for Newport to see Mr. Wing. Wonderful old man! I sat up with him
till midnight--it wasn't any picnic" . . .

More than once during the night Honora awoke with a sense of oppression,
and each time went painfully through the whole episode from the evening
--some weeks past when Trixton Brent had first mentioned the subject of
the trust company, to the occurrence in the automobile and Howard's
triumphant announcement. She had but a vague notion of how that scene had
finished; or of how, limply, she had got to bed. Round and round the
circle she went in each waking period. To have implored him to relinquish
the place had been waste of breath; and then--her reasons? These were the
moments when the current was strongest, when she grew incandescent with
humiliation and pain; when stray phrases in red letters of Brent's were
illuminated. Merit! He had a contempt for her husband which he had not
taken the trouble to hide. But not a business contempt. "As good as the
next man," Brent had said--or words to that effect. "As good as the next
man!" Then she had tacitly agreed to the bargain, and refused to honour
the bill! No, she had not, she had not. Before God, she was innocent of
that! When she reached this point it was always to James Wing that she
clung--the financier, at least, had been impartial. And it was he who
saved her.

At length she opened her eyes to discover with bewilderment that the room
was flooded with light, and then she sprang out of bed and went to the
open window. To seaward hung an opal mist, struck here and there with
crimson. She listened; some one was whistling an air she had heard
before--Mrs. Barclay had been singing it last night! Wheels crunched the
gravel--Howard was going off. She stood motionless until the horse's
hoofs rang on the highroad, and then hurried into her dressing-gown and
slippers and went downstairs to the telephone and called a number.

"Is this Mr. Brent's? Will you say to Mr. Brent that Mrs. Spence would be
greatly, obliged if he stopped a moment at her house before going to
town? Thank you."

She returned to her room and dressed with feverish haste, trying to
gather her wits for an ordeal which she felt it would have killed her to
delay. At ten minutes to eight she emerged again and glanced anxiously at
Mrs. Holt's door; and scarcely had she reached the lower hall before he
drove into the circle. She was struck more forcibly than ever by the
physical freshness of the man, and he bestowed on her, as he took her
hand, the peculiar smile she knew so well, that always seemed to have an
enigma behind it. At sight and touch of him the memory of what she had
prepared to say vanished.

"Behold me, as ever, your obedient servant," he said, as he followed her
into the screened-off portion of the porch.

"You must think it strange that I sent for you, I know," she cried, as
she turned to him. "But I couldn't wait. I--I did not know until last
night. Howard only told me then. Oh, you didn't do it for me! Please say
you didn't do it for me!"

"My dear Honora," replied Trixton Brent, gravely, "we wanted your husband
for his abilities and the valuable services he can render us."

She stood looking into his eyes, striving to penetrate to the soul
behind, ignorant or heedless that others before her had tried and failed.
He met her gaze unflinchingly, and smiled.

"I want the truth," she craved.

"I never lie--to a woman," he said.

"My life--my future depends upon it," she went on. "I'd rather scrub
floors, I'd rather beg--than to have it so. You must believe me!"

"I do believe you," he affirmed. And he said it with a gentleness and a
sincerity that startled her.

"Thank you," she answered simply. And speech became very difficult.
"If--if I haven't been quite fair with you--Mr. Brent, I am sorry. I--I
liked you, and I like you to-day better than ever before. And I can quite
see now how I must have misled you into thinking--queer things about me.
I didn't mean to. I have learned a lesson."

She took a deep, involuntary breath. The touch of lightness in his reply
served to emphasize the hitherto unsuspected fact that sportsmanship in
Trixton Brent was not merely a code, but assumed something of the
grandeur of a principle.

"I, too, have learned a lesson," he replied. "I have learned the
difference between nature and art. I am something of a connoisseur in
art. I bow to nature, and pay my bets."

"Your bets?" she asked, with a look.

"My renunciations, forfeits, whatever you choose to call them. I have
been fairly and squarely beaten--but by nature, not by art. That is my
consolation."

Laughter struck into her eyes like a shaft of sunlight into a well; her
emotions were no longer to be distinguished. And in that moment she
wondered what would have happened if she had loved this man, and why she
had not. And when next he spoke, she started.

"How is my elderly dove-coloured friend this morning?" he asked. "That
dinner with her was one of the great events of my life. I didn't suppose
such people existed any more."

"Perhaps you'll stay to breakfast with her," suggested Honora, smiling.
"I know she'd like to see you again."

"No, thanks," he said, taking her hand, "I'm on my way to the train--I'd
quite forgotten it. Au revoir!" He reached the end of the porch, turned,
and called back, "As a 'dea ex machina', she has never been equalled."

Honora stood for a while looking after him, until she heard a footstep
behind her,--Mrs. Holt's.

"Who was that, my dear?" she asked, "Howard?"

"Howard has gone, Mrs. Holt," Honora replied, rousing herself. "I must
make his apologies. It was Mr. Brent."

"Mr. Brent!" the good lady repeated, with a slight upward lift of the
faint eyebrows. "Does he often call this early?"

Honora coloured a little, and laughed.

"I asked him to breakfast with you, but he had to catch a train. He
--wished to be remembered. He took such a fancy to you."

"I am afraid," said Mrs. Holt, "that his fancy is a thing to be avoided.
Are you coming to Silverdale with me, Honora?"

"Yes, Mrs. Holt," she replied, slipping her arm through that of her
friend, "for as long as you will let me stay."

And she left a note for Howard to that effect.





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


BOOK III


Volume 5.



CHAPTER I

ASCENDI

Honora did not go back to Quicksands. Neither, in this modern chronicle,
shall we.

The sphere we have left, which we know is sordid, sometimes shines in the
retrospect. And there came a time, after the excitement of furnishing the
new house was over, when our heroine, as it were, swung for a time in
space: not for a very long time; that month, perhaps, between autumn and
winter.

We need not be worried about her, though we may pause for a moment or two
to sympathize with her in her loneliness--or rather in the moods it
produced. She even felt, in those days, slightly akin to the Lady of the
Victoria (perfectly respectable), whom all of us fortunate enough
occasionally to go to New York have seen driving on Fifth Avenue with an
expression of wistful haughtiness, and who changes her costumes four
times a day.

Sympathy! We have seen Honora surrounded by friends--what has become of
them? Her husband is president of a trust company, and she has one of the
most desirable houses in New York. What more could be wished for? To jump
at conclusions in this way is by no means to understand a heroine with an
Ideal. She had these things, and--strange as it may seem--suffered.

Her sunny drawing-room, with its gathered silk curtains, was especially
beautiful; whatever the Leffingwells or Allisons may have lacked, it was
not taste. Honora sat in it and wondered: wondered, as she looked back
over the road she had threaded somewhat blindly towards the Ideal,
whether she might not somewhere have taken the wrong turn. The farther
she travelled, the more she seemed to penetrate into a land of
unrealities. The exquisite objects by which she was surrounded, and which
she had collected with such care, had no substance: she would not have
been greatly surprised, at any moment, to see them vanish like a scene in
a theatre, leaning an empty, windy stage behind them. They did not belong
to her, nor she to them.

Past generations of another blood, no doubt, had been justified in
looking upon the hazy landscapes in the great tapestries as their own:
and children's children had knelt, in times gone by, beside the carved
stone mantel. The big, gilded chairs with the silken seats might
appropriately have graced the table of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Would
not the warriors and the wits, the patient ladies of high degree and of
many children, and even the 'precieuses ridicules' themselves, turn over
in their graves if they could so much as imagine the contents of the
single street in modern New York where Honora lived?

One morning, as she sat in that room, possessed by these whimsical though
painful fancies, she picked up a newspaper and glanced through it,
absently, until her eye fell by chance upon a name on the editorial page.
Something like an electric shock ran through her, and the letters of the
name seemed to quiver and become red. Slowly they spelled--Peter Erwin.

"The argument of Mr. Peter Erwin, of St. Louis, before the Supreme Court
of the United States in the now celebrated Snowden case is universally
acknowledged by lawyers to have been masterly, and reminiscent of the
great names of the profession in the past. Mr. Erwin is not dramatic. He
appears to carry all before him by the sheer force of intellect, and by a
kind of Lincolnian ability to expose a fallacy: He is still a young man,
self-made, and studied law under Judge Brice of St. Louis, once President
of the National Bar Association, whose partner he is"....

Honora cut out the editorial and thrust it in her gown, and threw the
newspaper is the fire. She stood for a time after it had burned, watching
the twisted remnants fade from flame colour to rose, and finally blacken.
Then she went slowly up the stairs and put on her hat and coat and veil.
Although a cloudless day, it was windy in the park, and cold, the ruffled
waters an intense blue. She walked fast.

She lunched with Mrs. Holt, who had but just come to town; and the light,
like a speeding guest, was departing from the city when she reached her
own door.

"There is a gentleman in the drawing-room, madam," said the butler. "He
said he was an old friend, and a stranger in New York, and asked if he
might wait."

She stood still with presentiment.

"What is his name?" she asked.

"Mr. Erwin," said the man.

Still she hesitated. In the strange state in which she found herself that
day, the supernatural itself had seemed credible. And yet--she was not
prepared.

"I beg pardon, madam," the butler was saying, "perhaps I shouldn't--?"

"Yes, yes, you should," she interrupted him, and pushed past him up the
stairs. At the drawing-room door she paused--he was unaware of her
presence. And he had not changed! She wondered why she had expected him
to change. Even the glow of his newly acquired fame was not discernible
behind his well-remembered head. He seemed no older--and no younger. And
he was standing with his hands behind his back gazing in simple, silent
appreciation at the big tapestry nearest the windows.

"Peter," she said, in a low voice.

He turned quickly, and then she saw the glow. But it was the old glow,
not the new--the light in which her early years had been spent.

"What a coincidence!" she exclaimed, as he took her hand.

"Coincidence?"

"It was only this morning that I was reading in the newspaper all sorts
of nice things about you. It made me feel like going out and telling
everybody you were an old friend of mine." Still holding his fingers, she
pushed him away from her at arm's length, and looked at him. "What does
it feel like to be famous, and have editorials about one's self in the
New York newspapers?"

He laughed, and released his hands somewhat abruptly.

"It seems as strange to me, Honora, as it does to you."

"How unkind of you, Peter!" she exclaimed.

She felt his eyes upon her, and their searching, yet kindly and humorous
rays seemed to illuminate chambers within her which she would have kept
in darkness: which she herself did not wish to examine.

"I'm so glad to see you," she said a little breathlessly, flinging her
muff and boa on a chair. "Sit there, where I can look at you, and tell me
why you didn't let me know you were coming to New York."

He glanced a little comically at the gilt and silk arm-chair which she
designated, and then at her; and she smiled and coloured, divining the
humour in his unspoken phrase.

"For a great man," she declared, "you are absurd."

He sat down. In spite of his black clothes and the lounging attitude he
habitually assumed, with his knees crossed--he did not appear incongruous
in a seat that would have harmonized with the flowing robes of the
renowned French Cardinal himself. Honora wondered why. He impressed her
to-day as force--tremendous force in repose, and yet he was the same
Peter. Why was it? Had the clipping that even then lay in her bosom
effected this magic change? He had intimated as much, but she denied it
fiercely.

She rang for tea.

"You haven't told me why you came to New York," she said.

"I was telegraphed for, from Washington, by a Mr. Wing," he explained.

"A Mr. Wing," she repeated. "You don't mean by any chance James Wing?"

"The Mr. Wing," said Peter.

"The reason I asked," explained Honora, flushing, was because Howard is
--associated with him. Mr. Wing is largely interested in the Orange Trust
Company."

"Yes, I know," said Peter. His elbows were resting on the arms of his
chair, and he looked at the tips of his fingers, which met. Honora
thought it strange that he did not congratulate her, but he appeared to
be reflecting.

"What did Mr. Wing want?" she inquired in her momentary confusion, and
added hastily, "I beg your pardon, Peter. I suppose I ought not to ask
that."

"He was kind enough to wish me to live in New York he answered, still
staring at the tips of his fingers.

"Oh, how nice!" she cried--and wondered at the same time whether, on
second thoughts, she would think it so. "I suppose he wants you to be the
counsel for one of his trusts. When--when do you come?"

"I'm not coming."

"Not coming! Why? Isn't it a great compliment?"

He ignored the latter part of her remark; and it seemed to her, when she
recalled the conversation afterwards, that she had heard a certain note
of sadness under the lightness of his reply.

"To attempt to explain to a New Yorker why any one might prefer to live
in any other place would be a difficult task."

"You are incomprehensible, Peter," she declared. And yet she felt a
relief that surprised her, and a desire to get away from the subject.
"Dear old St. Louis! Somehow, in spite of your greatness, it seems to fit
you."

"It's growing," said Peter--and they laughed together.

"Why didn't you come to lunch?" she said.

"Lunch! I didn't know that any one ever went to lunch in New York--in
this part of it, at least--with less than three weeks' notice. And by the
way, if I am interfering with any engagement--"

"My book is not so full as all that. Of course you'll come and stay with
us, Peter."

He shook his head regretfully.

"My train leaves at six, from Forty-Second Street," he replied.

"Oh, you are niggardly," she cried. "To think how little I see of you,
Peter. And sometimes I long for you. It's strange, but I still miss you
terribly--after five years. It seems longer than that," she added, as she
poured the boiling water into the tea-pot. But she did not look at him.

He got up and walked as far as a water-colour on the wall.

"You have some beautiful things here, Honora," he said. "I am glad I have
had a glimpse of you surrounded by them to carry back to your aunt and
uncle."

She glanced about the room as he spoke, and then at him. He seemed the
only reality in it, but she did not say so.

"You'll see them soon," was what she said. And considered the miracle of
him staying there where Providence had placed him, and bringing the world
to him. Whereas she, who had gone forth to seek it--"The day after
to-morrow will be Sunday," he reminded her.

Nothing had changed there. She closed her eyes and saw the little dining
room in all the dignity of Sunday dinner, the big silver soup tureen
catching the sun, the flowered china with the gilt edges, and even a
glimpse of lace paper when the closet door opened; Aunt Mary and Uncle
Tom, with Peter between them. And these, strangely, were the only
tangible things and immutable.

"You'll give them--a good account of me?" she said. "I know that you do
not care for New York," she added with a smile. "But it is possible to be
happy here."

"I am glad you are happy, Honora, and that you have got what you wanted
in life. Although I may be unreasonable and provincial and--and Western,"
he confessed with a twinkle--for he had the characteristic national trait
of shading off his most serious remarks--"I have never gone so far as to
declare that happiness was a question of locality."

She laughed.

"Nor fame." Her mind returned to the loadstar.

"Oh, fame!" he exclaimed, with a touch of impatience, and he used the
word that had possessed her all day. "There is no reality in that. Men
are not loved for it."

She set down her cup quickly. He was looking at the water-colour.

"Have you been to the Metropolitan Museum lately?" he asked.

"The Metropolitan Museum?" she repeated in bewilderment.

"That would be one of the temptations of New York for me," he said. "I
was there for half an hour this afternoon before I presented myself at
your door as a suspicious character. There is a picture there, by Coffin,
called 'The Rain,' I believe. I am very fond of it. And looking at it on
such a winter's day as this brings back the summer. The squall coming,
and the sound of it in the trees, and the very smell of the wet
meadow-grass in the wind. Do you know it?"

"No," replied Honora, and she was suddenly filled with shame at the
thought that she had never been in the Museum. "I didn't know you were so
fond of pictures."

"I am beginning to be a rival of Mr. Dwyer," he declared. "I've bought
four--although I haven't built my gallery. When you come to St. Louis
I'll show them to you--and let us hope it will be soon."

For some time after she had heard the street door close behind him Honora
remained where she was, staring into the fire, and then she crossed the
room to a reading lamp, and turned it up.

Some one spoke in the doorway.

"Mr. Grainger, madam."

Before she could rouse herself and recover from her astonishment, the
gentleman himself appeared, blinking as though the vision of her were too
bright to be steadily gazed at. If the city had been searched, it is
doubtful whether a more striking contrast to the man who had just left
could have been found than Cecil Grainger in the braided, grey cutaway
that clung to the semblance of a waist he still possessed. In him Hyde
Park and Fifth Avenue, so to speak, shook hands across the sea: put him
in either, and he would have appeared indigenous.

"Hope you'll forgive my comin' 'round on such slight acquaintance, Mrs.
Spence," said he. "Couldn't resist the opportunity to pay my respects.
Shorter told me where you were."

"That was very good of Mr. Shorter," said Honora, whose surprise had
given place to a very natural resentment, since she had not the honour of
knowing Mrs. Grainger.

"Oh," said Mr. Grainger, "Shorter's a good sort. Said he'd been here
himself to see how you were fixed, and hadn't found you in. Uncommonly
well fixed, I should say," he added, glancing around the room with
undisguised approval. "Why the deuce did she furnish it, since she's gone
to Paris to live with Rindge?"

"I suppose you mean Mrs. Rindge," said Honora. "She didn't furnish it."

Mr. Grainger winked at her rapidly, like a man suddenly brought face to
face with a mystery.

"Oh!" he replied, as though he had solved it. The solution came a few
moments later. "It's ripping!" he said. "Farwell couldn't have done it
any better."

Honora laughed, and momentarily forgot her resentment.

"Will you have tea?" she asked. "Oh, don't sit down there!"

"Why not?" he asked, jumping. It was the chair that had held Peter, and
Mr. Grainger examined the seat as though he suspected a bent pin.

"Because," said Honora, "because it isn't comfortable. Pull up that other
one."

Again mystified, he did as he was told. She remembered his reputation for
going to sleep, and wondered whether she had been wise in her second
choice. But it soon became apparent that Mr. Grainger, as he gazed at her
from among the cushions, had no intention of dozing, His eyelids reminded
her of the shutters of a camera, and she had the feeling of sitting for
thousands of instantaneous photographs for his benefit. She was by turns
annoyed, amused, and distrait: Peter was leaving his hotel; now he was
taking the train. Was he thinking of her? He had said he was glad she was
happy! She caught herself up with a start after one of these silences to
realize that Mr. Grainger was making unwonted and indeed pathetic
exertions to entertain her, and it needed no feminine eye to perceive
that he was thoroughly uncomfortable. She had, unconsciously and in
thinking of Peter, rather overdone the note of rebuke of his visit. And
Honora was, above all else, an artist. His air was distinctly apologetic
as he rose, perhaps a little mortified, like that of a man who has got
into the wrong house.

"I very much fear I've intruded, Mrs. Spence," he stammered, and he was
winking now with bewildering rapidity. "We--we had such a pleasant drive
together that day to Westchester--I was tempted--"

"We did have a good time," she agreed. "And it has been a pleasure to see
you again."

Thus, in the kindness of her heart, she assisted him to cover his
retreat, for it was a strange and somewhat awful experience to see Mr.
Cecil Grainger discountenanced. He glanced again, as he went out, at the
chair in which he had been forbidden to sit.

She went to the piano, played over a few bars of Thais, and dropped her
hands listlessly. Cross currents of the strange events of the day flowed
through her mind: Peter's arrival and its odd heralding, and the
discomfort of Mr. Grainger.

Howard came in. He did not see her under the shaded lamp, and she sat
watching him with a curious feeling of detachment as he unfolded his
newspaper and sank, with a sigh of content, into the cushioned chair
which Mr. Grainger had vacated. Was it fancy that her husband's physical
attributes had changed since he had attained his new position of dignity?
She could have sworn that he had visibly swollen on the evening when he
had announced to her his promotion, and he seemed to have remained
swollen. Not bloated, of course: he was fatter, and--if possible pinker.
But there was a growing suggestion in him of humming-and-hawing
greatness. If there--were leisure in this too-leisurely chronicle for
what might be called aftermath, the dinner that Honora had given to some
of her Quicksands friends might be described. Suffice it to recall, with
Honora, that Lily Dallam, with a sure instinct, had put the finger of her
wit on this new attribute of Howard's.

"You'll kill me, Howard!" she had cried. "He even looks at the soup as
though he were examining a security!"

Needless to say, it did not cure him, although it sealed Lily Dallam's
fate--and incidentally that of Quicksands. Honora's thoughts as she sat
now at the piano watching him, flew back unexpectedly to the summer at
Silverdale when she had met him, and she tried to imagine, the genial and
boyish representative of finance that he was then. In the midst of this
effort he looked up and discovered her.

"What are you doing over there, Honora?" he asked.

"Thinking," she answered.

"That's a great way to treat a man when he comes home after a day's
work."

"I beg your pardon, Howard," she said with unusual meekness. "Who do you
think was here this afternoon?"

"Erwin? I've just come from Mr. Wing's house--he has gout to-day and
didn't go down town. He offered Erwin a hundred thousand a year to come
to New York as corporation counsel. And if you'll believe me--he refused
it."

"I'll believe you," she said.

"Did he say anything about it to you?"

"He simply mentioned that Mr. Wing asked him to come to New York. He
didn't say why."

"Well," Howard remarked, "he's one too many for me. He can't be making
over thirty thousand where he is."




CHAPTER II

THE PATH OF PHILANTHROPY

Mrs. Cecil Grainger may safely have been called a Personality, and one of
the proofs of this was that she haunted people who had never seen her.
Honora might have looked at her, it is true, on the memorable night of
the dinner with Mrs. Holt and Trixton Brent; but--for sufficiently
obvious reasons--refrained. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mrs.
Grainger became an obsession with our heroine; yet it cannot be denied
that, since Honora's arrival at Quicksands, this lady had, in increasing
degrees, been the subject of her speculations. The threads of Mrs.
Grainger's influence were so ramified, indeed, as to be found in Mrs.
Dallam, who declared she was the rudest woman in New York and yet had
copied her brougham; in Mr. Cuthbert and Trixton Brent; in Mrs. Kame; in
Mrs. Holt, who proclaimed her a tower of strength in charities; and
lastly in Mr. Grainger himself, who, although he did not spend much time
in his wife's company, had for her an admiration that amounted to awe.

Elizabeth Grainger, who was at once modern and tenaciously conservative,
might have been likened to some of the Roman matrons of the aristocracy
in the last years of the Republic. Her family, the Pendletons, had
traditions: so, for that matter, had the Graingers. But Senator
Pendleton, antique homo virtute et fide, had been a Roman of the old
school who would have preferred exile after the battle of Philippi; and
who, could he have foreseen modern New York and modern finance, would
have been more content to die when he did. He had lived in Washington
Square. His daughter inherited his executive ability, many of his
prejudices (as they would now be called), and his habit of regarding
favourable impressions with profound suspicion. She had never known the
necessity of making friends: hers she had inherited, and for some reason
specially decreed, they were better than those of less fortunate people.

Mrs. Grainger was very tall. And Sargent, in his portrait of her, had
caught with admirable art the indefinable, yet partly supercilious and
scornful smile with which she looked down upon the world about her. She
possessed the rare gift of combining conventionality with personal
distinction in her dress. Her hair was almost Titian red in colour, and
her face (on the authority of Mr. Reginald Farwell) was at once modern
and Italian Renaissance. Not the languid, amorous Renaissance, but the
lady of decision who chose, and did not wait to be chosen. Her eyes had
all the colours of the tapaz, and her regard was so baffling as to arouse
intense antagonism in those who were not her friends.

To Honora, groping about for a better and a higher life, the path of
philanthropy had more than once suggested itself. And on the day of
Peter's visit to New York, when she had lunched with Mrs. Holt, she had
signified her willingness (now that she had come to live in town) to join
the Working Girls' Relief Society. Mrs. Holt, needless to say, was
overjoyed: they were to have a meeting at her house in the near future
which Honora must not fail to attend. It was not, however, without a
feeling of trepidation natural to a stranger that she made her way to
that meeting when the afternoon arrived.

No sooner was she seated in Mrs. Holt's drawing-room--filled with
camp-chairs for the occasion--than she found herself listening
breathlessly to a recital of personal experiences by a young woman who
worked in a bindery on the East side. Honora's heart was soft: her
sympathies, as we know, easily aroused. And after the young woman had
told with great simplicity and earnestness of the struggle to support
herself and lead an honest and self-respecting existence, it seemed to
Honora that at last she had opened the book of life at the proper page.

Afterwards there were questions, and a report by Miss Harber, a
middle-aged lady with glasses who was the secretary. Honora looked around
her. The membership of the Society, judging by those present, was surely
of a sufficiently heterogeneous character to satisfy even the catholic
tastes of her hostess. There were elderly ladies, some benevolent and
some formidable, some bedecked and others unadorned; there were
earnest-looking younger women, to whom dress was evidently a secondary
consideration; and there was a sprinkling of others, perfectly gowned,
several of whom were gathered in an opposite corner. Honora's eyes, as
the reading of the report progressed, were drawn by a continual and
resistless attraction to this group; or rather to the face of one of the
women in it, which seemed to stare out at her like the eat in the tree of
an old-fashioned picture puzzle, or the lineaments of George Washington
among a mass of boulders on a cliff. Once one has discovered it, one can
see nothing else. In vain Honora dropped her eyes; some strange
fascination compelled her to raise them again until they met those of the
other woman: Did their glances meet? She could never quite be sure, so
disconcerting were the lights in that regard--lights, seemingly, of
laughter and mockery.

Some instinct informed Honora that the woman was Mrs. Grainger, and
immediately the scene in the Holland House dining-room came back to her.
Never until now had she felt the full horror of its comedy. And then, as
though to fill the cup of humiliation, came the thought of Cecil
Grainger's call. She longed, in an agony with which sensitive natures
will sympathize, for the reading to be over.

The last paragraph of the report contained tributes to Mrs. Joshua Holt
and Mrs. Cecil Grainger for the work each had done during the year, and
amidst enthusiastic hand-clapping the formal part of the meeting came to
an end. The servants were entering with tea as Honora made her way
towards the door, where she was stopped by Susan Holt.

"My dear Honora," cried Mrs. Holt, who had hurried after her daughter,
"you're not going?"

Honora suddenly found herself without an excuse.

"I really ought to, Mrs. Holt. I've had such a good time-and I've been so
interested. I never realized that such things occurred. And I've got one
of the reports, which I intend to read over again."

"But my dear," protested Mrs. Holt, "you must meet some of the members of
the Society. Bessie!"

Mrs. Grainger, indeed--for Honora had been right in her surmise--was
standing within ear-shot of this conversation. And Honora, who knew she
was there, could not help feeling that she took a rather redoubtable
interest in it. At Mrs. Holt's words she turned.

"Bessie, I've found a new recruit--one that I can answer for, Mrs.
Spence, whom I spoke to you about."

Mrs. Grainger bestowed upon Honora her enigmatic smile.

"Oh," she declared, "I've heard of Mrs. Spence from other sources, and
I've seen her, too."

Honora grew a fiery red. There was obviously no answer to such a remark,
which seemed the quintessence of rudeness. But Mrs. Grainger continued to
smile, and to stare at her with the air of trying to solve a riddle.

"I'm coming to see you, if I may," she said. "I've been intending to
since I've been in town, but I'm always so busy that I don't get time to
do the things I want to do."

An announcement that fairly took away Honora's breath. She managed to
express her appreciation of Mrs. Grainger's intention, and presently
found herself walking rapidly up-town through swirling snow, somewhat
dazed by the events of the afternoon. And these, by the way, were not yet
finished. As she reached her own door, a voice vaguely familiar called
her name.

"Honora!"

She turned. The slim, tall figure of a young woman descended from a
carriage and crossed the pavement, and in the soft light of the vestibule
she recognized Ethel Wing.

"I'm so glad I caught you," said that young lady when they entered the
drawing-room. And she gazed at her school friend. The colour glowed in
Honora's cheeks, but health alone could not account for the sparkle in
her eyes. "Why, you look radiant. You are more beautiful than you were at
Sutcliffe. Is it marriage?"

Honora laughed happily, and they sat down side by side on the lounge
behind the tea table.

"I heard you'd married," said Ethel, "but I didn't know what had become
of you until the other day. Jim never tells me anything. It appears that
he's seen something of you. But it wasn't from Jim that I heard about you
first. You'd never guess who told me you were here."

"Who?" asked Honora, curiously.

"Mr. Erwin."

"Peter Erwin!"

"I'm perfectly shameless," proclaimed Ethel Wing. "I've lost my heart to
him, and I don't care who knows it. Why in the world didn't you marry
him?"

"But--where did you see him?" Honora demanded as soon as she could
command herself sufficiently to speak. Her voice must have sounded odd.
Ethel did not appear to notice that.

"He lunched with us one day when father had gout. Didn't he tell you
about it? He said he was coming to see you that afternoon."

"Yes--he came. But he didn't mention being at lunch at your house."

"I'm sure that was like him," declared her friend. And for the first time
in her life Honora experienced a twinge of that world-old ailment
--jealousy. How did Ethel know what was like him? "I made father give him
up for a little while after lunch, and he talked about you the whole
time. But he was most interesting at the table," continued Ethel,
sublimely unconscious of the lack of compliment in the comparison; "as
Jim would say, he fairly wiped up the ground with father, and it isn't an
easy thing to do."

"Wiped up the ground with Mr. Wing!" Honora repeated.

"Oh, in a delightfully quiet, humorous way. That's what made it so
effective. I couldn't understand all of it; but I grasped enough to enjoy
it hugely. Father's so used to bullying people that it's become second
nature with him. I've seen him lay down the law to some of the biggest
lawyers in New York, and they took it like little lambs. He caught a
Tartar in Mr. Erwin. I didn't dare to laugh, but I wanted to."

"What was the discussion about?" asked Honora.

"I'm not sure that I can give you a very clear idea of it," said Ethel.
"Generally speaking, it was about modern trust methods, and what a
self-respecting lawyer would do and what he wouldn't. Father took the
ground that the laws weren't logical, and that they were different and
conflicting, anyway, in different States. He said they impeded the
natural development of business, and that it was justifiable for the
great legal brains of the country to devise means by which these laws
could be eluded. He didn't quite say that, but he meant it, and he
honestly believes it. The manner in which Mr. Erwin refuted it was a
revelation to me. I've been thinking about it since. You see, I'd never
heard that side of the argument. Mr. Erwin said, in the nicest way
possible, but very firmly, that a lawyer who hired himself out to enable
one man to take advantage of another prostituted his talents: that the
brains of the legal profession were out of politics in these days, and
that it was almost impossible for the men in the legislatures to frame
laws that couldn't be evaded by clever and unscrupulous devices. He cited
ever so many cases . . . "

Ethel's voice became indistinct, as though some one had shut a door in
front of it. Honora was trembling on the brink of a discovery: holding
herself back from it, as one who has climbed a fair mountain recoils from
the lip of an unsuspected crater at sight of the lazy, sulphurous fumes.
All the years of her marriage, ever since she had first heard his name,
the stature of James Wing had been insensibly growing, and the vastness
of his empire gradually disclosed. She had lived in that empire: in it
his word had stood for authority, his genius had been worshipped, his
decrees had been absolute.

She had met him once, in Howard's office, when he had greeted her
gruffly, and the memory of his rugged features and small red eyes, like
live coals, had remained. And she saw now the drama that had taken place
before Ethel's eyes. The capitalist, overbearing, tyrannical, hearing a
few, simple truths in his own house from Peter--her Peter. And she
recalled her husband's account of his talk with James Wing. Peter had
refused to sell himself. Had Howard? Many times during the days that
followed she summoned her courage to ask her husband that question, and
kept silence. She did not wish to know.

"I don't want to seem disloyal to papa," Ethel was saying. "He is under
great responsibilities to other people, to stockholders; and he must get
things done. But oh, Honora, I'm so tired of money, money, money and its
standards, and the things people are willing to do for it. I've seen too
much."

Honora looked at her friend, and believed her. One glance at the girl's
tired eyes--a weariness somehow enhanced--in effect by the gold sheen of
her hair--confirmed the truth of her words.

"You've changed, Ethel, since Sutcliffe," she said.

"Yes, I've changed," said Ethel Wing, and the weariness was in her voice,
too. "I've had too much, Honora. Life was all glitter, like a Christmas
tree, when I left Sutcliffe. I had no heart. I'm not at all sure that I
have one now. I've known all kinds of people--except the right kind. And
if I were to tell you some of the things that have happened to me in five
years you wouldn't believe them. Money has been at the bottom of it
all,--it ruined my brother, and it has ruined me. And then, the other
day, I beheld a man whose standards simply take no account of money, a
man who holds something else higher. I--I had been groping lately, and
then I seemed to see clear for the first time in my life. But I'm afraid
it comes too late."

Honora took her friend's hand in her own and pressed it.

"I don't know why I'm telling you all this," said Ethel: "It seems to-day
as though I had always known you, and yet we weren't particularly
intimate at school. I suppose I'm inclined to be oversuspicious. Heaven
knows I've had enough to make me so. But I always thought that you were a
little--ambitious. You'll forgive my frankness, Honora. I don't think
you're at all so, now." She glanced at Honora suddenly. "Perhaps you've
changed, too," she said.

Honora nodded.

"I think I'm changing all the time," she replied.

After a moment's silence, Ethel Wing pursued her own train of thought.

"Curiously enough when he--when Mr. Erwin spoke of you I seemed to get a
very different idea of you than the one I had always had. I had to go out
of town, but I made up my mind I'd come to see you as soon as I got back,
and ask you to tell me something about him."

"What shall I tell you?" asked Honora. "He is what you think he is, and
more."

"Tell me something of his early life," said Ethel Wing.

          .....................

There is a famous river in the western part of our country that
disappears into a canon, the walls of which are some thousands of feet
high, and the bottom so narrow that the confined waters roar through it
at breakneck speed. Sometimes they disappear entirely under the rock, to
emerge again below more furiously than ever. From the river-bed can be
seen, far, far above, a blue ribbon of sky. Once upon a time, not long
ago, two heroes in the service of the government of the United States,
whose names should be graven in the immortal rock and whose story read
wherever the language is spoken, made the journey through this canon and
came out alive. That journey once started, there could be no turning
back. Down and down they were buffeted by the rushing waters, over the
falls and through the tunnels, with time to think only of that which
would save them from immediate death, until they emerged into the
sunlight of the plain below.

All of which by way of parallel. For our own chronicle, hitherto
leisurely enough, is coming to its canon--perhaps even now begins to feel
the pressure of the shelving sides. And if our heroine be somewhat rudely
tossed from one boulder to another, if we fail wholly to understand her
emotions and her acts, we must blame the canon. She had, indeed, little
time to think.

One evening, three weeks or so after the conversation with Ethel Wing
just related, Honora's husband entered her room as her maid was giving
the finishing touches to her toilet.

"You're not going to wear that dress!" he exclaimed.

"Why not?" she asked, without turning from the mirror.

He lighted a cigarette.

"I thought you'd put on something handsome--to go to the Graingers'. And
where are your jewels? You'll find the women there loaded with 'em."

"One string of pearls is all I care to wear," said Honora--a reply with
which he was fain to be content until they were in the carriage, when she
added: "Howard, I must ask you as a favour not to talk that way before
the servants."

"What way?" he demanded.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you don't know I suppose it is impossible to
explain. You wouldn't understand."

"I understand one thing, Honora, that you're too confoundedly clever for
me," he declared.

Honora did not reply. For at that moment they drew up at a carpet
stretched across the pavement.

Unlike the mansions of vast and imposing facades that were beginning
everywhere to catch the eye on Fifth Avenue, and that followed mostly the
continental styles of architecture, the house of the Cecil Graingers had
a substantial, "middle of-the-eighties" appearance. It stood on a corner,
with a high iron fence protecting the area around it. Within, it gave one
an idea of space that the exterior strangely belied; and it was
furnished, not in a French, but in what might be called a comfortably
English, manner. It was filled, Honora saw, with handsome and priceless
things which did not immediately and aggressively strike the eye, but
which somehow gave the impression of having always been there. What
struck her, as she sat in the little withdrawing room while the maid
removed her overshoes, was the note of permanence.

Some of those who were present at Mrs. Grainger's that evening remember
her entrance into the drawing-room. Her gown, the colour of a rose-tinted
cloud, set off the exceeding whiteness of her neck and arms and vied with
the crimson in her cheeks, and the single glistening string of pearls
about the slender column of her neck served as a contrast to the shadowy
masses of her hair. Mr. Reginald Farwell, who was there, afterwards
declared that she seemed to have stepped out of the gentle landscape of
an old painting. She stood, indeed, hesitating for a moment in the
doorway, her eyes softly alight, in the very pose of expectancy that such
a picture suggested.

Honora herself was almost frightened by a sense of augury, of triumph, as
she went forward to greet her hostess. Conversation, for the moment, had
stopped. Cecil Grainger, with the air of one who had pulled aside the
curtain and revealed this vision of beauty and innocence, crossed the
room to welcome her. And Mrs. Grainger herself was not a little
surprised; she was not a dramatic person, and it was not often that her
drawing-room was the scene of even a mild sensation. No entrance could
have been at once so startling and so unexceptionable as Honora's.

"I was sorry not to find you when I called," she said. "I was sorry,
too," replied Mrs. Grainger, regarding her with an interest that was
undisguised, and a little embarrassing. "I'm scarcely ever at home,
except when I'm with the children. Do you know these people?"

"I'm not sure," said Honora, "but--I must introduce my husband to you."

"How d'ye do!" said Mr. Grainger, blinking at her when this ceremony was
accomplished. "I'm awfully glad to see you, Mrs. Spence, upon my word."

Honora could not doubt it. But he had little time to express his joy,
because of the appearance of his wife at Honora's elbow with a tall man
she had summoned from a corner.

"Before we go to dinner I must introduce my cousin, Mr. Chiltern--he is
to have the pleasure of taking you out," she said.

His name was in the class of those vaguely familiar: vaguely familiar,
too, was his face. An extraordinary face, Honora thought, glancing at it
as she took his arm, although she was struck by something less tangible
than the unusual features. He might have belonged to any nationality
within the limits of the Caucasian race. His short, kinky, black hair
suggested great virility, an effect intensified by a strongly bridged
nose, sinewy hands, and bushy eyebrows. But the intangible distinction
was in the eyes that looked out from under these brows the glimpse she
had of them as he bowed to her gravely, might be likened to the hasty
reading of a chance page in a forbidden book. Her attention was arrested,
her curiosity aroused. She was on that evening, so to speak, exposed for
and sensitive to impressions. She was on the threshold of the Alhambra.

"Hugh has such a faculty," complained Mr. Grainger, "of turning up at the
wrong moment!"

Dinner was announced. She took Chiltern's arm, and they fell into file
behind a lady in yellow, with a long train, who looked at her rather
hard. It was Mrs. Freddy Maitland. Her glance shifted to Chiltern, and it
seemed to Honora that she started a little.

"Hello, Hugh," she said indifferently, looking back over her shoulder;
"have you turned up again?"

"Still sticking to the same side of your horse, I see." he replied,
ignoring the question. "I told you you'd get lop-sided."

The deformity, if there were any, did not seem to trouble her.

"I'm going to Florida Wednesday. We want another man. Think it over."

"Sorry, but I've got something else to do," he said.

"The devil and idle hands," retorted Mrs. Maitland.

Honora was sure as she could be that Chiltern was angry, although he gave
no visible sign of this. It was as though the current ran from his arm
into hers.

"Have you been away?" she asked.

"It seems to me as though I had never been anywhere else," he answered,
and he glanced curiously at the guests ranging about the great,
flower-laden table. They sat down.

She was a little repelled, a little piqued; and a little relieved when
the man on her other side spoke to her, and she recognized Mr. Reginald
Farwell, the architect. The table capriciously swung that way. She did
not feel prepared to talk to Mr. Chiltern. And before entering upon her
explorations she was in need of a guide. She could have found none more
charming, none more impersonal, none more subtly aware of her wants
(which had once been his) than Mr. Farwell. With his hair parted with
geometrical precision from the back of his collar to his forehead, with
his silky mustache and eyes of soft hazel lights, he was all things to
all men and women--within reason. He was an achievement that civilization
had not hitherto produced, a combination of the Beaux Arts and the Jockey
Club and American adaptability. He was of those upon whom labour leaves
no trace.

There were preliminaries, mutually satisfactory. To see Mrs. Spence was
never to forget her, but more delicately intimated. He remembered to have
caught a glimpse of her at the Quicksands Club, and Mrs. Dallam nor her
house were not mentioned by either. Honora could not have been in New
York Long. No, it was her first winter, and she felt like a stranger.
Would Mr. Farwell tell her who some of these people were? Nothing charmed
Mr. Farwell so much as simplicity--when it was combined with personal
attractions. He did not say so, but contrived to intimate the former.

"It's always difficult when one first comes to New York," he declared,
"but it soon straightens itself out, and one is surprised at how few
people there are, after all. We'll begin on Cecil's right. That's Mrs.
George Grenfell."

"Oh, yes," said Honora, looking at a tall, thin woman of middle age who
wore a tiara, and whose throat was covered with jewels. Honora did not
imply that Mrs. Grenfell's name, and most of those that followed, were
extremely familiar to her.

"In my opinion she's got the best garden in Newport, and she did most of
it herself. Next to her, with the bald head, is Freddy Maitland. Next to
him is Miss Godfrey. She's a little eccentric, but she can afford to
be--the Godfreys for generations have done so much for the city. The man
with the beard, next her, is John Laurens, the philanthropist. That
pretty woman, who's just as nice as she looks, is Mrs. Victor Strange.
She was Agatha Pendleton--Mrs. Grainger's cousin. And the gentleman with
the pink face, whom she is entertaining--"

"Is my husband," said Honora, smiling. "I know something about him."

Mr. Farwell laughed. He admired her aplomb, and he did not himself change
countenance. Indeed, the incident seemed rather to heighten the
confidence between them. Honora was looking rather critically at Howard.
It was a fact that his face did grow red at this stage of a dinner, and
she wondered what Mrs. Strange found to talk to him about.

"And the woman on the other side of him?" she asked. "By the way, she has
a red face, too."

"So she has," he replied amusedly. "That is Mrs. Littleton Pryor, the
greatest living rebuke to the modern woman. Most of those jewels are
inherited, but she has accustomed herself by long practice to carry them,
as well as other burdens. She has eight children, and she's on every
charity list. Her ancestors were the very roots of Manhattan. She looks
like a Holbein--doesn't she?"

"And the extraordinary looking man on my right?" Honora asked. "I've got
to talk to him presently."

"Chiltern!" he said. "Is it possible you haven't heard something about
Hugh Chiltern?"

"Is it such lamentable ignorance?" she asked.

"That depends upon one's point of view," he replied. "He's always been a
sort of a--well, Viking," said Farwell.

Honora was struck by the appropriateness of the word.

"Viking--yes, he looks it exactly. I couldn't think. Tell me something
about him."

"Well," he laughed, lowering his voice a little, here goes for a little
rough and ready editing. One thing about Chiltern that's to be admired is
that he's never cared a rap what people think. Of course, in a way, he
never had to. His family own a section of the state, where they've had
woollen mills for a hundred years, more or less. I believe Hugh Chiltern
has sold 'em, or they've gone into a trust, or something, but the estate
is still there, at Grenoble--one of the most beautiful places I've ever
seen. The General--this man's father--was a violent, dictatorial man.
There is a story about his taking a battery at Gettysburg which is almost
incredible. But he went back to Grenoble after the war, and became the
typical public-spirited citizen; built up the mills which his own pioneer
grandfather had founded, and all that. He married an aunt of Mrs.
Grainger's,--one of those delicate, gentle women who never dare to call
their soul their own."

"And then?" prompted Honora, with interest.

"It's only fair to Hugh," Farwell continued, "to take his early years
into account. The General never understood him, and his mother died
before he went off to school. Men who were at Harvard with him say he has
a brilliant mind, but he spent most of his time across the Charles River
breaking things. It was, probably, the energy the General got rid of at
Gettysburg. What Hugh really needed was a war, and he had too much money.
He has a curious literary streak, I'm told, and wrote a rather remarkable
article--I've forgotten just where it appeared. He raced a yacht for a
while in a dare-devil, fiendish way, as one might expect; and used to go
off on cruises and not be heard of for months. At last he got engaged to
Sally Harrington--Mrs. Freddy Maitland."

Honora glanced across the table.

"Exactly," said Mr. Farwell. "That was seven or eight years ago. Nobody
ever knew the reason why she broke it--though it may have been pretty
closely guessed. He went away, and nobody's laid eyes on him until he
turned up to-night."

Honora's innocence was not too great to enable her to read between the
lines of this biography which Reginald Farwell had related with such
praiseworthy delicacy. It was a biography, she well knew, that, like a
score of others, had been guarded as jealously as possible within the
circle on the borders of which she now found herself. Mrs. Grainger with
her charities, Mrs. Littleton Pryor with her good works, Miss Godfrey
with her virtue--all swallowed it as gracefully as possible. Noblesse
oblige. Honora had read French and English memoirs, and knew that history
repeats itself. And a biography that is printed in black letter and
illuminated in gold is attractive in spite of its contents. The contents,
indeed, our heroine had not found uninteresting, and she turned now to
the subject with a flutter of anticipation.

He looked at her intently, almost boldly, she thought, and before she
dropped her eyes she had made a discovery. The thing stamped upon his
face and burning in his eyes was not world-weariness, disappointment,
despair. She could not tell what it was, yet; that it was none of these,
she knew. It was not unrelated to experience, but transcended it. There
was an element of purpose in it, of determination, almost--she would have
believed--of hope. That Mrs. Maitland nor any other woman was a part of
it she became equally sure. Nothing could have been more commonplace than
the conversation which began, and yet it held for her, between the lines
as in the biography, the thrill of interest. She was a woman, and
embarked on a voyage of discovery.

"Do you live in New York?" he asked.

"Yes," said Honora, "since this autumn."

"I've been away a good many years," he said, in explanation of his
question. "I haven't quite got my bearings. I can't tell you how queerly
this sort of thing affects me."

"You mean civilization?" she hazarded.

"Yes. And yet I've come back to it."

Of course she did not ask him why. Their talk was like the starting of a
heavy train--a series of jerks; and yet both were aware of an
irresistible forward traction. She had not recovered from her surprise in
finding herself already so far in his confidence.

"And the time will come, I suppose, when you'll long to get away again."

"No," he said, "I've come back to stay. It's taken me a long while to
learn it, but there's only one place for a man, and that's his own
country."

Her eyes lighted.

"There's always so much for a man to do."

"What would you do?" he asked curiously.

She considered this.

"If you had asked me that question two years ago--even a year ago--I
should have given you a different answer. It's taken me some time to
learn it, too, you see, and I'm not a man. I once thought I should have
liked to have been a king amongst money changers, and own railroad and
steamship lines, and dominate men by sheer power."

He was clearly interested.

"And now?" he prompted her.

She laughed a little, to relieve the tension.

"Well--I've found out that there are some men that kind of power can't
control--the best kind. And I've found out that that isn't the best kind
of power. It seems to be a brutal, barbarous cunning power now that I've
seen it at close range. There's another kind that springs from a man
himself, that speaks through his works and acts, that influences first
those around him, and then his community, convincing people of their own
folly, and that finally spreads in ever widening circles to those whom he
cannot see, and never will see."

She paused, breathing deeply, a little frightened at her own eloquence.
Something told her that she was not only addressing her own soul--she was
speaking to his.

"I'm afraid you'll think I'm preaching," she apologized.

"No," he said impatiently, "no."

"To answer your question, then, if I were a man of independent means, I
think I should go into politics. And I should put on my first campaign
banner the words, 'No Compromise.'"

It was a little strange that, until now--to-night-she had not definitely
formulated these ambitions. The idea of the banner with its inscription
had come as an inspiration. He did not answer, but sat regarding her,
drumming on the cloth with his strong, brown fingers.

"I have learned this much in New York," she said, carried on by her
impetus, "that men and women are like plants. To be useful, and to grow
properly, they must be firmly rooted in their own soil. This city seems
to me like a luxurious, overgrown hothouse. Of course," she added
hastily, "there are many people who belong here, and whose best work is
done here. I was thinking about those whom it attracts. And I have seen
so many who are only watered and fed and warmed, and who become
--distorted."

"It's extraordinary," replied Chiltern, slowly, "that you should say this
to me. It is what I have come to believe, but I couldn't have said it
half so well."

Mrs. Grainger gave the signal to rise. Honora took Chiltern's arm, and he
led her back to the drawing-room. She was standing alone by the fire when
Mrs. Maitland approached her.

"Haven't I seen you before?" she asked.




CHAPTER III

VINELAND

It was a pleasant Newport to which Honora went early in June, a fair city
shining in the midst of summer seas, a place to light the fires of
imagination. It wore at once an air of age, and of a new and sparkling
unreality. Honora found in the very atmosphere a certain magic which she
did not try to define, but to the enjoyment of which she abandoned
herself; and in those first days after her arrival she took a sheer
delight in driving about the island. Narrow Thames Street, crowded with
gay carriages, with its aspect of the eighteenth and it shops of the
twentieth century; the whiffs of the sea; Bellevue Avenue, with its
glorious serried ranks of trees, its erring perfumes from bright gardens,
its massed flowering shrubs beckoning the eye, its lawns of a truly
enchanted green. Through tree and hedge, as she drove, came ever changing
glimpses of gleaming palace fronts; glimpses that made her turn and look
again; that stimulated but did not satisfy, and left a pleasant longing
for something on the seeming verge of fulfilment.

The very stillness and solitude that seemed to envelop these palaces
suggested the enchanter's wand. To-morrow, perhaps, the perfect lawns
where the robins hopped amidst the shrubbery would become again the
rock-bound, windswept New England pasture above the sea, and screaming
gulls circle where now the swallows hovered about the steep blue roof of
a French chateau. Hundreds of years hence, would these great pleasure
houses still be standing behind their screens and walls and hedges? or
would, indeed, the shattered, vine-covered marble of a balustrade alone
mark the crumbling terraces whence once the fabled owners scanned the
sparkling waters of the ocean? Who could say?

The onward rush of our story between its canon walls compels us
reluctantly to skip the narrative of the winter conquests of the lady who
is our heroine. Popularity had not spoiled her, and the best proof of
this lay in the comments of a world that is nothing if not critical. No
beauty could have received with more modesty the triumph which had
greeted her at Mrs. Grenfell's tableaux, in April, when she had appeared
as Circe, in an architectural frame especially designed by Mr. Farwell
himself. There had been a moment of hushed astonishment, followed by an
acclaim that sent the curtain up twice again.

We must try to imagine, too, the logical continuation of that triumph in
the Baiae of our modern republic and empire, Newport. Open, Sesame!
seems, as ever, to be the countersign of her life. Even the palace gates
swung wide to her: most of them with the more readiness because she had
already passed through other gates--Mrs. Grainger's, for instance. Baiae,
apparently, is a topsy-turvy world in which, if one alights upside down,
it is difficult to become righted. To alight upside down, is to alight in
a palace. The Graingers did not live in one, but in a garden that existed
before the palaces were, and one that the palace owners could not copy: a
garden that three generations of Graingers, somewhat assisted by a
remarkable climate, had made with loving care. The box was priceless, the
spreading trees in the miniature park no less so, and time, the
unbribeable, alone could now have produced the wide, carefully cherished
Victorian mansion. Likewise not purchasable by California gold was a
grandfather whose name had been written large in the pages of American
history. His library was now lined with English sporting prints; but
these, too, were old and mellow and rare.

To reach Honora's cottage, you turned away from the pomp and glitter and
noise of Bellevue Avenue into the inviting tunnel of a leafy lane that
presently stopped of itself. As though to provide against the contingency
of a stray excursionist, a purple-plumed guard of old lilac trees massed
themselves before the house, and seemed to look down with contempt on the
new brick wall across the lane. 'Odi profanum vulgus'. It was on account
of the new brick wall, in fact, that Honora, through the intervention of
Mrs. Grainger and Mrs. Shorter, had been able to obtain this most
desirable of retreats, which belonged to a great-aunt of Miss Godfrey,
Mrs. Forsythe.

Mr. Chamberlin, none other than he of whom we caught a glimpse some years
ago in a castle near Silverdale, owned the wall and the grounds and the
palace it enclosed. This gentleman was of those who arrive in Newport
upside down; and was even now, with the somewhat doubtful assistance of
his wife, making lavish and pathetic attempts to right himself. Newport
had never forgiven him for the razing of a mansion and the felling of
trees which had been landmarks, and for the driving out of Mrs. Forsythe.
The mere sight of the modern wall had been too much for this lady--the
lilacs and the leaves in the lane mercifully hid the palace--and after
five and thirty peaceful summers she had moved out, and let the cottage.
It was furnished with delightful old-fashioned things that seemed to
express, at every turn, the aristocratic and uncompromising personality
of the owner who had lived so long in their midst.

Mr. Chamberlin, who has nothing whatever to do with this chronicle except
to have been the indirect means of Honora's installation, used to come
through the wall once a week or so to sit for half an hour on her porch
as long as he ever sat anywhere. He had reddish side-whiskers, and he
reminded her of a buzzing toy locomotive wound up tight and suddenly
taken from the floor. She caught glimpses of him sometimes in the
mornings buzzing around his gardeners, his painters, his carpenters, and
his grooms. He would buzz the rest of his life, but nothing short of a
revolution could take his possessions away.

The Graingers and the Grenfells and the Stranges might move mountains,
but not Mr. Chamberlin's house. Whatever heart-burnings he may have had
because certain people refused to come to his balls, he was in Newport to
remain. He would sit under the battlements until the crack of doom; or
rather--and more appropriate in Mr. Chamberlin's case--walk around them
and around, blowing trumpets until they capitulated.

Honora magically found herself within them, and without a siege. Behold
her at last in the setting for which we always felt she was destined. Why
is it, in this world, that realization is so difficult a thing? Now that
she is there, how shall we proceed to give the joys of her Elysium their
full value? Not, certainly, by repeating the word pleasure over and over
again: not by describing the palaces at which she lunched and danced and
dined, or the bright waters in which she bathed, or the yachts in which
she sailed. During the week, indeed, she moved untrammelled in a world
with which she found herself in perfect harmony: it was new, it was
dazzling, it was unexplored. During the week it possessed still another
and more valuable attribute--it was real. And she, Honora Leffingwell
Spence, was part and parcel of its permanence. The life relationships of
the people by whom she was surrounded became her own. She had little time
for thought--during the week.

We are dealing, now, in emotions as delicate as cloud shadows, and these
drew on as Saturday approached. On Saturdays and Sundays the quality and
texture of life seemed to undergo a change. Who does not recall the
Monday mornings of the school days of youth, and the indefinite feeling
betwixt sleep and waking that to-day would not be as yesterday or the day
before? On Saturday mornings, when she went downstairs, she was wont to
find the porch littered with newspapers and her husband lounging in a
wicker chair behind the disapproving lilacs. Although they had long
ceased to bloom, their colour was purple--his was pink.

Honora did not at first analyze or define these emotions, and was
conscious only of a stirring within her, and a change. Reality became
unreality. The house in which she lived, and for which she felt a passion
of ownership, was for two days a rented house. Other women in Newport had
week-end guests in the guise of husbands, and some of them went so far as
to bewail the fact. Some had got rid of them. Honora kissed hers
dutifully, and picked up the newspapers, drove him to the beach, and took
him out to dinner, where he talked oracularly of finance. On Sunday night
he departed, without visible regrets, for New York.

One Monday morning a storm was raging over Newport. Seized by a sudden
whim, she rang her bell, breakfasted at an unusual hour, and nine o'clock
found her, with her skirts flying, on the road above the cliffs that
leads to the Fort. The wind had increased to a gale, and as she stood on
the rocks the harbour below her was full of tossing white yachts
straining at their anchors. Serene in the midst of all this hubbub lay a
great grey battleship.

Presently, however, her thoughts were distracted by the sight of
something moving rapidly across her line of vision. A sloop yacht, with a
ridiculously shortened sail, was coming in from the Narrows, scudding
before the wind like a frightened bird. She watched its approach in a
sort of fascination, for of late she had been upon the water enough to
realize that the feat of which she was witness was not without its
difficulties. As the sloop drew nearer she made out a bare-headed figure
bent tensely at the wheel, and four others clinging to the yellow deck.
In a flash the boat had rounded to, the mainsail fell, and a veil of
spray hid the actors of her drama. When it cleared the yacht was tugging
like a wild thing at its anchor.

That night was Mrs. Grenfell's ball, and many times in later years has
the scene come back to Honora. It was not a large ball, by no means on
the scale of Mr. Chamberlin's, for instance. The great room reminded one
of the gallery of a royal French chateau, with its dished ceiling, in the
oval of which the colours of a pastoral fresco glowed in the ruby lights
of the heavy chandeliers; its grey panelling, hidden here and there by
tapestries, and its series of deep, arched windows that gave glimpses of
a lantern-hung terrace. Out there, beyond a marble balustrade, the lights
of fishing schooners tossed on a blue-black ocean. The same ocean on
which she had looked that morning, and which she heard now, in the
intervals of talk and laughter, crashing against the cliffs,--although
the wind had gone down. Like a woman stirred to the depths of her being,
its bosom was heaving still at the memory of the passion of the morning.

This night after the storm was capriciously mild, the velvet gown of
heaven sewn with stars. The music had ceased, and supper was being served
at little tables on the terrace. The conversation was desultory.

"Who is that with Reggie Farwell?" Ethel Wing asked.

"It's the Farrenden girl," replied Mr. Cuthbert, whose business it was to
know everybody. "Chicago wheat. She looks like Ceres, doesn't she? Quite
becoming to Reggie's dark beauty. She was sixteen, they tell me, when the
old gentleman emerged from the pit, and they packed her off to a convent
by the next steamer. Reggie may have the blissful experience of living in
one of his own houses if he marries her."

The fourth at the table was Ned Carrington, who had been first secretary
at an Embassy, and he had many stories to tell of ambassadors who spoke
commercial American and asked royalties after their wives. Some one had
said about him that he was the only edition of the Almanach de Gotha that
included the United States. He somewhat resembled a golden seal emerging
from a cold bath, and from time to time screwed an eyeglass into his eye
and made a careful survey of Mrs. Grenfell's guests.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "Isn't that Hugh Chiltern?"

Honora started, and followed the direction of Mr. Carrington's glance. At
sight of him, a vivid memory of the man's personality possessed her.

"Yes," Cuthbert was saying, "that's Chiltern sure enough. He came in on
Dicky Farnham's yacht this morning from New York."

"This morning!" said Ethel Wing. "Surely not! No yacht could have come in
this morning."

"Nobody but Chiltern would have brought one in, you mean," he corrected
her. "He sailed her. They say Dicky was half dead with fright, and wanted
to put in anywhere. Chiltern sent him below and kept right on. He has a
devil in him, I believe. By the way, that's Dicky Farnham's ex-wife he's
talking to--Adele. She keeps her good looks, doesn't she? What's happened
to Rindge?"

"Left him on the other side, I hear," said Carrington. "Perhaps she'll
take Chiltern next. She looked as though she were ready to. And they say
it's easier every time."

"C'est le second mari qui coute," paraphrased Cuthbert, tossing his cigar
over the balustrade. The strains of a waltz floated out of the windows,
the groups at the tables broke up, and the cotillon began.

As Honora danced, Chiltern remained in the back of her mind, or rather an
indefinite impression was there which in flashes she connected with him.
She wondered, at times, what had become of him, and once or twice she
caught herself scanning the bewildering, shifting sheen of gowns and
jewels for his face. At last she saw him by the windows, holding a favour
in his hand, coming in her direction. She looked away, towards the red
uniforms of the Hungarian band on the raised platform at the end of the
room. He was standing beside her.

"Do you remember me, Mrs. Spence?" he asked.

She glanced up at him and smiled. He was not a person one would be likely
to forget, but she did not say so.

"I met you at Mrs. Granger's," was what she said.

He handed her the favour. She placed it amongst the collection at the
back of her chair and rose, and they danced. Was it dancing? The music
throbbed; nay, the musicians seemed suddenly to have been carried out of
themselves, and played as they had not played before. Her veins were
filled with pulsing fire as she was swung, guided, carried out of herself
by the extraordinary virility of the man who held her. She had tasted
mastery.

"Thank you," she faltered, as they came around the second time to her
seat.

He released her.

"I stayed to dance with you," he said. "I had to await my opportunity."

"It was kind of you to remember me," she replied, as she went off with
Mr. Carrington.

A moment later she saw him bidding good night to his hostess. His face,
she thought, had not lost that strange look of determination that she
recalled. And yet--how account for his recklessness?

"Rum chap, Chiltern," remarked Carrington. "He might be almost anything,
if he only knew it."

In the morning, when she awoke, her eye fell on the cotillon favours
scattered over the lounge. One amongst them stood out--a silver-mounted
pin-cushion. Honora arose, picked it up contemplatively, stared at it
awhile, and smiled. Then she turned to her window, breathing in the
perfumes, gazing out through the horse-chestnut leaves at the green,
shadow-dappled lawn below.

On her breakfast tray, amidst some invitations, was a letter from her.
uncle. This she opened first.

   "Dear Honora," he wrote, "amongst your father's papers, which have
   been in my possession since his death, was a certificate for three
   hundred shares in a land company. He bought them for very little,
   and I had always thought them worthless. It turns out that these
   holdings are in a part of the state of Texas that is now being
   developed; on the advice of Mr. Isham and others I have accepted an
   offer of thirty dollars a share, and I enclose a draft on New York
   for nine thousand dollars. I need not dwell upon the pleasure it is
   for me to send you this legacy from your father. And I shall only
   add the counsel of an old uncle, to invest this money by your
   husband's advice in some safe securities." . . .

Honora put down the letter, and sat staring at the cheque in her hand.
Nine thousand dollars--and her own! Her first impulse was to send it back
to her uncle. But that would be, she knew, to hurt his feelings--he had
taken such a pride in handing her this inheritance. She read the letter
again, and resolved that she would not ask Howard to invest the money.
This, at least, should be her very own, and she made up her mind to take
it to a bank in Thames Street that morning.

While she was still under the influence of the excitement aroused by the
unexpected legacy, Mrs. Shorter came in, a lady with whom Honora's
intimacy had been of steady growth. The tie between them might perhaps
have been described as intellectual, for Elsie Shorter professed only to
like people who were "worth while." She lent Honora French plays,
discussed them with her, and likewise a wider range of literature,
including certain brightly bound books on evolution and sociology.

In the eighteenth century, Mrs. Shorter would have had a title and a
salon in the Faubourg: in the twentieth, she was the wife of a most
fashionable and successful real estate agent in New York, and was aware
of no incongruity. Bourgeoise was the last thing that could be said of
her; she was as ready as a George Sand to discuss the whole range of
human emotions; which she did many times a week with certain gentlemen of
intellectual bent who had the habit of calling on her. She had never, to
the knowledge of her acquaintances, been shocked. But while she believed
that a great love carried, mysteriously concealed in its flame, its own
pardon, she had through some fifteen years of married life remained
faithful to Jerry Shorter: who was not, to say the least, a Lochinvar or
a Roland. Although she had had nervous prostration and was thirty-four,
she was undeniably pretty. She was of the suggestive, and not the
strong-minded type, and the secret of her strength with the other sex was
that she was in the habit of submitting her opinions for their approval.

"My dear," she said to Honora, "you may thank heaven that you are still
young enough to look beautiful in negligee. How far have you got? Have
you guessed of which woman Vivarce was the lover? And isn't it the most
exciting play you've ever read? Ned Carrington saw it in Paris, and
declares it frightened him into being good for a whole week!"

"Oh, Elsie," exclaimed Honora, apologetically, "I haven't read a word of
it."

Mrs. Shorter glanced at the pile of favours.

"How was the dance?" she asked. "I was too tired to go. Hugh Chiltern
offered to take me."

"I saw Mr. Chiltern there. I met him last winter at the Graingers'."

"He's staying with us," said Mrs. Shorter; "you know he's a sort of
cousin of Jerry's, and devoted to him. He turned up yesterday morning on
Dicky Farnham's yacht, in the midst of all that storm. It appears that
Dicky met him in New York, and Hugh said he was coming up here, and Dicky
offered to sail him up. When the storm broke they were just outside, and
all on board lost their heads, and Hugh took charge and sailed in. Dicky
told me that himself."

"Then it wasn't--recklessness," said Honora, involuntarily. But Mrs.
Shorter did not appear to be surprised by the remark.

"That's what everybody thinks, of course," she answered. "They say that
he had a chance to run in somewhere, and browbeat Dicky into keeping on
for Newport at the risk of their lives. They do Hugh an injustice. He
might have done that some years ago, but he's changed."

Curiosity got the better of Honora.

"Changed?" she repeated.

"Of course you didn't know him in the old days, Honora," said Mrs.
Shorter. "You wouldn't recognize him now. I've seen a good deal of men,
but he is the most interesting and astounding transformation I've ever
known."

"How?" asked Honora. She was sitting before the glass, with her hand
raised to her hair.

Mrs. Shorter appeared puzzled.

"That's what interests me," she said. "My dear, don't you think life
tremendously interesting? I do. I wish I could write a novel. Between
ourselves, I've tried. I had Mr. Dewing send it to a publisher, who said
it was clever, but had no plot. If I only could get a plot!"

Honora laughed.

"How would I The Transformation of Mr. Chiltern' do, Elsie?"

"If I only knew what's happened to him, and how he's going to end!"
sighed Mrs. Shorter.

"You were saying," said Honora, for her friend seemed to have relapsed
into a contemplation of this problem, "you were saying that he had
changed."

"He goes away for seven years, and he suddenly turns up filled with
ambition and a purpose in life, something he had never dreamed of. He's
been at Grenoble, where the Chiltern estate is, making improvements and
preparing to settle down there. And he's actually getting ready to write
a life of his father, the General--that's the most surprising thing! They
never met but to strike fire while the General was alive. It appears that
Jerry and Cecil Grainger and one or two other people have some of the old
gentleman's letters, and that's the reason why Hugh's come to Newport.
And the strangest thing about it, my dear," added Mrs. Shorter,
inconsequently, "is that I don't think it's a love affair."

Honora laughed again. It was the first time she had ever heard Mrs.
Shorter attribute unusual human phenomena to any other source. "He wrote
Jerry that he was coming back to live on the estate,--from England. And
he wasn't there a week. I can't think where he's seen any women--that
is," Mrs. Shorter corrected herself hastily, "of his own class. He's been
in the jungle--India, Africa, Cores. That was after Sally Harrington
broke the engagement. And I'm positive he's not still in love with Sally.
She lunched with me yesterday, and I watched him. Oh, I should have known
it. But Sally hasn't got over it. It wasn't a grand passion with Hugh. I
don't believe he's ever had such a thing. Not that he isn't capable of
it--on the contrary, he's one of the few men I can think of who is."

At this point in the conversation Honora thought that her curiosity had
gone far enough.




CHAPTER IV

THE VIKING

She was returning on foot from the bank in Thames Street, where she had
deposited her legacy, when she met him who had been the subject of her
conversation with Mrs. Shorter. And the encounter seemed--and was--the
most natural thing in the world. She did not stop to ask herself why it
was so fitting that the Viking should be a part of Vineland: why his
coming should have given it the one and final needful touch. For that
designation of Reginald Farwell's had come back to her. Despite the fact
that Hugh Chiltern had with such apparent resolution set his face towards
literature and the tillage of the land, it was as the Viking still that
her imagination pictured him. By these tokens we may perceive that this
faculty of our heroine's has been at work, and her canvas already
sketched in.

Whether by design or accident he was at the leafy entrance of her lane
she was not to know. She spied him standing there; and in her leisurely
approach a strange conceit of reincarnation possessed her, and she smiled
at the contrast thus summoned up. Despite the jingling harnesses of
Bellevue Avenue and the background of Mr. Chamberlin's palace wall;
despite the straw hat and white trousers and blue double-breasted serge
coat in which he was conventionally arrayed, he was the sea fighter
still--of all the ages. M. Vipsanius Agrippa, who had won an empire for
Augustus, had just such a head.

Their greeting, too, was conventional enough, and he turned and walked
with her up the lane, and halted before the lilacs. "You have Mrs.
Forsythe's house," he said. "How well I remember it! My mother used to
bring me here years ago."

"Won't you come in?" asked Honora, gently.

He seemed to have forgotten her as they mounted in silence to the porch,
and she watched him with curious feelings as he gazed about him, and
peered through the windows into the drawing-room.

"It's just as it was," he said. "Even the furniture. I'm glad you haven't
moved it. They used to sit over there in the corner, and have tea on the
ebony table. And it was always dark-just as it is now. I can see them.
They wore dresses with wide skirts and flounces, and queer low collars
and bonnets. And they talked in subdued voices--unlike so many women in
these days."

She was a little surprised, and moved, by the genuine feeling with which
he spoke.

"I was most fortunate to get the house," she answered. "And I have grown
to love it. Sometimes it seems as though I had always lived here."

"Then you don't envy that," he said, flinging his hand towards an opening
in the shrubbery which revealed a glimpse of one of the pilasters of the
palace across the way. The instinct of tradition which had been the cause
of Mrs. Forsythe's departure was in him, too. He, likewise, seemed to
belong to the little house as he took one of the wicker chairs.

"Not," said Honora, "when I can have this."

She was dressed in white, her background of lilac leaves. Seated on the
railing, with the tip of one toe resting on the porch, she smiled down at
him from under the shadows of her wide hat.

"I didn't think you would," he declared. "This place seems to suit you,
as I imagined you. I have thought of you often since we first met last
winter."

"Yes," she replied hastily, "I am very happy here. Mrs. Shorter tells me
you are staying with then."

"When I saw you again last night," he continued, ignoring her attempt to
divert the stream from his channel, I had a vivid impression as of having
just left you. Have you ever felt that way about people?"

"Yes," she admitted, and poked the toe of her boot with her parasol.

"And then I find you in this house, which has so many associations for
me. Harmoniously here," he added, "if you know what I mean. Not a
newcomer, but some one who must always have been logically expected."

She glanced at him quickly, with parted lips. It was she who had done
most of the talking at Mrs. Grainger's dinner; and the imaginative
quality of mind he was now revealing was unlooked for. She was surprised
not to find it out of character. It is a little difficult to know what
she expected of him, since she did not know herself the methods, perhaps;
of the Viking in Longfellow's poem. She was aware, at least, that she had
attracted him, and she was beginning to realize it was not a thing that
could be done lightly. This gave her a little flutter of fear.

"Are you going to be long in Newport?" she asked.

"I am leaving on Friday," he replied. "It seems strange to be here again
after so many years. I find I've got out of touch with it. And I haven't
a boat, although Farnham's been kind enough to offer me his."

"I can't imagine you, somehow, without a boat," she said, and added
hastily: "Mrs. Shorter was speaking of you this morning, and said that
you were always on the water when you were here. Newport must have been
quite different then."

He accepted the topic, and during the remainder of his visit she
succeeded in keeping the conversation in the middle ground, although she
had a sense of the ultimate futility of the effort; a sense of pressure
being exerted, no matter what she said. She presently discovered,
however, that the taste for literature attributed to him which had seemed
so incongruous--existed. He spoke with a new fire when she led him that
way, albeit she suspected that some of the fuel was derived from the
revelation that she shared his liking for books. As the extent of his
reading became gradually disclosed, however, her feeling of inadequacy
grew, and she resolved in the future to make better use of her odd
moments. On her table, in two green volumes, was the life of a
Massachusetts statesman that Mrs. Shorter had lent her. She picked it up
after Chiltern had gone. He had praised it.

He left behind him a blurred portrait on her mind, as that of two men
superimposed. And only that morning he had had such a distinct impression
of one. It was from a consideration of this strange phenomenon, with her
book lying open in her lap, that her maid aroused her to go to Mrs.
Pryor's. This was Tuesday.

Some of the modern inventions we deem most marvellous have been fitted
for ages to man and woman. Woman, particularly, possesses for instance a
kind of submarine bell; and, if she listens, she can at times hear it
tinkling faintly. And the following morning, Wednesday, Honora heard hers
when she received an invitation to lunch at Mrs. Shorter's. After a
struggle, she refused, but Mrs. Shorter called her up over the telephone,
and she yielded.

"I've got Alfred Dewing for myself," said Elsie Shorter, as she greeted
Honora in the hall. "He writes those very clever things--you've read
them. And Hugh for you," she added significantly.

The Shorter cottage, though commodious, was simplicity itself. From the
vine-covered pergola where they lunched they beheld the distant sea like
a lavender haze across the flats. And Honora wondered whether there were
not an element of truth in what Mr. Dewing said of their hostess--that
she thought nothing immoral except novels with happy endings. Chiltern
did not talk much: he looked at Honora.

"Hugh has got so serious," said Elsie Shorter, "that sometimes I'm
actually afraid of him. You ought to have done something to be as serious
as that, Hugh."

"Done something!"

"Written the 'Origin of Species,' or founded a new political party, or
executed a coup d'etat. Half the time I'm under the delusion that I'm
entertaining a celebrity under my roof, and I wake up and it's only
Hugh."

"It's because he looks as though he might do any of those things,"
suggested Mr. Deming. "Perhaps he may."

"Oh," said Elsie Shorter, "the men who do them are usually little wobbly
specimens."

Honora was silent, watching Chiltern. At times the completeness of her
understanding of him gave her an uncanny sensation; and again she failed
to comprehend him at all. She felt his anger go to a white heat, but the
others seemed blissfully unaware of the fact. The arrival of coffee made
a diversion.

"You and Hugh may have the pergola, Honora. I'll take Mr. Deming into the
garden."

"I really ought to go in a few minutes, Elsie," said Honora.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Shorter. "If it's bridge at the
Playfairs', I'll telephone and get you out of it."

"No--"

"Then I don't see where you can be going," declared Mrs. Shorter, and
departed with her cavalier.

"Why are you so anxious to get away?" asked Chiltern, abruptly.

Honora coloured.

"Oh--did I seem so? Elsie has such a mania for pairing people
off-sometimes it's quite embarrassing."

"She was a little rash in assuming that you'd rather talk to me," he
said, smiling.

"You were not consulted, either."

"I was consulted before lunch," he replied.

"You mean--?"

"I mean that I wanted you," he said. She had known it, of course. The
submarine bell had told her. And he could have found no woman in Newport
who would have brought more enthusiasm to his aid than Elsie Shorter.

"And you usually--get what you want," she retorted with a spark of
rebellion.

"Yes," he admitted. "Only hitherto I haven't wanted very desirable
things."

She laughed, but her curiosity got the better of her.

"Hitherto," she said, "you have just taken what you desired."

From the smouldering fires in his eyes darted an arrowpoint of flame.

"What kind of a man are you?" she asked, throwing the impersonal to the
winds. "Somebody called you a Viking once."

"Who?" he demanded.

"It doesn't matter. I'm beginning to think the name singularly
appropriate. It wouldn't be the first time one landed in Newport,
according to legend," she added.

"I haven't read the poem since childhood," said Chiltern, looking at her
fixedly, "but he became--domesticated, if I remember rightly."

"Yes," she admitted, "the impossible happened to him, as it usually does
in books. And then, circumstances helped. There were no other women."

"When the lady died," said Chiltern, "he fell upon his spear."

"The final argument for my theory," declared Honora.

"On the contrary," he maintained, smiling, "it proves there is always one
woman for every man--if he cars find her. If this man had lived in modern
times, he would probably have changed from a Captain Kidd into a useful
citizen of the kind you once said you admired."

"Is a woman necessary," she asked, "for the transformation?"

He looked at her so intently that she blushed to the hair clustering at
her temples. She had not meant that her badinage should go so deep.

"It was not a woman," he said slowly, "that brought me back to America."

"Oh," she exclaimed, suffused, "I hope you won't think that curiosity"
--and got no farther.

He was silent a moment, and when she ventured to glance up at him one of
those enigmatical changes had taken place. He was looking at her gravely,
though intently, and the Viking had disappeared.

"I wanted you to know," he answered. "You must have heard more or less
about me. People talk. Naturally these things haven't been repeated to
me, but I dare say many of them are true. I haven't been a saint, and I
don't pretend to be now. I've never taken the trouble to deceive any one.
And I've never cared, I'm sorry to say, what was said. But I'd like you
to believe that when I agreed with with the sentiments you expressed the
first time I saw you, I was sincere. And I am still sincere."

"Indeed, I do believe it!" cried Honora.

His face lighted.

"You seemed different from the other women I had known--of my generation,
at least," he went on steadily. "None of them could have spoken as you
did. I had just landed that morning, and I should have gone direct to
Grenoble, but there was some necessary business to be attended to in New
York. I didn't want to go to Bessie's dinner, but she insisted. She was
short of a man. I went. I sat next to you, and you interpreted my mind.
It seemed too extraordinary not to have had a significance."

Honora did not reply. She felt instinctively that he was a man who was
not wont ordinarily to talk about his affairs. Beneath his speech was an
undercurrent--or undertow, perhaps--carrying her swiftly, easily,
helpless into the deep waters of intimacy. For the moment she let herself
go without a struggle. Her silence was of a breathless quality which he
must have felt.

"And I am going to tell you why I came home," he said. "I have spoken of
it to nobody, but I wish you to know that it had nothing to do with any
ordinary complication these people may invent. Nor was there anything
supernatural about it: what happened to me, I suppose, is as old a story
as civilization itself. I'd been knocking about the world for a good many
years, and I'd had time to think. One day I found myself in the interior
of China with a few coolies and a man who I suspect was a ticket-of-leave
Englishman. I can see the place now the yellow fog, the sand piled up
against the wall like yellow snow. Desolation was a mild name for it. I
think I began with a consideration of the Englishman who was asleep in
the shadow of a tower. There was something inconceivably hopeless in his
face in that ochre light. Then the place where I was born and brought up
came to me with a startling completeness, and I began to go over my own
life, step by step. To make a long story short, I perceived that what my
father had tried to teach me, in his own way, had some reason in it. He
was a good deal of a man. I made up my mind I'd come home and start in
where I belonged. But I didn't do so right away--I finished the trip
first, and lent the Englishman a thousand pounds to buy into a firm in
Shanghai. I suppose," he added, "that is what is called suggestion. In my
case it was merely the cumulative result of many reflections in waste
places."

"And since then?"

"Since then I have been at Grenoble, making repairs and trying to learn
something about agriculture. I've never been as happy in my life."

"And you're going back on Friday," she said.

He glanced at her quickly. He had detected the note in her speech: though
lightly uttered, it was unmistakably a command. She tried to soften its
effect in her next sentence.

"I can't express how much I appreciate your telling me this," she said.
"I'll confess to you I wished to think that something of that kind had
happened. I wished to believe that--that you had made this determination
alone. When I met you that night there was something about you I couldn't
account for. I haven't been able to account for it until now."

She paused, confused, fearful that she had gone too far. A moment later
she was sure of it. A look came into his eyes that frightened her.

"You've thought of me?" he said.

"You must know," she replied, "that you have an unusual personality--a
striking one. I can go so far as to say that I remembered you when you
reappeared at Mrs. Grenfell's--" she hesitated.

He rose, and walked to the far end of the tiled pavement of the pergola,
and stood for a moment looking out over the sea. Then he turned to her.

"I either like a person or I don't," he said. "And I tell you frankly I
have never met a woman whom I cared for as I do you. I hope you're not
going to insist upon a probationary period of months before you decide
whether you can reciprocate."

Here indeed was a speech in his other character, and she seemed to see,
in a flash, his whole life in it. There was a touch of boyishness that
appealed, a touch of insistent masterfulness that alarmed. She recalled
that Mrs. Shorter had said of him that he had never had to besiege a
fortress--the white flag had always appeared too quickly. Of course there
was the mystery of Mrs. Maitland--still to be cleared up. It was plain,
at least, that resistance merely made him unmanageable. She smiled.

"It seems to me," she said, "that in two days we have become
astonishingly intimate."

"Why shouldn't we?" he demanded.

But she was not to be led into casuistry.

"I've been reading the biography you recommended," she said.

He continued to look at her a moment, and laughed as he sat down beside
her. Later he walked home with her. A dinner and bridge followed, and it
was after midnight when she returned. As her maid unfastened her gown she
perceived that her pincushion had been replaced by the one she had
received at the ball.

"Did you put that there, Mathilde?" she asked.

Mathilde had. She had seen it on madame's bureau, and thought madame
wished it there. She would replace the old one at once.

"No," said Honora, "you may leave it, now."

"Bien, madame," said the maid, and glanced at her mistress, who appeared
to have fallen into a revery.

It had seemed strange to her to hear people talking about him at the
dinner that night, and once or twice her soul had sprung to arms to
champion him, only to remember that her knowledge was special. She alone
of all of them understood, and she found herself exulting in the
superiority. The amazed comment when the heir to the Chiltern fortune had
returned to the soil of his ancestors had been revived on his arrival in
Newport. Ned Carrington, amid much laughter, had quoted the lines about
Prince Hal:

          "To mock the expectations of the world,
          To frustrate prophecies."

Honora disliked Mr. Carrington.

Perhaps the events of Thursday, would better be left in the confusion in
which they remained in Honora's mind. She was awakened by penetrating,
persistent, and mournful notes which for some time she could not
identify, although they sounded oddly familiar; and it was not until she
felt the dampness of the coverlet and looked at the white square of her
open windows that she realized there was a fog. And it had not lifted
when Chiltern came in the afternoon. They discussed literature--but the
book had fallen to the floor. 'Absit omen'! If printing had then been
invented, undoubtedly there would have been a book instead of an apple in
the third chapter of Genesis. He confided to her his plan of collecting
his father's letters and of writing the General's life. Honora, too,
would enjoy writing a book. Perhaps the thought of the pleasure of
collaboration occurred to them both at once; it was Chiltern who wished
that he might have her help in the difficult places; she had, he felt,
the literary instinct. It was not the Viking who was talking now. And
then, at last, he had risen reluctantly to leave. The afternoon had
flown. She held out her hand with a frank smile.

"Good-by," she said. "Good-by, and good luck."

"But I may not go," he replied.

She stood dismayed.

"I thought you told me you were going on Friday--to-morrow."

"I merely set that as a probable date. I have changed my mind. There is
no immediate necessity. Do you wish me to go?" he demanded.

She had turned away, and was straightening the books on the table.

"Why should I?" she said.

"You wouldn't object to my remaining a few days more?" He had reached the
doorway.

"What have I to do with your staying?" she asked.

"Everything," he answered--and was gone.

She stood still. The feeling that possessed her now was rebellion, and
akin to hate.

Her conduct, therefore, becomes all the more incomprehensible when we
find her accepting, the next afternoon, his invitation to sail on Mr.
Farnham's yacht, the 'Folly'. It is true that the gods will not exonerate
Mrs. Shorter. That lady, who had been bribed with Alfred Dewing, used her
persuasive powers; she might be likened to a skilful artisan who blew
wonderful rainbow fabrics out of glass without breaking it; she blew the
tender passion into a thousand shapes, and admired every one. Her
criminal culpability consisted in forgetting the fact that it could not
be trusted with children.

Nature seems to delight in contrasts. As though to atone for the fog she
sent a dazzling day out of the northwest, and the summer world was
stained in new colours. The yachts were whiter, the water bluer, the
grass greener; the stern grey rocks themselves flushed with purple. The
wharves were gay, and dark clustering foliage hid an enchanted city as
the Folly glided between dancing buoys. Honora, with a frightened glance
upward at the great sail, caught her breath. And she felt rather than saw
the man beside her guiding her seaward.

A discreet expanse of striped yellow deck separated them from the wicker
chairs where Mrs. Shorter and Mr. Dewing were already established. She
glanced at the profile of the Viking, and allowed her mind to dwell for
an instant upon the sensations of that other woman who had been snatched
up and carried across the ocean. Which was the quality in him that
attracted her? his lawlessness, or his intellect and ambition? Never, she
knew, had he appealed to her more than at this moment, when he stood, a
stern figure at the wheel, and vouchsafed her nothing but commonplaces.
This, surely, was his element.

Presently, however, the yacht slid out from the infolding land into an
open sea that stretched before them to a silver-lined horizon. And he
turned to her with a disconcerting directness, as though taking for
granted a subtle understanding between them.

"How well you sail," she said, hurriedly.

"I ought to be able to do that, at least," he declared.

"I saw you when you came in the other day, although I didn't know who it
was until afterwards. I was standing on the rocks near the Fort, and my
heart was in my mouth."

He answered that the Dolly was a good sea boat.

"So you decided to forgive me," he said.

"For what?"

"For staying in Newport."

Before accepting the invitation she had formulated a policy, cheerfully
confident in her ability to carry it out. For his decision not to leave
Newport had had an opposite effect upon her than that she had
anticipated; it had oddly relieved the pressure. It had given her a
chance to rally her forces; to smile, indeed, at an onslaught that had so
disturbed her; to examine the matter in a more rational light. It had
been a cause for self-congratulation that she had scarcely thought of him
the night before. And to-day, in her blue veil and blue serge gown, she
had boarded the 'Folly' with her wits about her. She forgot that it was
he who, so to speak, had the choice of ground and weapons.

"I have forgiven you. Why shouldn't I, when you have so royally atoned."

But he obstinately refused to fence. There was nothing apologetic in this
man, no indirectness in his method of attack. Parry adroitly as she
might, he beat down her guard. As the afternoon wore on there were
silences, when Honora, by staring over the waters, tried to collect her
thoughts. But the sea was his ally, and she turned her face appealingly
toward the receding land. Fascination and fear struggled within her as
she had listened to his onslaughts, and she was conscious of being moved
by what he was, not by what he said. Vainly she glanced at the two
representatives of an ironically satisfied convention, only to realize
that they were absorbed in a milder but no less entrancing aspect of the
same topic, and would not thank her for an interruption.

"Do you wish me to go away?" he asked at last abruptly, almost rudely.

"Surely," she said, "your work, your future isn't in Newport."

"You haven't answered my question."

"It's because I have no right to answer it," she replied. "Although we
have known each other so short a time, I am your friend. You must realize
that. I am not conventional. I have lived long enough to understand that
the people one likes best are not necessarily those one has known
longest. You interest me--I admit it frankly--I speak to you sincerely. I
am even concerned that you shall find happiness, and I feel that you have
the power to make something of yourself. What more can I say? It seems to
me a little strange," she added, "that under the circumstances I should
say so much. I can give no higher proof of my friendship."

He did not reply, but gave a sharp order to the crew. The sheet was
shortened, and the Folly obediently headed westward against the swell,
flinging rainbows from her bows as she ran. Mrs. Shorter and Dewing
returned at this moment from the cabin, where they had been on a tour of
inspection.

"Where are you taking us, Hugh?" said Mrs. Shorter. "Nowhere in
particular," he replied.

"Please don't forget that I am having people to dinner to-night. That's
all I ask. What have you done to him, Honora, to put him in such a
humour?"

Honora laughed.

"I hadn't noticed anything peculiar about him," she answered.

"This boat reminds me of Adele," said Mrs. Shorter. "She loved it. I can
see how she could get a divorce from Dicky--but the 'Folly'! She told me
yesterday that the sight of it made her homesick, and Eustace Rindge
won't leave Paris."

It suddenly occurred to Honora, as she glanced around the yacht, that
Mrs. Rindge rather haunted her.

"So that is your answer," said Chiltern, when they were alone again.

"What other can I give you?"

"Is it because you are married?" he demanded.

She grew crimson.

"Isn't that an unnecessary question?"

"No," he declared. "It concerns me vitally to understand you. You were
good enough to wish that I should find happiness. I have found the
possibility of it--in you."

"Oh," she cried, "don't say such things!"

"Have you found happiness?" he asked.

She turned her face from him towards their shining wake. But he had seen
that her eyes were filled with sudden tears.

"Forgive me," he pleaded; "I did not mean to be brutal. I said that
because I felt as I have never in my life felt before. As I did not know
I could feel. I can't account for it, but I ask you to believe me."

"I can account for it," she answered presently, with a strange
gentleness. "It is because you met me at a critical time.
Such-coincidences often occur in life. I happened to be a woman; and, I
confess it, a woman who was interested. I could not have been interested
if you had been less real, less sincere. But I saw that you were going
through a crisis; that you might, with your powers, build up your life
into a splendid and useful thing. And, womanlike, my instinct was to help
you. I should not have allowed you to go on, but--but it all happened so
quickly that I was bewildered. I--I do not understand it myself."

He listened hungrily, and yet at times with evident impatience.

"No," he said, "I cannot believe that it was an accident. It was you--"

She stopped him with an imploring gesture.

"Please," she said, "please let us go in."

Without an instant's hesitation he brought the sloop about and headed her
for the light-ship on Brenton's reef, and they sailed in silence. Awhile
she watched the sapphire waters break to dazzling whiteness under the
westerning sun. Then, in an ecstasy she did not seek to question, she
closed her eyes to feel more keenly the swift motion of their flight. Why
not? The sea, the winds of heaven, had aided others since the dawn of
history. Legend was eternally true. On these very shores happiness had
awaited those who had dared to face primeval things.

She looked again, this time towards an unpeopled shore. No sentinel
guarded the uncharted reefs, and the very skies were smiling, after the
storm, at the scudding fates.

It was not until they were landlocked once more, and the Folly was
reluctantly beating back through the Narrows, that he spoke again.

"So you wish me to go away?"

"I cannot see any use in your staying," she replied, "after what you have
said. I--cannot see," she added in a low voice, "that for you to remain
would be to promote the happiness of--either of us. You should have gone
to-day."

"You care!" he exclaimed.

"It is because I do not wish to care that I tell you to go--"

"And you refuse happiness?"

"It could be happiness for neither of us," said Honora. "The situation
would be impossible. You are not a man who would be satisfied with
moderation. You would insist upon having all. And you do not know what
you are asking."

"I know that I want you," he said, "and that my life is won or lost with
or without you."

You have no right to say such a thing."

"We have each of us but one life to live."

"And one life to ruin," she answered. "See, you are running on the
rocks!"

He swung the boat around.

"Others have rebuilt upon ruins," he declared.

She smiled at him.

"But you are taking my ruins for granted," she said. "You would make them
first."

He relapsed into silence again. The Folly needed watching. Once he turned
and spoke her name, and she did not rebuke him.

"Women have a clearer vision of the future than men," she began
presently, "and I know you better than you know yourself. What--what you
desire would not mend your life, but break it utterly. I am speaking
plainly. As I have told you, you interest me; so far that is the extent
of my feelings. I do not know whether they would go any farther, but on
your account as well as my own I will not take the risk. We have come to
an impasse. I am sorry. I wish we might have been friends, but what you
have said makes it impossible. There is only one thing to do, and that is
for you to go away."

He eased off his sheet, rounded the fort, and set a course for the
moorings. The sun hung red above the silhouetted roofs of Conanicut, and
a quaint tower in the shape of a minaret stood forth to cap the illusions
of a day.

The wind was falling, the harbour quieting for the night, and across the
waters, to the tones of a trumpet, the red bars of the battleship's flag
fluttered to the deck. The Folly, making a wide circle, shot into the
breeze, and ended by gliding gently up to the buoy.




CHAPTER V

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

It was Saturday morning, but Honora had forgotten the fact. Not until she
was on the bottom step did the odour of cigarettes reach her and turn her
faint; and she clutched suddenly at the banisters. Thus she stood for a
while, motionless, and then went quietly into the drawing-room. The
French windows looking out on the porch were, as usual, open.

It was an odd sensation thus to be regarding one's husband objectively.
For the first time he appeared to her definitely as a stranger; as much a
stranger as the man who came once a week to wind Mrs. Forsythe's clocks.
Nay, more. There was a sense of intrusion in this visit, of invasion of a
life with which he had nothing to do. She examined him ruthlessly, very
much as one might examine a burglar taken unawares. There was the
inevitable shirt with the wide pink stripes, of the abolishment or even
of the effective toning down of which she had long since despaired. On
the contrary, like his complexion, they evinced a continual tendency
towards a more aggressive colour. There was also the jewelled ring, now
conspicuously held aloft on a fat little finger. The stripes appeared
that morning as the banner of a hated suzerain, the ring as the emblem of
his overlordship. He did not belong in that house; everything in it cried
out for his removal; and yet it was, in the eyes of the law at least,
his. By grace of that fact she was here, enjoying it. At that instant, as
though in evidence of this, he laid down a burning cigarette on a
mahogany stand he had had brought out to him. Honora seized an ash tray,
hurried to the porch, and picked up the cigarette in the tips of her
fingers.

"Howard, I wish you would be more careful of Mrs. Forsythe's furniture,"
she exclaimed.

"Hello, Honora," he said, without looking up. "I see by the Newport paper
that old Maitland is back from Europe. Things are skyrocketing in Wall
Street." He glanced at the ash tray, which she had pushed towards him.
"What's the difference about the table? If the old lady makes a row, I'll
pay for it."

"Some things are priceless," she replied; "you do not seem to realize
that."

"Not this rubbish," said Howard. "Judging by the fuss she made over the
inventory, you'd think it might be worth something."

"She has trusted us with it," said Honora. Her voice shook.

He stared at her.

"I never saw you look like that," he declared.

"It's because you never look at me closely," she answered.

He laughed, and resumed his reading. She stood awhile by the railing.
Across the way, beyond the wall, she heard Mr. Chamberlin's shrill voice
berating a gardener.

"Howard," she asked presently, "why do you come to Newport at all?"

"Why do I come to Newport?" he repeated. "I don't understand you."

"Why do you come up here every week?"

"Well," he said, "it isn't a bad trip on the boat, and I get a change
from New York; and see men I shouldn't probably see otherwise." He paused
and looked at her again, doubtfully. "Why do you ask such a question?"

"I wished to be sure," said Honora.

"Sure of what?"

"That the-arrangement suited you perfectly. You do not feel--the lack of
anything, do you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You wouldn't care to stay in Newport all the time?"

"Not if I know myself," he replied. "I leave that part of it to you."

"What part of it?" she demanded.

"You ought to know. You do it pretty well," he laughed. "By the way,
Honora, I've got to have a conference with Mr. Wing to-day, and I may not
be home to lunch."

"We're dining there to-night," she told him, in a listless voice.

Upon Ethel Wing had descended the dominating characteristics of the elder
James, who, whatever the power he might wield in Wall Street, was little
more than a visitor in Newport. It was Ethel's house, from the hour she
had swept the Reel and Carter plans (which her father had brought home)
from the table and sent for Mr. Farwell. The forehanded Reginald arrived
with a sketch, and the result, as every one knows, is one of the chief
monuments to his reputation. So exquisitely proportioned is its simple,
two-storied marble front as seen through the trees left standing on the
old estate, that tourists, having beheld the Chamberlin and other
mansions, are apt to think this niggardly for a palace. Two infolding
wings, stretching towards the water, enclose a court, and through the
slender white pillars of the peristyle one beholds in fancy the summer
seas of Greece.

Looking out on the court, and sustaining this classic illusion, is a
marble-paved dining room, with hangings of Pompeiian red, and frescoes of
nymphs and satyrs and piping shepherds, framed between fluted pilasters,
dimly discernible in the soft lights.

In the midst of these surroundings, at the head of his table, sat the
great financier whose story but faintly concerns this chronicle; the man
who, every day that he had spent down town in New York in the past thirty
years, had eaten the same meal in the same little restaurant under the
street. This he told Honora, on his left, as though it were not history.
He preferred apple pie to the greatest of artistic triumphs of his
daughter's chef, and had it; a glorified apple pie, with frills and
furbelows, and whipped cream which he angrily swept to one side with
contempt.

"That isn't apple pie," he said. "I'd like to take that Frenchman to the
little New England hilltown where I went to school and show him what
apple pie is."

Such were the autobiographical snatches--by no means so crude as they
sound that reached her intelligence from time to time. Mr. Wing was too
subtle to be crude; and he had married a Playfair, a family noted for
good living. Honora did not know that he was fond of talking of that
apple pie and the New England school at public banquets; nor did Mr. Wing
suspect that the young woman whom he was apparently addressing, and who
seemed to be hanging on his words, was not present.

It was not until she had put her napkin on the table that she awoke with
a start and gazed into his face and saw written there still another
history than the one he had been telling her. The face was hidden,
indeed, by the red beard. What she read was in the little eyes that swept
her with a look of possession: possession in a large sense, let it be
emphasized, that an exact justice be done Mr. James Wing,--she was one of
the many chattels over which his ownership extended; bought and paid for
with her husband. A hot resentment ran through her at the thought.

Mr. Cuthbert, who was many kinds of a barometer, sought her out later in
the courtyard.

"Your husband's feeling tiptop, isn't he?" said he.

"He's been locked up with old Wing all day. Something's in the wind, and
I'd give a good deal to know what it is."

"I'm afraid I can't inform you," replied Honora.

Mr. Cuthbert apologized.

"Oh, I didn't mean to ask you far a tip," he declared, quite confused. "I
didn't suppose you knew. The old man is getting ready to make another
killing, that's all. You don't mind my telling you you look stunning
tonight, do you?"

Honora smiled.

"No, I don't mind," she said.

Mr. Cuthbert appeared to be ransacking the corners of his brain for
words.

"I was watching you to-night at the table while Mr. Wing was talking to
you. I don't believe you heard a thing he said."

"Such astuteness," she answered, smiling at him, "astounds me."

He laughed nervously.

"You're different than you've ever been since I've known you," he went
on, undismayed. "I hope you won't think I'm making love to you. Not that
I shouldn't like to, but I've got sense enough to see it's no use."

Her reply was unexpected.

"What makes you think that?" she asked curiously.

"Oh, I'm not a fool," said Mr. Cuthbert. "But if I were a poet, or that
fellow Dewing, I might be able to tell you what your eyes were like
to-night."

"I'm glad you're not," said Honora.

As they were going in, she turned for a lingering look at the sea. A
strong young moon rode serenely in the sky and struck a path of light
across the restless waters. Along this shimmering way the eyes of her
companion followed hers.

"I can tell you what that colour is, at least. Do you remember the blue,
transparent substance that used to be on favours at children's parties?"
he asked. "There were caps inside of them, and crackers."

"I believe you are a poet, after all," she said.

A shadow fell across the flags. Honora did not move.

"Hello, Chiltern," said Cuthbert. "I thought you were playing bridge..."

"You haven't looked at me once to-night," he said, when Cuthbert had gone
in.

She was silent.

"Are you angry?"

"Yes, a little," she answered. "Do you blame me?"

The vibration of his voice in the moonlit court awoke an answering chord
in her; and a note of supplication from him touched her strangely. Logic
in his presence was a little difficult--there can be no doubt of that.

"I must go in," she said unsteadily, "my carriage is waiting."

But he stood in front of her.

"I should have thought you would have gone," she said.

"I wanted to see you again."

"And now?"

"I can't leave while you feel this way," he pleaded. "I can't abandon
what I have of you--what you will let me take. If I told you I would be
reasonable--"

"I don't believe in miracles," she said, recovering a little; "at least
in modern ones. The question is, could you become reasonable?"

"As a last resort," he replied, with a flash of humour and a touch of
hope. "If you would--commute my sentence."

She passed him, and picking up her skirts, paused in the window.

"I will give you one more chance," she said.

This was the conversation that, by repeating itself, filled the interval
of her drive home. So oblivious was she to Howard's presence, that he
called her twice from her corner of the carriage after the vehicle had
stopped; and he halted her by seizing her arm as she was about to go up
the stairs. She followed him mechanically into the drawing-room.

He closed the door behind them, and the other door into the darkened
dining room. He even took a precautionary glance out of the window of the
porch. And these movements, which ordinarily might have aroused her
curiosity, if not her alarm, she watched with a profound indifference. He
took a stand before the Japanese screen in front of the fireplace, thrust
his hands in his pockets, cleared his throat, and surveyed her from her
white shoulders to the gold-embroidered tips of her slippers.

"I'm leaving for the West in the morning, Honora. If you've made any
arrangements for me on Sunday, you'll have to cancel them. I may be gone
two weeks, I may be gone a month. I don't know."

"Yes," she said.

"I'm going to tell you something those fellows in the smoking room
to-night did their best to screw out of me. If you say anything about it,
all's up between me and Wing. The fact that he picked me out to engineer
the thing, and that he's going to let me in if I push it through, is a
pretty good sign that he thinks something of my business ability, eh?"

"You'd better not tell me, Howard," she said.

"You're too clever to let it out," he assured her; and added with a
chuckle: "If it goes through, order what you like. Rent a house on
Bellevue Avenue--any thing in reason."

"What is it?" she asked, with a sudden premonition that the thing had a
vital significance for her.

"It's the greatest scheme extant," he answered with elation. "I won't go
into details--you wouldn't understand'em. Mr. Wing and some others have
tried the thing before, nearer home, and it worked like a charm. Street
railways. We buy up the little lines for nothing, and get an interest in
the big ones, and sell the little lines for fifty times what they cost
us, and guarantee big dividends for the big lines."

"It sounds to me," said Honora, slowly, "as though some one would get
cheated."

"Some one get cheated!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Every one gets cheated,
as you call it, if they haven't enough sense to know what their
property's worth, and how to use it to the best advantage. It's a case,"
he announced, "of the survival of the fittest. Which reminds me that if
I'm going to be fit to-morrow I'd better go to bed. Mr. Wing's to take me
to New York on his yacht, and you've got to have your wits about you when
you talk to the old man."





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


Volume 6.



CHAPTER VI

CLIO, OR THALIA?

According to the ordinary and inaccurate method of measuring time, a
fortnight may have gone by since the event last narrated, and Honora had
tasted at last the joys of authorship. Her name was not to appear, to be
sure, on the cover of the Life and Letters of General Angus Chiltern; nor
indeed, so far, had she written so much as a chapter or a page of a work
intended to inspire young and old with the virtues of citizenship. At
present the biography was in the crucial constructive stage. Should the
letters be put in one volume, and the life in another? or should the
letters be inserted in the text of the life? or could not there be a
third and judicious mixture of both of these methods? Honora's counsel on
this and other problems was, it seems, invaluable. Her own table was
fairly littered with biographies more or less famous which had been
fetched from the library, and the method of each considered.

Even as Mr. Garrick would never have been taken for an actor in his coach
and four, so our heroine did not in the least resemble George Eliot, for
instance, as she sat before her mirror at high noon with Monsieur Cadron
and her maid Mathilde in worshipful attendance. Some of the ladies,
indeed, who have left us those chatty memoirs of the days before the
guillotine, she might have been likened to. Monsieur Cadron was an
artist, and his branch of art was hair-dressing. It was by his own wish
he was here to-day, since he had conceived a new coiffure especially
adapted, he declared, to the type of Madame Spence. Behold him declaring
ecstatically that seldom in his experience had he had such hairs to work
with.

"Avec une telle chevelure, l'on peut tout faire, madame. Etre simple,
c'est le comble de l'art. Ca vous donne," he added, with clasped hands
and a step backward, "ca vous donne tout a fait l'air d'une dame de
Nattier."

Madame took the hand-glass, and did not deny that she was eblouissante.
If madame, suggested Monsieur Cadron, had but a little dress a la Marie
Antoinette? Madame had, cried madame's maid, running to fetch one with
little pink flowers and green leaves on an ecru ground. Could any
coiffure or any gown be more appropriate for an entertainment at which
Clio was to preside?

It is obviously impossible that a masterpiece should be executed under
the rules laid down by convention. It would never be finished. Mr.
Chiltern was coming to lunch, and it was not the first time. On her
appearance in the doorway he halted abruptly in his pacing of the
drawing-room, and stared at her.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," she said.

"It was worth it," he said. And they entered the dining room. A subdued,
golden-green light came in through the tall glass doors that opened out
on the little garden which had been Mrs. Forsythe's pride. The scent of
roses was in the air, and a mass of them filled a silver bowl in the
middle of the table. On the dark walls were Mrs. Forsythe's precious
prints, and above the mantel a portrait of a thin, aristocratic gentleman
who resembled the poet Tennyson. In the noonday shadows of a recess was a
dark mahogany sideboard loaded with softly gleaming silver--Honora's.
Chiltern sat down facing her. He looked at Honora over the roses,--and
she looked at him. A sense of unreality that was, paradoxically, stronger
than reality itself came over her, a sense of fitness, of harmony. And
for the moment an imagination, ever straining at its leash, was allowed
to soar. It was Chiltern who broke the silence.

"What a wonderful bowl!" he said.

"It has been in my father's family a great many years. He was very fond
of it," she answered, and with a sudden, impulsive movement she reached
over and set the bowl aside.

"That's better," he declared, "much as I admire the bowl, and the roses."

She coloured faintly, and smiled. The feast of reason that we are
impatiently awaiting is deferred. It were best to attempt to record the
intangible things; the golden-green light, the perfumes, and the faint
musical laughter which we can hear if we listen. Thalia's laughter,
surely, not Clio's. Thalia, enamoured with such a theme, has taken the
stage herself--and as Vesta, goddess of hearths. It was Vesta whom they
felt to be presiding. They lingered, therefore, over the coffee, and
Chiltern lighted a cigar. He did not smoke cigarettes.

"I've lived long enough," he said, "to know that I have never lived at
all. There is only one thing in life worth having."

"What is it?" asked Honora.

"This," he answered, with a gesture; "when it is permanent."

She smiled.

"And how is one to know whether it would be--permanent?"

"Through experience and failure," he answered quickly, "we learn to
distinguish the reality when it comes. It is unmistakable."

"Suppose it comes too late?" she said, forgetting the ancient verse
inscribed in her youthful diary: "Those who walk on ice will slide
against their wills."

"To admit that is to be a coward," he declared.

"Such a philosophy may be fitting for a man," she replied, "but for a
woman--"

"We are no longer in the dark ages," he interrupted. "Every one, man or
woman, has the right to happiness. There is no reason why we should
suffer all our lives for a mistake."

"A mistake!" she echoed.

"Certainly," he said. "It is all a matter of luck, or fate, or whatever
you choose to call it. Do you suppose, if I could have found fifteen
years ago the woman to have made me happy, I should have spent so much
time in seeking distraction?"

"Perhaps you could not have been capable of appreciating her--fifteen
years ago," suggested Honora. And, lest he might misconstrue her remark,
she avoided his eyes.

"Perhaps," he admitted. "But suppose I have found her now, when I know
the value of things."

"Suppose you should find her now--within a reasonable time. What would
you do?"

"Marry her," he exclaimed promptly. "Marry her and take her to Grenoble,
and live the life my father lived before me."

She did not reply, but rose, and he followed her to the shaded corner of
the porch where they usually sat. The bundle of yellow-stained envelopes
he had brought were lying on the table, and Honora picked them up
mechanically.

"I have been thinking," she said as she removed the elastics, "that it is
a mistake to begin a biography by the enumeration of one's ancestors.
Readers become frightfully bored before they get through the first
chapter."

"I'm beginning to believe," he laughed, "that you will have to write this
one alone. All the ideas I have got so far have been yours. Why shouldn't
you write it, and I arrange the material, and talk about it! That appears
to be all I'm good for."

If she allowed her mind to dwell on the vista he thus presented, she did
not betray herself.

"Another thing," she said, "it should be written like fiction."

"Like fiction?"

"Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact. It's
difficult to express what I mean. But this life of your father deserves
to be widely known, and it should be entertainingly done, like Lockhart,
or Parton's works--"

An envelope fell to the floor, spilling its contents. Among them were
several photographs.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "how beautiful! What place is this?"

"I hadn't gone over these letters," he answered. "I only got them
yesterday from Cecil Grainger. These are some pictures of Grenoble which
must leave been taken shortly before my father died."

She gazed in silence at the old house half hidden by great maples and
beeches, their weighted branches sweeping the ground. The building was of
wood, painted white, and through an archway of verdure one saw the
generous doorway with its circular steps, with its fan-light above, and
its windows at the side. Other quaint windows, some of them of triple
width, suggested an interior of mystery and interest.

"My great-great-grandfather, Alexander Chiltern, built it," he said, "on
land granted to him before the Revolution. Of course the house has been
added to since then, but the simplicity of the original has always been
kept. My father put on the conservatory, for instance," and Chiltern
pointed to a portion at the end of one of the long low wings. "He got the
idea from the orangery of a Georgian house in England, and an English
architect designed it."

Honora took up the other photographs. One of them, over which she
lingered, was of a charming, old-fashioned garden spattered with
sunlight, and shut out from the world by a high brick wall. Behind the
wall, again, were the dense masses of the trees, and at the end of a path
between nodding foxgloves and Canterbury bells, in a curved recess, a
stone seat.

She turned her face. His was at her shoulder.

"How could you ever have left it?" she asked reproachfully.

She voiced his own regrets, which the crowding memories had awakened.

"I don't know," he answered, not without emotion. "I have often asked
myself that question." He crossed over to the railing of the porch, swung
about, and looked at her. Her eyes were still on the picture. "I can
imagine you in that garden," he said.

Did the garden cast the spell by which she saw herself on the seat? or
was it Chiltern's voice? She would indeed love and cherish it. And was it
true that she belonged there, securely infolded within those peaceful
walls? How marvellously well was Thalia playing her comedy! Which was the
real, and which the false? What of true value, what of peace and security
was contained in her present existence? She had missed the meaning of
things, and suddenly it was held up before her, in a garden.

A later hour found them in Honora's runabout wandering northward along
quiet country roads on the eastern side of the island. Chiltern, who was
driving, seemed to take no thought of their direction, until at last,
with an exclamation, he stopped the horse; and Honora beheld an abandoned
mansion of a bygone age sheltered by ancient trees, with wide lands
beside it sloping to the water.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Beaulieu," he replied. "It was built in the seventeenth century, I
believe, and must have been a fascinating place in colonial days." He
drove in between the fences and tied the horse, and came around by the
side of the runabout. "Won't you get out and look at it?"

She hesitated, and their eyes met as he held out his hand, but she
avoided it and leaped quickly to the ground neither spoke as they walked
around the deserted house and gazed at the quaint facade, broken by a
crumbling, shaded balcony let in above the entrance door. No sound broke
the stillness of the summer's day--a pregnant stillness. The air was
heavy with perfumes, and the leaves formed a tracery against the
marvellous blue of the sky. Mystery brooded in the place. Here, in this
remote paradise now in ruins, people had dwelt and loved. Thought ended
there; and feeling, which is unformed thought, began. Again she glanced
at him, and again their eyes met, and hers faltered. They turned, as with
one consent, down the path toward the distant water. Paradise overgrown!
Could it be reconstructed, redeemed?

In former days the ground they trod had been a pleasance the width of the
house, bordered, doubtless, by the forest. Trees grew out of the flower
beds now, and underbrush choked the paths. The box itself, that once
primly lined the alleys, was gnarled and shapeless. Labyrinth had
replaced order, nature had reaped her vengeance. At length, in the
deepening shade, they came, at what had been the edge of the old terrace,
to the daintiest of summer-houses, crumbling too, the shutters off their
hinges, the floor-boards loose. Past and gone were the idyls of which it
had been the stage.

They turned to the left, through tangled box that wound hither and
thither, until they stopped at a stone wall bordering a tree-arched lane.
At the bottom of the lane was a glimpse of blue water.

Honora sat down on the wall with her back to a great trunk. Chiltern,
with a hand on the stones, leaped over lightly, and stood for some
moments in the lane, his feet a little apart and firmly planted, his
hands behind his back.

What had Thalia been about to allow the message of that morning to creep
into her comedy? a message announcing the coming of an intruder not in
the play, in the person of a husband bearing gifts. What right had he, in
the eternal essence of things, to return? He was out of all time and
place. Such had been her feeling when she had first read the hastily
written letter, but even when she had burned it it had risen again from
the ashes. Anything but that! In trying not to think of it, she had
picked up the newspaper, learned of a railroad accident,--and shuddered.
Anything but his return! Her marriage was a sin,--there could be no
sacrament in it. She would flee first, and abandon all rather than submit
to it.

Chiltern's step aroused her now. He came back to the wall where she was
sitting, and faced her.

"You are sad," he said.

She shook her head at him, slowly, and tried to smile.

"What has happened?" he demanded rudely. "I can't bear to see you sad."

"I am going away," she said. The decision had suddenly come to her. Why
had she not seen before that it was inevitable?

He seized her wrist as it lay on the wall, and she winced from the sudden
pain of his grip.

"Honora, I love you," he said, "I must have you--I will have you. I will
make you happy. I promise it on my soul. I can't, I won't live without
you."

She did not listen to his words--she could not have repeated them
afterwards. The very tone of his voice was changed by passion; creation
spoke through him, and she heard and thrilled and swayed and soared,
forgetting heaven and earth and hell as he seized her in his arms and
covered her face with kisses. Thus Eric the Red might have wooed. And by
what grace she spoke the word that delivered her she never knew. As
suddenly as he had seized her he released her, and she stood before him
with flaming cheeks and painful breath.

"I love you," he said, "I love you. I have searched the world for you and
found you, and by all the laws of God you are mine."

And love was written in her eyes. He had but to read it there, though her
lips might deny it. This was the man of all men she would have chosen,
and she was his by right of conquest. Yet she held up her hand with a
gesture of entreaty.

"No, Hugh--it cannot be," she said.

"Cannot!" he cried. "I will take you. You love me."

"I am married."

"Married! Do you mean that you would let that man stand between you and
happiness?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, in a frightened voice.

"Just what I say," he cried, with incredible vehemence. "Leave him
--divorce him. You cannot live with him. He isn't worthy to touch your
hand."

The idea planted itself with the force of a barbed arrow from a
strong-bow. Struggle as she might, she could not henceforth extract it.

"Oh!" she cried.

He took her arm, gently, and forced her to sit down on the wall. Such was
the completeness of his mastery that she did not resist. He sat down
beside her.

"Listen, Honora," he said, and tried to speak calmly, though his voice
was still vibrant; "let us look the situation in the face. As I told you
once, the days of useless martyrdom are past. The world is more
enlightened today, and recognizes an individual right to happiness."

"To happiness," she repeated after him, like a child. He forgot his words
as he looked into her eyes: they were lighted as with all the candles of
heaven in his honour.

"Listen," he said hoarsely, and his fingers tightened on her arm.

The current running through her from him made her his instrument. Did he
say the sky was black, she would have exclaimed at the discovery.

"Yes--I am listening."

"Honora!"

"Hugh," she answered, and blinded him. He was possessed by the tragic
fear that she was acting a dream; presently she would awake--and shatter
the universe. His dominance was too complete.

"I love you--I respect you. You are making it very hard for me. Please
try to understand what I am saying," he cried almost fiercely. "This
thing, this miracle, has happened in spite of us. Henceforth you belong
to me--do you hear?"

Once more the candles flared up.

"We cannot drift. We must decide now upon some definite action. Our lives
are our own, to make as we choose. You said you were going away. And you
meant--alone?"

The eyes were wide, now, with fright.

"Oh, I must--I must," she said. "Don't--don't talk about it." And she put
forth a hand over his.

"I will talk about it," he declared, trembling. "I have thought it all
out," and this time it was her fingers that tightened. "You are going
away. And presently--when you are free--I will come to you."

For a moment the current stopped.

"No, no!" she cried, almost in terror. The first fatalist must have been
a woman, and the vision of rent prison bars drove her mad. "No, we could
never be happy."

"We can--we will be happy," he said, with a conviction that was unshaken.
"Do you hear me? I will not debase what I have to say by resorting to
comparisons. But--others I know have been happy are happy, though their
happiness cannot be spoken of with ours. Listen. You will go away--for a
little while--and afterwards we shall be together for all time. Nothing
shall separate us: We never have known life, either of us, until now. I,
missing you, have run after the false gods. And you--I say it with
truth-needed me. We will go to live at Grenoble, as my father and mother
lived. We will take up their duties there. And if it seems possible, I
will go into public life. When I return, I shall find you--waiting for
me--in the garden."

So real had the mirage become, that Honora did not answer. The desert and
its journey fell away. Could such a thing, after all, be possible? Did
fate deal twice to those whom she had made novices? The mirage, indeed,
suddenly became reality--a mirage only because she had proclaimed it
such. She had beheld in it, as he spoke, a Grenoble which was paradise
regained. And why should paradise regained be a paradox? Why paradise
regained? Paradise gained. She had never known it, until he had flung
wide the gates. She had sought for it, and never found it until now, and
her senses doubted it. It was a paradise of love, to be sure; but one,
too, of duty. Duty made it real. Work was there, and fulfilment of the
purpose of life itself. And if his days hitherto had been useless, hers
had in truth been barren.

It was only of late, after a life-long groping, that she had discovered
their barrenness. The right to happiness! Could she begin anew, and found
it upon a rock? And was he the rock?

The question startled her, and she drew away from him first her hand, and
then she turned her body, staring at him with widened eyes. He did not
resist the movement; nor could he, being male, divine what was passing
within her, though he watched her anxiously. She had no thought of the
first days,--but afterwards. For at such times it is the woman who scans
the veil of the future. How long would that beacon burn which flamed now
in such prodigal waste? Would not the very springs of it dry up? She
looked at him, and she saw the Viking. But the Viking had fled from the
world, and they--they would be going into it. Could love prevail against
its dangers and pitfalls and--duties? Love was the word that rang out, as
one calling through the garden, and her thoughts ran molten. Let love
overflow--she gloried in the waste! And let the lean years come,--she
defied them to-day.

"Oh, Hugh!" she faltered.

"My dearest!" he cried, and would have seized her in his arms again but
for a look of supplication. That he had in him this innate and
unsuspected chivalry filled her with an exquisite sweetness.

"You will--protect me?" she asked.

"With my life and with my honour," he answered. "Honora, there will be no
happiness like ours."

"I wish I knew," she sighed: and then, her look returning from the veil,
rested on him with a tenderness that was inexpressible. "I--I don't care,
Hugh. I trust you."

The sun was setting. Slowly they went back together through the paths of
the tangled garden, which had doubtless seen many dramas, and the courses
changed of many lives: overgrown and outworn now, yet love was loth to
leave it. Honora paused on the lawn before the house, and looked back at
him over her shoulder.

"How happy we could have been here, in those days," she sighed.

"We will be happier there," he said.

Honora loved. Many times in her life had she believed herself to have had
this sensation, and yet had known nothing of these aches and ecstasies!
Her mortal body, unattended, went out to dinner that evening. Never, it
is said, was her success more pronounced. The charm of Randolph
Leffingwell, which had fascinated the nobility of three kingdoms, had
descended on her, and hostesses had discovered that she possessed the
magic touch necessary to make a dinner complete. Her quality, as we know,
was not wit: it was something as old as the world, as new as modern
psychology. It was, in short, the power to stimulate. She infused a sense
of well-being; and ordinary people, in her presence, surprised themselves
by saying clever things.

Lord Ayllington, a lean, hard-riding gentleman, who was supposed to be on
the verge of contracting an alliance with the eldest of the Grenfell
girls, regretted that Mrs. Spence was neither unmarried nor an heiress.

"You know," he said to Cecil Grainger, who happened to be gracing his
wife's dinner-party, "she's the sort of woman for whom a man might
consent to live in Venice."

"And she's the sort of woman," replied, "a man couldn't get to go to
Venice."

Lord Ayllington's sigh was a proof of an intimate knowledge of the world.

"I suppose not," he said. "It's always so. And there are few American
women who would throw everything overboard for a grand passion."

"You ought to see her on the beach," Mr. Grainger suggested.

"I intend to," said Ayllington. "By the way, not a few of your American
women get divorced, and keep their cake and eat it, too. It's a bit
difficult, here at Newport, for a stranger, you know."

"I'm willing to bet," declared Mr. Grainger, "that it doesn't pay. When
you're divorced and married again you've got to keep up appearances--the
first time you don't. Some of these people are working pretty hard."

Whereupon, for the Englishman's enlightenment, he recounted a little
gossip.

This, of course, was in the smoking room. In the drawing-room, Mrs.
Grainger's cousin did not escape, and the biography was the subject of
laughter.

"You see something of him, I hear," remarked Mrs. Playfair, a lady the
deficiency of whose neck was supplied by jewels, and whose conversation
sounded like liquid coming out of an inverted bottle. "Is he really
serious about the biography?"

"You'll have to ask Mr. Grainger," replied Honora.

"Hugh ought to marry," Mrs. Grenfell observed.

"Why did he come back?" inquired another who had just returned from a
prolonged residence abroad. "Was there a woman in the case?"

"Put it in the plural, and you'll be nearer right," laughed Mrs.
Grenfell, and added to Honora, "You'd best take care, my dear, he's
dangerous."

Honora seemed to be looking down on them from a great height, and to
Reginald Farwell alone is due the discovery of this altitude; his
reputation for astuteness, after that evening, was secure. He had sat
next her, and had merely put two and two together--an operation that is
probably at the root of most prophecies. More than once that summer Mr.
Farwell had taken sketches down Honora's lane, for she was on what was
known as his list of advisers: a sheepfold of ewes, some one had called
it, and he was always piqued when one of them went astray. In addition to
this, intuition told him that he had taken the name of a deity in
vain--and that deity was Chiltern. These reflections resulted in another
after-dinner conversation to which we are not supposed to listen.

He found Jerry Shorter in a receptive mood, and drew him into Cecil
Grainger's study, where this latter gentleman, when awake, carried on his
lifework of keeping a record of prize winners.

"I believe there is something between Mrs. Spence and Hugh Chiltern,
after all, Jerry," he said.

"By jinks, you don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. Shorter, who had a profound
respect for his friend's diagnoses in these matters. "She was dazzling
to-night, and her eyes were like stars. I passed her in the hall just
now, and I might as well have been in Halifax."

"She fairly withered me when I made a little fun of Chiltern," declared
Farwell.

"I tell you what it is, Reggie," remarked Mr. Shorter, with more
frankness than tact, "you could talk architecture with 'em from now to
Christmas, and nothing'd happen, but it would take an iceberg to write a
book with Hugh and see him alone six days out of seven. Chiltern knocks
women into a cocked hat. I've seen 'em stark raving crazy. Why, there was
that Mrs. Slicer six or seven years ago--you remember--that Cecil
Grainger had such a deuce of a time with. And there was Mrs. Dutton--I
was a committee to see her, when the old General was alive,--to say
nothing about a good many women you and I know."

Mr. Farwell nodded.

"I'm confoundedly sorry if it's so," Mr. Shorter continued, with
sincerity. "She has a brilliant future ahead of her. She's got good blood
in her, she's stunning to look at, and she's made her own way in spite of
that Billycock of a husband who talks like the original Rothschild. By
the bye, Wing is using him for a good thing. He's sent him out West to
pull that street railway chestnut out of the fire. I'm not particularly
squeamish, Reggie, though I try to play the game straight myself--the way
my father played it. But by the lord Harry, I can't see the difference
between Dick Turpin and Wing and Trixy Brent. It's hold and deliver with
those fellows. But if the police get anybody, their get Spence."

"The police never get anybody," said Farwell, pessimistically; for the
change of topic bored him.

"No, I suppose they don't," answered Mr. Shorter, cheerfully finishing
his chartreuse, and fixing his eye on one of the coloured lithographs of
lean horses on Cecil Grainger's wall. "I'd talk to Hugh, if I wasn't as
much afraid of him as of Jim Jeffries. I don't want to see him ruin her
career."

"Why should an affair with him ruin it?" asked Farwell, unexpectedly.
"There was Constance Witherspoon. I understand that went pretty far."

"My dear boy," said Mr. Shorter, "it's the women. Bessie Grainger here,
for instance--she'd go right up in the air. And the women had--well, a
childhood-interest in Constance. Self-preservation is the first law--of
women."

"They say Hugh has changed--that he wants to settle down," said Farwell.

"If you'd ever gone to church, Reggie," said Mr. Shorter, "you'd know
something about the limitations of the leopard."




CHAPTER VII

"LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

That night was Honora's soul played upon by the unknown musician of the
sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set
her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods of
semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these she was
suddenly startled into wakefulness by her own words. "I have the right to
make of my life what I can." But when she beheld the road of terrors that
stretched between her and the shining places, it seemed as though she
would never have the courage to fare forth along its way. To look back
was to survey a prospect even more dreadful.

The incidents of her life ranged by in procession. Not in natural
sequence, but a group here and a group there. And it was given her, for
the first time, to see many things clearly. But now she loved. God alone
knew what she felt for this man, and when she thought of him the very
perils of her path were dwarfed. On returning home that night she had
given her maid her cloak, and had stood for a long time immobile,--gazing
at her image in the pierglass.

"Madame est belle comme l'Imperatrice d'Autriche!" said the maid at
length.

"Am I really beautiful, Mathilde?"

Mathilde raised her eyes and hands to heaven in a gesture that admitted
no doubt. Mathilde, moreover, could read a certain kind of history if the
print were large enough.

Honora looked in the glass again. Yes, she was beautiful. He had found
her so, he had told her so. And here was the testimony of her own eyes.
The bloom on the nectarines that came every morning from Mr. Chamberlin's
greenhouse could not compare with the colour of her cheeks; her hair was
like the dusk; her eyes like the blue pools among the rocks, and touched
now by the sun; her neck and arms of the whiteness of sea-foam. It was
meet that she should be thus for him and for the love he brought her.

She turned suddenly to the maid.

"Do you love me, Mathilde?" she asked.

Mathilde was not surprised. She was, on the contrary, profoundly touched.

"How can madame ask?" she cried impulsively, and seized Honora's hand.
How was it possible to be near madame, and not love her?

"And would you go--anywhere with me?"

The scene came back to her in the night watches. For the little maid had
wept and vowed eternal fidelity.

It was not--until the first faint herald of the morning that Honora could
bring herself to pronounce the fateful thing that stood between her and
happiness, that threatened to mar the perfection of a heaven-born love
--Divorce! And thus, having named it resolutely several times, the demon
of salvation began gradually to assume a kindly aspect that at times
became almost benign. In fact, this one was not a demon at all, but a
liberator: the demon, she perceived, stalked behind him, and his name was
Notoriety. It was he who would flay her for coquetting with the
liberator.

What if she were flayed? Once married to Chiltern, once embarked upon
that life of usefulness, once firmly established on ground of her own
tilling, and she was immune. And this led her to a consideration of those
she knew who had been flayed. They were not few, and a surfeit of
publicity is a sufficient reason for not enumerating them here. And
during this process of exorcism Notoriety became a bogey, too: he had
been powerless to hurt them. It must be true what Chiltern had said that
the world was changing. The tragic and the ridiculous here joining hands,
she remembered that Reggie Farwell had told her that he had recently made
a trip to western New York to inspect a house he had built for a
"remarried" couple who were not wholly unknown. The dove-cote, he had
called it. The man, in his former marriage, had been renowned all up and
down tidewater as a rake and a brute, and now it was an exception when he
did not have at least one baby on his knee. And he knew, according to Mr.
Farwell, more about infant diet than the whole staff of a maternity
hospital.

At length, as she stared into the darkness, dissolution came upon it. The
sills of her windows outlined themselves, and a blurred foliage was
sketched into the frame. With a problem but half solved the day had
surprised her. She marvelled to see that it grew apace, and presently
arose to look out upon a stillness like that of eternity: in the grey
light the very leaves seemed to be holding their breath in expectancy of
the thing that was to come. Presently the drooping roses raised their
heads, from pearl to silver grew the light, and comparison ended. The
reds were aflame, the greens resplendent, the lawn sewn with the diamonds
of the dew.

A little travelling table was beside the window, and Honora took her pen
and wrote.

   "My dearest, above all created things I love you. Morning has come,
   and it seems to me that I have travelled far since last I saw you.
   I have come to a new place, which is neither hell nor heaven, and in
   the mystery of it you--you alone are real. It is to your strength
   that I cling, and I know that you will not fail me.

   "Since I saw you, Hugh, I have been through the Valley of the
   Shadow. I have thought of many things. One truth alone is clear--
   that I love you transcendently.. You have touched and awakened me
   into life. I walk in a world unknown.

   "There is the glory of martyrdom in this message I send you now.
   You must not come to me again until I send for you. I cannot, I
   will not trust myself or you. I will keep this love which has come
   to me undefiled. It has brought with it to me a new spirit, a
   spirit with a scorn for things base and mean. Though it were my
   last chance in life, I would not see you if you came. If I thought
   you would not understand what I feel, I could not love you as I do.

   "I will write to you again, when I see my way more clearly. I told
   you in the garden before you spoke that I was going away. Do not
   seek to know my plans. For the sake of the years to come, obey me.

                    "HONORA."

She reread the letter, and sealed it. A new and different exaltation had
come to her--begotten, perhaps, in the act of writing. A new courage
filled her, and now she contemplated the ordeal with a tranquillity that
surprised her. The disorder and chaos of the night were passed, and she
welcomed the coming day, and those that were to follow it. As though the
fates were inclined to humour her impatience, there was a telegram on her
breakfast tray, dated at New York, and informing her that her husband
would be in Newport about the middle of the afternoon. His western trip
was finished a day earlier than he expected. Honora rang her bell.

"Mathilde, I am going away."

"Oui, madame."

"And I should like you to go with me."

"Oui, madame."

"It is only fair that you should understand, Mathilde. I am going away
alone. I am not--coming back."

The maid's eyes filled with sudden tears.

"Oh, madame," she cried, in a burst of loyalty, "if madame will permit me
to stay with her!"

Honora was troubled, but her strange calmness did not forsake her. The
morning was spent in packing, which was a simple matter. She took only
such things as she needed, and left her dinner-gowns hanging in the
closets. A few precious books of her own she chose, but the jewellery her
husband had given her was put in boxes and laid upon the dressing-table.
In one of these boxes was her wedding ring. When luncheon was over, an
astonished and perturbed butler packed the Leffingwell silver and sent it
off to storage.

There had been but one interruption in Honora's labours. A note had
arrived--from him--a note and a box. He would obey her! She had known he
would understand, and respect her the more. What would their love have
been, without that respect? She shuddered to think. And he sent her this
ring, as a token of that love, as undying as the fire in its stones.
Would she wear it, that in her absence she might think of him? Honora
kissed it and slipped it on her finger, where it sparkled. The letter was
beneath her gown, though she knew it by heart. Chiltern had gone at last:
he could not, he said, remain in Newport and not see her.

At midday she made but the pretence of a meal. It was not until
afterwards, in wandering through the lower rooms of this house, become so
dear to her, that agitation seized her, and a desire to weep. What was
she leaving so precipitately? and whither going? The world indeed was
wide, and these rooms had been her home. The day had grown blue-grey, and
in the dining room the gentle face seemed to look down upon her
compassionately from the portrait. The scent of the roses overpowered
her. As she listened, no sound brake the quiet of the place.

Would Howard never come? The train was in--had been in ten minutes. Hark,
the sound of wheels! Her heart beating wildly, she ran to the windows of
the drawing-room and peered through the lilacs. Yes, there he was,
ascending the steps.

"Mrs. Spence is out, I suppose," she heard him say to the butler, who
followed with his bag.

"No, sir, she's is the drawing-room."

The sight of him, with his air of satisfaction and importance, proved an
unexpected tonic to her strength. It was as though he had brought into
the room, marshalled behind him, all the horrors of her marriage, and she
marvelled and shuddered anew at the thought of the years of that
sufferance.

"Well, I'm back," he said, "and we've made a great killing, as I wrote
you. They were easier than I expected."

He came forward for the usual perfunctory kiss, but she recoiled, and it
was then that his eye seemed to grasp the significance of her travelling
suit and veil, and he glanced at her face.

"What's up? Where are you going?" he demanded. "Has anything happened?"

"Everything," she said, and it was then, suddenly, that she felt the
store of her resolution begin to ebb, and she trembled. "Howard, I am
going away."

He stopped short, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his checked
trousers.

"Going away," he repeated. "Where?"

"I don't know," said Honora; "I'm going away."

As though to cap the climax of tragedy, he smiled as he produced his
cigarette case. And she was swept, as it were, by a scarlet flame that
deprived her for the moment of speech.

"Well," he said complacently, "there's no accounting for women. A case of
nerves--eh, Honora? Been hitting the pace a little too hard, I guess." He
lighted a match, blissfully unaware of the quality of her look. "All of
us have to get toned up once in a while. I need it myself. I've had to
drink a case of Scotch whiskey out West to get this deal through. Now
what's the name of that new boat with everything on her from a cafe to a
Stock Exchange? A German name."

"I don't know," said Honora. She had answered automatically.

To the imminent peril of one of the frailest of Mrs. Forsythe's chairs,
he sat down on it, placed his hands on his knees, flung back his head,
and blew the smoke towards the ceiling. Still she stared at him, as in a
state of semi-hypnosis.

"Instead of going off to one of those thousand-dollar-a-minute doctors,
let me prescribe for you," he said. "I've handled some nervous men in my
time, and I guess nervous women aren't much different. You've had these
little attacks before, and they blow over--don't they? Wing owes me a
vacation. If I do say it myself, there are not five men in New York who
would have pulled off this deal for him. Now the proposition I was going
to make to you is this: that we get cosey in a cabin de luxe on that
German boat, hire an automobile on the other side, and do up Europe. It's
a sort of a handicap never to have been over there."

"Oh, you're making it very hard for me, Howard," she cried. "I might have
known that you couldn't understand, that you never could understand--why
I am going away. I've lived with you all this time, and you do not know
me any better than you know--the scrub-woman. I'm going away from
you--forever."

In spite of herself, she ended with an uncontrollable sob.

"Forever!" he repeated, but he continued to smoke and to look at her
without any evidences of emotion, very much as though he had received an
ultimatum in a business transaction. And then there crept into his
expression something of a complacent pity that braced her to continue.
"Why?" he asked.

"Because--because I don't love you. Because you don't love me. You don't
know what love is--you never will."

"But we're married," he said. "We get along all right."

"Oh, can't you see that that makes it all the worse!" she cried. "I can
stand it no longer. I can't live with you--I won't live with you. I'm of
no use to you--you're sufficient unto yourself. It was all a frightful
mistake. I brought nothing into your life, and I take nothing out of it.
We are strangers--we have always been so. I am not even your housekeeper.
Your whole interest in life is in your business, and you come home to
read the newspapers and to sleep! Home! The very word is a mockery. If
you had to choose between me and your business you wouldn't hesitate an
instant. And I--I have been starved. It isn't your fault, perhaps, that
you don't understand that a woman needs something more than dinner-gowns
and jewels and--and trips abroad. Her only possible compensation for
living with a man is love. Love--and you haven't the faintest conception
of it. It isn't your fault, perhaps. It's my fault for marrying you. I
didn't know any better."

She paused with her breast heaving. He rose and walked over to the
fireplace and flicked his ashes into it before he spoke. His calmness
maddened her.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked.

"Because I didn't know it--I didn't realize it--until now."

"When you married me," he went on, "you had an idea that you were going
to live in a house on Fifth Avenue with a ballroom, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Honora. "I do not say I am not to blame. I was a fool. My
standards were false. In spite of the fact that my aunt and uncle are the
most unworldly people that ever lived--perhaps because of it--I knew
nothing of the values of life. I have but one thing to say in my defence.
I thought I loved you, and that you could give me--what every woman
needs."

"You were never satisfied from the first," he retorted. "You wanted money
and position--a mania with American women. I've made a success that few
men of my age can duplicate. And even now you are not satisfied when I
come back to tell you that I have money enough to snap my fingers at half
these people you know."

"How," asked Honora, "how did you make it?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

She turned away from him with a gesture of weariness.

"No, you wouldn't understand that, either, Howard."

It was not until then that he showed feeling.

"Somebody has been talking to you about this deal. I'm not surprised. A
lot of these people are angry because we didn't let them in. What have
they been saying?" he demanded.

Her eyes flashed.

"Nobody has spoken to me on the subject," she said. "I only know what I
have read, and what you have told me. In the first place, you deceived
the stockholders of these railways into believing their property was
worthless, and in the second place, you intend to sell it to the public
for much more than it is worth."

At first he stared at her in surprise. Then he laughed.

"By George, you'd make something of a financier yourself, Honora," he
exclaimed. And seeing that she did not answer, continued: "Well, you've
got it about right, only it's easier said than done. It takes brains.
That's what business is--a survival of the fittest. If you don't do the
other man, he'll do you." He opened the cigarette case once more. "And
now," he said, "let me give you a little piece of advice. It's a good
motto for a woman not to meddle with what doesn't concern her. It isn't
her business to make the money, but to spend it; and she can usually do
that to the queen's taste."

"A high ideal?" she exclaimed.

"You ought to have some notion of where that ideal came from," he
retorted. "You were all for getting rich, in order to compete with these
people. Now you've got what you want--"

"And I am going to throw it away. That is like a woman, isn't it?"

He glanced at her, and then at his watch.

"See here, Honora, I ought to go over to Mr. Wing's. I wired him I'd be
there at four-thirty."

"Don't let me keep you," she replied.

"By gad, you are pale!" he said. "What's got into the women these days?
They never used to have these confounded nerves. Well, if you are bent on
it, I suppose there's no use trying to stop you. Go off somewhere and
take a rest, and when you come back you'll see things differently."

She held out her hand.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I wanted you to know that I didn't--bear
you any ill-will--that I blame myself as much as you. More, if anything.
I hope you will be happy--I know you will. But I must ask you to believe
me when I say that I shan't come back. I--I am leaving all the valuable
things you gave me. You will find them on my dressing-table. And I wanted
to tell you that my uncle sent me a little legacy from my father-an
unexpected one--that makes me independent."

He did not take her hand, but was staring at her now, incredulously.

"You mean you are actually going?" he exclaimed.

"Yes."

"But--what shall I say to Mr. Wing? What will he think?"

Despite the ache in her heart, she smiled.

"Does it make any difference what Mr. Wing thinks?" she asked gently.
"Need he know? Isn't this a matter which concerns us alone? I shall go
off, and after a certain time people will understand that I am not coming
back."

"But--have you considered that it may interfere with my prospects?" he
asked.

"Why should it? You are invaluable to Mr. Wing. He can't afford to
dispense with your services just because you will be divorced. That would
be ridiculous. Some of his own associates are divorced."

"Divorced!" he cried, and she saw that he had grown pasty white. "On what
grounds? Have you been--"

He did not finish.

"No," she said, "you need fear no scandal. There will be nothing in any
way harmful to your--prospects."

"What can I do?" he said, though more to himself than to her. Her quick
ear detected in his voice a note of relief. And yet, he struck in her,
standing helplessly smoking in the middle of the floor, chords of pity.

"You can do nothing, Howard," she said. "If you lived with me from now to
the millennium you couldn't make me love you, nor could you love me--the
way I must be loved. Try to realize it. The wrench is what you dread.
After it is over you will be much more contented, much happier, than you
have been with me. Believe me."

His next remark astonished her.

"What's the use of being so damned precipitate?" he demanded.

"Precipitate!"

"Because I can stand it no longer. I should go mad," she answered.

He took a turn up and down the room, stopped suddenly, and stared at her
with eyes that had grown smaller. Suspicion is slow to seize the
complacent. Was it possible that he had been supplanted?

Honora, with an instinct of what was coming, held up her head. Had he
been angry, had he been a man, how much humiliation he would have spared
her!

"So you're in love!" he said. "I might have known that something was at
the bottom of this."

She took account of and quivered at the many meanings behind his speech
--meanings which he was too cowardly to voice in words.

"Yes," she answered, "I am in love--in love as I never hoped to be--as I
did not think it possible to be. My love is such that I would go through
hell fire for the sake of it. I do not expect you to believe me when I
tell you that such is not the reason why I am leaving you. If you had
loved me with the least spark of passion, if I thought I were in the
least bit needful to you as a woman and as a soul, as a helper and a
confidante, instead of a mere puppet to advertise your prosperity, this
would not--could not--have happened. I love a man who would give up the
world for me to-morrow. I have but one life to live, and I am going to
find happiness if I can."

She paused, afire with an eloquence that had come unsought. But her
husband only stared at her. She was transformed beyond his recognition.
Surely he had not married this woman! And, if the truth be told, down in
his secret soul whispered a small, congratulatory voice. Although he did
not yet fully realize it, he was glad he had not.

Honora, with an involuntary movement, pressed her handkerchief to her
eyes.

"Good-by, Howard," she said. "I--I did not expect you to understand. If I
had stayed, I should have made you miserably unhappy."

He took her hand in a dazed manner, as though he knew not in the least
what he was doing. He muttered something and found speech impossible. He
gulped once, uncomfortably. The English language had ceased to be a
medium. Great is the force of habit! In the emergency he reached for his
cigarette case.

Honora had given orders that the carriage was to wait at the door. The
servants might suspect, but that was all. Her maid had been discreet. She
drew down her veil as she descended the steps, and told the coachman to
drive to the station.

It was raining. Leaning forward from under the hood as the horses
started, she took her last look at the lilacs.




CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH THE LAW BETRAYS A HEART

It was still raining when she got into a carriage at Boston and drove
under the elevated tracks, through the narrow, slippery business streets,
to the hotel. From the windows of her room, as the night fell, she looked
out across the dripping foliage of the Common. Below her, and robbed from
that sacred ground, were the little granite buildings that housed the
entrances to the subway, and for a long time she stood watching the
people crowding into these. Most of them had homes to go to! In the
gathering gloom the arc-lights shone, casting yellow streaks on the
glistening pavement; wagons and carriages plunged into the maelstrom at
the corner; pedestrians dodged and slipped; lightnings flashed from
overhead wires, and clanging trolley cars pushed their greater bulk
through the mass. And presently the higher toned and more ominous bell of
an ambulance sounded on its way to the scene of an accident.

It was Mathilde who ordered her dinner and pressed her to eat. But she
had no heart for food. In her bright sitting-room, with the shades
tightly drawn, an inexpressible loneliness assailed her. A large
engraving of a picture of a sentimental school hung on the wall: she
could not bear to look at it, and yet her eyes, from time to time, were
fatally drawn thither. It was of a young girl taking leave of her lover,
in early Christian times, before entering the arena. It haunted Honora,
and wrought upon her imagination to such a pitch that she went into her
bedroom to write.

For a long time nothing more was written of the letter than "Dear Uncle
Tom and Aunt Mary": what to say to them?

   "I do not know what you will think of me. I do not know, to-night,
   what to think of myself. I have left Howard. It is not because he
   was cruel to me, or untrue. He does not love me, nor I him. I
   cannot expect you, who have known the happiness of marriage, to
   realize the tortures of it without love. My pain in telling you
   this now is all the greater because I realize your belief as to the
   sacredness of the tie--and it is not your fault that you did not
   instil that belief into me. I have had to live and to think and to
   suffer for myself. I do not attempt to account for my action, and I
   hesitate to lay the blame upon the modern conditions and atmosphere
   in which I lived; for I feel that, above all things, I must be
   honest with myself.

   "My marriage with Howard was a frightful mistake, and I have grown
   slowly to realize it, until life with him became insupportable.
   Since he does not love me, since his one interest is his business,
   my departure makes no great difference to him.

   "Dear Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom, I realize that I owe you much
  --everything that I am. I do not expect you to understand or to
   condone what I have done. I only beg that you will continue to
  --love your niece,

                         "HONORA."

She tried to review this letter. Incoherent though it were and
incomplete, in her present state of mind she was able to add but a few
words as a postscript. "I will write you my plans in a day or two, when I
see my way more clearly. I would fly to you--but I cannot. I am going to
get a divorce."

She sat for a time picturing the scene in the sitting-room when they
should read it, and a longing which was almost irresistible seized her to
go back to that shelter. One force alone held her in misery where she
was,--her love for Chiltern; it drew her on to suffer the horrors of
exile and publicity. When she suffered most, his image rose before her,
and she kissed the ring on her hand. Where was he now, on this rainy
night? On the seas?

At the thought she heard again the fog-horns and the sirens.

Her sleep was fitful. Many times she went over again her talk with
Howard, and she surprised herself by wondering what he had thought and
felt since her departure. And ever and anon she was startled out of
chimerical dreams by the clamour of bells-the trolley cars on their
ceaseless round passing below. At last came the slumber of exhaustion.

It was nine o'clock when she awoke and faced the distasteful task she had
set herself for the day. In her predicament she descended to the office,
where the face of one of the clerks attracted her, and she waited until
he was unoccupied.

"I should like you to tell me--the name of some reputable lawyer," she
said.

"Certainly, Mrs. Spence," he replied, and Honora was startled at the
sound of her name. She might have realized that he would know her. "I
suppose a young lawyer would do--if the matter is not very important."

"Oh, no!" she cried, blushing to her temples. "A young lawyer would do
very well."

The clerk reflected. He glanced at Honora again; and later in the day she
divined what had been going on in his mind.

"Well," he said, "there are a great many. I happen to think of Mr.
Wentworth, because he was in the hotel this morning. He is in the Tremont
Building."

She thanked him hurriedly, and was driven to the Tremont Building,
through the soggy street that faced the still dripping trees of the
Common. Mounting in the elevator, she read on the glass door amongst the
names of the four members of the firm that of Alden Wentworth, and
suddenly found herself face to face with the young man, in his private
office. He was well groomed and deeply tanned, and he rose to meet her
with a smile that revealed a line of perfect white teeth.

"How do you do, Mrs. Spence?" he said. "I did not think, when I met you
at Mrs. Grenfell's, that I should see you so soon in Boston. Won't you
sit down?"

Honora sat down. There seemed nothing else to do. She remembered him
perfectly now, and she realized that the nimble-witted clerk had meant to
send her to a gentleman.

"I thought," she faltered, "I thought I was coming to a--a stranger. They
gave me your address at the hotel--when I asked for a lawyer."

"Perhaps," suggested Mr. Wentworth, delicately, "perhaps you would prefer
to go to some one else. I can give you any number of addresses, if you
like."

She looked up at him gratefully. He seemed very human and understanding,
--very honourable. He belonged to her generation, after all, and she
feared an older man.

"If you will be kind enough to listen to me, I think I will stay here. It
is only a matter of--of knowledge of the law." She looked at him again,
and the pathos of her smile went straight to his heart. For Mr. Wentworth
possessed that organ, although he did not wear it on his sleeve.

He crossed the room, closed the door, and sat down beside her.

"Anything I can do," he said.

She glanced at him once more, helplessly.

"I do not know how to tell you," she began. "It all seems so dreadful."
She paused, but he had the lawyer's gift of silence--of sympathetic
silence. "I want to get a divorce from my husband."

If Mr. Wentworth was surprised, he concealed it admirably. His attitude
of sympathy did not change, but he managed to ask her, in a business-like
tone which she welcomed:--"On what grounds?"

"I was going to ask you that question," said Honora.

This time Mr. Wentworth was surprised--genuinely so, and he showed it.

"But, my dear Mrs. Spence," he protested, "you must remember that--that I
know nothing of the case."

"What are the grounds one can get divorced on?" she asked.

He coloured a little under his tan.

"They are different in different states," he replied. "I think--perhaps
--the best way would be to read you the Massachusetts statutes."

"No--wait a moment," she said. "It's very simple, after all, what I have
to tell you. I don't love my husband, and he doesn't love me, and it has
become torture to live together. I have left him with his knowledge and
consent, and he understands that I will get a divorce."

Mr. Wentworth appeared to be pondering--perhaps not wholly on the legal
aspects of the case thus naively presented. Whatever may have been his
private comments, they were hidden. He pronounced tentatively, and a
little absently, the word "desertion."

"If the case could possibly be construed as desertion on your husband's
part, you could probably get a divorce in three years in Massachusetts."

"Three years!" cried Honora, appalled. "I could never wait three years!"

She did not remark the young lawyer's smile, which revealed a greater
knowledge of the world than one would have suspected. He said nothing,
however.

"Three years!" she repeated. "Why, it can't be, Mr. Wentworth. There are
the Waterfords--she was Mrs. Boutwell, you remember. And--and Mrs.
Rindge--it was scarcely a year before--"

He had the grace to nod gravely, and to pretend not to notice the
confusion in which she halted. Lawyers, even young ones with white teeth
and clear eyes, are apt to be a little cynical. He had doubtless seen
from the beginning that there was a man in the background. It was not his
business to comment or to preach.

"Some of the western states grant divorces on--on much easier terms," he
said politely. "If you care to wait, I will go into our library and look
up the laws of those states."

"I wish you would," answered Honora. "I don't think I could bear to spend
three years in such--in such an anomalous condition. And at any rate I
should much rather go West, out of sight, and have it all as quickly over
with as possible."

He bowed, and departed on his quest. And Honora waited, at moments
growing hot at the recollection of her conversation with him. Why--she
asked herself should the law make it so difficult, and subject her to
such humiliation in a course which she felt to be right and natural and
noble? Finally, her thoughts becoming too painful, she got up and looked
out of the window. And far below her, through the mist, she beheld the
burying-ground of Boston's illustrious dead which her cabman had pointed
out to her as he passed. She did not hear the door open as Mr. Wentworth
returned, and she started at the sound of his voice.

"I take it for granted that you are really serious in this matter, Mrs.
Spence," he said.

"Oh!" she exclaimed.

"And that you have thoroughly reflected," he continued imperturbably.
Evidently, in spite of the cold impartiality of the law, a New England
conscience had assailed him in the library. "I cannot take er--the
responsibility of advising you as to a course of action. You have asked
me the laws of certain western states as to divorce I will read them."

An office boy followed him, deposited several volumes on the taule, and
Mr. Wentworth read from them in a voice magnificently judicial.

"There's not much choice, is there?" she faltered, when he had finished.

He smiled.

"As places of residence--" he began, in an attempt to relieve the pathos.

"Oh, I didn't mean that," she cried. "Exile is--is exile." She flushed.
After a few moments of hesitation she named at random a state the laws of
which required a six months' residence. She contemplated him. "I hardly
dare to ask you to give me the name of some reputable lawyer out there."

He had looked for an instant into her eyes. Men of the law are not
invulnerable, particularly at Mr. Wentworth's age, and New England
consciences to the contrary notwithstanding. In spite of himself, her
eyes had made him a partisan: an accomplice, he told himself afterwards.

"Really, Mrs. Spence," he began, and caught another appealing look. He
remembered the husband now, and a lecture on finance in the Grenfell
smoking room which Howard Spence had delivered, and which had grated on
Boston sensibility. "It is only right to tell you that our firm does
not--does not--take divorce cases--as a rule. Not that we are taking this
one," he added hurriedly. "But as a friend--"

"Oh, thank you!" said Honora.

"Merely as a friend who would be glad to do you a service," he continued,
"I will, during the day, try to get you the name of--of as reputable a
lawyer as possible in that place."

And Mr. Wentworth paused, as red as though he had asked her to marry him.

"How good of you!" she cried. "I shall be at the Touraine until this
evening."

He escorted her through the corridor, bowed her into the elevator, and
her spirits had risen perceptibly as she got into her cab and returned to
the hotel. There, she studied railroad folders. One confidant was enough,
and she dared not even ask the head porter the way to a locality
where--it was well known--divorces were sold across a counter. And as she
worked over the intricacies of this problem the word her husband had
applied to her action recurred to her--precipitate. No doubt Mr.
Wentworth, too, had thought her precipitate. Nearly every important act
of her life had been precipitate. But she was conscious in this instance
of no regret. Delay, she felt, would have killed her. Let her exile begin
at once.

She had scarcely finished luncheon when Mr. Wentworth was announced. For
reasons best known to himself he had come in person; and he handed her,
written on a card, the name of the Honourable David Beckwith.

"I'll have to confess I don't know much about him, Mrs. Spence," he said,
"except that he has been in Congress, and is one of the prominent lawyers
of that state."

The gift of enlisting sympathy and assistance was peculiarly Honora's.
And if some one had predicted that morning to Mr. Wentworth that before
nightfall he would not only have put a lady in distress on the highroad
to obtaining a western divorce (which he had hitherto looked upon as
disgraceful), but that likewise he would miss his train for Pride's
Crossing, buy the lady's tickets, and see her off at the South Station
for Chicago, he would have regarded the prophet as a lunatic. But that is
precisely what Mr. Wentworth did. And when, as her train pulled out,
Honora bade him goodby, she felt the tug at her heartstrings which comes
at parting with an old friend.

"And anything I can do for you here in the East, while--while you are out
there, be sure to let me know," he said.

She promised and waved at him from the platform as he stood motionless,
staring after her. Romance had spent a whole day in Boston! And with Mr.
Alden Wentworth, of all people!

Fortunately for the sanity of the human race, the tension of grief is
variable. Honora, closed in her stateroom, eased herself that night by
writing a long, if somewhat undecipherable, letter to Chiltern; and was
able, the next day, to read the greater portion of a novel. It was only
when she arrived in Chicago, after nightfall, that loneliness again
assailed her. She was within nine hours--so the timetable said--of St.
Louis! Of all her trials, the homesickness which she experienced as she
drove through the deserted streets of the metropolis of the Middle West
was perhaps the worst. A great city on Sunday night! What traveller has
not felt the depressing effect of it? And, so far as the incoming
traveller is concerned, Chicago does not put her best foot forward. The
way from the station to the Auditorium Hotel was hacked and bruised--so
it seemed--by the cruel battle of trade. And she stared, in a kind of
fascination that increased the ache in her heart; at the ugliness and
cruelty of the twentieth century.

To have imagination is unquestionably to possess a great capacity for
suffering, and Honora was paying the penalty for hers. It ran riot now.
The huge buildings towered like formless monsters against the blackness
of the sky under the sickly blue of the electric lights, across the
dirty, foot-scarred pavements, strange black human figures seemed to
wander aimlessly: an elevated train thundered overhead. And presently she
found herself the tenant of two rooms in that vast refuge of the
homeless, the modern hotel, where she sat until the small hours looking
down upon the myriad lights of the shore front, and out beyond them on
the black waters of an inland sea.

          .......................

From Newport to Salomon City, in a state not far from the Pacific tier,
is something of a transition in less than a week, though in modern life
we should be surprised at nothing. Limited trains are wonderful enough;
but what shall be said of the modern mind, that travels faster than
light? and much too fast for the pages of a chronicle. Martha Washington
and the good ladies of her acquaintance knew nothing about the upper
waters of the Missouri, and the words "for better, for worse, for richer,
for poorer" were not merely literature to them.

'Nous avons change tout cela', although there are yet certain crudities
to be eliminated. In these enlightened times, if in one week a lady is
not entirely at home with husband number one, in the next week she may
have travelled in comparative comfort some two-thirds across a continent,
and be on the highroad to husband number two. Why travel? Why have to put
up with all this useless expense and worry and waste of time? Why not
have one's divorce sent, C.O.D., to one's door, or establish a new branch
of the Post-office Department? American enterprise has surely lagged in
this.

Seated in a plush-covered rocking-chair that rocked on a track of its
own, and thus saved the yellow-and-red hotel carpet, the Honourable Dave
Beckwith patiently explained the vexatious process demanded by his
particular sovereign state before she should consent to cut the Gordian
knot of marriage. And his state--the Honourable Dave remarked--was in the
very forefront of enlightenment in this respect: practically all that she
demanded was that ladies in Mrs. Spence's predicament should become, pro
tempore, her citizens. Married misery did not exist in the Honourable
Dave's state, amongst her own bona fide citizens. And, by a wise
provision in the Constitution of our glorious American Union, no one
state could tie the nuptial knot so tight that another state could not
cut it at a blow.

Six months' residence, and a whole year before the divorce could be
granted! Honora looked at the plush rocking-chair, the yellow-and-red
carpet, the inevitable ice-water on the marble-topped table, and the
picture of a lady the shape of a liqueur bottle playing tennis in the
late eighties, and sighed. For one who is sensitive to surroundings, that
room was a torture chamber.

"But Mr. Beckwith," she exclaimed, "I never could spend a year here!
Isn't there a--house I could get that is a--a little--a little better
furnished? And then there is a certain publicity about staying at a
hotel."

The Honourable Dave might have been justly called the friend of ladies in
a temporary condition of loneliness. His mission in life was not merely
that of a liberator, but his natural goodness led him to perform a
hundred acts of kindness to make as comfortable as possible the purgatory
of the unfortunates under his charge. He was a man of a remarkable
appearance, and not to be lightly forgotten. His hair, above all,
fascinated Honora, and she found her eyes continually returning to it. So
incredibly short it was, and so incredibly stiff, that it reminded her of
the needle points on the cylinder of an old-fashioned music-box; and she
wondered, if it were properly inserted, what would be the resultant
melody.

The Honourable Dave's head was like a cannon-ball painted white. Across
the top of it (a blemish that would undoubtedly have spoiled the tune)
was a long scar,--a relic of one of the gentleman's many personal
difficulties. He who made the sear, Honora reflected, must have been a
strong man. The Honourable Dave, indeed, had fought his way upward
through life to the Congress of the United States; and many were the
harrowing tales of frontier life he told Honora in the long winter
evenings when the blizzards came down the river valley. They would fill a
book; unfortunately, not this book. The growing responsibilities of
taking care of the lonely ladies that came in increasing numbers to
Salomon City from the effeter portions of the continent had at length
compelled him to give up his congressional career. The Honourable Dave
was unmarried; and, he told Honora, not likely to become so. He was thus
at once human and invulnerable, a high priest dedicated to freedom.

It is needless to say that the plush rocking-chair and the picture of the
liqueur-bottle lady did not jar on his sensibilities. Like an eminent
physician who has never himself experienced neurosis, the Honourable Dave
firmly believed that he understood the trouble from which his client was
suffering. He had seen many cases of it in ladies from the Atlantic
coast: the first had surprised him, no doubt. Salomon City, though it
contained the great Boon, was not esthetic. Being a keen student of human
nature, he rightly supposed that she would not care to join the colony,
but he thought it his duty to mention that there was a colony.

Honora repeated the word.

"Out there," he said, waving his cigar to the westward, "some of the
ladies have ranches." Some of the gentlemen, too, he added, for it
appeared that exiles were not confined to one sex. "It's social--a little
too social, I guess," declared Mr. Beckwith, "for you." A delicate
compliment of differentiation that Honora accepted gravely. "They've got
a casino, and they burn a good deal of electricity first and last. They
don't bother Salomon City much. Once in a while, in the winter, they come
in a bunch to the theatre. Soon as I looked at you I knew you wouldn't
want to go there."

Her exclamation was sufficiently eloquent.

"I've got just the thing for you," he said. "It looks a little as if I
was reaching out into the sanitarium business. Are you acquainted by any
chance with Mrs. Boutwell, who married a fellow named Waterford?" he
asked, taking momentarily out of his mouth the cigar he was smoking by
permission.

Honora confessed, with no great enthusiasm, that she knew the present
Mrs. Waterford. Not the least of her tribulations had been to listen to a
partial recapitulation, by the Honourable Dave, of the ladies he had
assisted to a transfer of husbands. What, indeed, had these ladies to do
with her? She felt that the very mention of them tended to soil the pure
garments of her martyrdom.

"What I was going to say was this," the Honourable Dave continued. "Mrs.
Boutwell--that is to say Mrs. Waterford--couldn't stand this hotel any
more than you, and she felt like you do about the colony, so she rented a
little house up on Wylie Street and furnished it from the East. I took
the furniture off her hands: it's still in the house, by the way, which
hasn't been rented. For I figured it out that another lady would be
coming along with the same notions. Now you can look at the house any
time you like."

Although she had to overcome the distaste of its antecedents, the house,
or rather the furniture, was too much of a find in Salomon City to be
resisted. It had but six rooms, and was of wood, and painted grey, like
its twin beside it. But Mrs. Waterford had removed the stained-glass
window-lights in the front door, deftly hidden the highly ornamental
steam radiators, and made other eliminations and improvements, including
the white bookshelves that still contained the lady's winter reading
fifty or more yellow-and-green-backed French novels and plays. Honora's
first care, after taking possession, was to order her maid to remove
these from her sight: but it is to be feared that they found their way,
directly, to Mathilde's room. Honora would have liked to fumigate the
house; and yet, at the same time, she thanked her stars for it. Mr.
Beekwith obligingly found her a cook, and on Thursday evening she sat
down to supper in her tiny dining room. She had found a temporary haven,
at last.

Suddenly she remembered that it was an anniversary. One week ago that
day, in the old garden at Beaulieu, had occurred the momentous event that
had changed the current of her life!




CHAPTER IX

WYLIE STREET

There was a little spindle-supported porch before Honora's front door,
and had she chosen she might have followed the example of her neighbours
and sat there in the evenings. She preferred to watch the life about her
from the window-seat in the little parlour. The word exile suggests,
perhaps, to those who have never tried it, empty wastes, isolation,
loneliness. She had been prepared for these things, and Wylie Street was
a shock to her: in sending her there at this crisis in her life fate had
perpetrated nothing less than a huge practical joke. Next door, for
instance, in the twin house to hers, flaunted in the face of liberal
divorce laws, was a young couple with five children. Honora counted them,
from the eldest ones that ran over her little grass plot on their way to
and from the public school, to the youngest that spent much of his time
gazing skyward from a perambulator on the sidewalk. Six days of the week,
about six o'clock in the evening, there was a celebration in the family.
Father came home from work! He was a smooth-faced young man whom a
fortnight in the woods might have helped wonderfully--a clerk in the big
department store.

He radiated happiness. When opposite Honora's front door he would open
his arms--the signal for a race across her lawn. Sometimes it was the
little girl, with pigtails the colour of pulled molasses candy, who won
the prize of the first kiss: again it was her brother, a year her junior;
and when he was raised it was seen that the seat of his trousers was
obviously double. But each of the five received a reward, and the baby
was invariably lifted out of the perambulator. And finally there was a
conjugal kiss on the spindled porch.

The wife was a roly-poly little body. In the mornings, at the side
windows, Honora heard her singing as she worked, and sometimes the sun
struck with a blinding flash the pan she was in the act of shining. And
one day she looked up and nodded and smiled. Strange indeed was the
effect upon our heroine of that greeting! It amazed Honora herself. A
strange current ran through her and left her hot, and even as she smiled
and nodded back, unbidden tears rose scalding to her eyes. What was it?
Why was it?

She went downstairs to the little bookcase, filled now with volumes that
were not trash. For Hugh's sake, she would try to improve herself this
winter by reading serious things. But between her eyes and the book was
the little woman's smile. A month before, at Newport, how little she
would have valued it.

One morning, as Honora was starting out for her lonely walk--that usually
led her to the bare clay banks of the great river--she ran across her
neighbour on the sidewalk. The little woman was settling the baby for his
airing, and she gave Honora the same dazzling smile.

"Good morning, Mrs. Spence," she said.

"Good morning," replied Honora, and in her strange confusion she leaned
over the carriage. "Oh, what a beautiful baby!"

"Isn't he!" cried the little woman. "Of all of 'em, I think he's the
prize. His father says so. I guess," she added, "I guess it was because I
didn't know so much about 'em when they first began to come. You take my
word for it, the best way is to leave 'em alone. Don't dandle 'em. It's
hard to keep your hands off 'em, but it's right."

"I'm sure of it," said Honora, who was very red.

They made a strange contrast as they stood on that new street, with its
new vitrified brick paving and white stone curbs, and new little trees
set out in front of new little houses: Mrs. Mayo (for such, Honora's cook
had informed her, was her name) in a housekeeper's apron and a
shirtwaist, and Honora, almost a head taller, in a walking costume of
dark grey that would have done justice to Fifth Avenue. The admiration in
the little woman's eyes was undisguised.

"You're getting a bill, I hear," she said, after a moment.

"A bill?" repeated Honora.

"A bill of divorce," explained Mrs. Mayo.

Honora was conscious of conflicting emotions: astonishment, resentment,
and--most curiously--of relief that the little woman knew it.

"Yes," she answered.

But Mrs. Mayo did not appear to notice or resent her brevity.

"I took a fancy to you the minute I saw you," she said. "I can't say as
much for the other Easterner that was here last year. But I made up my
mind that it must be a mighty mean man who would treat you badly."

Honora stood as though rooted to the pavement. She found a reply
impossible.

"When I think of my luck," her neighbour continued, "I'm almost ashamed.
We were married on fifteen dollars a week. Of course there have been
trials, we must always expect that; and we've had to work hard, but--it
hasn't hurt us." She paused and looked up at Honora, and added
contritely: "There! I shouldn't have said anything. It's mean of me to
talk of my happiness. I'll drop in some afternoon--if you'll let me
--when I get through my work," said the little woman.

"I wish you would," replied Honora.

She had much to think of on her walk that morning, and new resolutions to
make. Here was happiness growing and thriving, so far as she could see,
without any of that rarer nourishment she had once thought so necessary.
And she had come two thousand miles to behold it.

She walked many miles, as a part of the regimen and discipline to which
she had set herself. Her haunting horror in this place, as she thought of
the colony of which Mr. Beckwith had spoken and of Mrs. Boutwell's row of
French novels, was degeneration. She was resolved to return to Chiltern a
better and a wiser and a truer woman, unstained by the ordeal. At the
outskirts of the town she halted by the river's bank, breathing deeply of
the pure air of the vast plains that surrounded her.

She was seated that afternoon at her desk in the sitting-room upstairs
when she heard the tinkle of the door-bell, and remembered her
neighbour's promise to call. With something of a pang she pushed back her
chair. Since the episode of the morning, the friendship of the little
woman had grown to have a definite value; for it was no small thing, in
Honora's situation, to feel the presence of a warm heart next door. All
day she had been thinking of Mrs. Mayo and her strange happiness, and
longing to talk with her again, and dreading it. And while she was
bracing herself for the trial Mathilde entered with a card.

"Tell Mrs. Mayo I shall be down in a minute," she said.

It was not a lady, Mathilde replied, but a monsieur.

Honora took the card. For a long time she sat staring at it, while
Mathilde waited. It read:

             Mr. Peter Erwin.

"Madame will see monsieur?"

A great sculptor once said to the statesman who was to be his model:
"Wear your old coat. There is as much of a man in the back of his old
coat, I think, as there is in his face." As Honora halted on the
threshold, Peter was standing looking out of the five-foot plate-glass
window, and his back was to her.

She was suddenly stricken. Not since she had been a child, not even in
the weeks just passed, had she felt that pain. And as a child, self-pity
seized her--as a lost child, when darkness is setting in, and the will
fails and distance appalls. Scalding tears welled into her eyes as she
seized the frame of the door, but it must have been her breathing that he
heard. He turned and crossed the room to her as she had known he would,
and she clung to him as she had so often done in days gone by when, hurt
and bruised, he had rescued and soothed her. For the moment, the delusion
that his power was still limitless prevailed, and her faith whole again,
so many times had he mended a world all awry.

He led her to the window-seat and gently disengaged her hands from his
shoulders and took one of them and held it between his own. He did not
speak, for his was a rare intuition; and gradually her hand ceased to
tremble, and the uncontrollable sobs that shook her became less frequent.

"Why did you come? Why did you come?" she cried.

"To see you, Honora."

"But you might have--warned me."

"Yes," he said, "it's true, I might."

She drew her hand away, and gazed steadfastly at his face.

"Why aren't you angry?" she said. "You don't believe in what I have
done--you don't sympathize with it--you don't understand it."

"I have come here to try," he said.

She shook her head.

"You can't--you can't--you never could."

"Perhaps," he answered, "it may not be so difficult as you think."

Grown calmer, she considered this. What did he mean by it? to imply a
knowledge of herself?

"It will be useless," she said inconsequently.

"No," he said, "it will not be useless."

She considered this also, and took the broader meaning that such acts are
not wasted.

"What do you intend to try to do?" she asked.

He smiled a little.

"To listen to as much as you care to tell me, Honora."

She looked at him again, and an errant thought slipped in between her
larger anxieties. Wherever he went, how extraordinarily he seemed to
harmonize with his surroundings. At Silverdale, and in the drawing-room
of the New York house, and in the little parlour in this far western
town. What was it? His permanence? Was it his power? She felt that, but
it was a strange kind of power--not like other men's. She felt, as she
sat there beside him, that his was a power more difficult to combat. That
to defeat it was at once to make it stronger, and to grow weaker. She
summoned her pride, she summoned her wrongs: she summoned the ego which
had winged its triumphant flight far above his kindly, disapproving eye.
He had the ability to make her taste defeat in the very hour of victory.
And she knew that, when she fell, he would be there in his strength to
lift her up.

"Did--did they tell you to come?" she asked.

"There was no question of that, Honora. I was away when--when they
learned you were here. As soon as I returned, I came."

"Tell me how they feel," she said, in a low voice.

"They think only of you. And the thought that you are unhappy overshadows
all others. They believe that it is to them you should have come, if you
were in trouble instead of coming here."

"How could I?" she cried. "How can you ask? That is what makes it so
hard, that I cannot be with them now. But I should only have made them
still more unhappy, if I had gone. They would not have understood--they
cannot understand who have every reason to believe in marriage, why those
to whom it has been a mockery and a torture should be driven to divorce."

"Why divorce?" he said.

"Do you mean--do you mean that you wish me to give you the reasons why I
felt justified in leaving my husband?"

"Not unless you care to," he replied. "I have no right to demand them. I
only ask you to remember, Honora, that you have not explained these
reasons very clearly in your letters to your aunt and uncle. They do not
understand them. Your uncle was unable, on many accounts, to come here;
and he thought that--that as an old friend, you might be willing to talk
to me."

"I can't live with--with my husband," she cried. "I don't love him, and
he doesn't love me. He doesn't know what love is."

Peter Erwin glanced at her, but she was too absorbed then to see the
thing in his eyes. He made no comment.

"We haven't the same tastes, nor--nor the same way of looking at things
--the same views about making money--for instance. We became absolute
strangers. What more is there to say?" she added, a little defiantly.

"Your husband committed no--flagrant offence against you?" he inquired.

"That would have made him human, at least," she cried. "It would have
proved that he could feel--something. No, all he cares for in the world
is to make money, and he doesn't care how he makes it. No woman with an
atom of soul can live with a man like that."

If Peter Erwin deemed this statement a trifle revolutionary, he did not
say so.

"So you just--left him," he said.

"Yes," said Honora. "He didn't care. He was rather relieved than
otherwise. If I had lived with him till I died, I couldn't have made him
happy."

"You tried, and failed," said Peter.

She flushed.

"I couldn't have made him happier," she declared, correcting herself. "He
has no conception of what real happiness is. He thinks he is happy,-he
doesn't need me. He'll be much more--contented without me. I have nothing
against him. I was to blame for marrying him, I know. But I have only one
life to live, and I can't throw it away, Peter, I can't. And I can't
believe that a woman and a man were intended to live together without
love. It is too horrible. Surely that isn't your idea of marriage!"

"My idea of marriage isn't worth very much, I'm afraid," he said. "If I
talked about it, I should have to confine myself to theories and--and
dreams."

"The moment I saw your card, Peter, I knew why you had come here," she
said, trying to steady her voice. "It was to induce me to go back to my
husband. You don't know how it hurts me to give you pain. I love you--I
love you as I love Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary. You are a part of me. But oh,
you can't understand! I knew you could not. You have never made any
mistakes--you have never lived. It is useless. I won't go back to him. If
you stayed here for weeks you could not make me change my mind."

He was silent.

"You think that I could have prevented--this, if I had been less
selfish," she said.

"Where you are concerned, Honora, I have but one desire," he answered,
"and that is to see you happy--in the best sense of the term. If I could
induce you to go back and give your husband another trial, I should
return with a lighter heart. You ask me whether I think you have been
selfish. I answer frankly that I think you have. I don't pretend to say
your husband has not been selfish also. Neither of you have ever tried,
apparently, to make your marriage a success. It can't be done without an
honest effort. You have abandoned the most serious and sacred enterprise
in the world as lightly as though it had been a piece of embroidery. All
that I can gather from your remarks is that you have left your husband
because you have grown tired of him."

"Yes," said Honora, "and you can never realize how tired, unless you knew
him as I did. When love dies, it turns into hate."

He rose, and walked to the other end of the room, and turned.

"Could you be induced," he said, "for the sake of your aunt and uncle, if
not for your own, to consider a legal separation?"

For an instant she stared at him hopelessly, and then she buried her face
in her hands.

"No," she cried. "No, I couldn't. You don't know what you ask."

He went to her, and laid his hand lightly on her shoulder.

"I think I do," he said.

There was a moment's tense silence, and then she got to her feet and
looked at him proudly.

"Yes," she cried, "it is true. And I am not ashamed of it. I have
discovered what love is, and what life is, and I am going to take them
while I can."

She saw the blood slowly leave his face, and his hands tighten. It was
not until then that she guessed at the depth of his wound, and knew that
it was unhealed. For him had been reserved this supreme irony, that he
should come here to plead for her husband and learn from her own lips
that she loved another man. She was suddenly filled with awe, though he
turned away from her that she might not see his face: And she sought in
vain for words. She touched his hand, fearfully, and now it was he who
trembled.

"Peter," she exclaimed, "why do you bother with me? I--I am what I am. I
can't help it. I was made so. I cannot tell you that I am sorry for what
I have done--for what I am going to do. I will not lie to you--and you
forced me to speak. I know that you don't understand, and that I caused
you pain, and that I shall cause--them pain. It may be selfishness--I
don't know. God alone knows. Whatever it is, it is stronger than I. It is
what I am. Though I were to be thrown into eternal fire I would not
renounce it."

She looked at him again, and her breath caught. While she had been
speaking, he had changed. There was a fire in his eyes she had never seen
before, in all the years she had known him.

"Honora," he said quietly, "the man who has done this is a scoundrel."

She stared at him, doubting her senses, her pupils wide with terror.

"How dare you, Peter! How dare you!" she cried.

"I dare to speak the truth," he said, and crossed the room to where his
hat was lying and picked it up. She watched him as in a trance. Then he
came back to her.

"Some day, perhaps, you will forgive me for saying that, Honora. I hope
that day will come, although I shall never regret having said it. I have
caused you pain. Sometimes, it seems, pain is unavoidable. I hope you
will remember that, with the exception of your aunt and uncle, you have
no better friend than I. Nothing can alter that friendship, wherever you
go, whatever you do. Goodby."

He caught her hand, held it for a moment in his own, and the door had
closed before she realized that he had gone. For a few moments she stood
motionless where he had left her, and then she went slowly up the stairs
to her own room . . . .




CHAPTER X

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

Had he, Hugh Chiltern, been anathematized from all the high pulpits of
the world, Honora's belief in him could not have been shaken. Ivanhoe and
the Knights of the Round Table to the contrary, there is no chivalry so
exalted as that of a woman who loves, no courage higher, no endurance
greater. Her knowledge is complete; and hers the supreme faith that is
unmoved by calumny and unbelief. She alone knows. The old Chiltern did
not belong to her: hers was the new man sprung undefiled from the sacred
fire of their love; and in that fire she, too, had been born again.
Peter--even Peter had no power to share such a faith, though what he had
said of Chiltern had wounded her--wounded her because Peter, of all
others, should misjudge and condemn him. Sometimes she drew consolation
from the thought that Peter had never seen him. But she knew he could not
understand him, or her, or what they had passed through: that kind of
understanding comes alone through experience.

In the long days that followed she thought much about Peter, and failed
to comprehend her feelings towards him. She told herself that she ought
to hate him for what he had so cruelly said, and at times indeed her
resentment was akin to hatred: again, his face rose before her as she had
seen it when he had left her, and she was swept by an incomprehensible
wave of tenderness and reverence. And yet--paradox of paradoxes
--Chiltern possessed her!

On the days when his letters came it was as his emissary that the sun
shone to give her light in darkness, and she went about the house with a
song on her lips. They were filled, these letters, with an elixir of
which she drank thirstily to behold visions, and the weariness of her
exile fell away. The elixir of High Purpose. Never was love on such a
plane! He lifting her,--no marvel in this; and she--by a magic power of
levitation at which she never ceased to wonder--sustaining him. By her
aid he would make something of himself which would be worthy of her. At
last he had the incentive to enable him to take his place in the world.
He pictured their future life at Grenoble until her heart was strained
with yearning for it to begin. Here would be duty,--let him who would
gainsay it, duty and love combined with a wondrous happiness. He at a
man's labour, she at a woman's; labour not for themselves alone, but for
others. A paradise such as never was heard of--a God-fearing paradise,
and the reward of courage.

He told her he could not go to Grenoble now and begin the life without
her. Until that blessed time he would remain a wanderer, avoiding the
haunts of men. First he had cruised in the 'Folly, and then camped and
shot in Canada; and again, as winter drew on apace, had chartered another
yacht, a larger one, and sailed away for the West Indies, whence the
letters came, stamped in strange ports, and sometimes as many as five
together. He, too, was in exile until his regeneration should begin.

Well he might be at such a time. One bright day in early winter Honora,
returning from her walk across the bleak plains in the hope of letters,
found newspapers and periodicals instead, addressed in an unknown hand.
It matters not whose hand: Honora never sought to know. She had long
regarded as inevitable this acutest phase of her martyrdom, and the long
nights of tears when entire paragraphs of the loathed stuff she had
burned ran ceaselessly in her mind. Would she had burned it before
reading it! An insensate curiosity had seized her, and she had read and
read again until it was beyond the reach of fire.

Save for its effect upon Honora, it is immaterial to this chronicle. It
was merely the heaviest of her heavy payments for liberty. But what, she
asked herself shamefully, would be its effect upon Chiltern? Her face
burned that she should doubt his loyalty and love; and yet--the question
returned. There had been a sketch of Howard, dwelling upon the prominence
into which he had sprung through his connection with Mr. Wing. There had
been a sketch of her; and how she had taken what the writer was pleased
to call Society by storm: it had been intimated, with a cruelty known
only to writers of such paragraphs, that ambition to marry a Chiltern had
been her motive! There had been a sketch of Chiltern's career, in
carefully veiled but thoroughly comprehensible language, which might have
made a Bluebeard shudder. This, of course, she bore best of all; or, let
it be said rather, that it cost her the least suffering. Was it not she
who had changed and redeemed him?

What tortured her most was the intimation that Chiltern's family
connections were bringing pressure to bear upon him to save him from this
supremest of all his follies. And when she thought of this the strange
eyes and baffling expression of Mrs. Grainger rose before her. Was it
true? And if true, would Chiltern resist, even as she, Honora, had
resisted, loyally? Might this love for her not be another of his mad
caprices?

How Honora hated herself for the thought that thus insistently returned
at this period of snows and blasts! It was January. Had he seen the
newspapers? He had not, for he was cruising: he had, for of course they
had been sent him. And he must have received, from his relatives,
protesting letters. A fortnight passed, and her mail contained nothing
from him! Perhaps something had happened to his yacht! Visions of
shipwreck cause her to scan the newspapers for storms at sea,--but the
shipwreck that haunted her most was that of her happiness. How easy it is
to doubt in exile, with happiness so far away! One morning, when the wind
dashed the snow against her windows, she found it impossible to rise.

If the big doctor suspected the cause of her illness, Mathilde knew it.
The maid tended her day and night, and sought, with the tact of her
nation, to console and reassure her. The little woman next door came and
sat by her bedside. Cruel and infinitely happy little woman, filled with
compassion, who brought delicacies in the making of which she had spent
precious hours, and which Honora could not eat! The Lord, when he had
made Mrs. Mayo, had mercifully withheld the gift of imagination. One
topic filled her, she lived to one end: her Alpha and Omega were husband
and children, and she talked continually of their goodness and badness,
of their illnesses, of their health, of their likes and dislikes, of
their accomplishments and defects, until one day a surprising thing
happened. Surprising for Mrs. Mayo.

"Oh, don't!" cried Honora, suddenly. "Oh, don't! I can't bear it."

"What is it?" cried Mrs. Mayo, frightened out of her wits. "A turn? Shall
I telephone for the doctor?"

"No," relied Honora, "but--but I can't talk any more--to-day."

She apologized on the morrow, as she held Mrs. Mayo's hand. "It--it was
your happiness," she said; "I was unstrung. I couldn't listen to it.
Forgive me."

The little woman burst into tears, and kissed her as she sat in bed.

"Forgive you, deary!" she cried. "I never thought."

"It has been so easy for you," Honora faltered.

"Yes, it has. I ought to thank God, and I do--every night."

She looked long and earnestly, through her tears, at the young lady from
the far away East as she lay against the lace pillows, her paleness
enhanced by the pink gown, her dark hair in two great braids on her
shoulders.

"And to think how pretty you are!" she exclaimed.

It was thus she expressed her opinion of mankind in general, outside of
her own family circle. Once she had passionately desired beauty, the high
school and the story of Helen of Troy notwithstanding. Now she began to
look at it askance, as a fatal gift; and to pity, rather than envy, its
possessors.

As a by-industry, Mrs. Mayo raised geraniums and carnations in her front
cellar, near the furnace, and once in a while Peggy, with the
pulled-molasses hair, or chubby Abraham Lincoln, would come puffing up
Honora's stairs under the weight of a flower-pot and deposit it
triumphantly on the table at Honora's bedside. Abraham Lincoln did not
object to being kissed: he had, at least, grown to accept the process as
one of the unaccountable mysteries of life. But something happened to him
one afternoon, on the occasion of his giving proof of an intellect which
may eventually bring him, in the footsteps of his great namesake, to the
White House. Entering Honora's front door, he saw on the hall table a
number of letters which the cook (not gifted with his brains) had left
there. He seized them in one fat hand, while with the other he hugged the
flower-pot to his breast, mounted the steps, and arrived, breathless but
radiant, on the threshold of the beautiful lady's room, and there
calamity overtook him in the shape of one of the thousand articles which
are left on the floor purposely to trip up little boys.

Great was the disaster. Letters, geranium, pieces of flower-pot, a
quantity of black earth, and a howling Abraham Lincoln bestrewed the
floor. And similar episodes, in his brief experience with this world, had
not brought rewards. It was from sheer amazement that his tears ceased to
flow--amazement and lack of breath--for the beautiful lady sprang up and
seized him in her arms, and called Mathilde, who eventually brought a
white and gold box. And while Abraham sat consuming its contents in
ecstasy he suddenly realized that the beautiful lady had forgotten him.
She had picked up the letters, every one, and stood reading them with
parted lips and staring eyes.

It was Mathilde who saved him from a violent illness, closing the box and
leading him downstairs, and whispered something incomprehensible in his
ear as she pointed him homeward.

"Le vrai medecin--c'est toi, mon mignon."

There was a reason why Chiltern's letters had not arrived, and great were
Honora's self-reproach and penitence. With a party of Englishmen he had
gone up into the interior of a Central American country to visit some
famous ruins. He sent her photographs of them, and of the Englishmen, and
of himself. Yes, he had seen the newspapers. If she had not seen them,
she was not to read them if they came to her. And if she had, she was to
remember that their love was too sacred to be soiled, and too perfect to
be troubled. As for himself, as she knew, he was a changed man, who
thought of his former life with loathing. She had made him clean, and
filled him with a new strength.

The winter passed. The last snow melted on the little grass plot, which
changed by patches from brown to emerald green; and the children ran over
it again, and tracked it in the soft places, but Honora only smiled.
Warm, still days were interspersed between the windy ones, when the sky
was turquoise blue, when the very river banks were steeped in new
colours, when the distant, shadowy mountains became real. Liberty ran
riot within her. If he thought with loathing on his former life, so did
she. Only a year ago she had been penned up in a New York street in that
prison-house of her own making, hemmed in by surroundings which she had
now learned to detest from her soul.

A few more penalties remained to be paid, and the heaviest of these was
her letter to her aunt and uncle. Even as they had accepted other things
in life, so had they accepted the hardest of all to bear--Honora's
divorce. A memorable letter her Uncle Tom had written her after Peter's
return to tell them that remonstrances were useless! She was their
daughter in all but name, and they would not forsake her. When she should
have obtained her divorce, she should go back to them. Their house, which
had been her home, should always remain so. Honora wept and pondered long
over that letter. Should she write and tell them the truth, as she had
told Peter? It was not because she was ashamed of the truth that she had
kept it from them throughout the winter: it was because she wished to
spare them as long as possible. Cruellest circumstance of all, that a
love so divine as hers should not be understood by them, and should cause
them infinite pain!

The weeks and months slipped by. Their letters, after that first one,
were such as she had always received from them: accounts of the weather,
and of the doings of her friends at home. But now the time was at hand
when she must prepare them for her marriage with Chiltern; for they would
expect her in St. Louis, and she could not go there. And if she wrote
them, they might try to stop the marriage, or at least to delay it for
some years.

Was it possible that a lingering doubt remained in her mind that to
postpone her happiness would perhaps be to lose it? In her exile she had
learned enough to know that a divorced woman is like a rudderless ship at
sea, at the mercy of wind and wave and current. She could not go back to
her life in St. Louis: her situation there would be unbearable: her
friends would not be the same friends. No, she had crossed her Rubicon
and destroyed the bridge deep within her she felt that delay would be
fatal, both to her and Chiltern. Long enough had the banner of their love
been trailed in the dust.

Summer came again, with its anniversaries and its dragging, interminable
weeks: demoralizing summer, when Mrs. Mayo quite frankly appeared at her
side window in a dressing sacque, and Honora longed to do the same. But
time never stands absolutely still, and the day arrived when Mr. Beckwith
called in a carriage. Honora, with an audibly beating heart, got into it,
and they drove down town, past the department store where Mr. Mayo spent
his days, and new blocks of banks and business houses that flanked the
wide street, where the roaring and clanging of the ubiquitous trolley
cars resounded.

Honora could not define her sensations--excitement and shame and fear and
hope and joy were so commingled. The colours of the red and yellow brick
had never been so brilliant in the sunshine. They stopped before the new
court-house and climbed the granite steps. In her sensitive state, Honora
thought that some of the people paused to look after them, and that some
were smiling. One woman, she thought, looked compassionate. Within, they
crossed the marble pavement, the Honourable Dave handed her into an
elevator, and when it stopped she followed him as in a dream to an
oak-panelled door marked with a legend she did not read. Within was an
office, with leather chairs, a large oak desk, a spittoon, and portraits
of grave legal gentlemen on the wall.

"This is Judge Whitman's office," explained the Honourable Dave. "He'll
let you stay here until the case is called."

"Is he the judge--before whom--the case is to be tried?" asked Honora.

"He surely is," answered the Honourable Dave. "Whitman's a good friend of
mine. In fact, I may say, without exaggeration, I had something to do
with his election. Now you mustn't get flustered," he added. "It isn't
anything like as bad as goin' to the dentist. It don't amount to shucks,
as we used to say in Missouri."

With these cheerful words of encouragement he slipped out of a side door
into what was evidently the court room, for Honora heard a droning. After
a long interval he reappeared and beckoned her with a crooked finger. She
arose and followed him into the court room.

All was bustle and confusion there, and her counsel whispered that they
were breaking up for the day. The judge was stretching himself; several
men who must have been lawyers, and with whom Mr. Beckwith was exchanging
amenities behind the railing, were arranging their books and papers; some
of the people were leaving, and others talking in groups about the room.
The Honourable Dave whispered to the judge, a tall, lank, cadaverous
gentleman with iron-grey hair, who nodded. Honora was led forward. The
Honourable Dave, standing very close to the judge and some distance from
her, read in a low voice something that she could not catch--supposedly
the petition. It was all quite as vague to Honora as the trial of the
Jack of Hearts; the buzzing of the groups still continued around the
court room, and nobody appeared in the least interested. This was a
comfort, though it robbed the ceremony of all vestige of reality. It
seemed incredible that the majestic and awful Institution of the ages
could be dissolved with no smoke or fire, with such infinite
indifference, and so much spitting. What was the use of all the pomp and
circumstance and ceremony to tie the knot if it could be cut in the
routine of a day's business?

The solemn fact that she was being put under oath meant nothing to her.
This, too, was slurred and mumbled. She found herself, trembling,
answering questions now from her counsel, now from the judge; and it is
to be doubted to this day whether either heard her answers. Most
convenient and considerate questions they were. When and where she was
married, how long she had lived with her husband, what happened when they
ceased to live together, and had he failed ever since to contribute to
her support? Mercifully, Mr. Beckwith was in the habit of coaching his
words beforehand. A reputable citizen of Salomon City was produced to
prove her residence, and somebody cried out something, not loudly, in
which she heard the name of Spence mentioned twice. The judge said, "Take
your decree," and picked up a roll of papers and walked away. Her knees
became weak, she looked around her dizzily, and beheld the triumphant
professional smile of the Honourable Dave Beckwith.

"It didn't hurt much, did it?" he asked. "Allow me to congratulate you."

"Is it--is it all over?" she said, quite dazed.

"Just like that," he said. "You're free."

"Free!" The word rang in her ears as she drove back to the little house
that had been her home. The Honourable Dave lifted his felt hat as he
handed her out of the carriage, and said he would call again in the
evening to see if he could do anything further for her. Mathilde, who had
been watching from the window, opened the door, and led her mistress into
the parlour.

"It's--it's all over, Mathilde," she said.

"Mon dieu, madame," said Mathilde, "c'est simple comme bonjour!"






A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill

Volume 7.



CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH IT IS ALL DONE OVER AGAIN

All morning she had gazed on the shining reaches of the Hudson, their
colour deepening to blue as she neared the sea. A gold-bound volume of
Shelley, with his name on the fly-leaf, lay in her lap. And two lines she
repeated softly to herself--two lines that held a vision:

       "He was as the sun in his fierce youth,
        As terrible and lovely as a tempest;"

She summoned him out of the chaos of the past, and the past became the
present, and he stood before her as though in the flesh. Nay, she heard
his voice, his laugh, she even recognized again the smouldering flames in
his eyes as he glanced into hers, and his characteristic manners and
gestures. Honora wondered. In vain, during those long months of exile had
she tried to reconstruct him thus the vision in its entirety would not
come: rare, fleeting, partial, and tantalizing glimpses she had been
vouchsafed, it is true. The whole of him had been withheld until this
breathless hour before the dawn of her happiness.

Yet, though his own impatient spirit had fared forth to meet her with
this premature gift of his attributes, she had to fight the growing fear
within her. Now that the days of suffering were as they had not been,
insistent questions dinned in her ears: was she entitled to the joys to
come? What had she done to earn them? Had hers not been an attempt, on a
gigantic scale, to cheat the fates? Nor could she say whether this
feeling were a wholly natural failure to grasp a future too big, or the
old sense of the unreality of events that had followed her so
persistently.

The Hudson disappeared. Factories, bridges, beflagged week-end resorts,
ramshackle houses, and blocks of new buildings were scattered here and
there. The train was running on a causeway between miles of tenements
where women and children, overtaken by lassitude, hung out of the
windows: then the blackness of the tunnel, and Honora closed her eyes.
Four minutes, three minutes, two minutes . . . . The motion ceased. At
the steps of the car a uniformed station porter seized her bag; and she
started to walk down the long, narrow platform. Suddenly she halted.

"Drop anything, Miss?" inquired the porter.

"No," answered Honora, faintly. He looked at her in concern, and she
began to walk on again, more slowly.

It had suddenly come over her that the man she was going to meet she
scarcely knew! Shyness seized her, a shyness that bordered on panic. And
what was he really like, that she should put her whole trust in him? She
glanced behind her: that way was closed: she had a mad desire to get
away, to hide, to think. It must have been an obsession that had
possessed her all these months. The porter was looking again, and he
voiced her predicament.

"There's only one way out, Miss."

And then, amongst the figures massed behind the exit in the grill, she
saw him, his face red-bronze with the sea tan, his crisp, curly head
bared, his eyes alight with a terrifying welcome; and a tremor of a fear
akin to ecstasy ran through her: the fear of the women of days gone by
whose courage carried them to the postern or the strand, and fainted
there. She could have taken no step farther--and there was no need. New
strength flowed from the hand she held that was to carry her on and on.

He spoke her name. He led her passive, obedient, through the press to the
side street, and then he paused and looked into her burning face.

"I have you at last," he said. "Are you happy?"

"I don't know," she faltered. "Oh, Hugh, it all seems so strange! I don't
know what I have done."

"I know," he said exultantly; "but to save my soul I can't believe it."

She watched him, bewildered, while he put her maid into a cab, and by an
effort roused herself.

"Where are you going, Hugh?"

"To get married," he replied promptly.

She pulled down her veil.

"Please be sensible," she implored. "I've arranged to go to a hotel."

"What hotel?"

"The--the Barnstable," she said. The place had come to her memory on the
train. "It's very nice and--and quiet--so I've been told. And I've
telegraphed for my rooms."

"I'll humour you this once," he answered, and gave the order.

She got into the carriage. It had blue cushions with the familiar smell
of carriage upholstery, and the people in the street still hurried about
their business as though nothing in particular were happening. The horses
started, and some forgotten key in her brain was touched as Chiltern
raised her veil again.

"You'll tear it, Hugh," she said, and perforce lifted it herself. Her
eyes met his--and she awoke. Not to memories or regrets, but to the
future, for the recording angel had mercifully destroyed his book.

"Did you miss me?" she said.

"Miss you! My God, Honora, how can you ask? When I look back upon these
last months, I don't see how I ever passed through them. And you are
changed," he said. "I could not have believed it possible, but you are.
You are--you are finer."

He had chosen his word exquisitely. And then, as they trotted sedately
through Madison Avenue, he strained her in his arms and kissed her.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, scarlet, as she disengaged, herself, "you mustn't
--here!"

"You're free!" he exclaimed. "You're mine at last! I can't believe it!
Look at me, and tell me so."

She tried.

"Yes," she faltered.

"Yes--what?"

"Yes. I--I am yours."

She looked out of the window to avoid those eyes. Was this New York, or
Jerusalem? Were these the streets through which she had driven and trod
in her former life? Her whole soul cried out denial. No episode, no
accusing reminiscences stood out--not one: the very corners were changed.
Would it all change back again if he were to lessen the insistent
pressure on the hand in her lap.

"Honora?"

"Yes?" she answered, with a start.

"You missed me? Look at me and tell me the truth."

"The truth!" she faltered, and shuddered. The contrast was too great
--the horror of it too great for her to speak of. The pen of Dante had
not been adequate. "Don't ask me, Hugh," she begged, "I can't talk about
it--I never shall be able to talk about it. If I had not loved you, I
should have died."

How deeply he felt and understood and sympathized she knew by the
quivering pressure on her hand. Ah, if he had not! If he had failed to
grasp the meaning of her purgatory.

"You are wonderful, Honora," was what he said in a voice broken by
emotion.

She thanked him with one fleeting, tearful glance that was as a grant of
all her priceless possessions. The carriage stopped, but it was some
moments before they realized it.

"You may come up in a little while," she whispered, "and lunch with me
--if you like."

"If I like!" he repeated.

But she was on the sidewalk, following the bell boy into the cool,
marble-lined area of the hotel. A smiling clerk handed her a pen, and set
the new universe to rocking.

"Mrs. Leffingwell, I presume? We have your telegram."

Mrs. Leffingwell! Who was that person? For an instant she stood blankly
holding the pen, and then she wrote rapidly, if a trifle unsteadily:
"Mrs. Leffingwell and maid." A pause. Where was her home? Then she added
the words, "St. Louis."

Her rooms were above the narrow canon of the side street, looking over
the roofs of the inevitable brownstone fronts opposite. While Mathilde,
in the adjoining chamber, unpacked her bag, Honora stood gazing out of
the sitting-room windows, trying to collect her thoughts. Her spirits had
unaccountably fallen, the sense of homelessness that had pursued her all
these months overtaken her once more. Never, never, she told herself,
would she enter a hotel again alone; and when at last he came she clung
to him with a passion that thrilled him the more because he could not
understand it.

"Hugh--you will care for me?" she cried.

He kissed away her tears. He could not follow her; he only knew that what
he held to him was a woman such as he had never known before. Tender, and
again strangely and fiercely tender: an instrument of such miraculous
delicacy as to respond, quivering, to the lightest touch; an harmonious
and perfect blending of strength and weakness, of joy and sorrow,--of all
the warring elements in the world. What he felt was the supreme masculine
joy of possession.

At last they sat down on either side of the white cloth the waiter had
laid, for even the gods must eat. Not that our deified mortals ate much
on this occasion. Vesta presided once more, and after the feast was over
gently led them down the slopes until certain practical affairs began to
take shape in the mind of the man. Presently he looked at his watch, and
then at the woman, and made a suggestion.

"Marry you now--this of afternoon!" she cried, aghast. "Hugh, are you in
your right senses?"

"Yes," he said, "I'm reasonable for the first time in my life."

She laughed, and immediately became serious. But when she sought to
marshal her arguments, she found that they had fled.

"Oh, but I couldn't," she answered. "And besides, there are so many
things I ought to do. I--I haven't any clothes."

But this was a plea he could not be expected to recognize. He saw no
reason why she could not buy as many as she wanted after the ceremony.

"Is that all?" he demanded.

"No--that isn't all. Can't you see that--that we ought to wait, Hugh?"

"No," he exclaimed, "No I can't see it. I can only see that every moment
of waiting would be a misery for us both. I can only see that the
situation, as it is to-day, is an intolerable one for you."

She had not expected him to see this.

"There are others to be thought of," she said, after a moment's
hesitation.

"What others?"

The answer she should have made died on her lips.

"It seems so-indecorous, Hugh."

"Indecorous!" he cried, and pushed back his chair and rose. "What's
indecorous about it? To leave you here alone in a hotel in New York would
not only be indecorous, but senseless. How long would you put it off? a
week--a month--a year? Where would you go in the meantime, and what would
you do?"

"But your friends, Hugh--and mine?"

"Friends! What have they got to do with it?"

It was the woman, now, who for a moment turned practical--and for the
man's sake. She loved, and the fair fabric of the future which they were
to weave together, and the plans with which his letters had been filled
and of which she had dreamed in exile, had become to-day as the stuff of
which moonbeams are made. As she looked up at him, eternity itself did
not seem long enough for the fulfilment of that love. But he? Would the
time not come when he would demand something more? and suppose that
something were denied? She tried to rouse herself, to think, to consider
a situation in which her instinct had whispered just once--there must be
some hidden danger: but the electric touch of his hand destroyed the
process, and made her incapable of reason.

"What should we gain by a week's or a fortnight's delay," he was saying,
"except so much misery?"

She looked around the hotel sitting-room, and tried to imagine the
desolation of it, stripped of his presence. Why not? There was reason in
what he said. And yet, if she had known it, it was not to reason she
yielded, but to the touch of his hand.

"We will be married to-day," he decreed. "I have planned it all. I have
bought the 'Adhemar', the yacht which I chartered last winter. She is
here. We'll go off on her together, away from the world, for as long as
you like. And then," he ended triumphantly, "then we'll go back to
Grenoble and begin our life."

"And begin our life!" she repeated. But it was not to him that she spoke.
"Hugh, I positively have to have some clothes."

"Clothes!" His voice expressed his contempt for the mundane thought.

"Yes, clothes," she repeated resolutely.

He looked at his watch once more.

"Very well," he said, "we'll get 'em on the way."

"On the way?" she asked.

"We'll have to have a marriage license, I'm afraid," he explained
apologetically.

Honora grew crimson. A marriage license!

She yielded, of course. Who could resist him? Nor need the details of
that interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to the
Centre of Things be entered into. An ignoble errand, Honora thought; and
she sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage.
Chiltern's finer feelings came to her rescue. He, too, resented this
senseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian loves.
And he was a man to chafe at all restraints. But at last the odious thing
was over, grim and implacable Law satisfied after he had compelled them
to stand in line for an interminable period before his grill, and mingle
with those whom he chose, in his ignorance, to call their peers. Honora
felt degraded as they emerged with the hateful paper, bought at such a
price. The City Hall Park, with its moving streams of people, etched
itself in her memory.

"Leave me, Hugh," she said; "I will take this carriage--you must get
another one."

For once, he accepted his dismissal with comparative meekness.

"When shall I come?" he asked.

"She smiled a little, in spite of herself.

"You may come for me at six o'clock," she replied.

"Six o'clock!" he exclaimed; but accepted with resignation and closed the
carriage door. Enigmatical sex!

Enigmatical sex indeed! Honora spent a feverish afternoon, rest and
reflection being things she feared. An afternoon in familiar places; and
(strangest of all facts to be recorded!) memories and regrets troubled
her not at all. Her old dressmakers, her old milliners, welcomed her as
one risen, radiant, from the grave; risen, in their estimation, to a
higher life. Honora knew this, and was indifferent to the wealth of
meaning that lay behind their discretion. Milliners and dressmakers read
the newspapers and periodicals--certain periodicals. Well they knew that
the lady they flattered was the future Mrs. Hugh Chiltern.

Nothing whatever of an indelicate nature happened. There was no mention
of where to send the bill, or of whom to send it to. Such things as she
bought on the spot were placed in her carriage. And happiest of all
omissions, she met no one she knew. The praise that Madame Barriere
lavished on Honora's figure was not flattery, because the Paris models
fitted her to perfection. A little after five she returned to her hotel,
to a Mathilde in a high state of suppressed excitement. And at six, the
appointed fateful hour, arrayed in a new street gown of dark green cloth,
she stood awaiting him.

He was no laggard. The bell on the church near by was still singing from
the last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for a
moment staring at her. Not that she had been shabby when he had wished to
marry her at noon: no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; not that her
present costume had any of the elements of overdress; far from it. Being
a woman, she had her thrill of triumph at his exclamation. Diana had no
need, perhaps, of a French dressmaker, but it is an open question whether
she would have scorned them. Honora stood motionless, but her smile for
him was like the first quivering shaft of day. He opened a box, and with
a strange mixture of impetuosity and reverence came forward. And she saw
that he held in his hand a string of great, glistening pearls.

"They were my mother's," he said. "I have had them restrung--for you."

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried. She could find no words to express the tremor
within. And she stood passively, her eyes half closed, while he clasped
the string around the lace collar that pressed the slender column of her
neck and kissed her.

Even the humble beings who work in hotels are responsive to unusual
disturbances in the ether. At the Barnstable, a gala note prevailed: bell
boys, porters, clerk, and cashier, proud of their sudden wisdom, were
wreathed in smiles. A new automobile, in Chiltern's colours, with his
crest on the panel, was panting beside the curb.

"I meant to have had it this morning," he apologized as he handed her in,
"but it wasn't ready in time."

Honora heard him, and said something in reply. She tried in vain to rouse
herself from the lethargy into which she had fallen, to cast off the
spell. Up Fifth Avenue they sped, past meaningless houses, to the Park.
The crystal air of evening was suffused with the level evening light; and
as they wound in and out under the spreading trees she caught glimpses
across the shrubbery of the deepening blue of waters. Pools of mystery
were her eyes.

The upper West Side is a definite place on the map, and full,
undoubtedly, of palpitating human joys and sorrows. So far as Honora was
concerned, it might have been Bagdad. The automobile had stopped before a
residence, and she found herself mounting the steps at Chiltern's side. A
Swedish maid opened the door.

"Is Mr. White at home?" Chiltern asked.

It seemed that "the Reverend Mr. White" was. He appeared, a portly
gentleman with frock coat and lawn tie who resembled the man in the moon.
His head, like polished ivory, increased the beaming effect of his
welcome, and the hand that pressed Honora's was large and soft and warm.
But dreams are queer things, in which no events surprise us.

The reverend gentleman, as he greeted Chiltern, pronounced his name with
unction. His air of hospitality, of good-fellowship, of taking the world
as he found it, could not have been improved upon. He made it apparent at
once that nothing could surprise him. It was the most natural
circumstance in life that two people should arrive at his house in an
automobile at half-past six in the evening and wish to get married: if
they chose this method instead of the one involving awnings and policemen
and uncomfortably-arrayed relations and friends, it was none of Mr.
White's affair. He led them into the Gothic sanctum at the rear of the
house where the famous sermons were written that shook the sounding-board
of the temple where the gentleman preached,--the sermons that sometimes
got into the newspapers. Mr. White cleared his throat.

"I am--very familiar with your name, Mr. Chiltern," he said, "and it is a
pleasure to be able to serve you, and the lady who is so shortly to be
your wife. Your servant arrived with your note at four o'clock. Ten
minutes later, and I should have missed him."

And then Honora heard Chiltern saying somewhat coldly:--"In order to
save time, Mr. White, I wish to tell you that Mrs. Leffingwell has been
divorced--"

The Reverend Mr. White put up a hand before him, and looked down at the
carpet, as one who would not dwell upon painful things.

"Unfortunate--ahem--mistakes will occur in life, Mr. Chiltern--in the
best of lives," he replied. "Say no more about it. I am sure, looking at
you both--"

"Very well then," said Chiltern brusquely, "I knew you would have to
know. And here," he added, "is an essential paper."

A few minutes later, in continuation of the same strange dream, Honora
was standing at Chiltern's side and the Reverend Mr. White was addressing
them: What he said--apart of it at least--seemed curiously familiar.
Chiltern put a ring on a finger of her ungloved hand. It was a supreme
moment in her destiny--this she knew. Between her responses she repeated
it to herself, but the mighty fact refused to be registered. And then,
suddenly, rang out the words:

   "Those whom God hath joined together let no man Put asunder."

Those whom God hath joined together! Mr. White was congratulating her.
Other people were in the room--the minister's son, his wife, his
brother-in-law. She was in the street again, in the automobile, without
knowing how she got there, and Chiltern close beside her in the
limousine.

"My wife!" he whispered.

Was she? Could it be true, be lasting, be binding for ever and ever? Her
hand pressed his convulsively.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, "care for me--stay by me forever. Will you
promise?"

"I promise, Honora," he repeated. "Henceforth we are one."

Honora would have prolonged forever that honeymoon on summer seas. In
those blissful days she was content to sit by the hour watching him as,
bareheaded in the damp salt breeze, he sailed the great schooner and gave
sharp orders to the crew. He was a man who would be obeyed, and even his
flashes of temper pleased her. He was her master, too, and she gloried in
the fact. By the aid of the precious light within her, she studied him.

He loved her mightily, fiercely, but withal tenderly. With her alone he
was infinitely tender, and it seemed that something in him cried out for
battle against the rest of the world. He had his way, in port and out of
it. He brooked no opposition, and delighted to carry, against his
captain's advice, more canvas than was wise when it blew heavily. But the
yacht, like a woman, seemed a creature of his will; to know no fear when
she felt his guiding hand, even though the green water ran in the
scuppers.

And every day anew she scanned his face, even as he scanned the face of
the waters. What was she searching for? To have so much is to become
miserly, to fear lest a grain of the precious store be lost. On the
second day they had anchored, for an hour or two, between the sandy
headlands of a small New England port, and she had stood on the deck
watching his receding figure under the flag of the gasoline launch as it
made its way towards the deserted wharves. Beyond the wharves was an
elm-arched village street, and above the verdure rose the white cupola of
the house of some prosperous sea-captain of bygone times. Honora had not
wished to go ashore. First he had begged, and then he had laughed as he
had leaped into the launch. She lay in a chaise longue, watching it
swinging idly at the dock.

The night before he had written letters and telegrams. Once he had looked
up at her as she sat with a book in her hand across the saloon, and
caught her eyes. She had been pretending not to watch him.

"Wedding announcements," he said.

And she had smiled back at him bravely. Such was the first acknowledgment
between them that the world existed.

"A little late," he observed, smiling in his turn as he changed his pen,
"but they'll have to make allowances for the exigencies of the situation.
And they've been after me to settle down for so many years that they
ought to be thankful to get them at all. I've told them that after a
decent period they may come to Grenoble--in the late autumn. We don't
want anybody before then, do we, Honora?"

"No," she said faintly; and added, "I shall always be satisfied with you
alone, Hugh."

He laughed happily, and presently she went up on deck and stood with her
face to the breeze. There were no sounds save the musical beat of the
water against the strakes, and the low hum of wind on the towering
vibrant sails. One moulten silver star stood out above all others. To the
northward, somewhere beyond the spot where sea and sky met in the hidden
kiss of night, was Newport,--were his relations and her friends. What did
they think? He, at least, had no anxieties about the world, why should
she? Their defiance of it had been no greater than that of an hundred
others on whom it had smiled benignly. But had not the others truckled
more to its conventions? Little she cared about it, indeed, and if he had
turned the prow of the 'Adhemar' towards the unpeopled places of the
earth, her joy would have been untroubled.

One after another the days glided by, while with the sharpened senses of
a great love she watched for a sign of the thing that slept in him--of
the thing that had driven him home from his wanderings to re-create his
life. When it awoke, she would have to share him; now he was hers alone.
Her feelings towards this thing did not assume the proportions of
jealousy or fear; they were merely alert, vaguely disquieting. The
sleeping thing was not a monster. No, but it might grow into one, if its
appetite were not satisfied, and blame her.

She told herself that, had he lacked ambition, she could not have loved
him, and did not stop to reflect upon the completeness of her
satisfaction with the Viking. He seemed, indeed, in these weeks, one whom
the sea has marked for its own, and her delight in watching him as he
moved about the boat never palled. His nose reminded her of the prow of a
ship of war, and his deep-set eyes were continually searching the horizon
for an enemy. Such were her fancies. In the early morning when he donned
his sleeveless bathing suit, she could never resist the temptation to
follow him on deck to see him plunge into the cold ocean: it gave her a
delightful little shiver--and he was made like one of the gods of
Valhalla.

She had discovered, too, in these intimate days, that he had the
Northman's temperament; she both loved and dreaded his moods. And
sometimes, when the yacht glided over smoother seas, it was his pleasure
to read to her, even poetry and the great epics. That he should be fond
of the cruel Scotch ballads she was not surprised; but his familiarity
with the book of Job, and his love for it, astonished her. It was a
singular library that he had put on board the 'Adhemar'.

One evening when the sails flapped idly and the blocks rattled, when they
had been watching in silence the flaming orange of the sunset above the
amethystine Camden hills, he spoke the words for which she had been
waiting.

"Honora, what do you say to going back to Grenoble?"

She succeeded in smiling at him.

"Whenever you like, Hugh," she said.

So the bowsprit of the 'Adhemar' was turned homewards; and with every
league of water they left behind them his excitement and impatience
seemed to grow.

"I can't wait to show it to you, Honora--to see you in it," he exclaimed.
"I have so long pictured you there, and our life as it will be."




CHAPTER XII

THE ENTRANCE INTO EDEN

They had travelled through the night, and in the early morning left the
express at a junction. Honora sat in the straight-backed seat of the
smaller train with parted lips and beating heart, gazing now and again at
the pearly mists rising from the little river valley they were climbing.
Chiltern was like a schoolboy.

"We'll soon be there," he cried, but it was nearly nine o'clock when they
reached the Gothic station that marked the end of the line. It was a
Chiltern line, he told her, and she was already within the feudal domain.
Time indeed that she awoke! She reached the platform to confront a group
of upturned, staring faces, and for the moment her courage failed her.
Somehow, with Chiltern's help, she made her way to a waiting omnibus
backed up against the boards. The footman touched his hat, the
grey-headed coachman saluted, and they got in. As the horses started off
at a quick trot, Honora saw that the group on the station platform had
with one consent swung about to stare after them.

They passed through the main street of the town, lined with plate-glass
windows and lively signs, and already bustling with the business of the
day, through humbler thoroughfares, and presently rumbled over a bridge
that spanned a rushing stream confined between the foundation walls of
mills. Hundreds of yards of mills stretched away on either side; mills
with windows wide open, and within them Honora heard the clicking and
roaring of machinery, and saw the men and women at their daily tasks.
Life was a strange thing that they should be doing this while she should
be going to live in luxury at a great country place. On one of the walls
she read the legend Chiltern and Company.

"They still keep our name," said Hugh, "although they are in the trust."

He pointed out to her, with an air of pride, every landmark by the
roadside. In future they were to have a new meaning--they were to be
shared with her. And he spoke of the times--as child and youth, home from
the seashore or college, he had driven over the same road. It wound to
the left, behind the mills, threaded a village of neat wooden houses
where the better class of operatives lived, reached the river again, and
turned at last through a brick gateway, past a lodge in the dense shade
of sheltering boughs, into a wooded drive that climbed, by gentle
degrees, a slope. Human care for generations had given to the place a
tradition. People had lived here and loved those trees--his people. And
could it be that she was to inherit all this, with him? Was her name
really Chiltern?

The beating of her heart became a pain when in the distance through the
spreading branches she caught a glimpse of the long, low outline of the
house, a vision at once familiar and unreal. How often in the months gone
by had she called up the memory of the photograph she had once seen, only
to doubt the more that she should ever behold that house and these trees
with him by her side! They drew up before the door, and a venerable,
ruddy-faced butler stood gravely on the steps to welcome them. Hugh
leaped out. He was still the schoolboy.

"Starling," he said, "this is Mrs. Chiltern."

Honora smiled tremulously.

"How do you do, Starling?" she said.

"Starling's an old friend, Honora. He's been here ever since I can
remember."

The blue eyes of the old servant were fixed on her with a strange,
searching expression. Was it compassion she read in them, on this that
should be the happiest of her days? In that instant, unaccountably, her
heart went out to the old man; and something of what he had seen, and
something of what was even now passing within him, came to her
intuitively. It was as though, unexpectedly, she had found a friend--and
a friend who had had no previous intentions of friendship.

"I'm sure I wish you happiness, madame,--and Mr. Hugh, he said in a voice
not altogether firm.

"Happiness!" cried Hugh. "I've never known what it was before now,
Starling."

The old man's eyes glistened.

"And you've come to stay, sir?"

"All my life, Starling," said Hugh.

They entered the hall. It was wide and cool, white panelled to the
ceiling, with a dark oak floor. At the back of it was an
eighteenth-century stairway, with a band of red carpet running up the
steps, and a wrought-iron guard with a velvet-covered rail. Halfway up,
the stairway divided at a landing, lighted by great triple windows of
small panes.

"You may have breakfast in half an hour, Starling," said Chiltern, and
led Honora up the stairs into the east wing, where he flung open one of
the high mahogany doors on the south side. "These are your rooms, Honora.
I have had Keller do them all over for you, and I hope you'll like them.
If you don't, we'll change them again."

Her answer was an exclamation of delight. There was a bedroom in pink,
with brocaded satin on the walls, and an oriel window thrust out over the
garden; a panelled boudoir at the corner of the house, with a marble
mantel before which one of Marie Antoinette's duchesses had warmed her
feet; and shelves lined with gold-lettered books. From its windows,
across the flowering shrubbery and through the trees, she saw the
gleaming waters of a lake, and the hills beyond. From this view she
turned, and caught her breath, and threw her arms about her husband's
neck. He was astonished to see that her eyes were filled with tears.

"Oh, Hugh," she cried, "it's too perfect! It almost makes me afraid."

"We will be very happy, dearest," he said, and as he kissed her he
laughed at the fates.

"I hope so--I pray so," she said, as she clung to him. "But--don't
laugh,--I can't bear it."

He patted her cheek.

"What a strange little girl you are!" he said. "I suppose I shouldn't be
mad about you if you weren't that way. Sometimes I wonder how many women
I have married."

She smiled at him through her tears.

"Isn't that polygamy, Hugh?" she asked.

It was all like a breathless tale out of one of the wonder books of
youth. So, at least, it seemed to Honora as she stood, refreshed with a
new white linen gown, hesitating on the threshold of her door before
descending. Some time the bell must ring, or the cock crow, or the fairy
beckon with a wand, and she would have to go back. Back where? She did
not know--she could not remember. Cinderella dreaming by the embers,
perhaps.

He was awaiting her in the little breakfast room, its glass casements
open to the garden with the wall and the round stone seat. The simmering
urn, the white cloth, the shining silver, the big green melons that the
hot summer sun had ripened for them alone, and Hugh's eyes as they rested
on her--such was her illusion. Nor was it quite dispelled when he lighted
a pipe and they started to explore their Eden, wandering through chambers
with, low ceilings in the old part of the house, and larger, higher
apartments in the portion that was called new. In the great darkened
library, side by side against the Spanish leather on the walls, hung the
portraits of his father and mother in heavy frames of gilt.

Her husband was pleased that she should remain so long before them. And
for a while, as she stood lost in contemplation, he did not speak. Once
she glanced at him, and then back at the stern face of the General,
--stern, yet kindly. The eyes, deep-set under bushy brows, like Hugh's,
were full of fire; and yet the artist had made them human, too. A dark,
reddish brown, close-trimmed mustache and beard hid the mouth and chin.
Hugh had inherited the nose, but the father's forehead was wider and
fuller. Hugh was at once a newer type, and an older. The face and figure
of the General were characteristic of the mid-century American of the
northern states, a mixture of boldness and caution and Puritanism, who
had won his battles in war and commerce by a certain native quality of
mind.

"I never appreciated him," said Hugh at length, "until after he died
--long after. Until now, in fact. At times we were good friends, and then
something he would say or do would infuriate me, and I would purposely
make him angry. He had a time and a rule for everything, and I could not
bear rules. Breakfast was on the minute, an hour in his study to attend
to affairs about the place, so many hours in his office at the mills, in
the president's room at the bank, vestry and charity meetings at regular
intervals. No movement in all this country round about was ever set on
foot without him. He was one to be finally reckoned with. And since his
death, many proofs have come to me of the things he did for people of
which the world was ignorant. I have found out at last that his way of
life was, in the main, the right way. But I know now, Honora," he added
soberly, slipping his hand within her arm, "I know now that without you I
never could do all I intend to do."

"Oh, don't say that!" she cried. "Don't say that!"

"Why not?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence. "It is not a confession of
weakness. I had the determination, it is true. I could--I should have
done something, but my deeds would have lacked the one thing needful to
lift them above the commonplace--at least for me. You are the
inspiration. With you here beside me, I feel that I can take up this work
with joy. Do you understand?"

She pressed his hand with her arm.

"Hugh," she said slowly, "I hope that I shall be a help, and not--not a
hindrance."

"A hindrance!" he exclaimed. "You don't know, you can't realize, what you
are to me."

She was silent, and when she lifted her eyes it was to rest them on the
portrait of his mother. And she seemed to read in the sweet, sad eyes a
question--a question not to be put into words. Chiltern, following her
gaze, did not speak: for a space they looked at the portrait together,
and in silence . . . .

From one end of the house to the other they went, Hugh reviving at the
sight of familiar objects a hundred memories of his childhood; and she
trying to imagine that childhood, so different from her own, passed in
this wonderful place. In the glass cases of the gun room, among the
shining, blue barrels which he had used in all parts of the world, was
the little shotgun his father had had made for him when he was twelve
years old. Hugh locked the door after them when they came out, and smiled
as he put the key in his pocket.

"My destroying days are over," he declared.

Honora put on a linen hat and they took the gravelled path to the
stables, where the horses, one by one, were brought out into the
courtyard for their inspection. In anticipation of this hour there was a
blood bay for Honora, which Chiltern had bought in New York. She gave a
little cry of delight when she saw the horse shining in the sunlight, his
nostrils in the air, his brown eyes clear, his tapering neck patterned
with veins. And then there was the dairy, with the fawn-coloured cows and
calves; and the hillside pastures that ran down to the river, and the
farm lands where the stubbled grain was yellowing. They came back by the
path that wound through the trees and shrubbery bordering the lake to the
walled garden, ablaze in the mellow sunlight with reds and purples,
salvias and zinnias, dahlias, gladioli, and asters.

Here he left her for a while, sitting dreamily on the stone bench. Mrs.
Hugh Chiltern, of Grenoble! Over and over she repeated that name to
herself, and it refused somehow to merge with her identity. Yet was she
mistress of this fair domain; of that house which had sheltered them race
for a century, and the lines of which her eye caressed with a loving
reverence; and the Chiltern pearls even then lay hidden around her
throat.

Her thoughts went back, at this, to the gentle lady to whom they had
belonged, and whose look began again to haunt her. Honora's superstition
startled her. What did it mean, that look? She tried to recall where she
had seen it before, and suddenly remembered that the eyes of the old
butler had held something not unlike it. Compassionate--this was the only
word that would describe it. No, it had not proclaimed her an intruder,
though it may have been ready to do so the moment before her appearance;
for there was a note of surprise in it--surprise and compassion.

This was the lady in whose footsteps she was to walk, whose charities and
household cares she was to assume! Tradition, order, observance,
responsibility, authority it was difficult to imagine these as a logical
part of the natural sequence of her life. She would begin to-day, if God
would only grant her these things she had once contemned, and that seemed
now so precious. Her life--her real life would begin to-day. Why not? How
hard she would strive to be worthy of this incomparable gift! It was
hers, hers! She listened, but the only answer was the humming of the bees
in the still September morning.

Chiltern's voice aroused her. He was standing in the breakfast room
talking to the old butler.

"You're sure there were no other letters, Starling, besides these bills?"

Honora became tense.

"No, sir," she heard the butler say, and she seemed to detect in his
deferential voice the note of anxiety suppressed in the other's. "I'm
most particular about letters, sir, as one who lived so many years with
your father would be. All that came were put in your study, Mr. Hugh."

"It doesn't matter," answered Chiltern, carelessly, and stepped out into
the garden. He caught sight of her, hesitated the fraction of a moment,
and as he came forward again the cloud in his eyes vanished. And yet she
was aware that he was regarding her curiously.

"What," he said gayly, "still here?"

"It is too beautiful!" she cried. "I could sit here forever."

She lifted her face trustfully, smilingly, to his, and he stooped down
and kissed it . . . .

To give the jealous fates not the least chance to take offence, the
higher life they were to lead began at once. And yet it seemed at times
to Honora as though this higher life were the gift the fates would most
begrudge: a gift reserved for others, the pretensions to which were a
kind of knavery. Merriment, forgetfulness, music, the dance; the cup of
pleasure and the feast of Babylon--these might more readily have been
vouchsafed; even deemed to have been bargained for. But to take that
which supposedly had been renounced--virtue, sobriety, security, respect
--would this be endured? She went about it breathlessly, like a thief.

Never was there a more exemplary household. They rose at half-past seven,
they breakfasted at a quarter after eight; at nine, young Mr. Manning,
the farm superintendent, was in waiting, and Hugh spent two or more hours
in his company, inspecting, correcting, planning; for two thousand acres
of the original Chiltern estate still remained. Two thousand acres which,
since the General's death, had been at sixes and sevens. The General's
study, which was Hugh's now, was piled high with new and bulky books on
cattle and cultivation of the soil. Government and state and private
experts came and made tests and went away again; new machinery arrived,
and Hugh passed hours in the sun, often with Honora by his side,
installing it. General Chiltern had been president and founder of the
Grenoble National Bank, and Hugh took up his duties as a director.

Honora sought, with an energy that had in it an element of desperation,
to keep pace with her husband. For she was determined that he should have
no interests in which she did not share. In those first days it was her
dread that he might grow away from her, and instinct told her that now or
never must the effort be made. She, too, studied farming; not from books,
but from him. In their afternoon ride along the shady river road, which
was the event of her day, she encouraged him to talk of his plans and
problems, that he might thus early form the habit of bringing them to
her. And the unsuspecting male in him responded, innocent of the simple
subterfuge. After an exhaustive discourse on the elements lacking in the
valley soil, to which she had listened in silent intensity, he would
exclaim:

"By George, Honora, you're a continual surprise to me. I had no idea a
woman would take an interest in these things, or grasp them the way you
do."

Lordly commendations these, and she would receive them with a flush of
gratitude.

Nor was it ever too hot, or she too busy with household cares, for her to
follow him to the scene of his operations, whatever these might be: she
would gladly stand for an hour listening to a consultation with the
veterinary about an ailing cow. Her fear was lest some matter of like
importance should escape her. She had private conversations with Mr.
Manning, that she might surprise her husband by an unsuspected knowledge.
Such were her ruses.

The housekeeper who had come up from New York was the subject of a
conjugal conversation.

"I am going to send her away, Hugh," Honora announced. "I don't believe
---your mother had one."

The housekeeper's departure was the beginning of Honora's real intimacy
with Starling. Complicity, perhaps, would be a better word for the
commencement of this relationship. First of all, there was an inspection
of the family treasures: the table-linen, the silver, and the china
--Sevres, Royal Worcester, and Minton, and the priceless dinner-set, of
Lowestoft which had belonged to Alexander Chiltern, reserved, for great
occasions only: occasions that Starling knew by heart; their dates, and
the guests the Lowestoft had honoured. His air was ceremonial as he laid,
reverently, the sample pieces on the table before her, but it seemed to
Honora that he spoke as one who recalls departed glories, who held a
conviction that the Lowestoft would never be used again.

Although by unalterable custom he submitted, at breakfast, the menus of
the day to Hugh, the old butler came afterwards to Honora's boudoir
during her struggle with the account books. Sometimes she would look up
and surprise his eyes fixed upon her, and one day she found at her elbow
a long list made out in a painstaking hand.

"What's this, Starling?" she asked.

"If you please, madame," he answered, "they're the current prices in the
markets--here."

She thanked him. Nor was his exquisite delicacy in laying stress upon the
locality lost upon her. That he realized the magnitude--for her--of the
task to which she had set herself; that he sympathized deeply with the
spirit which had undertaken it, she was as sure as though he had said so.
He helped her thus in a dozen unobtrusive ways, never once recognizing
her ignorance; but he made her feel the more that that ignorance was a
shameful thing not to be spoken of. Speculations upon him were
irresistible. She was continually forgetting the nature of his situation,
and he grew gradually to typify in her mind the Grenoble of the past. She
knew his principles as well as though he had spoken them--which he never
did. For him, the world had become awry; he abhorred divorce, and that
this modern abomination had touched the house of Chiltern was a calamity
that had shaken the very foundations of his soul. In spite of this, he
had remained. Why? Perhaps from habit, perhaps from love of the family
and Hugh,--perhaps to see!

And having stayed, fascination had laid hold of him,--of that she was
sure,--and his affections had incomprehensibly become involved. He was as
one assisting at a high tragedy not unworthy of him, the outcome of which
he never for an instant doubted. And he gave Honora the impression that
he alone, inscrutable, could have pulled aside the curtain and revealed
the end.




CHAPTER XIII

OF THE WORLD BEYOND THE GATES

Honora paused in her toilet, and contemplated for a moment the white
skirt that her maid presented.

"I think I'll wear the blue pongee to-day, Mathilde," she said.

The decision for the blue pongee was the culmination of a struggle begun
with the opening of her eyes that morning. It was Sunday, and the time
was at hand when she must face the world. Might it not be delayed a
little while--a week longer? For the remembrance of the staring eyes
which had greeted her on her arrival at the station at Grenoble troubled
her. It seemed to her a cruel thing that the house of God should hold
such terrors for her: to-day she had a longing for it that she had never
felt in her life before.

Chiltern was walking in the garden, waiting for her to breakfast with
him, and her pose must have had in it an element of the self-conscious
when she appeared, smilingly, at the door.

"Why, you're all dressed up," he said.

"It's Sunday, Hugh."

"So it is," he agreed, with what may have been a studied lightness--she
could not tell.

"I'm going to church," she said bravely.

"I can't say much for old Stopford," declared her husband. "His sermons
used to arouse all the original sin in me, when I had to listen to them."

She poured out his coffee.

"I suppose one has to take one's clergyman as one does the weather," she
said. "We go to church for something else besides the sermon--don't we?"

"I suppose so, if we go at all," he replied. "Old Stopford imposes a
pretty heavy penalty."

"Too heavy for you?" she asked, and smiled at him as she handed him the
cup.

"Too heavy for me," he said, returning her smile. "To tell you the truth,
Honora, I had an overdose of church in my youth, here and at school, and
I've been trying to even up ever since."

"You'd like me to go, wouldn't you, Hugh?" she ventured, after a silence.

"Indeed I should," he answered, and again she wondered to what extent his
cordiality was studied, or whether it were studied at all. "I'm very fond
of that church, in spite of the fact that--that I may be said to
dissemble my fondness." She laughed with him, and he became serious. "I
still contribute--the family's share toward its support. My father was
very proud of it, but it is really my mother's church. It was due to her
that it was built."

Thus was comedy played--and Honora by no the means sure that it was a
comedy. Even her alert instinct had not been able to detect the acting,
and the intervening hours were spent in speculating whether her fears had
not been overdone. Nevertheless, under the eyes of Starling, at twenty
minutes to eleven she stepped into the victoria with an outward courage,
and drove down the shady avenue towards the gates. Sweet-toned bells were
ringing as she reached the residence portion of the town, and subdued
pedestrians in groups and couples made their way along the sidewalks.
They stared at her; and she in turn, with heightened colour, stared at
her coachman's back. After all, this first Sunday would be the most
difficult.

The carriage turned into a street arched by old elms, and flanked by the
houses of the most prosperous townspeople. Some of these were of the
old-fashioned, classic type, and others new examples of a national
architecture seeking to find itself,--white and yellow colonial,
roughcast modifications of the Shakespearian period, and nondescript
mixtures of cobblestones and shingles. Each was surrounded by trim lawns
and shrubbery. The church itself was set back from the street. It was of
bluish stone, and half covered with Virginia creeper.

At this point, had the opportunity for a secret retreat presented itself,
Honora would have embraced it, for until now she had not realized the
full extent of the ordeal. Had her arrival been heralded by sounding
trumpets, the sensation it caused could not have been greater. In her
Eden, the world had been forgotten; the hum of gossip beyond the gates
had not reached her. But now, as the horses approached the curb, their
restive feet clattering on the hard pavement, in the darkened interior of
the church she saw faces turned, and entering worshippers pausing in the
doorway. Something of what the event meant for Grenoble dawned upon her:
something, not all; but all that she could bear.

If it be true that there is no courage equal to that which a great love
begets in a woman, Honora's at that moment was sublime. Her cheeks
tingled, and her knees weakened under her as she ran the gantlet to the
church door, where she was met by a gentleman on whose face she read
astonishment unalloyed: amazement, perhaps, is not too strong a word for
the sensation it conveyed to her, and it occurred to her afterwards that
there was an element in it of outrage. It was a countenance peculiarly
adapted to such an expression--yellow, smooth-shaven, heavy-jowled, with
one drooping eye; and she needed not to be told that she had encountered,
at the outset, the very pillar of pillars. The frock coat, the heavy
watch chain, the square-toed boots, all combined to make a Presence.

An instinctive sense of drama amongst the onlookers seemed to create a
hush, as though these had been the unwilling witnesses to an approaching
collision and were awaiting the crash. The gentleman stood planted in the
inner doorway, his drooping eye fixed on hers.

"I am Mrs. Chiltern," she faltered.

He hesitated the fraction of an instant, but he somehow managed to make
it plain that the information was superfluous. He turned without a word
and marched majestically up the aisle before her to the fourth pew from
the front on the right. There he faced about and laid a protesting hand
on the carved walnut, as though absolving himself in the sight of his God
and his fellow-citizens. Honora fell on her knees.

She strove to calm herself by prayer: but the glances of a congregation
focussed between her shoulder-blades seemed to burn her back, and the
thought of the concentration of so many minds upon her distracted her
own. She could think of no definite prayer. Was this God's tabernacle? or
the market-place, and she at the tail of a cart? And was she not Hugh
Chiltern's wife, entitled to his seat in the place of worship of his
fathers? She rose from her knees, and her eyes fell on the softly glowing
colours of a stained-glass window: In memoriam--Alicia Reyburn Chiltern.
Hugh's mother, the lady in whose seat she sat.

The organist, a sprightly young man, came in and began turning over his
music, and the choir took their-places, in the old-fashioned' manner.
Then came the clergyman. His beard was white, his face long and narrow
and shrivelled, his forehead protruding, his eyes of the cold blue of a
winter's sky. The service began, and Honora repeated the familiar prayers
which she had learned by heart in childhood--until her attention was
arrested by the words she spoke: "We have offended against Thy holy
laws." Had she? Would not God bless her marriage? It was not until then
that she began to pray with an intensity that blotted out the world that
He would not punish her if she had done wrong in His sight. Surely, if
she lived henceforth in fear of Him, He would let her keep this priceless
love which had come to her! And it was impossible that He should regard
it as an inordinate and sinful affection--since it had filled her life
with light. As the wife of Hugh Chiltern she sought a blessing. Would God
withhold it? He would not, she was sure, if they lived a sober and a
righteous life. He would take that into account, for He was just.

Then she grew calmer, and it was not until after the doctrinal sermon
which Hugh had predicted that her heart began to beat painfully once
more, when the gentleman who had conducted her to her seat passed her the
plate. He inspired her with an instinctive fear; and she tried to
imagine, in contrast, the erect and soldierly figure of General Chiltern
performing the same office. Would he have looked on her more kindly?

When the benediction was pronounced, she made her way out of the church
with downcast eyes. The people parted at the door to let her pass, and
she quickened her step, gained the carriage at last, and drove away
--seemingly leaving at her back a buzz of comment. Would she ever have
the courage to do it again?

The old butler, as he flung open the doors at her approach, seemed to be
scrutinizing her.

"Where's Mr. Chiltern, Starling?" she asked.

"He's gone for a ride, madame."

Hugh had gone for a ride!

She did not see him until lunch was announced, when he came to the table
in his riding clothes. It may have been that he began to talk a little
eagerly about the excursion he had made to an outlying farm and the
conversation he had had with the farmer who leased it.

"His lease is out in April," said Chiltern, "and when I told him I
thought I'd turn the land into the rest of the estate he tried to bribe
me into a renewal."

"Bribe you?"

Chiltern laughed.

"Only in joke, of course. The man's a character, and he's something of a
politician in these parts. He intimated that there would be a vacancy in
this congressional district next year, that Grierson was going to resign,
and that a man with a long purse who belonged to the soil might have a
chance. I suppose he thinks I would buy it."

"And--would you like to go to Congress, Hugh?"

"Well," he said, smiling, "a man never can tell when he may have to eat
his words. I don't say I shouldn't--in the distant future. It would have
pleased the General. But if I go," he added with characteristic vigour,
"it will be in spite of the politicians, not because of them. If I go I
shan't go bound, and I'll fight for it. I should enjoy that."

And she was able to accord him the smile of encouragement he expected.

"I am sure you would," she replied. "I think you might have waited until
this afternoon and taken me," she reproached him. "You know how I enjoy
going with you to those places."

It was not until later in the meal that he anticipated, in an admirably
accidental manner, the casual remark she had intended to make about
church.

"Your predictions were fulfilled," she answered; "the sermon wasn't
thrilling."

He glanced at her. And instead of avoiding his eyes, she smiled into
them.

"Did you see the First Citizen of Grenoble?" he inquired.

"I am sure of it," she laughed, "if he's yellow, with a drooping eye and
a presence; he was kind enough to conduct me to the pew."

"Yes," he exclaimed, "that's Israel Simpson--you couldn't miss him. How I
used to hate him when I was a boy! I haven't quite got over it yet. I
used to outdo myself to make things uncomfortable for him when he came up
here--I think it was because he always seemed to be truckling. He was
ridiculously servile and polite in those days. He's changed since," added
Hugh, dryly. "He must quite have forgotten by this time that the General
made him."

"Is--is he so much?" said Honora.

Her husband laughed.

"Is it possible that you have seen him and still ask that?" said he. "He
is Grenoble. Once the Chilterns were. He is the head of the honoured firm
of Israel Simpson and Sons, the president of the Grenoble National Bank,
the senior warden of the church, a director in the railway. Twice a year,
in the columns of the New York newspapers dedicated to the prominent
arrivals at the hotels, you may read the name of Israel Simpson of
Grenoble. Three times has he been abroad, respectably accompanied by
Maria, who invariably returns to read a paper on the cathedrals and art
before the Woman's Club."

Maria is his wife, I suppose."

"Yes. Didn't you run across Maria? She's quite as pronounced, in her way,
as Israel. A very tower of virtue."

"I didn't meet anybody, Hugh," said Honora. "I'll--I'll look for her next
Sunday. I hurried out. It was a little embarrassing the first time," she
added, "your family being so prominent in Grenoble."

Upon this framework, the prominence of his family, she built up during
the coning week a new structure of hope. It was strange she had never
thought before of this quite obvious explanation for the curiosity of
Grenoble. Perhaps--perhaps it was not prejudice, after all--or not all of
it. The wife of the Chiltern heir would naturally inspire a considerable
interest in any event, and Mrs. Hugh Chiltern in particular. And these
people would shortly understand, if they did not now understand, that
Hugh had come back voluntarily and from a sense of duty to assume the
burdens and responsibilities that so many of his generation and class had
shirked. This would tell in their favour, surely. At this point in her
meditations she consulted the mirror, to behold a modest, slim-waisted
young woman becomingly arrayed in white linen, whose cheeks were aglow
with health, whose eyes seemingly reflected the fire of a distant high
vision. Not a Poppaea, certainly, nor a Delila. No, it was unbelievable
that this, the very field itself of their future labours, should be
denied them. Her heart, at the mere conjecture, turned to stone.

During the cruise of the Adhemar she had often watched, in the gathering
darkness, those revolving lights on headland or shoal that spread now a
bright band across the sea, and again left the waters desolate in the
night. Thus, ceaselessly revolving from white hope to darker doubt, were
her thoughts, until sometimes she feared to be alone with them, and
surprised him by her presence in his busiest moments. For he was going
ahead on the path they had marked out with a faith in which she could
perceive no flaw. If faint and shadowy forms had already come between
them, he gave no evidence of having as yet discerned these. There was the
absence of news from his family, for instance,--the Graingers, the
Stranger, the Shorters, and the Pendletons, whom she had never seen; he
had never spoken to her of this, and he seemed to hold it as of no
account. Her instinct whispered that it had left its mark, a hidden mark.
And while she knew that consideration for her prompted him to hold his
peace, she told herself that she would have been happier had he spoken of
it.

Always she was brought back to Grenoble when she saw him thus, manlike,
with his gaze steadily fixed on the task. If New York itself withheld
recognition, could Grenoble--provincial and conservative Grenoble,
preserving still the ideas of the last century for which his family had
so unflinchingly stood--be expected to accord it? New York! New York was
many, many things, she knew. The great house could have been filled from
weekend to week-end from New York; but not with Graingers and Pendletons
and Stranger; not with those around the walls of whose fortresses the
currents of modernity still swept impotently; not with those who, while
not contemning pleasure, still acknowledged duty; not with those whose
assured future was that for which she might have sold her soul itself.
Social free lances, undoubtedly, and unattached men; those who lived in
the world of fashion but were not squeamish--Mrs. Kame, for example; and
ladies like Mrs. Eustace Rindge, who had tried a second throw for
happiness,--such votaries of excitement would undoubtedly have been more
than glad to avail themselves of the secluded hospitality of Grenoble for
that which they would have been pleased to designate as "a lively time."
Honora shuddered at the thought: And, as though the shudder had been
prophetic, one morning the mail contained a letter from Mrs. Kame
herself.

Mercifully Hugh had not noticed it. Honora did not recognize the
handwriting, but she slipped the envelope into her lap, fearful of what
it might contain, and, when she gained the privacy of her rooms, read it
with quickening breath. Mrs. Kame's touch was light and her imagination
sympathetic; she was the most adaptable of the feminine portion of her
nation, and since the demise of her husband she had lived, abroad and at
home, among men and women of a world that does not dot its i's or cross
its t's. Nevertheless, the letter filled Honora with a deep apprehension
and a deeper resentment. Plainly and clearly stamped between its
delicately worded lines was the claim of a comradeship born of Honora's
recent act. She tore the paper into strips and threw it into the flames
and opened the window to the cool air of the autumn morning. She had a
feeling of contamination that was intolerable.

Mrs. Kame had proposed herself--again the word "delicately" must be used
--for one of Honora's first house-parties. Only an acute perception could
have read in the lady's praise of Hugh a masterly avoidance of that part
of his career already registered on the social slate. Mrs. Kame had
thought about them and their wonderful happiness in these autumn days at
Grenoble; to intrude on that happiness yet awhile would be a sacrilege.
Later, perhaps, they would relent and see something of their friends, and
throw open again the gates of a beautiful place long closed to the world.
And--without the air of having picked the single instance, but of having
chosen from many--Mrs. Kame added that she had only lately seen Elsie
Shorter, whose admiration for Honora was greater than ever. A sentiment,
Honora reflected a little bitterly, that Mrs. Shorter herself had not
taken the pains to convey. Consistency was not Elsie's jewel.

It must perhaps be added for the sake of enlightenment that since going
to Newport Honora's view of the writer of this letter had changed. In
other words, enlarging ideals had dwarfed her somewhat; it was strictly
true that the lady was a boon companion of everybody. Her Catholicism had
two limitations only: that she must be amused, and that she must not--in
what she deemed the vulgar sense--be shocked.

Honora made several attempts at an answer before she succeeded in saying,
simply, that Hugh was too absorbed in his work of reconstruction of the
estate for them to have house-parties this autumn. And even this was a
concession hard for her pride to swallow. She would have preferred not to
reply at all, and this slightest of references to his work--and hers
--seemed to degrade it. Before she folded the sheet she looked again at
that word "reconstruction" and thought of eliminating it. It was too
obviously allied to "redemption"; and she felt that Mrs. Kame could not
understand redemption, and would ridicule it. Honora went downstairs and
dropped her reply guiltily into the mail-bag. It was for Hugh's sake she
was sending it, and from his eyes she was hiding it.

And, while we are dealing with letters, one, or part of one, from
Honora's aunt, may perhaps be inserted here. It was an answer to one that
Honora had written a few days after her installation at Grenoble, the
contents of which need not be gone into: we, who know her, would neither
laugh nor weep at reading it, and its purport may be more or less
accurately surmised from her aunt's reply.

   "As I wrote you at the time, my dear,"--so it ran "the shock which
   your sudden marriage with Mr. Chiltern caused us was great--so great
   that I cannot express it in words. I realize that I am growing old,
   and perhaps the world is changing faster than I imagine. And I
   wrote you, too, that I would not be true to myself if I told you
   that what you have done was right in my eyes. I have asked myself
   whether my horror of divorce and remarriage may not in some degree
   be due to the happiness of my life with your uncle. I am,
   undoubtedly, an exceptionally fortunate woman; and as I look
   backwards I see that the struggles and trials which we have shared
   together were really blessings.

   "Nevertheless, dear Honora, you are, as your uncle wrote you, our
   child, and nothing can alter that fact in our hearts. We can only
   pray with all our strength that you may find happiness and peace in
   your new life. I try to imagine, as I think of you and what has
   happened to you in the few years since you have left us--how long
   they seem!--I try to imagine some of the temptations that have
   assailed you in that world of which I know nothing. If I cannot, it
   is because God made us different. I know what you have suffered,
   and my heart aches for you.

   "You say that experience has taught you much that you could not
   have--learned in any other way. I do not doubt it. You tell me
   that your new life, just begun, will be a dutiful one. Let me
   repeat that it is my anxious prayer that you have not builded upon
   sand, that regrets may not come. I cannot say more. I cannot
   dissemble. Perhaps I have already said too much.

                  "Your loving

                       "AUNT MARY."

An autumn wind was blowing, and Honora gazed out of the window at the
steel-blue, ruffled waters of the lake. Unconsciously she repeated the
words to herself:

"Builded upon sand!"




CHAPTER XIV

CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER

Swiftly came the autumn days, and swiftly went. A bewildering, ever
changing, and glorious panorama presented itself, green hillsides struck
first with flaming crimsons and yellows, and later mellowing into a
wondrous blending of gentler, tenderer hues; lavender, and wine, and the
faintest of rose colours where the bare beeches massed. Thus the slopes
were spread as with priceless carpets for a festival. Sometimes Honora,
watching, beheld from her window the russet dawn on the eastern ridge,
and the white mists crouching in strange, ghostly shapes abode the lake
and the rushing river: and she saw these same mists gather again,
shivering, at nightfall. In the afternoon they threaded valleys, silent
save for the talk between them and the stirring of the leaves under their
horses' feet.

So the Indian summer passed--that breathless season when even happiness
has its premonitions and its pangs. The umber fields, all ploughed and
harrowed, lay patiently awaiting the coming again of the quickening
spring. Then fell the rain, the first, cold winter rain that shrouded the
valley and beat down upon the defenceless, dismantled garden and made
pools in the hollows of the stone seat: that flung itself against
Honora's window as though begrudging her the warmth and comfort within.
Sometimes she listened to it in the night.

She was watching. How intent was that vigil, how alert and sharpened her
senses, a woman who has watched alone may answer. Now, she felt, was the
crisis at hand: the moment when her future, and his was to hang in the
balance. The work on the farms, which had hitherto left Chiltern but
little time for thought, had relaxed. In these wet days had he begun to
brood a little? Did he show signs of a reversion to that other
personality, the Chiltern she had not known, yet glimpses of whom she had
had? She recalled the third time she had seen him, the morning at the
Lilacs in Newport, that had left upon her the curious sense of having
looked on a superimposed portrait. That Chiltern which she called her
Viking, and which, with a woman's perversity, she had perhaps loved most
of all, was but one expression of the other man of days gone by. The life
of that man was a closed book she had never wished to open. Was he dead,
or sleeping? And if sleeping, would he awake? How softly she tread!

And in these days, with what exquisite, yet tremulous skill and courage
did she bring up the subject of that other labour they were to undertake
together--the life and letters of his father. In the early dusk, when
they had returned from their long rides, she contrived to draw Chiltern
into his study. The cheerfulness, the hopefulness, the delight with which
she approached the task, the increasing enthusiasm she displayed for the
character of the General as she read and sorted the letters and
documents, and the traits of his she lovingly traced in Hugh, were not
without their effect. It was thus she fanned, ceaselessly and with a
smile, and with an art the rarest women possess, the drooping flame. And
the flame responded.

How feverishly she worked, unknown to him, he never guessed; so carefully
and unobtrusively planted her suggestions that they were born again in
glory as his inspiration. The mist had lifted a little, and she beheld
the next stage beyond. To reach that stage was to keep him intent on this
work--and--after that, to publish! Ah, if he would only have patience, or
if she could keep him distracted through this winter and their night, she
might save him. Love such as hers can even summon genius to its aid, and
she took fire herself at the thought of a book worthy of that love, of a
book--though signed by him that would redeem them, and bring a scoffing
world to its knees in praise. She spent hours in the big library
preparing for Chiltern's coming, with volumes in her lap and a note-book
by her side.

One night, as they sat by the blazing logs in his study, which had been
the General's, Chiltern arose impulsively, opened the big safe in the
corner, and took out a leather-bound book and laid it on her lap. Honora
stared at it: it was marked: Highlawns, Visitors' Book."

"It's curious I never thought of it before," he said, "but my father, had
a habit of jotting down notes in it on important occasions. It may be of
some use to us Honora."

She opened it at random and read: "July 5, 1893, Picnic at Psalter's
Falls. Temperature 71 at 9 A.M. Bar. 30. Weather clear. Charles left for
Washington, summons from President, in the midst of it. Agatha and Victor
again look at the Farrar property. Hugh has a ducking. P.S. At dinner
night Bessie announces her engagement to Cecil Grainger. Present Sarah
and George Grenfell, Agatha and Victor Strange, Gerald Shorter, Lord
Kylie--"

Honora looked up. Hugh was at her shoulder, with his eyes on the page.

"Psalter's Falls!" he exclaimed. "How well I remember that day! I was
just home from my junior year at Harvard."

"Who was 'Charles'?" inquired Honora.

"Senator Pendleton--Bessie's father. Just after I jumped into the
mill-pond the telegram came for him to go to Washington, and I drove him
home in my wet clothes. The old man had a terrible tongue, a whip-lash
kind of humour, and he scored me for being a fool. But he rather liked
me, on the whole. He told me if I'd only straighten out I could be
anything, in reason."

"What made you jump in the mill-pond?" Honora asked, laughing.

"Bessie Grainger. She had a devil in her, too, in those days, but she
always kept her head, and I didn't." He smiled. "I'm willing to admit
that I was madly in love with her, and she treated me outrageously. We
were standing on the bridge--I remember it as though it were yesterday
--and the water was about eight feet deep, with a clear sand bottom. She
took off a gold bracelet and bet me I wouldn't get it if she threw it in.
That night, right in the middle of dinner, when there was a pause in the
conversation, she told us she was engaged to Cecil Grainger. It turned
out, by the way, to have been his bracelet I rescued. I could have wrung
his neck, and I didn't speak to her for a month."

Honora repressed an impulse to comment on this incident. With his arm
over her shoulder, he turned the pages idly, and the long lists of guests
which bore witness to the former life and importance of Highlawns passed
before her eyes. Distinguished foreigners, peers of England, churchmen,
and men renowned in literature: famous American statesmen, scientists,
and names that represented more than one generation of wealth and
achievement--all were here. There were his school and college friends,
five and six at a time, and besides them those of young girls who were
now women, some of whom Honora had met and known in New York or Newport.

Presently he closed the book abruptly and returned it to the safe. To her
sharpened senses, the very act itself was significant. There were other
and blank pages in it for future years; and under different circumstances
he might have laid it in its time-honoured place, on the great table in
the library.

It was not until some weeks later that Honora was seated one afternoon in
the study waiting for him to come in, and sorting over some of the
letters that they had not yet examined, when she came across a new lot
thrust carelessly at the bottom of the older pile. She undid the elastic.
Tucked away in one of the envelopes she was surprised to find a letter of
recent date--October. She glanced at it, read involuntarily the first
lines, and then, with a little cry, turned it over. It was from Cecil
Grainger. She put it back into the envelope whence it came, and sat
still.

After a while, she could not tell how long, she heard Hugh stamping the
snow from his feet in the little entry beside the study. And in a few
moments he entered, rubbing his hands and holding them out to the blaze.

"Hello, Honora," he said; "are you still at it? What's the matter--a
hitch?"

She reached mechanically into the envelope, took out the letter, and
handed it to him.

"I found it just now, Hugh. I didn't read much of it--I didn't mean to
read any. It's from Mr. Grainger, and you must have overlooked it."

He took it.

"From Cecil?" he said, in an odd voice. "I wasn't aware that he had sent
me anything-recently."

As he read, she felt the anger rise within him, she saw it in his eyes
fixed upon the sheet, and the sense of fear, of irreparable loss, that
had come over her as she had sat alone awaiting him, deepened. And yet,
long expected verdicts are sometimes received in a spirit of
recklessness: He finished the letter, and flung it in her lap.

"Read it," he said.

"Oh, Hugh!" she protested tremulously. "Perhaps--perhaps I'd better not."
He laughed, and that frightened her the more. It was the laugh, she was
sure, of the other man she had not known.

"I've always suspected that Cecil was a fool--now I'm sure of it. Read
it!" he repeated, in a note of command that went oddly with his next
sentence; "You will find that it is only ridiculous."

This assurance of the comedy it contained, however, did not serve to
fortify her misgivings. It was written from a club.

   "DEAR HUGH: Herewith a few letters for the magnum opus which I have
   extracted from Aunt Agatha, Judge Gaines, and others, and to send
   you my humble congratulations. By George, my boy, you have dashed
   off with a prize, and no mistake. I've never made any secret, you
   know, of my admiration for Honora--I hope I may call her so now.
   And I just thought I'd tell you you could count on me for a friend
   at court. Not that I'm any use now, old boy. I'll have to be frank
   with you--I always was. Discreet silence, and all that sort of
   thing: as much as my head is worth to open my mouth. But I had an
   idea it would be an act of friendship to let you know how things
   stand. Let time and works speak, and Cecil will give the thing
   a push at the proper moment. I understand from one of the
   intellectual journals I read that you have gone in for simple life
   and scientific farming. A deuced canny move. And for the love of
   heaven, old man, keep it up for a while, anyhow. I know it's
   difficult, but keep it up. I speak as a friend.

   "They received your letters all right, announcing your marriage.
   You always enjoyed a row--I wish you could have been on hand to see
   and hear this one. It was no place for a man of peace, and I spent
   two nights at the club. I've never made any secret, you know, of
   the fact that I think the Pendleton connection hide-bound. And you
   understand Bessie--there's no good of my explaining her. You'd have
   thought divorce a brand-new invention of the devil, instead of a
   comparatively old institution. And if you don't mind my saying so,
   my boy, you took this fence a bit on the run, the way you do
   everything.

   "The fact is, divorce is going out of fashion. Maybe it's because
   the Pendleton-Grenfell element have always set their patrician faces
   against it; maybe its been a bit overdone. Most people who have
   tried it have discovered that the fire is no better than the frying-
   pan--both hot as soon as they warm up. Of course, old boy, there's
   nothing personal in this. Sit tight, and stick to the simple life--
   that's your game as I see it. No news--I've never known things to
   be so quiet. Jerry won over two thousand night before last--he made
   it no trumps in his own hand four times running.

               "Yours,

                    "CECIL."

Honora returned this somewhat unique epistle to her husband, and he
crushed it. There was an ill-repressed, terrifying savagery in the act,
and her heart was torn between fear and pity for this lone message of
good-will. Whatever its wording, such it was. A dark red flush had
mounted his forehead to the roots of his short curly hair.

"Well?" he said.

She was fighting for her presence of mind. Flashes of his temper she had
known, but she had never seen the cruel, fiendish thing--his anger. Not
his anger, but the anger of the destroyer that she beheld waking now
after its long sleep, and taking possession of him, and transforming him
before her very eyes. She had been able to cope with the new man, but she
felt numb and powerless before the resuscitated demon of the old.

"What do you expect me to say, Hugh?" she faltered, with a queer feeling
that she was not addressing him.

"Anything you like," he replied.

"Defend Cecil."

"Why should I defend him?" she said dully.

"Because you have no pride."

A few seconds elapsed before the full import and brutality of this insult
reached her intelligence, and she cried out his name in a voice shrill
with anguish. But he seemed to delight in the pain he had caused.

"You couldn't be expected, I suppose, to see that this letter is a d--d
impertinence, filled with an outrageous flippancy, a deliberate affront,
an implication that our marriage does not exist."

She sat stunned, knowing that the real pain would come later. That which
slowly awoke in her now, as he paced the room, was a high sense of
danger, and a persistent inability to regard the man who had insulted her
as her husband. He was rather an enemy to them both, and he would
overturn, if he could, the frail craft of their happiness in the storm.
She cried out to Hugh as across the waters.

"No,--I have no pride, Hugh,--it is gone. I have thought of you only. The
fear that I might separate you from your family, from your friends, and
ruin your future has killed my pride. He--Mr. Grainger meant to be kind.
He is always like that--it's his way of saying things. He wishes to show
that he is friendly to you--to me--"

"In spite of my relations," cried Chiltern, stopping in the middle of the
room. "They cease to be my relations from this day. I disown them. I say
it deliberately. So long as I live, not one of them shall come into this
house. All my life they have begged me to settle down, to come up here
and live the life my father did. Very well, now I've done it. And I wrote
to them and told them that I intended to live henceforth like a gentleman
and a decent citizen--more than some of them do. No, I wash my hands of
them. If they were to crawl up here from the gate on their knees, I'd
turn them out."

Although he could not hear her, she continued to plead.

"Hugh, try to think of how--how our marriage must have appeared to them.
Not that I blame you for being angry. We only thought of one thing--our
love--" her voice broke at the word, "and our own happiness. We did not
consider others. It is that which sometimes has made me afraid, that we
believed ourselves above the law. And now that we have--begun so well,
don't spoil it, Hugh! Give them time, let them see by our works that we
are in earnest, that we intend to live useful lives.

"I don't mean to beg them," she cried, at sight of his eyes. "Oh, I don't
mean that. I don't mean to entreat them, or even to communicate with
them. But they are your flesh and blood--you must remember that. Let us
prove that we are--not--like the others," she said, lifting her head,
"and then it cannot matter to us what any one thinks. We shall have
justified our act to ourselves."

But he was striding up and down the room again. It was as she feared
--her plea--had fallen on unheeding ears. A sudden convulsive leaping of
the inner fires sent him to his desk, and he seized some note-paper from
the rack. Honora rose to her feet, and took a step towards him.

"Hugh--what are you going to do?"

"Do!" he cried, swinging in his chair and facing her, "I'm going to do
what any man with an ounce of self-respect would do under the
circumstances. I'm going to do what I was a fool not to have done three
months ago--what I should have done if it hadn't been for you. If in
their contemptible, pharisaical notions of morality they choose to forget
what my mother and father were to them, they cease to exist for me. If
it's the last act of my life I'm going to tell them so."

She stood gazing at him, but she was as one of whom he took no account.
He turned to the desk and began to write with a deliberation all the more
terrible to her because of the white anger he felt. And still she stood.
He pressed the button on his desk, and Starling responded.

"I want a man from the stable to be ready to take some letters to town in
half an hour," he said.

It was not until then that she turned and slowly left the room. A mortal
sickness seemed to invade her vitals, and she went to her own chamber and
flung herself, face downward, on the lace covering of the bed: and the
sobs that shook her were the totterings of the foundations of her
universe. For a while, in the intensity of her anguish, all thought was
excluded. Presently, however, when the body was spent, the mind began to
practise its subtle and intolerable torture, and she was invaded by a
sense of loneliness colder than the space between the worlds.

Where was she to go, whither flee, now that his wrath was turned against
her? On the strength of his love alone she had pinned her faith,
discarded and scorned all other help. And at the first contact with that
greater power which he had taught her so confidently to despise, that
strength had broken!

Slowly, she gazed back over the path she had trod; where roses once had
held up smiling heads. It was choked now by brambles that scratched her
nakedness at every step. Ah, how easily she had been persuaded to enter
it! "We have the right to happiness," he had said, and she had looked
into his eyes and believed him. What was this strange, elusive happiness,
that she had so pantingly pursued and never overtaken? that essence pure
and unalloyed with baser things? Ecstasy, perhaps, she had found--for was
it delirium? Fear was the boon companion of these; or better, the
pestilence that stalked behind them, ever ready to strike.

Then, as though some one had turned on a light--a sickening, yet
penetrating blue light--she looked at Hugh Chiltern. She did not wish to
look, but that which had turned on the light and bade her was stronger
than she. She beheld, as it were, the elements of his being, the very
sources of the ceaseless, restless energy that was driving him on. And
scan as she would, no traces of the vaunted illimitable power that is
called love could she discern. Love he possessed; that she had not
doubted, and did not doubt, even now. But it had been given her to see
that these springs had existed before love had come, and would flow,
perchance, after it had departed. Now she understood his anger; it was
like the anger of a fiercely rushing river striving to break a dam and
invade the lands below with devastating floods. All these months the
waters had been mounting . . . .

Turning at length from the consideration of this figure, she asked
herself whether, if with her present knowledge she had her choice to make
over again, she would have chosen differently. The answer was a startling
negative. She loved him. Incomprehensible, unreasonable, and un reasoning
sentiment! That she had received a wound, she knew; whether it were
mortal, or whether it would heal and leave a scar, she could not say. One
salient, awful fact she began gradually to realize, that if she sank back
upon the pillows she was lost. Little it would profit her to save her
body. She had no choice between her present precarious foothold and the
abyss, and wounded as she was she would have to fight. There was no
retreat:

She sat up, and presently got to her feet and went to the window and
stared through the panes until she distinguished the blue whiteness of
the fallen snow on her little balcony. The night, despite the clouds, had
a certain luminous quality. Then she drew the curtains, searched for the
switch, and flooded the room with a soft glow--that beautiful room in
which he had so proudly installed her four months before. She smoothed
the bed, and walking to the mirror gazed intently at her face, and then
she bathed it. Afterwards she opened her window again, admitting a flurry
of snow, and stood for some minutes breathing in the sharp air.

Three quarters of an hour later she was dressed and descending the
stairs, and as she entered the library dinner was announced. Let us spare
Honora the account of that repast or rather a recital of the conversation
that accompanied it. What she found to say under the eyes of the servants
is of little value, although the fact itself deserves to be commended as
a high accomplishment; and while she talked, she studied the brooding
mystery that he presented, and could make nothing of it. His mood was
new. It was not sullenness, nor repressed rage; and his answers were
brief, but he was not taciturn. It struck her that in spite of a
concentration such as she had never in her life bestowed on any other
subject, her knowledge of him of the Chiltern she had married--was still
wofully incomplete, and that in proportion to the lack of perfection of
that knowledge her danger was great. Perhaps the Chiltern she had married
was as yet in a formative state. Be this as it may, what she saw depicted
on his face to-night corresponded to no former experience.

They went back to the library. Coffee was brought and carried off, and
Honora was standing before the fire. Suddenly he rose from his chair,
crossed the room, and before she could draw away seized and crushed her
in his arms without a word. She lay there, inert, bewildered as in the
grip of an unknown force, until presently she was aware of the beating of
his heart, and a glimmering of what he felt came to her. Nor was it an
understandable thing, except to the woman who loved him. And yet and yet
she feared it even in that instant of glory.

When at last she dared to look up, he kissed away the tears from her
cheeks.

"I love you," he said. "You must never doubt it--do you understand?"

"Yes, Hugh."

"You must never doubt it," he repeated roughly.

His contrition was a strange thing--if it were contrition. And love
--woman's love--is sometimes the counsellor of wisdom. Her sole reproach
was to return his kiss.

Presently she chose a book, and he read to her.




CHAPTER XV

THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

One morning, as he gathered up his mail, Chiltern left lying on the
breakfast table a printed circular, an appeal from the trustees of the
Grenoble Hospital. As Honora read it she remembered that this institution
had been the favourite charity of his mother; and that Mrs. Chiltern, at
her death, had bequeathed an endowment which at the time had been ample.
But Grenoble having grown since then, the deficit for this year was
something under two thousand dollars, and in a lower corner was a request
that contributions be sent to Mrs. Israel Simpson.

With the circular in her hand, Honora went thoughtfully up the stairs to
her sitting-room. The month was February, the day overcast and muggy, and
she stood for a while apparently watching the holes made in the snow by
the steady drip from the cap of the garden wall. What she really saw was
the face of Mrs. Israel Simpson, a face that had haunted her these many
months. For Mrs. Simpson had gradually grown, in Honora's mind, to typify
the hardness of heart of Grenoble. With Grenoble obdurate, what would
become of the larger ambitions of Hugh Chiltern?

Mrs. Simpson was indeed a redoubtable lady, whose virtue shone with a
particular high brightness on the Sabbath. Her lamp was brimming with oil
against the judgment day, and she was as one divinely appointed to be the
chastener of the unrighteous. So, at least, Honora beheld her. Her attire
was rich but not gaudy, and had the air of proclaiming the prosperity of
Israel Simpson alone as its unimpeachable source: her nose was long, her
lip slightly marked by a masculine and masterful emblem, and her eyes
protruded in such a manner as to give the impression of watchfulness on
all sides.

It was this watchfulness that our heroine grew to regard as a salient
characteristic. It never slept--even during Mr. Stopford's sermons. She
was aware of it when she entered the church, and she was sure that it
escorted her as far as the carriage on her departure. It seemed to
oppress the congregation. And Honora had an idea that if it could have
been withdrawn, her cruel proscription would have ended. For at times she
thought that she read in the eyes of some of those who made way for her,
friendliness and even compassion.

It was but natural, perhaps, in the situation in which our heroine found
herself, that she should have lost her sense of proportion to the extent
of regarding this lady in the light of a remorseless dragon barring her
only path to peace. And those who might have helped her--if any there
were--feared the dragon as much as she. Mrs. Simpson undoubtedly would
not have relished this characterization, and she is not to have the
opportunity of presenting her side of the case. We are looking at it from
Honora's view, and Honora beheld chimeras. The woman changed, for Honora,
the very aspect of the house of God; it was she who appeared to preside
there, or rather to rule by terror. And Honora, as she glanced at her
during the lessons, often wondered if she realized the appalling extent
of her cruelty. Was this woman, who begged so audibly to be delivered
from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, in reality a Christian? Honora
hated her, and yet she prayed that God would soften her heart. Was there
no way in which she could be propitiated, appeased? For the sake of the
thing desired, and which it was given this woman to withhold, she was
willing to humble herself in the dust.

Honora laid the hospital circular on the desk beside her account book.
She had an ample allowance from Hugh; but lying in a New York bank was
what remained of the unexpected legacy she had received from her father,
and it was from this that she presently drew a cheque for five hundred
dollars,--a little sacrifice that warmed her blood as she wrote. Not for
the unfortunate in the hospital was she making it, but for him: and that
she could do this from the little store that was her very own gave her a
thrill of pride. She would never need it again. If he deserted her, it
mattered little what became of her. If he deserted her!

She sat gazing out of the window over the snow, and a new question was in
her heart. Was it as a husband--that he loved her? Did their intercourse
have that intangible quality of safety that belonged to married life? And
was it not as a mistress rather than a wife that, in their isolation, she
watched his moods so jealously? A mistress! Her lips parted, and she
repeated the word aloud, for self-torture is human.

Her mind dwelt upon their intercourse. There were the days they spent
together, and the evenings, working or reading. Ah, but had the time ever
been when, in the depths of her being, she had felt the real security of
a wife? When she had not always been dimly conscious of a desire to
please him, of a struggle to keep him interested and contented? And there
were the days when he rode alone, the nights when he read or wrote alone,
when her joy was turned to misery; there were the alternating periods of
passion and alienation. Alienation, perhaps, was too strong a word.
Nevertheless, at such times, her feeling was one of desolation.

His heart, she knew, was bent upon success at Grenoble, and one of the
books which they had recently read together was a masterly treatise, by
an Englishman, on the life-work of an American statesman. The vast width
of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was stirred with
politics: a better era was coming, the pulse of the nation beating with
renewed life; a stronger generation was arising to take the Republic into
its own hands. A campaign was in progress in the State, and twice her
husband had gone some distance to hear the man who embodied the new
ideas, and had come back moody and restless, like a warrior condemned to
step aside. Suppose his hopes were blighted--what would happen? Would the
spirit of reckless adventure seize him again? Would the wilds call him?
or the city? She did not dare to think.

It was not until two mornings later that Hugh tossed her across the
breakfast table a pink envelope with a wide flap and rough edges. Its
sender had taken advantage of the law that permits one-cent stamps for
local use.

"Who's your friend, Honora?" he asked.

She tried to look calmly at the envelope that contained her fate.

"It's probably a dressmaker's advertisement," she answered, and went on
with the pretence of eating her breakfast.

"Or an invitation to dine with Mrs. Simpson," he suggested, laughingly,
as he rose. "It's just the stationery she would choose."

Honora dropped her spoon in her egg-cup. It instantly became evident,
however, that his remark was casual and not serious, for he gathered up
his mail and departed. Her hand trembled a little as she opened the
letter, and for a moment the large gold monogram of its sender danced
before her eyes.

   "Dear Madam, Permit me to thank you in the name of the Trustees of
   the Grenoble Hospital for your generous contribution, and believe
   me, Sincerely yours,

                  "MARIA W. SIMPSON."

The sheet fluttered to the floor.

When Sunday came, for the first time her courage failed her. She had
heard the wind complaining in the night, and the day dawned wild and wet.
She got so far as to put on a hat and veil and waterproof coat; Starling
had opened the doors, and through the frame of the doorway, on the wet
steps, she saw the footman in his long mackintosh, his umbrella raised to
escort her to the carriage. Then she halted, irresolute. The impassive
old butler stood on the sill, a silent witness, she knew, to the struggle
going on within her. It seemed ridiculous indeed to play out the comedy
with him, who could have recited the lines. And yet she turned to him.

"Starling, you may send the coachman back to the stable."

"Very good, madam."

As she climbed the stairs she saw him gravely closing the doors. She
paused on the landing, her sense of relief overborne by a greater sense
of defeat. There was still time! She heard the wheels of the carriage on
the circle--yet she listened to them die away. Starling softly caught the
latch, and glanced up. For an instant their looks crossed, and she
hurried on with palpitating breast, reached her boudoir, and closed the
door. The walls seemed to frown on her, and she remembered that the
sitting-room in St. Louis had worn that same look when, as a child, she
had feigned illness in order to miss a day at school. With a leaden heart
she gazed out on the waste of melting snow, and then tried in vain to
read a novel that a review had declared amusing. But a question always
came between her and the pages: was this the turning point of that silent
but terrible struggle, when she must acknowledge to herself that the
world had been too strong for her? After a while her loneliness became
unbearable. Chiltern was in the library.

"Home from church?" he inquired.

"I didn't go, Hugh."

He looked up in surprise.

"Why, I thought I saw you start," he said.

"It's such a dreary day, Hugh."

"But that has never prevented you before."

"Don't you think I'm entitled to one holiday?" she asked.

But it was by a supreme effort she kept back the tears. He looked at her
attentively, and got up suddenly and put his hands upon her shoulders.
She could not meet his eyes, and trembled under his touch.

"Honora," he said, "why don't you tell me the truth?"

"What do you mean, Hugh?"

"I have been wondering how long you'd stand it. I mean that these women,
who call themselves Christians, have been brutal to you. They haven't so
much as spoken to you in church, and not one of them has been to this
house to call. Isn't that so?"

"Don't let us judge them yet, Hugh," she begged, a little wildly, feeling
again the gathering of another destroying storm in him that might now
sweep the last vestige of hope away. And she seized the arguments as they
came. "Some of them may be prejudiced, I know. But others--others I am
sure are kind, and they have had no reason to believe I should like to
know them--to work among them. I--I could not go to see them first, I am
glad to wait patiently until some accident brings me near them. And
remember, Hugh, the atmosphere in which we both lived before we came
here--an atmosphere they regard as frivolous and pleasure-loving. People
who are accustomed to it are not usually supposed to care to make friends
in a village, or to bother their heads about the improvement of a
community. Society is not what it was in your mother's day, who knew
these people or their mothers, and took an interest in what they were
doing. Perhaps they think me--haughty." She tried to smile. "I have never
had an opportunity to show them that I am not."

She paused, breathless, and saw that he was unconvinced.

"Do you believe that, Honora?" he demanded.

"I--I want to believe it. And I am sure, that if it is not true now, it
will become so, if we only wait."

He shook his head.

"Never," he said, and dropped his hands and walked over to the fire. She
stood where he had left her.

"I understand," she heard him say, "I understand that you sent Mrs.
Simpson five hundred dollars for the hospital. Simpson told me so
yesterday, at the bank."

"I had a little money of my own--from my father and I was glad to do it,
Hugh. That was your mother's charity."

Her self-control was taxed to the utmost by the fact that he was moved.
She could not see his face, but his voice betrayed it.

"And Mrs. Simpson?" he asked, after a moment.

"Mrs. Simpson?"

"She thanked you?"

"She acknowledged the cheque, as president. I was not giving it to her,
but to the hospital."

"Let me see the letter."

"I--I have destroyed it."

He brought his hands together forcibly, and swung about and faced her.

"Damn them!" he cried, "from this day I forbid you to have anything to do
with them, do you hear. I forbid you! They're a set of confounded,
self-righteous hypocrites. Give them time! In all conscience they have
had time enough, and opportunity enough to know what our intentions are.
How long do they expect us to fawn at their feet for a word of
recognition? What have we done that we should be outlawed in this way by
the very people who may thank my family for their prosperity? Where would
Israel Simpson be to-day if my father had not set him up in business?
Without knowing anything of our lives they pretend to sit in judgment on
us. Why? Because you have been divorced, and I married you. I'll make
them pay for this!"

"No!" she begged, taking a step towards him. "You don't know what you're
saying, Hugh. I implore you not to do anything. Wait a little while! Oh,
it is worth trying!" So far the effort carried her, and no farther.
Perhaps, at sight of the relentlessness in his eyes, hope left her, and
she sank down on a chair and buried her face in her hands, her voice
broken by sobs. "It is my fault, and I am justly punished. I have no
right to you--I was wicked, I was selfish to marry you. I have ruined
your life."

He went to her, and lifted her up, but she was like a child whom
passionate weeping has carried beyond the reach of words. He could say
nothing to console her, plead as he might, assume the blame, and swear
eternal fealty. One fearful, supreme fact possessed her, the wreck of
Chiltern breaking against the rocks, driven there by her . . . .

That she eventually grew calm again deserves to be set down as a tribute
to the organism of the human body.

That she was able to breathe, to move, to talk, to go through the
pretence of eating, was to her in the nature of a mild surprise. Life
went on, but it seemed to Honora in the hours following this scene that
it was life only. Of the ability to feel she was utterly bereft. Her
calmness must have been appalling: her own indifference to what might
happen now,--if she could have realized it,--even more so. And in the
afternoon, wandering about the house, she found herself in the
conservatory. It had been built on against the library, and sometimes, on
stormy afternoons, she had tea there with Hugh in the red-cushioned
chairs beside the trickling fountain, the flowers giving them an illusion
of summer.

Under ordinary circumstances the sound of wheels on the gravel would have
aroused her, for Hugh scarcely ever drove. And it was not until she
glanced through the open doors into the library that she knew that a
visitor had come to Highlawns. He stood beside the rack for the magazines
and reviews, somewhat nervously fingering a heavy watch charm, his large
silk hat bottom upward on the chair behind him. It was Mr. Israel
Simpson. She could see him plainly, and she was by no means hidden from
him by the leaves, and yet she did not move. He had come to see Hugh, she
understood; and she was probably going to stay where she was and listen.
It seemed of no use repeating to herself that this conversation would be
of vital importance; for the mechanism that formerly had recorded these
alarms and spread them, refused to work. She saw Chiltern enter, and she
read on his face that he meant to destroy. It was no news to her. She had
known it for a long, long time--in fact, ever since she had came to
Grenoble. Her curiosity, strangely enough--or so it seemed
afterwards--was centred on Mr. Simpson, as though he were an actor she
had been very curious to see.

It was this man, and not her husband, whom she perceived from the first
was master of the situation. His geniality was that of the commander of
an overwhelming besieging force who could afford to be generous. She
seemed to discern the cloudy ranks of the legions behind him, and they
encircled the world. He was aware of these legions, and their presence
completely annihilated the ancient habit of subserviency with which in
former years he had been wont to enter this room and listen to the
instructions of that formidable old lion, the General: so much was plain
from the orchestra. He went forward with a cheerful, if ponderous
bonhomie.

"Ah, Hugh," said he, "I got your message just in time. I was on the point
of going over to see old Murdock. Seriously ill--you know--last time, I'm
afraid," and Mr. Simpson shook his head. He held out his hand. Hugh did
not appear to notice it.

"Sit down, Mr. Simpson," he said.

Mr. Simpson sat down. Chiltern took a stand before him.

"You asked me the other day whether I would take a certain amount of the
stock and bonds of the Grenoble Light and Power Company, in which you are
interested, and which is, I believe, to supply the town with electric
light, the present source being inadequate."

"So I did," replied Mr. Simpson, urbanely, "and I believe the investment
to be a good one. There is no better power in this part of the country
than Psalter's Falls."

"I wished to inform you that I do not intend to go into the Light and
Power Company," said Chiltern.

"I am sorry to hear it," Mr. Simpson declared. "In my opinion, if you
searched the state for a more profitable or safer thing, you could not
find it."

"I have no doubt the investment is all that could be desired, Mr.
Simpson. I merely wished you to know, as soon as possible, that I did not
intend to put my money into it. There are one or two other little matters
which you have mentioned during the week. You pointed out that it would
be an advantage to Grenoble to revive the county fair, and you asked me
to subscribe five thousand dollars to the Fair Association."

This time Mr. Simpson remained silent.

"I have come to the conclusion, to-day, not to subscribe a cent. I also
intend to notify the church treasurer that I will not any longer rent a
pew, or take any further interest in the affairs of St. John's church. My
wife was kind enough, I believe, to send five hundred dollars to the
Grenoble hospital. That will be the last subscription from any member of
my family. I will resign as a director of the Grenoble Bank to-morrow,
and my stock will be put on the market. And finally I wished to tell you
that henceforth I do not mean to aid in any way any enterprise in
Grenoble."

During this announcement, which had been made with an ominous calmness,
Mr. Simpson had gazed steadily at the brass andirons. He cleared his
throat.

"My dear Hugh," said he, "what you have said pains me
excessively-excessively. I--ahem--fail to grasp it. As an old friend of
your family--of your father--I take the liberty of begging you to
reconsider your words."

Chiltern's eyes blazed.

"Since you have mentioned my father, Mr. Simpson," he exclaimed, "I may
remind you that his son might reasonably have expected at your hands a
different treatment than that you have accorded him. You have asked me to
reconsider my decision, but I notice that you have failed to inquire into
my reasons for making it. I came back here to Grenoble with every
intention of devoting the best efforts of my life in aiding to build up
the community, as my father had done. It was natural, perhaps, that I
should expect a little tolerance, a little friendliness, a little
recognition in return. My wife was prepared to help me. We did not ask
much. But you have treated us like outcasts. Neither you nor Mrs.
Simpson, from whom in all conscience I looked for consideration and
friendship, have as much as spoken to Mrs. Chiltern in church. You have
made it clear that, while you are willing to accept our contributions,
you cared to have nothing to do with us whatever. If I have overstated
the case, please correct me."

Mr. Simpson rose protestingly.

"My dear Hugh," he said. "This is very painful. I beg that you will spare
me."

"My name is Chiltern," answered Hugh, shortly. "Will you kindly explain,
if you can, why the town of Grenoble has ignored us?"

Israel Simpson hesitated a moment. He seemed older when he looked at
Chiltern again, and in his face commiseration and indignation were oddly
intermingled. His hand sought his watch chain.

"Yes, I will tell you," he replied slowly, "although in all my life no
crueller duty has fallen on me. It is because we in Grenoble are
old-fashioned in our views of morality, and I thank God we are so. It is
because you have married a divorced woman under circumstances that have
shocked us. The Church to which I belong, and whose teachings I respect,
does not recognize such a marriage. And you have, in my opinion,
committed an offence against society. To recognize you by social
intercourse would be to condone that offence, to open the door to
practices that would lead, in a short time, to the decay of our people."

Israel Simpson turned, and pointed a shaking forefinger at the portrait
of General Augus Chiltern.

"And I affirm here, fearlessly before you, that he, your father, would
have been the last to recognize such a marriage."

Chiltern took a step forward, and his fingers tightened.

"You will oblige me by leaving my father's name out of this discussion,"
he said.

But Israel Simpson did not recoil.

"If we learn anything by example in this world, Mr. Chiltern," he
continued, "and it is my notion that we do, I am indebted to your father
for more than my start in life. Through many years of intercourse with
him, and contemplation of his character, I have gained more than riches.
--You have forced me to say this thing. I am sorry if I have pained you.
But I should not be true to the principles to which he himself was
consistent in life, and which he taught by example so many others, if I
ventured to hope that social recognition in Grenoble would be accorded
you, or to aid in any way such recognition. As long as I live I will
oppose it. There are, apparently, larger places in the world and less
humble people who will be glad to receive you. I can only hope, as an old
friend and well-wisher of your family, that you may find happiness."

Israel Simpson fumbled for his hat, picked it up, and left the room. For
a moment Chiltern stood like a man turned to stone, and then he pressed
the button on the wall behind him.





A MODERN CHRONICLE

By Winston Churchill


Volume 8.



CHAPTER XVI

IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP

Spring came to Highlawns, Eden tinted with myriad tender greens.
Yellow-greens, like the beech boughs over the old wall, and gentle
blue-greens, like the turf; and the waters of the lake were blue and
white in imitation of the cloud-flecked sky. It seemed to Honora, as she
sat on the garden bench, that the yellow and crimson tulips could not
open wide enough their cups to the sun.

In these days she looked at her idol, and for the first time believed it
to be within her finite powers to measure him. She began by asking
herself if it were really she who had ruined his life, and whether he
would ultimately have redeemed himself if he had married a woman whom the
world would have recognized. Thus did the first doubt invade her heart.
It was of him she was thinking still, and always. But there was the
doubt. If he could have stood this supreme test of isolation, of the
world's laughter and scorn, although it would have made her own heavy
burden of responsibility heavier, yet could she still have rejoiced. That
he should crumble was the greatest of her punishments.

Was he crumbling? In these months she could not quite be sure, and she
tried to shut her eyes when the little pieces fell off, to remind herself
that she must make allowances for the severity of his disappointment.
Spring was here, the spring to which he had so eagerly looked forward,
and yet the listlessness with which he went about his work was apparent.
Sometimes he did not appear at breakfast, although Honora clung with
desperation to the hour they had originally fixed: sometimes Mr. Manning
waited for him until nearly ten o'clock, only to receive curt dismissal.
He went off for long rides, alone, and to the despair of the groom
brought back the horses in a lather, with drooping heads and heaving
sides; one of them he ruined. He declared there wasn't a horse in the
stable fit to give him exercise.

Often he sat for hours in his study, brooding, inaccessible. She had the
tennis-court rolled and marked, but the contests here were
pitifully-unequal; for the row of silver cups on his mantel, engraved
with many dates, bore witness to his athletic prowess. She wrote for a
book on solitaire, but after a while the sight of cards became
distasteful. With a secret diligence she read the reviews, and sent for
novels and memoirs which she scanned eagerly before they were begun with
him. Once, when she went into his study on an errand, she stood for a
minute gazing painfully at the cleared space on his desk where once had
lain the papers and letters relative to the life of General Angus
Chiltern.

There were intervals in which her hope flared, in which she tasted,
fearfully and with bated breath, something that she had not thought to
know again. It was characteristic of him that his penitence was never
spoken: nor did he exhibit penitence. He seemed rather at such times
merely to become normally himself, as one who changes personality,
apparently oblivious to the moods and deeds of yesterday. And these
occasions added perplexity to her troubles. She could not reproach him
--which perhaps in any event she would have been too wise to do; but she
could not, try as she would, bring herself to the point of a discussion
of their situation. The risk, she felt, was too great; now, at least.
There were instances that made her hope that the hour might come.

One fragrant morning Honora came down to find him awaiting her, and to
perceive lying on her napkin certain distilled drops of the spring
sunshine. In language less poetic, diamonds to be worn in the ears. The
wheel of fashion, it appeared, had made a complete revolution since the
early days of his mother's marriage. She gave a little exclamation, and
her hand went to her heart.

"They are Brazilian stones," he explained, with a boyish pleasure that
awoke memories and held her speechless. "I believe it's very difficult,
if not impossible, to buy them now. My father got them after the war and
I had them remounted." And he pressed them against the pink lobes of her
ears. "You look like the Queen of Sheba."

"How do you know?" she asked tremulously. "You never saw her."

"According to competent judges," he replied, "she was the most beautiful
woman of her time. Go upstairs and put them on."

She shook her head. An inspiration had come to her.

"Wait," she cried. And that morning, when Hugh had gone out, she sent for
Starling and startled him by commanding that the famous Lowestoft set be
used at dinner. He stared at her, and the corners of his mouth twitched,
and still he stood respectfully in the doorway.

"That is all, Starling."

"I beg pardon, madam. How--how many will there be at the table?"

"Just Mr. Chiltern and I," she replied. But she did not look at him.

It was superstition, undoubtedly. She was well aware that Starling had
not believed that the set would be used again. An extraordinary order,
that might well have sent him away wondering; for the Lowestoft had been
reserved for occasions. Ah, but this was to be an occasion, a festival!
The whimsical fancy grew in her mind as the day progressed, and she
longed with an unaccustomed impatience for nightfall, and anticipation
had a strange taste. Mathilde, with the sympathetic gift of her nation,
shared the excitement of her mistress in this fete. The curtains in the
pink bedroom were drawn, and on the bed, in all its splendour of lace and
roses, was spread out the dinner-gown-a chef-d'oeuvre of Madame
Barriere's as yet unworn. And no vulgar, worldly triumph was it to adorn.

Her heart was beating fast as she descended the stairway, bright spots of
colour flaming in her cheeks and the diamonds sparkling in her ears. A
prima donna might have guessed her feelings as she paused, a little
breathless on the wide landing under the windows. She heard a footstep.
Hugh came out of the library and stood motionless, looking up at her. But
even those who have felt the silence and the stir that prefaces the
clamorous applause of the thousands could not know the thrill that swept
her under his tribute. She came down the last flight of steps, slowly,
and stopped in front of him.

"You are wonderful, Honora!" he said, and his voice was not quite under
control. He took her hand, that trembled in his, and he seemed to be
seeking to express something for which he could find no words. Thus may
the King have looked upon Rosamond in her bower; upon a beauty created
for the adornment of courts which he had sequestered for his eyes alone.

Honora, as though merely by the touch of his hand in hers, divined his
thought.

"If you think me so, dear," she whispered happily, "it's all I ask."

And they went in to dinner as to a ceremony. It was indeed a ceremony
filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put
into words. A feast symbolical. Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to
bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare
occasions in the family. And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at
his wife and raised it in silence to his lips.

She never forgot the scene. The red glow of light from the shaded candles
on the table, and the corners of the dining room filled with gloom. The
old butler, like a high priest, standing behind his master's chair. The
long windows, with the curtains drawn in the deep, panelled arches; the
carved white mantelpiece; the glint of silver on' the sideboard, with its
wine-cooler underneath,--these, spoke of generations of respectability
and achievement. Would this absorbed isolation, this marvellous wild love
of theirs, be the end of it all? Honora, as one detached, as a ghost in
the corner, saw herself in the picture with startling clearness. When she
looked up, she met her husband's eyes. Always she met them, and in them a
questioning, almost startled look that was new. "Is it the earrings?" she
asked at last. "I don't know," he answered. "I can't tell. They seem to
have changed you, but perhaps they have brought out something in your
face and eyes I have never seen before."

"And--you like it, Hugh?"

"Yes, I like it," he replied, and added enigmatically, "but I don't
understand it."

She was silent, and oddly satisfied, trusting to fate to send more
mysteries.

Two days had not passed when that restlessness for which she watched so
narrowly revived. He wandered aimlessly about the place, and flared up
into such a sudden violent temper at one of the helpers in the fields
that the man ran as for his life, and refused to set foot again on any of
the Chiltern farms. In the afternoon he sent for Honora to ride with him,
and scolded her for keeping him waiting. And he wore a spur, and pressed
his horse so savagely that she cried out in remonstrance, although at
such times she had grown to fear him.

"Oh, Hugh, how can you be so cruel!"

"The beast has no spirit," he said shortly. "I'll get one that has."

Their road wound through the western side of the estate towards misty
rolling country, in the folds of which lay countless lakes, and at length
they caught sight of an unpainted farmhouse set amidst a white cloud of
apple trees in bloom. On the doorstep, whittling, sat a bearded, unkempt
farmer with a huge frame. In answer to Hugh's question he admitted that
he had a horse for sale, stuck his knife in the step, rose, and went off
towards the barn near by; and presently reappeared, leading by a halter a
magnificent black. The animal stood jerking his head, blowing and pawing
the ground while Chiltern examined him.

"He's been ridden?" he asked.

The man nodded.

Chiltern sprang to the ground and began to undo his saddle girths. A
sudden fear seized Honora.

"Oh, Hugh, you're not going to ride him!" she exclaimed.

"Why not? How else am I going to find out anything about him?"

"He looks--dangerous," she faltered.

"I'm tired of horses that haven't any life in them," he said, as he
lifted off the saddle.

"I guess we'd better get him in the barn," said the farmer.

Honora went behind them to witness the operation, which was not devoid of
excitement. The great beast plunged savagely when they tightened the
girths, and closed his teeth obstinately against the bit; but the farmer
held firmly to his nose and shut off his wind. They led him out from the
barn floor.

"Your name Chiltern?" asked the farmer.

"Yes," said Hugh, curtly.

"Thought so," said the farmer, and he held the horse's head.

Honora had a feeling of faintness.

"Hugh, do be careful!" she pleaded.

He paid no heed to her. His eyes, she noticed, had a certain feverish
glitter of animation, of impatience, such as men of his type must wear
when they go into battle. He seized the horse's mane, he put his foot in
the stirrup; the astonished animal gave a snort and jerked the bridle
from the farmer's hand. But Chiltern was in the saddle, with knees
pressed tight.

There ensued a struggle that Honora will never forget. And although she
never again saw that farm-house, its details and surroundings come back
to her in vivid colours when she closes her eyes. The great horse in
every conceivable pose, with veins standing out and knotty muscles
twisting in his legs and neck and thighs. Once, when he dashed into the
apple trees, she gave a cry; a branch snapped, and Chiltern emerged,
still seated, with his hat gone and the blood trickling from a scratch on
his forehead. She saw him strike with his spurs, and in a twinkling horse
and rider had passed over the dilapidated remains of a fence and were
flying down the hard clay road, disappearing into a dip. A reverberating
sound, like a single stroke, told them that the bridge at the bottom had
been crossed.

In an agony of terror, Honora followed, her head on fire, her heart
pounding faster than the hoof beats. But the animal she rode, though a
good one, was no match for the great infuriated beast which she pursued.
Presently she came to a wooded corner where the road forked thrice, and
beyond, not without difficulty,--brought her sweating mare to a stand.
The quality of her fear changed from wild terror to cold dread. A hermit
thrush, in the wood near by, broke the silence with a song inconceivably
sweet. At last she went back to the farm-house, hoping against hope that
Hugh might have returned by another road. But he was not there. The
farmer was still nonchalantly whittling.

"Oh, how could you let any one get on a horse like that?" she cried.

"You're his wife, ain't you?" he asked.

Something in the man's manner seemed to compel her to answer, in spite of
the form of the question.

"I am Mrs. Chiltern," she said.

He was looking at her with an expression that she found incomprehensible.
His glance was penetrating, yet here again she seemed to read compassion.
He continued to gaze at her, and presently, when he spoke, it was as
though he were not addressing her at all.

"You put me in mind of a young girl I used to know," he said; "seems like
a long time ago. You're pretty, and you're young, and ye didn't know what
you were doin,' I'll warrant. Lost your head. He has a way of gittin'
'em--always had."

Honora did not answer. She would have liked to have gone away, but that
which was stronger than her held her.

"She didn't live here," he explained, waving his hand deprecatingly
towards the weather-beaten house. "We lived over near Morrisville in them
days. And he don't remember me, your husband don't. I ain't surprised.
I've got considerable older."

Honora was trembling from head to foot, and her hands were cold.

"I've got her picture in there, if ye'd like to look at it," he said,
after a while.

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no!"

"Well, I don't know as I blame you." He sat down again and began to
whittle. "Funny thing, chance," he remarked; "who'd a thought I should
have owned that there hoss, and he should have come around here to ride
it?"

She tried to speak, but she could not. The hideous imperturbability of
the man's hatred sickened her. And her husband! The chips fell in silence
until a noise on the road caused them to look up. Chiltern was coming
back. She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally
incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret. Chiltern rode into
the dooryard. The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his
temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she had
sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his eyes
hard, reckless, bloodshot. So, in the past, must he have emerged from
dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast. He had beaten
the sweat-stained horse (temporarily--such was the impression Honora
received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for its
opposition.

"Give me my hat, will you?" he cried to the farmer.

To her surprise the man obeyed. Chiltern leaped to the ground.

"What do you want for him?" he demanded.

"I'll take five hundred dollars."

"Bring him over in the morning," said Chiltern, curtly.

They rode homeward in silence. Honora had not been able to raise her
voice against the purchase, and she seemed powerless now to warn her
husband of the man's enmity. She was thinking, rather, of the horror of
the tragedy written on the farmer's face, to which he had given her the
key: Hugh Chiltern, to whom she had intrusted her life and granted her
all, had done this thing, ruthlessly, even as he had satisfied to-day his
unbridled cravings in maltreating a horse! And she thought of that other
woman, on whose picture she had refused to look. What was the essential
difference between that woman and herself? He had wanted them both, he
had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain he might cause
to others and to them. For her, perhaps, the higher organism, had been
reserved the higher torture. She did not know. The vision of the girl in
the outer darkness reserved for castaways was terrible.

Up to this point she had, as it were, been looking into one mirror. Now
another was suddenly raised behind her, and by its aid she beheld not a
single, but countless, images of herself endlessly repeated. How many
others besides this girl had there been? The question gave her the
shudder of the contemplation of eternity. It was not the first time
Honora had thought of his past, but until today it had lacked reality;
until to-day she had clung to the belief that he had been misunderstood;
until to-day she had considered those acts of his of the existence of
which she was collectively aware under the generic term of wild oats. He
had had too much money, and none had known how to control him. Now,
through this concrete example of another's experience, she was given to
understand that which she had strangely been unable to learn from her
own. And she had fancied, in her folly, that she could control him!
Unable as yet to grasp the full extent of her calamity, she rode on by
his side, until she was aware at last that they had reached the door of
the house at Highlawns.

"You look pale," he said as he lifted her off her horse. The demon in
him, she perceived, was tired.

"Do I?"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she answered.

He laughed.

"It's confoundedly silly to get frightened that way," he declared. "The
beast only wants riding."

Three mornings later she was seated in the garden with a frame of fancy
work. Sometimes she put it down. The weather was overcast, langourous,
and there was a feeling of rain in the air. Chiltern came in through the
gaffe, and looked at her.

"I'm going to New York on the noon train," he said.

"To New York?"

"Yes. Why not?"

"There's no reason why you shouldn't if you wish to," she replied, picking
up her frame.

"Anything I can get you?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

"You've been in such a deuced queer mood the last few days I can't make
you out, Honora."

"You ought to have learned something about women by this time," she said.

"It seems to me," he announced, "that we need a little livening up."




CHAPTER XVII

THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY

There were six letters from him, written from a club, representing the
seven days of his absence. He made no secret of the fact that his visit
to the metropolis was in the nature of a relaxation and a change of
scene, but the letters themselves contained surprisingly little
information as to how he was employing his holiday. He had encountered
many old friends, supposedly all of the male sex: among them--most
welcome of surprises to him!--Mr. George Pembroke, a boon companion at
Harvard. And this mention of boon companionship brought up to Honora a
sufficiently vivid idea of Mr. Pembroke's characteristics. The extent of
her knowledge of this gentleman consisted in the facts that he was a
bachelor, a member of a prominent Philadelphia family, and that time hung
heavy on his hands.

One morning she received a telegram to the effect that her husband would
be home that night, bringing three people with him. He sent his love, but
neglected to state the names and sexes of the prospective guests. And she
was still in a quandary as to what arrangements to make when Starling
appeared in answer to her ring.

"You will send the omnibus to the five o'clock train," she said. "There
will be three extra places at dinner, and tea when Mr. Chiltern arrives."

Although she strove to speak indifferently, she was sure from the way the
old man looked at her that her voice had not been quite steady. Of late
her curious feeling about him had increased in intensity; and many times,
during this week she had spent alone, she had thought that his eyes had
followed her with sympathy. She did not resent this. Her world having now
contracted to that wide house, there was a comfort in knowing that there
was one in it to whom she could turn in need. For she felt that she could
turn to Starling; he alone, apparently, had measured the full depth of
her trouble; nay, had silently predicted it from the beginning. And
to-day, as he stood before her, she had an almost irresistible impulse to
speak. Just a word-a human word would have been such a help to her! And
how ridiculous the social law that kept the old man standing there,
impassive, respectful, when this existed between them! Her tragedy was
his tragedy; not in the same proportion, perhaps; nevertheless, he had
the air of one who would die of it.

And she? Would she die? What would become of her? When she thought of the
long days and months and years that stretched ahead of her, she felt that
her soul would not be able to survive the process of steady degradation
to which it was sure to be subjected. For she was a prisoner: the
uttermost parts of the earth offered no refuge. To-day, she knew, was to
see the formal inauguration of that process. She had known torture, but
it had been swift, obliterating, excruciating. And hereafter it was to be
slow, one turn at a time of the screws, squeezing by infinitesimal
degrees the life out of her soul. And in the end--most fearful thought of
all--in the end, painless. Painless! She buried her head in her arms on
the little desk, shaken by sobs.

How she fought that day to compose herself, fought and prayed! Prayed
wildly to a God whose help, nevertheless, she felt she had forfeited, who
was visiting her with just anger. At half-past four she heard the
carriage on the far driveway, going to the station, and she went down and
walked across the lawn to the pond, and around it; anything to keep
moving. She hurried back to the house just in time to reach the hall as
the omnibus backed up. And the first person she saw descend, after Hugh,
was Mrs. Kame.

"Here we are, Honora," she cried. "I hope you're glad to see us, and that
you'll forgive our coming so informally. You must blame Hugh. We've
brought Adele."

The second lady was, indeed, none other than Mrs. Eustace Rindge,
formerly Mrs. Dicky Farnham. And she is worth--even at this belated stage
in our chronicle an attempted sketch, or at least an attempted
impression. She was fair, and slim as a schoolgirl; not very tall, not
exactly petite; at first sight she might have been taken for a
particularly immature debutante, and her dress was youthful and rather
mannish. Her years, at this period of her career, were in truth but two
and twenty, yet she had contrived, in the comparatively brief time since
she had reached the supposed age of discretion, to marry two men and
build two houses, and incidentally to see a considerable portion of what
is known as the world. The suspicion that she was not as innocent as a
dove came to one, on closer inspection, as a shock: her eyes were tired,
though not from loss of sleep; and her manner--how shall it be described
to those whose happy lot in life has never been to have made the
acquaintance of Mrs. Rindge's humbler sisters who have acquired--more
coarsely, it is true--the same camaraderie? She was one of those for
whom, seemingly, sex does not exist. Her air of good-fellowship with men
was eloquent of a precise knowledge of what she might expect from them,
and she was prepared to do her own policing,--not from any deep moral
convictions. She belonged, logically, to that world which is disposed to
take the law into its own hands, and she was the possessor of five
millions of dollars.

"I came along," she said to Honora, as she gave her hand-bag to a
footman. "I hope you don't mind. Abby and I were shopping and we ran into
Hugh and Georgie yesterday at Sherry's, and we've been together ever
since. Not quite that--but almost. Hugh begged us to come up, and there
didn't seem to be any reason why we shouldn't, so we telephoned down to
Banbury for our trunks and maids, and we've played bridge all the way. By
the way, Georgie, where's my pocket-book?"

Mr. Pembroke handed it over, and was introduced by Hugh. He looked at
Honora, and his glance somehow betokened that he was in the habit of
looking only once. He had apparently made up his mind about her before he
saw her. But he looked again, evidently finding her at variance with a
preconceived idea, and this time she flushed a little under his stare,
and she got the impression that Mr. Pembroke was a man from whom few
secrets of a certain kind were hid. She felt that he had seized, at a
second glance, a situation that she had succeeded in hiding from the
women. He was surprised, but cynically so. He was the sort of person who
had probably possessed at Harvard the knowledge of the world of a Tammany
politician; he had long ago written his book--such as it was--and closed
it: or, rather, he had worked out his system at a precocious age, and it
had lasted him ever since. He had decided that undergraduate life, freed
from undergraduate restrictions, was a good thing. And he did not, even
in these days, object to breaking something valuable occasionally.

His physical attributes are more difficult to describe, so closely were
they allied to those which, for want of a better word, must be called
mental. He was neither tall nor short, he was well fed, but hard, his
shoulders too broad, his head a little large. If he should have happened
to bump against one, the result would have been a bruise--not for him.
His eyes were blue, his light hair short, and there was a slight baldness
beginning; his face was red-tanned. There was not the slightest doubt
that he could be effectively rude, and often was; but it was evident, for
some reason, that he meant to be gracious (for Mr. Pembroke) to Honora.
Perhaps this was the result of the second glance. One of his name had not
lacked, indeed, for instructions in gentility. It must not be thought
that she was in a condition to care much about what Mr. Pembroke thought
or did, and yet she felt instinctively that he had changed his greeting
between that first and second glance.

"I hope you'll forgive my coming in this way," he said. "I'm an old
friend of Hugh's."

"I'm very glad to have Hugh's friends," she answered.

He looked at her again.

"Is tea ready?" inquired Mrs. Kame. "I'm famished." And, as they walked
through the house to the garden, where the table was set beside the stone
seat: "I don't see how you ever can leave this place, Honora. I've always
wanted to come here, but it's even more beautiful than I thought."

"It's very beautiful," said Honora.

"I'll have a whiskey and soda, if I may," announced Mrs. Rindge. "Open
one, Georgie."

"The third to-day," said Mr. Pembroke, sententiously, as he obeyed.

"I don't care. I don't see what business it is of yours."

"Except to open them," he replied.

"You'd have made a fortune as a barkeeper," she observed,
dispassionately, as she watched the process.

"He's made fortunes for a good many," said Chiltern.

"Not without some expert assistance I could mention," Mr. Pembroke
retorted.

At this somewhat pointed reference to his ancient habits, Chiltern
laughed.

"You've each had three to-day yourselves," said Mrs. Rindge, in whose
bosom Mr. Pembroke's remark evidently rankled, "without counting those
you had before you left the club."

Afterwards Mrs. Kame expressed a desire to walk about a little, a
proposal received with disfavour by all but Honora, who as hostess
responded.

"I feel perfectly delightful," declared Mrs. Rindge. "What's the use of
moving about?" And she sank back in the cushions of her chair.

This observation was greeted with unrestrained merriment by Mr. Pembroke
and Hugh. Honora, sick at heart, led Mrs. Kame across the garden and
through the gate in the wall. It was a perfect evening of early June, the
great lawn a vivid green in the slanting light. All day the cheerful
music of the horse-mowers had been heard, and the air was fragrant with
the odour of grass freshly cut. The long shadows of the maples and
beeches stretched towards the placid surface of the lake, dimpled here
and there by a fish's swirl: the spiraeas were laden as with freshly
fallen snow, a lone Judas-tree was decked in pink. The steep pastures
beyond the water were touched with gold, while to the northward, on the
distant hills, tender blue lights gathered lovingly around the copses.
Mrs. Kame sighed.

"What a terrible thing it is," she said, "that we are never satisfied!
It's the men who ruin all this for us, I believe, and prevent our
enjoying it. Look at Adele."

Honora had indeed looked at her.

"I found out the other day what is the matter with her. She's madly in
love with Dicky."

"With--with her former husband?"

"Yes, with poor little innocent Dicky Farnham, who's probably still
congratulating himself, like a canary bird that's got out of a cage.
Somehow Dicky's always reminded me of a canary; perhaps it's his name.
Isn't it odd that she should be in love with him?"

"I think," replied Honora, slowly, "that it's a tragedy."

"It is a tragedy," Mrs. Kame hastily agreed. "To me, this case is one of
the most incomprehensible aspects of the tender passion. Adele's idea of
existence is a steeplechase with nothing but water-jumps, Dicky's to
loiter around in a gypsy van, and sit in the sun. During his brief
matrimonial experience with her, he nearly died for want of breath--or
rather the life was nearly shaken out of him. And yet she wants Dicky
again. She'd run away with him to-morrow if he should come within hailing
distance of her."

"And her husband?" asked Honora.

"Eustace? Did you ever see him? That accounts for your question. He only
left France long enough to come over here and make love to her, and he
swears he'll never leave it again. If she divorces him, he'll have to
have alimony."

At last Honora was able to gain her own room, but even seclusion, though
preferable to the companionship of her guests, was almost intolerable.
The tragedy of Mrs. Rindge had served--if such a thing could be--to
enhance her own; a sudden spectacle of a woman in a more advanced stage
of desperation. Would she, Honora, ever become like that? Up to the
present she felt that suffering had refined her, and a great love had
burned away all that was false. But now--now that her god had turned to
clay, what would happen? Desperation seemed possible, notwithstanding the
awfulness of the example. No, she would never come to that! And she
repeated it over and over to herself as she dressed, as though to
strengthen her will.

During her conversation with Mrs. Kame she had more than once suspected,
in spite of her efforts, that the lady had read her state of mind. For
Mrs. Kame's omissions were eloquent to the discerning: Chiltern's
relatives had been mentioned with a casualness intended to imply that no
breach existed, and the fiction that Honora could at any moment take up
her former life delicately sustained. Mrs. Kame had adaptably chosen the
attitude, after a glance around her, that Honora preferred Highlawns to
the world: a choice of which she let it be known that she approved, while
deploring that a frivolous character put such a life out of the question
for herself. She made her point without over-emphasis. On the other hand,
Honora had read Mrs. Kame. No very careful perusal was needed to convince
her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she resembled
the chameleon. But she read deeper. She perceived that Mrs. Kame was
convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new conditions
after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in the
struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion that the sooner it was over with the
better. All women were born to be disillusionized. Such was the key, at
any rate, to the lady's conduct that evening at dinner, when she capped
the anecdotes of Mr. Pembroke and Mrs. Rindge and even of Chiltern with
others not less risque but more fastidiously and ingeniously suggestive.
The reader may be spared their recital.

Since the meeting in the restaurant the day before, which had resulted in
Hugh's happy inspiration that the festival begun should be continued
indefinitely at Highlawns, a kind of freemasonry had sprung up between
the four. Honora found herself, mercifully, outside the circle: for such
was the lively character of the banter that a considerable adroitness was
necessary to obtain, between the talk and--laughter, the ear of the
company. And so full were they of the reminiscences which had been
crowded into the thirty hours or so they had spent together, that her
comparative silence remained unnoticed. To cite an example, Mr. Pembroke
was continually being addressed as the Third Vice-president, an allusion
that Mrs. Rindge eventually explained.

"You ought to have been with us coming up on the train," she cried to
Honora; "I thought surely we'd be put off. We were playing bridge in the
little room at the end of the car when the conductor came for our
tickets. Georgie had 'em in his pocket, but he told the man to go away,
that he was the third vice-president of the road, and we were his
friends. The conductor asked him if he were Mr. Wheeler, or some such
name, and Georgie said he was surprised he didn't know him. Well, the man
stood there in the door, and Georgie picked up his hand and made it
hearts--or was it diamonds, Georgie?"

"Spades," said that gentleman, promptly.

"At any rate," Mrs. Rindge continued, "we all began to play, although we
were ready to blow up with laughter, and after a while Georgie looked
around and said, 'What, are you there yet?' My dear, you ought to have
seen the conductor's face! He said it was his duty to establish Georgie's
identity, or something like that, and Georgie told him to get off at the
next station and buy Waring's Magazine--was that it, Georgie?"

"How the deuce should I know?"

"Well, some such magazine. Georgie said he'd find an article in it on the
Railroad Kings and Princes of America, and that his picture, Georgie's,
was among the very first!" At this juncture in her narrative Mrs. Rindge
shrieked with laughter, in which she was joined by Mrs. Kame and Hugh;
and she pointed a forefinger across the table at Mr. Pembroke, who went
on solemnly eating his dinner. "Georgie gave him ten cents with which to
buy the magazine," she added a little hysterically. "Well, there was a
frightful row, and a lot of men came down to that end of the car, and we
had to shut the door. The conductor said the most outrageous things, and
Georgie pretended to be very indignant, too, and gave him the tickets
under protest. He told Georgie he ought to be in an asylum for the
criminally insane, and Georgie advised him to get a photograph album of
the high officials of the railroad. The conductor said Georgie's picture
was probably in the rogue's gallery. And we lost two packs of cards out
of the window."

Such had been the more innocent if eccentric diversions with which they
had whiled away the time. When dinner was ended, a renewal of the bridge
game was proposed, for it had transpired at the dinner-table that Mrs.
Rindge and Hugh had been partners all day, as a result of which there was
a considerable balance in their favour. This balance Mr. Pembroke was
palpably anxious to wipe out, or at least to reduce. But Mrs. Kame
insisted that Honora should cut in, and the others supported her.

"We tried our best to get a man for you," said Mrs. Rindge to Honora.
"Didn't we, Abby? But in the little time we had, it was impossible. The
only man we saw was Ned Carrington, and Hugh said he didn't think you'd
want him."

"Hugh showed a rare perception," said Honora.

Be it recorded that she smiled. One course had been clear to her from the
first, although she found it infinitely difficult to follow; she was
determined, cost what it might, to carry through her part of the affair
with dignity, but without stiffness. This is not the place to dwell upon
the tax to her strength.

"Come on, Honora," said Hugh, "cut in." His tone was of what may be
termed a rough good nature. She had not seen him alone since his return,
but he had seemed distinctly desirous that she should enjoy the
festivities he had provided. And not to yield would have been to betray
herself.

The game, with its intervals of hilarity, was inaugurated in the library,
and by midnight it showed no signs of abating. At this hour the original
four occupied the table for the second time, and endurance has its
limits. The atmosphere of Liberty Hall that prevailed made Honora's
retirement easier.

"I'm sure you won't mind if I go to bed," she said. "I've been so used to
the routine of--of the chickens." She smiled. "And I've spent the day in
the open air."

"Certainly, my dear," said Mrs. Kame; "I know exactly how one feels in
the country. I'm sure it's dreadfully late. We'll have one more rubber,
and then stop."

"Oh, don't stop," replied Honora; "please play as long as you like."

They didn't stop--at least after one more rubber. Honora, as she lay in
the darkness, looking through the open square of her window at the silver
stars, heard their voiced and their laughter floating up at intervals
from below, and the little clock on her mantel had struck the hour of
three when the scraping of chairs announced the breaking up of the party.
And even after that an unconscionable period elapsed, beguiled,
undoubtedly, by anecdotes; spells of silence--when she thought they had
gone--ending in more laughter. Finally there was a crash of breaking
glass, a climax of uproarious mirth, and all was still. . .

She could not have slept much, but the birds were singing when she
finally awoke, the sunlight pouring into her window: And the hands of her
clock pointed to half-past seven when she rang her bell. It was a relief
to breakfast alone, or at least to sip her coffee in solitude. And the
dew was still on the grass as she crossed the wide lawn and made her way
around the lake to the path that entered the woods at its farther end.
She was not tired, yet she would have liked to have lain down under the
green panoply of the forest, where the wild flowers shyly raised sweet
faces to be kissed, and lose herself in the forgetfulness of an eternal
sleep; never to go back again to an Eden contaminated. But when she
lingered the melody of a thrush pierced her through and through. At last
she turned and reluctantly retraced her steps, as one whose hour of
reprieve has expired.

If Mrs. Rindge had a girlish air when fully arrayed for the day, she
looked younger and more angular still in that article of attire known as
a dressing gown. And her eyes, Honora remarked, were peculiarly bright:
glittering, perhaps, would better express the impression they gave; as
though one got a glimpse through them of an inward consuming fire. Her
laughter rang shrill and clear as Honora entered the hall by the rear
door, and the big clock proclaimed that the hour was half-past eleven.
Hugh and Mr. Pembroke were standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing
upward. And Honora, following their glances, beheld the two ladies, in
the negligee referred to above, with their elbows on the railing of the
upper hall and their faces between their hands, engaged in a lively
exchange of compliments with the gentlemen. Mrs. Kame looked sleepy.

"Such a night!" she said, suppressing a yawn. "My dear, you did well to
go to bed."

"And to cap it all," cried Mrs. Rindge, "Georgie fell over backwards in
one of those beautiful Adam chairs, and there's literally nothing left of
it. If an ocean steamer had hit it, or a freight tram, it couldn't have
been more thoroughly demolished."

"You pushed me," declared Mr. Pembroke.

"Did I, Hugh? I barely touched him."

"You knocked him into a cocked hat," said Hugh. "And if you'd been in
that kimono, you could have done it even easier."

"Georgie broke the whole whiskey service,--or whatever it is," Mrs.
Rindge went on, addressing Honora again. "He fell into it."

"He's all right this morning," observed Mrs. Kame, critically.

"I think I'll take to swallowing swords and glass and things in public. I
can do it so well," said Mr. Pembroke.

"I hope you got what you like for breakfast," said Honora to the ladies.

"Hurry up and come down, Adele," said Hugh, "if you want to look over the
horses before lunch."

"It's Georgie's fault," replied Mrs. Rindge; "he's been standing in the
door of my sitting-room for a whole half-hour talking nonsense."

A little later they all set out for the stables. These buildings at
Highlawns, framed by great trees, were old-fashioned and picturesque,
surrounding three sides of a court, with a yellow brick wall on the
fourth. The roof of the main building was capped by a lantern, the home
of countless pigeons. Mrs. Rindge was in a habit, and one by one the
saddle horses were led out, chiefly for her inspection; and she seemed to
Honora to become another woman as she looked them over with a critical
eye and discussed them with Hugh and O'Grady, the stud-groom, and talked
about pedigrees and strains. For she was renowned in this department of
sport on many fields, both for recklessness and skill.

"Where did you get that brute, Hugh?" she asked presently.

Honora, who had been talking to Pembroke, looked around with a start. And
at the sight of the great black horse, bought on that unforgettable day,
she turned suddenly faint.

"Over here in the country about ten miles," Chiltern was saying. "I heard
of him, but I didn't expect anything until I went to look at him last
week."

"What do you call him?" asked Mrs. Rindge.

"I haven't named him."

"I'll give you a name."

Chiltern looked at her. "What is it?" he said.

"Oblivion," she replied:

"By George, Adele," he exclaimed, "you have a way of hitting it off!"

"Will you let me ride him this afternoon?" she asked.

"I'm a--a candidate for oblivion." She laughed a little and her eyes
shone feverishly.

"No you don't," he said. "I'm giving you the grey. He's got enough in him
for any woman--even for you: And besides, I don't think the black ever
felt a side saddle, or any other kind, until last week."

"I've got another habit," she said eagerly. "I'd rather ride him astride.
I'll match you to see who has him."

Chiltern laughed.

"No you don't," he repeated. "I'll ride him to-day, and consider it
to-morrow."

"I--I think I'll go back to the house," said Honora to Pembroke. "It's
rather hot here in the sun."

"I'm not very keen about sunshine, either," he declared.

At lunch she was unable to talk; to sustain, at least, a conversation.
That word oblivion, which Mrs. Rindge had so aptly applied to the horse,
was constantly on her lips, and it would not have surprised her if she
had spoken it. She felt as though a heavy weight lay on her breast, and
to relieve its intolerable pressure drew in her breath deeply. She was
wild with fear. The details of the great room fixed themselves indelibly
in her brain; the subdued light, the polished table laden with silver and
glass, the roses, and the purple hot-house grapes. All this seemed in
some way to be an ironic prelude to disaster. Hugh, pausing in his
badinage with Mrs. Rindge, looked at her.

"Cheer up, Honora," he said.

"I'm afraid this first house-party is too much for her," said Mrs. Kame.

Honora made some protest that seemed to satisfy them, tried to rally
herself, and succeeded sufficiently to pass muster. After lunch they
repaired again to the bridge table, and at four Hugh went upstairs to
change into his riding clothes. Five minutes longer she controlled
herself, and then made some paltry excuse, indifferent now as to what
they said or thought, and followed him. She knocked at his dressing-room
door and entered. He was drawing on his boots. "Hello, Honora," he said.

Honora turned to his man, and dismissed him.

"I wish to speak to Mr. Chiltern alone."

Chiltern paused in his tugging at the straps, and looked up at her.

"What's the matter with you to-day, Honora?" he asked. "You looked like
the chief mourner at a funeral all through lunch."

He was a little on edge, that she knew. He gave another tug at the boot,
and while she was still hesitating, he began again.

"I ought to apologize, I know, for bringing these people up without
notice, but I didn't suppose you'd object when you understood how
naturally it all came about. I thought a little livening up, as I said,
wouldn't, hurt us. We've had a quiet winter, to put it mildly." He
laughed a little. "I didn't have a chance to see you until this morning,
and when I went to your room they told me you'd gone out."

"Hugh," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "It isn't the guests.
If you want people, and they amuse you, I'm--I'm glad to have them. And
if I've seemed to be--cold to them, I'm sorry. I tried my best--I mean I
did not intend to be cold. I'll sit up all night with them, if you like.
And I didn't come to reproach you, Hugh. I'll never do that--I've got no
right to."

She passed her hand over her eyes. If she had any wrongs, if she had
suffered any pain, the fear that obsessed her obliterated all. In spite
of her disillusionment, in spite of her newly acquired ability to see him
as he was, enough love remained to scatter, when summoned, her pride to
the winds.

Having got on both boots, he stood up.

"What's the trouble, then?" he asked. And he took an instant's hold of
her chin--a habit he had--and smiled at her.

He little knew how sublime, in its unconscious effrontery, his question
was! She tried to compose herself, that she might be able to present
comprehensively to his finite masculine mind the ache of today.

"Hugh, it's that black horse." She could not bring herself to pronounce
the name Mrs. Rindge had christened him.

"What about him?" he said, putting on his waistcoat.

"Don't ride him!" she pleaded. "I--I'm afraid of him--I've been afraid of
him ever since that day.

"It may be a foolish feeling, I know. Sometimes the feelings that hurt
women most are foolish. If I tell you that if you ride him you will
torture me, I'm sure you'll grant what I ask. It's such a little thing
and it means so much--so much agony to me. I'd do anything for you--give
up anything in the world at your slightest wish. Don't ride him!"

"This is a ridiculous fancy of yours, Honora. The horse is all right.
I've ridden dozens of worse ones."

"Oh, I'm sure he isn't," she cried; "call it fancy, call it instinct,
call it anything you like--but I feel it, Hugh. That woman--Mrs.
Rindge--knows something about horses, and she said he was a brute."

"Yes," he interrupted, with a short laugh, "and she wants to ride him."

"Hugh, she's reckless. I--I've been watching her since she came here, and
I'm sure she's reckless with--with a purpose."

"You're morbid," he said. "She's one of the best sportswomen in the
country--that's the reason she wanted to ride the horse. Look here,
Honora, I'd accede to any reasonable request. But what do you expect me
to do?" he demanded; "go down and say I'm afraid to ride him? or that my
wife doesn't want me to? I'd never hear the end of it. And the first
thing Adele would do would be to jump on him herself--a little wisp of a
woman that looks as if she couldn't hold a Shetland pony! Can't you see
that what you ask is impossible?"

He started for the door to terminate a conversation which had already
begun to irritate him. For his anger, in these days, was very near the
surface. She made one more desperate appeal.

"Hugh--the man who sold him--he knew the horse was dangerous. I'm sure he
did, from something he said to me while you were gone."

"These country people are all idiots and cowards," declared Chiltern.
"I've known 'em a good while, and they haven't got the spirit of mongrel
dogs. I was a fool to think that I could do anything for them. They're
kind and neighbourly, aren't they?" he exclaimed. "If that old rascal
flattered himself he deceived me, he was mistaken. He'd have been
mightily pleased if the beast had broken my neck."

"Hugh!"

"I can't, Honora. That's all there is to it, I can't. Now don't cut up
about nothing. I'm sorry, but I've got to go. Adele's waiting."

He came back, kissed her hurriedly, turned and opened the door. She
followed him into the hallway, knowing that she had failed, knowing that
she never could have succeeded. There she halted and watched him go down
the stairs, and stand with her hands tightly pressed together: voices
reached her, a hurrah from George Pembroke, and the pounding of hoofs on
the driveway. It had seemed such a little thing to ask!

But she did not dwell upon this, now, when fear was gnawing her: how she
had humbled her pride for days and weeks and months for him, and how he
had refused her paltry request lest he should be laughed at. Her
reflections then were not on his waning love. She was filled with the
terror of losing him--of losing all that remained to her in the world.
Presently she began to walk slowly towards the stairs, descended them,
and looked around her. The hall, at least, had not changed. She listened,
and a bee hummed in through the open doorway. A sudden longing for
companionship possessed her-no matter whose; and she walked hurriedly, as
though she were followed, through the empty rooms until she came upon
George Pembroke stretched at full length on the leather-covered lounge in
the library. He opened his eyes, and got up with alacrity.

"Please don't move," she said.

He looked at her. Although his was not what may be called a sympathetic
temperament, he was not without a certain knowledge of women;
superficial, perhaps. But most men of his type have seen them in despair;
and since he was not related to this particular despair, what finer
feelings he had were the more easily aroused. It must have been clear to
her then that she had lost the power to dissemble, all the clearer
because of Mr. Pembroke's cheerfulness.

"I wasn't going to sleep," he assured her. "Circumstantial evidence is
against me, I know. Where's Abby? reading French literature?"

"I haven't seen her," replied Honora.

"She usually goes to bed with a play at this hour. It's a horrid habit
--going to bed, I mean. Don't you think? Would you mind showing me about
a little?"

"Do you really wish to?" asked Honora, incredulously.

"I haven't been here since my senior year," said Mr. Pembroke. "If the
old General were alive, he could probably tell you something of that
visit--he wrote to my father about it. I always liked the place, although
the General was something of a drawback. Fine old man, with no memory."

"I should have thought him to have had a good memory," she said.

"I have always been led to believe that he was once sent away from
college in his youth,--for his health," he explained significantly. "No
man has a good memory who can't remember that. Perhaps the battle of
Gettysburg wiped it out."

Thus, in his own easy-going fashion, Mr. Pembroke sought to distract her.
She put on a hat, and they walked about, the various scenes recalling
incidents of holidays he had spent at Highlawns. And after a while Honora
was thankful that chance had sent her in this hour to him rather than to
Mrs. Kame. For the sight, that morning of this lady in her dressing-gown
over the stairway, had seemingly set the seal on a growing distaste. Her
feeling had not been the same about Mrs. Rindge: Mrs. Kame's actions
savoured of deliberate choice, of an inherent and calculating wickedness.

Had the distraction of others besides himself been the chief business of
Mr. Pembroke's life, he could not have succeeded better that afternoon.
He must be given this credit: his motives remain problematical; at length
he even drew laughter from her. The afternoon wore on, they returned to
the garden for tea, and a peaceful stillness continued to reign about
them, the very sky smiling placidly at her fears. Not by assuring her
that Hugh was unusual horseman, that he had passed through many dangers
beside which this was a bagatelle, could the student of the feminine by
her side have done half so well. And it may have been that his success
encouraged him as he saw emerging, as the result of his handiwork, an
unexpectedly attractive--if still somewhat serious-woman from the gloom
that had enveloped her. That she should still have her distrait moments
was but natural.

He talked to her largely about Hugh, of whom he appeared sincerely fond.
The qualities which attracted Mr. Pembroke in his own sex were somewhat
peculiar, and seemingly consisted largely in a readiness to drop the
business at hand, whatever it might be, at the suggestion of a friend to
do something else; the "something else," of course, to be the conception
of an ingenious mind. And it was while he was in the midst of an anecdote
proving the existence of this quality in his friend that he felt a sudden
clutch on his arm.

They listened. Faintly, very faintly, could be heard the sound of hoof
beats; rapid, though distant.

"Do you hear?" she whispered, and still held his arm.

"It's just like them to race back," said Pembroke, with admirable
nonchalance.

"But they wouldn't come back at this time--it's too early. Hugh always
takes long rides. They started for Hubbard's--it's twelve miles."

"Adele changes her mind every minute of the day," he said.

"Listen!" she cried, and her clutch tightened. The hoof beats grew
louder. "It's only one--it's only one horse!"

Before he could answer, she was already halfway up the garden path
towards the house. He followed her as she ran panting through the
breakfast room, the dining room, and drawing-room, and when they reached
the hall, Starling, the butler, and two footmen were going out at the
door. A voice--Mrs. Kame's--cried out, "What is it?" over the stairs, but
they paid no heed. As they reached the steps they beheld the slight
figure of Mrs. Rindge on a flying horse coming towards them up the
driveway. Her black straw hat had slipped to the back of her neck, her
hair was awry, her childish face white as paper. Honora put her hand to
her heart. There was no need to tell her the news--she had known these
many hours.

Mrs. Rindge's horse came over the round grass-plot of the circle and
planted his fore feet in the turf as she pulled him up. She lurched
forward. It was Starling who lifted her off--George Pembroke stood by
Honora.

"My God, Adele," he exclaimed, "why don't you speak?"

She was staring at Honora.

"I can't!" she cried. "I can't tell you--it's too terrible! The horse--"
she seemed to choke.

It was Honora who went up to her with a calmness that awed them.

"Tell me," she said, "is he dead?"

Mrs. Rindge nodded, and broke into hysterical sobbing.

"And I wanted to ride him myself," she sobbed, as they led her up the
steps.

In less than an hour they brought him home and laid him in the room in
which he had slept from boyhood, and shut the door. Honora looked into
his face. It was calm at last, and his body strangely at rest. The
passions which had tortured it and driven it hither and thither through a
wayward life had fled: the power gone that would brook no guiding hand,
that had known no master. It was not until then that she fell upon him,
weeping . . . .




CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEEK PARIS

As she glanced around the sitting-room of her apartment in Paris one
September morning she found it difficult, in some respects, to realize
that she had lived in it for more than five years. After Chiltern's death
she had sought a refuge, and she had found it here: a refuge in which she
meant--if her intention may be so definitely stated--to pass the
remainder of her days.

As a refuge it had become dear to her. When first she had entered it she
had looked about her numbly, thankful for walls and roof, thankful for
its remoteness from the haunts of the prying: as a shipwrecked castaway
regards, at the first light, the cave into which he has stumbled into the
darkness-gratefully. And gradually, castaway that she felt herself to be,
she had adorned it lovingly, as one above whose horizon the sails of hope
were not to rise; filled it with friends not chosen in a day, whose
faithful ministrations were not to cease. Her books, but only those
worthy to be bound and read again; the pictures she had bought when she
had grown to know what pictures were; the music she had come to love for
its eternal qualities--these were her companions.

The apartment was in the old quarter across the Seine, and she had found
it by chance. The ancient family of which this hotel had once been the
home would scarce have recognized, if they had returned the part of it
Honora occupied. The room in which she mostly lived was above the corner
of the quiet street, and might have been more aptly called a sitting-room
than a salon. Its panels were the most delicate of blue-gray,
fantastically designed and outlined by ribbings of blue. Some of them
contained her pictures. The chairs, the sofas, the little tabourets, were
upholstered in yellow, their wood matching the panels. Above the carved
mantel of yellowing marble was a quaintly shaped mirror extending to the
high ceiling, and flanked on either side by sconces. The carpet was a
golden brown, the hangings in the tall windows yellow. And in the morning
the sun came in, not boisterously, but as a well-bred and cheerful guest.
An amiable proprietor had permitted her also to add a wrought-iron
balcony as an adjunct to this room, and sometimes she sat there on the
warmer days reading under the seclusion of an awning, or gazing at the
mysterious facades of the houses opposite, or at infrequent cabs or
pedestrians below.

An archway led out of the sitting-room into a smaller room, once the
boudoir of a marquise, now Honora's library. This was in blue and gold,
and she had so far modified the design of the decorator as to replace the
mirrors of the cases with glass; she liked to see her books. Beyond the
library was a dining room in grey, with dark red hangings; it overlooked
the forgotten garden of the hotel.

One item alone of news from the outer world, vital to her, had drifted to
her retreat. Newspapers filled her with dread, but it was from a
newspaper, during the first year of her retirement, that she had learned
of the death of Howard Spence. A complication of maladies was mentioned,
but the true underlying cause was implied in the article, and this had
shocked but not surprised her. A ferment was in progress in her own
country, the affairs of the Orange Trust Company being investigated, and
its president under indictment at the hour of his demise. Her feelings at
the time, and for months after, were complex. She had been moved to deep
pity, for in spite of what he had told her of his business transactions,
it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal. That he had been
the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how
clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs. He
had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school
the motto of which he had once succinctly stated: the survival of the
fittest. He had not been, alas, one of those to survive.

Honora had found it impossible to unravel the tangled skein of their
relationship, and to assign a definite amount of blame to each. She did
not shirk hers, and was willing to accept a full measure. That she had
done wrong in marrying him, and again in leaving him to marry another
man, she acknowledged freely. Wrong as she knew this to have been,
severely though she had been punished for it, she could not bring herself
to an adequate penitence. She tried to remember him as he had been at
Silverdale, and in the first months of their marriage, and not as he had
afterwards become. There was no question in her mind, now that it was
given her to see things more clearly, that she might have tried harder,
much harder, to make their marriage a success. He might, indeed, have
done more to protect and cherish her. It was a man's part to guard a
woman against the evils with which she had been surrounded. On the other
hand, she could not escape the fact, nor did she attempt to escape it,
that she had had the more light of the two: and that, though the task
were formidable, she might have fought to retain that light and infuse
him with it.

That she did not hold herself guiltless is the important point. Many of
her hours were spent in retrospection. She was, in a sense, as one dead,
yet retaining her faculties; and these became infinitely keen now that
she was deprived of the power to use them as guides through life. She
felt that the power had come too late, like a legacy when one is old. And
she contemplated the Honora of other days--of the flesh, as though she
were now the spirit departed from that body; sorrowfully, poignantly
regretful of the earthly motives, of the tarnished ideals by which it had
been animated and led to destruction.

Even Hugh Chiltern had left her no illusions. She thought of him at times
with much tenderness; whether she still loved him or not she could not
say. She came to the conclusion that all capacity for intense feeling had
been burned out of her. And she found that she could permit her mind to
rest upon no period of her sojourn at Grenoble without a sense of horror;
there had been no hour when she had seemed secure from haunting terror,
no day that had not added its mite to the gathering evidence of an
ultimate retribution. And it was like a nightmare to summon again this
spectacle of the man going to pieces under her eyes. The whole incident
in her life as time wore on assumed an aspect bizarre, incredible, as the
follies of a night of madness appear in the saner light of morning. Her
great love had bereft her of her senses, for had the least grain of
sanity remained to her she might have known that the thing they attempted
was impossible of accomplishment.

Her feeling now, after four years, might be described as relief. To
employ again the figure of the castaway, she often wondered why she of
all others had been rescued from the tortures of slow drowning and thrown
up on an island. What had she done above the others to deserve
preservation? It was inevitable that she should on occasions picture to
herself the years with him that would have stretched ahead, even as the
vision of them had come to her that morning when, in obedience to his
telegram, she had told Starling to prepare for guests. Her escape had
indeed been miraculous!

Although they had passed through a ceremony, the conviction had never
taken root in her that she had been married to Chiltern. The tie that had
united her to him had not been sacred, though it had been no less
binding; more so, in fact. That tie would have become a shackle. Her
perception of this, after his death, had led her to instruct her attorney
to send back to his relatives all but a small income from his estate,
enough for her to live on during her lifetime. There had been some
trouble about this matter; Mrs. Grainger, in particular, had surprised
her in making objections, and had finally written a letter which Honora
received with a feeling akin to gratitude. Whether her own action had
softened this lady's feelings, she never understood; she had cherished
the letter for its unexpectedly charitable expressions. Chiltern's family
had at last agreed to accept the estate on the condition that the income
mentioned should be tripled. And to this Honora had consented. Money had
less value than ever in her eyes.

She lived here in Paris in what may be called a certain peace, made no
demands upon the world, and had no expectations from it. She was now in
half mourning, and intended to remain so. Her isolation was of her own
choice, if a stronger expression be not used. She was by no means an
enforced outcast. And she was even aware that a certain sympathy for her
had grown up amongst her former friends which had spread to the colony of
her compatriots in Paris; in whose numbers there were some, by no means
unrecognized, who had defied the conventions more than she. Hugh
Chiltern's reputation, and the general knowledge of his career, had no
doubt aided to increase this sympathy, but the dignity of her conduct
since his death was at the foundation of it. Sometimes, on her walks and
drives, she saw people bowing to her, and recognized friends or
acquaintances of what seemed to her like a former existence.

Such had been her life in Paris until a certain day in early September, a
month before this chapter opens. It was afternoon, and she was sitting in
the balcony cutting a volume of memoirs when she heard the rattle of a
cab on the cobbles below, and peered curiously over the edge of the
railing. Although still half a block away, the national characteristics
of the passenger were sufficiently apparent. He was an American--of that
she was sure. And many Americans did not stray into that quarter. The
length of his legs, for one thing, betrayed him: he found the seat of the
fiacre too low, and had crossed one knee over the other. Other and less
easily definable attributes he did not lack. And as he leaned against the
faded blue cushions regarding with interest the buildings he passed, he
seemed, like an ambassador, to convert the cab in which he rode into
United States territory. Then she saw that it was Peter Erwin.

She drew back her head from the balcony rail, and tried to sit still and
to think, but she was trembling as one stricken with a chill. The cab
stopped; and presently, after an interval, his card was handed her. She
rose, and stood for a moment with her hand against the wall before she
went into the salon. None of the questions she had asked herself were
answered. Was she glad to see him? and what would be his attitude towards
her? When she beheld him standing before her she had strength only to
pronounce his name.

He came forward quickly and took her hand and looked down into her face.
She regarded him tremulously, instinctively guessing the vital importance
of this moment for him; and she knew then that he had been looking
forward to it in mingled hope and dread, as one who gazes seaward after a
night of tempest for the ship he has seen at dusk in the offing. What had
the tempest done to her? Such was his question. And her heart leaped as
she saw the light growing in his eyes, for it meant much to her that he
should see that she was not utterly dismantled. She fell; his own hand
tremble as he relinquished hers. He was greatly moved; his voice, too,
betrayed it.

"You see I have found you," he said.

"Yes," she answered; "--why did you come?"

"Why have I always come to you, when it was possible?" he asked.

"No one ever had such a friend, Peter. Of that I am sure:'

"I wanted to see Paris," he said, "before I grew too decrepit to enjoy
it."

She smiled, and turned away.

"Have you seen much of it?"

"Enough to wish to see more."

"When did you arrive?"

"Some time in the night," he said, "from Cherbourg. And I'm staying at a
very grand hotel, which might be anywhere. A man I crossed with on the
steamer took me there. I think I'd move to one of the quieter ones, the
French ones, if I were a little surer of my pronunciation and the
subjunctive mood."

"You don't mean to say you've been studying French!"

He coloured a little, and laughed.

"You think it ridiculous at my time of life? I suppose you're right. You
should have seen me trying to understand the cabmen. The way these people
talk reminds me more of a Gatling gun than anything I can think of. It
certainly isn't human."

"Perhaps you have come over as ambassador," she suggested. "When I saw
you in the cab, even before I recognized you, I thought of a bit of our
soil broken off and drifted over here."

Her voice did not quite sustain the lighter note--the emotion his visit
was causing her was too great. He brought with him into her retreat not
so much a flood of memories as of sensations. He was a man whose image
time with difficulty obliterates, whose presence was a shining thing: so
she had grown to value it in proportion as she had had less of it. She
did inevitably recall the last time she had seen him, in the little
Western city, and how he had overwhelmed her, invaded her with doubts and
aroused the spirit which had possessed her to fight fiercely for its
foothold. And to-day his coming might be likened to the entrance of a
great physician into the room of a distant and lonely patient whom amidst
wide ministrations he has not forgotten. She saw now that he had been
right. She had always seen it, clearly indeed when he had been beside
her, but the spirit within her had been too strong, until now. Now, when
it had plundered her soul of treasures--once so little valued--it had
fled. Such were her thoughts.

The great of heart undoubtedly possess this highest quality of the
physician,--if the statement may thus be put backhandedly,--and Peter
Erwin instinctively understood the essential of what was going on within
her. He appeared to take a delight in the fancy she had suggested; that
he had brought a portion of the newer world to France.

"Not a piece of the Atlantic coast, certainly," he replied. "One of the
muddy islands, perhaps, of the Mississippi."

"All the more representative," she said. "You seem to have taken
possession of Paris, Peter--not Paris of you. You have annexed the seat
of the Capets, and brought democracy at last into the Faubourg."

"Without a Reign of Terror," he added quizzically.

"If you are not ambassador, what are you?" she asked. "I have expected at
any moment to read in the Figaro that you were President of the United
States."

"I am the American tourist," he declared, "with Baedeker for my Bible,
who desires to be shown everything. And I have already discovered that
the legend of the fabulous wealth of the Indies is still in force here.
There are many who are willing to believe that in spite of my modest
appearance--maybe because of it--I have sailed over in a galleon filled
with gold. Already I have been approached from every side by confidential
gentlemen who announced that they spoke English--one of them said
'American'--who have offered to show me many things, and who have
betrayed enough interest in me to inquire whether I were married or
single."

Honora laughed. They were seated in the balcony by this time, and he had
the volume of memoirs on his knee, fingering it idly.

"What did you say to them?" she asked.

"I told them I was the proud father of ten children," he replied. "That
seemed to stagger them, but only for a moment. They offered to take us
all to the Louvre."

"Peter, you are ridiculous! But, in spite of your nationality, you don't
look exactly gullible."

"That is a relief," he said. "I had begun to think I ought to leave my
address and my watch with the Consul General . . . ."

Of such a nature was the first insidious rupture of that routine she had
grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she
had chosen for its very immutable quality. Even its pangs of loneliness
had acquired a certain sweet taste. Partly from a fear of a world that
had hurt her, partly from fear of herself, she had made her burrow deep,
that heat and cold, the changing seasons, and love and hate might be
things far removed. She had sought to remove comparisons, too, from the
limits of her vision; to cherish and keep alive, indeed, such regrets as
she had, but to make no new ones.

Often had she thought of Peter Erwin, and it is not too much to say that
he had insensibly grown into an ideal. He had come to represent to her
the great thing she had missed in life, missed by feverish searching in
the wrong places, digging for gold where the ground had glittered. And,
if the choice had been given her, she would have preferred his spiritual
to his bodily companionship--for a while, at least. Some day, when she
should feel sure that desire had ceased to throb, when she should have
acquired an unshakable and absolute resignation, she would see him. It is
not too much to say, if her feeling be not misconstrued and stretched far
beyond her own conception of it, that he was her one remaining interest
in the world. She had scanned the letters of her aunt and uncle for
knowledge of his doings, and had felt her curiosity justified by a
certain proprietorship that she did not define, faith in humankind, or
the lack of it, usually makes itself felt through one's comparative
contemporaries. That her uncle was a good man, for instance, had no such
effect upon Honora, as the fact that Peter was a good man. And that he
had held a true course had gradually become a very vital thing to her,
perhaps the most vital thing; and she could have imagined no greater
personal calamity now than to have seen him inconsistent. For there are
such men, and most people have known them. They are the men who,
unconsciously, keep life sweet.

Yet she was sorry he had invaded her hiding-place. She had not yet
achieved peace, and much of the weary task would have to be done over
after he was gone.

In the meantime she drifted with astounding ease into another existence.
For it was she, and not the confidential gentlemen, who showed Peter
Paris: not the careless, pleasure-loving Paris of the restaurants, but of
the Cluny and the Carnavalet. The Louvre even was not neglected, and as
they entered it first she recalled with still unaccustomed laughter his
reply to the proffered services of the guide. Indeed, there was much
laughter in their excursions: his native humour sprang from the same well
that held his seriousness. She was amazed at his ability to strip a sham
and leave it grotesquely naked; shams the risible aspect of which she had
never observed in spite of the familiarity four years had given her. Some
of his own countrymen and countrywomen afforded him the greatest
amusement in their efforts to carry off acquired European
"personalities," combinations of assumed indifference and effrontery, and
an accent the like of which was never heard before. But he was neither
bitter nor crude in his criticisms. He made her laugh, but he never made
her ashamed. His chief faculty seemed to be to give her the power to
behold, with astonishing clearness, objects and truths which had lain
before her eyes, and yet hidden. And she had not thought to acquire any
more truths.

The depth of his pleasure in the things he saw was likewise a revelation
to her. She was by no means a bad guide to the Louvre and the Luxembourg,
but the light in her which had come slowly flooded him with radiance at
the sight of a statue or a picture. He would stop with an exclamation and
stand gazing, self-forgetful, for incredible periods, and she would watch
him, filled with a curious sense of the limitations of an appreciation
she had thought complete. Where during his busy life had he got this
thing which others had sought in many voyages in vain?

Other excursions they made, and sometimes these absorbed a day. It was a
wonderful month, that Parisian September, which Honora, when she allowed
herself to think, felt that she had no right to. A month filled to the
brim with colour: the stone facades of the houses, which in certain
lights were what the French so aptly call bleuatre; the dense green
foliage of the horse-chestnut trees, the fantastic iron grills, the Arc
de Triomphe in the centre of its circle at sunset, the wide shaded
avenues radiating from it, the bewildering Champs Elysees, the blue
waters of the Seine and the graceful bridges spanning it, Notre Dame
against the sky. Their walks took them, too, into quainter, forgotten
regions where history was grim and half-effaced, and they speculated on
the France of other days.

They went farther afield; and it was given them to walk together down
green vistas cut for kings, to linger on terraces with the river far
below them, and the roofs of Paris in the hazy distance; that Paris,
sullen so long, the mutterings of which the kings who had sat there must
have heard with dread; that Paris which had finally risen in its wrath
and taken the pleasure-houses and the parks for itself.

Once they went out to Chantilly, the cameo-like chateau that stands
mirrored in its waters, and wandered through the alleys there. Honora had
left her parasol on the parapet, and as they returned Peter went to get
it, while she awaited him at a little distance. A group was chatting
gayly on the lawn, and one of them, a middle-aged, well-dressed man
hailed him with an air of fellowship, and Peter stopped for a moment's
talk.

"We were speaking of ambassadors the other day," he said when he joined
her; "that was our own, Minturn."

"We were speaking of them nearly a month ago," she said.

"A month ago! I can't believe it!" he exclaimed.

"What did he say to you?" Honora inquired presently.

"He was abusing me for not letting him know I was in Paris."

"Peter, you ought to have let him know!"

"I didn't come over here to see the ambassador," answered Peter, gayly.

She talked less than usual on their drive homeward, but he did not seem
to notice the fact. Dusk was already lurking in the courtyards and byways
of the quiet quarter when the porter let them in, and the stone stairway
of the old hotel was almost in darkness. The sitting-room, with its
yellow, hangings snugly drawn and its pervading but soft light, was a
grateful change. And while she was gone to--remove her veil and hat,
Peter looked around it.

It was redolent of her. A high vase of remarkable beauty, filled with
white roses, stood on the gueridon. He went forward and touched it, and
closed his eyes as though in pain. When he opened them he saw her
standing in the archway.

She had taken off her coat, and was in a simple white muslin gown, with a
black belt--a costume that had become habitual. Her age was thirty. The
tragedy and the gravity of her life during these later years had touched
her with something that before was lacking. In the street, in the
galleries, people had turned to look at her; not with impudent stares.
She caught attention, aroused imagination. Once, the year before, she had
had a strange experience with a well-known painter, who, in an impulsive
note, had admitted following her home and bribing the concierge. He
craved a few sittings. Her expression now, as she looked at Peter, was
graver than usual.

"You must not come to-morrow," she said.

"I thought we were going to Versailles again," he replied in surprise. "I
have made the arrangements."

"I have changed my mind. I'm not going."

"You want to postpone it?" he asked.

She took a chair beside the little blaze in the fireplace.

"Sit down, Peter. I wish to say something to you. I have been wishing to
do so for some time."

"Do you object if I stand a moment?" he said. "I feel so much more
comfortable standing, especially when I am going to be scolded."

"Yes," she admitted, "I am going to scold you. Your conscience has warned
you."

"On the contrary," he declared, "it has never been quieter. If I have
offended; it is through ignorance."

"It is through charity, as usual," she said in a low voice. "If your
conscience be quiet, mine is not. It is in myself that I am
disappointed--I have been very selfish. I have usurped you. I have known
it all along, and I have done very wrong in not relinquishing you
before."

"Who would have shown me Paris?" he exclaimed.

"No," she continued, "you would not have been alone. If I had needed
proof of that fact, I had it to-day--"

"Oh, Minturn," he interrupted; "think of me hanging about an Embassy and
trying not to spill tea!" And he smiled at the image that presented.

Her own smile was fleeting.

"You would never do that, I know," she said gravely.

"You are still too modest, Peter, but the time has gone by when I can be
easily deceived. You have a great reputation among men of affairs, an
unique one. In spite of the fact that you are distinctly American, you
have a wide interest in what is going on in the world. And you have an
opportunity here to meet people of note, people really worth while from
every point of view. You have no right to neglect it."

He was silent a moment, looking down at her. She was leaning forward, her
eyes fixed on the fire, her hands clasped between her knees.

"Do you think I care for that?" he asked.

"You ought to care," she said, without looking up. "And it is my duty to
try to make you care."

"Honora, why do you think I came over here?" he said.

"To see Paris," she answered. "I have your own word for it. To--to
continue your education. It never seems to stop."

"Did you really believe that?"

"Of course I believed it. What could be more natural? And you have never
had a holiday like this."

"No," he agreed. "I admit that."

"I don't know how much longer you are going to stay," she said. "You have
not been abroad before, and there are other places you ought to go."

"I'll get you to make out an itinerary."

"Peter, can't you see that I'm serious? I have decided to take matters in
my own hands. The rest of the time you are here, you may come to see me
twice a week. I shall instruct the concierge."

He turned and grasped the mantel shelf with both hands, and touched the
log with the toe of his boot.

"What I told you about seeing Paris may be called polite fiction," he
said. "I came over here to see you. I have been afraid to say it until
to-day, and I am afraid to say it now."

She sat very still. The log flared up again, and he turned slowly and
looked at the shadows in her face.

"You-you have always been good to me," she answered. "I have never
deserved it--I have never understood it. If it is any satisfaction for
you to know that what I have saved of myself I owe to you, I tell you so
freely."

"That," he said, "is something for which God forbid that I should take
credit. What you are is due to the development of a germ within you, a
development in which I have always had faith. I came here to see you, I
came here because I love you, because I have always loved you, Honora."

"Oh, no, not that!" she cried; "not that!"

"Why not?" he asked. "It is something I cannot help, something beyond my
power to prevent if I would. But I would not. I am proud of it, and I
should be lost without it. I have had it always. I have come over to beg
you to marry me."

"It's impossible! Can't you see it's impossible?"

"You don't love me?" he said. Into those few words was thrown all the
suffering of his silent years.

"I don't know what I feel for you," she answered in an agonized voice,
her fingers tightening over the backs of her white hands. "If reverence
be love--if trust be love, infinite and absolute trust--if gratitude be
love--if emptiness after you are gone be a sign of it--yes, I love you.
If the power to see clearly only through you, to interpret myself only by
your aid be love, I acknowledge it. I tell you so freely, as of your
right to know. And the germ of which you spoke is you. You have grown
until you have taken possession of--of what is left of me. If I had only
been able to see clearly from the first, Peter, I should be another woman
to-day, a whole woman, a wise woman. Oh, I have thought of it much. The
secret of life was there at my side from the time I was able to pronounce
your name, and I couldn't see it. You had it. You stayed. You took duty
where you found it, and it has made you great. Oh, I don't mean to speak
in a worldly sense. When I say that, it is to express the highest human
quality of which I can think and feel. But I can't marry you. You must
see it."

"I cannot see it," he replied, when he had somewhat gained control of
himself.

"Because I should be wronging you."

"How?" he asked.

"In the first place, I should be ruining your career."

"If I had a career," he said, smiling gently, "you couldn't ruin it. You
both overestimate and underestimate the world's opinion, Honora. As my
wife, it will not treat you cruelly. And as for my career, as you call
it, it has merely consisted in doing as best I could the work that has
come to me. I have tried to serve well those who have employed me, and if
my services be of value to them, and to those who may need me in the
future, they are not going to reject me. If I have any worth in the
world, you will but add to it. Without you I am incomplete."

She looked up at him wonderingly.

"Yes, you are great," she said. "You pity me, you think of my
loneliness."

"It is true I cannot bear to picture you here," he exclaimed. "The
thought tortures me, but it is because I love you, because I wish to take
and shield you. I am not a man to marry a woman without love. It seems to
me that you should know me well enough to believe that, Honora. There
never has been any other woman in my life, and there never can be. I have
given you proof of it, God knows."

"I am not what I was," she said, "I am not what I was. I have been
dragged down."

He bent and lifted her hand from her knee, and raised it to his lips, a
homage from him that gave her an exquisite pain.

"If you had been dragged down," he answered simply, "my love would have
been killed. I know something of the horrors you have been through, as
though I had suffered them myself. They might have dragged down another
woman, Honora. But they have strangely ennobled you."

She drew her hand away.

"No," she said, "I do not deserve happiness. It cannot be my destiny."

"Destiny," he repeated. "Destiny is a thing not understandable by finite
minds. It is not necessarily continued tragedy and waste, of that I am
certain. Only a little thought is required, it seems to me, to assure us
that we cannot be the judges of our own punishment on this earth. And of
another world we know nothing. It cannot be any one's destiny to throw
away a life while still something may be made of it. You would be
throwing your life away here. That no other woman is possible, or ever
can be possible, for me should be a consideration with you, Honora. What
I ask of you is a sacrifice--will you make me happy?"

Her eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, Peter, do you care so much as that? If--if I could be sure that I
were doing it for you! If in spite--of all that has happened to me, I
could be doing something for you--!"

He stooped and kissed her.

"You can if you will," he said.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

      Best way is to leave 'em alone. Don't dandle 'em (babies)
      Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted
      Comparisons, as Shakespeare said, are odorous
      Constitutionally honest
      Conversation was a mockery
      Every one, man or woman, has the right to happiness
      Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact
      Fetters of love
      Happy the people whose annals are blank in history's book
      He has always been too honest to make a great deal of money
      Her words of comfort were as few as her silent deeds were many
      How can you talk of things other people have and not want them
      Immutable love in a changing, heedless, selfish world
      Intense longing is always followed by disappointment
      Little better than a gambling place (Stock Exchange)
      No reason why we should suffer all our lives for a mistake
      Often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure
      Providence is accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact
      Regarding favourable impressions with profound suspicion
      Resented the implication of possession
      Rocks to which one might cling, successful or failing
      Self-torture is human
      She had never known the necessity of making friends
      Sleep! A despised waste of time in childhood
      So glad to have what other people haven't
      Sought to remove comparisons
      Taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about
      That magic word Change
      The greatest wonders are not at the ends of the earth, but near
      The days of useless martyrdom are past
      Thinking that because you have no ideals, other people haven't
      Those who walk on ice will slide against their wills
      Time, the unbribeable
      Weak coffee and the Protestant religion seemed inseparable
      Why should I desire what I cannot have






THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill


VOLUME 1.

CHAPTER I

I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore
kilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not a
celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I
had left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace and
unobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He never
read me any of his manuscripts, which I can safely say he would have done
had he written any at that time, and therefore my lack of detection of
his promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of the
oddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, and
which struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with the
Celebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricity
must have arrived with his genius, and both after the age of twenty-five.
Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has been
set the laurel of fame!

When I knew him he was a young man without frills or foibles, with an
excellent head for business. He was starting in to practise law in a
downtown office with the intention of becoming a great corporation
lawyer. He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, and
was first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover
laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised
to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon
notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's
shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not have
given him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in old
capitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had little
time or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, and
my nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out of
curiosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I was
soon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I had
often heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. On
these I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personal
taste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.
The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men and
aristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations only
met with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of its
functions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touch
life. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and
perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. They
left with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture,
with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, and
whisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me lay
in the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit was
delightful.

But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if the
newspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read the
criticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two of
them were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.
I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negatives
for the most part of my poor way of thinking. The positives, on the
other hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner of
treatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted it
was social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too delicate for
ordinary detection.

However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At
the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence. He
at once became the hero of the young women of the country from Portland,
Maine, to Portland, Oregon, many of whom wrote him letters and asked him
for his photograph. He was asked to tell what he really meant by the
vague endings of this or that story. And then I began to hear rumors
that his head was turning. These I discredited, of course. If true,
I thought it but another proof of the undermining influence of feminine
flattery, which few men, and fewer young men, can stand. But I watched
his career with interest.

He published other books, of a high moral tone and unapproachable
principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for
some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of polite society.
But in vain.




CHAPTER II

It was by a mere accident that I went West, some years ago, and settled
in an active and thriving town near one of the Great Lakes. The air and
bustle and smack of life about the place attracted me, and I rented an
office and continued to read law, from force of habit, I suppose. My
experience in the service of one of the most prominent of New York
lawyers stood me in good stead, and gradually, in addition to a
heterogeneous business of mines and lumber, I began to pick up a few
clients. But in all probability I should be still pegging away at mines
and lumber, and drawing up occasional leases and contracts, had it not
been for Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, of Philadelphia. Although it has
been specifically written that promotion to a young man comes neither
from the East nor the West, nor yet from the South, Mr. Cooke arrived
from the East, and in the nick of time for me.

I was indebted to Farrar for Mr. Cooke's acquaintance, and this
obligation I have since in vain endeavored to repay. Farrar's profession
was forestry: a graduate of an eastern college, he had gone abroad to
study, and had roughed it with the skilled woodsmen of the Black Forest.
Mr. Cooke, whom he represented, had large tracts of land in these parts,
and Farrar likewise received an income from the state, whose legislature
had at last opened its eyes to the timber depredations and had begun to
buy up reserves. We had rooms in the same Elizabethan building at the
corner of Main and Superior streets, but it was more than a year before I
got farther than a nod with him. Farrar's nod in itself was a repulsion,
and once you had seen it you mentally scored him from the list of your
possible friends. Besides this freezing exterior he possessed a cutting
and cynical tongue, and had but little confidence in the human race.
These qualities did not tend to render him popular in a Western town,
if indeed they would have recommended him anywhere, and I confess to have
thought him a surly enough fellow, being guided by general opinion and
superficial observation. Afterwards the town got to know him, and if it
did not precisely like him, it respected him, which perhaps is better.
And he gained at least a few warm-friends, among whom I deem it an honor
to be mentioned.

Farrar's contempt for consequences finally brought him an unsought-for
reputation. Admiration for him was born the day he pushed O'Meara out
of his office and down a flight of stairs because he had undertaken to
suggest that which should be done with the timber in Jackson County. By
this summary proceeding Farrar lost the support of a faction, O'Meara
being a power in the state and chairman of the forestry board besides.
But he got rid of interference from that day forth.

Oddly enough my friendship with Farrar was an indirect result of the
incident I have just related. A few mornings after, I was seated in my
office trying to concentrate my mind on page twenty of volume ten of the
Records when I was surprised by O'Meara himself, accompanied by two
gentlemen whom I remembered to have seen on various witness stands.
O'Meara was handsomely dressed, and his necktie made but a faint pretence
of concealing the gorgeous diamond in his shirt-front. But his face wore
an aggrieved air, and his left hand was neatly bound in black and tucked
into his coat. He sank comfortably into my wicker chair, which creaked a
protest, and produced two yellow-spotted cigars, chewing the end of one
with much apparent relish and pushing the other at me. His two friends
remained respectfully standing. I guessed at what was coming, and braced
myself by refusing the cigar,--not a great piece of self-denial, by the
way. But a case meant much to me then, and I did seriously regret that
O'Meara was not a possible client. At any rate, my sympathy with Farrar
in the late episode put him out of the question.

O'Meara cleared his throat and began gingerly to undo the handkerchief
on his hand. Then he brought his fist down on the table so that the ink
started from the stand and his cheeks shook with the effort.

"I'll make him pay for this!" he shouted, with an oath.

The other gentlemen nodded their approval, while I put the inkstand in a
place of safety.

"You're a pretty bright young man, Mr. Crocker," he went on, a look of
cunning coming into his little eyes, "but I guess you ain't had too many
cases to object to a big one."

"Did you come here to tell me that?" I asked.

He looked me over queerly, and evidently decided that I meant no
effrontery.

"I came here to get your opinion," he said, holding up a swollen hand,
"but I want to tell you first that I ought to get ten thousand, not a
cent less. That scoundrelly young upstart--"

"If you want my opinion," I replied, trying to speak slowly, "it is that
Mr. Farrar ought to get ten thousand dollars. And I think that would be
only a moderate reward."

I did not feel equal to pushing him into the street, as Farrar had done,
and I have now but a vague notion of what he said and how he got there.
But I remember that half an hour afterwards a man congratulated me openly
in the bank.

That night I found a new friend, although at the time I thought Farrar's
visit to me the accomplishment of a perfunctory courtesy to a man who had
refused to take a case against him. It was very characteristic of Farrar
not to mention this until he rose to go. About half-past eight he
sauntered in upon me, placing his hat precisely on the rack, and we
talked until ten, which is to say that I talked and he commented. His
observations were apt, if a trifle caustic, and it is needless to add
that I found them entertaining. As he was leaving he held out his hand.

"I hear that O'Meara called on you to-day," he said diffidently.

"Yes," I answered, smiling, "I was sorry not to have been able to take
his case."

I sat up for an hour or more, trying to arrive at some conclusion about
Farrar, but at length I gave it up. His visit had in it something
impulsive which I could not reconcile with his manner. He surely owed
me nothing for refusing a case against him, and must have known that my
motives for so doing were not personal. But if I did not understand him,
I liked him decidedly from that night forward, and I hoped that his
advances had sprung from some other motive than politeness. And indeed
we gradually drifted into a quasi-friendship. It became his habit, as he
went out in the morning, to drop into my room for a match, and I returned
the compliment by borrowing his coal oil when mine was out. At such
times we would sit, or more frequently stand, discussing the affairs of
the town and of the nation, for politics was an easy and attractive
subject to us both. It was only in a general way that we touched upon
each other's concerns, this being dangerous ground with Farrar, who was
ever ready to close up at anything resembling a confidence. As for me, I
hope I am not curious, but I own to having had a curiosity about Farrar's
Philadelphia patron, to whom Farrar made but slight allusions. His very
name--Farquhar Fenelon Cooke--had an odd sound which somehow betokened an
odd man, and there was more than one bit of gossip afloat in the town of
which he was the subject, notwithstanding the fact that he had never
honored it with a visit. The gossip was the natural result of Mr.
Cooke's large properties in the vicinity. It has never been my habit,
however, to press a friend on such matters, and I could easily understand
and respect Farrar's reluctance to talk of one from whom he received an
income.

I had occasion, in the May of that year, to make a somewhat long business
trip to Chicago, and on my return, much to my surprise, I found Farrar
awaiting me in the railroad station. He smiled his wonted fraction by
way of greeting, stopped to buy a newspaper, and finally leading me to
his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at
such an unusual proceeding.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"I shan't bother you long," he said; "I simply wanted the chance to talk
to you before you got to your office. I have a Philadelphia client, a
Mr. Cooke, of whom you may have heard me speak. Since you have been away
the railroad has brought suit against him. The row is about the lands
west of the Washita, on Copper Rise. It's the devil if he loses, for the
ground is worth the dollar bills to cover it. I telegraphed, and he got
here yesterday. He wants a lawyer, and I mentioned you."

There came over me then in a flash a comprehension of Farrar which I had
failed to grasp before. But I was quite overcome at his suggestion.

"Isn't it rather a big deal to risk me on?" I said. "Better go to
Chicago and get Parks. He's an expert in that sort of thing." I am
afraid my expostulation was weak.

"I merely spoke of you," replied Farrar, coolly,--"and he has gone around
to your office. He knows about Parks, and if he wants him he'll probably
take him. It all depends upon how you strike Cooke whether you get the
case or not. I have never told you about him," he added with some
hesitation; "he's a trifle queer, but a good fellow at the bottom.
I should hate to see him lose his land."

"How is the railroad mixed up in it?" I asked.

"I don't know much about law, but it would seem as if they had a pretty
strong case," he answered. He went on to tell me what he knew of the
matter in his clean, pithy sentences, often brutally cynical, as though
he had not a spark of interest in any of it. Mr. Cooke's claim to the
land came from a maternal great-uncle, long since deceased, who had been
a settler in these regions. The railroad answered that they had bought
the land with other properties from the man, also deceased, to whom the
old gentleman was alleged to have sold it. Incidentally I learned
something of Mr. Cooke's maternal ancestry.

We drove back to the office with some concern on my part at the prospect
of so large a case. Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the
first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad
gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might
have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines. A silver snaffle on a
heavy leather watch guard which connected the pockets of his corduroy
waistcoat, together with a huge gold stirrup in his Ascot tie,
sufficiently proclaimed his tastes. But I found myself continually
returning to the countenance, and I still think I could have modelled a
better face out of putty. The mouth was rather small, thick-tipped, and
put in at an odd angle; the brown eyes were large, and from their habit
of looking up at one lent to the round face an incongruous solemnity.
But withal there was a perceptible acumen about the man which was
puzzling in the extreme.

"How are you, old man?" said he, hardly waiting for Farrar to introduce
me. "Well, I hope." It was pure cordiality, nothing more. He seemed to
bubble over with it.

I said I was well, and invited him inside.

"No," he said; "I like the look of the town. We can talk business here."

And talk business he did, straight and to the point, so fast and
indistinctly that at times I could scarcely follow him. I answered his
rapid questions briefly, and as best I knew how. He wanted to know what
chance he had to win the suit, and I told him there might be other
factors involved beside those of which he had spoken. Plainly, also,
that the character of his great-uncle was in question, an intimation
which he did not appear to resent. But that there was no denying the
fact that the railroad had a strong thing of it, and a good lawyer into
the bargain.

"And don't you consider yourself a good lawyer?" he cut in.

I pointed out that the railroad lawyer was a man of twice my age,
experience, and reputation.

Without more ado, and before either Farrar or myself had time to resist,
he had hooked an arm into each of us, and we were all three marching down
the street in the direction of his hotel. If this was agony for me, I
could see that it was keener agony for Farrar. And although Mr. Farquhar
Fenelon Cooke had been in town but a scant twenty-four hours, it seemed
as if he knew more of its inhabitants than both of us put together.
Certain it is that he was less particular with his acquaintances. He
hailed the most astonishing people with an easy air of freedom, now
releasing my arm, now Farrar's, to salute. He always saluted. He
stopped to converse with a dozen men we had never seen, many of whom
smelled strongly of the stable, and he invariably introduced Farrar as
the forester of his estate, and me as his lawyer in the great quarrel
with the railroad, until I began to wish I had never heard of Blackstone.
And finally he steered us into the spacious bar of the Lake House.

The next morning the three of us were off early for a look at the
contested property. It was a twenty-mile drive, and the last eight miles
wound down the boiling Washita, still high with the melting snows of the
pine lands. And even here the snows yet slept in the deeper hollows.
unconscious of the budding green of the slopes. How heartily I wished
Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke back in Philadelphia! By his eternal accounts
of his Germantown stables and of the blue ribbons of his hackneys he
killed all sense of pleasure of the scene, and set up an irritation that
was well-nigh unbearable. At length we crossed the river, climbed the
foot-hills, and paused on the ridge. Below us lay the quaint inn and
scattered cottages of Asquith, and beyond them the limitless and
foam-flecked expanse of lake: and on our right, lifting from the shore by
easy slopes for a mile at stretch, Farrar pointed out the timbered lands
of Copper Rise, spread before us like a map. But the appreciation of
beauty formed no part of Mr. Cooke's composition,--that is, beauty as
Farrar and I knew it.

"If you win that case, old man," he cried, striking me a great whack
between the shoulder-blades, "charge any fee you like; I'll pay it! And
I'll make such a country-place out of this as was never seen west of New
York state, and call it Mohair, after my old trotter. I'll put a palace
on that clearing, with the stables just over the knoll. They'll beat the
Germantown stables a whole lap. And that strip of level," he continued,
pointing to a thinly timbered bit, "will hold a mile track nicely."

Farrar and I gasped: it was as if we had tumbled into the Washita.

"It will take money, Mr. Cooke," said Farrar, "and you haven't won the
suit yet."

"Damn the money!" said Mr. Cooke, and we knew he meant it.

Over the episodes of that interminable morning it will, be better to pass
lightly. It was spent by Farrar and me in misery. It was spent by Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke in an ecstasy of enjoyment, driving over and
laying out Mohair, and I must admit he evinced a surprising genius in his
planning, although, according to Farrar, he broke every sacred precept of
landscape gardening again and again. He displayed the enthusiasm of a
pioneer, and the energy of a Napoleon. And if he were too ignorant to
accord to nature a word of praise, he had the grace and intelligence to
compliment Farrar on the superb condition of the forests, and on the
judgment shown in laying out the roads, which were so well chosen that
even in this season they were well drained and dry. That day, too, my
views were materially broadened, and I received an insight into the
methods and possibilities of my friend's profession sufficient to instil
a deeper respect both for it and for him. The crowded spots had been
skilfully thinned of the older trees to give the younger ones a chance,
and the harmony of the whole had been carefully worked out. Now we drove
under dark pines and hemlocks, and then into a lighter relief of birches
and wild cherries, or a copse of young beeches. And I learned that the
estate had not only been paying the taxes and its portion of Farrar's
salary, but also a considerable amount into Mr. Cooke's pocket the while
it was being improved.

Mr. Cooke made his permanent quarters at the Lake House, and soon became
one of the best-known characters about town. He seemed to enjoy his
popularity, and I am convinced that he would have been popular in spite
of his now-famous quarrel with the railroad. His easy command of
profanity, his generous use of money, his predilection for sporting
characters, of whom he was king; his ready geniality and good-fellowship
alike with the clerk of the Lake House or the Mayor, not to mention his
own undeniable personality, all combined to make him a favorite. He had
his own especial table in the dining-room, called all the waiters by
their first names, and they fought for the privilege of attending him.
He likewise called the barkeepers by their first names, and had his own
particular corner of the bar, where none dared intrude, and where he
could almost invariably be found when not in my office. From this corner
he dealt out cigars to the deserving, held stake moneys, decided all
bets, and refereed all differences. His name appeared in the personal
column of one of the local papers on the average of twice a week, or in
lieu thereof one of his choicest stories in the "Notes about Town"
column.

The case was to come up early in July, and I spent most of my time, to
the detriment of other affairs, in preparing for it. I was greatly
hampered in my work by my client, who filled my office with his
tobacco-smoke and that of his friends, and he took it very much for
granted that he was going to win the suit. Fortune had always played
into his hands, he said, and I had no little difficulty in convincing him
that matters had passed from his hands into mine. In this I believe I
was never entirely successful. I soon found, too, that he had no ideas
whatever on the value of discretion, and it was only by repeated threats
of absolute failure that I prevented our secret tactics from becoming the
property of his sporting fraternity and of the town.

The more I worked on the case, the clearer it became to me that Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke's great-uncle had been either a consummate
scoundrel or a lunatic, and that our only hope of winning must be based
on proving him one or the other; it did not matter much which, for my
expectations at best were small. When I had at length settled to this
conclusion I confided it as delicately as possible to my client, who was
sitting at the time with his feet cocked up on the office table, reading
a pink newspaper.

"Which'll be the easier to prove?" he asked, without looking up.

"It would be more charitable to prove he had been out of his mind," I
replied, "and perhaps easier."

"Charity be damned," said this remarkable man. "I'm after the property."

So I decided on insanity. I hunted up and subpoenaed white-haired
witnesses for miles around. Many of them shook their heads when they
spoke of Mr. Cooke's great-uncle, and some knew more of his private
transactions than I could have wished, and I trembled lest my own
witnesses should be turned against me. I learned more of Mr. Cooke's
great-uncle than I knew of Mr. Cooke himself, and to the credit of my
client be it said that none of his relative's traits were apparent in
him, with the possible exception of insanity; and that defect, if it
existed in the grand-nephew, took in him a milder and less criminal turn.
The old rascal, indeed, had so cleverly worded his deed of sale as to
obtain payment without transfer. It was a trifle easier to avoid being
specific in that country in his day than it is now, and the document was,
in my opinion, sufficiently vague to admit of a double meaning. The
original sale had been made to a man, now dead, whom the railroad had
bought out. The Copper Rise property was mentioned among the other lands
in the will in favor of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, and the latter had
gone ahead improving them and increasing their output in spite of the
repeated threats of the railroad to bring suit. And it was not until its
present attorney had come in and investigated the title that the railroad
had resorted to the law. I mention here, by the way, that my client was
the sole heir.

But as the time of the sessions drew near, the outlook for me was
anything but bright. It is true that my witnesses were quite willing to
depose that his actions were queer and out of the common, but these
witnesses were for the most part venerable farmers and backwoodsmen:
expert testimony was deplorably lacking. In this extremity it was Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke himself who came unwittingly to my rescue. He had
bought a horse,--he could never be in a place long without one,--which
was chiefly remarkable, he said, for picking up his hind feet as well as
his front ones. However he may have differed from the ordinary run of
horses, he was shortly attacked by one of the thousand ills to which
every horse is subject. I will not pretend to say what it was. I found
Mr. Cooke one morning at his usual place in the Lake House bar holding
forth with more than common vehemence and profanity on the subject of
veterinary surgeons. He declared there was not a veterinary surgeon in
the whole town fit to hold a certificate, and his listeners nodded an
extreme approval to this sentiment. A grizzled old fellow who kept a
stock farm back in the country chanced to be there, and managed to get a
word in on the subject during one of my client's rare pauses.

"Yes," he said, "that's so. There ain't one of 'em now fit to travel
with young Doctor Vane, who was here some fifteen years gone by. He
weren't no horse-doctor, but he could fix up a foundered horse in a night
as good as new. If your uncle was livin', he'd back me on that, Mr.
Cooke."

Here was my chance. I took the old man aside, and two or three glasses
of Old Crow launched him into reminiscence.

"Where is Doctor Vane now?" I asked finally.

"Over to Minneapolis, sir, with more rich patients nor he can take care
of. Wasn't my darter over there last month, and seen him? And demned if
he didn't pull up his carriage and talk to her. Here's luck to him."

I might have heard much more of the stockraiser had I stayed, but I fear
I left him somewhat abruptly in my haste to find Farrar. Only three days
remained before the case was to come up. Farrar readily agreed to go to
Minneapolis, and was off on the first train that afternoon. I would have
asked Mr. Cooke to go had I dared trust him, such was my anxiety to have
him out of the way, if only for a time. I did not tell him about the
doctor. He sat up very late with me that night on the Lake House porch
to give me a rubbing down, as he expressed it, as he might have
admonished some favorite jockey before a sweepstake. "Take it easy, old
man," he would say repeatedly, "and don't give things the bit before
you're sure of their wind!"

Days passed, and not a word from Farrar. The case opened with Mr.
Cooke's friends on the front benches. The excitement it caused has
rarely been equalled in that section, but I believe this was due less to
its sensational features than to Mr. Cooke, who had an abnormal though
unconscious talent for self-advertisement. It became manifest early that
we were losing. Our testimony, as I had feared, was not strong enough,
although they said we were making a good fight of it. I was racked with
anxiety about Farrar; at last, when I had all but given up hope, I
received a telegram from him dated at Detroit, saying he would arrive
with the doctor that evening. This was Friday, the fourth day of the
trial.

The doctor turned out to be a large man, well groomed and well fed, with
a twinkle in his eye. He had gone to Narragansett Pier for the summer,
whither Farrar had followed him. On being introduced, Mr. Cooke at once
invited him out to have a drink.

"Did you know my uncle?" asked my client.

"Yes," said the doctor, "I should say I did."

"Poor old duffer," said Mr. Cooke, with due solemnity; "I understand he
was a maniac."

"Well," said the doctor, while we listened with a breathless interest,
"he wasn't exactly a maniac, but I think I can safely say he was a
lunatic."

"Then here's to insanity!" said the irrepressible, his glass swung in
mid-air, when a thought struck him, and he put it down again and looked
hard at the doctor.

"Will you swear to it?" he demanded.

"I would swear to it before Saint Peter," said the doctor, fervently.

He swore to it before a jury, which was more to the point, and we won our
case. It did not even go to the court of appeals; I suppose the railroad
thought it cheaper to drop it, since no right of way was involved. And
the decision was scarcely announced before Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke had
begun work on his new country place, Mohair.

I have oftentimes been led to consider the relevancy of this chapter, and
have finally decided to insert it. I concluded that the actual narrative
of how Mr. Cooke came to establish his country-place near Asquith would
be interesting, and likewise throw some light on that gentleman's
character. And I ask the reader's forbearance for the necessary personal
history involved. Had it not been for Mr. Cooke's friendship for me I
should not have written these pages.




CHAPTER III

Events, are consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size.
The wars of Troy were fought for a woman, and Charles VIII, of France,
bumped his head against a stone doorway and died because he did not stoop
low enough. And to descend from history down to my own poor chronicle,
Mr. Cooke's railroad case, my first experience at the bar of any gravity
or magnitude, had tied to it a string of consequences then far beyond my
guessing. The suit was my stepping-stone not only to a larger and more
remunerative practice, but also, I believe, to the position of district
attorney, which I attained shortly afterwards.

Mr. Cooke had laid out Mohair as ruthlessly as Napoleon planned the new
Paris; though not, I regret to say, with a like genius. Fortunately
Farrar interposed and saved the grounds, but there was no guardian angel
to do a like turn for the house. Mr. Langdon Willis, of Philadelphia,
was the architect who had nominal charge of the building. He had
regularly submitted some dozen plans for Mr. Cooke's approval, which were
as regularly rejected. My client believed, in common with a great many
other people, that architects should be driven and not followed, and was
plainly resolved to make this house the logical development of many
cherished ideas. It is not strange, therefore, that the edifice was
completed by a Chicago contractor who had less self-respect than Mr.
Willis, the latter having abruptly refused to have his name tacked on to
the work.

Mohair was finished and ready for occupation in July, two years after the
suit. I drove out one day before Mr. Cooke's arrival to look it over.
The grounds, where Farrar had had matters pretty much his own way, to my
mind rivalled the best private parks in the East. The stables were
filled with a score or so of Mr. Cooke's best horses, brought hither in
his private cars, and the trotters were exercising on the track.
The middle of June found Farrar and myself at the Asquith Inn. It was
Farrar's custom to go to Asquith in the summer, being near the forest
properties in his charge; and since Asquith was but five miles from the
county-seat it was convenient for me, and gave me the advantages of the
lake breezes and a comparative rest, which I should not have had in
town. At that time Asquith was a small community of summer residents
from Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and other western cities, most of
whom owned cottages and the grounds around them. They were a quiet lot
that long association had made clannish; and they had a happy faculty, so
rare in summer resorts, of discrimination between an amusement and a
nuisance. Hence a great many diversions which are accounted pleasurable
elsewhere are at Asquith set down at their true value. It was,
therefore, rather with resentment than otherwise that the approaching
arrival of Mr. Cooke and the guests he was likely to have at Mohair were
looked upon.

I had not been long at Asquith before I discovered that Farrar was acting
in a peculiar manner, though I was longer in finding out what the matter
was. I saw much less of him than in town. Once in a while in the
evenings, after ten, he would run across me on the porch of the inn,
or drift into my rooms. Even after three years of more or less intimacy
between us, Farrar still wore his exterior of pessimism and indifference,
the shell with which he chose to hide a naturally warm and affectionate
disposition. In the dining-room we sat together at the end of a large
table set aside for bachelors and small families of two or three, and
it seemed as though we had all the humorists and story-tellers in that
place. And Farrar as a source of amusement proved equal to the best
of them. He would wait until a story was well under way, and then
annihilate the point of it with a cutting cynicism and set the table in
a roar of laughter. Among others who were seated here was a Mr. Trevor,
of Cincinnati, one of the pioneers of Asquith. Mr. Trevor was a trifle
bombastic, with a tendency towards gesticulation, an art which he had
learned in no less a school than the Ohio State Senate. He was a
self-made man,--a fact which he took good care should not escape
one,--and had amassed his money, I believe, in the dry-goods business.
He always wore a long, shiny coat, a low, turned-down collar, and a black
tie, all of which united to give him the general appearance of a
professional pallbearer.

But Mr. Trevor possessed a daughter who amply made up for his
shortcomings. She was the only one who could meet Farrar on his own
ground, and rarely a meal passed that they did not have a tilt. They
filled up the holes of the conversation with running commentaries, giving
a dig at the luckless narrator and a side-slap at each other, until one
would have given his oath they were sworn enemies. At least I, in the
innocence of my heart, thought so until I was forcibly enlightened.
I had taken rather a prejudice to Miss Trevor. I could find no better
reason than her antagonism to Farrar. I was revolving this very thing
in my mind one day as I was paddling back to the inn after a look at my
client's new pier and boat-houses, when I descried Farrar's catboat some
distance out. The lake was glass, and the sail hung lifeless. It was
near lunch-time, and charity prompted me to head for the boat and give it
a tow homeward. As I drew near, Farrar himself emerged from behind the
sail and asked me, with a great show of nonchalance, what I wanted.

"To tow you back for lunch, of course," I answered, used to his ways.

He threw me a line, which I made fast to the stern, and then he
disappeared again. I thought this somewhat strange, but as the boat was
a light one, I towed it in and hitched it to the wharf, when, to my great
astonishment, there disembarked not Farrar, but Miss Trevor. She leaped
lightly ashore and was gone before I could catch my breath, while Farrar
let down the sail and offered me a cigarette. I had learned a lesson in
appearances.

It could not have been very long after this that I was looking over my
batch of New York papers, which arrived weekly, when my eye was arrested
by a name. I read the paragraph, which announced the fact that my friend
the Celebrity was about to sail for Europe in search of "color" for his
next novel; this was already contracted for at a large price, and was to
be of a more serious nature than any of his former work. An interview
was published in which the Celebrity had declared that a new novel was
to appear in a short time. I do not know what impelled me, but I began
at once to search through the other papers, and found almost identically
the same notice in all of them.

By one of those odd coincidents which sometimes start one to thinking,
the Celebrity was the subject of a lively discussion when I reached the
table that evening. I had my quota of information concerning his
European trip, but I did not commit myself when appealed to for an
opinion. I had once known the man (which, however, I did not think it
worth while to mention) and I did not feel justified in criticising him
in public. Besides, what I knew of him was excellent, and entirely apart
from the literary merit or demerit of his work. The others, however,
were within their right when they censured or praised him, and they did
both. Farrar, in particular, surprised me by the violence of his
attacks, while Miss Trevor took up the Celebrity's defence with equal
ardor. Her motives were beyond me now. The Celebrity's works spoke
for themselves, she said, and she could not and would not believe such
injurious reports of one who wrote as he did.

The next day I went over to the county-seat, and got back to Asquith
after dark. I dined alone, and afterwards I was strolling up and down
one end of the long veranda when I caught sight of a lonely figure in a
corner, with chair tilted back and feet on the rail. A gleam of a cigar
lighted up the face, and I saw that it was Farrar. I sat down beside
him, and we talked commonplaces for a while, Farrar's being almost
monosyllabic, while now and again feminine voices and feminine laughter
reached our ears from the far end of the porch. They seemed to go
through Farrar like a knife, and he smoked furiously, his lips tightly
compressed the while. I had a dozen conjectures, none of which I dared
voice. So I waited in patience.

"Crocker," said he, at length, "there's a man here from Boston, Charles
Wrexell Allen; came this morning. You know Boston. Have you ever heard
of him?"

"Allen," I repeated, reflecting; "no Charles Wrexell."

"It is Charles Wrexell, I think," said Farrar, as though the matter were
trivial. "However, we can go into the register and make sure."

"What about him?" I asked, not feeling inclined to stir.

The Celebrity

"Oh, nothing. An arrival is rather an occurrence, though. You can hear
him down there now," he added, tossing his head towards the other end of
the porch, "with the women around him."

In fact, I did catch the deeper sound of a man's voice among the lighter
tones, and the voice had a ring to it which was not wholly unfamiliar,
although I could not place it.

I threw Farrar a bait.

"He must make friends easily," I said.

"With the women?--yes," he replied, so scathingly that I was forced to
laugh in spite of myself.

"Let us go in and look at the register," I suggested. "You may have his
name wrong."

We went in accordingly. Sure enough, in bold, heavy characters, was the
name Charles Wrexell Allen written out in full. That handwriting was one
in a thousand. I made sure I had seen it before, and yet I did not know
it; and the more I puzzled over it the more confused I became. I turned
to Farrar.

"I have had a poor cigar passed off on me and deceive me for a while.
That is precisely the case here. I think I should recognize your man if
I were to see him."

"Well," said Farrar, "here's your chance."

The company outside were moving in. Two or three of the older ladies
came first, carrying their wraps; then a troop of girls, among whom was
Miss Trevor; and lastly, a man. Farrar and I had walked to the door
while the women turned into the drawing-room, so that we were brought
face to face with him, suddenly. At sight of me he halted abruptly,
as though he had struck the edge of a door, changed color, and held out
his hand, tentatively. Then he withdrew it again, for I made no sign of
recognition.

It was the Celebrity!

I felt a shock of disgust as I passed out. Masquerading, it must be
admitted, is not pleasant to the taste; and the whole farce, as it
flashed through my mind,--his advertised trip, his turning up here under
an assumed name, had an ill savor. Perhaps some of the things they said
of him might be true, after all.

"Who the devil is he?" said Farrar, dropping for once his indifference;
"he looked as if he knew you."

I evaded.

"He may have taken me for some one else," I answered with all the
coolness I could muster. "I have never met any one of his name. His
voice and handwriting, however, are very much like those of a man I used
to know."

Farrar was very poor company that evening, and left me early. I went
to my rooms and had taken down a volume of Carlyle, who can generally
command my attention, when there came a knock at the door.

"Come in," I replied, with an instinctive sense of prophecy.

This was fulfilled at once by the appearance of the Celebrity. He was
attired--for the details of his dress forced themselves upon me vividly
--in a rough-spun suit of knickerbockers, a colored-shirt having a large
and prominent gold stud, red and brown stockings of a diamond pattern,
and heavy walking-boots. And he entered with an air of assurance that
was maddening.

"My dear Crocker," he exclaimed, "you have no idea how delighted I am to
see you here!"

I rose, first placing a book-mark in Carlyle, and assured him that I was
surprised to see him here.

"Surprised to see me!" he returned, far from being damped by my manner.
"In fact, I am a little surprised to see myself here."

He sank back on the window-seat and clasped his hands behind his head.

"But first let me thank you for respecting my incognito," he said.

I tried hard to keep my temper, marvelling at the ready way he had chosen
to turn my action.

"And now," he continued, "I suppose you want to know why I came out
here." He easily supplied the lack of cordial solicitation on my part.

"Yes, I should like to know," I said.

Thus having aroused my curiosity, he took his time about appeasing it,
after the custom of his kind. He produced a gold cigarette case, offered
me a cigarette, which I refused, took one himself and blew the smoke in
rings toward the ceiling. Then, raising himself on his elbow, he drew
his features together in such a way as to lead me to believe he was about
to impart some valuable information.

"Crocker," said he, "it's the very deuce to be famous, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," I replied curtly, wondering what he was driving at;
"I have never tried it."

"An ordinary man, such as you, can't conceive of the torture a fellow in
my position is obliged to go through the year round, but especially in
the summer, when one wishes to go off on a rest. You know what I mean,
of course."

"I am afraid I do not," I answered, in a vain endeavor to embarrass him.

"You're thicker than when I used to know you, then," he returned with
candor. "To tell the truth, Crocker, I often wish I were back at the
law, and had never written a line. I am paying the penalty of fame.
Wherever I go I am hounded to death by the people who have read my books,
and they want to dine and wine me for the sake of showing me off at their
houses. I am heartily sick and tired of it all; you would be if you had
to go through it. I could stand a winter, but the worst comes
in the summer, when one meets the women who fire all sorts of
socio-psychological questions at one for solution, and who have
suggestions for stories." He shuddered.

"And what has all this to do with your coming here?" I cut in, strangling
a smile.

He twisted his cigarette at an acute angle with his face, and looked at
me out of the corner of his eye.

"I'll try to be a little plainer," he went on, sighing as one unused to
deal with people who require crosses on their t's. "I've been worried
almost out of my mind with attention--nothing but attention the whole
time. I can't go on the street but what I'm stared at and pointed out,
so I thought of a scheme to relieve it for a time. It was becoming
unbearable. I determined to assume a name and go to some quiet little
place for the summer, West, if possible, where I was not likely to be
recognized, and have three months of rest."

He paused, but I offered no comment.

"Well, the more I thought of it, the better I liked the idea. I met a
western man at the club and asked him about western resorts, quiet ones.
'Have you heard of Asquith?' says he. 'No,' said I; 'describe it.' He
did, and it was just the place; quaint, restful, and retired. Of course
I put him off the track, but I did not count on striking you. My man
boxed up, and we were off in twenty-four hours, and here I am."

Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the
Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that
adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought
the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

"You won't tell anyone who I am, will you?" he asked anxiously.

He even misinterpreted my silences.

"Certainly not," I replied. "It is no concern of mine. You might come
here as Emil Zola or Ralph Waldo Emerson and it would make no difference
to me."

He looked at me dubiously, even suspiciously.

"That's a good chap," said he, and was gone, leaving me to reflect on the
ways of genius.

And the longer I reflected, the more positive I became that there existed
a more potent reason for the Celebrity's disguise than ennui. As actions
speak louder than words, so does a man's character often give the lie to
his tongue.




CHAPTER IV

A Lion in an ass's skin is still a lion in spite of his disguise.
Conversely, the same might be said of an ass in a lion's skin. The
Celebrity ran after women with the same readiness and helplessness that
a dog will chase chickens, or that a stream will run down hill. Women
differ from chickens, however, in the fact that they find pleasure in
being chased by a certain kind of a man. The Celebrity was this kind of
a man. From the moment his valet deposited his luggage in his rooms,
Charles Wrexell Allen became the social hero of Asquith. It is by straws
we are enabled to tell which way the wind is blowing, and I first noticed
his partiality for Miss Trevor from the absence of the lively conflicts
she was wont to have with Farrar. These ceased entirely after the
Celebrity's arrival. It was the latter who now commanded the
conversation at our table.

I was truly sorry for Farrar, for I knew the man, the depth of his
nature, and the scope of the shock. He carried it off altogether too
well, and both the studied lightness of his actions and the increased
carelessness of his manner made me fear that what before was feigned,
might turn to a real bitterness.

For Farrar's sake, if the Celebrity had been content with women in
general, all would have been well; but he was unable to generalize, in
one sense, and to particularize, in another. And it was plain that he
wished to monopolize Miss Trevor, while still retaining a hold upon the
others. For my sake, had he been content with women alone, I should have
had no cause to complain. But it seemed that I had an attraction for
him, second only to women, which I could not account for. And I began to
be cursed with a great deal of his company. Since he was absolutely
impervious to hints, and would not take no for an answer, I was helpless.
When he had no engagement he would thrust himself on me. He seemed to
know by intuition--for I am very sure I never told him--what my amusement
was to be the mornings I did not go to the county-seat, and he would
invariably turn up, properly equipped, as I was making my way with judge
Short to the tennis court, or carrying my oars to the water. It was in
vain that I resorted to subterfuge: that I went to bed early intending to
be away before the Celebrity's rising hour. I found he had no particular
rising hour. No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the
veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a
message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly
wait. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all
elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when
he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.

Much of this persecution I might have put up with, indeed, had I not
heard, in one way or another, that he was doing me the honor of calling
me his intimate. This I could not stand, and I soberly resolved to leave
Asquith and go back to town, which I should indeed have done if
deliverance had not arrived from an unexpected quarter.

One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the
steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join
him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from
interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with
a fox terrier. Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a
three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone
with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and
I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the
direction of Mohair.

"That must be your friend Cooke," remarked the Celebrity, looking up.

There could be no doubt of it. With little difficulty I recognized on
the box the familiar figure of my first important client, and beside him
was a lady whom I supposed to be Mrs. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, although I
had had no previous knowledge that such a person existed. The horses
were on a brisk trot, and Mr. Cooke seemed to be getting the best out of
them for the benefit of the sprinkling of people on the inn porch.
Indeed, I could not but admire the dexterous turn of the wrist which
served Mr. Cooke to swing his leaders into the circle and up the hill,
while the liveried guard leaned far out in anticipation of a stumble.
Mr. Cooke hailed me with a beaming smile and a flourish of the whip as
he drew up and descended from the box.

"Maria," he exclaimed, giving me a hearty grip, "this is the man that won
Mohair. My wife, Crocker."

I was somewhat annoyed at this effusiveness before the Celebrity, but I
looked up and caught Mrs. Cooke's eye. It was the calm eye of a general.

"I am glad of the opportunity to thank you, Mr. Crocker," she said
simply. And I liked her from that moment.

Mr. Cooke at once began a tirade against the residents of Asquith for
permitting a sandy and generally disgraceful condition of the roads. So
roundly did he vituperate the inn management in particular, and with such
a loud flow of words, that I trembled lest he should be heard on the
veranda. The Celebrity stood by the block, in an amazement which gave
me a wicked pleasure, and it was some minutes before I had the chance
to introduce him.

Mr. Cooke's idea of an introduction, however, was no mere word-formula:
it was fraught with a deeper and a bibulous meaning. He presented the
Celebrity to his wife, and then invited both of us to go inside with him
by one of those neat and cordial paraphrases in which he was skilled.
I preferred to remain with Mrs. Cooke, and it was with a gleam of hope
at a possible deliverance from my late persecution that I watched the two
disappear together through the hall and into the smoking-room.

"How do you like Mohair?" I asked Mrs. Cooke.

"Do you mean the house or the park?" she laughed; and then, seeing my
embarrassment, she went on: "Oh, the house is just like everything else
Fenelon meddles with. Outside it's a mixture of all the styles, and
inside a hash of all the nationalities from Siamese to Spanish. Fenelon
hangs the Oriental tinsels he has collected on pieces of black baronial
oak, and the coat-of-arms he had designed by our Philadelphia jewellers
is stamped on the dining-room chairs, and even worked into the fire
screens."

There was nothing paltry in her criticism of her husband, nothing she
would not have said to his face. She was a woman who made you feel this,
for sincerity was written all over her. I could not help wondering why
she gave Mr. Cooke line in the matter of household decoration, unless
it was that he considered Mohair his own, private hobby, and that she
humored him. Mrs. Cooke was not without tact, and I have no doubt she
perceived my reluctance to talk about her husband and respected it.

"We drove down to bring you back to luncheon," she said.

I thanked her and accepted. She was curious to hear about Asquith and
its people, and I told her all I knew.

"I should like to meet some of them," she explained, "for we intend
having a cotillon at Mohair,--a kind of house-warming, you know. A party
of Mr. Cooke's friends is coming out for it in his car, and he thought
something of inviting the people of Asquith up for a dance."

I had my doubts concerning the wisdom of an entertainment, the success
of which depended on the fusion of a party of Mr. Cooke's friends and
a company from Asquith. But I held my peace. She shot a question at me
suddenly:

"Who is this Mr. Allen?"

"He registers from Boston, and only came a fortnight ago," I replied
vaguely.

"He doesn't look quite right; as though he had been set down on the wrong
planet, you know," said Mrs. Cooke, her finger on her temple. "What is
he like?"

"Well," I answered, at first with uncertainty, then with inspiration, "he
would do splendidly to lead your cotillon, if you think of having one."

"So you do not dance, Mr. Crocker?"

I was somewhat set back by her perspicuity.

"No, I do not," said I.

"I thought not," she said, laughing. It must have been my expression
which prompted her next remark.

"I was not making fun of you," she said, more soberly; "I do not like Mr.
Allen any better than you do, and I have only seen him once."

"But I have not said I did not like him," I objected.

"Of course not," said Mrs. Cooke, quizzically.

At that moment, to my relief, I discerned the Celebrity and Mr. Cooke in
the hallway.

"Here they come, now," she went on. "I do wish Fenelon would keep his
hands off the people he meets. I can feel he is going to make an
intimate of that man. Mark my words, Mr. Crocker."

I not only marked them, I prayed for their fulfilment.

There was that in Mr. Cooke which, for want of a better name, I will call
instinct. As he came down the steps, his arm linked in that of the
Celebrity, his attitude towards his wife was both apologetic and defiant.
He had at once the air of a child caught with a forbidden toy, and that
of a stripling of twenty-one who flaunts a cigar in his father's face.

"Maria," he said, "Mr. Allen has consented to come back with us for
lunch."

We drove back to Mohair, Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity on the box, Mrs.
Cooke and I behind. Except to visit the boathouses I had not been to
Mohair since the day of its completion, and now the full beauty of the
approach struck me for the first time. We swung by the lodge, the keeper
holding open the iron gate as we passed, and into the wide driveway,
hewn, as it were, out of the virgin forest. The sandy soil had been
strengthened by a deep road-bed of clay imported from the interior, which
was spread in turn with a fine gravel, which crunched under the heavy
wheels. From the lodge to the house, a full mile, branches had been
pruned to let the sunshine sift through in splotches, but the wild nature
of the place had been skilfully retained. We curved hither and thither
under the giant trees until suddenly, as a whip straightens in the
snapping, one of the ancient tribes of the forest might have sent an
arrow down the leafy gallery into the open, and at the far end we caught
sight of the palace framed in the vista. It was a triumph for Farrar,
and I wished that the palace had been more worthy.

The Celebrity did not stint his praises of Mohair, coming up the drive,
but so lavish were his comments on the house that they won for him a
lasting place in Mr. Cooke's affections, and encouraged my client to pull
up his horses in a favorable spot, and expand on the beauties of the
mansion.

"Taking it altogether," said he, complacently, "it is rather a neat box,
and I let myself loose on it. I had all these ideas I gathered knocking
about the world, and I gave them to Willis, of Philadelphia, to put
together for me. But he's honest enough not to claim the house. Take,
for instance, that minaret business on the west; I picked that up from a
mosque in Algiers. The oriel just this side is whole cloth from Haddon
Hall, and the galleried porch next it from a Florentine villa. The
conical capped tower I got from a French chateau, and some of the
features on the south from a Buddhist temple in Japan. Only a little
blending and grouping was necessary, and Willis calls himself an
architect, and wasn't equal to it. Now," he added, "get the effect. Did
you ever see another house like it?"

"Magnificent!" exclaimed the Celebrity.

"And then," my client continued, warming under this generous
appreciation, "there's something very smart about those colors. They're
my racing colors. Of course the granite's a little off, but it isn't
prominent. Willis kicked hard when it came to painting the oriel yellow,
but an architect always takes it for granted he knows it all, and a--"

"Fenelon," said Mrs. Cooke, "luncheon is waiting."

Mrs. Cooke dominated at luncheon and retired, and it is certain that both
Mr. Cooke and the Celebrity breathed more freely when she had gone. If
her criticisms on the exterior of the house were just, those on the
interior were more so. Not only did I find the coat-of-arms set forth on
the chairs, fire-screens, and other prominent articles, but it was even
cut into the swinging door of the butler's pantry. The motto I am afraid
my client never took the trouble to have translated, and I am inclined to
think his jewellers put up a little joke on him when they chose it.
"Be Sober and Boast not."

I observed that Mrs. Cooke, when she chose, could exert the subduing
effect on her husband of a soft pedal on a piano; and during luncheon she
kept, the soft pedal on. And the Celebrity, being in some degree a
kindred spirit, was also held in check. But his wife had no sooner left
the room when Mr. Cooke began on the subject uppermost in his mind. I
had suspected that his trip to Asquith that morning was for a purpose at
which Mrs. Cooke had hinted. But she, with a woman's tact, had aimed to
accomplish by degrees that which her husband would carry by storm.

"You've been at Asquith sometime, Crocker," Mr. Cooke began, "long enough
to know the people."

"I know some of them," I said guardedly. But the rush was not to be
stemmed.

"How many do you think you can muster for that entertainment of mine?
Fifty? I ought to have fifty, at least. Suppose you pick out fifty, and
send me up the names. I want good lively ones, you understand, that will
stir things up."

"I am afraid there are not fifty of that kind there," I replied.

His face fell, but brightened again instantly. He appealed to the
Celebrity.

"How about it, old man?" said he.

The Celebrity answered, with becoming modesty, that the Asquithians were
benighted. They had never had any one to show them how to enjoy life.
But there was hope for them.

"That's it," exclaimed my client, slapping his thigh, and turning
triumphantly to me, he continued, "You're all right, Crocker, and know
enough to win a damned big suit, but you're not the man to steer a
delicate thing of this kind."

This is how, to my infinite relief, the Celebrity came to engineer the
matter of the housewarming; and to him it was much more congenial. He
accepted the task cheerfully, and went about it in such a manner as to
leave no doubt in my mind as to its ultimate success. He was a master
hand at just such problems, and this one had a double attraction. It
pleased him to be thought the arbiter of such a worthy cause, while he
acquired a prominence at Asquith which satisfied in some part a craving
which he found inseparable from incognito.

His tactics were worthy of a skilled diplomatist. Before we left Mohair
that day he had exacted as a condition that Mr. Cooke should not appear
at the inn or in its vicinity until after the entertainment. To this my
client readily pledged himself with that absolute freedom from suspicion
which formed one of the most admirable traits of his character. The
Celebrity, being intuitively quick where women were concerned, had
surmised that Mrs. Cooke did not like him; but as her interests in the
affair of the cotillon coincided with those of Mr. Cooke, she was
available as a means to an end. The Celebrity deemed her, from a social
standpoint, decidedly the better part of the Mohair establishment, and he
contrived, by a system of manoeuvres I failed to grasp, to throw her
forward while he kept Mr. Cooke in the background.

He had much to contend with; above all, an antecedent prejudice against
the Cookes, in reality a prejudice against the world, the flesh, and the
devil, natural to any quiet community, and of which Mohair and its
appurtenances were taken as the outward and visible signs. Older people
came to Asquith for simplicity and rest, and the younger ones were
brought there for these things. Nearly all had sufficient wealth to
seek, if they chose, gayety and ostentation at the eastern resorts. But
Asquithians held gayety and ostentation at a discount, and maintained
there was gayety enough at home.

If any one were fitted to overcome this prejudice, it was Mrs. Cooke.
Her tastes and manners were as simple as her gowns. The Celebrity, by
arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at
Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the
track. The three returned wondering and charmed with Mrs. Cooke; they
were sure she had had no hand in the furnishing of that atrocious house.
Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair
was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and
equally invisible. These ladies likewise came back to sing Mrs. Cooke's
praises. Mrs. Cooke returned the calls. She took tea on the inn
veranda, and drove Mrs. Short around Mohair in her victoria.
Mr. Cooke being seen only on rare and fleeting occasions, there gradually
got abroad a most curious misconception of that gentleman's character,
while over his personality floated a mist of legend which the Celebrity
took good care not to dispel. Farrar, who despised nonsense, was
ironical and non-committal when appealed to, and certainly I betrayed
none of my client's attributes. Hence it came that Asquith, before the
house-warming, knew as little about Farquhar Fenelon Cooke, the man, as
the nineteenth century knows about William Shakespeare, and was every
whit as curious. Like Shakespeare, Mr. Cooke was judged by his works,
and from these he was generally conceded to be an illiterate and
indifferent person of barbarous tastes and a mania for horses. He was
further described as ungentlemanly by a brace of spinsters who had been
within earshot on the veranda the morning he had abused the Asquith
roads, but their evidence was not looked upon as damning. That Mr. Cooke
would appear at the cotillon never entered any one's head.

Thus it was, for a fortnight, Mr. Cooke maintained a most rigid
seclusion. Would that he had discovered in the shroud of mystery the
cloak of fame!





THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill


VOLUME 2.


CHAPTER V

It was small wonder, said the knowing at Asquith, that Mr. Charles
Wrexell Allen should be attracted by Irene Trevor. With the lake
breezes of the north the red and the tan came into her cheeks, those boon
companions of the open who are best won by the water-winds. Perhaps they
brought, too, the spring to the step and the light under the long lashes
when she flashed a look across the table. Little by little it became
plain that Miss Trevor was gaining ground with the Celebrity to the
neglect of the other young women at Asquith, and when it was announced
that he was to lead the cotillon with her, the fact was regarded as
significant. Even at Asquith such things were talked about. Mr. Allen
became a topic and a matter of conjecture. He was, I believe, generally
regarded as a good match; his unimpeachable man-servant argued worldly
possessions, of which other indications were not lacking, while his crest
was cited as a material sign of family. Yet when Miss Brewster, one of
the brace of spinsters, who hailed from Brookline and purported to be an
up-to-date edition of the Boston Blue Book, questioned the Celebrity on
this vital point after the searching manner warranted by the gravity of
the subject, he was unable to acquit himself satisfactorily. When this
conversation was repeated in detail within the hearing of the father of
the young woman in question, and undoubtedly for his benefit, Mr. Trevor
threw shame to the winds and scandalized the Misses Brewster then and
there by proclaiming his father to have been a country storekeeper.
In the eyes of Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke the apotheosis of the Celebrity
was complete. The people of Asquith were not only willing to attend the
house-warming, but had been worked up to the pitch of eagerness. The
Celebrity as a matter of course was master of ceremonies. He originated
the figures and arranged the couples, of which there were twelve from
Asquith and ten additional young women. These ten were assigned to the
ten young men whom Mr. Cooke expected in his private car, and whose
appearances, heights, and temperaments the Celebrity obtained from Mr.
Cooke, carefully noted, and compared with those of the young women. Be
it said in passing that Mrs. Cooke had nothing to do with any of it, but
exhibited an almost criminal indifference. Mr. Cooke had even chosen the
favors; charity forbids that I should say what they were.

Owing to the frequent consultations which these preparations made
necessary the Celebrity was much in the company of my client, which he
came greatly to prefer to mine, and I therefore abandoned my
determination to leave Asquith. I was settling down delightedly to my
old, easy, and unmolested existence when Farrar and I received an
invitation, which amounted to a summons, to go to Mohair and make
ourselves generally useful. So we packed up and went. We made an odd
party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity
dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain
permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he
appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip
sometimes twice in a day. The fact that Mrs. Cooke treated him with
unqualified disapproval did not dampen his spirits or lessen the
frequency of his visits, nor, indeed, did it seem to create any breach
between husband and wife. Mr. Cooke took it for granted that his friends
should not please his wife, and Mrs. Cooke remarked to Farrar and me that
her husband was old enough to know better, and too old to be taught. She
loved him devotedly and showed it in a hundred ways, but she was
absolutely incapable of dissimulation.

Thanks to Mrs. Cooke, our visit to Mohair was a pleasant one. We were
able in many ways to help in the arrangements, especially Farrar, who had
charge of decorating the grounds. We saw but little of Mr. Cooke and the
Celebrity.

The arrival of the Ten was an event of importance, and occurred the day
of the dance. I shall treat the Ten as a whole because they did not
materially differ from one another in dress or habits or ambition or
general usefulness on this earth. It is true that Mr. Cooke had been
able to make delicate distinctions between them for the aid of the
Celebrity, but such distinctions were beyond me, and the power to make
them lay only in a long and careful study of the species which I could
not afford to give. Likewise the life of any one of the Ten was the life
of all, and might be truthfully represented by a single year, since each
year was exactly like the preceding. The ordinary year, as is
well-known, begins on the first of January. But theirs was not the
ordinary year, nor the Church year, nor the fiscal year. Theirs began in
the Fall with the New York Horse Show. And I am of the opinion, though
open to correction, that they dated from the first Horse Show instead of
from the birth of Christ. It is certain that they were much better
versed in the history of the Association than in that of the Union, in
the biography of Excelsior rather than that of Lincoln. The Dog Show was
another event to which they looked forward, when they migrated to New
York and put up at the country places of their friends. But why go
farther?

The Ten made themselves very much at home at Mohair. One of them told
the Celebrity he reminded him very much of a man he had met in New York
and who had written a book, or something of that sort, which made the
Celebrity wince. The afternoon was spent in one of the stable lofts,
where Mr. Cooke had set up a mysterious L-shaped box, in one arm of which
a badger was placed by a groom, while my client's Sarah, a terrier, was
sent into the other arm to invite the badger out. His objections
exceeded the highest hopes; he dug his claws into the wood and devoted
himself to Sarah's countenance with unremitting industry. This
occupation was found so absorbing that it was with difficulty the Ten
were induced to abandon it and dress for an early dinner, and only did so
after the second peremptory message from Mrs. Cooke.

"It's always this way," said Mr. Cooke, regretfully, as he watched Sarah
licking the accessible furrows in her face; "I never started in on
anything worth doing yet that Maria did not stop it."

Farrar and I were not available for the dance, and after dinner we looked
about for a quiet spot in which to weather it, and where we could be
within reach if needed. Such a place as this was the Florentine
galleried porch, which ran along outside the upper windows of the
ball-room; these were flung open, for the night was warm. At one end of
the room the musicians, imported from Minneapolis by Mr. Cooke, were
striking the first discordant notes of the tuning, while at the other the
Celebrity and my client, in scarlet hunting-coats, were gravely
instructing the Ten, likewise in scarlet hunting-coats, as to their
conduct and functions. We were reviewing these interesting proceedings
when Mrs. Cooke came hurrying towards us. She held a letter in her hand.

"You know," said she, "that Mr. Cooke is forgetful, particularly when his
mind is occupied with important matters, as it has been for some time.
Here is a letter from my niece, Miss Thorn, which he has carried in his
pocket since Monday. We expected her two weeks ago, and had given her
up. But it seems she was to leave Philadelphia on Wednesday, and will
be at that forlorn little station of Asquith at half-past nine to-night.
I want you two to go over and meet her."

We expressed our readiness, and in ten minutes were in the station wagon,
rolling rapidly down the long drive, for it was then after nine. We
passed on the way the van of the guests from Asquith. As we reached the
lodge we heard the whistle, and we backed up against one side of the
platform as the train pulled up at the other.

Farrar and I are not imaginative; we did not picture to ourselves any
particular type for the girl we were going to meet, we were simply doing
our best to get to the station before the train. We jumped from the
wagon and were watching the people file out of the car, and I noticed
that more than one paused to look back over their shoulders as they
reached the door. Then came a maid with hand-bag and shawls, and after
her a tall young lady. She stood for a moment holding her skirt above
the grimy steps, with something of the stately pose which Richter has
given his Queen Louise on the stairway, and the light of the reflector
fell full upon her. She looked around expectantly, and recognizing Mrs.
Cooke's maid, who had stepped forward to relieve hers of the shawls, Miss
Thorn greeted her with a smile which greatly prepossessed us in her
favor.

"How do you do, Jennie?" she said. "Did any one else come?"

"Yes, Miss Marian," replied Jennie, abashed but pleased,--"these
gentlemen."

Farrar and I introduced ourselves, awkwardly enough, and we both tried to
explain at once how it was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Cooke was there to
meet her. Of course we made an absolute failure of it. She scanned our
faces with a puzzled expression for a while and then broke into a laugh.

"I think I understand," she said; "they are having the house-warming."

"She's first-rate at guessing," said Farrar to me as we fled
precipitately to see that the trunks were hoisted into the basket.
Neither of us had much presence of mind as we climbed into the wagon,
and, what was even stranger, could not account for the lack of it. Miss
Thorn was seated in the corner; in spite of the darkness I could see that
she was laughing at us still.

"I feel very badly that I should have taken you away from the dance," we
heard her say.

"We don't dance," I answered clumsily, "and we were glad to come."

"Yes, we were glad to come," Farrar chimed in.

Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere
else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with
such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified
we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better. After that we
got along famously. She had at once the air of good fellowship and the
dignity of a woman, and she seemed to understand Farrar and me perfectly.
Not once did she take us over our heads, though she might have done so
with ease, and we knew this and were thankful. We began to tell her
about Mohair and the cotillon, and of our point of observation from the
Florentine galleried porch, and she insisted she would join us there.
By the time we reached the house we were thanking our stars she had come.
Mrs. Cooke came out under the port-cochere to welcome her.

"Unfortunately there is no one to dance with you, Marian," she said; "but
if I had not by chance gone through your uncle's pockets, there would
have been no one to meet you."

I think I had never felt my deficiency in dancing until that moment. But
Miss Thorn took her aunt's hand affectionately in hers.

"My dear Aunt Maria," said she, "I would not dance to-night if there were
twenty to choose from. I should like nothing better than to look on with
these two. We are the best of friends already," she added, turning
towards us, "are we not?"

"We are indeed," we hastened to assure her.

Mrs. Cooke smiled.

"You should have been a man, Marian," she said as they went upstairs
together.

We made our way to the galleried porch and sat down, there being a lull
in the figures just then. We each took out a cigar and lighted a match;
and then looked across at the other. We solemnly blew our matches out.

"Perhaps she doesn't like smoke," said Farrar, voicing the sentiment.

"Perhaps not," said I.

Silence.

"I wonder how she will get along with the Ten?" I queried.

"Better than with us," he answered in his usual strain. "They're
trained."

"Or with Allen?" I added irresistibly.

"Women are all alike," said Farrar.

At this juncture Miss Thorn herself appeared at the end of the gallery,
her shoulders wrapped in a gray cape trimmed with fur. She stood
regarding us with some amusement as we rose to receive her.

"Light your cigars and be sensible," said she, "or I shall go in."

We obeyed. The three of us turned to the window to watch the figure, the
music of which was just beginning. Mr. Cooke, with the air of an English
squire at his own hunt ball, was strutting contentedly up and down one
end of the room, now pausing to exchange a few hearty words with some
Presbyterian matron from Asquith, now to congratulate Mr. Trevor on the
appearance of his daughter. Lined against the opposite wall were the
Celebrity and his ten red-coated followers, just rising for the figure.
It was very plain that Miss Trevor was radiantly happy; she was easily
the handsomest girl in the room, and I could not help philosophizing
when I saw her looking up into the Celebrity's eyes upon the seeming
inconsistency of nature, who has armed and warned woman against all but
her most dangerous enemy.

And then a curious thing happened. The Celebrity, as if moved by a
sudden uncontrollable impulse, raised his eyes until they rested on the
window in which we were. Although his dancing was perfect, he lost the
step without apparent cause, his expression changed, and for the moment
he seemed to be utterly confused. But only for the moment; in a trice he
had caught the time again and swept Miss Trevor rapidly down the room and
out of sight. I looked instinctively at the girl beside me. She had
thrown her head forward, and in the streaming light I saw that her lips
were parted in a smile.

I resolved upon a stroke.

"Mr. Allen," I remarked, "leads admirably."

"Mr. Allen!" she exclaimed, turning on me.

"Yes, it is Mr. Allen who is leading," I repeated.

An expression of perplexity spread over her face, but she said nothing.
My curiosity was aroused to a high pitch, and questions were rising to my
lips which I repressed with difficulty. For Miss Thorn had displayed,
purposely or not, a reticence which my short acquaintance with her
compelled me to respect; and, besides, I was bound by a promise not to
betray the Celebrity's secret. I was, however, convinced from what had
occurred that she had met the Celebrity in the East, and perhaps known
him.

Had she fallen in love with him, as was the common fate of all young
women he met? I changed my opinion on this subject a dozen times. Now I
was sure, as I looked at her, that she was far too sensible; again, a
doubt would cross my mind as the Celebrity himself would cross my view,
the girl on his arm reduced to adoration. I followed him narrowly when
in sight. Miss Thorn was watching him, too, her eyes half closed, as
though in thought. But beyond the fact that he threw himself into the
dance with a somewhat increased fervor, perhaps, his manner betokened no
uneasiness, and not even by a glance did he betray any disturbing
influence from above.

Thus we stood silently until the figure was finished, when Miss Thorn
seated herself in one of the wicker chairs behind us.

"Doesn't it make you wish to dance?" said Farrar to her. "It is hard
luck you should be doomed to spend the evening with two such useless
fellows as we are."

She did not catch his remark at first, as was natural in a person
preoccupied. Then she bit her lips to repress a smile.

"I assure you, Mr. Farrar," she said with force, "I have never in my life
wished to dance as little as I do now."

But a voice interrupted her, and the scarlet coat of the Celebrity was
thrust into the light between us. Farrar excused himself abruptly and
disappeared.

"Never wished to dance less!" cried the Celebrity. "Upon my word, Miss
Thorn, that's too bad. I came up to ask you to reconsider your
determination, as one of the girls from Asquith is leaving, and there is
an extra man."

"You are very kind," said Miss Thorn, quietly, "but I prefer to remain
here."

My surmise, then, was correct. She had evidently met the Celebrity, and
there was that in his manner of addressing her, without any formal
greeting, which seemed to point to a close acquaintance.

"You know Mr. Allen, then, Miss Thorn?" said I.

"What can you mean?" she exclaimed, wheeling on me; "this is not Mr.
Allen."

"Hang you, Crocker," the Celebrity put in impatiently; "Miss Thorn knows
who I am as well as you do."

"I confess it is a little puzzling," said she; "perhaps it is because I
am tired from travelling, and my brain refuses to work. But why in the
name of all that is strange do you call him Mr. Allen?"

The Celebrity threw himself into the chair beside her and asked
permission to light a cigarette.

"I am going to ask you the favor of respecting my incognito, Miss Thorn,
as Crocker has done," he said. "Crocker knew me in the East, too. I had
not counted upon finding him at Asquith."

Miss Thorn straightened herself and made a gesture of impatience.

"An incognito!" she cried. "But you have taken another man's name. And
you already had his face and figure!"

I jumped.

"That is so," he calmly returned; "the name was ready to hand, and so I
took it. I don't imagine it will make any difference to him. It's only
a whim of mine, and with me there's no accounting for a whim. I make it
a point to gratify every one that strikes me. I confess to being
eccentric, you know."

"You must get an enormous amount of gratification out of this," she said
dryly. "What if the other man should happen along?"

"Scarcely at Asquith."

"I have known stranger things to occur," said she.

The Celebrity smiled and smoked.

"I'll wager, now," he went on, "that you little thought to find me here
incognito. But it is delicious, I assure you, to lead once more a
commonplace and unmolested existence."

"Delightful," said Miss Thorn.

"People never consider an author apart from his work, you know, and I
confess I had a desire to find out how I would get along. And there
comes a time when a man wishes he had never written a book, and a longing
to be sought after for his own sake and to be judged on his own merits.
And then it is a great relief to feel that one is not at the beck and
call of any one and every one wherever one goes, and to know that one
is free to choose one's own companions and do as one wishes."

"The sentiment is good," Miss Thorn agreed, "very good. But doesn't it
seem a little odd, Mr. Crocker," she continued, appealing to me, "that a
man should take the pains to advertise a trip to Europe in order to
gratify a whim of this sort?"

"It is indeed incomprehensible to me," I replied, with a kind of grim
pleasure, "but you must remember that I have always led a commonplace
existence."

Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now
beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness
dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it
merited. It was with a palpable relief that he heard the first warning
notes of the figure.

"Am I to understand that you wish me to do my part in concealing your
identity?" asked Miss Thorn, cutting him short as he was expressing
pleasure at her arrival.

"If you will be so kind," he answered, and departed with a bow.
There was a mischievous mirth in her eye as she took her place in the
window. Below in the ball-room sat Miss Trevor surrounded by men, and
I saw her face lighting at the Celebrity's approach.

"Who is that beautiful girl he is dancing with?" said Miss Thorn.

I told her.

"Have you read his books?" she asked, after a pause.

"Some of them."

"So have I."

The Celebrity was not mentioned again that evening.




CHAPTER VI

As an endeavor to unite Mohair and Asquith the cotillon had proved a
dismal failure. They were as the clay and the brass. The next morning
Asquith was split into factions and rent by civil strife, and the porch
of the inn was covered by little knots of women, all trying to talk at
once; their faces told an ominous tale. Not a man was to be seen. The
Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Chicago papers, all of which had previously
contained elaborate illustrated accounts of Mr. Cooke's palatial park and
residence, came out that morning bristling with headlines about the ball,
incidentally holding up the residents of a quiet and retiring little
community in a light that scandalized them beyond measure. And Mr.
Charles Wrexell Allen, treasurer of the widely known Miles Standish
Bicycle Company, was said to have led the cotillon in a manner that left
nothing to be desired.

So it was this gentleman whom the Celebrity was personating! A queer
whim indeed.

After that, I doubt if the court of Charles the Second was regarded by
the Puritans with a greater abhorrence than was Mohair by the good ladies
of Asquith. Mr. Cooke and his ten friends were branded as profligates
whose very scarlet coats bore witness that they were of the devil. Mr.
Cooke himself, who particularly savored of brimstone, would much better
have remained behind the arras, for he was denounced with such energy and
bitterness that those who might have attempted his defence were silent,
and their very silence told against them. Mr. Cooke had indeed outdone
himself in hospitality. He had posted punch-bowls in every available
corner, and so industriously did he devote himself to the duties of host,
as he conceived them, that as many as four of the patriarchs of Asquith
and pillars of the church had returned home more or less insensible,
while others were quite incoherent. The odds being overwhelming, the
master of Mohair had at length fallen a victim to his own good cheer.
He took post with Judge Short at the foot of the stair, where, in spite
of the protests of the Celebrity and of other well-disposed persons, the
two favored the parting guests with an occasional impromptu song and
waved genial good-byes to the ladies. And, when Mrs. Short attempted to
walk by with her head in the air, as though the judge were in an
adjoining county, he so far forgot his judicial dignity as to chuck her
under the chin, an act which was applauded with much boyish delight by
Mr. Cooke, and a remark which it is just as well not to repeat. The
judge desired to spend the night at Mohair, but was afterwards taken home
by main force, and the next day his meals were brought up to him. It is
small wonder that Mrs. Short was looked upon as the head of the outraged
party. The Ten were only spoken of in whispers. Three of them had been
unable to come to time when the last figure was called, whereupon their
partners were whisked off the scene without so much as being allowed to
pay their respects to the hostess. Besides these offences, there were
other minor barbarisms too numerous to mention.

Although Mrs. Short's party was all-powerful at Asquith, there were some
who, for various reasons, refused to agree in the condemnation of Mr.
Cooke. Judge Short and the other gentlemen in his position were, of
course, restricted, but Mr. Trevor came out boldly in the face of severe
criticism and declared that his daughter should accept any invitation
from Mrs. Cooke that she chose, and paid but little attention to the
coolness resulting therefrom. He was fast getting a reputation for
oddity. And the Celebrity tried to conciliate both parties, and
succeeded, though none but he could have done it. At first he was eyed
with suspicion and disgust as he drove off to Mohair in his Hempstead
cart, and was called many hard names. But he had a way about him which
won them in the end.

A few days later I ran over to Mohair and found my client with the
colored Sunday supplement of a Chicago newspaper spread out before him,
eyeing the page with something akin to childish delight. I discovered
that it was a picture of his own hunt ball, and as a bit of color it was
marvellous, the scarlet coats being very much in evidence.

"There, old man!" he exclaimed. "What do you think of that? Something
of a sendoff, eh?" And he pointed to a rather stout and important
gentleman in the foreground. "That's me!" he said proudly, "and they
wouldn't do that for Farquhar Fenelon Cooke in Philadelphia."

"A prophet is without honor in his own country," I remarked.

"I don't set up for a prophet," said Mr. Cooke, "but I did predict that I
would start a ripple here, didn't I?"

I did not deny this.

"How do I stand over there?" he inquired, designating Asquith by a twist
of the head. "I hear they're acting all over the road; that they think
I'm the very devil."

"Well, your stock has dropped some, I admit," I answered. "They didn't
take kindly to your getting the judge drunk, you know."

"They oughtn't to complain about that," said my client; "and besides, he
wasn't drunk enough to amount to anything."

"However that may be," said I, "you have the credit for leading him
astray. But there is a split in your favor."

"I'm glad to know that," he said, brightening; "then I won't have to
import any more."

"Any more what?" I asked.

"People from the East to keep things moving, of course. What I have here
and those left me at the inn ought to be enough to run through the summer
with. Don't you think so?"

I thought so, and was moving off when he called me back.

"Is the judge locked up, old man?" he demanded.

"He's under rather close surveillance," I replied, smiling.

"Crocker;" he said confidentially, "see if you can't smuggle him over
here some day soon. The judge always holds good cards, and plays a
number one hand."

I promised, and escaped. On the veranda I came upon Miss Thorn
surrounded by some of her uncle's guests. I imagine that she was bored,
for she looked it.

"Mr. Crocker," she called out, "you're just the man I have been wishing
to see."

The others naturally took this for a dismissal, and she was not long in
coming to her point when we were alone.

"What is it you know about this queer but gifted genius who is here so
mysteriously?" she asked.

"Nothing whatever," I confessed. "I knew him before he thought of
becoming a genius."

"Retrogression is always painful," she said; "but tell me something about
him then."

I told her all I knew, being that narrated in these pages. "Now,"
said I, "if you will pardon a curiosity on my part, from what you
said the other evening I inferred that he closely resembles the man
whose name it pleased him to assume. And that man, I learn from the
newspapers, is Mr. Charles Wrexell Allen of the 'Miles Standish Bicycle
Company.'"

Miss Thorn made a comic gesture of despair.

"Why he chose Mr. Allen's name," she said, "is absolutely beyond my
guessing. Unless there is some purpose behind the choice, which I do not
for an instant believe, it was a foolish thing to do, and one very apt to
lead to difficulties. I can understand the rest. He has a reputation
for eccentricity which he feels he must keep up, and this notion of
assuming a name evidently appealed to him as an inspiration."

"But why did he come out here?" I asked. "Can you tell me that?"

Miss Thorn flushed slightly, and ignored the question.

"I met the 'Celebrity,' as you call him," she said, "for the first time
last winter, and I saw him frequently during the season. Of course
I had heard not a little about him and his peculiarities. His name seems
to have gone the length and breadth of the land. And, like most girls,
I had read his books and confess I enjoyed them. It is not too much to
say," she added archly, "that I made a sort of archangel out of the
author."

"I can understand that," said I.

"But that did not last," she continued hastily. "I see I have got beside
my story. I saw a great deal of him in New York. He came to call, and I
believe I danced with him once or twice. And then my aunt, Mrs. Rivers,
bought a place near Epsom, in Massachusetts, and had a house party there
in May. And the Celebrity was invited."

I smiled.

"Oh, I assure you it was a mere chance," said Miss Thorn. "I mention
this that I may tell you the astonishing part of it all. Epsom is one of
those smoky manufacturing towns one sees in New England, and the 'Miles
Standish' bicycle is made there. The day after we all arrived at my
aunt's a man came up the drive on a wheel whom I greeted in a friendly
way and got a decidedly uncertain bow in return.

"I thought it rather a strange shift from a marked cordiality, and spoke
of the circumstance to my aunt, who was highly amused. 'Why, my dear,'
said she, 'that was Mr. Allen, of the bicycle company. I was nearly
deceived myself.'"

"And is the resemblance so close as that?" I exclaimed.

"So close! Believe me, they are as like as two ices from a mould. Of
course, when they are together one can distinguish the Celebrity from the
bicycle man. The Celebrity's chin is a little more square, and his nose
straighter, and there are other little differences. I believe Mr. Allen
has a slight scar on his forehead. But the likeness was remarkable,
nevertheless, and it grew to be a standing joke with us. They actually
dressed ludicrously alike. The Celebrity became so sensitive about it
that he went back to New York before the party broke up. We grew to be
quite fond of the bicycle man."

She paused and shifted her chair, which had rocked close to mine.

"And can you account for his coming to Asquith?" I asked innocently.

She was plainly embarrassed.

"I suppose I might account for it, Mr. Crocker," she replied. Then she
added, with something of an impulse, "After all, it is foolish of me not
to tell you. You probably know the Celebrity well enough to have learned
that he takes idiotic fancies to young women."

"Not always idiotic," I protested.

"You mean that the young women are not always idiotic, I suppose. No,
not always, but nearly always. I imagine he got the idea of coming to
Asquith," she went on with a change of manner, "because I chanced to
mention that I was coming out here on a visit."

"Oh," I remarked, and there words failed me.

Her mouth was twitching with merriment.

"I am afraid you will have to solve the rest of it for yourself, Mr.
Crocker," said she; "that is all of my contribution. My uncle tells me
you are the best lawyer in the country, and I am surprised that you are
so slow in getting at motives."

And I did attempt to solve it on my way back to Asquith. The conclusion
I settled to, everything weighed, was this: that the Celebrity had become
infatuated with Miss Thorn (I was far from blaming him for that) and had
followed her first to Epsom and now to Asquith. And he had chosen to
come West incognito partly through the conceit which he admitted and
gloried in, and partly because he believed his prominence sufficient to
obtain for him an unpleasant notoriety if he continued long enough to
track the same young lady about the country. Hence he had taken the
trouble to advertise a trip abroad to account for his absence.
Undoubtedly his previous conquests had been made more easily, for my
second talk with Miss Thorn had put my mind at rest as to her having
fallen a victim to his fascinations. Her arrival at Mohair being
delayed, the Celebrity had come nearly a month too soon, and in the
interval that tendency of which he was the dupe still led him by the
nose; he must needs make violent love to the most attractive girl on the
ground,--Miss Trevor. Now that one still more attractive had arrived
I was curious to see how he would steer between the two, for I made no
doubt that matters had progressed rather far with Miss Trevor. And in
this I was not mistaken.

But his choice of the name of Charles Wrexell Allen bothered me
considerably. I finally decided that he had taken it because convenient,
and because he believed Asquith to be more remote from the East than the
Sandwich Islands.

Reaching the inn grounds, I climbed the hillside to a favorite haunt of
mine, a huge boulder having a sloping back covered with soft turf. Hence
I could watch indifferently both lake and sky. Presently, however, I was
aroused by voices at the foot of the rock, and peering over the edge I
discovered a kind of sewing-circle gathered there. The foliage hid me
completely. I perceived the Celebrity perched upon the low branch of an
apple-tree, and Miss Trevor below him, with two other girls, doing
fancy-work. I shall not attempt to defend the morality of my action, but
I could not get away without discovery, and the knowledge that I had
heard a part of their conversation might prove disquieting to them.

The Celebrity had just published a book, under the title of 'The
Sybarites', which was being everywhere discussed; and Asquith, where
summer reading was general, came in for its share of the debate. Why it
was called The Sybarites I have never discovered. I did not read the
book because I was sick and tired of the author and his nonsense, but I
imbibed, in spite of myself, something of the story and its moral from
hearing it talked about. The Celebrity himself had listened to arguments
on the subject with great serenity, and was nothing loth to give his
opinion when appealed to. I realized at once that 'The Sybarites' was
the present topic.

"Yes, it is rather an uncommon book," he was saying languidly, "but there
is no use writing a story unless it is uncommon."

"Dear, how I should like to meet the author!" exclaimed a voice.
"He must be a charming man, and so young, too! I believe you said
you knew him, Mr. Allen."

"An old acquaintance," he answered, "and I am always reminding him that
his work is overestimated."

"How can you say he is overestimated!" said a voice.

"You men are all jealous of him," said another.

"Is he handsome? I have heard he is."

"He would scarcely be called so," said the Celebrity, doubtfully.

"He is, girls," Miss Trevor interposed; "I have seen his photograph."

"What does he look like, Irene?" they chorused. "Men are no judges."

"He is tall, and dark, and broad-shouldered," Miss Trevor enumerated,
as though counting her stitches, "and he has a very firm chin, and a
straight nose, and--"

"Perfect!" they cried. "I had an idea he was just like that. I should
go wild about him. Does he talk as well as he writes, Mr. Allen?"

"That is admitting that he writes well."

"Admitting?" they shouted scornfully, "and don't you admit it?"

"Some people like his writing, I have to confess," said the Celebrity,
with becoming calmness; "certainly his personality could not sell an
edition of thirty thousand in a month. I think 'The Sybarites' the best
of his works."

"Upon my word, Mr. Allen, I am disgusted with you," said the second
voice; "I have not found a man yet who would speak a good word for him.
But I did not think it of you."

A woman's tongue, like a firearm, is a dangerous weapon, and often
strikes where it is least expected. I saw with a wicked delight that the
shot had told, for the Celebrity blushed to the roots of his hair, while
Miss Trevor dropped three or four stitches.

"I do not see how you can expect men to like 'The Sybarites'," she said,
with some heat; "very few men realize or care to realize what a small
chance the average woman has. I know marriage isn't a necessary goal,
but most women, as well as most men, look forward to it at some time of
life, and, as a rule, a woman is forced to take her choice of the two or
three men that offer themselves, no matter what they are. I admire a man
who takes up the cudgels for women, as he has done."

"Of course we admire him," they cried, as soon as Miss Trevor had stopped
for breath.

"And can you expect a man to like a book which admits that women are the
more constant?" she went on.

"Why, Irene, you are quite rabid on the subject," said the second voice;
"I did not say I expected it. I only said I had hoped to find Mr. Allen,
at least, broad enough to agree with the book."

"Doesn't Mr. Allen remind you a little of Desmond?" asked the first
voice, evidently anxious to avoid trouble.

"Do you know whom he took for Desmond, Mr. Allen? I have an idea it was
himself."

Mr. Allen, had now recovered some of his composure.

"If so, it was done unconsciously," he said. "I suppose an author must
put his best thoughts in the mouth of his hero."

"But it is like him?" she insisted.

"Yes, he holds the same views."

"Which you do not agree with."

"I have not said I did not agree with them," he replied, taking up his
own defence; "the point is not that men are more inconstant than women,
but that women have more excuse for inconstancy. If I remember
correctly, Desmond, in a letter to Rosamond, says: 'Inconstancy in a
woman, because of the present social conditions, is often pardonable. In
a man, nothing is more despicable.' I think that is so. I believe that
a man should stick by the woman to whom he has given his word as closely
as he sticks by his friends."

"Ah!" exclaimed the aggressive second voice, "that is all very well. But
how about the woman to whom he has not given his word? Unfortunately,
the present social conditions allow a man to go pretty far without a
definite statement."

At this I could not refrain from looking at Miss Trevor. She was bending
over her knitting and had broken her thread.

"It is presumption for a man to speak without some foundation," said the
Celebrity, "and wrong unless he is sure of himself."


"But you must admit," the second voice continued, "that a man has no
right to amuse himself with a woman, and give her every reason to believe
he is going to marry her save the only manly and substantial one. And
yet that is something which happens every day. What do you think of a
man who deserts a woman under those conditions?"

"He is a detestable dog, of course," declared the Celebrity.

And the cock in the inn yard was silent.

"I should love to be able to quote from a book at will," said the
quieting voice, for the sake of putting an end to an argument which bid
fair to become disagreeable. "How do you manage to do it?"

"It was simply a passage that stuck in my mind," he answered modestly;
"when I read a book I pick them up just as a roller picks up a sod here
and there as it moves over the lawn."

"I should think you might write, Mr. Allen, you have such an original way
of putting things!"

"I have thought of it," returned the Celebrity, "and I may, some fine
day."

Wherewith he thrust his hands into his pockets and sauntered off with
equanimity undisturbed, apparently unaware of the impression he had left
behind him. And the Fifth Reader story popped into my head of good King
William (or King Frederick, I forgot which), who had a royal fancy for
laying aside the gayeties of the court and straying incognito among his
plainer subjects, but whose princely origin was invariably detected in
spite of any disguise his Majesty could invent.




CHAPTER VII

I experienced a great surprise a few mornings afterwards. I had risen
quite early, and found the Celebrity's man superintending the hoisting of
luggage on top of a van.

"Is your master leaving?" I asked.

"He's off to Mohair now, sir," said the valet, with a salute.

At that instant the Celebrity himself appeared.

"Yes, old chap, I'm off to Mohair," he explained. "There's more sport in
a day up there than you get here in a season. Beastly slow place, this,
unless one is a deacon or a doctor of divinity. Why don't you come up,
Crocker? Cooke would like nothing better; he has told me so a dozen
times."

"He is very good," I replied. I could not resist the temptation to add,
"I had an idea Asquith rather suited your purposes just now."

"I don't quite understand," he said, jumping at the other half of my
meaning.

"Oh, nothing. But you told me when you came here, if I am not mistaken,
that you chose Asquith because of those very qualities for which you now
condemn it."

"Magna est vis consuetudinis," he laughed; "I thought I could stand the
life, but I can't. I am tired of their sects and synods and sermons. By
the way," said he pulling at my sleeve, "what a deuced pretty girl that
Miss Thorn is! Isn't she? Rollins, where's the cart? Well, good-bye,
Crocker; see you soon."

He drove rapidly off as the clock struck six, and an uneasy glance he
gave the upper windows did not escape me. When Farrar appeared, I told
him what had happened.

"Good riddance," he replied sententiously.

We sat in silence until the bell rang, looking at the morning sun on the
lake. I was a little anxious to learn the state of Farrar's feelings in
regard to Miss Trevor, and how this new twist in affairs had affected
them. But I might as well have expected one of King Louis's carp to
whisper secrets of the old regime. The young lady came to the
breakfast-table looking so fresh and in such high spirits that I made
sure she had not heard of the Celebrity's ignoble escape. As the meal
proceeded it was easy to mark that her eye now and again fell across his
empty chair, and glanced inquiringly towards the door. I made up my mind
that I would not be the bearer of evil news, and so did Farrar, so we
kept up a vapid small-talk with Mr. Trevor on the condition of trade in
the West. Miss Trevor, however, in some way came to suspect that we
could account for that vacant seat. At last she fixed her eye
inquiringly on me, and I trembled.

"Mr. Crocker," she began, and paused. Then she added with a fair
unconcern, "do you happen to know where Mr. Allen is this morning?"

"He has gone over to Mohair, I believe," I replied weakly.

"To Mohair!" she exclaimed, putting down her cup; "why, he promised to
go canoeing at ten.

"Probably he will be back by then," I ventured, not finding it in my
heart to tell her the cruel truth. But I kept my eyes on my plate. They
say a lie has short legs. Mine had, for my black friend, Simpson, was at
that instant taking off the fruit, and overheard my remark.

"Mr. Allen done gone for good," he put in, "done give me five dollars
last night. Why, sah," he added, scratching his head, "you was on de
poch dis mornin' when his trunks was took away!"

It was certainly no time to quibble then.

"His trunks!" Miss Trevor exclaimed.

"Yes, he has left us and gone to Mohair," I said, "bag and baggage. That
is the flat truth of it."

I suppose there is some general rule for calculating beforehand how a
young woman is going to act when news of this sort is broken. I had no
notion of what Miss Trevor would do. I believe Farrar thought she would
faint, for he laid his napkin on the table. She did nothing of the kind,
but said simply:

"How unreliable men are!"

I fell to guessing what her feelings were; for the life of me I could not
tell from her face. I was sorry for Miss Trevor in spite of the fact
that she had neglected to ask my advice before falling in love with the
Celebrity. I asked her to go canoeing with me. She refused kindly but
very firmly.

It is needless to say that the Celebrity did not come back to the inn,
and as far as I could see the desertion was designed, cold-blooded, and
complete. Miss Trevor remained out of sight during the day of his
departure, and at dinner we noticed traces of a storm about her,--a storm
which had come and gone. There was an involuntary hush as she entered
the dining-room, for Asquith had been buzzing that afternoon over the
episode. And I admired the manner in which she bore her inspection.
Already rumors of the cause of Mr. Allen's departure were in active
circulation, and I was astonished to learn that he had been seen that day
seated upon Indian rock with Miss Thorn herself. This piece of news gave
me a feeling of insecurity about people, and about women in particular,
that I had never before experienced. After holding the Celebrity up to
such unmeasured ridicule as she had done, ridicule not without a
seasoning of contempt, it was difficult to believe Miss Thorn so
inconsistent as to go alone with him to Indian rock; and she was not
ignorant of Miss Trevor's experience. But the fact was attested by
trustworthy persons.

I have often wondered what prompted me to ask Miss Trevor again to go
canoeing. To do myself justice, it was no wish of mine to meddle with or
pry into her affairs. Neither did I flatter myself that my poor company
would be any consolation for that she had lost. I shall not try to
analyze my motive. Suffice it to record that she accepted this second
invitation, and I did my best to amuse her by relating a few of my
experiences at the bar, and I told that memorable story of Farrar
throwing O'Meara into the street. We were getting along famously,
when we descried another canoe passing us at some distance, and we both
recognized the Celebrity at the paddle by the flannel jacket of his
college boat club. And Miss Thorn sat in the bow!

"Do you know anything about that man, Miss Trevor?" I asked abruptly.

She grew scarlet, but replied:

"I know that he is a fraud."

"Anything else?"

"I can't say that I do; that is, nothing but what he has told me."

"If you will forgive my curiosity," I said, "what has he told you?"

"He says he is the author of The Sybarites," she answered, her lip
curling, "but of course I do not believe that, now."

"But that happens to be true," I said, smiling.

She clapped her hands.

"I promised him I wouldn't tell," she cried, "but the minute I get back
to the inn I shall publish it."

"No, don't do that just yet," said I.

"Why not? Of course I shall."

I had no definite reason, only a vague hope that we should get some
better sort of enjoyment out of the disclosure before the summer was
over.

"You see," I said, "he is always getting into scrapes; he is that kind of
a man. And it is my humble opinion that he has put his head into a noose
this time, for sure. Mr. Allen, of the 'Miles Standish Bicycle
Company,' whose name he has borrowed for the occasion, is enough like
him in appearance to be his twin brother."

"He has borrowed another man's name!" she exclaimed; "why, that's
stealing!"

"No, merely kleptomania," I replied; "he wouldn't be the other man if he
could. But it has struck me that the real Mr. Allen might turn up here,
or some friend of his, and stir things a bit. My advice to you is to
keep quiet, and we may have a comedy worth seeing."

"Well," she remarked, after she had got over a little of her
astonishment, "it would be great fun to tell, but I won't if you say so."

I came to, have a real liking for Miss Trevor. Farrar used to smile when
I spoke of this, and I never could induce him to go out with us in the
canoe, which we did frequently,--in fact, every day I was at Asquith,
except of course Sundays. And we grew to understand each other very
well. She looked upon me in the same light as did my other friends,
--that of a counsellor-at-law,--and I fell unconsciously into the role of
her adviser, in which capacity I was the recipient of many confidences I
would have got in no other way. That is, in no other way save one, and
in that I had no desire to go, even had it been possible. Miss Trevor
was only nineteen, and in her eyes I was at least sixty.

"See here, Miss Trevor," I said to her one day after we had become more
or less intimate, "of course it's none of my business, but you didn't
feel very badly after the Celebrity went away, did you?"

Her reply was frank and rather staggering.

"Yes, I did. I was engaged to him, you know."

"Engaged to him! I had no idea he ever got that far," I exclaimed.

Miss Trevor laughed merrily.

"It was my fault," she said; "I pinned him down, and he had to propose.
There was no way out of it. I don't mind telling you."

I did not know whether to be flattered or aggrieved by this avowal.

"You know," she went on, her tone half apologetic, "the day after he came
he told me who he was, and I wanted to stop the people we passed and
inform them of the lion I was walking with. And I was quite carried away
by the honor of his attentions: any girl would have been, you know."

"I suppose so," I assented.

"And I had heard and read so much of him, and I doted on his stories, and
all that. His heroes are divine, you must admit. And, Mr. Crocker," she
concluded with a charming naivety, "I just made up my mind I would have
him."

"Woman proposes, and man disposes," I laughed. "He escaped in spite of
you."

She looked at me queerly.

"Only a jest," I said hurriedly; "your escape is the one to be thankful
for. You might have married him, like the young woman in The Sybarites.
You remember, do you not, that the hero of that book sacrifices himself
for the lady who adores him, but whom he has ceased to adore?"

"Yes, I remember," she laughed; "I believe I know that book by heart."

"Think of the countless girls he must have relieved of their affections
before their eyes were opened," I continued with mock gravity. "Think of
the charred trail he has left behind him. A man of that sort ought to be
put under heavy bonds not to break any more hearts. But a kleptomaniac
isn't responsible, you understand. And it isn't worth while to bear any
malice."

"Oh, I don't bear any malice now," she said. "I did at first,
naturally. But it all seems very ridiculous now I have had time to think
it over. I believe, Mr. Crocker, that I never really cared for him."

"Simply an idol shattered this time," I suggested, "and not a heart
broken."

"Yes, that's it," said she.

"I am glad to hear it," said I, much pleased that she had taken such a
sensible view. "But you are engaged to him."

"I was."

"You have broken the engagement, then?"

"No, I--haven't," she said.

"Then he has broken it?"

She did not appear to resent this catechism.

"That's the strange part of it," said Miss Trevor, "he hasn't even
thought it necessary."

"It is clear, then, that you are still engaged to him," said I, smiling
at her blank face.

"I suppose I am," she cried. "Isn't it awful? What shall I do, Mr.
Crocker? You are so sensible, and have had so much experience."

"I beg your pardon," I remarked grimly.

"Oh, you know what I mean: not that kind of experience, of course. But
breach of promise cases and that sort of thing. I have a photograph of
him with something written over it."

"Something compromising?" I inquired.

"Yes, you would probably call it so," she answered, reddening. "But
there is no need of my repeating it. And then I have a lot of other
things. If I write to break off the engagement I shall lose dignity, and
it will appear as though I had regrets. I don't wish him to think that,
of all things. What shall I do?"

"Do nothing," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Just that. Do not break the engagement, and keep the photograph and
other articles for evidence. If he makes any overtures, don't consider
them for an instant. And I think, Miss Trevor, you will succeed sooner
or later in making him very uncomfortable. Were he any one else I
shouldn't advise such a course, but you won't lose any dignity and
self-respect by it, as no one will be likely to hear of it. He can't be
taken seriously, and plainly he has never taken any one else so. He
hasn't even gone to the trouble to notify you that he does not intend
marrying you."

I saw from her expression that my suggestion was favorably entertained.

"What a joke it would be!" she cried delightedly.

"And a decided act of charity," I added, "to the next young woman on his
list."




CHAPTER VIII

The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I
had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;
for, even after she had conquered her love for the Celebrity, the
mortification of having been jilted by him remained. Now she had come
to look upon the matter in its true proportions, and her anticipation of
a possible chance of teaching him a lesson was a pleasure to behold. Our
table in the dining-room became again the abode of scintillating wit and
caustic repartee, Farrar bracing up to his old standard, and the demand
for seats in the vicinity rose to an animated competition. Mr. Charles
Wrexell Allen's chair was finally awarded to a nephew of Judge Short, who
could turn a story to perfection.

So life at the inn settled down again to what it had been before the
Celebrity came to disturb it.

I had my own reasons for staying away from Mohair. More than once as I
drove over to the county-seat in my buggy I had met the Celebrity on a
tall tandem cart, with one of Mr. Cooke's high-steppers in the lead, and
Miss Thorn in the low seat. I had forgotten to mention that my friend
was something of a whip. At such times I would bow very civilly and pass
on; not without a twinge, I confess. And as the result of one of these
meetings I had to retrace several miles of my road for a brief I had
forgotten. After that I took another road, several miles longer, for the
sight of Miss Thorn with him seriously disturbed my peace of mind.
But at length the day came, as I had feared, when circumstances forced me
to go to my client's place. One morning Miss Trevor and I were about
stepping into the canoe for our customary excursion when one of Mr.
Cooke's footmen arrived with a note for each of us. They were from Mrs.
Cooke, and requested the pleasure of our company that day for luncheon.
"If you were I, would you go?" Miss Trevor asked doubtfully.

"Of course," I replied.

"But the consequences may be unpleasant."

"Don't let them," I said. "Of what use is tact to a woman if not for
just such occasions?"

My invitation had this characteristic note tacked on the end of it

"DEAR CROCKER: Where are you? Where is the judge? F. F. C."

I corralled the judge, and we started off across the fields, in no very
mild state of fear of that gentleman's wife, whose vigilance was seldom
relaxed. And thus we came by a circuitous route to Mohair, the judge
occupied by his own guilty thoughts, and I by others not less disturbing.
My client welcomed the judge with that warmth of manner which grappled so
many of his friends to his heart, and they disappeared together into the
Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation
point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the Sawmill at Beaverton.

I learned from one of the lords-in-waiting loafing about the hall that
Mrs. Cooke was out on the golf links, chaperoning some of the Asquith
young women whose mothers had not seen fit to ostracize Mohair. Mr.
Cooke's ten friends were with them. But this discreet and dignified
servant could not reveal the whereabouts of Miss Thorn and of Mr. Allen,
both of whom I was decidedly anxious to avoid. I was much disgusted,
therefore, to come upon the Celebrity in the smoking-room, writing
rapidly, with, sheets of manuscript piled beside him. And he was quite
good-natured over my intrusion.

"No," said he, "don't go. It's only a short story I promised for a
Christmas number. They offered me fifteen cents a word and promised to
put my name on the cover in red, so I couldn't very well refuse. It's no
inspiration, though, I tell you that." He rose and pressed a bell behind
him and ordered whiskeys and ginger ales, as if he were in a hotel. "Sit
down, Crocker," he said, waving me to a morocco chair. "Why don't you
come over to see us oftener?"

"I've been quite busy," I said.

This remark seemed to please him immensely.

"What a sly old chap you are," said he; "really, I shall have to go back
to the inn and watch you."

"What the deuce do you mean?" I demanded.

He looked me over in well-bred astonishment and replied:

"Hang me, Crocker, if I can make you out. You seem to know the world
pretty well, and yet when a fellow twits you on a little flirtation you
act as though you were going to black his eyes."

"A little flirtation!" I repeated, aghast.

"Oh, well," he said, smiling, "we won't quarrel over a definition. Call
it anything you like."

"Don't you think this a little uncalled for?" I asked, beginning to lose
my temper.

"Bless you, no. Not among friends: not among such friends as we are."

"I didn't know we were such devilish good friends," I retorted warmly.

"Oh, yes, we are, devilish good friends," he answered with assurance;
"known each other from boyhood, and all that. And I say, old chap," he
added, "you needn't be jealous of me, you know. I got out of that long
ago. And I'm after something else now."

For a space I was speechless. Then the ludicrous side of the matter
struck me, and I laughed in spite of myself. Better, after all, to
deal with a fool according to his folly. The Celebrity glanced at the
door and drew his chair closer to mine.

"Crocker," he said confidentially, "I'm glad you came here to-day. There
is a thing or two I wished to consult you about."

"Professional?" I asked, trying to head him off.

"No," he replied, "amateur,--beastly amateur. A bungle, if I ever made
one. The truth is, I executed rather a faux pas over there at Asquith.
Tell me," said he, diving desperately at the root of it, "how does Miss
Trevor feel about my getting out? I meant to let her down easier; 'pon
my word, I did."

This is a way rascals have of judging other men by themselves.

"Well;" said I, "it was rather a blow, of course."

"Of course," he assented.

"And all the more unexpected," I went on, "from a man who has written
reams on constancy."

I flatter myself that this nearly struck home, for he was plainly
annoyed.

"Oh, bother that!" said he. "How many gowns believe in their own
sermons? How many lawyers believe in their own arguments?"

"Unhappily, not as many as might."

"I don't object to telling you, old chap," he continued, "that I went in
a little deeper than I intended. A good deal deeper, in fact. Miss
Trevor is a deuced fine girl, and all that; but absolutely impossible.
I forgot myself, and I confess I was pretty close to caught."

"I congratulate you," I said gravely.

"That's the point of it. I don't know that I'm out of the woods yet.
I wanted to see you and find out how she was acting."

My first impulse was to keep him in hot water. Fortunately I thought
twice.

"I don't know anything about Miss Trevor's feelings--" I began.

"Naturally not--" he interrupted, with a smile.

"But I have a notion that, if she ever fancied you, she doesn't care a
straw for you to-day."

"Doesn't she now," he replied somewhat regretfully. Here was one of the
knots in his character I never could untie.

"Understand, that is simply my guess," I said. "You must have discovered
that it is never possible to be sure of a woman's feelings."

"Found that out long ago," he replied with conviction, and added:
"Then you think I need not anticipate any trouble from her?"

"I have told you what I think," I answered; "you know better than I what
the situation is."

He still lingered.

"Does she appear to be in,--ah,--in good spirits?"

I had work to keep my face straight.

"Capital," I said; "I never saw her happier."

This seemed to satisfy him.

"Downcast at first, happy now," he remarked thoughtfully. "Yes, she got
over it. I'm much obliged to you, Crocker."

I left him to finish his short story and walked out across the circle of
smooth lawn towards the golf links. And there I met Mrs. Cooke and her
niece coming in together. The warm red of her costume became Miss Thorn
wonderfully, and set off the glossy black of her hair. And her skin was
glowing from the exercise. An involuntary feeling of admiration for this
tall, athletic young woman swept over me, and I halted in my steps for no
other reason, I believe, than that I might look upon her the longer.

What man, I thought resentfully, would not travel a thousand miles to be
near her?

"It is Mr. Crocker," said Mrs. Cooke; "I had given up all hope of ever
seeing you again. Why have you been such a stranger?"

"As if you didn't know, Aunt Maria," Miss Thorn put in gayly.

"Oh yes, I know," returned her aunt, "and I have not been foolish enough
to invite the bar without the magnet. And yet, Mr. Crocker," she went on
playfully, "I had imagined that you were the one man in a hundred who did
not need an inducement."

Miss Thorn began digging up the turf with her lofter: it was a painful
moment for me.

"You might at least have tried me, Mrs. Cooke," I said.

Miss Thorn looked up quickly from the ground, her eyes searchingly upon
my face. And Mrs. Cooke seemed surprised.

"We are glad you came, at any rate," she answered.

And at luncheon my seat was next to Miss Thorn's, while the Celebrity was
placed at the right of Miss Trevor. I observed that his face went blank
from time to time at some quip of hers: even a dull woman may be sharp
under such circumstances, and Miss Trevor had wits to spare. And I
marked that she never allowed her talk with him to drift into deep water;
when there was danger of this she would draw the entire table into their
conversation by some adroit remark, or create a laugh at his expense.
As for me, I held a discreet if uncomfortable silence, save for the few
words which passed between Miss Thorn and me. Once or twice I caught her
covert glance on me. But I felt, and strongly, that there could be no
friendship between us now, and I did not care to dissimulate merely for
the sake of appearances. Besides, I was not a little put out over the
senseless piece of gossip which had gone abroad concerning me.

It had been arranged as part of the day's programme that Mr. Cooke was to
drive those who wished to go over the Rise in his new brake. But the
table was not graced by our host's presence, Mrs. Cooke apologizing for
him, explaining that he had disappeared quite mysteriously. It turned
out that he and the judge had been served with luncheon in the Ethiopian
card-room, and neither threats nor fair words could draw him away. The
judge had not held such cards for years, and it was in vain that I talked
to him of consequences. The Ten decided to remain and watch a game which
was pronounced little short of phenomenal, and my client gave orders for
the smaller brake and requested the Celebrity to drive. And this he was
nothing loth to do. For the edification as well as the assurance of the
party Mr. Allen explained, while we were waiting under the porte cochere,
how he had driven the Windsor coach down Piccadilly at the height of the
season, with a certain member of Parliament and noted whip on the box
seat.

And, to do him justice, he could drive. He won the instant respect of
Mr. Cooke's coachman by his manner of taking up the lines, and clinched
it when he dropped a careless remark concerning the off wheeler. And
after the critical inspection of the horses which is proper he climbed up
on the box. There was much hesitation among the ladies as to who should
take the seat of honor: Mrs. Cooke declining, it was pressed upon Miss
Thorn. But she, somewhat to my surprise, declined also, and it was
finally filled by a young woman from Asquith.

As we drove off I found myself alone with Mrs. Cooke's niece on the seat
behind.

The day was cool and snappy for August, and the Rise all green with a
lavish nature. Now we, plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing
each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold
trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet: or
anon we shot into a clearing, with a colored glimpse of the lake and its
curving shore far below us. I had always loved that piece of country
since the first look I had of it from the Asquith road, and the sight of
it rarely failed to set my blood a-tingle with pleasure. But to-day I
scarcely saw it. I wondered what whim had impelled Miss Thorn to get
into this seat. She paid but little attention to me during the first
part of the drive, though a mere look in my direction seemed to afford
her amusement. And at last, half way up the Rise, where the road takes
to an embankment, I got a decided jar.

"Mr. Allen," she cried to the Celebrity, "you must stop here. Do you
remember how long we tarried over this bit on Friday?"

He tightened the lines and threw a meaning glance backward.

I was tempted to say:

"You and Mr. Allen should know these roads rather well, Miss Thorn."

"Every inch of them," she replied.

We must have gone a mile farther when she turned upon me.

"It is your duty to be entertaining, Mr. Crocker. What in the world are
you thinking of, with your brow all puckered up, forbidding as an owl?"

"I was thinking how some people change," I answered, with a readiness
which surprised me.

"Strange," she said, "I had the same thing in mind. I hear decidedly
queer tales of you; canoeing every day that business does not prevent,
and whole evenings spent at the dark end of a veranda."

"What rubbish!" I exclaimed, not knowing whether to be angered or amused.

"Come, sir," she said, with mock sternness, "answer the charge. Guilty
or not guilty?"

"First let me make a counter-charge," said I; "you have given me the
right. Not long ago a certain young lady came to Mohair and found there
a young author of note with whom she had had some previous acquaintance.
She did not hesitate to intimate her views on the character of this
Celebrity, and her views were not favorable."

I paused. There was some satisfaction in seeing Miss Thorn biting her
lip.

"Well?"

"Not at all favorable, mind you," I went on. "And the young lady's
general appearance was such as to lead one to suppose her the sincerest
of persons. Now I am at a loss to account for a discrepancy between her
words and her actions."

While I talked Miss Thorn's face had been gradually turning from mine
until now I saw only the dainty knot at the back of her head. Her
shoulders were quivering with laughter. But presently her face came back
all gravity, save a suspicious gleam of mirth in the eyes.

"It does seem inconsistent, Mr. Crocker; I grant you that. No doubt it
is so. But let me ask you something: did you ever yet know a woman who
was not inconsistent?"

I did not realize I had been side-tracked until I came to think over this
conversation afterwards.

"I am not sure," I replied. "Perhaps I merely hoped that one such
existed."

She dropped her eyes.

"Then don't be surprised at my failing," said she. "No doubt I
criticised the Celebrity severely. I cannot recall what I said.
But it is upon the better side of a character that we must learn to look.
Did it ever strike you that the Celebrity had some exceedingly fine
qualities?"

"No, it did not," I answered positively.

"Nevertheless, he has," she went on, in all apparent seriousness.
"He drives almost as well as Uncle Farquhar, dances well, and is a
capital paddle."

"You were speaking of qualities, not accomplishments," I said.
A horrible suspicion that she was having a little fun at my expense
crossed my mind.

Very good, then. You must admit that he is generous to a fault, amiable;
and persevering, else he would never have attained the position he
enjoys. And his affection for you, Mr. Crocker, is really touching,
considering how little he gets in return."

"Come, Miss Thorn," I said severely, "this is ridiculous. I don't like
him, and never shall. I liked him once, before he took to writing
drivel. But he must have been made over since then. And what is more,
with all respect to your opinion, I don't believe he likes me."

Miss Thorn straightened up with dignity and said:

"You do him an injustice. But perhaps you will learn to appreciate him
before he leaves Mohair."

"That is not likely," I replied--not at all pleasantly, I fear. And
again I thought I observed in her the same desire to laugh she had before
exhibited.

And all the way back her talk was of nothing except the Celebrity.
I tried every method short of absolute rudeness to change the subject,
and went from silence to taciturnity and back again to silence. She
discussed his books and his mannerisms, even the growth of his
popularity. She repeated anecdotes of him from Naples to St.
Petersburg, from Tokio to Cape Town. And when we finally stopped under
the porte cochere I had scarcely the civility left to say good-bye.

I held out my hand to help her to the ground, but she paused on the
second step.

"Mr. Crocker," she observed archly, "I believe you once told me you had
not known many girls in your life."

"True," I said; "why do you ask?"

"I wished to be sure of it," she replied.

And jumping down without my assistance, she laughed and disappeared into
the house.





THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill


VOLUME 3.



CHAPTER IX

That evening I lighted a cigar and went down to sit on the outermost
pile of the Asquith dock to commune with myself. To say that I was
disappointed in Miss Thorn would be to set a mild value on my feelings.
I was angry, even aggressive, over her defence of the Celebrity. I had
gone over to Mohair that day with a hope that some good reason was at the
bottom of her tolerance for him, and had come back without any hope. She
not only tolerated him, but, wonderful to be said, plainly liked him.
Had she not praised him, and defended him, and become indignant when I
spoke my mind about him? And I would have taken my oath, two weeks
before, that nothing short of hypnotic influence could have changed her.
By her own confession she had come to Asquith with her eyes opened, and,
what was more, seen another girl wrecked on the same reef.

Farrar followed me out presently, and I had an impulse to submit the
problem as it stood to him. But it was a long story, and I did not
believe that if he were in my boots he would have consulted me. Again,
I sometimes thought Farrar yearned for confidences, though it was
impossible for him to confide. And he wore an inviting air to-night.
Then, as everybody knows, there is that about twilight and an
after-dinner cigar which leads to communication. They are excellent
solvents. My friend seated himself on the pile next to mine, and said,

"It strikes me you have been behaving rather queer lately, Crocker."

This was clearly an invitation from Farrar, and I melted.

"I admit," said I, "that I am a good deal perplexed over the
contradictions of the human mind."

"Oh, is that all?" he replied dryly. "I supposed it was worse.
Narrower, I mean. Didn't know you ever bothered yourself with abstract
philosophy."

"See here, Farrar," said I, "what is your opinion of Miss Thorn?"

He stopped kicking his feet against the pile and looked up.

"Miss Thorn?"

"Yes, Miss Thorn," I repeated with emphasis. I knew he had in mind that
abominable twaddle about the canoe excursions.

"Why, to tell the truth," said he, "I never had any opinion of Miss
Thorn."

"You mean you never formed any, I suppose," I returned with some
tartness.

"Yes, that is it. How darned precise you are getting, Crocker! One
would think you were going to write a rhetoric. What put Miss Thorn into
your head?"

"I have been coaching beside her this afternoon."

"Oh!" said Farrar.

"Do you remember the night she came," I asked, "and we sat with her on
the Florentine porch, and Charles Wrexell recognized her and came up?"

"Yes," he replied with awakened interest, "and I meant to ask you about
that."

"Miss Thorn had met him in the East. And I gathered from what she told
me that he has followed her out here."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Farrar. "Don't much blame him, do you? Is that
what troubles you?" he asked, in surprise.

"Not precisely," I answered vaguely; "but from what she has said then and
since, she made it pretty clear that she hadn't any use for him; saw
through him, you know."

"Pity her if she didn't. But what did she say?"

I repeated the conversations I had had with Miss Thorn, without revealing
Mr. Allen's identity with the celebrated author.

"That is rather severe," he assented.

"He decamped for Mohair, as you know, and since that time she has gone
back on every word of it. She is with him morning and evening, and, to
crown all, stood up for him through thick and thin to-day, and praised
him. What do you think of that?"

"What I should have expected in a woman," said he, nonchalantly.

"They aren't all alike," I retorted.

He shook out his pipe, and getting down from his high seat laid his hand
on my knee.

"I thought so once, old fellow," he whispered, and went off down the
dock.

This was the nearest Farrar ever came to a confidence.

I have now to chronicle a curious friendship which had its beginning at
this time. The friendships of the other sex are quickly made, and
sometimes as quickly dissolved. This one interested me more than I care
to own. The next morning Judge Short, looking somewhat dejected after
the overnight conference he had had with his wife, was innocently and
somewhat ostentatiously engaged in tossing quoits with me in front of the
inn, when Miss Thorn drove up in a basket cart. She gave me a bow which
proved that she bore no ill-will for that which I had said about her
hero. Then Miss Trevor appeared, and away they went together. This was
the commencement. Soon the acquaintance became an intimacy, and their
lives a series of visits to each other. Although this new state of
affairs did not seem to decrease the number of Miss Thorn's
'tete-a-tetes' with the Celebrity, it put a stop to the canoe expeditions
I had been in the habit of taking with Miss Trevor, which I thought just
as well under the circumstances. More than once Miss Thorn partook of
the inn fare at our table, and when this happened I would make my escape
before the coffee. For such was the nature of my feelings regarding the
Celebrity that I could not bring myself into cordial relations with one
who professed to admire him. I realize how ridiculous such a sentiment
must appear, but it existed nevertheless, and most strongly.

I tried hard to throw Miss Thorn out of my thoughts, and very nearly
succeeded. I took to spending more and more of my time at the
county-seat, where I remained for days at a stretch, inventing business
when there was none. And in the meanwhile I lost all respect for myself
as a sensible man, and cursed the day the Celebrity came into the state.
It seemed strange that this acquaintance of my early days should have
come back into my life, transformed, to make it more or less miserable.
The county-seat being several miles inland, and lying in the midst of
hills, could get intolerably hot in September. At last I was driven out
in spite of myself, and I arrived at Asquith cross and dusty. As Simpson
was brushing me off, Miss Trevor came up the path looking cool and pretty
in a summer gown, and her face expressed sympathy. I have never denied
that sympathy was a good thing.

"Oh, Mr. Crocker," she cried, "I am so glad you are back again! We have
missed you dreadfully. And you look tired, poor man, quite worn out. It
is a shame you have to go over to that hot place to work."

I agreed with her.

"And I never have any one to take me canoeing any more."

"Let's go now," I suggested, "before dinner."

So we went. It was a keen pleasure to be on the lake again after the
sultry court-rooms and offices, and the wind and exercise quickly brought
back my appetite and spirits. I paddled hither and thither, stopping now
and then to lie under the pines at the mouth of some stream, while Miss
Trevor talked. She was almost a child in her eagerness to amuse me with
the happenings since my departure. This was always her manner with me,
in curious contrast to her habit of fencing and playing with words when
in company. Presently she burst out:

"Mr. Crocker, why is it that you avoid Miss Thorn? I was talking of you
to her only to-day, and she says you go miles out of your way to get out
of speaking to her; that you seemed to like her quite well at first. She
couldn't understand the change."

"Did she say that?" I exclaimed.

"Indeed, she did; and I have noticed it, too. I saw you leave before
coffee more than once when she was here. I don't believe you know what a
fine girl she is."

"Why, then, does she accept and return the attentions of the Celebrity?"
I inquired, with a touch of acidity. "She knows what he is as well, if
not better, than you or I. I own I can't understand it," I said, the
subject getting ahead of me. "I believe she is in love with him."

Miss Trevor began to laugh; quietly at first, and, as her merriment
increased, heartily.

"Shouldn't we be getting back?" I asked, looking at my watch. "It lacks
but half an hour of dinner."

"Please don't be angry, Mr. Crocker," she pleaded. "I really couldn't
help laughing."

"I was unaware I had said anything funny, Miss Trevor," I replied.

"Of course you didn't," she said more soberly; "that is, you didn't
intend to. But the very notion of Miss Thorn in love with the Celebrity
is funny."

"Evidence is stronger than argument," said I. "And now she has even
convicted herself."

I started to paddle homeward, rather furiously, and my companion said
nothing until we came in sight of the inn. As the canoe glided into the
smooth surface behind the breakwater, she broke the silence.

"I heard you went fishing the other day," said she.

"Yes."

"And the judge told me about a big bass you hooked, and how you played
him longer than was necessary for the mere fun of the thing."

"Yes."

"Perhaps you will find in the feeling that prompted you to do that a clue
to the character of our sex."




CHAPTER X

Mr. Cooke had had a sloop yacht built at Far Harbor, the completion of
which had been delayed, and which was but just delivered. She was,
painted white, with brass fittings, and under her stern, in big, black
letters, was the word Maria, intended as a surprise and delicate conjugal
compliment to Mrs. Cooke. The Maria had a cabin, which was finished in
hard wood and yellow plush, and accommodations for keeping things cold.
This last Mr. Cooke had insisted upon.

The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with
a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been
prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht for the month after the offer
of an emolument equal to half a year's sea pay of an ensign in the navy.
His son and helper was to receive a sum proportionally exorbitant. This
worthy man sighted Mohair on a Sunday morning, and at nine o'clock
dropped his anchor with a salute which caused Mr. Cooke to say unpleasant
things in his sleep. After making things ship-shape and hoisting the
jack, both father and son rowed ashore to the little church at Asquith.

Now the butler at Mohair was a servant who had learned, from long
experience, to anticipate every wish and whim of his master, and from
the moment he descried the white sails of the yacht out of the windows
of the butler's pantry his duty was clear as daylight. Such was the
comprehension and despatch with which he gave his commands that the
captain returned from divine worship to find the Maria in profane hands,
her immaculate deck littered with straw and sawdust, and covered to the
coamings with bottles and cases. This decided the captain, he packed his
kit in high dudgeon, and took the first train back to Far Harbor, leaving
the yacht to her fate.

This sudden and inconsiderate departure was a severe blow to Mr. Cooke'
who was so constituted that he cared but little about anything until
there was danger of not getting it. My client had planned a trip to Bear
Island for the following Tuesday, which was to last a week, the party to
bring tents with them and rough it, with the Maria as headquarters. It
was out of the question to send to Far Harbor for another skipper, if,
indeed, one could be found at that late period. And as luck would have
it, six of Mr. Cooke's ten guests had left but a day or so since, and
among them had been the only yacht-owner. None of the four that remained
could do more than haul aft and belay a sheet. But the Celebrity, who
chanced along as Mr. Cooke was ruefully gazing at the graceful lines of
the Maria from the wharf and cursing the fate that kept him ashore with
a stiff wind blowing, proposed a way out of the difficulty. He, the
Celebrity, would gladly sail the Maria over to Bear Island provided
another man could be found to relieve him occasionally at the wheel, and
the like. He had noticed that Farrar was a capable hand in a boat, and
suggested that he be sent for.

This suggestion Mr. Cooke thought so well of that he hurried over to
Asquith to consult Farrar at once, and incidentally to consult me. We
can hardly be blamed for receiving his overtures with a moderate
enthusiasm. In fact, we were of one mind not to go when the subject
was first broached. But my client had a persuasive way about him that
was irresistible, and the mere mention of the favors he had conferred
upon both of us at different periods of our lives was sufficient. We
consented.

Thus it came to pass that Tuesday morning found the party assembled on
the wharf at Mohair, the Four and the Celebrity, as well as Mr. Cooke,
having produced yachting suits from their inexhaustible wardrobes. Mr.
Trevor and his daughter, Mrs. Cooke and Miss Thorn, and Farrar and myself
completed the party. We were to adhere strictly to primeval principles:
the ladies were not permitted a maid, while the Celebrity was forced to
leave his manservant, and Mr. Cooke his chef. I had, however, thrust
into my pocket the Minneapolis papers, which had been handed me by the
clerk on their arrival at the inn, which happened just as I was leaving.
'Quod bene notandum!'

Thereby hangs a tale!

For the northern lakes the day was rather dead: a little wind lay in the
southeast, scarcely enough to break the water, with the sky an intense
blue. But the Maria was hardly cast and under way before it became
painfully apparent that the Celebrity was much better fitted to lead a
cotillon than to sail a boat. He gave his orders, nevertheless, in a
firm, seamanlike fashion, though with no great pertinence, and thus
managed to establish the confidence of Mr. Cooke. Farrar, after setting
things to rights, joined Mrs. Cooke and me over the cabin.

"How about hoisting the spinnaker, mate?" the Celebrity shouted after
him.

Farrar did not deign to answer: his eye was on the wind. And the boom,
which had been acting uneasily, finally decided to gybe, and swept
majestically over, carrying two of the Four in front of it, and all but
dropped them into the water.

"A common occurrence in a light breeze," we heard the Celebrity reassure
Mr. Cooke and Miss Thorn.

"The Maria has vindicated her sex," remarked Farrar.

We laughed.

"Why don't you sail, Mr. Farrar?" asked Mrs. Cooke.

"He can't do any harm in this breeze," Farrar replied; "it isn't strong
enough to get anywhere with."

He was right. The boom gybed twenty times that morning, and the
Celebrity offered an equal number of apologies. Mr. Cooke and the Four
vanished, and from the uproarious laughter which arose from the cabin
transoms I judged they were telling stories. While Miss Thorn spent the
time profitably in learning how to conn a yacht. At one, when we had
luncheon, Mohair was still in the distance. At two it began to cloud
over, the wind fell flat, and an ominous black bank came up from the
south. Without more ado, Farrar, calling on me to give him a hand, eased
down the halliards and began to close reef the mainsail.

"Hold on," said the Celebrity, "who told you to do that?"

"I am very sure you didn't," Farrar returned, as he hauled out a reef
earing.

Here a few drops of rain on the deck warned the ladies to retire to the
cabin.

"Take the helm until I get my mackintosh, will you, Farrar?" said the
Celebrity, "and be careful what you do."

Farrar took the helm and hauled in the sheet, while the Celebrity, Mr.
Cooke, and the guests donned their rain-clothes. The water ahead was
now like blue velvet, and the rain pelting. The Maria was heeling to the
squall by the time the Celebrity appeared at the cabin door, enveloped in
an ample waterproof, a rubber cover on his yachting cap. A fool despises
a danger he has never experienced, and our author, with a remark about a
spanking breeze, made a motion to take the wheel. But Farrar, the
flannel of his shirt clinging to the muscular outline of his shoulders,
gave him a push which sent him sprawling against the lee refrigerator.
Well Miss Thorn was not there to see.

"You will have to answer for this," he cried, as he scrambled to his feet
and clutched the weather wash-board with one hand, while he shook the
other in Farrar's face.

"Crocker," said Farrar to me, coolly, "keep that idiot out of the way for
a while, or we'll all be drowned. Tie him up, if necessary."

I was relieved from this somewhat unpleasant task. Mr. Cooke, with his
back to the rain, sat an amused witness to the mutiny, as blissfully
ignorant as the Celebrity of the character of a lake squall.

"I appeal to you, as the owner of this yacht, Mr. Cooke," the Celebrity
shouted, "whether, as the person delegated by you to take charge of it,
I am to suffer indignity and insult. I have sailed larger yachts than
this time and again on the coast, at--" here he swallowed a portion of a
wave and was mercifully prevented from being specific.

But Mr. Cooke was looking a trifle bewildered. It was hardly possible
for him to cling to the refrigerator, much less quell a mutiny. One who
has sailed the lakes well knows how rapidly they can be lashed to fury by
a storm, and the wind was now spinning the tops of the waves into a
blinding spray. Although the Maria proved a stiff boat and a seaworthy,
she was not altogether without motion; and the set expression on Farrar's
face would have told me, had I not known it, that our situation at that
moment was no joke. Repeatedly, as she was held up to it, a precocious
roller would sweep from bow to stern, until we without coats were wet and
shivering.

The close and crowded cabin of a small yacht is not an attractive place
in rough weather; and one by one the Four emerged and distributed
themselves about the deck, wherever they could obtain a hold. Some of
them began to act peculiarly. Upon Mr. Cooke's unwillingness or
inability to interfere in his behalf, the Celebrity had assumed an
aggrieved demeanor, but soon the motion of the Maria became more and
more pronounced, and the difficulty of maintaining his decorum likewise
increased. The ruddy color left his face, which grew pale with effort.
I will do him the justice to say that the effort was heroic: he whistled
popular airs, and snatches of the grand opera; he relieved Mr. Cooke of
his glasses (of which Mr. Cooke had neglected to relieve himself), and
scanned the sea line busily. But the inevitable deferred is frequently
more violent than the inevitable taken gracefully, and the confusion
which at length overtook the Celebrity was utter as his humiliation was
complete. We laid him beside Mr. Cooke in the cockpit.

The rain presently ceased, and the wind hauled, as is often the case,
to the northwest, which began to clear, while Bear Island rose from the
northern horizon. Both Farrar and I were surprised to see Miss Trevor
come out; she hooked back the cabin doors and surveyed the prostrate
forms with amusement.

We asked her about those inside.

"Mrs. Cooke has really been very ill," she said, "and Miss Thorn is doing
all she can for her. My father and I were more fortunate. But you will
both catch your deaths," she exclaimed, noticing our condition. "Tell me
where I can find your coats."

I suppose it is natural for a man to enjoy being looked after in this
way; it was certainly a new sensation to Farrar and myself. We assured
her we were drying out and did not need the coats, but nevertheless she
went back into the cabin and found them.

"Miss Thorn says you should both be whipped," she remarked.

When we had put on our coats Miss Trevor sat down and began to talk.

"I once heard of a man," she began complacently, "a man that was buried
alive, and who contrived to dig himself up and then read his own epitaph.
It did not please him, but he was wise and amended his life. I have
often thought how much it might help some people if they could read their
own epitaphs."

Farrar was very quick at this sort of thing; and now that the steering
had become easier was only too glad to join her in worrying the
Celebrity. But he, if he were conscious, gave no sign of it.

"They ought to be buried so that they could not dig themselves up," he
said. "The epitaphs would only strengthen their belief that they had
lived in an unappreciative age."

"One I happen to have in mind, however, lives in an appreciative age.
Most appreciative."

"And women are often epitaph-makers."

"You are hard on the sex, Mr. Farrar," she answered, "but perhaps justly
so. And yet there are some women I know of who would not write an
epitaph to his taste."

Farrar looked at her curiously.

"I beg your pardon," he said.

"Do not imagine I am touchy on the subject," she replied quickly; "some
of us are fortunate enough to have had our eyes opened."

I thought the Celebrity stirred uneasily.

"Have you read The Sybarites?" she asked.

Farrar was puzzled.

"No," said he sententiously, "and I don't want to."

"I know the average man thinks it a disgrace to have read it. And you
may not believe me when I say that it is a strong story of its kind, with
a strong moral. There are men who might read that book and be a great
deal better for it. And, if they took the moral to heart, it would prove
every bit as effectual as their own epitaphs."

He was not quite sure of her drift, but he perceived that she was still
making fun of Mr. Allen.

"And the moral?" he inquired.

"Well," she said, "the best I can do is to give you a synopsis of the
story, and then you can judge of its fitness. The hero is called Victor
Desmond. He is a young man of a sterling though undeveloped character,
who has been hampered by an indulgent parent with a large fortune.
Desmond is a butterfly, and sips life after the approved manner of his
kind,--now from Bohemian glass, now from vessels of gold and silver. He
chats with stage lights in their dressing-rooms, and attends a ball in
the Bowery or a supper at Sherry's with a ready versatility. The book,
apart from its intention, really gives the middle classes an excellent
idea of what is called 'high-life.'

"It is some time before Desmond discovers that he possesses the gift of
Paris,--a deliberation proving his lack of conceit,--that wherever he
goes he unwittingly breaks a heart, and sometimes two or three. This
discovery is naturally so painful that he comes home to his chambers and
throws himself on a lounge before his fire in a fit of self-deprecation,
and reflects on a misspent and foolish life. This, mind you, is where
his character starts to develop. And he makes a heroic resolve, not to
cut off his nose or to grow a beard, nor get married, but henceforth to
live a life of usefulness and seclusion, which was certainly considerate.
And furthermore, if by any accident he ever again involved the affections
of another girl he would marry her, be she as ugly as sin or as poor as
poverty. Then the heroine comes in. Her name is Rosamond, which sounds
well and may be euphoniously coupled with Desmond; and, with the single
exception of a boarding-school girl, she is the only young woman he ever
thought of twice. In order to save her and himself he goes away, but the
temptation to write to her overpowers him, and of course she answers his
letter. This brings on a correspondence. His letters take the form of
confessions, and are the fruits of much philosophical reflection.
'Inconstancy in woman,' he says, because of the present social
conditions, is often pardonable. In a man, nothing is more despicable.'
This is his cardinal principle, and he sticks to it nobly. For, though
he tires of Rosamond, who is quite attractive, however, he marries her
and lives a life of self-denial. There are men who might take that story
to heart."

I was amused that she should give the passage quoted by the Celebrity
himself. Her double meaning was, naturally, lost on Farrar, but he
enjoyed the thing hugely, nevertheless, as more or less applicable to Mr.
Allen. I made sure that gentleman was sensible of what was being said,
though he scarcely moved a muscle. And Miss Trevor, with a mirthful
glance at me that was not without a tinge of triumph, jumped lightly to
the deck and went in to see the invalids.

We were now working up into the lee of the island, whose tall pines stood
clean and black against the red glow of the evening sky. Mr. Cooke began
to give evidences of life, and finally got up and overhauled one of the
ice-chests for a restorative. Farrar put into the little cove, where we
dropped anchor, and soon had the chief sufferers ashore; and a delicate
supper, in the preparation of which Miss Thorn showed her ability as a
cook, soon restored them. For my part, I much preferred Miss Thorn's
dishes to those of the Mohair chef, and so did Farrar. And the Four,
surprising as it may seem, made themselves generally useful about the
camp in pitching the tents under Farrar's supervision. But the Celebrity
remained apart and silent.




CHAPTER XI

Our first, night in the Bear Island camp passed without incident, and we
all slept profoundly, tired out by the labors of the day before. After
breakfast, the Four set out to explore, with trout-rods and shot-guns.
Bear Island is, with the exception of the cove into which we had put, as
nearly round as an island can be, and perhaps three miles in diameter.
It has two clear brooks which, owing to the comparative inaccessibility
of the place, still contain trout and grayling, though there are few
spots where a fly can be cast on account of the dense underbrush. The
woods contain partridge, or ruffed grouse, and other game in smaller
quantities. I believe my client entertained some notion of establishing
a preserve here.

The insults which had been heaped upon the Celebrity on the yacht seemed
to have raised rather than lowered him in Miss Thorn's esteem, for these
two ensconced themselves among the pines above the camp with an edition
de luxe of one of his works which she had brought along. They were soon
absorbed in one of those famous short stories of his with the ending left
open to discussion. Mr. Cooke was indisposed. He had not yet recovered
from the shaking up his system had sustained, and he took to a canvas
easy chair he had brought with him and placed a decanter of Scotch and a
tumbler of ice at his side. The efficacy of this remedy was assured.
And he demanded the bunch of newspapers he spied protruding from my
pocket.

The rest of us were engaged in various occupations: Mr. Trevor relating
experiences of steamboat days on the Ohio to Mrs. Cooke; Miss Trevor
buried in a serial in the Century; and Farrar and I taking an inventory
of fishing-tackle, when we were startled by aloud and profane
ejaculation. Mr. Cooke had hastily put down his glass and was staring at
the newspaper before him with eyes as large as after-dinner coffee-cups.

"Come here," he shouted over at us. "Come here, Crocker," he repeated,
seeing we were slow to move. "For God's sake, come here!"

In obedience to this emphatic summons I crossed the stream and drew near
to Mr. Cooke, who was busily pouring out another glass of whiskey to tide
him over this strange excitement. But, as Mr. Cooke was easily excited
and on such occasions always drank whiskey to quiet his nerves, I thought
nothing of it. He was sitting bolt upright and held out the paper to me
with a shaking hand, while he pointed to some headlines on the first
page. And this is what I read:

            TREASURER TAKES A TRIP.

       CHARLES WREXELL ALLEN, OF THE MILES STANDISH
      BICYCLE COMPANY, GETS OFF WITH 100,000 DOLLARS.

             DETECTIVES BAFFLED.

        THE ABSCONDER A BACK BAY SOCIAL LEADER.

Half way down the column was a picture of Mr. Allen, a cut made from a
photograph, and, allowing for the crudities of newspaper reproduction,
it was a striking likeness of the Celebrity. Underneath was a short
description. Mr. Allen was five feet eleven (the Celebrity's height),
had a straight nose, square chin, dark hair and eyes, broad shoulders,
was dressed elaborately; in brief, tallied in every particular with the
Celebrity with the exception of the slight scar which Allen was thought
to have on his forehead.

The situation and all its ludicrous possibilities came over me with a
jump. It was too good to be true. Had Mr. Charles Wrexell Allen arrived
at Asquith and created a sensation with the man who stole his name I
should have been amply satisfied. But that Mr. Allen had been obliging
enough to abscond with a large sum of money was beyond dreaming!

I glanced at the rest of it: a history of the well-established company
followed, with all that Mr. Allen had done for it. The picture, by the
way, had been obtained from the St. Paul agent of the bicycle. After
doing due credit to the treasurer's abilities as a hustler there followed
a summary of his character, hitherto without reproach; but his tastes
were expensive ones. Mr. Allen's tendency to extravagance had been
noticed by the members of the Miles Standish Company, and some of the
older directors had on occasions remonstrated with him. But he had been
too valuable a man to let go, and it seems as treasurer he was trusted
implicitly. He was said to have more clothes than any man in Boston.

I am used to thinking quickly, and by the time I had read this I had an
idea.

"What in hell do you make of that, Crocker?" cried my client, eyeing me
closely and repeating the question again and again, as was his wont
when agitated.

"It is certainly plain enough," I replied, "but I should like to talk to
you before you decide to hand him over to the authorities."

I thought I knew Mr. Cooke, and I was not mistaken.

"Authorities!" he roared. "Damn the authorities! There's my yacht, and
there's the Canadian border." And he pointed to the north.

The others were pressing around us by this time, and had caught the
significant words which Mr. Cooke had uttered. I imagine that if my
client had stopped to think twice, which of course is a preposterous
condition, he would have confided his discovery only to Farrar and to me.
It was now out of the question to keep it from the rest of the party, and
Mr. Trevor got the headlines over my shoulder. I handed him the sheet.

"Read it, Mr. Trevor," said Mrs. Cooke.

Mr. Trevor, in a somewhat unsteady voice, read the headlines and began
the column, and they followed breathless with astonishment and agitation.
Once or twice the senator paused to frown upon the Celebrity with a
terrible sternness, thus directing all other eyes to him. His demeanor
was a study in itself. It may be surmised, from what I have said of him,
that there was a strain of the actor in his composition; and I am
prepared to make an affidavit that, secure in the knowledge that he had
witnesses present to attest his identity, he hugely enjoyed the sensation
he was creating. That he looked forward with a profound pleasure to the
stir which the disclosure that he was the author of The Sybarites would
make. His face wore a beatific smile.

As Mr. Trevor continued, his voice became firmer and his manner more
majestic. It was a task distinctly to his taste, and one might have
thought he was reading the sentence of a Hastings. I was standing next
to his daughter. The look of astonishment, perhaps of horror, which I
had seen on her face when her father first began to read had now faded
into something akin to wickedness. Did she wink? I can't say, never
before having had a young woman wink at me. But the next moment her
vinaigrette was rolling down the bank towards the brook, and I was after
it. I heard her close behind me. She must have read my intentions by a
kind of mental telepathy.

"Are you going to do it?" she whispered.

"Of course," I answered. "To miss such a chance would be a downright
sin."

There was a little awe in her laugh.

"Miss Thorn is the only obstacle," I added, "and Mr. Cooke is our hope.
I think he will go by me."

"Don't let Miss Thorn worry you," she said as we climbed back.

"What do you mean?" I demanded. But she only shook her head. We were
at the top again, and Mr. Trevor was reading an appended despatch from
Buffalo, stating that Mr. Allen had been recognized there, in the latter
part of June, walking up and down the platform of the station, in a
smoking-jacket, and that he had climbed on the Chicago limited as it
pulled out. This may have caused the Celebrity to feel a trifle
uncomfortable.

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Trevor, as he put down the paper. "Mr. Cooke, do you
happen to have any handcuffs on the Maria?"

But my client was pouring out a stiff helping from the decanter, which he
still held in his hand. Then he approached the Celebrity.

"Don't let it worry you, old man," said he, with intense earnestness.
"Don't let it worry you. You're my guest, and I'll see you safe out of
it, or bust."

"Fenelon," said Mrs. Cooke, gravely, "do you realize what you are
saying?"

"You're a clever one, Allen," my client continued, and he backed away the
better to look him over; "you had nerve to stay as long as you did."

The Celebrity laughed confidently.

"Cooke," he replied, "I appreciate your generosity,--I really do. I know
no offence is meant. The mistake is, in fact, most pardonable."

In Mr. Cooke amazement and admiration were clamoring for utterance.

"Damn me," he sputtered, "if you're not the coolest embezzler I ever
saw."

The Celebrity laughed again. Then he surveyed the circle.

"My friends," he said, "this is certainly a most amazing coincidence; one
which, I assure you, surprises me no less than it does you. You have no
doubt remarked that I have my peculiarities. We all have.

"I flatter thyself I am not entirely unknown. And the annoyances imposed
upon me by a certain fame I have achieved had become such that some
months ago I began to crave the pleasures of the life of a private man.
I determined to go to some sequestered resort where my face was
unfamiliar. The possibility of being recognized at Asquith did not occur
to me. Fortunately I was. And a singular chance led me to take the name
of the man who has committed this crime, and who has the misfortune to
resemble me. I suppose that now," he added impressively, "I shall have
to tell you who I am."

He paused until these words should have gained their full effect. Then
he held up the edition de luxe from which he and Miss Thorn had been
reading.

"You may have heard, Mrs. Cooke," said he, addressing himself to our
hostess, "you may perhaps have heard of the author of this book."

Mrs. Cooke was a calm woman, and she read the name on the cover.

"Yes," she said, "I have. And you claim to be he?"

"Ask my friend Crocker here," he answered carelessly, no doubt exulting
that the scene was going off so dramatically. "I should indeed be in a
tight box," he went on, "if there were not friends of mine here to help
me out."

They turned to me.

"I am afraid I cannot," I said with what soberness I could.

"What!" says he with a start. "What! you deny me?"

Miss Trevor had her tongue in her cheek. I bowed.

"I am powerless to speak, Mr. Allen," I replied.

During this colloquy my client stood between us, looking from one to the
other. I well knew that his way of thinking would be with my testimony,
and that the gilt name on the edition de luxe had done little towards
convincing him of Mr. Allen's innocence. To his mind there was nothing
horrible or incongruous in the idea that a well-known author should be a
defaulter. It was perfectly possible. He shoved the glass of Scotch
towards the Celebrity, with a smile.

"Take this, old man," he kindly insisted, "and you'll feel better.
What's the use of bucking when you're saddled with a thing like that?"
And he pointed to the paper. "Besides, they haven't caught you yet, by a
damned sight."

The Celebrity waved aside the proffered tumbler.

"This is an infamous charge, and you know it, Crocker," he cried.
"If you don't, you ought to, as a lawyer. This isn't any time to have
fun with a fellow."

"My dear sir," I said, "I have charged you with nothing whatever."

He turned his back on me in complete disgust. And he came face to face
with Miss Trevor.

"Miss Trevor, too, knows something of me," he said.

"You forget, Mr. Allen," she answered sweetly, "you forget that I have
given you my promise not to reveal what I know."

The Celebrity chafed, for this was as damaging a statement as could well
be uttered against him. But Miss Thorn was his trump card, and she now
came forward.

"This is ridiculous, Mr. Crocker, simply ridiculous," said she.

"I agree with you most heartily, Miss Thorn," I replied.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Thorn, and she drew her lips together, "pure
nonsense!"

"Nonsense or not, Marian," Mr. Cooke interposed, "we are wasting valuable
time. The police are already on the scent, I'll bet my hat."

"Fenelon!" Mrs. Cooke remonstrated.

"And do you mean to say in soberness, Uncle Fenelon, that you believe the
author of The Sybarites to be a defaulter?" said Miss Thorn.

"It is indeed hard to believe Mr. Allen a criminal," Mr. Trevor broke in
for the first time. "I think it only right that he should be allowed to
clear himself before he is put to further inconvenience, and perhaps
injustice, by any action we may take in the matter."

Mr. Cooke sniffed suspiciously at the word "action."

"What action do you mean?" he demanded.

"Well," replied Mr. Trevor, with some hesitation, "before we take any
steps, that is, notify the police."

"Notify the police!" cried my client, his face red with a generous anger.
"I have never yet turned a guest over to the police," he said proudly,
"and won't, not if I know it. I'm not that kind."

Who shall criticise Mr. Cooke's code of morality?

"Fenelon," said his wife, "you must remember you have never yet
entertained a guest of a larcenous character. No embezzlers up to the
present. Marian," she continued, turning to Miss Thorn, "you spoke as
if you might, be able to throw some light upon this matter. Do you know
whether this gentleman is Charles Wrexell Allen, or whether he is the
author? In short, do you know who he is?"

The Celebrity lighted a cigarette. Miss Thorn said indignantly,
"Upon my word, Aunt Maria, I thought that you, at least, would know
better than to credit this silly accusation. He has been a guest at your
house, and I am astonished that you should doubt his word."

Mrs. Cooke looked at her niece perplexedly.

"You must remember, Marian," she said gently, "that I know nothing about
him, where he came from, or who he is. Nor does any one at Asquith,
except perhaps Miss Trevor, by her own confession. And you do not seem
inclined to tell what you know, if indeed you know anything."

Upon this Miss Thorn became more indignant still, and Mrs. Cooke went on
"Gentlemen, as a rule, do not assume names, especially other people's.
They are usually proud of their own. Mr. Allen appears among us, from
the clouds, as it were, and in due time we learn from a newspaper that
he has committed a defalcation. And, furthermore, the paper contains a
portrait and an accurate description which put the thing beyond doubt. I
ask you, is it reasonable for him to state coolly after all this that he
is another man? That he is a well-known author? It's an absurdity. I
was not born yesterday, my dear."

"It is most reasonable under the circumstances," replied Miss Thorn,
warmly. "Extraordinary? Of course it's extraordinary. And too long to
explain to a prejudiced audience, who can't be expected to comprehend the
character of a genius, to understand the yearning of a famous man for a
little quiet."

Mrs. Cooke looked grave.

"Marian, you forget yourself," she said.

"Oh, I am tired of it, Aunt Maria," cried Miss Thorn; "if he takes my
advice, he will refuse to discuss it farther."

She did not seem to be aware that she had put forth no argument whatever,
save a woman's argument. And I was intensely surprised that her
indignation should have got the better of her in this way, having always
supposed her clear-headed in the extreme. A few words from her, such as
I supposed she would have spoken, had set the Celebrity right with all
except Mr. Cooke. To me it was a clear proof that the Celebrity had
turned her head, and her mind with it.

The silence was broken by an uncontrollable burst of laughter from Miss
Trevor. She was quickly frowned down by her father, who reminded her
that this was not a comedy.

"And, Mr. Allen," he said, "if you have anything to say, or any evidence
to bring forward, now is the time to do it."

He appeared to forget that I was the district attorney.

The Celebrity had seated himself on the trunk of a tree, and was blowing
out the smoke in clouds. He was inclined to take Miss Thorn's advice,
for he made a gesture of weariness with his cigarette, in the use of
which he was singularly eloquent.

"Tell me, Mr. Trevor," said he, "why I should sit before you as a
tribunal? Why I should take the trouble to clear myself of a senseless
charge? My respect for you inclines me to the belief that you are
laboring under a momentary excitement; for when you reflect that I am a
prominent, not to say famous, author, you will realize how absurd it is
that I should be an embezzler, and why I decline to lower myself by an
explanation."

Mr. Trevor picked up the paper and struck it.

"Do you refuse to say anything in the face of such evidence as that?" he
cried.

"It is not a matter for refusal, Mr. Trevor. It is simply that I cannot
admit the possibility of having committed the crime."

"Well, sir," said the senator, his black necktie working out of place as
his anger got the better of him, "I am to believe, then, because you
claim to be the author of a few society novels, that you are infallible?
Let me tell you that the President of the United States himself is liable
to impeachment, and bound to disprove any charge he may be accused of.
What in Halifax do I care for your divine-right-of-authors theory? I'll
continue to think you guilty until you are shown to be innocent."

Suddenly the full significance of the Celebrity's tactics struck Mr.
Cooke, and he reached out and caught hold of Mr. Trevor's coattails.
"Hold on, old man," said he; "Allen isn't going to be ass enough to own
up to it. Don't you see we'd all be jugged and fined for assisting a
criminal over the border? It's out of consideration for us."

Mr. Trevor looked sternly over his shoulder at Mr. Cooke.

"Do you mean to say, sir, seriously," he asked, "that, for the sake of a
misplaced friendship for this man, and a misplaced sense of honor, you
are bound to shield a guest, though a criminal? That you intend to
assist him to escape from justice? I insist, for my own protection and
that of my daughter, as well as for that of the others present that,
since he refuses to speak, we must presume him guilty and turn him over."

Mr. Trevor turned to Mrs. Cooke, as if relying on her support.

"Fenelon," said she, "I have never sought to influence your actions when
your friends were concerned, and I shall not begin now. All I ask of you
is to consider the consequences of your intention."

These words from Mrs. Cooke had much more weight with my client than Mr.
Trevor's blustering demands.

"Maria, my dear," he said, with a deferential urbanity, "Mr. Allen is my
guest, and a gentleman. When a gentleman gives his word that he is not a
criminal, it is sufficient."

The force of this, for some reason, did not overwhelm his wife; and her
lip curled a little, half in contempt, half in risibility.

"Pshaw, Fenelon," said she, "what a fraud you are. Why is it you wish to
get Mr. Allen over the border, then?" A question which might well have
staggered a worthier intellect.

"Why, my dear," answered my client, "I wish to save Mr. Allen the
inconvenience, not to say the humiliation, of being brought East in
custody and strapped with a pair of handcuffs. Let him take a shooting
trip to the great Northwest until the real criminal is caught."

"Well, Fenelon," replied Mrs. Cooke, unable to repress a smile, "one
might as well try to argue with a turn-stile or a weather-vane. I wash
my hands of it."

But Mr. Trevor, who was both a self-made man and a Western politician,
was far from being satisfied. He turned to me with a sweep of the arm
he had doubtless learned in the Ohio State Senate.

"Mr. Crocker," he cried, "are you, as attorney of this district, going
to aid and abet in the escape of a fugitive from justice?"

"Mr. Trevor," said I, "I will take the course in this matter which seems
fit to me, and without advice from any one."

He wheeled on Farrar, repeated the question, and got a like answer.

Brought to bay for a time, he glared savagely around him while groping
for further arguments.

But at this point the Four appeared on the scene, much the worse for
thickets, and clamoring for luncheon. They had five small fish between
them which they wanted Miss Thorn to cook.




CHAPTER XII

The Four received Mr. Cooke's plan for the Celebrity's escape to Canada
with enthusiastic acclamation, and as the one thing lacking to make the
Bear Island trip a complete success. The Celebrity was hailed with the
reverence due to the man who puts up the ring-money in a prize-fight. He
was accorded, too, a certain amount of respect as a defaulter, which the
Four would have denied him as an author, for I am inclined to the belief
that the discovery of his literary profession would have lowered him
rather than otherwise in their eyes. My client was naturally anxious to
get under way at once for the Canadian border, but was overruled in this
by his henchmen, who demanded something to eat. We sat down to an
impromptu meal, which was an odd affair indeed. Mrs. Cooke maintained
her usual serenity, but said little, while Miss Trevor and I had many a
mirthful encounter at the thought of the turn matters had taken.

At the other end of the cloth were Mr. Cooke and the Four, in wonderful
spirits and unimpaired appetite, and in their midst sat the Celebrity,
likewise in wonderful spirits. His behavior now and again elicited a
loud grunt of disapproval from Mr. Trevor, who was plying his knife and
fork in a manner emblematic of his state of mind. Mr. Allen was laughing
and joking airily with Mr. Cooke and the guests, denying, but not
resenting, their accusations with all the sang froid of a hardened
criminal. He did not care particularly to go to Canada, he said. Why
should he, when he was innocent? But, if Mr. Cooke insisted, he would
enjoy seeing that part of the lake and the Canadian side.

Afterwards I perceived Miss Thorn down by the brookside, washing dishes.
Her sleeves were drawn back to the elbow, and a dainty white apron
covered her blue skirt, while the wind from the lake had disentangled
errant wisps of her hair. I stood on the brink above, secure, as I
thought, from observation, when she chanced to look up and spied me.

"Mr. Crocker," she called, "would you like to make yourself useful?"

I was decidedly embarrassed. Her manner was as frank and unconstrained
as though I had not been shunning her for weeks past.

"If such a thing is possible," I replied.

"Do you know a dish-cloth when you see one?"

I was doubtful. But I procured the cloth from Miss Trevor and returned.
There was an air about Miss Thorn that was new to me.

"What an uncompromising man you are, Mr. Crocker," she said to me. "Once
a person is unfortunate enough to come under the ban of your disapproval
you have nothing whatever to do with them. Now it seems that I have
given you offence in some way. Is it not so?"

"You magnify my importance," I said.

"No temporizing, Mr. Crocker," she went on, as though she meant to be
obeyed; "sit down there, and let's have it out. I like you too well to
quarrel with you."

There was no resisting such a command, and I threw myself on the pebbles
at her feet.

"I thought we were going to be great friends," she said. "You and Mr.
Farrar were so kind to me on the night of my arrival, and we had such fun
watching the dance together."

"I confess I thought so, too. But you expressed opinions then that I
shared. You have since changed your mind, for some unaccountable
reason."

She paused in her polishing, a shining dish in her hand, and looked down
at me with something between a laugh and a frown.

"I suppose you have never regretted speaking hastily," she said.

"Many a time," I returned, warming; "but if I ever thought a judgment
measured and distilled, it was your judgment of the Celebrity."

"Does the study of law eliminate humanity?" she asked, with a mock
curtsey. "The deliberate sentences are sometimes the unjust ones, and
men who are hung by weighed wisdom are often the innocent."

"That is all very well in cases of doubt. But here you have the
evidences of wrong-doing directly before you."

Three dishes were taken up, dried, and put down before she answered me.
I threw pebbles into the brook, and wished I had held my tongue.

"What evidence?" inquired she.
"Well," said I, "I must finish, I suppose. I had a notion you knew of
what I inferred. First, let me say that I have no desire to prejudice
you against a person whom you admire."

"Impossible."

Something in her tone made me look up.

"Very good, then," I answered. "I, for one, can have no use for a man
who devotes himself to a girl long enough to win her affections, and then
deserts her with as little compunction as a dog does a rat it has shaken.
And that is how your Celebrity treated Miss Trevor."

"But Miss Trevor has recovered, I believe," said Miss Thorn.

I began to feel a deep, but helpless, insecurity.

"Happily, yes," I assented.

"Thanks to an excellent physician."

A smile twitched the corners of her mouth, as though she enjoyed my
discomfiture. I remarked for the fiftieth time how strong her face was,
with its generous lines and clearly moulded features. And a suspicion
entered my soul.

"At any rate," I said, with a laugh, "the Celebrity has got himself into
no end of a predicament now. He may go back to New York in custody."

"I thought you incapable of resentment, Mr. Crocker. How mean of you to
deny him!"

"It can do no harm," I answered; "a little lesson in the dangers of
incognito may be salutary. I wish it were a little lesson in the dangers
of something else."

The color mounted to her face as she resumed her occupation.

"I am afraid you are a very wicked man," she said.

Before I could reply there came a scuffling sound from the bank above us,
and the snapping of branches and twigs. It was Mr. Cooke. His descent,
the personal conduction of which he lost half-way down, was irregular and
spasmodic, and a rude concussion at the bottom knocked off a choice bit
of profanity which was balanced on the tip of his tongue.

"Tobogganing is a little out of season," said his niece, laughing
heartily.

Mr. Cooke brushed himself off, picked up the glasses which he had dropped
in his flight and pushed them into my hands. Then he pointed lakeward
with bulging eyes.

"Crocker, old man," he said in a loud whisper, "they tell me that is an
Asquith cat-boat."

I followed his finger and saw for the first time a sail-boat headed for
the island, then about two miles off shore. I raised the glasses.

"Yes," I said, "the Scimitar."

"That's what Farrar said," cried he.

"And what about it?" I asked.

"What about it?" he ejaculated. "Why, it's a detective come for Allen.
I knew sure as hell if they got as far as Asquith they wouldn't stop
there. And that's the fastest sail-boat he could hire there, isn't it?"

I replied that it was. He seized me by the shoulder and began dragging
me up the bank.

"What are you going to do?" I cried, shaking myself loose.

"We've got to get on the Maria and run for it," he panted. "There is no
time to be lost."

He had reached the top of the bank and was running towards the group at
the tents. And he actually infused me with some of his red-hot
enthusiasm, for I hastened after him.

"But you can't begin to get the Maria out before they will be in here,"
I shouted.

He stopped short, gazed at the approaching boat, and then at me.

"Is that so?"

"Yes, of course," said I, "they will be here in ten minutes."

The Celebrity stood in the midst of the excited Four. His hair was
parted precisely, and he had induced a monocle to remain in his eye long
enough to examine the Scimitar, his nose at the critical elevation. This
unruffled exterior made a deep impression on the Four. Was the Celebrity
not undergoing the crucial test of a true sport? He was an example alike
to criminals and philosophers.

Mr. Cooke hurried into the group, which divided respectfully for him, and
grasped the Celebrity by the hand.

"Something else has got to be done, old man," he said, in a voice which
shook with emotion; "they'll be on us before we can get the Maria out."

Farrar, who was nailing a rustic bench near by, straightened up at this,
his lip curling with a desire to laugh.

The Celebrity laid his hand on my client's shoulder.

"Cooke," said he, "I'm deeply grateful for all the trouble you wish to
take, and for the solicitude you have shown. But let things be. I'll
come out of it all right."

"Never," cried Cooke, looking proudly around the Four as some Highland
chief might have surveyed a faithful clan. "I'd a damned sight rather go
to jail myself."

"A damned sight," echoed the Four in unison.

"I insist, Cooke," said the Celebrity, taking out his eyeglass and
tapping Mr. Cooke's purple necktie, "I insist that you drop this
business. I repeat my thanks to you and these gentlemen for the
friendship they have shown, but say again that I am as innocent of this
crime as a baby."

Mr. Cooke paid no attention to this speech. His face became radiant.

"Didn't any of you fellows strike a cave, or a hollow tree, or something
of that sort, knocking around this morning?"

One man slapped his knee.

"The very place," he cried. "I fell into it," and he showed a rent in
his trousers corroboratively. "It's big enough to hold twenty of Allen,
and the detective doesn't live that could find it."

"Hustle him off, quick," said Mr. Cooke.

The mandate was obeyed as literally as though Robin Hood himself had
given it. The Celebrity disappeared into the forest, carried rather than
urged towards his destined place of confinement.

The commotion had brought Mr. Trevor to the spot. He caught sight of the
Celebrity's back between the trees, then he looked at the cat-boat
entering the cove, a man in the stern preparing to pull in the tender.

He intercepted Mr. Cooke on his way to the beach.

"What have you done with Mr. Allen?" he asked, in a menacing voice.

"Good God," said Mr. Cooke, whose contempt for Mr. Trevor was now
infinite, "you talk as if I were the governor of the state. What the
devil could I do with him?"

"I will have no evasion," replied Mr. Trevor, taking an imposing posture
in front of him. "You are trying to defeat the ends of justice by
assisting a dangerous criminal to escape. I have warned you, sir, and
warn you again of the consequences of your meditated crime, and I give
you my word I will do all in my power to frustrate it."

Mr. Cooke dug his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. Here was a
complication he had not looked for. The Scimitar lay at anchor with her
sail down, and two men were coming ashore in the tender. Mr. Cooke's
attitude being that of a man who reconsiders a rash resolve, Mr. Trevor
was emboldened to say in a moderated tone:

"You were carried away by your generosity, Mr. Cooke. I was sure when
you took time to think you would see it in another light."

Mr. Cooke started off for the place where the boat had grounded. I did
not catch his reply, and probably should not have written it here if I
had. The senator looked as if he had been sand-bagged.

The two men jumped out of the boat and hauled it up. Mr. Cooke waved an
easy salute to one, whom I recognized as the big boatman from Asquith,
familiarly known as Captain Jay. He owned the Scimitar and several
smaller boats. The captain went through the pantomime of an introduction
between Mr. Cooke and the other, whom my client shook warmly by the hand,
and presently all three came towards us.

Mr. Cooke led them to a bar he had improvised by the brook. A pool
served the office of refrigerator, and Mr. Cooke had devised an ingenious
but complicated arrangement of strings and labels which enabled him to
extract any bottle or set of bottles without having to bare his arm and
pull out the lot. Farrar and I responded to the call he had given, and
went down to assist in the entertainment. My client, with his back to
us, was busy manipulating the strings.

"Gentlemen," he said, "let me make you acquainted with Mr. Drew. You all
know the captain."

Had I not suspected Mr. Drew's profession, I think I should not have
remarked that he gave each of us a keen look as he raised his head. He
had reddish-brown hair, and a pair of bushy red whiskers, each of which
tapered to a long point. He was broad in the shoulders, and the clothes
he wore rather enhanced this breadth. His suit was gray and almost new,
the trousers perceptibly bagging at the knee, and he had a felt hat, a
necktie of the white and flowery pattern, and square-toed "Congress"
boots. In short, he was a decidedly ordinary looking person; you would
meet a hundred like him in the streets of Far Harbor and Beaverton. He
might have been a prosperous business man in either of those towns,--a
comfortable lumber merchant or mine owner. And he had chosen just the
get-up I should have picked for detective work in that region. He had a
pleasant eye and a very fetching and hearty manner. But his long
whiskers troubled me especially. I kept wondering if they were real.

"The captain is sailing Mr. Drew over to Far Harbor," explained Mr.
Cooke, "and they have put in here for the night."

Mr. Drew was plainly not an amateur, for he volunteered nothing further
than this. The necessary bottles having been produced, Mr. Cooke held up
his glass and turned to the stranger.

"Welcome to our party, old man," said he.

Mr. Drew drained his glass and complimented Mr. Cooke on the brand,--a
sure key to my client's heart. Whereupon he seated himself between Mr.
Drew and the captain and began a discourse on the subject of his own
cellar, on which he talked for nearly an hour. His only pauses were for
the worthy purpose of filling the detective's or the captain's glass, and
these he watched with a hospitable solicitude. The captain had the
advantage, three to one, and I made no doubt his employer bitterly
regretted not having a boatman whose principles were more strict. At the
end of the hour Captain Jay, who by nature was inclined to be taciturn
and crabbed, waxed loquacious and even jovial. He sang us the songs he
had learned in the winter lumber-camps, which Mr. Cooke never failed to
encore to the echo. My client vowed he had not spent a pleasanter
afternoon for years. He plied the captain with cigars, and explained to
him the mystery of the strings and labels; and the captain experimented
until he had broken some of the bottles.

Mr. Cooke was not a person who made any great distinction between the
three degrees, acquaintance, friendship, and intimacy. When a stranger
pleased him, he went from one to the other with such comparative ease
that a hardhearted man, and no other, could have resented his advances.
Mr. Drew was anything but a hard-hearted man, and he did not object to my
client's familiarity. Mr. Cooke made no secret of his admiration for Mr.
Drew, and there were just two things about him that Mr. Cooke admired and
wondered at, above all else,--the bushy red whiskers. But it appeared
that these were the only things that Mr. Drew was really touchy about.
I noticed that the detective, without being impolite, did his best to
discourage these remarks; but my client knew no such word as
discouragement. He was continually saying: "I think I'll grow some like
that, old man," or "Have those cut," and the like,--a kind of humor in
which the captain took an incredible delight. And finally, when a
certain pitch of good feeling had been arrived at, Mr. Cooke reached out
and playfully grabbed hold of the one near him. The detective drew back.
"Mr. Cooke," said he, with dignity, "I'll have to ask you to let my
whiskers alone."

"Certainly, old man," replied my client, anything but abashed. "You'll
pardon me, but they seemed too good to be true. I congratulate you on
them."

I was amused as well as alarmed at this piece of boldness, but the
incident passed off without any disagreeable results, except, perhaps,
a slight nervousness noticeable in the detective; and this soon
disappeared. As the sun grew low, the Celebrity's conductors straggled
in with fishing-rods and told of an afternoon's sport, and we left the
captain peacefully but sonorously slumbering on the bank.

"Crocker," said my client to me, afterwards, "they didn't feel like the
real, home-grown article. But aren't they damned handsome?"




CHAPTER XIII

After supper, Captain Jay was rowed out and put to bed in his own bunk on
the Scimitar. Then we heaped together a huge pile of the driftwood on
the beach and raised a blazing beacon, the red light of which I doubt not
could be seen from the mainland. The men made prongs from the soft wood,
while Miss Thorn produced from the stores some large tins of
marshmallows.

The memory of that evening lingers with me yet. The fire colored
everything. The waves dashed in ruby foam at our feet, and even the
tall, frowning pines at our backs were softened; the sting was gone out
of the keen night wind from the north. I found a place beside the gray
cape I had seen for the first time the night of the cotillon. I no
longer felt any great dislike for Miss Thorn, let it be known.
Resentment was easier when the distance between Mohair and Asquith
separated us,--impossible on a yachting excursion. But why should I be
justifying myself?

Mr. Cooke and the Four, in addition to other accomplishments, possessed
excellent voices, and Mr. Drew sang a bass which added much to the
melody. One of the Four played a banjo. It is only justice to Mr. Drew
to say that he seemed less like a detective than any man I have ever met.
He told a good story and was quick at repartee, and after a while the
music, by tacit consent, was abandoned for the sake of hearing him talk.
He related how he had worked up the lake, point by point, from Beaverton
to Asquith, and lightened his narrative with snappy accounts of the
different boatmen he had run across and of the different predicaments
into which he had fallen. His sketches were so vivid that Mr. Cooke
forgot to wink at me after a while and sat spellbound, while I marvelled
at the imaginative faculty he displayed. He had us in roars of laughter.
His stories were far from incredible, and he looked less like a liar than
a detective. He showed, too, an accurate and astonishing knowledge of
the lake which could hardly have been acquired in any other way than the
long-shore trip he had described. Not once did he hint of a special
purpose which had brought him to the island, and it was growing late.
The fire died down upon the stones, and the thought of the Celebrity,
alone in a dark cave in the middle of the island, began to prey upon me.
I was not designed for a practical joker, and I take it that pity is a
part of every self-respecting man's composition. In the cool of the
night season the ludicrous side of the matter did not appeal to me quite
as strongly as in the glare of day. A joke should never be pushed to
cruelty. It was in vain that I argued I had no direct hand in the
concealing of him; I felt my responsibility quite as heavy upon me.
Perhaps bears still remained in these woods. And if a bear should devour
the author of The Sybarites, would the world ever forgive me? Could I
ever repay the debt to the young women of these United States?
To speak truth, I expected every moment to see him appear. Why, in the
name of all his works, did he stay there? Nothing worse could befall him
than to go to Far Harbor with Drew, where our words concerning his
identity would be taken. And what an advertisement this would be for the
great author. The Sybarites, now selling by thousands, would increase
its sales to ten thousands. Ah, there was the rub. The clue to his
remaining in the cave was this very kink in the Celebrity's character.
There was nothing Bohemian in that character; it yearned after the
eminently respectable. Its very eccentricities were within the limits of
good form. The Celebrity shunned the biscuits and beer of the literary
clubs, and his books were bound for the boudoir. To have it proclaimed
in the sensational journals that the hands of this choice being had been
locked for grand larceny was a thought too horrible to entertain. His
very manservant would have cried aloud against it. Better a hundred
nights in a cave than one such experience!

Miss Trevor's behavior that evening was so unrestful as to lead me to
believe that she, too, was going through qualms of sympathy for the
victim. As we were breaking up for the evening she pulled my sleeve.

"Don't you think we have carried our joke a little too far, Mr. Crocker?"
she whispered uneasily. "I can't bear to think of him in that
terrible place."

"It will do him a world of good," I replied, assuming a gayety I did not
feel. It is not pleasant to reflect that some day one's own folly might
place one in alike situation. And the night was dismally cool and windy,
now that the fire had gone out. Miss Trevor began to philosophize.

"Such practical pleasantries as this," she said, "are like infernal
machines: they often blow up the people that start them. And they are
next to impossible to steer."

"Perhaps it is just as well not to assume we are the instruments of
Providence," I said.

Here we ran into Miss Thorn, who was carrying a lantern.

"I have been searching everywhere for you two mischief-makers," said she.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Heaven only knows how this
little experiment will end. Here is Aunt Maria, usually serene, on the
verge of hysterics: she says he shouldn't stay in that damp cave another
minute. Here is your father, Irene, organizing relief parties and
walking the floor of his tent like a madman. And here is Uncle Fenelon
insane over the idea of getting the poor, innocent man into Canada. And
here is a detective saddled upon us, perhaps for days, and Uncle Fenelon
has gotten his boatman drunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,"
she repeated.

Miss Trevor laughed, in spite of the gravity of these things, and so did
I.

"Oh, come, Marian," said she, "it isn't as bad as all that. And you talk
as if you hadn't anything to be reproached for. Your own defence of the
Celebrity wasn't as strong as it might have been."

By the light of the lantern I saw Miss Thorn cast one meaning look at
Miss Trevor.

"What are you going to do about it?" asked Miss Thorn, addressing me.
"Think of that unhappy man, without a bed, without blankets, without even
a tooth-brush."

"He hasn't been wholly off my mind," I answered truthfully. "But there
isn't anything we can do to-night, with that beastly detective to notice
it."

"Then you must go very early to-morrow morning, before the detective gets
up."

I couldn't help smiling at the notion of getting up before a detective.

"I am only too willing," I said.

"It must be by four o'clock," Miss Thorn went on energetically, "and we
must have a guide we can trust. Arrange it with one of Uncle Fenelon's
friends."

"We?" I repeated.

"You certainly don't imagine that I am going to be left behind?" said
Miss Thorn.

I made haste to invite for the expedition one of the Four, who was quite
willing to go; and we got together all the bodily comforts we could think
of and put them in a hamper, the Fraction not forgetting to add a few
bottles from Mr. Cooke's immersed bar.

Long after the camp had gone to bed, I lay on the pine-needles above the
brook, shielded from the wind by a break in the slope, and thought of the
strange happenings of that day. Presently the waning moon climbed
reluctantly from the waters, and the stream became mottled, black and
white, the trees tall blurs. The lake rose and fell with a mighty
rhythm, and the little brook hurried madly over the stones to join it.
One thought chased another from my brain.

At such times, when one's consciousness of outer things is dormant, an
earthquake might continue for some minutes without one realizing it. I
did not observe, though I might have seen from where I lay, the flap of
one of the tents drawn back and two figures emerge. They came and stood
on the bank above, under the tree which sheltered me. And I experienced
a curious phenomenon. I heard, and understood, and remembered the first
part of the conversation which passed between them, and did not know it.

"I am sorry to disturb you," said one.

"Not at all," said the other, whose tone, I thought afterwards, betokened
surprise, and no great cheerfulness.

"But I have had no other opportunity to speak with you."

"No," said the other, rather uneasily.

Suddenly my senses were alert, and I knew that Mr. Trevor had pulled the
detective out of bed. The senator had no doubt anticipated an easier
time, and he now began feeling for an opening. More than once he cleared
his throat to commence, while Mr. Drew pulled his scant clothing closer
about him, his whiskers playing in the breeze.

"In Cincinnati, Mr. Drew," said Mr. Trevor, at length, "I am a known, if
not an influential, citizen; and I have served my state for three terms
in its Senate."

"I have visited your city, Mr. Trevor," answered Mr. Drew, his teeth
chattering audibly, "and I know you by reputation."

"Then, sir," Mr. Trevor continued, with a flourish which appeared
absolutely grotesque in his attenuated costume, "it must be clear to you
that I cannot give my consent to a flagrant attempt by an unscrupulous
person to violate the laws of this country."

"Your feelings are to be respected, sir."

Mr. Trevor cleared his throat again.
"Discretion is always to be observed, Mr. Drew. And I, who have been in
the public service, know the full value of it."

Mr. Trevor leaned forward, at the same time glancing anxiously up at the
tree, for fear, perhaps, that Mr. Cooke might be concealed therein. He
said in a stage whisper:

"A criminal is concealed on this island."

Drew started perceptibly.

"Yes," said Mr. Trevor, with a glance of triumph at having produced an
impression on a detective, "I thought it my duty to inform you. He has
been hidden by the followers of the unscrupulous person I referred to, in
a cave, I believe. I repeat, sir, as a man of unimpeachable standing, I
considered it my duty to tell you."

"You have my sincere thanks, Mr. Trevor," said Drew, holding out his
hand, "and I shall act on the suggestion."

Mr. Trevor clasped the hand of the detective, and they returned quietly
to their respective tents. And in course of time I followed them,
wondering how this incident might affect our morning's expedition.




CHAPTER XIV

My first thought on rising was to look for the detective. The touch of
the coming day was on the lake, and I made out the two boats dimly,
riding on the dead swell and tugging idly at their chains. The detective
had been assigned to a tent which was occupied by Mr. Cooke and the Four,
and they were sleeping soundly at my entrance. But Drew's blankets were
empty. I hurried to the beach, but the Scimitar's boat was still drawn
up there near the Maria's tender, proving that he was still on the
island.

Outside of the ladies' tent I came upon Miss Thorn, stowing a large
basket. I told her that we had taken that precaution the night before.

"What did you put in?" she demanded.

I enumerated the articles as best I could. And when I had finished, she
said,

"And I am filling this with the things you have forgotten."

I lost no time in telling her what I had overheard the night before, and
that the detective was gone from his tent. She stopped her packing and
looked at me in concern.

"He is probably watching us," she said. "Do you think we had better go?"

I thought it could do no harm. "If we are followed," said I, "all we
have to do is to turn back."

Miss Trevor came out as I spoke, and our conductor appeared, bending
under the hamper. I shouldered some blankets and the basket, and we
started. We followed a rough path, evidently cut by a camping party in
some past season, but now overgrown. The Fraction marched ahead, and I
formed the rear guard. Several times it seemed to me as though someone
were pushing after us, and more than once we halted. I put down the
basket and went back to reconnoitre. Once I believed I saw a figure
flitting in the gray light, but I set it down to my imagination.

Finally we reached a brook, sneaking along beneath the underbrush as
though fearing to show itself, and we followed its course. Branches
lashed our faces and brambles tore our clothes. And then, as the
sunlight was filtering through and turning the brook from blue to
crystal, we came upon the Celebrity. He was seated in a little open
space on the bank, apparently careless of capture. He did not even rise
at our approach. His face showed the effect of a sleepless night, and
wore an expression inimical to all mankind. The conductor threw his
bundle on the bank and laid his hand on the Celebrity's shoulder.

"Halloa, old man!" said he, cheerily. "You must have had a hard night
of it. But we couldn't make you any sooner, because that hawk of an
officer had his eye on us."

The Celebrity shook himself free. And in place of the gratitude for
which the Fraction had looked, and which he had every reason to expect,
he got something different.

"This outrage has gone far enough," said the Celebrity, with a terrible
calmness. The Fraction was a man of the world.

"Come, come, old chap!" he said soothingly, "don't cut up. We'll make
things a little more homelike here." And he pulled a bottle from the
depths of the hamper. "This will brace you up."

He picked up the hamper and disappeared into the place of retention,
while the Celebrity threw the bottle into the brush. And just then (may
I be forgiven if I am imaginative!) I heard a human laugh come from that
direction. In the casting of that bottle the Celebrity had given vent to
some of the feelings he had been collecting overnight, and it must have
carried about thirty yards. I dived after it like a retriever puppy for
a stone; but the bottle was gone! Perhaps I could say more, but it
doesn't do to believe in yourself too thoroughly when you get up early.
I had nothing to say when I returned.

"You here, Crocker?" said the author, fixing his eye on me. "Deuced
kind of you to get up so early and carry a basket so far for me."

"It has been a real pleasure, I assure you," I protested. And it had.
There was a silent space while the two young ladies regarded him,
softened by his haggard and dishevelled aspect, and perplexed by his
attitude. Nothing, I believe, appeals to a woman so much as this very
lack of bodily care. And the rogue knew it!

"How long is this little game of yours to continue,--this bull-baiting?"
he inquired. "How long am I to be made a butt of for the amusement of a
lot of imbeciles?"

Miss Thorn crossed over and seated herself on the ground beside him.
"You must be sensible," she said, in a tone that she might have used to a
spoiled child. "I know it is difficult after the night you have had.
But you have always been willing to listen to reason."

A pang of something went through me when I saw them together.
"Reason," said the Celebrity, raising his head. "Reason, yes. But where
is the reason in all this? Because a man who happens to be my double
commits a crime, is it right that I, whose reputation is without a mark,
should be made to suffer? And why have I been made a fool of by two
people whom I had every cause to suppose my friends?"

"You will have to ask them," replied Miss Thorn, with a glance at us.
"They are mischief-makers, I'll admit; but they are not malicious. See
what they have done this morning! And how could they have foreseen that
a detective was on his way to the island?"

"Crocker might have known it," said he, melting. "He's so cursed smart!"

"And think," Miss Thorn continued, quick to follow up an advantage,
"think what would have happened if they hadn't denied you. This horrid
man would have gone off with you to Asquith or somewhere else, with
handcuffs on your wrists; for it isn't a detective's place to take
evidence, Mr. Crocker says. Perhaps we should all have had to go to
Epsom! And I couldn't bear to see you in handcuffs, you know."

"Don't you think we had better leave them alone?" I said to Miss Trevor.

She smiled and shook her head.

"You are blind as a bat, Mr. Crocker," she said.

The Celebrity had weighed Miss Thorn's words and was listening passively
now while she talked. There may be talents which she did not possess; I
will not pretend to say. But I know there are many professions she might
have chosen had she not been a woman. She would have made a name for
herself at the bar; as a public speaker she would have excelled. And had
I not been so long accustomed to picking holes in arguments I am sure I
should not have perceived the fallacies of this she was making for the
benefit of the Celebrity. He surely did not. It is strange how a man
can turn under such influence from one feeling to another. The Celebrity
lost his resentment; apprehension took its place. He became more and
more nervous; questioned me from time to time on the law; wished to know
whether he would be called upon for testimony at Allen's trial; whether
there was any penalty attached to the taking of another man's name;
precisely what Drew would do with him if captured; and the tail of his
eye was on the thicket as he made this inquiry. It may be surmised that
I took an exquisite delight in quenching this new-born thirst for
knowledge. And finally we all went into the cave.

Miss Thorn unpacked the things we had brought, while I surveyed the
cavern. It was in the solid rock, some ten feet high and irregular in
shape, and perfectly dry. It was a marvel to me how cosy she made it.
One of the Maria's lanterns was placed in a niche, and the Celebrity's
silver toilet-set laid out on a ledge of the rock, which answered
perfectly for a dressing-table. Miss Thorn had not forgotten a small
mirror. And as a last office, set a dainty breakfast on a linen napkin
on the rock, heating the coffee in a chafing-dish.

"There!" she exclaimed, surveying her labors, "I hope you will be more
comfortable."

He had already taken the precaution to brush his hair and pull himself
together. His thanks, such as they were, he gave to Miss Thorn. It is
true that she had done more than any one else.

"Good-bye, old boy!" said the Fraction. "We'll come back when we get the
chance, and don't let that hundred thousand keep you awake."

The Fraction and I covered up the mouth of the cave with brush. He
became confidential.

"Lucky dog, Allen!" he said. "They'll never get him away from Cooke.
And he can have any girl he wants for the asking. By George! I believe
Miss Thorn will elope with him if he ever reaches Canada."

I only mention this as a sample of the Fraction's point of view.
I confess the remark annoyed me at the time.

Miss Thorn lingered in the cave for a minute after Miss Trevor came out.
Then we retraced our way down the brook, which was dancing now in the
sunlight. Miss Trevor stopped now and then to rest, in reality to laugh.
I do not know what the Fraction thought of such heartless conduct. He
and I were constantly on the alert for Mr. Drew, but we sighted the camp
without having encountered him. It was half-past six, and we had trusted
to slip in unnoticed by any one. But, as we emerged from the trees, the
bustling scene which greeted our eyes filled us with astonishment. Two
of the tents were down, and the third in a collapsed condition, while
confusion reigned supreme. And in the midst of it all stood Mr. Cooke,
an animated central figure pedestalled on a stump, giving emphatic
directions in a voice of authority. He spied us from his elevated
position before we had crossed the brook.

"Here they come, Maria," he shouted.

We climbed to the top of the slope, and were there confronted by Mrs.
Cooke and Mr. Trevor, with Mr. Cooke close behind them.

"Where the devil is Allen?" my client demanded excitedly of the
Fraction.

"Allen?" repeated that gentleman, "why, we made him comfortable and left
him, of course. We had sense enough not to bring him here to be pulled."

"But, you damfool," cried Mr. Cooke, slightly forgetting himself, "Drew
has escaped."

"Escaped?"

"Yes, escaped," said Mr. Cooke, as though our conductor were personally
responsible; "he got away this morning. Before we know it, we'll have
the whole police force of Far Harbor out here to jug the lot of us."

The Fraction, being deficient for the moment in language proper to
express his appreciation of this new development, simply volunteered to
return for the Celebrity, and left in a great hurry.

"Irene," said Mr. Trevor, "can it be possible that you have stolen away
for the express purpose of visiting this criminal?"

"If he is a criminal, father, it is no reason that he should starve."

"It is no reason," cried her father, hotly, "why a young girl who has
been brought up as you have, should throw every lady-like instinct to
the winds. There are men enough in this camp to keep him from starving.
I will not have my daughter's name connected with that of a defaulter.
Irene, you have set the seal of disgrace upon a name which I have labored
for a lifetime to make one of the proudest in the land. And it was my
fond hope that I possessed a daughter who--"

During this speech my anger had been steadily rising.. But it was Mrs.
Cooke who interrupted him.

"Mr. Trevor," said she, "perhaps you are not aware that while you are
insulting your daughter, you are also insulting my niece. It may be well
for you to know that Miss Trevor still has my respect as a woman and my
admiration as a lady. And, since she has been so misjudged by her
father, she has my deepest sympathy. But I wish to beg of you, if you
have anything of this nature to say to her, you will take her feelings
into consideration as well as ours."

Miss Trevor gave her one expressive look of gratitude. The senator was
effectually silenced. He had come, by some inexplicable inference, to
believe that Mrs. Cooke, while subservient to the despotic will of her
husband, had been miraculously saved from depravity, and had set her face
against this last monumental act of outlawry.





THE CELEBRITY

By Winston Churchill



VOLUME 4.


CHAPTER XV

I am convinced that Mr. Cooke possessed at least some of the qualities of
a great general. In certain campaigns of past centuries, and even of
this, it has been hero-worship that impelled the rank and file rather
than any high sympathy with the cause they were striving for. And so it
was with us that morning. Our commander was everywhere at once,
encouraging us to work, and holding over us in impressive language the
awful alternative of capture. For he had the art, in a high degree, of
inoculating his followers with the spirit which animated him; and
shortly, to my great surprise, I found myself working as though my life
depended on it. I certainly did not care very much whether the Celebrity
was captured or not, and yet, with the prospect of getting him over the
border, I had not thought of breakfast. Farrar had a natural inclination
for work of this sort, but even he was infused somewhat with the
contagious haste and enthusiasm which filled the air; and together we
folded the tents with astonishing despatch and rowed them out to the
Maria, Mr. Cooke having gone to his knees in the water to shove the boat
off.

"What are we doing this for?" said Farrar to me, as we hoisted the sail.

We both laughed.

"I have just been asking myself that question," I replied.

"You are a nice district attorney, Crocker," he said. "You have made a
most proper and equitable decision in giving your consent to Allen's
escape. Doesn't your conscience smart?"

"Not unbearably. I'll tell you what, Farrar," said I, "the truth is,
that this fellow never embezzled so much as a ten-cent piece. He isn't
guilty: he isn't the man."

"Isn't the man?" repeated Farrar.

"No," I answered; "it's a long tale, and no time to tell it now. But he
is really, as he claims to be, the author of all those detestable books
we have been hearing so much of."

"The deuce he is!" exclaimed Farrar, dropping the stopper he was tying.
"Did he write The Sybarites?"

"Yes, sir; he wrote The Sybarites, and all the rest of that trash."

"He's the fellow that maintains a man ought to marry a girl after he has
become engaged to her."

"Exactly," I said, smiling at his way of putting it.

"Preaches constancy to all men, but doesn't object to stealing."

I laughed.

"You're badly mixed," I explained. "I told you he never stole anything.
He was only ass enough to take the man's name who is the living image of
him. And the other man took the bonds."

"Oh, come now," said he, "tell me something improbable while you are
about it."

"It's true," I replied, repressing my mirth; "true as the tale of
Timothy. I knew him when he was a mere boy. But I don't give you that
as a proof, for he might have become all things to all men since. Ask
Miss Trevor; or Miss Thorn; she knows the other man, the bicycle man, and
has seen them both together."

"Where, in India? Was one standing on the ground looking at his double
go to heaven? Or was it at one of those drawing-room shows where a
medium holds conversation with your soul, while your body sleeps on the
lounge? By George, Crocker, I thought you were a sensible man."

No wonder I got angry. But I might have come at some proper estimation
of Farrar's incredulity by that time.

"I suppose you wouldn't take a lady's word," I growled.

"Not for that," he said, busy again with the sail stops; "nor St.
Chrysostom's, were he to come here and vouch for it. It is too damned
improbable."

"Stranger things than that have happened," I retorted, fuming.

"Not to any of us," he said. Presently he added, chuckling: "He'd better
not get into the clutches of that man Drew."

"What do you mean?" I demanded. Farrar was exasperating at times.

"Drew will wind those handcuffs on him like tourniquets," he laughed.

There seemed to be something behind this remark, but before I could
inquire into it we were interrupted by Mr. Cooke, who was standing on
the beach, swearing and gesticulating for the boat.

"I trust," said Farrar, as we rowed ashore, "that this blind excitement
will continue, and that we shall have the extreme pleasure of setting
down our friend in Her Majesty's dominions with a yachting-suit and
a ham sandwich."

We sat down to a hasty breakfast, in the middle of which the Celebrity
arrived. His appearance was unexceptionable, but his heavy jaw was set
in a manner which should have warned Mr. Cooke not to trifle with him.

"Sit down, old man, and take a bite before we start for Canada," said my
client.

The Celebrity walked up to him.

"Mr. Cooke," he began in a menacing tone, "it is high time this nonsense
was ended. I am tired of being made a buffoon of for your party. For
your gratification I have spent a sleepless night in those cold, damp
woods; and I warn you that practical joking can be carried too far. I
will not go to Canada, and I insist that you sail me back to Asquith."

Mr. Cooke winked significantly in our direction and tapped his head.

"I don't wonder you're a little upset, old man," he said, humoringly
patting him; "but sit down for a bite of something, and you'll see things
differently."

"I've had my breakfast," he said, taking out a cigarette.

Then Mr. Trevor got up.

"He demands, sir, to be delivered over to the authorities," said he, "and
you have no right to refuse him. I protest strongly."

"And you can protest all you damn please," retorted my client; "this
isn't the Ohio State Senate. Do you know where I would put you, Mr.
Trevor? Do you know where you ought to be? In a hencoop, sir, if I had
one here. In a hen-coop. What would you do if a man who had gone a
little out of his mind asked you for a gun to shoot himself with? Give
it him, I suppose. But I put Mr. Allen ashore in Canada, with the funds
to get off with, and then my duty's done."

This speech, as Mr. Cooke had no doubt confidently hoped, threw the
senator into a frenzy of wrath.

"The day will come, sir," he shouted, shaking his fist at my client, "the
day will come when you will rue this bitterly."

"Don't get off any of your oratorical frills on me," replied Mr. Cooke,
contemptuously; "you ought to be tied and muzzled."

Mr. Trevor was white with anger.

"I, for one, will not go to Canada," he cried.

"You'll stay here and starve, then," said Mr. Cooke; "damned little I
care."

Mr. Trevor turned to Farrar, who was biting his lip.

"Mr. Farrar, I know you to be a rising young man of sound principles, and
Mr. Crocker likewise. You are the only ones who can sail. Have you
reflected that you are about to ruin your careers?"

"We are prepared to take the chances, I think," said Farrar.

Mr. Cooke looked us over, proudly and gratefully, as much as to say that
while he lived we should not lack the necessities of life.

At nine we embarked, the Celebrity and Mr. Trevor for the same reason
that the animals took to the ark,--because they had to. There was a
spanking breeze in the west-northwest, and a clear sky, a day of days for
a sail. Mr. Cooke produced a map, which Farrar and I consulted, and
without much trouble we hit upon a quiet place to land on the Canadian
side. Our course was north-northwest, and therefore the wind enabled us
to hold it without much trouble. Bear Island is situated some eighteen
miles from shore, and about equidistant between Asquith and Far Harbor,
which latter we had to pass on our way northward.

Although a brisk sea was on, the wind had been steady from that quarter
all night, and the motion was uniform. The Maria was an excellent
sea-boat. There was no indication, therefore, of the return of that
malady which had been so prevalent on the passage to Bear Island. Mr.
Cooke had never felt better, and looked every inch a sea-captain in his
natty yachting-suit. He had acquired a tan on the island; and, as is
eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical
ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall
that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine
invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon
as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he
assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut
ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, and
with his glasses he swept the lake in search of the Scimitar and other
vessels of a like unamiable character.

Although my client could have told you, offhand, jackstraw's last mile in
a bicycle sulky, his notion of the Scimitar's speed was as vague as his
knowledge of seamanship. And when I informed him that in all probability
she had already passed the light on Far Harbor reef, some nine miles this
side of the Far Harbor police station, he went into an inordinate state
of excitement. Mr. Cooke was, indeed, that day the embodiment of an
unselfish if misdirected zeal. He was following the dictates of both
heart and conscience in his endeavor to rescue his guest from the law;
and true zeal is invariably contagious. What but such could have
commanded the unremitting labors of that morning? Farrar himself had
done three men's work before breakfast, and it was, in great part, owing
to him that we were now leaving the island behind us. He was sailing the
Maria that day as she will never be sailed again: her lee gunwale awash,
and a wake like a surveyor's line behind her. More than once I called to
mind his facetious observation about Mr. Drew, and wondered if he knew
more than he had said about the detective.

Once in the open, the Maria showed but small consideration for her
passengers, for she went through the seas rather than over them. And Mr.
Cooke, manfully keeping his station on the weather bow, likewise went
through the seas. No argument could induce him to leave the post he had
thus heroically chosen, which was one of honor rather than utility, for
the lake was as vacant of sails as the day that Father Marquette (or some
one else) first beheld it. Under such circumstances ease must be
considered as only a relative term; and the accommodations of the Maria
afforded but two comfortable spots,--the cabin, and the lea aft of the
cabin bulkhead. This being the case, the somewhat peculiar internal
relations of the party decided its grouping.

I know of no worse place than a small yacht, or than a large one for that
matter, for uncongenial people. The Four betook themselves to the cabin,
which was fortunately large, and made life bearable with a game of cards;
while Mrs. Cooke, whose adaptability and sense I had come greatly to,
admire, contented herself with a corner and a book. The ungrateful cause
of the expedition himself occupied another corner. I caught sight of him
through the cabin skylight, and the silver pencil he was holding over his
note-book showed unmistakable marks of teeth.

Outside, Mr. Trevor, his face wearing an immutable expression of defiance
for the wickedness surrounding him, had placed his daughter for
safe-keeping between himself and the only other reliable character on
board,--the refrigerator. But Miss Thorn appeared in a blue mackintosh
and a pair of heavy yachting-boots, courting rather than avoiding a
drenching. Even a mackintosh is becoming to some women. All morning she
sat behind Mr. Cooke, on the rise of the cabin, her back against the mast
and her hair flying in the wind, and I, for one, was not sorry the
Celebrity had given us this excuse for a sail.




CHAPTER XVI

About half-past eleven Mr. Cooke's vigilance was rewarded by a glimpse
of the lighthouse on Far Harbor reef, and almost simultaneously he picked
up, to the westward, the ragged outline of the house-tops and spires of
the town itself. But as we neared the reef the harbor appeared as quiet
as a Sunday morning: a few Mackinaws were sailing hither and thither, and
the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat was coming out. My client, in view
of the peaceful aspect affairs had assumed, presently consented to
relinquish his post, and handed the glasses over to me with an injunction
to be watchful.

I promised. And Mr. Cooke, feeling his way aft with more discretion than
grace, finally descended into the cabin, where he was noisily received.
And I was left with Miss Thorn. While my client had been there in front
of us, his lively conversation and naive if profane remarks kept us in
continual laughter. When with him it was utterly impossible to see any
other than the ludicrous side of this madcap adventure, albeit he himself
was so keenly in earnest as to its performance. It was with misgiving
that I saw him disappear into the hatchway, and my impulse was to follow
him. Our spirits, like those in a thermometer, are never stationary:
mine were continually being sent up or down. The night before, when I
had sat with Miss Thorn beside the fire, they went up; this morning her
anxious solicitude for the Celebrity had sent them down again. She both
puzzled and vexed me. I could not desert my post as lookout, and I
remained in somewhat awkward suspense as to what she was going to say,
gazing at distant objects through the glasses. Her remark, when it came,
took me by surprise.

"I am afraid," she said seriously, "that Uncle Fenelon's principles are
not all that they should be. His morality is something like his tobacco,
which doesn't injure him particularly, but is dangerous to others."

I was more than willing to meet her on the neutral ground of Uncle
Fenelon.

"Do you think his principles contagious?" I asked.

"They have not met with the opposition they deserve," she replied.
"Uncle Fenelon's ideas of life are not those of other men,--yours, for
instance. And his affairs, mental and material, are, happily for him,
such that he can generally carry out his notions with small
inconvenience. He is no doubt convinced that he is acting generously in
attempting to rescue the Celebrity from a term in prison; what he does
not realize is that he is acting ungenerously to other guests who have
infinitely more at stake."

"But our friend from Ohio has done his best to impress this upon him,"
I replied, failing to perceive her drift; "and if his words are wasted,
surely the thing is hopeless."

"I am not joking," said she. "I was not thinking of Mr. Trevor, but of
you. I like you, Mr. Crocker. You may not believe it, but I do."
For the life of me I could think of no fitting reply to this declaration.
Why was that abominable word "like" ever put into the English language?
"Yes, I like you," she continued meditatively, "in the face of the fact
that you persist in disliking me."

"Nothing of the kind."

"Oh, I know. You mustn't think me so stupid as all that. It is a
mortifying truth that I like you, and that you have no use for me."

I have never known how to take a jest from a woman. I suppose I should
have laughed this off. Instead, I made a fool of myself.

"I shall be as frank with you," I said, "and declare that I like you,
though I should be much happier if I didn't."

She blushed at this, if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was unlooked for.

"At any rate," she went on, "I should deem it my duty to warn you of the
consequences of this joke of yours. They may not be all that you have
anticipated. The consequences for you, I mean, which you do not seem to
have taken into account."

"Consequences for me!" I exclaimed.

"I fear that you will think what I am going to say uncalled for, and that
I am meddling with something that does not concern me. But it seems to
me that you are undervaluing the thing you have worked so hard to attain.
They say that you have ability, that you have acquired a practice and a
position which at your age give the highest promise for the future. That
you are to be counsel for the railroad. In short, that you are the
coming man in this section of the state. I have found this out," said
she, cutting short my objections, "in spite of the short time I have been
here."

"Nonsense!" I said, reddening in my turn.

"Suppose that the Celebrity is captured," she continued, thrusting her
hands into the pockets of her mackintosh. "It appears that he is
shadowed, and it is not unreasonable to expect that we shall be chased
before the day is over. Then we shall be caught red-handed in an attempt
to get a criminal over the border. Please wait until I have finished,"
she said, holding up her hand at an interruption I was about to make.
"You and I know he is not a criminal; but he might as well be as far as
you are concerned. As district attorney you are doubtless known to the
local authorities. If the Celebrity is arrested after a long pursuit, it
will avail you nothing to affirm that you knew all along he was the noted
writer. You will pardon me if I say that they will not believe you then.
He will be taken East for identification. And if I know anything about
politics, and especially the state of affairs in local politics with
which you are concerned, the incident and the interval following it will
be fatal to your chances with the railroad,--to your chances in general.
You perceive, Mr. Crocker, how impossible it is to play with fire without
being burned."

I did perceive. At the time the amazing thoroughness with which she had
gone into the subject of my own unimportant affairs, the astuteness and
knowledge of the world she had shown, and the clearness with which she
had put the situation, did not strike me. Nothing struck me but the
alarming sense of my own stupidity, which was as keen as I have ever felt
it. What man in a public position, however humble, has not political
enemies? The image of O'Meara was wafted suddenly before me,
disagreeably near, and his face wore the smile of victory. All of Mr.
Cooke's money could not save me. My spirits sank as the immediate future
unfolded itself, and I even read the article in O'Meara's organ, the
Northern Lights, which was to be instrumental in divesting me of my
public trust and fair fame generally. Yes, if the Celebrity was caught
on the other side of Far Harbor, all would be up with John Crocker! But
it would never do to let Miss Thorn discover my discomfiture.

"There is something in what you say," I replied, with what bravado I
could muster.

"A little, I think," she returned, smiling; "now, what I wish you to do
is to make Uncle Fenelon put into Far Harbor. If he refuses, you can go
in in spite of him, since you and Mr. Farrar are the only ones who can
sail. You have the situation in your own hands."

There was certainly wisdom in this, also. But the die was cast now, and
pride alone was sufficient to hold me to the course I had rashly begun
upon. Pride! What an awkward thing it is, and more difficult for most
of us to swallow than a sponge.

"I thank you for this interest in my welfare, Miss Thorn," I began.

"No fine speeches, please, sir," she cut in, "but do as I advise."

"I fear I cannot."

"Why do you say that? The thing is simplicity itself."

"I should lose my self-respect as a practical joker. And besides,"
I said maliciously, "I started out to have some fun with the Celebrity,
and I want to have it."

"Well," she replied, rather coolly, "of course you can do as you choose."

We were passing within a hundred yards of the lighthouse, set cheerlessly
on the bald and sandy tip of the point. An icy silence sat between us,
and such a silence is invariably insinuating. This one suggested a
horrible thought. What if Miss Thorn had warned me in order to save the
Celebrity from humiliation? I thrust it aside, but it returned again and
grinned. Had she not practised insincerity before? And any one with
half an eye could see that she was in love with the Celebrity; even the
Fraction had remarked it. What more natural than, with her cleverness,
she had hit upon this means of terminating the author's troubles by
working upon my fears?

Human weakness often proves too much for those of us who have the very
best intentions. Up to now the refrigerator and Mr. Trevor had kept the
strictest and most jealous of vigils over Irene. But at length the
senator succumbed to the drowsiness which never failed to attack him at
this hour, and he forgot the disrepute of his surroundings in a
respectable sleep. Whereupon his daughter joined us on the forecastle.

"I knew that would happen to papa if I only waited long enough," she
said. "Oh, he thinks you're dreadful, Mr. Crocker. He says that
nowadays young men haven't any principle. I mustn't be seen talking to
you."

"I have been trying to convince Mr. Crocker that his stand in the matter
is not only immoral, but suicidal," said Miss Thorn. "Perhaps," she
added meaningly, "he will listen to you."

"I don't understand," answered Miss Trevor.

"Miss Thorn has been good enough to point out," I explained, "that the
political machine in this section, which has the honor to detest me, will
seize upon the pretext of the Celebrity's capture to ruin me. They will
take the will for the deed."

"Of course they will do just that," cried Miss Trevor. "How bright of
you to think of it, Marian!"

Miss Thorn stood up.

"I leave you to persuade him," said she; "I have no doubt you will be
able to do it."

With that she left us, quite suddenly. Abruptly, I thought. And her
manner seemed to impress Miss Trevor.

"I wonder what is the matter with Marian," said she, and leaned over the
skylight. "Why, she has gone down to talk with the Celebrity."

"Isn't that rather natural?" I asked with asperity.

She turned to me with an amused expression.

"Her conduct seems to worry you vastly, Mr. Crocker. I noticed that you
were quite upset this morning in the cave. Why was it?"

"You must have imagined it," I said stiffly.

"I should like to know," she said, with the air of one trying to solve a
knotty problem, "I should like to know how many men are as blind as you."

"You are quite beyond me, Miss Trevor," I answered; "may I request you to
put that remark in other words?"

"I protest that you are a most unsatisfactory person," she went on, not
heeding my annoyance. "Most abnormally modest people are. If I were to
stick you with this hat-pin, for instance, you would accept the matter as
a positive insult."

"I certainly should," I said, laughing; "and, besides, it would be
painful."

"There you are," said she, exultingly; "I knew it. But I flatter myself
there are men who would go into an ecstasy of delight if I ran a hat-pin
into them. I am merely taking this as an illustration of my point."

"It is a very fine point," said I. "But some people take pleasure in odd
things. I can easily conceive of a man gallant enough to suffer the
agony for the sake of pleasing a pretty girl."

"I told you so," she pouted; "you have missed it entirely. You are
hopelessly blind on that side, and numb. Perhaps you didn't know that
you have had a hat-pin sticking in you for some time."

I began feeling myself, nervously.

"For more than a month," she cried, "and to think that you have never
felt it." My action was too much for her gravity, and she fell back
against the skylight in a fit of merriment, which threatened to wake her
father. And I hoped it would.

"It pleases you to speak in parables this morning," I said.

"Mr. Crocker," she began again, when she had regained her speech, "shall
I tell you of a great misfortune which might happen to a girl?"

"I should be pleased to hear it," I replied courteously.

"That misfortune, then, would be to fall in love with you."

"Happily that is not within the limits of probability," I answered,
beginning to be a little amused. "But why?"

"Lightning often strikes where it is least expected," she replied archly.
"Listen. If a young woman were unlucky enough to lose her heart to you,
she might do everything but tell you, and you would never know it. I
scarcely believe you would know it if she did tell you."

I must have jumped unconsciously.

"Oh, you needn't think I am in love with you."

"Not for a minute," I made haste to say.

She pointed towards the timber-covered hills beyond the shore.

"Do you see that stream which comes foaming down the notch into the lake
in front of us?" she asked. "Let us suppose that you lived in a cabin
beside that brook; and that once in a while, when you went out to draw
your water, you saw a nugget of--gold washing along with the pebbles on
the bed. How many days do you think you would be in coming to the
conclusion that there was a pocket of gold somewhere above you, and in
starting in search of it?"

"Not long, surely."

"Ah, you are not lacking in perception there. But if I were to tell you
that I knew of the existence of such a mine, from various proofs I have
had, and that the mine was in the possession of a certain person who was
quite willing to share it with you on application, you would not believe
me."

"Probably not."

"Well," said Miss Trevor, with a nod of finality, "I was actually about
to make such a disclosure. But I see it would be useless."

I confess she aroused my curiosity. No coaxing, however, would induce
her to interpret.

"No," she insisted strangely, "if you cannot put two and two together, I
fear I cannot help you. And no one I ever heard of has come to any good
by meddling."

Miss Trevor folded her hands across her lap. She wore that air which I
am led to believe is common to all women who have something of importance
to disclose; or at least what they consider is of importance. There was
an element of pity, too, in her expression. For she had given me my
chance, and my wits had been found wanting.

Do not let it be surmised that I attach any great value to such banter as
she had been indulging in. At the same time, however, I had an uneasy
feeling that I had missed something which might have been to my
advantage. It was in vain that I whipped my dull senses; but one
conclusion was indicated by all this inference, and I don't care even to
mention that: it was preposterous.

Then Miss Trevor shifted to a very serious mood. She honestly did her
best to persuade me to relinquish our enterprise, to go to Mr. Cooke and
confess the whole thing.

"I wish we had washed our hands of this Celebrity from the first," she
said, with a sigh. "How dreadful if you lose your position on account of
this foolishness!"

"But I shan't," I answered reassuringly; "we are getting near the border
now, and no sign of trouble. And besides," I added, "I think Miss Thorn
tried to frighten me. And she very nearly succeeded. It was prettily
done."

"Of course she tried to frighten you. I wish she had succeeded."

"But her object was transparent."

"Her object!" she exclaimed. "Her object was to save you."

"I think not," I replied; "it was to save the Celebrity."

Miss Trevor rose and grasped one of the sail rings to keep her balance.
She looked at me pityingly.

"Do you really believe that?"

"Firmly."

"Then you are hopeless, Mr. Crocker, totally hopeless. I give you up."
And she went back to her seat beside the refrigerator.




CHAPTER XVII

"Crocker, old man, Crocker, what the devil does that mean?"

I turned with a start to perceive a bare head thrust above the cabin
roof, the scant hair flying, and two large, brown eyes staring into mine
full of alarm and reproach. A plump finger was pointing to where the
sandy reef lay far astern of us.

The Mackinaws were flecked far and wide over the lake, and a dirty smudge
on the blue showed where the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat had gone over
the horizon. But there, over the point and dangerously close to the
land, hung another smudge, gradually pushing its way like a writhing,
black serpent, lakewards. Thus I was rudely jerked back to face the
problem with which we had left the island that morning.

I snatched the neglected glasses from the deck and hurried aft to join my
client on the overhang, but a pipe was all they revealed above the bleak
hillocks of sand. My client turned to me with a face that was white
under the tan.

"Crocker," he cried, in a tragic voice, "it's a blessed police boat, or I
never picked a winner."

"Nonsense," I said; "other boats smoke beside police boats. The lake is
full of tugs."

I was a little nettled at having been scared for a molehill.

"But I know it, sure as hell," he insisted.

"You know nothing about it, and won't for an hour. What's a pipe and a
trail of smoke?"

He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I felt it tremble.

"Why do you suppose I came out?" he demanded solemnly.

"You were probably losing," I said.

"I was winning."

"Then you got tired of winning."

But he held up a thumb within a few inches of my face, and with it a ring
I had often noticed, a huge opal which he customarily wore on the inside
of his hand.

"She's dead," said Mr. Cooke, sadly.

"Dead?" I repeated, perplexed.

"Yes, she's dead as the day I lost the two thousand at Sheepshead. She's
never gone back on me yet. And unless I can make some little arrangement
with those fellows," he added, tossing his head at the smoke, "you and I
will put up to-night in some barn of a jail. I've never been in jail but
once," said Mr. Cooke, "and it isn't so damned pleasant, I assure you."
I saw that he believed every word of it; in fact, that it was his
religion. I might as well have tried to argue the Sultan out of
Mohammedanism.

The pipe belonged to a tug, that was certain. Farrar said so after a
look over his shoulder, disdaining glasses, and he knew the lake better
than many who made their living by it. It was then that I made note of a
curious anomaly in the betting character; for thus far Mr. Cooke, like a
great many of his friends, was a skeptic. He never ceased to hope until
the stake had found its way into the other man's pocket. And it was for
hope that he now applied to Farrar. But even Farrar did not attempt to
account for the tug's appearance that near the land.

"She's in some detestable hurry to get up this way, that's flat," he
said; "where she is, the channel out of the harbor is not forty feet
wide."

By this time the rest of the party were gathered behind us on the high
side of the boat, in different stages of excitement, scrutinizing the
smoke. Mr. Cooke had the glasses glued to his eyes again, his feet
braced apart, and every line of his body bespeaking the tension of his
mind. I imagined him standing thus, the stump of his cigar tightly
clutched between his teeth, following the fortunes of some favorite on
the far side of the Belmont track.

We waited without comment while the smoke crept by degrees towards the
little white spindle on the tip of the point, now and again catching a
gleam of the sun's rays from off the glass of the lantern. And
presently, against the white lather of the lake, I thought I caught sight
of a black nose pushed out beyond the land. Another moment, and the tug
itself was bobbing in the open. Barely had she reached the deep water
beyond the sands when her length began to shorten, and the dense cloud of
smoke that rose made it plain that she was firing. At the sight I
reflected that I had been a fool indeed. A scant flue miles of water lay
between us and her, and if they really meant business back there, and
they gave every sign of it, we had about an hour and a half to get rid of
the Celebrity. The Maria was a good boat, but she had not been built to
try conclusions with a Far Harbor tug.

My client, in spite of the ominous condition of his opal, was not slow to
make his intentions exceedingly clear. For Mr. Cooke was first and last,
and always, a gentleman. After that you might call him anything you
pleased. Meditatively he screwed up his glasses and buckled them into
the case, and then he descended to the cockpit. It was the Celebrity he
singled out of the party.

"Allen," said he, when he stood before him, "I want to impress on you
that my word's gold. I've stuck to you thus far, and I'll be damned now
if I throw you over, like they did Jonah."

Mr. Cooke spoke with a fine dignity that in itself was impressive, and
when he had finished he looked about him until his eye rested on Mr.
Trevor, as though opposition were to come from that quarter. And the
senator gave every sign of another eruption. But the Celebrity, either
from lack of appreciation of my client's loyalty, or because of the
nervousness which was beginning to show itself in his demeanor, despite
an effort to hide it, returned no answer. He turned on his heel and
resumed his seat in the cabin. Mr. Cooke was visibly affected.

"I'd sooner lose my whip hand than go back on him now," he declared.

Then Vesuvius began to rumble.

"Mr. Cooke," said the senator, "may I suggest something which seems
pertinent to me, though it does not appear to have occurred to you?"

His tone was the calm one that the heroes used in the Celebrity's novels
when they were about to drop on and annihilate wicked men.

"Certainly, sir," my client replied briskly, bringing himself up on his
way back to the overhang.

"You have announced your intention of 'standing by' Mr. Allen, as you
express it. Have you reflected that there are some others who deserve to
be consulted and considered beside Mr. Allen and yourself?"

Mr. Cooke was puzzled at this change of front, and unused, moreover, to
that veiled irony of parliamentary expression.

"Talk English, my friend," said he.

"In plain words, sir, Mr. Allen is a criminal who ought to be locked up;
he is a menace to society. You, who have a reputation, I am given to
understand, for driving four horses, have nothing to lose by a scandal,
while I have worked all my life for the little I have achieved, and have
a daughter to think about. I will neither stand by Mr. Allen nor by
you."

Mr. Cooke was ready with a retort when the true significance of this
struck him. Things were a trifle different now. The tables had turned
since leaving the island, and the senator held it in his power to ruin
our one remaining chance of escape. Strangely enough, he missed the
cause of Mr. Cooke's hesitation.

"Look here, old man," said my client, biting off another cigar, "I'm a
first-rate fellow when you get to know me, and I'd do the same for you as
I'm doing for Allen."

"I daresay, sir, I daresay," said the other, a trifle mollified; "I don't
claim that you're not acting as you think right."

"I see it," said Mr. Cooke, with admirable humility; "I see it. I was
wrong to haul you into this, Trevor. And the only thing to consider now
is, how to get you out of it."

Here he appeared for a moment to be wrapped in deep thought, and checked
with his cigar an attempt to interrupt him.

"However you put it, old man," he said at last, "we're all in a pretty
bad hole."

"All!" cried Mr. Trevor, indignantly.

"Yes, all," asserted Mr. Cooke, with composure. "There are the police,
and here is Allen as good as run down. If they find him when they get
abroad, you don't suppose they'll swallow anything you have to say about
trying to deliver him over. No, sir, you'll be bagged and fined along
with the rest of us. And I'd be damned sorry to see it, if I do say it;
and I blame myself freely for it, old man. Now you take my advice and
keep your mouth shut, and I'll take care of you. I've got a place for
Allen."

During this somewhat remarkable speech Mr. Trevor, as it were, blew hot
and cold by turns. Although its delivery was inconsiderate, its logic
was undeniable, and the senator sat down again on the locker, and was
silent. But I marked that off and on his fingers would open and shut
convulsively.

Time alone would disclose what was to happen to us; in the interval there
was nothing to do but wait. We had reached the stage where anxiety
begins to take the place of excitement, and we shifted restlessly from
spot to spot and looked at the tug. She was ploughing along after us,
and to such good purpose that presently I began to catch the white of the
seas along her bows, and the bright red with which her pipe was tipped.
Farrar alone seemed to take but slight interest in her. More than once I
glanced at him as he stood under me, but his eye was on the shuddering
leach of the sail. Then I leaned over.

"What do you think of it?" I asked.

"I told you this morning Drew would have handcuffs on him before night,"
he replied, without raising his head.

"Hang your joking, Farrar; I know more than you about it."

"Then what's the use of asking me?"

"Don't you see that I'm ruined if we're caught?" I demanded, a little
warmly.

"No, I don't see it," he replied. "You don't suppose I think you fool
enough to risk this comedy if the man were guilty, do you? I don't
believe all that rubbish about his being the criminal's double, either.
That's something the girls got up for your benefit."

I ignored this piece of brutality.

"But I'm ruined anyway."

"How?"

I explained shortly what I thought our friend, O'Meara, would do under
the circumstances. An inference sufficed Farrar.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked gravely.
"I would have put into Far Harbor."

"Because I didn't think of it," I confessed.

Farrar pulled down the corners of his mouth with trying not to smile.

"Miss Thorn is a woman of brains," he remarked gently; "I respect her."

I wondered by what mysterious train of reasoning he had arrived at this
conclusion. He said nothing for a while, but toyed with the spokes of
the wheel, keeping the wind in the sail with undue nicety.

"I can't make them out," he said, all at once.

"Then you believe they're after us?"

"I changed the course a point or two, just to try them."

"And--"

"And they changed theirs."

"Who could have informed?"

"Drew, of course," I said; "who else?"

He laughed.

"Drew doesn't know anything about Allen," said he; "and, besides, he's no
more of a detective than I am."

"But Drew was told there was a criminal on the island."

"Who told him?"

I repeated the conversation between Drew and Mr. Trevor which I had
overheard. Farrar whistled.

"But you did not speak of that this morning," said he.

"No," I replied, feeling anything but comfortable. At times when he was
facetious as he had been this morning I was wont to lose sight of the
fact that with Farrar the manner was not the man, and to forget the
warmth of his friendship. I was again to be reminded of this.

"Well, Crocker," he said briefly, "I would willingly give up this year's
state contract to have known it."




CHAPTER XVIII

It was, accurately as I can remember, half after noon when Mr. Cooke
first caught the smoke over the point, for the sun was very high: at two
our fate had been decided. I have already tried to describe a part of
what took place in that hour and a half, although even now I cannot get
it all straight in my mind. Races, when a great deal is at stake, are
more or less chaotic: a close four miles in a college eight is a
succession of blurs with lucid but irrelevant intervals. The weary
months of hard work are forgotten, and you are quite as apt to think of
your first velocipede, or of the pie that is awaiting you in the
boathouse, as of victory and defeat. And a yacht race, with a pair of
rivals on your beam, is very much the same.

As I sat with my feet dangling over the washboard, I reflected, once or
twice, that we were engaged in a race. All I had to do was to twist my
head in order to make sure of it. I also reflected, I believe, that I
was in the position of a man who has bet all he owns, with large odds on
losing either way. But on the whole I was occupied with more trivial
matters a letter I had forgotten to write about a month's rent, a client
whose summer address I had mislaid. The sun was burning my neck behind
when a whistle aroused me to the realization that the tug was no longer a
toy boat dancing in the distance, but a stern fact but two miles away.
There could be no mistake now, for I saw the white steam of the signal
against the smoke.

I slid down and went into the cabin. The Celebrity was in the corner by
the companionway, with his head on the cushions and a book in his hand.
And forward, under the low deck beams beyond the skylight, I beheld the
crouching figure of my client. He had stripped off his coat and was busy
at some task on the floor.

"They're whistling for us to stop," I said to him.

"How near are they, old man?" he asked, without looking up.
The perspiration was streaming down his face, and he held a brace and bit
in his hand. Under him was the trap-door which gave access to the
ballast below, and through this he had bored a neat hole. The yellow
chips were still on his clothes.

"They're not two miles away," I answered. "But what in mystery are you
doing there?"

But he only laid a finger beside his nose and bestowed a wink in my
direction. Then he took some ashes from his cigar, wetted his finger,
and thus ingeniously removed all appearance of newness from the hole he
had made, carefully cleaning up the chips and putting them in his pocket.
Finally he concealed the brace and bit and opened the trap, disclosing
the rough stones of the ballast. I watched him in amazement as he tore a
mattress from an adjoining bunk and forced it through the opening,
spreading it fore and aft over the stones.

"Now," he said, regaining his feet and surveying the whole with
undisguised satisfaction, "he'll be as safe there as in my new family
vault."

"But" I began, a light dawning upon me.

"Allen, old man," said Mr. Cooke, "come here."

The Celebrity laid down his book and looked up: my client was putting on
his coat.

"Come here, old man," he repeated.

And he actually came. But he stopped when he caught sight of the open
trap and of the mattress beneath it.

"How will that suit you?" asked Mr. Cooke, smiling broadly as he wiped
his face with an embroidered handkerchief.

The Celebrity looked at the mattress, then at me, and lastly at Mr.
Cooke. His face was a study:

"And--And you think I am going to get in there?" he said, his voice
shaking.

My client fell back a step.

"Why not?" he demanded. "It's about your size, comfortable, and all the
air you want" (here Mr. Cooke stuck his finger through the bit hole).
"Damn me, if I were in your fix, I wouldn't stop at a kennel."

"Then you're cursed badly mistaken," said the Celebrity, going back to
his corner; "I'm tired of being made an ass of for you and your party."

"An ass!" exclaimed my client, in proper indignation.

"Yes, an ass," said the Celebrity. And he resumed his book.

It would seem that a student of human nature, such as every successful
writer should be, might by this time have arrived at some conception of
my client's character, simple as it was, and have learned to overlook the
slight peculiarity in his mode of expressing himself. But here the
Celebrity fell short, if my client's emotions were not pitched in the
same key as those of other people, who shall say that his heart was not
as large or his sympathies as wide as many another philanthropist?

But Mr. Cooke was an optimist, and as such disposed to look at the best
side of his friends and ignore the worst; if, indeed, he perceived their
faults at all. It was plain to me, even now, that he did not comprehend
the Celebrity's attitude. That his guest should reject the one hope of
escape left him was, according to Mr. Cooke, only to be accounted for by
a loss of mental balance. Nevertheless, his disappointment was keen. He
let down the door and slowly led the way out of the cabin. The whistle
sounded shrilly in our ears.

Mr. Cooke sat down and drew a wallet from his pocket. He began to count
the bills, and, as if by common consent, the Four followed suit. It was
a task which occupied some minutes, and when completed my client produced
a morocco note-book and a pencil. He glanced interrogatively at the man
nearest him.

"Three hundred and fifty."

Mr. Cooke put it down. It was entirely a matter of course. What else
was there to be done? And when he had gone the round of his followers he
turned to Farrar and me.

"How much are you fellows equal to?" he asked.

I believe he did it because he felt we should resent being left out: and
so we should have. Mr. Cooke's instincts were delicate.

We told him. Then he paused, his pencil in the air, and his eyes
doubtfully fixed on the senator. For all this time Mr. Trevor had been
fidgeting in his seat; but now he opened his long coat, button by button,
and thrust his hand inside the flap. Oh, Falstaff!

"Father, father!" exclaimed Miss Trevor. But her tongue was in her
cheek.

I have heard it stated that if a thoroughly righteous man were cast away
with ninety and nine ruffians, each of the ruffians would gain
one-one-hundredth in virtue, whilst the righteous man would sink to their
new level. I am not able to say how much better Mr. Cooke's party was
for Mr. Trevor's company, but the senator seemed to realize that
something serious had happened to him, for his voice was not altogether
steady as he pronounced the amount of his contribution.

"Trevor," cried Mr. Cooke, with great fervor, "I take it all back.
You're a true, public-spirited old sport."

But the senator had not yet reached that extreme of degradation where it
is pleasurable to be congratulated on wickedness.

My client added up the figures and rubbed his hands. I regret to say
that the aggregate would have bought up three small police organizations,
body and soul.

"Pull up, Farrar, old man," he shouted.

Farrar released the wheel and threw the Maria into the wind. With the
sail cracking and the big boom dodging over our heads, we watched the tug
as she drew nearer and nearer, until we could hear the loud beating of
her engines. On one side some men were making ready to lower a boat, and
then a conspicuous figure in blue stood out by the davits. Then came the
faint tinkle of a bell, and the H Sinclair, of Far Harbor, glided up and
thrashed the water scarce a biscuit-throw away.

"Hello, there!" the man in uniform called out. It was Captain McCann,
chief of the Far Harbor police.

Mr. Cooke waved his cigar politely.

"Is that Mr. Cooke's yacht, the Maria?

"The same," said Mr. Cooke.

"I'm fearing I'll have to come aboard you, Mr. Cooke."

"All right, old man, glad to have you," said my client.

This brought a smile to McCann's face as he got into his boat. We were
all standing in the cockpit, save the Celebrity, who was just inside of
the cabin door. I had time to note that he was pale, and no more: I must
have been pale myself. A few strokes brought the chief to the Maria's
stern.

"It's not me that likes to interfere with a gent's pleasure party, but
business is business," said he, as he climbed aboard.

My client's hospitality was oriental.

"Make yourself at home, old man," he said, a box of his largest and
blackest cigars in his hand. And these he advanced towards McCann before
the knot was tied in the painter.

Then a wave of self-reproach swept over me. Was it possible that I, like
Mr. Trevor, had been deprived of all the morals I had ever possessed?
Could it be that the district attorney was looking calmly on while Mr.
Cooke wilfully corrupted the Far Harbor chief-of-police? As agonizing a
minute as I ever had in my life was that which it took McCann to survey
those cigars. His broad features became broader still, as a huge, red
hand was reached out. I saw it close lingeringly over the box, and then
Mr. Cooke had struck a match. The chief stepped over the washboard onto
the handsome turkey-red cushions on the seats, and thus he came face to
face with me.

"Holy fathers!" he exclaimed. "Is it you who are here, Mr. Crocker?"
And he pulled off his cap.

"No other, McCann," said I, with what I believe was a most pitiful
attempt at braggadocio.

McCann began to puff at his cigar. Clouds of smoke came out of his face
and floated down the wind. He was so visibly embarrassed that I gained a
little courage.

"And what brings you here?" I demanded.

He scrutinized me in perplexity.

"I think you're guessing, sir."

"Never a guess, McCann. You'll have to explain yourself."

McCann had once had a wholesome respect for me. But it looked now as if
the bottom was dropping out of it.

"Sure, Mr. Crocker," he said, "what would you be doing in such company as
I'm hunting for? Can it be that ye're helping to lift a criminal over
the border?"

"McCann," I asked sternly, "what have you had on the, tug?"

Force of habit proved too much for the man. He went back to the
apologetic.

"Never a drop, Mr. Crocker. Upon me soul!"

This reminded Mr. Cooke of something (be it recorded) that he had for
once forgotten. He lifted up the top of the refrigerator. The chief's
eye followed him. But I was not going to permit this.

"Now, McCann," I commenced again, "if you will state your business here,
if you have any, I shall be obliged. You are delaying Mr. Cooke."

The chief was seized with a nervous tremor. I think we were a pair in
that, only I managed to keep mine, under. When it came to the point,
and any bribing was to be done, I had hit upon a course. Self-respect
demanded a dignity on my part. With a painful indecision McCann pulled
a paper from his pocket which I saw was a warrant. And he dropped his
cigar. Mr. Cooke was quick to give him another.

"Ye come from Bear Island, Mr. Crocker?" he inquired.

I replied in the affirmative.

"I hope it's news I'm telling you," he said soberly; "I'm hoping it's
news when I say that I'm here for Mr. Charles Wrexell Allen,--that's the
gentleman's name. He's after taking a hundred thousand dollars away from
Boston." Then he turned to Mr. Cooke. "The gentleman was aboard your
boat, sir, when you left that country place of yours,--what d'ye call it?
--Mohair? Thank you, sir." And he wiped the water from his brow. "And
they're telling me he was on Bear Island with ye? Sure, sir, and I can't
see why a gentleman of your standing would be wanting to get him over the
border. But I must do my duty. Begging your pardon, Mr. Crocker," he
added, with a bow to me.

"Certainly, McCann," I said.

For a space there was only the bumping and straining of the yacht and the
swish of the water against her sides. Then the chief spoke again.

"It will be saving you both trouble and inconvenience, Mr. Crocker, if
you give him up, sir."

What did the man mean? Why in the name of the law didn't he make a move?
I was conscious that my client was fumbling in his clothes for the
wallet; that he had muttered an invitation for the chief to go inside.
McCann smoked uneasily.

"I don't want to search the boat, sir."

At these words we all turned with one accord towards the cabin. I felt
Farrar gripping my arm tightly from behind.

The Celebrity had disappeared!

It was Mr. Cooke who spoke.

"Search the boat!" he said, something between a laugh and a cry.

"Yes, sir," the chief repeated firmly. "It's sorry I am to do it, with
Mr. Crocker here, too."

I have always maintained that nature had endowed my client with rare
gifts; and the ease with which he now assumed a part thus unexpectedly
thrust upon him, as well as the assurance with which he carried it out,
goes far to prove it.

"If there's anything in your line aboard, chief," he said blandly, "help
yourself!"

Some of us laughed. I thought things a little too close to be funny.
Since the Celebrity had lost his nerve and betaken himself to the place
of concealment Mr. Cooke had prepared for him, the whole composition of
the affair was changed. Before, if McCann had arrested the ostensible
Mr. Allen, my word, added to fifty dollars from my client, would probably
have been sufficient. Should he be found now, no district attorney on
the face of the earth could induce the chief to believe that he was any
other than the real criminal; nor would any bribe be large enough to
compensate McCann for the consequences of losing so important a prisoner.
There was nothing now but to carry it off with a high hand. McCann got
up.

"Be your lave, Mr. Crocker," he said.

"Never you mind me, McCann," I replied, "but you do what is right."

With that he began his search. It might have been ludicrous if I had had
any desire to laugh, for the chief wore the gingerly air of a man looking
for a rattlesnake which has to be got somehow. And my client assisted at
the inspection with all the graces of a dancing-master. McCann poked
into the forward lockers where we kept the stores,--dropping the iron lid
within an inch of his toe,--and the clothing-lockers and the
sail-lockers. He reached under the bunks, and drew out his hand again
quickly, as though he expected to be bitten. And at last he stood by the
trap with the hole in it, under which the Celebrity lay prostrate. I
could hear my own breathing. But Mr. Cooke had his wits about him still,
and at this critical juncture he gave McCann a thump on the back which
nearly carried him off his feet.

"They say the mast is hollow, old man," he suggested.

"Be jabers, Mr. Cooke," said McCann, "and I'm beginning to think it is!

"He took off his cap and scratched his head.

"Well, McCann, I hope you're contented," I said.

"Mr. Crocker," said he, "and it's that thankful I am for you that the
gent ain't here. But with him cutting high finks up at Mr. Cooke's house
with a valet, and him coming on the yacht with yese, and the whole
country in that state about him, begorra," said McCann, "and it's domned
strange! Maybe it's swimmin' in the water he is!"

The whole party had followed the search, and at this speech of the
chief's our nervous tension became suddenly relaxed. Most of us sat down
to laugh.

"I'm asking no questions, Mr. Crocker, yell take notice," he remarked,
his voice full of reproachful meaning.

"McCann," said I, "you come outside. I want to speak to you."

He followed me out.

"Now," I went on, "you know me pretty well" (he nodded doubtfully), "and
if I give you my word that Charles Wrexell Allen is not on this yacht,
and never has been, is that sufficient?"

"Is it the truth you're saying, sir?"

I assured him that it was.

"Then where is he, Mr. Crocker?"

"God only knows!" I replied, with fervor. "I don't, McCann."

The chief was satisfied. He went back into the cabin, and Mr. Cooke, in
the exuberance of his joy, produced champagne. McCann had heard of my
client and of his luxurious country place, and moreover it was the first
time he had ever been on a yellow-plush yacht. He tarried. He drank Mr.
Cooke's health and looked around him in wonder and awe, and his remarks
were worthy of record. These sayings and the thought of the author of
The Sybarites stifling below with his mouth to an auger-hole kept us in a
continual state of merriment. And at last our visitor rose to go.

As he was stepping over the side, Mr. Cooke laid hold of a brass button
and pressed a handful of the black cigars upon him.

"My regards to the detective, old man," said he.

McCann stared.

"My regards to Drew," my client insisted.

"Oh!" said McCann, his face lighting up, "him with the whiskers, what
came from Bear Island in a cat-boat. Sure, he wasn't no detective, sir."

"What was he? A police commissioner?"

"Mr. Cooke," said McCann, disdainfully, as he got into his boat, "he
wasn't nothing but a prospector doing the lake for one of them summer
hotel companies."




CHAPTER XIX

When the biography of the Celebrity is written, and I have no doubt it
will be some day, may his biographer kindly draw a veil over that instant
in his life when he was tenderly and obsequiously raised by Mr. Cooke
from the trap in the floor of the Maria's cabin.

It is sometimes the case that a good fright will heal a feud. And
whereas, before the arrival of the H. Sinclair, there had been much
dissension and many quarrels concerning the disposal of the quasi Charles
Wrexell Allen, when the tug steamed away to the southwards but one
opinion remained,--that, like Jonah, he must be got rid of. And no one
concurred more heartily in this than the Celebrity himself. He strolled
about and smoked apathetically, with the manner of one who was bored
beyond description, whilst the discussion was going on between Farrar,
Mr. Cooke, and myself as to the best place to land him. When
considerately asked by my client whether he had any choice in the matter,
he replied, somewhat facetiously, that he could not think of making a
suggestion to one who had shown such superlative skill in its previous
management.

Mr. Trevor, too, experienced a change of sentiment in Mr. Cooke's favor.
It is not too much to say that the senator's scare had been of such
thoroughness that he was willing to agree to almost anything. He had
come so near to being relieved of that most precious possession, his
respectability, that the reason in Mr. Cooke's course now appealed to
him very strongly. Thus he became a tacit assenter in wrong-doing,
for circumstances thrust this, once in a while, upon the best of our
citizens.

The afternoon wore cool; nay, cold is a better word. The wind brought
with it a suggestion of the pine-clad wastes of the northwestern
wilderness whence it came, and that sure harbinger of autumn, the
blue haze, settled around the hills, and benumbed the rays of the sun
lingering over the crests. Farrar and I, as navigators, were glad to get
into our overcoats, while the others assembled in the little cabin and
lighted the gasoline stove which stood in the corner. Outside we had our
pipes for consolation, and the sunset beauty of the lake.

By six we were well over the line, and consulting our chart, we selected
a cove behind a headland on our left, which seemed the best we could do
for an anchorage, although it was shallow and full of rocks. As we were
changing our course to run in, Mr. Cooke appeared, bundled up in his
reefer. He was in the best of spirits, and was good enough to concur
with our plans.

"Now, sir," asked Farrar, "what do you propose to do with Allen?"

But our client only chuckled.

"Wait and see, old man," he said; "I've got that all fixed."

"Well," Farrar remarked, when he had gone in again, "he has steered it
deuced well so far. I think we can trust him."

It was dark when we dropped anchor, a very tired party indeed; and as the
Maria could not accommodate us all with sleeping quarters, Mr. Cooke
decided that the ladies should have the cabin, since the night was cold.
And so it might have been, had not Miss Thorn flatly refused to sleep
there. The cabin was stuffy, she said, and so she carried her point.
Leaving Farrar and one of Mr. Cooke's friends to take care of the yacht,
the rest of us went ashore, built a roaring fire and raised a tent, and
proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow.
The sense of relief over the danger passed produced a kind of
lightheartedness amongst us, and the topics broached at supper would
not have been inappropriate at a friendly dinner party. As we were
separating for the night Miss Thorn said to me:

"I am so happy for your sake, Mr. Crocker, that he was not discovered."

For my sake! Could she really have meant it, after all? I went to sleep
thinking of that sentence, beside my client beneath the trees. And it
was first in my thoughts when I awoke.

As we dipped our faces in the brook the next morning my client laughed
softly to himself between the gasps, and I knew that he had in mind the
last consummate touch to his successful enterprise. And the revelation
came when the party were assembled at breakfast. Mr. Cooke stood up, and
drawing from his pocket a small and mysterious paper parcel he forthwith
delivered himself in the tone and manner which had so endeared him to the
familiars of the Lake House bar.

"I'm not much for words, as you all know," said he, with becoming
modesty, "and I don't set up to be an orator. I am just what you see
here,--a damned plain man. And there's only one virtue that I lay any
claim to,--no one can say that I ever went back on a friend. I want to
thank all of you (looking at the senator) for what you have done for me
and Allen. It's not for us to talk about that hundred thousand dollars.
--My private opinion is (he seemed to have no scruples about making it
public) that Allen is insane. No, old man, don't interrupt me; but you
haven't acted just right, and that's a fact. And I won't feel square
with myself until I put him where I found him, in safety. I am sorry to
say, my friends," he added, with emotion, "that Mr. Allen is about to
leave us."

He paused for breath, palpably satisfied with so much of it, and with the
effect on his audience.

"Now," continued he, "we start this morning for a place which is only
four miles or so from the town of Saville, and I shall then request my
esteemed legal adviser, Mr. Crocker, to proceed to the town and buy a
ready-made suit of clothes for Mr. Allen, a slouch hat, a cheap necktie,
and a stout pair of farmer's boots. And I have here," he said, holding
up the package, "I have here the rest of it. My friends, you heard the
chief tell me that Drew was doing the lake for a summer hotel syndicate.
But if Drew wasn't a detective you can throw me into the lake! He wasn't
exactly Pinkerton, and I flatter myself that we were too many for him,"
said Mr. Cooke, with deserved pride; "and he went away in such a
devilish hurry that he forgot his hand-bag with some of his extra
things."

Then my client opened the package, and held up on a string before our
astonished eyes a wig, a pair of moustaches, and two bushy red whiskers.

And this was Mr. Cooke's scheme! Did it electrify his hearers? Perhaps.
Even the senator was so choked with laughter that he was forced to cast
loose one of the buttons which held on his turn-down collar, and Farrar
retired into the woods. But the gravity of Mr. Cooke's countenance
remained serene.

"Old man," he said to the Celebrity, "you'll have to learn the price of
potatoes now. Here are Mr. Drew's duplicates; try 'em on."

This the Celebrity politely but firmly refused to do.

"Cooke," said he, "it has never been my lot to visit so kind and
considerate a host, or to know a man who pursued his duty with so little
thought and care of his own peril. I wish to thank you, and to apologize
for any hasty expressions I may have dropped by mistake, and I would it
were possible to convince you that I am neither a maniac nor an
embezzler. But, if it's just the same to you, I believe I can get along
without the disguise you mentioned, and so save Mr. Crocker his pains.
In short, if you will set me down at Saville, I am willing to take my
chances of reaching the Canadian Pacific from that point without fear of
detection."

The Celebrity's speech produced a good impression on all save Mr. Cooke,
who appeared a trifle water-logged. He had dealt successfully with Mr.
Allen when that gentleman had been in defiant moods, or in moods of ugly
sarcasm. But this good-natured, turn-you-down-easy note puzzled my
client not a little. Was this cherished scheme a whim or a joke to be
lightly cast aside? Mr. Cooke thought not. The determination which
distinguished him still sat in his eye as he bustled about giving orders
for the breaking of camp. This refractory criminal must be saved from
himself, cost what it might, and responsibility again rested heavy on my
client's mind as I rowed him out to the Maria.

"Crocker," he said, "if Allen is scooped in spite of us, you have got to
go East and make him out an idiot."

He seemed to think that I had a talent for this particular defence. I
replied that I would do my best.

"It won't be difficult," he went on; "not near as tough as that case you
won for me. You can bring in all the bosh about his claiming to be an
author, you know. And I'll stand expenses."

This was downright generous of Mr. Cooke. We have all, no doubt, drawn
our line between what is right and what is wrong, but I have often
wondered how many of us with the world's indorsement across our backs
trespass as little on the other side of the line as he.

After Farrar and the Four got aboard it fell to my lot to row the rest of
the party to the yacht. And this was no slight task that morning. The
tender was small, holding but two beside the man at the oars, and owing
to the rocks and shallow water of which I have spoken, the Maria lay
considerably over a quarter of a mile out. Hence each trip occupied some
time. Mr. Cooke I had transferred with a load of canvas and the tent
poles, and next I returned for Mrs. Cooke and Mr. Trevor, whom I
deposited safely. Then I landed again, helped in Miss Trevor and Miss
Thorn, leaving the Celebrity for the last, and was pulling for the yacht
when a cry from the tender's stern arrested me.

"Mr. Crocker, they are sailing away without us!"

I turned in my seat. The Maria's mainsail was up, and the jib was being
hoisted, and her head was rapidly falling off to the wind. Farrar was
casting. In the stern, waving a handkerchief, I recognized Mrs. Cooke,
and beside her a figure in black, gesticulating frantically, a vision of
coat-tails flapping in the breeze. Then the yacht heeled on her course
and forged lakewards.

"Row, Mr. Crocker, row! they are leaving us!" cried Miss Trevor, in
alarm.

I hastened to reassure her.

"Farrar is probably trying something," I said. "They will be turning
presently."

This is just what they did not do. Once out of the inlet, they went
about and headed northward, up the coast, and we remained watching them
until Mr. Trevor became a mere oscillating black speck against the sail.

"What can it mean?" asked Miss Thorn.

I had not so much as an idea.

"They certainly won't desert us, at any rate," I said. "We had better
go ashore again and wait."

The Celebrity was seated on the beach, and he was whittling. Now
whittling is an occupation which speaks of a contented frame of mind, and
the Maria's departure did not seem to have annoyed or disturbed him.

"Castaways," says he, gayly, "castaways on a foreign shore. Two
delightful young ladies, a bright young lawyer, a fugitive from justice,
no chaperon, and nothing to eat. And what a situation for a short story,
if only an author were permitted to make use of his own experiences!"

"Only you don't know how it will end," Miss Thorn put in.

The Celebrity glanced up at her.

"I have a guess," said he, with a smile.

"Is it true," Miss Trevor asked, "that a story must contain the element
of love in order to find favor with the public?"

"That generally recommends it, especially to your sex, Miss Trevor," he
replied jocosely.

Miss Trevor appeared interested.

"And tell me," she went on, "isn't it sometimes the case that you start
out intent on one ending, and that your artistic sense of what is fitting
demands another?"

"Don't be silly, Irene," said Miss Thorn. She was skipping flat pebbles
over the water, and doing it capitally, too.

I thought the Celebrity rather resented the question.

"That sometimes happens, of course," said he, carelessly. He produced
his inevitable gold cigarette case and held it out to me. "Be sociable
for once, and have one," he said.

I accepted.

"Do you know," he continued, lighting me a match, "it beats me why you
and Miss Trevor put this thing up on me. You have enjoyed it, naturally,
and if you wanted to make me out a donkey you succeeded rather well. I
used to think that Crocker was a pretty good friend of mine when I went
to his dinners in New York. And I once had every reason to believe," he
added, "that Miss Trevor and I were on excellent terms."

Was this audacity or stupidity? Undoubtedly both.

"So we were," answered Miss Trevor, "and I should be very sorry to think,
Mr. Allen," she said meaningly, "that our relations had in any way
changed."

It was the Celebrity's turn to flush.

"At any rate," he remarked in his most offhand manner, "I am much
obliged to you both. On sober reflection I have come to believe that you
did the very best thing for my reputation."




CHAPTER XX

He had scarcely uttered these words before the reason for the Maria's
abrupt departure became apparent. The anchorage of the yacht had been at
a spot whence nearly the whole south of the lake towards Far Harbor was
open, whilst a high tongue of land hid that part from us on the shore.
As he spoke, there shot before our eyes a steaming tug-boat, and a second
look was not needed to assure me that she was the "H. Sinclair, of Far
Harbor." They had perceived her from the yacht an hour since, and it was
clear that my client, prompt to act as to think, had decided at once to
put out and lead her a blind chase, so giving the Celebrity a chance to
make good his escape.

The surprise and apprehension created amongst us by her sudden appearance
was such that none of us, for a space, spoke or moved. She was about a
mile off shore, but it was even whether the chief would decide that his
quarry had been left behind in the inlet and turn in, or whether he would
push ahead after the yacht. He gave us an abominable five minutes of
uncertainty. For when he came opposite the cove he slowed up, apparently
weighing his chances. It was fortunate that we were hidden from his
glasses by a copse of pines. The Sinclair increased her speed and pushed
northward after the Maria. I turned to the Celebrity.

"If you wish to escape, now is your chance," I said.

For contrariness he was more than I have ever had to deal with. Now he
crossed his knees and laughed.

"It strikes me you had better escape, Crocker," said he. "You have more
to run for."

I looked across at Miss Thorn. She had told him, then, of my
predicament. And she did not meet my eye. He began to whittle again,
and remarked:

"It is only seventeen miles or so across these hills to Far Harbor, old
chap, and you can get a train there for Asquith."

"Just as you choose," said I, shortly.

With that I started off to gain the top of the promontory in order to
watch the chase. I knew that this could not last as long as that of the
day before. In less than three hours we might expect the Maria and the
tug in the cove. And, to be frank, the indisposition of the Celebrity to
run troubled me. Had he come to the conclusion that it was just as well
to submit to what seemed the inevitable and so enjoy the spice of revenge
over me? My thoughts gave zest to my actions, and I was climbing the
steep, pine-clad slope with rapidity when I heard Miss Trevor below me
calling out to wait for her. At the point of our ascent the ridge of the
tongue must have been four hundred feet above the level of the water, and
from this place of vantage we could easily make out the Maria in the
distance, and note from time to time the gain of the Sinclair.

"It wasn't fair of me, I know, to leave Marian," said Miss Trevor,
apologetically, "but I simply couldn't resist the temptation to come up
here."

"I hardly think she will bear you much ill will," I answered dryly; "you
did the kindest thing possible. Who knows but what they are considering
the advisability of an elopement!"

We passed a most enjoyable morning up there, all things taken into
account, for the day was too perfect for worries. We even laughed at our
hunger, which became keen about noon, as is always the case when one has
nothing to eat; so we set out to explore the ridge for blackberries.
These were so plentiful that I gathered a hatful for our friends below,
and then I lingered for a last look at the boats. I could make out but
one. Was it the yacht? No; for there was a trace of smoke over it. And
yet I was sure of a mast. I put my hand over my eyes.

"What is it?" asked Miss Trevor, anxiously.

"The tug has the Maria in tow," I said, "and they are coming this way."

We scrambled down, sobered by this discovery and thinking of little else.
And breaking through the bushes we came upon Miss Thorn and the
Celebrity. To me, preoccupied with the knowledge that the tug would soon
be upon us, there seemed nothing strange in the attitude of these two,
but Miss Trevor remarked something out of the common at once. How keenly
a woman scents a situation.

The Celebrity was standing with his back to Miss Thorn, at the edge of
the water. His chin was in the air, and to a casual observer he looked
to be minutely interested in a flock of gulls passing over us. And Miss
Thorn? She was enthroned upon a heap of drift-wood, and when I caught
sight of her face I forgot the very existence of the police captain. Her
lips were parted in a smile.

"You are just in time, Irene," she said calmly; "Mr. Allen has asked me
to be his wife."

I stood, with the hatful of berries in my hand, like a stiff wax figure
in a museum. The expected had come at last; and how little do we expect
the expected when it comes! I was aware that both the young women were
looking at me, and that both were quietly laughing. And I must have cut
a ridiculous figure indeed, though I have since been informed on good
authority that this was not so. Much I cared then what happened. Then
came Miss Trevor's reply, and it seemed to shake the very foundations of
my wits.

"But, Marian," said she, "you can't have him. He is engaged to me. And
if it's quite the same to you, I want him myself. It isn't often, you
know, that one has the opportunity to marry a Celebrity."

The Celebrity turned around: an expression of extraordinary intelligence
shot across his face, and I knew then that the hole in the well-nigh
invulnerable armor of his conceit had been found at last. And Miss
Thorn, of all people, had discovered it.

"Engaged to you?" she cried, "I can't believe it. He would be untrue
to everything he has written."

"My word should be sufficient," said Miss Trevor, stiffly. (May I be
hung if they hadn't acted it all out before.) "If you should wish proofs,
however, I have several notes from him which are at your service, and an
inscribed photograph. No, Marian," she added, shaking her head, "I
really cannot give him up."

Miss Thorn rose and confronted him, and her dignity was inspiring.
"Is this so?" she demanded; "is it true that you are engaged to marry
Miss Trevor?"

The Bone of Contention was badly troubled. He had undoubtedly known what
it was to have two women quarrelling over his hand at the same time, but
I am willing to bet that the sensation of having them come together in
his presence was new to him.

"I did not think--" he began. "I was not aware that Miss Trevor looked
upon the matter in that light, and you know--"

"What disgusting equivocation," Miss Trevor interrupted. "He asked me
point blank to marry him, and of course I consented. He has never
mentioned to me that he wished to break the engagement, and I wouldn't
have broken it."

I felt like a newsboy in a gallery,--I wanted to cheer. And the
Celebrity kicked the stones and things.

"Who would have thought," she persisted, "that the author of The
Sybarites, the man who chose Desmond for a hero, could play thus idly
with the heart of woman? The man who wrote these beautiful lines:
'Inconstancy in a woman, because of the present social conditions, is
sometimes pardonable. In a man, nothing is more despicable.' And how
poetic a justice it is that he has to marry me, and is thus forced to
lead the life of self-denial he has conceived for his hero. Mr. Crocker,
will you be my attorney if he should offer any objections?"

The humor of this proved too much for the three of us, and Miss Trevor
herself went into peals of laughter. Would that the Celebrity could have
seen his own face. I doubt if even he could have described it. But I
wished for his sake that the earth might have kindly opened and taken him
in.

"Marian," said Miss Trevor, "I am going to be very generous.
I relinquish the prize to you, and to you only. And I flatter myself
there are not many girls in this world who would do it."

"Thank you, Irene," Miss Thorn replied gravely, "much as I want him,
I could not think of depriving you."

Well, there is a limit to all endurance, and the Celebrity had reached
his.

"Crocker," he said, "how far is it to the Canadian Pacific?"

I told him.

"I think I had best be starting," said he.

And a moment later he had disappeared into the woods.

We stood gazing in the direction he had taken, until the sound of his
progress had died away. The shock of it all had considerably muddled my
brain, and when at last I had adjusted my thoughts to the new conditions,
a sensation of relief, of happiness, of joy (call it what you will), came
upon me, and I could scarce restrain an impulse to toss my hat in the
air. He was gone at last! But that was not the reason. I was safe from
O'Meara and calumny. Nor was this all. And I did not dare to look at
Miss Thorn. The knowledge that she had planned and carried out with
dignity and success such a campaign filled me with awe. That I had
misjudged her made me despise myself. Then I became aware that she was
speaking to me, and I turned.

"Mr. Crocker, do you think there is any danger that he will lose
his way?"

"No, Miss Thorn," I replied; "he has only to get to the top of that ridge
and strike the road for Saville, as I told him."

We were silent again until Miss Trevor remarked:

"Well, he deserved every bit of it."

"And more, Irene," said Miss Thorn, laughing; "he deserved to marry
you."

"I think he won't come West again for a very long time," said I.

Miss Trevor regarded me wickedly, and I knew what was coming.

"I hope you are convinced, now, Mr. Crocker, that our sex is not as black
as you painted it: that Miss Thorn knew what she was about, and that she
is not the inconsistent and variable creature you took her to be."

I felt the blood rush to my face, and Miss Thorn, too, became scarlet.
She went up to the mischievous Irene and grasping her arms from behind,
bent them until she cried for mercy.

"How strong you are, Marian! It is an outrage to hurt me so. I haven't
said anything." But she was incorrigible, and when she had twisted free
she began again:

"I took it upon myself to speak a few parables to Mr. Crocker the other
day. You know, Marian, that he is one of these level-headed old fogies
who think women ought to be kept in a menagerie, behind bars, to be
inspected on Saturday afternoons. Now, I appeal to you if it wouldn't be
disastrous to fall in love with a man of such ideas. And just to let you
know what a literal old law-brief he is, when I said he had had a hat-pin
sticking in him for several weeks, he nearly jumped overboard, and began
to feel himself all over. Did you know that he actually believed you
were doing your best to get married to the Celebrity?" (Here she dodged
Miss Thorn again.) "Oh, yes, he confided in me. He used to worry himself
ill over that. I'll tell you what he said to me only--"

But fortunately at this juncture Miss Trevor was captured again, and Miss
Thorn put her hand over her mouth. Heaven only knows what she would have
said!

The two boats did not arrive until nearly four o'clock, owing to some
trouble to the tug's propeller. Not knowing what excuse my client might
have given for leaving some of his party ashore, I thought it best to go
out to meet them. Seated on the cabin roof of the Maria I beheld Mr.
Cooke and McCann in conversation, each with a black cigar too big for
him.

"Hello, Crocker, old man," shouted my client, "did you think I was never
coming back? I've had lots of sport out of this hayseed captain" (and he
poked that official playfully), "but I didn't get any grub. So we'll
have to go to Far Harbor."

I caught the hint. Mr. Cooke had given out that he had started for
Saville to restock the larder.

"No," he continued, "Brass Buttons didn't let me get to Saville. You
see, when he got back to town last night they told him he had been
buncoed out of the biggest thing for years, and they got it into his head
that I was child enough to run a ferry for criminals. They told him he
wasn't the sleuth he thought he was, so he came back. They'll have the
laugh on him now, for sure."

McCann listened with admirable good-nature, gravely pulling at his cigar,
and eyeing Mr. Cooke with a friendly air of admiration.

"Mr. Crocker," he said, with melancholy humor, "it's leery I am with the
whole shooting-match. Mr. Cooke here is a gentleman, every inch of him,
and so be you, Mr. Crocker. But I'm just after taking a look at the hole
in the bottom of the boat. 'Ye have yer bunks in queer places, Mr.
Cooke,' says I. It's not for me to be doubting a gentleman's word, sir,
but I'm thinking me man is over the hills and far away, and that's true
for ye."

Mr. Cooke winked expressively.

"McCann, you've been jerked," said he. "Have another bottle!"

The Sinclair towed us to Far Harbor for a consideration, the wind being
strong again from the south, and McCann was induced by the affable owner
to remain on the yellow-plush yacht. I cornered him before we had gone a
great distance.

"McCann," said I, "what made you come back to-day?"

"Faith, Mr. Crocker, I don't care if I am telling you. I always had a
liking for you, sir, and bechune you and me it was that divil O'Meara
what made all the trouble. I wasn't taking his money, not me; the saints
forbid! But glory be to God, if he didn't raise a rumpus whin I come
back without Allen! It was sure he was that the gent left that place,
--what are ye calling it?--Mohair, in the Maria, and we telegraphs over to
Asquith. He swore I'd lose me job if I didn't fetch him to-day. Mr.
Crocker, sir, it's the lumber business I'll be startin' next week," said
McCann.

"Don't let that worry you, McCann," I answered. "I will see that you
don't lose your place, and I give you my word again that Charles Wrexell
Allen has never been aboard this yacht, or at Mohair to my knowledge.
What is more, I will prove it to-morrow to your satisfaction."

McCann's faith was touching.

"Ye're not to say another word, sir," he said, and he stuck out his big
hand, which I grasped warmly.

My affection for McCann still remains a strong one.

After my talk with McCann I was sitting on the forecastle propped against
the bitts of the Maria's anchor-chain, and looking at the swirling foam
cast up by the tug's propeller. There were many things I wished to turn
over in my mind just then, but I had not long been in a state of reverie
when I became conscious that Miss Thorn was standing beside me. I got to
my feet.

"I have been wondering how long you would remain in that trance, Mr.
Crocker," she said. "Is it too much to ask what you were thinking of?"

Now it so chanced that I was thinking of her at that moment. It would
never have done to say this, so I stammered. And Miss Thorn was a young
woman of tact.

"I should not have put that to so literal a man as you," she declared.
"I fear that you are incapable of crossing swords. And then," she added,
with a slight hesitation that puzzled me, "I did not come up here to ask
you that,--I came to get your opinion."

"My opinion?" I repeated.

"Not your legal opinion," she replied, smiling, "but your opinion as a
citizen, as an individual, if you have one. To be frank, I want your
opinion of me. Do you happen to have such a thing?"

I had. But I was in no condition to give it.

"Do you think me a very wicked girl?" she asked, coloring. "You once
thought me inconsistent, I believe, but I am not that. Have I done wrong
in leading the Celebrity to the point where you saw him this morning?"

"Heaven forbid!" I cried fervently; "but you might have spared me a
great deal had you let me into the secret."

"Spared you a great deal," said Miss Thorn. "I--I don't quite
understand."

"Well--" I began, and there I stayed. All the words in the dictionary
seemed to slip out of my grasp, and I foundered. I realized I had said
something which even in my wildest moments I had not dared to think of.
My secret was out before I knew I possessed it. Bad enough had I told it
to Farrar in an unguarded second. But to her! I was blindly seeking
some way of escape when she said softly:

"Did you really care?"

I am man enough, I hope, when there is need to be. And it matters not
what I felt then, but the words came back to me.

"Marian," I said, "I cared more than you will ever learn."

But it seems that she had known all the time, almost since that night I
had met her at the train. And how? I shall not pretend to answer, that
being quite beyond me. I am very sure of one thing, however, which is
that I never told a soul, man or woman, or even hinted at it. How was it
possible when I didn't know myself?

The light in the west was gone as we were pulled into Far Harbor, and the
lamps of the little town twinkled brighter than I had ever seen them
before. I think they must have been reflected in our faces, since Miss
Trevor, when she came forward to look for us, saw something there and
openly congratulated us. And this most embarrassing young woman demanded
presently:

"How did it happen, Marian? Did you propose to him?"

I was about to protest indignantly, but Marian laid her hand on my arm.

"Tell it not in Asquith," said she. "Irene, I won't have him teased any
more."

We were drawing up to the dock, and for the first time I saw that a crowd
was gathered there. The report of this chase had gone abroad. Some
began calling out to McCann when we came within distance, among others
the editor of the Northern Lights, and beside him I perceived with
amusement the generous lines: of the person of Mr. O'Meara himself.
I hurried back to give Farrar a hand with the ropes, and it was O'Meara
who caught the one I flung ashore and wound it around a pile. The people
pressed around, peering at our party on the Maria, and I heard McCann
exhorting them to make way. And just then, as he was about to cross the
plank, they parted for some one from behind. A breathless messenger
halted at the edge of the wharf. He held out a telegram.

McCann seized it and dived into the cabin, followed closely by my client
and those of us who could push after. He tore open the envelope, his eye
ran over the lines, and then he began to slap his thigh and turn around
in a circle, like a man dazed.

"Whiskey!" shouted Mr. Cooke. "Get him a glass of Scotch!"

But McCann held up his hand.

"Holy Saint Patrick!" he said, in a husky voice, "it's upset I am,
bottom upwards. Will ye listen to this?"

   "'Drew is your man. Reddish hair and long side whiskers, gray
   clothes. Pretends to represent summer hotel syndicate. Allen at
   Asquith unknown and harmless.

   "' (Signed.)  Everhardt."'

"Sew me up," said Mr. Cooke; "if that don't beat hell!"




CHAPTER XXI

In this world of lies the good and the bad are so closely intermingled
that frequently one is the means of obtaining the other. Therefore, I
wish very freely to express my obligations to the Celebrity for any share
he may have had in contributing to the greatest happiness of my life.

Marian and I were married the very next month, October, at my client's
palatial residence of Mohair. This was at Mr. Cooke's earnest wish: and
since Marian was Mrs. Cooke's own niece, and an orphan, there seemed no
good reason why my client should not be humored in the matter. As for
Marian and me, we did not much care whether we were married at Mohair or
the City of Mexico. Mrs. Cooke, I think, had a secret preference for
Germantown.

Mr. Cooke quite over-reached himself in that wedding. "The knot was
tied," as the papers expressed it, "under a huge bell of yellow roses."
The paper also named the figure which the flowers and the collation and
other things cost Mr. Cooke. A natural reticence forbids me to repeat
it. But, lest my client should think that I undervalue his kindness,
I will say that we had the grandest wedding ever seen in that part of the
world. McCann was there, and Mr. Cooke saw to it that he had a punchbowl
all to himself in which to drink our healths: Judge Short was there,
still followed by the conjugal eye: and Senator Trevor, who remained
over, in a new long black coat to kiss the bride. Mr. Cooke chartered
two cars to carry guests from the East, besides those who came as
ordinary citizens. Miss Trevor was of the party, and Farrar, of course,
was best man. Would that I had the flow of words possessed by the
reporter of the Chicago Sunday newspaper!

But there is one thing I must mention before Mrs. Crocker and I leave for
New York, in a shower of rice, on Mr. Cooke's own private car, and that
is my client's gift. In addition to the check he gave Marian, he
presented us with a huge, 'repousse' silver urn he had had made to order,
and he expressed a desire that the design upon it should remind us of him
forever and ever. I think it will. Mercury is duly set forth in a
gorgeous equipage, driving four horses around the world at a furious
pace; and the artist, by special instructions, had docked their tails.

From New York, Mrs. Crocker and I went abroad. And it so chanced, in
December, that we were staying a few days at a country-place in Sussex,
and the subject of The Sybarites was broached at a dinner-party. The
book was then having its sale in England.

"Crocker," said our host, "do you happen to have met the author of that
book? He's an American."

I looked across the table at my wife, and we both laughed.

"I happen to know him intimately," I replied.

"Do you, now?" said the Englishman; "what a very entertaining chap he is,
is he not? I had him down in October, and, by Jove, we were laughing the
blessed time. He was telling us how he wrote his novels, and he said,
'pon my soul he did, that he had a secretary or something of that sort to
whom he told the plot, and the secretary elaborated, you know, and wrote
the draft. And he said, 'pon my honor, that sometimes the clark wrote
the plot and all,--the whole blessed thing,--and that he never saw the
book except to sign his name to it."

"You say he was here in October?" asked Marian, when the laugh had
subsided.

"I have the date," answered our host, "for he left me an autograph copy
of The Sybarites when he went away." And after dinner he showed us the
book, with evident pride. Inscribed on the fly-leaf was the name of the
author, October 10th. But a glance sufficed to convince both of us that
the Celebrity had never written it.

"John," said Marian to me, a suspicion of the truth crossing her mind,
"John, can it be the bicycle man?"

"Yes, it can be," I said; "it is."

"Well," said Marian, "he's been doing a little more for our friend than
we did."

Nor was this the last we heard of that meteoric trip through England,
which the alleged author of The Sybarites had indulged in. He did not go
up to London; not he. It was given out that he was travelling for his
health, that he did not wish to be lionized; and there were friends of
the author in the metropolis who had never heard of his secretary, and
who were at a loss to understand his conduct. They felt slighted. One
of these told me that the Celebrity had been to a Lincolnshire estate
where he had created a decided sensation by his riding to hounds,
something the Celebrity had never been known to do. And before we
crossed the Channel, Marian saw another autograph copy of the famous
novel.

One day, some months afterwards, we were sitting in our little salon in a
Paris hotel when a card was sent up, which Marian took.

"John," she cried, "it's the Celebrity."

It was the Celebrity, in the flesh, faultlessly groomed and clothed, with
frock coat, gloves, and stick. He looked the picture of ruddy, manly
health and strength, and we saw at once that he bore no ill-will for the
past. He congratulated us warmly, and it was my turn to offer him a
cigarette. He was nothing loath to reminisce on the subject of his
experiences in the wilds of the northern lakes, or even to laugh over
them. He asked affectionately after his friend Cooke. Time had softened
his feelings, and we learned that he had another girl, who was in Paris
just then, and invited us on the spot to dine with her at "Joseph's."
Let me say, in passing, that as usual she did credit to the Celebrity's
exceptional taste.

"Now," said he, "I have something to tell you two."

He asked for another cigarette, and I laid the box beside him.

"I suppose you reached Saville all right," I said, anticipating.

"Seven at night," said he, "and so hungry that I ate what they call
marble cake for supper, and a great many other things out of little side
dishes, and nearly died of indigestion afterward. Then I took a train up
to the main line. An express came along. 'Why not go West?' I asked
myself, and I jumped aboard. It was another whim--you know I am subject
to them. When I got to Victoria I wired for money and sailed to Japan;
and then I went on to India and through the Suez, taking things easy. I
fell in with some people I knew who were going where the spirit moved
them, and I went along.

"Algiers, for one place, and whom do you think I saw there, in the lobby
of a hotel?"

"Charles Wrexell Allen," cried Marian and I together.

The Celebrity looked surprised. "How did you know?" he demanded.

"Go on with your story," said Marian; "what did he do?"

"What did he do?" said the Celebrity; "why, the blackguard stepped up
and shook me by the hand, and asked after my health, and wanted to know
whether I were married yet. He was so beastly familiar that I took out
my glass, and I got him into a cafe for fear some one would see me with
him. 'My dear fellow,' said he, 'you did me the turn of my life.--How
can I ever repay you?' 'Hang your impudence,' said I, but I wanted to
hear what he had to say. 'Don't lose your temper, old chap,' he laughed;
'you took a few liberties with my name, and there was no good reason why
I shouldn't take some with yours. Was there? When I think of it, the
thing was most decidedly convenient; it was the hand of Providence.'
'You took liberties with my name,' I cried. With that he coolly called
to the waiter to fill our glasses. 'Now,' said he, 'I've got a story for
you. Do you remember the cotillon, or whatever it was, that Cooke gave?
Well, that was all in the Chicago papers, and the "Miles Standish" agent
there saw it, and he knew pretty well that I wasn't West. So he sent me
the papers, just for fun. You may imagine my surprise when I read that
I had been leading a dance out at Mohair, or some such barbarous place in
the northwest. I looked it up on the map (Asquith, I mean), and then I
began to think. I wondered who in the devil it might be who had taken my
name and occupation, and all that. You see, I had just relieved the
company of a little money, and it hit me like a clap of thunder one day
that the idiot was you. But I couldn't be sure. And as long as I had to
get out very soon anyway, I concluded to go to Mohair and make certain,
and then pile things off on you if you happened to be the man.'"

At this point Marian and I were seized with laughter, in which the
Celebrity himself joined. Presently he continued:

"'So I went,' said Allen. 'I provided myself with two disguises, as a
careful man should, but by the time I reached that outlandish hole,
Asquith, the little thing I was mixed up in burst prematurely, and the
papers were full of it that morning. The whole place was out with
sticks, so to speak, hunting for you. They told me the published
description hit you to a dot, all except the scar, and they quarrelled
about that. I posed as the promoter of resort syndicates, and I hired
the Scimitar and sailed over to Bear Island; and I didn't have a bad time
that afternoon, only Cooke insisted on making remarks about my whiskers,
and I was in mortal fear lest he might accidentally pull one off. He
came cursed near it. By the way, he's the very deuce of a man, isn't he?
I knew he took me for a detective, so I played the part. And in the
night that ass of a state senator nearly gave me pneumonia by getting me
out in the air to tell me they had hid you in a cave. So I sat up all
night, and followed the relief party in the morning, and you nearly
disfigured me for life when you threw that bottle into the woods. Then
I went back to camp, and left so fast that I forgot my extra pair of red
whiskers. I had two of each disguise, you know, so I didn't miss them.

"'I guess,' Mr. Allen went on, gleefully, 'that I got off about as
cleanly as any criminal ever did, thanks to you. If we'd fixed the thing
up between us it couldn't have been any neater, could it? Because I went
straight to Far Harbor and got you into a peck of trouble, right away,
and then slipped quietly into Canada, and put on the outfit of a
travelling salesman. And right here another bright idea struck me. Why
not carry the thing farther? I knew that you had advertised a trip to
Europe (why, the Lord only knows), so I went East and sailed for England
on the Canadian Line. And let me thank you for a little sport I had in a
quiet way as the author of The Sybarites. I think I astonished some of
your friends, old boy.'"

The Celebrity lighted another cigarette.

"So if it hadn't been for me," he said, "the 'Miles Standish Bicycle
Company' wouldn't have gone to the wall. Can they sentence me for
assisting Allen to get away, Crocker? If they can, I believe I shall
stay over here."

"I think you are safe," said I. "But didn't Allen tell you any more?"

"No. A man he used to know came into the cafe, and Allen got out of the
back door. And I never saw him again."

"I believe I can tell you a little more," said Marian.

          ......................

The Celebrity is still writing books of a high moral tone and
unapproachable principle, and his popularity is undiminished. I have not
heard, however, that he has given way to any more whims.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     A man's character often give the lie to his tongue
     A lie has short legs
     Appearance of a professional pallbearer
     Architects should be driven and not followed
     Consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size
     Deal with a fool according to his folly
     Impervious to hints, and would not take no for an answer
     Old enough to know better, and too old to be taught
     That abominable word "like"






THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill



CONTENTS

BOOK I

Volume 1.
I.     Which Deals With Origins
II.    The Mole
III.   The Unattainable Simplicity
IV.    Black Cattle
V.     The First Spark Passes
VI.    Silas Whipple
VII.   Callers

Volume 2.
VIII.   Bellegarde
IX.     A Quiet Sunday in Locust Street
X.      The Little House
XI.     The Invitation
XII.    "Miss Jinny"
XIII.   The Party


BOOK II.

Volume 3.
I.     Raw Material.
II.    Abraham Lincoln
III.   In Which Stephen Learns Something
IV.    The Question
V.     The Crisis
VI.    Glencoe

Volume 4.
VII.    An Excursion
VIII.   The Colonel is Warned
IX.     Signs of the Times
X.      Richter's Scar,
XI.     How a Prince Came
XII.    Into Which a Potentate Comes
XIII.   At Mr. Brinsmade's Gate
XIV.    The Breach becomes Too Wide
XV.     Mutterings

Volume 5.
XVI.    The Guns of Sumter
XVII.   Camp Jackson
XVIII.  The Stone that is Rejected
XIX.    The Tenth of May.
XX.     In the Arsenal
XXI.    The Stampede
XXII.   The Straining of Another Friendship
XXIII.  Of Clarence


BOOK III

Volume 6.
I.     Introducing a Capitalist
II.    News from Clarence
III.   The Scourge of War,
IV.    The List of Sixty
V.     The Auction
VI.    Eliphalet Plays his Trumps

Volume 7.
VII.    With the Armies of the West
VIII.   A Strange Meeting
IX.     Bellegarde Once More
X.      In Judge Whipple's Office
XI.     Lead, Kindly Light

Volume 8.
XII.    The Last Card
XIII.   From the Letters of Major Stephen Brice
XIV.    The Same, Continued
XV.     The Man of Sorrows
XVI.    Annapolis




THE CRISIS

BOOK I




CHAPTER I

WHICH DEALS WITH ORIGINS

Faithfully to relate how Eliphalet Hopper came try St. Louis is to betray
no secret. Mr. Hopper is wont to tell the story now, when his
daughter-in-law is not by; and sometimes he tells it in her presence, for
he is a shameless and determined old party who denies the divine right of
Boston, and has taken again to chewing tobacco.

When Eliphalet came to town, his son's wife, Mrs: Samuel D. (or S. Dwyer
as she is beginning to call herself), was not born. Gentlemen of Cavalier
and Puritan descent had not yet begun to arrive at the Planters' House,
to buy hunting shirts and broad rims, belts and bowies, and depart
quietly for Kansas, there to indulge in that; most pleasurable of
Anglo-Saxon pastimes, a free fight. Mr. Douglas had not thrown his bone
of Local Sovereignty to the sleeping dogs of war.

To return to Eliphalet's arrival,--a picture which has much that is
interesting in it. Behold the friendless boy he stands in the prow of the
great steamboat 'Louisiana' of a scorching summer morning, and looks with
something of a nameless disquiet on the chocolate waters of the
Mississippi. There have been other sights, since passing Louisville,
which might have disgusted a Massachusetts lad more. A certain deck on
the 'Paducah', which took him as far as Cairo, was devoted to cattle
--black cattle. Eliphalet possessed a fortunate temperament. The deck was
dark, and the smell of the wretches confined there was worse than it
should have been. And the incessant weeping of some of the women was
annoying, inasmuch as it drowned many of the profane communications of
the overseer who was showing Eliphalet the sights. Then a fine-linened
planter from down river had come in during the conversation, and paying
no attention to the overseer's salute cursed them all into silence, and
left.

Eliphalet had ambition, which is not a wholly undesirable quality. He
began to wonder how it would feel to own a few of these valuable
fellow-creatures. He reached out and touched lightly a young mulatto
woman who sat beside him with an infant in her arms. The peculiar dumb
expression on her face was lost on Eliphalet. The overseer had laughed
coarsely.

"What, skeered on 'em?" said he. And seizing the girl by the cheek, gave
it a cruel twinge that brought a cry out of her.

Eliphalet had reflected upon this incident after he had bid the overseer
good-by at Cairo, and had seen that pitiful coffle piled aboard a steamer
for New Orleans. And the result of his reflections was, that some day he
would like to own slaves.

A dome of smoke like a mushroom hung over the city, visible from far down
the river, motionless in the summer air. A long line of steamboats
--white, patient animals--was tethered along the levee, and the Louisiana
presently swung in her bow toward a gap in this line, where a mass of
people was awaiting her arrival. Some invisible force lifted Eliphalet's
eyes to the upper deck, where they rested, as if by appointment, on the
trim figure of the young man in command of the Louisiana. He was very
young for the captain of a large New Orleans packet. When his lips moved,
something happened. Once he raised his voice, and a negro stevedore
rushed frantically aft, as if he had received the end of a
lightning-bolt. Admiration burst from the passengers, and one man cried
out Captain Brent's age--it was thirty-two.

Eliphalet snapped his teeth together. He was twenty-seven, and his
ambition actually hurt him at such times. After the boat was fast to the
landing stage he remained watching the captain, who was speaking a few
parting words to some passengers of fashion. The body-servants were
taking their luggage to the carriages. Mr. Hopper envied the captain his
free and vigorous speech, his ready jokes, and his hearty laugh. All the
rest he knew for his own--in times to come. The carriages, the trained
servants, the obsequiousness of the humbler passengers. For of such is
the Republic.

Then Eliphalet picked his way across the hot stones of the levee, pushing
hither and thither in the rough crowd of river men; dodging the mules on
the heavy drays, or making way for the carriages of the few people of
importance who arrived on the boat. If any recollections of a cool, white
farmhouse amongst barren New England hills disturbed his thoughts, this
is not recorded. He gained the mouth of a street between the low houses
which crowded on the broad river front. The black mud was thick under his
feet from an overnight shower, and already steaming in the sun. The brick
pavement was lumpy from much travel and near as dirty as the street.
Here, too, were drays blocking the way, and sweaty negro teamsters
swinging cowhides over the mules. The smell of many wares poured through
the open doors, mingling with the perspiration of the porters. On every
side of him were busy clerks, with their suspenders much in evidence, and
Eliphalet paused once or twice to listen to their talk. It was tinged
with that dialect he had heard, since leaving Cincinnati.

Turning a corner, Eliphalet came abruptly upon a prophecy. A great drove
of mules was charging down the gorge of the street, and straight at him.
He dived into an entrance, and stood looking at the animals in startled
wonder as they thundered by, flinging the mud over the pavements.
A cursing lot of drovers on ragged horses made the rear guard.

Eliphalet mopped his brow. The mules seemed to have aroused in him some
sense of his atomity, where the sight of the pillar of smoke and of the
black cattle had failed. The feeling of a stranger in a strange land was
upon him at last. A strange land, indeed! Could it be one with his native
New England? Did Congress assemble from the Antipodes? Wasn't the great,
ugly river and dirty city at the end of the earth, to be written about in
Boston journals?

Turning in the doorway, he saw to his astonishment a great store, with
high ceilings supported by columns. The door was stacked high with bales
of dry goods. Beside him was a sign in gold lettering, "Carvel and
Company, Wholesale Dry Goods." And lastly, looking down upon him with a
quizzical expression, was a gentleman. There was no mistaking the
gentleman. He was cool, which Eliphalet was not. And the fact is the more
remarkable because the gentleman was attired according to the fashion of
the day for men of his age, in a black coat with a teal of ruffled shirt
showing, and a heavy black stock around his collar. He had a white
mustache, and a goatee, and white hair under his black felt hat. His face
was long, his nose straight, and the sweetness of its smile had a strange
effect upon Eliphalet, who stood on one foot.

"Well, sonny, scared of mules, are you?" The speech is a stately drawl
very different from the nasal twang of Eliphalet's bringing up. "Reckon
you don't come from anywhere round here?"

"No, sir," said Eliphalet. "From Willesden, Massachusetts."

"Come in on the 'Louisiana'?"

"Yes, sir." But why this politeness?

The elderly gentleman lighted a cigar. The noise of the rushing mules had
now become a distant roar, like a whirlwind which has swept by. But
Eliphalet did not stir.

"Friends in town?" inquired the gentleman at length.

"No, sir," sighed Mr. Hopper.

At this point of the conversation a crisp step sounded from behind and
wonderful smile came again on the surface.

"Mornin', Colonel," said a voice which made Eliphalet jump. And he swung
around to perceive the young captain of the Louisiana.

"Why, Captain Lige," cried the Colonel, without ceremony, "and how do you
find yourself to-day, suh? A good trip from Orleans? We did not look for
you so soon."

"Tolluble, Colonel, tolluble," said the young man, grasping the Colonel's
hand. "Well, Colonel, I just called to say that I got the seventy bales
of goods you wanted."

"Ephum" cried the Colonel, diving toward a counter where glasses were set
out,--a custom new to Eliphalet,--"Ephum, some of that very particular
Colonel Crittenden sent me over from Kentucky last week."

An old darkey, with hair as white as the Colonel's, appeared from behind
the partition.

"I 'lowed you'd want it, Marse Comyn, when I seed de Cap'n comin'," said
he, with the privilege of an old servant. Indeed, the bottle was beneath
his arm.

The Colonel smiled.

"Hope you'se well, Cap'n," said Ephum, as he drew the cork.

"Tolluble, Ephum," replied the Captain. "But, Ephum--say, Ephum!"

"Yes, sah."

"How's my little sweetheart, Ephum?"

"Bress your soul, sah," said Ephum, his face falling perceptibly, "bress
your soul, sah, Miss Jinny's done gone to Halcyondale, in Kaintuck, to
see her grandma. Ole Ephum ain't de same nigger when she's away."

The young Captain's face showed as much disappointment as the darkey's.

"Cuss it!" said he, strongly, "if that ain't too bad! I brought her a
Creole doll from New Orleans, which Madame Claire said was dressed finer
than any one she'd ever seen. All lace and French gewgaws, Colonel. But
you'll send it to her?"

"That I will, Lige," said the Colonel, heartily. "And she shall write you
the prettiest note of thanks you ever got."

"Bless her pretty face," cried the Captain. "Her health, Colonel! Here's
a long life to Miss Virginia Carvel, and may she rule forever! How old
did you say this was?" he asked, looking into the glass.

"Over half a century," said Colonel Carvel.

"If it came from the ruins of Pompeii," cried Captain Brent, "it might be
worthy of her!"

"What an idiot you are about that child, Lige," said the Colonel, who was
not hiding his pleasure. The Colonel could hide nothing. "You ruin her!"

The bluff young Captain put down his glass to laugh.

"Ruin her!" he exclaimed. "Her pa don't ruin her I eh, Ephum? Her pa
don't ruin her!"

"Lawsy, Marse Lige, I reckon he's wuss'n any."

"Ephum," said the Colonel, pulling his goatee thoughtfully, "you're a
damned impertinent nigger. I vow I'll sell you South one of these days.
Have you taken that letter to Mr. Renault?" He winked at his friend as
the old darkey faded into the darkness of the store, and continued: "Did
I ever tell you about Wilson Peale's portrait of my grandmother, Dorothy
Carvel, that I saw this summer at my brother Daniel's, in Pennsylvania?
Jinny's going to look something like her, sir. Um! She was a fine woman.
Black hair, though. Jinny's is brown, like her Ma's." The Colonel handed
a cigar to Captain Brent, and lit one himself. "Daniel has a book my
grandfather wrote, mostly about her. Lord, I remember her! She was the
queen-bee of the family while she lived. I wish some of us had her
spirit."

"Colonel," remarked Captain Lige, "what's this I heard on the levee just
now about your shootin' at a man named Babcock on the steps here?"

The Colonel became very grave. His face seemed to grow longer as he
pulled his goatee.

"He was standing right where you are, sir," he replied (Captain Lige
moved), "and he proposed that I should buy his influence."

"What did you do?"

Colonel Carvel laughed quietly at the recollection

"Shucks," said he, "I just pushed him into the streets gave him a little
start, and put a bullet past his ear, just to let the trash know the
sound of it. Then Russell went down and bailed me out."

The Captain shook with laughter. But Mr. Eliphalet Hopper's eyes were
glued to the mild-mannered man who told the story, and his hair rose
under his hat.

"By the way, Lige, how's that boy, Tato? Somehow after I let you have him
on the 'Louisiana', I thought I'd made a mistake to let him run the
river. Easter's afraid he'll lose the little religion she taught him."

It was the Captain's turn to be grave.

"I tell you what, Colonel," said he; "we have to have hands, of course.
But somehow I wish this business of slavery had never been started!"

"Sir," said the Colonel, with some force, "God made the sons of Ham the
servants of Japheth's sons forever and forever."

"Well, well, we won't quarrel about that, sir," said Brent, quickly. "If
they all treated slaves as you do, there wouldn't be any cry from
Boston-way. And as for me, I need hands. I shall see you again, Colonel."

"Take supper with me to-night, Lige," said Mr. Carvel. "I reckon you'll
find it rather lonesome without Jinny."

"Awful lonesome," said the Captain. "But you'll show me her letters,
won't you?"

He started out, and ran against Eliphalet.

"Hello!" he cried. "Who's this?"

"A young Yankee you landed here this morning, Lige," said the Colonel.
"What do you think of him?"

"Humph!" exclaimed the Captain.

"He has no friends in town, and he is looking for employment. Isn't that
so, sonny?" asked the Colonels kindly.

"Yes."

"Come, Lige, would you take him?" said Mr. Carvel.

The young Captain looked into Eliphalet's face. The dart that shot from
his eyes was of an aggressive honesty; and Mr. Hopper's, after an attempt
at defiance, were dropped.

"No," said the Captain.

"Why not, Lige?"

"Well, for one thing, he's been listening," said Captain Lige, as he
departed.

Colonel Carvel began to hum softly to himself:--

    "'One said it was an owl, and the other he said nay,
     One said it was a church with the steeple torn away,
     Look a' there now!'

"I reckon you're a rank abolitionist," said he to Eliphalet, abruptly.

"I don't see any particular harm in keepin' slaves," Mr. Hopper replied,
shifting to the other foot.

Whereupon the Colonel stretched his legs apart, seized his goatee, pulled
his head down, and gazed at him for some time from under his eyebrows, so
searchingly that the blood flew to Mr. Hopper's fleshy face. He mopped it
with a dark-red handkerchief, stared at everything in the place save the
gentleman in front of him, and wondered whether he had ever in his life
been so uncomfortable. Then he smiled sheepishly, hated himself, and
began to hate the Colonel.

"Ever hear of the Liberator?"

"No, sir," said Mr. Hopper.

"Where do you come from?" This was downright directness, from which there
was no escape.

"Willesden, Massachusetts."

"Umph! And never heard of Mr. Garrison?"

"I've had to work all my life."

"What can you do, sonny?"

"I cal'late to sweep out a store. I have kept books," Mr. Hopper
vouchsafed.

"Would you like work here?" asked the Colonel, kindly. The green eyes
looked up swiftly, and down again.

"What'll you give me?"

The good man was surprised. "Well," said he, "seven dollars a week."

Many a time in after life had the Colonel reason to think over this
scene. He was a man the singleness of whose motives could not be
questioned. The one and sufficient reason for giving work to a homeless
boy, from the hated state of the Liberator, was charity. The Colonel had
his moods, like many another worthy man.

The small specks on the horizon sometimes grow into the hugest of thunder
clouds. And an act of charity, out of the wisdom of God, may produce on
this earth either good or evil.

Eliphalet closed with the bargain. Ephum was called and told to lead the
recruit to the presence of Mr. Hood, the manager. And he spent the
remainder of a hot day checking invoices in the shipping entrance on
Second Street.

It is not our place here to chronicle Eliphalet's faults. Whatever he may
have been, he was not lazy. But he was an anomaly to the rest of the
young men in the store, for those were days when political sentiments
decided fervent loves or hatreds. In two days was Eliphalet's reputation
for wisdom made. During that period he opened his mouth to speak but
twice. The first was in answer to a pointless question of Mr. Barbo's
(aetat 25), to the effect that he, Eliphalet Hopper, was a Pierce
Democrat, who looked with complacency on the extension of slavery. This
was wholly satisfactory, and saved the owner of these sentiments a broken
head. The other time Eliphalet spoke was to ask Mr. Barbo to direct him
to a boardinghouse.

"I reckon," Mr. Barbo reflected, "that you'll want one of them
Congregational boarding-houses. We've got a heap of Yankees in the town,
and they all flock together and pray together. I reckon you'd ruther go
to Miss Crane's nor anywhere."

Forthwith to Miss Crane's Eliphalet went. And that lady, being a Greek
herself, knew a Greek when she saw one. The kind-hearted Barbo lingered
in the gathering darkness to witness the game which ensued, a game dear
to all New Englanders, comical to Barbo. The two contestants calculated.
Barbo reckoned, and put his money on his new-found fellow-clerk.
Eliphalet, indeed, never showed to better advantage. The shyness he had
used with the Colonel, and the taciturnity practised on his
fellow-clerks, he slipped off like coat and waistcoat for the battle. The
scene was in the front yard of the third house in Dorcas Row. Everybody
knows where Dorcas Row was. Miss Crane, tall, with all the severity of
side curls and bombazine, stood like a stone lioness at the gate. In the
background, by the steps, the boarders sat, an interested group.
Eliphalet girded up his loins, and sharpened his nasal twang to cope with
hers. The preliminary sparring was an exchange of compliments, and
deceived neither party. It seemed rather to heighten mutual respect.

"You be from Willesden, eh?" said Crane. "I calculate you know the
Salters."

If the truth were known, this evidence of an apparent omniscience rather
staggered Eliphalet. But training stood by him, and he showed no dismay.
Yes, he knew the Salters, and had drawed many a load out of Hiram
Salters' wood-lot to help pay for his schooling.

"Let me see," said Miss Crane, innocently; "who was it one of them
Salters girls married, and lived across the way from the meetin'-house?"

"Spauldin'," was the prompt reply.

"Wal, I want t' know!" cried the spinster: "not Ezra Spauldin'?"

Eliphalet nodded. That nod was one of infinite shrewdness which commended
itself to Miss Crane. These courtesies, far from making awkward the
material discussion which followed; did not affect it in the least.

"So you want me to board you?" said she, as if in consternation.

Eliphalet calculated, if they could come to terms. And Mr. Barbo keyed
himself to enjoyment.

"Single gentlemen," said she, "pay as high as twelve dollars." And she
added that they had no cause to complain of her table.

Eliphalet said he guessed he'd have to go somewhere else. Upon this the
lady vouchsafed the explanation that those gentlemen had high positions
and rented her large rooms. Since Mr. Hopper was from Willesden and knew
the Salters, she would be willing to take him for less. Eliphalet said
bluntly he would give three and a half. Barbo gasped. This particular
kind of courage was wholly beyond him.

Half an hour later Eliphalet carried his carpet-bag up three flights and
put it down in a tiny bedroom under the eaves, still pulsing with heat
waves. Here he was to live, and eat at Miss Crane's table for the
consideration of four dollars a week.

Such is the story of the humble beginning of one substantial prop of the
American Nation. And what a hackneyed story it is! How many other young
men from the East have travelled across the mountains and floated down
the rivers to enter those strange cities of the West, the growth of which
was like Jonah's gourd.

Two centuries before, when Charles Stuart walked out of a window in
Whitehall Palace to die; when the great English race was in the throes of
a Civil War; when the Stern and the Gay slew each other at Naseby and
Marston Moor, two currents flowed across the Atlantic to the New World.
Then the Stern men found the stern climate, and the Gay found the smiling
climate.

After many years the streams began to move again, westward, ever
westward. Over the ever blue mountains from the wonderland of Virginia
into the greater wonderland of Kentucky. And through the marvels of the
Inland Seas, and by white conestogas threading flat forests and floating
over wide prairies, until the two tides met in a maelstrom as fierce as
any in the great tawny torrent of the strange Father of Waters. A city
founded by Pierre Laclede, a certain adventurous subject of Louis who
dealt in furs, and who knew not Marly or Versailles, was to be the place
of the mingling of the tides. After cycles of separation, Puritan and
Cavalier united on this clay-bank in the Louisiana Purchase, and swept
westward together--like the struggle of two great rivers when they meet
the waters for a while were dangerous.

So Eliphalet was established, among the Puritans, at Miss Crane's. The
dishes were to his taste. Brown bread and beans and pies were plentiful,
for it was a land of plenty. All kinds of Puritans were there, and they
attended Mr. Davitt's Congregational Church. And may it be added in
justice to Mr. Hopper, that he became not the least devout of the
boarders.




CHAPTER. II

THE MOLE

For some years, while Stephen A. Douglas and Franklin Pierce and other
gentlemen of prominence were playing at bowls on the United States of
America; while Kansas was furnishing excitement free of charge to any
citizen who loved sport, Mr. Eliphalet Hopper was at work like the
industrious mole, underground. It is safe to affirm that Colonel Carvel
forgot his new hand as soon as he had turned him over to Mr. Hood, the
manager. As for Mr. Hopper, he was content. We can ill afford to dissect
motives. Genius is willing to lay the foundations of her structure
unobserved.

At first it was Mr. Barbo alone who perceived Eliphalet's greatness,--Mr.
Barbo, whose opinions were so easily had that they counted for nothing.
The other clerks, to say the least, found the newcomer uncompanionable.
He had no time for skylarking, the heat of the day meant nothing to him,
and he was never sleepy. He learned the stock as if by intuition, and
such was his strict attention to business that Mr. Hood was heard is say,
privately, he did not like the looks of it. A young man should have other
interests. And then, although he would not hold it against him, he had
heard that Mr. Hopper was a teacher in Mr. Davitt's Sunday School.

Because he did not discuss his ambitions at dinner with the other clerks
in the side entry, it must not be thought that Eliphalet was without
other interests. He was likewise too shrewd to be dragged into political
discussions at the boarding-house table. He listened imperturbably to the
outbursts against the Border Ruffian, and smiled when Mr. Abner Reed, in
an angry passion, asked him to declare whether or not he was a friend of
the Divine Institution. After a while they forgot about him (all save
Miss Crane), which was what Mr. Hopper of all things desired.

One other friend besides Miss Crane did Eliphalet take unto himself,
wherein he showed much discrimination. This friend was none other than
Mr. Davitt, minister for many years of the Congregational Church. For Mr.
Davitt was a good man, zealous in his work, unpretentious, and kindly.
More than once Eliphalet went to his home to tea, and was pressed to talk
about himself and his home life. The minister and his wife ware
invariably astonished, after their guest was gone, at the meagre result
of their inquiries.

If Love had ever entered such a discreet soul as that into which we are
prying, he used a back entrance. Even Mr. Barbo's inquiries failed in the
discovery of any young person with whom Eliphalet "kept company."
Whatever the notions abroad concerning him, he was admittedly a model.
There are many kinds of models. With some young ladies at the Sunday
School, indeed, he had a distant bowing acquaintance. They spoke of him
as the young man who knew the Bible as thoroughly as Mr. Davitt himself.
The only time that Mr. Hopper was discovered showing embarrassment was
when Mr. Davitt held his hand before them longer than necessary on the
church steps. Mr. Hopper was not sentimental.

However fascinating the subject, I do not propose to make a whole book
about Eliphalet. Yet sidelights on the life of every great man are
interesting. And there are a few incidents in his early career which have
not gotten into the subscription biographical Encyclopaedias. In several
of these volumes, to be sure, we may see steel engravings of him, true
likenesses all. His was the type of face which is the glory of the steel
engraving,--square and solid, as a corner-stone should be. The very
clothes he wore were made for the steel engraving, stiff and wiry in
texture, with sharp angles at the shoulders, and sombre in hue, as befit
such grave creations.

Let us go back to a certain fine morning in the September of the year
1857, when Mr. Hopper had arrived, all unnoticed, at the age of two and
thirty. Industry had told. He was now the manager's assistant; and, be it
said in passing, knew more about the stock than Mr. Hood himself. On this
particular morning, about nine o'clock, he was stacking bolts of woollen
goods near that delectable counter where the Colonel was wont to regale
his principal customers, when a vision appeared in the door. Visions were
rare at Carvel & Company's. This one was followed by an old negress with
leathery wrinkles, whose smile was joy incarnate. They entered the store,
paused at the entrance to the Colonel's private office, and surveyed it
with dismay.

"Clar t' goodness, Miss Jinny, yo' pa ain't heah! An' whah's Ephum, dat
black good-fo'-nuthin'!"

Miracle number one,--Mr. Hopper stopped work and stared. The vision was
searching the store with her eyes, and pouting.

"How mean of Pa!" she exclaimed, "when I took all this trouble to
surprise him, not to be here! Where are they all? Where's Ephum? Where's
Mr. Hood?"

The eyes lighted on Eliphalet. His blood was sluggish, but it could be
made to beat faster. The ladies he had met at Miss Crane's were not of
this description. As he came forward, embarrassment made him shamble, and
for the first time in his life he was angrily conscious of a poor figure.
Her first question dashed out the spark of his zeal.

"Oh," said she, "are you employed here?"

Thoughtless Virginia! You little know the man you have insulted by your
haughty drawl.

"Yes."

Then find Mr. Carvel, won't you, please? And tell him that his daughter
has come from Kentucky, and is waiting for him."

"I callate Mr. Carvel won't be here this morning," said Eliphalet. He
went back to the pile of dry goods, and began to work. But he was unable
to meet the displeasure in her face.

"What is your name?" Miss Carvel demanded.

"Hopper."

"Then, Mr. Hopper, please find Ephum, or Mr. Hood."

Two more bolts were taken off the truck. Out of the corner of his eye he
watched her, and she seemed very tall, like her father. She was taller
than he, in fact.

"I ain't a servant, Miss Carvel," he said, with a meaning glance at the
negress.

"Laws, Miss Jinny," cried she, "I may's 'ell find Ephum. I knows he's
loafin' somewhar hereabouts. An' I ain't seed him dese five month." And
she started for the back of the store.

"Mammy!"

The old woman stopped short. Eliphalet, electrified, looked up and
instantly down again.

"You say you are employed by Mr. Carvel, and refuse to do what I ask?"

"I ain't a servant," Mr. Hopper repeated doggedly. He felt that he was in
the right,--and perhaps he was.

It was at this critical juncture in the proceedings that a young man
stepped lightly into the store behind Miss Jinny. Mr. Hopper's eye was on
him, and had taken in the details of his costume before realizing the
import of his presence. He was perhaps twenty, and wore a coat that
sprung in at the waist, and trousers of a light buff-color that gathered
at the ankle and were very copious above. His features were of the
straight type which has been called from time immemorial patrician. He
had dark hair which escaped in waves from under his hat, and black eyes
that snapped when they perceived Miss Virginia Carvel. At sight of her,
indeed, the gold-headed cane stopped in its gyrations in midair.

"Why, Jinny!" he cried--"Jinny!"

Mr. Hopper would have sold his soul to have been in the young man's
polished boots, to have worn his clothes, and to have been able to cry
out to the young lady, "Why, Jinny!"

To Mr. Hopper's surprise, the young lady did not turn around. She stood
perfectly still. But a red flush stole upon her cheek, and laughter was
dancing in her eyes yet she did not move. The young man took a step
forward, and then stood staring at her with such a comical expression of
injury on his face as was too much for Miss Jinny's serenity. She
laughed. That laugh also struck minor chords upon Mr. Hopper's
heart-strings.

But the young gentleman very properly grew angry.

"You've no right to treat me the way you do, Virginia," he cried. "Why
didn't you let me know that you were coming home?" His tone was one of
authority. You didn't come from Kentucky alone!"

"I had plenty of attendance, I assure you," said Miss Carvel. "A
governor, and a senator, and two charming young gentlemen from New
Orleans as far as Cairo, where I found Captain Lige's boat. And Mr.
Brinsmade brought me here to the store. I wanted to surprise Pa," she
continued rapidly, to head off the young gentleman's expostulations. "How
mean of him not to be here!"

"Allow me to escort you home," said he, with ceremony:

"Allow me to decline the honah, Mr. Colfax," she cried, imitating him. "I
intend to wait here until Pa comes in."

Then Eliphalet knew that the young gentleman was Miss Virginia's first
cousin. And it seemed to him that he had heard a rumor, amongst the
clerks in the store; that she was to marry him one day.

"Where is Uncle Comyn?" demanded Mr. Colfax, swinging his cane with
impatience.

Virgina looked hard at Mr. Hopper.

"I don't know," she said.

"Ephum!" shouted Mr. Colfax. "Ephum! Easters where the deuce is that
good-for-nothing husband of yours?"

"I dunno, Marse Clarence. 'Spec he whah he oughtn't ter be."

Mr. Colfax spied the stooping figure of Eliphalet.

"Do you work here?" he demanded.

"I callate."

"What?"

"I callate to," responded Mr. Hopper again, without rising.

"Please find Mr. Hood," directed Mr. Colfax, with a wave of his cane,
"and say that Miss Carvel is here--"

Whereupon Miss Carvel seated herself upon the edge of a bale and giggled,
which did not have a soothing effect upon either of the young men. How
abominably you were wont to behave in those days, Virginia.

"Just say that Mr. Colfax sent you," Clarence continued, with a note of
irritation. "There's a good fellow."

Virginia laughed outright. Her cousin did not deign to look at her. His
temper was slipping its leash.

"I wonder whether you hear me," he remarked.

No answer.

"Colonel Carvel hires you, doesn't he? He pays you wages, and the first
time his daughter comes in here you refuse to do her a favor. By thunder,
I'll see that you are dismissed."

Still Eliphalet gave him no manner of attention, but began marking the
tags at the bottom of the pile.

It was at this unpropitious moment that Colonel Carvel walked into the
store, and his daughter flew into his arms.

"Well, well," he said, kissing her, "thought you'd surprise me, eh,
Jinny?"

"Oh, Pa," she cried, looking reproachfully up at his Face. "You knew
--how mean of you!"

"I've been down on the Louisiana, where some inconsiderate man told me,
or I should not have seen you today. I was off to Alton. But what are
these goings-on?" said the Colonel, staring at young Mr. Colfax, rigid as
one of his own gamecocks. He was standing defiantly over the stooping
figure of the assistant manager.

"Oh," said Virginia, indifferently, "it's only Clarence. He's so
tiresome. He's always wanting to fight with somebody."

"What's the matter, Clarence?" asked the Colonel, with the mild unconcern
which deceived so many of the undiscerning.

"This person, sir, refused to do a favor for your daughter. She told him,
and I told him, to notify Mr. Hood that Miss Carvel was here, and he
refused."

Mr. Hopper continued his occupation, which was absorbing. But he was
listening.

Colonel Carvel pulled his goatee, and smiled.

"Clarence," said he, "I reckon I can run this establishment without any
help from you and Jinny. I've been at it now for a good many years."

If Mr. Barbo had not been constitutionally unlucky, he might have
perceived Mr. Hopper, before dark that evening, in conversation with Mr.
Hood about a certain customer who lived up town, and presently leave the
store by the side entrance. He walked as rapidly as his legs would carry
him, for they were a trifle short for his body; and in due time, as the
lamps were flickering, he arrived near Colonel Carvel's large double
residence, on Tenth and Locust streets. Then he walked slowly along
Tenth, his eyes lifted to the tall, curtained windows. Now and anon they
scanned passers-by for a chance acquaintance.

Mr. Hopper walked around the block, arriving again opposite the Carvel
house, and beside Mr. Renault's, which was across from it. Eliphalet had
inherited the principle of mathematical chances. It is a fact that the
discreet sometimes take chances. Towards the back of Mr. Renault's
residence, a wide area was sunk to the depth of a tall man, which was
apparently used for the purpose of getting coal and wood into the cellar.
Mr. Hopper swept the neighborhood with a glance. The coast was clear, and
he dropped into the area.

Although the evening was chill, at first Mr. Hopper perspired very
freely. He crouched in the area while the steps of pedestrians beat above
his head, and took no thought but of escape. At last, however, he grew
cooler, removed his hat, and peeped over the stone coping. Colonel
Carvel's house--her house--was now ablaze with lights, and the shades not
yet drawn. There was the dining room, where the negro butler was moving
about the table; and the pantry, where the butler went occasionally; and
the kitchen, with black figures moving about. But upstairs on the two
streets was the sitting room. The straight figure of the Colonel passed
across the light. He held a newspaper in his hand. Suddenly, full in the
window, he stopped and flung away the paper. A graceful shadow slipped
across the wall. Virginia laid her hands on his shoulders, and he stooped
to kiss her. Now they sat between the curtains, she on the arm of his
chair and leaning on him, together looking out of the window.

How long this lasted Mr. Hopper could not say. Even the wise forget
themselves. But all at once a wagon backed and bumped against the curb in
front of him, and Eliphalet's head dropped as if it had been struck by
the wheel. Above him a sash screamed as it opened, and he heard Mr.
Renault's voice say, to some person below:

"Is that you, Capitaine Grant?"

"The same," was the brief reply.

"I am charmed that you have brought the wood. I thought that you had
forgotten me."

"I try to do what I say, Mr. Renault."

"Attendez--wait!" cried Mr. Renault, and closed the window.

Now was Eliphalet's chance to bolt. The perspiration had come again, and
it was cold. But directly the excitable little man, Renault, had appeared
on the pavement above him. He had been running.

"It is a long voyage from Gravois with a load of wood, Capitaine--I am
very grateful."

"Business is business, Mr. Renault," was the self-contained reply.

"Alphonse!" cried Mr. Renault, "Alphonse!" A door opened in the back
wall. "Du vin pour Monsieur le Capitaine."

"Oui, M'sieu."

Eliphalet was too frightened to wonder why this taciturn handler of wood
was called Captain, and treated with such respect.

"Guess I won't take any wine to-night, Mr. Renault," said he. "You go
inside, or you'll take cold."

Mr. Renault protested, asked about all the residents of Gravois way, and
finally obeyed. Eliphalet's heart was in his mouth. A bolder spirit would
have dashed for liberty. Eliphalet did not possess that kind of bravery.
He was waiting for the Captain to turn toward his wagon.

He looked down the area instead, with the light from the street lamp on
his face. Fear etched an ineffaceable portrait of him on Mr. Hopper's
mind, so that he knew him instantly when he saw him years afterward.
Little did he reckon that the fourth time he was to see him this man was
to be President of the United States. He wore a close-cropped beard, an
old blue army overcoat, and his trousers were tucked into a pair of muddy
cowhide boots.

Swiftly but silently the man reached down and hauled Eliphalet to the
sidewalk by the nape of the neck.

"What were you doing there?" demanded he of the blue overcoat, sternly.

Eliphalet did not answer. With one frantic wrench he freed himself, and
ran down Locust Street. At the corner, turning fearfully, he perceived
the man in the overcoat calmly preparing to unload his wood.




CHAPTER III

THE UNATTAINABLE SIMPLICITY

To Mr. Hopper the being caught was the unpardonable crime. And indeed,
with many of us, it is humiliation and not conscience which makes the
sting. He walked out to the end of the city's growth westward, where the
new houses were going up. He had reflected coolly on consequences, and
found there were none to speak of. Many a moralist, Mr. Davitt included,
would have shaken his head at this. Miss Crane's whole Puritan household
would have raised their hands in horror at such a doctrine.

Some novelists I know of, who are in reality celebrated surgeons in
disguise, would have shown a good part of Mr. Eliphalet Hopper's mental
insides in as many words as I have taken to chronicle his arrival in St.
Louis. They invite us to attend a clinic, and the horrible skill with
which they wield the scalpel holds us spellbound. For God has made all of
us, rogue and saint, burglar and burgomaster, marvellously alike. We read
a patent medicine circular and shudder with seven diseases. We peruse one
of Mr. So and So's intellectual tonics and are sure we are complicated
scandals, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Alas, I have neither the skill nor the scalpel to show the diseases of
Mr. Hopper's mind; if, indeed, he had any. Conscience, when contracted,
is just as troublesome as croup. Mr. Hopper was thoroughly healthy. He
had ambition, as I have said. But he was not morbidly sensitive. He was
calm enough when he got back to the boarding-house, which he found in as
high a pitch of excitement as New Englanders ever reach.

And over what?

Over the prospective arrival that evening of the Brices, mother and son,
from Boston. Miss Crane had received the message in the morning.
Palpitating with the news; she had hurried rustling to Mrs. Abner Reed,
with the paper in her hand.

"I guess you don't mean Mrs. Appleton Brice," said Mrs. Reed.

"That's just who I mean," answered Miss Crane, triumphantly,--nay,
aggressively.

Mrs. Abner shook her curls in a way that made people overwhelm her with
proofs.

"Mirandy, you're cracked," said she. "Ain't you never been to Boston?"

Miss Crane bridled. This was an uncalled-for insult.

"I guess I visited down Boston-way oftener than you, Eliza Reed. You
never had any clothes."

Mrs. Reed's strength was her imperturbability.

"And you never set eyes on the Brice house, opposite the Common, with the
swelled front? I'd like to find out where you were a-visitin'. And you've
never heard tell of the Brice homestead, at Westbury, that was Colonel
Wilton Brice's, who fought in the Revolution? I'm astonished at you,
Mirandy. When I used to be at the Dales', in Mount Vernon Street, in
thirty-seven, Mrs. Charles Atterbury Brice used to come there in her
carriage, a-callin'. She was Appleton's mother. Severe! Save us,"
exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "but she was stiff as starched crepe. His father was
minister to France. The Brices were in the India trade, and they had
money enough to buy the whole of St. Louis."

Miss Crane rattled the letter in her hand. She brought forth her
reserves.

"Yes, and Appleton Brice lost it all, in the panic. And then he died, and
left the widow and son without a cent."

Mrs. Reed took off her spectacles.

"I want to know!" she exclaimed. "The durned fool! Well, Appleton Brice
didn't have the family brains, ands he was kind of soft-hearted. I've
heard Mehitabel Dale say that." She paused to reflect. "So they're coming
here?" she added. "I wonder why."

Miss Crane's triumph was not over.

"Because Silas Whipple was some kin to Appleton Brice, and he has offered
the boy a place in his law office."

Miss Reed laid down her knitting.

"Save us!" she said. "This is a day of wonders, Mirandy. Now Lord help
the boy if he's gain' to work for the Judge."

"The Judge has a soft heart, if he is crabbed," declared the spinster.
"I've heard say of a good bit of charity he's done. He's a soft heart."

"Soft as a green quince!" said Mrs. Abner, scornfully. "How many friends
has he?"

"Those he has are warm enough," Miss Crane retorted. "Look at Colonel
Carvel, who has him to dinner every Sunday."

"That's plain as your nose, Mirandy Crane. They both like quarrellin'
better than anything in this world."

"Well," said Miss Crane, "I must go make ready for the Brices."

Such was the importance of the occasion, however, that she could not
resist calling at Mrs. Merrill's room, and she knocked at Mrs. Chandler's
door to tell that lady and her daughter.

No Burke has as yet arisen in this country of ours to write a Peerage.
Fame awaits him. Indeed, it was even then awaiting him, at the time of
the panic of 1857. With what infinite pains were the pedigree and
possessions of the Brice family pieced together that day by the scattered
residents from Puritan-land in the City of St. Louis. And few buildings
would have borne the wear and tear of many house-cleanings of the kind
Miss Crane indulged in throughout the morning and afternoon.

Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, on his return from business, was met on the steps
and requested to wear his Sunday clothes. Like the good republican that
he was, Mr. Hopper refused. He had ascertained that the golden charm
which made the Brices worthy of tribute had been lost. Commercial
supremacy,--that was Mr. Hopper's creed. Family is a good thing, but of
what use is a crest without the panels on which to paint it? Can a
diamond brooch shine on a calico gown? Mr. Hopper deemed church the place
for worship. He likewise had his own idol in his closet.

Eliphalet at Willesden had heard a great deal of Boston airs and graces
and intellectuality, of the favored few of that city who lived in
mysterious houses, and who crossed the sea in ships. He pictured Mrs.
Brice asking for a spoon, and young Stephen sniffing at Mrs. Crane's
boarding-house. And he resolved with democratic spirit that he would
teach Stephen a lesson, if opportunity offered. His own discrepancy
between the real and the imagined was no greater than that of the rest of
his fellow-boarders.

Barring Eliphalet, there was a dress parade that evening,--silks and
bombazines and broadcloths, and Miss Crane's special preserves on the
tea-table. Alas, that most of the deserved honors of this world should
fall upon barren ground!

The quality which baffled Mr. Hopper, and some other boarders, was
simplicity. None save the truly great possess it (but this is not
generally known). Mrs. Brice was so natural, that first evening at tea,
that all were disappointed. The hero upon the reviewing stand with the
halo of the Unknown behind his head is one thing; the lady of Family who
sits beside you at a boarding-house and discusses the weather and the
journey is quite another. They were prepared to hear Mrs. Brice rail at
the dirt of St. Louis and the crudity of the West. They pictured her
referring with sighs to her Connections, and bewailing that Stephen could
not have finished his course at Harvard.

She did nothing of the sort.

The first shock was so great that Mrs. Abner Reed cried in the privacy of
her chamber, and the Widow Crane confessed her disappointment to the
confiding ear of her bosom friend, Mrs. Merrill. Not many years later a
man named Grant was to be in Springfield, with a carpet bag, despised as
a vagabond. A very homely man named Lincoln went to Cincinnati to try a
case before the Supreme Court, and was snubbed by a man named Stanton.

When we meet the truly great, several things may happen. In the first
place, we begin to believe in their luck, or fate, or whatever we choose
to call it, and to curse our own. We begin to respect ourselves the more,
and to realize that they are merely clay like us, that we are great men
without Opportunity. Sometimes, if we live long enough near the Great, we
begin to have misgivings. Then there is hope for us.

Mrs. Brice, with her simple black gowns, quiet manner, and serene face,
with her interest in others and none in herself, had a wonderful effect
upon the boarders. They were nearly all prepared to be humble. They grew
arrogant and pretentious. They asked Mrs. Brice if she knew this and that
person of consequence in Boston, with whom they claimed relationship or
intimacy. Her answers were amiable and self-contained.

But what shall we say of Stephen Brice? Let us confess at once that it is
he who is the hero of this story, and not Eliphalet Hopper. It would be
so easy to paint Stephen in shining colors, and to make him a first-class
prig (the horror of all novelists), that we must begin with the
drawbacks. First and worst, it must be confessed that Stephen had at that
time what has been called "the Boston manner." This was not Stephen's
fault, but Boston's. Young Mr. Brice possessed that wonderful power of
expressing distance in other terms besides ells and furlongs,--and yet
he was simple enough with it all.

Many a furtive stare he drew from the table that evening. There were one
or two of discernment present, and they noted that his were the generous
features of a marked man,--if he chose to become marked. He inherited his
mother's look; hers was the face of a strong woman, wide of sympathy,
broad of experience, showing peace of mind amid troubles--the touch of
femininity was there to soften it.

Her son had the air of the college-bred. In these surroundings he escaped
arrogance by the wonderful kindliness of his eye, which lighted when his
mother spoke to him. But he was not at home at Miss Crane's table, and he
made no attempt to appear at his ease.

This was an unexpected pleasure for Mr. Eliphalet Hopper. Let it not be
thought that he was the only one at that table to indulge in a little
secret rejoicing. But it was a peculiar satisfaction to him to reflect
that these people, who had held up their heads for so many generations,
were humbled at last. To be humbled meant, in Mr. Hopper's philosophy, to
lose one's money. It was thus he gauged the importance of his
acquaintances; it was thus he hoped some day to be gauged. And he trusted
and believed that the time would come when he could give his fillip to
the upper rim of fortune's wheel, and send it spinning downward.

Mr. Hopper was drinking his tea and silently forming an estimate. He
concluded that young Brice was not the type to acquire the money which
his father had lost. And he reflected that Stephen must feel as strange
in St. Louis as a cod might amongst the cat-fish in the Mississippi. So
the assistant manager of Carvel & Company resolved to indulge in the
pleasure of patronizing the Bostonian.

"Callatin' to go to work?" he asked him, as the boarders walked into the
best room.

"Yes," replied Stephen, taken aback. And it may be said here that, if Mr.
Hopper underestimated him, certainly he underestimated Mr. Hopper.

"It ain't easy to get a job this Fall," said Eliphalet, "St. Louis houses
have felt the panic."

"I am sorry to hear that."

"What business was you callatin' to grapple with?"

"Law," said Stephen.

"Gosh!" exclaimed Mr. Hopper, "I want to know." In reality he was a bit
chagrined, having pictured with some pleasure the Boston aristocrat going
from store to store for a situation. "You didn't come here figurin' on
makin' a pile, I guess."

"A what?"

"A pile."

Stephen looked down and over Mr. Hopper attentively. He took in the
blocky shoulders and the square head, and he pictured the little eyes at
a vanishing-point in lines of a bargain. Then humor blessed humor--came
to his rescue. He had entered the race in the West, where all start
equal. He had come here, like this man who was succeeding, to make his
living. Would he succeed?

Mr. Hopper drew something out of his pocket, eyed Miss Crane, and bit off
a corner.

"What office was you going into?" he asked genially. Mr. Brice decided to
answer that.

"Judge Whipple's--unless he has changed his mind." Eliphalet gave him a
look more eloquent than words.

"Know the Judge?"

Silent laughter.

"If all the Fourth of Julys we've had was piled into one," said Mr.
Hopper, slowly and with conviction, "they wouldn't be a circumstance to
Silas Whipple when he gets mad. My boss, Colonel Carvel, is the only man
in town who'll stand up to him. I've seen 'em begin a quarrel in the
store and carry it all the way up the street. I callate you won't stay
with him a great while."




CHAPTER IV

BLACK CATTLE

Later that evening Stephen Brice was sitting by the open windows in his
mother's room, looking on the street-lights below.

"Well, my dear," asked the lady, at length, "what do you think of it
all?"

"They are kind people," he said.

"Yes, they are kind," she assented, with a sigh. "But they are not--they
are not from among our friends, Stephen."

"I thought that one of our reasons for coming West, mother," answered
Stephen.

His mother looked pained.

"Stephen, how can you! We came West in order that you might have more
chance for the career to which you are entitled. Our friends in Boston
were more than good."

He left the window and came and stood behind her chair, his hands clasped
playfully beneath her chin.

"Have you the exact date about you, mother?"

"What date, Stephen?"

"When I shall leave St. Louis for the United States Senate. And you must
not forget that there is a youth limit in our Constitution for senators."

Then the widow smiled,--a little sadly, perhaps. But still a wonderfully
sweet smile. And it made her strong face akin to all that was human and
helpful.

"I believe that you have the subject of my first speech in that august
assembly. And, by the way, what was it?"

"It was on 'The Status of the Emigrant,'" she responded instantly,
thereby proving that she was his mother.

"And it touched the Rights of Privacy," he added, laughing, "which do not
seem to exist in St. Louis boarding-houses."

"In the eyes of your misguided profession, statesmen and authors and
emigrants and other public charges have no Rights of Privacy," said she.
"Mr. Longfellow told me once that they were to name a brand of flour for
him, and that he had no redress."

"Have you, too, been up before Miss Crane's Commission?" he asked, with
amused interest.

His mother laughed.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"They have some expert members," he continued. "This Mrs. Abner Reed
could be a shining light in any bar. I overheard a part of her
cross-examination. She--she had evidently studied our case--"

"My dear," answered Mrs. Brice, "I suppose they know all about us." She
was silent a moment, I had so hoped that they wouldn't. They lead the
same narrow life in this house that they did in their little New England
towns. They--they pity us, Stephen."

"Mother!"

"I did not expect to find so many New Englanders here--I wish that Mr.
Whipple had directed us elsewhere-"

"He probably thought that we should feel at home among New Englanders. I
hope the Southerners will be more considerate. I believe they will," he
added.

"They are very proud," said his mother. "A wonderful people,--born
aristocrats. You don't remember those Randolphs with whom we travelled
through England. They were with us at Hollingdean, Lord Northwell's
place. You were too small at the time. There was a young girl, Eleanor
Randolph, a beauty. I shall never forget the way she entered those
English drawing-rooms. They visited us once in Beacon Street, afterwards.
And I have heard that there are a great many good Southern families here
in St. Louis."

"You did not glean that from Judge Whipple's letter, mother," said
Stephen, mischievously.

"He was very frank in his letter," sighed Mrs. Brice.

"I imagine he is always frank, to put it delicately."

"Your father always spoke in praise of Silas Whipple, my dear. I have
heard him call him one of the ablest lawyers in the country. He won a
remarkable case for Appleton here, and he once said that the Judge would
have sat on the Supreme Bench if he had not been pursued with such
relentlessness by rascally politicians."

"The Judge indulges in a little relentlessness now and then, himself. He
is not precisely what might be termed a mild man, if what we hear is
correct."

Mrs. Brice started.

"What have you heard?" she asked.

"Well, there was a gentleman on the steamboat who said that it took more
courage to enter the Judge's private office than to fight a Border
Ruffian. And another, a young lawyer, who declared that he would rather
face a wild cat than ask Whipple a question on the new code. And yet he
said that the Judge knew more law than any man in the West. And lastly,
there is a polished gentleman named Hopper here from Massachusetts who
enlightened me a little more."

Stephen paused and bit his tongue. He saw that she was distressed by
these things. Heaven knows that she had borne enough trouble in the last
few months.

"Come, mother," he said gently, "you should know how to take my jokes by
this time. I didn't mean it. I am sure the Judge is a good man,--one of
those aggressive good men who make enemies. I have but a single piece of
guilt to accuse him of."

"And what is that?" asked the widow.

"The cunning forethought which he is showing in wishing to have it said
that a certain Senator and Judge Brice was trained in his office."

"Stephen--you goose!" she said.

Her eye wandered around the room,--Widow Crane's best bedroom. It was
dimly lighted by an extremely ugly lamp. The hideous stuffy bed curtains
and the more hideous imitation marble mantel were the two objects that
held her glance. There was no change in her calm demeanor. But Stephen,
who knew his mother, felt that her little elation over her arrival had
ebbed, Neither would confess dejection to the other.

"I--even I--" said Stephen, tapping his chest, "have at least made the
acquaintance of one prominent citizen, Mr. Eliphalet D. Hopper. According
to Mr. Dickens, he is a true American gentleman, for he chews tobacco. He
has been in St. Louis five years, is now assistant manager of the largest
dry goods house, and still lives in one of Miss Crane's four-dollar
rooms. I think we may safely say that he will be a millionaire before I
am a senator."

He paused.

"And mother?"

"Yes, dear."

He put his hands in his pockets and walked over to the window.

"I think that it would be better if I did the same thing."

"What do you mean, my son--"

"If I went to work,--started sweeping out a store, I mean. See here,
mother, you've sacrificed enough for me already. After paying father's
debts, we've come out here with only a few thousand dollars, and the nine
hundred I saved out of this year's Law School allowance. What shall we do
when that is gone? The honorable legal profession, as my friend reminded
me to-night, is not the swiftest road to millions."

With a mother's discernment she guessed the agitation, he was striving to
hide; she knew that he had been gathering courage for this moment for
months. And she knew that he was renouncing thus lightly, for her sake an
ambition he had had from his school days.

Widow passed her hand over her brow. It was a space before she answered
him.

"My son," she said, let us never speak of this again:

"It was your father's dearest wish that you should become a lawyer and
--and his wishes are sacred God will take care of us."

She rose and kissed him good-night.

"Remember, my dear, when you go to Judge Whipple in the morning, remember
his kindness, and--."

"And keep my temper. I shall, mother."

A while later he stole gently back into her room again. She was on her
knees by the walnut bedstead.

At nine the next manning Stephen left Miss Crane's, girded for the
struggle with the redoubtable Silas Whipple. He was not afraid, but a
poor young man as an applicant to a notorious dragon is not likely to be
bandied with velvet, even though the animal had been a friend of his
father. Dragons as a rule have had a hard rime in their youths, and
believe in others having a hard time.

To a young man, who as his father's heir in Boston had been the subject
of marked consideration by his elders, the situation was keenly
distasteful. But it had to be gone through. So presently, after inquiry,
he came to the open square where the new Court House stood, the dome of
which was indicated by a mass of staging, and one wing still to be
completed. Across from the building, on Market Street, and in the middle
of the block, what had once been a golden hand pointed up a narrow dusty
stairway.

Here was a sign, "Law office of Silas Whipple."

Stephen climbed the stairs, and arrived at a ground glass door, on which
the sign was repeated. Behind that door was the future: so he opened it
fearfully, with an impulse to throw his arm above his head. But he was
struck dumb on beholding, instead of a dragon, a good-natured young man
who smiled a broad welcome. The reaction was as great as though one
entered a dragon's den, armed to the teeth, to find a St. Bernard doing
the honors.

Stephen's heart went out to this young man,--after that organ had jumped
back into its place. This keeper of the dragon looked the part. Even the
long black coat which custom then decreed could not hide the bone and
sinew under it. The young man had a broad forehead, placid Dresden-blue
eyes, flaxen hair, and the German coloring. Across one of his high
cheek-bones was a great jagged scar which seemed to add distinction to
his appearance. That caught Stephen's eye, and held it. He wondered
whether it were the result of an encounter with the Judge.

"You wish to see Mr. Whipple?" he asked, in the accents of an educated
German.

"Yes," said Stephen, "if he isn't busy."

"He is out," said the other, with just a suspicion of a 'd' in the word.
"You know he is much occupied now, fighting election frauds. You read the
papers?"

"I am a stranger here," said Stephen.

"Ach!" exclaimed the German, "now I know you, Mr. Brice. The young one
from Boston the Judge spoke of. But you did not tell him of your
arrival."

"I did not wish to bother him," Stephen replied, smiling.

"My name is Richter--Carl Richter, sir."

The pressure of Mr. Richter's big hands warmed Stephen as nothing else
had since he had come West. He was moved to return it with a little more
fervor than he usually showed. And he felt, whatever the Judge might be,
that he had a powerful friend near at hand--Mr. Richter's welcome came
near being an embrace.

"Sit down, Mr. Brice," he said; "mild weather for November, eh? The Judge
will be here in an hour."

Stephen looked around him: at the dusty books on the shelves, and the
still dustier books heaped on Mr. Richter's big table; at the cuspidors;
at the engravings of Washington and Webster; at the window in the jog
which looked out on the court-house square; and finally at another
ground-glass door on which was printed:

               SILAS WHIPPLE

                PRIVATE

This, then, was the den,--the arena in which was to take place a
memorable interview. But the thought of waiting an hour for the dragon to
appear was disquieting. Stephen remembered that he had something over
nine hundred dollars in his pocket (which he had saved out of his last
year's allowance at the Law School). So he asked Mr. Richter, who was
dusting off a chair, to direct him to the nearest bank.

"Why, certainly," said he; "Mr. Brinsmade's bank on Chestnut Street." He
took Stephen to the window and pointed across the square. "I am sorry I
cannot go with you," he added, "but the Judge's negro, Shadrach, is out,
and I must stay in the office. I will give you a note to Mr. Brinsmade."

"His negro!" exclaimed Stephen. "Why, I thought that Mr. Whipple was an
Abolitionist."

Mr. Richter laughed.

"The man is free," said he. "The Judge pays him wages."

Stephen thanked his new friend for the note to the bank president, and
went slowly down the stairs. To be keyed up to a battle-pitch, and then
to have the battle deferred, is a trial of flesh and spirit.

As he reached the pavement, he saw people gathering in front of the wide
entrance of the Court House opposite, and perched on the copings. He
hesitated, curious. Then he walked slowly toward the place, and buttoning
his coat, pushed through the loafers and passers-by dallying on the
outskirts of the crowd. There, in the bright November sunlight, a sight
met his eyes which turned him sick and dizzy.

Against the walls and pillars of the building, already grimy with soot,
crouched a score of miserable human beings waiting to be sold at auction.
Mr. Lynch's slave pen had been disgorged that morning. Old and young,
husband and wife,--the moment was come for all and each. How hard the
stones and what more pitiless than the gaze of their fellow-creatures in
the crowd below! O friends, we who live in peace and plenty amongst our
families, how little do we realize the terror and the misery and the dumb
heart-aches of those days! Stephen thought with agony of seeing his own
mother sold before his eyes, and the building in front of him was lifted
from its foundation and rocked even as shall the temples on the judgment
day.

The oily auctioneer was inviting the people to pinch the wares. Men came
forward to feel the creatures and look into their mouths, and one brute,
unshaven and with filthy linen, snatched a child from its mother's lap
Stephen shuddered with the sharpest pain he had ever known. An ocean-wide
tempest arose in his breast, Samson's strength to break the pillars of
the temple to slay these men with his bare hands. Seven generations of
stern life and thought had their focus here in him,--from Oliver Cromwell
to John Brown.

Stephen was far from prepared for the storm that raged within him. He had
not been brought up an Abolitionist--far from it. Nor had his father's
friends--who were deemed at that time the best people in Boston--been
Abolitionists. Only three years before, when Boston had been aflame over
the delivery of the fugitive Anthony Burns, Stephen had gone out of
curiosity to the meeting at Faneuil Hall. How well he remembered his
father's indignation when he confessed it, and in his anger Mr. Brice had
called Phillips and Parker "agitators." But his father, nor his father's
friends in Boston had never been brought face to face with this hideous
traffic.

Hark! Was that the sing-song voice of the auctioneer He was selling the
cattle. High and low, caressing an menacing, he teased and exhorted them
to buy. The were bidding, yes, for the possession of souls, bidding in
the currency of the Great Republic. And between the eager shouts came a
moan of sheer despair. What was the attendant doing now? He was tearing
two of then: from a last embrace.

Three--four were sold while Stephen was in a dream

Then came a lull, a hitch, and the crowd began to chatter gayly. But the
misery in front of him held Stephen in a spell. Figures stood out from
the group. A white-haired patriarch, with eyes raised to the sky; a
flat-breasted woman whose child was gone, whose weakness made her
valueless. Then two girls were pushed forth, one a quadroon of great
beauty, to be fingered. Stephen turned his face away,--to behold Mr.
Eliphalet Hopper looking calmly on.

"Wal, Mr. Brice, this is an interesting show now, ain't it? Something we
don't have. I generally stop here to take a look when I'm passing." And
he spat tobacco juice on the coping.

Stephen came to his senses.

"And you are from New England?" he said.

Mr. Hopper laughed.

"Tarnation!" said he, "you get used to it. When I came here, I was a sort
of an Abolitionist. But after you've lived here awhile you get to know
that niggers ain't fit for freedom."

Silence from Stephen.

"Likely gal, that beauty," Eliphalet continued unrepressed. "There's a
well-known New Orleans dealer named Jenkins after her. I callate she'll
go down river."

"I reckon you're right, Mistah," a man with a matted beard chimed in, and
added with a wink: "She'll find it pleasant enough--fer a while. Some of
those other niggers will go too, and they'd rather go to hell. They do
treat 'em nefarious down thah on the wholesale plantations. Household
niggers! there ain't none better off than them. But seven years in a
cotton swamp,--seven years it takes, that's all, Mistah."

Stephen moved away. He felt that to stay near the man was to be tempted
to murder. He moved away, and just then the auctioneer yelled,
"Attention!"

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I have heah two sisters, the prope'ty of the late
Mistah Robe't Benbow, of St. Louis, as fine a pair of wenches as was ever
offe'd to the public from these heah steps--"

"Speak for the handsome gal," cried a wag.

"Sell off the cart hoss fust," said another.

The auctioneer turned to the darker sister:

"Sal ain't much on looks, gentlemen," he said, "but she's the best nigger
for work Mistah Benbow had." He seized her arm and squeezed it, while the
girl flinched and drew back. "She's solid, gentlemen, and sound as a
dollar, and she kin sew and cook. Twenty-two years old. What am I bid?"

Much to the auctioneer's disgust, Sal was bought in for four hundred
dollars, the interest in the beautiful sister having made the crowd
impatient. Stephen, sick at heart, turned to leave. Halfway to the corner
he met a little elderly man who was the color of a dried gourd. And just
as Stephen passed him, this man was overtaken by an old negress, with
tears streaming down her face, who seized the threadbare hem of his coat.
Stephen paused involuntarily.

"Well, Nancy," said the little man, "we had marvellous luck. I was able
to buy your daughter for you with less than the amount of your savings."

"T'ank you, Mistah Cantah," wailed the poor woman, "t'ank you, suh.
Praised be de name ob de Lawd. He gib me Sal again. Oh, Mistah Cantah"
(the agony in that cry), "is you gwineter stan' heah an' see her sister
Hester sol' to--to--oh, ma little Chile! De little Chile dat I nussed,
dat I raised up in God's 'ligion. Mistah Cantah, save her, suh, f'om dat
wicked life o' sin. De Lawd Jesus'll rewa'd you, suh. Dis ole woman'll
wuk fo' you twell de flesh drops off'n her fingers, suh."

And had he not held her, she would have gone down on her knees on the
stone flagging before him. Her suffering was stamped on the little man's
face--and it seemed to Stephen that this was but one trial more which
adversity had brought to Mr. Canter.

"Nancy," he answered (how often, and to how many, must he have had to say
the same thing), "I haven't the money, Nancy. Would to God that I had,
Nancy!"

She had sunk down on the bricks. But she had not fainted. It was not so
merciful as that. It was Stephen who lifted her, and helped her to the
coping, where she sat with her bandanna awry.

Stephen was not of a descent to do things upon impulse. But the tale was
told in after days that one of his first actions in St. Louis was of this
nature. The waters stored for ages in the four great lakes, given the
opportunity, rush over Niagara Falls into Ontario.

"Take the woman away," said Stephen, in a low voice, "and I will buy the
girl,--if I can."

The little man looked up, dazed.

"Give me your card,--your address. I will buy the girl, if I can, and set
her free."

He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a dirty piece of pasteboard. It
read: "R. Canter, Second Hand Furniture, 20 Second Street." And still he
stared at Stephen, as one who gazes upon a mystery. A few curious
pedestrians had stopped in front of them.

"Get her away, if you can, for God's sake," said Stephen again. And he
strode off toward the people at the auction. He was trembling. In his
eagerness to reach a place of vantage before the girl was sold, he pushed
roughly into the crowd.

But suddenly he was brought up short by the blocky body of Mr. Hopper,
who grunted with the force of the impact.

"Gosh," said that gentleman, "but you are inters'ted. They ain't begun to
sell her yet--he's waitin' for somebody. Callatin' to buy her?" asked Mr.
Hopper, with genial humor.

Stephen took a deep breath. If he knocked Mr. Hopper down, he certainly
could not buy her. And it was a relief to know that the sale had not
begun.

As for Eliphalet, he was beginning to like young Brice. He approved of
any man from Boston who was not too squeamish to take pleasure in a
little affair of this kind.

As for Stephen, Mr. Hopper brought him back to earth. He ceased
trembling, and began to think.

"Tarnation!" said Eliphalet. "There's my boss, Colonel Carvel across the
street. Guess I'd better move on. But what d'ye think of him for a real
Southern gentleman?"

"The young dandy is his nephew, Clarence Colfax. He callates to own this
town." Eliphalet was speaking leisurely, as usual, while preparing to
move. "That's Virginia Carvel, in red. Any gals down Boston-way to beat
her? Guess you won't find many as proud."

He departed. And Stephen glanced absently at the group. They were picking
their way over the muddy crossing toward him. Was it possible that these
people were coming to a slave auction? Surely not. And yet here they were
on the pavement at his very side.

She wore a long Talma of crimson cashmere, and her face was in that most
seductive of frames, a scoop bonnet of dark green velvet, For a fleeting
second her eyes met his, and then her lashes fell. But he was aware, when
he had turned away, that she was looking at him again. He grew uneasy. He
wondered whether his appearance betrayed his purpose, or made a question
of his sanity.

Sanity! Yes, probably he was insane from her point of view. A sudden
anger shook him that she should be there calmly watching such a scene.

Just then there was a hush among the crowd. The beautiful slave-girl was
seized roughly by the man in charge and thrust forward, half fainting,
into view. Stephen winced. But unconsciously he turned, to see the effect
upon Virginia Carvel.

Thank God! There were tears upon her lashes.

Here was the rasp of the auctioneer's voice:-- "Gentlemen, I reckon there
ain't never been offered to bidders such an opportunity as this heah.
Look at her well, gentlemen. I ask you, ain't she a splendid creature?"

Colonel Carvel, in annoyance, started to move on. "Come Jinny," he said,
"I had no business to bring you aver."

But Virginia caught his arm. "Pa," she cried, "it's Mr. Benbow's Hester.
Don't go, dear. Buy her for me You know that I always wanted her.
Please!"

The Colonel halted, irresolute, and pulled his goatee Young Colfax
stepped in between them.

"I'll buy her for you, Jinny. Mother promised you a present, you know,
and you shall have her."

Virginia had calmed.

"Do buy her, one of you," was all she said

"You may do the bidding, Clarence," said the Colonel, "and we'll settle
the ownership afterward." Taking Virginia's arm, he escorted her across
the street.

Stephen was left in a quandary. Here was a home for the girl, and a good
one. Why should me spend the money which meant so much to him. He saw the
man Jenkin elbowing to the front. And yet--suppose Mr. Colfax did not get
her? He had promised to buy her if he could, and to set her free:

Stephen had made up his mind: He shouldered his way after Jenkins.




CHAPTER V

THE FIRST SPARK PASSES

"Now, gentlemen," shouted the auctioneer when he had finished his oration
upon the girl's attractions, "what 'tin I bid? Eight hundred?"

Stephen caught his breath. There was a long pause no one cared to start
the bidding.

"Come, gentlemen, come! There's my friend Alf Jenkins. He knows what
she's worth to a cent. What'll you give, Alf? Is it eight hundred?"

Mr. Jenkins winked at the auction joined in the laugh.

"Three hundred!" he said.

The auctioneer was mortally offended. Then some one cried:--"Three
hundred and fifty!"

It was young Colfax. He was recognized at once, by name, evidently as a
person of importance.

"Thank you, Mistah Colfax, suh," said the auctioneer, with a servile wave
of the hand in his direction, while the crowd twisted their necks to see
him. He stood very straight, very haughty, as if entirely oblivious to
his conspicuous position.

"Three seventy-five!"

"That's better, Mistah Jenkins," said the auctioneer, sarcastically. He
turned to the girl, who might have stood to a sculptor for a figure of
despair. Her hands were folded in front of her, her head bowed down. The
auctioneer put his hand under her chin and raised it roughly. "Cheer up,
my gal," he said, "you ain't got nothing to blubber about now."

Hester's breast heaved and from her black eyes there shot a magnificent
look of defiance. He laughed. That was the white blood.

The white blood!

Clarence Colfax had his bid taken from his lips. Above the heads of the
people he had a quick vision of a young man with a determined face, whose
voice rang clear and strong,-- "Four hundred!"

Even the auctioneer, braced two ways, was thrown off his balance by the
sudden appearance of this new force. Stephen grew red over the sensation
he made. Apparently the others present had deemed competition with such
as Jenkins and young Colfax the grossest folly. He was treated to much
liberal staring before the oily salesman arranged his wits to grapple
with the third factor.

Four hundred from--from--from that gentleman. And the chubby index seemed
the finger of scorn.

"Four hundred and fifty!" said Mr. Colfax, defiantly.

Whereupon Mr. Jenkins, the New Orleans dealer, lighted a very long cigar
and sat down on the coping. The auctioneer paid no attention to this
manoeuvre. But Mr. Brice and Mr. Colfax, being very young, fondly
imagined that they had the field to themselves, to fight to a finish.

Here wisdom suggested in a mild whisper to Stephen that there was a last
chance to pull out. And let Colfax have the girl? Never. That was pride,
and most reprehensible. But second he thought of Mr. Canter and of Nancy,
and that was not pride.

"Four seventy-five!" he cried.

"Thank you, suh."

"Now fur it, young uns!" said the wag, and the crowd howled with
merriment.

"Five hundred!" snapped Mr. Colfax.

He was growing angry. But Stephen was from New England, and poor, and he
thought of the size of his purse. A glance at his adversary showed that
his blood was up. Money was plainly no consideration to him, and young
Colfax did not seem to be the kind who would relish returning to a young
lady and acknowledge a defeat.

Stephen raised the bid by ten dollars. The Southerner shot up fifty.
Again Stephen raised it ten. He was in full possession of himself now,
and proof against the thinly veiled irony of the oily man's remarks in
favor of Mr. Colfax. In an incredibly short time the latter's impetuosity
had brought them to eight hundred and ten dollars.

Then several things happened very quickly.

Mr. Jenkins got up from the curb and said, "Eight hundred and
twenty-five," with his cigar in his mouth. Scarcely had the hum of
excitement died when Stephen, glancing at Colfax for the next move, saw
that young gentleman seized from the rear by his uncle, the tall Colonel.
And across the street was bliss Virginia Carvel, tapping her foot on the
pavement.

"What are you about, sir?" the Colonel cried. "The wench isn't worth it."

"Mr. Colfax shook himself free.

"I've got to buy her now, sir," he cried.

"I reckon not," said the Colonel. "You come along with me."

Naturally Mr. Colfax was very angry. He struggled but he went. And so,
protesting, he passed Stephen, at whom he did not deign to glance. The
humiliation of it must have been great for Mr. Colfax. "Jinny wants her;
sir," he said, "and I have a right to buy her."

"Jinny wants everything," was the Colonel's reply. And in a single look
of curiosity and amusement his own gray eyes met Stephen's. They seemed
to regret that this young man, too, had not a guardian. Then uncle and
nephew recrossed the street, and as they walked off the Colonel was seen
to laugh. Virginia had her chin in the air, and Clarence's was in his
collar.

The crowd, of course, indulged in roars of laughter, and even Stephen
could not repress a smile, a smile not without bitterness. Then he
wheeled to face Mr. Jerkins. Out of respect for the personages involved,
the auctioneer had been considerately silent daring the event. It was Mr.
Brice who was now the centre of observation.

Come, gentlemen, come, this here's a joke--eight twenty-five. She's worth
two thousand. I've been in the business twenty yea's, and I neve' seen
her equal. Give me a bid, Mr.--Mr.--you have the advantage of me, suh."

"Eight hundred and thirty-five!" said Stephen.

"Now, Mr. Jerkins, now, suh! we've got twenty me' to sell."

"Eight fifty!" said Mr. Jerkins.

"Eight sixty!" said Stephen, and they cheered him.

Mr. Jenkins took his cigar out of his teeth, and stared.

"Eight seventy-five!" said he.

"Eight eighty-five!" said Stephen.

There was a breathless pause.

"Nine hundred!" said the trader.

"Nine hundred and ten!" cried Stephen.

At that Mr. Jerkins whipped his hat from off his head, and made Stephen a
derisive bow.

"She's youahs, suh," he said. "These here are panic times. I've struck my
limit. I can do bettah in Louisville fo' less. Congratulate you, suh
--reckon you want her wuss'n I do."

At which sally Stephen grew scarlet, and the crowd howled with joy.

"What!" yelled the auctioneer. "Why, gentlemen, this heah's a joke. Nine
hundred and ten dollars, gents, nine hundred and ten. We've just begun,
gents. Come, Mr. Jerkins, that's giving her away."

The trader shook his head, and puffed at his cigar.

"Well," cried the oily man, "this is a slaughter. Going at nine hundred
an' ten--nine ten--going--going--" down came the hammer--"gone at nine
hundred and ten to Mr.--Mr.--you have the advantage of me, suh."

An attendant had seized the girl, who was on the verge of fainting, and
was dragging her back. Stephen did not heed the auctioneer, but thrust
forward regardless of stares.

"Handle her gently, you blackguard," he cried.

The man took his hands off.

"Suttinly, sah," he said.

Hester lifted her eyes, and they were filled with such gratitude and
trust that suddenly he was overcome with embarrassment.

"Can you walk?" he demanded, somewhat harshly.

"Yes, massa."

"Then get up," he said, "and follow me."

She rose obediently. Then a fat man came out of the Court House, with a
quill in his hand, and a merry twinkle in his eye that Stephen resented.

"This way, please, sah," and he led him to a desk, from the drawer of
which he drew forth a blank deed.

"Name, please!"

"Stephen Atterbury Brice."

"Residence, Mr. Brice!"

Stephen gave the number. But instead of writing it clown, the man merely
stared at him, while the fat creases in his face deepened and deepened.
Finally he put down his quill, and indulged in a gale of laughter, hugely
to Mr. Brice's discomfiture.

"Shucks!" said the fat man, as soon as he could.

"What are you givin' us? That the's a Yankee boa'din' house."

"And I suppose that that is part of your business, too," said Stephen,
acidly.

The fat man looked at him, pressed his lips, wrote down the number,
shaken all the while with a disturbance which promised to lead to another
explosion. Finally, after a deal of pantomime, and whispering and
laughter with the notary behind the wire screen, the deed was made out,
signed, attested, and delivered. Stephen counted out the money grimly, in
gold and Boston drafts.

Out in the sunlight on Chestnut Street, with the girl by his side, it all
seemed a nightmare. The son of Appleton Brice of Boston the owner of a
beautiful quadroon girl! And he had bought hex with his last cent.

Miss Crane herself opened the door in answer to his ring. Her keen eyes
instantly darted over his shoulder and dilated, But Stephen, summoning
all his courage, pushed past her to the stairs, and beckoned Hester to
follow.

"I have brought this--this person to see my mother," he said

The spinster bowed from the back of her neck. She stood transfixed on a
great rose in the hall carpet until she heard Mrs. Brice's door open and
slam, and then she strode up the stairs and into the apartment of Mrs.
Abner Reed. As she passed the first landing, the quadroon girl was
waiting in the hall.




CHAPTER VI

SILAS WHIPPLE

The trouble with many narratives is that they tell too much. Stephen's
interview with his mother was a quiet affair, and not historic. Miss
Crane's boarding-house is not an interesting place, and the tempest in
that teapot is better imagined than described. Out of consideration for
Mr. Stephen Brice, we shall skip likewise a most affecting scene at Mr.
Canter's second-hand furniture store.

That afternoon Stephen came again to the dirty flight of steps which led
to Judge Whipple's office. He paused a moment to gather courage, and
then, gripping the rail, he ascended. The ascent required courage now,
certainly. He halted again before the door at the top. But even as he
stood there came to him, in low, rich tones, the notes of a German song.
He entered And Mr. Richter rose in shirt-sleeves from his desk to greet
him, all smiling.

"Ach, my friend!" said he, "but you are late. The Judge has been awaiting
you."

"Has he?" inquired Stephen, with ill-concealed anxiety.

The big young German patted him on the shoulder.

Suddenly a voice roared from out the open transom of the private office,
like a cyclone through a gap.

"Mr. Richter!"

"Sir!"

"Who is that?"

"Mr. Brice, sir."

"Then why in thunder doesn't he come in?"

Mr. Richter opened the private door, and in Stephen walked. The door
closed again, and there he was in the dragon's dens face to face with the
dragon, who was staring him through and through. The first objects that
caught Stephen's attention were the grizzly gray eye brows, which seemed
as so much brush to mark the fire of the deep-set battery of the eyes.
And that battery, when in action, must have been truly terrible.

The Judge was shaven, save for a shaggy fringe of gray beard around his
chin, and the size of his nose was apparent even in the full face.

Stephen felt that no part of him escaped the search of Mr. Whipple's
glance. But it was no code or course of conduct that kept him silent. Nor
was it fear entirely.

"So you are Appleton Brice's son," said the Judge, at last. His tone was
not quite so gruff as it might have been.

"Yes, sir," said Stephen.

"Humph!" said the Judge, with a look that scarcely expressed approval. "I
guess you've been patted on the back too much by your father's friends."
He leaned back in his wooden chair. "How I used to detest people who
patted boys on the back and said with a smirk, 'I know your father.' I
never had a father whom people could say that about. But, sir," cried the
Judge, bringing down his fist on the litter of papers that covered his
desk, "I made up my mind that one day people should know me. That was my
spur. And you'll start fair here, Mr. Brice. They won't know your father
here--"

If Stephen thought the Judge brutal, he did not say so. He glanced around
the little room,--at the bed in the corner, in which the Judge slept, and
which during the day did not escape the flood of books and papers; at the
washstand, with a roll of legal cap beside the pitcher.

"I guess you think this town pretty crude after Boston, Mr. Brice," Mr.
Whipple continued. "From time immemorial it has been the pleasant habit
of old communities to be shocked at newer settlements, built by their own
countrymen. Are you shocked, sir?"

Stephen flushed. Fortunately the Judge did not give him time to answer.

"Why didn't your mother let me know that she was coming?"

"She didn't wish to put you to any trouble, sir."

"Wasn't I a good friend of your father's? Didn't I ask you to come here
and go into my office?"

"But there was a chance, Mr. Whipple--"

"A chance of what?"

"That you would not like me. And there is still a chance of it," added
Stephen, smiling.

For a second it looked as if the Judge might smile, too. He rubbed his
nose with a fearful violence.

"Mr. Richter tells me you were looking for a bank," said he, presently.

Stephen quaked.

"Yes, sir, I was, but--"

But Mr. Whipple merely picked up the 'Counterfeit Bank Note Detector'.

"Beware of Western State Currency as you would the devil," said he.
"That's one thing we don't equal the East in--yet. And so you want to
become a lawyer?"

"I intend to become a lawyer, sir."

"And so you shall, sir," cried the Judge, bringing down his yellow fist
upon the 'Bank Note Detector'. "I'll make you a lawyer, sir. But my
methods ain't Harvard methods, sir."

"I am ready to do anything, Mr. Whipple."

The Judge merely grunted. He scratched among his papers, and produced
some legal cap and a bunch of notes.

"Go out there," he said, "and take off your coat and copy this brief. Mr.
Richter will help you to-day. And tell your mother I shall do myself the
honor to call upon her this evening."

Stephen did as he was told, without a word. But Mr. Richter was not in
the outer office when he returned to it. He tried to compose himself to
write, although the recollection of each act of the morning hung like a
cloud over the back of his head. Therefore the first sheet of legal cap
was spoiled utterly. But Stephen had a deep sense of failure. He had gone
through the ground glass door with the firm intention of making a clean
breast of the ownership of Hester. Now, as he sat still, the trouble grew
upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he got as far as
his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted to the extent
of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when the creak of a
door shattered his nerves completely.

He glanced up from his work to behold--none other than Colonel Comyn
Carvel.

Glancing at Mr. Richter's chair, and seeing it empty, the Colonel's eye
roved about the room until it found Stephen. There it remained, and the
Colonel remained in the middle of the floor, his soft hat on the back of
his head, one hand planted firmly on the gold head of his stick, and the
other tugging at his goatee, pulling down his chin to the quizzical
angle.

"Whoopee!" he cried.

The effect of this was to make one perspire freely. Stephen perspired.
And as there seemed no logical answer, he made none.

Suddenly Mr. Carvel turned, shaking with a laughter he could not control,
and strode into the private office the door slammed behind him. Mr.
Brice's impulse was flight. But he controlled himself.

First of all there was an eloquent silence. Then a ripple of guffaws.
Then the scratch-scratch of a quill pen, and finally the Judge's voice.

"Carvel, what the devil's the matter with you, sir?"

A squall of guffaws blew through the transom, and the Colonel was heard
slapping his knee.

"Judge Whipple," said he, his voice vibrating from suppressed explosions,
"I am happy to see that you have overcome some of your ridiculous
prejudices, sir."

"What prejudices, sir?" the Judge was heard to shout.

"Toward slavery, Judge," said Mr. Carvel, seeming to recover his gravity.
"You are a broader man than I thought, sir."

An unintelligible gurgle came from the Judge. Then he said.

"Carvel, haven't you and I quarrelled enough on that subject?"

"You didn't happen to attend the nigger auction this morning when you
were at the court?" asked the Colonel, blandly.

"Colonel," said the Judge, "I've warned you a hundred times against the
stuff you lay out on your counter for customers."

"You weren't at the auction, then," continued the Colonel, undisturbed.
"You missed it, sir. You missed seeing this young man you've just
employed buy the prettiest quadroon wench I ever set eyes on."

Now indeed was poor Stephen on his feet. But whether to fly in at the one
entrance or out at the other, he was undecided.

"Colonel," said Mr. Whipple, "is that true?"

"Sir!"
"MR. BRICE!"

It did not seem to Stephen as if he was walking when he went toward the
ground glass door. He opened it. There was Colonel Carvel seated on the
bed, his goatee in his hand. And there was the Judge leaning forward from
his hips, straight as a ramrod. Fire was darting from beneath his bushy
eyebrows. "Mr. Brice," said he, "there is one question I always ask of
those whom I employ. I omitted it in your case because I have known your
father and your grandfather before you. What is your opinion, sir, on the
subject of holding human beings in bondage?"

The answer was immediate,--likewise simple.

"I do not believe in it, Mr. Whipple."

The Judge shot out of his chair like a long jack-in-the box, and towered
to his full height.

"Mr. Brice, did you, or did you not, buy a woman at auction to-day?"

"I did, sir."

Mr. Whipple literally staggered. But Stephen caught a glimpse of the
Colonel's hand slipping from his chin cover his mouth.

"Good God, sir!" cried the Judge, and he sat down heavily. "You say that
you are an Abolitionist?"

"No, sir, I do not say that. But it does not need an Abolitionist to
condemn what I saw this morning."

"Are you a slave-owner, sir?" said Mr. Whipple.

"Yes, sir."

"Then get your coat and hat and leave my office, Mr. Brice."

Stephen's coat was on his arm. He slipped it on, and turned to go. He
was, if the truth were told, more amused than angry. It was Colonel
Carvel's voice that stopped him.

"Hold on, Judge," he drawled, "I reckon you haven't got all the packing
out of that case."

Mr. Whipple locked at him in a sort of stupefaction. Then he glanced at
Stephen.

"Come back here, sir," he cried. "I'll give you hearing. No man shall say
that I am not just."

Stephen looked gratefully at the Colonel.

"I did not expect one, sir," he said..

"And you don't deserve one, sir," cried the Judge.

"I think I do," replied Stephen, quietly.

The Judge suppressed something.

"What did you do with this person?" he demanded

"I took her to Miss Crane's boarding-house," said Stephen.

It was the Colonel's turn to explode. The guffaw which came from hire
drowned every other sound.

"Good God!" said the Judge, helplessly. Again he looked at the Colonel,
and this time something very like mirth shivered his lean frame. "And
what do you intend to do with her?" he asked in strange tones.

"To give her freedom, sir, as soon as I can find somebody to go on her
bond."

Again silence. Mr. Whipple rubbed his nose with more than customary
violence, and looked very hard at Mr. Carvel, whose face was inscrutable.
It was a solemn moment.

"Mr. Brice," said the Judge, at length, "take off your coat, sir I will
go her bond."

It was Stephen's turn to be taken aback. He stood regarding the Judge
curiously, wondering what manner of man he was. He did not know that this
question had puzzled many before him.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

His hand was on the knob of the door, when Mr. Whipple called him back
abruptly. His voice had lost some of its gruffness.

"What were your father's ideas about slavery, Mr. Brice?"

The young man thought a moment, as if seeking to be exact.

"I suppose he would have put slavery among the necessary evils, sir," he
said, at length. "But he never could bear to have the liberator mentioned
in his presence. He was not at all in sympathy with Phillips, or Parker,
or Summer. And such was the general feeling among his friends."

"Then," said the Judge, "contrary to popular opinion in the West and
South, Boston is not all Abolition."

Stephen smiled.

"The conservative classes are not at all Abolitionists, sir."

"The conservative classes!" growled the Judge, "the conservative classes!
I am tired of hearing about the conservative classes. Why not come out
with it, sir, and say the moneyed classes, who would rather see souls
held in bondage than risk their worldly goods in an attempt to liberate
them?"

Stephen flushed. It was not at all clear to him then how he was to get
along with Judge Whipple. But he kept his temper.

"I am sure that you do them an injustice, sir," he said, with more
feeling them he had yet shown. "I am not speaking of the rich alone, and
I think that if you knew Boston you would not say that the conservative
class there is wholly composed of wealthy people. Many of may father's
friends were by no means wealthy. And I know that if he had been poor he
would have held the same views."

Stephen did not mark the quick look of approval which Colonel Carvel gave
him. Judge Whipple merely rubbed his nose.

"Well, sir," he said, "what were his views, then?"

"My father regarded slaves as property, sir. And conservative people"
(Stephen stuck to the word) "respect property the world over. My father's
argument was this: If men are deprived by violence of one kind of
property which they hold under the law, all other kinds of property will
be endangered. The result will be anarchy. Furthermore, he recognized
that the economic conditions in the South make slavery necessary to
prosperity. And he regarded the covenant made between the states of the
two sections as sacred."

There was a brief silence, during which the uncompromising expression of
the Judge did not change.

"And do you, sir?" he demanded.

"I am not sure, sir, after what I saw yesterday. I--I must have time to
see more of it."

"Good Lord," said Colonel Carvel, "if the conservative people of the
North act this way when they see a slave sale, what will the
Abolitionists do? Whipple," he added slowly, but with conviction, "this
means war."

Then the Colonel got to his feet, and bowed to Stephen with ceremony.

"Whatever you believe, sir," he said, "permit me to shake your hand. You
are a brave man, sir. And although my own belief is that the black race
is held in subjection by a divine decree, I can admire what you have
done, Mr. Brice. It was a noble act, sir,--a right noble act. And I have
more respect for the people of Boston, now, sir, than I ever had before,
sir."

Having delivered himself of this somewhat dubious compliment (which he
meant well), the Colonel departed.

Judge Whipple said nothing.




CHAPTER VII

CALLERS

If the Brices had created an excitement upon their arrival, it was as
nothing to the mad delirium which raged at Miss Crane's boarding-house.
during the second afternoon of their stay. Twenty times was Miss Crane on
the point of requesting Mrs. Brice to leave, and twenty times, by the
advice of Mrs. Abner Deed, she desisted. The culmination came when the
news leaked out that Mr. Stephen Brice had bought the young woman in
order to give her freedom. Like those who have done noble acts since the
world began, Stephen that night was both a hero and a fool. The cream
from which heroes is made is very apt to turn.

"Phew!" cried Stephen, when they had reached their room after tea,
"wasn't that meal a fearful experience? Let's find a hovel, mother, and
go and live in it. We can't stand it here any longer."

"Not if you persist in your career of reforming an Institution, my son,"
answered the widow, smiling.

"It was beastly hard luck," said he, "that I should have been shouldered
with that experience the first day. But I have tried to think it over
calmly since, and I can see nothing else to have done." He paused in his
pacing up and down, a smile struggling with his serious look. "It was
quite a hot-headed business for one of the staid Brices, wasn't it?"

"The family has never been called impetuous," replied his mother. "It
must be the Western air."

He began his pacing again. His mother had not said one word about the
money. Neither had he. Once more he stopped before her.

"We are at least a year nearer the poor-house," he said; "you haven't
scolded me for that. I should feel so much better if you would."

"Oh, Stephen, don't say that!" she exclaimed. "God has given me no
greater happiness in this life than the sight of the gratitude of that
poor creature, Nancy. I shall never forget the old woman's joy at the
sight of her daughter. It made a palace out of that dingy furniture shop.
Hand me my handkerchief, dear."

Stephen noticed with a pang that the lace of it was frayed and torn at
the corner.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Mrs. Brice, hastily putting the handkerchief down.

Hester stood on the threshold, and old Nancy beside her.

"Evenin', Mis' Brice. De good Lawd bless you, lady, an' Miste' Brice,"
said the old negress.

"Well, Nancy?"

Nancy pressed into the room. "Mis' Brice!"

"Yes?"

"Ain' you gwineter' low Hester an' me to wuk fo' you?"

"Indeed I should be glad to, Nancy. But we are boarding."

"Yassm, yassm," said Nancy, and relapsed into awkward silence. Then
again, "Mis' Brice!"

"Yes, Nancy?"

"Ef you 'lows us t' come heah an' straighten out you' close, an' mend 'em
--you dunno how happy you mek me an' Hester--des to do dat much, Mis'
Brice."

The note of appeal was irresistible. Mrs. Brice rose and unlocked the
trunks.

"You may unpack them, Nancy," she said.

With what alacrity did the old woman take off her black bonnet and shawl!
"Whaffor you stannin' dere, Hester?" she cried.

"Hester is tired," said Mrs. Brice, compassionately, and tears came to
her eyes again at the thought of what they had both been through that
day.

"Tired!" said Nancy, holding up her hands. "No'm, she ain' tired. She des
kinder stupefied by you' goodness, Mis' Brice."

A scene was saved by the appearance of Miss Crane's hired girl.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cluyme, in the parlor, mum," she said.

If Mr. Jacob Cluyme sniffed a little as he was ushered into Miss Crane's
best parlor, it was perhaps because of she stuffy dampness of that room.
Mr. Cluyme was one of those persons the effusiveness of whose greeting
does not tally with the limpness of their grasp. He was attempting, when
Stephen appeared, to get a little heat into his hands by rubbing them, as
a man who kindles a stick of wood for a visitor. The gentleman had red
chop-whiskers,--to continue to put his worst side foremost, which
demanded a ruddy face. He welcomed Stephen to St. Louis with neighborly
effusion; while his wife, a round little woman, bubbled over to Mrs.
Brice.

"My dear sir," said Mr. Cluyme, "I used often to go to Boston in the
forties. In fact--ahem--I may claim to be a New Englander. Alas, no, I
never met your father. But when I heard of the sad circumstances of his
death, I felt as if I had lost a personal friend. His probity, sir, and
his religious principles were an honor to the Athens of America. I have
listened to my friend, Mr. Atterbury,--Mr. Samuel Atterbury,--eulogize
him by the hour."

Stephen was surprised.

"Why, yes," said he, "Mr. Atterbury was a friend."

"Of course," said Mr. Cluyme, "I knew it. Four years ago, the last
business trip I made to Boston, I met Atterbury on the street. Absence
makes no difference to some men, sir, nor the West, for that matter. They
never change. Atterbury nearly took me in his arms. 'My dear fellow,' he
cried, 'how long are you to be in town?' I was going the next day. 'Sorry
I can't ask you to dinner,' says he, but step into the Tremont House and
have a bite.'--Wasn't that like Atterbury?"

Stephen thought it was. But Mr. Cluyme was evidently expecting no answer.

"Well," said he, "what I was going to say was that we heard you were in
town; 'Friends of Samuel Atterbury, my dear,' I said to my wife. We are
neighbors, Mr. Brace. You must know the girls. You must come to supper.
We live very plainly, sir, very simply. I am afraid that you will miss
the luxury of the East, and some of the refinement, Stephen. I hope I may
call you so, my boy. We have a few cultured citizens, Stephen, but all
are not so. I miss the atmosphere. I seemed to live again when I got to
Boston. But business, sir,--the making of money is a sordid occupation.
You will come to supper?"

"I scarcely think that my mother will go out," said Stephen.

"Oh, be friends! It will cheer her. Not a dinner-party, my boy, only a
plain, comfortable meal, with plenty to eat. Of course she will. Of
course she will. Not a Boston social function, you understand. Boston,
Stephen, I have always looked upon as the centre of the universe. Our
universe, I mean. America for Americans is a motto of mine. Oh, no," he
added quickly, "I don't mean a Know Nothing. Religious freedom, my boy,
is part of our great Constitution. By the way, Stephen--Atterbury always
had such a respect for your father's opinions--"

"My father was not an Abolitionist, sir," said Stephen, smiling.

"Quite right, quite right," said Mr. Cluyme.

"But I am not sure, since I have come here, that I have not some sympathy
and respect for the Abolitionists."

Mr. Cluyme gave a perceptible start. He glanced at the heavy hangings on
the windows and then out of the open door into the hall. For a space his
wife's chatter to Mrs. Brace, on Boston fashions, filled the room.

"My dear Stephen," said the gentleman, dropping his voice, "that is all
very well in Boston. But take a little advice from one who is old enough
to counsel you. You are young, and you must learn to temper yourself to
the tone of the place which you have made your home. St. Louis is full of
excellent people, but they are not precisely Abolitionists. We are
gathering, it is true, a small party who are for gradual emancipation.
But our New England population here is small yet compared to the
Southerners. And they are very violent, sir."

Stephen could not resist saying, "Judge Whipple does not seem to have
tempered himself, sir."

"Silas Whipple is a fanatic, sir," cried Mr. Cluyme.

"His hand is against every man's. He denounces Douglas on the slightest
excuse, and would go to Washington when Congress opens to fight with
Stephens and Toombs and Davis. But what good does it do him? He might
have been in the Senate, or on the Supreme Bench, had he not stirred up
so much hatred. And yet I can't help liking Whipple. Do you know him?"

A resounding ring of the door-bell cut off Stephen's reply, and Mrs.
Cluyme's small talk to Mrs. Brice. In the hall rumbled a familiar voice,
and in stalked none other than Judge Whipple himself. Without noticing
the other occupants of the parlor he strode up to Mrs. Brice, looked at
her for an instant from under the grizzled brows, and held out his large
hand.

"Pray, ma'am," he said, "what have you done with your slave?"

Mrs. Cluyme emitted a muffled shriek, like that of a person frightened in
a dream. Her husband grasped the curved back of his chair. But Stephen
smiled. And his mother smiled a little, too.

"Are you Mr. Whipple?" she asked.

"I am, madam," was the reply.

"My slave is upstairs, I believe, unpacking my trunks," said Mrs. Brice.

Mr. and Mrs. Cluyme exchanged a glance of consternation. Then Mrs. Cluyme
sat down again, rather heavily, as though her legs had refused to hold
her.

"Well, well, ma'am!" The Judge looked again at Mrs. Brice, and a gleam of
mirth lighted the severity of his face. He was plainly pleased with her
--this serene lady in black, whose voice had the sweet ring of women who
are well born and whose manner was so self-contained. To speak truth, the
Judge was prepared to dislike her. He had never laid eyes upon her, and
as he walked hither from his house he seemed to foresee a helpless little
woman who, once he had called, would fling her Boston pride to the winds
and dump her woes upon him. He looked again, and decidedly approved of
Mrs. Brice, and was unaware that his glance embarrassed her.

"Mr. Whipple," she said,--"do you know Mr. and Mrs. Cluyme?"

The Judge looked behind him abruptly, nodded ferociously at Mr. Cluyme,
and took the hand that fluttered out to him from Mrs. Cluyme.

"Know the Judge!" exclaimed that lady, "I reckon we do. And my Belle is
so fond of him. She thinks there is no one equal to Mr. Whipple. Judge,
you must come round to a family supper. Belle will surpass herself."

"Umph!" said the Judge, "I think I like Edith best of your girls, ma'am."

"Edith is a good daughter, if I do say it myself," said Mrs. Cluyme. "I
have tried to do right by my children." She was still greatly flustered,
and curiosity about the matter of the slave burned upon her face. Neither
the Judge nor Mrs. Brice were people one could catechise. Stephen,
scanning the Judge, was wondering how far he regarded the matter as a
joke.

"Well, madam," said Mr. Whipple, as he seated himself on the other end of
the horsehair sofa, "I'll warrant when you left Boston that you did not
expect to own a slave the day after you arrived in St. Louis."

"But I do not own her," said Mrs. Brice. "It is my son who owns her."

This was too much for Mr. Cluyme.

"What!" he cried to Stephen. "You own a slave? You, a mere boy, have
bought a negress?"

"And what is more, sir, I approve of it," the Judge put in, severely. "I
am going to take the young man into my office."

Mr. Cluyme gradually retired into the back of his chair, looking at Mr.
Whipple as though he expected him to touch a match to the window
curtains. But Mr. Cluyme was elastic.

"Pardon me, Judge," said he, "but I trust that I may be allowed to
congratulate you upon the abandonment of principles which I have
considered a clog to your career. They did you honor, sir, but they were
Quixotic. I, sir, am for saving our glorious Union at any cost. And we
have no right to deprive our brethren of their property of their very
means of livelihood."

The Judge grinned diabolically. Mrs. Cluyme was as yet too stunned to
speak. Only Stephen's mother sniffed gunpowder in the air.

"This, Mr. Cluyme," said the Judge, mildly, "is an age of shifting winds.
It was not long ago," he added reflectively, "when you and I met in the
Planters' House, and you declared that every drop of Northern blood
spilled in Kansas was in a holy cause. Do you remember it, sir?"

Mr. Cluyme and Mr. Cluyme's wife alone knew whether he trembled.

"And I repeat that, sir," he cried, with far too much zeal. "I repeat it
here and now. And yet I was for the Omnibus Bill, and I am with Mr.
Douglas in his local sovereignty. I am willing to bury my abhorrence of a
relic of barbarism, for the sake of union and peace."

"Well, sir, I am not," retorted the Judge, like lightning. He rubbed the
red spat on his nose, and pointed a bony finger at Mr. Cluyme. Many a
criminal had grovelled before that finger. "I, too, am for the Union. And
the Union will never be safe until the greatest crime of modern times is
wiped out in blood. Mind what I say, Mr. Cluyme, in blood, sir," he
thundered.

Poor Mrs. Cluyme gasped.

"But the slave, sir? Did I not understand you to approve of Mr. Brice's
ownership?"

"As I never approved of any other. Good night, sir. Good night, madam."
But to Mrs. Brice he crossed over and took her hand. It has been further
claimed that he bowed. This is not certain.

"Good night, madam," he said. "I shall call again to pay my respects when
you are not occupied."




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 2.



CHAPTER VIII

BELLEGARDE

Miss Virginia Carvel came down the steps in her riding-habit. And Ned,
who had been waiting in the street with the horses, obsequiously held his
hand while his young mistress leaped into Vixen's saddle. Leaving the
darkey to follow upon black Calhoun, she cantered off up the street,
greatly to the admiration of the neighbor. They threw open their windows
to wave at her, but Virginia pressed her lips and stared straight ahead.
She was going out to see the Russell girls at their father's country
place on Bellefontaine Road, especially to proclaim her detestation for a
certain young Yankee upstart. She had unbosomed herself to Anne Brinsmade
and timid Eugenie Renault the day before.

It was Indian summer, the gold and purple season of the year. Frost had
come and gone. Wasps were buzzing confusedly about the eaves again,
marvelling at the balmy air, and the two Misses Russell, Puss and Emily,
were seated within the wide doorway at needlework when Virginia
dismounted at the horseblock.

"Oh, Jinny, I'm so glad to see you," said Miss Russell. "Here's Elise
Saint Simon from New Orleans. You must stay all day and to-night."

"I can't, Puss," said Virginia, submitting impatiently to Miss Russell's
warm embrace. She was disappointed at finding the stranger. "I only came
--to say that I am going to have a birthday party in a few weeks. You must
be sure to come, and bring your guest."

Virginia took her bridle from Ned, and Miss Russell's hospitable face
fell.

"You're not going?" she said.

"To Bellegarde for dinner," answered Virginia.

"But it's only ten o'clock," said Puss. "And, Jinny?"

"Yes."

"There's a new young man in town, and they do say his appearance is very
striking--not exactly handsome, you know, but strong-looking."

"He's horrid!" said Virginia. "He's a Yankee."

"How do you know?" demanded Puss and Emily in chorus.

"And he's no gentleman," said Virginia.

"But how do you know, Jinny?"

"He's an upstart."

"Oh. But he belongs to a very good Boston family, they say."

"There are no good Boston families," replied Virginia, with conviction,
as she separated her reins. "He has proved that. Who ever heard of a good
Yankee family?"

"What has he done to you, Virginia?" asked Puss, who had brains.

Virginia glanced at the guest. But her grievance was too hot within her
for suppression.

Do you remember Mr. Benbow's Hester, girls? The one I always said I
wanted. She was sold at auction yesterday. Pa and I were passing the
Court House, with Clarence, when she was put up for sale. We crossed the
street to see what was going on, and there was your strong-looking Yankee
standing at the edge of the crowd. I am quite sure that he saw me as
plainly as I see you, Puss Russell."

"How could he help it?" said Puss, slyly.

Virginia took no notice of the remark.

"He heard me ask Pa to buy her. He heard Clarence say that he would bid
her in for me. I know he did. And yet he goes in and outbids Clarence,
and buys her himself. Do you think any gentleman would do that, Puss
Russell?"

"He bought her himself!" cried the astonished Miss Russell. "Why I
thought that all Bostonians were Abolitionists."

"Then he set her free," said Miss Carvel, contemptuously Judge Whipple
went on her bond to-day."

"Oh, I'm just crazy to see him now," said Miss Russell.

"Ask him to your party, Virginia," she added mischievously.

"Do you think I would have him in my house?" cried Virginia.

Miss Russell was likewise courageous--"I don't see why not. You have
Judge Whipple every Sunday dinner, and he's an Abolitionist."

Virginia drew herself up.

"Judge Whipple has never insulted me," she said, with dignity.

Puss gave way to laughter. Whereupon, despite her protests and prayers
for forgiveness, Virginia took to her mare again and galloped off. They
saw her turn northward on the Bellefontaine Road.

Presently the woodland hid from her sight the noble river shining far
below, and Virginia pulled Vixen between the gateposts which marked the
entrance to her aunt's place, Bellegarde. Half a mile through the cool
forest, the black dirt of the driveway flying from Vixen's hoofs, and
there was the Colfax house on the edge of the, gentle slope; and beyond
it the orchard, and the blue grapes withering on the vines,--and beyond
that fields and fields of yellow stubble. The silver smoke of a steamboat
hung in wisps above the water. A young negro was busily washing the broad
veranda, but he stopped and straightened at sight of the young
horsewoman.

"Sambo, where's your mistress?"

"Clar t' goodness, Miss Jinny, she was heah leetle while ago."

"Yo' git atter Miss Lilly, yo' good-fo'-nuthin' niggah," said Ned,
warmly. "Ain't yo' be'n raised better'n to stan' theh wif yo'mouf open?"

Sambo was taking the hint, when Miss Virginia called him back.

"Where's Mr. Clarence?

"Young Masr? I'll fotch him, Miss Jinny. He jes come home f'um seein'
that thar trottin' hose he's gwine to race nex' week."

Ned, who had tied Calhoun and was holding his mistress's bridle, sniffed.
He had been Colonel Carvel's jockey in his younger days.

"Shucks!" he said contemptuously. "I hoped to die befo' the day a
gemman'd own er trottah, Jinny. On'y runnin' hosses is fit fo' gemmen."

"Ned," said Virginia, "I shall be eighteen in two weeks and a young lady.
On that day you must call me Miss Jinny."

Ned's face showed both astonishment and inquiry.

"Jinny, ain't I nussed you always? Ain't I come upstairs to quiet you
when yo' mammy ain't had no power ovah yo'? Ain't I cooked fo' yo', and
ain't I followed you everywheres since I quit ridin' yo' pa's bosses to
vict'ry? Ain't I one of de fambly? An' yit yo' ax me to call yo' Miss
Jinny?"

"Then you've had privileges enough," Virginia answered. "One week from
to-morrow you are to say 'Miss Jinny.'"

"I'se tell you what, Jinny," he answered mischievously, with an emphasis
on the word, "I'se call you Miss Jinny ef you'll call me Mistah Johnson.
Mistah Johnson. You aint gwinter forget? Mistah Johnson."

"I'll remember," she said. "Ned," she demanded suddenly, "would you like
to be free?"

The negro started.

"Why you ax me dat, Jinny?"

"Mr. Benbow's Hester is free," she said.

"Who done freed her?"

Miss Virginia flushed. "A detestable young Yankee, who has come out here
to meddle with what doesn't concern him. I wanted Hester, Ned. And you
should have married her, if you behaved yourself."

Ned laughed uneasily.

"I reckon I'se too ol' fo' Heste'." And added with privileged impudence,
"There ain't no cause why I can't marry her now."

Virginia suddenly leaped to the ground without his assistance.

"That's enough, Ned," she said, and started toward the house.

"Jinny! Miss Jinny!" The call was plaintive.

"Well, what?"

"Miss Jinny, I seed that than young gemman. Lan' sakes, he ain' look like
er Yankee."

"Ned," said Virginia, sternly, "do you want to go back to cooking?"

He quailed. "Oh, no'm--Lan' sakes, no'm. I didn't mean nuthin'."

She turned, frowned, and bit her lip. Around the corner of the veranda
she ran into her cousin.  He, too, was booted and spurred. He reached
out, boyishly, to catch her in his arms. But she drew back from his
grasp.

"Why, Jinny," he cried, "what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Max." She often called him so, his middle name being Maxwell.
"But you have no right to do that."

"To do what?" said Clarence, making a face.

"You know," answered Virginia, curtly. "Where's Aunt Lillian?"

"Why haven't I the right?" he asked, ignoring the inquiry.

"Because you have not, unless I choose. And I don't choose."

"Are you angry with me still? It wasn't my fault. Uncle Comyn made me
come away. You should have had the girl, Jinny, if it took my fortune."

"You have been drinking this morning, Max," said Virginia.

"Only a julep or so," he replied apologetically. "I rode over to the race
track to see the new trotter. I've called him Halcyon, Jinny," he
continued, with enthusiasm. "And he'll win the handicap sure."

She sat down on the veranda steps, with her knees crossed and her chin
resting on her hands. The air was heavy with the perfume of the grapes
and the smell of late flowers from the sunken garden near by. A blue haze
hung over the Illinois shore.

"Max, you promised me you wouldn't drink so much."

"And I haven't been, Jinny, 'pon my word," he replied. "But I met old
Sparks at the Tavern, and he started to talk about the horses, and--and
he insisted."

"And you hadn't the strength of character," she said, scornfully, "to
refuse."

"Pshaw, Jinny, a gentleman must be a gentleman. I'm no Yankee."

For a space Virginia answered nothing. Then she said, without changing
her position:

"If you were, you might be worth something."

"Virginia!"

She did not reply, but sat gazing toward the water. He began to pace the
veranda, fiercely.

"Look here, Jinny," he cried, pausing in front of her. "There are some
things you can't say to me, even in jest."

Virginia rose, flicked her riding-whip, and started down the steps.

"Don't be a fool, Max," she said.

He followed her, bewildered. She skirted the garden, passed the orchard,
and finally reached a summer house perched on a knoll at the edge of the
wood. Then she seated herself on a bench, silently. He took a place on
the opposite side, with his feet stretched out, dejectedly.

"I'm tired trying to please you," he said. "I have been a fool. You don't
care that for me. It was all right when I was younger, when there was no
one else to take you riding, and jump off the barn for your amusement,
Miss. Now you have Tom Catherwood and Jack Brinsmade and the Russell boys
running after you, it's different. I reckon I'll go to Kansas. There are
Yankees to shoot in Kansas."

He did not see her smile as he sat staring at his feet.

"Max," said she, all at once, "why don't you settle down to something?
Why don't you work?"

Young Mr. Colfax's arm swept around in a circle.

There are twelve hundred acres to look after here, and a few niggers.
That's enough for a gentleman."

"Pooh!" exclaimed his cousin, "this isn't a cotton plantation. Aunt
Lillian doesn't farm for money. If she did, you would have to check your
extravagances mighty quick, sir."

"I look after Pompey's reports, I do as much work as my ancestors,"
answered Clarence, hotly.

"Ah, that is the trouble," said Virginia.

"What do you mean?" her cousin demanded.

"We have been gentlemen too long," said Virginia.

The boy straightened up and rose. The pride and wilfulness of generations
was indeed in his handsome face. And something else went with it. Around
the mouth a grave tinge of indulgence.

"What has your life been?" she went on, speaking rapidly. "A mixture of
gamecocks and ponies and race horses and billiards, and idleness at the
Virginia Springs, and fighting with other boys. What do you know? You
wouldn't go to college. You wouldn't study law. You can't write a decent
letter. You don't know anything about the history of your country. What
can you do--?"

"I can ride and fight," he said. "I can go to New Orleans to-morrow to
join Walker's Nicaragua expedition. We've got to beat the Yankees,
--they'll have Kansas away from us before we know it."

Virginia's eye flashed appreciation.

"Do you remember, Jinny," he cried, "one day long ago when those Dutch
ruffians were teasing you and Anne on the road, and Bert Russell and Jack
and I came along? We whipped 'em, Jinny. And my eye was closed. And you
were bathing it here, and one of my buttons was gone. And you counted the
rest."

"Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief,"
she recited, laughing. She crossed over and sat beside him, and her tone
changed. "Max, can't you understand? It isn't that. Max, if you would
only work at something. That is why the Yankees beat us. If you would
learn to weld iron, or to build bridges, or railroads. Or if you would
learn business, and go to work in Pa's store."

"You do not care for me as I am?"

"I knew that you did not understand," she answered passionately. "It is
because I care for you that I wish to make you great. You care too much
for a good time, for horses, Max. You love the South, but you think too
little how she is to be saved. If war is to come, we shall want men like
that Captain Robert Lee who was here. A man who can turn the forces of
the earth to his own purposes."

For a moment Clarence was moodily silent.

"I have always intended to go into politics, after Pa's example," he said
at length.

"Then--" began Virginia, and paused.

"Then--?" he said.

"Then--you must study law."

He gave her the one keen look. And she met it, with her lips tightly
pressed together. Then he smiled.

"Virginia, you will never forgive that Yankee, Brice."

"I shall never forgive any Yankee," she retorted quickly. "But we are not
talking about him. I am thinking of the South, and of you."

He stooped toward her face, but she avoided him and went back to the
bench.

"Why not?" he said.

"You must prove first that you are a man," she said.

For years he remembered the scene. The vineyard, the yellow stubble; and
the river rushing on and on with tranquil power, and the slow panting of
the steamboat. A doe ran out of the forest, and paused, her head raised,
not twenty feet away.

"And then you will marry me, Jinny?" he asked finally.

"Before you may hope to control another, we shall see whether you can
control yourself, sir."

"But it has all been arranged," he exclaimed, "since we played here
together years ago!"

"No one shall arrange that for me," replied Virginia promptly. "And I
should think that you would wish to have some of the credit for
yourself."

"Jinny!"

Again she avoided him by leaping the low railing. The doe fled into the
forest, whistling fearfully. Virginia waved her hand to him and started
toward the house. At the corner of the porch she ran into her aunt Mrs.
Colfax was a beautiful woman. Beautiful when Addison Colfax married her
in Kentucky at nineteen, beautiful still at three and forty. This, I am
aware, is a bald statement. "Prove it," you say. "We do not believe it.
It was told you by some old beau who lives upon the memory of the past."

Ladies, a score of different daguerrotypes of Lillian Colfax are in
existence. And whatever may be said of portraits, daguerrotypes do not
flatter. All the town admitted that she was beautiful. All the town knew
that she was the daughter of old Judge Colfax's overseer at Halcyondale.
If she had not been beautiful, Addison Colfax would not have run away
with her. That is certain. He left her a rich widow at five and twenty,
mistress of the country place he had bought on the Bellefontaine Road,
near St. Louis. And when Mrs. Colfax was not dancing off to the Virginia
watering-places, Bellegarde was a gay house.

"Jinny," exclaimed her aunt, "how you scared me! What on earth is the
matter?"

"Nothing," said Virginia

"She refused to kiss me," put in Clarence, half in play, half in
resentment.

Mrs. Colfax laughed musically. She put one of her white hands on each of
her niece's cheeks, kissed her, and then gazed into her face until
Virginia reddened.

"Law, Jinny, you're quite pretty," said her aunt

"I hadn't realized it--but you must take care of your complexion. You're
horribly sunburned, and you let your hair blow all over your face. It's
barbarous not to wear a mask when you ride. Your Pa doesn't look after
you properly. I would ask you to stay to the dance to-night if your skin
were only white, instead of red. You're old enough to know better,
Virginia. Mr. Vance was to have driven out for dinner. Have you seen him,
Clarence?"

"No, mother."

"He is so amusing," Mrs. Colfax continued, "and he generally brings
candy. I shall die of the blues before supper." She sat down with a grand
air at the head of the table, while Alfred took the lid from the silver
soup-tureen in front of her. "Jinny, can't you say something bright? Do I
have to listen to Clarence's horse talk for another hour? Tell me some
gossip. Will you have some gumbo soup?"

"Why do you listen to Clarence's horse talk?" said Virginia. "Why don't
you make him go to work!"

"Mercy!" said Mrs. Colfax, laughing, "what could he do?"

"That's just it," said Virginia. "He hasn't a serious interest in life."

Clarence looked sullen. And his mother, as usual, took his side.

"What put that into your head, Jinny," she said. "He has the place here
to look after, a very gentlemanly occupation. That's what they do in
Virginia."

"Yes," said Virginia, scornfully, "we're all gentlemen in the South. What
do we know about business and developing the resources of the country?
Not THAT."

"You make my head ache, my dear," was her aunt's reply. "Where did you
get all this?"

"You ask me because I am a girl," said Virginia. "You believe that women
were made to look at, and to play with,--not to think. But if we are
going to get ahead of the Yankees, we shall have to think. It was all
very well to be a gentleman in the days of my great-grandfather. But now
we have railroads and steamboats. And who builds them? The Yankees. We of
the South think of our ancestors, and drift deeper and deeper into debt.
We know how to fight, and we know how to command. But we have been ruined
by--" here she glanced at the retreating form of Alfred, and lowered her
voice, "by niggers."

Mrs. Colfax's gaze rested languidly on her niece's faces which glowed
with indignation.

"You get this terrible habit of argument from Comyn," she said. "He ought
to send you to boarding-school. How mean of Mr. Vance not to come! You've
been talking with that old reprobate Whipple. Why does Comyn put up with
him?"

"He isn't an old reprobate," said Virginia, warmly.

"You really ought to go to school," said her aunt. "Don't be eccentric.
It isn't fashionable. I suppose you wish Clarence to go into a factory."

"If I were a man," said Virginia, "and going into a factory would teach
me how to make a locomotive or a cotton press, or to build a bridge, I
should go into a factory. We shall never beat the Yankees until we meet
them on their own ground."

"There is Mr. Vance now," said Mrs. Colfax, and added fervently, "Thank
the Lord!"




CHAPTER IX

A QUIET SUNDAY IN LOCUST STREET

IF the truth were known where Virginia got the opinions which she
expressed so freely to her aunt and cousin, it was from Colonel Carvel
himself. The Colonel would rather have denounced the Dred Scott decision
than admit to Judge Whipple that one of the greatest weaknesses of the
South lay in her lack of mechanical and manufacturing ability. But he had
confessed as much in private to Captain Elijah Brent. The Colonel would
often sit for an hour or more, after supper, with his feet tucked up on
the mantel and his hat on the back of his head, buried in thought. Then
he would saunter slowly down to the Planters' House bar, which served the
purposes of a club in those days, in search of an argument with other
prominent citizens. The Colonel had his own particular chair in his own
particular corner, which was always vacated when he came in at the door.
And then he always had three fingers of the best Bourbon whiskey, no more
and no less, every evening.

He never met his bosom friend and pet antagonist at the Planters' House
bar. Judge Whipple, indeed, took his meals upstairs, but he never
descended,--it was generally supposed because of the strong slavery
atmosphere there. However, the Judge went periodically to his friend's
for a quiet Sunday dinner (so called in derision by St. Louisans), on
which occasions Virginia sat at the end of the table and endeavored to
pour water on the flames when they flared up too fiercely.

The Sunday following her ride to Bellegarde was the Judge's Sunday,
Certain tastes which she had inherited had hitherto provided her with
pleasurable sensations while these battles were in progress. More than
once had she scored a fair hit on the Judge for her father,--to the
mutual delight of both gentlemen. But to-day she dreaded being present at
the argument. Just why she dreaded it is a matter of feminine psychology
best left to the reader for solution.

The argument began, as usual, with the tearing apart limb by limb of the
unfortunate Franklin Pierce, by Judge Whipple.

"What a miserable exhibition in the eyes of the world," said the Judge.
"Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire" (he pronounced this name with infinite
scorn) "managed by Jefferson Davis of Mississippi!"

"And he was well managed, sir," said the Colonel.

"What a pliant tool of your Southern slaveholders! I hear that you are to
give him a plantation as a reward."

"No such thing, sir."

"He deserves it," continued the Judge, with conviction. "See the
magnificent forts he permitted Davis to build up in the South, the
arsenals he let him stock. The country does not realize this. But the day
will, come when they will execrate Pierce before Benedict Arnold, sir.
And look at the infamous Kansas-Nebraska act! That is the greatest crime,
and Douglas and Pierce the greatest criminals, of the century."

"Do have some more of that fried chicken, Judge," said Virginia.

Mr. Whipple helped himself fiercely, and the Colonel smiled.

"You should be satisfied now," said he. "Another Northern man is in the
White House."

"Buchanan!" roared the Judge, with his mouth full.

"Another traitor, sir. Another traitor worse than the first. He swallows
the Dred Scott decision, and smirks. What a blot on the history of this
Republic! O Lord!" cried Mr. Whipple, "what are we coming to? A Northern
man, he could gag and bind Kansas and force her into slavery against the
will of her citizens. He packs his Cabinet to support the ruffians you
send over the borders. The very governors he ships out there, his
henchmen, have their stomachs turned. Look at Walker, whom they are
plotting against in Washington. He can't stand the smell of this
Lecompton Constitution Buchanan is trying to jam down their throats.
Jefferson Davis would have troops there, to be sure that it goes through,
if he had his way. Can't you see how one sin leads to another, Carvel?
How slavery is rapidly demoralizing a free people?"

"It is because you won't let it alone where it belongs, sir," retorted
the Colonel. It was seldom that he showed any heat in his replies. He
talked slowly, and he had a way of stretching forth his hand to prevent
the more eager Judge from interrupting him.

"The welfare of the whole South, as matters now stand, sir, depends upon
slavery. Our plantations could not exist a day without slave labor. If
you abolished that institution, Judge Whipple, you would ruin millions of
your fellow-countrymen,--you would reduce sovereign states to a situation
of disgraceful dependence. And all, sir," now he raised his voice lest
the Judge break in, "all, sir, for the sake of a low breed that ain't fit
for freedom. You and I, who have the Magna Charta and the Declaration of
Independence behind us, who are descended from a race that has done
nothing but rule for ten centuries and more, may well establish a
Republic where the basis of stability is the self-control of the
individual--as long as men such as you and I form its citizens. Look at
the South Americans. How do Republics go there? And the minute you and I
let in niggers, who haven't any more self-control than dogs, on an equal
basis, with as much of a vote as you have,--niggers, sir, that have lived
like wild beasts in the depths of the jungle since the days of Ham,
--what's going to become of our Republic?"

"Education," cried the Judge.

But the word was snatched out of his mouth.

"Education isn't a matter of one generation. No, sir, nor two, nor three,
nor four. But of centuries."

"Sir," said the Judge, "I can point out negroes of intelligence and
learning."

"And I reckon you could teach some monkeys to talk English, and recite
the catechism, and sing emotional hymns, if you brought over a couple of
million from Africa," answered the Colonel, dryly, as he rose to put on
his hat and light a cigar.

It was his custom to offer a cigar to the Judge, who invariably refused,
and rubbed his nose with scornful violence.

Virginia, on the verge of leaving, stayed on, fascinated by the turn the
argument had taken.

"Your prejudice is hide-bound, sir," said Mr. Whipple.

"No, Whipple," said the Colonel, "when God washed off this wicked earth,
and started new, He saw fit to put the sons of Ham in subjection. They're
slaves of each other in Africa, and I reckon they're treated no better
than they are here. Abuses can't be helped in any system, sir, though we
are bettering them. Were the poor in London in the days of the Edwards as
well off as our niggers are to-day?"

The Judge snorted.

"A divine institution!" he shouted. "A black curse! Because the world has
been a wicked place of oppression since Noah's day, is that any reason
why it should so continue until the day of Judgment?"

The Colonel smiled, which was a sign that he was pleased with his
argument.

"Now, see here, Whipple," said he. "If we had any guarantee that you
would let us alone where we are, to manage our slaves and to cultivate
our plantations, there wouldn't be any trouble. But the country keeps on
growing and growing, and you're not content with half. You want
everything,--all the new states must abolish slavery. And after a while
you will overwhelm us, and ruin us, and make us paupers. Do you wonder
that we contend for our rights, tooth and nail? They are our rights."

"If it had not been for Virginia and Maryland and the South, this nation
would not be in existence."

The Colonel laughed.

"First rate, Jinny," he cried. "That's so."

But the Judge was in a revery. He probably had not heard her.

"The nation is going to the dogs," he said, mumbling rather to himself
than to the others. "We shall never prosper until the curse is shaken
off, or wiped out in blood. It clogs our progress. Our merchant marine,
of which we were so proud, has been annihilated by these continued
disturbances. But, sir," he cried, hammering his fist upon the table
until the glasses rang, "the party that is to save us was born at
Pittsburgh last year on Washington's birthday. The Republican Party,
sir."

"Shucks!" exclaimed Mr. Carvel, with amusement, "The Black Republican
Party, made up of old fools and young Anarchists, of Dutchmen and
nigger-worshippers. Why, Whipple, that party's a joke. Where's your
leader?"

"In Illinois," was the quick response.

"What's his name?"

"Abraham Lincoln, sir," thundered Mr. Whipple. "And to my way of thinking
he has uttered a more significant phrase on the situation than any of
your Washington statesmen. 'This government,' said he to a friend of
mine, 'cannot exist half slave and half free.'"

So impressively did Mr. Whipple pronounce these words that Mr. Carvel
stirred uneasily, and in spite of himself, as though he were listening to
an oracle. He recovered instantly.

"He's a demagogue, seeking for striking phrases, sir. You're too
intelligent a man to be taken in by such as he."

"I tell you he is not, sir."

"I know him, sir," cried the Colonel, taking down his feet. "He's an
obscure lawyer. Poor white trash! Torn down poor! My friend Mr.
Richardson of Springfield tells me he is low down. He was born in a log
cabin, and spends most of his time in a drug-store telling stories that
you would not listen to, Judge Whipple."

"I would listen to anything he said," replied the Judge. "Poor white
trash, sir! The greatest men rise from the people. A demagogue!" Mr.
Whipple fairly shook with rage. "The nation doesn't know him yet. But
mark my words, the day will come when it will. He was ballotted for
Vice-President in the Philadelphia convention last year. Nobody paid any
attention to that. If the convention had heard him speak at Bloomington,
he would have been nominated instead of Fremont. If the nation could have
heard him, he would be President to-day instead of that miserable
Buchanan. I happened to be at Bloomington. And while the idiots on the
platform were drivelling, the people kept calling for Lincoln. I had
never heard of him then. I've never forgot him since. He came ambling out
of the back of the hall, a lanky, gawky looking man, ridiculously ugly,
sir. But the moment he opened his mouth he had us spellbound. The
language which your low-down lawyer used was that of a God-sent prophet,
sir. He had those Illinois bumpkins all worked up,--the women crying,
and some of the men, too. And mad! Good Lord, they were mad--'We will say
to the Southern disunionists,' he cried,--'we will say to the Southern
disunionists, we won't go out of the Union, and you shan't.'"

There was a silence when the Judge finished. But presently Mr. Carvel
took a match. And he stood over the Judge in his favorite attitude,
--with his feet apart,--as he lighted another cigar.

"I reckon we're going to have war, Silas," said he, slowly; "but don't
you think that your Mr. Lincoln scares me into that belief. I don't count
his bluster worth a cent. No sirree! It's this youngster who comes out
here from Boston and buys a nigger with all the money he's got in the
world. And if he's an impetuous young fool; I'm no judge of men."

"Appleton Brice wasn't precisely impetuous," remarked Mr. Whipple. And he
smiled a little bitterly, as though the word had stirred a memory.

"I like that young fellow," Mr. Carvel continued. "It seems to be a kind
of fatality with me to get along with Yankees. I reckon there's a screw
loose somewhere, but Brice acted the man all the way through. He goa a
fall out of you, Silas, in your room, after the show. Where are you
going, Jinny?"

Virginia had risen, and she was standing very erects with a flush on her
face, waiting for her father to finish.

"To see Anne Brinsmade," she said. "Good-by, Uncle Silas."

She had called him so from childhood. Hers was the one voice that seemed
to soften him--it never failed. He turned to her now with a movement that
was almost gentle. "Virginia, I should like you to know my young Yankee,"
said he.

"Thank you, Uncle Silas," said the girl, with dignity, "but I scarcely
think that he would care to know me. He feels so strongly."

"He feels no stronger than I do," replied the Judge.

"You have gotten used to me in eighteen years, and besides," she flashed,
"you never spent all the money you had in the world for a principle."

Mr. Whipple smiled as she went out of the door.

"I have spent pretty near all," he said. But more to himself than to the
Colonel.

That evening, some young people came in to tea, two of the four big
Catherwood boys, Anne Brinsmade and her brother Jack, Puss Russell and
Bert, and Eugenie Renault. But Virginia lost her temper. In an evil
moment Puss Russell started the subject of the young Yankee who had
deprived her of Hester. Puss was ably seconded by Jack Brinsmade, whose
reputation as a tormentor extended far back into his boyhood. In vain;
did Anne, the peacemaker, try to quench him, while the big Catherwoods
and Bert Russell laughed incessantly. No wonder that Virginia was angry.
She would not speak to Puss as that young lady bade her good night. And
the Colonel, coming home from an evening with Mr, Brinsmade, found his
daughter in an armchair, staring into the sitting-room fire. There was no
other light in the room Her chin was in her hand, and her lips were
pursed.

"Heigho!" said the Colonel, "what's the trouble now?"

"Nothing," said Virginia.

"Come," he insisted, "what have they been doing to my girl?"

"Pa!"

"Yes, honey."

"I don't want to go to balls all my life. I want to go to
boarding-school, and learn something. Emily is going to Monticello after
Christmas. Pa, will you let me?"

Mr. Carvel winced. He put an arm around her. He, thought of his lonely
widowerhood, of her whose place Virginia had taken.

"And what shall I do?" he said, trying to smile.

"It will only be for a little while. And Monticello isn't very far, Pa."

"Well, well, there is plenty of time to think it over between now and
January," he said. "And now I have a little favor to ask of you, honey."

"Yes?" she said.

The Colonel took the other armchair, stretched his feet toward the blaze,
and stroked his goatee. He glanced covertly at his daughter's profile.
Twice he cleared hip throat.

"Jinny?"

"Yes, Pa" (without turning her head).

"Jinny, I was going to speak of this young. Brice. He's a stranger here,
and he comes of a good family, and--and I like him."

"And you wish me to invite him to my party," finished Virginia.

The Colonel started. "I reckon you guessed it," he said.

Virginia remained immovable. She did not answer at once. Then she said:

"Do you think, in bidding against me, that he behaved, like a gentleman?"

The Colonel blundered.

"Lord, Virginia," he said, "I thought you told the judge this afternoon
teat it was done out of principle."

Virginia ignored this. But she bit her lip

"He is like all Yankees, without one bit of consideration for a woman. He
knew I wanted Hester."

"What makes you imagine that he thought of you at all, my dear?" asked
her father, mildly, "He does not know you."

This time the Colonel scored certainly. The firelight saved Virginia.

"He overheard our conversation," she answered.

"I reckon that he wasn't worrying much about us. And besides, he was
trying to save Hester from Jennings."

"I thought that you said that it was to be my party, Pa," said Virginia,
irrelevantly.

The Colonel looked thoughtful, then he began to laugh.

"Haven't we enough Black Republican friends?" she asked.

"So you won't have him?" said the Colonel.

"I didn't say that I wouldn't have him," she answered.

The Colonel rose, and brushed the ashes from his goat.

"By Gum!" he said. "Women beat me."




CHAPTER X

THE LITTLE HOUSE

When Stephen attempted to thank Judge Whipple for going on Hester's bond,
he merely said, "Tut, tut."

The Judge rose at six, so his man Shadrach told Stephen. He had his
breakfast at the Planters' House at seven, read the Missouri Democrat,
and returned by eight. Sometimes he would say good morning to Stephen and
Richter, and sometimes he would not. Mr. Whipple was out a great part of
the day, and he had many visitors. He was a very busy man. Like a great
specialist (which he was), he would see only one person at a time. And
Stephen soon discovered that his employer did not discriminate between
age or sex, or importance, or condition of servitude. In short, Stephen's
opinion of Judge Whipple altered very materially before the end of that
first week. He saw poor women and disconsolate men go into the private
room ahead of rich citizens, who seemed content to wait their turn on the
hard wooden chairs against the wall of the main office. There was one
incident in particular, when a well-dressed gentleman of middle age paced
impatiently for two mortal hours after Shadrach had taken his card into
the sanctum. When at last he had been admitted, Mr. Richter whispered to
Stephen his name. It was that of a big railroad man from the East. The
transom let out the true state of affairs.

"See here, Callender," the Judge was heard to say, "you fellows don't
like me, and you wouldn't come here unless you had to. But when your road
gets in a tight place, you turn up and expect to walk in ahead of my
friends. No, sir, if you want to see me, you've got to wait."

Mr. Callender made some inaudible reply, "Money!" roared the Judge, "take
your money to Stetson, and see if you win your case."

Mr. Richter smiled at Stephen, as if in sheer happiness at this
vindication of an employer who had never seemed to him to need a defence.

Stephen was greatly drawn toward this young German with the great scar on
his pleasant face. And he was itching to know about that scar. Every day,
after coming in from dinner, Richter lighted a great brown meerschaum,
and read the St. Louis 'Anzeiger' and the 'Westliche Post'. Often he sang
quietly to himself:

          "Deutschlands Sohne
          Laut ertone
          Euer Vaterlandgesang.
          Vaterland! Du Land des Ruhmes,
          Weih' zu deines Heiligthumes
          Hutern, uns and unser Schwert."

There were other songs, too. And some wonderful quality in the German's
voice gave you a thrill when you heard them, albeit you could not
understand the words. Richter never guessed how Stephen, with his eyes on
his book, used to drink in those airs. And presently he found out that
they were inspired.

The day that the railroad man called, and after he and the Judge had gone
out together, the ice was broken.

"You Americans from the North are a queer people, Mr. Brice," remarked
Mr. Richter, as he put on his coat. "You do not show your feelings. You
are ashamed. The Judge, at first I could not comprehend him--he would
scold and scold. But one day I see that his heart is warm, and since then
I love him. Have you ever eaten a German dinner, Mr. Brice? No? Then you
must come with me, now."

It was raining, the streets ankle-deep in mud, and the beer-garden by the
side of the restaurant to which they went was dreary and bedraggled. But
inside the place was warm and cheerful. Inside, to all intents and
purposes, it was Germany. A most genial host crossed the room to give Mr.
Richter a welcome that any man might have envied. He was introduced to
Stephen.

"We were all 'Streber' together, in Germany," said Richter.

"You were all what?" asked Stephen, interested.

"Strivers, you might call it in English. In the Vaterland those who seek
for higher and better things--for liberty, and to be rid of oppression
--are so called. That is why we fought in '48 and lost. And that is why we
came here, to the Republic. Ach! I fear I will never be the great lawyer
--but the striver, yes, always. We must fight once more to be rid of the
black monster that sucks the blood of freedom--vampire. Is it not so in
English?"

Stephen was astonished at this outburst.

"You think it will come to war?"

"I fear,--yes, I fear," said the German, shaking his head. "We fear. We
are already preparing."

"Preparing? You would fight, Richter? You, a foreigner?"

"A foreigner!" cried Richter, with a flash of anger in his blue eyes that
died as suddenly as it came,--died into reproach. "Call me not a
foreigner--we Germans will show whether or not we are foreigners when the
time is ripe. This great country belongs to all the oppressed. Your
ancestors founded it, and fought for it, that the descendants of mine
might find a haven from tyranny. My friend, one-half of this city is
German, and it is they who will save it if danger arises. You must come
with me one night to South St. Louis, that you may know us. Then you will
perhaps understand, Stephen. You will not think of us as foreign swill,
but as patriots who love our new Vaterland even as you love it. You must
come to our Turner Halls, where we are drilling against the time when the
Union shall have need of us."

"You are drilling now?" exclaimed Stephen, in still greater astonishment.
The German's eloquence had made him tingle, even as had the songs.

"Prosit deine Blume!" answered Richter, smiling and holding up his glass
of beer. "You will come to a 'commerce', and see.

"This is not our blessed Lichtenhainer, that we drink at Jena. One may
have a pint of Lichtenhainer for less than a groschen at Jena. Aber," he
added as he rose, with a laugh that showed his strong teeth, "we
Americans are rich."

As Stephen's admiration for his employer grew, his fear of him waxed
greater likewise. The Judge's methods of teaching law were certainly not
Harvard's methods. For a fortnight he paid as little attention to the
young man as he did to the messengers who came with notes and cooled
their heels in the outer office until it became the Judge's pleasure to
answer them. This was a trifle discouraging to Stephen. But he stuck to
his Chitty and his Greenleaf and his Kent. It was Richter who advised him
to buy Whittlesey's "Missouri Form Book," and warned him of Mr. Whipple's
hatred for the new code. Well that he did! There came a fearful hour of
judgment. With the swiftness of a hawk Mr. Whipple descended out of a
clear sky, and instantly the law terms began to rattle in Stephen's head
like dried peas in a can. It was the Old Style of Pleading this time,
without a knowledge of which the Judge declared with vehemence that a
lawyer was not fit to put pen to legal cap.

"Now, sir, the pleadings?" he cried.

"First," said Stephen, "was the Declaration. The answer to that was the
Plea. The answer to that was the Replication. Then came the Rejoinder,
then the Surrejoinder, then the Rebutter, then the Surrebutter. But they
rarely got that far," he added unwisely.

"A good principle in Law, sir," said the Judge, "is not to volunteer
information."

Stephen was somewhat cast down when he reached home that Saturday
evening. He had come out of his examination with feathers drooping. He
had been given no more briefs to copy, nor had Mr. Whipple vouchsafed
even to send him on an errand. He had not learned how common a thing it
is with young lawyers to feel that they are of no use in the world.
Besides, the rain continued. This was the fifth day.

His mother, knitting before the fire in her own room, greeted him with
her usual quiet smile of welcome. He tried to give her a humorous account
of his catechism of the morning, but failed.

"I am quite sure that he doesn't like me," said Stephen.

His mother continued to smile.

"If he did, he would not show it," she answered.

"I can feel it," said Stephen, dejectedly.

"The Judge was here this afternoon," said his mother.

"What?" cried Stephen. "Again this week? They say that he never calls in
the daytime, and rarely in the evening. What did he say?"

"He said that some of this Boston nonsense must be gotten out of you,"
answered Mrs. Brice, laughing. "He said that you were too stiff. That you
needed to rub against the plain men who were building up the West. Who
were making a vast world-power of the original little confederation of
thirteen states. And Stephen," she added more earnestly, "I am not sure
but what he is right."

Then Stephen laughed. And for a long time he sat staring into the fire.

"What else did he say?" he asked, after a while.

"He told me about a little house which we might rent very cheaply. Too
cheaply, it seems. The house is on this street, next door to Mr.
Brinsmade, to whom it belongs. And Mr. Whipple brought the key, that we
might inspect it to-morrow."

"But a servant," objected Stephen, "I suppose that we must have a
servant."

His mother's voice fell.

"That poor girl whom you freed is here to see me every day. Old Nancy
does washing. But Hester has no work and she is a burden to Judge
Whipple. Oh, no," she continued, in response to Stephen's glance, "the
Judge did not mention that, but I think he had it in mind that Nester
might come. And I am sure that she would."

Sunday dawned brightly. After church Mrs. Brice and Stephen walked down
Olive Street, and stood looking at a tiny house wedged in between, two
large ones with scrolled fronts. Sad memories of Beacon Street filled
them both as they gazed, but they said nothing of this to each other. As
Stephen put his hand on the latch of the little iron gate, a gentleman
came out of the larger house next door. He was past the middle age,
somewhat scrupulously dressed in the old fashion, in swallowtail coat and
black stock. Benevolence was in the generous mouth, in the large nose
that looked like Washington's, and benevolence fairly sparkled in the
blue eyes. He smiled at them as though he had known them always, and the
world seemed brighter that very instant. They smiled in return, whereupon
the gentleman lifted his hat. And the kindliness and the courtliness of
that bow made them very happy. "Did you wish to look at the house,
madam?" he asked "Yes, sir," said Mrs. Brice.

"Allow me to open it for you," he said, graciously taking the key from
her. "I fear that you will find it inconvenient and incommodious, ma'am.
I should be fortunate, indeed, to get a good tenant."

He fitted the key in the door, while Stephen and his mother smiled at
each other at the thought of the rent. The gentleman opened the door, and
stood aside to let them enter, very much as if he were showing them a
palace for which he was the humble agent.

They went into the little parlor, which was nicely furnished in mahogany
and horsehair. And it had back of it a bit of a dining room, with a
little porch overlooking the back yard. Mrs. Brice thought of the dark
and stately high-ceiled dining-room she had known throughout her married
days: of the board from which a royal governor of Massachusetts Colony
had eaten, and some governors of the Commonwealth since. Thank God, she
had not to sell that, nor the Brice silver which had stood on the high
sideboard with the wolves and the shield upon it. The widow's eyes filled
with tears. She had not hoped again to have a home for these things, nor
the father's armchair, nor the few family treasures that were to come
over the mountains.

The gentleman, with infinite tact, said little, but led the way through
the rooms. There were not many of them. At the door of the kitchen he
stopped, and laid his hand kindly on Stephen's shoulder:-- "Here we may
not enter. This is your department, ma'am," said he.

Finally, as they stood without waiting for the gentleman, who insisted
upon locking the door, they observed a girl in a ragged shawl hurrying up
the street. As she approached them, her eyes were fixed upon the large
house next door. But suddenly, as the gentleman turned, she caught sight
of him, and from her lips escaped a cry of relief. She flung open the
gate, and stood before him.

"Oh, Mr. Brinsmade," she cried, "mother is dying. You have done so much
for us, sir,--couldn't you come to her for a little while? She thought if
she might see you once more, she would die happy." The voice was choked
by a sob.

Mr. Brinsmade took the girl's hand in his own, and turned to the lady
with as little haste, with as much politeness, as he had shown before.

"You will excuse me, ma'am," he said, with his hat in his hand.

The widow had no words to answer him. But she and her son watched him as
he walked rapidly down the street, his arm in the girl's, until they were
out of sight. And then they walked home silently.

Might not the price of this little house be likewise a piece of the
Brinsmade charity?




CHAPTER XI

THE INVITATION

Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, in his Sunday-best broadcloth was a marvel of
propriety. It seemed to Stephen that his face wore a graver expression on
Sunday when he met him standing on Miss Crane's doorstep, picking the
lint from his coat. Stephen's intention was not to speak. But he
remembered what the Judge had said to his mother, and nodded. Why,
indeed, should he put on airs with this man who had come to St. Louis
unknown and unrecommended and poor, who by sheer industry had made
himself of importance in the large business of Carvel &, Company? As for
Stephen Brice, he was not yet earning his salt, but existing by the
charity of Judge Silas Whipple.

"Howdy, Mr. Brice," said Mr. Hopper, his glance caught by the indefinable
in Stephen's costume. This would have puzzled Mr. Hopper's tailor more.

"Very well, thanks."

"A fine day after the rain."

Stephen nodded, and Mr. Hopper entered the hours after him.

"Be you asked to Virginia Carvel's party?" he asked abruptly.

"I do not know Miss Carvel," said Stephen, wondering how well the other
did. And if the truth be told, he was a little annoyed at Mr. Hopper's
free use of her name.

"That shouldn't make no difference," said Eliphalet with just a shade of
bitterness in his tone. "They keep open house, like all Southerners," Mr.
Hopper hesitated,--"for such as come well recommended. I 'most forgot,"
said he. "I callate you're not any too well recommended. I 'most forgot
that little transaction down to the Court House. They do say that she
wanted that gal almighty bad,--she was most awful cut up not to get her.
Served her right, though. I'm glad you did. Show her she can't have
everything her own way. And say," he added, with laughter, "how you did
fix that there stuckup Colfax boy! He'll never forgive you no more than
she. But," said Mr. Hopper, meditatively, "it was a durned-fool trick."

I think Stephen's critics will admit that he had a good right to be
angry, and that they will admire him just a little bit because he kept
his temper. But Mr. Hopper evidently thought he had gone too far.

"She ain't got no use for me, neither," he said.

"She shows poor judgment," answered Stephen.

"She's not long sighted, that's sure," replied Eliphalet, with emphasis.

At dinner Stephen was tried still further. And it was then he made the
determination to write for the newspapers in order to pay the rent on Mr.
Brinsmade's house. Miss Carvel's coming-out party was the chief topic.

"They do say the Colonel is to spend a sight of money on that ball," said
Mrs. Abner Reed. "I guess it won't bankrupt him." And she looked hard at
Mr. Hopper.

"I callate he ain't pushed for money," that gentleman vouchsafed.

"He's a good man, and done well by you, Mr. Hopper."

"So--so," answered Eliphalet. "But I will say that I done something for
the Colonel. I've saved him a hundred times my pay since I showed old
Hood the leaks. And I got a thousand dollar order from Wright & Company
this week for him."

"I dare say you'd keep a tight hand enough on expenses," said Miss Crane,
half in sarcasm, half in approval.

"If Colonel Carvel was doin' business in New England," said Eliphalet,
"he'd been bankrupt long ago."

"That young Clarence Colfax," Mrs. Abner Reed broke in, "he'll get a
right smart mint o' money when he marries Virginia. They do say her
mother left her independent. How now, Mr. Hopper?"

Eliphalet looked mysterious and knowing. He did not reply.

"And young Colfax ain't precisely a pauper," said Miss Crane.

"I'll risk a good deal that she don't marry Colfax," said Mr. Hopper.

"What on earth do you mean?" cried Mrs. Abner. It ain't broke off?"

"No," he answered, "it ain't broke off. But I callate she won't have him
when the time comes. She's got too much sense."

Heavy at heart, Stephen climbed the stairs, thanking heaven that he had
not been drawn into the controversy. A partial comprehension of Mr.
Hopper was dawning upon him. He suspected that gentleman of an aggressive
determination to achieve wealth, and the power which comes with it, for
the purpose of using that power upon those beneath him. Nay, when he
thought over his conversation, he suspected him of more,--of the
intention to marry Virginia Carvel.

It will be seen whether Stephen was right or wrong.

He took a walk that afternoon, as far out as a place called Lindell's
Grove, which afterward became historic. And when he returned to the
house, his mother handed him a, little white envelope.

"It came while you were out," she said.

He turned it over, and stared at his name written across the front in a
feminine hand In those days young ladies did not write in the bold and
masculine manner now deemed proper. Stephen stared at the note, manlike,
and pondered.

"Who brought it, mother?"

"Why don't you open it, and see?" asked his mother with a smile.

He took the suggestion. What a funny formal little note we should think
it now! It was not funny to Stephen--then. He read it, and he read it
again, and finally he walked over to the window, still holding it in his
hand.

Some mothers would have shown their curiosity. Mrs. Brice did not,
wherein she proved herself their superiors in the knowledge of mankind.

Stephen stood for a long while looking out into the gathering dusk. Then
he went over to the fireplace and began tearing the note into little
bits. Only once did he pause, to look again at his name on the envelope.

"It is an invitation to Miss Carvel's party," he said.

By Thursday of that week the Brices, with thanksgiving in their hearts,
had taken possession of Mr. Brinsmade's little house.




CHAPTER XII

"MISS JINNY"

The years have sped indeed since that gray December when Miss Virginia
Carvel became eighteen. Old St. Louis has changed from a pleasant
Southern town to a bustling city, and a high building stands on the site
of that wide and hospitable home of Colonel Carvel. And the Colonel's
thoughts that morning, as Ned shaved him, flew back through the years to
a gently rolling Kentucky countryside, and a pillared white house among
the oaks. He was riding again with Beatrice Colfax in the springtime.
Again he stretched out his arm as if to seize her bridle-hand, and he
felt the thoroughbred rear. Then the vision faded, and the memory of his
dead wife became an angel's face, far--so far away.

He had brought her to St. Louis, and with his inheritance had founded his
business, and built the great double house on the corner. The child came,
and was named after the noble state which had given so many of her sons
to the service of the Republic.

Five simple, happy years--then war. A black war of conquest which, like
many such, was to add to the nation's fame and greatness: Glory beckoned,
honor called--or Comyn Carvel felt them. With nothing of the profession
of arms save that born in the Carvels, he kissed Beatrice farewell and
steamed down the Mississippi, a captain in Missouri regiment. The young
wife was ailing. Anguish killed her. Had Comyn Carvel been selfish?

Ned, as he shaved his master's face, read his thoughts by the strange
sympathy of love. He had heard the last pitiful words of his mistress.
Had listened, choking, to Dr. Posthlewaite as he read the sublime service
of the burial of the dead. It was Ned who had met his master, the
Colonel, at the levee, and had fallen sobbing at his feet.

Long after he was shaved that morning, the Colonel sat rapt in his chair,
while the faithful servant busied himself about the room, one eye on his
master the while. But presently Mr. Carvel's revery is broken by the
swift rustle of a dress, and a girlish figure flutters in and plants
itself on the wide arm of his mahogany barber chair, Mammy Easter in the
door behind her. And the Colonel, stretching forth his hands, strains her
to him, and then holds her away that he may look and look again into her
face.

"Honey," he said, "I was thinking of your mother."

Virginia raised her eyes to the painting on the wall over the marble
mantel. The face under the heavy coils of brown hair was sweet and
gentle, delicately feminine. It had an expression of sorrow that seemed a
prophecy.

The Colonel's hand strayed upward to Virginia's head.

"You are not like her, honey," he said: "You may see for yourself. You
are more like your Aunt Bess, who lived in Baltimore, and she--"

"I know," said Virginia, "she was the image of the beauty, Dorothy
Manners, who married my great-grandfather."

"Yes, Jinny," replied the Colonel, smiling. "That is so. You are somewhat
like your great-grandmother."

"Somewhat!" cried Virginia, putting her hand over his mouth, "I like
that. You and Captain Lige are always afraid of turning my head. I need
not be a beauty to resemble her. I know that I am like her. When you took
me on to Calvert House to see Uncle Daniel that time, I remember the
picture by, by--"

"Sir Joshua Reynolds."

"Yes, Sir Joshua."

"You were only eleven," says the Colonel.

"She is not a difficult person to remember."

"No," said Mr. Carvel, laughing, "especially if you have lived with her."

"Not that I wish to be that kind," said Virginia, meditatively,--"to take
London by storm, and keep a man dangling for years."

"But he got her in the end," said the Colonel. "Where did you hear all
this?" he asked.

"Uncle Daniel told me. He has Richard Carvel's diary."

"And a very honorable record it is," exclaimed the Colonel. "Jinny, we
shall read it together when we go a-visiting to Culvert House. I remember
the old gentleman as well as if I had seen him yesterday."

Virginia appeared thoughtful.

"Pa," she began, "Pa, did you ever see the pearls Dorothy Carvel wore on
her wedding day? What makes you jump like that? Did you ever see them?"

"Well, I reckon I did," replied the Colonel, gazing at her steadfastly.

"Pa, Uncle Daniel told me that I was to have that necklace when I was old
enough."

"Law!" said the Colonel, fidgeting, "your Uncle Daniel was just fooling
you."

"He's a bachelor," said Virginia; what use has he got for it?"

"Why," says the Colonel, "he's a young man yet, your uncle, only
fifty-three. I've known older fools than he to go and do it. Eh, Ned?"

"Yes, marsa. Yes, suh. I've seed 'em at seventy, an' shufflin' about
peart as Marse Clarence's gamecocks. Why, dar was old Marse Ludlow--"

"Now, Mister Johnson," Virginia put in severely, "no more about old
Ludlow."

Ned grinned from ear to ear, and in the ecstasy of his delight dropped
the Colonel's clothes-brush. "Lan' sakes!" he cried, "ef she ain't
recommembered." Recovering his gravity and the brush simultaneously, he
made Virginia a low bow. "Mornin', Miss Jinny. I sholy is gwinter s'lute
you dis day. May de good Lawd make you happy, Miss Jinny, an' give you a
good husban'--"

"Thank you, Mister Johnson, thank you," said Virginia, blushing.

"How come she recommembered, Marse Comyn? Dat's de quality. Dat's why.
Doan't you talk to Ned 'bout de quality, Marsa."

"And when did I ever talk to you about the quality, you scalawag?" asks
the Colonel, laughing.

"Th' ain't none 'cept de bes' quality keep they word dat-a-way," said
Ned, as he went off to tell Uncle Ben in the kitchen.

Was there ever, in all this wide country, a good cook who was not a
tyrant? Uncle Ben Carvel was a veritable emperor in his own domain; and
the Colonel himself, had he desired to enter the kitchen, would have been
obliged to come with humble and submissive spirit. As for Virginia, she
had had since childhood more than one passage at arms with Uncle Ben. And
the question of who had come off victorious had been the subject of many
a debate below stairs.

There were a few days in the year, however, when Uncle Ben permitted the
sanctity of his territory to be violated. One was the seventh of
December. On such a day it was his habit to retire to the broken chair
beside the sink (the chair to which he had clung for five-and-twenty
years). There he would sit, blinking, and carrying on the while an
undercurrent of protests and rumblings, while Miss Virginia and other
young ladies mixed and chopped and boiled and baked and gossiped. But woe
to the unfortunate Rosetta if she overstepped the bounds of respect! Woe
to Ned or Jackson or Tato, if they came an inch over the threshold from
the hall beyond! Even Aunt Easter stepped gingerly, though she was wont
to affirm, when assisting Miss Jinny in her toilet, an absolute contempt
for Ben's commands.

"So Ben ordered you out, Mammy?" Virginia would say mischievously.

"Order me out! Hugh! think I'se skeered o' him, honey? Reckon I'd frail
'em good ef he cotched hole of me with his black hands. Jes' let him try
to come upstairs once, honey, an' see what I say to 'm."

Nevertheless Ben had, on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, ordered
Mammy Easter out, and she had gone. And now, as she was working the beat
biscuits to be baked that evening, Uncle Ben's eye rested on her with
suspicion.

What mere man may write with any confidence of the delicacies which were
prepared in Uncle's kitchen that morning? No need in those days of
cooking schools. What Southern lady, to the manner born, is not a cook
from the cradle? Even Ben noted with approval Miss Virginia's scorn for
pecks and pints, and grunted with satisfaction over the accurate pinches
of spices and flavors which she used. And he did Miss Eugenie the honor
to eat one of her praleens.

That night came Captain Lige Brent, the figure of an eager and determined
man swinging up the street, and pulling out his watch under every
lamp-post. And in his haste, in the darkness of a midblock, he ran into
another solid body clad in high boots and an old army overcoat, beside a
wood wagon.

"Howdy, Captain," said he of the high boots.

"Well, I just thought as much," was the energetic reply; "minute I seen
the rig I knew Captain Grant was behind it."

He held out a big hand, which Captain Grant clasped, just looking at his
own with a smile. The stranger was Captain Elijah Brent of the
'Louisiana'.

"Now," said Brent, "I'll just bet a full cargo that you're off to the
Planters' House, and smoke an El Sol with the boys."

Mr. Grant nodded. "You're keen, Captain," said he.

"I've got something here that'll outlast an El Sol a whole day,"
continued Captain Breast, tugging at his pocket and pulling out a
six-inch cigar as black as the night. "Just you try that."

The Captain instantly struck a match on his boot and was puffing in a
silent enjoyment which delighted his friend.

"Reckon he don't bring out cigars when you make him a call," said the
steamboat captain, jerking his thumb up at the house. It was Mr. Jacob
Cluyme's.

Captain Grant did not reply to that, nor did Captain Lige expect him to,
as it was the custom of this strange and silent man to speak ill of no
one. He turned rather to put the stakes back into his wagon.

"Where are you off to, Lige?" he asked.

"Lord bless my soul," said Captain Lige, "to think that I could forget!"
He tucked a bundle tighter under his arm. "Grant, did you ever see my
little sweetheart, Jinny Carvel?" The Captain sighed. "She ain't little
any more, and she eighteen to-day."

Captain Grant clapped his hand to his forehead.

"Say, Lige," said he, "that reminds me. A month or so ago I pulled a
fellow out of Renault's area across from there. First I thought he was a
thief. After he got away I saw the Colonel and his daughter in the
window."

Instantly Captain Lige became excited, and seized Captain Grant by the
cape of his overcoat.

"Say, Grant, what kind of appearing fellow was he?"

"Short, thick-set, blocky face."

"I reckon I know," said Breast, bringing down his fist on the wagon
board; "I've had my eye on him for some little time."

He walked around the block twice after Captain Grant had driven down the
muddy street, before he composed himself to enter the Carvel mansion. He
paid no attention to the salutations of Jackson, the butler, who saw him
coming and opened the door, but climbed the stairs to the sitting-room.

"Why, Captain Lige, you must have put wings on the Louisiana," said
Virginia, rising joyfully from the arm of her father's chair to meet him.
"We had given you up."

"What?" cried the Captain. "Give me up? Don't you know better than that?
What, give me up when I never missed a birthday,--and this the best of
all of 'em.

"If your pa had got sight of me shovin' in wood and cussin' the pilot for
slowin' at the crossin's, he'd never let you ride in my boat again. Bill
Jenks said: 'Are you plum crazy, Brent? Look at them cressets.' 'Five
dollars'' says I; 'wouldn't go in for five hundred. To-morrow's Jinny
Carvel's birthday, and I've just got to be there.' I reckon the time's
come when I've got to say Miss Jinny," he added ruefully.

The Colonel rose, laughing, and hit the Captain on the back.

"Drat you, Lige, why don't you kiss the girl? Can't you see she's
waiting?"

The honest Captain stole one glance at Virginia, and turned red copper
color.

"Shucks, Colonel, I can't be kissing her always. What'll her husband
say?"

For an instant Mr. Carvel's brow clouded.

"We'll not talk of husbands yet awhile, Lige."

Virginia went up to Captain Lige, deftly twisted into shape his black
tie, and kissed him on the check. How his face burned when she touched
him.

"There!" said she, "and don't you ever dare to treat me as a young lady.
Why, Pa, he's blushing like a girl. I know. He's ashamed to kiss me now.
He's going to be married at last to that Creole girl in New Orleans."

The Colonel slapped his knee, winked slyly at Lige, while Virginia began
to sing:

       "I built me a house on the mountain so high,
        To gaze at my true love as she do go by."

"There's only one I'd ever marry, Jinny," protested the Captain, soberly,
"and I'm a heap too old for her. But I've seen a youngster that might
mate with her, Colonel," he added mischievously. "If he just wasn't a
Yankee. Jinny, what's the story I hear about Judge Whipple's young man
buying Hester?"

Mr. Carvel looked uneasy. It was Virginia's turn to blush, and she grew
red as a peony.

"He's a tall, hateful, Black Republican Yankee!" she said.

"Phee-ew!" whistled the Captain. "Any more epithets?"

"He's a nasty Abolitionist!"

"There you do him wrong, honey," the Colonel put in.

"I hear he took Hester to Miss Crane's," the Captain continued, filling
the room with his hearty laughter. "That boy has sand enough, Jinny; I'd
like to know him."

"You'll have that priceless opportunity to-night," retorted Miss
Virginia, as she flung herself out of the room. "Pa has made me invite
him to my party."

"Here, Jinny! Hold on!" cried the Captain, running after her. "I've got
something for you."

She stopped on the stairs, hesitating. Whereupon the Captain hastily
ripped open the bundle under his arm and produced a very handsome India
shawl. With a cry of delight Virginia threw it over her shoulders and ran
to the long glass between the high windows.

"Who spoils her, Lige?" asked the Colonel, fondly.

"Her father, I reckon," was the prompt reply.

"Who spoils you, Jinny?"

"Captain Lige," said she, turning to him. "If you had only kept the
presents you have brought me from New Orleans, you might sell out your
steamboat and be a rich man."

"He is a rich man," said the Colonel, promptly. "Did you ever miss
bringing her a present, Lige?" he asked.

"When the Cora Anderson burnt," answered the Captain.

"Why," cried Virginia, "you brought me a piece of her wheel, with the
char on it. You swam ashore with it."

"So I did," said Captain Brent. "I had forgotten that. It was when the
French dress, with the furbelows, which Madame Pitou had gotten me from
Paris for you, was lost."

"And I think I liked the piece of wheel better," says Virginia. "It was
brought me by a brave man, the last to leave his boat."

"And who should be the last to leave, but the captain? I saw the thing in
the water; and I just thought we ought to have a relic."

"Lige," said the Colonel, putting up his feet, "do you remember the
French toys you used to bring up here from New Orleans?"

"Colonel," replied Brent, "do you recall the rough and uncouth young
citizen who came over here from Cincinnati, as clerk on the Vicksburg?"

"I remember, sir, that he was so promising that they made him provisional
captain the next trip, and he was not yet twenty-four years of age."

"And do you remember buying the Vicksburg at the sheriff's sale for
twenty thousand dollars, and handing her over to young Brent, and saying,
'There, my son, she's your boat, and you can pay for her when you like'?"

"Shucks, Brent!" said Mr. Carvel, sternly, "your memory's too good. But I
proved myself a good business man, Jinny; he paid for her in a year."

"You don't mean that you made him pay you for the boat?" cried Jinny.
"Why, Pa, I didn't think you were that mean!"

The two men laughed heartily.

"I was a heap meaner," said her father. "I made him pay interest."

Virginia drew in her breath, and looked at the Colonel in amazement.

"He's the meanest man I know," said Captain Lige. "He made me pay
interest, and a mint julep."

"Upon my word, Pa," said Miss Virginia, soberly, "I shouldn't have
believed it of you."

Just then Jackson, in his white jacket; came to announce that supper was
ready, and they met Ned at the dining-room door, fairly staggering under a
load of roses.

"Marse Clarence done send 'em in, des picked out'n de hothouse dis
afternoon, Miss Jinny. Jackson, fotch a bowl!"

"No," said Virginia. She took the flowers from Ned, one by one, and to
the wonderment of Captain Lige and her--father strewed them hither and
thither upon the table until the white cloth was hid by the red flowers.
The Colonel stroked his goatee and nudged Captain Lige.

"Look-a-there, now," said he. "Any other woman would have spent two
mortal hours stickin' 'em in china."

Virginia, having critically surveyed her work, amid exclamations from Ned
and Jackson, had gone around to her place. And there upon her plate lay a
pearl necklace. For an instant she clapped her palms together, staring at
it in bewilderment. And once more the little childish cry of delight,
long sweet to the Colonel's ears, escaped her.

"Pa," she said, "is it--?" And there she stopped, for fear that it might
not be. But he nodded encouragingly.

"Dorothy Carvel's necklace! No, it can't be."

"Yes, honey," said the Colonel. "Your Uncle Daniel sent it, as he
promised. And when you go upstairs, if Easter has done as I told her, you
will see a primrose dress with blue coin-flowers on your bed. Daniel
thought you might like that, too, for a keepsake. Dorothy Manners wore it
in London, when she was a girl."

And so Virginia ran and threw her arms about her father's neck, and
kissed him again and again. And lest the Captain feel badly, she laid his
India shawl beside her; and the necklace upon it.

What a joyful supper they had,--just the three of them! And as the fresh
roses filled the room with fragrance, Virginia filled it with youth and
spirits, and Mr. Carvel and the Captain with honest, manly merriment. And
Jackson plied Captain Brent (who was a prime favorite in that house) with
broiled chicken and hot beat biscuits and with waffles, until at length
he lay back in his chair and heaved a sigh of content, lighting a cigar.
And then Virginia, with a little curtsey to both of them, ran off to
dress for the party.

"Well," said Captain Brent, "I reckon there'll be gay goings-on here
to-night. I wouldn't miss the sight of 'em, Colonel, for all the cargoes
on the Mississippi. Ain't there anything I can do?"

"No, thank you, Lige," Mr. Carvel answered. "Do you remember, one morning
some five years ago, when I took in at the store a Yankee named Hopper?
You didn't like him, I believe."

Captain Brent jumped, and the ashes of his cigar fell on his coat. He had
forgotten his conversation with Captain Grant.

"I reckon I do," he said dryly.

For a moment he was on the point of telling the affair. Then he desisted.
He could not be sure of Eliphalet from Grant's description. So he decided
to await a better time. Captain Brent was one to make sure of his channel
before going ahead.

"Well," continued the Colonel, "I have been rather pushed the last week,
and Hopper managed things for this dance. He got the music, and saw the
confectioner. But he made such a close bargain with both of 'em that they
came around to me afterward," he added, laughing.

"Is he coming here to-night?" demanded the Captain, looking disgusted.

"Lige," replied the Colonel, "you never do get over a prejudice. Yes,
he's coming, just to oversee things. He seems to have mighty little
pleasure, and he's got the best business head I ever did see. A Yankee,"
said Mr. Carvel, meditatively, as he put on his hat, "a Yankee, when he
will work, works like all possessed. Hood don't like him any more than
you do, but he allows Hopper is a natural-born business man. Last month
Samuels got tight, and Wright & Company were going to place the largest
order in years. I called in Hood. 'Go yourself, Colonel,' says he. I I'm
too old to solicit business, Hood,' said I. 'Then there's only one man to
send,' says he, 'young Hopper. He'll get the order, or I'll give up this
place I've had for twenty years.' Hopper 'callated' to get it, and
another small one pitched in. And you'd die laughing, Lige, to hear how
he did it."

"Some slickness, I'll gamble," grunted Captain Lige.

"Well, I reckon 'twas slick," said the Colonel, thoughtfully. "You know
old man Wright hates a solicitor like poison. He has his notions. And
maybe you've noticed signs stuck up all over his store, 'No Solicitors
nor Travelling Men Allowed Here'"

The Captain nodded.

"But Hopper--Hopper walks in, sir, bold as you please, right past the
signs till he comes to the old man's cage. 'I want to see Mr. Wright,'
says he to the clerk. And the clerk begins to grin. 'Name, please,' says
he. Mr. Hopper whips out his business card. 'What!' shouts old Wright,
flying 'round in his chair, 'what the devil does this mean? Can't you
read, sir?' 'callate to,' says Mr. Hopper. 'And you dare to come in here?

"'Business is business,' says Hopper. 'You "callate"!' bellowed the old
man; 'I reckon you're a damned Yankee. I reckon I'll upset your
"callations" for once. And if I catch you in here again, I'll wring your
neck like a roostah's. Git!'"

"Who told you this?" asked Captain Brent.

"Wright himself,--afterward," replied Mr. Carvel, laughing. "But listen,
Lige. The old man lives at the Planters' House, you know. What does Mr.
Hopper do but go 'round there that very night and give a nigger two bits
to put him at the old man's table. When Wright comes and sees him, he
nearly has one of his apoplectic fits. But in marches Hopper the next
morning with twice the order. The good Lord knows how he did it."

There was a silence. Then the door-bell rang.

"He's dangerous," said the Captain, emphatically. "That's what I call
him."

"The Yankees are changing business in this town," was the Colonel's
answer. "We've got to keep the pace, Lige."




CHAPTER XIII

THE PARTY

To gentle Miss Anne Brinsmade, to Puss Russell of the mischievous eyes,
and even to timid Eugenie Renault, the question that burned was: Would he
come, or would he not? And, secondarily, how would Virginia treat him if
he came? Put our friend Stephen for the subjective, and Miss Carvers
party for the objective in the above, and we have the clew. For very
young girls are given to making much out of a very little in such
matters. If Virginia had not gotten angry when she had been teased a
fortnight before, all would have been well.

Even Puss, who walked where angels feared to tread, did not dare to go
too far with Virginia. She had taken care before the day of the party to
beg forgiveness with considerable humility. It had been granted with a
queenly generosity. And after that none of the bevy had dared to broach
the subject to Virginia. Jack Brinsmade had. He told Puss afterward that
when Virginia got through with him, he felt as if he had taken a rapid
trip through the wheel-house of a large steamer. Puss tried, by various
ingenious devices, to learn whether Mr. Brice had accepted his
invitation. She failed.

These things added a zest to a party long looked forward to amongst
Virginia's intimates. In those days young ladies did not "come out" so
frankly as they do now. Mothers did not announce to the world that they
possessed marriageable daughters. The world was supposed to know that.
And then the matrimonial market was feverishly active. Young men proposed
as naturally as they now ask a young girl to go for a walk,--and were
refused quite as naturally.  An offer of marriage was not the fearful and
wonderful thing--to be dealt with gingerly--which it has since become.
Seventeen was often the age at which they began. And one of the big
Catherwood boys had a habit of laying his heart and hand at Virginia's
feet once a month. Nor did his vanity suffer greatly when she laughed at
him.

It was with a flutter of excitement, therefore, that Miss Carvel's guests
flitted past Jackson, who held the door open obsequiously. The boldest of
them took a rapid survey of the big parlor, before they put foot on the
stairs to see whether Mr. Brice had yet arrived. And if their curiosity
held them too long, they were usually kissed by the Colonel.

Mr. Carvel shook hands heartily with the young mean and called them by
their first names, for he knew most of their fathers and grandfathers.
And if an older gentleman arrived, perhaps the two might be seen going
down the hall together, arm in arm. So came his beloved enemy, Judge
Whipple, who did not make an excursion to the rear regions of the house
with the Colonel; but they stood and discussed Mr. President Buchanan's
responsibility for the recent panic, until the band, which Mr. Hopper had
stationed under the stairs, drowned their voices.

As we enter the room, there stands Virginia under the rainbowed prisms of
the great chandelier, receiving. But here was suddenly a woman of
twenty-eight, where only this evening we knew a slip of a girl. It was a
trick she had, to become majestic in a ball-gown. She held her head high,
as a woman should, and at her slender throat glowed the pearls of Dorothy
Manners.

The result of all this was to strike a little awe into the souls of many
of her playmates. Little Eugenie nearly dropped a curtsey. Belle Cluyme
was so impressed that she forgot for a whole hour to be spiteful. But
Puss Russell kissed her on both cheeks, and asked her if she really
wasn't nervous.

"Nervous!" exclaimed Jinny, "why?"

Miss Russell glanced significantly towards the doorway. But she said
nothing to her hostess, for fear of marring an otherwise happy occasion.
She retired with Jack Brim made to a corner, where she recited:--

     "Oh young Lochinvar is come out of the East;
     Of millions of Yankees I love him the least."

"What a joke if he should come!" cried Jack.

Miss Russell gasped.

Just as Mr. Clarence Colfax, resplendent in new evening clothes just
arrived from New York, was pressing his claim for the first dance with
his cousin in opposition to numerous other claims, the chatter of the
guests died away. Virginia turned her head, and for an instant the pearls
trembled on her neck. There was a young man cordially and unconcernedly
shaking hands with her father and Captain Lige. Her memory of that moment
is, strangely, not of his face (she did not deign to look at that), but
of the muscle of his shoulder half revealed as he stretched forth his
arm.

Young Mr. Colfax bent over to her ear.

"Virginia," he whispered earnestly, almost fiercely, Virginia, who
invited him here?"

"I did," said Virginia, calmly, "of course. Who invites any one here?"

"But!" cried Clarence, "do you know who he is?"

"Yes," she answered, "I know. And is that any reason why he should not
come here as a guest? Would you bar any gentleman from your house on
account of his convictions?"

Ah, Virginia, who had thought to hear that argument from your lips? What
would frank Captain Lige say of the consistency of women, if he heard you
now? And how give an account of yourself to Anne Brinsmade? What
contrariness has set you so intense against your own argument?

Before one can answer this, before Mr. Clarence can recover from his
astonishment and remind her of her vehement words on the subject at
Bellegarde, Mr. Stephen is making thither with the air of one who
conquers. Again the natural contrariness of women. What bare-faced
impudence! Has he no shame that he should hold his head so high? She
feels her color mounting, even as her resentment rises at his
self-possession, and yet she would have despised him had he shown
self-consciousness in gait or manner in the sight of her assembled
guests. Nearly as tall as the Colonel himself, he is plainly seen, and
Miss Puss in her corner does not have to stand on tiptoe. Mr. Carvel does
the honors of the introduction.

But a daughter of the Carvels was not to fail before such a paltry
situation as this. Shall it be confessed that curiosity stepped into the
breach? As she gave him her hand she was wondering how he would act.

As a matter of fact he acted detestably. He said nothing whatever, but
stood regarding her with a clear eye and a face by far too severe. The
thought that he was meditating on the incident of the auction sale
crossed through her mind, and made her blood simmer. How dared he behave
so! The occasion called for a little small talk. An evil spirit took
possession of Virginia. She turned.

"Mr. Brice, do you know my cousin, Mr. Colfax?" she said.

Mr. Brice bowed. "I know Mr. Colfax by sight," he replied.

Then Mr. Colfax made a stiff bow. To this new phase his sense of humor
did not rise. Mr. Brice was a Yankee and no gentleman, inasmuch as he had
overbid a lady for Hester.

"Have you come here to live, Mr. Brice?" he asked.

The Colonel eyed his nephew sharply. But Stephen smiled.

"Yes," he said, "if I can presently make enough to keep me alive." Then
turning to Virginia, he said, "Will you dance, Miss Carvel?"

The effrontery of this demand quite drew the breath from the impatient
young gentlemen who had been waiting their turn. Several of them spoke up
in remonstrance. And for the moment (let one confess it who knows),
Virginia was almost tempted to lay her arm in his. Then she made a bow
that would have been quite as effective the length of the room.

"Thank you, Mr. Brice," she said, "but I am engaged to Mr. Colfax."

Abstractedly he watched her glide away in her cousin's arms. Stephen had
a way of being preoccupied at such times. When he grew older he would
walk the length of Olive Street, look into face after face of
acquaintances, not a quiver of recognition in his eyes. But most probably
the next week he would win a brilliant case in the Supreme Court. And so
now, indifferent to the amusement of some about him, he stood staring
after Virginia and Clarence. Where had he seen Colfax's face before he
came West? Ah, he knew. Many, many years before he had stood with his
father in the mellow light of the long gallery at Hollingdean, Kent,
before a portrait of the Stuarts' time. The face was that of one of Lord
Northwell's ancestors, a sporting nobleman of the time of the second
Charles. It was a head which compelled one to pause before it. Strangely
enough,--it was the head likewise of Clarence Colfax.

The image of it Stephen had carried undimmed in the eye of his memory.
White-haired Northwell's story, also. It was not a story that Mr. Brice
had expected his small son to grasp. As a matter of fact Stephen had not
grasped it then--but years afterward. It was not a pleasant story,--and
yet there was much of credit in it to the young rake its subject,--of
dash and courage and princely generosity beside the profligacy and
incontinence.

The face had impressed him, with its story. He had often dreamed of it,
and of the lace collar over the dull-gold velvet that became it so well.
And here it was at last, in a city west of the Mississippi River. Here
were the same delicately chiselled features, with their pallor, and
satiety engraved there at one and twenty. Here was the same lazy scorn in
the eyes, and the look which sleeplessness gives to the lids: the hair,
straight and fine and black; the wilful indulgence--not of one life, but
of generations--about the mouth; the pointed chin. And yet it was a fact
to dare anything, and to do anything.

One thing more ere we have done with that which no man may explain. Had
he dreamed, too, of the girl? Of Virginia? Stephen might not tell, but
thrice had the Colonel spoken to him before he answered.

"You must meet some of these young ladies, sir."

It was little wonder that Puss Russell thought him dull on that first
occasion. Out of whom condescension is to flow is a matter of which
Heaven takes no cognizance. To use her own words, Puss thought him "stuck
up," when he should have been grateful. We know that Stephen was not
stuck up, and later Miss Russell learned that likewise. Very naturally
she took preoccupation for indifference. It is a matter worth recording,
however, that she did not tease him, because she did not dare. He did not
ask her to dance, which was rude. So she passed him back to Mr. Carvel,
who introduced him to Miss Renault and Miss Saint Cyr, and other young
ladies of the best French families. And finally, drifting hither and
thither with his eyes on Virginia, in an evil moment he was presented to
Mrs. Colfax. Perhaps it has been guessed that Mrs. Colfax was a very
great lady indeed, albeit the daughter of an overseer. She bore Addison
Colfax's name, spent his fortune, and retained her good looks. On this
particular occasion she was enjoying herself quite as much as any young
girl in the room, and, while resting from a waltz, was regaling a number
of gentlemen with a humorous account of a scandal at the Virginia
Spring's.

None but a great lady could have meted out the punishment administered to
poor Stephen. None but a great lady could have concerned it. And he, who
had never been snubbed before, fell headlong into her trap. How was the
boy to know that there was no heart in the smile with which she greeted
him? It was all over in an instant. She continued to talk about Virginia
Springs, "Oh, Mr. Brice, of course you have been there. Of course you
know the Edmunds. No? You haven't been there? You don't know the Edmunds?
I thought every body had been there. Charles, you look as if you were
just dying to waltz. Let's have a turn before the music stops."

And so she whirled away, leaving Stephen forlorn, a little too angry to
be amused just then. In that state he spied a gentleman coming towards
him--a gentleman the sight of whom he soon came to associate with all
that is good and kindly in this world, Mr. Brinsmade. And now he put his
hand on Stephen's shoulder. Whether he had seen the incident just past,
who can tell?

"My son," said he, "I am delighted to see you here. Now that we are such
near neighbors, we must be nearer friends. You must know my wife, and my
son Jack, and my daughter Anne."

Mrs. Brinsmade was a pleasant little body, but plainly not a fit mate for
her husband. Jack gave Stephen a warm grasp of the hand, and an amused
look. As for Anne, she was more like her father; she was Stephen's friend
from that hour.

"I have seen you quite often, going in at your gate, Mr. Brice. And I
have seen your mother, too. I like her," said Anne. "She has such a
wonderful face." And the girl raised her truthful blue eyes to his.

"My mother would be delighted to know you," he ventured, not knowing what
else to say. It was an effort for him to reflect upon their new situation
as poor tenants to a wealthy family.

"Oh, do you think so?" cried Anne. "I shall call on her to-morrow, with
mother. Do you know, Mr. Brice," she continued, "do you know that your
mother is just the person I should go to if I were in trouble, whether I
knew her or not?"

"I have found her a good person in trouble," said Stephen, simply. He
might have said the same of Anne.

Anne was enchanted. She had thought him cold, but these words belied
that. She had wrapped him in that diaphanous substance with which young
ladies (and sometimes older ones) are wont to deck their heroes. She had
approached a mystery--to find it human, as are many mysteries. But thank
heaven that she found a dignity, a seriousness,--and these more than
satisfied her. Likewise, she discovered something she had not looked for,
an occasional way of saying things that made her laugh. She danced with
him, and passed him back to Miss Puss Russell, who was better pleased
this time; she passed him on to her sister, who also danced with him, and
sent him upstairs for her handkerchief.

Nevertheless, Stephen was troubled. As the evening wore on, he was more
and more aware of an uncompromising attitude in his young hostess, whom
he had seen whispering to various young ladies from behind her fan as
they passed her. He had not felt equal to asking her to dance a second
time. Honest Captain Lige Breast, who seemed to have taken a fancy to
him, bandied him on his lack of courage with humor that was a little
rough. And, to Stephen's amazement, even Judge Whipple had pricked him
on.

It was on his way upstairs after Emily Russell's handkerchief that he ran
across another acquaintance. Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, in Sunday broadcloth,
was seated on the landing, his head lowered to the level of the top of
the high door of the parlor. Stephen caught a glimpse of the picture
whereon his eyes were fixed. Perhaps it is needless to add that Miss
Virginia Carvel formed the central figure of it.

"Enjoy in' yourself?" asked Mr. Hopper.

Stephen countered.

"Are you?" he asked.

"So so," said Mr. Hopper, and added darkly: "I ain't in no hurry. Just
now they callate I'm about good enough to manage the business end of an
affair like this here. I guess I can wait. But some day," said he,
suddenly barring Stephen's way, "some day I'll give a party. And hark to
me when I tell you that these here aristocrats 'll be glad enough to get
invitations."

Stephen pushed past coldly. This time the man made him shiver. The
incident was all that was needed to dishearten and disgust him. Kindly as
he had been treated by others, far back in his soul was a thing that
rankled. Shall it be told crudely why he went that night? Stephen Brice,
who would not lie to others, lied to himself. And when he came downstairs
again and presented Miss Emily with her handkerchief, his next move was
in his mind. And that was to say good-night to the Colonel, and more
frigidly to Miss Carvel herself. But music has upset many a man's
calculations.

The strains of the Jenny Lind waltz were beginning to float through the
rooms. There was Miss Virginia in a corner of the big parlor, for the
moment alone with her cousin. And thither Stephen sternly strode. Not a
sign did she give of being aware of his presence until he stood before
her. Even then she did not lift her eyes. But she said: "So you have come
at last to try again, Mr. Brice?"

And Mr. Brice said: "If you will do me the honor, Miss Carvel."

She did not reply at once. Clarence Colfax got to his feet. Then she
looked up at the two men as they stood side by side, and perhaps swept
them both in an instant's comparison.

The New Englander's face must have reminded her more of her own father,
Colonel Carvel. It possessed, from generations known, the power to
control itself. She afterwards admitted that she accepted him to tease
Clarence. Miss Russell, whose intuitions are usually correct, does not
believe this.

"I will dance with you," said Virginia.

But, once in his arms, she seemed like a wild thing, resisting. Although
her gown brushed his coat, the space between them was infinite, and her
hand lay limp in his, unresponsive of his own pressure. Not so her feet;
they caught the step and moved with the rhythm of the music, and round
the room they swung. More than one pair paused in the dance to watch
them. Then, as they glided past the door, Stephen was disagreeably
conscious of some one gazing down from above, and he recalled Eliphalet
Hopper and his position. The sneer from Eliphalet's seemed to penetrate
like a chilly draught.

All at once, Virginia felt her partner gathering up his strength, and by
some compelling force, more of wild than of muscle, draw her nearer.
Unwillingly her hand tightened under his, and her blood beat faster and
her color came and went as they two moved as one. Anger--helpless anger
--took possession of her as she saw the smiles on the faces of her
friends, and Puss Russell mockingly throwing a kiss as she passed her.
And then, strange in the telling, a thrill as of power rose within her
which she strove against in vain. A knowledge of him who guided her so
swiftly, so unerringly, which she had felt with no other man. Faster and
faster they stepped, each forgetful of self and place, until the waltz
came suddenly to a stop.

"By gum!" said Captain Lige to Judge Whipple, "you can whollop me on my
own forecastle if they ain't the handsomest couple I ever did see."




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

BOOK II.


Volume 3.



CHAPTER I

RAW MATERIAL

Summer, intolerable summer, was upon the city at last. The families of
its richest citizens had fled. Even at that early day some braved the
long railroad journey to the Atlantic coast. Amongst these were our
friends the Cluymes, who come not strongly into this history. Some went
to the Virginia Springs. But many, like the Brinsmades and the Russells,
the Tiptons and the Hollingsworths, retired to the local paradise of
their country places on the Bellefontaine road, on the cool heights above
the river. Thither, as a respite from the hot office, Stephen was often
invited by kind Mr. Brinsmade, who sometimes drove him out in his own
buggy. Likewise he had visited Miss Puss Russell. But Miss Virginia
Carvel he had never seen since the night he had danced with her. This was
because, after her return from the young ladies' school at Monticello,
she had gone to Glencoe, Glencoe, magic spot, perched high on wooded
highlands. And under these the Meramec, crystal pure, ran lightly on sand
and pebble to her bridal with that turbid tyrant, the Father of Waters.

To reach Glencoe you spent two dirty hours on that railroad which (it was
fondly hoped) would one day stretch to the Pacific Ocean. You generally
spied one of the big Catherwood boys in the train, or their tall sister
Maude. The Catherwoods likewise lived at Glencoe in the summer. And on
some Saturday afternoons a grim figure in a linen duster and a silk
skull-cap took a seat in the forward car. That was Judge Whipple, on his
way to spend a quiet Sunday with Colonel Carvel.

To the surprise of many good people, the Judge had recently formed
another habit. At least once a week he would drop in at the little house
on Olive Street next to Mr. Brinsmade's big one, which was shut up, and
take tea with Mrs. Brice. Afterward he would sit on the little porch over
the garden in the rear, or on the front steps, and watch the bob-tailed
horse-cars go by. His conversation was chiefly addressed to the widow.
Rarely to Stephen; whose wholesome respect for his employer had in no
wise abated.

Through the stifling heat of these summer days Stephen sat in the outer
office, straining at the law. Had it not been for the fact that Mr.
Whipple went to his mother's house, despair would have seized him long
since. Apparently his goings-out and his comings-in were noted only by
Mr. Richter. Truly the Judge's methods were not Harvard methods. And if
there were pride in the young Bostonian, Mr. Whipple thought he knew the
cure for it.

It was to Richter Stephen owed a debt of gratitude in these days. He
would often take his midday meal in the down-town beer garden with the
quiet German. Then there came a Sunday afternoon (to be marked with a red
letter) when Richter transported him into Germany itself. Stephen's eyes
were opened. Richter took him across the Rhine. The Rhine was Market
Street, and south of that street was a country of which polite American
society took no cognizance.

Here was an epic movement indeed, for South St. Louis was a great sod
uprooted from the Fatherland and set down in all its vigorous crudity in
the warm black mud of the Mississippi Valley. Here lager beer took the
place of Bourbon, and black bread and sausages of hot rolls and fried
chicken. Here were quaint market houses squatting in the middle of wide
streets; Lutheran churches, square and uncompromising, and bulky Turner
Halls, where German children were taught the German tongue. Here, in a
shady grove of mulberry and locust, two hundred families were spread out
at their ease.

For a while Richter sat in silence, puffing at a meerschaum with a huge
brown bowl. A trick of the mind opened for Stephen one of the histories
in his father's library in Beacon Street, across the pages of which had
flitted the ancestors of this blue-eyed and great-chested Saxon. He saw
them in cathedral forests, with the red hair long upon their bodies. He
saw terrifying battles with the Roman Empire surging back and forth
through the low countries. He saw a lad of twenty at the head of rugged
legions clad in wild skins, sweeping Rome out of Gaul. Back in the dim
ages Richter's fathers must have defended grim Eresburg. And it seemed to
him that in the end the new Republic must profit by this rugged stock,
which had good women for wives and mothers, and for fathers men in whose
blood dwelt a fierce patriotism and contempt for cowardice.

This fancy of ancestry pleased Stephen. He thought of the forefathers of
those whom he knew, who dwelt north of Market Street. Many, though this
generation of the French might know it not, had bled at Calais and at
Agincourt, had followed the court of France in clumsy coaches to Blois
and Amboise, or lived in hovels under the castle walls. Others had
charged after the Black Prince at Poitiers, and fought as serf or noble.
in the war of the Roses; had been hatters or tailors in Cromwell's
armies, or else had sacrificed lands and fortunes for Charles Stuart.
These English had toiled, slow but resistless, over the misty Blue Ridge
after Boone and Harrod to this old St. Louis of the French, their
enemies, whose fur traders and missionaries had long followed the veins
of the vast western wilderness. And now, on to the structure builded by
these two, comes Germany to be welded, to strengthen or to weaken.

Richter put down his pipe on the table.

"Stephen," he said suddenly, "you do not share the prejudice against us
here?"

Stephen flushed. He thought of some vigorous words that Miss Puss Russell
had used on the subject of the Dutch."

"No," said he, emphatically.

"I am glad," answered Richter, with a note of sadness, in his voice. "Do
not despise us before you know more of us. We are still feudal in
Germany--of the Middle Ages. The peasant is a serf. He is compelled to
serve the lord of the land every year with so much labor of his hands.
The small farmers, the 'Gross' and 'Mittel Bauern', we call them, are
also mortgaged to the nobles who tyrannize our Vaterland. Our merchants
are little merchants--shopkeepers, you would say. My poor father, an
educated man, was such. They fought our revolution."

"And now," said Stephen, "why do they not keep their hold?"

Richter sighed.

"We were unused to ruling," he answered. "We knew not how to act--what to
do. You must remember that we were not trained to govern ourselves, as
are you of the English race, from children. Those who have been for
centuries ground under heel do not make practical parliamentarians. No;
your heritage is liberty--you Americans and English; and we Germans must
desert our native land to partake of it."

"And was it not hard to leave?" asked Stephen, gently.

The eyes of the German filled at the recollection, nor did he seem
ashamed of his tears.

"I had a poor old father whose life was broken to save the Vaterland, but
not his spirit," he cried, "no, not that. My father was born in 1797. God
directed my grandfather to send him to the Kolnisches gymnasium, where
the great Jahn taught. Jahn was our Washington, the father of Germany
that is to be.

"Then our Fatherland was French. Our women wore Parisian clothes, and
spoke the language; French immorality and atheism had spread like a
plague among us Napoleon the vile had taken the sword of our Frederick
from Berlin. It was Father Jahn (so we love to call him), it was Father
Jahn who founded the 'Turnschulen', that the generations to come might
return to simple German ways,--plain fare, high principles, our native
tongue; and the development of the body. The downfall of the fiend
Napoleon and the Vaterland united--these two his scholars must have
written in their hearts. All summer long, in their black caps and linen
pantaloons, they would trudge after him, begging a crust here and a
cheese there, to spread his teachings far and wide under the thatched
roofs.

"Then came 1811. I have heard my father tell how in the heat of that year
a great red comet burned in the sky, even as that we now see, my friend.
God forbid that this portends blood. But in the coming spring the French
conscripts filled our sacred land like a swarm of locusts, devouring as
they went. And at their head, with the pomp of Darius, rode that
destroyer of nations and homes, Napoleon. What was Germany then? Ashes.
But the red embers were beneath, fanned by Father Jahn. Napoleon at
Dresden made our princes weep. Never, even in the days of the Frankish
kings, had we been so humbled. He dragged our young men with him to
Russia, and left them to die moaning on the frozen wastes, while he drove
off in his sledge.

"It was the next year that Germany rose. High and low, rich and poor,
Jaeger and Landwehr, came flocking into the army, and even the old men,
the Landsturm. Russia was an ally, and later, Austria. My father, a last
of sixteen, was in the Landwehr, under the noble Blucher in Silesia, when
they drove the French into the Katzbach and the Neisse, swollen by the
rains into torrents. It had rained until the forests were marshes. Powder
would not burn. But Blucher, ah, there was a man! He whipped his great
sabre from under his cloak, crying 'Vorwarts! Vorwarts!' And the Landwehr
with one great shout slew their enemies with the butts of their muskets
until their arms were weary and the bodies were tossed like logs in the
foaming waters. They called Blucher Marachall Vorwarts!

"Then Napoleon was sent to Elba. But the victors quarrelled amongst
themselves, while Talleyrand and Metternich tore our Vaterland into
strips, and set brother against brother. And our blood, and the grief for
the widows and the fatherless, went for nothing."

Richter paused to light his pipe.

"After a while," he continued presently, "came the German Confederation,
with Austria at the head. Rid of Napoleon, we had another despot in
Metternich. But the tree which Jahn had planted grew, and its branches
spread. The great master was surrounded by spies. My father had gone to
Jena University, when he joined the Burschenschaft, or Students' League,
of which I will tell you later. It was pledged to the rescue of the
Vaterland. He was sent to prison for dipping his handkerchief in the
blood of Sand, beheaded for liberty at Mannheim. Afterwards he was
liberated, and went to Berlin and married my mother, who died when I was
young. Twice again he was in prison because the societies met at his
house. We were very poor, my friend. You in America know not the meaning
of that word. His health broke, and when '48 came, he was an old man. His
hair was white, and he walked the streets with a crutch. But he had saved
a little money to send me to Jena.

"He was proud of me. I was big-boned and fair, like my mother. And when I
came home at the end of a Semester I can see him now, as he would hobble
to the door, wearing the red and black and gold of the Burschenschaft.
And he would keep me up half the night-telling him of our 'Schlager'
fights with the aristocrats. My father had been a noted swordsman in his
day."

He stopped abruptly, and colored. For Stephen was staring at the jagged
scar, He had never summoned the courage to ask Richter how he came by it.

"Schlager fights?" he exclaimed.

"Broadswords," answered the German, hastily. "Some day I will tell you of
them, and of the struggle with the troops in the 'Breite Strasse' in
March. We lost, as I told you because we knew not how to hold what we had
gained.

"I left Germany, hoping to make a home here for my poor father. How sad
his face as he kissed me farewell! And he said to me: 'Carl, if ever your
new Vaterland, the good Republic, be in danger, sacrifice all. I have
spent my years in bondage, and I say to you that life without liberty is
not worth the living.' Three months I was gone, and he was dead, without
that for which he had striven so bravely. He never knew what it is to
have an abundance of meat. He never knew from one day to the other when
he would have to embrace me, all he owned, and march away to prison,
because he was a patriot." Richter's voice had fallen low, but now he
raised it. "Do you think, my friend," he cried, "do you think that I
would not die willingly for this new country if the time should come.
Yes, and there are a million like me, once German, now American, who will
give their lives to preserve this Union. For without it the world is not
fit to live in."

Stephen had food for thought as he walked northward through the strange
streets on that summer evening. Here indeed was a force not to be
reckoned, and which few had taken into account.




CHAPTER II

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

It is sometimes instructive to look back and see hour Destiny gave us a
kick here, and Fate a shove there, that sent us in the right direction at
the proper time. And when Stephen Brice looks backward now, he laughs to
think that he did not suspect the Judge of being an ally of the two who
are mentioned above. The sum total of Mr. Whipple's words and advices to
him that summer had been these. Stephen was dressed more carefully than
usual, in view of a visit to Bellefontaine Road. Whereupon the Judge
demanded whether he were contemplating marriage. Without waiting for a
reply he pointed to a rope and a slab of limestone on the pavement below,
and waved his hand unmistakably toward the Mississippi.

Miss Russell was of the opinion that Mr. Whipple had once been crossed in
love.

But we are to speak more particularly of a put-up job, although Stephen
did not know this at the time.

Towards five o'clock of a certain afternoon in August of that year, 1858,
Mr. Whipple emerged from his den. Instead of turning to the right, he
strode straight to Stephen's table. His communications were always a
trifle startling. This was no exception.

"Mr. Brice," said he, "you are to take the six forty-five train on the
St. Louis, Alton, and Chicago road tomorrow morning for Springfield,
Illinois."

"Yes sir."

"Arriving at Springfield, you are to deliver this envelope into the hands
of Mr. Abraham Lincoln, of the law firm of Lincoln & Herndon."

"Abraham Lincoln!" cried Stephen, rising and straddling his chair. "But,
sir--"

"Abraham Lincoln," interrupted the Judge, forcibly "I try to speak
plainly, sir. You are to deliver it into Mr. Lincoln's hands. If he is
not in Springfield, find out where he is and follow him up. Your expenses
will be paid by me. The papers are important. Do you understand, sir?"

Stephen did. And he knew better than to argue the matter with Mr.
Whipple. He had read in the Missouri Democrat of this man Lincoln, a
country lawyer who had once been to Congress, and who was even now
disputing the senatorship of his state with the renowned Douglas. In
spite of their complacent amusement, he had won a little admiration from
conservative citizens who did not believe in the efficacy of Judge
Douglas's Squatter Sovereignty. Likewise this Mr. Lincoln, who had once
been a rail-sputter, was uproariously derided by Northern Democrats
because he had challenged Mr. Douglas to seven debates, to be held at
different towns in the state of Illinois. David with his sling and his
smooth round pebble must have had much of the same sympathy and ridicule.

For Mr. Douglas, Senator and Judge, was a national character, mighty in
politics, invulnerable in the armor of his oratory. And he was known far
and wide as the Little Giant. Those whom he did not conquer with his
logic were impressed by his person.

Stephen remembered with a thrill that these debates were going on now.
One, indeed, had been held, and had appeared in fine print in a corner of
the Democrat. Perhaps this Lincoln might not be in; Springfield; perhaps
he, Stephen Brice, might, by chance, hit upon a debate, and see and hear
the tower of the Democracy, the Honorable Stephen A. Douglas.

But it is greatly to be feared that our friend Stephen was bored with his
errand before he arrived at the little wooden station of the Illinois
capital. Standing on the platform after the train pulled out, he summoned
up courage to ask a citizen with no mustache and a beard, which he swept
away when he spat, where was the office of Lincoln & Herndon. The
stranger spat twice, regarded Mr. Brice pityingly, and finally led him in
silence past the picket fence and the New England-looking meeting-house
opposite until they came to the great square on which the State House
squatted. The State House was a building with much pretension to beauty,
built in the classical style, of a yellow stone, with sold white blinds
in the high windows and mighty columns capped at the gently slanting
roof. But on top of it was reared a crude wooden dome, like a clay head
on a marble statue.

"That there," said the stranger, "is whar we watches for the County
Delegations when they come in to a meetin'." And with this remark,
pointing with a stubby thumb up a well-worn stair, he departed before
Stephen could thank him. Stephen paused under the awning, of which there
were many shading the brick pavement, to regard the straggling line of
stores and houses which surrounded and did homage to the yellow pile. The
brick house in which Mr. Lincoln's office was had decorations above the
windows. Mounting the stair, Stephen found a room bare enough, save for a
few chairs and law books, and not a soul in attendance. After sitting
awhile by the window, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, he went out
on the landing to make inquiries. There he met another citizen in shirt
sleeves, like unto the first, in the very act of sweeping his beard out
of the way of a dexterous expectoration.

"Wal, young man," said he, "who be you lookin' for here?"

"For Mr. Lincoln," said Stephen.

At this the gentleman sat down on the dirty top step; and gave vent to
quiet but annoying laughter.

"I reckon you come to the wrong place."

"I was told this was his office," said Stephen, with some heat.

"Whar be you from?" said the citizen, with interest.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," answered our friend.

"Wal," said the citizen, critically, "if you was from Philadelphy or
Boston, you might stand acquitted."

Stephen was on the point of claiming Boston, but wisely hesitated.

"I'm from St. Louis, with a message for Mr. Lincoln," he replied.

"Ye talk like y e was from down East," said the citizens who seemed in
the humor for conversation. "I reckon old Abe's' too busy to see you.
Say, young man, did you ever hear of Stephen Arnold Douglas, alias the
Little Giant, alias the Idol of our State, sir?"

This was too much for Stephen, who left the citizen without the
compliment of a farewell. Continuing around the square, inquiring for Mr.
Lincoln's house, he presently got beyond the stores and burning pavements
on to a plank walk, under great shade trees, and past old brick mansions
set well back from the street. At length he paused in front of a wooden
house of a dirty grayish brown, too high for its length and breadth, with
tall shutters of the same color, and a picket fence on top of the
retaining wall which lifted the yard above the plank walk. It was an ugly
house, surely. But an ugly house may look beautiful when surrounded by
such heavy trees as this was. Their shade was the most inviting thing
Stephen had seen. A boy of sixteen or so was swinging on the gate,
plainly a very mischievous boy, with a round, laughing, sunburned face
and bright eyes. In front of the gate was a shabby carriage with top and
side curtains, hitched to a big bay horse.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Lincoln lives?" inquired Stephen.

"Well, I guess," said the boy. "I'm his son, and he lives right here when
he's at home. But that hasn't been often lately."

"Where is he?" asked Stephen, beginning to realize the purport of his
conversations with citizens.

Young Mr. Lincoln mentioned the name of a small town in the northern part
of the state, where he said his father would stop that night. He told
Stephen that he looked wilted, invited him into the house to have a glass
of lemonade, and to join him and another boy in a fishing excursion with
the big bay horse. Stephen told young Mr. Lincoln that he should have to
take the first train after his father.

"Jimmy!" exclaimed the other, enviously, "then you'll hear the Freeport
debate."

Now it has been said that the day was scorching hot. And when Stephen had
got back to the wooden station, and had waited an hour for the
Bloomington express, his anxiety to hear the Freeport debate was not as
keen as it might have been. Late in the afternoon he changed at
Bloomington to the Illinois Central Railroad: The sun fell down behind
the cardboard edge of the prairie, the train rattled on into the north,
wrapped in its dust and Smoke, and presently became a long comet, roaring
red, to match that other comet which flashed in the sky.

By this time it may be said that our friend was heartily sick of his
mission, He tried to doze; but two men, a farmer and a clerk, got in at a
way station, and sat behind him. They began to talk about this man
Lincoln.

"Shucks," said the clerk, "think of him opposing the Little Giant."

"He's right smart, Sam," said the farmer. "He's got a way of sayin'
things that's clear. We boys can foller him. But Steve Douglas, he only
mixes you up."

His companion guffawed.

"Because why?" he shouted. "Because you ain't had no education: What does
a rail-sputter like Abe know about this government? Judge Douglas has
worked it all out. He's smart. Let the territories take care of
themselves. Besides, Abe ain't got no dignity. The fust of this week I
seen him side-tracked down the road here in a caboose, while Doug went by
in a special."

"Abe is a plain man, Sam," the farmer answered solemnly. "But you watch
out for him."

It was ten o'clock when Stephen descended at his destination. Merciful
night hid from his view the forlorn station and the ragged town. The
baggage man told him that Mr. Lincoln was at the tavern.

That tavern! Will words describe the impression it made on a certain
young man from Boston! It was long and low and ramshackly and hot that
night as the inside of a brick-kiln. As he drew near it on the single
plant walk over the black prairie-mud, he saw countrymen and politicians
swarming its narrow porch and narrower hall. Discussions in all keys were
in progress, and it, was with vast difficulty that our distracted young
man pushed through and found the landlord, This personage was the coolest
of the lot. Confusion was but food for his smiles, importunity but
increased his suavity. And of the seeming hundreds that pressed him, he
knew and utilized the Christian name of all. From behind a corner of the
bar he held them all at bay, and sent them to quarters like the old
campaigner he was.

"Now, Ben, tain't no use gettin' mad. You, and Josh way, an' Will, an'
Sam, an' the Cap'n, an' the four Beaver brothers, will all sleep in
number ten. What's that, Franklin? No, sirree, the Honerable Abe, and
Mister Hill, and Jedge Oglesby is sleepin' in seven." The smell of
perspiration was stifling as Stephen pushed up to the master of the
situation. "What's that? Supper, young man? Ain't you had no supper?
Gosh, I reckon if you can fight your way to the dinin' room, the gals'll
give you some pork and a cup of coffee."

After a preliminary scuffle with a drunken countryman in mud-caked boots,
Mr. Brice presently reached the long table in the dining-room. A sense of
humor not quite extinct made him smile as he devoured pork chops and
greasy potatoes and heavy apple pie. As he was finishing the pie, he
became aware of the tavern keeper standing over him.

"Are you one of them flip Chicagy reporters?" asked that worthy, with a
suspicious eye on Stephen's clothes.

Our friend denied this.

"You didn't talk jest like 'em. Guess you'll be here, tonight--"

"Yes," said Stephen, wearily. And he added, outs of force of habit, "Can
you give me a room?"

"I reckon," was the cheerful reply. "Number ten, There ain't nobody in
there but Ben Billings, and the four Beaver brothers, an' three more.
I'll have a shake-down for ye next the north window."

Stephen's thanks for the hospitality perhaps lacked heartiness. But
perceiving his host still contemplating him, he was emboldened to say:

"Has Mr. Lincoln gone to bed?"

"Who? Old Abe, at half-past ten? Wal I reckon you don't know him."

Stephen's reflections here on the dignity of the Senatorial candidate of
the Republican Party in Illinois were novel, at any rate. He thought of
certain senators he had seen in Massachusetts.

"The only reason he ain't down here swappin' yarns with the boys, is
because he's havin' some sort of confab with the Jedge and Joe Medill of
the 'Chicagy Press' and 'Tribune'."

"Do you think he would see me?" asked Stephen, eagerly. He was emboldened
by the apparent lack of ceremony of the candidate. The landlord looked at
him in some surprise.

"Wal, I reckon. Jest go up an' knock at the door number seven, and say
Tom Wright sent ye."

"How shall I know Mr. Lincoln?" asked Stephen.

"Pick out the ugliest man in the room. There ain't nobody I kin think of
uglier than Abe."

Bearing in mind this succinct description of the candidate, Stephen
climbed the rickety stairs to the low second story. All the bedroom doors
were flung open except one, on which the number 7 was inscribed. From
within came bursts of uproarious laughter, and a summons to enter.

He pushed open the door, and as soon as his eyes became, accustomed to
the tobacco smoke, he surveyed the room. There was a bowl on the floor,
the chair where it belonged being occupied. There was a very inhospitable
looking bed, two shake-downs, and four Windsor chairs in more or less
state of dilapidation--all occupied likewise. A country glass lamp was
balanced on a rough shelf, and under it a young man sat absorbed in
making notes, and apparently oblivious to the noise around him. Every
gentleman in the room was collarless, coatless, tieless, and vestless.
Some were engaged in fighting gnats and June bugs, while others battled
with mosquitoes--all save the young man who wrote, he being wholly
indifferent.

Stephen picked out the homeliest man in the room. There was no mistaking
him. And, instead of a discussion of the campaign with the other
gentlemen, Mr. Lincoln was defending what do you think? Mr. Lincoln was
defending an occasional and judicious use of swear words.

"Judge," said he, "you do an almighty lot of cussing in your speeches,
and perhaps it ain't a bad way to keep things stirred up."

"Well," said the Judge, "a fellow will rip out something once in a while
before he has time to shut it off."

Mr. Lincoln passed his fingers through his tousled hair. His thick lower
lip crept over in front of the upper one, A gleam stirred in the deep-set
gray eyes.

"Boys," he asked, "did I ever tell you about Sam'l, the old Quaker's
apprentice?"

There was a chorus of "No's" and "Go ahead, Abe?" The young man who was
writing dropped his pencil. As for Stephen, this long, uncouth man of the
plains was beginning to puzzle him. The face, with its crude features and
deep furrows, relaxed into intense soberness. And Mr. Lincoln began his
story with a slow earnestness that was truly startling, considering the
subject.

"This apprentice, Judge, was just such an incurable as you." (Laughter.)
"And Sam'l, when he wanted to, could get out as many cusses in a second
as his anvil shot sparks. And the old man used to wrastle with him nights
and speak about punishment, and pray for him in meeting. But it didn't do
any good. When anything went wrong, Sam'l had an appropriate word for the
occasion. One day the old man got an inspiration when he was scratching
around in the dirt for an odd-sized iron.

"'Sam'l,' says he, 'I want thee.'

"Sam'l went, and found the old man standing over a big rat hole, where
the rats came out to feed on the scraps.

"'Sam'l,' says he, 'fetch the tongs.'

"Sam'l fetched the tongs.

"'Now, Sam'l,' says the old man, 'thou wilt sit here until thou hast a
rat. Never mind thy dinner. And when thou hast him, if I hear thee swear,
thou wilt sit here until thou hast another. Dost thou mind?'"

Here Mr. Lincoln seized two cotton umbrellas, rasped his chair over the
bare boor into a corner of the room, and sat hunched over an imaginary
rat hole, for all the world like a gawky Quaker apprentice. And this was
a candidate for the Senate of the United States, who on the morrow was to
meet in debate the renowned and polished Douglas!

"Well," Mr. Lincoln continued, "that was on a Monday, I reckon, and the
boys a-shouting to have their horses shod. Maybe you think they didn't
have some fun with Sam'l. But Sam'l sat there, and sat there, and sat
there, and after a while the old man pulled out his dinner-pail. Sam'l
never opened his mouth. First thing you know, snip went the tongs." Mr.
Lincoln turned gravely around. "What do you reckon Sam'l said, Judge?"

The Judge, at random, summoned up a good one, to the delight of the
audience.

"Judge," said Mr. Lincoln, with solemnity, "I reckon that's what you'd
have said. Sam'l never said a word, and the old man kept on eating his
dinner. One o'clock came, and the folks began to drop in again, but
Sam'l, he sat there. 'Long towards night the boys collected 'round the
door. They were getting kind of interested. Sam'l, he never looked up."
Here Mr. Lincoln bent forward a little, and his voice fell to a loud,
drawling whisper. "First thing you know, here come the whiskers peeping
up, then the pink eyes a--blinking at the forge, then--!"

"Suddenly he brought the umbrellas together with whack.

"'By God,' yells Sam'l, 'I have thee at last!'"

Amid the shouts, Mr. Lincoln stood up, his long body swaying to and fro
as he lifted high the improvised tongs. They heard a terrified squeal,
and there was the rat squirming and wriggling,--it seemed before their
very eyes. And Stephen forgot the country tavern, the country politician,
and was transported straightway into the Quaker's smithy.




CHAPTER III

IN WHICH STEPHEN LEARNS SOMETHING

It was Mr. Lincoln who brought him back. The astonishing candidate for
the Senate had sunk into his chair, his face relaxed into sadness save
for the sparkle lurking in the eyes. So he sat, immobile, until the
laughter had died down to silence. Then he turned to Stephen.

"Sonny," he said, "did you want to see me?"

Stephen was determined to be affable and kind, and (shall we say it?) he
would not make Mr. Lincoln uncomfortable either by a superiority of
English or the certain frigidity of manner which people in the West said
he had. But he tried to imagine a Massachusetts senator, Mr. Sumner, for
instance, going through the rat story, and couldn't. Somehow,
Massachusetts senators hadn't this gift. And yet he was not quite sure
that it wasn't a fetching gift. Stephen did not quite like to be called
"Sonny." But he looked into two gray eyes, and at the face, and something
curious happened to him. How was he to know that thousands of his
countrymen were to experience the same sensation?

"Sonny," said Mr. Lincoln again, "did you want to see me?"

"Yes, sir." Stephen wondered at the "sir." It had been involuntary. He
drew from his inner pocket the envelope which the Judge had given him.

Mr. Lincoln ripped it open. A document fell out, and a letter. He put the
document in his tall hat, which was upside down on the floor. As he got
deeper into the letter, he pursed his mouth, and the lines of his face
deepened in a smile. Then he looked up, grave again.

Judge Whipple told you to run till you found me, did he, Mr. Brice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is the Judge the same old criss-cross, contrary, violent fool that he
always was?"

Providence put an answer in Stephen's mouth.

"He's been very good to me, Mr. Lincoln."

Mr. Lincoln broke into laughter.

"Why, he's the biggest-hearted man I know. You know him, Oglesby,--Silas
Whipple. But a man has to be a Daniel or a General Putnam to venture into
that den of his. There's only one man in the world who can beard Silas,
and he's the finest states-right Southern gentleman you ever saw. I mean
Colonel Carvel. You've heard of him, Oglesby. Don't they quarrel once in
a while, Mr. Brice?"

"They do have occasional arguments,' said Stephen, amused.

"Arguments!" cried Mr. Lincoln; "well, I couldn't come as near to
fighting every day and stand it. If my dog and Bill's dog across the
street walked around each other and growled for half a day, and then lay
down together, as Carvel and Whipple do, by Jing, I'd put pepper on their
noses--"

"I reckon Colonel Carvel isn't a fighting man," said some one, at random.

Strangely enough, Stephen was seized with a desire to vindicate the
Colonel's courage. Both Mr. Lincoln and Judge Oglesby forestalled him.

"Not a fighting man!" exclaimed the Judge. "Why, the other day--"

"Now, Oglesby," put in Mr. Lincoln, "I wanted to tell that story."

Stephen had heard it, and so have we. But Mr. Lincoln's imitation of the
Colonel's drawl brought him a pang like homesickness.

"'No, suh, I didn't intend to shoot. Not if he had gone off straight. But
he wriggled and twisted like a rattlesnake, and I just couldn't resist,
suh. Then I sent m'nigger Ephum to tell him not to let me catch sight of
him 'round the Planters' House. Yes, suh, that's what he was. One of
these damned Yankees who come South and go into nigger-deals and
politics."'

Mr. Lincoln glanced at Stephen, and then again at the Judge's letter. He
took up his silk hat and thrust that, too, into the worn lining, which
was already filled with papers. He clapped the hat on his head, and
buttoned on his collar.

"I reckon I'll go for a walk, boys," he said, "and clear my head, so as
to be ready for the Little Giant to-morrow at Freeport. Mr. Brice, do you
feel like walking?"

Stephen, taken aback, said that he did.

"Now, Abe, this is just durned foolishness," one of the gentlemen
expostulated. "We want to know if you're going to ask Douglas that
question."

"If you do, you kill yourself, Lincoln," said another, who Stephen
afterwards learned was Mr. Medill, proprietor of the great 'Press and
Tribune'.

"I guess I'll risk it, Joe," said Mr. Lincoln, gravely. Suddenly comes
the quiver about the corners of his mouth and the gray eyes respond.
"Boys," said he, "did you ever hear the story of farmer Bell, down in
Egypt? I'll tell it to you, boys, and then perhaps you'll know why I'll
ask Judge Douglas that question. Farmer Bell had the prize Bartlett pear
tree, and the prettiest gal in that section. And he thought about the
same of each of 'em. All the boys were after Sue Bell. But there was only
one who had any chance of getting her, and his name was Jim Rickets. Jim
was the handsomest man in that section. He's been hung since. But Jim had
a good deal out of life,--all the appetites, and some of the
gratifications. He liked Sue, and he liked a luscious Bartlett. And he
intended to have both. And it just so happened that that prize pear tree
had a whopper on that year, and old man Bell couldn't talk of anything
else.

"Now there was an ugly galoot whose name isn't worth mentioning. He knew
he wasn't in any way fit for Sue, and he liked pears about as well as Jim
Rickets. Well, one night here comes Jim along the road, whistling; to
court Susan, and there was the ugly galoot a-yearning on the bank under
the pear tree. Jim was all fixed up, and he says to the galoot, 'Let's
have a throw.' Now the galoot knew old Bell was looking over the fence So
he says, 'All right,' and he gives Jim the first shot--Jim fetched down
the big pear, got his teeth in it, and strolled off to the house, kind of
pitiful of the galoot for a, half-witted ass. When he got to the door,
there was the old man. 'What are you here for?' says he. 'Why,' says
Rickets, in his off-hand way, for he always had great confidence, 'to
fetch Sue.'"

"The old man used to wear brass toes to keep his boots from wearing out,"
said Mr. Lincoln, dreamily.

"You see," continued Mr. Lincoln, "you see the galoot knew that Jim
Rickets wasn't to be trusted with Susan Bell."

Some of the gentlemen appeared to see the point of this political
parable, for they laughed uproariously. The others laughed, too. Then
they slapped their knees, looked at Mr. Lincoln's face, which was
perfectly sober, and laughed again, a little fainter. Then the Judge
looked as solemn as his title.

"It won't do, Abe," said he. "You commit suicide."

"You'd better stick to the pear, Abe," said Mr. Medill, "and fight
Stephen A. Douglas here and now. This isn't any picnic. Do you know who
he is?"

"Why, yes, Joe," said Mr. Lincoln, amiably. "He's a man with tens of
thousands of blind followers. It's my business to make some of those
blind followers see."

By this time Stephen was burning to know the question that Mr. Lincoln
wished to ask the Little Giant, and why the other gentlemen were against
it. But Mr. Lincoln surprised him still further in taking him by the arm.
Turning to the young reporter, Mr. Hill, who had finished his writing, he
said:

"Bob, a little air will do you good. I've had enough of the old boys for
a while, and I'm going to talk to somebody any own age."

Stephen was halfway down the corridor when he discovered that he had
forgotten his hat. As he returned he heard somebody say:

"If that ain't just like Abe. He stopped to pull a flea out of his
stocking when he was going to fight that duel with Shields, and now he's
walking with boys before a debate with the smartest man in this country.
And there's heaps of things he ought to discuss with us."

"Reckon we haven't got much to do with it," said another, half laughing,
half rueful. "There's some things Abe won't stand."

From the stairs Stephen saw Mr. Lincoln threading his way through the
crowd below, laughing at one, pausing to lay his hand on the shoulder of
another, and replying to a rough sally of a third to make the place a
tumult of guffaws. But none had the temerity to follow him. When Stephen
caught up with him in the little country street, he was talking earnestly
to Mr. Hill, the young reporter of the Press and Tribune. And what do you
think was the subject? The red comet in the sky that night. Stephen kept
pace in silence with Mr. Lincoln's strides, another shock in store for
him. This rail-splitter, this postmaster, this flat-boatman, whom he had
not credited with a knowledge of the New Code, was talking Astronomy. And
strange to say, Mr. Brice was learning.

"Bob," said Mr. Lincoln, "can you elucidate the problem of the three
bodies?"

To Stephen's surprise, Mr. Hill elucidated.

The talk then fell upon novels and stories, a few of which Mr. Lincoln
seemed to have read. He spoke, among others, of the "Gold Bug." "The
story is grand," said he, "but it might as well have been written of
Robinson Crusoe's island. What a fellow wants in a book is to know where
he is. There are not many novels, or ancient works for that matter, that
put you down anywhere."

"There is that genuine fragment which Cicero has preserved from a last
work of Aristotle," said Mr. Hill, slyly. "'If there were beings who
lived in the depths & the earth, and could emerge through the open
fissures, and could suddenly behold the earth, the sea, and the:--vault
of heaven--'"

"But you--you impostor," cried Mr. Lincoln, interrupting, "you're giving
us Humboldt's Cosmos."

Mr. Hill owned up, laughing.

It is remarkable how soon we accustom ourselves to a strange situation.
And to Stephen it was no less strange to be walking over a muddy road of
the prairie with this most singular man and a newspaper correspondent,
than it might have been to the sub-terrestrial inhabitant to emerge on
the earth's surface. Stephen's mind was in the process of a chemical
change: Suddenly it seemed to him as if he had known this tall Illinoisan
always. The whim of the senatorial candidate in choosing him for a
companion he did not then try to account for.

"Come, Mr. Stephen," said Mr. Lincoln, presently, "where do you hail
from?"

"Boston," said Stephen.

"No!" said Mr. Lincoln, incredulously. "And how does it happen that you
come to me with a message from a rank Abolitionist lawyer in St. Louis?"

"Is the Judge a friend of yours, sir?" Stephen asked.

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Lincoln, "didn't he tell you he was?"

"He said nothing at all, sir, except to tell me to travel until I found
you."

"I call the Judge a friend of mine," said Mr. Lincoln. "He may not claim
me because I do not believe in putting all slave-owners to the sword."

"I do not think that Judge Whipple is precisely an Abolitionist, sir."

"What! And how do you feel, Mr. Stephen?"

Stephen replied in figures. It was rare with him, and he must have caught
it from Mr. Lincoln.

"I am not for ripping out the dam suddenly, sir, that would drown the
nation. I believe that the water can be drained off in some other way."

Mr. Lincoln's direct answer to this was to give Stephen stinging slap
between the shoulder-blades.

"God bless the boy!" he cried. "He has thought it out. Bob, take that
down for the Press and Tribune as coming from a rising young politician
of St. Louis."

"Why," Stephen blurted out, "I--I thought you were an Abolitionist, Mr.
Lincoln."

"Mr. Brice," said Mr. Lincoln, "I have as much use for the Boston
Liberator as I have for the Charleston Courier. You may guess how much
that is. The question is not whether we shall or shall not have slavery,
but whether slavery shall stay where it is, or be extended according to
Judge Douglas's ingenious plan. The Judge is for breeding worms. I am for
cauterizing the sore so that it shall not spread. But I tell you, Mr.
Brice, that this nation cannot exist half slave and half free."

Was it the slap on the back that opened Stephen's eyes? It was certain
that as they returned to the tavern the man at his side was changed. He
need not have felt chagrined. Men in high places underestimated Lincoln,
or did not estimate him at all. Affection came first. The great warm
heart had claimed Stephen as it claimed all who came near it.

The tavern was deserted save for a few stragglers. Under the dim light at
the bar Mr. Lincoln took off his hat and drew the Judge's letter from the
lining.

"Mr. Stephen," said he, "would you like to come to Freeport with me
to-morrow and hear the debate?"

An hour earlier he would have declined with thanks. But now! Now his face
lighted at the prospect, and suddenly fell again. Mr. Lincoln guessed the
cause. He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder, and laughed.

"I reckon you're thinking of what the Judge will say."

Stephen smiled.

"I'll take care of the Judge," said Mr. Lincoln. "I'm not afraid of him."
He drew forth from the inexhaustible hat a slip of paper, and began to
write.

"There," said he, when he had finished, "a friend of mine is going to
Springfield in the morning, and he'll send that to the Judge."

And this is what he had written:--

     "I have borrowed Steve for a day or two, and guarantee
     to return him a good Republican.
                  A. LINCOLN."

It is worth remarking that this was the first time Mr. Brice had been
called "Steve" and had not resented it.

Stephen was embarrassed. He tried to thank Mr. Lincoln, but that
gentleman's quizzical look cut him short. And the next remark made him
gasp.

"Look here, Steve," said he, "you know a parlor from a drawing-room. What
did you think of me when you saw me to-night?"

Stephen blushed furiously, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

"I'll tell you," said Mr. Lincoln, with his characteristic smile, "you
thought that you wouldn't pick me out of a bunch of horses to race with
the Senator."




CHAPTER IV

THE QUESTION

Many times since Abraham Lincoln has been called to that mansion which
God has reserved for the patriots who have served Him also, Stephen Brice
has thought of that steaming night in the low-ceiled room of the country
tavern, reeking with the smell of coarse food and hot humanity. He
remembers vividly how at first his gorge rose, and recalls how gradually
there crept over him a forgetfulness of the squalidity and discomfort.
Then came a space gray with puzzling wonder. Then the dawning of a
worship for a very ugly man in a rumpled and ill-made coat.

You will perceive that there was hope for Stephen. On his shake-down that
night, oblivious to the snores of his companions and the droning of the
insects, he lay awake. And before his eyes was that strange, marked face,
with its deep lines that blended both humor and sadness there. It was
homely, and yet Stephen found himself reflecting that honesty was just as
homely, and plain truth. And yet both were beautiful to those who had
learned to love them. Just so this Mr. Lincoln.

He fell asleep wondering why Judge Whipple had sent him.

It was in accord with nature that reaction came with the morning. Such a
morning, and such a place!

He was awakened, shivering, by the beat of rain on the roof, and
stumbling over the prostrate forms of the four Beaver brothers, reached
the window. Clouds filled the sky, and Joshway, whose pallet was under
the sill, was in a blessed state of moisture.

No wonder some of his enthusiasm had trickled away!

He made his toilet in the wet under the pump outside; where he had to
wait his turn. And he rather wished he were going back to St. Louis. He
had an early breakfast of fried eggs and underdone bacon, and coffee
which made him pine for Hester's. The dishes were neither too clean nor
too plentiful, being doused in water as soon as ever they were out of
use.

But after breakfast the sun came out, and a crowd collected around the
tavern, although the air was chill and the muck deep in the street.
Stephen caught glimpses of Mr. Lincoln towering above the knots of
country politicians who surrounded him, and every once in a while a knot
would double up with laughter. There was no sign that the senatorial
aspirant took the situation seriously; that the coming struggle with his
skilful antagonist was weighing him down in the least. Stephen held aloof
from the groups, thinking that Mr. Lincoln had forgotten him. He decided
to leave for St. Louis on the morning train, and was even pushing toward
the tavern entrance with his bag in his hand, when he was met by Mr.
Hill.

"I had about given you up, Mr. Brice," he said. "Mr. Lincoln asked me to
get hold of you, and bring you to him alive or dead."

Accordingly Stephen was led to the station, where a long train of twelve
cars was pulled up, covered with flags and bunting. On entering one of
these, he perceived Mr. Lincoln sprawled (he could think of no other word
to fit the attitude) on a seat next the window, and next him was Mr.
Medill of the Press and Tribune. The seat just in front was reserved for
Mr. Hill, who was to make any notes necessary. Mr. Lincoln looked up. His
appearance was even less attractive than the night before, as he had on a
dirty gray linen duster.

"I thought you'd got loose, Steve," he said, holding out his hand. "Glad
to see you. Just you sit down there next to Bob, where I can talk to
you."

Stephen sat down, diffident, for he knew that there were others in that
train who would give ten years of their lives for that seat.

"I've taken a shine to this Bostonian, Joe," said Mr Lincoln to Mr.
Medill. "We've got to catch 'em young to do anything with 'em, you know.
Now, Steve, just give me a notion how politics are over in St. Louis.
What do they think of our new Republican party? Too bran new for old St.
Louis, eh?"

Stephen saw expostulation in Mr. Medill's eyes, and hesitated. And Mr.
Lincoln seemed to feel Medill's objections, as by mental telepathy. But
he said:-- "We'll come to that little matter later, Joe, when the cars
start."

Naturally, Stephen began uneasily. But under the influence of that kindly
eye he thawed, and forgot himself. He felt that this man was not one to
feign an interest. The shouts of the people on the little platform
interrupted the account, and the engine staggered off with its load.

"I reckon St. Louis is a nest of Southern Democrats," Mr. Lincoln
remarked, "and not much opposition."

"There are quite a few Old Line Whigs, sir," ventured Stephen, smiling.

"Joe," said Mr. Lincoln, "did you ever hear Warfield's definition of an
Old Line Whig?"

Mr. Medill had not.

"A man who takes his toddy regularly, and votes the Democratic ticket
occasionally, and who wears ruffled shirts."

Both of these gentlemen laughed, and two more in the seat behind, who had
an ear to the conversation.

"But, sir," said Stephen, seeing that he was expected to go on, "I think
that the Republican party will gather a considerable strength there in
another year or two. We have the material for powerful leaders in Mr.
Blair and others" (Mr. Lincoln nodded at the name). "We are getting an
ever increasing population from New England, mostly of young men who will
take kindly to the new party." And then he added, thinking of his
pilgrimage the Sunday before: "South St. Louis is a solid mass of
Germans, who are all antislavery. But they are very foreign still, and
have all their German institutions."

"The Turner Halls?" Mr. Lincoln surprised him by inquiring.

"Yes. And I believe that they drill there."

"Then they will the more easily be turned into soldiers if the time
should come," said Mr. Lincoln. And he added quickly, "I pray that it may
not."

Stephen had cause to remember that observation, and the acumen it showed,
long afterward.

The train made several stops, and at each of them shoals of country
people filled the aisles, and paused for a most familiar chat with the
senatorial candidate. Many called him Abe. His appearance was the equal
in roughness to theirs, his manner if anything was more democratic,--yet
in spite of all this Stephen in them detected a deference which might
almost be termed a homage. There were many women among them. Had our
friend been older, he might have known that the presence of good women in
a political crowd portends something. As it was, he was surprised. He was
destined to be still more surprised that day.

When they had left behind them the shouts of the little down of Dixon,
Mr. Lincoln took off his hat, and produced a crumpled and not too
immaculate scrap of paper from the multitude therein.

"Now, Joe," said he, "here are the four questions I intend to ask Judge
Douglas. I am ready for you. Fire away."

"We don't care anything about the others," answered Mr. Medill. "But I
tell you this. If you ask that second one, you'll never see the United
States Senate."

"And the Republican party in this state will have had a blow from which
it can scarcely recover," added Mr. Judd, chairman of the committee.

Mr. Lincoln did not appear to hear them. His eyes were far away over the
wet prairie.

Stephen held his breath. But neither he, nor Medill, nor Judd, nor Hill
guessed at the pregnancy of that moment. How were they to know that the
fate of the United States of America was concealed in that Question,
--was to be decided on a rough wooden platform that day in the town of
Freeport, Illinois?

But Abraham Lincoln, the uncouth man in the linen duster with the tousled
hair, knew it. And the stone that was rejected of the builders was to
become the corner-stone of the temple.

Suddenly Mr. Lincoln recalled himself, glanced at the paper, and cleared
his throat. In measured tones, plainly heard above the rush and roar of
the train, he read the Question:

   "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way,
   against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
   slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
   Constitution?"

Mr. Medill listened intently.

"Abe," said he, solemnly, "Douglas will answer yes, or equivocate, and
that is all the assurance these Northern Democrats want to put Steve
Douglas in the Senate. They'll snow you under."

"All right," answered Mr. Lincoln, quietly.

"All right?" asked Mr. Medill, reflecting the sheer astonishment of the
others; "then why the devil are you wearing yourself out? And why are we
spending our time and money on you?"

Mr. Lincoln laid his hand on Medill's sleeve.

"Joe," said he, "a rat in the larder is easier to catch than a rat that
has the run of the cellar. You know, where to set your trap in the
larder. I'll tell you why I'm in this campaign: to catch Douglas now, and
keep him out of the White House in 1860. To save this country of ours,
Joe. She's sick."

There was a silence, broken by two exclamations.

"But see here, Abe," said Mr. Medill, as soon as ever he got his breath,
"what have we got to show for it? Where do you come in?"

Mr. Lincoln smiled wearily.

"Nowhere, I reckon," he answered simply.

"Good Lord!" said Mr. Judd.

Mr. Medill gulped.

"You mean to say, as the candidate of the Republican party, you don't
care whether you get to the Senate?"

"Not if I can send Steve Douglas there with his wings broken," was the
calm reply.

"Suppose he does answer yes, that slavery can be excluded?" said Mr.
Judd.

"Then," said Mr. Lincoln, "then Douglas loses the vote of the great
slave-holders, the vote of the solid South, that he has been fostering
ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South
the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm
mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead as 1860 for
some time."

Another silence followed these words. There was a stout man standing in
the aisle, and he spat deftly out of the open window.

"You may wing Steve Douglas, Abe," said he, gloomily, "but the gun will
kick you over the bluff."

"Don't worry about me, Ed," said Mr. Lincoln. "I'm not worth it."

In a wave of comprehension the significance of all this was revealed to
Stephen Brice, The grim humor, the sagacious statesmanship, and (best of
all)--the superb self sacrifice of it, struck him suddenly. I think it
was in that hour that he realized the full extent of the wisdom he was
near, which was like unto Solomon's.

Shame surged in Stephen's face that he should have misjudged him. He had
come to patronize. He had remained to worship. And in after years, when
he thought of this new vital force which became part of him that day, it
was in the terms of Emerson: "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood."

How many have conversed with Lincoln before and since, and knew him not!

If an outward and visible sign of Mr. Lincoln's greatness were needed,
--he had chosen to speak to them in homely parables. The story of Farmer
Bell was plain as day. Jim Rickets, who had life all his own way, was
none other than Stephen A. Douglas, the easily successful. The ugly
galoot, who dared to raise his eyes only to the pear, was Mr. Lincoln
himself. And the pear was the Senatorship, which the galoot had denied
himself to save Susan from being Mr. Rickets' bride.

Stephen could understand likewise the vehemence of the Republican leaders
who crowded around their candidate and tried to get him to retract that
Question. He listened quietly, he answered with a patient smile. Now and
then he threw a story into the midst of this discussion which made them
laugh in spite of themselves. The hopelessness of the case was quite
plain to Mr. Hill, who smiled, and whispered in Stephen's ear: "He has
made up his mind. They will not budge him an inch, and they know it."

Finally Mr. Lincoln took the scrap of paper, which was even more dirty
and finger-marked by this time, and handed it to Mr. Hill. The train was
slowing down for Freeport. In the distance, bands could be heard playing,
and along the track, line upon line of men and women were cheering and
waving. It was ten o'clock, raw and cold for that time of the year, and
the sun was trying to come out.

"Bob," said Mr. Lincoln, "be sure you get that right in your notes. And,
Steve, you stick close to me, and you'll see the show. Why, boys," he
added, smiling, "there's the great man's private car, cannon and all."

All that Stephen saw was a regular day-car on a sidetrack. A brass cannon
was on the tender hitched behind it.




CHAPTER V

THE CRISIS

Stephen A. Douglas, called the Little Giant on account of his intellect,
was a type of man of which our race has had some notable examples,
although they are not characteristic. Capable of sacrifice to their
country, personal ambition is, nevertheless, the mainspring of their
actions. They must either be before the public, or else unhappy. This
trait gives them a large theatrical strain, and sometimes brands them as
adventurers. Their ability saves them from being demagogues.

In the case of Douglas, he had deliberately renewed some years before the
agitation on the spread of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of
extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed
at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it
really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to
silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who
was heaven-sent in time of need, was Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Douglas was a juggler, a political prestidigitateur. He did things
before the eyes of the Senate and the nation. His balm for the healing of
the nation's wounds was a patent medicine so cleverly concocted that
experts alone could show what was in it. So abstruse and twisted were
some of Mr. Douglas's doctrines that a genius alone might put them into
simple words, for the common people.

The great panacea for the slavery trouble put forth by Mr. Douglas at
that time was briefly this: that the people of the new territories should
decide for themselves, subject to the Constitution, whether they should
have slavery or not, and also decide for themselves all other questions
under the Constitution. Unhappily for Mr. Douglas, there was the famous
Dred Scott decision, which had set the South wild with joy the year
before, and had cast a gloom over the North. The Chief Justice of the
United States had declared that under the Constitution slaves were
property,--and as such every American citizen owning slaves could carry
them about with him wherever he went. Therefore the territorial
legislatures might pass laws until they were dumb, and yet their settlers
might bring with them all the slaves they pleased.

And yet we must love the Judge. He was a gentleman, a strong man, and a
patriot. He was magnanimous, and to his immortal honor be it said that
he, in the end, won the greatest of all struggles. He conquered himself.
He put down that mightiest thing that was in him,--his ambition for
himself. And he set up, instead, his ambition for his country. He bore no
ill-will toward the man whose fate was so strangely linked to his, and
who finally came to that high seat of honor and of martyrdom which he
coveted. We shall love the Judge, and speak of him with reverence, for
that sublime act of kindness before the Capitol in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln might have prayed on that day of the Freeport debate:

"Forgive him, Lord. He knows not what he does." Lincoln descried the
danger afar, and threw his body into the breach.

That which passed before Stephen's eyes, and to which his ears listened
at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He
wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when
the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English
nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead with
something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung from the
loins of his own. Crudeness he saw, vulgarity he heard, but Force he
felt, and marvelled.

America was in Freeport that day, the rush of her people and the surprise
of her climate. The rain had ceased, and quickly was come out of the
northwest a boisterous wind, chilled by the lakes and scented by the
hemlocks of the Minnesota forests. The sun smiled and frowned Clouds
hurried in the sky, mocking the human hubbub below. Cheering thousands
pressed about the station as Mr. Lincoln's train arrived. They hemmed him
in his triumphal passage under the great arching trees to the new
Brewster House. The Chief Marshal and his aides, great men before, were
suddenly immortal. The county delegations fell into their proper
precedence like ministers at a state dinner. "We have faith in Abraham,
Yet another County for the Rail-sputter, Abe the Giant-killer,"--so the
banners read. Here, much bedecked, was the Galena Lincoln Club, part of
Joe Davies's shipment. Fifes skirled, and drums throbbed, and the stars
and stripes snapped in the breeze. And here was a delegation headed by
fifty sturdy ladies on horseback, at whom Stephen gaped like a
countryman. Then came carryalls of all ages and degrees, wagons from this
county and that county, giddily draped, drawn by horses from one to six,
or by mules, their inscriptions addressing their senatorial candidate in
all degrees of familiarity, but not contempt. What they seemed proudest
of was that he had been a rail-splitter, for nearly all bore a
fence-rail.

But stay, what is this wagon with the high sapling flagstaff in the
middle, and the leaves still on it?

     "Westward the Star of Empire takes its way.
     The girls link on to Lincoln; their mothers were for Clay."

Here was glory to blind you,--two and thirty maids in red sashes and blue
liberty caps with white stars. Each was a state of the Union, and every
one of them was for Abraham, who called them his "Basket of Flowers."
Behind them, most touching of all, sat a thirty-third shackled in chains.
That was Kansas. Alas, the men of Kansas was far from being as sorrowful
as the part demanded,--in spite of her instructions she would smile at
the boys. But the appealing inscription she bore, "Set me free" was
greeted with storms of laughter, the boldest of the young men shouting
that she was too beautiful to be free, and some of the old men, to their
shame be it said likewise shouted. No false embarrassment troubled
Kansas. She was openly pleased. But the young men who had brought their
sweethearts to town, and were standing hand in hand with them, for
obvious reasons saw nothing: They scarcely dared to look at Kansas, and
those who did were so loudly rebuked that they turned down the side
streets.

During this part of the day these loving couples, whose devotion was so
patent to the whole world, were by far the most absorbing to Stephen. He
watched them having their fortunes told, the young women blushing and
crying, "Say!" and "Ain't he wicked?" and the young men getting their
ears boxed for certain remarks. He watched them standing open-mouthed at
the booths and side shows with hands still locked, or again they were
chewing cream candy in unison. Or he glanced sidewise at them, seated in
the open places with the world so far below them that even the insistent
sound of the fifes and drums rose but faintly to their ears.

And perhaps,--we shall not say positively,--perhaps Mr. Brice's thoughts
went something like this, "O that love were so simple a matter to all!"
But graven on his face was what is called the "Boston scorn." And no
scorn has been known like unto it since the days of Athens.

So Stephen made the best of his way to the Brewster House, the elegance
and newness of which the citizens of Freeport openly boasted. Mr. Lincoln
had preceded him, and was even then listening to a few remarks of burning
praise by an honorable gentleman. Mr. Lincoln himself made a few remarks,
which seemed so simple and rang so true, and were so free from political
rococo and decoration generally, that even the young men forgot their
sweethearts to listen. Then Mr. Lincoln went into the hotel, and the sun
slipped under a black cloud.

The lobby was full, and rather dirty, since the supply of spittoons was
so far behind the demand. Like the firmament, it was divided into little
bodies which revolved about larger bodies. But there lacked not here
supporters of the Little Giant, and discreet farmers of influence in
their own counties who waited to hear the afternoon's debate before
deciding. These and others did not hesitate to tell of the magnificence
of the Little Giant's torchlight procession the previous evening. Every
Dred-Scottite had carried a torch, and many transparencies, so that the
very glory of it had turned night into day. The Chief Lictor had
distributed these torches with an unheard-of liberality. But there lacked
not detractors who swore that John Dibble and other Lincolnites had
applied for torches for the mere pleasure of carrying them. Since dawn
the delegations had been heralded from the house-tops, and wagered on
while they were yet as worms far out or the prairie. All the morning
these continued to came in, and form in line to march past their
particular candidate. The second great event of the day was the event of
the special over the Galena roar, of sixteen cars and more than a
thousand pairs of sovereign lungs. With military precision they repaired
to the Brewster House, and ahead of then a banner was flung: "Winnebago
County for the Tall Sucker." And the Tall Sucker was on the steps to
receive them.

But Mr. Douglas, who had arrived the evening before to the booming of two
and thirty guns, had his banners end his bunting, too. The neighborhood
of Freeport was stronghold of Northern Democrats, ardent supporters of
the Little Giant if once they could believe that he did not intend to
betray them.

Stephen felt in his bones the coming of a struggle, and was thrilled.
Once he smiled at the thought that he had become an active partisan--nay,
a worshipper--of the uncouth Lincoln. Terrible suspicion for a
Bostonian,--had he been carried away? Was his hero, after all, a homespun
demagogue? Had he been wise in deciding before he had taught a glimpse of
the accomplished Douglas, whose name end fame filled the land? Stephen
did not waver in his allegiance. But in his heart there lurked a fear of
the sophisticated Judge and Senator and man of the world whom he had not
yet seen. In his notebook he had made a, copy of the Question, and young
Mr. Hill discovered him pondering in a corner of the lobby at dinnertime.
After dinner they went together to their candidate's room. They found the
doors open and the place packed, and there was Mr. Lincoln's very tall
hat towering above those of the other politicians pressed around him. Mr.
Lincoln took three strides in Stephen's direction and seized him by the
shoulder.

"Why, Steve," said he, "I thought you had got away again." Turning to a
big burly man with a good-natures face, who was standing by, he added.
"Jim, I want you to look out for this young man. Get him a seat on the
stands where he can hear."

Stephen stuck close to Jim. He never knew what the gentleman's last name
was, or whether he had any. It was but a few minutes' walk to the grove
where the speaking was to be. And as they made their way thither Mr.
Lincoln passed them in a Conestoga wagon drawn by six milk-white horses.
Jim informed Stephen that the Little Giant had had a six-horse coach. The
grove was black with people. Hovering about the hem of the crowd were the
sunburned young men in their Sunday best, still clinging fast to the
hands of the young women. Bands blared "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean."
Fakirs planted their stands in the way, selling pain-killers and ague
cures, watermelons and lemonade, Jugglers juggled, and beggars begged.
Jim said that there were sixteen thousand people in that grove. And he
told the truth.

Stephen now trembled for his champion. He tried to think of himself as
fifty years old, with the courage to address sixteen thousand people on
such a day, and quailed. What a man of affairs it must take to do that!
Sixteen thousand people, into each of whose breasts God had put different
emotions and convictions. He had never even imagined such a crowd as this
assembles merely to listen to a political debate. But then he remembered,
as they dodged from in front of the horses, what it was not merely a
political debate: The pulse of nation was here, a great nation stricken
with approaching fever. It was not now a case of excise, but of
existence.

This son of toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the
prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night
before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen
with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be moved by a patriotism
divine. In the breast of that farmer, in the breast of his tired wife who
held her child by the hand, had been instilled from birth that sublime
fervor which is part of their life who inherit the Declaration of
Independence. Instinctively these men who had fought and won the West had
scented the danger. With the spirit of their ancestors who had left their
farms to die on the bridge at Concord, or follow Ethan Allen into
Ticonderoga, these had come to Freeport. What were three days of bodily
discomfort! What even the loss of part of a cherished crop, if the
nation's existence were at stake and their votes might save it!

In the midst of that heaving human sea rose the bulwarks of a wooden
stand. But how to reach it? Jim was evidently a personage. The rough
farmers commonly squeezed a way for him. And when they did not, he made
it with his big body. As they drew near their haven, a great surging as
of a tidal wave swept them off their feet. There was a deafening shout,
and the stand rocked on its foundations. Before Stephen could collect his
wits, a fierce battle was raging about him. Abolitionist and Democrat,
Free Soiler and Squatter Sov, defaced one another in a rush for the
platform. The committeemen and reporters on top of it rose to its
defence. Well for Stephen that his companion was along. Jim was
recognized and hauled bodily into the fort, and Stephen after him. The
populace were driven off, and when the excitement died down again, he
found himself in the row behind the reporters. Young Mr. Hill paused
while sharpening his pencil to wave him a friendly greeting.

Stephen, craning in his seat, caught sight of Mr. Lincoln slouched into
one of his favorite attitudes, his chin resting in his hand.

But who is this, erect, compact, aggressive, searching with a confident
eye the wilderness of upturned faces? A personage, truly, to be
questioned timidly, to be approached advisedly. Here indeed was a lion,
by the very look of him, master of himself and of others. By reason of
its regularity and masculine strength, a handsome face. A man of the
world to the cut of the coat across the broad shoulders. Here was one to
lift a youngster into the realm of emulation, like a character in a play,
to arouse dreams of Washington and its senators and great men. For this
was one to be consulted by the great alone. A figure of dignity and
power, with magnetism to compel moods. Since, when he smiled, you warmed
in spite of yourself, and when he frowned the world looked grave.

The inevitable comparison was come, and Stephen's hero was shrunk once
more. He drew a deep breath, searched for the word, and gulped. There was
but the one word. How country Abraham Lincoln looked beside Stephen
Arnold Douglas!

Had the Lord ever before made and set over against each other two such
different men? Yes, for such are the ways of the Lord.

          ........................

The preliminary speaking was in progress, but Stephen neither heard nor
saw until he felt the heavy hand of his companion on his knee.

"There's something mighty strange, like fate, between them two," he was
saying. "I recklect twenty-five years ago when they was first in the
Legislatur' together. A man told me that they was both admitted to
practice in the S'preme Court in '39, on the same day, sir. Then you know
they was nip an' tuck after the same young lady. Abe got her. They've
been in Congress together, the Little Giant in the Senate, and now, here
they be in the greatest set of debates the people of this state ever
heard; Young man, the hand of fate is in this here, mark my words--"

There was a hush, and the waves of that vast human sea were stilled. A
man, lean, angular, with coat-tail: flapping-unfolded like a grotesque
figure at a side-show.

No confidence was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to
speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill
falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning?
Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom
he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on
the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled was the agony of those
moments!

But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him? Surprise?
Cautiously he raised his eyes. The hands were coming around to the front.
Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined gesture,
the head was raised,--and.--and his shame was for gotten. In its stead
wonder was come. But soon he lost even that, for his mind was gone on a
journey. And when again he came to himself and looked upon Abraham
Lincoln, this was a man transformed. The voice was no longer shrill. Nay,
it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on those who
heard. Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to start a
stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it broke on
the very edge of that vast audience.

   "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way,
   against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
   slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State
   Constitution?"

It was out, at last, irrevocably writ in the recording book of History,
for better, for worse. Beyond the reach of politician, committee, or
caucus. But what man amongst those who heard and stirred might say that
these minutes even now basting into eternity held the Crisis of a nation
that is the hope of the world? Not you, Judge Douglas who sit there
smiling. Consternation is a stranger in your heart,--but answer the
question if you can. Yes, your nimble wit has helped you out of many a
tight corner. You do not feel the noose--as yet. You do not guess that
your reply will make or mar the fortunes of your country. It is not you
who can look ahead two short years and see the ship of Democracy
splitting on the rocks at Charleston and at Baltimore, when the power of
your name might have steered her safely.

But see! what is this man about whom you despise? One by one he is taking
the screws out of the engine which you have invented to run your ship.
Look, he holds them in his hands without mixing them, and shows the false
construction of its secret parts.

For Abraham Lincoln dealt with abstruse questions in language so limpid
that many a farmer, dulled by toil, heard and understood and marvelled.
The simplicity of the Bible dwells in those speeches, and they are now
classics in our literature. And the wonder in Stephen's mind was that
this man who could be a buffoon, whose speech was coarse and whose person
unkempt, could prove himself a tower of morality and truth. That has
troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.

That short hour came all too quickly to an end. And as the Moderator gave
the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen's big companion who snapped
the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.

"By Gosh!" he cried, "he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in
him."

The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled as
he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to die
out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should be.
The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen
Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even
as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors, and
left it punily naked.

Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as
was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head
and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the
ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening
words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly
disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people
how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting
things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth:
But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge
was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to
expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet
it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black
Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once
a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!"
cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter
by birth. He implied that most of these Black Republicans desired negro
wives.

But quick,--to the Question, How was the Little Giant, artful in debate
as he was, to get over that without offence to the great South? Very
skillfully the judge disposed of the first of the interrogations. And
then, save for the gusts of wind rustling the trees, the grove might have
been empty of its thousands, such was the silence that fell. But tighter
and tighter they pressed against the stand, until it trembled.

Oh, Judge, the time of all artful men will come at length. How were you
to foresee a certain day under the White Dome of the Capitol? Had your
sight been long, you would have paused before your answer. Had your sight
been long, you would have seen this ugly Lincoln bareheaded before the
Nation, and you are holding his hat. Judge Douglas, this act alone has
redeemed your faults. It has given you a nobility of which we did not
suspect you. At the end God gave you strength to be humble, and so you
left the name of a patriot.

Judge, you thought there was a passage between Scylla and Charybdis which
your craftiness might overcome.

"It matters not," you cried when you answered the Question, "it matters
not which way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract
question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the
Constitution. The people have the lawful means to introduce or to exclude
it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an
hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations."

Judge Douglas, uneasy will you lie to-night, for you have uttered the
Freeport Heresy.

It only remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster
House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln. On his knee, in transports of
delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on the
child's Jew's-harp. Standing beside him was a proud father who had
dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to
return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible. In a corner
of the room were several impatient gentlemen of influence who wished to
talk about the Question.

But when he saw Stephen, Mr. Lincoln looked up with a smile of welcome
that is still, and ever will be, remembered and cherished.

"Tell Judge Whipple that I have attended to that little matter, Steve," he
said.

"Why, Mr. Lincoln," he exclaimed, "you have had no time."

"I have taken the time," Mr. Lincoln replied, "and I think that I am well
repaid. Steve," said he, "unless I'm mightily mistaken, you know a little
more than you did yesterday."

"Yes, sir! I do," said Stephen.

"Come, Steve," said Mr. Lincoln, "be honest. Didn't you feel sorry for me
last night?"

Stephen flushed scarlet.

"I never shall again, sir," he said.

The wonderful smile, so ready to come and go, flickered and went out. In
its stead on the strange face was ineffable sadness,--the sadness of the
world's tragedies, of Stephen stoned, of Christ crucified.

"Pray God that you may feel sorry for me again," he said.

Awed, the child on his lap was still. The politician had left the room.
Mr. Lincoln had kept Stephen's hand in his own.

"I have hopes of you, Stephen," he said. "Do not forget me."

Stephen Brice never has. Why was it that he walked to the station with a
heavy heart? It was a sense of the man he had left, who had been and was
to be. This Lincoln of the black loam, who built his neighbor's cabin and
hoed his neighbor's corn, who had been storekeeper and postmaster and
flat-boatman. Who had followed a rough judge dealing a rough justice
around a rough circuit; who had rolled a local bully in the dirt; rescued
women from insult; tended the bedside of many a sick coward who feared
the Judgment; told coarse stories on barrels by candlelight (but these
are pure beside the vice of great cities); who addressed political mobs
in the raw, swooping down from the stump and flinging embroilers east and
west. This physician who was one day to tend the sickbed of the Nation in
her agony; whose large hand was to be on her feeble pulse, and whose
knowledge almost divine was to perform the miracle of her healing. So was
it that, the Physician Himself performed His cures, and when work was
done, died a martyr.

Abraham Lincoln died in His name




CHAPTER VI

It was nearly noon when Stephen walked into the office the next day,
dusty and travel-worn and perspiring. He had come straight from the
ferry, without going home. And he had visions of a quiet dinner with
Richter under the trees at the beer-garden, where he could talk about
Abraham Lincoln. Had Richter ever heard of Lincoln?

But the young German met him at the top of the stair--and his face was
more serious than usual, although he showed his magnificent teeth in a
smile of welcome.

"You are a little behind your time, my friend," said he, "What has
happened you?"

"Didn't the Judge get Mr, Lincoln's message?" asked Stephen, with
anxiety.

The German shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, I know not," he answered, "He has gone is Glencoe. The Judge is ill,
Stephen. Doctor Polk says that he has worked all his life too hard. The
Doctor and Colonel Carvel tried to get him to go to Glencoe. But he would
not budge until Miss Carvel herself comes all the way from the country
yesterday, and orders him. Ach!" exclaimed Richter, impulsively, "what
wonderful women you have in America! I could lose my head when I think of
Miss Carvel."

"Miss Carvel was here, you say?" Stephen repeated, in a tone of inquiry.

"Donner!" said Richter, disgusted, "you don't care."

Stephen laughed, in spite of himself.

"Why should I?" he answered. And becoming grave again, added: "Except on
Judge Whipple's account. Have you heard from him to-day, Carl?"

"This morning one of Colonel Carvel's servants came for his letters. He
must be feeling better. I--I pray that he is better," said Richter, his
voice breaking. "He has been very good to me."

Stephen said nothing. But he had been conscious all at once of an
affection for the Judge of which he had not suspected himself. That
afternoon, on his way home, he stopped at Carvel & Company's to inquire.
Mr. Whipple was better, so Mr. Hopper said, and added that he "presumed
likely the Colonel would not be in for a week." It was then Saturday.
Eliphalet was actually in the Colonel's sanctum behind the partition,
giving orders to several clerks at the time. He was so prosperous and
important that he could scarce spare a moment to answer Stephen, who went
away wondering whether he had been wise to choose the law.

On Monday, when Stephen called at Carvel & Company's, Eliphalet was too
busy to see him. But Ephum, who went out to Glencoe every night with
orders, told him that the "Jedge was wuss, suh." On Wednesday, there
being little change, Mrs. Brice ventured to despatch a jelly by Ephum. On
Friday afternoon, when Stephen was deep in Whittlesey and the New Code,
he became aware of Ephum standing beside him. In reply to his anxious
question Ephum answered:

"I reckon he better, suh. He an' de Colonel done commence wrastlin' 'bout
a man name o' Linkum. De Colonel done wrote you dis note, suh."

It was a very polite note, containing the Colonel's compliments, asking
Mr. Brice to Glencoe that afternoon with whatever papers or letters the
Judge might wish to see. And since there was no convenient train in the
evening, Colonel Carvel would feel honored if Mr. Brice would spend the
night. The Colonel mentioned the train on which Mr. Brice was expected.

The Missouri side of the Mississippi is a very different country from the
hot and treeless prairies of Illinois. As Stephen alighted at the little
station at Glencoe and was driven away by Ned in the Colonel's buggy, he
drew in deep breaths of the sweet air of the Meramec Valley.

There had been a shower, and the sun glistened on the drops on grass and
flowers, and the great trees hung heavy over the clay road. At last they
came to a white gate in the picket fence, in sight of a rambling wooden
house with a veranda in front covered with honeysuckle. And then he saw
the Colonel, in white marseilles, smoking a cigar. This, indeed, was real
country.

As Stephen trod the rough flags between the high grass which led toward
the house, Colonel Carvel rose to his full height and greeted him.

"You are very welcome, sir," he said gravely. "The Judge is asleep now,"
he added. "I regret to say that we had a little argument this morning,
and my daughter tells me it will be well not to excite him again to-day.
Jinny is reading to him now, or she would be here to entertain you, Mr.
Brice. Jackson!" cried Mr. Carvel, "show Mr. Brice to his room."

Jackson appeared hurriedly, seized Stephen's bag, and led the way
upstairs through the cool and darkened house to a pretty little room on
the south side, with matting, and roses on the simple dressing-table.
After he had sat awhile staring at these, and at the wet flower-garden
from between the slats of his shutters, he removed the signs of the
railroad upon him, and descended. The Colonel was still on the porch, in
his easy-chair. He had lighted another, cigar, and on the stand beside
him stood two tall glasses, green with the fresh mint. Colonel Carvel
rose, and with his own hand offered one to Stephen.

"Your health, Mr. Brice," he said, "and I hope you will feel at home
here, sir. Jackson will bring you anything you desire, and should you
wish to drive, I shall be delighted to show you the country."

Stephen drank that julep with reverence, and then the Colonel gave him a
cigar. He was quite overcome by this treatment of a penniless young
Yankee. The Colonel did not talk politics--such was not his notion of
hospitality to a stranger. He talked horse, and no great discernment on
Stephen's part was needed to perceive that this was Mr. Carvel's hobby.

"I used to have a stable, Mr. Brice, before they ruined gentleman's sport
with these trotters ten years ago. Yes sir, we used to be at Lexington
one week, and Louisville the next, and over here on the Ames track after
that. Did you ever hear of Water Witch and Netty Boone?"

Yes, Stephen had, from Mr. Jack Brinsmade.

The Colonel's face beamed.

"Why, sir," he cried, "that very nigger, Ned, who drove you here from the
cars-he used to ride Netty Boone. Would you believe that, Mr. Brice? He
was the best jockey ever strode a horse on the Elleardsville track here.
He wore my yellow and green, sir, until he got to weigh one hundred and a
quarter. And I kept him down to that weight a whole year, Mr. Brice. Yes,
sirree, a whole year."

"Kept him down!" said Stephen.

"Why, yes, sir. I had him wrapped in blankets and set in a chair with
holes bored in the seat. Then we lighted a spirit lamp under him. Many a
time I took off ten pounds that way. It needs fire to get flesh off a
nigger, sir."

He didn't notice his guest's amazement.

"Then, sir," he continued, "they introduced these damned trotting races;
trotting races are for white trash, Mr. Brice."

"Pa!"

The Colonel stopped short. Stephen was already on his feet. I wish you
could have seen Miss Virginia Carvel as he saw her then. She wore a white
lawn dress. A tea-tray was in her hand, and her head was tilted back, as
women are apt to do when they carry a burden. It was so that these
Southern families, who were so bitter against Abolitionists and Yankees,
entertained them when they were poor, and nursed them when they were ill.

Stephen, for his life, could not utter a word. But Virginia turned to him
with perfect self-possession.

"He has been boring you with his horses, Mr. Brice," she said. "Has he
told you what a jockey Ned used to be before he weighed one hundred and a
quarter?" (A laugh.) "Has he given you the points of Water Witch and
Netty Boone?" (More laughter, increasing embarrassment for Stephen.) "Pa,
I tell you once more that you will drive every guest from this house.
Your jockey talk is intolerable."

O that you might have a notion of the way in which Virginia pronounced
intolerable.

Mr. Carvel reached for another cigar asked, "My dear," he asked, "how is
the Judge?"

"My dear," said Virginia, smiling, "he is asleep. Mammy Easter is with
him, trying to make out what he is saying. He talks in his sleep, just as
you do--"

"And what is he saying?" demanded the Colonel, interested.

Virginia set down the tray.

"'A house divided against itself,'" said Miss Carvel, with a sweep of her
arm, "'cannot stand. I believe that this Government cannot endure
permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to
dissolve--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect it will
cease to be divided.' Would you like any more?" added Miss Virginia.

"No," cried the Colonel, and banged his fist down on the table. "Why,"
said he, thoughtfully, stroking the white goatee on his chin, "cuss me if
that ain't from the speech that country bumpkin, Lincoln, made in June
last before the Black Republican convention in Illinois."

Virginia broke again into laughter. And Stephen was very near it, for he
loved the Colonel. That gentleman suddenly checked himself in his tirade,
and turned to him.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said; "I reckon that you have the same
political sentiments as the Judge. Believe me, sir, I would not willingly
offend a guest."

Stephen smiled. "I am not offended, sir," he said. A speech which caused
Mr. Carvel to bestow a quick glance upon him. But Stephen did not see it.
He was looking at Virginia.

The Colonel rose.

"You will pardon my absence for a while, sir," he said.

"My daughter will entertain you."

In silence they watched him as he strode off under the trees through tall
grass, a yellow setter at his heels. A strange peace was over Stephen.
The shadows of the walnuts and hickories were growing long, and a rich
country was giving up its scent to the evening air. From a cabin behind
the house was wafted the melody of a plantation song. To the young man,
after the burnt city, this was paradise. And then he remembered his
mother as she must be sitting on the tiny porch in town, and sighed. Only
two years ago she had been at their own place at Westbury.

He looked up, and saw the girl watching him. He dared not think that the
expression he caught was one of sympathy, for it changed instantly.

"I am afraid you are the silent kind, Mr. Brice," said she; "I believe it
is a Yankee trait."

Stephen laughed.

"I have known a great many who were not," said he, "When they are
garrulous, they are very much so."

"I should prefer a garrulous one," said Virginia.

"I should think a Yankee were bad enough, but a noisy Yankee not to be
put up with," he ventured.

Virginia did not deign a direct reply to this, save by the corners of her
mouth.

"I wonder," said she, thoughtfully, "whether it is strength of mind or a
lack of ideas that makes them silent."

"It is mostly prudence," said Mr. Brice. "Prudence is our dominant
trait."

Virginia fidgeted. Usually she had an easier time.

"You have not always shown it," she said, with an innocence which in
women is often charged with meaning.

Stephen started. Her antagonism was still there. He would have liked
greatly to know whether she referred to his hasty purchase of Hester, or
to his rashness in dancing with her at her party the winter before.

"We have something left to be thankful for," he answered. "We are still
capable of action."

"On occasions it is violence," said Virginia, desperately. This man must
not get ahead of her.

"It is just as violent," said he, "as the repressed feeling which prompts
it."

This was a new kind of conversation to Virginia. Of all the young men she
knew, not one had ever ventured into anything of the sort. They were
either flippant, or sentimental, or both. She was at once flattered and
annoyed, flattered, because, as a woman, Stephen had conceded her a mind.
Many of the young men she knew had minds, but deemed that these were
wasted on women, whose language was generally supposed to be a kind of
childish twaddle. Even Jack Brinsmade rarely risked his dignity and
reputation at an intellectual tilt. This was one of Virginia's
grievances. She often argued with her father, and, if the truth were
told, had had more than one victory over Judge Whipple.

Virginia's annoyance came from the fact that she perceived in Stephen a
natural and merciless logic,--a faculty for getting at the bottom of
things. His brain did not seem to be thrown out of gear by local magnetic
influences,--by beauty, for instance. He did not lose his head, as did
some others she knew, at the approach of feminine charms. Here was a
grand subject, then, to try the mettle of any woman. One with less mettle
would have given it up. But Virginia thought it would be delightful to
bring this particular Yankee to his knees; and--and leave him there.

"Mr. Brice," she said, "I have not spoken to you since the night of my
party. I believe we danced together."

"Yes, we did," said he, "and I called, but was unfortunate."

"You called?"

Ah, Virginia!

"They did not tell you!" cried Stephen.

Now Miss Carvel was complacency itself.

"Jackson is so careless with cards," said she, "and very often I do not
take the trouble to read them."

"I am sorry," said he, "as I wished for the opportunity to tell you how
much I enjoyed myself. I have found everybody in St. Louis very kind to
strangers."

Virginia was nearly disarmed. She remembered how, she had opposed his
coning. But honesty as well as something else prompted her to say: "It
was my father who invited you."

Stephen did not reveal the shock his vanity had received.

"At least you were good enough to dance with me."

"I could scarcely refuse a guest," she replied.

He held up his head.

"Had I thought it would have given you annoyance," he said quietly, "I
should not have asked you."

"Which would have been a lack of good manners," said Virginia, biting her
lips.

Stephen answered nothing, but wished himself in St. Louis. He could not
comprehend her cruelty. But, just then, the bell rang for supper, and the
Colonel appeared around the end of the house.

It was one of those suppers for which the South is renowned. And when at
length he could induce Stephen to eat no more, Colonel Carvel reached for
his broad-brimmed felt bat, and sat smoking, with his feet against the
mantle. Virginia, who had talked but little, disappeared with a tray on
which she had placed with her own hands some dainties to tempt the Judge.

The Colonel regaled Stephen, when she was gone, with the pedigree and
performance of every horse he had had in his stable. And this was a
relief, as it gave him an opportunity to think without interruption upon
Virginia's pronounced attitude of dislike. To him it was inconceivable
that a young woman of such qualities as she appeared to have, should
assail him so persistently for freeing a negress, and so depriving her of
a maid she had set her heart upon. There were other New England young men
in society. Mr. Weston and Mr. Carpenter, and more. They were not her
particular friends, to be sure. But they called on her and danced with
her, and she had shown them not the least antipathy. But it was to
Stephen's credit that he did not analyze her further.

He was reflecting on these things when he got to his room, when there
came a knock at the door. It was Mammy Easter, in bright turban and
apron,--was hospitality and comfort in the flesh.

"Is you got all you need, suh?" she inquired.

Stephen replied that he had. But Mammy showed no inclination to go, and
he was too polite to shut the door:

"How you like Glencoe, Mistah Bride?"

He was charmed with it.

"We has some of de fust fam'lies out heah in de summer," said she. "But
de Colonel, he a'n't much on a gran' place laik in Kaintuck. Shucks, no,
suh, dis ain't much of a 'stablishment! Young Massa won't have no lawns,
no greenhouses, no nothin'. He say he laik it wil' and simple. He on'y
come out fo' two months, mebbe. But Miss Jinny, she make it lively. Las'
week, until the Jedge come we hab dis house chuck full, two-three young
ladies in a room, an' five young gemmen on trunnle beds."

"Until the Judge came?" echoed Stephen.

"Yassuh. Den Miss Jinny low dey all hatter go. She say she a'n't gwineter
have 'em noun' 'sturbin' a sick man. De Colonel 'monstrated. He done give
the Judge his big room, and he say he and de young men gwine ober to
Mista, Catherwood's. You a'n't never seen Miss Jinny rise up, suh! She
des swep' 'em all out" (Mammy emphasized this by rolling her hands) "an'
declah she gwine ten' to the Jedge herself. She a'n't never let me bring
up one of his meals, suh." And so she left Stephen with some food for
reflection.

Virginia was very gay at breakfast, and said that the Judge would see
Stephen; so he and the Colonel, that gentleman with his hat on, went up
to his room. The shutters were thrown open, and the morning sunlight
filtered through the leaves and fell on the four-poster where the Judge
sat up, gaunt and grizzled as ever. He smiled at his host, and then tried
to destroy immediately the effect of the smile.

"Well, Judge," cried the Colonel, taking his hand, "I reckon we talked
too much."

"No such thing, Carvel," said the Judge, forcibly, "if you hadn't left
the room, your popular sovereignty would have been in rags in two
minutes."

Stephen sat down in a corner, unobserved, in expectation of a renewal.
But at this moment Miss Virginia swept into the room, very cool in a pink
muslin.

"Colonel Carvel," said she, sternly, "I am the doctor's deputy here. I
was told to keep the peace at any cost. And if you answer back, out you
go, like that!" and she snapped her fingers.

The Colonel laughed. But the Judge, whose mind was on the argument,
continued to mutter defiantly until his eye fell upon Stephen.

"Well, sir, well, sir," he said, "you've turned up at last, have you? I
send you off with papers for a man, and I get back a piece of yellow
paper saying that he's borrowed you. What did he do with you, Mr. Brice?"

"He took me to Freeport, sir, where I listened to the most remarkable
speech I ever expect to hear."

"What!" cried the Judge, "so far from Boston?"

Stephen hesitated, uncertain whether to laugh, until he chanced to look
at Virginia. She had pursed her lips.

"I was very much surprised, sir," he said.

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Whipple, "and what did you chink of that ruffian,
Lincoln?"

"He is the most remarkable man that I have ever met, sir," answered
Stephen, with emphasis.

"Humph!"

It seemed as if the grunt this time had in it something of approval.
Stephen had doubt as to the propriety of discussing Mr. Lincoln there,
and he reddened. Virginia's expression bore a trace of defiance, and Mr.
Carvel stood with his feet apart, thoughtfully stroking his goatee. But
Mr. Whipple seemed to have no scruples.

"So you admired Lincoln, Mr. Brice?" he went on. "You must agree with
that laudatory estimation of him which I read in the Missouri Democrat."

Stephen fidgeted.

"I do, sir, most decidedly," he answered.

"I should hardly expect a conservative Bostonian, of the class which
respects property, to have said that. It might possibly be a good thing
if more from your town could hear those debates."

"They will read them, sir; I feel confident of it."

At this point the Colonel could contain himself no longer.

"I reckon I might tell the man who wrote that Democrat article a few
things, if I could find out who he is," said he.

"Pa!" said Virginia, warningly.

But Stephen had turned a fiery red, "I wrote it, Colonel Carvel," he
said.

For a dubious instant of silence Colonel Carvel stared. Then--then he
slapped his knees, broke into a storm of laughter, and went out of the
room. He left Stephen in a moist state of discomfiture.

The Judge had bolted upright from the pillows.

"You have been neglecting your law, sir," he cried.

"I wrote the article at night," said Stephen, indignantly.

"Then it must have been Sunday night, Mr. Brice."

At this point Virginia hid her face in her handkerchief which trembled
visibly. Being a woman, whose ways are unaccountable, the older man took
no notice of her. But being a young woman, and a pretty one, Stephen was
angry.

"I don't see what right you have to ask me that sir," he said.

"The question is withdrawn, Mr. Brice," said the Judge, "Virginia, you
may strike it from the records. And now, sir, tell me something about
your trip."

Virginia departed.

An hour later Stephen descended to the veranda, and it was with
apprehension that he discerned Mr. Carvel seated under the vines at the
far end. Virginia was perched on the railing.

To Stephen's surprise the Colonel rose, and, coming toward him, laid a
kindly hand on his shoulder.

"Stephen," said he, "there will be no law until Monday you must stay with
us until then. A little rest will do you good."

Stephen was greatly touched.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "I should like to very much. But I can't."

"Nonsense," said the Colonel. "I won't let the Judge interfere."

"It isn't that, sir. I shall have to go by the two o'clock train, I
fear."

The Colonel turned to Virginia, who, meanwhile, had sat silently by.

"Jinny," he said, "we must contrive to keep him."

She slid off the railing.

"I'm afraid he is determined, Pa," she answered. "But perhaps Mr. Brice
would like to see a little of the place before he goes. It is very
primitive," she explained, "not much like yours in the East."

Stephen thanked her, and bowed to the Colonel. And so she led him past
the low, crooked outbuildings at the back, where he saw old Uncle Ben
busy over the preparation of his dinner, and frisky Rosetta, his
daughter, playing with one of the Colonel's setters. Then Virginia took a
well-worn path, on each side of which the high grass bent with its load
of seed, which entered the wood. Oaks and hickories and walnuts and
persimmons spread out in a glade, and the wild grape twisted
fantastically around the trunks. All this beauty seemed but a fit setting
to the strong girlish figure in the pink frock before him. So absorbed
was he in contemplation of this, and in wondering whether indeed she were
to marry her cousin, Clarence Colfax, that he did not see the wonders of
view unrolling in front of him. She stopped at length beside a great
patch of wild race bushes. They were on the edge of the bluff, and in
front of them a little rustic summer-house, with seats on its five sides.
Here Virginia sat down. But Stephen, going to the edge, stood and
marvelled. Far, far below him, down the wooded steep, shot the crystal
Meramec, chafing over the shallow gravel beds and tearing headlong at the
deep passes.

Beyond, the dimpled green hills rose and fell, and the stream ran indigo
and silver. A hawk soared over the, water, the only living creature in
all that wilderness.

The glory of the place stirred his blood. And when at length he turned,
he saw that the girl was watching him.

"It is very beautiful," he said.

Virginia had taken other young men here, and they had looked only upon
her. And yet she was not offended. This sincerity now was as new to her
as that with which he had surprised her in the Judge's room.

And she was not quite at her ease. A reply to those simple words of his
was impossible. At honest Tom Catherwood in the same situation she would
have laughed, Clarence never so much as glanced at scenery. Her replies
to him were either flippant, or else maternal, as to a child.

A breeze laden with the sweet abundance of that valley stirred her hair.
And with that womanly gesture which has been the same through the ages
she put up her hand; deftly tucking in the stray wisp behind.

She glanced at the New Englander, against whom she had been in strange
rebellion since she had first seen him. His face, thinned by the summer
in town, was of the sternness of the Puritan. Stephen's features were
sharply marked for his age. The will to conquer was there. Yet justice
was in the mouth, and greatness of heart. Conscience was graven on the
broad forehead. The eyes were the blue gray of the flint, kindly yet
imperishable. The face was not handsome.

Struggling, then yielding to the impulse, Virginia let herself be led on
into the years. Sanity was the word that best described him. She saw him
trusted of men, honored of women, feared by the false. She saw him in
high places, simple, reserved, poised evenly as he was now.

"Why do you go in this afternoon?" she asked abruptly.

He started at the change in her tone.

"I wish that I might stay," he said regretfully. "But I cannot, Miss
Carvel."

He gave no reason. And she was too proud to ask it. Never before had she
stooped to urge young men to stay. The difficulty had always been to get
them to go. It was natural, perhaps, that her vanity was wounded. But it
hurt her to think that she had made the overture, had tried to conquer
whatever it was that set her against him, and had failed through him.

"You must find the city attractive. Perhaps," she added, with a little
laugh, "perhaps it is Bellefontaine Road."

"No," he answered, smiling.

"Then" (with a touch of derision), "then it is because you cannot miss an
afternoon's work. You are that kind."

"I was not always that kind," he answered. "I did not work at Harvard.
But now I have to or--or starve," he said.

For the second time his complete simplicity had disarmed her. He had not
appealed to her sympathy, nor had he hinted at the luxury in which he was
brought up. She would have liked to question Stephen on this former life.
But she changed the subject suddenly.

"What did you really think of Mr. Lincoln?" she asked.

"I thought him the ugliest man I ever saw, and the handsomest as well."

"But you admired him?"

"Yes," said Stephen, gravely.

"You believe with him that this government cannot exist half slave and
half free. Then a day will come, Mr. Brice, when you and I shall be
foreigners one to the other."

"You have forgotten," he said eagerly, "you have forgotten the rest of
the quotation. 'I do not expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not
expect the house to fall--but cease to be divided.' It will become all
one thing or all the other."

Virginia laughed. "That seemed to me very equivocal," said she. "Your
rail-sputter is well named."

"Will you read the rest of that speech?" he asked

"Judge Whipple is very clever. He has made a convert of you," she
answered.

"The Judge has had nothing to do with it," cried Stephen. "He is not
given to discussion with me, and until I went to Springfield had never
mentioned Lincoln's name to me."

Glancing at her, he surprised a sparkle of amusement in her eyes. Then
she laughed openly.

"Why do you suppose that you were sent to Springfield?" she asked.

"With an important communication for Mr. Lincoln," he answered.

"And that most important communication was--your self. There, now, I have
told you," said Virginia.

"Was myself? I don't understand."

Virginia puckered her lips.

"Then you haven't the sense I thought you had," she replied impatiently.
"Do you know what was in that note? No? Well, a year ago last June this
Black Republican lawyer whom you are all talking of made a speech before
a convention in Illinois. Judge Whipple has been crazy on the subject
ever since--he talks of Lincoln in his sleep; he went to Springfield and
spent two days with him, and now he can't rest until you have seen and
known and heard him. So he writes a note to Lincoln and asks him to take
you to the debate--"

She paused again to laugh at his amazement.

"But he told me to go to Springfield!" he exclaimed.

"He told you to find Lincoln. He knew that you would obey his orders, I
suppose."

"But I didn't know--" Stephen began, trying to come pass within an
instant the memory of his year's experience with Mr. Whipple.

"You didn't know that he thought anything about you," said Virginia.
"That is his way, Mr. Brice. He has more private charities on his list
than any man in the city except Mr. Brinsmade. Very few know it. He
thinks a great deal of you. But there," she added, suddenly blushing
crimson, "I am sorry I told you."

"Why?" he asked.

She did not answer, but sat tapping the seat with her fingers. And when
she ventured to look at him, he had fallen into thought.

"I think it must be time for dinner," said Virginia, "if you really wish
to catch the train."

The coldness in her voice, rather than her words, aroused him. He rose,
took one lingering look at the river, and followed her to the house.

At dinner, when not talking about his mare, the Colonel was trying to
persuade Stephen to remain. Virginia did not join in this, and her father
thought the young man's refusal sprang from her lack of cordiality.
Colonel Carvel himself drove to the station.

When he returned, he found his daughter sitting idly on the porch.

"I like that young man, if he is a Yankee," he declared.

"I don't," said Virginia, promptly.

"My dear," said her father, voicing the hospitality of the Carvels, "I am
surprised at you. One should never show one's feelings toward a guest. As
mistress of this house it was your duty to press him to stay."

"He did not want to stay."

"Do you know why he went, my dear," asked the Colonel.

"No," said Virginia.

"I asked him," said the Colonel.

"Pa! I did not think it of you!" she cried. And then, "What was it?" she
demanded.

"He said that his mother was alone in town, and needed him."

Virginia got up without a word, and went into Judge Whipple's room. And
there the Colonel found her some hours later, reading aloud from a
scrap-book certain speeches of Mr. Lincoln's which Judge Whipple had cut
from newspapers. And the Judge, lying back with his eyes half closed, was
listening in pure delight. Little did he guess at Virginia's penance!




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 4.



CHAPTER VII

AN EXCURSION

I am going ahead two years. Two years during which a nation struggled in
agony with sickness, and even the great strength with which she was
endowed at birth was not equal to the task of throwing it off. In 1620 a
Dutch ship had brought from Guinea to his Majesty's Colony of Virginia
the germs of that disease for which the Nation's blood was to be let so
freely. During these years signs of dissolution, of death, were not
wanting.

In the city by the Father of Waters where the races met, men and women
were born into the world, who were to die in ancient Cuba, who were to be
left fatherless in the struggle soon to come, who were to live to see new
monsters rise to gnaw at the vitals of the Republic, and to hear again
the cynical laugh of Europe. But they were also to see their country a
power in the world, perchance the greatest power. While Europe had
wrangled, the child of the West had grown into manhood and taken a seat
among the highest, to share with them the responsibilities of manhood.

Meanwhile, Stephen Brice had been given permission to practise law in the
sovereign state of Missouri. Stephen understood Judge Whipple better. It
cannot be said that he was intimate with that rather formidable
personage, although the Judge, being a man of habits, had formed that of
taking tea at least once a week with Mrs. Brice. Stephen had learned to
love the Judge, and he had never ceased to be grateful to him for a
knowledge of that man who had had the most influence upon his life,
--Abraham Lincoln.

For the seed, sowed in wisdom and self-denial, was bearing fruit. The
sound of gathering conventions was in the land, and the Freeport Heresy
was not for gotten.

We shall not mention the number of clients thronging to Mr. Whipple's
office to consult Mr. Brice. These things are humiliating. Some of
Stephen's income came from articles in the newspapers of that day. What
funny newspapers they were, the size of a blanket! No startling headlines
such as we see now, but a continued novel among the advertisements on the
front page and verses from some gifted lady of the town, signed Electra.
And often a story of pure love, but more frequently of ghosts or other
eerie phenomena taken from a magazine, or an anecdote of a cat or a
chicken. There were letters from citizens who had the mania of print,
bulletins of different ages from all parts of the Union, clippings out of
day-before-yesterday's newspaper of Chicago or Cincinnati to three-weeks
letters from San Francisco, come by the pony post to Lexington and then
down the swift Missouri. Of course, there was news by telegraph, but that
was precious as fine gold,--not to be lightly read and cast aside.

In the autumn of '59, through the kindness of Mr. Brinsmade, Stephen had
gone on a steamboat up the river to a great convention in Iowa. On this
excursion was much of St. Louis's bluest blood. He widened his circle of
acquaintances, and spent much of his time walking the guards between Miss
Anne Brinsmade and Miss Puss Russell. Perhaps it is unfair to these young
ladies to repeat what they said about Stephen in the privacy of their
staterooms, gentle Anne remonstrating that they should not gossip, and
listening eagerly the while, and laughing at Miss Puss, whose mimicry of
Stephen's severe ways brought tears to her eyes.

Mr. Clarence Colfax was likewise on the boat, and passing Stephen on the
guards, bowed distantly. But once, on the return trip, when Stephen had a
writing pad on his knee, the young Southerner came up to him in his
frankest manner and with an expression of the gray eyes which was not to
be withstood.

"Making a case, Brice?" he said. "I hear you are the kind that cannot be
idle even on a holiday."

"Not as bad as all that," replied Stephen, smiling at him.

"Reckon you keep a diary, then," said Clarence, leaning against the rail.
He made a remarkably graceful figure, Stephen thought. He was tall, and
his movements had what might be called a commanding indolence. Stephen,
while he smiled, could not but admire the tone and gesture with which
Colfax bade a passing negro to get him a handkerchief from his cabin. The
alacrity of the black to do the errand was amusing enough. Stephen well
knew it had not been such if he wanted a handkerchief.

Stephen said it was not a diary. Mr. Colfax was too well bred to inquire
further; so he never found out that Mr. Brice was writing an account of
the Convention and the speechmaking for the Missouri Democrat.

"Brice," said the Southerner, "I want to apologize for things I've done
to you and said about you. I hated you for a long time after you beat me
out of Hester, and--" he hesitated.

Stephen looked up. For the first time he actually liked Colfax. He had
been long enough among Colfax's people to understand how difficult it was
for him to say the thing he wished.

"You may remember a night at my uncle's, Colonel Carvel's, on the
occasion of my cousin's birthday?"

"Yes," said Stephen, in surprise.

"Well," blurted Clarence, boyishly, "I was rude to you in my uncle's
house, and I have since been sorry."

"He held out his hand, and Stephen took it warmly.

"I was younger then, Mr. Colfax," he said, "and I didn't understand your
point of view as well as I do now. Not that I have changed my ideas," he
added quickly, "but the notion of the girl's going South angered me. I
was bidding against the dealer rather than against you. Had I then known
Miss Carvel--" he stopped abruptly.

The winning expression died from the face of the other.

He turned away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs,
red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was
a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,--the school
for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and
grandmothers were taught,--Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had
gone, some thirty days since, for her second winter.

Perhaps Stephen guessed the thought in the mind of his companion, for he
stared also. The music in the cabin came to an abrupt pause, and only the
tumbling of waters through the planks of the great wheels broke the
silence. They were both startled by laughter at their shoulders. There
stood Miss Russell, the picture of merriment, her arm locked in Anne
Brinsmade's.

"It is the hour when all devout worshippers turn towards the East," she
said. "The goddess is enshrined at Monticello."

Both young men, as they got to their feet, were crimson. Whereupon Miss
Russell laughed again. Anne, however, blushed for them. But this was not
the first time Miss Russell had gone too far. Young Mr. Colfax, with the
excess of manner which was his at such times, excused himself and left
abruptly. This to the further embarrassment of Stephen and Anne, and the
keener enjoyment of Miss Russell.

"Was I not right, Mr. Brice?" she demanded. "Why, you are even writing
verses to her!"

"I scarcely know Miss Carvel," he said, recovering. "And as for writing
verse--"

"You never did such a thing in your life! I can well believe it."

Miss Russell made a face in the direction Colfax had taken.

"He always acts like that when you mention her," she said.

"But you are so cruel, Puss," said Anne. "You can't blame him."

"Hairpins!" said Miss Russell.

"Isn't she to marry him?" said Stephen, in his natural voice.

He remembered his pronouns too late.

"That has been the way of the world ever since Adam and Eve," remarked
Puss. "I suppose you meant to ask: Mr. Brice, whether Clarence is to
marry Virginia Carvel."

Anne nudged her.

"My dear, what will Mr. Brice think of us?"

"Listen, Mr. Brice," Puss continued, undaunted. "I shall tell you some
gossip. Virginia was sent to Monticello, and went with her father to
Kentucky and Pennsylvania this summer, that she might be away from
Clarence. Colfax."

"Oh, Puss!" cried Anne.

Miss Russell paid not the slightest heed.

"Colonel Carvel is right," she went on. "I should do the same thing. They
are first cousins, and the Colonel doesn't like that. I am fond of
Clarence. But he isn't good for anything in the world except horse racing
and--and fighting. He wanted to help drive the Black Republican emigrants
out of Kansas, and his mother had to put a collar and chain on him. He
wanted to go filibustering with Walker, and she had to get down on her
knees. And yet," she cried, "if you Yankees push us as far as war, Mr.
Brice, just look out for him."

"But--" Anne interposed.

"Oh, I know what you are going to say,--that Clarence has money."

"Puss!" cried Anne, outraged. "How dare you!"

Miss Russell slipped an arm around her waist.

"Come, Anne," she said, "we mustn't interrupt the Senator any longer. He
is preparing his maiden speech."

That was the way in which Stephen got his nickname. It is scarcely
necessary to add that he wrote no more until he reached his little room
in the house on Olive Street.

They had passed Alton, and the black cloud that hung in the still autumn
air over the city was in sight. It was dusk when the 'Jackson' pushed her
nose into the levee, and the song of the negro stevedores rose from below
as they pulled the gang-plank on to the landing-stage. Stephen stood
apart on the hurricane deck, gazing at the dark line of sooty warehouses.
How many young men with their way to make have felt the same as he did
after some pleasant excursion. The presence of a tall form beside him
shook him from his revery, and he looked up to recognize the benevolent
face of Mr. Brinsmade.

"Mrs. Brice may be anxious, Stephen, at the late hour," said he. "My
carriage is here, and it will give me great pleasure to convey you to
your door."

Dear Mr. Brinsmade! He is in heaven now, and knows at last the good he
wrought upon earth. Of the many thoughtful charities which Stephen
received from him, this one sticks firmest in his remembrance: A
stranger, tired and lonely, and apart from the gay young men and women
who stepped from the boat, he had been sought out by this gentleman, to
whom had been given the divine gift of forgetting none.

"Oh, Puss," cried Anne, that evening, for Miss Russell had come to spend
the night, "how could you have talked to him so? He scarcely spoke on the
way up in the carriage. You have offended him."

"Why should I set him upon a pedestal?" said Puss, with a thread in her
mouth; "why should you all set him upon a pedestal? He is only a Yankee,"
said Puss, tossing her head, "and not so very wonderful."

"I did not say he was wonderful," replied Anne, with dignity.

"But you girls think him so. Emily and Eugenie and Maude. He had better
marry Belle Cluyme. A great man, he may give some decision to that
family. Anne!"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you a secret?"

"Yes," said Anne. She was human, and she was feminine.

"Then--Virginia Carvel is in love with him."

"With Mr. Brice!" cried astonished Anne. "She hates him!"

"She thinks she hates him," said Miss Russell, calmly.

Anne looked up at her companion admiringly. Her two heroines were Puss
and Virginia. Both had the same kind of daring, but in Puss the trait had
developed into a somewhat disagreeable outspokenness which made many
people dislike her. Her judgments were usually well founded, and her
prophecies had so often come to pass that Anne often believed in them for
no other reason.

"How do you know?" said Anne, incredulously.

"Do you remember that September, a year ago, when we were all out at
Glencoe, and Judge Whipple was ill, and Virginia sent us all away and
nursed him herself?"

"Yes," said Anne.

"And did you know that Mr. Brice had gone out, with letters, when the
Judge was better?"

"Yes," said Anne, breathless.

"It was a Saturday afternoon that he left, although they had begged him
to stay over Sunday. Virginia had written for me to come back, and I
arrived in the evening. I asked Easter where Jinny was, and I found her
--"

"You found her--?" said Anne.

Sitting alone in the summer-house over the river. Easter said she had
been there for two hours. And I have never known Jinny to be such
miserable company as she was that night."

"Did she mention Stephen?" asked Anne.

"No."

"But you did," said Anne, with conviction.

Miss Russell's reply was not as direct as usual.

"You know Virginia never confides unless she wants to," she said.

Anne considered.

"Virginia has scarcely seen him since then," she said. "You know that I
was her room-mate at Monticello last year, and I think I should have
discovered it."

"Did she speak of him?" demanded Miss Russell.

"Only when the subject was mentioned. I heard her repeat once what Judge
Whipple told her father of him; that he had a fine legal mind. He was
often in my letters from home, because they have taken Pa's house next
door, and because Pa likes them. I used to read those letters to Jinny,"
said Anne, "but she never expressed any desire to hear them."

"I, too, used to write Jinny about him," confessed Puss.

"Did she answer your letter?"

"No," replied Miss Puss,--"but that was just before the holidays, you
remember. And then the Colonel hurried her off to see her Pennsylvania
relatives, and I believe they went to Annapolis, too, where the Carvels
come from."

Stephen, sitting in the next house, writing out his account, little
dreamed that he was the subject of a conference in the third story front
of the Brinsmades'. Later, when the young ladies were asleep, he carried
his manuscript to the Democrat office, and delivered it into the hands of
his friend, the night editor, who was awaiting it.

Toward the end of that week, Miss Virginia Carvel was sitting with her
back to one of the great trees at Monticello reading a letter. Every once
in a while she tucked it under her cloak and glanced hastily around. It
was from Miss Anne Brinsmade.

"I have told you all about the excursion, my dear, and how we missed you.
You may remember" (ah, Anne, the guile there is in the best of us), "you
may remember Mr. Stephen Brice, whom we used to speak of. Pa and Ma take
a great interest in him, and Pa had him invited on the excursion. He is
more serious than ever, since he has become a full-fledged lawyer. But he
has a dry humor which comes out when you know him well, of which I did
not suspect him. His mother is the dearest lady I have ever known, so
quiet, so dignified, and so well bred. They come in to supper very often.
And the other night Mr. Brice told Pa so many things about the people
south of Market Street, the Germans, which he did not know; that Pa was
astonished. He told all about German history, and how they were
persecuted at home, and why they came here. Pa was surprised to hear that
many of them were University men, and that they were already organizing
to defend the Union. I heard Pa say, 'That is what Mr. Blair meant when
he assured me that we need not fear for the city.'

"Jinny dear, I ought not to have written you this, because you are for
Secession, and in your heart you think Pa a traitor, because he comes
from a slave state and has slaves of his own. But I shall not tear it up.

"It is sad to think how rich Mrs. Brice lived in Boston, and what she has
had to come to. One servant and a little house, and no place to go to in
the summer, when they used to have such a large one. I often go in to sew
with her, but she has never once mentioned her past to me.

"Your father has no doubt sent you the Democrat with the account of the
Convention. It is the fullest published, by far, and was so much admired
that Pa asked the editor who wrote it. Who do you think, but Stephen
Brice! So now Pa knows why Mr. Brice hesitated when Pa asked him to go up
the river, and then consented. This is not the end. Yesterday, when I
went in to see Mrs. Brice, a new black silk was on her bed, and as long
as I live I shall never forget how sweet was her voice when she said, 'It
is a surprise from my son, my dear. I did not expect ever to have
another.' Jinny, I just know he bought it with the money he got for the
article. That was what he was writing on the boat when Clarence Colfax
interrupted him. Puss accused him of writing verses to you."

At this point Miss Virginia Carvel stopped reading. Whether she had read
that part before, who shall say? But she took Anne's letter between her
fingers and tore it into bits and flung the bits into the wind, so that
they were tossed about and lost among the dead leaves under the great
trees. And when she reached her room, there was the hated Missouri
Democrat lying, still open, on her table. A little later a great black
piece of it came tossing out of the chimney above, to the affright of
little Miss Brown, teacher of Literature, who was walking in the grounds,
and who ran to the principal's room with the story that the chimney was
afire.




CHAPTER VIII

THE COLONEL IS WARNED

It is difficult to refrain from mention of the leave-taking of Miss
Virginia Carvel from the Monticello "Female Seminary," so called in the
'Democrat'. Most young ladies did not graduate in those days. There were
exercises. Stephen chanced to read in the 'Republican' about these
ceremonies, which mentioned that Miss Virginia Carvel, "Daughter of
Colonel Comyn Carvel, was without doubt the beauty of the day. She wore
--" but why destroy the picture? I have the costumes under my hand. The
words are meaningless to all males, and young women might laugh at a
critical time. Miss Emily Russell performed upon "that most superb of all
musical instruments the human voice." Was it 'Auld Robin Gray' that she
sang? I am sure it was Miss Maude Catherwood who recited 'To My Mother',
with such effect. Miss Carvel, so Stephen learned with alarm, was to read
a poem by Mrs. Browning, but was "unavoidably prevented." The truth was,
as he heard afterward from Miss Puss Russell, that Miss Jinny had refused
point blank. So the Lady Principal, to save her reputation for
discipline, had been forced to deceive the press.

There was another who read the account of the exercises with intense
interest, a gentleman of whom we have lately forborne to speak. This is
Mr. Eliphalet Hopper. Eliphalet has prospered. It is to be doubted if
that somewhat easy-going gentleman, Colonel Carvel, realized the full
importance of Eliphalet to Carvel & Company. Mr. Hood had been
superseded. Ephum still opened the store in the mornings, but Mr. Hopper
was within the ground-glass office before the place was warm, and through
warerooms and shipping rooms, rubbing his hands, to see if any were late.
Many of the old force were missed, and a new and greater force were come
in. These feared Eliphalet as they did the devil, and worked the harder
to please him, because Eliphalet had hired that kind. To them the Colonel
was lifted high above the sordid affairs of the world. He was at the
store every day in the winter, and Mr. Hopper always followed him
obsequiously into the ground-glass office, called in the book-keeper, and
showed him the books and the increased earnings.

The Colonel thought of Mr. Hood and his slovenly management, and sighed,
in spite of his doubled income. Mr. Hopper had added to the Company's
list of customers whole districts in the growing Southwest, and yet the
honest Colonel did not like him. Mr. Hopper, by a gradual process, had
taken upon his own shoulders, and consequently off the Colonel's,
responsibility after responsibility. There were some painful scenes, of
course, such as the departure of Mr. Hood, which never would have
occurred had not Eliphalet proved without question the incapacity of the
ancient manager. Mr. Hopper only narrowed his lids when the Colonel
pensioned Mr. Hood. But the Colonel had a will before which, when roused,
even Mr. Hopper trembled. So that Eliphalet was always polite to Ephum,
and careful never to say anything in the darkey's presence against
incompetent clerks or favorite customers, who, by the charity of the
Colonel, remained on his books.

One spring day, after the sober home-coming of Colonel Carvel from the
Democratic Convention at Charleston, Ephum accosted his master as he came
into the store of a morning. Ephum's face was working with excitement.

"What's the matter with you, Ephum?" asked the Colonel, kindly. "You
haven't been yourself lately."

"No, Marsa, I ain't 'zactly."

Ephum put down the duster, peered out of the door of the private office,
and closed it softly.

"Marse Comyn?"

"Yes?"

"Marse Comyn, I ain't got no use fo' dat Misteh Hoppa', Ise kinder
sup'stitious 'bout him, Marsa."

The Colonel put down his newspaper.

"Has he treated you badly, Ephum?" he asked quietly.

The faithful negro saw another question in his master's face. He well
knew that Colonel Carvel would not descend to ask an inferior concerning
the conduct of a superior.

"Oh no, suh. And I ain't sayin' nuthin' gin his honesty. He straight, but
he powerful sharp, Marse Comyn. An' he jus' mussiless down to a cent."

The Colonel sighed. He realized that which was beyond the grasp of the
negro's mind. New and thriftier methods of trade from New England were
fast replacing the old open-handedness of the large houses. Competition
had begun, and competition is cruel. Edwards, James, & Company had taken
a Yankee into the firm. They were now Edwards, James, & Doddington, and
Mr. Edwards's coolness towards the Colonel was manifest since the rise of
Eliphalet. They were rivals now instead of friends. But Colonel Carvel
did not know until after years that Mr. Hopper had been offered the place
which Mr. Doddington filled later.

As for Mr. Hopper, increase of salary had not changed him. He still lived
in the same humble way, in a single room in Miss Crane's boarding-house,
and he paid very little more for his board than he had that first week in
which he swept out Colonel Carvel's store. He was superintendent, now, of
Mr. Davitt's Sunday School, and a church officer. At night, when he came
home from business, he would read the widow's evening paper, and the
Colonel's morning paper at the office. Of true Puritan abstemiousness,
his only indulgence was chewing tobacco. It was as early as 1859 that the
teller of the Boatman's Bank began to point out Mr. Hopper's back to
casual customers, and he was more than once seen to enter the president's
room, which had carpet on the floor.

Eliphalet's suavity with certain delinquent customers from the Southwest
was A wording to Scripture. When they were profane, and invited him into
the street, he reminded them that the city had a police force and a jail.
While still a young man, he had a manner of folding his hands and smiling
which is peculiar to capitalists, and he knew the laws concerning
mortgages in several different states.

But Eliphalet was content still to remain in the sphere in which
Providence had placed him, and so to be an example for many of us. He did
not buy, or even hire, an evening suit. He was pleased to superintend
some of the details for a dance at Christmas-time before Virginia left
Monticello, but he sat as usual on the stair-landing. There Mr. Jacob
Cluyme (who had been that day in conversation with the teller of the
Boatman's Bank) chanced upon him. Mr. Cluyme was so charmed at the
facility with which Eliphalet recounted the rise and fall of sugar and
cotton and wheat that he invited Mr. Hopper to dinner. And from this meal
may be reckoned the first appearance of the family of which Eliphalet
Hopper was the head into polite society. If the Cluyme household was not
polite, it was nothing. Eliphalet sat next to Miss Belle, and heard the
private history of many old families, which he cherished for future use.
Mrs. Cluyme apologized for the dinner, which (if the truth were told)
needed an apology. All of which is significant, but sordid and
uninteresting. Jacob Cluyme usually bought stocks before a rise.

There was only one person who really bothered Eliphalet as he rose into
prominence, and that person was Captain Elijah Brent. If, upon entering
the ground-glass office, he found Eliphalet without the Colonel, Captain
Lige would walk out again just as if the office were empty. The inquiries
he made were addressed always to Ephum. Once, when Mr. Hopper had bidden
him good morning and pushed a chair toward him, the honest Captain had
turned his back and marched straight to the house or Tenth Street, where
he found the Colonel alone at breakfast. The Captain sat down opposite.

"Colonel," said he, without an introduction. "I don't like this here
business of letting Hopper run your store. He's a fish, I tell you."

The Colonel drank his coffee in silence.

"Lige," he said gently, "he's nearly doubled my income. It isn't the old
times, when we all went our own way and kept our old customers year in
and year out. You know that."

The Captain took a deep draught of the coffee which Jackson had laid
before him.

"Colonel Carvel," he said emphatically, "the fellow's a damned rascal,
and will ruin you yet if you don't take advice."

The Colonel shifted uneasily.

"The books show that he's honest, Lige."

"Yes," cried Lige, with his fist on the table. "Honest to a mill. But if
that fellow ever gets on top of you, or any one else, he'll grind you
into dust."

"He isn't likely to get on top of me, Lige. I know the business, and keep
watch. And now that Jinny's coming home from Monticello, I feel that I
can pay more attention to her--kind of take her mother's place," said the
Colonel, putting on his felt hat and tipping his chair. "Lige, I want
that girl to have every advantage. She ought to go to Europe and see the
world. That trip East last summer did her a heap of good. When we were at
Calvert House, Dan read her something that my grandfather had written
about London, and she was regularly fired. First I must take her to the
Eastern Shore to see Carvel Hall. Dan still owns it. Now it's London and
Paris."

The Captain walked over to the window, and said nothing. He did not see
the searching gray eyes of his old friend upon him.

"Lige!" said the Colonel.

The Captain turned.

"Lige, why don't you give up steamboating and come along to Europe?
You're not forty yet, and you have a heap of money laid by."

The Captain shook his head with the vigor that characterized him.

"This ain't no time for me to leave," he said. "Colonel; I tell you
there's a storm comin'."

The Colonel pulled his goatee uneasily. Here, at last, was a man in whom
there was no guile.

"Lige," he said, "isn't it about time you got married?"

Upon which the Captain shook his head again, even with more vigor. He
could not trust himself to speak. After the Christmas holidays he had
driven Virginia across the frozen river, all the way to Monticello, in a
sleigh. It was night when they had reached the school, the light of its
many windows casting long streaks on the snow under the trees. He had
helped her out, and had taken her hand as she stood on the step.

"Be good, Jinny," he had said. "Remember what a short time it will be
until June. And your Pa will come over to see you."

She had seized him by the buttons of his great coat, and said tearfully:
"O Captain Lige! I shall be so lonely when you are away. Aren't you going
to kiss me?"

He had put his lips to her forehead, driven madly back to Alton, and
spent the night. The first thing he did the next day when he reached St.
Louis was to go straight to the Colonel and tell him bluntly of the
circumstance.

"Lige, I'd hate to give her up," Mr. Carvel said; "but I'd rather you'd
marry her than any man I can think of."




CHAPTER IX

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In that spring of 1860 the time was come for the South to make her final
stand. And as the noise of gathering conventions shook the ground,
Stephen Brice was not the only one who thought of the Question at
Freeport. The hour was now at hand for it to bear fruit.

Meanwhile, his hero, the hewer of rails and forger of homely speech,
Abraham Lincoln, had made a little tour eastward the year before, and had
startled Cooper Union with a new logic and a new eloquence. They were the
same logic and the same eloquence which had startled Stephen.

Even as he predicted who had given it birth, the Question destroyed the
great Democratic Party. Colonel Carvel travelled to the convention in
historic Charleston soberly and fearing God, as many another Southern
gentleman. In old Saint Michael's they knelt to pray for harmony, for
peace; for a front bold and undismayed toward those who wronged them. All
through the week chosen orators wrestled in vain. Judge Douglas, you
flattered yourself that you had evaded the Question. Do you see the
Southern delegates rising in their seats? Alabama leaves the hall,
followed by her sister stakes. The South has not forgotten your Freeport
Heresy. Once she loved you now she will have none of you.

Gloomily, indeed, did Colonel Carvel return home. He loved the Union and
the flag for which his grandfather Richard had fought so bravely. That
flag was his inheritance. So the Judge, laying his hand upon the knee of
his friend, reminded him gravely. But the Colonel shook his head. The
very calmness of their argument had been portentous.

"No, Whipple," said he. "You are a straightforward man. You can't
disguise it. You of the North are bent upon taking away from us the
rights we had when our fathers framed the Constitution. However the
nigger got to this country, sir, in your Bristol and Newport traders, as
well as in our Virginia and Maryland ships, he is here, and he was here
when the Constitution was written. He is happier in slavery than are your
factory hands in New England; and he is no more fit to exercise the
solemn rights of citizenship, I say, than the halfbreeds in the South
American states."

The Judge attempted to interrupt, but Mr. Carvel stopped him.

"Suppose you deprive me of my few slaves, you do not ruin me. Yet you do
me as great a wrong as you do my friend Samuels, of Louisiana, who
depends on the labor of five hundred. Shall I stand by selfishly and see
him ruined, and thousands of others like him?"

Profoundly depressed, Colonel Carvel did not attend the adjourned
Convention at Baltimore, which split once more on Mason and Dixon's line.
The Democrats of the young Northwest stood for Douglas and Johnson, and
the solid South, in another hall, nominated Breckenridge and Lane. This,
of course, became the Colonel's ticket.

What a Babel of voices was raised that summer! Each with its cure for
existing ills. Between the extremes of the Black Republican Negro
Worshippers and the Southern Rights party of Breckenridge, your
conservative had the choice of two candidates,--of Judge Douglas or
Senator Bell. A most respectable but practically extinct body of
gentlemen in ruffled shirts, the Old Line Whigs, had likewise met in
Baltimore. A new name being necessary, they called themselves
Constitutional Unionists Senator Bell was their candidate, and they
proposed to give the Nation soothing-syrup. So said Judge Whipple, with a
grunt of contempt, to Mr. Cluyme, who was then a prominent Constitutional
Unionist. Other and most estimable gentlemen were also Constitutional
Unionists, notably Mr. Calvin Brinsmade. Far be it from any one to cast
disrespect upon the reputable members of this party, whose broad wings
sheltered likewise so many weak brethren.

One Sunday evening in May, the Judge was taking tea with Mrs. Brice. The
occasion was memorable for more than one event--which was that he
addressed Stephen by his first name for the first time.

"You're an admirer of Abraham Lincoln," he had said.

Stephen, used to Mr. Whipple's ways, smiled quietly at his mother. He had
never dared mention to the Judge his suspicions concerning his journey to
Springfield and Freeport.

"Stephen," said the Judge (here the surprise came in), "Stephen, what do
you think of Mr. Lincoln's chances for the Republican nomination?"

"We hear of no name but Seward's, sir," said Stephen, When he had
recovered.

The Judge grunted.

"Do you think that Lincoln would make a good President?" he added.

"I have thought so, sir, ever since you were good enough to give me the
opportunity of knowing him."

It was a bold speech--the Judge drew his great eyebrows together, but he
spoke to Mrs. Brice.

"I'm not as strong as I was once, ma'am," said he. "And yet I am going to
that Chicago convention."

Mrs. Brice remonstrated mildly, to the effect that he had done his share
of political work. He scarcely waited for her to finish.

"I shall take a younger man with me, in case anything happens. In fact,
ma'am, I had thought of taking your son, if you can spare him."

And so it was that Stephen went to that most dramatic of political
gatherings,--in the historic Wigwam. It was so that his eyes were opened
to the view of the monster which maims the vitality of the Republic,
--the political machine. Mr. Seward had brought his machine from New York,
--a legion prepared to fill the Wigwam with their bodies, and to drown
with their cries all names save that of their master.

Stephen indeed had his eyes opened. Through the kindness of Judge Whipple
he heard many quiet talks between that gentleman and delegates from other
states--Pennsylvania and Illinois and Indiana and elsewhere. He perceived
that the Judge was no nonentity in this new party. Mr. Whipple sat in his
own room, and the delegates came and ranged themselves along the bed.
Late one night, when the delegates were gone, Stephen ventured to speak
what was in his mind.

"Mr. Lincoln did not strike me as the kind of man, sir; who would permit
a bargain."

"Mr. Lincoln's at home playing barn-ball," said the Judge, curtly. "He
doesn't expect the nomination."

"Then," said Stephen, rather hotly, "I think you are unfair to him."

You are expecting the Judge to thunder. Sometimes he liked this kind of
speech.

"Stephen, I hope that politics may be a little cleaner when you become a
delegate," he answered, with just the suspicion of a smile. "Supposing
you are convinced that Abraham Lincoln is the only man who can save the
Union, and supposing that the one way to get him nominated is to meet
Seward's gang with their own methods, what would you do, sir? I want a
practical proposition, sir," said Mr. Whipple, "one that we can use
to-night. It is now one 'clock."

As Stephen was silent, the Judge advised him to go to bed. And the next
morning, while Mr. Seward's henchmen, confident and uproarious, were
parading the streets of Chicago with their bands and their bunting, the
vast Wigwam was quietly filling up with bony Westerners whose ally was
none other than the state of Pennsylvania. These gentlemen possessed wind
which they had not wasted in processions. And the Lord delivered Seward
and all that was his into their hands.

How the light of Mr. Seward's hope went out after the first ballot, and
how some of the gentlemen attached to his person wept; and how the voices
shook the Wigwam, and the thunder of the guns rolled over the tossing
water of the lake, many now living remember. That day a name was
delivered to the world through the mouths political schemers which was
destined to enter history that of the saviour of the Nation.

Down in little Springfield, on a vacant lot near the station, a tall man
in his shirt sleeves was playing barn-ball with some boys. The game
finished, he had put on his black coat and was starting homeward under
the tree--when a fleet youngster darted after him with a telegram. The
tall man read it, and continued on his walk his head bent and his feet
taking long strides, Later in the day he was met by a friend.

"Abe," said the friend, "I'm almighty glad there somebody in this town's
got notorious at last."

In the early morning of their return from Chicago Judge Whipple and
Stephen were standing in the front of a ferry-boat crossing the
Mississippi. The sun was behind them. The Judge had taken off his hat,
and his gray hair was stirred by the river breeze. Illness had set a
yellow seal on the face, but the younger man remarked it not. For
Stephen, staring at the black blur of the city outline, was filled with a
strange exaltation which might have belonged to his Puritan forefathers.
Now at length was come his chance to be of use in life,--to dedicate the
labor of his hands and of his brains to Abraham Lincoln uncouth prophet
of the West. With all his might he would work to save the city for the
man who was the hope of the Union.

The bell rang. The great paddles scattered the brow waters with white
foam, and the Judge voiced his thoughts.

"Stephen," said he, "I guess we'll have to put on shoulders to the wheel
this summer. If Lincoln is not elected I have lived my sixty-five years
for nothing."

As he descended the plank, he laid a hand on Stephen's arm, and tottered.
The big Louisiana, Captain Brent's boat, just in from New Orleans, was
blowing off her steam as with slow steps they climbed the levee and the
steep pitch of the street beyond it. The clatter of hooves and the crack
of whips reached their ears, and, like many others before them and since,
they stepped into Carvel & Company's. On the inside of the glass
partition of the private office, a voice of great suavity was heard. It
was Eliphalet Hopper's.

"If you will give me the numbers of the bales, Captain Brent, I'll send a
dray down to your boat and get them."

It was a very decisive voice that answered.

"No, sir, I prefer to do business with my friend, Colonel Carvel. I guess
I can wait."

"I could sell the goods to Texas buyers who are here in the store right
now."

"Until I get instructions from one of the concern," vowed Captain Lige,
"I shall do as I always have done, sir. What is your position here, Mr.
Hopper?"

"I am manager, I callate."

The Captain's fist was heard to come down on the desk.

"You don't manage me," he said, "and I reckon you don't manage the
Colonel."

Mr. Hopper's face was not pleasant to see as he emerged. But at sight of
Judge Whipple on the steps his suavity returned.

"The Colonel will be in any minute, sir," said he.

But the Judge walked past him without reply, and into the office. Captain
Brent, seeing him; sprang to his feet.

"Well, well, Judge," said he, heartily, "you fellows have done it now,
sure. I'll say this for you, you've picked a smart man."

"Better vote for him, Lige," said the Judge, setting down.

The Captain smiled at Stephen.

"A man's got a lot of choice this year;" said he. "Two governments,
thirty-three governments, one government patched up for a year ox two."

"Or no government," finished the Judge. "Lige, you're not such a fool as
to vote against the Union?"

"Judge," said the Captain, instantly, "I'm not the only one in this town
who will have to decide whether my sympathies are wrong. My sympathies
are with the South."

"It's not a question of sympathy, Captain," answered the Judge, dryly.
"Abraham Lincoln himself was born in Kentucky."

They had not heard a step without.

"Gentlemen, mark my words. If Abraham Lincoln is elected, the South
leaves this Union."

The Judge started, and looked up. The speaker was Colonel Carvel himself.

"Then, sir," Mr. Whipple cried hotly, "then you will be chastised and
brought back. For at last we have chosen a man who is strong enough,
--who does not fear your fire-eaters,--whose electors depend on Northern
votes alone."

Stephen rose apprehensively, So did Captain Lige The Colonel had taken a
step forward, and a fire was quick to kindle in his gray eyes. It was as
quick to die. Judge Whipple, deathly pale, staggered and fell into
Stephen' arms. But it was the Colonel who laid him on the horsehair sofa.

"Silas!" he said, "Silas!"

Nor could the two who listened sound the depth of the pathos the Colonel
put into those two words.

But the Judge had not fainted. And the brusqueness in his weakened voice
was even more pathetic-- "Tut, tut," said he. "A little heat, and no
breakfast."

The Colonel already had a bottle of the famous Bourbon day his hand, and
Captain Lige brought a glass of muddy iced water. Mr. Carvel made an
injudicious mixture of the two, and held it to the lips of his friend. He
was pushed away.

"Come, Silas," he said.

"No!" cried the Judge, and with this effort he slipped back again. Those
who stood there thought that the stamp of death was already on Judge
Whipple's face.

But the lips were firmly closed, bidding defiance, as ever, to the world.
The Colonel, stroking his goatee, regarded him curiously.

"Silas," he said slowly, "if you won't drink it for me, perhaps you will
drink it--for--Abraham--Lincoln."

The two who watched that scene have never forgotten it. Outside, in the
great cool store, the rattle of the trucks was heard, and Mr. Hopper
giving commands. Within was silence. The straight figure of the Colonel
towered above the sofa while he waited. A full minute passed. Once Judge
Whipple's bony hand opened and shut, and once his features worked. Then,
without warning, he sat up.

"Colonel," said he, "I reckon I wouldn't be much use to Abe if I took
that. But if you'll send Ephum after, cup of coffee--"

Mr. Carvel set the glass down. In two strides he had reached the door and
given the order. Then he came hack and seated himself on the sofa.

Stephen found his mother at breakfast. He had forgotten the convention He
told her what had happened at Mr. Carvel's store, and how the Colonel had
tried to persuade Judge Whipple to take the Glencoe house while he was in
Europe, and how the Judge had refused. Tears were in the widow's eyes
when Stephen finished.

"And he means to stay here in the heat and go through, the campaign?" she
asked.

"He says that he will not stir."

"It will kill him, Stephen," Mrs. Brice faltered.

"So the Colonel told him. And he said that he would die willingly--after
Abraham Lincoln was elected. He had nothing to live for but to fight for
that. He had never understood the world, and had quarrelled with at all
his life."

'He said that to Colonel Carvel?"

"Yes."

"Stephen!"

He didn't dare to look at his mother, nor she at him. And when he reached
the office, half an hour later, Mr. Whipple was seated in his chair,
defiant and unapproachable. Stephen sighed as he settled down to his
work. The thought of one who might have accomplished what her father
could not was in his head. She was at Monticello.

Some three weeks later Mr. Brinsmade's buggy drew up at Mrs. Brice's
door. The Brinsmade family had been for some time in the country. And
frequently, when that gentleman was detained in town by business, he
would stop at the little home for tea. The secret of the good man's visit
came out as he sat with them on the front steps afterward.

"I fear that it will be a hot summer, ma'am," he had said to Mrs. Brice.
"You should go to the country."

"The heat agrees with me remarkably, Mr. Brinsmade," said the lady,
smiling.

"I have heard that Colonel Carvel wishes to rent his house at Glencoe,"
Mr. Brinsmade continued, "The figure is not high." He mentioned it. And
it was, indeed nominal. "It struck me that a change of air would do you
good, Mrs. Brice, and Stephen. Knowing that you shared in our uneasiness
concerning Judge Whipple, I thought--"

He stopped, and looked at her. It was a hard task even for that best and
roost tactful of gentlemen, Mr. Brinsmade. He too had misjudged this calm
woman.

"I understand you, Mr. Brinsmade," she said. She saw, as did Stephen, the
kindness behind the offer--Colonel Carvel's kindness and his own. The
gentleman's benevolent face brightened:

"And, my dear Madam, do not let the thought of this little house trouble
you. It was never my expectation to have it occupied in the summer. If we
could induce the Judge to go to Glencoe with you for the summer; I am
sure it would be a relief for us all."

He did not press the matter; but begged Stephen to call on him in a day
or two, at the bank.

"What do you think, Stephen," asked his mother, when Mr. Brinsmade was
gone, Stephen did not reply at once. What, indeed, could he say? The
vision of that proud figure of Miss Virginia was before him, and he
revolted. What was kindness from Colonel Carvel and Mr. Brinsmade was
charity from her. He could not bear the thought of living in a house
haunted by her. And yet why should he let his pride and his feelings
stand in the way of the health--perhaps of the life--of Judge Whipple?

It was characteristic of his mothers strength of mind not to mention the
subject again that evening. Stephen did not sleep in the hot night. But
when he rose in the morning he had made up his mind. After breakfast he
went straight to the Colonel's store, and fortunately found. Mr. Carvel
at his desk, winding up his affairs.

The next morning, when the train for the East pulled out of Illinoistown,
Miss Jinny Carvel stood on the plat form tearfully waving good-by to a
knot of friends. She was leaving for Europe. Presently she went into the
sleeping-car to join the Colonel, who wore a gray liners duster. For a
long time she sat gazing at the young, corn waving on the prairie,
fingering the bunch of June roses on her lap. Clarence had picked them
only a few hours ago, in the dew at Bellegarde. She saw her cousin
standing disconsolate under the train sheds, just as she had left him.
She pictured him riding out the Bellefontaine Road that afternoon, alone.
Now that the ocean was to be between them, was it love that she felt for
Clarence at last? She glanced at her father. Once or twice she had
suspected him of wishing to separate them. Her Aunt Lillian, indeed, had
said as much, and Virginia had silenced her. But when she had asked the
Colonel to take Clarence to Europe, he had refused. And yet she knew that
he had begged Captain Lige to go.

Virginia had been at home but a week. She had seen the change in Clarence
and exulted. The very first day she had surprised him on the porch at
Bellegarde with "Hardee's tactics". From a boy Clarence had suddenly
become a man with a Purpose,--and that was the Purpose of the South.

"They have dared to nominate that dirty Lincoln," he said.--"Do you think
that we will submit to nigger equality rule? Never! never!" he cried. "If
they elect him, I will stand and fight them until my legs are shot from
under me, and then I will shoot down the Yankees from the ground."

Virginia's heart had leaped within her at the words, and into her eyes
had flashed once more the look for which the boy had waited and hoped in
vain. He had the carriage of a soldier, the animation and endurance of
the thoroughbred when roused. He was of the stuff that made the
resistance of the South the marvel of the world. And well we know,
whatever the sound of it, that his speech was not heroics. Nor was it
love for his cousin that inspired it, save in this: he had apotheosized
Virginia. To him she was the inspired goddess of the South--his country.
His admiration and affection had of late been laid upon an altar. Her
ambition for him he felt was likewise the South's ambition for him.

His mother, Virginia's aunt, felt this too, and strove against it with
her feeble might. She never had had power over her son; nor over any man,
save the temporal power of beauty. And to her mortification she found
herself actually in fear of this girl who might have been her daughter.
So in Virginia's presence she became more trivial and petty than ever. It
was her one defence.

It had of course been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join
Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to
don for Virginia that glorious but useless full dress,--the high bearskin
rat, the red pigeon-tailed coat, the light blue trousers, and the
gorgeous, priceless shackle. Indeed, the boy looked stunning. He held his
big rifle like a veteran, and his face was set with a high resolve there
was no mistaking. The high color of her pride was on the cheek of the
girl as he brought his piece to the salute of her, his mistress. And yet,
when he was gone, and she sat alone amid the roses awaiting him, came
wilfully before her another face that was relentless determination,--the
face of Stephen Brice, as he had stood before her in the summer house at
Glencoe. Strive as she might against the thought, deny it to herself and
others, to Virginia Carvel his way become the face of the North. Her
patriotism and all that was in her of race rebelled. To conquer that face
she would have given her own soul, and Clarence's. Angrily she had arisen
and paced the garden walks, and cried out aloud that it was not
inflexible.

And now, by the car window, looking out over the endless roll of the
prairie, the memory of this was bitter within her.

Suddenly she turned to her father.

"Did you rent our house at Glencoe?" she asked.

"No, Jinny."

"I suppose Mr. Brice was too proud to accept it at your charitable rent,
even to save Mr, Whipple's life."

The Colonel turned to his daughter in mild surprise. She was leaning back
on the seat, her eyes half closed.

"Once you dislike a person, Jinny, you never get over it. I always had a
fancy for the young man, and now I have a better opinion of him than ever
before. It was I who insulted them by naming that rent."

"What did he do?" Virginia demanded.

"He came to my office yesterday morning. 'Colonel Carvel,' said he, 'I
hear you wish to rent your house.' I said yes. 'You rented it once
before, sir,' said he. 'Yes,' said I. 'May I ask you what price you got
for it?' said he."

"And what did you say?" she asked, leaning forward.

"I told him," said the Colonel, smiling. "But I explained that I could
not expect to command that price now on short notice. He replied that
they would pay it, or not consider the place."

Virginia turned her head away and stared out over the fields.

"How could they afford it!" she murmured.

"Mr. Brinsmade tells me that young Brice won rather a remarkable case
last winter, and since then has had some practice. And that he writes for
the newspapers. I believe he declined some sort of an editorial position,
preferring to remain at the law."

"And so they are going into the house?" she asked presently.

"No," said the Colonel. "Whipple refused point-blank to go to the
country. He said that he would be shirking the only work of his life
likely to be worth anything. So the Brices remain in town."

Colonel Carvel sighed. But Virginia said nothing.




CHAPTER X.

RICHTER'S SCAR

This was the summer when Mr. Stephen Brice began to make his appearance
in public. The very first was rather encouraging than otherwise, although
they were not all so. It was at a little town on the outskirts of the
city where those who had come to scoff and jeer remained to listen.

In writing that speech Stephen had striven to bear in mind a piece of
advice which Mr. Lincoln had given him. "Speak so that the lowest may
understand, and the rest will have no trouble." And it had worked. At the
halting lameness of the beginning an egg was thrown,--fortunately wide of
the mark. After this incident Stephen fairly astonished his audience,
--especially an elderly gentleman who sat on a cracker-box in the rear, out
of sight of the stand. This may have been Judge Whipple, although we have
no proof of the fact.

Stephen himself would not have claimed originality for that speech. He
laughs now when it is spoken of, and calls it a boyish effort, which it
was. I have no doubt that many of the master's phrases slipped in, as
young Mr. Brice could repeat most of the Debates, and the Cooper Union
speech by heart. He had caught more than the phrasing, however. So imbued
was he with the spirit of Abraham Lincoln that his hearers caught it; and
that was the end of the rotten eggs and the cabbages. The event is to be
especially noted because they crowded around him afterward to ask
questions. For one thing, he had not mentioned abolition. Wasn't it true,
then, that this Lincoln wished to tear the negro from his master, give
him a vote and a subsidy, and set him up as the equal of the man that
owned him? "Slavery may stay where it is," cried the young orator. "If it
is content there, so are we content. What we say is that it shall not go
one step farther. No, not one inch into a northern territory."

On the next occasion Mr. Brice was one of the orators at a much larger
meeting in a garden in South St. Louis. The audience was mostly German.
And this was even a happier event, inasmuch as Mr. Brice was able to
trace with some skill the history of the Fatherland from the Napoleonic
wars to its Revolution. Incidentally he told them why they had emigrated
to this great and free country. And when in an inspired moment he coupled
the names of Abraham Lincoln and Father Jahn, the very leaves of the
trees above them trembled at their cheers.

And afterwards there was a long-remembered supper in the moonlit grove
with Richter and a party of his college friends from Jena. There was Herr
Tiefel with the little Dresden-blue eyes, red and round and jolly; and
Hauptmann, long and thin and sallow; and Korner, redbearded and
ponderous; and Konig, a little clean-cut man with a blond mustache that
pointed upward. They clattered their steins on the table and sang
wonderful Jena songs, while Stephen was lifted up and his soul carried
off to far-away Saxony,--to the clean little University town with its
towers and crooked streets. And when they sang the Trolksmelodie,
"Bemooster Bursche zieh' ich aus,--Ade!" a big tear rolled down the scar
on Richter's cheek.

       "Fahrt wohl, ihr Strassen grad and krumm
        Ich zieh' nicht mehr in euch herum,
        Durchton euch nicht mehr mit Gesang,
        Mit Larm nicht mehr and Sporenklang."

As the deep tones died away, the soft night was steeped in the sadness of
that farewell song. It was Richter who brought the full force of it home
to Stephen.

"Do you recall the day you left your Harvard, and your Boston, my
friend?" he asked.

Stephen only nodded. He had never spoken of the bitterness of that, even
to his mother. And here was the difference between the Saxon and the
Anglo-Saxon.

Richter smoked his pipe 'mid dreamy silence, the tear still wet upon his
face.

"Tiefel and I were at the University together," he said at length. "He
remembers the day I left Jena for good and all. Ah, Stephen, that is the
most pathetic thing in life, next to leaving the Fatherland. We dine with
our student club for the last time at the Burg Keller, a dingy little
tavern under a grim old house, but very dear to us. We swear for the last
time to be clean and honorable and patriotic, and to die for the
Fatherland, if God so wills. And then we march at the head of a slow
procession out of the old West Gate, two and two, old members first, then
the fox major and the foxes."

"The foxes?" Stephen interrupted.

"The youngsters--the freshmen, you call them," answered Richter, smiling.

"And after the foxes," said Herr Tiefel, taking up the story, "after the
foxes comes the empty carriage, with its gay postilion and four. It is
like a long funeral. And every man is chanting that song. And so we go
slowly until we; come to the Oil Mill Tavern, where we have had many a
schlager-bout with the aristocrats. And the president of our society
makes his farewell speech under the vines, and we drink to you with all
the honors. And we drank to you, Carl, renowned swordsman!" And Herr
Tiefel, carried away by the recollection, rose to his feet.

The others caught fire, and stood up with their mugs high in the air,
shouting:

"Lebe wohl, Carl! Lebe wohl! Salamander, salamander, salamander! Ein ist
ein, zwei ist zwei, drei ist drei! Lebe wohl!"

And so they toasted every man present, even Stephen himself, whom they
complimented on his speech. And he soon learned to cry Salamander, and to
rub his mug on the table, German fashion. He was not long in discovering
that Richter was not merely a prime favorite with his companions, but
likewise a person of some political importance in South St. Louis. In the
very midst of their merriment an elderly man whom Stephen recognized as
one of the German leaders (he afterwards became a United States general)
came and stood smiling by the table and joined in the singing. But
presently he carried Richter away with him.

"What a patriot he would have made, had our country been spared to us!"
exclaimed Herr Konig. "I think he was the best man with the Schlager that
Jena ever saw. Even Korner likes not to stand against him in mask and
fencing hat, all padded. Eh, Rudolph?"

Herr Korner gave a good-natured growl of assent.

"I have still a welt that he gave me a month since," he said. "He has
left his mark on many an aristocrat."

"And why did you always fight the aristocrats?" Stephen asked.

They all tried to tell him at once, but Tiefel prevailed.

"Because they were for making our country Austrian, my friend," he cried.
"Because they were overbearing, and ground the poor. Because the most of
them were immoral like the French, and we knew that it must be by
morality and pure living that our 'Vaterland' was to be rescued. And so
we formed our guilds in opposition to theirs. We swore to live by the
standards of the great Jahn, of whom you spoke. We swore to strive for
the freedom of Germany with manly courage. And when we were not duelling
with the nobles, we had Schlager-bouts among ourselves."

"Broadswords?" exclaimed Stephen, in amazement.

"Ja wohl," answered Korner, puffing heavily. The slit in his nose was
plain even in the moonlight. "To keep our hands in, as you would say. You
Americans are a brave people--without the Schlager. But we fought that we
might not become effete."

It was then that Stephen ventured to ask a question that, had been long
burning within him.

"See here, Mr. Korner," said he, "how did Richter come by that scar? He
always gets red when I mention it. He will never tell me."

"Ah, I can well believe that," answered Korner. "I will recount that
matter,--if you do not tell Carl, lieber Freund. He would not forgive me.
I was there in Berlin at the time. It was a famous time. Tiefel will bear
me out."

"Ja, ja!" said Tiefel, eagerly.

"Mr. Brice," Herr Korner continued, "has never heard of the Count von
Kalbach. No, of course. We at Jena had, and all Germany. Many of us of
the Burschenschaft will bear to the grave the marks of his Schlager. Von
Kalbach went to Bonn, that university of the aristocrats, where he was
worshipped. When he came to Berlin with his sister, crowds would gather
to look at them. They were like Wodan and Freya. 'Donner'!" exclaimed
Herr Korner, "there is something in blood, when all is said. He was as
straight and strong as an oak of the Black Forest, and she as fair as a
poplar. It is so with the Pomeranians.

"It was in the year '47, when Carl Richter was gone home to Berlin before
his last semester, to see his father: One fine morning von Kalbach rode
in at the Brandenburg gate on a great black stallion. He boasted openly
that day that none of the despised 'Burschenschaft' dare stand before
him. And Carl Richter took up the challenge. Before night all Berlin had
heard of the temerity of the young Liberal of the Jena 'Burschenschaft'.
To our shame be it said, we who knew and loved Carl likewise feared for
him.

"Carl chose for his second Ebhardt, a man of our own Germanian Club at
Jena, since killed in the Breite Strasse. And if you will believe me, my
friend. I tell you that Richter came to the glade at daybreak smoking his
pipe. The place was filled, the nobles on one side and the Burschenschaft
on the other, and the sun coming up over the trees. Richter would not
listen to any of us, not even the surgeon. He would not have the silk
wound on his arm, nor the padded breeches, nor the neck covering
--Nothing! So Ebhardt put on his gauntlets and peaked cap, and his apron
with the device of the Germanians.

"There stood the Count in his white shirt in the pose of a statue. And
when it was seen that Richter likewise had no protection, but was calmly
smoking the little short pipe, with a charred bowl, a hush fell upon all.
At the sight of the pipe von Kalbach ground his heel in the turf, and
when the word was given he rushed at Richter like a wild beast. You, my
friend, who have never heard the whistle of sharp Schlager cannot know
the song which a skilled arm draws from the blade. It was music that
morning: You should have seen the noble's mighty strokes--'Prim und
Second und Terz und Quart'. You would have marked how Richter met him at
every blow. Von Kalbach never once took his eyes from the blue smoke from
the bowl. He was terrible in his fury, and I shiver now to think how we
of the Burschenschaft trembled when we saw that our champion was driven
back a step, and then another. You must know that it is a lasting
disgrace to be forced over one's own line. It seemed as if we could not
bear the agony. And then, while we counted out the last seconds of the
half, came a snap like that of a whip's lash, and the bowl of Richter's
pipe lay smouldering on the grass. The noble had cut the stem as clean as
it were sapling twig, and there stood Richter with the piece still
clenched in his teeth, his eyes ablaze, and his cheek running blood. He
pushed the surgeon away when he came forward with his needles. The Count
was smiling as he put up his sword, his friends crowding around him, when
Ebhardt cried out that his man could fight the second mensur,--though the
wound was three needles long. Then Kalbach cried aloud that he would kill
him. But he had not seen Carl's eyes. Something was in them that made us
think as we washed the cut. But when we spoke to him he said nothing. Nor
could we force the pipe stems from his teeth.

"Donner Schock!" exclaimed Herr Korner, but reverently, "if I live to a
hundred I never hope to see such a sight as that 'Mensur'. The word was
given. The Schlager flew so fast that we only saw the light and heard the
ring alone. Before we of the Burschenschaft knew what had happened the
Count von Kalbach was over his line and had flung his Schlager into a
great tree, and was striding from the place with his head hung and the
tears streamin down his face."

Amid a silence, Herr Korner lifted his great mug and emptied it slowly. A
wind was rising, bearing with it song and laughter from distant groups,
--Teutonic song and, laughter. The moonlight trembled through the shifting
leaves. And Stephen was filled with a sense of the marvelous. It was as
if this fierce duel, so full of national significance to a German, had
been fought in another existence, It was incredible to him that the
unassuming lawyer he knew, so wholly Americanized, had been the hero of
it. Strange, indeed, that the striving life of these leaders of European
Revolution had been suddenly cut off in its vigor. There came to Stephen
a flash of that world-comprehension which marks great statesmen. Was it
not with a divine purpose that this measureless force of patriotism and
high ideal had been given to this youngest of the nations, that its high
mission might be fulfilled?

Miss Russell heard of Stephen's speeches. She and her brothers and Jack
Brinsmade used to banter him when he came a-visiting in Bellefontaine
Road. The time was not yet come when neighbor stared coldly upon
neighbor, when friends of long standing passed each other with averted
looks. It was not even a wild dream that white-trash Lincoln would be
elected. And so Mr. Jack, who made speeches for Breckenridge in the face
of Mr. Brinsmade's Union leanings, laughed at Stephen when he came to
spend the night. He joined forces with Puss in making clever fun of the
booby Dutch, which Stephen was wise enough to take good-naturedly. But
once or twice when he met Clarence Colfax at these houses he was aware of
a decided change in the attitude of that young gentleman. This troubled
him more than he cared to admit. For he liked Clarence, who reminded him
of Virginia--at once a pleasure and a pain.

It is no harm to admit (for the benefit of the Society for Psychical
Research) that Stephen still dreamed of her. He would go about his work
absently all the morning with the dream still in his head, and the girl
so vividly near him that he could not believe her to be travelling in
England, as Miss Russell said. Puss and Anne were careful to keep him
informed as to her whereabouts. Stephen set this down as a most natural
supposition on their part that all young men must have an interest in
Virginia Carvel.

How needless to add that Virginia in her correspondence never mentioned
Stephen, although Puss in her letters took pains to record the fact every
time that he addressed a Black Republican meeting: Miss Carvel paid no
attention to this part of the communications. Her concern for Judge
Whipple Virginia did not hide. Anne wrote of him. How he stood the rigors
of that campaign were a mystery to friend and foe alike.




CHAPTER XI

HOW A PRINCE CAME

Who has not heard of the St. Louis Agricultural Fair. And what memories
of its October days the mere mention of at brings back to us who knew
that hallowed place as children. There was the vast wooden amphitheatre
where mad trotting races were run; where stolid cattle walked past the
Chinese pagoda in the middle circle, and shook the blue ribbons on their
horns. But it was underneath the tiers of seats (the whole way around the
ring) that the chief attractions lay hid. These were the church booths,
where fried oysters and sandwiches and cake and whit candy and ice-cream
were sold by your mothers and sister for charity. These ladies wore white
aprons as they waited on the burly farmers. And toward the close of the
day for which they had volunteered they became distracted. Christ Church
had a booth, and St. George's; and Dr. Thayer's, Unitarian, where Mrs.
Brice might be found and Mr. Davitt's, conducted by Mr. Eliphalet Hopper
on strictly business principles, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, where
Miss Renault and other young ladies of French descent presided: and Dr.
Posthelwaite's, Presbyterian, which we shall come to presently. And
others, the whole way around the ring.

There is one Fair which old St. Louisans still delight to recall,--that
of the autumn of 1860--Think for a minute. You will remember that
Virginia Carvel came back from Europe; and made quite a stir in a town
where all who were worth knowing were intimates. Stephen caught a glimpse
of her an the street, received a distant bow, and dreamed of her that
night. Mr. Eliphalet Hopper, in his Sunday suit, was at the ferry to pay
his respects to the Colonel, to offer his services, and to tell him how
the business fared. His was the first St. Louis face that Virginia saw
(Captain Lige being in New Orleans), and if she conversed with Eliphalet
on the ferry with more warmth than ever before, there is nothing strange
in that. Mr. Hopper rode home with them in the carriage, and walked to
Miss Crane's with his heart thumping against his breast, and wild
thoughts whirling in his head.

The next morning, in Virginia's sunny front room tears and laughter
mingled. There was a present for Eugenie and Anne and Emily and Puss and
Maude, and a hear kiss from the Colonel for each. And more tears and
laughter and sighs as Mammy Easter and Rosetta unpacked the English
trunks, and with trembling hands and rolling eyes laid each Parisian gown
upon the bed.

But the Fair, the Fair!

At the thought of that glorious year my pen fails me. Why mention the
dread possibility of the negro-worshiper Lincoln being elected the very
next month? Why listen, to the rumblings in the South? Pompeii had
chariot-races to the mutterings of Vesuvius. St. Louis was in gala garb
to greet a Prince.

That was the year that Miss Virginia Carvel was given charge of the booth
in Dr. Posthelwaite's church,--the booth next one of the great arches
through which prancing horses and lowing cattle came.

Now who do you think stopped at the booth for a chat with Miss Jinny? Who
made her blush as pink as her Paris gown? Who slipped into her hand the
contribution for the church, and refused to take the cream candy she
laughingly offered him as an equivalent?

None other than Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Saxony, Duke of
Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Chester and Carrick, Baron Renfrew, and
Lord of the Isles. Out of compliment to the Republic which he visited, he
bore the simple title of Lord Renfrew.

Bitter tears of envy, so it was said, were shed in the other booths.
Belle Cluyme made a remark which is best suppressed. Eliphalet Hopper, in
Mr. Davitt's booths, stared until his eyes watered. A great throng peered
into the covered way, kept clear for his Royal Highness and suite, and
for the prominent gentlemen who accompanied them. And when the Prince was
seen to turn to His Grace, the Duke of Newcastle, and the subscription
was forthcoming, a great cheer shook the building, while Virginia and the
young ladies with her bowed and blushed and smiled. Colonel Carvel, who
was a Director, laid his hand paternally on the blue coat of the young
Prince. Reversing all precedent, he presented his Royal Highness to his
daughter and to the other young ladies. It was done with the easy grace
of a Southern gentleman. Whereupon Lord Renfrew bowed and smiled too, and
stroked his mustache, which was a habit he had, and so fell naturally
into the ways of Democracy.

Miss Puss Russell, who has another name, and whose hair is now white,
will tell you how Virginia carried off the occasion with credit to her
country.

It is safe to say that the Prince forgot "Silver Heels" and "Royal Oak,"
although they had been trotted past the Pagoda only that morning for his
delectation. He had forgotten his Honor the Mayor, who had held fast to
the young man's arm as the four coal-black horses had pranced through the
crowds all the way from Barnum's Hotel to the Fair Grounds. His Royal
Highness forgot himself still further, and had at length withdrawn his
hands from the pockets of his ample pantaloons and thrust his thumbs into
his yellow waistcoat. And who shall blame him if Miss Virginia's replies
to his sallies enchained him?

Not the least impressive of those who stood by, smiling, was the figure
of the tall Colonel, his hat off for once, and pride written on his face.
Oh, that his dear wife might have lived to see this!

What was said in that historic interview with a future Sovereign of
England, far from his royal palaces, on Democratic sawdust, with an
American Beauty across a board counter, was immediately recorded by the
Colonel, together with an exact description of his Royal Highness's blue
coat, and light, flowing pantaloons, and yellow waist-coat, and colored
kids; even the Prince's habit of stroking his mustache did not escape the
watchful eye. It is said that his Grace of Newcastle smiled twice at Miss
Virginia's retorts, and Lord Lyons, the British Minister, has more than
two to his credit. But suddenly a strange thing happened. Miss Virginia
in the very midst of a sentence paused, and then stopped. Her eyes had
strayed from the Royal Countenance, and were fixed upon a point in the
row of heads outside the promenade. Her sentence was completed--with
some confusion. Perhaps it is no wonder that my Lord Renfrew, whose
intuitions are quick, remarked that he had already remained too long,
thus depriving the booth of the custom it otherwise should have had. This
was a graceful speech, and a kingly. Followed by his retinue and the
prominent citizens, he moved on. And it was remarked by keen observers
that his Honor the Mayor had taken hold once more of the Prince's elbow,
who divided his talk with Colonel Carver.

Dear Colonel Carvel! What a true American of the old type you were. You,
nor the Mayor, nor the rest of the grave and elderly gentlemen were not
blinded by the light of a royal Presence. You saw in him only an amiable
and lovable young man, who was to succeed the most virtuous and lovable
of sovereigns, Victoria. You, Colonel Carvel, were not one to cringe to
royalty. Out of respect for the just and lenient Sovereign, his mother,
you did honor to the Prince. But you did not remind him, as you might
have, that your ancestors fought for the King at Marston Moor, and that
your grandfather was once an intimate of Charles James Fox. But what
shall we say of Mr. Cluyme, and of a few others whose wealth alone
enabled them to be Directors of the Fair? Miss Isabel Cluyme was duly
presented, in proper form, to his Royal Highness. Her father owned a
"peerage," and had been abroad likewise. He made no such bull as the
Colonel. And while the celebrated conversation of which we have spoken
was in progress, Mr. Cluyme stood back and blushed for his countryman,
and smiled apologetically at the few gentlemen of the royal suite who
glanced his way.

His Royal Highness then proceeded to luncheon, which is described by a
most amiable Canadian correspondent who sent to his newspaper an account
of it that I cannot forbear to copy. You may believe what he says, or
not, just as you choose: "So interested was his Royal Highness in the
proceedings that he stayed in the ring three and a half hours witnessing
these trotting matches. He was invited to take lunch in a little wooden
shanty prepared for the Directors, to which he accordingly repaired, but
whether he got anything to eat or not, I cannot tell. After much trouble
he forced his way to the table, which he found surrounded by a lot of
ravenous animals. And upon some half dozen huge dishes were piled slices
of beef, mutton, and buffalo tongue; beside them were great jugs of lager
beer, rolls of bread, and plates of a sort of cabbage cut into thin
shreds, raw, and mixed with vinegar. There were neither salt spoons nor
mustard spoons, the knives the gentlemen were eating with serving in
their stead; and, by the aid of nature's forks, the slices of beef and
mutton were transferred to the plates of those who desired to eat. While
your correspondent stood looking at the spectacle, the Duke of Newcastle
came in, and he sat looking too. He was evidently trying to look
democratic, but could not manage it. By his side stood a man urging him
to try the lager beer, and cabbage also, I suppose. Henceforth, let the
New York Aldermen who gave to the Turkish Ambassador ham sandwiches and
bad sherry rest in peace."

Even that great man whose memory we love and revere, Charles Dickens, was
not overkind to us, and saw our faults rather than our virtues. We were a
nation of grasshoppers, and spat tobacco from early morning until late at
night. This some of us undoubtedly did, to our shame be it said. And when
Mr. Dickens went down the Ohio, early in the '40's, he complained of the
men and women he met; who, bent with care, bolted through silent meals,
and retired within their cabins. Mr. Dickens saw our ancestors bowed in a
task that had been too great for other blood,--the task of bringing into
civilization in the compass of a century a wilderness three thousand
miles it breadth. And when his Royal Highness came to St. Louis and
beheld one hundred thousand people at the Fair, we are sure that he knew
how recently the ground he stood upon had been conquered from the forest.

A strange thing had happened, indeed. For, while the Prince lingered in
front of the booth of Dr. Posthelwaite's church and chatted with
Virginia, a crowd had gathered without. They stood peering over the
barricade into the covered way, proud of the self-possession of their
young countrywoman. And here, by a twist of fate, Mr. Stephen Brice found
himself perched on a barrel beside his friend Richter. It was Richter who
discovered her first.

"Himmel! It is Miss Carvel herself, Stephen," he cried, impatient at the
impassive face of his companion. "Look, Stephen, look there."

"Yes," said Stephen, "I see."

"Ach!" exclaimed the disgusted German, "will nothing move you? I have
seen German princesses that are peasant women beside her. How she carries
it off! See, the Prince is laughing!"

Stephen saw, and horror held him in a tremor. His one thought was of
escape. What if she should raise her eyes, and amid those vulgar stares
discern his own? And yet that was within him which told him that she
would look up. It was only a question of moments, and then,--and then she
would in truth despise him! Wedged tightly between the people, to move
was to be betrayed. He groaned.

Suddenly he rallied, ashamed of his own false shame. This was because of
one whom he had known for the short, space of a day--whom he was to
remember for a lifetime. The man he worshipped, and she detested. Abraham
Lincoln would not have blushed between honest clerks and farmers Why
should Stephen Brice? And what, after all, was this girl to him? He could
not tell. Almost the first day he had come to St. Louis the wires of
their lives had crossed, and since then had crossed many times again,
always with a spark. By the might of generations she was one thing, and
he another. They were separated by a vast and ever-widening breach only
to be closed by the blood and bodies of a million of their countrymen.
And yet he dreamed of her.

Gradually, charmed like the simple people about him, Stephen became lost
in the fascination of the scene. Suddenly confronted at a booth in a
public fair with the heir to the English throne, who but one of her own
kind might have carried it off so well, have been so complete a mistress
of herself? Since, save for a heightened color, Virginia gave no sign of
excitement. Undismayed, forgetful of the admiring crowd, unconscious of
their stares until--until the very strength of his gaze had compelled her
own. Such had been the prophecy within him. Nor did he wonder because, in
that multitude of faces, her eyes had flown so straightly homeward to
his.

With a rough effort that made an angry stir, Stephen flung the people
aside and escaped, the astonished Richter following in his wake. Nor
could the honest German dissuade him from going back to the office for
the rest of the day, or discover what had happened.

But all through the afternoon that scene was painted on the pages of
Stephen's books. The crude booth in the darkened way. The free pose of
the girl standing in front of her companions, a blue wisp of autumn
sunlight falling at her feet. The young Prince laughing at her sallies,
and the elderly gentleman smiling with benevolence upon the pair.




CHAPTER XII

INTO WHICH A POTENTATE COMES

Virginia danced with the Prince, "by Special Appointment," at the ball
that evening. So did her aunt, Mrs. Addison Colfax. So likewise was Miss
Belle Cluyme among those honored and approved. But Virginia wore the most
beautiful of her Paris gowns, and seemed a princess to one watching from
the gallery. Stephen was sure that his Royal Highness made that
particular dance longer than the others. It was decidedly longer than the
one he had with Miss Cluyme, although that young lady had declared she
was in heaven.

Alas, that princes cannot abide with us forever! His Royal Highness bade
farewell to St. Louis, and presently that same 'City of Alton' which bore
him northward came back again in like royal state, and this time it was
in honor of a Democrat potentate. He is an old friend now, Senator and
Judge and Presidential Candidate,--Stephen Arnold Douglas,--father of the
doctrine of Local Sovereignty, which he has come to preach. So goes the
world. We are no sooner rid of one hero than we are ready for another.

Blow, you bandsmen on the hurricane deck, let the shores echo with your
national airs! Let the gay bunting wave in the river breeze! Uniforms
flash upon the guards, for no campaign is complete without the military.
Here are brave companies of the Douglas Guards, the Hickory Sprouts, and
the Little Giants to do honor to the person of their hero. Cannon are
booming as he steps into his open carriage that evening on the levee,
where the piles of river freight are covered with people. Transparencies
are dodging in the darkness. A fresh band strikes up "Hail Columbia," and
the four horses prance away, followed closely by the "Independent Broom
Rangers." "The shouts for Douglas," remarked a keen observer who was
present, "must have penetrated Abraham's bosom at Springfield."

Mr. Jacob Cluyme, who had been a Bell and Everett man until that day, was
not the only person of prominence converted. After the speech he assured
the Judge that he was now undergoing the greatest pleasure of his life in
meeting the popular orator, the true representative man of the Great
West, the matured statesman, and the able advocate of national
principles. And although Mr. Douglas looked as if he had heard something
of the kind before, he pressed Mr. Cluyme's hand warmly.

So was the author of Popular Sovereignty, "the great Bulwark of American
Independence," escorted to the Court House steps, past houses of his
stanch supporters; which were illuminated in his honor. Stephen, wedged.
among the people, remarked that the Judge had lost none of his
self-confidence since that day at Freeport. Who, seeing the Democratic
candidate smiling and bowing to the audience that blocked the wide
square, would guess that the Question troubled him at all, or that he
missed the votes of the solid South? How gravely the Judge listened to
the eulogy of the prominent citizen, who reminded him that his work was
not yet finished, and that he still was harnessed to the cause of the
people! And how happy was the choice of that word harnessed!

The Judge had heard (so he said) with deep emotion the remarks of the
chairman. Then followed one of those masterful speeches which wove a
spell about those who listened,--which, like the most popular of novels,
moved to laughter and to tears, to anger and to pity. Mr. Brice and Mr
Richter were not the only Black Republicans who were depressed that
night. And they trudged homeward with the wild enthusiasm still ringing
in their ears, heavy with the thought that the long, hot campaign of
their own Wide-Awakes might be in vain.

They had a grim reproof from Judge Whipple in the morning.

"So you too, gentlemen, took opium last night," was all he said.

The dreaded possibility of Mr. Lincoln's election did not interfere with
the gayeties. The week after the Fair Mr. Clarence Colfax gave a great
dance at Bellegarde, in honor of his cousin, Virginia, to which Mr.
Stephen Brice was not invited. A majority of Company A was there.
Virginia would have liked to have had them in uniform.

It was at this time that Anne Brinsmade took the notion of having a ball
in costume. Virginia, on hearing the news, rode over from Bellegarde, and
flinging her reins to Nicodemus ran up to Anne's little dressing-room.

"Whom have you invited, Anne?" she demanded.

Anne ran over the long list of their acquaintance, but there was one name
she omitted.

"Are you sure that that is all?" asked Virginia, searchingly, when she
had finished.

Anne looked mystified.

"I have invited Stephen Brice, Jinny," she said. But!--"

"But!" cried Virginia. "I knew it. Am I to be confronted with that Yankee
everywhere I go? It is always 'Stephen Brice', and he is ushered in with
a but."

Anne was quite overcome by this outburst. She had dignity, however, and
plenty of it. And she was a loyal friend.

"You have no right to criticise my guests, Virginia."

Virginia, seated on the arm of a chair, tapped her foot on the floor.

"Why couldn't things remain as they were?" she said. "We were so happy
before these Yankees came. And they are not content in trying to deprive
us of our rights. They must spoil our pleasure, too."

"Stephen Brice is a gentleman," answered Anne. "He spoils no one's
pleasure, and goes no place that he is not asked."

"He has not behaved according to my idea of a gentleman, the few times
that I have been unfortunate enough to encounter him," Virginia retorted.

"You are the only one who says so, then." Here the feminine got the
better of Anne's prudence, and she added. "I saw you waltz with him once,
Jinny Carvel, and I am sure you never enjoyed a dance as much in your
life."

Virginia blushed purple.

"Anne Brinsmade!" she cried. "You may have your ball, and your Yankees,
all of them you want. But I shan't come. How I wish I had never seen that
horrid Stephen Brice! Then you would never have insulted me."

Virginia rose and snatched her riding-whip. This was too much for Anne.
She threw her arms around her friend without more ado.

"Don't quarrel with me, Jinny," she said tearfully. "I couldn't bear it.
He--Mr. Brice is not coming, I am sure."

Virginia disengaged herself.

"He is not coming?"

"No," said Anne. "You asked me if he was invited. And I was going on to
tell you that he could not come."

She stopped, and stared at Virginia in bewilderment. That young lady,
instead of beaming, had turned her back. She stood flicking her whip at
the window, gazing out over the trees, down the slope to the river. Miss
Russell might have interpreted these things. Simple Anne!

"Why isn't he coming?" said Virginia, at last.

"Because he is to be one of the speakers at a big meeting that night.
Have you seen him since you got home, Jinny? He is thinner than he was.
We are much worried about him, because he has worked so hard this
summer."

"A Black Republican meeting!" exclaimed Virginia, scornfully ignoring the
rest of what was said. "Then I'll come, Anne dear," she cried, tripping
the length of the room. "I'll come as Titania. Who will you be?"

She cantered off down the drive and out of the gate, leaving a very
puzzled young woman watching her from the window. But when Virginia
reached the forest at the bend of the road, she pulled her horse down to
a walk.

She bethought herself of the gown which her Uncle Daniel had sent her
from Calvert House, and of the pearls. And she determined to go as her
great-grandmother, Dorothy Carvel.

Shades of romance! How many readers will smile before the rest of this
true incident is told?

What had happened was this. Miss Anne Brinsmade had driven to town in her
mother's Jenny Lind a day or two before, and had stopped (as she often
did) to pay a call on Mrs. Brice. This lady, as may be guessed, was not
given to discussion of her husband's ancestors, nor of her own. But on
the walls of the little dining-room hung a Copley and two Stuarts. One of
the Stuarts was a full length of an officer in the buff and blue of the
Continental Army. And it was this picture which caught Anne's eye that
day.

"How like Stephen!" she exclaimed. And added. "Only the face is much
older. Who is it, Mrs. Brice?"

"Colonel Wilton Brice, Stephen's grandfather. There is a marked look
about all the Brices. He was only twenty years of age when the Revolution
began. That picture was painted much later in life, after Stuart came
back to America, when the Colonel was nearly forty. He had kept his
uniform, and his wife persuaded him to be painted in it."

"If Stephen would only come as Colonel Wilton Brice!" she cried. "Do you
think he would, Mrs. Brice?"

Mrs. Brice laughed, and shook her head.

"I am afraid not, Anne," she said. "I have a part of the uniform
upstairs, but I could never induce him even to try it on."

As she drove from shop to shop that day, Anne reflected that it certainly
would not be like Stephen to wear his grandfather's uniform to a ball.
But she meant to ask him, at any rate. And she had driven home
immediately to write her invitations. It was with keen disappointment
that she read his note of regret.

However, on the very day of the ball, Anne chanced to be in town again,
and caught sight of Stephen pushing his way among the people on Fourth
Street. She waved her hand to him, and called to Nicodemus to pull up at
the sidewalk.

"We are all so sorry that you are not coming," said she, impulsively. And
there she stopped short. For Anne was a sincere person, and remembered
Virginia. "That is, I am so sorry," she added, a little hastily.
"Stephen, I saw the portrait of your grandfather, and I wanted you to
come in his costume."

Stephen, smiling down on her, said nothing. And poor Anne, in her fear
that he had perceived the shade in her meaning, made another unfortunate
remark.

"If you were not a--a Republican--" she said.

"A Black Republican," he answered, and laughed at her discomfiture. "What
then?"

Anne was very red.

"I only meant that if you were not a Republican, there would be no
meeting to address that night."

"It does not make any difference to you what my politics are, does it?"
he asked, a little earnestly.

"Oh, Stephen!" she exclaimed, in gentle reproof.

"Some people have discarded me," he said, striving to smile.

She wondered whether he meant Virginia, and whether he cared. Still
further embarrassed, she said something which she regretted immediately.

"Couldn't you contrive to come?"

He considered.

"I will come, after the meeting, if it is not too late," he said at
length. "But you must not tell any one."

He lifted his hat, and hurried on, leaving Anne in a quandary. She wanted
him. But what was she to say to Virginia? Virginia was coming on the
condition that he was not to be there. And Anne was scrupulous.

Stephen, too, was almost instantly sorry that he had promised. The little
costumer's shop (the only one in the city at that time) had been
ransacked for the occasion, and nothing was left to fit him. But when he
reached home there was a strong smell of camphor in his mother's room.
Colonel Brice's cocked hat and sword and spurs lay on the bed, and
presently Hester brought in the blue coat and buff waistcoat from the
kitchen, where she had been pressing them. Stephen must needs yield to
his mother's persuasions and try them on--they were more than a passable
fit. But there were the breeches and cavalry boots to be thought of, and
the ruffled shirt and the powdered wig. So before tea he hurried down to
the costumer's again, not quite sure that he was not making a fool of
himself, and yet at last sufficiently entered into the spirit of the
thing. The coat was mended and freshened. And when after tea he dressed
in the character, his appearance was so striking that his mother could
not refrain from some little admiration. As for Hester, she was in
transports. Stephen was human, and young. But still the frivolity of it
all troubled him. He had inherited from Colonel Wilton Brice, the
Puritan, other things beside clothes. And he felt in his heart as he
walked soberly to the hall that this was no time for fancy dress balls.
All intention of going was banished by the time his turn had come to
speak.

But mark how certain matters are beyond us. Not caring to sit out the
meeting on the platform, he made his way down the side of the crowded
hall, and ran into (of all people) big Tom Catherwood. As the Southern
Rights politics of the Catherwood family were a matter of note in the
city, Stephen did not attempt to conceal his astonishment. Tom himself
was visibly embarrassed. He congratulated Stephen on his speech, and
volunteered the news that he had come in a spirit of fairness to hear
what the intelligent leaders of the Republican party, such as Judge
Whipple, had to say. After that he fidgeted. But the sight of him started
in Stephen a train of thought that closed his ears for once to the
Judge's words. He had had before a huge liking for Tom. Now he admired
him, for it was no light courage that took one of his position there. And
Stephen remembered that Tom was not risking merely the displeasure of his
family and his friends, but likewise something of greater value than,
either. From childhood Tom had been the devoted slave of Virginia Carvel,
with as little chance of marrying her as a man ever had. And now he was
endangering even that little alliance.

And so Stephen began to think of Virginia, and to wonder what she would
wear at Anne's party; and to speculate how she would have treated him if
had gone. To speak truth, this last matter had no little weight in his
decision to stay away. But we had best leave motives to those whose
business and equipment it is to weigh to a grain. Since that agonizing
moment when her eyes had met his own among the curiously vulgar at the
Fair, Stephen's fear of meeting Virginia had grown to the proportions of
a terror. And yet there she was in his mind, to take possession of it on
the slightest occasion.

When Judge Whipple had finished, Tom rose. He awoke Mr. Brice from a
trance.

"Stephen," said he, "of course you're going to the Brinsmade's."

Stephen shook his head.

"Why not?" said Tom, in surprise. "Haven't you a costume?"

"Yes," he answered dubiously.

"Why, then, you've got to come with me," says Tom, heartily. "It isn't
too late, and they'll want you. I've a buggy, and I'm going to the
Russells' to change my clothes. Came along"

Steven went.




CHAPTER XIII

AT MR. BRINSMADE'S GATE

The eastern side of the Brinsmade house is almost wholly taken up by the
big drawing-room where Anne gave her fancy-dress ball. From the windows
might be seen, through the trees in the grounds, the Father of Waters
below. But the room is gloomy now, that once was gay, and a heavy coat of
soot is spread on the porch at the back, where the apple blossoms still
fall thinly in the spring. The huge black town has coiled about the place
the garden still struggles on, but the giants of the forest are dying and
dead. Bellefontaine Road itself, once the drive of fashion, is no more.
Trucks and cars crowd the streets which follow its once rural windings,
and gone forever are those comely wooded hills and green pastures,--save
in the memory of those who have been spared to dream.

Still the old house stands, begrimed but stately, rebuking the sordid
life around it. Still come into it the Brinsmades to marriage and to
death. Five and sixty years are gone since Mr. Calvin Brinsmade took his
bride there. They sat on the porch in the morning light, harking to the
whistle of the quail in the corn, and watching the frightened deer
scamper across the open. Do you see the bride in her high-waisted gown,
and Mr. Calvin in his stock and his blue tail-coat and brass buttons?

Old people will tell you of the royal hospitality then, of the famous men
and women who promenaded under those chandeliers, and sat down to the
game-laden table. In 1835 General Atkinson and his officers thought
nothing of the twenty miles from Jefferson Barracks below, nor of dancing
all night with the Louisville belles, who were Mrs. Brinsmade's guests.
Thither came Miss Todd of Kentucky, long before she thought of taking for
a husband that rude man of the people, Abraham Lincoln. Foreigners of
distinction fell in love with the place, with its open-hearted master and
mistress, and wrote of it in their journals. Would that many of our
countrymen, who think of the West as rough, might have known the quality
of the Brinsmades and their neighbors!

An era of charity, of golden simplicity, was passing on that October
night of Anne Brinsmade's ball. Those who made merry there were soon to
be driven and scattered before the winds of war; to die at Wilson's
Creek, or Shiloh, or to be spared for heroes of the Wilderness. Some were
to eke out a life of widowhood in poverty. All were to live soberly,
chastened by what they had seen. A fear knocked at Colonel Carvel's heart
as he stood watching the bright figures.

"Brinsmade," he said, "do you remember this room in May, '46?"

Mr. Brinsmade, startled, turned upon him quickly.

"Why, Colonel, you have read my very thoughts," he said. "Some of those
who were here then are--are still in Mexico."

"And some who came home, Brinsmade, blamed God because they had not
fallen," said the Colonel.

"Hush, Comyn, His will be done," he answered; "He has left a daughter to
comfort you."

Unconsciously their eyes sought Virginia. In her gown of faded primrose
and blue with its quaint stays and short sleeves, she seemed to have
caught the very air of the decorous century to which it belonged. She was
standing against one of the pilasters at the side of the room, laughing
demurely at the antics of Becky Sharp and Sir John Falstaff,--Miss Puss
Russell and Mr. Jack Brinsmade, respectively.

Mr. Tennyson's "Idylls" having appeared but the year before, Anne was
dressed as Elaine, a part which suited her very well. It was strange
indeed to see her waltzing with Daniel Boone (Mr. Clarence Colfax) in his
Indian buckskins. Eugenie went as Marie Antoinette. Tall Maude Catherwood
was most imposing as Rebecca; and her brother George made a towering
Friar Tuck, Even little fifteen-year-old Spencer Catherwood, the
contradiction of the family, was there. He went as the lieutenant
Napoleon, walking about with his hands behind his back and his brows
thoughtfully contracted.

The Indian summer night was mild. It was at tine very height of the
festivities that Dorothy Carvel and Mr. Daniel Boone were making their
way together to the porch when the giant gate-keeper of Kenilworth Castle
came stalking up the steps out of the darkness, brandishing his club in
their faces. Dorothy screamed, and even the doughty Daniel gave back a
step.

"Tom Catherwood! How dare you? You frightened me nearly to death."

"I'm sorry, Jinny, indeed I am," said the giant, repentant, and holding
her hand in his.

"Where have you been?" demanded Virginia, a little mollified. "What makes
you so late?"

"I've been to a Lincoln meeting," said honest Tom; "where I heard a very
fine speech from a friend of yours."

Virginia tossed her head.

"You might have been better employed," said she, and added, with dignity,
"I have no friends who speak at Black Republican meetings."

"How about Judge Whipple?" said Tom.

She stopped. "Did you mean the Judge?" she asked, over her shoulder.

"No," said Tom, "I meant--"

He got no further. Virginia slipped her arm through Clarence's, and they
went off together to the end of the veranda. Poor Tom! He passed on into
the gay drawing-room, but the zest had been taken out of his antics for
that night.

"Whom did he mean, Jinny?" said Clarence, when they were on the seat
under the vines.

"He meant that Yankee, Stephen Brice," answered Virginia, languidly. "I
am so tired of hearing about him."

"So am I," said Clarence, with a fervor by no means false. "By George, I
think he will make a Black Republican out of Tom, if he keeps on. Puss
and Jack have been talking about him all summer, until I am out of
patience. I reckon he has brains. But suppose he has addressed fifty
Lincoln meetings, as they say, is that any reason for making much of him?
I should not have him at Bellegarde. I am surprised that Mr. Russell
allows him in his house. I can see why Anne likes him."

"Why?"

"He is on the Brinsmade charity list."

"He is not on their charity list, nor on any other," said Virginia,
quickly. "Stephen Brice is the last person who would submit to charity."

"And you are the last person who I supposed would stand up for him,"
cried her cousin, surprised and nettled.

There was an instant's silence.

"I want to be fair, Max," she said quietly. "Pa offered them our Glencoe
House last summer at a low price, and they insisted on paying what Mr.
Edwards gave five years ago,--or nothing. You know that I detest a Yankee
as much as you do," she continued, indignation growing in her voice. "I
did not come out here with you to be insulted."

With her hand on the rail, she made as if to rise. Clarence was perforce
mollified.

"Don't go, Jinny," he said beseechingly. "I didn't mean to make you
angry--"

"I can't see why you should always be dragging in this Mr. Brice," she
said, almost tearfully. (It will not do to pause now and inquire into
Virginia's logic.) "I came out to hear what you had to tell me."

"Jinny, I have been made second lieutenant of Company A."

"Oh, Max, I am so glad! I am so proud of you!"

"I suppose that you have heard the result of the October elections,
Jinny."

"Pa said something about them to-night," she answered; why?"

"It looks now as if there were a chance of the Republicans winning," he
answered. But it was elation that caught his voice, not gloom.

"You mean that this white trash Lincoln may be President?" she exclaimed,
seizing his arm.

"Never!" he cried. "The South will not submit to that until every man who
can bear arms is shot down." He paused. The strains of a waltz mingled
with talk and laughter floated out of the open window. His voice dropped
to a low intensity. "We are getting ready in Company A," he said; "the
traitors will be dropped. We are getting ready to fight for Missouri and
for the South."

The girl felt his excitement, his exaltation.

"And if you were not, Max, I should disown you," she whispered.

He leaned forward until his face was close to hers.

"And now?" he said.

"I am ready to work, to starve, to go to prison, to help--"

He sank back heavily into the corner.

"Is that all, Jinny?"

"All?" she repeated. "Oh, if a woman could only do more!"

"And is there nothing--for me?"

Virginia straightened.

"Are you doing this for a reward?" she demanded.

"No," he answered passionately. "You know that I am not. Do you remember
when you told me that I was good for nothing, that I lacked purpose?"

"Yes, Max."

"I have thought it over since," he went on rapidly; "you were right. I
cannot work--it is not in me. But I have always felt that I could make a
name for myself--for you--in the army. I am sure that I could command a
regiment. And now the time is coming."

She did not answer him, but absently twisted the fringe of his buckskins
in her fingers.

"Ever since I have known what love is I have loved you, Jinny. It was so
when we climbed the cherry trees at Bellegarde. And you loved me then--I
know you did. You loved me when I went East to school at the Military
Institute. But it has not been the same of late," he faltered. "Something
has happened. I felt it first on that day you rode out to Bellegarde when
you said that my life was of no use. Jinny, I don't ask much. I am
content to prove myself. War is coming, and we shall have to free
ourselves from Yankee insolence. It is what we have both wished for. When
I am a general, will you marry me?"

For a wavering instant she might have thrown herself into his
outstretched arms. Why not, and have done with sickening doubts? Perhaps
her hesitation hung on the very boyishness of his proposal. Perhaps the
revelation that she did not then fathom was that he had not developed
since those childish days. But even while she held back, came the beat of
hoofs on the gravel below them, and one of the Bellegarde servants rode
into the light pouring through the open door. He called for his master.

Clarence muttered his dismay as he followed his cousin to the steps.

"What is it?" asked Virginia, alarmed.

"Nothing; I forgot to sign the deed to the Elleardsville property, and
Worington wants it to-night." Cutting short Sambo's explanations,
Clarence vaulted on the horse. Virginia was at his stirrup. Leaning over
in the saddle, he whispered: "I'll be back in a quarter of an hour Will
you wait?"

"Yes," she said, so that he barely heard.

"Here?"

She nodded.

He was away at a gallop, leaving Virginia standing bareheaded to the
night, alone. A spring of pity, of affection for Clarence suddenly welled
up within her. There came again something of her old admiration for a
boy, impetuous and lovable, who had tormented and defended her with the
same hand.

Patriotism, stronger in Virginia than many of us now can conceive, was on
Clarence's side. Ambition was strong in her likewise. Now was she all
afire with the thought that she, a woman, might by a single word give the
South a leader. That word would steady him, for there was no question of
her influence. She trembled at the reckless lengths he might go in his
dejection, and a memory returned to her of a day at Glencoe, before he
had gone off to school, when she had refused to drive with him. Colonel
Carvel had been away from home. She had pretended not to care. In spite
of Ned's beseechings Clarence had ridden off on a wild thoroughbred colt
and had left her to an afternoon of agony. Vividly she recalled his
home-coming in the twilight, his coat torn and muddy, a bleeding cut on
his forehead, and the colt quivering tame.

In those days she had thought of herself unreservedly as meant for him.
Dash and courage and generosity had been the beacon lights on her
horizon. But now? Were there not other qualities? Yes, and Clarence
should have these, too. She would put them into him. She also had been at
fault, and perhaps it was because of her wavering loyalty to him that he
had not gained them.

Her name spoken within the hall startled Virginia from her reverie, and
she began to walk rapidly down the winding drive. A fragment of the air
to which they were dancing brought her to a stop. It was the Jenny Lind
waltz. And with it came clear and persistent the image she had sought to
shut out and failed. As if to escape it now, she fairly ran all the way
to the light at the entrance and hid in the magnolias clustered beside
the gateway. It was her cousin's name she whispered over and over to
herself as she waited, vibrant with a strange excitement. It was as
though the very elements might thwart her wail. Clarence would be
delayed, or they would miss her at the house, and search. It seemed an
eternity before she heard the muffled thud of a horse cantering in the
clay road.

Virginia stood out in the light fairly between the gate posts. Too late
she saw the horse rear as the rider flew back in his seat, for she had
seized the bridle. The beams from the lamp fell upon a Revolutionary
horseman, with cooked hat and sword and high riding-boots. For her his
profile was in silhouette, and the bold nose and chin belonged to but one
man she knew. He was Stephen Brice. She gave a cry of astonishment and
dropped the rein in dismay. Hot shame was surging in her face. Her
impulse was to fly, nor could she tell what force that stayed her feet.

As for Stephen, he stood high in his stirrups and stared down at the
girl. She was standing full in the light,--her lashes fallen, her face
crimson. But no sound of surprise escaped him because it was she, nor did
he wonder at her gown of a gone-by century. Her words came first, and
they were low. She did not address him by name.

"I--I thought that you were my cousin," she said. "What must you think of
me!"

Stephen was calm.

"I expected it," he answered.

She gave a step backward, and raised her frightened eyes to his.

"You expected it?" she faltered.

"I can't say why," he said quickly, "but it seems to me as if this had
happened before. I know that I am talking nonsense--"

Virginia was trembling now. And her answer was not of her own choosing.

"It has happened before," she cried. "But where? And when?"

"It may have been in a dream," he answered her, "that I saw you as you
stand there by my bridle. I even know the gown you wear."

She put her hand to her forehead. Had it been a dream? And what mystery
was it that sent him here this night of all nights? She could not even
have said that it was her own voice making reply.

"And I--I have seen you, with the sword, and the powdered hair, and the
blue coat and the buff waistcoat. It is a buff waistcoat like that my
great-grandfather wears in his pictures."

"It is a buff waistcoat," he said, all sense of strangeness gone.

The roses she held dropped on the gravel, and she put out her hand
against his horse's flank. In an instant he had leaped from his saddle,
and his arm was holding her. She did not resist, marvelling rather at his
own steadiness, nor did she then resent a tenderness in his voice.

"I hope you will forgive me--Virginia," he said. "I should not have
mentioned this. And yet I could not help it."

She looked up at him rather wildly.

"It was I who stopped you," she said; "I was waiting for--"

"For whom?"

The interruption brought remembrance.

"For my cousin, Mr. Colfax," she answered, in another tone. And as she
spoke she drew away from him, up the driveway. But she had scarcely taken
five steps whey she turned again, her face burning defiance. "They told
me you were not coming," she said almost fiercely. "Why did you come?"

It was a mad joy that Stephen felt.

"You did not wish me to come?" he demanded.

"Oh, why do you ask that?" she cried. "You know I would not have been
here had I thought you were coming. Anne promised me that you would not
come."

What would she not have given for those words back again

Stephen took astride toward her, and to the girl that stride betokened a
thousand things that went to the man's character. Within its compass the
comparison in her mind was all complete. He was master of himself when he
spoke.

"You dislike me, Miss Carvel," he said steadily. "I do not blame you. Nor
do I flatter myself that it is only because you believe one thing, and I
another. But I assure you that it is my misfortune rather than my fault
that I have not pleased you,--that I have met you only to anger you."

He paused, for she did not seem to hear him. She was gazing at the
distant lights moving on the river. Had he come one step farther?--but he
did not. Presently she knew that he was speaking again, in the same
measured tone.

"Had Miss Brinsmade told me that my presence here would cause you
annoyance, I should have stayed away. I hope that you will think nothing
of the--the mistake at the gate. You may be sure that I shall not mention
it. Good night, Miss Carvel."

He lifted his hat, mounted his horse, and was gone. She had not even
known that he could ride--that was strangely the first thought. The
second discovered herself intent upon the rhythm of his canter as it died
southward upon the road. There was shame in this, mingled with a
thankfulness that he would not meet Clarence. She hurried a few steps
toward the house, and stopped again. What should she say to Clarence now?
What could she say to him?

But Clarence was not in her head. Ringing there was her talk with Stephen
Brice, as though it were still rapidly going on. His questions and her
replies--over and over again. Each trivial incident of an encounter real
and yet unreal! His transformation in the uniform, which had seemed so
natural. Though she strove to make it so, nothing of all this was
unbearable now, nor the remembrance of the firm torch of his arm about
her nor yet again his calling her by her name.

Absently she took her way again up the drive, now pausing, now going on,
forgetful. First it was alarm she felt when her cousin leaped down at her
side,--then dread.

"I thought I should never get back," he cried breathlessly, as he threw
his reins to Sambo. "I ought not to have asked you to wait outside. Did
it seem long, Jinny?"

She answered something, There was a seat near by under the trees. To lead
her to it he seized her hand, but it was limp and cold, and a sudden fear
came into his voice.

"Jinny!"

"Yes."

She resisted, and he dropped her fingers. She remembered long how he
stood in the scattered light from the bright windows, a tall, black
figure of dismay. She felt the yearning in his eyes. But her own
response, warm half an hour since, was lifeless.

"Jinny," he said, "what is the matter?"

"Nothing, Max. Only I was very foolish to say I would wait for you."

"Then--then you won't marry me?"

"Oh, Max," she cried, "it is no time to talk of that now. I feel to-night
as if something dreadful were to happen."

"Do you mean war?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

"But war is what we want," he cried, "what we have prayed for, what we
have both been longing for to-night, Jinny. War alone will give us our
rights--"

He stopped short. Virginia had bowed her head an her hands, and he saw
her shoulders shaken by a sob. Clarence bent over her in bewilderment and
anxiety.

"You are not well, Jinny," he said.

"I am not well," she answered. "Take me into the house."

But when they went in at the door, he saw that her eyes were dry.

Those were the days when a dozen young ladies were in the habit of
staying all night after a dance in the country; of long whispered talks
(nay, not always whispered) until early morning. And of late breakfasts.
Miss Russell had not been the only one who remarked Virginia's long
absence with her cousin; but Puss found her friend in one of those moods
which even she dared not disturb. Accordingly Miss Russell stayed all
night with Anne.

And the two spent most of the dark hours remaining in unprofitable
discussion as to whether Virginia were at last engaged to her cousin, and
in vain queried over another unsolved mystery. This mystery was taken up
at the breakfast table the next morning, when Miss Carvel surprised Mrs.
Brinsmade and the male household by appearing at half-past seven.

"Why, Jinny," cried Mr. Brinsmade, "what does this mean? I always thought
that young ladies did not get up after a ball until noon."

Virginia smiled a little nervously.

"I am going to ask you to take me to town when you go, Mr. Brinsmade."

"Why, certainly, my dear," he said. "But I under stood that your aunt was
to send for you this afternoon from Bellegarde."

Virginia shook her head. There is something I wis to do in town."

"I'll drive her in, Pa," said Jack. "You're too old. Will you go with me,
Jinny?"

"Of course, Jack."

"But you must eat some breakfast, Jinny," said Mrs Brinsmade, glancing
anxiously at the girl.

Mr. Brinsmade put down his newspaper.

"Where was Stephen Brice last night, Jack?" he asked. "I understood Anne
to say that he had spoke; of coming late."

"Why, sir," said Jack, "that's what we can't make out. Tom Catherwood,
who is always doing queer things, you know, went to a Black Republican
meeting last night, and met Stephen there. They came out in Tom's buggy
to the Russells', and Tom got into his clothes first and rode over.
Stephen was to have followed on Puss Russell's horse. But he never got
here. At least I can find no one who saw him. Did you, Jinny?"

But Virginia did not raise her eyes from her plate. A miraculous
intervention came through Mrs. Brinsmade.

"There might have been an accident, Jack," said that lady, with concern.
"Send Nicodemus over to Mrs. Russell's at once to inquire. You know that
Mr. Brice is a Northerner, and may not be able to ride."

Jack laughed.

"He rides like a dragoon, mother," said he. "I don't know where he picked
it up."

"The reason I mentioned him," said Mr. Brinsmade, lifting the blanket
sheet and adjusting his spectacles, "was because his name caught my eye
in this paper. His speech last night at the Library Hall is one of the
few sensible Republican speeches I have read. I think it very remarkable
for a man as young as he." Mr. Brinsmade began to read: "'While waiting
for the speaker of the evening, who was half an hour late, Mr. Tiefel
rose in the audience and called loudly for Mr. Brice. Many citizens in
the hall were astonished at the cheering which followed the mention of
this name. Mr. Brice is a young lawyer with a quiet manner and a
determined face, who has sacrificed much to the Party's cause this
summer. He was introduced by Judge Whipple, in whose office he is. He had
hardly begun to speak before he had the ear of everyone in the house. Mr.
Brice's personality is prepossessing, his words are spoken sharply, and
he has a singular emphasis at times which seems to drive his arguments
into the minds of his hearers. We venture to say that if party orators
here and elsewhere were as logical and temperate as Mr. Brice; if, like
him, they appealed to reason rather than to passion, those bitter and
lamentable differences which threaten our country's peace might be
amicably adjusted.' Let me read what he said."

But he was interrupted by the rising of Virginia. A high color was on the
girl's face as she said:

"Please excuse me, Mrs. Brinsmade, I must go and get ready."

"But you've eaten nothing, my dear."

Virginia did not reply. She was already on the stairs.

"You ought not have read that, Pa," Mr. Jack remonstrated; "you know that
she detests Yankees"




CHAPTER XIV

THE BREACH BECOMES TOO WIDE
ABRAHAM LINCOLN!

At the foot of Breed's Hill in Charlestown an American had been born into
the world, by the might of whose genius that fateful name was sped to the
uttermost parts of the nation. Abraham Lincoln was elected President of
the United States. And the moan of the storm gathering in the South grew
suddenly loud and louder.

Stephen Brice read the news in the black headlines and laid down the
newspaper, a sense of the miraculous upon him. There again was the
angled, low-celled room of the country tavern, reeking with food and
lamps and perspiration; for a central figure the man of surpassing
homeliness,--coatless, tieless, and vestless,--telling a story in the
vernacular. He reflected that it might well seem strange yea, and
intolerable--to many that this comedian of the country store, this crude
lawyer and politician, should inherit the seat dignified by Washington
and the Adamses.

And yet Stephen believed. For to him had been vouchsafed the glimpse
beyond.

That was a dark winter that followed, the darkest in our history. Gloom
and despondency came fast upon the heels of Republican exultation. Men
rose early for tidings from Charleston, the storm centre. The Union was
cracking here and there. Would it crumble in pieces before Abraham
Lincoln got to Washington?

One smoky morning early in December Stephen arrived late at the office to
find Richter sitting idle on his stool, concern graven on his face.

"The Judge has had no breakfast, Stephen," he whispered. "Listen!
Shadrach tells me he has been doing that since six this morning, when he
got his newspaper."

Stephen listened, and he heard the Judge pacing and pacing in his room.
Presently the door was flung open, And they saw Mr. Whipple standing in
the threshold, stern and dishevelled. Astonishment did not pause here. He
came out and sat down in Stephen's chair, striking the newspaper in his
hand, and they feared at first that his Mind had wandered.

"Propitiate!" he cried, "propitiate, propitiate, and again propitiate.
How long, O Lord?" Suddenly he turned upon Stephen, who was frightened.
But now his voice was natural, and he thrust the paper into the young
man's lap. "Have you read the President's message to Congress, sir? God
help me that I am spared to call that wobbling Buchanan President. Read
it. Read it, sir. You have a legal brain. Perhaps you can tell me why, if
a man admits that it is wrong for a state to abandon this Union, he
cannot call upon Congress for men and money to bring her back. No, this
weakling lets Floyd stock the Southern arsenals. He pays tribute to
Barbary. He is for bribing them not to be angry. Take Cuba from Spain,
says he, and steal the rest of Mexico that the maw of slavery may be
filled, and the demon propitiated."

They dared not answer him. And so he went back into his room, shutting
the door. That day no clients saw him, even those poor ones dependent on
his charity whom had never before denied. Richter and Stephen took
counsel together, and sent Shadrach out for his dinner.

Three weeks passed. There arrived a sparkling Sunday, brought down the
valley of the Missouri from the frozen northwest. The Saturday had been
soggy and warm.

Thursday had seen South Carolina leave that Union into which she was
born, amid prayers and the ringing of bells. Tuesday was to be Christmas
day. A young lady, who had listened to a solemn sermon of Dr.
Posthelwaite's, slipped out of Church before the prayers were ended, and
hurried into that deserted portion of the town about the Court House
where on week days business held its sway.

She stopped once at the bottom of the grimy flight of steps leading to
Judge Whipple's office. At the top she paused again, and for a short
space stood alert, her glance resting on the little table in the corner,
on top of which a few thumbed law books lay neatly piled. Once she made a
hesitating step in this direction. Then, as if by a resolution quickly
taken, she turned her back and softly opened the door of the Judge's
room. He was sitting upright in his chair. A book was open in his lap,
but it did not seem to Virginia that he was reading it.

"Uncle Silas," she said, "aren't you coming to dinner any more?"

He looked up swiftly from under his shaggy brows. The book fell to the
floor.

"Uncle Silas," said Virginia, bravely, "I came to get you to-day."

Never before had she known him to turn away from man or woman, but now
Judge Whipple drew his handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose
violently. A woman's intuition told her that locked tight in his heart
was what he longed to say, and could not. The shiny black overcoat he
wore was on the bed. Virginia picked it up and held it out to him, an
appeal in her eyes.

He got into it. Then she handed him his hat. Many people walking home
from church that morning marvelled as they saw these two on Locust Street
together, the young girl supporting the elderly man over the slippery
places at the crossings. For neighbor had begun to look coldly upon
neighbor.

Colonel Carvel beheld them from his armchair by the sitting-room window,
and leaned forward with a start. His lips moved as he closed his Bible
reverently and marked his place. At the foot of the stairs he surprised
Jackson by waving him aside, for the Colonel himself flung open the door
and held out his hand to his friend. The Judge released Virginia's arm,
and his own trembled as he gave it.

"Silas," said the Colonel, "Silas, we've missed you."

Virginia stood by, smiling, but her breath came deeply. Had she done
right? Could any good come of it all? Judge Whipple did not go in at the
door--He stood uncompromisingly planted on the threshold, his head flung
back, and actual fierceness in his stare.

"Do you guess we can keep off the subject, Comyn?" he demanded.

Even Mr. Carvel, so used to the Judge's ways, was a bit taken aback by
this question. It set him tugging at his goatee, and his voice was not
quite steady as he answered:

"God knows, Silas. We are human, and we can only try."

Then Mr. Whipple marched in. It lacked a quarter of an hour of dinner,
--a crucial period to tax the resources of any woman. Virginia led the
talk, but oh, the pathetic lameness of it. Her own mind was wandering
when it should not, and recollections she had tried to strangle had
sprung up once more. Only that morning in church she had lived over again
the scene by Mr. Brinsmade's gate, and it was then that a wayward but
resistless impulse to go to the Judge's office had seized her. The
thought of the old man lonely and bitter in his room decided her. On her
knees she prayed that she might save the bond between him and her father.
For the Colonel had been morose on Sundays, and had taken to reading the
Bible, a custom he had not had since she was a child.

In the dining-room Jackson, bowing and smiling, pulled out the Judge's
chair, and got his customary curt nod as a reward. Virginia carved.

"Oh, Uncle Silas," she cried, "I am so glad that we have a wild turkey.
And you shall have your side-bone." The girl carved deftly, feverishly,
talking the while, aided by that most kind and accomplished of hosts, her
father. In the corner the dreaded skeleton of the subject grinned
sardonically. Were they going to be able to keep it off? There was to be
no help from Judge Whipple, who sat in grim silence. A man who feels his
soul burning is not given to small talk. Virginia alone had ever
possessed the power to make him forget.

"Uncle Silas, I am sure there are some things about our trip that we
never told you. How we saw Napoleon and his beautiful Empress driving in
the Bois, and how Eugenie smiled and bowed at the people. I never saw
such enthusiasm in my life. And oh, I learned such a lot of French
history. All about Francis the First, and Pa took me to see his chateaus
along the Loire. Very few tourists go there. You really ought to have
gone with us."

Take care, Virginia!

"I had other work to do, Jinny," said the Judge.

Virginia rattled an.

"I told you that we stayed with a real lord in England, didn't I?" said
she. "He wasn't half as nice as the Prince. But he had a beautiful house
in Surrey, all windows, which was built in Elizabeth's time. They called
the architecture Tudor, didn't they, Pa?"

"Yes, dear," said the Colonel, smiling.

"The Countess was nice to me," continued the girl, "and took me to garden
parties. But Lord Jermyn was always talking politics."

The Colonel was stroking his goatee.

"Tell Silas about the house, Jinny--Jackson, help the Judge again."

"No," said Virginia, drawing a breath. "I'm going to tell him about that
queer club where my great-grand-father used to bet with Charles Fox. We
saw a great many places where Richard Carvel had been in England. That
was before the Revolution. Uncle Daniel read me some of his memoirs when
we were at Calvert House. I know that you would be interested in them,
Uncle Silas. He sailed under Paul Jones."

"And fought for his country and for his flag, Virginia," said the Judge,
who had scarcely spoken until then. "No, I could not bear to read them
now, when those who should love that country are leaving it in passion."

There was a heavy silence. Virginia did not dare to look at her father.
But the Colonel said, gently:

"Not in passion, Silas, but in sorrow."

The Judge tightened his lips. But the effort was beyond him, and the
flood within him broke loose.

"Colonel Carvel," he cried, "South Carolina is mad--She is departing in
sin, in order that a fiendish practice may be perpetuated. If her people
stopped to think they would know that slavery cannot exist except by
means of this Union. But let this milksop of a President do his worst. We
have chosen a man who has the strength to say, 'You shall not go!'"

It was an awful moment. The saving grace of it was that respect and love
for her father filled Virginia's heart. In his just anger Colonel Carvel
remembered that he was the host, and strove to think only of his
affection for his old friend.

"To invade a sovereign state, sir, is a crime against the sacred spirit
of this government," he said.

"There is no such thing as a sovereign state, sir," exclaimed the Judge,
hotly. I am an American, and not a Missourian."

"When the time comes, sir," said the Colonel, with dignity, "Missouri
will join with her sister sovereign states against oppression."

"Missouri will not secede, sir."

"Why not, sir!" demanded the Colonel.

Because, sir, when the worst comes, the Soothing Syrup men will rally for
the Union. And there are enough loyal people here to keep her straight."

"Dutchmen, sir! Hessians? Foreign Republican hirelings, sir," exclaimed
the Colonel, standing up. "We shall drive them like sheep if they oppose
us. You are drilling them now that they may murder your own blood when
you think the time is ripe."

The Colonel did not hear Virginia leave the room, so softly had she gone,
He made a grand figure of a man as he stood up, straight and tall, those
gray eyes a-kindle at last. But the fire died as quickly as it had
flared. Pity had come and quenched it,--pity that an unselfish life of
suffering and loneliness should be crowned with these. The Colonel longed
then to clasp his friend in his arms. Quarrels they had had by the
hundred, never yet a misunderstanding. God had given to Silas Whipple a
nature stern and harsh that repelled all save the charitable few whose
gift it was to see below the surface, and Colonel Carvel had been the
chief of them. But now the Judge's vision was clouded.

Steadying himself by his chair, he had risen glaring, the loose skin
twitching on his sallow face. He began firmly but his voice shook ere he
had finished.

"Colonel Carvel," said he, "I expect that the day has come when you go
your way and I go mine. It will be better if--we do not meet again, sir."

And so he turned from the man whose friendship had stayed him for the
score of years he had battled with his enemies, from that house which had
been for so long his only home. For the last time Jackson came forward to
help him with his coat. The Judge did not see him, nor did he see the
tearful face of a young girl leaning over the banisters above. Ice was on
the stones. And Mr. Whipple, blinded by a moisture strange to his eyes,
clung to the iron railing as he felt his way down the steps. Before he
reached the bottom a stronger arm had seize his own, and was helping him.

The Judge brushed his eyes with his sleeve, and turned a defiant face
upon Captain Elijah Brent--then his voice broke. His anger was suddenly
gone, and his thought had flown back to the Colonel's thousand charities.

"Lige," he said, "Lige, it has come."

In answer the Captain pressed the Judge's hand, nodding vigorously to
hide his rising emotion. There was a pause.

"And you, Lige?" said Mr. Whipple, presently.

"My God!" cried the Captain, "I wish I knew."

"Lige," said the Judge, gravely, "you're too good a man to be for
Soothing Syrup."

The Captain choked.

"You're too smart to be fooled, Lige," he said, with a note near to
pleading. "The time has come when you Bell people and the Douglas people
have got to decide. Never in my life did I know it to do good to dodge a
question. We've got to be white or black, Lige. Nobody's got much use for
the grays. And don't let yourself be fooled with Constitutional Union
Meetings, and compromises. The time is almost here, Lige, when it will
take a rascal to steer a middle course."

Captain Lige listened, and he shifted from one foot to the other, and
rubbed his hands, which were red. Some odd trick of the mind had put into
his head two people--Eliphalet Hopper and Jacob Cluyme. Was he like them?

"Lige, you've got to decide. Do you love your country, sir? Can you look
on while our own states defy us, and not lift a hand? Can you sit still
while the Governor and all the secessionists in this state are plotting
to take Missouri, too, out of the Union? The militia is riddled with
rebels, and the rest are forming companies of minute men."

"And you Black Republicans," the Captain cried "have organized your Dutch
Wideawakes, and are arming them to resist Americans born."

"They are Americans by our Constitution, sir, which the South pretends to
revere," cried the Judge. "And they are showing themselves better
Americans than many who have been on the soil for generations."

"My sympathies are with the South," said the Captain, doggedly, "and my
love is for the South."

"And your conscience?" said the Judge.

There was no answer. Both men raised their eyes to the house of him whose
loving hospitality had been a light in the lives of both. When at last
the Captain spoke, his voice was rent with feeling.

"Judge," he began, "when I was a poor young man on the old 'Vicksburg',
second officer under old Stetson, Colonel Carvel used to take me up to
his house on Fourth Street to dinner. And he gave me the clothes on my
back, so that I might not be ashamed before the fashion which came there.
He treated me like a son, sir. One day the sheriff sold the Vicksburg.
You remember it. That left me high and dry in the mud. Who bought her,
sir? Colonel Carvel. And he says to me, 'Lige, you're captain now, the
youngest captain on the river. And she's your boat. You can pay me
principal and interest when you get ready.'

"Judge Whipple, I never had any other home than right in, this house. I
never had any other pleasure than bringing Jinny presents, and tryin' to
show 'em gratitude. He took me into his house and cared for me at a time
when I wanted to go to the devil along with the stevedores when I was a
wanderer he kept me out of the streets, and out of temptation. Judge, I'd
a heap rather go down and jump off the stern of my boat than step in here
and tell him I'd fight for the North."

The Judge steadied himself on his hickory stick and walked off without a
word. For a while Captain Lige stood staring after him. Then he slowly
climbed the steps and disappeared.




CHAPTER, XV

MUTTERINGS

Early in the next year, 1861,--that red year in the Calendar of our
history,--several gentlemen met secretly in the dingy counting-room of a
prominent citizen to consider how the state of Missouri might be saved to
the Union. One of these gentlemen was Judge Whipple, another, Mr.
Brinsmade; and another a masterly and fearless lawyer who afterward
became a general, and who shall be mentioned in these pages as the
Leader. By his dash and boldness and statesmanlike grasp of a black
situation St. Louis was snatched from the very bosom of secession.

Alas, that chronicles may not stretch so as to embrace all great men of a
time. There is Captain Nathaniel Lyon,--name with the fateful ring.
Nathaniel Lyon, with the wild red hair and blue eye, born and bred a
soldier, ordered to St. Louis, and become subordinate to a wavering
officer of ordnance. Lyon was one who brooked no trifling. He had the
face of a man who knows his mind and intention; the quick speech and
action which go with this. Red tape made by the reel to bind him, he
broke. Courts-martial had no terrors for him. He proved the ablest of
lieutenants to the strong civilian who was the Leader. Both were the men
of the occasion. If God had willed that the South should win, there would
have been no occasion.

Even as Judge Whipple had said, the time was come for all men to decide.
Out of the way, all hopes of compromises that benumbed Washington. No
Constitutional Unionists, no Douglas Democrats, no Republicans now.

All must work to save the ship. The speech-making was not done with yet.
Partisanship must be overcome, and patriotism instilled in its place. One
day Stephen Brice saw the Leader go into Judge Whipple's room, and
presently he was sent for. After that he was heard of in various
out-of-the-way neighborhoods, exhorting all men to forget their quarrels
and uphold the flag.

The Leader himself knew not night from day in his toil,--in organizing,
conciliating, compelling when necessary. Letters passed between him and
Springfield. And, after that solemn inauguration, between him and
Washington. It was an open secret that the Governor of Missouri held out
his arms to Jefferson Davis, just elected President of the new Southern
Confederacy. It soon became plain to the feeblest brain what the Leader
and his friends had perceived long before, that the Governor intended to
use the militia (purged of Yankee sympathizers) to save the state for the
South.

The Government Arsenal, with its stores of arms and ammunition, was the
prize. This building and its grounds lay to the south of the City,
overlooking the river. It was in command of a doubting major of ordnance;
the corps of officers of Jefferson Barracks hard by was mottled with
secession. Trade was still. The Mississippi below was practically closed.
In all the South, Pickens and Sumter alone stood stanch to the flag. A
general, wearing the uniform of the army of the United States,
surrendered the whole state of Texas.

The St. Louis Arsenal was next in succession, and the little band of
regulars at the Barracks was powerless to save it. What could the Leader
and Captain Lyon do without troops? That was the question that rang in
Stephen's head, and in the heads of many others. For, if President
Lincoln sent troops to St. Louis, that would precipitate the trouble. And
the President had other uses for the handful in the army.

There came a rain-sodden night when a mysterious message arrived at the
little house in Olive Street. Both anxiety and pride were in Mrs. Brice's
eyes as they followed her son out of the door. At Twelfth Street two men
were lounging on the corners, each of whom glanced at him listessly as he
passed. He went up a dark and narrow stair into a lighted hall with
shrouded windows. Men with sober faces were forming line on the sawdust
of the floors. The Leader was there giving military orders in a low
voice. That marked the beginning of the aggressive Union movement.

Stephen, standing apart at the entrance, remarked that many of the men
were Germans. Indeed, he spied his friend Tiefel there, and presently
Richter came from the ranks to greet him.

"My friend," he said, "you are made second lieutenant of our company, the
Black Jaegers."

"But I have never drilled in my life," said Stephen.

"Never mind. Come and see the Leader."

The Leader, smiling a little, put a vigorous stop to his protestations,
and told him to buy a tactics. The next man Stephen saw was big Tom
Catherwood, who blushed to the line of his hair as he returned Stephen's
grip.

"Tom, what does this mean?" He asked.

"Well," said Tom, embarrassed, "a fellow has got to do what he think's
right."

"And your family?" asked Stephen.

A spasm crossed Tom's face.

"I reckon they'll disown me, Stephen, when they find it out."

Richter walked home as far as Stephen's house. He was to take the Fifth
Street car for South St. Louis. And they talked of Tom's courage, and of
the broad and secret military organization the Leader had planned that
night. But Stephen did not sleep till the dawn. Was he doing right? Could
he afford to risk his life in the war that was coming, and leave his
mother dependent upon charity?

It was shortly after this that Stephen paid his last visit for many a
long day upon Miss Puss Russell. It was a Sunday afternoon, and Puss was
entertaining, as usual, a whole parlor-full of young men, whose leanings
and sympathies Stephen divined while taking off his coat in the hall.
Then he heard Miss Russell cry:

"I believe that they are drilling those nasty Dutch hirelings in secret."

"I am sure they are," said George Catherwood. "One of the halls is on
Twelfth Street, and they have sentries posted out so that you can't get
near them. Pa has an idea that Tom goes there. And he told him that if he
ever got evidence of it, he'd show him the door."

"Do you really think that Tom is with the Yankees?" asked Jack Brinsmade.

"Tom's a fool," said George, with emphasis, "but he isn't a coward. He'd
just as soon tell Pa to-morrow that he was drilling if the Yankee leaders
wished it known."

"Virginia will never speak to him again," said Eugenie, in an awed voice.

"Pooh!" said Puss, "Tom never had a chance with Jinny. Did he, George?
Clarence is in high favor now. Did you ever know any one to change so,
since this military business has begun? He acts like a colonel. I hear
that they are thinking of making him captain of a company of dragoons."

"They are," George answered. "And that is the company I intend to join."

"Well," began Puss, with her usual recklessness, "it's a good thing for
Clarence that all this is happening. I know somebody else--"

Poor Stephen in the hall knew not whether to stay or fly. An accident
decided the question. Emily Russell came down the stairs at that instant
and spoke to him. As the two entered the parlor, there was a hush
pregnant with many things unsaid. Puss's face was scarlet, but her hand
was cold as she held it out to him. For the first time in that house he
felt like an intruder. Jack Brinsmade bowed with great ceremony, and took
his departure. There was scarcely a distant cordiality in the greeting of
the other young men. And Puss, whose tongue was loosed again, talked
rapidly of entertainments to which Stephen either had not been invited,
or from which he had stayed away. The rest of the company were almost
moodily silent.

Profoundly depressed, Stephen sat straight in the velvet chair, awaiting
a seasonable time to bring his visit to a close.

This was to be the last, then, of his intercourse with a warmhearted and
lovable people. This was to be the end of his friendship with this
impetuous and generous girl who had done so much to brighten his life
since he had come to St: Louis. Henceforth this house would be shut to
him, and all others save Mr. Brinsmade's.

Presently, in one of the intervals of Miss Russell's feverish talk, he
rose to go. Dusk was gathering, and a deep and ominous silence penetrated
like the shadows into the tall room. No words came to him. Impulsively,
almost tearfully, Puss put her hand in his. Then she pressed it
unexpectedly, so that he had to gulp down a lump that was in his throat.
Just then a loud cry was heard from without, the men jumped from their
chairs, and something heavy dropped on the carpet.

Some ran to the window, others to the door. Directly across the street
was the house of Mr. Harmsworth, a noted Union man. One of the third
story windows was open, and out of it was pouring a mass of gray wood
smoke. George Catherwood was the first to speak.

"I hope it will burn down," he cried.

Stephen picked up the object on the floor, which had dropped from his
pocket, and handed it to him.

It was a revolver.




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 5.



CHAPTER XVI

THE GUNS OF SUMTER

Winter had vanished. Spring was come with a hush. Toward a little island
set in the blue waters of Charleston harbor anxious eyes were strained.

Was the flag still there?

God alone may count the wives and mothers who listened in the still hours
of the night for the guns of Sumter. One sultry night in April Stephen's
mother awoke with fear in her heart, for she had heard them. Hark! that
is the roar now, faint but sullen. That is the red flash far across the
black Southern sky. For in our beds are the terrors and cruelties of life
revealed to us. There is a demon to be faced, and nought alone.

Mrs. Brice was a brave woman. She walked that night with God.

Stephen, too, awoke. The lightning revealed her as she bent over him. On
the wings of memory be flew back to his childhood in the great Boston
house with the rounded front, and he saw the nursery with its high
windows looking out across the Common. Often in the dark had she come to
him thus, her gentle hand passing over aim to feel if he were covered.

"What is it, mother?" he said.

She said: "Stephen, I am afraid that the war has come."

He sat up, blindly. Even he did not guess the agony in her heart.

"You will have to go, Stephen."

It was long before his answer came.

"You know that I cannot, mother. We have nothing left but the little I
earn. And if I were--" He did not finish the sentence, for he felt her
trembling. But she said again, with that courage which seems woman's
alone:

"Remember Wilton Brice. Stephen--I can get along. I can sew."

It was the hour he had dreaded, stolen suddenly upon him out of the
night. How many times had he rehearsed this scene to himself! He, Stephen
Brice, who had preached and slaved and drilled for the Union, a renegade
to be shunned by friend and foe alike! He had talked for his country, but
he would not risk his life for it. He heard them repeating the charge. He
saw them passing him silently on the street. Shamefully he remembered the
time, five months agone, when he had worn the very uniform of his
Revolutionary ancestor. And high above the tier of his accusers he saw
one face, and the look of it stung to the very quick of his soul.

Before the storm he had fallen asleep in sheer weariness of the struggle,
that face shining through the black veil of the darkness. If he were to
march away in the blue of his country (alas, not of hers!) she would
respect him for risking life for conviction. If he stayed at home, she
would not understand. It was his plain duty to his mother. And yet he
knew that Virginia Carvel and the women like her were ready to follow
with bare feet the march of the soldiers of the South.

The rain was come now, in a flood. Stephen's mother could not see in the
blackness the bitterness on his face. Above the roar of the waters she
listened for his voice.

"I will not go, mother," he said. "If at length every man is needed, that
will be different."

"It is for you to decide, my son," she answered. "There are many ways in
which you can serve your country here. But remember that you may have to
face hard things."

"I have had to do that before, mother," he replied calmly. "I cannot
leave you dependent upon charity."

She went back into her room to pray, for she knew that he had laid his
ambition at her feet.

It was not until a week later that the dreaded news came. All through the
Friday shells had rained on the little fort while Charleston looked on.
No surrender yet. Through a wide land was that numbness which precedes
action. Force of habit sent men to their places of business, to sit idle.
A prayerful Sunday intervened. Sumter had fallen. South Carolina had shot
to bits the flag she had once revered.

On the Monday came the call of President Lincoln for volunteers. Missouri
was asked for her quota. The outraged reply of her governor went back,
--never would she furnish troops to invade her sister states. Little did
Governor Jackson foresee that Missouri was to stand fifth of all the
Union in the number of men she was to give. To her was credited in the
end even more men than stanch Massachusetts.

The noise of preparation was in the city--in the land. On the Monday
morning, when Stephen went wearily to the office, he was met by Richter
at the top of the stairs, who seized his shoulders and looked into his
face. The light of the zealot was on Richter's own.

"We shall drill every night now, my friend, until further orders. It is
the Leader's word. Until we go to the front, Stephen, to put down
rebellion." Stephen sank into a chair, and bowed his head. What would he
think,--this man who had fought and suffered and renounced his native
land for his convictions? Who in this nobler allegiance was ready to die
for them? How was he to confess to Richter, of all men?

"Carl," he said at length, "I--I cannot go."

"You--you cannot go? You who have done so much already! And why?"

Stephen did not answer. But Richter, suddenly divining, laid his hands
impulsively on Stephen's shoulders.

"Ach, I see," he said. "Stephen, I have saved some money. It shall be for
your mother while you are away."

At first Stephen was too surprised for speech. Then, in spite of his
feelings, he stared at the German with a new appreciation of his
character. Then he could merely shake his head.

"Is it not for the Union?" implored Richter, "I would give a fortune, if
I had it. Ah, my friend, that would please me so. And I do not need the
money now. I 'have--nobody."

Spring was in the air; the first faint smell of verdure wafted across the
river on the wind. Stephen turned to the open window, tears of intense
agony in his eyes. In that instant he saw the regiment marching, and the
flag flying at its head.

"It is my duty to stay here, Carl," he said brokenly.

Richter took an appealing step toward him and stopped. He realized that
with this young New Englander a decision once made was unalterable. In
all his knowledge of Stephen he never remembered him to change. With the
demonstrative sympathy of his race, he yearned to comfort him, and knew
not how. Two hundred years of Puritanism had reared barriers not to be
broken down.

At the end of the office the stern figure of the Judge appeared.

"Mr. Brice!" he said sharply.

Stephen followed him into the littered room behind the ground glass door,
scarce knowing what to expect,--and scarce caring, as on that first day
he had gone in there. Mr. Whipple himself closed the door, and then the
transom. Stephen felt those keen eyes searching him from their
hiding-place.

"Mr. Brice," he said at last, "the President has called for seventy-five
thousand volunteers to crush this rebellion. They will go, and be
swallowed up, and more will go to fill their places. Mr. Brice, people
will tell you that the war will be over in ninety days. But I tell you,
sir, that it will not be over in seven times ninety days." He brought
down his fist heavily upon the table. "This, sir, will be a war to the
death. One side or the other will fight until their blood is all let, and
until their homes are all ruins." He darted at Stephen one look from
under those fierce eyebrows. "Do you intend to go sir?"

Stephen met the look squarely. "No, sir," he answered, steadily, "not
now."

"Humph," said the Judge. Then he began what seemed a never-ending search
among the papers on his desk. At length he drew out a letter, put on his
spectacles and read it, and finally put it down again.

"Stephen," said Mr. Whipple, "you are doing a courageous thing. But if we
elect to follow our conscience in this world, we must not expect to
escape persecution, sir. Two weeks ago," he continued slowly, "two weeks
ago I had a letter from Mr. Lincoln about matters here. He mentions you."

"He remembers me!" cried Stephen

The Judge smiled a little. "Mr. Lincoln never forgets any one," said he.
"He wishes me to extend to you his thanks for your services to the
Republican party, and sends you his kindest regards."

This was the first and only time that Mr. Whipple spoke to him of his
labors. Stephen has often laughed at this since, and said that he would
not have heard of them at all had not the Judge's sense of duty compelled
him to convey the message. And it was with a lighter heart than he had
felt for many a day that he went out of the door.

Some weeks later, five regiments were mustered into the service of the
United States. The Leader was in command of one. And in response to his
appeals, despite the presence of officers of higher rank, the President
had given Captain Nathaniel Lyon supreme command in Missouri.

Stephen stood among the angry, jeering crowd that lined the streets as
the regiments marched past. Here were the 'Black Jaegers.' No wonder the
crowd laughed. Their step was not as steady, nor their files as straight
as Company A. There was Richter, his head high, his blue eyes defiant.
And there was little Tiefel marching in that place of second lieutenant
that Stephen himself should have filled. Here was another company, and at
the end of the first four, big Tom Catherwood. His father had disowned
him the day before, His two brothers, George and little Spencer, were in
a house not far away--a house from which a strange flag drooped.

Clouds were lowering over the city, and big drops falling, as Stephen
threaded his way homeward, the damp anal gloom of the weather in his very
soul. He went past the house where the strange flag hung against its
staff In that big city it flaunted all unchallenged. The house was thrown
wide open that day, and in its window lounged young men of honored
families. And while they joked of German boorishness and Yankee cowardice
they held rifles across their knees to avenge any insult to the strange
banner that they had set up. In the hall, through the open doorway, the
mouth of a shotted field gun could be seen. The guardians were the Minute
Men, organized to maintain the honor and dignity of the state of
Missouri.

Across the street from the house was gathered a knot of curious people,
and among these Stephen paused. Two young men were standing on the steps,
and one was Clarence Colfax. His hands were in his pockets, and a
careless, scornful smile was on his face when he glanced down into the
street. Stephen caught that smile. Anger swept over him in a hot flame,
as at the slave auction years agone. That was the unquenchable fire of
the war. The blood throbbed in his temples as his feet obeyed,--and yet
he stopped.

What right had he to pull down that flag, to die on the pavement before
that house?




CHAPTER XVII

CAMP JACKSON

What enthusiasm on that gusty Monday morning, the Sixth of May, 1861!
Twelfth Street to the north of the Market House is full three hundred
feet across, and the militia of the Sovereign State of Missouri is
gathering there. Thence by order of her Governor they are to march to
Camp Jackson for a week of drill and instruction.

Half a mile nearer the river, on the house of the Minute Men, the strange
flag leaps wildly in the wind this day.

On Twelfth Street the sun is shining, drums are beating, and bands are
playing, and bright aides dashing hither and thither on spirited
chargers. One by one the companies are marching up, and taking place in
line; the city companies in natty gray fatigue, the country companies
often in their Sunday clothes. But they walk with heads erect and chests
out, and the ladies wave their gay parasols and cheer them. Here are the
aristocratic St. Louis Grays, Company A; there come the Washington Guards
and Washington Blues, and Laclede Guards and Missouri Guards and Davis
Guards. Yes, this is Secession Day, this Monday. And the colors are the
Stars and Stripes and the Arms of Missouri crossed.

What are they waiting for? Why don't they move? Hark! A clatter and a
cloud of dust by the market place, an ecstasy of cheers running in waves
the length of the crowd. Make way for the dragoons! Here they come at
last, four and four, the horses prancing and dancing and pointing
quivering ears at the tossing sea of hats and parasols and ribbons. Maude
Catherwood squeezes Virginia's arm. There, riding in front, erect and
firm in the saddle, is Captain Clarence Colfax. Virginia is red and
white, and red again,--true colors of the Confederacy. How proud she was
of him now! How ashamed that she even doubted him! Oh, that was his true
calling, a soldier's life. In that moment she saw him at the head of
armies, from the South, driving the Yankee hordes northward and still
northward until the roar of the lakes warns them of annihilation. She saw
his chivalry sparing them. Yes, this is Secession Monday.

Down to a trot they slow, Clarence's black thorough-bred arching his long
neck, proud as his master of the squadron which follows, four and four.
The square young man of bone and sinew in the first four, whose horse is
built like a Crusader's, is George Catherwood. And Eugenie gives a cry
and points to the rear where Maurice is riding.

Whose will be the Arsenal now? Can the Yankee regiments with their
slouchy Dutchmen hope to capture it! If there are any Yankees in Twelfth
Street that day, they are silent. Yes, there are some. And there are
some, even in the ranks of this Militia--who will fight for the Union.
These are sad indeed.

There is another wait, the companies standing at ease. Some of the
dragoons dismount, but not the handsome young captain, who rides straight
to the bright group which has caught his eye, Colonel Carvel wrings his
gauntleted hand.

"Clarence, we are proud of you, sir," he says.

And Virginia, repeats his words, her eyes sparkling, her fingers
caressing the silken curve of Jefferson's neck.

"Clarence, you will drive Captain Lyon and his Hessians into the river."

"Hush, Jinny," he answered, "we are merely going into camp to learn to
drill, that we may be ready to defend the state when the time comes."

Virginia laughed. "I had forgotten," she said.

"You will have your cousin court-martialed, my dear," said the Colonel.

Just then the call is sounded. But he must needs press Virginia's hand
first, and allow admiring Maude and Eugenie to press his. Then he goes
off at a slow canter to join his dragoons, waving his glove at them, and
turning to give the sharp order, "Attention"! to his squadron.

Virginia is deliriously happy. Once more she has swept from her heart
every vestige of doubt. Now is Clarence the man she can admire. Chosen
unanimously captain of the Squadron but a few days since, Clarence had
taken command like a veteran. George Catherwood and Maurice had told the
story.

And now at last the city is to shake off the dust of the North. "On to
Camp Jackson!" was the cry. The bands are started, the general and staff
begin to move, and the column swings into the Olive Street road, followed
by a concourse of citizens awheel and afoot, the horse cars crowded.
Virginia and Maude and the Colonel in the Carvel carriage, and behind
Ned, on the box, is their luncheon in a hamper Standing up, the girls can
just see the nodding plumes of the dragoons far to the front.

Olive Street, now paved with hot granite and disfigured by trolley wires,
was a country road then. Green trees took the place of crowded rows of
houses and stores, and little "bob-tail" yellow cars were drawn by
plodding mules to an inclosure in a timbered valley, surrounded by a
board fence, known as Lindell Grove. It was then a resort, a picnic
ground, what is now covered by close residences which have long shown the
wear of time.

Into Lindell Grove flocked the crowd, the rich and the poor, the
proprietor and the salesmen, to watch the soldiers pitch their tents
under the spreading trees. The gallant dragoons were off to the west,
across a little stream which trickled through the grounds. By the side of
it Virginia and Maude, enchanted, beheld Captain Colfax shouting his
orders while his troopers dragged the canvas from the wagons, and
staggered under it to the line. Alas! that the girls were there! The
Captain lost his temper, his troopers, perspiring over Gordian knots in
the ropes, uttered strange soldier oaths, while the mad wind which blew
that day played a hundred pranks.

To the discomfiture of the young ladies, Colonel Carvel pulled his goatee
and guffawed. Virginia was for moving away.

"How mean, Pa," she said indignantly. "How car, you expect them to do it
right the first day, and in this wind?"

"Oh! Jinny, look at Maurice!" exclaimed Maude, giggling. "He is pulled
over on his head."

The Colonel roared. And the gentlemen and ladies who were standing by
laughed, too. Virginia did not laugh. It was all too serious for her.

"You will see that they can fight," she said. "They can beat the Yankees
and Dutch."

This speech made the Colonel glance around him: Then he smiled,--in
response to other smiles.

"My dear," he said, "you must remember that this is a peaceable camp of
instruction of the state militia. There fly the Stars and Stripes from
the general's tent. Do you see that they are above the state flag? Jinny;
you forget yourself."

Jinny stamped her foot

"Oh, I hate dissimulation," she cried, "Why can't we, say outright that
we are going to run that detestable Captain Lyon and his Yankees and
Hessians out of the Arsenal."

"Why not, Colonel Carvel?" cried Maude. She had forgotten that one of her
brothers was with the Yankees and Hessians.

"Why aren't women made generals and governors?" said the Colonel.

"If we were," answered Virginia, "something might be accomplished."

"Isn't Clarence enough of a fire-eater to suit you?" asked her father.

But the tents were pitched, and at that moment the young Captain was seen
to hand over his horse to an orderly, and to come toward them. He was
followed by George Catherwood.

"Come, Jinny," cried her cousin, "let us go over to the main camp."

"And walk on Davis Avenue," said Virginia, flushing with pride. "Isn't
there a Davis Avenue?"

"Yes, and a Lee Avenue, and a Beauregard Avenue," said George, taking his
sister's arm.

"We shall walk in them all," said Virginia.

What a scene of animation it was. The rustling trees and the young grass
of early May, and the two hundred and forty tents in lines of military
precision. Up and down the grassy streets flowed the promenade, proud
fathers and mothers, and sweethearts and sisters and wives in gala dress.
Wear your bright gowns now, you devoted women. The day is coming when you
will make them over and over again, or tear them to lint, to stanch the
blood of these young men who wear their new gray so well.

Every afternoon Virginia drove with her father and her aunt to Camp
Jackson. All the fashion and beauty of the city were there. The bands
played, the black coachmen flecked the backs of their shining horses, and
walking in the avenues or seated under the trees were natty young
gentlemen in white trousers and brass-buttoned jackets. All was not
soldier fare at the regimental messes. Cakes and jellies and even ices
and more substantial dainties were laid beneath those tents. Dress parade
was one long sigh of delight: Better not to have been born than to have
been a young man in St. Louis, early in Camp Jackson week, and not be a
militiaman.

One young man whom we know, however, had little of pomp and vanity about
him,--none other than the young manager (some whispered "silent partner")
of Carvel & Company. If Mr. Eliphalet had had political ambition, or
political leanings, during the half-year which had just passed, he had
not shown them. Mr. Cluyme (no mean business man himself) had pronounced
Eliphalet a conservative young gentleman who attended to his own affairs
and let the mad country take care of itself. This is precisely the wise
course Mr. Hopper chose. Seeing a regiment of Missouri Volunteers
slouching down Fifth street in citizens' clothes he had been remarked to
smile cynically. But he kept his opinions so close that he was supposed
not to have any.

On Thursday of Camp Jackson week, an event occurred in Mr. Carvel's store
which excited a buzz of comment. Mr. Hopper announced to Mr. Barbo, the
book-keeper, that he should not be there after four o'clock. To be sure,
times were more than dull. The Colonel that morning had read over some
two dozen letters from Texas and the Southwest, telling of the
impossibility of meeting certain obligations in the present state of the
country. The Colonel had gone home to dinner with his brow furrowed. On
the other hand, Mr. Hopper's equanimity was spoken of at the widow's
table.

At four o'clock, Mr. Hopper took an Olive Street car, tucking himself
into the far corner where he would not be disturbed by any ladies who
might enter. In the course of an hour or so, he alighted at the western
gate of the camp on the Olive Street road. Refreshing himself with a
little tobacco, he let himself be carried leisurely by the crowd between
the rows of tents. A philosophy of his own (which many men before and
since have adopted) permitted him to stare with a superior good nature at
the open love-making around him. He imagined his own figure,--which was
already growing a little stout,--in a light gray jacket and duck
trousers, and laughed. Eliphalet was not burdened with illusions of that
kind. These heroes might have their hero-worship. Life held something
dearer for him.

As he was sauntering toward a deserted seat at the foot of a tree, it so
chanced that he was overtaken by Mr. Cluyme and his daughter Belle. Only
that morning, this gentleman, in glancing through the real estate column
of his newspaper, had fallen upon a deed of sale which made him wink. He
reminded his wife that Mr. Hopper had not been to supper of late. So now
Mr. Cluyme held out his hand with more than common cordiality. When Mr.
Hopper took it, the fingers did not close any too tightly over his own.
But it may be well to remark that Mr. Hopper himself did not do any
squeezing. He took off his hat grudgingly to Miss Belle. He had never
liked the custom.

"I hope you will take pot luck with us soon again, Mr. Hopper," said the
elder gentleman. "We only have plain and simple things, but they are
wholesome, sir. Dainties are poor things to work on. I told that to his
Royal Highness when he was here last fall. He was speaking to me on the
merits of roast beef--"

"It's a fine day," said Mr. Hopper.

"So it is," Mr. Cluyme assented. Letting his gaze wander over the camp,
he added casually, "I see that they have got a few mortars and howitzers
since yesterday. I suppose that is the stuff we heard so much about,
which came on the 'Swon' marked 'marble.' They say Jeff Davis sent the
stuff to 'em from the Government arsenal the Secesh captured at Baton
Rouge. They're pretty near ready to move on our arsenal now."

Mr. Hopper listened with composure. He was not greatly interested in this
matter which had stirred the city to the quick. Neither had Mr. Cluyme
spoken as one who was deeply moved. Just then, as if to spare the pains
of a reply, a "Jenny Lind" passed them. Miss Belle recognized the
carriage immediately as belonging to an elderly lady who was well known
in St. Louis. Every day she drove out, dressed in black bombazine, and
heavily veiled. But she was blind. As the mother-in-law of the stalwart
Union leader of the city, Miss Belle's comment about her appearance in
Camp Jackson was not out of place.

"Well!" she exclaimed, "I'd like to know what she's doing here!"

Mr. Hopper's answer revealed a keenness which, in the course of a few
days, engendered in Mr. Cluyme as lusty a respect as he was capable of.

"I don't know," said Eliphalet; "but I cal'late she's got stouter."

"What do you mean by that?" Miss Belle demanded.

"That Union principles must be healthy," said he, and laughed.

Miss Cluyme was prevented from following up this enigma. The appearance
of two people on Davis Avenue drove the veiled lady from her mind.
Eliphalet, too, had seen them. One was the tall young Captain of
Dragoons, in cavalry boots, and the other a young lady with dark brown
hair, in a lawn dress.

"Just look at them!" cried Miss Belle. "They think they are alone in the
garden of Eden. Virginia didn't use to care for him. But since he's a
captain, and has got a uniform, she's come round pretty quick. I'm
thankful I never had any silly notions about uniforms."

She glanced at Eliphalet, to find that his eyes were fixed on the
approaching couple.

"Clarence is handsome, but worthless," she continued in her sprightly
way. "I believe Jinny will be fool enough to marry him. Do you think
she's so very pretty, Mr. Hopper?"

Mr. Hopper lied.

"Neither do I," Miss Belle assented. And upon that, greatly to the
astonishment of Eliphalet, she left him and ran towards them. "Virginia!"
she cried; "Jinny, I have something so interesting to tell you!"

Virginia turned impatiently. The look she bestowed upon Miss Cluyme was
not one of welcome, but Belle was not sensitive. Putting her arm through
Virginia's, she sauntered off with the pair toward the parade grounds,
Clarence maintaining now a distance of three feet, and not caring to hide
his annoyance.

Eliphalet's eyes smouldered, following the three until they were lost in
the crowd. That expression of Virginia's had reminded him of a time,
years gone, when she had come into the store on her return from Kentucky,
and had ordered him to tell her father of her arrival. He had smarted
then. And Eliphalet was not the sort to get over smarts.

"A beautiful young lady," remarked Mr. Cluyme. "And a deserving one, Mr.
Hopper. Now, she is my notion of quality. She has wealth, and manners,
and looks. And her father is a good man. Too bad he holds such views on
secession. I have always thought, sir, that you were singularly fortunate
in your connection with him."

There was a point of light now in each of Mr. Hopper's green eyes. But
Mr. Cluyme continued:

"What a pity, I say, that he should run the risk of crippling himself by
his opinions. Times are getting hard."

"Yes," said Mr. Hopper.

"And southwestern notes are not worth the paper they are written on--"

But Mr. Cluyme has misjudged his man. If he had come to Eliphalet for
information of Colonel Carvel's affairs, or of any one else's affairs, he
was not likely to get it. It is not meet to repeat here the long business
conversation which followed. Suffice it to say that Mr. Cluyme, who was
in dry goods himself, was as ignorant when he left Eliphalet as when he
met him. But he had a greater respect than ever for the shrewdness of the
business manager of Carvel & Company.

          .........................

That same Thursday, when the first families of the city were whispering
jubilantly in each other's ears of the safe arrival of the artillery and
stands of arms at Camp Jackson, something of significance was happening
within the green inclosure of the walls of the United States arsenal, far
to the southward.

The days had become alike in sadness to Stephen. Richter gone, and the
Judge often away in mysterious conference, he was left for hours at a
spell the sole tenant of the office. Fortunately there was work of
Richter's and of Mr. Whipple's left undone that kept him busy. This
Thursday morning, however, he found the Judge getting into that best
black coat which he wore on occasions. His manner had recently lost much
of its gruffness.

"Stephen," said he, "they are serving out cartridges and uniforms to the
regiments at the arsenal. Would you like to go down with me?"

"Does that mean Camp Jackson?" asked Stephen, when they had reached the
street.

"Captain Lyon is not the man to sit still and let the Governor take the
first trick, sir," said the Judge.

As they got on the Fifth Street car, Stephen's attention was at once
attracted to a gentleman who sat in a corner, with his children about
him. He was lean, and he had a face of great keenness and animation. He
had no sooner spied Judge Whipple than he beckoned to him with a kind of
military abruptness.

"That is Major William T. Sherman," said the Judge to Stephen. "He used
to be in the army, and fought in the Mexican War. He came here two months
ago to be the President of this Fifth Street car line."

They crossed over to him, the Judge introducing Stephen to Major Sherman,
who looked at him very hard, and then decided to bestow on him a vigorous
nod.

"Well, Whipple," he said, "this nation is going to the devil; eh?"

Stephen could not resist a smile. For it was a bold man who expressed
radical opinions (provided they were not Southern opinions) in a St.
Louis street car early in '61.

The Judge shook his head. "We may pull out," he said.

"Pull out!" exclaimed Mr. Sherman. "Who's man enough in Washington to
shake his fist in a rebel's face? Our leniency--our timidity--has
paralyzed us, sir."

By this time those in the car began to manifest considerable interest in
the conversation. Major Sherman paid them no attention, and the Judge,
once launched in an argument, forgot his surroundings.

"I have faith in Mr. Lincoln. He is calling out volunteers."

"Seventy-five thousand for three months!" said the Major, vehemently, "a
bucketful on a conflagration I tell you, Whipple, we'll need all the
water we've got in the North."

The Judge expressed his belief in this, and also that Mr. Lincoln would
draw all the water before he got through.

"Upon my soul," said Mr. Sherman, "I'm disgusted. Now's the time to stop
'em. The longer we let 'em rear and kick, the harder to break 'em. You
don't catch me going back to the army for three months. If they want me,
they've got to guarantee me three years. That's more like it." Turning to
Stephen, he added: "Don't you sign any three months' contract, young
man."

Stephen grew red. By this time the car was full, and silent. No one had
offered to quarrel with the Major. Nor did it seem likely that any one
would.

"I'm afraid I can't go, sir."

"Why not?" demanded Mr. Sherman.

"Because, sir," said the Judge, bluntly, "his mother's a widow, and they
have no money. He was a lieutenant in one of Blair's companies before the
call came."

The Major looked at Stephen, and his expression changed.

"Find it pretty hard?" he asked.

Stephen's expression must have satisfied him, but he nodded again, more
vigorously than before.

"Just you WAIT, Mr. Brice," he said. "It won't hurt you any."

Stephen was grateful. But he hoped to fall out of the talk. Much to his
discomfiture, the Major gave him another of those queer looks. His whole
manner, and even his appearance, reminded Stephen strangely of Captain
Elijah Brent.

"Aren't you the young man who made the Union speech in Mercantile Library
Hall?"

"Yes, sir," said the Judge. "He is."

At that the Major put out his hand impulsively, and gripped Stephen's.

"Well, sir," he said, "I have yet to read a more sensible speech, except
some of Abraham Lincoln's. Brinsmade gave it to me to read. Whipple, that
speech reminded me of Lincoln. It was his style. Where did you get it,
Mr. Brice?" he demanded.

"I heard Mr. Lincoln's debate with Judge Douglas at 'Freeport," said
Stephen; beginning to be amused.

The Major laughed.

"I admire your frankness, sir," he said. "I meant to say that its logic
rather than its substance reminded one of Lincoln."

"I tried to learn what I could from him, Major Sherman."

At length the car stopped, and they passed into the Arsenal grounds.
Drawn up in lines on the green grass were four regiments, all at last in
the blue of their country's service. Old soldiers with baskets of
cartridges were stepping from file to file, giving handfuls to the
recruits. Many of these thrust them in their pockets, for there were not
enough belts to go around. The men were standing at ease, and as Stephen
saw them laughing and joking lightheartedly his depression returned. It
was driven away again by Major Sherman's vivacious comments. For suddenly
Captain Lyon, the man of the hour, came into view.

"Look at him!" cried the Major, "he's a man after my own heart. Just look
at him running about with his hair flying in the wind, and the papers
bulging from his pockets. Not dignified, eh, Whipple? But this isn't the
time to be dignified. If there were some like Lyon in Washington, our
troops would be halfway to New Orleans by this time. Don't talk to me of
Washington! Just look at him!"

The gallant Captain was a sight, indeed, and vividly described by Major
Sherman's picturesque words as he raced from regiment to regiment, and
from company to company, with his sandy hair awry, pointing,
gesticulating, commanding. In him Stephen recognized the force that had
swept aside stubborn army veterans of wavering faith, that snapped the
tape with which they had tied him.

Would he be duped by the Governor's ruse of establishing a State Camp at
this time? Stephen, as he gazed at him, was sure that he would not. This
man could see to the bottom, through every specious argument. Little
matters of law and precedence did not trouble him. Nor did he believe
elderly men in authority when they told gravely that the state troops
were there for peace.

After the ranks were broken, Major Sherman and the Judge went to talk to
Captain Lyon and the Union Leader, who was now a Colonel of one of the
Volunteer regiments. Stephen sought Richter, who told him that the
regiments were to assemble the morning of the morrow, prepared to march.

"To Camp Jackson?" asked Stephen.

Richter shrugged his shoulders.

"We are not consulted, my friend," he said. "Will you come into my
quarters and have a bottle of beer with Tiefel?"

Stephen went. It was not their fault that his sense at their comradeship
was gone. To him it was as if the ties that had bound him to them were
asunder, and he was become an outcast.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE STONE THAT IS REJECTED

That Friday morning Stephen awoke betimes with a sense that something was
to happen. For a few moments he lay still in the half comprehension which
comes after sleep when suddenly he remembered yesterday's incidents at
the Arsenal, and leaped out of bed.

"I think that Lyon is going to attack Camp Jackson to-day," he said to
his mother after breakfast, when Hester had left the room.

Mrs. Brice dropped her knitting in her lap.

"Why, Stephen?"

"I went down to the Arsenal with the Judge yesterday and saw them
finishing the equipment of the new regiments. Something was in the wind.
Any one could see that from the way Lyon was flying about. I think he
must have proof that the Camp Jackson people have received supplies from
the South."

Mrs. Brice looked fixedly at her son, and then smiled in spite of the
apprehension she felt.

"Is that why you were working over that map of the city last night?" she
asked.

"I was trying to see how Lyon would dispose his troops. I meant to tell
you about a gentleman we met in the street car, a Major Sherman who used
to be in the army. Mr. Brinsmade knows him, and Judge Whipple, and many
other prominent men here. He came to St. Louis some months ago to take
the position of president of the Fifth Street Line. He is the keenest,
the most original man I have ever met. As long as I live I shall never
forget his description of Lyon."

"Is the Major going back into the army?" said Mrs. Brice, Stephen did not
remark the little falter in her voice. He laughed over the recollection
of the conversation in the street car.

"Not unless matters in Washington change to suit him," he said. "He thinks
that things have been very badly managed, and does not scruple to say so
anywhere. I could not have believed it possible that two men could have
talked in public as he and Judge Whipple did yesterday and not be shot
down. I thought that it was as much as a man's life is worth to mention
allegiance to the Union here in a crowd. And the way Mr. Sherman pitched
into the Rebels in that car full of people was enough to make your hair
stand on end."

"He must be a bold man," murmured Mrs. Brice.

"Does he think that the--the Rebellion can be put down?"

"Not with seventy-five thousand men, nor with ten times that number."

Mrs. Brice sighed, and furtively wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

"I am afraid we shall see great misery, Stephen," she said.

He was silent. From that peaceful little room war and its horrors seemed
very far away. The morning sun poured in through the south windows and
was scattered by the silver on the sideboard. From above, on the wall,
Colonel Wilton Brice gazed soberly down. Stephen's eyes lighted on the
portrait, and his thoughts flew back to the boyhood days when he used to
ply his father with questions about it. Then the picture had suggested
only the glory and honor which illumines the page of history. Something
worthy to look back upon, to keep ones head high. The hatred and the
suffering and the tears, the heartrending, tearing apart for all time of
loving ones who have grown together,--these were not upon that canvas,
Will war ever be painted with a wart?

The sound of feet was heard on the pavement. Stephen rose, glancing at
his mother. Her face was still upon her knitting.

"I am going to the Arsenal," he said. "I must see what as happening."

To her, as has been said, was given wisdom beyond most women. She did not
try to prevent him as he kissed her good-by. But when the door had shut
behind him, a little cry escaped her, and she ran to the window to strain
her eyes after him until he had turned the corner below.

His steps led him irresistibly past the house of the strange flag,
ominously quiet at that early hour. At sight of it anger made him hot
again. The car for South St. Louis stood at the end of the line, fast
filling with curious people who had read in their papers that morning of
the equipment of the new troops. There was little talk among them, and
that little guarded.

It was a May morning to rouse a sluggard; the night air tingled into life
at the touch of the sunshine, the trees in the flitting glory of their
first green. Stephen found the shaded street in front of the Arsenal
already filled with an expectant crowd. Sharp commands broke the silence,
and he saw the blue regiments forming on the lawn inside the wall. Truly,
events were in the air,--great events in which he had no part.

As he stood leaning against a tree-box by the curb, dragged down once
more by that dreaded feeling of detachment, he heard familiar voices
close beside him. Leaning forward, he saw Eliphalet Hopper and Mr.
Cluyme. It was Mr. Cluyme who was speaking.

"Well, Mr. Hopper," he said, "in spite of what you say, I expect you are
dust as eager as I am to see what is going on. You've taken an early
start this morning for sightseeing."

Eliphalet's equanimity was far from shaken.

"I don't cal'late to take a great deal of stock in the military," he
answered. "But business is business. And a man must keep an eye on what
is moving."

Mr. Cluyme ran his hand through his chop whiskers, and lowered his voice.

"You're right, Hopper," he assented. "And if this city is going to be
Union, we ought to know it right away."

Stephen, listening with growing indignation to this talk, was unaware of
a man who stood on the other side of the tree, and who now came forward
before Mr. Hopper. He presented a somewhat uncompromising front. Mr.
Cluyme instantly melted away.

"My friend," said the stranger, quietly, "I think we have met before,
when your actions were not greatly to your credit. I do not forget a
face, even when I see it in the dark. Now I hear you utter words which
are a disgrace to a citizen of the United States. I have some respect for
a rebel. I have none for you, sir."

As soon as Stephen recovered from the shock of his surprise, he saw that
Eliphalet had changed countenance. The manner of an important man of
affairs, which he hay so assiduously cultivated, fell away from him. He
took a step backward, and his eyes made an ugly shift. Stephen rejoiced
to see the stranger turn his back on the manager of Carvel & Company
before that dignitary had time to depart, and stand unconcernedly there
as if nothing had occurred.

Then Stephen stared at him.

He was not a man you would look at twice, ordinarily, he was smoking a
great El Sol cigar. He wore clothes that were anything but new, a slouch
hat, and coarse grained, square-toed boots. His trousers were creased at
the knees. His head fell forward a little from his square shoulders, and
leaned a bit to one side, as if meditatively. He had a light brown beard
that was reddish in the sun, and he was rather short than otherwise.

This was all that Stephen saw. And yet the very plainness of the man's
appearance only added to his curiosity. Who was this stranger? His words,
his action, too, had been remarkable. The art of administering a rebuke
like that was not given to many men. It was perfectly quiet, perfectly
final. And then, when it was over, he had turned his back and dismissed
it.

Next Stephen began to wonder what he could know about Hopper. Stephen had
suspected Eliphalet of subordinating principles to business gain, and
hence the conversation with Mr. Cluyme had given him no shock in the way
of a revelation, But if Hopper were a rogue, ought not Colonel Carvel to
hear it? Ought not he, Stephen Brice, to ask this man with the cigar what
he knew, and tell Judge Whipple? The sudden rattle of drums gave him a
start, and cruelly reminded him of the gulf of prejudice and hatred fast
widening between the friends.

All this time the stranger stood impassively chewing his cigar, his hand
against the tree-box. A regiment in column came out of the Arsenal gate,
the Union leader in his colonel's uniform, on horseback at its head. He
pulled up in the street opposite to Stephen, and sat in his saddle,
chatting with other officers around him.

Then the stranger stepped across the limestone gutter and walked up to
the Colonel's horse, He was still smoking. This move, too, was surprising
enough, It argued even more assurance. Stephen listened intently.

"Colonel Blair, my name is Grant," he said briefly.

The Colonel faced quickly about, and held out his gloved hand cordially,
"Captain Ulysses Grant," said he; "of the old army?"

Mr. Grant nodded.

"I wanted to wish you luck," he said.

"Thank you, Grant," answered the Colonel. "But you? Where are you living
now?"

"I moved to Illinois after I left here," replied Mr. Grant, as quietly as
before, "and have been in Galena, in the Leather business there. I went
down to Springfield with the company they organized in Galena, to be of
any help I could. They made me a clerk in the adjutant general's office
of the state I ruled blanks, and made out forms for a while." He paused,
as if to let the humble character of this position sink into the
Colonel's comprehension. "Then they found out that I'd been quartermaster
and commissary, and knew something about military orders Now I'm a state
mustering officer. I came down to Belleville to muster in a regiment,
which wasn't ready. And so I ran over here to see what you fellows were
doing."

If this humble account had been delivered volubly, and in another tone,
it is probable that the citizen-colonel would not have listened, since
the events of that day were to crown his work of a winter. But Mr. Grant
possessed a manner of holding attention.. It was very evident, however;
that Colonel Blair had other things to think of. Nevertheless he said
kindly:

"Aren't you going in, Grant?"

"I can't afford to go in as a captain of volunteers," was the calm reply:
"I served nine years in the regular army and I think I can command a
regiment."

The Colonel, whose attention was called away at that moment, did not
reply. Mr. Grant moved off up the street. Some of the younger officers
who were there, laughed as they followed his retreating figure.

"Command a regiment!" cried one, a lieutenant whom Stephen recognized as
having been a bookkeeper at Edwards, James, & Doddington's, and whose
stiff blue uniform coat creased awkwardly. "I guess I'm about as fit to
command a regiment as Grant is."

"That man's forty years old, if he's a day," put in another. "I remember
when he came here to St. Louis in '54, played out. He'd resigned from the
army on the Pacific Coast. He put up a log cabin down on the Gravois
Road, and there he lived in the hardest luck of any man I ever saw until
last year. You remember him, Joe."

"Yep," said Joe. "I spotted him by the El Sol cigar. He used to bring a
load of wood to the city once in a while, and then he'd go over to the
Planters' House, or somewhere else, and smoke one of these long fellows,
and sit against the wall as silent as a wooden Indian. After that he came
up to the city without his family and went into real estate one winter.
But he didn't make it go. Curious, it is just a year ago this month than
he went over to Illinois. He's an honest fellow, and hard working enough,
but he don't know how. He's just a dead failure."

"Command a regiment!" laughed the first, again, as of this in particular
had struck his sense of humor. "I guess he won't get a regiment in a
hurry, There's lots of those military carpet-baggers hanging around for
good jobs now."

"He might fool you fellows yet," said the one caller, though his tone was
not one of conviction. "I understand he had a first-rate record an the
Mexican War."

Just then an aide rode up, and the Colonel gave a sharp command which put
an end to this desultory talk. As the First Regiment took up the march,
the words "Camp Jackson" ran from mouth to mouth on the sidewalks.
Catching fire, Stephen ran with the crowd, and leaping on passing street
car, was borne cityward with the drums of the coming hosts beating in his
ears.

In the city, shutters were going up on the stores. The streets were
filled with, restless citizens seeking news, and drays were halted here
and there on the corners, the white eyes and frenzied calls of the negro
drivers betraying their excitement. While Stephen related to his mother
the events of the morning, Hester burned the dinner. It lay; still
untouched, on the table when the throbbing of drums sent them to the
front steps. Sigel's regiment had swung into the street, drawing in its
wake a seething crowd.

Three persons came out of the big house next door. One was Anna
Brinsmade; and there was her father, his white hairs uncovered. The third
was Jack. His sister was cringing to him appealingly, and he struggling
in her grasp. Out of his coat pocket hung the curved butt of a pepperbox
revolver.

"Let me go, Anne!" he cried. "Do you think I can stay here while my
people are shot down by a lot of damned Dutchman?"

"John," said Mr. Brinsmade, sternly, "I cannot let you join a mob. I
cannot let you shoot at men who carry the Union flag."

"You cannot prevent me, sir," shouted the young man, in a frenzy. "When
foreigners take our flag for them own, it is time for us to shoot them
down."

Wrenching himself free, he ran down the steps and up the street ahead of
the regiment. Then the soldiers and the noisy crowd were upon them and
while these were passing the two stood there as in a dream. After that
silence fell upon the street, and Mr. Brinsmade turned and went back into
the house, his head bowed as in prayer. Stephen and his mother drew back,
but Anne saw them.

"He is a rebel," she faltered. "It will break my father's heart."

She looked at Stephen appealingly, unashamed of the tears in her eyes.
Then she, too went in.

"I cannot stay here mother," he said.

As he slammed the gate, Anne ran down the steps calling his name. He
paused, and she caught his sleeve.

"I knew you would go," she said, "I knew you would go. Oh, Stephen, you
have a cool head. Try to keep Jack--out of mischief."

He left her standing on the pavement. But when he reached the corner and
looked back he saw that she had gone in at his own little gate to meet
his mother. Then he walked rapidly westward. Now and again he was stopped
by feverish questions, but at length he reached the top of the second
ridge from the river, along which crowded Eighteenth Street now runs.
There stood the new double mansion Mr. Spencer Catherwood had built two
years before on the outskirts of the town, with the wall at the side, and
the brick stable and stable yard. As Stephen approached it, the thought
came to him how little this world's goods avail in times of trouble. One
of the big Catherwood boys was in the blue marching regiment that day,
and had been told by his father never again to darken his doors. Another
was in Clarence Colfax's company of dragoons, and still another had fled
southward the night after Sumter.

Stephen stopped at the crest of the hill, in the white dust of the
new-turned street, to gaze westward. Clouds were gathering in the sky,
but the sun still shone brightly, Half way up the rise two blue lines had
crawled, followed by black splotches, and at the southwest was the glint
of the sun on rifle barrels. Directed by a genius in the art of war, the
regiments were closing about Camp Jackson.

As he stood there meditating and paying no attention to those who hurried
past, a few familiar notes were struck on a piano. They came through the
wide-shuttered window above his head. Then a girl's voice rose above the
notes, in tones that were exultant:--

       "Away down South in de fields of cotton,
        Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,
        Look away, look away, Look away, look away.
        Den I wish I was in Dixie's Land,
        Oh, oh! oh, oh!
        In Dixie's Land I'll take my stand,
        And live and die in Dixie's Land.
        Away, away, away.
        Away down South in Dixie."

The song ceased amid peals of girlish laughter. Stephen was rooted to the
spot.

"Jinny! Jinny Carvel, how dare you!" came through the shutters. "We shall
have a whole regiment of Hessians in here."

Old Uncle Ben, the Catherwoods' coachman, came out of the stable yard.
The whites of his eyes were rolling, half in amusement, half in terror.
Seeing Stephen standing there, he exclaimed:

"Mistah Brice, if de Dutch take Camp Jackson, is we niggers gwinter be
free?"

Stephen did not answer, for the piano had started again,

       "If ever I consent to be married,
        And who could refuse a good mate?
        The man whom I give my hand to,
        Must believe in the Rights of the State."

More laughter. Then the blinds were flung aside, and a young lady in a
dress of white trimmed with crimson stood in the window, smiling.
Suddenly she perceived Stephen in the road. Her smile faded. For an
instant she stared at him, and then turned to the girls crowding behind
her. What she said, he did not wait to hear. He was striding down the
hill.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE TENTH OF MAC

Would the sons of the first families surrender, "Never!" cried a young
lady who sat behind the blinds in Mrs. Catherwood's parlor. It seemed to
her when she stopped to listen for the first guns of the coming battle
that the tumult in her heart would drown their roar.

"But, Jinny," ventured that Miss Puss Russell who never feared to speak
her mind, "it would be folly for them to fight. The Dutch and Yankees
outnumber them ten to one, and they haven't any powder and bullets."

"And Camp Jackson is down in a hollow," said Maude Catherwood, dejectedly.
And yet hopefully, too, for at the thought of bloodshed she was near to
fainting.

"Oh," exclaimed Virginia, passionately, "I believe you want them to
surrender. I should rather see Clarence dead than giving his sword to a
Yankee."

At that the other two were silent again, and sat on through an endless
afternoon of uncertainty and hope and dread in the darkened room. Now and
anon Mr. Catherwood's heavy step was heard as he paced the hall. From
time to time they glanced at Virginia, as if to fathom her thought. She
and Puss Russell had come that day to dine with Maude. Mr. Catherwood's
Ben, reeking of the stable, had brought the rumor of the marching on the
camp into the dining-room, and close upon the heels of this the rumble of
the drums and the passing of Sigel's regiment. It was Virginia who had
the presence of mind to slam the blinds in the faces of the troops, and
the crowd had cheered her. It was Virginia who flew to the piano to play
Dixie ere they could get by, to the awe and admiration of the girls and
the delight of Mr. Catherwood who applauded her spirit despite the
trouble which weighed upon him. Once more the crowd had cheered,--and
hesitated. But the Dutch regiment slouched on, impassive, and the people
followed.

Virginia remained at the piano, her mood exalted patriotism, uplifted in
spirit by that grand song. At first she had played it with all her might.
Then she sang it. She laughed in very scorn of the booby soldiers she had
seen. A million of these, with all the firearms in the world, could not
prevail against the flower of the South. Then she had begun whimsically
to sing a verse of a song she had heard the week before, and suddenly her
exaltation was fled, and her fingers left the keys. Gaining the window,
trembling, half-expectant, she flung open a blind. The troops, the
people, were gone, and there alone in the road stood--Stephen Brice. The
others close behind her saw him, too, and Puss cried out in her surprise.
The impression, when the room was dark once more, was of sternness and
sadness,--and of strength. Effaced was the picture of the plodding
recruits with their coarse and ill-fitting uniforms of blue.

Virginia shut the blinds. Not a word escaped her, nor could they tell
why--they did not dare to question her then. An hour passed, perhaps two,
before the shrill voice of a boy was heard in the street below.

"Camp Jackson has surrendered!"

They heard the patter of his bare feet on the pavement, and the cry
repeated.

"Camp Jackson has surrendered!"

And so the war began for Virginia. Bitter before, now was she on fire.
Close her lips as tightly as she might, the tears forced themselves to
her eyes. The ignominy of it!

How hard it is for us of this age to understand that feeling.

"I do not believe it!" she cried. "I cannot believe it!"

The girls gathered around her, pale and frightened and anxious. Suddenly
courage returned to her, the courage which made Spartans of Southern
women. She ran to the front door. Mr. Catherwood was on the sidewalk,
talking to a breathless man. That man was Mr. Barbo, Colonel Carvel's
book-keeper.

"Yes," he was saying, "they--they surrendered. There was nothing else for
them to do. They were surrounded and overpowered."

Mr. Catherwood uttered an oath. But it did not shock Virginia.

"And not a shot fired?" he said.

"And not a shot fired?" Virginia repeated, mechanically. Both men turned.
Mr. Barbo took off his hat.

"No, ma'am."

"Oh, how could they!" exclaimed Virginia.

Her words seemed to arouse Mr. Catherwood from a kind of stupor. He
turned, and took her hand.

"Virginia, we shall make them smart for this yet, My God!" he cried,
"what have I done that my son should be a traitor, in arms against his
own brother fighting for his people? To think that a Catherwood should be
with the Yankees! You, Ben," he shouted, suddenly perceiving an object
for his anger. "What do you mean by coming out of the yard? By G-d, I'll
have you whipped. I'll show you niggers whether you're to be free or
not."

And Mr. Catherwood was a good man, who treated his servants well.
Suddenly he dropped Virginia's hand and ran westward down the hill. Well
that she could not see beyond the second rise.

Let us go there--to the camp. Let us stand on the little mound at the
northeast of it, on the Olive Street Road, whence Captain Lyon's
artillery commands it. What a change from yesterday! Davis Avenue is no
longer a fashionable promenade, flashing with bright dresses. Those quiet
men in blue, who are standing beside the arms of the state troops,
stacked and surrendered, are United States regulars. They have been in
Kansas, and are used to scenes of this sort.

The five Hessian regiments have surrounded the camp. Each commander has
obeyed the master mind of his chief, who has calculated the time of
marching with precision. Here, at the western gate, Colonel Blair's
regiment is in open order. See the prisoners taking their places between
the ranks, some smiling, as if to say all is not over yet; some with
heads hung down, in sulky shame. Still others, who are true to the Union,
openly relieved. But who is this officer breaking his sword to bits
against the fence, rather than surrender it to a Yankee? Listen to the
crowd as they cheer him. Listen to the epithets and vile names which they
hurl at the stolid blue line of the victors, "Mudsills!" "Negro
Worshippers."

Yes, the crowd is there, seething with conflicting passions. Men with
brows bent and fists clenched, yelling excitedly. Others pushing, and
eager to see,--there in curiosity only. And, alas, women and children by
the score, as if what they looked upon were not war, but a parade, a
spectacle. As the gray uniforms file out of the gate, the crowd has
become a mob, now flowing back into the fields on each side of the road,
now pressing forward vindictively until stopped by the sergeants and
corporals. Listen to them calling to sons, and brothers, and husbands in
gray! See, there is a woman who spits in a soldier's face!

Throughout it all, the officers sit their horses, unmoved. A man on the
bank above draws a pistol and aims at a captain. A German private steps
from the ranks, forgetful of discipline, and points at the man, who is
cursing the captain's name. The captain, imperturbable, orders his man
back to his place. And the man does not shoot--yet.

Now are the prisoners of that regiment all in place between the two files
of it. A band (one of those which played lightsome music on the birthday
of the camp) is marched around to the head of the column. The regiment
with its freight moves on to make place for a battalion of regulars, amid
imprecations and cries of "Hurrah for Jeff Davis!" and "Damn the Dutch!
Kill the Hessians!"

Stephen Brice stood among the people in Lindell's Grove, looking up at
the troops on the road, which was on an embankment. Through the rows of
faces he had searched in vain for one. His motive he did not attempt to
fathom--in truth, he was not conscious at the time of any motive. He
heard the name shouted at the gate.

"Here they are,--the dragoons! Three cheers for Colfax! Down with the
Yankees!"

A storm of cheers and hisses followed. Dismounted, at the head of his
small following, the young Captain walked erect. He did not seem to hear
the cheers. His face was set, and he held his gloved hand over the place
where his sword had been, as if over a wound. On his features, in his
attitude, was stamped the undying determination of the South. How those
thoroughbreds of the Cavaliers showed it! Pain they took lightly. The
fire of humiliation burned, but could not destroy their indomitable
spirit. They were the first of their people in the field, and the last to
leave it. Historians may say that the classes of the South caused the
war; they cannot say that they did not take upon themselves the greatest
burden of the suffering.

Twice that day was the future revealed to Stephen. Once as he stood on
the hill-crest, when he had seen a girl in crimson and white in a window,
--in her face. And now again he read it in the face of her cousin. It was
as if he had seen unrolled the years of suffering that were to come.

In that moment of deep bitterness his reason wavered. What if the South
should win? Surely there was no such feeling in the North as these people
betrayed. That most dangerous of gifts, the seeing of two sides of a
quarrel, had been given him. He saw the Southern view. He sympathized
with the Southern people. They had befriended him in his poverty. Why had
he not been born, like Clarence Colfax, the owner of a large plantation,
the believer in the divine right of his race to rule?

Then this girl who haunted his thoughts! Would that his path had been as
straight, his duty as easy, as that of the handsome young Captain.

Presently these thoughts were distracted by the sight of a back strangely
familiar. The back belonged to a, gentleman who was energetically
climbing the embankment in front of him, on the top of which Major
Sexton, a regular, army officer, sat his horse. The gentleman was pulling
a small boy after him by one hand, and held a newspaper tightly rolled in
the other. Stephen smiled to himself when it came over him that this
gentleman was none other than that Mr. William T. Sherman he had met in
the street car the day before. Somehow Stephen was fascinated by the
decision and energy of Mr. Sherman's slightest movements. He gave Major
Saxton a salute, quick and genial. Then, almost with one motion he
unrolled the newspaper, pointed to a paragraph, and handed it to the
officer. Major Saxton was still reading when a drunken ruffian clambered
up the bank behind them and attempted to pass through the lines. The
column began to move forward. Mr. Sherman slid down the bank with his boy
into the grove beside Stephen. Suddenly there was a struggle. A corporal
pitched the drunkard backwards over the bank, and he rolled at Mr.
Sherman's feet. With a curse, he picked himself up, fumbling in his
pocket. There was a flash, and as the smoke rolled from before his eyes,
Stephen saw a man of a German regiment stagger and fall.

It was the signal for a rattle of shots. Stones and bricks filled the
air, and were heard striking steel and flesh in the ranks. The regiment
quivered,--then halted at the loud command of the officers, and the ranks
faced out with level guns, Stephen reached for Mr. Sherman's boy, but a
gentleman had already thrown him and was covering his body. He contrived
to throw down a woman standing beside him before the mini-balls swished
over their heads, and the leaves and branches began to fall. Between the
popping of the shots sounded the shrieks of wounded women and children,
the groans and curses of men, and the stampeding of hundreds.

"Lie down, Brice! For God's sake lie down!" Mr. Sherman cried.

He was about to obey when a young; man, small and agile, ran past him
from behind, heedless of the panic. Stopping at the foot of the bank he
dropped on one knee, resting his revolver in the hollow of his left arm.
It, was Jack Brinsmade. At the same time two of the soldiers above
lowered their barrels to cover him. Then smoke hid the scene. When it
rolled away, Brinsmade lay on the ground. He staggered to his feet with
an oath, and confronted a young man who was hatless, and upon whose
forehead was burned a black powder mark.

"Curse you!" he cried, reaching out wildly, "curse you, you d--d Yankee.
I'll teach you to fight!"

Maddened, he made a rush at Stephen's throat. But Stephen seized his
hands and bent them down, and held them firmly while he kicked and
struggled.

"Curse you!" he panted; "curse you, you let me go and I'll kill you,--you
Yankee upstart!"

But Stephen held on. Brinsmade became more and more frantic. One of the
officers, seeing the struggle, started down the bank, was reviled, and
hesitated. At that moment Major Sherman came between them.

"Let him go, Brice," he said, in a tone of command. Stephen did as he was
bid. Whereupon Brinsmade made a dash for his pistol on the ground. Mr.
Sherman was before him.

"Now see here, Jack," he said, picking it up, "I don't want to shoot you,
but I may have to. That young man saved your life at the risk of his own.
If that fool Dutchman had had a ball in his gun instead of a wad, Mr.
Brice would have been killed."

A strange thing happened. Brinsmade took one long look at Stephen, turned
on his heel, and walked off rapidly through the grove. And it may be
added that for some years after he was not seen in St. Louis.

For a moment the other two stood staring after him. Then Mr. Sherman took
his boy by the hand.

"Mr. Brice," he said, "I've seen a few things done in my life, but
nothing better than this. Perhaps the day may come when you and I may
meet in the army. They don't seem to think much of us now," he added,
smiling, "but we may be of use to 'em later. If ever I can serve you, Mr.
Brice, I beg you to call on me."

Stephen stammered his acknowledgments. And Mr. Sherman, nodding his head
vigorously, went away southward through the grove, toward Market Street.

The column was moving on. The dead were being laid in carriages, and the
wounded tended by such physicians as chanced to be on the spot. Stephen,
dazed at what had happened, took up the march to town. He strode faster
than the regiments with their load of prisoners, and presently he found
himself abreast the little file of dragoons who were guarded by some of
Blair's men. It was then that he discovered that the prisoners' band in
front was playing "Dixie."

They are climbing the second hill, and are coming now to the fringe of
new residences which the rich citizens have built. Some of them are
closed and dark. In the windows and on the steps of others women are
crying or waving handkerchiefs and calling out to the prisoners, some of
whom are gay, and others sullen. A distracted father tries to break
through the ranks and rescue his son. Ah, here is the Catherwood house.
That is open. Mrs. Catherwood, with her hand on her husband's arm, with
red eyes, is scanning those faces for the sight of George.

Will he ever come back to her? Will the Yankees murder him for treason,
or send him North to languish the rest of his life? No, she will not go
inside. She must see him. She will not faint, though Mrs. James has,
across the street, and is even now being carried into the house. Few of
us can see into the hearts of those women that day, and speak of the
suffering there.

Near the head of Mr. Blair's regiment is Tom. His face is cast down as he
passes the house from which he is banished. Nor do father, or mother, or
sister in their agony make any sound or sign. George is coming. The
welcome and the mourning and the tears are all for him.

The band is playing "Dixie" once more. George is coming, and some one
else. The girls are standing in a knot bend the old people, dry-eyed,
their handkerchiefs in their hands. Some of the prisoners take off their
hats and smile at the young lady with the chiselled features and brown
hair, who wears the red and white of the South as if she were born to
them. Her eyes are searching. Ah, at last she sees him, walking erect at
the head of his dragoons. He gives her one look of entreaty, and that
smile which should have won her heart long ago. As if by common consent
the heads of the troopers are uncovered before her. How bravely she waves
at them until they are gone down the street! Then only do her eyes fill
with tears, and she passes into the house.

Had she waited, she might have seen a solitary figure leaving the line of
march and striding across to Pine Street.

That night the sluices of the heavens were opened, and the blood was
washed from the grass in Lindell Grove. The rain descended in floods on
the distracted city, and the great river rose and flung brush from
Minnesota forests high up on the stones of the levee. Down in the long
barracks weary recruits, who had stood and marched all the day long, went
supperless to their hard pallets.

Government fare was hard. Many a boy, prisoner or volunteer, sobbed
himself to sleep in the darkness. All were prisoners alike, prisoners of
war. Sobbed themselves to sleep, to dream of the dear homes that were
here within sight and sound of them, and to which they were powerless to
go. Sisters, and mothers, and wives were there, beyond the rain, holding
out arms to them.

Is war a thing to stir the blood? Ay, while the day lasts. But what of
the long nights when husband and wife have lain side by side? What of the
children who ask piteously where their father is going, and who are
gathered by a sobbing mother to her breast? Where is the picture of that
last breakfast at home? So in the midst of the cheer which is saddest in
life comes the thought that, just one year ago, he who is the staff of
the house was wont to sit down just so merrily to his morning meal,
before going to work in the office. Why had they not thanked God on their
knees for peace while they had it?

See the brave little wife waiting on the porch of her home for him to go
by. The sun shines, and the grass is green on the little plot, and the
geraniums red. Last spring she was sewing here with a song on her lips,
watching for him to turn the corner as he came back to dinner. But now!
Hark! Was that the beat of the drums? Or was it thunder? Her good
neighbors, the doctor and his wife, come in at the little gate to cheer
her. She does not hear them. Why does God mock her with sunlight and with
friends?

Tramp, tramp, tramp! They are here. Now the band is blaring. That is his
company. And that is his dear face, the second from the end. Will she
ever see it again? Look, he is smiling bravely, as if to say a thousand
tender things. "Will, are the flannels in your knapsack? You have not
forgotten that medicine for your cough?" What courage sublime is that
which lets her wave at him? Well for you, little woman, that you cannot
see the faces of the good doctor and his wife behind you. Oh, those guns
of Sumter, how they roar in your head! Ay, and will roar again, through
forty years of widowhood!

Mrs. Brice was in the little parlor that Friday night, listening to the
cry of the rain outside. Some thoughts such as these distracted her. Why
should she be happy, and other mothers miserable? The day of reckoning
for her happiness must surely come, when she must kiss Stephen a brave
farewell and give him to his country. For the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate Him who is the Ruler of all things.

The bell rang, and Stephen went to the door. He was startled to see Mr.
Brinsmade. That gentleman was suddenly aged, and his clothes were wet and
spattered with mud. He sank into a chair, but refused the spirits and
water which Mrs. Brice offered him in her alarm.

"Stephen," he said, "I have been searching the city for John. Did you see
him at Camp Jackson--was he hurt?"

"I think not, sir," Stephen answered, with clear eyes.

"I saw him walking southward after the firing was all over."

"Thank God," exclaimed Mr. Brinsmade, fervently. "If you will excuse me,
madam, I shall hurry to tell my wife and daughter. I have been able to
find no one who saw him."

As he went out he glanced at Stephen's forehead. But for once in his
life, Mr. Brinsmade was too much agitated to inquire about the pain of
another.

"Stephen, you did not tell me that you saw John," said his mother, when
the door was closed.




CHAPTER XX

IN THE ARSENAL

There was a dismal tea at Colonel Carvel's house in Locust Street that
evening Virginia did not touch a mouthful, and the Colonel merely made a
pretence of eating. About six o'clock Mrs. Addison Colfax had driven in
from Bellegarde, nor could it rain fast enough or hard enough to wash the
foam from her panting horses. She did not wait for Jackson to come out
with an umbrella, but rushed through the wet from the carriage to the
door in her haste to urge the Colonel to go to the Arsenal and demand
Clarence's release. It was in vain that Mr. Carvel assured her it would
do no good, in vain that he told her of a more important matter that
claimed him. Could there be a more important matter than his own nephew
kept in durance, and in danger of being murdered by Dutch butchers in the
frenzy of their victory? Mrs. Colfax shut herself up in her room, and
through the door Virginia heard her sobs as she went down to tea.

The Colonel made no secret of his uneasiness. With his hat on his head,
and his hands in his pockets, he paced up and down the room. He let his
cigar go out,--a more serious sign still. Finally he stood with his face
to the black window, against which the big drops were beating in a fury.

Virginia sat expressionless at the head of the table, still in that gown
of white and crimson, which she had worn in honor of the defenders of the
state. Expressionless, save for a glance of solicitation at her father's
back. If resolve were feminine, Virginia might have sat for that
portrait. There was a light in her dark blue eyes. Underneath there were
traces of the day's fatigue. When she spoke, there was little life in her
voice.

"Aren't you going to the Planters' House, Pa The Colonel turned, and
tried to smile.

"I reckon not to-night, Jinny. Why?"

"To find out what they are going to do with Clarence," she said
indignantly.

"I reckon they don't know at the Planters' House," he said.

"Then--" began Virginia, and stopped.

"Then what?" he asked, stroking her hair.

"Then why not go to the Barracks? Order the carriage, and I will go with
you."

His smile faded. He stood looking down at her fixedly, as was sometimes
his habit. Grave tenderness was in his tone.

"Jinny," he said slowly, "Jinny, do you mean to marry Clarence?"

The suddenness of the question took her breath. But she answered
steadily:

"Yes."

"Do you love him?

"Yes," she answered. But her lashes fell.

Still he stood, and it seemed to her that her father's gaze pierced to
her secret soul.

"Come here, my dear," he said.

He held out his arms, and she fluttered into them. The tears were come at
last. It was not the first time she had cried out her troubles against
that great heart which had ever been her strong refuge. From childhood
she had been comforted there. Had she broken her doll, had Mammy Easter
been cross, had lessons gone wrong at school, was she ill, or weary with
that heaviness of spirit which is woman's inevitable lot,--this was her
sanctuary. But now! This burden God Himself had sent, and none save her
Heavenly Father might cure it. Through his great love for her it was
given to Colonel Carvel to divine it--only vaguely.

Many times he strove to speak, and could not. But presently, as if
ashamed of her tears, she drew back from him and took her old seat on the
arm of his chair.

By the light of his intuition, the Colonel chose tins words well. What he
had to speak of was another sorrow, yet a healing one.

"You must not think of marriage now, my dear, when the bread we eat may
fail us. Jinny, we are not as rich as we used to be. Our trade was in the
South and West, and now the South and West cannot pay. I had a conference
with Mr. Hopper yesterday, and he tells me that we must be prepared."

She laid her hand upon his.

"And did you think I would care, dear?" she asked gently. "I can bear
with poverty and rags, to win this war."

"His own eyes were dim, but pride shone in them. Jackson came in on
tiptoe, and hesitated. At the Colonel's motion he took away the china and
the silver, and removed the white cloth, and turned low the lights in the
chandelier. He went out softly, and closed the door.

"Pa," said Virginia, presently, "do you trust Mr. Hopper?"

The Colonel gave a start.

"Why, yes, Jinny. He improved the business greatly before this trouble
came. And even now we are not in such straits as some other houses."

"Captain Lige doesn't like him."

"Lige has prejudices."

"So have I," said Virginia. "Eliphalet Hopper will serve you so long as
he serves himself. No longer."

"I think you do him an injustice, my dear," answered the Colonel. But
uneasiness was in his voice. "Hopper is hard working, scrupulous to a
cent. He owns two slaves now who are running the river. He keeps out of
politics, and he has none of the Yankee faults."

"I wish he had," said Virginia.

The Colonel made no answer to this. Getting up, he went over to the
bell-cord at the door and pulled it. Jackson came in hurriedly.

"Is my bag packed?"

"Yes, Marsa."

"Where are you going?" cried Virginia, in alarm.

"To Jefferson City, dear, to see the Governor. I got word this
afternoon."

"In the rain?"

He smiled, and stooped to kiss her.

"Yes," he answered, "in the rain as far as the depot, I can trust you,
Jinny. And Lige's boat will be back from New Orleans to-morrow or
Sunday."

The next morning the city awoke benumbed, her heart beating but feebly.
Her commerce had nearly ceased to flow. A long line of boats lay idle,
with noses to the levee. Men stood on the street corners in the rain,
reading of the capture of Camp Jackson, and of the riot, and thousands
lifted up their voices to execrate the Foreign City below Market Street.
A vague terror, maliciously born, subtly spread. The Dutch had broken up
the camp, a peaceable state institution, they had shot down innocent
women and children. What might they not do to the defenceless city under
their victorious hand, whose citizens were nobly loyal to the South? Sack
it? Yes, and burn, and loot it. Ladies who ventured out that day crossed
the street to avoid Union gentlemen of their acquaintance.

It was early when Mammy Easter brought the news paper to her mistress.
Virginia read the news, and ran joyfully to her aunt's room. Three times
she knocked, and then she heard a cry within. Then the key was turned and
the bolt cautiously withdrawn, and a crack of six inches disclosed her
aunt.

"Oh, how you frightened me, Jinny!" she cried. "I thought it was the
Dutch coming to murder us all, What have they done to Clarence?"

"We shall see him to-day, Aunt Lillian," was the joyful answer. "The
newspaper says that all the Camp Jackson prisoners are to be set free
to-day, on parole. Oh, I knew they would not dare to hold them. The whole
state would have risen to their rescue."

Mrs. Colfax did not receive these tidings with transports. She permitted
her niece to come into her room, and then: sank into a chair before the
mirror of her dressing-table, and scanned her face there.

"I could not sleep a wink, Jinny, all night long. I look wretchedly. I am
afraid I am going to have another of my attacks. How it is raining! What
does the newspaper say?"

"I'll get it for you," said Virginia, used to her aunt's vagaries.

"No, no, tell me. I am much too nervous to read it."

"It says that they will be paroled to-day, and that they passed a
comfortable night."

"It must be a Yankee lie," said the lady. "Oh, what a night! I saw them
torturing him in a thousand ways the barbarians! I know he had to sleep
on a dirty floor with low-down trash."

"But we shall have him here to-night, Aunt Lillian!" cried Virginia.
"Mammy, tell Uncle Ben that Mr. Clarence will be here for tea. We must
have a feast for him. Pa said that they could not hold them."

"Where is Comyn?" inquired Mrs. Colfax. "Has he gone down to see
Clarence?"

"He went to Jefferson City last night," replied Virginia. "The Governor
sent for him."

Mrs. Colfax exclaimed in horror at this news.

"Do you mean that he has deserted us?" she cried. "That he has left us
here defenceless,--at the mercy of the Dutch, that they may wreak their
vengeance upon us women? How can you sit still, Virginia? If I were your
age and able to drag myself to the street, I should be at the Arsenal
now. I should be on my knees before that detestable Captain Lyon, even if
he is a Yankee." Virginia kept her temper.

"I do not go on my knees to any man," she said. "Rosetta, tell Ned I wish
the carriage at once."

Her aunt seized her convulsively by the arm.

"Where are you going, Jinny?" she demanded. "Your Pa would never forgive
me if anything happened to you."

A smile, half pity, crossed the girl's anxious face.

"I am afraid that I must risk adding to your misfortune, Aunt Lillian,"
she said, and left the room.

Virginia drove to Mr. Brinsmade's. His was one of the Union houses which
she might visit and not lose her self respect. Like many Southerners,
when it became a question of go or stay, Mr. Brinsmade's unfaltering love
for the Union had kept him in. He had voted for Mr. Bell, and later had
presided at Crittenden Compromise meetings. In short, as a man of peace,
he would have been willing to sacrifice much for peace. And now that it
was to be war, and he had taken his stand uncompromisingly with the
Union, the neighbors whom he had befriended for so many years could not
bring themselves to regard him as an enemy. He never hurt their feelings;
and almost as soon as the war began he set about that work which has been
done by self-denying Christians of all ages,--the relief of suffering. He
visited with comfort the widow and the fatherless, and many a night in
the hospital he sat through beside the dying, Yankee and Rebel alike, and
wrote their last letters home.

And Yankee and Rebel alike sought his help and counsel in time of
perplexity or trouble, rather than hotheaded advice from their own
leaders.

Mr. Brinsmade's own carriage was drawn up at his door; and that gentleman
himself standing on the threshold. He came down his steps bareheaded in
the wet to hand Virginia from her carriage.

Courteous and kind as ever, he asked for her father and her aunt as he
led her into the house. However such men may try to hide their own trials
under a cheerful mien, they do not succeed with spirits of a kindred
nature. With the others, who are less generous, it matters not. Virginia
was not so thoughtless nor so selfish that she could not perceive that a
trouble had come to this good man. Absorbed as she was in her own
affairs, she forgot some of them in his presence. The fire left her
tongue, and to him she could not have spoken harshly even of an enemy.
Such was her state of mind, when she was led into the drawing-room. From
the corner of it Anne arose and came forward to throw her arms around her
friend.

"Jinny, it was so good of you to come. You don't, hate me?"

"Hate you, Anne dear!"

"Because we are Union," said honest Anne, wishing to have no shadow of
doubt.

Virginia was touched. "Anne," she cried, "if you were German, I believe I
should love you."

"How good of you to come. I should not have dared go to your house,
because I know that you feel so deeply. You--you heard?"

"Heard what?" asked Virginia, alarmed.

"That Jack has run away--has gone South, we think. Perhaps," she cried,
"perhaps he may be dead."  And tears came into the girl's eyes.

It was then that Virginia forgot Clarence. She drew Anne to the sofa and
kissed her.

"No, he is not dead," she said gently, but with a confidence in her voice
of rare quality. "He is not dead, Anne dear, or you would have heard."

Had she glanced up, she would have seen Mr. Brinsmade's eye upon her. He
looked kindly at all people, but this expression he reserved for those
whom he honored. A life of service to others had made him guess that, in
the absence of her father, this girl had come to him for help of some
kind.

"Virginia is right, Anne," he said. "John has gone to fight for his
principles, as every gentleman who is free should; we must remember that
this is his home, and that we must not quarrel with him, because we think
differently." He paused, and came over to Virginia. "There is something I
can do for you, my dear?" said he.

She rose. "Oh, no, Mr. Brinsmade," she cried. And yet her honesty was as
great as Anne's. She would not have it thought that she came for other
reasons. "My aunt is in such a state of worry over Clarence that I came
to ask you if you thought the news true, that the prisoners are to be
paroled. She thinks it is a--" Virginia flushed, and bit a rebellious
tongue. "She does not believe it."

Even good Mr. Brinsmade smiled at the slip she had nearly made. He
understood the girl, and admired her. He also understood Mrs. Colfax.

"I'll drive to the Arsenal with you, Jinny," he answered. "I know
Captain Lyon, and we shall find out certainly."

"You will do nothing of the kind, sir," said Virginia, with emphasis."
Had I known this--about John, I should not have come."

He checked her with a gesture. What a gentleman of the old school he was,
with his white ruffled shirt and his black stock and his eye kindling
with charity.

"My dear," he answered, "Nicodemus is waiting. I was just going myself to
ask Captain Lyon about John." Virginia's further objections were cut
short by the violent clanging of the door-bell, and the entrance of a
tall, energetic gentleman, whom Virginia had introduced to her as Major
Sherman, late of the army, and now president of the Fifth Street
Railroad. The Major bowed and shook hands. He then proceeded, as was
evidently his habit, directly to the business on which he was come.

"Mr. Brinsmade," he said, "I heard, accidentally, half an hour ago that
you were seeking news of your son. I regret to say, sir, that the news I
have will not lead to a knowledge of his whereabouts. But in justice to a
young gentleman of this city I think I ought to tell you what happened at
Camp Jackson."

"I shall be most grateful, Major. Sit down, sir."

But the Major did not sit down. He stood in the middle of the room. With
some gesticulation which added greatly to the force of the story, he gave
a most terse and vivid account of Mr. John's arrival at the embankment by
the grove--of his charging a whole regiment of Union volunteers. Here was
honesty again. Mr. Sherman did not believe in mincing matters even to a
father and sister.

"And, sir," said he, "you may thank the young man who lives next door to
you--Mr. Brice, I believe--for saving your son's life."

"Stephen Brice!" exclaimed Mr, Brinsmade, in astonishment.

Virginia felt Anne's hand tighten But her own was limp. A hot wave swept
over her, Was she never to hear the end of this man.

"Yes, sir, Stephen Brice," answered Mr. Sherman. "And I never in my life
saw a finer thing done, in the Mexican War or out of it."

Mr. Brinsmade grew a little excited. "Are you sure that you know him?"

"As sure as I know you," said the Major, with excessive conviction.

"But," said Mr. Brinsmade, "I was in there last night, I knew the young
man had been at the camp. I asked him if he had seen Jack. He told me
that he had, by the embankment. But he never mentioned a word about
saving his life."

"He didn't," cried the Major. "By glory, but he's even better than I
thought him, Did you see a black powder mark on his face?"

"Why, yes, sir, I saw a bad burn of some kind on his forehead."

"Well, sir, if one of the Dutchmen who shot at Jack had known enough to
put a ball in his musket, he would have killed Mr. Brice, who was only
ten feet away, standing before your son."

Anne gave a little cry--Virginia was silent--Her lips were parted. Though
she realized it not, she was thirsting %a hear the whole of the story.

The Major told it, soldier fashion, but well. How John rushed up to the
line. How he (Mr. Sherman) had seen Brice throw the woman down and had
cried to him to lie down himself how the fire was darting down the
regiment, and how men and women were falling all about them; and how
Stephen had flung Jack and covered him with his body.

It was all vividly before Virginia's eyes. Had she any right to treat
such a man with contempt? She remembered hour he had looked, at her when
he stood on the corner by the Catherwoods' house. And, worst of all, she
remembered many spiteful remarks she had made, even to Anne, the gist of
which had been that Mr. Brice was better at preaching than at fighting.
She knew now--and she had known in her heart before--that this was the
greatest injustice she could have done him.

"But Jack? What did Jack do?"

It was Anne who tremblingly asked the Major. But Mr. Sherman, apparently,
was not the man to say that Jack would have shot Stephen had he not
interfered. That was the ugly part of the story. John would have shot the
man who saved his life. To the day of his death neither Mr. Brinsmade nor
his wife knew this. But while Mr. Brinsmade and Anne had gone upstairs to
the sickbed, these were the tidings the Major told Virginia, who kept it
in her heart. The reason he told her was because she had guessed a part
of it.

Nevertheless Mr. Brinsmade drove to the Arsenal with her that Saturday,
in his own carriage. Forgetful of his own grief, long habit came to him
to talk cheerily with her. He told her many little anecdotes of his
travel, but not one of them did she hear. Again, at the moment when she
thought her belief in Clarence and her love for him at last secure, she
found herself drawing searching comparisons between him and the quieter
young Bostonian. In spite of herself she had to admit that Stephen's deed
was splendid. Was this disloyal? She flushed at the thought. Clarence had
been capable of the deed,--even to the rescue of an enemy. But--alas,
that she should carry it out to a remorseless end--would Clarence have
been equal to keeping silence when Mr. Brinsmade came to him? Stephen
Brice had not even told his mother, so Mr. Brinsmade believed.

As if to aggravate her torture, Mr. Brinsmade's talk drifted to the
subject of young Mr. Brice. This was but natural. He told her of the
brave struggle Stephen had made, and how he had earned luxuries, and
often necessities, for his mother by writing for the newspapers.

"Often," said Mr. Brinsmade, "often I have been unable to sleep, and have
seen the light in Stephen's room until the small hours of the morning."

"Oh, Mr. Brinsmade," cried Virginia. "Can't you tell me something bad
about him? Just once."

The good gentleman started, and looked searchingly at the girl by his
side, flushed and confused. Perhaps he thought--but how can we tell what
he thought? How can we guess that our teachers laugh at our pranks after
they have caned us for them? We do not remember that our parents have
once been young themselves, and that some word or look of our own brings
a part of their past vividly before them. Mr. Brinsmade was silent, but
he looked out of the carriage window, away from Virginia. And presently,
as they splashed through the mud near the Arsenal, they met a knot of
gentlemen in state uniforms on their way to the city. Nicodemus stopped
at his master's signal. Here was George Catherwood, and his father was
with him.

"They have released us on parole," said George. "Yes, we had a fearful
night of it. They could not have kept us--they had no quarters."

How changed he was from the gay trooper of yesterday! His bright uniform
was creased and soiled and muddy, his face unshaven, and dark rings of
weariness under his eyes.

"Do you know if Clarence Colfax has gone home?" Mr. Brinsmade inquired.

"Clarence is an idiot," cried George, ill-naturedly. Mr. Brinsmade, of
all the prisoners here, he refused to take the parole, or the oath of
allegiance. He swears he will remain a prisoner until he is exchanged."

"The young man is Quixotic," declared the elder Catherwood, who was not
himself in the best of humors.

"Sir," said Mr. Brinsmade, with as much severity as he was ever known to
use, "sir, I honor that young man for this more than I can tell you.
Nicodemus, you may drive on." And he slammed the door.

Perhaps George had caught sight of a face in the depths of the carriage,
for he turned purple, and stood staring on the pavement after his
choleric parent had gone on.

It was done. Of all the thousand and more young men who had upheld the
honor of their state that week, there was but the one who chose to remain
in durance vile within the Arsenal wall--Captain Clarence Colfax, late of
the Dragoons.

Mr. Brinsmade was rapidly admitted to the Arsenal, and treated with the
respect which his long service to the city deserved. He and Virginia were
shown into the bare military room of the commanding officer, and thither
presently came Captain Lyon himself. Virginia tingled with antagonism
when she saw this man who had made the city tremble, who had set an iron
heel on the flaming brand of her Cause. He, too, showed the marks of his
Herculean labors, but only on his clothes and person. His long red hair
was unbrushed, his boots covered with black mud, and his coat unbuttoned.
His face was ruddy, and his eye as clear as though he had arisen from
twelve hours' sleep. He bowed to Virginia (not too politely, to be sure).
Her own nod of are recognition did not seem to trouble him.

"Yes, sir," he said incisively, in response to Mr. Brinsmade's question,
"we are forced to retain Captain Colfax. He prefers to remain a prisoner
until he is exchanged. He refuses to take the oath of allegiance to the
United States.

"And why should he be made to, Captain Lyon? In what way has he opposed
the United States troops?"

It was Virginia who spoke. Both looked at her in astonishment.

"You will pardon me, Miss Carvel," said Captain Lyon, gravely, "if I
refuse to discuss that question with you." Virginia bit her tongue.

"I understand that Mr. Colfax is a near relative of yours, Miss Carvel,"
the Captain continued. "His friends may come here to see him during the
day. And I believe it is not out of place for me to express my admiration
of the captain's conduct. You may care to see him now--"

"Thank you," said Virginia, curtly.

"Orderly, my respects to Captain Colfax, and ask him if a he will be kind
enough to come in here. Mr. Brinsmade," said the Captain, "I should like
a few words with you, sir." And so, thanks to the Captain's delicacy,
when Clarence arrived he found Virginia alone. She was much agitated She
ran toward him as he entered the door, calling his name.

"Max, you are going to stay here?"

"Yes, until I am exchanged."

Aglow with admiration, she threw herself into his arms. Now, indeed, was
she proud of him. Of all the thousand defenders of the state, he alone
was true to his principles--to the South. Within sight of home, he alone
had chosen privation.

She looked up into his face, which showed marks of excitement and
fatigue. But above all, excitement. She knew that he could live on
excitement. The thought came to her--was it that which sustained him now?
She put it away as treason. Surely the touch of this experience would
transform the boy into the man. This was the weak point in the armor
which she wore so bravely for her cousin.

He had grown up to idleness. He had known neither care nor
responsibility. His one longing from a child had been that love of
fighting and adventure which is born in the race. Until this gloomy day
in the Arsenal, Virginia had never characterized it as a love of
excitement---as any thing which contained a selfish element. She looked
up into his face, I say, and saw that which it is given to a woman only
to see. His eyes burned with a light that was far away. Even with his
arms around her he seemed to have forgotten her presence, and that she
had come all the way to the Arsenal to see him. Her hands dropped limply
from his shoulders She drew away, as he did not seem to notice.

So it is with men. Above and beyond the sacrifice of a woman's life, the
joy of possessing her soul and affection, is something more desirable
still--fame and glory--personal fame and glory, The woman may share them,
of course, and be content with the radiance. When the Governor in making
his inauguration speech, does he always think of the help the little wife
has given him. And so, in moments of excitement, when we see far ahead
into a glorious future, we do not feel the arms about us, or value the
sweets which, in more humdrum days, we labored so hard to attain.

Virginia drew away, and the one searching glance she gave him he did not
see. He was staring far beyond; tears started in her eyes, and she turned
from him to look out over the Arsenal grounds, still wet and heavy with
the night's storm. The day itself was dark and damp. She thought of the
supper cooking at home. It would not be eaten now.

And yet, in that moment of bitterness Virginia loved him. Such are the
ways of women, even of the proudest, who love their country too. It was
but right that he should not think of her when the honor of the South was
at stake; and the anger that rose within her was against those nine
hundred and ninety-nine who had weakly accepted the parole.

"Why did Uncle Comyn not come?" asked Clarence.

"He has gone to Jefferson City, to see the Governor.."

"And you came alone?"

"No, Mr. Brinsmade brought me."

"And mother?"

She was waiting for that question. What a relief that should have come
among the first.

"Aunt Lillian feels very badly. She was in her room when I left. She was
afraid," (Virginia had to smile), "she was afraid the Yankees would kill
you."

"They have behaved very well for Yankees," replied he, "No luxury, and
they will not hear of my having a servant. They are used to doing their
own work. But they have treated me much better since I refused to take
their abominable oath."

"And you will be honored for it when the news reaches town."

"Do you think so, Jinny?" Clarence asked eagerly, "I reckon they will
think me a fool!"

"I should like to hear any one say so," she flashed out.

"No," said Virginia, "our friends will force them to release you. I do
not know much about law. But you have done nothing to be imprisoned for."

Clarence did not answer at once. Finally he said. "I do not want to be
released."

"You do not want to be released," she repeated.

"No," he said. "They can exchange me. If I remain a prisoner, it will
have a greater effect--for the South."

She smiled again, this time at the boyish touch of heroics. Experience,
responsibility, and he would get over that. She remembered once, long
ago, when his mother had shut him up in his room for a punishment, and he
had tortured her by remaining there for two whole days.

It was well on in the afternoon when she drove back to the city with Mr.
Brinsmade. Neither of them had eaten since morning, nor had they even
thought of hunger. Mr. Brinsmade was silent, leaning back in the corner
of the carriage, and Virginia absorbed in her own thoughts. Drawing near
the city, that dreaded sound, the rumble of drums, roused them. A shot
rang out, and they were jerked violently by the starting of the horses.
As they dashed across Walnut at Seventh came the fusillade. Virginia
leaned out of the window. Down the vista of the street was a mass of blue
uniforms, and a film of white smoke hanging about the columns of the old
Presbyterian Church Mr. Brinsmade quietly drew her back into the
carriage.

The shots ceased, giving place to an angry roar that struck terror to her
heart that wet and lowering afternoon. The powerful black horses galloped
on. Nicodemus tugging at the reins, and great splotches of mud flying in
at the windows. The roar of the crowd died to an ominous moaning behind
them. Then she knew that Mr. Brinsmade was speaking:-- "From battle and
murder, and from sudden death--from all sedition, privy conspiracy, and
rebellion,--Good Lord, deliver us."

He was repeating the Litany--that Litany which had come down through the
ages. They had chanted it in Cromwell's time, when homes were ruined and
laid waste, and innocents slaughtered. They had chanted it on the dark,
barricaded stairways of mediaeval Paris, through St. Bartholomew's night,
when the narrow and twisted streets, ran with blood. They had chanted it
in ancient India, and now it was heard again in the New World and the New
Republic of Peace and Good Will.

Rebellion? The girl flinched at the word which the good gentleman had
uttered in his prayers. Was she a traitor to that flag for which her
people had fought in three wars? Rebellion! She burned to blot it forever
from the book Oh, the bitterness of that day, which was prophecy of the
bitterness to come.

Rain was dropping as Mr. Brinsmade escorted her up her own steps. He held
her hand a little at parting, and bade her be of good cheer. Perhaps he
guessed something of the trial she was to go through that night alone
with her aunt, Clarence's mother. Mr. Brinsmade did not go directly home.
He went first to the little house next door to his. Mrs. Brice and Judge
Whipple were in the parlor: What passed between them there has not been
told, but presently the Judge and Mr. Brinsmade came out together and
stood along time in, the yard, conversing, heedless of the rain.




CHAPTER XXI

THE STAMPEDE

Sunday dawned, and the people flocked to the churches. But even in the
house of God were dissension and strife. From the Carvel pew at Dr.
Posthelwaite's Virginia saw men and women rise from their knees and walk
out--their faces pale with anger. At St. Mark's the prayer for the
President of the United States was omitted. Mr. Russell and Mr.
Catherwood nodded approvingly over the sermon in which the South was
justified, and the sanction of Holy Writ laid upon her Institution. With
not indifferent elation these gentlemen watched the departure of brethren
with whom they had labored for many years, save only when Mr. Brinsmade
walked down the aisle never to return. So it is that war, like a
devastating flood, creeps insistent into the most sacred places, and will
not be denied. Mr. Davitt, at least, preached that day to an united
congregation,--which is to say that none of them went out. Mr. Hopper,
who now shared a pew with Miss Crane, listened as usual with a most
reverent attention. The clouds were low and the streets wet as people
walked home to dinner, to discuss, many in passion and some in sorrow,
the doings of the morning. A certain clergyman had prayed to be delivered
from the Irish, the Dutch, and the Devil. Was it he who started the old
rumor which made such havoc that afternoon? Those barbarians of the
foreign city to the south, drunk with power, were to sack and loot the
city. How it flew across street and alley, from yard to yard, and from
house to house! Privileged Ned ran into the dining-room where Virginia
and her aunt were sitting, his eyes rolling and his face ashen with
terror, crying out that the Dutch were marching on the city, firebrands
in hand and murder in their hearts.

"De Gen'ral done gib out er procl'mation, Miss Jinny," he cried. "De
Gen'ral done say in dat procl'mation dat he ain't got no control ober de
Dutch soldiers."

Mrs. Colfax fainted.

"Oh Miss Jinny, ain't you gwineter Glencoe? Ain't you gwineter flee away?
Every fambly on dis here street's gwine away--is packin' up fo' de
country. Doan't you hear 'em, Miss Jinny? What'll your pa say to Ned of
he ain't make you clear out! Doan't you hear de carridges a-rattlin' off
to de country?"

Virginia rose in agitation, yet trying to be calm, and to remember that
the safety of the household depended upon her alone. That was her
thought,--bred into her by generations,--the safety of the household, of
the humblest slave whose happiness and welfare depended upon her father's
bounty. How she longed in that instant for her father or Captain Lige,
for some man's strength, to depend upon. Would there be wisdom in flight?

"Do you want to go, Ned?" she asked. She has seen her aunt swoon before,
and her maid Susan knows well what to do. "Do you want to go, Ned?"

"Laws Mussy, no, Miss Jinny. One nigger laik me doan't make no
difference. My Marsa he say: 'Whaffor you leave ma house to be ramsacked
by de Dutch?'

"What I gwineter answer? Oh Miss Jinny, you an' Miss Lill an' Mammy
Easter an' Susan's gwine with Jackson, an' de othah niggahs can walk.
Ephum an' me'll jes' put up de shutters an' load de Colonel's gun."

By this time the room was filled with excited negroes, some crying, and
some laughing hysterically. Uncle Ben had come in from the kitchen;
Jackson was there, and the women were a wailing bunch in the corner by
the sideboard. Old Ephum, impassive, and Ned stood together. Virginia's
eye rested upon them, and the light of love and affection was in it. She
went to the window. Yes, carriages were indeed rattling outside, though a
sharp shower was falling. Across the street Alphonse, M. Renault's
butler, was depositing bags and bundles on the steps. M. Renault himself
bustled out into the rain, gesticulating excitedly. Spying her at the
window, he put his hands to his mouth, cried out something, and ran in
again. Virginia flung open the sash and listened for the dreaded sound of
drums. Then she crossed quickly over to where her aunt was lying on the
lounge.

"O Jinny," murmured that lady, who had revived, "can't you do something?
Haven't you done anything? They will be here any moment to burn us, to
murder us--to--oh, my poor boy! Why isn't he here to protect his mother!
Why was Comyn so senseless, so thoughtless, as to leave us at such a
time!"

"I don't think there is any need to be frightened," said Virginia, with a
calmness that made her aunt tremble with anger. "It is probably only a
rumor. Ned, run to Mr. Brinsmade's and ask him about it."

However loath to go, Ned departed at once. All honor to those old-time
negroes who are now memories, whose devotion to their masters was next to
their love of God. A great fear was in Ned's heart, but he went. And he
believed devoutly that he would never see his young mistress any more.

And while Ned is running to Mr. Brinsmade's, Mrs. Colfax is summoning
that courage which comes to persons of her character at such times. She
gathers her jewels into a bag, and her fine dresses into her trunk, with
trembling hands, although she is well enough now. The picture of Clarence
in the diamond frame she puts inside the waist of her gown. No, she will
not go to Bellegarde. That is too near the city. With frantic haste she
closes the trunk, which Ephum and Jackson carry downstairs and place
between the seats of the carriage. Ned had had the horses in it since
church time. It is not safe outside. But where to go?

To Glencoe? It is three in the afternoon, and Jackson explains that, with
the load, they would not reach there until midnight, if at all. To
Kirkwood or Webster? Yes; many of the first families live there, and
would take them in for the night. Equipages of all sorts are passing,
--private carriages and public, and corner-stand hacks. The black drivers
are cracking whips over galloping horses.

Pedestrians are hurrying by with bundles under their arms, some running
east, and some west, and some stopping to discuss excitedly the chances
of each direction. From the river comes the hoarse whistle of the boats
breaking the Sabbath stillness there. It is a panic to be remembered.

Virginia leaned against the iron railing of the steps, watching the
scene, and waiting for Ned to return from Mr. Brinsmade's. Her face was
troubled, as well it might be. The most alarming reports were cried up to
her from the street, and she looked every moment for the black smoke of
destruction to appear to the southward. Around her were gathered the
Carvel servants, most of them crying, and imploring her not to leave
them. And when Mrs. Colfax's trunk was brought down and placed in the
carriage where three of them might have ridden to safety, a groan of
despair and entreaty rose from the faithful group that went to her heart.

"Miss Jinny, you ain't gwineter leave yo' ol mammy?"

"Hush, Mammy," she said. "No, you shall all go, if I have to stay myself.
Ephum, go to the livery stable and get another carriage."

She went up into her own deserted room to gather the few things she would
take with her--the little jewellery case with the necklace of pearls
which her great-grandmother had worn at her wedding. Rosetta and Mammy
Easter were of no use, and she had sent them downstairs again. With a
flutter she opened her wardrobe door, to take one last look at the gowns
there. You will pardon her. They were part of happier days gone by. She
fell down on her knees and opened the great drawer at the bottom, and
there on the top lay the dainty gown which had belonged to Dorothy
Manners. A tear fell upon one of the flowers of the stays. Irresistibly
pressed into her mind the memory of Anne's fancy dress ball,--of the
episode by the gate, upon which she had thought so often with burning
face.

The voices below grow louder, but she does not hear. She is folding the
gown hurriedly into a little package. It was her great-grandmother's; her
chief heirloom after the pearls. Silk and satin from Paris are left
behind. With one glance at the bed in which she had slept since
childhood, and at the picture over it which had been her mother's, she
hurries downstairs. And Dorothy Manners's gown is under her arm. On the
landing she stops to brush her eyes with her handkerchief. If only her
father were here!

Ah, here is Ned back again. Has Mr. Brinsmade come?

What did he say? Ned simply pointed out a young man standing on the steps
behind the negroes. Crimson stains were on Virginia's cheeks, and the
package she carried under her arm was like lead. The young man, although
he showed no signs of excitement, reddened too as he came forward and
took off his hat. But the sight of him had acurious effect upon Virginia,
of which she was at first unconscious. A sense of security came upon her
as she looked at his face and listened to his voice.

"Mr. Brinsmade has gone to the hospital, Miss Carvel," he said. "Mrs.
Brinsmade asked me to come here with your man in the hope that I might
persuade you to stay where you are."

"Then the Germans are not moving on the city?" she said.

In spite of himself, Stephen smiled. It was that smile that angered her,
that made her rebel against the advice he had to offer; that made her
forget the insult he had risked at her hands by coming there. For she
believed him utterly, without reservation. The moment he had spoken she
was convinced that the panic was a silly scare which would be food for
merriment in future years. And yet--was not that smile in derision of
herself--of her friends who were running away? Was it not an assumption
of Northern superiority, to be resented?

"It is only a malicious rumor, Miss Carvel," he answered. "You have been
told so upon good authority, I suppose," she said dryly. And at the
change in her tone she saw his face fall.

"I have not," he replied honestly, "but I will submit it to your own
judgment. Yesterday General Harney superseded Captain Lyon in command in
St. Louis. Some citizens of prominence begged the General to send the
troops away, to avoid further ill-feeling and perhaps--bloodshed." (They
both winced at the word.) "Colonel Blair represented to the General that
the troops could not be sent away, as they had been enlisted to serve
only in St. Louis; whereupon the General in his proclamation states that
he has no control over these Home Guards. That sentence has been twisted
by some rascal into a confession that the Home Guards are not to be
controlled. I can assure you, Miss Carvel," added Stephen, speaking with
a force which made her start and thrill, "I can assure you from a
personal knowledge of the German troops that they are not a riotous lot,
and that they are under perfect control. If they were not, there are
enough regulars in the city to repress them."

He paused. And she was silent, forgetful of the hub-bub around her. It
was then that her aunt called out to her, with distressing shrillness,
from the carriage:-- "Jinny, Jinny, how can you stand there talking to
young men when our lives are in danger?"

She glanced hurriedly at Stephen, who said gently; "I do not wish to
delay you, Miss Carvel, if you are bent upon going."

She wavered. His tone was not resentful, simply quiet. Ephum turned the
corner of the street, the perspiration running on his black face.

"Miss Jinny, dey ain't no carridges to be had in this town. No'm, not for
fifty dollars."

This was the occasion for another groan from the negroes, and they began
once more to beseech her not to leave them. In the midst of their cries
she heard her aunt calling from the carriage, where, beside the trunk,
there was just room for her to squeeze in.

"Jinny," cried that lady, frantically, "are you to go or stay? The
Hessians will be here at any moment. Oh, I cannot stay here to be
murdered!"

Unconsciously the girl glanced again at Stephen. He had not gone, but was
still standing in the rain on the steps, the one figure of strength and
coolness she had seen this afternoon. Distracted, she blamed the fate
which had made this man an enemy. How willingly would she have leaned
upon such as he, and submitted to his guidance. Unluckily at that moment
came down the street a group which had been ludicrous on any other day,
and was, in truth, ludicrous to Stephen then. At the head of it was a
little gentleman with red mutton-chop whiskers, hatless, in spite of the
rain beginning to fall. His face was the very caricature of terror. His
clothes, usually neat, were awry, and his arms were full of various
things, not the least conspicuous of which was a magnificent bronze
clock. It was this object that caught Virginia's eye. But years passed
before she laughed over it. Behind Mr. Cluyme (for it was he) trotted his
family. Mrs. Cluyme, in a pink wrapper, carried an armful of the family
silver; then came Belle with certain articles of feminine apparel which
need not be enumerated, and the three small Cluymes of various ages
brought up the rear.

Mr. Cluyme, at the top of his speed, was come opposite to the carriage
when the lady occupant got out of it. Clutching at his sleeve, she
demanded where he was going. The bronze clock had a narrow escape.

"To the river," he gasped. "To the river, madame!" His wife coming after
him had a narrower escape still. Mrs. Colfax retained a handful of lace
from the wrapper, the owner of which emitted a shriek of fright.

"Virginia, I am going to the river," said Mrs. Colfax. "You may go where
you choose. I shall send the carriage back for you. Ned, to the levee!"
Ned did not lift a rein.

"What, you black rascal! You won't obey me?"

Ned swung on his seat. "No, indeedy, Miss Lilly, I ain't a-gwine 'thout
young Miss. The Dutch kin cotch me an' hang me, but I ain't a-gwine
'thout Miss Jinny."

Mrs. Colfax drew her shawl about her shoulders with dignity.

"Very well, Virginia," she said. "Ill as I am, I shall walk. Bear witness
that I have spent a precious hour trying to save you. If I live to see
your father again, I shall tell him that you preferred to stay here and
carry on disgracefully with a Yankee, that you let your own aunt risk her
life alone in the rain. Come, Susan!"

Virginia was very pale. She did not run down the steps, but she caught
her aunt by the arm ere that lady had taken six paces. The girl's face
frightened Mrs. Colfax into submission, and she let herself be led back
into the carriage beside the trunk. Those words of Mrs. Colfax's stung
Stephen to righteous anger and resentment--for Virginia.

As to himself, he had looked for insult. He turned to go that he might
not look upon her confusion; and hanging on the resolution, swung on his
heel again, his eyes blazeing. He saw in hers the deep blue light of the
skies after an evening's storm. She was calm, and save for a little
quiver of the voice, mistress of herself as she spoke to the group of
cowering servants.

"Mammy," she said, "get up on the box with Ned. And, Ned, walk the horses
to the levee, so that the rest may follow. Ephum, you stay here with the
house, and I will send Ned back to keep you company."

With these words, clasping tightly the precious little bundle under her
arm, she stepped into the carriage. Heedless of the risk he ran, sheer
admiration sent Stephen to the carriage door.

"If I can be of any service, Miss Carvel," he said, "I shall be happy."

She glanced at him wildly.

"No," she cried, "no. Drive on, Ned!"

And as the horses slipped and started she slammed the door in his face.

Down on the levee wheels rattled over the white stones washed clean by
the driving rain. The drops pelted the chocolate water into froth, and a
blue veil hid the distant bluffs beyond the Illinois bottom-lands. Down
on the Levee rich and poor battled for places on the landing-stages, and
would have thrown themselves into the flood had there been no boats to
save them from the dreaded Dutch. Attila and his Huns were not more
feared. Oh, the mystery of that foreign city! What might not its
Barbarians do when roused? The rich and poor struggled together; but
money was a power that day, and many were pitilessly turned off because
they did not have the high price to carry them--who knew where?

Boats which screamed, and boats which had a dragon's roar were backing
out of the close ranks where they had stood wheel-house to wheel-house,
and were dodging and bumping in the channel. See, their guards are black
with people! Mrs. Colfax, when they are come out of the narrow street
into the great open space, remarks this with alarm. All the boats will be
gone before they can get near one. But Virginia does not answer. She is
thinking of other things than the steamboats, and wondering whether it
had not been preferable to be killed by Hessians.

Ned spies the 'Barbara Lane'. He knows that her captain, Mr. Vance, is a
friend of the family. What a mighty contempt did Ned and his kind have
for foot passengers! Laying about him with his whip, and shouting at the
top of his voice to make himself heard, he sent the Colonel's Kentucky
bays through the crowd down to the Barbara's landing stage, the people
scampering to the right and left, and the Carvel servants, headed by
Uncle Ben, hanging on to the carriage springs, trailing behind.

Here was a triumph for Ned, indeed! He will tell you to this day how Mr.
Catherwood's carriage was pocketed by drays and bales, and how Mrs.
James's horses were seized by the bridles and turned back. Ned had a head
on his shoulders, and eyes in his head. He spied Captain Vance himself on
the stage, and bade Uncle Ben hold to the horses while he shouldered his
way to that gentleman. The result was that the Captain came bowing to the
carriage door, and offered his own cabin to the ladies. But the niggers
---he would take no niggers except a maid for each; and he begged Mrs.
Colfax's pardon--he could not carry her trunk.

So Virginia chose Mammy Easter, whose red and yellow turban was awry from
fear lest she be left behind and Ned was instructed to drive the rest
with all haste to Bellegarde. Captain Vance gave Mrs. Colfax his arm, and
Virginia his eyes. He escorted the ladies to quarters in the texas, and
presently was heard swearing prodigiously as the boat was cast off. It
was said of him that he could turn an oath better than any man on the
river, which was no mean reputation.

Mrs. Colfax was assisted to bed by Susan. Virginia stood by the little
window of the cabin, and as the Barbara paddled and floated down the
river she looked anxiously for signals of a conflagration. Nay, in that
hour she wished that the city might burn. So it is that the best of us
may at times desire misery to thousands that our own malice may be fed.
Virginia longed to see the yellow flame creep along the wet, gray clouds.
Passionate tears came to her eyes at the thought of the humiliation she
had suffered,--and before him, of all men. Could she ever live with her
aunt after what she had said? "Carrying on with that Yankee!" The
horrible injustice of it!

Her anger, too, was still against Stephen. Once more he had been sent by
circumstances to mock her and her people. If the city would only burn,
that his cocksure judgment might for once be mistaken, his calmness for
once broken!

The rain ceased, the clouds parted, and the sun turned the muddy river to
gold. The bluffs shone May-green in the western flood of light, and a
haze hung over the bottom-lands. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the
city receding to the northward, and the rain had washed the pall of smoke
from over it. On the boat excited voices died down to natural tones; men
smoked on the guards and promenaded on the hurricane deck, as if this
were some pleasant excursion. Women waved to the other boats flocking
after. Laughter was heard, and joking. Mrs. Colfax stirred in her berth
and began to talk.

"Virginia, where are we going?" Virginia did not move

"Jinny!"

She turned. In that hour she remembered that great good-natured man, her
mother's brother, and for his sake Colonel Carvel had put up with much
from his wife's sister in-law. She could pass over, but never forgive
what her aunt had said to her that afternoon. Mrs. Colfax had often been
cruel before, and inconsiderate. But as the girl thought of the speech,
staring out on the waters, it suddenly occurred to her that no lady would
have uttered it. In all her life she had never realized till now that her
aunt was not a lady. From that time forth Virginia's attitude toward her
aunt was changed.

She controlled herself, however, and answered something, and went out
listlessly to find the Captain and inquire the destination of the boat.
Not that this mattered much to her. At the foot of the companionway
leading to the saloon deck she saw, of all people, Mr. Eliphalet Hopper
leaning on the rail, and pensively expectorating on the roof of the
wheel-house. In another mood Virginia would have laughed, for at sight of
her he straightened convulsively, thrust his quid into his cheek, and
removed his hat with more zeal than the grudging deference he usually
accorded to the sex. Clearly Eliphalet would not have chosen the
situation.

"I cal'late we didn't get out any too soon, Miss Carvel," he remarked,
with a sad attempt at jocoseness. "There won't be a great deal in that
town when the Dutch get through with it."

"I think that there are enough men left in it to save it," said Virginia.

Apparently Mr. Hopper found no suitable answer to this, for he made none.
He continued to glance at her uneasily. There was an impudent tribute in
his look which she resented strongly.

"Where is the Captain?" she demanded.

"He's down below--ma'am," he replied. "Can--can I do anything?"

"Yes," she said, with abrupt maliciousness, "you may tell me where you
are going."

"I cal'late, up the Cumberland River. That's where she's bound for, if
she don't stop before she gets there Guess there ain't many of 'em
inquired where she was goin', or cared much," he added, with a ghastly
effort to be genial.

"Do you care?" she demanded, curiously. Eliphalet grinned.

"Not a great deal," he said. Then he felt called upon to defend himself.
"I didn't see any use in gettin' murdered, when I couldn't do anything."

She left him. He stared after her up the companionway, bit off a generous
piece of tobacco, and ruminated. If to be a genius is to possess an
infinite stock of patience, Mr. Hopper was a genius. There was patience
in his smile. But it was not a pleasant smile to look upon.

Virginia did not see it. She had told her aunt the news, and stood in the
breeze on the hurricane deck looking southward, with her hand shading her
eyes. The 'Barbara Lane' happened to be a boat with a record, and her
name was often in the papers. She had already caught up with and
distanced others which had had half an hour's start of her, and was near
the head of the procession.

Virginia presently became aware that people were gathering around her in
knots, gazing at a boat coming toward them. Others had been met which, on
learning the dread news, turned back. But this one kept her bow steadily
up the current, although she had passed within a biscuit-toss of the
leader of the line of refugees. It was then that Captain Vance's hairy
head appeared above the deck.

"Dang me!" he said, "if here ain't pig-headed Brent, steaming the
'Jewanita' straight to destruction."

"Oh, are you sure it's Captain Brent?" cried Virginia. The Captain looked
around in surprise.

"If that there was Shreve's old Enterprise come to life again, I'd lay
cotton to sawdust that Brent had her. Danged if he wouldn't take her
right into the jaws of the Dutch."

The Captain's words spread, and caused considerable excitement. On board
the Barbara Lane were many gentlemen who had begun to be shamefaced over
their panic, and these went in a body to the Captain and asked him to
communicate with the 'Juanita'. Whereupon a certain number of whistles
were sounded, and the Barbara's bows headed for the other side of the
channel.

As the Juanita drew near, Virginia saw the square figure and clean,
smooth-shaven face of Captain Lige standing in front of his wheel-house
Peace crept back into her soul, and she tingled with joy as the bells
clanged and the bucket-planks churned, and the great New Orleans packet
crept slowly to the Barbara's side.

"You ain't goin' in, Brent?" shouted the Barbara's captain.

"Why not?" responded Mr. Brent. At the sound of his voice Virginia could
have wept.

"The Dutch are sacking the city," said Vance. "Didn't they tell you?"

"The Dutch--hell!" said Mr, Brent, calmly. "Who's afraid of the Dutch?"

A general titter went along the guards, and Virginia blushed. Why could
not the Captain see her?

"I'm on my reg'lar trip, of course," said Vance. Out there on the sunlit
river the situation seemed to call for an apology.

"Seems to be a little more loaded than common," remarked Captain Lige,
dryly, at which there was another general laugh.

"If you're really goin' up," said Captain Vance, I reckon there's a few
here would like to be massacred, if you'll take 'em."

"Certainly," answered Mr. Brent; "I'm bound for the barbecue." And he
gave a command.

While the two great boats were manoeuvring, and slashing with one wheel
and the other, the gongs sounding, Virginia ran into the cabin.

"Oh, Aunt Lillian," she exclaimed, "here is Captain Lige and the Juanita,
and he is going to take us back with him. He says there is no danger."

It its unnecessary here to repeat the moral persuasion which Virginia
used to get her aunt up and dressed. That lady, when she had heard the
whistle and the gongs, had let her imagination loose. Turning her face to
the wall, she was in the act of repeating her prayers as her niece
entered.

A big stevedore carried her down two decks to where the gang-plank was
thrown across. Captain Lige himself was at the other end. His face
lighted, Pushing the people aside, he rushed across, snatched the lady
from the negro's arms, crying:

"Jinny! Jinny Carvel! Well, if this ain't fortunate." The stevedore's
services were required for Mammy Easter. And behind the burly shield thus
formed, a stoutish gentleman slipped over, all unnoticed, with a
carpet-bag in his hand It bore the initials E. H.

The plank was drawn in. The great wheels began to turn and hiss, the
Barbara's passengers waved good-by to the foolhardy lunatics who had
elected to go back into the jaws of destruction. Mrs. Colfax was put into
a cabin; and Virginia, in a glow, climbed with Captain Lige to the
hurricane deck. There they stood for a while in silence, watching the
broad stern of the Barbara growing smaller. "Just to think," Miss Carvel
remarked, with a little hysterical sigh, "just to think that some of
those people brought bronze clocks instead of tooth-brushes."

"And what did you bring, my girl?" asked the Captain, glancing at the
parcel she held so tightly under her arm.

He never knew why she blushed so furiously.




CHAPTER XXII

THE STRAINING OF ANOTHER FRIENDSHIP

Captain Lige asked but two questions: where was the Colonel, and was it
true that Clarence had refused to be paroled? Though not possessing
over-fine susceptibilities, the Captain knew a mud-drum from a lady's
watch, as he himself said. In his solicitude for Virginia, he saw that
she was in no state of mind to talk of the occurrences of the last few
days. So he helped her to climb the little stair that winds to the top of
the texas,--that sanctified roof where the pilot-house squats. The girl
clung to her bonnet Will you like her any the less when you know that it
was a shovel bonnet, with long red ribbons that tied under her chin? It
became her wonderfully. "Captain Lige," she said, almost tearfully, as
she took his arm, "how I thank heaven that you came up the river this
afternoon!"

"Jinny," said the Captain, "did you ever know why cabins are called
staterooms?"

"Why, no," answered she, puzzled.

"There was an old fellow named Shreve who ran steamboats before Jackson
fought the redcoats at New Orleans. In Shreve's time the cabins were
curtained off, just like these new-fangled sleeping-car berths. The old
man built wooden rooms, and he named them after the different states,
Kentuck, and Illinois, and Pennsylvania. So that when a fellow came
aboard he'd say: 'What state am I in, Cap?' And from this river has the
name spread all over the world--stateroom. That's mighty interesting,"
said Captain Lige.

"Yea," said Virginia; "why didn't you tell me long ago."

"And I'll bet you can't say," the Captain continued, "why this house
we're standing on is called the texas."

"Because it is annexed to the states," she replied, quick a flash.

"Well, you're bright," said he. "Old Tufts got that notion, when Texas
came in. Like to see Bill Jenks?"

"Of course," said Virginia.

Bill Jenks was Captain Brent's senior pilot. His skin hung on his face in
folds, like that of a rhinoceros It was very much the same color. His
grizzled hair was all lengths, like a worn-out mop; his hand reminded one
of an eagle's claw, and his teeth were a pine yellow. He greeted only
such people as he deemed worthy of notice, but he had held Virginia in
his arms.

"William," said the young lady, roguishly, "how is the eye, location, and
memory?"

William abandoned himself to a laugh. When this happened it was put in
the Juanita's log.

"So the Cap'n be still harpin' on that?" he said, "Miss Jinny, he's just
plumb crazy on a pilot's qualifications."

"He says that you are the best pilot on the river, but I don't believe
it," said Virginia.

William cackled again. He made a place for her on the leather-padded seat
at the back of the pilot house, where for a long time she sat staring at
the flag trembling on the jackstaff between the great sombre pipes. The
sun fell down, but his light lingered in the air above as the big boat
forged abreast the foreign city of South St. Louis. There was the
arsenal--grim despite its dress of green, where Clarence was confined
alone.

Captain Lige came in from his duties below. "Well, Jinny, we'll soon be
at home," he said. "We've made a quick trip against the rains."

"And--and do you think the city is safe?"

"Safe!" he cried. "As safe as London!" He checked himself. "Jinny, would
you like to blow the whistle?"

"I should just love to," said Virginia. And following Mr. Jenks's
directions she put her toe on the tread, and shrank back when the monster
responded with a snort and a roar. River men along the levee heard that
signal and laughed. The joke was certainly not on sturdy Elijah Brent.

An hour later, Virginia and her aunt and the Captain, followed by Mammy
aster and Rosetta and Susan, were walking through the streets of the
stillest city in the Union. All that they met was a provost's guard, for
St. Louis was under Martial Law. Once in a while they saw the light of
some contemptuous citizen of the residence district who had stayed to
laugh. Out in the suburbs, at the country houses of the first families,
people of distinction slept five and six in a room--many with only a
quilt between body and matting. Little wonder that these dreamed of
Hessians and destruction. In town they slept with their doors open, those
who remained and had faith. Martial law means passes and explanations,
and walking generally in the light of day. Martial law means that the
Commander-in-chief, if he be an artist in well doing, may use his boot
freely on politicians bland or beetle-browed. No police force ever gave
the sense of security inspired by a provost's guard.

Captain Lige sat on the steps of Colonel Carvel's house that night, long
after the ladies were gone to bed. The only sounds breaking the silence
of the city were the beat of the feet of the marching squads and the call
of the corporal's relief. But the Captain smoked in agony until the
clouds of two days slipped away from under the stars, for he was trying
to decide a Question. Then he went up to a room in the house which had
been known as his since the rafters were put down on that floor.

The next morning, as the Captain and Virginia sit at breakfast together
with only Mammy Easter to cook and Rosetta to wait on them, the Colonel
bursts in. He is dusty and travel-stained from his night on the train,
but his gray eyes light with affection as he sees his friend beside his
daughter.

"Jinny," he cries as he kisses her, "Jinny, I'm proud oil you, my girl!
You didn't let the Yankees frighten you--But where is Jackson?"

And so the whole miserable tale has to be told over again, between
laughter and tears on Virginia's part, and laughter and strong language
on Colonel Carvel's. What--blessing that Lige met them, else the Colonel
might now be starting for the Cumberland River in search of his daughter.
The Captain does not take much part in the conversation, and he refuses
the cigar which is offered him. Mr. Carvel draws back in surprise.

"Lige," he says, "this is the first time to my knowledge."

"I smoked too many last night," says the Captain. The Colonel sat down,
with his feet against the mantel, too full of affairs to take much notice
of Mr. Brent's apathy.

"The Yanks have taken the first trick--that's sure," he said. "But I
think we'll laugh last, Jinny. Jefferson City isn't precisely quiet. The
state has got more militia, or will have more militia in a day or two. We
won't miss the thousand they stole in Camp Jackson. They're organizing up
there. And I've got a few commissions right here," and he tapped his
pocket.

"Pa," said Virginia, "did you volunteer?"

The Colonel laughed.

"The Governor wouldn't have me," he answered. "He said I was more good
here in St. Louis. I'll go later. What's this I hear about Clarence?"

Virginia related the occurrences of Saturday. The Colonel listened with
many exclamations, slapping his knee from time to time as she proceeded.

"By gum!" he cried, when she had finished, "the boy has it in him, after
all! They can't hold him a day--can they, Lige?" (No answer from the
Captain, who is eating his breakfast in silence.) "All that we have to do
is to go for Worington and get a habeas corpus from the United States
District Court. Come on, Lige." The Captain got up excitedly, his face
purple.

"I reckon you'll have to excuse me, Colonel," he said. "There's a cargo
on my boat which has got to come off." And without more ado he left the
room. In consternation they heard the front door close behind him. And
yet, neither father nor daughter dared in that hour add to the trial of
the other by speaking out the dread that was in their hearts. The Colonel
smoked for a while, not a word escaping him, and then he patted
Virginia's cheek.

"I reckon I'll run over and see Russell, Jinny," he said, striving to be
cheerful. "We must get the boy out. I'll see a lawyer." He stopped
abruptly in the hall and pressed his hand to his forehead. "My God," he
whispered to himself, "if I could only go to Silas!"

The good Colonel got Mr. Russell, and they went to Mr. Worington, Mrs.
Colfax's lawyer, of whose politics it is not necessary to speak. There
was plenty of excitement around the Government building where his Honor
issued the writ. There lacked not gentlemen of influence who went with
Mr. Russell and Colonel Carvel and the lawyer and the Commissioner to the
Arsenal. They were admitted to the presence of the indomitable Lyon, who
informed them that Captain Colfax was a prisoner of war, and, since the
arsenal was Government property, not in the state. The Commissioner
thereupon attested the affidavit to Colonel Carvel, and thus the
application for the writ was made legal.

These things the Colonel reported to Virginia; and to Mrs. Colfax, who
received them with red eyes and a thousand queries as to whether that
Yankee ruffian would pay any attention to the Sovereign law which he
pretended to uphold; whether the Marshal would not be cast over the
Arsenal wall by the slack of his raiment when he went to serve the writ.
This was not the language, but the purport, of the lady's questions.
Colonel Carvel had made but a light breakfast: he had had no dinner, and
little rest on the train. But he answered his sister-in-law with
unfailing courtesy. He was too honest to express a hope which he did not
feel. He had returned that evening to a dreary household. During the day
the servants had straggled in from Bellegarde, and Virginia had had
prepared those dishes which her father loved. Mrs. Colfax chose to keep
her room, for which the two were silently thankful. Jackson announced
supper. The Colonel was humming a tune as he went down the stairs, but
Virginia was not deceived. He would not see the yearning in her eyes as
he took his chair; he would not glance at Captain Lige's empty seat. It
was because he did not dare. She caught her breath when she saw that the
food on his plate lay untouched.

"Pa, are you ill?" she faltered.

He pushed his chair away, such suffering in his look as she had never
seen.

"Jinny," he said, "I reckon Lige is for the Yankees."

"I have known it all along," she said, but faintly.

"Did he tell you?" her father demanded. "No."

"My God," cried the Colonel, in agony, "to think that he kept it from me
I to think that Lige kept it from me!"

"It is because he loves you, Pa," answered the girl, gently, "it is
because he loves us."

He said nothing to that. Virginia got up, and went softly around the
table. She leaned over his shoulder. "Pa!"

"Yes," he said, his voice lifeless.

But her courage was not to be lightly shaken. "Pa, will you forbid him to
come here--now?"

A long while she waited for his answer, while the big clock ticked out
the slow seconds in the hall, and her heart beat wildly.

"No," said the Colonel. "As long as I have a roof, Lige may come under
it."

He rose abruptly and seized his bat. She did not ask him where he was
going, but ordered Jackson to keep the supper warm, and went into the
drawing-room. The lights were out, then, but the great piano that was her
mother's lay open. Her fingers fell upon the keys. That wondrous hymn
which Judge Whipple loved, which for years has been the comfort of those
in distress, floated softly with the night air out of the open window. It
was "Lead, Kindly Light." Colonel Carvel heard it, and paused.

Shall we follow him?

He did not stop again until he reached the narrow street at the top of
the levee bank, where the quaint stone houses of the old French residents
were being loaded with wares. He took a few steps back-up the hill. Then
he wheeled about, walked swiftly down the levee, and on to the
landing-stage beside which the big 'Juanita' loomed in the night. On her
bows was set, fantastically, a yellow street-car.

The Colonel stopped mechanically. Its unexpected appearance there had
served to break the current of his meditations. He stood staring at it,
while the roustabouts passed and repassed, noisily carrying great logs of
wood on shoulders padded by their woollen caps.

"That'll be the first street-car used in the city of New Orleans, if it
ever gets there, Colonel."

The Colonel jumped. Captain Lige was standing beside him.

"Lige, is that you? We waited supper for you."

"Reckon I'll have to stay here and boss the cargo all night. Want to get
in as many trips as I can before--navigation closes," the Captain
concluded significantly.

Colonel Carvel shook his head. "You were never too busy to come for
supper, Lige. I reckon the cargo isn't all."

Captain Lige shot at him a swift look. He gulped.

"Come over here on the levee," said the Colonel, sternly. They walked out
together, and for some distance in silence.

"Lige," said the elder gentleman, striking his stick on the stones, "if
there ever was a straight goer, that's you. You've always dealt squarely
with me, and now I'm going to ask you a plain question. Are you North or
South?"

"I'm North, I reckon," answered the Captain, bluntly. The Colonel bowed
his head. It was a long time before he spoke again. The Captain waited
like a man who expects and deserve, the severest verdict. But there was
no anger in Mr. Carvel's voice--only reproach.

"And you wouldn't tell me, Lige? You kept it from me."

"My God, Colonel," exclaimed the other, passionately, "how could I? I owe
what I have to your charity. But for you and--and Jinny I should have
gone to the devil. If you and she are taken away, what have I left in
life? I was a coward, sir, not to tell you. You must have guessed it. And
yet,--God help me,--I can't stand by and see the nation go to pieces.
Your nation as well as mine, Colonel. Your fathers fought that we
Americans might inherit the earth--" He stopped abruptly. Then he
continued haltingly, "Colonel, I know you're a man of strong feelings and
convictions. All I ask is that you and Jinny will think of me as a
friend--"

He choked, and turned away, not heeding the direction of his feet. The
Colonel, his stick raised, stood looking after him. He was folded in the
near darkness before he called his name.

"Lige!"

"Yes, Colonel."

He came back, wondering, across the rough stones until he stood beside
the tall figure. Below them, the lights glided along the dark water.

"Lige, didn't I raise you? Haven't I taught you that my house was your
home? Come back, Lige. But--but never speak to me again of this night!
Jinny is waiting for us."

Not a word passed between them as they went up the quiet street. At the
sound of their feet in the entry the door was flung open, and Virginia,
with her hands out stretched, stood under the hall light.

"Oh, Pa, I knew you would bring him back," she said.




CHAPTER XXIII

OF CLARENCE

Captain Clarence Colfax, late of the State Dragoons, awoke on Sunday
morning the chief of the many topics of the conversation of a big city.
His conduct drew forth enthusiastic praise from the gentlemen and ladies
who had thronged Beauregard and Davis avenues, and honest admiration from
the party which had broken up the camp. The boy had behaved well. There
were many doting parents, like Mr. Catherwood, whose boys had accepted
the parole, whose praise was a trifle lukewarm, to be sure. But popular
opinion, when once aroused, will draw a grunt from the most grudging.

We are not permitted, alas, to go behind these stern walls and discover
how Captain Colfax passed that eventful Sunday of the Exodus. We know
that, in his loneliness, he hoped for a visit from his cousin, and took
to pacing his room in the afternoon, when a smarting sense of injustice
crept upon him. Clarence was young. And how was he to guess, as he looked
out in astonishment upon the frightened flock of white boats swimming
southward, that his mother and his sweetheart were there?

On Monday, while the Colonel and many prominent citizens were busying
themselves about procuring the legal writ which was at once to release
Mr. Colfax, and so cleanse the whole body of Camp Jackson's defenders
from any, veiled intentions toward the Government, many well known
carriages drew up before the Carvel House in Locust Street to
congratulate the widow and the Colonel upon the possession of such a son
and nephew. There were some who slyly congratulated Virginia, whose
martyrdom it was to sit up with people all the day long. For Mrs, Colfax
kept her room, and admitted only a few of her bosom friends to cry with
her. When the last of the callers was gone, Virginia was admitted to her
aunt's presence.

"Aunt Lillian, to-morrow morning Pa and I are going to the Arsenal with a
basket for Max. Pa seems to think there is a chance that he may come back
with us. You will go, of course."

The lady smiled wearily at the proposal, and raised her hands in protest,
the lace on the sleeves of her dressing gown falling away from her white
arms.

"Go, my dear?" she exclaimed, "when I can't walk to my bureau after that
terrible Sunday. You are crazy, Jinny. No," she added, with conviction,
"I never again expect to see him alive. Comyn says they may release him,
does he? Is he turning Yankee, too?"

The girl went away, not in anger or impatience, but in sadness. Brought
up to reverence her elders, she had ignored the shallowness of her aunt's
character in happier days. But now Mrs. Colfax's conduct carried a
prophecy with it. Virginia sat down on the landing to ponder on the years
to come,--on the pain they were likely to bring with them from this
source--Clarence gone to the war; her father gone (for she felt that he
would go in the end), Virginia foresaw the lonely days of trial in
company with this vain woman whom accident made her cousin's mother. Ay,
and more, fate had made her the mother of the man she was to marry. The
girl could scarcely bear the thought--through the hurry and swing of the
events of two days she had kept it from her mind.

But now Clarence was to be released. To-morrow he would be coming home to
her joyfully for his reward, and she did not love him. She was bound to
face that again and again. She had cheated herself again and again with
other feelings. She had set up intense love of country in the shrine
where it did not belong, and it had answered--for a while. She saw
Clarence in a hero's light--until a fatal intimate knowledge made her
shudder and draw back. And yet her resolution should not be water. She
would carry it through.

Captain Lige's cheery voice roused her from below--and her father's
laugh. And as she went down to them she thanked God that this friend had
been spared to him. Never had the Captain's river yarns been better told
than at the table that evening. Virginia did not see him glance at the
Colonel when at last he had brought a smile to her face.

"I'm going to leave Jinny with you, Lige," said Mr. Carvel, presently.
"Worington has some notion that the Marshal may go to the Arsenal
to-night with the writ. I mustn't neglect the boy."

Virginia stood in front of him. "Won't you let me go?" she pleaded

The Colonel was taken aback. He stood looking down at her, stroking his
goatee, and marvelling at the ways of woman.

"The horses have been out all day, Jinny," he said, "I am going in the
cars."

"I can go in the cars, too."

The Colonel looked at Captain Lige.

"There is only a chance that we shall see Clarence," he went on,
uneasily.

"It is better than sitting still," cried Virginia, as she ran away to get
the bonnet with the red strings.

"Lige,--" said the Colonel, as the two stood awaiting her in the hall, "I
can't make her out. Can you?"

The Captain did not answer.

It was a long journey, in a bumping car with had springs that rattled
unceasingly, past the string of provost guards. The Colonel sat in the
corner, with his head bent down over his stick At length, cramped and
weary, they got out, and made their way along the Arsenal wall, past the
sentries to the entrance. The sergeant brought his rifle to a "port".

"Commandant's orders, sir. No one admitted," he said.

"Is Captain Colfax here?" asked Mr. Carver

"Captain Colfax was taken to Illinois in a skiff, quarter of an hour
since."

Captain Lige gave vent to a long, low whistle.

"A skiff!" he exclaimed, "and the river this high! A skiff!"

Virginia clasped his arm in terror. "Is there danger?"

Before he could answer came the noise of steps from the direction of the
river, and a number of people hurried up excitedly. Colonel Carvel
recognized Mr. Worington, the lawyer, and caught him by the sleeve.

"Anything happened?" he demanded.

Worington glanced at the sentry, and pulled the Colonel past the entrance
and into the street. Virginia and Captain Lige followed.

"They have started across with him in a light skiff----four men and a
captain. The young fool! We had him rescued."

"Rescued!"

"Yes. There were but five in the guard. And a lot of us, who suspected
what they were up to, were standing around. When we saw 'em come down, we
made a rush and had the guard overpowered But Colfax called out to stand
back."

"Well, sir."

"Cuss me if I understand him," said Mr. Worington. "He told us to
disperse, and that he proposed to remain a prisoner and go where they
sent him."

There was a silence. Then-- "Move on please, gentlemen," said the sentry,
and they started to walk toward the car line, the lawyer and the Colonel
together. Virginia put her hand through the Captain's arm. In the
darkness he laid his big one over it.

"Don't you be frightened, Jinny, at what I said, I reckon they'll fetch
up in Illinois all right, if I know Lyon. There, there," said Captain
Lige, soothingly. Virginia was crying softly. She had endured more in the
past few days than often falls to the lot of one-and-twenty.

"There, there, Jinny." He felt like crying himself. He thought of the
many, many times he had taken her on his knee and kissed her tears. He
might do that no more, now. There was the young Captain, a prisoner on
the great black river, who had a better right, Elijah Brent wondered, as
they waited in the silent street for the lonely car, if Clarence loved
her as well as he.

It was vary late when they reached home, and Virginia went silently up to
her room. Colonel Carvel stared grimly after her, then glanced at his
friend as he turned down the lights. The eyes of the two met, as of old,
in true understanding.

The sun was still slanting over the tops of the houses the next morning
when Virginia, a ghostly figure, crept down the stairs and withdrew the
lock and bolt on the front door. The street was still, save for the
twittering of birds and the distant rumble of a cart in its early rounds.
The chill air of the morning made her shiver as she scanned the entry for
the newspaper. Dismayed, she turned to the clock in the hall. Its hands
were at quarter past five.

She sat long behind the curtains in her father's little library, the
thoughts whirling in her brain as she watched the growing life of another
day. What would it bring forth? Once she stole softly back to the entry,
self-indulgent and ashamed, to rehearse again the bitter and the sweet of
that scene of the Sunday before. She summoned up the image of the young
man who had stood on these steps in front of the frightened servants. She
seemed to feel again the calm power and earnestness of his face, to hear
again the clear-cut tones of his voice as he advised her. Then she drew
back, frightened, into the sombre library, conscience-stricken that she
should have yielded to this temptation then, when Clarence--She dared not
follow the thought, but she saw the light skiff at the mercy of the angry
river and the dark night.

This had haunted her. If he were spared, she prayed for strength to
consecrate herself to him A book lay on the table, and Virginia took
refuge in it. And her eyes glancing over the pages, rested on this
verse:--

       "Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums,
        That beat to battle where he stands;
        Thy face across his fancy comes,
        And gives the battle to his hands."

The paper brought no news, nor mentioned the ruse to which Captain Lyon
had resorted to elude the writ by transporting his prisoner to Illinois.
Newspapers were not as alert then as now. Colonel Carvel was off early to
the Arsenal in search of tidings. He would not hear of Virginia's going
with him. Captain Lige, with a surer instinct, went to the river. What a
morning of suspense! Twice Virginia was summoned to her aunt, and twice
she made excuse. It was the Captain who returned first, and she met him
at the door.

"Oh, what have you heard?" she cried.

"He is alive," said the Captain, tremulously, "alive and well, and
escaped South."

She took a step toward him, and swayed. The Captain caught her. For a
brief instant he held her in his arms and then he led her to the great
armchair that was the Colonel's.

"Lige," she said,--are you sure that this is not--a kindness?"

"No, Jinny," he answered quickly, "but things were mighty close. I was
afraid last night. The river was roarin'. They struck out straight
across, but they drifted and drifted like log-wood. And then she began to
fill, and all five of 'em to bail. Then---then she went down. The five
soldiers came up on that bit of an island below the Arsenal. They hunted
all night, but they didn't find Clarence. And they got taken off to the
Arsenal this morning."

"And how do you know?" she faltered.

"I knew that much this morning," he continued, "and so did your pa. But
the Andrew Jackson is just in from Memphis, and the Captain tells me that
he spoke the Memphis packet off Cape Girardeau, and that Clarence was
aboard. She picked him up by a miracle, after he had just missed a round
trip through her wheel-house."




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill

BOOK III


Volume 6.



CHAPTER I

INTRODUCING A CAPITALIST

A cordon of blue regiments surrounded the city at first from Carondelet
to North St. Louis, like an open fan. The crowds liked best to go to
Compton Heights, where the tents of the German citizen-soldiers were
spread out like so many slices of white cake on the green beside the
city's reservoir. Thence the eye stretched across the town, catching the
dome of the Court House and the spire of St. John's. Away to the west, on
the line of the Pacific railroad that led halfway across the state, was
another camp. Then another, and another, on the circle of the fan, until
the river was reached to the northward, far above the bend. Within was a
peace that passed understanding,--the peace of martial law.

Without the city, in the great state beyond, an irate governor had
gathered his forces from the east and from the west. Letters came and
went between Jefferson City and Jefferson Davis, their purport being that
the Governor was to work out his own salvation, for a while at least.
Young men of St. Louis, struck in a night by the fever of militarism,
arose and went to Glencoe. Prying sergeants and commissioned officers,
mostly of hated German extraction, thundered at the door of Colonel
Carvel's house, and other houses, there--for Glencoe was a border town.
They searched the place more than once from garret to cellar, muttered
guttural oaths, and smelled of beer and sauerkraut, The haughty
appearance of Miss Carvel did not awe them--they were blind to all manly
sensations. The Colonel's house, alas, was one of many in Glencoe written
down in red ink in a book at headquarters as a place toward which the
feet of the young men strayed. Good evidence was handed in time and time
again that the young men had come and gone, and red-faced commanding
officers cursed indignant subalterns, and implied that Beauty had had a
hand in it. Councils of war were held over the advisability of seizing
Mr. Carvel's house at Glencoe, but proof was lacking until one rainy
night in June a captain and ten men spurred up the drive and swung into a
big circle around the house. The Captain took off his cavalry gauntlet
and knocked at the door, more gently than usual. Miss Virginia was home
so Jackson said. The Captain was given an audience more formal than one
with the queen of Prussia could have been, Miss Carvel was infinitely
more haughty than her Majesty. Was not the Captain hired to do a
degrading service? Indeed, he thought so as he followed her about the
house and he felt like the lowest of criminals as he opened a closet door
or looked under a bed. He was a beast of the field, of the mire. How
Virginia shrank from him if he had occasion to pass her! Her gown would
have been defiled by his touch. And yet the Captain did not smell of
beer, nor of sauerkraut; nor did he swear in any language. He did his
duty apologetically, but he did it. He pulled a man (aged seventeen) out
from under a great hoop skirt in a little closet, and the man had a
pistol that refused its duty when snapped in the Captain's face. This was
little Spencer Catherwood, just home from a military academy.

Spencer was taken through the rain by the chagrined Captain to the
headquarters, where he caused a little embarrassment. No damning evidence
was discovered on his person, for the pistol had long since ceased to be
a firearm. And so after a stiff lecture from the Colonel he was finally
given back into the custody of his father. Despite the pickets, the young
men filtered through daily,--or rather nightly. Presently some of them
began to come back, gaunt and worn and tattered, among the grim cargoes
that were landed by the thousands and tens of thousands on the levee. And
they took them (oh, the pity of it!) they took them to Mr. Lynch's slave
pen, turned into a Union prison of detention, where their fathers and
grandfathers had been wont to send their disorderly and insubordinate
niggers. They were packed away, as the miserable slaves had been, to
taste something of the bitterness of the negro's lot. So came Bert
Russell to welter in a low room whose walls gave out the stench of years.
How you cooked for them, and schemed for them, and cried for them, you
devoted women of the South! You spent the long hot summer in town, and
every day you went with your baskets to Gratiot Street, where the
infected old house stands, until--until one morning a lady walked out
past the guard, and down the street. She was civilly detained at the
corner, because she wore army boots. After that permits were issued. If
you were a young lady of the proper principles in those days, you climbed
a steep pair of stairs in the heat, and stood in line until it became
your turn to be catechised by an indifferent young officer in blue who
sat behind a table and smoked a horrid cigar. He had little time to be
courteous. He was not to be dazzled by a bright gown or a pretty face; he
was indifferent to a smile which would have won a savage. His duty was to
look down into your heart, and extract therefrom the nefarious scheme you
had made to set free the man you loved ere he could be sent north to
Alton or Columbus. My dear, you wish to rescue him, to disguise him, send
him south by way of Colonel Carvel's house at Glencoe. Then he will be
killed. At least, he will have died for the South.

First politics, and then war, and then more politics, in this our
country. Your masterful politician obtains a regiment, and goes to war,
sword in hand. He fights well, but he is still the politician. It was not
a case merely of fighting for the Union, but first of getting permission
to fight. Camp Jackson taken, and the prisoners exchanged south, Captain
Lyon; who moved like a whirlwind, who loved the Union beyond his own
life, was thrust down again. A mutual agreement was entered into between
the Governor and the old Indian fighter in command of the Western
Department, to respect each other. A trick for the Rebels. How Lyon
chafed, and paced the Arsenal walks while he might have saved the state.
Then two gentlemen went to Washington, and the next thing that happened
was Brigadier General Lyon, Commander of the Department of the West.

Would General Lyon confer with the Governor of Missouri? Yes, the General
would give the Governor a safe-conduct into St. Louis, but his Excellency
must come to the General. His Excellency came, and the General deigned to
go with the Union leader to the Planters House. Conference, five hours;
result, a safe-conduct for the Governor back. And this is how General
Lyon ended the talk. His words, generously preserved by a Confederate
colonel who accompanied his Excellency, deserve to be writ in gold on the
National Annals.

"Rather than concede to the state of Missouri the right to demand that my
Government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops
into the state whenever it pleases; or move its troops at its own will
into, out of, or through, the state; rather than concede to the state of
Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in
any matter, however unimportant, I would" (rising and pointing in turn to
every one in the room) "see you, and you, and you, and you, and every
man, woman, and child in this state, dead and buried." Then, turning to
the Governor, he continued, "This means war. In an hour one of my
officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines."

And thus, without another word, without an inclination of the head, he
turned upon his heel and strode out of the room, rattling his spurs and
clanking his sabre.

It did mean war. In less than two months that indomitable leader was
lying dead beside Wilson's Creek, among the oaks on Bloody Hill. What he
would have been to this Union, had God spared him, we shall never know.
He saved Missouri, and won respect and love from the brave men who fought
against him.

Those first fierce battles in the state! What prayers rose to heaven, and
curses sank to hell, when the news of them came to the city by the river!
Flags were made by loving fingers, and shirts and bandages. Trembling
young ladies of Union sympathies presented colors to regiments on the
Arsenal Green, or at Jefferson Barracks, or at Camp Benton to the
northwest near the Fair Grounds. And then the regiments marched through
the streets with bands playing that march to which the words of the
Battle Hymn were set, and those bright ensigns snapping at the front;
bright now, and new, and crimson. But soon to be stained a darker red,
and rent into tatters, and finally brought back and talked over and cried
over, and tenderly laid above an inscription in a glass case, to be
revered by generations of Americans to confer What can stir the soul more
than the sight of those old flags, standing in ranks like the veterans
they are, whose duty has been nobly done? The blood of the color-sergeant
is there, black now with age. But where are the tears of the sad women
who stitched the red and the white and the blue together?

The regiments marched through the streets and aboard the boats, and
pushed off before a levee of waving handkerchiefs and nags. Then
heart-breaking suspense. Later--much later, black headlines, and grim
lists three columns long,--three columns of a blanket sheet! "The City of
Alton has arrived with the following Union dead and wounded, and the
following Confederate wounded (prisoners)." Why does the type run
together?

In a never-ceasing procession they steamed up the river; those calm boats
which had been wont to carry the white cargoes of Commerce now bearing
the red cargoes of war. And they bore away to new battlefields thousands
of fresh-faced boys from Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota, gathered
at Camp Benton. Some came back with their color gone and their red cheeks
sallow and bearded and sunken. Others came not back at all.

Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat,
walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided their
faces. He wrung Richter's hand on the landing-stage. Richter was now a
captain. The good German's eyes were filled as he said good-by.

"You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you," he said.
"Now" (and he shrugged his shoulders), "now have we many with no cares to
go. I have not even a father--" And he turned to Judge Whipple, who was
standing by, holding out a bony hand.

"God bless you, Carl," said the Judge And Carl could scarce believe his
ears. He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as
she backed out with her whistle screaming, the last objects he saw were
the gaunt old man and the broad-shouldered young man side by side on the
edge of the landing.

Stephen's chest heaved, and as he walked back to the office with the
Judge, he could not trust himself to speak. Back to the silent office
where the shelves mocked them. The Judge closed the ground-glass door
behind him, and Stephen sat until five o'clock over a book. No, it was
not Whittlesey, but Hardee's "Tactics." He shut it with a slam, and went
to Verandah Hall to drill recruits on a dusty floor,--narrow-chested
citizens in suspenders, who knew not the first motion in right about
face. For Stephen was an adjutant in the Home Guards--what was left of
them.

One we know of regarded the going of the troops and the coming of the
wounded with an equanimity truly philosophical. When the regiments passed
Carvel & Company on their way riverward to embark, Mr. Hopper did not
often take the trouble to rise from his chair, nor was he ever known to
go to the door to bid them Godspeed. This was all very well, because they
were Union regiments. But Mr. Hopper did not contribute a horse, nor even
a saddle-blanket, to the young men who went away secretly in the night,
without fathers or mothers or sisters to wave at them. Mr. Hopper had
better use for his money.

One scorching afternoon in July Colonel Carvel came into the office, too
hurried to remark the pain in honest Ephum's face as he watched his
master. The sure signs of a harassed man were on the Colonel. Since May
he had neglected his business affairs for others which he deemed public,
and which were so mysterious that even Mr. Hopper could not get wind of
them. These matters had taken the Colonel out of town. But now the
necessity of a pass made that awkward, and he went no farther than
Glencoe, where he spent an occasional Sunday. Today Mr. Hopper rose from
his chair when Mr. Carvel entered,--a most unprecedented action. The
Colonel cleared his throat. Sitting down at his desk, he drummed upon it
uneasily.

"Mr. Hopper!" he said at length.

Eliphalet crossed the room quickly, and something that was very near a
smile was on his face. He sat down close to Mr. Carvel's chair with a
semi-confidential air,--one wholly new, had the Colonel given it a
thought. He did not, but began to finger some printed slips of paper
which had indorsements on their backs. His fine lips were tightly closed,
as if in pain.

"Mr. Hopper," he said, "these Eastern notes are due this week, are they
not?"

"Yes, sir."

The Colonel glanced up swiftly.

"There is no use mincing matters, Hopper. You know as well as I that
there is no money to pay them," said he, with a certain pompous attempt
at severity which characterized his kind nature. "You have served me
well. You have brought this business up to a modern footing, and made it
as prosperous as any in the town. I am sorry, sir, that those
contemptible Yankees should have forced us to the use of arms, and cut
short many promising business careers such as yours, sir. But we have to
face the music. We have to suffer for our principles.

"These notes cannot be met, Mr. Hopper." And the good gentleman looked
out of the window. He was thinking of a day, before the Mexican War, when
his young wife had sat in the very chair filled by Mr. Hopper now. "These
notes cannot be met," he repeated, and his voice was near to breaking.

The flies droning in the hot office made the only sound. Outside the
partition, among the bales, was silence.

"Colonel," said Mr. Hopper, with a remarkable ease, "I cal'late these
notes can be met."

The Colonel jumped as if he had heard a shot, and one of the notes fell
to the floor. Eliphalet picked it up tenderly, and held it.

"What do you mean, sir?" Mr. Carvel cried. "There isn't a bank in town
that will lend me money. I--I haven't a friend--a friend I may ask who
can spare it, sir."

Mr. Hopper lifted up his hand. It was a fat hand. Suavity was come upon
it like a new glove and changed the man. He was no longer cringing. Now
he had poise, such poise as we in these days are accustomed to see in
leather and mahogany offices. The Colonel glared at him uncomfortably.

"I will take up those notes myself, sir."

"You!" cried the Colonel, incredulously, "You?"

We must do Eliphalet justice. There was not a deal of hypocrisy in his
nature, and now he did not attempt the part of Samaritan. He did not beam
upon the Colonel and remind him of the day on which, homeless and
friendless, he had been frightened into his store by a drove of mules.
No. But his day,--the day toward which he had striven unknown and
unnoticed for so many years--the day when he would laugh at the pride of
those who had ignored and insulted him, was dawning at last. When we are
thoughtless of our words, we do not reckon with that spark in little
bosoms that may burst into flame and burn us. Not that Colonel Carvel had
ever been aught but courteous and kind to all. His station in life had
been his offence to Eliphalet, who strove now to hide an exultation that
made him tremble.

"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the Colonel, again.

"I cal'late that I can gather together enough to meet the notes, Colonel.
Just a little friendly transaction." Here followed an interval of sheer
astonishment to Mr. Carvel.

"You have this money?" he said at length. Mr. Hopper nodded.

"And you will take my note for the amount?"

"Yes, sir."

The Colonel pulled his goatee, and sat back in his chair, trying to face
the new light in which he saw his manager. He knew well enough that the
man was not doing this out of charity, or even gratitude. He reviewed his
whole career, from that first morning when he had carried bales to the
shipping room, to his replacement of Mr. Hood, and there was nothing with
which to accuse him. He remembered the warnings of Captain Lige and
Virginia. He could not in honor ask a cent from the Captain now. He would
not ask his sister-in-law, Mrs. Colfax, to let him touch the money he had
so ably invested for her; that little which Virginia's mother had left
the girl was sacred.

Night after night Mr. Carvel had lain awake with the agony of those
Eastern debts. Not to pay was to tarnish the name of a Southern
gentleman. He could not sell the business. His house would bring nothing
in these times. He rose and began to pace the floor, tugging at his chin.
Twice he paused to stare at Mr. Hopper, who sat calmly on, and the third
time stopped abruptly before him.

"See here," he cried. "Where the devil did you get this money, sir?"

Mr. Hopper did not rise.

"I haven't been extravagant, Colonel, since I've worked for you," he
said. "It don't cost me much to live. I've been fortunate in
investments."

The furrows in the Colonel's brow deepened.

"You offer to lend me five times more than I have ever paid you, Mr.
Hopper. Tell me how you have made this money before I accept it."

Eliphalet had never been able to meet that eye since he had known it. He
did not meet it now. But he went to his desk, and drew a long sheet of
paper from a pigeonhole.

"These be some of my investments," he answered, with just a tinge of
surliness. "I cal'late they'll stand inspection. I ain't forcing you to
take the money, sir," he flared up, all at once. "I'd like to save the
business."

Mr. Carvel was disarmed. He went unsteadily to his desk, and none save
God knew the shock that his pride received that day. To rescue a name
which had stood untarnished since he had brought it into the world, he
drew forth some blank notes, and filled them out. But before he signed
them he spoke:

"You are a business man, Mr. Hopper," said he, "And as a business man you
must know that these notes will not legally hold. It is martial law. The
courts are abolished, and all transactions here in St. Louis are
invalid."

Eliphalet was about to speak.

"One moment, sir," cried the Colonel, standing up and towering to his
full height. "Law or no law, you shall have the money and interest, or
your security, which is this business. I need not tell you, sir, that my
word is sacred, and binding forever upon me and mine."

"I'm not afraid, Colonel," answered Mr. Hopper, with a feeble attempt at
geniality. He was, in truth, awed at last.

"You need not be, sir!" said the Colonel, with equal force. "If you were
--this instant you should leave this place." He sat down, and continued
more calmly: "It will not be long before a Southern Army marches into St.
Louis, and the Yankee Government submits." He leaned forward. "Do you
reckon we can hold the business together until then, Mr. Hopper?"

God forbid that we should smile at the Colonel's simple faith. And if
Eliphalet Hopper had done so, his history would have ended here.

"Leave that to me, Colonel," he said soberly.

Then came the reaction. The good Colonel sighed as he signed, away that
business which had been an honor to the, city where it was founded, I
thank heaven that we are not concerned with the details of their talk
that day. Why should we wish to know the rate of interest on those notes,
or the time? It was war-time.

Mr. Hopper filled out his check, and presently departed. It was the
signal for the little force which remained to leave. Outside, in the
store; Ephum paced uneasily, wondering why his master did not come out.
Presently he crept to the door of the office, pushed it open, and beheld
Mr. Carvel with his head bowed, down in his hands.

"Marse Comyn!" he cried, "Marse Comyn!"

The Colonel looked up. His face was haggard.

"Marse Comyn, you know what I done promise young MISS long time ago,
befo'--befo' she done left us?"

"Yes, Ephum."

He saw the faithful old negro but dimly. Faintly he heard the pleading
voice.

"Marse Comyn, won' you give Ephum a pass down, river, ter fotch Cap'n
Lige?"

"Ephum," said the Colonel, sadly, "I had a letter from the Captain
yesterday. He is at Cairo. His boat is a Federal transport, and he is in
Yankee pay."

Ephum took a step forward, appealingly, "But de Cap'n's yo' friend, Marse
Comyn. He ain't never fo'get what you done fo' him, Marse Comyn. He ain't
in de army, suh."

"And I am the Captain's friend, Ephum," answered the Colonel, quietly.
"But I will not ask aid from any man employed by the Yankee Government.
No--not from my own brother, who is in a Pennsylvania regiments."

Ephum shuffled out, and his heart was lead as he closed the store that
night.

Mr. Hopper has boarded a Fifth Street car, which jangles on with many
halts until it comes to Bremen, a German settlement in the north of the
city. At Bremen great droves of mules fill the street, and crowd the
entrances of the sale stables there. Whips are cracking like pistol
shots, Gentlemen with the yellow cavalry stripe of the United States Army
are pushing to and fro among the drivers and the owners, and fingering
the frightened animals. A herd breaks from the confusion and is driven
like a whirlwind down the street, dividing at the Market House. They are
going to board the Government transport--to die on the battlefields of
Kentucky and Missouri.

Mr. Hopper alights from the car with complacency. He stands for a while
on a corner, against the hot building, surveying the busy scene,
unnoticed. Mules! Was it not a prophecy,--that drove which sent him into
Mr. Carvel's store?

Presently a man with a gnawed yellow mustache and a shifty eye walks out
of one of the offices, and perceives our friend.

"Howdy, Mr. Hopper?" says he.

Eliphalet extends a hand to be squeezed and returned. "Got them
vouchers?" he asks. He is less careful of his English here.

"Wal, I jest reckon," is the answer: The fellow was interrupted by the
appearance of a smart young man in a smart uniform, who wore an air of
genteel importance. He could not have been more than two and twenty, and
his face and manners were those of a clerk. The tan of field service was
lacking on his cheek, and he was black under the eyes.

"Hullo, Ford," he said, jocularly.

"Howdy, Cap," retorted the other. "Wal, suh, that last lot was an extry,
fo' sure. As clean a lot as ever I seed. Not a lump on 'em. Gov'ment
ain't cheated much on them there at one-eighty a head, I reckon."

Mr. Ford said this with such an air of conviction and such a sober face
that the Captain smiled. And at the same time he glanced down nervously
at the new line of buttons on his chest.

"I guess I know a mule from a Newfoundland dog by this time," said he.

"Wal, I jest reckon," asserted Mr. Ford, with a loud laugh. "Cap'n
Wentworth, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Hopper. Mr. Hopper,
Cap'n Wentworth."

The Captain squeezed Mr. Hoppers hand with fervor. "You interested in
mules, Mr. Hopper?" asked the military man.

"I don't cal'late to be," said. Mr. Hopper. Let us hope that our worthy
has not been presented as being wholly without a sense of humor. He
grinned as he looked upon this lamb in the uniform of Mars, and added,
"I'm just naturally patriotic, I guess. Cap'n, 'll you have a drink?"

"And a segar," added Mr. Ford.

"Just one," says the Captain. "It's d--d tiresome lookin' at mules all
day in the sun."

Well for Mr. Davitt that his mission work does not extend to Bremen, that
the good man's charity keeps him at the improvised hospital down town.
Mr. Hopper has resigned the superintendency of his Sunday School, it is
true, but he is still a pillar of the church.

The young officer leans against the bar, and listens to stories by Mr.
Ford, which it behooves no church members to hear. He smokes Mr. Hopper's
cigar and drinks his whiskey. And Eliphalet understands that the good
Lord put some fools into the world in order to give the smart people a
chance to practise their talents. Mr. Hopper neither drinks nor smokes,
but he uses the spittoon with more freedom in this atmosphere.

When at length the Captain has marched out, with a conscious but manly
air, Mr. Hopper turns to Ford-- "Don't lose no time in presenting them
vouchers at headquarters," says he. "Money is worth something now. And
there's grumbling about this Department in the Eastern papers, If we have
an investigation, we'll whistle. How much to-day?"

"Three thousand," says Mr. Ford. He tosses off a pony of Bourbon, but his
face is not a delight to look upon, "Hopper, you'll be a d--d rich man
some day."

"I cal'late to."

"I do the dirty work. And because I ain't got no capital, I only get four
per cent."

"Don't one-twenty a day suit you?"

"You get blasted near a thousand. And you've got horse contracts, and
blanket contracts besides. I know you. What's to prevent my goin' south
when the vouchers is cashed?" he cried. "Ain't it possible?"

"I presume likely," said Mr. Hopper, quietly. "Then your mother'll have
to move out of her little place."




CHAPTER II

NEWS FROM CLARENCE

The epithet aristocrat may become odious and fatal on the banks of the
Mississippi as it was on the banks of the Seine. Let no man deceive
himself! These are fearful times. Thousands of our population, by the
sudden stoppage of business, are thrown out of employment. When gaunt
famine intrudes upon their household, it is but natural that they should
inquire the cause. Hunger began the French Revolution.

Virginia did not read this editorial, because it appeared in that
abhorred organ of the Mudsills, the 'Missouri Democrat.' The wheels of
fortune were turning rapidly that first hot summer of the war time. Let
us be thankful that our flesh and blood are incapable of the fury of the
guillotine. But when we think calmly of those days, can we escape without
a little pity for the aristocrats? Do you think that many of them did not
know hunger and want long before that cruel war was over?

How bravely they met the grim spectre which crept so insidiously into
their homes!

"Virginia, child." said Mrs. Colfax, peevishly, one morning as they sat
at breakfast, "why do you persist it wearing that old gown? It has gotten
on my nerves, my dear. You really must have something new made, even if
there are no men here to dress for."

"Aunt Lillian, you must not say such things. I do not think that I ever
dressed to please men."

"Tut, tut; my dear, we all do. I did, even after married your uncle. It
is natural. We must not go shabby in such times as these, or be out of
fashion, Did you know that Prince Napoleon was actually coming here for a
visit this autumn? We must be ready for him. I am having a fitting at
Miss Elder's to-day."

Virginia was learning patience. She did not reply as she poured out her
aunt's coffee.

"Jinny," said that lady, "come with me to Elder's, and I will give you
some gowns. If Comyn had been as careful of his own money as of mine, you
could dress decently."

"I think I do dress decently, Aunt Lillian," answered the girl. "I do not
need the gowns. Give me the money you intend to pay for them, and I can
use it for a better purpose."

Mrs. Colfax arranged her lace pettishly.

"I am sick and tired of this superiority, Jinny." And in the same breath.
"What would you do with it?"

Virginia lowered her voice. "Hodges goes through the lines to-morrow
night. I should send it to Clarence." "But you have no idea where
Clarence is."

"Hodges can find him."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed her aunt, "I would not trust him. How do you know that
he will get through the Dutch pickets to Price's army? Wasn't Souther
captured last week, and that rash letter of Puss Russell's to Jack
Brinsmade published in the Democrat?" She laughed at the recollection,
and Virginia was fain to laugh too. "Puss hasn't been around much since.
I hope that will cure her of saying what she thinks of people."

"It won't," said Virginia.

"I'll save my money until Price drives the Yankees from the state, and
Clarence marches into the city at the head of a regiment," Mrs. Colfax
went on, "It won't be long now."

Virginia's eyes flashed.

"Oh, you can't have read the papers. And don't you remember the letter
Maude had from George? They need the bare necessities of life, Aunt
Lillian. And half of Price's men have no arms at all."

"Jackson," said Mrs. Colfax, "bring me a newspaper. Is there any news
to-day?"

"No," answered Virginia, quickly. "All we know is that Lyon has left
Springfield to meet our troops, and that a great battle is coming,
Perhaps--perhaps it is being fought to-day."

Mrs. Colfax burst into tears, "Oh, Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so
cruel!"

That very evening a man, tall and lean, but with the shrewd and kindly
eye of a scout, came into the sitting-room with the Colonel and handed a
letter to Mrs. Colfax. In the hall he slipped into Virginia's hand
another, in a "Jefferson Davis" envelope, and she thrust it in her gown
--the girl was on fire as he whispered in her ear that he had seen
Clarence, and that he was well. In two days an answer might be left at
Mr. Russell's house. But she must be careful what she wrote, as the
Yankee scouts were active.

Clarence, indeed, had proven himself a man. Glory and uniform became him
well, but danger and deprivation better. The words he had written,
careless and frank and boyish, made Virginia's heart leap with pride.
Mrs. Colfax's letter began with the adventure below the Arsenal, when the
frail skiff had sunk near the island, He told how he had heard the
captain of his escort sing out to him in the darkness, and how he had
floated down the current instead, until, chilled and weary, he had
contrived to seize the branches of a huge tree floating by. And how by a
miracle the moon had risen. When the great Memphis packet bore down upon
him, he had, been seen from her guards, and rescued and made much of; and
set ashore at the next landing, for fear her captain would get into
trouble. In the morning he had walked into the country, first providing
himself with butternuts and rawhide boots and a bowie-knife. Virginia
would never have recognized her dashing captain of dragoons in this
guise.

The letter was long for Clarence, and written under great difficulties
from date to date. For nearly a month he had tramped over mountains and
across river bottoms, waiting for news of an organized force of
resistance in Missouri. Begging his way from cabin to cabin, and living
on greasy bacon and corn pone, at length he crossed the swift Gasconade
(so named by the French settlers because of its brawling ways) where the
bridge of the Pacific railroad had been blown up by the Governor's
orders. Then he learned that the untiring Lyon had steamed up the
Missouri and had taken possession of Jefferson City without a blow, and
that the ragged rebel force had fought and lost at Booneville. Footsore,
but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was
retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.

On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad
a plight as himself. They travelled together, until one day some rough
farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders of
a creek and arrested all three for Union spies. And they laughed when Mr.
Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper
captain of the State Dragoons.

His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good
Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were
brought before him. His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp
which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.

"Colfax!" cried the Governor. "A Colfax of St. Louis in butternuts and
rawhide boots?"

"Give me a razor," demanded Clarence, with indignation, "a razor and a
suit of clothes, and I will prove it." The Governor laughed once more.

"A razor, young man! A suit of clothes You know not what you ask."

"Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?" George Catherwood was
brought in,--or rather what had once been George. Now he was a big
frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his
trousers in place of a sword. He recognized his young captain of dragoons
the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the cabin. The
next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which the
Governor's soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way
south, And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who
were their images. This was Price's army, but Price had gone ahead into
Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their
aid and save the state.

   "Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have
   seen this country rabble. How you would have laughed, and cried,
   because we are just like them. In the combined army two thousand
   have only bowie-knives or clubs. Some have long rifles of Daniel
   Boone's time, not fired for thirty years. And the impedimenta are a
   sight. Open wagons and conestogas and carryalls and buggies, and
   even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and
   feather beds. But we've got spirit, and we can whip Lyon's Dutchmen
   and Yankees just as we are. Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees
   haven't got it, I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under
   Colonel Rives. I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant.
   He jolts me until I am sore,--not quite as easy as my thoroughbred,
   Jefferson. Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we
   march into St. Louis."

                  "COWSKIN PRAIRIE, 9th July.

   "We have whipped Sigel on the prairie by Coon Creek and killed--we
   don't know how many. Tell Maude that George distinguished himself
   in the fight. We cavalry did not get a chance.

   "We have at last met McCulloch and his real soldiers. We cheered
   until we cried when we saw their ranks of gray, with the gold
   buttons and the gold braid and the gold stars. General McCulloch
   has taken me on his staff, and promised me a uniform. But how to
   clothe and feed and arm our men! We have only a few poor cattle,
   and no money. But our men don't complain. We shall whip the
   Yankees before we starve."

For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which her
dear boy was forced to endure. He, who was used to linen sheets and eider
down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the best
table in the state, was reduced to husks.

"But, Aunt Lillian," cried Virginia, "he is fighting for the South. If he
were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud of
him."

Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to
Virginia. How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even the
candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away! He was happy, though
wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had longed for.
At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world.
He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.

   "Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would
   come of our not being able to work? How I wish you could see us
   felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister,
   and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.
   Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage. I can see
   you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us."

It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew. She had always detested
it. Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began. Sad to
relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the front,
--those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which were made
in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the war, to be
ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.

"Why should not our soldiers have them, too?" said Virginia to the
Russell girls. They were never so happy as when sewing on them against
the arrival of the Army of Liberation, which never came.

The long, long days of heat dragged slowly, with little to cheer those
families separated from their dear ones by a great army. Clarence might
die, and a month--perhaps a year--pass without news, unless he were
brought a prisoner to St. Louis. How Virginia envied Maude because the
Union lists of dead and wounded would give her tidings of her brother
Tom, at least! How she coveted the many Union families, whose sons and
brothers were at the front, this privilege!

We were speaking of the French Revolution, when, as Balzac remarked, to
be a spy was to be a patriot. Heads are not so cheap in our Anglo-Saxon
countries; passions not so fierce and uncontrollable. Compare, with a
prominent historian, our Boston Massacre and St. Bartholomew.

They are both massacres. Compare Camp Jackson, or Baltimore, where a few
people were shot, with some Paris street scenes after the Bastille.
Feelings in each instance never ran higher. Our own provost marshal was
hissed in the street, and called "Robespierre," and yet he did not fear
the assassin's knife. Our own Southern aristocrats were hemmed in in a
Union city (their own city). No women were thrown into prison, it is
true. Yet one was not permitted to shout for Jeff Davis on the street
corner before the provost's guard. Once in a while a detachment of the
Home Guards, commanded by a lieutenant; would march swiftly into a street
and stop before a house, whose occupants would run to the rear, only to
encounter another detachment in the alley.

One day, in great excitement, Eugenie Renault rang the bell of the Carvel
house, and ran past the astounded Jackson up the stairs to Virginia's
room, the door of which she burst open.

"Oh, Jinny!" she cried, "Puss Russell's house is surrounded by Yankees,
and Puss and Emily and all the family are prisoners!"

"Prisoners! What for?" said Virginia, dropping in her excitement her last
year's bonnet, which she was trimming with red, white, and red.

"Because," said Eugenie, sputtering with indignation "because they waved
at some of our poor fellows who were being taken to the slave pen. They
were being marched past Mr. Russell's house under guard--Puss had a
small--"

"Confederate flag," put in Virginia, smiling in spite of herself.

"And she waved it between the shutters," Eugenie continued. And some one
told, the provost marshal. He has had the house surrounded, and the
family have to stay there."

"But if the food gives out?"

"Then," said Miss Renault, in a voice of awe, "then each one of the
family is to have just a common army ration. They are to be treated as
prisoners."

"Oh, those Yankees are detestable!" exclaimed Virginia. "But they shall
pay for it. As soon as our army is organized and equipped, they shall pay
for it ten times over." She tried on the bonnet, conspicuous with its red
and white ribbons, before the glass. Then she ran to the closet and drew
forth the white gown with its red trimmings. "Wait for me, Genie," she
said, "and we'll go down to Puss's house together. It may cheer her to
see us."

"But not in that dress," said Eugenie, aghast. "They will arrest you."
"Oh, how I wish they would!" cried Virginia. And her eyes flashed so that
Eugenie was frightened. "How I wish they would!"

Miss Renault regarded her friend with something of adoration from beneath
her black lashes. It was about five in the afternoon when they started
out together under Virginia's white parasol, Eugenie's slimmer courage
upheld by her friend's bearing. We must remember that Virginia was young,
and that her feelings were akin to those our great-grandmothers
experienced when the British held New York. It was as if she had been
born to wear the red and white of the South. Elderly gentlemen of
Northern persuasion paused in their homeward walk to smile in admiration,
--some sadly, as Mr. Brinsmade. Young gentlemen found an excuse to
retrace their steps a block or two. But Virginia walked on air, and saw
nothing. She was between fierce anger and exaltation. She did not deign
to drop her eyes as low as the citizen sergeant and guard in front of
Puss Russell's house (these men were only human, after all); she did not
so much as glance at the curious people standing on the corner, who could
not resist a murmur of delight. The citizen sergeant only smiled, and
made no move to arrest the young lady in red and white. Nor did Puss
fling open the blinds and wave at her.

"I suppose its because Mr. Russell won't let her," said Virginia,
disconsolately, "Genie, let's go to headquarters, and show this Yankee
General Fremont that we are not afraid of him."

Eugenie's breath was taken away by the very boldness of this
proposition.. She looked up timidly into Virginia's face, and
hero-worship got the better of prudence.

The house which General Fremont appropriated for his use when he came
back from Europe to assume command in the West was not a modest one. It
still stands, a large mansion of brick with a stone front, very tall and
very wide, with an elaborate cornice and plate-glass windows, both tall
and broad, and a high basement. Two stately stone porches capped by
elaborate iron railings adorn it in front and on the side. The chimneys
are generous and proportional. In short, the house is of that type built
by many wealthy gentlemen in the middle of the century, which has best
stood the test of time,--the only type which, if repeated to-day, would
not clash with the architectural education which we are receiving. A
spacious yard well above the pavement surrounds it, sustained by a wall
of dressed stones, capped by an iron fence. The whole expressed wealth,
security, solidity, conservatism. Alas, that the coal deposits under the
black mud of our Western states should, at length, have driven the owners
of these houses out of them! They are now blackened, almost buried in
soot; empty, or half-tenanted by boarders, Descendants of the old
families pass them on their way to business or to the theatre with a
sigh. The sons of those who owned them have built westward, and west-ward
again, until now they are six miles from the river.

On that summer evening forty years ago, when Virginia and Eugenie came in
sight of the house, a scene of great animation was before them. Talk was
rife over the commanding general's pomp and circumstance. He had just
returned from Europe, where pomp and circumstance and the military were
wedded. Foreign officers should come to America to teach our army dress
and manners. A dashing Hungarian commanded the general's body-guard,
which honorable corps was even then drawn up in the street before the
house, surrounded at a respectable distance by a crowd that feared to
jest. They felt like it save when they caught the stern military eye of
the Hungarian captain. Virginia gazed at the glittering uniforms,
resplendent in the sun, and at the sleek and well-fed horses, and
scalding tears came as she thought of the half-starved rabble of Southern
patriots on the burning prairies. Just then a sharp command escaped in
broken English from the Hungarian. The people in the yard of the mansion
parted, and the General himself walked proudly out of the gate to the
curb, where his charger was pawing the gutter. As he put foot to the
stirrup, the eye of the great man (once candidate, and again to be, for
President) caught the glint of red and white on the corner. For an
instant he stood transfixed to the spot, with one leg in the air. Then he
took it down again and spoke to a young officer of his staff, who smiled
and began to walk toward them. Little Eugenie's knees trembled. She
seized Virginia's arm, and whispered in agony.

"Oh, Jinny, you are to be arrested, after all. Oh, I wish you hadn't been
so bold!"

"Hush," said Virginia, as she prepared to slay the young officer with a
look. She felt like flying at his throat, and choking him for the
insolence of that smile. How dare he march undaunted to within six paces
of those eyes? The crowd drew back, But did Miss Carvel retreat? Not a
step. "Oh, I hope he will arrest me," she said passionately, to Eugenie.
"He will start a conflagration beyond the power of any Yankee to quell."

But hush! he was speaking. "You are my prisoners"? No, those were not the
words, surely. The lieutenant had taken off his cap. He bowed very low
and said:

"Ladies, the General's compliments, and he begs that this much of the
sidewalk may be kept clear for a few moments."

What was left for them, after that, save a retreat? But he was not
precipitate. Miss Virginia crossed the street with a dignity and bearing
which drew even the eyes of the body-guard to one side. And there she
stood haughtily until the guard and the General had thundered away. A
crowd of black-coated civilians, and quartermasters and other officers in
uniform, poured out of the basement of the house into the yards. One
civilian, a youngish man a little inclined to stoutness, stopped at the
gate, stared, then thrust some papers in his pocket and hurried down the
side street. Three blocks thence he appeared abreast of Miss Carvel. More
remarkable still, he lifted his hat clear of his head. Virginia drew
back. Mr. Hopper, with his newly acquired equanimity and poise, startled
her.

"May I have the pleasure," said that gentleman, "of accompanying you
home?"

Eugenie giggled, Virginia was more annoyed than she showed.

"You must not come out of your way," she said. Then she added. "I am sure
you must go back to the store. It is only six o'clock."

Had Virginia but known, this occasional tartness in her speech gave
Eliphalet an infinite delight, even while it hurt him. His was a nature
which liked to gloat over a goal on the horizon He cared not a whit for
sweet girls; they cloyed. But a real lady was something to attain. He had
revised his vocabulary for just such an occasion, and thrown out some of
the vernacular.

"Business is not so pressing nowadays, Miss Carvel," he answered, with a
shade of meaning.

"Then existence must be rather heavy for you," she said. She made no
attempt to introduce him to Eugenie. "If we should have any more
victories like Bull Run, prosperity will come back with a rush," said the
son of Massachusetts. "Southern Confederacy, with Missouri one of its
stars an industrial development of the South--fortunes in cotton"

Virginia turned quickly, "Oh, how dare you?" she cried. "How dare you
speak flippantly of such things?" His suavity was far from overthrown.

"Flippantly Miss Carvel?" said he. "I assure you that I want to see the
South win." What he did not know was that words seldom convince women.
But he added something which reduced her incredulity for the time. "Do
you cal'late," said he,--that I could work for your father, and wish ruin
to his country?"

"But you are a Yankee born," she exclaimed.

"There be a few sane Yankees," replied Mr. Hopper, dryly. A remark which
made Eugenie laugh outright, and Virginia could not refrain from a smile.

But much against her will he walked home with her. She was indignant by
the time she reached Locust Street. He had never dared do such a thing
before, What had got into the man? Was it because he had become a
manager, and governed the business during her father's frequent absences?
No matter what Mr. Hopper's politics, he would always be to her a
low-born Yankee, a person wholly unworthy of notice.

At the corner of Olive Street, a young man walking with long strides
almost bumped into them. He paused looked back, and bowed as if uncertain
of an acknowledgment. Virginia barely returned his bow. He had been very
close to her, and she had had time to notice that his coat was
threadbare. When she looked again, he had covered half the block. Why
should she care if Stephen Brice had seen her in company with Mr, Hopper?
Eliphalet, too, had seen Stephen, and this had added zest to his
enjoyment. It was part of the fruits of his reward. He wished in that
short walk that he might meet Mr. Cluyme and Belle, and every man and
woman and child in the city whom he knew. From time to time he glanced at
the severe profile of the aristocrat beside him (he had to look up a bit,
likewise), and that look set him down among the beasts of prey. For she
was his rightful prey, and he meant not to lose one tittle of enjoyment
in the progress of the game. Many and many a night in the bare little
back room at Miss Crane's, Eliphalet had gloated over the very event
which was now come to pass. Not a step of the way but what he had lived
through before.

The future is laid open to such men as he. Since he had first seen the
black cloud of war rolling up from the South, a hundred times had he
rehearsed the scene with Colonel Carvel which had actually taken place a
week before. A hundred times had he prepared his speech and manner for
this first appearance in public with Virginia after he had forced the
right to walk in her company. The words he had prepared--commonplace, to
be sure, but carefully chosen--flowed from his lips in a continual nasal
stream. The girl answered absently, her feminine instinct groping after a
reason for it all. She brightened when she saw her father at the doors
and, saying good by to Eugenie, tripped up the steps, bowing to Eliphalet
coldly.

"Why, bless us, Jinny," said the Colonel, "you haven't been parading the
town in that costume! You'll have us in Lynch's slave pen by to-morrow
night. My land!" laughed he, patting her under the chin, "there's no
doubt about your sentiments, anyhow."

"I've been over to Puss Russell's house," said she, breathless. "They've
closed it up, you know--" (He nodded.) "And then we went--Eugenie and I,
to headquarters, just to see what the Yankees would do."

The Colonel's smile faded. He looked grave. "You must take care, honey,"
he said, lowering his voice. "They suspect me now of communicating with
the Governor and McCulloch. Jinny, it's all very well to be brave, and to
stand by your colors. But this sort of thing," said he, stroking the
gown, "this sort of thing doesn't help the South, my dear, and only sets
spies upon us. Ned tells me that there was a man in plain clothes
standing in the alley last night for three hours."

"Pa," cried the girl, "I'm so sorry." Suddenly searching his face with a
swift instinct, she perceived that these months had made it yellow and
lined. "Pa, dear, you must come to Glencoe to-morrow and rest You must
not go off on any more trips."

The Colonel shook his head sadly.

"It isn't the trips, Jinny There are duties, my dear, pleasant duties
--Jinny--"

"Yes?"

The Colonel's eye had suddenly fallen on Mr, Hopper, who was still
standing at the bottom of the steps. He checked himself abruptly as
Eliphalet pulled off his hat,

"Howdy, Colonel?" he said.

Virginia was motionless, with her back to the intruder, She was frozen by
a presentiment. As she saw her father start down the steps, she yearned
to throw herself in front of him--to warn him of something; she knew not
what. Then she heard the Colonel's voice, courteous and kindly as ever.
And yet it broke a little as he greeted his visitor.

"Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Hopper?"

Virginia started

"I don't know but what I will, thank you, Colonel," he answered; easily.
"I took the liberty of walking home with your daughter."

Virginia fairly flew into the house and up the stairs. Gaining her room,
she shut the door and turned the key, as though he might pursue her
there. The man's face had all at once become a terror. She threw herself
on the lounge and buried her face in her hands, and she saw it still
leering at her with a new confidence. Presently she grew calmer; rising,
she put on the plainest of her scanty wardrobe, and went down the stairs,
all in a strange trepidation new to her. She had never been in fear of a
man before. She hearkened over the banisters for his voice, heard it, and
summoned all her courage. How cowardly she had been to leave her father
alone with him.

Eliphalet stayed to tea. It mattered little to him that Mrs. Colfax
ignored him as completely as if his chair had been vacant He glanced at
that lady once, and smiled, for he was tasting the sweets of victory. It
was Virginia who entertained him, and even the Colonel never guessed what
it cost her. Eliphalet himself marvelled at her change of manner, and
gloated over that likewise. Not a turn or a quiver of the victim's pain
is missed by your beast of prey. The Colonel was gravely polite, but
preoccupied. Had he wished it, he could not have been rude to a guest. He
offered Mr. Hopper a cigar with the same air that he would have given it
to a governor.

"Thank'ee, Colonel, I don't smoke," he said, waving the bog away.

Mrs. Colfax flung herself out of the room.

It was ten o'clock when Eliphalet reached Miss Crane's, and picked his
way up the front steps where the boarders were gathered.

"The war doesn't seem to make any difference in your business, Mr.
Hopper," his landlady remarked, "where have you been so late?"

"I happened round at Colonel Carvel's this afternoon, and stayed for tea
with 'em," he answered, striving to speak casually.

Miss Crane lingered in Mrs. Abner Reed's room later than usual that
night.




CHAPTER III

THE SCOURGE OF WAR

"Virginia," said Mrs. Colfax, the next morning on coming downstairs, "I
am going back to Bellegarde today. I really cannot put up with such a
person as Comyn had here to tea last night."

"Very well, Aunt Lillian. At what time shall I order the carriage?"

The lady was surprised. It is safe to say that she had never accurately
gauged the force which Virginia's respect for her elders, and affection
for her aunt through Clarence, held in check. Only a moment since Mrs.
Colfax had beheld her niece. Now there had arisen in front of her a tall
person of authority, before whom she deferred instinctively. It was not
what Virginia said, for she would not stoop to tirade. Mrs. Colfax sank
into a chair, seeing only the blurred lines of a newspaper the girl had
thrust into her hand.

"What--what is it?" she gasped. "I cannot read."

"There has been a battle at Wilson's Creek," said Virginia, in an
emotionless voice. "General Lyon is killed, for which I suppose we should
be thankful. More than seven hundred of the wounded are on their way
here. They are bringing them one hundred and twenty miles, from
Springfield to Rollo, in rough army wagons, with scarcely anything to eat
or drink."

"And--Clarence?"

"His name is not there."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Colfax. "Are the Yankees beaten?"

"Yes," said Virginia, coldly. "At what time shall I order the carriage to
take you to Bellegarde?"

Mrs. Colfax leaned forward and caught the hem of her niece's gown. "Oh,
let me stay," she cried, "let me stay. Clarence may be with them."

Virginia looked down at her without pity.

"As you please, Aunt Lillian," she answered. "You know that you may
always stay here. I only beg of you one thing, that when you have
anything to complain of, you will bring it to me, and not mention it
before Pa. He has enough to worry him."

"Oh, Jinny," sobbed the lady, in tears again, "how can you be so cruel at
such a time, when my nerves are all in pieces?"

But she did not lift her voice at dinner, which was very poor indeed for
Colonel Carvel's house. All day long Virginia, assisted by Uncle Ben and
Aunt Easter, toiled in the stifling kitchen, preparing dainties which she
had long denied herself. At evening she went to the station at Fourteenth
Street with her father, and stood amongst the people, pressed back by the
soldiers, until the trains came in. Alas, the heavy basket which the
Colonel carried on his arm was brought home again. The first hundred to
arrive, ten hours in a hot car without food or water, were laid groaning
on the bottom of great furniture vans, and carted to the new House of
Refuge Hospital, two miles to the south of the city.

The next day many good women went there, Rebel and Union alike, to have
their hearts wrung. The new and cheap building standing in the hot sun
reeked with white wash and paint. The miserable men lay on the hard
floor, still in the matted clothes they had worn in battle. Those were
the first days of the war, when the wages of our passions first came to
appal us. Many of the wounds had not been tended since they were dressed
on the field weeks before.

Mrs. Colfax went too, with the Colonel and her niece, although she
declared repeatedly that she could not go through with such an ordeal.
She spoke the truth, for Mr. Carvel had to assist her to the
waiting-room. Then he went back to the improvised wards to find Virginia
busy over a gaunt Arkansan of Price's army, whose pitiful, fever-glazed
eyes were following her every motion. His frontiersman's clothes, stained
with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body. At Virginia's
bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh water, and she
washed the caked dust from his face and hands. It was Mr. Brinsmade who
got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe some of the
broth from Virginia's basket. For the first time since the war began
something of happiness entered her breast.

It was Mr. Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the questions
of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged the place;
consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to work in
placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have been
seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down the
names of dear ones in distant states,--that he might spend his night
writing to them.

They put a mattress under the Arkansan. Virginia did not leave him until
he had fallen asleep, and a smile of peace was come upon his sunken face.
Dismayed at the fearful sights about her, awed by the groans that rose on
every side, she was choosing her way swiftly down the room to join her
father and aunt in the carriage below.

The panic of flight had seized her. She felt that another little while in
this heated, horrible place would drive her mad. She was almost at the
door when she came suddenly upon a sight that made her pause.

An elderly lady in widow's black was kneeling beside a man groaning in
mortal agony, fanning away the flies already gathering about his face. He
wore the uniform of a Union sergeant,--dusty and splotched and torn. A
small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right
band. The left sleeve was empty. Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity,
thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there. Her face the
girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man. The sweetness of
her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped groaning
that he might listen:

"You have a wife?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And a child?"

The answer came so painfully.

"A boy, ma'am--born the week--before I came--away."

"I shall write to your wife," said the lady, so gently that Virginia
could scarce hear, "and tell her that you are cared for. Where does she
live?"

He gave the address faintly--some little town in Minnesota. Then he
added, "God bless you, lady."

Just then the chief surgeon came and stood over them. The lady turned her
face up to him, and tears sparkled in her eyes. Virginia felt them wet in
her own. Her worship was not given to many. Nobility, character,
efficiency,-all were written on that face. Nobility spoke in the large
features, in the generous mouth, in the calm, gray eyes. Virginia had
seen her often before, but not until now was the woman revealed to her.

"Doctor, could this man's life be saved if I took him to my home?"

The surgeon got down beside her and took the man's pulse. The eyes
closed. For a while the doctor knelt there, shaking his head. "He has
fainted," he said.

"Do you think he can be saved?" asked the lady again. The surgeon
smiled,--such a smile as a good man gives after eighteen hours of
amputating, of bandaging, of advising,--work which requires a firm hand,
a clear eye and brain, and a good heart.

"My dear Mrs. Brice," he said, "I shall be glad to get you permission to
take him, but we must first make him worth the taking. Another hour would
have been too late." He glanced hurriedly about the busy room, and then
added, "We must have one more to help us."

Just then some one touched Virginia's arm. It was her father.

"I am afraid we must go, dear," he said, "your aunt is getting
impatient."

"Won't you please go without me, Pa?" she asked. "Perhaps I can be of
some use."

The Colonel cast a wondering glance at the limp uniform, and went away.
The surgeon, who knew the Carvel family, gave Virginia a look of
astonishment. It was Mrs. Brice's searching gaze that brought the color
to the girl's, face.

"Thank you, my dear," she said simply.

As soon as he could get his sister-in-law off to Locust Street in the
carriage, Colonel Carvel came back. For two reeking hours he stood
against the newly plastered wall. Even he was surprised at the fortitude
and skill Virginia showed from the very first, when she had deftly cut
away the stiffened blue cloth, and helped to take off the rough bandages.
At length the fearful operation was finished, and the weary surgeon,
gathering up his box, expressed with all the energy left to him, his
thanks to the two ladies.

Virginia stood up, faint and dizzy. The work of her hands had sustained
her while it lasted, but now the ordeal was come. She went down the
stairs on her father's arm, and out into the air. All at once she knew
that Mrs. Brice was beside her, and had taken her by the hand.

"My dear?" she was saying, "God will reward you for this act. You have
taught many of us to-day a lesson we should have learned in our Bibles."

Virginia trembled with many emotions, but she answered nothing. The mere
presence of this woman had a strange effect upon the girl,--she was
filled with a longing unutterable. It was not because Margaret Brice was
the mother of him whose life had been so strangely blended with hers
--whom she saw in her dreams. And yet now some of Stephen's traits seemed
to come to her understanding, as by a revelation. Virginia had labored
through the heat of the day by Margaret Brice's side doing His work,
which levels all feuds and makes all women sisters. One brief second had
been needful for the spell.

The Colonel bowed with that courtesy and respect which distinguished him,
and Mrs. Brice left them to go back into the room of torment, and watch
by the sergeant's pallet. Virginia's eyes followed her up the stairs, and
then she and her father walked slowly to the carriage. With her foot on
the step Virginia paused.

"Pa," she said, "do you think it would be possible to get them to let us
take that Arkansan into our house?"

"Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like," said the Colonel. "Here he
comes now, and Anne."

It was Virginia who put the question to him.

"My dear," replied that gentleman, patting her, "I would do anything in
the world for you. I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.
Virginia," he added, soberly, "it is such acts as yours to-day that give
us courage to live in these times."

Anne kissed her friend.

"Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men. What am I
saying?" she cried. "They are your men, too. This horrible war cannot
last. It cannot last. It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on
the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to
him with her request. This was before the days when the wounded arrived
by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to
throw out of gear the workings of a great system. But the General, had
had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first. Therefore he smiled.

"Colonel Carvel," said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, "is a gentleman. When
he gives his word, it is sacred, sir."

"Even to an enemy," the General put in, "By George, Brinsmade, unless I
knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself. Well, well,
he may have his Arkansan."

Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not say
that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview his
Excellency, the Commander in-chief. It was like obtaining an audience
with the Sultan or the Czar. Citizens who had been prominent in affairs
for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men like Mr.
Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows in one of
the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with beardless
youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain. The General might
have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough. His European notions of uniformed
inaccessibility he carried out to the letter. He was a royal personage,
seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a glittering guard. It did
not seem to weigh with his Excellency that these simple and democratic
gentlemen would not put up with this sort of thing. That they who had
saved the city to the Union were more or less in communication with a
simple and democratic President; that in all their lives they had never
been in the habit of sitting idly for two hours to mop their brows.

On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette,
you discovered a good man and a patriot. It was far from being the
General's fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and
worthless army blankets. Such things always have been, and always will be
unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep of
security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword. We
shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army of
comfortable size will save millions in the end. So much for Democracy
when it becomes a catchword.

The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the
Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women
who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing. Would
that a novel--a great novel--might be written setting forth with truth
its doings. The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler hero
than he was never under a man's hand. For the glory of generals fades
beside his glory.

It was Mr. Brinsmade's carriage that brought Mrs. Brice home from her
trying day in the hospital. Stephen, just returned from drill at Verandah
hall, met her at the door. She would not listen to his entreaties to
rest, but in the evening, as usual, took her sewing to the porch behind
the house, where there was a little breeze.

"Such a singular thing happened to-day, Stephen," she said. "It was while
we were trying to save the life of a poor sergeant who had lost his arm.
I hope we shall be allowed to have him here. He is suffering horribly."

"What happened, mother?" he asked.

"It was soon after I had come upon this poor fellow," she said. "I saw
the--the flies around him. And as I got down beside him to fan them away
I had such a queer sensation. I knew that some one was standing behind
me, looking at me. Then Dr. Allerdyce came, and I asked him about the
man, and he said there was a chance of saving him if we could only get
help. Then some one spoke up,--such a sweet voice. It was that Miss
Carvel my dear, with whom you had such a strange experience when you
bought Hester, and to whose party you once went. Do you remember that
they offered us their house in Glencoe when the Judge was so ill?"

"Yes," said Stephen.

"She is a wonderful creature," his mother continued. "Such personality,
such life! And wasn't it a remarkable offer for a Southern woman to make?
They feel so bitterly, and--and I do not blame them." The good lady put
down on her lap the night-shirt she was making. "I saw how it happened.
The girl was carried away by her pity. And, my dear, her capability
astonished me. One might have thought that she had always been a nurse.
The experience was a dreadful one for me--what must it have been for her.
After the operation was over, I followed her downstairs to where she was
standing with her father in front of the building, waiting for their
carriage. I felt that I must say something to her, for in all my life I
have never seen a nobler thing done. When I saw her there, I scarcely
knew what to say. Words seemed so inadequate. It was then three o'clock,
and she had been working steadily in that place since morning. I am sure
she could not have borne it much longer. Sheer courage carried her
through it, I know, for her hand trembled so when I took it, and she was
very pale. She usually has color, I believe. Her father, the Colonel, was
with her, and he bowed to me with such politeness. He had stood against
the wall all the while we had worked, and he brought a mattress for us. I
have heard that his house is watched, and that they have him under
suspicion for communicating with the Confederate leaders." Mrs. Brice
sighed. He seems such a fine character. I hope they will not get into any
trouble."

"I hope not, mother," said Stephen.

It was two mornings later that Judge Whipple and Stephen drove to the
Iron Mountain depot, where they found a German company of Home Guards
drawn up. On the long wooden platform under the sheds Stephen caught
sight of Herr Korner and Herr Hauptmann amid a group of their countrymen.
Little Korner came forward to clasp his hands. The tears ran on his
cheeks, and he could not speak for emotion. Judge Whipple, grim and
silent, stood apart. But he uncovered his head with the others when the
train rolled in. Reverently they entered a car where the pine boxes were
piled one on another, and they bore out the earthly remains of Captain
Carl Richter.

Far from the land of his birth, among those same oaks on Bloody Hill
where brave Lyon fell, he had gladly given up his life for the new
country and the new cause he had made his own.

That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a hero
hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the great trees,
as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the bugle-call which
is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent, stepped out from
behind the blue line of the troops. It was that of Judge Whipple. He
carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first of many to be laid
on Richter's grave.

Poor Richter! How sad his life had been! And yet he had not filled it
with sadness. For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look
upon his empty place without a pang. He missed the cheery songs and the
earnest presence even more than he had thought. Carl Richter,--as his
father before him,--had lived for others. Both had sacrificed their
bodies for a cause. One of them might be pictured as he trudged with
Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering
at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant
Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his
wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a
thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.
Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder
man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In Carl
a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred. His, too, had
been the sacrifice. Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate that
great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the oppressed.




CHAPTER IV

THE LIST OF SIXTY

One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black
mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window. Her eye was caught
by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched over
them. One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame. They were pulling a
rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel. On the seat a man, pallid
and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his feeble hands,
while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a ragged blanket. In
the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed down in the midst of
broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware, lay a gaunt woman in the
rain. Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the surface of the dirty quilt
beside her showed that a child must be there. From such a picture the
girl fled in tears. But the sight of it, and of others like it, haunted
her for weeks. Through those last dreary days of November, wretched
families, which a year since had been in health and prosperity, came to
the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes. The history of that
hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been written. Still they came
by the hundred, those families. Some brought little corpses to be buried.
The father of one, hale and strong when they started, died of pneumonia
in the public lodging-house. The walls of that house could tell many
tales to wring the heart. So could Mr. Brinsmade, did he choose to speak
of his own charities. He found time, between his labors at the big
hospital newly founded, and his correspondence, and his journeys of
love,--between early morning and midnight,--to give some hours a day to
the refugees.

Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already
overtaxed. All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains of
articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored
print that has hung in the best room, a Bible text.

Anne Brinsmade, driven by Nicodemus, went from house to house to solicit
old clothes, and take them to the crowded place of detention. Christmas
was drawing near--a sorry Christmas, in truth. And many of the wanderers
were unclothed and unfed.

More battles had been fought; factions had arisen among Union men.
Another general had come to St. Louis to take charge of the Department,
and the other with his wondrous body-guard was gone.

The most serious problem confronting the new general--was how to care for
the refugees. A council of citizens was called at headquarters, and the
verdict went forth in the never-to-be-forgotten Orders No. 24.

"Inasmuch," said the General, "as the Secession army had driven these
people from their homes, Secession sympathizers should be made to support
them." He added that the city was unquestionably full of these.

Indignation was rife the day that order was published. Sixty prominent
"disloyalists" were to be chosen and assessed to make up a sum of ten
thousand dollars.

"They may sell my house over my head before I will pay a cent," cried Mr.
Russell. And he meant it. This was the way the others felt. Who were to
be on this mysterious list of "Sixty"? That was the all-absorbing
question of the town. It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous ones.
Colonel Carvel was sure to be there, and Mr. Catherwood and Mr. Russell
and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer. Mrs. Addison Colfax lived
for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared would
break her down; and which, despite her many cares and worries, gave her
niece not a little amusement. For Virginia was human, and one morning she
went to her aunt's room to read this editorial from the newspaper:-- "For
the relief of many palpitating hearts it may be well to state that we
understand only two ladies are on the ten thousand dollar list."

"Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so cruel as to read me that, when you
know that I am in a state of frenzy now? How does that relieve me? It
makes it an absolute certainty that Madame Jules and I will have to pay.
We are the only women of importance in the city."

That afternoon she made good her much-uttered threat, and drove to
Bellegarde. Only the Colonel and Virginia and Mammy Easter and Ned were
left in the big house. Rosetta and Uncle Ben and Jackson had been hired
out, and the horses sold,--all save old Dick, who was running,
long-haired, in the fields at Glencoe.

Christmas eve was a steel-gray day, and the sleet froze as it fell. Since
morning Colonel Carvel had sat poking the sitting-room fire, or pacing
the floor restlessly. His occupation was gone. He was observed night and
day by Federal detectives. Virginia strove to amuse him, to conceal her
anxiety as she watched him. Well she knew that but for her he would long
since have fled southward, and often in the bitterness of the night-time
she blamed herself for not telling him to go. Ten years had seemed to
pass over him since the war had begun.

All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of
Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the
store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily
into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson. The
Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he
would confide to Ned with a knowing wink. And then the house would be
lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of
apple toddy and egg-nog. And Virginia would have her own friends in the
big parlor. That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.

Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his
Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house. Virginia pictured him this
year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss
them as much as they missed him. War may break friendships, but it cannot
take away the sacredness of memories.

The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood
looking out of the sitting-room window. A man's figure muffled in a
greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.
Virginia started. It was the same United States deputy marshal she had
seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.

"Pa," she cried, "do you think he is coming here?"

"I reckon so, honey."

"The brute! Are you going to pay?"

"No, Jinny."

"Then they will take away the furniture."

"I reckon they will."

"Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room. It
--it was mother's. I could not bear to see them take that. Let me put it in
the garret."

The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.

"No, Jinny. We must leave this house just as it is." Then he added,
strangely enough for him, "God's will be done."

The bell rang sharply. And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with
his apron on.

"Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?"

The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself. He was an imposing figure
as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy. Virginia's
first impulse was to shrink under the stairs. Then she came out and stood
beside her father.

"Are you Colonel Carvel?"

"I reckon I am. Will you come in?"

The officer took off his cap. He was a young man with a smooth face, and
a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia. He did not appear
to relish the duty thrust upon him. He fumbled in his coat and drew from
his inner pocket a paper.

"Colonel Carvel," said he, "by order of Major General Halleck, I serve
you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars
for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven
from their homes. In default of payment within a reasonable time such
personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will
satisfy the demand against you."

The Colonel took the paper. "Very well, sir," he said. "You may tell the
General that the articles may be seized. That I will not, while in my
right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me."

It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to
dinner. The deputy marvelled. He had gone into many houses that week; had
seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy. He had even heard men and women
whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their
loyalty to the Union. But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl
who had stood silent beside them, were new. He bowed, and casting his
eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.

The Colonel shut the door. Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully
pulled his goatee, and laughed gently. "Lordy, we haven't got three
hundred and fifty dollars to our names," said he.

The climate of St. Louis is capricious. That fierce valley of the
Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is
sometimes quiet. Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet
melts, and windows are opened. In those days the streets will be fetlock
deep in soft mud. It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor
anything.

It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,
accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police,
pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie, watching
at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who came out on
his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his French
ancestors.

Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply
filling its place. Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance hard
to describe sat on her honest black face.

"Is this Colonel Carvel's house?"

"Yassir. I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me." An embarrassed silence,
and then from Mammy, "Whaffor you laffin at?"

"Is the Colonel at home?"

"Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't. Ef he was, you ain't come here
'quirin' in dat honey voice." (Raising her own voice.) "You tink I dunno
whaffor you come? You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an' to steal,
an' to seize what ain't your'n. You come heah when young Marse ain't to
home ter rob him." (Still louder.) "Ned, whaffor you hidin' yonder? Ef
yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes han' over Marse
Comyn's gun."

The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled by
this unexpected resistance. Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it was
evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.

"Is your mistress here?"

This question was unfortunate in the extreme.

"You--you white trash!" cried Mammy, bursting with indignation. "Who is
you to come heah 'quiring fo' her! I ain't agwine--"

"Mammy!"

"Yas'm! Yas, Miss Jinny." Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at
her bandanna.

"Mammy, what is all this noise about?" The torrent was loosed once more.

"These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's
blongin's. I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body."

The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of
Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.

"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."

Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. "I do not see how I
am to prevent you," she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.

"I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to be
done."

Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. "What are you
waiting for?" she said.

The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he
entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
him.

"I expect all that we want is right here," he said. And at the sight of
the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he
walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.

The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,
standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.

The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick
house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice lay
on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening when
they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them over
to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,
--dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side. And,
when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played them
for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those days, and
walked with her over those paths.

The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia
stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.

"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us, I
reckon." Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she
pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. "Oh, de good
Lawd'll burn de wicked!"

The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room
and stood before the deputy.

"Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery?" She flushed.
"I have a necklace--"

"No, miss. This warrant's on your father. And there ain't nothing quite
so salable as pianos."

She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a
coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and
that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood
what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could touch
them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany velvet-bottomed
chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and, last of all, they
ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near the spot where
Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's parties.

She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.
It was the embodied wreck of her happiness. Ned closed the blinds once
more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the
stairs.




CHAPTER V

THE AUCTION

"Stephen," said the Judge, in his abrupt way, "there isn't a great deal
doing. Let's go over to the Secesh property sales."

Stephen looked up in surprise. The seizures and intended sale of
secession property had stirred up immense bitterness and indignation in
the city. There were Unionists (lukewarm) who denounced the measure as
unjust and brutal. The feelings of Southerners, avowed and secret, may
only be surmised. Rigid ostracism was to be the price of bidding on any
goods displayed, and men who bought in handsome furniture on that day
because it was cheap have still, after forty years, cause to remember it.

It was not that Stephen feared ostracism. Anne Brinsmade was almost the
only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances. Miss
Carvel's conduct is known. The Misses Russell showed him very plainly
that they disapproved of his politics. The hospitable days at that house
were over. Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street, pretended not to
see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod. The loyal families
to whose houses he now went were mostly Southerners, in sentiment against
forced auctions.

However, he put on his coat, and sallied forth into the sharp air, the
Judge leaning on his arm. They walked for some distance in silence.

"Stephen," said he, presently, "I guess I'll do a little bidding."

Stephen did not reply. But he was astonished. He wondered what Mr.
Whipple wanted with fine furniture. And, if he really wished to bid,
Stephen knew likewise that no consideration would stop him.

"You don't approve of this proceeding, sir, I suppose," said the Judge.

"Yes, sir, on large grounds. War makes many harsh things necessary."

"Then," said the Judge, tartly, "by bidding, we help to support starving
Union families. You should not be afraid to bid, sir."

Stephen bit his lip. Sometimes Mr. Whipple made him very angry.

"I am not afraid to bid, Judge Whipple." He did not see the smile on the
Judge's face.

"Then you will bid in certain things for me," said Mr. Whipple. Here he
hesitated, and shook free the rest of the sentence with a wrench.
"Colonel Carvel always had a lot of stuff I wanted. Now I've got the
chance to buy it cheap."

There was silence again, for the space of a whole block. Finally, Stephen
managed to say:-- "You'll have to excuse me, sir. I do not care to do
that."

"What?" cried the Judge, stopping in the middle of a cross-street, so
that a wagon nearly ran over his toes.

"I was once a guest in Colonel Carvel's house, sir. And--"

"And what?"

Neither the young man nor the old knew all it was costing the other to
say these things. The Judge took a grim pleasure in eating his heart. And
as for Stephen, he often went to his office through Locust Street, which
was out of his way, in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of
Virginia. He had guessed much of the privations she had gone through. He
knew that the Colonel had hired out most of his slaves, and he had
actually seen the United States Police drive across Eleventh Street with
the piano that she had played on.

The Judge was laughing quietly,--not a pleasant laugh to hear,--as they
came to Morgan's great warerooms. A crowd blocked the pavement, and
hustled and shoved at the doors,--roughs, and soldiers off duty, and
ladies and gentlemen whom the Judge and Stephen knew, and some of whom
they spoke to. All of these were come out of curiosity, that they might
see for themselves any who had the temerity to bid on a neighbor's
household goods. The long hall, which ran from street to street, was
packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly
against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing
all in a breath. The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way
fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a
secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale. In truth,
it was at the Judge's suggestion that a blue provost's guard was called
in later to protect the seized property.

How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before the
public eye, meant a heartache! Wedding presents of long ago, dear to many
a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the
children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to war.
Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and which
the little feet had worn in the corner. Those were the chairs the little
hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the
armchair--the stage coach itself. There were the books, held up to common
gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection. Yes, and here in
another part of the hall were the family horses and the family carriage
that had gone so often back and forth from church with the happy brood of
children, now scattered and gone to war.

As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were
being cried. And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have
dropped dead. The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the
family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,
whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one
day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern
aristocrats. Mr. James was not there. But Mr. Catherwood, his face
haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her
silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.

Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia. He did not want
to see them there. He knew by heart the list of things which had been
taken from their house. He understood the feeling which had sent the
Judge here to bid them in. And Stephen honored him the more.

When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was
shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the
stand. And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.

"Now, gentlemen, and ladies," said the seller, "this here is a genuine
English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the
celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky." He lingered fondly over the names,
that the impression might have time to sink deep. "This here magnificent
instrument's worth at the very least" (another pause) "twelve hundred
dollars. What am I bid?"

He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top
octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.

"Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres. What am I bid?"

A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence. Some there were who
gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention of
committing social suicide. Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which penetrated
to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was a seedy man
with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning against the
body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those about him
shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was followed by a
hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple
drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that
knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive
distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to
opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed himself clear of
the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the floor. But there
were no hisses now.

And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more. As he
stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish
to do with the piano of his old friend. Those who knew the Judge (and
there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy little
apartment where he lived, and smiled. Whatever his detractors might have
said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought or sold
anything for gain.

A tremor ran through the people. Could it have been of admiration for the
fine old man who towered there glaring defiance at those about him? "Give
me a strong and consistent enemy," some great personage has said, "rather
than a lukewarm friend." Three score and five years the Judge had lived,
and now some were beginning to suspect that he had a heart. Verily he had
guarded his secret well. But it was let out to many more that day, and
they went home praising him who had once pronounced his name with
bitterness.

This is what happened. Before he of the yellow mustache could pick up his
cigar from the floor and make another bid, the Judge had cried out a sum
which was the total of Colonel Carvel's assessment. Many recall to this
day how fiercely he frowned when the applause broke forth of itself; and
when he turned to go they made a path for him, in admiration, the length
of the hall, down which he stalked, looking neither to the right nor
left. Stephen followed him, thankful for the day which had brought him
into the service of such a man.

And so it came about that the other articles were returned to Colonel
Carvel with the marshal's compliments, and put back into the cold parlor
where they had stood for many years. The men who brought them offered to
put down the carpet, but by Virginia's orders the rolls were stood up in
the corner, and the floor left bare. And days passed into weeks, and no
sign or message came from Judge Whipple in regard to the piano he had
bought. Virginia did not dare mention it to the Colonel.

Where was it? It had been carried by six sweating negroes up the narrow
stairs into the Judge's office. Stephen and Shadrach had by Mr. Whipple's
orders cleared a corner of his inner office and bedroom of papers and
books and rubbish, and there the bulky instrument was finally set up. It
occupied one-third of the space. The Judge watched the proceeding grimly,
choking now and again from the dust that was raised, yet uttering never a
word. He locked the lid when the van man handed him the key, and thrust
that in his pocket.

Stephen had of late found enough to do in St. Louis. He was the kind of
man to whom promotions came unsought, and without noise. In the autumn he
had been made a captain in the Halleck Guards of the State Militia, as a
reward for his indefatigable work in the armories and his knowledge of
tactics. Twice his company had been called out at night, and once they
made a campaign as far as the Merimec and captured a party of recruits
who were destined for Jefferson Davis. Some weeks passed before Mr.
Brinsmade heard of his promotion and this exploit, and yet scarcely a day
went by that he did not see the young man at the big hospital. For
Stephen helped in the work of the Sanitary Commission too, and so strove
to make up in zeal for the service in the field which he longed to give.

After Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade moved out to their place on the
Bellefontaine Road. This was to force Anne to take a rest. For the girl
was worn out with watching at the hospitals, and with tending the
destitute mothers and children from the ranks of the refugees. The
Brinsmade place was not far from the Fair Grounds,--now a receiving camp
for the crude but eager regiments of the Northern states. To Mr.
Brinsmade's, when the day's duty was done, the young Union officers used
to ride, and often there would be half a dozen of them to tea. That
house, and other great houses on the Bellefontaine Road with which this
history has no occasion to deal, were as homes to many a poor fellow who
would never see home again. Sometimes Anne would gather together such
young ladies of her acquaintance from the neighbor hood and the city as
their interests and sympathies permitted to waltz with a Union officer,
and there would be a little dance. To these dances Stephen Brice was
usually invited.

One such occasion occurred on a Friday in January, and Mr. Brinsmade
himself called in his buggy and drove Stephen to the country early in the
afternoon. He and Anne went for a walk along the river, the surface of
which was broken by lumps of yellow ice. Gray clouds hung low in the sky
as they picked their way over the frozen furrows of the ploughed fields.
The grass was all a yellow-brown, but the north wind which swayed the
bare trees brought a touch of color to Anne's cheeks. Before they
realized where they were, they had nearly crossed the Bellegarde estate,
and the house itself was come into view, standing high on the slope above
the withered garden. They halted.

"The shutters are up," said Stephen. "I understood that Mrs. Colfax had
come out here not long a--"

"She came out for a day just before Christina," said Anne, smiling, "and
then she ran off to Kentucky. I think she was afraid that she was one of
the two women on the list of Sixty."

"It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,"
said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain
Sunday not a year gone.

Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and
sat down on the edge of the porch. The only motion in the view was the
smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice
in the stream.

"Poor Jinny!" said Anne, with a sigh, "how she loved to romp! What good
times we used to have here together!"

"Do you think that she is unhappy?" Stephen demanded, involuntarily.

"Oh, yes," said Anne. "How can you ask? But you could not make her show
it. The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting
at the piano. I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not
let me see them. She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running
away. What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?"

He shook his head.

"The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black
cloth, which he spread over it. You cannot even see the feet."

There was a silence. And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long,
searching look.

"It is growing late," she said. "I think that we ought to go back."

They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods. Stephen
said little. Only a little while before he had had one of those vivid
dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their substance,
to haunt him. On those rare days following the dreams her spirit had its
mastery over his. He pictured her then with a glow on her face which was
neither sadness nor mirth,--a glow that ministered to him alone. And yet,
he did not dare to think that he might have won her, even if politics and
war had not divided them.

When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen
stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright
gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.
Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade's voice
mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some
familiar episode. Almost--so it seemed--at one motion, the owner of the
voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen's hand in a warm
grasp,--a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer. The
military frock, which fitted the man's character rather than the man, was
carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an
expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie. The ends of the
collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache
was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip. The forehead rose
high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair. The nose was almost
straight, but combative. A fire fairly burned in the eyes.

"The boy doesn't remember me," said the gentleman, in quick tones,
smiling at Mr. Brinsmade.

"Yes, sir, I do," Stephen made haste to answer. He glanced at the star on
the shoulder strap, and said. "You are General Sherman."

"First rate!" laughed the General, patting him. "First rate!"

"Now in command at Camp Benton, Stephen," Mr. Brinsmade put in. "Won't
you sit down, General?"

"No," said the General, emphatically waving away the chair. "No, rather
stand." Then his keen face suddenly lighted with amusement,--and
mischief, Stephen thought. "So you've heard of me since we met, sir?"
"Yes, General."

"Humph! Guess you heard I was crazy," said the General, in his downright
way.

Stephen was struck dumb.

"He's been reading the lies in the newspapers too, Brinsmade," the
General went on rapidly. "I'll make 'em eat their newspapers for saying I
was crazy. That's the Secretary of War's doings. Ever tell you what
Cameron did, Brinsmade? He and his party were in Louisville last fall,
when I was serving in Kentucky, and came to my room in the Galt House.
Well, we locked the door, and Miller sent us up a good lunch and wine,
After lunch, the Secretary lay on my bed, and we talked things over. He
asked me what I thought about things in Kentucky. I told him. I got a
map. I said, 'Now, Mr. Secretary, here is the whole Union line from the
Potomac to Kansas. Here's McClellan in the East with one hundred miles of
front. Here's Fremont in the West with one hundred miles. Here we are in
Kentucky, in the centre, with three hundred miles to defend. McClellan
has a hundred thousand men, Fremont has sixty thousand. You give us
fellows with over three hundred miles only eighteen thousand.' 'How many
do you want?' says Cameron, still on the bed. 'Two hundred thousand
before we get through,' said I. Cameron pitched up his hands in the air.
'Great God?' says he, 'where are they to come from?' 'The northwest is
chuck full of regiments you fellows at Washington won't accept,' said I.
'Mark my words, Mr. Secretary, you'll need 'em all and more before we get
done with this Rebellion.' Well, sir, he was very friendly before we
finished, and I thought the thing was all thrashed out. No, sir! he goes
back to Washington and gives it out that I'm crazy, and want two hundred
thousand men in Kentucky. Then I am ordered to report to Halleck in
Missouri here, and he calls me back from Sedalia because he believes the
lies."

Stephen, who had in truth read the stories in question a month or two
before, could not conceal his embarrassment He looked at the man in front
of him,--alert, masterful intelligent, frank to any stranger who took his
fancy,--and wondered how any one who had talked to him could believe
them.

Mr. Brinsmade smiled. "They have to print something, General," he said.

"I'll give 'em something to print later on," answered the General,
grimly. Then his expression changed. "Brinsmade, you fellows did have a
session with Fremont, didn't you? Anderson sent me over here last
September, and the first man I ran across at the Planters' House was
Appleton. '--What are you in town for?' says he. 'To see Fremont,' I
said. You ought to have heard Appleton laugh. 'You don't think Fremont'll
see you, do you?' says he. 'Why not?' 'Well,' says Tom, 'go 'round to his
palace at six to-morrow morning and bribe that Hungarian prince who runs
his body-guard to get you a good place in the line of senators and
governors and first citizens, and before nightfall you may get a sight of
him, since you come from Anderson. Not one man in a hundred,' says
Appleton, I not one man in a hundred, reaches his chief-of-staff.' Next
morning," the General continued in a staccato which was often his habit,
"had breakfast before daybreak and went 'round there. Place just swarming
with Californians--army contracts." (The General sniffed.) Saw Fremont.
Went back to hotel. More Californians, and by gad--old Baron Steinberger
with his nose hanging over the register."

"Fremont was a little difficult to get at, General," said Mr. Brinsmade.
"Things were confused and discouraged when those first contracts were
awarded. Fremont was a good man, and it wasn't his fault that the
inexperience of his quartermasters permitted some of those men to get
rich."

"No," said the General. "His fault! Certainly not. Good man! To be sure
he was--didn't get along with Blair. These court-martials you're having
here now have stirred up the whole country. I guess we'll hear now how
those fortunes were made. To listen to those witnesses lie about each
other on the stand is better than the theatre."

Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set
this matter forth. He himself had been present one day of the sittings of
the court-martial when one of the witnesses on the prices of mules was
that same seedy man with the straw-colored mustache who had bid for
Virginia's piano against the Judge.

"Come, Stephen," said the General, abruptly, "run and snatch one of those
pretty girls from my officers. They're having more than their share."

"They deserve more, sir," answered Stephen. Whereupon the General laid
his hand impulsively on the young man's shoulder, divining what Stephen
did not say.

"Nonsense!" said be; "you are doing the work in this war, not we. We do
the damage--you repair it. If it were not for Mr. Brinsmade and you
gentlemen who help him, where would our Western armies be? Don't you go
to the front yet a while, young man. We need the best we have in
reserve." He glanced critically at Stephen. "You've had military training
of some sort?"

"He's a captain in the Halleck Guards, sir," said Mr. Brinsmade,
generously, "and the best drillmaster we've had in this city. He's seen
service, too, General."

Stephen reddened furiously and started to protest, when the General
cried:-- "It's more than I have in this war. Come, come, I knew he was a
soldier. Let's see what kind of a strategist he'll make. Brinsmade, have
you got such a thing as a map?" Mr. Brinsmade had, and led the way back
into the library. The General shut the door, lighted a cigar with a
single vigorous stroke of a match, and began to smoke with quick puffs.
Stephen was puzzled how to receive the confidences the General was giving
out with such freedom.

When the map was laid on the table, the General drew a pencil from his
pocket and pointed to the state of Kentucky. Then he drew a line from
Columbus to Bowling Green, through Forts Donelson and Henry.

"Now, Stephen," said he, "there's the Rebel line. Show me the proper
place to break it."

Stephen hesitated a while, and then pointed at the centre.

"Good!" said the General. "Very good!" He drew a heavy line across the
first, and it ran almost in the bed of the Tennessee River. He swung on
Mr. Brinsmade. "Very question Halleck asked me the other day, and that's
how I answered it. Now, gentlemen, there's a man named Grant down in that
part of the country. Keep your eyes on him. Ever heard of him, Brinsmade?
He used to live here once, and a year ago he was less than I was. Now
he's a general."

The recollection of the scene in the street by the Arsenal that May
morning not a year gone came to Stephen with a shock.

"I saw him," he cried; "he was Captain Grant that lived on the Gravois
Road. But surely this can't be the same man who seized Paducah and was in
that affair at Belmont."

"By gum!" said the General, laughing. "Don't wonder you're surprised.
Grant has stuff in him. They kicked him around Springfield awhile, after
the war broke out, for a military carpet-bagger. Then they gave him for a
regiment the worst lot of ruffians you ever laid eyes on. He fixed 'em.
He made 'em walk the plank. He made 'em march halfway across the state
instead of taking the cars the Governor offered. Belmont! I guess he is
the man that chased the Rebs out of Belmont. Then his boys broke loose
when they got into the town. That wasn't Grant's fault. The Rebs came
back and chased 'em out into their boats on the river. Brinsmade, you
remember hearing about that.

"Grant did the coolest thing you ever saw. He sat on his horse at the top
of the bluff while the boys fell over each other trying to get on the
boat. Yes, sir, he sat there, disgusted, on his horse, smoking a cigar,
with the Rebs raising pandemonium all around him. And then, sir," cried
the General, excitedly, "what do you think he did? Hanged if he didn't
force his horse right on to his haunches, slide down the whole length of
the bank and ride him across a teetering plank on to the steamer. And the
Rebs just stood on the bank and stared. They were so astonished they
didn't even shoot the man. You watch Grant," said the General. "And now,
Stephen," he added, "just you run off and take hold of the prettiest girl
you can find. If any of my boys object, say I sent you."

The next Monday Stephen had a caller. It was little Tiefel, now a first
lieutenant with a bristly beard and tanned face, come to town on a few
days' furlough. He had been with Lyon at Wilson's Creek, and he had a sad
story to tell of how he found poor Richter, lying stark on that bloody
field, with a smile of peace upon his face. Strange that he should at
length have been killed by a sabre!

It was a sad meeting for those two, since each reminded the other of a
dear friend they would see no more on earth. They went out to sup
together in the German style; and gradually, over his beer, Tiefel forgot
his sorrow. Stephen listened with an ache to the little man's tales of
the campaigns he had been through. So that presently Tiefel cried out:

"Why, my friend, you are melancholy as an owl. I will tell you a funny
story. Did you ever hear of one General Sherman? He that they say is
crazy?"

"He is no more crazy than I am," said Stephen, warmly--

"Is he not?" answered Tiefel, "then I will show you a mistake. You recall
last November he was out to Sedalia to inspect the camp there, and he
sleeps in a little country store where I am quartered. Now up gets your
General Sherman in the middle of the night,--midnight,--and marches up
and down between the counters, and waves his arms. So, says he, 'land
so,' says he, 'Sterling Price will be here, and Steele here, and this
column will take that road, and so-and-so's a damned fool. Is not that
crazy? So he walks up and down for three eternal hours. Says he, 'Pope
has no business to be at Osterville, and Steele here at Sedalia with his
regiments all over the place. They must both go into camp at La Mine
River, and form brigades and divisions, that the troops may be handled.'"

"If that's insanity," cried Stephen so strongly as to surprise the little
man; "then I wish we had more insane generals. It just shows how a
malicious rumor will spread. What Sherman said about Pope's and Steele's
forces is true as Gospel, and if you ever took the trouble to look into
that situation, Tiefel, you would see it." And Stephen brought down his
mug on the table with a crash that made the bystanders jump.

"Himmel!" exclaimed little Tiefel. But he spoke in admiration.

It was not a month after that that Sherman's prophecy of the quiet
general who had slid down the bluff at Belmont came true. The whole
country bummed with Grant's praises. Moving with great swiftness and
secrecy up the Tennessee, in company with the gunboats of Commodore
Foote, he had pierced the Confederate line at the very point Sherman had
indicated. Fort Henry had fallen, and Grant was even then moving to
besiege Donelson.

Mr. Brinsmade prepared to leave at once for the battlefield, taking with
him too Paducah physicians and nurses. All day long the boat was loading
with sanitary stores and boxes of dainties for the wounded. It was muggy
and wet--characteristic of that winter--as Stephen pushed through the
drays on the slippery levee to the landing.

He had with him a basket his mother had put up. He also bore a message to
Mr. Brinsmade from the Judge It was while he was picking his way along
the crowded decks that he ran into General Sherman. The General seized
him unceremoniously by the shoulder.

"Good-by, Stephen," he said.

"Good-by, General," said Stephen, shifting his basket to shake hands.
"Are you going away?"

"Ordered to Paducah," said the General. He pulled Stephen off the guards
into an empty cabin. "Brice," said he, earnestly, "I haven't forgotten
how you saved young Brinsmade at Camp Jackson. They tell me that you are
useful here. I say, don't go in unless you have to. I don't mean force,
you understand. But when you feel that you can go in, come to me or write
me a letter. That is," he added, seemingly inspecting Stephen's white
teeth with approbation, "if you're not afraid to serve under a crazy
man."

It has been said that the General liked the lack of effusiveness of
Stephen's reply.




CHAPTER VI

ELIPHALET PLAYS HIS TRUMPS

Summer was come again. Through interminable days, the sun beat down upon
the city; and at night the tortured bricks flung back angrily the heat
with which he had filled them. Great battles had been fought, and vast
armies were drawing breath for greater ones to come.

"Jinny," said the Colonel one day, "as we don't seem to be much use in
town, I reckon we may as well go to Glencoe."

Virginia, threw her arms around her father's neck. For many months she
had seen what the Colonel himself was slow to comprehend--that his
usefulness was gone. The days melted into weeks, and Sterling Price and
his army of liberation failed to come. The vigilant Union general and his
aides had long since closed all avenues to the South. For, one fine
morning toward the end of the previous summer, when the Colonel was
contemplating a journey, he had read that none might leave the city
without a pass, whereupon he went hurriedly to the office of the Provost
Marshal. There he had found a number of gentlemen in the same plight,
each waving a pass made out by the Provost Marshal's clerks, and waiting
for that officer's signature. The Colonel also procured one of these, and
fell into line. The Marshal gazed at the crowd, pulled off his coat, and
readily put his name to the passes of several gentlemen going east. Next
came Mr. Bub Ballington, whom the Colonel knew, but pretended not to.

"Going to Springfield?" asked the Marshal, genially.

"Yes," said Bub.

"Not very profitable to be a minute-man, eh?" in the same tone.

The Marshal signs his name, Mr, Ballington trying not to look indignant
as he makes for the door. A small silver bell rings on the Marshal's
desk, the one word: "Spot!" breaks the intense silence, which is one way
of saying that Mr. Ballington is detained, and will probably be lodged
that night at Government expense.

"Well, Colonel Carvel, what can I do for you this morning?" asked the
Marshal, genially.

The Colonel pushed back his hat and wiped his brow. "I reckon I'll wait
till next week, Captain," said Mr. Carvel. "It's pretty hot to travel
just now."

The Provost Marshal smiled sweetly. There were many in the office who
would have liked to laugh, but it did not pay to laugh at some people.
Colonel Carvel was one of them.

In the proclamation of martial law was much to make life less endurable
than ever. All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels were
to have property confiscated, and slaves set free. Then there was a
certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have
guardians appointed over their actions. There were many who swallowed
this oath and never felt any ill effects. Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
came away feeling very virtuous. It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
feel virtuous. Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
never tasted but once.

That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot gasps
when you think it has expired. It took the Arkansan just a month, under
Virginia's care, to become well enough to be sent to a Northern prison He
was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep over the
"Idylls of the King." But he was admiring, and grateful, and wept when he
went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined for a Northern
prison. Virginia wept too. He had taken her away from her aunt (who would
have nothing to do with him), and had given her occupation. She nor her
father never tired of hearing his rough tales of Price's rough army.

His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set. The
favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
another sufferer the same comfort. The cordon was drawn tighter. One of
the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.

Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had continued
at intervals of painful regularity. It is not necessary to dwell upon his
brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the platitudes which he
repeated, for there was no significance in Mr. Hopper's tales, not a
particle. The Colonel had found that out, and was thankful. His manners
were better; his English decidedly better.

It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with him.
Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it occurred
to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she repeated
to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low ebb of
his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him. She
had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a person
of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,--if virtues they
were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. With his great
shrewdness and business ability, why did he not take advantage of the
many opportunities the war gave to make a fortune? For Virginia had of
late been going to the store with the Colonel,--who spent his mornings
turning over piles of dusty papers, and Mr. Hopper had always been at his
desk.

After this, Virginia even strove to be kind to him, but it was uphill
work. The front door never closed after one of his visits that suspicion
was not left behind. Antipathy would assert itself. Could it be that
there was a motive under all this plotting? He struck her inevitably as
the kind who would be content to mine underground to attain an end. The
worst she could think of him was that he wished to ingratiate himself
now, in the hope that, when the war was ended, he might become a partner
in Mr. Carvel's business. She had put even this away as unworthy of her.

Once she had felt compelled to speak to her father on the subject.

"I believe I did him an injustice, Pa," she said. "Not that I like him
any better now. I must be honest about that. I simply can't like him. But
I do think that if he had been as unscrupulous as I thought, he would
have deserted you long ago for something more profitable. He would not be
sitting in the office day after day making plans for the business when
the war is over."

She remembered how sadly he had smiled at her over the top of his paper.

"You are a good girl, Jinny," he said.

Toward the end of July of that second summer riots broke out in the city,
and simultaneously a bright spot appeared on Virginia's horizon. This
took the form, for Northerners, of a guerilla scare, and an order was
promptly issued for the enrollment of all the able-bodied men in the ten
wards as militia, subject to service in the state, to exterminate the
roving bands. Whereupon her Britannic Majesty became extremely popular,
--even with some who claimed for a birthplace the Emerald Isle. Hundreds
who heretofore had valued but lightly their British citizenship made
haste to renew their allegiance; and many sought the office of the
English Consul whose claims on her Majesty's protection were vague, to
say the least. Broken heads and scandal followed. For the first time,
when Virginia walked to the store with her father, Eliphalet was not
there. It was strange indeed that Virginia defended him.

"I don't blame him for not wanting to fight for the Yankees," she said.

The Colonel could not resist a retort.

"Then why doesn't he fight for the South he asked"

"Fight for the South!" cried the young lady, scornfully. "Mr. Hopper
fight? I reckon the South wouldn't have him."

"I reckon not, too," said the Colonel, dryly.

For the following week curiosity prompted Virginia to take that walk with
the Colonel. Mr. Hopper being still absent, she helped him to sort the
papers--those grimy reminders of a more prosperous time gone by. Often
Mr. Carvel would run across one which seemed to bring some incident to
his mind; for he would drop it absently on his desk, his hand seeking his
chin, and remain for half an hour lost in thought. Virginia would not
disturb him.

Meanwhile there had been inquiries for Mr. Hopper. The Colonel answered
them all truthfully--generally with that dangerous suavity for which he
was noted. Twice a seedy man with a gnawed yellow mustache had come in to
ask Eliphalet's whereabouts. On the second occasion this individual
became importunate.

"You don't know nothin' about him, you say?" he demanded.

"No," said the Colonel.

The man took a shuffle forward.

"My name's Ford," he said. "I 'low I kin 'lighten you a little."

"Good day, sir," said the Colonel.

"I guess you'll like to hear what I've got to say."

"Ephum," said Mr. Carvel in his natural voice, "show this man out."

Mr. Ford slunk out without Ephum's assistance. But he half turned at the
door, and shot back a look that frightened Virginia.

"Oh, Pa," she cried, in alarm, "what did he mean?"

"I couldn't tell you, Jinny," he answered. But she noticed that he was
very thoughtful as they walked home. The next morning Eliphalet had not
returned, but a corporal and guard were waiting to search the store for
him. The Colonel read the order, and invited them in with hospitality. He
even showed them the way upstairs, and presently Virginia heard them all
tramping overhead among the bales. Her eye fell upon the paper they had
brought, which lay unfolded on her father's desk. It was signed Stephen
A. Brice, Enrolling Officer.

That very afternoon they moved to Glencoe, and Ephum was left in sole
charge of the store. At Glencoe, far from the hot city and the cruel war,
began a routine of peace. Virginia was a child again, romping in the
woods and fields beside her father. The color came back to her cheeks
once more, and the laughter into her voice. The two of them, and Ned and
Mammy, spent a rollicking hour in the pasture the freedom of which Dick
had known so long, before the old horse was caught and brought back into
bondage. After that Virginia took long drives with her father, and coming
home, they would sit in the summer house high above the Merimec,
listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade upon the
water. The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to smoke a
corncob. He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of the porch
and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him. Poe and Wordsworth
and Scott he liked, but Tennyson was his favorite. Such happiness could
not last.

One afternoon when Virginia was sitting in the summer house alone, her
thoughts wandering back, as they sometimes did, to another afternoon she
had spent there,--it seemed so long ago,--when she saw Mammy Easter
coming toward her.

"Honey, dey's comp'ny up to de house. Mister Hopper's done arrived. He's
on de porch, talkin' to your Pa. Lawsey, look wha he come!"

In truth, the solid figure of Eliphalet himself was on the path some
twenty yards behind her. His hat was in his hand; his hair was plastered
down more neatly than ever, and his coat was a faultless and sober
creation of a Franklin Avenue tailor. He carried a cane, which was
unheard of. Virginia sat upright, and patted her skirts with a gesture of
annoyance--what she felt was anger, resentment. Suddenly she rose, swept
past Mammy, and met him ten paces from the summer house.

"How-dy-do, Miss Virginia," he cried pleasantly. "Your father had a
notion you might be here." He said fayther.

Virginia gave him her hand limply. Her greeting would have frozen a man
of ardent temperament. But it was not precisely ardor that Eliphalet
showed. The girl paused and examined him swiftly. There was something in
the man's air to-day.

"So you were not caught?" she said.

Her words seemed to relieve some tension in him. He laughed noiselessly.

"I just guess I wahn't."

"How did you escape?" she asked, looking at him curiously.

"Well, I did, first of all. You're considerable smart, Miss Jinny, but
I'll bet you can't tell me where I was, now."

"I do not care to know. The place might save you again."

He showed his disappointment. "I cal'lated it might interest you to know
how I dodged the Sovereign State of Missouri. General Halleck made an
order that released a man from enrolling on payment of ten dollars. I
paid. Then I was drafted into the Abe Lincoln Volunteers; I paid a
substitute. And so here I be, exercising life, and liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness."

"So you bought yourself free?" said Virginia. "If your substitute gets
killed, I suppose you will have cause for congratulation."

Eliphalet laughed, and pulled down his cuffs. "That's his lookout, I
cal'late," said he. He glanced at the girl in a way that made her vaguely
uneasy. She turned from him, back toward the summer house. Eliphalet's
eyes smouldered as they rested upon her figure. He took a step forward.

"Miss Jinny?" he said.

"Yes?"

"I've heard considerable about the beauties of this place. Would you mind
showing me 'round a bit?" Virginia started. It was his tone now. Not
since that first evening in Locust Street had it taken on such assurance,
And yet she could not be impolite to a guest.

"Certainly not," she replied, but without looking up. Eliphalet led the
way. He came to the summer house, glanced around it with apparent
satisfaction, and put his foot on the moss-grown step. Virginia did a
surprising thing. She leaped quickly into the doorway before him, and
stood facing him, framed in the climbing roses.

"Oh, Mr. Hopper!" she cried. "Please, not in here." He drew back, staring
in astonishment at the crimson in her face.

"Why not?" he asked suspiciously--almost brutally. She had been groping
wildly for excuses, and found none.

"Because," she said, "because I ask you not to." With dignity: "That
should be sufficient."

"Well," replied Eliphalet, with an abortive laugh, "that's funny, now.
Womenkind get queer notions, which I cal'late we've got to respect and
put up with all our lives--eh?"

Her anger flared at his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her whim.
And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being at home--it was
nothing less.

The man's whole manner was an insult. She strove still to hide her
resentment.

"There is a walk along the bluff," she said, coldly, "where the view is
just as good."

But she purposely drew him into the right-hand path, which led, after a
little, back to the house. Despite her pace he pressed forward to her
side.

"Miss Jinny," said he, precipitately, "did I ever strike you as a
marrying man?"

Virginia stopped, and put her handkerchief to her face, the impulse
strong upon her to laugh. Eliphalet was suddenly transformed again into
the common commercial Yankee. He was in love, and had come to ask her
advice. She might have known it.

"I never thought of you as of the marrying kind, Mr. Hopper," she
answered, her voice quivering.

Indeed, he was irresistibly funny as he stood hot and ill at ease. The
Sunday coat bore witness to his increasing portliness by creasing across
from the buttons; his face, fleshy and perspiring, showed purple veins,
and the little eyes receded comically, like a pig's.

"Well, I've been thinking serious of late about getting married," he
continued, slashing the rose bushes with his stick. "I don't cal'late to
be a sentimental critter. I'm not much on high-sounding phrases, and such
things, but I'd give you my word I'd make a good husband."

"Please be careful of those roses, Mr. Hopper."

"Beg pardon," said Eliphalet. He began to lose track of his tenses--that
was the only sign he gave of perturbation. "When I come to St. Louis
without a cent, Miss Jinny, I made up my mind I'd be a rich man before I
left it. If I was to die now, I'd have kept that promise. I'm not
thirty-four, and I cal'late I've got as much money in a safe place as a
good many men you call rich. I'm not saying what I've got, mind you. All
in proper time.

"I'm a pretty steady kind. I've stopped chewing--there was a time when I
done that. And I don't drink nor smoke."

"That is all very commendable, Mr. Hopper," Virginia said, stifling a
rebellious titter. "But,--but why did you give up chewing?"

"I am informed that the ladies are against it," said Eliphalet,--"dead
against it. You wouldn't like it in a husband, now, would you?"

This time the laugh was not to be put down. "I confess I shouldn't," she
said.

"Thought so," he replied, as one versed. His tones took on a nasal twang.
"Well, as I was saying, I've about got ready to settle down, and I've had
my eye on the lady this seven years."

"Marvel of constancy!" said Virginia. "And the lady?"

"The lady," said Eliphalet, bluntly, "is you." He glanced at her
bewildered face and went on rapidly: "You pleased me the first day I set
eyes on you in the store I said to myself, 'Hopper, there's the one for
you to marry.' I'm plain, but my folks was good people. I set to work
right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny. You've just what I
need. I'm a plain business man with no frills. You'll do the frills.
You're the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury. You'll need a man
with a fortune, and a big one; you're the sort to show it off. I've got
the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here. And I
tell you,"--his jaw was set,--"I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper
will be one of the richest men in the West."

He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong,
his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was
still dominant,--sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he
finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose
of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of
Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal
seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money. Scalding
words rose to her lips. But she caught the look on Eliphalet's face, and
she knew that he would not understand. This was one who rose and fell,
who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--money.

For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over
the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought
that he had no passion. This was the moment for which he had lived since
the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store. That type of
face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his
money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized
her hand. She wrung it free again.

"How--how dare you!" she cried.

He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
many a day.

"You--won't--marry me?" he said.

"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the
shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against
a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff.
Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion
entered his soul.

"You must!" he said hoarsely. "You must! You've got no notion of my
money, I say."

"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand? If you owned the whole of
California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He
slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew
out some papers.

"I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he
said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately. You're poor, but I guess
you don't know how poor you are,--eh? The Colonel's a man of honor, ain't
he?"

For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she
stayed to listen.

"Well," he said, "after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over
them papers. A woman wouldn't know. I'll tell you what they say: they say
that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."

The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a
physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
The girl was breathing fast and deep.

"I cal'late you despise me, don't you?" he went on, as if that, too, gave
him pleasure. "But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me. Go and
ask him if I'm lying. All you've got to do is to say you'll be my wife,
and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff." (He made the
motion with his hands.) "Carvel & Company's an old firm,--a respected
firm. You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I cal'late."

He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
She said, simply:--"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."

And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once.

Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path
wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in
front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His pipe
lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent
forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly,
and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.

"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"

Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face. In one stride he
had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing down
the path.

"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly. "If
you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it. You're a
cowardly hound, sir!" Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was an
invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run, but a
sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing in his
head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the store,
--the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide. And down in the
small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol, and
feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once outside,
he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him that a
wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to lift his
feet.

The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee
thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the
creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from
her.

Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
shoulder, as of old.

"Jinny, did he--?"

"Yes--"

"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"

Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the
branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.

"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."

Virginia smiled through her tears.

"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him
have the business."

She did not reproach him.

"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
"I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."

"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours and
mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."

But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar
posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back,
stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they sought
hers, and she put her hand to her breast.

"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm some
use yet awhile. It isn't right that I should idle here, while the South
needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a Pennsylvania
regiment.--Jinny, I have to go."

Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel
had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay
flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that
his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders,
and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.

They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the
glory of the light on the western hills. "Jinn," said the Colonel, "I
reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It--it will be hard. But
I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case--in case I do not
come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to your
Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert House
when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say. I won't pry
into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him. I like the boy,
and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."

Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held
its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned's
voice rose in the still evening air.

     "Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
     Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."

And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's
bandanna was seen.

"Supper, Miss Jinny. Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you bof.
De co'n bread's gittin' cold."

That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her little
leather bag they had chosen together in London. Virginia had found a
cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and there she
gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his hand shook.

Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard his
firm tread die in the dust of the road. The South had claimed him at
last.




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 7.



CHAPTER VII

WITH THE ARMIES OF THE WEST

We are at Memphis,--for a while,--and the Christmas season is approaching
once more. And yet we must remember that war recognizes no Christmas, nor
Sunday, nor holiday. The brown river, excited by rains, whirled seaward
between his banks of yellow clay. Now the weather was crisp and cold, now
hazy and depressing, and again a downpour. Memphis had never seen such
activity. A spirit possessed the place, a restless spirit called William
T. Sherman. He prodded Memphis and laid violent hold of her. She groaned,
protested, turned over, and woke up, peopled by a new people. When these
walked, they ran, and they wore a blue uniform. They spoke rapidly and
were impatient. Rain nor heat nor tempest kept them in. And yet they
joked, and Memphis laughed (what was left of her), and recognized a bond
of fellowship. The General joked, and the Colonels and the Commissary and
the doctors, down to the sutlers and teamsters and the salt tars under
Porter, who cursed the dishwater Mississippi, and also a man named Eads,
who had built the new-fangled iron boxes officially known as gunboats.
The like of these had never before been seen in the waters under the
earth. The loyal citizens--loyal to the South--had been given permission
to leave the city. The General told the assistant quartermaster to hire
their houses and slaves for the benefit of the Federal Government.
Likewise he laid down certain laws to the Memphis papers defining
treason. He gave out his mind freely to that other army of occupation,
the army of speculation, that flocked thither with permits to trade in
cotton. The speculators gave the Confederates gold, which they needed
most, for the bales, which they could not use at all.

The forefathers of some of these gentlemen were in old Egypt under
Pharaoh--for whom they could have had no greater respect and fear than
their descendants had in New Egypt for Grant or Sherman. Yankees were
there likewise in abundance. And a certain acquaintance of ours
materially added to his fortune by selling in Boston the cotton which
cost him fourteen cents, at thirty cents.

One day the shouting and the swearing and the running to and fro came to
a climax. Those floating freaks which were all top and drew nothing, were
loaded down to the guards with army stores and animals and wood and men,
--men who came from every walk in life.

Whistles bellowed, horses neighed. The gunboats chased hither and
thither, and at length the vast processions paddled down the stream with
naval precision, under the watchful eyes of a real admiral.

Residents of Memphis from the river's bank watched the pillar of smoke
fade to the southward and ruminated on the fate of Vicksburg. The General
paced the deck in thought. A little later he wrote to the
Commander-in-Chief at Washington, "The valley of the Mississippi is
America."

Vicksburg taken, this vast Confederacy would be chopped in two.

Night fell to the music of the paddles, to the scent of the officers'
cigars, to the blood-red vomit of the tall stacks and the smoky flame of
the torches. Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted
two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in the
morning sun. Vicksburg, the well-nigh impregnable key to America's
highway. When old Vick made his plantation on the Walnut Hills, he chose
a site for a fortress of the future Confederacy that Vauban would have
delighted in.

Yes, there were the Walnut Hills, high bluffs separated from the
Mississippi by tangled streams and bayous, and on their crests the
Parrotts scowled. It was a queer Christmas Day indeed, bright and warm;
no snow, no turkeys nor mince pies, no wine, but just hardtack and bacon
and foaming brown water.

On the morrow the ill-assorted fleet struggled up the sluggish Yazoo,
past impenetrable forests where the cypress clutched at the keels, past
long-deserted cotton fields, until it came at last to the black ruins of
a home. In due time the great army was landed. It spread out by brigade
and division and regiment and company, the men splashing and paddling
through the Chickasaw and the swamps toward the bluffs. The Parrotts
began to roar. A certain regiment, boldly led, crossed the bayou at a
narrow place and swept resistless across the sodden fields to where the
bank was steepest. The fire from the battery scorched the hair of their
heads. But there they stayed, scooping out the yellow clay with torn
hands, while the Parrotts, with lowered muzzles, ploughed the slope with
shells. There they stayed, while the blue lines quivered and fell back
through the forests on that short winter's afternoon, dragging their
wounded from the stagnant waters. But many were left to die in agony in
the solitude.

Like a tall emblem of energy, General Sherman stood watching the attack
and repulse, his eyes ever alert. He paid no heed to the shells which
tore the limbs from the trees about him, or sent the swamp water in thick
spray over his staff. Now and again a sharp word broke from his lips, a
forceful home thrust at one of the leaders of his columns.

"What regiment stayed under the bank?"

"Sixth Missouri, General," said an aide, promptly.

The General sat late in the Admiral's gunboat that night, but when he
returned to his cabin in the Forest Queen, he called for a list of
officers of the Sixth Missouri. His finger slipping down the roll paused
at a name among the new second lieutenants.

"Did the boys get back?" he asked. "Yes, General, when it fell dark."

"Let me see the casualties,--quick."

That night a fog rolled up from the swamps, and in the morning jack-staff
was hid from pilot-house. Before the attack could be renewed, a political
general came down the river with a letter in his pocket from Washington,
by virtue of which he took possession of the three army core, and their
chief, subpoenaed the fleet and the Admiral, and went off to capture
Arkansas Post.

Vicksburg had a breathing spell.

Three weeks later, when the army was resting at Napoleon, Arkansas, a
self-contained man, with a brown beard arrived from Memphis, and took
command. This way General U. S. Grant. He smoked incessantly in his
cabin. He listened. He spoke but seldom. He had look in his face that
boded ill to any that might oppose him. Time and labor be counted as
nothing, compared with the accomplishment of an object. Back to Vicksburg
paddled the fleet and transports. Across the river from the city, on the
pasty mud behind the levee's bank were dumped Sherman's regiments,
condemned to week of ditch-digging, that the gunboats might arrive at the
bend of the Mississippi below by a canal, out of reach of the batteries.
Day in and day out they labored, officer and men. Sawing off stumps under
the water, knocking poisonous snakes by scores from the branches, while
the river rose and rose and rose, and the rain crept by inches under
their tent flies, and the enemy walked the parapet of Vicksburg and
laughed. Two gunboats accomplished the feat of running the batteries,
that their smiles might be sobered.

To the young officers who were soiling their uniform with the grease of
saws, whose only fighting was against fever and water snakes, the news of
an expedition into the Vicksburg side of the river was hailed with caps
in the air. To be sure, the saw and axe, and likewise the levee and the
snakes, were to be there, too. But there was likely to be a little
fighting. The rest of the corps that was to stay watched grimly as the
detachment put off in the little 'Diligence' and 'Silver Wave'.

All the night the smoke-pipes were batting against the boughs of oak and
cottonwood, and snapping the trailing vines. Some other regiments went by
another route. The ironclads, followed in hot haste by General Sherman in
a navy tug, had gone ahead, and were even then shoving with their noses
great trunks of trees in their eagerness to get behind the Rebels. The
Missouri regiment spread out along the waters, and were soon waist deep,
hewing a path for the heavier transports to come. Presently the General
came back to a plantation half under water, where Black Bayou joins Deer
Creek, to hurry the work in cleaning out that Bayou. The light transports
meanwhile were bringing up more troops from a second detachment. All
through the Friday the navy great guns were heard booming in the
distance, growing quicker and quicker, until the quivering air shook the
hanging things in that vast jungle. Saws stopped, and axes were poised
over shoulders, and many times that day the General lifted his head
anxiously. As he sat down in the evening in a slave cabin redolent with
corn pone and bacon, the sound still hovered among the trees and rolled
along the still waters.

The General slept lightly. It was three o'clock Saturday morning when the
sharp challenge of a sentry broke the silence. A negro, white eyed,
bedraggled, and muddy, stood in the candle light under the charge of a
young lieutenant. The officer saluted, and handed the General a roll of
tobacco.

"I found this man in the swamp, sir. He has a message from the Admiral--"

The General tore open the roll and took from it a piece of tissue paper
which he spread out and held under the candle. He turned to a staff
officer who had jumped from his bed and was hurrying into his coat.

"Porter's surrounded," he said. The order came in a flash. "Kilby Smith
and all men here across creek to relief at once. I'll take canoe through
bayou to Hill's and hurry reenforcements."

The staff officer paused, his hand on the latch of the door.

"But your escort, General. You're not going through that sewer in a canoe
without an escort!"

"I guess they won't look for a needle in that haystack," the General
answered. For a brief second he eyed the lieutenant. "Get back to your
regiment, Brice, if you want to go," he said.

Stephen saluted and went out. All through the painful march that
followed, though soaked in swamp water and bruised by cypress knees, he
thought of Sherman in his canoe, winding unprotected through the black
labyrinth, risking his life that more men might be brought to the rescue
of the gunboats.

The story of that rescue has been told most graphically by Sherman
himself. How he picked up the men at work on the bayou and marched them
on a coal barge; how he hitched the barge to a navy tug; how he met the
little transport with a fresh load of troops, and Captain Elijah Brent's
reply when the General asked if he would follow him. "As long as the boat
holds together, General." And he kept his word. The boughs hammered at
the smoke-pipes until they went by the board, and the pilothouse fell
like a pack of cards on the deck before they had gone three miles and a
half. Then the indomitable Sherman disembarked, a lighted candle in his
hand, and led a stiff march through thicket and swamp and breast-deep
backwater, where the little drummer boys carried their drums on their
heads. At length, when they were come to some Indian mounds, they found a
picket of three, companies of the force which had reached the flat the
day before, and had been sent down to prevent the enemy from obstructing
further the stream below the fleet.

"The Admiral's in a bad way, sir," said the Colonel who rode up to meet
the General. "He's landlocked. Those clumsy ironclads of his can't move
backward or forward, and the Rebs have been peppering him for two days."

Just then a fusillade broke from the thickets, nipping the branches from
the cottonwoods about them.

"Form your line," said the General. "Drive 'em out."

The force swept forward, with the three picket companies in the swamp on
the right. And presently they came in sight of the shapeless ironclads
with their funnels belching smoke, a most remarkable spectacle. How
Porter had pushed them there was one of the miracles of the war.

Then followed one of a thousand memorable incidents in the life of a
memorable man. General Sherman, jumping on the bare back of a scrawny
horse, cantered through the fields. And the bluejackets, at sight of that
familiar figure, roared out a cheer that might have shaken the drops from
the wet boughs. The Admiral and the General stood together on the deck,
their hands clasped. And the Colonel astutely remarked, as he rode up in
answer to a summons, that if Porter was the only man whose daring could
have pushed a fleet to that position, Sherman was certainly the only man
who could have got him out of it.

"Colonel," said the General, "that move was well executed, sir. Admiral,
did the Rebs put a bullet through your rum casks? We're just a little
tired. And now," he added, wheeling on the Colonel when each had a glass
in his hand, "who was in command of that company on the right, in the
swamp? He handled them like a regular."

"He's a second lieutenant, General, in the Sixth Missouri. Captain
wounded at Hindman, and first lieutenant fell out down below. His name is
Brice, I believe."

"I thought so," said the General.

Some few days afterward, when the troops were slopping around again at
Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg, a gentleman arrived on a boat from St.
Louis. He paused on the levee to survey with concern and astonishment the
flood of waters behind it, and then asked an officer the way to General
Sherman's headquarters. The officer, who was greatly impressed by the
gentleman's looks, led him at once to a trestle bridge which spanned the
distance from the levee bank over the flood to a house up to its first
floor in the backwaters. The orderly saluted.

"Who shall I say, sir?"

The officer looked inquiringly at the gentleman, who gave his name.

The officer could not repress a smile at the next thing that happened.
Out hurried the General himself, with both hands outstretched.

"Bless my soul!" he cried, "if it isn't Brinsmade. Come right in, come
right in and take dinner. The boys will be glad to see you. I'll send and
tell Grant you're here. Brinsmade, if it wasn't for you and your friends
on the Western Sanitary Commission, we'd all have been dead of fever and
bad food long ago." The General sobered abruptly. "I guess a good many of
the boys are laid up now," he added.

"I've come down to do what I can, General," responded Mr. Brinsmade,
gravely. "I want to go through all the hospitals to see that our nurses
are doing their duty and that the stores are properly distributed."

"You shall, sir, this minute," said the General. He dropped instantly the
affairs which he had on hand, and without waiting for dinner the two
gentlemen went together through the wards where the fever raged. The
General surprised his visitor by recognizing private after private in the
cots, and he always had a brief word of cheer to brighten their faces, to
make them follow him with wistful eyes as he passed beyond them. "That's
poor Craig," he would say, "corporal, Third Michigan. They tell me he
can't live," and "That's Olcott, Eleventh Indiana. Good God!" cried the
General, when they were out in the air again, "how I wish some of these
cotton traders could get a taste of this fever. They keep well--the
vultures--And by the way, Brinsmade, the man who gave me no peace at all
at Memphis was from your city. Why, I had to keep a whole corps on duty
to watch him."

"What was his name, sir?" Mr. Brinsmade asked.

"Hopper!" cried the General, with feeling. "Eliphalet Hopper. As long as
I live I shall never forget it. How the devil did he get a permit? What
are they about at Washington?"

"You surprise me," said Mr. Brinsmade. "He has always seemed inoffensive,
and I believe he is a prominent member of one of our churches."

"I guess that's so," answered the General, dryly. "I ever I set eyes on
him again, he's clapped into the guardhouse. He knows it, too."

"Speaking of St. Louis, General," said Mr. Brinsmade, presently, "have
you ever heard of Stephen Brice? joined your army last autumn. You may
remember talking to him one evening at my house."

"He's one of my boys!" cried the General. "Remember him? Guess I do!" He
paused on the very brink of relating again the incident at Camp Jackson,
when Stephen had saved the life of Mr. Brinsmade's own son. "Brinsmade,
for three days I've had it on my mind to send for that boy. I'll have him
at headquarters now. I like him," cried General Sherman, with tone and
gesture there was no mistaking. And good Mr. Brinsmade, who liked
Stephen, too, rejoiced at the story he would have to tell the widow. "He
has spirit, Brinsmade. I told him to let me know when he was ready to go
to war. No such thing. He never came near me. The first thing I hear of
him is that he's digging holes in the clay of Chickasaw Bluff, and his
cap is fanned off by the blast of a Parrott six feet above his head. Next
thing he turns up on that little expedition we took to get Porter to sea
again. When we got to the gunboats, there was Brice's company on the
flank. He handled those men surprisingly, sir--surprisingly. I shouldn't
have blamed the boy if one or two Rebs got by him. But no, he swept the
place clean." By this time they had come back to the bridge leading to
headquarters, and the General beckoned quickly to an orderly.

"My compliments to Lieutenant Stephen Brice, Sixth Missouri, and ask him
to report here at once. At once, you understand!"

"Yes, General."

It so happened that Mr. Brice's company were swinging axes when the
orderly arrived, and Mr. Brice had an axe himself, and was up to his boot
tops in yellow mud.

The orderly, who had once been an Iowa farmer, was near grinning when he
gave the General's message and saw the lieutenant gazing ruefully at his
clothes.

Entering headquarters, Stephen paused at the doorway of the big room
where the officers of the different staffs were scattered about, smoking,
while the negro servants were removing the dishes from the table. The
sunlight, reflected from the rippling water outside, danced on the
ceiling. At the end of the room sat General Sherman, his uniform, as
always, a trifle awry. His soft felt hat with the gold braid was tilted
forward, and his feet, booted and spurred, were crossed. Small wonder
that the Englishman who sought the typical American found him in Sherman.

The sound that had caught Stephen's attention was the General's voice,
somewhat high-pitched, in the key that he used in telling a story. These
were his closing words.

"Sin gives you a pretty square deal, boys, after all. Generally a man
says, 'Well, I can resist, but I'll have my fun just this once.' That's
the way it happens. They tell you that temptation comes irresistibly.
Don't believe it. Do you, Mr. Brice? Come over here, sir. Here's a friend
of yours."

Stephen made his way to the General, whose bright eyes wandered rapidly
over him as he added:

"This is the condition my officers report in, Brinsmade,--mud from head
to heel."

Stephen had sense enough to say nothing, but the staff officers laughed,
and Mr. Brinsmade smiled as he rose and took Stephen's hand.

"I am delighted to see that you are well, sir," said he, with that formal
kindliness which endeared him to all. "Your mother will be rejoiced at my
news of you. You will be glad to hear that I left her well, Stephen."

Stephen inquired for Mrs. Brinsmade and Anne.

"They are well, sir, and took pleasure in adding to a little box which
your mother sent. Judge Whipple put in a box of fine cigars, although he
deplores the use of tobacco."

"And the Judge, Mr. Brinsmade--how is he?"

The good gentleman's face fell.

"He is ailing, sir, it grieves me to say. He is in bed, sir. But he is
ably looked after. Your mother desired to have him moved to her house,
but he is difficult to stir from his ways, and he would not leave his
little room. He is ably nursed. We have got old Nancy, Hester's mother,
to stay with him at night, and Mrs. Brice divides the day with Miss Jinny
Carvel, who comes in from Bellegarde every afternoon."

"Miss Carvel?" exclaimed Stephen, wondering if he heard aright. And at
the mention of her name he tingled.

"None other, sir," answered Mr. Brinsmade. "She has been much honored for
it. You may remember that the Judge was a close friend of her father's
before the war. And--well, they quarrelled, sir. The Colonel went South,
you know."

"When--when was the Judge taken ill, Mr. Brinsmade?" Stephen asked. The
thought of Virginia and his mother caring for him together was strangely
sweet.

"Two days before I left, sir, Dr. Polk had warned him not to do so much.
But the Doctor tells me that he can see no dangerous symptoms."

Stephen inquired now of Mr. Brinsmade how long he was to be with them.

"I am going on to the other camps this afternoon," said he. "But I should
like a glimpse of your quarters, Stephen, if you will invite me. Your
mother would like a careful account of you, and Mr. Whipple, and--your
many friends in St. Louis."

"You will find my tent a little wet, air," replied Stephen, touched.

Here the General, who had been sitting by watching them with a very
curious expression, spoke up.

"That's hospitality for you, Brinsmade!"

Stephen and Mr. Brinsmade made their way across plank and bridge to
Stephen's tent, and his mess servant arrived in due time with the package
from home. But presently, while they sat talking of many things, the
canvas of the fly was thrust back with a quick movement, and who should
come stooping in but General Sherman himself. He sat down on a cracker
box. Stephen rose confusedly.

"Well, well, Brice," said the General, winking at Mr. Brinsmade, "I think
you might have invited me to the feast. Where are those cigars Mr.
Brinsmade was talking about?"

Stephen opened the box with alacrity. The General chose one and lighted
it.

"Don't smoke, eh?" he inquired. "Why, yes, sir, when I can."

"Then light up, sir," said the General, "and sit down, I've been thinking
lately of court-martialing you, but I decided to come 'round and talk it
over with you first. That isn't strictly according to the rules of the
service. Look here, Mr. Brice, why did you leave St. Louis?"

"They began to draft, sir, and I couldn't stand it any longer."

"But you wouldn't have been drafted. You were in the Home Guards, if I
remember right. And Mr. Brinsmade tells me you were useful in many ways
What was your rank in the Home Guards?"

"Lieutenant colonel, sir."

"And what are you here?"

"A second lieutenant in temporary command, General."  "You have commanded
men?"

"Not in action, sir. I felt that that was different."

"Couldn't they do better for you than a second-lieutenancy?"

Stephen did not reply at once, Mr. Brinsmade spoke up, "They offered him
a lieutenant-colonelcy."

The General was silent a moment: Then he said "Do you remember meeting me
on the boat when I was leaving St. Louis, after the capture of Fort
Henry?"

Stephen smiled. "Very well, General," he replied, General Sherman leaned
forward.

"And do you remember I said to you, 'Brice, when you get ready to come
into this war, let me know.' Why didn't you do it?"

Stephen thought a minute. Then he said gravely, but with just a suspicion
of humor about his mouth:-- "General, if I had done that, you wouldn't be
here in my tent to-day."

Like lightning the General was on his feet, his hand on Stephen's
shoulder.

"By gad, sir," he cried, delighted, "so I wouldn't."




CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE MEETING

The story of the capture of Vicksburg is the old, old story of failure
turned into success, by which man is made immortal. It involves the
history of a general who never retraced his steps, who cared neither for
mugwump murmurs nor political cabals, who took both blame and praise with
equanimity. Through month after month of discouragement, and work gone
for naught, and fever and death, his eyes never left his goal. And by
grace of the wisdom of that President who himself knew sorrow and
suffering and defeat and unjust censure, General Grant won.

Boldness did it. The canal abandoned, one red night fleet and transports
swept around the bend and passed the city's heights, on a red river. The
Parrotts and the Dahlgrens roared, and the high bluffs flung out the
sound over the empty swamp land.

Then there came the landing below, and the cutting loose from a base
--unheard of. Corps behind cursed corps ahead for sweeping the country
clear of forage. Battles were fought. Confederate generals in Mississippi
were bewildered.

One night, while crossing with his regiment a pontoon bridge, Stephen
Brice heard a shout raised on the farther shore. Sitting together on a
log under a torch, two men in slouch hats were silhouetted. That one
talking with rapid gestures was General Sherman. The impassive profile of
the other, the close-cropped beard and the firmly held cigar that seemed
to go with it,--Stephen recognized as that of the strange Captain Grant
who had stood beside him in the street by the Arsenal He had not changed
a whit. Motionless, he watched corps after corps splash by, artillery,
cavalry, and infantry, nor gave any sign that he heard their plaudits.

At length the army came up behind the city to a place primeval, where the
face of the earth was sore and tortured, worn into deep gorges by the
rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias and
the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness, save
for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood tottering
on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out below. The
May weather was already sickly hot.

First of all there was a murderous assault, and a still more murderous
repulse. Three times the besiegers charged, sank their color staffs into
the redoubts, and three times were driven back. Then the blue army
settled into the earth and folded into the ravines. Three days in that
narrow space between the lines lay the dead and wounded suffering untold
agonies in the moist heat. Then came a truce to bury the dead, to bring
back what was left of the living.

The doomed city had no rest. Like clockwork from the Mississippi's banks
beyond came the boom and shriek of the coehorns on the barges. The big
shells hung for an instant in the air like birds of prey, and then could
be seen swooping down here and there, while now and anon a shaft of smoke
rose straight to the sky, the black monument of a home.

Here was work in the trenches, digging the flying sap by night and
deepening it by day, for officers and men alike. From heaven a host of
blue ants could be seen toiling in zigzags forward, ever forward, along
the rude water-cuts and through the hills. A waiting carrion from her
vantage point on high marked one spot then another where the blue ants
disappeared, and again one by one came out of the burrow to hurry down
the trench,--each with his ball of clay.

In due time the ring of metal and sepulchred voices rumbled in the ground
beneath the besieged. Counter mines were started, and through the narrow
walls of earth commands and curses came. Above ground the saps were so
near that a strange converse became the rule. It was "Hello, Reb!"
"Howdy, Yank!" Both sides were starving, the one for tobacco and the
other for hardtack and bacon. These necessities were tossed across,
sometimes wrapped in the Vicksburg news-sheet printed on the white side
of a homely green wall paper. At other times other amenities were
indulged in. Hand-grenades were thrown and shells with lighted fuses
rolled down on the heads of acquaintances of the night before, who
replied from wooden coehorns hooped with iron.

The Union generals learned (common item in a siege) that the citizens of
Vicksburg were eating mule meat. Not an officer or private in the
Vicksburg armies who does not remember the 25th of June, and the hour of
three in an afternoon of pitiless heat. Silently the long blue files
wound into position behind the earth barriers which hid them from the
enemy, coiled and ready to strike when the towering redoubt on the
Jackson road should rise heavenwards. By common consent the rifle crack
of day and night was hushed, and even the Parrotts were silent. Stillness
closed around the white house of Shirley once more, but not the stillness
it had known in its peaceful homestead days. This was the stillness of
the death prayer. Eyes staring at the big redoubt were dimmed. At last,
to those near, a little wisp of blue smoke crept out.

Then the earth opened with a quake. The sun was darkened, and a hot blast
fanned the upturned faces. In the sky, through the film of shattered
clay, little black dots scurried, poised, and fell again as arms and legs
and head less trunks and shapeless bits of wood and iron. Scarcely had
the dust settled when the sun caught the light of fifty thousand
bayonets, and a hundred shells were shrieking across the crater's edge.
Earth to earth, alas, and dust to dust! Men who ran across that rim of a
summer's after-noon died in torture under tier upon tier of their
comrades,--and so the hole was filled.

An upright cannon marks the spot where a scrawny oak once stood on a
scarred and baked hillside, outside of the Confederate lines at
Vicksburg. Under the scanty shade of that tree, on the eve of the
Nation's birthday, stood two men who typified the future and the past. As
at Donelson, a trick of Fortune's had delivered one comrade of old into
the hands of another. Now she chose to kiss the one upon whom she had
heaped obscurity and poverty and contumely. He had ceased to think or
care about Fortune. And hence, being born a woman, she favored him.

The two armies watched and were still. They noted the friendly greeting
of old comrades, and after that they saw the self-contained Northerner
biting his cigar, as one to whom the pleasantries of life were past and
gone. The South saw her General turn on his heel. The bitterness of his
life was come. Both sides honored him for the fight he had made. But war
does not reward a man according to his deserts.

The next day--the day our sundered nation was born Vicksburg surrendered:
the obstinate man with the mighty force had conquered. See the gray
regiments marching silently in the tropic heat into the folds of that
blue army whose grip has choked them at last. Silently, too, the blue
coats stand, pity and admiration on the brick-red faces. The arms are
stacked and surrendered, officers and men are to be parolled when the
counting is finished. The formations melt away, and those who for months
have sought each other's lives are grouped in friendly talk. The coarse
army bread is drawn eagerly from the knapsacks of the blue, smoke quivers
above a hundred fires, and the smell of frying bacon brings a wistful
look into the gaunt faces. Tears stand in the eyes of many a man as he
eats the food his Yankee brothers have given him on the birthday of their
country.

Within the city it is the same. Stephen Brice, now a captain in General
Lauman's brigade, sees with thanksgiving the stars and stripes flutter
from the dome of that court-house which he had so long watched from afar.

Later on, down a side street, he pauses before a house with its face
blown away. On the verge of one of its jagged floors is an old
four-posted bed, and beside it a child's cot is standing pitifully,--the
tiny pillow still at the head and the little sheets thrown across the
foot. So much for one of the navy's shells.

While he was thinking of the sadness of it all, a little scene was acted:
the side door of the house opened, a weeping woman came out, and with her
was a tall Confederate Colonel of cavalry. Gallantly giving her his arm,
he escorted her as far as the little gate, where she bade him good by
with much feeling. With an impulsive movement he drew some money from his
pocket, thrust it upon her, and started hurriedly away that he might not
listen to her thanks. Such was his preoccupation that he actually brushed
into Stephen, who was standing beside a tree. He stopped and bowed.

"Excuse me, seh," he said contritely. "I beg your pardon, seh."

"Certainly," said Stephen, smiling; it was my fault for getting in your
way."

"Not at all, seh," said the cavalry Colonel; "my clumsiness, seh." He did
not pass on, but stood pulling with some violence a very long mustache.
"Damn you Yankees," he continued, in the same amiable tone, "you've
brought us a heap of misfortune. Why, seh, in another week we'd been
fo'ced to eat niggers."

The Colonel made such a wry face that Stephen laughed in spite of
himself. He had marked the man's charitable action, and admired his
attempt to cover it. The Colonel seemed to be all breadth, like a card.
His shoulders were incredible. The face was scant, perchance from lack of
food, the nose large, with a curved rim, and the eyes blue gray. He wore
clay-flecked cavalry boots, and was six feet five if an inch, so that
Stephen's six seemed insignificant beside him.

"Captain," he said, taking in Stephen's rank, "so we won't qua'l as to
who's host heah. One thing's suah," he added, with a twinkle, "I've been
heah longest. Seems like ten yeahs since I saw the wife and children down
in the Palmetto State. I can't offer you a dinner, seh. We've eaten all
the mules and rats and sugar cane in town." (His eye seemed to
interpolate that Stephen wouldn't be there otherwise.) "But I can offer
you something choicer than you have in the No'th."

Whereupon he drew from his hip a dented silver flask. The Colonel
remarked that Stephen's eyes fell on the coat of arms.

"Prope'ty of my grandfather, seh, of Washington's Army. My name is
Jennison,--Catesby Jennison, at your service, seh," he said. "You have
the advantage of me, Captain."

"My name is Brice," said Stephen.

The big Colonel bowed decorously, held out a great, wide hand, and
thereupon unscrewed the flask. Now Stephen had never learned to like
straight whiskey, but he took down his share without a face. The exploit
seemed to please the Colonel, who, after he likewise had done the liquor
justice, screwed on the lid with ceremony, offered Stephen his arm with
still greater ceremony, and they walked off down the street together.
Stephen drew from his pocket several of Judge Whipple's cigars, to which
his new friend gave unqualified praise.

On every hand Vicksburg showed signs of hard usage. Houses with gaping
chasms in their sides, others mere heaps of black ruins; great trees
felled, cabins demolished, and here and there the sidewalk ploughed
across from curb to fence.

"Lordy," exclaimed the Colonel. "Lordy I how my ears ache since your
damned coehorns have stopped. The noise got to be silence with us, seh,
and yesterday I reckoned a hundred volcanoes had bust. Tell me," said he
"when the redoubt over the Jackson road was blown up, they said a nigger
came down in your lines alive. Is that so?"

"Yes," said Stephen, smiling; "he struck near the place where my company
was stationed. His head ached a mite. That seemed to be all."

"I reckon he fell on it," said Colonel Catesby Jennison, as if it were a
matter of no special note.

"And now tell me something," said Stephen. "How did you burn our
sap-rollers?"

This time the Colonel stopped, and gave himself up to hearty laughter.

"Why, that was a Yankee trick, sure enough," he cried. "Some ingenious
cuss soaked port fire in turpentine, and shot the wad in a large-bore
musket."

"We thought you used explosive bullets."

The Colonel laughed again, still more heartily. "Explosive bullets!
--Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how
we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers--dare-devils, seh
--floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with
two hundred thousand. He's the pride of our Vicksburg army. Not afraid of
hell. A chivalrous man, a forlorn-hope man. The night you ran the
batteries he and some others went across to your side in skiffs--in
skiffs, seh, I say--and set fire to the houses in De Soto, that we might
see to shoot. And then he came back in the face of our own batteries and
your guns. That man was wounded by a trick of fate, by a cussed bit of
shell from your coehorns while eating his dinner in Vicksburg. He's
pretty low, now, poor fellow," added the Colonel, sadly.

"Where is he?" demanded Stephen, fired with a desire to see the man.

"Well, he ain't a great ways from here," said the Colonel. "Perhaps you
might be able to do something for him," he continued thoughtfully. "I'd
hate to see him die. The doctor says he'll pull through if he can get
care and good air and good food." He seized Stephen's arm in a fierce
grip. "You ain't fooling?" he said.

"Indeed I am not," said Stephen.

"No," said the Colonel, thoughtfully, as to himself, "you don't look like
the man to fool."

Whereupon he set out with great strides, in marked contrast to his former
languorous gait, and after a while they came to a sort of gorge, where
the street ran between high banks of clay. There Stephen saw the
magazines which the Confederates had dug out, and of which he had heard.
But he saw something, too, of which he had not heard, Colonel Catesby
Jennison stopped before an open doorway in the yellow bank and knocked. A
woman's voice called softly to him to enter.

They went into a room hewn out of the solid clay. Carpet was stretched on
the floor, paper was on the walls, and even a picture. There was a little
window cut like a port in a prison cell, and under it a bed, beside which
a middle-aged lady was seated. She had a kindly face which seemed to
Stephen a little pinched as she turned to them with a gesture of
restraint. She pointed to the bed, where a sheet lay limply over the
angles of a wasted frame. The face was to the wall.

"Hush!" said the lady,--"it is the first time in two days that he has
slept."

But the sleeper stirred wearily, and woke with a start. He turned over.
The face, so yellow and peaked, was of the type that grows even more
handsome in sickness, and in the great fever-stricken eyes a high spirit
burned. For an instant only the man stared at Stephen, and then he
dragged himself to the wall.

The eyes of the other two were both fixed on the young Union Captain.

"My God!" cried Jennison, seizing Stephen's rigid arm, "does he look as
bad as that? We've seen him every day."

"I--I know him," answered Stephen. He stepped quickly to the bedside, and
bent over it. "Colfax!" he said. "Colfax!"

"This is too much, Jennison," came from the bed a voice that was
pitifully weak; "why do you bring Yankees in here?"

"Captain Brice is a friend of yours, Colfax," said the Colonel, tugging
at his mustache.

"Brice?" repeated Clarence, "Brice? Does he come from St. Louis?"

"Do you come from St. Louis, sir?"

"Yes. I have met Captain Colfax--"

"Colonel, sir."

"Colonel Colfax, before the war! And if he would like to go to St. Louis,
I think I can have it arranged at once."

In silence they waited for Clarence's answer Stephen well knew what was
passing in his mind, and guessed at his repugnance to accept a favor from
a Yankee. He wondered whether there was in this case a special
detestation. And so his mind was carried far to the northward to the
memory of that day in the summer-house on the Meramee heights. Virginia
had not loved her cousin then--of that Stephen was sure. But now,--now
that the Vicksburg army was ringing with his praise, now that he was
unfortunate--Stephen sighed. His comfort was that he would be the
instrument.

The lady in her uneasiness smoothed the single sheen that covered the
sick man. From afar came the sound of cheering, and it was this that
seemed to rouse him. He faced them again, impatiently.

"I have reason to remember Mr. Brice," he said steadily. And then, with
some vehemence, "What is he doing in Vicksburg?"

Stephen looked at Jennison, who winced.

"The city has surrendered," said that officer.

They counted on a burst of anger. Colfax only groaned.

"Then you can afford to be generous," he said, with a bitter laugh. "But
you haven't whipped us yet, by a good deal. Jennison," he cried,
"Jennison, why in hell did you give up?"

"Colfax," said Stephen, coming forward, "you're too sick a man to talk.
I'll look up the General. It may be that I can have you sent North
to-day."

"You can do as you please," said Clarence, coldly, "with a--prisoner."

The blood rushed to Stephen's face. Bowing to the lady, he strode out of
the room. Colonel Jennison, running after him, caught him in the street.

"You're not offended, Brice?" he said. "He's sick--and God Almighty, he's
proud--I reckon," he added with a touch of humility that went straight to
Stephen's heart. "I reckon that some of us are too derned proud--But we
ain't cold."

Stephen grasped his hand.

"Offended!" he said. "I admire the man. I'll go to the General directly.
But just let me thank you. And I hope, Colonel, that we may meet again
--as friends." "Hold on, seh," said Colonel Catesby Jennison; "we may as
well drink to that."

Fortunately, as Stephen drew near the Court House, he caught sight of a
group of officers seated on its steps, and among them he was quick to
recognize General Sherman.

"Brice," said the General, returning his salute, "been celebrating this
glorious Fourth with some of our Rebel friends?"

"Yes, sir," answered Stephen, "and I came to ask a favor for one of
them." Seeing that the General's genial, interested expression did not
change, he was emboldened to go on. "This is one of their colonels, sir.
You may have heard of him. He is the man who floated down the river on a
log and brought back two hundred thousand percussion caps--"

"Good Lord," interrupted the General, "I guess we all heard of him after
that. What else has he done to endear himself?" he asked, with a smile.

"Well, General, he rowed across the river in a skiff the night we ran
these batteries, and set fire to De Soto to make targets for their
gunners."

"I'd like to see that man," said the General, in his eager way. "Where is
he?"

"What I was going to tell you, sir. After he went through all this, he
was hit by a piece of mortar shell, while sitting at his dinner. He's
rather far gone now, General, and they say he can't live unless he can be
sent North. I--I know who he is in St. Louis. And I thought that as long
as the officers are to be paroled I might get your permission to send him
up to-day."

"What's his name?"

"Colfax, sir."

The General laughed. "I know the breed," said he, "I'll bet he didn't
thank you."

"No, sir, he didn't."

"I like his grit," said the General, emphatically, "These young bloods
are the backbone of this rebellion, Brice. They were made for war. They
never did anything except horse-racing and cock-fighting. They ride like
the devil, fight like the devil, but don't care a picayune for anything.
Walker had some of 'em. Crittenden had some. And, good Lord, how they
hate a Yankee! I know this Colfax, too. He's a cousin of that
fine-looking girl Brinsmade spoke of. They say he's engaged to her. Be a
pity to disappoint her--eh?"

"Yes, General."

"Why, Captain, I believe you would like to marry her yourself! Take my
advice, sir, and don't try to tame any wildcats."

"I'm glad to do a favor for that young man," said the General, when
Stephen had gone off with the slip of paper he had given him. "I like to
do that kind of a favor for any officer, when I can. Did you notice how
he flared up when I mentioned the girl?"

This is why Clarence Colfax found himself that evening on a hospital
steamer of the Sanitary Commission, bound north for St. Louis.




CHAPTER XI

BELLEGARDE ONCE MORE

Supper at Bellegarde was not the simple meal it had been for a year past
at Colonel Carvel's house in town. Mrs. Colfax was proud of her table,
proud of her fried chickens and corn fritters and her desserts. How
Virginia chafed at those suppers, and how she despised the guests whom
her aunt was in the habit of inviting to some of them! And when none was
present, she was forced to listen to Mrs. Colfax's prattle about the
fashions, her tirades against the Yankees.

"I'm sure he must be dead," said that lady, one sultry evening in July.
Her tone, however, was not one of conviction. A lazy wind from the river
stirred the lawn of Virginia's gown. The girl, with her hand on the
wicker back of the chair, was watching a storm gather to the eastward,
across the Illinois prairie.

"I don't see why you say that, Aunt Lillian," she replied. "Bad news
travels faster than good."

"And not a word from Comyn. It is cruel of him not to send us a line,
telling us where his regiment is."

Virginia did not reply. She had long since learned that the wisdom of
silence was the best for her aunt's unreasonableness. Certainly, if
Clarence's letters could not pass the close lines of the Federal troops,
news of her father's Texas regiment could not come from Red River.

"How was Judge Whipple to-day?" asked Mrs. Colfax presently.

"Very weak. He doesn't seem to improve much."

"I can't see why Mrs. Brice,--isn't that her name?--doesn't take him to
her house. Yankee women are such prudes."

Virginia began to rock slowly, and her foot tapped the porch.

"Mrs. Brice has begged the Judge to come to her. But he says he has lived
in those rooms, and that he will die there,--when the time comes."

"How you worship that woman, Virginia! You have become quite a Yankee
yourself, I believe, spending whole days with her, nursing that old man."

"The Judge is an old friend of my father's; I think he would wish it,"
replied the girl, in a lifeless voice.

Her speech did not reveal all the pain and resentment she felt. She
thought of the old man racked with pain and suffering in the heat, lying
patient on his narrow bed, the only light of life remaining the presence
of the two women. They came day by day, and often Margaret Brice had
taken the place of the old negress who sat with him at night. Worship
Margaret Brice! Yes, it was worship; it had been worship since the day
she and her father had gone to the little whitewashed hospital.
Providence had brought them together at the Judge's bedside. The
marvellous quiet power of the older woman had laid hold of the girl in
spite of all barriers.

Often when the Judge's pain was eased sufficiently for him to talk, he
would speak of Stephen. The mother never spoke of her son, but a light
would come into her eyes at this praise of him which thrilled Virginia to
see. And when the good lady was gone, and the Judge had fallen into
slumber, it would still haunt her.

Was it out of consideration for her that Mrs. Brice would turn the Judge
from this topic which he seemed to love best? Virginia could not admit to
herself that she resented this. She had heard Stephen's letters to the
Judge. They came every week. Strong and manly they were, with plenty of
praises for the Southern defenders of Vicksburg. Only yesterday Virginia
had read one of these to Mr. Whipple, her face burning. Well that his
face was turned to the window, and that Stephen's mother was not there!

"He says very little about himself," Mr. Whipple complained. "Had it not
been for Brinsmade, we should never know that Sherman had his eye on him,
and had promoted him. We should never have known of that exploit at
Chickasaw Bluff. But what a glorious victory was Grant's capture of
Vicksburg, on the Fourth of July! I guess we'll make short work of the
Rebels now."

No, the Judge had not changed much, even in illness. He would never
change. Virginia laid the letter down, and tears started to her eyes as
she repressed a retort. It was not the first time this had happened. At
every Union victory Mr. Whipple would loose his tongue. How strange that,
with all his thought of others, he should fall short here!

One day, after unusual forbearance, Mrs. Brice had overtaken Virginia on
the stairway. Well she knew the girl's nature, and how difficult she must
have found repression. Margaret Brice had taken her hand.

"My dear," she had said, "you are a wonderful woman." That was all. But
Virginia had driven back to Belle. garde with a strange elation in her
heart.

Some things the Judge had forborne to mention, and for this Virginia was
thankful. One was the piano. But she had overheard Shadrach telling old
Nancy how Mrs. Brice had pleaded with him to move it, that he might have
more room and air. He had been obdurate. And Colonel Carvel's name had
never once passed his lips.

Many a night the girl had lain awake listening to the steamboats as they
toiled against the river's current, while horror held her. Horror lest
her father at that moment be in mortal agony amongst the heaps left by
the battle's surges; heaps in which, like mounds of ashes, the fire was
not yet dead. Fearful tales she had heard in the prison hospitals of
wounded men lying for days in the Southern sun between the trenches at
Vicksburg, or freezing amidst the snow and sleet at Donelson.

Was her bitterness against the North not just? What a life had been
Colonel Carvel's! It had dawned brightly. One war had cost him his wife.
Another, and he had lost his fortune, his home, his friends, all that was
dear to him. And that daughter, whom he loved best in all the world, he
was perchance to see no more.

Mrs. Colfax, yawning, had taken a book and gone to bed. Still Virginia
sat on the porch, while the frogs sang of rain, and the lightning
quivered across the eastern sky. She heard the crunch of wheels in the
gravel.

A bar of light, peopled by moths, slanted out of the doorway and fell on
a closed carriage. A gentleman slowly ascended the steps. Virginia
recognized him as Mr. Brinsmade.

"Your cousin Clarence has come home, my dear," he said. "He was among the
captured at Vicksburg, and is paroled by General Grant."

Virginia gave a little cry and started forward. But he held her hands.

"He has been wounded!"

"Yes," she exclaimed, "yes. Oh, tell me, Mr. Brinsmade, tell me--all--"

"No, he is not dead, but he is very low. Mr. Russell has been kind enough
to come with me."

She hurried to call the servants. But they were all there in the light,
in African postures of terror,--Alfred, and Sambo, and Mammy Easter, and
Ned. They lifted the limp figure in gray, and carried it into the hall
chamber, his eyes closed, his face waxen under a beard brown and shaggy.
Heavily, Virginia climbed the stairs to break the news to her aunt.

There is little need to dwell on the dark days which followed--Clarence
hanging between life and death. That his life was saved was due to
Virginia and to Mammy Easter, and in no particle to his mother. Mrs.
Colfax flew in the face of all the known laws of nursing, until Virginia
was driven to desperation, and held a council of war with Dr. Polk. Then
her aunt grew jealous, talked of a conspiracy, and threatened to send for
Dr. Brown--which Dr. Polk implored her to do. By spells she wept, when
they quietly pushed her from the room and locked the door. She would
creep in to him in the night during Mammy Easter's watches and talk him
into a raging fever. But Virginia slept lightly and took the alarm. More
than one scene these two had in the small hours, while Ned was riding
post haste over the black road to town for the Doctor.

By the same trusty messenger did Virginia contrive to send a note to Mrs.
Brice, begging her to explain her absence to Judge Whipple. By day or
night Virginia did not leave Bellegarde. And once Dr. Polk, while walking
in the garden, found the girl fast asleep on a bench, her sewing on her
lap. Would that a master had painted his face as he looked down at her!

'Twas he who brought Virginia daily news of Judge Whipple. Bad news,
alas! for he seemed to miss her greatly. He had become more querulous and
exacting with patient Mrs. Brice, and inquired for her continually.

She would not go. But often, when he got into his buggy the Doctor found
the seat filled with roses and fresh fruit. Well he knew where to carry
them.

What Virginia's feelings were at this time no one will ever know. God had
mercifully given her occupation, first with the Judge, and later, when
she needed it more, with Clarence. It was she whom he recognized first of
all, whose name was on his lips in his waking moments. With the petulance
of returning reason, he pushed his mother away. Unless Virginia was at
his bedside when he awoke, his fever rose. He put his hot hand into her
cool one, and it rested there sometimes for hours. Then, and only then,
did he seem contented.

The wonder was that her health did not fail. People who saw her during
that fearful summer, fresh and with color in her cheeks, marvelled.
Great-hearted Puss Russell, who came frequently to inquire, was quieted
before her friend, and the frank and jesting tongue was silent in that
presence. Anne Brinsmade came with her father and wondered. A miracle had
changed Virginia. Her poise, her gentleness, her dignity, were the
effects which people saw. Her force people felt. And this is why we
cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature. It is God who changes,
--who cleanses us of our levity with the fire of trial. Happy, thrice
happy, those whom He chasteneth. And yet how many are there who could not
bear the fire--who would cry out at the flame.

Little by little Clarence mended, until he came to sit out on the porch
in the cool of the afternoon. Then he would watch for hours the tassels
stirring over the green fields of corn and the river running beyond,
while the two women sat by. At times, when Mrs. Colfax's headaches came
on, and Virginia was alone with him, he would talk of the war; sometimes
of their childhood, of the mad pranks they played here at Bellegarde, of
their friends. Only when Virginia read to him the Northern account of the
battles would he emerge from a calm sadness into excitement; and he
clenched his fists and tried to rise when he heard of the capture of
Jackson and the fall of Port Hudson. Of love he spoke not a word, and now
that he was better he ceased to hold her hand. But often when she looked
up from her book, she would surprise his dark eyes fixed upon her, and a
look in them of but one interpretation. She was troubled.

The Doctor came but every other day now, in the afternoon. It was his
custom to sit for a while on the porch chatting cheerily with Virginia,
his stout frame filling the rocking-chair. Dr. Polk's indulgence was
gossip--though always of a harmless nature: how Mr. Cluyme always managed
to squirm over to the side which was in favor, and how Maude Catherwood's
love-letter to a certain dashing officer of the Confederate army had been
captured and ruthlessly published in the hateful Democrat. It was the
Doctor who gave Virginia news of the Judge, and sometimes he would
mention Mrs. Brice. Then Clarence would raise his head; and once (she saw
with trepidation) he had opened his lips to speak.

One day the Doctor came, and Virginia looked into his face and divined
that he had something to tell her. He sat but a few moments, and when he
arose to go he took her hand.

"I have a favor to beg of you, Jinny," he said, "Judge has lost his nurse.
Do you think Clarence could spare you for a little while every day? I
shouldn't ask it," Dr. Polk continued, somewhat hurriedly for him, "but
the Judge cannot bear a stranger near him, and I am afraid to have him
excited while in this condition."

"Mrs. Brice is ill?" she cried. And Clarence, watching, saw her color go.

"No," replied Dr. Polk, "but her son Stephen has come home from the army.
He was transferred to Lauman's brigade, and then he was wounded." He
jangled the keys in his pocket and continued "It seems that he had no
business in the battle. Johnston in his retreat had driven animals into
all the ponds and shot them, and in the hot weather the water was soon
poisoned. Mr. Brice was scarcely well enough to stand when they made the
charge, and he is now in a dreadful condition He is a fine fellow," added
the Doctor, with a sigh, "General Sherman sent a special physician to the
boat with him. He is--" Subconsciously the Doctor's arm sought Virginia's
back, as though he felt her swaying. But he was looking at Clarence, who
had jerked himself forward in his chair, his thin hands convulsively
clutching at the arms of it. He did not appear to see Virginia.

"Stephen Brice, did you say?" he cried, "will he die?"

In his astonishment the Doctor passed his palm across his brow, and for a
moment he did not answer. Virginia had taken a step from him, and was
standing motionless, almost rigid, her eyes on his face.

"Die?" he said, repeating the word mechanically; "my God, I hope not. The
danger is over, and he is resting easily. If he were not," he said
quickly and forcibly, "I should not be here."

The Doctor's mare passed more than one fleet--footed trotter on the road.
to town that day. And the Doctor's black servant heard his master utter
the word "fool" twice, and with great emphasis.

For a long time Virginia stood on the end of the porch, until the heaving
of the buggy harness died on the soft road, She felt Clarence gaze upon
her before she turned to face him.

"Virginia!" He had called her so of late. "Yes, dear."

"Virginia, sit here a moment; I have something to tell you."

She came and took the chair beside him, her heart beating, her breast
rising and falling. She looked into his eyes, and her own lashes fell
before the hopelessness there But he put out his fingers wasted by
illness, and she took them in her own.

He began slowly, as if every word cost him pain.

"Virginia, we were children together here. I cannot remember the time
when I did not love you, when I did not think of you as my wife. All I
did when we played together was to try to win your applause. That was my
nature I could not help it. Do you remember the day I climbed out on the
rotten branch of the big pear tree yonder to get you that pear--when I
fell on the roof of Alfred's cabin? I did not feel the pain. It was
because you kissed it and cried over me. You are crying now," he said
tenderly. "Don't, Jinny. It isn't to make you sad that I am saying this.

"I have had a great deal of time to think lately, Jinny, I was not
brought up seriously,--to be a man. I have been thinking of that day just
before you were eighteen, when you rode out here. How well I remember it.
It was a purple day. The grapes were purple, and a purple haze was over
there across the river. You had been cruel to me. You were grown a woman
then, and I was still nothing but a boy. Do you remember the doe coming
out of the forest, and how she ran screaming when I tried to kiss you?
You told me I was good for nothing. Please don't interrupt me. It was
true what you said, that I was wild and utterly useless, I had never
served or pleased any but myself,--and you. I had never studied or
worked, You were right when you told me I must learn something,--do
something,--become of some account in the world. I am just as useless to
day."

"Clarence, after what you have done for the South?"

He smiled with peculiar bitterness.

"What have I done for her?" he added. "Crossed the river and burned
houses. I could not build them again. Floated down the river on a log
after a few percussion caps. That did not save Vicksburg."

"And how many had the courage to do that?" she exclaimed.

"Pooh," he said, "courage! the whole South has it, Courage! If I did not
have that, I would send Sambo to my father's room for his ebony box and
blow my brains out. No, Jinny, I am nothing but a soldier of fortune. I
never possessed any quality but a wild spirit for adventure, to shirk
work. I wanted to go with Walker, you remember. I wanted to go to Kansas.
I wanted to distinguish myself," he added with a gesture. "But that is
all gone now, Jinny. I wanted to distinguish myself for you. Now I see
how an earnest life might have won you. No, I have not done yet."

She raised her head, frightened, and looked at him searchingly.

"One day," he said, "one day a good many years ago you and I and Uncle
Comyn were walking along Market Street in front of Judge Whipple's
office, and a slave auction was going on. A girl was being sold on whom
you had set your heart. There was some one in the crowd, a Yankee, who
bid her in and set her free. Do you remember him?"

He saw her profile, her lips parted, her look far away, She inclined her
head.

"Yes," said her cousin, "so do I remember him. He has crossed my path
many times since, Virginia. And mark what I say--it was he whom you had
in mind on that birthday when you implored me to make something of
myself, It was Stephen Brice."

Her eyes flashed upon him quickly.

"Oh, how dare you?" she cried.

"I dare anything, Virginia," he answered quietly. "I am not blaming you.
And I am sure that you did not realize that he was the ideal which you
had in mind."

The impression of him has never left it. Fate is in it. Again, that night
at the Brinsmades', when we were in fancy dress, I felt that I had lost
you when I got back. He had been there when I was away, and gone again.
And--and--you never told me."

"It was a horrible mistake, Max," she faltered. "I was waiting for you
down the road, and stopped his horse instead. It--it was nothing--"

"It was fate, Jinny. In that half-hour I lost you. How I hated that man,"
he cried, "how I hated him?"

"Hated!" exclaimed Virginia, involuntarily. "Oh, no!"

"Yes," he said, "hated! I would have killed him if I could. But now--"

"But now?"

"Now he has saved my life. I have not--I could not tell you before: He
came into the place where I was lying in Vicksburg, and they told him
that my only chance was to come North, I turned my back upon him,
insulted him. Yet he went to Sherman and had me brought home--to you,
Virginia. If he loves you,--and I have long suspected that he does--"

"Oh, no," she cried, hiding her face "No."

"I know he loves you, Jinny," her cousin continued calmly, inexorably.
"And you know that he does. You must feel that he does. It was a brave
thing to do, and a generous. He knew that you were engaged to me. He
thought that he was saving me for you. He was giving up the hope of
marrying you himself."

Virginia sprang to her feet. Unless you had seen her then, you had never
known the woman in her glory.

"Marry a Yankee!" she cried. "Clarence Colfax, have you known and loved
me all my life that you might accuse me of this? Never, never, never!"
Transformed, he looked incredulous admiration.

"Jinny, do you mean it?" he cried.

In answer she bent down with all that gentleness and grace that was hers,
and pressed her lips to his forehead. Long after she had disappeared in
the door he sat staring after her.

But later, when Mammy Easter went to call her mistress for supper, she
found her with her face buried in the pillows.




CHAPTER X

IN JUDGE WHIPPLE'S OFFICE

After this Virginia went to the Judge's bedside every day, in the
morning, when Clarence took his sleep. She read his newspapers to him
when he was well enough. She read the detested Missouri Democrat, which I
think was the greatest trial Virginia ever had to put up with. To have
her beloved South abused, to have her heroes ridiculed, was more than she
could bear. Once, when the Judge was perceptibly better, she flung the
paper out of the window, and left the room. He called her back
penitently.

"My dear," he said, smiling admiration, "forgive an old bear. A selfish
old bear, Jinny; my only excuse is my love for the Union. When you are
not here, I lie in agony, lest she has suffered some mortal blow unknown
to me, Jinny. And if God sees fit to spare our great country, the day
will come when you will go down on your knees and thank Him for the
inheritance which He saved for your children. You are a good woman, my
dear, and a strong one. I have hoped that you will see the right. That
you will marry a great citizen, one unwavering in his service and
devotion to our Republic." The Judge's voice trembled with earnestness as
he spoke. And the gray eyes under the shaggy brows were alight with the
sacred fire of his life's purpose. Undaunted as her spirit was, she could
not answer him then.

Once, only once, he said to her: "Virginia, I loved your father better
than any man I ever knew. Please God I may see him again before I die."

He never spoke of the piano. But sometimes at twilight his eyes would
rest on the black cloth that hid it.

Virginia herself never touched that cloth to her it seemed the shroud
upon a life of happiness that was dead and gone.

Virginia had not been with Judge Whipple during the critical week after
Stephen was brought home. But Anne had told her that his anxiety was a
pitiful thing to see, and that it had left him perceptibly weaker.
Certain it was that he was failing fast. So fast that on some days
Virginia, watching him, would send Ned or Shadrach in hot haste for Dr.
Polk.

At noon Anne would relieve Virginia,--Anne or her mother,--and frequently
Mr. Brinsmade would come likewise. For it is those who have the most to
do who find the most time for charitable deeds. As the hour for their
coming drew near, the Judge would be seeking the clock, and scarce did
Anne's figure appear in the doorway before the question had arisen to his
lips--"And how is my young Captain to-day?"

That is what he called him,--"My young Captain." Virginia's choice of her
cousin, and her devotion to him, while seemingly natural enough, had
drawn many a sigh from Anne. She thought it strange that Virginia herself
had never once asked her about Stephen's condition and she spoke of this
one day to the Judge with as much warmth as she was capable of.

"Jinny's heart is like steel where a Yankee is concerned. If her best
friend were a Yankee--"

Judge Whipple checked her, smiling.

"She has been very good to one Yankee I know of," he said. "And as for
Mrs. Brice, I believe she worships her."

"But when I said that Stephen was much better to-day, she swept out of
the room as if she did not care whether he lived or died."

"Well, Anne," the Judge had answered, "you women are a puzzle to me. I
guess you don't understand yourselves," he added.

That was a strange month in the life of Clarence Colfax,--the last of his
recovery, while he was waiting for the news of his exchange. Bellegarde
was never more beautiful, for Mrs. Colfax had no whim of letting the
place run down because a great war was in progress. Though devoted to the
South, she did not consecrate her fortune to it. Clarence gave as much as
he could.

Whole afternoons Virginia and he would sit in the shaded arbor seat; or
at the cool of the day descend to the bench on the lower tier of the
summer garden, to steep, as it were, in the blended perfumes of the roses
and the mignonettes and the pinks. He was soberer than of old. Often
through the night he pondered on the change in her. She, too, was grave.
But he was troubled to analyze her gravity, her dignity. Was this merely
strength of character, the natural result of the trials through which she
had passed, the habit acquired of being the Helper and comforter instead
of the helped and comforted? Long years afterward the brightly colored
portrait of her remained in his eye,--the simple linen gown of pink or
white, the brown hair shining in the sunlight, the graceful poise of the
head. And the background of flowers--flowers everywhere, far from the
field of war.

Sometimes, when she brought his breakfast on a tray in the morning, there
was laughter in her eyes. In the days gone by they had been all laughter.

They were engaged. She was to be his wife. He said it over to himself
many, many times in the day. He would sit for a space, feasting his eyes
upon her until she lifted her look to his, and the rich color flooded her
face. He was not a lover to sit quietly by, was Clarence. And yet, as the
winged days flew on, that is what he did, It was not that she did not
respond to his advances, he did not make them. Nor could he have told
why. Was it the chivalry inherited from a long life of Colfaxes who were
gentlemen? Not wholly. Something of awe had crept into his feeling for
her.

As the month wore on, and the time drew near for him to go back to the
war, a state that was not quite estrangement, and yet something very like
it, set in. Poor Clarence. Doubts bothered him, and he dared not give
them voice. By night he would plan his speeches,--impassioned, imploring.
To see her in her marvellous severity was to strike him dumb. Horrible
thought! Whether she loved him, whether she did not love him, she would
not give him up. Through the long years of their lives together, he would
never know. He was not a weak man now, was Clarence Colfax. He was merely
a man possessed of a devil, enchained by the power of self-repression
come upon her whom he loved.

And day by day that power seemed to grow more intense,--invulnerable.
Among her friends and in the little household it had raised Virginia to
heights which she herself did not seem to realize. She was become the
mistress of Bellegarde. Mrs. Colfax was under its sway, and doubly
miserable because Clarence would listen to her tirades no more.

"When are you to be married?" she had ventured to ask him once. Nor had
she taken pains to hide the sarcasm in her voice.

His answer, bringing with it her remembrance of her husband at certain
times when it was not safe to question him, had silenced her. Addison
Colfax had not been a quiet man. When he was quiet he was dangerous.

"Whenever Virginia is ready, mother," he had replied. Whenever Virginia
was ready! He knew in his heart that if he were to ask her permission to
send for Dr, Posthelwaite to-morrow that she would say yes. Tomorrow
came,--and with it a great envelope, an official, answer to Clarence's
report that he was fit for duty once more. He had been exchanged. He was
to proceed to Cairo, there to await the arrival of the transport
Indianapolis, which was to carry five hundred officers and men from
Sandusky Prison, who were going back to fight once more for the
Confederacy. O that they might have seen the North, all those brave men
who made that sacrifice. That they might have realized the numbers and
the resources and the wealth arrayed against them!

It was a cool day for September, a perfect day, an auspicious day, and
yet it went the way of the others before it. This was the very fulness of
the year, the earth giving out the sweetness of her maturity, the corn in
martial ranks, with golden plumes nodding. The forest still in its glory
of green. They walked in silence the familiar paths, and Alfred, clipping
the late roses for the supper table, shook his white head as they passed
him. The sun, who had begun to hurry on his southward journey, went to
bed at six. The few clothes Clarence was to take with him had been packed
by Virginia in his bag, and the two were standing in the twilight on the
steps of the house, when Ned came around the corner. He called his young
mistress by name, but she did not hear him. He called again.

"Miss Jinny!"

She started as from a sleep, and paused.

"Yes, Mr. Johnson," said she, and smiled. He wore that air of mystery so
dear to darkeys.

"Gemmen to see you, Miss Jinny."

"A gentleman!" she said in surprise. "Where?"

The negro pointed to the lilac shrubbery.

"Thar!"

"What's all this nonsense, Ned?" said Clarence, sharply: "If a man is
there, bring him here at once."

"Reckon he won't come, Marse Clarence." said Ned, "He fearful skeered ob
de light ob day. He got suthin very pertickler fo' Miss Jinny."

"Do you know him?" Clarence demanded.

"No sah--yessah--leastwise I'be seed 'um. Name's Robimson."

The word was hardly out of his mouth before Virginia had leaped down the
four feet from the porch to the flower-bed and was running across the
lawn toward the shrubbery. Parting the bushes after her, Clarence found
his cousin confronting a large man, whom he recognized as the carrier who
brought messages from the South.

"What's the matter, Jinny?" he demanded.

"Pa has got through the lines," she said breathlessly. "He--he came up to
see me. Where is he, Robinson?"

"He went to Judge Whipple's rooms, ma'am. They say the Judge is dying. I
reckoned you knew it, Miss Jinny," Robinson added contritely.

"Clarence," she said, "I must go at once."

"I will go with you," he said; "you cannot go alone." In a twinkling Ned
and Sambo had the swift pair of horses harnessed, and the light carriage
was flying over the soft clay road toward the city. As they passed Mr.
Brinsmade's place, the moon hung like a great round lantern under the
spreading trees about the house. Clarence caught a glimpse of his
cousin's face in the light. She was leaning forward, her gaze fixed
intently on the stone posts which stood like monuments between the bushes
at the entrance. Then she drew back again into the dark corner of the
barouche. She was startled by a sharp challenge, and the carriage
stopped. Looking out, she saw the provost's guard like black card figures
on the road, and Ned fumbling for his pass.

On they drove into the city streets until the dark bulk of the Court
House loomed in front of them, and Ned drew rein at the little stairway
which led to the Judge's rooms. Virginia, leaping out of the carriage,
flew up the steps and into the outer office, and landed in the Colonel's
arms.

"Jinny!"

"Oh, Pa!" she cried. "Why do you risk your life in this way? If the
Yankees catch you--"

"They won't catch me, honey," he answered, kissing her. Then he held her
out at arm's length and gazed earnestly into her face. Trembling, she
searched his own. "Pa, how old you look!"

"I'm not precisely young, my dear," he said, smiling. His hair was nearly
white, and his face scared. But he was a fine erect figure of a man,
despite the shabby clothes he wore, and the mud-bespattered boots.

"Pa," she whispered, "it was foolhardy to come here. Why did you come to
St. Louis at all?"

"I came to see you, Jinny, I reckon. And when I got home to-night and
heard Silas was dying, I just couldn't resist. He's the oldest friend
I've got in St. Louis, honey and now--now--"

"Pa, you've been in battle?"

"Yes," he said.

"And you weren't hurt; I thank God for that," she whispered. After a
while: "Is Uncle Silas dying?"

"Yes, Jinny; Dr. Polk is in there now, and says that he can't last
through the night. Silas has been asking for you, honey, over and over.
He says you were very good to him,--that you and Mrs. Brice gave up
everything to nurse him."

"She did," Virginia faltered. "She was here night and day until her son
came home. She is a noble woman--"

"Her son?" repeated the Colonel. "Stephen Brice? Silas has done nothing
the last half-hour but call his name. He says he must see the boy before
he dies. Polk says he is not strong enough to come."

"Oh, no, he is not strong enough," cried Virginia. The Colonel looked
down at her queerly. "Where is Clarence?" he asked.

She had not thought of Clarence. She turned hurriedly, glanced around the
room, and then peered down the dark stairway.

"Why, he came in with me. I wonder why he did not follow me up?"

"Virginia."

"Yes, Pa."

"Virginia, are you happy?"

"Why, yes, Pa."

"Are you going to marry Clarence?" he asked.

"I have promised," she said simply.

Then after a long pause, seeing her father said nothing, she added,
"Perhaps he was waiting for you to see me alone. I will go down to see if
he is in the carriage."

The Colonel started with her, but she pulled him back in alarm.

"You will be seen, Pa," she cried. "How can you be so reckless?"

He stayed at the top of the passage, holding open the door that she might
have light. When she reached the sidewalk, there was Ned standing beside
the horses, and the carriage empty.

"Ned!"

"Yass'm, Miss Jinny."

"Where's Mr. Clarence?"

"He done gone, Miss Tinny."

"Gone?"

"Yass'm. Fust I seed was a man plump out'n Willums's, Miss Jinny. He was
a-gwine shufflin' up de street when Marse Clarence put out after him,
pos' has'e. Den he run."

She stood for a moment on the pavement in thought, and paused on the
stairs again, wondering whether it were best to tell her father. Perhaps
Clarence had seen--she caught her breath at the thought and pushed open
the door.

"Oh, Pa, do you think you are safe here?" she cried. "Why, yes, honey, I
reckon so," he answered. "Where's Clarence?"

"Ned says he ran after a man who was hiding in an entrance. Pa, I am
afraid they are watching the place."

"I don't think so, Jinny. I came here with Polk, in his buggy, after
dark."

Virginia, listening, heard footsteps on the stairs, and seized her
father's sleeve.

"Think of the risk you are running, Pa," she whispered. She would have
dragged him to the closet. But it was too late. The door opened, and Mr.
Brinsmade entered, and with him a lady veiled.

At sight of Mr. Carvel Mr. Brinsmade started back in surprise. How long
he stared at his old friend Virginia could not say. It seemed to her an
eternity. But Mrs. Brice has often told since how straight the Colonel
stood, his fine head thrown back, as he returned the glance. Then Mr.
Brinsmade came forward, with his hand outstretched.

"Comyn," said he, his voice breaking a little, "I have known you these
many years as a man of unstained honor. You are safe with me. I ask no
questions. God will judge whether I have done my duty."

Mr. Carvel took his friend's hand. "Thank you, Calvin," he said. "I give
you my word of honor as a gentleman that I came into this city for no
other reason than to see my daughter. And hearing that my old friend was
dying, I could not resist the temptation, sir--"

Mr. Brinsmade finished for him. And his voice shook.

"To come to his bedside. How many men do you think would risk their lives
so, Mrs. Brice?"

"Not many, indeed, Mr. Brinsmade," she answered. "Thank God he will now
die happy. I know it has been much on his mind."

The Colonel bowed over her hand.

"And in his name, madam,--in the name of my oldest and best friend,--I
thank you for what you have done for him. I trust that you will allow me
to add that I have learned from my daughter to respect and admire you. I
hope that your son is doing well."

"He is, thank you, Colonel Carvel. If he but knew that the Judge were
dying, I could not have kept him at home. Dr. Polk says that he must not
leave the house, or undergo any excitement."

Just then the door of the inner room opened, and Dr. Polk came out. He
bowed gravely to Mrs. Brice and Mr. Brinsmade, and he patted Virginia.

"The Judge is still asleep," he said gently. "And--he may not wake up in
this world."

Silently, sadly, they went together into that little room where so much
of Judge Whipple's life had been spent. How little it was! And how
completely they filled it,--these five people and the big Rothfield
covered with the black cloth. Virginia pressed her father's arm as they
leaned against it, and brushed her eyes. The Doctor turned the wick of
the night-lamp.

What was that upon the sleeper's face from which they drew back? A smile?
Yes, and a light. The divine light which is shed upon those who have
lived for others, who have denied themselves the lusts of the flesh, For
a long space, perhaps an hour, they stayed, silent save for a low word
now and again from the Doctor as he felt the Judge's heart. Tableaux from
the past floated before Virginia's eyes. Of the old days, of the happy
days in Locust Street, of the Judge quarrelling with her father, and she
and Captain Lige smiling nearby. And she remembered how sometimes when
the controversy was finished the Judge would rub his nose and say:

"It's my turn now, Lige."

Whereupon the Captain would open the piano, and she would play the hymn
that he liked best. It was "Lead, Kindly Light."

What was it in Silas Whipple's nature that courted the pain of memories?
What pleasure could it have been all through his illness to look upon
this silent and cruel reminder of days gone by forever? She had heard
that Stephen Brice had been with the Judge when he had bid it in. She
wondered that he had allowed it, for they said that he was the only one
who had ever been known to break the Judge's will. Virginia's eyes rested
on Margaret Brice, who was seated at the head of the bed, smoothing the
pillows The strength of Stephen's features were in hers, but not the
ruggedness. Her features were large, indeed, yet stanch and softened. The
widow, as if feeling Virginia's look upon her, glanced up from the
Judge's face and smiled at her. The girl colored with pleasure, and again
at the thought which she had had of the likeness between mother and son.

Still the Judge slept on, while they watched. And at length the thought
of Clarence crossed Virginia's mind.

Why had he not returned? Perhaps he was in the office without. Whispering
to her father, she stole out on tiptoe. The office was empty. Descending
to the street, she was unable to gain any news of Clarence from Ned, who
was becoming alarmed likewise.

Perplexed and troubled, she climbed the stairs again. No sound came from
the Judge's room Perhaps Clarence would be back at any moment. Perhaps
her father was in danger. She sat down to think,--her elbows on the desk
in front of her, her chin in her hand, her eyes at the level of a line of
books which stood on end.--Chitty's Pleadings, Blackstone, Greenleaf on
Evidence. Absently; as a person whose mind is in trouble, she reached out
and took one of them down and opened it. Across the flyleaf, in a high
and bold hand, was written the name, Stephen Atterbury Brice.

It was his desk! She was sitting in his chair!

She dropped the book, and, rising abruptly, crossed quickly to the other
side of the room. Then she turned, hesitatingly, and went back. This was
his desk--his chair, in which he had worked so faithfully for the man who
lay dying beyond the door. For him whom they all loved--whose last hours
they were were to soothe. Wars and schisms may part our bodies, but
stronger ties unite our souls. Through Silas Whipple, through his mother,
Virginia knew that she was woven of one piece with Stephen Brice. In a
thousand ways she was reminded, lest she drive it from her belief. She
might marry another, and that would not matter.

She sank again into his chair, and gave herself over to the thoughts
crowding in her heart. How the threads of his life ran next to hers, and
crossed and recrossed them. The slave auction, her dance with him, the
Fair, the meeting at Mr. Brinsmade's gate,--she knew them all. Her love
and admiration for his mother. Her dreams of him--for she did dream of
him. And now he had saved Clarence's life that she might marry her
cousin. Was it true that she would marry Clarence? That seemed to her
only a dream. It had never seemed real. Again she glanced at the
signature in the book, as if fascinated by the very strength of it. She
turned over a few pages of the book, "Supposing the defendant's counsel
essays to prove by means of--" that was his writing again, a marginal,
note. There were marginal notes on every page--even the last was covered
with them, And then at the end, "First reading, February, 1858. Second
reading, July, 1858. Bought with some of money obtained by first article
for M. D." That capacity for work, incomparable gift, was what she had
always coveted the most. Again she rested her elbows on the desk and her
chin on her hands, and sighed unconsciously.

She had not heard the step on the stair. She had not seen the door open.
She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his voice,
and then she thought that she was dreaming.

"Miss Carvel!"

"Yes?" Her head did not move. He took a step toward her.

"Miss Carvel!"

Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her eyes,
--unbelief and wonder and fright. No; it could not be he. But when she met
the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she trembled, and
our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting quivered and
became a blur.

He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him. She
herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person
exhaled. It seemed to have come upon him suddenly. He needed not to have
spoken for her to have felt that. What it was she could not tell. She
knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of the
chair as though material support might sustain her.

"Is he--dead?"

She was breathing hard.

"No," she said. "Not--not yet, They are waiting for the end."

"And you?" he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the
Judge's room.

Then she remembered Clarence.

"I am waiting for my cousin," she said.

Even as she spoke she was with this man again at the Brinsmade gate.
Those had been her very words! Intuition told her that he, too, was
thinking of that time. Now he had found her at his desk, and, as if that
were not humiliation enough, with one of his books taken down and laid
open at his signature. Suffused, she groped for words to carry her on.

"I am waiting for Clarence, Mr. Brice. He was here, and is gone
somewhere."

He did not seem to take account of the speech. And his silence--goad to
indiscretion--pressed her to add:-- "You saved him, Mr. Brice. I--we all
--thank you so much. And that is not all I want to say. It is a poor
enough acknowledgment of what you did,--for we have not always treated
you well." Her voice faltered almost to faintness, as he raised his hand
in pained protest. But she continued: "I shall regard it as a debt I can
never repay. It is not likely that in my life to come I can ever help
you, but I shall pray for that opportunity."

He interrupted her.

"I did nothing, Miss Carvel, nothing that the most unfeeling man in our
army would not do. Nothing that I would not have done for the merest
stranger."

"You saved him for me," she said.

O fateful words that spoke of themselves! She turned away from him for
very shame, and yet she heard him saying:-- "Yes, I saved him for you."

His voice was in the very note of the sadness which has the strength to
suffer, to put aside the thought of self. A note to which her soul
responded with anguish when she turned to him with the natural cry of
woman.

"Oh, you ought not to have come here to-night. Why did you come? The
Doctor forbade it. The consequences may kill you."

"It does not matter much," he answered. "The Judge was dying."

"How did you know?"

"I guessed it,--because my mother had left me."

"Oh, you ought not to have come!" she said again.

"The Judge has been my benefactor," he answered quietly. I could walk,
and it was my duty to come."

"You did not walk!" she gasped.

He smiled, "I had no carriage," he said.

With the instinct of her sex she seized the chair and placed it under
him. "You must sit down at once," she cried.

"But I am not tired," he replied.

"Oh, you must sit down, you must, Captain Brice." He started at the
title, which came so prettily from her lips, "Won't you please!" she said
pleadingly.

He sat down. And, as the sun peeps out of a troubled sky, she smiled.

"It is your chair," she said.

He glanced at the book, and the bit of sky was crimson. But still he said
nothing.

"It is your book," she stammered. "I did not know that it was yours when
I took it down. I--I was looking at it while I was waiting for Clarence."

"It is dry reading," he remarked, which was not what he wished to say.

"And yet--"

"Yes?"

"And yet you have read it twice." The confession had slipped to her lips.

She was sitting on the edge of his desk, looking down at him. Still he
did not look at her. All the will that was left him averted his head. And
the seal of honor was upon his speech. And he wondered if man were ever
more tempted.

Then the evil spread its wings, and soared away into the night. And the
moment was past. Peace seemed to come upon them both, quieting the tumult
in their hearts, and giving them back their reason. Respect like wise
came to the girl,--respect that was akin to awe. It was he who spoke
first.

"My mother has me how faithfully you nursed the Judge, Miss Carvel. It
was a very noble thing to do."

"Not noble at all," she replied hastily, "your mother did the most of it,
And he is an old friend of my father--"

"It was none the less noble," said Stephen, warmly, "And he quarrelled
with Colonel Carvel."

"My father quarrelled with him," she corrected. "It was well that I
should make some atonement. And yet mine was no atonement, I love Judge
Whipple. It was a--a privilege to see your mother every day--oh, how he
would talk of you! I think he loves you better than any one on this
earth."

"Tell me about him," said Stephen, gently.

Virginia told him, and into the narrative she threw the whole of her
pent-up self. How patient the Judge had been, and the joy he had derived
from Stephen's letters. "You were very good to write to him so often,"
she said. It seemed like a dream to Stephen, like one of the many dreams
of her, the mystery of which was of the inner life beyond our ken. He
could not recall a time when she had not been rebellious, antagonistic.
And now--as he listened to her voice, with its exquisite low tones and
modulations, as he sat there in this sacred intimacy, perchance to be the
last in his life, he became dazed. His eyes, softened, with supreme
eloquence cried out that she, was his, forever and forever. The magnetic
force which God uses to tie the worlds together was pulling him to her.
And yet the Puritan resisted.

Then the door swung open, and Clarence Colfax, out of breath, ran into
the room. He stopped short when he saw them, his hand fell to his sides,
and his words died on his lips. Virginia did not stir.

It was Stephen who rose to meet him, and with her eyes the girl followed
his motions. The broad and loosely built frame of the Northerner, his
shoulders slightly stooping, contrasted with Clarence's slighter figure,
erect, compact, springy. The Southerner's eye, for that moment, was flint
struck with the spark from the steel. Stephen's face, thinned by illness,
was grave. The eyes kindly, yet penetrating. For an instant they stood
thus regarding each other, neither offering a hand. It was Stephen who
spoke first, and if there was a trace of emotion in his voice, one who
was listening intently failed to mark it.

"I am glad to see that you have recovered, Colonel Colfax," he said.

"I should indeed be without gratitude if I did not thank Captain Brice
for my life," answered Clarence. Virginia flushed. She had detected the
undue accent on her cousin's last words, and she glanced apprehensively
at Stephen. His forceful reply surprised them both.

"Miss Carvel has already thanked me sufficiently, sir," he said. "I am
happy to have been able to have done you a good turn, and at the same
time to have served her so well. It was she who saved your life. It is to
her your thanks are chiefly due. I believe that I am not going too far,
Colonel Colfax," he added, "when I congratulate you both."

Before her cousin could recover, Virginia slid down from the desk and had
come between them. How her eyes shone and her lip trembled as she gazed
at him, Stephen has never forgotten. What a woman she was as she took her
cousin's arm and made him a curtsey.

"What you have done may seem a light thing to you, Captain Brice," she
said. "That is apt to be the way with those who have big hearts. You have
put upon Colonel Colfax, and upon me, a life's obligation."

When she began to speak, Clarence raised his head. As he glanced,
incredulous, from her to Stephen, his look gradually softened, and when
she had finished, his manner had become again frank, boyish, impetuous
--nay, penitent. He seized Stephen's hand.

"Forgive me, Brice," he cried. "Forgive me. I should have known better.
I--I did you an injustice, and you, Virginia. I was a fool--a scoundrel."
Stephen shook his head.

"No, you were neither," he said. Then upon his face came the smile of one
who has the strength to renounce, all that is dearest to him--that smile
of the unselfish, sweetest of all. It brought tears to Virginia. She was
to see it once again, upon the features of one who bore a cross,
--Abraham Lincoln. Clarence looked, and then he turned away toward the door
to the stairway, as one who walks blindly, in a sorrow.

His hand was on the knob when Virginia seemed to awake. She flew after
him:

"Wait!" she whispered.

Then she raised her eyes, slowly, to Stephen, who was standing motionless
beside his chair.

"Captain Brice!"

"Yes," he answered.

"My father is in the Judge's room," she said.

"Your father!" he exclaimed. "I thought--"

"That he was an officer in the Confederate Army. So he is." Her head went
up as she spoke.

Stephen stared at her, troubled. Suddenly her manner, changed. She took a
step toward him, appealingly.

"Oh, he is not a spy," she cried. "He has given Mr Brinsmade his word
that he came here for no other purpose than to see me. Then he heard that
the Judge was dying--"

"He has given his word to Mr. Brinsmade?

"Yes."

"Then," said Stephen, "what Mr. Brinsmade sanctions is not for me to
question."

She gave him yet another look, a fleeting one which he did not see. Then
she softly opened the door and passed into the room of the dying man.
Stephen followed her. As for Clarence, he stood for a space staring after
them. Then he went noiselessly down the stairs into the street.




CHAPTER XI

LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

When the Judge opened his eyes for the last time in this world, they fell
first upon the face of his old friend, Colonel Carvel. Twice he tried to
speak his name, and twice he failed. The third time he said it faintly.

"Comyn!"

"Yes, Silas."

"Comyn, what are you doing here?

"I reckon I came to see you, Silas," answered the Colonel.

"To see me die," said the Judge, grimly.

Colonel Carvel's face twitched, and the silence in that little room
seemed to throb.

"Comyn," said the Judge again, "I heard that you had gone South to fight
against your country. I see you here. Can it be that you have at last
returned in your allegiances to the flag for which your forefathers
died?"

Poor Colonel Carvel

"I am still of the same mind, Silas," he said.

The Judge turned his face away, his thin lips moving as in prayer. But
they knew that he was not praying, "Silas," said Mr. Carvel, "we were
friends for twenty years. Let us be friends again, before--"

"Before I die," the Judge interrupted, "I am ready to die. Yes, I am
ready. I have had a hard life, Comyn, and few friends. It was my fault.
I--I did not know how to make them. Yet no man ever valued those few more
than! But," he cried, the stern fire unquenched to the last, "I would
that God had spared me to see this Rebellion stamped out. For it will be
stamped out." To those watching, his eyes seemed fixed on a distant
point, and the light of prophecy was in them. "I would that God had
spared me to see this Union supreme once more. Yes, it will be supreme. A
high destiny is reserved for this nation--! I think the highest of all on
this earth." Amid profound silence he leaned back on the pillows from
which he had risen, his breath coming fast. None dared look at the
neighbor beside them.

It was Stephen's mother who spoke. "Would you not like to see a
clergyman, Judge?" she asked.

The look on his face softened as he turned to her.

"No, madam," he answered; "you are clergyman enough for me. You are near
enough to God--there is no one in this room who is not worthy to stand in
the presence of death. Yet I wish that a clergyman were here, that he
might listen to one thing I have to say. When I was a boy I worked my way
down the river to New York, to see the city. I met a bishop there. He
said to me, 'Sit down, my son, I want to talk to you. I know your father
in Albany. You are Senator Whipple's son.' I said to him, 'No, sir, I am
not Senator Whipple's son. I am no relation of his.' If the bishop had
wished to talk to me after that, Mrs. Brice, he might have made my life a
little easier--a little sweeter. I know that they are not all like that.
But it was by just such things that I was embittered when I was a boy."
He stopped, and when he spoke again, it was more slowly, more gently,
than any of them had heard him speak in all his life before. "I wish that
some of the blessings which I am leaving now had come to me then--when I
was a boy. I might have done my little share in making the world a
brighter place to live in, as all of you have done. Yes, as all of you
are now doing for me. I am leaving the world with a better opinion of it
than I ever held in life. God hid the sun from me when I was a little
child. Margaret Brice," he said, "if I had had such a mother as you, I
would have been softened then. I thank God that He sent you when He did."

The widow bowed her head, and a tear fell upon his pillow.

"I have done nothing," she murmured, "nothing."

"So shall they answer at the last whom He has chosen," said the Judge. "I
was sick, and ye visited me. He has promised to remember those who do
that. Hold up your head, my daughter. God has been good to you. He has
given you a son whom all men may look in the face, of whom you need never
be ashamed. Stephen," said the Judge, "come here."

Stephen made his way to the bedside, but because of the moisture in his
eyes he saw but dimly the gaunt face. And yet he shrank back in awe at
the change in it. So must all of the martyrs have looked when the fire of
the faggots licked their feet. So must John Bunyan have stared through
his prison bars at the sky.

"Stephen," he said, "you have been faithful in a few things. So shall you
be made ruler over many things. The little I have I leave to you, and the
chief of this is an untarnished name. I know that you will be true to it
because I have tried your strength. Listen carefully to what I have to
say, for I have thought over it long. In the days gone by our fathers
worked for the good of the people, and they had no thought of gain. A
time is coming when we shall need that blood and that bone in this
Republic. Wealth not yet dreamed of will flow out of this land, and the
waters of it will rot all save the pure, and corrupt all save the
incorruptible. Half-tried men wilt go down before that flood. You and
those like you will remember how your fathers governed,--strongly,
sternly, justly. It was so that they governed themselves.

"Be vigilant. Serve your city, serve your state, but above all serve your
country."

He paused to catch his breath, which was coming painfully now, and
reached out his bony hand to seek Stephen's. "I was harsh with you at
first, my son," he went on. "I wished to try you. And when I had tried
you I wished your mind to open, to keep pace with the growth of this
nation. I sent you to see Abraham Lincoln that you might be born again
--in the West. You were born again. I saw it when you came back--I saw it
in your face. O God," he cried, with sudden eloquence. "I would that his
hands--Abraham Lincoln's hands--might be laid upon all who complain and
cavil and criticise, and think of the little things in life: I would that
his spirit might possess their spirit!"

He stopped again. They marvelled and were awed, for never in all his days
had such speech broken from this man. "Good-by, Stephen," he said, when
they thought he was not to speak again. "Hold the image of Abraham
Lincoln in front of you. Never forget him. You--you are a man after his
own heart--and--and mine."

The last word was scarcely audible. They started for ward, for his eyes
were closed. But presently he stirred again, and opened them.

"Brinsmade," he said, "Brinsmade, take care of my orphan girls. Send
Shadrach here."

The negro came forth, shuffling and sobbing, from the doorway.

"You ain't gwine away, Marse Judge?"

"Yes, Shadrach, good-by. You have served me well, I have left you
provided for."

Shadrach kissed the hand of whose secret charity he knew so much. Then
the Judge withdrew it, and motioned to him to rise. He called his oldest
friend by name. And Colonel Carvel came from the corner where he had been
listening, with his face drawn.

"Good-by, Comyn. You were my friend when there was none other. You were
true to me when the hand of every man was against me. You--you have
risked your life to come to me here, May God spare it for Virginia."

At the sound of her name, the girl started. She came and bent over him.
And when she kissed him on the forehead, he trembled.

"Uncle Silas!" she faltered.

Weakly he reached up and put his hands on her shoulders. He whispered in
her ear. The tears came and lay wet upon her lashes as she undid the
button at his throat.

There, on a piece of cotton twine, hung a little key, She took it off,
but still his hands held her.

"I have saved it for you, my dear," he said. "God bless you--" why did
his eyes seek Stephen's?--"and make your life happy. Virginia--will you
play my hymn--once more--once more?"

They lifted the night lamp from the piano, and the medicine. It was
Stephen who stripped it of the black cloth it had worn, who stood by
Virginia ready to lift the lid when she had turned the lock. The girl's
exaltation gave a trembling touch divine to the well-remembered chords,
and those who heard were lifted, lifted far above and beyond the power of
earthly spell.

       "Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom
        Lead Thou me on
        The night is dark, and I am far from home;
        Lead Thou me on.
        Keep Thou my feet! I do not ask to see
        The distant scene; one step enough for me."

A sigh shook Silas Whipple's wasted frame, and he died.




THE CRISIS

By Winston Churchill


Volume 8.



CHAPTER XII

THE LAST CARD

Mr. Brinsmade and the Doctor were the first to leave the little room
where Silas Whipple had lived and worked and died, Mr. Brinsmade bent
upon one of those errands which claimed him at all times. He took
Shadrach with him. Virginia sat on, a vague fear haunting her,--a fear
for her father's safety. Where was Clarence? What had he seen? Was the
place watched? These questions, at first intruding upon her sorrow,
remained to torture her.

Softly she stirred from the chair where she had sat before the piano, and
opened the door of the outer office. A clock in a steeple near by was
striking twelve. The Colonel did not raise his head. Only Stephen saw her
go; she felt his eyes following her, and as she slipped out lifted hers
to meet them for a brief instant through the opening of the door. Then it
closed behind her.

First of all she knew that the light in the outer office was burning
dimly, and the discovery gave her a shock. Who had turned it down? Had
Clarence? Was he here? Fearfully searching the room for him, her gaze was
held by a figure in the recess of the window at the back of the room. A
solid, bulky figure it was, and, though uncertainly outlined in the
semi-darkness, she knew it. She took a step nearer, and a cry escaped
her.

The man was Eliphalet Hopper. He got down from the sill with a motion at
once sheepish and stealthy. Her breath caught, and instinctively she gave
back toward the door, as if to open it again.

"Hold on!" he said. "I've got something I want to say to you, Miss
Virginia."

His tones seemed strangely natural. They were not brutal. But she
shivered and paused, horrified at the thought of what she was about to
do. Her father was in that room--and Stephen. She must keep them there,
and get this man away. She must not show fright before him, and yet she
could not trust her voice to speak just then. She must not let him know
that she was afraid of him--this she kept repeating to herself. But how
to act? Suddenly an idea flashed upon her.

Virginia never knew how she gathered the courage to pass him, even
swiftly, and turn up the gas. He started back, blinking as the jet
flared. For a moment she stood beside it, with her head high; confronting
him and striving to steady herself for speech.

"Why have you come here?" she said. "Judge Whipple--died--to-night."

The dominating note in his answer was a whine, as if, in spite of
himself, he were awed.

"I ain't here to see the Judge."

She was pale, and quite motionless. And she faltered now. She felt her
lips moving, but knew not whether the words had come.

"What do you mean?"

He gained confidence. The look in his little eyes was the filmy look of
those of an animal feasting.

"I came here to see you," he said, "--you." She was staring at him now, in
horror. "And if you don't give me what I want, I cal'late to see some one
else--in there," said Mr. Hopper.

He smiled, for she was swaying, her lids half closed. By a supreme effort
she conquered her terror and looked at him. The look was in his eyes
still, intensified now.

"How dare you speak to me after what has happened! she said. If Colonel
Carvel were here, he would--kill you."

He flinched at the name and the word, involuntarily. He wiped his
forehead, hot at the very thought.

"I want to know!" he exclaimed, in faint-hearted irony. Then, remembering
his advantage, he stepped close to her.

"He is here," he said, intense now. "He is here, in that there room." He
seized her wrists. Virginia struggled, and yet she refrained from crying
out. "He never leaves this city without I choose. I can have him hung if
I choose," he whispered, next to her.

"Oh!" she cried; "oh, if you choose!"

Still his body crept closer, and his face closer. And her strength was
going.

"There's but one price to pay," he said hoarsely, "there's but one price
to pay, and that's you--you. I cal'late you'll marry me now."

Delirious at the touch of her, he did not hear the door open. Her senses
were strained for that very sound. She heard it close again, and a
footstep across the room. She knew the step--she knew the voice, and her
heart leaped at the sound of it in anger. An arm in a blue sleeve came
between them, and Eliphalet Hopper staggered and fell across the books on
the table, his hand to his face. Above him towered Stephen Brice. Towered
was the impression that came to Virginia then, and so she thought of the
scene ever afterward. Small bits, like points of tempered steel,
glittered in Stephen's eyes, and his hands following up the mastery he
had given them clutched Mr. Hopper's shoulders. Twice Stephen shook him
so that his head beat upon the table.

"You--you beast!" he cried, but he kept his voice low. And then, as if he
expected Hopper to reply: "Shall I kill you?"

Again he shook him violently. He felt Virginia's touch on his arm.

"Stephen!" she cried, "your wounds! Be careful! Oh, do be careful!"

She had called him Stephen. He turned slowly, and his hands fell from Mr.
Hopper's cowering form as his eyes met hers. Even he could not fathom the
appeal, the yearning, in their dark blue depths. And yet what he saw
there made him tremble. She turned away, trembling too.

"Please sit down," she entreated. "He--he won't touch me again while you
are here."

Eliphalet Hopper raised himself from the desk, and one of the big books
fell with a crash to the floor. Then they saw him shrink, his eyes fixed
upon some one behind them. Before the Judge's door stood Colonel Carvel,
in calm, familiar posture, his feet apart, and his head bent forward as
he pulled at his goatee.

"What is this man doing here, Virginia?" he asked. She did not answer
him, nor did speech seem to come easily to Mr. Hopper in that instant.
Perhaps the sight of Colonel Carvel had brought before him too, vividly
the memory of that afternoon at Glencoe.

All at once Virginia grasped the fulness of the power in this man's
hands. At a word from him her father would be shot as a spy--and Stephen
Brice, perhaps, as a traitor. But if Colonel Carvel should learn that he
had seized her,--here was the terrible danger of the situation. Well she
knew what the Colonel would do. Would. Stephen tell him? She trusted in
his coolness that he would not.

Before a word of reply came from any of the three, a noise was heard on
the stairway. Some one was coming up. There followed four seconds of
suspense, and then Clarence came in. She saw that his face wore a
worried, dejected look. It changed instantly when he glanced about him,
and an oath broke from his lips as he singled out Eliphalet Hopper
standing in sullen aggressiveness, beside the table.

"So you're the spy, are you?" he said in disgust. Then he turned his back
and faced his uncle. "I saw, him in Williams's entry as we drove up. He
got away from me."

A thought seemed to strike him. He strode to the open window at the back
of the office, and looked out, There was a roof under it.

"The sneak got in here," he said. "He knew I was waiting for him in the
street. So you're the spy, are you?"

Mr. Hopper passed a heavy hand across the cheek where Stephen had struck
him.

"No, I ain't the spy," he said, with a meaning glance at the Colonel.

"Then what are you doing here?" demanded Clarence, fiercely.

"I cal'late that he knows," Eliphalet replied, jerking his head toward
Colonel Carvel. "Where's his Confederate uniform? What's to prevent my
calling up the provost's guard below?" he continued, with a smile that
was hideous on his swelling face.

It was the Colonel who answered him, very quickly and very clearly.

"Nothing whatever, Mr. Hopper," he said. "This is the way out." He
pointed at the door. Stephen, who was watching him, could not tell
whether it were a grim smile that creased the corners of the Colonel's
mouth as he added. "You might prefer the window."

Mr. Hopper did not move, but his eyes shifted to Virginia's form. Stephen
deliberately thrust himself between them that he might not see her.

"What are you waiting for?" said the Colonel, in the mild voice that
should have been an ominous warning. Still Mr. Hopper did not move. It
was clear that he had not reckoned upon all of this; that he had waited
in the window to deal with Virginia alone. But now the very force of a
desire which had gathered strength in many years made him reckless. His
voice took on the oily quality in which he was wont to bargain.

"Let's be calm about this business, Colonel," he said. "We won't say
anything about the past. But I ain't set on having you shot. There's a
consideration that would stop me, and I cal'late you know what it is."

Then the Colonel made a motion. But before he had taken a step Virginia
had crossed the room swiftly, and flung herself upon him.

"Oh, don't, Pa!" she cried. "Don't! Tell him that I will agree to it.
Yes, I will. I can't have you--shot." The last word came falteringly,
faintly.

"Let me go,--honey," whispered the Colonel, gently. His eyes did not
leave Eliphalet. He tried to disengage himself, but her fingers were
clasped about his neck in a passion of fear and love. And then, while she
clung to him, her head was raised to listen. The sound of Stephen Brice's
voice held her as in a spell. His words were coming coldly, deliberately,
and yet so sharply that each seemed to fall like a lash.

"Mr. Hopper, if ever I hear of your repeating what you have seen or heard
in this room, I will make this city and this state too hot for you to
live in. I know you. I know how you hide in areas, how you talk sedition
in private, how you have made money out of other men's misery. And, what
is more, I can prove that you have had traitorous dealings with the
Confederacy. General Sherman has been good enough to call himself a
friend of mine, and if he prosecutes you for your dealings in Memphis,
you will get a term in a Government prison, You ought to be hung. Colonel
Carvel has shown you the door. Now go."

And Mr, Hopper went.




CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE LETTERS OF MAJOR STEPHEN BRICE

Of the Staff of General Sherman on the March to the Sea, and on the March
from Savannah Northward.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI GOLDSBORO, N.C. MARCH
24, 1865

DEAR MOTHER: The South Carolina Campaign is a thing of the past. I pause
as I write these words--they seem so incredible to me. We have marched
the four hundred and twenty-five miles in fifty days, and the General
himself has said that it is the longest and most important march ever
made by an organized army in a civilized country. I know that you will
not be misled by the words "civilized country." Not until the history of
this campaign is written will the public realize the wide rivers and all
but impassable swamps we have crossed with our baggage trains and
artillery. The roads (by courtesy so called) were a sea of molasses and
every mile of them has had to be corduroyed. For fear of worrying you I
did not write you from Savannah how they laughed at us for starting at
that season of the year. They said we would not go ten miles, and I most
solemnly believe that no one but "Uncle Billy" and an army organized and
equipped by him could have gone ten miles. Nothing seems to stop him. You
have probably remarked in the tone of my letters ever since we left
Kingston for the sea, a growing admiration for "my General."

It seems very strange that this wonderful tactician can be the same man I
met that day going to the Arsenal in the streetcar, and again at Camp
Jackson. I am sure that history will give him a high place among the
commanders of the world. Certainly none was ever more tireless than he.
He never fights a battle when it can be avoided, and his march into
Columbia while threatening Charleston and Augusta was certainly a master
stroke of strategy.

I think his simplicity his most remarkable trait. You should see him as
he rides through the army, an erect figure, with his clothes all angular
and awry, and an expanse of white sock showing above his low shoes. You
can hear his name running from file to file; and some times the new
regiments can't resist cheering. He generally says to the Colonel:
--"Stop that noise, sir. Don't like it."

On our march to the sea, if the orders were ever given to turn northward,
"the boys" would get very much depressed. One moonlight night I was
walking my horse close to the General's over the pine needles, when we
overheard this conversation between two soldiers:-- "Say, John," said
one, "I guess Uncle Billy don't know our corps is goin' north."

"I wonder if he does,'" said John. "If I could only get a sight of them
white socks, I'd know it was all right."

The General rode past without a word, but I heard him telling the story
to Mower the next day.

I can find little if any change in his manner since I knew him first. He
is brusque, but kindly, and he has the same comradeship with officers and
men--and even the negroes who flock to our army. But few dare to take
advantage of it, and they never do so twice. I have been very near to
him, and have tried not to worry him or ask many foolish questions.
Sometimes on the march he will beckon me to close up to him, and we have
a conversation something on this order:-- "There's Kenesaw, Brice."

"Yes, sir."

Pointing with his arm.

"Went beyond lines there with small party. Rebel battery on summit. Had
to git. Fired on. Next day I thought Rebels would leave in the night. Got
up before daylight, fixed telescope on stand, and waited. Watched top of
Kenesaw. No Rebel. Saw one blue man creep up, very cautious, looked
around, waved his hat. Rebels gone. Thought so."

This gives you but a faint idea of the vividness of his talk. When we
make a halt for any time, the general officers and their staffs flock to
headquarters to listen to his stories. When anything goes wrong, his
perception of it is like a lightning flash,--and he acts as quickly.

By the way, I have just found the letter he wrote me, offering this staff
position. Please keep it carefully, as it is something I shall value all
my life.

   GAYLESVILLE, ALABAMA, October 25, 1864.

   MAJOR STEPHEN A. BRICE:

   Dear Sir,--The world goes on, and wicked men sound asleep. Davis
   has sworn to destroy my army, and Beauregard has come to do the
   work,--so if you expect to share in our calamity, come down. I
   offer you this last chance for staff duty, and hope you have had
   enough in the field. I do not wish to hurry you, but you can't get
   aboard a ship at sea. So if you want to make the trip, come to
   Chattanooga and take your chances of meeting me.

               Yours truly,

                  W. T. SHERMAN, Major General.

One night--at Cheraw, I think it was--he sent for me to talk to him. I
found him lying on a bed of Spanish moss they had made for him. He asked
me a great many questions about St. Louis, and praised Mr. Brinsmade,
especially his management of the Sanitary Commission.

"Brice," he said, after a while, "you remember when Grant sent me to beat
off Joe Johnston's army from Vicksburg. You were wounded then, by the
way, in that dash Lauman made. Grant thought he ought to warn me against
Johnston.

"'He's wily, Sherman,' said he. 'He's a dangerous man.'

"'Grant,' said I, 'you give me men enough and time enough to look over
the ground, and I'm not afraid of the devil.'"

Nothing could sum up the man better than that. And now what a trick of
fate it is that he has Johnston before him again, in what we hope will
prove the last gasp of the war! He likes Johnston, by the way, and has
the greatest respect for him.

I wish you could have peeped into our camp once in a while. In the rare
bursts of sunshine on this march our premises have been decorated with
gay red blankets, and sombre gray ones brought from the quartermasters,
and white Hudson's Bay blankets (not so white now), all being between
forked sticks. It is wonderful how the pitching of a few tents, and the
busy crackle of a few fires, and the sound of voices--sometimes merry,
sometimes sad, depending on the weather, will change the look of a lonely
pine knoll. You ask me how we fare. I should be heartily ashamed if a
word of complaint ever fell from my lips. But the men! Whenever I wake up
at night with my feet in a puddle between the blankets, I think of the
men. The corduroy roads which our horses stumble over through the mud,
they make as well as march on. Our flies are carried in wagons, and our
utensils and provisions. They must often bear on their backs the little
dog-tents, under which, put up by their own labor, they crawl to sleep,
wrapped in a blanket they have carried all day, perhaps waist deep in
water. The food they eat has been in their haversacks for many a weary
mile, and is cooked in the little skillet and pot which have also been a
part of their burden. Then they have their musket and accoutrements, and
the "forty rounds" at their backs. Patiently, cheerily tramping along,
going they know not where, nor care much either, so it be not in retreat.
Ready to make roads, throw up works, tear up railroads, or hew out and
build wooden bridges; or, best of all, to go for the Johnnies under hot
sun or heavy rain, through swamp and mire and quicksand. They marched ten
miles to storm Fort McAllister. And how the cheers broke from them when
the pop pop pop of the skirmish line began after we came in sight of
Savannah! No man who has seen but not shared their life may talk of
personal hardship.

We arrived at this pretty little town yesterday, so effecting a junction
with Schofield, who got in with the 3d Corps the day before. I am writing
at General Schofield's headquarters. There was a bit of a battle on
Tuesday at Bentonville, and we have come hither in smoke, as usual. But
this time we thank Heaven that it is not the smoke of burning homes,
--only some resin the "Johnnies" set on fire before they left.

I must close. General Sherman has just sent for me.

               ON BOARD DESPATCH BOAT "MARTIN."
                  AT SEA, March 25, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: A most curious thing has happened. But I may as well begin
at the beginning. When I stopped writing last evening at the summons of
the General, I was about to tell you something of the battle of
Bentonville on Tuesday last. Mower charged through as bad a piece of wood
and swamp as I ever saw, and got within one hundred yards of Johnston
himself, who was at the bridge across Mill Creek. Of course we did not
know this at the time, and learned it from prisoners.

As I have written you, I have been under fire very little since coming to
the staff. When the battle opened, however, I saw that if I stayed with
the General (who was then behind the reserves) I would see little or
nothing; I went ahead "to get information" beyond the line of battle into
the woods. I did not find these favorable to landscape views, and just as
I was turning my horse back again I caught sight of a commotion some
distance to my right. The Rebel skirmish line had fallen back just that
instant, two of our skirmishers were grappling with a third man, who was
fighting desperately. It struck me as singular that the fellow was not in
gray, but had on some sort of dark clothes.

I could not reach them in the swamp on horseback, and was in the act of
dismounting when the man fell, and then they set out to carry him to the
rear, still farther to my right, beyond the swamp. I shouted, and one of
the skirmishers came up. I asked him what the matter was.

"We've got a spy, sir," he said excitedly.

"A spy! Here?"

"Yes, Major. He was hid in the thicket yonder, lying flat on his face. He
reckoned that our boys would run right over him and that he'd get into
our lines that way. Tim Foley stumbled on him, and he put up as good a
fight with his fists as any man I ever saw."

Just then a regiment swept past us. That night I told the General, who
sent over to the headquarters of the 17th Corps to inquire. The word came
back that the man's name was Addison, and he claimed to be a Union
sympathizer who owned a plantation near by. He declared that he had been
conscripted by the Rebels, wounded, sent back home, and was now about to
be pressed in again. He had taken this method of escaping to our lines.
It was a common story enough, but General Mower added in his message that
he thought the story fishy. This was because the man's appearance was
very striking, and he seemed the type of Confederate fighter who would do
and dare anything. He had a wound, which had been a bad one, evidently
got from a piece of shell. But they had been able to find nothing on him.
Sherman sent back word to keep the man until he could see him in person.
It was about nine o'clock last night when I reached the house the General
has taken. A prisoner's guard was resting outside, and the hall was full
of officers. They said that the General was awaiting me, and pointed to
the closed door of a room that had been the dining room. I opened it.

Two candles were burning in pewter sticks on the bare mahogany table.
There was the General sitting beside them, with his legs crossed, holding
some crumpled tissue paper very near his eyes, and reading. He did not
look up when I entered. I was aware of a man standing, tall and straight,
just out of range of the candles' rays. He wore the easy dress of a
Southern planter, with the broad felt hat. The head was flung back so
that there was just a patch of light on the chin, and the lids of the
eyes in the shadow were half closed.

My sensations are worth noting. For the moment I felt precisely as I had
when I was hit by that bullet in Lauman's charge. I was aware of
something very like pain, yet I could not place the cause of it. But this
is what since has made me feel queer: you doubtless remember staying at
Hollingdean, when I was a boy, and hearing the story of Lord Northwell's
daredevil Royalist ancestor,--the one with the lace collar over the
dull-gold velvet, and the pointed chin, and the lazy scorn in the eyes.
Those eyes are painted with drooping lids. The first time I saw Clarence
Colfax I thought of that picture--and now I thought of the picture first.

The General's voice startled me.

"Major Brice, do you know this gentleman?" he asked.

"Yes, General."

"Who is he?"

"His name is Colfax, sir--Colonel Colfax, I think"

"Thought so," said the General.

I have thought much of that scene since, as I am steaming northward over
green seas and under cloudless skies, and it has seemed very unreal. I
should almost say supernatural when I reflect how I have run across this
man again and again, and always opposing him. I can recall just how he
looked at the slave auction, which seem, so long ago: very handsome, very
boyish, and yet with the air of one to be deferred to. It was
sufficiently remarkable that I should have found him in Vicksburg. But
now--to be brought face to face with him in this old dining room in
Goldsboro! And he a prisoner. He had not moved. I did not know how he
would act, but I went up to him and held out my hand, and said.--"How do
you do, Colonel Colfax?"

I am sure that my voice was not very steady, for I cannot help liking him
And then his face lighted up and he gave me his hand. And he smiled at me
and again at the General, as much as to say that it was all over. He has
a wonderful smile.

"We seem to run into each other, Major Brice," said he.

The pluck of the man was superb. I could see that the General, too, was
moved, from the way he looked at him. And he speaks a little more
abruptly at such times.

"Guess that settles it, Colonel," he said.

"I reckon it does, General," said Clarence, still smiling. The General
turned from him to the table with a kind of jerk and clapped his hand on
the tissue paper.

"These speak for themselves, sir," he said. "It is very plain that they
would have reached the prominent citizens for whom they were intended if
you had succeeded in your enterprise. You were captured out of uniform
You know enough of war to appreciate the risk you ran. Any statement to
make?"

"No, sir."

"Call Captain Vaughan, Brice, and ask him to conduct the prisoner back."

"May I speak to him, General?" I asked. The General nodded.

I asked him if I could write home for him or do anything else. That
seemed to touch him. Some day I shall tell you what he said.

Then Vaughan took him out, and I heard the guard shoulder arms and tramp
away in the night. The General and I were left alone with the mahogany
table between us, and a family portrait of somebody looking down on us
from the shadow on the wall. A moist spring air came in at the open
windows, and the candles flickered. After a silence, I ventured to say:

"I hope he won't be shot, General."

"Don't know, Brice," he answered. "Can't tell now. Hate to shoot him, but
war is war. Magnificent class he belongs to--pity we should have to fight
those fellows."

He paused, and drummed on the table. "Brice," said he, "I'm going to send
you to General Grant at City Point with despatches. I'm sorry Dunn went
back yesterday, but it can't be helped. Can you start in half an hour?"

"Yes, sir."

"You'll have to ride to Kinston. The railroad won't be through until
to-morrow: I'll telegraph there, and to General Easton at Morehead City.
He'll have a boat for you. Tell Grant I expect to run up there in a day
or two myself, when things are arranged here. You may wait until I come."

"Yes, sir."

I turned to go, but Clarence Colfax was on my mind "General?"

"Eh! what?"

"General, could you hold Colonel Colfax until I see you again?"

It was a bold thing to say, and I quaked. And he looked at me in his keen
way, through and through "You saved his life once before, didn't you?"

"You allowed me to have him sent home from Vicksburg, sir."

He answered with one of his jokes--apropos of something he said on the
Court House steps at Vicksburg. Perhaps I shall tell it to you sometime.

"Well, well," he said, "I'll see, I'll see. Thank God this war is pretty
near over. I'll let you know, Brice, before I shoot him."

I rode the thirty odd miles to Kinston in--little more than three hours.
A locomotive was waiting for me, and I jumped into a cab with a friendly
engineer. Soon we were roaring seaward through the vast pine forests. It
was a lonely journey, and you were much in my mind. My greatest
apprehension was that we might be derailed and the despatches captured;
for as fast as our army had advanced, the track of it had closed again,
like the wake of a ship at sea. Guerillas were roving about, tearing up
ties and destroying bridges.

There was one five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the
tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming. The engineer said
there was no house there, that it must be a fire. But we did not slacken
our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until
we were upon them.

Not one gaunt figure stood between them and us. Not one shot broke the
stillness of the night. As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of
the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the
desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white in the chill
morning air.




CHAPTER XIV

THE SAME, CONTINUED

             HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES,
              CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 28, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: I arrived here safely the day before yesterday, and I hope
that you will soon receive some of the letters I forwarded on that day.
It is an extraordinary place, this City Point; a military city sprung up
like a mushroom in a winter. And my breath was quite taken away when I
first caught sight of it on the high table-land. The great bay in front
of it, which the Appomattox helps to make, is a maze of rigging and
smoke-pipes, like the harbor of a prosperous seaport. There are gunboats
and supply boats, schooners and square-riggers and steamers, all huddled
together, and our captain pointed out to me the 'Malvern' flying Admiral
Porter's flag. Barges were tied up at the long wharves, and these were
piled high with wares and flanked by squat warehouses. Although it was
Sunday, a locomotive was puffing and panting along the foot of the ragged
bank.

High above, on the flat promontory between the two rivers, is the city of
tents and wooden huts, the great trees in their fresh faint green
towering above the low roofs. At the point of the bluff a large flag
drooped against its staff, and I did not have to be told that this was
General Grant's headquarters.

There was a fine steamboat lying at the wharf, and I had hardly stepped
ashore before they told me she was President Lincoln's. I read the name
on her--the 'River Queen'. Yes, the President is here, too, with his wife
and family.

There are many fellows here with whom I was brought up in Boston. I am
living with Jack Hancock, whom you will remember well. He is a captain
now, and has a beard.

But I must go on with my story. I went straight to General Grant's
headquarters,--just a plain, rough slat house such as a contractor might
build for a temporary residence. Only the high flagstaff and the Stars
and Stripes distinguish it from many others of the same kind. A group of
officers stood chatting outside of it, and they told me that the General
had walked over to get his mail. He is just as unassuming and democratic
as "my general." General Rankin took me into the office, a rude room, and
we sat down at the long table there. Presently the door opened, and a man
came in with a slouch hat on and his coat unbuttoned. He was smoking a
cigar. We rose to our feet, and I saluted.

It was the general-in-chief. He stared at me, but said nothing.

"General, this is Major Brice of General Sherman's staff. He has brought
despatches from Goldsboro," said Rankin.

He nodded, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and reached out for
the despatches. While reading them he did not move, except to light
another cigar. I am getting hardened to unrealities,--perhaps I should
say marvels, now. Our country abounds in them. It did not seem so strange
that this silent General with the baggy trousers was the man who had
risen by leaps and bounds in four years to be general-in-chief of our
armies. His face looks older and more sunken than it did on that day in
the street near the Arsenal, in St. Louis, when he was just a military
carpet-bagger out of a job. He is not changed otherwise. But how
different the impressions made by the man in authority and the same man
out of authority!

He made a sufficient impression upon me then, as I told you at the time.
That was because I overheard his well-merited rebuke to Hopper. But I
little dreamed that I was looking on the man who was to come out of the
West and save this country from disunion. And how quietly and simply he
has done it, without parade or pomp or vainglory. Of all those who, with
every means at their disposal, have tried to conquer Lee, he is the only
one who has in any manner succeeded. He has been able to hold him
fettered while Sherman has swept the Confederacy. And these are the two
men who were unknown when the war began.

When the General had finished reading the despatches, he folded them
quickly and put them in his pocket.

"Sit down and tell me about this last campaign of yours, Major," he said.

I talked with him for about half an hour. I should rather say talked to
him. He is a marked contrast to Sherman in this respect. I believe that
he only opened his lips to ask two questions. You may well believe that
they were worth the asking, and they revealed an intimate knowledge of
our march from Savannah. I was interrupted many times by the arrival of
different generals, aides, etc. He sat there smoking, imperturbable.
Sometimes he said "yes" or "no," but oftener he merely nodded his head.
Once he astounded by a brief question an excitable young lieutenant, who
floundered. The General seemed to know more than he about the matter he
had in hand.

When I left him, he asked me where I was quartered, and said he hoped I
would be comfortable.

Jack Hancock was waiting for me, and we walked around the city, which
even has barber shops. Everywhere were signs of preparation, for the
roads are getting dry, and the General preparing for a final campaign
against Lee. Poor Lee! What a marvellous fight he has made with his
material. I think that he will be reckoned among the greatest generals of
our race.

Of course, I was very anxious to get a glimpse of the President, and so
we went down to the wharf, where we heard that he had gone off for a
horseback ride. They say that he rides nearly every day, over the
corduroy roads and through the swamps, and wherever the boys see that
tall hat they cheer. They know it as well as the lookout tower on the
flats of Bermuda Hundred. He lingers at the campfires and swaps stories
with the officers, and entertains the sick and wounded in the hospitals.
Isn't it like him?

He hasn't changed, either. I believe that the great men don't change.
Away with your Napoleons and your Marlboroughs and your Stuarts. These
are the days of simple men who command by force of character, as well as
knowledge. Thank God for the American! I believe that he will change the
world, and strip it of its vainglory and hypocrisy.

In the evening, as we were sitting around Hancock's fire, an officer came
in.

"Is Major Brice here?" he asked. I jumped up.

"The President sends his compliments, Major, and wants to know if you
would care to pay him a little visit."

If I would care to pay him a little visit! That officer had to hurry to
keep up with the as I walked to the wharf. He led me aboard the River
Queen, and stopped at the door of the after-cabin.

Mr. Lincoln was sitting under the lamp, slouched down in his chair, in
the position I remembered so well. It was as if I had left him but
yesterday. He was whittling, and he had made some little toy for his son
Tad, who ran out as I entered.

When he saw me, the President rose to his great height, a sombre,
towering figure in black. He wears a scraggly beard now. But the sad
smile, the kindly eyes in their dark caverns, the voice--all were just
the same. I stopped when I looked upon the face. It was sad and lined
when I had known it, but now all the agony endured by the millions, North
and South, seemed written on it.

"Don't you remember me, Major?" he asked.

The wonder was that he had remembered me! I took his big, bony hand,
which reminded me of Judge Whipple's. Yes, it was just as if I had been
with him always, and he were still the gaunt country lawyer.

"Yes, sir," I said, "indeed I do."

He looked at me with that queer expression of mirth he sometimes has.

"Are these Boston ways, Steve?" he asked. "They're tenacious. I didn't
think that any man could travel so close to Sherman and keep 'em."

"They're unfortunate ways, sir," I said, "if they lead you to misjudge
me."

He laid his hand on my shoulder, just as he had done at Freeport.

"I know you, Steve," he said. "I shuck an ear of corn before I buy it.
I've kept tab on you a little the last five years, and when I heard
Sherman had sent a Major Brice up here, I sent for you."

What I said was boyish. "I tried very hard to get a glimpse of you
to-day, Mr. Lincoln. I wanted to see you again."

He was plainly pleased.

"I'm glad to hear it, Steve," he said. "Then you haven't joined the ranks
of the grumblers? You haven't been one of those who would have liked to
try running this country for a day or two, just to show me how to do it?"

"No, sir," I said, laughing.

"Good!" he cried, slapping his knee. "I didn't think you were that kind,
Steve. Now sit down and tell me about this General of mine who wears
seven-leagued boots. What was it--four hundred and twenty miles in fifty
days? How many navigable rivers did he step across?" He began to count on
those long fingers of his. "The Edisto, the Broad, the Catawba, the
Pedee, and--?"

"The Cape Fear," I said.

"Is--is the General a nice man?" asked Mr. Lincoln, his eyes twinkling.

"Yes, sir, he is that," I answered heartily. "And not a man in the army
wants anything when he is around. You should see that Army of the
Mississippi, sir. They arrived in Goldsboro' in splendid condition."

He got up and gathered his coat-tails under his arms, and began to walk
up and down the cabin.

"What do the boys call the General?" he asked.

I told him "Uncle Billy." And, thinking the story of the white socks
might amuse him, I told him that. It did amuse him.

"Well, now," he said, "any man that has a nickname like that is all
right. That's the best recommendation you can give the General--just say
'Uncle Billy.'" He put one lip over the other. "You've given 'Uncle
Billy' a good recommendation, Steve," he said. "Did you ever hear the
story of Mr. Wallace's Irish gardener?"

"No, sir."

"Well, when Wallace was hiring his gardener he asked him whom he had been
living with.

"'Misther Dalton, sorr.'

"'Have you a recommendation, Terence?'

"'A ricommindation is it, sorr? Sure I have nothing agin Misther Dalton,
though he moightn't be knowing just the respict the likes of a
first-class garthener is entitled to.'"

He did not laugh. He seldom does, it seems, at his own stories. But I
could not help laughing over the "ricommindation" I had given the
General. He knew that I was embarrassed, and said kindly:-- "Now tell me
something about 'Uncle Billy's Bummers.' I hear that they have a most
effectual way of tearing up railroads."

I told him of Poe's contrivance of the hook and chain, and how the
heaviest rails were easily overturned with it, and how the ties were
piled and fired and the rails twisted out of shape. The President
listened to every word with intense interest.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed, "we have got a general. Caesar burnt his bridges
behind him, but Sherman burns his rails. Now tell me some more."

He helped me along by asking questions. Then I began to tell him how the
negroes had flocked into our camps, and how simply and plainly the
General had talked to them, advising them against violence of any kind,
and explaining to them that "Freedom" meant only the liberty to earn
their own living in their own way, and not freedom from work.

"We have got a general, sure enough," he cried. "He talks to them
plainly, does he, so that they understand? I say to you, Brice," he went
on earnestly, "the importance of plain talk can't be overestimated. Any
thought, however abstruse, can be put in speech that a boy or a negro can
grasp. Any book, however deep, can be written in terms that everybody can
comprehend, if a man only tries hard enough. When I was a boy I used to
hear the neighbors talking, and it bothered me so because I could not
understand them that I used to sit up half the night thinking things out
for myself. I remember that I did not know what the word demonstrate
meant. So I stopped my studies then and there and got a volume of Euclid.
Before I got through I could demonstrate everything in it, and I have
never been bothered with demonstrate since."

I thought of those wonderfully limpid speeches of his: of the Freeport
debates, and of the contrast between his style and Douglas's. And I
understood the reason for it at last. I understood the supreme mind that
had conceived the Freeport Question. And as I stood before him then, at
the close of this fearful war, the words of the Gospel were in my mind.
'So the last shall be first, and the first, last; for many be called, but
few chosen.'

How I wished that all those who have maligned and tortured him could talk
with him as I had talked with him. To know his great heart would disarm
them of all antagonism. They would feel, as I feel, that his life is so
much nobler than theirs, and his burdens so much heavier, that they would
go away ashamed of their criticism.

He said to me once, "Brice, I hope we are in sight of the end, now. I hope
that we may get through without any more fighting. I don't want to see
any more of our countrymen killed. And then," he said, as if talking to
himself, "and then we must show them mercy--mercy."

I thought it a good time to mention Colfax's case. He has been on my mind
ever since. Mr. Lincoln listened attentively. Once he sighed, and he was
winding his long fingers around each other while I talked.

"I saw the man captured, Mr. Lincoln," I concluded, "And if a
technicality will help him out, he was actually within his own skirmish
line at the time. The Rebel skirmishers had not fallen back on each side
of him."

"Brice," he said, with that sorrowful smile, "a technicality might save
Colfax, but it won't save me. Is this man a friend of yours?" he asked.

That was a poser.

"I think he is, Mr. Lincoln. I should like to call him so. I admire him."
And I went on to tell of what he had done at Vicksburg, leaving out,
however, my instrumentality in having him sent north. The President used
almost Sherman's words.

"By Jing!" he exclaimed. (That seems to be a favorite expression of his.)
"Those fellows were born to fight. If it wasn't for them, the South would
have quit long ago." Then he looked at me in his funny way, and said,
"See here, Steve, if this Colfax isn't exactly a friend of yours, there
must be some reason why you are pleading for him in this way."

"Well, sir," I said, at length, "I should like to get him off on account
of his cousin, Miss Virginia Carvel." And I told him something about Miss
Carvel, and how she had helped you with the Union sergeant that day in
the hot hospital. And how she had nursed Judge Whipple."

"She's a fine woman," he said. "Those women have helped those men to
prolong this war about three years.

"And yet we must save them for the nation's sake. They are to be the
mothers of our patriots in days to come. Is she a friend of yours, too,
Steve?"

What was I to say?

"Not especially, sir," I answered finally. I have had to offend her
rather often. But I know that she likes my mother."

"Why!" he cried, jumping up, "she's a daughter of Colonel Carvel. I
always had an admiration for that man. An ideal Southern gentleman of the
old school,--courteous, as honorable and open as the day, and as brave as
a lion. You've heard the story of how he threw a man named Babcock out of
his store, who tried to bribe him?"

"I heard you tell it in that tavern, sir. And I have heard it since." It
did me good to hear the Colonel praised.

"I always liked that story," he said. "By the way, what's become of the
Colonel?"

"He got away--South, sir," I answered. "He couldn't stand it. He hasn't
been heard of since the summer of '63. They think he was killed in Texas.
But they are not positive. They probably never will be," I added. He was
silent awhile.

"Too bad!" he said. "Too bad. What stuff those men are made of! And so
you want me to pardon this Colfax?"

"It would be presumptuous in me to go that far, sir," I replied. "But I
hoped you might speak of it to the General when he comes. And I would be
glad of the opportunity to testify."

He took a few strides up and down the room.

"Well, well," he said, "that's my vice--pardoning, saying yes. It's
always one more drink with me. It--" he smiled--"it makes me sleep
better. I've pardoned enough Rebels to populate New Orleans. Why," he
continued, with his whimsical look, "just before I left Washington, in
comes one of your Missouri senators with a list of Rebels who are shut up
in McDowell's and Alton. I said:-- "'Senator, you're not going to ask me
to turn loose all those at once?'

"He said just what you said when you were speaking of Missouri a while
ago, that he was afraid of guerilla warfare, and that the war was nearly
over. I signed 'em. And then what does he do but pull out another batch
longer than the first! And those were worse than the first.

"'What! you don't want me to turn these loose, too?'

"'Yes, I do, Mr. President. I think it will pay to be merciful.'

"'Then durned if I don't,' I said, and I signed 'em."

                  STEAMER "RIVER QUEEN."
               ON THE POTOMAC, April 9, 1865.

DEAR MOTHER: I am glad that the telegrams I have been able to send
reached you safely. I have not had time to write, and this will be but a
short letter.

You will be surprised to see this heading. I am on the President's boat,
in the President's party, bound with him for Washington. And this is how
it happened: The very afternoon of the day I wrote you, General Sherman
himself arrived at City Point on the steamer 'Russia'. I heard the
salutes, and was on the wharf to meet him. That same afternoon he and
General Grant and Admiral Porter went aboard the River Queen to see the
President. How I should have liked to be present at that interview! After
it was over they all came out of the cabin together General Grant silent,
and smoking, as usual; General Sherman talking vivaciously; and Lincoln
and the Admiral smiling and listening. That was historic! I shall never
expect to see such a sight again in all my days. You can imagine my
surprise when the President called me from where I was standing at some
distance with the other officers. He put his hand on my shoulder then and
there, and turned to General Sherman.

"Major Brice is a friend of mine, General," he said. "I knew him in
Illinois."

"He never told me that," said the General.

"I guess he's got a great many important things shut up inside of him,"
said Mr. Lincoln, banteringly. "But he gave you a good recommendation,
Sherman. He said that you wore white socks, and that the boys liked you
and called you 'Uncle Billy.' And I told him that was the best
recommendation he could give anybody."

I was frightened. But the General only looked at me with those eyes that
go through everything, and then he laughed.

"Brice," he said, "You'll have my reputation ruined."

"Sherman," said Mr. Lincoln, "you don't want the Major right away, do
you? Let him stay around here for a while with me. I think he'll find it
interesting." He looked at the general-in-chief, who was smiling just a
little bit. "I've got a sneaking notion that Grant's going to do
something."

Then they all laughed.

"Certainly, Mr. Lincoln," said my General, "you may have Brice. Be
careful he doesn't talk you to death--he's said too much already."

That is how I came to stay.

I have no time now to tell you all that I have seen and heard. I have
ridden with the President, and have gone with him on errands of mercy and
errands of cheer. I have been almost within sight of what we hope is the
last struggle of this frightful war. I have listened to the guns of Five
Forks, where Sheridan and Warren bore their own colors in the front of
the charge, I was with Mr. Lincoln while the battle of Petersburg was
raging, and there were tears in his eyes.

Then came the retreat of Lee and the instant pursuit of Grant, and
--Richmond. The quiet General did not so much as turn aside to enter the
smoking city he had besieged for so long. But I went there, with the
President. And if I had one incident in my life to live over again, I
should choose this. As we were going up the river, a disabled steamer lay
across the passage in the obstruction of piles the Confederates had
built. Mr. Lincoln would not wait. There were but a few of us in his
party, and we stepped into Admiral Porter's twelve-oared barge and were
rowed to Richmond, the smoke of the fires still darkening the sky. We
landed within a block of Libby Prison.

With the little guard of ten sailors he marched the mile and a half to
General Weitzel's headquarters,--the presidential mansion of the
Confederacy. You can imagine our anxiety. I shall remember him always as
I saw him that day, a tall, black figure of sorrow, with the high silk
hat we have learned to love. Unafraid, his heart rent with pity, he
walked unharmed amid such tumult as I have rarely seen. The windows
filled, the streets ahead of us became choked, as the word that the
President was coming ran on like quick-fire. The mob shouted and pushed.
Drunken men reeled against him. The negroes wept aloud and cried
hosannas. They pressed upon him that they might touch the hem of his
coat, and one threw himself on his knees and kissed the President's feet.

Still he walked on unharmed, past the ashes and the ruins. Not as a
conqueror was he come, to march in triumph. Not to destroy, but to heal.
Though there were many times when we had to fight for a path through the
crowds, he did not seem to feel the danger.

Was it because he knew that his hour was not yet come?

To-day, on the boat, as we were steaming between the green shores of the
Potomac, I overheard him reading to Mr. Sumner:--

          "Duncan is in his grave;
        After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
        Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
        Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
        Can touch him further."

          WILLARD'S HOTEL, WASHINGTON, April 10, 1865.

I have looked up the passage, and have written it in above. It haunts me.




CHAPTER XV

MAN OF SORROW

The train was late--very late. It was Virginia who first caught sight of
the new dome of the Capitol through the slanting rain, but she merely
pressed her lips together and said nothing. In the dingy brick station of
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad more than one person paused to look after
them, and a kind-hearted lady who had been in the car kissed the girl
good-by.

"You think that you can find your uncle's house, my dear?" she asked,
glancing at Virginia with concern. Through all of that long journey she
had worn a look apart. "Do you think you can find your uncle's house?"

Virginia started. And then she smiled as she looked at the honest, alert,
and squarely built gentleman beside her.

"Captain Brent can, Mrs. Ware," she said. "He can find anything."

Whereupon the kind lady gave the Captain her hand. "You look as if you
could, Captain," said she. "Remember, if General Carvel is out of town,
you promised to bring her to me."

"Yes, ma'am," said Captain Lige, "and so I shall."

"Kerridge, kerridge! Right dis-a-way! No sah, dat ain't de kerridge you
wants. Dat's it, lady, you'se lookin at it. Kerridge, kerridge,
kerridge!"

Virginia tried bravely to smile, but she was very near to tears as she
stood on the uneven pavement and looked at the scrawny horses standing
patiently in the steady downpour. All sorts of people were coming and
going, army officers and navy officers and citizens of states and
territories, driving up and driving away.

And this was Washington!

She was thinking then of the multitude who came here with aching hearts,
--with heavier hearts than was hers that day. How many of the throng
hurrying by would not flee, if they could, back to the peaceful homes
they had left? But perhaps those homes were gone now. Destroyed, like her
own, by the war. Women with children at their breasts, and mothers bowed
with sorrow, had sought this city in their agony. Young men and old had
come hither, striving to keep back the thoughts of dear ones left behind,
whom they might never see again. And by the thousands and tens of
thousands they had passed from here to the places of blood beyond.

"Kerridge, sah! Kerridge!"

"Do you know where General Daniel Carvel lives?"

"Yes, sah, reckon I does. I Street, sah. Jump right in, sah."

Virginia sank back on the stuffy cushions of the rattle-trap, and then
sat upright again and stared out of the window at the dismal scene. They
were splashing through a sea of mud. Ever since they had left St. Louis,
Captain Lige had done his best to cheer her, and he did not intend to
desist now.

"This beats all," he cried. "So this is Washington, Why, it don't compare
to St. Louis, except we haven't got the White House and the Capitol.
Jinny, it would take a scow to get across the street, and we don't have
ramshackly stores and nigger cabins bang up against fine Houses like
that. This is ragged. That's what it is, ragged. We don't have any dirty
pickaninnies dodging among the horses in our residence streets. I
declare, Jinny, if those aren't pigs!"

Virginia laughed. She could not help it.

"Poor Lige!" she said. "I hope Uncle Daniel has some breakfast for you.
You've had a good deal to put up with on this trip."

"Lordy, Jinny," said the Captain, "I'd put up with a good deal more than
this for the sake of going anywhere with you."

"Even to such a doleful place as this?" she sighed.

"This is all right, if the sun'll only come out and dry things up and let
us see the green on those trees," he said, "Lordy, how I do love to see
the spring green in the sunlight!"

She put out her hand over his.

"Lige," she said, "you know you're just trying to keep up my spirits.
You've been doing that ever since we left home."

"No such thing," he replied with vehemence. "There's nothing for you to
be cast down about."

"Oh, but there is!" she cried. "Suppose I can't make your Black
Republican President pardon Clarence!"

"Pooh!" said the Captain, squeezing her hand and trying to appear
unconcerned. "Your Uncle Daniel knows Mr. Lincoln. He'll have that
arranged."

Just then the rattletrap pulled up at the sidewalk, the wheels of the
near side in four inches of mud, and the Captain leaped out and spread
the umbrella. They were in front of a rather imposing house of brick,
flanked on one side by a house just like it, and on the other by a series
of dreary vacant lots where the rain had collected in pools. They climbed
the steps and rang the bell. In due time the door was opened by a smiling
yellow butler in black.

"Does General Carvel live here?"

"Yas, miss, But he ain't to home now. Done gone to New York."

"Oh," faltered Virginia. "Didn't he get my telegram day before yesterday?
I sent it to the War Department."

"He's done gone since Saturday, miss." And then, evidently impressed by
the young lady's looks, he added hospitably, "Kin I do anything fo' you,
miss?"

"I'm his niece, Miss Virginia Carvel, and this is Captain Brent."

The yellow butler's face lighted up.

"Come right in, Miss Jinny, Done heerd de General speak of you often
--yas'm. De General'll be to home dis a'ternoon, suah. 'Twill do him good
ter see you, Miss Jinny. He's been mighty lonesome. Walk right in, Cap'n,
and make yo'selves at home. Lizbeth--Lizbeth!"

A yellow maid came running down the stairs. "Heah's Miss Jinny."

"Lan' of goodness!" cried Lizbeth. "I knows Miss Jinny. Done seed her at
Calve't House. How is you, Miss Jinny?"

"Very well, Lizbeth," said Virginia, listlessly sitting down on the hall
sofa. "Can you give us some breakfast?"

"Yas'm," said Lizbeth, "jes' reckon we kin." She ushered them into a
walnut dining room, big and high and sombre, with plush-bottomed chairs
placed about--walnut also; for that was the fashion in those days. But
the Captain had no sooner seated himself than he shot up again and
started out.

"Where are you going, Lige?"

"To pay off the carriage driver," he said.

"Let him wait," said Virginia. "I'm going to the White House in a little
while."

"What--what for?" he gasped.

"To see your Black Republican President," she replied, with alarming
calmness.

"Now, Jinny," he cried, in excited appeal, "don't go doin' any such fool
trick as that. Your Uncle Dan'l will be here this afternoon. He knows the
President. And then the thing'll be fixed all right, and no mistake."

Her reply was in the same tone--almost a monotone--which she had used for
three days. It made the Captain very uneasy, for he knew when she spoke
in that way that her will was in it.

"And to lose that time," she answered, "may be to have him shot."

"But you can't get to the President without credentials," he objected.

"What," she flashed, "hasn't any one a right to see the President? You
mean to say that he will not see a woman in trouble? Then all these
pretty stories I hear of him are false. They are made up by the Yankees."

Poor Captain Lige! He had some notion of the multitude of calls upon Mr.
Lincoln, especially at that time. But he could not, he dared not, remind
her of the principal reason for this,--Lee's surrender and the
approaching end of the war. And then the Captain had never seen Mr.
Lincoln. In the distant valley of the Mississippi he had only heard of
the President very conflicting things. He had heard him criticised and
reviled and praised, just as is every man who goes to the White House, be
he saint or sinner. And, during an administration, no man at a distance
may come at a President's true character and worth. The Captain had seen
Lincoln caricatured vilely. And again he had read and heard the pleasant
anecdotes of which Virginia had spoken, until he did not know what to
believe.

As for Virginia, he knew her partisanship to, and undying love for, the
South; he knew the class prejudice which was bound to assert itself, and
he had seen enough in the girl's demeanor to fear that she was going to
demand rather than implore. She did not come of a race that was wont to
bend the knee.

"Well, well," he said despairingly, "you must eat some breakfast first,
Jinny."

She waited with an ominous calmness until it was brought in, and then she
took a part of a roll and some coffee.

"This won't do," exclaimed the Captain. "Why, why, that won't get you
halfway to Mr. Lincoln."

She shook her head, half smiling.

"You must eat enough, Lige," she said.

He was finished in an incredibly short time, and amid the protestations
of Lizbeth and the yellow butler they got into the carriage again, and
splashed and rattled toward the White House. Once Virginia glanced out,
and catching sight of the bedraggled flags on the houses in honor of
Lee's surrender, a look of pain crossed her face. The Captain could not
repress a note of warning.

"Jinny," said he, "I have an idea that you'll find the President a good
deal of a man. Now if you're allowed to see him, don't get him mad,
Jinny, whatever you do."

Virginia stared straight ahead.

"If he is something of a man, Lige, he will not lose his temper with a
woman."

Captain Lige subsided. And just then they came in sight of the house of
the Presidents, with its beautiful portico and its broad wings. And they
turned in under the dripping trees of the grounds. A carriage with a
black coachman and footman was ahead of them, and they saw two stately
gentlemen descend from it and pass the guard at the door. Then their turn
came. The Captain helped her out in his best manner, and gave some money
to the driver.

"I reckon he needn't wait for us this time, Jinny," said be. She shook
her head and went in, he following, and they were directed to the
anteroom of the President's office on the second floor. There were many
people in the corridors, and one or two young officers in blue who stared
at her. She passed them with her head high.

But her spirits sank when they came to the anteroom. It was full of all
sorts of people. Politicians, both prosperous and seedy, full faced and
keen faced, seeking office; women, officers, and a one-armed soldier
sitting in the corner. He was among the men who offered Virginia their
seats, and the only one whom she thanked. But she walked directly to the
doorkeeper at the end of the room. Captain Lige was beside her.

"Can we see the President?" he asked.

"Have you got an appointment?" said the old man.

"No."

"Then you'll have to wait your turn, sir," he said, shaking his head and
looking at Virginia. And he added. "It's slow work waiting your turn,
there's so many governors and generals and senators, although the
session's over. It's a busy time, miss."

Virginia went very close to him.

"Oh, can't you do something?" she said. And added, with an inspiration,
"I must see him. It's a matter of life and death."

She saw instantly, with a woman's instinct, that these words had had
their effect. The old man glanced at her again, as if demurring.

"You're sure, miss, it's life and death?" he said.

"Oh, why should I say so if it were not?" she cried.

"The orders are very strict," he said. "But the President told me to give
precedence to cases when a life is in question. Just you wait a minute,
miss, until Governor Doddridge comes out, and I'll see what I can do for
you. Give me your name, please, miss."

She remained standing where she was. In a little while the heavy door
opened, and a portly, rubicund man came out with a smile on his face. He
broke into a laugh, when halfway across the room, as if the memory of
what he had heard were too much for his gravity. The doorkeeper slipped
into the room, and there was a silent, anxious interval. Then he came out
again.

"The President will see you, miss."

Captain Lige started forward with her, but she restrained him.

"Wait for me here, Lige," she said.

She swept in alone, and the door closed softly after her. The room was a
big one, and there were maps on the table, with pins sticking in them.
She saw that much, and then--!

Could this fantastically tall, stooping figure before her be that of the
President of the United States? She stopped, as from the shock he gave
her. The lean, yellow face with the mask-like lines all up and down, the
unkempt, tousled hair, the beard--why, he was a hundred times more
ridiculous than his caricatures. He might have stood for many of the poor
white trash farmers she had seen in Kentucky--save for the long black
coat.

"Is--is this Mr. Lincoln?" she asked, her breath taken away.

He bowed and smiled down at her. Somehow that smile changed his face a
little.

"I guess I'll have to own up," he answered.

"My name is Virginia Carvel," she said. "I have come all the way from St.
Louis to see you."

"Miss Carvel," said the President, looking at her intently, "I have
rarely been so flattered in my life. I--I hope I have not disappointed
you."

Virginia was justly angry.

"Oh, you haven't," she cried, her eyes flashing, "because I am what you
would call a Rebel."

The mirth in the dark corners of his eyes disturbed her more and more.
And then she saw that the President was laughing.

"And have you a better name for it, Miss Carvel?" he asked. "Because I am
searching for a better name--just now."

She was silent--sternly silent. And she tapped her foot on the carpet.
What manner of man was this? "Won't you sit down?" said the President,
kindly. "You must be tired after your journey." And he put forth a chair.

"No, thank you," said Virginia; "I think that I can say what I have come
to say better standing."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's not strange. I'm that way, too. The
words seem to come out better. That reminds me of a story they tell about
General Buck Tanner. Ever heard of Buck, Miss Carvel? No? Well, Buck was
a character. He got his title in the Mormon war. One day the boys asked
him over to the square to make a speech. The General was a little uneasy.

"'I'm all right when I get standing up, Liza,' he said to his wife. Then
the words come right along. Only trouble is they come too cussed fast.
How'm I going to stop 'em when I want to?'

"'Well, I du declare, Buck,' said she, 'I gave you credit for some sense.
All you've got to do is to set down. That'll end it, I reckon.'

"So the General went over to the square and talked for about an hour and
a half, and then a Chicago man shouted to him to dry up. The General
looked pained.

"'Boys,' said he, 'it's jest every bit as bad for me as it is for you.
You'll have to hand up a chair, boys, because I'm never going to get shet
of this goldarned speech any anther way.'"

Mr. Lincoln had told this so comically that Virginia was forced to laugh,
and she immediately hated herself. A man who could joke at such a time
certainly could not feel the cares and responsibilities of his office. He
should have been a comedian. And yet this was the President who had
conducted the war, whose generals had conquered the Confederacy. And she
was come to ask him a favor. Virginia swallowed her pride.

"Mr. Lincoln," she began, "I have come to talk to you about my cousin,
Colonel Clarence Colfax."

"I shall be happy to talk to you about your cousin, Colonel Colfax, Miss
Carvel. Is he your third or fourth cousin?"

"He is my first cousin," she retorted.

"Is he in the city?" asked Mr. Lincoln, innocently. "Why didn't he come
with you?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?" she cried. "He is Clarence Colfax, of St. Louis,
now a Colonel in the army of the Confederate States."

"Which army?" asked Mr. Lincoln. Virginia tossed her head in
exasperation.

"In General Joseph Johnston's army," she replied, trying to be patient.
"But now," she gulped, "now he has been arrested as a spy by General
Sherman's army."

"That's too bad," answered Mr. Lincoln.

"And--and they are going to shoot him."

"That's worse," said Mr. Lincoln, gravely. "But I expect he deserves it."

"Oh, no, he doesn't," she cried. "You don't know how brave he is! He
floated down the Mississippi on a log, out of Vicksburg, and brought back
thousands and thousands of percussion caps. He rowed across the river
when the Yankee fleet was going down, and set fire to De Soto so that
they could see to shoot."

"Well," said Mr. Lincoln, "that's a good starter." Then he looked
thoughtful.

"Miss Carvel," said he, "that argument reminds me of a story about a man
I used to know in the old days in Illinois. His name was McNeil, and he
was a lawyer.

"One day he was defending a prisoner for assault and battery before Judge
Drake.

"'Judge, says McNeil, 'you oughtn't to lock this man up. It was a fair
fight, and he's the best man in the state in a fair fight. And, what's
more, he's never been licked in a fair fight in his life.'

"'And if your honor does lock me up,' the prisoner put in, 'I'll give
your honor a thunderin' big lickin' when I get out.'

"The Judge took off his coat.

"'Gentlemen,' said he, 'it's a powerful queer argument, but the Court
will admit it on its merits. The prisoner will please to step out on the
grass.'"

This time Virginia contrived merely to smile. She was striving against
something, she knew not what. Her breath was coming deeply, and she was
dangerously near to tears. Why? She could not tell. She had come into
this man's presence despising herself for having to ask him a favor. The
sight of his face she had ridiculed. Now she could not look into it
without an odd sensation. What was in it? Sorrow? Yes, that was nearest
it.

What had the man done? Told her a few funny stories--given quizzical
answers to some of her questions. Quizzical, yes; but she could not be
sure then there was not wisdom in them, and that humiliated her. She had
never conceived of such a man. And, be it added gratuitously, Virginia
deemed herself something of an adept in dealing with men.

"And now," said Mr. Lincoln, "to continue for the defence, I believe that
Colonel Colfax first distinguished himself at the time of Camp Jackson,
when of all the prisoners he refused to accept a parole."

Startled, she looked up at him swiftly, and then down again. "Yes," she
answered, "yes. But oh, Mr. Lincoln, please don't hold that against him."

If she could only have seen his face then. But her lashes were dropped.

"My dear young lady," replied the President, "I honor him for it. I was
merely elaborating the argument which you have begun. On the other hand,
it is a pity that he should have taken off that uniform which he adorned
and attempted to enter General Sherman's lines as a civilian,--as a spy."

He had spoken these last words very gently, but she was too excited to
heed his gentleness. She drew herself up, a gleam in her eyes like the
crest of a blue wave in a storm.

"A spy!" she cried; "it takes more courage to be a spy than anything else
in war. Then he will be shot. You are not content in, the North with what
you have gained. You are not content with depriving us of our rights, and
our fortunes, with forcing us back to an allegiance we despise. You are
not content with humiliating our generals and putting innocent men in
prisons. But now I suppose you will shoot us all. And all this mercy that
I have heard about means nothing--nothing--"

Why did she falter and stop?

"Miss Carvel," said the President, "I am afraid from what I have heard
just now, that it means nothing." Oh, the sadness of that voice,--the
ineffable sadness,--the sadness and the woe of a great nation! And the
sorrow in those eyes, the sorrow of a heavy cross borne meekly,--how
heavy none will ever know. The pain of a crown of thorns worn for a world
that did not understand. No wonder Virginia faltered and was silent. She
looked at Abraham Lincoln standing there, bent and sorrowful, and it was
as if a light had fallen upon him. But strangest of all in that strange
moment was that she felt his strength. It was the same strength she had
felt in Stephen Brice. This was the thought that came to her.

Slowly she walked to the window and looked out across the green grounds
where the wind was shaking the wet trees, past the unfinished monument to
the Father of her country, and across the broad Potomac to Alexandria in
the hazy distance. The rain beat upon the panes, and then she knew that
she was crying softly to herself. She had met a force that she could not
conquer, she had looked upon a sorrow that she could not fathom, albeit
she had known sorrow.

Presently she felt him near. She turned and looked through her tears at
his face that was all compassion. And now she was unashamed. He had
placed a chair behind her.

"Sit down, Virginia," he said. Even the name fell from him naturally.

She obeyed him then like a child. He remained standing.

"Tell me about your cousin," he said; "are you going to marry him?"

She hung an instant on her answer. Would that save Clarence? But in that
moment she could not have spoken anything but the truth to save her soul.

"No, Mr. Lincoln," she said; "I was--but I did not love him. I--I think
that was one reason why he was so reckless."

Mr. Lincoln smiled.

"The officer who happened to see Colonel Colfax captured is now in
Washington. When your name was given to me, I sent for him. Perhaps he is
in the anteroom now. I should like to tell you, first of all, that this
officer defended your cousin and asked me to pardon him."

"He defended him! He asked you to pardon him! Who is he?" she exclaimed.

Again Mr. Lincoln smiled. He strode to the bell-cord, and spoke a few
words to the usher who answered his ring.

The usher went out. Then the door opened, and a young officer, spare,
erect, came quickly into the room, and bowed respectfully to the
President. But Mr. Lincoln's eyes were not on him. They were on the girl.
He saw her head lifted, timidly. He saw her lips part and the color come
flooding into her face. But she did not rise.

The President sighed But the light in her eyes was reflected in his own.
It has been truly said that Abraham Lincoln knew the human heart.

The officer still stood facing the President, the girl staring at his
profile. The door closed behind him. "Major Brice," said Mr. Lincoln,
when you asked me to pardon Colonel Colfax, I believe that you told me he
was inside his own skirmish lines when he was captured."

"Yes, sir, he was."

Suddenly Stephen turned, as if impelled by the President's gaze, and so
his eyes met Virginia's. He forgot time and place,--for the while even
this man whom he revered above all men. He saw her hand tighten on the
arm of her chair. He took a step toward her, and stopped. Mr. Lincoln was
speaking again.

"He put in a plea, a lawyer's plea, wholly unworthy of him, Miss
Virginia. He asked me to let your cousin off on a technicality. What do
you think of that?"

"Oh!" said Virginia. Just the exclamation escaped her--nothing more. The
crimson that had betrayed her deepened on her cheeks. Slowly the eyes she
had yielded to Stephen came back again and rested on the President. And
now her wonder was that an ugly man could be so beautiful.

"I wish it understood, Mr. Lawyer," the President continued, "that I am
not letting off Colonel Colfax on a technicality. I am sparing his life,"
he said slowly, "because the time for which we have been waiting and
longing for four years is now at hand--the time to be merciful. Let us
all thank God for it."

Virginia had risen now. She crossed the room, her head lifted, her heart
lifted, to where this man of sorrows stood smiling down at her.

"Mr. Lincoln," she faltered, "I did not know you when I came here. I
should have known you, for I had heard him--I had heard Major Brice
praise you. Oh," she cried, "how I wish that every man and woman and
child in the South might come here and see you as I have seen you to-day.
I think--I think that some of their bitterness might be taken away."

Abraham Lincoln laid his hands upon the girl. And Stephen, watching, knew
that he was looking upon a benediction.

"Virginia," said Mr. Lincoln, "I have not suffered by the South, I have
suffered with the South Your sorrow has been my sorrow, and your pain has
been my pain. What you have lost, I have lost. And what you have gained,"
he added sublimely, "I have gained."

He led her gently to the window. The clouds were flying before the wind,
and a patch of blue sky shone above the Potomac. With his long arm he
pointed across the river to the southeast, and as if by a miracle a shaft
of sunlight fell on the white houses of Alexandria.

"In the first days of the war," he said, "a flag flew there in sight of
the place where George Washington lived and died. I used to watch that
flag, and thank God that Washington had not lived to see it. And
sometimes, sometimes I wondered if God had allowed it to be put in irony
just there." His voice seemed to catch. "That was wrong," he continued.
"I should have known that this was our punishment--that the sight of it
was my punishment. Before we could become the great nation He has
destined us to be, our sins must be wiped out in blood. You loved that
flag, Virginia. You love it still.

"I say in all sincerity, may you always love it. May the day come when
this Nation, North and South, may look back upon it with reverence.
Thousands upon thousands of brave Americans have died under it for what
they believed was right. But may the day come again when you will love
that flag you see there now--Washington's flag--better still."

He stopped, and the tears were wet upon Virginia's lashes. She could not
have spoken then.

Mr. Lincoln went over to his desk and sat down before it. Then he began
to write, slouched forward, one knee resting on the floor, his lips
moving at the same time. When he got up again he seemed taller than ever.

"There!" he said, "I guess that will fix it. I'll have that sent to
Sherman. I have already spoken to him about the matter."

They did not thank him. It was beyond them both. He turned to Stephen
with that quizzical look on his face he had so often seen him wear.

"Steve," he said, "I'll tell you a story. The other night Harlan was here
making a speech to a crowd out of the window, and my boy Tad was sitting
behind him.

"'What shall we do with the Rebels?' said Harlan to the crowd.

"'Hang 'em!' cried the people. "'No,' says Tad, 'hang on to 'em.'

"And the boy was right. That is what we intend to do,--hang on to 'em.
And, Steve," said Mr. Lincoln, putting his hand again on Virginia's
shoulder, "if you have the sense I think you have, you'll hang on, too."

For an instant he stood smiling at their blushes,--he to whom the power
was given to set apart his cares and his troubles and partake of the
happiness of others. For of such was his happiness.

Then the President drew out his watch. "Bless me!" he said, "I am ten
minutes behind my appointment at the Department. Miss Virginia, you may
care to thank the Major for the little service he has done you. You can
do so undisturbed here. Make yourselves at home."

As he opened the door he paused and looked back at them. The smile passed
from his face, and an ineffable expression of longing--longing and
tenderness--came upon it.

Then he was gone.

For a space, while his spell was upon them, they did not stir. Then
Stephen sought her eyes that had been so long denied him. They were not
denied him now. It was Virginia who first found her voice, and she called
him by his name.

"Oh, Stephen," she said, "how sad he looked!"

He was close to her, at her side. And he answered her in the earnest tone
which she knew so well.

"Virginia, if I could have had what I most wished for in the world, I
should have asked that you should know Abraham Lincoln."

Then she dropped her eyes, and her breath came quickly.

"I--I might have known," she answered, "I might have known what he was. I
had heard you talk of him. I had seen him in you, and I did not know. Do
you remember that day when we were in the summer-house together at
Glencoe, long ago? When you had come back from seeing him?"

"As yesterday," he said.

"You were changed then," she said bravely. "I saw it. Now I understand.
It was because you had seen Mr. Lincoln."

"When I saw him," said Stephen, reverently, "I knew how little and narrow
I was."

Then, overcome by the incense of her presence, he drew her to him until
her heart beat against his own. She did not resist, but lifted her face
to him, and he kissed her.

"You love me, Virginia!" he cried.

"Yes, Stephen," she answered, low, more wonderful in her surrender than
ever before. "Yes--dear." Then she hid her face against his blue coat.
"I--I cannot help it. Oh, Stephen, how I have struggled against it! How I
have tried to hate you, and couldn't. No, I couldn't. I tried to insult
you, I did insult you. And when I saw how splendidly you bore it, I used
to cry." He kissed her brown hair.

"I loved you through it all," he said.

"Virginia!"

"Yes, dearest."

"Virginia, did you dream of me?"

She raised her head quickly, and awe was in her eyes. "How did you know?"

"Because I dreamed of you," he answered. And those dreams used to linger
with me half the day as I went about my work. I used to think of them as
I sat in the saddle on the march."

"I, too, treasured them," she said. "And I hated myself for doing it."

"Virginia, will you marry me?"

"Yes."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, dear, to-morrow." Faintly, "I have no one but you--now."

Once more he drew her to him, and she gloried in his strength.

"God help me to cherish you, dear," he said, "and guard you well."

She drew away from him, gently, and turned toward the window.

"See, Stephen," she cried, "the sun has come out at last."

For a while they were silent, looking out; the drops glistened on blade
and leaf, and the joyous new green of the earth entered into their
hearts.




CHAPTER XVI

ANNAPOLIS

IT was Virginia's wish, and was therefore sacred. As for Stephen, he
little cared whither they went. And so they found themselves on that
bright afternoon in mid-April under the great trees that arch the unpaved
streets of old Annapolis.

They stopped by direction at a gate, and behind it was a green cluster of
lilac bushes, which lined the walk to the big plum-colored house which
Lionel Carvel had built. Virginia remembered that down this walk on a
certain day in June, a hundred years agone, Richard Carvel had led
Dorothy Manners.

They climbed the steps, tottering now with age and disuse, and Virginia
playfully raised the big brass knocker, brown now, that Scipio had been
wont to polish until it shone. Stephen took from his pocket the clumsy
key that General Carvel had given him, and turned it in the rusty lock.
The door swung open, and Virginia stood in the hall of her ancestors.

It was musty and damp this day as the day when Richard had come back from
England and found it vacant and his grandfather dead. But there, at the
parting of the stairs, was the triple-arched window which he had
described. Through it the yellow afternoon light was flooding now, even
as then, checkered by the branches in their first fringe of green. But
the tall clock which Lionel Carvel used to wind was at Calvert House,
with many another treasure.

They went up the stairs, and reverently they walked over the bare floors,
their footfalls echoing through the silent house. A score of scenes in
her great-grandfather's life came to Virginia. Here was the room--the
cornet one at the back of the main building, which looked out over the
deserted garden--that had been Richard's mother's. She recalled how he
had stolen into it on that summer's day after his return, and had flung
open the shutters. They were open now, for their locks were off. The
prie-dieu was gone, and the dresser. But the high bed was there, stripped
of its poppy counterpane and white curtains; and the steps by which she
had entered it.

And next they went into the great square room that had been Lionel
Carvel's, and there, too, was the roomy bed on which the old gentleman
had lain with the gout, while Richard read to him from the Spectator. One
side of it looked out on the trees in Freshwater Lane; and the other
across the roof of the low house opposite to where the sun danced on the
blue and white waters of the Chesapeake.

"Honey," said Virginia, as they stood in the deep recess of the window,
"wouldn't it be nice if we could live here always, away from the world?
Just we two! But you would never be content to do that," she said,
smiling reproachfully. "You are the kind of man who must be in the midst
of things. In a little while you will have far more besides me to think
about."

He was quick to catch the note of sadness in her voice. And he drew her
to him.

"We all have our duty to perform in the world, dear," he answered. "It
cannot be all pleasure."

"You--you Puritan!" she cried. "To think that I should have married a
Puritan! What would my great-great-great-great-grandfather say, who was
such a stanch Royalist? Why, I think I can see him frowning at me now,
from the door, in his blue velvet goat and silverlaced waistcoat."

"He was well punished," retorted Stephen, "his own grandson was a Whig,
and seems to have married a woman of spirit."

"She had spirit," said Virginia. "I am sure that she did not allow my
great-grandfather to kiss her--unless she wanted to."

And she looked up at him, half smiling, half pouting; altogether
bewitching.

"From what I hear of him, he was something of a man," said Stephen.
"Perhaps he did it anyway."

"I am glad that Marlborough Street isn't a crowded thoroughfare," said
Virginia.

When they had seen the dining room, with its carved mantel and silver
door-knobs, and the ballroom in the wing, they came out, and Stephen
locked the door again. They walked around the house, and stood looking
down the terraces,--once stately, but crumbled now,--where Dorothy had
danced on the green on Richard's birthday. Beyond and below was the
spring-house, and there was the place where the brook dived under the
ruined wall,--where Dorothy had wound into her hair the lilies of the
valley before she sailed for London.

The remains of a wall that had once held a balustrade marked the outlines
of the formal garden. The trim hedges, for seventy years neglected, had
grown incontinent. The garden itself was full of wild green things coming
up through the brown of last season's growth. But in the grass the blue
violets nestled, and Virginia picked some of these and put them in
Stephen's coat.

"You must keep them always," she said, "because we got them here."

They spied a seat beside a hoary trunk. There on many a spring day Lionel
Carvel had sat reading his Gazette. And there they rested now. The sun
hung low over the old-world gables in the street beyond the wall, and in
the level rays was an apple tree dazzling white, like a bride. The sweet
fragrance which the day draws from the earth lingered in the air.

It was Virginia who broke the silence.

"Stephen, do you remember that fearful afternoon of the panic, when you
came over from Anne Brinsmade's to reassure me?"

"Yes, dear," he said. "But what made you think of it now?"

She did not answer him directly.

"I believed what you said, Stephen. But you were so strong, so calm, so
sure of yourself. I think that made me angry when I thought how
ridiculous I must have been."

He pressed her hand.

"You were not ridiculous, Jinny." She laughed.

"I was not as ridiculous as Mr. Cluyme with his bronze clock. But do you
know what I had under my arm--what I was saving of all the things I
owned?"

"No," he answered; "but I have often wondered." She blushed.

"This house--this place made me think of it. It was Dorothy Manners's
gown, and her necklace. I could not leave them. They were all the
remembrance I had of that night at Mr. Brinsmade's gate, when we came so
near to each other."

"Virginia," he said, "some force that we cannot understand has brought us
together, some force that we could not hinder. It is foolish for me to
say so, but on that day of the slave auction, when I first saw you, I had
a premonition about you that I have never admitted until now, even to
myself."

She started.

"Why, Stephen," she cried, "I felt the same way!"

"And then," he continued quickly, "it was strange that I should have gone
to Judge Whipple, who was an intimate of your father's--such a singular
intimate. And then came your party, and Glencoe, and that curious
incident at the Fair."

"When I was talking to the Prince, and looked up and saw you among all
those people."

He laughed.

"That was the most uncomfortable of all, for me."

"Stephen," she said, stirring the leaves at her feet, "you might have
taken me in your arms the night Judge Whipple died--if you had wanted to.
But you were strong enough to resist. I love you all the more for that."

Again she said:-- "It was through your mother, dearest, that we were most
strongly drawn together. I worshipped her from the day I saw her in the
hospital. I believe that was the beginning of my charity toward the
North."

"My mother would have chosen you above all women, Virginia," he answered.

In the morning came to them the news of Abraham Lincoln's death. And the
same thought was in both their hearts, who had known him as it was given
to few to know him. How he had lived in sorrow; how he had died a martyr
on the very day of Christ's death upon the cross. And they believed that
Abraham Lincoln gave his life for his country even as Christ gave his for
the world.

And so must we believe that God has reserved for this Nation a destiny
high upon the earth.

Many years afterward Stephen Brice read again to his wife those sublime
closing words of the second inaugural:--

   "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
   right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish
   the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him
   who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his children
  --to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
   among ourselves and with all nations."




AFTERWORD

The author has chosen St. Louis for the principal scene of this story for
many reasons. Grant and Sherman were living there before the Civil War,
and Abraham Lincoln was an unknown lawyer in the neighboring state of
Illinois. It has been one of the aims of this book to show the remarkable
contrasts in the lives of these great men who came out of the West. This
old city of St. Louis, which was founded by Laclede in 1765, likewise
became the principal meeting-place of two great streams of emigration
which had been separated, more or less, since Cromwell's day. To be sure,
they were not all Cavaliers who settled in the tidewater Colonies. There
were Puritan settlements in both Maryland and Virginia. But the life in
the Southern states took on the more liberal tinge which had
characterized that of the Royalists, even to the extent of affecting the
Scotch Calvinists, while the asceticism of the Roundheads was the keynote
of the Puritan character in New England. When this great country of ours
began to develop, the streams moved westward; one over what became the
plain states of Ohio and Indiana and Illinois, and the other across the
Blue Ridge Mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee. They mixed along the
line of the Ohio River. They met at St. Louis, and, farther west, in
Kansas.

Nor can the German element in St. Louis be ignored. The part played by
this people in the Civil War is a matter of history. The scope of this
book has not permitted the author to introduce the peasantry and trading
classes which formed the mass in this movement. But Richter, the type of
the university-bred revolutionist which emigrated after '48, is drawn
more or less from life. And the duel described actually took place in
Berlin.

St. Louis is the author's birthplace, and his home, the home of those
friends whom he has known from childhood and who have always treated him
with unfaltering kindness. He begs that they will believe him when he
says that only such characters as he loves are reminiscent of those he
has known there. The city has a large population,--large enough to
include all the types that are to be found in the middle West.

One word more. This book is written of a time when feeling ran high. It
has been necessary to put strong speech into the mouths of the
characters. The breach that threatened our country's existence is healed
now. There is no side but Abraham Lincoln's side. And this side, with all
reverence and patriotism, the author has tried to take.

Abraham Lincoln loved the South as well as the North.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Behind that door was the future: so he opened it fearfully
     Being caught was the unpardonable crime
     Believe in others having a hard time
     Freedom meant only the liberty to earn their own living
     Humiliation and not conscience which makes the sting
     Most dangerous of gifts, the seeing of two sides of a quarrel
     Naturally she took preoccupation for indifference
     Principle in law not to volunteer information
     Read a patent medicine circular and shudder with seven diseases
     She could pass over, but never forgive what her aunt had said
     Silence--goad to indiscretion
     Simple men who command by force of character
     So much for Democracy when it becomes a catchword
     They have to print something
     To be great is to be misunderstood






DR. JONATHAN

By Winston Churchill


A Play in Three Acts

PREFACE



This play was written during the war. But owing to the fact that several
managers politely declined to produce it, it has not appeared on any
stage. Now, perhaps, its theme is more timely, more likely to receive
the attention it deserves, when the smoke of battle has somewhat cleared.
Even when the struggle with Germany and her allies was in progress it was
quite apparent to the discerning that the true issue of the conflict was
one quite familiar to American thought, of self-determination. On
returning from abroad toward the end of 1917 I ventured into print with
the statement that the great war had every aspect of a race with
revolution. Subliminal desires, subliminal fears, when they break down
the censor of law, are apt to inspire fanatical creeds, to wind about
their victims the flaming flag of a false martyrdom. Today it is on the
knees of the gods whether the insuppressible impulses for human freedom
that come roaring up from the subliminal chaos, fanned by hunger and
hate, are to thrash themselves out in anarchy and insanity, or to take an
ordered, intelligent and conscious course. Of the Twentieth Century,
industrial democracy is the watchword, even as political democracy was
the watchword of the two centuries that preceded it. Economic power is
at last realized to be political power. No man owns himself, no woman
owns herself if the individual is not economically free. Perhaps the
most encouraging omen of the day is the fact that many of our modern
employers, and even our modern financiers and bankers seem to be
recognizing this truth, to be growing aware of the danger to civilization
of its continued suppression. Educators and sociologists may supply the
theories; but by experiment, by trial and error,--yes, and by prayer,
--the solution must be found in the practical domain of industry.





DR. JONATHAN

ACT I

SCENE:
   The library of ASHER PINDAR'S house in Foxon Falls, a New England
   village of some three thousand souls, over the destinies of which
   the Pindars for three generations have presided. It is a large,
   dignified room, built early in the nineteenth century, with white
   doors and gloss woodwork. At the rear of the stage,--which is the
   front of the house,--are three high windows with small, square panes
   of glass, and embrasures into which are fitted white inside
   shutters. These windows reach to within a foot or so of the floor;
   a person walking on the lawn or the sidewalk just beyond it may be
   seen through them. The trees bordering the Common are also seen
   through these windows, and through a gap in the foliage a glimpse of
   the terraced steeple of the Pindar Church, the architecture of which
   is of the same period as the house. Upper right, at the end of the
   wall, is a glass door looking out on the lawn. There is another
   door, lower right, and a door, lower left, leading into ASHER
   PINDAR'S study. A marble mantel, which holds a clock and certain
   ornaments, is just beyond this door. The wall spaces on the right
   and left are occupied by high bookcases filled with respectable
   volumes in calf and dark cloth bindings. Over the mantel is an
   oil painting of the Bierstadt school, cherished by ASHER as an
   inheritance from his father, a huge landscape with a self-conscious
   sky, mountains, plains, rivers and waterfalls, and two small figures
   of Indians--who seem to have been talking to a missionary. In the
   spaces between the windows are two steel engravings, "The Death of
   Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham" and "Washington Crossing the
   Delaware!" The furniture, with the exception of a few heirlooms,
   such as the stiff sofa, is mostly of the Richardson period of the
   '80s and '90s. On a table, middle rear, are neatly spread out
   several conservative magazines and periodicals, including a
   religious publication.

TIME: A bright morning in October, 1917,


   GEORGE PINDAR, in the uniform of a first lieutenant of the army,
   enters by the doorway, upper right. He is a well set up young man
   of about twenty-seven, bronzed from his life in a training camp, of
   an adventurous and social nature. He glances about the room, and
   then lights a cigarette.

   ASHER PINDAR, his father, enters, lower right. He is a tall,
   strongly built man of about sixty, with iron grey hair and beard.
   His eyes are keen, shadowed by bushy brows, and his New England
   features bear the stamp of inflexible "character." He wears a black
   "cutaway" coat and dark striped trousers; his voice is strong and
   resonant. But he is evidently preoccupied and worried, though he
   smiles with affection as he perceives GEORGE. GEORGE'S fondness for
   him is equally apparent.

GEORGE. Hello, dad.

ASHER. Oh, you're here, George.

GEORGE (looking, at ASHER). Something troubling you?

ASHER (attempting dissimulation). Well, you're going off to France,
they've only given you two days' leave, and I've scarcely seen anything
of you. Isn't that enough?

GEORGE. I know how busy you've been with that government contract on
your hands. I wish I could help.

ASHER. You're in the army now, my boy. You can help me again when you
come back.

GEORGE. I want to get time to go down to the shops and say goodbye to
some of the men.

ASHER. No, I shouldn't do that, George.

GEORGE (surprised). Why not? I used to be pretty chummy with them, you
know,--smoke a pipe with them occasionally in the noon hour.

ASHER. I know. But it doesn't do for an employer to be too familiar
with the hands in these days.

GEORGE. I guess I've got a vulgar streak in me somewhere, I get along
with the common people. There'll be lots of them in the trenches, dad.

ASHER. Under military discipline.

GEORGE (laughing). We're supposed to be fighting a war for democracy.
I was talking to old Bains yesterday,--he's still able to run a lathe,
and he was in the Civil War, you know. He was telling me how the boys in
his regiment stopped to pick blackberries on the way to the battle of
Bull Run.

ASHER. That's democracy! It's what we're doing right now--stopping to
pick blackberries. This country's been in the war six months, since
April, and no guns, no munitions, a handful of men in France--while the
world's burning!

GEORGE. Well, we won't sell Uncle Sam short yet. Something is bothering
you, dad.

ASHER. No--no, but the people in Washington change my specifications
every week, and Jonathan's arriving today, of all days.

GEORGE. Has Dr. Jonathan turned up?

ASHER. I haven't seen him yet. It seems he got here this morning. No
telegram, nothing. And he had his house fixed up without consulting me.
He must be queer, like his father, your great uncle, Henry Pindar.

GEORGE. Tell me about Dr. Jonathan. A scientist,--isn't he? Suddenly
decided to come back to live in the old homestead.

ASHER. On account of his health. He was delicate as a boy. He must
have been about eight or nine years old when Uncle Henry left Foxon Falls
for the west,--that was before you were born. Uncle Henry died somewhere
in Iowa. He and my father never got along. Uncle Henry had as much as
your grandfather to begin with, and let it slip through his fingers. He
managed to send Jonathan to a medical school, and it seems that he's had
some sort of a position at Johns Hopkins's--research work. I don't know
what he's got to live on.

GEORGE. Uncle Henry must have been a philanthropist.

ASHER. It's all very well to be a philanthropist when you make more than
you give away. Otherwise you're a sentimentalist.

GEORGE. Or a Christian.

ASHER. We can't take Christianity too literally.

GEORGE (smiling). That's its great advantage, as a religion.

ASHER. George, I don't like to say anything just as you're going to
fight for your country, my boy, but your attitude of religious skepticism
has troubled me, as well as your habit of intimacy with the shop hands.
I confess to you that I've been a little afraid at times that you'd take
after Jonathan's father. He never went to church, he forgot that he owed
something to his position as a Pindar. He used to have that house of his
overrun with all sorts of people, and the yard full of dirty children
eating his fruit and picking his flowers. There's such a thing as being
too democratic. I hope I'm as good an American as anybody, I believe
that any man with brains, who has thrift, ought to rise--but wait until
they do rise. You're going to command men, and when you come back here
into the business again you'll be in a position of authority. Remember
what I say, if you give these working people an inch, they'll take all
you have.

GEORGE (laying his hand on ASHER's shoulder). Something is worrying you,
dad. We've always been pretty good pals, haven't we?

ASHER. Yes, ever since you were a little shaver. Well, George, I didn't
want to bother you with it--today. It seems there's trouble in the
shops,--in our shops, of all places,--it's been going on for some time,
grumbling, dissatisfaction, and they're getting higher wages than ever
before--ruinous wages. They want me to recognize the union.

GEORGE. Well, that beats me. I thought we were above the labour-trouble
line, away up here in New England.

ASHER (grimly). Oh, I can handle them.

GEORGE. I'll bet you can. You're a regular old war horse when you get
started. It's your capital, it's your business, you've put it all at the
disposal of the government. What right have they to kick up a row now,
with this war on? I must say I haven't any sympathy with that.

ASHER (proudly). I guess you're a real Pindar after all, George.

   (Enter an elderly maid, lower right.)

MAID. Timothy Farrell, the foreman's here,

   (Enter, lower right, TIMOTHY, a big Irishman of about sixty, in
   working clothes.)

TIMOTHY. Here I am, sir. They're after sending word you wanted me.

GEORGE (going up to TIMOTHY and shaking his hand warmly). Old Timothy!
I'm glad to get sight of you before I go.

TIMOTHY. And it's glad I am to see you, Mr. George, before you leave.
And he an officer now! Sure, I mind him as a baby being wheeled up and
down under the trees out there. My boy Bert was saying only this morning
how we'd missed the sight of him in the shops this summer. You have a
way with the men, Mr. George, of getting into their hearts, like. I was
thinking just now, if Mr. George had only been home, in the shops, maybe
we wouldn't be having all this complaint and trouble.

GEORGE. Who's at the bottom of this, Timothy? Rench? Hillman? I
thought so. Well, they're not bad chaps when you get under their skins.

   (He glances at his wrist watch)

Let me go down and talk with them, dad,--I've got time, my train doesn't
leave until one thirty.

ASHER (impatiently, almost savagely). No, I'll settle this, George, this
is my job. I won't have any humoring. Come into my study, Timothy.

   TIMOTHY, shaking his head, follows ASHER out of the door, left.

   After a moment GEORGE goes over to the extreme left hand corner of
   the room, where several articles are piled. He drags out a kit bag,
   then some necessary wearing apparel, underclothes, socks, a sweater,
   etc., then a large and rather luxurious lunch kit, a pin cushion.
   with his monogram, a small travelling pillow with his monogram, a
   linen toilet case embroidered in blue, to hang on the wall--these
   last evidently presents from admiring lady friends. Finally he
   brings forth a large rubber life preserving suit. He makes a show
   of putting all these things in the bag, including the life-
   preserving suit; and reveals a certain sentiment, not too deep, for
   the pillow, the pincushion and the toilet case. At length he strews
   everything over the floor, and is surveying the litter with mock
   despair when a girl appears on the lawn outside, through one of the
   windows. She throws into the room a small parcel wrapped in tissue
   paper, and disappears. GEORGE picks up the parcel and looks
   surprised, and suddenly runs out of the door, upper right. He
   presently returns, dragging the girl by the wrists, she resisting.

   MINNIE FARRELL is about twenty one, with black hair and an abundant
   vitality. Her costume is a not wholly ineffective imitation of
   those bought at a great price at certain metropolitan
   establishments. A string of imitation pearls gleams against her
   ruddy skin.

MINNIE. Cut it out, George! (Glancing around apprehensively.) Say, if
your mother was to find me here she'd want to send me up to the
reformatory (she frees herself).

GEORGE. Where the deuce did you blow in from? (Regarding her with
admiration.) Is this the little Minnie Farrell who left Foxon Falls two
years ago? Gee whiz! aren't we smart!

MINNIE. Do you like me? I'm making good money, since the war.

GEORGE. Do I like you? What are you doing here?

MINNIE. My brother Bert's out there--he ain't working today. Mr. Pindar
sent for father, and we walked up here with him. Where is he?

GEORGE (nodding toward the study). In there. But what are you doing,
back in Foxon Falls?

MINNIE. Oh, visiting the scenes of my childhood.

GEORGE (tearing open the tissue paper from the parcel). Did you make
these for me?
   (He holds up a pair of grey woollen wristlets.)

MINNIE. Well, I wanted to do something for a soldier, and when I heard
you was going to France I thought you might as well have 'em.

GEORGE. How did you hear I was going?

MINNIE. Bert told me when I came home yesterday. They say it's cold in
the trenches, and nothing keeps the hands so warm as wristlets. I know,
because I've had 'em on winter mornings, early, when I was going to work.
Will you wear 'em, George?

GEORGE. Will I wear them! (He puts then on his wrists.) I'll never take
them off till the war's over.

MINNIE (pleased). You always were a josher!

GEORGE. Tell me, Minnie, why did you run away from me two years ago?

MINNIE. Run away from you! I left because I couldn't stand this village
any longer. It was too quiet for me.

GEORGE. You're a josher! You went off while I was away, without telling
me you were going. And then, when I found out where you were and hustled
over to Newcastle in my car, you turned me down hard.

MINNIE. You didn't have a mortgage on me. There were plenty of girls of
your own kind at that house party you went to. I guess you made love to
them, too.

GEORGE. They weren't in the same class with you. You've got the ginger.

MINNIE. I've still got the ginger, all right.

GEORGE. I thought you cared for me.

MINNIE. You always had the nerve, George.

GEORGE. You acted as if you did.

MINNIE. I'm a good actor. Say, what was there in it for me?--packing
tools in the Pindar shops, and you the son of my boss? You didn't want
nothing from me except what all men want, and you wouldn't have wanted
that long.

GEORGE. I was crazy about you.

MINNIE (her eyes falling on the travelling pillow and the pincushion;
picking theron: up in turn). I guess you told them that, too.

GEORGE (embarrassed). Oh, I'm popular enough when I'm going away. They
don't care anything about me.

MINNIE (indicating the wristlets). You don't want them,--I'll give 'em
to Bert.

GEORGE. No, you won't.

MINNIE. I was silly. But we had a good time while it lasted,--didn't
we, George?

   (She evades him deftly, and picks up the life-preserving suit.)

What's this?--a full dress uniform?

GEORGE. When a submarine gets you, all you've got to do is to jump
overboard and blow this--

   (He draws the siren from the pocket and starts to blow it, but she
   seizes his hand.)

--and float around until a destroyer picks you up.

   (Takes from another pocket a metal lunch box.)

This is for pate de foie gras sandwiches, and there's room in here--

   (Indicating another pocket.)

--for a bottle of fizz. Come along with me, Minnie, ship as a Red Cross
nurse, and I'll buy you one. The Atlantic wouldn't be such a bad place,
with you,--and we wouldn't be in a hurry to blow the siren. You'd look
like a peach in a white costume, too.

MINNIE. Don't you like me in this?

GEORGE. Sure, but I'd like that better.

MINNIE. I'd make a good nurse, if I do say it myself. And I'd take good
care of you, George,--as good as any of them.

   (She nods toward the pillow and pincushion.)

GEORGE. Better!

   (He seizes her hands and attempts to draw her toward him.)

You used to let me!

MINNIE. That ain't any reason.

GEORGE. Just once, Minnie,--I'm going away.

MINNIE. No. I didn't mean to come in here--I just wanted to see what
you looked like in your uniform.

   (She draws away from him, just as Dr. JONATHAN appears in the
   doorway, lower right.)

Goodbye, George.

   (She goes out through the doorway, upper right.)

   (DR. JONATHAN may be almost any age,--in reality about thirty five.
   His head is that of the thinker, high above the eyes. His face
   bears evidence in its lines of years of labour and service, as well
   as of a triumphant struggle against ill health. In his eyes is a
   thoughtful yet illuminating smile, now directed toward GEORGE who,
   when he perceives him, is taken aback,)

DR. JONATHAN. Hello! I was told to come in here,--I hope I'm not
intruding.

GEORGE. Not at all. How--how long have you been here?

DR. JONATHAN. Just long enough to get my bearings. I came this morning.

GEORGE. Oh! Are you--are you Dr. Jonathan?

DR. JONATHAN. I'm Jonathan. And you're George, I suppose.

GEORGE. Yes. (He goes to him and shakes hands.) I'm sorry to be leaving
just as you come.

DR. JONATHAN. I'll be here when you return.

GEORGE. I hope so (a pause). You won't find Foxon Falls a bad old town.

DR. JONATHAN. And it will be a better one when you come back.

GEORGE. Why do you say that?

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). It seems a safe conjecture.

   (Dr. JONATHAN is looking at the heap of articles on the floor.)

GEORGE (grinning, and not quite at ease). You might imagine I was
embarking in the gent's furnishing business, instead of going to war.
(He picks up the life-preserving suit.) Some friend of mother's told her
about this, and she insisted upon sending for it. I don't want to hurt
her feelings, but I can't take it, of course.

   (He rolls it up and thrusts it under the sofa, upper left.)

You won't give me away?

DR. JONATHAN. Never!

GEORGE. Dad ought to be here in a minute, he's in there with old Timothy
Farrell, the moulder foreman. It seems that things are in a mess at the
shops. Rotten of the men to make trouble now--don't you think?--when the
country's at war! Darned unpatriotic, I say.

DR. JONATHAN. I saw a good many stars in your service flag as I passed
the office door this morning.

GEORGE. Yes. Over four hundred of our men have enlisted. I don't
understand it.

DR. JONATHAN. Perhaps you will, George, when you come home.

GEORGE. You mean--

   (GEORGE is interrupted by the entrance, lower right, of his mother,
   AUGUSTA PINDAR. She is now in the fifties, and her hair is turning
   grey. Her uneventful, provincial existence as ASHER'S wife has
   confirmed and crystallized her traditional New England views, her
   conviction that her mission is to direct for good the lives of the
   less fortunate by whom she is surrounded. She carries her knitting
   in her hand,--a pair of socks for GEORGE. And she goes at once to
   DR. JONATHAN.)

AUGUSTA. So you are Jonathan. They told me you'd arrived--why didn't
you come to us? Do you think it's wise to live in that old house of your
father's before it's been thoroughly heated for a few days?

DR. JONATHAN (taking her hand). Oh, I'm going to live with the doors and
windows open.

AUGUSTA. Dear me! I understand you've been quite ill, and you were
never very strong as a child. I made it my business to go through the
house yesterday, and I must say it looks comfortable. But the carpenters
and plumbers have ruined the parlour, with that bench, and the sink in
the corner. What are you going to do there?

DR. JONATHAN. I'm having it made into a sort of laboratory.

AUGUSTA. You don't mean to say you intend to do any work!

DR. JONATHAN. Work ought to cure me, in this climate.

AUGUSTA. You mean to practise medicine? You ought to have consulted us.
I'm afraid you won't find it remunerative, Jonathan,--but your father was
impractical, too. Foxon Falls is still a small place, in spite of the
fact that the shops have grown. Workmen's families can't afford to pay
big fees, you know.

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). I know.

AUGUSTA. And we already have an excellent physician here, Dr. Senn.

DR. JONATHAN. I shan't interfere with Dr. Senn.

GEORGE (laying his hand on AUGUSTA's shoulder: apologetically). Mother
feels personally responsible for every man, woman and child in Foxon
Falls. I shouldn't worry about Dr. Jonathan if I were you, mother, I've
got a notion he can take care of himself.

AUGUSTA (a little baffled by DR. JONATHAN's self-command, sits down and
begins to knit). I must get these socks finished for you to take with
you, my dear. (To DR. JONATHAN) I can't realize he's going! (To GEORGE)
You haven't got all your things in your bag! Where's the life-preserving
suit I sent for?

GEORGE (glancing at DR. JONATHAN). Oh that's gone, mother.

AUGUSTA. He always took cold so easily, and that will keep him warm and
dry, if those terrible Germans sink his ship. But your presents, George!
(To DR. JONATHAN:) Made for him by sisters of his college friends.

GEORGE (amused but embarrassed). I can't fit up a section of the
trenches as a boudoir.

AUGUSTA. Such nice girls! I wish he'd marry one of them. Who made you
the wristlets? I hadn't seen them.

GEORGE (taking of the wristlets and putting them in his bag). Oh, I
can't give her away. I was--just trying them on, to see if they fitted.

AUGUSTA. When did they come?

GEORGE (glancing at DR. JONATHAN). Er--this morning.

   (Enter ASHER and TIMOTHY from the study, left. ASHER is evidently
   wrought up from his talk with TIMOTHY.)

ASHER. Remember, Timothy, I rely on sensible men like you to put a stop
to this nonsense.

AUGUSTA. Asher, here's Jonathan.

ASHER. Oh! (He goes up to DR. JONATHAN and takes his hand, though it is
quite evident that his mind is still on the trouble in the shops). Glad
to see you back in Foxon Falls, Jonathan. I heard you'd arrived, and
would have dropped in on you, but things are in a muddle here just now.

DR. JONATHAN. Not only here, but everywhere.

ASHER. You're right. The country's going to the dogs. I don't know
what will straighten it out.

DR. JONATHAN. Intelligence, open-mindedness, cooperation, Asher.

ASHER (arrested: looking at him). Hum!

DR. JONATHAN (leaving him and going up to TIMOTHY). You don't remember
me, Timothy?

TIMOTHY. Sure and I do, sir,--though you were only a little lad. You
mind me of your father,--your smile, like. He was the grand, simple man!
It's happy I am to see you back in Foxon Falls.

DR. JONATHAN. Yes, I've been ordered to the rear.

TIMOTHY. The rear, is it? I'm thinking we'll be fighting this war in
Foxon Falls, too.

DR. JONATHAN. Yes, much of it will be fought behind the battle lines.

AUGUSTA. You think the Germans will come over here?

DR. JONATHAN. No, but the issue is over here already.

   (DR. JONATHAN picks up her ball of wool, which has fallen to the
   floor.)

AUGUSTA (looking at him apprehensively: puzzled). Thank you, Jonathan.

   (She turns to TIMOTHY, who has started toward the door, lower right)

Wait a moment, Timothy, I want to ask you about your children. What do
you hear from Minnie? I always took an interest in her, you know,
--especially when she was in the tool packing department of the shops,
and I had her in my Bible class. I appreciated your letting her come,
--an Irishman and a Catholic as you are.

TIMOTHY. The Church has given me up as a heathen, ma'am, when I married
your cook, and she a Protestant.

AUGUSTA. I've been worried about Minnie since she went to Newcastle.
She has so much vitality, and I'm afraid she's pleasure loving though she
seemed to take to religion with her whole soul. And where's Jamesy?

TIMOTHY. Jamesy, is it? It's gone to the bad entirely he is, with the
drink. He left the shops when the twelve-hour shifts began--wherever
he's at now. It's home Minnie came from Newcastle yesterday, ma'am, for
a visit,--she's outside there now, with Bert,--they walked along with me.

AUGUSTA. Bring them in, I want to see them,--especially Minnie. I must
say I'm surprised she should have come home without calling on me.

TIMOTHY. I'll get them, ma'am.

   (He goes out of the door, upper right. GEORGE, who has been
   palpably ill at ease during this conversation, now makes for the
   door, lower right.)

AUGUSTA. Where are you going, my dear?

GEORGE (halting). I thought I'd look around and see if I'd forgotten
anything, mother.

AUGUSTA. Stay with us,--there's plenty of time.

   (TIMOTHY returns through the doorway, upper right, with BERT, but
   without MINNIE.)

TIMOTHY. It's disappeared entirely she is, ma'am,--here one minute and
there the next, the way with young people nowadays. And she's going back
to Newcastle this afternoon, to her job at the Wire Works.

AUGUSTA. I must see her before she goes. I feel in a measure
responsible for her. You'll tell her?

TIMOTHY. I'll tell her.

AUGUSTA. How are you getting along, Bert?

BERT. Very well, thank you, Mrs. Pindar.

   (The MAID enters, lower right.)

MAID. Miss Thorpe wishes to speak with you, ma'am.

AUGUSTA (gathering up her knitting). It's about the wool for the Red
Cross.

   (Exit, lower right.)

GEORGE (shaking hands with BERT). Hello, Bert,--how goes it?

BERT. All right, thank you, lieutenant.

GEORGE. Oh, cut out the title.

   (BERT FARRELL is about twenty three. He wears a brown flannel shirt
   and a blue four-in-hand tie, and a good ready-made suit. He holds
   his hat in front of him. He is a self-respecting, able young Irish
   American of the blue-eyed type that have died by thousands on the
   battle fields of France, and whose pictures may be seen in our
   newspapers.)

ASHER. You're not working today, Bert?

BERT. I've left the shops, Mr. Pindar,--I got through last night.

ASHER. Left the shops! You didn't say anything about this, Timothy!

TIMOTHY. No, sir,--you have trouble enough today.

ASHER (to BERT). Why did you leave?

BERT. I'm going to enlist, Mr. Pindar,--with the Marines. From what
I've heard of that corps, I think I'd like to join it.

ASHER (exasperated). But why do you do a thing like this when you must
know I need every man here to help turn out these machines? And
especially young men like you, good mechanics! If you wanted to serve
your country, you were better off where you were. I got you exempted
--(catching himself) I mean, you were exempted from the draft.

BERT. I didn't want to be exempted, sir. More than four hundred of the
boys have gone from the shops, as well as Mr. George here, and I couldn't
stand it no longer.

ASHER. What's Mr. George got to do with it? The cases are different.

BERT (stoutly). I don't see that, Mr. Pindar. Every man, no matter who
he is, has to decide a thing like this for himself.

GEORGE. Bert's right, dad.

ASHER. You say he's right, when you know that I need every hand I can
get to carry out this contract?

GEORGE. He's going to make a contract, too. He's giving up all he has.

ASHER. And you approve of this, Timothy?

TIMOTHY. Sure, I couldn't stop him, Mr. Pindar! And it's proud I am of
him, the same as you are of Mr. George, that he'd be fighting for America
and liberty.

ASHER. Liberty! License is what we're getting now! The workman thinks
he can do as he pleases. And after all I've done for my workmen,
--building them a club house with a piano in it, and a library and a
billiard table, trying to do my best to make them comfortable and
contented. I pay them enough to buy pianos and billiard tables for
themselves, and you tell me they want still higher wages.

TIMOTHY. They're saying they can go down to the shipyards, where they'd
be getting five dollars and thirty cents a day.

ASHER. Let them go to the shipyards, if they haven't any sense of
gratitude! What else do they say?

TIMOTHY. That you have a contract, sir, and making millions out of it.

ASHER. What can they know about my profits?

TIMOTHY. It's just that, sir,--they know nothing at all. But they're
saying they ought to know, since things is different now, and they're
working for the war and the country, the same as yourself.

ASHER. Haven't I established a system of bonuses, to share my profits
with the efficient and the industrious?

TIMOTHY. They don't understand the bonuses,--how you come by them.
Autocracy is the word they use. And they say you put up a notice sudden
like, without asking them, that there'd be two long shifts instead of
three eight-hour ones. They're willing to work twelve hours on end, for
the war, they say, but they'd want to be consulted.

ASHER. What business is it of theirs?

TIMOTHY. Well, it's them that has to do the hard work, sir. There was a
meeting last night, I understand, with Rench and Hillman and a delegate
come from Newcastle making speeches, the only way they'd get their rights
would be for you to recognize the union.

ASHER. I'll never recognize a union! I won't have any outsiders,
meddlers and crooks dictating my business to me.

TIMOTHY. I've been with you thirty years, come December, Mr. Pindar, and
you've been a good employer to me. I don't hold with the unions--you
know it well, sir, or you wouldn't be asking me advice. I'm telling you
what they're saying.

ASHER. I didn't mean to accuse you,--you've been a good and loyal
employee--that's why I sent for you. Find out what their game is, and
let me know.

TIMOTHY. It's not a detective I am, Mr. Pindar. I'm a workman meself.
That's another thing they're saying, that you'd pay detectives to go
among them, like workingmen.

ASHER (impatiently). I'm not asking you to be a detective,--I only want
you to give me warning if we are to have a strike.

TIMOTHY. I've warned you, sir,--if it's only for the sake of beating the
Germans, the dirty devils.

GEORGE (turning to BERT). Well, here's wishing you luck, Bert, and
hoping we'll meet over there. I know how you feel,--you want to be in
it, just as I do.

ASHER (turning). Perhaps I said more than I meant to, Bert. I've got to
turn out these machines in order that our soldiers may have shrapnel to
fight with, and what with enlistments and the determination of
unscrupulous workmen to take advantage of the situation, I'm pretty hard
pressed. I can't very well spare steady young men like you, who have too
much sense and too much patriotism to mix yourselves up with trouble
makers. But I, too, can understand your feeling,--I'd like to be going
myself. You might have consulted me, but your place will be ready for
you when you come back.

BERT. Thank you, sir. (He turns his hat over in his hands.) Maybe it
would be fair to tell you, Mr. Pindar, that I've got a union card in my
pocket.

ASHER. You, Timothy Farrell's son!

TIMOTHY. What's that? And never a word to me!

BERT (to TIMOTHY). Why wouldn't I join the union? I took out the card
this morning, when I see that that's the only way we'll get what's coming
to us. We ain't got a chance against the, employers without the union.

TIMOTHY. God help me, to think my son would join the union,--and he
going to be a soldier!

BERT (glancing at GEORGE). I guess there'll be other union men in the
trenches besides me.

ASHER. Soldier or no soldier, I'll never employ any man again who's
joined a union.

GEORGE (perturbed). Hold on, dad!

ASHER. I mean what I say, I don't care who he is.

BERT (who retains his self-possession). Excuse me, Mr. Pindar, but I'd
like to ask you a question--I've heard the men talking about this in the
shops. You don't like it if we go off to--fight, but if we join the
union you fire us, no matter how short-handed you are.

ASHER. It's a principle with me,--I won't have any outside agency
dictating to me.

BERT. But if it came to recognizing the union, or shutting down?

ASHER. I'd shut down tomorrow.

   (GEORGE, who sees the point, makes a gesture as if about to
   interrupt.)

BERT. That's what I'm getting at, Mr. Pindar. You say you'd shut down
for a principle, whether the government gets the machines or not. And
the men say they'd join the union for a principle, whether the government
gets the machines or not. It looks to me as if both was hindering the
war for a principle, and the question is, which principle is it that
agrees best with what we're fighting for?

ASHER. No man joins a union for a principle, but for extortion. I can't
discuss it,--I won't!

BERT. I'm sorry, sir.

   (He turns to go out, lower right.)

GEORGE (overtaking him and grasping his hand). So long, Bert. I'll look
you up, over there!

BERT (gazing at him). All right, Mr. George.

GEORGE. Goodbye, Timothy. Don't worry about the boy.

TIMOTHY. It's proud I am to have him go. Mr. George,--but I can't think
why he'd be joining the union, and never telling me.

   (He stands for a moment troubled, glancing at ASHER, torn between
   loyalty to his employer and affection for his son. Then he goes out
   slowly, upper right. All the while DR. JONATHAN has stood in the
   rear of the room, occasionally glancing at GEORGE. He now comes
   forward, unobtrusively, yet withal impressively.)

ASHER. I never expected to hear such talk from a son of Timothy
Farrell,--a boy I thought was level-headed. (To DR. JONATHAN) What do
you think of that? You heard it.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, he stated the issue, Asher.

ASHER. The issue of what?

DR. JONATHAN. Of the new century.

GEORGE. The issue of the new century

ASHER. You're right, we've got to put these people down. After the war
they'll come to heel,--we'll have a cheap labour market then.

DR. JONATHAN. Humanity has always been cheap, but we're spending it
rather lavishly just now.

ASHER, You mean that there will be a scarcity of labour? And that they
can continue to blackmail us into paying these outrageous wages?

DR. JONATHAN. When you pay a man wages, Asher, you own him,--until he
is turned over to somebody else.

ASHER (puzzled, a little suspicious for the first time). I own his
labour, of course.

DR. JONATHAN. Then you own his body, and his soul. Perhaps he resents
being regarded as a commodity.

ASHER. What else is labour?

DR. JONATHAN. How would you like to be a commodity?

ASHER. I? I don't see what that has to do with it. These men have no
consideration, no gratitude, after the way I've treated them.

DR. JONATHAN. Isn't that what they object to?

ASHER. What?

DR. JONATHAN. To being treated.

ASHER. Object to kindness?

DR. JONATHAN. To benevolence.

ASHER. Well, what's the difference?

DR. JONATHAN. The difference between self-respect and dependence.

ASHER. Are--are you a Socialist?

DR. JONATHAN. NO, I'm a scientist.

   (ASHER is standing staring at him when the MAID enters, lower
   right.)

MAID. Your long distance call to Washington, sir.

ASHER. Very well.

   (As he starts to go out he halts and looks at DR. JONATHAN again,
   and then abruptly leaves the room, lower right, following the MAID.)

GEORGE (who has been regarding DR. JONATHAN: after a moment's
hesitation). You seem to think there's something to be said for the
workman's attitude, Dr. Jonathan.

DR. JONATHAN. What is his attitude, George?

GEORGE. Well, you heard Bert just now. I thought he had poor old dad
on the hip when he accused the employer of holding up the war, too.
But after all, what labour is after is more money, isn't it? and they're
taking advantage of a critical situation to get it. And when they get
money, most of them blow it in on sprees.

DR. JONATHAN. George, what are you going to France to fight for?

GEORGE. Germany's insulted our flag, murdered our people on the high
seas and wants to boss the world.

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). The issue, then, is human freedom.

GEORGE. Sure thing!

DR. JONATHAN. And you think every man and woman in this country is
reasonably free?

GEORGE. Every man can rise if he has the ability.

DR. JONATHAN. What do you mean by rise?

GEORGE. He can make money, set up for himself and be his own boss.

DR. JONATHAN. In other words, he can become free.

GEORGE (grinning). I suppose that's one way of putting it.

DR. JONATHAN. Money gives him freedom, doesn't it? Money gave you
yours,--to go to school and college until you were twenty four, and get
an education,--such as it was.

GEORGE. Such as it was!

DR. JONATHAN. Money gave you the choice of engaging in an occupation in
which you could take an interest and a pride, and enabled you
occasionally to go on a spree, if you ever went on a spree, George.

GEORGE. Once in awhile.

DR. JONATHAN. But this craving for amusement, for excitement and
adventure isn't peculiar to you and me. Workingmen have it too,--and
working girls.

GEORGE. You're a wise guy, I guess.

DR. JONATHAN. Oh no,--not that! But I've found out that you and I are
not so very different from Timothy Farrell and his children,--Bert and
Jamesy and--Minnie.

GEORGE (startled, and looking around to follow DR. JONATHAN'S glance
toward the windows). What do you know about them?

DR. JONATHAN. Oh, nothing at first hand. But I can see why Bert's going
to the war, and why Jamesy took to drink, and why Minnie left Foxon
Falls.

GEORGE. The deuce you can!

DR. JONATHAN. And so can you, George. When you get back from France you
will know what you have been fighting for.

GEORGE. And what's that?

DR. JONATHAN. Economic freedom, without which political freedom is a
farce. Industrial democracy.

GEORGE. Industrial democracy! Well, it wasn't included in my education
at Harvard.

DR. JONATHAN. Our education begins, unfortunately, after we leave
Harvard,--with Bert and Jamesy and Minnie. And here's Minnie, now!

GEORGE (hastily). I'll beat it! Mother wants to talk to her.

DR. JONATHAN (his hand on GEORGE'S arm). No,--wait.

   (Enter, lower right, AUGUSTA, followed by MINNIE FARRELL. MINNIE,
   AUGUSTA'S back being turned toward her, gives GEORGE a wink, which
   he acknowledges, and then glances toward DR. JONATHAN. AUGUSTA,
   with her knitting, seats herself in an armchair. Her attitude is
   somewhat inquisitorial; her tone, as she addresses MINNIE, non-
   committal. She is clearly offended by MINNIE'S poise and good-
   natured self-assertion.)

AUGUSTA. You remember Mr. Pindar, Minnie.

MINNIE (demurely). Glad to meet you again, Mr. Pindar. I hear you're
going off to the war. Well, that's great.

GEORGE (squeezing her hand; she winces a little). Oh, yes,-I remember
Minnie.

AUGUSTA. And this is Dr. Jonathan Pindar.

MINNIE (who has been eyeing DR. JONATHAN as a possible enemy; with
reserve). Glad to meet you, I'm sure.

DR. JONATHAN (smiling at her as he takes her hand). The pleasure is
--mutual.

MINNIE (puzzled, but somewhat reassured). Glad to meet you.

DR. JONATHAN. I've come to live in Foxon Falls. I hope we'll be
friends.

MINNIE. I hope so. I'm going back to Newcastle this afternoon, there's
nothing doing here.

DR. JONATHAN. Would you stay, if there were something doing?

MINNIE. I--I don't know. What would I be doing here?

AUGUSTA (disapprovingly, surveying, MINNIE'S costume). I don't think I
should have recognized you, Minnie.

MINNIE. City life agrees with me, Mrs. Pindar. But I needed a little
rest cure, and I came to see what the village looked like.

DR. JONATHAN. A sort of sentimental journey, Minnie.

MINNIE (flashing a look at GEORGE, and another at DR. JONATHAN). Well,
you might call it that. I get you.

AUGUSTA. Minnie, what church do you attend in Newcastle?

MINNIE. Well, I haven't got a seat in any particular church, Mrs.
Pindar.

AUGUSTA. I didn't expect you to go to the expense of getting a seat.
I hope you delivered the letter our minister gave you to the minister of
the First Church in Newcastle.

MINNIE. No, I didn't, Mrs. Pindar, and that's the truth. I never went
near a church.

AUGUSTA (drily). It's a pity you ever went to Newcastle, I think.

MINNIE. It's some town! Every time you ride into it you see a big sign,
"Welcome to Newcastle, population one hundred and six thousand, and
growing every day. Goodbye, and thank you!"

AUGUSTA (knitting). You drive about in automobiles!

MINNIE. Oh, sometimes I get a joy ride.

AUGUSTA. It grieves me to hear you talk in this way. I knew you were
pleasure loving, I thought I saw certain tendencies in you, yet you
seemed to realize the grace of religion when you were in my Bible class.
Your brother Jamesy took to drink--

MINNIE. And I took to religion. You meant to be kind, Mrs. Pindar, and
I thank you. But now I know why Jamesy took to drink--it was for the
same reason I took to religion.

AUGUSTA (scandalized). Minnie!

MINNIE. We were both trying to be free, to escape.

AUGUSTA. To escape? From what?

MINNIE (with a gesture indicating futility). I guess it would be pretty
hard to get it across to you, Mrs. Pindar. But I was working ten hours a
day packing tools in your shops, and all you gave me when the whistle
blew was--Jesus.

   (A pause: GEORGE takes a step toward her.)

Jamesy took to drink, and I took to Jesus. I'm not saying anything
against Him. He had His life, but I wanted mine. Maybe He would have
understood.

   (Turning impulsively toward DR. JONATHAN.)

I've got a hunch that you understand.

AUGUSTA. Minnie, I can't let you talk about religion in this way in my
presence.

MINNIE. I'm sorry, Mrs. Pindar, I knew it wasn't no use to come and see
you,--I told father so.

AUGUSTA. I suppose, if you're determined to continue this life of--(she
catches herself) I can't stop you.

MINNIE (flaring up). What life? Don't worry about me, Mrs. Pindar,--I
get twenty five dollars a week at the Shale Works making barb wire to
trip up the Huns with,--enough to get nice clothes--(she glances down at
her dress) and buy good food, and have a good time on the side.

AUGUSTA (whose conceptions of what she believes to be MINNIE's kind are
completely upset). You still work?

MINNIE. Work! Sure I work. I wouldn't let any man get a strangle hold
on me. And I don't kick at a little overtime, neither. I'm working for
what he's going to fight for--(indicating GEORGE) it ain't for myself
only, but for everybody that ain't been free, all over the world. (To
DR. JONATHAN.) Ain't that right? (She does not wait for his nod of
approval.) I was just saying this morning--(she looks toward GEORGE and
catches herself)--I've been wishing all along I could do more--go as a
nurse for some of the boys.

AUGUSTA. A nurse!

MINNIE (to DR. JONATHAN). If I was a man, I'd have been a doctor, like
you. Sick people don't bother me, I give myself to 'em. Before mother
died, when she was sick, she always said I'd ought to have been a nurse.
(A pause.) Well, I guess I'll go along. The foreman only give me a
couple of days off to see the old home town.

GEORGE. Hold on, Minnie.

MINNIE. What is it?

GEORGE (to AUGUSTA). Minnie and I are old friends, mother.

AUGUSTA. Old friends?

GEORGE. Yes. I knew her--very well before she went away from Foxon
Falls, and I went to Newcastle and took her out for a drive in my car.

MINNIE (vehemently). No, you never.

GEORGE. Why do you deny it?

MINNIE. There's nothing to it.

AUGUSTA (aghast). George!

GEORGE. Well, it's true. I'm not ashamed of it, though Minnie appears
to be.

MINNIE (on the verge of tears). If you wasn't ashamed, why didn't you
tell, her before? I'm not ashamed of it, neither. It was natural.

AUGUSTA (after a pause, with a supreme effort to meet the situation).
Well, I suppose men are different. But there's no excuse for you, after
all I tried to do for you.

MINNIE. Thank God men are different!

   (AUGUSTA rises. The ball of wool drops to the floor again, and DR.
   JONATHAN picks it up.)

GEORGE. Mother, I'd like to tell you about it. You don't understand.

AUGUSTA. I'm afraid I do understand, dear.

   (As she leaves the room, with dignity, GEORGE glances appealingly at
   DR. JONATHAN.)

DR. JONATHAN (going up to MINNIE and taking her hand). Do you think
you'd have time to drop in to see me, Minnie, before your train goes?

MINNIE (gazing at him; after a moment). Sure! I guess I'd like to talk
to you.

DR. JONATHAN. It's the little white house across the Common.

MINNIE. Oh, I know, that's been shut up all these years.

DR. JONATHAN. And is open now again.

   (He goes out, lower right, and there is a brief silence as the two
   look after him.)

MINNIE. Say, who is he?

GEORGE. Why, he's a cousin of mine--

MINNIE. I don't mean that. He's somebody, ain't he?

GEORGE. By jingo, I'm beginning to think he is!

   (They stand gazing at one another.)

MINNIE (remembering her grievance: passionately). Now you've gone and
done it--telling your mother we were friends.

GEORGE. But we are--aren't we? You couldn't expect me to keep quiet,
under the circumstances.

MINNIE. She thinks I'm not fit to talk to you. Not that I care, except
that I was fond of her, she's been good to me in her way, and I felt real
bad when I went off to Newcastle with the letter to the minister I never
laid eyes on. She'll believe--you know what she'll believe,--it'll
trouble her. She's your mother, and you're going away. You might have
kept still.

GEORGE. I couldn't keep still. What would you have thought of me?

MINNIE. It don't make any difference what I'd have thought of you.

GEORGE. It makes a difference to me, and it makes some difference what I
think of myself. I seem to be learning a good many things this morning.

MINNIE. From him?

GEORGE: You mean Dr. Jonathan?

MINNIE. Yes.

GEORGE (reflecting). I don't know. I'm learning them from you, from
everybody.

MINNIE. Maybe he put you wise.

GEORGE. Well, I don't feel wise. And seeing you again this morning
brought it all back to me.

MINNIE. You were only fooling.

GEORGE. I began that way,--I'll own up. But I told you I'd never met
a girl like you, you're full of pep--courage--something I can't describe.
I was crazy about you,--that's straight,--but I didn't realize it until you
ran off, and then I went after you,--but it was no good! I don't claim
to have been square with you, and I've been thinking--well, that I'm
responsible.

MINNIE. Responsible for what?

GEORGE. Well-for your throwing yourself away down there at Newcastle.
You're too good.

MINNIE (with heat). Throwing myself away?

GEORGE. Didn't you? Didn't you break loose?--have a good time?

MINNIE. Why wouldn't I have a good time? That's what you were having,
--a good time with me,--wasn't it? And say, did you ever stop to think
what one day of a working girl's life was like?

GEORGE. One day?

MINNIE. With an alarm clock scaring you out of sweet dreams in the
winter, while it's dark, and you get up and dress in the cold and heat a
little coffee over a lamp and beat it for the factory,--and stand on your
feet all morning, in a noise that would deafen you, feeding a thing you
ain't got no interest in? It don't never need no rest! By eleven
o'clock you think you're all in, that the morning'll never end, but at
noon you get a twenty five cent feed that lasts you until about five in
the afternoon,--and then you don't know which way the machine's headed.
I've often thought of one of them cutters at Shale's as a sort of
monster, watching you all day, waiting to get you when you're too tired
to care. (Dreamily.) When it looks all blurred, and you want to put your
hand in it.

GEORGE. Good God, Minnie!

MINNIE. And when the whistle blows at night all you have is your little
hall bedroom in a rooming house that smells of stale smoke and cabbage.
There's no place to go except the streets--but you've just got to go
somewhere, to break loose and have a little fun,--even though you're so
tired you want to throw yourself on the bed and cry.

   (A pause.)

Maybe it's because you're tired. When you're tired that way is when you
want a good time most. It's funny, but it's so.

   (A pause.)

You ain't got no friends except a few girls with hall bedrooms like
yourself, and if a chance comes along for a little excitement, you don't
turn it down, I guess.

GEORGE (after a pause). I never knew what your life was like.

MINNIE. Why would you?--with friends, and everything you want, only to
buy it? But since the war come on, I tell you, I ain't kicking, I can go
to a movie or the theatre once in a while, and buy nice clothes, and I
don't get so tired as I used to. I don't want nothing from anybody, I
can take care of myself. It's money that makes you free.

GEORGE. Money!

MINNIE. When I looked into this room this morning and saw you standing
here in your uniform, I says to myself, "He's changed." Not that you
wasn't kind and good natured and generous, George, but you didn't know.
How could you? You'd never had a chance to learn anything!

GEORGE (bitterly, yet smiling in spite of himself). That's so!

MINNIE. I remember that first night I ran into you,--I was coming home
from your shops, and you made love to me right off the bat! And after
that we used to meet by the watering trough on the Lindon road. We were
kids then. And it didn't make no difference how tired I was, I'd get
over it as soon as I saw you. You were the live wire!

GEORGE. Minnie, tell me, what made you come back to Foxon Falls today?

   (He seizes her hand.)

MINNIE (struggling). Don't, George,--don't go and be foolish again!

   (The shop whistle blows. She pulls away from him and backs toward
   the doorway, upper right.)

There's the noon whistle! Goodbye, I'll be thinking of you, over there.

GEORGE. I'll write to you. Will you write to me, Minnie?

MINNIE (shaking her head). Don't lose any sleep about me. Good luck,
George!

   (She goes to the doorway, upper right, turns, kisses her hand to
   GEORGE and disappears. He goes to the doorway and gazes after her;
   presently he raises his hand and waves in answer to another signal,
   and smiles. He remains there until MINNIE is out of sight, and then
   is about to come back into the room when a man appears on the
   sidewalk, seen through the windows. The man is PRAG. He is a gaunt
   workman, with high cheek bones and a rather fanatical light in his
   blue eyes. He stands motionless, gazing at the house.)

GEORGE (calling). Do you want anything, Prag?

PRAG. I joost come to look at your house, where you live. It is no
harm, is it?

GEORGE. None at all.

   (PRAG continues to stare at the house, and GEORGE obeys a sudden
   impulse.)

Won't you come in, Prag?

PRAG (looking fixedly at the house). No, I stay here.

GEORGE. Come in a while,--don't be unsociable.

   (PRAG crosses the lawn and enters, upper right. He surveys the room
   curiously, defiantly, and then GEORGE in uniform, as he cones down
   the stage.)

You're not working today?

PRAG (with bitter gloom). I lose my job, you don't hear? No, it is
nothings to you, and you go away to fight for liberty,--ain't it?

GEORGE. How did you lose your job?

PRAG. The foreman come to me last night and says, "Prag I hear you
belong to the union. You gets out."

GEORGE (after a moment's hesitation). But--there are plenty of other
jobs these days. You can go down to the coast and get more than five
dollars a day at a shipyard.

PRAG. It is easy, yes, when you have a little home bought already, and
mortgaged, and childrens who go to school here, and a wife a long time
sick.

GEORGE. I'm sorry. But weren't you getting along all right here, except
your wife's illness? I don't want to be impertinent,--I recognize that
it's your affair, but I'd like to know why you joined the union.

PRAG. Why is it you join the army? To fight for somethings you would
give your life for--not so? Und you are a soldier,--would you run away
from your comrades to live safe and happy? No! That is like me. I lose
my job, I go away from my wife and childrens, but it is not for me, it is
for all, to get better things for all,--freedoms for all.

GEORGE. Then--you think this isn't a free country.

PRAG. When. I sail up the harbour at New York twenty years ago and see
that Liberty shining in the sun, I think so, yes. But now I know, for
the workmens, she is like the Iron Woman of Nuremberg, with her spikes
when she holds you in her arms. You call me a traitor, yes, when I say
that.

GEORGE. No--I want to understand.

PRAG. I am born in Bavaria, but I am as good an American as any,--better
than you, because I know what I fight for, what I suffer for. I am not
afraid of the Junkers here,--I have spirits,--but the Germans at home
have no spirits. You think you fight for freedoms, for democracy, but
you fight for this! (He waves his hand to indicate the room.) If I had a
million dollars, maybe I fight for it, too,--I don't know.

GEORGE. So you think I'm going to fight for this--for money?

PRAG. Are you going to fight for me, for the workmens and their
childrens? No, you want to keep your money, to make more of it from your
war contracts. It is for the capitalist system you fight.

GEORGE. Come, now, capital has some rights.

PRAG. I know this, that capital is power. What is the workmen's vote
against it? against your newspapers and your system? America, she will
not be free until your money power is broken. You don't like kings and
emperors, no,--you say to us workmens, you are not patriots, you are
traitors if you do not work and fight to win this war for democracy
against kings. Are we fools that we should worry about kings? Kings
will fall of themselves. Now you can put me in jail.

GEORGE. I don't want to put you in jail, God knows! How would you
manage it?

PRAG. Why does not the employer say to his workmens, "This is our war,
yours and mines. Here is my contract, here is my profits, we will have
no secrets, we will work together and talk together and win the war
together to make the world brighter for our childrens." Und then we
workmens say, "Yes, we will work night and day so hard as we can,
because we are free mens."

   (A fanatical gleams comes into his eyes.)

But your employer, he don't say that,--no. He says, "This is my
contract, this is my shop, and if you join the unions to get your
freedoms you cannot work with me, you are traitors!"

   (He rises to a frenzy of exaltation.)

After this there will be another war, and the capitalists will be swept
away like the kings!

   (He pauses; GEORGE is silent.)

Und now I go away, and maybe my wife she die before I get to the shipyard
at Newcastle.

   (He goes slowly out, upper right, and GEORGE does not attempt to
   stay him. Enter ASHER, lower right.)

ASHER. I've just called up the Department in Washington and given them a
piece of my mind--told 'em they'd have to conscript labour. Damn these
unions, making all this trouble, and especially today, when you're going
off. I haven't had a chance to talk to you. Well, you know that I'm
proud of you, my boy. Your grandfather went off to the Civil War when he
was just about your age.

GEORGE. And he knew what he was going to fight for.

ASHER. What?

GEORGE. I thought I knew, this morning. Now I'm not so sure.

ASHER. You say that, when Germany intended to come over here and crush
us, when she got through with the Allies.

GEORGE. No, it's not so simple as that, dad, it's bigger than that.

ASHER. Who's been talking to you? Jonathan Pindar? I wish to God he'd
never come to Foxon Falls! I might have known what his opinions would
be, with his inheritance. (Reproachfully.) I didn't suppose you could be
so easily influenced by sentimentalism, George, I'd hoped you'd got over
that.

GEORGE. Are you sure it's sentimentalism, dad? Dr. Jonathan didn't say
much, but I'll admit he started me thinking. I've begun to realize a few
things--

ASHER. What things?

GEORGE (glancing at the clock on the mantel). I haven't got time to tell
you,--I'm afraid I couldn't make it clear, anyway,--it isn't clear in my
own mind yet. But,--go slow with this labour business, dad, there's
dynamite in it.

ASHER. Dynamite?

GEORGE. Human dynamite. They're full of it,--we're full of it, too,
I guess. They're not so different from you and me, though I'll admit
that many of them are ignorant, prejudiced and bitter. But this row
isn't just the result of restlessness and discontent,--that's the smoke,
but the fire's there, too. I've heard enough this morning to be
convinced that they're struggling for something fundamental, that has to
do with human progress,--the issue behind the war. It's obscured now, in
the smoke. Now if that's so you can't ignore it, dad, you can't suppress
it, the only thing to do is to sit down with them and try to understand
it. If they've got a case, if the union has come to stay, recognize it
and deal with it.

ASHER. You--you, my son, are not advising me to recognize the union!
To give our employees a voice in our private affairs!

GEORGE (courageously). But is the war our private affair, dad? Hasn't
it changed things already?

   (ASHER makes a gesture of pain, of repudiation. GEORGE approaches
   him appealingly.)

Dad, you know how much we've always been to each other, I'd hate to have
any misunderstanding between us,--especially today. I've always accepted
your judgment. But I'm over twenty one, I'm going to fight this war,
I've got to make up my own mind about it.

ASHER (extending his arms and putting his hands on GEORGE'S shoulders).
Something's upset you today, my boy,--you don't know what you're saying.
When you get over there and take command of your men you'll see things in
a truer proportion.

GEORGE. No, I can't leave it this way, dad. I've come to feel this
thing, it's got hold of me now, I shan't change. And I'll be thinking
of it over there, all the time, if we don't talk it out.

ASHER. For God's sake, George, don't speak of it again,--don't think of
it! There's no sacrifice I wouldn't make for you, in reason, but you're
asking me to go against my life-long convictions. As your father, I
forbid you to entertain such ideas--(he breaks off, choking). Don't
speak of them, don't think of them!

   (TIMOTHY FARRELL Steps inside the doorway, upper right, followed by
   BERT, and after a few moments by DR. JONATHAN.)

TIMOTHY. Excuse me sir, but you asked me to be letting you know if I
heard anything. There's a meeting called for tonight, and they'll strike
on Monday morning. It's certain I am, from the way the men are talking,
--unless ye'd agree to meet the committee this afternoon and come to an
understanding like.

ASHER. Let them strike. If they burned down the shops this afternoon,
I wouldn't stop them! (He waves TIMOTHY Off.) My boy is leaving for
France, and I'm going to New York with him.

TIMOTHY (with a sudden flaring up of sympathy). It's meself has a boy
going, too, Mr. Pindar. And maybe it's almost the last I'll be seeing of
him, this noon hour. Just a word with ye, before it's too late, sir.

ASHER (suppressing him). No, let them strike!

   (He turns to hide his emotion and then rushes out of the door, lower
   right. GEORGE and BERT come forward and stand with TIMOTHY, silent
   after ASHER's dramatic exit; when TIMOTHY perceives DR. JONATHAN.)

TIMOTHY. Did you see my Minnie, doctor? She went to your house.

DR. JONATHAN. I met her on the street just now, and left her with Mrs.
Prag.

GEORGE. Prag's wife! You've been to see her?

DR. JONATHAN. Yes. Her condition is serious. She needs a nurse, and
Minnie volunteered.

TIMOTHY. My Minnie, is it? Then she won't be going back to Newcastle.

DR. JONATHAN (looking at GEORGE). She won't be going back to Newcastle.

TIMOTHY. That's Minnie! (he turns to GEORGE). Well, goodbye, Mr.
George,--I'll say God bless you again. (He looks at BERT.) You'll be
fighting over there, the pair of you, for freedom. Have an eye on him,
Sir, if you can,--give him some good advice.

GEORGE (his hand on BERT'S shoulder). Bert can take care of himself, I
guess. I'll be needing the advice!

   (He shakes hands with TIMOTHY.)

                 CURTAIN.






ACT II

SCENE:
   A fairly large room in DR. JONATHAN's house in Foxon Falls, which
   has been converted into a laboratory. The house antedates the
   PINDAR mansion, having been built in the first decade of the
   nineteenth century, and though not large, has a certain distinction
   and charm. The room has a panelled wainscoting and a carved wooden
   mantel, middle left, painted white, like the doors. Into the
   fireplace is set a Franklin stove. The windows at the rear have
   small panes; the lower sashes are raised; the tops of the hollyhocks
   and foxgloves in the garden bed may be seen above the window sills,
   and the apple trees beyond. Under the windows is a long table, on
   which are chemical apparatus. A white enamelled sink is in the rear
   right corner. The walls are whitewashed, the wooden floor bare. A
   door, left, in the rear, leads into DR. JONATHAN'S office; another,
   middle right, into a little front hall.

TIME: A July morning, 1918.



   MINNIE FARRELL, in the white costume worn by nurses and laboratory
   workers, is at the bench, pouring liquid into a test tube and
   holding its up to the light, when DR. JONATHAN enters from the
   right.

DR. JONATHAN. Has anyone been in, Minnie?

MINNIE (turning, with the test tube in her hand). Now, what a question
to ask, Dr. Jonathan! Was there ever a morning or afternoon that
somebody didn't stray in here with their troubles? (Fiercely.) They
don't think a scientist has a real job,--they don't understand, if you
put this across--(she holds up the test tube)--you'll save the lives of
thousands of soldiers, and a few ordinary folks, too, I guess. But you
won't let me tell anyone.

DR. JONATHAN. It will be time enough to tell them when we do put it
across.

MINNIE. But we're going to,--that is, you're going to.

DR. JONATHAN. You're too modest, Minnie.

MINNIE. Me modest! But what makes me sore is that they don't give you
a chance to put this thing across. Dr. Senn's a back number, and if
they're sick they come here and expect you to cure 'em for nothing.

DR. JONATHAN. But they can't complain if I don't cure them.

MINNIE. And half the time they ain't sick at all,--they only imagine it.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, that's interesting too,--part of a doctor's
business. It's pretty hard to tell in these days where the body ends
and the soul begins.

MINNIE. It looks like you're cutting out the minister, too. You'd ought
to be getting his salary.

DR. JONATHAN. Then I'd have to do his job.

MINNIE. I get you--you'd be paid to give 'em all the same brand of dope.
You wouldn't be free.

DR. JONATHAN. To experiment.

MINNIE. You couldn't be a scientist. Say, every time I meet the
minister I want to cry, he says to himself, "She ran away from Jesus and
went to the bad. What right has she got to be happy?" And Mrs. Pindar's
just the same. If you leave the straight and narrow path you can't never
get back--they keep pushing you off.

DR. JONATHAN (who has started to work at the bench). I've always had my
doubts about your sins, Minnie.

MINNIE. Oh, I was a sinner, all right, they'll never get that out of
their craniums. But being a sinner isn't a patch on being a scientist!
It's nearly a year now since you took me in. The time's flown! When I
was in the Pindar Shops, and in the Wire Works at Newcastle I could
always beat the other girls to the Main Street when the whistle blew, but
now I'm sorry when night comes. I can't hardly wait to get back here
--honest to God! Say, Dr. Jonathan, I've found out one thing,--it's being
in the right place that keeps a man or a woman straight. If you're in
the wrong place, all the religion in the world won't help you. If you're
doing work you like, that you've got an interest in, and that's some use,
you don't need religion (she pauses). Why, that's religion,--it ain't
preaching and praying and reciting creeds, it's doing--it's fun. There's
no reason why religion oughtn't to be fun, is there?

DR. JONATHAN. None at all!

MINNIE. Now, if we could get everybody in the right job, we wouldn't
have any more wars, I guess.

DR. JONATHAN. The millennium always keeps a lap ahead--we never catch up
with it.

MINNIE. Well, I don't want to catch up with it. We wouldn't have
anything more to do. Say, it's nearly eleven o'clock--would you believe
it?--and I've been expecting Mr. Pindar to walk in here with the
newspaper. I forgot he was in Washington.

DR. JONATHAN. He was expected home this morning.

MINNIE. What gets me is the way he hangs around here, too, like
everybody else, and yet I've heard him call you a Socialist, and swear
he hasn't any use for Socialists.

DR. JONATHAN. Perhaps he's trying to find out what a Socialist is.
Nobody seems to know.

MINNIE. He don't know, anyway. If it hadn't been for you, his shops
would have been closed down last winter.

DR. JONATHAN. It looks as if they'd be closed down now, anyway.

MINNIE (concerned, looking up). Is that so? Well, he won't recognize
the union--he doesn't know what century he's living in. But he's human,
all the same, and he's good to the people he's fond of, like my father,
--and he sure loves George. He's got George's letters all wore out,
reading them, to people. (A pause.) He don't know where George is,
does he, Dr. Jonathan?

DR. JONATHAN. Somewhere in France.

MINNIE. We spotted Bert because he's with the Marines, at that place
where they put a crimp in the Huns the other day when they were going to
walk into Paris.

DR. JONATHAN. Chateau-Thierry.

MINNIE. I'll leave it to you. But say, Dr. Jonathan, things don't look
good to me,--I'm scared we won't get enough of our boys over there before
the deal's closed up. I've got so I don't want to look at a paper.

   (A brief silence.)

I never told you George wrote me a couple of letters, did I?

DR. JONATHAN. No, I'm quite sure you didn't.

MINNIE. I never told nobody. His father and mother would be wild if
they knew it. I didn't answer them--I just sent him two post cards with
no writing on except the address--just pictures.

DR. JONATHAN. Pictures?

MINNIE. One of the Pindar Church and the Other of the Pindar Shops. I
guess he'll understand they were from me, all right. You see, when I ran
away from the Pindar Shops and the Pindar Church--I always connect them
together--I was stuck on George. That's why I ran away.

DR. JONATHAN. I see.

MINNIE. Oh, I never let him know. I don't know why I told you--I had to
tell somebody,--and you won't give me away.

DR. JONATHAN. You may count on me.

MINNIE. He didn't care nothing about me, really. But you can't help
liking George. He's human, all right! If he was boss of the Pindar
Shops there wouldn't be any strike.

   (A knock at the door, right.)

I wonder who's butting in now!

   (She goes to the door and jerks it open.)

   (A man's voice, without.) Good morning, Miss Farrell. Is the doctor
   in?

MINNIE. This is his busy day.

DR. JONATHAN (going toward the door). Oh, it's you, Hillman. Come in.

MINNIE. I guess I'll go for the mail.

   (With a resigned expression she goes oust right as HILLMAN comes in,
   followed by RENCH and FERSEN. They are the strike committee.
   HILLMAN is a little man, with red hair and a stiff, bristling red
   moustache. He holds himself erect, and walks on the balls of his
   feet, quietly. RENCH is tall and thin, with a black moustache,
   like a seal's. He has a loud, nasal voice, and an assertive manner.
   FERSEN is a blond Swede.)

   (DR. JONATHAN puts one or two objects in place on the bench. His
   manner is casual but cordial, despite the portentous air of the
   Committee.)

   (The men, their hats in their hands, go toward the bench and inspect
   the test tubes and apparatus.)

RENCH (New England twang). Always manage to have something on hand when
you ain't busy with the folks, doctor. It must be interestin' to fool
with these here chemicals.

DR. JONATHAN. It keeps me out of mischief.

HILLMAN. I guess you haven't much time to get into mischief.

FERSEN. We don't like to bother you.

DR. JONATHAN. No bother, Fersen,--sit down. (He draws forward some
chairs, and they sit down.) How is the baby?

FERSEN. Oh, she is fine, now, since we keep her outside in the baby
carriage, like you tell us.

   (FERSEN grins, and immediately becomes serious again. A brief
   silence.)

HILLMAN (clearing his throat). The fact is, Dr. Jonathan, the boys have
struck,--voted last night to walk out at noon today.

FERSEN. We thought we tell you now. You been such a good friend to us
and our families.

DR. JONATHAN. But isn't this rather sudden, with Mr. Pindar in
Washington?

RENCH. We couldn't wait no longer,--he's been standing us off for more
than a year. When he comes back from Washington there'll be nothing
doing. He's got to recognize the union or lose his contract.

DR. JONATHAN. He may prefer to lose his contract.

RENCH. Well, he can afford to. Then he can go to hell.

HILLMAN. Hold on, Sam, that ain't no way to talk to the doctor!

RENCH. I didn't mean no disrespect to him. He don't go 'round
preachin', like some fellers I could mention, but actions is louder than
words. Ain't that the reason we're here, because he sympathizes with us
and thinks we're entitled to a little more of this freedom that's bein'
handed 'round? We want you to help us, doctor.

DR. JONATHAN. It seems to me you've come a little late, Rench,--after
the event.

HILLMAN. Maybe if you'd said a word, they'd never have voted to strike.

FERSEN. But you never said nothing, Doctor.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, when you get around to admitting doctors to your
labour unions, perhaps they'll talk.

HILLMAN. If all the doctors was like you!

DR. JONATHAN. Give 'em a chance, Hillman.

HILLMAN. We don't have to explain to you why we want the union,--it's
the only way we'll ever get a say about the conditions in which we work
and live, now that the day of individual bargaining is gone by. You
understand. Mr. Pindar raised our wages when we threatened to strike
last fall, but he calculates to drop 'em again when the soldiers come
home.

FERSEN (nodding). Sure thing!

HILLMAN. It's this way, doctor. We notice Mr. Pindar comin' in here to
see you every day or so,--like the rest of Foxon Falls. And we thought
you could make him see this thing straight, if any man could.

DR. JONATHAN. So the shops will be idle.

RENCH. Not a shaft'll turn over till he recognizes the union.

HILLMAN. We don't want to do nothin' to obstruct the war, but we've got
to have our rights.

DR. JONATHAN. Can you get your rights now, without obstructing the war?

RENCH (aggressively). I get what you're driving at, doctor. You're
going to say that we've just reached quantity production on these here
machines, and if labour gets from under now, the Huns win. But tell me
this,--where'll labour be if America wins and our Junkers (he pronounces
the J) come out on top?--as they callate to.

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). When a building with dry rot catches fire,
Rench, can you put limit to how much of it will burn?

RENCH (after a pause). Maybe not. I get you--but--

DR. JONATHAN. No nation, no set of men in any nation can quench that
fire or make the world that is coming out of this war. They may think
they can, but they can't.

HILLMAN. That's so!

DR. JONATHAN. Germany will be beaten, because it is the temper of the
nation, the temper of the times--your temper. You don't want Germany to
win, Rench?

RENCH. No, I guess not.

DR. JONATHAN. And if you don't work here, you'll go off to work
somewhere else.

RENCH. Where they recognize the union.

DR. JONATHAN. A good many of your friends have enlisted, haven't they?
(RENCH nods.) And what do you suppose they are fighting for?

RENCH. For the same thing as we want, a square deal.

DR. JONATHAN. And what do you think George Pindar is fighting for?

RENCH. I ain't got nothing to say against him.

DR. JONATHAN. If you close down the Pindar Shops, won't it mean that a
few more of your friends will lose their lives? These men are fighting
for something they don't yet understand, but when they come back they'll
know more about it. Why not wait until George Pindar comes back?

RENCH. He mayn't never come back.

DR. JONATHAN. Give him the opportunity.

RENCH. I like George,--he's always been friendly--what we call a common
man up here in New England--naturally democratic. But at bottom
employers is all alike. What makes you think he won't take his ideas
about labour from the old man?

DR. JONATHAN. Because he belongs to the generation that fights this war.

HILLMAN (shuffling). It ain't no use, doctor. Unless you can bring Mr.
Pindar 'round, the shops'll close down.

DR. JONATHAN. I can't, but something else can.

HILLMAN. What?

DR. JONATHAN. Circumstances. No man can swim up stream very long in
these days, Hillman. Wait a while, and see.

RENCH (rising). We've voted to put this strike through, and by God,
we'll do it.

FERSEN (rising and shaking hands with DR. JONATHAN). It's fine weather,
doctor.

RENCH (bursting into a laugh). He's like the man who said, when Congress
declared war, "It's a fine day for it!" It's a fine day for a strike!

HILLMAN (who has risen, shaking hands with DR. JONATHAN). But you'll
talk to Mr. Pindar, anyway?

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). Yes, I'll talk with him.

   (Enter TIMOTHY FARRELL, right, in working clothes.)

TIMOTHY. Good morning, doctor. (Surveying the committee.) So it's here
ye are, after voting to walk out of the shops just when we're beginning
to turn out the machines for the soldiers!

RENCH. If we'd done right we'd have called the strike a year ago.

TIMOTHY. Fine patriots ye are--as I'm sure the doctor is after telling
you--to let the boys that's gone over there be murdered because ye must
have your union!

HILLMAN. If Mr. Pindar recognizes the union, Timothy, we'll go to work
tomorrow.

TIMOTHY. He recognize the union! He'll recognize the devil first! Even
Dr. Jonathan, with all the persuasion he has, couldn't get Mr. Pindar to
recognize the union. He'll close down the shops, and it's hunting a job
I'll be, and I here going on thirty years.

RENCH. If he closes the shops--what then? The blood of the soldiers'll
be on his head, not ours. If there were fewer scabs in the country--

HILLMAN. Hold on, Sam.

TIMOTHY. A scab, is it? If I was the government do you know what I'd do
with the likes of you--striking in war time? I'd send ye over there to
fight the Huns with your bare fists. I'm a workman meself, but I don't
hold with traitors.

RENCH. Who's a traitor? It's you who are a traitor to your class. If a
union card makes a man a traitor, your own son had one in his pocket the
day he enlisted.

TIMOTHY. A traitor, and he fighting for his country, while you'd be
skulking here to make trouble for it!

   (MINNIE appears on the threshold of the door, right. DR. JONATHAN,
   who is the first to perceive from her expression that there is
   something wrong, takes a step toward her. After a moment's silence
   she comes up to TIMOTHY and lays a hand on his arm.)

TIMOTHY (bewildered). What is it, Minnie?

MINNIE. Come home, father.

TIMOTHY. What is it? It's not a message ye have--it's not a message
about Bert?

   (MINNIE continues to gaze at him.)

The one I'd be looking for these many days! (He seizes her.) Can't ye
speak, girl? Is the boy dead?

MINNIE. Yes, father.

TIMOTHY (puts his hand to his forehead and lets fall his hat.
DR. JONATHAN picks it up). Me boy! The dirty devils have killed him!

MINNIE. Come, father, we'll go home.

TIMOTHY. Home, is it? It's back to the shops I'm going. (To the
committee) Damn ye--we'll run the shops in spite of ye! Where's me hat?

   (DR. JONATHAN hands it to him as the committee file out in silence.)

Come with me as far as the shops, Minnie. Thank you, doctor--(as DR.
JONATHAN gives him the hat)--it's you I'll be wanting to see when I get
me mind again.

   (DR. JONATHAN goes with TIMOTHY and MINNIE as far as the door,
   right, and then comes back thoughtfully to the bench, takes up a
   test tube and holds it to the, light. Presently ASHER PINDAR
   appears in the doorway, right.)

ASHER. Good morning, Jonathan.

DR. JONATHAN. Good morning, Asher. I didn't know you'd got back from
Washington.

ASHER. I came in on the mail train.

DR. JONATHAN. Have you been to the office?

ASHER. No. I stopped at the house to speak to Augusta, and then--(he
speaks a trifle apologetically)--well, I went for a little walk.

DR. JONATHAN. A walk.

ASHER. I've been turning something over in my mind. And the country
looked so fine and fresh I crossed the covered bridge to the other side
of the river. When George was a child I used to go over there with him
on summer afternoons. He was such a companionable little shaver--he'd
drop his toys when he'd see me coming home from the office. I can see
him now, running along that road over there, stopping to pick funny
little bouquets--the kind a child makes, you know--ox-eyed daisies and
red clover and buttercups all mixed up together, and he'd carry them home
and put them in a glass on the desk in my study.

   (A pause.)

It seems like yesterday! It's hard to realize that he's a grown man,
fighting over there in the trenches, and that any moment I may get a
telegram, or be called to the telephone--Have you seen today's paper?

DR. JONATHAN. No.

ASHER. It looks like more bad news,--the Germans have started another
one of those offensives. I was afraid they were getting ready for it.
West of Verdun this time. And George may be in that sector, for all I
know. How is this thing going to end, Jonathan? That damned military
machine of theirs seems invincible--it keeps grinding on. Are we going
to be able to stem the tide, or to help stem it with a lot of raw youths.
They've only had a year's training.

DR. JONATHAN. Germany can't win, Asher.

ASHER. What makes you say that? We started several years too late.

Dr. JONATHAN. And Germany started several centuries too late.

ASHER. My God, I hope you're right. I don't know.

   (He walks once or twice up and down the room..)

I've had another letter.

DR. JONATHAN. This morning?

ASHER. No--I got it before I left for Washington. But I didn't bring it
in to you I wanted to think about it.

   (He draws the letter, together with a folded paper, from his pocket,
   and lays the paper down on the bench. Then he adjusts his glasses
   and begins to read.)

"Dear dad,

"The sky is the colour of smeared charcoal. We haven't been in the
trenches long enough to evolve web feet, so mine are resting on a duck
board spread over a quagmire of pea soup. The Heinies are right here,
soaking in another ditch beyond a barbed wire fence, about the distance
of second base from the home plate. Such is modern war!

"But these aren't the things that trouble me. Last night, when I was wet
to the skin and listening to the shells--each singing its own song in the
darkness--I was able to think with astonishing ease better than if I were
sitting at a mahogany desk in a sound proof room! I was thinking over
the talk we had the day I left home,--do you remember it?--about the real
issue of this war. I've thought of it time and again, but I've never
written you about it. Since I have been in France I have had a liberal
education gathered from all sorts and conditions of men. Right here in
the trench near me are a street car conductor, a haberdasher, a Swedish
farm hand, a grocery clerk, a college professor, a Pole from the Chicago
Stock Yards, an Irish American janitor of a New York apartment house, and
Grierson from Cleveland, whose father has an income of something like a
million a year. We have all decided that this is a war for the under
dog, whether he comes from Belgium or Armenia or that so-called land of
Democracy, the United States of America. The hope that spurs us on and
makes us willing to endure these swinish surroundings and die here in the
mud, if need be, is that the world will now be reorganized on some
intelligent basis; that Grierson and I, if we get back, won't have to rot
on a large income and petrified ideas, but will have some interesting and
creative work to do. Economic inequalities must be reduced, and those
who toil must be given a chance to live, not merely to exist. Their
lives must include a little leisure, comfortable homes, art and beauty
and above all an education that none of us, especially those of us who
went to universities, never got,--but which now should be available for
all.

"The issue of this war is industrial democracy, without which political
democracy is a farce. That sentence is Dr. Jonathan's. But when I was
learning how to use the bayonet from a British sergeant in Picardy I met
an English manufacturer from Northumberland. He is temporarily an
officer. I know your opinion of theorists, but this man is working out
the experiment with human chemicals. After all, the Constitution of the
United States, now antiquated and revered, once existed only in the
brains of French theorists! In the beginning was the Word, but the deed
must follow. This Englishman, whose name is Wray, has given me the
little pamphlet he wrote from his experience, and I shall send it to you.

"Though I am writing this letter in what to me is a solemn and
undoubtedly exalted hour, I am sure that my mind was never clearer or
saner. Dad, I have set my heart on inaugurating an experiment in
industrial democracy in Foxon Falls! I'd like to be able to think--if
anything happened to me--that the Pindar shops were among the first in
America to recognize that we are living in a new era and a changed
world."

   (ASHER walks over to the bench and lays down the open letter on it.)

If anything should happen to that boy, Jonathan, there wouldn't be
anything in life left for me! Industrial democracy! So you put that
into his head! Socialism, I suppose.

DR. JONATHAN. No, experimental science.

ASHER. Call it what you like. What surprises me is, when I look back
over the months you've been here, how well we've got along in spite of
your views.

DR. JONATHAN. Why not say in spite of yours, Asher?

ASHER (smiling involuntarily). Well, it's been a comfort to drop in here
and talk to you, in spite of what you believe. You've got the gift of
sympathy, Jonathan. But I don't approve of you're spending your time in
this sort of work--(he waves a hand toward the bench)--which may never
come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up
their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you
are going to live?

DR. JONATHAN. By practising your cardinal virtue, thrift.

ASHER. I've got a proposal to make to you part of a scheme I've been
turning over in my mind for the last six months--and when George's letter
came I decided to put it through. I went to New York and had Sterry, a
corporation lawyer, draw it up. I'm going to prove I'm not a mossback.
It will reorganize the Pindar Shops.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, that's good news.

ASHER. First, with reference to your part in it, I shall establish a
free hospital for my employees, and put you in charge of it, at a salary
of five thousand a year. After all, you're the only Pindar left except
George, and I'm satisfied that as a doctor you're up to the job, since
you've driven Dr. Senn out of business.

DR. JONATHAN. Practical proof, Asher. Fortunately Dr. Senn has enough
to live on.

ASHER. In offering you this position I have only one stipulation to
make--(he clears his throat)--it's about Minnie Farrell. I think the
world of Timothy, I wouldn't willingly hurt his feelings, but I can't
have Minnie with you in the hospital, Jonathan. You deserve a great deal
of credit for what you've done for the girl, you've kept her out of
mischief, but considering her past, her life at Newcastle--well, even if
I approved of having her in the hospital Augusta would never hear of it.
And then she had some sort of an affair with George--I daresay there was
nothing wrong--

DR. JONATHAN. Wrong is a question of code, Asher. We've all had pasts
--What interests me is Minnie's future.

ASHER. Of course you wouldn't decline my offer on Minnie's account.

DR. JONATHAN. On my own account, Asher. We'll say no more about Minnie.

ASHER. You refuse to help me, when I'm starting out on a liberal scheme
which I thought you would be the first to endorse?

DR. JONATHAN. I have not refused to help you,--but you have not told me
the scheme?

ASHER. Well. (He' taps the paper in his hand.) For those employees who
serve me faithfully I have arranged pensions.

DR. JONATHAN. For those, in other words, who refrain from taking their
destinies in their own hands, and who do as you wish.

ASHER. For those who are industrious and make no trouble. And I have
met the objection that they have no share in the enterprise by allowing
them, on favourable terms, to acquire stock in the company.

DR. JONATHAN. I see. You will let them acquire half of the stock, in
order that they may have an equal voice.

ASHER. Equal? It's my company, isn't it?

DR. JONATHAN. At present.

ASHER. I supply the capital. Furthermore, I have arranged for a system
of workmen's committees, which I recognize, and with which I will
continually consult. That's democratic enough--isn't it? If the men
have any grievances, these will be presented in an orderly manner through
the committees.

DR. JONATHAN. And if you find the demands--reasonable, you grant them.

ASHER. Certainly. But one thing I set my face against as a matter of
principle, I won't recognize the unions.

DR. JONATHAN. But--who is to enforce the men's side of this contract?

ASHER. What do you mean?

DR. JONATHAN. What guarantee have they, other than a union organization,
that you will keep faith?

ASHER. My word.

DR. JONATHAN. Oh!

ASHER. Never in my life have I regarded my possessions as my own. I am
a trustee.

DR. JONATHAN. The sole trustee.

ASHER. Under God.

DR. JONATHAN. And you have God's proxy. Well, it seems to me that that
is a very delightful arrangement, Asher--William appears to approve of
it, too.

ASHER. William? William who?

DR. JONATHAN. William Hohenzollern.

ASHER. You compare me to the Kaiser!

DR. JONATHAN. Only in so far as you have in common a certain
benevolence, Asher. Wouldn't your little plan, if your workmen accepted
it, keep you in as a benevolent autocrat?

ASHER. Me? an autocrat?

DR. JONATHAN. You are preparing to give your men more privileges, and
perhaps more money on the condition that they will renounce rights to
which they are entitled as free men. You are ready to grant anything but
a constitution. So is William.

ASHER. Do you seriously suggest that I give labour a voice in my
business?

DR. JONATHAN. Doesn't George suggest it, when he pleads for industrial
democracy? He seems to think that he is ready to give his life for it.
And Bert Farrell has already given his life for it.

ASHER (agitatedly). What? Timothy's boy, Bert? Is he dead? Why didn't
you tell me?

DR. JONATHAN (gently). I've had no chance. Minnie and Timothy were here
just before you came in.

ASHER. Oh God, I'm sorry--I'm sorry for Timothy. It might have been
--I'll go and see Timothy. Where is he?--at his house.

DR. JONATHAN. No, at the shops. He wanted to keep working until they
close down.

ASHER (who has started for the door, right, turns). What do you mean?

   (There is a knock at the door.)

DR. JONATHAN. I mean that the moment has come, Asher, to remember
George. That your opportunity is here--heed it.

ASHER. I can't, I won't desert my principles

   (The knock is repeated. DR. JONATHAN goes to the door and opens it.
   Enter, in the order named, HILLMAN, RENCH and FERSEN.)

HILLMAN. Beg your pardon, Mr. Pindar, we've been waiting for you at the
office, and we heard you was here.

ASHER ( facing them with a defiance almost leonine). Well, what is it?

HILLMAN (glancing at DR. JONATHAN). There's a matter we'd like to talk
over with you, Mr. Pindar, as soon as convenient.

ASHER. This is as convenient as any time, right now.

HILLMAN. The men voted to strike, last night. Maybe Dr. Jonathan has
told you.

ASHER. Voted to strike behind my back while I was in Washington
attending to the nation's business!

RENCH. It ain't as if this was anything new, Mr. Pindar, as if we hadn't
been discussing this here difference for near a year. You've had your
warning right along.

ASHER. Didn't I raise your wages last January?

HILLMAN. Wait a minute, Mr. Pindar. (He looks at DR. JONATHAN.) It
oughtn't to be only what you say--what capital says. Collective
bargaining is only right and fair, now that individual bargaining has
gone by. We want to be able to talk to you as man to man,--that's only
self-respecting on our part. All you've got to do is to say one word,
that you'll recognize the union, and I'll guarantee there won't be any
trouble.

RENCH. If you don't, we walk out at noon.

HILLMAN (with an attempt at conciliation). I know if we could sit down
and talk this thing out with you, Mr. Pindar, you'd see it reasonable.

ASHER. Reasonable? Treasonable, you mean,--to strike when the lives of
hundreds of thousands of your fellow countrymen depend on your labour.

RENCH. We ain't striking--you're striking!

FERSEN (nodding). That's right!

RENCH. We're ready to go back to work this afternoon if you treat us
like Americans. (FERSEN nods.) You say we're obstructing the war by not
giving in,--what's the matter with you giving in? Ain't the employers
just as much traitors as we?

HILLMAN. Hold on, Sam,--we won't get nowhere by calling names. Let's
discuss it cool!

ASHER. I refuse to discuss it.

   (He takes the paper out of his docket and holds it up.)

Do you see this paper? It's a plan I had made, of my own free will, for
the betterment and advancement of the working class. It was inspired by
the suggestion of my son, who is now fighting in France. I came back to
Foxon Falls this morning happy in the hope that I was to do something to
encourage what was good in labour--and how have I been met? With a
demand, with a threat. I was a fool to think you could stand decent
treatment!

   (He seizes the paper, and tears it in two.)

HILLMAN. Wait a minute, Mr. Pindar. If you won't listen to us, maybe
Dr. Jonathan would say a word for us. He understands how we feel.

ASHER (savagely tearing the paper in two, and then again in four).
That's my answer! I won't have Dr. Pindar or anyone else interfering in
my private affairs.

RENCH. All right--I guess we're wasting time here, boys. We walk out
and stay out. (Threateningly.) Not a shaft'll turn over in them shops
until you recognize the union. And if that's treason, go back to
Washington and tell 'em so. Come on boys!

   (He walks out, followed by FERSEN, nodding, and lastly by HILLMAN,
   who glances at DR. JONATHAN. ASHER stares hard at them as they
   leave. Then an expression of something like agony crosses his
   face.)

ASHER. My God, it's come! My shops shut down, for the first time in my
life, and when the government relies on me!

   (DR. JONATHAN stoops down and picks up the fragments of the document
   from the floor.)

What are you doing?

DR. JONATHAN. Trying to save the pieces, Asher.

ASHER. I've got no use for them now.

DR. JONATHAN. But history may have.

ASHER. History. History will brand these men with shame for all time.
I'll fix 'em! I'll go back to Washington, and if the government has any
backbone, if it's still American, they'll go to work or fight!
(Pointedly.) This is what comes of your Utopian dreams, of your
socialism!

   (A POLAK WOMAN is seen standing in the doorway, right.)

WOMAN. Doctor!

DR. JONATHAN. Yes.

WOMAN. My baby is seek--I think maybe you come and see him. Mrs.
Ladislaw she tell me you cure her little boy, and that maybe you come,
if I ask you.

DR. JONATHAN. Yes, I'll come. What is your name?

WOMAN. Sasenoshky.

DR. JONATHAN. Your husband is in the shops?

WOMAN. He was, doctor. Now he is in the American army.

DR. JONATHAN. Sasenoshky--in the American army.

WOMAN (proudly). Yes, he is good American now,--he fight to make them
free in the old country, too.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, we'll have a look at the baby. He may be in the
White House some day--President Sasenoshky! I'll be back, Asher.

   (The noon whistle blows.)

ASHER. That's the signal! I'll get along, too.

DR. JONATHAN. Where are you going?

ASHER. I guess it doesn't make much difference where I go.

   (He walks out, followed by DR. JONATHAN and the WOMAN. The room is
   empty for a moment, and then MINNIE FARRELL enters through the
   opposite door, left, from DR. JONATHAN'S office. She gazes around
   the room, and then goes resolutely to the bench and takes up several
   test tubes in turn, holding theme to the light. Suddenly her eye
   falls on GEORGE'S letter, which ASHER has left open on the bench
   with the envelope beside it. MINNIE Slowly reaches out and picks it
   up, and then holds it to her lips . . . She still has the letter
   in her hand, gazing at it, when AUGUSTA PINDAR enters, right.)

AUGUSTA. Oh, I thought Mr. Pindar was here!

MINNIE. Perhaps he's been here--I don't know. I just came in. (She
hesitates a second, then goes to the bench and lays the letter down.)

AUGUSTA. He must have been here,--he told me he was coming to talk with
Dr. Pindar.

   (She approaches the bench and glances at the letter.)

Isn't that a letter from my son?

MINNIE (a little defiantly, yet almost in tears). I guess it is.

AUGUSTA. It was written to you?

MINNIE. No.

AUGUSTA. Then what were you doing with it?

MINNIE. I just--picked it up. You think I was reading it? Well, I
wouldn't.

AUGUSTA. Then how did you know it was written by my son?

   (MINNIE is silent.)

You must be familiar with his handwriting. I think I'd better take it.
(She folds it up and puts it in the envelope.) Does George write to you?

MINNIE. I've had letters from him.

AUGUSTA. Since he went to France?

MINNIE. Yes.

AUGUSTA (after a pause). I've never approved of Dr. Findar employing you
here. I warned him against you--I told him that you would betray his
kindness as you betrayed mine, but he wouldn't listen to me. I told him
that a girl who was capable of drawing my son into an intrigue while she
was a member of the church and of my Bible class, a girl who had the
career you had in Newcastle, couldn't become a decent and trustworthy
woman. The very fact that you had the audacity to come back to Foxon
Falls and impose on Dr. Pindar's simplicity, proves it.

MINNIE. You know all about me, Mrs. Pindar.

AUGUSTA. I wasn't born yesterday.

MINNIE. Oh, ladies like you, Christian ladies, are hard! They won't
believe nothing good of anybody--only the bad. You've always been
sheltered, you've always had everything you'd want, and you come and
judge us working girls. You'd drive me out of the only real happiness
I ever had, being here with a man like Dr. Jonathan, doing work it's a
pleasure to do--a pleasure every minute!--work that may do good to
thousands of people, to the soldiers over there--maybe to George, for all
you know! (She burst into tears.) You can't understand--how could you?
After all, you're his mother. I oughtn't to forget it.

AUGUSTA. Yes, I'm his mother. And you? You haven't given up the idea
that he may marry you some day, if you stay here and pretend to have
reformed. You write to him. George may have been foolish, but he isn't
as foolish as that!

MINNIE. He doesn't care about me.

AUGUSTA. I'm glad you realize it. But you mean to stay here in Foxon
Falls, nevertheless. You take advantage of Dr. Pindar, who is easily
imposed upon, as his father was before him. But if I told you that you
might harm Dr. Pindar by staying here, interfere with his career, would
you be willing to leave?

MINNIE. Me? Me doing Dr. Jonathan harm?

AUGUSTA, Yes. I happen to know that he has very little money. He makes
none, he never asks anyone for a bill. He spends what he has on this
kind of thing--research, for the benefit of humanity, as he thinks,--but
very little research work succeeds, and even then it doesn't pay.

MINNIE. He doesn't care about money.

AUGUSTA. Perhaps not. He is one of those impractical persons who have
to be looked out for, if they are fortunate enough to have anyone to look
out for them. Since he is a cousin of my husband, Mr. Pindar considers
him as one of his many responsibilities. Mr. Pindar has always had, in a
practical way, the welfare of his working people at heart, and now he
proposes to establish a free hospital for them and to put Dr. Pindar in
charge of it. This will give him a good living as well as a definite
standing in the community, which he needs also.

MINNIE. He's the biggest man in Foxon Falls today!

AUGUSTA. That is as one thinks. At any rate, he has this opportunity.
Are you going to stand in the way of it?

MINNIE. Me stand in the way of it?

AUGUSTA. If Dr. Pindar accepts the place, you can't go with him,--you
will have to find some other position. Mr. Pindar is firm about that,
and rightly so. But I believe Dr. Pindar would be quite capable of
refusing rather than inconvenience anyone with whom he is connected.

MINNIE. You're right there!

AUGUSTA. He's quixotic.

MINNIE. If that's a compliment, you're right again.

AUGUSTA. It isn't exactly a compliment.

MINNIE. I guess you mean he's queer--but you're wrong--you're wrong!
He's the only man in Foxon Falls who knows what kind of a world we're
going to live in from now on. Why? Because he's a scientist, because
he's trained himself to think straight, because he understands people
like you and people like me. He don't blame us for what we do--he knows
why we do it.

   (A pause.)

That's the reason I try not to blame you for being hard--you can't
understand a girl like me. You can't understand George.

AUGUSTA (white). We'll leave my son out of the conversation, if you
please. We were talking of Dr. Pindar. You seem to have some
consideration for him, at least.

MINNIE. I'd go to the electric chair for him!

AUGUSTA. I'm not asking you to do that.

MINNIE. You want me to go away and get another place. I remember a
lesson you gave us one day in Bible class, "Judge not, that you be not
judged,"--that was what you talked about. But you're judging me on what
you think is my record,--and you'd warn people against hiring me. If
everybody was a Christian like that these days, I'd starve or go on the
street.

AUGUSTA. We have to pay for what we do.

MINNIE. And you make it your business to see that we pay.

   (A pause.)

Well, I'll go. I didn't know how poor Dr. Jonathan was,--he never said
anything about it to me. I'll disappear.

AUGUSTA. You have some good in you.

MINNIE. Don't begin talking to me about good!

   (TIMOTHY FARRELL enters, right.)

TIMOTHY. Good morning, ma'am. (Looking at MINNIE and AUGUSTA). I came
to fetch Minnie to pass an hour with me.

AUGUSTA (agitated and taken aback). Were--were having a little talk.
(She goes up to TIMOTHY.) I'm distressed to hear about Bert!

TIMOTHY. Thank you for your sympathy, ma'am.

   (A brief silence. Enter ASHER, right.)

ASHER (surveying the group). You here, Augusta? (He goes up to TIMOTHY
and presses his hand.) I wanted to see you, Timothy,--I understand how
you feel. We both gave our sons in this war. You've lost yours, and I
expect to lose mine.

AUGUSTA. Asher!

TIMOTHY. Don't say that, Mr. Pindar

ASHER. Why not? What right have I to believe, after what has happened
in my shops today, that he'll come back?

TIMOTHY. God forbid that he should be lost, too! There's trouble
enough--sorrow enough--

ASHER. Sorrow enough! But if a man has one friend left, Timothy, it's
something.

TIMOTHY (surprised). Sure, I hope it's a friend I am, sir,--a friend
this thirty years.

ASHER. We're both old fashioned, Timothy,--we can't help that.

TIMOTHY. I'm old fashioned enough to want to be working. And now that
the strike's on, whatever will I do? Well, Bert is after giving his life
for human liberty,--the only thing a great-hearted country like America
would be fighting for. There's some comfort in that! I think of him as
a little boy, like when he'd be carrying me dinner pail to the shops at
noon, runnin' and leppin' and callin' out to me, and he only that high!

ASHER. As a little boy!

TIMOTHY. Yes, sir, it's when I like to think of him best. There's a
great comfort in childher, and when they grow up we lose them anyway.
But it's fair beset I'll be now, with nothing to do but think of him.

ASHER. You can thank these scoundrels who are making this labour trouble
for that.

TIMOTHY. Scoundrels, is it? Scoundrels is a hard word, Mr. Pindar.

ASHER. What else are they? Scoundrels and traitors! Don't tell me that
you've gone over to them, Timothy--that you've deserted me, too! That
you sympathize with these agitators who incite class against class!

TIMOTHY. I've heard some of them saying, sir, that if the unions gain
what they're after, there'll be no classes at all at all. And classes
is what some of us didn't expect to find in this country, but freedom.

ASHER. Freedom! They're headed for anarchy. And they haven't an ounce
of patriotism.

TIMOTHY (meaningly). Don't say that, sir. Me own boy is after dying
over there, and plenty have gone out of your own shops, as ye can see for
yourself every time you pass under the office door with some of the stars
in the flag turning to gold. And those who stays at home and works
through the night is patriots, too. The unions may be no better than
they should be, but the working man isn't wanting anyone to tell him
whether he'd be joining them or not.

ASHER. I never expected to hear you talk like this!

TIMOTHY. Nor I, sir. But it's the sons, Mr. Pindar,--the childher that
changes us. I've been thinking this morning that Bert had a union card
in his pocket when he went away,--and if he died for that kind of
liberty, it's good enough for his old father to live for. I see how
wicked it was to be old fashioned.

ASHER. Wicked?

TIMOTHY. Isn't it the old fashioned nation we're fighting, with its
kings and emperors and generals that would crush the life and freedom
out of them that need life. And why wouldn't the men have the right to
organize, sir, the way that they'd have a word to say about what they'd
be doing?

ASHER. You--you ask me to sacrifice my principles and yield to men who
are deliberately obstructing the war?

TIMOTHY. Often times principles is nothing but pride, sir. And it might
be yourself that's obstructing the war, when with a simple word from you
they'd go on working.

ASHER (agitatedly). I can't, I won't recognize a labour union!

TIMOTHY. Have patience, sir. I know ye've a kind heart, and that ye've
always acted according to your light, the same as me. But there's more
light now, sir,--it's shining through the darkness, brighter than the
flashes of the cannon over there. In the moulding room just now it seems
to break all around me, and me crying like a child because the boy was
gone. There was things I hadn't seen before or if I saw them, it was
only dim-like, to trouble me (ASHER turns away) the same as you are
troubled now. And to think it's me that would pity you, Mr. Pindar! I
says to myself, I'll talk to him. I ain't got no learning, I can't find
the words I'm after--but maybe I can persuade him it ain't the same world
we're living in.

ASHER. I was ready to recognize that. Before they came to me this
morning I had made a plan to reorganize the shops, to grant many
privileges.

TIMOTHY. You'll excuse me, sir, but it's what they don't want,--anyone
to be granting them privileges, but to stand on their own feet, the same
as you. I never rightly understood until just now,--and that because I
was always looking up, while you'd be looking down, and seeing nothing
but the bent backs of them. It's inside we must be looking, sir,--and
God made us all the same, you and me, and Mr. George and my son Bert, and
the Polak and his wife and childher. It's the strike in every one of us,
sir,--and half the time we'd not know why we're striking!

ASHER. You're right there, Timothy

TIMOTHY. But that makes no difference, sir. It's what we can't be
reasoning, but the nature in us all--

   (He flings his arm toward the open windows.)

--like the flowers and the trees in the doctor's garden groping to the
light of the sun. Maybe the one'll die for lack of the proper soil, and
many is cruelly trampled on, but the rest'll be growing, and none to stop
'em.

ASHER (pacing to the end of the room, and turning). No, I won't listen
to it! You--you ask me to yield to them, when you have lost your son,
when they're willing to sacrifice--to murder my son on the field of
battle?

   (He pauses and looks toward the doorway, right. DR. JONATHAN
   standing there, holding in his hand a yellow envelope. ASHER
   starts forward.)

A telegram? For me?

DR. JONATHAN. Yes, Asher.

   (After giving it to ASHER, DR. JONATHAN takes his stand beside
   MINNIE, who is at the back of the room, near the bench. He lays a
   hand on her arm. ASHER tears open the envelope and stares at the
   telegram, his hands trembling.)

ASHER (exclaiming, in a half whisper). George!

AUGUSTA. Oh Asher, not--not--!

   (She reaches for the telegram. He gives it to her. She reads.)
"Captain George Pindar severely wounded, condition critical."

TIMOTHY. Please God he'll be spared to ye!

                 CURTAIN.





ACT III

SCENE: Same as in Act I, the library of ASHER PINDAR'S house.

TIME:
   The following day, early afternoon. A storm is raging, with wind
   and rain and occasional bright flashes of lightning and heavy peals
   of thunder. ASHER is pacing up and down the room, folding and
   unfolding his hands behind his back, when AUGUSTA enters, lower
   right, her knitting in her hand. There is a flash and a peal of
   thunder.

AUGUSTA. Oh! Asher, did you know that the elm at the end of the Common
was struck just now?--that splendid old landmark!

ASHER. All the old landmarks are being struck down, one after another.

AUGUSTA (going up to him and putting her hand on his arm). I've been so
nervous all day. Do be careful how you go about during this strike.
Those sullen and angry groups of men on the street this morning--

ASHER. Oh, they wouldn't dare touch me. If we only had a state
constabulary we'd soon break that sort of thing up. But the Legislature
trembles whenever a labour leader opens his mouth.

AUGUSTA (sitting down and taking up her knitting). If only I could be
of some help to you! But it's always been so.

ASHER. You've been a good wife, Augusta!

AUGUSTA. I don't know. I've kept your house, I've seen that you were
well fed, but I've been thinking lately how little that is for a woman
--for a human being.

ASHER (surprised). Why, Augusta! I can't remember the time when you
haven't been busy. You've taken an active part in church work and looked
out for the people of the village.

AUGUSTA. Yes, and what has it all amounted to? The poor are ungrateful,
they won't go near the church, and today they're buying pianos. Soon
there won't be any poor to help.

ASHER. That's so. We'll be the paupers, if this sort of thing keeps on.

AUGUSTA. I've tried to do my duty as a Christian woman, but the world
has no use, apparently, for Christians in these times. And whenever you
have any really serious trouble, I seem to be the last person you take
into your confidence.

ASHER. I don't worry you with business matters.

AUGUSTA. Because you do not regard me as your intellectual equal.

ASHER. A woman has her sphere. You have always filled it admirably.

AUGUSTA. "Adorn" is the word, I believe.

ASHER. To hear you talk, one would think you'd been contaminated by
Jonathan. You, of all people!

AUGUSTA. There seems to be no place for a woman like me in these days,
--I don't recognize the world I'm living in.

ASHER. You didn't sleep a wink last night, thinking of George.

AUGUSTA. I've given up all hope of ever seeing him again alive.

   (Enter DR. JONATHAN, lower right. His calmness is in contrast to
   the storm, and to the mental states of ASHER and AUGUSTA.)

Why, Jonathan, what are you doing out in this storm?

DR. JONATHAN. I came to see you, Augusta.

AUGUSTA (knitting, trying to hide her perturbation at his appearance).
Did you? You might have waited until the worst was over. You still have
to be careful of your health, you know.

DR. JONATHAN (sitting down). There are other things more important than
my health. No later news about George, I suppose.

ASHER. Yes. I got another telegram early this morning saying that he
is on his way home on a transport.

DR. JONATHAN. On his way home!

ASHER. If he lives to arrive. I'll show you the wire. Apparently they
can't make anything out of his condition, but think it's shell shock.
This storm has been raging along the coast ever since nine o'clock, the
wires are down, but I did manage to telephone to New York and get hold of
Frye, the shell-shock specialist. In case George should land today,
he'll meet him.

DR. JONATHAN. Frye is a good man.

ASHER. George is hit by a shell and almost killed nearly a month ago,
and not a word do I hear of it until I get that message in your house
yesterday! Then comes this other telegram this morning. What's to be
said about a government capable of such inefficiency? Of course the
chances of his landing today are small, but I can't leave for New York
until tonight because that same government sends a labour investigator
here to pry into my affairs, and make a preliminary report. They're
going to decide whether or not I shall keep my property or hand it over
to them! And whom do they send? Not a business man, who's had practical
experience with labour, but a professor out of some university,--a
theorist!

DR. JONATHAN. Awkward people, these professors. But what would you do
about it, Asher? Wall up the universities?

ASHER. Their trustees, who are business men, should forbid professors
meddling in government and politics. This fellow had the impudence to
tell me to my face that my own workmen, whom I am paying, aren't working
for me. I'm only supposed to be supplying the capital. We talk about
Germany being an autocracy it's nothing to what this country has become!

DR. JONATHAN (smiling). An autocracy of professors instead of business
men. Well, every dog has his day. And George is coming home.

ASHER. And what is there left to hand over to him if he lives? What
future has the Pindar Shops,--which I have spent my life to build up?

DR. JONATHAN. If George lives, as we hope, you need not worry about the
future of the Pindar Shops, I think.

AUGUSTA. If God will only spare him!

ASHER. I guess I've about got to the point where I don't believe that a
God exists.

   (A flash and a loud peal of thunder.)

AUGUSTA. Asher

ASHER. Then let Him strike me!

   (He hurries abruptly out of the door, left.)

AUGUSTA (after a silence). During all the years of our married life, he
has never said such a thing as that. Asher an atheist!

DR. JONATHAN. So was Job, Augusta,--for a while.

AUGUSTA (avoiding DR. JONATHAN'S glance, and beginning to knit). You
wanted to speak to me, Jonathan?

   (The MAID enters, lower right.)

MAID. Timothy Farrell, ma'am.

   (Exit maid, enter TIMOTHY FARRELL.)

AUGUSTA. I'm afraid Mr. Pindar can't see you just now, Timothy.

TIMOTHY. It's you I've come to see, ma'am, if you'll bear with me,
--who once took an interest in Minnie.

AUGUSTA. It is true that I once took an interest in her, Timothy, but
I'm afraid I have lost it. I dislike to say this to you, her father, but
it's so.

TIMOTHY. Don't be hard on her, Mrs. Pindar. She may have been wild-
like in Newcastle, but since she was back here to work for the doctor
she's been a good girl, and that happy I wouldn't know her, and a comfort
to me in me old age,--what with Bert gone, and Jamesy taken to drink!
And now she's run away and left me alone entirely, with the shops closed,
and no work to do.

AUGUSTA (knitting). She's left Foxon Falls?

TIMOTHY (breaking down for a moment). When I woke up this morning I
found a letter beside me bed--I'm not to worry, she says and I know how
fond of me she was--be the care she took of me. She's been keeping
company with no young man--that I know. If she wasn't working with the
doctor on that discovery she'd be home with me.

AUGUSTA. I'm sorry for you, Timothy, but I don't see what I can do.

TIMOTHY. I minded that you were talking to her yesterday in the
lab'rat'ry, before the telegram came about Mr. George.

AUGUSTA. Well?

TIMOTHY. It was just a hope, ma'am, catching at a straw-like.

AUGUSTA (tightening her lips). I repeat that I'm sorry for you, Timothy.
I have no idea where she has gone.

TIMOTHY (looking at her fixedly. She pauses in her knitting and returns
his look). Very well, ma'am--there's no need of my bothering you.
You've heard nothing more of Mr. George?

AUGUSTA (with sudden tears). They're sending him home.

TIMOTHY. And now that ye're getting him back, ma'am, ye might think with
a little more charity of her that belongs to me--the only one I'd have
left.

   (TIMOTHY goes out, lower right. AUGUSTA is blinded by tears. She
   lets fall her ball of wool. DR. JONATHAN picks it up.)

AUGUSTA. I try to be fair in my judgments, and true to my convictions,
but what Minnie has done cannot be condoned.

DR. JONATHAN (sitting down beside AUGUSTA) And what has Minnie done,
Augusta?

AUGUSTA. You ask me that? I try hard to give you credit, Jonathan, for
not knowing the ways of the world--but it's always been difficult to
believe that Minnie Farrell had become well--a bad woman.

DR. JONATHAN. A bad woman. I gather, then, that you don't believe in
the Christian doctrines of repentance and regeneration.

AUGUSTA (bridling). The leopard doesn't change his spots. And has she
shown any sign of repentance? Has she come to me and asked my pardon for
the way in which she treated me? Has she gone to church and asked God's
forgiveness? But I know you are an agnostic, Jonathan,--it grieves me.
I couldn't expect you to see the necessity of that.

DR. JONATHAN. If it hadn't been for Minnie, I shouldn't have been able
to achieve a discovery that may prove of value to our suffering soldiers,
as well as to injured operatives in factories. In spite of the news of
her brother's death, Minnie worked all afternoon and evening. It was
midnight when we made the successful test, after eight months of
experiment.

AUGUSTA. I hope the discovery may be valuable. It seems to me that
there is too much science in these days and too little religion. I've
never denied that the girl is clever.

DR. JONATHAN. But you would deny her the opportunity to make something
of her cleverness because in your opinion; she has broken the Seventh
Commandment. Is that it?

AUGUSTA. I can't listen to you when you talk in this way.

DR. JONATHAN. But you listen every Sunday to Moses--if it was Moses?
--when he talks in this way. You have made up your mind, haven't you, that
Minnie has broken the Commandment?

AUGUSTA. I'm not a fool, Jonathan.

DR. JONATHAN. You are what is called a good woman. Have you proof that
Minnie is what you would call a bad one?

AUGUSTA. Has she ever denied it? And you heard her when she stood up in
this room and spoke of her life in Newcastle.

DR. JONATHAN. But no court of law would convict her on that.

AUGUSTA. And she had an affair with George. Oh, I can't talk about it!

DR. JONATHAN. I'm afraid that George will wish to talk about it, when he
comes back.

AUGUSTA, She's been corresponding with George--scheming behind my back.

DR. JONATHAN. Are you sure of that?

AUGUSTA. She confessed to me that she had had letters from him.

DR. JONATHAN. And that she'd written letters in return?

AUGUSTA. What right have you to catechize me, Jonathan?

DR. JONATHAN. The same right, Augusta, that you have to catechize
Minnie. Only I wish to discover the truth, and apparently you do not.
She left me a letter, too, in which she said, "Don't try to find me--I
wouldn't come back if you did. Mrs. Pindar was right about me, after
all--I had to break loose again." Now, Augusta, I'd like to know what
you make of that?

AUGUSTA. It's pretty plain, isn't it?

DR. JONATHAN. If the girl were really "bad," as you insist, would she
say a thing like that?

AUGUSTA. I'm afraid I'm not an authority on Minnie's kind.

DR. JONATHAN. Well, I am. The only motive which could have induced her
to leave my laboratory and Foxon Falls--her father--is what you would
call a Christian motive.

AUGUSTA. What do you mean?

DR. JONATHAN. An unselfish motive. She went because she thought she
could help someone by going.

AUGUSTA. Why--do you discuss this with me?

DR. JONATHAN. Because I've come to the conclusion that you know
something about Minnie's departure, Augusta.

AUGUSTA (again on the verge of tears). Well, then, I do. I am
responsible for her going--I'm not ashamed of it. Her remaining here was
an affront to all right thinking people. I appealed to her, and she had
the decency to leave.

DR. JONATHAN. Decency is a mild word to apply to her sacrifice.

AUGUSTA. I suppose, with your extraordinary radical views, you mean that
she might have remained here and married George. One never can predict
the harm that a woman of that kind can do.

DR. JONATHAN (rising). The harm that a bad woman can do, Augusta,
is sometimes exceeded only by the harm a good woman can do. You are
unfortunately steeped in a religion which lacks the faith in humanity
that should be its foundation. The girl has just given you the strongest
proof of an inherent goodness, and you choose to call her bad. But if
you will not listen to Moses and the prophets, how will you listen to
Christ?

AUGUSTA. Jonathan! Where are you going?

DR. JONATHAN. To find Minnie Farrell and bring her back to Foxon Falls.

   (He goes out, lower right. AUGUSTA sits for a while, motionless,
   and then makes an attempt to go on with her knitting. A man's face
   is seen pressed against the glass of the middle window. AUGUSTA
   does not perceive him. He disappears, the glass door, upper right,
   opens slowly and PRAG enters! His clothes are wet, he is unshaven,
   he is gaunt and ill, and his eyed gleans. He leaves the door open
   behind him. Once inside the room, he halts and stares at AUGUSTA,
   who gathers up her knitting and rises. She does not lack courage.)

AUGUSTA. What do you want?

PRAG. I come to see Mr. Pindar.

AUGUSTA. The proper place to see Mr. Pindar is in his office. What do
you mean by forcing your way into this house?

PRAG (advancing). I have no right here--it is too fine for me, yes?

   (Through the window the figure of a woman is seen running across the
   lawn, and a moment later MINNIE FARRELL comes in through the open
   doorway, upper right. She is breathless and somewhat wet.)

AUGUSTA. Minnie!

PRAG (turning and confronting MINNIE). So! You come back to Foxon
Falls, too!

MINNIE. You guessed it.

PRAG. You follow me?

MINNIE. But you're some sprinter! (She seizes him by the arm.) Come on,
Prag,--you haven't got any business here, and you know it.

PRAG (stubbornly). I come to see Mr. Pindar. I vill see him!

AUGUSTA. He isn't home.

PRAG. Then I vait for him.

MINNIE (glancing toward the study door, where she suspects ASHER is). No
you don't, either! You come along with me.

   (She pulls him, and he resists. They begin to struggle. AUGUSTA
   cries out and runs to MINNIE's assistance.)

Keep away, Mrs. Pindar. If Mr. Pindar's home, find him and tell him not
to come in here. This man's crazy.

PRAG (struggling with MINNIE). Crazy, is it? What is it to you--what
I do with Mr. Pindar. He is also your enemy--the enemy of all work-
peoples.

   (AUGUSTA, after a second's indecision, turns and runs toward the
   door, left, that leads into ASHER's study. MINNIE tries to push
   PRAG toward the doorway, upper right, but she is no match for the
   nervous strength he is able to summon up in his fanatical frenzy.
   Just as AUGUSTA reaches the study door, it is flung open and ASHER
   appears.)

ASHER. What's the matter?

   (Then he sees MINNIE and PRAG struggling and strides toward them.
   AUGUSTA tries to prevent him reaching them. PRAG wrenches himself
   free from MINNIE and draws a pistol front his pocket. MINNIE flings
   herself between him and ASHER, who momentarily halts, too astonished
   to act.)

PRAG (to MINNIE). Get avay! He kill my wife, he drive me out of my
home--he will not have the unions. I shoot him! Get oudt!

ASHER. Stand aside, Minnie, I'll take care of him.

   (AUGUSTA cries out. ASHER advances, seizes MINNIE by the shoulder
   and thrusts her aside. PRAG has the pistol levelled at him.)

PRAG. Recognize the unions, or I shoot!

ASHER. Lower that pistol! Do you think you can intimidate me?

PRAG. They can hang me,--I die for freedoms!

   (He is apparently about to pull the trigger, but he does not. His
   eyes are drawn away from ASHER, toward the doorway, lower right,
   where DR. JONATHAN is seen standing, gazing at him. Gradually his
   arm drops to his side, and DR. JONATHAN goes up to him and takes the
   pistol from his hand. PRAG breaks down, sobbing violently.)

It is no good! I can't--now.

DR. JONATHAN (his hand on PRAG'S shoulder). Come with me, Prag, to my
house.

   (He leads PRAG, shaken by sobs, out of the doorway, upper right,
   and they are seen through the windows crossing the lawn and
   disappearing.)

AUGUSTA. Oh, Asher!

   (She goes up to him and puts her hand on his arm, and then turns to
   MINNIE.)

You saved him

MINNIE. Dr. Jonathan saved him. He'd save everybody, if they'd let him.
Ever since he took care of Prag's wife, when she died, he's got him
hypnotized.

ASHER. You've done a brave thing, Minnie. I shan't forget it.

MINNIE. I want you to forget it. I wouldn't like to see anybody hurt.

AUGUSTA. But--how did you happen to be here--in Foxon Falls?

MINNIE. Oh, I didn't mean to come back. I'm going away again.

AUGUSTA. I have no right to ask you to go away, now.

ASHER. What's this? Did you ask Minnie to leave Foxon Falls?

AUGUSTA. Asher, I'd like to talk with Minnie, if you don't mind.

ASHER (glancing at the two women). Well, I shan't forget what you've
done, Minnie.

   (He goes out, lower right.)

MINNIE (who is on the verge of losing her self-control). I didn't come
back to Foxon Falls to talk to you again, Mrs. Pindar. I'm sorry, but
I've got to go.

AUGUSTA. Where?

MINNIE. You didn't care yesterday--why should you care today?

AUGUSTA (with an effort). I ought to tell you that Dr. Pindar has
declined Mr. Pindar's offer.

MINNIE. He isn't going to take charge of the hospital?

AUGUSTA. No.

MINNIE. But if he's so poor, how's he going to live? He can't afford to
hire me to help him.

AUGUSTA. I don't know. Dr. Pindar was about to leave in search of you.

MINNIE. I was afraid of that--when he ought to be going to New York to
test the discovery at the hospitals there. He meant to.

AUGUSTA. You must see him.

MINNIE. Oh, I'll see him now. That was what hurt me most, lying to him
about why I was leaving--letting him think I was sick of working with
him.

AUGUSTA. Minnie, I'm willing to say that I was mistaken about you. You
may have been unwise, but you never did anything wrong. Isn't it so?

MINNIE. Why do you think that now? What changed you? Just because I
might have helped to keep Mr. Pindar from being shot by a crazy man--that
didn't change you, did it?

AUGUSTA. I was mistaken!

MINNIE. If you thought I was bad yesterday, I'm bad today.

AUGUSTA. A bad woman couldn't have done what you did just now.

MINNIE. Don't you believe it, Mrs. Pindar. I knew a woman in Newcastle
--but there's no use going into that, I guess. There's worse kinds of
badness than what you call bad.

AUGUSTA. I--I can't discuss it. But I want to be just. I'm convinced
that I did you a wrong--and I'm sorry. Won't you believe me?

MINNIE. But you'll never forgive me--even if I hadn't done what you
thought--on account of what happened with George.

AUGUSTA. I--I'll try.

MINNIE. No, don't try--forgiveness doesn't come that way, Mrs. Pindar.
(With sudden acuteness.) It was on account of George, not Dr. Jonathan,
that you wanted to get me out of Foxon Falls.

AUGUSTA. I repeat--I shouldn't have asked you to go. Isn't that enough?

MINNIE. I told you not to worry about me and George. I ran away from
him once--I guess I won't have to do it again.

AUGUSTA. You--you ran away from him?

MINNIE. From the church, too, and from the Bible class and from you, and
from the shops. But I'm free now, there isn't any danger of my going
wrong,--I know what I can do, I've learned my job--Dr. Jonathan's taught
me. You needn't have me on your conscience, either. I'll go across and
see if I can help Dr. Jonathan take care of that poor wreck, Prag.
Life's been too tough for him--

AUGUSTA (starting forward to detain her). Wait a moment, Minnie,--tell
me how you happened to come back, to be here so--providentially.

MINNIE. There wasn't anything providential about it. I took the six
o'clock train to Newcastle this morning. Not that I had any notion of
staying there. I ran into Prag at the station. I nursed his wife, you
know--and he started in to tell me how he was coming up to Foxon Falls to
shoot Mr. Pindar because he'd closed down the works rather than recognize
the union. I knew that Prag was just about crazy enough to do it,
because I've heard Dr. Jonathan talk about the mental disease he's got.
That was about ten, and the train for Foxon Falls was leaving in a few
minutes. I ran into the booth to phone Dr. Jonathan, but the storm had
begun down there, and I couldn't get a connection. So I caught the
train, and when it pulled in here I saw Pray jump out of the smoking car
and start to run. I couldn't run as fast as he could, and I'd only got
to the other side of the Common when I saw him walk into the house.

AUGUSTA (after a pause). Minnie, you'll stay here now? Your father
needs you--I--I should never forgive myself if you left.

MINNIE. Tell me, Mrs. Pindar,--have you heard anything more from George?

AUGUSTA (hesitating). Yes--Mr. Pindar got a telegram this morning.

MINNIE. He's coming home! When will he get here?

AUGUSTA. I--don't know. Oh, I'm afraid he may never get here--alive.

MINNIE. Don't say that! George will live--he's got to live.

AUGUSTA (gazing, at her). What makes you think so?

MINNIE. Because he's needed so in the world--in Foxon Falls.

   (She starts for the doorway, upper right.)

AUGUSTA. You're not going?

MINNIE. I couldn't stay here--now.

AUGUSTA. Why--why not?

MINNIE (in tears). I should think you'd know why not!

AUGUSTA. You mean--you care--you care that much?

MINNIE. I'm going.

   (She turns to leave the room when the sound of an automobile is
   heard without, the brakes going on, etc. MINNIE, who has got as far
   as the doorway, upper right halts and stares.)

AUGUSTA (excitedly). What is it?

MINNIE. An automobile. Oh, Mrs. Pindar--it's him--it's George!

   (She draws back from the doorway, her hands clasped.)

AUGUSTA. George! (She hurries toward the doorway, speaking as she
goes.) Where is he?

Why doesn't he come in?

MINNIE (staring out). He can't. Oh, I'll get Dr. Jonathan!

   (She is speaking as AUGUSTA goes out.)

   (Mingling with other voices, ASHER's resonant and commanding voice
   is heard.)

ASHER (without). Bring him in through the library--it's easier for you,
George.

   (MINNIE who obviously cannot now escape through the doorway, upper
   right, without GEORGE seeing her, after a second's resolution dashes
   across the room and out of the door, lower right. A moment later
   GEORGE is brought in through the doorway, upper right, leaning
   heavily on Dr. FRYE, a capable looking man, whose well fitting
   business suit and general appearance indicate a prosperous city
   practice. GEORGE is in uniform. He is much thinner, and his face
   betrays acute suffering. His left arm hangs helpless at his side.)

   (ASHER and AUGUSTA follow, ASHER with a look of pain which has been
   increased by an incident which occurred at the automobile, where
   GEORGE refused to allow ASHER to help support him.)

   (GEORGE gets a little way into the room when he stops, sways a
   little, and spasmodically puts his hand to his heart. ASHER, in a
   frenzy of anxiety, again approaches to help him, but GEORGE repulses
   him.)

GEORGE (protesting with what strength he has, as if in fear). N--no,
dad, I'd rather not--I--I can get along.

   (ASHER halts and gazes at him mutely, and then looks at AUGUSTA.)

DR. FRYE. You'd better sit down here a minute and rest, Captain Pindar.

   (ASHER starts to pull up an armchair, but AUGUSTA looks at him and
   shakes her head, and pulls it up herself. GEORGE sinks into the
   chair, leans back his head and closes his eyes. AUGUSTA hovers over
   him, smoothing his hair.)

AUGUSTA. Is there nothing we can do, Dr. Frye? A little brandy--?

Dr. FRYE (who is evidently trying to hide his own concern by a show of
professional self-confidence), I think I'd wait a few moments.

GEORGE (murmuring). I--I'll be all right, mother

   (DR. FRYE stands gazing down at him a few seconds and then comes
   forward into the room to join ASHER.)

ASHER. For God's sake tell me what it is, doctor! Why did you leave New
York with him when he was in this condition? Was it because?

Dr. FRYE (speaking more rapidly than is his wont). He was surprisingly
well, considering everything, when we left New York, and the army medical
men advised taking him home. I thought an automobile better than a slow
train. I tried to telephone you, but the storm--

ASHER. I know.

Dr. FRYE. I sent you a wire.

ASHER. I didn't get it.

DR. FRYE. It was impossible to get a good nurse on account of the
influenza epidemic. In fact, I didn't think he needed one--but I thought
you'd feel more comfortable if I came. He seemed extraordinary well,
even cheerful until we got right into Foxon Falls. We were passing your
shops, and a big crowd of men were there, making a noise, shouting at a
speaker. Is there a strike on here?

ASHER. Yes. You say he got like this when he saw the crowd?

DR. FRYE (indicating GEORGE). As you see. He fell back on the cushions
as though he'd been hit--it all happened in a second. I have the history
of the case from the army people--he had an attack something like this
abroad.

ASHER. Did you notice how he avoided me?

DR. FRYE (with reluctance). That may not be anything. It's his heart,
at present,--and yet I'm convinced that this is a case for a psychologist
as well as for a medical man. I confess I'm puzzled, and as soon as we
can get a connection with New York I want to summon Barnwell.

ASHER. I'll see if I can get a wire through.

DR. FRYE. Telephone Plaza 4632.

   (ASHER hurries out, lower right. Dr. FRYE returns to GEORGE to take
   his pulse when DR. JONATHAN enters, upper right. He crosses the
   room directly to GEORGE and stands looking down at him.)

AUGUSTA (who is a little behind GEORGE'S chair, gives DR. JONATHAN an
agonized glance, which she transfers to Dr. FRYE when he drops GEORGE'S
wrist). George! George, dear!

   (DR. FRYE is silent Then ASHER reenters.)

ASHER (in a low tone, to Dr. FRYE). They think they can get New York
within half an hour.

   (DR. FRYE nods. His attention is now fixed upon DR. JONATHAN, whose
   gaze is still focussed on GEORGE. ASHER and AUGUSTA now begin to
   look at DR. JONATHAN. Gradually, as though by the compulsion of DR.
   JONATHAN'S regard; GEORGE slowly opens his eyes.)

GEORGE (stammering). Dr. Jonathan!

DR. JONATHAN. I'm here, George.

GEORGE. Is there-is there a strike in the shops?

   (DR. JONATHAN glances at ASHER.)

ASHER (hesitating, speaking with difficulty). Don't worry about that
now, George.

GEORGE. Why--why are they striking?

ASHER. I'll tell you all about it later--when you feel better.

GEORGE (feebly, yet insistent). I--I want to know.

ASHER. We can't talk about it now, my boy--later.

GEORGE. Did--did you get my letter--the letter in which I begged you--

ASHER. Yes, yes--I'll explain it all tomorrow.

GEORGE. I--I may not be here--tomorrow. You didn't do what--I asked?
It's--so simple--when you've thought about it--when you've fought for it.

ASHER. I--I had a plan, George. We'll go over it

   (He approaches GEORGE.)

GEORGE (shrinking). No--no!

   (ASHER recoils. MINNIE FARRELL appears, upper right, from the
   direction of the Common. She carries a phial, a dropper and some
   water in a glass. Seeing the group gathered about GEORGE, she
   hesitates, but DR. JONATHAN motions her to come forward.)

W--who is that? Minnie?

   (GEORGE makes an attempt to sit up, but his head falls back and his
   eyes close again. Then DR. JONATHAN lays his hand on Dr. FRYE's
   arm, as though to draw him aside.)

Dr. FRYE. Is this Dr. Jonathan Pindar? I wondered if you were a
relation--(he glances at ASHER)--but I wasn't looking for you in Foxon
Falls. If you have something to suggest--?

DR. JONATHAN ( taking the phial and the dropper from MINNIE). With your
permission. In any case it can do no harm.

DR. FRYE. By all means: If I had realized you were here--!

   (ASHER looks on in astonishment. DR. JONATHAN measures out a few
   drops of the liquid from the phial into the glass of water, which
   MINNIE holds.)

DR. JONATHAN. George, will you take this?

   (He holds the glass while GEORGE drinks. To Dr. FRYE:)

There's a lounge in Mr. Pindar's study.

(To AUGUSTA:) Get a blanket.

   (AUGUSTA goes toward the door, lower right, while MINNIE Starts to
   retire.)

We'll need you, Minnie.

   (He hands MINNIE the glass, dropper and phial. The two physicians
   pick GEORGE up and carry him out, left, followed by MINNIE. ASHER
   goes a little way and then halts with a despairing gesture. AUGUSTA
   having gone for the blanket, ASHER is left alone, pacing, until she
   returns.)

AUGUSTA (going through the room from right to left, with the blanket).
Ah, Asher!

   (ASHER begins pacing again, when Dr. FRYE reenters from the left.)

ASHER. Is there--is there any hope?

DR. FRYE (his hand on ASHER'S sleeve). I can tell you more when I have
had a chance to talk with Dr. Pindar. This seems to be one of his cases
--but I confess, when I mentioned Barnwell, I didn't think of him. The
situation came so suddenly. And in spite of his name being yours, I
didn't expect to find him here.

ASHER. Then you know of Jonathan?

DR. FRYE. I didn't know of him until I read the book which he published
about a year ago. When I was in Baltimore in March, I asked for him at
Johns Hopkins's, and they told me that he had gone to New England for his
health. Extraordinary to meet him here--and today!

ASHER. What book? He's never spoken to me of any book.

DR. FRYE. On the Physical Effects of Mental Crises. There has been a
good deal of controversy about it in the profession, but I'm one of those
who believe that the physician must seek to cure, not only the body, but
the soul. We make a guess--though he's published no religion--the true
scientist is the minister of the future.

ASHER. I never realized that Jonathan--!

DR. FRYE (smiling a little). No prophet is without honour save in his
own country.

ASHER. What has he given George?

DR. FRYE. I can't tell you exactly, but I can make a guess--though he's
published no account of his recent experiments.

   (As DR. JONATHAN reenters from the left.)

He will undoubtedly tell you himself. (Exit Dr. FRYE, left.)

ASHER. Will he live?

DR. JONATHAN. I'll be frank with you, Asher,--I don't know. All we can
do is to wait.

ASHER. I call God to witness there's nothing I wouldn't do, no
sacrifice I wouldn't make, if that boy could be saved!

DR. JONATHAN. Remember that, Asher.

ASHER. Remember what?

DR. JONATHAN. If his life is saved, you will be called upon to make a
sacrifice, to do your part.

ASHER. My part?

DR. JONATHAN. Yes. What I have given him--the medicine--is only half
the battle--should it succeed. My laboratory experiments were only
completed last night.

ASHER. This is what you have been working on?

DR. JONATHAN. It happens to be. But I have had no chance to test it
--except on animals. I meant to have gone to a war hospital in New York
today. If it works, then we shall have to try the rest of the
experiment,--your half of it.

ASHER. What's that?

DR. JONATHAN. You probably noticed that George avoided you.

ASHER. It's more than I can bear. You know what we've been to each
other. If he should die--feeling that way--!

DR. JONATHAN. George hasn't lost his affection for you; if it were so,
we shouldn't have that symptom. I will tell you, briefly, my theory of
the case. But first let me say, in justice to Frye, that he was in no
position to know certain facts that give the clue to George's condition
the mental history.

ASHER. I don't understand.

DR. JONATHAN. The day he left home, for France, certain things happened
to him to arouse his sympathy with what we call working people, their
lives and aspirations. As you know, George has a very human side,--he
loves his fellow men. He'd never thought of these things before. He
went with them, naturally, to you, and I infer that you suppressed him!

ASHER. I told him I couldn't discuss certain aspects. His emotional
state troubled me,--he was going away, and I imagined he would get over
it.

DR. JONATHAN. He didn't get over it. It was an emotional crisis. He
left home with a conflict in his mind,--a conflict between his affection
for you and that which he had suddenly come to see was right. I mean,
right for today, for the year and hour in which we are living. This
question of the emancipation of labour began a hundred years ago, with
the introduction of machinery and the rise of modern industry, and in
this war it has come to a head. Well, as the time approached for George
to risk his life for his new beliefs, his mental conflict deepened. He
talked with other young men who believed they were fighting for the same
cause. And then--it must have been shortly before he was wounded--he
wrote you that appeal.

ASHER. The letter I read to you!

DR. JONATHAN. The fact that in his own home, in the shops which bore his
name, no attempt had been made to meet the new issues for which he was
going into battle, weighed upon him. Then came the shell that shattered
his body. But the probabilities are that he was struck down,
unconscious, at the very moment when the conflict in his mind was most
acute. He was thinking of you, of the difference you and he had had, he
was lonely, he was afraid for the bravest men feel fear. To him the
bursting of the shell was the bursting of the conflict within him. I
won't go into the professional side of the matter, the influence of the
mental state on the physical--but after the wound healed, whenever
anything occurred to remind him of the conflict,--a letter from you, the
sight of the strikers this afternoon at the shops, meeting you once more,
a repetition came of what happened when the shell struck him. Certain
glands fail in their functions, the heart threatens to stop and put an
end to life. If my theory is correct, what I have given him may tide
over that danger, but only on one condition can he continue to live and
become a useful member of society.

ASHER. What condition?

DR. JONATHAN. That the mental conflict, the real cause of the trouble,
he resolved. The time has come, Asher, when you must make your choice
between your convictions and your son.

ASHER. Speak out.

DR. JONATHAN. I mean that you must be prepared to tell George, if he
recovers, that you have abandoned your attitude toward the workmen, that
you are willing to recognize their union, settle the strike, and go even
further than in their ignorance they ask. You must try the experiment in
the democratization of industry on which George's heart is set.
Otherwise I will not answer for his sanity, I cannot even give you the
hope that he will live.

ASHER. I never heard of a mental conflict producing such a state!

DR. JONATHAN. Remember, you have said that you will make any sacrifice
to save George's life.

ASHER (turning on DR. JONATHAN). You're not trying to play on my--my
superstition,--at a time like this!

DR. JONATHAN. I'm not dealing with superstition, Asher, but with
science. If George revives, he will wish to talk with you.

ASHER. When?

DR. JONATHAN. Probably this evening--or never. I ask you the question
--will you yield your convictions?

   (ASHER bows his head. DR. JONATHAN gazes at him for a moment,
   compassionately.)

I'll go back to him now. I think he'd better be moved to his room, and
put to bed.

   (Exit DR. JONATHAN, left. For a minute ASHER remains alone, and
   then DR. JONATHAN and Dr. FRYE reappear, carrying GEORGE. The
   blanket is flung over his knees, and he seems lifeless. They are
   followed by MINNIE, carrying the phial and the glass, and by
   AUGUSTA. They cross the room and go out, lower right. ASHER walks
   behind them as far as the door, hesitates, and then goes out.)


   (THE CURTAIN falls and remains down a minute to indicate a lapse of
   three hours. When it rises again night has come, the lamps are
   lighted and the window curtains drawn. ASHER and AUGUSTA are
   discovered standing together. ASHER has a black, leather covered
   book in his hand, with one finger in the place where he has been
   reading. Both show the effects of a strain.)

AUGUSTA (who has been speaking). And when we took him upstairs, I was
sure he was going to die--it seemed to me as if nothing could save him.
He's been sitting up and talking to us--of course he's pale and weak and
wasted, but in spite of that, Asher, he seems to have a strength, a force
that he didn't have before he went away. He isn't a boy any more.
I can't describe it, but I'm almost afraid of him--!

ASHER. He--he hasn't mentioned me?

AUGUSTA. No, my dear--and since Jonathan warned me not to, I've said
nothing about you. Why is it?

ASHER. Jonathan's the master now.

AUGUSTA. In spite of what I've felt about him, he has saved George for
us. It seems a miracle.

ASHER. A scientific miracle.

AUGUSTA (indicating the book ASHER holds). And yet you were reading the
Bible!

ASHER. I just took it down. (He lays it on the table, and touches
AUGUSTA, with an unwonted tenderness, on the shoulder). I think we may
hope, now, Augusta. But before we can be sure that he'll get well,
there's something else to be done.

AUGUSTA (anxiously). What?

ASHER. Go back to George,--I'll tell you later. It seems that we must
trust Jonathan. Here he is now.

   (Enter DR. JONATHAN, lower right, as AUGUSTA departs.)

DR. JONATHAN. George wants to get dressed, and come down.

ASHER. You think it wise?

DR. JONATHAN. Under the circumstances yes. The heart is practically
normal again, we have done all that is physically possible. One half of
the experiment seems to have succeeded, and the sooner we try the other
half, the better. Are you still willing?

ASHER. I'm prepared. I've carried out your--instructions--sent for the
committee.

DR. JONATHAN (looking at him). Good!

ASHER (with an effort). Jonathan, I--I guess I misjudged you--

DR. JONATHAN (Smiling). Wait until you are sure. Nothing matters if we
can save that boy. By the way, he asked for Timothy, and I've sent for
him.

ASHER. He asked for Timothy, and not for me!

DR. JONATHAN. It seems he saw an officer of Bert's regiment, after the
boy was killed. Here's the committee, I think.

   (The MAID enters, lower right. She does not speak, but ushers in
   HILLMAN, RENCH and FERSEN, and retires.)

HILLMAN.  |
RENCH.   |-Good evening, Mr. Pindar. Good evening, doctor.
FERSEN.  |

ASHER. Good evening.

   (An awkward silence. From habit, ASHER stares at them defiantly, as
   DR. JONATHAN goes out, lower right.)

HILLMAN (going up to ASHER). How's your son, Mr. Pindar?

RENCH. We're real anxious about the Captain.

FERSEN (nodding). The boys think a whole lot of him, Mr. Pindar.

ASHER. He's better, thank you. The medicine Dr. Pindar has given him

RENCH. Didn't I say so? When I heard how he was when he got back, I
said to Fred Hillman here,--if anybody can cure him, it's Dr. Jonathan,
right here in Foxon Falls!

   (A pause.)

I'm sorry this here difference came up just now, Mr. Pindar, when the
Captain come home. We was a little mite harsh--but we was strung up,
I guess, from the long shifts. If we'd known your son was comin'--

ASHER. You wouldn't have struck?

RENCH. We'd have agreed to put it off. When a young man like that is
near dying for his country why--anything can wait. But what we're asking
is only right.

ASHER. Well, right or not right, I sent for you to say, so far as I'm
concerned, the strike's over.

RENCH. You'll--you'll recognize the union?

ASHER. I grant--( he catches himself)--I consent to your demands.

   (After a moment of stupefaction, their faces light up, and they
   approach him.)

RENCH. We appreciate it, Mr. Pindar. This'll make a lot of families
happy tonight.

FERSEN. It will that.

HILLMAN. Maybe you won't believe me, Mr. Pindar, but it was hard to see
the shops closed down--as hard on us as it was on you. We take pride in
them, too. I guess you won't regret it.

ASHER (waving them away). I hope not. I ought to tell you that you may
thank my son for this--my son and Dr. Pindar.

RENCH. We appreciate it,--just the same.

   (ASHER makes a gesture as thought to dismiss the subject, as well as
   the committee. They hesitate, and are about to leave when GEORGE,
   followed by DR. JONATHAN, comes in, lower right. His entrance is
   quite dramatic. He walks with the help of a stick, slowly, but his
   bearing is soldierly, authoritative, impressive. He halts when he
   perceives the committee.)

HILLMAN (going up to GEORGE). How are you, Captain?

FERSEN. Good to have you home once more.

RENCH (going up to GEORGE). Good to see you, Captain, on a day like
this. As Larz Fersen said when we were going to strike, "It's a fine day
for it." Well, this is a better day--you home and well, and the strike
off.

GEORGE (glancing from one to the other, and then at ASHER). What do you
mean?

RENCH. Why, Mr. Pindar--your father here's just made everybody happy.
He's recognized the union, and we're going back to work. We'll turn out
machines to make shrapnel enough to kill every Hun in France,--get square
with 'em for what they done to you.

   (They all watch GEORGE, absorbed in the effect this announcement has
   on him. An expression of happiness grows in his eyes. After a
   moment he goes up to ASHER.)

GEORGE. Dad, why did you do this?

ASHER. I'll tell you, George. When you came home this afternoon I
realized something I hadn't realized before. I saw that the tide was
against me, that I was like that old English king who set his throne on
the sands and thought he could stay the waters. If--if anything had
happened to you, I couldn't have fought on, but now that you're here with
me again, now that you've risked your life and almost lost it for this
--this new order in which you believe, why, it's enough for me--I can
surrender with honour. I'm tired, I need a rest. I'd have gone down
fighting, but I guess you've saved me. I've been true to my
convictions,--you, who belong to the new generation, must be true to
yours. And as I told you once, all I care about this business is to hand
it over to you.

GEORGE. You'll help me!

ASHER. This seems to be Jonathan's speciality,--science. But I never
give my word half heartedly, my boy, and I'll back you to my last dollar.
Be prepared for disappointments,--but if you accomplish something, I'll
be glad. And if you fail, George,--any failure for a man's convictions
is a grand failure.

GEORGE. Well, it means life to me, dad. I owe it to you.

ASHER (turning toward DR. JONATHAN). No, you owe it to him,--to science.

   (He puts one hand on GEORGE'S shoulder, and the other, with an
   abrupt movement, on DR. JONATHAN'S.)

And if science will do as much for democracy, then--

GEORGE. Then, you're from Missouri. Good old dad!

ASHER (huskily, trying, to carry it off, and almost overcome by emotion
at the reconciliation). I'm from Missouri, my boy.

DR. JONATHAN. Then you're a true scientist, Asher, for science, too,
waits to be shown.

   (ASHER goes out, lower right. Dr. JONATHAN, evidently in support
   and sympathy, goes with him. GEORGE and the committee look after
   them, and then GEORGE sits down, and smiles at the men.)

GEORGE. And we've got to be scientists, too. Are you fellows willing to
take your share in the experiment?

HILLMAN. What experiment's that, Captain?

GEORGE. Now that you've got your union, what's the good of it?

RENCH (after a pause). Why, I thought we'd made that pretty clear,
Captain. We've got something to fall back on in case the employers don't
live up to their agreements. I'm not speaking of you--

GEORGE. In other words, you've got a weapon.

RENCH. Well, you might call it that.

GEORGE. But weapons imply warfare,--don't they?

RENCH. We wouldn't fight with you.

GEORGE. Yes, you would,--if our interests conflicted. When I was in the
trenches I kept thinking of the quotation Lincoln used, "A house divided
against itself cannot stand." We're going to try to perpetuate that
house, just as he did.

HILLMAN. Lincoln had common sense.

GEORGE. Another name for intelligence. And what we've got to decide is
whether the old house will do--for democracy--industrial democracy? Can
we shore up the timbers--or shall we have to begin to build a new house?

RENCH (glancing at HILLMAN). The old one sure enough looks rotten to me.
I've said that all along.

GEORGE. It seems to have served its day. Has your union got the plans
of a new house ready--consulted an architect?

RENCH. I'm afraid we don't get you, Captain.

GEORGE. You belong to the American Federation of Labour, don't you?
Has it got a new house ready to move into?

RENCH. Well, I haven't seen any plans.

GEORGE. If the old structure's too small, one party or the other will
have to be shoved out. The capitalist or the employee. Which will it
be?

RENCH (laughing). If it comes to that--

GEORGE (smiling). There's no question in your mind. But you hadn't
thought about it--your Federation hasn't thought about it, or doesn't
want to think about it, and your employers don't want to, either.

HILLMAN (stroking his moustache). That's so

GEORGE. I'll tell you who have thought about it--the Bolshevists and the
I. W. W. And because they have a programme,--some programme, any
programme, they're more intelligent than we, for the time.

RENCH. Those guys?

GEORGE. Exactly,--those guys. At least they see that the house isn't
fit to live in. They want to pull it down, and go back to living in
trees and caves.

HILLMAN. That's about right.

GEORGE. But you're conservatives, you labour union people--the
aristocrats of labour, which means that you don't think. What you really
object to, when you come down to it, is that men like my father and me,
and the bankers,--we're all in the same boat, most of 'us own banks,
too,--control the conditions of life for you and men like you.

RENCH. I never heard it put in those words, but by gum, it's so.

GEORGE. And your Confederation, your unions are for the skilled workers,
whose conditions aren't so bad,--and they're getting better every time
you jack up the wages. You complain that we employers aren't thinking of
you, but are you thinking of the millions of the unskilled who live from
hand to mouth? The old structure's good enough for you, too. But what
will the miserable men, who don't sit in, be doing while we're squabbling
to see who'll have the best rooms?

RENCH. Blow the house up, I guess.

GEORGE. If they're rough with it, it'll tumble down like a pack of
cards--simply because we're asses. Can't we build a house big enough for
all--for a hundred million people and their descendants? A house in
which, after a while, there will be no capitalists and no exploiters and
no wreckers, only workers--each man and woman on the job they were fitted
for? It's a man-sized job, but isn't it worth tackling?

RENCH (enthused). It's sure worth tackling, Captain.

GEORGE. And can't we begin it, in a modest way, by making a little model
of the big house right here in Foxon Falls? Dr. Jonathan will help us.

RENCH. Go to it, Captain. We'll trust him and you.

GEORGE. Trust is all right, but you've got to go to it, too, and use
your headpieces. We've got to sit down together and educate ourselves,
who are now employers and employees, get hold of all the facts, the
statistics,--and all the elements, the human nature side of it, from the
theorists, the students, whom we've despised.

RENCH. Well, it's a fact, I hadn't thought much of them intellectuals.

GEORGE. They're part of the game--their theories are the basis for an
intelligent practice. And what should we be able to do without their
figures? Look at what we've worked out in large scale production and
distribution in this war! That's a new world problem. Shall we be
pioneers here in Foxon Falls in the new experiment?

RENCH. An experiment in human chemicals, as the doctor would say.
Pioneers! I kind of like that word. You can put me in the wagon,
Captain.

GEORGE. It will be a Conestoga with the curtains rolled up, so that
everybody can see in. No secrets. And it will be a wagon with an
industrial constitution.

FERSEN. Excuse me, Captain,--but what's that?

   (RENCH laughs.)

GEORGE (smiling). Hasn't it struck you, Fersen, that unless a man has a
voice and an interest in the industry in which he works his voice, and
interest in the government for which he votes is a mockery?

   (FERSEN nods.)

RENCH. We'll have to give Larz a little education.

GEORGE. Oh, I guess he'll make a good industrial citizen. But that's
part of the bargain.

RENCH. That's fair. Human nature ain't so rotten, when you give it a
chance.

GEORGE. Well, then, are you willing to try it out, on the level?

RENCH. I cal'late we'll stick, Captain.

HILLMAN. We sure will.

FERSEN. We'll be pioneers!

GEORGE. That's good American, Fersen, not to be afraid of an ideal.
Shake! We'll sit down with it in a day or two.

   (They all shake. The members of the committee file out of the room,
   lower right. GEORGE is left alone for a brief interval, when
   MINNIE, in the white costume of a nurse, enters, lower right,
   with a glass of medicine in her hand.)

MINNIE (halting). You're all alone? Where's Dr. Jonathan?

GEORGE. He's gone off with dad.

MINNIE. It's nine o'clock.

   (She hands him the glass, he drinks the contents and sets the glass
   on the table. Then he takes her hands and draws her to him and
   kisses her. She submits almost passively.)

Why are you doing this, George?

GEORGE. Because I love you, because I need you, because I'm going to
marry you.

MINNIE (shaking her head: slowly). No you're not.

GEORGE. Why not?

MINNIE. You know why not, as well as I do.

   (She gazes up at him. He is still holding her in his arms.
   Suddenly she kisses him passionately, breaks away from him and
   starts to fly from the room, when she runs into DR. JONATHAN, who is
   entering, lower right.)

DR. JONATHAN. Where are you going, Minnie?

   (MINNIE halts, and is silent. DR. JONATHAN lays a detaining hand on
   her arm, and looks from one to the other, comprehendingly.)

GEORGE. I've asked her to marry me, Dr. Jonathan.

DR. JONATHAN. And what are your objections, Minnie?

MINNIE. You know why I can't, Dr. Jonathan. What kind of a wife would I
make for him, with his family and friends. I'd do anything for him but
that! He wouldn't be happy.

DR. JONATHAN. And what's your answer, George?

GEORGE. I don't want her for my family and friends,--I want her for
myself. This isn't a snap judgment--I've had time to think it over.

MINNIE. I didn't mean to be here when you got home. I know I'm not fit
to be your wife I haven't had any education.

GEORGE. Neither have I. We start level there. I've lived among people
of culture, and I've found out that culture chiefly consists of fixed
ideas, and obstruction to progress, of hating the President,--of knowing
the right people and eating fish with a fork.

MINNIE (smiling, though in tears). Well, I never ate fish with a knife,
anyway.

GEORGE. I spent my valuable youth learning Greek and Latin, and I can't
speak or read either of them. I know that Horace wrote odes, and Cicero
made orations, but I can't quote them. All I remember about biology is
that the fittest are supposed to survive, and in this war I've seen the
fittest killed off like flies. You've had several years of useful work
in the Pindar Shops and the Wire Works, to say nothing of a course in
biological chemistry, psychology and sociology under Dr. Jonathan. I'll
leave it to him whether you don't know more about life than I do--about
the life and problems of the great mass of people in this country. And
now that the strike's over--

MINNIE. The strike's over!

GEORGE. Yes. I've chosen my life. It isn't going to be divided
between a Wall Street office and Newport and Palm Beach. A girl out of
a finishing school wouldn't be of any use to me. I'm going to stay right
here in Foxon Falls, Minnie, I've got a real job on my hands, and I need
a real woman with special knowledge to help me. I don't mean to say we
won't have vacations, and we'll sit down and get our education together.
Dr. Jonathan will be the schoolmaster.

MINNIE. It's a dream, George.

GEORGE. Well, Minnie, if it's a dream worth dying for it's a dream worth
living for. Your brother Bert died for it.


                 CURTAIN


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Economic freedom, without which political freedom is a farce
     Flaming flag of a false martyrdom
     It's money that makes you free
     Often times principles is nothing but pride
     We can't take Christianity too literally






A TRAVELLER IN WARTIME.

By Winston Churchill



PREFACE

I am reprinting here, in response to requests, certain recent experiences
in Great Britain and France.  These were selected in the hope of
conveying to American readers some idea of the atmosphere, of "what it is
like" in these countries under the immediate shadow of the battle clouds.
It was what I myself most wished to know.  My idea was first to send home
my impressions while they were fresh, and to refrain as far as possible
from comment and judgment until I should have had time to make a fuller
survey.  Hence I chose as a title for these articles,--intended to be
preliminary, "A Traveller in War-Time."  I tried to banish from my mind
all previous impressions gained from reading.  I wished to be free for
the moment to accept and record the chance invitation or adventure,
wherever met with, at the Front, in the streets of Paris, in Ireland, or
on the London omnibus.  Later on, I hoped to write a book summarizing the
changing social conditions as I had found them.

Unfortunately for me, my stay was unexpectedly cut short.  I was able to
avail myself of but few of the many opportunities offered.  With this
apology, the articles are presented as they were written.

I have given the impression that at the time of my visit there was no
lack of food in England, but I fear that I have not done justice to the
frugality of the people, much of which was self-imposed for the purpose
of helping to win the war.  On very, good authority I have been given to
understand that food was less abundant during the winter just past;
partly because of the effect of the severe weather on our American
railroads, which had trouble in getting supplies to the coast, and partly
because more and more ships were required for transporting American
troops and supplies for these troops, to France.  This additional
curtailment was most felt by families of small income, whose earners were
at the front or away on other government service.  Mothers had great
difficulty in getting adequate nourishment for growing children.  But the
British people cheerfully submitted to this further deprivation.  Summer
is at hand.  It is to be hoped that before another winter sets in,
American and British shipping will have sufficiently increased to remedy
the situation.

In regard to what I have said of the British army, I was profoundly
struck, as were other visitors to that front, by the health and morale of
the men, by the marvel of organization accomplished in so comparatively
brief a time.  It was one of the many proofs of the extent to which the
British nation had been socialized.  When one thought of that little band
of regulars sent to France in 1914, who became immortal at Mons, who
shared the glory of the Marne, and in that first dreadful winter held
back the German hosts from the Channel ports, the presence on the battle
line of millions of disciplined and determined men seemed astonishing
indeed.  And this had been accomplished by a nation facing the gravest
crisis in its history, under the necessity of sustaining and financing
many allies and of protecting an Empire.  Since my return to America a
serious reverse has occurred.

After the Russian peace, the Germans attempted to overwhelm the British
by hurling against them vastly superior numbers of highly trained men.
It is for the military critic of the future to analyse any tactical
errors that may have been made at the second battle of the Somme.
Apparently there was an absence of preparation, of specific orders from
high sources in the event of having to cede ground.  This much can be
said, that the morale of the British Army remains unimpaired; that the
presence of mind and ability of the great majority of the officers who,
flung on their own resources, conducted the retreat, cannot be
questioned; while the accomplishment of General Carey, in stopping the
gap with an improvised force of non-combatants, will go down in history.
In an attempt to bring home to myself, as well as to my readers, a
realization of what American participation in this war means or should
mean.




A TRAVELLER IN WAR-TIME

CHAPTER I

Toward the end of the summer of 1917 it was very hot in New York, and
hotter still aboard the transatlantic liner thrust between the piers.
One glance at our cabins, at the crowded decks and dining-room, at the
little writing-room above, where the ink had congealed in the ink-wells,
sufficed to bring home to us that the days of luxurious sea travel, of
a la carte restaurants, and Louis Seize bedrooms were gone--at least for
a period.  The prospect of a voyage of nearly two weeks was not enticing.
The ship, to be sure, was far from being the best of those still running
on a line which had gained a magic reputation of immunity from
submarines; three years ago she carried only second and third class
passengers!  But most of us were in a hurry to get to the countries where
war had already become a grim and terrible reality.  In one way or
another we had all enlisted.

By "we" I mean the American passengers.  The first welcome discovery
among the crowd wandering aimlessly and somewhat disconsolately about the
decks was the cheerful face of a friend whom at first I did not recognize
because of his amazing disguise in uniform.  Hitherto he had been
associated in my mind with dinner parties and clubs.

That life was past.  He had laid up his yacht and joined the Red Cross
and, henceforth, for an indeterminable period, he was to abide amidst the
discomforts and dangers of the Western Front, with five days' leave every
three months.  The members of a group similarly attired whom I found
gathered by the after-rail were likewise cheerful.  Two well-known
specialists from the Massachusetts General Hospital made significant the
hegira now taking place that threatens to leave our country, like
Britain, almost doctorless.  When I reached France it seemed to me that I
met all the celebrated medical men I ever heard of.  A third in the group
was a business man from the Middle West who had wound up his affairs and
left a startled family in charge of a trust company.  Though his physical
activities had hitherto consisted of an occasional mild game of golf, he
wore his khaki like an old campaigner; and he seemed undaunted by the
prospect--still somewhat remotely ahead of him--of a winter journey
across the Albanian Mountains from the Aegean to the Adriatic.

After a restless night, we sailed away in the hot dawn of a Wednesday.
The shores of America faded behind us, and as the days went by, we had
the odd sense of threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more
difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic in
the twentieth century.  Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent
steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a
sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little
schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester--a forthfarer, too.

Meanwhile, amongst the Americans, the socializing process had begun.
Many elements which in a former stratified existence would never have
been brought into contact were fusing by the pressure of a purpose, of a
great adventure common to us all.  On the upper deck, high above the
waves, was a little 'fumoir' which, by some odd trick of association,
reminded me of the villa formerly occupied by the Kaiser in Corfu
--perhaps because of the faience plaques set in the walls--although I
cannot now recall whether the villa has faience plaques or not.  The room
was, of course, on the order of a French provincial cafe, and as such
delighted the bourgeoisie monopolizing the alcove tables and joking with
the fat steward.  Here in this 'fumoir', lawyers, doctors, business men
of all descriptions, newspaper correspondents, movie photographers, and
millionaires who had never crossed save in a 'cabine de luxe', rubbed
elbows and exchanged views and played bridge together.  There were
Y. M. C. A.  people on their way to the various camps, reconstruction
workers intending to build temporary homes for the homeless French,
and youngsters in the uniform of the American Field Service, going over
to drive camions and ambulances; many of whom, without undue regret,
had left college after a freshman year.  They invaded the 'fumoir',
undaunted, to practise atrocious French on the phlegmatic steward; they
took possession of a protesting piano in the banal little salon and sang:
"We'll not come back till it's over over there."  And in the evening, on
the darkened decks, we listened and thrilled to the refrain:

              "There's a long, long trail a-winding
               Into the land of my dreams."

We were Argonauts--even the Red Cross ladies on their way to establish
rest camps behind the lines and brave the mud and rains of a winter in
eastern France.  None, indeed, were more imbued with the forthfaring
spirit than these women, who were leaving, without regret, sheltered,
comfortable lives to face hardships and brave dangers without a question.
And no sharper proof of the failure of the old social order to provide
for human instincts and needs could be found than the conviction they
gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them.  The timidities with
which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even the
possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them.  When the sun
fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins below
were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled themselves for
the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the remark of M. le
Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines.  The moonlight
filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding the deck.  About
3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became communicative, the Red
Cross ladies produced chocolate.  It was the genial hour before the final
nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the sound of squeegees and brooms
to find the deck a river of sea water, on whose banks a wild scramble for
slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably ensued.  No experience could have
been more socializing.

"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be travelling
with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box!  Oh, yes, I realize what I'm
doing.  I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses with
twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months, but it's
better than thrashing around looking for something to do and never
finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on.  I've
closed my country house, I've sublet my apartment, I've done with teas
and bridge, and I'm happier than I've been in my life even if I don't get
enough sleep."

Another lady, who looked still young, had two sons in the army.  "There
was nothing for me to do but sit around the house and wait, and I want to
be useful.  My husband has to stay at home; he can't leave his business."
Be useful!  There she struck the new and aggressive note of emancipation
from the restricted self-sacrifice of the old order, of wider service
for the unnamed and the unknown; and, above all, for the wider
self-realization of which service is but a by-product.  I recall
particularly among these women a young widow with an eager look in clear
grey eyes that gazed eastward into the unknown with hope renewed.  Had
she lived a quarter of a century ago she might have been doomed to slow
desiccation. There are thousands of such women in France today, and to
them the great war has brought salvation.

From what country other than America could so many thousands of pilgrims
--even before our nation had entered the war--have hurried across a wide
ocean to take their part?  No matter what religion we profess, whether it
be Calvinism, or Catholicism, we are individualists, pragmatists,
empiricists for ever.  Our faces are set toward strange worlds presently
to rise out of the sea and take on form and colour and substance--worlds
of new aspirations, of new ideas and new values.  And on this voyage I
was reminded of Josiah Royce's splendid summary of the American
philosophy--of the American religion as set forth by William James:

     "The spirit of the frontiers-man, of the gold-seeker or the
     home-builder transferred to the metaphysical or to the religious
     realm. There is a far-off home, our long lost spiritual fortune.
     Experience alone can guide us to the place where these things are,
     hence indeed you need experience.  You can only win your way on the
     frontier unless you are willing to live there."

Through the pall of horror and tragedy the American sees a vision;
for him it is not merely a material and bloody contest of arms and men,
a military victory to be gained over an aggressive and wrong-minded
people.  It is a world calamity, indeed, but a calamity, since it has
come, to be spiritualized and utilized for the benefit of the future
society of mankind.  It must be made to serve a purpose in helping to
liberate the world from sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and
cant.



II

One night we entered the danger zone.  There had been an entertainment in
the little salon which, packed with passengers, had gradually achieved
the temperature and humidity of a Turkish bath.  For the ports had been
closed as tight as gaskets could make them, the electric fans, as usual,
obstinately "refused to march."  After the amateur speechmaking and
concert pieces an Italian violinist, who had thrown over a lucrative
contract to become a soldier, played exquisitely; and one of the French
sisters we had seen walking the deck with the mincing steps of the
cloister sang; somewhat precariously and pathetically, the Ave Maria.
Its pathos was of the past, and after she had finished, as we fled into
the open air, we were conscious of having turned our backs irrevocably
yet determinedly upon an era whose life and convictions the music of the
composer so beautifully expressed.  And the sister's sweet withered face
was reminiscent of a missal, one bright with colour, and still shining
faintly.  A missal in a library of modern books!

On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a
phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving
the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating
the sinister blackness of the night.  We were, apparently, a beacon in
that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.

There were on board other elements which in the normal times gone by
would have seemed disquieting enough.  The evening after we had left New
York, while we were still off the coast of Long Island, I saw on the poop
a crowd of steerage passengers listening intently to harangues by
speakers addressing them from the top of a pile of life rafts.
Armenians, I was told, on their way to fight the Turks, all recruited in
America by one frenzied woman who had seen her child cut in two by a
German officer.  Twilight was gathering as I joined the group, the sea
was silvered by the light of an August moon floating serenely between
swaying stays.  The orator's passionate words and gestures evoked wild
responses from his hearers, whom the drag of an ancient hatred had
snatched from the peaceful asylum of the west.  This smiling, happy folk,
which I had seen in our manufacturing towns and cities, were now
transformed, atavistic--all save one, a student, who stared wistfully
through his spectacles across the waters.  Later, when twilight deepened,
when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to
a singer.  He had been a bootblack in America.  Now he had become a bard.
His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that
age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to
avenge.  Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured
them--almost, indeed, assimilated them.  And suddenly they had reverted.
They were going to slaughter the Turks.

On a bright Saturday afternoon we steamed into the wide mouth of the
Gironde, a name stirring vague memories of romance and terror.  The
French passengers gazed wistfully at the low-lying strip of sand and
forest, but our uniformed pilgrims crowded the rail and hailed it as the
promised land of self-realization.  A richly coloured watering-place slid
into view, as in a moving-picture show.  There was, indeed, all the
reality and unreality of the cinematograph about our arrival; presently
the reel would end abruptly, and we should find ourselves pushing our way
out of the emptying theatre into a rainy street.  The impression of
unreality in the face of visual evidence persisted into the night when,
after an afternoon at anchor, we glided up the river, our decks and ports
ablaze across the land. Silhouettes of tall poplars loomed against the
blackness; occasionally a lamp revealed the milky blue facade of a house.
This was France!  War-torn France--at last vividly brought home to us
when a glare appeared on the sky, growing brighter and brighter until, at
a turn of the river, abruptly we came abreast of vomiting furnaces,
thousands of electric lights strung like beads over the crest of a hill,
and, below these, dim rows of houses, all of a sameness, stretching along
monotonous streets.  A munitions town in the night.

One could have tossed a biscuit on the stone wharfs where the workmen,
crouching over their tasks, straightened up at sight of us and cheered.
And one cried out hoarsely, "Vous venez nous sauver, vous Americains"
--"You come to save us"--an exclamation I was to hear again in the days
that followed.



III

All day long, as the 'rapide' hurried us through the smiling wine country
and past the well-remembered chateaux of the Loire, we wondered how we
should find Paris--beautiful Paris, saved from violation as by a miracle!
Our first discovery, after we had pushed our way out of the dim station
into the obscurity of the street, was that of the absence of taxicabs.
The horse-drawn buses ranged along the curb were reserved for the
foresighted and privileged few.  Men and women were rushing desperately
about in search of conveyances, and in the midst of this confusion,
undismayed, debonnair, I spied a rugged, slouch-hatted figure standing
under a lamp--the unmistakable American soldier.

"Aren't there any cabs in Paris?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, they tell me they're here," he said.  "I've given a man a
dollar to chase one."

Evidently one of our millionaire privates who have aroused such burnings
in the heart of the French poilu, with his five sous a day!  We left him
there, and staggered across the Seine with our bags.  A French officer
approached us.  "You come from America," he said.  "Let me help you."
There was just enough light in the streets to prevent us from getting
utterly lost, and we recognized the dark mass of the Tuileries as we
crossed the gardens.  The hotel we sought was still there, and its menu,
save for the war-bread and the tiny portion of sugar, as irreproachable
as ever.

The next morning, as if by magic, hundreds of taxis had sprung into
existence, though they were much in demand.  And in spite of the soldiers
thronging the sunlit streets, Paris was seemingly the same Paris one had
always known, gay--insouciante, pleasure-bent.  The luxury shops appeared
to be thriving, the world-renowned restaurants to be doing business as
usual; to judge from the prices, a little better than usual; the
expensive hotels were full.  It is not the real France, of course, yet it
seemed none the less surprising that it should still exist.  Oddly enough
the presence of such overwhelming numbers of soldiers should have failed
to strike the note of war, emphasized that of lavishness, of the casting
off of mundane troubles for which the French capital has so long been
known.  But so it was.  Most of these soldiers were here precisely with
the object of banishing from their minds the degradations and horrors of
the region from which they had come, and which was so unbelievably near;
a few hours in an automobile--less than that in one of those dragon-fly
machines we saw intermittently hovering in the blue above our heads!

Paris, to most Americans, means that concentrated little district de luxe
of which the Place Vendome is the centre, and we had always unconsciously
thought of it as in the possession of the Anglo-Saxons.  So it seems
today.  One saw hundreds of French soldiers, of course, in all sorts of
uniforms, from the new grey blue and visor to the traditional cloth
blouse and kepi; once in a while a smart French officer.  The English and
Canadians, the Australians, New Zealanders, and Americans were much in
evidence.  Set them down anywhere on the face of the globe, under any
conditions conceivable, and you could not surprise them; such was the
impression.  The British officers and even the British Tommies were
blase, wearing the air of the 'semaine Anglaise', and the "five o'clock
tea," as the French delight to call it.  That these could have come
direct from the purgatory of the trenches seemed unbelievable.  The
Anzacs, with looped-up hats, strolled about, enjoying themselves, halting
before the shops in the Rue de la Paix to gaze at the priceless jewellery
there, or stopping at a sidewalk cafe to enjoy a drink.  Our soldiers had
not seen the front; many of them, no doubt, were on leave from the
training-camps, others were on duty in Paris, but all seemed in a hurry
to get somewhere, bound for a definite destination.  They might have been
in New York or San Francisco.  It was a novel sight, indeed, to observe
them striding across the Place Vendome with out so much as deigning to
cast a glance at the column dedicated to the great emperor who fought
that other world-war a century ago; to see our square-shouldered officers
hustling around corners in Ford and Packard automobiles.  And the
atmosphere of our communication headquarters was so essentially one of
"getting things done" as to make one forget the mediaeval narrowness of
the Rue Sainte Anne, and the inconvenient French private-dwelling
arrangements of the house.  You were transported back to America.  Such,
too, was the air of our Red Cross establishment in the ancient building
facing the Palace de la Concorde, where the unfortunate Louis lost his
head.

History had been thrust into the background.  I was never more aware of
this than when, shortly after dawn Wednesday, the massive grey pile of
the Palace of Versailles suddenly rose before me.  As the motor shot
through the empty Place d'Armes I made a desperate attempt to summon
again a vivid impression, when I had first stood there many years ago,
of an angry Paris mob beating against that grill, of the Swiss guards
dying on the stairway for their Queen.  But it was no use.  France has
undergone some subtle change, yet I knew I was in France.  I knew it when
we left Paris and sped through the dim leafy tunnels of the Bois; when I
beheld a touch of filtered sunlight on the dense blue thatch of the
'marroniers' behind the walls of a vast estate once dedicated to the
sports and pleasures of Kings; when I caught glimpses of silent chateaux
mirrored in still waters.

I was on my way, with one of our naval officers, to visit an American
naval base on the western coast.  It was France, but the laughter had
died on her lips.  A few women and old men and children were to be seen
in the villages, a bent figure in a field, an occasional cart that drew
aside as we hurried at eighty kilometers an hour along deserted routes
drawn as with a ruler across the land.  Sometimes the road dipped into a
canyon of poplars, and the sky between their crests was a tiny strip of
mottled blue and white.  The sun crept in and out, the clouds cast
shadows on the hills; here and there the tower of lonely church or castle
broke the line of a distant ridge.  Morning-glories nodded over lodge
walls where the ivy was turning crimson, and the little gardens were
masses of colours--French colours like that in the beds of the Tuileries,
brick-red geraniums and dahlias, yellow marigolds and purple asters.

We lunched at one of the little inns that for generations have been
tucked away in the narrow streets of provincial towns; this time a Cheval
Blanc, with an unimposing front and a blaze of sunshine in its heart.
After a dejeuner fit for the most exacting of bon viveurs we sat in that
courtyard and smoked, while an ancient waiter served us with coffee that
dripped through silver percolators into our glasses.  The tourists have
fled.  "If happily you should come again, monsieur," said madame, as she
led me with pardonable pride through her immaculate bedrooms and salons
with wavy floors.  And I dwelt upon a future holiday there, on the joys
of sharing with a friend that historic place.  The next afternoon I
lingered in another town, built on a little hill ringed about with
ancient walls, from whose battlements tide-veined marshes stretched away
to a gleaming sea.  A figure flitting through the cobbled streets, a
woman in black who sat sewing, sewing in a window, only served to
heighten the impression of emptiness, to give birth to the odd fancy that
some alchemic quality in the honeyed sunlight now steeping it must have
preserved the place through the ages.  But in the white close surrounding
the church were signs that life still persisted.  A peasant was drawing
water at the pump, and the handle made a noise; a priest chatted with
three French ladies who had come over from a neighbouring seaside resort.
And then a woman in deep mourning emerged from a tiny shop and took her
bicycle from against the wall and spoke to me.

"Vous etes Americain, monsieur?"

I acknowledged it.

"Vous venez nous sauver"--the same question I had heard on the lips of
the workman in the night.  "I hope so, madame," I replied, and would have
added, "We come also to save ourselves."  She looked at me with sad,
questioning eyes, and I knew that for her--and alas for many like her--we
were too late.  When she had mounted her wheel and ridden away I bought a
'Matin' and sat down on a doorstep to read about Kerensky and the Russian
Revolution.  The thing seemed incredible here--war seemed incredible, and
yet its tentacles had reached out to this peaceful Old World spot and
taken a heavy toll.  Once more I sought the ramparts, only to be reminded
by those crumbling, machicolated ruins that I was in a war-ridden land.
Few generations had escaped the pestilence.

At no great distance lay the little city which had been handed over to us
by the French Government for a naval base, one of the ports where our
troops and supplies are landed.  Those who know provincial France will
visualize its narrow streets and reticent shops, its grey-white and ecru
houses all more or less of the same design, with long French windows
guarded by ornamental balconies of cast iron--a city that has never
experienced such a thing as a real-estate boom.  Imagine, against such a
background, the bewildering effect of the dynamic presence of a few
regiments of our new army!  It is a curious commentary on this war that
one does not think of these young men as soldiers, but as citizens
engaged in a scientific undertaking of a magnitude unprecedented.  You
come unexpectedly upon truck-loads of tanned youngsters, whose features,
despite flannel shirts and campaign hats, summon up memories of Harvard
Square and the Yale Yard, of campuses at Berkeley and Ithaca.  The
youthful drivers of these camions are alert, intent, but a hard day's
work on the docks by no means suffices to dampen the spirits of the
passengers, who whistle ragtime airs as they bump over the cobbles.  And
the note they strike is presently sustained by a glimpse, on a siding, of
an efficient-looking Baldwin, ranged alongside several of the tiny French
locomotives of yesterday; sustained, too, by an acquaintance with the
young colonel in command of the town.  Though an officer of the regular
army, he brings home to one the fact that the days of the military
martinet have gone for ever.  He is military, indeed-erect and soldierly
--but fortune has amazingly made him a mayor and an autocrat, a builder,
and in some sense a railway-manager and superintendent of docks.  And to
these functions have been added those of police commissioner, of
administrator of social welfare and hygiene.  It will be a comfort to
those at home to learn that their sons in our army in France are cared
for as no enlisted men have ever been cared for before.



IV

By the end of September I had reached England, eager to gain a fresh
impression of conditions there.

The weather in London was mild and clear.  The third evening after I had
got settled in one of those delightfully English hotels in the heart of
the city, yet removed from the traffic, with letter-boxes that still bear
the initials of Victoria, I went to visit some American naval officers in
their sitting-room on the ground floor.  The cloth had not been removed
from the dinner-table, around which we were chatting, when a certain
strange sound reached our ears--a sound not to be identified with the
distant roar of the motor-busses in Pall Mall, nor with the sharp bark of
the taxi-horns, although not unlike them.  We sat listening intently, and
heard the sound again.

"The Germans have come," one of the officers remarked, as he finished his
coffee.  The other looked at his watch.  It was nine o'clock.  "They must
have left their lines about seven," he said.

In spite of the fact that our newspapers at home had made me familiar
with these aeroplane raids, as I sat there, amidst those comfortable
surroundings, the thing seemed absolutely incredible.  To fly one hundred
and fifty miles across the Channel and southern England, bomb London,
and fly back again by midnight!  We were going to be bombed!  The
anti-aircraft guns were already searching the sky for the invaders.  It is
sinister, and yet you are seized by an overwhelming curiosity that draws
you, first to pull aside the heavy curtains of the window, and then to
rush out into the dark street both proceedings in the worst possible
form!  The little street was deserted, but in Pall Mall the dark forms of
busses could be made out scurrying for shelter, one wondered where?
Above the roar of London, the pop pop  pop! of the defending guns could
be heard now almost continuously, followed by the shrieks and moans of
the shrapnel shells as they passed close overhead.  They sounded like
giant rockets, and even as rockets some of them broke into a cascade of
sparks.  Star shells they are called, bursting, it seemed, among the
immutable stars themselves that burned serenely on.  And there were other
stars like November meteors hurrying across space--the lights of the
British planes scouring the heavens for their relentless enemies.
Everywhere the restless white rays of the searchlights pierced the
darkness, seeking, but seeking in vain.  Not a sign of the intruders was
to be seen.  I was induced to return to the sitting-room.

"But what are they shooting at?" I asked.

"Listen," said one of the officers.  There came a lull in the firing and
then a faint, droning noise like the humming of insects on a still summer
day.  "It's all they have to shoot at, that noise."

"But their own planes?" I objected.

"The Gotha has two engines, it has a slightly different noise, when you
get used to it.  You'd better step out of that window.  It's against the
law to show light, and if a bomb falls in the street you'd be filled with
glass."  I overcame my fascination and obeyed.  "It isn't only the
bombs," my friend went on, "it's the falling shrapnel, too."

The noise made by those bombs is unmistakable, unforgetable, and quite
distinct from the chorus of the guns and shrapnel--a crashing note,
reverberating, sustained, like the E minor of some giant calliope.

In face of the raids, which coincide with the coming of the moon, London
is calm, but naturally indignant over such methods of warfare.  The
damage done is ridiculously small; the percentage of deaths and injuries
insignificant.  There exists, in every large city, a riffraff to get
panicky: these are mostly foreigners; they seek the Tubes, and some the
crypt of St. Paul's, for it is wise to get under shelter during the brief
period of the raids, and most citizens obey the warnings of the police.
It is odd, indeed, that more people are not hurt by shrapnel.  The Friday
following the raid I have described I went out of town for a week-end,
and returned on Tuesday to be informed that a shell had gone through the
roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling and floor of the
bedroom of one of the officers who lived below.  He was covered with dust
and debris, his lights went out, but he calmly stepped through the
window.  "You'd best have your dinner early, sir," I was told by the
waiter on my return.  "Last night a lady had her soup up-stairs,
her chicken in the office, and her coffee in the cellar."  It is worth
while noting that she had all three.  Another evening, when I was dining
with Sir James Barrie, he showed me a handful of shrapnel fragments.
"I gathered them off the roof," he informed me.  And a lady next to whom
I sat at luncheon told me in a matter-of-fact tone that a bomb had fallen
the night before in the garden of her town house.  "It was quite
disagreeable," she said, "and broke all our windows on that side."
During the last raids before the moon disappeared, by a new and ingenious
system of barrage fire the Germans were driven off.  The question of the
ethics of reprisals is agitating London.

One "raid," which occurred at midday, is worth recording.  I was on my
way to our Embassy when, in the residential quarter through which I
passed, I found all the housemaids in the areas gazing up at the sky, and
I was told by a man in a grocer's cart that the Huns had come again.  But
the invader on this occasion turned out to be a British aviator from one
of the camps who was bringing a message to London.  The warmth of his
reception was all that could be desired, and he alighted hastily in the
first open space that presented itself.

Looking back to the time when I left America, I can recall the
expectation of finding a Britain beginning to show signs of distress.
I was prepared to live on a small ration.  And the impression of the
scarcity of food was seemingly confirmed when the table was being set
for the first meal at my hotel; when the waiter, who chanced to be an
old friend, pointed to a little bowl half-full of sugar and exclaimed:
"I ought to warn you, sir, it's all you're to have for a week, and I'm
sorry to say you're only allowed a bit of bread, too."  It is human
perversity to want a great deal of bread when bread becomes scarce; even
war bread, which, by the way, is better than white.  But the rest of the
luncheon, when it came, proved that John Bull was under no necessity of
stinting himself.  Save for wheat and sugar; he is not in want.
Everywhere in London you are confronted by signs of an incomprehensible
prosperity; everywhere, indeed, in Great Britain.  There can be no doubt
about that of the wage-earners--nothing like it has ever been seen
before.  One sure sign of this is the phenomenal sale of pianos to
households whose occupants had never dreamed of such luxuries.  And
not once, but many times, have I read in the newspapers of workingmen's
families of four or five which are gaining collectively more than five
hundred pounds a year.  The economic and social significance of this
tendency, the new attitude of the working classes, the ferment it is
causing need not be dwelt upon here.  That England will be a changed
England is unquestionable.

The London theatres are full, the "movies" crowded, and you have to wait
your turn for a seat at a restaurant.  Bond Street and Piccadilly are
doing a thriving business--never so thriving, you are told, and presently
you are willing to believe it.  The vendor beggars, so familiar a sight a
few years ago, have all but disappeared, and you may walk from Waterloo
Station to the Haymarket without so much as meeting a needy soul anxious
to carry your bag.  Taxicabs are in great demand.  And one odd result of
the scarcity of what the English are pleased to call "petrol," by which
they mean gasoline, is the reappearance of that respectable, but almost
obsolete animal, the family carriage-horse; of that equally obsolete
vehicle, the victoria.  The men on the box are invariably in black.
In spite of taxes to make the hair of an American turn grey, in spite
of lavish charities, the wealthy classes still seem wealthy--if the
expression may be allowed.  That they are not so wealthy as they were
goes without saying.  In the country houses of the old aristocracy the
most rigid economy prevails.  There are new fortunes, undoubtedly,
munitions and war fortunes made before certain measures were taken to
control profits; and some establishments, including a few supported by
American accumulations, still exhibit the number of men servants and
amount of gold plate formerly thought adequate.  But in most of these
great houses maids have replaced the butlers and footmen; mansions have
been given over for hospitals; gardeners are fighting in the trenches,
and courts and drives of country places are often overgrown with grass
and weeds.

"Yes, we do dine in public quite often," said a very great lady.  "It's
cheaper than keeping servants."

Two of her three sons had been killed in France, but she did not mention
this.  The English do not advertise their sorrows.  Still another
explanation when husbands and sons and brothers come back across the
Channel for a few days' leave after long months in the trenches, nothing
is too good for them.  And when these days have flown, there is always
the possibility that there may never be another leave.  Not long ago I
read a heart-rending article about the tragedies of the goodbyes in the
stations and the terminal hotels--tragedies hidden by silence and a
smile.  "Well, so long," says an officer "bring back a V. C.," cries
his sister from the group on the platform, and he waves his hand in
deprecation as the train pulls out, lights his pipe, and pretends
to be reading the Sphere.

Some evening, perchance, you happen to be in the dark street outside of
Charing Cross station.  An occasional hooded lamp throws a precarious
gleam on a long line of men carrying--so gently--stretchers on which lie
the silent forms of rich and poor alike.




CHAPTER II

For the student of history who is able to place himself within the stream
of evolution the really important events of today are not taking place on
the battle lines, but behind them.  The key-note of the new era has been
struck in Russia.  And as I write these words, after the Italian retreat,
a second revolution seems possible.  For three years one has thought
inevitably of 1789, and of the ensuing world conflict out of which
issued the beginnings of democracy.  History does not repeat itself,
yet evolution is fairly consistent.  While our attention has been focused
on the military drama enacted before our eyes and recorded in the
newspapers, another drama, unpremeditated but of vastly greater
significance, is unfolding itself behind the stage.  Never in the history
of the world were generals and admirals, statesmen and politicians so
sensitive to or concerned about public opinion as they are today.
From a military point of view the situation of the Allies at the present
writing is far from reassuring.  Germany and her associates have the
advantage of interior lines, of a single dominating and purposeful
leadership, while our five big nations, democracies or semi-democracies,
are stretched in a huge ring with precarious connections on land, with
the submarine alert on the sea.  Much of their territory is occupied.
They did not seek the war; they still lack co-ordination and leadership
in waging it.  In some of these countries, at least, politicians and
statesmen are so absorbed by administrative duties, by national rather
than international problems, by the effort to sustain themselves, that
they have little time for allied strategy.  Governments rise and fall,
familiar names and reputations are juggled about like numbered balls in a
shaker, come to the top to be submerged again in a new 'emeute'.  There
are conferences and conferences without end.  Meanwhile a social ferment
is at work, in Russia conspicuously, in Italy a little less so, in
Germany and Austria undoubtedly, in France and England, and even in our
own country--once of the most radical in the world, now become the most
conservative.

What form will the social revolution take?  Will it be unbridled,
unguided; will it run through a long period of anarchy before the
fermentation begun shall have been completed, or shall it be handled, in
all the nations concerned, by leaders who understand and sympathize with
the evolutionary trend, who are capable of controlling it, of taking the
necessary international steps of co-operation in order that it may become
secure and mutually beneficial to all?  This is an age of co-operation,
and in this at least, if not in other matters, the United States of
America is in an ideal position to assume the leadership.

To a certain extent, one is not prepared to say how far, the military and
social crises are interdependent.  And undoubtedly the military problem
rests on the suppression of the submarine.  If Germany continues to
destroy shipping on the seas, if we are not able to supply our new armies
and the Allied nations with food and other things, the increasing social
ferment will paralyze the military operations of the Entente.  The result
of a German victory under such circumstances is impossible to predict;
but the chances are certainly not worth running.  In a, sense, therefore,
in a great sense, the situation is "up" to us in more ways than one, not
only to supply wise democratic leadership but to contribute material aid
and brains in suppressing the submarine, and to build ships enough to
keep Britain, France, and Italy from starving.  We are looked upon by all
the Allies, and I believe justly, as being a disinterested nation, free
from the age-long jealousies of Europe.  And we can do much in bringing
together and making more purposeful the various elements represented by
the nations to whose aid we have come.

I had not intended in these early papers to comment, but to confine
myself to such of my experiences abroad as might prove interesting and
somewhat illuminating.  So much I cannot refrain from saying.

It is a pleasure to praise where praise is due, and too much cannot be
said of the personnel of our naval service--something of which I can
speak from intimate personal experience.  In these days, in that part of
London near the Admiralty, you may chance to run across a tall, erect,
and broad-shouldered man in blue uniform with three stars on his collar,
striding rapidly along the sidewalk, and sometimes, in his haste, cutting
across a street.  People smile at him--costermongers, clerks, and
shoppers--and whisper among themselves, "There goes the American
admiral!" and he invariably smiles back at them, especially at the
children.  He is an admiral, every inch a seaman, commanding a devoted
loyalty from his staff and from the young men who are scouring the seas
with our destroyers.  In France as well as in England the name Sims is a
household word, and if he chose he might be feted every day of the week.
He does not choose.  He spends long hours instead in the quarters devoted
to his administration in Grosvenor Gardens, or in travelling in France
and Ireland supervising the growing forces under his command.

It may not be out of place to relate a characteristic story of Admiral
Sims, whose career in our service, whose notable contributions to naval
gunnery are too well known to need repetition.  Several years ago, on a
memorable trip to England, he was designated by the admiral of the fleet
to be present at a banquet given our sailors in the Guildhall.  Of course
the lord mayor called upon him for a speech, but Commander Sims insisted
that a bluejacket should make the address.  "What, a bluejacket!"
exclaimed the lord mayor in astonishment.  "Do bluejackets make speeches
in your country?"  "Certainly they do," said Sims.  "Now there's a
fine-looking man over there, a quartermaster on my ship.  Let's call on
him and see what he has to say."  The quartermaster, duly summoned, rose
with aplomb and delivered himself of a speech that made the hall ring,
that formed the subject of a puzzled and amazed comment by the newspapers
of the British Capital.  Nor was it ever divulged that Commander Sims had
foreseen the occasion and had picked out the impressive quartermaster to
make a reputation for oratory for the enlisted force.

As a matter of fact, it is no exaggeration to add that there were and are
other non-commissioned officers and enlisted men in the service who could
have acquitted themselves equally well.  One has only to attend some of
their theatrical performances to be assured of it.

But to the European mind our bluejacket is still something of an anomaly.
He is a credit to our public schools, a fruit of our system of universal
education.  And he belongs to a service in which are reconciled,
paradoxically, democracy and discipline.  One moment you may hear a
bluejacket talking to an officer as man to man, and the next you will
see him salute and obey an order implicitly.

On a wet and smoky night I went from the London streets into the
brightness and warmth of that refuge for American soldiers and sailors,
the "Eagle Hut," as the Y. M. C. A. is called.  The place was full, as
usual, but my glance was at once attracted by three strapping,
intelligent-looking men in sailor blouses playing pool in a corner.
"I simply can't get used to the fact that people like that are ordinary
sailors," said the lady in charge to me as we leaned against the
soda-fountain.  "They're a continual pride and delight to us Americans
here--always so willing to help when there's anything to be done, and so
interesting to talk to."  When I suggested that her ideas of the navy
must have been derived from Pinafore she laughed.  "I can't imagine using
a cat-o'-nine-tails on them!" she exclaimed--and neither could I. I heard
many similar comments.  They are indubitably American, these sailors,
youngsters with the stamp of our environment on their features, keen and
self-reliant.  I am not speaking now only of those who have enlisted
since the war, but of those others, largely from the small towns and
villages of our Middle West, who in the past dozen years or so have been
recruited by an interesting and scientific system which is the result of
the genius of our naval recruiting officers.  In the files at Washington
may be seen, carefully tabulated, the several reasons for their
enlisting.  Some have "friends in the service"; others wish to "perfect
themselves in a trade," to "complete their education" or "see the world"
--our adventurous spirit.  And they are seeing it. They are also engaged
in the most exciting and adventurous sport--with the exception of aerial
warfare ever devised or developed--that of hunting down in all weathers
over the wide spaces of the Atlantic those modern sea monsters that prey
upon the Allied shipping.  For the superdreadnought is reposing behind
the nets, the battle-cruiser ignominiously laying mines; and for the
present at least, until some wizard shall invent a more effective method
of annihilation, victory over Germany depends primarily on the airplane
and the destroyer. At three o'clock one morning I stood on the crowded
deck of an Irish mail-boat watching the full moon riding over Holyhead
Mountain and shimmering on the Irish Sea.  A few hours later, in the
early light, I saw the green hills of Killarney against a washed and
clearing sky, the mud-flats beside the railway shining like purple
enamel.  All the forenoon, in the train, I travelled through a country
bathed in translucent colours, a country of green pastures dotted over
with white sheep, of banked hedges and perfect trees, of shadowy blue
hills in the high distance.  It reminded one of nothing so much as a
stained-glass-window depicting some delectable land of plenty and peace.
And it was Ireland!  When at length I arrived at the station of the port
for which I was bound, and which the censor does not permit me to name, I
caught sight of the figure of our Admiral on the platform; and the fact
that I was in Ireland and not in Emmanuel's Land was brought home to me
by the jolting drive we took on an "outside car," the admiral perched
precariously over one wheel and I over the other.  Winding up the hill by
narrow roads, we reached the gates of the Admiralty House.

The house sits, as it were, in the emperor's seat of the amphitheatre
of the town, overlooking the panorama of a perfect harbour.  A ring of
emerald hills is broken by a little gap to seaward, and in the centre is
a miniature emerald isle.  The ships lying at anchor seemed like
children's boats in a pond.  To the right, where a river empties in, were
scattered groups of queer, rakish craft, each with four slanting pipes
and a tiny flag floating from her halyards; a flag--as the binoculars
revealed--of crimson bars and stars on a field of blue.  These were our
American destroyers.  And in the midst of them, swinging to the tide,
were the big "mother ships" we have sent over to nurse them when, after
many days and nights of hazardous work at sea, they have brought their
flock of transports and merchantmen safely to port.  This "mothering" by
repair-ships which are merely huge machine-shops afloat--this trick of
keeping destroyers tuned up and constantly ready for service has inspired
much favourable comment from our allies in the British service.  It is an
instance of our national adaptability, learned from an experience on long
coasts where navy-yards are not too handy.  Few landsmen understand how
delicate an instrument the destroyer is.

A service so hazardous, demanding as it does such qualities as the
ability to make instantaneous decisions and powers of mental and physical
endurance, a service so irresistibly attractive to the young and
adventurous, produces a type of officer quite unmistakable.  The day I
arrived in London from France, seeking a characteristically English meal,
I went to Simpson's in the Strand, where I found myself seated by the
side of two very junior officers of the British navy.  It appeared that
they were celebrating what was left of a precious leave.  At a
neighbouring table they spied two of our officers, almost equally
youthful.  "Let's have 'em over," suggested one of the Britishers; and
they were "had" over; he raised his glass.  "Here's how--as you say in
America!"  he exclaimed.  "You destroyer chaps are certainly top hole."
And then he added, with a blush, "I say, I hope you don't think I'm
cheeking you!"

I saw them afloat, I saw them coming ashore in that Irish port,
these young destroyer captains, after five wakeful nights at sea,
weather-bitten, clear-eyed, trained down to the last ounce.  One, with
whom I had played golf on the New England hills, carried his clubs in his
hand and invited me to have a game with him.  Another, who apologized for
not being dressed at noon on Sunday--he had made the harbour at three
that morning!--was taking his racquet out of its case, preparing to spend
the afternoon on the hospitable courts of Admiralty House with a fellow
captain and two British officers.  He was ashamed of his late rising, but
when it was suggested that some sleep was necessary he explained that, on
the trip just ended, it wasn't only the submarines that kept him awake.
"When these craft get jumping about in a seaway you can't sleep even if
you want to."  He who has had experience with them knows the truth of
this remark.  Incidentally, though he did not mention it, this young
captain was one of three who had been recommended by the British admiral
to his government for the Distinguished Service Order.  The captain's
report, which I read, is terse, and needs to be visualized. There is
simply a statement of the latitude and longitude, the time of day, the
fact that the wave of a periscope was sighted at 1,500 yards by the
quartermaster first class on duty; general quarters rung, the executive
officer signals full speed ahead, the commanding officer takes charge and
manoeuvres for position--and then something happens which the censor may
be fussy about mentioning.  At any rate, oil and other things rise to the
surface of the sea, and the Germans are minus another submarine.  The
chief machinist's mate, however, comes in for special mention.  It seems
that he ignored the ladder and literally fell down the hatch, dislocating
his shoulder but getting the throttle wide open within five seconds!

In this town, facing the sea, is a street lined with quaint houses
painted in yellows and browns and greens, and under each house the kind
of a shop that brings back to the middleaged delectable memories of
extreme youth and nickels to spend.  Up and down that street on a bright
Saturday afternoon may be seen our Middle-Western jackies chumming with
the British sailors and Tommies, or flirting with the Irish girls, or
gazing through the little panes of the show-windows, whose enterprising
proprietors have imported from the States a popular brand of chewing-gum
to make us feel more at home.  In one of these shops, where I went to
choose a picture post-card, I caught sight of an artistic display of a
delicacy I had thought long obsolete--the everlasting gum-drop.  But when
I produced a shilling the shopkeeper shook his head.  "Sure, every day
the sailors are wanting to buy them of me, but it's for ornament I'm
keeping them," he said.  "There's no more to be had till the war will be
over.  Eight years they're here now, and you wouldn't get a tooth in
them, sir!"  So I wandered out again, joined the admiral, and inspected
the Bluejackets' Club by the water's edge.  Nothing one sees, perhaps, is
so eloquent of the change that has taken place in the life and fabric of
our navy.  If you are an enlisted man, here in this commodious group of
buildings you can get a good shore meal and entertain your friends among
the Allies, you may sleep in a real bed, instead of a hammock, you may
play pool, or see a moving-picture show, or witness a vaudeville worthy
of professionals, like that recently given in honour of the visit of the
admiral of our Atlantic fleet.  A band of thirty pieces furnished the
music, and in the opinion of the jackies one feature alone was lacking
to make the entertainment a complete success--the new drop-curtain had
failed to arrive from London.  I happened to be present when this curtain
was first unrolled, and beheld spread out before me a most realistic
presentation of "little old New York," seen from the North River,
towering against blue American skies.  And though I have never been
overfond of New York, that curtain in that place gave me a sensation!

Such is the life of our officers and sailors in these strange times that
have descended upon us.  Five to eight days of vigilance, of hardship and
danger--in short, of war--and then three days of relaxation and enjoyment
in clubs, on golf-courses and tennis-courts, barring the time it takes to
clean ship and paint.  There need be no fear that the war will be
neglected.  It is eminently safe to declare that our service will
be true to its traditions.



III

"Dogged does it" ought to be added to "Dieu et mon droit" and other
devices of England.  On a day when I was lunching with Mr. Lloyd George
in the dining-room at 10 Downing Street that looks out over the Horse
Guards' Parade, the present premier, with a characteristic gesture, flung
out his hand toward the portrait of a young man in the panel over the
mantel.  It was of the younger Pitt, who had taken his meals and drunk
his port in this very room in that other great war a hundred years ago.
The news of Austerlitz, brought to him during his illness, is said to
have killed him.  But England, undismayed, fought on for a decade, and
won.  Mr. Lloyd George, in spite of burdens even heavier than Pitt's,
happily retains his health; and his is the indomitable spirit
characteristic of the new Britain as well as of the old.  For it is a new
Britain one sees.  Mr. Lloyd George is prime minister of a transformed
Britain, a Britain modernized and democratized.  Like the Englishman who,
when he first witnessed a performance of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," cried out,
"How very unlike the home life of our dear Queen!" the American who
lunches in Downing Street is inclined to exclaim: "How different from
Lord North and Palmerston!"  We have, I fear, been too long accustomed to
interpret Britain in terms of these two ministers and of what they
represented to us of the rule of a George the Third or of an inimical
aristocracy.  Three out of the five men who form the war cabinet of
an empire are of what would once have been termed an "humble origin."
One was, if I am not mistaken, born in Nova Scotia.  General Smuts,
unofficially associated with this council, not many years ago was in arms
against Britain in South Africa, and the prime minister himself is the
son of a Welsh tailor.  A situation that should mollify the most exacting
and implacable of our anti-British democrats!

I listened to many speeches and explanations of the prejudice that
existed in the mind of the dyed-in-the-wool American against England,
and the reason most frequently given was the "school-book" reason;
our histories kept the feeling alive.  Now; there is no doubt that the
histories out of which we were taught made what psychologists would call
"action patterns," or "complexes," in our brains, just as the
school-books have made similar complexes in the brains of German children
and prepared them for this war.  But, after all, there was a certain
animus behind the histories.  Boiled down, the sentiment was one against
the rule of a hereditary aristocracy, and our forefathers had it long
before the separation took place.  The Middle-Western farmer has no
prejudice against France, because France is a republic.  The French are
lovable, and worthy of all the sympathy and affection we can give them.
But Britain is still nominally a monarchy; and our patriot thinks of its
people very much as the cowboy used to regard citizens of New York.  They
all lived on Fifth Avenue.  For the cowboy, the residents of the dreary
side streets simply did not exist.  We have been wont to think of all the
British as aristocrats, while they have returned the compliment by
visualizing all Americans as plutocrats--despite the fact that one-tenth
of our population is said to own nine-tenths of all our wealth!

But the war will change that, is already changing it.

'Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner'.  We have been soaked in the same
common law, literature, and traditions of liberty--or of chaos, as one
likes.  Whether we all be of British origin or not, it is the mind that
makes the true patriot; and there is no American so dead as not to feel a
thrill when he first sets foot on British soil.  Our school-teachers felt
it when they began to travel some twenty years ago, and the thousands of
our soldiers who pass through on their way to France are feeling it
today, and writing home about it.  Our soldiers and sailors are being
cared for and entertained in England just as they would be cared for and
entertained at home.  So are their officers.  Not long ago one of the
finest town houses in London was donated by the owner for an American
officers' club, the funds were raised by contributions from British
officers, and the club was inaugurated by the King and Queen--and Admiral
Sims.  Hospitality and good-will have gone much further than this.  Any
one who knows London will understand the sacredness of those private
squares, surrounded by proprietary residences, where every tree and every
blade of grass has been jealously guarded from intrusion for a century or
more.  And of all these squares that of St.  James's is perhaps the most
exclusive, and yet it is precisely in St. James's there is to be built
the first of those hotels designed primarily for the benefit of American
officers, where they can get a good room for five shillings a night and
breakfast at a reasonable price.  One has only to sample the war-time
prices of certain hostelries to appreciate the value of this.


On the first of four unforgettable days during which I was a guest behind
the British lines in France the officer who was my guide stopped the
motor in the street of an old village, beside a courtyard surrounded
by ancient barns.

"There are some of your Americans," he remarked.

I had recognized them, not by their uniforms but by their type.  Despite
their costumes, which were negligible, they were eloquent of college
campuses in every one of our eight and forty States, lean, thin-hipped,
alert.  The persistent rains had ceased, a dazzling sunlight made that
beautiful countryside as bright as a coloured picture post-card, but a
riotous cold gale was blowing; yet all wore cotton trousers that left
their knees as bare as Highlanders' kilts.  Above these some had an
sweaters, others brown khaki tunics, from which I gathered that they
belonged to the officers' training corps.  They were drawn up on two
lines facing each other with fixed bayonets, a grim look on their faces
that would certainly have put any Hun to flight.  Between the files stood
an unmistakable gipling sergeant with a crimson face and a bristling
little chestnut moustache, talking like a machine gun.

"Now, then, not too lidylike!--there's a Bosch in front of you!  Run 'im
through!  Now, then!"

The lines surged forward, out went the bayonets, first the long thrust
and then the short, and then a man's gun was seized and by a swift
backward twist of the arm he was made helpless.

"Do you feel it?" asked the officer, as he turned to me.  I did.
"Up and down your spine," he added, and I nodded.  "Those chaps will do,"
he said.  He had been through that terrible battle of the Somme, and he
knew.  So had the sergeant.

Presently came a resting-spell.  One of the squad approached me, whom I
recognized as a young man I had met in the Harvard Union.

"If you write about this," he said, "just tell our people that we're
going to take that sergeant home with us when the war's over.  He's too
good to lose."



IV

It is trite to observe that democracies are organized--if, indeed, they
are organized at all--not for war but for peace.  And nowhere is this
fact more apparent than in Britain.  Even while the war is in progress
has that internal democratic process of evolution been going on,
presaging profound changes in the social fabric.  And these changes must
be dealt with by statesmen, must be guided with one hand while the war is
being prosecuted with the other.  The task is colossal.  In no previous
war have the British given more striking proof of their inherent quality
of doggedness.  Greatness, as Confucius said, does not consist in never
falling, but in rising every time you fall.  The British speak with
appalling frankness of their blunders.  They are fighting, indeed, for
the privilege of making blunders--since out of blunders arise new truths
and discoveries not contemplated in German philosophy.

America must now contribute what Britain and France, with all their
energies and resources and determination, have hitherto been unable to
contribute.  It must not be men, money, and material alone, but some
quality that America has had in herself during her century and a half of
independent self-realization.  Mr. Chesterton, in writing about the
American Revolution, observes that the real case for the colonists is
that they felt that they could be something which England would not help
them to be.  It is, in fact, the only case for separation.  What may be
called the English tradition of democracy, which we inherit, grows
through conflicts and differences, through experiments and failures and
successes, toward an intellectualized unity,--experiments by states,
experiments by individuals, a widely spread development, and new
contributions to the whole.

Democracy has arrived at the stage when it is ceasing to be national and
selfish.

It must be said of England, in her treatment of her colonies subsequent
to our Revolution, that she took this greatest of all her national
blunders to heart.  As a result, Canada and Australia and New Zealand
have sent their sons across the seas to fight for an empire that refrains
from coercion; while, thanks to the policy of the British Liberals--which
was the expression of the sentiment of the British nation--we have the
spectacle today of a Botha and a Smuts fighting under the Union Jack.

And how about Ireland?  England has blundered there, and she admits it
freely.  They exist in England who cry out for the coercion of Ireland,
and who at times have almost had their way.  But to do this, of course,
would be a surrender to the German contentions, an acknowledgment of the
wisdom of the German methods against which she is protesting with all her
might.  Democracy, apparently, must blunder on until that question too,
is solved.



V

Many of those picturesque features of the older England, that stir us by
their beauty and by the sense of stability and permanence they convey,
will no doubt disappear or be transformed.  I am thinking of the great
estates, some of which date from Norman times; I am thinking of the
aristocracy, which we Americans repudiated in order to set up a
plutocracy instead.  Let us hope that what is fine in it will be
preserved, for there is much.  By the theory of the British constitution
--that unwritten but very real document--in return for honours,
emoluments, and titles, the burden of government has hitherto been
thrown on a class.  Nor can it be said that they have been untrue to
their responsibility.  That class developed a tradition and held fast to
it; and they had a foreign policy that guided England through centuries
of greatness.  Democracy too must have a foreign policy, a tradition of
service; a trained if not hereditary group to guide it through troubled
waters.  Even in an intelligent community there must be leadership.  And,
if the world will no longer tolerate the old theories, a tribute may at
least be paid to those who from conviction upheld them; who ruled,
perhaps in affluence, yet were also willing to toil and, if need be,
to die for the privilege.

One Saturday afternoon, after watching for a while the boys playing fives
and football and romping over the green lawns at Eton, on my way to the
head master's rooms I paused in one of the ancient quads.  My eye had
been caught by a long column of names posted there, printed in heavy
black letters.  'Etona non, immemora'!  Every week many new names are
added to those columns.  On the walls of the chapel and in other quads
and passages may be found tablets and inscriptions in memory of those who
have died for England and the empire in by-gone wars.  I am told that the
proportion of Etonians of killed to wounded is greater than that of any
other public school--which is saying a great deal.  They go back across
the channel and back again until their names appear on the last and
highest honour list of the school and nation.

In one of the hospitals I visited lay a wounded giant who had once been
a truckman in a little town in Kent.  Incidentally, in common with his
neighbours, he had taken no interest in the war, which had seemed as
remote to him as though he had lived in North Dakota.  One day a Zeppelin
dropped a bomb on that village, whereupon the able-bodied males enlisted
to a man, and he with them.  A subaltern in his company was an Eton boy.
"We just couldn't think of 'im as an orficer, sir; in the camps 'e used
to play with us like a child.  And then we went to France.  And one night
when we was wet to the skin and the Boschs was droppin' shell all around
us we got the word.  It was him leaped over the top first of all,
shouting back at us to come on.  He tumbled right back and died in my
arms, 'e did, as I was climbin' up after 'im.  I shan't ever forget 'im."

As you travel about in these days you become conscious, among the people
you meet, of a certain bewilderment.  A static world and a static order
are dissolving; and in England that order was so static as to make the
present spectacle the more surprising.  Signs of the disintegration of
the old social strata were not lacking, indeed, in the earlier years of
the twentieth century, when labour members and north-country radicals
began to invade parliament; but the cataclysm of this war has accelerated
the process.  In the muddy trenches of Flanders and France a new
comradeship has sprung up between officers and Tommies, while
time-honoured precedent has been broken by the necessity of giving
thousands of commissions to men of merit who do not belong to the
"officer caste." At the Haymarket Theatre I saw a fashionable audience
wildly applaud a play in which the local tailor becomes a major-general
and returns home to marry the daughter of the lord of a mayor whose
clothes he used to cut before the war.

"The age of great adventure," were the words used by Mr. H. G. Wells to
describe this epoch as we discussed it.  And a large proportion of the
descendants of those who have governed England for centuries are
apparently imbued with the spirit of this adventure, even though it may
spell the end of their exclusive rule.  As significant of the social
mingling of elements which in the past never exchanged ideas or points
of view I shall describe a week-end party at a large country house of
Liberal complexion; on the Thames.  I have reason to believe it fairly
typical.  The owner of this estate holds an important position in the
Foreign Office, and the hostess has, by her wit and intelligent grasp of
affairs, made an enviable place for herself.  On her right, at luncheon
on Sunday, was a labour leader, the head of one of the most powerful
unions in Britain, and next him sat a member of one of the oldest of
England's titled families.  The two were on terms of Christian names.
The group included two or three women, a sculptor and an educator,
another Foreign Office official who has made a reputation since the
beginning of the war, and finally an employer of labour, the chairman of
the biggest shipbuilding company in England.

That a company presenting such a variety of interests should have been
brought together in the frescoed dining-room of that particular house is
noteworthy.

The thing could happen nowhere save in the England of today.  At first
the talk was general, ranging over a number of subjects from that of the
personality of certain politicians to the conduct of the war and the
disturbing problem raised by the "conscientious objector"; little by
little, however, the rest of us became silent, to listen to a debate
which had begun between the labour leader and the ship-builder on the
"labour question."  It is not my purpose here to record what they said.
Needless to add that they did not wholly agree, but they were much nearer
to agreement than one would have thought possible.  What was interesting
was the open-mindedness with which, on both sides, the argument was
conducted, and the fact that it could seriously take place then and
there.  For the subject of it had long been the supreme problem in the
lives of both these men, their feelings concerning it must at times have
been tinged with bitterness, yet they spoke with courtesy and restraint,
and though each maintained his contentions he was quick to acknowledge a
point made by the other.  As one listened one was led to hope that a
happier day is perhaps at hand when such things as "complexes" and
convictions will disappear.

The types of these two were in striking contrast.  The labour leader was
stocky, chestnut-coloured, vital, possessing the bulldog quality of the
British self-made man combined with a natural wit, sharpened in the
arena, that often startled the company into an appreciative laughter.
The ship-builder, on the other hand, was one of those spare and hard
Englishmen whom no amount of business cares will induce to neglect the
exercise of his body, the obligation at all times to keep "fit";
square-rigged, as it were, with a lean face and a wide moustache
accentuating a square chin.  Occasionally a gleam of humour, a ray of
idealism, lighted his practical grey eyes.  Each of these two had managed
rather marvellously to triumph over early training by self-education: the
labour leader, who had had his first lessons in life from injustices and
hard knocks; and the ship-builder, who had overcome the handicap of the
public-school tradition and of Manchester economics.

"Yes, titles and fortunes must go," remarked our hostess with a smile as
she rose from the table and led the way out on the sunny, stone-flagged
terrace.  Below us was a wide parterre whose flower-beds, laid out by a
celebrated landscape-gardener in the days of the Stuarts, were filled
with vegetables.  The day was like our New England Indian summerthough
the trees were still heavy with leaves--and a gossamer-blue veil of haze
stained the hills between which the shining river ran.  If the social
revolution, or evolution, takes place, one wonders what will become of
this long-cherished beauty.

I venture to dwell upon one more experience of that week-end party.  The
Friday evening of my arrival I was met at the station, not by a limousine
with a chauffeur and footman, but by a young woman with a taxicab--one of
the many reminders that a war is going on.  London had been reeking in a
green-yellow fog, but here the mist was white, and through it I caught
glimpses of the silhouettes of stately trees in a park, and presently saw
the great house with its clock-tower looming up before me.  A fire was
crackling in the hall, and before it my hostess was conversing amusedly
with a well-known sculptor--a sculptor typical of these renaissance
times, large, full-blooded, with vigorous opinions on all sorts of
matters.

"A lecturer is coming down from London to talk to the wounded in the
amusement-hall of the hospital," our hostess informed us.  "And you both
must come and speak too."

The three of us got into the only motor of which the establishment now
boasts, a little runabout using a minimum of "petrol," and she guided us
rapidly by devious roads through the fog until a blur of light proclaimed
the presence of a building, one of some score or more built on the
golf-course by the British Government.  I have not space hereto describe
that hospital, which is one of the best in England; but it must be
observed that its excellence and the happiness of its inmates are almost
wholly due to the efforts of the lady who now conducted us across the
stage of the amusement-hall, where all the convalescents who could walk
or who could be rolled thither in chairs were gathered.  The lecturer had
not arrived.  But the lady of the manor seated herself at the speaker's
table, singling out Scotch wits in the audience--for whom she was more
than a match--while the sculptor and I looked on and grinned and resisted
her blandishments to make speeches.  When at last the lecturer came he
sat down informally on the table with one foot hanging in the air and
grinned, too, at her bantering but complimentary introduction.  It was
then I discovered for the first time that he was one of the best
educational experts of that interesting branch of the British Government,
the Department of Reconstruction, whose business it is to teach the
convalescents the elements of social and political science.  This was not
to be a lecture, he told them, but a debate in which every man must take
a part.  And his first startling question was this:

"Why should Mr. Lloyd George, instead of getting five thousand pounds a
year for his services as prime minister, receive any more than a common
labourer?"

The question was a poser.  The speaker folded his hands and beamed down
at them; he seemed fairly to radiate benignity.

"Now we mustn't be afraid of him, just because he seems to be
intelligent," declared our hostess.  This sally was greeted with
spasmodic laughter.  Her eyes flitted from bench to bench, yet met
nothing save averted glances.  "Jock!  Where are you, Jock?  Why don't
you speak up?--you've never been downed before."

More laughter, and craning of necks for the Jocks.  This appeared to be
her generic name for the vita.  But the Jocks remained obdurately modest.
The prolonged silence did not seem in the least painful to the lecturer,
who thrust his hand in his pocket and continued to beam.  He had learned
how to wait.  And at last his patience was rewarded.  A middleaged
soldier with a very serious manner arose hesitatingly, with encouraging
noises from his comrades.

"It's not Mr. Lloyd George I'm worrying about, sir," he said, "all I
wants is enough for the missus and me.  I had trouble to get that before
the war."

Cries of "Hear!  Hear!"

"Why did you have trouble?" inquired the lecturer mildly.

"The wages was too low."

"And why were the wages too low?"

"You've got me there.  I hadn't thought."

"But isn't it your business as a voter to think?" asked the lecturer.
"That's why the government is sending me here, to start you to thinking,
to remind you that it is you soldiers who will have to take charge of
this country and run it after the war is over.  And you won't be able to
do that unless you think, and think straight."

"We've never been taught to think," was the illuminating reply.

"And if we do think we've never been educated to express ourselves, same
as you!" shouted another man, in whom excitement had overcome timidity.

"I'm here to help you educate yourselves," said the lecturer.  "But first
let's hear any ideas you may have on the question I asked you."

There turned out to be plenty of ideas, after all.  An opinion was
ventured that Mr. Lloyd George served the nation, not for money but from
public spirit; a conservative insisted that ability should be rewarded
and rewarded well; whereupon ensued one of the most enlightening
discussions, not only as a revelation of intelligence, but of complexes
and obsessions pervading many of the minds in whose power lies the
ultimate control of democracies.  One, for instance, declared that--"if
every man went to church proper of a Sunday and minded his own business
the country would get along well enough."  He was evidently of the
opinion that there was too much thinking and not enough of what he would
have termed "religion."  Gradually that audience split up into liberals
and conservatives; and the liberals noticeably were the younger men who
had had the advantages of better board schools, who had formed fewer
complexes and had had less time in which to get them set.  Of these,
a Canadian made a plea for the American system of universal education,
whereupon a combative "stand-patter" declared that every man wasn't fit
to be educated, that the American plan made only for discontent.
"Look at them," he exclaimed, "They're never satisfied to stay in their
places."  This provoked laughter, but it was too much for the sculptor
--and for me.  We both broke our vows and made speeches in favour of
equality and mental opportunity, while the lecturer looked on and smiled.
Mr. Lloyd George and his salary were forgotten.  By some subtle art of
the chairman the debate had been guided to the very point where he had
from the first intended to guide it--to the burning question of our day
--education as the true foundation of democracy!  Perhaps, after all, this
may be our American contribution to the world's advance.

As we walked homeward through the fog I talked to him of Professor
Dewey's work and its results, while he explained to me the methods of the
Reconstruction Department.  "Out of every audience like that we get a
group and form a class," he said.  "They're always a bit backward at
first, just as they were tonight, but they grow very keen.  We have a
great many classes already started, and we see to it that they are
provided with text-books and teachers.  Oh, no, it's not propaganda,"
he added, in answer to my query; "all we do is to try to give them facts
in such a way as to make them able to draw their own conclusions and join
any political party they choose--just so they join one intelligently."
I must add that before Sunday was over he had organized his class and
arranged for their future instruction.




CHAPTER III

I would speak first of a contrast--and yet I have come to recognize how
impossible it is to convey to the dweller in America the difference in
atmosphere between England and France on the one hand and our country on
the other.  And when I use the word "atmosphere" I mean the mental state
of the peoples as well as the weather and the aspect of the skies.  I
have referred in another article to the anxious, feverish prosperity one
beholds in London and Paris, to that apparent indifference, despite the
presence on the streets of crowds of soldiers to the existence of a war
of which one is ever aware.  Yet, along with this, one is ever conscious
of pressure.  The air is heavy; there is a corresponding lack of the
buoyancy of mind which is the normal American condition.  Perhaps, if
German troops occupied New England and New York, our own mental barometer
might be lower.  It is difficult to say.  At any rate, after an ocean
voyage of nine days one's spirits rise perceptibly as the ship nears
Nantucket; and the icy-bright sunlight of New York harbour, the sight of
the buildings aspiring to blue skies restore the throbbing optimism which
with us is normal; and it was with an effort, when I talked to the
reporters on landing, that I was able to achieve and express the
pessimism and darkness out of which I had come.  Pessimism is perhaps too
strong a word, and takes no account of the continued unimpaired morale
and determination of the greater part of the British and French peoples.
They expect much from us.  Yet the impression was instantaneous, when I
set forth in the streets of New York, that we had not fully measured the
magnitude of our task--an impression that has been amply confirmed as the
weeks have passed.

The sense of relief I felt was not only the result of bright skies and a
high barometer, of the palpable self-confidence of the pedestrians, of
the white bread on the table and the knowledge that there was more, but
also of the ease of accomplishing things.  I called for a telephone
number and got it cheerfully and instantly.  I sent several telegrams,
and did not have to wait twenty minutes before a wicket while a
painstaking official multiplied and added and subtracted and paused to
talk with a friend; the speed of the express in which I flew down-town
seemed emblematic of America itself.  I had been transported, in fact,
into another world--my world; and in order to realize again that from
which I had come I turned to a diary recording a London filled with the
sulphur fumes of fog, through which the lamps of the taxis and buses
shone as yellow blots reflected on glistening streets; or, for some
reason a still greater contrast, a blue, blue November Sunday afternoon
in parts, the Esplanade of the Invalides black with people--sad people
--and the Invalides itself all etched in blue as seen through the wide
vista from the Seine.

A few days later, with some children, I went to the Hippodrome.  And it
remained for the Hippodrome, of all places, to give me the thrill I had
not achieved abroad, the thrill I had not experienced since the first
months of the war.  Mr. George Cohan accomplished it.  The transport with
steam up, is ready to leave the wharf, the khaki-clad regiment of erect
and vigorous young Americans marches across the great stage, and the
audience strains forward and begins to sing, under its breath, the words
that proclaim, as nothing else perhaps proclaims, how America feels.

              "Send the word, send the word over there .  .  .
               We'll be o-ver, we're coming o-ver,
               And we won't come back till it's o-ver, over there!"

Is it the prelude of a tragedy?  We have always been so successful, we
Americans.  Are we to fail now?  I am an American, and I do not believe
we are to fail.  But I am soberer, somehow a different American than he
who sailed away in August.  Shall we learn other things than those that
have hitherto been contained in our philosophy?

Of one thing I am convinced.  It is the first war of the world that is
not a miltary war, although miltary genius is demanded, although it is
the bloodiest war in history.  But other qualities are required; men and
women who are not professional soldiers are fighting in it and will aid
in victory.  The pomp and circumstance of other wars are lacking in this,
the greatest of all.  We had the thrills, even in America, three years
ago, when Britain and France and Canada went in.  We tingled when we read
of the mobilizing of the huge armies, of the leave-takings of the
soldiers.  We bought every extra for news of those first battles on
Belgian soil.  And I remember my sensations when in the province of
Quebec in the autumn of 1914, looking out of the car-window at the troops
gathering on the platforms who were to go across the seas to fight for
the empire and liberty.  They were singing "Tipperary!" "Tipperary!" One
seldoms hears it now, and the way has proved long--longer than we
reckoned.  And we are singing "Over There!"

In those first months of the war there was, we were told, in England and
France a revival of "religion," and indeed many of the books then written
gave evidence of having been composed in exalted, mystic moods.  I
remember one in particular, called "En Campagne," by a young French
officer.  And then, somehow, the note of mystic exaltation died away,
to be succeeded by a period of realism.  Read "Le Feu," which is most
typical, which has sold in numberless editions.  Here is a picture of
that other aspect--the grimness, the monotony, and the frequent
bestiality of trench life, the horror of slaughtering millions of men
by highly specialized machinery.  And yet, as an American, I strike
inevitably the note of optimism once more.  Even now the truer spiritual
goal is glimpsed through the battle clouds, and has been hailed in
world-reverberating phrases by our American President.  Day by day the
real issue is clearer, while the "religion" it implies embraces not one
nation, wills not one patriotism, but humanity itself.  I heard a
Frenchwoman who had been deeply "religious" in the old sense exclaim:
"I no longer have any faith in God; he is on the side of the Germans."
When the war began there were many evidences of a survival of that faith
that God fights for nations, interferes in behalf of the "righteous"
cause.  When General Joffre was in America he was asked by one of our
countrywomen how the battle of the Marne was won.  "Madame," he is
reported to have said, "it was won by me, by my generals and soldiers."
The tendency to regard this victory, which we hope saved France and the
Western humanitarian civilization we cherish, as a special interposition
of Providence, as a miracle, has given place to the realization that the
battle was won by the resourcefulness, science, and coolness of the
French commander-in-chief.  Science preserves armies, since killing, if
it has to be done, is now wholly within that realm; science heals the
wounded, transports them rapidly to the hospitals, gives the shattered
something still to live for; and, if we are able to abandon the
sentimental view and look facts in the face--as many anointed chaplains
in Europe are doing--science not only eliminates typhoid but is able to
prevent those terrible diseases that devastate armies and nations.  And
science is no longer confined to the physical but has invaded the social
kingdom, is able to weave a juster fabric into the government of peoples.
On all sides we are beginning to embrace the religion of self-reliance,
a faith that God is on the side of intelligence--intelligence with a
broader meaning than the Germans have given it, for it includes charity.



II

It seems to me that I remember, somewhere in the realistic novel I have
mentioned "Le Feu"--reading of singing soldiers, and an assumption
on the part of their hearers that such songs are prompted only by a
devil-may-care lightness of heart which the soldier achieves.  A shallow
psychology (as the author points out), especially in these days of trench
warfare! The soldier sings to hide his real feelings, perhaps to give
vent to them.  I am reminded of all this in connection with my trip to
the British front.  I left London after lunch on one of those dreary,
grey days to which I have referred; the rain had begun to splash angrily
against the panes of the car windows before we reached the coast.  At
five o'clock the boat pushed off into a black channel, whipped by a gale
that drove the rain across the decks and into every passage and gangway.
The steamer was literally loaded with human beings, officers and men
returning from a brief glimpse of home.  There was nothing of the glory
of war in the embarkation, and, to add to the sad and sinister effect of
it, each man as he came aboard mounted the ladder and chose, from a pile
on the hatch combing, a sodden life-preserver, which he flung around his
shoulders as he went in search of a shelter.  The saloon below, where we
had our tea, was lighted indeed, but sealed so tight as to be
insupportable; and the cabin above, stifling too, was dark as a pocket.
One stumbled over unseen passengers on the lounges, or sitting on kits on
the floor.  Even the steps up which I groped my way to the deck above
were filled, while on the deck there was standing-room only and not much
of that.  Mal de mer added to the discomforts of many.  At length I found
an uncertain refuge in a gangway amidships, hedged in between unseen
companions; but even here the rain stung our faces and the spray of an
occasional comber drenched our feet, while through the gloom of the night
only a few yards of white water were to be discerned.  For three hours I
stood there, trying to imagine what was in the minds of these men with
whose bodies I was in such intimate contact.  They were going to a
foreign land to fight, many of them to die, not in one of those
adventurous campaigns of times gone by, but in the wet trenches or the
hideous No Man's Land between.  What were the images they summoned up in
the darkness?  Visions of long-familiar homes and long-familiar friends?
And just how were they facing the future?  Even as I wondered, voices
rose in a song, English voices, soldier voices.  It was not "Tipperary,"
the song that thrilled us a few years ago.  I strove to catch the words:

              "I want to go home!
               I don't want to go back to the trenches no more,
               Where there are bullets and shrapnel galore,
               I want to go home!"

It was sung boisterously, in a defiant tone of mockery of the desire it
expressed, and thus tremendously gained in pathos.  They did want to go
home--naturally.  It was sung with the same spirit our men sing "We won't
come back till it's over, over there!"  The difference is that these
Britishers have been over there, have seen the horrors face to face, have
tasted the sweets of home, and in spite of heartsickness and seasickness
are resolved to see it through.  Such is the morale of the British army.
I have not the slightest doubt that it will be the morale of our own army
also, but at present the British are holding the fort.  Tommy would never
give up the war, but he has had a realistic taste of it, and his songs
reflect his experience.  Other songs reached my ears each night, above
the hissing and pounding of the Channel seas, but the unseen group
returned always to this.  One thought of Agincourt and Crecy, of
Waterloo, of the countless journeys across this same stormy strip of
water the ancestors of these man had made in the past, and one wondered
whether war were eternal and inevitable, after all.

And what does Tommy think about it--this war?  My own limited experience
thoroughly indorses Mr. Galsworthy's splendid analysis of British-soldier
psychology that appeared in the December North American.  The average
man, with native doggedness, is fighting for the defence of England.
The British Government itself, in its reconstruction department for the
political education of the wounded, has given partial denial to the old
maxim that it is the soldier's business not to think but to obey; and the
British army is leavened with men who read and reflect in the long nights
of watching in the rain, who are gaining ideas about conditions in the
past and resolutions concerning those of the future.  The very army
itself has had a miracle happen to it: it has been democratized--and with
the cheerful consent of the class to which formerly the possession of
commissions was largely confined.  Gradually, to these soldier-thinkers,
as well as to the mass of others at home, is unfolding the vision of a
new social order which is indeed worth fighting for and dying for.



III

At last, our knees cramped and our feet soaked, we saw the lights of the
French port dancing across the veil of rain, like thistledowns of fire,
and presently we were at rest at a stone quay.  As I stood waiting on the
deck to have my passport vised, I tried to reconstruct the features of
this little seaport as I had seen it, many years before, on a bright
summer's day when I had motored from Paris on my way to London.  The gay
line of hotels facing the water was hidden in the darkness.  Suddenly I
heard my name called, and I was rescued from the group of civilians by a
British officer who introduced himself as my host.  It was after nine
o'clock, and he had been on the lookout for me since half past seven.
The effect of his welcome at that time and place was electrical, and I
was further immensely cheered by the news he gave me, as we hurried along
the street, that two friends of mine were here and quite hungry, having
delayed dinner for my arrival.  One of them was a young member of
Congress who had been making exhaustive studies of the situation in
Italy, France and England, and the other one of our best-known writers,
both bound for London.  We sat around the table until nearly eleven,
exchanging impressions and experiences.  Then my officer declared that
it was time to go home.

"Home" proved to be the big chateau which the British Government has
leased for the kindly purpose of entertaining such American guests as
they choose to invite.  It is known as the "American Chateau," and in the
early morning hours we reached it after a long drive through the gale.
We crossed a bridge over a moat and traversed a huge stone hall to
the Gothic drawing-room.  Here a fire was crackling on the hearth,
refreshments were laid out, and the major in command rose from his book
to greet me.  Hospitality, with these people, has attained to art, and,
though I had come here at the invitation of his government, I had the
feeling of being his personal guest in his own house.  Presently he led
the way up the stone stairs and showed me the room I was to occupy.

I awoke to the sound of the wind whistling through the open lattice, and
looking down on the ruffled blue waters of the moat I saw a great white
swan at his morning toilet, his feathers dazzling in the sun.  It was one
of those rare crisp and sparkling days that remind one of our American
autumn.  A green stretch of lawn made a vista through the woods.
Following the example of the swan, I plunged into the tin tub the orderly
had placed beside my bed and went down to porridge in a glow.  Porridge,
for the major was Scotch, and had taught his French cook to make it as
the Scotch make it.  Then, going out into the hall, from a table on which
lay a contour map of the battle region, the major picked up a hideous
mask that seemed to have been made for some barbaric revelries.

"We may not strike any gas," he said, "but it's as well to be on the safe
side," whereupon he made me practise inserting the tube in my mouth,
pinching the nostrils instantly with the wire-covered nippers.  He also
presented me with a steel helmet.  Thus equipped for any untoward
occurrence, putting on sweaters and heavy overcoats, and wrapping
ourselves in the fur rugs of the waiting automobile, we started off,
with the gale on our quarter, for the front.

Picardy, on whose soil has been shed so much English blood, never was
more beautiful than on that October day.  The trees were still in full
leaf, the fields green, though the crops had been gathered, and the
crystal air gave vivid value to every colour in the landscape.  From time
to time we wound through the cobble-stoned streets of historic villages,
each having its stone church end the bodki-shaped steeple of blue slate
so characteristic of that country.  And, as though we were still in the
pastoral times of peace, in the square of one of these villages a
horse-fair was in progress, blue-smocked peasants were trotting chunky
ponies over the stones.  It was like a picture from one of De
Maupassant's tales.  In other villages the shawled women sat knitting
behind piles of beets and cabbages and apples, their farm-carts atilt in
the sun.  Again and again I tried to grasp the fact that the greatest of
world wars was being fought only a few miles away--and failed.

We had met, indeed, an occasional officer or orderly, huddled in a
greatcoat and head against the wind, exercising those wonderful animals
that are the pride of the British cavalry and which General Sir Douglas
Haig, himself a cavalryman, some day hopes to bring into service.  We had
overtaken an artillery train rumbling along toward the east, the men
laughing and joking as they rode, as though they were going to
manoeuvres.  Farther on, as the soldiers along the highroads and in the
towns grew more and more numerous, they seemed so harmoniously part of
the peaceful scene that war was as difficult to visualize as ever.  Many
sat about smoking their pipes and playing with the village children,
others were in squads going to drill or exercise--something the Briton
never neglects.  The amazing thing to a visitor who has seen the trenches
awash on a typical wet day, who knows that even billeting in cold farms
and barns behind the lines can scarcely be compared to the comforts of
home, is how these men keep well under the conditions.  To say that they
are well is to understate the fact: the ruddy faces and clear eyes and
hard muscles--even of those who once were pale London clerks--proclaim a
triumph for the system of hygiene of their army.

Suddenly we came upon a house with a great round hole in its wall, and
then upon several in ruins beside the village street.  Meanwhile, at work
under the windswept trees of the highway, were strange, dark men from the
uttermost parts of the earth, physiognomies as old as the tombs of
Pharaoh.  It was, indeed, not so much the graven red profiles of priests
and soldiers that came tome at sight of these Egyptians, but the singing
fellaheen of the water-buckets of the Nile.  And here, too, shovelling
the crushed rock, were East Indians oddly clad in European garb, careless
of the cold.  That sense of the vastness of the British Empire, which at
times is so profound, was mingled now with a knowledge that it was
fighting for its life, marshalling all its resources for Armageddon.

Saint Eloi is named after the good bishop who ventured to advise King
Dagobert about his costume.  And the church stands--what is left of it
--all alone on the greenest of terraces jutting out toward the east; and
the tower, ruggedly picturesque against the sky, resembles that of some
crumbled abbey.  As a matter of fact, it has been a target for German
gunners.  Dodging an army-truck and rounding one of those military
traffic policemen one meets at every important corner we climbed the hill
and left the motor among the great trees, which are still fortunately
preserved.  And we stood for a few minutes, gazing over miles and miles
of devastation.  Then, taking the motor once more, we passed through
wrecked and empty villages until we came to the foot of Vimy Ridge.
Notre Dame de Lorette rose against the sky-line to the north.

Vimy and Notre Dame de Lorette--sweet but terrible names!  Only a summer
had passed since Vimy was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of
the war.  From a distance the prevailing colour of the steep slope is
ochre; it gives the effect of having been scraped bare in preparation for
some gigantic enterprise.  A nearer view reveals a flush of green; nature
is already striving to heal.  From top to bottom it is pockmarked by
shells and scarred by trenches--trenches every few feet, and between them
tangled masses of barbed wire still clinging to the "knife rests" and
corkscrew stanchions to which it had been strung.  The huge shell-holes,
revealing the chalk subsoil, were half-filled with water.  And even
though the field had been cleaned by those East Indians I had seen on the
road, and the thousands who had died here buried, bits of uniform, shoes,
and accoutrements and shattered rifles were sticking in the clay--and
once we came across a portion of a bedstead, doubtless taken by some
officer from a ruined and now vanished village to his dugout.  Painfully,
pausing frequently to ponder over these remnants, so eloquent of the fury
of the struggle, slipping backward at every step and despite our care
getting tangled in the wire, we made our way up the slope.  Buttercups
and daisies were blooming around the edges of the craters.

As we drew near the crest the major warned me not to expose myself.
"It isn't because there is much chance of our being shot," he explained,"
but a matter of drawing the German fire upon others."  And yet I found it
hard to believe--despite the evidence at my feet--that war existed here.
The brightness of the day, the emptiness of the place, the silence--save
for the humming of the gale--denied it.  And then, when we had cautiously
rounded a hummock at the top, my steel helmet was blown off--not by a
shrapnel, but by the wind!  I had neglected to tighten the chin-strap.

Immediately below us I could make out scars like earthquake cracks
running across the meadows--the front trenches.  Both armies were buried
like moles in these furrows.  The country was spread out before us, like
a map, with occasionally the black contour of a coal mound rising against
the green, or a deserted shaft-head.  I was gazing at the famous
battlefield of Lens.  Villages, woods, whose names came back to me as the
major repeated them, lay like cloud shadows on the sunny plain, and the
faintest shadow of all, far to the eastward, was Lens itself.  I marked
it by a single white tower.  And suddenly another white tower, loftier
than the first, had risen up!  But even as I stared its substance seemed
to change, to dissolve, and the tower was no longer to be seen.  Not
until then did I realize that a monster shell had burst beside the
trenches in front of the city.  Occasionally after that there came to my
ears the muffed report of some hidden gun, and a ball like a powder-puff
lay lightly on the plain, and vanished.  But even the presence of these,
oddly enough, did not rob the landscape of its air of Sunday peace.

We ate our sandwiches and drank our bottle of white wine in a sheltered
cut of the road that runs up that other ridge which the French gained at
such an appalling price, Notre Dame de Lorette, while the major described
to me some features of the Lens battle, in which he had taken part.
I discovered incidentally that he had been severely wounded at the Somme.
Though he had been a soldier all his life, and a good soldier, his true
passion was painting, and he drew my attention to the rare greens and
silver-greys of the stones above us, steeped in sunlight--all that
remained of the little church of Notre Dame--more beautiful, more
significant, perhaps, as a ruin.  It reminded the major of the Turners he
had admired in his youth.  After lunch we lingered in the cemetery, where
the graves and vaults had been harrowed by shells; the trenches ran right
through them.  And here, in this desecrated resting-place of the village
dead, where the shattered gravestones were mingled with barbed wire,
death-dealing fragments of iron, and rusting stick-bombs that had failed
to explode, was a wooden cross, on which was rudely written the name of
Hans Siebert.  Mouldering at the foot of the cross was a grey woollen
German tunic from which the buttons had been cut.

We kept the road to the top, for Notre Dame de Lorette is as steep as
Vimy.  There we looked upon the panorama of the Lens battle-field once
more, and started down the eastern slope, an apparently smooth expanse
covered now with prairie grasses, in reality a labyrinth of deep ditches,
dugouts, and pits; gruesome remnants of the battle lay half-concealed
under the grass.  We walked slowly, making desperate leaps over the
trenches, sometimes perforce going through them, treading gingerly on the
"duck board" at the bottom.  We stumbled over stick-bombs and unexploded
shells.  No plough can be put here--the only solution for the land for
years to come is forest.  Just before we gained the road at the bottom,
where the car was awaiting us, we were startled by the sudden flight of a
covey of partridges.

The skies were grey when we reached the banal outskirts of a town where
the bourgeoise houses were modern, commonplace, save those which had been
ennobled by ruin.  It was Arras, one of those few magic names, eloquent
with suggestions of mediaeval romance and art, intrigue and chivalry;
while upon their significance, since the war began, has been superimposed
still another, no less eloquent but charged with pathos.  We halted for a
moment in the open space before the railroad station, a comparatively new
structure of steel and glass, designed on geometrical curves, with an
uninspiring, cheaply ornamented front.  It had been, undoubtedly, the
pride of the little city.  Yet finding it here had at first something of
the effect of the discovery of an office-building--let us say--on the
site of the Reims Cathedral.  Presently, however, its emptiness, its
silence began to have their effects--these and the rents one began to
perceive in the roof.  For it was still the object of the intermittent
yet persistent fire of the German artillery.  One began to realize that
by these wounds it had achieved a dignity that transcended the mediocre
imagination of its provincial designer.  A fine rain had set in before
we found the square, and here indeed one felt a certain desolate
satisfaction; despite the wreckage there the spirit of the ancient town
still poignantly haunted it.  Although the Hotel de Ville, which had
expressed adequately the longings and aspirations, the civic pride of
those bygone burghers, was razed to the ground, on three sides were still
standing the varied yet harmonious facades of Flemish houses made
familiar by photographs.  Of some of these the plaster between the carved
beams had been shot away, the roofs blown off, and the tiny hewn rafters
were bared to the sky.  The place was empty in the gathering gloom of the
twilight.  The gaiety and warmth of the hut erected in the Public Gardens
which houses the British Officers' Club were a relief.

The experiences of the next day will remain for ever in my memory etched,
as it were, in sepia.  My guide was a younger officer who had seen heroic
service, and I wondered constantly how his delicate frame had survived in
the trenches the constant hardship of such weather as now, warmly wrapped
and with the car-curtains drawn, we faced.  The inevitable, relentless
rain of that region had set in again, the rain in which our own soldiers
will have to fight, and the skies were of a darkness seldom known in
America.  The countryside was no longer smiling.  After some two hours of
progress we came, in that devastated district near the front, to an
expanse where many monsters were clumsily cavorting like dinosaurs in
primeval slime.  At some distance from the road others stood apparently
tethered in line, awaiting their turn for exercise.  These were the
far-famed tanks.  Their commander, or chief mahout--as I was inclined to
call him--was a cheerful young giant of colonial origin, who has often
driven them serenely across No Man's Land and into the German trenches.
He had been expecting us, and led me along a duck board over the morass,
to where one of these leviathans was awaiting us.  You crawl through a
greasy hole in the bottom, and the inside is as full of machinery as the
turret of the Pennsylvania, and you grope your way to the seat in front
beside that of the captain and conductor, looking out through a slot in
the armour over a waste of water and mud.  From here you are supposed to
operate a machine gun.  Behind you two mechanics have started the engines
with a deafening roar, above which are heard the hoarse commands of the
captain as he grinds in his gears.  Then you realize that the thing is
actually moving, that the bosses on the belt have managed to find a grip
on the slime--and presently you come to the brink of what appears, to
your exaggerated sense of perception, a bottomless chasm, with distant
steep banks on the farther side that look unattainable and
insurmountable.  It is an old German trench which the rains have worn and
widened.  You brace yourself, you grip desperately a pair of brass
handles in front of you, while leviathan hesitates, seems to sit up on
his haunches, and then gently buries his nose in the pasty clay and paws
his way upward into the field beyond.  It was like sitting in a huge
rocking-chair.  That we might have had a bump, and a bone-breaking one, I
was informed after I had left the scene of the adventure.  It all depends
upon the skill of the driver.  The monsters are not as tractable as they
seem.

That field in which the tanks manoeuvre is characteristic of the whole of
this district of levelled villages and vanished woods.  Imagine a
continuous clay vacant lot in one of our Middle Western cities on the
rainiest day you can recall; and further imagine, on this limitless lot,
a network of narrow-gauge tracks and wagon roads, a scattering of
contractors' shanties, and you will have some idea of the daily life and
surroundings of one of oar American engineer regiments, which is running
a railroad behind the British front.  Yet one has only to see these men
and talk with them to be convinced of the truth that human happiness and
even human health thanks to modern science--are not dependent upon an
existence in a Garden of Eden.  I do not mean exactly that these men
would choose to spend the rest of their existences in this waste, but
they are happy in the consciousness of a job well done.  It was really
inspiring to encounter here the familiar conductors and brakemen,
engineers and firemen, who had voluntarily, and for an ideal, left their
homes in a remote and peaceful republic three thousand miles away, to
find contentment and a new vitality, a wider vision, in the difficult and
dangerous task they were performing.  They were frequently under fire
--when they brought back the wounded or fetched car-loads of munitions to
the great guns on the ridiculous little trains of flat cars with
open-work wheels, which they named--with American humour--the Federal
Express and the Twentieth Century Limited.  And their officers were
equally happy.  Their colonel, of our regular Army Engineer Corps, was
one of those broad-shouldered six-footers who, when they walk the streets
of Paris, compel pedestrians to turn admiringly and give one a new pride
in the manhood of our nation.  Hospitably he drew us out of the wind and
rain into his little hut, and sat us down beside the stove, cheerfully
informing us that, only the night before, the gale had blown his door in,
and his roof had started for the German lines.  In a neighbouring hut,
reached by a duck board, we had lunch with him and his officers baked
beans and pickles, cakes and maple syrup.  The American food, the
American jokes and voices in that environment seemed strange indeed! But
as we smoked and chatted about the friends we had in common, about
political events at home and the changes that were taking place there, it
seemed as if we were in America once more.  The English officer listened
and smiled in sympathy, and he remarked, after our reluctant departure,
that America was an extraordinary land.

He directed our chauffeur to Bapaume, across that wilderness which the
Germans had so wantonly made in their retreat to the Hindenburg line.
Nothing could have been more dismal than our slow progress in the steady
rain, through the deserted streets of this town.  Home after home had
been blasted--their intimate yet harrowing interiors were revealed.  The
shops and cafes, which had been thoroughly looted, had their walls blown
out, but in many cases the signs of the vanished and homeless proprietors
still hung above the doors.  I wondered how we should feel in New England
if such an outrage had been done to Boston, for instance, or little
Concord!  The church, the great cathedral on its terrace, the bishop's
house, all dynamited, all cold and wet and filthy ruins!  It was dismal,
indeed, but scarcely more dismal than that which followed; for at Bapaume
we were on the edge of the battle-field of the Somme.  And I chanced to
remember that the name had first been indelibly impressed on my
consciousness at a comfortable breakfast-table at home, where I sat
looking out on a bright New England garden.  In the headlines and columns
of my morning newspaper I had read again and again, during the summer of
1916, of Thiepval and La Boisselle, of Fricourt and Mametz and the Bois
des Trones.  Then they had had a sinister but remote significance; now I
was to see them, or what was left of them!

As an appropriate and characteristic setting for the tragedy which had
happened here, the indigo afternoon could not have been better chosen.
Description fails to do justice to the abomination of desolation of that
vast battle-field in the rain, and the imagination, refuses to
reconstruct the scene of peace--the chateaux and happy villages, the
forests and pastures, that flourished here so brief a time ago.  In my
fancy the long, low swells of land, like those of some dreary sea, were
for the moment the subsiding waves of the cataclysm that had rolled here
and extinguished all life.  Beside the road only the blood-red soil
betrayed the sites of powdered villages; and through it, in every
direction, trenches had been cut.  Between the trenches the earth was
torn and tortured, as though some sudden fossilizing process, in its
moment of supreme agony, had fixed it thus.  On the hummocks were graves,
graves marked by wooden crosses, others by broken rifles thrust in the
ground.  Shattered gun-carriages lay in the ditches, modern cannon that
had cost priceless hours of skilled labour; and once we were confronted
by one of those monsters, wounded to the death, I had seen that morning.
The sight of this huge, helpless thing oddly recalled the emotions I had
felt, as a child, when contemplating dead elephants in a battle picture
of the army of a Persian king.

Presently, like the peak of some submerged land, we saw lifted out of
that rolling waste the "Butt" of Warlencourt--the burial-mound of this
modern Marathon.  It is honeycombed with dugouts in which the Germans who
clung to it found their graves, while the victorious British army swept
around it toward Bapaume.  Everywhere along that road, which runs like an
arrow across the battle-field to Albert, were graves.  Repetition seems
the only method of giving an adequate impression of their numbers; and
near what was once the village of Pozieres was the biggest grave of all,
a crater fifty feet deep and a hundred feet across.  Seven months the
British sappers had toiled far below in the chalk, digging the passage
and chamber; and one summer dawn, like some tropical volcano, it had
burst directly under the German trench.  Long we stood on the slippery
edge of it, gazing down at the tangled wire and litter of battle that
strewed the bottom, while the rain fell pitilessly.  Just such rain, said
my officer-guide, as had drenched this country through the long winter
months of preparation.  "We never got dry," he told me; and added with a
smile, in answer to my query: "Perhaps that was the reason we never
caught colds."

When we entered Albert, the starting point of the British advance, there
was just light enough to see the statue of the Virgin leaning far above
us over the street.  The church-tower on which it had once stood erect
had been struck by a German shell, but its steel rod had bent and not
broken.  Local superstition declares that when the Virgin of Albert falls
the war will be ended.



IV

I come home impressed with the fact that Britain has learned more from
this war than any other nation, and will probably gain more by that
knowledge.  We are all wanting, of course, to know what we shall get out
of it, since it was forced upon us; and of course the only gain worth
considering--as many of those to whom its coming has brought home the
first glimmerings of social science are beginning to see--is precisely a
newly acquired vision of the art of self-government.  It has been
unfortunately necessary--or perhaps fortunately necessary--for the great
democracies to turn their energies and resources and the inventive
ingenuity of their citizens to the organization of armies and indeed of
entire populations to the purpose of killing enough Germans to remove
democracy's exterior menace.  The price we pay in human life is
appallingly unfortunate.  But the necessity for national organization
socializes the nation capable of it; or, to put the matter more truly,
if the socializing process had anticipated the war--as it had in Great
Britain--the ability to complete it under stress is the test of a
democratic nation; and hence the test of democracy, since the socializing
process becomes international.  Britain has stood the test, even from the
old-fashioned militarist point of view, since it is apparent that no
democracy can wage a sustained great war unless it is socialized.  After
the war she will probably lead all other countries in a sane and
scientific liberalization.  The encouraging fact is that not in spite of
her liberalism, but because of it, she has met military Germany on her
own ground and, to use a vigorous expression, gone her one better.  In
1914, as armies go today, the British Army was a mere handful of men
whose officers belonged to a military caste.  Brave men and brave
officers, indeed!  But at present it is a war organization of an
excellence which the Germans never surpassed.  I have no space to enter
into a description of the amazing system, of the network of arteries
converging at the channel ports and spreading out until it feeds and
clothes every man of those millions, furnishes him with newspapers and
tobacco, and gives him the greatest contentment compatible with the
conditions under which he has to live.  The number of shells flung at the
enemy is only limited by the lives of the guns that fire them.  I should
like to tell with what swiftness, under the stress of battle, the wounded
are hurried back to the coast and even to England itself.  I may not
state the thousands carried on leave every day across the channel and
back again--in spite of submarines.  But I went one day through Saint
Omer, with its beautiful church and little blue chateau, past the
rest-camps of the big regiments of guards to a seaport on the downs,
formerly a quiet little French town, transformed now into an ordered
Babel.  The term is paradoxical, but I let it stand.  English, Irish, and
Scotch from the British Isles and the ends of the earth mingle there with
Indians, Egyptians, and the chattering Mongolians in queer fur caps who
work in the bakeries.

I went through one of these bakeries, almost as large as an automobile
factory, fragrant with the aroma of two hundred thousand loaves of bread.
This bakery alone sends every day to the trenches two hundred thousand
loaves made from the wheat of western Canada!  Of all sights to be seen
in this place, however, the reclamation "plant" is the most wonderful.
It covers acres.  Everything which is broken in war, from a pair of
officer's field-glasses to a nine-inch howitzer carriage is mended here
--if it can be mended.  Here, when a battle-field is cleared, every article
that can possibly be used again is brought; and the manager pointed with
pride to the furnaces in his power-house, which formerly burned coal and
now are fed with refuse--broken wheels of gun-carriages, sawdust, and
even old shoes.  Hundreds of French girls and even German prisoners are
resoling and patching shoes with the aid of American machinery, and even
the uppers of such as are otherwise hopeless are cut in spirals into
laces.  Tunics, breeches, and overcoats are mended by tailors; rusty camp
cookers are retinned, and in the foundries the precious scraps of cast
iron are melted into braziers to keep Tommy in the trenches warm.  In the
machine-shops the injured guns and cannon are repaired.  German prisoners
are working there, too.  At a distance, in their homely grey tunics, with
their bullet-shaped heads close-cropped and the hairs standing out like
the needles of a cylinder of a music-box, they had the appearance of hard
citizens who had become rather sullen convicts.  Some wore spectacles.  A
closer view revealed that most of them were contented, and some actually
cheerful.  None, indeed, seemed more cheerful than a recently captured
group I saw later, who were actually building the barbed-wire fence that
was to confine them.

My last visit in this town was to the tiny but on a "corner lot," in
which the Duchess of Sutherland has lived now for some years.  As we had
tea she told me she was going on a fortnight's leave to England; and no
Tommy in the trenches could have been more excited over the prospect.
Her own hospital, which occupies the rest of the lot, is one of those
marvels which individual initiative and a strong social sense such as
hers has produced in this war.  Special enterprise was required to save
such desperate cases as are made a specialty of here, and all that
medical and surgical science can do has been concentrated, with
extraordinary success, on the shattered men who are brought to her wards.
That most of the horrible fractures I saw are healed, and healed quickly
--thanks largely to the drainage system of our own Doctor Carrel--is not
the least of the wonders of the remarkable times in which we live.

The next day, Sunday, I left for Paris, bidding farewell regretfully to
the last of my British-officer hosts.  He seemed like an old, old friend
--though I had known him but a few days.  I can see him now as he waved
me a good-bye from the platform in his Glengarry cap and short tunic and
plaid trousers.  He is the owner of a castle and some seventy square
miles of land in Scotland alone.  For the comfort of his nation's guests,
he toils like a hired courier.


PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     American religion as set forth by William James
     Be useful!
     Privilege of making blunders
     Rising every time you fall (Confucius on greatness)
     Sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and cant
     The English do not advertise their sorrows






AN ESSAY ON THE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTION AND THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA

By Winston Churchill


Failure to recognize that the American, is at heart an idealist is to
lack understanding of our national character.  Two of our greatest
interpreters proclaimed it, Emerson and William James.  In a recent
address at the Paris Sorbonne on "American Idealism," M. Firmin Roz
observed that a people is rarely justly estimated by its contemporaries.
The French, he says, have been celebrated chiefly for the skill of their
chefs and their vaudeville actors, while in the disturbed 'speculum
mundi' Americans have appeared as a collection of money grabbers whose
philosophy is the dollar.  It remained for the war to reveal the true
nature of both peoples.  The American colonists, M. Roz continues, unlike
other colonists, were animated not by material motives, but by the desire
to safeguard and realize an ideal; our inherent characteristic today is a
belief in the virtue and power of ideas, of a national, indeed, of a
universal, mission.  In the Eighteenth Century we proposed a Philosophy
and adopted a Constitution far in advance of the political practice of
the day, and set up a government of which Europe predicted the early
downfall.  Nevertheless, thanks partly to good fortune, and to the
farseeing wisdom of our early statesmen who perceived that the success
of our experiment depended upon the maintenance of an isolation from
European affairs, we established democracy as a practical form of
government.

We have not always lived up to our beliefs in ideas.  In our dealings
with other nations, we yielded often to imperialistic ambitions and thus,
to a certain extent, justified the cynicism of Europe.  We took what we
wanted--and more.  From Spain we seized western Florida; the annexation
of Texas and the subsequent war with Mexico are acts upon which we cannot
look back with unmixed democratic pride; while more than once we
professed a naive willingness to fight England in order to push our
boundaries further north.  We regarded the Monroe Doctrine as altruistic,
while others smiled.  But it suited England, and her sea power gave it
force.

Our war with Spain in 1898, however, was fought for an idea, and,
despite the imperialistic impulse that followed it, marks a transition,
an advance, in international ethics.  Imperialistic cynics were not
lacking to scoff at our protestation that we were fighting Spain in order
to liberate Cuba; and yet this, for the American people at large, was
undoubtedly the inspiration of the war.  We kept our promise, we did not
annex Cuba, we introduced into international affairs what is known as the
Big Brother idea.  Then came the Platt Amendment.  Cuba was free, but she
must not wallow near our shores in an unhygienic state, or borrow money
without our consent.  We acquired valuable naval bases.  Moreover, the
sudden and unexpected acquisition of Porto Rico and the Philippines made
us imperialists in spite of ourselves.

Nations as well as individuals, however, must be judged by their
intentions.  The sound public opinion of our people has undoubtedly
remained in favour of ultimate self-government for the Philippines, and
the greatest measure of self-determination for little Porto Rico; it has
been unquestionably opposed to commercial exploitation of the islands,
desirous of yielding to these peoples the fruits of their labour in
developing the resources of their own lands.  An intention, by the way,
diametrically different from that of Germany.  In regard to our
protectorate in the island of San Domingo, our "semi-protectorate" in
Nicaragua, the same argument of intention may fairly be urged.  Germany,
who desired them, would have exploited them.  To a certain extent, no
doubt, as a result of the momentum of commercial imperialism, we are
still exploiting them.  But the attitude of the majority of Americans
toward more backward peoples is not cynical; hence there is hope that a
democratic solution of the Caribbean and Central American problem may be
found.  And we are not ready, as yet, to accept without further
experiment the dogma that tropical and sub-tropical people will not
ultimately be able to govern themselves.  If this eventually, prove to be
the case at least some such experiment as the new British Labour Party
has proposed for the Empire may be tried.  Our general theory that the
exploitation of foreign peoples reacts unfavourably on the exploiters is
undoubtedly sound.

Nor are the ethics of the manner of our acquisition of a part of Panama
and the Canal wholly defensible from the point of view of international
democracy.  Yet it must be remembered that President Roosevelt was
dealing with a corrupt, irresponsible, and hostile government, and that
the Canal had become a necessity not only for our own development, but
for that of the civilization of the world.

The Spanish War, as has been said, marked a transition, a development of
the American Idea.  In obedience to a growing perception that dominion
and exploitation are incompatible with and detrimental to our system of
government, we fought in good faith to gain self-determination for an
alien people.  The only real peril confronting democracy is the arrest
of growth.  Its true conquests are in the realms of ideas, and hence it
calls for a statesmanship which, while not breaking with the past, while
taking into account the inherent nature of a people, is able to deal
creatively with new situations--always under the guidance of current
social science.

Woodrow Wilson's Mexican policy, being a projection of the American Idea
to foreign affairs, a step toward international democracy, marks the
beginning of a new era.  Though not wholly understood, though opposed by
a powerful minority of our citizens, it stirred the consciousness of a
national mission to which our people are invariably ready to respond.
Since it was essentially experimental, and therefore not lacking in
mistakes, there was ample opportunity for a criticism that seemed at
times extremely plausible.  The old and tried method of dealing with such
anarchy as existed across our southern border was made to seem the safe
one; while the new, because it was untried, was presented as disastrous.
In reality, the reverse was the case.

Mr. Wilson's opponents were, generally speaking, the commercial classes
in the community, whose environment and training led them to demand a
foreign policy similar to that of other great powers, a financial
imperialism which is the logical counterpart in foreign affairs of the
commercial exploitation of domestic national resources and domestic
labour.  These were the classes which combated the growth of democracy at
home, in national and state politics.  From their point of view--not that
of the larger vision--they were consistent.  On the other hand, the
nation grasped the fact that to have one brand of democracy at home and
another for dealing with foreign nations was not only illogical but, in
the long run, would be suicidal to the Republic.  And the people at large
were committed to democratic progress at home.  They were struggling for
it.

One of the most important issues of the American liberal movement early
in this century had been that for the conservation of what remains of our
natural resources of coal and metals and oil and timber and waterpower
for the benefit of all the people, on the theory that these are the
property of the people.  But if the natural resources of this country
belong to the people of the United States, those of Mexico belong to the
people of Mexico.  It makes no difference how "lazy," ignorant, and
indifferent to their own interests the Mexicans at present may be.  And
even more important in these liberal campaigns was the issue of the
conservation of human resources--men and women and children who are
forced by necessity to labour.  These must be protected in health, given
economic freedom and a just reward for their toil.  The American
democracy, committed to the principle of the conservation of domestic
natural and human resources, could not without detriment to itself
persist in a foreign policy that ignored them.  For many years our own
government had permitted the squandering of these resources by
adventurous capitalists; and gradually, as we became a rich industrial
nation, these capitalists sought profitable investments for their
increasing surplus in foreign lands.  Their manner of acquiring
"concessions" in Mexico was quite similar to that by which they had
seized because of the indifference and ignorance of our own people--our
own mines and timber lands which our government held in trust.  Sometimes
these American "concessions" have been valid in law though the law itself
violated a democratic principle; more often corrupt officials winked at
violations of the law, enabling capitalists to absorb bogus claims.

The various rulers of Mexico sold to American and other foreign
capitalists the resources belonging to the people of their country, and
pocketed, with their followers, the proceeds of the sale.  Their control
of the country rested upon force; the stability of the Diaz rule, for
instance, depended upon the "President's" ability to maintain his
dictatorship--a precarious guarantee to the titles he had given.  Hence
the premium on revolutions.  There was always the incentive to the
upstart political and military buccaneer to overthrow the dictator and
gain possession of the spoils, to sell new doubtful concessions and levy
new tribute on the capitalists holding claims from a former tyrant.

The foreign capitalists appealed to their governments; commercial
imperialism responded by dispatching military forces to protect the lives
and "property" of its citizens, in some instances going so far as to take
possession of the country.  A classic case, as cited by Hobson, is
Britain's South African War, in which the blood and treasure of the
people of the United Kingdom were expended because British capitalists
had found the Boers recalcitrant, bent on retaining their own country for
themselves.  To be sure, South Africa, like Mexico is rich in resources
for which advancing civilization continually makes demands.  And, in the
case of Mexico, the products of the tropics, such as rubber, are
increasingly necessary to the industrial powers of the temperate zone.
On the other hand, if the exploiting nation aspire to self-government,
the imperialistic method of obtaining these products by the selfish
exploitation of the natural and human resources of the backward countries
reacts so powerfully on the growth of democracy at home--and hence on the
growth of democracy throughout the world--as to threaten the very future
of civilization.  The British Liberals, when they came into power,
perceived this, and at once did their best to make amends to South Africa
by granting her autonomy and virtual independence, linking her to Britain
by the silken thread of Anglo-Saxon democratic culture.  How strong this
thread has proved is shown by the action of those of Dutch blood in the
Dominion during the present war.

Eventually, if democracy is not to perish from the face of the earth,
some other than the crude imperialistic method of dealing with backward
peoples, of obtaining for civilization the needed resources of their
lands, must be inaugurated--a democratic method.  And this is perhaps the
supreme problem of democracy today.  It demands for its solution a
complete reversal of the established policy of imperialism, a new theory
of international relationships, a mutual helpfulness and partnership
between nations, even as democracy implies cooperation between individual
citizens.  Therefore President Wilson laid down the doctrine that
American citizens enter Mexico at their own risk; that they must not
expert that American blood will be shed or the nation's money be expended
to protect their lives or the "property" they have acquired from Mexican
dictators.  This applies also to the small capitalists, the owners of the
coffee plantations, as well as to those Americans in Mexico who are not
capitalists but wage earners.  The people of Mexico are entitled to try
the experiment of self-determination.  It is an experiment, we frankly
acknowledge that fact, a democratic experiment dependent on physical
science, social science, and scientific education.  The other horn of the
dilemma, our persistence in imperialism, is even worse--since by such
persistence we destroy ourselves.

A subjective judgment, in accordance with our own democratic standards,
by the American Government as to the methods employed by a Huerta, for
instance, is indeed demanded; not on the ground, however, that such
methods are "good" or "bad"; but whether they are detrimental to Mexican
self-determination, and hence to the progress of our own democracy.



II

If America had started to prepare when Belgium was invaded, had entered
the war when the Lusitania was sunk, Germany might by now have been
defeated, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been spared.  All
this may be admitted.  Yet, looking backward, it is easy to read the
reason for our hesitancy in our national character and traditions.  We
were pacifists, yes, but pacifists of a peculiar kind.  One of our
greatest American prophets, William James, knew that there was an issue
for which we were ready to fight, for which we were willing to make the
extreme sacrifice,--and that issue he defined as "war against war."  It
remained for America to make the issue.

Peoples do not rush to arms unless their national existence is
threatened.  It is what may be called the environmental cause that drives
nations quickly into war.  It drove the Entente nations into war, though
incidentally they were struggling for certain democratic institutions,
for international justice.  But in the case of America, the environmental
cause was absent.  Whether or not our national existence was or is
actually threatened, the average American does not believe that it is.
He was called upon to abandon his tradition, to mingle in a European
conflict, to fight for an idea alone.  Ideas require time to develop,
to seize the imagination of masses.  And it must be remembered that in
1914 the great issue had not been defined.  Curiously enough, now that it
is defined, it proves to be an American issue--a logical and positive
projection of our Washingtonian tradition and Monroe doctrine.  These had
for their object the preservation and development of democracy, the
banishment from the Western Hemisphere of European imperialistic conflict
and war.  We are now, with the help of our allies, striving to banish
these things from the face of the earth.  It is undoubtedly the greatest
idea for which man has been summoned to make the supreme sacrifice.

Its evolution has been traced.  Democracy was the issue in the Spanish
War, when we fought a weak nation.  We have followed its broader
application to Mexico, when we were willing to ignore the taunts and
insults of another weak nation, even the loss of "prestige," for the sake
of the larger good.  And we have now the clue to the President's
interpretation of the nation's mind during the first three years of the
present war.  We were willing to bear the taunts and insults of Germany
so long as it appeared that a future world peace night best be brought
about by the preservation of neutrality, by turning the weight of the
impartial public opinion of our democracy and that of other neutrals
against militarism and imperialism.  Our national aim was ever consistent
with the ideal of William James, to advance democracy and put an end to
the evil of war.

The only sufficient reason for the abandonment of the Washingtonian
policy is the furtherance of the object for which it was inaugurated, the
advance of democracy.  And we had established the precedent, with Spain
and Mexico, that the Republic shall engage in no war of imperialistic
conquest.  We war only in behalf of, or in defence of, democracy.

Before the entrance of America, however, the issues of the European
War were by no means clear cut along democratic lines.  What kind of
democracy were the allies fighting for?  Nowhere and at no time had it
been defined by any of their statesmen.  On the contrary, the various
allied governments had entered into compacts for the transference of
territory in the event of victory; and had even, by the offer of rewards,
sought to play one small nation against another.  This secret diplomacy
of bargains, of course, was a European heritage, the result of an
imperialistic environment which the American did not understand, and
from which he was happily free.  Its effect on France is peculiarly
enlightening.  The hostility of European governments, due to their fear
of her republican institutions, retarded her democratic growth, and her
history during the reign of Napoleon III is one of intrigue for
aggrandizement differing from Bismarck's only in the fact that it was
unsuccessful.  Britain, because she was separated from the continent and
protected by her fleet, virtually withdrew from European affairs in the
latter part of the nineteenth century, and, as a result, made great
strides in democracy.  The aggressions of Germany forced Britain in
self-defence into coalitions.  Because of her power and wealth she became
the Entente leader, yet her liberal government was compelled to enter into
secret agreements with certain allied governments in order to satisfy
what they deemed to be their needs and just ambitions.  She had honestly
sought, before the war, to come to terms with Germany, and had even
proposed gradual disarmament.  But, despite the best intentions,
circumstances and environment, as well as the precarious situation of her
empire, prevented her from liberalizing her foreign relations to conform
with the growth of democracy within the United Kingdom and the Dominions.
Americans felt a profound pity for Belgium.  But she was not, as Cuba had
been, our affair.  The great majority of our citizens sympathized with
the Entente, regarded with amazement and disgust the sudden disclosure of
the true character of the German militaristic government.  Yet for the
average American the war wore the complexion of other European conflicts,
was one involving a Balance of Power, mysterious and inexplicable.  To
him the underlying issue was not democratic, but imperialistic; and this
was partly because he was unable to make a mental connection between a
European war and the brand of democracy he recognized.  Preaching and
propaganda fail unless it can be brought home to a people that something
dear to their innermost nature is at stake, that the fate of the thing
they most desire, and are willing to make sacrifices for, hangs in the
balance.

During a decade the old political parties, between which there was now
little more than an artificial alignment, had been breaking up.
Americans were absorbed in the great liberal movement begun under the
leadership of President Roosevelt, the result of which was to transform
democracy from a static to a pragmatic and evolutionary conception,--in
order to meet and correct new and unforeseen evils.  Political freedom
was seen to be of little worth unless also accompanied by the economic
freedom the nation had enjoyed before the advent of industrialism.
Clerks and farmers, professional men and shopkeepers and artisans were
ready to follow the liberal leaders in states and nation; intellectual
elements from colleges and universities were enlisted.  Paralleling the
movement, at times mingling with it, was the revolt of labour, manifested
not only in political action, but in strikes and violence.  Readily
accessible books and magazines together with club and forum lectures in
cities, towns, and villages were rapidly educating the population in
social science, and the result was a growing independent vote to make
politicians despair.

Here was an instance of a democratic culture growing in isolation,
resentful of all external interference.  To millions of Americans
--especially in our middle western and western states--bent upon social
reforms, the European War appeared as an arresting influence.  American
participation meant the triumph of the forces of reaction.  Colour was
lent to this belief because the conservative element which had opposed
social reforms was loudest in its demand for intervention.  The wealthy
and travelled classes organized preparedness parades and distributed
propaganda.  In short, those who had apparently done their utmost to
oppose democracy at home were most insistent that we should embark
upon a war for democracy across the seas.  Again, what kind of democracy?
Obviously a status quo, commercially imperialistic democracy, which the
awakening liberal was bent upon abolishing.

There is undoubtedly in such an office as the American presidency some
virtue which, in times of crisis, inspires in capable men an intellectual
and moral growth proportional to developing events.  Lincoln, our most
striking example, grew more between 1861 and 1865 than during all the
earlier years of his life.  Nor is the growth of democratic leaders, when
seen through the distorted passions of their day, apparently a consistent
thing.  Greatness, near at hand, is startlingly like inconsistency; it
seems at moments to vacillate, to turn back upon and deny itself, and
thus lays itself open to seemingly plausible criticism by politicians and
time servers and all who cry out for precedent.  Yet it is an interesting
and encouraging fact that the faith of democratic peoples goes out, and
goes out alone, to leaders who--whatever their minor faults and failings
--do not fear to reverse themselves when occasion demands; to enunciate
new doctrines, seemingly in contradiction to former assertions, to meet
new crises.  When a democratic leader who has given evidence of greatness
ceases to develop new ideas, he loses the public confidence.  He flops
back into the ranks of the conservative he formerly opposed, who catch up
with him only when he ceases to grow.

In 1916 the majority of the American people elected Mr. Wilson in the
belief that he would keep them out of war.  In 1917 he entered the war
with the nation behind him.  A recalcitrant Middle West was the first
to fill its quota of volunteers, and we witnessed the extraordinary
spectacle of the endorsement of conscription: What had happened?  A very
simple, but a very great thing Mr. Wilson had made the issue of the war a
democratic issue, an American issue, in harmony with our national hopes
and traditions.  But why could not this issue have been announced in 1914
or 1915?  The answer seems to be that peoples, as well as their leaders
and interpreters, must grow to meet critical situations.  In 1861 the,
moral idea of the Civil War was obscured and hidden by economic and
material interests.  The Abraham Lincoln who entered the White House in
1881 was indeed the name man who signed the Emancipation Proclamation in
1863; and yet, in a sense, he was not the same man; events and
responsibilities had effected a profound but logical growth in his
personality.  And the people of the Union were not ready to endorse
Emancipation in 1861.  In 1863, in the darkest hour of the war, the
spirit of the North responded to the call, and, despite the vilification
of the President, was true to him to victory.  More significant still,
in view of the events of today, is what then occurred in England.  The
British Government was unfriendly; the British people as a whole had
looked upon our Civil War very much in the same light as the American
people regarded the present war at its inception--which is to say that
the economic and materialistic issue seemed to overshadow the moral one.
When Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it to be a war for human freedom, the
sentiment of the British people changed--of the British people as
distinct from the governing classes; and the textile workers of the
northern counties, whose mills could not get cotton on account of the
blockade, declared their willingness to suffer and starve if the slaves
in America might be freed.

Abraham Lincoln at that time represented the American people as the
British Government did not represent the British people.  We are
concerned today with peoples rather than governments.

It remained for an American President to announce the moral issue of the
present war, and thus to solidify behind him, not only the liberal mind
of America, but the liberal elements within the nations of Europe.  He
became the democratic leader of the world.  The issue, simply stated, is
the advancement of democracy and peace.  They are inseparable.
Democracy, for progress, demands peace.  It had reached a stage, when, in
a contracting world, it could no longer advance through isolation: its
very existence in every country was threatened, not only by the partisans
of reaction from within, but by the menace from without of a militaristic
and imperialistic nation determined to crush it, restore superimposed
authority, and dominate the globe.  Democracy, divided against itself,
cannot stand.  A league of democratic nations, of democratic peoples, has
become imperative.  Hereafter, if democracy wins, self-determination, and
not imperialistic exploitation, is to be the universal rule.  It is the
extension, on a world scale, of Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy, the
application of democratic principles to international relationships, and
marks the inauguration of a new era.  We resort to force against force,
not for dominion, but to make the world safe for the idea on which we
believe the future of civilization depends, the sacred right of
self-government.  We stand prepared to treat with the German people when
they are ready to cast off autocracy and militarism.  Our attitude toward
them is precisely our attitude toward the Mexican People.  We believe,
and with good reason, that the German system of education is
authoritative and false, and was more or less deliberately conceived in
order to warp the nature and produce complexes in the mind of the German
people for the end of preserving and perpetuating the power of the
Junkers.  We have no quarrel with the duped and oppressed, but we war
against the agents of oppression.  To the conservative mind such an
aspiration appears chimerical.  But America, youngest of the nations, was
born when modern science was gathering the momentum which since has
enabled it to overcome, with a bewildering rapidity, many evils
previously held by superstition to be ineradicable.  As a corollary to
our democratic creed, we accepted the dictum that to human intelligence
all things are possible.  The virtue of this dictum lies not in dogma,
but in an indomitable attitude of mind to which the world owes its every
advance in civilization; quixotic, perhaps, but necessary to great
accomplishment. In searching for a present-day protagonist, no happier
example could be found than Mr. Henry Ford, who exhibits the
characteristic American mixture of the practical and the ideal.  He
introduces into industry humanitarian practices that even tend to
increase the vast fortune which by his own efforts he has accumulated.
He sees that democratic peoples do not desire to go to war, he does not
believe that war is necessary and inevitable, he lays himself open to
ridicule by financing a Peace Mission.  Circumstances force him to
abandon his project, but he is not for one moment discouraged.  His
intention remains.  He throws all his energy and wealth into a war to end
war, and the value of his contribution is inestimable.

A study of Mr. Ford's mental processes and acts illustrates the true mind
of America.  In the autumn of 1916 Mr. Wilson declared that "the people
of the United States want to be sure what they are fighting about, and
they want to be sure that they are fighting for the things that will
bring the world justice and peace.  Define the elements; let us know that
we are not fighting for the prevalence of this nation over that, for the
ambitions of this group of nations as compared with the ambitions of that
group of nations, let us once be convinced that we are called in to a
great combination for the rights of mankind, and America will unite her
force and spill her blood for the great things she has always believed in
and followed."

"America is always ready to fight for the things which are American."
Even in these sombre days that mark the anniversary of our entrance into
the war.  But let it be remembered that it was in the darkest days of the
Civil War Abraham Lincoln boldly proclaimed the democratic, idealistic
issue of that struggle.  The Russian Revolution, which we must seek to
understand and not condemn, the Allied defeats that are its consequences,
can only make our purpose the firmer to put forth all our strength for
the building up of a better world.  The President's masterly series of
state papers, distributed in all parts of the globe, have indeed been so
many Proclamations of Emancipation for the world's oppressed.  Not only
powerful nations shall cease to exploit little nations, but powerful
individuals shall cease to exploit their fellow men.  Henceforth no wars
for dominion shall be waged, and to this end secret treaties shall be
abolished.  Peoples through their representatives shall make their own
treaties.  And just as democracy insures to the individual the greatest
amount of self-determination, nations also shall have self-determination,
in order that each shall be free to make its world contribution.  All
citizens have duties to perform toward their fellow citizens; all
democratic nations must be interdependent.

With this purpose America has entered the war.  But it implies that our
own household must be swept and cleaned.  The injustices and inequalities
existing in our own country, the false standards of worth, the
materialism, the luxury and waste must be purged from our midst.



III

In fighting Germany we are indeed fighting an evil Will--evil because it
seeks to crush the growth of individual and national freedom.  Its object
is to put the world back under the thrall of self-constituted authority.
So long as this Will can compel the bodies of soldiers to do its bidding,
these bodies must be destroyed.  Until the Will behind them is broken,
the world cannot be free.  Junkerism is the final expression of reaction,
organized to the highest efficiency.  The war against the Junkers marks
the consummation of a long struggle for human liberty in all lands,
symbolizes the real cleavage dividing the world.  As in the French
Revolution and the wars that followed it, the true significance of this
war is social.  But today the Russian Revolution sounds the keynote.
Revolutions tend to express the extremes of the philosophies of their
times--human desires, discontents, and passions that cannot be organized.
The French Revolution was a struggle for political freedom; the
underlying issue of the present war is economic freedom--without which
political freedom is of no account.  It will not, therefore, suffice
merely to crush the Junkers, and with them militarism and autocracy.
Unless, as the fruit of this appalling bloodshed and suffering, the
democracies achieve economic freedom, the war will have been fought in
vain.  More revolutions, wastage and bloodshed will follow, the world
will be reduced to absolute chaos unless, in the more advanced
democracies, an intelligent social order tending to remove the causes
of injustice and discontent can be devised and ready for inauguration.
This new social order depends, in turn, upon a world order of mutually
helpful, free peoples, a league of Nations.--If the world is to be made
safe for democracy, this democratic plan must be ready for the day when
the German Junker is beaten and peace is declared.

The real issue of our time is industrial democracy we must face that
fact.  And those in America and the Entente nations who continue to
oppose it will do so at their peril.  Fortunately, as will be shown, that
element of our population which may be designated as domestic Junkers is
capable of being influenced by contemporary currents of thought, is
awakening to the realization of social conditions deplorable and
dangerous.  Prosperity and power had made them blind and arrogant.  Their
enthusiasm for the war was, however, genuine; the sacrifices they are
making are changing and softening them; but as yet they can scarcely be
expected, as a class, to rejoice over the revelation--just beginning to
dawn upon their minds--that victory for the Allies spells the end of
privilege.  Their conception of democracy remains archaic, while wealth
is inherently conservative.  Those who possess it in America have as a
rule received an education in terms of an obsolete economics, of the
thought of an age gone by.  It is only within the past few years that our
colleges and universities have begun to teach modern economics, social
science and psychology--and this in the face of opposition from trustees.
Successful business men, as a rule, have had neither the time nor the
inclination to read books which they regard as visionary, as subversive
to an order by which they have profited.  And that some Americans are
fools, and have been dazzled in Europe by the glamour of a privilege not
attainable at home, is a deplorable yet indubitable fact.  These have
little sympathy with democracy; they have even been heard to declare that
we have no right to dictate to another nation, even an enemy nation, what
form of government it shall assume.  We have no right to demand, when
peace comes, that the negotiations must be with the representatives of
the German people.  These are they who deplore the absence among us of a
tradition of monarchy, since the American people "should have something
to look up to."  But this state of mind, which needs no comment, is
comparatively rare, and represents an extreme.  We are not lacking,
however, in the type of conservative who, innocent of a knowledge of
psychology, insists that "human nature cannot be changed," and that the
"survival of the fittest" is the law of life, yet these would deny Darwin
if he were a contemporary.  They reject the idea that society can be
organized by intelligence, and war ended by eliminating its causes from
the social order.  On the contrary they cling to the orthodox contention
that war is a necessary and salutary thing, and proclaim that the
American fibre was growing weak and flabby from luxury and peace,
curiously ignoring the fact that their own economic class, the small
percentage of our population owning sixty per cent. of the wealth of the
country, and which therefore should be most debilitated by luxury, was
most eager for war, and since war has been declared has most amply proved
its courage and fighting quality.  This, however, and other evidences of
the patriotic sacrifices of those of our countrymen who possess wealth,
prove that they are still Americans, and encourages the hope and belief
that as Americans they ultimately will do their share toward a democratic
solution of the problem of society.  Many of them are capable of vision,
and are beginning to see the light today.

In America we succeeded in eliminating hereditary power, in obtaining a
large measure of political liberty, only to see the rise of an economic
power, and the consequent loss of economic liberty.  The industrial
development of the United States was of course a necessary and desirable
thing, but the economic doctrine which formed the basis of American
institutions proved to be unsuited to industrialism, and introduced
unforeseen evils that were a serious menace to the Republic.  An
individualistic economic philosophy worked admirably while there was
ample land for the pioneer, equality of opportunity to satisfy the
individual initiative of the enterprising.  But what is known as
industrialism brought in its train fear and favour, privilege and
poverty, slums, disease, and municipal vice, fostered a too rapid
immigration, established in America a tenant system alien to our
traditions.  The conditions which existed before the advent of
industrialism are admirably pictured, for instance, in the autobiography
of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, when he describes his native town of Quincy
in the first half of the Nineteenth Century.  In those early communities,
poverty was negligible, there was no great contrast between rich and
poor; the artisan, the farmer, the well-to-do merchant met on terms of
mutual self-respect, as man to man; economic class consciousness was
non-existent; education was so widespread that European travellers
wonderingly commented on the fact that we had no "peasantry"; and with
few exceptions every citizen owned a piece of land and a home.  Property,
a refuge a man may call his own, and on which he may express his
individuality, is essential to happiness and self-respect.  Today, less
than two thirds of our farmers own their land, while vast numbers of our
working men and women possess nothing but the labour of their hands.  The
designation of labour as "property" by our courts only served to tighten
the bonds, by obstructing for a time the movement to decrease the tedious
and debilitating hours of contact of the human organism with the
machine,--a menace to the future of the race, especially in the case
of women and children.  If labour is "property," wretches driven by
economic necessity have indeed only the choice of a change of masters.
In addition to the manual workers, an army of clerical workers of both
sexes likewise became tenants, and dependents who knew not the
satisfaction of a real home.

Such conditions gradually brought about a profound discontent, a grouping
of classes.  Among the comparatively prosperous there was set up a social
competition in luxury that was the bane of large and small communities.
Skilled labour banded itself into unions, employers organized to oppose
them, and the result was a class conflict never contemplated by the
founders of the Republic, repugnant to democracy which by its very nature
depends for its existence on the elimination of classes.  In addition to
this, owing to the unprecedented immigration of ignorant Europeans to
supply the labour demand, we acquired a sinister proletariat of unskilled
economic slaves.  Before the war labour discovered its strength; since
the war began, especially in the allied nations with quasi-democratic
institutions, it is aware of its power to exert a leverage capable of
paralyzing industry for a period sufficient to destroy the chances of
victory.  The probability of the occurrence of such a calamity depends
wholly on whether or not the workman can be convinced that it is his war,
for he will not exert himself to perpetuate a social order in which he
has lost faith, even though he now obtains a considerable increase in
wages.  Agreements entered into with the government by union leaders will
not hold him if at any time he fails to be satisfied that the present
world conflict will not result in a greater social justice.  This fact
has been demonstrated by what is known as the "shop steward" movement in
England, where the workers repudiated the leaders' agreements and
everywhere organized local strikes.  And in America, the unskilled
workers are largely outside of the unions.

The workman has a natural and laudable desire to share more fully in the
good things of life.  And it is coming to be recognized that material
prosperity, up to a certain point, is the foundation of mental and
spiritual welfare: clean and comfortable surroundings, beauty, rational
amusements, opportunity for a rational satisfaction of, the human.
instincts are essential to contentment and progress.  The individual, of
course, must be enlightened; and local labour unions, recognizing this,
are spending considerable sums all over the country on schools to educate
their members.  If a workman is a profiteer, he is more to be excused
than the business profiteer, against whom his anger is directed; if he is
a spendthrift, prodigality is a natural consequence of rapid acquisition.
We have been a nation of spendthrifts.

A failure to grasp the psychology of the worker involves disastrous
consequences.  A discussion as to whether or not his attitude is
unpatriotic and selfish is futile.  No more profound mistake could be
made than to attribute to any element of the population motives wholly
base.  Human nature is neither all black nor all white, yet is capable of
supreme sacrifices when adequately appealed to.  What we must get into
our minds is the fact that a social order that insured a large measure of
democracy in the early days of the Republic is inadequate to meet modern
industrial conditions.  Higher wages, material prosperity alone will not
suffice to satisfy aspirations for a fuller self-realization, once the
method by which these aspirations can be gained is glimpsed.  For it
cannot be too often repeated that the unquenchable conflicts are those
waged for ideas and not dollars.  These are tinged with religious
emotion.



IV

Mr. Wilson's messages to the American people and to the world have
proclaimed a new international order, a League of Democracies.  And in a
recent letter to New Jersey Democrats we find him warning his party, or
more properly the nation, of the domestic social changes necessarily
flowing from his international program.  While rightly resolved to
prosecute the war on the battle lines to the utmost limit of American
resources, he points out that the true significance of the conflict lies
in "revolutionary change."  "Economic and social forces," he says, "are
being released upon the world, whose effect no political seer dare to
conjecture."  And we "must search our hearts through and through and make
them ready for the birth of a new day--a day we hope and believe of
greater opportunity and greater prosperity for the average mass of
struggling men and women."  He recognizes that the next great step in
the development of democracy which the war must bring about--is the
emancipation of labour; to use his own phrase, the redemption of masses
of men and women from "economic serfdom."  "The old party slogans," he
declares, "will mean nothing to the future."

Judging from this announcement, the President seems prepared to condemn
boldly all the rotten timbers of the social structure that have outlived
their usefulness--a position that hitherto no responsible politician has
dared to take.  Politicians, on the contrary, have revered the dead wood,
have sought to shore the old timbers for their own purposes.  But so far
as any party is concerned, Mr. Wilson stands alone.  Both of the two
great parties, the Republican and the Democratic, in order to make a show
of keeping abreast of the times, have merely patched their platforms with
the new ideas.  The Socialist Party in the United States is relatively
small, is divided against itself, and has given no evidence of a
leadership of broad sanity and vision.  It is fortunate we have been
spared in this country the formation of a political labour party, because
such a party would have been composed of manual workers alone, and hence
would have tended further to develop economic class consciousness, to
crystallize class antagonisms.  Today, however, neither the Republican
nor the Democratic party represents the great issue of the times; the
cleavage between them is wholly artificial.  The formation of a Liberal
Party, with a platform avowedly based on modern social science, has
become essential.  Such a party, to be in harmony with our traditions and
our creed, to arrest in our democracy the process of class stratification
which threatens to destroy it, must not draw its members from the ranks
of manual labour alone, but from all elements of our population.  It
should contain all the liberal professions, and clerks and shopkeepers,
as well as manual workers; administrators, and even those employers who
have become convinced that our present economic system does not suffice
to meet the needs of the day.  In short, membership in such a party, as
far as possible, should not be based upon occupation or economic status,
but on an honest difference of view from that of the conservative
opposition.  This would be a distinctly American solution.  In order to
form such a party a campaign of education will be necessary.  For today
Mr. Wilson's strength is derived from the independent vote representing
the faith of the people as a whole; but the majority of those who support
the President, while they ardently desire the abolition in the world of
absolute monarchy, of militarism and commercial imperialism, while they
are anxious that this war shall expedite and not retard the social
reforms in which they are interested, have as yet but a vague conception
of the social order which these reforms imply.

It marks a signal advance in democracy when liberal opinion in any
nation turns for guidance and support to a statesman of another nation.
No clearer sign of the times could be desired than the fact that our
American President has suddenly become the liberal leader of the world.
The traveller in France, and especially in Britain, meets on all sides
striking evidence of this.  In these countries, until America's entrance
into the war, liberals had grown more and more dissatisfied with the
failure of their governments to define in democratic terms the issue of
the conflict, had resented the secret inter-allied compacts, savouring of
imperialism and containing the germs of future war.  They are now looking
across the Atlantic for leadership.  In France M. Albert Thomas declared
that Woodrow Wilson had given voice to the aspirations of his party,
while a prominent Liberal in England announced in a speech that it had
remained for the American President to express the will and purpose of
the British people.  The new British Labour Party and the Inter-Allied
Labour and Socialist Conferences have adopted Mr. Wilson's program and
have made use of his striking phrases.  But we have between America and
Britain this difference: in America the President stands virtually alone,
without a party behind him representing his views; in Britain the general
democratic will of the nation is now being organized, but has obtained as
yet no spokesman in the government.

Extraordinary symptomatic phenomena have occurred in Russia as well as in
Britain.  In Russia the rebellion of an awakening people against an
age-long tyranny has almost at once leaped to the issue of the day, taken
on the complexion of a struggle for industrial democracy.  Whether the
Germans shall be able to exploit the country, bring about a reaction and
restore for a time monarchical institutions depends largely upon the
fortunes of the war.  In Russia there is revolution, with concomitant
chaos; but in Britain there is evolution, an orderly attempt of a people
long accustomed to progress in self-government to establish a new social
order, peacefully and scientifically, and in accordance with a
traditional political procedure.

The recent development of the British Labour Party, although of deep
significance to Americans, has taken place almost without comment in this
country.  It was formally established in 1900, and was then composed of
manual workers alone.  In 1906, out of 50 candidates at the polls, 39
were elected to Parliament; in 1910, 42 were elected.  The Parliamentary
Labour Party, so called, has now been amalgamated with four and a half
millions of Trade Unionists, and with the three and a half millions of
members of the Co-operative Wholesale Society and the Co-operative Union.
Allowing for duplication of membership, these three organizations
--according to Mr. Sidney Webb--probably include two fifths of the
population of the United Kingdom.  "So great an aggregation of working
class organizations," he says, "has never come shoulder to shoulder in
any country."  Other smaller societies and organizations are likewise
embraced, including the Socialists.  And now that the suffrage has been
extended, provision is made for the inclusion of women.  The new party is
organizing in from three to four hundred constituencies, and at the next
general election is not unlikely to gain control of the political balance
of power.

With the majority of Americans, however, the word "labour" as designating
a party arouses suspicion and distrust.  By nature and tradition we are
inclined to deplore and oppose any tendency toward the stratification of
class antagonisms--the result of industrial discontent--into political
groups.  The British tradition is likewise hostile to such a tendency.
But in Britain the industrial ferment has gone much further than with us,
and such a result was inevitable.  By taking advantage of the British
experience, of the closer ties now being knit between the two
democracies, we may in America be spared a stage which in Britain was
necessary.  Indeed, the program of the new British Labour Party seems to
point to a distinctly American solution, one in harmony with the steady
growth of Anglo-Saxon democracy.  For it is now announced that the word
"labour," as applied to the new party, does not mean manual labour alone,
but also mental labour.  The British unions have gradually developed and
placed in power leaders educated in social science, who have now come
into touch with the intellectual leaders of the United Kingdom, with the
sociologists, economists, and social scientists.  The surprising and
encouraging result of such association is the announcement that the new
Labour Party is today publicly thrown open to all workers, both by hand
and by brain, with the object of securing for these the full fruits of
their industry.  This means the inclusion of physicians, professors,
writers, architects, engineers, and inventors, of lawyers who no longer
regard their profession as a bulwark of the status quo; of clerks, of
administrators of the type evolved by the war, who indeed have gained
their skill under the old order but who now in a social spirit are
dedicating their gifts to the common weal, organizing and directing vast
enterprises for their governments.  In short, all useful citizens who
make worthy contributions--as distinguished from parasites, profiteers,
and drones, are invited to be members; there is no class distinction
here.  The fortunes of such a party are, of course, dependent upon the
military success of the allied armies and navies.  But it has defined the
kind of democracy the Allies are fighting for, and thus has brought about
an unqualified endorsement of the war by those elements of the population
which hitherto have felt the issue to be imperialistic and vague rather
than democratic and clear cut.  President Wilson's international program
is approved of and elaborated.

The Report on Reconstruction of the new British Labour Party is perhaps
the most important political document presented to the world since the
Declaration of Independence.  And like the Declaration, it is written in
the pure English that alone gives the high emotional quality of
sincerity.  The phrases in which it tersely describes its objects are
admirable.  "What is to be reconstructed after the war is over is not
this or that government department, this or that piece of social
machinery, but Society itself."  There is to be a systematic approach
towards a "healthy equality of material circumstance for every person
born into the world, and not an enforced dominion over subject nations,
subject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex."  In industry as
well as in government the social order is to be based "on that equal
freedom, that general consciousness of consent, and that widest
participation in power, both economic and political, which is
characteristic of democracy."  But all this, it should be noted, is not
to be achieved in a year or two of "feverish reconstruction"; "each brick
that the Labour Party helps to lay shall go to erect the structure it
intends and no other."

In considering the main features of this program, one must have in mind
whether these are a logical projection and continuation of the
Anglo-Saxon democratic tradition, or whether they constitute an absolute
break with that tradition.  The only valid reason for the adoption of
such a program in America would be, of course, the restoration of some
such equality of opportunity and economic freedom as existed in our
Republic before we became an industrial nation.  "The first condition of
democracy,"--to quote again from the program, "is effective personal
freedom."

What is called the "Universal Enforcement of the National Minimum"
contemplates the extension of laws already on the statute books in order
to prevent the extreme degradation of the standard of life brought about
by the old economic system under industrialism.  A living minimum wage is
to be established.  The British Labour Party intends "to secure to every
member of the community, in good times and bad alike .  .  .  all the
requisites of healthy life and worthy citizenship."

After the war there is to be no cheap labour market, nor are the millions
of workers and soldiers to fall into the clutches of charity; but it
shall be a national obligation to provide each of these with work
according to his capacity.  In order to maintain the demand for labour
at a uniform level, the government is to provide public works.  The
population is to be rehoused in suitable dwellings, both in rural
districts and town slums; new and more adequate schools and training
colleges are to be inaugurated; land is to be reclaimed and afforested,
and gradually brought under common ownership; railways and canals are to
be reorganized and nationalized, mines and electric power systems.  One
of the significant proposals under this head is that which demands the
retention of the centralization of the purchase of raw materials brought
about by the war.

In order to accomplish these objects there must be a "Revolution in
National Finance."  The present method of raising funds is denounced; and
it is pointed out that only one quarter of the colossal expenditure made
necessary by the war has been raised by taxation, and that the three
quarters borrowed at onerous rates is sure to be a burden on the nation's
future.  The capital needed, when peace comes, to ensure a happy and
contented democracy must be procured without encroaching on the minimum
standard of life, and without hampering production.  Indirect taxation
must therefore be concentrated on those luxuries of which it is desirable
that the consumption be discouraged.  The steadily rising unearned
increment of urban and mineral land ought, by appropriate direct
taxation, to be brought into the public exchequer; "the definite
teachings of economic science are no longer to be disregarded."  Hence
incomes are to be taxed above the necessary cost of family maintenance,
private fortunes during life and at death; while a special capital levy
must be made to pay off a substantial portion of the national debt.

"The Democratic Control of Industry" contemplates the progressive
elimination of the private capitalist and the setting free of all who
work by hand and brain for the welfare of all.

The Surplus Wealth is to be expended for the Common Good.  That which
Carlyle designates as the "inward spiritual," in contrast to the "outward
economical," is also to be provided for.  "Society," says the document,
"like the individual, does not live by bread alone, does not exist only
for perpetual wealth production."  First of all, there is to be education
according to the highest modern standard; and along with education, the
protection and advancement of the public health, 'mens sana in corpore
sano'.  While large sums must be set aside, not only for original
research in every branch of knowledge, but for the promotion of music,
literature, and fine art, upon which "any real development of
civilization fundamentally depends."

In regard to the British Empire, the Labour Party urges self-government
for any people, whatever its colour, proving itself capable, and the
right of that people to the proceeds of its own toil upon the resources
of its territory.  An unequivocal stand is taken for the establishment,
as a part of the treaty of peace, of a Universal Society of Nations;
and recognizing that the future progress of democracy depends upon
co-operation and fellowship between liberals of all countries, the
maintenance of intimate relationships is advocated with liberals oversea.

Finally, a scientific investigation of each succeeding problem in
government is insisted upon, and a much more rapid dissemination among
the people of the science that exists.  "A plutocratic party may choose
to ignore science, but no labour party can hope to maintain its position
unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of the best political
science of its time."



V

There are, it will be seen, some elements in the program of the new
British Labour Party apparently at variance with American and English
institutions, traditions, and ideas.  We are left in doubt, for instance,
in regard to its attitude toward private property.  The instinct for
property is probably innate in humanity, and American conservatism in
this regard is, according to certain modern economists, undoubtedly
sound.  A man should be permitted to acquire at least as much property
as is required for the expression of his personality; such a wise
limitation, also, would abolish the evil known as absentee ownership.
Again, there will arise in many minds the question whether the funds for
the plan of National finance outlined in the program may be obtained
without seriously deranging the economic system of the nation and of the
world.  The older school denounces the program as Utopian.  On the other
hand, economists of the modern school who have been consulted have
declared it practical.  It is certain that before the war began it would
not have been thought possible to raise the billions which in four years
have been expended on sheer destruction; and one of our saddest
reflections today must be of regret that a small portion of these
billions which have gone to waste could not have been expended for the
very purposes outlined--education, public health, the advancement of
science and art, public buildings, roads and parks, and the proper
housing of populations!  It is also dawning upon us, as a result of new
practices brought about by the war, that our organization of industry was
happy-go-lucky, inefficient and wasteful, and that a more scientific and
economical organization is imperative.  Under such a new system it may
well be, as modern economists claim, that, we shall have an ample surplus
for the Common Good.

The chief objection to a National or Democratic Control of Industry has
been that it would tend to create vast political machines and thus give
the politicians in office a nefarious power.  It is not intended here to
attempt a refutation of this contention.  The remedy lies in a changed
attitude of the employee and the citizen toward government, and the fact
that such an attitude is now developing is not subject to absolute proof.
It may be said, however, that no greater menace to democracy could have
arisen than the one we seem barely to have escaped--the control of
politics and government by the capitalistic interests of the nation.
What seems very clear is that an evolutionary drift toward the national
control of industry has for many years been going on, and that the war
has tremendously speeded up the tendency.  Government has stepped in to
protect the consumer of necessities from the profiteer, and is beginning
to set a limit upon profits; has regulated exports and imports;
established a national shipping corporation and merchant marine, and
entered into other industries; it has taken over the railroads at least
for the duration of the war, and may take over coal mines, and metal
resources, as well as the forests and water power; it now contemplates
the regulation of wages.

The exigency caused by the war, moreover, has transformed the former
practice of international intercourse.  Co-operation has replaced
competition.  We are reorganizing and regulating our industries, our
business, making sacrifices and preparing to make more sacrifices in
order to meet the needs of our Allies, now that they are sore beset.
For a considerable period after the war is ended, they will require our
aid.  We shall be better off than any other of the belligerent nations,
and we shall therefore be called upon to practice, during the years of
reconstruction, a continuation of the same policy of helpfulness.
Indeed, for the nations of the world to spring, commercially speaking,
at one another's throats would be suicidal even if it were possible.
Mr. Sidney Webb has thrown a flood of light upon the conditions likely
to prevail.  For example, speculative export trade is being replaced by
collective importing, bringing business more directly under the control
of the consumer.  This has been done by co-operative societies, by
municipalities and states, in Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom,
and in Germany.  The Co-operative Wholesale Society of Great Britain,
acting on behalf of three and a half million families, buys two and a
half million dollars of purchases annually.  And the Entente nations, in
order to avoid competitive bidding, are buying collectively from us, not
only munitions of war, but other supplies, while the British Government
has made itself the sole importer of such necessities as wheat, sugar,
tea, refrigerated meat, wool, and various metals.  The French and Italian
governments, and also certain neutral states, have done likewise.  A
purchasing commission for all the Allies and America is now proposed.
After the war, as an inevitable result, for one thing, of transforming
some thirty million citizens into soldiers, of engaging a like number of
men and women at enhanced wages on the manufacture of the requisites of
war, Mr. Webb predicts a world shortage not only in wheat and foodstuffs
but in nearly all important raw materials.  These will be required for
the resumption of manufacture.  In brief, international co-operation will
be the only means of salvation.  The policy of international trade
implied by world shortage is not founded upon a law of "supply and
demand."  The necessities cannot be permitted to go to those who can
afford to pay the highest prices, but to those who need them most.  For
the "free play of economic forces" would mean famine on a large scale,
because the richer nations and the richer classes within the nations
might be fully supplied; but to the detriment and ruin of the world the
poorer nations and the poorer classes would be starved.  Therefore
governments are already beginning to give consideration to a new
organization of international trade for at least three years after the
war.  Now if this organization produce, as it may produce, a more
desirable civilization and a happier world order, we are not likely
entirely to go back--especially in regard to commodities which are
necessities--to a competitive system.  The principle of "priority of
need" will supersede the law of "supply and demand."  And the
organizations built up during the war, if they prove efficient, will not
be abolished.  Hours of labour and wages in the co-operative League of
Nations will gradually be equalized, and tariffs will become things of
the past.  "The axiom will be established," says Mr. Webb, "that the
resources of every country must, be held for the benefit not only of its
own people but of the world .  .  .  .  The world shortage will, for
years to come, make import duties look both oppressive and ridiculous."

So much may be said for the principle of Democratic Control.  In spite of
all theoretical opposition, circumstances and evolution apparently point
to its establishment.  A system that puts a premium on commercial greed
seems no longer possible.

The above comments, based on the drift of political practice during the
past decade and a half, may be taken for what they are worth.
Predictions are precarious.  The average American will be inclined to
regard the program of the new British Labour Party as the embodiment of
what he vaguely calls Socialism, and to him the very word is repugnant.
Although he may never have heard of Marx, it is the Marxian conception
that comes to his mind, and this implies coercion, a government that
constantly interferes with his personal liberty, that compels him to
tasks for which he has no relish.  But your American, and your
Englishman, for that matter, is inherently an individualist he wants as
little government as is compatible with any government at all.  And the
descendants of the continental Europeans who flock to our shores are
Anglo-Saxonized, also become by environment and education individualists.
The great importance of preserving this individualism, this spirit in our
citizens of self-reliance, this suspicion against too much interference
with personal liberty, must at once be admitted.  And any scheme for a
social order that tends to eliminate and destroy it should by Americans
be summarily rejected.

The question of supreme interest to us, therefore, is whether the social
order implied in the British program is mainly in the nature of a
development of, or a break with, the Anglo-Saxon democratic tradition.
The program is derived from an English source.  It is based on what is
known as modern social science, which has as its ultimate sanction the
nature of the human mind as revealed by psychology.  A consideration of
the principles underlying this proposed social order may prove that it is
essentially--if perhaps paradoxically--individualistic, a logical
evolution of institutions which had their origin in the Magna Charta.
Our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that every citizen had the
right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which means the
opportunity to achieve the greatest self-development and self-realization.
The theory is that each citizen shall find his place, according to his
gifts and abilities, and be satisfied therewith.  We may discover that
this is precisely what social science, in an industrial age, and by
spiritualizing human effort, aims to achieve.  We may find that the
appearance of such a program as that of the British Labour Party,
supported as it is by an imposing proportion of the population of the
United Kingdom, marks a further step, not only in the advance of social
science and democracy, but also of Christianity.

I mention Christianity, not for controversial or apologetic reasons, but
because it has been the leaven of our western civilization ever since the
fall of the Roman Empire.  Its constant influence has been to soften and
spiritualize individual and national relationships.  The bitter
controversies, wars, and persecutions which have raged in its name are
utterly alien to its being.  And that the present war is now being fought
by the Allies in the hope of putting an end to war, and is thus in the
true spirit of Christianity, marks an incomparable advance.

Almost up to the present day, both in our conception and practice of
Christianity, we have largely neglected its most important elements.
Christian orthodoxy, as Auguste Sabatier points out, is largely derived
from the older supernatural religions.  The preservative shell of dogma
and superstition has been cracking, and is now ready to burst, and the
social teaching of Jesus would seem to be the kernel from which has
sprung modern democracy, modern science, and modern religion--a trinity
and unity.

For nearly two thousand years orthodoxy has insisted that the social
principles of Christianity are impractical.  And indeed, until the
present day, they have been so.  Physical science, by enormously
accelerating the means of transportation and communication, has so
contracted the world as to bring into communion peoples and races
hitherto far apart; has made possible an intelligent organization of
industry which, for the first time in history, can create a surplus ample
to maintain in comfort the world's population.  But this demands the will
to co-operation, which is a Christian principle--a recognition of the
brotherhood of man.  Furthermore, physical science has increased the need
for world peace and international co-operation because the territories of
all nations are now subject to swift and terrible invasion by modern
instruments of destruction, while the future submarine may sweep commerce
from the seas.

Again, orthodoxy declares that human nature is inherently "bad," while
true Christianity, endorsed by psychology, proclaims it inherently
"good," which means that, properly guided, properly educated, it is
creative and contributive rather than destructive.  No more striking
proof of this fact can be cited than the modern experiment in prison
reform in which hardened convicts, when "given a chance," frequently
become useful citizens.  Unjust and unintelligent social conditions are
the chief factors in making criminals.

Our most modern system of education, of which Professor John Dewey is the
chief protagonist, is based upon the assertions of psychology that human
nature is essentially "good" creative.  Every normal child is supposed to
have a special "distinction" or gift, which it is the task of the
educator to discover.  This distinction found, the child achieves
happiness in creation and contribution.  Self-realization demands
knowledge and training: the doing of right is not a negative but a
positive act; it is not without significance that the Greek word for sin
is literally "missing the mark."  Christianity emphasizes above all else
the worth of the individual, yet recognizes that the individual can
develop only in society.  And if the individual be of great worth, this
worth must be by society developed to its utmost.  Universal suffrage is
a logical corollary.

Universal suffrage, however, implies individual judgment, which means
that the orthodox principle of external authority is out of place both
in Christianity and democracy.  The Christian theory is that none shall
intervene between a man's Maker and himself; democracy presupposes that
no citizen shall accept his beliefs and convictions from others, but
shall make up his own mind and act accordingly.  Open-mindedness is the
first requisite of science and democracy.

What has been deemed, however, in Christianity the most unrealizable
ideal is that which may be called pacifism--to resist not evil, to turn
the other cheek, to agree with your adversary while you are in the way
with him.  "I come not," said Jesus, in one of those paradoxical
statements hitherto so difficult to understand, "I come not to bring
peace, but a sword."  It is indeed what we are fighting for--peace.  But
we believe today, more strongly than ever before, as democracy advances,
as peoples tend to gain more and more control over their governments,
that even this may not be an unrealizable ideal.  Democracies, intent on
self-realization and self-development, do not desire war.

The problem of social science, then, appears to be to organize human
society on the principles and ideals of Christianity.  But in view of the
fact that the trend of evolution is towards the elimination of commercial
competition, the question which must seriously concern us today is--What
in the future shall be the spur of individual initiative?  Orthodoxy and
even democratic practice have hitherto taken it for granted--in spite of
the examples of highly socialized men, benefactors of society--that
the average citizen will bestir himself only for material gain.  And it
must be admitted that competition of some sort is necessary for
self-realization, that human nature demands a prize.  There can be no
self-sacrifice without a corresponding self-satisfaction.  The answer
is that in the theory of democracy, as well as in that of Christianity,
individualism and co-operation are paradoxically blended.  For
competition, Christianity substitutes emulation.  And with democracy,
it declares that mankind itself can gradually be rained towards the level
of the choice individual who does not labour for gain, but in behalf of
society.  For the process of democracy is not degrading, but lifting.
Like Christianity, democracy demands faith, and has as its inspiring
interpretation of civilization evolution towards a spiritual goal.  Yet
the kind of faith required is no longer a blind faith, but one founded on
sane and carefully evolved theories.  Democracy has become a scientific
experiment.

In this connection, as one notably inspired by emulation, by the joy of
creative work and service, the medical profession comes first to mind.
The finer element in this profession is constantly increasing in numbers,
growing more and more influential, making life less easy for the quack,
the vendor of nostrums, the commercial proprietor of the bogus medical
college.  The doctor who uses his talents for gain is frowned upon by
those of his fellow practitioners whose opinion really counts.  Respected
physicians in our cities give much of their time to teaching, animating
students with their own spirit; and labour long hours, for no material
return, in the clinics of the poor.  And how often, in reading our
newspapers, do we learn that some medical scientist, by patient work, and
often at the risk of life and health, has triumphed over a scourge which
has played havoc with humanity throughout the ages!  Typhoid has been
conquered, and infant paralysis; gangrene and tetanus, which have taken
such toll of the wounded in Flanders and France; yellow fever has been
stamped out in the tropics; hideous lesions are now healed by a system of
drainage.  The very list of these achievements is bewildering, and
latterly we are given hope of the prolongation of life itself.  Here in
truth are Christian deeds multiplied by science, made possible by a
growing knowledge of and mastery over Nature.

Such men by virtue of their high mission are above the vicious social and
commercial competition poisoning the lives of so many of their fellow
citizens.  In our democracy they have found their work, and the work is
its own reward.  They give striking testimony to the theory that
absorption in a creative or contributive task is the only source of
self-realization.  And he has little faith in mankind who shall declare
that the medical profession is the only group capable of being
socialized, or, rather, of socializing themselves--for such is the true
process of democracy.  Public opinion should be the leaven.  What is
possible for the doctor is also possible for the lawyer, for the teacher.
In a democracy, teaching should be the most honoured of the professions,
and indeed once was,--before the advent of industrialism, when it
gradually fell into neglect,--occasionally into deplorable submission to
the possessors of wealth.  Yet a wage disgracefully low, hardship, and
even poverty have not hindered men of ability from entering it in
increasing numbers, renouncing ease and luxuries.  The worth of the
contributions of our professors to civilization has been inestimable; and
fortunately signs are not lacking that we are coming to an appreciation
of the value of the expert in government, who is replacing the panderer
and the politician.  A new solidarity of teaching professional opinion,
together with a growing realization by our public of the primary
importance of the calling, is tending to emancipate it, to establish it
in its rightful place.

Nor are our engineers without their ideal.  A Goethals did not cut an
isthmus in two for gain.

Industrialism, with its concomitant "corporation" practice, has
undoubtedly been detrimental to the legal profession, since it has
resulted in large fees; in the accumulation of vast fortunes, frequently
by methods ethically questionable.  Grave social injustices have been
done, though often in good faith, since the lawyer, by training and
experience, has hitherto been least open to the teachings of the new
social science, has been an honest advocate of the system of 'laissez
faire'.  But to say that the American legal profession is without ideals
and lacking in the emulative spirit would be to do it a grave injustice.
The increasing influence of national and state bar associations evidences
a professional opinion discouraging to the unscrupulous; while a new
evolutionary and more humanitarian conception of law is now beginning to
be taught, and young men are entering the ranks imbued with this.  Legal
clinics, like medical clinics, are established for the benefit of those
who cannot afford to pay fees, for the protection of the duped from the
predatory quack.  And, it must be said of this profession, which hitherto
has held a foremost place in America, that its leaders have never
hesitated to respond to a public call, to sacrifice their practices to
serve the nation.  Their highest ambition has even been to attain the
Supreme Court, where the salary is a mere pittance compared to what they
may earn as private citizens.

Thus we may review all the groups in the nation, but the most significant
transformation of all is taking place within the business group,--where
indeed it might be least expected.  Even before the war there were many
evidences that the emulative spirit in business had begun to modify the
merely competitive, and we had the spectacle of large employers of
labour awakening to the evils of industrialism, and themselves attempting
to inaugurate reforms.  As in the case of labour, it would be obviously
unfair to claim that the employer element was actuated by motives of
self-interest alone; nor were their concessions due only to fear.
Instances could be cited, if there were space, of voluntary shortening of
hours of labour, of raising of wages, when no coercion was exerted either
by the labour unions or the state; and--perhaps to their surprise
employers discovered that such acts were not only humane but profitable!
Among these employers, in fact, may be observed individuals in various
stages of enlightenment, from the few who have educated themselves in
social science, who are convinced that the time has come when it is not
only practicable but right, who realize that a new era has dawned; to
others who still believe in the old system, who are trying to bolster it
up by granting concessions, by establishing committees of conference, by
giving a voice and often a financial interest, but not a vote, in the
conduct of the corporation concerned.  These are the counterpart, in
industry, of sovereigns whose away has been absolute, whose intentions
are good, but who hesitate, often from conviction, to grant
constitutions.  Yet even these are responding in some degree to social
currents, though the aggressive struggles of labour may have influenced
them, and partially opened their eyes.  They are far better than their
associates who still seek to control the supplies of food and other
necessities, whose efficiency is still solely directed, not toward a
social end, but toward the amassing of large fortunes, and is therefore
wasted so far as society is concerned.  They do not perceive that by
seeking to control prices they merely hasten the tendency of government
control, for it is better to have government regulation for the benefit
of the many than proprietary control, however efficient, for the benefit
of the few.

That a significant change of heart and mind has begun to take place
amongst capitalists, that the nucleus of a "public opinion" has been
formed within an element which, by the use and wont of business and
habits of thought might be regarded as least subject to the influence of
social ideas, is a most hopeful augury.  This nascent opinion has begun
to operate by shaming unscrupulous and recalcitrant employers into better
practices.  It would indeed fare ill with democracy if, in such an era,
men of large business proved to be lacking in democratic initiative,
wholly unreceptive and hostile to the gradual introduction of democracy
into industry, which means the perpetuation of the American Idea.
Fortunately, with us, this capitalistic element is of comparatively
recent growth, the majority of its members are essentially Americans;
they have risen from small beginnings, and are responsive to a democratic
appeal--if that appeal be properly presented.  And, as a matter of fact,
for many years a leaven had been at work among them; the truth has been
brought home to them that the mere acquisition of wealth brings neither
happiness nor self-realization; they have lavished their money on
hospitals and universities, clinics, foundations for scientific research,
and other gifts of inestimable benefit to the nation and mankind.
Although the munificence was on a Medicean scale, this private charity
was in accord with the older conception of democracy, and paved the way
for a new order.

The patriotic and humanitarian motive aroused by the war greatly
accelerated the socializing transformation of the business man and the
capitalist.  We have, indeed, our profiteers seeking short cuts to luxury
and wealth; but those happily most representative of American affairs,
including the creative administrators, hastened to Washington with a
willingness to accept any position in which they might be useful, and
in numerous instances placed at the disposal of the government the
manufacturing establishments which, by industry and ability, they
themselves had built up.  That in thus surrendering the properties for
which they were largely responsible they hoped at the conclusion of peace
to see restored the 'status quo ante' should not be held against them.
Some are now beginning to surmise that a complete restoration is
impossible; and as a result of their socializing experience, are even
wondering whether it is desirable.  These are beginning to perceive that
the national and international organizations in the course of
construction to meet the demands of the world conflict must form the
model for a future social structure; that the unprecedented pressure
caused by the cataclysm is compelling a recrystallization of society in
which there must be fewer misfits, in which many more individuals than
formerly shall find public or semi-public tasks in accordance with their
gifts and abilities.

It may be argued that war compels socialization, that after the war the
world will perforce return to materialistic individualism.  But this
calamity, terrible above all others, has warned us of the imperative need
of an order that shall be socializing, if we are not to witness the
destruction of our civilization itself.  Confidence that such an order,
thanks to the advancement of science, is now within our grasp should not
be difficult for Americans, once they have rightly conceived it.  We, who
have always pinned our faith to ideas, who entered the conflict for an
Idea, must be the last to shirk the task, however Herculean, of world
reconstruction along the lines of our own professed faith.  We cannot be
renegades to Democracy.

Above all things, then, it is essential for us as a people not to abandon
our faith in man, our belief that not only the exceptional individual but
the majority of mankind can be socialized.  What is true of our
physicians, our scientists and professional men, our manual workers, is
also true of our capitalists and business men.  In a more just and
intelligent organization of society these will be found willing to
administer and improve for the common weal the national resources which
formerly they exploited for the benefit of themselves and their
associates.  The social response, granted the conditions, is innate in
humanity, and individual initiative can best be satisfied in social
realization.

Universal education is the cornerstone of democracy.  And the recognition
of this fact may be called the great American contribution.  But in our
society the fullest self-realization depends upon a well balanced
knowledge of scientific facts, upon a rounded culture.  Thus education,
properly conceived, is a preparation for intelligent, ethical, and
contented citizenship.  Upon the welfare of the individual depends the
welfare of all.  Without education, free institutions and universal
suffrage are mockeries; semi-learned masses of the population are at the
mercy of scheming politicians, controversialists, and pseudo-scientific
religionists, and their votes are swayed by prejudice.

In a materialistic competitive order, success in life depends upon the
knack--innate or acquired, and not to be highly rated--of outwitting
one's neighbour under the rules of the game--the law; education is merely
a cultural leaven within the reach of the comparatively few who can
afford to attend a university.  The business college is a more logical
institution.  In an emulative civilization, however, the problem is to
discover and develop in childhood and youth the personal aptitude or gift
of as many citizens as possible, in order that they may find
self-realization by making their peculiar contribution towards the
advancement of society.

The prevailing system of education, which we have inherited from the
past, largely fails to accomplish this.  In the first place, it has been
authoritative rather than scientific, which is to say that students have
been induced to accept the statements of teachers and text books, and
have not been trained to weigh for themselves their reasonableness and
worth; a principle essentially unscientific and undemocratic, since it
inculcates in the future citizen convictions rather than encourages the
habit of open-mindedness so necessary for democratic citizenship.  For
democracy--it cannot be too often repeated--is a dynamic thing,
experimental, creative in its very essence.  No static set of opinions
can apply to the constantly changing aspect of affairs.  New discoveries,
which come upon us with such bewildering rapidity, are apt abruptly to
alter social and industrial conditions, while morals and conventions are
no longer absolute.  Sudden crises threaten the stability of nations and
civilizations.  Safety lies alone in the ability to go forward, to
progress.  Psychology teaches us that if authoritative opinions,
convictions, or "complexes" are stamped upon the plastic brain of the
youth they tend to harden, and he is apt to become a Democrat or
Republican, an Episcopalian or a Baptist, a free trader or a tariff
advocate or a Manchester economist without asking why.  Such "complexes"
were probably referred to by the celebrated physician who emphasized the
hopelessness of most individuals over forty.  And every reformer and
forum lecturer knows how difficult it is to convert the average audience
of seasoned adults to a new idea: he finds the most responsive groups in
the universities and colleges.  It is significant that the "educated"
adult audiences in clubs and prosperous churches are the least open to
conversion, because, in the scientific sense, the "educated" classes
retain complexes, and hence are the least prepared to cope with the world
as it is today.  The German system, which has been bent upon installing
authoritative conviction instead of encouraging freedom of thought,
should be a warning to us.

Again, outside of the realm of physical science, our text books have been
controversial rather than impartial, especially in economics and history;
resulting in erroneous and distorted and prejudiced ideas of events,
such for instance, as our American Revolution.  The day of the
controversialist is happily coming to an end, and of the writer who
twists the facts of science to suit a world of his own making, or of that
of a group with which he is associated.  Theory can now be labelled
theory, and fact, fact.  Impartial and painstaking investigation is the
sole method of obtaining truth.

The old system of education benefited only the comparatively few to
whose nature and inclination it was adapted.  We have need, indeed, of
classical scholars, but the majority of men and women are meant for other
work; many, by their very construction of mind, are unfitted to become
such.  And only in the most exceptional cases are the ancient languages
really mastered; a smattering of these, imposed upon the unwilling
scholar by a principle opposed to psychology,--a smattering from which is
derived no use and joy in after life, and which has no connection with
individual inclination--is worse than nothing.  Precious time is wasted
during the years when the mind is most receptive.  While the argument of
the old school that discipline can only be inculcated by the imposition
of a distasteful task is unsound.  As Professor Dewey points out, unless
the interest is in some way involved there can be no useful discipline.
And how many of our university and high school graduates today are in any
sense disciplined?  Stimulated interest alone can overcome the resistance
imposed by a difficult task, as any scientist, artist, organizer or
administrator knows.  Men will discipline themselves to gain a desired
end.  Under the old system of education a few children succeed either
because they are desirous of doing well, interested in the game of mental
competition; or else because they contrive to clothe with flesh and blood
some subject presented as a skeleton.  It is not uncommon, indeed, to
recognize in later years with astonishment a useful citizen or genius
whom at school or college we recall as a dunce or laggard.  In our
present society, because of archaic methods of education, the development
of such is largely left to chance.  Those who might have been developed
in time, who might have found their task, often become wasters, drudges,
and even criminals.

The old system tends to make types, to stamp every scholar in the same
mould, whether he fits it or not.  More and more the parents of today are
looking about for new schools, insisting that a son or daughter possesses
some special gift which, under teachers of genius, might be developed
before it is too late.  And in most cases, strange to say, the parents
are right.  They themselves have been victims of a standardized system.

A new and distinctly American system of education, designed to meet the
demands of modern conditions, has been put in practice in parts of the
United States.  In spite of opposition from school boards, from all those
who cling to the conviction that education must of necessity be an
unpalatable and "disciplinary" process, the number of these schools is
growing.  The objection, put forth by many, that they are still in the
experimental stage, is met by the reply that experiment is the very
essence of the system.  Democracy is experimental, and henceforth
education will remain experimental for all time.  But, as in any other
branch of science, the element of ascertained fact will gradually
increase: the latent possibilities in the mind of the healthy child will
be discovered by knowledge gained through impartial investigation.  The
old system, like all other institutions handed down to us from the ages,
proceeds on no intelligent theory, has no basis on psychology, and is
accepted merely because it exists.

The new education is selective.  The mind of each child is patiently
studied with the view of discovering the peculiar bent, and this bent is
guided and encouraged.  The child is allowed to forge ahead in those
subjects for which he shows an aptitude, and not compelled to wait on a
class.  Such supervision, of course, demands more teachers, teachers of
an ability hitherto deplorably rare, and thoroughly trained in their
subjects, with a sympathetic knowledge of the human mind.  Theirs will be
the highest and most responsible function in the state, and they must be
rewarded in proportion to their services.

A superficial criticism declares that in the new schools children will
study only "what they like."  On the contrary, all subjects requisite for
a wide culture, as well as for the ability to cope with existence in a
highly complex civilization, are insisted upon.  It is true, however,
that the trained and gifted teacher is able to discover a method of so
presenting a subject as to seize the imagination and arouse the interest
and industry of a majority of pupils.  In the modern schools French, for
example, is really taught; pupils do not acquire a mere smattering of the
language.  And, what is more important, the course of study is directly
related to life, and to practical experience, instead of being set forth
abstractly, as something which at the time the pupil perceives no
possibility of putting into use.  At one of the new schools in the south,
the ignorant child of the mountains at once acquires a knowledge of
measurement and elementary arithmetic by laying out a garden, of letters
by inscribing his name on a little signboard in order to identify his
patch--for the moment private property.  And this principle is carried
through all the grades.  In the Gary Schools and elsewhere the making of
things in the shops, the modelling of a Panama Canal, the inspection of
industries and governmental establishments, the designing, building, and
decoration of houses, the discussion and even dramatization of the books
read,--all are a logical and inevitable continuation of the abstract
knowledge of the schoolroom.  The success of the direct application of
learning to industrial and professional life may also be observed in such
colleges as those at Cincinnati and Schenectady, where young men spend
half the time of the course in the shops of manufacturing, corporations,
often earning more than enough to pay their tuition.

Children are not only prepared for democratic citizenship by being
encouraged to think for themselves, but also to govern and discipline
themselves.  On the moral side, under the authoritative system of lay
and religious training, character was acquired at the expense of mental
flexibility--the Puritan method; our problem today, which the new system
undertakes, is to produce character with open-mindedness--the kind of
character possessed by many great scientists.  Absorption in an
appropriate task creates a moral will, while science, knowledge, informs
the mind why a thing is "bad" or "good," disintegrating or upbuilding.
Moreover, these children are trained for democratic government by the
granting of autonomy.  They have their own elected officials, their own
courts; their decisions are, of course, subject to reversal by the
principal, but in practice this seldom occurs.

The Gary Schools and many of the new schools are public schools.  And the
principle of the new education that the state is primarily responsible
for the health of pupils--because an unsound body is apt to make an
unsound citizen of backward intelligence--is now being generally adopted
by public schools all over the country.  This idea is essentially an
element of the democratic contention that all citizens must be given
an equality of opportunity--though all may not be created equal--now
becoming a positive rather than a negative right, guaranteed by the state
itself.  An earnest attempt is thus made by the state to give every
citizen a fair start that in later years he may have no ground for
discontent or complaint.  He stands on his own feet, he rises in
proportion to his ability and industry.  Hence the program of the British
Labour Party rightly lays stress on education, on "freedom of mental
opportunity."  The vast sums it proposes to spend for this purpose are
justified.

If such a system of education as that briefly outlined above is carefully
and impartially considered, the objection that democratic government
founded on modern social science is coercive must disappear.  So far as
the intention and effort of the state is able to confer it, every citizen
will have his choice of the task he is to perform for society, his
opportunity for self-realization.  For freedom without education is a
myth.  By degrees men and women are making ready to take their places in
an emulative rather than a materialistically competitive order.  But the
experimental aspect of this system should always be borne in mind, with
the fact that its introduction and progress, like that of other elements
in the democratic program, must be gradual, though always proceeding
along sound lines.  For we have arrived at that stage of enlightenment
when we realize that the only mundane perfection lies in progress rather
than achievement.  The millennium is always a lap ahead.  There would be
no satisfaction in overtaking it, for then we should have nothing more to
do, nothing more to work for.

The German Junkers have prostituted science by employing it for the
destruction of humanity.  In the name of Christianity they have waged the
most barbaric war in history.  Yet if they shall have demonstrated to
mankind the futility of efficiency achieved merely for material ends; if,
by throwing them on a world screen, they shall have revealed the evils of
power upheld alone by ruthlessness and force, they will unwittingly have
performed a world service.  Privilege and dominion, powers and
principalities acquired by force must be sustained by force.  To fail
will be fatal.  Even a duped people, trained in servility, will not
consent to be governed by an unsuccessful autocracy.  Arrogantly Germany
has staked her all on world domination.  Hence a victory for the Allies
must mean a democratic Germany.

Nothing short of victory.  There can be no arrangement, no agreement,
no parley with or confidence in these modern scions of darkness
--Hohenzollerns, Hindenburgs, Zudendorffs and their tools.  Propaganda must
not cease; the eyes of Germans still capable of sight must be opened.
But, as the President says, force must be used to the limit--force for a
social end as opposed to force for an evil end.  There are those among us
who advocate a boycott of Germany after peace is declared.  These would
seem to take it for granted that we shall fall short of victory, and
hence that selfish retaliative or vindictive practices between nations,
sanctioned by imperialism, will continue to flourish after the war.  But
should Germany win she will see to it that there is no boycott against
her.  A compromised peace would indeed mean the perpetuation of both
imperialism and militarism.

It is characteristic of those who put their faith in might alone that
they are not only blind to the finer relationships between individuals
and nations, but take no account of the moral forces in human affairs
which in the long run are decisive,--a lack of sensitiveness which
explains Germany's colossal blunders.  The first had to do with Britain.
The German militarists persisted in the belief that the United Kingdom
was degenerated by democracy, intent upon the acquisition of wealth,
distracted by strife at home, uncertain of the Empire, and thus would
selfishly remain aloof while the Kaiser's armies overran and enslaved the
continent.  What happened, to Germany's detriment, was the instant
socialization of Britain, and the binding together of the British Empire.
Germany's second great blunder was an arrogant underestimation of a
self-reliant people of English culture and traditions.  She believed that
we, too, had been made flabby by democracy, were wholly intent upon the
pursuit of the dollar--only to learn that America would lavish her vast
resources and shed her blood for a cause which was American.  Germany
herself provided that cause, shaped the issues so that there was no
avoiding them.  She provided the occasion for the socializing of America
also; and thus brought about, within a year, a national transformation
which in times of peace might scarce in half a century have been
accomplished.

Above all, as a consequence of these two blunders, Germany has been
compelled to witness the consummation of that which of all things she had
most to fear, the cementing of a lasting fellowship between the English
speaking Republic and the English speaking Empire.  For we had been
severed since the 18th Century by misunderstandings which of late Germany
herself had been more or less successful in fostering.  She has furnished
a bond not only between our governments, but--what is vastly more
important for democracy--a bond between our peoples.  Our soldiers are
now side by side with those of the Empire on the Frontier of Freedom; the
blood of all is shed and mingled for a great cause embodied in the
Anglo-Saxon tradition of democracy; and our peoples, through the
realization of common ideas and common ends, are learning the supreme
lesson of co-operation between nations with a common past, are being
cemented into a union which is the symbol and forerunner of the
democratic league of Nations to come.  Henceforth, we believe, because of
this union, so natural yet so long delayed, by virtue of the ultimate
victory it forecasts, the sun will never set on the Empire of the free,
for the drum beats of democracy have been heard around the world.  To
this Empire will be added the precious culture of France, which the
courage of her sons will have preserved, the contributions of Italy,
and of Russia, yes, and of Japan.

Our philosophy and our religion are changing; hence it is more and more
difficult to use the old terms to describe moral conduct.  We say, for
instance, that America's action in entering the war has been "unselfish."
But this merely means that we have our own convictions concerning the
ultimate comfort of the world, the manner of self-realization of
individuals and nations.  We are attempting to turn calamity into good.
If this terrible conflict shall result in the inauguration of an
emulative society, if it shall bring us to the recognition that
intelligence and science may be used for the upbuilding of such an order,
and for an eventual achievement of world peace, every sacrifice shall
have been justified.

Such is the American Issue.  Our statesmen and thinkers have helped to
evolve it, our people with their blood and treasure are consecrating it.
And these statesmen and thinkers, of whom our American President is not
the least, are of democracy the pioneers.  From the mountain tops on
which they stand they behold the features of the new world, the dawn of
the new day hidden as yet from their brothers in the valley.  Let us have
faith always that it is coming, and struggle on, highly resolving that
those who gave their lives in the hour of darkness shall not have died in
vain.





PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS OF THE ENTIRE PG WORKS OF WINSTON CHURCHILL:

     A man ought never to be frightened by appearances
     A man's character often give the lie to his tongue
     A bold front is half the battle
     A people is rarely justly estimated by its contemporaries
     A lie has short legs
     Absurd to promise to love
     Acceptance of authority is not faith, it is mere credulity
     Affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest
     Always getting glimpses of things when it is too late
     American religion as set forth by William James
     Antipathy to forms
     Appearance of a professional pallbearer
     Architects should be driven and not followed
     As little government as is compatible with any government at all
     Bad music, she said, offended her
     Be useful!
     Behind that door was the future: so he opened it fearfully
     Being caught was the unpardonable crime
     Believe in others having a hard time
     Best way is to leave 'em alone.  Don't dandle 'em (babies)
     Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted
     Can't believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth
     Clothes of one man are binding on another
     Comparisons, as Shakespeare said, are odorous
     Consequential or inconsequential irrespective of their size
     Constitutionally honest
     Conversation was a mockery
     Conviction that all things were as they ought to be
     Deal with a fool according to his folly
     Deification of beauty to the exclusion of all else
     Do not fear to reverse themselves when occasion demands
     Economic freedom, without which political freedom is a farce
     Economic slavery
     Elaborate attention little men are apt to bestow upon women
     Even after all these ages, the belief, the hope would not down
     Ever been my nature to turn forward instead of back
     Every one, man or woman, has the right to happiness
     Fact should be written like fiction, and fiction like fact
     Faith may be likened to an egg
     Fetters of love
     Flaming flag of a false martyrdom
     Foolish sacrifices are worse than useless
     For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter
     Freedom  meant only the liberty to earn their own living
     Freedom without education is a myth
     Futility of the traditional words of comfort
     Genius honored but never encouraged
     Genius, analyzed, is often disappointing
     God himself would have divorced us
     God bless their backs, which is the only part I ever care to see
     Had a habit of not waiting for answers to her questions
     Happiness of gratitude and wonder, too wise to exult
     Happy the people whose annals are blank in history's book
     He was what is known as a "success"--always that magic word
     He was our macaroni of Annapolis
     He has always been too honest to make a great deal of money
     Hell's here--isn't it?
     Her words of comfort were as few as her silent deeds were many
     How to be silent with a clamouring heart
     How can you talk of things other people have and not want them
     Human multitude with its infinity of despairs and joys
     Humiliation and not conscience which makes the sting
     I see no one upon whom I can rely but myself
     I hate humility
     I'm always searching for things to do
     If Christians were logical, they should be Socialists
     Immortality as orthodox Christianity depicts it
     Immutable love in a changing, heedless, selfish world
     Impervious to hints, and would not take no for an answer
     Impulse had brought him thus far
     Indiscriminate, unreasoning self-sacrifice
     Individualism with which the Church can have no sympathy
     Intellectually lazy
     Intense longing is always followed by disappointment
     It is sorrow which lifts us nearest to heaven
     It's money that makes you free
     Know a great deal and don't believe anything
     Knowledge puts faith out of the question
     Leaders and interpreters, must grow to meet critical situations
     Little better than a gambling place (Stock Exchange)
     Logical result of independent thinking is anarchy
     Love," she added, "plays such havoc with one's opinions
     Luxuries formerly unthought of seemed to become necessities
     Material proof, it seems to me, is a denial of faith
     Mistaking the effect for the cause
     Mixture of awkwardness and straightforwardness
     Most dangerous of gifts, the seeing of two sides of a quarrel
     Naturally she took preoccupation for indifference
     No reason why we should suffer all our lives for a mistake
     No real prosperity comes out of double-dealing
     Not given to trite acquiescence
     Often in real danger at the moment when they feel most secure
     Often times principles is nothing but pride
     Old enough to know better, and too old to be taught
     Olmah which Isaiah uses does not mean virgin
     Only one regret as to what you said--that it is true
     Outwitting one's neighbour under the rules of the game--the law
     Pleasure?  Yes.  It makes me feel as if I were of some use
     Principle in law not to volunteer information
     Privilege of making blunders
     Providence is accepted by his beneficiaries as a matter of fact
     Read a patent medicine circular and shudder with seven diseases
     Regarding favourable impressions with profound suspicion
     Religion, I think, should be everybody's (profession)
     Resented the implication of possession
     Rising every time you fall (Confucius on greatness)
     Rocks to which one might cling, successful or failing
     Rule which you so confidently apply to fit all cases
     Scandalously forced through the council of Nicaea
     Seeking a forgiveness out of all proportion to the trespass
     Self-torture is human
     Sentimentalism, ignorance, close-mindedness, and cant
     Shaped his politics according to the company he was in
     She had never known the necessity of making friends
     She could pass over, but never forgive what her aunt had said
     Sight of happiness is often a pleasure for those who are sad
     Silence--goad to indiscretion
     Simple men who command by force of character
     Sir, I have not yet begun to fight
     Sleep!  A despised waste of time in childhood
     So glad to have what other people haven't
     So much for Democracy when it becomes a catchword
     Sought to remove comparisons
     St Paul, you say, put us in our proper place
     Success--which was really failure
     Sunday was then a day essentially different from other days
     Taking him like daily bread, to be eaten and not thought about
     That abominable word "like"
     That magic word Change
     The law cannot fit all cases
     The weak always sink
     The English do not advertise their sorrows
     The hours of greatest suffering are the empty hours
     The worse the disease, the more remarkable the cure
     The days of useless martyrdom are past
     The greatest wonders are not at the ends of the earth, but near
     Their lines belonged rather to the landscape (cottages)
     They have to print something
     Thinking isn't--believing
     Thinking that because you have no ideals, other people haven't
     Those who walk on ice will slide against their wills
     Thy politics are not over politic
     Time, the unbribeable
     Tis no so bad it micht-na be waur
     To be great is to be misunderstood
     Universal suffrage, however, implies individual judgment
     Unquenchable conflicts are those waged for ideas and not dollars
     Vagueness generally attributed to her sex
     Vividly unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop
     We never can foresee how we may change
     We must believe, if we believe at all, without authority
     We are always trying to get away from ourselves
     We have no control over our affections
     We can't take Christianity too literally
     Weak coffee and the Protestant religion seemed inseparable
     When our brief span of usefulness is done
     Who had learned the lesson of mothers,--how to wait
     Whole conception of charity is a crime against civilization
     Why should I desire what I cannot have
     Within every man's province to make himself what he will
     Ya maun ken th' incentive's the maist o' the battle
     You and your religion are as far apart as the poles
     Youth is in truth a mystery